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cyanide-latte · 2 years

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Sunshine [A Fear Street drabble]

Written for Fear Street Appreciation Week 2022

Day 1 (June 26): Pre Canon or “Hide”

Originally posted to AO3 here (if you’re interested in my author’s notes, that’s where you’ll find them; please consider leaving a comment and kudos, even if you’re a guest!)

Rating: Teen (playing it safe)

Word count: 1717

Characters: Solomon Goode, Sarah Fier

Warnings: not a ship but hints at the beginning of fixation and obsession, hints of grief spiraling, Solomon is his own warning

At what point does change become something to taunt a man with? When is it that offers of hope and a better life ahead stop sounding like a promise and grow akin to mocking cruelty?

Your faith is lacking, Solomon, he chided himself automatically, but even that private admonition was beginning to ring hollow. What good had faith done his wife and child, now nothing more than marked, raised earth? Less good than even the widow Mary, who had at least tried to use her knowledge to save Cecelia after the babe died.

He rubbed at his face, pushing the heels of his palms against his eyes before his gaze could go to the graves not far from the front of the house. They were a month gone now, and he’d already wept plenty. Even had he been willing to listen to his brothers’ persistent belief that trying to tame the land here was a wasted effort, he could never leave now. Even if time ate him away to nothing, he would die in this house if he had his way, for it was death that bound him here.

Faith has given me nothing, he thought, not for the first time nor the last. And at this point hope is just something to throw in someone’s face for the chance of a cruel laugh at their hurt.

They’d come here because they wanted better things. Their fortunes were supposed to have improved, not worsened. They were going to live off the land, trade with their neighbors in the settlement, grow and build a home for their family for generations to come. And now…

Well, now it wasn’t likely that there would be any future generation of Goodes, not from him.

Dappled, gentle sunshine was lighting up the world outside. He watched out the window, unwilling to weep, but unable to shake the melancholy. The beauty of the day outside did nothing for the dull, dark-gray shadow that crept over his heart and mind. What was a man in pieces, that he could still walk and work and feel?

Should I give up? Perhaps my brothers have their wisdom as well…

“Solomon!”

He blinked, trying to shake himself out of his gloomy contemplation at the sound of the voice calling his name. How much time had passed? He should have gone out and at least begun the work by now. Instead another of these spells had come over him once more.

“Solomon!” the voice yelled again, its owner closer now as she approached the house. “Solomon Goode! Are you home?”

His legs were heavy, the weight like stones dragging at him and trying to hold him in place, but he pushed himself up to stand regardless. His eyes finally registered her now, walking carefully through the trees into the little clearing before the house, hauling a heavy, woven satchel near to overflowing with goods. Blinking, he forced himself into action, throwing the door open and half-stumbling out onto the threshold.

“What on this green Earth?” he said, looking agape as the young woman lugged the sack along, despite it being nearly the same size she was. “Did you bring me half the town in that, Sarah Fier?”

Her mouth twisted in a crooked smile that many people in Union found to be unladylike as she answered him, “Just about.”

The stones that made up his legs grew lighter and lighter with each step as he walked towards Sarah, reaching out his arms to take the burden from her. She accepted with a whooshing exhale of breath, her shoulders sagging once she was free of the sack.

“Thank you,” she said gratefully, moving her forearms up and down as she breathed hard a moment. “I’m amazed I got this far, it's so heavy.”

She wasn’t exaggerating; he lifted it easily enough, but he could tell from the weight that it was difficult enough to carry over the course of a long walk, and the path to his home from Union wasn’t the easiest to begin with. And since she’d come alone, he could only assume Sarah had had to stop and set the sack down more than once. She was far too stubborn a girl to have gone back and asked for help when she was determined to see something through.

“It’s I who should be thanking you,” he said, shifting the weight of the gift so he could turn back to the house. He looked at her and nodded. “You didn’t have to do this, Sarah.”

“Aye, but would you have come over to Union to get yourself any supplies, to trade anything, to see anyone?” she replied.

He pulled a face at that, turning his gaze away. “You must have woken early, to see right through me,” he remarked, trudging back to the open door.

“Wakin’ early has nothing to do with it,” Sarah replied, letting out a good-natured chuckle as she followed along behind him. “I can always see through you, Solomon. You make it so easy, you know.”

He crossed the threshold, walked a few paces, and set the sack down on the floor with a thud that rattled the boards beneath it as he shook his head.

“I suppose I must,” he said, managing a very small laugh in return. “I won’t lie, I have been hurting more than I should like anyone to know. Sometimes I wonder if being so alone out here doesn’t make missing them any worse. I feel their absence all around me, every day.”

He glanced to Sarah. She’d stopped in the door and now she was looking back over her shoulder at the small markers over the graves. Her expression slipped into a frown, and she was slow to return his gaze.

“Is it true?” she asked, and when he continued to stare, wondering what she was on about, she clarified. “The rumors that you took Cecy to the widow Mary.”

He inhaled deeply, pushing strands of his hair away from his face in a rough motion, then exhaled all at once. “It is true I took her to the widow to ask for her help once the child died,” he said, grabbing one of the chairs by the table and seating himself in it, motioning an offer for her to sit in one of the other chairs. “If there are rumors flying about Union, I don’t know of them or what they claim.”

Sarah took the other chair, watching him carefully.

“They speak of witchcraft,” Sarah answered. “Many of them think the widow cursed your wife instead of helping you, made her pass.”

He shook his head vigorously at that, agitation bubbling up like boiling water. “No,” he said. “I don’t know who is saying that, but I swear on both Cecy and the baby that the widow was only ever trying to help. She was the only one who had a chance at making a difference. The medicine she learned from the Shawnee was the best chance we had at saving Cecy.”

The tears were lingering there, behind his eyes. One moment they hadn’t been there, the next they were ready to fall if he wasn’t careful.

“But we were too late,” he said, voice thick as his throat threatened to close up on him. “Mary did what she could, but…” He inhaled, bitterness in his mouth, and shut his eyes, unwilling and unable to look at Sarah. “But I suppose my family were called home, weren’t they?”

“Solomon, I’m sorry,” Sarah said quietly. He could hear the thickness in her voice too; despite being several years younger, she had been good friends with Cecy, and to a degree himself as well. The Fiers and the Goodes had largely been on amicable terms, and when Solomon had wanted to build a home for his future family outside of the settlement, Sarah had remained one of the few who still happily ventured out to visit them. Often, Solomon had felt that Cecy adored Sarah as a younger sister, however wild and strange she was, and over time her visits had become commonplace.

And now… Well, now, she came around less. Not due to any desire to adhere to the way Union saw the outcast Goode, but because she had become essential to the Fier family household running smoothly, after the death of her mother. She’d been out a couple of times since Cecy died as well, many in Union had. But she was perhaps the only one outside of his brothers Solomon felt truly understood his loss and mourned with him.

He opened his eyes and looked at her again, saddened by the look of stricken hurt and compassion on her face. It warmed him, gave him something to feel better about.

She wasn’t like the rest of Union. She never had been. She didn’t attribute any sense of religious righteousness or doggerel to his loss; she simply knew it and felt it with him and shared in his mourning.

Sarah Fier would be wasted on Union’s people, wasted on any of the young men there who might seek to court her. They would try to tame her, break her like a spirited yearling.

Does she know that? he wondered, only to then immediately decide, Whether she does or doesn’t, I won’t let that happen to her. Whatever wildness burns in her mustn’t be snuffed out. It’s too beautiful to let suffocate and wither.

It was a strange thought to have. But then, was it, really? Sarah was growing into a woman. Perhaps her beauty was as different to Cecy’s as night was to day, but it was undeniable all the same.

“Thank you,” he said at last. “You’re a blessing and a gift to me, Sarah. Sometimes I don’t know how I’d go on without you coming around.”

She worked up a smile, her eyes still tender. “Oh, now, Solomon. I know you’d manage somehow! You’re grieving, but I still think you’d manage without me.”

“Kind of you to say,” he murmured.

Because the truth was, he wasn’t sure he would manage without her. Not anymore. He was succumbing to a slow, slow death in the dark, and Sarah Fier always brought the light with her wherever she went.

His entire being was starved for it.

#fsweek22 #fear street appreciation week #Netflix Fear Street #Fear Street film trilogy #fsweek22 day 1 writing prompt #my writing and fics #crossposted from AO3 #oneshot fic #Solomon Goode #Sarah Fier

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