all the leaves on the trees are falling [1/?]

Fandom: Strange Magic
Rating: T
Word Count: 1,750
Summary: Title from Van Morrison’s “Moondance.” This is an alternate ending fic, where the declarations do not quite happen with the sunrise.
Also on: AO3

She is still a little—very, she is still very—shaken by the night’s events. This is what she tells herself after he says, rocking back on his heels, “Feel free to visit whenever you like,” and she blurts, “I could stay.”

Bog stops mid-rock, blinks, and his blue eyes finally hold steady on hers.

Marianne squares her shoulders. “I could help,” she goes on. “Rebuild your…castle.” She glances over the ledge they’re still standing so close to, down at all the rubble half-concealed by the gloom. There are still leaves—shaken free of their trees—following the debris down. She swallows, trying to catch the breath that’s suddenly left her. He could still be in that. He could be—

But he’s not. He’s standing right here, gone peculiarly still, watching her.

“Maybe help you find a new one?” she tries. Her fingers are digging so hard into one another, clasped before her, that the points of them are starting to go numb. She does not want to go. She cannot say it, cannot make her stubborn tongue form the words, but she does not want to go. She does not want to leave him. Whatever they’ve found together, it’s still so fragile and new and already torn; she cannot bear to let it wither and die.

“You…would?” he says, all hesitation, like she’s offered a gift he can’t accept.

“I would,” she says, more firmly this time. “I will. If you'd…if you’d like.”

“I would.” He says it almost before she’s finished, as if she will take it back if he doesn’t act quickly enough.

“Good.” She smiles, honest-to-goodness smiles, and it feels like the first time she’s smiled in years. “Let’s tell my father.”

When she turns, Dawn is standing there, her hands pressed over her mouth as if that will be enough to hide her grin. Marianne widens her eyes just a bit in warning, and for once, Dawn keeps quiet as Marianne goes by, falling in step beside Bog.

He had hunched down to speak with her, and she appreciates the consideration for her neck, but now he towers beside her—one long stride of his legs for every two quick steps of hers. She risks a glance sideways at him, greedy eyes taking him in—whole, safe—and promptly looks forward again when his gaze moves to intercept hers. Her face is hot with embarrassment at being caught, but better that than the worry.

Her father is dusting his armor off, grumbling, his eyes narrowed over Marianne’s shoulder at Dawn, who has doubtless turned back to Sunny. Marianne clears her throat, and her father’s attention snaps to her.

She half-expects a very strong reprimand for flying off to confront Bog against his explicit command not to, but he just marches across the distance between them and grabs her in a bone-crushing hug. Her shoulders, hunched up in defense, immediately slump.

“I’m so glad you’re alright,” he says in her ear.

“Fine,” she reassures, hating the strain in her voice that heralds tears, the way she has to blink to clear her eyes.

He pulls back, hands on her shoulders, and looks up at Bog, still standing awkwardly beside her. He has a fidgeting habit, she realizes, and without his scepter he has to hunch, claws twisting together, to satisfy it. He doesn’t look particularly fearsome this way.

“Bog,” her father says. “I apologize for this…series of misunderstandings.”

Bog inclines his head. “Aye.” It’s wary, as though he’s never been offered an olive branch before.

“Dad,” she says. “I want to stay.”

Her father’s wide, shocked eyes return to hers. She straightens, and his hands fall away from her shoulders.

“This could all have been prevented if our kingdoms had ever tried to reach an understanding. We might have resolved this peacefully, instead of…all this.” She waves toward the wreckage of Bog’s home. “I want to stay. To make things right.”

The Fairy King turns back to Bog. “And what do you say to this?”

Bog’s wings twitch. “I would welcome Mari…” He catches himself. Her stomach twists at his voice around her name, a pleasant little shiver. “…the Princess‘s—help.”

“It’s my duty,” Marianne insists, seeing her father’s hesitation. “To fix this. One of our subjects trespassed in Bog’s kingdom. Another destroyed his home. If there’s ever to be peace between us, I can’t leave now.”

Her father knows something, she thinks—the way his shrewd eyes dart between her and Bog speaks volumes—but he does not share. He heaves a long-suffering sigh that ruffles his moustache. “You’re not wrong,” he mutters.

He cannot stop her—she has proven that once already tonight—but she would like his agreement all the same, his approval, so she nearly wilts with relief when he says, “Alright. But I’d like to leave a guard or two with you. They’ll be useful for the heavy lifting.”

They’ll protect you goes unsaid. She nods; if it sets his mind at ease, she will not stop him.

“Leave a messenger at the border,” Bog says abruptly. “My subjects can carry any word she wishes to send to you, or you to her.”

Marianne catches the surprise on her father’s face before he nods. “I will.” At his sharp whistle, two guards snap to attention. “Stay with Marianne,” he says. “Follow her orders.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs.

He casts her an odd, searching look—she wonders what he knows, what he suspects—and cups her cheek in his hand. “Be safe,” he says, and lets her go. “My army will be gone by sundown, Bog.”

Bog ducks his head again in acknowledgment.

“Dawn,” her father calls.

“Yes?” she calls back, so innocently that Marianne knows she’s heard every word.

“Time to go home,” he says.

By the time the sun is fully risen, she has hugged her sister goodbye, and the army has gone, leaving her there with Bog and his strange goblins, who are all giving her sly, ill-disguised looks of interest. Think of it as an adventure, Bog had said, but he hardly looks up for an adventure now, absently rubbing his injured arm.

She stares down into the gloom where his castle lies in pieces. She wonders if she can convince him to rest before going to work, but by the set of his jaw, she doubts it.

“At least let me see to your arm before we go down there,” she says, pitching her voice low.

He cuts a surprised glance sideways at her. He looks on the verge of denying her, but when he catches sight of the hard press of her mouth, he does not fight her.

“If you insist,” he says.

She takes his uninjured hand and leads him away, out of the sun, while Griselda marshals the curious goblins, directing them down into the ravine. Stuff and Thang make to follow them, but with a flutter of his wings and jerk of his chin, they stay behind.

When they pass into the cool shade of a towering, gnarled tree, she feels Bog relax, his fingers loose in hers. Her skin burns where he touches her. She hadn’t known. If she had known that it could be like this, a wildfire just from the brush of a hand, perhaps she wouldn’t have sworn off it for good—but it’s no matter now, for she’s here all the same. With him.

A day ago, she didn’t know Bog, and now—now, she can’t fathom tomorrow without him.

“Sit,” she orders, steering him toward an ancient, twisted root.

He doesn’t fight or fuss, just goes where she bids him, his wings fluttering briefly to keep him balanced. For a moment, his hand stays clasped around hers, and then he lets her go, looking away, the faintest of smiles on his face.

She’s standing so close—so close that her face is blazing with the proximity—but she tries to keep her voice businesslike while she examines his arm. “Where does it hurt?” she asks, hands hovering around the limb.

“The shoulder. It was dislocated.” She lets out a hiss of sympathy, and he hastens to reassure her. “It has already been…tended to.”

Still, she presses careful fingers around the joint. He’s right—Griselda’s yanking must have been more calculated than it appeared—but he still holds himself stiff as she examines it.

“You need a sling,” she decides. “You’re lucky it wasn't—”

Her voice catches, throat closing. She turns away, blind eyes casting around for something to use as a sling. She’d know just the thing, if they were in the fields—long blades of grass, woven together, the soft petals of a daisy to cushion the elbow—but there is no grass here, only moss and dirt and rocks. She looks up; the weeping leaves of the willow will work just as well. She’s just spread her wings, about to fly up and tear a few loose, when Bog reaches out and catches her by the elbow.

“Marianne.”

Her face screws up against the wild swing of emotion inside her, plummeting again. Oh, but it’s been such a long night, and a multitude of interruptions to the careful, hard existence she’s carved out for herself these last few months, and it’s too much, at long last; she’s never been so overwhelmed in all her life.

He tugs, turning her back to face him, but she can’t look at him with her eyes narrowed against the sting of tears, and he doesn’t ask her to—just pulls her closer until she’s gathered against him. They’re of a height with him perched on this gnarled old root, and she tucks her chin against his uninjured shoulder and fights her emotions every step of the way.

“Tough girl,” he murmurs fondly, so quietly she almost misses it, and she closes her eyes against the glint of sun cutting through the gloaming, holding him tight.

She doesn’t know how long they stay there, huddled against one another; at some point, the wild pounding of her heart settles, and still she doesn’t move, too afraid to part from the reassurance that he is here and real, that it was real, his hand stretched out to her, tucking a flower behind her ear with tender fingers.

When she finally draws back, she brushes the back of her wrist across her eyes. “I’ll make that sling,” she says, her voice thick, and flutters off before he can stop her.

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