* HADES

Hades Falconer-Quinn. Thirty Three Years Old. Auror Corporal. Central Squad. "Soldier, Take your time. No one said the words all have to rhyme." POINTS: 505 Active Cases: –– Ghost Sightings in Galveston –– Spooky Happenings at the Piggly Wiggly

[hfalconerquinn]

aurormonday​:

His smirk widens at the mention of Cypress. Jack was far from an exceptionally observant person, but one would have to be blind not to see something had clearly transpired between HQ and the squad’s resident ghost whisperer in the last couple months. He’s happy that they found each other, and even though HQ’s and April’s abilities weren’t exactly the same, but shared a common trait, it gives him some hope for her too. That her path in life didn’t have to necessarily follow the same one his mother took, but something much more happier in the form of HQ’s. 

“I usually do too, but Rory has been weirdly pretty kind with the ones they’ve given me lately,” he replies as he takes a second to look down at his new body. It was pretty hard to beat “Bobby Thursday”, the reporter he played with Marleigh back in Oklahoma, but this “Sam Friday” character Rory had manufactured for him was a pretty close second to the best concealments he’d had. 

When HQ leaves to briefly change into his own concealment, Jack stays behind to get a better lay of the land. The Piggly Wiggly looked about the same as every other low budget supermarket he’d ever seen. The store’s windows were plastered with signs displaying that week’s steals and deals, and the motorized pony that sat out front, promising children a ride for the price of a dime, had a cardboard sign on it that looked about two weeks old, informing those nearby it was out of order. 

When HQ does return, sporting a new body that vibe wise seemed so drastically different than his own, Jack can’t help but let out another small laugh. “So I guess I’m still the brawn of this duo then,” he teases, “don’t worry, if any mean teenagers show up to steal your lunch money, I’ll kick their asses for you.” 

Going by the whole alien thing HQ had started out with, and his new look in general, Jack quickly assumes that between the two of them, Sam Friday was probably the skeptic. Which sure, he could definitely do. If he had to guess from the case file alone, these hauntings seemed more human caused than actual poltergeist derived, but he figured that was the whole point of this investigation anyway. To see just where the truth lied despite the fiction. 

“Well, boss, how do you want to play this?” he asks. “You wanna find that manager, or just see who we run into first?” 

Concealments were strange, and Hades always felt strange wearing them. That hadn’t been a class he actually excelled in in the Academy, but Rory was a master at their work, and it all seemed to come together well in the end after many years of practice at the art. It always felt like someone elses skin, like he didn’t have the same walls and same defenses, like he couldn’t wear the clothes that he used sometimes like armor. It had taken Hades a long time to become really comfortable in his own body, to find just the right way to do things so that he could please himself and escape the uncomfortable edge that had so often lingered underneath his skin, digging in to his bones and telling him that he was wrong. There was nothing about this shape in particular that should make him feel strange, or wrong, or less than himself. But its the general sensation of a difference that unsettles something in him. Still, he smiles at Jack, and its a bright and wonderful thing. Their faces don’t matter, only that its them. He’s still Hades and Jack is still Jack, and they’re going to work this case together and see it through to the end. 

He rolls his eyes slightly, but feels a rush of warmth. Jack beating up his bullies for him would be a sight to behold. “I’m rather scrappy, I’ll have you know. Hector Hawking bends for no man. Not when his lunch money is at stake.” A silly joke, to pass the time as he considers where to go from here, glancing up at the convenience store and thinking about it.

In all truth, he didn’t think it was aliens. He didn’t even think it was ghosts. His famed instincts didn’t tingle when he considered either of those options. The strange goings on inside the store could be explained in a hundred different ways, but Hades would put money on the idea that it was some kind of prank, people fooling around or trying to make a show of things. People did love a ghost story, people did love to bring attention to places that should go forgotten.

And Hades is almost surprised at the question, when Jack asks it. He’s never been one to put too much thought into who was the lead and who was assisting, isn’t the kind of person who needs to be listened to or give all the directions. He’s always thought that half the people assisting him were probably more qualified to lead themselves, probably more competent at their jobs than he would ever be. But Hades was good at the fluff cases, and this kind of seemed like a fluff case. 

He shrugs a shoulder, bright and cheery. “I’m in a winging it kind of mood. Let’s just see who’s home, and go from there.” He says, as he starts toward the shop, grabbing the door and pulling it open. He holds it for Jack to go through first, a natural thing to do. And then he follows inside, glancing around the store as he enters to get a better look at it. 

[hfalconerquinn]

ignatiusyaxley​:

There’s not really much of anything to do about the nerves, he’s well aware. Even if he knows logically there’s probably no reason to worry––all of the interactions they’ve had before now have been good, which is saying something since a lot of people on the squad, at least before, were not particularly happy about having him around––it’s impossible not to worry just a little. There’s the normal concern about wanting the most important person in Athena’s life to like him, and to want him to be in Athena’s life too, yes, but there’s an added thing here of the foreign concept that is dating a twin. It’s a different beast entirely, and one that he hopes he can handle well enough, but then, in a way, Athena’s in a similar situation, Ignatius coming as a package deal with Emerson.

So there’s some comfort there, knowing that it’s a two way street, in a way, even if he’s not quite as confident in his ability not to fuck things up with a grown adult, over his ability to make sure a six year old likes his new girlfriend.

But the good news here is that Hades is smiling as he sits down, he does a little wiggle as he looks at the treats waiting for him, and maybe buttering up an adult really isn’t all that different than buttering up a six year old, after all. At least at a starting point. Quickly enough, he gives him that look, a look that he can very easily take a brother sizing up the man who nearly broke his sister’s heart, and is now dating her. That’s the real concern, here, the before part, because he knows that Athena probably talked all about that with him, probably got his advice on it, too. So the task ahead of him is assuring him he will never make Athena feel like that again, and assuring him that he’ll be very, very good, to boot.

Ignatius nods slowly, puts his hands around his cup of tea, out of habit, something to do with his hands to keep him from fiddling with things. Because this isn’t going to be a brotherly interrogation the likes of which he experienced with Travers, and there’s comfort there, in the way Hades looks like he’s already amused by the whole situation. That makes him breathe a little easier. “A thing or two to discuss, yeah, I think so,” he says, cocking his head to the side, mock thoughtfully. He figures a little teasing wouldn’t hurt. “I want to be absolute certain that you’re not going to break Crow’s heart. That’s what we’re here to talk about, right?”

.

He can tell -- in that way that he always can, that Ignatius is just a little bit nervous about this. Not overwhelmingly so, not in any way that would actually make Hades think less of him. No. He seems to be vaguely nervous in exactly the way that he should be. Because he should want this to go well. He should want HQ to like him, to approve of whatever was going on between him and Athena. It’s good that he’s anxious to be in Hades’ good graces, but HQ is equally glad that he isn’t actually fretting about it too much. They’ve got time to smooth out any rough areas, time to talk it through and time to put an end to this frankly embarrassing case. Hades has his own quiet doubts about it all, about what happened on Valentines day, about Ignatius being a man who had made Athena cry. But he doesn’t hold grudges, usually, and if they can make this work and be happy, Hades would like to support them in that. 

He lets out a bright laugh at Ignatius’ soft teasing, because he’ll never be the kind of man who can actually pull of a scary serious brother act, and so he had never even tried it. He likes that Ignatius is lighthearted about it all, in honesty. It’s nice to know that Athena is dating someone who can make him laugh, who can get in on the joke ahead of anyone else, diffuse the situation with a little comment that will easily make people smile. He allows the smile that spreads across his face. 

“Just so,” he says, a light and lilting thing. “But I promise that my intentions are purely honorable, with our dear Cypress.” He means it, so its easy to say. Cypress has been a bright spot in his life, ever since they started speaking to one another. A crush that hit hard, a love that bloomed too quickly, and Athena had taken it all in stride, had accepted him in like it was something easy to do. Every time he saw the two of them talking, even causal little things, he felt bright and hopeful for the life that they might all share someday. He imagines that Athena will feel the same, when Hades gets his hooks into Ignatius and forces the poor sap into friendship with him. “I’m in it for the long game, so if anyone stands to get their heart broken, it’s probably me.” He arches an eyebrow, then, a slightly pointed thing. “Us Falconer-Quinns are like that, you know? We tend to go all-in at a moments notice, if you can catch our attention. And our hearts break very easily.” 

He takes a sip of his coffee, perfect and slightly chocolaty, something decadent. He’s glad that Ignatius knew what he wanted, charmed that he must have asked someone to find it all out. He wonders again if it was Athena or Marleigh that he got his information from. “You know,” he says, slow and sounding terribly fond despite himself. “I did promise Athena that I wasn’t going to give you the shovel talk. And I don’t really mean to. But I think it should be said, just this once, that If you ever pull any bullshit that makes her cry again, I’ll make you pay for it.”

[hfalconerquinn]

cypresscrow​:

He’s grateful, for HQ’s hand in his, steadying and firm, reassuring, not going anywhere. He hates this, hates the suggestion, hates that it’s right, hates that the answer is that this is all one Pandora’s box he may never be able to put the lid back one, one good thing—solving the case—amidst all the bad, all the dark that could come with this. Instincts or no instincts, he knows in his gut that even if he can find it in himself to let his walls down, doing it is going to change something in him, something deep and fundamental, something at the very foundation of him, change it irrevocably, change it in a way that might just change everything else around him, too. 

He feels like he’s been living as a coin, flipping in the air, sometimes heads up sometimes tails, sometimes the warm, mild-mannered Cypress he tries to be, the one HQ likes so much, the one HQ wants to buy hot chocolate for and hold hands with and kiss, so gently, and look at with that warmth and fondness in his eyes, and the one he is when the ghosts get to him, when he’s exhausted and at wit’s end, temperamental and selfish and angry and breaking apart at the seems, the one that had driven such a wedge between himself and Abel all those years ago, always half a second away from snapping. He feels like this is the moment the coin hits the ground, finally, and one side has to come up and stay there, feels like it’s a coin toss between whether letting his guard down means he’ll be able to be someone HQ can still like, or if he’ll be stuck, forever, being the side of himself he can’t stand to be, the side he’s always trying his best to avoid. 

But, as much as he hates to admit it, he doesn’t have a choice. 

The coin is going to land, eventually, no matter how long he’s staved it off. And if he’s going to let it, he might as well catch a serial killer while he’s at it. He might as well do it early enough that HQ won’t feel bad, if it turns out Cypress ends up being someone he could never love. He might as well get it over with, before he gets too comfortable—because this is the first time he’s felt comfortable in a long time, having friends, real friends, a job he’s learning to be better at, things to care about and things to fight for. It would only be a let down, to let any of that go any further, knowing there’s no way any of it can last unless he finally faces this.

     “You’re right,” he says, and he hates the way his voice shakes as he says it, hates the way it breaks a little bit, hates feeling like he’s thirteen again, hates the way he feels like he might cry, here in Professor Magnolius’ office, like nothing’s changed in twenty five years. “I’ll—I’ll try again, see what happens.”

He doesn’t feel any better than he did when they got here. In fact, he feels much, much worse as he stands up, shakes Magnolius’ hand again and gets ready to go. Back to the amusement pier, back to the ghosts. It’s still early, but he thinks maybe it’s a good idea to try it when the place isn’t crowded yet, people still on the beach instead of riding rides. The ghosts might not be visible during the day, but he knows where Vivienne is, now, and maybe it will be easier to hear her when he can’t see her, too.

     “Cypress,” Magnolius says, voice gently, before Cypress goes. “If… if you need anything else, you know where to find me, alright? My door’s always open.” And he sounds so achingly sincere, he always has. He’s always cared about Cypress, he knows, in a way that makes Cypress wish he’d never let him down. So he nods, tries for a smile, and then turns to see if HQ is ready to go. 

If anything could break HQ’s heart somehow, it would be the way that Cypress’ talks through the slight shake in his voice, at the idea of giving in to this plan, giving in to the ghostly voices that plague him day after day. Hades doesn’t like the idea of letting these dark figures and dark feelings traverse through Cypress’ head unchecked. It’s such a precious thing, Cypress’ mind, his softness and his charm and the way that Hades feels about him, the way the love keeps blooming more and more inside his chest, more powerful with every passing moment, with every passing day and every passing glance. He wishes again that he could smoothe away all the pain and all the fear that crowd in Cypress’ mind. But all he can do is help him moving forward, be a strong figure to help them on their way into the abyss, and try to pull them out again if things get hard, if the darkness seems too crowded in to get out of again. 

HQ maintains his quiet, lets them speak and lets Cypress rise from his seat, keeps careful eyes on him as he shakes Professor Magnolius’ hand and says his goodbies. Magnolius’ voice is gentle, when he speaks of his door always being open, and HQ thinks for a moment that that tone of voice was exactly why he liked the man so much when he was at school. These had been rooms where he always felt welcome, where the world was exciting and big and full of so many different possibilities, where passion had gotten him further than any real talent in magic would have.

He considers saying something, but limits himself to a warm goodbye. He takes Cypress’ hand as they leave again, as they make their way out of the school and back into the wider world, the one they’ve both inhabited for such a long time now. They make their way together, back to the Peir, both understanding that doing this earlier was probably better than doing it later, with all the world around to watch them. HQ apparates them to a spot nearby, and they make their way in to the park, much quieter now in the light of day than it had been when they were looking at the ghosts the night before. 

HQ stops Cypress a few feet away from where they had first seen Vivienne, and rests his hands on Cypress’ shoulders again. “You’re okay with this?” He asks, because he has to be sure, he has to know that this is the best if not only option. “Because if its a place you don’t want to go, we can find another way. There are always other answers.” His voice is soft, gentle. It’s the kind of thing that can only be genuine, can only imply that he means what he says. There’s no pressure here, not on his part at the very least. He won’t be the person who pushes Cypress in to this, who doesn’t give him the other options that he should be allowed to have. 

[hfalconerquinn]

ignatiusyaxley​:

midmorning, a nice little cafe, kirkwood, missouri / @hfalconerquinn​

The case itself is absolutely hilarious in his mind, the sort of thing that probably shouldn’t have made it up to them in the first place, but that he’s actually a little relieved to hop on just now, when the past few months have been hell. But he’s still nervous, because of the other name on the case file. If Ben wasn’t long gone, he would’ve been inclined to believe this was another instance of the lovable arsehole finagling cases for personal reasons, but it’s just a funny coincidence, he supposes. 

Still, though, he can guess that there is going to be a lot of non-case related talk happening on this one, especially considering it seems the sort of thing they can solve in a few hours, if they can get the old lady to just lay off the Missouri aurors, and find her bloody garden gnome. So he’s nervous, because it’s been a long time since he’s done the whole having a talk with your girlfriend’s family shite. And while he knows that talking about Athena to Hades, someone he’s worked with for years and who is just a generally pleasant person, will be nothing like talking to the Travers siblings, it’s still nerve wracking. Because he really, really likes Athena, and he doesn’t want to screw anything up by accidentally saying the wrong thing to Hades, and he’s got a history of saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time.

So he’s strategic about it. Doesn’t bother going into detail over the case file, in all honesty, but more treats spending a day alone with Athena’s twin brother like a case itself. He scopes out a nice little cafe in Kirkwood, Missouri for them to meet at before going to question anyone, to strategize, and maybe also butter him up a little with a nice pastry. Ignatius gets there early orders himself a double shot of espresso and a cinnamon bun, and a mocha with extra chocolate and a raspberry danish for Hades, and sets up at a corner table, case file out, but certainly untouched. When the door opens, and he comes in, Ignatius is ready, gives him an easy smile as he finds the table.

“A little birdie told me you like a mocha and something a little fruity. Feels like an appropriate start to an absolutely fruity case.”

.

Hades has been meaning to sit Ignatius down, to have a little conversatoon with him about everything that’s been going on lately. About him and Athena, the grand expanse of them from Valentines day to now, this newfound relationship they’re beginning. He’s always liked Igantius, more or less –– Ignatius was nicer and more trustworthy than some people allowed themselves to believe. He was a good man, with a kid he loved, and he did his job well enough even if sometimes he lacked enthusiasm. And most importantly of all, Athena liked him. If she was sure about someone, Hades would always do his very best to love them as well. 

He just hoped that Ignatius was prepared for what was going to happen here. That was the real risk, the real thing to be scared about. Because Athena and HQ were a packaged deal, and that wasn’t going to change. If Ignatius couldn’t handle Hades being a big part of his life, couldn’t put up with his big personality and his big opinions, he wouldn’t survive for long. And HQ would like him to survive, would like him to hold on and stay a part of their lives. But he wouldn’t get Athena without HQ clinging on as well, even if he decided that HQ was annoying or too much. It would really all be nicer if they could love each other, become some kind of meshed group, a family. He hopes that Ignatius takes it as well as Cypress has, so far. 

HQ has been meaning to corner him, and have that nice conversation, but Langer seems to be willing to do the cornering for them. A case. An easy case, it seems. Something that’s almost emabrrassing to be asked to deal with, as a Squad Auror of their combined ranks. He doubts someone like Cassandra would have ever been sent out on a case like this, but HQ is happy that they have been, because its a chance to spend the day with Ignatius where the other man can’t escape him. He’s excited about this. He thinks it’s going to go well. 

He arrives at the cafe that Ignatius had directed him toward, and grins when he sees him settled there already. HQ makes his way over, noting the drinks and treats already laid out alongside Ignatius’ copy of the case file. “I happen to be taking this case very seriously. The fruity ones are always the most interesting.” He says, though he’s smiling wide, as he slips in to the chair and gives a happy little wiggle about the danish waiting for him. That little bird will have been Athena, he imagines. Unless Ignatius has decided to get all his HQ advice from Marleigh, which would probably work just about as well. He fixes Ignatius with a look –– a very specific look. A big brother kind of look, and arches an eyebrow at him. He thinks this is going to be delightfully fun, and it probably comes across in the expression. “So. I believe we have some very important things to talk about, don’t we Ignatius?”

[hfalconerquinn]

cypresscrow​:

Professor Magnolius seems to consider it for a second, sitting back in his armchair and hmming thoughtfully. It takes a long moment, too long for Cypress when every second seems to stretch out to an hour’s length in dread, and he’s moments from sitting forward and suggesting they try a different path, have Magnolius suggest a real medium they can ask to try to communicate with these ghosts for them instead, when Magnolius finally leans forward again. 

      “Does your ability come in handy often, in your work as an auror?” he asks Cypress, and Cypress can hear the real question behind it: do you use it more willingly now than you did when you were a student here? It’s a question he can’t in good conscience answer correctly, can’t figure out how to explain that he does because he has to, because he has no choice, but wishes desperately he didn’t need to. It feels like it would be such a let down to explain that he never even wanted to become an auror, that he’d become one under duress and only really passed his auror training because he had a useful skill that someone wanted to make him use.

But lies aren’t going to help anyone, here, not himself, not Magnolius, and certainly not the victims of the Pelican Island Killer. So he bites the inside of his cheek for a moment and puts together the words.

     “It’s why I was hired,” he admits. “They rarely put me on cases where I don’t have to use it.” The rest, he thinks, is implicit in the sound of his voice, a miserable little sound to it. “I know people say that practice makes perfect but I’m not any better at it than I used to be. I’m just… better at shutting it out, when I’m not working.”

     “It sounds like the something blocking you might be you,” Magnolius says, and his voice is so achingly kind. It always was, every other time Cypress sat here to be lectured about his reluctance to learn how to properly understand his abilities, how dangerous it could be to him to keep ignoring them, like the pressure might build up inside of him and explode if he didn’t learn how to embrace it and work with it. He’d always hated it, the kindness, because it felt so unearned, felt too much like pity, and because the answer he’d always gotten when he came to Magnolius for help—work on it, stop fighting it, listen to it—had always been the opposite of what he’d wanted it to be. 

He doesn’t hate it, now. Just takes it with a kind of resigned and miserable acceptance. Because that’s always been the answer, and he’s known it for longer than he cares to admit. Talking to Eden, watching them and their own abilities… he knows his desperate desire to escape this has only made it worse. 

He’s quiet, for a long moment. He feels like he should be embarrassed, that HQ is sitting here listening to all of this, knowing that all this trouble might be something as simple as a bad mental block he’s built up for himself over the years as a coping mechanism, a dam against the fear and the anger and the hundred powerful feelings that aren’t his—but… But HQ would understand that, surely. Better than most. HQ knows what it’s like to be subjected to thoughts and feelings that aren’t your own, except that he can walk away from people and let it calm down, but ghosts are everywhere, over every inch of the entire planet, nowhere safe for Cypress to run.

     “But what do I do?” he asks, after a moment, his voice breaking a little bit as he looks up t the Professor, and he must have sat here a hundred times, asking the same desperate question, and he suddenly feels so young again, so small, so helpless. And Magnolius leans across the space between them, puts a warm, steady hand on Cypress’ own for a moment, waits there until Cypress finally looks up, looks him in the eye.

     “Your mind knows what to do, Cypress. As instinctively as breathing. You’ve spent your entire life fighting those instincts. If you let go, they’ll take over; you just have to be ready to accept that you might not be able to put those walls back up once you let them down.”

Silence doesn’t usually –– doesn’t always, come easy to HQ. It had been his job to fill it when the time came, when he was young and his entire world was made up of Athena, Athena, Athena. His dear sister, so quiet, leaving him to talk for the both of them and make sure that they were heard, leaving him to offer comforting words to her in the dark. The silence was lovely when he needed it the most, when he would climb into her bed at night and seek comfort in the way she could give it to him, someone to hold him and someone to pet his hair when nightmares came or he was shaken by some strong emotion that seemed to creep in through the floorboards and sink into his heart. Sometimes, he still feels like he needs to fill the world up with something, voices and laughter. But the best thing to do right now seems to be keeping quiet, letting Professor Magnolius speak to Cypress and ask the questions he seemed to need to know the answers to, in order to offer his advice. 

The best thing to do would be to keep his comments by himself, to remain a steadfast and strong fixture by Cypress side while the two of them talk about his gift. His heart aches all over again, at the weary tone in Cypress’ voice when he mentions that they was only hired because of his gift, because he could talk to ghosts, and something like that was valuble on a whole lot of cases. Hades was glad for the case they’d worked together before, the one with Silverthorn. At the very least it had been a chance for Cypress to stretch his feet, to solve a case without having to rely in ghosts. He had done it just because he was good, because they were together and they had seemed to bounce so well of one another, seemed to work together better than magic could explain.

He hates to think it, but it seems like the Professor might be on to something when he says that Cypress might be blocking himself up, that he might be holding himself back too much to break through to whatever is trying to reach out to him. He remembers Athena again, in that cafe just the other day, telling him that he’d always been able to read her mind, that his gift expanded far past what he usually allowed himself to imagine. He didn’t want that part of it, the messy and harsh part that left him knowing with a strange sort of certainty exactly what people were thinking, exactly what they were thinking about him. It was what had left him feeling so cold around his parents, with the absolute certainty in the fact that they were disappointed in him, that he wasn’t what they had wanted in a child. It was better to imagine that all he knew were the feelings, that the thoughts weren’t real.

He reaches out, a bold move, not very professional, and he takes Cypress’ hand. He doesn’t really care about keeping their relationship away from work, not when they’re talking about things like this, not when Cypress is being told to let all the dark voices lingering out there on the horizon right into his head, with nothing to hold them back, nothing to protect him, walls that he might not be able to put back up again. Professor Magnolius has leaned forward to touch Cypress’ hand too, so it can all be excused in the end. 

“Isn’t that...dangerous?” He asks, voice soft. “Letting them in, not holding them back?” Cypress was already torn apart so frquently by them, driven to the darkest places, enough that he was worried he would say things that would hurt HQ more than HQ could imagine. 

“All things are dangerous, gentlemen. But it may be the only way for the both of you. Holding back never got anybody anywhere, even if it seems to be the more pleasent option.” 

The more pleasent option. It would certainly be nicer if they didn’t have to do this case at all, if people weren’t telling Cypress to lay himself down into an early grave, in a certain sense. He doesn’t want to encourage Cypress to do this, so he just looks at him instead, looks at him tenderly with the implicity message in his eyes that it’s up to him, that no matter what he does HQ will support him, be at his side. 

[hfalconerquinn]

aurormonday​:

The case file that hits his desk that morning is another clear softball, one that practically screamed his name in the absurdity of it all, which of course is probably why Langer gave it to him in the first place, especially with someone like HQ. He and HQ hadn’t worked all that much with each other in the past, maybe Kato didn’t think the pairing would be a productive one, or they just simply were always missing one another in case rotations, but he’s glad to finally get the chance to work alongside the wizard again after so long. 

Before he heads out to Piggly Wiggly, he picks up Rory’s concealment notes and heads to the bathroom beforehand. It’d been months since he had to do a concealment, and suddenly he now had two in the span of a couple weeks. After all the fun he had with his last face, he’s eager to see just what Rory cooked up for him this time around, and when the features finally take shape in the mirror the face is every bit as fantastic as he hoped. 

When he gets to Arkansas he isn’t all that surprised to see HQ hadn’t thrown on his concealment yet, concealments didn’t take all that long to do up in the long run, and maybe HQ wanted to wait to put it on when he got to Arkansas instead of beforehand. Either way, Jack isn’t thrown off by it, what he is thrown off by though is the auror’s next words. 

“You and Marleigh really need to start spending some time apart,” he huffs a laugh as he draws closer, liking the way this new body moved, “I mean I get it, they’re nice to look at, and the whole conspiracy theory shit is fun to listen to for a laugh. But you gotta take that shit with a grain of salt, before it starts frying your brain.” 

.

He can tell that he’s amused Jack, even with the whole new face laid over him. Pretty, with that same old Jack energy. The huff of laughter makes Hades smile, makes him beam out in that way it always does when people smile and laugh at him, especially people like Jack, who always seemed like they could charm anyone. It was like when he’d first won over Marleigh, with their wide smiles and bright laughs, and it had felt like the biggest victory in the world, like HQ had found some kind of place in the world, like once again he had managed to make one of the cool kids like him. 

“Hey, I’ve been keeping my distance.” He says, with a low kind of teasing in his voice, in case his instincts are right about what’s going on around Jack and Marleigh. “They are a pretty sight, but I’ve got this hot new boyfriend, don’t know if you noticed. I’d hate to make him jealous over an old flame like Marls.” He shakes his head, voice fond as it always is when he talks about Cypress. 

And then he sighs a little bit, glancing around to the store. “Just give me a minute, I’ll get my concealment on. I hate the bloody things, you know?” He rolls his eyes, shakes his head, and gestures to a cafe just a couple of doors down. “They have a bathroom, I’ll just be back before you can say Piggly Wiggly.” Wth a wink, he heads that way, and after some careful work his already back on his way. He really does hate concealments, as fun as they can be sometimes. He likes his own face, his own body. He worked hard for it, and he’s strangely clingy even about himself. He hates not looking like Hades Falconer-Quinn, he hates not looking a little bit like Athena in all of the best ways. 

He makes his way back to Jack, with his bright smile still in place. “Okay, okay. Ready to go make first contact with some aliens? I don’t care what you say, man. I’m holding out hope.” 

[hfalconerquinn]

outside the Piggly Wiggly Grocery Store in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. early morning / @aurormonday​

It’s a little baffling to HQ that they so rarely get pared up to work together. He hasn’t thought about it much before now, but its strange in general how out of each others orbits its seemed that him and Jack are lately –– HQ has always been more concerned with joking around with Marleigh than anything else, and now HQ has a real work boyfriend instead of a fake work spouse. And Marleigh and Jack... HQ doesn’t know for sure, but if the vibes he’s been getting around the office are legit... it seems like Marleigh has a hot new real work boyfriend too. 

Regardless of anything else, HQ has always kind of thought that Jack was great. That idea had been dented a little bit when Athena told him about the date from hell with Ignatius and Jack, but it hadn’t been damaged beyond repair. From what HQ has seen, Jack is charming and strangely sweet, and he loves his friends. 

So Hades is excited to be here today, to be stepping out and working a case with Jack, so they can get to know each other in the ways that they haven’t before. He isn’t really sure what to make of this case, but it seems like one of the ones where you just have to get out there and explore, get a good grip on all of the different ideas and theories and see what sticks to the wall. HQ was sure that if they got in there and talked to the witnesses, talked to all of the people who knew this place better than they did, they would be able to figure it out in no time at all. 

He grins when he hears the pop of an apparition, and turns to see Jack. It’s a wide smile, welcoming. HQ feels light and relaxed, ready for the day, chewing bubble-gum that’s just about losing its flavour. He gives a wave, and takes a step closer. “So I’ve been thinking, okay? And I wanna put a theory out there before we go inside, before we see anything else. Aliens. Shadowy figures, small towns in Arkansas. It seems like it fits, right? So like, at the end of this, when we’re on the brink of solving this big case. Remember: Aliens.” 

[hfalconerquinn]

cypresscrow​:

Professor Magnolius’ office is somewhere he spent a lot of time, in his school years, not always willingly, the Divination professor trying to encourage him to hone his abilities, to embrace them; every other time he’d sad on this couch he’d been angry, or reluctant, or annoyed, or exhausted, or some messy combination of all of them, but it feels easier to walk in, given the distance between then and now, given HQ’s hand at the small of his back, a small sign of comfort as they make their way to the couch and take a seat across from the professor.

He feels as much like a disappointment as he had all those years ago, but all in all, even given the small freak out he’d had the night before, he’s in a much better place than he’d been back then. He finds himself glad that HQ hadn’t known him, when they were both students here, that HQ hadn’t seen what a mess he was as a teenager, before he’d had reasonably healthy coping mechanisms to help him through the worst of it, when he’d been scared and angry all the time, when he’d been desperate enough that he’d almost wished he didn’t have magic at all if it meant he could get a decent nights’ sleep every once in a while without ghosts keeping him awake. 

     “From a few years ago, yes?” Magnolius confirms, tapping a kettle with his wand and setting it to boil as he takes a seat in his armchair, looking between the two of them. “Don’t tell me another victim has turned up. Those stories, when they happened, those poor people…” 

     “No,” Cypress reassures him, jumping in quickly to steer the conversation in the right direction. “No new victims that we know of, thankfully.” It’s the one saving grace of this case: that the Pelican Island Killer hasn’t killed in something like six years, that there’s no sign he will again—unless that’s what the ghosts are trying to tell him, in which case, better to focus on them than to dwell on it. “No, it’s actually that several of the ghosts of his victims have turned up, in a sort of… unusual circumstances.”

     “Ah,” he replies, a look of understanding coming across this face. “Is that where you come in, then, Cypress? Using that gift of yours to find a serial killer, finally close a cold case?”

A part of him hates how easily Magnolius comes to the conclusion, how quickly he knows, because why else would Cypress Crow—unmotivated, unambitious, not particularly hard-working, middling grades, utterly ordinary at every single other form of magic except the kind he didn’t want to excel at—be an auror? What would have possessed the Central Squad to hire him except this? But there’s another kind of understanding, on Magnolius’ face, too, as he says it, a sympathetic look from the man who knew best just how much it had always plagued Cypress, this unwanted gift of his, this curse. 

     “That is… the hope, yes,” he answers. He takes a second to glance at HQ, to ground himself in his presence at his side, comforting and encouraging. HQ had thought this was a good idea. It is a good idea. “The ghosts are strange: they’re visible, but not corporeal, almost like projections of some kind, and they seem to be stuck in one place. But the strangest part is… they look like they’re talking, and I can’t hear them. I mean, no one can, but I can’t hear them.” 

.

HQ is struck again with how proud he is of Cypress. He knows this isn’t easy –– none of this has ever been easy, nothing at all. Except for the two of them, maybe, but Cypress had struggled with that as well at the start, perhaps he still did. HQ would find it hard as well, if he had a talent like Cypress’, if he had to use it in the way that people expected. Central Squad kept throwing him at ghosts, at murder victims and grusome deaths, witches burned at the stake and haunted houses. HQ doesn’t know that he could take it, having to use that gift, that burden, in the way people wanted him to. 

But he’s proud that Cypress is doing it now. He’s proud that they’re going to solve this case together, once they get their heads around what they need to do. He’s proud that they’re going to bring this story to some kind of close, possibly reignite a cold case and finally be able to shut the book on it for good. HQ would like that, if they could finish this, if they could find the answers that no one else could, and save the day, and give people the closure that they really need. 

The Professor arches an eyebrow, when Cypress admits that the ghosts couldn’t be heard, even by him with all of his many gifts. That was unusual for Cypress, who always heard ghosts even when he wished that he couldn’t. And it’s even more distressing when HQ thinks about how he had felt yesterday, out on the peir, after that ghost reached out to him. 

“Oh my. Not a sound?” He asks, with eyebrow still arched, voice thoughtful. It’s a familiar expression something that HQ can easily recognise from his days at school, when he had been so utterly delighted by this man that he could hardly believe it. “Not even a whisper? Are we sure they’re really ghosts, not just...a no-maj trick? They can do such wonderful things with lights these days.”

“They’re definitely ghosts.” HQ says, with confidence that he isn’t really sure he’s earned. But he knows. He knows that they’re ghosts.  They couldn’t be anything else. A projection couldn’t do what they had done, couldn’t have reached out and moved through Cypress like that, couldn’t have inspired all of those feelings. “The one we tried to talk to reached out and touched him and, well... It didn’t seem good. We’re wondering... if something could be blocking them. Blocking him.”

[hfalconerquinn]

auroramarobott​:

The little scene before her plays out absolutely beautifully, Miranda thinks to herself, very proud of how HQ was able to play along so well with her. Drake clearly wasn’t their culprit here, he just didn’t have the skills to brew something to the degree that had been for these potions to be tainted in the way they were. His girlfriend on the other hand, seemed like she just might have that skill if her word was anything to go by. 

“Gabby….”, Drake sighs, seemingly having put the pieces of this puzzle together himself. 

“Babe, I couldn’t let them keep walking over you like that,” she replies, the stone cold expression on her face faltering to something much more softer, “I had to give you the payback you deserve.” 

“So you tainted the potions, Miss….” Miranda speaks up, before Drake’s girlfriend- Gabby answers her. 

“Knight, Gabrielle Knight,” the woman answers with a defeated sigh. “And yes, I did. It was after Drake was let go after the third shop. I was so mad, he’d been working his ass off, studying every night, trying to make sure he did a good job. And for what? Just for these assholes who think they’re better than everyone else to fire him because he wasn’t learning at the pace they wanted him to?” 

Miranda does feel a little bad for the couple, both for the handsome but aloof Drake, and for Gabby, who seemed to care rather deeply for him. None of that though, made up for the fact that several people were made to suffer terrible nightmares and psychological trauma due to her nasty draught. 

“You couldn’t think of any better way to do it than through poisoning innocent people?” Miranda asks still a bit stunned by it all. She’d certainly been in love a few times in her life, but she could never imagine going to these lengths to secure her paramour a job. 

“I wanted to get the potion masters where it’d hurt. Which in this case would be their pocketbook- their clientele. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone though, I guess the tainted potions I brewed were just stronger than I anticipated is all.” 

Hades kind of thinks that Miranda is some kind of genius, because this little play worked better than he could have imagined. Her instincts were good, and her plan had worked perfectly. Within moments, Gabrielle had confessed to the crime that they’d both correctly assumed Drake Landess would  have never committed. 

Hades listens with rapt attention as the situation is explained to them, the story unfolding quickly. It all makes a certain kind of sense, he supposes, but he can never imagine what must have been going on in her head to make her do something like this. He’d do a lot for the people he loved, but he would never ever hurt someone to protect them, not if it could be helped, and certainly not for a reason as petty as this. Her reasons almost make it worse, because people may not have been hurt physically, but the psychological damage of what happened to them would linger for a long time. She had taken something that offered people peace, and used to it make them live through hell instead. 

Hades makes a small sound, disappointed in her, and shares a glance with Miranda that expresses how terrible he finds all of this. He frowns slightly when he looks back at Gabby, and lets out a sigh. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to take you back to MACUSA for further questioning. Whatever your intentions might have been, however you may not have wanted to hurt people, tainting with potions in the way you did is a rather serious crime.” 

Drake looks stricken, where he stands, shaking his head. “Can’t you go easy on her?” He asks, as if he’s entirely conflicted about everything that’s happening here. “She’s not... she wouldn’t hurt anyone on purpose.”

And Hades feels bad for him, almost, this man who had been seen as the clear suspect in something that his girlfriend had done. He wishes that there was a way to make all of this easier, but there’s no option here but to bring her in. This isn’t a kid who made some harmless mistake, this isn’t the kind of suspect you just let walk away at the end of the day. Gabby would have to come with them to MACUSA, give her full confession, and face the consequences.

So Hades shakes his head and straightens his shoulders, watch both of them sag a little in fear and some small amount of anger. He pulls out his warded handcuffs, and with a resigned voice starts the process of taking Gabby in to custody. 

[hfalconerquinn]

cypresscrow​:

He feels just a little brighter, just a little more hopeful already, and HQ always seems to have that effect on him, practically effortless; he isn’t shaking anymore, his heart isn’t racing. It’s easy to let himself lean into him HQ’s touch, to believe his reassurances. To feel like it really is a great idea and not a complete waste of time. And he’s still nervous, still a little shaken, still a little hopeless, but they’re manageable feelings now, small ones, ones he isn’t worried are going to drag HQ down with him if the feels them too much.

And it’s late. And going home, staying with him, taking a break from it and coming back refreshed… it sounds not just like the easy option, but also the right one, the productive one. The one that will actually help instead of just ending in him tormenting himself for a few more hours and being too tired and frustrated to be of use tomorrow.

So they go home. They go home, and they have a late dinner, and he lets HQ take care of him for a while, falls asleep wrapped up in him. And first thing in the morning, they swing by the office and get the floo to Ilvermorny, and he follows the familiar route from the headmaster’s office up to the divination classroom, with its big arched windows and its warm decor, a place he hadn’t spent nearly as much time as he maybe should have, when he’d been a student here himself. 

     “Cypress Crow,” he hears, before he can even turn to locate the voice within the room, Professor Magnolius apparently coming out of his office to the side of the room just as they’re entering. “And Hades Falconer-Quinn? Wow, my leaves weren’t wrong this morning when they told me today was going to take me by surprise. Well, gentlemen, to what do I owe the delight of your company?” 

Half of him wants to smile, at how utterly familiar it is, how Professor Magnolius hardly looks like he’s aged a day in almost twenty years, and certainly has no less energy than he used to when Cypress was in school; and half of him tenses, his chest tightening, at the familiar sight and the familiar voice, with the feeling of guilt that even after all these years he’s never lived up to the unwavering faith and expectations Magnolius always had for him. Still, he pushes past it, lets himself smile a little, pulls his badge out—it may not be as impressive as it looks, but it’s something, a small sign that he’s done something with his life, even unwillingly.

     “Professor, it’s good to see you,” he says, passing the badge over. “We’re actually here on auror business… we could use your help, with a case we’re working on. Is this a good time? Can we steal ten or fifteen minutes?” 

There’s a strange kind of excitement, stepping back in time and walking through the halls of Ilvermorny again. HQ had practically been racing to get out of this place by the time his seventh year of school came around, never having been as academically inclined as his sister was. But he couldn’t deny that he had at least a few fond memories of the place, of the magic that was woven in to every inch and every second of the experience. 

And its strange to be here with Cypress, strange to think that  they walked through these halls at the same time, an overlap of several years, and they never knew each other, never noticed each other and never stopped to try to. It was like the world waited until they were ready for each other, like the universe threw them together exactly at the right moment for this love to bloom, to shine a light on their potential under just the right conditions. He didn’t know who Cypress was, then, but he’s so damn glad he gets to know him now, that he gets to do thinks like take him home and kiss him for hours at a time, that Cypress is charmed enough by him to want to be with him for extended periods of time. 

As hard as this case has been already, will be in the future, he’s glad that Cypress is here with him, glad that they can do it all together. 

Hades smiles when they step in to the Divination classroom, as warm as it’s always been, that distinctive smell of incense and the light streaming in through the wide windows. So many afternoons spent tucked away in these walls, doing his damned best to pull any sort of future out of the mist. He never could, but that was okay. He did well enough despite it all. And he liked Professor Magnolius. So his smile grows even wider when the man actually appears from his little office, seeming exactly the same as he had before.

The Professor takes Cypress’ badge and his eyebrows shoot up, flicking between them both. “Auror business? Well i’ll be damned. I hope you’re not investigating that ghastly Tarot Card Killer. The cards haven’t revealed anything to me about my potential impending doom, so if you’ve come to tell me I’m a target, I would be very upset indeed.” 

Hades lets out a small laugh, still smiling. “You’re in luck. Far better aurors than me are working on that case. Unfortunately this one... is still serial killer related.” 

A soft hum escapes the man, and he opens the door to his cozy little office space. “In that case, you’d better come get settled and fill me in on the thrilling tale. I can offer you all the time you need, gentlemen.” 

Hades follows him in to the room, his hand finding the small of Cypress’ back for just a moment as he guides him through the door, before he finds a place to sit on the plush little couch tucked into a little nook, opposite the arm chair that the Professor sits in. He decides to launch straight in, begin the story so that Cypress can ask for whatever help it is that he needs here. “We’re having a little problem with some ghosts, old victims of the Pelican Island Killer. You’re familiar with his work, I assume?” 

[hfalconerquinn]

cypresscrow​:

Everything seems to still, a little bit, to quiet, with HQ’s arms wrapped around him. They make him feel safer, a little studier. They make him feel like he can stop shaking a little bit and let his racing thoughts slow, make him feel like HQ doesn’t need an answer he doesn’t have in order to sit here and keep his promise. He doesn’t know that he believes what HQ says, doesn’t actually think there is a way to solve this without finding some way to hear whatever Vivienne was trying to tell him—certainly not him, only a halfway decent auror in the first place, who had fumbled his way through training, who never would have been here except for the accident of fate that was his abilities.

But HQ sounds like he believes it. And Cypress doesn’t want to ever be the reason HQ stops believing in something, stops hoping, stops that relentless optimism he always seems to have, the way he believes so damn hard. So he just nods, a little, leans into the soft kiss, lets his eyes drift shut for a second until HQ is pulling away to look at him again.

Advice, he thinks. Someone else to go to. He’d never found anyone else, who heard ghosts the way he did, never heard of another medium who did similar things. He’d… never actively sought out another medium before, in all honesty, had tried to stay as far away from that as he could. Of course there were plenty of them, all over the country; they could probably find one, but he wouldn’t know where to begin looking.

But he knew someone who did. Who had offered, when he was younger, to help him find someone to teach him, to guide him.

     “Professor Magnolius,” he answers, before he even means to say it out loud, the moment it comes to him. The Divination professor at Ilvermorny. Cypress hasn’t seen him in almost twenty years, but he’s fairly certain he’s still there, even as a teenager Cypress had thought he was on the younger side compared to most of the old professors there. No matter how much Cypress had bucked against his ability, no matter how stubborn and reluctant he’d been to even take Divination, let alone let himself try to be any good at it, Magnoluis had been just as stubbornly consistent, and reliable, and helpful, and hopefully. He thinks, now, he didn’t deserve to have had a teacher that good for all those years and not appreciate him in the least. 

     “I don’t know if he’ll know anything helpful, but he ought to at least know another medium we can go to, for advice. I don’t… I don’t mean to drag this on an extra day, but we could stop by and see him in the morning tomorrow before coming back? I don’t know that I’m up for much more tonight.” 

HQ cups Cypress’ cheek in the palm of his hand, a soft and grounding touch. As much as he’s trying to pull away an dclear their heads so that they can work this case to the best of their ability, he can’t help but reaching out to touch that face, to smooth a thumb over the delicate expanse of his cheekbone, near the semi-dark circles under his eyes. He’s just so tender when it comes to Cypress, its hard to fight through that. And he doesn’t see any reason why he should have to let go of him, why he should have to give up on the touches that make the both of them feel better, a little safer and a little more at ease. 

“Professor Magnolius!” He says, a little bit brighter. Because yes, that sounds like a solution. That sounds like something they should try, at the very least. Hades remembers Professor Magnolius pretty damn well. He’d never had a real talent for Divination, but HQ had been enthusiastic and his empathy was still a novel little game, something that he could use to wow people like that when he needed it too. “That’s a great idea, Cypress.” He says, warm and bright, because they could use a little hint of that, they could use a tiny bead of hope in this world, the idea that there might be an answer or someone who can help them. “Even if he just points us toward someone else, it will be worth it.” 

HQ considers it for a second. He doesn’t think that there’s anything else they can do here tonight, if the ghosts can’t actually communicate with them. All they would really be doing was wandering around a fair that neither of them were up for looking at, or making Cypress try again with a different ghost. But the outcome would be the same, HQ was sure, if they tried that last option. It would tire him out, it would make everything feel worse. 

He nods his head, smiles just a little bit, and ducks forward quickly to press another kiss to Cypress’ forhead. “We’ll head over first thing in the morning. Talk to the Professor, come back here when the sun starts to set.” Thats a good plan, thats a good course of action to settle in on. For now, all they can do is wait until morning. Which is good, because HQ is achey, and he just wants to take Cypress home, he just wants to take care of him and make all of this better if he can. He wants to make Cypress soup, and wrap a blanekt around him, and kiss him softly until they both fall asleep together, wrapped up in each others arms. That would be perfect, and HQ is pretty sure that Cypress would enjoy it all just as much as he did. It might be nice, to spend some time caring for him. 

“All you have to do tonight is let me take you home and take care of you for a little while. We can worry about it all tomorrow.” He says, voice soft, and stands up straighter to get them moving, holding out a hand to offer it to Cypress. “Up and at 'em, dear.” 

[hfalconerquinn]

cypresscrow​:

HQ is there, at his side, in a rush, kneeling in front of him, hands gentle across his face, sounding worried, and of course he is, of course he does, he’d promised he would be listening for them, promised he would feel it if they got upset, promised he would be right there with them, and HQ isn’t a person who promises things and doesn’t follow through on those promises. It’s one of the things he likes most, about him, the way he feels like he can always depend on his word.

He lets one of his shaking hands come up, grasping for HQ’s hand on his face a little desperately, fingers closing around his wrist like Cypress is trying to keep him there, or maybe just hang onto something stable while he tries to figure out how to explain everything he’s just experienced—so, so much of it, and all so useless.

     “I couldn’t hear anything,” he says, and he sounds a little despairing about it. His whole life spent trying not to hear things, and the one time it matters, the one time he really, really needs it, there’s nothing there. “She was trying to tell me something, I could see it in her eyes. She seems… stuck. She looks so scared. She feels scared. But I think there’s something blocking her from talking. Or… blocking me from hearing. I don’t know, I can’t make any sense of it it.”

He doesn’t know how to explain it, but mostly he thinks that’s because he doesn’t know what it is he was feeling, what was stopping him from being able to hear her, or what she was trying to do by reaching out to him physically when she realized he couldn’t hear. He’s never dealt with a physical ghost like that before, which makes it all the more complicated. And he wants to be honest with HQ, like he promised he would, like he’s been trying so hard to be, knowing that will make things easier, but it’s impossible to articulate something he doesn’t know well enough to put into words. 

     “I don’t know what I’m doing, HQ,” he confesses, his voice still shaking, just a little. He finds himself thinking, again, of Eden’s question, if he’d ever had any real training with his ability; he’d been so upset to learn, as a kid, that being magic didn’t mean he wasn’t a freak anymore, that he still heard voices no one else heard, that he’d accepted that no one could do what he’d do and just learned how to survive it with as little pain as possible. Even as his Divination professor tried to lead him towards resources, towards some kind of apprenticeship to learn how to use it. He didn’t think he could. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to. And now here he was, being asked to do it, needing to do it, and failing. “I don’t… I’ve spent my whole life running away from this. I don’t know how to make it happen. I don’t know how to make myself hear her. I don’t know how to reach out to her, in any other way. I don’t… I don’t think I can get anything.  I don’t think I can help her.”

And that’s the worst part of this. He’d never wanted to be an auror, never wanted to use this, but when he’d been coerced into it there had at least been the promise that he’d be helping people. Now it feels like he can’t even do that. 

Someday, maybe, his heart will stop aching for Cypress so damn hard. He can’t actually imagine it ever happening, but he’s sure that some day he’ll feel just a little different than this. Right now, he feels sore with how much he cares, he feels like it aches more than it ever has before. Cypress reaches up and holds his hand there against his face, as if he just needs something to hold on to, as if Cypress needs someone to support him so damn badly. And that will be HQ. HQ will always be there, he thinks, to hold on to. He’s sure that he’ll never leave Cypress behind, that he’ll never ever pull away if Cypress needs him. 

HQ lets out a soft sigh and listens, listens carefully to every single word that comes out of his mouth. He feels scared about how scared Cypress feels, how scared that girl must have felt, the way the two fears radiated together and mixed in the air, behind Cypress’ eyes. It isn’t fair that Cypress has this weight on his chest, that this burden is his to carry when HQ would gladly take it away if he could. 

But it does belong to Cypress, and HQ doesn’t know how to take it away. 

His voice is shaking, and the words that they form make HQ want to hug him, make HQ want to pull him close and never let him go again. After a moment he does, he shifts up and wraps his arms around Cypress, holds him close, a solid hug full of solid warmth and so much affection. He can’t hold it in, he can’t really stop himself when he needs to comfort someone like this. So he gives in and he hugs Cypress, and he tries to think it through, decide the best thing to say. 

“You can do it. I know you can.” He says, soft. Softer than he would with anyone else that was sitting there doubting themself. HQ knew that they could do this, he knew that they could do it together, that they would get through it no matter what it took. “We solve cases all of the time without... our weird superpowers. If you can’t help them with what you hear, you’ll help them some other way. We’ll help them together.” 

He feels more comfident about it than he really should, because he doesn’t exactly know how they’re going to manage it, but they won’t give up. He lets out another breath and kisses the side of Cypress’ head. And then he pulls back to look Cypress in the eyes, to look at him gently and warmly. 

“Maybe...” He starts, and then hesitates, and then he starts again. “Maybe there’s someone we can ask for help? Someone who can offer some guidence? Like, when I’m stuck, when I can’t do something, I go to Athena. She’s smart. She knows more than I do.” He nods his head. “We’ll talk to someone, because asking for help is always the first thing you should do when you feel... helpless.” 

[hfalconerquinn]

auroramarobott​:

The more Miranda listens to the exchange between Drake and Hades the more she doesn’t like the wizard for this. She was starting to understand just why Portentia seemed so protective over him, there was a certain softness to the man, despite the layers of muscle, and even more she still isn’t quite set on believing he was capable of brewing something as advanced as these tainted forms of Dreamless Sleep. As she looks between Drake and his girlfriend though, Miranda’s eyes fall on her. Now, she was someone Miranda wouldn’t past doing this, especially when she notices the spark of rage that flashes in her features at Hades’s little quip regarding Drake’s capabilities. 

“No, no I wouldn’t say I was angry at them,” Drake speaks up, answering Hades’s question. “Bummed out for sure, because like, I do try you know? It’s just this stuff comes a little hard for me, but I honestly do try.” 

“They just needed to be more patient with him is all, which is what they’re supposed to be. When you take on an apprentice you’re supposed to take the time to actually teach them the profession, not throw them in the lion’s den on day one.” The woman speaks up. 

Chewing the inside of her cheek, Miranda looks curiously between the two wixes again. She’s fairly certain the girlfriend had something to do with this all, given her attitude and how quick she was to defend Drake. She couldn’t be for certain of course, but maybe there was a way she could get the other woman to confess more about what she did know. 

“Well Mr. Landess,” she speaks up, “I am afraid we will need to take you in for further interrogation. You aren’t under arrest, naturally, but given your connection to all three shops, and with all three having accused you for this crime, I do believe it would be better we continue this discussion in a more formal setting.” 

“W-wait, what?” He asks, eyes growing wide. “But I didn’t do anything, I swear.” 

“This is ridiculous you can’t bring him in, he’s right, he didn’t do anything,” the woman speaks up. 

“Well unless either of you two have something more for us, I don’t see any other way but to approach this back at MACUSA, wouldn’t you agree, Hades?” She asks as she looks over to her partner, hoping he caught where she was going with this. 

.

Hades can be slow sometimes, he knows that. It often takes him a second to track what everyone else has already realised about a situation. Outside of his own little sparks of instinct, it can be difficult to realise when other people have made decisions and need him to go along with them. He knows that sometimes it takes him a second to catch up –– and he almost opens his mouth to ask Miranda why exactly they need to bring Landess in, when it seems so unlikely that he was the person who did this.

But he listens to what Miranda is saying, and she looks over at him in search of his agreement, and he considers the girlfriends strange behaviour. And he realises what Miranda is thinking, that the woman in front of them may be the one who had committed these crimes, but without proof they’ll likely have to depend on her actually saying something about it. She was clearly clever, clearly sharp as a knife, and she clearly cared a lot about what people thought of Drake. She was defensive of him in ways that would be sweet, if she hadn’t potentially poisioned several people with tainted potions just to try and get revenge for him, or prove some kind of point. 

He starts to nod only a moment after Miranda looks at him, putting a serious look in his face as he glances back at the couple. “I’m afraid it’s the only option, here. We’ll need to question Mr. Landess extensively. Unless there’s some concrete proof that he couldn’t have done this, but for we just have too much evidence that he may be involved.” He sounds like he’s sorry, he sounds like he wishes that there was another way, that there’s a lot of compassion in his chest. And he does almost feel bad, because Landess clearly didn’t do this, and the look in his eyes is something scared, as if he just now realised that he might be in serious trouble here, that there were two aurors at his door asking him about a fairly serious crime. 

“But if you’re willing to come with us without a fight, Mr. Landess, we can promise we’ll treat you very well during your interrogation.” 

Drake puts his hands to his head, runs his fingers through his lovely, lovely hair. God, he’s so damn handsome that HQ almost gets distracted again. But he looks so upset as well, that it’s hard to focus on it. “Oh god,” He says, “What the hell man, I swear I didn’t do it.” 

“I’m sorry,” HQ says again, “But we really need ––” 

“He didn’t do it!” The girlfriend says, quick and a little frantic, and there’s a weird kind of anger behind his eyes. “Shit, I can prove it. He’s obviously not capable of that, of any of it, even if he wanted to! He’s not as good at it as I am.” 

[hfalconerquinn]

cypresscrow​:

He doesn’t want to leave HQ behind to deal with these ghost hunters, but he has a point—someone needs to distract them, and it won’t be Cypress. And so he nods, with a quiet little okay, lets HQ’s hand on his shoulder smooth over the nervousness, and he sets off, toward the ferris wheel. 

He barely has to know where he’s meant to be looking, to see the ghost: she’s obvious, glowing silver and white and standing perfectly still at the edge of the pier just feet from the ferris wheel. People seem to be giving her a wide berth, some of them gaping at her but most of them avoiding her, clearly creeped out, like Abadi had said he was when he saw the ghosts for the first time. Thankfully, that makes it easy to make her out, and he can tell, having spend the afternoon looking at the photos of the victims, that this is Vivienne Draper, who had been killed in 1989.

She’s obviously a ghost, but she’s also so unlike any ghost he’s ever seen. Not like the ones who chose to stuck around, who lived lives in the world after death. There’s no depth to her—just a a flat kind of image—and the image keeps stuttering, a little bit, to the point where he starts looking around for some kind of hidden projector that might be casting her image here, because she looks like a strange kind of film reel, almost. He approaches her cautiously, bracing for what he imagines will be an overwhelming blow of feelings and noise and fear as he reaches her but…

There’s nothing. Just silence. Just the noise of the crowd around her, the noise of the amusement pier at night. 

He thinks, at first, it’s that maybe everything else is too loud. The roar of the crowd, the screams of people on the rollercoaster overhead, the pounding of the music playing through loudspeakers nearby. That the ambient noise is somehow drowning the voices he would normally hear out. But… no, that can’t be it, that can’t be right. Because he’s spent his entire life trying to drown out the sound of the voices that follow him everywhere and nothing, nothing has ever been loud enough to chase it away, no music, no noise, no crowd. He has always been able to hear it, above anything else, a constant presence. And it’s still here, he’s still hearing some of it, whispers here and there, but none of them match up with the movements of this ghost’s mouth, nothing syncs, nothing sounds like hers.

And then he realizes: nothing matches up with the movement of her mouth because the movement of her mouth is repeating. Over and over again, the same short movements, like she’s stuck in some kind of loop, like this is just one image of many, repeating itself again and again. And yet… she looks in his eyes. She looks desperate, and afraid, and on a whim, he reaches out towards her, as if to try to touch her… and his hand passes right through. He’s not sure what else he expected. 

But he can’t hear her. And what’s the point, what is the point of having this stupid power, if he can’t even help this woman, when she needs it, what is the point of having suffered all of this pain if all he can do is stand here and look at her, watch her watching him, watch her so clearly trying to ask for help, and hear nothing. 

He feels like he might be sick. He feels so, so close, feels like there must be a way for him to do something, a way for him to make himself be able to hear her. He tries to focus on the normal voices here, the quiet roar of ghosts, but it is cacophonous and indistinct, with nothing for him to latch onto, no matter how desperately he reaches. 

     “What do you want?” he asks, looking at her, and he doesn’t care if anyone around him is watching, doesn’t care if anyone sees. He’s spent the past few short years living with all of this under the assumption that maybe, maybe, he can at least help a few people out, find a few murderers and bring them to justice, that everything he has suffered might have been worth it. Camden Savage’s voice rings, unbidden, in his head, a blessing? or a curse? “Please, I’m trying to help you. Please, just tell me what happened to you, tell me who did this, I can help. I can find whoever it was, I can stop them. I can bring you peace, Vivienne, I just need to hear you.”

Her mouth stops moving, all of a sudden, the first motion breaking the repetitive pattern of her actions. Her eyes are wide, full of fear. She reaches a hand out, towards him, just like he had reached his out towards hers, but when he reaches to meet hers, his hand passes right through. There’s a flash, an image in his mind, bright and searing, a shriek of some kind of sound, like nails on a chalkboard, and a light, red and blinding, and then it is gone and he is panting to catch his breath, stumbling his way to a nearby bench before his trembling legs collapse from under him, his whole body shaking with it. 

Distracting the ghost hunting duo for the moment is actually a lot easier than Hades expects it to be. They live off drama, they live off fun, and they want to make sure that they get the best footage possible for the show that they’re making. Hades knows that the most important thing for him and Cypress in this moment is to keep them far away from the actual ghosts, while Cypress is trying to talk to them. HQ didn’t think that the apparitions would show up on camera, but he didn’t know for sure. He feels a little bad for the things he does to try and get them out of the way, but it all works out for the best. 

He casts a confundus charm on the camera man. And the more enthusiastic looking of the duo. That’s step one. And when he stumbles and drops his equipment, everything else kind of turns into chaos for the minute. HQ plays the part of helping them, and engages them in a big long conversation. They seem so damn earnest, and he feels kind of bad for briefly fucking with their heads in order to make sure that they don’t get in Cypress’ way. But the case comes first, always, and these no-maj ghost hunters would only get in their way if they were hanging around here all night.

In the end, their camera is slightly damaged, and one of the main stars of the show is clearly not in his right mind. They leave and decide to come back the next night, when they have everything in order again and the star of the show feels better. Hades watches them leave with a distant kind of satisfaction, because he acomplished at least one thing to day.

He’s had his feelers out for Cypress this whole time, trying to latch on to the one beacon of emotion that he knows best in the crowd. Cypress doesn’t feel great, but he’s been nevous since this started, they both have been. Only the longer he’s gone , the more the storm of feeling seems to grow. Confusion, frustration, fear. The second that the ghost hunters have turned to move away, HQ moves as well, back in the direction of the ferris wheel so that he can get back to where he really needs to be, beside Cypress. That seems like the most important spot in the universe sometimes, the place that he always wants to be. If he could reserve that space for himself he would, from here until the end of his life. So that at times like this he can reach out and take Cypress’ arm, and offer some kind of comfort. 

HQ moves quickly, the giant wheel is something easy to navigate to, and Cypress is like a strand of string tied around his heart, pulling him to just the right spot in the crowd. He sees Cypress there, and he sees the ghost. Vivienne Draper, in all her glory. Cypress had been right before, these didn’t seem like any regular ghosts. HQ catches the end of the moment in his vision, catches the last few words out of Cypress’ mouth: I just need to hear you.

He sees the ghost reach out to him, passing through him, and the feelings spike in HQ’s chest. Nothing feels right, nothing feels normal about this, and when Cypress moves to the bench HQ unsticks his feet from the ground and rushes over, kneels in front of him and touches his face, looks up with worried eyes. 

“Hey, hey. What’s up, Cy?” He says, soft but a little frantic with a hint of worry. He feels sick, and he’s not entirely sure which one of them that is. Most likely its HQ himself because he hates seeing Cypress like this, hates seeing him shake and hates knowing how strange and wrong this all is for him. “What happened? Did she say something?” 

[hfalconerquinn]

cypresscrow​:

HQ takes his hand, and he can feel himself relax a little bit. He’s right, after all: as much as there is happening here, as much as there is that they should be doing, they can’t do much at all until nightfall, so there’s no use hanging around and panicking. He likes to think that HQ’s right, too, about setting these spirits to rest, about helping to end the pain they’ve been in for the many years since their deaths. Find a bad guy, put him away so he can’t hurt anyone else. Bring a couple of ghosts some peace. 

     “That sounds good,” he says, squeezing HQ’s hand. It will give him time to mentally prepare himself for it, too. He’d looked into the killings before they set out, to get an idea of what to expect, and there wasn’t much of anything, so few details, but it would be worth going through it again. Maybe they could get hot chocolate, to go, bring it back and sit around HQ’s desk for a few hours. And then come back. And then worry about the ghosts. 

And they do—they do just that. Go back to the office. Pick up two hot chocolates and a slice of cake to split, pull out the Pelican Island Killer files and flip through its grim contents together. It’s still as grim as when he looked through it before, but it feels less daunting with HQ at his side. Seven victims, the last one almost six years ago, identified and linked only because of the photographs of their bodies that had been sent to the Texas Spectacle, like some kind of perverse taunt. No connections, between the victims. No sign of where they’d been killed, or how they’d been chosen. Their bodies never found, never laid to rest. He can’t imagine having been one of the aurors on one of those cases, can’t imagine how awful it would have been to have tried and tried and tried and kept coming up empty-handed. 

And then it starts to get late. They grab a quick dinner, together, and then apparate back to the beach, making their way back to a now lit up and much more crowded pier. He feels better than he did, earlier. Feels braced, steeled, ready for it, with HQ by his side. Knowing that HQ is looking out for him, is trying to help as much as he can, is going to try not to hold it against him if things get bad. 

     “Okay,” he says, as they get to the amusement pier, the carnival sounds of music and games and delighted screams filling up the air around them. “Where was the first one Abadi pointed out, the nearest one to here? We can start here and work our way back, and hopefully—”

He’s cut off, through, from finishing the question, by a small commotion nearby, and he looks over to see two men, followed by a small group of people with heavy, elaborate recording equipment—video cameras, microphones, lights. The “ghost hunters,” he thinks, his stomach dropping a little. The last thing they needed was these guys to get film of any of the ghosts, especially with Cypress around, especially when he has no idea how the ghosts will react to finding themselves face to face with someone who can finally hear them. 

After looking through all the files a second time, HQ feels even more determined than he did before to get them through this all in one peice. Determined as well to solve this case, to figure out what had happened only a handful of years ago so that they can bring some justice to the people who lost their lives. It isn’t fair that they never figured out what the answers were before, in the six years since the last victim lost their lives. It isnt fair that their bodies were never found, that their families never really got to say goodbye to them. He feels bad thinking it, but maybe it will be worth the pain for Cypress and him if it means that they’ll get to fix any one of those problems. But no, he revises that thought. It would be worth the pain for himself. He would rather spare Cypress if he could. 

But he’s pretty sure they don’t have that option. 

In the end, they have to get back into the field and face the case head on. Seeing if they can get their eyes on the ghosts themselves and hopefully communicate with them is probably their best bet for the day. They clearly have something to say, they just need someone who will listen to them, someone who can listen to them. Someone like Cypress, with his big heart and earnest eyes. Its hard to bring him here, hard to ask him to do something like this, but HQ knows that he’ll be right there beside Cypress for the whole thing, that he’ll never be more than a minute away, that he’ll always be paying attention to the way that Cypress is feeling. 

They get back to the peir and its so much louder now, so much brighter with so much more excitement in the air. It’s almost overwhelming, but HQ is there with his hand on Cypress’s arm, pulling out the map to try and find the closest spot they can go to –– but he notices the sound and the disturbance just at the same time that Cypress does. The ghost hunters. With their stupid television show. That was the last thing they really needed right now, that was the last thing Cypress needed when he was trying to do something that was already hard.

“Ugh,” He says, a little breathless, with a shake of his head. He considers it for a second, weighs their options here. “We can’t let them see us talking to ghosts. That would be... bad. Okay, here.” he shows Cypress the map. “The first ghost shows up just over there near the ferris wheel. I’ll destract the idiots with cameras while you try find it, how does that sound?” He looks into Cypress’s eyes, just for a minute. “I’ll have my feelers out for you, so if things get intense I’ll come running.”  

After a moment, letting the plan settles in, HQ sends Cypress off with a  soft squeeze on his shoulder, a warm hand and another promise that he’ll only be a moment away. And then he plasters on a wide, excited smile, rushing up to the Ghost Hunters to improv something to keep them busy while Cypress gets to work. 

[hfalconerquinn]

cypresscrow​:

HQ’s hand on his shoulder grounds him again, focuses him, and he needs it, because his mind is racing a little bit, trying to imagine exactly what they’re going to see tonight, when these ghosts show up. Physical apparitions, but soundless ones, a strange inverse from the way he’s experienced the world, the way he’s always understood ghosts like this to work. He’s trying to piece it all together, as HQ thanks their witness, leads him off and away to a quiet spot so they can talk.

The words he usually heard, they weren’t connected to mouths moving; they weren’t spoken so much as they were echoed, remnants of what had been thought or heard or feared once, before, in a place. Not the way people normally thought of hearing spirits: he didn’t hear people try to contact their loved ones, didn’t hear spirits trying to give warnings or instructions. He heard what was left over, what was left behind. It was like he heard what had been loud and strong enough to leave an impression, heard it by the sound of the wind rushing through that impression.

Would he be able to hear these ghosts? Their unspoken words? Would he just hear the echoes of the pain they had been in when they died? 

     “I hope so,” he says, after a moment. “I mean, if I can’t hear something I’m not sure what use I’m gonna be on this case. But… it’s strange, right? I’ve never—well, I’ve seen ghosts, but they’re a different kind. The kind that chose not to move on, that keep living a life here instead of going on to whatever comes next, the kind that’s here willingly. My ghosts, the ones I hear, they’re not people the way those ghosts are. They’re… more like echoes, pieces of souls, the worst, most terrified pieces of them that get caught here and stuck in one place. And I’ve been hearing them as long as I can remember, but I’ve never seen one like that, not like the ones he described.”

He feels vastly under equipped, just standing here. He takes a second to try to listen, to see if there’s anything he can hear, but with the sounds of the rides, the sounds of the waves, it’s hard to focus, like grasping at straws. At least by daylight nothing here is loud enough to grip him. Eden had asked him, on their last case, if he had ever been trained for this, and he’d told them the truth: that he’d run away from it instead, too afraid to do anything but cope with it. But now he finds himself wishing maybe he hadn’t run away, so he’d find himself on firmer footing here. 

     “If they’re showing up, making themselves known, trying to talk… it sounds like they’re trying to give some kind of warning.” He doesn’t know of what. Maybe that their killer was going to strike again. Maybe something else. These things didn’t always work by logic, the way people did; the afterlife had its secrets, after all. “But I guess there’s no telling until the sun goes down, right?”

It’s a little chilling to hear Cypress explain exactly what ghosts are like for him. Of course, HQ knows that they aren’t like the regular ghosts, the ones that everyone can see and talk to if they’ll give you the time of day. Those are the ghosts that wanted to stay here, that had reasons to be floating around. HQ was rather friendly with this one ghost at school. She lurked around the charms classrooms, and she used to try and whisper the answers to questions in his ear when the professors weren’t looking at him. She had been rather lovely, actually, lovely but sad in the way so many ghosts could be. She’d died a tragic death, too young, and she hadn’t wanted to stop living her life. So she stayed and haunted the school, helped people when they needed it. She was kind and somehow bright, despite the fact that she didn’t really have a body at all. 

The ghosts that Cypress knows best aren’t like that. And its chilling to think of it, it really is. The worst parts of people, the fear and the pain, echoes of their most terrified moments. That was the noise that filled Cypress’ head almost every day, that was what drove him off the deep end sometimes. It’s understandable that he would snap sometimes, that he would need to warn HQ about the potential for getting mean, trying to push him away. 

He thinks he’d lose his own mind, if he had to hear that. Ghosts. Seeing them, feeling them, hearing them at their most scared and their most vulnerable. He found it hard enough and all he felt was regular people. Office drama. People having bad bad days. At least they were alive.

He slides his hand down, takes Cypress’ hand in gentle fingers. “They might be.” he says, a little quieter. “Maybe there’s something they want everyone to know. Maybe we can set them to rest, when we figure this all out.” And he nods his head, a gentle motion. “But there’s no telling until the sun goes down. I think we should take it easy until then, huh? Take a look around, maybe read up more on the history of the killings?”  

He feels cautious, suggesting that they look more into the killings and how they happened. But they should probably have the best picture of this that they can get, before they walk into the unknown together. They might as well use the time for something worthwile, so that the case doesn’t drag on and on and on. 

They can return at nightfall, back into the noise and the trouble, into the world of ghosts. But for now he leads Cypress away from the noise of the peer to do just as he said, take it easy and investigate a little bit more into what had happened so long ago. 

[hfalconerquinn]

aurorbishop​:

Harlow stares quizzically at the clock as Hades speaks to Mr. Pinn. They feel awful for the man, not only for the loss he suffered, but also how his attempts to take back that loss have gone. After the last few months they feel like they know so much more about loss than they ever did before, but they were one of the lucky ones, Willow and Nomi weren’t lost permanently, not like Mr. Pinn’s wife. 

“Maria Kotsakis should be able to fix this,” they reply, looking over to HQ than to Mr. Pinn, who was quite understandably perplexed given he didn’t know the wix. 

“She’s a chronomancer, she helped us figure out how to safely enter the time loop without being pulled in ourselves,” they answer Pinn’s unspoken question. If there was any witch that could fix this, they’re certain it’s her. 

“Good, what a relief,” Pinns lets out a sigh. “After it’s fixed will you two be… um taking me in?” The grief is still heavy on his features, so much so Harlow wonders if he even truly cares if he will be or not. But he doesn’t deserve to, and they’re sure HQ thinks so as well. 

“Creating unregistered time-turners is illegal in our laws, but you’re not the one who made this,” they reply with a solemn shake of their head. “Once Maria fixes the loop we’ll have to take the clock back with us, but you won’t be in trouble, no.” 

Looking back to the clock they run their hand through their hair, trying to figure out just where to go from there. Someone was going to have to get Maria, but they should also get Shelby too, they think. She didn’t even belong in this town, she deserved to be one of the first ones out of it once she was able. 

“HQ,” they speak up as they look over to him, “I can go to Maria’s shop and collect her. Maybe you should hunt down Shelby, bring her back here and fill her in?” 

“Would you like me to do anything? I’d like to help.” Pinn speaks up. 

“If you got a coffee pot and some mugs laying around we could all probably use some,” they reply with a small smile. Looking back over to HQ they look to see if he’s in on the plan. “You ready then?” 

.