I do not own Storm Hawks! This is an AU. The extent of which, I want to be normal, but vampirism seems to be creeping in on it, so let me go beat it out by writing a separate fanfic that may never see the light of day to keep it mostly the way I want it to be. A little heartwarming story.
What? Did you think I only wrote Finn in dead or depressing situations?
On with the story!
Finns at the playground swing, crying silently. The other kids, especially the bully Carver, had been picking on him again.
Usually that wasn't a problem. Usually Piper, Aerrow, Stork, or Junko would be at the fifth grade playground and keep him company and keep the mean kids away from him.
But Piper was so smart, she was in advance classes already, Aerrow had training as a promising Athlete, Junko was transferred into a class with a different recess time, and Stork had moved to another section of town with his Dad's promotion.
So there was no one for Finn when the other kids moved in on him.
Most of them left him alone, but the new teacher didn't understand that Finn needed his slingshot to defend himself, and had scheduled a meeting with Finn's Mom about Finn bringing dangerous artifacts, such as the slingshot, to school.
Finn's mother had told the teacher that he was an ass and that if Finn felt he was in danger, than he was.
But she didn't have the time or money to home school Finn, so Finn learned to turn in A-grade papers and stay out of Mr. Colonel's way.
Sniffling hard and steadying his breath, Finn watched the game of Kickball going on. He had stayed out of the line up this time.
He knew that if he tried to join in, he would be targeted to fail by both teams.
Finn looked up to the sky, with its different shades of blue, and wished that he had wings. The skies were ruled in an entirely different method, and once, he would have lost himself to the inner musings and ramblings that would help him better understand the world through observing it.
Now, he was scared to think, to be distracted, because Carver would sneak up on him and hurt him or humiliate him when he wasn't paying attention to his surroundings.
What hurt the most was that no one would help him. All of his friends were gone. He only saw them on the weekends and sometimes on the evenings.
But if his friends wanted to go somewhere that needed money, Finn would have to skip lunch for the next week to go with them.
His mother was furious with him for endangering his health, but she also understood that it was his friends getting him through the worse times.
She had hugged him so tightly that night, and never let go.
"Hey, Finnster!"
Oh, no, here they come.
Finn leapt off the swing and landed away from the set. If he needed to run, he didn't want one of Carver's friends circling around him to trip him up.
"I'm talking to you, crybaby!"
Ah, the ever original insults. Besides, Finn didn't cry. He never cried. He screamed instead. He always came close to crying, and at first his mom thought something was wrong with him, but the doctors reassured her that at some point, Finn had just decided to not cry.
"Whether he deemed it unnecessary or unimportant isn't the issue here. Finn won't cry unless he has been highly agitated. He doesn't have anything wrong with him physically." Finn remembered the man in the white coat who had told his mother that. He was a giant of a man, and considered odd by his contemporaries, but he had backed up the claim with a credible source.
Finn wasn't weird, or a freak, just because he had exceptional eyesight.
He narrowed his cerulean orbs at Carver, and gauged the distance.
Maybe if he sprinted, he could clear the fence and get back to the school where other teachers would put a stop to the chase.
Finn prayed that the extra training had paid off and spun on the balls of his feet.
Trapped. The other kids were between him and the school's entrance, and fast as he was, he couldn't dodge them all.
The only way out was to run into the forest.
"What are you going to do, Finn? No teacher, no friends, no help for you. I'm going to show you where a white crayon like yourself belongs."
There was a mad glint in Carver's eyes.
What had Finn ever done to piss him off? It was like he just decided that Finn was his personal punching bag when Aerrow and Junko left.
Piper had beaten Carver at a match once, but she was very strong, even for a girl!
Faking to break left, Finn doubled back and hurtled for the tree line. He shot between two trees growing close together, thanking his mother for her slim frame and frugal spending that kept him lean.
Then he was in the forest.
Finn kept running. He wasn't stopping until he was out of breath. He refused to look back and see Carver putting on the speed for the last mad dash to catch him.
He ran right into a wall of solid flesh.
"Hey!"
Finn looked up, from where he had fallen over in collision.
"Watch it!" The kid said.
Ulp. The kid was a High School teenager. They did bad stuff like drugs and sex. And this one looked pretty mad, with his styled jacket and lean frame. Two red eyes glared at Finn from under jet black hair that gleamed in the filtering sunlight.
The kid's face twisted from a snarl into a gentler, okay, it was resigned with a hint of concern, sort of like how a shark is sorry for biting into a human.
Not because sharks have bad eyesight, but because humans don't taste good.
"Are you bleeding?"
The teenager leaned over him.
Trapped.
"N-no!"
Finn shoved at the boy, but the sheer mass difference meant he raised an eyebrow rather than back off. He didn't even grunt.
"Whoa, hold on, I won't hurt you. I want to help. I have a little sister a bit older than you."
Finn stopped hitting him with his clenched fists. He couldn't pull his arms back to give him a right straight, so he had settled on pounding him.
"You do? Does she go to Atmos Elementary?"
"Nah, she's at the Cyclonian Academy. I go there too. It's a private school that does kindergarten through college and offers boarding."
"That's across town." Finn had heard of the somewhat rival school, that was considered superior to the Atmos system.
The teen sat up and helped Finn to a park bench, on what, it seemed, was a nature trail far behind the school.
Finn hoped that his mother wouldn't be too worried when the school called her, telling her that her son had run off and they couldn't find him.
"Not a lot of kid's your age know that."
"Stork's going there. His dad got a promotion, and Stork's really smart. He got in on a scholarship. And Piper wants to go there too someday, they are supposed to have a huge library, she actually has read nearly every book she can in the school and the public library in out system."
It felt nice to have someone to talk to. The teen sat apart from him on the bench, twisted to face him. He didn't make any sudden movements, and studied Finn. Finn held very still, because he didn't want the teenager to know he knew that he was starring.
The kid settled down. "Yeah, there is a lot of talent out there. My girlfriend Ravess wants to start and Archery club, but her parents refuse to let her get distracted from playing the violin. I say; if she has an itch, let her scratch it. It doesn't turn into a war zone that way."
The teen smiled. "She's fighting really hard to get her dream, but all I want to do is be there for my baby sister, because our parents are either dead or too busy with their lives. Apparently, I was made during their honeymoon, and she was planned."
The teen gave a derisive snort. "I come out here to relax and take a deep breath. Not a lot of people know about this preserved space, but if I have my way, Cyclonia will buy this lot and help keep it here in this town. What's your story?"
Finn mulled over his answer, drawing his legs up to his chest.
He glanced into the red eyes. They were open, and seemed honest, or at least curious.
"Carver was going to bully me again, so I ran and wound up here."
The teen blinked and tilted his head to the side. He looked like a bird that was encountering a new being and was curious as to how to peck at it to get what it wanted.
"Who's Carver?"
"He's a bully in my class. Ever since Aerrow and Junko left, he's been picking on me. I can just outrun him, but that's because I'm lighter than him."
The teen made the same blinking twitch.
"If Aerrow has red hair, then he must be the new kid my sister is so smitten with."
"Oh."
Finn curled up more into himself. He thought that Aerrow was drifting away from him in their friendship; he just didn't think that Aerrow would actually leave.
Something inside of Finn was shattering.
The teen pulled Finn onto his lap.
"Shhh, shhh, its okay…its okay…."
Tears slipped down Finn's cheeks.
"He left me….."
The teen rocked Finn back and forth. After a while, Finn stopped crying.
"Well, it's not just your lost. My sister plays less with me and more with him. I'm scared I'll be replaced. I want her to have the best, but I don't want her to throw me away."
The teen rubbed Finn's back.
"What is she like?" Finn sniffled.
"Well, she's really smart, and really pretty. She's a bit like a doll, but she certainly can hold her own in a fight for a girl. She has purple eyes and dark black hair that looks purple in the sunlight."
Finn nodded.
"They sound like a good match. But Aerrow wouldn't leave Piper."
"Is Piper really smart? Blue hair?"
Finn nodded.
"It's okay then. Cyclonis is friends with both of them. But how about you? If you go back, will you be alright?"
Finn shook his head.
The drops of blood that splattered on the ground brought his attention to a cut he hadn't seen before.
"Uhm…" The bleeding needed to be stopped, so Finn proceeded to take his shirt off to staunch the blood flow.
"Wait. There's something I learned at the Academy that can stop that even better."
The red eyed teen lay Finn on the park bench, lifted his hand to his mouth, and began to like the blood and dirt off the hand.
Finn watched as a feeling of numbness slowly crept into his fingers. When the teen pulled away and started on another cut, Finn tried to curl his hand close.
"Don't." A pale hand snaked around his wrist. "It's healing."
Finn felt the warm tongue lave at other wounds. Bruises that were still dark purple or yellow-green were found and given the same attention to. Finn didn't realize that his shirt had come off until the teen pulled the shirt back over him, gently.
Finn found it a little uncomfortable, but nothing to whine over.
The pain was going away.
"Are there a lot of people who can do this?" He asked. He felt safe, even if he had only met the teenager. He wasn't even touching Finn, just running his tongue over a few scrapes that were red and angry on his neck.
"No. I'm one of the few who can."
Finn fell silent as the teen began to lick the other hand. When he was done, Finn crawled back into his lap.
"So, what made you run all the way into the forest today?"
"He- he called me useless."
"Oh? Really?"
"Well, he called me a 'white crayon' and that implied that I was useless compared to all of the other colors."
The teen snorted.
"No, the white crayon is not useless. It's an enhancer. It takes what there is and changes everything. In fact, white crayons are the only ones you want when working with black paper."
Finn felt his eyes seek out the red orbs. They seemed to gleam at him in the afternoon sunlight.
"I could be your black paper if you'll be my white crayon."
Finn gazed into the red eyes, and felt the numbing sensation in his fingers tingle as it left.
"Okay."
A/N: Okay, this was supposed to be a simple 'Finn finds solace in Dark Ace' School AU, and now I really want to make DA a vampire, but I'm already doing that for a different story.
Urgh. This was supposed to be a heartwarming story about DA being Finn's black paper to his white crayon (not a euphemism, just a –clean- metaphor) and then it turned creepy! And I can't figure how to re-write it! Not to mention, I never actually named Dark Ace in this fanfic! All of you scrolling back up to check, no cookie for you.
Review, and this may or may not remain a one-shot. I mean, who wants a border-line Vampire family to rip Carver into itty-bitty pieces? Sort of a, Dracula meet Twilight meet Let the Right One In meet the Storm Hawks story.
Okay, now I feel terrified, and I have other stories to be working on. Ciao!