Fandom: Dalmatian, E.R. mv & teaser-pics (Magic AU)
Pairings: Simon x Fem OC ; Simon x Inati ; Simon/FemOC/Inati ; YoungWon (Dongrim) x Fem OC
Rating: PG-13 (violence x sexual themes)
Chp WC: 9,020

Summary: Nearly immortal with the amount of raw power they possess, the Dogs of St. Aggie's have a very specific job to do: guard her. It 's no simple task when it's the things that haunt the nightmares of children that they're supposed to be guarding her from, but their biggest challenge by far is grappling with their personal feelings towards her, and more importantly, towards each other …


{聖の家: 奈落の番犬} (naraku no banken)

The House of Saints: Hell Hounds

~Tamed~

There is a phrase that people use to describe the immoral man.

'His soul is blacker than the Night', they say.

But they're wrong.

There is nothing blacker than the Night.

Human kind has lit its fires, shone it's little lights into the dark.

They've made the nighttime sparkle, to twinkle with the glitter of false security. The eye lights of the nighttime creatures assure them that the black is filled with life, familiar somehow because of it.

They don't know that the creatures they see are just the small and fragile ones, little life forms on the run from bigger things. The things that humans don't see are the things so black their eyes don't shine, things so cruel and vile they can't be named. They drip with the very essence of the night, the black and creeping ooze of nightmares that humanity has shied away from since the beginning, pretending them out of the human reality.

But the Night lives on in the background.

In the dim corners of the mind a bit of blackness can take root. The seep and spawn of searing ink burns, charring away at everything good and light as it corrodes the human soul from within. The darkness twists motives, warps values, delicately deteriorates the ability of people to understand the fault of sin. It tempts them into the black, as willing victims make the sweetest prey, and it swells with their freely given lifeblood.

There is nothing darker than Night.

Millicent LeBourghe was the daughter of darkness, the unholy offspring of the Fallen Bearer of Light and the Black of Endless Night.

The power welled within her was that of humans' lost potential, the life and hope and heart they'd signed away wholesale. It was raw and violent and yearning, and so unbearably human. It called out to the dumb beasts of the Black like a beacon of salvation, jeered at the higher beings that had already tasted her bitter false promises and sought revenge. And it called to the Night itself, the Black that always wanted more.

But she was not an undefended existence.

From the very fiber of her power, beings were amassed; melded out of the blackest of the damned, the worst of humanity so twisted the result was hardly human, and glued together by the indisputable influence of her will into Dogs to serve and stand guard. They were designed to be her workers; hounds to stand at her heel, holding on her whatever she handed them be it her purse on a day out shopping or the heavy thoughts of a broken heart. Her Dogs were made of humanity's darkest days. They weren't supposed to be her friends, but they were created in the sea of humanity and all its complexities. They were bred to be loyal, to love her unconditionally, and serve beyond expectation.

Millicent LeBourghe had ended up as a mere maid at St Aggie's because when she'd first been unleashed upon the world, she hadn't been able to handle her power. The St. Aggie's staff had. Milly had been bound, her memories of Hell suppressed behind wall, her powers siphoned through her protectors and recycled into the very Pit from which her well of black drew up energy to replace what she lost.

The excess of energy, the leftover residue that couldn't be drained by her Dogs, was funneled into physical labor. The services she provided to St Aggies were entirely superfluous and meant only to give her an outlet of activity. In truth Milly was an honored guest, insulated by her place in St Aggie's for her protection, with her entourage extending to protect the school in turn.

She was the only one who had forgotten.

She had been steered away from certain things; razors that could bleed into sigils and seals and call up memories, tempting attire that might drive the Dogs around her to step above their bounds and take her as she grew up and her hormones overwhelmed their senses, and books that told black fables that might make her recall the truth of Night.

Her entire life had been an elaborate dance designed to keep her safe and happy, beneficent in all things. And now the charade that had made that life possible had been consumed by the sludge of the Night coming up to fill the emptiness she'd been able to hide from the Dogs she loved more than anything. It was overwhelming; the rush was suffocating, drowning her within herself.

Unable to breathe, unable to scream, unable to cry or laugh or feel, Milly was lost. Lying on her back, she was floating away in the black. Alone in the dark tunnel, Milly didn't know where she was going, where she even could be going. She was alone and she was lonely, missing the friends around her with the same visceral longing of a person missing their limbs. Breathing in without taking in any air, Milly wondered how long she'd been floating there, in this strange, silent abyss in the black behind a wall. It might have been a day, or two, or two hundred and two.

. . . Milly

There echos in the black, echos of a life half lived, of a recent past half remembered, of a distant memory half forgotten. It was her fault somehow, all of this. She could feel her friends hurting, she always could. She'd sent them all away, she was to blame for how they were always hurting, and how she herself had been hurting. She had never cried in front of them; not really at least, not for this horrible loneliness she felt, how could she? She wasn't alone, the friends she had would support her through anything; thunderstorms, bellyaches, boredom, anything. How unfair would it be to them if she tried to explain that despite it all, she felt an acute disconnect to them. She loved all of them so dearly, and yet every time she met with them, spoke with them, played around and laughed with them, it felt like something was wrong, something was missing.

It was just so frustrating. Milly couldn't remember when she'd started to feel off around them, like something was stuck between them all. She'd tamped the feeling down and had been able to make herself have fun, but the tickle in the back of her mind had never gone away entirely. She felt cold, numb. There was a dull pain in her chest, heartache caused by cardiac arrest. Or maybe it was the other way around, her heart had stopped beating because it hurt too much to carry on.

She could just barely remember Daniel, talking to her before she opened her eyes to look out on the black of Night. He'd been talking to her, but the memory was muddled, muffled by distance like she'd been underwater as he'd spoken. And she remembered that first shot of pain in her chest, the heat an fury from just before she went numb.

Milly.

When Milly opened her eyes the world was slightly fuzzy, hazy with the warmth of a half-remembered summer afternoon. The breeze blew lightly through the courtyard, the trickle of clear water into the fountain's pool echoed around her. She was sitting on the edge, stone yellowed with age, as she stared down into the fountain's swirling patterns that followed the hand she was dragging back and forth through the pool.

Looking up to find the source of her echoed name, she found that the courtyard was empty of anyone, or anything she should have brought to work on. Milly had forgotten why she'd come out to the sunny space. Usually, she would bring some needle work that she had to finish up out to the courtyard. On days like this it was impossible to stay away from the space, but she did have her chores to attend to.

"Milly!"

Jeesu came barreling in, skidding across the cobblestones with the sweet-natured abandon that belied his sensible maturity. He toppled over into the fountain, the splash making Milly shy away as she laughed. Holding out her hand to help Jeesu clamber out of the fountain, Milly asked, "What are you doing here?"

"I finished early!" Jeesu yipped happily, shaking the water from his hair like an over grown dog. "And Dongrim's not done yet, so I came to play with you!"

Smiling at the infectious cheer Jeesu carried with him, Milly said, "I still have work to do!"

"Just for a little bit! You never take any breaks," Jeesu complained, tugging on her hand. Milly resisted only for a moment before following out of the courtyard towards the stables to Jeesu's excitedly voiced delight.

The sheep and horses never liked Jeesu, but it was one of his favorite things to chase them around inside the paddock behind the barn. Today, there were just sheep let out to graze and Milly joined in as Jeesu went about corralling the adorable creatures that seemed out of sorts in their summer-sheared coats.

Their game evolved into one of those nonsensical things that have no real goal, no real divide between the sides, and bickering about who had won despite the fact that there was no real way to win. The bickering between them lasted all the way to the kitchens, not least because Milly was insisting that she make Jeesu something to eat before he went back to work.

Jeesu submitted and docilely plopped his chin in his hand as he leaned over the stone counter that Milly set to work at kneading out dough for bread on top of. After a few minutes of watching her work, Jeesu said, "Milly, can I ask you something?"

"Of course! Anything!"

"Do you like us?"

Milly paused, looking up to see Jeesu staring at her like a puppy with a dollop of frosting on its nose that it couldn't quite reach. "Of course, I like you! You five are my best friends in the whole world."

Beaming, Jeesu asked immediately, "Who's your favorite?"

"What?"

His question caught Milly by surprise.

"Which one of us do you like the best?"

Throwing a handful of flour at him with a laugh, as she turned to finish up her bread, Milly responded, "Why would I have a favorite?"

"Because."

"Well, I don't have a favorite."

"Why not?"

"Because I like you all, equally!" Milly asserted throwing her dough down onto the baking pallet.

She slid it into the oven as Jeesu protested, "But that's not really fair! I'm much more fun than Inati is!"

"But Inati doesn't ask me weird questions," Milly countered. "Though, I suppose I don't like you all equally, I like you all differently. The way Inati takes care of you all-"

"I take care of Dongrim!" Jeesu interjected.

Milly laughed at his petulance. "You're like a good big brother though, well, really more like a helpful little brother. You definitely support Dongrim, Inati . . . he takes care of all of you like a good captain should. He keeps you crazies all in line, but he's never harsher than he has to be, and he picks up all your slack when you all run off to come and play with me!" When Jeesu pouted, Milly laughed. Then she added, "He's so . . . steady, you know? Unwavering and strong . . . and soft, somewhere deep inside that scary guy's got a sweet side. He really makes you feel safe."

Pouting, Jeesu muttered, "You just don't know how many laps he makes us run." He was thinking of more than Inati's drills; Jeesu's thoughts were on the leader's erratic behavior, his violence, his mood swings . . . 'safe' was one of the last things Jeesu felt around Inati, at least recently.

"You've lived through it all so far."

Jeesu just grumbled incoherently. Milly smiled and went back to her main point, "For Inati, it's the way he takes care of you. For Daniel, it's how he's so sweet and snarky; whenever I talk to him, I feel like he's being entirely honest with me, even when I know he's spouting nothing but lies. There's always something true, some deeper meaning to what he says. He listens to you, understands. And then he somehow makes it all better, even though what he tells you makes almost no sense because he's obviously lying."

Jeesu had to admit there was a certain ring of truth in Milly's estimate. Daniel was the packs great peacekeeper after all. The only thing in question was how Milly knew he was lying to her, Daniel's expertise in the practice had managed to get him past Inati's discerning interrogations on more than one occasion. Jeesu's attention would have spiraled away had Milly not still been talking. "For Dongrim, it's how he always listens. He'll pay attention even when I prattle on about stupid things. Like this one time I was upset that I didn't have any real friends, which is ridiculous because I have you guys, but he listened to me, made me feel like I was completely normal, he validated my idiocy, let me get it out. He always listens like what I have to say is earth shatteringly important, like it actually matters to him."

Dongrim would love to hear that Milly had noticed, Jeesu thought. He would have to tell his comrade. It would only get his hopes up that little bit higher, make the inevitable disappointment hurt all the more, but it would be a momentary happiness, and with Dongrim's recent troubles, any moment of happiness was something to cherish. As Jeesu smiled to himself, Milly finished, "And of course, for you it's the way that you're the fun one." She winked at him. "If anyone on earth can spend five minutes with you and not be grinning ear to ear and wiling to go rolling in the grass like a five year old without any hesitation . . . I can't even imagine. You've never failed to cheer me up, not once. You even make me happier when I'm already happy!"

Fluffing up happily at Milly's words about him, Jeesu pressed, "And what about Simon?"

"hmm, I don't really know," Milly said thoughtfully. "There's something about him . . . he's not quite personable him when he talks to me, but he's very firm about it, very opinionated and 'devil may care'. I feel like he's stuck somehow, like he has no idea who he is or what he wants. I wish I could help him somehow. Sometimes I see this . . . softness in him, something scarred and hurting and still tender to the touch. Sometimes, when it's just the two of us, I see him smile and, even though he's an idiot and mean sometimes, I think that if I could just talk to him, just make him really listen . . . "

There was something strange in Jeesu's eyes just then, something almost sad. "Milly," he started quietly, standing up and looking to her hopefully, "I wanna show you something."

"The bread's almost ready."

"It'll only take a minute."

Milly stood firm. "I'm not letting it burn."

Jeesu grinned and settled back to his seat. "Okay then, I guess it can wait a little."

Smiling, Milly came to sit beside him. She leaned up against his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. "I've missed you," she told him, breathing him in. It felt like it had been so long since they'd just sat together, since he had been a real and solid presence, a stable structure in her life.

"We miss you too."

The bread came out of the oven eventually, and Milly had just set it down to cool when Jeesu grabbed her hand. Giving it a tug, he said, "Come on, we're gonna be late."

"Late for what?"

Towing her out of the kitchen, Jeesu led the way across the courtyard and through the halls to Milly's bedroom. When Jeesu swung the door open, Milly noticed that something was wrong immediately. That the passage in the depths of the windowless hall had been made bright with candlelight, but Milly was surprised that her bedroom was the same. She had three large windows in her room, windows that ought to have been open to the afternoon sunlight. Instead, the curtains blew in gentle breeze of midnight.

"What on earth?" Milly asked, rushing to the window.

"What?"

"It was just the afternoon, but now it's night," Milly marveled, not scared so much as stunned. There was no hint of terror, just awe.

Jeesu didn't respond. Instead, he leapt onto her bed and buried himself in the pillows. "Come and play!"

As Milly stepped away from the window, she tripped over something behind her and tumbled to the floor, knocking a candle and its stand over and scraping her hand on the unexpectedly sharp foot of the stand. The blood began to drip from the wound and Milly stared at it, utterly enthralled.

The viscous drip of red was like nothing she had ever seen, and yet it was a vital part of who she was. Realizing that was fascinating to her. The blood pooled in her hand, at the rate it was going she would lose consciousness in a few more minutes if the wound went untreated.

Jeesu was next to her in an instant, hand hovering around the wound as if worried that a touch would make it worse. "I'll be fine," Milly promised before he could voice concern. Jeesu didn't seem very soothed by her announcement. Anyone could tell that she was not just going to be fine.

Then he grinned. "Wanna know a secret?"

Milly looked at him, perplexed. He used his index finger to sweep up some of the blood on Milly's hand. Deftly, he used her blood like red ink to draw a little circle on the floor and fill it with a complicated pattern of lines. "It's a magic trick," Jeesu explained, grabbing the wrist above Milly's bleeding hand and using it to press her wound down into the circle.

Briefly, the whole circle lit up and flickered like a candle. The space beneath Milly's palm was suddenly warm, searing hot even.

Milly snatched her hand away and the light died. Her hand was no longer bleeding. She looked to Jeesu stunned. "I remember this," she murmured. "You fixed my hand when we were kids."

"Not quite. You fixed your hand," Jeesu corrected.

Recalling what had happened next, Milly's head swung violently to look at her door. "Inati saw you show me."

"Inati sees everything."

"But this time he was angry."

Sure enough, Inati burst through the door, glaring down his subordinate. It was the Inati she remembered, so much younger than the one she'd seen this morning, so long ago it seemed to her and yet so far ahead of when this had taken place. "Jeesu, you didn't finish your rounds," Inati's voice was cold, but Milly could feel the fury boiling under them.

Jeesu had slunk out the door then, cowering almost under Inati's glare. The pack leader had come to Milly's side then. He righted the candle stick, re-lit it's candle. He hadn't asked to see Milly's hand, but his eyes kept looking towards it in the dim light as Milly had slowly stood and made her way back to bed. Her hand tingled at the memory. Inati had seemed so indomitable, so cold and unyielding. But Milly could see his concern.

"Come with me," Jeesu chirped, calling Milly's attention away. He gleefully grabbed Milly's hand and leapt to his feet. Milly was towed up with him and then pulled out the window as Jeesu launched himself away and she was dragged along behind.

This wasn't how Milly remembered it.

They landed on their backs in a pile of fresh sheets, still warm from the sun. They weren't in the courtyard below her window.

"What's going on?"

Jeesu grinned at her.

"You're dreaming, silly."

This wasn't Jeesu's voice. It was Daniel's. But it wasn't the fully grown Daniel she was used to, this was the ten year old Daniel who'd been teasing her about how she'd caught him talking to the Hunting Hounds of St. Aggie's.

"You were talking to them, like they could really understand you!" Milly squeaked, recalling the day in detail. "You were talking to them, and they were listening. It even seemed like one had answered."

Daniel responded, but not directly. He responded to the very similar words Milly had spoken years ago. "Like I said, you were lost in a daydream! Dogs can't talk to people. They probably can't even tell that people are talking, to them it's just noise."

"That's not true! Dogs are very smart! Smarter than most humans, nicer too," Milly responded, knowing that she'd held similar sentiments even then.

She'd missed Daniel's surprised expression at her announcement when it happened, but this time around she caught it plain as day when it flashed quickly over his features. The chagrined smile had been unmistakeable from the beginning though. "You are absolutely insane, Milly," he'd said, shaking his head.

Jeesu spoke over the end of Daniel's reply, "Come on, we're running late."

"Late for what?"

"You'll see."

Jeesu pulled her into another passage, one where most of the torches had burned down into charcoal. Milly yanked her hand back from Jeesu, beginning to feel a bit of fear creeping in. This wasn't quite as amazing as it had seemed before. When it had just been one isolated thing, something dramatically not right, it was interesting, but this was getting to be too much, too confusing. Milly couldn't keep up.

"What's going on?" she asked. "Jeesu, talk to me!"

Smiling sadly, Jeesu replied, "You already know what's going on, Milly. I can't tell you, it's not allowed. Even now it's not . . . but you do know, Milly, I know you do. Daniel thinks so too. It's something that you're simply refusing to see."

Stepping back away from her as he spoke, Jeesu had vanished into the shadows before Milly had even registered that he had begun to move. She sighed and let her shoulders sag.

"It's just a night mare, it can't hurt you."

The voice was Inati's, a younger Inati than she knew now, but an older version than the one that had burst in after Jeesu's magic trick. Milly couldn't place him exactly until she heard her own voice, the nine year-old version of her voice, coming from behind her.

"Miss Amy didn't like my drawing," little Milly cried as her older counterpart looked on, stunned. "She said it was a bad thing. She said it was a scary thing that didn't really exist and if I thought about it at all again I needed to tell her and I needed to stop thinking about it. But I don't want to."

Then Milly remembered. This was the last night she had dreamed of the Dogs. When she'd been very small she dreamt of big dogs running through her head, running running running through the black behind her eyes. They hadn't seemed the least bit scary to her until she'd drawn them for the woman who'd more or less raised her. They hadn't come out right in her drawing, they had looked big and mean and truly frightening, not at all like the Hounds in her head.

Miss Amy had explained that the big bad dogs in her dreams couldn't hurt her. She'd done something else too, and then the Dogs had never come back. Milly missed them.

Inati had been puzzled by the reaction.

He didn't know how to comfort her. He wanted to, more than anything, and Milly could see it on his face. The younger version of her hadn't seen it; she'd just seen the thirteen year old friend she'd asked more than once to make sure there weren't any monsters under her bed. He was 'safe' to her, he always made her feel safe, but she couldn't quite understand him; he was too stiff and formal to make sense to a lively little girl.

Milly felt a touch against her hand and turned to see Dongrim staring intently at her, his eyes dark with worry. Milly's whole body flooded with relief. She jumped at him, flinging herself into the safety of his familiar arms.

Holding him tight, she asked, "What's going on?"

"We didn't want to make you remember," Dongrim said, petting her hair. "We didn't realize how little you had forgotten . . . I can't believe I never noticed."

"What are you talking about?"

Milly looked up from where her face had been pressed into his shoulder. They were in her room, but it looked wrong again, like it had with Jeesu. There was a fire lit and the shutters were closed up like they were in the depths of winter. Refusing to take more than a step away from Dongrim, Milly edged over to the fire, crouching down to stand before the flames. When she bent down, Dongrim crouched with her.

"You shouldn't play with fire, Milly," Dongrim chided lightly when Milly stuck her hand inside the flames.

"I remember this," she said slowly, marveling at how the flames lapped at her skin, do no more damage than turning the skin bright pink as if she'd left her arm in the hot waters of the Laundry for a bit too long. "I couldn't sleep; a night mare or something. You came in through the window."

"Inati would never have let any of us by if we'd tried the door."

"He was outside, worried. I could feel it somehow."

"He could feel that you were," Dongrim explained. "We all could."

Inati had cared so much for Milly. Maybe it was because he was the pack leader and had the most of her power being washed through his system, maybe it was because he'd been the first created to guard her, or maybe it was the years of watching her grow up as a sweet and gentle soul so unlike his own . . . Dongrim, as much as he hated Inati for having claimed Milly and then practically ignored the role that gave him, knew that Inati truly did care for her. He just couldn't show it.

But that left Milly without a hand to hold at night and Dongrim had stepped up to fill that void. "We could all feel that you were worried, and that's why Daniel didn't stop me from slipping in though the window. He knew you needed someone."

"How?"

"It's part of our job."

"But how can that even be possible?"

Dongrim rested his chin on Milly's shoulder for a moment, staring into the flames with her as the bright shapes danced around her hand. "You're special, Milly."

There was a sudden clap of thunder and Milly spun wildly around. The shutters were still closed up, but the fire had been extinguished with a hiss that drew Milly's attention back around. This was a storm that she remembered, the worst that she remembered.

Dongrim hadn't been the one to save her that night. He could usually be counted onto appear beside her whenever she felt down or worried, but that night it was Daniel that came to hold her hand. He'd come in and sat at the end of her bed while she'd been cowering under a pile of pillows. He told her how thunderstorms worked, how the hot and cold air currents moved against each other in a violent dance.

It wasn't scary he had said, it was beautiful.

"He wasn't talking about the storm," Dongrim explained as Milly stood and wandered over to the bed, reliving the memory. "This storm was on the first day that Simon touched you without your permission, he'd managed to grab your hand somehow. Inati had been furious . . . When Daniel came to you, Jeesu and I were out on rounds, he'd only just managed to break up the fight on his own."

Inati had always been the cold one, cool and collected with ice in his eyes and a hard shells that Milly could never seem to break through, no matter how warm-hearted her attempts, nor valiant his attempts to care for her.

And then there was Simon.

"Scaredy cat."

Hot and stirring Simon, he was a tornado of fire that swirled around her existence with ease while she fought to keep cool and calm.

The décor in Milly's room had changed. She was fourteen or so now. This storm had been nearly as bad as the one from when she was twelve, only tempered by the fact that she was older now. She didn't need Daniel or Dongrim to come save her this time, but she was still afraid.

Simon had melted into the room somehow while she'd been hiding under the pillows. She'd thought he'd walked through the door, but now she knew Inati wouldn't have allowed it. He'd been glib and mocking even then.

"It's just a little thunderstorm."

Milly had wanted to throw a pillow at him. She still didn't know exactly why she didn't, but she definitely didn't. Instead she'd simply stared at him, at the swirl of black ink that marked his chest, that hung 'round his neck like a collar, that wound about his arms like a straight jacket. She'd stared at the well toned body, as muscles that ached to be used, and the dark eyes that hid from everything, looking down judgmentally on the world to justify a retreat from it. Simon unsettled her. She knew he was unhappy, that life in St. Aggie's wasn't nearly the comfortable affair it was for the others. Milly knew that Inati went hard on him, that he was rebellious and wanted to do what he wanted to do.

She knew that he didn't know what he wanted to do.

The winds howling outside the windows settled down a bit and Milly went to the window with Dongrim close behind. Simon stayed in the shadows by the fire as Milly opened the shutters to see that the waning nighttime storm had been replaced by the building grey of an afternoon down pour. Looking to Dongrim, Milly sat down on the sill and lifted her legs over the side. Her room was on the second floor, but she'd been able to sneak out like this many times before. Dongrim smiled softly. He kissed her cheek, an acceptance of final farewell, and then he stepped away instead of following her lead.

Milly's inertia took her over the side before she could do more than call out to him.

Alone again as she regained her feet in the soft grass below her window, Milly looked around at the grey wall of thunderclouds aiming themselves at St Aggie's. The wind was building around her, blowing her hair and her short red skirt around violently.

"You should be inside, Milly."

Daniel's voice was teasing and amused, well aware that if she wanted to stand out in the rain, then she was simply going to do so. This wasn't a young Daniel that she recognized from a memory; this was her very solid friend come to tease her.

"I still don't understand what's going on," Milly told him as he strode over to her nonchalantly in the building storm. He was already soaked from it.

"But you're starting to, aren't you?" he asked. "You're starting to see that you've always been special."

"Special how?"

Daniel, in his usual light and flirty tone, responded, "We'd thought that you'd forgotten; hoped it, rather. It wasn't fun for us being down in the Dark, and we thought it must have been the same for you. We shouldn't have though, because you were always special."

Used to his pleasant evasions, Milly didn't let the point rest. "Special how?"

"You liked us."

Daniel's genuinely happy smile caught Milly off guard. Compared to the seriousness of his words, of the tone he'd spoken with, the smile seemed out of place. "Why shouldn't I have liked you? You're all so wonderful."

"Ah, well maybe, but only you can see that."

"What do you mean?"

Daniel shrugged. "Take me, for example. I talk you round in circles, I never tell the whole truth, I steal things without regret, and I let Inati treat Simon unfairly without batting an eye," he explained. "I lie to your face and do it with a smile. I'm shamelessly manipulative, and I'm disastrously efficient. Like this whole thing now, whatever's happening to you at the moment is entirely my fault. I'm the one that made you wake up."

"But you're so sweet! You help me with my chores and you never ask for extra handouts! And you bring me stories and you're the one that helped me learn how to read them! And sure, you lie, but you always say what's important. You do what you think is best, it's not some cold efficiency, it's necessity!"

"I wasn't supposed to do any of that; you were supposed to be off limits, you weren't supposed to be able to read, or to finish up your chores before you'd gotten tired," Daniel retorted, not giving an inch. "And you definitely weren't supposed to wake up. You're dangerous, to us, to St. Aggie's, even to yourself."

Milly sighed. She wasn't going to win her case. Daniel was still one of her very best friends though, no matter what he thought about himself. "Then what about Jeesu? Hm? He's the nicest person ever, and he always has a new game in mind to play. Why shouldn't I have liked the guy that's never failed to make me laugh?"

"He has no volition. He gets and order and he follows it, and has no thought beyond that. He only came to play with you because no one had told him not to. If he were left out on his own, he'd never be able to survive," Daniel listed out bluntly. He wasn't pulling any punches in this, Milly had to understand.

"He takes care of Dongrim," Milly countered effortlessly.

Daniel raised an eyebrow. "True, Dongrim wouldn't have been able to live without Jeesu's support, and Jeesu's prerogative has always been the order to keep the Pack at its peak. But he's still only doing it for his own satisfaction, giving Dongrim hope like he has, just to keep him living and breathing, working as a full fledged member of the pack . . . it's really quite selfish. But it is still true, Dongrim . . . without Jeesu, he definitely would have dropped dead ages ago."

"Dongrim can take care of himself," Milly asserted.

"Dongrim can take care of you. He's too focused, too obsessive. Once he found that you needed someone close to you emotionally, he became the one that could be by letting go of everything else," Daniel replied. "He's the jealous type, easily angered and hot headed, possessive, defensive, vengeful, and everything else that a good and stable person isn't. And he's entirely masochistic."

"Masochistic?"

"He would've let Inati have you without question, if Inati ever took a step to do it, that is; and every time he came to see you, he knew that it might be the last time Inati let him do it."

"Inati can't just have me," Milly protested immediately. Then she asked, "Inati let him come see me?"

"Inati is our leader and his word is our highest law; save for yours, of course," Daniel responded. "And Inati's place with you is supposed to be as the undisputed closest of us to you. Something like your favorite."

Thinking over Inati's history with her, Milly couldn't quite see it. Inati had been the main reason she always felt secure inside St Aggie's, his protection of the place had seemed indomitable, but he'd always felt so distant from her. Looking back at everything, she realized that he'd never been far away from her, he'd always been right there to guard and watch over her. He'd been so good at half of his job, the protecting her body from harm part, that he'd been entirely unable to perform the other half, the protecting her mind and emotions part.

"Inati's failures are easy to see," Daniel mentioned, going on with his argument that Milly shouldn't have liked any of them. "He's never really let himself feel anything, except what you were. He did his job, but never respected himself for it and you were always a little bit scared of him. So he kept his distance from you, let Dongrim dig himself into a hole by your side. He's possessive of you though, and he has an awful temper. I can't tell you how many times I've had to step in to keep him from killing all the people you talk to. Even the students of St Aggie's weren't safe, which is why you were hardly ever allowed to see any of them. He's actually killed one or two that I didn't know about until afterwards. Even his own packmates were on the chopping block if they got too close to you. Jealousy is not a strong enough word to cover it. And it was his own fault too, if he'd ever said anything to you about it, you would have been able to set him straight pretty easily."

Milly nodded slowly, about to say that it wasn't entirely his fault. He'd been trying to keep his distance because she'd been scared of him, after all.

"But he still had the, uh, 'male urges' shall we say, as if he was with you as a partner. He had it more acutely than the rest of us and he spent your late teens sleeping his way through almost every girl enrolled at St Aggie's," Daniel interrupted, before Milly had even begun. "And he didn't think anything of it, never cared that some of the girls fell in love and got hurt because he didn't care or that he was supposed to be reserved for you alone. He had his job as he saw it, and he did his job, releasing himself as necessary so that he could focus on the job."

At this point, Milly was frowning. She didn't particularly like the faults of her friends being paraded out in front of her like this. But Daniel was relentless.

"You should be able to guess Simon's issues without even trying."

"He's always been a little rebellious," Milly admitted. "A bit precocious . . ."

"That's an understatement. No matter what order Inati gave, Simon would find a way to weasel his way out of it. He refused to make friends, tried to make us all angry, and most importantly, he bullied you," Daniel expanded. "Emotionally, physically . . . sexually too, in some ways."

Milly couldn't think of anything to say back at Daniel. She couldn't deny his words, she'd seen them play out before her often enough. But she could try to soften their sting. "He was always completely honest, though. When he didn't like something he said so, and when I was being ridiculous, he pointed it out. He might not have been the nicest person to do it, but he was always honest. And whenever he talked with me . . . he felt very present, like the whole world existed in just those few minutes . . .It was always a nice feeling, that immediacy and honesty."

Smiling at her determination to see the good side of things, Daniel replied, "He wasn't always honest, not with himself at least."

"What do you mean?"

Daniel sighed heavily. "St Aggie's made you fall asleep, and we were left to wake you up," he said, cryptically. He leaned over quickly to give Milly a kiss on the cheek. "I'm sorry, Milly, but it had to be done."

Lighting cracked almost directly above them and Milly looked up at the dark grey of the clouds being split by the purple bruise of lightning. When her eyes flicked back down, Daniel was gone. She called out to him in confusion as it began to rain.

"Milly."

She turned around to see Inati standing out in the downpour with her. He came to stand beside her as she looked back to where Daniel had been. Neither of them said anything for a few moments as the storm raged around them.

Milly grabbed lightly onto Inati's hand.

"You're hurting."

"I failed."

"You didn't," Milly countered, giving his hand a squeeze. "You've always been right beside me; you've always kept me safe."

Sparks as bright and strong as the lightning around them began to build around Milly's hand, the one she held Inati's with. Black sparks from his power began to rise to match them as she slowly put together the pieces of her conscious memory, from when Jeesu had showed her how to heal her hand herself to how she had healed Dongrim only just recently.

All the little mysteries, the static sparks, the quick recoveries, the little secrets, they hadn't just been glimpses at the thing she couldn't remember, they'd been bubbles of her own memory suppression breaking free and boiling over. She'd never really forgotten, she'd just tamped the memories down like a good little girl doing what the grown-ups told her to. It was her fault that her Dogs were hurting, and that was something she couldn't tolerate any longer.

Standing there in the midst of the storm with Inati, as the wind raged, lighting thrashed among the clouds, and thick bullets of rain pelted down, Milly felt perfectly safe.

With Inati standing beside her, she knew she always would.

"I couldn't save you this time," Inati told her.

"I think you still can," Milly responded.

"You don't know what's out there."

"Actually, I do."

Milly let the power she'd forgotten course through her, lifting her onto her toes and then off the ground entirely. It was just a few inches at first, enough to let her kiss Inati on the cheek. "You're my good dog, Inati, and you still have a job to do."

Milly began to lift further away from him, looking up into the black bellow of clouds. He held onto her hand, resisting her departure. This time, like she had with Dongrim, Milly was moving on without her companion. But this time she knew it, and this time, it was Inati that was resisting the transition.

"I'll be back soon," Milly promised, as she finally lifted out of Inati's reach. "And I know that you'll be standing at my side, tall and proud with your pack."

Drifting lightly through the torrent of wind and rain, Milly touched down inside the bell tower of St Aggie's, the highest point on the grounds and one of Simon's favorite hiding places. He wasn't there at the moment, but as Milly looked out on the black mass seeping through the walls of St Aggie's, she knew he would be here soon.

Sure enough, she heard his footsteps pounding up the stairs as he came in, skidding to a stop and panting heavily from the exertion.

Milly let him breathe a moment before she asked, "What is it exactly?"

Trying to gain some composure and take up the high ground he was so used to having with her, Simon replied, "What? You can't even recognize your own cousin? I knew your side of the family got gypped in the brawn department, but brains too? I guess you are just a pretty-faced princess."

Milly didn't respond to his gibe.

"I'm related to that thing? Tell me how."

"You're related in a way, it's much older than you, and much less powerful. It was spawned by the Black, before Lucifer had even fallen. Its power comes exclusively from the constancy of Night, instead of also drawing on the flaws of man, like you can," Simon explained, mesmerized as he looked out at the black sludge.

"You're wrong," Milly said suddenly after a moment of silence. "It's not just the Dark that gives me power. It's the Light too, neither can exist in isolation. The real power comes from walking on the line between them."

Holding her hand out into the deluge, Milly let the rain run over it. Little sparks, black and white, played about her hand in the onslaught of water. She lifted off the floor, floating out a few feet into the open air as Simon stared.

And then the lightning struck her.

It smoothly used her as a conduit and then struck straight into the heart of the thing attacking St. Aggies's, adding damage ten-fold to the wounds the Dogs had torn into the creature. The black mass was vaporized instantly. It may have been powerful, and she might have been more so, but neither of them were exactly natural, and nothing in the universe was more powerful than the universe itself.

As Milly began to sag in her flight, the result of being used to funnel the raw power of nature, Simon grabbed her hand. "Milly!"

He yanked her down, into the safety of the bell tower and the surprise of a kiss.

Simon was the one that broke it, but not because it burned like any of his past kisses. He broke it because it felt good, acceptable, right.

"That wasn't supposed to happen, none of this was supposed to happen," Simon spewed, staring at Milly with wide eyes.

In the space of the kiss, they'd zapped out of the stormy bell tower. Now, still wind-ruffled, wet and dripping they were standing in the middle of a warm and grassy meadow, lit up to a golden glow by the late afternoon sun.

"It was all just a game to piss off the others, to make Inati squirm," Simon was continuing as Milly marveled at the translocation he hadn't seemed to notice. "I'm immune to you."

"You've never seemed immune," Milly teased, sidling up to him as he had done to her so many times before.

Simon was adamant. "It was never real. I was just teasing you, trying to trip you up all over yourself to make Inati mad."

"You were having fun."

"In order to make everyone else miserable."

Milly just smiled. "But it was real. You were really having fun with it. Being around me made you happy. I saw you smile."

Simon stared at her, looking her over carefully. This wasn't the timid and forgetful Milly that had been he'd been haunting for so many years. This was Millicent LeBourghe, come into herself at last. She was still the playful and sweet Milly that she'd always been, but she was sure of where she stood in the world and how she worked within its design. She knew what she wanted and how to get it.

This Milly was powerful in a way that they'd never imagined Millicent being. More than confident, she was content. Simon had been immune to the blunt magnetism of her power, but he didn't stand a chance against her captivating smile.

When Milly held out her hand to him, Simon took it without hesitation. She smiled at him, squeezed his hand, and closed her eyes in contentment feeling the black swirl around her and the wall melt away as light and dark regained their proper balance inside of her. She was fully content.

And then Milly woke up.

She was in the St Aggie's infirmary, but not the suite she had fallen asleep in with Dongrim. It took her the next several minutes to sort out what had happened. The school had been under attack, and her Dogs hadn't been able to fight it off. She remembered hearing Daniel's voice, and then the wall inside her head came crumbling down.

Milly didn't quite understand what had happened after that.

It had been some sort of attempt of a shattered psyche to deal with the sudden rush of memories. At the same time, the visits made by her Dogs, some of them at least, had definitely been real; that much she was absolutely sure of.

Getting out of the hospital bed, Milly noticed that she wasn't in the red hospital gown she had been in before. Now, she wore a white wrap, a dress of her own choosing.

Her hair was still wet from the rain.

It took a few tries to recall how to tap into the power she'd only just remembered possessing, but once she had, Milly dried her hair into perfect shining curls.

Then she headed out to find her Dogs.

The infirmary staff were hovering round her the moment she opened her door, tittering that she ought to go lay down. None of them gave her an order, though; a thing she'd never noticed before but now knew had been their standard practice.

"Where are they?"

Who she meant by they was unmistakable. The Orderlies all looked away sadly, save for the head nurse, the only one who knew the true extent of Milly's power in relation to the Dogs. "They didn't make it," she said quietly. "They're in the morgue."

Milly nodded and turned to walk away. The nurse caught her attention again, "Miss Milly?" When Milly looked back, the nurse revealed that she knew that Milly had gotten her memory back, "Would you like your things moved to a more suitable suite?"

"No." Milly's smile was reassuring, but her words were firm beyond contest. "I like my home how it is, thank you."

With that, Milly made her way downstairs.

The morgue was a dark space even when the fancy electric lights were on. Milly stepped lightly across the cold floor over to the five silver stretchers that bore the bodies of her best friends. Inati, Jeesu, Daniel, Dongrim, Simon; one by one she visited their sides, drawing her hand over their lifeless forms with the sparks of her power painting her own version of their old tattoos onto their bare skin.

As Dogs from the Pit, they needed a certain degree of bindings to keep them in this world at all. Their energies needed to be tied down into physical forms. The bindings St Aggie's had lain were also meant to tamp down their power and siphon Milly's through them at the same time. The bindings that Milly was now laying only ensured that that they were order-bound to inhabit their physical bodies.

They would always be with her, so long as she wanted them.

And she wanted them.

They didn't instantly take a breath once Milly had finished with each of their bindings, ordering them back up from the Pit to be with her. But she knew they would soon enough. When she got to Simon, she kissed him gently on the forehead, wondering how much of the scene from inside her head he would remember.

"Come on, boys," she whispered to them as she headed up the stairs to return to her room for a long over-due nap. "It's time to get back to work."

The lights flickered behind her as she flipped them off, a bit of residual current relighting the scene for a few seconds. After the first millisecond of darkness, when the lights came back on for a moment, they shone over a lifeless room filled with empty steel tables. Another flicker saw the pack gathered at the door. In the last flicker they were gone and the room was well and truly vacant.

The Dogs had a job to do, after all, and they couldn't be wasting any time with it.

~Finite~


A/N:
So Simon wins. ^_~ He got the kiss in the MV, so he also got the kiss here! Actually I stayed really close to the MV in this one, all of Milly's thoughts play into the Lyrics, and and of the boys actions link directly to something they do in the MV. And of course, the last few paragraphs match the last few MV seconds perfectly. So I hope you've enjoyed it and THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!

Also, I've been getting a few questions on Tumblr about what else is chained up in St Aggie's and because of it, I might put up a little drabble about one of the other creepy creatures. It'll be a bonus chapter, rather than a new story, but it won't have anything to do with DMTN. If you're interested, it's probably going to be up by Thursday! ^_^