Title: And They lived Happily Ever After - NOT!
Author: BELOVEDbyWAR
Pairing: Henry/Mike (gen)
Rating: PG
TV verse: Blood Ties
Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money.
Warnings: Future!fic
Summary: Dazed and irritated, a man in a faded trench coat stumbled through streets he once knew so well, but now bore no resemblance to the pictures he had committed to memory
Wc: 969
A.N.: Thanks to wordstuck for taking over beta duties!
And they lived happily ever after – NOT!
"…and they lived happily ever after."
What a bunch of lies we tell our children! Happily ever after? Yeah sure, easy to say when everything is peachy and brand new, but once the novelty rubs off, what then? What happens when the princess and prince grow old and a younger, seemingly more exciting person comes along? What then?
Or ever wondered what kind of ticks and psychoses those poor princesses must have developed on their way to never-ending love? I mean, Cinderella's childhood wasn't exactly a trip to the park, now was it? Or Snow White? And where the hell is a fairy-godmother when you need one?
No, children life is anything but a fairytale. Unfortunately, the one thing about them that is right is the one aspect you'd never dare to believe, nor wish for: The Monsters.
They come in all shapes and forms, but one thing is for sure, once you know they are out there your life will never be as it was before. And try as you might; there is no escaping them…
---Mike Celluci
***
Dazed and irritated, a man in a faded trench coat stumbled through streets he once knew so well, but now bore no resemblance to the pictures he had committed to memory.
Where ever he walked everything resembled a battlefield. Houses were vandalized, streets destroyed and seamed with car wrecks. And not a person in sight!
It was a ghost town! Had the blond not lived and worked here for all his life, he wouldn't have been able to recognize his city. What had happened here? And why hadn't he noticed any of it?
He kept walking until on the far horizon he could make out the silhouette of the CN Tower, but something was wrong. The town's once unmistakable landmark, just like everything he had looked upon so far, was the worse for wear. The former light façade was now blackened by fire and several holes made it look as if a giant rat had nibbled on it as it would on a juicy carrot.
Everything seemed to have gone down the drain. He bet, this was how the people of New Orleans had felt when they returned to their destroyed neighborhoods after the evacuation.
No matter in which direction he looked, chaos was everywhere. Then suddenly, in the far north, he spied a faint column of smoke.
Finally! After all, where there was smoke there had to be (or recently have been) fire and fire normally meant humans, seeing that it wasn't exactly high summer in a dry area.
He picked up his pace as fast as he could – which wasn't very quick and made him wonder how he had gotten so out of shape – and managed to shift into a light jog until he reached the location where the smoke was rising up.
Mike had been right in the assumption that he might find people near by, but what he hadn't really counted on was the out right fight scene he was stumbling in.
To his utter dismay, half of the participants where still children, varying from the age of 12 to 18. Their opponents on the other hand looked strange. There was on aura of - he had no other word to describe it – 'evil' surrounding them. It made the small hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
Then suddenly he caught sight of two seedy looking men cornering a girl of about 16 with ungodly smiles on their faces and he was done watching. Going with his gut-feeling and following the impulse, the need to protect, he crept up on one of them just in time to stop what would have been a tooth-rattling blow to the girl's pretty face by catching the fat fist in one of his big hands.
Surprised, the thug looked around and then up and up until he finally reached Mike's glaring blue gaze in utter astonishment.
"Wha-?" Was the only thing he managed to whisper before the cop's gigantic fist sent him to sleep with one mighty blow. Meanwhile the girl, a young woman really, had managed to hold her own and was delivering a series of impressive round house kicks, which sent her attacker stumbling backwards.
An alarm sent everyone stumbling apart. At first Mike didn't move but the girl's surprisingly strong grip coaxed him to follow her and just in time, because just the moment they were out of the open space a sickly looking green-yellow smoke crawled to where bare minutes ago the fighting had still been going. The vapor seemed to have a life of its own, and it looked as if it was searching for something.
Soon however, it vanished to the east. Only then did Mike dare to look around him. The adult's appeared to have used the distraction to vanish, and all that remained were the children, who had surrounded Mike from behind, and were looking at him skeptically, some even outright suspiciously.
"Who the hell are you!" The eldest boy, a tall black young man of about 18 years, demanded to know.
But before Mike could answer the girl from before had taken position between him and the group and pronounced:
"He helped me! Let him be, Thomas!"
Clearly surprised by her defense of a stranger, the by far taller boy backed down, which made Mike smirk a little. He could practically hear Crowley sneer:
'Still letting women fight the fight for you, Celluci?'
Carefully laying a hand on the girl's shoulder Mike stepped to her side.
"My name is Mike. Where are your parents? And what happened here just now?"
The kids looked at him as if he had grown another head.
"Parents?!" Another boy laughed mirthlessly. "Where have you been the last ten years, old timer?!"
tbc