Standing behind Jasper, Damian moved.

In one swift motion, he snapped out a beautiful roundhouse kick against the side of Jasper's head. The sound of impact was satisfying, and Jasper staggered. Damian wasted no time in following up with another kick in the ribs, causing the taller man to double over. Next he lunged for Re, but Re was quick - he sidestepped Damian and whipped the Beretta around.

He fired, but Damian was already in the midst of a dive toward Re's knees. With no attention on me, I began to work on my zip-tie bindings. The plastic cut relentlessly into skin as I moved, and I winced.

Meanwhile, Damian and Re had both fallen to the ground. The younger one clawed for dominance while Damian resisted, grim-faced. With one hand pushing down on Re, Damian pulled out his gun with some difficulty and was about to point it at Re's forehead - until I felt the most vicious hair-pulling yank to beat all hair-pulling yanks against my scalp. The force was so strong that I was pulled off my knees before landing heavily on my (already sore from the earlier blast) derriere. I felt several strands of my hair being ripped out.

Two clear gunshots echo around the space and merciless steel dug right into the soft flesh in between the underside of my jaw.

"Move a muscle, and she dies," Jasper seethed. His gun pressed harder against my flesh.

Damian froze. 

Jasper's breath was hot and stale in my ear. "So. Been cheating on me, have you, sweetheart? I thought after what happened with Mr Hood and Emrys you would know better."

It was bad enough that I was being so helpless - but now I was also being used as a bargaining chip. Jasper looked back at Damian. 

"Damian. Blackcroft." Each syllable was spat as if it was poison in Jasper's mouth. "I should have known better than to trust the person who blackmailed his way into my mission. Twice now, you've gotten the jump on me." Jasper reached up to touch his temple, where a nice little bruise was already forming. "Impressive. It would have been more impressive if you had taken me down properly, however."

Jasper's grip tightened on me. "I have no use for traitors. Drop the gun. And raise both hands."

Damian wasn't looking at Jasper. He was looking at me. I held his gaze, desperate, trying to wreck my brain to think of something - anything! But my mind had gone dull, and the earpiece in my ear was silent.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. I'm so sorry, Damian.

He shook his head almost imperceptibly, and his lips formed, a smile, just. I watched him, watched his lips move, and they mouthed something I would never forget.

Tell my brother hi when you see him.

Damian dropped his gun. 

The second he did, Re rose beneath him like an avenging archangel and pummeled him right in the side of his face. The gun was kicked away as Damian twisted around, and fell. The younger boy was screaming, and there was this sort of inhumane look in his eyes, almost as if he couldn't bear the idea that he had been outsmarted and outpowered. He held his gun like a club and drove the butt-end of it into Damian's face, blow after blow after blow, and I watched blood splatter the dirty bunker floor.

No. No.

Jasper didn't make a move. My head spun, and suddenly I was pulled back, oddly, into the memory of the sleepover, with Leila, Roxy and Emrys. The last normal night of my undercover life; the night when Emrys shot me in the shoulder and all my friendships began disintegrating; the night when my Blackcroft life began seeping through the cracks like a long-forgotten trauma, to remind me that normal life was something I did not deserve. 

That night, I had watched my first movie. We were all drunk at that point and I had no idea what we put on, only that it was an action movie with that one hot dude Leila really liked, and that one hot chick that Emrys really liked. I remembered how hard I was laughing at the ludicrousness of the fight scenes, and how my friends didn't understand because I couldn't explain that the physics of gunshots simply didn't work like that. 

And there was this one scene, this one particular scene that I was now recalling, so clearly and so vividly - the girl had been tied up and the hero was being tortured. And the girl kept screaming a line, the same line, over and over, and I remembered rolling my eyes; I remembered snorting derisively and saying good grief, can't she do better than yelling out something so useless; come on, surely she could just bust out of that rope, do two simultaneous side kicks against her guards, disarm them of their guns and take out the torturers in three sequential chest taps? And Roxy had laughed and agreed and said in movies, they always do this. They always make the girl say these things. 

Now, here I was.

I was the girl. Now, I was tied up. I was helpless, unable to do anything but watch. And I heard myself, my pitiful, useless, wretched self, screaming out the same line, the same line used by that actress, over and over again, because even though I knew it didn't help - wouldn't help - it was all I could do, to scream out, over and over - 

"Stop it! You're killing him! Stop! Please!"

But Re didn't stop. And Jasper didn't let me go. And there was no SWAT team busting down the doors and no hero looking up, grinning through bloodied teeth as he delivered his winning one-liner - you forgot I have the best team in the world. 

Re simply kept going.

Until Damian stopped moving.

The hands he had been using to cover his face fell limp to the side, and there they lay. The only sound in the entire bunker was Re's uneven, heavy breaths. I couldn't see Damian; not until Re finally stepped away. The horror unfolded in my eyes like a blossoming rose - first came Re's heaving shoulders from the exertion, then his shirt and face speckled with fat droplets of blood and then - 

And then - 

"Damian," I whispered. "Damian?"

His eyes. Those blue-green eyes. Wide and unseeing, as they stared off into the distance. I waited for a movement - any movement - a twitch of the eyelid, maybe - the chest - it should be rising and falling - 

Then I saw the left side of his skull. Re had completely bashed it in. There was no way anyone could survive that.

Re turned to me coldly. "I don't think you'll hear his voice again."

I think I went completely unhinged then. I remember letting out a shriek that sounded like a beast gone feral, and despite the fact that my hands were zip-tied and my hair was a fistful in Jasper's hands, I tried to lunge forward at Re. Jasper cut off that line of action instantly by turning me around and slapping me across the face. Hard.

"Enough!" he bellowed. "You made the decision to go against me, Damian made the decision to go against me - and this is what happens when you do! You lose."

He dragged my face closer. "You know, there was a moment where I really wanted to let you stay on as my bride, in the new empire I was making."

I spat in his eyes. 

Jasper's nose turned white in a familiar shade of rage. "But I guess not."

He whirled me around and jammed the gun back under my jaw. "Look at Damian. Look at him!"

Eyes. Lifeless eyes. Blue-green eyes.

"You did this, Hayley. No one but you. You did this. Because you're helpless, and you can't do - jackshit."

I screamed, jerking wildly. The plastic cut wetly into my bleeding wrists. 

"It's okay. You're joining him there."

Was no one coming to help? Kaylan was probably dead; even though he may know a little bit about fighting, in the end he was nothing more than the teenage son of a lawyer dad. About as civilian as you could get. And there was no way fists could stand up against four of Jasper's men. The fact that William was no longer speaking in my ear and Emrys wasn't calling in - I didn't even dare to think that far. Did Emrys and Eric even make it out? Or worse, did they make it out and led Jasper's men straight to the van?

And what about Thomas, who never showed? Maybe Jasper had already killed him way before this shitfest ever started.

If they really were dead - if they all were - 

It's my fault. I spearheaded this whole thing, didn't I? Damian knew it was a bad idea from the start. I remembered his reaction, in William's room, when I said that my end goal wasn't just to take down Black and Tan, but also Blackcroft. He'd called it crazy. He hadn't wanted to join. But he had, in the end. He stuck with us. And he'd said something too.

Might as well keep going. And die.

I couldn't help it, I burst into tears.

It's over, I thought, in grief and despair. 

It really is over.

|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|

:(