Coming to the fic visualisation thing late to say, the opening of A Once and Future Thing, with Beth massacring her way to Circe. Iconic.
Thank you! That’s actually one of my favorite scenes I’ve ever written. I really enjoy dark!Beth and dark!Wes because honestly, I enjoy portraying just how human and flawed they are. These two have some the darkest arcs I’ve plotted and I don’t think I’ll ever do those arcs the justice they deserve. I mean you got a taste of it in A Once and Future Thing, but honestly, it’s kinda a drop in the bucket in how far she kinda goes.
I’m so sorry I waited so long to answer this but it’s because I had something similar to this waiting to be finished in my notebook and I couldn’t resist sharing it with you because if you enjoy murder happy and vicious Beth then you would definitely love this little snippet I have of Killian witnessing Beth fight and realizing how much she’s like him and feeling like he’s failed her but of course not verbalizing it. This takes place between Beth’s Enchanted Forest journey and Will’s death naturally. So, 1.8k of Killian kinda discovering his daughter has a bit of dark side, just like him.
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Not a week goes by in Storybrooke without trouble occurring, which is Killian Jones isn’t even remotely surprised to see Vikings (new ones, not the local ones of course) charging the Storybrooke Harbor on the one bloody Saturday morning his wife and best friend were out of town. Killian and Beth had been cleaning out the inside of the Jolly when they crashed into the docks, whooping and hollering as they raised their weapons into the air.
“Finally,” Beth laughs, grabbing her sword and swinging herself over the side of the Jolly before Killian could even get a word in to stop her. “About time we got something exciting to do around here! I was starting to get bored!”
A fit of anxiousness fills his chest as she flings herself immediately into battle, but he has no time to think. He grabs his own sword and joins her, trying to keep an eye on his daughter as he engages the enemy. The unsettled nerves in his belly is all too familiar. He felt a similar emotion when Henry started joining them in battles. However, that feeling was a lot more mild than how he feels about his little girl fighting. Beth is his only daughter and he fears what he might do to these men if anything was to happen to her.
Despite his advancing age, Killian has little trouble taking on these men. They’re novice fighters at best, hardly challenge. He wants to laugh at how sluggishly they swing their weapons, like drunk children playing war. It’s almost unfair how easily he cuts them and a part of him is high on the rush that comes with fighting and feeding the bloodlust he tries so very hard to keep locked inside him. It’s so rare for his inner wolf to come out these days and it howls with satisfaction at being let loose on these invaders as he thins the group to almost nothing.
The high doesn’t last long however.
The sound of swords clashing rattles through the air until it doesn’t. Metal meets flesh instead and the noises become more gargled. The last Viking falls to his feet, clutching his throat as a curtain of scarlet cascades down his front. It’s a horrific and gruesome death, but Killian has long since been acquainted with such things and has developed something of an iron stomach for gore.
The only thing that unsettles him is who delivered the killing blow.
Beth stands above the dying man; her lips curled into a menacing sneer as her glittering green eyes stare down at him as cold as gemstones. There’s blood, not her own, sprayed across her face and she looks more like a feral thing than the little girl who used to sit on his knee and give him sweet kisses before bed.
She glances down at her sword and huffs in annoyance at the viscera clinging to the edge of the blade, barely glancing at the dying Viking. She pulls out an old rag, one that used to blue but now was a muddled grey and covered with dark stains, and starts using it to clean while muttering under her breath. She seems more upset with the idea of her weapon is dirty than she is about the fact there was a man choking on his blood laying at her feet.
Killian’s stomach pulls itself into knots at the scene.
He remembers so vividly the four-year old girl who begged so prettily for him to teach her how to use a sword. “Please, Daddy?” She had cried. “Oh please can you teach me too? I want to be like you, Daddy.” Her eyes been incredibly green then too, but like her mother’s, warm, full of light and wonder.
As if sensing his gaze, his daughter raises her head from her task. It’s no longer Emma’s eyes that stare back at him, but ones a little too familiar. Everything about her at the moment is too familiar.
She wipes as her face in an attempt get rid of the ruddy drops on her face but only manages to swear it across her mouth.
She looks like a wolf fresh from a kill; one with his eyes and bloodied muzzle. It’s as unsettling as looking in a mirror.
“What?” She asks, frowning deeply.
Killian squeezes his eyes closed, trying to compose himself from the uneasiness he feels. Before he had been worried about the men hurting his daughter, but that fear has been misplaced. He should have been more concerned with her viciousness instead of theirs. His daughter has just killed a man without even blinking.
She was just like him, but twice as pretty and twice as vicious.
“Dad? Are you okay?”
“Come here…” he calls, voice hoarse as he tries to swallow.
Beth steps forward questioningly, cocking her head to the side as she tries to assess his expression. He raises his hand, brushing his thumb across her mouth to wipe away the blood. His attempt is relatively successful but he can see traces lingering on her skin.
He still sees himself in her face.
“Are you alright?”
“I feel like I should be asking you that question,” she responds, eyebrows knitting together. “You look a bit green.”
“It’s not everyday you watch your child fight.”
She snorts at that. “You trained me with a sword since I was yeah high, I was never in any danger.”
“Training is training. Watching you gut someone is a different thing all together.”
“Gut someone,” she repeats, blinking almost owlishly.
“Aye.”
“You make it sound like I did something wrong. He was going to kill us. It was either him or me. I did what I had to do. There wasn’t a choice.”
“Wasn’t there?”
Her eyes flash at the question. She pulls back, shoulders squaring defensively as she eyes him with something just short of contempt. “You would have done the same thing.”
It’s the truth and Killian knows it. Coming from anyone else, he wouldn’t have flinched but this is his daughter and for reasons he knows all too well, it stings to hear the words spat him.
“Just because I do things doesn’t mean you should, Elizabeth.”
“Are you serious right now!” She shouts angrily, outstretching her arms in frustration. She has an inner wolf just like him and he can see it snarling inside of her, baring its teeth in anger at being questioned. “I don’t understand why you’re mad at me! I’m doing exactly what you taught me to do! What we have spent all of my life training for!”
“I’m not mad,” he says, reaching forward to place a hand on her shoulder in hopes of calming her, but she shrugs it away. “I’m just concerned.”
“About?”
“You didn’t even flinch.”
She startles at a little his words, lips pulling into a thin line as she digests his words.
“It wasn’t the first time,” she admits.
“Oh, that I can tell. That was very clear. I’m just wondering…” he trails off, unable to find the appropriate words to convey what he means. He’s a gift orator, but this is such a raw and delicate situation. He doesn’t know which to ask.
When did you become a killer?
Why couldn’t I protect you?
When did you become me?
When did I fail you as a father?
Her eyes dart between his, trying to read the questions that he can’t bring himself. Whatever she sees deflates her some and her shoulders droop. She sighs, playing with her hair self-consciously with blood stained fingers.
“It was in the Enchanted Forest,” she says after a moment. “My third day. I was playing poker against some pretty vicious assholes. One took exception to my winnings and he and his cronies tried to…well, let’s just say they wanted to hurt me…badly…”
He hears all too clearly what she isn’t saying and the beast inside rears its angry head, furious that someone would dare lay a hand on his child. It calls for blood and it takes everything inside Killian to tap it down in order to keep listening to what she’s saying.
She takes a deep before speaking again. “He tried to hurt me and I stabbed him in the ribs for his troubles…I don’t think I would have survived though if I hadn’t met Jim…”
“I should have been there.”
“There’s no way you could have,” she shrugs, completely unconcerned with his failures. “I was cursed. Not your fault.”
“He was the first, but he wasn’t the last.”
“No,” she confirms quietly, looking away from him again. “Not by a long shot.”
“How many?” He dreads the answer to the question, but he can’t help it. He knows the savage delight she displayed earlier all too well and it’s something that’s cultivated over time rather than gained after one killed. Her small slender hands have sent more than a few men to their death, he’s sure of it as much as it pains him.
He never wanted his children to be like him. He wanted them to be like the Charmings, to be like Emma.
“I could ask you the same question,” she responds, eyes cutting back to his.
“You could, but I asked first.”
“I don’t know,” she admits. With those three words, Killian’s heart shatters into a million pieces.
“You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t…I never sought it but sometimes you have no choice…all I know is that it got a little easier…and I didn’t have to think about it…it just…”
Killian pulls her to him, guiding her face into the crook of his neck like he’s done so many times before. It used to be something he did to comfort her when she was a child, but for the first time, he does it to comfort himself; so he doesn’t have to look at her face and see himself staring back at him. Tears burn at the corners of his eyes as he rubs his hand up and down her back. He opens his mouth to speak, to apologize, to say something but words won’t come out. They linger voiceless in the air.
Smorgasbord Posts from Your Archives - The Restless Spirit by Billy Ray Chitwood
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It is time for another post from the archives of Billy Ray Chitwood. As someone who has lived a nomadic life as a child with my father’s career in the Royal Navy, and then in the last 38 years of marriage and travelling for work and to live, I can empathise with Billy Ray as he talks about his restless spirit. This is meant to be our last house! About the time that the house and and garden are…
THE CRACKED MIRROR - Reflections of an Appalachian Son
THE CRACKED MIRROR – Reflections of an Appalachian Son
THE CRACKED MIRROR – Reflections of an Appalachian Son “Mr. Chitwood–the author of Bailey Crane novels and works of nonfiction–bares his life from childhood to old age with the skill of a surgeon and the requisite messiness of ER trauma.” (From the 5-Star Review by Dr. Timothy Tays – Author and Clinical Psychologist who has his practice in Scottsdale, Arizona.) Twitter: @timothytays) * “The…
She left him and went with her Time Lord. How would he live the one true adventure now?
On an average, Human, TARDIS-less day, the Doctor (Tentoo) runs into the last person he expected to see fighting an alien... “over a pineapple. A pineapple, for goodness sake?”
Love this fic. They seemed to nail the characters while still managing to make them unique enough from their AU counterparts!
NOTE: Normally I don’t post fics with adult content, but this one does have some. Normally I don’t even read fics with adult content. However the one sex scene that’s somewhat descriptive (idk, I glazed over it) was in Chapter 17, 1/3 or 1/2 of the way into it. It can easily be skipped over like I did (just start up in Chapter 18 when you get to the scene) and you don’t lose any important information.
