( she does trust him. it's a powerful, humbling thing that takes his voice in the moment, the full force of her gratitude and what she came here to do and not do suddenly thick in the air; weighing on him. he takes the list, his eyes averting from her, his tongue sweeping between his lips. paper pocketed, he reaches to bind her last limb.
he doesn't believe anyone has trusted him quite this much. perhaps more pointedly, he's rarely given any so completely reason to do so. )
(perhaps if she knew his full history, everything he is capable of and has done, she would not trust him he way she does, but she is ignorant of those things. if there is one blessing hell has given to people, it is a clean slate, a chance to make connections with no baggage connected, and given how he has behaved with her here, how he has treated her since day one --
there is no reason for her to not trust him now.
she is quiet as he ties up her last limb, until anothe burning, searing sensation runs through her body, causing her to cry out in pain. they want to break her. like lucifer wanted to break her. she's too stubborn to make it that easy.)
( he knows she's stubborn, that she's strong enough to withstand this, that despite whatever her life previous to this and hell itself has thrust upon her, she has not broke. his belief in that is not shaken, but hearing her cry out again, feeling the pain run through her tensed, trembling body has him rattled enough that he feels the reverberations in his own form. he feels the anger and helplessness that accompanies watching her suffer, again, and he could not go on if he did not at least offer.
his hands skim up her body after he's hastily finished the knot, reaching to cup her face.
and he does offer — for her and perhaps, selfishlessly, for himself, his eyes burning with the rage he feels. ) I could try... ( his thumb sweeps across her cheek ) to compel the pain away. ( doubtful it would work. but worth, perhaps, the effort. ) At least force you to sleep, for a time.
I don't know if it would work on me. When the vampires in my world tried to glamour the whole town -- it didn't work on me.
(she thinks that it was peacemaker's doing, the gun has a mind of it's own and it wouldn't be the first time it zapped her out of some sort of spell or enchantment.)
You can try, though.
(maybe it makes her weaker to take his offer, to want to take it. but it hurts. her whole body burns with agony and the desire to make other people to hurt, and sometimes, sometimes she gets so tired of having to fight. of being the one who never runs.)
( it's not weak. it's practical. perhaps that's only his desire to make it all stop, to take away her pain, but if they can cheat the system, why shouldn't they? it's not as if any of this has at all been done in fairness. at least not in a fairness in which he can agree.
unlikely or not he nods slightly, shifting forward to his knees and keeping her eyes with his. it's a desperate, hopeless play, and the moment before he speaks he knows it is, seeing that same look in her own gaze.
still. his cradles her face with firm tenderness. his pupils dilate. ) You're not in pain.
(his touch his calm and warm, tethering her to something other than the pain. but that's all it is -- a comfort. whether it's peacemaker, or hell, or the cult's influence, it's hard to say, but his attempt to take her pain away doesn't work.
( the disappointment is heavy, and he lingers, taking in her brave and wearied smile for a suspended moment. she says it means something, and while the sentiment is sweet and real, klaus knows it makes no difference besides that comfort. he is helpless. he cannot take her pain away. they can do nothing but let the tide come in.
klaus stands, letting out a soft and quiet exhale, moving to sit in his accompanying, though mismatching armchair, dragging it a little closer, their knees nearly touching. he says what he does not only because he feels that he can, because he wants to, as he often does with her, but because it's something to say. another diversion.
he speak to the space between them. ) Being immortal, impervious... for a long time I wanted it to mean that nothing could ever touch me. ( but this... this is inescapable. caring, wanting, loving. he never could, truly, escape this. ) At least I pretended it could not.
(maybe it offers nothing but comfort, but that is all they can offer one another right now: comfort. he can't take her pain away. nothing can. they just have to ride it out, for better for worse. she knows this is a lot to ask of him, but she's also grateful she does not have to bare the weight of this alone.)
But obviously, that wasn't true. (her words aren't cruel, but matter of fact, she remembers all too well what he confessed last time, that he was dead.)
( she's right. it wasn't. but that's not what he meant. his eyes lift to hers; he corrects her. ) I don't mean physically.
( klaus looks down again, his memories beckoning him, his elbows at his thighs, his hands lifted with subtle gestures as he elaborates. ) I used to tell my brother that as vampires, we do not feel, and we do not care. All the blood and suffering left in our wake was nothing to us. The truth is when I killed for the first time... ( waking up in the woods, blood on his hands and in his mouth, the dead bodies littered around him in pieces... ) For the second and the third... ( for so many after that. ) I was devastated. ( to be a monster. to be what his father had been so certain he was, his entire life. an abomination.
to be, also, what mikael wanted him to be. a killer. to be someone who destroyed, and took, and not created. ) Devastated enough that it began to feel inevitable, and cruelty was my only defense. ( he's quiet for a moment, reliving those centuries in a condensed moment, looking back on them with different eyes. newer ones. wiser, perhaps. )
But despite all my best efforts... ( his lips turn into a subtle smile ) and they were many... The one thing I could not quiet... ( he trails off, the word still tucked inside of him. his heart. what he could not quiet then, and cannot quiet now. klaus exhales and presses his lips together. )
(wynonna listens. maybe it's because it's all she can do, maybe because she wants to, because she wants to know more about him. for all that they've shared, there's still so much they don't know.)
The first person I ever killed was my father. It was an accident. I was never supposed to be the heir, it was supposed to be my sister, but the revenants broke into our home and they had my father, but I killed him instead. They took my older sister. So when I turned 27, they killed my uncle to lure me back home. When I started killing revenants -- I thought it wouldn't effect me. They weren't people.
But with each shot it got easier and easier.
(and sometimes the only way to survive a cruel world is to become cruel yourself.)
But it didn't -- as much as I tried not to care --
(she did. she cared. she loved even when she tried hardest not to, and everything death weighed around her neck like an anvil. the air that's been forcing confessions out of her seems to still be in effect, among everything else, and the conversation helps distract some, at least, from the pain)
( so does klaus. listen. he listens and understands what he can; feels compassion for what he can't. he reaches for her hand as she stops, unable to go on, his fingers curling around hers. hell's influences in the air or not, he picks up the thread. he unravels willingly. ) I killed my father. And my mother. Multiple times, in point of fact. Despite deserving their fates... Reveling in their defeats... ( and he did. every one of those instances. and in every one, there was a disquiet, marring that victory. the knowledge that they were dead, but never gone. that he had killed them, but still he remained with their legacy of manipulation and terror. with the loathing they had cultivated within himself. he was left with only himself. ) It was never quite as satisfying as it should have been.
And then I killed him. My true father. The one that made me and abandoned me. I meant to do it, in case he would've been used against me. Against my daughter. ( his voice hardens, firms with the certainty and paranoia he felt, that he must feel; it's a righteousness that is only strong enough to tamp down his grief. his regret. his fear. )
It feels like excising a part of yourself. Every time, even if it is easy, even if you enjoy it. ( it's only then that he looks at her again, his eyes rounded, startling himself with the honesty in his words. )
My father deserved it too. (it's something often thought, but rarely said out loud: ward earp was a bad man. he beat his wife. he abused willa and treated her like a child soldier. he neglected wynonna and waverly.
she regrets what happened that night in the homestead, and everything that came after, but she doesn't always regret killing ward. she is her parent's child for the best or worst.)
My mother was locked away for trying to kill my sister -- or so we thought. Apparently she had been trying to kill a demon connected to Waverly. One that she bound to herself instead. But even once she was free of that...she apparently doesn't stick around long. I spent most of my teen years in and out of foster homes, kept away from Waverly to protect her future. A lot of those people are dead now. I can't say I'm sorry about it.
(the parole officers who turned her into dealers, the judges who saw her as unfixable. lesser than. she's a protector, but she's also in charge of protecting people who have been systematically terrible to her. she can't save everyone, and some of the people she doesn't feel sorry about not saving.
but as she tells her stories she listens to his)
Waverly was born of an affair too -- though apparently her dad didn't abandon her out of choice. But he dies too. Some great future I have to look forward to.
(at least she doesn't know yet she had sex with waverly's dad...)
You wanted Hope to be safe. To have better than you had. I would do the same for Alice, there's little I wouldn't do for her.
( the affinity and sadness he feels as she speaks is an ache, as bone-deep and wearied as she sounds. for someone so young and beautiful to feel so very helpless and lacking any light in the dark... but he sees it. he sees her, and more than that, he sees true.
he moves his hand around hers, weaves their fingers together. ) You'll leave this place one day. Your life, however rife with loss it has been, will be your own. And there will be moments: vibrant, real moments of happiness. That is all I can promise you, because I know it to be true. ( it is not all darkness.
there is plenty more waiting for her, because there has to be. because if the same could be true for someone like him, in dozens of lifetimes, there is some fated for her.
he adds, after a pause, and a nod, ) You're welcome.
(it has been hard to be optimistic about going home since she's learned about the garden taking waverly. about doc following her. her being unable to.
how can she have happiness or any moment of light without her sister? it seems impossible. and she knows she'll move heaven and earth to get them back, she always does, she always fights because it's all she knows how to do but sometimes....sometimes she's just so tired. )
I know. I'll save Waverly, because I always do. And the curse will be broken, and maybe we'll finally get some peace.
(but something in her gut tells her they won't, that there will always be new enemies finding them. her fingers squeeze his, she wishes she could give him similar reassurances, but his stor already has an ending, and she doesn't believe in empty platitudes)
All I've ever wanted is to keep my family safe. I'm not always good at it, but I'm never going to stop trying either. And it's worth it to see how happy Waverly and her girlfriend are.
( new enemies are inevitable. fighting; always imminent. everyone has their demons; some are just more tangible than others, and it's obvious wynonna's fit that description. he's tired of it too: fighting. war. even here, after death, he is forced again to savor the taste of it. but bleakness does not preclude what it is all for. his thumb runs along the side of hers.
musing, he says, ) You know, I've only spoken a handful of words to your sister, but it's clear she loves you. Whatever you face, it won't be alone. Whether she's with you or not.
That would be a change. ( a subtle dig, but not an unkind one. with a burgeoning smile, he adds, ) I'd encourage you to get to know my siblings, but honestly I'm the far superior one. ( or maybe the idea of wynonna learning more about him — anyone learning more about him, intimate in the way only siblings could communicate — unsettles him. she knows him as he is now; he likes the way she knows him. or maybe, more accurately, inviting others into a circle that already feels so fleeting and fragile to him... feels like inviting in reality that will cause it all to topple around him. )
( certainly not the time, if ever, to tell him that. not that it would change anything at all, but it wouldn't put him in the best of moods.
klaus straightens, just some, as she's overcome, averting his eyes as if doing so might grant them both reprieve from what most definitely will worsen. his fingers tighten over hers. ) I managed to acquire the taste quite readily.
(look, her plan is not ever telling him, and so far, it's worked.
it's going to get worse before it gets better, something they both know acutely, and yet his hand wrapped around hers reminds her that at the very least, she doesn't have to suffer through it alone. he is here by her side, and that matters.)
You did. You were one of the first people I met here, that night in the club.
(they had both been desperate and lonely then, looking for an escape from their feelings and problems, finding solace in carnal pleasures. what they have has grown a lot since then.)
And I, you. ( what is between them has changed. grown and evolved, and he feels the weight of that, as he has in many moments since, his hand wrapped around hers; the fabrications and calculations of the everyday stripped from him as he looks at her now.
klaus is not a man of needless, flowery words in moments like these, despite his vocabulary, in spite even of what he feels filling him to the brim. there is no need in him to state what is obvious: that whatever happenstance brought them together, it has allowed something significant form. only a soft smile that follows his words. )
(honestly, she prefers it this way. she never knows what to do with flowery words or big speeches about love and devotion. the silence, what goes unsaid but is felt by both of them is easier to swallow, to accept.
her hand tightens around his, squeezing harshly as she feels another ripple of pain go through her. while she could probably weather this storm alone, like she has so many before, she is glad she doesn't have to.)
Distract me. Tell me a story. Something I don't know about you.
(he's lived a long time, surely he has some good stories to tell, and it'll give her something else to focus on.)
( he doesn't look away this time, but bears through it with her, his fingers tightening gently over hers. her strength is substantial enough for a human, but she won't break him. he wants her to know that: he's not going anywhere. ) Any genre in mind? ( he does have all sorts. she can take her pick. )
(she does know that, somehow she knew from the moment he agreed that he would not leave her side until this passes. that he would choose to bear it with her.
as far as genre goes...she knows they both have their share of misery and violence they could talk about. he's probably had some epic romances in his times, but she doesn't really want to hear about that. so instead she simply says:)
( he doesn't have very many happy stories. but as of late, he cannot help but recall more moments that hold true meaning to him. his daughter is not only the obvious choice, but the brightest. the happiest. the one he holds closest to his heart.
but she already knows that one. )
All right. Once upon a time, ( he begins, somewhat tongue-in-cheek at the tell-tale beginning, ) a mysterious train of magnificent carriages hobbled up and down the rolling hills of Scotland, eventually reaching the hollowed, empty halls of an abandoned castle.
The family within those carriages were unknown to the surrounding villages and were not greeted with all possible welcome. You see, they carried an accent from a country unliked throughout the Highlands, but within time what their noble dress and wealth could not endear, their insatiable love of the countryside and the rough and tumble gaiety of its people did.
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he doesn't believe anyone has trusted him quite this much. perhaps more pointedly, he's rarely given any so completely reason to do so. )
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(perhaps if she knew his full history, everything he is capable of and has done, she would not trust him he way she does, but she is ignorant of those things. if there is one blessing hell has given to people, it is a clean slate, a chance to make connections with no baggage connected, and given how he has behaved with her here, how he has treated her since day one --
there is no reason for her to not trust him now.
she is quiet as he ties up her last limb, until anothe burning, searing sensation runs through her body, causing her to cry out in pain. they want to break her. like lucifer wanted to break her. she's too stubborn to make it that easy.)
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his hands skim up her body after he's hastily finished the knot, reaching to cup her face.
and he does offer — for her and perhaps, selfishlessly, for himself, his eyes burning with the rage he feels. ) I could try... ( his thumb sweeps across her cheek ) to compel the pain away. ( doubtful it would work. but worth, perhaps, the effort. ) At least force you to sleep, for a time.
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I don't know if it would work on me. When the vampires in my world tried to glamour the whole town -- it didn't work on me.
(she thinks that it was peacemaker's doing, the gun has a mind of it's own and it wouldn't be the first time it zapped her out of some sort of spell or enchantment.)
You can try, though.
(maybe it makes her weaker to take his offer, to want to take it. but it hurts. her whole body burns with agony and the desire to make other people to hurt, and sometimes, sometimes she gets so tired of having to fight. of being the one who never runs.)
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unlikely or not he nods slightly, shifting forward to his knees and keeping her eyes with his. it's a desperate, hopeless play, and the moment before he speaks he knows it is, seeing that same look in her own gaze.
still. his cradles her face with firm tenderness. his pupils dilate. ) You're not in pain.
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(his touch his calm and warm, tethering her to something other than the pain. but that's all it is -- a comfort. whether it's peacemaker, or hell, or the cult's influence, it's hard to say, but his attempt to take her pain away doesn't work.
she offers a weak smile.)
It means something that you tried.
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klaus stands, letting out a soft and quiet exhale, moving to sit in his accompanying, though mismatching armchair, dragging it a little closer, their knees nearly touching. he says what he does not only because he feels that he can, because he wants to, as he often does with her, but because it's something to say. another diversion.
he speak to the space between them. ) Being immortal, impervious... for a long time I wanted it to mean that nothing could ever touch me. ( but this... this is inescapable. caring, wanting, loving. he never could, truly, escape this. ) At least I pretended it could not.
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(maybe it offers nothing but comfort, but that is all they can offer one another right now: comfort. he can't take her pain away. nothing can. they just have to ride it out, for better for worse. she knows this is a lot to ask of him, but she's also grateful she does not have to bare the weight of this alone.)
But obviously, that wasn't true. (her words aren't cruel, but matter of fact, she remembers all too well what he confessed last time, that he was dead.)
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( klaus looks down again, his memories beckoning him, his elbows at his thighs, his hands lifted with subtle gestures as he elaborates. ) I used to tell my brother that as vampires, we do not feel, and we do not care. All the blood and suffering left in our wake was nothing to us. The truth is when I killed for the first time... ( waking up in the woods, blood on his hands and in his mouth, the dead bodies littered around him in pieces... ) For the second and the third... ( for so many after that. ) I was devastated. ( to be a monster. to be what his father had been so certain he was, his entire life. an abomination.
to be, also, what mikael wanted him to be. a killer. to be someone who destroyed, and took, and not created. ) Devastated enough that it began to feel inevitable, and cruelty was my only defense. ( he's quiet for a moment, reliving those centuries in a condensed moment, looking back on them with different eyes. newer ones. wiser, perhaps. )
But despite all my best efforts... ( his lips turn into a subtle smile ) and they were many... The one thing I could not quiet... ( he trails off, the word still tucked inside of him. his heart. what he could not quiet then, and cannot quiet now. klaus exhales and presses his lips together. )
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(wynonna listens. maybe it's because it's all she can do, maybe because she wants to, because she wants to know more about him. for all that they've shared, there's still so much they don't know.)
The first person I ever killed was my father. It was an accident. I was never supposed to be the heir, it was supposed to be my sister, but the revenants broke into our home and they had my father, but I killed him instead. They took my older sister. So when I turned 27, they killed my uncle to lure me back home. When I started killing revenants -- I thought it wouldn't effect me. They weren't people.
But with each shot it got easier and easier.
(and sometimes the only way to survive a cruel world is to become cruel yourself.)
But it didn't -- as much as I tried not to care --
(she did. she cared. she loved even when she tried hardest not to, and everything death weighed around her neck like an anvil. the air that's been forcing confessions out of her seems to still be in effect, among everything else, and the conversation helps distract some, at least, from the pain)
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And then I killed him. My true father. The one that made me and abandoned me. I meant to do it, in case he would've been used against me. Against my daughter. ( his voice hardens, firms with the certainty and paranoia he felt, that he must feel; it's a righteousness that is only strong enough to tamp down his grief. his regret. his fear. )
It feels like excising a part of yourself. Every time, even if it is easy, even if you enjoy it. ( it's only then that he looks at her again, his eyes rounded, startling himself with the honesty in his words. )
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My father deserved it too. (it's something often thought, but rarely said out loud: ward earp was a bad man. he beat his wife. he abused willa and treated her like a child soldier. he neglected wynonna and waverly.
she regrets what happened that night in the homestead, and everything that came after, but she doesn't always regret killing ward. she is her parent's child for the best or worst.)
My mother was locked away for trying to kill my sister -- or so we thought. Apparently she had been trying to kill a demon connected to Waverly. One that she bound to herself instead. But even once she was free of that...she apparently doesn't stick around long. I spent most of my teen years in and out of foster homes, kept away from Waverly to protect her future. A lot of those people are dead now. I can't say I'm sorry about it.
(the parole officers who turned her into dealers, the judges who saw her as unfixable. lesser than. she's a protector, but she's also in charge of protecting people who have been systematically terrible to her. she can't save everyone, and some of the people she doesn't feel sorry about not saving.
but as she tells her stories she listens to his)
Waverly was born of an affair too -- though apparently her dad didn't abandon her out of choice. But he dies too. Some great future I have to look forward to.
(at least she doesn't know yet she had sex with waverly's dad...)
You wanted Hope to be safe. To have better than you had. I would do the same for Alice, there's little I wouldn't do for her.
(there's a pause, and then:)
The picture was beautiful, by the way
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he moves his hand around hers, weaves their fingers together. ) You'll leave this place one day. Your life, however rife with loss it has been, will be your own. And there will be moments: vibrant, real moments of happiness. That is all I can promise you, because I know it to be true. ( it is not all darkness.
there is plenty more waiting for her, because there has to be. because if the same could be true for someone like him, in dozens of lifetimes, there is some fated for her.
he adds, after a pause, and a nod, ) You're welcome.
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(it has been hard to be optimistic about going home since she's learned about the garden taking waverly. about doc following her. her being unable to.
how can she have happiness or any moment of light without her sister? it seems impossible. and she knows she'll move heaven and earth to get them back, she always does, she always fights because it's all she knows how to do but sometimes....sometimes she's just so tired. )
I know. I'll save Waverly, because I always do. And the curse will be broken, and maybe we'll finally get some peace.
(but something in her gut tells her they won't, that there will always be new enemies finding them. her fingers squeeze his, she wishes she could give him similar reassurances, but his stor already has an ending, and she doesn't believe in empty platitudes)
All I've ever wanted is to keep my family safe. I'm not always good at it, but I'm never going to stop trying either. And it's worth it to see how happy Waverly and her girlfriend are.
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musing, he says, ) You know, I've only spoken a handful of words to your sister, but it's clear she loves you. Whatever you face, it won't be alone. Whether she's with you or not.
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(her face visibly warms as he talks about waverly. she can't help it. her sister is her favorite person, generally speaking.)
You should talk to her more. Waverly is the best -- and she'd actually get more of those pretentious references you make than I do.
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I've met Kol. I definitely like you better.
(not that she and kol talked much but the last thing he needs to know is how this place forced her to play seven minutes in heaven with his brother.
another burst of pain flashes through her and her voice is more strained, more labored when she speaks again)
Waverly's definitely the better one of the two of us -- everyone loves her. I tend to be more of an acquired taste.
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klaus straightens, just some, as she's overcome, averting his eyes as if doing so might grant them both reprieve from what most definitely will worsen. his fingers tighten over hers. ) I managed to acquire the taste quite readily.
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(look, her plan is not ever telling him, and so far, it's worked.
it's going to get worse before it gets better, something they both know acutely, and yet his hand wrapped around hers reminds her that at the very least, she doesn't have to suffer through it alone. he is here by her side, and that matters.)
You did. You were one of the first people I met here, that night in the club.
(they had both been desperate and lonely then, looking for an escape from their feelings and problems, finding solace in carnal pleasures. what they have has grown a lot since then.)
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klaus is not a man of needless, flowery words in moments like these, despite his vocabulary, in spite even of what he feels filling him to the brim. there is no need in him to state what is obvious: that whatever happenstance brought them together, it has allowed something significant form. only a soft smile that follows his words. )
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(honestly, she prefers it this way. she never knows what to do with flowery words or big speeches about love and devotion. the silence, what goes unsaid but is felt by both of them is easier to swallow, to accept.
her hand tightens around his, squeezing harshly as she feels another ripple of pain go through her. while she could probably weather this storm alone, like she has so many before, she is glad she doesn't have to.)
Distract me. Tell me a story. Something I don't know about you.
(he's lived a long time, surely he has some good stories to tell, and it'll give her something else to focus on.)
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(she does know that, somehow she knew from the moment he agreed that he would not leave her side until this passes. that he would choose to bear it with her.
as far as genre goes...she knows they both have their share of misery and violence they could talk about. he's probably had some epic romances in his times, but she doesn't really want to hear about that. so instead she simply says:)
I want something happy.
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but she already knows that one. )
All right. Once upon a time, ( he begins, somewhat tongue-in-cheek at the tell-tale beginning, ) a mysterious train of magnificent carriages hobbled up and down the rolling hills of Scotland, eventually reaching the hollowed, empty halls of an abandoned castle.
The family within those carriages were unknown to the surrounding villages and were not greeted with all possible welcome. You see, they carried an accent from a country unliked throughout the Highlands, but within time what their noble dress and wealth could not endear, their insatiable love of the countryside and the rough and tumble gaiety of its people did.
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