A/N: It shall be 'realise' for as long as I am English. So, you know, forever. :) The Skyhiatrist is now one chocolate cake richer. -Sky.

Chapter 13 – Ask Me

It was as though there was a demon living inside Timmy's chest. No matter what he did or where he went, its presence was always there, affecting every little thing he did. As he walked slowly through the streets of Dimsdale, with thoughts running through his head so fast that he couldn't separate them from one another, he could feel it, squirming in his chest and growing bigger with each minute that passed. Time flowed by like it was tangible, oozing past so slowly that Timmy could almost reach out and grab the seconds, and yet every moment was filled with so much activity it was wearing Timmy out. He felt as though he had been walking forever when he reached the end of Vicky's street, and yet when he looked at his watch he couldn't believe how much time had really passed. Cosmo and Wanda's trial was ticking ever closer and Timmy had almost forgotten that it was his trial, too. For some reason, it didn't matter. Fairy World could do what it liked to him, just as long as Cosmo and Wanda were fine.

Timmy yawned widely as he walked, sensing how tired he really was. He knew he would have to rest soon, and even though he was reluctant to go home he really knew that he had nowhere else to go. He knew he had promised Tootie that he would look for her sister, but the truth was that even if he did know where she was likely to be, he was probably the last person she would want to run into. He had vowed to stay away from her after all, no matter how much the thought caused the tiniest of pangs in his chest. A pang that he couldn't understand and couldn't explain. It sounded stupid to Timmy to even think it, but the idea that he could ever have feelings for Vicky frightened him, because he knew that it could never be superficial. Sure, he had a crush on Trixie Tang, but she was beautiful and sweet and even if she did blank him more often than he'd like he knew she was only like that because she felt the intense desire to preserve her social standing. When it came down to it, he knew with Trixie it was just a crush.

But with Vicky it was different. Vicky had done so much to him that he knew that it was only if he fell for her so hard that he would ever be able to fall for her at all. Timmy knew that if he accepted the way he was starting to feel about the red head, it wouldn't be long before those feelings had spiralled out of his control, transcending common sense and reason and going to that place where only true love exists. How many times had Wanda told him that true love forgives everything? She knew that her husband was exactly perfect, but she still loved him unconditionally. She always would. So Timmy knew that it was impossible to crush on someone like Vicky after everything they had shared, and he was frightened that what he felt for her was going to be the real thing.

He knew he didn't want that.

He didn't want Vicky to be his one and only. Not after what she had done to him. He didn't want to fall in love with someone he wasn't sure he could ever forgive.

He sighed and scuffed his sneaker along the ground, looking up and around for a familiar flash of red.

-

Vicky wanted to go home. Her body ached and she was mentally exhausted, and she wanted nothing more than to curl up beneath her duvet and let the world carry on without her for a little while. Grey clouds accumulated above her, hanging heavy with moisture but Vicky was already so wet through from the morning's shower of rain that she couldn't see how it could matter. She sniffed and held her arms tightly as she walked, her head bowed in a sultry fashion and she was only dimly aware that she didn't know where she was going. She was still lost, and she knew that the direction she was walking in could be the one that took her away from home, but she couldn't just stand still and let the world fall in on her. Her stomach growled and tightened, and she paid it no mind as she continued to walk.

-

Wanda's feet ached. She wasn't used to them being so firmly attached to solid ground. She spent as much time as she could huddled on her tiny bunk, but it would inevitably all become too much for her and she would spring to her seldom-used feet and pace around her cell like an animal. Her hair fell in messy curls around her ears, the pink swirls dancing on her shoulders and tickling her skin beneath her uniform. Without her wand she felt as though she was half the woman she used to be, and little things that she used to take for granted, like fixing her hair in the morning, had all been taken away from her. And somewhere, on another cold wing of this dark and dank complex, her husband sat lonely and scared, running through the same horrible fate just like her. She curled her fingers around the cold bars and pressed her forehead to them, just wishing she could see him and tell him everything was going to be alright.

Her thoughts were with Timmy, too, and the guilt she felt at not being able to deliver all the things she had promised. She had sworn to him that she would help him with Trixie, and that their last few days together would be the best of their lives, and now she had been wrenched away from him without being able to say goodbye, and she didn't know what he was doing or how he was feeling. She knew she would be seeing him again, but it would be at the trial so it wasn't much comfort to her. In her heart, however, she hoped that Timmy had finally come to his senses.

-

Timmy felt as though he had been walking for hours when he first saw Vicky off in the distance. His first instinct was to run up to her and show himself, because he was relieved to see her and to be honest, he was also very lost. The scenery had stopped looking familiar a long time ago, and even though Timmy had told himself that he should stop and turn back he hadn't seemed to be able to stop his feet from moving. He had carried on, somehow knowing that he had to keep looking for Vicky, as he was strangely certain that he would find her. When he had seen her when he turned onto an unfamiliar high street lined with shops with boarded windows, she was ambling slowly along, her head bowed against the world and Timmy hadn't been at all surprised to see her there. He had slowed his pace and began following her, glad that there were no crowds to lose her in, just watching her and utterly unsure of why he was staying away.

He buried his hands in his pockets, a habit he noticed he had only really acquired in the last few months, and picked up his pace a little. He knew that he was waiting for her to turn around and notice him, and if she did crane her neck he didn't want to be so far away that she wouldn't be able to spot him in the distance. It felt silly to him really, because he was betraying all of his common sense instincts, but he couldn't lie to himself. He wanted to talk to her.

"Vicky!" His face rang out through the still air, sounding uncomfortable and awkward. Vicky stopped dead in her tracks and then spun around, her eyes surprisingly wide and fearful. Her eyes fell on Timmy and lingered there for just a moment, before she set her mouth in a straight line and continued to walk away from him, with confident strides and her arms folded across her chest.

"Vicky!" Timmy called again, picking his pace up a bit so he was jogging after the girl. "Vicky, wait!"

Vicky walked a little faster, striding so fast she was almost running, with Timmy calling after her behind her. Sharp pains shot through her chest as her anxiety and hunger built up, trying to force her to stop. They clutched at her, shooting through her heart like arrows and despite the fact that she was desperate to carry on Vicky finally caved in and allowed herself to rest against a wall. Tears fogged her eyes and she bowed her head, trying to keep Timmy from seeing her as he rapidly approached.

"Vicky, what's going on?" Timmy demanded, coming to a slow halt in front of the red head.

"Go away," she muttered, wishing she had the strength to get to her feet again.

"No," Timmy said firmly, so firmly that the hardness of his voice caused Vicky to look up in shock. "I'm not going anywhere until you explain yourself," he said coldly. From deep within her Vicky felt an old familiar friend rise up, roaring in the pit of her stomach like a monster; her anger had returned.

"I don't have to explain anything to you," she said slowly and evenly, pushing her voice through jaws that were clamped tightly shut. Much to her annoyance, Timmy smiled.

"What are you grinning at, twerp?" she said, getting to her feet even though the effort made her dizzy.

"You," he replied, and the simple word drained every trace of rage from Vicky. Surprisingly, she offered him a weak little smile.

"Can't really complain about that," she said, sitting back down with a shrug. "I guess I really have turned into someone you can laugh at." Timmy rolled his eyes at the sky before sitting down next to his former babysitter. He hadn't meant to, and in a way he knew he was doing her wrong just by being there because he knew nothing could ever happen between them, but the urge to comfort Vicky and just to be with her had been too strong for him to resist.

"You know I didn't mean it like that," Timmy said softly. Vicky looked at him.

"What are you doing?" she asked without a trace of emotion in her voice.

"What do you mean?" Timmy asked, genuinely confused.

"All this," she said, with a lilt of irritation in her words. She waved a hand ineffectually at the air around her. "Finding me, trying to help me, being nice to me. Why are you doing it?"

Timmy was thunderstruck. "I, er, I don't really know," he said honestly. "I just know that I have to do this for you."

Vicky found she couldn't speak. Hearing Timmy confess that he cared had filled her with a strange kind of light that was almost alien as she hadn't felt it in so long. A tiny glimmer of happiness had sparked inside her from Timmy's simple act, and even if she had been able to find her voice it still wouldn't have been enough to tell him how she felt. She wanted to reach out and grab him, to hold him and kiss him and show him how much she loved him and wanted him. How much she needed him. It was more emotion than she had felt in months.

"What?" he said, smiling at her with a quizzical look. She bit her lip.

"Nothing," she said fondly. "Nothing at all."

-

Cosmo was worried. He had spent so much of his life being certain that he had done the wrong thing that now he wasn't sure where he stood his heart was banging like crazy. He was in no doubt that what he had done was against the rules, but it had seemed so right at the time that it didn't seem to matter how much trouble he got in. There was also the fact that he was so surprised at what he had done. It was not only illegal for a Fairy Godparents to perform unwished magic, it was also fairly rare. They were bound by their own biology, and only a few fairies in the history of the world had ever managed it, and they had been the cream of the crop. Usually, unwished magic is also unintentional, and it can be quite harmful for a fairy to force himself to try. But Cosmo had felt compelled to help Timmy, and to help him he had crossed lines he never would have dreamed of before. Trying to force magic was something every fairy was warned about as a child, something that they taught you about in school, and something that happened to fairies you didn't know.

Fairies that were smarter than Cosmo.

He bit his lip and continued to pace around his cell, staring at the fingernails that he had chewed until they were bloody. He hadn't meant to do it, not really. He had wanted to do something, but fairy magic couldn't interfere with true love, that was something that really was never possible. He had just wanted to force them together and make them see some sense. He had just wanted Timmy to spend enough time with Vicky to realise what kind of girl she really was beneath all the rage. He had thought about locking them in together, about somehow getting Timmy to wish he were sealed in somewhere with the red head. But he had dismissed that from the start. He couldn't confine them like animals, stuck together in a situation they couldn't escape if they needed to. He needed to just let them be alone, even if they were in a space so wide they couldn't even see each other. A place where they couldn't be disturbed by passers-by while they discovered the truth about each other. The extension of Dimsdale had been created then, a part of the town that had never been and still wasn't really there, but was still familiar enough to the pair that they wouldn't be frightened or cotton on to the fact that they really were alone, together.

And he hadn't meant a single second of it. He had lain awake beside his wife, trying with all his might to create this non-wish, but he had felt nothing, and when he had awoken in the morning he just assumed that nothing had happened. And then, as he watched Wanda comb her beautiful hair, he had started to feel it. The peaceful calm that every fairy experiences after performing magic. It had spread a warmth from his toes to his fingers and at the time it had been very comforting for Cosmo to know that even if he was to be taken away from Timmy, he had at least done something to make the boy's life without him that much better.

Then the law had showed up, and they had taken him and Wanda away.

Cosmo wondered if they knew what he had done, because in Fairy World unwished magic doesn't stay very secret for long.

-

"You're hungry," Timmy said matter-of-factly as he and Vicky ambled along yet another street lined with closed-up stores.

"You don't say," Vicky said, still wishing that she could just stop damn well smiling. Timmy gave a little laugh.

"We should get something to eat," Timmy said. His eyelids felt heavy and his eyes felt sore, but he was trying not to show Vicky how he was feeling. He still wasn't even all that sure what he was doing. He was walking through unfamiliar streets with a girl who left him so confused, but he knew that the more time he spent with Vicky the more he wanted to reach out and touch her, even though she was barely speaking and avoiding his gaze. He could tell that she felt uncomfortable, like she expected him to pounce on her any minute and start attacking, and a little like she hoped he would. However, he knew that he was the only one that could feel the fire between them, because Vicky had been the fire all her life.

"Everywhere's closed," Vicky mumbled, feeling a familiar wave of sorrow wash over her. She was sick of being so up and down with her emotions, but they seemed to have escalated out of her control now. She had no hold on them whatsoever, and she was torn to pieces inside. Part of her wanted to accept the way that Timmy was behaving towards her and just let him take care of her, but a larger part of her was still too stubborn to be forgiven. She felt as though if anything did happen between, on the crazy off-chance that that was what Timmy wanted, she would be forever walking on eggshells around him, lest he remembered that there was a time when he rightly hated her with all of his soul.

"Everywhere?" Timmy said with a frown. Vicky nodded.

"I've been walking around this square for hours and everything's shut. I've been trying to get home, but it seems like it doesn't matter which direction I take, I end up back here." She shrugged her shoulders and offered Timmy a weak smile. "It's strange." Her eyes lingered on Timmy for just a second to long, and she tore them away, trying to play down the smile that danced across her lips.

He was struck with the mad desire to grab her and kiss her right there and then.

He shook himself as they carried on walking down the street. "You look cold, too," Timmy said, taking off his jacket.

"I'm wet through," she replied, hugging her arms tightly around her body as Timmy draped his jacket around her shoulders. She inhaled the scent and her heart skipped and thudded beneath her rips, knocking to be let out and be free. She took a deep breath and tried to compose herself, and hoped against hope that no matter what happened in her life, she would always remember this moment.

"Timmy, do you-" Vicky began, but she stopped herself before she finished her sentence.

"Do I what?" he asked absently as he peered into the darkened windows of the stores.

"It doesn't matter," Vicky said. She hadn't really known. The question could have ended anywhere. Do you forgive me? Do you love me? Do you know I love you? Do you hate me? That was the one she desperately wanted to ask. She had to know if he loathed her, if everything they were going through was just superficial. She had to confirm that he wasn't just spending time with her because he felt like Vicky was his responsibility. It made her skin crawl to think he might only be with her out of pity.

"Ask me," Timmy said, coming to a stop. Vicky stopped too, and stared into his clear blue eyes. There it was again. That faint glimmer of understanding that peeked behind the swirling clouds of worry that seemed to have fogged his eyes of late.

"Ask you what?" Vicky said, tearing her gaze away. Timmy said nothing. Vicky bit her lip and shifted her feet, and prayed that the earth would open up and swallow her whole. The sun hung in the sky but a chill wind was still whipping the town. Vicky drew Timmy's jacket tightly around her, and tried to remember if she had thanked him when he had given it to her. He was still staring at her, refusing to look away, and she could feel his gaze boring into her and forcing her to confront herself.

"Do you hate me?" she said.

A car drove past slowly, the dull thud from its stereo resonating on the air.

"No," Timmy said honestly. "Not anymore."

Vicky beamed, and suddenly, she was forgiven.