#(that might be more the influx of family and friends visiting than the baby herself though)
Note
have you done an Ella - museum curator, Robb - investor on a tour work??
Ummmm no I had not! And wow was this one cathartic to write. It came out way longer than expected because this is a subject near and dear to my heart...
Thank you for this prompt!!
***
She was so sick of this shit.
Over a year of it. Ever since the governor’s order in April 2020. Back then she’d almost believed it was just a blip, a couple of weeks. A vacation, almost.
But then the ban on gatherings. The shutdowns. Finally the masks.
Every museum in the country had shut its doors along with libraries, movie theaters, and every other place desperate parents could take their children on a rainy Saturday.
Theirs had been luckier than most. An endowment a few years prior, which had been earmarked but not mandated for an expansion had been used to keep the lights on and the staff fed - literally. Their programming had gone virtual and understandably attendance had dropped but not entirely – thanks to a few local artists that had generously donated their time for a last minute plug.
Ever since restrictions had lifted, the crowds had returned somewhat. A rainy spring and summer had helped, but they were nowhere near their ‘pre-pandemic’ levels (and with the Delta variant on the rise she wasn’t super comfortable with the term ‘post-pandemic’ to describe their current state of affairs).
She wouldn’t say that today though.
No, today everything would be rosy – not just the botanical gardens that abutted the museum and had been started in 1853 – no, 1854.
Not that she imagined the potential donor would be fact checking her but nevertheless there was no room for error. She needed to represent the museum well. Her colleagues were counting on her – not to mention the collection itself depended on her.
The board had decided at its most recent meeting if they didn’t get an influx of donations within this quarter they were going to sell off a few pieces from the collection.
There was nothing sadder to a museum than deaccessioning. The staff all loved and protected the collection, and they truly felt the impact they and it had on the community. Myrcella loved to walk through the galleries on Thursday afternoons to see the regulars who’d come to visit the paintings like old friends of theirs, stopping by to say hello to a Baroque oil here or an Impressionist watercolor there.
So if schmoozing yet another prospective donor was what it took to mean that Mr. Poole’s favorite still-life stayed put for his bi-weekly Wednesday morning visit, then she would schmooze. She would schmooze Sansa Stark like her life depended on it.
She knew Sansa Stark sort of. It was the sort of thing where pre-pandemic they had run into each other at half a dozen events every year and always had a lovely chat and discussed getting together and then never did. The North was a small world and they ran in similar circles. But they weren’t friends.
Still, she was her best bet. From the wealthiest and most philanthropic family in the North, of course she was.
And she had to deliver.
The board had all made it clear that they expected results, and it had been suggested that really Myrcella Baratheon shouldn’t have such a hard time finding donors. But all her usual suspects had come to her with their own sob stories full of please tell me you won’t shut your doors but without any promise of relief, and the people she knew down south – the sort that profited from the world being in such dire straits had no interest in a little regional museum. No matter how much she marketed it as a hidden jewel.
To them, there was little worth in a jewel hidden, and they had no interest in having their act of charity buried under the northern snows.
So Sansa Stark was it.
She smoothed her dress, chosen carefully for the occasion. Sansa was always impeccably dressed and favored ladylike, tailored dresses for daytime, just as Myrcella did. Today, which had turned out to be a gorgeous one, she’d chosen a pale blue scallop trim knit dress, her grandmother’s wristwatch her only accessory. Feminine but appropriate. More comfortable than the clingier dresses she only ever so occasionally wore when taking around a male potential benefactor.
“Good luck,” Gilly, their glum registrar said as she raised her wrist to her nose to make sure she could still smell the scented oil she’d spread there that morning.
“Thanks baby,” Myrcella sighed, “Lunch from that naughty salad place when I’m done? My treat?”
Gilly smiled at that, “My treat if you get her.”
“Oh, now the stakes are really high,” she teased and blew Gilly a kiss and walked through the halls.
She felt eyes on her as she went. It was a small, tight-knit team, and it made it all the harder every time she received a sheepish regret. If she couldn’t succeed, one of them might lose their job if the board couldn’t decide what to sell. Even if they could, depending on how long this lasted.
Game face, Baratheon.
She took a deep breath and then smiled for fifteen seconds. She let it drop, knowing that it would still be in her eyes when she walked outside and it felt a little more genuine when her heels clacked along the gorgeous marble floor.
Walking over to the security desk, the smile reappeared on her face.
“Morning Roddy,” she grinned.
“Good morning to you Miss Myrcella,” Rodrick greeted her, “You see the game last night?”
“You’ve known me for four years,” she noted, “When in all of that time have I ever seen the game?”
He chuckled, “There was that one time in 2018.”
“Oh no, I totally lied about that,” she assured him, shrugging, “I wanted you to think I was cool.” She then looked around the empty lobby, “No Miss Stark?”
He grimaced, “Not yet. Traffic is back though, folks still aren’t used to it.”
She nodded, picking at a non-existent thread on her dress and looked around. Her eyes narrowed in on something and she crossed the lobby and picked up a tiny scrap of paper, crumbling it in her hand and then walking back over and tossing it in the trash behind Roddy’s desk.
“I’ve been sitting here for two hours, didn’t see it,” he noted.
She smiled, “Well you’ve been doing less important things like making sure no one robs the place.”
He opened his mouth to say something to her but then his gaze was directed behind her, “I’m sorry, sir, we don’t open until 11 o’clock on Tuesdays.”
“I sort of have an appointment,” the man said.
She knew that voice. She’d heard it before. In a coat closet at Alys Karstark’s birthday party. At the next table over at a charity even in 2019. Deep, stubbornly Northern, as unyielding as Valyrian steel.
She felt her palms sweat and forced herself not to rub them on her dress, rubbing them together instead and then turning around with a bright smile.
“You’re not Sansa Stark,” she greeted him.
He grinned sheepishly, though she wasn’t sure this man had ever had occasion to be sheepish in his entire life, “Afraid not. Myrcella, right? We met at that thing – that um… save the…whatsits.”
She giggled, and she heard the sound echoing garishly on the marble, “I believe that evening we were saving the seals. Or the… tulips, maybe.”
His smile spread slowly across his face, a dimple marking its end like an exclamation point, “Well we did our part even if we can’t remember what it was, I’m Robb Stark.”
She liked that he introduced himself. He’d done so every time they’d met, as though he in no way expected her to remember him. Sansa had done it the first five or so. Must have been how they were raised.
On the other hand, she’d been raised to act as though someone was foolish for not knowing who she was, introducing herself had been something she’d had to learn when she moved north, like parallel parking and salting her stoop.
Her hand extended and his met it, taking hers in his larger one and shaking it firmly as he looked her in the eyes briefly and then her lips slightly longer before purposefully going back to her eyes, “Myrcella Baratheon, and I remember you, Mr. Stark.”
“Well if that were true you’d remember I prefer Robb,” he noted, releasing her hand.
She shrugged, leaning forward conspiratorially, “Old habits. Can I get you something to drink before we begin our tour?”
“No thank you, I’m fine,” he shook his head.
She nodded, “Well it’s beautiful out now, why don’t we start in the botanical gardens. There’s been a bumper crop this year, we recently had the Cerwyn wedding here, did you attend?”
He fell into step next to her and said, “No, I didn’t. I was meant to but they reduced it to just family.”
She nodded, “Right, seems to be happening quite a bit. Will you do the same for your wedding?”
He stopped walking briefly and before she could stop too he had started again, “No… uh, rather than reduce the guest list we decided not to have it at all. We called the engagement off in January.”
“I’m so sorry!” she internally stabbed herself in the throat, “I didn’t know.”
He shrugged, “The nice thing about there not being any events over the past year is that the press didn’t really get wind of it.” Then stopped abruptly, “Not that… it’s not like that makes up for the past year or anything.”
She laughed, “Don’t worry, I know what you meant. I am sorry though, about your engagement.”
“As am I,” he agreed, “But it’s for the best. We parted as friends. Had we gotten married, I’m not sure we could have done so, so I’m grateful for that, and for her.”
A gentleman.
So many men played the part. Opening doors, buying flowers. So few of them realized that manners mattered very little when they were offered without grace.
“That’s lovely,” she noted, pleased for once not to have to lie.
It was a gorgeous day, a perfect seventy-nine degrees and clear blue skies. As though they’d understood the importance of the occasion, the Phlox stood proudly in battle formation and the scent of honeysuckle surrounded them.
“Sansa wanted me to apologize for missing your meeting,” Robb noted.
“I hope nothing’s the matter?” she asked.
A grin overtook his face, “No nothing at all. She’s in labor.”
She smiled, grabbing his forearm briefly. They both looked down at her hand on it and she pulled it back as gingerly as she could.
“That’s wonderful,” she told him, “Her second, right?”
He nodded, “A girl. And I’ve convinced her out of the name Corona.”
She chuckled, “Oh come now, you could call her Corrie for short.”
“And her parents idiots for long,” he noted. Then told her, “They weren’t really going to call her Corona.”
She smiled, “And here I was about to tip off the press…”
He smirked, “Narrow miss, then.” He looked around, “So. Flowers.”
“Not just flowers,” she pointed out, “We have a community garden to the left and down that lane local beekeepers keep their hives.”
“My mistake,” he allowed with a close-lipped smile.
That smile annoyed her. It was the same one she’d heard in the voice of every southern donor she’d called when they’d offered her good luck with her little country museum.
It was the smile someone gave her when she’d already lost.
“Perhaps we should go inside,” she noted, “I can show you our contemporary wing which we’ve recently devoted to elevating female and underrepresented artists. Or perhaps that’s a bit too avant-garde for you. Would you like to see our hall of armor and weaponry? I believe we have a few pieces that your ancestors left on one battlefield or another.”
“I’m sorry,” he noted, rubbing his jaw, “I told Sansa we should just cancel this meeting but she insisted.”
“With all due respect, Mr. Stark –“
“Robb,” he corrected her.
“No, I’m addressing Mr. Stark right now,” she argued, all of the frustration and helplessness of the past few months bubbling up inside of her, “May I ask what exactly it is about this that you find amusing? Is it the painting that we’re going to have to sell so that it can end up in someone’s climate controlled storage unit and never looked at again? Or is it the leaky roof? Perhaps the pay cut we asked all senior employees to take? Or how about the summer interns who had gone through a rigorous hiring process only to be told we couldn’t take them on at all? I certainly hope it’s not the seniors who used to come here for their Saturday afternoon watercolor classes which we had to cancel because we didn’t have anything to pay the instructor even though it would have been the perfect activity for them because it is outdoors and safe. Or maybe it’s the after-school programs you find so laughable…”
“I’m not laughing,” he pointed out. “But you’ll forgive me if I take your righteousness with a grain of salt.”
“I’m not sure that I will, actually,” she argued.
“No?” he asked, “Well let’s talk about those seniors? Don’t you think that funding is better spent ensuring they have free and safe access to the vaccination that can actually save their lives? Or what about those kids? Sure, the after-school program is great, but how about providing computers to allow them to do remote learning? Now I’m sorry if you have to lose one of a thousand paintings in this place, but if money can be better spent giving people what they really need then I’m sorry – sell the damn thing.”
That was hard to argue with.
But not impossible.
“So you’ve drained your coffers?” she asked.
There was only room for one of them on the moral high ground and she’d always enjoyed the view.
His cheeks had turned blotchy in anger but they paled now, “Excuse me?”
“Are you in the red?” she asked, “Declaring bankruptcy? Let’s not go that far - Taking out loans? Leveraging assets?”
His jaw clenched, revealing a muscle in his left cheek that might have been attractive if she wasn’t about to rip his head off.
“No,” he noted, “But my family’s company and my family have given an exceptional amount this year already.”
“Well,” she pointed out, “It has been an exceptional year already.”
“Are you always this haughty with potential donors?” he asked, stepping ever so slightly closer to her.
A flash in her mind of his hand ghosting across the back of her neck as he secured her coat over her shoulders. That smell.
“Never,” she admitted, stepping ever so slightly towards him, “But you’re not a potential donor, are you? And tell me, is it really because you don’t think it’s worthwhile or because it doesn’t sound worthwhile?”
His face contorted in anger, “You think we’re giving so that people will write songs about us? We want this country back on its feet. We want to return to normal and if we can’t do that, we want to make sure to give people as comfortable an existence until it reverts on its own. Tell me, Miss Baratheon, can you actually find fault in that?”
She shook her head, “No, I can’t.” He looked surprised and she shrugged, “It’s a flawless argument. Just an incomplete one. Giving an exceptional amount right now isn’t enough. You have to give until it hurts, because you can. It is wonderful, exceptional, heroic, to be doing all that you have done so far. But what comes next? What comes after? What happens when the dust settles? When things open? When we get things under control? What happens when people are ready to return to what was before and none of it is left because it wasn’t deemed essential. Because it’s just flowers and amateur beekeepers and pretty watercolors? I understand that we are not on the top of the list and we shouldn’t be. But we should be on the list. We need to do more than survive, Robb. There are things apart from us that we need to endure. Things we need to protect.”
His mouth twitched at that.
“I’m sorry to say I don’t have time to see the armor,” he told her.
She felt the defeat trickle through her veins slowly.
She held out her hand, “Thank you for letting me rant at you.”
He shook it once again, narrowing his eyes at her, “Something tells me you’ve still got some left in the tank. I’d quite like to hear it. Have dinner with me tonight and convince me.”
It was happening to all of her girlfriends. After a year in isolation, their ability to detect a creep from a mile away had withered. She hadn’t thought that hers had too. He’d seemed like one of the good ones.
She pulled her hand away, “That’s not the way I do business, Mr. Stark.”
His eyes widened in horror, “No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t get to make these decisions.”
“You’re the CEO,” she pointed out.
“Yes I am but Sansa insisted on inserting a clause into her contract that she gets final say over any philanthropic decisions,” he sighed, “I literally am not even allowed to choose the location of a book drive.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at that, a tiny bit of hope bubbling inside of her, “So when you said you should have cancelled the meeting…”
“It’s because Sansa’s already decided that we will be giving a donation, she wanted to discuss the structure of it with you – you know whether you’d prefer a lump sum, or whether you want it in increments, if you wanted it to be public to inspire other donors or whether you wanted it to be private so that they couldn’t use it as an excuse not to give…” he waved his hand, “She’s better at the specifics and I’m sure she’ll be calling you in between contractions to fine tune them.”
She laughed, “Please tell her not to. A pledge is more than enough to take to my board, we can map out the nitty gritty whenever she or whomever will be replacing her in the interim has time.”
He nodded, “You’ll have them within the week.”
She was about to thank him but the words caught in her mouth, “So wait a second… did you just wind me up for the sake of it?”
He grinned, a chuckle present in his voice though it hadn’t yet broken, “I’d like to point out that it took very little to wind you up.”
She laughed, because he was right and admitted, “It’s been a tough year.”
He nodded, “For everyone. So, now that you know I have absolutely no control and can hold absolutely nothing over you… have dinner with me.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I enjoy arguing with you,” he told her, then grinned sheepishly, “And because I lied. Sansa told me that I could cancel the meeting and I insisted on coming because I wanted to see you. The bad thing about this year is that there were no events where I could have a chance of bumping into you…”
“Oh that’s the bad thing about this year?” she asked.
“Well,” he grinned, then did a scarily good impression of her, “Maybe it shouldn’t be at the top of the list, but it should be on the list.”
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Sacrifice: the Rise of Adeline Goode | II. GUIDED BY A BEATING HEART
(an American Horror Story fic)
author’s note: hi, this is part 2/2 of a collaboration with @tempusinfinituumword count is 4,299 words.
"There is a home and a family waiting for you."
Adeline sat cross legged on her fire escape, facing her bedroom window. She was leaned forward so she could get a somewhat clear view of the small box TV that sat on her dresser. Her eyes were fixated on the staticky screen. She'd seen that woman before. She'd seen her more times than she could count—but always when she was asleep.
Adeline knew she was different at a young age. She could do things her foster siblings couldn't—and when you were a child of the system, what made you different made you a target. It wasn't until the summer she turned thirteen that she met a young girl who claimed to be a witch. The girl shared a lot of similarities with Adeline, including things they could do like telekinesis or lighting a flame with their mind. Adeline had a constant sense of calm the few times the witch visited her.
They met on her first day in the group home. Adeline was having a hard time adjusting, especially after the incidences at her last foster home. She was sitting by a small brook, leaning back against a tree when she heard someone humming. The song was familiar; Adeline's subconscious recognized the melody and she caught herself humming along. The older witch was startled, not having seen the petite blonde curled up on the ground. The two of them started talking, and before long Adeline was having to rush home to try to make it there before curfew. It was at their second meeting that the girl admitted to being a witch, telling her that's what lead her to Adeline. "I could sense you were one of my tribe," the girl would say anytime they spoke about their first meeting. She taught Adeline what she knew—which wasn't much as far as structure goes—when it came to magic. In exchange, at the older woman's request, Adeline would read to her every day for an hour after school.
When the girl stopped visiting, Adeline shut down for a few days, an unexpected depression overwhelming her existence. It lasted for less than a week, then Adeline was back to her normal self. She started spending less time in the woods—it made her sad, reminding her of her long lost friend. This, however, meant that was more time she'd spend at the group home—which meant more time to be a direct target of abuse and torment at the hands of some of the other girls.
That day on the fire escape was the first day in a year that Adeline wasn't bothered. She wasn't being pushed, slapped, or cussed out every other minute. She convinced Rita to let her skip school, telling the older woman she was dealing with a stomach bug. Once Rita had left for work, Adeline got the bag she'd kept packed under her bed. She did that in every foster home she lived in, in the event she needed an exit strategy. She was climbing onto the fire escape when—for a reason she couldn't yet tell—the voice on the TV stopped her. She turned around, sat down, and watched the interview.
Adeline felt like she was seeing a ghost, or the physical embodiment of her childhood imaginary friend. She'd had frequent dreams that involved this person, and she knew that was a sign. She had to find her. When the news flashed the name of the school once more, and Adeline quickly memorized the address that was listed beneath it. She used to think her photographic memory was one of her powers, until she changed foster homes and met another girl who shared the same talent. She felt a twinge of sadness when the girl briefly crossed her mind, but she shook it off and started on her journey to Robichaux’s.
It was long after dark when Adeline finally arrived at the large manor. She, being a foster child in a group home, obviously didn't have a cell phone. She stopped at one of the tourist stores that frequented almost every block in New Orleans, using the small amount of money she had to buy a map. She walked up the front steps onto the large, cypress wood porch. "Wait," she stopped herself. "What the hell am I doing?" Her fight or flight started kicking in, but it was too late. Despite her stopping herself from knocking and making virtually no noise at all, Adeline heard the lock click as it was unlocked and the front door opened.
—
Cordelia took a deep breath, her heels clicking against the linoleum in the kitchen. She had a newfound confidence to her as Supreme. Something she'd been desperately missing for so long. Something she didn't know she could be capable of. The middle-aged witch could feel the presence of someone outside and made her way to the door of the school to allow an interviewer inside - for the very first time.
"I don't believe we need to hide any longer," the witch simply stated when asked why she'd chosen that particular time in the school's history to 'come out' about what used to be their own little secret. "There's no reason to feel ashamed. Or forgotten. Or lost or alone when you have a whole world waiting for you. People just like you, people who understand and want to help you grow in your powers and abilities - it's nothing to be scared of. It's a gift," the blonde witch assured anyone listening beyond that room. Cordelia whole-heartedly hoped she could reach hundreds of young girls who were in the predicament she found herself in years before.
Even though Cordelia never truly felt ashamed due to her witchcraft, her mother on the other hand, made her ashamed of herself. Cordelia always sold herself short and felt so small. Shipped off to school at a young age and so far away from home hurt the young witch. She never knew her father, but had only heard terrible things about him from her estranged mother. She wished that as a young witch she would've had a leader like herself. And that was her greatest accomplishment to date - taking care of, teaching and most importantly, protecting her girls.
It took a day or so, but Cordelia began to see the influx of young witches come to visit her at Miss Robichaux's. Some were certainly powerful young witches, some were just beginning to spread their wings, and some weren't witches at all. She managed to find the ones that belonged to her coven, assuring them that they would be loved, cherished, and protected.
On one particular day, Cordelia felt something deep inside her. Something gnawing at her heart a little bit, something she'd never really felt before. The witch felt a presence outside of the manor - one that held familiarity and curiosity. She stood, her heels clicking against the linoleum flooring as she got up from the kitchen table. Tap, tap, tap she went. Cordelia put her hand out and swiftly unlocked the door without a single touch. Her heart skipped a beat once she reached the door and opened it cautiously.
Adeline's breath caught in her throat when the older woman opened the door. She observed the woman for a moment—not long enough to seem creepy but long enough to take in her gestures. The blonde’s face was gentle and kind, her composure more proper than Adeline had ever seen in an adult. Adeline focused on her eyes—they had the same eyes.
When she was little and she dreamed about Cordelia, for a brief time she thought that maybe the woman in her dreams was her birth mother. When she saw her on TV, the thought crossed her mind for the first time in years. Now, standing before Cordelia, she questioned that. Maternal instincts were practically visibly radiating off of her; there was no way she'd give a kid up for adoption.
"Uh, hi I'm..." she debated for a second on lying about her name in case the woman called her social worker, but she wasn't great at lying on the spot. "My name is Adeline. I saw you on TV...and I think I might be a witch."
Cordelia couldn't shake the feeling of familiarity once she'd opened the door and set her eyes upon the girl on the other side. She knew she'd never met her before - right? She didn't look familiar..but somehow she felt familiar. She studied her for a few seconds, although it somehow felt like much longer.
Cordelia had always dreamt of being a mother. She always wished so badly that she could give a child the exact opposite that she'd had growing up. With her husband, she couldn't get pregnant and it broke her heart. She held so much resentment inside - but now she knew why. She needed to be there for her girls - and having a baby probably would've stifled her from doing so. It didn't mean that she didn't still have that urge every now and then, even though she truly did think of her girls as her own.
The witch studied her for a few seconds longer. "It's nice to meet you," she responded, her tone soft and caring, yet still a little cautious. "I'm Cordelia. Cordelia Goode, welcome to Miss Robichaux's." The witch felt inclined to shake the young girl's hand. She wanted to be polite and welcoming, but also yearned to know more about her.
Adeline felt her heart squeeze when she heard her voice. She'd heard that voice before...it was a very, very distant memory—it probably wasn't even real. She blinked a few times, trying to force the sense of deja vu to the back of her mind. Even if this woman wasn't her mother, she didn't think it would be fair to put the burden of caring for her on Cordelia. Adeline was damaged goods and she knew it. All she would do is self-destruct and bring down everything and everyone with her. That's what always happened. She looked back up at Cordelia; her fight or flight was starting to kick in.
"I-I'm sorry," she stuttered anxiously. "I think this was a mistake." Adeline turned to walk off the porch and down the stairs.
Cordelia studied the girl. She didn't really have judgment. She'd met so many young girls - so many young witches trying to figure out their place in the world and how this new part of them would play into their lives and their futures. She'd made mistakes herself - she had regrets. She certainly couldn't judge anyone else for what they'd done in the past.
The older witch took a step or two down once the younger witch tried to leave. "Why don't you come inside for something to drink? It's okay to be scared," she said, her tone coming across a little more gently. She understood that feeling. She understood it so well.
Adeline hesitated but nodded slightly, following the older woman into the house. She looked around with wide eyes upon entering the academy. Her eyes traced almost every inch of the room, almost in complete disbelief. "I've only ever seen places like this in movies..." she said quietly, scared that her voice would echo if she talked too loud.
The fact that the academy was as nice as it was only added to the inner conflict she'd been having. She pictured a real bed, with a mattress that was a thousand times softer than jail cot she was made to sleep on in the group home. She thought about the fact that their pillows probably all had pillowcases and the sheets weren't stained from all of the past foster children who occupied that bed at one point.
She felt like her body was playing tug of war—her heart was pulling her in one direction, which was toward Cordelia. Her mind, soul, and everything else that remembered that every parental figure or those who were supposed to act as such had either died, given her away, or abused her. Plus, she didn't know this woman. She knew there was a possibility that she misremembered her dream after seeing Cordelia on the news. Something about that felt wrong, though. "It's beautiful," she commented, looking around a little more.
Cordelia led the girl inside the manor, her heels clicking against the flooring again. "If you don't mind closing the door on your way in, I'd certainly appreciate it," she said politely, finally smiling a little.
Cordelia walked to the end table in the entry way and turned around briefly to lock the door. "It's spectacular, isn't it?" She had to admit, the manor was the most beautiful home she'd ever lived in - really the only place that she felt she could truly call home.
"I know I've already introduced myself but I'm Ms. Goode. You can call me Cordelia, all the girls do," she explained warmly. Something inside of her led her to the girl that had arrived outside of the school that day. She still couldn't quite place why. So she'd have to let it go for now.
"I'm Adeline... just Adeline," she half smiled, almost tempted to reach out and shake the woman's hand. This wasn't something she would normally do; Adeline wasn't proper by any means. She was basically a child of the streets. She didn't own a pair of jeans that weren't ripped, she skateboarded, and she rarely ever brushed her curly, blonde hair. That was another factor that deterred Adeline from the thought that the woman could be her mother. There was no way she came out of that. That would be a cruel joke for the universe to play on Cordelia. She noticed the entryway to the den area, the walls inside lined with portraits. "Could we go in there?" She asked quietly, curious about the pictures.
Cordelia knew that not everyone would be comfortable would touch and if Adeline didn't want to shake her hand then she wouldn't take it personally. "Of course," the older witch said rather quickly, being pulled away from her thoughts. Cordelia began to explain the portraits, speaking a little more slowly and carefully once she reached Myrtle's. "Myrtle Snow was one powerful witch - and so very nurturing, too. She took care of me. We were family," Cordelia stated simply, a soft twinkle in her eye.
Adeline looked at the picture of the older redhead and over to Cordelia, smiling softly. She looked back at the portrait, her heart sinking a little. "You seem to have really loved her," she spoke softly and carefully. Adeline always got a hint of jealousy when her friends would talk about their parents, but especially their mothers. Adeline had to go through everything by herself, when a mother's care and guidance would have eased some of that burden. She walked slowly looking at a few more pictures. In her peripheral vision, another portrait caught her eye. She turned, her eyes locking on the painting. She approached the painting, her heart starting to beat faster. She knew that face—she'd know it anywhere. "W-why is there a picture of Fiona in here?"
Cordelia nodded slowly, studying the picture of Myrtle - caught up in her own thoughts and feelings. "You could say that," she agreed, turning to face the girl again. Her smile faltered ever so slightly. Cordelia found herself caught off guard when she heard the younger woman's next words. She didn't think she'd introduced her to the portrait yet and she found it slightly peculiar that she'd bring up the topic of her late mother. Cordelia took a small breath and walked to face the portrait. It hadn't gotten easier for her. The burn she felt in her heart, the boiling hatred for the woman that caused her so much pain and heartache. "You're very smart. Fiona was our last Supreme. The previous Supreme."
"S-supreme?" She furrowed her eyebrows, turning her head to look at the older woman. Adeline's heart rhythm started beating more unevenly, a side effect of the heart condition she had after the car accident with her adoptive parents. "What's a Supreme?" Her voice was quiet, and she tired to keep it as composed as she could.
Cordelia had heard that question so many times before and smiled gently thinking about it. She never grew tired of explaining it. "The matriarch of our coven. An exceptional witch that can perform all of the Seven Wonders," she explained. "Have you ever heard of the Seven Wonders, Adeline?" Finally speaking the younger woman's name gave Cordelia a sense of deja vu. It felt more familiar to her than a name in a song or the name of an acquaintance.
Adeline zoned out a little after Cordelia explained what the Supreme was. She'd seen Fiona a multitude of times, but the difference between her and Cordelia—she'd seen her in person. Her breathing started becoming a little more erratic and her chest tightened. "I-I'm sorry. I can't—I need to leave." Adeline turned, sprinting from the parlor and out the front door. She thought she was home free, until she reached the gate. She pushed it with her palms, recoiling when she was met with a locked gate. "Shit!" She hissed, looking down at her hands. Blood trickled from a dozen small cuts from the thorns of whatever vine was wrapped around the gate.
Cordelia didn't know what was happening and before she could stop it it seemed to be too late. "Adeline - it's okay, what is upsetting you?" She asked, quickly following after the young witch. Her heels tapped rather quickly against the flooring and out the front door. She'd stopped in her tracks once Adeline had stopped and quickly noticed the blood on the younger woman's hands. "Let me help you, okay? I'll help you clean yourself up and you can go, if that's what you'd like to do," Cordelia assured her.
Adeline looked at Cordelia with tears in her eyes. She nodded slightly, but stayed silent. Her breathing was bordering on a panic attack, and she needed her hands clean so she could dig through her bag for her inhaler.
Cordelia took a deep breath, hoping she would mimic her breathing. She reached into her pocket, taking out a few clean tissues. She took the girl's hands in her own and couldn't have prepared herself for what she saw.
“Delia, let her go. It's time for her to go," Fiona spoke softly, almost sounding like she was actually comforting her daughter. Cordelia, after an hour of refusing and saying she changed her mind, loosened her grip on the baby. Fiona took her from Cordelia, who crumpled into Hank’s arms. Fiona put her thumb on the baby’s head, closing her eyes and whispering the spell over her. She handed the baby to the social worker before going back to her daughter. She waved her hand, and everything around her froze. She put her hand gently on Cordelia's head, a tear falling from Fiona's eye. She whispered the memory spell over Cordelia. She waved her hand through the air again, and everything around her was set back into motion. She stood next to her daughter’s bed with her arms crossed.
Cordelia gasped, stepping back abruptly. She suddenly felt like she couldn't catch her breath and suddenly remembered more than she had in years. She still couldn't piece it all together, but couldn't stop the shaking of her hands as she applied pressure to Adeline's wounds.
Adeline recoiled back, backing slowly away from Cordelia. She'd seen the same thing, albeit from a third person point of view. She was right. All of the thoughts about Cordelia being her birth mother. Her breathing was more strained, and she slipped into an asthma attack. She dropped down, opening her bag and digging frantically for her inhaler.
Cordelia knelt down beside Adeline. "How can I help you?" She asked, breaking her silence. She allowed her the room to get into her purse in case she had some kind of medicine to help her. She took the tissues back temporarily, making sure that she'd wiped the majority of the blood from the girl's hands.
Adeline shook her head as she pulled the inhaler from her bag. She shook it before putting it in her mouth. She took inhaled it a few times before she started feeling her airway open up. She was still breathing rapidly, but she didn't feel like she was on the verge of suffocating anymore. "I-I'm fine," she stuttered, tears falling from her eyes, breaking her obvious facade. "I'm sorry, I can't be here. I need to go." She stood up and threw her bag over her shoulder. "I'm sure you're great, but I..." her words were broken off by a strained sob.
Cordelia couldn't mask her confusion. She still didn't completely understand what she'd seen when she touched the newcomer's hands despite her sense of deja vu becoming more and more clear. "Is - is there anything I can do?" She asked, wishing she could help. "What can I do for you?"
"Explain what the fuck just happened," Adeline put her head in her hands, a thought popping into her mind. She pulled her bag around the front of her body and dug for her wallet. She opened it, pulling out a folded up picture and handing it to Cordelia.
Cordelia took the picture, her hands beginning to shake as she looked at it. The Supreme closed her eyes for a brief moment, taking a second to feel the energy around the photo. Details came back to her like pieces of a puzzle, all connecting together.
She felt like she couldn't breathe - actually, she knew she couldn't. "I don't want to, I can't do it. I've changed my mind. Hank, we can do this," the young witch begged. "I don't want to do this," she said, tears threatening to leak down her cheeks. "I want my baby. I want my daughter."
"What are you thinking?" Adeline still felt the need to run. She could physically breathe, but her body felt like it couldn't.
The young witch's body shook violently with each sob before suddenly she didn't feel anything at all.
"Is this you, in this picture?" She finally asked, breaking from her trance. "I - I don't know how to explain this. I - my God," Cordelia breathed, still in utter shock.
"The only thing I knew about my birth parents was that they didn't want me," Adeline narrowed her eyes slightly, even though she knew full well it obviously wasn't Cordelia's fault. "Fiona started showing up after my adoptive parents died. Said she was my great aunt." She crossed her arms stubbornly. "That's all I know."
Cordelia's gaze softened. "I.." she didn't completely know what to say. She remembered some parts, but not nearly enough to tell Adeline what she wanted to hear. "Great aunt?" She asked, trying to make sense of it. Cordelia started to feel queasy and tried to swallow down the feeling.
"Yeah." Adeline responded softly, not sure what else to say. She was hurt, confused, angry. She didn't know how to handle her emotions and she knew she'd eventually lash out at Cordelia if she didn't calm down. She crossed her arm and shook her leg.
Cordelia knew she probably needed time to process all of the new information - or old information she'd been given. She wished so badly that she could talk to Myrtle about all of this - and maybe she could.. "I would like a little bit of time to process this and to think about it more," Cordelia finally chose to say, scared of pushing the hurt girl away.
Adeline furrowed her eyebrows and nodded slightly, putting her bag over her shoulder. She started toward the front door, stopping to look back at Cordelia. "It was nice to have met you." She half smiled before putting her hand on the knob. Adeline was so used to people giving her up and not wanting her that it normally wouldn't bother her. And although Cordelia didn't say she didn't want her, Adeline's trust issues were so severe she figured she may as well have. This stung more than it normally did, and tears welled up as she opened the door.
Cordelia could sense the girl's feelings and felt guilty for the way she'd reacted. "Do you have a phone number I can reach you at?" She finally asked, mere steps before she'd possibly never see the girl again.
Adeline smiled sadly and shook her head. "They don't let us have them in the group home. A lot of girls got into a lot of trouble before they'd go there. But...if it's meant to be, it will be I guess. I don't know what I expected from this, but this definitely wasn't it."
Cordelia’s heart sank in her chest. She really had no other choice. "Why don't you stay here tonight? We have spare rooms. Or if there's someone I could call?" She suggested.
Adeline shook her head. "No, it's okay. You need time...I understand that. Don't worry about me—I'll be alright."
Cordelia knew she couldn't make or force Adeline to stay. "Okay, will you come back?" She asked with hesitance.
Adeline chewed her lip for a second. "Do you want me to?"
Cordelia didn't hesitant in her answer. "Yes, of course," she said solemnly. She always kept her word.
Adeline smiled sadly, nodding a little. "I'll come back if you want me to come back... but don't feel obligated or anything. I've been though worse." She repressed the tears that burned the brims of her eyes as she turned the doorknob and exited the academy.
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Sacrifice: the Rise of Adeline Goode
co-written with @sc-rp
II. GUIDED BY A BEATING HEART
"There is a home and a family waiting for you."
Adeline cross legged on her fire escape, facing her bedroom window. She was leaned forward so she could get a somewhat clear view of the small box TV that sat on her dresser. Her eyes were fixated on the staticky screen. She'd seen that woman before. She'd seen her more times than she could count—but always when she was asleep.
Adeline knew she was different at a young age. She could do things her foster siblings couldn't—and when you were a child of the system, what made you different made you a target. It wasn't until the summer she turned 13 that she met a young girl who claimed to be a witch. The girl shared a lot of similarities with Adeline, including things they could do like telekinesis or lighting a flame with their mind. Adeline had a constant sense of calm the few times the witch visited her.
They met her first day in the group home. Adeline was having a hard time adjusting, especially after the incidences of her last foster home. She was sitting by a small brook, leaning back against a tree when she heard someone humming. The song was familiar; Adeline's subconscious recognized the melody and she caught herself humming along. The older witch was startled, not having seen the petite blonde curled up on the ground. The two of them started talking, and before long Adeline was having to rush home to try to make it there before curfew. It was at their second meeting that the girl admitted to being a witch, telling her that's what lead her to Adeline. "I could sense you were one of my tribe," the girl would say anytime they spoke about their first meeting. She taught Adeline what she knew—which wasn't much as far as structure goes—when it came to magic. In exchange, at the older woman's request, Adeline would read to her every day for an hour after school.
When the girl stopped visiting, Adeline shut down for a few days, an unexpected depression overwhelming her existence. It lasted for less than a week, then Adeline was back to her normal self. She started spending less time in the woods—it made her sad, reminding her of her long lost friend. This, however, meant that was more time she'd spend at the group home—which meant more time to be a direct target of abuse and torment at the hands of some of the other girls.
That day on the fire escape was the first day in a year that Adeline wasn't bothered. She wasn't being pushed, slapped, or cussed out every other minute. She convinced Rita to let her skip school, telling the older woman she was dealing with a stomach bug. Once Rita had left for work, Adeline got the bag she'd kept packed under her bed. She did that in every foster home she lived in, in the event she needed an exit strategy. She was climbing onto the fire escape when—for a reason she couldn't yet tell—the voice on the TV stopped her. She turned around, sat down, and watched the interview.
Adeline felt like she was seeing a ghost, or the physical embodiment of her childhood imaginary friend. She'd had frequent dreams that involved this person, and she knew that was a sign. She had to find her. When the news flashed the name of the school once more, and Adeline quickly memorized the address that was listed beneath it. She used to think her photographic memory was one of her powers, until she changed foster homes and met another girl who shared the same talent. She felt a twinge of sadness when the girl briefly crossed her mind, but she shook it off and started on her journey to Robichaux.
It was long after dark when Adeline finally arrived at the large manor. She, being a foster child in a group home, obviously didn't have a cell phone. She stopped at one of the tourist stores that frequented almost every block in New Orleans, using the small amount of money she had to buy a map. She walked up the front steps onto the large, cypress wood porch. "Wait," she stopped herself. "What the hell am I doing?" Her fight or flight started kicking in, but it was too late. Despite her stopping herself from knocking and making virtually no noise at all, Adeline heard the lock click as it was unlocked and the front door opened.
—
Cordelia took a deep breath, her heels clicking against the linoleum in the kitchen. She had a newfound confidence to her as Supreme. Something she'd been desperately missing for so long. Something she didn't know she could be capable of. The middle-aged witch could feel the presence of someone outside and made her way to the door of the school to allow an interviewer inside - for the very first time.
"I don't believe we need to hide any longer," the witch simply stated when asked why she'd chosen that particular time in the school's history to 'come out' about what used to be their own little secret. "There's no reason to feel ashamed. Or forgotten. Or lost or alone when you have a whole world waiting for you. People just like you, people who understand and want to help you grow in your powers and abilities - it's nothing to be scared of. It's a gift," the blonde witch assured anyone listening beyond that room. Cordelia whole-heartedly hoped she could reach hundreds of young girls who were in the predicament she found herself in years before.
Even though Cordelia never truly felt ashamed due to her witchcraft, her mother on the other hand, made her ashamed of herself. Cordelia always sold herself short and felt so small. Shipped off to school at a young age and so far away from home hurt the young witch. She never knew her father, but had only heard terrible things about him from her estranged mother. She wished that as a young witch she would've had a leader like herself. And that was her greatest accomplishment to date - taking care of, teaching and most importantly, protecting her girls.
It took a day or so, but Cordelia began to see the influx of young witches come to visit her at Miss Robichaux's. Some were certainly powerful young witches, some were just beginning to spread their wings, and some weren't witches at all. She managed to find the ones that belonged to her coven, assuring them that they would be loved, cherished, and protected.
On one particular day, Cordelia felt something deep inside her. Something gnawing at her heart a little bit, something she'd never really felt before. The witch felt a presence outside of the manor - one that held familiarity and curiosity. She stood, her heels clicking against the linoleum flooring as she got up from the kitchen table. Tap, tap, tap she went. Cordelia put her hand out and swiftly unlocked the door without a single touch. Her heart skipped a beat once she reached the door and opened it cautiously.
Adeline's breath caught in her throat when the older woman opened the door. She observed the woman for a moment—not long enough to seem creepy but long enough to take in her gestures. The blondes face was gentle and kind, her composure more proper than Adeline had ever seen in an adult. Adeline focused on her eyes—they had the same eyes.
When she was little and she dreamed about Cordelia, for a brief time she thought that maybe the woman in her dreams was her birth mother. When she saw her on TV, the thought crossed her mind for the first time in years. Now, standing before Cordelia, she questioned that. Maternal instincts were practically visibly radiating off of her; there was no way she'd give a kid up for adoption.
"Uh, hi I'm..." she debated for a second on lying about her name in case the woman called her social worker, but she wasn't great at lying on the spot. "My name is Adeline. I saw you on TV...and I think I might be a witch."
Cordelia couldn't shake the feeling of familiarity once she'd opened the door and set her eyes upon the girl on the other side. She knew she'd never met her before - right? She didn't look familiar..but somehow she felt familiar. She studied her for a few seconds, although it somehow felt like much longer.
Cordelia had always dreamt of being a mother. She always wished so badly that she could give a child the exact opposite that she'd had growing up. With her husband, she couldn't get pregnant and it broke her heart. She held so much resentment inside - but now she knew why. She needed to be there for her girls - and having a baby probably would've stifled her from doing so. It didn't mean that she didn't still have that urge every now and then, even though she truly did think of her girls as her own.
The witch studied her for a few seconds longer. "It's nice to meet you," she responded, her tone soft and caring, yet still a little cautious. "I'm Cordelia. Cordelia Goode, welcome to Miss Robichaux's." The witch felt inclined to shake the young girl's hand. She wanted to be polite and welcoming, but also yearned to know more about her.
Adeline felt her heart squeeze when she heard her voice. She'd heard that voice before...it was a very, very distant memory—it probably wasn't even real. She blinked a few times, trying to force the sense of Deja Vu to the back of her mind. Even if this woman wasn't her mother, she didn't think it would be fair to put the burden of caring for her Cordelia. Adeline was damages goods and she knew it. All she would do iis self destruct and bring down everything and everyone with her. That's what always happened. She looked back up at Cordelia; her fight or flight was starting to kick in.
"I-I'm sorry," she stuttered anxiously. "I think this was a mistake." Adeline turned to walk off the porch and down the stairs.
Cordelia studied the girl. She didn't really have judgment. She'd met so many young girls - so many young witches trying to figure out their place in the world and how this new part of them would play into their lives and their futures. She'd made mistakes herself - she had regrets. She certainly couldn't judge anyone else for what they'd done in the past.
The older witch took a step or two down once the younger witch tried to leave. "Why don't you come inside for something to drink? It's okay to be scared," she said, her tone coming across a little more gently. She understood that feeling. She understood it so well.
Adeline hesitated but nodded slightly, following the older woman into the house. She looked around with wide eyes upon entering the academy. Her eyes traced almost every inch of the room, almost in complete disbelief. "I've only ever seen places like this in movies..." she said quietly, scared that her voice would echo if she talked too loud.
The fact that the academy was as nice as it was only added to the inner conflict she'd been having. She pictured a real bed, with a mattress that was a thousand times softer than jail cot she was made to sleep on in the group home. She thought about the fact that their pillows probably all had pillowcases and the sheets weren't stained from all of the past foster children who occupied that bed at one point.
She felt like her body was playing tug of war—her heart was pulling her in one direction, which was toward Cordelia. Her mind, soul, and everything else that remembered that every parental figure or those who were supposed to act as such had either died, given her away, or abused her. Plus, she didn't know this woman. She knew there was a possibility that she misremembered her dream after seeing Cordelia on the news. Something about that felt wrong, though. "It's beautiful," she commented, looking around a little more.
Cordelia led the girl inside the manor, her heels clicking against the flooring again. "If you don't mind closing the door on your way in, I'd certainly appreciate it," she said politely, finally smiling a little.
Cordelia walked to the end table in the entry way and turned around briefly to lock the door. "It's spectacular, isn't it?" She had to admit, the manor was the most beautiful home she'd ever lived in - really the only place that she felt she could truly call home.
"I know I've already introduced myself but I'm Ms. Goode. You can call me Cordelia, all the girls do," she explained warmly. Something inside of her led her to the girl that had arrived outside of the school that day. She still couldn't quite place why. So she'd have to let it go for now.
"I'm Adeline... just Adeline," she half smiled, almost tempted to reach out and shake the woman's hand. This wasn't something she would normally do; Adeline wasn't proper by any means. She was basically a child of the streets. She didn't own a pair of jeans that weren't ripped, she skateboarded, and she rarely ever brushed her curly, blonde hair. That was another factor that deterred Adeline from the thought that the woman could be her mother. There was no way she came out of that. That would be a cruel joke for the universe to play on Cordelia. She noticed the entryway to the den area, the walls inside lined with portraits. "Could we go in there?" She asked quietly, curious about the pictures.
Cordelia knew that not everyone would be comfortable would touch and if Adeline didn't want to shake her hand then she wouldn't take it personally. "Of course," the older witch said rather quickly, being pulled away from her thoughts. Cordelia began to explain the portraits, speaking a little more slowly and carefully once she reached Myrtle's. "Myrtle Snow was one powerful witch - and so very nurturing, too. She took care of me. We were family," Cordelia stated simply, a soft twinkle in her eye.
Adeline looked at the picture of the older redhead and over to Cordelia, smiling softly. She looked back at the portrait, her heart sinking a little. "You seem to have really loved her," she spoke softly and carefully. Adeline always got a hint of jealousy when her friends would talk about their parents, but especially their mothers. Adeline had to go through everything by herself, when a mother's care and guidance would have eased some of that burden. She walked slowly looking at a few more pictures. In her peripheral vision, another portrait caught her eye. She turned, her eyes locking on the painting. She approached the painting, her heart starting to beat faster. She knew that face—she'd know it anywhere. "W-why is there a picture of Fiona in here?"
Cordelia nodded slowly, studying the picture of Myrtle - caught up in her own thoughts and feelings. "You could say that," she agreed, turning to face the girl again. Her smile faltered ever so slightly. Cordelia found herself caught off guard when she heard the younger woman's next words. She didn't think she'd introduced her to the portrait yet and she found it slightly peculiar that she'd bring up the topic of her late mother. Cordelia took a small breath and walked to face the portrait. It hadn't gotten easier for her. The burn she felt in her heart, the boiling hatred for the woman that caused her so much pain and heartache. "You're very smart. Fiona was our last Supreme. The previous Supreme."
"S-supreme?" She furrowed her eyebrows, turning her head to look at the older woman. Adeline's heart rhythm started beating more unevenly, a side effect of the heart condition she had after the car accident with her adoptive parents. "What's a Supreme?" Her voice was quiet, and she tired to keep it as composed as she could.
Cordelia had heard that question so many times before and smiled gently thinking about it. She never grew tired of explaining it. "The matriarch of our coven. An exceptional witch that can perform all of the Seven Wonders," she explained. "Have you ever heard of the Seven Wonders, Adeline?" Finally speaking the younger woman's name gave Cordelia a sense of deja vu. It felt more familiar to her than a name in a song or the name of an acquaintance.
Adeline zoned out a little after Cordelia explained what the Supreme was. She'd seen Fiona a multitude of times, but the difference between her and Cordelia—she'd seen her in person. Her breathing started becoming a little more erratic and her chest tightened. "I-I'm sorry. I can't—I need to leave." Adeline turned, sprinting from the parlor and out the front door. She thought she was home free, until she reached the gate. She pushed it with her palms, recoiling when she was met with a locked gate. "Shit!" She hissed, looking down at her hands. Blood trickled from a dozen small cuts from the thorns of whatever vine was wrapped around the gate.
Cordelia didn't know what was happening and before she could stop it it seemed to be too late. "Adeline - it's okay, what is upsetting you?" She asked, quickly following after the young witch. Her heels tapped rather quickly against the flooring and out the front door. She'd stopped in her tracks once Adeline had stopped and quickly noticed the blood on the younger woman's hands. "Let me help you, okay? I'll help you clean yourself up and you can go, if that's what you'd like to do," Cordelia assured her.
Adeline looked at Cordelia with tears in her eyes. She nodded slightly, but stayed silent. Her breathing was bordering on a panic attack, and she needed her hands clean so she could dig through her bag for her inhaler.
Cordelia took a deep breath, hoping she would mimic her breathing. She reached into her pocket, taking out a few clean tissues. She took the girl's hands in her own and couldn't have prepared herself for what she saw.
“Delia, let her go. It's time for her to go," Fiona spoke softly, almost sounding like she was actually comforting daughter. Cordelia, after an hour of refusing and saying she changed her mind, loosened her grip on the baby. Fiona took her from Cordelia, who crumpled into Hanks arms. Fiona put her thumb on the babies head, closing her eyes and whispering the spell over her. She handed the baby to the social worker before going back to her daughter. She waved her hand, and everything around her froze. She put her hand gently on Cordelia's head, a tear falling from Fiona's eye. She whispered the memory spell over Cordelia. She waved her hand through the air again, and everything around her was set back into motion. She stood next to her daughters bed with her arms crossed.
Cordelia gasped, stepping back abruptly. She suddenly felt like she couldn't catch her breath and suddenly remembered more than she had in years. She still couldn't piece it all together, but couldn't stop the shaking of her hands as she applied pressure to Adeline's wounds.
Adeline recoiled back, backing slowly away from Cordelia. She'd seen the same thing, albeit from a 3rd person point of view. She was right. All of the thoughts about Cordelia being her birth mother. Her breathing was more strained, and she slipped into an asthma attack. She dropped down, opening her bag and digging frantically for her inhaler.
Cordelia knelt down beside Adeline. "How can I help you?" She asked, breaking her silence. She allowed her the room to get into her purse in case she had some kind of medicine to help her. She took the tissues back temporarily, making sure that she'd wiped the majority of the blood from the girl's hands.
Adeline shook her head as she pulled the inhaler from her bag. She shook it before putting it in her mouth. She took inhaled it a few times before she started feeling her airway open up. She was still breathing rapidly, but she didn't feel like she was on the verge of suffocating anymore. "I-I'm fine," she stuttered, tears falling from her eyes, breaking her obvious facade. "I'm sorry, I can't be here. I need to go." She stood up and threw her bag over her shoulder. "I'm sure you're great, but I..." her words were broken off by a strained sob.
Cordelia couldn't mask her confusion. She still didn't completely understand what she'd seen when she touched the newcomer's hands despite her sense of deja vu becoming more and more clear. "Is - is there anything I can do?" She asked, wishing she could help. "What can I do for you?"
"Explain what the fuck just happened," Adeline put her head in her hands, a thought popping into her mind. She pulled her bag around the front of her body and dug for her wallet. She opened it, pulling out a folded up picture and handing it to Cordelia.
Cordelia took the picture, her hands beginning to shake as she looked at it. The Supreme closed her eyes for a brief moment, taking a second to feel the energy around the photo. Details came back to her like pieces of a puzzle, all connecting together. She felt like she couldn't breathe - actually, she knew she couldn't. "I don't want to, I can't do it. I've changed my mind. Hank, we can do this," the young witch begged. "I don't want to do this," she said, tears threatening to leak down her cheeks. "I want my baby. I want my daughter."
"What are you thinking?" Adeline still felt the need to run. She could physically breathe, but her body felt like it couldn't.
The young witch's body shook violently with each sob before suddenly she didn't feel anything at all. "Is this you, in this picture?" She finally asked, breaking from her trance. "I - I don't know how to explain this. I - my God," Cordelia breathed, still in utter shock.
"The only thing I knew about my birth parents was that they didn't want me," Adeline narrowed her eyes slightly, even though she knew full well it obviously wasn't Cordelia's fault. "Fiona started showing up after my adoptive parents died. Said she was my great aunt." She crossed her arms stubbornly. "That's all I know."
Cordelia's gaze softened. "I.." she didn't completely know what to say. She remembered some parts, but not nearly enough to tell Adeline what she wanted to hear. "Great aunt?" She asked, trying to make sense of it. Cordelia started to feel queasy and tried to swallow down the feeling.
"Yeah." Adeline responded softly, not sure what else to say. She was hurt, confused, angry. She didn't know how to handle her emotions and she knew she'd eventually lash out at Cordelia if she didn't calm down. She crossed her arm and shook her leg.
Cordelia knew she probably needed time to process all of the new information - or old information she'd been given. She wished so badly that she could talk to Myrtle about all of this, and maybe she could after all. "I would like a little bit of time to process this and to think about it more," Cordelia finally chose to say, scared of pushing the hurt girl away.
Adeline furrowed her eyebrows and nodded slightly, putting her bag over her shoulder. She started toward the front door, stopping to look back at Cordelia. "It was nice to have met you." She half smiled before putting her hand on the knob. Adeline was so used to people giving her up and not wanting her that it normally wouldn't bother her. And although Cordelia didn't say she didn't want her, Adeline's trust issues were so severe she figured she may as well have. This stung more than it normally did, and tears welled up as she opened the door.
Cordelia could sense the girl's feelings and felt guilty for the way she'd reacted. "Do you have a phone number I can reach you at?" She finally asked, mere steps before she'd possibly never see the girl again.
Adeline smiled sadly and shook her head. "They don't let us have them in the group home. A lot of girls got into a lot of trouble before they'd go there. But...if it's meant to be, it will be I guess. I don't know what I expected from this, but this definitely wasn't it."
Cordelia heart sank in her chest. She really had no other choice. "Why don't you stay here tonight? We have spare rooms. Or if there's someone I could call?" She suggested.
Adeline shook her head. "No, it's okay. You need time...I understand that. Don't worry about me—I'll be alright."
Cordelia knew she couldn't make or force Adeline to stay. "Okay, will you come back?" She asked with hesitance.
Adeline chewed her lip for a second. "Do you want me to?"
Cordelia didn't hesitant in her answer. "Yes, of course," she said solemnly. She always kept her word.
Adeline smiled sadly, nodding a little. "I'll come back if you want me to come back... but don't feel obligated or anything. I've been though worse." She repressed the tears that burned the brims of her eyes as she turned the doorknob and exited the academy.
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Prompt for your IVF headcanon - any interest in expanding on #3 (Christmas with the Scullys)? I keep imagining M&S cuddled up on the couch at night and exchanging looks when Matthew comes over to S for a hug and M trying not to be too obvious that he can't keep his hands of S's tummy.
sure, what the hell. the original story is here. this is for @2moms-0fucks, who i promised a full story and never came through for. i’m sorry i never finished that, but here’s something else??
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1. They’re both nervous as hell. Scully in no way regrets asking him to go along, but it’s undeniably an awkward situation, showing up at the airport with her partner in tow, to the complete surprise of her mother. She blinks at the both of them, and Scully rushes to explain that Mulder was going to be alone for Christmas again (she knows they both remember the last Christmas he nearly spent alone well), so she invited him along. (Which isn’t a lie; just an omission.) The awkwardness is palpable in the moment, and Scully excuses herself to call ahead to California to warn Bill (since she knows that will be a million times more awkward without warning). But when she gets back, she finds Maggie and Mulder engaged in polite conversation, probably spurred on by the fact that he’s been in an incredibly good mood since some time this morning. He keeps catching her eyes over Maggie’s shoulder and grinning dopily. Scully smiles back.
On the plane, he grabs her hand and she can’t bring herself to pull away. Maggie doesn’t comment.
2. Scully forgets what is happening half the time. The fact that she’s pregnant, the fact that Mulder is at her brother’s with her. Every time she remembers, she can’t quite believe it. The last time she was here, she had to face the fact that she wasn’t going to have children, the death of her daughter. And now… now.
(She feels guilty about it, just a little, when she catches Melissa’s baby face in an old photo and thinks of her daughter. A heart-stopping moment. Mulder drives her to visit Emily’s grave and waits patiently in the car, wraps her hand in his comfortingly when she returns with red eyes. “Are you okay?” he says gently, rubbing her knuckles with his thumb.
She nods, sniffling a little and smiling wobbily at him. “It doesn’t stop hurting,” she says, because it doesn’t. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop regretting not being able to save her. But... Emily didn’t know me. I never got the chance to be her mother. But now...”
This new baby will never be a replacement. Never. But it feels like a second chance. A first chance, to get it right this time. A baby who she can protect, a baby that is wholly and completely hers. Theirs. She is having a baby with her best friend.
Her voice breaks off, her hand over her stomach. Mulder’s eyes are full of a quiet understanding. He leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. Scully squeezes his hand gratefully. “Thank you,” she whispers, and means for so much more than this moment. “Thank you, Mulder.”)
3. Scully would’ve thought that being in a situation where they can’t talk about the baby for a few days would be an excellent way to mentally work things out, but it’s almost impossible not to, staying in a house with a toddler. Matthew is almost two now, and she’s barely seen him in the past couple years, so she is trying to enjoy the chance to spend time with her nephew. (After all of the family members she’s become distant from, she wants to hold onto the family she has left.) He’s sweet and chubby and sticky-fingered, and he seems fascinated with her and Mulder both. “He’s not shy at all,” Tara says affectionately, bouncing Matthew on her hip before passing him to Scully. “Yes, you remember your Aunt Dana, don’t you, Matty?” she coos, and Scully smiles.
She holds Matthew on her lap while he watches his cartoons, and Mulder sits beside them, pats her knee absently with one hand, tickles Matthew’s bare foot until he giggles, and Scully wants to cry. She bounces Matthew up and down on her knee absently, reads him a story at her mother’s request, and sees Mulder looking at her with a tremendous amount of affection in his eyes. When Maggie scoops up Matthew and takes him upstairs for his bath, he scoots closer on the couch until their legs bump, reaches out with tentative fingers to touch her stomach.
Scully smiles, happy tears welling in her eyes. “Mulder,” she says, and he yanks his hand away as if he was burned. She catches his hand before he takes it too far, places it back against her stomach.
He smiles back warily, sheepishly. “Sorry,” he says gingerly.
She shakes her head, presses her hand over his. “Don’t be sorry,” she says. She can’t stop thinking about how this will be them, in a year. Their baby. And she doesn’t know if they’ll be doing it together, but she truly hopes they will be. “Don’t you dare be sorry,” she says, and leans in to kiss him. The first time she will have kissed him since that morning they woke up, tangled up together in her comforter.
“Hey, Danes?” Bill calls, and they can hear his footsteps approaching. Mulder leaps back again, in an almost teenagery way: prom dates caught after curfew. Scully blushes madly and pretends she isn’t, pretends she isn’t pregnant and hiding that fact from her family. Bill sticks his head in. “You guys want salad?” he asks, nodding at Mulder in an almost courteous way. (They’ve actually kind of gotten along during this visit. Scully wants to joke that it is a Christmas miracle.)
Scully nods. “Yeah, sounds good, thanks,” Mulder says in a rush.
Bill shoots them a suspicious look, but nods. He turns away and walks back down the hall. As soon as he’s gone, Mulder reaches for her stomach again, and Scully wants to giggle.
4. She knows that, as far as her family knows, she and Mulder are just partners; she knows that their Catholic ideals would want Mulder to stay down on the couch even if they did know. She knows that they have spent more time in separate beds than together. But she can’t shake it, the urge not to be alone. It’s too cold, even in California. It’s too cold for California. She can’t sleep.
She gives up on the second night, climbs out of bed and retrieves the Oxford sweatshirt she stole from Mulder’s suitcase. She slips it over her head before padding downstairs quietly. This may only be a replication of her childhood home, but it’s enough; she knows how to sneak downstairs without getting caught.
The Christmas tree is unplugged, dark, and she can see Mulder on his side on the couch bed. She isn’t sure that he’s even awake until she draws close to the edge of the cot, and Mulder immediately turns over. “Scully, hey,” he says, his voice somewhere between sweet and worried. “Are you okay? Is it morning sickness?”
Scully chuckles quietly, sitting down on the bed gingerly, one leg folded under her. “Oh, no, Mulder. That’s still a few weeks away, fortunately.”
“Oh.” He extracts an arm out from under the blanket and reaches up to cup her cheek. “What’s up?”
“Oh...” She is suddenly embarrassed, unsure of what the hell to do now; they haven’t officially decided whether or not he’s going to be a part of the baby’s life yet (although she’d thought that night in her apartment when they found out was a good indicator); a week ago, they were just partners, for fuck’s sake. She turns her face into his palm a little. “I dunno,” she says quietly. “I guess I just got...”
“Cold?” Mulder tugs the sleeve of her sweatshirt between two fingers.
She nods gratefully. “Cold.”
He brushes his knuckle over her abdomen slowly, gently. “Is the baby cold?” he whispers in the voice she’s only ever heard him use with her nephew or her daughter or the scared children on cases.
Scully grins. “I don’t know, Mulder. The baby might be cold.”
He traces a circle slowly over her stomach, bumps his cheek against her hip. “C’mere, Scully,” he says, and she comes. She rolls over and nestles against him, back to chest, and he wraps his arms around her, presses sloppy kisses to the side of her neck. She shivers, squirming a little, brushing her cold feet over his legs, laces her fingers with his.
“I’m... I’m so glad we did this, Scully,” Mulder says in a choked voice. He kisses the nape of her neck, the curve of her shoulder. “I know how... I knew how important it was to you. But I had no idea how much I wanted it until...”
“I know,” she says in a breathy voice. Blinks tears from her eyes as she stares at the unlit Christmas tree. She thinks of the baby, their baby. “God, I know.”
5. Christmas morning is bright, sun streaming through the window. Matthew is the star of the show, overjoyed at the influx of presents. He’s sitting on the floor with Maggie and Scully, throwing crumpled-up wrapping paper. Scully is laughing, and Mulder can’t help but think that it’s the most carefree he’s seen her with her family. He catches her eye over the top of his coffee mug, and she smiles her thousand-watt smile, and he melts a little. He still can’t believe that he’s here, that he’s kissed Scully and she’s having a baby and he’s going to be a father. That everything is seeming to work out, for once. Everything’s working out okay.
Christmas dinner goes down without any hitches. Mulder tries to goad her into a thumb war under the table, and Scully keeps a remarkably straight face as she kicks his ass in the midst of a story from Tara about Matthew. Maggie talks to him the most out of anyone at the table; he’s starting to think that she knows that they’re together. He thinks it’s likely a good sign that she still wants to make conversation with him over the dinner table.,
Everyone goes to bed early--Tara and Maggie are yawning, and Bill is rubbing his eyes, and Matty has fallen asleep in Scully’s lap. Scully passes the baby to Bill, says, “Get some rest, big brother. I’ll lock up.”
“Thanks, Dana,” he says, kissing her cheek. He locks eyes briefly with Mulder, cupping the back of his kid’s head with one hand. “I’m glad you could come,” he says to Scully--but Mulder gets the sense that said eye lock is a sign of acceptance, if nothing else.
Scully hugs her mother and sister-in-law goodnight, and they go upstairs. And then Mulder and Scully are alone. They sit together on the couch, listening to the bustling sound upstairs. Scully slips closer, underneath the hook of his arm, her cheek on his shoulder. He kisses the top of her head. “Merry Christmas, Scully,” he says softly. ’
“Merry Christmas.” He can hear the smile in her voice. She rubs her cheek against his chest softly. “I’ve been thinking about it, Mulder,” she says softly, and he covers her stomach with his hand. There’s something in her voice like amusement, like joy; after everything that’s happened, he can’t believe they’re here. “I’ve been thinking about all the stuff you said to me a few months ago,” says Scully. “In your apartment hallway.”
“Oh,” Mulder says with a throaty, self-deprecating laugh. “All that corny stuff, huh.”
She swats at his chest. “It was sweet, Mulder.”
“It was cheesy,” he says. “But I meant every word of it.”
“Mmm.” She taps her head against his chin, almost questioningly. “Every word?”
“Every word.” He nods. “You’re my constant, Scully, you always have been. My touchstone.”
She ducks her head as if embarrassed, but speaks smugly to his chest: “Your one in five billion?”
“I think that one was a couple of years ago,” he says bemusedly, tapping her on the shoulder, and she giggles a little, tips her head back and kisses him.
Every time she kisses him feels brand new. Knocks him off his feet. He loves her so much.
He bumps his forehead against hers, mumbles, “Two,” against her mouth.
“What?”
“Two,” he says, and he rubs a slow circle on her stomach. “Two in five billion, now. You two.”
Scully looks up at him in weepy surprise, her eyes glittering with the Christmas lights; she sniffles a little, kisses the side of his jaw before burying her head against his shoulder. “You were right, Mulder,” she says, “about that stuff being corny,” and he laughs, wraps his arms tighter around her.
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The Adventure Zone Fic Recs
I wanted to rec some of my favourite fics that I haven’t seen much appreciation for around. I love these to bits.
An Umbrella Term by brushstrokesApocalyptic
Plot: The Umbra Staff haunts, Taako gets haunted, and Angus McDonald, the world's greatest detective, investigates.Or: AU where Lup isn't quite so trapped.
Comment: I’m a sucker for Taako&Angus fics, but this is an even more delicious cake, Lup&Angus being friends and partners in crime. It has such a good moments and a better inoculation/reveal than in canon if I might say.
Among the Ruins by DistractedKat
Plot: In one universe, Sazed tries to get rid of Taako with poison. In this one, he finds a more lucrative solution. It still doesn't end well.Years later, Lucretia steels herself to enter Wonderland with Cam as her guide. What she's looking for is the Animus Bell.What she finds is Taako.Everything goes downhill from there.
Comment: When I started this fic, I was gripped by such an unexplicable feeling of needing to know what was going on that I ended up contacting (and later befriending) the author. She’s incredibly talented and amazing, I’d read anything of hers.
Babes in the Woods by InterNutter
Plot: The Pine Guard are almost used to dealing with Abominations, by now. But this one isn't acting like your average bom-bom. Older people are going missing, and there's a sudden influx of children turning up lost.And there's something... else... with glowing eyes in the night...
Comment: A ‘the world of Amnesty is one of those visited by the Starblaster’ fic, with a childification twist. Extremely good and in character, especially the Amnesty crew even though they didn’t have many episodes yet when this story was written. Slow paced but enticing, is a pretty good read.
Cycle Sixty-Six by iox
Plot: The IPRE family of five lands in their sixty-sixth cycle. This planet is battling against a forest and horrific creatures called the Fae. Something is very, very wrong.
Comment: Holy shit. Holy Shit. I’ve never felt such an emotion from any horror story (not even Stephen King can write this shit) - this story is pervaded by such an aura of wrongness that clutches at your heart and yet I couldn’t stop reading and rereading it. There was a moment I was so immersed in the atmosphere my own dog scared me.
Even a Sparrow Falls by distractedKat
Plot: When Governor Kalen is routed from Raven's Roost, he has to go somewhere to collect his forces before striking back.That somewhere ends up being Glamour Springs, where he makes a name for himself by capturing the criminal responsible for forty deaths: Taako, the famous wizard chef.Now Taako has to live with the fallout, injuries that change him and land him in the care of a bunch of weirdos, a new family destined to save more than just the world.
Comment: I did say I’d read anything of hers. I remember binge-reading this fic at uni, instead of paying attention to a goddamn 4-hours seminar. The plot, the character dynamics, everything in this is so fucking amazing I’m emotional just writing this review.
Impossible Encounters by InterNutter
Plot: What if Angus met Taako a lot earlier in the time stream?
Comment: I have particular love for this fanfic, because it’s the first I’ve read in the TAZ fandom. From a sentence in one of its chapter was born the entire idea for my own fic, too. And I’m a sucker for parental Taako fics anyway.
Letting Dreams of Fame Take Over by Teramina
Plot: Nearly a year after Glamour Springs, Taako is still distant and wandering, looking for any kind of purpose, something to do with the rest of his life that doesn't feel meaningless in the wake of everything he failed.The Philosopher's Stone, since the relic war ended, has found itself bored. Few chanced upon it anymore, and those that did destroyed themselves so quickly. It needed more of a challenge, someone whose mind wouldn't be so easy to twist. At least, not for now.
Comment: Holy Shit (x2). I’ve been following this fic since it was an embryo of an idea and I’m so happy to see it all grown up. I’m like a proud uncle. This is the only fic I’ve ever seen that has such a good characterization of the relics and clear depiction of the thrall.
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before by ohjustdisarmalready
Plot: Lup is good at a lot of things. Magic, chaos, blowing things up, cooking…the list goes on.But she’s best at knowing her brother. And it doesn’t take much to see that Taako is being suspicious as fuck.
Comment: You know those lighthearted fics where ‘character goes back in time with their memories intact and fixes things’? This is not one of them. Oh God, this is not one of them.
The Act of Remembering by okbutfirsttea
Plot: Davenport gets inoculated, only sooner than planned.
How do they react to being thrown into an unexpected reunion?
Comment: WARNING! DON’T BE FOOLED! THIS IS BAD! UNFIXABLE ANGST! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK! I love it and hate it.
What’s Done Cannot Be Undone (Series) by Lanyare
Plot: In the third round of Wonderland the stakes are higher. Refusing a sacrifice can lead to a penalty that's more than you expected to pay.Or, Taako refuses to give up his beauty and regrets the decision immediately after.
Comment: I’m a sucker for lich!Taako and this fic is the one that comes closer to what I want to see more of in this fandom. It’s a collection of 7 short stories, but they could very well be parts of the same fanfic.
What’s Lost by Habie
Plot: Sazed kills Taako in Glamour Springs and everyone else lives. Taako remembers eveything and tries to find his friends, figure out what happened to Lup, and prepare for The Hunger while juggling death and the rules.
Comment: Taako as a Reaper is a chaotic force of nature that shouldn’t exist. But he does. The scene with Garfield is likely my favourite in all of TAZ’s transformative works.
Wings Made of Flesh and Memories by weevilo707
Plot: This final world they had landed on was so much like their own. They were so lucky to have a place where they could fit in and pick up new lives mostly uninterrupted. There was just one thing that set them apart as otherworldly and strange from the rest of this plane.Those were the wings that each member of the IPRE had.When Lucretia set up new homes for each member of her family, she had to be sure that they would be able to fit in. She had to keep them safe, to make sure nothing ruined these lives for them.Their wings needed to be edited.
Comment: this fic was my baby I needed to see in the world but couldn’t write so I did the next obvious thing. I commissioned it. It came out so much better than I could have ever written it, and I’m so happy weev accepted to write it instead.
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life and death and love and
summary: yusuke and botan have a conversation about immortality. because neither of them are good at decorum, they have it over kuwabara’s grave. kuwabara wouldn’t care. probably.
notes: hello yu yu hakusho, my first fandom, my forever love, home to my favorite shonen protagonist and favorite mentor in anything. @wuzzyletoastermac is a terrible influence. gen, looooong post-series, discussions of death. yusuke and botan brotp, 1800 words
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Yusuke stops aging at some point. Or stops aging visibly at least—he never looks as dignified and ageless as Kurama, or as young and pissy as Hiei, instead wavering between too young to drink and too old to not know better. But eventually, Kuwabara looks at him, dressed in old jeans that shouldn’t be as flexible as they are, then back to himself with salt streaks in his red hair, and says, “Shit, Urameshi, you stay young and you still don’t look as good as me.”
Then there’s a time when someone mistakes him for Keiko’s grandson and she still hasn’t stopped giving him shit for it. Decades dead, and Botan is still popping by with messages: Yusuke do you still have a thing for older women? Is that your big secret?
It is her fault, too, ripping into his ear for not showing up for her birthday party just because Demon World had been a little preoccupied with an influx of stupid in the form of militant invaders from another dimension, like a video game gone terribly bad. She’s eighty-one. She’s had eighty-one birthdays, she’d have eighty-one more if Yusuke has anything to say about it.
Needless to say, she doesn’t. If there’s one thing Yusuke’s learned in his impossible life, it’s that people die, and most of the time, they stay dead. Him and Kurama, he’s still not sure if they’re the lucky ones, or the ones that got scammed.
(Yusuke makes sure Botan gives Keiko a deathday card every year, now. He’s sure it makes her laugh, and if she ever wants to be reborn, Yusuke is sure he’ll keep sending them. Birthdays, deathdays—they’ll become unwieldy after a while, but he’s got a long time to worry about that.)
(For now, she stays dead and nags him from beyond the grave, beyond worlds. Yusuke can’t believe he loves her.)
Demons have an odd view of their own mortality, or lack of it. Yusuke first realizes this with Raizen, who for all his centuries is still fixated on years that soar by like fireworks, bright and brilliant and gone in a flash. Moments that shape his life, ignorant of the decades and centuries that lie between. Yusuke, still a baby in comparison if not in strength, can’t help but feel the years slipping through his fingers, each one staying in his memory even as some things begin to blur. It’s scary in a way he’s not used to, something he can’t fight against and isn’t sure he wants to.
“What’s it like to, you know. Live forever?” he asks Botan, offering her a smoke over Kuwabara’s grave. It’s been a few years now, and the dipshit is still insisting on haunting Yusuke’s thoughts. Absolutely unfair, really—it’s not like they don’t see each other, not with Koenma blatantly ignoring Yusuke’s irregular stints of breaking and entering Spirit World unless the brat needs something.
One day, Yusuke will admit he does it because he misses them, Kuwabara and Keiko and even the old hag. For now, he still looks young enough that a little B&E is excusable as a weird sort of early-demonhood rebellion.
Botan crinkles her nose at the stench of burning nicotine. She’s perched on Kuwabara’s gravestone like it’s a posh throne, absolutely no care to deference of the graveyard or the cat toys half-buried in front of the grave. Maybe Yusuke’s finally rubbed off on her, but more likely she’s more comfortable in a graveyard than anywhere else in the human world. Someone smarter would have something to say about the boundaries between life and death, but Yusuke’s not that sort of person. “I’d think Kurama would be a better advisor on this subject,” she says delicately.
“Kurama’s in the same boat as me. We don’t die, but we already did, and who knows, maybe I’ll go three for three one of these days. I’ve pissed off enough people.” Yusuke takes another pull, smoke wafting in front of his nose. “Besides, I tried asking him already. He just gave me that annoyingly smug smile he gets when he doesn’t know the answer and told me to give it time.”
Botan giggles. “That does sound like Kurama.”
“Look, I asked other people too,” Yusuke huffs, counting on his fingers everyone he’s tried. “Enki and Kokou were too busy planning the next tournament, and I don’t think they really understood the question anyways, since we can die if we get punched hard enough. Hokushin and the monks went all zen guru on me again. Yukina practically gave me a dissertation on the power of life and made me babysit her twins again—one of them has Kuwabara’s hair and Hiei’s personality, and it makes my head hurt. The angry gremlin himself just did his grr I am angry piss off thing he does when he's not sure what to say. And I tried asking Jin and Chu, but they don’t seem to understand the idea of mortality at all. Fucking fight-happy dumbasses.”
It’s a sign of their decades of friendship that Botan restrains herself from more comment than, “They are the fight-happy dumbasses.”
Yusuke flips her off with his free hand. “So I’m asking you. If anyone knows what living forever’s like, it’s a shinigami, right?”
She laughs, bell-like. “I suppose I can see your point.”
And then it’s quiet again, birds chirping and leaves rustling. For all that Yusuke’s stopped aging, Botan never has. She’s always looked as old as she needed to, not so much like Koenma’s drastic physical change but just…fitting in. Never too old to be a kid’s friend, never too young to be an elder’s confidant. It might be magic, but Yusuke’s pretty sure it’s just Botan.
Yusuke finishes his cigarette and stabs it out on the dirt in front of Kuwabara’s epitaph. “So?” he demands.
“Hush you, I’m thinking.” She props her chin up on her hand, elbow on her knee and foot on the tombstone, like some perky gargoyle.
“If this is you thinking, maybe I don’t want to live forever. It’s like watching a loading screen.”
“Some of us actually use our brains on occasion,” she says. A strand of blue hair falls out of her ponytail, wafting on the breeze. She twists it around her finger.
“I’m more of a concept than a person, you know?” she says. “Death. Shinigami. Yamaduta. Grim reapers. We exist as we do because people think us that way, part of the wheel of life and death. We keep the cycle moving. Don’t want it getting clogged up, after all.”
Yusuke snorts. “So I…thought of death as a hyperactive blue haired girl? Puu aside, that does not sound like me. Definitely not fourteen-year-old me. I was a shithead.”
She laughs. “No, no. Nothing so personal as that. Many people prefer the concept of death as a terror, anyways, something to be feared and hidden. But we…I will live forever because death will always exist, and people remember that it exists. And if people believe death to be manifest, well. Someone has to do the job.”
“It definitely won’t be Koenma.” The thought of toddler-sized Koenma attempting to corral lost souls into the Spirit World is almost enough to cackle at.
“And I certainly don’t want his job. Or Jorge’s, for that matter. All of that paperwork.” She makes a face, nose scrunched and tongue out. “But I will live forever, because there are people to believe in me, and because there is a system that needs me. I’m an extension of more than just my thoughts.”
She hops off the tombstone, narrowly avoiding a kitten plushie an angry red-headed boy had placed there not too long ago. (Yusuke is, of course, sworn to absolute secrecy over this, but he doesn’t mind. He held Hiei’s secret long enough, holding onto Kuwabara’s spawn’s is actual child’s play. And if the kid’s anything like Hiei or Kuwabara, the blackmail potential will be endless.)
“So what does that make me?” Yusuke asks, neck cracking as he looks up at Botan. “I’m not ferrying anyone across any rivers anytime soon, not even if Koenma tries to hire me again. That’s a shit gig.”
Like he’s fourteen and stupid, rather than decades and aware of his stupid, Botan bops him on the nose. “It makes you who you are, Yusuke. And remember, you’re as immortal as I am, in your own way. As Keiko is, or Kuwabara, or Kurama or Hiei or the rest of your ‘fight-happy dumbasses.’ As anyone you love, and loves you.”
He considers this for a moment, turning the thought over. “You know Botan,” Yusuke says slowly. “You’re pretty smart. But you’re also full of shit.”
She laughs again and ruffles his slicked-back hair. He throws his arms over his head, attempting and failing to protect himself. Being a questionably immortal demon with nearly infinite power means keeping up appearances, especially since most of the demons he knows have never heard of the concept of hair gel and can get away with it on a mixture of spite, sarcasm, and whatever’s in the air in Demon World. “Botan!” he protests, feeling as bratty as he sounds.
Satisfied with her work, Botan leans back and summons her oar, hopping onto it in midair. “I love you too, Yusuke. And if I live forever, so will you, even after you do something stupid to get yourself killed again and Koenma makes me drag you kicking and screaming across the river.”
He leans back, propping himself up on his hands and crossing his legs. “Take your time, I guess,” he says.
She hovers there for a moment, obviously waiting for something. “Do you want a ride back?” she asks. She doesn’t specify where back is supposed to be: back to Demon World, back to his old home, back somewhere he never quite fit in but damn if he didn’t try.
Yusuke pulls himself to his feet, dusting off his jeans and pulling a comb out of his jacket. “Nah. I’ve got a family visit this afternoon. Gonna check in on the twerps, see how they’re doing.” He tosses the rest of his cigarettes onto Kuwabara’s grave, where they scatter over the plushie and the cat toys. He’s almost tempted to light them on fire, just to be ornery. He’s a moderately-sized scary demon from hell—youthful appearances and doting grandkids aside. “Tell Keiko I say…Well, you know. I love her, I miss her, all that. Kuwabara too.”
“Of course.” And she’s gone, off into the sky in a dash of blue hair and grins, her kimono manifesting halfway into the scattered clouds. It’s a nice day, sunny and bright despite the early spring chill. Kuwabara would’ve loved it, the old romantic.
Not Keiko, though. She preferred summer storms.
Yusuke sighs and jams his hands into his pockets, nose tilted to the sky. Maybe he is getting old, if he’s thinking about stuff like this. Well, there are worse things.
#yu yu hakusho#yyh#yyh fic#yyh spoilers#tagging for 20 year old spoilers whoops#I needed to get this out of my head so I can get back to work#yusuke urameshi#urameshi yusuke#which one is my tag idk#botan#my writing
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