#( or maybe they noticed aisling's reaction to seeing him in the cctv footage! )

[bailesona]

" well, then. " a sigh is released, and with it, goes fiachra's careful construction of a false, innocent identity. " it's painfully obvious that you know i'm not a boring old tourist. so why don't we just cut to the chase? no more facades. sound good? "

OPEN STARTER. / STARRING: FIACHRA KELLY.

[quillsareswords]

Crooked Grin

Damian Wayne

Your smile shouldn't look like that.

[Reader lives with John Constantine, and is similarly a demonologist and magic user. About 16-18.]

Prompt List // Masterlist (in bio)

"Are you ready to go?"

You turn away from the book on the table, and face him. "Sorry?"

"Are you ready to leave?" he repeats. He leans against the doorjam, arms crossed, clad in black, much like yourself. He doesn't look impatient, but he does look a little anxious.

You cock an eyebrow and shoot him a lopsided grin. "Nervous, Birdy?"

He rolls his eyes as you snap a leather bound journal shut. "Please, I've assisted you before."

You set the book on your dresser. You shoulder a messenger bag on your way to meet him at the door. "Sure, but you already know what I'm up against this time."

"I didn't see it," he argues.

"But you felt it."

He doesn't answer you. Turns away before you can get a proper reaction.

You shut the door behind you, and enter the Wayne Manor. If anyone were to open the door again, it would be an empty closet.

Ah, how you loved your little door trick.

It was fairly simple magic, something you learned quickly. You could simply replace doors—switch one with another, if you will. With a rune and a mumbled phrase, you can make any door lead to any room that has a door you've marked with the same rune.

"Tim's the one who saw it on CCTV."

You stopped in front if the bookcase in Bruce's office, allowing Damian the grand honor of pulling the right book and pulling the hidden door open. "Video footage isn't exactly trustworthy when it comes to paranormal—haven't I told you this before?"

"Probably," he answers, throwing you comical wink.

Now you're the one rolling your eyes. "One if these days, you're gonna wish you listened," you sing, beginning your decent down the metal grate stairs.

He starts down after you. "No I won't." He slows his pace when he's next to you, "Because you'll be there to remind me." Then off he goes, taunting you to chase him clear down to the cave, through the secret hideout, and clear over to the vehicle bay.

You've never liked riding on Damian's bike. Or Robin's bike, rather. You much preferred his Lincoln, all leather seats and metal walls. Though he insisted it would be faster tonight, so you relented. The bike felt less secure, gave you less of a chance if anything were to happen.

Don't misunderstand; Damian is a fantastic driver. You'd rather him behind the wheel than yourself any day. It's more the people in the city he calls home you don't trust.

You've always had a love-hate relationship with Gotham City. You love the dreary atmosphere, the rainy days. You adore the old buildings and even older libraries. You live for the underground, more-than-human clubs and shops peppered throughout the streets.

You hate the crazed clowns, killer plants, and murderous penguins. You despise the snobby people and jacked up prices. You detest the crumbling ruins left to decay alone. Most of all, you abhor the other side of the coin.

Gotham has no shortage of darkness. In its people, under its streets, below the waters, above the rooftops. Though it sends a shockwave of thrill through you, the danger only you seem to be aware of is forever just around the corner. From ghouls to vampires to demons to dark witches, Gotham is crawling with things darker than its skies.

You, if course, stay in your lane unless absolutely necessary. Demons, ghosts, angels. That's your specialty, after all.

You're who the Bat Gang calls when things get a little too weird. Your father figure isn't one to drop and run at anybody's beck and call (except, perhaps, yours), so you're the one who gets the call first. You don't conplain—you enjoy the practice.

Damian slows and steers the bike off the backstreet, into the tiny parking lot of a little abandoned church. Little, meaning most likely one big room, and maybe a backroom and a bathroom at the end of the building.

He twists the key and silences the engine, one foot anchored on the asphalt, then removes his helmet.

You unwind your arms from his torso, lifting off your helmet as you slide off the machine behind him. You stare up at the stark white building and the wide brown mounted to the front of it. "How long has it been empty?" you inquire.

He dismounts the motorcycle and pockets his keys. His eyes find the same spot yours have: the busted glass of the front door. "Three weeks."

You turn to him, incredious. "Three weeks? Really?" You face the building again, studying the sprawling vines and waist-high grass by the playground, the chipping paint and the grimy windows.

In the light if dusk, it wasn't a place you'd want to find yourself on any Sunday morning.

"Three weeks," you breathe. You steal another minute or so to run through your mental database. What causes such decay so quickly? What was powerful enough to take residency in a church?

You head up to the doors, treading over busted asphalt and shattered glass and dry leaves on your way. Damian follows you closely, peering around at the surrounding buildings and streets.

The streetlights flicker on behind you, but you're too busy trying to get a good look at the inside before opening the doors to notice.

You try the handles first. It doesn't budge. You don't want to risk irritating whatever is inside before you're ready, so you duck down and carefully slip through the bottom pane of the left door, which had been shattered. Outwardly, you note. Whatever broke the glass came from inside, leaving the shards of glass scattered on the sidewalk.

Damian hesitates before he follows you. His muscles tighten the moment he crosses the threshold.

Beyond a short hallway consisting of three flimsy doors, you find the sanctuary. It's laden with over turned or broken pews, stained red carpet, and papers and pamphlets scattered all around.

Damian joins you in the middle of the isle a moment after your entrance, footsteps muffled by the thick red carpet. "The two doors on the end of the hall are bathrooms. I didn't see much there, besides some blood splatter in one of the sinks."

You nod, gaze shifting around the alter. "What about the far end? Have you been in that one yet?"

"No," he answers, "but if the other two were bathroom, it's most likely an office or a kitchenette."

You point to the far end of the sanctuary, at a door looming in the corner. "That's the office, I bet." You turn to face the entrance doors. "Let's check the door in the hall first, that one over there's giving me a bad vibe."

He follows you to hall, but you make him wait by the sanctuary doors.

When you nudge open the ajar door with the toe of your boot, Damian's suspicions are confirmed. A slim white refrigerator, four feet of vinal counter top, and a shallow sink. The only thing out-of-the-ordinary is the rancid stench and the cock-eyed chair by the window.

You dig out a maglight from your messenger bag and click it on. Light floods the dim room as you wave it around, gliding over counter tops and in open cubords. "Nothing in here," you report absently, fingers hooking around the refrigerator handle. You yank it open, just as a precaution.

You gasp suddenly, more out of shock than fright. You puff out your cheeks with the excess air, staring down the red and white mess caught in your flashlight beam with high eyebrows. "Found what's making that smell."

"What?" Damian stalks into the room, posture tense and guarded.

You press the door closed to save him the scaring image of three dead, mutilated chickens and a severed cat head. "Some sacrifices, apparently. Looks like they've been in here for a few days, maybe. A week, at the most."

He tries to look again, but you slam the door too quick and push him out of the room.

You know he's seen far worse, and frankly so have you, but one less thing to pop up in nightmares could make all the difference.

The pair of you make your way back through the hall and down the sanctuary aisle, to the flimsy wooden door at the very back, behind the podium and the alter.

However, your gait hitches a few feet yards away. You stick out your arm to stop Damian.

He looks to you for an explanation, but you don't hear his question.

You're too busy skimming the room with your eyes. The air seems to cool around you, raising the hairs on the back of your neck. You mentally recite the hand motions and spell for a barrier rune, just in case.

The streetlight outside flickers six times exactly, before it goes out completely.

The room is considerably darker now, leaving shadows to dance upon every wall, to whisper in your ears, to nip at your ankles.

Your growing paranoia gets the better of you, and you jump closer to Damian as your light darts in the direction of quiet crunch, eyes narrowed.

A gray cat scurries out of the way of your light, skinny and panicky.

You exhaled slowly, light beam passing through the room one more time before you turned back around.

Damian knows better to comment on it. Not that he would have—he just thanks his lucky stars you jumped, too.

You hook your index finger with his before you move forward, beam still highlighting all areas within close proximity to the door.

Shielding rune and defensive spells fresh in your mind, you waste no time in opening the door. You bypass the formality of the knob this time, and decide instead to kick it wide open.

The handle crashes against the wall, thundering echo bouncing trough both rooms. You search the ceiling thuroughly before entering, sure to hit every inch of the textured surface with the beam of your light.

When you are confident there's nothing hiding there, you move past the threshold cautiously. As you tightly swing your light around the room, a story unfolds.

This room, that appears to an office with cheap bookshelves of holy literature and a desk right out of an Ikea magazine, more closely resembled a warzone. Books strung throughout the room, some flipped over, some split open, some with pages in taters, and some with their covers ripped clean off.

The windows on the north and west side are so thick with spiderwebbing fractures, neither of you are able to see through them properly. The carpeting is shredded in random places, as if wild cats had been set loose to ruin it. You look back to the windows, at the curtains, and wonder if that could possibly exactly what's happened here. But with a spotlight on the paintings and pictures on the wall, you decide that cats have nothing to do with it.

You approach one of the paintings slowly, light focused on the face of what you guess is Mother Mary. Your mental check has you listening to Damian's boots crunching on discarded pages as you observe the hollow place where her face should be.

"Look at this."

You turn away from the image at Damian's call. You find him in you beam, crouched in the middle of the room, hunched over an open book, his micro light poised between his thumb and his index finger.

"What is it?" you inquire, crossing the room to lean over his shoulder.

"There are words written in this one." He points to the red, black, and blue circles highlighting specific words.

"It was very swift?" You squint at the page. "Why would you use three different pens for that?"

He shakes his head. "We're investigating a possible demon and you're questioning why somebody would use different pens in a book?"

You roll your eyes once again. "Firstly, you should always assume poltergeist before demon, and secondly, who do you know that would make any kind of mark on a book in a church?"

"Point taken." He stands, waving his light around by the wall you'd come in by. "Closet."

You turn again to find where his light is pointed. "Awesome," you heave, stalking toward the feeble sliding door. You motion Damian away from its direct path, positioning yourself on the opposite side.

In one swift motion, you jerk it open.

"Shit!" You jump away as a man falls out, his head hitting the floor with an awful thud.

"I really hate closets," you hiss, pulling the high neck of your shirt up over your mouth and nose, the stench tumbling out with him.

With his shirt fitting the way it does, Damian is left only with a sneer and his hand.

You narrow your eyes and refocus your beam on the mystery man. With your boot, you roll him over.

Black button down, white collar, brass belt.

"Preacher," you announce. You take a closer look at his face. Bald head, strangely proportioned features. "A weird one, though. Looks more like he belongs in a trenchcoat at a playground."

Damian nods, fearing that if he opened his mouth, he'd have to taste the smell of rotting skin.

"What exactly were you doing here, buddy?" you ask aloud, half expecting an answer. When none comes, you look to Damian again. "I would say it was just straight up murder—maybe a robbery-gone-wrong—but this guy doesn't have any marks.

A look passes over your face, as if you've just reminded yourself of something. "Get me a pencil off the desk."

Damian creeps the short distance back through books and scattered paper in the now pitch black room, relying heavily on his tiny (yet impressively bright) flashlight to keep him from tripping on anything.

At the desk, he reaches across it for a pencil from a plain white cup, but stops short when his gaze snags on a book spread open there.

Thick black lines scrawling across thick, yellowing paper that alarmingly resembled dried skin, thin and black red letters in a language he only vaguely recognized. He could only guess a few words; that one could be blood, this one might be chicken, over there could be human. He knows better than to touch the book at all.

He returns to you quickly, though you're already looking at him. He holds a sharpened No. 2 pencil out to you. "When you're finished with him, there's something you should look at."

You accept the pencil, flipping it in your hand so you were using the eraser for whatever you were planning to do with it. "What is it?"

He watches you gently press the eraser to the preacher's eyelid. His brows furrow, but he doesn't ask. "It's a book. The pages don't look like paper, and I don't recognize the language. It's partly Latin." He grimances as you carefully push one eyelid open. There is no eye, only a round black, coal-like stone. "And some runes, or something alike."

You turned to look over your shoulder at him. "Really?" You look back down at was once an eyeball. You're quiet during your examination, poking your way all around the poor man's face.

Damian stands at the preacher's opposite shoulder, watching from above. He doesn't ask what you're looking for. As whip smart as he is and as quickly as he learns, he gets lost in the centuries-old homemade terms and lack of scientific logic.

Finally, you stand. "He's been possessed," you concur. "The skin's gone cold, so it's been a least a week. And the rot in his mouth is pretty progressed, so it's probably been a little over that." You meet his eyes in the dark, as if you're expecting something.

"I don't have any intent to ask, beloved."

You bob your head with a little smile. "Fair enough. Desk, then?"

"Desk."

You follow him back across the room again. You lean over the surface, pointing the wide beam down on the old book. You kept attentive to how close you were to the edge of the desk, as well as how far your many necklaces and bracelets hung above the miscellaneous items and papers strung about the flat wood.

"This is an old language, one of the original ones the first demonologists and occult studiers used to record everything and communicate with each other—"

"Why did they need a separate language?"

You kept your gaze focused on the open page. "Most serious demonology—outside of Bible stuff—and focused paranormal study started around the same time people were called witches for curing sicknesses, Dame."

"Ah."

"Anyway, I'll stop boring you with the history lesson. It's basically a mashup of Latin, Greek, and little freestyling."

"Can you read it?"

"Yeah, I read stuff like this in the House Of Magic's library pretty often. It's similar to what is used in modern day demonology."

You squint down at the page, scrutinizing the dull lettered lines. Damian noted that you weren't blinking.

"It's . . . It's labeled as an invocation, but it's a summoning." Your eyebrows gather above your nose. "Which is pretty obvious, considering–"

"(Y/N), as much as I adore hearing you talk about the things that interest you, what exactly does it summon?"

You fall silent, eyes darting further down the page, to the two intricate symbols scribed there. Finally, you announce, "Crossroads demon—for making deals. But it doesn't make sense, because crossroads demons don't need this much, uh, drama."

"What does that mean?" A creak echos from the sanctuary. He moves quickly and quietly, back to the door to see what's caused it.

You speak a little louder to be sure he can hear you. "Well, a crossroads ritual is so much simpler than this, and you don't need any kind of rune, symbol, or anything, really. As basically as I can put it, you put a box in the dirt and beg for it to work." You grab your longest necklace in your hand and pull it away from the desk, allowing you to lean closer to the book without the programed stone touching the desk. "And this right here would mean–"

You eyebrows unfurrow immediately. That would mean I summon thee to take my soul. Your eyes dart wildly across the page, rereading and rechecking every letter of the old text.

That isn't the right center for a crossroads demon.

You mentally run through everything but of information you'd compiled since last night, when Tim had shown you the footage.

You bounded down the stairs, Damian on your heels, as you chattered on about Constantine's rotten habits and The House's typical invasions of privacy.

"Speak of the devil." Tim throws you a cocky, yet oh-so-tired grin.

You jump the last three grate steps, landing with a hard thump on the cement. "Close, but not quite," you laughed, sauntering over to join him at the massive blue screen. "What can I do for ya, Trombone?"

His eyebrows slant together in annoyance at the aged nickname. You try to play a trombone one time—one time. "Found this yesterday," he grits. His pinky tags the tab button, just as Damian joins you.

The black and white CCTV clip is taken from a security camera, focused on the building across the street. Nothing seems to be happening.

You lean closer to the screen. Maybe you're missing something? You doubt it's a prank, considering the last time they tried to jumpscare you. Your gaze bounces around to all the windows and the doors, the dark corners and the shadowed strips.

Then, out of the blue, the three streetlights bordering the parking lot and accompanying sidestreet flicker off. Then on again, then off.

You blink. Squint. "Rewind it."

The footage speeds backward a few seconds, then takes proper motion again. You focus on the windows. A shadow moves just inside the door. "Right there," you point at the glass entry doors. "Go back and watch the edge of the left door."

The accelerated decay of the property.

The dead animals in the kitchen.

The intact cross.

The flickering streetlight.

Possessed priest.

This is for something far stronger.

You pull away from the table and shoot forward, nearly tripping over an outstretched arm. "Damian!" you bellow, stumbling out into the sanctuary.

He's halfway down the isle, flashlight swinging to face you in surprise. "What?"

You run through the room to close the gap between you, beam of light cutting through pitch black empty space, peeling back inky air from the ruined room. Paranoia swells in your chest, knowing something was looming in the shadows so close to him.

He subconsciously reaches out and grasps your arm. "What's wrong?"

You're still steadily searching the room with your light. "It isn't a crossroads demon, it's worse, it's bigger, it's meaner. We should go back to The House, regroup, get some tougher stuff."

"What do you mean?" Now he's skimming the room with his light. "What is it?"

You shake your head. "That's the bad part, it wasn't specific, so I don't know for sure."

"For sure. What do you guess it is?"

"Educated guess?" You flick your light behind you. "Fourth ring—bad news."

"Aren't all demons bad news?"

"Not the ones you can reason with."

You both spin on your heels to face the crashing commotion by the entrance. Your light caught it just in time to see pages settle on the ground around a newly over turned pew.

"We're leaving," you state firmly, pushing against Damian, a silent order to move your ass.

His light must have hit every edge of the room as he creeps forward, step by step, toward the entrance of the sanctuary. You walk backward behind him, keeping your eyes from settling on one thing for too long.

When the pannel doors slam shut with enough force to knock the remaining photographs and painting off the wall, you feel the pressure of Damian not only stopping, but jerking back a step against your back.

Your beam settles on the office doors. "The doors shut?"

"Yes."

"Did you hear the lock?"

"Watched it."

"Fuck."

"Shit."

You move your beam to the podium. Then the fractured statue of Jesus nailed to a cross on the furthest wall. The head and arms had been broken off, laying sadly at his sides.

"Damian?"

"Yes?"

"We're going back to the office."

"Obviously." He spins around to stand at your side. "I'm far more comfortable with the remains of the living than the presence of the dead."

"Not really the dead, but I know what you mean."

You lead the way down the main isle, light skimming and skipping through the room as you went. You listen intently, for any sound that might tip you off to intentions or locations. Demons lower (or higher, depending on how you looked at it) than a Sixth Circle require a body to walk the living plane. If you're right, there must be a form of some kind around here some place. A physical body.

You reach out absently, hooking your index finger around his pinky. You've had people and things snatched away in silence before, and you weren't about to let it happen to Damian.

He doesn't say anything. No typical snide remarks or well thought jabs. The first few times he'd accompanied you to an exorcism or a hunt, he'd been just as cocky and arrogant as the day you met him. He'd laughed when you whipped out a canister of table salt.

The third time, though, he'd been pinned to a wall by something he couldn't see or feel. He couldn't fight it, couldn't intimidate it, couldn't distract it.

He never mocked a thing about your practice after that.

Another crash echoes from the left side of the room, drawing both of your attention. Your light finds the broken crucifix, now toppled over and laying across the podium it knocked over on it's way down. Your light lingers.

"Go ahead into the room," you poke a thumb in the direction of the open door. "Set Carl back up in the closet, if you don't mind."

"Carl?" Damian edges his way back to the open door, using your favorite tactic of keeping an eye on him. If he was still talking to you, odds are, he's just fine.

"Yeah, I named the poor guy. Didn't want to offend him with that dead dude on the floor." You creep closer to the crucifix.

"And you chose Carl because. . ?" he pushes the door the rest of the way open, the creak bouncing off the walls, throwing the sound in every direction.

You kick a shredded Bible out of the way. "Just what came off the top of my head," you answered honestly. You shift your gaze from the broken religious symbol to the surrounding area, just to make sure.

"What about Davis?" He sets his little flashlight between his teeth to free his hands. He hesitates, but hooks his hands under the dead man's shoulders, grips his shirt, and lifts him back to a near-standing position.

"No way, look at the stubble of his chin. No Davis would let it get that bad."

He stuffs the body back into the closet with as much grace and pride as he can manage. He shoves the door shut double checks the latch to make sure it doesn't swing open with the added weight. "Mark?"

"No way." You nudge the wooden cross with the toe if your boot. It must weight at least seventy pounds, and it from the six inch industrial screws on the back of it, it was bolted to the wall. "Not with hair that thin."

He shakes his head. What to talk about now? "Find anything out there?"

"Not yet." You crouch, running a hand over the carved robe.

He sweeps the room with his light again. But this time, it catches on the farthest corner from the door.

His heart leaps. His spine stiffens, his blood runs cold.

It's staring right at him.

His mind reels, grappling for something—anything—you've mentioned about dealing with a demon face to face.

He's panicking. Why is he panicking? He works well under pressure, one might even say best. Why now? He feels terror grip his heart, and his breath is coming and going in short, silent bursts. Terror floods his mind—but why?

Why, why, why?

He was raised for this sort of thing, groomed for it even. He's never reacted this way before–

It's a demon, he reminds himself, through muddied thoughts of escape plans and defensive manuevers.

It's got to be messing with him. He remembers you mentioning things like this, both in idle conversation and over sparring.

He does his best to push it away, keep the blood rushing in his ears at a manageable level.

What does he do?

Does he yell for you? Will that startle it, or push it to action? Should he make a break for it? Is there even a chance he could get to you before it gets to him?

What if he takes you from the equation entirely? What can he do? Can he hit it? He can see it now, mostly, at least. What about shielding himself?

"Damian?" Your voice sounds like church bells ringing on a dark and foggy morning.

There's his out, if all else fails. You'll be coming to check on him in a few seconds if he doesn't answer, and he's finding speaking more difficult than usual anyway.

He tears his eyes from the piercing red and orange globes hanging in font of a foggy face. An old, dogeared bible lays on the floor. Surely that would do something.

"Hey, Dame. Everything good?" He doesn't hear anymore movement from you. You sound more focused. "Damian?"

He holds his breath. Counts to five. Releases. Counts to five. Another breath.

"Damian, I swear if you're just too focused to listen to me. . ." Your warning trails off as you draw closer. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees you moving around the corner, coming through the doorway, and then you stop.

He doesn't look away from the thing in the corner. He knows you're looking at it. He knows, because you haven't called his name again.

He nearly jumps and your voice, cold and level. "You nasty bastard."

The thing's glittering orange irises slide slowly to you. The rest if it doesn't move.

He takes the diverted attention to get a better look at it.

It looks like a man—all the pieces are there, the arms, the legs, the hands, the feet—but it just looks wrong. Like. Poorly designed animated character that was meant to resemble a real person, but was just off enough to be nearly unrecognizable.

And the face. It was distorted in an indescribable way. He could almost pick out the details—a nose, a mouth, even eyebrows—but it was like they were just out of sight. Like looking through a foggy mirror, but the air was perfectly clear.

"What brought you to Gotham, then?" you question.

Damian tries to sneak a step backward. You're only a few feet away, and if he can get to you, you'll be able to tell him what to do. Give him something to hit with.

Unfortunately, the discarded papers and books scattered along the floor expel any and every chance of stealth he thought he had.

Orange irises flicker yellow and snap back his way, and he finds himself unable to look away. Panic is starting to rise again when you take two daring steps sideways.

"Hey, what the hell, man? We were having a conversation, you know. It's rude to look away when someone's talking to you." You're only a foot away from blocking him entirely.

It's eyes are back on yours now.

"As I was saying, what brought you 'round this side of town?" Damian sees your hand sliding into your back pocket. "Thought you'd be up in the skyscrapers, ya know, with the big dogs in fat ties with fatter checks." You slide on a pair of knuckles.

Damian shifts his weight. You're about to charge it, he can read it from your body language. As loudly as his instincts are screaming, he knows he'll only be in the way if he stays where he is. His best bet is to at least get out to the sanctuary, so you can get your job done without worrying about where he is.

You're both silent for exactly two seconds. Muscles curled tight, like wild animals waiting for the right time to strike.

Then, in barley a blink, you're leaping forward, words of a dead language flying off your tongue, bring orange shapes he doesn't register encasing your hands. He's swerving behind you, slipping on papers in his rush for the door.

He speeds around the first row of pews, and takes the farthest left right isle. He makes it to the double doors at the back of the room, before discovering that the doors are still very firmly locked. Thankfully, the doors were cheap and easily gave way to Damian's forceful convention.

He shoves one side the rest of the way open, and discovers exactly why such a task was so difficult in the first place.

The dining table from the kitchen had been lodged in the doorjam.

He blows out a breath when the leg catches on the wall of the hallway. It's not going to open without shattering that table leg, which he doesn't have time for.

You let out an angry shout, shoving forward the spinning, glowing sigil you're using to shield yourself from the demon's razor-like fingertips.

You thrust it through the doorway of the office, quickly pinning it down on an upright pew.

Damian swears under his breath and ducks past the doors, opting instead for a more stable place to hold his ground, should things get as bad as they were looking.

The room is nearly pitch black, both his and your flashlights abandoned in the office, providing the smallest amount of light to the most obvious parts of the room. The only other sources of light are your magic and your eyes, both a mesmerizing shade of dark orange, glowing fiercely in contrast to the stale dark air surrounding you.

There were times when those glowing irises were a calming, steadying presence; something to lean against to keep himself grounded.

This is not one of those times.

At the moment, he's hunkered down behind a church pew, waiting for you to tell him to do something, watching sparks of magic fly around the room as you battle against a demon you weren't entirely prepared for. The great room is filled with encantations in a language he doesn't care to understand and ungodly shrills and growls.

Then, he hears a pained shriek so deafening and strangely pitched, his hands involentarily fly up to cover his ears.

The room goes quiet and still, papers settling back on the cheap red carpet, dust finding it's way back down to the wooden surfaces.

He peers over the edge of the church pew once more, eyes flicking through the whole room in a near desperate search for that orange glow. It couldn't have been you that made that noise, could it?

Finally, he finds two tiny, bright orange circles flickering around the room as well. The palms of your hands still have a soft glow to them, in the fuzzy outlines of your veins.

"Damian, where'd you go?" Your voice is level—you aren't worried. You know he didn't go far enough that you couldn't be heard.

It always left him just a bit tender in the chest when you reminded him just how well you knew him. "Right here," he beckons, straightening out and picking his way back across the room to the doors, where the dim beams of the streetlights out side have away his outline.

You start up the isle immediately, eyes still piercing the darkness. "Do you want to go get your light?"

He doesn't answer you right away. "My–? No, I have more at home. What happened to the demon?"

"Killed it," you answer dryly. "Or mostly did, anyway. Either way, we better go before we find out."

He's about to follow you back up the rest of the way to the doors, but stops halfway. "Wait, I do need something from that office."

You turn to ask what is, but he's already running back down the main isle. Your grip tightens on the strap of your messenger bag, the same strap that had been sliced in two at some point during your little skirmish. Eyes dart around the great room. You raise your maglight again, and click it back on. You'd gotten yours from the office, but Damian's was too small for you to waste much time looking for it. You point it after him, and when he vanishes into the mostly dark room, you direct it to the darkest edges of the room. When you're satisfied, you pinch the light between your jaw and your shoulder, drop your bag, and set your hands to work with moving that blasted table out of the way.

You've just about got it completely clear when the sound of the office door reaches you. You turn halfway, just to check. And then, your heart drops along with your flashlight. It feels like the floor's given out from under you when your light catches him.

You start to shout, but the words get caught in your throat. Your hands twitch and suddenly the world seems like it's slipped into slow motion.

Then, your knees are bending and the rubber soles of your boots claw against the carpet. Your rushing toward him, but it doesn't feel fast enough.

Faster, faster, faster.

Your heart is palpitating and your mind is reeling already, and all you can hear is the premonition his screams.

You come to a near-screeching halt in the tiny space between your lover and the charging black mass, fully intending to push him clean to the exit, eyes hardly focused before it happens—

Something hits you, hard, fast, and cold. Your eyes roll back and ice shoots through your veins, you can feel it, and the pain is overwhelming as you stumble backwards with the world spinning around you and—

Damian feels it in his chest before he sees it. Heavy and tight. He spins around, though it takes a measure of courage and willpower, because he has a feeling he knows what's happened, but he doesn't want to see it.

You're a few feet away, crumpled, hunched in on yourself as you sit on your knees, between two intact pews. Your back heaves with every strangled breath. Your hands are out of view, pressed firmly against the rough red in front of you to anchor yourself.

"(Y/N)?" He braves a step or two forward. "What happened?"

You don't answer.

Chills rush over him in waves. The temperature in the air hadn't been in any way warm to begin with, but his breath billows out into the stream of light from the flashlight he'd managed to pick up on his way out of the office. He tries your name again, and this time, you side to your feet.

You don't stand, mind you, so much as levitate gently until your feet are beneath you. You turn very slowly, with jagged and barely controlled movements.

You grin widely at him, but it's crooked and too sharp at the ends. It reaches tour eyes, sure, but really wishes it didn't.

Part 2; but I can't link it because Tumblr is still being a bitch with links. I am so sorry. If you go to profile, it should be the first post until further notice. 🙄

because Tumblr apparently has a limit of 250 text blocks per post