Guys I'm sorry I took a mini hiatus from writing. I know I mentioned it already but I had some personal stuff going on. The good news? It's pretty much sorted now. At least, I'm a lot happier. I foresee upheaval in my future but fingers crossed I'll still end up in a good place eventually. *Cryptics cryptically*
Also. My. Anthology. Story. Is. PUBLISHED! It feels awesome to finally have some original works back in the game. And that's one of the reasons I haven't been writing fan fic in a while, but now I'm back! And I have most of the next chapter already written because it got too long and I split it into two. Remember how I promised no more OCs? Umm... well I couldn't really write it without any. Sorry. Have a werewolf. In consolation I'd like to add a quick shoutout to the amazingly awesome SalaciousSymphonies (previously the Trash Panda) who is back and rewriting her epic masterpiece The Ties That Bind Us. It's better than ever and definitely worth looking at! Go give her some love.
Content Warning: not a lot of action in this chapter but we're building towards some pretty explosive events. Conspiracy theories, links to real life historical figures (yay PLOT!), implied het sex, mild torture references, foreshadowing.
There was a wolf in the courtyard. Not attacking anyone, not doing anything but sitting on silky, pale haunches and waiting. Marceline landed in front of it with a scowl on her face. She knew wolves, they were one of the animals she'd spent a considerable amount of time shape shifted into and hanging out with. And this wolf was not acting like a normal wild wolf. It was fluffy and white with keen amber eyes and an intelligent face. It looked up and her and let out a little yip before stretching, yawning and exploding upwards into what looked unsettlingly like an ancient, pure human. If it hadn't been for the fine down of dark hair across the woman's knuckles and the lupine yellow of her eyes even in her human form she'd have blended into any pre-Mushroom War city for a thousand miles without a second glance. She was pale faced and had thick dark brunette hair that was hacked off severely at the shoulders; despite being a whole head shorter than Marceline she held her solid frame with a kind of easy self confidence that not many people maintained while facing the most powerful creature in existence.
"Werewolf." Marceline snarled. She'd smelled it a mile off anyway and there was no point pretending she didn't recognise what she was looking at. Kim hung behind her a little nervously, he'd never met a genuine werewolf and he was unsure if there was about to be a fight. Words were his weapon, he'd never so much as lifted a sword.
"Laika." the woman replied in a voice that flowed oddly, almost like she was singing her words. "I'm the pack matriarch. And you are the vampire queen. Good, this shouldn't take long. I need your help."
"Get out of my palace before I rip your face off." the vampire replied with her voice dropping into a demonic growl. The woman did nothing but tilt her chin defiantly and tighten her jaw a little, she didn't even flinch.
"Hear me out. They've taken our puppies. You think we want to fight you?"
"Yes. Yes, I think you're every bit as much demon as I am and bloodlust sings through your blood the same way it does for me. I'll bet you never feel so alive as when your teeth break the flesh of another creature, yeah? See, I spent time in the Nightosphere. I know how demons operate. And werewolves are just another type of demon. Fuck off now while you can still walk."
The werewolf darted forward unexpectedly and Marceline had the feverish skin of her throat between merciless undead hands in an instant. But the wolf did nothing more than just stand perfectly still in her grip, gazing beseechingly up into narrowed crimson eyes.
"See? You could crush the life out of me in a moment. And I'm not even trying to defend myself. Hear me out." she begged quietly. "You have kids, right? They said you had kids. If someone took them, if they were in danger... They're just babies. Puppies."
Unbidden the memory of the night Finn and Jake had been snatched by Joshua flashed behind her eyes. The empty cradle. The dead guards. The feeling of the world crashing and shattering around her because her babies were gone, might be dead or hurt or crying for her in terror-
"You have exactly sixty seconds. Start talking, wolf."
Marceline didn't release her grip on the werewolf's throat for that minute as the other woman spoke. Kim must have hurried away to find whoever he could in the palace because there was a noise like people hurrying to them from the main building but Marceline never took her eyes away from where they were scanning the direct amber gaze beneath her own for any sign of lies. The woman's pulse lapped lazily against the cold fist around her throat and the stink of wet dog was almost overbearing, even Jake at the heights of his teenage aversion to bathing had never reeked that badly. But still Marceline listened and ignored the footsteps approaching and the other voices shouting a confusing babble of questions.
"We were allies. A long time ago we were friends. After your war, I guess. And then the false queen wanted to be certain of our loyalty. So she took my pups as a guarantee. We've lost too many pack members though, Estelle's idea of loyalty is going to cost us lives whatever we do. So I decided to try another way. The enemy of my enemy must be my friend. I escaped, I came here. And now the only way I'll go back is with the help I need to get my children. I already lost my packmate, we'll never have another litter. There are six babies, they're all I have left of him. All I want is my children to be safe and away from this war."
There was a sort of horrified rushing noise in Marceline's ears when the werewolf matriarch had finished speaking. Like she was flying into a headwind. Or, more like falling. Like falling out of the sky without any control over her trajectory, like the night Bella Noche had temporarily sucked her vampire magic away. Like the night when her baby boys had been stolen away by a madman, like the feeling when she'd looked into Bonnie's eyes and seen no spark of recognition-
"Mom, we have to help. We're heroes, me and Finn. And Phoebe."
It was Jake. He must have hurried to her side while the werewolf was talking, his paws were clenched into fists and he was avoiding Kim's scornful gaze. But the rebels had the pups, and that meant they must be somewhere heavily guarded.
"They have them in Goblin City, right?" Marceline guessed, pushing her revulsion and the memories that were flooding her to one side. Laika nodded heavily.
"Guarded by former members of our own pack. The ones loyal to Estelle now, or at least good enough at pretending to satisfy her ego. Please, I already lost my mate in the attack on your mountain village. As much as I wish I could avenge him, as hard as it is to beg his murderers for aid, you're the only option I have now. Please help me save my puppies, and then we'll leave. No more werewolves, at least none of my pack. There are a few who'd stay but with the pups back and no reason to continue guarding the vampires most of us would be gone in a heartbeat."
"I've got puppies of my own." Jake interrupted. "I'm not going to sit back and let anyone hurt kids."
"And I suppose telling you not to put yourself in danger and that I'd be crushed if anything happened to you wouldn't keep you here?" Marceline asked him with a sad smile.
"Mom, what if it was Viola or Jake Junior or Charlie? What if they had my little girls and they were scared and alone and didn't understand why it was happening? If I'd lost Lady, if the girls were all I had?"
She opened her mouth to reply only for a new voice to interrupt. It was an odd feeling for Marceline, she wasn't used to that voice being unwelcome.
"Absolutely not! I forbid it in every possible way! You'll stay in the palace, Jake. And you, werewolf woman, you'll get out of my home before I execute you myself! As for you-"
Marceline whirled around and found herself face to face with Bonnie. The candy queen was flushed in her cheeks and clearly furious at being left out of any kind of decision making however accidentally it had happened. She'd obviously sprinted from wherever she'd been, probably her laboratory, and her breath came hard and distractingly sweet right into the vampire's face. There was barely a hand's width between their lips, the crazy idea that it would be far too easy to just lean forward and kiss her wouldn't leave Marceline's thoughts. It took every last fibre of resistance that she had to force herself a step backwards, away from the intoxicating scent of her wife's sweet breath.
"They're adults, Bon. We don't get to tell them what to-"
"You'll call me Your Highness or you won't address me at all! You're nothing to me, do you understand? I won't tolerate insolence like this!" Bonnie screamed. That time Marceline took a step back in shock and took a moment to look at her estranged wife more closely. There were rings under her eyes like she hadn't slept in days, her hair was bound in a sloppy ponytail and held back from her face with what looked like a circle of wire she'd used a temporary hairband and her fingers were raw and scabbed like she'd been digging her nails into her hands from stress so much she'd broken the skin. Rose coloured eyes skittered all around, filled with a nervous energy that spoke of too little sleep and too much stress. Jake, ever sensitive to others' moods, stepped forward between them and directed his mother's gaze to himself instead.
"Come on, Mama. Come back inside and rest. We can talk about this later but you need to get some breakfast and a nap, you're exhausted." he said kindly, taking Bonnie's arm and leading her away. She must be almost at her limit, Marceline thought, because she let him tug her away with only minimum complaint.
"I don't need to nap, I'm fine. You Dogs and your obsession with sleeping and eating, I keep telling you I'll rest when I've finished my project..."
Her voice was lost among the general background noise of the palace mid-morning and the werewolf who'd held her tongue so far sidled up to Marceline's elbow.
"Your scent is full of pain." she observed quietly.
"You better shut the fuck up or your scent will be full of being dead." Marceline growled back. She was unable to keep the obvious agony from her voice, though.
"That was your mate."
"Yeah. I mean, no, not... Former mate. Not anymore."
"And yet when we take a mate we always think it will be for the rest of our lives." the werewolf observed quietly. Her words carried a pain that mirrored Marceline's own and the vampire was reminded that the werewolf had said she'd lost her packmate. Had her silver-edged axe widowed the woman standing next to her? Finn's axe, Jake's sword? There was no way to know but the weight of guilt settled across her silent heart all the same. Suddenly Marceline didn't know what to say, so she simply drifted off towards the palace and motioned for her new werewolf acquaintance to follow.
...
"Come on babydoll, won't you eat? You gotta eat to keep your strength up."
She just sighed and pushed away from the herdling he held up to her.
"I want wildblood. I want the chase and the fight, I don't like that farmed blood crap."
"Baby, come on, you know you're too weak to hunt right now. You need to rest and recover."
Garrett didn't roll his eyes because he respected his girl too much to let his frustrations with her whining show. But it wasn't like Estelle was in any shape to hunt, she was so weak she could barely fly and leaving their rooms in the daylight was out of the question. If she didn't eat soon she'd go feral from starvation and then they'd have to deal with detoxing her of the blood of whichever vamp was unlucky enough to cross her path when that happened. They didn't have enough spare time for the queen to go tripping balls for a week or more, they had a continent to conquer. It didn't help that it was the middle of the day and Garrett wanted to sleep, didn't help that Estelle hadn't rested for more than an hour at a time since the last attack. They'd warned him that losing his Zeta Psis would hurt but it had been more like a sort of bee sting in the back of his brain, easily ignored if he shoved it away from himself to focus on the finer details of their alliance with the fire nation. If he'd known where he was pushing the pain, if he'd known it was his babydoll that was suffering from the broken mental links- Garrett shook his head to try ease some of the hot guilt and regret flooding his thoughts. He needed to get some food into Estelle before he could try to help her with the damage in her head.
"I want to taste her." Estelle whined, throwing her arms around his neck and pouting up at him. "Was she sweet? Did she scream? Tell me again."
"She got away, babe. I'm sorry. Yeah, she was sweet and she screamed real nice. And I'll get her for you again and you can taste her for yourself, soon. I promise."
"But you can still feel her, can't you? In your head? I want her to die, I don't want to share your brain with another woman, I don't like it."
"She's… babe, we can do tons of stuff with the junk I pulled out of her head. Do you know how much fear there is in her? You're gonna had so much fun with her."
"But I want it now. I hurt, my brain hurts. I need wildblood to make me better."
Estelle wasn't going to forgive him for letting the pink candy woman escape any time soon, or for establishing a mental link to her however accidentally. Her pout was ridiculously cute though and he couldn't stop himself from dropping the herdling by the scruff of its fat neck and letting his lips find hers. Centuries later and he was still so in love with her, his beauty queen. He'd called her his princess and she'd laughed and told him she wanted to be the queen, not just a dumb princess. And then one night she bit him and said they'd be together forever that way, then they hunted and killed the one who'd bitten her and rode out the mental agony from the broken link together. After that it was his frat brothers, and they were a real family after all. King, queen and adoring subjects. But that hadn't been enough for Estelle. Not when she saw the grey woman with the real crown. The crown that now sat lopsided on top of the light brown waves of Estelle's beautiful hair. Garrett broke the kiss and smiled down at her, lost in her eyes like he had been that night they'd first kissed at the drive-in cinema in the back of his father's car.
"You're so beautiful." he whispered to her.
"But I was to be pretty." she sulked.
"Beautiful is better than pretty, baby."
"No, I want to be pretty. Double pretty. Pretty Pretty like a real queen."
And then he remembered that Estelle was making less and less sense these days, was broken in her mind and beyond even his Talent's power to fix. Garrett kept the snarl from showing on his chiseled features but he felt it in his mind nevertheless. That royal ditz and her stupid pink wife were going to suffer and die for what they'd done to his Estelle. Nobody hurt his girl, not unless she wanted them to and ordered it. He'd made her a queen like she wanted, he'd kept her safe this time around because he'd seen how vulnerable she was in their first war and he wasn't taking the chance of letting Marceline slip away from them again because Estelle and her friends were too busy playing arsonist. No, this time he'd lead the charge himself and his loyal Zeta Psis would be the foot soldiers. He'd kill the old queen with his own hands and then when he was king they'd finally, finally have the wedding she'd promised him all those centuries ago. The memory of that ancient promise pulsed through his thoughts as though driven by a heartbeat he no longer possessed.
"And once I graduate my Papa's gonna get me a job on uncle Bobby's campaign staff, get me a ringside seat for the election. Next stop, the Senate. Who knows? I could be king of the world."
"And I'll be your queen?"
"Of course, babydoll. You and me sittin' in the Oval Office, you'll be my First Lady. But you gotta marry me first, y'know? They don't let no fornicators run for president."
"You're asking me to be your wife?"
"Asking you to be my queen. What do you say, you wanna rule the world with me?"
"Mrs Estelle Kennedy. I like it."
Someone had taken uncle John out of the picture before they'd even managed to Turn him and it had been difficult to convince uncle Bobby to join them. In the end Garrett had had to shoot him and bite him in the hospital before using Sire control to make the older man lie still as death through the funeral, and after that they'd ended up having to dispose of him because he'd turned out to be worse than useless anyway. Kennedies were as stubborn as they were prolific and there were plenty more who made better vampires than uncle Bobby. Someone was working against them though; seemed like every time he had a plan for another family member they wound up dead in tragic circumstances before he had a chance to bite them. Garrett had only had a few decades to Turn as many political figures as possible before the bombs had fallen and he'd lost so many of his lineage. That was when Estelle had first started to lose her mind and here they were a thousand years later and she was sicker than ever and still not a queen. Garrett knew it was irrational but he couldn't shake the feeling that Marceline had something to do with it, that her sudden appearance and meteoric rise to power had been planned. And now he was finally going to end her once and for all, he had a plan. Garrett hadn't grown up during the age of espionage for nothing, if sending in the spies had worked against the commies he saw no reason it wouldn't work now too.
"Eat." Garrett urged softly, again holding up the herdling that whimpered and stared at them with dull eyes. Estele sighed and finally sunk her fangs into its soft flesh, draining it until nothing but a dry carcass remained. Garrett spared her his softest, most private smile. "Feel better?"
"Much." she replied. And then her answering smile grew impish beneath the fresh blood that gleamed on her lips and she leaned back into his embrace to trail her finger tips down the bite scar low on his shoulder, the mirror of her own. Garrett shuddered at the contact and arched against her touch.
"Estelle..." he gasped quietly, half questioning and half begging.
"I think I could sleep now. But I need someone to tuck me in, make sure I'm relaxed before bed." she purred before her lips met the cool skin of his throat. Tomorrow, later, another day, he'd plot and plan for how to destroy the vampire queen one and for all, and crown his beautiful Estelle for real this time. But right now she needed him to relax her and he'd never been able to say no to her.
...
Maybe Jake had been too optimistic, thinking he could sneak out himself, both of his siblings, Phoebe's stupid cat boyfriend thing and Laika the werewolf all in one go without getting caught. Because the five of them slipped out of one of the many secret passages into the candy palace and came face to face with a long, rusty orange body ending in a suit jacket and a disapproving frown.
"Grandma said nobody was going to leave." Kim Kil Whan announced, crossing his arms across his chest.
"And I say I'm not standing by idly while innocent children are held hostage by the rebels. I'm a hero. I save people." Jake replied evenly. He crossed his arms across his chest and set his jaw defiantly in the same gesture of stern authority he'd seen his Mama use so many times. Finn and Phoebe looked between the two in shock, who was more stubborn between Jake and his hotheaded son?
Kim snorted derisively and scowled.
"You're not a hero, Dad! You're a lazy bum who has no reason to even exist! Your whole life is pointless! You're the crown prince and heir to a pair of centuries old immortals, what's the point? And you're a stay-home father because Mom wanted you to feel like you had any kind of relevancy to the childhood of your children, she doesn't need you there any more than Grandma and Gran Gran need an heir. 'Hero' is a polite way of saying you hang around causing trouble because you're bored and have no direction in your life. And now you have TV lounging around like a useless sack of crap too, I'm so glad I took after Mom instead!"
"Well at least I'm not a judgmental snob." Jake replied quietly. Finn could hear the restrained hurt in his brother's voice though and stepped between them with his hands raised.
"Woah woah, time out, dudes. Kim, you be nice to your Dad, he loves you and he's got a ton of important stuff to do, it's just different to your stuff. Jake... man, you love your son too. Let's all just not fight, yeah? There's enough going on without us turning on ourselves. Let's just follow the plan and save some puppies." he soothed.
"Oh great, now Loser the Younger is getting in on it too. Listen, Uncle Finn. Sooner or later you're gonna have to grow up, this whole Peter Pan act you have is getting old. It's embarrassing. I've only been around a fraction of the time you have and look at what I've achieved. And you know why that is? Because I respect authority. Your mother, my grandmother, the queen of this whole kingdom and single most politically powerful being in Ooo, said we can't afford the distraction of running around chasing wayward puppies. And here you all are, all three of you, sneaking out against her direct orders. You too, Aunt Phoebe! I thought you were better than this!"
"I'd have done the same for you if you'd been in danger as a pup." Phoebe replied with a scowl. She flared brighter and tried hard not to notice the way Yrran swayed subtly closer to her warmth, he'd insisted on coming along since she'd taken the time to slip her undead bodyguard and he had nothing to do until his commander was recovered. Not that Elliot had been too difficult to avoid, she'd been huddled down with the other Old Bloods talking in whispers since the night of Eagle Mask's funeral and Phoebe had no idea what was up with them. Something, for sure, but Marceline had been too busy to check the vampire bodyguards were actually doing their jobs and in all the confusion nobody had noticed the three royal children sliding away with their new werewolf acquaintance. Nobody but Yrran, and apparently Kim.
"I'm not letting you go." Kim announced. He looked between all of them, scowling even harder than ever.
"And you'll stop us... how? Exactly?" Phoebe asked with her own snort of derision.
As mature as Kim was he simply didn't have the experience they did. He hadn't even opened his mouth before Finn and Jake bounded off to one side of him, Phoebe shot to the other and cleared his midsection in a single leap then Laika and Yrran followed at a charge. Kim shut his mouth with an angry huff and swirled to follow.
"You don't even have a plan!" he yelled from the air above.
"Then how about you give us some aerial support? Scout the terrain, you can be part of our hero squad!" Jake hollered back. The grin on his face was enough to tell his brother and sister that he had every intention of turning the whole adventure into a bonding experience and Finn couldn't help but answer with his own smile. Last night Victoria had grabbed his hand and placed it against her belly, he could have sworn he felt a sort of fluttering movement. He was gonna raise his kid to be a hero too, he understood why Jake wanted Kim to approve of him. Finn just hoped that Jake wouldn't have reason to regret bringing along his uptight eldest son with them, that their parents and especially Mama wouldn't explode with fury when they found out about the mission. But there were pups in danger, a fair maiden to help even if she was a werewolf and general heroing to get on with. Despite all of the danger and grief, despite it war and the death and all the uncertainty in their future he did nothing to restrain the savage grin that spread across his face at the thought of finally getting into the middle of the action. Finn was back in his element at last.