He ends up in some utter hole - a long-disused underground line who the fuck knows where.

Doesn't matter.

Baphomet collapses against the wall, still trying to get his head on straight. He's burning, all the energy from that complete mistake of a gig flooding in on him at once, but he's in no state to appreciate it. Just makes him feel twitchy and strung out.

There's a balance. A line to be struck between the personal and the divine. The inspiration, and the fucked up, brutal truth behind it. How many of them saw right through him? Watched, and knew it wasn't divinity that brought him to his knees, heard the rasp in his throat for what it was?

Baphomet drops his head into his hands and groans. He's fucked everything up, he's so fucked up-

"How long do you think it'll take you to burn out without the Morrigan here to hold your hand?" The voice is far too appealing given the circumstances, and still more familiar. Smooth, unhurried - nowhere near as threatening as it should be. Baphomet tries to shut him out, but it's no use. "My guess is not long."

"No one asked you," he growls, fists clenching at his sides before he can fully appreciate the way they ache at the thought, or how insubstantial it feels without the Morrigan's fingers crushed between them. Baphomet should know better, but he can't help marking that hollow ache in his chest any more than he can stop the way his skin prickles with the need to have Morri beside him.

It's pathetic, what he'd give to have her hold his hand for a minute. But the Morrigan won't forgive him for this mess, and Baphomet couldn't face her before Baal decided she'd be acceptable collateral.

"She knew you were there," Inanna continues, far too casually, refusing to let Baphomet bury it. "Why else would she be distracted enough to let Baal grab her?"

There's an undercurrent to Inanna's words that suggests he's doubly at fault, but Baphomet almost wishes he could believe it anyway. If only because it means she didn't give him away, that maybe the Morrigan has some love left for him despite what he's done…

But that kind of wishful thinking raises too many more questions - why wouldn't she fight? - and Baphomet's trying desperately not to think at all. "Don't you have anything better to do?" he growls.

"Do you?" Inanna crouches down beside him, unbothered, all too-earnest eyes and glittery purple bullshit, "this is your hallucination, after all. I suppose I could go ask Laura how death becomes her, but,"

"Laura?" Baphomet latches on too eagerly; nice to have a momentary reprieve from 'murderer' and craving Morri like he needs her to breathe, even if he already knows he'll regret going down this rabbit hole as surely as anything that came before. He hasn't seen her since, since -

Inanna taps a finger to the side of his head. "There was a tv on at the bar, not that you paid much attention. Wanted: one murderous asshole with delusions of godhood."

"No." Surely he's wrong - Laura can't be - she wasn't one of them; no one had any reason to want her dead. Baphomet should probably care that they're blaming him, but he's stuck trying to wrap his mind around it. If Laura could be killed - could die so young, with so many years left ahead of her - what does that mean for him? For Morri?

He can't resolve the memory of the girl they'd dragged down into the underworld with the idea that she's… gone. Like it's nothing. "No," Baphomet repeats. She was alive - she was supposed to outlive them all. "Why-"

"Oh, come on now, Baph, don't pretend to care," Inanna chides him. "You said it yourself: a friend is the last thing you ever wanted. She was a curiosity. A plaything. Someone you could impress when you needed your ego stroked."

Baphomet scowls. "Doesn't mean I didn't care." He's annoyed at how petulant he sounds to his own ears, but it stings. Because even if he can't deny the rest, he did care.

Because he sucks at being half as disaffected as he wishes he was, and always has.

"Look on the bright side," Inanna continues, "at least you'll never have to see the look on her face when she inevitably went looking for my killer and found you out. This way, she might have even died believing the best of you."

It's everything he thinks he should have wanted, but gone hollow and bitter. Not a victory at all. She'd been stupid enough to trust him, naive enough to care - to see all of them as more than just divine dispensers of a good time - and look what it'd gotten her.

Baphomet turns away, not feeling guilty so much as utterly lost, eyes burning and throat too tight - but Inanna doesn't stop there. "Maybe that's the fatal mistake. The stars know I tried to appeal to your better half."

Even saying what he is, there's a flippancy to it that gets under Baphomet's skin, makes him wish Inanna would stop treating all of this as a joke. It's not funny. None of it is. "Shut up."

"I wonder if the Morrigan will go the same way, or if she's already realized her faith in you is misplaced… Huh. I wonder how much time she's got left."

It's just a sound of incoherent rage that tears itself from Baphomet's throat in response. He doesn't have the words; all too raw and still dangerously close to falling to pieces. No one threatens the Morrigan, not if they want to -

Inanna laughs, and makes himself comfortable, sitting down beside Baphomet as if they could be friends, as if Inanna existed anywhere but in his head. "Oh, come on, Baphomet. You saw Baal - he's going to make someone pay for what you did to me."

He grits his teeth and tries to tune Inanna out, but it's no use. All Baphomet can see is the memory of that smashed up tunnel, Morri's feathers scattered about like ash. He can't forget it. Can't escape that no matter how far or how fast he runs.

"First you put my blood on her conscience," Inanna muses, as if Baphomet's not grinding the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, trying to burn the thought from his own head, "figures that you'd do the same with the consequences. Some boyfriend you are."

"Go away!" He lashes out blindly, puts his fist halfway through the concrete wall. Knows he's yelling at nothing, that he looks like a fucking psycho. Maybe that's not as far off the mark as he'd like to think. "You don't get to say that to me! You don't get to tell me she's - fuck!"

Inanna watches him for a moment - waits for the flames to recede, for Baphomet to get himself under control and dash the angry tears from his eyes - all with an expression that looks maddeningly akin to pity. Then he cocks his head to the side and says, too gently, "how come you got to kill me?"

"I didn't have a choice."

It's automatic. He can't think about it, can't bring himself to look any closer.

"Yeah, you did," Inanna insists, impossible to ignore. "You chose to kill me. And for what, one more year? That's practically nothing. You're still going to die."

"Shut. Up." His heart is pounding with the reminder, feels like the walls are closing in. Baphomet scrambles back to his feet, shakes out his fist as he paces, and tries to distract himself with the uncomfortable sensation of blood drying across his knuckles. It's no use.

Nine months. He's nearly halfway there, and it's nothing, nowhere near enough time.

"Hey, the dead don't speak, remember? I'm all you, Baph."

Except he's calm, looking on impassively as Baphomet tries not to lose it completely. Each passing second is more time ticking away from him, his mind is racing - Cassy has the most time left; he'd failed once, but - "You don't learn, do you?"

"I don't have a choice!" Baphomet snaps. He's not ready to die, doesn't think he'll ever be, would do anything -

"You really think you can kill again? You're lying to yourself if you thought this would ever end well. Face it, Baph: two more years or twenty, it'll never be enough. You were never going to get out of this alive."

Inanna's words hit too close to home; Baphomet feels like the breath's been knocked out of him. He stands, frozen, and stares at Inanna for too long a time. That awful crushing feeling is back, trapping him in place like a butterfly under glass. He can't breathe, can't fucking think beyond the roar in his head.

"Help."

He goes to click his fingers, but Inanna puts up a hand. "You don't need another voice in your head. Think. You had a choice then, and you have a choice now."

"What choice do I have?" Baphomet asks. "Baal will kill me."

"Better you than the Morrigan."

Baphomet feels the blood drain from his own face, thinks he might have gone lightheaded for a split second. He can't even contemplate that, can't - "No." He backs away from Inanna, shaking his head. "No. You're trying to get me killed."

"I thought we'd established that this is all in your head," Inanna replies with a wave of his hand. "So either you're the one with the death wish, or you care about the Morrigan more than you do having to face your own mortality. Which might be your only redeeming quality at this point - but hey, I'm biased."

"I can't."

He's burnt that bridge to hell and back and it's a fucking death-sentence besides. Baphomet needs her to keep him sane; can't live with her rejection, can't live with her blood on his conscience. There's no way to win.

"She's your only hope, and you know it," Inanna continues. "So you can leave the Morrigan to the rest of the pantheon and try to live without her - though, no offence, I think we both know how that ends - or you can go after her."

He pauses, long enough for Baphomet to really look at him, the mirage already coming apart at the edges.

"You or her." His voice is still utterly serene, but Inanna's eyes light with some shared, sadistic secret, a cruel twist lingering at the corner of his mouth. It looks out of place on him, far closer to an expression Baphomet has seen himself wear. The kind of smirk that accompanies a particularly brutal punch line.

"No choice at all, now is there?"