Chapter Text
They appeared back where they’d started, but everything had changed.
For starters, it was just her and Grizzop. She remembered her hand slipping free of Ed’s, although she wasn’t sure when she’d lost hold of Bi Ming. It had been so overwhelming, and just plain awful feeling that her memories wouldn’t sort themselves out. So when they landed in the dirt and she rolled onto her back to look up into the far too familiar red light of Rome, and heard only the movement of one other person beside her, it took her a moment or two to realise that wasn’t the only thing that was different.
“Wow, you’re back!” A face suddenly blocked out her view, and she repressed the urge to cry out in alarm. That wasn’t something Sasha Racket did, after all. “Why are there only two of you?”
“Einstein?”
“Who else?” A hand was held out to her and she grasped it, getting to her feet and blinking muzzily. Grizzop was also getting up, his eyes wide. They both took in their surroundings, and then immediately started asking questions.
They sat in Einstein’s extremely professional looking camp while the old wizard did his best… or at least, made an attempt to explain. Sasha was still floundering around with the knowledge that over a year had passed since they’d gone, and Grizzop was obsessed with making sure the others weren’t just dead. Einstein, though, sounded confident.
“You just came through early, that’s all. There’s time magic all over you. Honestly you were very lucky! Planar shifting is weird, you could have ended up a couple of thousand years ago with all your bones on the outside. Saw that once happen to a third year transfiguration student. Bad business.”
“So Hamid and the others… they’ll be here soon?” Sasha asked.
“Probably. Maybe. Almost certainly maybe definitely. You know one way you can muck up the planar shift spell is by keeping your eyes open you didn’t keep your eyes open did you because that can...”
Grizzop interrupted. “Einstein, where is Wilde? We need to get back to him.”
“Oh… he’s around. Doing things.” Einstein’s face closed off, suddenly.
“Where?”
“He works on his own these days, we Harlequins…” Einstein’s pride in his position was evident in the emphasis he put on the “we” “don’t have a lot of contact with him and he’s too far away really for us to…”
“Einstein, I’m going to ask you this one more time, and if you don’t give me a straight answer, I’m going to shoot you in the kneecaps.”
“I’d really rather you…”
Grizzop unslung his bow and stood up, and Einstein sighed.
“Fine. Fine. He’s in Japan.”
“Good. Take us there.”
Sasha blinked. “Hang on. We need to wait for Hamid and Azu, we can’t just…”
Grizzop shook his head, violently.
“There isn’t time! We have just wasted a whole year and a half doing exactly what the horrible, evil, awful people wanted us to do. We got distracted, Sasha, and we need to get back to work .”
“I just got blown up by my own dagger Grizzop, can we at least…”
“I healed you! You’re fine! And if Hamid and Azu are going to turn up behind us then Einstein can bring them to us in Japan once they’re here…”
“This… this obsession with keeping on going isn’t healthy, you know! It’s the whole reason why we ended up in Rome without you in the first place, and we nearly died there, twice! We can’t just run off and leave when…”
“Sasha, I don’t know if you were paying attention, but Einstein just said the world. Has. Ended! And I’m pretty sure it was partially our fault! Because we weren’t here to stop it! So now, we need to go find Wilde and we need to fix it. ”
“It’s not just Hamid and Azu, Grizzop, it’s Bi Ming and Ed and your friend , don’t you care about your friend?”
She thought, for a second, she might have pushed him too far. Grizzop’s fists clenched at his side and the tips of his ears seemed to quiver and when he spoke again his voice was far lower. “Vesseek can look after themself. Just like you said Bi Ming could look after himself. Any way they’re with Hamid and Azu and Azu can look after everyone.”
Sasha sucked air in through her nose. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She could feel how different everything was, knew that they could potentially do something about it. But Grizzop just moved too fast.
“Sasha we need to go.”
She rubbed her hands over her face, then let out a sigh.
“Can you take us to Wilde then?” she asked Einstein.
Einstein was still eyeing Grizzop’s bow. “Technically I should be taking you to Curie…”
Grizzop growled. “Absolutely, categorically, am not going to see Curie. I don’t deal with liars.”
“Oh hang on now I wouldn’t say that Curie is…”
“She lied to me and she lied to my goddess. I am not going to see her.” Grizzop stepped threateningly up to Einstein, who wasn’t really that much taller than him, and Sasha knew from experience, running through the streets of Rome with him on her back, that he was built like a child’s ragdoll underneath all that hair, even with the new survival gear. Grizzop could probably snap the man in half. Possibly just by looking at him.
Grizzop poked Einstein in the chest. “You’re going to take us to Wilde, and you’re going to take us to him now.”
“I thought you hated Wilde,” Sasha said, weakly.
“Oh yeah, most people do,” Einstein agreed, meeting Sasha’s eyes over the top of Grizzop’s head, apparently unfazed by the goblin’s obvious threat.
“You can hate someone and still work with them,” Grizzop said. “And yes he’s a horrible person but at least he doesn’t lie.”
“I mean, I think he probably does, Grizzop,” Sasha said. “Quite a lot actually. We didn’t even know he was our handler until after the business in…”
“He didn’t lie to me, not about this. And we need to fix things. I’m not going to renegotiate a contract with a bunch of Harlequins .” He spat the word like a curse. “Wilde knows us, and we know him, and that’s got to be good enough, right Sasha?”
She really didn’t know what to do when Grizzop got like this. Not even Hamid could talk him down when he was in full flight (and really, a lot of that was because when Grizzop was in full flight it was about something stupid that Hamid had done so she really didn’t blame him). All those years of training with Barret and Bi Ming and Eldarion and Rakevine hadn’t given her the skills to even begin to try to talk down a small, determined, furious Paladin. “I... suppose?”
Grizzop flashed her a grin and gave a little hop. “Good. Great. Let’s go. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”
Einstein sighed. “I’m probably going to get into a lot of trouble for this,” he said.
“You’ll be fine. Just teleport away from it.”
“Oh I intend to.” Einstein stood up, and held out his hands. “Take my hands. Let’s get going then.”
Sasha reached out and took one of Einstein’s leathery, wrinkled hands in hers as gently as possible. Grizzop gripped his other one, then offered his other to Sasha. She took it, and Einstein took a deep breath.
And they said goodbye to Rome.