Rated: PG
Length: This is a two-shot.
Characters: Mick, Beth, Coraline, Josef
A/N: I had been contemplating writing a new "What If" story at the time the All 4 Challenge was issued, so I combined them. A big thank you to Moonlighter, my idea bouncer and beta, for brainstorming the plot with me - she had great ideas as always!
This starts off when Mick finds Beth waiting in his hallway in The Mortal Cure, so everything in the show that happened up until then has happened. It takes a different spin after that, but you will recognize scenes and dialogue from other episodes mixed in. Part 2 will go up tomorrow night.
Re-turn Decisions – A What If / Fab 4 Story
Part 1
“Come here – you okay? Wanna come in?” Mick asked the blond hiding in the shadow of his hallway. She nodded and they entered his loft.
“Let me take your coat. Would you like something to drink?” he asked as he hung her coat up.
“Just a glass of water, please.”
“Here you go.” Mick handed her the glass. “Let’s sit down.”
“Thanks,” Beth said as she accepted the drink and sat on the couch. “I wanted to apologize for the things I said before.”
“Beth, it’s…” Mick interrupted.
“No, please let me finish. I want you to know I don’t blame you for Josh’s death. I should never have asked you to turn him into a vampire. He wouldn’t have wanted that.” Mick nodded but said nothing, waiting to see if she would continue.
“There’s something else I wanted to tell you,” Beth added, looking around the room at anything other than Mick. “When his office brought me his personal belongings, I looked through his date book. He had dinner reservations for two tonight with someone named Celeste. I…I went to the restaurant, expecting to confront ‘the other woman.’ But it turns out she was a jeweler and was helping him set his grandmother’s stone for me. I was so embarrassed.”
“Oh! Josh was going to propose to you?”
Beth nodded. “But I realized that even if he had proposed to me, I wouldn’t have been able to say yes.”
“Why not?”
“There’s someone else. There has been for a while. I care about him a lot. And I think it’s time he figured out what he’s going to do about it.” She lifted her eyes and when they met his, they both smiled. As Mick reached over to take her hand, there was a knock at the door, spoiling the moment. Mick wanted to ignore it, but it came again, more insistent.
Beth blushed and pulled her hand away. “Go ahead,” she said, nodding towards the door. Mick stood up with a sigh and walked towards the door. Beth also stood to return her glass to the kitchen.
A few feet from the door, Mick knew who was on the other side, even before checking the security camera. He opened the door and Coraline rushed in, embracing him in a hug which he did not return. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she gushed. Mick pulled away as Beth came out of the kitchen, making her presence known. Coraline’s eyes were cold as she stared at Beth.
“Hello Coraline,” Beth said coolly. Coraline looked between Beth and Mick, but neither moved.
“Hello Beth,” Coraline nodded slightly in greeting. She turned back to Mick. “Mick, I need to talk to you.”
“We have nothing to talk about, Coraline.”
“I have to get away.”
“Then go. I’m not stopping you.”
“I want you to come with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.” Mick turned and reached his hand out towards Beth, who took it and let Mick draw her next to him. Turning back towards Coraline he said, “You need to leave now.”
Coraline looked between them again and then focused back on Mick. “But, I have some of the cure.” She took a small tin out of her pocket and held it out. “I took it from Lance and he’s after me because he wants it back. I’ll give you some if you’ll help me.”
Mick looked at the tin in her hand – what he thought was the answer to his prayers. For a moment he was tempted, but a gentle squeeze of his hand from Beth made him realize his prayers were already being answered. He returned Beth’s squeeze.
“It’s tempting, but no.”
Coraline’s face fell. “But it’s what you’ve always wanted!” she said with a hint of desperation in her voice.
“At one time I did.” Mick looked at Beth and smiled. “But it’s not as important to me now as it once was.” He turned back to look at Coraline. “Besides, I don’t want any favors from you. I don’t want to be beholden to you for anything. Not even that,” he said with a glance down at her hand. “You need to leave. Now.” He began to push her out the door.
“But where will I go? Lance is after me!”
“That’s not my problem, Coraline. Good-bye,” and he shut the door.
MLMLMLML
The doorbell to Josef’s mansion was ringing incessantly. “Yeah, yeah I hear you.” Glancing at the security camera he groaned inwardly and reluctantly opened his door. “Coraline. What an unpleasant surprise.”
Coraline brushed right past him and into his house. “Josef, you have to help me,” she said, turning towards him.
“Let’s get something straight,” he said as he shut the door. “I don’t ‘have’ to do anything.” He walked into his bar. “Would you like a drink before you go?” He poured her a glass of A-positive mixed with whiskey and one for himself. Pushing hers down the bar towards her, he sat on a stool with his own drink, observing the frantic female vamp before him.
“But Lance is after me!”
“Ah, the medieval vampire who never leaves Europe and kicked Mick’s ass earlier today. That Lance?” Coraline nodded. “So you’re the reason he’s here in LA. And this concerns me how?”
“I…I took something from him.” She tried to give him her coy look, but she couldn’t pull it off; she was too afraid and Josef knew it.
“And what might that be?” Josef asked, feigning disinterest.
Coraline pulled the tin from her pocket and set it on the bar. “This. The cure.”
Josef froze with his glass halfway to his lips and then set it back down. He looked between the tin and Coraline.
“So it does exist.” He picked it up and opened it.
Again, Coraline nodded. “It does.”
Josef examined and sniffed the contents. “Tell me everything about this,” he said as he closed the tin and set it back on the bar. “The truth. Where it comes from, why it was made, how to use it – everything.”
Three more drinks and thirty minutes later, Coraline finished telling Josef about the compound.
“So I’ve been trying to reproduce it using a plant in the same family as the extinct one, but without success.”
“To what purpose?”
Coraline sighed. “Since it’s not a permanent cure and merely masks vampirism for a few months, I…I wanted enough to become human so I could win Mick back.” She walked over to the large window and looked out over the city. “And to offer him the chance to use it.”
Josef jumped up from his barstool and went to her, grabbing her arm and spinning her around to face him. “Mick must never hear about this. He knows you’ve been human as Morgan and are a vampire again, but he doesn’t know how or that you actually have some of this compound in your possession.”
Coraline stared into Josef’s intense eyes and then hung her head. “He already knows,” she said.
“What?!” Josef practically choked. “What? How did he find out?”
Coraline shrugged. “I told him. Just before I came here.” Josef stared at her, speechless. “When he showed up at the warehouse and attacked Lance, I ran away. I wanted to go see if he was safe.”
“How considerate of you,” Josef said sarcastically. “Wanted to see if he made it out alive is more like it.” Coraline ignored him.
“I wanted to find out if he was safe, and then I asked him to help me get away and to come with me. I even offered him the cure. I was sure he would help me then.”
“So what happened?”
Coraline finally showed some emotion other than fear. “That goody-two shoes Beth was already at his loft when I arrived,” she said with contempt. “I don’t know what she told him, but suddenly they were holding hands and making goo-goo eyes at each other and he told me the cure wasn’t important to him anymore.”
Josef raised his eyebrows. “Really? ‘Goo-goo eyes?’ And he wasn’t interested in this compound at all?”
“Well, he said he was tempted, but that it didn’t mean as much to him as it once did, and he didn’t want to be beholden to me for any favors.”
“I guess he’s smartened up. Then what happened?”
“Then he told me to leave and pushed me out the door.”
“Hmm, this is all very interesting.” Josef walked back to his bar and fixed himself another drink, lost in thought. Coraline waited for him to say something.
“Well? Are you going to help me or not?” She finally said, coming over and sitting next to him.
Josef stood and reached over the bar, grabbing a small empty vial that he usually used for small blood donations from his freshies to add to his drinks. “Here’s the deal. Give me some of the compound in here,” he said setting the vial in front of her and sitting back down. “And I’ll get you safely out of LA. After that you’re on your own. Don’t return, and never bother Mick or Beth again. Ever. Is that understood?” Josef looked her straight in the eye.
She wilted under Josef’s deadly stare and turned away, biting her lip. Josef pushed the vial a little closer to her without saying a word.
“Ever?” she repeated, turning back to face him. “How about just until Beth dies? He’ll never turn her,” she added, looking for a loophole.
“Ever. As in for eternity. Who knows? He might surprise us both and decide to turn her one day. I always thought she’d make a good vampire. Either way, it doesn’t matter. You bother either of them again and I will hunt you down.” More silence. “Come on, Coraline,” Josef said in amazement. “You can’t possibly be considering refusing my offer?”
“Why do you want some of the compound? You always said you’d never want to return to the mortal coil.”
“Maybe I just want some for personal safety reasons. Eternity’s a long time and you never know when the world might turn crazy again. Besides, it’s really none of your business why I want some. Just give it to me and I’ll start making the arrangements for your extraction. Do we have a deal?”
Coraline nodded slowly.
“Say it out loud.”
“Yes Josef, we have a deal,” she said curtly, aggravated that he could wrangle this out of her. However, she knew she had no choice and was resigned to her fate. “I will give you some of the compound and I promise never to bother Mick or Beth again. But,” she added, “you need to help me get out of the country; not just LA.”
“Agreed,” Josef replied.
Coraline reached for the vial and opened it. Using a cocktail stirrer from the bar she put a small amount of the precious compound into the glass vial and capped it tightly, pushing it back towards him. “There.”
Josef picked up the vial and held it up to eye level, examining it in the light. Then he slipped it into his coat pocket. “A pleasure doing business with you.”
To be continued...
Wow. 
I love how you've put your own spin on things. 
I love the changes in the scenario...so much closer to what we wanted, right? 
I love to put a different spin on what we know. 
