Old, Unhappy, Far-Off Things

"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick."
-Proverbs, 13:12





Molly sighed as she followed Trixie up the stairs to her bedroom, looking around her at the extravagant furniture, especially the soft luxuriant carpeting she was walking on. Molly was impressed. Her parent's company had been doing very well for quite awhile. Enough for them to afford a Spanish colonial style mansion in the Blackwood Park area, and all the furnishings that went with it. Not that she held it against her, of course. She wasn't one of those people who thought that wealthy people were, to the man and woman, greedy Scrooges who got their wealth by robbing the "little guy" blind, but she couldn't help but be a tad jealous.

Not jealous, she amended a heartbeat later. Envious. I don't begrudge her any of it, of course.

Then they walked off the stairs and across the landing to the double doors that marked her bedroom. Trixie pushed them open, and Molly's eyes widened as she followed her friend inside. The room was huge, easily as big as both her living room and dining room in her small house in Colonial Plains. She couldn't help but be a tad envious of the large flat screen HDTV that dominated the wall in front of her bed.

What Molly was most definitely not envious of was the revolting shade of pink that seemed to dominate everything else. The four-poster bed had pink curtains, a pink comforter, and pink pillowcases. There was a pink rug in the middle of the floor. And there were pink hearts everywhere.

"You don't approve of the color scheme do you?" Trixie asked.

"Well," she began trying to phrase her answer in the least offensive manner possible. Is "I want to rip everything pink off these walls, start a bonfire in the backyard and leap around it in my underwear" inoffensive? Probably not. None unfortunately presented themselves and she finally just muttered out. "No."

Trixie smirked, though it was one devoid of genuine joy. "It's okay. To be honest I don't much care for it either."

"Then why-,"

"Because it was what would make me popular!" Trixie snapped, glaring at her as her eyes blazed. Trixie let out a deep sigh as she forced herself to unclench her fist. "I'm sorry about that, but you must understand, Molly. I wasn't what you would call a stereotypical girly girl. When I was seven and eight, instead of playing with my dolls, I was wearing cardboard boxes as suits of armor and pretending I was out slaying dragons. We were living in Honolulu at the time and surprisingly the other boys didn't put me down for it, frequently playing with me. A few of the other girls who were more like me would join in, but the others…." She shuddered. "They were horrible to me. Spreading nasty rumors about me behind my back, cutting me out of every goddamn social occasion they could and get away with! Eventually when my parents and some of my dad's Raytheon co-workers announced they were forming Tang Defense Industries, and said they were moving to California, I dared to hope. Hope that the California kids weren't as…mean as the ones I'd been dealing with since I was old enough to form clear memories."

"And it turned out they were just as bad," she continued.

Trixie nodded, eyes beginning to glisten as the tears began to back up. "In their own way, instead of being aggressive shits, they were just…cold. They just ignored me, even the boys. Finally, I just had enough. There's only so much abuse one person can take before they'll say or do anything to make it stop."

Why doesn't this poor girl have a godparent already?, she thought to herself, empathetic sadness welling up within her, as she put her hand on Trixie's shoulder. Trixie looked up at her, hope in her eyes. Hope that at last she'd found a girl who could understand her.

And in truth she had. The circumstances under which she had received Swizzle hadn't exactly been different. She had been bullied for not being a girly-girl to. Add on top of that a father who had abandoned them, and a mother who couldn't always ensure her daughter could go to bed with food in her belly, despite her best efforts. The situation had improved by the time she was ten, with her mom's remarriage, and her getting a higher paying job, but still she would never shake the memory of those nights her belly rumbled and there was nothing to fill it with.

So why not her? she thought to herself. Sure's she's better than off than I was at the time, but socioeconomic status and happiness aren't connected, and plenty of godchildren of all social strata had gotten godparents for less than what either one of us had to endure.

"It doesn't seem worth it anymore, does it?" Molly asked aloud.

Trixie's sad eyes hardened. "No," she said coldly, though she knew that coldness wasn't directed at her. "It didn't last, and I'm tired of keeping who I truly am literally in the closet." The other girl sighed. "You know, my father didn't approve of this. Of any of this. He would have preferred that-," and she shook her head. "Oh, I'm so sorry, baba," she said, starting to sob openly. "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you, I'm sorry for everything."

Molly walked over and put her arms around her, desperate for someone to hold her, impulsively threw her arms around her, and sobbed into Molly's shoulder. Molly had tightened her arms around her friend when the lights dimmed. She heard a humming sound behind her followed by the crackling of energy. It was a sound she'd heard before, back when she'd been at her lowest point. It was a sound the newfound friend sobbing her eyes out in her arms should have heard for herself a long time ago. All sobbing from said friend had ceased, as she stared at the vortex beginning to form behind her.

"What the hell-," she began.

"It's okay, Trix," Molly said, disengaging from her, and turning around to stare at the rapidly expanding gold and purple ball of energy floating in front of the door. "It's not hostile, and to be perfectly honest, you should have been visited by this when you were still in Hawaii."

Trixie looked at her quizzically, but any words she was going to say were interrupted when, the ball of energy exploded into a vortex with a loud bang. Thank God for small favors, she thought to herself. Her mother had to leave to finalize that deal, she thought, no reason to have to come up with some sort of explanation for the momentary power drain.

The vortex gave another large boom, before it disgorged a small blue-haired fairy woman in black pants, green shirt and with blue eyes.

"Greetings Beatrix Tang," the fairy said as the vortex collapsed into itself and faded, "my name is Emma and I'm your Fairy Godmother!"

"Excellent," Molly said, her snarky side bristling. "Why the hell wasn't she assigned one when she was eight."

Emma narrowed her eyes at her. "Pardon me," she said almost too calmly as she raised her wand towards her, presumably to wipe her memories. "But you're not-,"

"I authenticate Mike Alpha Papa Oscar One-One-One Two-Eight Bravo Sierra Whiskey."

The wand's automatic programming regurgitated the proper response back in a monotone feminine voice. "Code and voiceprint godchild identification confirmed. Margaret Potter, godparent Swizzle."

"Right, sorry," the fairy, Emma said a tad embarrassed, lowering her wand. "Training you know?"

"Of course," Molly said nodding. She turned to Trixie. "I suppose this is quite a shock to you." Trixie however, still looked like a deer caught in oncoming headlights. Finally, she turned to look at her, her eyes widened, and her pupils contracted to their furthest possible state.

"What," she said, her voice voice pitched high and cracking with shock and disbelief "How?" Then her eyes rolled back into her head and she began to fall to the floor. Molly reached out and grabbed her before she could crash into it.

Swizzle popped up from her cover as a pen in the pocket of her duffel bag. "Hey, Emma,"

"Hey, Swizzle," the other fairy said, with the voice of easy familiarity. "Long time, no see."

"I hate to interrupt your little love-in," Molly said, harsher than she intended, but then if her friend hadn't collapsed and no one seem to care, she wouldn't have much cause to be angry. "But you're godchild just fainted from the shock of seeing you for the first time. Can you get her into bed?"

"Oh," Emma said sheepishly. "Right."

-----

Flashes of light pierced the darkness that enveloped Trixie, getting brighter and brighter before her eyes flew fully open in a bright burst of light that resolved into the fair-skinned and dark-haired features of Molly Potter.

"Molly?" She asked, still groggy, even as her mind picked up on the fact that it was in bed. "What happened?"

"You fainted," Molly said, relief noticeable on her voice. "You've been out cold for ten minutes."

"I should go see a doctor, before I passed out I hallucinated that I saw fairies in the room," Trixie said, still slightly groggy. Because nothing like what my subconscious mind decided to dredge up and throw at me can exist outside my comics.

"That was no hallucination," Molly said calmly, a smile on her face. "That really happened." She shifted out of the way, to reveal floating behind her, an embarrassed look on her face, the same blue-haired woman floating about five feet off the ground. "Beatrix Tang meet Emma. Emma, Beatrix Tang."

"It's nice to meet you," the creature, Emma, Trixie thought to herself, she has a name, and it's best not to do anything to provoke creatures like this. "You've had a very hard thirteen years Miss Tang, you'll only have me until you're eighteen, and it's my job to help you navigate the remainder of your minority as best I can."

God help me I think she means it, Trixie thought, wondering why she wasn't surprised. "How?" She asked curiously.

"By granting you an unlimited supply of magical wishes," Emma said crisply, a smile on her face. "But there are stipulations attached."

"What sort of stipulations?" Trixie asked, genuinely curious. Now that I'm sure I'm not dreaming or insane.

"There's a huge set of rules to follow," Molly said, crossing her arms and leaning against her bed. "Though fortunately you don't have to learn all of them at once; any order that conflicts with regulations causes the wand to reject it."

"The system is designed to keep godchildren from becoming drunk on the potential power having an unlimited supply of magical wishes," Emma said. "For example, you can't raise the dead, wish for 'super' versions of anything, wish anyone dead directly, bypass the free market by gaining immense wealth out of nowhere, and that's just the tip of the iceberg."

"Unfortunately, another female voice said from next to her, and she turned to view the purple-haired fairy that had been revealed to be assigned to Molly. Oh, right, she does have a…godparent. Does everyone I know have a fairy attached to them? What's next, Timmy? "some godchildren use us as personal servants, overworking us until the FairyWorld authorities have to intervene. Little Miss Bossy Pants here," she says, gesturing with her head at Molly, "has a habit of it."

"Hey, I only had to go to rehab once!" Molly said indignantly, her voice cutting through Trixie's still slightly disoriented mind like a chainsaw. "Twice," she amended a moment later.

"Okay, everyone be quiet," Trixie said, as a headache began throbbing close to her right ear as she attempted to take in everything at once. She closed her head and sighed, as she waited for the searing pain to subside. Finally, after about a minute, her head began to clear she felt her stomach grumble. I haven't eaten since this morning, she thought to herself, abruptly reminded of what had happened. I suppose I should do something about that.

She turned and regarded Emma curiously. "Can you make food?" She asked, curiously.

Emma gave her a wide smile. "Of course," she said as though that were a silly question, which admittedly it probably was, "you have an unlimited supply of magical wishes for a reason, one of which is not starving. What are you hungry for?"

"I want a quesadilla," she said after a few moments of thought, "The Mexican variation, with Oaxaca cheese and black beans. I want my sides to be guacamole and sour cream, and I want a bottle of root beer with it."

Molly's face lit up at the description of the food, a wide smile breaking out on her face. "Ooh, Swiz, I'll take that, but make my drink a cherry coke."

Emma raised her wand into the air, the golden star at the end glowing with a bright light. "One quesa-,"

"Wait!" Swizzle voice snapped through the air, so sharp they caused her to wince. "Before we do that, Emma, there's one thing you forgot. She's a godchild now, our laws requires that she be made fully aware of her previous dealings with us before any wishes are granted."

A dead silence fell over the room. Trixie stared at Swizzle, eyes wide, shock coursing through her. It was another moment before she was finally able to get out the words. "'Previous dealings,'" she said after a moment, turning to look at Molly, "what previous dealings?"

Molly, her eyes wide themselves, swallowed visibly and gave a distressed sigh. "I was wondering how this topic was going to be addressed. You know your…interactions with Timmy over the past three years?"

Trixie sighed, pangs of regret filling her. "Yes." I'm not delusional, I know I can be self-confident to the point of arrogance sometimes, but that's no excuse. You envied those girls. You remade yourself in their image. You let your arrogant streak explode into something perilously close to full on narcissism and as a result genuinely believed that people like Timmy and Molly were trash unworthy of the ground you walked on.

"A lot of those events were events that were subsequently either erased from the timeline or your memories of those events were erased because of the direct intervention of Timmy Turner's fairy godparents. The rest of the times, the one's you remember, they were there, but because you didn't have direct contact with them, they didn't wipe your memories. There was however one, major incident that bears mentioning…"

Ten minutes earlier

Timothy Michael Turner sat at his desk in his treetop clubhouse, watching the orange-red sunset on the horizon, resisting the urge to anxiously pace. He'd just sent the two women he cared most about in the world after the women in his family into the lion's den, and he couldn't be there with them. He'd of course have Cosmo and Wanda poof him there if they needed the help, but he hated going insane with worry over it.

No, he thought to himself, as he looked at the tactical map of Dimmsdale projected onto the wall. My job is to do my homework for right now, and provide the advance warning that Veronica's on the move. I hope she has been reduced to a lone wolf. If it's just her, she's well placed to meet the threat, and knowing her, she'll have Veronica down and out within five minutes. If her army's still in the field…we'll work on that when we come to it.

He shuddered at the thought of what one lone lunatic can do if he or she achieves complete surprise. He'd snuck a look at one of the crime documentaries on Investigation Discovery when he was eleven and he was well aware of what Ted Bundy had done in that Florida sorority. He wasn't saying it was going to be a repeat of that, but the last thing anyone, least of all Trixie needed was her alone in the house and asleep only be awoken as Veronica did…whatever she was going to do.

Which is why he'd sent the person who'd spent two years in self-defense classes with her. Molly and Trixie were not to be more than a few feet from each other at any given time, and since it was doubtful either was going to sleep until it was over, she'd be awake to protect Trixie. If it came to it tonight, and he hoped to God it did not.

"Hey, Timmy," Molly's voice suddenly cut through her reverie, startling him out of his chair. Heart racing, he turned to view Molly staring at him a stunned look on her face, from the mirror on the far side of the wall. Timmy breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh, it's just you," He said, before noting her face. "What's up," he said, "is something wrong?"

"No," she said, her voice cracking ever so slightly. "Nothing's wrong, just…unexpected," she sighed. "Apparently you're godparents have been busy beavers today. I don't know how they managed to do it but they got Trixie a permanent godparent."

Timmy stood there for a long moment, staring at the girl in his mirror. Veronica had surrendered herself to the police on live television, or an army of mystical warriors had arrived and sworn to protect Trixie, anything would have been more foreseeable than that.

"Are... you sure?" He finally found himself asking when he felt his mouth begin to work again.

Molly nodded. "Yes, sir," she said, surprise still on her voice. "She checks out and everything."

Timmy smiled, his heart beginning to race, but from a far better sensation then the infarction Molly nearly gave him. If she has a fairy now, that means her memories will be restored, that means she'll remember what happened during the Darkness crisis.

"How's she taking it?"

"Well, she fainted," she said.

Timmy couldn't help but chuckle at that. He distinctly remembered blacking out from the shock of seeing Cosmo and Wanda the first time too. "Don't we all."

Molly smirked this time. "Yeah." Then just as suddenly the smirk was gone. "Look, if I may it's time you headed over. She's going to have a lot of questions after I bring her around, and she's going to need more than just me."

"But what about her mom?"

Molly shook her head. "She went back to work," at Timmy's widening eyes, she held up her hand to forestall the angry rant that was building in his mouth. "Her husband died taking a bullet for one of the Rheinmetall execs he was meeting over lunch. It got them their business deal, but, as her husband's designated successor she has to be the one to finish ironing out the kinks. That will likely take the rest of the afternoon and most of the night. Since your parents are going to be gone, why not just come on over?" Unspoken was the obvious: one more person was one more body to even the odds if Veronica showed up tonight.

"All right," Timmy said immediately, making him…giddy. "I'll be over as soon as I can."

Molly nodded, another brief smile on her face, before it died once more. "Listen," Molly said. "If I'm wrong, and we are facing Veronica and her gang tonight, I don't know what'll happen. If-if," she gave a long deep sigh this time, "If we die, I want you to know that meeting you in rehab was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. You're the best friend I've ever had and-,"

"Molly," he began, cutting her off. "We'll be fine. We've successfully defeated Lovecraftian abominations from beyond the stars, I think a bunch of idiot thugs isn't going to be too much of a hassle."

------

The Present Day

Of course," Trixie said back in the present, leaning back in her chair. "You learned to eat those words,"

"Don't remind me," Timmy responded, shooting her a look with mingled sadness and faint embarrassment. "We beat the real-world equivalent of Cthulu one would think that a gang of low-rent thugs that Veronica gathered with a combination of promise of booty and her putting out would have been child's play."

"For all its faults, Timmy," Trixie said, feeling an urge to hug her boyfriend. "The Darkness wasn't insane, or incompetent. We at least could strategize beating it based on its motivations and previous actions, even at ten, fighting someone as unbalanced as Veronica is less… predictable. There's a saying I read in a book once. 'The best swordsman in the world doesn't fear the second-best swordsman but the worst swordsman in the world, because he can't predict what the idiot will do.'"

Molly's derisive laugh echoed through the all-but empty church. "Yeah, I learned that the hard way."

"We all did," Trixie pointed out. "At any rate, during that period you were going to the bathroom and packing, Emma was unlocking the blocks Jorgen von Strangle put in my memories…

Trixie struggled against the bright purple vortex that wheeled overhead, the manic, desperate strength of adrenaline flowing through her as she gripped Timmy Turner with both hands, pulling with all her might against the vortex that was sucking him up.

"Timmy!" She shouted, anger and desperation welling up inside him. "Do you like my hair?"

"Perfect," he said, before leaning in and pressing his lips to hers.

Then the world around her broke and shattered, the fear welling up inside her found expression in a desperation inhalation of breath as she once more shot up in bed.

"Forgive me," Emma said, and Trixie heard genuine sincerity on her voice. "Depending on the content of the memories being restored, the process can be…emotionally taxing.'

"I'll say," Trixie said, still hyperventilating slightly. How do you like my hair, really you daft twit? Another human being was getting sucked into a magical vortex and that was the best you could come up with? If we hadn't won…

She was still having trouble wrapping her head around the fact that she had apparently fought alongside Timmy Turner to keep a gigantic space creature from swallowing all creation, only to turn out it wasn't so evil after all. Then again, she was still wrapping her head around the apparent existence of fairies.

All that paled in comparison however, to the kisses he'd given her over the course of the crisis. She could feel them all on her lips now, and the emotions that had been awoken in her during it. And I see what Molly was saying earlier. When the chips are down, he doesn't do anything by half-measures. He also may be a bit of a jerk at times, but in the end he does the right thing.

And you calling Timmy out as a jerk would be the ultimate expression of the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn't it?

"You okay, Trixie?" Molly's voice said, breaking her out of her reverie. She looked over at her friend to see her giving her a concerned look from the direction of her bedroom door.

"I'm fine, Molly," Trixie said in what she hoped was a reassuring voice. "It's just a lot to take in all at once."

"I can imagine," Molly said, walking over and sitting next to her. "It was different for me in a lot of ways. Chief among them being the fact that I'd had no prior experience with fairies before Swizzle walked into my life. It has to be hard, knowing that there's an entire set of experiences that were just yanked away. Timmy tried hard three years ago to get you a fairy to allow you to keep your memories of what you and he were able to accomplish. But to no avail, the most he got them to budge on was 'putting your name on the list for consideration.' It was his fairies that apparently got through the red tape to put your name up for consideration."

"I'd like to meet them," Trixie said, smiling. "What are they like?"

"Wanda is an intelligent, wonderful woman," Molly said, an affectionate smile on her face. "Cosmo is…less intelligent."

"Cosmo is an idiot," Swizzle said somewhat harshly. "Though is heart in the right place. Usually."

"I was trying to be charitable," Molly said testily, "but you're basically right."

A golden explosion of light abruptly burst into the room, instinctively causing her eyes to squeeze shut against the brightness. She opened her eyes when the light faded to see Timmy Turner standing in the middle of the room, with a diminutive pink-haired woman and an equally-diminutive green-haired man next to him. Timmy opened her mouth to say something, then his eyes fell on her, and whatever words he was about to say died in his throat.

Trixie sat there, staring back, her emotions a roil. After a seeming eternity, though it could only have been a few seconds, one emotion came out on top. In a daze, almost, she got off the bed and walked around the bed straight towards Timmy. As she closed on him, Timmy opened his mouth to say something only to have Trixie lean up and press her lips against his. She felt Timmy resist for half a second before leaning into her.

As the two stood there kissing. Molly reached over an took the bag containing Timmy's laptop. Unpacking it she set it up on Trixie's desk before turning it on and logging into the magical threat warning system monitoring Dimmsdale. She sighed in relief as the program reported that Veronica hadn't been detected on the streets at any point in the last fifteen minutes. When the situation changed, and her bad feeling that it would change before the night was over hadn't changed, it was set to alert everyone. Loudly. She could only hope that they didn't allow each other to get distracted, especially because they all planned to enjoy this time to the fullest.

Eat and be merry my friends, for tonight we dine with the ghosts.