see the signs

Soul Mate Timer AU - They don't meet as kids but instead meet when they're older. Jerry the troubled wrong-side-of-the-tracks street rat and Lucas the kind hearted timid rich boy.

It's a rainy day near the bridge and he's sitting on the rocks by the small fast moving stream when he hears movement and looks up to see Lucas walking up to him and tilting his umbrella to shield them both from the rain. Lucas asking if he's okay, a bit intimidated by his eyes and Jerry just nods and scoots over to give Lucas room to sit. Lucas sits and asks if Jerry is lost and Jerry just shakes his head. The two fall silent, little!Lucas awkwardly worried he may be bothering this kid until Jerry looks over at him and quietly asks if he wants to see a magic trick. Lucas looks up at him and Jerry waves his hand in front of his face. When his hand slides up, his eye color inverts itself, the white returning and iris turning green, when his hand slides down, his eye color reverts back to normal. Lucas grins and excitedly asks how did he manage to do that and Jerry just gives a slight shrug and explains "It's all natural~"

The two begin chattering away at this point, up until Lucas has to go home. "You want me to walk you home?" Lucas asks and Jerry just shakes his head, turning to watch Lucas run off. Although the blond stops at the top of the hill to turn and call out "Can we meet here again tomorrow?!"

Jerry is caught off guard by that and struggles to think of what to say before he nods. "Ye-Yeah! That sounds great to me!"

In this version, Jerry would be more likely to have violent outbreaks, and may be even more so borderline evil at this point with only Lucas there to keep him from being an outright villain.

Lucas never becoming a wendigo in this timeline. Either Northshore doesn't happen, or events have been altered enough that they either aren't there or they're able to get to safety in time.

Possibly the academy spotting Jerry earlier on when someone witnesses one of those near-misses, enrollment there being offered to Lucas as well since he's in the know about supernatural things. So like before they're living nearby off-campus and they're well clear of Northshore when it happens, but other struggles arising as Jerry gets older and comes more into his demon side, and Jared still to detail with along with the school drama.

So cut to five years later and Jerry's been an Arcanine most of that, with vague but distant and dream-like memories of the city and a blond human that was friendly and important, enough that he stays near populated areas for reasons he doesn't understand. Trainers passing through the area hearing about a powerful, one-eyed Arcanine that's elusive and has been impossible to capture, people continuing to try and making Jerry incredibly distrustful of humans so that he does pretty much go on the offensive until he can flee almost whenever approached, barring when it's a child in which case he just more gently bumps them off and leaves. Until that fateful encounter with Lucas, on vacation from school and beginning to travel a bit in a poorly-disguised attempt to find out what happened to Jerry. Neither fully recognizing the other at first but there's that subconscious pull on bother sides - the eye and lack thereof at least reminding Lucas of him enough, and after intial hostility something kicking in in Jerry's head, that ever-present undercurrent of /I know him, I have to protect him/. So he, grudgingly at first, ends up tagging along after Lucas, who is inviting and offers him food to eat and tries to make friends, and does /not/ try to capture him. The pair of them falling into familiarity and friendship again easily after a bit despite the species gap.

Cut to over 100 years later. The old Courtwater estate has changed hands several times, but the one thing that remained the same is that the Burtons are still hired caretakers of it. Jerry's grandfather most recently; as usual Jerry ends up in his custody and more often than not accompanies him. They just about have full access to the estate, free to roam about for the most part and Jerry would explore the grounds and the massive house. During an early visit is when he first encounters Lucas's ghost.

Loads of ghost stories exist about the Courtwater house, ranging from the most sinister to the most innocuous. After all this time Lucas has little memory of what happened to him, and alone in this giant house - with the presence of his own killer still also lurking - he's reverted to the spirit of a young child, about Jerry's age, and spends most of his conscious hours hiding away. Reading sometimes, not bothering anyone but watching visitors come and go, or sometimes really hiding from the other thing lurking within the manor's walls.

Inevitably Jerry finds him hiding somewhere, scared. Jerry's level of spiritual ability allows him to interact with ghosts practically as though they were flesh and blood, and like usual the bromance instantly starts developing. Lucas at first just amazed because Jerry was the first person to interact with him at all that wasn't terrified because /ghost/, and Jerry excited because he's never really met/scene a ghost that acted so . . . normal and actually stuck around to be spoken to. So, Jerry spends much of his time sneaking up to estate - which Lucas is bound to and unable to leave - to play with Lucas. Especially so after his grandfather dies, and paranormal-obsessed Jared takes over and begins investigating the house - more interest in the dark presence there than Lucas, who Jared knows little if anything about.

So Jerry and Lucas pretty much grow up together as usual, as Jerry gets older Lucas progressing as well and slowly becoming aware again of his life and what happened to him. Jerry goes to school or whatever and sticks around the old estate (Dorothy took off to study abroad or something as soon as possible), always coming back to Lucas and by the time they're teenagers having practically moved into the estate, in part to avoid Jared. Everything's going about as good as it can be considering that Lucas is dead and unable to leave the grounds until he and Jerry are near to the age Lucas was killed at, and the anniversary of the murders approaches. At which time the ghost of the killer begins to severely influence Jared. Jared and the ghost gradually begin to go after Jerry and Lucas in earnest and they have to prevent history from repeating itself as the current owners of the estate arrive, looking into selling the place. Etc.

Late one night, still up and working on learning how to read, a young Jeremiah Burton would be sucked into yet another tragedy as the one creature he feared would appear in his room. He tried to run, but injured legs got him no where, and when he called for help, no one could hear him courtesy of his uncle's abilities. The room was silent from the outside, but on the inside it was filled with terrified cries as Jerry asked for Jared to stop, that he didn't want to change and he didn't want to die. Ignoring his pleas, though, Jerry's struggle was fruitless and Jared would indeed sink his fangs into him. Forced to go through the process of changing into a monster, the hours would go by before finally Jared would vanish and the loud painfilled scream of Jerry would awake almost everyone in the house. Rushing to the room where Jerry was hiding under his bed, holding his wrist and refusing to let anyone see, he kicked and fougth to keep them away before finally a couple of grown men came in to drag the kicking and screaming child out and finally reveal the bites all over his wrist.

Immediately Jerry was moved from the room he'd been staying in and further into the Courtwater house, descending to the levels dedicated to vampiric research and work. As Jerry began changing, he was the subject of various attempts to reverse the process as well. For nearly a week of agony they fought and fought until it was too late and Jerry became a creature of the night. Locking him in one of the sealed rooms downstairs, it was then left up to Oliver and Regina to decide what should be done about the child now locked up in their house. One who Lucas was constantly asking about in worry day in and day out.

Jerry is coming over for the usual hang out after another hunt but as he comes inside the entryway, it's quiet, like... Uncomfortably quiet. "... Lucas? . . . Regina?" he calls out, making his way around the corner just in time to nearly get blind sided by whatever was in there taking off before it can be seen. Jerry is ready to chase it when he hears a weak voice call out "Jerry...?" The Burton boy quickly whips around to see Regina bleeding out on the floor and he quickly runs over and rips off his scarf to hold it against the wound. "No, nononono" he chants, before realizing Lucas was supposed to be home, too. He looks up before looking back down at Regina, obviously torn. It's obvious at this point, no one could possibly come here fast enough to save her and Jerry just tries to slow the bleeding. "It'll be okay, i-it'll be fine, you're..." he nervously rambles before Regina sets a hand on his cheek. He shuts up and lets go of the wound to hold Regina's hand in this silent acceptance. "What did this ... Wh-Where's Lucas?" he asks.

Regina explains the details the best she can before commenting that she locked Lucas in one of the rooms in the back to protect him from whatever it was. Jerry nods before he moves her hands over her wound and pulls off his jacket to hide the damage that's been done the best he can. "I'll protect him, I promise, it won't... Nothing will hurt him, okay?" he softly assures Regina who nods. Jerry scrambles to his feet and over to the door Lucas is behind and he finally opens it. Lucas is in a complete panic, especially when he sees Jerry covered in blood. He asks what's going on, where's his mom and Jerry quickly tells him "Just close your eyes, okay?"

Lucas hesitates but does so and Jerry qickly leads him down the hall. He takes a deep breath and says "Don't... Don't open your eyes. Just imagine mo-- your mom is in front of you and just say whatever you want to her. Like remind her how much you love her and..."

"Jerry, wha-what's going on?" "Just do it."

Lucas is completely lost but as Jerry stops in the living room by Regina, Lucas begins to say what he doesn't realize are his final words to Regina. When Lucas finishes, Jerry makes sure his eyes stay shut and guide him to the front entry way. "Stay. I'm getting your things. We need to leave here /now/." "What's going on?!" "I'll explain in a bit, just stay here, please!" Jerry cries, suddenly looking so desperate for Lucas to just do this and Lucas just caves and waits. Packing for Lucas and quickly taking him to safety, back in some hotel, Jerry explains to Lucas what had happened, sitting beside him as he explains the details and Lucas just falling apart in his arms that night. Jerry takes over investigating and hunting down the monster, and after all's said and done, Jerry comes back to Lucas and it's during this moment of a cold solemn silence that Jerry finally breaks the ice with another story of the 'warrior'.

It's kind of like cold war Russia - you can't just leave if you live there. Starting at eighteen, assuming you are branded as holy and you have the money and influence to fund your pursuit, you can begin the process of applying for a passport. This can takes months or even years - and in theory these passports are only temporary tickets out, you are expected to return, and most rich people do because they're living it up there, though networks have formed on the outside to help people get free of the city's influence and set up lives on the outside. The Courtwaters being a major part of these networks - the Courtwaters still within the city doing a lot of work to fund passports for people and secretly back resistance movements.

The thing is, the government isn't just this radical pseudo-religious body. It's run by six fallen angels in disguise, who have created this city so they can basically be the gods of it. Their corrupted bodies are sustained by the immorality of the city, and the superior souls they're able to take to power themselves. They have immense power within the city, and pretend to be just the messengers to the "angels" that watch over them, shapeshifting every few decades to give the illusion of a changing government run by the people in rigged elections.

Lucas was branded as holy due to his family standing, but also because of his pure soul, one that the fallen angels more or less bookmarked to come to collect one day. Because of his family's history of mental disorders and Jared's in particular research into angels and demons which quickly got him arrested, Jerry was branded as unholy. The pair of course friends since childhood, the Courtwaters protecting them and the two pretty much growing up with the dream of getting passports and getting out of their as soon as possible. So all through their teens they're working to get Jerry re-branded as holy so he can get out, and they're really close, Lucas refusing to put his papers in until he and Jerry can do it together. But getting re-branded is a laborious process as well, and they've only just put the papers for that in by the time the boys are in their early twenties. It's when they're waiting for that application to go through, and they've started looking into passports, that the yearly lottery comes around.

Every year, a select number of people are chosen to be elevated to this primary citizenship position. They get to go live in a closed-off part of the city that's basically supposed to be heaven on earth. The lottery is rigged, of course, with the rich and powerful buying the winning slots, and the fallen angels choosing the others whose souls they want to take. This paradise is rife with decadence and rampant immorality, lust and gluttony and greed fueled. It feeds the fallen angels. And the citizens chosen to live here not only get to do whatever they please, they're also transformed into sort of lesser "angelic" beings, which gives the fallen angels direct control over them whenever they need it. As for those whose souls the fallen angels want to devour, they're left in this immoral place until they've hopefully given in and become less spiritually fortified, and then their souls are devoured and they become these soulless beings that are the direct underlings of the fallen angels, more or less acting as the city's secret police. They also reap and act as storage for the souls of the branded unholy that have been marked for "cleansing" - usually criminals and the like.

So Lucas gets handpicked as a lottery winner and is whisked off to this other part of the city. In his desperation to somehow get him back, Jerry is noticed by a seventh fallen angel - one that long ago had tried to stop the other and ended up getting sealed away within the core of the city instead. Now this seventh fallen angel wants to bring about their destruction for multiple reasons, not all of them particularly moral ones. He's mostly a good guy but still wants to be able to manipulate whoever he chooses for this quest, and mistakenly thinks Jerry's a good choice for that, rather than the numerous underground resistance leaders he had also been watching. He communicates with Jerry through astral projection or something and explains that he'll use the last of his strength to begin slowly transferring his power to Jerry through a weakness in the seals placed on him. So as Jerry goes on his search for Lucas and a way to break into the inner city and rescue him, he's slowly and hopefully temporarily being transformed into a something like these fallen angels. Meanwhile on the inside, Lucas is avoiding all the immorality and parties leading up to the winner's ceremony at the end of the year during which all the soul-stealing and transformations are set to take place. Lucas is instead digging around into the history of the city, finding out about the seventh angel on his own and eventually establishing brief, loose contact with Jerry when he finds the actual chamber under which the seventh angel is sealed.

Reversal AU - In which Jerry was rich and Lucas homeless. Lucas' parents' plane went down on the way home from a business trip. The money squandered by a relative or locked up in a trust, and the home situation awful enough that Lucas actually preferred the streets and city libraries and getting into homeless shelters whenever he could. He could go "home" but he hates it, the uncle with girlfriends always over, parties all the time and alcohol always flowing. Lucas is even quieter, doing odd jobs around local shops and restaurants for food. Until Jerry suddenly there and charging into the rescue just like he always used to.