"THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG NIGHT IF YOU'RE GOING TO IGNORE ME," Michael's voice crossed the room, meeting her ears and slightly muffling the sound through the blanket covering her ears.
She chose not to answer, hoping he'd think she's fallen out of their shared dreamscape. Going to sleep was something one often looked forward to after a tiring day, but Molly had come to absolutely abhor the activity. Simply because, Michael was often there too.
She had no idea why they would meet in their dreams, or how their brains were connected. Molly had guessed it was something she was subconsciously enforcing, due to the fact that she could cross into his room but he couldn't come near hers. Not that she ever would, again.
"I know you're awake, Molly," he continued with a chuckle, tossing a ball up into the air and catching it out of boredom. "You're not snoring, so it's easy to tell."
"I don't snore," she snapped, rolling her eyes and flinging the blanket off of her head, it was getting far too warm underneath it. "And even if I did, I highly doubt I snore in a dream."
"So you were ignoring me," he beamed triumphantly, as if he had won something. Molly gave up ignoring him, unable to escape the dream and knowing full well he wasn't going to stop pestering her. She sat up in her bed, resting her back against the headboard and looking at him with a deadly glare.
"You want to talk?" She smirked suddenly, a thought coming to her mind that she would use against him. "Let's talk about how you tried to save me."
"I didn't try, nor need, to save you," his smile faded, now that the tables were turned on him. "You're the second coming of Christ. If all it took to kill you was a measly truck, then there was no point in you being born at all."
"You pushed me out of the way, still," she crossed her arms over her chest, raising a dark eyebrow. "Does it pain you to see people get hurt?"
At this, he barked a hearty laugh, as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard.
"Oh, Miss Second Coming, if you knew half as much as you pretended to you wouldn't be quite so entertaining."
"Stop calling me Second Coming," she huffed. "It sounds vaguely dirty coming from the mouth of the Antichrist."
"Why? Do you always come second?" He winked playfully, chuckling to himself again. Molly shuddered at his insinuation.
"Well I suppose that's why you're known as Satan's firstborn then, because you always come first," she fired back, cringing at her words as she spoke them and realised they didn't sound half as insulting inside her head. He laughed nonetheless.
"The Second Coming," he mused, resting his chin on his fist, his elbow on his knee as he sat in front of the mirror on the ground. "Did your almighty father not get it right the first time?"
"That's rich coming from the Antichrist. Daddy dearest isn't all that original, is he?"
"When did you first start getting powers?" He asked suddenly, catching her off guard. Michael looked genuinely interested by what she had to respond, all traces of humour wiping off his face. She hesitated, wondering if she would be revealing too much by answering, but her own curiosity about his first experience won her over.
After all, there wasn't a being in the world like Molly. But if anyone came close to that level, it was Michael.
"Six," she revealed, "brought a dead guy back to life at his own funeral."
"Six?" He repeated, eyebrows furrowing.
"Yeah? What age were you?"
"Older than six," he replied gruffly, appearing somewhat offended all of a sudden.
"Late bloomer, huh? What happened your first time?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" He teased, playing with her usage of the words 'first time'. "I made a ball fly across the room. With my mind."
"When was this?" She smirked. "Last week?"
"You may have been bringing the dead to life but my first kill was at the age of four, so don't flatter yourself," he fired back.
"Four?" She echoed, absolutely horrified. It was casual comments like this he would occasionally make that would snap her back to reality.
"I was born evil, sweetheart," he positively beamed, proud of his words and his revelations. "It's about time you realised that."
"And I was born good, what makes you so sure you're my superior?" She tensed up, mentally preparing for an argument if needs be.
"I don't," he shook his head, almost surprising her. "In fact, I think we're perfect equals. Exactly alike."
"I'm nothing like you," she defended in a low tone, swallowing harshly in disgust.
"You're exactly like me. I'd even hazard a guess that you're not entirely good, just like I wasn't entirely evil before my Black Mass." He slowly began to stand up, his hands resting on either side of the mirror as he grinned wickedly. "I have Ms Mead to remind me of my true self, but you have no one. And that is why you will fail. It's not that you're not powerful, it's that you're alone - with nobody by your side."
"You don't know anything about me," she scrambled out of bed, her chest rising and falling as she tried to contain her anger, marching towards the mirror. "So stop pretending that you do. I have had people by my side my whole life."
"Oh really?" He asked sarcastically. "A mother?"
Molly didn't answer.
"A father?"
Molly didn't answer.
"Any relative of any kind?"
Molly didn't answer.
"Friends?"
Again, Molly didn't answer. She briefly considered Cordelia and Zoe, but both women were obligated to take care of her. Somehow she doubted that made them friends. An overwhelming wave of sadness washed over her, that made her doubt everything. This was the devil talking, the devil creeping into her head and whispering into her ear to make her doubt herself.
But that didn't mean the devil was wrong.
"What happened to your parents?" He questioned, his tone softer and audibly curious. She lifted her gaze from the spot on the floor she had focused on, meeting his eyes and biting the inside of her cheek to prevent from crying.
"I don't know," she answered with a shrug, further elaborating, "I don't know where they are." He tilted his head in confusion, but the last thing she wanted to do was tell him she was abandoned. Molly couldn't give him that satisfaction, she wouldn't.
"I can find out who they are," he offered, his tone sounding legitimate but his actual words sounding foreign, coming from him.
"Why would you want to do that, hm?"
"My father hated me and wanted nothing to do with me, and my mother tried to kill me. I believe that also makes me a member of the 'abandoned kids' club," he smiled half-heartedly. But there was something in his expression that completely took her by surprise, a flicker of sadness - one she recognised in herself.
It was also brief moments like this where she questioned Michael's inhumanity. Surely the Antichrist wouldn't have cared about two measly humans, his one true father was Satan and nothing would have mattered past that.
"How can you find out?" She pressed, trying not to sound eager.
"I have my ways," the corners of his lips turned up as he headed towards the desk in his room. Picking up a sheet of paper and a pencil, he brought the items back to the mirror and sat down in front of it, nodding for her to follow.
She sat down with her feet tucked underneath her, eyes following his every movement as he tried to make himself comfortable. When that was done, his eyes lifted from the paper to focus on her, making her fidget under the intensity of his gaze. After a few awkward moments of eye contact, his blue pupils suddenly turned a bright shade of white.
Curiously, she leaned in closer to the mirror, wondering what was happening, but then she heard the small scratch of pen against paper and she knew. Michael could see.
While Molly had received her visions in her dreams, Michael seemed to be able to induce context-specific images and scenes when prompted to. It was a rather shocking feat, for him to one-up her on psychic ability.
After a few seconds, Michael stopped drawing and his eyes flickered back to normal, his breathing accelerated as he panted softly. He looked down at the sheet beneath him with a small smile, before lifting it up and holding it in the air before her so she could see.
Tentatively, in case he should react or attack, she slipped her hand through the glass pane and took the sheet from him, bringing it back to her own side to inspect.
It was a woman, to be sure, appearing to be in her twenties. The lady was dark and strikingly beautiful, but also bore striking similarities to herself. Molly's hand slipped over her drawn nose and lips, tears welling in her eyes as she realised this was quite possibly the first and only time she'd ever see her mother.
Michael waited in silence for her to have her moment, patiently at that. He could tell how upset she was getting over the ordeal, and decided his teasing just wouldn't have amused him as much if she was in such a state.
"I couldn't see a father," he voiced after a few minutes. "I'd imagine that means you don't have one."
"What do you mean?" She asked with watering, widened eyes, shaky hands gripping the paper tightly.
"Wasn't your predecessor born to a virgin mother? Your dad likes to impregnate random women it seems."
"You expect me to think that after this there's not a shred of humanity in you," her voice was flat and low, eyes fixated on the woman's face. Suddenly, she didn't feel sad any more. Now, she felt rather angry. Her mother hadn't died, or anything similar to the sort. And still, she abandoned her like a newspaper on a doorstep.
Before he could reply to her taunt, Molly balled the piece of paper up in her hand and vaulted it through the mirror, it falling a few feet behind Michael. He turned around with a smirk, eyeing her with a strange expression.
"And you expect me to think that you're a saint when you so obviously harbour so much anger inside."
Molly could feel herself start to fade, meaning she was ready to wake up any second. With a resounding sigh of relief, she stood up and returned to her bed, thankful for the interruption so she wouldn't have to acknowledge what he said - or the truth of it.
She had listened to Constance's bickering for far too long, and after an unfulfilled trip to get the alcohol the previous day, Molly finally agreed to go on a shopping spree for the House's occupants. The second she had said yes, she immediately regretted it - as almost everyone approached her to give her their demand.
Ben had wanted bourbon, rightfully so. Violet wanted more cigarettes, while Viven asked for a cinnamon roll - purely because she missed the taste. Tate had requested a box of chocolate-shaped hearts, for Violet presumedly, but Molly did not intend to assist him in trying to win back his ex-girlfriend. Not after all he had done. And she quite liked Violet, the two had grown closer in her time spent in the house.
There she was, lazily pushing a cart through the same supermarket aisles she fought Michael in days before, tossing things into the cart that a group of ghosts asked for.
"We simply have to stop meeting like this," an upbeat voice resounded from behind her. Immediately, she rolled her eyes, choosing not to acknowledge Michael and instead reach for a box of Coco Pops, tossing them carelessly in. If she was probably going to die soon, she may as well get to spend her last few weeks, or months, living unhealthily.
"Ms Mead came down with something," he explained, although she hadn't asked. She sneaked a glance with the corner of her eye, seeing him read through a handwritten grocery list and scratching his head innocently. If she didn't know he was the root of all evil, she might have even dared say he looked adorable.
"Forgive me for not pitying the Satanist," she grunted, pushing the cart faster in an attempt to get away from him.
She should have known when she heard childish giggles behind her, but Molly still gasped when a tower of cereal boxes suddenly came tumbling down to the ground in front of her, blocking her path.
Molly whipped around to see Michael keeled over with laughter, clutching his stomach and shaking with amusement. She raised an eyebrow in challenge, eyes zeroing in on the bags of flour that were stocked closest to him.
Lifting her hand and flicking her index finger, at least ten bags suddenly exploded out of nowhere, encasing Michael in a heavy layer of white dust that immediately ceased his chuckling.
Before he could retaliate, she telepathically moved the boxes back onto the shelf and darted into the next aisle, half-running, but trying to hold herself from laughing. Her efforts were pointless, as every time the image replayed in her head she cackled even harder.
She was stopped once again by a sudden influx of products falling off the shelves and conveniently right into her trolley. Molly narrowed her eyes as she made out what the box said, and gasped afterward in surprise and humiliation. Michael had just flew about twenty boxes of condoms into her shopping cart. She could practically feel his amusement from the presence behind her, laughter booming throughout the supermarket.
At that very moment, a store clerk happened to enter that aisle, eyes immediately catching the sheer amount of condoms in Molly's cart. Her cheeks blushed a violent shade of red, stuttering over her words as she tried to explain, but he quickly left again before she could. This only made Michael laugh even harder.
"Okay, that's it!" She called out, noticing a display had been set up at the end of the aisle with about fifty soccer balls inside.
Smirking, she lifted both hands up, and one by one each ball floated towards Michael. Slowly at first, but then came quickly down to bounce off of his head. He was unable to block them, even using his arms to cover his head, but it was pointless as he still got bombarded.
Molly howled so hard she was sure her sides were split, nothing in her life ever having entertained her so much. When the balls stopped bouncing, they settled around him, like a tower encasing him inside.
He flicked his hair out of his eyes with a shake of his head, eyes narrowed at her. She worried for a second he'd end up fighting her again in the middle of the same store as before, but instead, he broke into laughter as well, starting up her own giggles once more.
"Excuse me," the same clerk from earlier interrupted their banter, crossing his arms rather disapprovingly. "I'm going to have to ask you both to leave."
Molly was still laughing when she reached the open air outside, and so was Michael. But when as soon as they stopped, a sudden awkwardness befell them both, and they wondered what to do next.
All they had ever done was try to kill each other when they saw each other. Or express some display of power, but this didn't feel like the right time to try and slay him again. And it was certainly not the right place.
Deciding to end their short-term camaraderie there, Molly nodded her head in goodbye before starting to walk backwards.
"I'm heading off," she explained, pointing over her shoulder. "See ya later, Antichrist."
"See you around, Second Comer." He waved his hand lightly, snickering to himself afterward. When she disappeared from sight completely, the small smile on his lips faded, and he was left with a sense of disappointment in himself.
This was his one true enemy, and he was wasting the chances he had to kill her on bonding instead.
AUTHORS NOTE
So... let's just all ignore that season finale shall we?
SPOILERS FOR ANYONE WHO HASNT SEEN IT.
I just... I loved the season don't get me wrong it's my favourite by far, and I even expected Michael to die but to die so brutally and by a CAR? It should have been an epic power battle between him and Mallory, but that's just my opinion. The season spent too long in the flashbacks stages, which I didn't mind because of the coven and Michael content but then the ending was completely rushed. Needless to say, this book may end up a little AU from the show.
sheshe073 - So glad you're liking it so far! I completely agree, representation matters and excluded from a lot of fanfics. I hope you have a fabulous day and that you liked this chapter 3