He wondered briefly if Morrigan had just given him a compliment, but childish as he could be, he was not wholly naive. If it was a compliment, there was surely an insult hidden underneath. “Yes, I suppose some of your guests are good enough, but is that all we’re striving for these days?” He likes this playing with words, it’s new to him since he has learned so much since leaving Neverland. 

A brow raises in response to her transparent threat, but he otherwise keeps his cool. He may not like her, but he also doesn’t like the challenge she poses. In Neverland, it was only ever Hook and he had been the worst of them. Here, there was a darker creature lurking around every corner, and he would never admit they posed a threat, but it was better to keep them a hesitant friend or ally or at least a non-enemy.

“Well, I only lived with the fairies for a short time. If I’d stayed long enough, I don’t doubt… actually, I’m certain it would have happened to me.” He flashes her a smile, as if to lighten the insinuation in his words, but it only serves to solidify it. If it was threats she wanted to play at, Peter was never one to back down from a game. 

“Darling, I’m just trying to keep my standards within your reach--” Morrigan pats his arm, a facsimile of a grandmother’s comforting touch. “I’m nothing if not fair, after all.”

There was something almost fun about this back and forth of theirs... It was, perhaps, the nostalgia; While Morrigan was firm in her honesty, most of Fabletown was not strong enough to hold her to it. What was the point, she sometimes wondered, of performing her dance if the people who saw it would never notice a misstep? But Peter would notice, Peter had the knowledge and the drive to see it in her words-- More importantly, Peter had his fingers dug into her life, nails biting into the fleshy underbelly of her emotions. 

Morrigan eyes him when he talks, lightly, about his own hypothetical torture. There’s something broken in there, Morrigan knows, just as surely as it’s broken in her. Maybe it’s the knowledge that it would take more than a court of angry low-level fae to kill them, or maybe it’s just the urge to see what could. 

Maybe Peter, too, knew how comforting the embrace of oblivion could be. 

“I suppose if you’re feeling nostalgiac enough, you could try it,” Morrigan mused. “I wouldn’t advise it, however-- Arabelle is here somewhere, and I would hate to bring her into this. Wouldn’t you?”

It’s something of a bluff. It’s less that Morrigan wouldn’t want Arabelle to fall to the wrath of a fairy cabal, and more that she simply would not let her insert herself into the situation, but when it came to Peter, his loyal companion could be quite reckless. More than anything, Morrigan wondered if that same loyalty was found in Peter-- She watched his face for any sign of it, eyes sharp. 

Please, she thought, vaguely. Please give me a reason to let you live.

mad 

s -> “a bad name to immortality”: i don’t care how you run your little gang, that’s up to you and fritz 

s -> “a bad name to immortality” : but if you ever treat arabelle like you treat that little girlfriend of yours, you will be dead before her first tear even hits the ground, understand? 

s -> “a bad name to immortality”: we all see the bruises, peter, and some of us are monstrous enough to recognize our own. 

bored

s -> “a bad name to immortality” : how much legal trouble do you think we’d be in if we brought the fairy games to fabletown? 

s -> “a bad name to immortality”: i would very much like to see oz’s face when faced with dozens of stoned citizens trying to compete in a joust while trying not to offend twelve fairy queens

reveal 

s -> “a bad name to immortality”: do you know what a changeling is, pan? it’s a fairy child, left in the bed of a human-- a wolf in sheep’s clothing. sometimes, they were discovered, and killed. sometimes, they brought a legion of human servants to court. very useful, but not relevant. 

s -> “a bad name to immortality”: i wonder if you ever thought of the human children we stole away. did you ask your fairy friends, hungry for a friend? maybe your world was different. maybe that was how you found your lost boys. 

s -> “a bad name to immortality”: in my world, we killed them. i even had a few friends who liked the eat theirs. not out of cruelty, dear peter, although i suppose you wouldn’t judge us if it were. no, we killed them because, in our way, they scared us. 

s -> “a bad name to immortality”: imagine what that would be like, peter. a fairy’s inhumanity, a fairy’s cruelty, with all of a human’s wild abandon, the lawlessness in their blood. the ability to lie. but you don’t have to imagine, do you? 

s -> “a bad name to immortality”: all of that is to say, i think, perhaps, you might be the most dangerous of us all. but, peter-- you are still so young. 

s -> “a bad name to immortality”: and while you not be quite as tender as you once were, i think there are a few of my kind who miss the taste of human flesh. 

mad 

s -> “orkin”: if the rumours are true and you actually threw my favourite pizza place out, square up bitch, i’m coming for you 

s -> “orkin”: THEIR GARLIC KNOTS HAD MORE MAGIC THAN OSCAR HAS IN HIS WHOLE BODY

bored

s -> “orkin”: hey do you wanna come drink and plan jack’s murder again 

s -> “orkin”: wait we did that last time 

s -> “orkin”: property brothers? 

reveal

s -> “orkin”: is it okay if i admit something terrible? 

s -> “orkin”: i like that we aren’t really friends

s -> “orkin”: you’re good company, fritz, and a useful ally. but i don’t trust you, and i don’t expect you to trust me. 

busy

s -> “primadonna”: hey i’m in-between classes can you pick diaval up

s -> “primadonna”: he’s hiding in the alley on fouth and wentworth

s -> “primadonna”: bring bandages

sad

s -> “primadonna”: i’m going to be stuck doing this forever, aren’t i? 

s -> “primadonna”: you might hate me for saying this, but sometimes i feel like choreographing these dances are worse than performing them 

s -> “primadonna”: i wish, sometimes, that i too could just let my body move with a story someone else wrote instead of thinking about what would titillate the dredges of this fucking town

s -> “primadonna”: the worst of it is that it’s so fucking close 

s -> “primadonna”: i’m so fucking close to making it, cain 

reveal 

s -> “primadonna”: it’s funny that your name is cain, because you’re my least favourite son 

s -> “primadonna”: well, you’re my only son

mad

s -> “favourite annoyance”: you owe me 1k

s -> “favourite annoyance”: i literally went to collect a debt from a client and their wallet was missing

s -> “favourite annoyance”: don’t pretend it wasn’t you 

mad: 

s -> “petal”: i have let you break literally every rule i have ever held my students and friends to 

s -> “petal”: and yet you continue to throw it in my face in front of people like hexxus 

s -> “petal”: i wonder if you will be satisfied when they kill me 

happy: 

s -> “petal”: THE RUSSIAN BALLET IS COMING

s -> “petal”:  not to fabletown, of course

s -> “petal”: can you imagine? i’d meet them at the city limits and make them turn around

s -> “petal”: anyway i have tickets; you and arabelle are coming

reveal: 

s -> “petal”: you must know, darling, you must, how i feel about you? 

s -> “petal”: you are my family, briar. aurora. i have known so little of family, you gave that back to me. sometimes i feel as if you act as if i love you on borrowed time, but i need you to know it isn’t true. 

❝ if you’re ‘at war’ and the other party doesn’t even notice, then that’s pretty much the definition of - self-defeating. ❞

he just shrugs, lax and calm.  it would take more than a few pithy words from the septic tongue of the fae to rile the backbone of the nothing.  a lot more.  of course she’d probably come back with something even more contrite - covert wars, the cleverness of her, the favor of the shadows, the unsuspecting victim… which would make her whole poorly attempted ‘power play’ seem even more – tiresomely impotent.  cowardly even.

❝ no, this is earth - and it’s a whole new story.  none of which are tied to a fable like prose, none of which are destined to have the proverbial, ‘happy ending’.  it may be ‘named’ fabletown by rote of proxy, but what it is - is reality.  and there are more than a few people who really rather need to wake up to that… ❞

he sighs.  as though the need to explain such simple facts to her was wearying, though each and every word is delivered with the patience of that every tried parent with a particularly dense toddler.  one who isn’t just attempting to shove the square piece through the round hole, but who hasn’t even figured out that the shapes go into the holes and is currently just drooling and slobbering on the little piece.

❝ there are no ‘roles’ - no heroes, no villains, no ‘bad guys’ or ‘good guys’ - and have a care to address me by my name - it’s cessair… i know it must be difficult for you, but do at least try to keep up. ❞

❝ in house spats??? ❞

maybe in her house.  not in his.

again - if there was some manner of continued antagonism that was considered a ‘spat’, he hadn’t noticed.  and really, he wonders if she just goes through her whole life considering that she’s still the ‘big bad’, that she’s at ‘war’ or ‘spatting’ with everyone, while they just get on with their lives and she’s simply… an oblivious irrelevancy. 

❝ mmmh… no… ❞

❝ …the least i can do is ‘nothing’. ❞

he’s not surprised she came to him for help if this is the extent of her negotiating skills.  to sit there and attempt to insult the very person she requires aid from???  one who - had been agreeable to hearing her out and on doing so, is met with… well, whatever this fucking mess was.  truly, truly… stupid.  and she’s she’s doing a rather remarkable job of shooting herself in the foot.  so - no.  

the woman who earns your paychecks.

it’s only now that he moves – leaning forward across his own desk, a slice of a smile lifting the corners of his lips, revealing brilliant teeth, gleaming like the edge of the universe, before the screaming blackness of the nothing beyond.  that last little bite from her lips is almost laughable… in fact he does chuckle, a dark an hollow sound that bubbles from his chest…

yet - red isn’t here and - lo and behold, the sky isn’t falling, the universe isn’t imploding, there’s no crushing end to his tale or any other ( except perhaps reds ).  he honestly doesn’t care about red - she was a draw to the crowd, but she’s not irreplaceable.  not in the slightest.  and he certainly doesn’t ‘owe her’ anything - or morrigan for that matter.  and this???  is a schoolyard game of the most infantile kind… and now, he’s bored.  there’s nothing interesting here, nothing astute or intriguing, nothing challenging or cerebral, nothing vivacious or visceral.  just something like a poor attempt at trivial, childish spite.

which - unless something caught his attention in the next ten seconds is exactly what he’s going to do.

❝ people go missing every day - let the law do their job - that’s how it works here, that’s what they’re there for.  vigilantism isn’t a good colour on you.  now, was there anything else??? ❞ 

There is so much that Morrigan could say. 

Hexxus is a hypocrite, a slimy thing that scorns the world for every inhumanity that bubbles up in its own sordid soul. It tempts the humans to the worst of their natures, and then punishes them for it, making and breaking weapons out of people to destroy the world. It’s funny, really-- It dismisses her as belligerent, when Morrigan watches it with sharp eyes and knows that there is not a being in this club who it has not designated as weapon or enemy. 

It reminds her of reality, of how human they all are now, but refuses to accept its own role-- Neither of them see themselves as human, but now it’s her fault for not wanting to live hand in hand with the placid lives of the heroes. How can Fritz stand it, Morrigan wonders, with every word out of its mouth such a fucking lie? 

She has no doubt it believes it’s own words to be true. Honestly, for all it wants to sit there and call her stupid, it doesn’t seem too bright itself. For all her faults, Morrigan has never been known to be in love with herself-- but she is sure that it is all Hexxus has ever loved. So sure of its own brilliance, its own superiority, a toxin that cannot be scrubbed away, it ignores the reality of the situation, its new human body a fragile thing that needs to eat, to sleep. 

Morrigan wonders how long it will be until the rest of Fabletown realizes how easy it would be to run a knife along Hexxus’s throat, until the slaves he’s made and mistreated realise there are better options here, in humanity. Maybe, she thinks, staring at Hexxus blankly, it will be Regina who gets sick of it first, and then, who will save it? 

Maybe Fritz, if it’s lucky, but... She hums. There would be ways of convincing him otherwise. 

It doesn’t believe it’s at war? Fine. She hopes the war comes to it faster than most, the doom creeping up around its shoulders. 

All the things she would like to say, and doesn’t. Even Morrigan has limits, beyond even the iron rules. Unlike Hexxus, she can admit her new human limitations, including the distinct disadvantage of having people in this town that she loves. If she speaks these things, summons them into reality, so many people-- Briar, Cain, Snow --would be at risk. Not to mention her own fragile existence. 

Morrigan, too, needs to eat. 

Still, it is waiting on a reply. 

“Cessair,” she says, face blank. “Yes. I was wondering who you wanted to replace Scarlet this week. A rotation, perhaps? If she does return, we don’t want the understudy to have gotten too attached to their position.”