Chapter Text
Bloom was always a precocious child.
“I’ll break your teeth if you don’t give Cindy her doll back, Andy Melkin,” she spat through her own six year old gap-teeth. “I swear to god almighty I’ll break your teeth.”
There were many possibilities for Bloom growing up, all throughout the range of her qualities, love of art, kindness, leadership, bravery, curiosity, compassion, imagination, loyalty, passion, all of them a constantly shifting amalgam that made up her being, taking on different shapes at different times, some more present and others less, but they were all Bloom, undeniably. And while in another world, Bloom might have worked with her mother more in her florist shop in Gardenia, and taken on a shine more emphasizing love of art, kindness, and compassion, with appropriate life lessons to go along with it, this Bloom spent more time with her father at the fire station, the lessons she learned as a result of which ended up being a little different.
“Finally decided to show up to work again, Mike?” One of the other big firefighters slapped him on the back, before looking down at the tiny girl on the floor. “Ah, and I see you’ve brought in a new recruit. What’s your name, little missy?”
“Daddy?” Bloom pointed up at the man. “Why did he hit you?”
Her dad smiled, scratching the back of his neck as he tried to find a way to explain. “Oh, he didn’t hit me, honey, he… okay, well I guess he did hit me, but it’s not a bad thing, it’s like a friendly kind of hit. Understand?”
Lesson one: sometimes hitting can be friendly.
Bloom nodded, absorbing the new information before turning to the man. “I’m Bloom,” she introduced herself, before swinging a fist back and jabbing it forward to land on the man’s leg, who laughed uproariously at the action.
“She picks things up fast, doesn’t she, Mikey?” He slapped her father on the back again, crouching down to get slightly closer to eye level of the girl. “Well it’s very nice to meet you, Bloom. I’m uncle Nick, and if you work hard, you can grow up to be big and strong just like your old man, do you want that?”
Bloom’s eyes widened, looking up at her dad, larger than life, before turning back to the man and nodding hurriedly. “Mmhmm.”
Lesson two: she could be big and strong.
“Now, Bloom, I’ve got some of your favorite toys set up over here, but if you ever need something, ask one of the other firefighters around here and they’ll come get me, okay? Don’t wander off in the station,” her father said, and Bloom nodded quickly, ambling off to her toys in the corner to play while her dad worked.
The report when they reached home was good. “I love the fiwe station,” she announced excitedly. “I wanna go again.”
The report from the other parents was less so. “She’s started hitting the children at group,” misses Mevilda had reported. “I don’t know where she’d pick up such a habit, but I’d advise you rein her in.”
The talk her parents had with her about that was instrumental in changing her behavior, though likely not in any way they could have foreseen.
“Listen, honey, the fire station is… special. We can hit each other there because we all know what we mean by it, and we’ve signed up to put each other’s lives in our hands, to keep each other safe. It’s like… home, you understand? How you can hug and kiss mommy and daddy but you shouldn’t do that to strangers?” Her dad tried to explain as Bloom nodded, eyes wide with rapt attention. “It’s a little like that.” He looked over to her mom for help, at a loss where to go with the conversation next.
“Bloom?” Her mom broke in, and Bloom’s attention rotated to fixate on her. “The fire station is magic, okay? Don’t hit anyone outside of it.” Bloom nodded, absolutely assured of that fact.
“Unless it’s a bad person trying to take you,” her dad put in. “You remember we talked about that? If a bad person tries to take you, you can hit them as hard as you can and run away, okay?” Her mother pursed her lips a little at the mixed messaging, but let it go, nodding along.
“That’s right, Bloom. Only in the fire station, or if some bad person tries to hurt you, okay?”
“Okay,” Bloom agreed.
Lesson three: bad people should be hit. As hard as she could.
If her parents were able to divine when and where exactly this lesson had been created, they might have been able to do something about it. As it was, the lesson was instead quietly tucked away into the lockbox of a young Bloom’s soul, where it became the pattern for a variety of new and exciting lessons to follow.
From Brian Abernathy, who threw an action figure at her face when she tried to get him to stop sitting on Herman Fischer, she learned lessons four and five.
Lesson four: some bad people use weapons.
Lesson five: not dodging hurts a lot.
From Zach Borders, who tattled to the teacher when she hit him for cheating at red light green light, she learned lesson six.
Lesson six: sometimes bad people use good people as shields.
And from Andy Melkin’s older brother Jake, who soundly beat her up after she’d done the same to Andy, she learned the ever important lesson seven.
Lesson seven: there will always be somebody bigger than you.
This was a fact of life it took Bloom a long time to struggle with before accepting, but it made her stronger in the long run.
Her parents had raised an exceptionally strong-willed child, and while they weren’t entirely sure how that happened, they were happy she was happy, stood up for what she believed in, and loved them dearly. As much as they wished they received fewer angry calls from parents, Bloom was still their darling daughter.
“Hey, dad, hey uncle Nick,” Bloom greeted both men as she walked into the fire station, hands stuffed in the pockets of her favorite puffy green down jacket hanging open in the front in a way that wasn’t quite appropriate for any kind of weather, but that she found most comforting nonetheless.
“Recruit Bloomingdale,” Nick saluted her with the ridiculous nickname that had somehow lasted her entire childhood.
Bloom saluted back, face screwed up in something almost resembling seriousness. “Fire Chief Santa, sir,” she barked back in her best approximation of a military tone.
“I’ve decided to blame you for my daughter,” her dad deadpanned, checking the hose on the truck. “We had her all good to go and you ruined her.”
“You love me.” Bloom leaned her back against her dad, arms folded as she looked around the fire station. “Hey, where’s Chris?”
“Chris is outta town,” Nick huffed, the rolling chair he sat down in squeaking complainingly under his weight. “He’s supposed to be moving to Nevada next month, you know.”
“What? That sucks,” Bloom whined, slumping further against her dad. “Why does everyone cool always leave Gardenia?”
Nick raised an eyebrow. “You wanna try revising that statement, recruit?”
Bloom stood up straight, saluting again. “Everyone cool except for you Fire Chief Santa, sir,” she barked out, and he nodded, stiffly.
“That’s better.”
“It’s just the way of things, Bloom,” her dad broke in. “When you go off to college, you’ll probably leave Gardenia, too.”
“Right, because I’m definitely going to college, dad,” she rolled her eyes sarcastically. “Gonna major in art and music.”
“Your art is good,” her dad said.
“My art is fine.”
“It’s good.”
“My point is, I’m better off just getting a job and kicking around here.” She shrugged. “Nothing I want to learn in stupid college anyway.”
Her dad sighed. “Bloom, you know your mother and I support you, but there’s no way I’m letting you max out your potential bartending at the Tutti Frutti Music Bar; you’re too smart for that.”
“So smart I got nothing I want to study,” she sighed, rubbing the bandage on her just barely healed broken nose.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Application forms are due soon, you know,” he said.
“Ugh, don’t remind me.” She shifted off him, changing to swinging idly around the fire pole with one arm. “What makes you so special and wonderful we should let you into our school?” She said in a high-pitched, sing-song, voice. “Please write a ten thousand word essay we’re definitely gonna read.” She scoffed. “Total waste of time.”
“Just wait until you find a college you actually want to go to,” her dad said. “You’ll change your tune, then.”
“Not likely.”
The fire alarm went off, everyone in the station moving to quickly put on their gear and board the truck. “Get out of here, recruit,” Nick told her. “Go take a walk.”
She didn’t even have the energy to fake salute him before he was gone, leaving her walking down the road kicking a rock with her hands back in her pockets.
“Well, I could always go back home…” Bloom mused to herself, lips twitching into a frown. “Where it’s completely empty. Or to mom’s shop, where she’ll nag me about applications.” She sighed. “Guess it’s to the batting cage again.”
Her parents had tried a variety of sports in order to channel Bloom’s ‘aggression’ as they saw it, into something productive. Baseball, basketball, soccer, field hockey, a stint of kickboxing at a gym just outside of town that produced noticeably unhelpful results in curbing Bloom’s fights, even horseback riding were all tried, and enjoyed to different extents before eventually being dropped.
Bloom’s problem wasn’t that she couldn’t do sports; she could do them. Following rules and operating within a team were much harder, but neither of those were her main problem. Her problem was that she simply had no passion for them. She had decent grades with no particular interest in any school subject. She could go to college if she ever figured out anything she actually wanted to do.
Anything, anything, her parents begged. Anything but fighting.
Bloom picked up a bat entering the cage, setting up the automatic pitching machine and walking back to loosen her shoulders, square her stance, and draw the bat back to swing.
“Hey Bloom,” Mitzi’s voice grated against the back of her skull.
Her bat cracked against the baseball, the sound echoing through the area, as she readied it again to take another swing. “Mitzi,” she greeted evenly.
“My new boyfriend Dominic was asking to meet you,” she said faux-sweetly. “I’ve been telling him all about what good friends we are.”
“That so.” Crack, the baseball slammed into the metal fencing on the other side of the cage, spinning in place for a moment before dropping.
“You haven’t been nice to Mitzi,” a deeper, dumber, voice interjected. “I don’t like that.”
A ball was spit out by the machine, passing right by Bloom and into the net without her taking a swing. Then another, then another.
Slowly, Bloom lowered the bat in her hand until the tip just barely scraped against the ground, her neck twisting to get her first look at ‘Dominic’, big and burly with Mitzi hanging off his arm, and a big, stupid, glare on his face. “Why don’t you come out here?” Mitzi offered, “and Dominic can tell you why it’s a bad idea to upset me?”
A long, slow, smile crawled across Bloom’s face, her healing nose throbbing, her heartrate rising.
The bat in her hand felt heavy and light at the same time, hot and cold in her grip, unfamiliar and perfect all at once. Bloom was a bright young girl, and she’d learned lesson eight a long time ago by then.
Lesson eight: bad guys weren’t the only ones who could use weapons.
“Sure.” She glided out of the batting cage, bat twisting between her fingers as she stepped outside, Dominic towering above her, but elation singing in the adrenaline pounding through her. “Why don’t you explain it to me, nice and slow?”
Bloom loved her jacket. She usually preferred being too warm to too cold, and the down made excellent padding if someone managed to land a hit, but the best part? Winter jacket meant waterproofing, and a little bit of cold water lifted blood off of it like a dream because of that.
Bloom finished running the park’s water fountain over her sleeve, finally satisfied and putting it back on.
Bats were harder to get blood off of, but this wasn’t her bat, technically, so she could ditch it back at the batting cages when she went back that way and call it good.
She whistled, merrily, twisting the bat between her fingers again, swinging it idly through the air as she wandered the park.
Her shoulders ached, and she had more than a few new bruises on her arms and legs, but… it wasn’t an unproductive day, all in all.
Bloom’s ears pricked up, her footsteps and whistling both halting in an instant.
For a moment, she thought she heard a-
A woman screamed, and Bloom shot in the direction of the sound, fast footsteps sprinting through a deep thicket of bushes she’d never been past, launching through the other end to see a blonde girl attacked by… animals?
They weren’t like any animals Bloom had ever seen, so the question mark was quite pronounced, but the girl was obviously in some distress.
And Bloom already had a bat.
One of the creatures leapt up toward the girl, trying to grab at her face, but Bloom was already moving.
Crack, the bat slammed against the thing with an echoing sound, its shell cracking open and a black mist pouring out instead of blood, collapsed and twitching on the ground by the time Bloom had already set onto the next one, bat smashing into the next creature as well.
“What in the name of winx are you doing here?” The blonde girl demanded, swinging what seemed like a far too delicate staff to be used in a fight toward one of the creatures, missing by a mile if not for the beam of light that shot from it and obliterated the creature at range.
“Serving? Protecting?” Crack, another one fell to her bat. “Containing? I dunno, pick one. I’m helping out.”
A massive… man? The question mark on that was also quite large, stepped out of some kind of swirling vortex, skin as yellow as corn, with purple overalls and an offensive stench that whirled around Bloom’s nose in a way that made it throb harder.
“I’ll take that Staff now, little fairy,” he raised a big meaty hand to point at the stick the blonde girl wielded. “Now hand it over.”
The girl shot out another beam of light at one of the smaller creatures, breathing heavily and leaning against the staff like a cane. “Like, no way, you big brute.”
“Have it your way. Take her down, ghouls,” he commanded, and more of the little creatures flooded out of the vortex, setting upon Bloom and the clearly exhausted blonde.
“Any ideas?” Bloom grunted, cracking her bat against another, while one of them clung to it, forcing her to kick that one off personally.
“I might be able to manage a wider range sunlight spell to deal with the ghouls,” she caught one of them leaping for her throat with the staff, shaking it to the ground. “But with how low my winx is right now, there’s no way I’d be able to fight mister tall, dark, and gruesome over there afterwards.”
“Leave him to me.” Bloom felt the bat grind against the thick callouses on her hands, bringing it back to swing again. “Do that… whatever, that thing you said.”
“Here goes…” she breathed in deeply, closing her eyes and twirling the staff in her hand. “Of gleaming sun on autumn brows, please help me in my earnest fight, I bid the cure for evil rouse, burn them in Solarian light,” she shouted the last part, her staff gleaming bright enough the dark creatures surrounding them burst apart, the giant yellow man charging forward to attack her while she was concentrating.
That’s where Bloom stepped in.
Her bat crashed against the man’s jaw, forcing him stumbling back, enough Bloom could press forward, shooting her elbow as hard as she could into his pronounced gut, doubling him over and exposing the back of his head to overhead swing, cracking against him with enough force the bat almost split in half.
The man crashed down to the floor, thoroughly dealt with by a combo Bloom had practiced dozens of times, though admittedly holding back a lot more against people not actively assaulting young girls.
Or, Bloom thought as the giant man stood up again, at least she thought she’d thoroughly dealt with him. “That hurt, hu-man,” he growled, stretching the word into two. “I’ll make you pay for that.”
It was funny, the way he was talking, it was almost like he…
Bloom’s gaze flicked to his ears, just a little too sharp, his eyes a bit too red, his hands big enough to eclipse her entire head, able to grab and squeeze her beneath his fingers until she popped there, like a grape.
…wasn’t human.
Bloom felt fear flicker through her being for a moment, before the sound of the girl behind her hitting the ground unconscious reached her ears, and she cupped her hands around the feeling.
She was afraid. Firefighters were afraid all the time, that was okay. But it didn’t stop them from doing what they had to.
Bloom was there to help someone. So that was what she was going to do, fear or no fear.
She lifted up the bat to point challengingly at the giant in front of her. “I’ll break your teeth if you take even one step toward her.” She shifted it back behind her, readying the swing. “I swear to god almighty, I’ll break your teeth.”
The creature hesitated, clearly remembering the pain of before, even if it didn’t take him out completely. “This isn’t over hu-man,” he shouted, retreating with a handful of the smaller creatures back into the vortex. “I’ll be back.”
Bloom planted the bat in the dirt, standing like a sentinel. “I’ll be waiting.” Before the vortex closed, the blonde and her alone.
That was when the bat snapped in half completely and Bloom faceplanted into the dirt, groaning as every muscle she had loudly complained about the encounter. One of the smaller creatures had ripped her shirt, she was covered in tiny bruises and bites, and she could feel her overexerted arms, legs, and shoulders already beginning to twinge with the sudden work they’d been put through.
But.
Bloom turned, watching the blonde girl laying on the grass unconscious, but safe, protected.
Yeah. She rolled onto her back, staring up at the darkening sky. Still worth it.
It was probably another hour before she managed to force herself to her feet, throwing the girl over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry and beginning the long walk home.
By the time she finally made it back, it was fully dark out, and her parents scrambled to the door as soon as they heard her trying to open.
“Bloom, what on Earth were you doing out so l- who is that?” Her mother gasped, as Bloom passed her and laid the still unconscious girl out on the couch, sitting down on the floor with a heavy groan.
“Dunno,” Bloom admitted, wiping sweat off her face with a grimace. “She was being attacked by some guy in the park. Fell unconscious before I could get anything out of her.”
“I’m calling an ambulance,” her dad moved to the phone before Bloom spoke up.
“Don’t,” she said suddenly, making both parents look at her.
“Why not?” Her dad said, phone in hand.
Bloom bit her lip, not sure how much she should say. “I think she’s… not normal.”
Her dad raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”
“It means magic,” the girl yawned, finally sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.
“Wh-magic?” Her dad moved to her, using a small pen light attached to his keys to check her eyes for a concussion, firefighting training taking priority in the situation.
“Ah, why are you shining that in my face?” She complained, pushing him away to rub her head. “And yeah, magic. I’m like, totally the fairy princess of Solaria.”
Her mom and dad exchanged glances. “Ambulance,” he decided, and her mom agreed.
The blonde rolled her eyes, flicking her fingers and changing the color of the wall to a deep, unmistakable, pink with a wave of sparkles seeming to sprout from her fingers.
Her mom gasped, walking over to touch it, her hands coming back dry. “But, that’s impossible.”
“As if,” the blonde answered confidently. “It’s magic.”
“So, the man attacking you,” her dad slowly put the phone back on the hook, “that was some kind of… wizard?”
“I wish. That was an ogre, really nasty brutes, with a bunch of ghouls, too. I would’ve been a total goner if your daughter hadn’t helped.”
“Yeah, well.” Her dad scratched the back of his head, sitting down clearly overwhelmed. “She’s a firecracker.”
“Did our…” her mom hesitated. “I don’t know how to say this exactly. Our daughter didn’t do anything… magical, did she?”
The blonde tapped a finger to her chin, humming. “Nope,” she said. “It’s a shame, cause it’d be totally cool if she came with me to Alfea.”
Bloom raised an eyebrow at that. “And Alfea is?”
“Only the best fairy school in all of Magix, which is like totally the crossroads of all the magic dimensions,” she explained.
“Well ain’t that a shame.” Bloom cracked a smirk at the idea of going to a school for fairies, just walking around in her puff jacket while pixies threw spells over her head. “Guess my normal human self is just gonna have to kick it here.”
The blonde’s eyes sparked, hand to her chin as she thought hard about something. “Maybe not…” she hummed.
Bloom rubbed one of her aching arms, standing up to grab some water out of the sink. “What do you mean?”
The blonde clapped her hands together excitedly. “I know the perfect way to thank you for saving my life,” she announced suddenly.
“I don’t really need thanks,” Bloom said, grabbing a glass from the cupboard. “If you’re a princess, though, I’d definitely look into picking up some bodyguards.”
“No, this is perfect. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.” She stood up, moving far too quickly into the kitchen where she could grab Bloom’s hands, staring into her eyes. “You could go to Red Fountain.”
Bloom looked at her askance. “What the heck is a ‘Red Fountain’?”
The girl’s smile widened. “Oh, I promise,” she said. “You’re going to love it.”
