I knew when I saw it.

In its uniqueness, its beauty and its simplicity. The way it was bound delicately by a metal that was either titanium or platinum. The stones were dark but not quite onyx, they had the faintest purple hue within them. It was captivating. It was Quinn.

"Selena!" I called, hearing the sound penetrate the silence of the vast vault. "I've made my decision!"

She strolled around the corner of clay pots and walked calmly to where I was. She then looked down at the ring I sought and nodded with a small smile.

"Something old and something new." She murmured.

"How so?"

"The stones, they can't even carbon date because they're not from earth. They fell from a meteorite in the 18th century. But the fixing I had bound once we had the technology for a stronger metal to hold them–I couldn't risk them being lost to something as weak as gold." She finished. Then she lifted the glass back and removed the ring with its box and held it before me.

"And the metal?" I asked in curiosity, noting that it had the faintest blue-ish tint to its chrome finish.

"Tantalum, one of the rarest stable metals we have... and pretty damn strong." She offered it to me.

I took it carefully and gazed at the alien rocks more closely. Definitely a hint of violet inside them. But it was beautiful. She would wear it as she wore everything... effortlessly stunning and striking me with an awe that froze me.

"You are gloriously in love." She mused.

I flinched out of my thoughts and saw a strange warmth on her face I thought I had imagined. I saw Elders as indifferent–ambivalent, uninterested in such things after their time... I never saw what she revealed for this moment.

"Sounds like you are familiar." I blurted, without thinking through my words.

But she wasn't shocked by them. She seemed to want to live in them for a slice of time.

"As I said before... I was once." She answered, taking the ring back and pocketing it in her jacket. I frowned, she had lived, worked and as it appears... loved alongside mortals. But she spoke with endings and closed words, not ones that left those doors open. Ones that experienced and never tried again.

"Can I ask you a very personal question, Selena?"

The use of her name seemed to rip her out of her thoughts and she met my eyes with her carefree demeanour back in place. She smirked and gestured around us.

"What better place to do so?" She drawled.

"Did you fall in love with a mortal?" I asked slowly.

Her smile faded but she kept the air light, refusing to delve into whatever history stayed down here. She snorted and started walking in a particular direction back past shelves of clay pots.

"I did say you could ask..." She chuckled, continuing forward. So I strode to keep up beside her in this maze.

"I won't press you–"

"You remind me of him so much, you know..." She surprised me with an answer.

So, I listened.

"He was a soldier too. Only, he fought in the Second World War. One that I had no say in. How could I?" She laughed in irony, "A woman... With no place on the battlefield–that the mortals would tolerate anyway–no chance to save him, or to stop him. His sense of duty was to mortals he never knew, fighting for those that did not even speak his language or share any of his values–so much like you." She finished in a quiet voice. 

I was stunned into silence. I didn't know if I could add anything of value to that, so I stayed quiet.

"I killed so many of them, Fletcher." She whispered, pausing before a row of fossils. It was in this moment that I noticed that she did not collect or keep a single weapon down here. Not one relic or remnant of the wars she was no doubt involved in. I couldn't imagine the rage she unleashed upon those that took that mortal from her, but I could fully understand it. She knew that.

"As did I." I answered her honestly, watching the way her face seemed to show a remorse I had not expected at all. "–But I am sorry you had to lose much more than parts of your soul in that war."

She turned at my words. At the way I meant every single one of them. Then she closed her eyes and raised her head, breathing slowly outwards. When she opened her eyes again she pulled the box out of her jacket and reached forward to take my hand and place the box in it. I stared down at the black satin and she slowly removed her hand.

"I'd like to be alone." She murmured softly, "–I hope she likes it."

"Selena–"

"Please. I need to be with my thoughts." She answered, pressing the side of her watch once.

I nodded finally and placed the box into the inside of my jacket.

"I know you want to be... but remember that you do not have to be." I said quietly, before turning my back and leaving her to make whatever peace in her mind she needed to.

I left her standing before a large undersea fossil that she regarded in silence. But she may well have been looking straight through it. For all that confidence and calm, she was a raging storm, one that had raged a path through the continent. As an outsider, I could have looked upon her and merely thought of her as another blood hungry immortal enacting power upon mortals as an excuse... But she had been lost. 

What would I do to those mortals if they had taken Quinn from me? I too, would be lost.

I once again felt a weight. But it was not for something left unsaid, it was for the weight I felt an immortal held... but not an indifferent, demon. A woman that felt deeply and was still lost from what was taken.

The evening was already upon me as I stood outside of the road down into her vault. I knew where I had to be in a few hours. Vanguard's social night... The promise of building ties with the mortals I would work closely with–but something tugged at me. That conscience I couldn't quite kill, the one that made me go back into the burning building. I sighed deeply and text the mortals I needed to.

I felt the satin box more prominently near my chest. 

I'm sorry Quinn, but I will make my promise to you another night... The woman I just left did not get that much.

I called Jamerson and made a very deliberate stop to my own vault. When I returned to the car with the ring safely stored and a cumbersome item tucked under my arm I directed him back to the grand mansion in the west end.

No sign of the criminal Aston Martin, thankfully.

Jamerson left me with a questioning smirk at the item in my hands. I had to assume she was still buried deep underground with her thoughts inside that vault... So, I didn't bother to alert her mortal security guards. I vaulted her wall easily and caught the side of her building with one hand. Not even my shoes made a sound. I listened to the crackle of their radios as they patrolled the perimeter. Then I scaled it rapidly.

I didn't stop until I was back on her rooftop and its watching statues stood dutifully in the firelight. I carefully removed the item from my arm and placed it in the centre of the stone circle. I drew down the arm and placed the pin on the edge of the vinyl.

The same piece from earlier began to play softly. The piano worked with the trumpets and I wandered leisurely around the grounds, taking in the well kept plants and details of the roman looking statues... They can't have been original. She wouldn't leave them out in the weather like this–would she?

It wasn't until the third song in the album that a car pulled into her driveway. I smirked at the sound of its haste and the harsh slam of brakes.

The lift sounded below and I knew she only used it for the sake of all the mortals present. When the brass doors opened, a pistol pointed out of them at my head. I tilted my head at the pistol and smiled slowly.

"I hope you have some strong rounds in that." I drawled.

She lowered it in shock. Then her eyes quickly darted towards the gramophone. 

"My perimeter alarms went off... I thought some fool had been mad enough to rob me." She said, lowering the pistol and tossing it onto a stone bench. "What are you doing... here?" She asked.

"Merely delivering on my good taste." I said nonchalant, as she listened to the jazz float between us.

"Is that..." She ventured, listening to the music. Then she smiled, shaking her head. "I gave you the ring–it did not need something in return." 

"You are actually helping me get out of a commitment right now." I answered instead, because what other excuse did I have to try and be present for someone that looked as broken as I had felt the day I lost all ties to the mortal world.

"I think my alliance with you is going to be a problem." She finally muttered.

I snorted.

"Come on, show me what else you have hidden away." I nodded to her house behind.

"You're relentless, aren't you?" She quipped, crossing her arms but cracking a small smile despite it all.

"No doubt my exhausting hero complex." I drawled, walking towards her elevator again.

"It is." She agreed in seriousness, but I don't think it was in regard to being exhausting because I would have been launched off this rooftop by now if it were the case.

She pressed the second floor and the doors closed. This need not be a long stay, just long enough to see that emptiness leave her and I would be back outside Quinn's residence–I shouldn't even be here now.