#Dorothea would give Sam Aragon’s amulet and it would be the only trinket Sam keeps after she retires from magic

[vonehrenfest]

Together Forever

So it turns out that Danny is functionally immortal, his living and ghostly forms stabilizing each other every time he transforms. What this means for his human body is that he keeps reverting back to the age of his death- if he wants to grow up, to grow old, he will have to give up the other half of himself.

Danny could also stay a ghost instead, but it doesn’t feel right. It would be too much somehow in a way he can’t explain. (To be a ghost is to be tethered to your pain. He doesn’t notice it while he’s dead but the relief is real each time he comes back to life.)

Tucker reincarnates, like he has been for the past millennia. Each time he forgets his friends, and each time he’ll look into an ancient mirror and slowly start to remember.

It’s not just Tucker who comes back. His parents also return, again and again to each other. They never remember but it’s comforting nonetheless. On his third life after being Tucker Foley, it occurs to him that they might be soulmates; his continued existence not an unnatural blackmailing of the universe (like magic so often is) but just… skitching a ride.

Sam lives. She’s idealistic, a fighter, and ambitious. She dabbles in the dark arts just enough to help further her bright-eyed goals. Then, for a while she disappears. When her friends finally find her again, she has demons- both literal and metaphorical. She stops dabbling, and lets herself age. (She won’t stop fighting though, she never will.)

Sam dies. Danny protects her soul, and Tucker helps preserve her heart and mind. Her ghost is a fearsome and terrible thing, nearly a goddess in her own right. Death frees her from her living burdens, and for the first time in centuries she feels as light as she was in her youth.

Dani and Vlad are similar to Danny, but they are not perfect. They have to eat.

Vlad’s death was gradual. There is no single moment his biology returns to when he transforms, so he ages. He sustains his living body with his ghostly form, so like Spectra and Desiree he learns to draw energy from human emotions.

Dani was born half-dead. The condition Vlad discovered in himself as he begun to live longer and longer than any human has natural access to, she had from the very beginning. Dani doesn’t bother with vampirism though. She’s a Frankenstein and she’s ok with it; she gets her ecto-vitamins in the form an injection by Danny.

One day Dani will find out why she wanders, and why she traces the same paths over and over again. (Sam will tell her about ley lines, liminal spaces, and tears in the veil between worlds.) She’ll find places and events where the air itself sustains and strengthens her. Sun on a flower.