Chapter One
''How dare you, witch!'' Stella hissed, before she had reason to do anything else but talk. Darcy grinned. ''Easily, and that's not an insult, honey. Anyways, I'd suggest you pay more attention to the ogre.'' Darcy just stood there, existing, cooking up the invisibility barrier that was slowly flowing from her body.
Stella crouched into defense mode, palms open ready for the first hit.
''What ogre?''
That was when the first thick tree branch crashed into her back. Back then – all four minutes ago – it started to feel like a real ride. After just a little more time enthusiasm her enthusiasm a little less sustained. Darcy felt something like a laugh itch at the back of her throat and tried to seduce it into some proud cackle.
There was Stella of Solaria, most entitled child in all the realms, splayed out on top of the grass, her gaudy yellow get up caked in grass and mud. Every early comeback, every swift move had been struck down as easily as a knife through butter. Darcy even toyed with placing a higher rating for Knut on the 'muscles and mooks for crims and kooks' app. He'd come very cheap, their real price being his low recommendations. He was stupid, she'd told Icy, too stupid. Still, seeing him beat Stella to the ground, hearing the loud thwacks of his battle … she had to admit stupid could really work.
Another almost laugh.
Why almost? Why wasn't she laughing? What was stuck?
It was starting to feel like sitting in a lecture, just with better background noise. She'd even forgotten to glance over to check that Knut had actually pilfered the staff, and that he hadn't – yet – actually killed the little fairy. It was exhausting, really. Truly predictable. A light flare here and there, a classic duck and dive, a few sneaky moves of Stella's courtesy to her slenderness and guile met with shock, resistance and then…punch punch, stomp stomp.
It had lost all intrigue quickly, although she was glad that Stella's one liners – such as 'you can't handle my heat' were swiftly dropped in favour of her actually putting effort into holding her own and fighting back. Darcy sighed.
Maybe the barrier role Icy slotted her into last minute was why she couldn't really get into the spirit of things.
Focusing on the innately light magic of protection and shelter, even for dark purpose, often drained even the brightest in Cloud Tower. She was not the brightest. She'd put everything she had into the sneakiness of her plan, the cold ignorance from the strangers in the park, the feeling of true dominance – but it ached. It really ached. From the stress of trying to remember the chant to concentrating while there were toddlers playing and laughing on the other side of the field she felt almost tired enough to collapse right alongside Stella.
She wished Icy hadn't taken the smart route, just for once. She tried to think Stormy, starting to wish that they'd left the little humans to scatter about in panic. She wished she wasn't so proud. Proud to be in the realm of the Black Circle themselves – and deeply, deeply annoyed to be doing the work she knew she had to. She tried out a cackle, thinking of how Stella's legs had been turned into long lithe networks of bruises, but stumbled.
She didn't have the energy.
She picked the already peeling paint from off her nails, chip by chip. She would not resort to a laughter lozenge. Those were for the girls who spent too long in CT's toilets, who nearly saw depressive tendencies as a must have for their college apps. Where would she even get a pack whilst moored on this dump anyway? She sighed, bringing out her phone again, writing a long text to Icy, before she stopped in her tracks.
''Ouwwf!''
That was a new noise.
It sounded like Stella had been smacked into a tree or something. New was good, fun, interesting. Or at least it might pass the time. She looked over to the scene of the fight, ready to be engrossed - and was sorely disappointed. Again it turned out action could be boring, when most of it involved someone taking minutes just to schlepp back up again. Stella was sluggish, bloated by pain, every movement taking moments stretched far beyond the average seconds.
Darcy resigned herself to enjoying the shebang more on crystal catch up, when she wouldn't be so damn exhausted. No doubt the girls were watching live with rapture and would never tire of anything that brought so much pain to a fairy. She, on the other hand, was tired even of standing up. Every child swung across a puddle, every blooming flower, every bicycle bell ringing pierced through her already leaden concentration. Her eyes quivered from open to closed, she felt her head rolling backwards, her occasional sharp jut forward doing nothing to assuage her exhaustion.
She heard nothing from Stella.
Not one little moan of pain.
She could let herself go, recharge with the usual black magic.
She shook her head awake again. No not if she really could hear nothing. Death had its perks, but it was shit for bribery and avoiding executions on account of treason. Whilst the barrier ebbed and flowed from strong to weak around her, she tried taking stock of every useful noise as she walked slowly towards the epicenter of the damage. She could hear big bug like creatures crawling. Good sign? Bad? She could smell the sweat of disbelief and even shame off of the ogre even stronger than his usual cologne of flatulence. Finally, she heard weak little breaths, small and haughty, off of the princess. They fluttered in and out of her lungs like her Winx wings, which had already retracted from the failures of the battle.
Her laughter came now. After being plugged up so long, it was pure hysteria, maniacal and almost musical.
With all the holes already in her barrier, small ripples of her laughter whispered past the people in the park, through the ears of mothers tidying up their picnic, teenagers flipping off their skateboards, and agitated birds which quickly flew away. There were tears down her face, real ones, and she had to gulp her giggles down to verify with Knut that the sceptre ring had even been gained.
By the time Knut was about to fade back into their dorm room, she had vanished. All her fatigue could finally end in rest, the barrier of invisibility enveloping her collapsed body as she slept, and as he vanished off to his other mistresses, already almost blubbering at the prospect of telling them he'd lost Darcy.
Wrapped now around the sleeping witch, the barrier was lifted from ordinary view and so the cheerful little ring of an old bike which had interrupted Darcy's concentration earlier was the first thing Stella properly heard of the outside world of Earth.
Bloom had wondered why she couldn't find the biggest, usually most densely packed area of the park.
Sure she could get a little scatter brained, but she'd never forgotten anywhere she'd been to that often before. When she finally cycled in down her familiar route, it didn't feel the same somehow. On a day so bright and beautiful it could wind up on a 'see Gardenia' post card, every little inch she rode down made her skin feel colder, almost as if it was under condensation. It made her feel something else as well, something far less plausible. It made her feel crueller somehow too. Sure, her bike was a little – lot - too cutesy and rattled around the edges, but now she felt like driving it into a wall just to spite her parents. She felt like its second hand appearance was hammering in her second hand nature.
She'd never be their real daughter, so of course they wouldn't want to waste good money on her. It was stupid and wrong. Very very wrong. Still, some part of it felt insidiously honest, and so she furrowed her brows and attempted a faster, more bullish ride to blow off her steam, before her bike juddered against a loose branch.
She wobbled, nearly falling on her hands before she regained balance and then finally saw what must have been the reason she felt so spooked out. Or rather who. A lithe young woman, whose blonde hair seemed every colour of gold spun together, and dark skin that contrasted wildly.
A woman who seemed younger and younger with each small step Bloom took towards her. Her face, though lean, still had a little baby fat, and her complexion, though still almost perfect, had one small pimple just above her eyebrow.
Normally Bloom would get a little jealous, because acne cream came pricey – but she wondered how even from afar she hadn't noticed the thick blotches all over her skin, big mushrooms of brown and black and purple from her toe to her neck, and cuts, ranging from nicks to long, soon to be scars, running up her too. They looked all the worse when in her short outfit, which almost looked like a cosplay of some sort, dazzlingly yellow and jewelled with a large headdress which might've cushioned – or worsened, any blow to her neck.
''Are you alright?''
Bloom slapped her forehead. Yeah, of course she was. Unconscious and badly beaten in a public park. The girl would feel just peachy, wouldn't she?
Stella thought the stranger's voice sounded sweet and clear, uncomplicated. Even so, too quiet. Too wavering to trust. Her strange hand trembled on top Stella's motionless left arm. This girl was concerned. Which meant she must be kind.
Which, right now, right here, seemed to mean she must be blundering. After all, this was an Earth girl. Every 'sssh, it'll be alright' was spoken with less surety and stung more powerfully than the last. It would not be alright. This girl had no right. Not to touch her. Not to look at her. Certainly not to pity her. Yes, the girl's words blistered. Every soothing one was more painful than whatever surface wounds the ogre might have given her.
Stella groaned out loud for the first time, shocking her ears. She had no idea how long it had been since she'd made a sound other than heavy breathing, and re-evaluated. Surface wounds didn't do anything like that. The noise, her noise, went straight through her spine. She was the Crown princess of Solaria, defenceless. Now coddled by a mortal.
Stella heartily attempted a great frustrated sigh. She tried to make out some feature of the girl she could focus her resentment onto but her eyes were still bruised shut. She could only see small flickers of light, block colours. Pale, pale skin. A deep orange. Either hair or flame. This girl was flame.
Stella focused on her breaths, trying to ignore how labored each one sounded. The rays of the sun and the flames of the fire. They could get along just fine. They were made to go together. But the girl sounded almost simpering, too gosh darned good for her own good.
''Hey, sweetie. I'm Bloom.'' She waved her hand awkwardly, feeling awful when she realized how hard the girl was squinting. Some other place some other time there was a script for this meeting, bright and cheerful, but it wasn't read in the right moment, written in the right form, so the words tumbled out as grunts and snorts instead.
Bloom only heard 'myughah' in response to her greeting.
''Ok then.'' Bloom smiled, still smoothing her hand down the stranger's arm. ''I'll call you Maya, just for the moment, alright? You can tell me off about it later – unless I got it right first time! You just have to stay with me, ok? No slipping under, promise?'' Bloom wondered what her dad would do, how he or his crew would handle all of this. She remembered bounding alongside him to training talks and courses in clubs and Girl Scouts, shadowing her father with the great big gappy grin he always used to tease her for. All those things she should have remembered from years of tagging along faded to nothing when she had to hold somebody's body down and make sure the person underneath it was alright.
'Maya' with her limbs contorted across the grass like a broken marionette, might as well have had the words 'police matter' tattooed all over her.
It was hard to see her breathe, and when Bloom did manage to spot the rise and fall, it was almost harder to imagine it continuing, although she miraculously seemed to have grazes as opposed to open wounds. There was another matter, too, the matter of some thick lime coloured mucus on the grass. The matter of why no one else had seen – or at least helped – this poor, badly beaten girl.
Bloom squeezed her hand. ''It'll be ok,'' she reassured her, hushing her despite her silence. Stella groaned again. Stranded, here. Of course it would be this of all planets. ''Well,'' Bloom admitted, ''I think so. I hope I think so.'' Stella's dislike for her voice grew immensely.
Bloom's hand, though. That seemed nice enough. She couldn't find a way to lift her arm more than a few, shaky centimetres, but she ached to grab a hold of something, find some silly minute strength again.
Bloom picked up her phone, ''Dad…''
Stella swatted the device right out of her hand, where it fell to pieces. ''Hey!'' Bloom shouted, grunting in anger. Stella managed a smile. So this Bloom wasn't all a saint, then? ''Do you know how much that cost – that doesn't matter, how much help and time that was gonna give us? Why did you –'' she stopped her shouting, doing a double take. ''Wait – you can – you're moving now!'' She started to laugh and cheer. Stella then pulled her hair and body to the ground. ''Bloom,'' she said, her voice gravelly, ''I like you. Or I might. Soon. But even with you, from now on? No one's gonna defeat Stella –'' here she rolled over, to look Bloom directly in her eyes, ''of Solaria that easily. Ever. Again!' She smirked. Good recovery time. Great, actually. Only the best for the best magic Winx fairy in – she swiftly fell on top of Bloom, and started snoring.
Notes: After struggling a lot with writerly imposter syndrome in fic and college this is my first fanfiction in literally years. College writing is beating me down, so what better way to get back up than with my inspiration for my application, fanfic? I hope you guys like it but I'd absolutely love constructive criticism :3