#ash's guns are her most precious thing. she loves them both so much and built them herself and when shes not training or studying

[silverselfshippingchaos]

I just know that Ash pulling one of these would drive S.eifer nuts in the best way possible

[masterofmagnetism]

Monster || Self Para

“He had become a monster, happily, for just a moment of having his head above water.” -Ian St. Martin, Lucius: The Faultless Blade

WHO: @master-of-magnetism, mentions of @burdenedxtelepath, @jeanelcinegrey,@mistressxfmagnetism, @jameslogans, @apoisontouch, @shakeandquake, @firstxman,@mysteriousmutant

WHAT: In the aftermath of finding out about the firebird that’s taken up residence in Erik’s mind, Charles grows wary of his old friend.  Erik sees him flinch and starts down a spiral that changes how he thinks of himself and those he holds dearest.

WHEN: After Lorna’s visit to see Charles at the Institute.

WHERE: The Institute and one of Erik’s safehouses.

WORDS: 4k

WARNINGS: Holocaust mention, depression, anxiety, PTSD, child abuse, child death, paranoia, smoking, guns, manipulative behavior.

He’d been a fool.  A blind, naïve, sentimental, stupid fool.  

Even with how sudden the shift in the tides was, the abrupt influx of old enemies and estranged family alike returning to his side in the aftermath of Central Park and the Raft, the thought to examine why hadn’t crossed his mind.  It seemed self-evident, at the time—they had finally seen what he’d seen for decades, from the humans.  They had seen the inevitability of the war, the atrocities humans were willing to commit against their people.  

How very uncharacteristically optimistic of him that belief had been.  As always, the truth was far less pleasant to entertain.  Perhaps Charles had rubbed off on him rather more than he’d thought he had; Charles always was prone to telling people pretty half-truths as opposed to what Erik had thought of as ugly truths.  

At least one of the other man’s half-truths had clearly made a home in his mind, and he was paying for it now.

That day years ago in the gardens outside the Institute, Erik had let Charles into his head further than he’d trusted anyone--even himself.  There were ghosts in the corners of his mind that he’d always thought best to let lie as much as he could; they haunted him enough on the hard days that he saw no reason to try and wake them on the easy ones. But he’d let Charles in, and the man had reached into his mind and dredged up a memory from the depths where he’d buried the thoughts of the first family he’d lost all those decades ago.  The point between rage and serenity, he’d said, and used that precious memory of his mother to coax Erik into turning the satellite for him.  Like a performing show dog.  Pathetic, that that was all it had taken, but even more pathetic was how quickly he’d internalized the words the man told him after.  There's so much more to you than you know. Not just pain and anger. There’s good too, I felt it.

And that had been all it took—Charles saying those words, looking at him like that.  Having his mind opened and being reintroduced to the most invaluable memories had flayed him open and soothed the sting all at once, and in such a state, he’d taken the words in like air to a drowning man.  They had wrapped their roots around the fragile parts of his psyche and taken hold, may as well have shifted the world on its axis.  

Erik hadn’t thought of himself as a good man since he’d lived in Ukraine.  Not since the day Anya died, when in the ensuing surge of anger he’d swept away the lives of twenty people as easily as drawing breath.  That single moment had sent his wife, who he loved as dearly as the daughter he dug out of the ashes that day, fleeing from him with terror in her eyes.  He’d never laid a hand on her, never dreamt of it.  But when she had seen that side of him, she had decided that it outweighed all else.  She had decided that she couldn’t stay in the presence of a monster like him, even to bury her own daughter.

It wasn’t the first time someone had thought as much of him—Sonderkommando hadn’t been well-regarded in the camps.  They had always been kept separate from the rest of the camp, put up in dormitories isolated from everyone else.  Some people thought they got special privileges. Others dismissed that as rightfully laughable, and hated them anyway for the jobs they imagined they were made to do.  The camp administrators kept that secret, and accordingly rumors had abounded of what atrocities they may have been made to help perpetuate.  That had stung in his throat: the hatred of his own people being directed at him.  It didn’t need to be everyone—it was enough, those few glares that they got when they did come into contact with the others in the camp, to make him feel nauseous and guilty anyway. Those stares were unavoidable if he wanted to see Magda.  But they’d been at least tolerable, so long as she never looked at him that way.

And then she had, that day in Vinnitsa, and Erik had lost everything in one fell swoop.  His daughter, his wife, and any idea he’d had that doing what it took to survive and protect her had made him a good man.  

Maybe Schmidt had taken out what made him good, in all those days at the camp, and turned him into something else.

That thought had lingered for decades.  When he went to Israel, when he started hunting Nazis, the idea was only reinforced.  Everyone he ever worked with had signed up to do the very same thing as he had, but stared at him like there was something wrong for the ease with which he would end the lives of their quarries.  Left to his own devices, Erik never let them die swiftly.  He thought it righteous retribution, justice, to let them feel a fraction of what he and so many others had.

( He never had quite seen the difference, between the two things: what was justice if not balancing the scales?  If not an eye for an eye?  There were other teachings, of course, later teachings about turning the other cheek, but as far as Erik was concerned, they’d had it right the first time.  His family had turned the other cheek, when all this started, and all they’d gotten for their troubles were torture and unmarked graves.  That wasn’t justice.  Justice was making their enemies feel for even just a few hours what he and six million of his kinsmen had suffered for years.  The scales would never be righted, but he would be damned if he wouldn’t try. Leaving their punishments to a G-d who had watched as the camps were built and his chosen people were slaughtered didn’t seem enough to even things out as much as what he could accomplish with his own two hands.  Maybe it was blasphemous to think that way.  He rather thought that if it was, he’d earned a bit of leeway. )

The others were afraid of how easily the cruelty came—maybe they thought he’d been one of the unfortunates made to perform such acts on his own people, in the camps, or maybe they had sorted out that difference he’d never seen. Either way, eventually the partnerships had stopped coming.  They’d never pulled him back from the field, probably because he was efficient if nothing else, but he’d stopped getting others assigned to help back in the seventies.  It’d been fine.  He worked better alone, without their stares upon his back and the green tint to their faces when he’d finished with his target.  When, in showing his partners the meticulous pins that could sometimes fill the walls of entire rooms he was staying in, he didn’t have to hear the whispers under their breath calling him a blood-fueled machine.  

( If only they knew the half of it. )

And then he’d met Charles, and the man hadn’t looked at him like that, despite the situation he’d found him in.  Erik had been prepared to kill Shaw on that yacht, and this little Oxford professor-type had dragged him out of the water, knew it, and still looked at him like he was a marvel.

Like he was worth saving.  

After so many years, it’d been intoxicating, the way that Charles looked at him.  The way the man relaxed around him—even when he was curt and abrasive, Charles never went tense or looked at him like he was the cold-blooded hunter that he’d become.  More than that, Charles had asked Erik to stay, to set aside the mission and help him help others like them.  He’d spoken about his vision, about wanting to build a safe haven, had been willing to trust Erik in the care of children.  And as much as the thought terrified him, it was everything that he’d ever wanted, and Erik couldn’t say no.  He knew from a lifetime of experience that inevitably, Charles and whoever they brought under their roof would pay for their association with him the same way both of his families had.  The same way Suzanna had just years before.  The same way everyone always did.  But Erik was a selfish man, and Charles’ optimism was in some ways contagious, and Erik couldn’t leave that acceptance behind to go back to working alone when he’d had a taste of what a partnership was supposed to be like.

Monsters didn’t get happy endings, though.  And surely enough, Charles had paid for it.

They’d planned Cuba for weeks.  Charles had never liked Erik’s goal of killing Shaw, though he had come in recent months to understand the necessity of taking the man out of action.  The telepath thought they could hand him over to law enforcement.  That the combined efforts of the entire team would be enough to overpower Shaw and his allies, enough to let the worlds’ governments step in and take care of him in the legal way.  The humane way.  

It was the most severe in a line of miscalculations Erik had been quietly cataloguing for months, the worst of the times that Charles let his idealism get in the way of his brilliant intellect.  Erik didn’t trust any government to be competent enough to take care of Shaw, especially when it seemed the man had been manipulating the Americans and the Russians to the brink of war for years.  He knew all too well the effects that Shaw could have on a person--how the man’s madness and cruelty could be dressed up in charisma and the air of power that seemed to suck the air out of any room he was in.  Charles wanted to believe that mutants and humans could work together against greater threats, but there was no amount of reasoning Erik could try that would convince his dearest friend that the humans would never see them as any better than the worst amongst them.  They couldn’t even respect their fellow humans that much, let alone another species.  Their differences would be enough to earn the humans’ contempt, even if not all of them made the leap that Charles himself had in his genetics thesis--that they were the next step of evolution that would wipe homo sapiens out if nature ran its course.  

Charles was dangerously wrong, and it was going to get him and the whole team killed.  So Erik had made his own plans, like he was used to.  He had willfully and shamelessly tricked Charles into being an accessory to murder, and while he regretted the pain it had caused the man, he would do it again in a heartbeat, because this was bigger than one man’s pain.  Charles could take it, had taken it seemingly no worse for the wear by the time he’d gotten out to the sand to see the evidence that Erik was right pointed at them.  And even then, even with a hundred missiles pointed at them threatening to blow the island into so much rearranged sand, Charles had argued for the humans.  Had said those most hated words, that the men on the ships were just following orders like every single man in the camps who marched after Hitler’s vision over the corpses of his people, and Erik had seen red.

The next minute had passed in a blur of thrown fists and metal singing to him as it hurtled across the sea towards its targets--and then Moira had shot at him.  Shot metal bullets at a metallokinetic.  And Charles, in all his eternal wisdom, had not hit the ground like everyone with sense and without Erik’s powers should when a gun went off, but had stood behind him while Erik’s attention was a million places at once, the past included.  It didn’t matter that Moira and Charles both had been stupid, though--Erik had been the one to curve the bullet.

Laying there in the sand, Charles had told him that he didn’t want to be by Erik’s side.  That they did not want the same things, despite months of conversation indicating otherwise in all senses but for the one.  In less than an hour, Erik had made a murderer and a cripple both of Charles, and so he had finally done what the man seemed to want, what he should have done from the beginning, and left.

The guilt for the bullet never went away.  The guilt for tricking Charles into violating his beliefs was worse and more complicated because he didn’t feel guilty enough that he would change it.  The bullet, of course.  But not that.  It had eaten him, that he was willing to use someone he truly cared about like that and not want to take it back.  Surely a good person wouldn’t be.

Erik had been content to leave it there: that Charles had been wrong about him the same way he’d been wrong about so many other things.  But no--he hadn’t been wrong at all, Erik knew now.  

He’d simply been lying.

Because today, when he’d been at the Institute, when he’d been trying to care for the man, Charles had been perpetually watching him out of the corner of his eye.  The telepath had made excuses for why they needed to go somewhere around other people, despite his studious avoidance of contact with anyone who wasn’t Jean, Hank, or himself for weeks.  Erik had been sitting at his bedside taking care of Charles since the rescue without issue. But then Hank had said something, when they were all together in the kitchen, and Charles had flinched when Erik’s voice got harder when he snapped his response.  

The first moment after, Erik had thought that perhaps it had just triggered memories from the kidnapping, but then the pieces fell into place with a sickening clarity that made his chest feel like it was caving in.

Hank had raised his voice, first, and not gotten a flinch.  Charles had been trying to keep from being alone with him all day, had been watching him like a bomb in the corner of the room.  He was afraid--not of the raised voice, but of what he must have somehow found out despite Erik’s efforts to hide it.  Charles knew he had the Phoenix, and he was afraid of it.  

But, had prompted that little voice in his mind, he isn’t afraid of Jean, is he?

No.  Even when Jean had nearly taken apart rooms of the house in fits of frustration or anger or sadness, Charles had never looked at Jean once in anything like fear.  Charles didn’t tiptoe around her, didn’t hate being alone with her—he enjoyed it, being with their daughter alone.  Even when said daughter was the living conduit of the Phoenix force.

Which meant it wasn’t a Phoenix problem.  It was Erik.  

Charles was afraid of him.  And all at once, Erik had felt the dizzying vertigo of familiarity—the rug being pulled from under his feet as someone he loved, someone he thought loved and trusted him, looked at him like he was feral.

Erik had made his excuses and left immediately, because he knew the emotion welling up in him was dangerous. Just like Charles thought he was—he was right, Erik was a time bomb, and he refused to go off at the Institute.  

His safehouse hadn’t been so lucky.  The place was a mess, but Erik had a few feet of clearance around himself where he sat against the wall, staring at the opposite wall absently as his mind twisted, reconciled itself with a reality he’d refused to consider before.

Charles was afraid of him.  Not the Phoenix.  If that was the case, it couldn’t be new—maybe more pronounced, now, but not new. And the more Erik considered it, the more he realized it had to have been true.

The near-nightly chess games had been more than simple friendship, they’d been check-ins.  The constant brush of Charles’ mind that he’d found so comforting for his months at the Institute wasn’t out of intimacy, it was monitoring.  

There’s good too.  Not a statement of fact, but wishful thinking.  Trying to make him something good, through the access Erik had given him to his mind and heart rather than through fists and fear as Schmidt had. And Erik hadn’t ever even considered it. He’d welcomed the man into his head after a few short weeks, let him set up an outpost, let him see things Erik had never—

So fucking stupid.

Of course that had been what it was.  Erik had known he wasn’t a good man, but had believed from the moment that he met Charles that the telepath was one. He’d thought that the man chose to associate with him because maybe, maybe Erik had been wrong about himself, but no.

Charles had seen what he was.  It’d been an exercise in containment. He’d seen that Erik wasn’t a good person and lured him to the Institute to keep him contained in a cage dressed up far nicer than the one Schmidt had used.  He had put him under him in the X-Men because he had seen that Erik needed to be controlled, and Erik had gone along with it because he’d been following orders his whole life and because he had trusted Charles.  

How useful that was for him, in recruitment, in boosting his ego.  The telepath had been right, on that beach when he'd told Erik that they didn't want the same thing.  Erik had always wanted freedom.  Charles wanted control.  Charles wanted to fix people, to trot them out and say look what I did.  He’d made Raven stay in a skin not her own for years around other people.  He'd hidden himself as a telepath from others, Raven said, and simply done whatever it took to win them over until Moira McTaggert.  Always about being liked.  Always about hiding the things that didn't fit the picture.  Always about the people around him keeping up the all-important image Charles cared so much about, cultivated so carefully.  Why, then, associate with Erik?  Erik, who was rough around the edges, who was sharp and dangerous and too hot-headed for his own good and nothing at all like the type of person Charles would’ve associated with in Oxford.  Erik, who Charles believed with every fiber of his being was fundamentally wrong about the world.  Why bother with him?

Certainly only for the satisfaction of a job well done.  What an image boost that would be, wouldn’t it?  The man who trained a housepet was nothing compared to the man who brought a feral animal to heel.  Rehabilitation was a lofty ideal, one that Charles could say he’d accomplished with someone as fucked up as Erik at his back.  Look, I can bring even the worst down to settle.

Erik had been too broken even for that.

And Jean—

Jean was afraid of him, too.  Oh, he had no doubt that she loved him, because she had been too young to fake it then and he still felt it now, when he let her into his head.  But she was afraid, too. She did what Charles had done, dressed it up in concern about his well-being, but it’d slipped through in her conversations with him, too, even if he’d been too stupid to see it at the time.  

That’s a fantastic idea, Erik. Lose your inhibitions even more.  

Sober up before you hurt someone not on our hit list, would you?

The chosen avatar of the Phoenix force was afraid of him—his daughter was afraid of him.  Of what he was willing to do.  Of what he would do if he wasn’t kept on a leash. She wasn’t here to help.  She was here to do damage control.  Just like the father she’d chosen years ago.  

Jean had said, time and time again, when he talked to her about the force running through both of them, now, that the Phoenix cuts through lies.  The Phoenix shows the truth.

The next hour was spent wrapped in smoke as he made his way steadily through nearly a whole pack of cigarettes, carefully cataloguing all the data he’d gotten but ignored regarding the people he surrounded himself with.  He stepped back, looked at it from out of himself, from the Phoenix that apparently could see what he would not, and evaluated all the little details he’d disregarded out of fear of disturbing the fragile self-image he’d started to repair all those years ago.  

They were all afraid of him.

When he’d tried to talk to Logan about Terry, the man had jumped immediately to telling Erik to stay away from her, threatening to kill him if he hurt the woman.  As if Erik would.

Daisy had been surprised, the morning after, because she hadn’t expected he would do something so basically polite, something he considered baseline etiquette. She’d expected something meaner.

Lorna had balked, during the rescue, at the lack of care he’d had for torturing the man for information about his leader.  She’d been disgusted, had avoided looking him in the eye for hours after.

Anna had left him once already because she was afraid of what he was willing to do.  He’d thought that they were getting back on track.  But she had been appalled, he vaguely remembered, when he’d told her about the plan while drunk and devastated against her side. She’d covered it with agreement, but he’d felt the way she shifted beneath him.  He hadn’t wanted to look at anything from that night, when he’d woken up the morning after, but now?  Now he saw.

And Raven.  Raven, who he thought might know him better than nearly anyone.  She’d told him flat out that she was afraid of him, too, that he sparked the same fear she’d been fighting as a child.  He’d felt so betrayed when he found out about the Park, but maybe she’d been right.  Maybe she’d seen in him what he wouldn’t see in himself.

One by one, he felt the rocks that he’d been braced against slipping under the water.  Charles, Jean, Logan, Daisy, Lorna, Anna, Raven.  All but one.

Scott—Scott wasn’t afraid of him, he was certain of that.  When Scott had been a student, Erik had noted quietly the similarities between himself and the boy.  When he’d found out years later that Jean and Scott had fallen together, he’d felt almost relieved, because Scott was like him--Scott would do anything to protect Jean, he knew.  ( And if Jean liked Scott, maybe they were similar enough that she didn’t hate Erik as she had every right to, now. )

When they’d teamed up that handful of times before Scott had formally come to his side after the Park, Scott had never once been afraid of what Erik did to those who got in his way.  Scott knew what he could do, what he would do, surely enough, but hadn’t hated him.  Scott had looked at him in exasperation, irritation, concern, amusement, but never fear. Not once. Not even as an X-Man.  

He could trust Scott.  The other one who’d had the Phoenix force pressed upon him, the one Erik had long thought was more similar to himself than the younger man would admit to himself, who he now realized Jean clung to because she had the best parts of himself without the rest, without the parts that terrified her and everyone else he’d ever loved.

Scott was a good man--the best of himself and of Charles.  Scott hadn’t lied to him.  Scott hadn’t tried to control him.  He could trust Scott.

If no one else.

He needed space, needed a few days to sort through what was true and what wasn’t.  Seeing things with clear eyes would be essential, in the coming weeks, and he wasn’t there. Not yet.  But he was getting there.

He left the safehouse he’d been staying in in its state without bothering to straighten anything.  He would come back in a few days.  For now, he left the contents scattered around the room in pieces, alongside the lie of what he’d pretended to be.  He was right, in that bar years ago, when the Nazis he’d left to choke on their own blood asked him what he was.

A monster.  

[marieschunne]

A Spirit Away

Chapter One: Deal with the Devil

November 19, 1948

Death was not a rarity among the East End lowlives. But on that November night in which the candles refused to flicker long enough for the poor souls crying for help, one particular tragedy remained a mystery forevermore. It was what everyone could talk about—the details of the deaths, the clues they managed to extract from tongues wagging around the neighborhood. Some even made up stories that were too odd to be true regarding that night for the more mystery, the better.

Truth be told, no one knew exactly how it happened. A woman living at the edge of East End, nearest to the River Thames, claimed she saw shadows running rampant on the streets when she had been up that night to pour herself a cup of water. Another claimed they heard a gunshot… only, everybody heard it as they all had rushed out to the streets to find what had caused the commotion that sent East End into a blasted echo of doom. Those who had time to look at the faces of the poor victims before they were whisked away by the police instantly became the most popular in half of London as journalists seek for them and offered to write a piece filled with their quotes.

What happened that night was a tragedy. It was a result of the sins as they exploded in the air, invisible wisps of its dark elements dancing in the winds. Though the deaths compelled the sins, only a few people knew of the latter. The victims were very respectable in society, they had been so near on climbing the social status towards the upper class when they had been in the middle all their lives. What were these sins that blew out their souls like a strong gust of wind over a flickering hearth?

It was the Devil’s deed, truly. He had chased Parker and Michelle Quinn to the filthiest corner of London with his handsome mask and his crisp suit, as though he was simply a well-dressed businessman and not at all a creature of hell. They weren’t silent either—the Quinns had been screaming as they tried to get away from the creature, begging for their lives and his mercy. But the Devil doesn’t give mercy just as he never cared for kind, humble souls. Perhaps the winds had been prejudiced against the Quinns, for they muted out the screams from the sharp ears of the neighborhood.

The Devil’s strides were somewhat lazy yet fast-paced nevertheless as he descended upon the Quinns, cocking his head aside to reveal his trademark smile. There was something naughty or rather amusing about his smile. It either taunts you or scares you to oblivion. “You have nowhere else to go, Quinns,” he’d drawled, his voice deep and smooth as the velvet night. “You made a deal… many moons ago. You signed a contract. Now, pay me a soul!”

“There was no deal!” Parker Quinn’s voice tore the winds, edged as the shattering glass. “We signed up for nothing!”

It was expected for the Devil to be upset about such lies but instead, his smile grew wider. The Devil loved it when human lies… it was one of the things he could savor like a piece of jarring music. “Are you denying now the fact that both of you had been desperate at all?”

But the wife knew better. Michelle Quinn cowered behind her husband as her arms curled tightly around the baby in her arms. The baby was the one thing that was honest about her, despite every inch of her skin bedecked with the most precious of jewels. She pleaded, “Please! We promise we’ll give you your end of the bargain—simply give us some time, and we’ll be certain!”

“Oh, I see,” he said, sounding more curious than normal. “Have you ever heard the French proverb… les bons comptes font les bons amis? I picked it off a wise, wise man on my old days back in Paris. Of course,” he lets out a dry chuckle, the sound much like a mallet hitting stone, “he didn't have time to translate it before I had his head severed off his shoulders. I figured what it meant not long later and I quite liked it.”

The Quinns didn't answer as they continued to back away, even though they had nowhere else to go as the end of the street was bricked high with a wall fit for a rook’s built. At last, they found their backs hitting contact with it, their eyes widened as it a wave of agony and fear blazed in the whites under the furious batting of their lashes.

“A debt paid is a kept friend was what the words translated,” the Devil explained, as though he was a schoolchildren teacher trying to coax the scared younger ones. “Just give me the child because I don't have all night, Quinns.”

“Don’t let him take our child,” Michelle sobbed in Parker’s ear, hugging the silent bundle tighter against her chest. Then she shrieked at the Devil, “Why should we pay a deal forger who took away what was promised in the first place?”

“Touché,” the Devil considered this. But of course, there was nothing in all eternity that could sway him from his wish. It was more of a show, as the world was always a performance to him. “I promised you I would grant the favor you asked for… I never said you could keep it.”

“Let’s solve this—you and me,” Parker stepped forward, gathering what was left of his courage as he covered his family’s body with his own. “We’ll find a way, another child to sacrifice in our daughter’s stead.”

“So now you are taking innocent lives, yeah?” The Devil laughed, full of mirth and amusement. “And they always blamed sins on me.”

But Parker had made his choice. He quickly turned in his spot and pulled Michelle in his arms, muttering quickly, “Go. Bring Ivy and run. Take her to safety… for both of our sakes. Don’t look back, Michelle. For the love of Gods, don’t look back.”

A beat passed. At last, Michelle gave her husband the barest of nods. The Devil was still laughing—he thought the scene was most amusing in the last few decades that once he started to laugh, it was hard for him to stop. Parker whirled at the creature again, feeling newfound bravery coursing in his veins.

“It’s always the same with Adam’s children!” The Devil howled, clutching his chest as he doubled over. “You are weak creatures. You never learn.”

“We are not weak,” Parker forced out. From the corners of his eyes, he watched Michelle carefully slip into the darkness, where the Devil didn't bother to spare a glance.

The Devil stopped laughing. His fathomless red eyes bored into Parker’s, a wave of familiar anger threatening to rise. “You think you can beat me, mortal?” He growled, pulling up a slim, shining object from the inside of his crisp coat.

It was a gun. Parker would recognize the object anywhere—he had been a fan of many movies consisting of gun props. But to see an immortal creature, much less a creature of hell to wield such a mundane weapon… he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it.

They all heard the bullet click into place, like a bell of doom pounding against their eardrums. “Just give me the child, mortals. I do not fancy attracting a crowd.”

“Over my dead body!” Parker shouted, charging at the Devil like a bull.

But the Devil had been made from fire, flickering embers of infinite. He was much too quick for a mere mortal as he raised the gun and pulled the trigger. “That can be arranged,” the words had barely escaped the Devil’s lips as Parker’s eyes widened with shock, not quite registering the bloody wound blooming on his chest.

Meanwhile, Michelle, who had seen the scene unfold and had held back her screams was rocking the baby back and forth on the ground, hidden by the walls of a staircase of a nearby building. She had to cup her mouth to stifle her sobs, her fear worse than ever. Despite her faults and her unhealthy obsession with luxury, she had loved her husband very much. It was what made her place the baby carefully at the top of the staircase without a second thought, only that she had to save her husband.

Leaning down, Michelle’s gloved hands found the silver pendant around her neck—the only family heirloom that her middle-class family had passed down for centuries. It was carved into the shape of a phoenix, a reminder that no matter what happened, a strong spirit would always rise from the ashes.

She now clasped the pendant around the sleeping baby’s neck, somehow untroubled by the commotion. Michelle only had time to kiss the baby on the forehead before stepping out of the darkness, back into the dangerous sight of the hell incarnate.

“Ah, there you are,” sighed the Devil, “I was worried I would have to kill all of your look-alikes to simply have my revenge against you lot. You’ve seen what happened to your husband for his disagreement. Now, just hand me the child and get this over with.”

Her voice was shaky at best as she shrieked, “I will never let you anywhere near my daughter!”

For a split second, the universe seemed to come to a pause. Death has always had a great fear effect on any mortals… so why isn’t it affecting this one? Though amused, the creature of hell has no time for their games. He simply rolled his eyes, cocked the bullet back into place, and shoots.

This time, the winds seem to unmute. The whole neighborhood heard the last gunshot, waking them up from the safe confinements of their beds and under the many layers of their blankets. They weren’t exactly the most unfortunate lot, but it had been a cold winter, and sleep couldn’t be much bothered with all the cold biting into their skin.

They scrambled off their mattresses and looked out their windows. People spilled into the streets to discover the most tragic scene of the couple’s deaths—and yet, with no trace of the criminal insight.

It was midnight in the east of London. There were no twinkling lights, only the horror unfolding before their very own eyes.