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Hansel & Gretel - Chosen Path
Title: Chosen Path
Fandom: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~2,150 words
Synopsis: Sometimes, you choose a path. Sometimes, the path chooses you.
Author's Notes: For the "witch hunt" square at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hc_bingo. With a prompt like that and a fandom like this, I couldn't resist the urge to go literal.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
Duck. Twist. Roll. Come up fighting. This was a technique she had known since she was young, yet proved useful on a near daily basis with few if any alterations. Take now, for example. She completed the first three, but didn’t need the final step as no one had seen her, no one knew she was there enough to even look for her.
She righted herself anyway, dusted off the debris her latest actions had gifted her with, and tossed the hastily borrowed cloak to the side. She stepped right back out onto the main path, strode forward with confidence in her step, eyes straight ahead, even as she knew each and every leaf and four-legged friend that lay about her. The crowd from the village passed with nary a look in her direction, intent as they were on locating their prize. There though, near the end of the latest wave, she found what she was looking for.
“If the witch went that way, why are we still back here?” Ben asked with a hint of a whine. He did so hate missing out on a hunt.
“Because Gretel was supposed to meet us here and I’m not going to leave her behind,” Hansel replied with all the authority of a heavily armed sibling. It was a fair argument.
She dodged a man carrying an actual pitchfork and torch, and made her presence known to her brother and their wayward apprentice. “I’m here,” she announced, earning a sigh of relief from Ben and a very careful pat on the back from Edward. She kept her footing with a hint of pride.
Hansel studied her carefully for a moment, eyes likely not missing a thing. He plucked a twig from her hair and asked, “What happened to your arm?” It was barely a scratch, but of course he noticed it. There was a streak of mud on her sleeve and the tiniest of tears in the fabric that revealed a corresponding scrape on the skin beneath. It had barely bled at all, but she knew she should probably clean it and possibly bandage it sooner rather than later.
“Better question is what happened to my crossbow,” she countered, gesturing to reveal her weapons-free hands. She still had a pistol and several knives, but her weapon of choice was missing. “The answer to that is ‘an idiot’ and leads me to hope you brought the backup.”
Edward produced it near immediately and she took it readily enough. She checked it over to make sure it was in working order even though she knew Hansel never let their spares go to rust. Satisfied, she slung it over her shoulder and ordered, “Let’s go.”
She took a whole three steps forward but heard only the crunch of a single pair of boots behind her. She turned around and found Hansel watching her, not warily, but with more consideration than she was strictly comfortable with. She raised an eyebrow in silent question, and he responded with, “What happened?”
She blew a loose strand of hair out of her eyes and resisted the urge to go bang her head against a tree. “The villagers thought they saw a witch. As we are here to take care of some wayward golem minions, this is not exactly surprising. Unfortunately, now they are up in arms and think they can take her out, which will eradicate the golems and cost us a pretty bag of coins.” It was the truth. A slightly edited version of the truth, but still the truth.
Hansel took her arm, the one with the scrape of course, and demanded, “Did they do this to you?”
She shook her head. “No, avoiding them did this to me,” she promised, and there, that was the full truth, she didn’t even have to obfuscate about that one. “Which means the sooner we stop their idiocy, the fewer innocent bystanders are hurt.” Not that she was innocent, not by a long-shot, but she knew he understood what she meant.
He nodded and handed her a water flask and she knew he would be watching far more closely than usual in the immediate future. She’d say that meant she had to be more careful but, really, she wasn’t doing anything he didn’t know about already. She hunted witches and their ilk, as did he. They both used every tool at their disposal to do so. He had taken a full three months to mention he didn’t think he needed his injections against the sugar sickness after Mina cured his other ailments, so her taking a little while past that to mention she may possibly have come into a few gifts of her own was nothing.
Or at least that’s what she told herself.
It didn’t take them long to reach where she had re-entered the main path, and it didn’t take Hansel long to spot the abandoned cloak. Edward beat him to it though, sniffed the air and then “accidentally” knocked it into the mud where he then “accidentally” stepped on it once before handing it over. Gretel offered him a grateful smile behind a patient yet less than amused Hansel’s back. “Either from the witch or someone in the hunting party dropped it,” he sighed. “Given that they can barely manage pitchforks without tripping on them, it’s doubtful they can pin their cloaks correctly.”
She snorted because it was expected, and let him look the thing over. A very peculiar looking stick dropped to the ground and she tucked it with her pack by rote, but he paid it as much mind as the fact the cloak was covered in the same oddly blue twigs as he had pulled out of her hair earlier, which is to say not much at all. The ground around the trees in the area was littered with blue and a red so dark as to be nearly purple. Not normally native to the area, but common enough in the past four days to make them suspect it was related to the golems.
That said, while the villagers stuck to the main path and headed along its way as though evil would just wander out in the open, Hansel, Ben, Edward, and she took to the carpet of blue to lead them where they needed to be. The blues and reds were brighter in the growing moonlight, still fading before their eyes when they came upon freshly trampled foliage, letting them know that they were in the right place. That, and wooden automatons were not exactly graceful nor quiet as they stomped through the bushes.
The first arrow did nothing, though Hansel’s shotgun blast left a sizable hole. He took to blasting the things apart piece by piece, Ben using his lower caliber weapon to do the same. Edward simply smashed what he could, but she had a slightly different idea born of the fact that the pieces kept trying to rebuild and reform and the blue and red twigs appeared to be assisting in these matters.
She took the “peculiar looking stick” out of her pack and managed one of the very few spells she actually knew and was fairly successful with. Several of the twigs burst into flame, accompanied by a satisfying screech by one of the golems. She grabbed an unlit and relatively straight piece and held only the end to the fire until it caught, then loaded it into the crossbow. The aim was slightly off, but they were in close enough quarters for it not to matter. Now, beside the standard arrow that had done absolutely nothing, a flaming counterpart struck deep and fairly true. The rest of the golem caught soon enough after that, bursting into a cascade of thankfully inert ashes after bouncing off a fellow golem and singeing him as well. She had no idea if fire in general had the effect, or if it was the fact the fire itself was of magical origins that made the difference, but it appeared to work and that was far better than the alternative.
The ashes did not reform so Hansel grabbed a fallen branch of his own, lit it, and began poking at the things soon enough. “This is surprisingly effective,” he commented after a sixth one showered down upon them.
The seventh and eighth were taken care of in short order and they were onto the ninth and tenth when the villagers arrived. The crowd watched as the final two fell and Gretel was covered in the aftermath. She let Hansel and Ben kick dirt over the remaining embers of what she had created while Edward served as her silent backup when she addressed the villagers and said, “The golems are taken care of. Now there is the simple matter of our fee that you have been withholding.”
Purses nicely padded, warm meal and decent mead in her belly, Gretel laid down in the bed they had rented for the night, Hansel in a second one beside her and Ben passed on the floor as mead was never his friend. True, they could have let him have the bed, but it would have made no difference come morning, so they both enjoyed a little comfort for a change. Edward sat outside beneath their window, less than gentle snores drifting into the night.
She was beginning to drift herself when something landed beside her on the thin mattress. She opened her eyes, then opened them a bit wider when she realized what it was.
“Thought you might want it,” he shrugged. “That’s the second time you have left it behind.” He acted like he was settling in for the night, but she could feel his eyes still on her, watching her, waiting for her to say something or do something or lie yet again.
She picked up the peculiarly shaped stick and felt the now familiar hum against her skin. Yes, she had left it behind twice. She had also intentionally buried it and even tried to toss it into a campfire more than once. Instead, it had always found its way back to her, one way or another, by morning. She swallowed, considered her words, and decided upon, “There is a possibility that mother’s heritage-”
“Lives on in you?” he finished for her. He stretched, unconcerned now that the truth was out in the open. “Yeah, got that. You should probably read some of those books Ben keeps hauling around, maybe there is something in them that can help.”
She didn’t ask if he meant help her learn how to control things better or learn to suppress the magic entirely. He notably didn’t offer to clarify. “I’m sorry?” she tried, not sure what else to say. Somehow, explaining that she had become what they had spent their life hunting just wasn’t a topic she wanted to delve into in the middle of the night. Or ever.
He waved a hand in her rough direction and said, “We already sorted out that whole White Witch versus Dark Witch thing with Mina. You’re not rotting and not trying to kill me or cook Ben for dinner, so I figure you’re on the side of good, or at least on the side of Not Killing Hansel for now.”
She let out a breath she hadn’t quite realized she had been holding and offered a, “Thank you,” that she didn’t think was quite sufficient.
“You make any more of those golems that go around trashing villages and we’ll have words though,” he warned.
“To be fair, they only attacked the magistrate’s place and you were tempted to torch it yourself,” she reminded him.
“True,” he agreed. “But releasing his horse that happened to be dumb enough to trample the mid-day market was a little out of hand, even you have to admit that.”
She nodded and fought the urge to grin. “I’ll be more careful in the future,” she promised.
“That’s all I ask,” he yawned as if that settled that. And maybe it did.
She heard his bed creak as he turned and, soon enough, the soft huffs of breath that meant he was joining Edward in the realm of slumber and realized that whole experience could have gone far, far worse.
She tucked her wand under her pillow and muttered the protection that her mother had recited over them nightly, pleased to see the faint glow expand about the room, and not even set anything on fire this time. Outside, Edward shifted and scared the drunks. Inside, she thought of techniques, and if maybe learning spells was like fighting – something you got better with over time, something that became so innate that you could no longer separate the know-how from the instinct.
The slight vibration she felt from the wand, and the warmth that she felt from more than just the covers, told her that maybe, just maybe, she was on the right path.
End.
Feedback is always welcomed.
Fandom: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
Genre: Gen
Rating: PG-13
Length: ~2,150 words
Synopsis: Sometimes, you choose a path. Sometimes, the path chooses you.
Author's Notes: For the "witch hunt" square at
hc_bingo. With a prompt like that and a fandom like this, I couldn't resist the urge to go literal.Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and am making no profit from this.
Also available on AO3.
Duck. Twist. Roll. Come up fighting. This was a technique she had known since she was young, yet proved useful on a near daily basis with few if any alterations. Take now, for example. She completed the first three, but didn’t need the final step as no one had seen her, no one knew she was there enough to even look for her.
She righted herself anyway, dusted off the debris her latest actions had gifted her with, and tossed the hastily borrowed cloak to the side. She stepped right back out onto the main path, strode forward with confidence in her step, eyes straight ahead, even as she knew each and every leaf and four-legged friend that lay about her. The crowd from the village passed with nary a look in her direction, intent as they were on locating their prize. There though, near the end of the latest wave, she found what she was looking for.
“If the witch went that way, why are we still back here?” Ben asked with a hint of a whine. He did so hate missing out on a hunt.
“Because Gretel was supposed to meet us here and I’m not going to leave her behind,” Hansel replied with all the authority of a heavily armed sibling. It was a fair argument.
She dodged a man carrying an actual pitchfork and torch, and made her presence known to her brother and their wayward apprentice. “I’m here,” she announced, earning a sigh of relief from Ben and a very careful pat on the back from Edward. She kept her footing with a hint of pride.
Hansel studied her carefully for a moment, eyes likely not missing a thing. He plucked a twig from her hair and asked, “What happened to your arm?” It was barely a scratch, but of course he noticed it. There was a streak of mud on her sleeve and the tiniest of tears in the fabric that revealed a corresponding scrape on the skin beneath. It had barely bled at all, but she knew she should probably clean it and possibly bandage it sooner rather than later.
“Better question is what happened to my crossbow,” she countered, gesturing to reveal her weapons-free hands. She still had a pistol and several knives, but her weapon of choice was missing. “The answer to that is ‘an idiot’ and leads me to hope you brought the backup.”
Edward produced it near immediately and she took it readily enough. She checked it over to make sure it was in working order even though she knew Hansel never let their spares go to rust. Satisfied, she slung it over her shoulder and ordered, “Let’s go.”
She took a whole three steps forward but heard only the crunch of a single pair of boots behind her. She turned around and found Hansel watching her, not warily, but with more consideration than she was strictly comfortable with. She raised an eyebrow in silent question, and he responded with, “What happened?”
She blew a loose strand of hair out of her eyes and resisted the urge to go bang her head against a tree. “The villagers thought they saw a witch. As we are here to take care of some wayward golem minions, this is not exactly surprising. Unfortunately, now they are up in arms and think they can take her out, which will eradicate the golems and cost us a pretty bag of coins.” It was the truth. A slightly edited version of the truth, but still the truth.
Hansel took her arm, the one with the scrape of course, and demanded, “Did they do this to you?”
She shook her head. “No, avoiding them did this to me,” she promised, and there, that was the full truth, she didn’t even have to obfuscate about that one. “Which means the sooner we stop their idiocy, the fewer innocent bystanders are hurt.” Not that she was innocent, not by a long-shot, but she knew he understood what she meant.
He nodded and handed her a water flask and she knew he would be watching far more closely than usual in the immediate future. She’d say that meant she had to be more careful but, really, she wasn’t doing anything he didn’t know about already. She hunted witches and their ilk, as did he. They both used every tool at their disposal to do so. He had taken a full three months to mention he didn’t think he needed his injections against the sugar sickness after Mina cured his other ailments, so her taking a little while past that to mention she may possibly have come into a few gifts of her own was nothing.
Or at least that’s what she told herself.
It didn’t take them long to reach where she had re-entered the main path, and it didn’t take Hansel long to spot the abandoned cloak. Edward beat him to it though, sniffed the air and then “accidentally” knocked it into the mud where he then “accidentally” stepped on it once before handing it over. Gretel offered him a grateful smile behind a patient yet less than amused Hansel’s back. “Either from the witch or someone in the hunting party dropped it,” he sighed. “Given that they can barely manage pitchforks without tripping on them, it’s doubtful they can pin their cloaks correctly.”
She snorted because it was expected, and let him look the thing over. A very peculiar looking stick dropped to the ground and she tucked it with her pack by rote, but he paid it as much mind as the fact the cloak was covered in the same oddly blue twigs as he had pulled out of her hair earlier, which is to say not much at all. The ground around the trees in the area was littered with blue and a red so dark as to be nearly purple. Not normally native to the area, but common enough in the past four days to make them suspect it was related to the golems.
That said, while the villagers stuck to the main path and headed along its way as though evil would just wander out in the open, Hansel, Ben, Edward, and she took to the carpet of blue to lead them where they needed to be. The blues and reds were brighter in the growing moonlight, still fading before their eyes when they came upon freshly trampled foliage, letting them know that they were in the right place. That, and wooden automatons were not exactly graceful nor quiet as they stomped through the bushes.
The first arrow did nothing, though Hansel’s shotgun blast left a sizable hole. He took to blasting the things apart piece by piece, Ben using his lower caliber weapon to do the same. Edward simply smashed what he could, but she had a slightly different idea born of the fact that the pieces kept trying to rebuild and reform and the blue and red twigs appeared to be assisting in these matters.
She took the “peculiar looking stick” out of her pack and managed one of the very few spells she actually knew and was fairly successful with. Several of the twigs burst into flame, accompanied by a satisfying screech by one of the golems. She grabbed an unlit and relatively straight piece and held only the end to the fire until it caught, then loaded it into the crossbow. The aim was slightly off, but they were in close enough quarters for it not to matter. Now, beside the standard arrow that had done absolutely nothing, a flaming counterpart struck deep and fairly true. The rest of the golem caught soon enough after that, bursting into a cascade of thankfully inert ashes after bouncing off a fellow golem and singeing him as well. She had no idea if fire in general had the effect, or if it was the fact the fire itself was of magical origins that made the difference, but it appeared to work and that was far better than the alternative.
The ashes did not reform so Hansel grabbed a fallen branch of his own, lit it, and began poking at the things soon enough. “This is surprisingly effective,” he commented after a sixth one showered down upon them.
The seventh and eighth were taken care of in short order and they were onto the ninth and tenth when the villagers arrived. The crowd watched as the final two fell and Gretel was covered in the aftermath. She let Hansel and Ben kick dirt over the remaining embers of what she had created while Edward served as her silent backup when she addressed the villagers and said, “The golems are taken care of. Now there is the simple matter of our fee that you have been withholding.”
Purses nicely padded, warm meal and decent mead in her belly, Gretel laid down in the bed they had rented for the night, Hansel in a second one beside her and Ben passed on the floor as mead was never his friend. True, they could have let him have the bed, but it would have made no difference come morning, so they both enjoyed a little comfort for a change. Edward sat outside beneath their window, less than gentle snores drifting into the night.
She was beginning to drift herself when something landed beside her on the thin mattress. She opened her eyes, then opened them a bit wider when she realized what it was.
“Thought you might want it,” he shrugged. “That’s the second time you have left it behind.” He acted like he was settling in for the night, but she could feel his eyes still on her, watching her, waiting for her to say something or do something or lie yet again.
She picked up the peculiarly shaped stick and felt the now familiar hum against her skin. Yes, she had left it behind twice. She had also intentionally buried it and even tried to toss it into a campfire more than once. Instead, it had always found its way back to her, one way or another, by morning. She swallowed, considered her words, and decided upon, “There is a possibility that mother’s heritage-”
“Lives on in you?” he finished for her. He stretched, unconcerned now that the truth was out in the open. “Yeah, got that. You should probably read some of those books Ben keeps hauling around, maybe there is something in them that can help.”
She didn’t ask if he meant help her learn how to control things better or learn to suppress the magic entirely. He notably didn’t offer to clarify. “I’m sorry?” she tried, not sure what else to say. Somehow, explaining that she had become what they had spent their life hunting just wasn’t a topic she wanted to delve into in the middle of the night. Or ever.
He waved a hand in her rough direction and said, “We already sorted out that whole White Witch versus Dark Witch thing with Mina. You’re not rotting and not trying to kill me or cook Ben for dinner, so I figure you’re on the side of good, or at least on the side of Not Killing Hansel for now.”
She let out a breath she hadn’t quite realized she had been holding and offered a, “Thank you,” that she didn’t think was quite sufficient.
“You make any more of those golems that go around trashing villages and we’ll have words though,” he warned.
“To be fair, they only attacked the magistrate’s place and you were tempted to torch it yourself,” she reminded him.
“True,” he agreed. “But releasing his horse that happened to be dumb enough to trample the mid-day market was a little out of hand, even you have to admit that.”
She nodded and fought the urge to grin. “I’ll be more careful in the future,” she promised.
“That’s all I ask,” he yawned as if that settled that. And maybe it did.
She heard his bed creak as he turned and, soon enough, the soft huffs of breath that meant he was joining Edward in the realm of slumber and realized that whole experience could have gone far, far worse.
She tucked her wand under her pillow and muttered the protection that her mother had recited over them nightly, pleased to see the faint glow expand about the room, and not even set anything on fire this time. Outside, Edward shifted and scared the drunks. Inside, she thought of techniques, and if maybe learning spells was like fighting – something you got better with over time, something that became so innate that you could no longer separate the know-how from the instinct.
The slight vibration she felt from the wand, and the warmth that she felt from more than just the covers, told her that maybe, just maybe, she was on the right path.
End.
Feedback is always welcomed.