Welcome readers. I've been wanting to write this story for literally years, but have finally mustered the courage to give to you all this project which is very dear to my heart. I've always wanted to write a variation of the Goliath/Elisa romance, but could never figure out how I wanted to frame it. Until now. I will not be writing out the whole series word for word. For that, you can watch the original. Instead, imagine this piece containing five or six romantic novelisations of a movie adaptation of the series. That's the best I can describe the format this will take. There will be AU artistic licence taken in order to give this my own flair. Some characters and scenarios will be expanded upon or given more focus, to which I hope people will enjoy.

A special thank you to iloveDracoDH for helping me with motivation and typos.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Gargoyles and all its characters belong to Disney/Greg Weisman

~ Protect And Serve ~

by DONOVAN94

~Book One - Stone Awakened~

Prologue

Scotland, 938 A.D. Castle Wyvern

The spring night was mild for that time of year. A thin layer of cloud blanketed the sky to hold in the warmth of the world. The moon, fully round, pierced through the thin shroud with its bright glare. In its light, the frost that covered the earth beyond the castle walls glittered like an array of twinkling diamonds. It was peaceful beyond, where not a creature stirred; no wolf sang its lonely songs, no bear would shuffle in the undergrowth of the forests, all the birds were tucked in their nests. The screech of banshees were silent, the kelpies stirred not in their watery depths, and the dragons slept on atop their hoards of gold.

The Clan leader walked the ramparts of the castle, his gaze searching out over the sea far below the cliff on which the castle was perched. It had been many a night since things were this calm, he realised. It was a welcome change. There would be no attacks tonight. In either case, patrols would continue as normal. Though there were some gripes amongst the human soldiers about leaving their safety in the hands of Gargoyles, the prince squashed those murmurings. The Clan leader appreciated the support. The royal family had always been good friends with the Wyvern Clan ever since the pact had been sworn that they would build their castle atop their ancestral home cliffs. A Gargoyle could no more stop protecting the castle than breathe the air, after all. Whether some milk-drinkers liked it or not, the Gargoyle clan belonged here.

Fires burned bright in their braziers, human sentries huddled round to try and warm their shivering hands. The Clan Leader ignored them, for the cold could not pierce his thick hide the same as theirs. Past the stables he went, offering a gentle pat to the beasts of burden that neighed softly at him as he passed. Behind the stables stood an archway in the stone, thick old double doors made of stone. The Clan Leader wrenched one open, using his Gargoyle strength to move them the way no human possibly could. A dark abyss greeted him, and he folded his wings over his chest to keep them from brushing the walls of the tight tunnel. Down a set of steps he descended, deep into the earth. Moonlight could not find its way down here, and instead, torches illuminated the end of the climb down. Another archway, this one in stone as old as the cliffs themselves, letters in an ancient tongue even the Gargoyles had forgotten carved above the entryway.

Stepping through, a shiver of the slightest magic swept over the Clan Leader, enough to make his wings twitch. A spell of protection, ancient as the Rookery itself, permitting only the blood of the clan to enter here. It was the one place the humans could never come, one last sanctuary.

The Rookery was a large rocky cavern, the stalagmites and stalactites coated with glowing green moss that offered a soft illumination and might offer some nutritional food to any hatchlings nested within. But the females of the clan were not due to lay their next eggs for another year or more yet. The last batch of hatchlings were only just old enough to leave the Rookery completely, having now outgrown their nursery.

They were all gathered now, just over a dozen of them, the hatchlings that had survived to reach their adolescence at last. They were a cluster of noisy babbling wings, all the different colours of the rainbow. Upon his entry into their sanctum, the younglings all hushed out of respect for their leader. He smirked. He'd only inherited the position of Clan Leader two winters past, but it still felt newly gratifying to experience the reverence the position granted him. With the eyes of the younglings watching him avidly, he made his way across the Rookery towards his mate, who had rounded up all the younglings here as he'd asked, though she had evidently had trouble keeping them under control.

As they met, he immediately took her into his arms, running his talons through her short, raven hair. To hold her so close, bodies pressed together, his core felt at piece as their hearts became one. All he could feel in that moment was her love and contentment, as surely as she could feel his own. Before he released her, he gave her a throaty rumble. Her webbed ears wiggled, as they always did when she might've blushed if she were human.

As one, they turned towards the clan's children. It was time. Though twenty years old in human years, a Gargoyle's slowed aging meant they were half that number in terms of their development. About to leave their childhood behind in order to undertake the change to adulthood, the most important lesson of their lives was about to be imparted to them. And this was his first time, on his turn as Clan-Leader, that he could teach this very lesson.

"Gather round, youngen's," he beckoned them. The children dared to inch closer, mesmerised by his mere presence yet cautious for fear of trespassing some unknown boundary. They all seemed to huddle behind one of their number. A big lad, even for one his age, with a broad structure that promised of an impressive build. Indeed, the Clan Leader thought, if how large he was now was any indication, he would surely grow to be the biggest Gargoyle the Clan had ever seen.

"As Clan Leader and Clan Mother," his mate said with a warm smile, "It is our duty to teach you all that you will need to know for when you come of age."

"Aye. And there be none ye will learn that'll be more important than the most sacred of Gargoyle rites: The Soulmate." He watched as the children all glanced at one another, puzzled. "Now, ye all know that unlike the humans we share our home with, we do not have families and we do not have names. We are Clan. And you are children to all the Clan, and we all raise you as devotedly as a human raises a pup of their own blood."

"Though we have no family of blood to hold above the Clan, there is one bond we keep, one you will learn to hold so dear to your heart it will be worth more than your own life."

"A Gargoyle mates for life. It is a commitment, a promise, an unbreakable binding that seals two Gargoyles together as one, forever. But it be not with just any Gargoyle ye can mate with." He could feel his mate's excitement beside him, a flutter inside that did not come from his own being. He looked down at his side and took her talons in his. "A Soulmate is the one! You'll find them when yer heart beats for them alone, when it feels like the earth and the stars revolve around them."

The obsidian eyes he adored so much glittered in the magical green glow of the moss around them. His beloved smiled so deeply, he thought he would be lost in her forever. But the spell was broken when a little voice asked loudly: "But how do we find them?"

"Are ye not surrounded by yer Rookery Siblings, lad?" The Clan Leader smirked, gesturing to the other younglings around the small blue boy. "As ye grow up, look to each other. Ye'll learn aboot one another, and ye'll find that someone yer were meant for."

"Do we have to?" whined a black haired lad with a long thin face, casting sideways glances at each of his Rookery Siblings as if they were all beneath him.

"Of course!" the Clan Mother huffed in slight outrage at such a question. "Finding a Soulmate is to find the one that will make you happy for all of your days. They shall be yours for eternity, and you will be theirs, to protect and serve. To be without a Soulmate is to live an empty existence, void of true love. There is no worse a fate."

"But…" a small lass at the front, her hair a fiery, wild red, looked up at her elders, fear in her eyes. "But what if we cannot find them?"

"Dunne worry aboot that, lass," the Clan Leader chuckled gently. "A Gargoyle has never been without a mate. It's the natural order of things."

He was perhaps forty in human years when they gave him his name. Goliath. For he had grown strong and mighty into adulthood, and he'd trained and worked all that time to earn his status as the clan's best warrior. At first, he had rebelled against the idea, for Gargoyles did not see the point of names. But his mentor and Clan Leader had encouraged him to accept the moniker of respect. And so it made him an oddity amongst the clan, the only named Gargoyle, Goliath.

But that was not the only oddity.

Ever since that night when he and his Rookery Siblings had last seen their nursery, he had taken to heart the teachings of the Clan Leader and his mate. He had looked to each of his Rookery Sisters, had grown fond of them all, and eagerly awaited discovering which one of them would be the one for him. Yet the phenomenon was not as eager to find him as he was to find it, however. That had not bothered him to begin with. Perhaps he was still too young, or perhaps it was something that needed to be initiated by his partner. In either case, he had plenty of time, he'd told himself.

And yet, as the years passed, all of his Rookery Siblings began to pair off, one by one. They each began to find their Soulmates amongst each other, or in some rare cases, they found it in the generation before them. Each time, Goliath noted the change that occurred. The pair would gravitate towards one another, as if pulled together by some invisible force, as if they could not bare to be parted. Such happiness would shine in their eyes, the pair would seem to be eclipsed by joy. The rest of the world was insignificant, so long as they held each other in their arms. Goliath watched on, unsure how to feel. He watched as all those he knew and loved began to find the one that made them complete and moved on to the next part of their lives together. Whilst he was left behind.

He grew desperate as time went on. He even searched amongst the next batch of adolescents that had been in the Rookery after his generation. But nothing. Not once did his heart stir, never could he hear the echo of another's love inside himself, never did he feel as if he'd found her! A yawning pit began to open inside of him, an unfathomable loneliness as he began to wonder if there was something wrong with him. His Clan-Leader had said that all Gargoyles found their Soulmate, that it was the natural way of things. Did that mean that if a Gargoyle couldn't, he was unnatural?

After a time, the elders began to notice as well. He was the only one in the clan without a mate. Whispers must've started, though he did not hear any directly to his face. He knew his mentor must surely have protected him from the worst of it. If others thought there was something wrong with him, they might order his position as Second-In-Command be given to someone else. After all, the Second might one day lead the Clan into the future, but a Gargoyle without a mate? The Clan would need a Clan-Mother alongside him. If he had no one, what future could he possibly offer? But the politics didn't matter to Goliath, not as much as it should have. He only cared about this hole inside himself, this desperate ache in his heart, a yearning to feel the love that everyone else in the Clan had, except himself.

In his eyes, when his resentment got the best of him for a moment, he thought they all took it for granted. They did not know what it was to be alone.

All that is… except for one.

They had grown up together as the best of friends. She was almost as good of a warrior as he was. Her strength was surprising for one of her small size, but what she lacked in stature, she made up for in skill and a fiery passion that would terrorise the fiercest demons. And through his lonely years, she was the only one who was there by his side, reassuring him, and he began to realise that it was because she knew exactly what it felt like. He had been surprised when no other male had come for her, had declared them one, now and forever. And when she watched other couples glide past them on their mating flights, he recognised that same secret disappointment he often felt in himself.

Desperately, he tried to push himself to bond with her, that perhaps they were simply late bloomers. But nothing. She was not the one, and he knew that even when she wanted him to be hers, she could not move her own heart to form the bond.

A decision laid before them both. To either carry on their lives, endlessly searching for that someone, that key to eternal happiness, that Goliath wasn't even sure existed? Or…

It was she who first suggested the arrangement. When they were out on patrol, alone, on the stroke of the witching hour. It was clear that they would not find their Soulmates, she'd said, that fate had dealt them a cruel hand, but they not need accept it. What if they joined together, told the Clan they were merely late in forming the bond, and just simply held onto each other, ensuring neither of them would be lonely in the long years to come. But what if one of them did eventually find their Soulmate, he had asked. She had tried to hide her hurt, but had said that should that happen, she would not hold him accountable to her. They were not real Soulmates, so it would not crush their hearts so utterly to walk away from this arrangement.

The choice hadn't seemed that difficult at the time. A potential lifetime of loneliness, or a relationship forged on trust and a compassionate act to comfort and care for one another? He had accepted. And though it had at first felt strange, the pair of them had built their love, for Goliath would never deny that he did grow to feel something for his fiery-haired angel of the night. And the clan accepted their lie with ease, and all was made well.

But no one had told him how even love for someone other than a Soulmate could hurt like a thousand hooks pulling him apart in all directions. For all the clan had wanted for him had come true and more. He would become the most respected amongst his kind, would become a Leader destined for legend. He would have the love and loyalty of all the clan, and a mate to be proud of by his side. And perhaps he had grown arrogant, had thought that nothing could fell him now that he had peace. For perhaps it was that hubris that had brought the doom he could never have imagined upon his clan, and the curse that would seal his fate…