Chapter 30: The Ties That Bind.

Word by word and line by line

I follow your voice through the fire

And nothing will disarm my mind

To cut the ties that bind

"...the damage?.."

"...have revealed symptoms closest to a form of cardiomyopathy… were the ventricle to actually rupture from the pressure. Her condition is stable now, though. Angiography shows no internal blockages, with minimal deviations on the EСG. No signs of tamponade, either, so no need for surgery, too - a wonder, all things considered. She's currently on some minor inhibitors, but I'm not keeping it that way. You mentioned her aura was already wearing low at that point?"

Voices. Both male. One middle-aged, perhaps on the deep end of his thirties. Dry, yet confident. Irritated. Never heard before. The other...

In the future, Blake would eventually judge that waking up to medical lingo was, without a doubt, the most unpleasant way to regain consciousness of the handful she'd tried over her lifetime.

But not now. Floating in the empty expanse of comfortable, numbing darkness as she was, there could be no judgement, much like there could be no sight for lack of eyes, nor even a thought for lack of head. Only voices heard through nonexistent ears resounding meaninglessly in the nonexistent skull, and a feeling in the nonexistent gut that the voices were referring to her.

Whatever she might be.

"I gave her a Dust crystal before the ambush for an emergency refill. I assume she managed to absorb it in the ensuing chaos."

Crisp phrases, measured to convey no more and no less than was intended, spoken in a tone both forceful and deliberate. Whispers of trauma and hardship, echoing through time like a padded tunnel and ringing out like steel, carefully suppressed and tucked away from prying eyes and civil company.

Darius. No doubt.

Yet...

"That would explain it. With that being said, all other injuries are superficial at best for a Huntress. The leg might need stretching out the next day, and, if this even needs saying, it would be wise to avoid more life-or-death situations in the next week or so to prevent further strain on the heart. Now…"

Silence, cold and grating the ears like the whine of a sword unsheathed. Unseen strings, tensed to the absolute brink, reverberating somewhere deep inside.

"...Brother. I trust, at the very least, that you had the foresight to make sure she will be spared any further fallout?.."

"Nothing that standard cleanup procedure can't handle."

"You believe this is enough?"

"Yes. Master Wilhelm should be all but done with the process by now."

Another pause.

"I must take your word for it, then."

Gentle, almost imperceptible creaking of freshly ironed cloth. Perhaps the collar of a doctor's coat underneath a turning head.

"I must also ask you to leave the room for now. It would seem she has regained consciousness, and..."

"I understand."

Brief scraping of a chair pushed just a little ways. Footsteps, then the clicking of a closed door.

Silence.

"Miss Belladonna, can you hear me?"

A name, for once. Strangely familiar, too. That…

That's me.

A full-body shiver ran through Blake, and for a moment, her breath hitched as the notion of needing to take them reasserted itself in her thoughts, now unnaturally faint - a stark contrast to the rest of her body weighing down on her like a bag of bricks. Sucking in another deep breath and recollecting the scattered remains of her mind in as tight a knot as she could, she managed to fling open her eyes, each eyelid weighing in at no less than a ton.

The sight unraveling before her was unimpressive as far as rooms go, with four plain, albeit meticulously clean, white walls half-covered with assorted mechanical devices of diagnostic purport, if she had to guess, with enough space to comfortably house a desk and a pair of chairs adjourning it beside the various apparati, as well as a cupboard directly to her right. One of said chairs was occupied by a man of middling age, yet sturdy complexion, faded blue eyes gazing sharply from beneath a tall forehead and a crew cut of dark hair. Affixed to a spotless white coat was a name tag reading 'Dr. Flynt'.

Having taken stock of what little was present in the room besides, Blake's gaze eventually settled upon the only other person in it, letting out a weary sigh. Lightheadedness aside, Blake was also beginning to realize her throat was quite sore.

"How do you feel?" an inquiry came.

"Very… very lightheaded. Hard to think..." she swallowed in a reflexive attempt to stave off the onsetting dryness in her throat. Futilely. "Goodness… so thirsty... May I have some water?"

"Please," reaching behind her head, the doctor set a very sizeable glass on the cupboard near her. "You can adjust the bed on your left side. Just take care not to move your right leg too much."

Choosing not to focus on the last part of that directive for now, Blake pushed one of the buttons embedded into the wall to her left, feeling the headrest gradually rise until her body was set in a reclining position, whereupon she promptly emptied about half of the glass at once, exhaling contently. The doctor, meanwhile, used her silence to introduce himself:

"Miss Belladonna, my name is Samuel Flynt. I will be overseeing your recuperation… well, chiefly for this evening and the morning after. Tell me, does anything hurt?"

This doesn't look like Beacon.

'Brother...'

Her gaze wandering aimlessly, the Faunus blinked, rubbing her eyes with both palms, still only technically aware of the events transpiring around her.

"Not… exactly. Though now that you mentioned my leg, it does feel..." Reaching out for the thin blanket atop her, she flung away the part covering her legs, only to stare blankly at the sight of her right leg locked firmly in an immobilizer, with an additional splint placed around her knee. "...weird."

How the Grimm did I end up with a broken leg?

Evidently having taken notice of Blake's dumbfounded expression, the doctor briefly turned to the table, tapping out something on his scroll, before looking at her again.

"Do you remember what happened to you?"

"I..." much to her own shock, not even scraping together every ounce of concentration still drifting about within her vacant skull was enough to bring back so much as a hint of recollection of the most certainly bizarre events that would leave her, of all people, with a broken limb. Shaking her head, she pressed her hands around the sides, rubbing her temples intensely. "...wow. Not a thing. Did I also somehow hit my head when this happened?"

"I'm not ruling it out," Samuel responded after a brief pause, yet even in her concussed state, the instant in which his eyes shifted away just a little bit did not escape Blake's vision. "Could you describe to me the last thing, or things, that you remember, perhaps?"

"I can do that," she nodded, wincing slightly as the unpleasant occurrences reminded her of themselves. "Though I'd like to omit unnecessary details, if possible."

"Go on."

"At the start of the day, my team and I were taking a series of individual exams. With that done, we decided to take a stroll into the town and ended up in the docks. There, we saw some… peculiar things, to say the least. One thing led to another and we ended up arguing. Very badly," she sighed. "I ended up storming away from the team. Darius caught up to me almost immediately, and we… talked. A lot."

She chuckled lightly.

"Almost into the evening, actually. Then, he..."

'Open your mouth again, see what happens!'

Whatever words Blake was about to say lodged themselves in her throat, and she felt a bead of perspiration slowly seep down her forehead, cold as ice, as glimpse after glimpse much like this one, memories cascaded down upon her with crushing force. Anguished, tortured screams of her former comrades turned mortal enemies torn limb from bloody limb rang deafeningly in her ears and the visceral, grim images of the aftermath had stuck like a lump in her throat, robbing her of breath. And as the impossible, logic-defying events of that night regained their wholeness within Blake's mortified consciousness, every nightmarish detail picking ravenously upon her waning sanity, she felt herself, with an eerily familiar sense of disconnect with her own body, slump back into her cot, completely exhausted, as the realization had made itself manifest that the sole thing separating her from its source was a single measly door.

"Miss Belladonna?"

"It's... " though hardly optimal therapy, the pain from balling her hands into fists to the point of piercing her own palms with her nails did help to take the edge off the less than pleasant memories, bringing her back into the waking world. "It's coming back to me. How long have I been unconscious?"

"No more than two hours. Darius brought you here immediately, holding on for dear life - literally. We stabilized you, then let your aura do the rest of the work."

"I can tell. Would I be right to presume, then, that you are?.."

"A fellow brother of his in service of our Lady, yes," he nodded. "And, coincidentally, Chief Practitioner of this facility. He had informed me of your… knowledge about us as I was working on you."

"I… I owe you my life, then." It took a second for the realization to fully sink in. "Thank you."

A perfectly proportionate response, Belladonna.

"All part of the job, ma'am," Samuel's lips creased ever so slightly in a faint smile, fading just as quickly. "But I would reserve your thanks for someone else. If things were as dire as he described, had he not given you that crystal, we would not be chatting here."

Silence loomed over the room as neither of the two could find a way to segue towards the root of the issue. Though still aching like fresh wounds, the memories of the ambush gone horrifically wrong had nonetheless retreated into a place within her head where she could pretend to ignore them well enough to almost pass for normalcy. Yet further consideration of the implications of tonight's proceedings raised only further, disturbing questions regarding both her and her partner in crime. One of these questions, having quietly gnawn on the back of her head ever since the lapse in her recollection had been remedied, grew ever more pertinent as Blake remembered the icy silence that befell Darius and the good doctor during their conversation and was even more emphasized by the grim demeanor with which Samuel was forced to reluctantly give him credit for saving Blake's life.

"If I might ask you, doctor Flynt..."

"Anything."

"How much…" she clenched her teeth, summoning her resolve. "How much trouble is… he... in?"

She couldn't help but take note in abject fright how her own lips defied her, unable to utter the name of the person she chatted up so casually mere hours ago. She was certain Samuel did as well.

It would seem, however, that he derived some morbid amusement from her query, as the left half of his lips distorted for a brief moment, letting Blake catch a glimpse of an immaculately maintained canine in a crooked half-smile.

"You're a saint, Miss Belladonna, you know that?" he chuckled. "He almost killed you and that's the first thing you ask of him?"

He sighed. Blake failed to think of a proper rebuke in that brief window of opportunity.

"Frankly, I don't think anyone around here's gonna give you a satisfying answer to this. Not like there's anyone who can force him into taking responsibility."

What's that supposed to mean?

"What a shitshow, though!" her physician exclaimed meanwhile, clearly riled up by this unprecedented event. "Avatar or not, we have rules for a reason! What was he thinking telling a non-initiate about us? Manifesting himself like that? Involving you in the Order's business?! This is unheard of!"

Though passively registering the words so vigorously uttered by Doctor Flynt, Blake ceased to pay attention about one sentence in. One more time, the grisly details of her and Darius' combined attack upon the wharf manifested before her eyes, yet shining in an entirely different light. Violence the scale and perversion of which sickened her, a hardened guerilla fighter, to the very core; painful seizures within reality itself, imposed by a force that defied the very concept of 'natural' and the ensuing horror of a mind made forcefully to confront events it could neither comprehend nor resist; every ghastly memory featuring Darius as its central and focal point had been given shape, structure and intent with a single word.

"...Avatar?"

It was as if the temperature of the room dropped well below freezing within but a second: were it not for the unfinished glass of water beside Blake's bed remaining completely unaffected, she may very well have believed this to be just that. Whatever indignation Samuel Flynt still had reserved to throw Darius' way was gone like it never existed in the first place, replaced instead by a torpor so intense it could only be borne of one emotion, one Blake had an all-too-intimate acquaintance with tonight.

"He… he didn't tell you?"

No words on her end were necessary to convey the answer.

Judging by the uncaring ticking of an analogue clock on the opposite side of the room that only now made its presence known, a solid ten seconds had passed before her doctor managed to get a grip on himself as he slowly reclined back in his chair, left arm unfolding a small tissue it fished out from his coat and swiping away the bead of sweat upon his temple.

"I… I may be beginning to see the roots of such wanton disregard for secrecy on his side," he said slowly, his exertion to keep his voice even remotely steady palpable. "You, Miss Belladonna, have a gift that many among us would give a limb for, though it's hardly been a boon to you now. Men feel compelled to spill everything before you; that he'd held on for so long is, if anything, a testament to his resolve."

A brief fit of nervous laughter escaping his throat only cast further doubts as to whether the statement was heartfelt or merely a means of coping with the immense stress he felt, as far as Blake was concerned. If anything, however, the mere fact that her uttering that word distressed someone so calm just moments ago - and a physician, to boot - to the point of mild hysteria only further cemented her suspicion that that word meant something, and that to her, it clearly wasn't supposed to.

"That being said," Samuel continued, having, it would appear, finally found his center. "I'm afraid I can't utter another word concerning the subject matter, ma'am. As I mentioned earlier, for reasons as complicated as they are simplistic, Darius Silva has long since ceased to be subject to our internal laws and codes and our means to enforce them. I meanwhile, am still bound by them, and frankly, this alone may very well throw me into very deep waters. Lastly, if he himself hasn't told you the… full truth… then it's certainly not my place to do so, if only out of respect for his position… if not the person occupying it. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

In truth, this answer more than satisfied Blake, as she felt an ever more pressing need to get some questions answered by their source, one that slowly but surely outweighed the languishing instinctual fear of getting within cannon shot distance of him. Thus, with both objective and subjective factors aligned towards her goal, there was but one avenue of progress for her. Summoning all of her resolve, Blake sighed and spoke:

"I… would like to talk to Darius, then. Could you please call him back?"

Judging by how readily the doctor lifted himself from his seat, he too was anticipating this turn of events. With a brief nod and a long look at Blake, he said:

"I can tell I don't need to ask you if you're sure. If you need me, just press the emergency button and I'll be right back."

Then he left the room, shutting the door as he exited, leaving Blake alone with her thoughts, of which there were many.

'I can only assume you're hiding something truly, truly horrible.'

Would it only that this terrible night had taken her tongue instead, good only for blabbering its way into situations even she couldn't run away from! Every ounce of resolve Blake thought she'd mustered evaporated before the door so much as clicked shut, and if she could hop out of her bed and halt the good doctor in his tracks, she very well might have, were it not for her fixated leg to hamper her agility just enough for the paralysis of indecision to set in as her mind wandered towards the person about to enter the room, the mere remembrance of him proving as corruptive and detrimental to her state of mind as he himself was to the very fabric of the world back on that blasted dock.

Like cancerous tissue spreading through the weakened organism, echoes and aftershocks of tonight would force their way into her every memory, every moment spent with Darius twisted beyond recognition. Or, perhaps, revealed in all of its truthful splendor? Was that thing, that atrocity against reality present in every conversation, every tender moment shared, every battle endured, hidden away behind a wry smile or the steel mask, so unceremoniously mulched? Was some fleeting threshold crossed where one ended and the other began? Was there even one in the first place?

Blake couldn't tell anymore. Question heaped upon question within her ailing consciousness, her immense anguish before the unknown painfully accentuated by a single certainty: there was no going back to the way things were between them.

Would it only that this terrible night had taken her eyes instead, good only for seeing things they were never meant to and messily lamenting the fact afterwards!

Though the clock on the far side of the room never stopped ticking in its meticulous measurement of time's passing, the meaning behind its monotonous sound was lost completely on Blake as she realized that tears had been streaming out of her aching eyes for quite some time. Hunched over in her bed, surrounded by the four walls that, in a maddening confluence of two extremes, seemed to her both suffocatingly cramped and impossibly vast, the only thing stopping her from curling up into a trembling ball of sorrow was her own leg. Fixated to the point of absolute immobility, it ironically remained the only thing anchoring her to the real world, bleak as it may have seemed, the dull pain left by Torchwick's sick games grating at her senses just enough for her not to completely lose herself in the bottomless pit of self-pity.

In her case, however, 'just enough' still meant teetering on the edge of absolute desperation, kept at bay only by an impossible, downright manic hope that, any moment now, Darius would enter and in a fashion so befitting of the usual him calmly offer up an explanation, reassurance, anything, that would allow her to finally breathe out in relief and move on, wherever that might be. Anything that would banish the searing images of the skies themselves splitting open from the roiling hatred.

Anything that would make her remember what his eyes looked like.

Blake felt her entire body seize in torpor as another memory flared up in her mind, so vivid the walls of her room had all but gone out of sight, replaced instead by the endless expanse of the night sky as she lay motionless amid a squall of gore so fresh some of it may well have been alive, still. Visceral dread brought about by a crystal clear understanding that she was next in line, yet complete inability to budge her dying body even a centimeter, drained of all but the last shreds of vitality. A sudden sense of sucking emptiness, in part even more unbearable than the fear, as a familiar voice called out her name over and over, filled almost immediately by relief so overwhelming it was nothing short of euphoria as gentle hands lifted her head, shielding her sight from the cruel reality. Eyes filled with worry and sorrow scanning every square inch of her body in search of signs of life, the gray steel of the irises dulled to near complete obscurity by the crimson of burst capillaries, yet so painfully familiar.

Blake almost hit her head on the wall as she collapsed back onto her pillow, now bereft of any strength, her entire body shaking violently as she wept without a sound.

Why did I have to open my mouth?!

Why did he?! He had to know better! He had to!

He…

You have to make some sense of this…

Please…

It was then that a new, foreign sound invaded Blake's hearing. A series of three knocks on the plywood door, their cadence unmistakably matching a certain person's.

"...Blake? May I enter?"

It was him. Though barely audible his voice, there could be no mistaking it. Beyond that door stood Darius, and while that might have been the limit of comprehension of her human ears, her animal nature filled in the gaps, unfailingly picking up his deliberately measured breathing and level tone, both products of his iron discipline. This alone should have put Blake's mind at ease as testament that even in a situation this outwardly dire, he still maintained a grip on the situation.

And yet it didn't.

There was a fault. A straining that she felt through no rational means of perceiving the outside world, but rather on a level much deeper, one that transcended reasoning and flesh itself. Whatever uncanny force allowed him to maintain a level head at a time like this was giving way, every spreading crack echoing deep within her as well, resonating with the ever growing sense of hopelessness gnawing at her heart. Not even Darius Silva could explain his way out of this.

She probably could have just stayed still until he went away.

A familiar emptiness seized Blake's entire body, so palpably cold she could all but visualize her breath turning to vapor as she struggled to inhale again. Caught in precarious balance upon a point smaller than the corner of a balancing die, a moment frozen in time, stretched infinitely just before the mistress of fate cast her crimson-stained hand and rendered unto the world the only possible outcome. A threshold that, by all accounts, could not possibly exist, yet one she just could not find the heart to cross, for even this miserable state of uncertainty terrified her less than the threat of the unknown becoming definite knocking on her door.

She figured there was a decent enough chance that Darius would get the hint and leave her alone if she just stayed very still for long enough, pushing back the threshold, if only for a moment. She knew not, she could not possibly know what terrible truth he would bestow upon her, but feared it nonetheless, for she had no doubt that when proffered with the profound, pliable emptiness that was her being, that truth would expand ravenously and without hindrance, until it consumed her without a trace.

What terrible misfortune it was, then, that her running leg just so happened to be in utter disrepair.

'I think it's a lifetime of unfortunate decisions coming back at you.'

The emotional whiplash was almost nauseating in its intensity, yet it was that visceral feeling of discomfort that knocked Blake out of her stupor as a wave of anger and shame bordering on disgust washed over her, flushing her face with crimson. How eager she was to find comfort in her old ways! How desperate to retreat anywhere, even in herself!

The die cast, a decision was rendered long before it would be actuated by its maker, and time resumed its relentless advance without skipping a beat as the analogue clock counted precisely five seconds since Darius knocked on the door. Though somewhat dumbstruck at the realization that she was not brooding within the lightless confines of her own tormented mind, but actually in a decently lit room, by far the most novel sensation to Blake was, for the first time during this unpleasant awakening, a state of almost perfect clarity, marred not by fear nor doubt nor self-pity.

For some reason, however, the thirst remained.

Quickly rectifying that small inconvenience by finishing off the glass so courteously provided to her by the good doctor, Blake took a second to concentrate on her hearing. Just as she anticipated, just beyond the door a faint heartbeat could be heard, kept steady by forces far beyond her ken.

There's no running away from this, is there?

That, too, was crystal clear to her.

She sighed.

"...Darius?"

Almost immediately, a reply followed:

"I'm here," Darius reassured, repeating his query thereafter. "May I come in?"

Blake sighed again.

"Please do."

As the door slowly slid open, Blake used the little time in between to prop herself up in her bed into a sitting position, taking care so as not to disturb her leg too much. Satisfied with this arrangement, she turned her head back, only for her heart to involuntarily skip a beat as grey eyes stared at her in silence, a flood of emotions raging just behind the unmoving pupils.

It was Darius, alright. It was well known among Team RWBY and most anyone who knew their companion from more than one cursory encounter that Darius took great care to carry himself with dignity and strength at all times, yet nowhere was it more apparent as to what extremes that dedication reached than right here, right now. Whatever happened back then, the toll it took on Darius' body was horrific: beyond the deathly pallor that spread all across his body, or at least what little Blake could see from underneath the grey fatigues he wore, an immense bruise, almost plum-like in color, spread across his entire collarbone. Surmising it was likely a consequence of the blunt force trauma from having gatling rounds pelt his body, even dampened by his aura as they had been, it wouldn't surprise Blake if that bruise extended all the way down his torso, not to mention the first barrage that hit him square in the back. Judging by a bracelet of brown, copper-like metal slung around his wrist, it wasn't going away any time soon.

It had to hurt like a motherfucker, leagues more than her shattered kneecap, secured beneath two layers of protection and probably hopped up on some painkillers as she was. She knew it had to. She could all but smell it. Yet it was as though the word 'pain' had no meaning to him. Shoulders spread wide and his stance steady, one could easily be fooled into thinking that substituting his spine was a rod of the same metal as his eyes, watching with sharp focus despite a large, irregular blot of blood just beneath his right pupil.

It would fool anyone on her team, Blake figured.

It was almost enough to fool her.

But where carnal senses failed her, a new, entirely foreign one held true, pointing unwaveringly at the deepening fault line just as it did before she laid eyes upon him. Though much was lost this night, something else was offered in return. In their shared nightmare, they were bound; be it by fate or by the unwritten law of likeness attracting likeness, it mattered not. Thus, with vision that went beyond sight, Darius' unparalleled restraint, of whose true nature she only caught errant glimpses before, was revealed unto her: not a guiding pillar of support, but a thousand, thousand threads piercing every atom of his being. Ropes cutting mercilessly into his skin, peeling back the eyelids for his eyes to gaze sternly and without hesitation into the world; inlaid within every muscle fibre, artificial muscles to guide his arm and wield his weapon without remorse; puppet strings grafted in every bone, vanishing from sight to a point of origin that she dared not ponder; his very heart wrapped within a silken vise, contracting and expanding with impossible calmness, each and every one taut far beyond the breaking point. An inhuman bondage to which he clung with the desperation of a drowning man grasping at a straw.

And yet, mindful of what happened when those strings came undone, Blake could hardly find it in her heart to blame him.

It was only natural for their mutual bond to be realized by both parties; yet while the Faunus was still struggling to formulate any kind of emotional response to the troves upon troves of new information being heaped upon her, shock and despair reflected clearly in Darius' eyes as the realization sunk in, followed by profound regret as he gazed further upon his own creation.

It was then that a single one of the myriad threads binding him snapped with all the force of a steel guitar string giving way under careless tuning.

It could be no more harmful to her than her own imagination, yet nonetheless Blake couldn't help but flinch on pure instinct as the invisible thread almost slashed against her eyes in its frenzied flailing. It was then, for a moment so fleeting it could be mistaken for a trick her own mind played on her, that the mask cracked as Darius' breath hitched, his inhale stuck in his throat, and his pupils dilated ever so slightly, letting her briefly glimpse more of the agony that wracked his body and mind.

And in the very next heartbeat, the illusion perished, the only testament to its reality being a straining feeling of the next string being tensed in place of the old one, cutting even deeper into him, a sensation Blake realized she remembered from back on that nameless rooftop where she got her first glimpse into Darius' life. Once again, his gaze refocused, and the seemingly infinite threads that bound him vanished from senses as normality reasserted itself.

She found herself staring right into his eyes.

"Doctor Flynt apprised me of your condition," he spoke finally, with a softness to his voice that, as far as Blake could tell, was beyond genuine, yet also… involuntary. "He also said you… remember what happened. You seem… remarkably composed."

Funny you should say that.

Blake pondered.

"I've wept mine, if that's what you mean," she replied, considering her, indeed, uncharacteristic resolve in the face of everything that was transpiring before her, even right now. The answer seemed simple, if disconcerting. "I'm pretty sure I'll be in burnout for a while now."

She sighed.

"Prime time to… set things straight, the way I see it."

Not a single muscle moved on Darius' face as he nodded, taking place on the chair formerly occupied by the good doctor near her bed. Once seated, he looked at Blake expectantly, giving her right of first question.

And what a right that was. A roiling apiary's worth of questions buzzed and fluttered about Blake's head, yet she found herself irresistibly drawn to a singularly distressing one that, ironically, she found the easiest to ask.

"How… how many?"

Relatively the easiest.

For a moment, their eye contact wavered as Darius' glazed over, perhaps reliving the evening, or perhaps coldly tallying up the lives he ended there. That done, he took a deep breath.

"Twenty six members of the initial raiding party, burnt up by the fires from the Dust container explosion. Further thirty one of the second wave, split evenly among the enforcement and transport troops. Two downed Bullheads, sunk. Precise crew count unknown. No survivors identified."

Burnout or not, Blake was helpless to stop icy needles from painfully piercing her already weakened heart at every sentence, her eyes shutting on reflex. Murderers and thugs, yes. Misguided fanatics, certainly. Mortal enemies who had almost killed her mere hours ago, without a doubt. But still people with whom she shared roof, bread and steel for the better part of her life and, until very recently, a vision of the world as well. Kin.

'They ain't your brothers, sister. Don't try to pull this shit.'

Oh, but they were. And it hurt to know that their lives ended like this, even if some rational part of her mind insisted there was no other way they could ever have ended. Blake wagered it hurt her almost as much as it did Darius, who listed off his victims like articles of his own sentence. Simple math told her that, even excluding the lives so callously sacrificed by Torchwick just to get a cheap shot in on her, tonight had easily doubled, if not tripled, the number of lives he had taken, if his account of his past in Atlas was to be believed.

"Why?"

And no answer came.

To even ask for a reason in circumstances such as these felt criminal to her. What possible reason could he have to save both of their lives, indeed? To bail them out of the situation that was, in part, of her own doing when she hadn't spared so much as a thought to properly secure Torchwick?

But she knew that was not why she was asking. And she was all but certain that he knew as well, hence his silence.

So why, even still, could she not hold her tongue, thrice it be damned?

"What happened..." her voice unsteady, Blake realized she was on the verge of tears as words came out of her mouth against her own volition. "Darius… there has to be some explanation… Please..."

And when he spoke, his own answer was no louder than a whisper.

"I… I killed them because I couldn't control myself. I'm sorry, Blake… I have no explanation for you. No excuse."

It sickened Blake to her very core how little that surprised her.

She could expect no other answer, really. From their Initiation where he attacked her and Yang with the same ruthlessness as he did the Beowolves, to the training spars that would often end with a varying amount of applied splints and profuse apologies, eventually leading to him practicing combat separately from his team, the battlefield was the only place where his usual curt demeanor, which would defuse most any situation long before it came to conflict, evaporated into nowhere, while his biting wit became just one of his many implements of death, along with his body and weapons. All of RWBY were well aware of that, and all of RWBY felt very acutely how every combat, a strange threshold would always be approached, beyond which something uncanny and vile leered back at them with hatred and rage.

Yet she could never have imagined the true extent of it.

"I know..." Darius' voice cut through the silence, interrupting the aimless meandering within Blake's head. Though its strength had been somewhat regained, she could easily tell that every word took tremendous effort on his end, as if just saying them inflicted pain. "I know you're wondering what it was you witnessed there."

In other circumstances, such nonchalant formulation would probably have Blake breaking down in hysterical laughter. However, all she had managed was a quiet snicker:

"That's… one way to put it."

"It… has to do with what I told you back in the city," she saw Darius' cheekbones sharpen, his jaw almost cramping from stress, yet he continued. "More specifically… it has to do with what I didn't tell you. My rank within this Order and its true nature."

Avatar.

"Back there… when I spoke of the Light and the Dark responding to humanity's desperate plea for help, I meant it… rather literally. The Light and the Dark are no abstract metaphors, no… euphemism for the untapped potential within us," he spoke, and this time there was no place for doubt in Blake's heart, as memories of tonight beat back any kind of rationality with relentless force. "Though no physical beings… no persons as we could envision, they are very much real. Forces primordial, whose vision reaches aeons into the past and future, and whose machinations span the entire universe. Through their machinations they have conceived us as kin, our very souls essence from their essence, and throughout our history, they have deemed it necessary to give some of us… more."

By virtue of the dimeritium bracelet wrapped tightly around his wrist, Blake was certain he couldn't possibly manifest any of his power even if he wanted to. Yet by simply invoking those ancient powers, unseen ripples went through the air, and for just a moment, the threads binding Darius shimmered back into existence, strings by which his grim patron held unwavering sway over him. Yet just as her breath hitched in her throat, the mire was all but gone completely, the bracelet serving as an unflinching reality check. Unknowingly sneaking another peek of his ruined collarbone, Blake couldn't help but slightly shake her head as, for the first time in this night, a tingle of warmth flickered in her heart.

He really does think of everything.

It occurred to her that Darius wasn't talking. As she met his eyes, she realized that, for all of his truly impressive endurance, his condition, unlike hers, only worsened, if only by the fact that the blood blot in his eye at least doubled in size, now occupying almost all of the lower half of his right eye.

"Something the matter?"

"Sorry. Just… gathering my thoughts," he slowly shook his head, before stopping abruptly and slightly wincing. When he continued speaking after taking a deep breath, there was no masking the hoarseness in his voice. "You look much better than when I first entered."

Smooth.

"You seem to have that effect on me," Blake's lips creased into a faint half-smile, one that came surprisingly easily to her. The sentiment needed correction, though. "For the most part. You're looking worse and worse, though. Are you sure you don't want to take that bracelet off?"

He spared the metal strip a brief glance.

"I'll tend to my wounds once I'm out of your earshot. I can manage that far. Shall I continue to make that moment come that little sooner?"

"Do that," she nodded. "So, if we all have a fraction of their power from birth, why'd they need to heap on more separately from that?"

"Because we're still humans, bound by our mortal bodies, and all the vices that come with the need to maintain them," he continued. "To err is human, and over time, such errors compound to catastrophic extremes, ones that take their toll on thousands, uninvolved and innocent alike. They cannot possibly fix the consequence of our every mistake for us, for even attempting to operate on such… microscopic... scale would sunder our entire planet and who knows how much around it. Yet… if one of our own would reach out to them of their own volition… that immutable bond between us could be used to grant more strength than one could achieve with even a lifetime of development. To commit to that... is to transcend the limitations of one's mortality, to approach them as closely as the confines of this mortal coil can allow, and possibly even one step closer. To..."

His sentence cut short before it started, Darius broke into a coughing fit, hunching over and grabbing the cupboard with one hand for stability as a dry cough wracked his body, Yet to Blake, no words were necessary as her mind readily filled in the gaps.

"...To become their Avatar?"

Though his fit ceased a short time after, the Atlesian did not speak up for quite some time, evening out his breath with a familiar breathing technique. Still hunched over, he turned his head to look briefly at the door of the cell, before straightening out and nodding.

It could not escape Blake's attention that, despite his posture, his eyes were lowered.

"Yes. I… I assume Doctor Flynt had slipped up?"

"Please don't be too hard on him," Blake winced. "He just mentioned the word itself off-handedly, and it kind of… clicked for me. He didn't tell me anything else."

A quiet chuckle rippled through Darius' chest, one that could easily be mistaken for another coughing fit if she didn't know better.

"Far be it for me to go after anyone today for breach of protocol. He did leave your room looking rather shaken. I think you left… quite an impression on him."

"I guess you could call it that," she shrugged. "He himself justified it because, and I quote, 'men feel compelled to spill everything before me'."

Another fit of dry barks, almost resembling laughter, ripped through Darius as he smiled weakly, the exertion sending cracks through his already chapped lips.

"What better example of what a difference several decades of experience make, then," he responded. "In just a few minutes of chatting with you, he had pinpointed that which took me until yesterday to fully realize."

As a treacherous blush crept up Blake's cheeks, she realized the topic urgently needed refocusing.

"And this power was given… to you?"

This was the best way you could put it?!

Yet Darius paid no heed at all to her appalling lack of tact. Judging from his voice, he may very well have had no strength left for that.

"Was that not evident today?" letting go of the cupboard, he grabbed his head with the same hand, shaking it slightly. "...Sorry. Your doubt is beyond understandable. That said… the recipients for the powers of Avatar are not decided by committee or rank. To serve our Lady, to be the instrument of Her will… it's the very reason why we took the oath, why we had labored tirelessly through centuries..."

It was almost uncanny to see the invigoration that had washed over Darius at the mere mention of his master… or mistress, strictly speaking. His voice replete with newfound strength, all just to put the right emphasis on the moniker he seemed to revere so, his posture almost reverted to the way he first was when he entered the room, while his eyes, albeit still bloodshot, gleamed with focus.

"But once one hears Her call, it is another matter entirely to answer it. I know I was not the only one to hear Her call me into service three years ago. In fact, I believe more of us than ever before were asked to rise up. Yet… yet I was the only one to reach back."

She couldn't quite understand what it was about the way he said the last sentence, but she knew for certain that it sent a chill down her spine, and that a knot began tightening within her stomach. Whatever the reason for such lack of volunteers could be, it could only bode poorly.

"Why?"

There was no answer for a good while. The clock counted about eight seconds before Darius finally responded, his voice heavy:

"To be Avatar isn't to just receive a heap of free power to do with as one pleases. The coming of one is, in the first place, a reminder to all of us that we're still humans, and in the second, the sign that we, as humans, had failed to safeguard the world in our mortal ways. That countless others not suffer for our mistakes, the Avatar sets out to do what others could not do, would not do, should never have to do. To accept their offering of power is to consign oneself to committing acts so terrible, so reviled that they be referred through history as nothing short of atrocities or ascribed to natural disasters. And once their purpose is fulfilled..."

It had to be some truly perverse joke of creation that Blake already knew what he was going to say.

"...To rid the world of their filth."