A L E X

Proximo wasn't answering. Makayla was on the dark path to self destruction. And me?

I was trying to figure out how it had all gone to shit in the blink of an eye. I stared at my hands. They rippled briefly before I touched the side of my face and the stranger with red hair faded away. I kicked my feet out over the edge. Sitting on the lip of a landing pad looking down at fusion crafts racing between towers. Strands of my hair brushed my cheeks.

We both wanted an easy fix. Some action to bring it all back together. In her eyes that was taking it out on the woman who sat on Sector 1's throne. But I had kept her out of my world for as long as I could for a reason... I'd sooner take her father's place than let her become like that.

If I could see my future self I would have laughed bitterly at the state of me now...

You're stronger than this. You're better. Yet here you sit shrouded in self pity like some common Merridian nobody. Underworld rulers do not have time to wallow. They take what they want and if it doesn't work they change it themselves. You wouldn't survive Hades if he were still alive.

I chuckled humourless into the wind.

Lazuras. Hades. Emperor. Empress. Does it matter who takes aim at me next?

I pushed off my hands and leaned my elbows over my knees looking down. You couldn't see street level from this height. Just many floors, vendors, crafts and smog below. I wonder what she saw every morning from that sky tower. Was it hopeful? Did the clouds look nice hiding the city below?

She should have stayed there. Where you only needed to see a line of soft white and nothing else. Sector 1 was good at that. They would have kept her safe forever. She would never have had to see the wrong side of a barrel in her entire existence of ballroom dancing and false smiles. Maybe she could have gotten used to the notion that it was all there was. Maybe Velron would have done right by her.

The sound of fusion thrusters burst behind me. I didn't take my eyes off the drop below as something heavy landed on the pad behind me and boots hit the ground.

He whistled low and carefree before dumping himself right beside me on the lip of the edge.

"Long way down. Would you like a push?" Proximo inquired.

"Not today." I answered empty. "Maybe tomorrow."

He rolled his eyes.

"Must I pull you from your own mind yet again, Scorpion."

"That's not my title anymore–"

"Yes it is. And you know it." He rumbled.

I sighed and tore my eyes off the abyss. I stared into the depths of his steel grey eyes instead. The same ones that watched me with that level calm as I took a poisoned blade and ran it along my own palm rather than fight him unfairly.

"Do I look like I can run a fucking empire, Proximo?" I demanded over the winds. "Do I look like I can fight for the Underworld when I can't even for her?!" My voice broke and I sank my teeth into the side of my mouth avoiding his all seeing stare.

He rolled his neck and leant back on his arms appraising the city beyond us.

"My answer was yes in the beginning and it is yes now. No one else could have walked through what you have and come out alive on the other side." He said loud enough to be heard. "Your self hatred has nothing to do with your leadership ability. But I am not here as your Second. I am here as your closest friend, Alex."

I almost flinched off the edge entirely.

Never once. Not once, had he called me by first name. Proximo Dartega looked at me lucidly. Without the hard sheen of combat focus and pure duty. He looked at me like a human that understood human pain.

"I–you have never..." I lost my words as I stared back at him lost.

He smiled briefly and nodded.

"Just because I'm using your name doesn't mean we're going to embrace each other and shed a tearful moment. I'm using your name so you listen well." I swallowed as his hard words hit me all the more starkly. As those harsh tattoos exposed a carefully masked man beneath. "You and Makayla Xavier reminded me of something I lost years ago. It might be the case that I have found it again... but god damn it Scorpion life is short enough as it is and you are both wasting your moments."

"Proximo I–"

"If I'm done speaking I'll let you know." He dismissed simply. "If you let this rift break you now you may not get the chance at it again. Do you understand what I am saying? It's blind luck that you find someone that important in the first place. Hold onto it. Fight for it more than you fought for our damn place in this city and you won't have to know what drowning regret feels like."

I was lost in the intensity of his gaze. An endless one that spoke only of experience. I found myself listening like it was the last words I'd ever get.

"How? How can I possibly–" I began.

"You can start by taking back your title." He took my shoulder and I felt fabric land in my lap heavily. I looked down and it was a stark crimson. The colour of a leader. 

"And then?"

"Then you find Xavier. Face to face. You. Fix. It. It might take a day, it might take a month, but I will buy you that time."

"Anything else?" I asked dryly, trying to stop the spinning thoughts from dragging me under.

"Then we are doing what we should have done the moment we knew what upper Merridian was capable of. We're pointing those satellite weapons at the top of that glass tower and making our own rules. The ones we wanted from the start. No more sectors. Just Merridian." He said reverently. "No one needs to be a number. 52 or 1. That's what we can do, Scorpion."

"It was just a stupid idea–" I choked off with a broken laugh, "–they'll never let inner Merridian fall."

"Then the towers will fall first." He said simply. "They'll adapt like they forced the outer sectors to."

"Proximo this is–where has this come from? You're–it was enough for us before to lead the Underworld." I got out strangled in confusion and my own fear. "To do what we can for our people."

He grabbed the cloak in his hand and held it up to me.

"Because if I make it out of this city alive I want to have an answer when they ask what I did about Merridian. When they ask, what did you do in the time of Sectors and Emperors? I'm going to tell them I threw power off all 250 floors with Scorpion at my side. That we toasted over a bottle when the elites were run from the city and nothing divided the Underworld anymore." He threw it back at me and I watched him rise from the edge with a harder look in his eyes and a hand offered down to me.

"So, what are you going to tell yourself, Alex? When the time came you walked away? You let this go–you let her go and it all blurred past you?" He growled, "Or did you take your damn throne, let them know exactly who we are and proved what Makayla Xavier really means to you?"

I looked back down at the red cloak in my fist.

An image. An idea. A reminder of what the Division was. Only this city deserved to have no more division in it. Those born in the harshest sector knew the harshest rules of life. Ones that didn't need to exist if those glass towers and numbers fell.

"You know Proximo..." I murmured low over the morning wind, I looked up at him past his hand. "You really are something when you're not a stoic bastard." I ignored his growl and hand as I got to my feet with my cloak in my hands.

"And I don't need a cloak to tear those glass towers down." I finished with a dark look.

He smirked waiting. Still pulling my ass straight out of hell whether I liked it or not.

"I know what needs to be done. I know what I want. And I'm glad every day that I've got you beside me to get it done." He nodded slowly as I spoke. "We need to finish what the Division set out to do from the beginning and then–we need to finish the Division." I continued before the shock could settle on his face. "We can't be another tyrant over this city Proximo. I know what we do but others will always see the blood behind us. They need something new from the ground up. Once this is all over we clear the field and open it up to people from all sectors. They're the ones that should hold power over their futures not the ones with the biggest guns."

"But it will be chaos–they need order–"

"Yes. We can serve that for the transition but when the time comes to give it over I want us to do that."

"You think Merridian can function without... Without Division agents?" He murmured, staring at my cloak now.

I smiled and pulled my hand up to clasp his tightly.

"You think it will hold up with no sectors at all–what's one more thing?"

"Maybe I have taken a step too far... we always maintained control." He ventured.

"Yet you want to ask yourself what we did when this is all over and we've had our day. I think I'd like to join you with that toast over a bottle and say that I removed every dictator that ever took a throne here. That our past was bloody but we set it right... And that when I lucked out and met Makayla Xavier I fought for her harder than anything else so that I would never have to live with a drop of regret in the end."

He looked at our hands and then met my eyes with a firm nod.

"I will hold you to that drink."

"We won't waste our moment." I agreed.

"Until the end. Scorpion."

"And even after that." I smirked back watching him match it with all the lethal promise and burning loyalty I had seen since the first day I had met Proximo Dartega.