(GT Angst)
A Dark Future AU Story.
In which Cliff goes on a mission to save a young glamour fairy from captivity.
(Author's Note: Several unfamiliar characters in this story have been featured in a few short snippets, but their full origin story is not yet published.)
Warning: Dehumanization, violence
Characters belong to me and the lovely @marydublin5 💕
(( Read from the beginning ))
(( More Dark Future AU ))
Naturally, Chase and Austin called dozens of times during Cliff’s three-day drive across the country to reach them. He never answered, texting back only simple, unassuming phrases, along with his ETA every day.
On my way. We’ll talk soon.
As agonizing as it had to be for them to wait, Cliff stayed firm on avoiding any mention of fairies on an open line. By the second day, Chase and Austin seemed to get the message and stopped calling.
Cliff stopped briefly to rest his eyes in his car before hitting the road again. The whole time, dread sat like a lead weight on his shoulders. All he could hope was that he wasn’t too late—that Chase and Austin weren’t calling him to say that there was no point in him coming anymore.
The sun had just finished setting on the third day when he arrived. He slowed the car to a crawl past the familiar sprawling house, noting that the gate was locked tight. Past the bars, the front and side gardens looked neglected, devoid of all life. Cliff shuddered, picturing spunky little Bryoni. She was an earth fairy, the one who gave those plants love and care despite her prickly exterior. If the garden was dead, then maybe she…
Clenching his jaw, Cliff drove down a couple of blocks before parking at a random curb. An unfamiliar car in front of the house could draw unwanted attention. He briskly made his way back toward the manor and stopped in front of the gate. Just as he was about to send a message to alert them he had arrived, the front door swung open.
Both Chase and Austin made their way outside, contempt and wariness written in their expressions and postures. It was strange—they were around the same age as Cliff, but the fact that they were parental figures to a small pack of fairies made them seem so much older.
“I’m sorry,” Cliff started. “I haven’t checked that phone in months. I had no idea—”
“How do we know you’re not working for them?” Austin cut in, his light eyes ablaze with distrust.
Cliff frowned, the stunned beat of silence likely making him appear even more suspicious. But it was a dumbass accusation, so he treated it as such. “For who? The DNB?” He glared at their cautious faces and barked a humorless laugh. “You… you think I’d be working for the fucking feds? You saw her on the news, right? Everyone did.”
Judging by the way Chase and Austin averted their gazes, Cliff didn’t need to say who he meant.
Sylv.
“So, you saw her hopped up on drugs, being poked and prodded in a cage for all the world to see, and you think I would be working for those fuckers?”
The two of them hesitated.
“You could’ve cut some kind of deal with them,” Chase said, less sure of himself as he raked a hand back through his dark hair. “We haven’t seen her on the news in a while.”
“That’s because she’s dead. Jon, too, in case you’ve been trying to reach him also.”
Cliff braced himself. Most times, when Jon or Sylv so much as crossed his mind, tears nudged at the back of his eyes and he shut down. But right now, he was cold and empty as he observed the dawning horror on Chase and Austin’s faces.
When Austin finally unlocked the gate, Cliff didn’t budge.
“Come in,” Austin said. “Please. We’re sorry, but can you blame us? We didn’t have a clue what happened to any of you. We’ve spent months thinking you were all dead, and then out of the clear blue, you get back to us and won’t say anything except that you’re on your way. And after what happened, trusting anyone is…” He trailed off and pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, shuddering a deep breath.
Chase squeezed Austin’s shoulder and met Cliff’s gaze pleadingly. “Lucille was taken almost three months ago. If anyone can find her, it’s you, right? Please, if you need money, you can take anything we got. Just, please… Find her.”
“Are you serious?” Cliff had to gather his patience, knowing just how desperate they had to be. “You think I’m here for a payout?”
Before he could go on, something moved in Chase’s front pocket and made Cliff stop short. A pair of tiny eyes met Cliff’s gaze over the lip of the pocket and then ducked back down hurriedly. Cliff huffed in disbelief and glanced around to make sure no one was on the sidewalk to catch the same glimpse. Finally, he strode past the gate and onto the property.
“You shouldn’t bring them out here,” Cliff muttered to Chase, grabbing his arm and steering him back toward the front door. “For all you know, whoever took Lucille is keeping tabs. They won’t hesitate to kidnap another fairy if they find out there’s more.”
Chase shrugged off Cliff’s touch, looking confused. Then he followed Cliff’s nod to his front pocket. Drawing in a sharp breath, Chase gingerly touched the outside of the pocket before hurrying ahead to the porch steps.
“We told you to stay inside!” Chase whispered downward.
Austin sighed and came to a stop beside Cliff. “Trust me—we don’t want them outside any more than you do. It’s just been difficult to reason with them since Lucille was taken. She… she’s always been the voice of reason. They listen to her.” He looked at Cliff vulnerably, pleadingly. “Will you come inside?”
Without any further argument, Cliff strode past him and into the foyer. He stepped up beside Chase, who fished around in his pocket until he pulled out a fairy—a girl no older than thirteen or fourteen. Thea. Although she had two fully-grown human men staring down at her in question, she didn’t look particularly frightened. Even with her pale violet hair falling in her face, it was clear she was pouting the way any teenager would, caught doing something she wasn’t supposed to.
“I just wanted to be there to help convince him,” she explained, nodding toward Cliff. “In case he said no.”
Cliff softened, relaxing a little as Austin closed the front door and locked it tight, sealing them all safely inside.
“What makes you think I’d say no?” Cliff asked.
Thea curled her shoulders forward timidly and wouldn’t meet his gaze. “You never answered before.”
“That was a mistake.” He ensured his voice was as gentle as possible; he recalled her being the most skittish of the fairy children in Chase and Austin’s care. “I’m here now. And I’m definitely not saying no.”
Straightening, Thea looked at him fully. The tentative hope on her tiny face was devastating. He knew it would be the right thing to let her down gently—to tell her that he couldn’t make any promises about finding Lucille. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Especially when two more tiny figures appeared in the foyer.
Elias was the first one to reach Cliff, a blur of rosy hair that paused to hover inches from his face. “You’re here!” he said brightly. It was hard to believe that anyone, even a ten-year-old, could smile so innocently at Cliff.
“What took you so long?” Bryoni was equally enthusiastic—though in venom rather than glee. She crossed her arms tightly and perched on Austin’s shoulder, blatantly keeping her distance from Cliff. She couldn’t have been older than twelve by that point, but her glare could raze a forest.
“Manners, Bry,” Austin scolded lightly.
She made a face at Cliff. “Thank you for finally showing up after a million years, I guess.”
Cliff had the urge to tell her she was adorable just to stir her up, but after seeing the garden in ruins, he had a feeling she wasn’t up for jokes. Instead, he focused on the fact that at least three of the five kids were accounted for.
“Lucille was the only one taken?” Cliff said.
Swallowing hard, Austin nodded. “Only her.” He frowned at all the kids in quick succession, even reaching up to tap Bryoni to make sure she was still there. In an instant, he voiced the same question on Cliff’s mind: “Where’s Calder?”
All the kids averted their gazes and fidgeted, exchanging nervous glances with each other.
Chase cursed and cupped Thea closer as if she might disappear next if he didn’t hold her tight. “He went out?” he asked her directly. “Again?”
“He said he’ll be back soon,” she said placatingly, patting his thumb. “He… he’s just trying to help.”
“He’s going to get himself taken next,” Austin muttered, rubbing his eyes.
“If he’d let me go with him, maybe we would’ve found her by now,” Bryoni said.
Austin shuddered, scooting her closer to his neck to hug her despite her grumbles. “Don’t even say that.”
It wasn’t until then that Cliff truly registered how exhausted Chase and Austin both looked. If he managed to figure out where Lucille was—or, he thought grimly, what happened to her—Calder wouldn’t have a reason to throw himself into danger anymore.
Cliff looked between Chase and Austin, then the faces of the three tiny children. “Tell me everything that happened.
She lovingly weaves her own dreams from glamour when she can. But sometimes, she’s too exhausted and has no choice but to relinquish control of her mind as she drifts off.
There is no rest on those nights. She dreams of how things could have gone differently--for better or worse—on the day her life became a living hell. She and her siblings could have all ended up in chains, or none of them. The most devastating dreams are the ones that remind her that this hadn’t needed to happen. If only she had allowed herself to be as
VIOLENT
MANIPULATIVE
SADISTIC
as human propaganda claims glamour fairies to be.
There are several clients this evening, back to back. She isn’t allowed to curl up on her pillow until the faint gray of dawn peeks through the curtains that block the iron-barred window. By then, she knows she doesn’t have the energy to form a dream of her choice. She’s too tired to dwell on the dread of falling asleep.
Not long after her heavy eyelids fall shut, she relives that day, just as it really happened.
It always begins the same.
“Come on, this is a rerun!” Calder tries to sidestep Lucille to reach the remote control.
They’re on a couch cushion, one wrong word away from breaking out into a magic fight—something they’re not allowed to do anymore. Not since the third couch replacement and the fifth wall repainting. But Chase and Austin aren’t home to stop them.
“It’s not a rerun,” Lucille fumes. “And even if it is, it doesn’t matter if I haven’t seen it yet!”
“Literally every episode is the same shit, I can’t even tell what’s a rerun or not. You and your stupid reality shows.”
“Well, you just want to watch another stupid nature documentary. Why, you wanna cry over another bear dying?”
Calder flares his wings and shouts a spell, conjuring a blast of ice crystals from nowhere that knocks her backward. Before he can reach the remote, Lucille tackles him away from it, huffing with cold. She normally isn't so violent, but no one—no one—gets between her and the TV. And Calder is just being a brat.
The front door bangs open.
Lucille and Calder break apart and bolt into the air in unison, exchanging wide-eyed looks. Chase and Austin aren’t supposed to be back until late afternoon. And neither of them would ever open the door like that.
Unfamiliar voices mutter to each other in the foyer. Cautious footsteps invite themselves into the house. Chase and Austin disable the house alarm long ago, not wanting to risk drawing the authorities’ attention to the house for any reason. Now, Lucille would have given anything to hear the blare of a siren. Anything to deter whoever is breaking in.
The intruders draw closer to the living room.
“Hide,” Lucille whispers, seizing Calder’s wrist and flying with him behind the TV. It’s too late to turn it off without being noticed.
They squeeze each other’s hands and hold their breath as two humans enter the room. Lucille dares to peek out to size them up. It’s a man and a woman. They are dressed casually, as if they had decided to break in as an extra treat during their morning stroll through the neighborhood. The woman is petite, and the man is tall, but not as tall as Austin. Despite that, unfamiliar humans appear far more massive and imposing.
The woman has a bag slung over her shoulder. She has a shiny blond ponytail and pink-painted lips, which pull into a smirk as she eyes the TV. Lucille ducks back out of sight before she can be spotted.
“Looks like someone’s home,” the woman says.
“Maybe Brett’s info is actually good for once,” the man scoffs. Lucille catches a glimpse of the bottom of his jacket. The pockets are bulky. She swears she sees the handle of a knife peeking out. Even from a distance, iron buzzes in the air. The man strolls deeper into the room and runs a hand along the back of the couch, as though he can sense where Lucille and Calder had been moments before. “Didn’t think he’d come in handy.”
“Let’s not get excited.” The woman rifles through her bag, but Lucille can’t see what she pulls out. “We gotta find the little fucker first. Stay sharp. If there is one, and if it really can do glamour, there’s no telling what it’ll try.”
Lucille clasps a hand over her mouth and muffles a whimper. Someone must have been her or one of her siblings outside. It was her job to maintain a glamour shield, and she knew that she had gotten lazy more than once. She’d assumed there weren’t any fairy fanatics in the area—she and her siblings very rarely sense magic other than their own.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
She’d let her guard down and someone had eagerly tipped off these two monsters. There’s no telling how much people pay for that kind of information, but it’s been all over the news for months: humans hunting down fairies for profit, dodging the red tape of the authorities and the DNB. No matter how quickly Chase and Austin change the channel when Lucille flies in during a broadcast, there’s no hiding the truth of what’s going on out there.
The man stays in the living room and begins to search while the woman heads back to the foyer. The click of her heels trails up the stairs.
“The kids,” Calder breathes, squeezing Lucille’s shoulder and shaking her out of her stupor.
“Shit!”
Bryoni and Elias had roped Thea into playing hide and seek upstairs. There’s no telling where they are now. No doubt they heard the door and the voices and were smart enough to stay out of sight. But if these people are determined to find a fairy, no hiding place is safe enough.
Lucille gathers her nerves and makes a split-second decision. “Go out the back,” she whispers. “Find the kids and get them outside through the attic.”
“What about you?” Calder snaps so loud that Lucille shushes him. “I’m not leaving you!”
“I’m right behind you, just go.” She nods toward the human, who is peeking behind picture frames on the table and rifling through drawers. “I’ll glamour him so we can get a head start. Now.”
She doesn’t give Calder the luxury of hesitating. She whispers a spell that makes the man pause and go blank. Lucille knows she can do much, much worse, but she can’t bring herself to do it. She and her siblings have scared off nearly a dozen human families from this house, but this is different. Nothing will frighten these people away. They will not be fooled into thinking there’s a ghost.
With no choice but to comply, Calder bolts off past the man without being spotted. Lucille watches with fear and guilt weighing heavily on her heart.
I’m sorry.
She lied. It’s easy because it means protecting her family. She has no intention of following Calder. She needs him out of the way, safe. She plans to knock out both the man and the woman to stop them in their tracks. Incapacitate them as punishment for targeting her family. Again, at the back of her mind she thinks about how she could kill them if she wants to. But corpses will only bring trouble onto Chase and Austin and unwanted attention to the house. With the intruders knocked out, Chase and Austin will have a better grip on what to do.
There is a strain on the spell. The man grunts and shakes his head. Just like that, he fights off the glamour. Lucille tries to take it in stride. Humans are harder to fool when they’re aware of glamour. She’s tried to trick Chase and Austin plenty of times for the fun of it, and they’ve gotten better at resisting.
Do we seriously need to make a rule for ‘no glamouring us into buying twenty chocolate bars’?
It’s funny when Chase or Austin snap out of it and scowl. It’s anything but funny when the intruder realizes why his mind went foggy. Lucille attempts to glamour him again, but he fights it off easily, making Lucille wonder how often he has dealt with magic before.
“Michelle!” His voice booms like thunder, making Lucille cover her ears instinctively. He glares around the living room. “It’s somewhere down here! It tried to fucking glamour me!”
Heels click hurriedly on the second floor, racing for the stairs. Lucille feels a simultaneous rush of relief and fear. Michelle would have made it obvious if she found one of Lucille’s siblings. Her family is safe now that she’s drawn both of the intruders’ attention. But even the satisfaction of that can’t completely ward off her terror.
It’ll be easy, she tells herself. She just needs to take out the man before the woman reaches the bottom of the stairs.
“Where the fuck are you?” He’s manic now, searching everywhere for her. He pushes furniture aside, tears curtains from the window rods, shoves a vase and a framed photograph off the side table. He’s coming closer to the TV, closer—
Lucille bolts into the air to seize control of her predicament. I’m choosing to be found, she assures the panic ravaging her insides. The man stops his rampage and locks eyes on her.
Lifting her hands, Lucille screams a chant.
But Michelle arrives on the ground floor faster than expected. She turns the corner and startles Lucille, wrenching something out of her bag. Lucille catches the briefest glimpse of it—a bottle. Michelle sprays a mist into the air.
At first, Lucille is utterly indignant, thinking this stupid human is trying to use bug spray on her, but then her spell peters out, and her skin burns like wildfire.
Iron. The mist is infused with iron.
It’s not potent enough to devour her skin, but it’s more than enough to sap the magic right out of her. Coughing raggedly, she tries to fly higher and escape the poisonous air, but her wings hurt so much that she drops straight down and hits the carpet with a muted thud.
Choking, she forces herself to hands and knees, clawing at the carpet fibers to drag herself away, but her energy fades to nothing. Falling to herself, wings twitching feverishly, she looks straight up. Her vision blurs as the man and woman loom over her and stare down at their prize with breathless joy.
“It’s so… young,” Michelle says as though she’s commenting on the weather right before Lucille blacks out from the pain.
