spnxsm – rennegades backup

I have… struggled with this one. Mostly because I keep changing things in the drabbles for Paved and Perdition which retroactively change this and the three or four drabbles that follow immediately after it.

prompt: TEMPTATION
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Waiting for the End
characters: Gabriel, Laufey-Serenity
words: 1629
summary: (A conversation long over due)

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A little more than a century after the death of Christ, and Gabriel the Messenger is still on Earth. He has remained to watch over his Father’s fledgling religion, or so he tells Michael on the rare occasion that his brother thinks to question it.

That, more than anything that has happened since Lucifer’s fall, is what hurts the most. Centuries ago, Michael would have been the constant watcher over his shoulder. He would have wanted to know everything that Gabriel was involved with, every message and all the possible trouble he could be getting into. He would be there to offer aid and even comfort. Once… well, once their brother would have been right there with Michael, scoffing and poking and prodding. He would teach Gabriel tricks here and there while Michael was distracted.

Those times are long gone. Michael has gotten so wrapped up in training Raphael on how to be a ‘proper’ Archangel, that he has forgotten that Gabriel was already one. Michael has allowed himself to dwell on their brother’s Fall, and on the destruction of their family. He has turned a blind eye to the damage he has done to the Host while he sits and stews on whatever hateful things Lucifer whispers through the cracks in the Cage. He has allowed those spiteful words to strike all too deeply, and now he can barely see beyond the final battle. No matter how far in the future that may be.

That’s not something that Gabriel really wants to think about. He doesn’t want to consider how many of his younger brothers will die for their pissing contest, either. So he hides; he hides on Earth and guides the new church along the path that Father has set for it.

He’s gotten pretty good at hiding, though any angel with a drop of sense to their name can still find him. All they have to do is reach out for the curious squish-crunch of Grace forced into a form too small for it. Thankfully, most of the non-human entities that populate Earth aren’t quite to versed in feeling out an angel’s Grace; to them, he is Nal. He, or rather she, is one of them. She’s just another pagan looking to make something of herself.

It’s not a hard sell to make when sharing the body with a pagan woman. Laufey has stirred and brushed against his grace every few years since that first year, giving him glimpses of memory and knowledge of how to use her powers. It has helped him to weave the story that has bound them to the Nordic pagans, and has become such a familiar touch that he rarely notices it these days.

He thinks nothing of it when he feels her stir this time. Nothing, that is, until a soundless voice rips through his Grace alongside a memory. The pain that lances through their abdomen is so unexpected that for a second he loses control of the vessel and it crumples to the ground.

“Nal!” it is the impetuous pagan that he has been whispering his father’s secrets to that catches him, hands curling protectively into her tunic. Gabriel can see greatness and power in the future of this nordic pagan, but without using powers far beyond what he has borrow from Laufey, he can’t say just how it comes to be. At the moment he is young and worried, hands shifting nervously to press against her abdomen and then her forehead.

Gabriel laughs slightly, and it is a weak, breathy sound as she pushes him away. “Settle down. I’m alright, it was just an unexpected kick.” The pagan’s brow furrows in confusion, but Laufey’s lips curve into a gentle smile that it had taken Gabriel thirty years to figure out. “Do not worry so, Borson. Nothing is wrong.”

“You are… certain?”

“Of course I am. Odin, if I didn’t know my own body, who else would?” Well, Gabriel supposes that Laufey would kwow the body better than he, and by the tug and pull of his grace it’s obvious that she is up and wants… something. To talk, most likely. It’s not really a conversation that he is looking forwards to, but it is one that needs to happen.

So she claps a hand on Odin’s shoulder, presses a kiss to his forehead, and whispers a blessing in Enochian into his hair. Odin makes a face at the kiss, and Gabriel finds himself laughing again. She braces himself against his shoulder as she lurches back to her feet. “I do believe, however, that it’s a sign that I need to head home. We will continue our discussion another time.”

“Yes, of course.” He’s still young enough that when a mother-figure uses that tone, he does not disagree with her, and it is a tone that Gabriel has forced himself to learn. She flashes another smile at him and flickers away, only going far enough to cover the sound of her wings. A moment later, and she is settling into the Garden; she needs time to commune with her Vessel, and this is the only place that she can think of where she won’t be bothered by angels or pagans or Christians.

He takes an unneeded breath and then pulls up one of Laufey’s oldest memories for them to speak in. It is an ancient palace sitting room, all beautiful Grecian columns and white marble. Gabriel has never seen the long destroyed Palace of the Serenities, but it is obvious that this is where they are. The Earth is a cool blue orb that hangs in the sky over their heads.

“Gabriel.”

He turns to face her, wearing Farbauti’s face once more. Aside from her own, it is the only face of his that she would recognize. “Laufey.”

“Pandeia Serenity,” she corrects softly, looking up at the Earth instead of at him. “You have been Laufey for far long than I ever was.”

He shrugs awkwardly and steps up beside her. Her gaze shifts from the Earth to him for a moment, and her face is strangely blank.

“How long has it been?”

“One hundred and eighty-five years. Give or take.” Even as he is answering her, he realizes that he has never told her his true name, and he turns to ask how she knew. The slap takes him completely by surprise.

“Two centuries, Gabriel? You took my life from me!”

Maybe it’s the heartache caused by Michael and Lucifer. Maybe it’s the pit in his stomach from watching Michael replace their brother with Raphael. Maybe it’s the century of hiding with the humans, or the decades of playing with the pagans. Maybe it’s just a part of Gabriel that was never allowed to flourish in his Father’s House. Whatever the reason, Gabriel grins wickedly as he laughs. “Oh Princess, the deal was that I healed your body and then I got to use it. There was no time limit on it.”

She makes a frustrated little squeak before she visibly collapses in on herself. “I want my life back, angel.”

Gabriel looks away with a frown, his moment of vindictive joviality vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. “Don’t we all.” All he wants is for Michael to open his eyes and see what he’s making Raphael and Anael and Uriel and all of their younger brothers into. He wants Lucifer to ask for forgiveness and come home. He wants to be able to walk through Heaven without thinking of ages long gone.

“I still need a Vessel, Serenity. My job is not yet finished.”

“Why can’t you find someone else? Why does it have to be me?” her voice is plaintive with a note of desperation.

“Because you are the last of your line. No siblings, remember? You have no nieces or nephews that I could move on to.”

“My aunts—”

“Only have half the bloodlines necessary to host an angel of my power, Serenity.”

She is quiet for a long time, and Gabriel has to admit to himself that he would miss being Nal. Her skin has grown comfortable over the decades, and the pagan magics that are available to him through her body are unlike the powers that his Father had given him. A shift to a new Vessel would mean giving all that up.

And he knows that he doesn’t have any right to that power, and that he should give it all up, but at this point he is not sure if he can. He has become addicted to her magic, something that should be impossible for an angel and yet… here he is.

“…I can still bare children.”

It takes a moment for Serenity’s words to filter through, and then the Archangel’s jaw drops. “What?”

Serenity looks rather displeased with her own line of thought, but she continues before Gabriel can get her shock under control. “I am still capable of baring children and continuing the line.”

“You would give up your own child to escape being my Vessel?” Gabriel’s face twists unpleasantly. “If I had had any doubt that you were a pagan—”

“Look,” she interrupts and her voice sounds strained even to her, “Endymion has not been reborn yet. A child of any other union would not be recognized by Mother. It’s… it’s not breaking my vows if they child is produced for a reason outside of continuing the royal line.”

“Except that it goes against that whole free will thing Father gave humanity.”

“The child won’t be human. Not enough to matter in any case. Gabriel. Please.”

“…I need to think about this, Serenity.”

As he slips out of their shared mental landscape, Gabriel is careful not to pay attention to the way his wings quiver. When he opens Laufey’s eyes, he ignores the way her stomach clenches. As he returns to Earth, he pretends her mouth isn’t dry.

This is a temptation he is not sure he can withstand.

Mary’s been bugging me for a couple of days. I should be finishing up Gabriel’s amazing pagan transformation, but here I am writing about the beloved missus Winchester. Le sigh.

Although this is set in the Wrapped Up ‘Verse, this piece is part of my personal head canon for the series and is therefore written without actually mentioning anything that happens in-verse.

prompt: DEATH
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Waiting for the End
characters: Mary Winchester
words: 707
summary: (that which comes after)

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There are a number of ghosts, spirits, and poltergeist who are unable to tell that they are dead; that they are something that doesn’t fit into the living world. This is part of what makes them rage against the living so hard, and it is what makes them dangerous. That dangerous is what gives hunters a reason to hunt. Years ago, Mary Winchester had been a hunter; back when she had been Mary Campbell. She had been a damn good one, too, regardless of how it had all come to an end.

So she knows very well that she’s dead.

She never wanted to leave John and Dean and baby Sammy behind, never wanted her boys to grow up without their mother, or for John to have to learn to live on his own. They may have had their fights, but she loved him deeply.

But Mary is no fool, and she knows that it’s that sort of thinking that creates the ghosts and spirits she’d hunted all her life. She was ready for the Reaper to come and collect, although the Reaper wasn’t quite as ready as she was. Apparently it had expected to have to debate her down in order to get her to cross over.

That was how it was with the vast majority of hunters, and given that most of those died in the line of duty, that didn’t surprise Mary. She’d laughed a little and reached out to take the Reaper’s hand.

The Reaper didn’t get the chance to collect.

Apparently Mary’s ghost wasn’t the only thing left behind by that yellow eyed bastard. The being that was left in his wake was all darkness and malevolence, and apparently capable of possessing an unsuspecting Reaper. Mary couldn’t possibly leave that beast in her home, not with the way it attacked anyone who stepped through the doors. It fed off their fear, their anxiety, and their pain, and with the power of a reaper at it’s finger tips it could cause a lot of damage to it’s targets.

Targets that Mary did her best to shield and protect. Most of them weren’t even aware that there was something in the house with them, chalking up disturbances to problems and damage left by the fire. Even John, was finally let back into the house to collect their surviving belongings, assume that something crashing to the ground where his foot had been moments before was just structural damage. She kind of wanted to smack him upside the head for being so obtuse.

He wasn’t quite as obtuse when he caught a glimpse of her. Their eyes met through a mirror as she threw herself between him and the spirit. She knows that John damn near broke his neck whipping around to try and see her, but she hadn’t learned how to cross over into the physical world that early on. She grappled with the spirit and managed to keep it away from John until he left.

She’s careful to avoid reflective surfaces the next time John comes to the house.

He doesn’t come back a third time.

Mary doesn’t know what happened to her husband after that. She saw cleaning crews for the first few weeks, followed by the police when John turns up missing. He’s taken Sam and Dean with him and run, she learns. She’s kind of grateful for that. It’s hard enough to control the poltergeist around strangers, and she worries that it had been left behind to kill the rest of her family.

She knows that she would over extend herself if they were still here, and then where would they be?

She misses her family dearly, but she’s glad they’re not here. John will take care of them, raise them up right. They’d grow up strong and kind, and maybe they’ll be a little stubborn, but they’d come by that naturally. Both she and John could hold a grudge, after all. Despite that, and despite whatever damage that demon has done to her baby boy, they’ll be good boys. She’s sure of it.

She can feel the poltergeist stirring once again, and she sets herself for battle. She just needs to hold out here until a hunter can come along and rid her of her new companion.

well, I’ve spent two hours working on arts (20 minutes on Sai-Zo, 100 minutes on Jibriel, WIPs to come sometime tomorrow…) I think it’s time to get some Wrapped Up out there.

prompt: BREAKFAST
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Waiting For The End
characters: Usagi, Gabriel
words: 687
summary: (sweets and theology)

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Usagi loves her sweets and treats as much as the next girl, but this is more than a little ridiculous. Actually, it falls under “Absolutely 100%, Grade-A, Capslock Is Most Certainly Necessary, What The Eff Is Wrong With You” ridiculous. Seriously, it’s been two and a half hours and Gabriel is on his twenty-seventh bowl of ice cream. Bubblegum flavoured, this time.

But twenty-seven! Ugh, it just isn’t fair that he doesn’t get brainfreeze!

And he knows it; he’s grinning an ear-to-ear smile and acting as though every single damn bit is a freaking orgasm. Un. Fair.

Her frustration must finally get through that thick skull of his, because when he finishes bowl number twenty-eight he puts down his spoon instead of conjuring more. “Ah, now that is a good breakfast.”

She fumbles for a moment, stumbling over just what it is she’s going to call him before deciding to just not call him anything. “A two hour ice cream binge is not breakfast and oh my god I did not just say that.”

“I’m pretty sure you did, Moonface.” His smirk is tinted in maliciousness, but she doesn’t let that bother her. It’s just kind of his default smirk, and besides. They haven’t seen each other for a few reincarnations, she’ll give him some time to get used to her again. “So what did my favorite human call me out for?”

Usagi has been trying to figure this one out on her own for a month now. It has been a month of restless nights and research. A month of tantrums and fits, a month of brushing off her friends and family and worrying all of them. She’s at her wit’s end, which means the only thing she can do is to go directly to the source.

“Laufey’s memories…” she hesitates to ask, but she really wants to know. She winds up looking down at her hands and fiddling with her ring. “…they don’t feel like they’re my memories. Not the way that Serenity’s do.”

Gabriel’s smile is surprisingly gentle for all that it is still a teasing grin. “You expected them to? Babe, Pandeia’s memories are bound up in your divinity. You’ll never escape them in any life where they wake up, and Usagi’s memories are from this life. I’d be worried if you didn’t feel a connection to those ones. Now Laufey… Laufey’s just a shade of a life a thousand reincarnations gone. Heck, maybe even two thousand. It’s no surprise that you can’t connect to them.”

“But you can still use my body.”

Gabriel’s amusement flickers for a moment, a troubled look entering his eyes before he masks it again. “Apparently.”

“Why? And how?” I might not connect to her memories very well, but I can definitely remember the state that you left her in.” It had featured rather prominently in her nightmares of late; from the blazing heat of sharing a physical form with an archangel, to the impenetrable darkness that Laufey had been unable to dig herself out of afterwards. She had died that way, locked within her own head and unable to interact with the world.

It is a terrible way to die, whether in the here and now, or in the sixth century.

“Why… I don’t know, Usagi.” He is being surprisingly candid with her, though that is likely due only to their long standing connection. “We… the other angels, I mean… we’ve always just assumed that the bloodline is the part that matters the most when it comes to a vessel. Of course, most souls don’t reincarnate back into humans every time they die. The nearest I’ve been able to figure is that your soul remembers my grace.”

Usagi frowns at him, opening her mouth to ask another question. Of course, that would be about the time that her grumbling stomach decides to interrupt. With her face flushing red, Gabriel smirks and snaps his fingers.

The table is cleared of the debris of his frozen treat breakfast, though it’s certainly not empty. Oh no, now there are cakes of all different shapes, sizes, and flavours scattered across it.

“Let’s finished breakfast before we get into the heavy-duty stuff, babe.”

haha oh man. Why do I keep writing Perdition drabbles? Ah well…

prompt: FAMILY
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Paved With Good Intentions
characters: Sam/Jess, Gabriel
words: 654
summary: (family is more than blood)

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Sam and Jessica have only been ‘officially’ dating for about a month when Jessica had to break their plans for the evening. She looks annoyed and frustated, but it melts into a weak smile when he asks her why.

“A… cousin of mine is in town. He wants to play catch up.”

“Cousin?” the hesitation might have been slight, but it was obvious to someone who has spent so much time trying to weasel information on things that go bump in the night out of reluctant witnesses. There’s something more there, something that she doesn’t want to talk about, and for a moment his instincts scream at him to dig and pick at it, to find out what it is. Then her hand settles lightly on his shoulder and he reminds himself that he’s a normal guy now.

He doesn’t have to dig or snoop for clues, especially not into his girlfriend’s life. There’s nothing supernatural or freaky about her, and he does his best to keep it all away from her. If she doesn’t like her cousin, it’s more than likely for some mundane reason.

“Ray is…” she huffs out a laugh that sounds more pained than amused at the thought of her cousin. “Well, he thinks he’s funny. He plays all of these nasty little jokes and pranks and people tend to get hurt in the aftermath. It’s just… I don’t want to throw you to the dogs without a three day briefing, at the least.”

Sam has to laugh at that. “No one is that bad, Jess.”

“Ray is.” She’s being unusually firm about this as her gaze moves to stare over his shoulder. Sam starts to turn to see what it is that she’s looking at, but her nails dig into his arm and he stops. He’s already turned enough that he can see someone out of the corner of his eye, standing maybe twenty feet away.

Jessica sighs and lets go of his arm. Sam takes this as permission to finish turning and take a good look at the man; he places his age around the mid-thirties, and it’s obvious even at a distance that he’s quite a bit shorter than either Jess or himself. His face is curiously blank of expression, though it’s fairly obvious to Sam that they’re being studied in return.

“That would be Ray,” Jess admits with a wry twist of her lips. “I should go distract him from whatever trick he’s plotting out right now. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Of course,” he can’t say no to her smile, even if her cousin has completely ruined their plans for the evening. Just because his relationship with his family has gone down the drain doesn’t mean that he’ll demand that Jessica breaks off her familial connections. That’s not his place to decide.

As Jessica pulls the shorter man into a hug, Sam doesn’t bother to deny the sharp pang of jealousy or the wish that things were better with Dean. It’s been over a year, but he’s still angry and bitter about Dad’s reaction to his decision; he doesn’t really want to try and fix things with him. Fixing things with Dean would mean calling his brother, and the last time they’d talked it had only driven home just how much he didn’t fit into the Winchester mold.

All he had wanted to so was celebrate his grades (top of the class! Can you believe that?) but he hadn’t even been able to get the news out before Dean had asked if he’d come to his senses yet. If he was going to finally come home and leave ‘all that junk’ behind. The call had ended in a shouting match and Sam had absolutely zero desire for a repeat performance.

He didn’t need family that wouldn’t support him; not when he had Jess and Brady and the rest of his friends. So he boxed away his jealousy and started back to his room.

He had reservations to reschedule.

prompt: INTRODUCTIONS
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Paved With Good Intentions
characters: Sam, Jessica, Brady
words: 433
summary: (First meetings can be unexpected)

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It takes a month and a half of whining and wheedling for Sam to cave to Brady. He’s actually pretty proud of himself for this, as there is only so long a person can stand to listen to the hard partying loudmouth bitch and moan, and Sam has lasted longer than most of their mutual friends. It’s cold comfort to take with him when he finds himself ducking into a bar behind his friend at a quarter to midnight.

He still caved, after all; caved and was dragged off for a night of karaoke. The laughter that’s ringing in the back of his head right now? That’s Dean’s. This is definitely one of those stories he is not going to tell his brother about. Ever.

Karaoke might be one of those normal guy in a normal life situations, but it had never factored into his own normal life plans. The upside was that it was a sports bar, and he could alw—

“TYSON!”

Sam is a pretty smart guy. He gets good grades and tends to breeze through the requirements to keep his scholarship going. It still takes the shouting woman actually jumping on Brady for him to connect the name. There are few people that call his friend by his given name, and Sam had almost forgotten that Brady wasn’t it.

“You are late!”

“Not by much,” Brady grins widely, and it’s all teeth. The blond woman wrapped around him leans back and Sam is embarrassed to discover that it’s his favorite stranger.

“Two hours, Tyson. That is a whole lot of late!”

A distant part of Sam’s brain takes note that she’s pretty even when she’s mad, though most of it is caught up in her wide eyes and red cheeks. He might not have the same level of experience at cataloging the tells that his brother does, but the slight slur to her words and the way she’s swaying is enough to tell him that she’s started drinking without them.

He really shouldn’t find that cute, but like everything else he’s ever noticed about her, he totally does.

Brady hasn’t lost an inch of his grin; if anything it’s gotten wider. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and then swings them around so that she can see Sam. The heat in his face makes it pretty obvious that he’s blushing, and he’s hoping like hell that between the drinks and the lighting, she doesn’t notice. He’s not prepared to meet the girl that’s been on his mind for over a year, but that’s taken out of his hands now.

“Rabbit, this is Sam. Sam, this is Jessica.”

Last one of the sequence I wanted to post tonight. Between this one and the last one, you finally get that explanation for the whole Usagi = Jessica thing.

prompt: CHEAT
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Paved With Good Intentions
characters: Usagi (Jessica)
words: 187
summary: (Americanizing a Princess)

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Halloween comes and goes before Usagi decides that she is going to Americanize her name. There are still so many people who can’t seem to pronounce her birth name correctly and she’s getting sick and tired of it. Logically, she decides to go with “Bunny”.

Illogically, it seems that everyone else has decided to start calling her “Jessica” instead, even her professors.

Her suspect list begins and ends with Gabriel; every attempt to correct someone on her name results in her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. She’s not all that impressed with him, though she privately admits that she’s impressed with the sheer scope of it. Everyone calls her Jessica now, even the staff at an off-campus restaurant she frequents.

It takes a few weeks to get used to being called Jess, of course, but by the time that thanksgiving rolls around it’s just another odd facet of her life. For all intents and purposes, she is and has always been Jessica Tsukino, to everyone but Brady.

It comes as a relief to not be Usagi anymore.

(She’s still going to hurt Gabriel then next time she sees him)

And the second one for tonight. There’s actually one between the one I posted earlier and this one, but it’s not all that essential and I’m tweaking it to make it more worthy of actually being part of this universe.

prompt: TOO MUCH
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Paved With Good Intentions
characters: Usagi, Brady, Gabriel
words: 541
summary: (Stepping towards Jessica)

———————————————

“I don’t like it.”

She looks wrong. She has made a lot of changes over the last few months, but she hasn’t really taken the time to look at herself to catalog them. In all honesty, she had been afraid to; afraid that she would be able to see the sadness and loneliness and heartbreak. That she would never be able to move on past the part of her soul that had been Mamoru and Chibi-Usa and everything that should have been.

That was before she found out that she had jumped to conclusions. After that, she couldn’t look at herself because she knew that the guilt eating away at her insides would show on her face. She had felt so bad about starting to get on with her life over something so stupid, and then worse when she realized she couldn’t go back to the way she had been.

She tugs on a strand of hair and scowls at her reflection. The hair that frames her face is now cherry red, and she has taken her colored contacts out. The only glimpse of the girl she’d seen in the mirror for a decade is in the shape of her face; there is nothing there that looks of Serenity.

Like this, she resembles Beryl more than her past self, and it is more than a little unnerving. It makes her skin crawl. So she can’t be blamed for the shriek when another face appears in the mirror over her shoulder.

The Trickster laughs uproariously as he dodges out from under her flailing arms. “Oh I dunno babe. I think you’d make a smoking hot Jessica Rabbit like this.

Before she has a chance to ask just what the hell he thinks he’s doing in her dorm room, Brady’s voice comes from the doorway. “Sorry Rabbit, this guy just kinda charged past me into th— holy hell what happened to your hair?”

“It’s temporary,” she insists, turning back to her mirror to try and find at least something to enjoy from the change. She can’t. “I don’t like it.”

“Oh c’mon, cousin! Live a little!” her unwanted guest actually has the balls to grin at her, and so she ignores him out of sheer spite.

“You guys are cousins?” Brady doesn’t recall Usagi mentioning any American relatives at any point. This strikes him as odd, considering he’d gotten quite the earful about a spontaneously appearing cousin a few years back, and the fanatical search into all her relatives that had followed.

“Distantly,” his smile is wide and innocent. “By marriage. Name’s Ray. You are…?”

“Tyson Brady.” And just like that, Gabriel has slipped himself back into her life. The Princess scowls at him, but he ignores it with the ease of long practice.

“I was being serious about that Jessica Rabbit thing, Usa.”

Given the way that Brady is tilting her head, she knows that he’s going to agree even before he says the words. “You know, Ray’s right. You gotta stay red until at least Halloween. It even fits with your name.”

Usagi stares blankly at the pair for a long moment, before she covers her face with one hand. “I don’t even know who Jessica Rabbit is.”

The almost vicious smile on Gabriel’s face says quite plainly that that doesn’t actually matter.

wrote some more chunks of Perdition today. So you get some pieces of Paved! Huzzah. I should really finish the Laufey sequence of Waiting, but… nah. Writing things in chronological sequence is boring.

Wow. Until I typed this up I didn’t realize how many tense changes was in this piece. Fantastic.

prompt: FOOD
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Paved With Good Intentions
characters: Usagi, Brady
words: 931
summary: (An overdue discussion. And dessert)

———————————————

“You can have one or the other, but not both.” Brady’s voice is teasing as he sets the pair of paper plates on the table between them with a flourish. Her head is still down, and there is a faint trembling to her shoulders that he takes as laughter as she leans forwards to claim the strawberry shortcake. His answering grin is appreciative and amused, and he starts in on the piece of blueberry pie he’d grabbed for himself. That was always the way, of course: Brady would bring a slice of cake and whatever dessert had caught his fancy that day, and Usagi would always pick the cake. Her sweet tooth was delightfully predictable that way.

He’s taken a full three bites of his pie before he realizes that she isn’t even pretending to eat her cake. “Rabbit?”

She’s still got her head down, her hair falling in a curtain to hide her face as she curls herself around her plate. Her fingers flex randomly on the fork, like she’s not sure what she really wants to do with it. When she finally looks up at him, her eyes are puffy and her face is splotchy and red with tears. For a tense moment, Brady’s brain short circuits and all he wants is for one of her cheerleader friends to show up and deal with this instead of him.

But no, that would be too much to ask for, and he’s left by himself to try to navigate his friend’s emotions and put all her pieces back together. “What happened?”

“Mamoru…” is all she manages to get out before she starts sniffling again, fingers pressing into the corners of her eyes like that will stop the tears from coming.

Brady’s jaw tenses and his expression darkens into a scowl. “What did he do now?”

Usagi shakes her head, looking back down at her hands. She twists her fork almost to the verge of breaking. “He didn’t do anything, Tyson.”

“So this is… what, because he walked past you or something?” Brady may have known the girl for more than a decade, but he doesn’t think that he will ever reall understand the strange paths her mind took.

“No… No. We just… talked.”

“About what?” he really wants to end the question with ‘how he’s a cheating scumbag?’, but he has long since learned that holding his tongue when it came to Mamoru Chiba tended to result in far less tears and running make-up.

Of course, now would be the time that Usagi has picked up telepathy, as her answer is: “He didn’t cheat on me.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Brady drops his fork onto his pie and makes a T for ‘timeout’ with his hands. “You saw him.”

“It was a misunderstanding,” she sniffles, and he wants to ask how having his tongue in another girl’s mouth is a misunderstanding, but she’s continuing before he can be indignant on her behalf. “She kissed him just that once. I… I didn’t stay long enough to see him push her away.”

Mamoru may not have actually said that he’d done so, but she still believes whole heartedly in him and their love. Brady, on the other hand, isn’t convinced. In fact, if the expression on his face was anything to go by, he was the exact opposite of convinced. “Please tell me that you didn’t take him back.”

“No.” At this, Brady feels the first definable spark of relief. “He hurt me too much this time for me to just brush it all away again, Tyson.”

Brady frowns, but once again bites his tongue. There’s an argument to be had here, but it’s one they’ve had in their mid-teens, and there isn’t really a reason to bring it all up again now that it seems she’s actually following his advice. Five years may have been a long time, but it was better late than never, he figures.

“So you’ve gone an officially dumped him, then?”

“It’s more…” she pauses for a moment, expression twisting before she slips into Japanese. She’s still far better at articulating herself in her native tongue than in English. “We’re… on pause, I guess. I need to find myself before we pick up.”

“How long will that take?” his response is in English. He’s perfectly capable of responding in Japanese, he just doesn’t want to. The way he sees it, Japanese is Usagi’s language, and she doesn’t want to be Usagi.

“I don’t know…” she bites her lip. “Tyson, what if he finds someone else?”

“What if you do?”

“What?”

Brady leans across the table. “Now I’m not saying you go out and find yourself a new guy. What I’m saying is that if you find yourself falling in love while finding yourself, don’t cling to Mamoru’s memory, okay?”

“But…”

“Look, nothing is set in stone, okay? Least of all who you’re allowed to be with, Miss Rabbit.”

A strange look crosses her face then, a twisted sort of realization followed by pained determination. Brady smiles as she switches her grip on her fork and digs into the cake. He watches her take a couple bites before he goes to pick up his fork and sees his watch.

“Crap. I’m going to be late. You alright by yourself? I can skip if—”

“I’ll be fine, go to class. I just… need to think, okay?”

“If you’re sure…”

“I am.” He searches her face for any lingering doubt, but all he finds is a sad little smile. It doesn’t reassure him very much, but despite what he said, he can’t really skip this class. He hefts his bag back onto his shoulder and turns to leave.

“Tyson?”

“Yeah, Rabbit?”

“Can I have the rest of your pie?”

Welp, I’m awake and caught up on tumblr… so lets throw down some more Wrapped Up. And then I need to finish the piece for OSI tonight. Apparently it’s due at midnight Sasktime.

prompt: DEALS
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Waiting for the End
characters: Chibi-usa
words: 1518
summary: (It’s always been about time)

———————————————

Half a century ago, she bartered away the magic and power that was hers by right of birth, and in doing so bound herself to the mortal plane and a mortal life. The terms of the deal meant that she would be sealed within time, assured against the destruction of her own personal history and being wiped from existence. There were other side effects to the deal, however.

Forty-nine years ago, she discovered that without her power, without her divinity, the Key that had been her companion through so much would no longer allow her to step outside of the timeline. She could not step sideways through time, only forwards and back, and even then that was limited. She could only go backwards through the timeline she now existed on, and forwards only so far as she had lived in this century. She could not go home, and she could not return to Castle Charon and her great libraries.

She was all but mortal now, only the barest whispers of her power clinging in the color of her hair and eyes, and that was not enough to grant her access to the castle. No mortal had ever stepped within the bounds of Castle Charon, and now all her research, all her possibilities, everything that she could have done was lost to her.

Forty-seven years ago, she caved to her rage and bitterness, to the darkness growing in the gap her divinity left, and she made another deal. This time she wanted knowledge and power, magic, texts, anything that she could use to brute force her way into the future to fix her mother’s mistakes. Whatever it was that mother did, once she was back on the correct path, then the ripples meant that she would never have to sell her divinity, and this timeline would cease to exist. She would go back to the girl she had been.

The power that she dealt for was only a fraction of the strength of the greatness that had once been hers. Where once that power had been moonlight bright, the reflection of the sun’s strength tempered down to manageable levels, not there was only the icy cold fingers of a winter’s night to sustain her. She wrapped herself in it, uncaring of the damage it did to her being, only caring that she could use it.

The deal had seemed like such a bargain when compared to the earlier deal with Crowley. Tamar had offered her ten years of magic and knowledge for her soul, and she had believed with all the arrogance of thousand years as the only Heir of a Goddess Queen that it would be a simple task to figure out what had happened. Her mother was a simple woman before her ascension, so it would be a matter of days to use her new power to fix whatever she had done.

After that, well. It wouldn’t take much more power to force herself back into the time after the Rebirth, where demons had been wiped out and there would be no one left to collect on her soul. She would assimilate the new memories of the timeline, as she had done in the times before where she had changed history.

Only… it didn’t quite work out that way.

She could force herself further forwards along the timeline, yes, but if she went beyond the ten year limit of her contract the Hell hounds would come for her. She could hear the baying and howling of the hounds coming for miles, and luck was with her that she always had enough time to fling herself back into history before they arrived.

Still, she couldn’t get back to Castle Charon; it was apparently warded against darkness and evil, and as that was the source of her new powers, it was warded against her as well. She was locked out and incapable of using the greatest resources in history to find a way out of her foolishness.

Though it had seemed like a long time when the deal was made, ten years passed in the blink of an eye. How strange a mortal life was, that she would forget how short a decade was when three years without her divinity had seemed like an eternity. She had spent much of her time locked in studies of magic and witchcraft. Those times where she left her studies were only to search out contacts and other methods of research, all in the name of fixing whatever it was her mother had done.

The night that the Hell hounds came for her almost came as a surprise. It couldn’t, not truly, not when she had been counting down the days, but it was upon her before she considered herself prepared. She didn’t have a way out of the contract, not yet, but she did have a way to… extend it a bit.

She used the Key and threw herself backwards once again. Not to any point within the contract period, as that would be tempting things too much. No, this time she went a century before her first deal was made with the hope that this would give her the time she needed. Time to contemplate and study, to think and remember on lessons long faded and magic nearly forgotten. She only spent a handful of years in that period before she could hear the howls and again she went back.

Any time that the hounds were let loose for some other poor soul, she could hear them. She knew that they would come for her if their master or mistress didn’t call them back immediately, and it built a terrifying panic in her. It became all but instinct to throw herself further backwards in time at the first faint howls.

She just needed a little more time, that’s all. Just a little bit, so that she could figure out how to escape the hounds and the deal, figure out how to fix the mistakes her mother made that led her down this path. Though as the years crawled on in this terrible hunt, it became more about her own survival than about anything upstream.

She made a mistake. There is, after all, only so long one can run before one’s luck runs out, and as her mortal body grew older and frailer it became harder for her to escape. When she jumped from the early fifteenth century into the middle of the fourteenth, she was a crone of sixty-five, and had nearly lost her legs to the beasts that had burst into her cloister. She hadn’t had the time necessary to guide the time magic to some place safe.

Not that she understood the danger that she’d placed herself in; the fourteenth century was a period of time all but lost to her people. In all honesty, there was little that remained of any century before Lucifer’s rise, and so she did not know of the Black Death. She did not know of the plague that would kill millions.

In this, she made another mistake. She was an old woman now, not expected to live much longer even without the hounds at her heels. So she grew close to the people she settled in with. She taught them, she celebrated with them, she loved them, and she allowed herself to connect in ways that she hadn’t done since the year her contract came due.

She made friends. Friends who began to die from disease and plague.

She was something of a miracle worker in the village, her focus on them intense in a way that she had not been in decades. She forced her demonic magics into the patterns she had long ago learned for healing, half forgotten memories of her mother’s guiding hands and soft voice. She had almost forgotten the woman who had raised her in her hatred for the woman who’s mistakes had caused her to destroy herself.

She didn’t hear the Hell hounds this time. Their voices were hidden by the wailing and screaming of the bereaved, and by the blood that pounded in her ears as she forced herself and her magic to the limits. She was trying, dear lord how she was trying, to make up for all the evil she had done, all the hate she had spread.

It had been clear to her, in the moment that she allowed Wise Man’s magic to slip into the cracks of her soul, that she would come to a bad end. She wasn’t quite sure how it was that she had forgotten it in the years since then, but she had. All that had saved her back then was her mother’s love, and Serenity’s believe in forgiveness. She had forgiven. She had saved. She had healed.

As much as she had tried for this one village, Small Lady would never be able to reach that level of light and love and trust with her divinity gone. She wouldn’t be given the chance to even retrieve her birthright, not with her soul turned black and the hell hounds at the door.

She didn’t have the time any more.

Her door shattered inwards.

Second one for the night. And last, I think. I need to sleep so I am well rested for job hunting tomorrow. Ugh.

prompt: STEPS
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Waiting for the End
characters: Chibi-usa, Crowley
words: 718
summary: (It’s not his first deal)

———————————————

This is hardly his first deal as a crossroads demon, but it is close. His fourth deal sees him summoned to an ancient and lonely crossing of paths in the far north of Scotland. He has yet to collect even one of the deals he’s made, and so he has little power of his own to call upon; he can feel the watchful eyes of his “sponsor” in the darkness behind him, an ever careful eye to ensure he does not steal any of her power for his own. After all, it will be her power that will actually make the deal, even if it his name on the contract. He is not yet strong enough to grant anything bu the most minor of arrangements.

Settling into the feel of his meat suit, he takes a moment of inspect this new supplicant. She is kneeling on the ground, long hair spilling in thick waves from the two tails it has been pulled up in. It is a strange color under the moonlight, pale but not in the way blond hair would be… given the local, he guesses it’s a pale shade of red, though he’s never seen any quite that light. The girl is ten years or so, no older than twelve, and wasn’t that a treat.

Children had always been so much easier to trick, even when he’d been a mortal man.

“Hello child.”

It is when she turns that he realizes that this is so much more than just easy pickings. This is truly a special occasion, one where he had a chance to break the bonds that tie him to his sponsor in one move; the child is not human. He can’t feel the power that is locked tightly within her, but he can see it in her ruby red eyes. Darkness curls around her ancient being, and he can see enough of it that it makes his sponsor look like a newborn pup.

Before anything else can be said, she flickers. The child, with her power and age and darkness is gone, disappeared into the form of a woman of some twenty years. Her cheeks are splotchy with tears, and her eyes reflect nothing but desperation. She opens her mouth as though to beg, her hangs reaching outwards… and then it is the Pagan child who’s fingers curl around his meat suit’s wrists.

“I need your help,” her voice fluctuates and fractures, changing with her shape. For a moment she is the girl, and the next she is the woman.

“That’s why I’m here,” his voice isn’t quite as smooth and cultured as he had been aiming for. The longing and desire for her power has turned his words husky and low, but he can work with that.

The woman’s eyes narrow, but the girl smiles bright and widely. The reactions are too different to be the same person, and it comes to him rather abruptly. This isn’t just a crossing of roads, but a crossing of fate. The human woman and the Pagan child are occupying the same time and place, but they are most assuredly not the same soul. However it is possible, the Pagan is being erased; but someone needs to be here to call upon the crossroads, and so the woman has found herself in on the path of witchcraft.

Whatever manipulations are at work here, now that he has a chance to make a deal with a Pagan, he isn’t going to settle for anything less. He will have to work fast, of course, before the child can be completely destroyed.

“I don’t know how—” the child’s voice is echoed by “I need to know how—” in the woman’s voice.

“I can’t anchor myself!” says the child, and the woman wails: “I can’t watch her die!”

“I need time to figure out what mother did!” there is harshness born of frustration in the child’s voice, and of love in the woman’s plea: “I need time to find out how to cure her!”

“I can give you time,” he purrs, leashing his desire and his hunger as best he can. “But I need something in return. Just a small payment, you’ll like as not even know it’s gone.”

“Anything,” the voices twin together in twisted harmony, and Crowley smiles cold and cruel.

“All I want, little Goddess, is your divinity.”