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[cursivescrawl]

Flee

Rating: PG Category: Elementals Summary: Exile sucks, and hopefully Gemstone won’t die.

The last vampire exploded in a shriek of golden flame.  Jagev yanked her sword from its burning body, a sting of pain curling up beneath her ribs.  The steel kara on her left wrist glowed with absorbed heat.

“And I’m drained,” she muttered, stepping back.  The stench of burning vampire made her wrinkle her nose.

“Same,” Maddy grumbled.  Jagev sidestepped the curling flames to see her teammate, sword on the ground, wrestling her long red-brown hair up into a ponytail holder.  “Is that all of them?”

Looks like it.  Eliava’s voice rang in Jagev’s head.  A view of the neighborhood from above spread in her mind’s eye - Eliava’s vantage point.  It made her slightly dizzy.

The flames on the vampire’s body crackled out, leaving only a statue of screaming ash.  Jagev blew at it.  The ashes crumbled into a pile.

Marcy felt disgusted in the back of the team connection.

“We’re going to have to switch our hideout now,” said Maddy.  She tightened her ponytail and bent to pick up her sword.  “If this coven knew where we are…”

Jagev really didn’t want to think about that.  In the five weeks they’d been exiled, they’d had to pick up and move three separate times.  An Elemental team of barely-warriors, alone, was just too tempting a target.  If one of them was killed-

worse, if one of them was captured alive-

all the team would be weak, susceptible to whatever might befall them.  She didn’t have to go rifling through Marcy’s mind to see examples of when teams had been controlled or gone insane because of one captured or dead teammate.

We can’t afford weakness, Marcy concluded grimly.  She’d been following along with Jagev’s thoughts?  Jagev hadn’t noticed.

We can’t afford staying in one place.  Eliava sheathed her last arrow and took a running start, darting along the rooftops.  Saph, where are you?

Marcy threw up a map into the connection.  Once again, Jagev grimaced, a nauseating sense of carsickness rising in her throat.

Form up on Marcy?

Varying degrees of assent wavered through the connection.  Jagev cleaned her sword on the wet grass as best she could and sheathed it, hoping there wouldn’t be any more fighting before she could clean it properly.  If it stuck in the sheath and she couldn’t draw it fast enough…

“Don’t be frickin’ morbid,” Maddy groaned.  Jagev glanced over her shoulder.  Maddy picked up her own sword from the ground and sheathed it at her own hip.  “We’ll be fine.”

“We’re all-”  No, it probably wasn’t a good idea to say that out loud.  Jagev caught herself and finished the thought silently.  We’re all drained.  There’s no way we could fight anything off now.

Nobody argued.  Maddy came to Jagev’s side, and together they started wandering through the darkened, silent streets.

Some Elementals could pull teammates to their side instantly.  Jagev had seen Flash do it, and her mentor Jen, too, before she fell into that coma.  She wished Gemstone had that power.  No matter how many times they tried, it seemed beyond their connection.

That would be really useful right now.  Every one of Jagev’s muscles screamed with exhaustion.

Maddy idly linked her arm in Jagev’s.  Their steps fell into sync.

“So, Ruby, where are we going?” she murmured.  Jagev reached out.  Maddy’s mind made it pretty clear - she wasn’t asking about Marcy and Eliava’s location.

“I don’t know.  We could try the Sanctum again.”

Maddy didn’t need to voice her doubt.  It slammed into Jagev’s mind like a physical force, almost making her stagger and lose her balance.

She was right.  They couldn’t just keep using that Sanctum to protect themselves.  They had to get used to this.  There wasn’t going to be an end to their exile, no way to exonerate themselves.

Hell, when they’d left, Jagev had even been optimistic they’d be able to lift the spell from Astral Team and raise the Holders from their coma.  But that wasn’t going to happen, not so long as they were constantly being hunted by anyone wanting a pet Elemental or four.

Guys, Marcy said quietly.  She and Eliava were walking.  Listen.

Jagev and Maddy paused.

So did another pair of quiet footsteps.

Maddy stepped aside and whirled.  Jagev reached for her sword, trying to wiggle it out of the sheath.  Stupid thing, covered with grass juice and vampire blood, it was stuck.

Through the connection, she saw shadows forming slowly into another group of humans.  No- not humans.  Some were on four legs with glowing eyes.

A werewolf pack.

Are you-

Same-

Run-

Sanctum?

Panicked thoughts flashed through the connection.  Jagev’s heart hammered against her ribs.  She yanked at her sword and it finally came free, dirty steel flashing through the air.

The Sanctum was too far away.  Miles.  Drained as they were, they’d never get there in time.

The Sikh ashram is two streets over, she remembered, and immediately Marcy jumped on the thought.

That has protection-!

Eliava was already running.  The rest of Gemstone followed suit and bolted as the night exploded in hunting howls.

Jagev flipped her blade in her hand as she sprinted down the street, fear giving fresh life to her exhausted body.  Maddy caught up with her.  Marcy and Eliava were converging-

Jagev realized it a few seconds too late.  Ahead was a cul-de-sac.  They’d be surrounded.  The pack was driving them into a trap.  She threw the thought to the connection.

Eliava managed to spring into the air, using the winds to lift her.  Marcy couldn’t find a point of escape.  Maddy, panicked, stumbled; Jagev reached to steady her, but the coven leapt forward with a shriek, and Maddy planted her hand on the ground.  The asphalt behind them rumbled.  A wall of black stone curled up from the ground, just high enough to prevent anything from jumping it.

Marcy skidded to a stop on their side of the wall.  Maddy sagged to the ground, more than exhausted.  Jagev caught her.

Behind the wall, the pack bayed and howled.

“Shit,” Jagev breathed.  Her sword almost slipped in her sweaty palm; she gripped it tighter, exchanged a panicked look with Marcy.

A fight would mean death.

It wasn’t a thought so much as it was a certainty.  As drained as they were…

Jagev glanced around.  They’d walled themselves into the cul-de-sac.  Maddy was dead weight in her arms.  Eliava landed on a roof, then yelped and pulled one of her last arrows from her quiver, aiming at the wolf who’d spotted her and releasing the bowstring.

The arrow struck true.  On the other side of the wall, an injured wolf yelped, and then the entire pack snarled in anger.

How many arrows do you have left? Jagev reached for Eliava.  The answer was immediate, grim.

Two.

Jagev dragged Maddy back away from the wall of asphalt.  Her thoughts felt like they were moving through molasses.  Marcy backed up with her, shoulder-to-shoulder, her spear gripped in both hands.

Some astute werewolf caught scent of Eliava, perched on the roof.  The howling redoubled.  Jagev whipped her head around, seeing lights snapping on in windows, her heart hammering against her ribs.

God, if humans got involved in this-

Can we get up on the roofs?  Marcy spied a ladder propped on the roof of a porch, loose shingles in the front yard.  They’d have to go human to climb.

We can try, Jagev responded.  How long would it take to climb that ladder, get a comatose teammate up onto the rooftops...

I can buy us time.  Eliava drew both her remaining arrows from her quiver as she stood from her crouch.  One dangled loose between her fingers; the other, she nocked to her bowstring and drew, trying not to let her aim shake.

“Hey!” she yelled down to the pack.

They whirled to face her, mouths opening to howl, a few more of the humanoid packmates dropping to all fours.  Eliava sighted and released.  Her white-fletched arrow slammed down s wolf’s throat.

A howl died.  The pack screamed.  Eliava backed away from the edge, scrambled down the other side of the house, and hit the ground running as the pack surged after her.

Nice.  Jagev gritted her teeth and dragged Maddy over to the ladder, not sheathing her sword.  Marcy slipped her spear back into its holster across her back and helped get Maddy up the ladder, their teammate too exhausted to help much, until they both crouched on the porch rooftop.

Eliava’s panic surged through the connection.  Jagev and Marcy stared at each other, unseeing, the pack closing in on their teammate, bays and cries of triumph ringing distantly-

This was a bad idea.

Eliava dredged up her last bit of magical strength.  She sprang forward, turned in midair, shouted a word of defiance as she drew her bow.

The arrow slammed into the asphalt and stuck there.

A black tornado surged into the sky.

Eliava’s thoughts cut out, her mind a faint flicker at the edge of Jagev’s consciousness.  She turned.  The tornado whirled down the street, wolves getting caught up and thrown aside in it, the victory howl turning into one of retreat.

Marcy breathed a curse and sat down heavily on the porch roof.

The winds dispersed.

Eliava lay in the street where she’d collapsed.  Her curly black hair spread out around her head, blending with the asphalt, her light leather armor was torn by jaws and tossed by wind.  Jagev knelt beside her fallen teammate.

Marcy carried half-conscious Maddy over.

The asphalt dug into Jagev’s knees.  She reached for Eliava’s neck, two shaking fingers looking for a pulse, for tangible proof of the mind fluttering at the very edge of her consciousness.  A pulse throbbed beneath her fingertips.

“We can’t do this again,” Marcy whispered.

Jagev slowly shook her head, blinking back tears.

They finally gathered enough strength to drag themselves to the ashram.  The moment they stepped onto the grass, soft barriers of orange and white light gleamed around the premises, reacting to the four exhausted Elementals.

Eliava’s breathing had steadied, at least, but she remained unconscious.  Jagev’s steel kara bit into her left arm.  She’d carried Eliava the entire way here, and the Wind’s limp body wasn’t exactly light.

Marcy had Maddy’s arm looped around her shoulder.  Now she released her, letting Maddy collapse back to the ground, her fingers digging into the dirt.

“Should we try and redistribute?” Marcy breathed, sitting next to Maddy and dragging her spear from its holster.  She lay it down on the grass.  Jagev staggered over, lay Eliava out next to it, and collapsed.

“None of us have enough power for that.”

Marcy shrugged and lay back.  Jagev did the same.  The grass felt damp beneath her long hair, and the sky was dark with clouds, only a few stars bright enough to poke through.  Atop the flagpole, the orange and white ashram flag snapped in a soft breeze.

Such a beautiful night, Jagev thought drowsily.  If they hadn’t been banished, where would they be on a night like this?  Maybe with Metallic Team, playing a video game in the brightly lit common room of the Wind base.  Or else Alyss and Tori would be dragging Jagev and Eliava out, trying to teach them to slink through the shadows, laughing at their predictable failures until Jagev jokingly challenged them to a straight-up duel…

Marcy’s exhausted mind supplied an image of the Library.  The comfortable windowseat where they’d met each other, where they used to sit across from each other with stacks of books and pass hours hiding from their mentors.

They’d been puzzling through one together, just before they’d been made warriors and sent on their proving mission.  What had been the title…

Marcy seized the thought and turned it over in her own mind.  Jagev reached out with her hand, found Eliava’s curly hair, wove her fingers through it.  The book was about taking day and night magic, weaving it with elemental power, creating a lost art…

“Twilight?” Marcy murmured aloud.  Jagev saw the book in Marcy’s mind’s eye, the title indistinct.

“Practice of Twilight?”  Jagev felt herself falling asleep.  She yawned and rolled over.

They couldn’t stay here, could they?  Too dangerous, if mortals found them-

But they couldn’t move.

Jagev wasn’t sure whose thought that was.  The connection kind of blurred when she was this tired.  She couldn’t tell who was thinking, who was trying to move, who was already unconscious.

She gave up.

Her breathing steadied, and a moment later, so did Marcy’s.

The entire team sprawled unconscious on the ashram lawn.

Dawn broke, driving away the night’s shadows like so many feral cats.  The ashram flag glowed as the sunrise crept over it, the gleaming dome of the gurdwara behind the ashram reflecting golden light over the neighborhood.

A few stray rays hit a small house a few streets over.  Runes glowed where the light illuminated them.  A ladder had been knocked down from the ruined porch overnight, lying now among loose shingles in the overgrown shrubs and grass.

The stone wall in the street had crumbled, leaving asphalt pebbles scattered around, waiting to lodge in someone’s tires.  It appeared to have shattered with some force - pebbles lay in people’s yards, on their roofs.  One had gone through the small house’s window.

It now lay in a neat, long-unused kitchen, decorated in beige and white like the rest of the house.  The kitchen connected to a living room via a half-wall, which also hid the hallway to the single bedroom where Gemstone Team lay unconscious and piled on top of each other.

The rising sun filtered in through the east-facing window, lighting up the beige walls, gleaming off their clean and sharpened weapons stacked beside the door.  Two swords.  One bow, one full quiver of arrows.  A spear.

Asleep, Eliava groaned and buried her face in Maddy’s back, hiding from the light.  The sun crept further into the room and found a book.

It had been placed carefully on the old writing desk beside the weapons.  The binding was soft, old leather, the pages edged in silver, the title etched in the same gleaming metal.

Practice of Twilight.

[cursivescrawl]

Rescue

Rating: PG-13 Category: Elementals Summary: “Father’s wrath,” Hawk whispers.  “What happened here?”

“Fuck,” snarls Flash as he storms into Jen's room.  “Grace.  You in here?”

Grace jumps from her half-doze, one hand going to her sword hilt, pulse hammering in alarm.  “What is it?”

“I need your permission.”  His hand flutters at his side, tapping his thigh.  Grace glimpses red in the dark irises shaded by Flash's cowl. “To authorize a mission.”

Images flicker into Grace's mind, the viewpoints of her teammates.  They've all been approached by members of Feline Team – Fire to Fire, Water to Water, Wind to Wind, and Earth to Earth.  And all of them are displaying similar signs of nervousness.

Leaden dread adds force to Grace's pounding heart.

“Permission?” she repeats, struggling to stay calm.  “Panther, you're the Second. You don't need my permission.  You outrank-”

“Oh, for fuck's sake,” Flash snaps, then lowers his voice, glowering.  “Just listen-”

“It's a search and rescue,” says Zephyr to Vani, his words echoing in Grace's hearing.  “They're under”

“your jurisdiction,” says Flash.  “Courage,”

“Patience,” says Lake to Leah. “Metallic is alive.”

Silence settles thick over the ringing in Grace's ears.  Metallic Team.  Her team's former apprentices.  The four young warriors haven't been seen in over a month, not since that mission to track and burn a Colorado nest of wights.  Even optimistic Elizabeth had started to assume they'd died.

But, and the thought is flavored with Leah's indecision, there haven't been any bodies found.  No proof of Metallic's murder.

Flash – and his team – are speaking again, so deep in their own connection that they trade words and talk in one voice.  Grace listens numbly.  She wishes she could tune out Vani's hope, Leah's anxiety, Elizabeth's determination.

Metallic has been captured, Feline Team is saying.  They are being held by the Winters. The base is quite near to where Metallic burned out those wights.

(Guilt clouds Grace's thoughts.  Why did she override her teammates' objections, why did she push to give Metallic that mission?  Everyone else had known they weren't ready.  Elizabeth reaches out, taking the guilt upon herself – they all should have known.)

“Where did you-” Leah begins, looking at Lake.  But she trails off, and Elizabeth finishes the sentence for Jag.  “-learn this?”

“Rozzo informant,” Zephyr says to Vani.  “It was a bribe. They want us to ignore that, ah,”

“tussle,” supplies Lake.

Zephyr flicks his hand.  “-that they had with Yuugao,”

“which caused the latest tornado,”

“in Oklahoma,” Flash finishes.

Grace's head aches.  Teams showing off their connection are the worst.

But Metallic.  Metallic is alive.  Leah's voice whispers that running chant in the back of Grace's mind, in the back of all of their minds.

“Where are they?” Grace asks.

“Utah,” says Flash.

Zephyr spins over to a detailed map of the continental United States on the wall of the Wind planning room and considers it.  Then he pins a certain location.  “Here.”

“It's a closed ski resort,” says Lake.

It's very near to the site of the old church, Vani realizes after a moment of looking.  She's furious.  Why had they sent Metallic there?  The team connection wavers, frays, and Grace joins her in anger until their minds steady back together.  Her nails bite into her palms.

There were other teams.  Metallic could have been spared this fate.

If the Holders were awake, they would know what to do.

Once again it's Elizabeth who pulls the team from grief.  She examines the chalkboard on her wall that holds the names of the Daytime teams available to take assignments.

“We'll dispatch someone in the morning,” says Grace.  Her voice shakes. “Dimension, or Sin-”

But Jag and Zephyr are shaking their heads, and Lake makes a noise of dissent, and Flash speaks.  “No.  It has to be tonight, because,”

“we don't know what they're doing,” bursts out Zephyr.  “And if they know we know,”

“they'll know we're coming for Metallic, and they'll,”

“probably kill them.”  Jag crosses his arms.  “That's why,”

“we need to dispatch Raptor Team.  Now.”

Raptor Team?  Leah stares at Lake, who spoke last.  “But Raptor is just as young as Metallic.”

“We,” says Flash, “did not shelter our apprentices,” says Jag.

Grace winces.  Had they done Metallic a disservice by not letting them fight earlier?

Maybe they'd been wrong, ventures Leah.  Grace can feel her pulse speeding up to match her anxious teammate's.  Raptor was fighting.  Maybe Metallic could have been useful, if they'd been allowed to be.

But Raptor was a Nighttime team.  They mostly dealt in spies and skirmishes.  Elizabeth's logic cut through the anxiety, calm and collected.  Metallic was Daytime, like Virtue themselves, and they would have been on the front lines.

If they weren't ready now, they certainly wouldn't have been before.

“Do you trust Raptor enough for this?” whispers Vani.

Zephyr makes an impatient movement with his hands.

“Yes,” Flash snaps.  “We wouldn't suggest it otherwise.”

Elizabeth tightens her ponytail.  They're all looking to Grace, offering opinions, waiting for her decision.  She closes her eyes and tries to focus on her own thoughts.

Metallic is captured.

Metallic must be rescued.

Feline Team seems confident that it can happen tonight.

What kind of a mentor, what kind of a Champion is Grace if she lets them suffer one moment longer than necessary?

There's no other option when she thinks of it that way.  Elizabeth supports her; Vani and Leah fall into line.  The disparity of thought and Grace's headache subside.

“Alright,” she says without opening her eyes.  “We give you permission.  Bring back Metallic Team safely.”

The door opens, then closes.  In her mind's eye Grace sees the other members of Feline Team leave her teammates alone.  Grace stumbles over to the chair at Jen's bedside and sinks down again, exhausted, keyed up, nauseous, famished.

Soon, whispers Vani, a single word and multiple sentiments.

Soon, Elizabeth echoes.

“Maybe,” says Leah aloud to a silent room.

“Soon,” says Grace, louder, to her Holder's corpselike figure.

None of them will be sleeping tonight.

There's no future, thinks Alyss, in rushing.

Tori dryly points out that she'd thought it in Flash's sardonic voice.  Raina laughs.  Alyss redirects them both back to their mission.

Nothing's happening, Tori protests.  Her great wings scoop at the air as she circles lazily over the Winter base, an unassuming little lodge perched among ski slopes. Everything's quiet.  We're good to go in.

We are not walking in the front door. Audrey is ridiculously firm about this.  There's at least fifteen traps set up, and I feel footsteps inside.  Hold your horses.

Raina and Alyss exchange nervous thoughts.  Raina patrols around the edge of the base, marking out paces and finding wards in the darkness.  Alyss stands over Audrey, who is kneeling in the powdery snow with her hands pressed to the hard earth underneath, focused on sensing and changing her element.

A cloud passes over the moon.  Alyss shivers.  Her cloak doesn't do this weather justice.

“Um,” murmurs Audrey.  Her connection wavers.  Something else is stealing her concentration.  “There's something- underneath-?”

“Underneath?” repeats Alyss in a whisper.  She relays the words to Raina and Tori.  “Underneath where?”

Audrey doesn't answer immediately.  Then she sits back on her heels, tugs her gloves off, and presses her bare hands to the earth instead, shivering.

Wards. Osprey-?

On it, Raina responds after a moment of searching Audrey's mind.  Alyss half-closes one eye to watch as Raina finds a certain ward marking and carefully, ever so carefully, alters it by degrees until Audrey can get through.

It's a bit of a risky move.  Alyss frowns.  If a Winter Elemental notices that alteration, they'll be found out immediately.  But information is a good thing, so it's probably worth it.

One heartbeat of silence.  Two. Three.  Tori turns for another circle over the lodge, keeping a close watch on Raina as Alyss watches Audrey.

Four. Five.  Six.  Something rustles; Alyss whirls around, her hands going to her knives, before the distinctive thud of Tori's hand-mounted crossbow slams over her head.  A rabbit leaves a bloody skid trail across the powdery snow.

“Ew,” Alyss grumbles.  Its dead eyes stare at her.

Sorry.

Focus, you idiots, hisses Raina. Audrey is too wrapped up in her magic to respond.

An owl hoots somewhere.

Audrey gasps and jerks up, shaking snow from her hands, trembling.  Alyss drops to one knee beside her.

“What is it?”

Audrey's eyes fade from green to brown, focus on Alyss, and she struggles to form words.  Images and sensations flow into Alyss through the team connection.

A familiar power.  Voices she hasn't heard in months.  A scream she has never wanted to hear.

“Metallic,” Audrey breathes.  “They're-”

Alive, says Tori.

“Here,” says Alyss.

Shit, says Raina.  She dives to the side, rolling through the powder just as a silver blade pierces the ground where she was.  Her spear forms in her hand.

The Winter Elemental is a flash of pale fury in the night.  Frost entraps Raina's hand as she tries to get up; she slams it with the butt of her spear, spins the spear, blocks his blade with her shaft as she struggles to her feet.

Here!

It's Tori.  Raina ducks and tilts her spear.  The Winter Elemental overreaches, draws back, spins once more to face Raina, just before Tori drops from the sky and kicks him to the ground.

A gust of wind blows her to a softer landing than the Winter had. Raina lunges forward, burying the point of her spear in the Winter's throat.

Alyss watches through Raina's eyes as he goes into his dying convulsions.

Audrey stands up, pulling her gloves back on.  There goes secrecy, she grumbles.

Fuck secrecy, says Alyss, Metallic is here.  She looks around the dark resort, formulating a quick plan.  Are those footsteps? They'd better not be.  She reaches for her knives just in case, scanning the night as she directs her teammates.

There isn't time to argue.  They all know that.  Raina begins breaking wards, shattering the Winter Elementals' protections with carefully careless swipes of power and spear.  Tori kicks into the sky, summoning a wind that bites at Alyss' face and threatens to sweep her hood off, sealing the door of the lodge shut.  Audrey drops to her knees and clears a section in the snow, then begins murmuring under her breath.  And Alyss puts her head down against the wind and sprints.

The lodge didn't seem so far away when Alyss was looking at it through Tori's birds-eye view.  Now twenty meters seems like twenty kilometers.  The wind kicks up snow, driving, howling, as Alyss forges through the cold as quickly as she can.  Tori can't really shield Alyss without draining more of her power than she needs to use here.

Finally Alyss can see the lodge.  It's hardwood, she thinks, squinting – definitely not concrete or cinderblock, which is absolutely fine with her.

Putting the wind to her back, she circles around until she's in the lee of the lodge.  Fire scorches her skin.  The feeling of Winter Elementals is close – like the freezing wind on her face, cutting open her chest, striking deep into her heart.

She reaches out and calls fire to her fingers.

Warmth courses through her veins, shutting out the pain in Alyss' chest. She stares hard at the lodge and imagines it in flames.

She huffs a sharp exhale.

Pure crimson power leaps from her fingers to the wood.

A Winter Elemental shrieks from inside.  Alyss steps back and raises her hands, concentrating on the tiny flame, feeding it power so it will catch and burn brighter.  Edged with black, it begins to spread.

The wind redoubles, blocking off exits, forcing Alyss to drain more of her power.  A stitch pierces her side.  The reserves of her strength are depleting quickly – but it doesn't matter, not now, because the flames found pine sap and in a satisfying whoosh they catch light and burn alone.

Alyss steps back.

Impulse through the connection.  Here.  Now. Audrey ducks into the tunnel she's made, scrambling down into the earth.  Tori folds her wings and dives for it.  Raina yanks herself through the connection to Alyss' side, her cowl blown back from her face, her cheeks chapped.

“C'mon,” she yells.

They sprint together.  The Winter Elementals scream from inside the burning lodge.  Alyss tries her best not to hear.

The tunnel, where is the tunnel.  Here.  Raina nearly trips into it. Alyss lunges, seizes her upper arm, helps her teammate descend before jumping in herself.

Audrey steadies them both.  Tori's wings are gone; dissolved back into air, too large for this cramped little crawlspace.  With a gesture of Audrey's hand, the tunnel seals.

“That won't last long,” she gasps aloud.

Alyss flicks fire to her fingers.  Raina uses the light to straighten her cloak and pull up her hood again.  Tori looks paler than usual.

“Let's go,” Alyss whispers.

Audrey leads the way.  Tori reloads her crossbow with another bolt, relying on Raina's touch to guide her.  And Alyss brings up the rear.  This isn't one of Audrey's better tunnels – it's rough, unfinished, there is dirt falling everywhere and certain places where they have to squeeze through narrow passageways in rock.  But it's better than trying to fight their way through an entire base of Winter Elementals.

Minutes pass in silence.

Alyss feels it when the fire dies aboveground.  It's like an absence of warmth in her core, a deep exhaustion reaching to her bones.  She stumbles.  Raina reaches back to steady her.

Audrey pauses.

“Just a little further,” she whispers.

“Good,” hisses Tori, claustrophobic and antsy.  Alyss grits her teeth and draws on Audrey's strength to ease the exhaustion.

“Go.” She pushes Audrey lightly.

A few more steps, and the tunnel widens into a stone-cut hallway. Alyss stumbles out after her teammates.  Tori turns one way; Raina steps out and turns the other; aiming crossbow bolt and spear point at opposite ends of the hall, watching, waiting.  

Audrey unsheathes a dagger.  Alyss fits the hilts of her knives into her hands.

Footsteps pound down stairs, echoing in the stone corridor.  Tori closes one eye.

“Osprey. Your side,” she says after a moment.

Raina's grip tightens on her spear.  Shouts of panic, of rage, echo from Alyss' right.  She and Audrey turn together to flank Raina.

The first Winter Elemental appears – a woman with fluffy white hair and a wicked-looking crystal battleaxe.

Audrey draws one foot back and throws her dagger.

The Winter deflects it easily.  It spins away and sinks into the stone wall.  The ground trembles.   Alyss can feel it as Audrey draws power from them all, from the team connection.

She gasps with effort.  Cracks web out from her dagger.  The Winter is almost upon them, and Raina steps out once more, leveling her spear. More Winter Elementals are rounding the corner.

“Owl!” Tori hisses.

Audrey convulses and drops to one knee, slamming the heel of her palm into the ground.  The stone ceiling caves in with a shattering, dusty sound, rock crashing and Winter Elementals screaming and bones breaking with awful crunch sounds.

The charging Winter falters.  Alyss hesitates only a moment before she leaps forward with her knives drawn.

The Winter crumples in her own blood.

Tori lowers her crossbow hand and kneels by Audrey.  The Earth is panting and pale.  Sweat beads on her forehead.

“Come on,” she gasps.  “Gotta-”

“Hold up,” Tori murmurs, pressing her hand to Audrey's forehead.  Alyss waits.  The connection wavers, then stabilizes as Tori gives up some of her power to keep Audrey going.

“New ability?” Raina asks as Tori helps Audrey up.

“Wanna sleep for a week,” Audrey replies, grimacing.  “C'mon.  Metallic should be close.”

They walk.  Part of Alyss wants to run, but she forces herself to keep to a steady, though brisk pace.  She can't leave Audrey behind.  Her teammates are too important to take chances.

Feline Team didn't tell them who they'd be rescuing.  Alyss isn't sure where the thought starts, but within moments, everyone is focused on it. Why?  Does Feline not trust them to keep their cool?

“Maybe they're trying to lead Astral-style,” Tori says aloud.  Her thoughts clarify the statement, showing incidents in which the Holders gave different information to different teams.

“Astral is in a freakin' coma,” Audrey mumbles.  “If Feline goes and lands themselves in one, I'm gonna kill Ocelot – you guys take your mentors.”

Alyss laughs.

Raina covers a jaw-cracking yawn with her hand.

An earsplitting scream drives all thoughts of yawning from Alyss' mind.

Urgency gives them all new life, panic blazing through the connection and Alyss' veins.  She breaks into a dead sprint.  Her teammates' steps pound in unison with hers.

There is a door at the end of the hallway.  Flimsy wood.  Five meters. Four.  Three.  Tori flings out her hand; a blast of wind slams it open, an armored Winter Elemental turns, Tori's crossbow discharges with a wicked thrum-hiss. The Winter staggers backward.

Tori breaks stride to reload.  Alyss pulls ahead, leaping over the dead Winter's body, drawing her knives as she enters the unknown room.

The door leads into a small raised area.  The floor drops off to tile about half a meter ahead..  The room's scent hits Alyss a moment after she registers this; dark, despair, damp, blood.

Raina is beside her, spear gleaming.  Audrey fans her position out so Tori can enter.

A girl hangs in manacles on the wall.  Her golden hair is matted with blood, her clothes tattered.  Webs of horrible gleaming scars glint dully on her body, on her face.

Two Winter Elementals stand before her.  One is young; holding a (familiar?) spear too big for her; the other snarls as she sees Raptor Team, arrows of ice forming in the air around him.

“Eliana!” he snaps.  “Do it!”

The arrows fly.  Alyss throws up her hand.  A wall of fire flares from nothing, a stitch curving beneath Alyss' ribs.  The icy arrows melt and fail.  Black spots dance in Alyss' vision.  She staggers, feeling her power desert her and curl back into the center of her chest, stretched far too thin for the moment.

Raina has to reach out to steady her.

A man screams, gurgling, choking.  Alyss catches a flash of horror and color from Audrey's sight.  The other Winter's spear is buried in the first one's body, his blood gushing over her hands and splattering over her face and chest.

She releases the spear and stumbles back.  The male Winter collapses to the ground.  His blood drips from her fingers.

Alyss straightens up as Tori switches her aim, her bolt pointing for the bloody Winter's chest.  The air shimmers and coalesces.

“Stop it,” Bellamy's disembodied voice chokes out.  “Just stop.”

She takes form in the air, then drops to the ground, stumbling, weak, long hair tangled and in her face.  Shaking hands push it back as she positions herself in front of the murderer.

The girl in the chains takes a rattling breath.  “Eliana...”

“I'm sorry,” the silver-haired one whispers.  She wavers forward, staring at her bloodsoaked hands, then trips and falls to her knees in front of the chained Clare.  “I failed you.”

Eliana? Surely Alyss can't have heard that right.  Eliana is loud, sarcastic, caustic, dark-haired and cheerful.  This Winter girl is too thin and too pale to be Eliana.

But that is Eliana's spear, Audrey points out, numb with shock.  It is. In the dead Winter.  Eliana's silver spear.  The silver spear of Silver of Metallic Team.

Bellamy grits her teeth, tears collecting at her lashes as she stares Tori down.  Raina silently draws Alyss' attention to a cell in the back before she picks her way down the stairs, across the bloody floor, and over to an imprisoned Aly, breaking the wards with a word and the lock with the heel of her hand.

She has to support Aly across the dungeon floor.

Alyss descends as well, reaching for Clare's chains.  They come apart with a touch of fire.  Clare falls limply down into Alyss' arms, too light for her muscle mass and height, eyes fluttering shut.  Her wrists are rubbed raw.  The frost burns across half of her entire body are worse than Alyss thought.

A sob tears itself from Bellamy's throat.  She collapses onto the hard, bloody floor, hiding her face as tears rack her frame.

Tori lowers her crossbow in slow horror.

“Father's wrath,” Alyss whispers, voicing the sentiment of her entire team. “What happened here?”

[cursivescrawl]

Misadventure

Rating: PG Category: Elementals Summary:  It’s a wonder Feline Team is still alive, really, after a certain incident when they were a young team.

Feline once stumbled upon the edge of Kaltis.

They'd been meant to go to Sengolia's realm at the center of the web of worlds, to check that Sengolia's bonds hadn't loosened since last she'd been checked on.  Usually a team more experienced than theirs would do this.  Feline was young, then, and had only been together for half a year or so.  Flash still looked at older warriors in envy, wondering when his team would achieve the perfect synchronicity they all seemed to have.

But this had been their first time traveling alone in Kaltis.  Their first actual, real mission of import.  The only way to get to Sengolia was through the ley lines of her web.  Theoretically, it wasn't much different than traveling through the ley lines in a single world.  Practically, as Zey would always explain it later to wide-eyed apprentices, it was like shooting an arrow – where a small angle change might not matter over a distance of ten meters, it would tremendously matter over a distance of a hundred.

Distraction could be fatal, in other words.

Flash barely remembered the argument between himself and Zephyr, later, when he tried to recall details. It was useless.  Something about the plural of hippopotamus.  Lake and Jag got drawn in by the sheer ridiculousness of the topic.  There was a fierce sense of elation, Flash remembers, arguing with his team, being on a solo mission, flying alone (the sensation of strong wings pumping even though he didn't have wings, the swirling Aethir around him) through the ley lines and towards his team.

They must have gotten turned around. When they emerged from the web, the sky overhead wasn't garish yellow, ribbons of chaotic light fighting for dominance.  The ground wasn't pulsing black sand with random many-colored silk cocoons rising at odd intervals, each containing a near-born monster.

The argument – silly as it had been – died in the still air.  Feline Team stood staring.

Before them stretched a white plain covered with perfect uniform ice.  The sky overhead gleamed the dully colorless sepia of a long-faded photograph, unbroken by stars or clouds.  Though there was no light source, there were no shadows either.  It seemed lit by the kind of fluorescent light which leaves no shadows and a roaring headache.

Perfect snowflakes glimmered in midair.  Unfalling.  Unfailing.  Suspended, as if in clear plastic, the way a trinket might be suspended in a soap.

“Father's wrath,” breathed Flash.

Jag reached for Lake's arm.  “We shouldn't be here.”

“We shouldn't,” Jag agreed.

None of them moved.  It felt impossible.  This land was perfect, untouched, eerie.  Static in all the ways Sengolia was dynamic.

Zephyr seized that thought.  The opposite of Sengolia.  Could this be the farthest point in Kaltis from her ever-shifting cocoon?

He sucked in a breath, disturbing a single snowflake from its everlasting position.

“Static,” he said aloud.

The name fell like glass and shattered the silence.

A howling dread filled Flash, filled his teammates.  He couldn't move.  The landscape didn't change,but suddenly someone-

a trio of someones-

were watching them, malevolent, wanting these Elemental intruders out of/absorbed into their domain. Flash couldn't see them.  But they were there.  Their eyes pierced him.  If he could only turn around, he could see their faces, see the clawed hands reaching for him.

Lake's knees buckled.  He caught himself on Flash with a convulsive movement; Flash automatically raised his arm to loop it around Lake's shoulders.  But his arm didn't move.  And Jag was already there (or was he?  It was hard to tell in this blizzard, or was there a blizzard? There wasn't a blizzard.  Everything was just as perfectly still as it always had been would be was).

Jag's urgency slashed them, urgency turning to panic turning to adrenaline in Flash's veins, determination and wakefulness shattering Flash's heart back to life.

(And it had stopped without him realizing, and when it began to pound, it was abnormally loud in the silent howl.)

“WE NEED TO GO!”

The words might have been shouted, spoken, whispered, thought.  Flash's throat was hoarse.  The still air felt like daggers in his lungs, like plastic over his nose and mouth, stale, deadly, suffocating.

He desperately clawed for the ley lines. But they weren't there.  The comforting, warm, purifying Aethir was out of his reach, the magic of his heritage dead at his fingertips.  Dread filled Flash's ears and lungs and settled leaden in the pit of his stomach.

“I'll pull you!”  Zephyr vanished.  Lake almost crumpled again; Flash yanked him upright, tugged him close, felt his teammate's ragged breathing as Lake buried his head in the shoulder of Flash's black cloak.

Jag was on one knee.

“We do not kneel,” Flash forced out through numb lips.  The words carried some emotion he couldn't identify.  Jag gritted his teeth.

(And Flash didn't feel the frustration, he realized, didn't know what Jag wanted or was trying to say.  The connection, the contract, the thing that made them Feline Team, was-)

Zephyr was there.  Zephyr's power and magic was binding and revitalizing, carrying with it the sense of Sengolia and chaos.  Lake took another shuddering deep breath.

“Go,” hissed Flash.  Lake vanished from his arms.  Flash felt suddenly cold without his teammate pressed against him.  Lake slipped from Flash's mind like water from a child's cupped hand, and then he was gone.

Flash stumbled over to Jag.  Every movement seemed to be fought through syrup, through half-solid wax. He couldn't feel Zephyr or Lake.  Couldn't feel his fingers. Couldn't feel his heartbeat anymore, it was a cold dead sensation in his chest, and he shuddered.

Then he was tumbling backwards.

He landed squarely on his butt in warm black sand, and it was coarse under his fingers, and his heart pounded in his ears and he drew a shuddering, gasping breath.  And another.  And another.  It hurt, his ribs hurt, but the air was sweet despite the taste of sulfur and-

“Help me pull,” snapped Zephyr, his wings straining with effort.  Flash reached for Jag.

He seemed so close.  But then Flash's outstretched mind hit a wall, like a bird who realizes a sliding glass door isn't open.

Jag's mind moved sluggishly.  Where normally thoughts fired quickly and in all directions, now he only had one thought, one sensation.  Flash threw himself at the glass door, panic closing his throat-

and it shattered and Jag was there and he was lying across Flash's lap and drawing in heaving breaths and choking on nothing and clawing at the sand until he realized it was sand.  Their minds pressed in on each other's. Lake crumpled beside Flash and Jag, resting his head unashamedly on the small of Jag's back; Zephyr, wings still extended, collapsed with one great bronze wing draping over his teammates.

They breathed.

Sengolia's screeches and cries sounded around them.  Somewhere in the distance a monster ripped from its cocoon with a rending of silk and a newborn scream.  Above, the sky danced with color and chaos.  The earth itself seemed to pulse with irregular spasms.

Slowly, Flash's heart calmed.  He felt his teammates – felt the black sand beneath Jag's fingernails, the way Zephyr couldn't quite bring himself to dismiss his wings back into air.  Lake's exhaustion and his depleted reserves of magic. Zephyr gave energy to Lake, and Flash realized the leaden exhaustion in his own limbs and drew from Jag until they were all equalized again.

The sensation, thought Zephyr drowsily, now that they were all calm enough to think.  He replaced his guarding wing with one strong arm draped over his teammates as he flopped closer.  Flash heard his heart steadily drumming in his chest.  In sync.  What was that sensation, that thing Jag had been focused on while they tried to rescue him.

Jag wearily opened his eyes and cleared his throat.

“Ocelot.”

His team name.  The name of his totem.  Flash saw Jag drawing a small stone-carved ocelot from his cloak, setting it down on the ice, focusing on it to stave off the numbness.

“Clever.”

He wasn't sure if it was him or Lake that spoke.  It didn't matter.  Here, in the outskirts of Sengolia's realm, everyone could speak and it wouldn't matter.

“I know.”

Zephyr huffed a laugh.  Jag's amusement jolted them all back to wakefulness, even Jag, who seemed a bit startled by his own emotion – was it okay to be amused after that?

“We should go,” said Flash.

“Yeah,” said Lake, and he was the first one to stagger to his feet.  Flash was the last simply because he was on the bottom of the Feline pile.  “You all- ready?”

They weren't.  But they were prepared, and, weapons drawn, they entered Sengolia's realm.

It took eight hours to reach her. She was wrapped in colorful silk strands with each filament a different shade and trapped in solid chains of some peculiar metal which might have been steel once but which now gleamed with the solid enchantments of the Elementals (bright red, deep blue, pale yellow, straight green).  The cocoon was steady.  If they'd had to fight their way back to the edge of her realm, Flash might have just given up right there; as it was, the center of Sengolia's realm was also where the ley lines were the strongest.  Magic couldn't even be used near her for the chance it might go wild.  So after checking on Sengolia, Flash closed his eyes and let the Aethir sweep him away from her giant dangerous shrieking form, let it get him very close to their world before taking over again and making an effort to get back to the Fire base.

He did not give the report that night.  Lake did, but he fell asleep in the middle and it ended up being Flash to give the report anyways the next morning, reassuring the senior warriors that Sengolia was still bound.

They did not mention the edge of Kaltis.  If it was known they'd traveled there, and come back alive- well.  Lake found no records that anyone else had accomplished that. This near-deadly accident was not something Feline, as a whole, wanted to be known for.  So they kept quiet even when Jen of Astral Team joked with Flash about how he hadn't looked this tired since that one all-nighter where all the Fire apprentices tried (and failed) to get drunk.

They did not mention the dreams, after that, of standing in that horrible landscape (alone).  Each of them had a different version.  Zephyr felt a malevolent gaze, but no matter which way he turned, he only caught the ghost of blue inhuman eyes.  Lake turned to ice, his every blood cell slowly freezing and becoming one with the stillness, until he shattered into a million tiny snowflakes and hung motionless in the air for the rest of eternity.  Jag was covered in snow and ice and forgotten, left to scream silently for some unknown period of time.  And Flash always heard the same soundless chant, the same tuneless song, with eight words he could make out and hundreds more he could not.

I  C O M E  A L I V E  A T  T H E  E N D  O F  T I M E

It was a blessing, really, that it was acceptable for them (as a Nighttime team) to sleep during the day and be awake at night.  They had trained in the night.  It was familiar to them.  There was no reminiscing when they were busy in the dark hours, and in the daylight hours, it was well-lit enough that the nightmares and the eerie landscape always seemed so far away – until they went to sleep.

It took time, but the dreams faded into memory.  That fear was replaced by others.  The entire experience became one of many near-death calls, something that they all became quite familiar with as they rose to be the Hunters and then the Holder's Seconds, answering only to Astral Team (and then not even to them, because how can you answer to someone who remains in a coma?)  The day came when Flash didn't think about it; the year came when none of them thought about it; and life went on.

But the little black ocelot carving, the one Jag had focused on to keep his sanity, remained in a snarling pounce at the edge of Kaltis.

[cursivescrawl]

Transition

Rating: G Category: Elementals Summary: Bellamy was always a boy.  It just took him eleven years to catch on.

Bellamy pulled on a plaid button-up sweater over the tee-shirt, stepped in front of his mirror, and looked at himself.

He frowned.  He pulled back his long wheat-colored hair, yanking it away from his face, and turned, examining his body.  No.  This didn't work, the cut and color of the shirt was still too feminine.

He let his hair fall back down around his face and sighed, staring at himself again.  Then he turned back to his dresser and resumed rummaging.

Jeans, too slim and tight.  Several tee-shirts with sparkles or flowers or lace.  Black leggings. More jeans.  A training bra.

A dress.

He pulled out the dress, held it up to the light.  It wasn't fancy or anything.  Just simple gray-washed-white, probably a hand-me-down from one of the other Winds.

He looked across at the mirror again.  His face was rounder than he would have liked, his arms muscled enough from drawing his bow but those telltale soft parts still showing up, slimming his shoulders, softening his waist.

He folded the dress neatly and put it on his bed.  Then he began pulling out more clothing.

The leggings – too slim, too tight, too feminine.

Every tee-shirt that wasn't just a plain solid color, and some that were pink or purple.

Two skirts.  The training bra.  Jeans meant to fit to his legs, the shirt he was wearing, jeggings.  His conviction grew along with the pile on his bed as he discarded clothes, not bothering to fold them anymore, just pulling them out and tossing them on the bed and looking in the mirror and grimacing at his girl's face.

The only clothes remaining in his dresser were a few shirts he'd gotten at free events (the kind that nobody bothers to order two separate cuts for), a pair of khaki cargo pants someone had given him as a joke, and socks.  He pulled the cargo pants on and selected a shirt that proclaimed, U of A YOUNG GYMNAST 2010.

He looked at himself and pulled his hair back once more.  Then he swapped out the shirt for another one, irregular patterns of lime-green tie-dye squiggled across the white fabric.

It clashed with his hair, but he didn't care.

He turned around and stared at the clothes on his bed.

Part of him wanted to throw them out the window, let them rain down into the backyard, but he knew he'd just have to pick them up later when the other Winds yelled at him.  Part of him wanted to ask Clare for a flame and watch the cloth burn.

But that would be a waste, he realized guiltily after a moment of fantasy.  Possibly it was Eliana's thoughts intruding on his at that moment, making him see reason.

She was just outside his door.

“Come in,” Bellamy called, and, ignoring the pile of clothes for now, turned to examine himself in the mirror again.

Eliana entered silently.  She did most things silently, these days. Tucking a silver strand of hair behind her ear, she walked over to Bellamy and extended a pale hand.

You ready​? she asked silently.

Bellamy stared at himself.  Then he took a deep breath, exhaled it, nodded, and turned to his teammate.

“How do I look?”

She stepped back with annoyance flashing through the contract and looked him up and down.  Like yourself.

“Like a guy or a girl?”

Yourself. Another, stronger undercurrent of annoyance came with the word. That's not the best question to ask a teammate.  You're Bellamy.

“Helpful,” Bellamy grumbled.  At Eliana's silent apology, he squeezed her shoulder, then walked out into the dorm hallway.

“Hey, Andrea!  How do I look?”

Andrea turned and gave him a hard look.  Then she grinned.

“You're getting your hair cut today, aren't you?  'Grats, Bell. You look the part.”

Eliana made it very clear that she didn't like anyone calling him 'Bell'.  Bellamy gave her condescension and amusement

“Thanks.”  He winked at Andrea.

“Don't give me that!”  She laughed, flicked air just strongly enough to make him stumble back, and disappeared into her room. Bellamy's heart lifted.  He turned to Eliana, unsuccessful at stopping his grin.

“Right, you said you know the place?”

She nodded and offered a picture through the connection.  It was an alley, detailed enough in its location, beside a major intersection and behind a tall renter's building.

“Right,” repeated Bellamy, and drew an arrow from his quiver to be a focal point.  The air in the hallway shifted, twisted, lifted his hair and played with his clothes.  He raised his hand and waved to Eliana.

“Follow me through the connection?

She nodded.  Then the wind ley line swept him away.

The salon was inside a “beauty mall,” a collection of one-room salons in which different specialists rented out different shops.  Eliana led him to the top of the stairs, and then to the third door along the hallway.

It was open.  Bellamy saw a cutting chair, a shampoo station, prints of Paris on the walls.  A TV mounted across from the door bounced the Pandora logo around its screen, and soft Taylor Swift played from a speaker on a counter otherwise filled with hair dye boxes and leave-in conditioner bottles.  The stylist was bent over her phone with her back to the two Elementals.

Eliana nudged Bellamy.  He cleared his throat.  The stylist looked up, then put her phone down and jumped to her feet.

“You're late.”  She addressed the comment to Eliana, who took her notepad from her jacket pocket and flipped to a clean page.

SORRY, she printed in block letters, and then showed the pad to the stylist before continuing.  TRAFFIC.

You speak, she told Bellamy, folding the pad back up and putting it away.  Bellamy cleared his throat again and tried to sound masculine.

“Um. I'm Bellamy,” he said.  “Silver told me she booked an appointment...?”

“Yes.” The stylist beckoned them in and glanced again at Eliana.  “We're not doing you today, Silver?”

Eliana shook her head and pointed to Bellamy.  Then she deliberately crossed over to the waiting chairs, sat herself down, picked up one of the trashy magazines scattered out for browsing pleasure, and hid her face inside one.

“Um,” said Bellamy.

Eliana prodded him through the connection.  Clare and Aly set their swords aside, starting cool-down stretches at Aly's insistence, watching Bellamy.

“So- uh.  I want to cut my hair off.”

The stylist reached for his hair.  Bellamy twisted his head to give her easier access.  In the mirror, he watched her run the strands through his hair, then close her middle and index fingers across it at chin-length.

“To here?”

“No.” Bellamy hesitantly reached for her hand and moved it up.  “I was thinking – here.  Like a boy's.”

The stylist met his eyes, askance, in the mirror.  Then she turned to Eliana.

“Silver, you didn't tell me she was going to-”

“He,” said Bellamy.  It felt like his throat was closing up around the word.  Without looking, he knew Eliana had lowered the magazine and was giving the stylist a hard stare.

An awkward few seconds ensued.

“Oh,” said the stylist finally.  Her cheekbones were dusted with red now, and she didn't look Bellamy in the eye as she examined his hair.  “I see.  I can do that.  Just the cut, no color?”

“Yes, please,” said Bellamy, and let himself be led over to the hair-washing station.

The stylist clearly knew what she was doing.  Eliana had reassured him of as much.  Her own hair was incredibly fragile, after what the Winters had done to it – done to her – and this woman was the only one she'd found who'd managed to cut her hair without making it just break off.  Bellamy tried to relax as she rinsed the fragrant shampoo from his hair and helped him rise, clipped one of those salon robes around his shoulders, and settled him in the cutting chair.

“Just to be certain,” she said, and reached for a style book, flipping to a section of men's haircuts.  “Which do you like best?”

Bellamy glanced through them, trying to figure out what would make his face look most masculine.  He finally pointed out a swept-back style, parted on the side.

“That?”

The stylist looked at it, nodded, and took the style book from Bellamy, propping it up on a convenient stand.  Then she reached for a pair of scissors.

Bellamy looked at himself in the mirror until the stylist brought the blades to his hair.  Then he closed his eyes, hearing the first soft snip at his chin.

Wimp, said Clare.  Aly kicked her, a swift pain in Bellamy's shin.

Eliana reached for them, a silent, wordless offer to share her vision.

Bellamy felt Clare and Aly take her up on that.  He distanced himself from the connection.  He didn't want to see his hair falling to the floor in strands and snips, didn't want to make himself nervous by watching.  He focused on his breathing.

Wind in, wind out, air filling his lungs and his veins.  Inhale.  Exhale.

The soft whirr of a buzz-clipper, the unfamiliar sensation of it gliding across the nape of his neck.

Inhale. Exhale.

Minutes passed.  A hair dryer started, ruffling light weight on his scalp. The airflow was soothing.  Bellamy could follow the wind's path into the dryer, through the heating coils, and out through the fan, evaporating water from his hair.

“Alright,” said the stylist finally.  The dryer shut off.  Bellamy squeezed his eyes shut tighter.

“Does it look good?” he asked Eliana aloud.

“I think it does,” said the stylist.

It looks perfect, said Clare, still watching from Eliana's perspective.  Eliana and Aly's approval washed over him.

More confident, Bellamy opened his eyes.

He couldn't look away once he did.  He stared, turned his head, stood, ran his fingers through newly-short strands.  The stylist unclipped the cape, letting his garish lime-green tee-shirt show again.

The boy meeting Bellamy's eyes in the mirror the mirror actually looked like a boy.  He looked like what Bellamy imagined he should look like.  Short hair highlighted his cheekbones, his jaw.  Bellamy turned his face and felt at the back of his neck.  Soft, almost curly hair sprang under his fingertips.

He laughed, then clapped his hand over his mouth as the emotion threatened to spring tears of relief to his eyes.  Men don't cry. Men don't cry, men don't cry, if you want to be a man-

“Is it that bad?” asked the stylist.  Bellamy shook his head, not trusting himself to speak, staring at this wonderful stranger in the mirror.

Idiot, laughed Clare, happy for his happiness.

Eliana's pencil scratched.  Bellamy saw, in the mirror, the stylist turn around, knew from Eliana's thoughts that she was clarifying his emotion.  He didn't care.  He kept touching his face, his hair, the new part in it.

He was him, as ridiculous as Aly thought that sounded.

“It's perfect,” he managed, and tore his eyes from his reflection long enough to thank the stylist.  Eliana examined him silently.

She nodded approval.

You look like you, she repeated.

Aly laughed.  Clare's amused, excited thoughts roughly translated to get over here right now so I can see you!

Bellamy's power automatically tried to obey the directive from his leader, trying to pull him into the connection and to her side.  He stopped himself.

“Thank you,” he said.  “Really, thank you.  How much-?”

The stylist named her price, and Eliana paid cash from their team's monthly stipend.  Then they were out the door, and the wind was ruffling Bellamy's hair, and he tipped his head back and laughed, giddy, and his teammates all grinned at the thrill he felt.

I'll go with you to pick out new clothes next week, promised Aly, and Bellamy saw that while he'd been waiting in the stylist's chair, she'd taken the feminine clothes he'd discarded and put them in the laundry for whatever Elemental might need a spare outfit.

Right, Bellamy responded cheerfully, and he slowed to savor catching his reflection in the side mirror of a parked car.  Eliana tugged him along with impatience underscoring the connection.

Reminder, said Clare, once we're all done ooh-ing and aah-ing over Bellamy, we've got to discuss our newest briefing.

Aly started to respond.  For the moment, Bellamy brushed her aside, and called up a little breeze to play among the leaves on the trees. He listened to the quiet susurrus underneath the rumble of cars turning onto one street or another, felt the breeze playing in his hair.

His hair, his clothes, his breeze.

He realized his teammates had fallen silent in the connection. Somewhat guiltily, he tuned back in.  Yeah?

It had been a while since any of them had felt him this happy.  They weren't quick enough at erasing the thought from their minds before Bellamy saw it.

Guys!

It's true, said Clare, without a hint of defensiveness or shame.  There was plenty of embarrassment coming from Aly to make up for it.  Now, c'mon.

Eliana flowed through the connection to obey, vanishing from Bellamy's side and pressing against his mind for a second before he felt her re-appear next to Aly.  Bellamy closed his eyes and followed.

The soft wind dissipated as the Wind boy vanished from the street.

[cursivescrawl]

Pillow Fort

Rating: G Category: Mafia Summary:  Does Chrome work very hard to project an image of himself as emotionless and uncaring?  Sure.  Does he also cheerfully invalidate that image at times?  Of course.

As Chrome stepped into his apartment, the vampire coven leader still blathering in his ear, he was greeted by an unusual sound.

Silence.

With a child of ten in the house, silence was concerning.  Chrome frowned as he toed out of his shoes and stepped further into the hallway, sparing a habitual moment to glance into the wall mirror and grimace at his hair.

“-And,” said the vampire with the same pomp he'd been talking with for this whole conversation, “I would really like your assurance-”

“What, that I won't tell your enemies, or allies, that you're moving the coven?”  Chrome laughed the laugh he'd practiced into a voice recorder until it sounded right over the phone.  “Aaah, if I gave out the information I receive from my clients, Alexander, I'd have no business left!”

There was a small giggle, a thump, and a louder giggle from the living room.  Chrome crept down the hall towards it.  What could Dark possibly be doing?

“Alexander,” he said, cutting off the vampire as he started some flowery goodbye speech, as he did every call.  “I'm afraid I must cut this short.  Call me back if you need anything further.”

Without saying goodbye, he hung up and slipped the phone into his jacket pocket.  The weightless rune etched on the inside of that pocket did its work, making it seem like that phone (and the two others also there) didn't even exist.

Then he pushed open the living room door.

He was greeted with the sight of a massive pillow fort.  It sprawled from the couch set in front of the television to his own desk in front of the window, multicolored blankets draped and thrown and artfully twisted into a feat of engineering supported by what looked like couch cushions, dining room chairs, and duct tape.  Chrome blinked a few times at the spectacle.

Good lord, how long had it taken Ari and Dark to set this up? Clearly Naomi hadn't helped them.  Naomi had no taste for anything fun.

“I spy an intruder!” Dark shrilled.  She popped up from between two blankets, her hair in her face and eyes alight.  She dramatically pointed at Chrome.  “Halt!  In the name of Her Majesty Dark the Cunning, kneel and identify yourself!”

Chrome had so many better things to do than to play with a kid.  The Rozzos were riding his back again, Alexander needed to be tended to, there was a turf war between werewolves and werecats that Chrome wanted to keep tabs on and manipulate to his side.  But the pillow fort was between him and his desk.

And, really, it wasn't possible to say no to Dark's face.  There was no harm in playing for a little while.

He put his hands up and got to his knees.  “I am,” he said, and paused, thinking fast, “Chrome the Dishonorable Knight of Caleiorn. And... I am here to steal your crown!”  He sprang up, lunging for the fort.  Dark shrieked and giggled.

“Majestic Catlord, after him!” she yelled, gesturing wildly at Chrome.

Majestic Catlord?  There was only one person in the apartment that even vaguely fit that description. Ari sat up from where (Chrome assumed) he'd been napping, blinking lazily, twitching his ears.  He yawned with a small nya sound.

“Hi, Chrome,” he said once he'd realized who was staring at him. Chrome waved.

“Hello!” he said cheerily.  “I think you're supposed to be chasing me.”

“Drag him in chains before his Empress!” Dark screeched.  Ari yawned again, then got to his feet.

“Sorry,” he said to Chrome before diving for him over the blanket fort.  Chrome dodged away.

“You should catch me before you apologize!”  And then, for Dark's benefit, he added, “Honorable scum!  I shall use cheap tricks and parlor magic, and abscond with your crown jewels!”

Ari blinked, then grabbed for him.  Chrome spun away.  He noticed Dark blinking in confusion.

“Abscond?” he asked.

Dark nodded.

“It means to steal, or get away with.”

Dark nodded again, this time in comprehension, and threw herself back into her play.  “Catlord!  Don't let him abscond with my crown!”

Chrome led Ari on a chase through the living room.  He was pretty sure the neko wasn't trying to grab him, just as he wasn't trying to actually lose Ari or get out of the living room – if he had been, he could have just activated his invisibility rune or walked out the door.  But Dark was giggling the entire time.  There were worse things than playing the villain to make a child happy.

After a few minutes of this, Chrome pretended to trip and let Ari catch him.  Ari looked concerned.  Chrome winked.

“No!” he wailed dramatically, pretending to tug against Ari's very lax grip.  “I have been vanquished!  If you set me free, Majestic Catlord, I shall-”

“Nope,” said Ari, and grinned a sharp grin, and tugged Chrome over to the blanket fort.  Dark popped down and crawled through the fort to emerge in front of Chrome.  She'd made a scepter, Chrome noticed, out of an empty paper towel roll.  She rapped Chrome on the head with this.

“Majestic Catlord!  You are now the Most Honorable and Majestic Catlord!”

“Nya?” said Ari.  Dark continued undeterred.

“And you, scoundrel! Dishonorable Knight of- uh...”

“Caleiorn,” Chrome supplied helpfully.  It was the name of the one of the witch covens' mythical promised land.  He'd been dealing with quite a few witch covens lately.

“Yes!  Dishonorable Knight of Caleiorn!  You shall now be... Executed!”

Chrome gasped in exaggerated horror, threw his hand up to shield his forehead, and pretended to faint.  “No!  Not execution!  I shall betray my country for my life!”

“If you betray your country, you'll betray mine as well!”

Oooh.  Shrewd.  Chrome felt a pang of pride, he'd taught this girl well.

He drew breath for another argument for his 'life,' but the front door opened before he could say anything.  Naomi's familiar heeled step sounded in the hall.

Chrome grinned.

“What about a life for a life?” he suggested.  “If I turn in another enemy of your glorious kingdom, you must spare me and make me a baron!”

Dark glanced around at the hall.  It took her a moment to realize what Chrome was getting at, then a slow, sweet grin spread across her face.

“Spare you,” she agreed.  “We will see about a barony.  Go!”

Chrome scrambled up and activated the invisibility rune on his coat, melting into nothing on the other side of the living room door. Naomi walked in and stopped short, staring at the blanket fort and at Dark's tiny regal form ruling it all.

“Oh, no,” she sighed.

“Oh, yes,” Chrome said, and uncloaked himself, and pounced on her as Dark shrieked with laughter.

[cursivescrawl]

Snap

Rating: G Category: Elementals Summary:  Unfortunately, when you’re making the worst mistake of your young life, the only warnings are in hindsight.

Dawn broke blood-red and beautiful over the tile roofs, spilling across the block wall to bathe the dirt training yard in light.  Clare stood from her fighting crouch and watched the clear sky's color, then leaned her practice sword against the grapefruit tree she'd been beating up and stretched her tired wrists.

Someday, her mentor Grace assured her, this feeling of nervousness before a mission would ease.  Someday she wouldn't feel keyed-up and anxious before every single battle or assignment.  She might even be able to sleep the night before she knew her team was going to be assigned to something.

'Someday' was taking a long time in coming.  Nearly a month had gone by since Clare had been named a warrior and set at the head of her team.  This was her fifth mission so far that Grace was sending her on, and she still felt nauseous.

Clare laced her fingers together and pushed her palms outward.  She flexed her hands and reached to the sky, then to the ground, stretching the tiredness from her back and shoulders.  If it was dawn now, she'd been practicing sword dances for nearly an hour already.  She should stop.  Straining a muscle before a mission would be horrible.

She picked up the wooden practice sword and slid it back into its spot on the rack, then rushed through her cool-down stretches and headed back inside.

The Fire base was quiet at this time of dawn.  Most Darkfires, those assigned to nighttime teams, either weren't back from their duties yet or were asleep.  Most Lightfires assigned to daytime teams were still slumbering.

(Which was just more evidence that someday, Clare's before-mission butterflies would probably stop.  And damn if she didn't want that day to hurry up already.)

She flopped down on the couch and checked the time on the desktop computer.  Then she concentrated, reaching through her team connection, and touched her teammates' minds.  They were all asleep. Of course they were. She envied them.

No, wait; Eliana was awake, but barely.

Go back to sleep, Clare told her. Eliana gave a jaw-cracking yawn and rolled over.

Butterfly clowns.

And she was dozing again.  Clare turned over that odd thought in her mind – butterfly clowns?  It was probably just a figment of whatever Eliana had been dreaming.  Eliana had weird dreams.

With her teammates sleeping, and her muscles aching pleasantly from exertion, Clare almost felt more tired than nervous.  She yawned and stood up.  Maybe she could manage to fall asleep for a few hours before Grace came bouncing into her room to give her the mission brief.

Creak went the front door.  Near-silent steps scuffed on the wooden floor. Clare automatically flicked flames into her hand and stepped to the side, cautious of-

Oh.  It was Alyss.

The Darkfire girl had her hood pushed back and her cloak behind her shoulders, looking absolutely exhausted.  She stumbled and caught herself on the wall.  Clare shook her hand to dispel her power.

“Hey- hey!  Alyss!  Are you hurt?”  It didn't look like her black clothes were ripped anywhere, or like her armor had been pierced, but-

Alyss shook her head.  “Tired,” she grumbled.  “Father's wrath, what time is it?”

Clare glanced at the computer again.  “Nearly six,” she said, and stepped forward, grasping Alyss' shoulders to try and keep her upright.  “How long have you been out?”

“Since eleven.”  Alyss leaned on Clare with no reservations and yawned.  “Damn, I'm tired.”

“Language,” said Clare without really thinking about it.  Seven hours of being out on a mission. That was rougher than anything Grace had ever given Clare and her team.  Clare tugged at Alyss, starting to guide her towards her room.

“What were you doing out there?”

Alyss yawned again and moved complacently alongside Clare.  “Stuff.”

“What, not even going to tell me?”

She rolled her eyes.  “Are you my commander or something?  Do I have to give you a mission report?  Jeez, I'll already have to write one up for Flash.”

They passed into the kitchen.  Clare ducked out from under Alyss' arm and went to the pantry to select a single-serving box of sugary wafers. She held them out to Alyss.

“Thanks.”  Alyss lifted herself up on a stool at the island counter and tore open the box.  Clare sat on the other stool and watched Alyss scarf down the food.

The microwave clock ticked a minute past.

“Fine,” said  Alyss when she was half-done with the box.  She swallowed.  “We were scouting.”

“For?”

“A Winter base.”  Alyss said it carelessly, like she went searching for monumental war zones every night.  She shoved another three wafers into her mouth.

Clare's thoughts felt like they were moving through cotton.  Alyss' team was searching for a Winter base?  For seven hours?  Had they gotten into a fight?  It didn't look like it, Alyss wasn't injured at all.  Clare was better at combat than Alyss, and even she couldn't escape a fight without a few scrapes and bruises.

“Isn't that supposed to be something for older teams to do? Looking for Winter bases, I mean.”

Alyss shrugged.  “I don't know.  Flash assigned it to Raptor Team.  I guess he trusts us not to get ourselves killed.”

Grace never assigned anything like that to Metallic Team.  Clare's team.  She said it was too dangerous.

“Besides, it's not like we went inside.  We just found it and made sure we knew the location, so we can tell Flash.”  Alyss tipped her head back and shook the last wafers into her mouth, then threw the box at the wall.  It bounced and landed in the trash can.

“Thanks, Clare.  I swear my fire was about to eat a hole through me if I didn't feed it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”  Clare waved that aside.  Did Grace not trust her? She'd only given Metallic easy assignments so far – searching for amulets in abandoned witch lairs or hunting down vampires who'd gone rogue.  Most recently, Clare had led Metallic Team to kill a demon who'd planned to tear up a school.

Now that she thought about it, Grace hadn't given them anything to do with the war.  Clare had assumed it was just because she was inexperienced.  But Alyss' Raptor Team had been made warriors just a few days before Clare and Metallic Team, and they were apparently actively helping out in the war.

Wasn't she skilled enough to do more?  Why wasn't Grace letting Metallic do what they'd trained for, and fight Ice and Snow and Frost Elementals?

“Clare?”  Alyss waved a hand in front of Clare's face.  Clare jerked her head up.

“Uh- yeah.  Sure.  That sounds like a good idea.”

“I didn't... what?”  Alyss looked confused before a yawn split her face.  “You... you have that look on your face.  What stupid thing are you planning?”

“I'm not planning anything stupid.”  It wasn't a lie, not really. She didn't have a plan.

Alyss rubbed her eyes.  “Don't go looking for Winter bases, Clare.”

“I'm not going to!”  Though maybe if Metallic Team cleared one out, or killed a few Winter Elementals, Grace would trust them more.  “I just- uh, I was wondering why Grace won't give me important stuff to do.”

Alyss shrugged and yawned again.  She rubbed at her eyes in a vain effort to keep them open.  “Dunno.  Ask her?  Sorry, I'm gonna go sleep.  Don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

“You wouldn't get into direct combat,” Clare pointed out as Alyss pushed herself off the counter stool and stumbled her way towards the dorm hall.  “And that's literally most of my job.”

“You know what I mean.”  Alyss turned her head to make a face at Clare just as Jake, a tall teenaged Lightfire, stepped around the corner.

Alyss barely stopped in time to not bump into him.  Jake patted her on the head and looked at Clare.

“You're up early,” he said.  “Gold, right?”

It took Clare a second to remember that was her team name.  She nodded.

“Great.  Grace wanted me to give you this.”  Jake strode down the hall and dropped an envelope on the counter in front of Clare, then went over to the coffee maker and hit a few buttons.

Clare opened the envelope and dumped out the contents.

A Sanctum keycard, a debit card, four plane tickets.  A letter on Grace's stationary written in the careful cursive of her teammate Vani.

Sorry to drop this on you so suddenly, Metallic.  We found a nest of wights up in Utah; looks like they've taken over an old church.  The town's name is...

“What are wights?” asked Clare, looking up from the letter.  Jake glanced over his shoulder.  The coffee-maker burbled and spat coffee into a mug.

“Wights?  Dead bodies.  Reanimated by Winter magic, as far as I know.  They're best killed by setting fire to them.”  Jake took his coffee mug, liberally added sugar, and came over to lean on the island counter across from Clare, sipping loudly at it.  “Why d'ya ask?”

Clare held up the letter.  Jake slurped as he read.

“Huh.  Guess Grace's got to put our youngest warrior on something,” he said finally, putting down the mug.

“What?”  Clare felt oddly lost.  What did her being the youngest full member of the Nation have to do with anything?

“You didn't hear?”  Jake pushed himself upright and stretched, popping his back.  Clare winced.

“Uh, no?”

“A bunch of Winters have been trying to raise wights.  All across the country.  Probably all across the world.”  Jake put his elbows back on the counter and shrugged.  “I mean, we all got our orders today.  Find the wight nests, find the Winter bases near them, destroy the wights and try to get their creators too.  The Champions are even out trying to put this down.”

The Champions, Clare knew, were Virtue Team.  Grace's team.  So these wights were so bad that the most powerful Daytime team was having to leave the safety of their bases and fight.  But just yesterday, Grace had reminded Clare that she and her team couldn't fight openly, or else they'd risk dying and leaving the Nation leaderless since the actual leaders, the Holders, were still locked in unexplainable death-like comas.

“Yeah,” said Jake, raising his coffee cup at Clare's expression. “Exactly.”

If it was this bad, though, Clare thought, why hadn't Grace sent Metallic Team out to do important stuff before this?  Why had she waited for a crisis to use them?

I hear important stuff, said Bellamy in the back of the team connection, finally somewhat awake. Clare closed her eyes and focused on the team connection until she could feel Bellamy's mind, like sticking her head out of the window of a slow car.

Yeah. Virtue gave us a new mission, killing wights in Utah.

Confusion, sleepiness.  What are wights?

Clare showed Bellamy the conversation with Jake.

So, zombies, Bellamy summed up after a moment.  That's okay.  We've killed zombies before.  I'll wake up Aly if you wake up Eliana?

Sure, said Clare.  We're leaving at- When were they leaving?  She opened her eyes and checked the plane tickets.  We've gotta be at the airport in an hour.  Pack your stuff.

The airport?  We're not using the dimension lines?

Now that Clare thought about it, the four plane tickets were weird. Every Elemental apprentice learned to use alternate dimensions to travel quickly between points.

Maybe there's something wrong with the lines?

Bellamy shrugged, clearly not caring enough to argue.  Acceptance washed through the connection.  Hey, finally something useful, at least.

Clare whole-heartedly agreed.  She disconnected from Bellamy and opened her eyes, reading through the rest of Grace's orders.

Yadi yadi yah, an explanation of what wights were, a map of the church they were hiding out in, and instructions to not engage with the wights.

Clare read that part more closely.  Don't engage?  Burn down the church and hide?  But that wasn't combat.  That wasn't even making sure the job was finished.  What if wights escaped?  If they were like zombies, they could devastate a city in minutes.  And what about the base Jake said was going to be nearby?  The wights could just be raised again.

Did Grace really not trust them to fight?

“Hey, Jake, did you get your orders?”

Clare turned around.  It took her a moment to recognize Heather, a Lightfire a few years younger and a few centimeters taller than Jake.

“Yeah.”  Jake slurped his coffee again.  “Wights?”

“Wights,” Heather confirmed, and patted Clare on the head.  “Hey, Clare.  Did Grace set y'all on the wights too?”

“Yeah, but I'm not supposed to engage,” said Clare, putting down the letter.

Both Heather and Jake looked at her.  Heather's eyebrows arched up almost to her hairline.  Jake ran his fingers through his messy curls and blinked.

Clare stared down at the letter.

“That's weird,” said Heather finally.  “Guess Virtue doesn't want their former apprentices to get hurt?  Hey, Jake, you didn't leave any coffee.”

“That's 'cause I didn't want to.”

“Asshole!”

Jake took a swig of coffee and gargled it at her.  Heather flicked golden fire at him; Jake raised his palm and let it dissolve against his dark skin.  Clare neatly folded the letter and shoved it back into the envelope along with the card and the plane tickets.

“Is there anything wrong with the dimension lines?” she asked.

Jake swallowed.  “Not that I know of.  Why?”

“Just wondering.” Clare creased the top of the envelope and turned towards the dorm hall.

“Damn,” she heard Heather say as she walked out of the kitchen. “Wights.  Makes you wish Gemstone hadn't betrayed us, we need all the teams we can get.”

Gemstone.  Clare's resolve faltered for a moment.  They'd followed their convictions, and they'd gotten banished for it.  Why was her brewing idea any different?

Because Gemstone, she answered herself as she stepped into her room, had been wrong.  They'd murdered their charge, the person the Nation had told them to protect.  And she wasn't disobeying like Gemstone did, she was making sure the mission was fully completed.  Going above and beyond the call of duty.

Yeah.  That sounded nice.

Please no above and beyond anything, grumbled Bellamy.  Clare closed her eyes.

Change of plans.  Eliana, Aly, wake up.

They didn't wake, so Clare prodded their minds until they did.  Eliana grumbled something about moths.  Aly sleepily batted at her mind.

Go away.

Nope. We've got a mission, and we're leaving in ten minutes.

If it's another rogue vampire, it can wait. Aly's thoughts weren't words, but the general shape of them was clear.  Clare prodded her awake again.

It's not.  It's something important this time.

She waited until she had all her team's (sleepy) attention, then continued.

We're gonna use the dimension lines and go to Utah.  There's a nest of wights there in a church.  We're going to kill the wights, burn the church, and then find the Winter base that spawned them.

Virtue didn't order that, did they? Bellamy asked.

Had he sensed Clare's own hesitation?  She hadn't told him they weren't supposed to engage.

She crumpled the envelope in her fist.

They don't trust us to fight well.  We've got to prove ourselves.

Silence. Aly yawned and threw  agreement through the connection.  Bellamy grumbled wordlessly.  Eliana tentatively agreed.

Clare opened her eyes and stared down at the envelope.  Warmth tingled in her fingers, and flames jumped to life, licking at the heavy paper and devouring it.

She watched it burn.

C'mon. Nine minutes, now.  Let's go, Metallic Team.

[cursivescrawl]

Permafrost

Rating: PG Tagged: Elementals Summary: After driving her powers dormant and nearly murdering her teammates, Eliana would just like to be left alone.

The Library is quiet, peaceful.  Eliana loves the silence.  Far below, on the ground floor or some low balcony, two apprentices debate the virtues of one spell over another, but they’re easily tuned out.

Sunset lights the sky outside, fading with every heartbeat.  Rain pours down the glass.  If Eliana really wanted to, she could pick up the phone lying beside her and Google timezones, try and figure out where in the world this window is showing her.

She doesn’t really want to move.

In the back of her team connection, she feels her teammates still wrapped in healing sleep.  Good.  Let them rest.  They deserve it.  In the twilight silence, Eliana feels her own eyelids growing heavy, lulled by her teammates’ sleep.

Perhaps she should take a nap. She scoots down, getting comfortable on the blue plush windowseat, leaning her head against the cold glass. She can almost hear the drum of rain on the other side.

Soft boots scuff on the tile floor, a familiar tread.  Eliana braces herself for interaction.

“Did you even sleep last night?” Raina asks.

Eliana opens her eyes, looks up at her friend, and nods.

Raina moves a stack of books off the blue plush windowseat.  Eliana crosses her legs and sits up to make room for Raina.

“You should sleep more.”  Raina shrugs her cloak back and perches on the windowseat.  “After-”

Eliana cuts her off with a glare and reaches for her notepad.

Are you my teammate? she scribbles down.

Raina reads the words upside down, mouthing them silently, as Eliana writes.  “No.”

Eliana raises her eyebrows and pointedly sets down the pad.  There are so many retorts she could make - how Raina’s nighttime missions keep her out at all hours of darkness, about how she doesn’t seem concerned about the faint half-moons under her own eyes, something utterly childish involving the words “your mom”.  But she doesn’t feel like writing any of those things.

Raina huffs a sigh.  “Am I not allowed to be concerned now?”

Eliana stares outside, tracing the patterns of droplets with her gaze, and doesn’t respond.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Eliana glances over at Raina for a moment, then returns to the much more interesting view out the window.

“Blink twice if you’re dead.”

Entirely fed up with this, Eliana stares directly at her and blinks twice.  Raina giggles.

There are finally no more questions.  The rain falls silently against the window.   A large droplet races down the glass, collecting others and leaving a clear path in its wake, until it drops to the bottom and joins the runoff.  Spatters of rain quickly fill in the trail it left.

Raina reaches out and puts her hand against the glass.  The droplets start collecting around her fingers, the time-space magic of the Library doing something to warp the glass so that when she pulls away, a ball of controlled water follows her palm.

Eliana frowns.  Her own fingers tingle to reach out and take the water, the magic she’s been staying away from, but-

Raina manipulates the water into an infinity loop with small motions of her fingers, then into a complex cat’s cradle.  It flows calmly, gently, gleaming blue-black with the smallest nudges of Raina’s power and magic.

The sky outside darkens a bit as the sun sinks.  Eliana tears her eyes from Raina’s little game of water and goes back to looking out the window.  The angle of the light behind the clouds makes the rain look like crystals, falling from the sky to shatter on the glass.

“Eliana,” Raina says softly.

Eliana shudders.  Cold ripples down her spine.

Eliana, you’re being so good-

Why don’t you try freezing it, Eliana?

Perfect, Eliana, you’ll become one of us soon enough.

Eliana reaches for her teammates, still slumbering.  Clare stirs just enough for Eliana to catch a flicker of her dreams - frost, the iron bars, a scream.  It’s different enough from Eliana’s thoughts to jerk her back to the present, to the Library.

She glares at Raina.  Raina holds up her hands in surrender.  The water is still looping around her fingers, so easy, so calm.

“Fine.  Silver.”

Eliana turns away.  Her team name is soothing, relaxing, suitably foreign to her ears.  In time, it might become grating, but it works for now.

“Silver,” Raina says.  “Come on.”

She’s holding out the water, Eliana can feel it.  It’s coalesced into a ball that floats above Raina’s palm.  Raina’s magic drains from it, sheer power keeping it together.

Eliana wants it.  She can almost feel it calling to her, her fingers parched for that silken touch.

“It won’t hurt you,” says Raina.  “And you can’t hurt it.”

Eliana reaches out.

The sky darkens.  In the rain-spattered glass, Eliana catches sight of her reflection - the color drained from her hair and eyes, both silver-white.  She is an unfamiliar ghost.

Her hand trembles.  Even her fingernails shine colorless and pale now.

Look at you, so pretty like that.

Eliana snatches her hand back away from the water.

Raina stares at her.

She doesn’t understand.  Eliana can see the confusion in how the water trembles with Raina’s emotions.

She bites the inside of her cheek and presses her hand to the glass instead of reaching out.  The water droplets outside frost over with silver magic.  Her power - the bright blue that used to balance out the cold silver - is nowhere to be seen.

The window crackles and cracks with frost.

“Silver,” says Raina softly.

Eliana yanks her hand away and stands up.  Raina nearly trips over the hem of her cloak in her haste to follow.

“Silver, come on, you’re a Water-”

Am I? she wants to snap, but the words bite in her throat, stick there and choke her breath.  She strides towards the railing.

“Silver!”

Eliana jumps up onto the balcony railing, balances for a moment, staring down at the bookshelves and floor mosaic a good twenty meters below.

Then she jumps.

There’s no room for thought when she’s falling.  Instinct takes over, the result of years of training.  She grabs for another balcony’s railing, misses, catches the second, hangs on even though impact threatens to yank her shoulders from their sockets.

When her breath steadies, she drops again.  This time she’s close enough to the floor that she can roll to disperse her momentum.  The shock lingers in her ankles and shins, but it’s okay, she’s alive, the pain proves that, and Raina is four balconies above her with her stupid water and stupid words.

Eli? murmurs Clare sleepily in the back of Eliana’s mind.  Eliana closes her eyes and pushes the heels of her palms against them, fighting back the unbidden tears.

I’m fine, she says to her teammate.  I’m… I’m coming.

Raina calls out to her.  Eliana pretends not to hear as she hurries for the door.

[cursivescrawl]

Discovery

Rating: PG Category: Elementals Summary:  This is why Feline Team’s leader hates waking up to silence from the house and news from Virtue Team.  It’s never a good sign.

The Fire base is silent when Flash wakes.

That's worrying.  Usually he drifts into consciousness on the wings of twilight, hearing the muted tired chatter of Darkfires outside his locked door.  But now there's just absolute silence.

Flash rolls over, unwilling to get up just yet, and reaches out to his team with silent, sleepy greetings.

Lake nudges him away.  Lake is trying to decipher some old text for the Water Library, which is pretty normal for him at this hour.  Zephyr is still asleep, and Flash catches glimpses of his dreams – arrows, wings, the murmuring of a breeze.  Jag reaches out and meets him halfway.

Something's wrong.

You feel it too?  Flash raises himself to see the glowing LED display of his bedside clock. Five-thirty in the afternoon.  Earlier than he usually wakes, but that's alright.

Instead of responding in words, Jag opens his mind, letting Flash see the Earth base.  Everyone's silent there, too.  There's not even the flare of magic or the clash of swords from the training room.  It's like everyone's preparing for an important funeral.

Did something happen to the Holders while we were asleep? Flash sits up properly and drags his hand over his face, wincing as his fingers brush scar tissue.  Zey.  Wake up.

Fuck off, Zephyr responds eloquently. Jag pokes him.

Zeyyyyyyyyyyy~

Go away.

Zey, stop it, Lake sighs, finally setting down his book and translation notes.  Zephyr grumbles, but makes an effort to pull himself from sleep.  Lake continues.

The Library is louder than normal.  I think something happened to Gemstone, but everyone shuts up when they get close to me, so I can't overhear anything useful.

Gemstone Team?  It's about time for them to get back from their first mission, Flash knows.  Did something go wrong?

Oh, and Flash, says Lake.  Grace wanted to see you in Jen's room.

Great, Flash grumbles, and lets his team feel him dramatically flop back down into bed.  Just what I needed.  An early meeting with the Champion.

It's afternoon, Zephyr points out, just awake enough to make fun of a teammate.  Flash shoves him.

Shut it.

Jag's amusement filters through the connection with Lake's exasperation. Flash stretches, yawns, and gets up properly this time, dressing hastily before reaching for his cloak.

Fine. I'm going.  Hopefully nothing's happened to the Holders.

Silent agreement from all sides.  Zephyr goes to seek out the Wind Champion, a cheery girl named Vani.  Flash checks the mirror as he swings his enchanted black cloak around his shoulders.  He grimaces at his own reflection, checking the scarring on the side of his face, then shadows it with his cowl and ghosts from his room and down the hall.

Jen's door, as always, is locked.  Flash takes barely a moment to pick the familiar mechanism.

Good luck, says Jag.  Flash pulls his cowl more securely over his face.

Thanks, I think.

Zephyr laughs.  Flash opens Jen's door just enough to slip into her room.

The Holder lies on her bed, unmoving, just as she's been for the past few weeks.  Flash can see the tracery of flames underneath her pale skin.

So there's no change.

Grace sits by Jen's bed, head propped in one hand.  Flash keeps his steps silent as he moves over behind her.

“Boo.”

She jumps.  Flash grins.  Lake, silently in the back of his mind, sighs.

“Panther.” Grace yawns.  “You're awake.”

“Jen isn't.”  Flash sinks down on the edge of his Holder's bed.  Grace looks scandalized.

“Show some respect!”

“She's unconscious,” Flash points out.  “And I'm her second-in-command. Why should I bow and scrape?”

Grace huffs.

Ask her what's going on, Zephyr urges.  Jag's fond exasperation makes Flash love them both even more.

Impatient, he teases them.  “Grace?”

She looks up at him, inquisitive.  Zephyr finally manages to corner Vani.

“Did something happen today?”

Grace sighs, her gaze returning to Jen's still body.  Something definitely happened.  There have been very, very few times that Flash has seen the Fire Champion look this defeated.

“Gemstone Team came back.”

Flash waits.  Grace's hand goes to the tangle of woven bracelets on her left wrist, clutching at them.

“They betrayed the Nation.”

Shock. Disbelief.  Flash keeps his body impassive and his face smooth through long years of training.  His teammates are no less stunned, he sees after a quick check – Lake shaken from his normal coldness, Jag stumbling over the threshold of a door and nearly tripping his former apprentice Audrey, Zephyr stammering midway through a sentence.

What? Jag finally snaps.

“How did that happen?” Flash asks instantly, driven by Jag's impulse. He wishes he'd bitten his tongue.  His voice almost cracks.

Gemstone Team, though, traitors?  It hardly seems likely.  Flash knows them, knows their leader Jagev.  They're the most righteous and pragmatic apprentices of their generation.  How could they be disloyal?

Unless... A thought trembles on the edge of Lake's mind.  Flash finishes it for him.

Unless Virtue Team didn't know what Gemstone was actually supposed to do.

A cold pit of dread settles in Flash's stomach, echoed by his teammates.

“They murdered their Charge in cold blood,” says Grace quietly.  “And then tried to blame the Holders' coma on him as justification.  My team and I stripped them of their warrior status.  They're banished now.”

Flash bends his head to shadow his face more and shuts his eyes, trying to quell the overwhelming emotion rocking through his team connection.  Shock.  Rage.  Fear. Horror.  Bitterness towards the Champions for causing this, towards themselves for not preventing it.

As always, it's Lake's quiet reassurance that cuts through the maelstrom, a spear through the sea.

Banished, he repeats. Banished.  There's still a chance.

“Flash?” Grace asks.  Flash takes a deep breath and opens his eyes to Grace's concerned, tired face.

“What have you done?” he whispers.

She recoils in shock.  Then her face sets into those hard lines of stubborn, proud resolve that Flash knows all too well.

“What we had to,” she replies.

There's no use arguing with an unrepentant Champion.  Zephyr reaches out silently, carrying his own silent burden.

Vani doesn't know Gemstone's secret either.  Looks like the Champions were all kept in the dark on this.

There's a pun there, in the irony of a Daytime team like Virtue being kept in the dark, but Flash doesn't want to think about that.

If the Holders didn't tell them, Lake muses, always the thoughtful one, who are we to go against their judgment?

Do you still trust they've planned all this out? Irritation laces Zephyr's skepticism.  Jag silently agree.

If they have, I'd rather not mess it up.  You know the Holders. They're... secretive at best. Flash turns to the comatose Jen, watching the fire flow through the traceries of her veins.  Jag mirrors his stance at the bedside of Earth Holder Scylla.  There's no Champion there to stop him from reaching out and tracing the almost stone-like flesh of her arm.

Audrey interrupts him.  Jag turns, closing himself off from his teammates partially to talk with her.

When they're awake, Zephyr snaps, but Lake's silent support of Flash quiets him.  After a few moments of consideration, Jag adds his agreement, and Zephyr submits to his team's will.

Flash turns back to Grace.  She's staring into the middle distance, probably in deep conversation with her teammates.  He waits.

In a few moments, she takes a deep breath and her eyes refocus on the Holder.

“You're hiding something,” she accuses.  “Vani just talked to Zey.  He's acting weird.  What's up?”

Flash just shrugs.  “I'm a Darkfire,” he says by way of explanation.  “We're always hiding something.”

She's suspicious.  Flash stands and shakes his cloak back into position over his body, then pats her shoulder.

“Go to bed, Courage.”

Grace yawns at him, an expression of exasperation as much as exhaustion.  “Don't fuck things up, Panther.”

He smiles just wide enough for a flash of teeth under his hood.  She leans forward to press Jen's warm hand once, then leaves.  Flash closes his eyes.

Audrey says Raptor Team helped Gemstone find shelter, Jag says, opening his mind once more. He still stands by Scylla's bedside, but Audrey is gone.  They're holed up in the Sanctum in Phoenix.

Clever.  Lake's grudging approval washes over Flash, directed for Jag.  Using an unused Daytime Sanctum as protection. You've trained her well.

They're all trained well, says Flash, thinking fondly of his own former apprentice.  What role did Alyss play in Gemstone's safety​?

C'mon, let's go, he prompts his team.  We can't reverse Virtue's verdict.  But we should make sure Gemstone is alive.

We're not interfering?  For all his initial reluctance, Jag seems willing to go now, clasping his own cloak around his throat and pulling up the hood.  Flash checks that his knives are where they're supposed to be.

We don't know enough about this to interfere. Lake is drinking something.  Flash reaches out in curiosity, then wishes he hadn't.  The sweet taste of tea diffuses over his tongue and makes him gag.  The Holders said to trust Gemstone's instincts.  We should follow their instructions.

Nobody disagrees this time, not even Zephyr.

Flash settles a ward over Jen's comatose body, and turns, reaching for Lake and letting himself be pulled to his teammate's side.  The world seems to shimmer and fade around him before there's cool air brushing his face and Lake's steady hand on his shoulder, both of them standing in the chill night outside the Water base.

So, find Gemstone.  Make sure they're relatively safe, Jag repeats.  Flash helps Lake pull Jag to them, and he appears in a shimmer of brown-green, his cloak covering wide shoulders and a strong body.  Zephyr's wings flash overhead, then the last member of Feline Team is with them, landing catlike and folding his great bronze wings and shaking windswept hair from his eyes.

“And other than that, we won't interfere,” Flash says firmly.  “We won't let them out of our sight, but we'll just watch.”

Lake nods.  Zephyr is busy fumbling with the fastenings of his cloak, positioning it over the quiver at his hip as to not impede his movement, and only responds in a flash of silent acknowledgment.  Jag crosses his arms.

“And after that?”

Flash hesitates.  It's Lake that responds.

“Keep watching until something happens.”  He smiles.  “We're good at that, aren't we?”

There's no hesitation in the agreement that sweeps them all.  Flash's hand falls to the hilt of his knife and he draws it, preparing to cut into the Aethir, settling the location of the Phoenix Sanctum in his mind and preparing to create the portal.

“Besides,” he says, almost as an afterthought.  “We can't let the first Twilight Team in five hundred years just die.”

[cursivescrawl]

End

Rating: PG-13 Category: Mafia Summary:  All things must come to an end.  For Chrome and Naomi, skilled Rozzo informants, there is no exception.

It happened so suddenly that Naomi had no time to think, or act, or do anything but stare in stunned silence.

One moment it was a normal day.  Chrome had his feet on his desk, teasing his poor secretary about getting off the couch and cleaning the office.  (It was honestly less of an office and more of a large apartment, which is what it had started out as.  Naomi had to keep it all clean or risk her paycheck being docked, a frequent threat.)  His back was to the wide floor-to-ceiling window as he reclined in his swivel chair.

"Oh.... you should probably file that information that our dear Agent Alex wanted," he teased.  "He wanted it two days ago, but you've let it off...."

"That was your job," Naomi snapped.  "I'm not going to do all of your work for you."  The way he stressed the agent pissed her off.  This wasn't the first government official to come to them for information, and he certainly wouldn't be the last.

"Was it?"  Chrome's innocent tone and look were totally fake.  Naomi sighed and chucked her pen at the information broker's handsome, mischievous face.

"It was, you insincere scumbag.  Don't even try to deny it," she said, eyes going back to the binder full of outdated information open on her lap.  She cross-checked a fact with the report in front of her and made a dissatisfied noise in the back of her throat.  "And give me back that pen.  I need it."

"Ah-ah-ah, you gave it to me."  Chrome had recovered from the instrument hitting him square in the nose, it seemed.  Now he was twirling it between his slim fingers, smirking.  "I'm not sharing it."

Naomi could swear some days that Chrome was nothing more than a child in the body of a twenty-eight year old.  She sighed, putting the binder on the glass coffee table in front of her as she stood up, stalking over to Chrome's desk and snatching the pen back.

"Remember, you get an alphabet cookie if you share," she said acidly, and stormed back to her nest of paper on the couch.  Chrome's laugh followed her, as did the pleasant chime of an incoming text message from his phone.

"Let me guess.  It's Agent Alex, wondering where the hell his information is," Naomi said sarcastically without looking up. She scribbled a note in the margins of the binder.  "You get to make up the excuse."

"Ah.... no.  I don't give my number out to pompous rats like him.  At least, not this one."  A beat of silence.  "That werewolf pack leader I dealt with the other day is freaking out.  He's got another conspiracy theory that his pack's about to be destroyed."

"Is it correct?" Naomi asked, and was rewarded with a snort.

"Of course it's correct.  I'm not going to tell him that, though.  He's getting annoyingly dependent on me.  Might as well get him off the radar, yeah?"

Naomi shrugged, wondering who Chrome would manipulate into killing the annoying werewolf.  She knew he never did any of his own dirty work.

Chrome stopped spinning and put his feet up on the desk again, holding his phone up above him as he typed on it.  A new email dinged on his computer, but he ignored it, as usual.  He'd sort through them later at night, she knew, working together in silence as Chrome caught up with the work he pretended not to care about and Naomi kept piecing together the story of the odd rips in space that had been appearing in remote locations around the world.

"So does the report contain anything interesting?"  Chrome spun around in his swivel chair, acting like a happy kindergartener again.

"No," Naomi said shortly.  "Nothing we didn't already know, beside the fact that even Foster apparently can't identify the stuff that leaks out of those rips.  And she's got no idea where to start."

Chrome made a noise of interest.  "Think it is a rip between worlds, then?  Hmm.... You're the scientist.  If demons came through to our dimension, what would happen?"

"Don't be a child," Naomi snapped.  "That's a myth."

"So are vampires, mages, and all of the other crazies we deal with regularly.  We have a neko as a pet.  Hell, we rescued our first and only successor from a lectoblix, or don't you remember?"

Naomi had no witty reply for him there, so she stayed silent, not wanting to give him the pleasure of hearing her admit that she was wrong.

It was some time later before Chrome's voice sounded again.  "Hmm."

Naomi ignored him until she saw him move out of the corner of her eye, his feet coming down off the desk as he leaned forward to stare at his computer.  Then she sighed.  "What is it?"

"Governor Helena is dead.  The police report says it's an impossible case – she was in a locked room, with no way for anyone to get in or out."

"So?" A demon rip couldn't open in someone's bedroom.  There needed to be extreme conditions.  "I'm not sure how this-"

"The dark side of Situ just discontinued their teleportation potions."

The pen fell forgotten from Naomi's cold fingers.  She stared unseeing at the binder for a few moments, then jerked her head up to look at Chrome.

His dark eyes were expressionless, but something in the set of his shoulders suggested that he knew what Naomi was thinking.  She had developed that potion, nearly seven years ago.  Was it only seven years?  It felt like a lifetime.  And her brother had warned her that it could be used for this, but she didn't believe him, and now.... How was her brother doing?

"Naomi, I'm thirsty," Chrome whined, looking away.  The moment was lost. Naomi forced herself back to thoughts of the demon rips.  She could look into her family's old company later.

"Go drink lava," she suggested, ignoring how her hands shook when she flipped a page in the binder.

"Nnnnh, I want tea.  Go make some or I'll cut your pay."

Naomi sighed, looking up at the ceiling to stretch out the crick in her neck.  "Ass," she muttered as she stood, grateful to him for the distraction but never wanting to admit it, carefully setting her work aside and placing the report inside the binder.  She half-heartedly flipped Chrome off as she started toward the small kitchen sectioned off by only a paper divider.

The front door slammed open and a loud, familiar bang reverberated around the room.  Naomi ducked instinctively, turning away.  A second loud bang and Naomi felt herself shriek, starbursts of pain radiating from everwhere in her body.  The soft carpet brushed her knees as she fell.

Then quiet.  All quiet, creepy quiet, made quieter in the aftermath of the loud noise.  Even Chrome's inane chatter had stopped, and that was a good thing, because Naomi had no inclination to deal with him right now.  She imagined, through the hazy gray-black-red of pain, that he was simply staring in shock.

She pressed her hands to the pain at her stomach and felt warm liquid rushing through her fingers.  She slowly looked down at her hands, noticing the red stains, and suddenly realized why those bangs had sounded so familiar.

She forced her eyes up, expecting to see one smirking black-haired man leaning over his desk.  But no, Chrome was leaning back still, feet up, blood trickling from his open mouth.  Blood still oozed from a fresh bullet hole in his forehead, beginning to cover his suprised expression.  (And it was ironic, really, that Chrome had died while surprised.  Chrome, who was never surprised at anything.)

Shot.... Assassins.... Messy, they had been sloppy, why hadn't they been more careful?  News of their work with the possible demon rip must have gotten out.  Naomi cursed herself, cursed Chrome, cursed the information leak.

A fresh shock of pain brough Naomi from her self-pity.  Wake up idiot.  Next step, Naomi scolded herself.  She slowly tore one hand away from her stomach, trying to get her hand into her pocket to grasp her phone.  Dark had to know about the assassins. Even though their former trainee had struck out on her own a couple of months ago, she still worked closely with her old mentors.  Dark knew about the demon rip, she could gather the information.  And like any person with a sense of self-importance, Naomi didn't want her work to die with her – even though Dark would possibly ruin it.  The girl took after Chrome in her approach to life, damn her.

Chrome.  She'd never see Chrome again.  Or Dark.  Or her brother.  Or even Ari.  The anguish that tore through her was almost as strong as the pain, threatening to send her over the brink of unconsciousness. She gritted her teeth and refused to think about them, fighting back the blackness and shifting her position the tiniest bit.  Something grated inside her, Naomi could feel it, hear it, everything going black for a couple of seconds.  When Naomi's vision cleared, she realized that her fingertips were touching her phone.

Slowly, carefully, she pulled the device out.  Her fingers trembled as she hit the call button next to Dark's number, leaving bloody smudges on the screen.  Pick up pick up pick up please pick up-

The call went to voicemail.  Naomi cursed as she heard the pleasant female voice tell her that the voicemail box was full, and in a rare display of anger, she threw the phone across the room.

It hit the wall and cracked.  Naomi instantly regretted it, realizing that she could have just texted Dark.  She had just basically condemmed herself to death and still needed to find another way to get a message to the younger informant.  (Dark accidentally ruining her work didn't seem as terrible as it dying with her.  She'd even trust Chrome with it at this point, had he not died first.)

Ah.  There, by the front door.  A pad of paper and a pen, originally put there when Chrome complained about never having anything to scribble quick notes on.

The problem was getting to it.

An excruciating five minutes passed before Naomi finished scrawling a note, not caring that there might be more blood than ink on the once-pretty stationary.  She also didn't care about the smudged ink mingling with the blood on her pale fingers.  The trail of blood on the thick gray carpet, left where she had dragged herself over to the pen and paper, was also none of her concern.  There was no Chrome anymore to dock her paycheck for not having the office clean, right?

She laughed weakly, stopping almost immediately because it hurt and made the room swim even more, and folded the paper in half.  She wrote the address of Dark's P.O. box on the paper, slid it under the door, and promptly collapsed.

The delivery man would take the paper and deliver it to Dark, along with taking the other packages to their proper destinations.  He wouldn't find Naomi and Chrome's bodies.  He'd been instructed when he took the job to never open their door, and he never questioned it. Perhaps he had heard about his two predecessors, both of whom disobeyed that rule.  The first one had been overcome with curiosity, opening the door once and overhearing sensitive information that Chrome and Naomi were discussing.  He had gone insane after a quick chat with Chrome, in which Chrome had calmly told him exactly what would have happened had he stopped his sister from commiting suicide early in his teen years.  The other had walked in on Chrome and Naomi arguing, and failed to see the flying switchblade that Naomi had easily dodged.  By the time he noticed it, it was far too late.

Those memories and others flashed vividly through Naomi's dying mind as her life drained away.  She sank slowly down, feeling shades of gray wash over her.  Death wasn't a dark tunnel, it was a deep ocean, and she was slowly and painfully sinking under.

She drifted deeper, memories and regrets flashing before her eyes, until she was too deep to ever be recovered.

The bloody note sat outside with the late informants' other packages, waiting patiently to unleash its devastating news.

[cursivescrawl]

Regret

Rating: PG Category: Mafia Summary: Ever since the kidnapping of his sisters, Chrome’s life has been fueled by regret.

They're always there with him.

Their accusing eyes bore into his back whenever he collapses, focuses on the television or a mobile game instead of the information he should be collecting and sorting through, because doesn't Chrome remember? He's at fault for this, he's the reason May and June aren't laughing and chattering through the apartment, he's the reason his parents divorced and Chrome was left in the giant house full of ticking clocks and a mother who was barely ever there, immersing himself in the work he got from the Rozzo mafia family and putting himself through online college (psychology, an associate's degree) at the same time as he still kept his highschool grades up, two long lonely years of work and silence and whispers until the moment he turned eighteen and could move out by himself on the wages he got from the Rozzo family and what little he got from selling the house in the bad housing market.

His sisters' voices whisper in his mind as Chrome walks into his first apartment, eighteen and scared and alone.  He thought moving out would help.  It doesn't.  And he can't find a way to get rid of the memories and regrets even in this new space.

Buying things they'd like doesn't help – they're sitting there, waiting to be used, it feels wrong when Chrome touches them.

Buying things they'd hate doesn't help – they look incongruous, refurbished couches and a twelve-inch TV in the plush apartment, sitting there and waiting for complaints that never come, until Chrome wants to scream.

The apartment ends up furnished like something from a magazine, all smooth black leather and gleaming chrome (the pun almost makes Chrome laugh when he sees the online furniture ad that chrome is the future, because it's not, he's not, he's living in the past and he hates it and he can't drag himself out) and impersonal empty space. Bookshelves fill with unused books that Chrome can never bring himself to read, because half of them are things May and June would squeal over and half of them are things that he can't bring himself to enjoy anymore, stories where everyone ends up happy and Chrome just can't deal with the smiling reunions and tearful joy.  Even books he thinks he'd like normally – horror novels that delve into the human mind, dark fantasy where things are actually lost and the characters feel real, dystopian novels with screwed up societies and intriguing concepts of behavior – they don't feel right when he gets into the story, starts enjoying the story, and realizes he's enjoying something and is that okay? Should he be enjoying things with May and June gone?  He doesn't know and it scares him so much that one day when he shelves a book he never picks it back up again.

He enrolls in an online bachelor's degree program to fill the time.  He begins a habit of having Pandora on all the time, layered over a podcast or the radio or both to fill the silence, to try and drown out the ghosts of voices that still linger in his mind.

It's weird.  His workload as a full-time informant is so heavy that he shouldn't be able to think of anything else.  Selling the information he has, gathering new information for clients who ask, working on his psychology degree at the same time just for something else to do, they take up all the time he has and Chrome is glad for it.  When he's focused he doesn't hear the voices so much.  But May and June are like his breath – even when he's not thinking about it, they're there, but when he starts thinking about them he just can't stop.

It gets to the point where he doesn't know what he'd do without them always hovering in the back of his mind.  What would his life even look like?  Would he die?  He doesn't know, it doesn't seem possible that he'd be able to move on.

He survives.  That's all.

Chrome barely notices his nineteenth and twentieth birthdays.  He only notices his twenty-first because he doesn't have to use a fake ID to get into a bar that one of his clients wants to meet in.

He's in Washington DC one day for a meeting with a client (perched in one of the places nobody has the time to look, watching people, wondering how they live and subconsciously watching for two twin girls a few years younger than him with black hair and constant banter) when he sees a man walk up to a confused and disheveled woman and link arms with her.  It's not unusual in DC for that to happen, except that there are two other men dressed almost exactly like that one, all watching the same woman.  Chrome wouldn't have noticed the pattern if he wasn't up so high.

On a hunch, he pulls out one of his phones and flicks the modified camera up.  Brown specks twirl sluggishly around the woman, purple sparks flying off all three men, radiant magic in the sea of life that is Washington DC.

Chrome puts down the phone and watches the woman, then without quite knowing why, he jumps down and follows her and the man, activating one of the runes he paid to have etched into the back of his coat.  He's like a shadow as he slips between people, gazes flicking over him and then forgetting he was even there, courtesy of the rune.

The man and the woman enter a closed coffee shop.  Chrome hesitates for a moment or two, wondering why he's even interested in this, why he's here, then shrugs and reaches for the door handle and decides to think about it later.

He's yelling at her.  Chrome's entrance quickly turns into a physical intervention.

The man has powerful magic, but Chrome has been in scuffles with mages before, so he manages to get himself and the woman to safety before too much harm is done.  He's bleeding, a scrape across one shoulder from a thrown chair when they're finally a decent distance away, but he doesn't really care.

The woman's name is Naomi and she's from a Chinese company that sells medicine to the normal world, and potions to the abnormal world. Chrome has heard of it – Situ Pharmaceuticals, he's also been watching the power struggle at the top – but he feigns ignorance, draws out of Naomi the story of how she was attacked and forced to use one of her own experimental potions to escape.

Being displaced from her home for something she had no knowledge of.... The story tugs at those strings Chrome tries to keep hidden. He almost can see his sisters clinging to Naomi, laughing, chattering at her, offering her solace and comfort.

He offers her a job.

She accepts.

It's odd having another person in the apartment.  Naomi is quiet at first, polite and unsure, but after a week or two she starts integrating herself into Chrome's routine.  She's a welcome presence, someone who can pull him from his thoughts when he starts staring into space and not working, and he does the same for her when a mention of potions or her old company comes up.

They don't talk about family.  Or personal things, really, at all, even though they live and work together.

Chrome pays Naomi more than he probably should for work that she doesn't really do much of.  She's helpful still, collecting information that he can't get and just being there in the apartment. She has, Chrome finds, a witty and sharp sense of humor and a way of rapid-firing words at him that keeps him always alert, always on his toes and ready.

He redevelops his own skill with language, with sarcasm and lies and jests, and they get along in a constant match of wordplay.

Slowly, Chrome starts to take notice of times and dates again, and he doesn't have much time to dwell on the guilt he knows he should still be feeling.  Days pass by, always different from the last and always intriguing, clients and information swirling into a pattern that Chrome and Naomi can only just glimpse from their dealings with the information that runs the magical underground.

It's spring and Naomi has been with him for nearly a year when the Rozzo family asks him to investigate a neko trading ring that's cropped up on their territory.  Chrome pretends he's a buyer, infiltrates one of the shows, and accidentally ends up walking home with a neko by his side.  Whoops.

The neko's name is Ari and he's nineteen, just a few years younger than Chrome, and Chrome feels a bit odd keeping him collared but knows if Ari doesn't belong to him he'll be out on the streets or back in a cage, because that's how nekos are in this world.

Naomi doesn't like Ari at first sight.  Chrome keeps her from murdering him.  He knows it brings back bad memories for her, memories of the neko assassin that she can't keep out of her mind every time one of Ari's ears flick or his tail twitches, but he doesn't want to get rid of Ari.

They learn to get along.  It takes four months and a tracker anklet that Ari is forbidden to take off, but they learn to live together, work together, and Chrome no longer has to have three soundtracks playing at once.  He just has Pandora in the background, Pandora or NPR for those rare moments that everything is silent and Naomi is working and Ari is out meeting clients.  But those don't happen much anymore.

The third person is a surprise.  Chrome has never liked lectoblixes – cousins of vampires that suck life force instead of blood – but there are some in his information network, and he's visiting one that calls herself “Risa” one day when he finds a little girl scared out of her mind and with twenty-five, maybe thirty years already drained off her life.

The sight of her tugs something in Chrome that he hasn't felt in long years.  She's wan, probably a runaway, but her face is determined and there's an intelligence behind the fear in those gray eyes that reminds Chrome of how June would look at the top of a high dive.

When the girl runs out of the lectoblix's house, Chrome slams the door in the lectoblix's face and follows her.

When she collapses from exhaustion and shock not even a block away, Chrome lifts her up and takes her back to the apartment.

She's nine, he finds when she wakes up, nine years old and scared and unwilling to tell Chrome and Naomi what happened before the lectoblix.  She can't say her name, either, instead choosing one for herself after seeing her new reflection in the mirror – Dark, she names herself, and Chrome breathes a sigh of relief because for a few moments he thought she was going to say “June”.

Raising a kid isn't something Chrome thought he'd be doing.  He remembers how he used to take care of his little sisters, but he shies away from those thoughts, because they're still painful and he's still responsible and he still hasn't found where they are or what happened to them even after seven years of searching.  He's probably not the best parent, but Dark is intelligent and learns from him how to manipulate and gather information and sort through it and even how to use knives for self-defense.  Naomi teaches her too, takes care of her and teaches her about potions and languages and things Chrome has no use for.

But it's Ari that has the greatest influence.  Naomi and Chrome are Dark's teachers, but it's Ari who takes on the role of a parent, making sure Dark has all she needs and even daring to stand up to Chrome a time or two when he's too immersed in work to look at the child.  Dark is nothing like June, like Chrome feared she'd be, and Ari is protective over her, so it's okay.  Everything is okay.  And time passes that way.

And then there comes a day when Chrome looks up.

Naomi sits in front of the lighted television, on the black leather couch, in a flurry of papers, marking corrections and updates to a binder of information.  Dark sits cross-legged on the floor, focused on the laptop Chrome bought her for her eleventh birthday and chattering at Ari and occasionally retrieving papers for Naomi.  Ari lounges on the back of a leather chair, eyes closed, content purring and a flicking tail the only sign he's awake and listening to Dark's complaints.

His music session, Chrome notices, has timed out.  He doesn't need it.  Naomi mutters to herself quietly in Chinese as she scribbles down information, Dark talks preteen nonsense over the clicking of her keyboard, and Ari's faint purring underlies every other sound in the apartment.  There's no room for thought, but Chrome's mind is at peace.

He smiles.

“Take a picture, it'll last longer,” snaps Naomi in English at him.  Chrome just grins wider.  Naomi makes one last note and looks up at him, eyebrows raised.

“Something wrong?” asks Ari, opening his eyes and sitting up, always more concerned than abrasive Naomi or childish Dark.  Chrome laughs.

“Not at all,” he says cheerily, saves the email he was working on, knocks his vibrating phone to the floor, and kicks his feet up onto his desk.  “Not at all.”

Dark gives him a strange look.  Naomi goes back to her work with a disparaging mutter.  Chrome ignores them both in favor of mulling over his newest revelation.

The loss of his sisters still aches.  There will never be a time when Chrome doesn't regret what he did.  But now that gaping void in his chest, in his life, isn't so dark.

“I'm going out,” he announces suddenly, and stands, and takes pleasure in the way Dark waves goodbye and Naomi tells him not to forget his runed blade again and Ari offers to accompany him.

Yes.

He may have lost his family, but somehow, he's built a family out of the lost.

[cursivescrawl]

Exile

Rating: G Category: Elementals Summary: Gemstone Team has betrayed the Nation and is being sent into exile.  Unfortunately, there’s only so much Raptor Team can do to help.

“Jagev...?” Alyss says quietly, pushing open the dorm door.

Jagev jumps.  Alyss would normally smile and tease her about paying attention to what's going on, but she can barely muster a grimace at this particular moment.

“Hey... I'm sorry.”

Jagev shrugs and turns back to the half-packed bag on the floor.  “It's not your fault,” she says.  “We made our decision.  Grace just decided it wasn't the right one.”

Alyss bites her tongue.  “How's your team doing?”

Jagev reaches for a shirt slowly, the steel kara on her wrist glinting.  “They're... okay.  Marcy and I kinda predicted this would happen.  Eliava's the only one who really hates it.  Maddy's brooding.”

“Maddy's always brooding.”

That, at least, startles a laugh out of Jagev, one quickly cut off.  Alyss smiles.

“But you're supposed to be out by nightfall.  Where are you going to go?”

Jagev only shrugs, her shoulders drooping.

An entire Daytime team, cut off from the resources of the Nation with no way to protect themselves... The full weight of to what Grace has sentenced Gemstone Team hits Alyss like Clare's greatsword.

No. This can't be right. Grace won't revoke her judgment, she's too proud for that, but there has to be some way Alyss can help.

They're going to die, Tori says silently, having just come to the same conclusion.  Raina elbows her sharply, a rebuke that even Alyss winces at.

Shut up.  No, they're not.

But-

Day Sanctums aren't used often, Audrey offers.  And they protect against Night creatures. If we can get Gemstone Team into one of those...

But don't they require a key card?  We don't have one, Alyss says.  Irritated amazement washes into her brain from Audrey and Raina both.  Tori sighs aloud.

Are you mad?  You're a Darkfire, asking how to get your hands on something?

Right.  That was dumb of her.  Alyss' face heats up at the silent teasing Raina jabs at her, though she tries to shake it off as she taps Jagev's shoulder.

“Hey, I'm gonna go grab something for you.  Don't leave 'till I get back.”

“Alyss, what are you doing?” Jagev sits back on her heels and twists around to stare at Alyss, but she doesn't answer.  She just whirls around and strides out, heading down the hall to Grace's room.

Virtue Team's all still there, right?

In response, Tori sends her a clear image of Virtue Team, including Grace, on the dais in the Great Hall where the Holders would usually reign, if they weren't all in a freaking coma at the moment. Fantastic.  Now only to worry about whatever traps might be guarding Grace's room.

She slows down as she approaches the gold-painted hardwood door.  The rune of protection is easy enough to spot, gleaming bright red across the door.  It fades to inactive gray with a touch of Alyss' own black-bordered red power.  Alyss checks over every other inch of the door just like Flash taught her, attempting to find other safeguards.

There seem to be none. A red flag pops up in the back of Alyss' mind. She wants to stop and go back over this more carefully, to ask for her teammates' opinions, but-

There's no time, Raina pushes.  A feeling of urgency quickens Alyss' heart.  Come on.  She's a Lightfire, she won't have trapped her room.

With a breath and a muttered prayer to Fire itself, Alyss pushes open Grace's door.

Nothing happens.  The hinges are silent, well-oiled.  The room within is neatly organized.  Alyss checks the doorframe cursorily before she steps inside.

Quickly, now.  Tori is glancing at her watch.  Five minutes have passed just by Alyss examining that door.  But no time to dwell on that, where would Grace keep a Sanctum key card?

Bedside drawer, Alyss decides after a momentary exchange with her teammates, and crosses over to it. No traps.  She opens it.  Nothing but a spare tampon and a singed copy of a Fablehaven book.  Damn. Where else?

Closet, desk, under the mattress.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  The low table with a sword care kit scattered over it?  Nope.  Having searched all the furniture in the room, Alyss steps back in frustration and glances at the open door.

Nobody's coming.  The unshuttered window?  The sunset spills into the room, turning everything to a glowing orange.  Alyss spins in place, her teammates' dread weighing on her heart as well as her own.  There has to be some other place, some clue...

There!  The whiteboard with the hourglass-like Sigil of the Elements drawn meticulously on it.  The top bits of hinges poke out from the right side.  Two steps take Alyss to it, and a gentle tug makes the whiteboard swing away smoothly from the wall in a flicker of sunset-gold, revealing a cubby set into the wall.

Alyss rifles through the contents.

Totems from different Elementals, gleaming with the stored power of their owners.  Maps.  A chimera-bone knife that Alyss had stolen from her mentor Flash on a dare, and which had been subsequently confiscated by Grace.  And, at the side of the cubby tucked in a recipe box, the Sanctum keycards.

Alyss!

“Alyss!”

One warning rings silent, the other heart-poundingly loud.  Alyss clutches the recipe box and reaches for her team.

Virtue Team, including Grace, are still talking in the great hall. But their former apprentices, Metallic Team, is gone.  Raina is facepalming.

Didn't you check the whiteboard for magic?

That hadn't been the sunset flashing, then, it had been a trap breaking when Alyss swung it away from the wall.  Stupid.  She knows better than that.

“What are you doing?” Clare presses.  Alyss turns around to see the other young warrior staring at her, arms folded.

She grimaces.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, breaking and entering into the Champion's room.  Clare, Jagev is going to die. Her entire team is going to die if they don't have protection for the night.  They don't know how to fight nighttime creatures, or even cloak themselves.  Clare. Please.  I just need a Sanctum keycard for them.”

Alyss stops to take a breath, searching Clare's impassive face. Clare raises her eyebrows.

“Nice speech,” she congratulates.  “I love being convinced of something I already knew.”

What? Raina asks in shock.  Clare reaches out for the recipe box in Alyss' hands and pops it open, withdrawing a single card.

“Here. Phoenix's Sanctum is nearest.  Tell Jagev the passcode is 3473.”

Alyss' shock must show on her face, because Clare pauses, then laughs.  She leans forward to kiss Alyss' nose.

“Honestly,” she says warmly.  “Jagev's my friend, too.  I don't know if she's telling the truth about why they all betrayed the Nation, but I don't want her to die.”

“Well, that's good,” Alyss manages.  A rather lame response.  She steps aside so Clare can replace the recipe box in the cubby and swing the whiteboard shut, renewing the enchantment with a flicker of gold-red power.

“For the record, neither of us helped Jagev,” Alyss says.  Flash's voice rings in her head. If you're going to lie, get your lies straight. “We were just... off, kissing.”

“That's believable.”  Clare spins and tries to snag her arm around Alyss' waist.  Alyss twists out of the way.

“C'mon!” She laughs.  “I've got to get this to Jagev before she leaves.”

“Right. Nightfall,” Clare says.  They both glance at the setting sun outside the window, now just a sliver above the buildings.

“Good luck,” says Clare.

Usually Alyss would give a sarcastic response, but right now, there's no time.  Tori's urgency is pushing her forward again.  The tightly-held key card bites into her hand as she half-runs down the hall, back to the apprentice dorms, and slams open the door.

“Jagev-”

The room is empty.

“Shit,” mutters Alyss under her breath.  Jagev's bag is gone.  The rest of her stuff is neat, like she's left it organized, and there's a folded piece of paper on her bed.  Alyss slips the key card into a pocket and reaches for the paper.

Sunset's too close.  Maddy wanted to leave right now.  Sorry.  You know my number, text me whatever you wanted to tell me.

Alyss swears again and reaches for her teammates.  She feels Tori stand up.

I'll get the card to them, she volunteers.  They can't have gone far, right?

Probably, Alyss agrees.  Audrey, can you help her?

Sure.

Both of them stand up.  Alyss closes her eyes and lets Raina pull her through their team connection.  Her body tingles, wavers, then she's standing in the Great Hall again and Audrey is taking the card from her hand with a drawn smile that does nothing to hide the concern Alyss can feel pulsing through her mind.  Tori is already gone and moving up to the exit.  Audrey follows after only a brief moment of hesitation.

Raina pulls Alyss down into her seat.  Alyss runs her fingers through her hair and sighs.

“Guess they're on their own, now.”

“We've done all we can,” Raina murmurs, slipping her arm around Alyss' shoulder.  Alyss leans into her teammate's body and sighs.

“Yeah.”

“They'll be okay.”

“Yeah.”  Alyss really doesn't want to talk, and Raina falls silent.  Alyss shuts her eyes and lets her mind wander to Tori and Audrey.

Gemstone Team isn't exactly difficult to find.  Alyss wasn't wrong when she said to Clare that Daytime teams were bad at cloaking themselves.  They're barely out of the neighborhood that houses the Earth base.  Audrey runs up to them to hand them the key card.

Alyss watches through Tori's eyes as Jagev takes it, sees the way Eliava twists and waves up to her fellow Wind.  Marcy stands beside Jagev, small and pale beneath her olive skin.  Maddy looks absolutely pissed.

“-careful,” Marcy is saying to Audrey.  “We're pretty sure there's something trying to kill the Holders.”

“What is it?”  Tori nudges Alyss silently, telling her to curb her curiosity, and jumps up to sit on the top of a wall.  Gemstone Team turns to face her.  Eliava grimaces.

“We don't know.  But-”

“It could be nothing,” Maddy grumbles.  “And we could be banished for nothing.  It's not like we've got any way to investigate, or any resources, or-”

“We'll figure something out.”  Jagev's confidence is inspiring. False, and Alyss can see the way her shoulders are tight and her hand is a fist around the precious key card, but inspiring.  “Thank you for this.  And the Sanctum passcode is...?”

3473, Alyss supplies, and Audrey relays it.  Marcy nods.

“Keep an eye out, okay?”

“We will,” Audrey says.  Tori murmurs assent.  The feeling of fierce agreement and solidarity flowing through their connection makes Alyss gasp and stiffen, Raina's arm tightening around her.  Is this what a team connection is supposed to feel like?  Everyone together, every person in agreement?  It's wonderful.

And then Gemstone is gone, vanishing into the growing twilight.  Audrey and Tori watch them disappear.

They'll be okay, Raina says, reassuring the doubt that overshadows their agreement.  Alyss smiles despite herself.

Of course they will be.  And we'll protect them as much as we can, right, Raptor Team?

Again the current of fierce agreement, and again Alyss stiffens as her heart beats faster, losing herself in the warmth of her team even as Gemstone faces their worst trial.

[cursivescrawl]

Terrified Kiss

Rating: G Category: Demons Summary:  Cobalt still has nightmares from his time as a slave in Hell.  Lucifer hates seeing his boyfriend terrified.

He woke up in a tiny cell.  The ceiling was only high enough for him to kneel, and even then, his head brushed the concrete.  His clothes were torn and dirty from the hard dirt floor.  He couldn't stretch out his arms without hitting one of three solid cement walls, and the fourth wall was composed of a fine metal mesh.

Like a dog cage, Cobalt thought involuntarily, scrambling to the back of the cell as black boots paced in front of the mesh.  His breathing came faster, heart pounding.  He thought he'd escaped the cages for good.  He thought they'd destroyed the cages.  He remembered it, the blue magic rushing through his veins and blazing outwards to tear down these hated walls, but somehow-

The familiar sound of the whip against the mesh cracked out, low laughter from one of the trainers as the man in the next cell yelped. All rational thought fled Cobalt's mind with fear, hands trembling, cowering in the back corner as the black boots stopped and the whip trailed across the mesh of his own cage.

“851, show yourself,” a rough voice commanded.  The whip snapped against the black boots.

Cobalt dragged himself forward, knowing he'd get a worse punishment if he defied the order.  His entire body shook harder the closer he got to the mesh.  A few inches away, and a whimper tore itself from his throat, a small sound that he couldn't muffle in time.

The whip snapped again.

“Put your hands where I can see them, 851, or you'll get the kiss,” the trainer commanded, a note of impatience now in the rough voice.

The threat just made Cobalt's breathing come quicker, his mind immediately traveling to the little room where the worst punishments were carried out.  He mouthed the kiss to himself, forcing his trembling hands to press against the wire mesh, seeing the whip coil and strike out-

It wasn't so much a sound that woke Lucifer as it was a sense.  He sat bolt upright, panting from the sudden jolt of fear.

Even now that he was awake, the fear still stayed a constant murmur in the back of his mind.  Lucifer patted the mattress beside him, realizing that Cobalt wasn't there.  He must be sleeping on the floor again.

Lucifer tucked his shoulder-length white hair back behind his ear and leaned over the edge of the bed.  The fear intensified as soon as he looked at the other demon.  Cobalt was trembling in his sleep, curling into a defensive fetal position with blue sparks of magic flickering around him.

Lucifer scooted off the bed and dropped to his knees next to his boyfriend.  “Cobalt?” he whispered, putting one hand on his shoulder.  Cobalt's shivering didn't stop.  If anything, it just intensified, and Cobalt was still asleep.

“Cobalt, wake up,” Lucifer said, gently shaking the thin shoulder.  Cobalt curled tighter.  He really was trembling like a leaf, obviously terrified of whatever he was dreaming.  Lucifer closed his eyes, trying to use their connection to see Cobalt's dream, but he was firmly blocked out for some reason.

Lucifer stared down at Cobalt again, wondering what to do next.  He hated seeing Cobalt terrified and helpless like this. But on the other hand, he still wasn't sure where he stood with the personality of Cobalt's past self that had been lurking in Cobalt's mind for nearly a month.

A small whimper tore itself from Cobalt's throat.  Lucifer couldn't take it anymore.  He leaned down and wrapped his arms around the other demon's thin frame, gathering Cobalt up as much as he could.

“Wake up,” he pleaded, feeling Cobalt's trembling still growing worse.  Cobalt's hands twitched like they were going to reach for something.

“The kiss...” he breathed, terror lacing his voice.  He cringed backwards almost immediately, squeezing his eyes more tightly shut.

Lucifer wet his lips and leaned down on an instinct.  It wasn't like he had any other ideas.

Cobalt's lips were cool and chapped, as usual.  Lucifer felt a shudder go through Cobalt's body as soon as their lips touched, which was an encouragement even if the trembling resumed immediately.  He kept trying, kissing Cobalt gently, praying for him to please wake up, please stop shaking, please-

Cobalt went limp.  Lucifer drew away a couple centimeters, opening his eyes halfway to watch Cobalt's clear blue eyes snap open, the remnants of soul-crushing fear still lingering in them.

“Lucifer...?”

Lucifer only drew breath to reply before Cobalt pressed up into him, lips fitting perfectly against his.  He tightened his grasp around Cobalt, relief tainting the kiss and turning it even more gentle than it had been.

Cobalt's hands timidly wrapped around Lucifer's neck, a shuddering sigh breaking through his nose before he pulled away and buried his head in Lucifer's shoulder.  Lucifer's knees were aching from the wooden floor.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he whispered to the messy blue hair resting on his shoulder.  Cobalt shook his head timidly, then lifted his face again to Lucifer.  A single tear was tracing its way down his pale cheek.

“Mas- Lucifer, can you... kiss me?” he whispered.

Lucifer nodded once and bent his head, carefully catching the salty tear with his lips before fitting them again to Cobalt's.

[cursivescrawl]

Reunion Kiss

Rating: G Category: Demons, Mafia Summary:  The mafia informant and her demon boyfriend reunite after far, far too long.

The teenage girl sat cross-legged on the couch, books and tablets and stacks of paper all around her.  A laptop to the side streamed upbeat instrumental music while displaying a scrolling news feed.  A pale boy in black stood behind her, black metal wings and blank red eyes the only signs that he wasn't human.  The girl's own robotic wings were coiled neatly on her back and hidden underneath her shirt.

She absently twirled the gray streak in her brown hair around her finger for a moment, reading through a paragraph in one of the books, then sighed and tossed it on the glass coffee table.

“Fang, skip this song,” she ordered.  The boy nodded and glanced over at the laptop, momentarily connecting to it and selecting a new track.

“Still unwilling to disturb your nest of work by changing your own music, Mistress?” he asked.  The girl made a noise of annoyance and shuffled through some of the papers.

“I didn't build you to be snarky, Fang,” she said.  Fang shrugged.

“You didn't recode me to not be snarky.”

“Shut up.”

Fang bowed and reached for the empty glass in front of his mistress, leaving the room with it.  The girl bent her head back to her work.

As she reached for another tablet, her fingers brushed against the purple crystal on her charm bracelet.  A tingle shot up her arm.  She retrieved the tablet and dropped it on her lap, then clutched at the crystal.

How long had it been now?  Di had said he'd be back in a month, at most.  But January had passed already, and now it was about a week into February.  The girl absently unlocked the tablet with her other hand and opened her email, scrolling down to make sure none of her clients were panicking about their information.

It wasn't like Di to be late, she mused, her finger hovering over the screen.  Her gaze shifted to the innocent purple crystal.

Di? she tried, sending her thoughts into the crystal and willing its owner to hear her.  There was no response, just like the past two weeks, but the girl could still feel the demon's presence at the end of their connection.  She sighed and forced herself back to the tablet.

If Di's business in Hell was taking him this long, fine.  She might actually get some work done for once.

Night's torn cloak crept over the sky, stars shimmering through the rips in the darkness.  The girl only noticed when it grew too dark for her to work, then she simply yelled for Fang or another of her six robotic servants to come turn on the lights.  Oh, and get her another glass of iced tea.

Fang leaned against a wall now, periodically checking his internal clock as he watched his mistress.  It was now past midnight and she'd been nestled in her precious information since the morning.  Maybe it was time to bring up the subject of sleep.

Before he could decide one way or another, a pocket of black smog began to swirl behind the girl.  Fang pushed himself off the wall and stretched his wings, making sure his runed switchblade was where it was supposed to be just in case this wasn't who he thought it was.

The smog thickened and condensed into a young man, his slim body mostly covered by a black cloak.  His dark hair lightened to purple at the edges, electric blue eyes surrounded by black where there should have been white.

“Dark?”

The girl yelped, eight-foot steel wings uncoiling and shooting to their full length, knocking information everywhere.  She twisted around and nearly hit the demon with one wing.  He jumped out of the way just in time.

“Di?”

Fang settled back into his comfortable position by the wall as his mistress and her boyfriend stared at each other.  Di would rather die than hurt his mistress, he knew – he'd demonstrated that on several occasions.  And as long as Dark was safe, Fang could relax.

Dark, on the other hand, wasn't so calm.  She got off the couch, picking her way through the scattered information.  Di moved to help her, but she waved him away.

“You're late,” she said, keeping her voice steady.  Di's gaze dropped.

“Queen Helena wanted me to kill a group of witches that were summoning demons,” he muttered, then his eyes locked onto Dark's again. “Magic hurts, did you know that?  And they can just disappear and reappear in a different place!  I can't even track them!”

“So is that why it took the best assassin in Hell more than a month to come back?”  The words came out more bitingly than Dark had intended.  She shuffled her wings, now folded on her back, as the excitement faded from Di's face and guilt set in.

He looked at the ground, shoving his hands in his pockets.  “Sorry, I should have told you what was going on,” he muttered.

Dark watched him for a moment, trying to sort through her own feelings.  Sure, she was mad that Di had just disappeared off the face of the earth for over a month (literally.  Hell was vaguely underground), but the anger paled in comparison to her relief that he was back safely, among some other, less appropriate feelings for him.

Oh well.  She had never been very good at holding grudges.

Dark stepped forward and buried her face in his collarbone, slipping her arms under his cloak and around his waist.  He tensed in surprise.

“I was worried about you,” she said into his neck, and felt his hands tentatively splay across her back beneath her wings.  She coiled them quickly to make the hug more comfortable.

“Sorry,” he repeated.  Dark felt gentle lips brush across the top of her head.  The touch sent shivers down her spine.

“Next time, tell me when you're going to be late,” she whispered, tilting her head up to catch his next kiss with her lips.  Her hands ran up and down his back, feeling the scars layered over corded muscles, the same strength with which he kissed her.

She stretched up on tip-toe and pressed herself against him, nipping his lower lip gently.  Di's mouth opened just enough for Dark to slip her tongue in, gently pressing against his sharp canines but not going farther.

Di was the one who broke away first.  Dark felt his lips pull away from hers, felt his hands pulling her closer, and opened her eyes to see his tongue swiping across his lips in a motion that looked involuntary.  She swallowed.

“I missed you,” he said quietly.  Dark had to look away from his electric blue eyes before staring into them made her dizzy.

“Tell me where you are next time,” she muttered.  The cross tone was negated almost immediately as she buried her head back in his chest.  His arms tightened around her.

It was only a few moments before she felt Di's lips pressing against the top of her head again in an almost apologetic kiss.  He must really be feeling guilty if he was initiating a kiss like this, but honestly, Dark was in no mood to stop it.  This was a nice change.

She was almost tempted to kiss him again.

[cursivescrawl]

Sympathy

Rating: T Category: Demons Summary: Under Hell’s system of overworked assassins and cruel trainers, a single demon tries to help his best friend.

The demon called 247 used the tip of his right-hand katana to catch the woman's phone as it fell from her limp fingers, flipping it to the side.  It shattered against the wall and went dark.

He stepped back, pulling the left-hand katana from her back.  It came out with a familiar sound of muscle and bone and blood rubbing against metal, and 247 idly twisted it, watching the moon glint off the red-silver shine of blood on metal as the woman's body crumpled to the gravel of the alleyway.  One down, nine to go.

He licked at the blood on his blade, lapping it up instead of wiping it off.  It was a pitifully small amount.  His stomach still rumbled when the steel of his katana was shining silver again.  Only then did he bend to wipe his blades cursorily on a clean part of the woman's suit, sliding his blades back into their sheath.

The back of his neck prickled with an uncomfortable feeling.  Was there someone watching him?  247 felt the blood he'd just drunk churn in his stomach as he imagined his trainers stalking him.  But if they were following, wouldn't they have stopped him before he ate?

Unless they wanted an excuse to punish him....

The twisted wire embedded under the skin of his calf throbbed painfully as the thought flashed across his mind.  He looked backwards, already preparing his excuses and apologies before he caught a glimpse of black smog retreating behind a dumpster.

His fears promptly went out the window.

“Go to hell, 001,” he called crossly.  A muffled snort came from behind the dumpster.

“Been there, done that, got the black sclera.”

247 turned around properly to watch 001's materialized form step out from behind the dumpster.  The purple tips of his black hair caught the moonlight strangely, as did the electric blue eyes surrounded by black.

“Didn't your trainers tell you not to eat?”  001 smirked.  “I didn't know you could be disobedient.”

“Shut up,” 247 grumbled, turning away and reaching for the empty bag inside his coat.  He undid the drawstring and knelt down, squinting to see the woman's soul.  His demonic sight was fading in one eye, he'd noticed.  Hopefully it was just temporary.

The woman's soul was fluttering frantically in her chest, trying to get away from the two demons.  247 reached out, scooping the soul up and feeling it throw itself against his cupped hands.  His stomach growled.

“Just eat it,” 001 said.  Boots crunched on gravel, the sounds of 001 walking closer.  “Really.  When's the last time you were fed?”

“A week ago,” 247 said through gritted teeth.  He carefully squeezed the soul, pressing it until it stopped moving, then dropped it into the bag and shut it again.

“And you're still obeying your trainers?”  001 sounded half-annoyed, half-disdainful.  247 shrugged and stood up.

“Maybe if you obeyed more often, your trainers wouldn't be so hard on you.”

001 snorted.  “No.  They wouldn't.  Father doesn't give a shit, and Master just likes hearing me scream.  I swear you got the trainer jackpot.  They love you.”

“They'd love to have more reasons to punish me,” 247 corrected.  “I just try very hard not to give them reasons.”

001 looked skeptical.  “And that's why you're on  first-name terms with them.  And  they don't yell at you for talking in the blocks. Right.”

“It's called favors.”  247 pitched his voice higher, like he was talking to a child.  “Can you say favors?  I do stuff for them, and they do stuff for me in return, isn't that nice?”

“I'm going to fucking murder you.”

“Good luck.  How many do you have to hunt?”

“Twenty souls. I assume you're not going to eat that.”  001 gestured to the woman's body.  247 pushed his hunger down and shook his head.

001 snorted.  “Wimp.”

He nudged 247 aside and knelt by the woman's body, a dagger appearing from smog in his hand.  He sliced open the woman's neck and made sure blood was flowing before pressing his mouth to the slit, lapping up the blood.

“What, your trainers didn't tell you not to eat?” 247 asked, already knowing the answer.  001 gave him a prompt middle finger.

He drained the woman's body of blood, stood up, and kicked the corpse to the side.  Then he winced and leaned down to rub his knee.

“It's nothing,” he snapped at 247's look of concern.  “If you want to hunt together, let's go.”

“Who said I wanted to hunt together?”

001 glared.  247 sighed.

“Fine, fine.  Let's go.”

“Thought so,” 001 sneered.  He took a few quick steps to the end of the alley before breaking into a run.  247 followed him, the wire in his calf throbbing whenever he put weight on that leg.

001 was limping again, he noticed.  It was always this way with the other demon.  His trainers never gave him a day to recover, forcing injury upon injury and pushing 001 to the breaking point with no time to heal himself.  If 247 could just give him one day to rest, then his normal demonic healing factor would kick in.

A tiny idea started forming in his mind.  001 glanced back and yelled a question.

“How many are you hunting?”

247 smiled.  “Fifteen,” he lied.

247 waited as Dash counted the souls, his eyes cast down and hands clasped in front of him.  The perfect, non-threatening, demure assassin pose.

Finally, his trainer looked up.  “Have you forgotten how to count?  I asked for ten, not fifteen.”  247 dipped his head even further.

“That's because, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask a favor.”

Dash looked up, his attention on his assassin.  “Explain.”

247 swallowed his nervousness. “If possible, I'd like you to lend me to trainers Alistair and Jaquen for a day.”

“Why?”

All of 247's carefully planned explanations and lies suddenly sounded flimsy, even to him, under Dash's judging gaze.  He silently scrambled to construct a different explanation.  If he lied, Dash would be able to tell, but if he told the truth, he'd be punished for being sympathetic.

He heard Dash fumbling with the drawstring of the bag, and looked up to see his trainer lifting one of the purest souls to his mouth.  His sharp teeth neatly sliced it in half.  247's stomach growled at the scent.

“Your reason, 247,” Dash commanded.  247 swallowed and looked down again.

“I... want to give my hunting partner a day off.”  Mostly truth, half lie, and he hurried to elaborate so Dash wouldn't punish him for compassion.  “Hunting is easier with him, but his trainers are constantly pushing him to the breaking point and his injuries are starting to get on my nerves.  So I thought if I let his trainers use me for a day, he'd have the day of recovery time he needs to be helpful again.”

Dash hummed in thought.  247 flicked his gaze up to see his trainer popping the other half of the soul into his mouth, black-rimmed brown eyes examining his assassin.

“And what if they break you?” Amarth asked lazily.  247 hadn't noticed him leaning against the other side of the cell bars.  “Or ruin our drawings?”

247 would be quite happy to have the drawings ruined, the patterned scars that Amarth and Dash both liked carving into his skin.  But since he'd already died once and wasn't keen to repeat the experience, he said nothing.

Dash tossed Amarth the bag of souls.  Amarth caught it by the drawstring, swinging open the cell door with his foot and scooping a child's soul from the bag.

“Decent quality,” he commented, tilting his head back and dropping the feathery-gold soul into his mouth.  He sealed the bag again and tossed it back to Dash. “247, look at me.”

247 raised his head immediately, meeting Amarth's calculating gaze.

“I'll ask Jaquen and Alistair if they want you for a day.  If they agree, I'll warn them not to break you.  If they don't, I'll see what I can do about your hunting partner.”

247 knew there was an additional price for Amarth's last offer.  He stayed silent, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“And when you come back, Dash and I will start the other half of that tree.”

There it was.  247 resisted the urge to rub his forearm where half of a tree was scarred into his skin.  That one had taken the longest yet to heal.  He bit back a protest, remembering 001's limp and his biting denial that anything was wrong.

“Yes, Amarth.  Thank you.”

He didn't tell 001 what he'd done when Dash and Amarth sent him back to his cell.  001's cell was across from 247's, both just small concrete rooms with one wall of bars facing a bleak hallway of more cages.  He didn't tell 001 all through their usual nightly conversation, though the other demon did seem to notice 247 was tense.  001 didn't ask. Neither of them ever did.  It was better that way.

Even when the trainers started stalking down the halls, rousing their assassins for whatever tasks or punishment they had, 247 kept silent. 001 glanced across at him, absently playing with a dagger he'd formed from smoke.

Then 001 tensed, automatically shrinking back against the back wall before forcing himself to a casual position.  247 heard it a few moments after 001 did – the measured tread of Alistair, 001's cruel “Master”.

He put a hand on the floor, ready to scramble to a kneel in case Amarth had put his favor through.  When Alistair came into view, 001 looked up with insolence in his eyes, daring Alistair to hurt him again.

Alistair didn't even look at 001.

247 rose onto his knees, trying to ignore the confusion on 001's face and pointedly not looking up at Alistair.  He could feel the other demon's gaze on him, examining every part of his body, and forced himself to relax, forced his breathing into a steady pattern, though he couldn't do anything about his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

“Is this the one?” Alistair called down the hall.  Dash yelled something that sounded like agreement.  247 didn't dare move a muscle even when Alistair's eyes were off him.

A different set of footsteps stopped in front of his cell.  247 heard the quick intake of breath from 001's cell, glanced up just enough to see the demon in black boots standing next to Alistair and to see 001's eyes suddenly on the floor.  There was only one demon that could actually make 001 obey with his mere presence.

“Don't play with him too much,” Jaquen said with the faintest hint of amusement in his voice.  “I want to see how he hunts later.”

Play? 247 bit the inside of his cheek, trying to figure out what Jaquen meant.  Then he heard the door of his cell being unlocked and Alistair stepping inside, bent his head more towards the ground, and willed himself to ignore the growing pain in his knees.

Then Alistair's hand was on his shoulder, roughly shoving down.  247 caught himself with his hands before his face hit the floor, saw 001's eyes widen, and barely registered Alistair's kick before it landed to his chest.

247 heard the rib snap before he felt it.  He fell to the ground, Alistair saying something that sounded vaguely disappointed but the words of which he couldn't make out through the pain.

Then something sharp and cold pressed to his side and he choked back a cry, black edging his vision.

The last thing he saw was the absolute horror on 001's face.

And the first thing he thought when he woke up to find himself in chains in an unfamiliar cell with torture implements scattered around and Alistair humming as he prepared a serrated knife, was that he would kill anyone and do anything to get 001 out of this situation for good.