They will label you thieves, wolves and whores but, you are nothing less than angels, cast down and covered in black.

La Dispute - Future Wars

I heard Kael rise from his spot on the dead grass next to me, but I barely looked up. When he spoke it wasn't to me.

"You know we should kill you...but you know I can't."

He spoke slowly, as if his sorrow was pulling at his mind, making it difficult to form the words he needed to speak. He opened his mouth to say more, but then closed it again and woodenly turned. Nevaeh had fire burning in her eyes, I immediately recognized it as hate, but I preferred that over the profound sadness Kael's held. She allowed Kael to lead her away, disappearing into the cemetery's haze.

And then I was alone with James, or Gabriel, whoever he was. His head hung, his dark hair shielding his face, still sitting on the ground with his knees tucked under him. His shoulders were slumped as he stared at the ground. He almost looked like he was praying, the way his body was hunched over, caving in on itself. The corpse of Juda drained next to him, steam rising from the fresh blood.

I stood and slowly walked over to him, feeling the stiff soreness I always did after a recent healing. I had my knife clenched in my hand, letting the handle bite into my palm. His head turned slightly, but he didn't raise his eyes to mine. My dream came to mind, of stabbing James, killing him in his room as he slept. Yet another 'prophecy' come true. I wished it was like my dream, like I wasn't really the one doing it, like I had no choice, but I did, and I would make the right one. Who knew how many lives would be saved by killing the broken, empty shell in front of me.

And then myself. He and I were the same, after all.

I realized he wasn't going to fight me, he didn't even look like he was going to acknowledge me. He had already given up. A part of me hated him all the more for that, for taking the easy way and letting me execute him because he didn't have the strength to do it himself, or because he was delusional, still pretending he didn't need to die, but was merely allowing it. I hated so much of him. At least that's what I kept repeating to myself.

The knife shook in my hand, but I wasn't about to let my fear stop me. I knelt in front of him, mirroring how he was seated, and waited. He dragged his eyes up to mine and the torment I saw in them broke my heart, even my anger couldn't protect me from it. The raw pain reminded me of the unguarded emotions I had seen in him on his mother's anniversary, except this was magnified, this was worse.

The fear in his every movement reminded me of a beaten animal backed into a corner. I told myself it was an act, that he was just manipulating me like he had from the start. It was the only way I could make myself go through with what I knew I had to do.

To my surprise, he spoke. A quiet voice that matched the torture in his eyes, the fear and despair, broke the brittle night's still air.

"Kill me, but please, don't kill yourself. You aren't like me. You aren't like anyone. You can be good, you are good. I've seen it. I know it. You aren't like me."

His voice broke, breaking me into a thousand tiny shards with it, but I couldn't imagine that he actually believed his words. I was a Half, and he had told me so many times what they were, what we were, that we were fundamentally evil. Saying a Halfling was good was like saying someone with a disease could overcome it by the goodness of their heart. Sounds lovely, the thing of bedtime stories, but it wasn't real. We were sick, and what we had couldn't be changed, couldn't be saved.

"Please, please don't kill yourself," he begged now, his head hanging again.

I watched him silently, just like he did to me so often, searching for something in him, for anything. Searching for a soul but there was none, I knew that now. I raised the knife, pointing it at his chest. The blade quivered slightly.

The memory of the last time I held a knife to James came flooding back to me and nausea rolled in my stomach. Last time he had been trying to get me to hurt him, and right after was when he had discovered we were True Pairs, and then tried to kill me that same night in the woods.

All the memories from my time with James were crushing me, suffocating me. Every look he had ever given me, every word ever spoken, everything he had been to me was tearing me apart.

As I got lost in the memories, James reached forward, wrapping his warm hand, slick with blood, around mine once again. I didn't fight him this time; this was what I wanted. This was right. He lead the knife's point straight to his heart and I let him. He let go of my hand and laid his in his lap, returning his gaze to the ground, waiting for me to push the knife home.

The memory of Juda's execution flashed in my mind. I saw his smirk as he fell to his knees in front of James, as my Pair held out the knife from his childhood horrors, as he slowly bent down before his victim and lightly laid the knife's edge to Juda's neck. And then in an act of violence that somehow seemed more gruesome than all the other things I had seen James do, he grabbed Juda's hair, pulling his head back and slid the knife across his throat, digging it in to the hilt.

I glanced to Juda's corpse laying just a few feet away, the smirk forever frozen on his face, his eyes somehow halfway between Shifted and Human, the black much too large to be natural. I was about to do the same to James. I was about to execute him as he sat on his knees before me, wounded from a fight, defeated and indifferent to his own fate. Broken, alone, afraid.

Then I would turn the blade on myself. I didn't want to live in a world without him, no matter what kind of monster he was. I didn't want to live as that same monster either. It was better this way. It was right. I knew what to do, and I knew it would be the most difficult thing I had ever done. Killing myself would be so much easier, I almost looked forward to it in comparison, but killing James...it didn't seem right, though I knew it was.

I tried to make my hand move forward, to push the blade into him, but I couldn't. Maybe I wasn't really trying. My anger began to fall away and no matter how I tried to gather it again, to pack it into something dark and hard, I couldn't keep it from fading. James should be killed. All Halflings should, but I wasn't the one to do it. I couldn't be. I wasn't strong enough.

I dropped the knife and bowed my head like him, closing my eyes, but the tears still found their way out.

The sad. The crushing sad.

This was almost the Prologue or Chapter 1 for Book 2 - Dust, but I thought better of it.

But now that you've finished it all...what do you think?

Also, this song, this song is goood, its so sick and amazing and I've loved it for a decade. This song, in some ways, tells the story arc of Greys but in its own vague way, don't worry.

But, well, I guess...this is goodbye...EXCEPT NOT! Book Two is ready for you!

Hope to see you over there soon. It has been my truest and purest pleasure to write this for you. Thank you from the bottom of my heartless little chest.

Much love,

T