Title: Snake Singer

Authors Notes: Thank you so much to TallemeraRane who helped with the editing of this chapter.

Disclaimer: Characters belong to Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, but the plot belongs to me.

Zane held his sword only a few inches above Vasili's head, his hand and the sword shaking slightly. I couldn't move. I wanted Zane to stop and let Vasili live. Zane's life was too important to me to just let him spend the rest of his life tormenting himself over Vasili's death and the part that he played in it. Yet, at the same time, I knew that Zane had killed people, I knew that he had slaughtered for safety at home and on the battlefield. I wanted Vasili dead, dead to the world and dead to me. My flesh still felt raw and awkward when I thought of what he had done to me and all of the things that he would have later, had he been given the chance to do so. I felt lost within myself and the only thing that I could cling to was the hope that Zane and I would live through this and somehow have a life after everything that would be worth living for; a life worth fighting for.

Zane seemed completely hidden from me yet at the same time completely exposed. The moment that held the paused movements of us all seemed to collapse and go on forever. Vasili with his delighted smirk as though he were pleased to see the pathway to death before him. His dark blond hair half way covering his excited eyes. The same eyes of a child who was just about to receive a gift that he had been begging for longer then he could remember. Zane stood above him; his form shadowed by the erect stillness of his high shoulder blades. His fingers tightly together around the handle of his sword. His knuckles white with the exception of tiny blue veins that seemed as though they would burst at any moment. Then myself, standing off to the side powerless to stop any of it, or change any of it. I was the host to this fear and emptiness that I couldn't seem to escape. I wanted to stop everything...

"Zane!" I called, wanting my voice to fill the void of all of this. If only all of this could have been different. If only Vasili had truly lived and remained here all of these years and I had never met Zane and wasn't now tortured with these two diverging feelings.

"Don't interfere!" Vasili yelled, his content awareness of death and his all too hopefulness for it in the coming seconds overpowering me as I saw Vasili for the mad man that he was, begging for a death that he had so long searched for. "Go on Zane, do it." He said between his smiling lips. "You and I both know that my death will solve all of your problems." It was like great wisdom to Vasili, his words almost a prayer meant to absolve him of all of his sins. "But just remember," he continued, "you will never be able to make her happy. Your relationship will crumble and never remain intact through out this war!"

I saw Zane lower the sword slightly. It wasn't a deep plunge as though he was trying to scare Vasili into the submission of begginig for his life. I knew that the satisfaction of killing Vasili was dwarfed by Vasili's welcoming of it. But rather a slow covering of alternative thoughts; a to be or not to be approach to the action that he was about to commit.

"Go on Zane. Plunge that knife into me and be done with it!" The smile on Vasili's face widened.

Zane's firm posture loosened slightly and in one thankful second he let go of the sword and moved it away from Vasili's neck. "I will not kill you Vasili," he said, his voice exhausted as he let out a breath that he must have been holding for as long as Vasili had been on the ground. "I will not take your life." Zane's bluntness seemed to startle Vasili, and Zane quickly moved back to my side and we both watched as Vasili got up from the floor, his arm around the 'C' shaped gash across his stomach, the pressure of his hand making his already bloodied shirt redder and damper. "Death will not free us of you!"

Zane stood at my side and with proud eyes over his decision I lifted my hand up to his cheek and kissed his temple, my lips slightly above a scratch that had been given to him in the fight.

I could feel Vasili's anger fuming from where I stood across the room with Zane. "Fools!" He called out to us, the drip of blood falling from his curled lips. "You have too much against you; the world with all of its wars will never let you be together." Vasili paused, his deep-set eyes going from me to Zane. "Your presence, so near to her, will kill her one day, and on that day there will be nothing that you can do to save her, or yourself."

I stopped listening to him long ago.

I heard running footsteps from down the hall and shortly after Rei entered with a host of Avian soldiers behind him, their weapons all drawn as though ready for warfare. "There he is!" Zane called out to them, not bothering to turn around but knowing that it was Rei and his men who had come in. "Take him back to the Underground Municipality!"

After hearing those two words, Underground Municipality, Vasili's eyes became the eyes of a desperate victim trying to escape the clutches of the creature who desired to kill him. He became desperate, and I knew that he would much rather have been killed then to go back to that place. From behind me I heard Rei's men approach him, their boot heals clicking and clashing against the hard stone floor like hunters hunting their prey. Vasili quickly turned on his heels, unwilling to go with them quietly and without incident.

With one last desperate glance at me Vasili ran. His body fast and unrelentlessly frantic as he came to a dead end in the throne room, and without turning to face us he ran into the large glass window against one of the walls. A spray of glass fell like raindrops into the throne room and out onto the wild earth outside of the Hawks Keep. Vasili fell like a doll from the window and into the darkness of the night. Was he alive or dead when he fell to the ground? I'll never know.

Rei's men didn't follow Vasili through his chosen rout of escape, but rather turned around and headed for the entrance to the Hawks keep to follow him that way. No doubt the fall through the window would have wounded him in some way, and his wounds from the fight with Zane would slow him down if he was still alive and wanted to flee to safety. As Rei passed us, closely behind his men he said: "We will find him!"

Zane and I didn't doubt him, and at least this journey of our lives had ended, and whatever shape the next morning would take and the following days was unknown to us, but at least this part was over.