Check it out! A new milestone. With the publishing of this chapter, this story now has 100,008 words in it! Cool!

(…) means twin's telepathy and ((…)) means Cosmo and Wanda telepathy.

No, I don't own FOP or any reference to its varied characters mentioned herein, and unless the new episodes that follow 'School's Out' begin showing the love again, I wouldn't want to. So, for now, Butch Hartman can keep his name tacked on…even if it is for nothing more than the royalties at this point.

Oh…and I don't own The Big Comfy Couch either. That belongs to some broadcasting company in Tennessee I think. : )

Fairly OddParents : The Next Generation

Chapter 25. Recompense Due

Green hair bobbed slightly as the fairy made his way down the walkway. He really had no idea which way to go, but he didn't care. All that mattered was catching Crocker. He was gong to catch him and make him pay for whathe'd done.

Cosmo's blood had cooled slightly during the confusion of the other fairies entangling with the men and Wandissimo's bid at getting the two of them free as well, but here as he jogged quickly, he could feel it growing to boiling once more. He was still mad. Wildly so, and he wasn't going to waste such an incredible drive when the man, the human responsible for this, was getting away. No way. He was going to catch him, and when he did, he was going to… Well, he didn't know exactly what he was going to do to Crocker just yet, but he was definitely going to do something to him.

Though most of Cosmo's body had regained feeling after the men had pulled him off the panel as a warning to Wanda during Crocker's rant, his hands and feet still had a slightly painful tingling to them that jabbed sharply at him every time he placed a foot down solidly. Some of his movements even still felt a little awkward, but the more he thought about his anger at Crocker, the less he noticed his own physical discomforts. He at least could still feel something while his precious Wanda could not. Could he have done anything else in that moment, he would have wished it were the opposite.

It was Wanda that should have been doing something just then. She was the smart one after all. She should have found a way to stop Crocker and should have even now been organizing all those other fairies so they could get out of there. But she wasn't. She was laying on the ground unconscious, knocked out by Crocker's hit. Rather, he hoped that was all that was going on with her right now. He still did not understand why he couldn't sense anything from her even now that she was so close even after having been able to sort of hear her mind speak. Unless perhaps it had something to so with that weird metal stuff Crocker had been gloating about.

He was sure he was the last person there to understand anything that Crocker had actually said about it, but he did catch that a fairy had to be outside of the metal in order to use their magic. This explained how he was able to use his wand at least a little once it was outside that cell he'd been in. Perhaps it was the same with their ability to talk in their heads or sense their emotions.

Maybe being surrounded by the metal had somehow cut his connection with Wanda as well. Maybe it had kept what ever signals they sent out to each other blocked, or pulled them away. So, considering it like that, did that mean that their telepathic bond was magic based?

Cosmo shook his head in irritation over it.

This was really too much for him and something better left to Wanda to sort out and try to explain to him later. Of course, he wasn't sure he'd be able to understand even then. But one thing he did know for sure was that he was definitely worried about her.

He hadn't really wanted to leave her like that. He would have much rather preferred to be at her side to hold her and try and wake her, but Crocker was getting away and no one was moving to stop him. He couldn't let that happen. He had to catch him and make him pay, somehow.

And besides. Wandissimo had promised she would be alright. The purple eyed fairy, being admittedly so much smarter than him, obviously knew something he didn't, and being as Wandissimo had always been just as concerned for Wanda as he was, then he was sure the fairy would see to her for the few moments he was gone. The fairy had helped free him after all AND had pointed out which way Crocker had gone. This left Cosmo wondering if maybe there was something honorable inside of the fairy. Something not just let loose when it suited his wants.

He gave a mental shake of head. Of course it was entirely possible Wandissimo was just using this as a way to get rid of him so he could have Wanda all too himself. That was definitely more his style. But then again, these were…what was the word Wanda always used? Ah! Extenuating. These were extenuating circumstances. Maybe this was one time he really could trust Magoo's word.

'He just better not try anything stupid,' thought Cosmo. 'Or he might be next!'

Cosmo turned down a long corridor of metal piping and several feet down came to Crocker's motorized chair lying on its side at another corner. He stopped beside it to see that the chair had been caught by some piping, but Crocker was not there.

'Well, he couldn't have just disappeared,' the fairy thought as he looked about. So, where had he gone? He obviously needed this chair to some degree so he couldn't have gone too far without it. The question was where?

"Hmm. If I was Mr. Crazy, where would I go?" he mused allowed to himself without even the least bit of humor in his voice.

A strip of yellow caught his eye then and going over to it, he saw a bright yellow ribbon strung across the front of a set of steps leading up. The bold black lettering across it read simply, "DANGER! DO NOT CROSS!"

'Well,' thought Cosmo to himself as he looked at the top of the steps. 'Any normal person in their right mind wouldn't want to go past this. So, that means that Crocker must be up there since he sure isn't in his mind at all let alone in it right!'

His theory made, Cosmo slipped beneath the yellow ribbon without even ducking and made his way up the stairs.

Once at the top, the fairy looked down the length of the catwalk and spied his quarry leaning heavily on the upper railing not thirty feet down. His eye brows creased downward and his jaw tightened as he gritted his teeth.

"You!" he spat out with sheer malice.

Crocker looked up as the fairy started to approach and the man glowered malevolently, but it's purpose was lost on Cosmo forthe normallyeasily alarmed fairy was no longer afraid.

Cosmo began to tremble slightly, not in any fear for his life, but from the anger that welled up inside of him at the sight of Crocker. Here was the one who had done this to all of them. Here was the man responsible for all the pain and suffering. Her was the beast that had dared sink below the level of an animal to strike his wife! And Cosmo had him. There was no where for Crocker to run.

"You," Cosmo breathed again in a detesting whisper as he stopped just seven feet away and glared through Crocker as though looking to see into the man's soul.

"How could you do that to us?" he asked in quiet demanding rage. "How could you do that to her?"

Crocker tried to pull himself on the railing to stand up straighter, but his brittle and fractured hip refused to bear the little weight he still had upon his upper torso as he tried to answer Cosmo's question.

"Because you made my life a living hell! I tried for years to prove your existence, but no one would believe me. And then I tried to capture you, but you wouldn't cooperate. You and that pink haired fairy…always getting in the way…always getting away…always sabotaging my efforts to prove I was right to the world!"

Anger can do many things to a person. It can cloud their judgment, make them wild with violence, and make them willing to go to any length to get what they desire most. But none of this applied to Cosmo in this moment.

For the first time, in a longer time than he could remember, he felt just a little more in control. His actions, he was sure, were completely his by honest will. Nothing wanted to jump from him in that more characteristic impulsiveness of his. His mind seemed just a little clearer, his thoughts almost ordered themselves, and with a clarity that would have surprised anyone else, he responded to Crocker's declaration of injustice with a startling measure of assurance.

"Did you ever think that maybe you weren't supposed to be able to tell anyone about us? Did you ever think why we didn't want to be exposed? Did you ever even think what that would mean to all those kids? What you've done to them even now?"

"Why should I worry about them?" Crocker snapped back. "I had to suffer growing up and they should too. No one ever cared about Denzel Q. Crocker! No one was ever there for me! What makes them so special that you would help them and not me?"

Cosmo looked at Crocker for one brief incredulous moment, wondering if perhaps all those years of trying to capture fairy godparents were really nothing more than a childish, jealous indignation.

"You…you…you idiot!" Cosmo suddenly blurted out. "You did have fairy godparents! That's why you knew about us in the first place!"

Crocker sneered. "You pathetic imbecile! I didn't have…them! Why would I? A boy growing up without a father! No friends! A mother who was always off doing what she wanted while leaving me home alone! Why would I ever have…" he cringed slightly as he hissed out the last word, "…fairies!"

"That's why you had them! That's why we were there! Why you had Wanda and me!"

Now it was Crocker's turn to look in surprise for a moment before his eyes closed to thin slits.

"No," he said in a low hiss.

"We were there because you didn't have anyone. We helped you the best we could. We played with you, granted your every wish…we made you laugh and smile."

"No! No, no, no…" said Crocker, his voice starting off in yell, but quickly growing weak.

The man was hearing things he did not want to hear. He was being told a fact he did not wish to know. He was trying desperately to repress what he somehow knew was true…and failing miserably.

Cosmo stared at him in a moment of sudden understanding before his anger began to flare again.

"You remember…don't you?" he asked as he began to slowly advance on the man and Crocker, with disbelieving eyes, took desperate struggling steps back and away.

He didn't want to hear this. Didn't even want to think it. But Cosmo was going to make him.

"Do you remember that time you wanted to get back at Robert Engle for bullying you in the schoolyard and you went toTP his house? His dad let the dog out and you ran instead of wishing yourself away. You tried to climb the fence but slipped off at the top, and when you fell on the ground on the other side you cut your leg on a piece of glass. You didn't tell us until after you got home and your mom saw it. That's how you got that scar there. Oh, and remember Linda? That girl you had the crush on? You wanted to give her something for her birthday and wished for a huge bouquet of flowers. But a swarm of bees got to you first and stung you so bad you were in bed for a week! You remember who took care of you then, don't you? Me and Wanda!"

"No! I never had fairies!" yelled Crocker in nearly a scream, his eyes flaring in a desperate rage as he continued backing up from Cosmo. "I never had fairies!"

Cosmo shook his green haired head as he took another slow measured step forward.

"You can stand there and deny it all you want, but it won't make a difference. Because its all still inside. See, that's the one problem with our magic. Some kids get so attached to their fairies that we're not just written in their minds…we're written their hearts and souls, and no amount of fairy magic in the universe can remove that. That's why you remember us!"

Cosmo could clearly see Crocker was passing beyond his anger. Now there was only fear in his eyes for the truth. Fear that he was wrong and had always been.

"No! I didn't know fairies existed until I found that fairy detector that said 'fairies are real' on the back!" insisted the man with a wild and forced certainty.

Cosmo smirked at the man's fear though no humor shown in his eyes, and the fairy pushed on, a small deep dark part of him urging him to do so. To keeping ripping into the man…to torture him just as much as he had tortured all of them.

"We were with you for almost a year. We did everything we could for you and this is how you repay us? You take us away from the kids who need our help, you separate people who love each other, you torture them for no reason…"

Cosmo's own anger went a level higher as the memory of the sound of the hit upon Wanda echoed through his head and he shook in rage at it.

"You. Hit. Her." he hissed. "How could you do that? When you were sick, who made sure you had all the soup you could eat and orange juice you could drink? When you had your tonsils out, who got you all the ice cream you could swallow? Who was always the last person you saw at night and the first you saw in the morning? Who talked you through the nights you had nightmares and who held you for hours when the pain from the beestings was so much you couldn't stop crying?"

Crocker made no reply but took another staggered step away. Feeling nothing beneath his foot, he glanced back once quickly to see he had reached the end of the broken catwalk.

"It wasn't your real mother that's for sure,' continued the fairy. "It was Wanda! Always Wanda! She took just as much care of you as she would have a kid of our own…and that's how you repay her. How could you?"

Cosmo took several steps closer before he stopped and looked at Crocker in a barely tempered fury.

"She loved you!"

Crocker's eyes went wide in shock and the memories from years ago flooded him…memories stored not in his head…but in his heart. The one piece left of his once good heart released the tidal wave and like a tsunami it washed over him. Every wish asked, every dream granted, every moment filled with fun and joy…and love…it swirled before his eyes, the voices of sixty years ago filling his ears…so much so, that he missed the whining groan of stressed metal.

Cosmo heard it and he looked about, cluelessly wondering what the noise could be; but when the catwalk suddenly gave a stomach clenching lurch, he understood. He grabbed the railing quickly and not a second after he'd wrapped his arms around it, the catwalk gave a far louder cry at the weight it could no longer support. There was a violent shake, and the steel walkway dropped from beneath him. Cosmo clung to the railing in panic as the steel shook for another few seconds before it finally settled, the last eight feet hanging by little more than several steel cables, the supporting frame beneath, now a pile of twisted metal on the floor below.

Cosmo took a few relieved breaths before looking up to see the end of the walkway dipped down at an angle and Crocker was nowhere to be seen. Curiosity took hold and Cosmo carefully inched his way forward to the edge of the angled metal, his body tense for the least little jerk of the walkway. He peered down as far as he dared and looked in wide eyed astonishment.

The man hung just below by one hand, gripping a bar attached to the catwalk as he looked down at the huge empty smelting vat some fourty feet below him. He turned his eyes back up at Cosmo and for what seemed like an eternity, the two just watched the other.

They both knew what this moment held.

The man was just fingers away from falling, quite possibly to his death, and he said nothing. He merely glared up at Cosmo.

Cosmo looked away after a second and began to inchbackward as though turning, but stopped.

He wanted to walk away and be assured of his own safety. He wanted to leave the man to figure his own way out of this situation. He wanted to not care if he fell or not. What revenge that would have been. Not by his hand, but by accident…So much less guilt to be concerned over.

But…

Cosmo closed his eyes before gritting his teeth.

No.

Damn it, he couldn't do it.

He couldn't walk away. He couldn't just leave him there to hang and eventually to fall. As much as he hated the man for what he had done, he had still once been a good kid. One Cosmo had liked. Very much. A kid he never would have walked away from then. One Wanda wouldn't have walked away from even now.

He gave a heavy sigh.

Wanda had influenced him far more than he had ever realized and maybe, just maybe, there was a little love for this errant godson left in his heart after all. Besides, Wanda wouldn't have ever wanted this. And he just couldn't bear the thought of her sadness for it.

"Aw nuts," he muttered.

He carefully lowered himself to lay flat on his stomach and reached out a hand.

Crocker looked from the empty vat below to Cosmo's offered hand and slightly irritated face.

"Come on Crocker. Grab on," said Cosmo with a grumpy look.

The man looked at the fairy warily.

"What?"

The steel of the walkway shuddered beneath Cosmo and the fairy reached his hand as far as he could in growing worry over the stability of the catwalk.

"Come on! I don't know how long this thing will hold!"

Crocker gave a snort.

"You? You couldn't possible save me."

Cosmo shook his head in agitated fear as he felt another tremor pass through the metal.

"Even without magic, fairies are stronger than they first look, now grab on! Please!"

Crocker made no move.

The fairy could not understand why the man did not reach for him…why he wouldn't offer his other hand. It was far and away the most confusing thing he'd ever encountered. The man had to know he could be seriously hurt, even killed if he fell. So why wouldn't he reach for help? Unless…

Unless he didn't want it.

Cosmo's anger was gone. He could hold no more of it to him even if he'd wanted to. Instead, a great saddened pity stole over him and he remembered the good boy that had once been. The boy that had died within the man's heart so long ago.

Cosmo gave the man a gentle, imploring gaze before he said softly, pleadingly, "Denzel… Denny… Please. I don't want you to die."

The man looked at Cosmo in disbelieving surprise and somewhere, in the last usable recesses of his beleaguered mind, the thin line holding his sanity snapped.

The fairy had his due. Here he had his enemy hanging by just fingers. All he had to do was walk and he would have revenge for over a thousand fairies. All he had to do was just look away and he would have had payback for all the difficulties placed upon them in the years he had so actively sought to capture them. All he had to do was just pull his hand back from over the edge and his personal retribution for the violence wrought against his wife would be fulfilled.

It was this fairy's right.

Crocker had fully intended to kill them all. Every last one of them was to have been fried to a crisp inside his modified Faraday boxes. But once again, his plans had been foiled. Foiled by fairies.

He would never again have the opportunity he had just lost. He was too old. Too far gone in mind and body to ever devise another plan worth even considering let alone following through with. He would never again have the money or the resources to buy his way into even so much as a fast food restaurant let alone a trillion dollar corporation. He had reached the end of everything for him. He knew it and he would accept it.

And would spit the stupid fairy's compassion right back in his face.

He didn't want it.

He didn't deserve it.

Crocker gave a crooked and idiotic smile.

"No," was all he said in a grated whisper, before he let go of the bar.

Wide eyed, Cosmo reached dangerously forward in a rush to make a grab at the man's hand, his fingers brushing Crocker's for an instant, then, nothing but air.

And Crocker fell. For only seconds in body…

…and forever in the blackness of his mind.

Cosmo watched in horrified shock as Crocker fell away from him and down into the huge melting pot below, but he could not watch as the man struck the bottom. He closed his eyes and turned his head only a second before the dull thud of the man's body landing in the deep well reached his ears.

The fairy gave a hard shudder, his stomach lurching as violently as the catwalk had only a minute before and he swallowed back the bile that threatened to rise in his throat. He didn't want to have the memory ofCrocker actually hitting the metal so far below, but he did have to see what had become of him. Cosmo peeked through one eye to see the twisted, crumpled, still form below and he looked away even quicker. He'd never seen anything like that before in his entire life and had no desire to see it any better.

It was done.

Crockerhad given up. He'd given up any last piece of heart he had left. He may have still had the memories of his short time with godparents, but the darkness of his soul had swallowed him and with it, his last chance for salvation.

Cosmo crawled backwards until he was on a more stable section of steel and for a brief moment, kneeled there, unable to do any more but shiver. Crocker had been right. Even if the man had allowed the fairy to pull him up, he couldn't have saved him. No one could.

He felt no inclination to cry for the man, but he knew he would forever feel a deep sadness at the lose of what ever goodness Wanda had always believed had been left inside the man.

Wanda…

Cosmo looked up then and with a resolute sigh, he stood and quickly walked away.

He headed back to the workroom.

Back to over a thousand fairies and two kids.

Back to a wife…

Back to Wanda.

Wow. I'm not sure I have too much to say after this chapter. Even as the authoress I wasn't expecting it to come out quite like this. Funny though, even with as much as I dislike Crocker, I can't help but feel incredibly sad for him. He really just gave up even after the truth. And just for reference...Faraday boxes are conductive enclosures used to eliminate emanations and induced signals from an enclosed environment.

And Cosmo! Goodness! I am truly pleased that he couldn't find his way to just letting Crocker fall without at least trying. I'm even more amazed at how much he did care at the end of it. Ahhh, it just goes to follow my theory that there always has been and always will be more to Cosmo then there first appears.

Now if you all will excuse me, I need to get another box of tissues. Sniff.

Trixie21