"Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person."

- Tennessee Williams

                                                                               ***

The portal wrapped around Sirius like the eye of a hurricane, calm for the briefest of moments before he slammed into the storm wall and was torn to shreds. 

When he'd said this portal was easier to traverse than the one between Hell and Earth, he'd only really meant for Rhys and possibly Caydryn. For him, portals into Hell were a much nicer trip.

This portal ripped him apart, leaving him little more than a collection of loosely associated cells that were hurled through space and dimension. It splintered his bones and shredded his muscles.

But at least this one didn't play any mind games that he would have to bear the fallout of. 

Sirius wanted to scream, but wasn't really sure of where his throat was until the portal spit him out. He had a momentary sensation of weightlessness, of being flung through a dull grey sky, and then a crunching sound filled his ears.

Branches snapped, their broken edges stabbing at him as he tumbled through the dead trees before he smashed into the ground. He rolled three or four times across the ground before he fetched up against a ridge of stone.

A low groan fought its way from his chest and he lay there for a moment, letting the world right itself. When the dull sky stayed in its place above him and the trees stopped wobbling, he sat up, resting his elbows on his knees as he took stock of several things.

The most important was that he was alive, and in Purgatory.

Blood trickled down his arms, back and even the side of his face, courtesy of the branches he had smashed through. A crop of new bruises filed in over the old ones, just in case there was possibly some part of him that wasn't already sore or injured. His shoulder ached from how he had landed on it and the base of his skull throbbed.

But at least he wasn't in Hell.

Sirius snorted at himself, cursing as he pushed up to his feet, dusting leaves and dirt off of his already filthy clothes. A quick glance around and a few cursory sniffs told him he was alone for now.

Dead, brown leaves covered the ground in a thick layer of decay. The trees around him were alive, but seemed somehow drained of vibrancy. Poplar and yew towered over him, their branches full of rustling brown and drab green leaves. He could hear a creek somewhere nearby.

Not a thing had changed since he'd ventured here last, nearly three hundred years ago. The wind still whispered its restlessness, rattling the branches and sending the leaves at his feet skittering across the ground. Even the air smelled the same, a combination of decayed vegetation and rain-slicked rock.

Sirius inhaled deeply, just to be safe.

He caught the over-sweet almond scent of a vetala and the tar-like scent of a leviathan. Thankfully, the second one was very faint. Sirius didn't really feel like tangling with something that had more teeth than it knew what to do with, so he turned his back on the scent and headed in the opposite direction.

There wasn't even so much as a whiff of Rhys' bitter, soapy smell or Caydryn's ice and moss scent. Not that he really expected them to be anywhere nearby.

It didn't particularly matter which direction he was moving in, just so long as it was away from things that would want to get in a fight with him. Purgatory would draw him to its center, shifting around him until he was moving toward the portal leading back to Earth.

Unlike Hell, Purgatory didn't take too kindly to things that didn't belong and actively tried to dispel them.

Of course...Sirius knew that the portal wouldn't let him out. Only humans could pass through, and he certainly wasn't that. Purgatory might not want him here, but it wouldn't let him out into the human world, either.

But he'd cross that particular bridge only when he absolutely needed to.

Leaves and dead grass crunched under his feet, the rush of water growing nearer. Sirius kept his eyes firmly on the thick vegetation around him, not wanting to tempt an ambush predator. The wind whispered through the leaves, the scents it carried ebbing and changing as every step propelled him forward.

The cardamom-and-poppy scent of a jinn haunted him for a while, then was traded for the rotten-fruit smell of a handful of vampires. The musky tang of werewolf and the musty, unopened-cellar scent of a ghoul teased at him. A dozen other kinds of monsters gravitated toward him, but none attacked him. 

Yet. 

Most likely they could tell he didn't belong in Purgatory but that he wasn't human, and that uncertainty kept them at bay.

This suited Sirius just fine. He'd had his fill of blood in the pits and didn't particularly care for the idea of leaving any of these creatures in ribbons. A dull ache of want for the Bloodlust they'd been dosing him with wrapped around his throat at the thought, but he shoved it aside.

For once, he wasn't looking for a fight. He didn't want to spend the time or energy it would require.

All he wanted to do was reach Alex and Logan, somehow convincing the latter to let him take the girl. And he wanted to get to them before Rhys could screw up that chance.

Sirius was beginning to regret not just leaving him in Hell. He honestly didn't know why he'd bothered to drag the witch out in the first place. It wasn't like Rhys was going to be an awful lot of help.

A little voice whispered the reason in the back of his mind, but he quickly shushed it, trying to keep his focus on the task at hand—getting safely through Purgatory. 

This, he soon found, was easier said than done, though.

The ambient sounds of Purgatory turned into a layer of white noise as he walked, leaving him with nothing to distract him from the thoughts wheeling through his mind. Sirius struggled to pay attention to his surroundings, but the conflict waging itself in his head wouldn't allow him even this parody of peace.

He didn't want to bring Alex to Hades.

And not just because he was naturally belligerent whenever Hades was involved.  

Rhys' last words to him kept echoing in his head, refusing to let up. 

He even trusts you. He even trusts you. He even trusts you.

The words repeated themselves, driving him crazy. Or...crazier. Sirius growled, hoping the noise would get the record to skip, but all he managed to do was stir up a few answering growls from things he couldn't see.

He snarled again, just to discourage any lesser monsters, and picked up his pace through the trees. The air around him was thin and cold, the light enough to see by, but somehow drained and dull.

What Sirius didn't understand was why Rick trusted him. What exactly had he done to gain a Hunter's trust, and Rick's in particular? Sirius scowled, striding through the woods. He let every interaction he'd ever had with Rick run through his head in a loop, trying to suss out why the Hunter would do something so foolish as trusting a Hellhound.

By the time Sirius broke through the trees to find the creek he had been hearing, he had come to no satisfying conclusion. He crossed it, grimacing as the cold water soaked into his boots before he reached the trees on the creek's other bank.

There was just no reason for Rick to trust him. No reason for anyone but Galloway to trust him. He'd do anything, betray anyone—even himself—if it meant he could free her from Hades' grasp. 

The fact that he had to tell himself that several times before he believed it was not something that brought him any measure of comfort. 

He scowled at nothing, breathing deeply through his nose. Still nothing—not even a whisper of a human scent. The brush around him rustled, out of time with the wind, and his skin prickled under the gaze of a handful of werewolves. 

They didn't like him being in their territory.

Sirius let a growl of warning rumble in his chest and considered changing to his wolf form. Body language was so much easier in that shape, though he wasn't actually sure if werewolves were lupine enough to understand that he didn't want trouble. That he was just passing through and wouldn't bother them if they extended the same courtesy to him. 

He kept moving, not giving any more indication than the growl that he knew of their presence. Anything more direct might set them off.

Werewolves were annoyingly volatile. 

A chorus of howls rose around him, leaves rustling to the ground, but nothing charged out of the undergrowth. They were simply warning him off their turf.

Sirius laughed under his breath. It was such a stupid thing to be worried about. Especially considering that they were all dead. But, he supposed, death didn't strip away the nature of the beast. 

Once a monster, always a monster.

His laugh died and he clung to that thought. He could change for her when she was free. In order for that to happen, he had to be the monster he was. Not the man she deserved. 

He wasn't a man.

Sirius slowed to a stop, frowning at the pale trunks of the trees. 

That was such an easy thing to believe when he was alone. It was easy to think things like that when he wasn't tied down by the morality of others or when he didn't have anyone else's disapproval to guide him.

Disappointed grey eyes flashed in his mind. Disappointed, and resigned. It was a look he had become familiar with, as the months lingered and he fell more deeply in love with her.

Perhaps she actually didn't believe that he could be something better. Maybe she was okay with the fact that she had fallen for a monster.

With that not-exactly hopeful thought, he called the darkness to him. It jabbered and hissed in delight as it wrapped around him, shifting his skeleton, his muscles until he was the monster, not the man. His paws landed on the dead ground with a heavy thud, his tail flicking from side to side. His ears twitched at the new layer of noise that accosted him.

And maybe you're just trying to convince yourself of a bunch of bullshit.

The words were soft, barely there, but still enough to make his hackles raise.

Sirius shook his head, ears pinning back against his skull as he showed his teeth. She didn't say anything else, but he didn't want to risk it and began running, regardless of how pointless that was. He couldn't outrun his own mind, but he sure as Hell tried. His spine flexed with every long stride, his paws propelling him forward as his claws bit into the dirt and decayed leaves.

It didn't work.

Man, monster. That's not what matters, Sirius. Your heart is what matters. And you promised you wouldn't break mine.

Sirius couldn't stop the whine that caught in his throat.

What about his heart?

Galloway's voice didn't seem to have an answer for that. Resentment welled in him for a brief moment before it simply gave way to the same heartsickness he'd been dying from all this time. 

His paws pounded against the hard earth as he ran, all of his attention turned inward. He bared his teeth at nothing as he flew through the trees.

What about the fact that, when she'd died, his heart had shattered into nothing? Was he not supposed to care about that? Was he supposed to put someone else's wants and needs ahead of his own.

Still no answer.

No, he decided, he was not. It was not his responsibility to care about anyone but himself and Galloway. Not Rick, not Logan or Rhys. Certainly not Caleb or Alex.

Liar. You're a liar.

Shut up, he snarled viciously. Just shut up.

His heart shuddered when Galloway's voice didn't snap back. But it was better this way. Having a conscience—even one that sounded like her—was not going to do him any favors here.

If he kept listening to it, he would lose everything. Everything.

And he was not going to let that happen.

Sirius ran harder, his heart thudding wildly in his ribcage, his breath rasping against the back of his throat. He had to reach Logan first. He had to find some way to get the witch to let him have Alex.

And, he thought grimly, if he didn't then Sirius would simply have to take her.

It was an easy enough thought to have, running by himself through the dead trees.

                                                                         ~~~

A small eternity passed as he wove his way toward Purgatory's center, ducking around the larger groups of monsters and the beasts capable of giving him a run for his money. It seemed to take forever before the ground began to tilt upward, steepening into foothills that eventually led into craggy, barren mountains.

The flat, pale disc that was supposed to be the sun never changed its position in the lifeless white sky. No clouds drifted past on the wind that began to whip at his fur and blurred his vision.

A dark face of rock reared up before him like a brooding guardian.

He was close, but the wind was so strong that he couldn't smell anything. The bare rock did nothing to buffer him from the elements. Sirius ducked his head and began picking his way carefully up the thin ribbon of flat ground that passed for a trail up the sheer cliff face.

The portal would be somewhere in this range, and Sirius suspected that Logan would want to stay within bolting distance of the pathway to Earth if things went sideways. Which was smart, but didn't exactly help Sirius in his attempts to locate the witch.

He could smell nothing up here, so exposed to the air. The wind shrieked and moaned incessantly, so he couldn't hear anything clearly. The ground was nothing but rock, which made tracking them nearly impossible. The only really reliable sense was sight, but that wouldn't do him much good when he got to the top of the cliff.

Sirius snarled in irritation and continued carefully placing each step on the crumbling pathway.

Mercifully, that voice in his head stayed silent.

When Sirius finally gained the top of the cliff, he was panting, tongue lolling from his mouth. The air was thin here. Thin and cold, and he shivered, even protected by his thick fur.

Barely eight feet from the edge of the cliff, the trees sprang up in full fury, creating an impenetrable wall of foliage. Brown and crumbling it might be, but no less thick for that fact.

It took a full fifteen minutes of pacing along the edge of the forest before he could even find a place that would allow him to slip into the trees. And then it was a battle to simply ford his way through the brush and low-hanging limbs.

An hour crawled slowly past, followed by another. Each minute found his temper growing exponentially as the branches slapped at him in the constant wind and the thorny brush snagged at his fur, his sensitive ears, his tail.

Lost in his foul mood, Sirius almost didn't hear the scream.

At first, he dismissed it as the wind, but it sounded again and he realized that the wind could never manage such a terrified pitch. He hesitated for a second, considering the possibility that the scream had nothing to do with anything. 

This was Purgatory after all. Here, there were monsters, in the truest sense of the word—things that would prey on anything perceived to be weaker. Even other monsters.

The scream sounded again and Sirius huffed a sigh. He began pushing his way through the thorny brush, the wind making his ears twitch toward every rustled leaf or clattering branch. He strained his nose, hoping to catch even the slightest hint of what he might be walking into.

Finally, the brush thinned, ever so slightly, allowing him to make better time. The screams had picked up in intensity. Sirius kept himself low to the ground as he stalked forward. If the only thing he stumbled across was just some unfortunate bloodsucker, he had every intention of leaving before he was noticed.

Though...the possible wasting of his time made the idea of killing something a tad more attractive than it had been when he'd arrived in Purgatory.

Sirius crept through the brush, wishing there were more shadows available but the flat, white light of Purgatory outlined everything in severe detail. Soon enough, he found himself in a clearing.

It hadn't exactly been a waste of his time.

Caydryn stood in the middle of the clearing, sword held loose in his hand, shoulders careless, his head tilted thoughtfully to the side. The incessant wind rippled through his indigo hair, making the silver thorns ring like bells against one another.

But he really wasn't the most interesting thing to be found in that small clearing.

Sirius pushed his way through the last of the dead foliage and let the darkness swarm over him again. He shivered as he stood, the protection of his thick fur stripped away from him. Then he began to pick his way down the gentle slope and through the field of bodies. More werewolves, by the smell.

Caydryn stiffened and turned, a snarl revealing startlingly red teeth. Sirius paused, raising an eyebrow. The faerie prince blinked twice in surprise before his shoulders relaxed. His white shirt was sprayed with blood, more dripping from the thin blade of his sword.

Approaching cautiously, Sirius glanced down to find one of them still alive at Caydryn's feet. A young female was curled over the body of another female, a soft keening sound coming from her.

"I did warn them," Caydryn said, voice soft, absently cleaning the blade of his sword on the leg of his pants. "They did not wish to let me pass un-harried." 

Sirius sighed, the dry sobs from the young werewolf plucking at terrible memories. "Did you have to kill all of them?"

The faerie simply gave him a blank look.

Another sigh gusted from his nose and he shook his head as Caydryn ran his tongue along his teeth and spit to the side. The prince scrubbed at his face with his sleeve, only managing to smear the splattered blood into a macabre mask.

He took a few steps toward Sirius, limping slightly. Claw marks ravaged his clothes, blood so dark it was nearly purple welling from a number of shallow wounds scattered over Caydryn's body. As he passed Sirius, he asked, "Have you found the witchling?"

Sirius cast one last look over the slaughter the prince had left in his wake, a trickle of nerves running down his spine. His voice a touch too quiet, he said, "No."

The werewolf female looked up at him, face streaked with tears and blood. "Where do they go?" she whispered, her brown eyes vacant. "If they died here too, where do they go?"

He didn't have an answer. So he just shook his head, turning away from her pain. It was entirely too familiar.

Her next words dragged him to a halt. "Would you kill me too?"

Sirius stared blankly after Caydryn. The prince had reached the edge of the clearing and was tearing strips from the tail of his shirt, winding them around some of the deeper claw marks along his arms. 

A light touch made him jump. Looking down, he found the female standing next to him, her small hand resting gently on his arm. "Please," she whispered. "Please kill me."

Resentment welled in him again, something inside of him struggling against this.

When he still didn't so much as blink, she gestured around at the bodies. "They're all I have. I want to be with them." Her nose wrinkled delicately. "I don't know what you are, but I think you could kill me."

Sirius' eyes wandered back to Caydryn, who was now leaning patiently against a tree, arms folded over his chest. He didn't seem to be in any hurry to get away from what he'd done.

"Please," she whispered once more. "Don't make me exist like this."

Something cracked inside of him. Understanding of the worst sort leaked into his mind. Before he could talk himself out of it, he turned, threaded his fingers through her short, dark hair to tilt her head back and sank his teeth into her throat.

A surprised yelp of pain burst from her mouth, her fingers scrambling at his shoulders before she went still. Sirius bit down harder, crushing her windpipe and severing her carotid. Blood that tasted like elderberries and clear water gushed over his tongue before he lowered her gently to the ground.

It took her a few moments to... Sirius didn't know what to call it. Could you die twice?

She watched him as she slipped away, gratitude in her dimming eyes. Sirius wiped at his mouth with the bottom of his shirt, sickness rising in him.

When she was well and truly gone, Sirius turned and trudged through the bodies to join Caydryn at the edge of the forest. The prince gave him a considering look, pale eyes trailing over the blood around Sirius' mouth before they strayed to where the werewolf pack lay.

"Why?" he asked simply, sounding genuinely curious.

"Because," Sirius sighed, wiping at his mouth once more, "if I can't save her, I hope someone will do the same for me."

Caydryn just nodded, though Sirius very much doubted he understood. Hell, he didn't really understand it all that much himself. A year and a half ago, he wouldn't have given a damn.

He might have even laughed at the idea that this Seelie prince had just destroyed an entire pack.

Part of him wished he could go back to that version of himself.

But he couldn't.

"That won't happen," Caydryn said, beginning to slip through the trees. The forest seemed to part for him, making traveling much easier, just so long as Sirius stuck close behind him. "We will simply trade this other woman for your Huntress and all will be well, yes?"

Sirius didn't really know how to answer that.

The taste of blood in his mouth wouldn't leave, no matter how many times he tried to clear it away. And he wanted to clear it away.

You're not the monster you keep trying to pretend you are, her voice whispered. You've changed, Sirius, and you know it.

Yes, he replied grimly. But I don't know if it's for the better.

A soft laugh sounded in his mind. 

Anything is better than always being alone.

Sirius shivered at that, wishing he could deny every word. But he couldn't. 

Regardless of how much it had hurt him. How much he had suffered because of it, he wouldn't for a moment wish to change it. He couldn't bring himself to not love her. He couldn't bear the thought of her not loving him.

When the silence had stretched too long—even for a faerie—Caydryn looked over his shoulder, hair rippling in the faded light. He lifted a dark brow in question. "Is that not why we are here?"

Sirius met Caydryn's ivory eyes, then found himself slowly shaking his head. 

The prince stopped, surprise written briefly across his face before it smoothed into his usual calm mask.

"We will not be giving this Alex to Lord Hades?" Caydryn asked, voice neutral.

Sirius rallied a grim smile. "Oh, we'll get Hades what he wants. But he never really specified how I had to deliver."