A/N: This is my return to Underworld fanfic after a two (nearly three) year hiatus. When I write, the planning and envisioning of scenes so many times before they actually get to the paper (or screen) usually puts lots of short-cuts and compression into my writing, because I know what is going on. Of course the reader doesn't, so all the assumptions and omissions I make become totally non-sensical. Returning to the story now makes me realise just how riddled with holes the story is, so I have decided to re-write it. It should now a) be more more lucid and b) move more slowly. Since I live in Australia, I will use British English for spelling and grammar (unless I am writing Michael, in which case American syntax may intrude.)

I. Odi et amo

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?

nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. –Catullus 85

I hate and I love. Why do I do this, you ask? I do not know, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.

In death, he looked almost peaceful. Even while he had slept he had never looked at rest. It was always as if the daylight hours had blasted away the fragile, deceptive construction of his waking faces like a sandstorm, laying bare his true expression. Sleep had swept away the iron control he normally had, let me see some inner facet of him that no-one else did, some mystery that had sculpted the planes and angles into a too-familiar show of loneliness and grief. I wonder if he had known how vulnerable he had looked. But I didn't want him to look at peace, I wanted that familiar expression to be etched forever on his features. I wanted him to be writhing in the flames of Tartarus, screaming the way my nieces had, pleading for mercy the way my family had not.

"Selene? Selene, listen to me." Michael's voice was insistent. "Selene, we have to leave. Now."

"Michael, do you think I'm fucking stupid? Yes, we have to leave. I do actually realise that if the vampires catch us we will be tortured until we don't have the strength to scream for mercy."

He was quiet for a moment. The metronome drip-drip-drip from the pipes in the sewer was not. Further away I could hear snatches of the wounded and the dying. The grief of the newly orphaned or widowed and the anger, guilt and despair of their surviving comrades would come hours later. It gave Michael and I time. It gave me a choice. What I had said was not entirely true: no-one to my knowledge actually knew what had occurred here. I could return to the mansion, claim that Lucien or Kraven had killed Viktor, help those Death Dealers who had survived and mourn those who had not. I would be safe. I could, to some extent, simultaneously protect Michael and slow the war from the inside. Despite my appearance, I was no mere infantryman. Whether I wanted it or not, I was the last of Viktor's bloodline and heiress to a family that had rules the greater game for centuries. Speak not of the game. The command rang in my blood and my heart. The first law of the aristocracy: Do not speak of the greater game to those who are not its players. But I had a choice now...

"You've seen it, haven't you Selene? Have you...have you done it?"

Michael rushed out the words as if that would make the question more palatable. It was not one I had any desire to answer. The look on my face was enough. What had I done? I no longer had a choice: soon I would have no freedom, no minutes free from risk and no sanctuary to which I might return. For the second time in my long existence my emotions, my fallible, fragile, useless conscience had forced me to wlk the blade's edge. The first time... No, I would not think of that either.

"There is nothing here for me now."

I tore my gaze from his face, leading the way.