Haven Ficlet: Brothers
Title: Brothers
Fandom: Haven
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Vince and Dave Teagues.
Rating: G
Word Count: 668
Spoilers: End of Season 4, beginning of Season 5.
Summary: Vince learns Dave’s deepest and darkest secret.
Written For: Prompt #038 - Bloodline at fandomweekly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Haven, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
Haven, Maine, looks like the kind of idyllic, picturesque little coastal town that anyone wanting to escape the big city rat race would be glad to escape to. The people who live there know different; it’s not nearly as peaceful as it appears on the surface.
Many of Haven’s inhabitants belong to families who have lived there for generations; some can even trace their ancestry back to when the town was first built. Genealogy matters here, bloodlines are all important, because of the Troubles.
Every twenty-seven years, as regular as clockwork, the Troubles surface again. Some people glide through the upheaval unscathed, either because they’re not from a Troubled family, or because for one reason or another, their Trouble isn’t activated. They’re the lucky ones. For others, when the Troubles return and some emotional event triggers their family curse, their lives become a waking nightmare. Those afflicted do their best to conceal from others that they’re Troubled, all too aware of the prejudice and discrimination they’ll face if they’re found out, the hostility that will likely be directed at them by friends and neighbours. But some Troubles can’t be kept hidden; they’re too volatile, too noticeable, too cruel… Families get torn apart, and some never recover. Some don’t even survive.
For Vince and Dave Teagues, keeping track of everything to do with the Troubles is a vocation above and beyond their regular job of running the local newspaper. There’s nothing they won’t do to protect their town and its inhabitants, although they don’t always see eye to eye on the best way to accomplish that goal. As close as they are, sometimes their opposing views cause friction between them and their normal bickering steps up a gear into outright arguments, and yet no matter how serious the disagreement, somehow they always make up again. It’s what brothers do.
They’re not above keeping secrets from each other either though. Like any two people who spend so much time together, there have always been little things they’ve kept to themselves, but there’s nothing little about the bombshell Dave just dropped on Vince; it’s big enough to rock the foundations of his whole world. To say he’s shocked would be the understatement of the decade, maybe even the century.
All these years, Dave has kept from Vince the fact that they’re not related by blood, as Vince has always believed. Not only was Dave adopted, but now it seems that he may have originally come from the Other Place, the world that exists on the other side of the void, and now something is trying to pull him back there, a situation that Dave understandably finds terrifying.
Vince sympathises, but even so he can’t help being angry with Dave for keeping something so fundamental from him for so long. Dave is his brother, has been an integral part of his life for as long as he can remember, his constant companion, sounding board, co-conspirator, and so much more. Why couldn’t Dave trust him with the truth? Did he think Vince would disown him if he knew? It doesn’t matter to Vince that he and Dave don’t share the same blood; they grew up together and shared damn near everything else. How can Dave think for an instant that not having the same birth parents would change that in the slightest?
So maybe bloodlines aren’t always as important as Vince has always assumed them to be, especially when it comes to the person closest to him. He and Dave are family, each of them all the other really has left, and Vince will do whatever it takes to protect his brother and keep him from being sucked back into the Other Place. Come what may, they’re in this together, just like they always have been. As long as they both live, nothing and no one is ever going to come between them, not if Vince has anything to do with it. Blood is strong, but a brother’s love is stronger by far.
The End
Fandom: Haven
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Vince and Dave Teagues.
Rating: G
Word Count: 668
Spoilers: End of Season 4, beginning of Season 5.
Summary: Vince learns Dave’s deepest and darkest secret.
Written For: Prompt #038 - Bloodline at fandomweekly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Haven, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
Haven, Maine, looks like the kind of idyllic, picturesque little coastal town that anyone wanting to escape the big city rat race would be glad to escape to. The people who live there know different; it’s not nearly as peaceful as it appears on the surface.
Many of Haven’s inhabitants belong to families who have lived there for generations; some can even trace their ancestry back to when the town was first built. Genealogy matters here, bloodlines are all important, because of the Troubles.
Every twenty-seven years, as regular as clockwork, the Troubles surface again. Some people glide through the upheaval unscathed, either because they’re not from a Troubled family, or because for one reason or another, their Trouble isn’t activated. They’re the lucky ones. For others, when the Troubles return and some emotional event triggers their family curse, their lives become a waking nightmare. Those afflicted do their best to conceal from others that they’re Troubled, all too aware of the prejudice and discrimination they’ll face if they’re found out, the hostility that will likely be directed at them by friends and neighbours. But some Troubles can’t be kept hidden; they’re too volatile, too noticeable, too cruel… Families get torn apart, and some never recover. Some don’t even survive.
For Vince and Dave Teagues, keeping track of everything to do with the Troubles is a vocation above and beyond their regular job of running the local newspaper. There’s nothing they won’t do to protect their town and its inhabitants, although they don’t always see eye to eye on the best way to accomplish that goal. As close as they are, sometimes their opposing views cause friction between them and their normal bickering steps up a gear into outright arguments, and yet no matter how serious the disagreement, somehow they always make up again. It’s what brothers do.
They’re not above keeping secrets from each other either though. Like any two people who spend so much time together, there have always been little things they’ve kept to themselves, but there’s nothing little about the bombshell Dave just dropped on Vince; it’s big enough to rock the foundations of his whole world. To say he’s shocked would be the understatement of the decade, maybe even the century.
All these years, Dave has kept from Vince the fact that they’re not related by blood, as Vince has always believed. Not only was Dave adopted, but now it seems that he may have originally come from the Other Place, the world that exists on the other side of the void, and now something is trying to pull him back there, a situation that Dave understandably finds terrifying.
Vince sympathises, but even so he can’t help being angry with Dave for keeping something so fundamental from him for so long. Dave is his brother, has been an integral part of his life for as long as he can remember, his constant companion, sounding board, co-conspirator, and so much more. Why couldn’t Dave trust him with the truth? Did he think Vince would disown him if he knew? It doesn’t matter to Vince that he and Dave don’t share the same blood; they grew up together and shared damn near everything else. How can Dave think for an instant that not having the same birth parents would change that in the slightest?
So maybe bloodlines aren’t always as important as Vince has always assumed them to be, especially when it comes to the person closest to him. He and Dave are family, each of them all the other really has left, and Vince will do whatever it takes to protect his brother and keep him from being sucked back into the Other Place. Come what may, they’re in this together, just like they always have been. As long as they both live, nothing and no one is ever going to come between them, not if Vince has anything to do with it. Blood is strong, but a brother’s love is stronger by far.
The End