It wasn't easy to scare Ronan nowadays. Between his childhood home and the one that followed, he'd had more than enough exposure to get over spiders and heights, blood and vomit, loud noises and small spaces and the dark.

Even so, the road to the Abrams farm was eerie before sunrise.

The countryside was pitch black save for the moon and the stars. They offered just enough light to cast angry, gnarled shadows from the trees onto Ronan's path. The forest rustled and murmured and groaned with the breeze, and although the morning was warm, he held his arms against a chill. It had been a long time since he'd struggled to move without light, but the pebbles seemed to shift beneath his feet, and they nearly gave way when an owl's screech pierced the damp air. He stumbled over himself in his haste to get where he was going faster.

"The hero's come early!"

"Holy–!" Ronan's feet really did leave the ground as he whirled around, but his arm was caught in a strong grip before he could topple. "Fucking– oh my god," he panted, heartbeat pounding in his ears.

"We're . . . saved?" Sadie looked bewildered. Edgar blinked blearily from his place on her shoulder, deeply disgruntled after being jostled awake. "You need a minute?"

"No I do not–" Ronan started to snap, but he hadn't quite caught his breath.

"I'll give you a minute." She leaned against the rake in one hand and tapped her foot.

Ronan gave her a narrow look. "What are you doing here?"

"I live here."

"You live there." He pointed to the house down the road.

Sadie followed his gaze to her house and stalled there for a moment with her lips pursed. Rather reluctantly, she admitted, "I was out in the fields, and I saw someone on the road, and, well– we lost a couple'a chickens last week, and my brothers all think it had to be coyotes, but I've been suspecting a thief, so . . ."

"So you followed me – the chicken thief – out here. With a rake."

"Well what are you doing here?" Sadie demanded. She sounded flustered. "Awful early shift, considering my pa's not even up yet."

Ronan looked again at the house, which was notably unlit. "He told me you all start your mornings early."

Sadie laughed openly at him. "Sure do, but it's half-four in the morning! Pa's prob'ly just waking up– don't expect him out here for another hour."

Ronan tilted his head to the sky, scrubbed his forearm over tired eyes with a heavy sigh, and resigned to the fact that he would have to swallow his pride and ask this girl for work if he wanted an excuse to be here instead of sitting sleepless at home, stuck on useless apologies spoken through a wall.

When he lowered his gaze, Sadie was already watching him, subdued. Shifting her weight back and forth between her feet and the rake, horribly awkward, she said, "Do you, ah– do you want to talk about . . . whatever it is that's got you lookin' for work before the sun's even up?"

Ronan made a face. 

Sadie snorted. "Yeah, alright. C'mon, I'll show you how we open up."

Ronan didn't know this then, but the seconds between when she started down the road and when she looked back at him over her shoulder with an impatient, "Need me to carry you?" were the longest stretch of silence he would get for some time.

Apparently, it was normal for Sadie to be the first one on the farm, because: "How could I sleep through this? My brothers and my pa, they just don't see what I see, d'ya know what I mean?" Ronan did not know what she meant.

She listed every possible reason why early morning was the best part of day– but, no, the farm was so alive around mid-afternoon– and, wait, there was nothing like the sky at midnight– oh, not to mention the clouds at sunset. Every time of day was Sadie's favorite time of day, it seemed, and despite Ronan's lackluster response, she didn't spare a single detail as to why.

He didn't interrupt her or complain, even as she blurted story after story. She had a childhood memory for every corner they cleaned in the sheds and pens.

They were crouched low, ripping and cutting at the weeds surrounding the barn, when she gave Ronan his second fright of the day. She gasped and swung her arms out excitedly and damn near got the tip of his nose with her pocket-knife, all to pull out a fistfull of yellow flowers and hold it up to Ronan's face. "Look!"

Ronan went a bit cross-eyed trying to look at the deceptively pretty weeds, before he realized what he was doing and turned an unimpressed look on Sadie instead. "Golly."

"It's creeping sunshine." She earnestly ignored his tone. "First sign summer's really here. Always thought it a shame we've gotta rip 'em all out," she lamented like she hadn't just mercifully torn out an entire extended family of them. "Pretty little things, aren't they?"

Edgar took one of her weeds in his teeth and fluttered about her head until it was haphazardly tucked into her hair, stem sticking out and held on by a good two strands.

"I just think they're nice, is all," Sadie said softly, smiling down at her little bouquet. She went back to weeding after a moment, but the cheer lingered in her gaze. Edgar entertained himself as she worked, until one side of her head looked like a meadow in the aftermath of a tornado.

She introduced Ronan to every last cow, pig, and chicken as they went about restocking their feed. Two of her brothers – James and Micah, or maybe Simon and Gid – trekked past lugging wood beams and tool boxes, and she dove into a tirade about fence maintenance.

"You sure talk a lot," Ronan finally said, but there was no snark in it. It seemed a bit much to outright thank a near-stranger for talking his ears off. But she bumped her hip against his, sending him staggering, and it felt an awful lot like you're welcome.

She abruptly cut herself off mid-sentence while they were finishing up in the two-stall stable. In the brightening twilight, Ronan could see the way her face lit up as she pressed a finger to her lips, like he had been the one talking.

Now he heard it, a disjointed song coming from all sides. A high-pitched medley of chirps and whistles shouldn't have been pleasing to the ear, but Ronan stopped to listen. There had been scattered birdsong as the farm woke up around them, but it reached a crescendo now, a dreamy dawn chorus. Sadie crossed her arms over one of the stall doors, leaned her head onto them, and closed her eyes. For the first time since finding Ronan on the road, she was quiet.

The horse in the stall sniffed at her hair, dislodging the few flowers that had clung on this long. "Pretty song, isn't it, Dalton?" She mused as Edgar chittered angrily around the beast's ear. Sadie looked out through the stable's entrance like she was talking directly to the musicians themselves and said, "Best of luck, you romancers."

She was an incredibly strange girl.

She planted herself in the grass an hour later and without warning, right at the edge of the shallow hill that sloped into the crop fields. Ronan could've tripped over her; Sadie was a walking hazard.

". . . What are you doing?" he asked after she patted the ground next to her instead of offering an explanation.

"Sun's about to rise," she said. Ronan waited for more, but she only stared out at the lightening sky.

So he sat down next to her and watched the sun rise over the fields.

Sadie picked at the large patches over her knees and elbows as the sun peeked atop the distant treeline. Ronan could admit it was nice – the whole sky was visible above the flat fields – but it was just like any other sunrise.

"Is there something special about it today?"

Sadie pondered this. "I do this every morning," she said. "If that's what you mean, then I s'pose not. But I would say it's real special.

"Haven't you bored of it?" The charm had to wear off eventually – it always did.

"'Course not. The day I do is the day I die, I think."

Ronan snickered, but when he looked at Sadie, her face was serious and serene, still fixed ahead.

Ronan left early in the evening, after the shop had long closed and he had successfully taken apart one of Amos' watches under his supervision. Ronan refused adamantly when Amos tried to pay him for the early-morning work, but somehow the coins wound up shoved into his palm anyway, much like lunch had been forced into his hands despite his insistence that his breakfast would carry him.

He sneakily left the extra coins beneath one of Amos' sketches on his way out.

He went home feeling full in spite of his growling stomach. He hovered over the food on the table with timid fingers, but the thought of a hot stew ultimately won out. His fingertips stung as he stirred boiling vegetables – it had been years since he'd spent consecutive days on consecutive hours of precise work. The bite was gratifying. He was so exhausted, he didn't think about Vito and the Merry Men. He almost didn't think about Amir.

He lay on the sofa with a full stomach and fell swiftly and soundly asleep.

𓃦𓃦𓃦

Ronan was in and out of consciousness the second time a late-night knock sounded at his door.

Halfway asleep, he didn't even realize it was the sound that had roused him. He jolted upright and muttered a curse when he realized he had dozed off with the lamp still burning. When he heard Amir's voice, he froze where he was, crouched near the door with the lamp in his grasp.

It started just as it had the last time. The same nervous call of Ronan's name, the same assurance that he didn't expect to be let inside, the same announcement that he had brought food. The same three-knock rule.

Then,

"I've spent the better part of the last week mulling over what I would say to you next – what could I possibly say that wouldn't be too much or too little? I don't want to waste your time, but – and I'm sorry if this makes me selfish – I do want to take it."

Without any sign of him in the days since his first visit, Ronan had thought that would be it. Whether he'd been relieved or disappointed was hard to say; he preferred not to dwell on it at all. But Amir had returned to disturb the tentative peace he was building.

"So I thought I could . . . well. You told me I was unfair to want to know you without giving anything in return."

Ronan's fingers clenched around the lamp. It seemed so long ago that Amir had been a black spot at the edge of his vision, vague and threatening and impossible to know. Ronan had walked at his back because Amir was not to be trusted.

Somewhere along the path, his steps had gotten muddled. He had let Amir fall behind him. The wound in his back still burned.

Ronan sagged down where he was and leaned back against the wall.

"The family I served," Amir began, "they had pegasi. I always marveled at that– how a powerful beast with access to the whole sky could be kept. It was a matter of honor, I was told. They revered their masters, and so they stayed. And since they would never honor me, I was strictly forbidden from approaching them."

His voice sounded so close, Ronan thought he must have been sitting, too, right there against the door.

"But I would watch from the window as they took off with riders on their backs, and perhaps I was just young, but there seemed nothing greater than flying. Or– now that I think about it, it might have been the rider I admired, who was able to control such a fearsome thing with the movement of his arms. To a kid who never had any control over anything, to command the pegasus was to command respect.

"So I snuck into the stables one afternoon, thinking: nobody will be angry with me once they see me up there, once they see how I fly, and the word will spread that I am someone to adore. I had ridden horses before, so I thought I knew what I was doing. But the beast flew up high just to throw me off its back, and for a moment I thought I might die– from the pain, perhaps, or from the trouble I'd be in. Except the bastard landed next to me and walked itself into the stable like it had proven its point, and I managed to lock it up and crawl somewhere I wouldn't be found to cry until the worst of the ache subsided, and no one ever saw me fly."

Ronan remembered the way he had pressured Amir onto horseback and wondered with bated anger if this was some twisted guilt-trip.

"I'm not sure if the fear that lingered afterward was for the pain or for what it represented, but . . . you saw me the first time I met Bandit."

The most frustrating part was that Ronan did feel guilty.

"And then you took me flying."

He said it so reverently, it pulled a sigh from Ronan's lips. 

"I wish I could've known as a kid that control, and respect, and power– those were the last things I should've been seeking in the short time I was up there."

Quiet and delayed like an afterthought, he added, "The sky was pink that night."

Ronan ached for orange clouds and rosy skin and a red sunset, and Amir's laugh rumbling against his back.

"I wish every day that I could have left with you," Amir said, and the hazy illusion shattered. Ronan's jaw clenched. "If it were anywhere else – anywhere else, Ronan – I would have. I'm sure you don't believe me–" I don't, Ronan thought bitterly. I don't, I don't, I won't. "But Diverra is the only place in this world I can't run with you. I'm a wanted man – I can't show my face, I can't travel alone, I can't hold a regular job, I can't . . . The Merry Men were always my only hope to live freely. I knew that when I left."

Ronan curled his fist. He really, really couldn't fault him for that.

"Anywhere else, I pr–"

A knock cut through the air, and Amir went dead quiet.

It was hard to hate Amir for protecting himself. But Ronan had to do the same, and he couldn't move on with Amir's voice in his ear, and he couldn't undo the hurt of waiting on rejection, and he definitely couldn't handle another promise. He couldn't again let himself forget that Amir was unknowable.

Except his knuckles had only hit the wall once, and his hand fell into his lap before he could knock twice more.

"Damn it," Ronan whispered, closing his eyes and cradling his fist to his chest. It was quiet long enough that he wondered if that had done it – if one knock had been enough, and Amir had walked away for good. That was what he wanted, wasn't it? "Damn it," he muttered again.

"I . . . don't know what that means."

Amir was still there.

"Two more," he said. His voice wavered, but he urged, "Two more, Ronan."

Ronan rubbed circles into his knuckles. He didn't knock again.

"I'll– I'll leave for the night, then," said Amir. "But until I hear three knocks, I'll come back."

From here, Ronan could hear the first of Amir's footsteps. He waited until the sound faded, then waited some more. There was another cloth bundle outside his door.

Sadie found him cleaning the barn at four that morning. She didn't ask questions this time, but she did tell him he looked like death warmed over as she fell in next to him.

"Why aren't you taking notes?" she criticized as she demonstrated proper cow-milking technique. "I know you have your sweet little book with you."

Ronan looked slowly down at his hands, both currently outstretched beneath Mirabel the cow, then back at her. She tutted and mumbled under her breath about multitasking. Ronan squirted milk at her.

"Wasteful!" she cried.

"Annoying," Ronan grumbled. His cheeks tinged pink when he heard a laugh and looked up to see her oldest brother, Micah, approaching down the aisle. He knelt at the next cow over and got to work himself, and Ronan resolutely ignored Sadie's goading until they were all finished.

Amos found the pair of them by the fields at sunrise. With muddy hands and a fond smile, he let Ronan know that they would be meeting at the forge in an hour – today, they were blacksmiths – then left them be.

𓃥𓃥𓃥

"By now, you're well aware of how I feel about pegasi. I suppose felt is a better word; you have this habit of changing everything. But it isn't just them – I'm afraid of lots of things."

Ronan eased back against the sofa cushions. From the sound of it, Amir was exactly as he'd been the week before, seated against the door.

"Falling, for one. Needles, clearly – do you remember when I got my tattoo? The vastness of space. Childbirth, probably; endless respect for the women who manage it, but I'm not sure I could witness it and keep my sanity. Let me think . . . those very large moths that stay on one wall for days at a time, so you fear them waking every time you open the door."

Ronan didn't laugh, but maybe there was a little puff of air through his nose.

"Hair loss, naturally, but my father's head was still full the last time I saw him. Small animals that can kill you – why does something the size of my thumbnail need venom that can take down a lion? And how would I even protect myself against that?

"I have a special sort of fear of Felix when he tells me he wants to test something he made." That one did make Ronan smile – he knew the feeling. He had never thought he would miss it. "Drowning, certainly – who isn't afraid of that? And while we're at it, being burned alive. Buried, too; God, what an end. . .

"I don't fear death, but I do fear growing old, or maybe just growing old alone. Being forgotten. Mostly, I fear being . . . caught, I think, though 'fear' might be the wrong word. I resent being caught. I scorn the fate of the pegasus – to be powerful, infinite, and kept."

The polarity of summer weather meant the troughs could overflow one day and run near-empty the next. On this morning, the latter was true, and Ronan's arms, back, legs– Ronan's everything ached as he made what felt like his hundredth trip from the well carting a hefty bucket of water. The enclosures were strategically close by, but considering the sheer amount of land, close was a relative term.

"Cheer up, hero," Sadie poked, dumping her haul with little more than a grunt. "This is good, fulfilling work. Stop with that face!"

"That's . . . just . . . my face," Ronan huffed as he did the same.

"Oh . . ." Sadie said regretfully. While Ronan bent over to catch his breath, she left him to investigate something by the stables. He vaguely heard her prattling excitedly to the horses, which was not in itself unusual.

But when he glanced up, there were two more horses than he remembered, two that did not at all belong with the others. Unless Dalton and Gilbert had produced a pair of fully-grown, winged love-children–

"Mind your manners," Sadie chided, placing one hand on her cocked hip and using the other to scratch the dapple-gray's neck. "That's no way to treat a guest."

"That's my horse," Ronan said, dumbfounded.

Sadie laughed and gave Bandit a congratulatory pat. "Looks like the rude man likes you, Exie."

"No," Ronan said emphatically. "That's my horse. Her name is Bandit."

Sadie dropped both hands. "Oh. You're serious." And then, because she couldn't let it slide, "Her name is Exie."

"What is Bandit doing here?"

"Exie drops by all the time, because she likes me. Same with Sylva." She gestured to the lean black pegasus lazing by the fence. "They've got another friend too, who knows what she's up to–"

"That's Devil, and the other one is Rogue." Then, because he couldn't let it slide, "She likes me more."

"Your naming is dreadful." Sadie derided. "And how dare you."

Which was how they wound up on opposite ends of the enclosure, the pegasi stationed in the middle and looking exceptionally bored, as Ronan clapped his hands and urged, "Come on, girls, come on," and Sadie shouted, "This way, pretty ladies!"

"Bandit, my buddy, think of everything we've been through."

"You girls hungry?"

"Cheap move! You wouldn't sell yourself for some boring oats, would you? I have apples at home!"

"Pretty girls walk this way! I didn't make that rule!"

Eventually, Bandit ambled over to Ronan's side – probably to shut him up, but he still welcomed her with a hearty cheer and plenty of loving. The victory was somewhat offset when Devil chose Sadie, but Vito had always been her favorite, anyway.

"A race to decide the winner!" Sadie declared.

Ronan faltered, mostly hidden from sight with a hand on Bandit's shoulder. Racing horses was something he and Tony had done . . . not often, but enough to feel significant. It had been the only time he stood a chance against her in a race, and one of the only times she ever got fired up outside of a heist.

"You'll lose pretty bad at that rate."

Ronan blinked back into the present. Sadie grinned devilishly down at him, straddling the traitor's back.

"Don't you dare start early, you damn cheat," he found himself saying, but he could already feel the gust from the first beats of Devil's wings. He swung himself up without bothering to look for a mount and leaned forward on Bandit's back. "Hope you aren't rusty, girl."

Bandit gave an offended huff and took off like a hawk.

That morning, they watched the sunrise from the sky.

𓃦𓃦𓃦

"I grew up next to lavish balls and banquets that I was never allowed to attend, but the beautiful thing about being young is knowing too little to ever feel slighted. I don't believe ignorance is bliss, but I do think it can be generous. I would look forward to those parties as if I was at the top of the guest list, and I would sneak into somebody else's formal garb and shirk my duties and pretend, for the night, that I was the beloved prince at the center of a celebration.

"The music was loud even through the walls, and I knew every dance, so I slipped away to this perfect corner outside the ballroom and imagined the crowd parting around me and a glamorous partner. I don't remember many details of the partner I dreamt up – only that I loved them, or perhaps just that they loved me. I'm realizing this sounds like a rather sad story, but . . . those were some of my favorite nights, dancing beneath the stars to an orchestra that played just for me.

"The kitchen staff would sneak me desserts and sips of champagne, and sometimes they even danced with me, and then it really was a party. They didn't know the steps, but they humored me anyway, and we all fell out of rhythm and tripped over each other, and . . . I felt such a thrill each time they laughed, because that was a prince's job, wasn't it? To make his subjects happy? God, I miss when naivety was kind."

For the fourth time in as many weeks, Ronan arrived at the Abrams home before the lights were on inside. He knew enough by now to make himself useful on his own, and yet he wandered the farm in search of long red curls and patched knees.

He wasn't sure when he had started doing that – seeking Sadie out. But he sought her out every time Amos sent him out to the farm. He sought her out across the dinner table a week later, after he and Amos got so caught up in an unusual repair that he didn't realize the time until Simon was calling out that food was ready. And he sought her out at the end of his shift the next day, after finding a basket on his doorstep as he left that morning and realizing he had slept through Amir's visit for the first time. Rather than sit alone at home, longing to know what Amir hadn't gotten the chance to say – because it was longing, Ronan acknowledged after the third time he fumbled his work, distracted – he helped her stack hay and listened to her ramblings until he convinced himself he didn't care either way.

This time, when he opened the sack, he found a book inside, nestled beneath ripe orange apricots. It was small, leather-bound, and obviously old. The pages were soft to the touch, the text hand-written in a script Ronan didn't recognize. But on the back of each page, hard to discern among the bleed-through from the front, were words he could read.

They told the story of a chief's son who contended for the role of chieftain to represent his tribe. Smart but weak, he was scorned by all but his unwavering lover, and he was brutally beaten, tied, and left for dead by the other candidates. But the very beasts who were supposed to devour him took him as a friend, and he returned home with an army of dragons to defend against northern invaders. He rode into battle next to the only person who had sworn immovably that he lived, who had never once doubted that he was born to lead.

It was a tale Ronan knew from a sleepless night, though he felt he had gotten an inaccurate retelling. This version was, at its heart, a love story.

The chief's son was named only once throughout the entire legend, and only from his lover's lips.

And they all watched the sky through glazed eyes.

The war would end, and the world along with it, in a procession of scale and flame.

Lines of battle blurred as the belligerents scattered. At the center of the madness, one warrior stood true. Bloodied knuckles pressed together in prayer, he shouted a teary battle cry to the dragon parade.

Quietly, he said, "How I've missed you, Amir. You took so long."

𓃥𓃥𓃥

One weekday evening, with no prompting and no preamble, Ronan told Sadie about the Merry Men.

They were trapped in the barn after a late-afternoon shower had turned torrential, huddled against the stalls as wind rattled the doors. Hay stuck to Ronan's back and legs, water dripped from a crack in the roof they would have to deal with later, and it was so dark, he wouldn't have been able to see much of Sadie had she not been close at his side.

Her chest heaved from the sprint to get inside. Hair clung to her cheeks, her neck, her jaw. She grinned as if they hadn't just been drenched with rain, eyes so bright you'd think they'd light the whole barn. Ronan watched her wrap Edgar up in the driest corner of her coat and wanted to tell her everything he could.

So he did his best, starting with the group of friends that had outgrown him and ending with the boy who had disappointed him. He left out the details he couldn't afford – the nature of his old job, the nature of his feelings – and the ones he couldn't quite manage. He didn't speak of Wendy, or Vernon, or Elena.

For someone who always had so much to say, Sadie listened quietly until he trailed off.

Her takeaway was, "This Vito character sounds like he's worth about as much as a piece of horse shit. Bet he stinks like one, too."

Ronan barked a surprised laugh. He felt weightless despite the water soaked through his clothes.

"Amir too, the fucker," she cursed. "Good grief, who does that?"

Ronan felt the urge to admit there was more to that particular story. But then Sadie scrunched up her nose and said, "I can smell them from here," and the thought was lost to a fit of laughter. A little omission wouldn't hurt.

"Pretty sure that's the cows," he said through his giggles. Sadie waved a hand dismissively.

She leaned her head back against the stall door, her shoulders shaking as she laughed with him. The curve of her grin was enchanting, roguish, and bold.

It waned into something thoughtful. Rain hammered the barn, water trickled from the ceiling, and Ronan waited patiently on whatever she was thinking. Sadie always spoke her mind.

"I like you a lot," she said. "So I'm gonna be honest with you, alright?"

The sincerity caught Ronan off guard. "Alright."

"I'm sure you've realized by now, we aren't exactly wealthy. Never have been, and that's just fine, but we were already sinking, then there was this awful harvest, then my ma's death, back-to-back. We were drivin' ourselves into the ground to keep this place running, pa more than anyone. We convinced him to look for help 'cause he'd rather drown himself than admit he needs it. Thought another set of hands might pull us outta this. And he loves havin' you around, loves havin' someone to share his passions with – we all got two left thumbs from our momma, never could help with his fine work. But–"

"You can lower my pay," Ronan said in a rush. He turned so he was facing her, so she could see his face and know that he meant it.

Sadie's lips twitched at the corner. "He'd never allow that. He'd say," she put on a deep voice and puffed out her chest, "'Go get a better job that can pay what you deserve, my boy!' 'S not like you're the problem, anyway. If we wind up with another shit harvest . . . without a miracle, we might be goin' down either way. I'm only telling you 'cause my pa'll do everythin' in his power to prevent that. And . . . I'm not sure where you'd fall in all that."

She waited for Ronan's response, eyebrows drawn in concern the longer he said nothing.

"Oh."

The look on his face must have really been something, because she elbowed his side and said, "Don't look so down. That's not a promise, alright? Just felt right to let you know."

Ronan tried for a smile, and he waited out the storm with Sadie's chatter in his ear.

𓃢𓃢𓃢

Song for this chapter: Jackie Onassis by Sammy Rae & The Friends

this song just screams sadie to me