Fatally Yours

Sumary: There is a dark side to all things; this is true even for a being already split in two. It is unwise to think that the darkness can be quelled with promises and threats. It is unwise to meddle in things you do not fully understand.

A/N: Remember how I told you in NRFtW that you needed to play close attention to the genre and ratings on my stories? This is the reason. Horror, Angst, Drama, AU. This story does not mix and match with ItDoN (even though it looks like it might) or any of my other works. Characterization, dialogue and style is the same only because that's how I write these characters.

Warnings: Language, gore, blood, torture and other mature themes.

Spoilers: All episodes up to and including Ransom

Disclaimer: Gargoyles… Disney… Buena Vista… Greg Weisman… not me.

Prologue: A Wicked Plot

When things are simple and calm it is easy to become careless. Carelessness was how Generals lost wars, how fools lost their fortunes, how empires met their end. Owen tried very hard not to be careless but he was not perfect and he could not predict everything. Sometimes things go awry in ways you can't prepare for and sometimes you can't control your wilder side.

(Line Break)

In a dark room a group of men sat in silence, watching a computer monitor.

On the screen a burst of white light seemed to engulf the form of a very small child that had been in the way of weapons fire. When the light cleared the child, now several feet from where he had been, was laughing.

The leader of the group, a heavy man in an ill-fitted suit with thinning brown hair, opened another window and played another clip. Another burst of light, this one almost human shaped, floating over the orange haired kid. Then there was another clip. And another.

When Eliot Staine was fourteen years old, he got beaten up for reading Peter Pan in the school cafeteria. The group of older boys had called him all sorts of names and accused him of believing in fairies. The beating hadn't lasted long because the year prior, young Eliot had learned the value of viciousness and dirty tactics. Two of the boys had ended up in the hospital and the other three never bothered him again.

Eliot had believed in fairies. He believed in them the same way his little sister liked to believe in real-life Fairy Godmothers: When you're dirt poor and life sucks, you've got to believe there's a little magic out there.

As he'd grown and earned a name for himself as the baddest of the bad, became close with the right class of criminal and started his own little organization Staine hadn't needed to believe in fairies anymore. Because by then he knew.

He'd seen magic - not the slight of hand you saw on the streets; real magic - and known it for what it was. He'd seen monsters in the jungles his business occasionally took him away to, he'd seen the shapes of men dancing in the duststorms of the desert, he'd seen creatures with no logical explanation perform deeds beyond anything man could carry out alone. He knew.

Good thing too. Now that Staine was old enough, strong enough, connected enough to use it the knowledge could give him the one thing he'd wanted since he'd been that dirt poor child. Power.

"How 'bout it boys?" he asked after the last clip - bought for a high price from a friend who had managed to access David Xanatos's private files - had finished playing. "Who's up for catchin' a fairy?"

A/N: If you've ever seen the anime Hell Girl then your ahead of the curb and know how to envision the story overall, mentally. If you haven't, go look up a "Hellgirl Avenged" clip or two on youtube totally at random and chances are you'll get the basic idea. This is not a crossover, there's just a shared style that you might benefit from seeing.