Disclaimer: Gaahh, I am so lazy … guys, I'm really sorry for delaying posting this chapter for so long … or for just waiting so long to write it. (embarrassed silence) Um, forgive me? Feel free to yell at me as long as you want in a review! That or you can praise me because, while I waited a long time, I could have waited longer! Or not posted at all! Don't you hate it when you're reading a really good story and then the person just never updates it ever again? Grr! I hate that! But I promise that I'll keep updating until I finish the story … even if it takes me forever, I will finish it! Plus, I have an idea for a story after this one, but I told myself that I wouldn't write it until this one was finished so I could focus on it w/o having to worry about this one. Anyway, read and review when you finish the chapter! Reviews make me happy and, the happier I am, the more likely I am to update quickly and efficiently :D And, um, the song belongs to Phantom Planet.

Taintedpromises: I'm not from Texas! I'm forced to live here against my will! I really hate it here—at least compared to Washington D.C., where I used to live … it was so much better there. People say "y'all" too much here … it annoys the heck out of me! Grr! You are sooo lucky you live in Scotland. I would love to live in Europe (I get to visit Europe this summer, though! Yay!) but … alas … I'm stuck here in the US … with … TEXAS CONSERVATIVES! (runs and hides) I severely dislike conservatives and their president … but anyway, I've taken up enough time ranting about my hate of Texas. Read the chapter now :P

Raynornlimegreen: Yes, it's true that I'm evil, vile, despicable, malevolent, wicked, sinful, abominable, malicious, loathsome, immoral, foul, nasty, horrid, revolting, disgusting, obnoxious, foul, and cruel :D Lol, did you have to use a thesaurus to come up with all of those words? I definitely wouldn't be able to think of that many synonyms for "bad". But, yes, I am all of those! Mwahaha!

MIDNIGHT-PIXIE: Ooh … (amazed) 3 reviews on one chapter! That makes me feel all fuzzy inside :D Lol, thank you sooo much for reviewing and always commenting on the different aspects of all of the chapters! It doesn't really do me any good when people are like, "It's good. Update soon." Of course … I do that, too … so I shouldn't really be complaining, but still! It's great to get reviews from people like you, so give me more … please? (puppy dog eyes) Pleeeease?

UnangelicHalo: Hehe, only a select few know which one of the possibilities I will choose to off at the end … um … wait, who said anything about someone being killed off? (pause) If anyone asks, you heard nothing!

Part XXVIII: Just Pretend Happy Ending

There's nothing for me here
I'm starting to get old
Time just ticks on
We've all been taking some comfort in repetition
And I'm left with no way to scratch
What has been itching

Morgan

As I hovered between the realms of consciousness and the fuzzy darkness on the edges of my mind, my sense of touch was all that I could rely on. My hands were cold, and my head was pounding with a killer headache. There was a sharp pain on my forehead, too; Bhanaltra must have cut me. I tried to open my eyes, but I didn't feel even the slightest flicker of movement in my physical body. Muireadhach had me under a powerful binding spell; I didn't have to be a genius to figure out that it would be almost impossible to break it by myself.

I was straining to hear, but I felt so far away from my body. I could barely pick up on any sounds coming from around me. I heard whispers, so far and so faint. People must be talking around me, maybe even shouting, but I couldn't hear anything. It was so quiet; I wanted to scream just to hear a sound. The silence was deafening.

I was sure that, if I was awake, I would have been crying. Something inside me was hurting, and being so disconnected from the world around me made it easier to feel. Something was dying, something intangible, and I wanted to gasp and choke with the pain of it. Something was wrong, I could tell. I instantly knew that it was Hunter; something had to be wrong with him. Why else would I suddenly be feeling this internal ache, so emotionally and mentally sharp that I could almost feel a physical pain from it?

I knew it with a certainty that was frightening; Hunter and Sky's lives were in danger, slipping farther away from the real world with every passing second. I had to wake up; I had to find them and save them. Where were they? Where are you, Hunter?

Then I felt a burst of anger within me so sudden, so strong, that I could almost feel myself shaking; what were my friends doing here? I told them to stay away. I told them to stay away so they'd be safe. Why hadn't they listened to me?

I could almost hear Hunter's voice, as clear as if he were sitting next to me. Because we love you, Morgan. You didn't think we'd just let you do this, did you?

I wanted to cry in that moment. I could feel the tears welling up from somewhere inside the emotions that I had never connected with before.

I felt him whispering something else. Now you have to wake up. You have a job to do. People you need to protect.

I don't understand, I tried to say. Where are you? Why couldn't you have just let me do this?

There was no response. The voices around me were growing louder, and I felt something fly past me, the heat from it almost burning my arm.

The next thought I registered didn't come from Hunter; it was my own, but it was if it was another voice within me telling me something: It's time for you to see this through.

And I'm ready and waiting
For the happy ending

Mike

The chains binding me to the gravestone were rough, chafing my skin every time I shifted. As I looked into eyes that held no light, eyes that truly terrified me with their sheer, forbidding gaze, I could see Morgan out of the corner of my eye, tied to a headstone in the middle of the circle as the tall, lithe members of Muireadhach's clan hung back, looking to their leader as if awaiting further instructions. Morgan looked battered, and I could see bruises forming on her arms. I saw Muireadhach's gaze shift to the direction that I was looking, and he gave a grisly smile.

"Sad, isn't it? The Woodbane princess reduced to this? This shell of a human being?" He sounded a little disappointed. "This will not make much of a battle tale when we leave your realm. I had really expected more of a fight from her."

I didn't say anything, but I clenched my fists tightly to keep from trying to break free again. I wanted to yell at the demon in front of me; didn't he understand that he was about to kill an innocent girl who had never hurt anyone in her life? Didn't he understand that he was about to kill my sister?

"But your friends, though …" He turned to look back at me, and I shuddered as his eyes refocused, boring into mine. "Your friends put up quite a fight. They were fools for thinking they could stop us."

"You had better let her go," I whispered through gritted teeth. "If you let us have her back, maybe most of you will get out of this alive."

Muireadhach laughed; it sounded like a mix between a barking dog and nails on a chalkboard. I wanted to cover my ears as the horrible sound penetrated my head.

"I honestly do not believe you are in a position to be threatening me, boy," he said, still chuckling in a demented sort of way to himself. "If you want the girl, you will have to kill us all. We will not risk letting this girl live."

"We wouldn't let her give in," I said desperately. "We would never let her give in to dark magick. She can change; she can persevere over –"

Muireadhach sounded bored. "That will never happen. The future has been foreseen, and quite clearly at that. The only thing that could change her fate would be monumental, something greater than any of us could ever create. It would have to alter the very essence of who this girl … this Morgan Riordan … is." A pause. Did I detect a note of bitterness in his deep, rough voice? "Such a thing does not exist."

He had turned away; his energies were focused elsewhere. I felt him retreat into his own mind, pondering what he had just said as he said something to one of his soldiers in an ancient, archaic tongue. I looked at Morgan again, straining slightly to loosen the grip that the chains had on me, and suddenly I felt myself growing angry. Morgan had dark magick in her blood, yes; our father, Ciaran MacEwan, was one of the cruelest, most notorious magick abusers to ever curse the world with his presence. But Morgan's mother? Killian had told me about her. She had been beautiful, a white witch, powerful beyond her years. She had known the difference between dark and light in a person, something Morgan would probably struggle her whole life to understand. She had never abused magick, never once done anything to deserve the harsh cultural stereotype of being 'evil' except be born into a Woodbane clan.

It wasn't even something that Maeve could control, just as Morgan couldn't control the fate of the man that her father had turned out to be. At least she had white magick in her blood; she was also the child of a woman who had known what dark magick was and had rejected it. She had a choice; she didn't have to relinquish the good in her lineage, regardless of what Muireadhach and his clan believed. I bit my lip slightly. If anyone should be chained to that grave in the middle of an Irish cemetery, it should have been me. I couldn't claim the same lineage as Morgan could; my mother hadn't even been a witch. The only magick in me was from the MacEwan line; the only place that my power flowed from was from hundreds of years of dark magick practice.

Without even being aware of it, I realized that that power was swelling right then. I could feel my hands starting to shake as magick coursed through my veins, ready to attack Muireadhach. I wouldn't let him do this to my sister, the one person with an opportunity to show the world that to be a MacEwan wasn't to be evil.

I closed my eyes and saw the chains binding me to the gravestone; I visualized them snapping, breaking and shattering, setting me free. The spells on them weren't difficult to break through. I saw the metal bending and reshaping itself, and I heard something snap behind me, so quietly that I was almost certain the Diobhail hadn't heard it.

Muireadhach turned to look back at me from the ranks of his soldiers. I thought I saw a half-smile cross his disfigured mouth. He had felt the rise of power as well.

"Don't do anything stupid, boy."

I wasn't about to let him tell me what to do. "No, demon!" I didn't even realize that I was on my feet. "I'll do what I wish. You will not kill Morgan."

Now the days go by
They pass right through us
Our night lives make us so useless
Now don't take anything to heart
We don't care
We don't want to start

I felt magick pouring out of me as I raised my hand and launched a sphere of energy towards the clan leader, never—strangely enough, given the situation—having felt so exhilarated in my life. Suddenly everything was moving a little faster. Even with supernatural reflexes, Muireadhach barely managed to avoid my attack; off-balance and startled, he barked a harsh order to his soldiers. My heart was thumping, but suddenly I wasn't afraid anymore. The Diobhail were approaching me, slowly at first before it became a mad dash.

I raised my arms again and I saw the dozens upon dozens of foster parents I had had over the course of my life, the multitudes of step-brothers and step-sisters that I had never connected with, the father who had abandoned my mother when he found out she was pregnant, the mother who had put me up for adoption because she couldn't stand me ruining her lifestyle, the real brother that I never knew I had but treated me like he had known me his whole life, and the sister I had come to love in the short time I knew her. Out of all of that pain, that misery, those years of heartache and sorrow and longing to find a place that I actually fit in, I found the energy that I needed to save my life and Morgan's.

I launched dozens of those enigmatic bundles of energy towards the oncoming crowd of soldiers, but I felt despair beginning to rise within me. When one soldier fell, two took his place. I stared down at myself; I was physically radiating the energy that I felt bursting through me. I looked at Morgan, a dull roar in my ears, and dark energy smashed into the looming wave. This was magick they had never seen before, and I could feel Muireadhach's astonishment as he watched his army crumbling before his eyes. I was more powerful than he had thought.

One word, though, was all it took for me to suddenly slam back to reality.

"Mike?"

Morgan was awake. She was staring at me, her eyes wide with shock and an unreadable emotion. Was it anger? She seemed to be searching for words that wouldn't come to her.

Well, I'm leaving for a while
I'll head in some direction
I just don't know which one I should be taking
And I'm ready and waiting
For the happy ending

Morgan

I was furious. Imagine, if you will, the utter surprise of opening my eyes with my last memory being blacked out by a demonic nursemaid and seeing my younger brother Mike, quite literally radiating black energy, firing balls of energy at a group of Muireadhach's soldiers. Before I had time to even begin to comprehend what was happening in front of me, I couldn't see Muireadhach and the others as clearly. There was something between them and us, and I realized a moment later that Mike had pulled out his athame—our father's beautifully carved, radiant-in-the-light-of-the-energy athame—and put up a temporary rune shield, albeit I could tell it was stronger and more powerful than the ones we had been practicing so long ago. Strangely enough, the one thought that crossed my mind was, "Well, at least I taught him something."

I stared at him, and thought I'd open with an outraged, "What the hell are you doing here?"

He looked back at me in confusion, panting for breath with exertion; to allow such potent magicks to run through him must have been so draining. "I'm trying to save your life!"

"What the hell are you doing here?" I repeated, my mind stuck on the same track. My voice sounded high and desperate, and my heart was racing. Goddess, this couldn't be happening. "What are you doing here, Mike? It's too dangerous for you to be here! How did you even know where to find me?"

"Morgan, we'll explain later," he said quickly, and he ducked behind the gravestone; I could tell that he was trying to undue the binding spells that Muireadhach had placed on the chains tying me to my grandmother's grave. "We have to get you out of here now, and I can't say how long the shield will hold up."

I chanced a glance towards Muireadhach. He looked strangely disfigured through the translucent shield, even more so than usual. I could see his soldiers pounding on the edges, but they couldn't break through. Mike's magick was too powerful for them.

"Mike …" I tried to say, my throat constricting. "Mike, you have to get out of here."

"I'm not leaving you," he said firmly from behind me.

"I told you to get out of here!" I yelled, unleashing the desperation and fear building up in my chest. I needed to make him understand; why wasn't he listening to me? "This isn't your battle, Mike! This doesn't have anything to do with you! Would you stop trying to break the spells on the chains and listen to me?"

He held up the lock to the chains. "Too late."

I screamed with fury and stood up, my legs shaking as I shrugged the chains off me. They fell limply to the grassy ground with a clatter. Mike was staring at me.

"Morgan, please, we have to go –"

"No, you have to go," I cried. "I'm not going to let you stay here. It's too dangerous. This isn't your fight, Mike! It's mine!"

"If you think I'm just going to leave my sister here so that these demons can kill her –"

"You don't have a choice!" I yelled as tears began to leak out of my eyes. "Mike, I'm doing this for all of you! You and Killian and the rest of my friends! Why can't you just accept it? This is what has to happen! I'm going to be evil in the future! Muireadhach showed me what his soothsayers foresaw! I have to do this to protect all of you!"

"Why do you have a death wish, Morgan?" he demanded. "Why can't you come with us? We'll find another way! You won't give in to evil, Morgan, I know you well enough to say that! You could never hurt anyone like that!"

"You're wrong," I whispered. "I could be that person so easily. It's in me, Mike. It's in both of us, but I'm the one that it blossoms in. You can't help it, and you can't prevent it. This is what has to be done. Do you think I really want to die? Of course I don't! But I don't have a choice! It's me or all of you, and the decision is fairly obvious!"

I'm begging and pleading
For another beating

Mike looked about to say something, but I held up a hand and cut him off. "Mike …" I was suddenly finding it rather hard to not start crying. "Mike … I'd rather lose my magick and go insane or even …" I bit back a sob. "God, I'd even rather die than know that I had caused all of you so much pain. My friends, my soulmate … they're all going to die because of me." I felt sick. "I can't stand that. The thought of it makes me want to vomit." I took a deep breath and looked my brother in the eyes. "I can't let this happen to them, Mike. I can't let it happen to anyone."

"Morgan …" He looked sympathetic, and he took a step forward. "It's not going to happen. Okay? You have this warning." I must have looked confused; he elaborated. "The Diobhail gave you this warning, didn't they? You saw a possible future, not a definite one!" I was staring at him, and he continued, looking at me intensely. "Don't you think that knowing what might possibly be will affect what you do in the future?"

I couldn't seem to wrap my mind around that concept. "But our dad … he –"

"Morgan, don't make this about our dad," he said, for once sounding a little bit annoyed. "Yes, Ciaran is evil. You and I both know that. But, Morgan …" He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick with emotion. "We're his children. We're not his clones." He looked at me, watching the effect his words had on me. "We make our own choices."

I couldn't help but smile ruefully at that. "I know."

"So you see?" he said desperately. "You don't have to do this. I know you, Morgan. I know you. You love your friends more than anything. Do you honestly think that, knowing what you know now, you would choose to hurt them in the future? Because, Morgan, you're bigger than that! You don't have to stoop to the levels of people like our dad!"

In spite of everything … in spite of everything that I had seen through Muireadhach's eyes … the idea of becoming Ciaran MacEwan–embodying his principles and his convictions of evil–truly frightened me. My eyes shone with tears. "Mike …"

"You can be the most amazing witch in the world," he began, "but you have to –"

He stopped talking abruptly. I looked at him curiously, wanting to know what he had been about to say. When I lowered my gaze from his face, though, my breath caught in my throat. Blood was slowly dripping on the ground, but it didn't even connect in my mind that it was from the wound in Mike's chest. He looked just as confused as I was, and when he saw the athame blade—that familiar blade that was all he had left of our father's lineage—stuck clear through his skin, the tip trickling blood to the ground, his eyes widened a little.

I wasn't hearing anything. I was staring, transfixed, at the athame, at my brother, and at Muireadhach's figure behind him. The shield had been broken.

As he collapsed in front of me in what seemed like slow motion, my mind didn't make the jump between Mike, the knife, and Muireadhach for a long moment. However, the gap that seemed to be forming itself in my heart spoke for itself.

"Oh, Goddess …"

I'm ready and waiting
For the happy ending