There were a lot of things that Dipper would have preferred to hear than "What makes you think I'd so easily lose such an amusing little thing as you?" Much less sinister things. For instance, a simple "okay" would have sufficed, and it wouldn't have implied that he only had the Fae's already questionable protection so long as he was considered entertaining, which would have been very nice since he didn't really know what the Faerie found so interesting about him in the first place, other then his pain.

However, he supposed that this was the closest to a promise of protection as he was going to get. It was something to go off of, some form of assurance that he wouldn't get lost in the dangerous revel going on around them, weak and slippery as that assurance was.

He'd take it. He'd take whatever he could get, from whomever he could get it from, at least for now.

He loosened his hold, and with a greater amount of effort and concentration then a healthy person would have probably needed, he drew in a breath that tasted like warm ale and the sweet perfume of toxic mountain laurel. "Alright." He choked out, and tried to drop its hand completely. Before he could, though, its fingers slipped between his and refused to let go.

"Come on." Was all the warning he got before the Fae stepped back and yanked him after it, tugging him through the throng. Two ogres started to fight where he had stood just moments ago, and a nymph with pear green eyes and flowers in its equally green hair smiled at him as they passed. He barely even noticed smiling back, too enthralled by its eyes to stop until he was pulled out of eye contact by the hand pulling him along.

"So this is what's been capturing all of your attention lately!" Someone cried from behind them, and Dipper was dragged along as the Faerie twisted around to see who was speaking.

A Faerie, definitely female Dipper noted, stared down at him, blinking the one huge pink eye set in the middle of its equally pink, curious looking face. This Faerie's skin was almost entirely fuschia, except for its arms and a strip across its thighs, where it faded to white before turning pink again at its feet. Huge pink horns bent like a hartebeest jutted from the sides of its head, and a few smaller ones grew in a line, starting at its forehead and following the part in its dark magenta hair. It saw him staring, and grinned at him, showing teeth bigger and sharper then should have reasonably fit in its mouth, before it aimed that grin at the Faerie holding Dipper's hand and began to speak, ignoring him completely.

Behind it loomed a massive troll with thick fur the colour of stormy water or wet slate, tiny saplings beginning to grow on its dirt covered back, and a face hidden away. It brushed against the roots of trees sticking through the dirt ceiling, it was so tall, and whenever it moved the earth around it trembled.

Dipper couldn't see the massive beast's eyes, but he felt like it was staring at him, judging and dismissing him, and he fucking hated it. He hated it so much that he stared right back, for the moment letting his glare carry all of his pent up frustrations and misery from the days he'd been kept imprisoned, unknowingly ending up looking so startlingly simular to a certain court member through only the sheer rage and wretchedness his tiny body contained, that The Being Whose Name Must Never Be Said felt a fleeting moment of apprehension.

Hopefully she would not concern herself with this, it thought, and looked away, paying attention instead to a sprite munching on a spider, not noticing the skinny, brilliant orange cat creeping up on it from behind.

As the sense of being picked apart by an invisible gaze faded and the other two Faeries conversed, Dipper realized that the hand holding his was gradually loosening its hold. It still wasn't anywhere close to slipping away completely, but it was just barely loose enough that he could move without it tightening around his fingers again.

So that was precisely what he did. He turned around, his back facing the Faerie, and looked around in hopes of spotting a door or a curtain, a crack in the crumbling walls even, or perhaps another human.

Instead, he caught sight of the green eyes nymph from earlier, though they did not meet gazes again. One of the ogres who had fought earlier stumbled fast, evidently the winner of their small battle, as the other was nowhere in sight and blood clearly coated this ogres sharp, jagged teeth. There was a pale green goblin with white hair and eyes with black edges and strange pupils, reminiscent of figure eights, perhaps. A woman with dark skin and an hourglass figure strode by, laughing with a friend, all three of her different coloured eyes alight with dangerous humour.

The only real human he saw was a dainty young woman with short, muddy blonde hair and a wreath of torn and mashed leaves on her head, choking down Faerie fruit as if her life depended on the sweet, bruised and almost rotting flesh of the apples that she was gobbling down. The crowd parted just long enough for him to catch a glimpse of her, before she was swallowed back up by it again just as quickly.

He felt a shudder run up his spine, and edged slightly closer to the Faerie, leaning ever so lightly against it, half to ensure that he would not wind up like the girl, and half just to keep himself standing. He felt dead on his feet, and his stomach had gone so long empty that just the sight of the woman eating had made him feel sick.

He didn't want to be like her. He didn't properly recognise her, but he knew he didn't want to be like her. Anything but trapped here, his own mind made insignificant as his body and heart yearned for just one more taste of Faerie, and the false sense of glory that came with it. He didn't want to be the boy huddled on the floor as monsters danced all around him, desperately wolfing down bruised fruit covered in dirt, spoiled apples and grapes and wild plums dropped to him by those very same monsters just so that they could laugh as he wasted away later.

Anything but that. He would sooner tempt death then that.

He jerked his hand away on a split second impulse that even he didn't understand, and instantly regretted it, because his knees almost immediately felt ready to give out and his now freed hand, much like the rest of him, suddenly felt very, very cold. He hadn't really meant to pull away, and he had no plan of what to do afterwords. He still hadn't seen anything that looked like an entrance or an exit. There wasn't anywhere he could spot that he could use to hide and not be found almost at once. There wasn't even a sign of the blond girl, she had long since been hidden from view, and Dipper knew he would not find her. It was like a reflex to startle or to strike when someone snuck up on him, a decision made without his consent, but suddenly horrifyingly out there.

Whether he was regretful of that reflex or not, the Faerie's claws were already reaching to grab him again, a possessive gleam in that butter coloured eye as it glanced down at him, and Dipper figured that that trick wouldn't work twice.

He turned and ran before he could properly sort out what the hell he was doing.

Both fortunately and unfortunately for Dipper, he ended up running straight into the center of the revel. This was fortunate because there was nothing quite like a hundred twirling, bending, frolicking Fae to conceal one from sight. Yet far more importantly, this was unfortunate because it meant that he was now lost in the fray, something more dangerous then he could have ever imagined, and he had already been imagining some rather grim things from the very start of the night.

This, though, was beyond even him.

Leers and smiles and toothy, hungry looking smirks leapt out at him, dresses and veils and talons brushed against his bare shoulders, and he found himself constantly tripping over one thing or another, skirts and glass bottles and still forms. Some Faeries bumped uncaringly into him, before swirling away as if not even noticing, while others fixed him with long unreadable looks and still others seemed to practically follow him around the mass of twisting bodies, reappearing in the corner of his vision again and again.

Being lost in the middle of a crowd is like being told that you have only a few more months to live. You don't know where you're going, where you should be going, and generally just have no clue what is happening around you.

Being lost in this particular crowd was like confronting your death head on without even a warning, and still having no clue what the fuck was going on, other then that you wanted to survive, no matter the costs, no matter that you knew your chances of doing so were realistically less then zero.

Despite knowing that, really, death is one of the kinder things that can happen to you here.

When the hand first grabbed him by his bruised, aching shoulder, sending fresh sparks of pain to join the fire already burning like a torrent inside of him, Dipper's first thought, his mind bleary and confused and panicked, was that it was the Faerie, catching up to him already. A single glance backwards proved otherwise, as a girl with the lower body of a fawn stared back, her big, doey eyes glittering in the light of dozens of candles settled among her huge, reindeer-like antlers.

He felt silly for a moment. Her hand had felt completely different, smaller and lacking claws, and gentle in a way that didn't suggest hidden strength and cruelty so much as true gentleness.

Her eyes said the exact opposite, sparkling with the kind of shameless mischief that doesn't care for the consequences, so long as the joke is fun.

She smiled as she leaned forward and kissed him, grabbing his head with one hand and tilting his head back at an awkward angle, prying his mouth open with hers and flooding it with the taste of sweet delicious Faerie wine, while the other hand clutched the bottle.

xXx

Yes, the plot of this is more then slightly ripped from "The Darkest Part of the Forest" by Holly Black. But it's either that or no smut, and judging by a few comments I've gotten in the past, you guys are wanting smut. So surprise snogging/drugging it is. My brother and I have affectionately dubbed it "Surprise! Faerie assault!" and taken to occasionally yelling its name at the grocery store. I encourage you to do the same.

Please note that this is where I'll be branching off from the version that I'm going to be posting on Archive of Our Own. While on this site certain things will only be implied, on Archive they will actually be described. This will result in some chapters posted here probably seeming a bit short, so I'm sorry about that. If you want to read the full version, all questionable content intact, I recommend just reading what's on Archive. My name is the same there, minus the dash.

Thanks you for reading, please leave a review, and byeeeee!