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It's September fourteenth 1997, and a ten-year-old Sadde has not had breakfast. Her mother is resigned to it, but that doesn't mean she likes it. Sadde herself, on the other hand, cannot sit still. "I'm so gonna get magic!" she says, bouncing up and down, to which Laura replies with, "I'm sure."
Her excitement is dying down by dinner time. She's hungry. But she doesn't complain. She just drinks a lot of water.
In the middle of the night, she sneaks into the kitchen. She eats two crackers, suspiciously easy to reach in their cupboard. He doesn't mention it to Laura the next morning, and Laura herself doesn't bring it up either.
He continues drinking lots of water. He naps, ignoring (or trying to ignore) the growling of his stomach. He was happy when he figured out he wouldn't even be eleven at the time of his eclipse. It didn't occur to him until now that maybe being older might have been better for his endurance or something. So his stomach keeps growling, and he refuses to eat anything all day, and Laura refuses to do anything about her child's suffering because it's better this way.
Starvation is not the best for his mood, either. He starts considering that maybe, possibly, he may not be one of the .1% of humanity that gets magic. Maybe he'll be just normal for the rest of his life. Maybe he should just lie in bed and curl up into a ball and ignore the incessant crying of his stomach demanding to be fed. He gets up, gets water, goes back to bed, curls back up again, in a funk. What's this even for? What's even the point? He's 99.9% positive he won't get magic. It's not fair for him to go through this—this shit, just because he maybe perhaps might possibly in a remote parallel universe have magic but not this one because there is nothing that justifies this.
He turns around so he can watch the clock. He wills it to tick faster, wishes the eclipse to come earlier, maybe if he really focuses enough he can get some psion power (or is it mage? how would you even classify that?) to move time faster, make this end. He's just ten!
He naps again, fitfully, and his stomach wakes him up. "Shut up!" he tells it. It doesn't listen. Still growling. "Ugh!" His mother comes to his room, and he's still curled up into a ball, eyes shut, trying to sleep again, because when he sleeps he's not so hungry. She pets him, running her hands through his hair, trying to be soothing without really saying anything. She's been through it. She knows what it's like, to feel horrible for two days, she knows at the end he will feel betrayed, curse the universe for not giving him a gift, for causing this suffering for no reason. No worse suffering, he believes at the moment, and he's so young, not even eleven. But this, too, shall pass. Not tonight, he will suffer because of it for much longer, he is much different than she was when she went through this, but it will pass.
And it's the evening, and the eclipse starts, and Sadde is suddenly full of vigor and energy again, he jumps from his bed and runs outside, and he looks up and then he doesn't because that's bad for his eyes (or was it the other eclipse? he's not sure), and he waits, waits, waits, and hopes—
—and feels. "I have it," he breathes. "I have it! Mom! Moooom! Mom I have it I have it!" The hunger forgotten, he runs into the house—no, she's watching him from the door, okay, he flings himself at her and hugs her, "I have it! I'm a mage! Not a psion but that's okay, I'm a mage!" (And a part of him says, I can be me, I'll work on it and I'll be me, not just half of me, all of me!)
And she laughs and kisses the top of his head and they're in the car, driving off to control school. Sadde's lying on the back seat, listing off all the things he will be doing with his magic, he will change a lot, and he'll fly, and he'll heal people, and they're both going to live forever, together, and everything will be fine, and there's a granola bar under his mom's seat. He grabs it, his stomach grumbles, and he opens it and eats it, because he has forgotten he isn't supposed to, because he's busy ratting off all the things he's going to do and his mind is elsewhere. He runs out of things to list for a while and stops to think about them, and he chews and swallows, and oh my god he was so hungry, except wait, he wasn't supposed to eat! Oops. But that's alright, he thinks, it was just like three quarters of a granola bar, he's fine.
It's not alright.
He feels—something. Laura stops answering. The car starts veering to the right, and he sits up and looks at—
blood. So much blood. Too much blood. There aren't any injuries, nothing visible, but there's blood everywhere, soaking through her clothes and her hair, sprouting from her eyes and nose and ears and lips, emerging from her bare skin as if her pores were fountains of it, and she's slumped over, she's not moving, she stops breathing as he watches, her head turned to look directly at him through blood-covered eyes. He's not sure when he started screaming, but he did in fact start screaming at some point, and calling her, and the car's off the road and it skids into a shallow ditch but he's not paying attention because he can't breathe, can't see, can't think over the horror of what he's looking at, and he can't look at it anymore but he can't stop looking. He has stopped screaming. He hasn't stopped looking. He doesn't know he has a body until it rudely reminds him by telling him it needs food, it doesn't care that the world has just ended and that nothing matters anymore, it doesn't give a fuck that nothing will ever be alright again, this stupid body has the audacity to remind him it exists, it has caused this, it couldn't have just stopped. It couldn't have just killed him instead. It could kill him now. He could kill him now. He couldn't kill him now. She wouldn't—wouldn't—He can't complete the thought for a while longer, he's no longer staring at her but he's not seeing anything either. It's dark, he's alone, and it's not cold, it should be cold but it's not, and he's hungry.
She would want him to live. Of course she would. There's not even a question there. But the thing is, unlike in movies, this won't sustain him. It won't be enough to drive him. It doesn't matter that she would want him to live, because she's not alive, she's gone, and it's his fault. He has to want to live, it has to be himself.
He climbs out of the car, numbly, realizing that some of the blood is on him, on his clothes, and he finishes eating the granola bar, and he leaves.
He doesn't follow the road.
He sets a tree on fire that night. It's an accident.
Back in the old days, people would do this. Go to the wilderness, where no one else lived, live off berries and whatever else. Other people would leave boxes of food, once a week, but no one else knows he's here. No one'll leave him food. He has to live. He wants to live. He killed her, he knows this, but that's no excuse. What's even the point, if she dies and he dies and then, and then what? Pointless. Not that there has to be a point. But he'll make a point.
He's rambling. Inside his head. He stops rambling and focuses on finding stuff to eat. Surely there's stuff to eat.
There's very little stuff to eat.
He makes a shrub with berries on it explode the following morning. That's alright, he's pretty sure they were poisonous. That's what he keeps telling himself, anyway.
She realizes, at some point, that two days without eating wasn't that big a deal. That she was being a big baby about it, that it's nothing compared to a week without food. She wakes up one day to the sound of some animal nearby, and her magic actually cooperates, and the animal's leaking blood
(just like mom did)
it doesn't matter, it's dead. She has not learned to make a fire. Not with magic, not with her hands. She tries anyway, and is mostly successful, and she manages to eat half-cooked half-raw something. She doesn't remember what animal it was, only that it was the most delicious thing she'd ever eaten.
Tobias answers, listens in silence, then says he's on his way.
The cop thanks him and goes back to other things. The psion keeps sitting with Sadde. He may also be doing other things, you never know with psions, but he doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Sadde has sort of mastered the ability to not do anything, what with spending long stretches of time not doing anything.
And eventually Tobias arrives, and he's so very clearly a dom it's practically written on his forehead. His eyes scan the scene, and pause on Sadde—
—and she's paralyzed. She meets his eyes for only half a second, then lowers hers.
"Well, there you are," he says, and smiles.
The psion wants to see Tobias's ID - can't be too careful, you know - and advise him on reintroducing Sadde gradually to normal quantities and kinds of food, and after that they're free to go! Happy reunion!
Yes. So happy. Yay. Much joy. Tobias is courteous, but uses more imperatives than usual. Not enough that it really makes people too uncomfortable, but definitely on the higher end of normal. And he smiles, and talks to Sadde like he's missed her, beaming at her and putting a hand on her shoulder and being overall very affectionate.
Then they get in the car, and he's silent like a tomb for fifteen minutes, after which he asks: "What happened to your mother?"
She doesn't answer.
"Tell me what happened to your mother," he repeats, and she finds herself telling it all, everything from the moment she started fasting to today, about what happened in the car and her two years alone, how she survived, what she had to do. He listens to all of this without uttering a word. She's sobbing quietly by the time she's done, still not looking at him. He doesn't say anything until they reach his place.
She finds she has two half-siblings, Johnathan and Sarah. She doesn't speak to them—whenever it looks like she might try, Tobias looks at her, and she remains silent. Her stepmother—Bethany—is polite, but that's the extent of it. Bethany only speaks to Tobias when he speaks to her. She doesn't leave the house, and wears a collar all the time. Sometimes, on weekends, even a leash.
(And Sadde thinks that there was a time when her mother was wearing this collar and she shudders before she can stop herself.)
The evening of the day they arrive, Tobias shows Sadde her room. It's small, probably a guest room or some such, but better than anywhere she's slept in for the past two years. She asks him something, something innocuous like where the bathroom is or what she'll wear, and the next thing she knows she's on the floor, her left cheek burning from the slap. "You will only speak when given leave to do so," he says, calmly. "Now. Do you have any questions?" She looks at him, shaking, and he furrows his brows slightly. "Answer me, child." She shakes her head. He nods, and leaves her in her room, and locks her there.
And what follows are the three worst years of Sadde's life. Tobias patiently and systematically tries to beat the dom out of them. They are not allowed to physically look male in the house, they are not allowed to use imperatives, they are not to meet anyone else's eyes, they are to only speak when they're spoken to. They are female. They are submissive. They learn quite a bit about how to magically heal bruises, at least on themself.
They do not comply.
Sadde slowly connects to their half-siblings. They're not allowed to talk to Sadde, at first, but they do it anyway. Beth speaks when she's spoken to, and that's it.
At some point, Tobias just gives up, and continues mistreating Sadde more out of habit than out of any hope of changing them. And at some point, Sadde manages to, deferentially enough, ask for the umpteenth time to go to magic school, and he accepts. If they're going to be a freak of nature, they might as well be one far away from him.
Better late than never, but late it is, and Sadde's sixteen.
The one that Sadde winds up at is called the Selene School. Most kids from 2001's January eclipse are already out of training, and a lot of them wound up here; the place is crammed with thirteen year olds; but there are plenty of people Sadde's age!
Sadde has to take placement tests for academics, and talk to the residence director. There is not a shapeshifter dorm but there is a co-ed dorm where they can put them in a single. The residence director is very understanding about the shapeshifter thing.
Really. Are they. Well, he'll take what he can get and wonder about ulterior motives later.
He can go on a tour with the six most recent arrivals from the 2001 January batch. Dining hall! Dorms! Classrooms! Fancy gymnasium! Psionic tech lab! Bulletin board of work study opportunities! Library! Lovely greenery and landscaping! Student health center, littered with pamphlets about using condoms and about what's fun domming versus unsafe abuse and about the age of consent (it's 14 for doms in this state, 15 for subs)! Various administrative offices! Student organizations! Auditorium and music practice rooms!
...The alumni are so generous, you see. It is thanks to these generous alumni that we have all these nice things. Hint.
(14 for doms, 15 for subs...? What about him...? Well, he's 16, doesn't matter anyway.)
Such nice facilities. Such nice people. He starts slowly remembering that not everyone is a horrible person.
Sadde lives on a hall inhabited by three girls' names and three boys' names and him, everybody in singles. They do have to share the bathroom.
Isabella, Janet, Myeisha, Victor, Roger, and Jackson.
...
Knock knock.
There is a tapping noise, and the door opens, and a dom leaning on a rattan cane with woodburned spirals all up and down it regards Sadde. "Hi."
And Sadde has to do a triple take because he's pretty sure his heart has just stopped a few times. "Hello," he says, practically batting his eyelashes and lowering his eyes, even though he's taller than she is.
He shrugs, then raises his eyes back up to properly look at her face. "Just arrived. Supposed I should probably meet the people around here."
"Ah. Well, I'm Isabella. ...You don't look like a January 2001. Took a while to get back into magic after training?"
"...kinda. I'm September '97, actually. My birthday was one year and one month after that, and one year and two months before the next one."
"I'm January 2000." Pause. "Between your haircut and..." She doesn't actually say 'the way you batted your eyes at me'. "- I can't tell your role. Switch or just don't like fussing with your hair or what?"
...he laughs, lowering his eyes again. "I actually forgot to say, didn't I. It's Sadde. I'm the only person in the country called that."