A/N: So it turns out I am a weekid gurl. Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed and basically told me to get my arse in gear about this story. I really needed that. You may be pleased to hear, however, that while I was in the shower, my muse visited me, (the pervert), and painted out the way in which I should end this story. Now that I have an ending, there should be no more writer's block, and I also have a weekend to myself. I shall make no promises, (I have learnt my lesson), but I shall keep my fingers crossed for some more progression in this here stone around my neck. :) Please enjoy Chapter 19, (it's not that good, but Vicky and Timmy almost talk things out. Plus it's nearly eight thousand words, a sorry for how long I've kept you waiting). All my love and eternal gratitude for sticking by me, Sky.

(On a more personal note: HP and the Deathly Hallows: WTF?)

Chapter 19 - Nothing Left to Lose

Vicky wandered, quite aimlessly, through halls lined with pictures she did not understand. Faces stared down at her from the countless frames, but she knew not a single one of them, and they yielded no comfort to her. Instead, she found herself feeling trapped within her own skin, desperate to run away or shut her eyes against their relentless stares, which seemed accusatory, as though she had been the one to order their genocide. Each face looked down on her with an expression of anger mingled with pity. It was a look she had seen a thousand times, but usually it stared out at her from the face of Timmy Turner. These people on the walls were strangers, people who she felt had no right to look at her in that way, but as they were mere photographs all she could do was keep her head bowed and keep walking, hoping that somewhere there was an exit amongst the endless halls before her.

The light in the halls came only from the dimming lamps mounted over each picture. They flickered with Vicky's every step, and the strain was beginning to hurt her eyes. For a moment she felt it would be alright if she just stood still, though the mere thought made her heart beat that much quicker. What if she was being followed by a being who's steps did not upset the lights? She shook her head fiercely, trying to dispel her childish fears. She was not being followed and anyway, Vicky knew perfectly well that this was a dream, even if it was the fiendish kind that had the knack of keeping you from waking. However, the fact that she was aware that it was her imagination creating her situation just doubled the chances that something hostile would soon turn up and, pulling her long, brown cardigan tightly around her skinny frame, she walked onwards, her quickened pace mirrored by the flickering of the lamps.

"Vicky!" It was more of a scream than a shout, high-pitched and ear-splitting, and it froze Vicky to the spot.

"Who... who's there?" she called nervously, her voice quivering every syllable out of her reluctant throat.

There was, as is often the case in terrifying nightmares, no answer. The eerie silence continued on as if it had never been interrupted, and sensing that it would be safer to do the same, Vicky carried on walking. She had barely managed two steps when the hideous voice crowed her name out once more. She stopped again, and, instead of trying to figure out who was yelling at her it would be simpler just to find out what it was they wanted.

"Yes?" she ventured. The word leapt from her mouth with much more force than she intended, and Vicky was almost certain that her sleeping form was probably mumbling and thrashing a little as it lay in her bed.

The voice screamed again, but it was muffled this time, and Vicky could not make out what it was saying. The pictures on the walls continued to glare down at her, and she reached the conclusion that it really was time she ought to be waking up. For a moment, just a fleeting one, something in her brain begged her not to do it, but by then it was too late and the next thing Vicky knew she was sitting bolt upright in her bed, her duvet tangled around her ankles and her nightdress hitched up to a very undignified height. There was another thump on her door, and the high-pitched voice that was uniquely her sister's very own sounded through the wood once more.

"Vicky!"

"I'm up," Vicky snarled through gritted teeth, rubbing her eyes against the onslaught of the sun and yawning. The door opened meekly, and Tootie's head appeared in Vicky's room.

"Um," she began nervously, all to aware that despite recent fond moments between the two, she had probably just annoyed her big sister. "Mom and I are going to the store. Um, do you want anything?" Vicky just shook her head in an irritated fashion and flopped herself back onto her bed, Tootie's cue to disappear once more, which she did without faltering. Vicky listened for a while to the sound of her sister's soft footsteps on the stairs, keeping her eyes shut and her long pale forearm draped across her face.

The dream was starting to filter from her mind, escaping her senses like sand through her fingers. It seemed, now at least, so much less intense than it had while she was dreaming it, but she supposed this was quite often the case. The ludicrousness of some dreams is only apparent when you're not being subjected to them anymore. She did remember quite clearly her impulse to not wake up, however, and in a quick flash that coincided with her sister shutting the front door it all came flooding back.

Timmy. Trixie. Kissing.

A day spent staring at nothing and feeling like it too.

The bath that had relieved her feelings a little, and the sleep that followed that had taken them away entirely.

Her father hammering on the door, yelling at her to get out.

Falling into this bed, surrounded by the sweet smell of her bath oils and the black clouds of her depression.

Sleep once more, and a dream that she could no longer remember.

She let out a soft sob, but did not open her eyes. She longed to fall asleep again, as although she had been frightened, and worried, she knew she hadn't been heartbroken.

-:-

Timmy had spent his night much like Vicky had spent hers, except his nightmare was real and he was very much awake. He had, at first, been overjoyed to see Wanda, floating nervously behind him, so overjoyed that her had thrown his long, awkward arms around the tiny fairy and held her as tight as he dared to without crushing her. After what seemed like years, during which Timmy had been very vocal and not really said very much and Wanda had remained stoic and therefore expressed tomes of feeling, they had broken apart and Timmy had asked the inevitable question.

"Where's Cosmo?"

For a moment, Wanda looked quite normal, and Timmy had half expected her to tell him that his Godfather was out getting ice cream or something equally mundane and pleasant, but then the pink-haired fairy had collapsed into tears, dropping down so far that her feet nearly scraped the ground. A sweeping dread filled Timmy as though he had just breathed icy cold water into his lungs, and a feeling of intense foreboding manifested itself in his chest.

"Wanda..." he began, half fearful to finish his sentence. "What's happened?"

For a long time, it seemed as though Wanda would be in no state to answer, and Timmy simply sat on his bed with his arms around her as she floated softly beside him, howling with a primal pain that Timmy was terrified to find out the cause of. To Timmy it seemed that she was now only accepting the huge actuality of what was about to befall Cosmo, (or what had already befallen him, Timmy thought, tears pricking the corners of his eyes as he did so), and he felt that it was important for Wanda to get her grief and anguish out of the way now, so that she was not tempted to break down while the pair worked tirelessly to make right whatever it was that had gone so dreadfully wrong. Sitting about and accepting it was simply not an option to Timmy, who would sooner have thrown himself into the canyon than accept that his godfather was...

"Wanda," he began sternly, correcting both himself and the weeping fairy in his arms. "Wanda, please, I need to know. Is Cosmo... is he..." Timmy's voice gave out on him, and he stared ashamedly into his lap. Wanda sniffed and furiously rubbed her eyes, beating back the legions of fresh tears that threatened to fall.

"He isn't dead," she said resolutely, and Timmy wondered if it was a fact or a determined effort to convince herself. "Yet," she said, with a sense of conclusion.

"What do you mean, yet?" Timmy whispered, squeezing Wanda's hand gently to reassure her. He was greatly relieved when she squeezed his a little firmer in return.

"The Fairy Council," she began, spitting the words out with a faint sort of malice that still managed to survive beneath all of her grief. "They've sentenced him to be... des- destroyed."

Timmy leapt to his feet. "What!" he cried, the injustice of it all welling up inside of him like an angry monster, scrabbling up his throat and clawing it's way out of his mouth. "They can't do that! Just because you both wanted to stay with me! Just because you... "Timmy began to falter once more, and looked down at Wanda with an ugly question in his eyes that he wished wasn't there. "Because you both care about me," he finished. "Both... why...?" He couldn't seem to form it. The words wouldn't come. Luckily, Wanda understood what he was getting at.

"I know what you're thinking," she said, and it was without a trace of offence in her voice. "Why is he being destroyed for it if I still get to live?" Timmy nodded numbly, hating to think of what was going through Wanda's mind. At best, she may believe that he thought she was capable of letting Cosmo give up his life in exchange for hers. At worst, she thought he was wishing it was Cosmo who was sat before him right now while Wanda sat nervously in a cold, blank cell, waiting to die.

"They're not destroying him because we overstayed our assignments," Wanda said bitterly.

"Then why?" Timmy asked desperately, sitting back down beside her with disbelief etched on every feature of his face.

It was then that Wanda launched into an explanation of everything Jupitus Starr had told her before she had been ordered to materialise directly into Timmy's room. Timmy sat silently and listened, shaking his head every now and then and trying his best to understand why Cosmo had done what he did. None of it made any sense to Timmy. Why on Earth would Cosmo sacrifice his life, just to make a little extra bit of the town? The tears began to leak from Timmy's eyes before he could stop them, and it wasn't long before he was asking the empty air how Cosmo could have been so stupid. When Wanda finished talking she too was in tears again, and they both just sobbed until there were no more tears left inside them to cry.

"They've taken my magic away, too," Wanda concluded quietly, but she obviously didn't care.

"What? Why?" Timmy asked, staring at her with deepest sympathy through his red-stained eyes. Wanda just shrugged noncommittally.

"Punishment, I suppose," she said. "I can never leave this room. Never again."

Timmy's eyes widened. "What do mean? For how long."

"Never again," Wanda repeated, as though she hadn't heard Timmy's question and was simply contemplating the vastness of the years that stretched out before her.

"Even when I move out?" Timmy asked, his incomprehension towards the Fairy Council and it's actions now stretched to breaking point.

"Even when you... die. I have to be here, in this room, forever. I'm not even allowed to see Cosmo ever again."

"This is wrong," Timmy said plainly. Wanda merely sighed beside him. She sounded exhausted. "Sleep," he suggested kindly, getting up from his bed so that she could slide beneath the covers. "I'm going out for a walk. I need to clear my head."

-:-

Of course he had known before he'd even reached the foot of his stairs that he was heading to Vicky's house. Morning had well and truly broken by this point and though Timmy hadn't slept for so long he didn't feel remotely tired. His mind buzzed with awful thoughts that threatened to rip him to shreds, and he needed to talk to Vicky about it all. As strange as it sounded, Timmy was certain that the old Vicky still lurked somewhere within the broken, frail new one, and if anyone could find a way to get Cosmo out of his situation it was the babysitter who had terrorised Timmy for so long. Though he didn't think it was wise to provoke the old Vicky out of her hiding place, he had to admit that it had occurred to him, in the corners of his mind, that perhaps the old Vicky was a better Vicky for her to be, as this new one seemed to be falling apart at the seams, and soon, there would be nothing left there at all.

The walk didn't take him long, and he was astonished to find that it was partly because he taken the same route so many times in his head. The beginnings of a headache thumped at Timmy's brain, but Timmy knew it was due to lack of sleep and tried his best to ignore it. He worried, just briefly, that Vicky would not grant him an audience. After what he had done with Trixie, (although h hadn't quite yet worked out how she could know about it, he just had a heavy, sick sort of feeling in his gut), it was unlikely that his was a face she would want to see. Crazily, he did feel the same creeping onsets of guilt he had felt the other night when he had first tried to justify the kiss to himself. It wasn't as though he and Vicky were in love, was it? He knew he didn't have feelings for her. Not ones that mattered, at any rate. He couldn't live the rest of his life skirting around her feelings for her sake. It wasn't fair on him, and he was determined to make her see that if it was the last thing he ever did. Embittered with this new determination, he strode forcefully up her garden path and hammered quite loudly on her front door, breathing heavily.

After a nervous few minutes, during which Timmy had glanced at the driveway and noticed the distinct absence of a car, he began to wonder if there was anyone home. He had merely assumed that because of her state, Vicky would always be at home, moping and crying, and then a split second later he realised how conceited that sounded. He cleared his throat, as if he had just said something embarrassing, and knocked again, a little more gently this time.

Through the glass panels of the door he could see a hunched figure topped with a shock of red ambling towards the door. Much to his surprise, Timmy found himself smoothing down the hair that peeked out from beneath his baseball cap and standing up a little straighter. He cursed himself inwardly, knowing for a fact that he had no reason, and no desire to impress Vicky. Perhaps, he reasoned, it was just his natural teenage instinct for whenever he was in the presence of a pretty girl. And then he cursed himself inwardly again.

The door opened, but only up to a sliver of space, and one of Vicky's bloodshot eyes appeared in the gap. "Timmy!" she gasped, her voice sounding tired and cracked. She caught herself just in time and straightened up. "Tootie isn't here," she said flatly.

"I, er, I didn't come to see Tootie," Timmy said, suddenly feeling that his whole plan had been a very stupid idea. Vicky was the kind of person who had time for no one but herself. Even now, when she had succumbed to the ravages of love, she would still be too busy feeling depressed and pathetic to listen to anyone else. Timmy shook his head.

"Then why did you come here?" Vicky demanded.

Timmy took a deep breath and fixed her eyes squarely with his own. "I came to speak to you," he said calmly. She regarded with a mixture of suspicion and dread, as though he was about to launch into a tirade of how she was worthless and how ridiculous she was to think that he could ever love her. Timmy saw it in her eyes; the hurt and the anguish, and more terribly, how hard she was trying to hide it all from the world. She shut her eyes against him, as though she could feel him reading her thoughts, and opened the door up a little more.

"What about?" she asked, as if she didn't really care.

"It's sort of complicated," he said, offering a sad sort of smile in the hopes of winning her over. It seemed to work, as she stepped to one side and threw the door completely open.

"You should probably come in, then," she said resignedly, and as Timmy followed Vicky's thin frame down her hallway, he saw her place a small, scruffy teddy bear on a table by the wall.

-:-

The public had spoken, or at least, Jupitus had leaned heavily on them, and now Cosmo was going to die. His eyes flicked about the room, desperately searching for something that could be indicative of the passage of time, but there was nothing. He was no longer strapped into the torturous chair he had been for so long and was now in a cell reminiscent of the one he had first been placed in when he had been taken to jail. It was an improvement, undoubtedly, but Como found that he simply could not appreciate it. He had been there for what he guessed was a little over an hour. An hour since he had been moved, condemned, and locked up for the last few days of his life. He had been told his cell mate would be back from the exercise yard soon, which was something else Cosmo was not looking forward to. He was in no mood to make friends, and in a place like this that only left him with brand new enemies to find.

-:-

Vicky had felt the anger flare up in her from the second she had seen that it was Timmy who had roused her from her bed. The fact that he had been on her mind mere moments before was not helped by his physical presence, as it was much easier to let herself be overwhelmed with her depression when he only existed inside her head. Why exactly she had let him into her home without much of a fight was not immediately apparent to Vicky, but she supposed it had rather a lot to do with the fact that no matter how bad she felt or how many other girls he kissed, some part of her would be eternally living in hope. She had led the way to the sitting room, however, as she felt she had seen enough of Timmy's back to last her a lifetime.

He sat down straight away without being asked, but Vicky saw immediately that it was not rudeness but preoccupation that caused him to do so. After a moment's hesitation she sat down too, not on the couch next to him but on the floor, with her legs folded up tightly beneath her to preserve what little modesty she had left in her flimsy nightdress. Timmy just stared at his hands for a while, and Vicky could feel the waves of despair coming off of him, waves that were so familiar to her but usually her own. She wanted to say something to provoke conversation from him, feeling like she hadn't in a long time that the world continued to turn, and continued to burden those around her with problems of their own. No words came to mind, however, so she too stared at her hands, noticing the brittle yellowness that her nails had succumbed to.

Timmy sighed softly, clearly unaware that he was doing so. Vicky looked up from her hands, and the age-old words leapt from her mouth before she could even think about stopping them.

"What's wrong?" she asked delicately.

"Like I said," Timmy began, looking at her with a self-deprecating grin, "it's complicated."

"Well," she said with a sniff. "I've got all day to try to understand."

Timmy's smile brightened then, and Vicky was aware that she should be looking at him with some cheesy, forget-my-pain-I'm-here-for-you smile, but all she felt was numb. She was more than certain that all she would get from the conversation would be extra heartache, as Timmy's problem was certain to be both something she couldn't help him with and something she didn't want to hear. If it was founded in girl problems, relationship issues, or anything of that ilk, she seriously doubted she would be able to stand it, and was likely to throw him from the house before he'd even had the chance to ask her what he should do. But then, on the other hand, girl troubles and the discussion of same would surely lay under the jurisdiction of Chester, his best friend, and not the girl-slash-woman who had once made his life a misery.

"Someone I care about is in trouble," he finally began lamely.

For a heart jolting moment, Vicky thought she was the someone he cared about. But then it occurred to her that nothing had really changed for her recently, and she wasn't exactly in trouble. Everything was the same for her as it had been for a long time.

"Who?" she asked lightly.

"I... you see, it's..." Timmy faltered, and Vicky was so afraid that he was searching for the right words to break terrible news to her with that she wanted to clamp her hands to her ears and shut his tired voice out completely. Instead she kept her eyes fixed stonily on his, a faint smile plastered on her face lest she betray the torment that was going on beneath her breast.

"You can tell me," she said, her voice cracking a little despite her best efforts. "You know I won't..." she had wanted to say 'mind', but that didn't seem right. If it was about a girl, he knew she would mind, and then he would know she was lying and the whole conversation would have come crashing into the ground. She searched desperately around for a way to finish her sentence.

"...tell," she whispered some time later, feeling that there had been too pregnant a pause for Timmy to truly buy what she was saying.

"I know you won't tell," Timmy said, seemingly unworried by her broken speech, "but they'll know anyway." He laughed bitterly, a sound that Vicky knew had nothing to do with amusement. She couldn't get her head around his last sentence, and she looked at him with a puzzled expression.

"They? Who's they? And how will they know?"

Timmy looked at her nervously, as though he had just blurted out something terrible. Then his eyes began to dart around the room, and he began to twist his fingers together irritably in his lap. Vicky got to her feet and went to sit beside him on the couch. Her fears that this had something to do with a girl, (Trixie), had all but been dispelled, and she even found herself forgiving him already for what he had done at the party the other night. Not, she reprimanded herself, that he had anything to feel guilty about. She was very clear on that, as Timmy had no responsibilities towards her whatsoever, no matter how much she longed for him to.

"Timmy," she said gently. "What's going on?"

Timmy finally allowed his eyes to rest, this time on Vicky's lips, and he swallowed hard. His thoughts were with Wanda, and how he shouldn't have left her alone in that room with nothing but her knowledge of what was about to happen to Cosmo to keep her company. "Vicky, do you-" he began, but he faltered and then fell silent altogether.

"Do I what?" she asked, but Timmy just shook his head. "Timmy," she said forcefully, in a tone that told him in no uncertain terms that she wanted him to look at her. "Ask me."

"Do you believe in fairies?" he blurted out, and it was apparent to him straight away that he had confused Vicky with this question. Clearly she had been expecting something a lot more grown up and important than an enquiry about fantastical creatures. She looked away briefly, and Timmy wondered if he had hurt her feelings by making it seem as if he didn't trust her and was changing the subject to something silly. "I mean it," he said earnestly.

Vicky's first instinct was to reply straightaway that of course she didn't, and that the notion was ridiculous. But then something inside told her to think about it for just a moment. Admittedly though she had only dreamt about him twice, she had seen a green-haired man who she was certain was her imagination's idea of what a fairy should look like. She had assumed that it was also her imagination giving her the sense of familiarity when she looked at him, but now, what with Timmy's comments, she wasn't inclined to believe that it was all a big coincidence. But still, fairies? Even though Timmy was younger than her he was still too old to be believing in such things.

"I don't know Timmy," she began uncertainly, now casting her eyes wildly around the room. Timmy had caught her off guard with this strange thread of conversation. She wondered where he was going with it. "I-" she began, but Timmy cut her off.

"No, don't worry about it," he said hastily. "It was stupid, forget I mentioned it."

"No, no, it wasn't stupid," Vicky protested gently. "I mean, I just wondered... what have fairies got to do with anything?" she asked.

"What do you mean, anything?" Timmy replied.

"Our situation," Vicky said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. It was only after she had said it that she realised that perhaps it wasn't.

"Oh," said Timmy, clearly uncomfortable. It hadn't occurred to him that Vicky might think the reason for his visit was so that he could talk things out with her, perhaps set her straight on the matters of what was and what wasn't ever going happen between them. He felt himself flush, both with guilt and anger at himself for not seeing this coming. Vicky was clearly uncomfortable too, she clearly thought that perhaps she had been wrong when she thought Timmy knew how he felt about her.

"No wait, obviously that's not why you came here, so let's just ignore that and get back to what you were saying," she said, words spilling out of her like ineffectual shields against the tension between them.

"Vicky, I-" Timmy began in a voice laced with sympathy and apology.

"No, it doesn't matter," she said, waving her hands in front of her as though waving Timmy's failure to reciprocate her feelings away. "Why did you come here really? Please, just tell me."

"I told you," Timmy said, his voice returning to it's mournful tone. "Someone I care about is in trouble."

"Who?" Vicky asked, her eagerness to get away from the last topic of conversation all to obvious in her tone.

"My godfather," he said quietly.

If Vicky had been expecting anything, it certainly hadn't been that.

"Your godfather?" she repeated back to him. "What's happened to him? Is he ok?"

"He's in prison," Timmy replied dully. "He's been sentenced to death."

Vicky gasped and brought a hand to her mouth. Suddenly, her problems seemed so trivial and insignificant, and all she wanted to do was alleviate Timmy's grief somehow. At the same time, however, something stopped her short. If he was on Death Row, then Timmy's godfather must have done something pretty bad. She was lost for words, and clearly it showed on her face because Timmy did not wait for her to try to speak.

"But he hasn't done anything wrong," he said, his voice tinged with the mad desire and need for Vicky to believe him, which she found herself doing instantly.

"What do they say he's done?" she found herself asking in a husky whisper. Timmy shook his head and looked away. "I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I didn't mean to be so..."

"No, it's ok, it's just that where he is, they... they sort of sentence you to death for things that aren't even really wrong." Vicky nodded numbly, thinking that were they both two different people, she would have her arms around him by this point. "I just, I'm scared for him, and my godmother, she's sort of in trouble too."

By this point, Vicky was so swamped with information that she didn't really know what to say. Nothing she could tell Timmy was going to make his situation any better, and she hated knowing that and feeling so helpless while the man she loved fell to pieces beside her.

"Wanda... that's my godmother... she said that even though they're going to fix what he did, they're still going to punish him for doing it in the first place." Tears began to leak from Timmy's eyes at this point, so thickly that where they spilled onto his t-shirt they left large, dark stains, but he wasn't sobbing or coughing, he was just talking normally, albeit a little shakily, as if he didn't even notice.

"Why is she in trouble?" Vicky asked cautiously, passing Timmy a tissue from beside her in a way she hoped conveyed him that she didn't think he was stupid for crying in front of her. Timmy mopped at his eyes and sighed.

"That's complicated too," he said. Vicky nodded, feeling she knew as much as Timmy needed her to know. Timmy buried his face in his hands at this point, and though he made no sound Vicky could see large racking jolts coursing through his body. She wanted so badly to lay one of her long pale hands on his shoulder, but she couldn't seem to bring herself to touch him.

After about ten minutes, during which Vicky had sat awkwardly next to Timmy and had almost felt his unspoken demand that she comfort him in some way, he sat up and looked at her through eyes that were so pink they were almost red. "I thought you could help me," he said, with another of his bitter laughs.

"Me?" Vicky said, astonished. "How?"

Timmy shrugged and wiped his nose with his now sodden tissue. "I don't know," he said with a sniff. "I just remember how you used to be, and how good you were at getting people out of tricky situations, usually yourself. I just thought that somehow you'd come up with an ingenious plan to free my godfather." He shook his head, with the ghost of a smile at how ridiculous he was being plastered on his face.

"This isn't really the same, Timmy," Vicky said, now with a faint stern edge to her consoling tone. "This isn't some stupid scam to make money or get a free skiing trip, this is the law. I can't jut go in there trying to free prisoners, I'd get in enough trouble myself."

Timmy nodded resolutely. "I know," he began, "but the place where my godfather is isn't like other places. The usual laws don't really apply." Vicky nodded a little, humouring Timmy, but she couldn't think of a place on Earth where you could get away with springing a man who had been sentenced to die.

"I know what you're thinking," he said, waving his hands at her, "but it's true." There was a brief pause in which Vicky thought Timmy was about to start cry again. Instead he rubbed his eyes fiercely with the heels of his hands and looked at Vicky, as though he was just remembering some important detail about her that he had forgotten.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," Timmy said. He looked around him, as though in desperate search for something to lean on, for something to support him, but he came up empty handed. Then he looked at Vicky again, and selfish desire washed over him.

His thoughts were cast back to the time she had held him while they were hiding in the toilets of the mall. He remembered how it had felt to have her holding him so tightly it seemed as though she would never let go, and he had felt every iota of her love for him course through every nerve in his body. It had filled him with a strange sort of rapture and amazement, for even though he didn't not love her the way she did him, it paled in the face of the strength of her feelings. For those blessed few moments, it hadn't mattered about the spaces in between them, as Timmy had allowed himself to surrender to the wonderful bliss of being surrounded by nothing but pure, raw love for himself. It felt good, of course it would, to know that holding you in her arms was the reason her heart beat quickened so, why her breathing became shallow and while terrible tears of pure pleasure and utter grief filled her eyes. To have someone feel that much about you made you feel lighter than air, and stronger than the sun. It had made him forget everything bad that lay before him, and in that moment, as Vicky stared at him cautiously in her pretty white nightdress, Timmy craved it like nothing he had ever wanted before.

To save himself from her objections, and to spare his awkwardness, Timmy did not ask her permission but simply threw himself at the startled red head, who's first instinct was to recoil as though the boy was attacking her. He threw his arms around her and laid his head on her shoulders, once again with silent tears cascading down his cheeks. Vicky felt as though she was on fire, as both pleasure and pain raced each other to the surface of her skin, overcrowding her senses and making her feel as though she would burst. His arms were locked tightly around her, pinning her arms to her sides, but his grip let up when she moved her arms up to encircle him in them. Once she was holding her, (and she was thankful he could not see the horrified expression on her face), he let his arms fall to his sides and fell into her embrace completely, needing the safety of her arms to just escape from the real world for a little while.

"Timmy?" she whispered over the top of his head. She could not lie that she was in something like heaven. He had embraced her, he had shown a basic need of her. Of course, she was only too willing to respond, knowing though she did that it was a lot like shooting herself in the foot. She was merely setting herself up for a fall, but the fact that Timmy was the one who had instigated it did not make her love him any less. She knew it could not be easy for him to do something that was bound to cause her so much pain, but then she knew he was desperate for a way out, and where better to find it than in the arms of a woman who loved you?

After what seemed like forever, Timmy lifted his head from Vicky's shoulder, but she did not take her arms from around him. There faces were mere inches apart, and Vicky was fighting the strong urge to look away from those heartbreaking eyes. Timmy was blinking rather a lot, but he did not look away from her eyes, which she was embarrassed to note must have been filled with not only the beginnings of teardrops, but also a hungry need for the boy she held in his arms. It was in that moment that she realised there was no point pretending in front of him. Her love for Timmy was a secret between the pair no more.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, and Vicky knew that it was not the forced hug that he was apologising for. The bottom seemed to fall out of her heart as Timmy worked his way out of her arms, and suddenly, that was that.

-:-

"You!"

The booming voice had shaken Cosmo to his very core. He had been lying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling when his cellmate had returned, but he had paid no attention to the newcomer. The shouted word had brought with it, however, a jolt of recognition in Cosmo's mind, and he sat bolt upright on his bunk and looked at the towering fairy before him.

"Jorgen?" he said incredulously.

"You!" Jorgen repeated, launching himself at the tiny fairy with his arms outstretched and his teeth bared. Cosmo screwed up his eyes, waiting for the impact, but then there was a blinding flash of white light and Jorgen was thrown across the cell and into the stone wall opposite. He took a few moments to regain his composure, before scrambling into a sitting position where he was more or less leaning against the wall.

Cosmo wasn't entirely sure what to say. What with one thing or another, it had completely escaped him that he and Wanda had landed Jorgen in hot water too. 'How are you?' seemed a tad redundant, and 'I'm sorry' sounded patronising. It was, however, a start.

"Jorgen, I'm so sorry," he gushed quickly, hopping down from his bed and getting as close to the muscular fairy as he dared. The magical security measures in the cell would prevent Jorgen from physically hurting Cosmo, but Cosmo didn't want to seem as though he was relishing in the fact. "Wanda and I, we had no idea all this would happen."

Jorgen regarded the fairy ferociously for a moment, before shaking his head and getting to his feet, his expression a lot softer now. "Neither did I," he intoned, making to clap Cosmo chummily on the shoulder but then suddenly thinking better of it. "It's Starr and his dictatorship," he spat. "I had not known he had overthrown Pinky Cosmosis when I made you and that Turner boy the deal. Had I have done..." he trailed off, but Cosmo didn't need words to know that had Jorgen been better informed, he and Wanda would probably have been unpacking their things at their new godchild's at that very moment.

"Still, Wanda and I... we should have done what the rules told us to do," Cosmo said sadly. "Do you know how long you will be in here?" he asked.

"Ten thousand years," Jorgen said, trying his best to act though he did not care. "Eight and a half with good behaviour." He leant against the wall and began examining his nails. "You?"

"About three days," Cosmo said with a heavy sigh. Jorgen cast him a filthy look, as though he was about to start to attempt throttling him again. "After that," Cosmo said, but he could not bring himself to finish. Instead he drew his finger slowly across his throat and closed his eyes. Jorgen looked outraged, but also confused, so Cosmo launched into the whole story because somehow, talking about it made it seem less real.

-:-

"Don't be," Vicky had replied, but she had cast her eyes down to her knees and found that there were no more thoughts in her head. There was no sliver of hope shining it's light through the dark recesses of her depression. There was no faint pink glow surrounding the part of her mind reserved purely for thoughts of how wonderful Timmy was and nothing more. There was just darkness, and sorrow, and a grief so painful that Vicky was certain it would kill her. Two words, 'I'm sorry', and her world had come to an end.

"I didn't mean-" Timmy had begun, but clearly he had meant his apology to tell her how sorry he was that he could never truly love her like she did him. He would be lying, to both himself and to her, to say that he didn't want her. He knew that he did, as sure as night followed day, because there was something so inescapably attractive about her, and he would have dearly loved to take her in his arms and kiss her small, pale lips. And to say that he didn't need her would have been a half-truth as well, for had that been the case then surely he would not be sitting at her mercy now, spilling to her that which he had strived to keep a secret for so long. It was simply that he could not, would not love her, not while she was this other Vicky, this passionless, hopeless fool whose only crime was to fall in love with the wrong boy.

"Where... where is your godfather now?" Vicky asked, her voice vague and her attempt to change the subject all too obvious.

"He's... abroad," Timmy said, thinking that the words 'Fairy World' would be too much to throw at the shaking, trembling figure before him. Timmy ached to go to Fairy World, if not to save Cosmo then at least to see him one last time. But he had been denied even that. Even the trial that he had been promised had been all but washed away, as suddenly Jupitus Starr saw no reason to try a man who had already confessed to being guilty. In three days Cosmo would be dead, Wanda would be trapped, and Timmy would be destroyed. It was in that instant that he knew that he couldn't simply let it happen. He had to try to fix it, and even if he failed at least his conscience would be clear.

"I have to go," he said suddenly, getting to his feet.

"What?" Vicky asked, a note of slight alarm in her voice as she was pulled from her dark and eternal thoughts.

"I have to help Cosmo," he said defiantly, looking around her room wildly as though he were not sure where the door was. Vicky's lowered her eyes once more, a gesture that she hoped showed understanding, but then there was a slight mental click in her brain as things began to fall into place.

"Cosmo?" she repeated faintly.

"My godfather," Timmy replied plainly.

"I know but..." Vicky faltered, her throat suddenly becoming dry and her cheeks burning up at the ridiculousness of what she was about to say.

"What?" Timmy asked, obviously sensing something in Vicky that was enough to stop him in his tracks.

"Your godfather, is he..." Vicky swallowed again. "Is he a fairy?"

Timmy should have been expecting it, what with his earlier comments, but something about how quickly Vicky had put two and two together struck him as odd. However, when he had made his way to her house that morning, it had been with the sturdy intention of telling her the full truth about Cosmo and Wanda, and as she was guessing all of the things he was too frightened to say he could see no sense in lying to her now.

"Yes, he is," he said, in a slightly scared tone. "So is Wanda. I mean, they both are."

It took Vicky only a few seconds to absorb this bombshell, but that was mostly because she wasn't sure if she really believed him. Instead she shook her head, trying to clear it, and fixed him with a stare that he had not seen for so long that he suddenly felt ten years old again.

"So this was your secret?" she asked, in a tone full of both determination and amazement.

"Yep, pretty much," Timmy replied with a shrug.

"Makes mine seem sort of unimportant, huh?" she said, but Timmy did not respond. He hated to see her make light of something so damn intense and awesome in it's destructive power. It was a defence he could see straight through, and he wasn't willing to let her sully true love, even if he could not reciprocate it.

Vicky waited a few moments, still not quite allowing herself to believe it, but there was something so absolutely crazy about it all that she couldn't help but trust that what Timmy said was the truth. "And they've sentenced him, your fairy godfather, to death?" she said, and her voice was laced with a disbelieving note. Timmy rolled his eyes at her.

"You don't have to believe me," he said.

Vicky breathed slowly in and out. "Actually, I kind of do," she said. "I've dreamt about him. Twice."

Now it was Timmy's turn to doubt the honesty of the words being bandied about the room. "What?" he asked.

"The first time it was nice," Vicky explained. "He came to me while I was asleep in the garden, and pretty much told me to accept the way I..." she trailed off, but Timmy did not need her to finish. "To question the way I was acting," she said pointlessly.

"And the second?" Timmy pressed on, desperate to know why his godfather would be visiting Vicky in her dreams.

"The second time it had nothing to do with me," she said, and Timmy noted the vague look of disgust on her face. "The second time, he wanted my help. Needed it even. But before he could tell me what was wrong, he vanished in a ball of flame." Timmy stared at her for a little while, completely baffled, so Vicky felt it was upon her to elaborate.

"Your godfather," she said, motioning to Timmy to sit back down beside her again. "Green hair? White shirt with a thin black tie?"

"That's him!" Timmy shouted, almost leaping up from the chair he had just seated himself in. "That's Cosmo!" Vicky nodded resolutely.

"So where is he?" she asked again.

"Fairy World," Timmy replied.

For a long time, Timmy said nothing, and though Timmy wanted to interrupt her, it was clear she was thinking hard. "Fairy World," she said finally. "And how do we get there?"