#kidnapping a fairy being step one is crazy. freak of all time

[macroglossus]

forever obsessed with artemis fowl who, upon realizing that he needs a fuckton of money in order to keep searching for his missing and probably dead father, doesn’t reach for his impeccable hacking skills or his ability to flawlessly recreate artistic masterpieces in order to commit art theft but instead runs the most absolutely insane and convoluted plan that’s ever been constructed (rivaled only by the insane and convoluted plans he constructs when he’s older and aided by time and practice). based solely, by the way, off of what basically amounts to the fairy bible which is written entirely in verse AND in a language that no human being has ever been permitted to see let alone translate. and the plan WORKS

[piscesparker]

Black and white P.P

Soulmate AU

a/n: I have no idea what I have written, this is my first time writing a soulmate AU. Feedback is appreciated :) A big thank you to @perspectiveparker for helping me with this fic😊🥰

In a world full of chaos and crime there was only one thing most of the people looked forward to and that was finding their true love or better known as their soulmates. As for you, you've always loved the story of how your parents found each other which was better than any fairy tale. And now you waited for your own.

Everyone was born with a black wrist band and when it turns white it means you've found your true love and soulmate.

You're 18 years and almost half of your school had found their soulmates, trying to hide your emotions was one of your greatest strengths. And here you were again, trying to hide the fact that your depressed that you still haven't found the one. Your parents always reassured you that it will happen soon or at unexpected time, and you listened to them like it was gospel.

"She's so gorgeous Ned!" Peter said dreamily and he leaned on his locker looking at you laughing with your friends. "Yeah, Peter you've said that for the 58th time now, in the past hour!" Ned yelled in frustration, making Peter mutter a soft 'sorry'.

The day went by quickly and now you were on your way walking home. Peter too was busy patrolling after school, everyday when you used to walk home Peter used to keep an eye on you; not stalking you like a creep but making sure your reached home safely.

But today when he was patrolling he noticed two shady guys following you.

"Karen can you pull up the database of those two guys?" he asked the AI system. "On it Peter!" Reading the  information  in front of him his spidey senses heightened, he swooped down from the building ledge he was squatting on and  webbed the bad guys up. All the chaos caught your attention but also startled you at the same time.

"Are you okay?" he breathed through the spandex suit. You were absolutely speechless, you couldn't believe that The Spiderman who just saved your life was standing in front of you. "Yeah, I-I'm fine." You gulped. "T-thank you." Peter could see how scared you were, "Could I maybe walk you home?"

"Oh, you don't have to." You hesitated.

"Please I insist." It was not everyday that you'd get a superhero to walk you home so you took agreed, but that the last moment he decided to change the way of  "walking" you home; instead his swung you across the city. First time for everything right?

On reaching your apartment building, you carefully unwrapped your arms from around his neck, sending a small thank you. As you enter the elevator, you notice something; your black wrist band was now white. At first you thought you were hallucinating, could it be possible? Your soulmate was spiderman?

Meanwhile Peter was in some alley freaking out and dancing that you were his soulmate, after all these years finally. But you were wondering if you'd ever meet him again. The next week you distanced yourself from everyone, this is the one thing that you've been waiting for all this time and now you have no idea how to deal with it. Peter too was anxious and worried about you, he wanted to tell you but he didn't want to put you in danger.

--

One day while you were walking back home from school, passing an alleyway when you heard a noise. Walking towards it you saw what you'd been waiting for, spiderman all alone. All you wanted was a conversation with him to sort out the situation.

"Hey." You stuttered, being nervous was an understatement, this guy is supposed to be your soulmate; there must be a reason the universe put you two together. Thanks to Peter's spidey sense he knew you were there, turning around he looks at your shy and nervous demeanor, and falls in love with you all over again.

"Hey." he says though his spandex mask.

"I actually wanted to talk about the other day," you inform as you rolled up your sleeve to show the now white band, "but you know it's alright if you don't want to." You stutter. Peter just wanted to hug you and comfort you but he something else in mind. "Do you trust me?"he asked as he stepped closer to you. Confused and scared you didn't know what to say, but you felt some sort of connection with him, it was like you've known him forever. "Yes." You gulped.

Peter wrapped his one around your waist and shot a web with the other and he pulled you up, you kept your eyes closed the entire time and tightened your grip around him. Feeling the ground below your feet, you carefully opened your eyes and quickly noticed the surrounding. He had taken you on the roof of some building which had an extremely charming view of Queens.

"Y/n.." He whispered. You were confused, how did spiderman know your name? And then he slowly started to lift his mask; right now you were terrified, what if it was some older man trying to fake being spiderman to kidnap you. But the all your doubts were cleared when your eyes met a beautiful pair of hazel ones, giving you a sense of relief. "Peter?" You asked timidly.

"You must be pretty disappointed."

"What? No I'm not! I'm glad actually."

"What?"

"Yeah, I mean, I've always had a crush on you and now," you bit you lip, making Peter blush," I'm so so happy that you're my soulmate."

"Yo-you've had a crush on me?" You nodded in response. Peter pulled you in a tight hug and completely underestimated his strength. "Peter!" You gasped.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!"

"It's okay." You reassured him as you pulled him onto your lips; it took Peter a while to comprehend what was happening but eventually melted into it.  

"I'm so happy I've finally found you." You admit pulling away.

"Me too." Peter once again pulled you in his embrace.

"Peter!" You gasped once again.

"I'm sorry." He winced.

"It's okay, we can work on that." You smiled at him.

General Taglist: @in-a-lot-of-fandoms-tbh @perspectiveparker @mischiefmanaged011 @hollanderfangirl @amorhollands @halfblood-princess-505 @parkerpeter24 @whatthefuckimbisexual @musicalkeys @rnatasha @hollands-weasley @fancyxparker @peterspideysstuff @ethereal-beauty-p @parker-hollandx @going-crazy-over-unreal-people

Peter Parker Taglist: @starlight-starks

[cruelangelstheses]

with quiet courage

fandom: coraline rating: G characters: coraline, wybie words: 2.1k additional tags: canon compliant, post-canon, fluff, angst, mental health issues, character study description: years later, wybie gives coraline a gift. a/n: hi, this was written for the @ethereal-zine! i just thought it would be interesting to explore the long-term effects that the whole ordeal with the other world could have on coraline’s mental health. title from “with quiet courage” by larry daehn

read it on ao3

—

Something feels...wrong.

She can’t explain it, can’t even fully comprehend it herself, but the house feels different tonight, like it’s just waiting for the right moment to pounce. Every creak sends chills down her spine. This isn’t right.

Coraline glances out the kitchen window at their garden, but finds that she can’t really see it, despite the fact that the moon is close to full, last time she checked. She raises her gaze to the sky, squinting in confusion, and her heart nearly stops at what she sees: a shadow passing over the moon in the shape of a button, holes and all.

Gasping, Coraline pushes herself away from the window, every inch of her suddenly on high alert. That’s when she hears it: a familiar metallic skittering across the floor, a sound she knows all too well.

She bolts out of the kitchen and up the stairs, leaping into her bedroom and slamming the door shut behind her. Her blood rushes in her ears.

It only gives her a few moments’ reprieve before she hears the skittering again, even closer and louder than before. Coraline backs away from the door, frantically searching her room for anything she could use as a weapon. She digs underneath her pillow for the pocketknife she bought in secret a year or two ago, but inexplicably, it’s nowhere to be found. Her heart nearly stops when she sees the hand crawl in from underneath.

The hand is severed at first, but from its wrist seems to grow an arm, a torso, another arm, all made out of needles. Coraline steels herself as the Beldam materializes before her eyes.

“You are my daughter,” she hisses, as something else appears in one of her hands. “You’re going to stay with me forever.”

In one hand, she holds another needle, already threaded. In the other is a gift box, and inside it sits a pair of black buttons.

“Hold still,” the Beldam continues. Coraline tries to move, to fight, to do anything, but her whole body is suddenly frozen. “This will only hurt a bit.” She takes a step forward, needle pointing at Coraline’s face, and then—

Coraline jolts awake and sits up rapidly, trying to catch her breath. The morning light streams through her bedroom window, a reminder of where she is: not the Other World, but the real one. Reaching under her pillow, she feels for her pocketknife. She is seventeen now, but still the events of her childhood plague her dreams.

She still has her stuffed animals. Most of the time, they sit on her shelf, watching over her like guardian angels, ensuring that danger doesn’t even make it through the doorway. Sometimes, though, on nights where the house creaks more than usual, on nights where Coraline swears she can feel a sinister gaze burning into her back, she grabs a few of them and sleeps with them in her bed, holding them tight against her chest, as if they will cast a bubble around her body that protects her from any harm. Sometimes she doesn’t even sleep, just lies awake in terror for hours on end. She’s far too old to sleep in her parents’ bed, but some nights, she tiptoes over to their bedroom and cracks the door open, just enough so she can see that they’re still there, safe and sound.

Coraline loves her parents, but they don’t completely understand everything. It’s not their fault; they have no memory of being kidnapped by the Beldam, and they weren’t witness to anything else that happened that fateful year. She tried to explain bits and pieces when she was younger, but they dismissed it as a child’s wild imagination or particularly vivid dreams, and she’s not sure she can really blame them. After all, it hardly sounds believable.

She’s made some other friends at her new school, and they’re wonderful, but none of them get it, either. They don’t understand why she cringes every time they point out the tiny door that leads to nowhere when they come over to her house. They don’t understand why buttons and dolls disturb her to this day, or why when she looks at a snow globe, it always takes her a moment to register that there is nothing frightening inside of it. “Something happened to me when I was a kid,” she told them once, to allay their concerns. “It was really scary. I could’ve died. So if I ever do something...weird, that’s probably why.” None of them questioned her, then, when she bought that pocketknife. If nothing else, she’s grateful for that.

Wybie and his grandmother are the only ones she can actually talk to about what happened, and she’s not going to come to them every single time she has a paranoid thought (which is, unfortunately, fairly often). Usually she can calm herself down, anyway; she just has to take deep breaths and remind herself that the key is gone, at the bottom of a bottomless well, and the Beldam can never open that godforsaken portal ever again.

It takes lying there for another ten minutes, eyes closed and focusing on nothing but the sound of her own breathing, for Coraline to finally muster up the energy to pull herself out of bed. At least it’s a Friday, she tells herself. She has to work a bit this weekend, but her job involves more stocking shelves than interacting with other people, so it’s still better than school.

It’s not that she hates school. She likes learning when it’s interesting, and she likes seeing her friends. It’s not even that she dislikes other people, because she doesn’t, really. Even people she thought were weird or annoying at first, like Wybie, have grown on her with time. It’s just that she fears she’ll have a flashback or a panic attack in the middle of class and embarrass herself. It’s happened before—in middle school she was branded a freak when a sewing project in her home economics class brought her to tears for reasons she didn’t know how to explain. Strangely enough, she feels safer in her neighborhood. It’s an environment she knows well, and as odd as her neighbors are, she trusts them to protect her, even if they might not be aware of it. She remembers Mr. Bobinsky’s warning not to go through the little door, and she remembers the adder stone given to her by Misses Spink and Forcible—and, of course, she remembers Wybie, who once called her crazy before he saw the Beldam’s severed hand for himself, before he helped her dispose of the key for good. Technically, he’s the one who found the Coraline doll that spied on her in the first place—a fact that she hates him for on her worst days—but she knows that he had no idea, and it doesn’t do any good to blame him. After all, even if he may have inadvertently introduced Coraline to the Other Mother, he also helped to defeat her.

While Coraline is choosing her outfit for the day, her phone buzzes: a text from Wybie. Hey Jonesy, it reads, meet me outside then. I got something for ya.

Coraline raises an eyebrow. That could mean anything. Still, she sends him a quick Ok and slips her clothes on. If it happens to be a slug or something, at least she can say her day got off to an interesting start.

Being writers, her parents don’t have to wake up as early as she does, so Coraline usually fixes her own breakfast—often something quick, like a muffin—and heads out the door. Today is no exception, her meal a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice. It sort of makes her feel like a kid again, in a good way. Sitting alone at the kitchen table, Cheerios in her spoon, the sun rising over the foggy mountains, a feeling of quiet peace and even innocence settles over her like dust on a bookshelf. In this moment, there is no fear, no nightmares, no flashbacks. In this moment, she is not a teenager doing her best to survive even while her mind begs to differ. She is the little girl she once was, before she was forced to be brave in the face of true horror. The sky glows pink and orange, a phenomenon unknown to the Other World. She’s grown to appreciate daylight more since then.

Finally, Coraline vaults her backpack over her shoulder and pushes the front door open, saying a silent goodbye to her parents in her head. Sure enough, at the bottom of the hill, leaning up against the Pink Palace sign, is Wybie, who looks like he’s playing a game on his phone. When he hears the sound of her footsteps, he looks up and waves to her.

“You’re back,” she says once she’s close enough to him to talk without having to shout. For the past two weeks, Wybie has been on a school trip to Germany. (Coraline couldn’t go because she’s taking Spanish instead of German.) It’s pretty stupid for them to get back on a Friday and then have to go to regular school for one day, in her opinion, but that’s just how it worked out. “You said you have something for me?” She can’t help but wonder if it’s a souvenir of some sort. She’d joked about him getting her one, but she didn’t actually expect him to do it.

“Yeah,” Wybie says. As they start to walk down the path that leads to town and their school, he pulls something small out of his jeans pocket, holding it in both hands so she can’t see what it is. His voice sounds strangely solemn. “So, you know how you said Miss Spink and Miss Forcible gave you that stone that one time? The one with the hole in the middle?”

Coraline remembers it well: the adder stone that helped her find the ghost children’s eyes all those years ago. When she read up about them later on, she found that rocks with naturally occurring holes in them, called adder stones or hag stones, are said to have magical properties. One of them is the ability to see through a witch or fairy’s disguises or traps, but others include the prevention of nightmares and curing whooping cough.

Coraline certainly doesn’t have whooping cough, but she does have nightmares, and she’s already seen the power of an adder stone for herself. “Yeah,” she says slowly. “They’re pretty rare. The Other Mother destroyed the one I had.”

Wybie flashes her a little half-smile and opens his palms, revealing a round, grayish stone with a medium-sized hole in it. “We visited the north coast one day,” he says as she takes it from him, “and I just happened to stumble across it. Apparently that’s one of the places where they’re more common, in northern Germany.” He shrugs. “I saw it, and I knew I had to give it to you. Not like you’ll need to find any more ghost children’s eyes, but…”

Coraline holds the stone up to her eye, feeling an odd comfort when she looks through the hole, even though nothing seems different. Feeling a soft smile spread across her face, she slips the stone into her pocket and says, “Thank you, Wybie.” Then, to lighten the mood, she adds, “I guess taking German was a good decision after all.”

Wybie blows a raspberry at her. “Hey, who got to go to a foreign country? Not you.”

They banter back and forth like that for a while, but part of Coraline is still focused on the stone in her pocket and the thoughtfulness behind it. It’s so small, but both the stone and the gesture give her the burst of courage she needs to get through the rest of the day, the week, the month. It’s a different kind of courage from what she had to muster up to stop the Beldam. It’s subtler, quieter. It’s the courage of a girl who has seen real ugliness, who has felt the deepest and most primal sort of fear, who went through hell and came out alive but unsure where to go from there. How do you keep on going when you’ve been face to face with death?

The answer, she realizes, is simple: it takes courage. It might be the kind that only a few people can see, but it’s courage all the same.

[shannygoatgruff]

My Brother’s Keeper - Chapter XIII

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Modern Ivar X Modern Hvitserk

Rating: MA+18

Overall Warning:  Dark story told from an emotionally distributed person’s POV with graphic and sadistic material including rape, terror, torture, kidnapping, drug use, slash, implied incest, necrophilia, and insecurity. Heavy trigger warnings.  

Chapter Warning: Description of previous assault.

Summary: Mama always said to be their brothers’ keeper. Now there is absolutely nothing these two won’t do for each other.  Boys will be boys…

Chapter XIII

I've been so busy the last couple of days that I haven't been home much. Judging from the dishes in the sink, I'd say that Ivar hasn't been here either. He's notoriously neat. Like, nothing is ever out of place, neat. I'm not really a slob, but I'm nowhere as neat as he is. He never really complains about the small messes I leave around the house, well, except for my piss in the bathroom, he doesn't. His neat thing is just one of his little idiosyncrasies that I live with. God knows he puts up with enough of mine.

I don't know why these few dishes in the sink are bothering me so damn much.  Had I been the one home for a few days, there probably wouldn’t be a clean dish left in the house.  But, Ivar’s only left a bowl, a fork, and a glass and for some reason, it's driving me crazy. Even if he just left it – it’s just not like him.  He always cleans up the messes. 

Maybe I'm foreshadowing, but it just feels like things are changing.

I had this other shrink tell me that I live in a transferred state. That I'm always transferring the way I feel onto other people. Yeah…she didn't know what the fuck she was talking about, either. If what she said was true, then right now, I should be projecting thoughts around this house that would have me as happy as a pig in shit. 

I want to find Ivar and tell him my good news.  I want him to know how happy I am.  But, if he knew that I just spent the last three days at Thora's dorm looking at bridal magazines, hearing her childish fantasies about this big, fairy tale wedding, complete with a castle and a mote, he'd laugh his ass off. And not in a good way.

In all honesty, I can't help but laugh myself when I think about the way her face lit up when she told me she thought I would look good in a tunic and tights and that she wanted the groomsmen to raise swords for us to walk under.  I wanted to ask her, what groomsmen? I didn’t want to burst her bubble, so I kept my mouth shut, but there won’t be any motes or castles and their damn sure won’t be any groomsmen. 

Besides Ivar, I don't have anybody to invite. Well, maybe Ubbe, but fuck, does he have to know I’m getting married? If he found out, he’d probably tell my other brothers Bjorn and Sigurd and I haven’t seen or heard from them in years. 

Bjorn and I don’t talk anymore and I haven’t seen Siggy since he and Ivar got in that big fight when they were teenagers and I took Ivar’s side.  Our family has never been that close.

I wonder if Uncle Rollo would come?  If Ivar doesn’t already think I’m crazy for getting married, he will if he ever found out I was thinking about Rollo.  He’s liable to have me committed.  I think it would be nice to have some representation from my dad’s side of the family there, but Ivar would fucking flip.  If I even thought about inviting Rollo, I better decide now who would I rather have there, my brother or my uncle.  

Oh well, I guess if Ivar doesn't completely stop talking to me over this little stunt, he’s going to be looking pretty fucking stupid holding a sword by himself.

Instead of thinking about how pathetic my side of the church is going to be, I might as well see what that bitch from the news is up to.  The only time I get to watch it now is when Ivar isn’t around. He would have a fucking fit if he knew that’s what I was putting on. He’s been extremely overprotective lately.  

I would have thought after our night with Bishop and Aud that he would relax a little. He saw how much I needed that and how much they helped me in the confidence department, but he’s still been treating me like a porcelain doll.  

He still won’t let me watch the news.  He freaked the fuck out when I told him I was taking Thora out to dinner and went ballistic when I told him I was staying the night at her place.  Now that he hasn’t seen me in a few days, I don’t have a clue what kind of mood he’s going to be in.  He keeps saying something about being worried that I’m not ready to be social yet – that he’s afraid I’m going to have another blackout. I haven’t blacked out in over a week, but he still doesn’t want me out of his sight. I swear it’s more to it than that, only he won’t be straight with me and tell me what it is.    

Foreshadowing my ass. Things are definitely changing.

Wait...where's that Judith Wessex news bitch? I’ve developed a relationship with that fucking reporter that likes to dump on us. I know it seems crazy, but I feel like if I can just keep my eye on her, hear firsthand what lies she's spreading, that I have some control over the situation.  Knowing what she knows about us has been almost settling for me, because I know I’m still one step ahead of her nosy ass. But, she's not on today. Where the fuck is she? Is she combing the streets making up more lies? Is she retracing our steps and writing a story to put our entire lives on display for the public? 

Little does she know, I've stopped…so fuck you, bitch!  Ha! I can't wait to see her pinched fucking face when she has nothing else to lie about. Fucking whore. I hate that bitch more when she's not on TV then when she is. And the fact that I don't know where she is making me uncomfortable.

Turning my head toward the sound of the kitchen, I see Ivar emerging from the basement stairs. "Hey there. Long time, no see." He smiles brightly as he walks toward me and kisses me on the head. "How are you feeling?"

I never take my eyes off of him as he rounds the couch to sit beside me. "Good. Tired, but good." He looks genuinely happy to see me. I feel myself smile as I reach across the couch to wipe away a smudge of dirt from his cheek. "What have you been into?"

He moves his head away from my hand before capturing it in his own. "You know... this and that. Gotta new project I'm working on." When Ivar's being vague, I tend not to question why. He never gets himself into more than he can handle. We share our lives, but how we share is completely different. I am an open book to him, mainly because I can't seem to control my emotions. He shares with me by being supportive. It's not that I don't care what he's got going on; it's just, Ivar doesn't need help. He tells me what I need to know and works the rest out on his own. "How's the pixie?"

There it is, the Thora sarcasm. I knew it was going to happen, I just didn’t think it would happen two minutes into our conversation. I wanted to sit here and shoot the shit with him for a little while, talk about regular shit before the conversation drifted over to her.  But, he already brought her up.  It’s like he knows that she’s on my mind or that I have something that I need to talk to him about.  

He's my everything - I don't keep secrets from him and sure as fuck can't lie to him. But on the same token, I don't ever want to hurt him. What if he takes this news as a betrayal?  "Good." That's not what I wanted to say, but it's all that will come out my mouth at the moment. 

"Just good? What? No animated hearts floating above your head when you talk about her? Where are the sparkles and glittery fairy dust? She's losing her touch, Hvitserk." He gives me this smile and rolls his eyes in annoyance.  God, I hate this. He must sense my mood changing because he lifts my hand to his lips and kisses my open palm. "Aww, I’m sorry, baby. I’m just joking."

I haven't been this afraid to tell him something since the time I told him about my hobby.  That was the single biggest leap of faith I have ever taken with anyone in my life.  Telling him about Thora is nowhere near the same magnitude, but fuck if I’m not just as afraid.

For some reason, it had always been easiest to talk to Ivar and he is my youngest brother. But that night, when I came back to our parents’ house, I just couldn’t go back to my place and be alone. I went to his room to sleep on his floor.  Maybe it was because he was the only one of my brothers that was home at the time or maybe because we always seemed to have this connection. Whatever it was, it just felt safe to be there with him. He didn't judge me or ask me a lot of questions. He didn’t tell me to go to my old room or get the fuck out of his.  He just moved over in his bed and patted the space next to him – he lifted his covers for me to crawl in next to him, so I did.  I don’t think either of us knew why.  I just know that I needed someone and he knew that I was in a funk that I couldn’t get out of and he never made fun of me for it.

Those first few nights, he would lay next to me and stroke my hair silently, so lovingly and just let me cry without prying. I don't know what made me tell him. I guess I just couldn't keep it in any longer. Maybe it was knowing that his blue eyes were desperately searching for what was making me so unhappy, or maybe it was the soothing sound of his breathing? Whatever it was, I was scared but I trusted him. 

I swear I felt then just like I feel right now.

It just didn't seem that hard then. I just knew that I had to tell somebody before my secret-self ate me alive. Sweaty palms and a heartbeat that I couldn't control couldn’t stop me from divulging. Someone had to see the real me before I completely disappeared. So I told him. I told him about the hunger and how crazy it made me feel. I told him how I like to hurt them, restrain them, feel them fight against me. I tried to explain the tears and how they excited me. The punching and scratching, biting, and resisting… the guilt, the pain, the endless crying, and apologizing over them as they lay bloody and unconscious. I never meant to hurt any of them I just needed them to make me feel normal again. And it had worked for a while.

Until her…

She was supposed to be like the rest of them, but no matter what I did, it wasn't enough. She loved it more than I did. I wasn't strong enough to break her and when I stopped, she begged for more. She needed it more than me. She was sick, all the things she asked me to do. And what was sicker was I couldn't do them. But she finally stopped asking when I broke the bottle and used it to please her. 

I don't know why I did it. Nothing I was doing on my own would hurt her enough. I didn't think it would kill her. But there was so much blood. I mutilated her to settle something in me.

He listened silently as I recounted how I lost control and killed her so that I didn't have to hear her call me a failure. He understood that that's what led me back home that night and why I ended up on his floor.  He knew that the one thing I had to make me feel powerful she had taken away from me so I ended her life and that I would rather kill myself than to live knowing that I was that weak. I still can't believe I told him that. I have never told anyone that much about myself.

I just knew that Ivar would tell me to get the hell out of the room, or that we weren’t brothers anymore. But he didn't. Instead, he held me tight and soothed my tears. He told me he understood. Then he told me about the things that haunt him.

I felt like we connected when he explained the way the screams help him sleep at night. I understood what he meant by the smell of fear being sweeter than any perfume. It felt like he was reading my diary. I got how his hunger was so unbearable that he felt like he was losing his mind. I knew the feeling of ants crawling in my blood; it was just like that for him.

I had finally found someone that understood me. I had no idea that my baby brother felt so many of the same feelings that I did.  The one person in the world that wouldn’t think I was a freak had been in my life all of this time. My insecurities, my awkwardness, my past time…nothing seemed to deter him from being there for me. If anything, I think it brought us closer.

Ivar took me under his wing and taught me how to take pride and pleasure in what it is that we do. He showed me how to make what is mine into an art form. He helped me learn to accept true love and know that I am worthy of it…even if I don't have my shit together. He proved to me time and time again that nothing I do is enough to make him leave me.

So why the fuck am I petrified to tell him about Thora?

Taking a deep breath and fix my eyes on the couch cushion between us. "I'm getting married." Slowly my eyes raise to meet his face and I blink back the sheer terror that runs through me. If I could just read his expression I would feel more at ease. But for now, his expression is blank. "I–I proposed to her. S-She said yes." I try to sound relieved but I know it comes across as uncertain. I'm not unsure about Thora, I'm unsure about his silence.

Nothing. He says absolutely nothing. He's completely still and only his sporadic blinking lets me know that he's still paying attention. He never lets my hand go nor does he increase his grip to show his anger. Sometimes I hate how aloof he can be.

"Ivar. This is what I want. I want a normal life. This thing that we do isn’t normal. I use to think it was, but it's not.” I take a deep breath, “The papers are full of a hundred stories of other people that do what we do, but most of them can control it better than we can.  They don’t go around partying as hard or as often.  We’re losing control, man." I stand from the couch and start to pace in front of the television. His eyes follow me back and forth, but the look on his face never changes. "We can't do this forever. I just want a chance, like Mother and Father had.  Okay?" I don't know why I'm crying. He hasn't said anything, but his silence is even worse than him yelling. I just want him to talk to me. "Say something, please."

He closes his eyes and folds his hands neatly in his lap. It takes a second for him to formulate the words. When he's ready and his eyes open, he turns his body to face me and he cocks his head and fixes me with an eerily calm glare. "What would you like me to say?"

"Something. Anything. Let me know you're okay with it. Tell me you still love me and that you'll never leave me." Ivar's approval means to me than even I understand. But I know he won't approve of this. "Tell me that you're still proud of me."

He shakes his head sadly and his eyes soften. I don't want him to react to my reaction but I know that's what he's doing. Just once, I want Ivar to tell me how he feels without treating me like I may break. "Hvitserk…"

I am going to get married. I have to learn how to stand on my own feet if I'm going to be able to carry Thora for the rest of our lives. I can take it. I can take whatever he says. But he has to know how I feel. "She makes me happy. I love her."

A cool smile spreads across his face before a throaty laugh escapes him. I don't like it when people laugh at me, especially Ivar. "Please, don't laugh at me, Ivar."

"I'm not laughing at you, Serk. I'm laughing at the absurdity of the situation." He stands slowly and runs his fingers through his hair. Even now he's so fluid. Nothing in his body language shows how he feels. But the smooth tone of his voice alerts me that he's less than happy. "I'm not going to give you permission if that's what you're looking for. You think this is what you want, but it's not." He stands in front of me and places a kiss on my forehead. "I've taught you everything you need to know. I have shown you the beauty of who and what you are. But the one thing I can't do is make you accept it. So if that pixie, cunt, bitch is what will keep you entertained for a while, then by all means. And when the feeling overwhelms you and you know what it is that you need, I'll be right here waiting for you."

I would rather him yell at me then to use that disappointed tone of voice. I wish I could take back the last three days and have just kept that damn ring in my pocket. But, I want this. I deserve it. I've been fighting this thing in me since I was fourteen years old. Isn't it time for it to stop controlling me? Isn't it time for me to be happy. "It's not like that, Ivar."

"Then why are you crying, Sweetie?" He leans down to whisper in my ear and I feel my heart breaking at his words. "If you were sure, you would have told me and not felt the need to defend it."

I sniffle back the emotion that's taking over me at the moment. I feel dizzy and nauseous, but I'm not letting that give me an excuse not to deal with the events of my life. I will not blackout. I will deal with discomfort and not second guess my actions.

I am sure. I'm sure that I don't want to lose him but that I want a normal life. "I'm done." My lips move to say the words but no sound comes from my mouth. I want him to understand that I mean it when I say it, but I just haven't found the strength yet.

"Okay." He says it with a smile and I know he doesn't believe me.

"I mean it." I find my voice and raise my eyes to finally meet his. I'm not backing down. Not this time. "I'm not doing it anymore."

With a shrug, Ivar turns away from me and heads towards the stairs. "You say that now. You might even think that you believe it. But you can't escape it."

I watch him walk up the stairs and I find myself at the foot of them, scared to death. "Just don't stop loving me. Please?"

He turns to me and I swear I see tears in his eyes. "I'll never stop loving you, Brother. I just don't support you in this one. You can have all the dreams you want, baby. But you can never stop being who you are."

Ivar's usually right about everything. I just pray to God that he's not about this.

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[1000roughdrafts]

Family Secrets: Chapter Eight

Thrown Out

Summary: After a fight with Edra, you let your anger get the best of you and confront Allanah. Only to be kicked out and rushed into the arms of a demon. 

Warnings: language, demon being creepy towards reader, but no worries: Dean to the rescue :), angst

W/C: 3.4

Masterlist/schedule:

Previous Chapter

You peak around the corner before creeping out of your room. Sneaking down the hallway, you scan the building for Allanah. Spotting her in a group of witches, you march over. "We need to talk." You glare at the other witches and lower your voice, "alone."

She executes a glare before forcing a smile and excusing herself from the group. "Sure, honey." With a hand on your back, she guides you to an unoccupied corner of the ballroom. "What's the concern?"

"The reason for all of this - what is it? You need to tell me what the hell is going on right now, or so help me-"

Allanah only laughs. 

"I'm serious. Something is not right about you, or Edra, or... any of this, and I want some damn answers."

Allanah grins gratingly, "I suppose." She glances around the room for a few seconds before saying, "follow me."

She closes the door behind her and slowly walks to your side, the heels of her shoes clacking on the marble flooring. "I'm going to tell you something that none of the others know and I expect you to keep it that way.

It took us nearly a century of trial and error to get the group we have now. Not to mention the countless lives of fellow witches and high priestesses it cost to get to this point. It's quite disappointing for me to see, after all of that, a young and gloriously powerful witch questioning the validity of her elder."

You involuntarily roll your eyes with a scoff. "With that being said," Allanah raises her voice. "While I'm not in the least bit surprised, and though I'm genuinely insulted by your interrogation, I will tell you why and how we became."

She clears her throat, clasping her hands together, "at the turn of the century, I was a tad naive compared to now, as I was involved with what humans would call a 'bad boy'. No surprise, Fergus is just as power hungry as I, and neither of us are too proud to deny it. He'd developed an idea; formulate an army of demons. Of course, this was something that had already been in place since the dawn of time, but he wanted his own. When I suggested we become partnership in ruling, he wanted no place in it." She lowers her head and mutters, "that misogynistic pig."

Looking back to you, she continues, "when he kicked my idea to the curb I did the same to our relationship and thus an idea of my own sprung: an army of witches. I spent years bringing together my most trusted and started to develop a plan, which turned into... kind of an experiment."

"Experiment?"

"Get a mirror, darling. You and all of your brothers and sisters out there used to be human, as you are aware. The four of us that I brought together adopted children from all over the world to see what kind of powers we could cook up in them. We gave each and every one of you a specific set of abilities for when you reached certain ages, passed the training, etcetera, etcetera."

"Adopted," you scoff. "More like kidnapped hundreds of babies and children and to what? Get back at your ex?" You've heard of 'crazy ex' stories before, but a century long revenge plan seems far fetched. "I don't believe a word you say."

"And I never asked you to," she pauses, looking deeply into your eyes and squinting her own slightly. "Besides, why would I lie?"

"Because you have nothing to lose from it." You keep your face and composure aligned as they were. "Why did you put that book in my room?"

"I'm sorry? I can't say I know what you're talking about."

You hold up a finger, stepping closer, "you know exactly what I'm talking about."

"I do hope you don't mean the book you stole from my private library to cheat your way into more powers." With the remnants of a smile on her face she utters in a catty, high pitched tone, "because as you may or may not know, that is grounds for immediate termination from the family. I really hate to do this, especially after all I did to bring you here, but..." she shrugs and like rain drops on a spring night, the guff drops back into her voice, "pack your things and be gone."

--

Sprinting towards your car, a sharp pain in your head buckles your knees. You apply pressure to your forehead and force your legs one by one until you reach the car door, using it to pull yourself into the seat. Trying to battle the unexpected sleepiness that flows through you is unsuccessful. As you slouch into your seat, your eyes fall shut. You slip into a state of being asleep yet fully alert and conscious.

When your eyes open again, you see five people sitting around a table in a conference room. There is an older man at the head of the table, the only one with his back turned to you. Beside him is a younger gentleman, who along with four of the others is wearing a lab coat and blue scrubs.

Across from the man is a woman with pink hair in a pixie cut, who seems nervous and out of place in her over sized shall and pajama pants. There is a woman of small stature, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail, while across from her is a woman with well kept, and short black hair. When you look next to you, you see the familiar man from your dream.

The man at the head of the table folds his hands together and leans forward. "Now," he says to the pink haired woman. "Miss Luna's case is of high priority and exceptionally confidential. You see, her parents are what makes this town what it is."

"And what is that, exactly?" the pink haired woman asks.

"Powerful," the woman next to her scoffs.

"Some would even say magical, but I don't lend myself to those kinds of fairy tales," the older man holds his palms up with a laugh.

You look over at the familiar man and lock eyes, "what is happening?" He puts a finger to his pursed lips to shush you.

"Teraw has been blessed with a lot and we are very grateful. We've held first place out of all the regions here for the past twenty years, since the beginning of her fathers appointed takeover," the woman with the black bob adds.

"She's right," the younger man cuts in with elbows on the table. The pink haired woman narrows her eyes at him. "And not just the hospital. The businesses here are growing at exponential rates. We are the first region to start exporting goods since the separation in 2030."

"2030?" you whisper. "That's seventeen years from now."

He shushes you again. The older man nods, "whatever he's doing seems to be working and if the girl doesn't survive," he pauses to shake his head and lean back in the chair. He clicks his tongue with a shrug, "well, that'd be devastating in itself, but I don't wish to see how the town suffers from that."

"Okay," she says slowly. "I see. So the 'town that never stops smiling' is just as corrupt as the others. Wonderful."

The older man grips onto her wrist, leaning in, "don't you ever disgrace Teraw like that again." Her eyes widen, and you see the dark haired woman shake her head with a frown, eyes locked with the man. He somberly nods and removes his hand, "you just never know who is listening," he whispers.

The familiar man clamps a hand over your mouth and pulls you into him. He gently pushes you into the hallway and you realize that you can't actually feel his hands on you. You see them on your arms, you feel the energy from him, but it doesn't seem or feel real.

"Do you remember who you are this time?"

"Yeah," you say, ripping your arm away. "And you're Dean Winchester."

Nodding his head he says, "are you causing this?"

"Seriously?"

Holding his hands up, he smirks. "Hey, you're the one with the ability to assault someone's mind with your thoughts, all right? I have every right to question you."

"You're right, but you're not innocent either, De-"

"Just.. stop. Look, this isn't the time for that. We need to find that girl's - Luna's - room again." Looking down the hall behind him at the many different people and doors, he sighs, "does any of this look familiar?"

"Uh, not really. I just remember lights and crying." You glance around at the doors, reading their numbers. A creepy chill and feeling of being watch consumes you.

With every blink, as your eyes are closed you see your steering wheel, and when they open you see a hallway. Reality is merging with this surreal experience and the doors in front of you are being overtaken, transforming into a street lamp and the surrounding darkness.

"Why are you stopped, Y/N? We have to get to that door. Come on."

"I don't - I don't see it anymore." You let out the breath you were holding and look away from the fading hallway to see Dean slowly transitioning in and out of your sight.

Whatever it feels like to be in two places at once is what you're imagining this is. You feel like you're fighting to breathe, like the air is thinning around you. Dean is saying things you can't understand as your ears ring and you try to wrap your mind around him being next to you in a hallway and a car door. The hallway disappears completely, as does Dean.

Hot air is blasting out of your cars' vents and dances along to the blaring radio. Turning them off you glance at your watch, "no. That's not possible. Time couldn't have just sto-"

Jumping at the sound of your phone ringing, you put it to your ear, "hello?"

"Oh, now you answer," Dean says in a harsh whisper. "We gotta talk. Now. Come alone."

"No." You accidentally hold a palm up facing the steering wheel as if he were standing in front of you. You glance up at the building in time to see Allanah stepping away from the window. "You have no idea how dangerous this is."

"I have no- are you kidding me? I've been doing this my whole life, sweetheart. I think I would know how to handle-"

"This isn't chasing demons, or taking down the freaking tooth fairy anymore, Dean. This is a whole new ballgame with brand new rules, and we're on strike two. I've probably got hundreds of witches out for my throat. We need a plan. Just... hang tight and wait to hear from me."

You toss the phone into the passenger seat and take one last glance up at the empty window before putting your car into gear. You've never been more concerned about being tailed than you are now; everyone is a threat. With every option to make a turn you do, and end up at a gas station in the middle of nowhere.

The clerk gives no acknowledgement to your arrival other than looking up from his phone. You round a corner and eye him behind a stand of granola bars. His lack of intrigue is enough for you to not yet suspect him. With shaky hands, you accidentally drop one of the power bars.

"We close in ten minutes," the clerk says without looking up from his phone.

Grabbing a few more of the power bars and an energy drink you drop the items on the counter. "I need my tank filled, too," you say pulling a wad of cash out of your pocket.

He sets the phone beside the register and begins to ring up your items. "Have we met before? You look awfully familiar," he says in a sarcastic tone.

"Don't think so." You set the case on the counter and reach down to grab your bags. The clerk clasps his hand around your wrist, "yeah, you know my buddy Tim."

~

Dean adjusts his shirt as he comes out of the bathroom, heading over to the nightstand for his keys. "Get packed, were checking out," he says.

Sam shifts in his chair, "what? Why?"

"She's on the move," Dean says, throwing clothes into his bag.

Sam slowly shuts the screen of his laptop down, "how do you know?"

"I just do." He looks down at Sam and twirls a finger, "come on, Sam. Let's roll."

You wake up sitting in a chair with your hands behind the back of it, zip ties around your wrists and ankles. The demon is circling you with his finger against his lips and elbow resting on his other arm to hold it up.

"I've heard about you," he says.

"Oh, have you?" you say with a yawn.

The demon leans close to your face, lips almost touching your cheek, "you know, Crowley’s been searching for you," he steps away to pace. "But see, I don't really work for him anymore, so that's not why you're here."

"Is that so?" you say, trying to wiggle your wrists around to snap or loosen the zip ties.

"I just want a piece of what Tim got..." the demon leans in close, sniffing your hair. You jerk your head in the opposite direction, "and he said you were... delicious."

"That's disgusting," you growl. "Get the fuck away from me." You jerk your shoulder and face away from him.

He kneels down in front of you, one hand resting on your thigh, the other moving up your body and caressing your cheek. His eyes flicker back, and he lowers his voice to a snarl, "I'm going to untie you now. If you try anything, anything at all, you're dead. Hear me?"

You narrow your eyes at him as he takes a knife to the zip ties around your ankles. After both of your legs are free he slowly starts to stand. You kick your leg up and hit him between the thighs, sending him straight to the ground. You stand up with the chair still attached by your tied hands, but the demon grips onto your ankle, sending you flying face first into the ground.

Standing over you, he holds his foot on your arm to cut the zip ties from your wrists, and throws the chair against the wall, shattering it with a loud bang. He grips both of your arms and pulls you into him.

"This is my favorite thing about you hunters, always putting up a fight." He inhales sharply, pulling you closer to his chest with both of your arms behind you. He forces your head to the side, taking in the smell of your neck before planting a kiss behind your ear."

"Let her go!" You hear what sounds like Dean's voice scream from behind you. The demon laughs as he flips you around to see Dean and Sam holding guns at you and the demon.

"You're not that great of a shot, Winchester," the demon cackles. "You try shooting me, you're gonna kill her instead. You don't want that, do you? I know I don't want that," he says leaning his head into yours and running a hand through your hair. You cringe, trying to turn in the opposite direction.

You lean your head forward and slam it against the demons, giving you a chance to wiggle your hand just free enough to elbow him in the stomach. You flip around and grab the demon by the back of the neck, slamming his face against your knee and throwing him onto the ground. Putting your foot on his back, the Winchester's rush to your side. Dean jumps in with his dagger, but is too late. With a grunt, you rip your own knife from your boot, and stab the demon in the back, just above your foot. 

The demon screams out as the essence vanishes from the vessel, and you’re left with nothing but the Winchesters and a dead body. 

"Are you okay?" Sam asks, helping you keep your balance as you stagger back a few steps.

You nod delicately, eyes wide as the severity of what had almost happened to you settles in your mind. Looking to your side, you notice that both of the Winchester's are standing beside you, helping you out of the shop.

"How - how did you know I was here?"

"You told me," Dean shrugs. "Don't think you meant to, but I knew you were in trouble, so..." he shrugs again.

"Listen, Y/N, when we get to the cabin we're going to have to figure out how to keep them from finding you again," Sam says as he helps you into the back seat of the Impala. Dean drives off the instant Sam shuts his door.

-

"So, uh," Dean looks into the rear view mirror at you after driving for a few miles, "what did you do to piss off a hundred witches?"

"I don't know, exactly. I never meant to do anything, but I got kicked out," you sigh.

Sam turns around to look at you, "seriously? How?"

"My trainer, Edra, left books in my room. One of them had a spell, and that lead to this weird dream. Dean, you were there," Dean and Sam share a look before focusing back on you. "Edra barged into my room to question me about it. Apparently, that book was from a collection of Allanah's that no one should have access to. That's when Allanah told me she dated Crowley in the past and that me having that book was grounds for termination. But, the thing is, I think - no, I'm certain - that she's the one that put it in my room, to get rid of me. I think she found out about my plan, somehow."

"Wait a minute," Sam says. "Plan? What do you mean?"

You chuckle, "I used to scare the shit out of Rufus and Bobby. My favorite kind of attacks were internal take downs. I would infiltrate a nest or group, somehow trick them into trusting me until it was time to take them down one by one. It was terrifying, yet thrilling. I hadn't done it in a long time, and it was my plan with Allanah and the other witches. When I first started calling out for you, Dean, I wasn't ready to do it. I was ambushed, and I didn't think I was prepared enough to take her down. But then, when she started saying all that stuff about my family being dead, I just... lost it," you pause.

"I realized that everyone who has ever known me is... dead. I got so angry that I," you take a deep breath. "I was feeling so many things, mostly just anger. I was mad at the way I never knew my dad. I knew Ellen, but not as the mother she should have been to me. I met Jo a time or two, but I never got to be her big sister. Overall, I think I was mad at myself. In a lot of ways, I still am. I feel like I was the cause for all of this," you say more with your hands than your voice, looking around the car and out of the window at the dark, clear sky and trees that surround the road.

"I didn't want to drag you guys in and get you killed, too. Allanah probably had eyes on me the whole time you were there, and if I went with you right then she wouldn't be after just me. She'd be after you guys, too."

"But if you did, we could have come up with a plan," Dean says, looking at you from the rear view mirror. "Together."

"My way got me powers, told me how to find them and where. But that still leaves the question of where and how you came into all of this."

He looks over at Sam, "when I told you this wasn't just hearing thoughts, this is what I meant."

"What does that mean?" you say quickly.

"It's hard to explain, but everything that you saw and were feeling," he focused on the road. "I saw and felt, too. It took me a while to see it, but I knew after a few days that this was your plan. And I knew there was nothing getting in the way of you and taking that bitch down, so after you turned us away at dead man’s house, I decided to hang low. Let you do your thing and be there when you needed us."

Next Chapter

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[channy-mae]

To Be Afraid

It was dark, and you were scared and something smelled faintly of lavender incense. You could hear the voice of your captor at the far end of whatever room you were currently in, the only issue was how do you get out, and how did you get here. Nothing made sense, what could you have possibly done to deserve getting snatched and held hostage. You try to remember what led up to this moment.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I wish this guy would leave me alone for god sake, no means freaking no..” you mutter to yourself as your phone vibrates for what seemed like the thousandth time tonight. This same guy had been pestering you for the past week or so after a party you went to. He was cute you could admit that, but something about him rubbed you the wrong way, and you were always the one to follow your gut instinct, so when he offered you a drink and a ride home you were quick and polite to turn down his offer. But for some reason either you turning him down, or just... you don’t even know led him to like you more maybe, cause he now has your number and social media accounts. Your phone vibrates in beats, meaning you had an incoming phone call, low and behold it was him again. Sick of this you pick it up and answer the phone, “Stop calling me Baekhyun.” you deadpan. He doesn’t say anything back, all you hear on the other end is dead and heavy breathing, not quite panting but on the verge.

“Hey! Did you not hear me?” you question, he was ticking you off more than his constant spamming was doing before. The breathing on the other end becomes more erratic sounding and harsher, freaked out you hang up and toss your phone on the couch. “The hell was that all about?” you question aloud. You wait a good 5 minutes, your phone doesn’t vibrate again, deciding that he probably got the message you decide to head to bed. A knock on your door causes you to jolt awake, placing a hand on your to fast beating heart you take a deep breath, get out of bed, and walk to the front door. Taking a glance at the clock on your counter it read 1:30 am. Who in the world? “Who is it?” you yawn and lean towards the peep hole. Stumbling back you trip and fall on your behind, “B-Baekhyun?” You call out, still on the ground in shock. He begins pounding on your door from the other side, like he was trying to break it down with his bare hands. You cry out in shock and start to cry, fearing for your life now you try to get up and find your phone. “Go away! I’m calling the cops!” you shout, still searching for your phone. You find it between the couch cushions and try to unlock it, your hands were shaking so hard.

You could barely hold the phone and unlock it properly. When you finally manage to get on the phone app and dial 119 it was to late, your door flies open smacking against the wall, the thump made you jump and you dropped the phone from your hands. The last thing you see is him rushing towards you with a look of pure admiration on his face before you were knocked out. You were brought out of your memories by the sound of rapid tapping on the wall near you, “Please let me go.” you whisper “Baekhyun, please.” you could hear and feel the tears build up in your throat. You were trying so hard not to break down and cry, you feel the blindfold being taken off your face and soon after it’s fully removed you slowly open your eyes. The room wasn’t as dark as you first thought it would be, instead it was moderately lit with candles,and fairy lights. You see the incense in the far corner burning, causing the smell to circulate in the room, if you hadn’t been kidnapped and tied up, this would have been super romantic. “I can’t believe you remember my name still, I was worried I hit you a little to hard.” Baekhyun pops out from behind you and pouts. Seeing him made you panic internally a bit, but you were able to gain at least a stred of control over yourself as you nod. 

“Of course I wouldn’t forget your name, how could I? You called, texted, and spammed me everyday since we met. You found my friends and kept asking about my whereabouts and where I lived.” by the end of it you couldn’t help the venom that leaked into your words. He seemed to notice, cause his cute pout turned into a scowl pretty quickly, “I was doing that so I could be with you! How could you not see that?” He places his hands on your arms and leans in close to your face. “Do you not see how much I love you?” His lips brush against yours in a light kiss. He pulls away, and breathes out slowly, his eyes showing nothing but what he thinks is love. You only see it as obsession. You don’t move, and the two of you simply stare at each other for a minute, finally you decide to speak hoping you could take some sense into him. “Baekhyun-” you stop when you hear the moan that slipped past his lips at the sound of his name coming from you. It was an alluring and beautiful sound, but you had to remind yourself that this guy is a crazy person, “I know that you really...love me and just wanted to show me, but I was no, am busy with a lot. That’s why I didn’t want to be in a serious relationship, I wouldn’t be able to devote all my time to maintaining it.” He blinks slowly at you, almost as if he was trying to make sense of what you had just said. “I knew you loved me.” the words were whispered so softly that you almost missed them. 

His hands move, reminding you he was still gripping your arms. He moved to cup your face, going for what you assumed was another kiss. You manage to move you face in time so he connected with your cheek. His hands tighten his grip on your face, squeezing it to the point where you were wincing to get away. “Why’d you move? Am I disgusting? I thought you loved me, you do right?” His nails were digging into the sides of your face. You were so scared now, no longer able to remain in complete control of your already broken mind you could feel the tears slowly start running down your face. You were trying so hard to hold back sobs at this point, Baekhyun did nothing but simply look at you. You tears were streaming down the sides of his hands as well, you could image the mess you looked like right now, but you couldn’t care. You just wanted to go home, you just wanted to see your family and be done with this, with him. Baekhyun pulls one of his hands away and looks at it, you could see how wet it was from your tears, as if he was in slow motion, he pulls his hand close to his mouth and his tongue peeks out. Then he licks his hand where it was wet, after he lowers his hand and leans in, licking the path were your tears fell from your eyes. “You look so pretty when you’re crying.” This only made you cry harder, the sobs now breaking loose and echoing throughout the room. 

“B-aekhyun, please just let me go. Why are you doing this. I don’t understand.” Your words were choppy and filled with coughs and sharp breath intakes. “I just wanna go home, please.” you didn’t know what else to do other than beg at this point. The pressure of his other hand on your face was giving you a headache, you just wanted to go home. Baekhyun snatched his hand from your face as if you burned him, glaring at you he takes a couple steps back. “What? Why am I doing this?! Why do I love you is what you’re asking me! I’m doing all of this for you!” He swings his arm to gesture around the room in a large arc, you flinch back without thinking. His face twists in confusion for a split second before it was gone, and he was upset again. “WHY”D YOU DO THAT!” He screams at you and picks up a nearby candle before throwing it you, it barely misses you right cheek. You hear it crash on the ground behind you, you could feel the heat before you smelled anything, it lit something on fire. Panic shot through your entire body, and on instinct you jolt your body forward, throwing yourself and the chair you were tied to on the ground at Baekhyun’s feet.

Baekhyun looks at what you presume is the fire behind you, and laughs. He leans down enough to be able to untie your hands, you don’t even have time to react before his lifts you up and holds you to him, pinning one of your hands to your back. “LET GO OF ME!” you scream trying desperately to force him to let of go so you could run. No matter how much you tried it seemed pointless, “I think this is better, don’t you. We’ll be together now, forever. You won’t be to busy then now will you?” He whispers in your ear. You take this opportunity to headbutt him hard, he lets go surprised and stumbles back. You don’t give it a second thought before your legs take to flying across the room to the door. Bursting through the door and into the open night air, you turn around to see you barely made it out alive. The fire was rapidly growing and consuming the building you were in, Baekhyun wasn’t coming out after you yet, but you didn’t wanna stick around to see if he would. You turn away from the fire and start running. The minute you were safe you immediately went to your parents place, you were to shook to talk about it so they just stopped asking and instead attended to you. 

About five days after the incident took place, you just assume that Baekhyun must have died in the fire, while you didn’t want it to, that eased your heart a bit. “Darling turn on the news for me please to check the weather.” You mom calls from the kitchen. You go over and turn on the tv, switching to the local news. “In disaster related news, we’ve had reports of a fire raging in the local construction area. One of the buildings was burned down in a fire that police are still investigating the cause of. Luckily none were harmed or killed in this fire. We’ll give more information on this as the investigation continues, for now back to you in the studio.” You saw it, for a second but that was enough to make you scream and freak out petrified. You mother rushes in from the kitchen to see you cowering on the ground, Baekhyun was standing in the background with other bystanders, he looked perfectly fine. And he smiled at the camera.       

[coldflashwave-baby]

Coldflashwave, “The saddest thing is that when I told him I loved him, he thought I was lying. He never believed someone could fall in love with him.” Please?

Okay, so this is based off of a OUAT AU I’ve discussed with @agentmarymargaretskitz and @pansexual-fandom-queen, so I hope you like it 

(Barry is Regina, Len is Emma, Mick is Hook, and this is a Heroes and Villains AU)

I told him I loved him once

           Len wasstill reeling from what happened on the dock, what he’d just watched Iris andEddie—his own parents—do to Mick. Heremembered the way Mick had bravely stepped between him and Eddie, urging Lento take Lisa and run.

           “Go.” Hetold him. “Save your girl and your true love. Kiss him and change things back.”

           He rememberedthe vicious way Eddie had stabbed him. He remembered watching his and Barry’spirate fall.

           He wasgrateful that Barry wouldn’t have to live with the memory of it. After all,Barry was known to hold grudges, and he’d watched enough loved ones die not tohave Mick added to the mix.

           It was aburden Len could bear on his own.

           “Dad!” Heheard Lisa shout. She’d run ahead while Len was lost in thought, all the way tothe secret cave that Barry was hiding out in.

           Prince Bartholomew—thetrue prince of the Enchanted Forest, now a bandit on the run from his evilfoster sister, Queen Iris, who murdered his parents when he was young. Damn, itwas quite the switch up, even if Barry hadn’t actually killed King Joseph in their reality.

           Still.

           All heneeded to do was get a true love’s kiss from Barry, and everything would goback to normal. The snowflake tattoo on his forearm itched like crazy as hefollowed Lisa to the cave.

           “…I needto hit the road before Iris finds me and rips out my heart for her collection.”He heard Barry saying. His heart leapt. It felt like it’d been forever since heheard Barry’s voice. Imagining it, imagining him and Mick, picturing hisdaughter’s face, was the only thing keeping him sane the whole time he waslocked in his tower, however long that’d been.

           Hepractically ran inside.

“There’s someone I want you tomeet.” Lisa finished, glancing over her shoulder at him with a smile. Barry…Barrywas as beautiful as he remembered. He was dirty, dressed in bandit clothessimilar to what he’d seen Iris wearing in Lisa’s fairy tale book, but the facthe could reach out and touch him…

He forced himself to resist theurge. He’d given into it when he saw Mick, and it’d just freaked the pirateout.

When Barry’s eyes fell on him,there was no recognition, just like with Mick. “Let me guess—you’re the father?Or are you the pirate I’m also in love with?”

Len’s heart was lodged in histhroat. “I’m Lisa’s other dad. Her birth father.”

Barry nodded, tossing a shirt intothe bag he was packing. “Well, she’s a sweetheart, but a handful. You shouldkeep a better eye on her. Not everyone is as nice as I am around here.”

“I know.” Len found himself responding.“I know that you’re a lot nicer than you like people to think. You used to havea heart of gold before the world took it and twisted it.”

Barry rolled his eyes and threw hisbag over his shoulder. “Not you, too. You believe this whole ‘the world isn’tright’ thing, too?”

Len hadn’t even noticed that Lisastep out of the cave, but he was suddenly aware that he and Barry were alone. “Yes,I do. Because it’s the truth. My name is Leonard Snart. I am Iris and Eddie’schild—a child of true love. They sent me to a world without magic on the day Iwas born to protect me from a curse—your curse.A curse I was destined to break.

“On my thirty-fifth birthday, thedaughter I never knew I had showed up on my front door with a birth certificatewith my real name, but a fake mother’s name on it, and a storybook. I took herhome to you, her adopted father, and I stayed around. You hated me for it, andeven tried to curse me with a sleeping death, but Lisa ate the curse instead ofme. She made me believe in magic, and one kiss from me broke your spell.”

A scoff interrupted his story. “Alright,say that’s true. That means we hate each other. Meaning that the whole ‘love ofmy life’ thing doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m getting to that.” Len drawled.“The Dark One, a man named Eobard, sent a wraith after you for hiding his truelove from him. You used magic to banish it, but I was sucked into the portal,too. I ended up here, a place I had no knowledge of, with Iris, who jumped inafter me. That’s where I met Mick.”

“The pirate?”

Len nodded. “The pirate. He wasworking with your mother, who is an evil sorceress in our reality. But, Mickhad no real loyalty to her, and continuously made moves on me the entire time Iwas there. We got back home, eventually, and your mother followed. A lot ofshit went down, you fell into a dark place because of her, but I realized thatthere was something bright in you. Something that the likes of Nora Allen andEobard hadn’t dimmed yet. I’m not the best role model for goodness, but I canrecognize it. It all went to hell when Lisa was kidnapped and taken to anotherland.”

Barry’s eyes widened. Len could’vesworn there was some familiarity behind them. Maybe just hearing their storywould be enough. “Mick volunteered to take me, you, Iris, Eddie, and Eobard tothe other land to rescue her.”

“Wait.” Barry held up a hand. “Ithought that, in this fantasy, Eobard was evil.”

“He is.” Len confirmed. “He’s amanipulative son of a bitch out only for himself, but occasionally, ourinterests align. Like, when he found out that Lisa is actually hisgranddaughter and the man that took her is his father spelled to look younger.”

Barry’s brow was furrowing in a waythat told Len it was a lot to take in.

“It was confusing to live through,too. Trust me. While we were there, though, you kept acting strange around me,kept glaring at Mick whenever he got too close to me, and I thought you weregoing to set him on fire when you found out he kissed me. Then, a fairy told meabout this.”

He pulled up the sleeve of his leftarm, showing off his tattoo. Barry stumbled back, eyes wide and panicked. “No…noway. There’s no way you’re my…”

Len dropped his sleeve and nodded. “Yeah,I had the same reaction when she told me that I was your true love. Especially becauseof my budding feelings for Mick. But, for some reason, it felt right. We didn’tdo anything about it, until after we saved Lisa and returned home. Zolomon—the manthat took her—cast your curse again, and it was going to take everything exceptfor Lisa back here. So, you kissed me, and cast a spell so that I could saveher and live happily, like I’d raised her my whole life. And I did, for a year.Until, Mick showed up at my door.

“He gave me something to break the memoryspell you gave Lisa and me, and told me that you sent him because something terriblehad happened. Turns out, you and Iris had a long lost brother, born from anaffair between King Joseph and your mother, and he felt slighted that you twohad everything he wanted. None of you remembered anything from your time in theother world until our kiss broke the curse over your memories.

“Apparently,” he chuckled, “you andMick spent a lot of time together in your time in the Enchanted Forest. You twofell in love, thinking that neither of you would see me again. Then, whenWallace—your brother—showed up, you gave him a spell to block him memories ofit so that Wallace wouldn’t come after him, and told him to find me. We alldefeated your brother, who is locked up and dealing with his trauma, and we allthink can become a helpful member to society—your mother really fucked everyoneup, Scarlet—and we’ve all been happy together since. Sure, we’ve had some iceproblems, and now we’re facing off against evil witches and twisted authors,but you, and Mick, and me…we were happy. We were in love.”

           The cavefell silent for a moment, Barry taking in all that Len had just told him. A broken,humorless laugh echoed off the walls. “I can’t believe…” Barry shook his head. “Ican’t believe I just wasted my time listening to someone who calls himself ‘TheSavior’. Savior of what? You can’t save me.”

           He moved topush past him, but Len grabbed his arm. “I can’t save you, Scarlet. You’reright.” He admitted. “You have to save yourself. Do you know how hard it wasfor me to let you in, to let Mick in,after being abandoned my whole life? You’ve got to be open to love. Because Ilove you. And…”

           His wordscaught in his throat, the emotions of losing Mick hitting him full force. “Iloved Mick. I loved Mick, and I just watched him die to get me here, so that wecould break this curse.”

           Barrystiffened, like the weight of the words hit him as well. Like, somewhereinside, he remembered waking up in Mick’s arms, using magic to mess with him,the three of them making out in the mayor’s office (even though it wasn’t Barry’sanymore).

           “I watchedMick get murdered by my parents.” Len choked out. “I’d only ever admitted toloving him once, and the saddest thing is that, when I told him, he thought Iwas lying. He never believed someone could fall in love with him. He alwaysthought he’d be second best to our true love, even though he just made it allso much truer.”

           A teardripped from Barry’s eye. “I’m so sorry. I…I didn’t know.” Another teardripped, then another, and suddenly, Barry was falling into sobs, Len lungingforward to grab him the only thing keeping him up. “I don’t…I don’t know why it’shitting me so hard. I didn’t even know this Mick.”

           “Because,”Len said, “you loved him. You loved him, and you love me. Your heart isbreaking, because you just lost one of the loves of your life. But we’re goingto fix it.”

           He leanedin to press their lips together, but a force wrapped around his torso. “Wha—?”He was barely able to get out, before his entire body was yanked clear out ofthe cave.

           “Len!” Heheard Barry shout, but his eyes were fixed on the figure looming over him. Eobard.

           “Hello.” He smirked. “Sorry tointerrupt.”

           “Grandpa,wait!” Len’s eyes darted to Lisa, who was picking herself up off the ground afew yards to his left. “You’re supposed to be a hero in this reality! Heroesdon’t just kill innocent people!”

           Len knewthat wouldn’t stop Eobard. He knew that, no matter what reality they were in,Eobard was a coward, who would hide behind his reasoning and smarts, killinganyone who stood in the way of what he wanted.And what he wanted now was to make sure reality stayed the way it was.

           “Go ahead.”Len sneered. “Show your granddaughter the real monster you are.”

           Eobardfrowned—of course, he didn’t remember that Lisa was his granddaughter in thereality change—but drew his sword. “Any last words, rogue?”

           Suddenly, arock came out of nowhere and struck Eobard in the head. Everyone’s attentionturned to the mouth of the cave, where Barry was standing, another rock readyto throw. “Get away from him, or I’ll make you.”

           Eobardsighed, turning his weapon to Barry. “If you insist on dying first…”

           But beforeEobard could make a move, Lisa jumped between them. “Please don’t hurt them.”She begged. “Be the hero you’re supposed to be. I believe in you.”  

           Lisa hadthe heart of a true believer, but that meant nothing to a scum sucker likeEobard. He raised his sword to cut her down. Len scrambled to his feet to stophim, but wasn’t fast enough.

           The swordstruck. Lisa tumbled to the ground. Blood gleamed on Eobard’s sword.

           “It’s done.”The Dark One concluded, flashing away. Len stared in horror.

           “Barry!” Herushed to Barry’s side, his shirt already darkening with blood. Lisa pushed herselfup from where Barry’d pushed her down and screamed.

           “Dad!” Shecrawled to his side. She was crying, sorrowfully and painfully, and Len threwhis arm around her.

           Barry grabbedher hand. “It’ll be fine, little princess.” He whispered. “Your dad will takecare of you.”

           Len’s heartstopped. Barry always called Lisa his little princess, at least as long as he’dknown them. “You remember?”

           Barrynodded. “I remember you, Lenny. And I remember Mick. And the real Iris andEddie, and Oliver, Cisco, Caitlin, Felicity…I remember everything.”

           “I can’twatch you die, too, Barry.” Len gasped. “I can’t bear it.”

           “Len…youdon’t have to.” He replied. “You can change things…change the world….”

           His eyesstarted to drift shut, and Len leaned down to press their lips together. For thethird time, he felt a power stronger than anything rush through him, andeverything faded away.

0000000

           Len jerkedawake. He was sitting in his car outside of the diner. He remembered…heremembered…

           He jumpedout and ran inside. Barry was sitting in their regular booth across from Mick.Both were eating cheeseburgers and milkshakes, debating about magic versussword fighting. He ran to them, knowing that they wouldn’t remember the otherreality (he only remembered because he was the Savior), but needing to hold andkiss his boyfriends.

           Mickspotted him first, his face lighting up. “See, here’s a neutral party who hasdealt with both. Lenny, what do you think—?” but Len crashed their lips togetherbefore Mick could finish, practically attacking him with the kiss.

           Mick wasdazed and loopy when Len pulled back, but the Savior just turned and gave Barrythe same treatment. “What’s gotten into you?” Barry panted once he pulled away.

           Len sighed,settling beside Mick so that Lisa could sit by Barry when she got back fromschool. “I’m just…I love you both, so much.”

           (And then,Len becomes the Dark One and everything goes to shit, but that’s another story)

[justanotherwannabeclassic]

Bloom (1/?)

This has been a work in progress for quite some time. It started as a response to the fact that OUAT seemingly cannot have a normal pregnancy on this show without it being traumatic or otherwise very sad. This is the result. This series will be following the arc of Emma’s totally normal, only lightly angsty pregnancy that will end 100% happy. That is my guarantee. No prophecies. No speeding up. A super normal pregnancy.

As for the timing of posting this…well, we could all use some fluff, and I’m not letting reality get me down. So, presenting, “The Happiest Pregnancy Ever”

Also on A03.

Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom. -Rumi

Emma tapped her fingers on the table, her nails clack-clack-clacking on the wood with each downward press. She listened to the steady tick-tock of the clock, understanding with sudden clarity why Barrie had one haunt his interpretation of her husband. 

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Her husband wasn’t home. He was at store working his way down the list of things she’d hastily scribbled before he walked out the door. The list was long, and she didn’t really need half the things she sent him to buy, but she needed him gone, not anywhere near her while she processed the impending changes to their life. He would be home soon, which meant that she had to decide just what course of action to take.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

The house was quiet. Whenever Henry stayed with Regina, there was a certain stillness to their home. Even when he was there, he opted to listen to music via headphones. He was teenager, meaning he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. She liked the quiet, sometimes. Other times, not so much. It reminded Emma of her time as the Dark One – the house barren, dead. 

It won’t be like that much longer.

Emma fingered the stick in front of her. It read “pregnant” in small letters. She sprung for the test that said pregnant or not pregnant. She didn’t want to take any chances with lines or ink. It was clear as day that way. No mistakes.

This was the fourth positive test she had taken. She used magic to dispose of the three others, sending them to the Storybrooke dump away from prying eyes. Storybrooke was bad enough about gossip. She wouldn’t put it past a nosy neighbor to glance through her trash, and have the news travel before she even told the father.

The baby wasn’t planned. She was on birth control, but she and Killian had been sloppy with using extra protection the week she had been getting over a sinus infection. Damn antibiotics and their stupid side effects. 

There was a dark side of her that wanted to laugh about how both her children weren’t planned. She could prevent the destruction of untold realms, but pregnancy? What a great Savior she was!

At least things were better this time around. The only jail she was in was when she booked someone. She had a stable job. She wasn’t living out of the bug. She had a support system: friends, family, and –

Killian.

Emma had Killian. He was there for her, he would never abandon her. He loved her. Truly in the fairy tale, curse-breaking kind of way. She knew how he’d react once she told him the news. He’d be elated, but he would hold it back to test her reaction first. Always waiting for her, that’s how he normally approached any relationship milestone. (Even when he didn’t want to, Emma thought, the memory of his first proposal flitting through her mind.)

So why was she afraid? 

She and Killian had been married for almost a year, and things had been peaceful by Storybrooke standards. And that was the rub - “by Storybrooke standards”. Their home was as fantastical as the curse that had created it, with dangers Emma never could have eve imagined. Prior to moving here, the worst Emma could have imagined was a random terrorist attack or freak train derailment. Here she had to worry about time travel, and realm hopping, and memory spells. 

What if a villain made her forget her own child?

Emma wasn’t even sure how pregnancy and raising an infant would even work. Her mother had pulled it off, but the bulk of her pregnancy had been spent in the Enchanted Forest. Both Zelena and Belle had their pregnancies magically sped up, which Emma was sure wasn’t entirely healthy. Not to mention the kidnapping. Her little brother had been kidnapped, as had Gideon. Gideon, in turn, had attempted to murder her and her family. What would she do if her kid was kidnapped and went all Terminator?

Pregnancies were supposed to be happy things, right? Not riddled with anxiety regarding villains and portals and crazed relatives seeking revenge. What If Killian had more surprise relatives who wanted him dead? What if she did?

What made matters worse was that for a brief moment she had been happy. The first, second, and third time the tests turned positive - Pregnant! - she had been elated. Emma could easily picture a boy with her green eyes and his dark hair running through the house. Or a little blonde-haired blue-eyed girl receiving archery lessons on the lawn. But somewhere between test three and four, anxiety had creeped in and taken hold. 

She could get rid of it, but that didn’t seem right either. Truth was, she wanted the baby. She and Killian could pack up the house and move seven states over, but even then Emma was convinced that somehow, some way, a villain would find them. After all, it was she who nearly became engaged to the flying monkey. 

Emma felt the pinpricks of tears at the corner of her eyes, and tried to will them away. It was a lost cause. Not only was she a mess of hormones, but she was stressed, anxious, and more than a little overwhelmed. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” she said to herself, as if announcing it aloud would somewhat make her statement more true. “You’re going to be fine.”

It was then when she heard the district sound of the boards of the front steps creaking, indicating that someone was outside. She had been meaning to fix the stairs, tighten them or whatever one did to stairs – a handy woman, Emma was not – but she was grateful for the alert that allowed her to shove the test out of sight. Killian likely didn’t know what a pregnancy test looked like, but she didn’t want to take the chance of him seeing it first.

As expect, he swept through the front door, grocery bags hanging from his hooked arm. 

“Good news, love, there was a two-for-one special on those pints of ice cream you and Henry enjoy. Never let it be said that I–” Whatever Killian had been saying died in his throats when  caught sight of her. Emma knew she must look miserable, cheeks flushed from her earlier bout of tears. “Emma, what’s wrong?”

He rushed over to her, dropping the bags front of the door. Emma had half a mind to tell him to put the ice cream in the freezer, but relented. She knew Killian. His focus would be completely on her. Instead, she waved her hand and magicked what she hoped was the ice cream into the freezer. There was no use getting it all melty while she and Killian had a serious conversation.

“I love you, you know that right?” She asked, wanting to stress that the conflicting emotions she felt had nothing to do with him. 

“Yes.” His brows furrowed even as he took a set next to her at the table. He eyed her suspiciously and said nothing more.

“And you know how we’ve talked about wanting a future,” she continued, knowing she was beginning to ramble,“ but here’s the thing, we never exactly ironed out what exactly that was gonna entail, and when those things were gonna happen.”

“And you desire to have that conversation now?” Killian asked, enunciating every word slowly as if he was trying to wrap his mind around the concept. He reached over and clasped her left hand in his right, rubbing his thumb over her rings. “Darling, if that’s what you’re worried about, there’s no need to be.”

“I’m - I’m-” Emma began, struggling over what she was intending to say. She’d never been good with the whole talking thing. Flowery language and grand announcements had always been Killian’s forte. One would think that after a year of marriage, some of it would have rubbed off, but nope. “God, I should have prepared a speech.”

“Emma, you can tell me anything.” Killian kept his voice soothing, but Emma could sense the undercurrent of worry there. She supposed if he had been acting similarly, she too would be worried.

Deciding that actions spoke louder than words, Emma let go of Killian’s hand and pulled out the pregnancy test she had hidden, shoving it unceremoniously toward him. Brows furrowed, he picked it up and studied it intently. 

“What’s this?” he asked, because as expected, it was obvious he had never seen such a thing. “And why does it say…”

His voice trailed off. Her husband was an intelligent man. He could put two and two together and figure out just why she was handing him a stick that said “Pregnant” on a tiny little screen. He looked from it to her, realization dawning on his face. 

“Emma,” he said, her name coming out half-gasp, half-whisper. He sat the test down delicately, almost reverently, as if he believed that moving too quickly would upset the balance of what it had revealed. 

“So, yeah, that’s the thing. The future we didn’t elaborate on is here.” She gestured vaguely to her abdomen where a tiny lump of cells was slowly developing into a small human. 

“I see,” Killian replied. He now looked as if he were grappling with his own words. “Swan, how are you feeling?”

It was his way of asking how he should feel. Her pirate wasn’t that difficult to read.

“I feel happy, but mostly scared,” she admitted. “I have no idea how this is even going to work here or anywhere, you know, with our crazy, fucked up lives.”

He was silent for a moment… After what felt like forever, he asked, “How would you feel if our lives weren’t so crazy? If we lived a lifestyle that you considered ‘normal’, like you had in New York with Henry?”

“Still happy, a lot less terrified. Probably still freaked out, but about the normal stuff,” Emma answered truthfully. “But I don’t think going to New York is the answer either.”

“Of course not.” Killian shook his heads “But allow me to remind you that you’d still be both happy and afraid no matter what lifestyle we lead.”

She sighed. She understood what he was trying to do, let her know her reactions were totally normal. That no matter where they were and the lives they were living, she would likely still be afraid on some level. 

“We can’t pretend our lifestyle is the easiest,” she told him, looking away as she felt the tears come again. “Our kid wouldn’t exactly have the most normal of lives.”

“Our child will have both a mother and father who loves it,” Killian replied, his tone taking the authorial tone of a captain. “It will also have adoring grandparents, a protective older brother, and what I imagine will be s handful of devoted honorary aunts and uncles standing alongside those it will have by blood.”

“That doesn’t guarantee its safety or even normalcy.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Killian shook his head. “But it’s more than either you or I had.” Emma was silent. She didn’t know how to formulate a response, couldn’t really. His words struck her. She, the girl who bounced from home to home, and he, the boy raised a slave and abandoned by his father were discussing their future and their unborn child. Sometimes, Emma was overtaken by the awe of how far she’d come since those days in the systems. It was during moments when Henry would steal onion rings from her plate at Granny’s, or pancake breakfasts with her parents. And now here in the kitchen, Killian holding her hand and she worked through her feelings regarding her pregnancy. And then there was Killian, sold into slavery and practically raised by his brother. A life in the Navy, followed by a life of piracy and loss, finally to here, to her.

“So what do you say, love?” he asked, watching her meaningfully. Truth be told, Emma was still terrified of a curse, but something told her that if she asked about curses, Killian would counter by reminding her there might not be one.

And he was right, there might not be a course. Or there could be. But they’d be there, and her parents, and Regina and Zelena, as well. There would be a house the kid could come home to, the same house with the same bed. There’d be clothes that fit and kisses and “I love you”s every day. There’d be a home, one picked out by Killian and Henry, one they all filled together, their happy little family.

Wasn’t this the “Happy Beginning” they sang about all those months ago?

“I think,” she began finally, “I think that we should grab some spoons and eat the ice cream you got at the store. Celebrate.”

He grinned. “Aye, love, let’s celebrate."

She sealed it with a kiss.

[rchanscandy]

rchanscandy’s webcomic recomendations!

I don’t normally do this but I’ve been reading a lot of really awesome webcomics and I wanted to tell y’all about them and stuff because damn I found some real gems this past month. I also need people to scream about them with so heres my list in no particular order under the cut! (the comics are hosted on either smackjeeves or tapastic or both)

Lazy Snow Leopard

An utterly lazy god, an anthropomorphic personification of the Snow Leopard, rests upon his favourite tree, when suddenly woken up by a thrown stone. The thrower turns out to be a young admirer of his former self. The youngster persuades the lazy god to begin a quest for fame, glory and world salvation. While the one concerned would have preferred to just lie down and go back to sleep.

Notes: This one has me dying of laughter, I love everything about it; the art, characters, just all of the yes

Helix

A street rat is given a second chance when he is dragged from the gutter and into a new life. Will he accept his position at the side of royalty, or fight every step of the way? -Rated M for sex (M/M, consensual), violence, nudity, language and dark themes.- Warnings: -References to child abuse and sexual abuse.-

Notes: The art and story is absolutely mesmerizing, I couldn’t stop thinking about this one after reading it for a long while. Can’t wait for more updates!

Novae

Novae is a historical romance with a touch of the paranormal and a dash of astronomy. It chronicles the adventures of Sulvain, a sweet tempered necromancer and Raziol, a passionate 17th century astronomer. A connection forms between them and their relationship blooms, but when the body of a fellow astronomer is found on the steps of the Academy of Sciences, their lives are entangled in ways they could never foresee.

Notes: There are not a lot of pages so far but I’m already in this for the long run. I’m a sucker for historical romances, especially gay ones and this is just beautifully executed. 

Boned

A story about being nice to birds and having safe gay sex.

Notes: The description pretty much sums it up xD. Such a good read and really intriguing characters, I enjoyed this a lot. (NSFW)

Mismatch

Mismatch tells of the bond between two rivals who slowly discover they have more in common than they think.

Notes: Only 5 pages in and I was immediately hooked. The art style is so cute and I absolutely love the premise! I can’t wait for more!

Grey Eyes

Mike Lawson finds himself on the strange world of Dwal. But now the ancient Gate won't let him back through. Mike must try to find his place in this strange new world, and perhaps find it to be better than the world he came from. A fantasy/romance with a touch of mystery. 18+ for adult language and situations.

Notes: The character designs and the art are so cool, hell everything about this is freaking cool and I need more!

Almost Touching

Wyatt's got a huge secret and Aiden is a nosy bitch who becomes intertwined in it. Though he doesn't seem to mind much... boyxboy

Notes: I got sucked in by the pretty art style and stuck around for the interesting story and lovely characters. (NSFW)

Avialae

Avialae is a webcomic about a gross bird boy and his nerdy wannabe ornithologist boyfriend--I mean neighbor who helps him out during the painful and bloody process of growing wings. 

Notes: I just absolutely adore this one, it has really interesting characters, a unique premise, and just...birds man. (NSFW)

Rainbow Mansion

Watch the drama unfold as 14 contestants come together at the Rainbow Mansion in hopes of becoming the Rainbow Champion! Hearts will break, the tension will sizzle, and only one will have a chance at eternal glory. Or, like, at least a quip in the tabloids and a book deal? (M/M)

Notes: This is one of the best and most hilarious fucking comics I’ve read in a long time. I love the way it’s set up (a cheesy bad reality tv show) and the characters (all of them) are fucking fantastic not to mention the art is on point. (NSFW)

Handcuffs

Yrkki sold drugs to a stranger guy. That wouldn't be nothing new for him, but this guy was a cop.

Notes: Beautiful art, beautiful men, and a story that keeps you on your toes, whats not to love? (NSFW)

Demon House

Tula is a student just trying to get through her senior year of college. Little does she know that her new rental is inhabited by demons. Juggling her social life and these new roommates should be no problem.

Notes: This comic is a blessing. I absolutely love all the characters and the art is so well done, not to mention the hilarity that ensues. Definitely one of those must-reads!

Demon of the Underground

Pogo is a big-mouthed but small-framed young thief who falls through a hole in the ground and finds himself in a brutal underground world where survival is based on strength and intimidation. His only hope for escape is his telekinetic ability - and the help of a stray ferret named Annie. Urban fantasy/paranormal/LGBTQ

Notes: I’ve been following this one for awhile. First off, the art is fantastic, and I’m in love with that in itself. Second the characters and story are so interesting and unique...I’m dying to know what happens next and discover more!

Aimatos

Boy meet boy and together search their origins

Notes: This story is so cute and the art is beautiful and I’m gonna cry I need more. (NSFW)

Thistlewine

Markus is a reclusive witch living in the woods. He stumbles across a surprise one morning that changes his entire life. It's gay.

Notes: I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love this comic. It’s so fucking cute, the characters are adorable, the art is adorable and well drawn, and every time it updates I get so freakin excited you have no idea ahhh just go read it!

No Way

NO WAY is a web comic, a story about fantasy world and Academy, where many creatures study together. But first and foremost this is a story about a vampire and an elf who were betrothed to each other and who now have to live and learn together. Yes, this is a story about the relationship between two guys, basically, although the other characters are there too. Also in the future in the comic are planned explicit scenes of a sexual nature, so there is a limit 18 + But, basically, it's still a romantic Comedy and fairy tale.

Notes: Everything about this, the characters and the art and the story are fucking phenomenal. It’s got some of my favorite character designs ever by far. Highly recommend this one, such a good read and a feast for the eyes! 

The God in the Field

The age-old story of Hades, Persephone, and a love that causes the seasons (with a yaoi twist.) Disclaimer/Content Warning: Anyone familiar with greek mythology will know that they are in for a ride. This comic will contain kidnapping, a coercive relationship with unequal power dynamics, and various other scenes from the underworld that Hades presides over. It will contain NSFW scenes and scenes rated 18+. Please be forewarned!

Notes: One of the most friggin beautiful art styles I’ve come across in a long time. I actually caved in and bought hard copies of this one it was so beautiful. I love everything about this gosh I can’t even put it into words.

Les Normaux

Les Normaux follows the lives of a bunch of supernatural beings living in Paris after a human wizard named Sebastien moved to the city. 

Notes: The premise and characters in this one are so unique and the art style is so cute. Actually everything in this is cute, and funny, and just a good time in general. Highly recommend this one.

Indigents

Dakota and Kennedy are thrown together in a world ravaged by a single disease. Fast spreading and corrupting sanity, civilization was razed to the ground. For those fortunate to have immunity, life isn't easy. Avoiding the diseased is one thing, but without law and order those left take complete advantage of a world they can now build for themselves. Stranded together in the ghost of the country they once knew, Dakota and Kennedy fight through whatever obstacles lay in their path, seeking peace and quiet and maybe something to eat.

Notes: I really like the way the story is going, not to mention the art is hella nice. Highly recommend this one, especially if you like apocalyptic themes and such.

Wham, Bam!

Harvey is nothing. He's a nobody. Trapped in a small Texas town where nothing ever changes, doomed to waste away in the scrub brush and withering sun, he figures the best he can do is keep his head down and stay out of everyone else's way. After all, who would be crazy enough care about a deadbeat redneck like him? Then one day an old Dodge rumbles into the parking lot of the gas station where he works, and Harvey learns that some folks wear their crazy like it'll never go out of style. It's amazing how much your life can change in just four days. [WARNINGS: explicit content, strong language, depictions of violence, TW for homophobic attitudes/language (later on). 18+ only please.]

Notes: I am in love with this art and storyline. It’s so unique, I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like it. Not to mention that the title itself grabbed me in for the hook before anything else.  I can’t wait to see more!

Moonflower

Sometimes, home can be a person. A sheltered young mutant meets a soldier who's seen far too much for his short life. A process of learning and healing begins.

Notes: The art is so pretty, reminds me a lot of avatar the last airbender in terms of style. I’m super excited to see where this story goes as well, the characters are super interesting and really cute!

Hendrix and Julian

Hendrix and Julian are natural enemies- a cocky jock and the school's gay punching bag, but will all that change after one cold night alone in the gym cupboard? (NSFW)

Notes: I’m usually not a fan of the whole bullied falling for bully plot but I really really love how this story goes. Not to mention the nsfw scenes are really good and the art is just yesssss.  I highly recommend this one!

Aspera

Nine young adults with different backgrounds all end up in the same area in Paris. What started off as another semester at art school takes a turn when the differences of the group's lives finally meet. A story of lgbt love, friendship and finding yourself. Warning for blood, violence, sexual content and drug use in the upcoming chapters.

Notes: The art style is cute, the characters are cute, the comic feels super relatable and down to earth and I just really love the whole thing overall. I always get so excited when it updates!

Countdown to Countdown

Iris is a young man with the gift to bring pieces of artwork into reality. 5 years into an apocalyptic outbreak, he's holed up in a lab that shelters "problem" children. Between his failed experiments, deteriorating mental stability, and being ridiculed by other members of the lab, he doesn't think life could get any worse. Life agrees to disagree.

Notes: This comic is so friggin beautiful. The story is hella interesting and the setup is like that of a video game which I think is really super creative and interesting to experience. The characters and the world they are in are really fun and interesting and just overall this is a really well done comic, I’m always excited for when it updates!

Heartstopper

Charlie, a highly-strung, openly gay over-thinker, and Nick, a cheerful, soft-hearted rugby player, meet at a British all-boys grammar school. Friendship blooms quickly, but could there be something more...?

Notes: The title of this comic is the most accurate thing.  This comic has my heart stopping because of how dang cute this is. Seriously, there are parts of this that have me screaming on the floor.  The art style is so cute and airy and totally fits the mood of this comic and the characters are so adorkable and just...aughhh go read it seriously!

With Great Abandon

With Great Abandon is a queer romance set over the course of a year in London. It's the story of Harry and Russell's differences, similarities, and relationship. A hopeful and kind story. Also food and comics.

Notes: This comic made me cry (good tears).  The story is so down to earth and realistic, not to mention so cute.  Also the art and colors are just on point and I really appreciate this comic aesthetically. It just completed and I was very satisfied, you should definitely give it a read!

Age of the Grey

When the unseen war between heaven and hell finds itself bound to the plane of humans, several kids discover themselves caught in the middle. The almighty angels of heaven and the wicked demons of hell battle for their kingdoms, a revolution that could mean the end of humanity, and when god and the devil decide to take it into their own hands, only chaos can follow.

Notes: This is such a cool concept executed with such bold and expressive art. I love love love the characters and its so cool to see how the art continues to improve over the course of the story! Definitely recommend this!

Behind these Birchwood Walls

Adrian Pembroke's parents put their foot down after his teenaged mischief turns into a run in with the cops. He finds himself shipped off to Mercier Preparatory Academy, an elite boarding school. Miserable and feeling utterly out of place, Adrian soon lands himself into trouble as usual. He is rescued from his own antics by Acario Ambrose, the resident golden boy of Mercier. Appearances are deceiving, and Adrian learns a great deal more about both himself and his new friend than he ever bargained for.

Notes: I love this so much, it started out a bit slow but as soon as the story got going i was on the edge begging for updates. The art is amazing, I have no idea how this artist is able to be so consistent with their painting style throughout, its amazing! 

Ingress Adventuring Company

Saving the world is a pretty big deal, but what do you do once you’re done saving the world and no one needs you anymore? Do you become a magic professor? Do you study a convoluted thesis that no one understands? Maybe you relive the glory days by starting up a one-man adventuring party to gather mystical artifacts for people who may or may not pay you. Or, if you’re Toivo Kissa, you do all of those things.

Notes: I fell in love with the premise and art at first sight. It’s absolutely adorable and the main character is so precious I love him so much. I cannot wait to see where the shenanigans go. 

Ambrosia

Alphor, a countryside apothecary, comes to the capital city for work, where he has a chance encounter with his estranged childhood friend, the wizard Selfrid. The same childhood friend who confessed his love for him ten years ago, before they separated. They resume their friendship, as though there was no confession, but such feelings can't be forgotten that easily; they are torn between the bitterness of a crushed first love and the comfort of a friendship they don't want to ruin again.

Notes: This comic is so damn pretty i can’t handle it. I love the setting and all the little world elements added into this comic. Definitely a bit of a slow burn if you’re into that but oh man will it be satisfying if the main ship finally sails. 

Sunkissed

When Stephen, a quiet bookworm from Oregon, gets his admission letter from the University of Hawaii at Manoa he was anticipating some life changes. What he didn’t anticipate was meeting Alex, an upbeat and easygoing local who offers to be his guide around the island. After that, it’s love at first sight. Through ups and downs, they’ll bring out the best in each other in this story of love, growth, and self-acceptance.

Notes: If you want a sweet heartwarming story about 2 cinnamon buns falling in love with each other then this is the comic for you! Seriously, every little tiny moment in this comic just makes me scream because its too cute.

Dissent

A cursed prince must rely on a witch to free him from an enchantment. But witchcraft is banned, and the two young men have little in common. As love blossoms between them, can they overcome their own prejudices, save their nation, and find a cure... before it's too late?

Notes: Everything about this comic i just love love love love. The story, the art, the characters, everything! It tugs at your heartstrings in ways you don’t even expect whilst dealing with a suspenseful situation. I’d gush forever about this one but I don’t have enough room.

Guard Dog

BL about people living in the post apocalyptic world where being infected by a zombie won't immediately turn you into one, but it can give you some troubles... and some extras

Notes: By the same creator as Handcuffs, which is also on this list, I knew when this came out I’d love it too. I was not wrong. Cute gay bois in the apocalypse, what more can you ask for? Definitely a must read!

The Sun Prince, the Saint, and the Changeling

When Tomas stumbles into unexpected feelings for his friend Matthias, he dreams about a fun, uncomplicated summer romance. Instead, he discovers that he doesn’t know his friend nearly as well as he thought he did, he knows himself even less, and when your family has connections to the Holy Roman Empire, nothing is ever simple. When summer comes, Tomas finds himself drawn into a mystery spanning two years and three hearts — one of which is his own. 

Notes: This is one of my all time favorite comics. I am a sucker for lgbt historical romances and everything about this comic from the story, to the art, to the world building is just so beautifully done. Cannot gush enough about this one to do it justice, just read it. 

Abel & a Dead Man

Jim lives an ordinary life until the day he's supposed to die. Abel is a Soul Collector who decides to let Jim live and asks him out instead.

Notes: Such a unique graphic art style combined with one of my favorite grim reaper x supposed to be dead person premises, I highly highly recommend checking this out.

Life Outside the Circle

The heartwarming tale of two men who find love in the Finnish countryside.

Notes: This comic is way too cute I cannot handle how cute it is everything about it just makes me scream because ahhhh it so CUTE!!! Just read it and you’ll understand what I mean.

[ceslatoil]

Fiddleford in Fairyland, Part One

My first entry this week for @fiddleford-appreciation-month is a story about an expedition Parallel Fiddleford takes into an alternate dimension called Faerie. More under the cut!

Fiddleford had read plenty of stories about folks finding themselves in magical, faraway lands as a kid. He’d read each of the Narnia books over and over again, and had even kept an old, battered omnibus of the Oz books in his current private library, though in truth, he’d been more interested in all the strange, mechanical people like Tik Tok and the Tin Man than Dorothy’s silly adventures.

All the same, when the International Institute of Oddology had managed to discover an interdimensional access point to a place just as odd as Narnia and Oz right in the Oregon woods outside town, Fiddleford surprised everyone by volunteering to head the expedition. There were, of course, some doubts about this; though Fiddleford was a brilliant scientist and an integral part of the Institution, he was still a very anxious person, and his last journey, which had ended with an entire dimension disappearing all together, had left him shaken.

But, to his own shock, he insisted on going. He had grown used to the strange anomalies since he’d arrived in Gravity Falls some thirty years ago, even if most of the monsters and creatures that were drawn to this town were quite frightening. Magical creatures always seemed so charming, with the possible exception of Unicorns, who were just plain jerks. How scary could this magic dimension be?

So, after saying goodbye to Stanford that morning (a rather hug filled, warm affair that made Fiddleford second guess leaving), Fidds took a group of security officers and a few researchers and headed to the site that lay deep in the woods. It was a large, stone doorway in one of the deepest parts of the forest; strange ruins in a language none of the scientists had been able to identify were carved all over it, and an image of a sun and moon in eclipse loomed at the very top. Staring at this carving for too long sent a shiver down Fiddleford’s spine, which was not helped by the fact that nothing could be seen on the other side of the door.

Gulping, he reluctantly lead his team into the darkness, and for what seemed like hours they marched through the gloomy corridor, until they came across a bright light twinkling in the distance.

“Finally,” mumbled one of the security officers. “My feet are killing me.”

“I dunno,” whispered one of the younger officers, Cadet Corduroy, “You ever heard of looking out for oncoming trains when you see lights at the end of tunnels?”

It wasn’t exactly encouraging.

When they stepped out into the light, however, they were greeted by a lovely field of poppies that lay just by a river; beyond that was a large swath of farmland, and beyond that, a massive, dark forest.

“Golly, this is just beautiful,” said Fiddleford softly; the research team at once began to snap photos for documentation. “Just fantastical! Though I cain’t see where the reports of it being a magic dimension came from—”

Barreling from the woods came a monster, one that looked like a giant man with terrible, misshapen muscles and a lumpy, pale face with one eyelid drooping. It took one look at the tiny research team and let out a terrible, creepy cry that sounded like laughter before it lunged at them. Several of the researchers cowered and lost their heads entirely out of pure fear, but the security officers were made of tougher stuff, and took aim at the beast with their laser guns. Though they made several incredible shots that would have taken down a lesser foe, the terrible giant was completely unaffected by their attack.

“Fvb’yl qbza h spaasl jopjrlu, Jollw, jollw, jollw, jollw,” the beast snarled down at the security officers. The giant reached out one of its muscular arms and snatched Fiddleford up within the iron grip of his hands.

“Help!”

The beast leered down at Fiddleford with a dangerous look in its eyes. Or, maybe it was just sleepy. It was hard to make out facial expressions, as the giant looked like it had eaten a hive of bees and washed them all down with cold medicine: the result was a pale, lumpy faced giant who was even more terrifying up close than he was at a distance.

“Vo ohp Thyr! Ovd'z fvby zle spml,” the beast roared at Fiddleford, and just as the poor scientist thought he had reached his doom, a large rock slammed against the giant’s face.

“Kvu'a avbjo tl tvaolymbjrly,” the beast growled down to the ground. From what Fiddleford could see, a small girl in a yellow dress was flying at the monster, raising her arms and making boulders ten times her size fly at the giant’s face.

“What in tarnation,” Fidds cried, the girl continued to attack and scream profanities at the giant while the beast still kept its grip around him. Soon, other strange, flying girls began to attack the giant; a girl with wild, magenta colored curls was throwing large cherries that exploded when they made contact against the giant’s face, and another, her dress as black as her skin and hair was a ghostly, inhuman white, lobbed arrows into the giant’s eye. The giant laughed creepily once more, the arrows were about as effective as the lasers had been.

“Unhand this man at once,” commanded a powerful voice near Fiddleford’s right, he couldn’t turn his head to see who was speaking.

“Fvb svvr zv zlef Ahufh!” The giant offered the speaker an eerie, wooden smile that chilled Fiddleford to the core.

“I don’t care; you will leave these visitors to our land in piece, now let him go,” the voice snapped at the giant.

“FVB HYL ALHYPUN TL HWHYA, AHUFH!”

Enraged, the beast suddenly released his tight fisted grip on Fiddleford, and the man felt a terrible lurch as he began to hurtle towards the ground, which was roughly sixty feet in the air. Before he gained too much momentum, however, something else snatched him up around his armpits and held him aloft. He hadn’t even been able to register the thought of who or what had caught him when a sensation like being sucked into a vacuum began to consume his whole body, and he found himself being laid down upon the ground.

“Boss!”

Cadet Corduroy knelt down next to Fiddleford, who was shaking and pale, his knees bouncing together uncontrollably, but otherwise seemed perfectly unharmed. Fiddleford looked up to see a winged creature in white and gold armor looking down on him as well as the young cadet.

Good lord, what am I even looking at right now, he thought dizzily.

“Keep him safe while I get rid of the giant,” the armored creature told the Cadet, who nodded. Cadet Corduroy gently sat up the older scientist; Fiddleford looked up to see a flash of brilliant, sparkling light, one last scream from the Giant, and it was at this he lost consciousness at last.

*  *  *

When he woke about five minutes later, a tiny green creature that looked like a humanoid moth was flicking his nose with a stick.

“D’you think he died?” squeaked the creature to another, the pale, slender archer from before.

“I ain’t dead, get off my nose,” grumbled Fiddleford, who shooed away the green girl with a wave of his hand. Fiddleford still felt dizzy and disoriented, so he laid still while the others around him continued to talk.

“He has terrible grammar,” sniffed the white haired girl, who narrowed her black eyes at him disapprovingly. “Are you sure he’s really supposed to be a brilliant scientist?”

She had directed this question to Corduroy, who was a little disturbed by this strange creature, in no small part because she looked a bit like the ghost in the Japanese Horror franchise The Creepy Woman and Her Cat-Son Who Yelled at American Tourists Until They Went Crazy.

“He is brilliant,” Wendy managed to choke out tersely, “He just gets a little freaked out by some of the larger monsters. He had a bad experience with one of the cryptids he and Dr. Pines encountered when they were younger; something called a Gremoblin tried to kidnap him, it shook him up a bit.”

“Yikes. Say no more,” said the girl in the yellow dress, the one who had thrown rocks at the giant’s head. Her entire body was made of different shades of orange and yellow, from her sunset colored skin with bright yellow freckles to her lava-red hair, which she wore in several small braids across her head. “I’ve dealt with my fair share of Gremoblins in the past and I’ll say one word: Daddy. Issues.”

“Those are two words, Mustardseed.”

“Can it, Cobweb!”

“Both of you move,” said the woman in white armor sternly. The three strange girls hovering over Fiddleford dispersed as the woman knelt down next to him. She removed her helmet; the woman had a lovely, dark complexion and curly hair the color of pink champagne that she kept bound up in a bun.

“Wow,” whispered Corduroy, “She’s pretty cute.”

“That’s Queen Titania,” hissed Mustardseed, “You can’t call the Queen cute!”

“Wow, ain’t you just the cutest thing,” Fiddleford loudly told the Queen. She laughed, a warm, friendly sound, thought Fiddleford, as she helped him to his feet.

“Well, it sounds like you’re not any worse for wear,” said the Queen, looking the old man over, “Let me know if you’re feeling any pain so we can get you medical treatment. Not everyone who faces the Gurrero Street Beast gets off so easy.”

“Well golly, I sure am grateful ya saved me ladies,” said Fiddleford, addressing the six women with good cheer.

“Sorry your first trip to Faerie had an overly exciting beginning,” said Titania, shaking Fiddleford’s hand. Midway through, however, she paused as she examined his face; suddenly, her eyes went wide and she shot her hand to her chest, as if she had seen a ghost.

“Oh my stars,” she whispered; turning to the other fairies, she cried, “I don’t believe it—it’s McGucket!”

Fiddleford and Corduroy shared a bemused look. How did the Queen of the Fairies know Fiddleford’s name?

“What? Come on Tanya, this guy looks nothing like McGucket,” said Mustardseed dismissively.

“My lady, the fight with the Gurrero Street Beast was exhausting,” chimed the girl with magenta hair, whose name was Peaseblossom. “Perhaps you’re just confused.”

Titania shot her servants a glare. Without a word, she pulled a wand from a scabbard at her side, and, after giving it a flick, she made a long, white beard and a floppy hat appear on Fiddleford’s face and head.

At this point, Fiddleford couldn’t think of anything to say other than, “Why does my beard have a bandage on it? Weird.”

The other four fairies screamed.

“Face stealer!” cried the green one, Moth, who began to kick Fiddleford in the shins.

“Ouch! Now you stop that,” chided Fiddleford, lifting the tiny winged girl into his hands. “Yer actin’ like a conswalloping hogwash salesman on the fourth of july!”

“… Yup, it’s him,” Titania nodded her head in triumph. She made the beard and hat vanish by waving the silver wand carefully, returning Fiddleford to his normal state.

“I don’t understand… how can this man still be McGucket,” said Peaseblossom, scrutinizing the older scientist with narrowed eyes.

“I told you, he’s a face stealer, Duh,” squeaked Moth, still waving her fists wildly at Fiddleford.

“Well, my name is Fiddleford McGucket,” he admitted, “and my team and I are from an institution that studies the oddities of the universe—in fact, we came all the way from our world to study yours! I think we’re the only version of our dimension that can travel to different worlds, but it’s entirely possible that you ran across a version of me from an alternate dimension?”

“We did recently open up a permanent portal to Earth,” said Titania slowly, “It’s entirely possible that the portal is available to all the different possible earths as well?”

“It’s a shaky theory, but the only one we have to work with in the present,” nodded Fiddleford. He frowned, however, when he realized that at any moment, an alternate version of himself could come waltzing into Faerie and possibly destroy the entire dimension should they accidentally run into each other.

“We should probably leave,” Fiddleford turned to Corduroy, “The risk of dimensional collapse is too high if an alternate me is on the loose—I couldn’t bare to repay my rescuers by accidentally destroying their home!”

“Nonsense,” said Titania, clapping her hand on Fiddleford’s shoulder. “McGucket rarely visits this dimension, and surely we can find a way to send a warning about the possible danger. I’ll have my servants send a letter explaining the whole thing. In the meanwhile, why don’t you and your team stay at my old family home? You’d be able to set up base and have access to our library if you needed to gather some research on Faerie’s history and culture.”

“You’d really do all that for us?” Fiddleford asked excitedly, hardly believing the institute’s good fortune.

“Anything for a good, old friend,” said Titania warmly. “Who, now that I think about it, is actually a new friend? A new old friend, perhaps we should say? Oh, who cares, everybody back to Eclipse Manor for a feast!”

                                                      *  *  *                                                                  Eclipse Manor, a country chateau just outside of a small village in the woods, was quite beautiful with a quiet, comfortable elegance. The research team immediately began snapping photos and writing down descriptions of the comfortable, elegant mansion, and didn’t stop taking notes until Fiddleford chided them into putting those things aside when the Queen called them all to dinner.

It was a wonderful feast of roasted chicken, baked sweet potatoes, buttery dinner rolls and a spinach salad—it reminded Fiddleford of Sunday dinners with his family when he was a child. There was, however, a slight incident when one of the security officers refused to take a bit.

“Would you like something else,” asked the Queen, offering security officer Ramirez a concerned look, “I’d hate for any of my guests to go hungry.”

“Um…” Ramirez looked highly uncomfortable, Fiddleford could see beads of flop sweat beginning to drip down his forehead as the table turned his attention to him.

“What, do you think our food sucks or something,” said Mustardseed aggressively. Titania shot Mustardseed a nasty look as Ramirez recoiled at her accusation.

“No! Um, no I really like food, little fairy dood,” said Ramirez nervously.

“Then eat up, Ramirez,” Fiddleford said, raising his glass of wine with good cheer, “I wasn’t raised to let anyone waste food at the dinner table.”

“Yeah but—oh man, what if the food turns out to be enchanted and we get stuck here forever like in all the fantasy books! This place is nice but I’d miss my grandma!”

Fiddleford grimaced, he thought for sure the Queen would have been offended, but she merely laughed again.

“Oh, you poor thing,” said Titania, patting a now mortified Ramirez’s arm kindly. “I assure you, food chain spells have long since been made illegal in this land, but if you would like, I can get somebody to run back to your dimension and get you something else.”

Relieved that the Queen wasn’t mad at him and that dinner wasn’t cursed, Ramirez assured her that he’d eat what was put out in front of him, and soon everyone was tucking in.

In addition to the fine food, the research team’s hosts were all lively conversationalists: Mustardseed and Corduroy were arm wrestling each other once the dishes had been cleared away, Moth kept daring Ramirez to try different kinds of food, a challenge he approached with unwavering bravery no matter how odd the dish was, and the researchers hung onto every word of Peaseblossom’s stories about the history of Faerie, which kept getting interrupted by Cobweb, who would add bawdy, off-color comments about the story much to her embarrassment.

Meanwhile, as all this was happening, Titania and Fiddleford were quickly becoming the best of friends; she asked him quite a few questions about the Institute and listened intently.

“Fascinating—so you run the robotics department? Whatever made you decide to lead an expedition,” asked Titania, who was trying to urge her small son, Daya, into finishing his sweet potatoes as she spoke to him.

“Well,” said Fiddleford, taking a swig from his wine glass once more, “I guess you could say I was curious—we used to read fairy stories all the time at my house when I was a kid, and I guess I just wanted to see what it was really like.” He smiled at Daya, who was scowling at his sweet potatoes with unmingled dislike.

”Well I certainly count myself lucky to meet you today,” said Titania, who’s smile faded to a frown when Daya rudely stuck his tongue out at the hated sweet potatoes. “Come on baby, eat!”

“No!”

“I’m glad to have met you too,” said Fiddleford earnestly, “I probably would have been eaten up by that giant, completely unlike how this little fella ain’t eating his taters.”

“Tatoes are yucky,” screeched Daya.

“Well, if you don’t want ‘em, I’ll steal ‘em for ya,” said Fiddleford, reaching his fork over to Daya’s plate.

Daya’s eyes grew wide, and without any warning, he began to shove handfuls of potato into his mouth to keep Fiddleford from grabbing any.

“My taters!”

“Well, darn, guess I’ll go without,” said Fiddleford with mock disappointment as he winked at Titania.

“I should invite you over more often,” said Titania, impressed. “Maybe then Daya would eat his vegetables more often.”

“Comes with lots of practice—the institute offers a childcare program to any wayward interdimensional refugees that come across our part of the universe,” said Fiddleford brightly. “I’ve had to coax my fair share of kids into eating their veggies than I can count!”

“Perhaps I’ll give you a call when Daya’s old enough to start school then,” said Titania warmly.

“We’d be happy to have him,” said Fiddleford, just as kindly.

“Now, would you mind joining me in the library? I want to show you the place where you can keep your research handy while you’re staying here,” said Titania, standing up from the table.

“Sure shootin’, lead the way,” said Fiddleford, and the two, along with Daya, who had sweet potatoes smeared all across his face, left the rest of the researchers alone in the great hall.

                                                      *  *  *

           The library was a magnificent place, filled with large, mahogany bookshelves that towered over Fiddleford and the Queen as they walked through its aisles, the sweet, comforting scent of old books filling the air like gentle incense. At the end of the room by a roaring fireplace was where the reading area had been arranged—polished wooden tables and comfortable, chintz chairs lay out before them, and the two took a seat opposite one another on the chairs.

           “Care for a chocolate?” asked Titania, indicating a box of chocolates on a nearby coffee table. “And by that I mean please eat them so I won’t. I have enough trouble getting my kid to eat vegetables as it is, what will he think when he sees that I’m constantly eating chocolate.”

           For his part, Daya was slowly starting to doze off as he cuddled close against his mother’s side.

           “Well, I guess I got room for more,” said Fiddleford, reaching over to open the box. He spied a photograph that was kept on the table next to the chocolates, and gasped. He recognized quite a few people present—Ramirez and Corduroy for one, along with Ford, who looked much grayer and rugged than his own Ford back at home, two kids that looked like Ford’s own little niece and nephew from Piedmont, and another man, who, though a bit thicker around the middle and with a more mischievous glint in the eyes, could have been Ford’s double. Titania and her girls were also in the picture, each smiling and laughing over something just off camera.

           “I’ll be,” whispered Fiddleford, “It’s Ford’s family!”

           “Yes,” nodded Titania, a slightly worried tone tinting her voice as she spoke, “Your… partner, correct?”

           “A little bit more than that,” said Fiddleford proudly, indicating the ring on his left hand with a smile. He pursed his lips as he gazed at the photo, pausing at the two twin brothers before saying, “I take it the Ford you know is on better terms with his twin than mine is?”

           “Oh? Are your Pines twins not getting along,” said Titania with a frown.

           “Well,” said Fiddleford sadly, “I tried getting Ford to talk to Stan for years, or at the very least, invite him to our wedding, but we haven’t been able to find him. It’s like he fell off the face of the earth.”

           “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Titania, who hugged her son tightly at this confession, “I know how difficult it is when a family member to go missing. I hope you’ll be able to reunite with him.”

           “Me too, at least for Ford’s sake—he wasn’t on the best terms with him, but I think he’d take it hard if he never got to speak with his brother again,” said Fiddleford quietly. He then smiled and held up the photo as he said, “but this proves that it’s possible, don’t ya think? That they could work everything out.”

           “Of course it is,” said Titania, who at last gave into temptation and grabbed a piece of chocolate from the box. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a family I’ve liked more than the Pines in a long time. I’m sure your version could be just as happy in time. By the way, if you ever do meet Stan again, don’t tell him I said that. I have a reputation to maintain as the best head of our respective found families, and I can’t have him strutting around knowing I said he was better at something, I wouldn’t bear it.”

           “It sounds like you’re awful fond of him to me,” said Fiddleford, wagging his eyebrows knowingly at the Queen. She playfully tossed the piece of chocolate she was holding at him, but he quickly caught it in his mouth.

           “While we’re on the subject,” said Fiddleford, his mouth full of chocolate caramel as he spoke, “Do you mind if I ask about my alternate self? I’ve been meaning to gather information about alternate timelines and how different dimensions compare and contrast, but it’s too dangerous of a risk to meet up with an alternate me! We know of one fella who was able to jerryrig up a whosmajig to keep himself from dissolving along with alternate versions of himself, but he ain’t saying anything to the institute—he has some sort of silly gentleman scientists feud with Stanford for some damn fool reason. So, if’n you don’t mind me asking, your majesty… what am I like?”

           The Queen’s smile faltered, and she grew quite pensive until she finally spoke.

           “You’re a bit balder… and with quite a few less teeth,” she said, looking away for a moment.

           “Oh,” said Fiddleford, frowning. He figured that at least a few different versions of himself wouldn’t age quite as well as he had, and besides, his habit of tearing out his hair when he was anxious probably hadn’t done him any favors. But why did the Queen look so sad?

            “Is something the matter,” asked Fiddleford.

           “Well… I don’t know if I’m the best person to tell you this,” said Titania, who began to stroke her son’s hair nervously, “after all, I only know a little piece about what happened from the version of Stanford I met. There was an incident when you were younger where you fell through a portal; some kind of accident that left you traumatized. You… made a gun that erased memories.”

           There was a trickling, icy sensation that shot down Fiddleford’s back. He had remembered the fight with the Gremoblin, the horrible things he had seen—he had wanted it all to go away so badly, and he thought the gun would be the perfect solution. At Ford’s constant insistence about the possible, dangerous side effects, however, he allowed Ford to destroy his invention.

           “What happened,” said Fiddleford, gulping.

           “It took a severe toll that affected your mental health for decades,” said Titania, her voice soft and full of sorrow. “It took ages for you to recover. You were living on the street.”

           Fiddleford couldn’t describe what he was feeling in that moment exactly—just a sort of lingering shock that a person who narrowly missed being hit by a car would have felt, the dreadful horror of what could have been.

           “… How am I now?” asked Fiddleford slowly after a long time.

           “Well… the Fiddleford I know is now living in a mansion after earning a fortune in inventing patents,” said Titania, who took Fiddleford’s hand and gently squeezed it as she spoke, “He has lots of close friends, and I’m fortunate enough to consider myself one of those friends. Furthermore, just about a week ago, he finally got engaged to his version of Stanford.”

           “He waited that long? Figures he’d take near about forever to get around to it,” said Fiddleford, and for a moment, the mood was light again, and he and the Queen shared a good laugh.

           “It’s getting late,” said Titania, eying the clock on the fireplace mantle. “I need to get my son to bed, and I’m sure you and your team need the rest. I’ll show you to your rooms, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call on any of my girls.”

                                                              *  *  *

           The bed was soft, and his stomach was full, and though his mind was still churning from what the Queen had told him about his double, Fiddleford McGucket easily found himself in a deep, comfortable sleep in his first night in Fairyland.

[cutie1365]

Hello Detective Chapter 46

Pairing: Sherlock x Reader

Word Count: 1532

masterlist  Part 47

You made it back to the station after an hour or two. You sat down in a chair outside the interrogation room and Sherlock paced next to you. Lestrade and Donovan were in there now with Claudette and a social worker, the brother was still in the ICU.

The door opened and Donovan strutted out.

“Right then, the professionals are finished if the amateurs want to go in and have their turn.” Donovan said rudely to Sherlock.

“Now, remember that she’s in shock and she’s just seven years old so... Anything you can do to–” Lestrade began before Sherlock spoke.

“Not be myself.” Sherlock finished.

“Yeah.” Lestrade said. “Might be helpful.”

Sherlock turned his coat collar down and walked into the room in front of you.

“Claudette, I–” Sherlock said before she started to scream. “No, no, I know it’s been hard for you, Claudette. Listen to me.”

She kept screaming and pointing to Sherlock, and he didn’t understand why.

“Out! Now!” You dragged Sherlock out of the room, not wanting to cause anymore pain to Claudette.

“Makes no sense.” John said.

“Kids traumatized. Something about Sherlock reminds her of the kidnapper.” Lestrade said. Oh, Moriarty was good, getting him to look like Sherlock.

Sherlock was standing at the window, looking out into the night.

“Well, don’t let it get to you, I always feel like screaming when you walk into a room. In fact, so do most people. Come on.” Lestrade said with a smile, telling Sherlock it was time to go home, work’s done.

“Brilliant work you did, finding those kids from just a footprint. It’s really amazing.” Donovan said, surprisingly cheerfully.

“Thank you.” Sherlock said quietly, walking from the room.

“Unbelievable.” Donovan said, her demeanor shifted.

Sherlock and John went home, you still had some work to do. You were walking down the hall with Lestrade, when you both stopped and noticed Sally in the room with all the evidence. You both walked towards the open doors.

“Problem?” Lestrade asked.

“A footprint that’s all he has.” Sally said.

“Yeah, well, you know what he’s like, CSI Baker Street.” Lestrade said.

“Well our boys couldn’t have done it. Y/N couldn’t even have done it, and even though it pains me to admit it, she’s the best one here.” She said.

“Well he is a graduate chemist. That’s why we need him, he’s better.” you said.

“That’s one explanation.” She said, looking off.

“What’s the other?” You asked rudely.

“Only he could have found that evidence. And then the girl screams her head off when she sees him, a man she has never seen before. Unless she had seen him before.” Donovan argued.

“It can’t be him Sally, you’re not serious?” You asked her.

“I am serious, you just don’t want to think about.” She said.

“This is crazy.” You said, shaking your head.

You now stood in Greg’s office with Donovan and Anderson.

“You’re not seriously suggesting he’s involved are you?” Greg asked.

“I think we have to entertain the possibility.” Anderson said.

You looked to Greg, shaking your head. And then you saw the look on his face: doubt. He began to question Sherlock as well.

“Ok, Gregson, you come with me.” Lestrade said, and the two of you drove to Baker Street and rang the bell. John let you in and you ascended the stairs into the sitting room where Sherlock was grabbing something from his bookshelf, it looked like a tiny camera.

“No, Inspector.” Sherlock said.

“What?” Lestrade asked.

“The answer is no.” Sherlock said.

“You haven’t heard the question.” Lestrade argued.

“You want to take me to the station. Just saving you the trouble of asking.” He said, now standing in front you you and Lestrade.

“Sherlock...” Lestrade began.

“The scream?” He asked.

“Yeah.” Lestrade nodded.

“Who was it? Donovan? I bet it was Donovan. Am I somehow responsible for the kidnapping. Ah, Moriarty’s smart. He planted that doubt in her head. That little nagging sensation you’re going to have to be strong to resist. You can’t kill an idea, can you? Not once it’s made a home there.” Sherlock said, pointing to Lestrade’s head before turning and sitting back at his desk.

“Will you come?” Lestrade asked.

“One photograph, that’s his next move. Moriarty’s game. First the scream, then a photograph of me being taken in for questioning. He want’s to destroy me inch by inch. It is a game, Lestrade, and not one I’m willing to play. Give my regard to Sergeant Donovan.” Sherlock said, Lestrade sighed and turned to you.

“Stay here, make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.” He whispered, before leaving.

You moved to the window and watched him drive away.

“You should have gone with him. People will think–” You began before Sherlock cut you off.

“I don’t care what people think.” He said.

“You’d care if they thought you were stupid or wrong.” You said.

“No, that would just make them stupid or wrong.” Sherlock said.

“Sherlock, I don’t want the world believing you’re...” You yelled before stopping yourself.

“That I am what?” He asked seriously, looking up from his computer.

“A fraud.” You said.

“You’re worried they’re right.” Sherlock sighed, sitting back.

“No, not at all.” You argued.

“Moriarty is playing with your mind to. Can’t you see what’s going on! You don’t understand because no one’s ever doubted you in your life.” He yelled.

“You have.” You said softly.

“What?” He asked, surprised.

“In the pool, when I first stepped out, and until you saw the explosives, you doubted me. You thought I was Moriarty. That I was behind it all. I still remember the look on your face Sherlock and it broke my heart. That was his plan, he wanted you to doubt me, if even for a minute. I’m not letting that happen this time. I will never doubt you.” You said.

He stood, looked at you curiously, before moving to his chair.

Your phone buzzed, it was a text from Lestrade. They were coming back. Sherlock was looking at you wondering what the text was.

“It’s Lestrade, he said they’re all coming over here. Queuing up to slap on the handcuffs. Every single officer you’ve ever made feel like a tit, which is a lot of people.” You yelled at him. Sherlock didn’t answer, just sat in his chair with his hands folded in front of him.

“Yoo hoo!” Mrs. Hudson said, knocking on the door and entering.

“Oh, sorry. Am I interrupting?” She said when she noticed your hands on your hips and your disapproving gaze towards Sherlock.

“Some chap delivered a parcel, I forgot. Marked perishable. I had to sign for it.” She spoke, you smiled and took it from her. Your smile faded when you saw the seal on it, the same as the two before.

“Funny name. German. Like the fairy tales.” She said as you opened it, Sherlock was now standing beside you.

You held the object in your hand carefully. It was a burnt gingerbread cookie. You looked up to Sherlock in fear.

“Burnt to a crisp.” He said, and you could hear the police sirens outside.

You could hear James Moriarty’s voice in your head from the pool “I will burn the heart out of you.”

Before you had time to speak, there were frantic knocks on the door and yelling coming from downstairs. Four policemen now stood in 221B, handcuffing Sherlock while Lestrade stood in front of him.

“Sherlock Holmes, I’m arresting you on suspicion of abduction and kidnapping. Get him downstairs now.” Lestrade said.

You stood idly by while Sherlock was dragged away.

“Are you happy now?” You asked Donovan.

“Well, I said it. First time we met.” She said.

“Don’t bother.” You retorted.

“Solving crimes won’t be enough. One day he’ll cross the line. Now ask yourself, what sort of man would kidnap those kids just so he can impress us all by finding them?” Sally said, and she truly believed her own words. She thought Sherlock was behind all of this.

Before you could speak, your boss, the Chief Superintendent, entered the room.

“Donovan? That’s our man?” He asked.

“Uh, yes, sir.” She answered.

“Looked a bit of a weirdo, if you ask me. Often are, these vigilante types.” He said, and your blood was boiling.

You promised yourself on your first case with Sherlock, you wouldn’t stand by and watch him die. Your job didn’t come first, he did: Sherlock Holmes, the father of your unborn child.

“Better start perfecting your alibi, Gregson, you were so close to him people might think you were involved too.” Sally said.

“Gregson, is that true?” Your boss asked.

“Oh, they’re hardly separated. Just read the blog, they’re like some kind of freak team.” She began, and your hand clenched into a fist. “Let me ask you Y/N, did you two have time for a quickie while we were gone? Does he make you wear the hat?”

She laughed, you lunged towards her, fist first. No doubt, breaking her nose.

You were quickly taken outside and slammed against the police car next to Sherlock, you let out a grunt when your body made contact with the metal.

Part 47

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[pokemaniacal]

Pokémon Moon, Episode 8: In Which I Am Given A Stern Talking-To By A Colourful Sisterly Figure

“So what you’re saying is, you almost killed my Totem Lurantis because your crazy great-grandmother would have wanted it that way?”  Mallow folds her arms as she waits for an answer. “…she had a drinking problem.  And a gambling problem.  And… several legal problems.  But she was pretty spry for 94.” “When did she…?” “Um… well, about eight years back, the law caught up with her, and she grabbed a shotgun, stole a motorbike, kidnapped the neighbours’ Heracross, and skipped town, laughing all the way.  Honestly she’s, uh… probably still kicking.  Somewhere out there.”  I idly dunk a spoon in the half-finished pot of stew from Mallow’s trial and taste it. “Mmmmmmmm, that’s so f%&£ing good. Good call on the Revival Herb, by the way.”  Mallow shudders. “Okay, well… I’m pretty sure you did technically pass my trial… somehow… so… take these, I guess.” She thrusts a sack of Nest Balls at me, then hands me her Z-Crystal, the Grassium-Z, and leaves me to explore the jungle on my own.  Now that I can encounter and catch wild Pokémon there, I am rewarded with three new ones: Bounsweet, Comfey, and Oranguru.  I’m not exactly inspired by these so far.  Bounsweet is a round, pinkish-red fruit Pokémon that brings to mind the phrase “oh, look, it’s Cherubi,” but it does evolve into something that might not be Cherrim, so we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.  Comfey is a Hawaiian lei Pokémon, one of those Flabébé-like Fairy-types that really looks as though it should be a Grass-type and has a bunch of stuff that supports Grass-types; it’s nice and thematically appropriate to the setting but doesn’t seem to evolve, and so far doesn’t really look like it’ll measure up to a fully-evolved Florges.  The third Pokémon, Oranguru, is so far the most interesting-looking – a purple and white apelike Normal/Psychic Pokémon that fights from a cross-legged sitting position.  It too shares a Pokédex page with something else, so there’s a good chance it will evolve.

When I leave the jungle, Professor Kukui turns up to congratulate me on passing all three of Akala Island’s trials, and remind me that I’m not off the hook yet: the next step is to face Kahuna Olivia in battle, to provide amusement for whatever primitive heathen deity rules this island.  But first, he has a little diversion for me: he wants me to come and visit a facility known as the Dimensional Research Lab, back in Heahea City. “If this is your way of recruiting me to some wild goose chase of a research project that’s going to get me killed in a ridiculous sci-fi laser explosion, Kukui, I swear to Arceus…” “No, of course not!” he protests.  “At the very worst you’ll be trapped in an alien nightmare dimension with no hope of ever returning home!  It’ll be no worse than being hit simultaneously with Mean Look, Trick Room, Shadow Force, and Dark Void.”  I stare at him in silence for a solid thirty seconds. “Eh. Good enough.” 

Lillie is already at the lab when I get there, trying to teach Nebby to use Splash, of all things.  I see right through her (admittedly clever) deception, of course.  When your real goal is for your Pokémon to lay waste to a region with the most powerful move of all – Explosion – what better way of avoiding suspicion than by pretending to focus on the weakest move of all?  I’m wise to your schemes, terrorist girl.  I give her a suspicious leer, causing her to squeak in feigned shock, and we enter the lab together.  The Dimensional Research Lab is run by one Professor Burnet, who happens to be Professor Kukui’s wife (GOD DAMN IT HE’S STRAIGHT).  She is also a friend of Lillie, having… randomly discovered her and Nebby lying unconscious on a beach three months ago.  This was apparently not a significant red flag to anyone involved. Lillie claims that she had been looking for Burnet anyway, and had simply “gotten lost” on the beach before collapsing from exhaustion.  How convenient, that circumstances should align so neatly for her to gain the sympathy and enter the confidence of the very professors she had been seeking.  I squint at Lillie again, mouth the words “I’m onto you,” and start scribbling in a notebook.  She returns a look of utter bewilderment and pulls down the brim of her hat to cover her face.  More importantly, returning to the conversation at hand, Burnet is a physicist who has dedicated much of her career to the study of strange phenomena designated “ultra wormholes.”  These are, as far as I can glean, mysterious wibbly-wobbly spacey-wacey holes in reality that occasionally appear in the sky over Alola and randomly spit out powerful demon-Pokémon to terrorise the region.

…this, I point out to nobody in particular, is yet another thing that the tourism brochures mysteriously failed to mention.

Professor Burnet is evasive when I try to ask her whether she’s actually seen a wormhole, or one of these “ultra beasts,” but notes that several known Pokémon possess power over dimensions, and claims that the sensitive equipment in her lab should be able to detect the wormholes. She also explains that the four guardian deities of Alola fought against the demonic invaders in ancient times to protect their region… which suddenly makes me very nervous that Tapu Koko’s plans to ruin my holiday may go way beyond just making me fight Pokémon battles for its amusement.

Of course, the instant I leave the lab, a gigantic glowing rift in space appears briefly in the sky, as if to taunt me, before closing up a few moments later. I’m… totally going to get drafted into a war between dimensions, aren’t I?

Whatever. Not my problem.  I’m just going to get on with this trial nonsense and pretend I didn’t see th- oh, gods, what if Nebby is the vanguard of the demonic invasion???  No! Nope.  I’m not thinking about that.  Just… go find Olivia.

Kahuna Olivia lives in Konikoni City, on Akala Island’s southwest coast.  To get there, I have to travel through Alola’s take on the Diglett’s Cave, a tunnel system inhabited by Zubat and Alolan Steel Diglett.  Olivia herself is actually there when I arrive, but is apparently too busy for me and requests that I meet her at her shop in Konikoni.  What is she busy with?  Well… apparently working with some of those Aether Foundation conservationists. The Foundation rents space in an office building in Heahea City, next to Professor Burnet’s lab (and right above Game Freak’s Alola branch), though as far as I can tell they don’t actually do anything there.  Their presence in the tunnels is a response to some recent unusual Diglett activity that has been making the area dangerous for travellers and miners, which they blame on Team Skull’s shenanigans.  Well, their story checks out – further into the caves, I encounter two Team Skull grunts I don’t recognise, and battle them in tandem with Hau, who is gradually becoming almost respectable as a trainer.  That was simple enough… almost weirdly so.  Team Skull are such buffoons, and I’m not even sure what they were trying to accomplish by disturbing the Diglett. Could there be some greater design behind their nonsense…?

…nah, I’m just being paranoid.  Just because their name starts with “Team” doesn’t mean they’re going to open a dozen of these wormholes and bring about the apocalypse.

Once on the other side of the tunnel, I take a brief look around Konikoni City. It’s a colourful city with heavily Japanese-influenced architecture.  Like most big Alolan cities, it’s a hub for tourism, with markets that sell rare incenses, TMs and clothing.  Down by the cape, there’s a lighthouse, but I can’t access it (yet?), as well as a woman who not only offers to teach my Pikachu Volt Tackle, but even gives me a special Z-Crystal.  I thought these things were sacred relics!  The Pikanium-Z, when its power is unleashed by the absolute stupidest dance I have yet been taught, transforms Volt Tackle into a truly devastating super-move… Catastropika. Catastropika?  Really?  That’s the name we’re going with here, Alola?  Not, like… Pikalamity, or Pikataclysm, or just Pi-Kaboom? Seriously, the translators dropped the ball on this $#!t. Whatever.  Apparently the rules for Z-moves are a little different to what the previous crystals had led me to believe – some of them are related, like Mega Stones, to just one species, or even just one move used by that species. Then there’s Olivia’s own shop. Olivia, a Rock Pokémon specialist, sells evolutionary stones and fossils.  Contrary to her earlier promise, she’s not there, but has left her Probopass to run the shop (because… why not?) and given it a message, telling me to join her at the nearby Ruins of Life, the home of the guardian Tapu Lele. 

Ohhhhh no. No.  I’ve already got one of these ‘guardians’ lording it over me and telling me what to do, just because it… like… I don’t know, saved my life or whatever.  The last thing I need is Tapu Lele arbitrarily deciding to offer me “guidance,” or punish me for trespassing, or turn me into an attractive paperweight, or-

Ugggggggh, but on the other hand, I can totally see a couple of members of Team Skull heading for the Ruins of Life through that creepy cemetery outside town. If Olivia’s gone out there to fight them, or they’ve gone out there to attack her… well, then frankly that’s her problem, right? …right? “Zzzzzt! I dunno, boss!” the Rotomdex interjects. “Sure seemzzzz like it’d be a dick move not to at least go check it out!” “No one asked you, you cursed calculator-watch,” I mutter, but decide to go anyway.  If Olivia… somehow can’t handle those idiots, it’s bound to be my fault, one way or another. 

I do my best to pick my way respectfully through the cemetery on Memorial Hill, skirting carefully around each grave.  As I reach the other side, I spot the two Team Skull grunts – it’s “B” again, with another of his idiot friends.  But it’s not just them – there’s a Slowpoke with them, and they’re arguing with an Aether Foundation worker.  Beside her is a green-haired man with huge yellow-green glasses and a white lab coat, regarding the situation with strange detachment.  As I approach, I hear the Foundation worker shouting. “Team Skull!  Give back that Pokémon!”  The second grunt flicks a few random gang signs in her direction as he shouts his response. “Don’t give me trouble!  I’ll reduce you to rubble!” “Mmm, trouble/rubble; there’s an original one,” I interrupt, sidling up between the Aether Foundation worker and the man in the glasses.  “You know, I bet you’re the first in all the history of the English language to rhyme those two.”  I shoot the young woman a glance, and stage-whisper to her “Sarcastic enough? D’you think they’ll get it?”  She only stares at me, dumbfounded, so I shrug and turn back to the Team Skull grunts.  “Sorry, am I interrupting something?  You weren’t about to kidnap this Pokémon, were you?”  I feign a wide-eyed gasp.  “Tsk, tsk, tsk… You know, I really thought we were getting somewhere, boys, I honestly did.”  The second grunt just looks bewildered (I’m not totally sure whether I’ve met him before), but B looks like smoke is about to start pouring out of his ears.  I give him my most practiced look of sincere disappointment.  “Come on; I thought we were moving past this.  Can’t you let this one go?  For me?” I smile at him. “But- wh- you- NO!” he splutters.  “We’re gonna sell this Pokémon to get rich, and we won’t make no bones about it!  If you want it back, y- you- you’re gonna have to take it!”  I sigh and reach for a Pokéball… until the other grunt abruptly gets a look of comprehension and elbows B in the side. “Yo, homie?” he says quietly.  “This ain’t…? Is it?”  B turns to him and continues spluttering. “Wh-what you talkin’bout, dawg?” “Look, you don’t gotta let nobody step to you when your Team Skull brothers are around, ‘specially not this fool!  Take a chill pill, homie; I got your back!”  B’s gaze flicks back and forth between me and the other grunt for several seconds, then they both turn their backs to me and start arguing.  The Aether Foundation woman gives me a quizzical look, as though to ask for an explanation.  I shrug at her, but then inspiration strikes.  I hold a finger to my lips to signal for quiet, then crouch low and try to make eye contact with the Slowpoke.  It looks directly at me… then yawns and looks away.  I snap my fingers, glancing at the grunts to make sure they haven’t noticed, and the Slowpoke – with all the urgency of cold treacle – turns its stupid dopey face towards me.  I jab a finger at it and start beckoning it towards me.  A full ten seconds later, it gives a decisive nod, turns around, and begins walking directly away from me.  I roll my eyes, then glance around, grab a convenient rock, take careful aim, and throw it at the Slowpoke, striking it on the back of the head.  It turns around to face me again.  I jab my finger at it again, then point firmly at the ground beneath my feet and start beckoning once more.  This time, the blasted thing apparently gets the message and starts crawling steadily towards me.  I glance up again.  The Team Skull grunts are still deep in an animated argument about… something.  It’s definitely turning out worse for B, who is holding one hand to his face and cringing for some reason.  About a minute later, the Slowpoke reaches me.  I silently make a coo-ing face at it, and pat it gently on the head, giving a thumbs-up to the Aether Foundation girl with my other hand. “Sloooooooooooow…” the Slowpoke says, appreciatively.  This, unfortunately, gets the attention of the grunts again, who spin around to face me. “Right!” I say decisively, standing up straight and clapping my hands together. “I’m sure we all have other business to attend to today, so why don’t we all just-” but the second grunt is having none of that. “You ready?” he yells at me, grabbing a Pokéball from his belt.  “Cuz I was born ready, yo!” “Well…” I sigh, “worth a try.”  I send out my own (infinitely more responsive) Slowpoke… which turns out to be a mistake when his Pokémon is revealed as a Dark Raticate, forcing a hasty switch to my Trumbeak.  From there, though, Rock Smash makes short work of it. “That loss was pathetic!  Your moves were so kinetic!” the grunt declares, stunned.  B grumbles something under his breath, then shakes his head and shouts at me. “We don’t need that Pokémon anyway!  Take it then! Good luck and good riddance!” Both of them flee the scene.  The Aether Foundation worker breathes a sigh of relief and leans down to pat the Slowpoke. “Phew… thanks, kid.  I could’ve been in real trouble there…” “Now, now,” her companion admonishes her, speaking for the first time, “stand firm! Think of what the president would say!” “That’s what you say, Chief!  But you don’t lift a finger!” “Why, I am the Aether Foundation’s last line of defence!”  I frown at this comment, carefully scrutinising for any signs of particular competence, but he doesn’t seem to notice.  “What would become of the Foundation if something were to happen to me now?”  He tut-tuts her, then turns to me.  “You are a trial-goer aren’t you?  You’re a splendid trainer!  I’m deeply impressed!  I’d like to reward you by showing you something truly astounding.  Once you have finished your Grand Trial, come to Hano Grand Resort and I will take you to see a wondrous place.”  I accept his invitation with a shrug.  Can’t be any worse than whatever the Kahunas and the Guardians will want me to do next.

I continue along the path to the Ruins of Life, past a truly spectacular cliff side and up towards the ruins’ great stone gate.  Someone is standing in the path… a young woman… but as I get close, it becomes obvious that it’s not Olivia.  She has waist-length pink and yellow hair, black clothes, and… an unmistakeable Team Skull necklace, as well as the Team Skull logo tattooed in pink on her bare midriff.  Looks like I’m starting to attract all the wrong kinds of attention from these guys. I briefly consider trying to avoid her, but she’s clearly seen me first, and looks like she was waiting for me. “So…” she says, confidently strolling up to me.  “You’re the one Gladion was talking about?  Hmph.  You don’t look like anything special to me.” “Well… looks can be deceiving, right?”  I try to flash a confident grin back, but there’s something a tad unsettling about her. “…uh… is this about the Slowpoke, or…?” She looks me sternly in the eye. “I’m Plumeria.  I help keep Team Skull together.  I’m like a big sister to all those numskulls.”  Her expression softens a little.  “Look… you have realised what idiots all these guys are, right?” she asks. “Um. I- I guess?” I reply.  Obviously I have, but I’m a little taken aback by her frankness. “But… don’t you think some of those dummies are cute in their dumbness?  You know what I mean… right?”  Plumeria gives me a strange look that is somehow equal parts conspiratorial, teasing… and deadly threatening. “Um. No.  No!  I have no idea what you’re talking about!  What are you even implying here?  Who said anyone was cute?  Not me, that’s for sure.”  Plumeria glares at me coldly. “Is that so, punk?  Well, I gotta tell you – you picking on my cute, dumb brothers and sisters is really annoying me!”  She grabs a Pokéball and summons a Golbat.  Oh, thank Arceus, a problem I know how to deal with!  My Dartrix is a real champ in this fight, thanks to the affection bonuses we’re starting to accumulate; he dodges a Confuse Ray and an Air Cutter, and shakes off some nasty poison, to secure a win against the Golbat, and seriously injure the Salandit that Plumeria sends out in its place. Salandit finishes my Dartrix with Flame Burst, but its own weak physical defences leave it easy prey for my Trumbeak. Plumeria recalls her Pokémon, steps back, and looks me over for a second.  Even though I just beat her, her gaze is… still kind of chilling. “Hmph. You’re pretty strong,” she says. “I’ll give you that.  But mess with anyone in Team Skull again… in any way… and I’ll show you how serious I can get.” Without waiting for a response, she spins around on her heel and stalks off. “I’m not messing with anyone anywhere!” I call out after her.  “It’s not like I have a… a… a stupid ‘thing’ for one of your dumb little brothers.  Uh.  Or sisters.  Could be a sister; you don’t know me; you don’t know my life.  I mean, it- it’s not, because it’s no one, but- but you don’t know!”  Plumeria is long gone by this point, of course, but that’s no reason to let her get the last word.

Finally, I reach the entrance to the Ruins of Life, with Lillie suddenly right behind me, escorted by Professor Burnet.  Lillie is apparently here at Nebby’s behest, and doesn’t know much more than that.  Before I can interrogate either of them, though, Kahuna Olivia emerges from the ruins. She apologises for her earlier absence by explaining that Tapu Lele had summoned her to help “clean up” the ruins (wait… so the Kahunas have to do household chores for the guardian deities?  Okay, maybe I’m not really getting the short end of the stick after all). With minimal preliminaries, Olivia accepts my challenge… and promptly wrecks my $#!t.

I never intended my current team to be in any sense permanent – Raticate’s going to go at some point, probably Trumbeak too once I’ve finished exploring its evolution, and I’m not 100% on Pikachu or Slowpoke either – but even so, I have to admit it was a slight oversight to have three Pokémon with Rock weaknesses and none with a Rock resistance.

My Dartrix takes out Olivia’s first Pokémon, a Nosepass, without immense difficulty (though, again, a few affection bonuses help to seal the deal).  Then… in comes her partner Pokémon, Lycanroc, a creepy-looking red-and-white werewolf Pokémon that I can only assume is the evolved form of Rockruff.  Its powerful Rock Throw attack immediately knocks out my Dartrix and my Salandit, then as soon as I try to bring its defences down with Trumbeak’s Rock Smash, Olivia unleashes its Z-move: Continental Crush, which as far as I can tell is a move that works by dropping Australia on you. My poor Slowpoke flinches under Lycanroc’s Bite and doesn’t even get a chance to hit back with Scald.  Finally, my Raticate manages to bring it down with Crunch.  Enduring what would have been a finishing blow from Olivia’s final Pokémon, a Boldore, Raticate manages to do just enough damage before fainting to bring it within striking distance for my last Pokémon, Pikachu, to finish it off. 

Phew.  Okay.  Lesson learned.  No more underestimating Rock-types.  Especially weird, gangly werewolf Rock-types.

…what, you didn’t think I was actually going to lose that one, did you?  Listen, “wrecks my $#!t” is very much a relative term here.  Sure, it looked bad for a little while but I’m a former Champion (in multiple regions, if you count my… past lives, or… whatever… look, I try not to think about it too hard), and Olivia is, like, the head shaman of some backwards middle-of-nowhere hick island who does chores for a bird.  Of course I beat her; I’m amazing.  Give me some credit here.

Olivia rewards me with her Z-crystal – the Rockium-Z (did the Alolans listen to these names at all while they were picking them…?) – and sends me packing just as Hau arrives for his own Grand Trial. Hau has apparently received the same invitation from the Aether Foundation as I did, and is eager to get his trial out of the way so we can go and have a look.  Lillie is decidedly less enthusiastic, presumably since she knows the Aether Foundation is hot on her trail, and makes a stammering excuse. Well, whatever.  Sooner or later, Lillie… you can’t run forever.

Ridiculous quote log:

“Yo! I’m a herb seller!  I’m self-taught, but I sell good quality herbs!” Why does everyone in this region try to get me to do f#$%ing drugs!?

“There’s a faint smell of spices, sauces, and other fragrant things…” …okay maybe this is the time to admit that I… kiiiiiiinda have a thing for smelling other people’s beds?  Uh, I- I mean, it’s totally not a sex thing, not even a little bit; just, uh… if I come across someone’s bed, I like to… give it a good long sniff before I move past it.  Lots of people do it, probably.  It helps me feel closer to- wait, damn it, no, that still sounds weird.  That is, uh… I mean, if they wanted to sniff my bed I would totally let them, and- okay that sounds even worse.  Can we… just forget I said anything?

The team: 

Tane the Dartrix Male, Timid nature, Overgrow ability Level 28 Tackle, Razor Leaf, Astonish, Pluck 

Rhea the Trumbeak Female, Lax nature, Keen Eye ability Level 27 Pluck, Roost, Fury Attack, Rock Smash 

Ashley the Pikachu Female, Timid nature, Static ability Level 27 Volt Tackle, Hidden Power (Ice), Nasty Plot, Thunder Wave 

Hypatia the Slowpoke Female, Hardy nature, Own Tempo ability Level 27 Confusion, Yawn, Headbutt, Scald 

Soot the Raticate Female, Hardy nature, Hustle ability Level 27 Crunch, Tail Whip, Hyper Fang, Focus Energy 

Joanna the Salandit Female, Timid nature, Corrosion ability Level 27 Flame Burst, Sweet Scent, Dragon Rage, Smog

[argentxarcheresse]

NAME: Allison Argent NICKNAMES/ALIASES: Ally AGE: 18 SPECIES: Human SEXUALITY: Doesn’t Label Herself MARITAL STATUS: Single FANDOM: Teen Wolf PUNCTURABLE? Yes BIGGEST SECRET: She’s terrified that she’ll turn into her aunt Kate or grandfather Gerard. She’s afraid of appearing weak or helpless. FC: Crystal Reed

PERSONAL INVENTORY: The clothes on her back, crossbow and quiver, a small arsenal of hidden weapons on her person,  a dulled arrowhead, $10 lunch money in her jacket pocket, Iphone 5c, silver bullet necklace.

POWERS/SPECIAL ABILITIES - Above average gymnastic ability - Expert archery skills - Above average hand-to-hand combat skills - English and French - Talented with daggers

PERSONALITY: When she first arrived in Beacon Hills, Allison Argent may not have been completely innocent, but she was relatively unjaded and, for the most part, happy with her life. She did what she could to get around her parents’ sheltering behaviors and wanted nothing more than to just stay in one location for once and live a normal teenage life. When she started dating Scott McCall she was playful with him and often flirtatious even if she didn’t have the guts her best friend Lydia had around boys. Gradually, Allison became more and more distrustful of people mostly because she knew something was being hidden from her. Eventually, with the help of her aunt Kate, she came to realize that the secret being kept from her was that werewolves existed and that her family was meant to hunt them. This put a damper on her relationship with Scott even though she fought hard to be with him. Things would do an outright 180 for Allison when she learned of her mother’s suicide. Her kneejerk reaction was to demolish everything she was and build in its place a hardened young woman with one major purpose in her life - Revenge. She became almost crazed in her attempts to even the score between her family and Derek Hale, hunting down her werewolf classmates that were members of Derek’s pack. During that time she was often worried that she was not strong enough. Eventually it became clear to Allison that she was being used as Gerard’s pawn and that was when she truly began to redeem herself. In the third season, Allison was not quite the unjaded, smiling young woman she was at the start, but she is no longer bloodthirsty and hungering for revenge. She’s put distance between herself and Scott because she thinks she needs to grow and that can only be done on her own. She is still brave to the core and her mother’s voice now reminds her to be strong when she needs to be. The ritual would cause her heart to darken, but she has yet to see proof of that.

HISTORY: Allison was born to Chris and Victoria Argent. They told her that Chris sold firearms as a living, hiding the truth that they were both hunters from a long familial line of hunters, and for a very long time their daughter bought the story without question. They gave everything to their only daughter. When she wanted to be involved in gymnastics they paid for the top coach in the area. When she expressed an interest in archery they gave her lessons. She became talented in both areas, but especially in archery. Allison even went so far as to compete on the national level. Her parents were extremely proud of her, but even more so was her aunt Kate, her father’s younger sister. Kate encouraged Allison’s talents, especially her archery, and would cheer her on enthusiastically during the practices she observed. Eventually, though, Allison quit archery and gymnastics. This was due to a combination of factors. Having never truly put down roots, Allison had to deal with constantly changing coaches. Also, over the years she began to lose interest and wanted to try ordinary teenage activities. After all, she’d already been held back a year in school because of the constant travel with her family. Her story became much more complicated after her family moved to Beacon Hills and she began her sophomore year of school at the public high school. She immediately made friends with one of the most popular and envied girls in school and also caught the eye of a boy in her class named Scott McCall. After some time, Allison became suspicious of certain things going on in her life. People seemed secretive and sometimes distrustful. Things got even more tangled with the arrival of her aunt Kate in Beacon Hills. Kate gave Allison a pendant, a family heirloom, and it prompted Allison to further research her family tree. She learned through her research that her family had strange history attached to it. At least in the past, the Argents had been famed werewolf hunters. When Kate took notice of Allison’s interest, she decided to take things a step further. Kate had captured a local werewolf, Derek Hale. When Allison saw him he was in wolf form, which naturally freaked Allison out. This new information troubled her. Now she knew that her family history was more than one of Grimm’s fairy tales. Not only were werewolves real, but all of the stories about her family members being hunters were true, as well. Things took a turn for the worse when Allison attended the prom. It was a picture perfect formal dance until Scott, now her boyfriend, revealed himself as a werewolf. Things had turned into a complicate, modern day Romeo and Juliet kind of relationship. Allison was devastated. That same night, Allison’s best friend Lydia was attacked by local alpha werewolf Peter Hale. Her parents planned to move her out of town for her own safety, but Allison didn’t want any of that. She was full of questions, but all she could get out of her parents were orders to ‘lay low’ and stop digging for answers. Allison decided to sneak away to see Lydia in the hospital, looking at her in her hospital bed with Kate using the situation to try and convince Allison that all werewolves are monsters. Kate was trying to mold Allison into a hunter like herself. While Allison agreed to help catch werewolves, she still had doubts about all werewolves being homicidal monsters. This leads everyone to the old Hale house where it is revealed that Kate Argent burned down the house with not only werewolves inside but also human children. For this, alpha Peter Hale harbored a gigantic grudge. He scared an apology out of Kate, but it wasn’t enough. He killed her with her family watching. With a little team effort, Allison and her friends taken Peter Hale down. He was burned to death by a molotov cocktail. After the incident, Allison kissed Scott and declared that she loved him. Unfortunately for the couple, not everyone was happy for them to be together. Allison’s father, for example, was seething about the whole thing. He even went so far as to tell Scott that he wouldn’t let him near his daughter. To make things even worse, Allison’s hunter grandfather had just breezed into town to attend Kate’s funeral. Kate’s death had stirred something up in grandpa Gerard, bringing out his hatred for werewolves. On top of all that, it wasn’t only werewolves that Beacon Hills had to worry about anymore. There was also a lizard like creature roaming the streets at night, killing people. To jumpstart his daughter’s hunter training, Chris staged a kidnapping. He and the other hunters present made it perfectly clear what would happen if any hunter were to be bitten by a werewolf. The hunter in question would be killed. Everything was presented to Allison as black and white and Chris insisted that the only option was to stay far away from Scott. The whole fake kidnapping thing would almost be prophetic. When Allison’s mother tried to kill Scott, Derek came to the rescue and in the scuffle managed to bite the woman. She would have been doomed to become what she and her family hunted. With a little help from Chris, Allison’s mother committed suicide just as the moon rose. The news devastated Allison. She went crazy, throwing nicknacks and her old, girlier clothing in the trash. Allison was inspired by intense grief to become a skilled hunter. She felt that all she had left was vengeance. With the Argents, the men were brought up to be hunters and the women brought up to be leaders. Since Allison’s mother had died the role of leader fell on Allison’s shoulders. She was to be in charge from then on. Chris was less than enthusiastic about his daughter taking on the role at such a young age, but Allison wouldn’t hear it and neither would her grandfather Gerard. She led an attack meant to bring Derek Hale and the lizardlike kanima into custody, but the whole thing was botched. Allison did manage to capture two of Derek’s pack, though. The two were quickly let loose, though, when Chris finally realized that, in her grief, Allison was utterly out of control. It wasn’t long before she and Gerard planned another attack. Midway through the operation, Gerard revealed that he’d had a secret plan all along. He had been looking for a werewolf to bite him and cure his cancer. It looked as if Gerard had lost, but as more and more distractions presented themselves he somehow got away. The mystery of the kanima had been solved. It had been Jackson, Lydia’s boyfriend, the whole time. He had even been cured of his lizardlike form and had become a werewolf. Allison and Scott’s relationship troubles, however, had not been solved. Allison told him that they needed time apart. She needed to get over the drama of the recent past before going headfirst into what she knew would be a very stressful relationship. Allison took four months distancing herself from Scott, part of the time living abroad in France. He had respected her wishes, not contacting her the entire summer she was away, but Allison still was not ready for a relationship with Scott or anyone else. The Argent family, now just Allison and Chris, had distanced themselves from hunting, too, over the summer. The two of them had moved out of the house they’d lived in while Victoria was alive and into a new home. Chris’ one condition for allowing Allison to stay in Beacon Hills was that she forget about hunting completely, something she was not eager to do. A mysterious stranger would draw Allison and best friend Lydia back into the supernatural, though, by leaving a clue in the form of a bruise on their forearms. As the two of them held up paint swatches in Allison’s new bedroom they couldn’t help but notice the bruises decorating their arms were no ordinary bruises, but formed some sort of symbol when the two halves were placed together. They decide to approach Scott on the topic and he in turn makes Derek look at the matching bruises, but Derek said that he saw nothing, then criticizing Lydia for bringing his uncle back from the dead and Allison for hunting his pack. Allison countered that, at the time, her mother had died because of Derek’s bite only to have Derek argue that it was the Argent family Code that caused Victoria’s death. Allison persisted with her research in spite of Derek’s lack of confidence, looking up ancient symbols on the internet. It’s then that it came to her - The symbol the bruises formed when put together was not ancient, but a modern logo. She managed to trace it further and found that it was a logo to a closed down bank in town. With no one else seeming to be around, she went to the bank and broke in with bolt cutters. As soon as she got inside, though, she ran into her guidance counselor Ms. Morrell who hurried her into a storage room and told her not to come out until she heard the fighting start. Allison did as she was told, even going so far as to spill amonia to mask her scent to any werewolves present. When she finally heard the fighting start, Allison left to get a closer look at what was going on. She followed the sounds to a vault where she saw Boyd, a werewolf from Derek’s pack, and Derek’s sister Cora each fighting crazedly against Derek and Scott. When it became clear that Boyd was getting the better of Scott, Allison reached down to break the mountain ash circle that held all of them inside of the vault, hoping to save Scott’s life. She succeeded, but unfortunately unleashed the two crazed werewolves. Derek was fuming mad, causing Allison to lash out and counter that at least she wasn’t the one turning teenagers into killing machines. It’s then that Derek brings up her mother, but it only confused Allison. Scott was then forced to explain that Derek only bit Victoria after she tried to kill Scott. In spite of her promise to her father that she would no longer hunt, Allison decided to help trap Boyd and Cora before they did much damage to anyone in Beacon Hills. Derek and the others, including Chris Argent, worked to trap them on their own, but would have nearly failed if Allison hadn’t trapped the two inside of the high school by shooting flash bolts at them. Isaac caught sight of her, but other than that the only evidence of her assistance were the arrows left behind. The next day, an exhausted Allison made the mistake of falling asleep in Ms. Morrell’s French class. When she couldn’t answer a question related to the class she was sentenced to lunchtime detention, something she’d have to spend with Isaac who was framed for having beaten up one of two Alpha werewolf twins. Isaac confronted Allison for having attacked him with knives only to have her correct him, saying that they weren’t knives but Chinese ring daggers. After a little beating around the bush, she finally apologized. Their task for detention was to clean out the janitor’s supply closet, but the Alpha twins were not finished messing with Isaac. They pushed a soda machine against the door, effectively locking Allison and Isaac in the closet together. Having had many bad experiences in a locked freezer, Isaac had been left claustrophobic. After beating on the door uselessly he wolfed out, meaning to turn on Allison. Scott was the one to come to the rescue. He moved the soda machine and opened the door, pulling Isaac outside and letting him return to his human state. Allison escaped merely with scratches on her arm. As payback, she helped hotwire one of the twins’ motorbikes and left it for Isaac to ride into the school, then leaving it looking like the Alpha twin was the one riding it inside. It wasn’t long before someone found an arrow at school where Allison had helped contain Boyd and Cora. That someone happened to be Scott. Even though she insisted it must have been the school’s archery team, Scott pointed out that Beacon Hills had no archery team and if they did they wouldn’t be using military grade, armor piercing, titanium arrowheads. He warned her to stay away from the new Alpha pack in town because of their superhuman strength. This only made Allison insist that she could hold her own and drove her to spar with Scott. She was disappointed as he blocked her attacks every time, but was left very close to kissing him. Even after Scott’s warnings, Allison tried to convince her father that someone needed to help Scott and Derek against the Alpha pack. He insisted that it wasn’t up to them, that they agreed to live a normal life. He pointed out that Scott and Derek weren’t family, but she counters that she’s lost so much family that she could use a few friends. Against her father’s wishes, Allison finds a battle going on and helps Scott and Derek anyway. They’re outnumbered by the Alpha pack, but Allison’s flash bolt arrows distract the pack long enough to buy Scott and Derek time to escape and help the other wounded away from the fray. Derek, however, couldn’t save himself and wound up toppling down quite a distance. After the fight, Isaac and Scott still headed off to a cross country meet to keep up appearances. Scott, however, was wounded and not healing as fast as he should have. Luckily, Allison and Lydia were driving behind the cross country team’s bus. Allison gets Scott into a public restroom to treat his wound, having visions of her mother telling her how to properly stitch up a wound. Meanwhile, elsewhere, Derek was left to heal with Allison’s English teacher who seemed to have some kind of healing ability. Deciding to leave their car at the reststop where Allison stitched up Scott’s wound, she and Lydia boarded the cross country bus, riding with the team to stay overnight at a motel called the Glen Capri. Lydia immediately told Allison that she had a bad feeling about the place. Allison tried to comfort her best friend by saying they were only staying one night, but Lydia argued that a lot could happen in one night. It turned out that Lydia’s bad gut feeling was justified as one by one the werewolves on the cross country team started to hallucinate and attempt suicide. It took Stiles, Lydia, and Allison to keep them from killing themselves. As Stiles saved Scott from setting himself on fire, Lydia caught sight of a cloaked, disfigured form in the flames. The next morning, Scott, Stiles, Lydia, and Allison were found sleeping on the bus. The coach informs them that the meet had been cancelled. It was Lydia who noticed the purple stain of wolfsbane on the coach’s shirt where his whistle rested, and once it was pointed out Stiles tossed the thing out the bus window so it wouldn’t do any more harm. In the meantime, Stiles has figured out that the murders taking place in Beacon Hills are actually sacrifices and it connects to Allison. Allison had discovered something written in ink only visible under blacklight suggesting that her father had been tracking all of the sacrifices. It was enough to send Allison to Gerard looking for answers. She even came back a second time with Scott looking for answers regarding the Alpha pack. Gerard only offered a skewed version of how the Alpha pack came to be that made him look like an innocent, but he offered one useful tidbit - Deucalion, the leader of the Alpha pack, lost his eyes but is not always blind. Soon after, Lydia went into a fugue state that led her back to the high school. She immediately called Allison, Stiles, and Scott hoping to investigate why she was drawn there. Her fugue states at that point had only led her to discover dead bodies and this one was no exception as they discovered the body of a deputy left on top of the high school’s sign. This made it clear to Allison that she needed to somehow intervene. She returned home, hiding out in bed and telling her father that she couldn’t make it to the school’s orchestra concert and planned to stay in bed. She was out of bed the moment he was gone, fully clothed. After equipping herself with her ringed daggers, she was ready to go and try to prevent another sacrifice from taking place. The only thing that stopped her was hearing a noise at her window. Without much thought, she pinned her attacker to the floor only to discover that it was Isaac in her room. She assumed that Scott had sent him to check up on her and defensively insisted that she could take care of herself. Isaac agrees, saying that he’d noticed more than once. Allison showed Isaac the blacklight visible markings on her father’s desk. With Isaac advising her to take a step back and look at the whole picture they noticed a fivefold knot and the words “Virgins”, “Warriors”, “Healers”, “Philosophers”, and “Guardians, one in each knot. Allison immediately called Stiles, worried that “guardians” could very well mean law enforcement and therefore Stiles’ father. Having learned all that she had in a short period of time, Allison was left with the feeling that her father was responsible for the ritual killings. After all, he seemed to have foreknowledge of the pattern and locations of the murders. Allison and Isaac, following the markings on the desk, wound up at an abandoned power plant. They expected to see Chris there, catching him in the act. Isaac used his werewolf senses to follow the scent of blood even though he’s inexperienced with tracking. They look around, finally seeming to have caught a sacrifice in progress as they spotted a figure suspended on chain-link, struggling against his restraints. The culprit, a Darach or dark druid, stood behind the figure, watching Allison and Isaac. Both Allison and Isaac rushed to help the man, but were stopped by a shout of ‘get down’ coming from none other than Chris Argent. He shot at the Darach until he was completely out of ammo. While her father took the offensive approach, Allison and Isaac set to helping the would-be sacrifice down. They recognized him as being their history teacher, which made them realize that the Darach was not currently after ‘guardians’ as they had thought, but rather ‘philosophers’ as in teachers. In the aftermath of the rescue, both Argents found themselves arguing with one another. Allison blamed her father for keeping what he knew of the sacrifices secret for so long and Chris blamed his daughter and Isaac for interfering with his plans, saying that they’d ruined his chance at killing the Darach. They push their frustrations to the side, however, to rush to the orchestra concert, having feared that another teacher might die that night. While they focused on that, Lydia had followed her instincts to who else but the seemingly kind, innocent Ms. Blake, her English teacher. It’s revealed that Ms. Blake is the Darach and she would have killed Lydia in the same manner as the sacrifices, but Lydia let out a piercing scream, revealing that she wasn’t as innocent as she appeared, either. Lydia’s scream indicated that she was a Banshee and it saved her life. Lydia was saved, but as the Darach left she took Stiles’ father Sheriff Stilinski with her. Later that night, Darach, looking like Ms. Blake, pays a visit to Derek’s loft. She played it off as if she was merely a witness to the events at the concert, but Stiles and Scott had beat her to the loft and informed Derek before she had a chance to lie about things. Derek almost killed her, but Ms. Blake insisted that she could heal his mysteriously unconscious sister Cora if he would just help her escape the Alpha pack. They rush to the hospital only to be locked in by the Alpha pack. Meanwhile, Chris was about to take both Allison and Isaac home after the terrible happenings at the concert, but Isaac wanted to be dropped off at the hospital to check on Cora. They arrived just as the power to the entire building was cut. They knew that something was wrong. As they rounded a corner, the two Argents and Isaac ran into Scott and his mother. Since Ms. Blake promised to assist Derek in healing Cora, they were all working to protect the Darach, at least temporarily. They hatched a plan involving Allison running off as a decoy as she and Ms. Blake look alike from behind. She put on Ms. Blake’s heels and went running, the Alpha chasing after her. Allison managed to get outside the emergency room just as a female Alpha, Kali, jumped from a second story window. Having been prepared, Allison turned to face Kali with her bow in hand. Kali easily caught the first arrow, but Allison was rescued by her father firing rounds from his pistol. The Alphas fleed from the gunfire. It seemed as if everyone was safe, then, but when the chaos died down Ms. Blake was gone and she had taken Mrs. McCall along with her. With both Sheriff Stilinski and Scott’s mother being taken presumably as guardian sacrifices, it looks pretty clear that Chris Argent will be the third. Chris tried his best to assure Allison that it wouldn’t happen that way. He told her that they wouldn’t wait for Ms. Blake to make her next move. He takes Allison and Isaac to a secure vault, having told them that the Darach would show up there, but once he got there he pulled a fast one on both of them. He shocked Isaac unconscious with his tazer stick and quickly handcuffed his daughter to metal bars within the vault. At that moment, Ms. Blake made her entrance and took Chris, with him putting no effort into resisting. When Isaac recovers from being tazed, he breaks the handcuff keeping Allison in the vault. She was absolutely distraught over losing her father, so much so that she let Isaac hold her in an attempt to comfort her. At that point in time, after all of the murders and abductions, the FBI had been called in to handle things and it was not overlooked that Scott McCall and his friends, Allison included, were a part of what had been going on. Stiles, Lydia, Allison, and Isaac went to Scott’s place of employment, the animal clinic, to speak to his boss and druid Deaton, hoping that he might be able to help them track down the missing parents before it became too late. Deaton suggested a ritual that would essentially make Stiles, Allison, and Scott surrogate sacrifices for their parents. Deaton also warned that the ritual would create a darkness around the three surrogates’ hearts. The ritual itself involved filling tubs with herbs and ice water. The three surrogate sacrifices were to be submerged and pulled out by someone they trusted, an anchor of sorts. Into the water also went personal items belonging to the three parents. Allison had brought a silver bullet her father had forged as part of his hunter’s training. When it came to anchors, Scott’s anchor was clearly Deaton, but things were a little less certain for Allison. At first she chose Lydia, but Deaton directed Lydia to Stiles, who she had kissed earlier that day, and Isaac to Allison. When Scott, Stiles, and Allison seemed to wake up they were simply having visions involving the tree that grew over the root cellar their parents were being held in - the Nemeton. They each have separate visions. Allison’s is of the night she arrived in Beacon Hills with her mother. They swerve to avoid someone in the road she later realized was Scott. Allison insists that they turn around but when they went back to the scene only Scott’s asthma inhaler was left behind. Victoria takes the inhaler off of her daughter, throwing it into the woods, and as Allison follows the inhaler with her eyes she catches a glimpse of the Nemeton. Allison, Scott, and Stiles woke back up, eager to share the visions they had to speed along the rescue efforts. Unfortunately, they’d been in the water for sixteen full hours and had only four hours until the moon would rise and the ritual requiring the three deaths would be performed. While Stiles is sent to his house to get something with his father’s scent on it to help Scott track the man, Scott, Isaac, and Allison headed off to the Argents’ apartment to grab something of Chris’. They were stopped, however, by Scott’s father - an FBI agent. He had seemed to catch that all of the victims were in some way related to Scott and/or his friends and intended to hold all three of them in the house until it was all figured out. Scott’s father told them that all of the weapons found in the Argents’ apartment were enough probably cause to hold the three. Allison took the moment as a chance to create a diversion big enough for them to escape the FBI, throwing a smoke grenade and running as fast as she and the others could. As they were making their escape, Stiles was continuing with the plan to meet them. However, Ms. Blake was powerful enough to create a storm that would lower visibility to the extreme. He ran his Jeep right into a tree and he was knocked unconscious. Scott parted ways with Allison and Isaac to fight alongside Deucalion, but Isaac and Allison were still determined to follow their plan to track down and save the three missing parents. Isaac couldn’t pick up any scents due to the storm, but he did hear an ultrasonic emitter Chris had activated. He and Allison followed the sound to the root cellar below the Nemeton where they found the parents. Their relief lasted only a brief moment before Jennifer, across town, started to make the Nemeton collapse into the root cellar. The ceiling was caving in and fast without much any of them could do about it. Just as the last of the cellar roof came down, practically burying the parents and the teenagers alive, Stiles showed up, propping the roof up temporarily with his baseball bat. On the other side of town, Ms. Blake was weakened enough to affect her magic. The storm subsided a bit and everyone in the root cellar was finally able to breathe. In a last ditch effort to survive the night, Ms. Blake forms a circle of mountain ash meant to block any of the werewolves from reaching her, but Scott pressed on and in doing so became a true Alpha out of sheer perseverance and character. Destroying the barrier of mountain ash, he demanded that she release the parents for good or he would kill her himself. Deucalion, however, was less merciful. He simply stepped in and slashed Ms. Blake’s throat, ending the storm for good and freeing everyone in the root cellar. Back home, Chris was going back to putting his weapons away when Allison approached him. She shared with him that she believed the Nemeton would become a beacon for supernatural creatures and that they should prepare to fight if they must. She proposed a new code. Instead of ‘We hunt those that hunt us.’ Allison suggested ‘We protect those who cannot protect themselves.’ Chris agreed on it. Allison was able to resume life as it had been before the Darach, but who knew how long it would be before the darkness around her heart would begin to show?