#but on tumblr I sorta worry about accidentally crossing wires with some other obscure fandom.

[anguishedlurker]

(grabs you by the shoulder) Hi. 2.1k words.

Very little leaves Desiree horrified, you see.

She’s a genie, a djinn if you’re being weird about it; Genies grant wishes, and the desires of others can be…Well, rather fucked up.

And the people who could only be saved by a wish are those in such desolate state that Fate itself would prefer to pretend they don’t exist, the birsmirchment on existence too great to admit to.

If she was kinder about her wishes to such folk, that was between her and her final obliteration.

But her point was, most people wanted to use her to be lazy. To not have to dirty their hands with the task they set before her, be it in laziness or attempted refusal of responsibility for their actions. Murder was a fantastically common example of the latter.

So picture; She’s finally broken the brats latest attempts to ward her out of the town, and risen through the building.

Maybe she even left already and came back to leave a nasty surprise for the brat, who knew but for her, really?

The brat had been slumped over on a desk, talking to a painted rubber duck, the red head and cyan body oddly bright in the room.

As odd as it was, she couldn’t claim to care about it. Soliloquizing to inanimate objects was not as uncommon as people liked to pretend.

What was odder was that she snuck up on him, but the answer was simple; He had a cough.

A slight wheeze that had him choking and spluttering on the slightest of wrong movements easily hid the gasp of cold the brat gave.

It was a perfect chance, really.

For someone who had a more offensive powerset, that was. He wasn’t so inexperienced anymore; Any real fight would be her end.

Still, she could be annoying in the mundane sense. She just needed to figure out how while he was distracted.

And then her spotlight towards her goals, once he had stopped coughing.

“I just wish I could go back to when I wasn’t in danger. Just… just safe again.”

By all rights, this one should've been easy.

See, she had world ending powers by all accounts. Time, or the illusion thereof, being rewound on a global scale was not an object.

Obsession bloomed in her core, and her work should’ve been done in moments as she purred out “As you desire.”

It really shouldn’t have taken any thought. Most people’s words are easy to define away into the unideal or downright harmful.

The caveat to that is that she must still abide by her own definitions and technicalities, if no-one else’s could be abused.

But hey, sometimes a wish is genuinely complicated. Sometimes it has a lot of fiddly bits to pull off or needs extra information she didn’t get to look at before jumping in.

Safe is… Safe is a funny word, she’d have to say. Any of the living could trip on steps and die on impact. They’d be terribly unlucky, but not the first to die in such a manner.

So any definition had to, by default, forbid such realities from counting. If it counted, then there was no time at all she could send him.

It had to be his own specific problems.

It should’ve been automatic; Put him before the portal, maybe by a couple of years. Maybe make him a baby again. Who cares?

Safe is an annoying word. Safe is a word that cannot be defined by any one person to fit a whole, and must be assessed on a case by case basis.

The brat was a child. Children, to be safe, would be in low physical danger with access to basic physical needs.

She wasn’t sure what she bounced off of, at first. She had to look to find out.

The Fenton parents had never abided an OSHA law in their lives. They might argue that there were no established laws for their work, and she might have granted plausibility to such an argument if common sense had not evaded them so thoroughly.

No gun with a safety had been created in the house. Every stove repaired hardly better than standing near a wildfire.

She could ignore physical needs, at least, though the images left a bad taste in her mouth. A pantry stocked, as was their job. Never more. Never at the dinner table, never cooking.

His sister did that.

But Desiree could go further back.

Further.

And even further.

Sharp glass, contaminated labs let to the children to clean, insane behavior towards any electronic.

Could she even count the food as fine? They had no issues with letting cross contamination happen.

Young. Younger. Youngest.

Eight, nearly dead by proto-gun. He would never comprehend how lucky he was.

Six, they left for the week. For once they had not remembered to restock the pantry. Jasmine herself was not legally old enough to care for him, anyhow.

Four. They hadn’t learned to keep samples out of the fridge from the first poisoning, clearly.

Two. Can’t they keep a toddler out of the lab? It couldn't be that hard...

Zero should not be an age she ever looked at. But from the day he was brought home, he was in danger.

Now though, in this mess of a wish, she was dragged forward by her obsession.

It had to be complete. She could help or harm but she had to do it, she had to fulfill a desire as stated.

And all through the pregnancy, there was never a time where the contamination was acceptable. She never stopped.

Maddie Fenton would be dead before she’d consider fixing either.

Desiree shouldn’t have made it this far in the search to complete the wish, yet she couldn’t undefine safe to fit. The child would need to be in no notable danger from his environment.

The wish was uncompleteable without reaching through time to mess with these idiots neurons. Whatever her illustrative powers to force the world to turn back, or seem to, there were too many steps involved to both turn back the clock and change the people in the past. Whatever happened needed to be a logical consequence of one or the other, not both.

Such a wish would’ve, should’ve, left her drained yet smug.

Instead she had watched this boys life flash before her eyes and was left to wonder if CPS was a myth the living spoke of.

Vision clearing, cracks moving along her core, she was left blinking up at him.

She knew a lost fight when she got into one, and it took hours to lose him. She was lucky she couldn’t hear him over the wind and her thrumming core, she was certain of that.

He had no issues leveraging her obsession against her any of the previous times, so why now?

It all left her hiding out in a warehouse, glaring the Box Ghost into submission.

Lucky her, most ghosts thought she was stronger than she actually was. Even in their own piece of land she was believed to be best dealt with by not interacting.

She was sure the moment she touched a box it was time to leave again, but she just…

She needed time.

The child was a brat, to be certain. She would not be swayed on this topic.

A brat with a sad life, and a sad little burden all on his lonesome.

But she’d known that, hadn’t she? Never questioned it. Mocked him for it.

Dead, or a creepy little boy with creepy powers?

Creepy powers that could very well get him killed the rest of the way if his parents found out. Who knew what the lunatics would do.

A brat with nobody meaningfully in his corner. Nobody who both cared and was capable of protection.

Maybe that’s why he was Obsessed with protecting other people. Nobody who mattered for the job had deigned to do it for even a single moment in his life.

“I, THE BOX GHOST, HAVE RESIGNED TO ASKING YOU WHY YOU ARE HEErrrEEE.” The fool shouted, waving his arms. Boxes rattled around her in a threat display.

She was forced to give due respect to the display, and calmly put her hands up in accordance; Anything could be a formidable weapon if one were determined enough to make it work.

“I got ran off by the brat, and this has enough energy and low visibility on his radar.”

There wasn’t much need to lie.

Box Ghost seemed to assess this, floating around her in a circle path before shrugging.

“What, so, a day that ends in Y?” He asked, dropping the facade.

“It’s more… how I lost, than that I lost.” She offered carefully. She was in Box Ghost’s lair, and she knew that her welcome was thin to start with.

She suspected the look on Box’s face was more stink eye than proper appraisal.

“Look, I don’t want to fend you off. I’ll lose too many boxes doing that if you’re just… floating here. But I was hoping to have Lunch Lady over.” Box expressed, annoyed.

“As you desire.” She mocked, lifting towards the ceiling. This was not her territory to fight over, and she had so few offensive options if Box got a bright idea.

“Don’t even joke.” He groaned, going back to… categorizing boxes?

Not her Obsession, not her curiosity. She is out.

It still left her with a slightly cracked core and an angry teenager tearing his life to pieces to find the altered piece, looking for her all the while.

She was plenty capable of granting more wishes, at least. It would make her heal faster to do so.

Quiet, easy, mostly inane and stupid. Holding herself back from screwing people over too royally, lest the brat find her much too quickly.

It was easy and largely mind-numbing. He wanted money, she wanted the ‘stupid cunt’ to shut up, they as a collective wanted free-time to go camping.

A couple of twenties in the house to cover more groceries if noting else, all that took was a brief possession and staring more intently at the antagonistic woman's own computer, and it wasn’t hard to clear the troublesome one’s schedule.

Can’t have a schedule be blocked off if his abusive bitch of a girlfriend/fiance is dead in a car crash two hours from then.

She was forced to look at the pathetic mortals life for much too long. Truly, how does one get so insecure?

That was the highlight of her wish granting, honestly. It stopped her from going thinking about the child.

She had to tell him. She knew that. But she didn’t know how to do that.

But she didn’t want to think about it! Why go around making it her problem if she didn’t need to?

And now, an apartment in the bad side of town, obviously not meeting any sort of housing standard. There was a girl on the phone, sobbing away.

An easy mark to camp out, as she kept an ear to the rest of the apartment.

She was left to stew, again.

He was a brat that was owed more than he’d ever been given, and who hated her for perfectly good (and irrefutable) reasons.

She had to do more, too. But she didn’t know what yet.

Most people slightly sucked. Human nature and all that. Being a brat was hardly uncommon.

She also shouldn’t care that much.

But she did.

“I just wish he c-could give a real… I just-! He could be better! W-why isn’t he better??” She wailed.

Easy mark.

She had to conclude that it was another sad mark as the scene unfolded in her head.

Anyone could be better, but often there was nothing of meaning to salvage.

She was the other woman, strung along as he played both- no, all four women like cheap instruments.

Ew.

Of course his main girlfriend was suspicious too, and just as much of a cunt as he was. If she found out it wouldn’t be his ass on the line, it'd be the women.

And maybe, just maybe, that hit her where it hurt as she closed the wish by making him have his come-to-Jesus moment and resolve to dump all four and pack himself off to another state.

That might be her problem over all; She cared about those in bad spots. Tight situations that weren’t their fault.

She could see why the man would be called charming, even, having flipped through the pages of memory to figure out why this wish would occur.

And no child picked their parents.

Maybe she knew someone she could set up to watch him. That might be a better option.

Eight, six, four, two, zero. Never safe. Barely loved. If anyone had an ax to grind, he’d be helpless and left to dry in the cold in an instant.

She had to tell him, at least. Lunch Lady had truce with him, right? A message could be passed.

She hoped it could be seen as genuine.

She knew it wouldn’t be, but she had to anyways.

Thinking about Danny wishing to go back to a time where he wasn't constantly in danger, and Desiree not being able to find a time in his life that can fit the bill so just,,, nothing happens.