Author's Note: It feels too easy for Juandissimo to locate Crocker and Cosmo, but then again, fairies don't seem to have a problem locating each other when they actually try (as opposed to Timmy driving aimlessly around Fairy World in a season seven ep).

Sorry for the delay in updating. School has been kicking my ass. Thanksgiving break means I should be able to get my updates on time next week.

Chapter Sixteen: A Million Little Pieces

Timmy fell asleep curled up on the floor and Tootie watched him breathe steadily in, out, in, out. Her heart ached and she pulled him into her lap. In the morning, she'd deal with his disgust. She stroked his hair and thought about the mental block she'd had for as long as she could remember. If she had possessed Cosmo and Wanda in the past and couldn't remember it, Fairy World had done a poor job erasing them. Rather than rewriting her past and replacing the incidents, she amassed a headache trying to pinpoint the blurry details on certain details. Usually the headache deterred her; she didn't have any time to break through the pain to figure out why it was happening or discover what was beyond it. Now, she had nothing but time. Watching Timmy sleep was a gift and, as horrible as the thought was, she was actually safer here than at home. Doombringer wasn't Vicky and she wasn't particularly interested in Tootie right now. Tootie was free to see how far she could push herself.

Shutting her eyes, she concentrated on her eighth birthday. Vicky had ruined her cake, stomped on all her presents, and forced her to clean out the toilets and the basement as punishment for being born. Those events were clear, but then she'd gone up to her bedroom and everything from there had a dreamlike insubstantiality. She projected herself into the past and thought about why she'd started accumulating wands. She'd liked playing princess, except princesses didn't have wands. And hadn't she always been obsessed with fairies? Most little girls liked unicorns (a few strange ones liked dragons) and she'd been desperate to find fairy things, including fairy men. Contrary to popular belief, it really was hard to find anything combining fairy and men, unless you, ahem, looked in a very adult area.

Most little girls could also pinpoint the moment their obsession grew. Tootie couldn't. She imagined her room, herself sobbing and inconsolable, and pain spiked behind her eyes. Hissing, she fought it and thought harder, picturing her surroundings. The air near her wavered in the memory and she placed Cosmo and Wanda in there, the way she'd seen them interact with Timmy. Pain exploded behind her eyes and she screamed, probably waking Timmy. It felt like her head should start bleeding, just to relieve pressure, and she trembled.

"What? What's going on?" he said groggily and she barely heard him. Curled into a ball, she bit the inside of her lip and blood filled her mouth. Determined now and irritated at the blatant brainwashing, she projected Cosmo and Wanda again into her memory and saw a phantom hand touch her shoulder. Maybe this would have encouraged her to push herself further, if the resulting pain hadn't come close to knocking her out. She thought her head might split from the agony and she whimpered, tasting blood and shaking like someone had electrocuted her.

For a while, time indeterminate, she drifted, waiting for the pain to abate. She couldn't say conclusively whether she had had Cosmo and Wanda and been forced to forget about them because the pain was so intense, along with the sheer difficulty of pushing past the false memory to the true one, that she was lost. It might have been some other fairy, for all she knew. It might not have been a fairy at all. Maybe she'd taken too many blows to the head then and it was a trigger. Except Vicky had never actually hit her…

When Tootie recovered enough to stagger into a crouching position, she vomited in a thin stream, whimpered, and cried. Shaking, she thought she'd try one last jab through the pain. If this didn't work, she'd cry off and wait until morning while she recovered.

She latched onto the phantom hand and filled in the details from what she'd seen of Timmy's fairies. Cosmo's face swam before her closed eyes.

"What if we turned her into a rabid monkey? Then she could-" Cosmo's voice started and then stopped in her mind and it felt like someone had beaten her with a mace. Curling into a tight ball, she screamed and lashed out, doing anything to make the damn pain stop. Blood flooded her mouth and she coughed, choking on it. Timmy slapped her on the back and she spat it out, screamed again, and sobbed. Was this the secret to Fairy World erasing memories? They just made it so painful no child in their right mind would try to think about it?

"What do I do? What do I do?" Timmy said. She threw up again and hugged herself. In the past, she'd had no one to depend on. If Cosmo and Wanda were her fairy godparents, then she must have relied on them. In the present, her parents were too afraid of Vicky.

"Are you okay?" Timmy said. With the mind numbing pain she was going through, she couldn't respond. She couldn't even bring herself to think about any birthdays, let alone her eighth. And thinking about Cosmo and Wanda? Forget about it. The colors pink and green were likely to send her into renewed anguish. It was good the lighting in here was awful and she couldn't see Timmy's shirt.

"Tootie?" he said. "I don't get it…there's nothing here. What happened?"

She didn't answer. She hoped she hadn't bitten her tongue. Her mouth tasted awful. It felt like someone had pressed a brand to her brain.

"Tootie? You're starting to freak me out," he said. "I mean, you usually freak me out, but now you're kinda worse."

If she felt marginally better, she might have laughed. She couldn't even open her eyes. Maybe she had had Cosmo and Wanda before. It didn't seem like there was any way she could use that knowledge or the power Doombringer seemed to think went with it if it every time she tried, she wound up wishing she were dead because the pain was so intense.

"Answer me!" he said. "Tootie!"

Willing her body to relax, her mind snapped back to the phantom hand on her shoulder and Cosmo's words. It pissed her off that the only time she might have been happy she couldn't remember. What was wrong with Fairy World? Why would children betray having godparents to make themselves more miserable in exchange? Even if they lost them, they wouldn't sell out fairies when they'd meant so much. Or were children so common a commodity it didn't matter how miserable most of them were without fairies? They had been hers, hadn't they? She'd never sell them out if they belonged to her.

Water splashed in her face and she sputtered, eyelids fluttering.

"Oh, good, you're alive," he said.

"If I weren't alive, I wouldn't be breathing," she rasped.

"And you can talk too!" he said. She had no energy to slap her palm to her forehead, even if she really wanted to. The lame leading the blind.

"What happened?" he asked again. The energy required to snap at him before had sapped the little reserve she had and she sighed, uncoiling her body.

"Tootie?" he repeated. Her lips twitched. That was the most times she'd ever heard him speak her name and not launch a water balloon at her.

Juandissimo dumped Crocker in front of Doombringer. She was in the middle of working on the computer and looked up at him. The office was small, with a desk pushed up against the left wall and a desktop on it. Beside the desk was a bookcase and behind them was a couch. There wasn't enough room for two people to stand side by side in the room. On the right was a grungy window that looked out on the docks. Due to the space limitations, Crocker in his knapsack was crushed between Doombringer's chair and the couch.

"I've brought you Crocker," Juandissimo said coolly, eying the Dark Crystal with distaste. "I want to see Remy or Wanda. Now."

"Don't you remember? You failed me," Doombringer said. "This was to prevent them from being hurt. Just because you succeeded at one task means you get rewarded. In fact, you sound like you're getting cocky to me. Maybe I should hurt them to teach you a lesson about ordering me around."

"I brought you Crocker!" he objected. "You said you would not harm them-"

"If you brought him to me," she agreed. "Except you brought him back with an attitude problem. I could have sent a half breed to bring him back and they would have succeeded and been grateful for the opportunity."

She tossed Crocker onto the couch and stared at Juandissimo, floating in front of the door.

"Should I make them scream so loud you can hear them?" she said. Her eyes glittered with malice and his stomach somersaulted.

"You are never going to let me see them again, are you?" he said. She laughed and changed the screen to a small video feed inside the butterfly net. Wanda was curled up into a ball and her right arm was bleeding profusely, the blood glittering on camera. Juandissimo's mouth dried out and Doombringer pressed a function button on the keyboard. The butterfly net shrank and balled her up like a used tissue paper, bounced her around, and then an iron hand patted her hair. Wanda moaned and her scalp bled, little droplets coating her pink hair.

Doombringer hit another button and Juandissimo saw Remy for the first time in days. The blond haired boy was unconscious, wheezing and fidgeting. There was an enormous hole in the wall and Doombringer gasped and then made an appreciative 'ooh'.

"He succeeded," she said. "He's not worthless after all. One out of two isn't bad."

"What are you talking about?" Juandissimo said. His voice was rough and his hands were shaking. He longed to grab Remy and run for the hills. Seeing him so vulnerable brought out Juandissimo's protective side.

"I can use him," she said. She clicked another button and showed Wanda, panting, curled up in a ball. "It's a shame about Wanda. I thought living for thousands of years might have given faeries an ounce of common sense."

She switched back to Remy. "Tomorrow we begin his testing. Make yourself useful, Juandissimo, and locate Cosmo."

Protests flooded his mind and he had to force them back. He was damned no matter what he did. If he declined, Doombringer would hurt Wanda and Remy worse than she already had. If he agreed, she might leave Remy alone because she wanted him intact. He couldn't save both of them unless they both agreed to help her and even then, he didn't know exactly what she had in store for them. He couldn't get near Wanda's butterfly net without getting sick himself. He bit back a whimper.

"Locate Cosmo and I promise I'll leave Wanda alone," she said.

"Like you promised you would not hurt Wanda and Remy?" he hissed.

"Something like that, yes," she said and smiled cruelly. Juandissimo glared and stared at his beloved.

"How long do I have?" he asked. Maybe he could locate the butterfly net first and try to rescue Wanda.

"Less time if you keep staring at Wanda like a bitch in heat," Doombringer snapped. Juandissimo stiffened, inclined his head, and disappeared back into Dimmsdale. He didn't think he could stand speaking to her again. Wanda's predicament was seared into his mind and he'd do anything to cleanse himself, even if it meant dealing with Cosmo.

Changing into a dog, he followed the trail of magic. Unfortunately, tonight there was magic all over the city, mostly relating to half breeds. Fairies could sense each other and usually, this was a neutral power they didn't invoke. Right now, he could sense several other fairies in Dimmsdale not within Doombringer's grasp, half breeds making a ruckus and what felt like a contaminated fairy running amuck throughout the city. Puzzled, Juandissimo followed the path of least resistance and decided to find the contaminated fairy. It didn't 'feel' like Cosmo to him- it felt like a brilliantly light, good hearted fairy had been overrun by the darkness, but this fairy was on the run. It might know something.

"Stupid fucking dog," a familiar voice grumbled and tripped over him. Icky Vicky straightened herself out and glared at Juandissimo. "What the hell? Is it raining dogs now? You better not be a talking one too."

"If I were talking, I would certainly not be talking to the likes of you," Juandissimo said, tongue in cheek. Vicky gaped at him and he took advantage of her confusion to continue the trail. His stomach ached from catching Vicky's foot and he knew it would be a while until Vicky worked out what he'd said and what had actually happened.

A dog yelped in pain and he pursued it, the cloud of darkness growing around Dimmsdale. Normally, it was a bright and cheerful city. He couldn't help but wonder how much, if not all, of this was Doombringer's fault.

Deciding it was faster to transport himself to the fairy, he held up his wand and disappeared, reappearing near the outskirts of town. From here, it was about a thirty minute walk to the docks and the dog, green with spots of black, was running in circles in a blind panic. He heard a telepathic buzz (he could never listen in, because he didn't have telepathy without a true love) and advanced, knocking the fairy in disguise off his feet so he could stop running around. The dog's eyes locked onto him and Juandissimo stepped back.

"Cosmo?" he said.

Cosmo shook his head and his tail thumped on the ground. There were a few buildings ready for demolition nearby and under the moonlight, they looked haunted.

"Have you seen Wanda?" he said.

"No, you are not Cosmo?" Juandissimo said, frowning at him. "But I know you are."

"I can't find Wanda," Cosmo said. "And there's this weird…" he jerked his head at a vague shadow hanging over him.

He huffed and stared at him. "What have you done?"