All recognizable Covenant characters, places, and events belong to Sony Pictures and its affiliates. I am making no money from this endeavor. As for any original content: Any likeness, similarities, and resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, and events are unintentional and purely coincidental.

Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are my own.

They said that there would be days like the one Pogue was having. Days where nothing seemed to go right and everything went straight to hell for absolutely no reason other than some high power had it out for him. He remembered a book his mother read to him when he was little. It was about some ginger kid that did nothing but list everything went wrong with his day. Pogue always thought that the kid was being a little whiner and that moving to Australia was an overreaction. Currently, though, he could commiserate the need to be as far away from where he was to escape the catastrophic day.

First thing that morning, he woke to a freezing room. His heater had stopped working and they were in the middle of a frigid New England winter. Snow had blanketed their campus and there was no ground in sight. He could see his breath fog in the air and he shivered as he tried to figure out how to fix the radiator without magic. Unlike Reid, he wasn't one to turn to magic at every turn to fix minor inconveniences.

When he went to call the maintenance crew, neither his cell nor landline had worked. The chip in his cell was fried and there was no dial tone from his room phone. He had tried to email them but his computer was loaded with viruses and refused to even open the school's homepage. He had chalked it up to the freezing temperatures and his less than savory browsing history.

It wasn't until he tried to go to the bathroom when he started to suspect there was a direct malice to the universe. His toilet had been tampered with; instead of water it held some sort of solid gelatinous mass. He was booted from his room for the time being as it wasn't up to regulation when he finally was able to get in contact with someone to help with his problems.

He started to suspect that Reid was behind the cause of his recent bad luck, the blond was known for pulling pranks in the past. He decided he needed to confront his Covenant brother when he sat down for his first class and noticed a strange smell. Others had noticed it too as they scooted away from him. He tried to see if he stepped in something or if there were foreign objects in his bag but nothing seemed out of place. It didn't take him long to figure out that the smell was coming directly from his clothes, a putrid funk emitted from the fibers.

Then it turned out every writing instrument he had was either broken or had exploded. He made the mistake of touching his face with his accidently dyed blue hand and had an embarrassing blue mark across his mouth.

When the teacher asked him to turn in their assignments, he couldn't find his work. Only pages of poems dedicated to Harry Potter.

By the time the first block of classes were over, he was ready to kill the blond member of the group.

"Reid, whatever kind of mood you're in or if I've done something to piss you off then I'm sorry but the pranks have got to stop," Pogue said as calmly as he could when he confronted him at their lockers. He knew from experience that reacting to the blonds' pranks would only incite him further. He needed to keep composed and try to reason with him.

Reid only raised a light haired eyebrow and wondered what his friend was talking about. He also wondered where the sudden funk was coming from.

"Dude, I don't know what you're talking about but I think you need to shower or something. You smell bad and you look like you gave a smurf a blowjob."

"Come on Reid, don't be a dick. I know you're behind all the crappy things that have happened to me today. It's all very funny but seriously it has to stop."

"Po, I don't know if you know this but my time has been filled with school, swim, and rigorous sex. I don't have time to prank you."

Pogue contemplated his words, knowing his friend like he did he knew Reid wouldn't deny being the culprit. Normally he bragged about his shenanigans before they even happen so the Parry scion was stumped at who would be harassing him.

A chill passed over him and he looked over at the end of the hallway. Hannah stood there, looking neutral but as if she was expecting something to happen. She wasn't sneering at him but she wasn't too happy to see him either. On either side of her stood a curvaceous girl with a multicolored scarf that he knew played in the orchestra and on the other was a random TaG male that he didn't know.

"Ummm…Pogue? Why is Hannah and two people from TaG staring you down like the Children of the Corn?"

Pogue stopped looking at the trio and didn't know how to explain why they were looking at him in such odd manner. He suspected he was looking at the culprits behind his misfortune and very much regretted angering the witch. Apparently what he said to her the day before had gotten to her and she was alerting him to her anger with petty but effective revenge pranks. He didn't even know where to begin to apologize and how to get her to stop.

Kate and Reid were easy. Usually bribing them with something shiny or alcohol respectively worked but what to get a genius whose feelings where hurt was new territory. He opened his locked and before he knew it something had combusted from within. He was covered in a thick dark red paint that covered from his head to his waist. His uniformed was ruined and he didn't know where he'd shower since his room was off limits until they fixed his plumbing.

He looked to where he last saw Hannah and she was gone as if she was never there.

"Pogue, dude. You look like a used tampon, what did you do?" Reid said between bouts of laughter.

He ignored him and headed to his dorm for a fresh change of clothes. He'd have to shower in the communal bathrooms.

As he stood under the warm shower and scrubbed vigorously to get the red stains off his skin he regretted underestimating the witch's ability to get even with those who had wronged her. He only hoped that as quick as she had been to retaliate she'd be just as quick to forgive. He soon smelled a savory scent and saw that the water coming from the shower head was a muddled brown. His tongue darted out carefully and discovered that somehow Hannah had rigged the shower to spew out beef bouillon. He wanted nothing more than to bang his head against the out of frustration.

He found her in the library freshly showered and smelling like soup, he was just glad she had a predictable schedule and he wouldn't have to roam all over the TaG wing to find her. Reid and Tyler had caught wind of what happened through the grapevine. He was grateful that Hannah was not the type to go crying to her boyfriend, or boyfriends as the case may be. She was the type to take care of her own problems and shivered at the thought of what his day would have been like if he had his two brothers and the witch peeved with him. They thought what she was putting him through was punishment enough and even had a few chuckles at his expense. They did urge him to make peace with the sorceress less she up the ante and he truly would be remorseful.

Hannah sat at a table, surrounded by printed packets, going through them quickly; highlighting certain passages before going to the next. There were several piles put into some kind of organization that only she would know. It all looked like random chaos to him but to her but apparently there was a method to the madness.

Her head shot up and looked straight at him, sensing his presence and she did not look happy. She didn't look particularly pissed off either so he was ready to prostrate himself in front of her as long as the terrible things stopped. She raised an eyebrow, expecting him to speak first as she did not have anything to say.

"Look, I'm sorry. OK? I get it, I'm a huge jerk and I shouldn't have yelled at you. Please, just make it stop," he pleaded, not to proud to beg. Being in a relationship with Kate for over two years, he had learned to leave pride at the door a long time ago.

That did the trick and Hannah looked pleased at her handiwork. She took out a cell and pushed a button. After a second she talked to an unknown person on the other end,

"Crouching Tiger, this is Hidden Dragon. Abort Project Onslaught. Thank you."

She turned to him and said,

"Your room will be hospitable by the end of the school day and your computer wiped and functional. I'm glad we could come to an understanding."

Pogue was amazed that with a few simple words his world was right again. He was too bewildered at how easy it was. A simple apology and Hannah had stopped her campaign against him. Kate at the very least would have made him beg a few more times.

Hannah sighed; she knew she had to do something to ease his fears of her. She could admit that she perhaps went a little overboard with her vengeance but she couldn't just let it go either. She needed Pogue to know that she wasn't his enemy and that if she wanted to continue seeing Tyler and Reid then she'd have to get along with their friends.

"Pogue, I get it. I really do. I know more than anyone how much it sucks when you don't have control over your body. But I'm not here to seduce each and every one of you or to make your life complicated. In fact, I'm trying to look for a way to either cure us without...you know. And I'm even trying to develop a way to share the power if a cure isn't possible. I've been examining my blood and other biometrics to try to find the basis of the power. If I could find its source then it's possible I could replicate it in other individuals. Perhaps Kate or any mate you choose for yourself could be turned and act as the cure," she offered as an olive branch.

Pogue was overwhelmed with the new information. Sharing the power? It was something he had never thought possible and never entertained. He figured the best case scenario would be that he'd end up like Tyler's father, living out his premature elderly age in a retirement home; the worst case scenario being Caleb's father. The middle ground being his own father or Reid's, touring the world while he still had his wits and powers but declining quickly and probably dying in the next year or two. The last he heard of his father was that the elder Parry was somewhere in South America, enjoying whores and gambling.

For generations, the Sons had been content with their lot in life. Be filthy rich and die before they reached fifty. Then comes along this super genius who dares to look beyond the surface of their legacy and try to look for solutions.

For the first time in a very long time, he smiled. There was some hope for them yet and it all rested in the tiny package of a strange sci-fi obsessed witch.

A lot of the problems he encountered with Kate were that they didn't trust each other. His girlfriend knew that deep down he was keeping something from her. In turn, she lashed out with flirting and he lashed back with jealousy. If Kate was a witch as well and being together made them perfectly healthy then maybe things would be so much better.

"Of course, the research is still in its infancy. We haven't gotten any solid results. If fact what we've found has been severely disappointing but that doesn't mean we're going to give up."

Pogue's stomach fell out of him as what she told him sunk in.

"We?"

Hannah sat on her bed, her friends on the screen behind her. Jayne and Alissa had stoic faces, not letting the three males in the room intimidate them. The witch on the other hand felt as if she had done something bad unknowingly and was in trouble.

Tyler paced around the room, livid and unsure of how to even comprehend everything he had learned that afternoon.

"How...why..." he tried a few times to verbalize his anger but a new wave of fury enveloped him and he could no longer speak.

Pogue leaned against the wall quietly, not wanting to get in the middle of things. Usually Caleb was the one to deal with issues involving the Covenant of Silence but Tyler was more than eager to get to the bottom of things.

Reid was never one to give someone a hard time or try to enforce the rules but he would be there for Tyler. He didn't want Hannah to be in trouble but two unknown girls had knowledge of their existence, it was unprecedented. Something had to be done but he was willing to give Hannah the benefit of the doubt.

Tyler…not so much.

"How could you just tell them?! Centuries of silence have kept us safe and it's all gone. Now two girls who have nothing to do with any of our families know and God knows what else."

"Hey, in my defense no one ever told me there was a 'Covenant of Silence.' I wasn't aware it was this ultra secret club and I couldn't tell my best friends."

"It's on the first page in the Book of Damnation. And it's littered throughout the damn thing. How could you have missed it?"

Hannah stuttered for a moment and looked a bit sheepish.

"OK...I haven't gotten around to actually reading the Book," she admitted.

"Haven't read it? I gave it to you weeks ago, why haven't you read it?"

"I thumbed through it but never had a chance to really read it. It's in my pile," she gestured to the stack of tomes on her dresser. The old book that has been passed down from fathers to sons for centuries lay pressed between novels and scientific books. Three books sat on top of their ancient codex, waiting patiently to be read.

"Why is it in a pile to begin with? Why didn't you just read it when I gave it to you?"

"That's not how the pile works," she said incredulously, aghast that he would even suggest such a thing and didn't understand why he was so frustrated.

She explained further when she saw his disbelieving face.

"You see, I get a book and it goes to the bottom on the pile and in line. I read them in the order I get them. If I just read whenever I wanted to then there'd be disorder and there might be books forever waiting for me to read them. I use the term forever in the figurative sense. Of course I don't mean literal because the amount of time in a human lifespan would hardly account as forever..."

"Hannah! Screw the pile, the book has important information in it that you need to know."

"Hey! Don't yell at her," shouted Alissa, no longer willing to sit by and watch some guy yell at her friend.

"You keep out of this. This doesn't concern you. What are you guys thinking anyway? Do you think if you gain some powers then you'll go around the city in spandex and save people? This isn't one of your crazy fanfics where you can meddle in anything you want," Tyler responded hotly.

"Don't you talk to her like that," Hannah said not willing to let anyone, even her lover, talk to her friends like that.

The brunette was startled that Hannah would ever raise her voice to him in anything other than orgasmic ecstasy.

"I think you three need to leave," she said gravely. She didn't like the anger that rose between them but she wouldn't abandon the friends she had for the males in front of her.

Reid and Pogue looked at each other awkwardly, the meeting was not going the way they thought it would at all. Tyler's intense cornflower eyes focused on her, his anger and hurt at war with each other.

"Are you seriously kicking us out?"

"I'm not going to allow you to talk to me or my friends that way. I think you need to go and calm down."

"I'm the one that needs to calm down? You're choosing them?"

"I don't need to justify my actions to you. And yes, if you're going to make me choose between you and them. I'm going to choose them."

Her words were like a punch in the gut, she had made her choice and it wasn't him. He never thought he could ever bet hurt like he was and stormed out the room before his powers let everyone know exactly how much Hannah's decision pained him although the door frame breaking from the force of his anger gave them a clue.

Pogue and Reid followed suit, feeling they were not welcomed in the room from the hard stares from all three females.

Jayne was not an emotional person. She was logical and intellectual to a fault. She couldn't even remembered the last time she cried but seeing Hannah's devotion made her tear up just a little. She rationalized that it was probably due to an unexpected increase of dust in the air. But nevertheless she felt her heart swell at her friend's loyalty.

Alissa was feeling similar sentiments but was not afraid to acknowledge them or physically manifest the feelings. She was openly crying and couldn't have asked for a better friend.

Hannah knew she had done the right thing. She had been close to the two girls for years. They had stood by her through her time at Sheppard Prat and were always open to her. She wouldn't turn her back on them because of a male she had known for a little over a month was worried over imagined betrayal. She knew that Jayne and Alissa were discreet and would never sell her out or whatever Tyler was so afraid of. It was no longer the Dark Ages. People were rational and capable of keeping a secret. She just wished that Tyler had given her the chance to explain that instead of jumping to the worst conclusion.

Despite knowing she had made the right decision, something inside her felt that things were not right.

"What's wrong?" Jayne asked at her friend's odd expression.

"I feel...odd. My stomach is suddenly cramping and I feel the pressing need to vomit."

Neither Jayne nor Alissa were familiar with heartache so they did not recognize the symptoms.

"Maybe you ate something bad?" Alissa tried to be helpful.

"Maybe."

"Well I think that you showed great fortitude and loyalty. It was a perfect example of females choosing their most cherished friends in lieu male genitalia," Jayne congratulated.

"Yeah, besties over testes any day," Alissa joined in.

Hannah smiled and was glad she still had her best friends. She still had the uneasy feeling with letting Tyler walk away but she hoped it would go away. She had anticipated the relationship ending; it was never something she pictured lasting forever.

Nothing lasted forever.

Despite knowing that, she was surprised at how much she didn't like that it ended.

A week had gone by and still no word from Hannah. Tyler paced their newly renovated room; everything was repaired and it was as if the fire had never happened.

It had been seven days since Hannah kicked them out of her room, effectively choosing her friends over him. He didn't understand why she hasn't tried to contact him, trying to get his attention. Every girl he's ever been with always came crawling back to him.

"Face it Ty, she said that she'd choose her friends and she meant it," Reid told his friend bluntly.

"How could she though? We're the cure and..."

"She's the cure too. Only she has the advantage of being able to figure out another cure without us."

"And that doesn't bother you?"

"What?"

"That's she's trying to find a way around it. That...she's trying to figure out how to get rid of us."

Reid had a moment of clarity. Tyler wasn't angry about Hannah telling her friends. It should have been obvious because the brunette didn't bat an eyelash when Caleb had told Sarah.

"Is that what you're worried about? That she'll find a way to stave off the madness and leave?"

Tyler remained silent, frowned, and didn't like to be confronted with the idea. It was bad enough when it replayed in his head every night since he last spoke to her, it was even worse when someone said it out loud.

"Isn't that what she's doing?" he asked, justifying his behavior.

Reid couldn't believe he was the one to have the level head in the situation but he figured it was proof of how much Tyler liked the witch.

"Baby Boy, I think she's a super genius with severe compulsion to figure out how things work. She's not satisfied with the answer 'it's magic' and let it go. She wants to know how magic works. I also think that she utilizes her knowledge and one utility is to make sure she'll be safe from the hell she had to endure the past three years. Ty, she has emergency bags for every possible natural and societal disaster. She's legitimately prepared for the zombie apocalypse."

"What's that have to do with anything?" Tyler asked, not sure where Reid was going with his speech.

"She's involved with two guys that have never had a relationship last longer than a semester. Two guys who are seeing each other on the side, might I add. She's not some insipid airhead that thinks things are going to be good forever. I think we probably should have seen her trying to figure out a solution that didn't solely rely on another person coming."

"I know she's smart. Everyone who has ever met her knows she's smart. You'd think she'd be smart enough to know that we don't plan on going anywhere despite our history. I know we've been kind of fast and loose with other girls but this whole situation is different. She's different; I don't want to go anywhere."

"Have you told her that?"

"Well…no but she should just know."

"Did she develop mind reading abilities that I'm not aware of? Or basic recognition of normal social interaction between people? Because I'm more inclined to believe the former."

Reid had a point and Tyler was irritated that the blond was making it very hard for him to stay righteously angry.

"Well she chose her friends over us…" Tyler realized what he was saying and he couldn't believe how ridiculous it was. "Which is commendable because she's known them forever and only us for a couple of months."

Rational thought had finally come back to Tyler and he really hated how he had reacted to the whole situation.

"And honestly, if she ever made such a request to us, asking us to choose either her or one of you guys then I'd be uber pissed," Reid said to twist the knife of his absurd behavior in his back.

"Oh God, when did I become such a girl?" Tyler groaned into his hands as he stopped pacing and sat on the bed.

"Well it could have been that night we..."

"Jesus Reid, stop talking."

The blond grinned as they both knew exactly what he was talking about but he didn't want to push Tyler further.

"So what should I do?"

"Might want to ask Pogue because he's the one who's used to groveling to a female; I have no such experience."

Tyler rolled his eyes but felt that perhaps Reid had a point.

A sharp pinch suddenly ravaged his back and shook to try to toss off the feeling. He saw that Reid had the same reaction. Without anything telling him otherwise, he knew that Hannah was no longer in Ipswich.

On I-95, Hannah sat in the passenger seat of a Mazda CX-5 listening to Sura sing along to an aria she wasn't familiar with. Not only was the musical prodigy amazing at the French Horn but she had a spectacular singing voice. She was being lulled to sleep already on the eight hour drive to MaGfest. Sura had agreed to drive because they decided they would rather drive than take the train as costs and travel would have been more complicated. Hannah couldn't drive but thankfully the music major liked to and took providing the snacks as payment.

Hannah was shocked out of her sleep by a weird pinch she felt run the gamut down her back. She was too far away for the bond between her and the boys. She felt oddly emptier than she had been in the week since she had talked to either of them. She chose to avoid them which was easy given her classes.

"You OK?" Sura asked after witnessing Hannah's odd reaction.

"Yeah, it's a simple occurrence of frisson otherwise known as a 'cold chill' which is a bit of misnomer because it has nothing to do with the temperature."

"So you've been kind of ghost the last week. Everything else OK? Something happen with Tyler or Reid?"

Hannah contemplated the question and she supposed the end of the relationship would count as "something."

"I suppose. Tyler had a hostile reaction to me telling Jayne and Alissa...about our arrangement. He spoke to us unkindly and I wouldn't allow that. He reacted even more unfavorably and I asked him to leave. I haven't spoken to him since so I'm assuming that means that he no longer wants to engage in a sexual relationship with me."

"Why would you assume that?"

"It's what happened with my parents. My father stopped talking to my mother and then they never saw each other again. My grandmother stopped talking to me and I haven't seen her since. Once you stop talking to someone, you never see them again."

Sura felt sorry for Hannah's view on relationships and the obvious dysfunction.

"Well, have you tried to talk to him?" she asked and treaded carefully. She didn't think Hannah was wrong per say but also didn't think her friend was one hundred percent in the right.

"No, I did not see the point."

"Well if he's mad now that doesn't necessarily mean that he'll be mad forever."

Hannah frowned and didn't understand, all of her experience suggested otherwise.

"And what exactly was he mad about?" Sura asked, trying to get the full context of the fight.

"He was angry that I had let Jayne and Alissa on what he considered private information."

"Was it?"

"Perhaps but I wasn't aware it was privileged even from my best friends. I wanted to explain things further but he was so angry that I didn't get a chance to explain. He started to be very rude to them and I wasn't going to have that, no matter how angry he was."

Sura gave Hannah props for sticking with her friends because she had known many females that would take the side of their boyfriends no matter who was at fault. She didn't understand it but sometimes girls just lost all common sense and loyalty for a guy.

"Well it sounds like a misunderstanding. Maybe if you try talking to him, you two could work it out?"

Hannah looked unsure as she had never seen such a thing happen before. Once people were angry, they stayed angry and there was nothing one could do to change their mind. She never thought that perhaps her father and his family were unduly stubborn and judgmental. The idea of forgiving someone for their trespasses and moving on was a foreign concept to her.

"I'm not saying that you shouldn't have told him to go cool down but maybe he's just waiting for you to say that it's OK to speak to you again?"

"Do you think he'd be open to a discussion of resume our sexual relationship? I do miss intercourse."

"Seeing that he's male then yeah I think he'd be open to that conversation."

"If he hasn't began one with someone else or is satisfied with the one he was pursuing while he was seeing me."

"He was seeing someone else?" Sura was surprised but not really, it was Tyler Simms. She was more surprised at Hannah's nonchalant attitude.

"Yes, I believe that the relationship predates anything we had but he never divulged anything. I had to figure it out on my own."

"Wow...do you know who it was?"

"Yes, I scientifically deduced who it could be and used various other methods to confirm."

"Who was it? Do we need to go all Robb Stark on her ass? Like we did with Pogue? Which was so fun by the way. I felt all secret agent meets Kill Bill."

Hannah giggled at Sura's description of her help in the witch's vengeance scheme.

"No it's nothing like that. I don't begrudge the other paramour. Though his reluctance to even admit he was in another relationship undermined my previous conception of the state of things," Hannah spoke sadly, obviously upset at the situation.

Sura felt bad for her friend's apparent heartache and wondered if Hannah was even aware of it. The situation was bizarre and above her area of expertise.

"Well if it doesn't work out then maybe you'll meet a hottie gamer."

"Maybe! I feel much more confident in my ability to procure another mate."

As soon as the words left her mouth, her phone vibrated. She saw that it was Tyler and she answered.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"That's a bit of a difficult question. Like where am I in time and space or where am I in a metaphorical sense? Because at the speed I'm going 'where I am' changes very quickly."

"What? No where are you that is not Ipswich."

"Right. I'm on I-95 heading towards Waltham."

"Why? Why'd you leave?"

"I'm on my way to Fort Washington."

He recognized the name of her home town and panic rose inside of him. She was leaving for good and going home.

"Han, you don't have to leave. We had one little fight."

"I know I don't have to leave I want to leave."

"What?! Look, I'm sorry about what happened but you don't have to go home. Please, we can talk about this."

There was something she was missing and she hated that she had no sense of reading people's feelings or could accurately recognize the subtle nuances in their voice. She didn't understand why people couldn't just be honest and say what they were feeling instead of relying on the other person to instinctively know what they were talking about.

"I don't know what there is to talk about in regards to me leaving," she said in all honestly, very confused.

"You don't think we need to talk about you going back home?" he asked, very concerned that she could just drop them so easily. His fears of her leaving before seemingly more justified.

"Sura, I need your help. I think Tyler is upset and I don't know why…he's upset right?" she asked Sura who had been listening in as he was on speakerphone. She really wasn't sure what was going on but had faith that her friend knew.

"Yes, he's agitated. Tyler, this is Sura. Hannah isn't leaving forever she's just going to MaGFest. We're going to be back Sunday."

Tyler breathed a sigh of relief, she wasn't gone forever. She was going to some convention and he suddenly remembered the music and game festival she had been talking about the weekend before.

"Right, Han I think we need to talk... and could you warn me next time I'm on speakerphone? I know I said some harsh things and I want you to know that I was just angry and not thinking."

"Yes and I apologize for telling Jay and Al...I realize that perhaps it wasn't my secret to tell and I should have at least run it by you before I told them. But I need you to know that I need them in my life and that they would never gossip about anything."

"Yeah I know...I was just angry and scared about some stuff that I know I shouldn't be. Look, we can talk more when you get back. Call me when you get there OK? So I know you're safe."

"I will."

They said their goodbyes and both felt a little better of where they were with each other. Hannah's issues with her digestion went away and felt physically lighter and wasn't sure why. All she knew was that she was happier than she had been in days.

A/N: It's an Xmas miracle! I finally updated. I know I suck a lot when it comes to writing this fic now but thank you guys for being so patient and I hope you enjoy!

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