Note: Again very AU. This is a long fic series so I will update if people are interested for more. Enjoy!

It was Halloween Eve and the wives of the village had tried to kill the woman living on it's edge. She was a witch they said, bewitching innocent people that came across her small house with her silver tongue. And she was a whore, but that was kept hushed up, only spoken about in scandalised whispers amongst the housewives. And then the rumour started, that she was expecting. They had watched her with rising disgust and anger as she glowed with the prospect of birth. The father could have been anyone, even one of their husbands. She had bewitched all the men, turned them off of their wives. The wives knew that their husbands visited her. And then they started to leave, one by one. The devil woman was a harlot and needed to be shown.

They had stuffed her mouth with cloth sack and dragged her out of her home. It was the first time that many of them had seen her and were shocked to see not a voluptuous, erotic beauty from overseas but a tiny, rail thin girl, lily white in the dusk. Pixie instead of a Succubus. They pushed her to the ground and punched and kicked at her frail body. She didn't last long, so growing tired of her easy defeat they left her in the undergrowth.

Gabriel Gray had heard of her of course. Had even seen her once when he needed to go into the city for clock parts. She had been hanging up clothes, all neatly on a line. So when he found her laying in front of his path home he recognised her immediately. She was hurt, bleeding and clothing ripped, curled up on the crushed grass. He gingerly knelt down, not wanting to touch her for fear of something he couldn't name.

"I can't just leave you here. I can help."

So saying that he picked her gently up into his arms and carried her back to her cottage.

*

Eden felt like her limbs were at once very heavy and needle sharp with pain. Her head was foggy, pulsing cotton, clotted together like webs over her mind. She remembered hearing shouting and a large crowd. And then pain. Thankfully she had blacked out afterwards. She ran her dry tongue along her teeth, to see if any had been loosened for there was a taste of copper there. She winced and opened her eyes when she tasted blood. There was a man standing at the end of her bed, tall but slightly hunched over. Her body spasmed in shock and she gasped aloud in pain.

"Don't move. You might have broken something." His soft voice was soothing to her ringing ears and she relaxed. One of her eyes felt swollen but she opened them again to watch him. He hedged closer, eyes bespectacled and soft with worry. Everything about him very neat and clean. Well put together. He had his handkerchief out and handed it to her. "You nose is bleeding."

She took the snow white cloth and cupped it to her face. "Who are you?"

"I'm Gabriel Gray. I make timepieces."

Ah yes, she'd heard of him. A recluse, like her. People found him an oddity, nice enough but too unsociable. He didn't speak to people so they didn't speak back to him. He was rather handsome, she thought, as he smiled shyly at her. She nodded.

"Thank you for bringing me home, I could have been out there all night." She sighed wearily and looked around her bedroom. It was small and joined onto the only other room in which the kitchen and front room were occupied. She looked around sadly, pulling her bed sheet up in her hands. "It looks like I won't be here for long. The women in the village hate me. Well, I was never really welcomed here…"

Gabriel blinked and cleared his throat, looking relieved. "That's good." Eden raised her eyebrows at him. "Oh, I mean good that it wasn't anything more…serious?" His checks reddened and he looked down.

"Oh, you thought the men…?" She shock her head. "No, they worship me." She laughed but had to stop at the pain in her chest. His head had raised, eyes alight with interest. He seemed to hesitate before knelling down by her bed.

" You are -"

"A witch?""No. A God send."

Eden frowned at him. Then her lips quirked. "That is an odd thing to say. I don't think I've ever been called that before."

"The stories that they tell of you, of the things you can do. It's just wonderful." He was excited, mouth parted. "Like last year. Did you really make the landlord of The Rock give out free ale?"

He looked so animated that she felt herself swayed. No one had looked at her like that. Only anger, fear or lust was directed her way. "He overcharged me. He was a curmudgeon and greedy. I was doing the punters a service."

His face broke out into a wide grin and she felt herself reflect it back at him. "It's magic, what you do! You don't know how lucky and unique you are! People would kill for what you have."

"It's not all good…" She pulled the sheet around her breasts.

"Sorry, I didn't mean…"

"If you are so pleased about my power why haven't you been to see me before?"

"I -" he paused, licking his lips. "I thought about it but I wasn't sure. About what the women say…"

"That I am a whore? They can think what they like…Didn't you ever wonder?"

"No. Yes. I mean no." He grew uncomfortable, pulling out his pocket watch and playing with it as he spoke. "I don't care about what you do and don't do with men. I have no interest in it at all."

She stared at him with interest. He had to be in his late twenties and not yet married. From what she had been told he had never been in a relationship with anyone. He had lived with his mother until last year, when his father had died. She thought he was the type of man that would be desperate enough to see her. She took his hand.

"It's alright. I don't want to make you uncomfortable after what you have done for me. Before I leave there must be a way I can pay you back for your kindness?" Many men came to see her, and some women too, and they were thankful for her help. But she would always go to bed alone and wake that way. The silence could be crushing.

He looked down at their hands, thumb brushing gently over the scratches marking her skin. He didn't speak but his grip got tighter. Finally he looked up.

"You're offering me what I want?" His voice shook slightly.

"If I can give it."

"And what would you want in return?"

Eden needed food, clothes and other necessities to keep her place here. She did her trick and they would give her payment for it. Before this power had been given to her she had resorted to another method to stay alive. But that was years ago.

"Money. If I am to leave I will need it to travel." Every time she thought about leaving her face became downcast. "But more I want to go out into the village without the dirty glances. I need to be respected, honourably. I'm tired of moving and I thought this would finally be the place I could settle."

"You don't have to leave." He said gently.

She smiled "No one wants me here anymore. My reputation, what I had of it, is decimated." She sighed, biting her lip. "I went overboard…sometimes I let it take me over till I can't see what I'm doing is wrong. I just wanted to hurt them, pay them back for all the years worth of muck they had thrown at me. Their husbands wanted to leave, I just gave them a push."

"But you have lived here for years. A lady like yourself can't travel by herself." He looked rather scandalised she thought.

Her eyes sharpened on him. "You believe what they say? About the baby? Malicious rumours spread to ruin me." Her eyes clouded over with nostalgia. "Oh but before I came here I did things that would make your hair white and your face burn."

His mouth thinned but the excitement was still palpable. "What kind of things?"

Eden kept silent, her own face going red. She couldn't tell him, he gave off waves of Christian virtue, prudish reserve. Like his mother. "Just safe to say it was things that someone like you would find…distasteful."

He straightened up, affronted. "You don't know that. I'm not a child."

She raised an eyebrow. "You were living with your mother until recently. I have never seen you in the company of any young women for more then a few minutes…Well with anyone for that amount of time."

He stood up and walked to her bureau, taking her hair brushes and trinkets and placing them neatly in a line. Eden sat up carefully and stood up, hand placed to her mid section. She reached his side, hand brushing his arm.

"I could make you not fear people, make you want to be with them. I could give you anyone that you wanted. Haven't you ever wanted a wife?"

His chest was swelling, breath caught in his throat before it was released in a rush. He turned quickly to her, hands cupping her shoulders. "Can you do that? Can you make them see me?"

Eden was taken aback by his expression. Gone was the shy awkwardness and in it's place was a desperate lustful hope. The transformation made her hair stand on end and her stomach flip over. The magnetism was raw and it made her want to be under the full force of it. Then she tried to step back but his fingers held her in place.

"You want it that much?"

"I'd give you my business for it." He was deathly serious. "Whatever you want I'll give it if you do this."

Eden needed to sit down. She wiggled out of his hold and sat down on her bed. She was being reckless and not thinking. Again. But he would give her what she wanted. What did she want?

"Gabriel I don't want to go but I can't stay here doing this all the time. It's so easy for me to do it, to tell others what I want them to believe. I don't do good things for people."

He knelt down again, earnestly watching her from between her knees. That hungry look had been subdued. "You would be helping me. You would not be doing a bad thing, I don't want to hurt people. I just want to be someone significant. Please don't withhold this from me."

And then an idea grew in her mind, half formed and haphazard. It was ridiculous but maybe, maybe…She placed her palm to his soft cheek and leaned forward, eyes intense on his. "I will make a deal with you. This will be my last trick and if I perform it for you then you must do this for me. I want to stay here but I can't be alone, not with this reputation hanging over me. I can't live with it anymore." His eyes were captivated to hers. "I want to stay with you. I want you to pretend to court me."

His mouth slackened and he gulped. "You mean…marriage?" He laughed nervously.

"I'm not a fool or some green girl. We won't have to share a bed or even touch each other when not in the company of others. This is if you agree of course. I'll give you a few days to come to a decision and give me your answer. If you don't come by the end of the week then I'll know your mind and you'll never see me again. You'll remain unnoticed."

Gabriel eyes flickered between hers, as if looking for any traces of deceit. "It's mad." He whispered. "But, but I'll think on it…I don't even know you! You don't know me!" He shook his head.

"We can get to know each other! It will not be a difficult situation, we could go hours a day without seeing each other if that is what you wanted. It would be matter of convenience for both of us. I will give you the reputation you crave and that will heighten mine by being associated with you." She stopped, thinking she was coming across as too cold. "But I -" She paused, uncertain. "I'm lonely. I don't want to spend the rest of my life alone and moving from one place to another." Her fingers traced the curve of his mouth. "It wouldn't be all pretence, I could come to feel…"

"Eden…" He took both of her hands in his. They were huge compared to hers but years of working with delicate watch parts had trained them to be gentle with small things. "If you grant me what I want I could even fool my mother into believing we are in love."

He stood up, moving to the door. Eden followed him out. He put on his dust coat and she brushed out the crinkles. "So it's a deal then?"

"If you do your trick for me I'll do the treat for you. "

She smiled. "In the spirit of the season?"

"Yes."

He left her in her blood and grass stained chemise and walked down her garden path and out of sight.