Sympathy for the Devil {Liam Stewart | The Darkest Minds}

20. Sandman

"Slip Kid wants to see you." Mike comes to collect Mags a week after the party, and it's early enough that she's not even awake when he marches into their cabin just before dawn. Propping herself up on her elbows, she levels a glare at Mike, which he has the decency to look at least a little bit nervous about, though that's the usual reaction people have when they see her eyes.

"Me?" Voice groggy with sleep, Mags only glares harder before rubbing the sleep from her eyes. In the moment she's not looking, she misses the way Mike looks doubtfully between Mags and Ruby, still very much asleep on the bunk below her.

"Yeah, Cal, he's after you." They've taken to calling her Cal, short for Caledonia, as that was how everyone was identifying her, and after a few discrete words from both Liam and Clancy, no-one dared call her a monster. Mags watched Mike for another moment before her expression broke and she smiled cheerily at him.

"Okay, I'll be there in a minute." She hops down from her bunk, pulls on a sundress and tries not to think too hard about her last encounter with Clancy. He seemed to be deliberately keeping space between them, he barely looked her in the eye when he came to collect dinner from where she had been stationed in the kitchen.

When she gets to his office, she can't help but be nervous, and when she sees him, awash with pale lavender light from the early morning, she can see he's nervous too.

"I wanted to give you some space, after what happened last time." He starts by way of explanation. Mags nods jerkily. "And I wanted to watch the sunrise with you; Ruby told me it was something you enjoyed." His voice was soft and his hands were clasped, so nonthreatening that Mags was able to relax a little. "I've missed you, Maggie, but I understand if you don't want to." Mags is quiet for a long moment after this, but steps towards him. She offers her hand without a word, and he seems to relax, meeting her halfway and taking it, his eyes still that same green she knew all too well. He wasn't inside her head now, and they went outside together.

They sit together at the top of the surprisingly well built structure, looking out at the horizon beyond the forest. They're quiet as the first few rays danced across the treetops.

"You're trying to win my trust." Mags says bluntly, and there's a long silence, but Clancy doesn't deny it.

"Is it working?" He asked, turning to look at her. When she turns to meet his gaze, her breath catches in her throat, he's smiling at her, soft and familiar like he had when they were younger, golden in the early morning light. Clancy was objectively pretty, and his eyes were green; she never forgot that detail about him. "We were friends once, Mags." He said softly. His eyes glow orange, and Mags panics for half a moment before she realises she's being shown a memory.

Her eyes are brown in the memory, and that alone almost makes present-day Mags start crying, but she claps a hand over her mouth in shock and watches through Clancy's eyes. She remembers this very suddenly, a moment after a long day of press interviews where they parroted the same thing over and over, and back at their hotel, Clancy had made two chocolate milks and passed the to her. Without taking her eyes off the television she held both cups for about a minute and passed back what was now a mug of hot chocolate, sipping her own calmly. It's simple, just a snippet from one of their everyday situations, but still;

"Mags, I thought it then and I think it now; everything you do is incredible. Not a day has gone past that I didn't think of you." These are the words that finally defrost Mags, convince her that they were children back then, and that so much has changed that she should at least give him the benefit of the doubt.

They spend hours talking and catching up, joking and laughing about their adventures in the four years since they had seen one another, and eventually Mags lets him into her mind, to show him memories she can't describe; he watches her escape from Caledonia, watches her spit metal and pop tires and melt the skull of the first skip-tracer to corner her, he hears the hiss of Lady Jane in her mind, a pretty little hellhound, and somehow when he resurfaces, she's still smiling.

"It's all in the past." She tells him, and her smile is so certain he can't help but smile back. Eventually, they get into recent history, and Mags smiles bashfully when he brings up Ruby.

"You came in here with her, right? What's she like?" He asks, intrigued; the sun is well into the sky by now, and he took his jumper off about an hour ago, but Mags is still very comfortable in her sundress.

"She's... lovely." Mags breathed, cheeks turning pink, before she ducks her head. "What are you asking me for? You're the one training with her." Mags chuckled. Ruby had come from training every day for the past week excited and glowing, ready to gush about her session with Clancy to Mags and Liam, the former being far more excited for her progress than the latter, who still had a firm dislike for Clancy himself.

"She's very fond of you, Mags, I wanted to see if it was," he thought for a moment, a glimmer of knowing in his eyes, "mutual." He decides on, and Mags is fairly certain he already knows exactly how she feels about Ruby.

"Well of course it's mutual," Mags laughs, drawing her knees up to her chest, "we're together." Clancy's eyebrows shoot up in mock surprise, though Mags sees right through him and rolls her eyes. "Together together." She elaborates, answering his unspoken question. After a beat Clancy smiles, a little confused, and though she can't place why, a little bit tightly.

"And Liam? He seemed..." he laughed, though his heart wasn't in it, "a little possessive, when we first met that is." He looked back out at the forest as Mags smiled to herself.

"Yeah, he's mine too," she paused for a moment, "and Ruby's." And it didn't need any further explanation as Clancy was nodding with a newfound understanding, though he seemed more withdrawn than earlier. "I really care about them, Clance." Mags mused, and Clancy wrapped his arm around her, petting her shoulder fondly.

"I can tell, Mags."

When she left for the lunch shift, Clancy was distant, giving her a smile that didn't reach her eyes, saying something about how they should spend more time together. Mags agrees, tells him she's missed him, but as she's heading for the door, a voice in her mind, what sounds like Clancy's voice, whispers, accusingly <But have you thought?> and when she turns back, Clancy looks like he's been caught red handed, with his hands on his head as if to retroactively stop the thought escaping. She doesn't ask about it, instead she frowns, thinks hard about what she heard, and leaves to ruminate on it as she worked.

Clancy may have changed, he certainly was different than the boy she remembered, but she didn't know this Clancy well enough to say he's changed for the better.