Fast and the Furious fic: Blood Sacrifice (Gisele/Han)
I wanted to write this story for quettaser last year, but could never get the feel of the magic right, so I ended up writing From Just One Spark instead, which is also a fix-it fic in which Gisele and Han both live. This year, I wanted to try again, and succeeded. I love Mia and her magic, and how Dominic turned away from it, and how she finds her strength not in practicing alone, but in finding and keeping her place within her family, past, present, and future.
Title: Blood Sacrifice
Author: escritoireazul
Characters/Pairings: Gisele Harabo/Han Lue, Letty Ortiz/Dominic Toretto, Brian O'Conner/Mia Toretto
Author's Note: This is a transformative work of fiction set after Fast & Furious 6 and during Furious 7. Many thanks to my beta.
Written for: quettaser for Yuletide 2015
Word count: 4,200
Rating: 13+
Read at AO3
Summary: “Han,” she says, and her voice is rough. “Han,” she tries again.
He glances up at her, and the shadows under his eyes, the pain lining his face, make her want to cry.
“Han.” His name, a third time, the start of a spell. “I can bring her back.”
In that first moment after, all Mia feels is a fast adrenaline drop - and relief. She’s still alive, and Brian and Dom, and, god, they finally, finally have Letty back. She slumps into Brian’s arms, face pressed into the crook of his neck, and tries to remember how to breathe. Her heart pounds in her chest, each thud an echo - you’re alive, you’re going home, you’re alive, you’re going home.
It’s not that she doesn’t care how Han feels - she loves Gisele too, and she will mourn - but the rest of the world is muted, softened, set at a distance. She’s given so much to get her family back together, done so much, sacrificed - there is blood on her hands.
Mia sinks into Brian in that moment, into Dom’s big arms wrapped around them both, Letty hovering, not the same but there, and breathes out, breathes in. She’s finally done it. She’s brought her family home.
*
Han’s really good with a hammer and nails, and Mia puts him to work inside the house where she can keep an eye on him. It's been empty a long time, and it needs a lot of work before they all move back in. He talks a little less, but sometimes he smiles - when Brian and Mia get going at each other with joking insults, when Jack goes toddling past him, trying to get chubby little fingers into every mess - and Mia tries to temper her worry. He’s mourning, but so are they all. He’s mourning, but people survive that every day.
He’s mourning, and Mia already changed the world once when she shouldn’t have done, and almost died trying. A part of her did die that night, as she slit a goat’s throat and watched the blood stain her fingers, as she cut open her wrists and bled onto the ground, as she lay, fingers pressed into the dirt and stared at the sky, the moon gone dark and all the stars, and reached deep, deep inside for her magic.
Han is mourning, and dying a little more each breath he takes, and Mia’s heart is breaking.
*
They’re alone in the house, Brian and Jack out picking up food, Dom off showing Letty all the places she doesn’t remember, when Mia finally goes to him.
“Han,” she says, and her voice is rough. She wipes sweaty hands on her jeans, sits on a cardboard box of supplies that still needs to be unpacked, then stands again. He sits on one of the ragged lawn chairs they use when they need a break but aren’t ready to head back to the hotel suite. He’s slumped forward, arms resting on his thighs, hands hanging between his knees, head down. “Han,” she tries again.
He glances up at her, and the shadows under his eyes, the pain lining his face, make her want to cry.
“Han.” His name, a third time, the start of a spell. “I can bring her back.”
There’s no other “her” in Han’s world.
He blinks, drops his head, makes a choked sound. “She’s dead,” he says at last, and his voice cracks. She expects more out of him, but he looks drained. He’s worse off than she thought.
She can’t lose him too. Maybe, maybe, she could survive losing one of them, but not both.
“I know it sounds like a joke,” she says, her words coming fast. She sinks down to her knees in front of him, takes his hands. “I wouldn’t do that to you, though. I can bring her back. Like I did Letty.”
His hands clench down on hers, and he holds her so tight her fingers start to go numb. His eyes are wide, something wild in the flash of them as he looks at her, looks away, jerky. She’s spooked him, and even through his sadness, there’s some part of him gearing up for fight or flight, some part of him that wants to survive.
“It’s -” She stops. The details don’t matter, at least not those details. “I’m telling you the truth. I promise, I wouldn’t lie to you, wouldn’t jerk you around. But, Han - if I do this, if I bring her back, it might not work like we want.”
She braces herself, waiting for a barrage of questions, shouting demands, liar liar yelled at her again and again, but Han drags in a shuddery breath and doesn’t say anything for a long time, just holds onto her, breathes in, breathes out.
“What will happen?” he asks, and that is not the question she expected.
Mia shrugs, holding his hands just as hard as he holds hers. “Look at Letty. She came back lost, she forgot everything - she forgot us, her family. We almost didn’t get her back.”
“But we did.” His voice is a little stronger now.
She nods. “Yeah, we did. Gisele - I don’t know where she’d come back. We’ll have to find her. I don’t know if she’ll remember us.” She hesitates, tries to find the right words. “I don’t know if she’ll be Giselle -- she might come back wrong.”
“But she’ll come back.”
“Yeah,” Mia says, with the ghost of a sigh. She can already feel the pain taking her body apart. “She’ll come back.”
“Please,” Han says. “Please, Mia.”
Mia presses a kiss to their joined hands, sealing the promise.
*
Mia spends some time rocking Jack before she puts him to bed, breathing in his scent. It’s not a baby smell anymore, but she can remember what that was like. He smells clean from his bath, a little sweet, and she loves her snuggly baby boy more than she ever dreamed possible. He kicks a little in his sleep, makes funny noises, flops across her arms. When she puts him to bed, he sprawls, taking up all the space.
Just like she does, as Brian complains all the time, and it makes Mia smile.
Out in the suite’s living room, the others are waiting. They’ve called everyone home, but the others have scattered, and it will take awhile for them to arrive. Right now, she’s faced with Letty and Brian and Dom, and that’s more than enough.
Han sits, watches her, and she can feel the weight of his expectations settle over her.
Only Dom knows anything about this part of her, because it’s his family too. Letty knew, once, held back her hair the first time she tried a spell that was too strong and spent the rest of the day puking, sat and listened as Mia talked about witches and magic, voice as shaky as her hands, and believed every word. She’s forgotten that, just like everything else, and now she sits next to Dom, but drawn into herself a little.
Mia wonders if she remembers dying or what it was like to come back.
She’s never asked.
Quickly, she sketches out the family history for Brian and Letty. Dom’s eyes are hooded as he stares at her, expression fierce, but she ignores him. When she gets to Letty’s death and resurrection, Letty makes this noise, low in the back of her throat, and crosses her arms over her chest, fingers clutching so hard her skin starts to bruise. Holding herself together, Mia thinks, and hates that this has come up so soon, that Letty’s tie to them, so fragile, might yet still come undone.
It is good for Han to see, another way this could go wrong, and she steels herself to keep going.
“I couldn’t,” Mia says, but runs out of words. It’s too fresh, the way she felt when she got the call about Letty, the way she felt when she had to tell Dom. Everything broken inside, shattered glass and poisoned blood. “I had to bring you back.”
“How?” Brian’s the one who asks, and she wants to go to him, to hold his hands, kiss him, promise him everything will be okay.
“Magic.” She takes a breath, holds herself steady, chin high, back straight. She is calm, she is in control, this is exactly what she wants to do. “Magic like this is difficult. It requires blood sacrifices, and a lot of energy.” She hesitates, because this is going to be the sticking point, but she knows what it’s like to be left out, left behind, for her own good, and she’s not going to be the one to do that to her family. “I almost died bringing Letty back.”
She goes tense, ready for an explosion of noise like violence - she knows her family well - but there’s only silence. Brian looks at her, looks at Han watching her, and drops his head into his hands. Still, she waits, and finally he lifts his head.
“How do we stop that from happening this time?”
She can’t help herself. This time she goes to him, kisses him quickly but soundly, then settles on the arm of the couch, her feet pressed under his thigh. This is where she belongs, surrounded by her family, not standing separate, strong as she is.
They’ve learned, over and over again, that they are stronger together than apart.
“I think, if Dom’s there, I can pull some energy from him,” she says. She’s been giving this some thought. Leaving him out of it last time was stupid, and she doesn’t dare make the same mistakes this time. “He doesn’t use his magic, but it’s in his blood, too. That could help.”
Dom leans forward, his attention now focused; Mia sits up straight, ready for a fight. “We should bind you first,” he says, and she jerks, startled. “Bind you to us, bind you to your body.”
Mia opens her mouth, then closes it, considers his suggestion. It’s not a bad idea. “I like it,” she says, and if her smile is a little shaky, well, she never expected Dominic Toretto to ever give his magic a second thought, not after their mother died a slow, painful death when he was thirteen and no spell could save her, could even ease her pain.
(That was before Mia knew how to bring someone back. Even if she had known, she was more scared of her magic then, and terrified of losing herself. The first death was hard. She’s since seen what happens when the family comes apart.
Never again.)
“This might go badly,” she warns them. Warns Han, again, trying to drive it home, but she doesn’t think he hears her. “We don’t know how she’ll come back.” Mia glances at Letty, who is sitting very still, arms still crossed, lips pressed together. After a second, Letty meets her gaze, crooks a bit of a smile. “She could come back like Letty, not know who she is. She could come back angry or lost or - or any number of ways.” Mia doesn’t want to start thinking about how very many ways Gisele might come back wrong. “She might not be Gisele anymore.”
“What makes her Gisele?” Letty asks, and they all turn to look at her. Even Han breaks his focus on Mia at that. Letty shrugs under their attention. “I mean, am I Letty? I don’t remember who she was. But you -“ She stops, shrugs again.
“You’re Letty,” Dom tells her, and reaches over. Letty’s mouth works, no words, then she drops her arms, takes his offered hand.
“Maybe.” Again with that shrug, and Mia’s chest is tight and hot. “Point is, Gisele comes back without her memories, comes back angry or sad or broken,” Mia wonders how many of those words Letty applies to herself, and all the other things she no longer knows about her best friend, “who cares? She comes back, that’s the important thing.” She smiles, just a little. “As long as she comes back, we can handle the rest.”
We.
Mia’s heart sings.
*
They go far out into the desert for the ceremony. Tej and Roman stay behind with Jack. They know what’s happening, and Mia loves them, they’re family, but she doesn’t want too many people there. More people, more distractions.
She’ll sacrifice to bring back Gisele, but she’s not ready to die just yet, especially over something as stupid as a joke made at just the wrong time.
The sky is vast out here, overwhelming. The moon is new, but stars spill out across the darkness. Mia’s small fire casts golden light across their bodies and makes the shadows dance. The goat bleats, and Han strokes its head. She’s already warned him not to get attached, he knows what she’s going to do to it. If giving it attention -oh, hell, he’s feeding it treats now - makes him feel better about the sacrifice, she’s not really in a position to judge.
Binding spells are simple enough. She pricks their fingers, one at a time: Dominic first, always, their shared blood grounding her, then Letty, the tie between past and present, not quite blank slate writing her own story, and finally Brian, the one she has chosen, the one who circles her like she is his gravity.
Han she saves. Han she needs for Gisele.
There’s nothing dramatic about this spell. Blood on the cloth, from each of them, and then together they bind it around her upper arm, out of the way, but fixed. She can feel them even before the spell snaps into place, tying her down, to them and to her living body. Letty shifts her weight, rubs her arms, screws up her face. Dom gives himself a little shake, squares his shoulders, resettles himself.
And Brian kisses her, just once, making the magic buzz throughout her body.
The resurrection spell is more complicated.
Mia chews lavender and lemon, purifies herself. Adds long willow branches to the fire, fills her arms with zinnias and drops them in after, the flames devouring yellow and orange, red and purple flowers alike, their sadness, their mourning. This time, she adds pink carnations and forget-me-nots, focuses hard on Gisele’s memory.
Remember us, she whispers into the smoke, then breathes in deep, filling her lungs. It burns, it sticks in the back of her throat, she fights not to gag, but then she can breathe out, and that breath carries power.
Han holds the goat when the time comes, soothing his hands along its back. Mia is quick, efficient, slits its throat, and lets the blood spill into a wooden bowl. She dips her fingers into the blood as it falls, presses bloody fingerprints to her forehead, to Han’s, to the backs of his hands.
To that spilled blood, sacrifice, she adds more herbs, plants, and spices, dying things for the fire to consume: thyme and yarrow, peppermint and cinnamon and cedar, anise and dill. She chews up nettle, spits it into the fire without swallowing.
Mia takes Han’s hand, already marked by tonight’s sacrifice. He will give still more before they’re done. They both will.
She presses a kiss to the palm of his hand, then to his lips, touching him with peppermint. He doesn’t flinch when she presses the knife against his skin, only bites down hard on his lower lip as she opens his arm from wrist to elbow, a long, shallow cut that bleeds but will leave no damage behind, the doctor she once could have been weaving itself into the way she practices magic. She dips her fingers into his blood, touches her forehead, his, the backs of his hands, his lips.
He stays near her, so close she can feel his body move with each breath, as she repeats the cut on herself, both arms for her. It stings, then burns, as she opens her skin, marks herself, marks him.
She pushes the bowl into his hands after he’s bled into it, and he holds it steady while she bleeds too.
“I’ll circle the fire three times clockwise, three times counter,” she tells him. “Then you pour in the blood. Think about Gisele, as many details as you can. Focus on her.”
“Be careful,” he whispers, and she would hug him tight, but there’s no time. The fire cracks, the shadows it casts dancing, and she can feel the magic stirring deep inside.
Mia circles the fire, saying Gisele’s name to the cardinal directions with each revolution. By the time she’s finished circling counterclockwise, she’s dizzy from it, the smoke, the magic rising with each breath, and the world spins. Han pours the blood into the fire, and the flames leap ever higher.
She’s panting by now, each breath a struggle, and her heart pounds in her chest. When she raised Letty, this is when she fell, bleeding out onto the ground, and she waits for the fall again. It doesn’t happen; she spins, dizzy, but her body is strong, stronger - grounded in itself, she realizes, in Dom and Letty and Brian. She can feel them, soft flickers from Letty and Brian, but Dom is as strong as a mountain at her back.
She lowers her hands, lets blood fall down her wrists, patter onto the dirt at her feet. She stomps, grinding it, churning mud. Mia flings back her head, stares at the sky, the shadow face of the moon, the endless sea of stars shining bright, reaches down inside.
Magic spills out of her in a wave, an ocean of power, and she rides it through, head back, arms out, eyes open wide. Her power, Dominic’s, their family’s. Blood family. Chosen.
Her fingers spread wide, Mia reaches outside the world for the spark that was Gisele, grasps it, and pulls.
*
All that energy roiling through her keeps Mia going as they clean up and make sure there are no traces of ritual left behind, right up until she sinks down into the passenger seat. She gets settled, drinks some water, and almost chokes on it as exhaustion rocks through her. Her eyes droop shut, and it is a struggle to respond when Dom asks if she’s alright.
“I thought there’d be more talking,” Letty says on the way home. She sits in the back with Han, but leans forward between the front seats. “Chanting, Latin prayers, something, y’know?”
Mia shoots her a weak grin. “Words matter, but not as much as intent. I know what I want, what I used the spell to do. That’s enough.”
“Well, you never were a big talker.” Letty says it with a grin that fades as Mia stares at her, far too tired to react as strongly as she feels.
“You remember that?” Dom asks.
Letty shrugs, slumps back against the seat. “Yeah?” She doesn’t sound convinced. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Mia talks more now than she did growing up. She’s confident, she trusts in her own intelligence, she’s found a way to be herself without being lost in the strong personalities that surround her. Letty didn’t pick that up from the past few weeks, that’s for sure.
“You remember,” Dom repeats, sure and steady, the dashboard lights highlighting his bright smile.
Mia yawns, leans against the window. She starts to say something, but can’t think of the right words. Instead, she stares out at the darkness, then, on another yawn, closes her eyes.
*
Half the world away, Gisele opens her eyes.
*
“Woman, you did what?” Hobbs glares at her, arms crossed over his chest, but she’s seen worse, from him, from Dom. Mia’s not impressed.
“Look, you don’t have to believe I did a damn thing,” she tells him. “Just this: we’ve heard a rumor that Gisele is alive out there somewhere, and we need to find her.” She forces a gentle smile. “You helped us bring Letty home. We hoped you could do it again.”
There’s a long moment of guarded silence where she expects him to either cut out of their lives completely or try to lock her up because she’s a threat to herself or others, but then he gives a rueful shake of his head.
“My nana, god rest her soul, was a believer,” he says. “I’m not.” He lifts one massive shoulder in a half shrug. It’s a little like watching boulders move; she’s always been aware of Dom’s size, but he’s her big brother, and it sort of fades into the background.
Next to Hobbs, Dom very nearly looks tiny, and that will never not freak her out a little.
“You don’t have to believe,” Mia says again.
He gives her a little nod. “I’ll help you find her. Do you have any idea where to start looking?”
Mia sighs, shakes her head. She must look as worried and frustrated as she feels, because he claps her on the shoulder. It’s a surprisingly gentle touch, though enthusiastic.
“We’ll find her, don’t you worry.”
She smiles, and worries anyway.
*
There’s been no sign of Gisele for more than a week, and just when Mia’s feeling sick with worry - it’s probably not just morning sickness, but no guarantees - they end up with something a tiny bit more immediate to worry about: the fucking house blows up.
That’s one hell of a distraction.
Before her heart has stopped racing, which can’t be good for the baby, she and Jack are secured in the Dominican Republic. Armando makes her feel welcome, but nothing can make her stop worrying, not for herself but for Dom and Brian, Letty off somewhere on her own, Tej and Roman, and, god, Han. Han who is so focused on trying to find Gisele that she’s afraid he wouldn’t even notice the bullet that took him down.
She kisses Brian good-bye, sends him back to Los Angeles to meet up with Dom and the rest of the family. She waits until he’s gone to touch her stomach, butterfly touch of her fingers, and to let the tears fall. It’s only for a minute, before she goes to hold Jack, tickle him into laughter, but it stays with her long after she wipes her cheeks dry and sets her shoulders like steel.
*
As much as she doesn’t want to try blood magic again without Dom, Brian, and Letty to ground her, she can’t stop thinking about what this Deckard Shaw will do to Gisele if he finds her first. (He’s seen Hobbs’ files, and maybe he didn’t write about witchcraft and resurrection in them, but if there was even a hint that Gisele might be out there somewhere, Mia wouldn’t put it past Shaw to hunt her down.)
She tucks Jack into bed, tells him his bedtime story and then three more for good measure, because he’s scared and he misses his daddy, and kisses him goodnight.
Then she takes herself out onto the balcony. She can see moonlight glint off the guns of the guards in the distance, and wishes it brought her any relief. She sinks down into the shadows, a world atlas spread in front of her, sharp kitchen knife and bandages set to one side. (She would rather have a ceremonial knife, but that’s back in Los Angeles, possibly burned into an unusable lump of metal at this point. She can make do. She always has before.)
Mia breathes in and breathes out, focusing on Gisele, on her smile and her bright eyes and her easy laugh, on where in the world she might be hiding.
Then she drags the knife across her palm, cuts deep, and, despite the pain, makes a fist, squeezes it tight as she holds her hand over the atlas. Blood drips, but falls to the side instead of a straight drop. It lands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and Mia has to bite back an explosion of angry words.
*
She falls asleep leaning against the balcony door, face tilted up to the moon.
*
When she wakes, Jack is calling for her, and all the blood on the atlas has pooled on New Zealand, not a single drop marring any of the many islands between where the blood had fallen and where it now gathered. The atlas is stretched flat, the balcony even. There’s no way it could have flowed there on its own.
“Son of a bitch,” she mutters, and then scrambles to get to Jack before he comes looking for her. Her hand hurts, her back is sore, her neck aches from the angle it was pressed against the door while she slept, but for the first time in days, she feels something beyond fear and anger.
Hope, and the hint of peace.
*
Armando says she can’t leave, not until Dominic gives word that it’s safe.
Mia reminds him that she’s a Toretto, too, determined to get her own way. Loudly, and often.
He has a contingent of security escort her to New Zealand, but they go.
*
Shaw is arrested, and Dom, Letty, and Brian bring Han with them when they come to collect Mia and Jack. He looks like he’s been beaten and run over, then run over and beaten again, but when Gisele says his name, just that, voice cracked and low, he looks up fast, and life floods across his expression, joy and disbelief.
Brian buries his face in Mia’s hair, and holds her oh, so tight. She takes one hand in both of hers, presses the bundle of their fingers to her stomach, and whispers her news.
*
They rebuild the house, bigger than ever. Better. It takes less than six months before Mia’s family, every last one of them, even Hobbs and his adorable little girl, Samantha, finally, finally get to come home.
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Title: Blood Sacrifice
Author: escritoireazul
Characters/Pairings: Gisele Harabo/Han Lue, Letty Ortiz/Dominic Toretto, Brian O'Conner/Mia Toretto
Author's Note: This is a transformative work of fiction set after Fast & Furious 6 and during Furious 7. Many thanks to my beta.
Written for: quettaser for Yuletide 2015
Word count: 4,200
Rating: 13+
Read at AO3
Summary: “Han,” she says, and her voice is rough. “Han,” she tries again.
He glances up at her, and the shadows under his eyes, the pain lining his face, make her want to cry.
“Han.” His name, a third time, the start of a spell. “I can bring her back.”
In that first moment after, all Mia feels is a fast adrenaline drop - and relief. She’s still alive, and Brian and Dom, and, god, they finally, finally have Letty back. She slumps into Brian’s arms, face pressed into the crook of his neck, and tries to remember how to breathe. Her heart pounds in her chest, each thud an echo - you’re alive, you’re going home, you’re alive, you’re going home.
It’s not that she doesn’t care how Han feels - she loves Gisele too, and she will mourn - but the rest of the world is muted, softened, set at a distance. She’s given so much to get her family back together, done so much, sacrificed - there is blood on her hands.
Mia sinks into Brian in that moment, into Dom’s big arms wrapped around them both, Letty hovering, not the same but there, and breathes out, breathes in. She’s finally done it. She’s brought her family home.
*
Han’s really good with a hammer and nails, and Mia puts him to work inside the house where she can keep an eye on him. It's been empty a long time, and it needs a lot of work before they all move back in. He talks a little less, but sometimes he smiles - when Brian and Mia get going at each other with joking insults, when Jack goes toddling past him, trying to get chubby little fingers into every mess - and Mia tries to temper her worry. He’s mourning, but so are they all. He’s mourning, but people survive that every day.
He’s mourning, and Mia already changed the world once when she shouldn’t have done, and almost died trying. A part of her did die that night, as she slit a goat’s throat and watched the blood stain her fingers, as she cut open her wrists and bled onto the ground, as she lay, fingers pressed into the dirt and stared at the sky, the moon gone dark and all the stars, and reached deep, deep inside for her magic.
Han is mourning, and dying a little more each breath he takes, and Mia’s heart is breaking.
*
They’re alone in the house, Brian and Jack out picking up food, Dom off showing Letty all the places she doesn’t remember, when Mia finally goes to him.
“Han,” she says, and her voice is rough. She wipes sweaty hands on her jeans, sits on a cardboard box of supplies that still needs to be unpacked, then stands again. He sits on one of the ragged lawn chairs they use when they need a break but aren’t ready to head back to the hotel suite. He’s slumped forward, arms resting on his thighs, hands hanging between his knees, head down. “Han,” she tries again.
He glances up at her, and the shadows under his eyes, the pain lining his face, make her want to cry.
“Han.” His name, a third time, the start of a spell. “I can bring her back.”
There’s no other “her” in Han’s world.
He blinks, drops his head, makes a choked sound. “She’s dead,” he says at last, and his voice cracks. She expects more out of him, but he looks drained. He’s worse off than she thought.
She can’t lose him too. Maybe, maybe, she could survive losing one of them, but not both.
“I know it sounds like a joke,” she says, her words coming fast. She sinks down to her knees in front of him, takes his hands. “I wouldn’t do that to you, though. I can bring her back. Like I did Letty.”
His hands clench down on hers, and he holds her so tight her fingers start to go numb. His eyes are wide, something wild in the flash of them as he looks at her, looks away, jerky. She’s spooked him, and even through his sadness, there’s some part of him gearing up for fight or flight, some part of him that wants to survive.
“It’s -” She stops. The details don’t matter, at least not those details. “I’m telling you the truth. I promise, I wouldn’t lie to you, wouldn’t jerk you around. But, Han - if I do this, if I bring her back, it might not work like we want.”
She braces herself, waiting for a barrage of questions, shouting demands, liar liar yelled at her again and again, but Han drags in a shuddery breath and doesn’t say anything for a long time, just holds onto her, breathes in, breathes out.
“What will happen?” he asks, and that is not the question she expected.
Mia shrugs, holding his hands just as hard as he holds hers. “Look at Letty. She came back lost, she forgot everything - she forgot us, her family. We almost didn’t get her back.”
“But we did.” His voice is a little stronger now.
She nods. “Yeah, we did. Gisele - I don’t know where she’d come back. We’ll have to find her. I don’t know if she’ll remember us.” She hesitates, tries to find the right words. “I don’t know if she’ll be Giselle -- she might come back wrong.”
“But she’ll come back.”
“Yeah,” Mia says, with the ghost of a sigh. She can already feel the pain taking her body apart. “She’ll come back.”
“Please,” Han says. “Please, Mia.”
Mia presses a kiss to their joined hands, sealing the promise.
*
Mia spends some time rocking Jack before she puts him to bed, breathing in his scent. It’s not a baby smell anymore, but she can remember what that was like. He smells clean from his bath, a little sweet, and she loves her snuggly baby boy more than she ever dreamed possible. He kicks a little in his sleep, makes funny noises, flops across her arms. When she puts him to bed, he sprawls, taking up all the space.
Just like she does, as Brian complains all the time, and it makes Mia smile.
Out in the suite’s living room, the others are waiting. They’ve called everyone home, but the others have scattered, and it will take awhile for them to arrive. Right now, she’s faced with Letty and Brian and Dom, and that’s more than enough.
Han sits, watches her, and she can feel the weight of his expectations settle over her.
Only Dom knows anything about this part of her, because it’s his family too. Letty knew, once, held back her hair the first time she tried a spell that was too strong and spent the rest of the day puking, sat and listened as Mia talked about witches and magic, voice as shaky as her hands, and believed every word. She’s forgotten that, just like everything else, and now she sits next to Dom, but drawn into herself a little.
Mia wonders if she remembers dying or what it was like to come back.
She’s never asked.
Quickly, she sketches out the family history for Brian and Letty. Dom’s eyes are hooded as he stares at her, expression fierce, but she ignores him. When she gets to Letty’s death and resurrection, Letty makes this noise, low in the back of her throat, and crosses her arms over her chest, fingers clutching so hard her skin starts to bruise. Holding herself together, Mia thinks, and hates that this has come up so soon, that Letty’s tie to them, so fragile, might yet still come undone.
It is good for Han to see, another way this could go wrong, and she steels herself to keep going.
“I couldn’t,” Mia says, but runs out of words. It’s too fresh, the way she felt when she got the call about Letty, the way she felt when she had to tell Dom. Everything broken inside, shattered glass and poisoned blood. “I had to bring you back.”
“How?” Brian’s the one who asks, and she wants to go to him, to hold his hands, kiss him, promise him everything will be okay.
“Magic.” She takes a breath, holds herself steady, chin high, back straight. She is calm, she is in control, this is exactly what she wants to do. “Magic like this is difficult. It requires blood sacrifices, and a lot of energy.” She hesitates, because this is going to be the sticking point, but she knows what it’s like to be left out, left behind, for her own good, and she’s not going to be the one to do that to her family. “I almost died bringing Letty back.”
She goes tense, ready for an explosion of noise like violence - she knows her family well - but there’s only silence. Brian looks at her, looks at Han watching her, and drops his head into his hands. Still, she waits, and finally he lifts his head.
“How do we stop that from happening this time?”
She can’t help herself. This time she goes to him, kisses him quickly but soundly, then settles on the arm of the couch, her feet pressed under his thigh. This is where she belongs, surrounded by her family, not standing separate, strong as she is.
They’ve learned, over and over again, that they are stronger together than apart.
“I think, if Dom’s there, I can pull some energy from him,” she says. She’s been giving this some thought. Leaving him out of it last time was stupid, and she doesn’t dare make the same mistakes this time. “He doesn’t use his magic, but it’s in his blood, too. That could help.”
Dom leans forward, his attention now focused; Mia sits up straight, ready for a fight. “We should bind you first,” he says, and she jerks, startled. “Bind you to us, bind you to your body.”
Mia opens her mouth, then closes it, considers his suggestion. It’s not a bad idea. “I like it,” she says, and if her smile is a little shaky, well, she never expected Dominic Toretto to ever give his magic a second thought, not after their mother died a slow, painful death when he was thirteen and no spell could save her, could even ease her pain.
(That was before Mia knew how to bring someone back. Even if she had known, she was more scared of her magic then, and terrified of losing herself. The first death was hard. She’s since seen what happens when the family comes apart.
Never again.)
“This might go badly,” she warns them. Warns Han, again, trying to drive it home, but she doesn’t think he hears her. “We don’t know how she’ll come back.” Mia glances at Letty, who is sitting very still, arms still crossed, lips pressed together. After a second, Letty meets her gaze, crooks a bit of a smile. “She could come back like Letty, not know who she is. She could come back angry or lost or - or any number of ways.” Mia doesn’t want to start thinking about how very many ways Gisele might come back wrong. “She might not be Gisele anymore.”
“What makes her Gisele?” Letty asks, and they all turn to look at her. Even Han breaks his focus on Mia at that. Letty shrugs under their attention. “I mean, am I Letty? I don’t remember who she was. But you -“ She stops, shrugs again.
“You’re Letty,” Dom tells her, and reaches over. Letty’s mouth works, no words, then she drops her arms, takes his offered hand.
“Maybe.” Again with that shrug, and Mia’s chest is tight and hot. “Point is, Gisele comes back without her memories, comes back angry or sad or broken,” Mia wonders how many of those words Letty applies to herself, and all the other things she no longer knows about her best friend, “who cares? She comes back, that’s the important thing.” She smiles, just a little. “As long as she comes back, we can handle the rest.”
We.
Mia’s heart sings.
*
They go far out into the desert for the ceremony. Tej and Roman stay behind with Jack. They know what’s happening, and Mia loves them, they’re family, but she doesn’t want too many people there. More people, more distractions.
She’ll sacrifice to bring back Gisele, but she’s not ready to die just yet, especially over something as stupid as a joke made at just the wrong time.
The sky is vast out here, overwhelming. The moon is new, but stars spill out across the darkness. Mia’s small fire casts golden light across their bodies and makes the shadows dance. The goat bleats, and Han strokes its head. She’s already warned him not to get attached, he knows what she’s going to do to it. If giving it attention -oh, hell, he’s feeding it treats now - makes him feel better about the sacrifice, she’s not really in a position to judge.
Binding spells are simple enough. She pricks their fingers, one at a time: Dominic first, always, their shared blood grounding her, then Letty, the tie between past and present, not quite blank slate writing her own story, and finally Brian, the one she has chosen, the one who circles her like she is his gravity.
Han she saves. Han she needs for Gisele.
There’s nothing dramatic about this spell. Blood on the cloth, from each of them, and then together they bind it around her upper arm, out of the way, but fixed. She can feel them even before the spell snaps into place, tying her down, to them and to her living body. Letty shifts her weight, rubs her arms, screws up her face. Dom gives himself a little shake, squares his shoulders, resettles himself.
And Brian kisses her, just once, making the magic buzz throughout her body.
The resurrection spell is more complicated.
Mia chews lavender and lemon, purifies herself. Adds long willow branches to the fire, fills her arms with zinnias and drops them in after, the flames devouring yellow and orange, red and purple flowers alike, their sadness, their mourning. This time, she adds pink carnations and forget-me-nots, focuses hard on Gisele’s memory.
Remember us, she whispers into the smoke, then breathes in deep, filling her lungs. It burns, it sticks in the back of her throat, she fights not to gag, but then she can breathe out, and that breath carries power.
Han holds the goat when the time comes, soothing his hands along its back. Mia is quick, efficient, slits its throat, and lets the blood spill into a wooden bowl. She dips her fingers into the blood as it falls, presses bloody fingerprints to her forehead, to Han’s, to the backs of his hands.
To that spilled blood, sacrifice, she adds more herbs, plants, and spices, dying things for the fire to consume: thyme and yarrow, peppermint and cinnamon and cedar, anise and dill. She chews up nettle, spits it into the fire without swallowing.
Mia takes Han’s hand, already marked by tonight’s sacrifice. He will give still more before they’re done. They both will.
She presses a kiss to the palm of his hand, then to his lips, touching him with peppermint. He doesn’t flinch when she presses the knife against his skin, only bites down hard on his lower lip as she opens his arm from wrist to elbow, a long, shallow cut that bleeds but will leave no damage behind, the doctor she once could have been weaving itself into the way she practices magic. She dips her fingers into his blood, touches her forehead, his, the backs of his hands, his lips.
He stays near her, so close she can feel his body move with each breath, as she repeats the cut on herself, both arms for her. It stings, then burns, as she opens her skin, marks herself, marks him.
She pushes the bowl into his hands after he’s bled into it, and he holds it steady while she bleeds too.
“I’ll circle the fire three times clockwise, three times counter,” she tells him. “Then you pour in the blood. Think about Gisele, as many details as you can. Focus on her.”
“Be careful,” he whispers, and she would hug him tight, but there’s no time. The fire cracks, the shadows it casts dancing, and she can feel the magic stirring deep inside.
Mia circles the fire, saying Gisele’s name to the cardinal directions with each revolution. By the time she’s finished circling counterclockwise, she’s dizzy from it, the smoke, the magic rising with each breath, and the world spins. Han pours the blood into the fire, and the flames leap ever higher.
She’s panting by now, each breath a struggle, and her heart pounds in her chest. When she raised Letty, this is when she fell, bleeding out onto the ground, and she waits for the fall again. It doesn’t happen; she spins, dizzy, but her body is strong, stronger - grounded in itself, she realizes, in Dom and Letty and Brian. She can feel them, soft flickers from Letty and Brian, but Dom is as strong as a mountain at her back.
She lowers her hands, lets blood fall down her wrists, patter onto the dirt at her feet. She stomps, grinding it, churning mud. Mia flings back her head, stares at the sky, the shadow face of the moon, the endless sea of stars shining bright, reaches down inside.
Magic spills out of her in a wave, an ocean of power, and she rides it through, head back, arms out, eyes open wide. Her power, Dominic’s, their family’s. Blood family. Chosen.
Her fingers spread wide, Mia reaches outside the world for the spark that was Gisele, grasps it, and pulls.
*
All that energy roiling through her keeps Mia going as they clean up and make sure there are no traces of ritual left behind, right up until she sinks down into the passenger seat. She gets settled, drinks some water, and almost chokes on it as exhaustion rocks through her. Her eyes droop shut, and it is a struggle to respond when Dom asks if she’s alright.
“I thought there’d be more talking,” Letty says on the way home. She sits in the back with Han, but leans forward between the front seats. “Chanting, Latin prayers, something, y’know?”
Mia shoots her a weak grin. “Words matter, but not as much as intent. I know what I want, what I used the spell to do. That’s enough.”
“Well, you never were a big talker.” Letty says it with a grin that fades as Mia stares at her, far too tired to react as strongly as she feels.
“You remember that?” Dom asks.
Letty shrugs, slumps back against the seat. “Yeah?” She doesn’t sound convinced. “Maybe. I don’t know.”
Mia talks more now than she did growing up. She’s confident, she trusts in her own intelligence, she’s found a way to be herself without being lost in the strong personalities that surround her. Letty didn’t pick that up from the past few weeks, that’s for sure.
“You remember,” Dom repeats, sure and steady, the dashboard lights highlighting his bright smile.
Mia yawns, leans against the window. She starts to say something, but can’t think of the right words. Instead, she stares out at the darkness, then, on another yawn, closes her eyes.
*
Half the world away, Gisele opens her eyes.
*
“Woman, you did what?” Hobbs glares at her, arms crossed over his chest, but she’s seen worse, from him, from Dom. Mia’s not impressed.
“Look, you don’t have to believe I did a damn thing,” she tells him. “Just this: we’ve heard a rumor that Gisele is alive out there somewhere, and we need to find her.” She forces a gentle smile. “You helped us bring Letty home. We hoped you could do it again.”
There’s a long moment of guarded silence where she expects him to either cut out of their lives completely or try to lock her up because she’s a threat to herself or others, but then he gives a rueful shake of his head.
“My nana, god rest her soul, was a believer,” he says. “I’m not.” He lifts one massive shoulder in a half shrug. It’s a little like watching boulders move; she’s always been aware of Dom’s size, but he’s her big brother, and it sort of fades into the background.
Next to Hobbs, Dom very nearly looks tiny, and that will never not freak her out a little.
“You don’t have to believe,” Mia says again.
He gives her a little nod. “I’ll help you find her. Do you have any idea where to start looking?”
Mia sighs, shakes her head. She must look as worried and frustrated as she feels, because he claps her on the shoulder. It’s a surprisingly gentle touch, though enthusiastic.
“We’ll find her, don’t you worry.”
She smiles, and worries anyway.
*
There’s been no sign of Gisele for more than a week, and just when Mia’s feeling sick with worry - it’s probably not just morning sickness, but no guarantees - they end up with something a tiny bit more immediate to worry about: the fucking house blows up.
That’s one hell of a distraction.
Before her heart has stopped racing, which can’t be good for the baby, she and Jack are secured in the Dominican Republic. Armando makes her feel welcome, but nothing can make her stop worrying, not for herself but for Dom and Brian, Letty off somewhere on her own, Tej and Roman, and, god, Han. Han who is so focused on trying to find Gisele that she’s afraid he wouldn’t even notice the bullet that took him down.
She kisses Brian good-bye, sends him back to Los Angeles to meet up with Dom and the rest of the family. She waits until he’s gone to touch her stomach, butterfly touch of her fingers, and to let the tears fall. It’s only for a minute, before she goes to hold Jack, tickle him into laughter, but it stays with her long after she wipes her cheeks dry and sets her shoulders like steel.
*
As much as she doesn’t want to try blood magic again without Dom, Brian, and Letty to ground her, she can’t stop thinking about what this Deckard Shaw will do to Gisele if he finds her first. (He’s seen Hobbs’ files, and maybe he didn’t write about witchcraft and resurrection in them, but if there was even a hint that Gisele might be out there somewhere, Mia wouldn’t put it past Shaw to hunt her down.)
She tucks Jack into bed, tells him his bedtime story and then three more for good measure, because he’s scared and he misses his daddy, and kisses him goodnight.
Then she takes herself out onto the balcony. She can see moonlight glint off the guns of the guards in the distance, and wishes it brought her any relief. She sinks down into the shadows, a world atlas spread in front of her, sharp kitchen knife and bandages set to one side. (She would rather have a ceremonial knife, but that’s back in Los Angeles, possibly burned into an unusable lump of metal at this point. She can make do. She always has before.)
Mia breathes in and breathes out, focusing on Gisele, on her smile and her bright eyes and her easy laugh, on where in the world she might be hiding.
Then she drags the knife across her palm, cuts deep, and, despite the pain, makes a fist, squeezes it tight as she holds her hand over the atlas. Blood drips, but falls to the side instead of a straight drop. It lands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and Mia has to bite back an explosion of angry words.
*
She falls asleep leaning against the balcony door, face tilted up to the moon.
*
When she wakes, Jack is calling for her, and all the blood on the atlas has pooled on New Zealand, not a single drop marring any of the many islands between where the blood had fallen and where it now gathered. The atlas is stretched flat, the balcony even. There’s no way it could have flowed there on its own.
“Son of a bitch,” she mutters, and then scrambles to get to Jack before he comes looking for her. Her hand hurts, her back is sore, her neck aches from the angle it was pressed against the door while she slept, but for the first time in days, she feels something beyond fear and anger.
Hope, and the hint of peace.
*
Armando says she can’t leave, not until Dominic gives word that it’s safe.
Mia reminds him that she’s a Toretto, too, determined to get her own way. Loudly, and often.
He has a contingent of security escort her to New Zealand, but they go.
*
Shaw is arrested, and Dom, Letty, and Brian bring Han with them when they come to collect Mia and Jack. He looks like he’s been beaten and run over, then run over and beaten again, but when Gisele says his name, just that, voice cracked and low, he looks up fast, and life floods across his expression, joy and disbelief.
Brian buries his face in Mia’s hair, and holds her oh, so tight. She takes one hand in both of hers, presses the bundle of their fingers to her stomach, and whispers her news.
*
They rebuild the house, bigger than ever. Better. It takes less than six months before Mia’s family, every last one of them, even Hobbs and his adorable little girl, Samantha, finally, finally get to come home.
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