After midnight, before dawn:

Justin stumbled back from the ledge, falling into the rooftop, retching. His mouth filled with a bitter acid that tasted of his ideals. His head throbbed unmercifully. Justin couldn't remember a time when he'd felt so dirty and sick, so alone in the world. He collapsed on the hard blacktop, grateful that no one was here to witness his degradation. Politely, someone cleared her throat.

Sitting on the parapet a few feet away, kicking her heels against the concrete, Rosie was waiting for him. She'd pulled an old Tshirt over her corset, and her makeup was smeary, which gave her a tired, worn look. She had bare legs and bare feet. Justin's aching head swum with an unexpected wave of sympathy for Rosie. I've been with him so long, she'd said. Rosie with her sad smile and sinful curves. Rosie with her tragic, broken black heart... Rosie, who still loved him.

Whose tender green eyes were the wrong color entirely, whose smile would never reflect his own soul in exactly the right way, or be able to push his every last button with the effortlessness of someone who's spent years getting good at it, who would never own his foolish, shriveled heart. Sweet doomed Rosie, who would never, ever be enough.

Rosie tried to smile, but it came out crooked and wrong. "Are you going to do it?"

Justin leaned next to her, looking down at the lights of the city. It was too dark down there, and occasionally, a horn-blast or a scream drifted up, or the sound of crunching glass. But between such reminders, it looked, almost, like a peaceful place.

It had been a peaceful place. His home. He could have protected it; he'd been given the chance. Gorog was right about at least one thing: It all came down to choice. He could have saved what he'd loved, turned away from the darkness welling within him. Instead, he's been brought low by his own childish fears. With the naive and oddly self-centered insecurity of the very young, he'd believed in the dark recesses of his heart that no one could ever see him for who he was and still love him. He had believed, truly (stupidly) that there would be no one to stand by his side and let him be the hero, no one to accept all the love he was aching to be allowed to give. Certainly, not a beautiful girl with eyes like stars.

Now, like some horrible cosmic joke, he understood with perfect clarity that he's been separated forever from the only girl who ever would.

Justin deserved it. He was a goddamned fool.

Fuck, but it was all too much. He hadn't asked to be made a part of this! He was just a kid! How could he possibly have know about this, foreseen it, had any kind of defense against it? He'd wanted the love of a girl, and had been given this.

The world was goddamned unfair, if this could happen in it. Justin Russo, the old Justin Russo, he was a good kid! He had wanted to get good grades and win the occasional fight with Alex and Max, to make his parents proud, to help a group of punk Wizard kids get back into their family competitions. He had wanted to get a pretty girl to kiss him... And here he was instead: Good and evil, sin and love, magic and darkness... all mixed up together.

Justin didn't want to be in a world that could have this possibility in it. A world that could hold Alex and Gorgon, Rosie and the Compass... a world like that was no goddamned fair.

"Justin? I said, are you going to do it?"

Justin looked at her, and a black hatred rose in him.

"You could have anything," she insisted, looking at him with terrible hope in her eyes. "I mean, anything, Justin. Fame. Money. Beautiful girls. Do you know how many people would give anything for a chance like this? Isn't there anything you've always wanted? Something you thought you could never have? How many people get this chance? It's your heart's desire!"

Rage rose up in him, and he wanted to strike her. "It's my soul, Rosie!" he shouted. "Nothing is worth that, do you understand me? Do you even remember what it was like to have one, or have you been dead so long that the word means nothing to you?" He saw her flinch, and knowing that he'd hurt her made him feel glad. Oh Rosie he thought, I could do so much more than make you cry.

He was angry, more angry than he'd ever been in his life. He wanted to punish Rosie, to hurt her and break her and torment her for the things she'd done to him. He wanted to watch her suffer and draw pleasure from it as one draws heat from a campfire.

He'd spent so much of his life pushing his anger and his rage away from him, denying it... but he had it near him, now. It was hot and strong and good, and part of him wished he'd discovered it years ago. Now it was all gathered within him like a storm of rage and some dark, unsuspected at part of him yearned to spend it on the angel's soft, vulnerable body.

But as good as that would be… as much as she deserved it… he couldn't. His old self, it seemed, wasn't entirely dead after all; there was just enough left of him to protect a crying angel from the wrath of his own despairing heart. And she was such a broken thing. Was it really her fault?

Of course not. All the fault lay with Justin. The choice, after all had been his.

In his memory, another, more distant Justin cries out, "My allegiance lies with Gorog!" In his mind's eye he sees his wand's last flume of dying magic escape as he snaps it in two.

His fealty to Gorog had cost him so much. The Dark Lord, together with his pet Angel, had set in motion the series of terrible choices that robbed Justin of his freedom, his courage, and his birthright. They had taken his family and his home. They had fooled him into surrendering his magic. There was almost nothing left that meant life to him. Maybe it would be better to give up, give in. Join the Darkness forever.

The Dark Realm wanted him for some bad purpose he had yet to understand… They'd chosen him. Gorog and his brethren knew he was vulnerable, lonely. They saw there was an emptiness in him that the darkness would rush to fill. He didn't know what desecration they would force from him, but he knew it was coming all the same. He sensed it crouched in hiding, like an animal in the undergrowth. Gorog needed Justin, and he didn't need him for anything good.

But he hadn't taken everything... Justin still had one last choice that Gorog didn't control, hadn't knowingly gifted him with.

Justin could die.