Hey Gryphon

[kawaiisporkmage]

This post is for you.

So Stephen. I need your help. I've kind of walled myself into a corner with him, and I kinda need Ae's help.

Okay, here's what's going on, in magical bullet point form. I'm starting early cause there are a few changes I made along the way that are important.

Stephen is born.

When Stephen is about 7 years old, he starts talking about the pretty colors around people.

When Stephen is ten, his parents, out of a completely sincere desire to help him, send him away to what they are told is a mental health facility. They receive regular letters over the next five years or so, and if the subject matters seems to be repeating after a while they don't notice.

Finally, though, when there's not even a hint of improvement, his parents pull him out and send him into a private academy for troubled children. The headmaster there is a kindly fellow, maybe 65 years old, and he reaches out to Steph. Steph likes him.

After almost a semester there, Stephen's conditioning kicks in, and he kills as many people as he has bullets before he comes back to himself and flees. Behind him, the school explodes.

After that, he's homeschooled by a string of private tutors until his father bribes Cardiff High School into accepting him.

At CHS, Stephen runs into Jack-tachi, and is suitably freaked out. Like, seriously, because Jack does this all wrong and sends Ae to talk to him, which sends him running (remember, this is what Jack and company will remember. I'll sum what Steph recalls later.) They have to work for awhile to "gain his trust," and even then it's a sort of weak, desperate attraction to Jack that keeps him there. As I've said, he's cleaving to the nearest "father figure," and then picking up on Jack's emotional state. Which, unfortunately, is often "horny." Um. Moving on.

They're at the school a few months at least before they actually get a lead when another student disappears. It's not a sensitive student, however, which blows their main theory of vampires trying to find tasty snacks, and they pretty much stumble around blindly until Stephen trips over the mouth of the trap. Which is a moving door in the office hallway. While it attracts him, he doesn't go through it the first time he sees it, but tells Jack-tachi about it, and he and Jack wander (are drawn, are forced, find themselves) through it in much the same way as last time. All this time Steph has been getting moodier and more upset in regards to Jack, and the scene on the ballroom floor is a lot more violent and a lot less floofy-sexual than the one I invented the first go around. But, it ends the same way, with Stephen angrily choosing the fantasy and disappearing.

Meanwhile, up top, Ae-tachi have been tracking down the source of the door (which dissipated as soon as Jack and Steph were inside) using as-of-yet-undecided means. They fight the dragon, yada-yada, and a lot of the same sort of stuff goes down, only it's at the school instead of the art museum, and in the end I think the principal here transforms into the dragon instead of whatever. Though, this will deprive Rikki of her chance to fry him and gain emotional trauma XP. What do you think? In any case, Jack rejoins the battle after being ejected from the otherroom, though as before only the sensitives remember him. Ianto is not, nor was he ever, sensitive.

At the end of the final battle, with the dragon bleeding on the ground, the other-universe ejects everyone that had been trapped in it. This includes Rhonwen, who had been swallowed earlier during the trip, and he proposes to Cady in much the same way as before. Because that was an adorable bit.

But, anyway, Stephen (who is 17 at this point) and Grace say their goodbyes almost exactly in the same way we did it the first time round, and it's epically sad and Jack feels hideous because he tends to do that.

Anyway, nothing else happens with Stephen for awhile since he's stuck in non-being, but then he comes tumbling out of the Rift on top of Jack. It isn't revealed until much later in the story, but the trigger for him to "return" was a combination of the wills of a minor goddess (who later takes the form of Grace, you remember?) and a semi-formed Elder God. That'll make more sense later, just bear with me.

Anyway, the details of this are all in the story I wrote (though it needs to be rewritten once I finish writing out the entirety of this epic.) It ends with Stephen going off with Arthur.

He lives in almost total seclusion for ten years before Megan comes along and breaks him out of his shell. She's not his soulmate, certainly not (that was, in fact, Grace,) but they really do care about each other. Stephen's problem, though, is that while the only woman in the world he can imagine loving now is Megan, she can still think about someone other than Steph. This, I think, is a problem with many vampire-someone pairings. Vampires think in terms of themselves and their mate, no one else. It's an almost fanatical attraction. Examples: Jack/Ianto, Cady/Rhonwen, Ae/Everyone -__-. Anyway, werewolves have the same sort of devotion, but their can extend it to include pack, not just another person. None of that is important until later, however.

For now, Steph and Meg do their thing, and it's actually not that important. I'm working on writing it now. But it ends up with them deeply in love, though with a lot of problems they refuse to acknowledge, and heading towards Cardiff to find Jack.

Jack is pleased to see them of course, and decided to help them track down Ae. This leads to a scene I have in my head that I want to write down properly. Suffice to say Megan sees for the first time how fucking different the vampire's world is from her own, and she get's scared. She's not Cady. She seriously is not strong enough to deal with this. She's a wonderful person, but this is simply too much to handle.

But she stays with Steph as they find Ae, and through the first stirrings of the war from the vampire's side. And then, she turns for the first time, and leaves Stephen a wreck as she races away to embrace her Pack.

Stephen hardens then, and tightens his control over the vampires, forcing them ownard to war. The only person he doesn't do this to, I think, is Ae, mainly because his memories of Ae are of someone he respects and cares for.

Anyway, this all climaxes in Stephen killing Megan's brother Ian and his boyfriend Mitch, and drinking Ian's blood. Thus fledged, he plunges into the battle with Meg.

When they stumble out of that, both losers, Megan has been given a past that simply doesn't include Meg, and he watches for about a month as she shakily resumes her life, and then flees.

As he's running, the Grace-goddess comes to him and gives him the power to turn back vampires. This only makes him run farther and faster, to her chagrin.

He doesn't get far before Torchwood gets him. They break him a little bit more, and when he escapes he's blank-eyed and shivering and hungry for death.

At this point Xander gets him and forces back some control. At around this time the vampires come out in the open, or maybe that was back before Stephen got caught. Yeah, it was only a week after the war finished.

So, after he leaves Xander, Stephen goes home. To his family. There's the big confrontation, and then he hunkers down to hide. Only, his past is still looking for him, and he encounters the seethe that has been protecting his family for him. It's not important now, but he's saddled with loads of guilt and, for the first time, a sense of responsibility for people other than himself.

It's at this point that Sam Winchester accidentally Summons him, and they have sex, which leads to Stephen's second death. Are you keeping count? You should be.

In Hell, Steph clogs up the gears, and an older demi-goddess, one of the ones worshiped by the Native Americans, barters for his soul and nurses him back to health.

After a while of being her puppet, Stephen kills her and takes control of her little corner of Hell, turning it into his own personal universe, consuming all the souls that pass through and generally wreaking havoc by refusing to play by the rules.

And, this is where Ae comes in again. Eventually Stephen's antics start having effects in the real world, and Jack somehow figures out the cause and realizes that someone needs to kill Steph. Really for reals this time. So he calls Ae, and sends him to hell.

At this point, we need to talk about what happens, though it will end up with Ae killing Stephen somehow.

And then, there's someOne where Steph was. It looks a little like Stephen, but more ethereal, and without gender. It's obvious to anyone with eyes that this thing is one of the olde-timey Gods, and it's staring at Ae.

Once again, this is a part I want to roleplay, and I don't want to spoil what happens. :P

Anyway, Ae will end up in the real world again with an infant he's been told is Stephen in his arms and Stephen's sister's house in front of him. After that, once again, roleplay is needed to fill in a few gaps, but then we come to the end of the first (er, second, actually) chapter of Stephen's life.

So, yeah. When we gonna do it, biatch?