Foreword: The following is a The Last Witch Hunter AU piece. I do feel it should be noted, this project as a whole was created to be a sort of joint project between myself, Jael Randell (who the readership will likely know as the cowriter for Chronicles of the Fallen's second installment, Layers), and HaloRecoil. There will likely feel like there are… not necessarily huge missing parts, but like there are skips ahead to different parts of the overarching plot, as I will only be posting the pieces I myself have written. Familiarity with the storyline of The Last Witch Hunter is, therefore, highly recommended. That said, there are going to be some deviations from said plot. It feels moreso like a situation where one must know the rules before breaking them.

Also, while this has its roots as an Angel Sanctuary gone The Last Witch Hunter AU, this piece features Nemaelle Mudou, OC for my CotF series, Azreal, HaloRecoil's OC for her Coming of the Seraph series, and Zephyrel, OC for Jael Randell's Eve of the Earth series.

Before the Morning Comes
Teen Witch in the Bar
By: Brenli

"You're sure I can't get you anything but water?"

Nema couldn't blame the bartender for asking, her dark eyes haunting and sweet, like the welcome warmth of a pitch-black bedroom. She had been there since the bar opened at 6, and it was coming up on the witching hour. All she'd had was water, sitting slumped slightly in the smallest corner booth.

"Drop of Cheer?"

She blinked a bit at the name of the potion and shrank into herself, tugging on the thumb holes of her purposely torn, ebony long-sleeved shirt. "No, thank you..."

The bartender left, though not without a smile on her red-painted lips that reminded her of sympathy.

Nema had a lot of difficulty accepting that anyone, even a stranger, would give something like sympathy to her. It had been a long and lonely journey, full of dark nights, midnight trains, dirty benches, dumpster diving, pitch-black thoughts. She had deserved all of that.

For the hundredth time that night, scarlet eyes ringed in thick eyeliner and equally-stark black eyeshadow scanned over the crowd. Beautiful girls in their boho-chic best, sipping potions that glittered and glowed in a literal rainbow of colors. She had to look away.

Witches. Comfortable, happy, magical people. If she'd grown up in this city, with people like these, would she be like them? Or was there some... unspoken distinction, between witches like these and... witches like her?

Bad witches.

Witches who hurt people.

A finger uncommonly pale traced rings around the top of her glass of water as she recalled the line of black cars, of laying delicate lilies on the casket before it was lowered, of feeling guilty...

A line of sparks began to follow the path of her finger, and it wasn't like the gentle, glowing glitter that ringed the potions in the hands of girls as beautiful as the daylight. They were harsh and rang sharp, like a midnight train hitting the brakes too hard in some vain attempt to avoid an utter wreck.

Nema's lips were the darkest of reds and pursed into a hurting frown, but still she kept tracing that circle, staring at the grating ring of unhappy, aggravated, even painful sparks.

"Too hard."

For all her makeup, dark as pitch, her lashes remained as moonlight pale as her skin, her hair. They fluttered as she looked up at the bartender.

With one hand, she snapped fingers that reminded her of coffee mixed with creamer – like how he liked to drink it – and the edgy ambience of the music immediately halted. It was only then when Nema realized she'd sat there, toying with her glass of water while the hours slipped by, all the way until closing time. The evening of hiding in warmth was over; she would have the spend the rest of her time exposed to the dark and the cold.

But the bartender only held out her hand. "May I?"

Nema shrugged. She wasn't used to talking to people, anymore...

The bartender's finger traced a ring around the glass of water, and the sparks were soft and delicate as the dust from a butterfly's wing. "Gently. See?"

Her instinct was to say that it had nothing to do with pressure and everything to do with her not being like the beautiful person who'd been gracious enough to let her loiter inside all evening... but, for however many stained things she was, she wasn't rude. Nema traced her finger around the glass, more gently this time... sharp sparks, still. But this time, interspersed graceful tendrils that spilled from her finger like a glittering fog, following the shape of the glass and pooling on the table.

"Better." The bartender said with the soft glee of a teacher encouraging an unsure student. "A little truly goes a long way in these things."

"Magic things."

"Yes." She plunked a small shot glass onto the table, and it looked like sunlight in the spring, yellow and soft and welcoming. "Drop of Cheer; you need it."

Nema's dark-blood lips became an 'o' and her pale hands waved at the drink. "I don't have any money...!"

"It's on the house."

"I really can't...!"

"You're not in the habit of accepting kindness from a stranger." The bartender's red lips curled into a smile, again. "I understand."

But her understanding only made Nema feel worse. "You're closing. I should get out of your way." She didn't wait for a response, getting out of the little corner booth and hurrying for the stairs that would take her up and away from the bar that had been her haven.

"Two blocks up 9th street from here."

Nema paused.

"They won't charge you anything to take one of their cots for the night. There's a soup kitchen there, too."

She looked over her shoulder, feeling the heat of shame burn her pale face bright red. "That obvious, huh?"

"You're not the first witch who's sort of... taken to her broomstick, if you get what I mean. You won't be the last, either. But for whatever reason you're flying away, you deserve to be safe and warm."

"Not this witch."

"Especially this witch. How old are you? 15? That's no age to be out on the streets."

"I'm 16." She couldn't help it; for all her need to keep all the beautiful witches away from her twisted self, she at least wanted her age guessed right.

"Spoken like a true teenager." The bartender laughed, and the sound, even though tired, was like a hug sorely needed but never asked for.

Even as Nema smiled, tears began to line her eyes.

"Come, come. Take the Drop. Wasted cheer is such a tragedy."

But she only shook her head. "No, I can't."

"Suit yourself. Be safe, out there." The bartender fixed the sloppy, deep purple knot she'd tied her hair into. "'An ye harm none, do what ye will' and all that."

A common farewell meant to give peace, only gave a witch like Nema pain. "... And what if I have harmed one?" Such a confession was unprompted, but she had wrestled with the question with every mile she'd put between herself and her tiny town...

The bartender was quiet, and Nema felt the weight of her dark-eyed stare. Not with the heaviness of judgement, or even apprehension. It was the welcome weight of dark blankets settling over one's head, blotting out the sun for comfort's sake. "We have all made our mistakes."

But Nema had a hard time imagining this woman making mistakes. "Undoable ones are, I think, in a league of their own."

"I hurt the man that I love."

Something split in two within her, at once wanting to rail against the claim and wanting to cling to it. She sniffed back the conflict and said tentatively, brokenly, "... Me too."

The bartender began crossing to her, and Nema didn't know what to make of it until she heard the snap of her fingers and the scrape of wooden chair legs moving across the floor. The chair received her with a creak, and it was only then when Nema realized she'd fallen into weeping.

"I didn't mean to...!"

"I believe you." She spoke gently, the words a balm to pain held tightly across state lines.

"I was just so... angry! Angry that he'd choose her, that he picked Nanako of all the girls to play with. He said that he adored me and then he chose her...!" She hiccuped on a sob, just to see the bartender's head beginning to tilt in confusion. "He wasn't... very... exclusive, before me. Mitsuki lasted three months before he started asking about... opening things up."

Black eyes briefly widened, and it was a face that seemed so strange compared the calm she was used to seeing on this bartender's features. "Ah. Sorry, times like this I remember how old I am."

Nema gave her a bitter, snorting sound. "Not that old."

"Older than I look."

She shook her head. "I tried... because I loved him, and it was who he was. We don't... cage the people we love, right? We don't... force them to be some way."

The bartender looked down at the washcloth in her hands, and for a moment she seemed... stricken. "We try not to."

Nema nodded, finding herself clinging to the reassurance of a stranger. "And I tried... but I couldn't; I can't! I'm too selfish, and he... he chose her; he chose the girl who's always hated me, I don't...!" She dragged in a ragged breath. "I went back and forth giving him permission; in the end I let him have one night but it... It woke up this anger in me. And I shouldn't have been, because I let him do it, but I was angry he wanted it in the first place; I was angry that I didn't feel like enough...! I wanted him all to myself, I...!"

The bartender gently offered a short glass of something, a potion that was silver and periwinkle swirling like a pastel galaxy. "A Soothing Serum."

This time, Nema accepted the drink, though only because verbalizing the thoughts that plagued her had sent her spiraling so hard within her own head. She wondered if she could ruin herself the way she'd ruined him... "I chased him... somewhere in his head. I'd find him in bed with other girls; I'd shoo him out, I... attacked a lot of those girls he'd had before me. Attacked Nanako." She paused, and the last confession dripped out on words too heavy for tears – or maybe that was the potion working. She wasn't sure. "Attacked Mitsuki." Her dark-blood lip quivered. "He never woke up again."

"How many people have you told this to?"

"None but my parents..."

"They threw you out?"

Did Nema imagine the hint of indignation? "... No. I beat them to that point; they were talking about psych evaluations."

It was the bartender's turn to wonder if she'd imagined the words. "They didn't believe you. They're not witches?"

Nema shrugged helplessly. "It's not something I was raised with... I only learned on the road."

"A family, two lines of witches without magic... except for you."

"Lucky me." The sarcasm was so bitter, Nema had to take another sip of the potion.

The bartender didn't reply to the hurting comment. "Do yourself a favor and tell no one else. Even in the witching community, Dream Walkers get a bad reputation."

"I'm a Dream Walker?"

"I like to think that I can spot one well. Birds of a feather."

When Nema's teary eyes widened, the bartender shushed her with a finger to her red lips. She sniffled and rotated her now-empty glass in her pale hands, murmuring, "Did you hurt yours the same way?"

Suddenly the bartender went about turning chairs upside down upon tables. "I'd rather not share, right now." The clacking of wood on wood punctuated her sentences.

"Sorry..." Nema stood, allowing the stranger to place her chair on the nearest table. "Let me help you close up."

"You can help me close by drinking that Drop of Cheer."

Though her smudged makeup made her eyes burn, the red irises rolled in a big circle before taking the sunshine shot glass and downing it. "How do you make one of these, anyway...?"

"It's a relatively simple recipe," The bartender spoke distractedly, but paused to softly suggest, "Learning would not be a bad thing for you. You have all this magic in you but you don't know how to direct it. Control is important for a witch." She heard the clacking of more wood on wood, and looked up to see that the young, pale girl all in black had begun to help close up the bar.

"Maybe you could teach me?"

The bartender had to laugh. "Oh, I don't know how great of a teacher I would be...!"

"Please? There's no one else I can ask. And if you teach me enough drinks, you can put me to work in the bar."

"A teenage bartender."

"Just for potions, no alcohol...!"

"I may have made your Drop of Cheer too cheery..."

"Not too cheery, just..."

"Just?"

"I don't want to end up hurting anyone else."

The bartender paused in her work, watching the girl set up the last chair. Their eyes met in an honest gaze, and at last she spoke. "Potions only."

"Potions only."

"And until you've learned well enough, you can help me with the cleaning. It's not glamorous work."

"It's work."

The bartender looked up and down at her. "... Then... consider yourself hired." She held out her hand, and it looked that much darker holding the moonlight-pale hand of the girl. "First thing's first; my name is Zephyrel. Welcome to my bar."

"Nemaelle." Her smile was small, still a bit hurt, but hopeful. "Thank you for giving me a chance."