#and people canonically leveraging that to become immortal through that means

[aroaceleovaldez]

i think a lot about how early-series, demigods are referred to pretty equally as "demigods," "half-bloods," and "godlings," - the last used particularly by gods at demigods - but after that "godlings" is almost exclusively used to refer to minor gods.

something something i am literally always chewing on the concept of the line between immortals/demigods/monsters/etc being thinner than it appears

[glorious-spoon]

When the Seasons Stop [Leverage/The Old Guard]

Title: When the Seasons Stop Fandom: Leverage; The Old Guard Pairings: Gen-ish or pre-relationship Eliot/Hardison/Parker Warnings: Temporary character death, canon-typical violence Other tags: Hurt/comfort, immortality Summary: Eliot Spencer damn well knew better than to get this close to a couple of mortals. But he never expected this.

*

There’s nothing new about the bullet punching through Eliot’s lung, nicking an artery and shattering a rib on its way out. He can feel the world start to squeeze and fold in a familiar way, but that’s not what worries him. What worries him is the gasping quality of Parker’s voice over the comms, the shaky way she said he’s all smashed up inside and the trail of blood zig-zagging out to the van.

Sophie’s hands grasp at him, pulling him in. Her eyes are huge and dark with tears, and Eliot can’t get the lung capacity to reassure her. Isn’t sure there’s anything worth reassuring at all when blood is soaking into the floor (Hardison will be so mad, he thinks stupidly, but it’s Hardison’s blood, his and Parker’s, and they’re sprawled there like broken toys as the van peels away into the street. There are sirens. Nate is swearing fluently and foully in the front as Sophie heaves herself through to drop into the seat beside him).

None of it fucking matters. Eliot’s vision is starting to tunnel, but he can still see Hardison gasping with blood on his lips.

“Did Eliot make it out?”

“Age of the geek, brother,” Eliot rasps, grasping for him, fumbling, fingers slick with blood. Hardison’s long fingers twitch weakly when he grips them. On his other side, Parker’s cold hand slips into his. She’s tilted back against the wall, her shirt stained with dark blood, soaking through to pool beneath her, and she’s already so cold.

She’s bleeding out, Eliot thinks vaguely, but his body is too leaden and heavy to do anything about it. His thoughts fragment into the thickening darkness, and the last thing he remembers is hoping against desperate hope that this time, this time, he won’t wake up to see the aftermath.

*

He comes to choking in silty water, flailing, splashing. Sinks into the dark and maybe drowns a second time before he finally surfaces. His head hits metal, and he gasps in the small pocket of air beneath it, his mind becoming aware bit by horrible bit. He’s died in a lot of bad ways since he took a bullet to the heart in the winter of 1861 and woke hours later face-down and stripped of his guns and boots in the cold Nebraska mud. But this one might just be the worst of them.

It’s too dark to see, but he fumbles until his hands close over a bony wrist, cloth and cold skin. Hardison’s, by the size. And there’s Parker floating to his left, her hair spreading out in the water and tangling around his wrist when he pulls her to him, puts a hand under her nose like he really thinks he’ll feel breathing.

Like there’s more than half a dozen people in the world who could wake up from this.

“Parker,” he rasps. His throat feels raw, and he tells himself that it’s the leftovers from breathing in river water. “Parker. Hardison. Come on. Come on.”

There’s no response. They’re cold and limp, floating lifelessly in the icy water, and Eliot can’t pretend that the heat welling up in his eyes is anything other than tears.

“Come on,” he rasps again. “Come on, Parker. Damn it, Hardison, wake up.”

There’s nothing. Just bodies, just Parker’s hair tangled around his fingers and Hardison’s expressive hands gone terribly still. Eliot drives his fist into the side of the van and feels his knuckles break and heal in an instant, and then he ducks beneath the water to check for the front of the van.

It’s empty, and he hopes with a dull, flickering sort of hope that Nate and Sophie at least got out alive. Then he goes back to pull the floating corpses of his dearest friends out through the shattered window, one after another. He loops his arms around them like this is a rescue instead of a recovery and kicks until his head breaks the swift surface of the river.

The water is deep and fast here, and it’s not easy to keep his head above it without letting go of either of his burdens, which he damn well is not going to do. He manages, at the very least, not to drown again before his feet finally find the soft mud in the shallows.

He pulls them both to the shore, scrabbling in the silty mud until they’re above the water line, and then he sinks to the ground and puts his head in his hands. Tries to breathe. Tries not to breathe, maybe, since that’s never been his problem. It doesn’t work, either way. His chest hurts like he can still feel the lingering ache of that bullet from a hundred and fifty-some years ago, but he knows it’s not that. Knows that it’s nothing more than simple grief.

He knows better, is the thing. He knows better than to get too attached. He always knew that his life would encompass both Parker’s and Hardison’s by years, centuries (millennia, if Andy is to be believed, and Eliot believes her because he’s never met another person so fucking tired of it all), but he just. He thought he’d have more time. He thought he’d get to dance at their wedding. He thought he’d get to watch Parker take over the reins from Nate and make Leverage into something lasting and real; he thought he’d get to watch Hardison going on about new computer shit for decades to come, going gray and bent and still leaning over his screens with that brilliant joy. He thought he’d get to welcome their children and watch them grow.

He thought that maybe, someday, he’d trust them both with his secret.

He thought he had more fucking time.

Something shifts to his left. Eliot lifts his head listlessly. If it’s cops, he’ll go into custody quietly. If it’s someone looking for trouble, maybe he’ll just let them kill him. Either way, he doesn’t have it in him right now to fight.

It’s neither of those things, though. Instead, Hardison’s body seizes, jerks, and then heaves upright like it’s spring-loaded. He’s hacking and coughing, vomiting murky water, his eyes so wide and wild that Eliot can see the whites all the way around. His hands dig into the mud, then lift to claw at his grimy, bloody shirt.

Cloth parts. Beneath it is bare skin, smooth and completely undamaged. No sign of the shattered bone and pulpy bruising that should be there. Hardison pats at himself frantically and finally lifts his head to meet Eliot’s eyes.

“Eliot,” he says, weak and rasping. “We—I thought—”

“Hardison,” Eliot breathes, and for a wild instant he has no idea what to think. Hardison was dead, he was dead, Eliot’s seen more dead bodies than he can count and he knows what they look like. What they feel like. Hardison was dead. Which means...

“Parker,” Hardison gasps, and then, “Parker, where’s Parker,” and before Eliot can even think to speak there’s gasping on the other side of him and Parker’s thready voice saying first Hardison’s name and then Eliot’s.

Eliot drops his head into his hands and laughs until he cries.

*

It takes a while to explain it. Or, to be more accurate: it takes a while to get to the closest safehouse that they can be reasonably sure isn’t compromised, which turns out to be one of Parker’s warehouses. She’s got A/C set up somehow, and clothes for both of them—Eliot recognizes the t-shirt she tosses him as one that went missing in the move to Portland all those months ago—and has even rigged up something that could generously be termed shower facilities.

“I thought you didn’t keep any of these anymore,” Hardison mumbles as she steers him to the sprayer that’s zip-tied to a pipe over a wide, shallow trough. The whole thing is brutally utilitarian in a very Parker kind of way.

“You never know when you might need to go to ground. Always be prepared.”

A ragged laugh escapes Hardison’s lips. “Boy Scouts. Cool, cool.”

Parker is busy unbuttoning his shirt; she pulls that off and starts on his pants. Hardison doesn’t squawk any objections about his modesty, which just goes to show how deeply shaken he is; Eliot turns away anyway as both their clothes hit the floor and the water sputters on. He can wait his turn. He once hiked thirty miles on the trail of horse thieves with the remnants of his own guts decorating his clothes; this isn’t even close to the most disgusting he’s ever been.

“Eliot,” Parker says firmly, and he lifts his head. They’re both naked, and he can’t quite stop himself from staring at all that smooth undamaged skin laid bare. Parker’s right shoulder is caked with blood that’s washed her entire side with red, but there’s no bullet-hole now. Beside her, Hardison is steady on his feet, standing easily on a leg that was shattered an hour ago.

They’re both alive.

Eliot blinks, then jerks his head to the side a moment too late. “Go ahead. I can wait.”

“Or you could just come here,” Hardison says, with a raw edge of humor. “You look like a drowned rat.”

“Thanks a lot,” Eliot huffs. He considers trying to argue, then finds abruptly that he doesn’t have the energy. He kicks off his boots and starts pulling his clothes off, leaving them in a stinking bloody heap on the floor. Parker and Hardison both watch him in a way that makes him feel weirdly exposed. It’s not prurient, not really. He has a feeling that they’re looking at his naked body the same way he was just looking at theirs. Cataloguing the injuries that should be there, and aren’t.

Drawing some conclusions, maybe, about all of the beatings that he’s walked away from without a limp in the time they’ve known each other.

“You got some explaining to do,” Hardison says, almost apologetically, as he draws Eliot into the tub with them. He keeps a firm grip on Eliot’s elbow like he’s expecting him to bolt, which to be fair isn’t completely outside the realm of possibility. Eliot has imagined stepping into a shower with the two of them more times than he can count, but this particular scenario never featured in his daydreams.

“Yeah,” Eliot admits, closing his eyes. The spray washes over him, rinsing away the blood and river mud, but the panic—that terrible bleak echo of grief—that lingers. “I will. I promise.”

*

While Parker and Hardison are getting dressed, he takes one of Parker’s burner phones and goes out behind the building to call Andy.

“I have the new ones,” he says without preamble when she picks up. He knows that she knows what he’s talking about. They’ll have dreamed this, the four of them.

There’s a long pause, and then Andy says, “Good. We’re in Afghanistan. Do you need us there?”

He can hear voices in the distance. It’s impossible to make out the words over the shitty international connection, but even so he recognizes Joe’s laughing cadence. He’s heckling someone; Booker, probably. Nicky has to be there too.

Eliot misses them all so much that it aches. He squeezes his eyes shut. “Nah. I can take care of it.”

“You know them,” Andy says. “Don’t you.”

It’s not really a question.

“Yeah,” Eliot says on a breath of laughter, all the same. “Yeah, you sure could say that.”

There’s a hell of a lot that Andy could say in response, especially after the way everything went down with Eliot and Moreau ten years back, but all she does say, after a slight pause, is, “Well, good. That’ll make it simpler. You can explain about the dreams, but we’ll be in the States by the end of the week.”

Eliot laughs again, more genuinely. “Yeah, okay. It’s— It’ll be good to see you all. I miss you.”

“We miss you too,” Andy says, very gently, and ends the call before Eliot has to find a way to do it.

*

When he gets back inside, Parker and Hardison are dressed and sitting at the folding table. Both of them lift their heads as he approaches.

“Where’d you go?” Hardison asks.

“Had to call a friend.” Eliot makes a face. The time for prevarication is over, but that doesn’t mean he has a damn clue how to explain this. Until right now, he’s been the baby of the gang. “Andy, her name is Andy. She’s another one. Like us.”

“Like us, like us, okay,” Hardison says. “What—what does that mean, exactly? We—you got shot. Parker got shot. I had a broken leg. We all—” He shakes his head. “What happened?”

Eliot takes a breath, opens his mouth, closes it again. Finally, bluntly, he says, “You died. We all did.”

“Cut the bullshit,” Hardison says. There’s an uncharacteristic snap to his voice. He sounds genuinely angry for the first time. Scared, too. He sounds scared. Eliot wishes like hell there was anything at all he could do to fix that, but all he has to offer is the truth.

He sighs and says, to Parker, “You got a knife?”

She reaches back without breaking her eerily intent gaze to scoop a switchblade off the table and toss it to him. Eliot plucks it out of the air and opens it, then takes a deep breath, spreads his left hand out, and drives the blade into it until the point emerges from his palm. Blood dribbles onto the floor; Hardison jolts forward with a horrified noise.

Parker is still just watching him, cool-eyed and assessing. He pulls the blade out and holds up his hand so that they can watch the hole he just made heal in seconds.

“Oh shit,” Hardison says faintly. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

Parker stares at him a moment longer, then holds out her hand. “Can I do that?”

“It’ll still hurt,” Eliot warns her, but he hands the knife back. She cleans it carelessly on a shop rag, then tests the edge of it thoughtfully.

Hardison rubs a hand over his mouth, then says, carefully, “Babe, please don’t stab yourself. I can’t watch that twice in a row.”

“It would heal, though.” She looks up and fixes Eliot with a burning look. “Right?”

Eliot sighs. “Right.”

She nods slowly. “That wasn’t the first time you died. Was it.”

“Not by a long shot.”

Hardison looks up at that, eyes narrowed. “When was the first time?”

“1861,” Eliot sighs. “I was guarding a mail coach in the Nebraska Territory, and we were attacked, and...”

“Eighteen—eighteen sixty-one. Okay.”

“Sorry.”

“For being old as balls?”

It startles a laugh out of him. “Yeah, I guess.”

“And there’s more of you.” Hardison pauses. “Of us.”

“Yeah. Four—” He pauses, winces. Thinks of Quynh, drowning and drowning under the ocean. Her deaths have been in his dreams for well over a hundred years. She’s been a constant companion, even if he’s never met her and probably never will. “Five more.”

“Are they older than you, or younger?”

“Older. Lots older.”

“So what you’re saying, basically,” Hardison says, “is that we’re immortal.”

“Yeah,” Eliot says dryly, “that was the general gist of it.”

Parker is starting to smile, wild in a way that’s almost inhuman. “Oh, I’m going to jump off the Sears Tower without a harness.”

“Babe,” Hardison says again, but he sounds distracted as he pulls a tablet toward him.

“You’ll still die,” Eliot tells her.

“Yeah,” she says dismissively, “but I’ll come back. Right?”

“Please don’t jump off the Sears Tower,” Hardison says absently. He chews on his lower lip as he does something on the tablet, shifting lights on the screen reflecting in his eyes. “Okay. Good news, Nate and Sophie are okay. Bad news, Sophie is in the hospital and Nate’s been taken into custody in Highpoint Tower.” He looks up and meets Eliot’s eyes, expression challenging. “We need to get him out.”

Eliot nods, relieved. “Yeah. We do.”

Hardison nods too. He looks a little easier now—with a task at hand, with proof that the others are still alive, with the knowledge that he’s still him, Eliot doesn’t know. “Okay. That’s what we’ll do. And when we’re done we’re gonna come back here and you’re gonna answer all of our questions. Right?”

Eliot considers that moment on the river bank when he thought they both were dead. He considers the interrogation Hardison is going to subject him to, and the batshit insane stunts that Parker is going to pull, and he feels himself smiling, broad and helpless. “Anything you want.”

[normal-thoughts-official]

Ok so some of your content implies immortal Alec and I was wondering how you thought it would happen? I've read a few things where Clary creates a rune/uses the alliance rune to make him immortal (but I don't think you're a real big fan of her) so I wanna hear your thoughts and also maybe Magnus's reaction

hoooooo boy i am GLAD YOU ASKED because i have a whole ass au that i have like. basically all the plot down but my stupid brain can’t turn into a fic so i guess im gonna shove it here and GOODBYE FOREVER 

(also, about the clary thing: it’s complicated diaushduaih because i kind of really hate her in canon but i also accepted fanon clary into my life? mostly because i unfortunately can’t help but ship clizzy, but anyway, i kinda disassociate clary from canon. so i’m not really against the idea that she makes a rune or something, but i do think this idea is more interesting. or maybe it isn’t but then i guess that’s your personal problem because well, you did ask lol im jk btw)

okay so i have one word for you: seelies. hot diggity damn do i fucking love seelies or what

so you know how seelies are the offspring of demons and angels? and there’s this whole thing about demon blood and angel blood not mixing well at all? well, i was thinking, how the fuck does that work. and i came to the conclusion that whatever stronger parent they had’s blood would like, tame the other or whatever, you know? but then what if they had equally strong - or equally weak - parents? like a child of an archangel and a prince of hell, what the fuck happens then? or alternatively the child of some angel janitor and a minor demon, would they even have enough magic?

so i figured if that happens it’s like as if a seelie has an autoimmune disease - their body is fighting itself constantly. for those who have very strong parents, this means that they are decaying quickly, and usually won’t be able to like, survive for long if they don’t do something. for those who have weaker parents, it usually means they’re weak

so these seelies are actually born mortal, and for the ones with stronger parents, pretty much with a lifespan of like, a few days before they end up dying due to the autoimmunity. so what happens for those is, they have this Cool Ritual that makes them immortal and solves all their problems

basically what happens is: seelies are one with nature, correct? but they’re also, like, individuals. so they have their own magic, their own energy, their own life source. right? so what happens to these seelies is, they tie this life/magic source of theirs to that of the universe. they basically become one with the universe fully, instead of just guarding it and being connected to it, they are literally tied to it, so much so that their magic and the world’s magic is one and the same. basically their life is fed by the same source that feeds all life, even mortal ones, and that source is endless, so they become immortal. it’s not a cure per se, since it doesn’t really stop their blood from fighting itself, but it does solve the problem because it has endless energy to keep doing it. and after going through this magical ritual, they become basically the strongest seelies around, because they have access to very strong demonic and angelic magic and the like, natural source of the world. so that’s pretty cool

and this whole thing is like. absolutely top secret, no one but the seelies knows how it works or even that it exists. especially because the seelies used to be basically closed off to outside influences, besides the very few representants they had going to the realms (like meliorn)

meliorn is one of those super powerful seelies, a child of an archangel and a prince of hell, who has gone through this ritual. which is one of the many reasons they’re, you know, a super powerful and respected Seelie Knight, sent to deal directly with shadowhunters and the highest threats they have to deal with, all by themself. no one would be crazy to go against them, because they are extremely powerful. it’s also why they had, to seelie standarts, been given a slap to the wrist for taking clary to twi - i mean, they didn’t even lose their position in a super trusted and highly important job, really? like yes they were tortured and don’t get me wrong, that was fucking awful dude, but i feel like the seelie queen could have been a lot more cruel, could have taken away their job (it would make sense to since they basically committed treason by seelie law) or exiled them, or maybe even killed them. but they got “just” a physical punishment. that’s. weird to say the least

so that’s why, because meliorn actually has a lot of leverage and importance. they have a rare condition, a lot of power that most seelies can’t dream of, and they are extremely smart and have knowledge of the culture of our realm, which most seelies don’t since their realm is closed to outsiders. the seelies can’t afford to lose them. and they know that, too, which is why they went so hard to help clary and take her to twi in the first place - they knew that they would be punished, but that it wouldn’t actually risk their position, or their influence

anyway! with the previous seelie queen gone, i like to think that meliorn becomes the new seelie queen (random hc that no one asked for: since i refuse to believe that seelies have any concept of gender, i think the position is called “seelie queen” because outsiders took a look at the first seelie queen, who’s very cis female-presenting, and were like “ah, is that your queen?” and to seelies that basically translates to just “monarch” in whatever their language is, so they were just like yeah sure. and so the position is called that and they don’t even know that it’s supposed to be gendered and that to outsiders meliorn would probably be called seelie king, they are just like “i am the new seelie queen” and no one of course is going to fucking question why they didn’t gender the position, especially considering how fragile relations with the seelie realm are) or at least is given like, an important position or something. like tbh i don’t stan monarchy so :/ but anyway the point is, meliorn is super powerful, they are super smart, they have knowledge of the mundane, shadowhunter and etc cultures - and after the whole previous fiasco with the jonathan thing and the seelies having been basically kept from the other realms, despite the fact that as parts of nature, seelies should be able to wander between them as they please, i think they would want to start a radically new external policy, and who better than meliorn to help them do it? so yeah i think they would choose meliorn to be their queen. besides, they love the seelies more than anything. they might have disobeyed seelie law, but that was to like, save a whole ass realm lmao, but they’ve always had the seelies best interests at heart, hell, they were willing to be tortured twice for them. so i think they would be well liked, and want this new position, and treasure it not as a display of power, but as an opportunity to lead the people they love into better times

DISCLAIMER: i’m not saying that seelies bad or whatever, okay. tbh i do understand perfectly why they would want to close off their realm with the very real threat that shadowhunters presented, and i wouldn’t be dying to integrate with shadowhunter society either, especially considering that their idea of integration was just genocide and assimilation and the destruction of their culture. okay? but in the process, the seelie law and realm became cruel, first and foremost, towards seelies themselves, and the banishment of them from other realms is. very bad. and after the whole jonathan and valentine thing, the shadow society as a whole is being reconstructed, so what better time to try and create new alliances that won’t implicate into attempts of assimilation, etnocide and so on. it’s a new bet, basically, one that is only possible because shadowhunter society is also in shambles after the near destruction of the world, and this means that seelies have more leverage to try and build something new without yielding to them. and it’s a SLOW process, one that takes years and always has the seelies best interest’s, not the shadowhunter’s or anyone else’s, at heart, okay? and it implicates in shadowhunters giving them many concessions, and the strongest alliances between them are and will always be with the other downworlders - this is also something they are working on, making the different downworlder cultures closer and stronger politically, aiding each other mutually and helping each other reach their political goals. together, the downworlder societies are unbeatable, and the shadowhunters basically have no choice but to accept their demands, especially after so much destruction. plus, at least some of them are slightly more willing to. but it’s mostly a vicious political battle that takes all of them years, not to say decades, to settle

but the fact that the seelies are willing to do it and getting stronger relationships with warlocks and vampires and werewolves (and hoo here i come with my “maia and raphael start a vampires/werewolves alliance” hc because look that rivalry thing is STUPID and i want to see downworlder societies coming closer together and healing after being very obviously pitted against each other due to shadowhunter supremacy) is also what, well, allows the whole thing to happen. they are powerful, and the shadowhunters have no way of taking them on a war, much less now that their forces are well, fragile to say the least

in short! they have leverage now. and that makes it possible for them to try a new external policy that wasn’t in the table before, and their main interest in doing that is helping themselves, because seelies are tired of living in constant fear in a basically military state where they’re confined to the same realm despite them being supposed to be guardians of all of them. like that’s gotta affect their mental health, if they’re one with nature, wouldn’t being kept away from it be like being isolated from your loved ones? isn’t that deprivation? so like. this is about them, not the shadowhunters and how great their society is and how much they want to be a part of them, okay

anyway! so the seelies have designed a plan (because under meliorn’s rule everyone participates in political decisions because hmmm *checks notes* i said so) to make stronger alliances with the other downworlders. the first thing they offer them all is a little token of alliance. to vampires, they offer the possibility of becoming a dayligher - something they can easily do with their angel magic, not to mention, you know, blood -; to werewolves, magical amulets that help them keep their wolf under control, not turning without meaning to and being able to live a relatively normal life if they so choose; and to warlocks, knowledge of seelie magic

and of course magnus in particular eats that shit right UP because he’s a naturally curious person and a genius and a physichist and holy shit i love him so fucking much. seelies have so much more knowledge of physics and magic and their natural workings, so much so that it makes him dizzy because hell, the possibilities, and all the shit he can learn, okay. all this knowledge that was currently being kept away, and the warlocks get to learn about it (or well, part of it. obviously the seelies aren’t going to go around spilling EVERYTHING to them all at once before they even know if their token is accepted and whatnot. but they do teach those who are interested a lot of stuff, maybe create some sort of seelie-warlock magical school/course/programme/look you GET IT to strengthen their relationships as a whole?? boy i eat that shit UP). he’s just losing his mind here

super cute to think about alec coming home to find a very disheveled magnus surrounded by books and notes, hair and clothes rumpled and just a whole mess as he excitedly reads and writes and runs around to get a different book and draw parallels, okay. and alec smiles and has to be like “have you eaten?” and magnus looks up from his books all suddenly like “hm? oh hello alexander, i didn’t see you there”, “have you eaten?” “i don’t remember” “okay, i’ll make you something, you can keep reading” and magnus smiling all like “thank you” and diving right back into the notes in Super Hyperfocus + Hyperfixation Mode as he figures out, like, a thousand new spells (obviously warlocks can’t use seelie magic because they come from different sources they don’t have access to, but like, the knowledge is enough for them to create so much new stuff okay), btw. but anyway, ANYWAY

and to shadowhunters the seelies offer, i dont know, a soggy cheeto or something faiojdsajdasj look it’s not like the seelies owe them so they basically offer a truce and maybe authorization to explore certain parts of the seelie realm in small guarded groups? i dont know, in exchange for them and all other downworlders having a power and a vote in the new shadowhunter laws, and the whole proccess of reconstruction of their society. and the shadowhunters agree, after vicious infighting of course 

so anyway years pass and things are blossoming, downworlder societies are stronger than ever and phucking florishing dude, shadowhunters suck less, seelies finally get to wander around like they’ve been wanting to for centuries, there’s been some neato cultural exchange, magnus is still figuring out spells and shit at an alarming rate to anyone who doesn’t know what a goddamn genius he is. and shadowhunter society is- well, changing, but there’s a kind of cultural war going on, you know, with such a strong shift in paradigm so sudden. the changes in schooling and shit that were brought on by the new accords kind of ensure that the newest generations are getting a very different view and education, but there’s still a lot of infighting from shadowhunters who want to undo all that hard work, which is of course still fragile because it’s only starting

and alec of course takes a primary role in that fight, being the greatest representative of the progressive shadowhunters’ (?) and their downworlder allies’ interests, inside shadowhunter society. like don’t get me wrong it’s not like he’s leading the downworlders, the downworlders are doing all that hard work so they can get their own destiny back into their own hands and not be led by shadowhunters anymore, but within shadowhunter society, alec is a leader and their greatest ally slash eye in the inside, defending the policies that downworlders create and letting them know what is going on inside of the clave. basically preparing a cultural war. you get it

so naturally alec is a threat to conservative shadowhunters and they’re trying to strip him off his runes all the time, and there’s even been a few (quickly failed) assassination attempts, you know, the whole. drama. and he plays an important role for this whole game, and magnus has been studying the whole immortality ritual thing, and yeah, the seelies offer to put him through the ritual

it’s a matter of political leverage (and okay maybe a personal favor to meliorn’s dear friend magnus, but like, mostly political leverage). first of all, making alec immortal gives him a lot of power within shadowhunter society, not unlike meliorn and being the child of super powerful parents. second of all, no need to worry about assassination attempts, they can’t fucking kill him! third of all, clear message - alec has powerful allies, way more powerful than the shadowhunters can dream of, and if shadowhunter society is willing to create real, lasting equality with downworlders, they have a lot to gain. if not, they have a lot to lose, because the seelies have literal power over life and death. also, alec better watch his step, too, because, you know. he owes them that one. they are not stupid, they know alec has been looking for a way of becoming immortal for years now, know how much he desires this. it’s also about keeping his loyalty, and making sure he doesn’t forget, he’s supposed to be their ally too

and there are a lot of like, security things in place. alec will not be able to see or hear anything, he will not be taught how the ritual works (not even warlocks know that yet), he will not be taught about its forces, it will happen in the seelie realm and he will go alone, and no other shadowhunter will be granted that unless the seelies themselves offer at a later time, you know, etc etc. they list off things and precautions he has to agree to for like, half an hour, and honestly they could have added “alec will have to eat a piece of the moon” and alec would be like “okay fine great let’s do this”

magnus is fucking terrified

first, because well, they have never attempted to do that on someone who isn’t a seelie, and while they have figured out a pretty damn good understanding of how it works and are pretty sure it should go smoothly, there’s no way to actually tell. it might not work. alec might regret it. does he really want this? to become immortal? he doesn’t have to say yes, and magnus will not be upset, because he would never, ever demand such a huge sacrifice from him-

and alec’s like “nope i want this let’s go” which only terrifies magnus more because it feels like he’s being impulsive, you know? and he doesn’t know if there’s any turning back from this. but alec is like “magnus, when have i ever been impulsive? i’m not impulsive, i’m just sure of what i want, and there’s no reason to dwell on it because that’s already done.” alec is an expert at dwelling on things, and when he makes a decision, it’s because that part has already been thoroughly done, with every single possible argument being exhausted and taken apart minuciously and careful. there’s no room for doubt anymore, because if there had even a spectre of it, alec would still be ruminating. he doesn’t make a decision until he’s sure, but by god, once he makes it, he is sure, and nothing will stop him

so he reassures magnus of that (“hey, look at me. i’m not doing this on a whim. i have been looking for something like this for years. i’ve given it a lot of thought. besides, the seelies reasoning is good, too; i do want to have the time to dedicate myself to these changes, to building a new society, and with that, i can do it. there’s so much i want to live and see and do, magnus. and i want to do it by your side, yes, always, forever, but it’s not just about that. this is my decision. i’m not doing it for you. you won’t owe me anything because of it. you won’t have to make it up for it. because i’m doing it for myself. okay?”) and magnus kind of chokes up and hugs him and cries because he’s so overwhelmed by everything, the fear and the adoration and the relief of knowing that alec isn’t doing this just because of him, because if he had, magnus would forever feel like he was ruining his life, like he was indebted, like he would have to make up for it. but alec wants this. truly. and he doesn’t have to- worry anymore, this constant weight in his head, that tells him this has an expiration date, you’re gonna lose him. look at how much time you’re wasting with all of this, he’ll be gone before you even notice. there’ll be no turning back, and you’ll regret it forever. and fuck it’s just- so much, okay

so alec hugs him and they repeat to each other, i love you, i love you, i love you, and the next day, alec accepts the seelies’ offer. 

and magnus is- fuck, terrified, because he can’t even go with him, can’t even watch. there’s nothing he can do but wait

but everything goes relatively smoothly and alec emerges from the seelie realm exactly as before, no change to be noted, not even when magnus scanned him with his magic - it’s all still there. still a shadowhunter, still the same runes, the same face, the same hazel eyes, the same smile and voice, and when he hugs and kisses magnus, it feels like just the same

and then i suppose alec can now, like, talk to trees or something, since he’s connected to the whole force of nature and whatnot. i don’t think he would be able to use magic, because like i said, he’s still the same and a shadowhunter so it’s more that his angelic magic is stronger? but he’s fucking immortal dude, and he can like talk to trees, which is at the very least funny as hell (cracky images of alec discussing with some shadowhunter asshole and he’s like, even your SUCCULENT is tired of you!! but i digress)

anyway the point is, it works both in the sense of immortal alec, baby! and the whole political leverage thing, and they basically revolutionize all of shadowhunter society and alec lives to see the results of that besides magnus, and meliorn is the greatest seelie queen ever, and the downworlder societies are all happy and blossoming and getting their best life, and everyone is happy, and the bigoted shadowhunters die and are hated by their own plants. the end

[secret-engima]

Taking a brief break from watching FFXIV to throw out some HCs for my new WoL!

All three of them.

Because I have no self control.

(forgive whatever massive leaps in lore or logic I make in this I only just started watching Realm Reborn and I will fully go AU if I have to to keep my sib trio. I also apologize for the accidental poaching of any canon character names or created character names, I picked these out of a name gen because they sounded pretty and I don’t know enough of FFXIV to identify canon characters at this point).

Anyway meet the Troublesome Trio, they are siblings. Imply otherwise and you will be hurt. No, it doesn’t matter to them that they are each a different species, they ARE SIBLINGS. XD Anyway they got their start when an Au Ra dad who’d just lost two kiddos stumbled across first a Viera bby and then a Miqo’te bby and took them home to raise with his remaining Au Ra daughter. They’re all probably around the same age, but since they have no way of knowing who the REAL oldest is, they count it by who was adopted first. So the Au Ra bby, being the blood-relation of their dad, is the “oldest”, the Viera is the “middle child” and the Miqo’te is the “youngest”. All three of them have Au Ra style names even though only one of them is a dragon person because they were named by their Au Ra dad.

Names and brief bios!!

-Starting with the Au Ra, she is Temulun Kahkol. She is a Xaela Au Ra. Very sweet natured. Cheerful. Passionate. Something of a secret Shipper at heart. Touch her siblings and Die In Fire :). Black hair, gold eyes that glow red. Medium dark skin. 5′2″ tall. Despite being the dragon from a tribe of warlike dragons, she has arguably the most Chill of the three siblings. Despite supposedly being the eldest and using that status as leverage against her sibs, they very much treat her like the youngest. It’s probably her personality.

-“Sometimes the only way to help yourself is to help others …. And sometimes it’s to punch someone in the face and summon Bahamut on them.” Quote from Temulun.

-Isn’t she a sweet heart? :)

-Someone made the eternal mistake of letting this girl become a Summoner. She is REALLY GOOD AT IT. Will happily use overkill at every opportunity. She is also a Dancer, to good luck trying to catch her.

...

-Moving on to the Viera, she is Cotota Kakhol. Blunt, practical, aggressive, almost No Chill.

-Look you try being a bunny girl raised in a tribe of dragons and see how much Chill you have left by the time you reach adulthood.

-Wavy black-blue hair, long black ears, red eyes, dark blue-ish black skin. 6′4″, which was not something expected by her adoptive Au Ra family. Few of her “cousins” quite knew what to do with the fact she could look them in the eye or even be taller than a few of them. Tends to act like the Oldest Sibling, probably because of her height advantage.

-Will murder you for a corn chip. But only if one of her siblings wants a corn chip. Otherwise she doesn’t care about you.

-Who let this woman be a White Mage. A White Mage needs more Chill than this. She is also a Monk. Which is ... arguably way more in character for her than White Mage and yet White Mage is her main so there you go.

-“Hi. I’m the White Mage, I’m here to kill you all.” Quote from Cotota, showing off her in depth understanding of what it means to be the party healer.

-Probably wants to punch Thancred in the mouth. Or kiss him. It depends.

...

-Finally we have the Miqo’te, Arasen Kahkol. Keeper of the Moon Miqo’te. Only boy of the group. Cheerful, snarky, impulse control what impulse control. Likes to play the happy-go-lucky fool but is actually the Cunning One of the group. He’d be way scarier if his impulse control wasn’t as broken as it is. Blue-black hair color/fur, Fuzzy Ears, long tail with a lion’s bushy tip on the end. One gold eye one green eye. 4′5″ of pure whoop ass. Touch his sisters without their permission and he won’t kill you on the spot, but he will gleefully sell tickets to your beatdown and then follow you down a dark alley to murder your soul.

-Look, LOOK. If you think this tiny cat bby didn’t survive being raised in a tribe of Fite Me hormonal dragon teenagers that all tower over him by a good 2 ft by learning to take them out at the knee caps, or that he isn’t Fully Ready to do the same to you by any means necessary then you have another think coming. Probably while eating dirt. And mourning the loss of your kneecaps.

-How this boy wields a Warrior class axe that’s bigger than him as well as he does is an eternal mystery, but he pulls it off. When Hitting Things With His Axe does not work, he will switch over the being a Black Mage and set everything on fire. His strategy has yet to fail.

-“Why wait for trouble when I can track it down, knock it out, and go through its pockets for Shiny Things?” - Quote from Arasen, displaying his sparkling sense of logic as per usual.

-Was adopted last and was the oldest when he was found by his Au Ra dad at 2 years old. Couldn’t remember his own name because he’d been living in an alley by himself for too long, so he got named Arasen.

...

Some combined HCs on the trio-

-ONE of these kiddos it the WoL. Everyone is sure of that. The question of the century is WHICH ONE. No one knows, the Trio isn’t telling.

-Honestly they seem to have the marvelous ability to pass the title of WoL and all the trouble that comes with it around like a glorified Hot Potato. This ability is a moot point because they always jump in feet first TOGETHER on anything troublesome so really all three of them might as well be a WoL at this point.

-Most people after getting to know them pray that Temulun is the WoL because Cotota is Terrifying and Arasen is a Problem. Temulun, they believe, is the one calm, reasonable one.

-This is a lie. She is the instigator, because unlike the other two she is ready to help out anyone for almost any reason.

-They would like you to believe that Temulun is the Braincell of the group.

-This is also a lie.

-The Braincell is Arasen. He just has no Impulse Control. The Impulse Control is actually Cotota, but she can’t be bothered half the time because denying Arasen is denying their Instigator, Temulun, and that means dealing with the Pouty Face and frankly nothing is worth the Pouty Face.

-Facing the Immortal Forces of Darkness? Better than the Pouty Face. Smackdown with the Primals themselves? As long as it will keeps the Pouty Face from making an appearance? Kissing Thancred? Sure- wait no, Temulun keep your shipping impulses under control we met him five minutes ago.

-Their Au Ra dad is Temuge btw. He is very proud of his kiddos.

[unfolded73]

This Graceful Path (17/19)

The moment a lot of you have been waiting for...

Summary: Emma has just moved in with Mary Margaret and started working as a deputy in the Storybrooke sheriff’s department when she meets Killian Jones, the town’s introverted harbormaster. When a prominent Storybrooke resident is found murdered, Emma tries to juggle solving the case with new friendships, parenthood, and romance. A Season 1 Cursed!Killian AU.

Rating: Explicit per CSBB guidelines (violence, sex); more of an M on unfolded73’s scale. The sex, when we get there, is not extremely graphic in nature. Same with the violence.

Content Warning: This fic contains two major character deaths, one canon and one not. (You’re already past them.) Content warning for violence and mentions of suicide and in this chapter.

Total word count: ~ 75,000

Acknowledgements: Thank you to @j-philly-b for betaing this monstrosity. Thank you to @caprelloidea for all of the read-throughs and cheerleading; not sure I could have written it without your excitement early on. Thank you to @teruel-a-witch for the original prompt on tumblr which sparked this fic. Thank you to @pompeiiablaze for the wonderful art which accompanies Chapters 3, 9, and 16. Thanks to the CSBB mods ( @sambethe in particular, who had to look at my check-ins) for your support and for enduring my neuroses.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 – AO3 Link

Chapter 17

Emma couldn’t get the pain in Killian’s eyes out of her mind. Moving the food on her plate around with her fork, she tried to focus on what her parents were saying, but all she could see was Killian, pushing her away. She remembered Henry telling her that he was the same man she’d known before, the same man she’d—

“You’ve hardly eaten, sweetheart. Are you feeling okay?” Mary Margaret regarded Emma’s dinner plate with concern, a mirroring concern reflecting on her father’s face.

“Yeah, I’m good.” She looked up at them and tried to smile, but it was obvious she wasn’t fooling them. She sighed. Emma had resolved not to bottle her feelings up so much, but it took constant vigilance. “I saw Killian yesterday, and I’m worried.”

David sat at attention. “You saw him where?”

“Regina discovered that he’s living in an old mansion at the edge of town, and I went to check on him.”

“Emma, I wish you had taken me with you,” her father said.

“I wasn’t in any danger. But he’s in really bad shape.”

Mary Margaret frowned. “What do you mean, bad shape?”

“He’s exiling himself, I think to protect the rest of us. Marinating in all that darkness, voices filling his head with who-knows-what. Look, aside from whatever my personal feelings for him might be, he’s a ticking time bomb up there. Eventually, he’ll go crazy enough that he’s gonna be a danger to Storybrooke.”

“That’s a good point.” David put down his fork. “So what do you suggest?”

“I thought I might talk to Regina. Maybe there’s a way to get rid of the darkness for good. With magic.” She took a sip of her beer.

“Honey, do you think this is something you can trust Regina with?” her mother asked.

Emma shrugged. “Look, I tried going to your Blue Fairy already, but she was less than helpful. She just offered me a bunch of vague platitudes that would have applied in any situation. It’s no wonder Regina cursed her into being a nun. Meanwhile, Regina hasn’t tried to kill us lately, and she’s been positively civil when she’s picking up or dropping off Henry. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“She could take advantage of a weak Dark One to get her hands on his dagger, and then command him to kill us all,” her father suggested.

“Okay, sure, but let’s hope she doesn’t do that,” Emma said.

~*~

“And why should I help you rescue your boyfriend from the darkness?” Regina arched one of her perfectly plucked eyebrows at Emma from across the diner booth.

“He’s not my boyfriend, and you should help because I assume you don’t want a crazed Dark One in town any more than I do. If he starts doing what the voices in his head are telling him to do, who knows what could happen, but I don’t think it would be good for any of us.” Emma swirled her hot cocoa in her mug while Regina took a sip of her coffee.

“The Dark One’s curse has been around for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. There isn’t any way to break it,” Regina said with finality. “The only way to transfer it is what you already know — kill a Dark One with the dagger, the power goes into you.”

“Is there anyone else here in Storybrooke who might know more? Besides the Blue Fairy — I already tried her and got nothing.” Both women rolled their eyes in tandem.

“In recent memory, I and my mother were the only sorceresses trained by the Dark One, so I know more about Rumpelstiltskin than anyone living… except …” Regina grimaced.

“Except what?”

She looked at Emma uneasily. “Except I sort of forgot that I have Rumple’s mistress locked up underneath the hospital.”

“You forgot?”

“Look, it’s been a long time since I set out the initial parameters for the curse. One of them was that I’d have Rumple’s lover under my control in case I needed leverage against him.”

Emma folded her arms across her chest. “Wow, Regina.”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. Rumple was dangerous, and having an ace up my sleeve was a necessary evil.” She sighed, looking petulant. “What I mean to say is, we will let her out immediately. Happy, Savior?”

~*~

The mental ward in the basement of the hospital was dank and morbid, its caretakers right out of a movie, although Emma was pretty sure One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest wasn’t a fairy tale. “Who else do you have down here, Regina?” Emma asked as she trailed behind the other woman.

“No one,” Regina answered, then paused. “Well, just Sidney Glass.”

“Why?”

“Because he failed me,” Regina muttered, and then seemed to realize what she’d said. “I’ll let him out too,” she said sheepishly, walking over and unlocking one of the doors.

Sidney trembled as he stepped before Regina. “Your majesty,” he whispered, bowing low. “Can you ever forgive this humble servant for letting you down?”

“Jesus,” Emma said. “Go home, Sidney. Consider yourself discharged.”

Regina had already moved on to the next door, her former servant all but forgotten. Regina may be walking on the side of light lately, but she was a long way from redemption, Emma reminded herself. The not-quite-as-evil Queen unlocked another door, and as Emma approached, she heard a tremulous, feminine voice say, “You�� you’re the queen who had me kidnapped.”

“Yes, and now I’m the queen who’s letting you out,” Regina replied.

Emma came into the room, seeing a short woman with long, brown hair cowering on her narrow bed. “Hey, I’m Emma,” she said, trying to appear and sound as unthreatening as possible. “Do you know where you are?”

The woman — her name was Belle, and Emma had spent most of the drive over struggling to understand the crossover between Rumpelstiltskin and Beauty and the Beast — shook her head quickly.

“Okay, well, first of all, you’re safe. And you’re going to be freed from this hospital right away. My name is Emma, and I’m Sheriff of Storybrooke. Which is where you are, the town of Storybrooke.”

Belle darted a fearful glance at Regina, and then looked back at Emma. She kept her bare feet tucked up under her hospital gown, and Emma made a mental note to call someone to bring her some clothes. “I’ve never heard of Storybrooke. How far is it from Misthaven?”

Emma raised an eyebrow at Regina. “You wanna try to field that question?”

“It’s in another realm, I’m afraid. We’re cut off from Misthaven permanently,” Regina said.

“And is that why Rumple hasn’t rescued me? Because he’s there?”

Emma had been preparing herself for having to explain this part. “Belle, can I sit down?” The other woman nodded. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but Rumpelstiltskin has died.”

Belle stared at her a moment, as if she didn’t understand what Emma was saying. Then she shook her head. “That’s impossible; he’s immortal.”

“The Dark One is immortal, Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t,” Regina said.

“What does that mean?” Belle’s fingers clutched helplessly at her threadbare hospital gown, and Emma’s heart ached for the woman.

“There was a curse on the town, and everyone only got their memories back recently. Were you aware of that?”

Belle nodded. “I didn’t remember anything about my own life; I thought I belonged here.” She shot a dirty look at Regina. “And then one day it all came back. Rumple, and my father… everything about my past that I had forgotten. At first, I thought it was proof that I was as crazy as they’d been telling me I was, but… you’re saying the whole town had the same experience? You too?”

“Well, no, but I’m not from here.” Emma reached out and took Belle’s hand. “What I’m trying to say is, during the curse, there were a few people who started to get their memories back more slowly. It was disorienting. One of those people, Killian Jones, he killed Rumpelstiltskin while in this state. He had no idea what he was doing, and no idea that it would cause him to become the Dark One. And now we want to save him, and we’re hoping you can help us.”

Belle narrowed her eyes. “You want me to save… the man who killed Rumpelstiltskin.”

“I told you we should have lied to her,” Regina said.

“You’re not helping,” Emma hissed before turning back to Belle. “I know, it’s awful what we’re asking of you. But maybe if we can do something for Killian, then no one will have to suffer under the Dark One’s curse ever again. We can end it for good.”

That seemed to make an impression on her. “What is it that you think I can do?” she asked.

“I don’t know if you can, but you’re the person in this town who knew the last Dark One the best. Did you ever learn of any way to remove the Dark One’s curse, besides the dagger?”

Belle looked at Regina. “Just true love’s kiss, like the queen told me back in the Enchanted Forest,” she said.

Regina rolled her eyes. “Which didn’t work, so it hardly seemed worth mentioning. Anything besides that?”

“It didn’t work because Rumple didn’t want it to work. He didn’t want to give up the Dark One’s power. But before he realized what was happening, the kiss did start to change him.” Tears welled in Belle’s eyes and fell down her cheeks. “It was true love, it just wasn’t as important to him as being the Dark One.”

“Well,” Regina said, considering, “you did say Hook didn’t care about the power.”

“Let’s talk about it later,” Emma whispered, trying to focus on the woman who was falling apart on the bed beside her. “Come on, Belle, let’s go upstairs. We’ll have Dr. Whale make sure you’re healthy and get you a shower and some clean clothes. Okay?”

Belle nodded, still crying quietly. Emma gently guided her to stand and to leave the room on shuffling feet.

~*~

“True love’s kiss?” Emma grumbled, leaning back against the breakfast bar in the loft. “Really? How is that even a thing?”

Regina shot her a disparaging look from where she sat at the kitchen table next to Henry. “How is it that you’re still struggling to believe even the most rudimentary things about magic? It was a true love potion that you got out of that dragon under the library; that’s what brought magic to Storybrooke.” She lifted her hand, palm up, and conjured a perfect flame on top of it. “Do you doubt the existence of magic?”

“No, but… it seems so silly.”

“It was true love’s kiss that woke Henry from his sleeping curse,” Mary Margaret pointed out. “And me, back in the Enchanted Forest.”

“Okay, fine, it exists. But that was, one, the love of a mother for a child,” Emma said, raising a finger to enumerate her points, “and two, you guys, who I’ll agree are disgustingly in love. But Captain Hook definitely doesn’t love me.” Anymore, she added mentally. Whether she loved him was a question she didn’t want to contemplate.

Regina snorted.

“What?” Emma asked, folding her arms across her chest.

“That pirate spent two hundred years looking for revenge on Rumpelstiltskin for killing his first love. He just doesn’t want to admit to himself that he moved on,” Regina said.

“Regina may have a point,” David offered.

“Add to that the fact that, if the previous Dark One resisted true love’s kiss with Belle, then the darkness knows what a danger you are, Emma,” Regina continued. “It’s probably telling him to push you away.”

A memory sparked in Emma’s mind. “He said something about that,” she murmured. “He said, ‘why is it so afraid of you?’”

“See?” Mary Margaret said, smiling. “The darkness knows that true love always prevails.”

“I still think we need another plan,” Emma said.

“You assumed I haven’t been working on one,” Regina grumbled. “But I actually have, for the reason you stated. I don’t want a half-mad Dark One lurking at the edge of town any more than the rest of you.”

“You couldn’t have mentioned this earlier?” David asked.

“I didn’t mention it because I haven’t gotten very far with it. My idea was that if I could draw the darkness out with a spell, I could bind it to an object. So I spent some time digging around in Gold’s shop—”

“Looting,” Emma commented.

“The whole town’s been looting the pawn shop,” Henry pointed out. “He had stuff belonging to just about everyone in there.”

“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” Regina continued, “I found this.” She reached into her large purse and pulled out an ornate box, setting it on the table.

“What’s that?” Henry asked.

“Pandora’s box,” Regina replied. “If the darkness is untethered, we could trap it simply by opening the lid.”

“Okay,” Emma said, “that’s promising. And how do we untether the darkness from Killian?”

Regina looked sheepish. “That’s the part I haven’t figured out, but I’ll keep working on it.”

~*~

August sat in his father’s work shed, typing into the wee hours of the morning. He was so focused on his writing that he barely noticed the change in air pressure behind him.

A hand reached out and picked up one of his completed pages, making August jump with fright.

“Did you put in the part about how I stole a dwarf’s car and then told the Sheriff I didn’t know how to drive?” Killian asked. “I thought that was a nice bit of flair.”

“That’s not the story I’m telling, Dark One,” August said.

Killian set the typewritten page back down, his eyes darting around the shed and taking everything in. “You were quite convinced that I would know the dagger when you showed me that picture of it. How did you know?”

August stood up from his stool and backed away, his hands trembling. “I knew the story of Captain Hook and Rumpelstiltskin. I wasn’t sure, but I was taking a gamble that you were the one who killed him.”

“And what did you conclude from our meeting, that day that you barged into my office?” Killian asked. He moved as if to clean his fingernails with his hook, a parody of nonchalance.

“Nothing,” August said. “I couldn’t get a read on you.”

“You were awfully interested in the dagger,” Killian said.

“I knew of its power.”

“And?” Killian asked, moving around the small space, picking up and inspecting some of Geppetto’s wood carvings that sat on the shelves. He returned each item carefully to its place before handling the next.

“And I thought such a powerful magical item might be able to help me with my… issue. Ultimately, though, it seems the Dark One’s dagger has a very limited magic within it.”

Killian laughed at that, a laugh that tore from his chest, a laugh that spoke the tale of the agony within. “That it does.” He turned and looked at August again. “So you are completely healed now? No aftereffects of turning to wood?”

“Why do you care?”

Killian shrugged. “I’m curious.”

“The Blue Fairy says that I need to stay in Storybrooke, or I will revert to my wooden form.” Frustration rose like bile in his throat. “And that even then, the magic in Storybrooke may not be enough to sustain me. I may start to slowly turn into wood again.” He resisted the urge to reach down and rub his leg.

“That must be terrifying,” Killian said. “Every morning, waking up, checking yourself over, wondering if this is the day that your limbs start to betray you. Awakening from a nightmare of being encased in wood, trapped, unable to even scream?” He shuddered theatrically.

“Yeah, it sucks; what’s your point?”

“What if I could help you?” Killian said, a carved wooden doll still clutched in his hand. “There is a magic that would ensure you would remain a real boy forever.”

“And what’s that?” August asked, dread and mistrust coiling in his stomach.

“It’s this,” Killian said simply, reaching inside his leather coat and pulling out the dagger. He flipped it in the air, catching it by the flat of the blade, and then set it on the stack of August’s manuscript. August stared at it blankly.

“Are you asking me to… control you with it? I don’t understand.”

“If I thought you were actually villainous enough to command me to do anything dastardly, I wouldn’t be offering it to you. But I think your self-preservation is strong. Strong enough to do what you have to.”

August picked up the dagger. He imagined that the dagger itself shuddered with restrained power, but it was likely his own hand trembling.

“What do you want me to do?” August asked.

Killian held both of his arms out wide. “Kill me with it.”

“What?” He gaped at Killian. “Why would you want me to do that?”

Killian rolled his eyes in frustration. “The Dark One’s power will keep you from turning into wood. Didn’t I explain this already? Are you slow?”

“And you’ll be dead,” August said.

Killian laughed, another haunting sound that sent a chill up August’s spine. “Turns out, being the Dark One wasn’t the right career move for me. I don’t have any particular desire to rule with an iron fist. I’m not a deal-maker. This power is wasted on me.”

“But you think I want it?”

“I think you want to stay a living person, and not a wooden doll.” He waved the small doll he still held for emphasis.

August looked down at the dagger, and then back up at the haunted eyes of the man in front of him. “No offense, but you’re not making this look like a particularly appealing trade.”

Killian sauntered close, closing his hand around August’s on the hilt of the dagger. “Come on, Pinocchio,” he gritted out. “Be a man! Put me out of my misery, and save yourself.”

August wrenched back, his hand loosening and letting the dagger fall to the dusty floor between them. “I won’t.”

Killian swiped his arm through the empty air in front of him. At the same moment, August felt it like a fist connecting with his jaw, and he stumbled backward. “You’re useless,” the Dark One muttered. He brought his hand up, palm out, and August was thrown back against the cabinets behind him, the back of his head connecting painfully with a shelf.

The Dark One advanced on him. “Weak, and useless, and not worthy to breathe the same air as the Savior.” August’s vision swam and he started to slide to the floor. He spared a thought for his poor Papa, who would find his dead body out here in the morning. Geppetto didn’t deserve that kind of grief. Not again. He lost consciousness.

When August opened his eyes what felt like a moment later, the dagger was gone, and so was the Dark One.

With a shaking hand, August pulled his phone out of his pocket and made a call.

~*~

Regina fumbled for her Blackberry on the nightstand, bringing it to her ear without looking at the screen. “Hello?”

“Regina, we need to do something now. Killian’s suicidal.” It was Emma, sounding panicked.

“Great, let him off himself, we’d all get a lot more rest,” she grumbled.

There was a huff of frustrated breath into the phone’s speaker. “He went to August and tried to get August to stab him with the dagger. He refused, but Killian will find someone to do it eventually. We can’t wait any longer.”

“The spell is a long-shot, Emma. I’ve done what I can, but I honestly don’t think it will work.”

“We have to try. Please, Regina.”

Regina ran a hand through her sleep-tousled hair. She had to admit, it felt good to be needed, to be valued for her skills with magic. She could see it in Henry’s eyes sometimes, that he was proud of her. He’d never looked at her that way before. It brought a swell of satisfaction in her chest that vengeance never had. “Okay, we’ll try.”

~*~

Emma swallowed against the nausea of teleportation as Regina materialized the two of them in the mansion.

“Killian!” she called out immediately, already running for the stairs that she thought led to the library.

“If he doesn’t want you to find him, calling out his name is idiotic,” Regina said, trailing behind her. “He’ll just teleport away from here.”

Emma ignored her, tearing from room to room and continuing to call out Killian’s name. She had to find him. She had to.

Regina appeared before her in a puff of purple smoke as she opened the door of an unused bedroom. “He’s not here, Emma.”

“So what now?”

“Well, if there’s something around here that belongs to him, we could take it back to my vault and I can do a locator spell.”

The curtains in the bedroom were open, and the first pale light of dawn caught Emma’s eye. “No need. I think I know where he is. Take us to the docks.”

With an eye roll, Regina waved her hand as Emma braced herself for the disorienting nausea of teleportation once again, squeezing her eyes shut.

She smelled the cannery and heard the cry of seagulls before she opened her eyes.

“How did you find me?” Killian asked.

Emma blinked, orienting herself. Killian stood a few feet away, near the railing that separated part of the dock from the harbor. The masts of the fishing boats in their slips stuck up like bones picked clean in the dim light.

“You told me once that you found the water calming.”

He didn’t respond, his gaze still trained out over the bay. Emma turned to Regina, raising her eyebrows. It was now or never.

Regina lifted her hands and murmured an incantation under her breath. When she reached the point that they had rehearsed, Emma pulled a potion out of her pocket, uncapped it, and threw it toward Killian. The red liquid splashed on his leather jacket as Regina continued to speak.

Killian turned around slowly, looking back and forth between them both. Regina trailed off into silence.

“Regina?”

“I’m sorry, Emma. The spell didn’t work.”

The laugh that came out of Killian’s throat was high-pitched and foreign. “You thought there was a spell that could cast out the darkness? You’re even stupider than I thought, Dearie.”

“We just want to help you, Killian,” Emma said.

“I’m not sure Killian is the one in control right now, Emma. We need to go.” Regina raised her hand, ready to teleport them both away.

“No.” Emma put a hand on Regina’s shoulder. “You can go if you want, but I won’t.”

“He’ll kill you,” Regina responded.

Emma took a step forward. “I know you must be in there somewhere, Killian. You want to get rid of the darkness. You don’t want to be the Dark One. So let us help you.”

“I don’t need the help of a trollop and a queen who rules over nothing,” he responded. “Get away from here.” His lips pulled back in a grimace, revealing a flash of white teeth. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes bright and wild with madness. Emma could almost feel the battle that seemed to be raging underneath his skin.

Taking another step, she reached out for him. “Killian, please.”

“I said get away from here!” he roared, and he raised his fist, clenching it.

Emma gasped as she felt herself raised onto her toes by an unseen force. She could feel his fingers on her neck, and she tried to draw air in through her open mouth, her chest heaving as she failed to draw breath. Her hands came up to her throat, scrabbling at the skin, trying to release the pressure on her windpipe, but there was nothing there to fight against.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Regina raise her hands, fire flickering on her fingertips, and just as quickly the sorceress was thrown back, hitting the ground several feet away like a discarded doll.

Emma could hear the tiny, desperate sounds coming out of her own throat as she attempted to breathe. Heard the sounds of the dock beginning to muffle as she started to lose consciousness. Her vision went black at the edges, exploding dots of white in front of her eyes. Through it all, she kept her gaze on Killian, on the desperate mask of pain that was his face, on the struggle that she could see behind his eyes.

The sun breached the horizon, its yellow rays filling her vision. At least the last thing I see before I die will be a pretty sunrise, Emma thought faintly.

Then there was a hoarse shout from somewhere, and the pressure on her throat suddenly let up. Emma fell to her knees as she raggedly drew breath, gasping in great lungfuls of air. She let her head drop, swaying as she struggled to remain conscious.

She heard rather than saw Killian slump the ground.

“Killian,” she rasped, crawling forward, the rough wood of the dock painful under her hands and knees. Finally able to raise her head, she saw him slumped against the railing, tears running down his cheeks.

“I don’t know how long I can fight the darkness off, Emma,” he gasped, his voice entirely his own for the moment. “You have to find a way to kill me, to stop this curse forever.”

“I’m not going to kill you.” She clutched at his leather-clad arm, pulling herself close and pressing her forehead against his as she swayed above him.

“Please,” he said, still crying. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.” The sun shone brightly behind him, lighting up the ends of his hair and casting his face in shadow. Emma brought her other hand to his stubbled jaw. “You won’t.”

“I’m weak,” Killian gasped.

“Me too,” she responded, almost laughing. “What do you think it was that brought us together?”

Killian pulled back, looking into her eyes. “I never thought I would be able to let go of my first love, my Milah. But then I met you. Please, Emma, you can’t be here with me. I’ll destroy you.”

Shaking her head mutely, tears falling, her heart full and near to cracking inside her chest, Emma pressed her closed mouth against Killian’s.

She felt the wave go through her, felt the air pressure change inside her ears and her hair flutter with an unseen breeze. The constant cry of seagulls stopped suddenly, leaving only the sound of the water against the hulls of the gently rocking ships. And it was warm when it passed through her. She knew that warmth, had felt it when she’d pressed her lips to the forehead of her son in his hospital room.

Opening her eyes, Emma pulled away and looked at Killian. He was blinking, confused and disoriented.

“What was that?”

Emma smiled tremulously. “Is the darkness…?”

“Gone,” he said, looking at her with wonder. “The darkness is gone.”

“Unfortunately,” cut in Regina’s voice, shattering the fragile moment, “that’s not entirely true.”

Emma turned and frowned at Regina, who simply pointed up at the sky. Emma’s gaze followed her finger.

“What the hell is that?”

Chapter 18

[animalloverdev]

not sure if i missed it,or if it just wasn't mentioned- why is Lucy the only one able to turn the boys back into humans?

It’s REALLY complicated! We’ve never explained why but I have a reason myself as to why Lucy is seemingly the only one who can turn the boys back.

I wrote it out for myself a while back in a hidden place that’s still accessible if you are psychotic enough to find it but I’ll paste it below in a Read More if you’re interested.

WARNING: SPOILERS

“Here’s the reason that only the player is able to restore the boys back to normal and not Katy (or most people for that matter)

The rules of magic, in this universe, fall in line with a few basic rules which tend to pervade a lot of my writing (probably a byproduct of my own creationism and believing in a strange set of rules that the universe lives by)

Most ‘curses’ created by witches and wizards have a byproduct of their granted functional immortality because the universe cannot abide by an eternal ~anything~. Doesn’t make sense? To explain: death ends suffering. It’s a way out of any torture. To wish for someone to be tortured forever will always fail because everyone dies.

Witches and wizards, however, are magical and can prologue things beyond the natural life cycle and the malevolent ones have worked very hard to find loopholes. This is through the function of burden, which means that the spell can be manipulated by anyone who has the burden of the spell.

It’s functionally impossible to write a duration time of ‘Forever’ into a spell, and if a wizard or witch tries, then the spell only lasts as long as the caster’s lifespan (at best).

Aadara created this spell SPECIFICALLY for Edmund in a fit of rage after having found out that he deceived her. She wanted him to suffer long after she was dead (which she assumed to be very shortly as she had not yet begun to prolong her lifespan), and you can imagine that Edmund returning to the world of humans after she’s died, leaving him to resume his life in the future doesn’t sound very satisfying to a villain, and you can’t write ‘indefinitely’ as a duration. Aadara placed the burden with ‘anyone with the capacity to do the accursed harm’.

This means a couple of things:

-Aadara could die and the curse would continue

-If she said ‘anyone who WISHES to do the accursed harm’, Edmund would be free as soon as everyone forgot about him, waking as his accursed age and resuming his life (and remember that Aadara had not yet prolonged her life)

-Harm, in this case, does not mean physical harm as Edmund and the others are immortal with bodies that will restore themselves and cannot be permanently killed. It must be emotional.

-Anyone who bears the burden of the spell has the power to reverse it as well.

-If Aadara had placed the burden of the spell on LITERALLY EVERYONE so that the spell would last for all time, then anyone would be able to change Edmund back, even people without the ability to harm Edmund

-If Aadara had placed the burden on Edmund, attempting to loophole it so that it would last as long as he was alive, then Edmund could change himself back any time he wanted

This is why Katy is unable to turn Edmund back, there’s nothing that Katy could do or ever would do to do lasting damage to him. The player, on the other hand, can break his heart.

Seeing as Aadara used the same spell as Edmund’s on each of the boys, it all works the same. This means that Katy is actually able to turn Miguel back (as a universe in which the player doesn’t end up with Miguel eventually brings Katy and Miguel together. But you’re not supposed to know that.), but never gets the opportunity to try.

This is also my own personal canonical explanation as to why the sixth character proposed by the Kickstarter (and alluded to by Aadara in the ending) is not a part of the story: The player would not be able to change him back anyway, they never got a chance to be together, so the player has no leverage over him to potentially break his heart. It’s a good thing that he ends up freed at the end anyway, huh?

This brings me to one last repercussion that never made it into Animal Lover. The reason that the ability to break his heart is considered ‘lasting damage’ by the curse is that if Edmund (or any other afflicted) becomes hurt badly enough and becomes too guarded, they close their heart off to others. Thus, the pool of people able to harm (and by proxy, free) Edmund shrinks. If Edmund’s heart ever became guarded enough to where no one could get through to him, then Aadara would be the only person left, and upon her death, he would emerge from the curse in a suicidal state, unable to form human connections with anyone, permanently. This means that, yes, the other cure for the curse would be to become so abhorrently miserable that suicide is the only option for escape. Then Aadara would have done her job. (The reason that Kyle isn’t cured from his curse the moment he’s done speaking to Mick, even though he’s suicidally depressed is because he’s only temporarily hurt, and there still exist people (namely the player) would could hurt him worse if they wished to.)”

[penumbra-rp]

Ash, you will be playing the role of Amycus Carrow!

“How do you feel,” Amycus mocks hostilly, a scoff and a sharp roll of his eyes following. He takes off then, darting towards the right side of the court, racket striking the ball and letting it sail over the net. “What are you? My therapist? Asking me how I feel and shit all the fuckin’ time.” He feels everything. Always. And asking him about it only manages to make it worse.

Admin Becky: mark-me-down-as-scared-and-horny.gif because it’s quite frankly rude of Amycus to be so endearing in such a terrifyingly dangerous, diamond-cuttingly sharp, violently unhinged sort of way. What struck me the most about him is that is so unapologetically himself. He doesn’t try to hide his opinions and instead of letting his rage hinder him he has learned to use it to his advantage, embracing bloodshed and allowing himself to be useful to Riddle -- which succeeds in making him all the more deadly. He’s carving out a name for himself and unlike many of his peers is choosing fear over adoration. I can already tell that he’s here to cause trouble and I honestly can’t wait to witness the carnage. 

01. Out of Character

NAME: Ash

AGE: 25

YOUR BIRTHDAY: 01/24

PRONOUNS: She/Her

TIMEZONE: EST

02. In Character

CHARACTER: Amycus Carrow

CHARACTER’S PRONOUNS: He/Him

FACECLAIM: Manny Montana

CHARACTER’S BIRTHDAY: 06/06

PERSONALITY:

(-) ABRASIVE – Amycus possesses a personality that the faint of heart cannot and will not be capable of handling. He’s overly aggressive and highly confrontational, with a tendency to rub people the wrong way from the moment they shake his hand, and he tips his head back and laughs when he succeeds. It makes it increasingly difficult to get to know and get close to someone like him. Harsh and insensitive, he cannot be bothered to spare a second thought for anyone else and their feelings, more importantly, he doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him. He finds that he doesn’t like most people anyways, so he thinks nothing of it as he pushes people away due to his annoyances and attitudes.

(-) IRASCIBLE – A young man with a short fuse, Amycus has a legendary temper, known for being ‘perpetually angry’ by his peers. He is quick to infuriate and prone to mood swings, going from crackling embers to a full blaze within mere moments without much warning. He’s volatile, known to lash out at anyone and anything when his temper is triggered. Incredibly irritable, the Carrow boy has always been hot-tempered and testy, more at home with his fury than anything else. And this fury manifests itself into cruelty and ruthlessness. His actions are driven by rage and spite, above any other motivations, leading him to wild and wicked behaviors. Fighting and cursing and initiating arguments are his ways to handle his problems, sooner spitting or throwing a punch to make a point.

(-) IMPETUOUS – The easiest way to make Amycus do something is to tell him that he can’t, tell him that he won’t. With his lack of regard for others, and a devil may care attitude towards most things, Amycus will dive headfirst into anything even if he cannot see the bottom. They call him reckless, call him rampant, and they wouldn’t be incorrect. Logistics are lost on him, seeing A and knowing he needs to get to B, and so he simply charges towards it without forethought. He’s a fast moving man, always has been and always would be, and his life needs to keep up the pace with his mind. While his sister possesses a penchant for thought and calculation, Amycus is a man of action (and not just action, but reaction too), and that’s what makes him useful.

(+) PASSIONATE – For someone who says they don’t care about anything, Amycus will certainly be the first one to get worked up when it comes to certain things that are important to him. He’s extremely emotionally expressive. His passion manifests in the intensity with which he does all things, never quitting halfway through, always seeing things to their completion once he starts them. It makes for a rather lethal force of nature once his path is set. It’s in the conviction with which he speaks about everything, forceful and animated with the inflection of his words and strong in the language he chooses. While it often prompts others to tell him to calm down or lighten up – Amycus does not know the meaning of such words, cannot comply with such requests. His passion makes him determined, drives him to continue, gives him the grit to persevere when others would give up.

(+) CLEVER – Amycus is not exactly the most brilliant, intellectual, I-have-top-marks-in-my-class kind of ‘smart’. But he’s a problem solver by nature, and it’s the engineer in him that is prone to thinking critically (if properly motivated to do so – that’s the important part). He has much more potential than he allows people to know, mostly because he doesn’t feel to expend the energy. Violence is what he’s known for, not his brain, and he uses that – letting others count on his dependable nature, and shocking them as he allows himself to be underestimated. But if you give Amycus a problem, it’s guaranteed he’ll figure it out. He’s an out of the box thinker, a quick thinker, rather resourceful and works best on his feet, in the moment, in the midst of action.

BRIEF BULLET POINT BIO:

Prelude | The bad guy always has a very specific type of man in his back pocket – a secret weapon, a wild card, a loose canon of sorts. One they release when all else fails, one they unchain with the knowledge that destruction is eminent but necessary. A man just as, if not more dangerous, more deadly, than himself. A vicious, feral creature – with his true nature kept suppressed and subdued by gilded societal cages, his thirst for blood and violence going unquenched as the only sustenance fit enough to fuel his fury. It’s rather difficult to find someone like that…but only if you don’t know where to look. There’s always been something off, something predatory in those near-black eyes of his – immortalized in family portraits within the compound estate, and plastered over covers of GQ and Forbes. Something unsettling that triggered that fight or flight response in the pit of your stomach as it clenches and twists. It speaks to something unhinged, something untamed in the Carrow heir. He slinks and stalks through the streets, the silk of his shirts as dark as the dead of night – a panther camouflaged amidst a jungle of concrete. It seems he hides from high points, rooftops and ledges, body tense and about to ambush, always ready for attack. And when he smiles, it’s more a bearing of fangs than anything else. It’s fear that creates the foundations of his reputation. There’s a reason the stories festered and grew, there’s a reason that his every step caused yet another glance averted, caused bodies to part along sidewalks to not be in his path, caused his enemies, his sister’s enemies, his family’s enemies, to turn and retreat. It’s all so they might not end up like the others that have fallen by his hand. They call him a menace – good for nothing but destroying. And it just so happens, Amycus Carrow fits Tom Riddle’s criteria to a T.

Two | He has his father’s looks – edges sharp and features dark, but it is his mother’s temper that is passed down to him like a most coveted heirloom. Unruly. It’s the first word that comes to mind to describe him. He lived violently, turbulently. This whirlwind of a boy. He is everything his sister is not. Fire where she is ice, passion where she is poised. They couldn’t take their eyes off of him for a single moment without consequence. But there was no room for whirlwinds in their society, only proper little lads with firm handshakes who knew which spoon to use for soup and tea. So his mother smooths his hair down with careful brush strokes (to press his horns back in, most likely). Tells him to smile and play nice with the other boys (to hide his sharpened teeth, of course). Forcing his essence – his wildness – into order – perhaps, because she knew what it was capable of. He hated every correction of his mother’s fingertips, wincing and whining and snapping his jaws as she straightened his collar and re-tied his bowtie, fixing the disheveled wrinkles that only appeared because he thought it’d be a good idea to fight with one of the little Rowle boys in the park for bothering his sister. His mother leaves and he loosens his tie – the chain – around his neck. That’s better.

Three | Other children become means of entertainment, punching bags and spit targets. Throwing rocks at them from the top of the jungle gym he’d claimed as his throne. He’s the sudden push that sends others toppling from the slide because it’s his. He’s the one to create minions of his classmates, leveraging the safety of their toys so they’d commandeer all the red crayons because that was his color. Amycus was a mean little boy. And he grows into a cruel young man – with eyes like daggers and a tongue like a blade. His blood sings in tones of violence, misbehaving his favorite thing, and fighting his sport of choice – always stirring the pot, looking to get a rise out of others, returning home with bloody fists and a bloody face for his sister to clean up. He’s sent to boarding school then, his parents seeking reform and discipline that he desperately needed. After that, they submit his application to Hogwarts – not attending university was not an option, but they allow him the illusion of choice even as his major is selected for him. He will study Engineering, they decide, just as Alecto studies Business. There is a strategy in that – one collecting knowledge that the other doesn’t, filling in the gaps that would make them the perfect unit fit to lead at the helm of Carrow Energy together. He studies because apparently a piece of paper means something, even with an empire inked into his parent’s will for him to inherit. But he graduates and trades his diploma for a seat at the head of the boardroom table beside Alecto’s. Amycus knows nothing of the petroleum sector, cares none about oil rigs being created in their name and the forests sacrificed by pollution from it – but he knows electricity, knows energy, finds it fascinating for it’s capacity to create power just as it has the capacity to destroy. While he might not care for the conversation, he relishes in making the board members squirm under the intensity of his gaze, making them cling to edges of their seats waiting for him to fly off the handle at even the smallest offense.

Four | He’s a flash in the crowd, a blur of motion hidden between immaculately dressed bodies, camouflaged beneath designer fabrics, swinging chandeliers playing tricks of light that allow you to see him and then make him vanish, blended in until he wishes to be seen. So it’s easy for him to disappear when he gets his assignment. The rev of a Ducati in the moonlight, he slides down the visor of his helmet and takes off. It’s only then that they realize he’s gone. When Forbes calls, intent on congratulating him and Alecto on making their Most Influential list for the third time, he can’t come to the phone. He’s busy. Hands slicked with the crimson of blood – he’d never be able to swipe to answer. They’ll leave a message. While Carrow Energy is meant to be his livelihood, his heart will never be in it. Clean energy projects and electricity reduction plans pale in comparison to the real work that he’s entrusted to do for the Death Eaters. ‘Give them a taste of hell,’ Riddle’s voice sounds in his ear. A whistleblower’s head cradled in his hands, a sharp twist, a neck snapped. The call to darkness is relentless, and Amycus can’t help but pick up every time, asserting his dominance and inflicting his wild brand of violence wherever his mad eyes set themselves.

INTERVIEW:

“Mr. Carrow?”

The pleasant voice of the Carrow’s in-housekeeper, Camila, carries across the courtyard towards him.

“Digame,” Amycus responds, a tennis racket flipped in his hand, his wrist rotating as he prepped himself to practice. The machine revs up, spits out a yellow ball – one he whacks forcefully towards the back gate.

“Los periodistas de GQ están aquí. Your interview is now, they tell me.”

“That’s today? Puta madre…”

He allows her to let them into the compound, but he doesn’t stop the machine, lets it continue to fire out tennis balls only to be met with aggressive swings. “You caught me during practice, lads. Want to try?” Holding out his racket, to the videographer, who promptly shakes his head, adjusting the massive camera poised on his shoulder. A low growl rumbles at the back of his throat as he twists with alarming speed to clip the ball sailing their way. “Well,” Amycus impatiently waves the racket around, knocking it beneath one journalist’s notepad and letting it fall to the floor, only to jab it harshly into his chest a moment after. “Are we doing this or no?”  

i. How do you feel about your current occupation?

“How do you feel,” Amycus mocks hostilly, a scoff and a sharp roll of his eyes following. He takes off then, darting towards the right side of the court, racket striking the ball and letting it sail over the net. “What are you? My therapist? Asking me how I feel and shit all the fuckin’ time.” He feels everything. Always. And asking him about it only manages to make it worse. His eyes widen, he clicks his tongue, “Ay Dio – I’m sorry. You probably cannot print curses, eh?” Inhaling slowly, he purses his lips, giving a lazy shrug of his shoulder, as if he cannot be bothered to lift them both at the same time  “I hate it.” His expression is serious, jaw flexing. “I mean, everyday I get to do what I want. I come and go as I please, I don’t report to a single damn person in that building. It’s just awful,” the grin that slides across his lips is the same as a blade’s edge, slick and sharp, as sarcasm embeds within his words.

ii. What song would you say describes yourself?

“You listen to Latin music?” An inquisitive brow risen, flicking his attention towards his Apple Watch, connecting it to the bluetooth speakers outside, and turning up the volume. “Listen to this. It’s by J Balvin and Bad Bunny.” He presses play and the sounds of YO LE LLEGO fills the manicured grassy grounds. “Dónde e’ que están los cuartos, ‘manito, ey, y yo le llego,” the words roll smooth over his tongue, tone low, as it transports him to the other night, the song blasting in his Ferrari at 1AM as he headed towards The Dungeon, speeding through reds with the top down and sunglasses slid over his eyes. It’s the only song fitting. The only song to describe Amycus Carrow: “They’re saying – where the drinks, and the women, and the money, and my people are? That’s where I’ll be.”

iii. Does reputation matter to you?

“It doesn’t…” Amycus says, only for his eyes to squint up at the beaming sun in contemplation, bringing up a hand to act as a makeshift visor, “But it also does.” The Carrows have built their empire on the foundations of fear and intimidation in order to breed respect. It’s with this familial reputation that Amycus has carved out a reputation of his own – known for being the worst of all who possess their name, whispers carried along the city’s dark underbelly of his savagery. And it is on this same reputation coupled with his vicious exploits, that makes him known. But, it can also be said that Amycus cannot bring himself to care about what others think of him. Given his frequent trips to Scotland Yard, decorated in handcuffs, and brawls within The Dungeon’s walls being part of news highlight reels, Amycus can’t bring himself to care of what people say, as they’ll always talk, always judge. Just so long as they don’t do either to his face…

iv. What is your relationship with your parents like?

“I’m the favorite,” Amycus gives a rather rare boast, using his racket to dribble one of the yellow balls that landed by his feet, only to smack it into the back gate with a powerful swing. It’s not often that he brags of his favor over Alecto, quick to dispel the thoughts, only whipping the truth out as a secret weapon when he wished to win an argument as a teen against her. “So yeah, we’re rather close, my parents and I.” Many parents do their best to rid their children of the nagging thought that one is better than the other, that one is more favored, more special. But his mother and father couldn’t seemed to be bothered with the courtesy. It was Amycus who was praised after even the most minute achievements. It was Amycus whose fencing matches and debate competitions were attended with undying support. And it is Amycus that is praised for strides the company takes with himself and his sister serving as new leadership. “They say I take after mami – apparently, she gifted me her temper. And her rasp of a voice.” But the idea is sound and spot on. Even he finds his heartbeat picks up pace if she even so much as raises her voice.

v. What languages can you speak?

“Two – Spanish and English. Fluently. Clearly.” He says Spanish first because he considers it his first language. He learned that the sky was azul before he knew what blue was. With Latino parents, the language was spoken in the Carrow estate from he was born and it’s the language he reverts to when he’s with family, when he steps foot onto the compound. It’s this same fluency that causes him to thrive with his overseas contacts in Mexico. “`Lecto is the…polyglot. That’s the word right? Poly…glot? That’s so ugly. Why is English so ugly,” he wrinkles his nose in distaste, shaking his head, “Linguista, is what she is. I think she knows like…German or some shit. Like, who needs German? To do anything?”

vi. If your home was on fire and you could only save one item, what would you choose?

“What kind of pinche question is that?” His face screws up like he smells something bad, just imagining smoke and burning wood and it tickles his nose. In fact, he raises his racket-hand to swipe the back of his palm beneath his nose for good measure before twirling it between his fingers to let it’s point stare the reporter in the face. “ Don’t speak that kind of thing into the air, eh,” he threatens darkly. Because God forbid something happen to his home, his sanctuary, just about the only place where he feels truly at ease, he’d hunt down this reporter and his videographers and his supervisors and lastly his family and skin them alive. “But I’d take the dogs. Stuff is…stuff. It can be replaced. But Santo and Diosa. They mean a lot to me. Not a lot of things do.”

vii. Which Hogwarts University faculty did you study at? The Gryffindor School of Applied Science, the Ravenclaw School of Humanities, the Slytherin School of Social Science, or the Hufflepuff School of Art?

Pretty sure you could have Google’d this one, pendejo, he mutters beneath his breath. The Carrow heir hadn’t seen the point of school, not at the time, not when the company was his to inherit eventually. But when his great great grandfather Aurelio came to this country, he made it so that his grandfather had all the opportunities he didn’t. It was a task carried forward, and forward again – so Amycus had no choice but to obtain a degree, as ignorance was something his parents wouldn’t allow to be attached to their name. The course catalog is something he skims over carelessly as he sips his morning tea. A boy at eighteen smirking wickedly across the table as he tells them ‘Modern Dance’ at the Hufflepuff School had really piqued his interest. It’s swiftly shot down, as he knows it would be. “I studied engineering at the Gryffindor School,” he confesses, “I actually started at the Slytherin School, studying law.” Amycus scoffs, shaking his head. What a joke that first year had been. “Imagine me? A lawyer? Mothers and fuckers of the jury, type shit. But my father thought since I liked to argue so much I’d be good at it. He wasn’t wrong or anything, but…I couldn’t be a lawyer, not with my record.” Shrugging, he thinks not of his multiple counts of assault, disorderly conduct, vandalism, trespassing, and reckless driving, creating stain after inky stain on what could have been a pristine reputation. “Crimson was always more my color, anyways.”

vix. What is your social media username?

Amycus blinks. Once. Twice. The muscles in his jaw clenching and releasing, in his irritation. Of all the senseless questions, this one had to be the worst of them. “Don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the…Google? You know, you put things in, you search them, and you find things you want to know?” He pauses the ball machine, and puts a hand out to the reporter, “Your phone. Unlock it.” His requests are met with apprehension, sure, but they do not go unheeded, the device slid into his awaiting palm. His fingers are lightning quick as he taps at keys, typing his own name into the search engine. “Oh – look, that’s me. There’s my picture, and the Carrow Energy website, and oh! Look at that. That’s my handle. Amycuscarrow – all one word. All in a matter of seconds. Crazy right?” His wild eyes stare across at the journalist, before locking his phone and tucking it into the man’s jacket pocket. “Got any other questions, or can I finish practicing my backhand swing?”