He stared at me with gilded eyes and I wondered if this was the first time I was seeing him, really seeing him. If he used his preternatural looks just as much to scare others away or entice them in, as to hide what he really was, to mask his schemes, his plans, and the fact that he would sacrifice anything, anyone for them.

"I didn't do anything - how could you think - I'm just following orders, her orders, no, following her request. It's her choice."

He stuttered his response like my question had short-circuited him, shocked him like a slap across his sharp cheekbone. His low voice pleaded for me to understand, but this was wrong. He was wrong, and so was Jordan.

"No! It's not her choice, or not just hers. She can't let him do this to her. It's suicide!"

"No, it's sacrifice. And whose choice is it if not for hers? Yours? Mine? Shall we take a vote? It's her life alone, her plan, and she can do with it whatever she wants. Even if we hate it, even if we wish we had a say - that doesn't mean we do."

He sounded sad, defeated, but even the lost look in his eyes couldn't extinguish my anger.

"What if everything we're doing is just making it all worse? We got James back and he was a puppet. So we disentangled him from Ambriel and now he's a goddamn monster. Jordan tries to match him and comes back as what? What if she really does come back as his match?"

I paced before him, near shouting again. This was wrong, so wrong. It wasn't the answer, it couldn't be.

"What if she wakes up worse?"

"She won't," he paused to swallow, hard, his eyes wandering the floor at my feet, searching for something in his mind, the right words or reasoning. "I believe in her."

His eyes met mine again, gleaming despite the low light of the gym, like he had his own ever-burning flame within, shining out like a candle in a darkened window. Even as the bloody, sweaty mess he was after our barbaric 'training', he was still striking, inhumanly so. He looked more an Angel than James or Jordan or even Baraqiel. But beauty didn't equate to goodness.

"You believed in James too."

I hated how my voice came out, like I was accusing him of something. He heard it too, lifting his chin in defense, his jaw tight as he breathed in deeply through his nose. He closed his eyes for a beat, holding the breath and reaching for whatever calmed someone like him.

"And I still do. This isn't over yet. Am I the only one who won't give up so easily?"

He started out quiet, but his volume grew as he pushed his words past gritted teeth before shouting the end. I swear I saw his eyes flicker from black when he opened them, once again controlled, though his fisted hands shook at his sides, begging to convince with violence instead of words.

"You've had the most time with the prophecy, you must have figured it out, it has to be this way. Burning and frozen, one life willingly laid. That wasn't you. Burning? Frozen? It's her, you must know that - a sacrifice to the dark. But instead of just passively letting those old words dictate her path, she's orchestrating it exactly as she wants it. You've always known each of you had to die, that's the only clear part of the prophecy, and when that time came for you - you chose death. She is allowed the same choice.

So she'll let him kill her, willingly laying down her life, tonight, and then she'll come back stronger, with power to match him, to match his father. Maybe enough to find whatever shreds of James' soul still survive and stitch them back together. So yes, this could all go to shit, but it's already shit - at least this way we have a chance of it working. We can't stop her, and even if we could, we shouldn't. It was never our choice to make. All we can do is wait...and trust her."

His points were annoyingly sound, and he knew it. How someone so unhinged, so damaged, could possible have such a grasp on logic was beyond me. It's like his mind only twisted the truth where he was involved, but he saw the rest of the world for what it was, and wasn't. I glared at him for a long moment, wishing I could refute even one point he had made. Finally, I conceded, and looked away.

"Why wouldn't she tell all of us?"

"Because-"

"-she needs us to believe it so we act accordingly. Otherwise James will know it was her plan and guard against whatever she's going to do next. But what is she doing next? What's her goal? She could have done it - made herself come back - whenever she wanted. Why let him do it?"

Malachi raised his eyebrows, lips thin, almost a grimace, as he waited for me to answer that on my own too.

"She thinks it will help get him back, weaken whatever cage the real him is trapped in. She's hoping that her death will affect him, remind or wake him," I muttered at the ceiling, my hands hanging from the crown of my head. I saw her actions for what they were; desperation and grief. She needed to feel like she was doing something, anything, for James.

"Ding ding," Malachi said a little too quietly, his tone and words at odds. "You got it."

"Why did she tell you?" I heard how tired my own voice sounded, how defeated.

Somewhere in the Vault, right now, Jordan was being murdered by the man she loved, or a lookalike of the man she loved, used to love, and we were just supposed to sit here and talk about it like it was a good plan. And it was, maybe, but it was still wrong. Or, it certainly wasn't right. But Malachi was, when he had asked me to die, it was only my choice, and it was an easy one. My life for even just the sliver of a chance that we might win was worth it, the possibility of saving those I cared for, protected, loved, it wasn't even a choice. And I hadn't known I was coming back, I thought that was my end, permanently. Jordan and James both knew she would.

Malachi's rumbled answer dragged me back from the memory of the manor, staring down the Collector, feeling his power rip through my flesh and organs before I healed myself over and over again. Drawing as much as I could from him just for a few seconds, just long enough for the others to escape. Then the subtle sparks I felt when Kai killed me, the instinctual panic that screamed from deep in my mind as I forced myself not to heal, as I trusted him to save me from being used as a weapon.

"She knew I wouldn't try to stop her, that I would see it as she does. We're...similar in that respect. It's what I would do if the roles were reversed, so I figured she would make a move. I simply asked and she trusted me, told me her plan. And now, I return that trust. Plus, she knows I'm the best actor."

He winked and I wanted to throw something at him for how nonchalant he was being, for having to always deflect with humor, even now, how he played everything off so easily. For how easily he lied.

"Your sister is dead or dying a few hallways away and you're cracking jokes."

I felt too much to even describe, and my voice betrayed me, balanced at the messy crossroads of anger and disbelief and sorrow and cracked laughter. I wanted to cry, to scream, though I wasn't sure why. Maybe because if Malachi had discarded his soul to survive months of torture I couldn't fathom, just to go dark anyway, and I had to let him kill me for the slight possibility of something good coming from it, if I knew the man I loved was willing to kill me with or without my permission, it would break my heart.

Maybe my heart was broken for Jordan, for the impossible paths she had to walk, the choices she had to make. James' life had always been tragic, but I honestly couldn't decide which was worse, living a life like his, or having to watch the one you loved go through it. Watching him be so destroyed that he was unrecognizable, that he was someone else, someone he would hate, the villain in his own story.

"Half-sister," Malachi corrected with a little smirk pasted on his face that told me he wasn't giving up his irreverent mask just yet, but it was just that, a mask, fake and flat. "And I don't think of it as dying, more like an extended nap." He shrugged in practiced fashion, choreographed to strangle his tells.

"How long have you known? Lied to me?" I kept my voice empty, ignoring his little jokes and sarcasm. To his credit, he didn't try to argue my words.

"Last night. She went to see Abby, then came to me. Abby knows, too, obviously," he continued, his voice casual, though his chest rose and fell too quickly. "He'll clear out the Vault until Jordan...wakes, in case James acts as we expect."

"And what do we expect from a Fallen who just murdered his True Pair?"

"Violence."

» ✦ «

It was easier than I had expected. Just skin and muscle, some cartilage between her ribs, it barely took any pressure, any force at all, there was hardly even resistance. We are such powerful beings, but a little knife, one sharpened dagger, was all it took, it slipped in and easily stole it all away. All that power, all her Gifts and parentage and training bled out, soaking into her bed just like some weak Human. Because she was just a weak Human, but I saved her from that, I remade her, and when she returned and knew true power, she would thank me for it.

It was easier than I had expected in a second way, not just physically. I thought the trapped, strangled prisoner in me, that far-off voice buried deep, screaming behind that heavy metal door would have shown more opposition, put up more of a fight, bloodied his fists on that gray door leaving dents and stains, but he was silent, defeated. Weak. Maybe he finally suffocated in that little saving room, starved and withered and atrophied. Good fucking riddance. I had bricked over the door what seemed a thousand times, turning his safe room to his coffin. It wouldn't kill him, but at least it would shut him up.

Being buried alive seemed highly unpleasant, especially given my past with my father's perverse version of a timeout - and the fact imprisonment couldn't kill him, just suspend him in an eternity of waiting, suffering. But I felt no pity for the merciful, soft sliver of me trapped behind that door. I only wished he could die for my own benefit, not his. I despised having any part of the old me, the feeble Human me, still in existence, even if he was dealt with and hidden from all others. I still knew, heard his muffled roars at times, still carried him with me like some earthly disease.

I meant what I said to Jordan, that she was mine, made for me, my only equal, but not as she was, and I wanted all of her, not some thin watered down version. And soon I would have her, all of her, reborn, rebuilt, as she was meant to be. I just had to wait for her to awaken, to come back to me, but in the mean time, I had some work to do, some damage to deal. I knew I should go, begin my ministrations, but I couldn't leave her, not yet. I had been laying with her for hours, her blood on my chest long dried, the bed sticky and cold with it.

She almost looked asleep, if I ignored the ocean of red beneath her cooling body. She still laid on her side, almost like she did when she was curled against my chest hours ago. I hadn't moved much either, just turned to my side as well, out from under her to face her, our faces mere inches apart as I watched her, close enough that our breath would have mingled if she still breathed.

Her skin looked too pale against her dark hair, something wrong in the texture, or the consistency. I reached out for the first time, running my knuckles across her cheek, my thumb over her cold lips before adjusting a few stuck strands of her hair tipped in thickening blood. With a sigh I stood.

I pulled on pants, but left my feet and chest bare, her blood smeared across me. What a sight I would be for her little allies. My eyes strayed to her again, where she laid, though I knew I should go, begin, something didn't seem right with the view before me. I strode over, standing above her, my eyes dancing across her, unsure what I was looking for. I lifted her easily, despite the dead weight, the stiffness beginning in her limbs. She didn't smell right, maybe that's what seemed wrong.

I carried her to the bathroom, adjusting her in my arms to turn on the shower, and waited for it to warm, though I didn't know why. She wouldn't feel it. Washing her was difficult, scrubbing the blood away, cleaning the wounds in her chest and back, though they were small, delicate but deadly things. I finally had to sit with my back against the wall and her leaned against me to wash her hair, her head laid back on my shoulder, her body caged between my bent legs. I rinsed her mass of hair over and over until there was no soap left lingering, until she smelled more like she should, less like death and blood. It still wasn't quite right, but at least she was clean.

I wrapped her in a towel and brought her back to the bed, but standing over it, seeing the mess we left, made me not want to put her back in it, to dirty her with her own blood again. I turned and went to my room instead. It was hers too after all, everything I had was hers.

I laid her under the covers, fanning her hair out around her shoulders to dry, and placed her hands across her stomach. I stepped back to survey my work. That looked better, she looked peaceful, merely sleeping. It was almost like none of this had happened, almost like I hadn't pushed that blade into her so easily.