Detour
The two girls emerged from the trees and wandered their way up to the road for miles before reaching the highway that would take them into Atlanta.
“Not far now,” Holly commented, excited as she folded the map back up and stuffed it into her bag. A little over a day and they’d be there. She was itching to get her hands on a wand, her magic had been antsy as of late, between the long hours holding it in to keep it concealed from her new companion to the sporadic and untamable burst she was able to conjure, it needed to stretch its wings.
She was giddy and ready to cast spells again, almost hopping from foot to foot whenever she thought about it.
Sophia remained the more subdued of the two, merely humming in agreement as she adjusted the straps of her new backpack, pilfered from a tiny general store that was only sort of looted.
“What are we headed for in Atlanta, exactly?” She asked, straw-blonde hair in disarray, a smudge of dried mud across her nose, pulling one strap too tight and then grimacing at the sensation. Holly chewed her inner lip, turning on the spot and pretending to inspect the empty street for signs of dangers.
“I-There’s some stuff that I really need. And I don’t know how long it's going to still be there so…” She shrugged uncomfortably and rubbed her cheek with one shoulder, not looking at her directly.
Sophia must have frowned and the wind rustled the leaves overhead, a shivering canopy of green and yellow.
Holly knew she couldn’t avoid the question for very much longer, she’d already dodged it a couple of times already in the few days since Sophia had decided to stick around and she knew the other girl was equal parts annoyed and undeniably curious.
So far she'd remained politely timid about her inquiries but that would not last forever. No matter how much she needed Holly to survive, no one would be okay with being left in the dark like this indefinitely (Holly sure wouldn’t and was feeling more and more squirmy in her gut about it by the hour, she never did like lying to fri-people. To people.) but for now she accepted Holly's noncommittal excuse as she fled down the road away from that point of conversation with no more than a frustrated huff.
They were in a small town called Oxford and to Holly it appeared as though the entire place was of nothing more than a landscape supply store, a faith christian school and a cracker barrel. They’d already cleared the restaurant and came out empty-handed (if you call a jacket pocket full of ketchup packets empty-handed, which Sophia did but Holly didn’t--insisting stubbornly that they could make a better-than-nothing-tomato-soup from it much to the other girls visible disgust, “We still have those packet-thingies though.” “It’s called being prepared, moron.” “Jesus, fine.”) and then Holly badgered Sophia into checking out the landscape supply store under the guise of finding a more permanent weapon for the girl, she’d been wandering around with Dans knife and a sharpened stick made by Holly, but really she had her eyes set on something else.
Neville and her liked to talk about gardening sometimes, and she remembered him once said something about Quicki-Gro fertilizer during Herbology, she’d been half distracted wrangling a venomous tanctula at the time and she thinks it did something like magically speed up the growth rate. On her long walk up through Florida she’d had a half baked notion of starting her own garden wherever she ended up and this place looked like it might sell seeds or something. She bet herself she could scoop a boatload into her bag without Sophia even noticing.
They stepped carefully through the front window, the glass had been shattered outward and was now speckled with red, Sophia whimpered but quieted quick enough once Holly shushed her.
The place smelled of sawdust and paint, metallic in the darkened dusty air and the almost teens crept carefully along the registers. Once they’d rounded the turnstile of paint swatches Holly motioned for Sophia to go. The other girl bit her lip, cautious determination glancing across her features briefly (the same as every time before when Holly had asked to take the lead) before she nodded resolutely.
Holly made a point of forcing her to take an active part in their survival every day, in a rush for her companion to catch up and become someone a little less pathetic (if at least so she would stop painting such a large target on their backs) and slowly but surely Sophia was rising to the challenge.
Today she was calling the rotters.
She crept past Holly carefully, the young witch could tell with each trepid step that she was holding her breath. She unclipped the metal water bottle hanging at her side and then thumped it against the floor, the metal reverberating with loud distinctive clangs throughout the seemingly empty building.
They exchanged a glance when after a long moment nothing disturbed the quiet.
Holly held up her fingers and counted down from three, then they moved together deeper into the aisles. Sophia in the lead, Holly with one hand gripped tight to her shoulder, using a series of pats and squeezes to direct her silently through the store.
It had become their routine system after Sophia could not stop herself from grabbing hold of Holly’s arm/hand in fright or looking back at her with big wet doe-eyes, constantly in need of reassurance.
This technique allowed for Holly to provide that without the dumb girl taking her eyes off potential danger every five seconds.
It helped that the young gryffindor thought their slowly developing system of gestures was very cool; it made her feel like a soldier or maybe an international superspy. Sophia was her cadet in training and they were on top secret missions, not running for their lives through a hellscape that had them both gasping awake from bad dreams every night.
Glancing at Sophia's pale face and white knuckles Holly doubted she was making up silly scenarios in her head like she was. Shame. She was missing out. It was half the reason Holly was able to stay sane these days.
“What are we looking for?” Sophia breathed as they paused beside a pallet piled with sacks of musty wood chips. Holly shrugged, pressing their shoulders together so the other girl could feel the movement and then motioned over their right. The sign displaying ‘Garden Tools’ was a little crooked on its pegs, Sophia sucked in a breath, then knocked their shoulders together again and nodded.
They snuck along the back wall until the lumber and paint turned to hoses, plastic buckets, and great big bags of dark soil. Holly hummed to herself, flicking her eyes over the display of trowels and garden forks, tilting her head in thought while Sophia fidgeted with her spear nervously.
There were more gardening supplies marked one aisle over. Holly bit her lip before making her move.
“Pick out the sharpest one you can find,” She whispered, stepping away, “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” Sophia demanded, gripping the edge of her sleeve.
“I’ve got an idea.” Holly reassured, gently but firmly detaching her fingers and darting back before she could be grabbed again. Sophia’s whispered protests fading into anxious mutters as Holly rounded the corner into another darkened aisle.
Her shoes squeaked across the linoleum, she ducked around an overturned display of neon rubber gloves, scurrying quickly down the aisles until she came to the section lined with small packets of seeds. Black krim tomatoes, romaine lettuce, basil, sweet peas, carrots, cucumbers, thyme, peppers, watermelon, she scooped them up greedily and shoved them into an inner pocket of her bag, grinning to herself like a maniac.
She pictured them planted haphazardly by her own whims in a small garden that looked a lot like the one by Hagrid's hut, her being able to tend to them lovingly without a thin-lipped shadow lurking from the window, whipping them up into the complex dishes she had learned to serve for the Dursleys over the years. She envisioned having them all to herself this time instead of staring longingly at her hours of labor from across the kitchen.
She imagined, briefly, a life a little bit brighter than the one she left behind.
Something clattered behind her in the dark and she got back on task.
Holly tossed the final packets of sugar beets inside, zipped her pack and swung it over her shoulder. She slipped along the metal shelves, rounding the corner into Hardware and snatched up a thick roll of duct tape before doubling back towards her companion.
Sophia was sitting cross legged on the floor, caught in the dusty slants of light, biting her lip as she surveyed the dozen or so garden trowels she had lined up on the tiles in front of her. They were organized by length and color; it looked like Sophia was in the process of pushing the tip of one into the pad of her finger to test its sharpness.
Holly fought a fond smile, the face of her bushy-haired friend flashing briefly behind her eyes before she shook it away. Arranging her features into an appropriate scowl she knelt down next to the other girl and raised an eyebrow when she jumped. They’d have to work on her awareness then.
The blonde tween grinned at her sheepishly, wordlessly handing the red handled trowel over when Holly extended a hand. She turned it over and ran a finger along it, the metal connecting the blade to the handle was thin and looked like it’d snap relatively easily. She looked over the other options Sophia had laid out until her eyes landed on one thicker than the rest. She picked it up and tried to bend it, grinning when it held. She motioned to Sophia for her spear, “Gimme that” and quickly began winding a thick layer of silver tape to attach the two together.
“Here,” Holly said, handing it back. “It’s a proper spear, now.”
“Yeah,” Sophia muttered, twisting it in her grip to stare at it with no small degree of doubt, “Positively medieval.”
Holly grinned involuntarily, somewhat taken aback by vitriol from the timid girl but impressed nonetheless.
“Better than before.” She returned. Sophia pulled a face at her and Holly rolled her eyes, standing and offering a hand that the other girl accepted to haul to her feet.
“We’ll see about that.”
Holly opened her mouth to fire back when the rumbling of an approaching engine froze the reply in her throat. Both girls' heads snapped around towards the sudden clamor, an off-white pick up was pulling in out front.
All the blood rushed out of Holly’s face and she felt the ghostly grip of fingers clenched tightly around her upper arms, holding her in place. The smell of salt and sugar and charcoal rushed back into her nose and she could feel her heart rate speed up as images of steel tanks and concrete rooms and the rusted out sign that read “Tillmans” flashed like a shutter speed across her eyes.
The sound of car doors slamming jolted her out of her panicked stupor. People. People are dangerous. She reached out blindly and fumbled for Sophia’s arm, yanking her back farther into the store. Her heart thumped in her ears.
The blonde girl stumbled under the sudden strain on her joints. Yelping, the sound cut off under Holly’s palm when she immediately slapped it over her mouth. Her face was as pale as her own, blue eyes wide and frightened. A murmured question muffled against her palm and she wheezed quietly when Holly sunk her nails into her cheeks in warning.
“Shh!” Holly hissed, pulling them back farther into the dark, her eyes darting over all the shadows as they passed through them, the sound of voices chattering and a rough laugh trickling in from the outside. Holly breathed the words right into her ear. “We have to hide. Right. Now.”
Sophia nodded rapidly and allowed Holly to bully her into a corner, wedged between two shelves, Holly pushing her until she hit the wall and then the young witch flattened her back against the self, putting herself in the way of whatever came next, hard metal digging into her spine. Both of them breathing quiet as they could, ensconced together in the dark.
A few heartbeats later, the three men entered the store.
///
Sophia’s breath was hot against her own palm. Her breath coming out short and fast, despite her trying her best to keep it even. She had to be quieter.
“-c’mon, Wade. We don’t even need this shit.”
“Just shut your mouth and find it, will you?”
Their boots were heavy, thumping solid against the ground and cracking glass under their soles. There was some clattering and one of the men swore. She flicked her eyes to her dark haired companion and could see the tense set of her jaw. Sophia grabbed her hand and squeezed it without really thinking about it before letting go again once she noticed Holly’s tightly contained flinch.
“Pull it together, man. She wants us back before dark.”
“Whatever.”
“Nah, he’s right.” A third voice chimed in, words taunting and smug, in on some joke Sophia wasn’t getting. “She said she needed something and so we jumped, right? All hop-to-it-yes-men once she blinks at us pretty.”
“Shut up, Moros.”
“Why should I? Not like you aren’t thinking about it. Shoot, I’d even go as far to say it’s expected of ya.”
“I said shut up.”
“Settle down, sport. No need to go feeling bad ‘bout it. S’only natural. And besides, it’s not like she’s your real mom-”
A growl and the sound of flesh hitting flesh, then bodies falling sideways into some kind of display that sent whatever was on it crashing to the ground, the clatter it made sounded like a hundred gunshots to Sophia, whose hands flew to cover her ears.
She whimpered and felt Holly press elbow firmly into her stomach, both a warning and an anchor to reality. She dropped her head forward until it made contact with the back of the other girl's shoulder shaking with barely suppressed terror.
She’d never stop being grateful that despite the other girl's prickly nature she would occasionally indulge Sophia’s clinginess. Contact with people made her feel safer, always had. She’d wrapped her arms around her mom’s middle when her father was in one of his shouting drunken moods, held the hand of one of her few friends when the richer kids would tease her for obviously donation-bin-clothing, and leaned heavily into Carl’s shoulder when they rode past the scorched husk of a burnt out car, what was left of the drivers face melted to the still smoking metal like a glob of fleshy mozzarella.
Now, she clung desperately to the tiny rigid person in front of her, hiding her face in a dark mane of impossibly wild (but somehow still always untangled) hair and praying neither of them would be found.
That if they were, that Holly would be able to protect her.
(She already had. Twice! She could do it again now, couldn’t she?)
Holly pressed back slightly into her hold and shushed her viciously, sounding much more irritated this time, without ever moving her gaze from the sliver of aisle still visible from their hiding place.
It was a weird noise, more of a hiss really, and one that she could barely discern over the startling chorus of men exchanging curse-filled blows nearby, but still somehow it managed to frighten the breath out of her lungs.
It was so cold and the sound of it made her shiver like the air that carried it was heavy with frozen water, sharp shards of ice sinking directly into her mind like a horrible ice cream headache. (But evil, somehow.)
Hearing it felt wrong, she felt wrong, and it was an absolutely-definitely-awful sensation but it also slapped Sophia back into the current moment like a whip cracking unexpectedly over head. The sudden stab of terror in her heart sharpening at the perceived threat and then batting it away to focus on the very real and present danger to them both.
Her heartbeat quickened and she felt her legs tense like she was ready to run.
(Or to fight, she realized with no small amount of shock. Her fingers had curled unconsciously around her spear, and when she reached for it she felt a shaky resolve within herself to stand and try to stab at whoever might come at them next.)
Sophia exhaled a shaky breath and shifted back, now a little embarrassed about her semi-desperate-hug, and brought the spear up a little higher in her grip, bumping her own shoulder into Holly’s gently, the signal that was coming to mean “I’m okay to keep going” between them. Holly glanced back and gave her a tense closed lip smile, her eyes astonishingly bright in the dim light. Sophia squinted a little, they were almost too bright.
….actually, they were super abnormal now that she was really looking at them. She’d never seen someone who had eyes that looked like that, not even in movies. Not that absurd color, anyways. They were almost gleaming in the dim, bathing the air around them in a cool green glow.
It was unnatural. Like a stupid impossible thing in a comic book. Almost like-
“YOU SACK OF SHIT!”
More wild hacking laughter, rough like whoever was doing it had sore ribs. The other man, the one not currently threatening to shit down the smug one's throat, spoke in a deep, even voice.
“Calm down, kid. Don’t let him rile you up.”
“He… He fucking-”
“Just let it go.”
“Yeah, kiddo,” The smug man’s voice was a little nasally, like he’d been punched in the nose and was pinching it shut (her mom had sounded similar sometimes), “Don’t throw a fit.”
More shuffling like the heavily breathing second man was being held back by the deep voiced guy.
“I said cool it, Wade.”
“Get off me you-” And then the world came crashing down around them.
Or at least, that’s how it felt to Sophia.
One moment they were huddled together, straining their ears and the next the shelving behind them wobbled and fell, pushing them both to the ground as they scrambled to cover their heads from the falling hardware and appliances that smacked heavily into the dust.
Sophia squeaked in fright, and this time Holly was too preoccupied with bracing herself to stop it.
The silence that rang out in the aftermath had her hanging her head in shame and fear.
They’d definitely heard that.
///
Merlinchristalmightyshitwhy?!!?
Holly cursed internally, turned to glare hellfire at the idiot flattened next to her in the dirt, a bag of fertilizer had split upon making contact with the ground and now they were literally in deep shit.
Holly panted, her vision narrowing to two twin pinpricks of terror as she scrambled to pull herself out from under the wreckage of shelves. She almost forgot about Sophia in her panic but at the last second whipped around to haul her out as well, dragging the girl on her stomach through the spilt soil. Sophia spluttered and spit as some got into her mouth, but Holly was already hurrying them back further into the store and away from the dark silhouettes, smokey in the light and coming towards them, guns raised.
Holly turned away just in time to see a bullet impact the plaster wall behind her, she ducked into a crouch, pulling an unsteady Sophia down with her and breaking into a run that honestly looked more like a frantic crab scuttle.
“Hey!” The big guy barked sharply, “That’s a fucking kid.”
“So?” The smug guy raised his gun again and this time the big guy smacked it down and out of his hands. Which mattered little to Holly, who had already pulled the two of them halfway through the back door when a fist tangled in her dark hair and yanked her back.
“And just where do you think you’re going?”