CHAPTER TITLE: Chapter One
FANDOM: LazyTown/Silent Hill
PAIRING: Robbie Rotten/Stephanie, Sportacus/Stephanie (onesided, implied)
CHARACTERS: Robbie Rotten, Stephanie, Sportacus
GENRE: Horror
RATING: M
SUMMARY: The fairytale happiness of LazyTown comes to an end when an archaic sacrifice goes horribly wrong. Everyone is left paying the price when Sportacus leaves forever.
WARNINGS: Violence, language
SPOILERS: None
AUTHOR'S NOTE: A larger, longer version of a crackfic I already did. I've never actually seen LazyTown. This is all based off what I've read on Wikipedia. It was merely an experiment to see if I could cross the two fandoms.
BETAS: The wonderful Scio Von August and the lovely Lulebell
DISCLAIMER: Obvious this isn't mine.

Elfin magic was a temperamental thing, governed by laws and inherent rules that humans were not born understanding, but had to be taught. It was both a binding and chaotic element, easy to upset, yet very protective of those within its boundaries. It was hidden and quiet, much like the folk that had created it; many of the humans who lived among it were not even aware of its existence. It had become part of the land, powerful and immutable.

Robbie Rotten had received his wish, to make LazyTown miserable—Sportacus was gone—gone—and without its hero, the small and once cheerful town had become a dark, ugly version of its former self; what the trickster hadn't realised was that LazyTown was situated atop ancient land tied to the hidden folk and Sportacus' exit had resulted in disastrous consequences.

Stephanie, still caught on the cusp of 12 and 13, carried a heavily iced slice of cake on a cracked plate towards the edge of town. It had taken her two days to recover the sweet piece of dessert from the bakery's freezer, watching patiently for the nasty 'things' that wandered the street to leave and then hiding from the eldritch fog. She hummed a song as she walked along the crumbling cobblestone road, careful to step over the pulsing red runes that glowed on the ground—she'd discovered that they burned when she tried to touch them.

'The Fire', as it was the only one she'd ever experienced, had been horrible, sweeping through most of the town, leaving many houses, trees, and buildings black, charred husks. It had be the first of many dark things to come to her beloved LazyTown. There were packs of horrible looking dogs that roamed the town, dripping blood everywhere and giving wheezing snarls. When nightfall approached, air-raid sirens she'd never noticed before blared loudly, warning the empty town that it was to become dark. And then there were the people...

Some nights she sat on the roof of her uncle's house, watched the skies and waited.

Sportacus…he'd been gone before LazyTown changed.

Most citizens had gone missing as far as she knew, while some wandered around the edge of the town, horribly disfigured. Stephanie tried to stay away from them which wasn't too hard—they were slow moving and most were missing eyes at this point, the teethed birds that circled town having chewed them out. The Townhall had been halfway burned down and when she went looking for her Uncle Milford, she found an odd noise that came from within his office, one that reminded her of chattering teeth and maniacal laughter. After hearing it, she'd brought boards and a hammer to nail the door closed, not wanting whatever was inside to come out.

She wasn't blind to the fact that she never saw Uncle Milford after that.

Ziggy's house was no better. It had been spared from the fire but there were two skeletons trapped against the glass windows, pinned there by a wall of greyish-green mould that had presumably filled the whole home. And from it emitted the sharp and nauseating tang of rotting sugar as well as the moaning—pained, aching moans—that sometimes carried with the gentle breeze. She hated the nights when the moaning carried through the neighbourhood, laced in with the stench of decay. Pixel's house was untouched by the fire as well, but long electronic wires had begun protruding from the building, coiled and ready for anything that came too close to it. Once, she'd been temped to get close to the house to call out to Pixel, but upon seeing the cables snatch up one of the roaming 'dogs' and drag it back into the domicile, she decided to simply stay away. Trixie and Stingy's house were nothing more than charred husks and on the one occasion she'd gone poking around through the remains, she'd only found ashes.

No, LazyTown was technically empty save for herself and Robbie Rotten, who'd surprisingly became someone that she found herself looking for far too often.

She brushed off the dust from her bloodstained frock, bending at the waist slightly to wipe at the smudges on her bare legs; some days she missed the tights she used to wear, but those had become shredded and torn to the point that they'd completely worn away. And while all the mirrors in town had been smashed, as she'd discovered a long while ago, she knew she looked different from the ghost-like reflections of herself in the dingy glass of the store windows on the main street. She couldn't make out details, but she suspected she wouldn't like what she'd become.

On the edge of town there was a large semi-submerged series of connected buildings that formed an underground labyrinth that Robbie Rotten lived in. Since the Fire, a huge structure of barbed wire and assorted scraps of chainlink fence had been strung together to form a barrier around the site, apparently meant to keep out the creatures that roamed LazyTown freely. The gate was easy enough to get over as it was only heavy bars in a frame and she balanced the plate of cake with ease as she climbed over the heavy metal. To lure Robbie out, she always brought sugar saturated cakes or sodium rich snacks as incentive. She knew it would only be a matter of time before the smell of icing wafted down into his underground home via the tube he used as an entrance, and lo, it didn't take long for him to emerge. He crept over to the gift, crouching on the ground to inspect them.

"Hello, Robbie," she greeted, bringing herself into his line of sight.

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye; the usual loathing edge wasn't there, as though he was disappointed to see her—he knew what her presence meant.

"Little girl," he murmured with a nod of his head.

She stood patiently, watching him as he stuffed his mouth with large chunks of the cake, watching the content way he closed his eyes as he swallowed the food whole, waiting until the plate was licked clean.

"Play with me," she begged, the aching loneliness immediately overwhelming her.

Robbie licked the icing off each of his long fingers in a decadent and slow manner before answering her. "I don't wantto."

"I brought you that. You owe me," she insisted.

He gave her a heavily-lidded look, obviously not impressed with her argument. "I'm not Sportakook."

But he offered out his hand to her, long fingers grasping onto hers and he pulled her to his underground lair. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the darkness that he lived in; yellowing sheets of newspaper had been been taped over the windows for reasons she didn't know, leaving only the pale orange glow of his costume cases to light the space.

She nearly pouted, hurt that after all this time, he still wasn't very fond of her. "Sportakookwould have played with me."

"I sure he would have," he murmured, sitting on the edge of one of his worktables to remove the polished wingtips and clean spats he still wore; as he never ventured out of his lair anymore, he'd managed to remain the same as he'd always been.

That was something she found comforting amid all of this wondrous and terrifying change. He would never be any different.

"Always the same Robbie," she murmured, wanting his attention.

He hesitated (as he always did) and she tilted her head to the side slightly, studying him in a sad way. She had no idea why he always resisted—there was no point to it.

"Do it," she whispered.

He stood up from the worktable and approached her slowly, looking almost sad himself. He towered over her, reaching to touch her hair, rolling slightly singed strands between his fingers.

"What would your blue elf say if he saw you now?" he asked softly, prompting a single tear to slide down her cheek.

Some nights Stephanie sat on what was left of the roof of her uncle's house, watching the dark skies, waiting. On this particular night, she was surprised to see Robbie sneaking across the road and then across the lawn, constantly looking back over his shoulder for the assorted creatures that roamed in the dark looking for things to tear apart. He usually stayed safely barricaded in his underground lair, so she was somewhat happy to see him joining her on the rooftop. She offered out her hand to him as he scrambled up the rose trellis, pulling him up to lie on the rough shingling beside her. His slender ankles crossed neatly and his arms folded behind his head and they were quiet together, staring up at the smoky night sky.

"You're waiting for him?" he finally asked.

She sighed, not looking over at the troublemaker. "I keep hoping he'll come. I want to send a letter every day, but the air mail tube on the town's postbox is broken in half and doesn't work anymore." Her eyes welled with tears and she tried to blink them back. "Do you think that maybe you could fix it?"

His reply was uncomfortably blunt. "No."

She wondered if he was saying it because he wanted to be mean or if he was actually being honest; the more she thought about it, the more she realised it probably didn't matter. She could find a way to repair the postal tube without him.

"Have you ever tried to leave?" she asked a while later after she'd become accustomed to the sound of his breathing and her not.

"Once. LazyTown doesn't want us to leave. The ley lines that surround the town have been activated to create a barrier around the town in the form of LazyTown's original seal." His long fingers gestured down to the few scattered runes that glowed red faintly on the worn cobbled street.

"That's what all the writing and symbols around the town are," she mused.

"This is a private hell for those who remain," he explained.

"Why are we being punished? Uncle Milford was the one made Sportacus leave."

He gave a sigh, as though talking about it exhausted him. "Because the elf couldn't have you. You were dangled in front of him and he knew you could never be his."

She felt the hair on her arms stand up. "He wanted me?"

"Always wanted you." He made a face at her. "Not just like that…but because you understood him. 'Kindred spirits' and all that."

"Oh," she said mournfully; her heart beat a bit faster at the thought of being compared to Sportacus. "I didn't know."

"Your uncledid," Robbie muttered darkly.

"What?"

"He wanted Sportacus to have incentive to stay around." He turned on his side, propping his head up with a hand. "Imagine—Mayor Milford Meanswell forming the perfect arrangement between the township and one of the huldunfolk; his niece for the safety of his beloved LazyTown."

At this, she sat up and looked down at him. "You're not serious. You're just trying to upset me."

"Why do you think your uncle allowed you to stay for so long? That he wanted you to be here rather than return home? That he even asked for you to come to come visit LazyTown in the first place?" He tapped his long finger on the roof. "It was all a big set up from the start. He was trying to keep you here."

Stephanie stared at him with rounded eyes, aghast he was saying such things.

"Oh, don't look so hurt. You would have been sohappy to be with that silly elf," he scoffed, but his voice lost its hard tone and he added, "And he would have waited until you were of age."

She didn't want to ask him if he was specifying Sportacus or her uncle.

"Why…why did my uncle did my uncle make him leave?"

"He had formed a contract with Sportadork and failed to deliver." He sat up and waved his hands dramatically at the ruined town. "That is why this is the way it is."

So somewhere in all the unanswered questions and the horrifying answers, she was part of the reason Sportacus was gone. She drew her legs up against her chest, resting her chin on her knees.

"You just want someone to love you as much as I love Sportacus," she mumbled, wanting to make him feel as bad as she did.

He didn't seem fazed by her comment. "Perhaps."

They watched a pack of the hideous canine-like creatures that roamed the town fighting over what looked like a mummified left arm for a while before then she turned back to Robbie, wanting answers once more.

"If he loves me, why hasn't he come back?" She wanted to hold Robbie's hand for comfort but that wasn't a gesture she could ever bring herself to do, so she balled her hands into fists and let the feeling pass.

"Maybe he knows there's nothing to come back to."

She wanted to protest, to tell him that she was still here, but she looked at the bloodstains on the front of her frock and the dark ash that had been ground in. Maybe she hadn't tried hard enough to make LazyTown worth coming back to. If she found a better dress and cleaned the town up even more than she had already…yes, surely that would just scratch the surface of what she had to do. After all, she wanted him to be proud of her taking care of the place he worked so hard to protect. She lie back down and closed her eyes, her mind going back to a time where the sky was blue and she hair was brilliant pink...

By the time she spoke again, the Milky Way, or 'Night River' as Sportacus would have called it, had crossed over her to her right side.

"Robbie?" she asked, turning to look at him.

He didn't open his eyes. "Hmm?"

"How long have we been here?"

He cracked an eye open, glancing over at her. "Only a few hours. I'd say three at most."

"No. I meant, how long have we been here?" She emphasised by tapping a finger to the roof.

"Oh." His eyes opened fully at that point and he stared at her, his greyish eyes unnervingly bright in this dark. "I stopped keeping track after ten years. The seals have changed this land's perception of time."

She touched her dull hair. "Am I always going to look like this?"

"Yes. No. Probably. For a while, at least." His eyes trailed up and down her body. "Encapsulated as eternal youth."

"Why did I change?" she asked. "I mean, why do I look this way now?"

He shrugged against the shingles. "Spells. Curses."

She bit her lips between her teeth as she thought about what she wanted to ask him next. "Why did people die?"

"Because they didn't stop me." His words came out like a sigh..

"Why do you still look the same?"

Expectedly, rolled his eyes. "My name is Robbie Rotten for a reason. There wasn't much to change."

She rolled over onto her side, propping her head up on her hand. "Where did those dog things down in the street come from—"

He gave an exasperated huff. "I don't know, Pinkie. My understanding of huldenfolk magic is limited at best, just things I remember being told when I was a child and the few things I learned while I was plotting against the big blue elf."

She felt uncomfortable thinking about how often Robbie had tried to sabotage the person she considered 'hers', a nauseous upsurge beginning to build in her stomach. Her hands clutched at her hollow abdomen, tracing the deep ridges of the cicatrices through the material of her dress. Sometimes she wanted to hate him so much, but she would catch those thoughts and remind herself that Sportacus never disliked anyone, much less hated, and she'd force herself to be patient with Mr Rotten.

"Fog," she commented as an unusual layer of haze began to rise off the ground.

He lifted his head up to glance down at mottled grey swirls that had left the road and yard hidden. "Perhaps I'll stay until it leaves."

"Might be a while," she said hopefully.

While she never sought out to hold his hand for comfort, this time he found hers, his long fingers folding tightly around hers. She wondered if this was all he'd ever needed, a comforting gesture from someone, anyone. She didn't ask, suspecting that he probably didn't know the answer himself.

But that was fine. As she lie here on the rooftop, looking at the sky, waiting, she was more than happy to find comfort where she could.