Darker London

Perhaps a white suit adorned with retro-style flowers wasn't the most covert thing to wear while Deirdre was on a creeping mission, but the flaming colour of her hair tended to negate sneakiness anyway. Luckily, Deirdre was so used to the way that Spectre felt, having spent a great deal of time around him, that she could tell the angel inside Spectre's house was in fact really him before she finished darting across the road.

( Wow no )

They had boarded up the door, in an attempt to both keep the weather out and give them some semblance of safety. Though clearly if a demon wanted in, they were just going to crash the hell in. They all crowded together then, sleeping in the second lounge on mattresses and hoarded blankets, none of them really wanting to be alone.

It wasn't until the next morning, until Leon and Serenity had slunk into the kitchen in search of coffee and sustenance, that Hope had a chance to address Joss' behaviour during their little invasion. He had begged her to stay in the closet, and said he couldn't watch her die again. It was a sight cause of concern.

"Joss? You awake?" she asked, glancing over at his lump under the covers.

"Thomas!" Stephie called from the kitchen, where she'd been making coffee and messaging Deirdre. At first it had been good - Deirdre was going to come over and Stephie was going to tell her all about Spectre and if Deirdre was on her side, Spectre didn't stand a chance, and also, Stephie wanted a Deirdre hug, irregardless of anything to do with Spectre. And then Jinx had called him a cunt and something about Jinx standing up for her made her ache with the very strong need to hug him, too.

And then Deirdre had suggested with wasn't Spectre and breathing became an issue. "Thomas, where are you!?"

Josie had slept a little, but, unfortunately, most of it had been in the shower.

She hadn't wanted to wait, after Cai had driven them to the hospital. Most of the fuss was around Zoe, who was in a state of exhaustion that occasionally fluctuated toward heavily annoyed before sinking back toward the barely conscious end of the spectrum. It wasn't till Josie went over to Katia to tell her that she hadn't had anything to do with Zoe fainting, honest, that Katia realised Josie's skin was almost blue, and started quizzing her about how many times she'd thrown up ("like, eight" said Cai, who had just called Liz and was in earshot) and did her chest hurt and how long had she been underwater?

( ... )

Rachel woke up in Danny's bed, and lay there for a long time. Wolf was draped over the foot of the bed, his chin resting on her leg, deeply asleep.

She raised her fingers to touch her face. The place where she'd cracked it against the car was warm and tender and very sore. Where was that car now? At the bottom of the Thames.

(Had he got out?) she wondered. (Had he swum to the surface and survived?)

( ... )

Zoe couldn't sleep. Rachel was safe in the room upstairs with Danny and Deirdre and Jason were about, being demonic shields. As soon as they'd got home, Rachel and Danny had gone straight back to Danny's room and Rachel had climbed in, piled up with blankets. Zoe had poked her head in on them, a little while later, like her mother would have, and Rachel was either very firmly asleep or very firmly pretending. Either way, safe, wrapped in Danny's arms. But it wasn't enough to relax Zoe. Her head ached and banged, whatever she did.

Deirdre had set up mattresses for her and Cai on the floor of the library at Victoria Lane, and Zoe was lying fully dressed under the quilt staring at the ceiling. Cai looked lost. He wanted nothing more than to wriggle over and hold her.

"They need to find his body," she said to Cai, in the dark "She needs to be sure he's dead. Or alive. She needs that."

( ... )

It was while cleaning the benchtop, her shower-fresh hair hanging wet and heavy on her shoulders, that Nova thought I have got to get my own place.

Sure, the hospital was fine. But it wasn't a home, wasn't any way to have an actual life. And Nova spent all her time in that place, either working or on her downtime. Originally it had made sense: Valentin had reached out and (understandably) terrified her: but it had been years since then, years since there'd been even a glimpse of him.

Honestly, Nova didn't think she was on his radar anymore. Maybe she was wrong but maybe if she was just going to continue hiding away forever, she might as well be in a prison of his choosing anyway.

( Your hands are hard, still warm from when they took me too far. )

Write Quinn backstory!

It wasn't long before the cold had seeped to entirely into Carly's bones that her whole body ached with each step.

Imagine if I died of hypothermia and that one stuck, Carly thought as she stumbled thought the night time streets, starting to laugh at the idea. Every person she passed - most of them under struggling umbrellas or sheltered beneath awnings - drew away from her and she couldn't blame them. She was wet and bloody and stumbling and laughing. She was the exact type of person everyone should have been avoiding.

( We sound so small; our hearts have no voices at all. )

Josie woke up gasping for air.

There was none to gasp for - only water - and her body convulsed in the effort to expel it from her lungs, but each time she coughed she gasped in again afterwards - and more of the water, ice cold, rushed in.

( ... )

The scene smelled of spilled petrol and Stephie clutched Marie tighter, gagging not from the smell itself but the sense memory of the Templar splashing Thomas with petrol. She pressed her face against Marie’s hair, and clung. Marie was wailing and clinging too, Stephie could feel her tears hot on her neck in heartbreaking contrast to the icy shock as they were both soaked completely in the rain.

( ... )

Zoe shrieked as she dashed from the front door of Vic Lane to Cai's car, right outside, the rain almost instantly soaking her face. "HURRY UP!" she yelled at the boys. "Stop letting your hearts slow you down, I'm getting soaked!"

"You're mean when you're cold," Cai grinned, moving as fast as he could toward the car and unlocking it so that Zoe and Danny could bundle in. He was delighted that Zoe was in such a good mood, despite the cold. She'd been through the wringer lately and a movie marathon at Danny's new place was probably just what she needed.

( ... )

Blind with fury, Imogene rode. Immortality lent a certain amount of confidence to riding a bike, something she hadn’t done for over forty years. The thought of crashing or falling did not occur to her because crashing or falling would slow her down, and that was unthinkable. She must catch up to her husband, the liar. The cheat. The irredeemable bastard. She must catch up to him and tear open his whole life as punishment.

As she caught up with him, she forced clarity upon herself. Blind fury would not work. She need lucidity if she was going to come out of tonight on top. She needed to be clear sighted and goal orientated. Imogene took a long, deep breath, and asked herself what she wanted.

She wanted every lie he’d ever told revealed, wanted the weight of them to crush him, utterly destroy him. That had been her mistake, she realised. She should have destroyed him earlier, in order to rebuild him into the kind of man she wanted him to be.

Well, she would destroy him now, but she had no plans to waste any more of her heart in trying to redeem him this time. He was past help. Their marriage was in its death throes, and all Imogene wanted was to make it as messy a death as possible.


As he drove, Harley made frantic plans. London was over. London was done. He must get home and grab anything of value, and grab Rachel, and get them all back into the car and leave. He did not give a shit where they went, so long as it was far. Maybe America. You could really hide from your past, in America. You had the right to protect yourself properly there, too. Imogene wouldn’t have fucked with him if he’d been carrying his gun.

Harley was not immortal, but tonight, he drove like it.

( ... )

Placehold for Peter and Razvan

The crash from downstairs had them all looking up, attention snatched away from the board game pieces on the table. Truth be told Joss wasn't paying all that much attention the game anyway, because Hope kept distracting him with her gorgeous intensity, and he'd really rather be doing something else instead of playing with Serenity and the empty chair that Leon had left.

The wind was making a racket around the house but that didn't disguise the crash, and it did absolutely nothing to disguise the scream that ripped through the house afterwards. Joss found himself on his feet, frozen in the middle of the room, his blood sprinting through his veins as he stared at the door that lead downstairs. He hadn't noticed that he'd grabbed Hope's wrist and pulled her to her feet too, not till she spoke.

Rachel scrolled through the pictures Danny had sent her of his new home, the way he'd decorated his bedroom, the cakes in the kitchen, the backyard, the cat, Deirdre making a ridiculous face at the camera, barely dressed even though it was the dead of winter. Alex was in the background of a couple of them, and Rachel stopped scrolling for a few moments to look at her. She couldn't tell if Alex looked more relaxed than before, couldn't tell what her feelings were about living in this new place just from two pictures. But god, Rachel wanted to know.

Zoe had told Rachel all about what they'd done; going to Alex's house to strip it of her stuff, make a clean break from her awful mother. Zoe hadn't hidden how proud she was of Alex, as if there was any pride to be had in a family's final death throes.

( ... )

Leon's mulled wine was coming along beautifully. He'd been working on this new recipe all winter and wasn't too modest to admit that tonight's batch might just be his greatest yet. Half moons of orange floated in a sea of star anise. He was tempted, briefly, to add to the space vibe with a little glitter; he was sure there was some food grade gold flakes left over from their midwinter celebrations.

Leon busied himself with his dinner preparations and next time he turned around, Joss was looking into the cauldron of wine (the cauldron itself a gift from Serenity's mums). "Divining anything good?" Leon asked, and Joss looked up and gave him a half shrug, but a half smile, too. This had been a pretty good winter for Joss; he was still a moody bastard some of the time, but he grinned a whole lot easier.

( ... )

"Did you have friends in school?"

( Smarts )

Alex woke from a nightmare - not a screaming one, thank god - and sat up in bed in the dark, catching her breath, trying not to cry. In the dream her window had shattered and something had climbed in, and for too many long moments, sick with adrenaline as she tried to breathe quietly, she was too scared to look at the window and see.

Reality slowly filtered back in. She was in a room in a big house on Victoria Lane. It was, according to the people she lived with, 'Alex's room', but it did not feel yet like it belonged to her. The room was the biggest and the most expensive gift that she had ever been given and this was one of the roadblocks in her mind stopping her from thinking of it as her own thing.

( ... )

Carly hated Christmas.

It hadn't always been that way, she hadn't always been the Bah Humbug type. Even as a teenager who thought she was too cool for everything, Carly had loved everything about Christmas. The bright lights, the terrible songs, the rampant consumerism. (Probably that last one the most.)

But it was hard to get worked up about Christmas when she didn't have anyone to spend it with. Even when her father had been difficult and surly, he'd always put all their difficulties aside for Christmas. Something about the tradition of it all seemed to make him more of a dad than he usually was, and they always went and bought the most beautiful tree. On Christmas day she and Jonas and their dad would sit around it opening presents and drinking their coffees and everything felt - for a brief bright and shining moment - like they were all happy together.

( Read more... )