Part IV: Streamline

Chapter: The things that I know

He didn't know, how it had happened.

Somehow, without his knowledge, without his lead, the room was full of people. They were taking photographs, the flash lights of their cameras unbearably bright in the dark, they were making notes, and talking, their voices like buzzing of flies in his ears - as meaningless, as incomprehensible.

How could they talk like that? How could they walk? How could these people go on breathing? Did they not know that the world was no more? That it had all ended, everything, his life - no, all life on Earth, had surely stopped with Margot's heart.

The only thing he knew, was that he had always been here.

He had sat on this floor his whole life, his clothes soaked with her blood, his heart turned to lead, it's beats heavy and slow and painful. There was nothing else than this. His body had turned to stone, and if he'd even try to move, to get up, to open his mouth - it would turn to dust.

That's what he knew.

It took some time before he realized someone was trying to speak to him.

He blinked a few times, looked up.

It took all he had, to turn his gaze away from Margot. A familiar figure hovered over him, the blue skin, the black, vast eyes of the merman.

"John, are you alright?" Abe hesitated. "Physically?"

Alright? What did that even mean?

But somehow, seeing the worry in Abe's face made Myers snap back to reality. He managed to nod.

"Yes. I mean… this is not my blood."

But it was. It was his blood, like it had been poured out of his heart, and his life with it. He felt like lier to try and tell otherwise.

"Let's go home, John. There is nothing we can do here anymore."

"Home?"

"Yes, home. Come on, I'll help you up."

"No…" he turned his eyes back to Margot. Her lifeless form, her beautiful eyes that stared at the roof, her hair, soaked with blood, her face, oh that face he had held in his hands so many times, had kissed those lips and felt their smile on his own. He felt like choking, like words were pieces of burning coal that got stuck in his throat.

"I cannot." he breathed. "I can't leave her."

"John, don't." Abe knelt by his side, forced him to look at him. "These are your men, they know what they are doing. You're place isn't here now, it's home, with Sean and Amy."

Sean and Amy.

What am I going to say to them?

A pain unlike anything he had felt, cut right through his heart when he remembered the faces of his children.

How can I ever face them? I've let them down like never before.

"Where's Red?" That was Kat's voice. She was sitting on the floor too, not far from Myers, and she had been silently crying all this time.

"Searching the place." Abe replied. "If the thing that did this, is still here, Red will find him."

"He shouldn't be out there alone!" Kat protested.

"He is not alone." Abe's voice was calm. "There are agents with him, good agents. Let them do their job, and come with us, Kat. I need you to take John home."

There was a moment of silence, Myers heard how Kat sobbed, tried to stop crying. His own eyes were dry. The tears that had poured to his face when he had found Margot, had inexplicably stopped flowing. Crying felt like an understatement, like this was a normal kind of grief. Yet every inch of his soul knew that it wasn't.

It was the end of the world, and you don't just cry when you're dying.

They had barely materialized in Myers' living room, as a young, hysterically sobbing woman threw herself at Myers, and wrapped her arms around his neck, her dark hazelnut curls swinging around her slender shoulders.

"Dad!" Amy cried, her voice thick with tears.

"Amy?" Myers was clearly shocked. "How do you know?"

A silent voice of a young man answered from the corner: "We felt it when it happened."

It was Sean. He looked pale, his red curly hair a mess, a scared look of a child in his green eyes.

Of course they had felt it.

Kat shook her head slowly to clear her mind. If any one of them had been in their right mind, they would've realized the twins would feel Margot's death.

Margot's death.

Those words struck Kat so hard, that she just could not face them, not now, not in front of everyone. She made the decision to push them away, to push away the grief into the farthest corner of her mind, where it would wait until she was back in Red's arms.

She glanced at Myers - it was obvious he had made a similar kind of a decision. Holding his daughter in his arms, he looked like he was the strong figure Amy needed to keep her from falling apart, but Kat knew better.

She had seen Myers on his knees in Margot's blood, and…. and she wasn't going to think about that right now.

Luckily Abe's voice interrupted her troubled thoughts, and she quickly pulled herself together.

"John, tell me, how can I help?" Abe inquired.

Myers, still holding Amy in his arms, looked up to his friends.

"I need you to stay here with Sean and Amy."

"Dad…?" Amy sobbed. "What do you mean? You cannot go, not now-"

"I must." Myers' tone was calm, his eyes dark. "I'm sorry Amy, for everything. But the job-"

"Screw the job!" Sean spat out. "It's always the job, always! None of this would've happened if you'd taken the night off!"

Sean's emotional outburst left them all shocked (especially since none of them had ever heard him speak like that), and Kat could practically see how Myers crumbled to pieces in front of his son.

"You don't get to talk your dad like that!" Kat stated. "Like Margot would've agreed to skip a mission!"

"No, Kat, please." Myers breathed, his face pale and haunted. "He is right, and I will pay for that for the rest of my days. But now, Abe, will you stay with the kids? Kat, we need to move."

"Of course." Abe nodded. "Anything."

"Where to?" asked Kat?

"To see your brothers." Myers said.

In a heartbeat Kat and Myers materialized just a few blocks away, in the kitchen of a beautiful green house down the road. A loud crash followed their appearance, as a large soup bowl slipped of Amanda's fingers.

"Twenty years living with us, and you still haven't gotten used to teleportation during the dinner?" Jay laughed.

Amanda was just about to snap back, but happened to glance towards Kat and Myers, and the words left her.

It was Andu, who spoke first, standing up.

"What happened?"

"Margot's dead." Kat felt her voice breaking.

Amanda gasped, and fell to a chair, all color fleeing her face.

"How did it happen?" Andu asked, his hand founding Amanda's shoulder.

It was eerie to hear Myers' voice as he went through the events of this night. He spoke monotonically, keeping his eyes on the floor, as if talking about something that had not happened to him. Seeing him like this felt wrong, Kat thought, it felt worse than seeing him crying and holding the gun on his head. It made her feel helpless, and for the first time ever, she didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to fix things.

When Myers had finished, a silence fell into the room.

"Who did it?" Jay asked after a few heartbeats.

"We don't know yet." Myers met Jay's yellow eyes. "We'll know more when we get the security tapes."

Jay gave a sharp nod. His face was so uncharacteristically serious, that there would've been no telling the brothers apart.

Amanda got up, and managed to walk to Myers, her legs trembling. She gave her brother an embrace, not caring about his blood soaked clothes, wrapped her arms around him - and again Myers wore the face of someone Kat didn't know. Of a person who was strong and steady and cool, and keeping Amanda from falling apart.

"Can I come with you?" Amanda asked after a while, wiping off her tears. "I want to see Sean and Amy, they must be…"

Myers nodded. "Sure. I'd appreciate that."

"We should get going." Kat noted. "I'm worried about Red. Besides… you need a shower."

It was as if Myers hadn't realized that before, but now he took a look at the mirror on the wall. His face was pale, his eyes dark and his cheeks stained with blood. His hair was full of it too, lumps of dried blood making it sticky and unruly. Kat met his eyes through the mirror, and for a shortest of moments, she saw the pain in them, until he masked it again, and turned his eyes away.

"Jay, Andu, can I ask you a favor?" Myers turned to look at the twins.

"No need to ask." Andu replied. "We're on it."

"We'll find the one responsible." Added Jay. "And we'll bring him to you."

With a loud 'bamf' they disappeared into a cloud of blue smoke.

For a moment Kat felt proud to be able to call them her brothers.

Myers sat on his bed - no, their bed - and stared at the wall.

It was late already, 2 am, but there was no way he could sleep.

Amanda had stayed over, and was sleeping on the living room couch as Sean and Amy slept on the floor, holding each other in their sleep. That was how they had always been, since they were babies. They could not be apart, as if somehow they shared a consciousness. Even now, they were a unit, keeping each other together, sharing the pain and the grief in their own, private world.

Margot had been part of that world, but as much as Myers loved his children, he had always been an outsider in their secret universe. He was a muggle, a mundane, in the world of paranormal and magic, and in his own family. No matter what he did, he could never ease the pain of his children the way they eased it for each other.

Kat had left to be with Red, and Abe had followed her (he needed to get into his tank). Myers could tell, that they had all been relieved to leave, that they didn't know what to say to him or what to do, and that they were scared of this house and it's grief.

He knew they had loved Margot too, but it was different.

He was alone. More so, than he had ever been in his life.

The coffee mug was still on the night stand.

Margot's dress, the one she had chosen for their anniversary dinner, was laid out on a chair. It was green and girly, and he loved that dress, he loved how Margot carried it and how it made her look like a fairy.

Margot's scent was in the room, in the sheets of the bed, in the air that he breathed, her familiar scent of roses and cinnamon, that he had never asked where it came from. If it was a perfume, or if it was her natural odor, or magic. He would never know now.

Margot's shoes on the floor, her hairbrush on the dressing table, her unfinished book (something called 'Lady Midnight') on the nightstand, her pajamas in the bed.

All he could see was her lifeless face, and the bite marks in her neck.

He had went to see the body to BPRD, alone. Kat and Abe had offered to come with him, but he had told them not to.

Margot had laid on the autopsy table, naked under a sheet. They had revealed her face to him, her neck and her shoulders. Someone had closed her eyes, which was a relief, but otherwise she had looked just like she had on the floor of the mall. Small, helpless and young.

"It was a vampire, no doubt." The doctor had said, pointing the bite marks on her neck.

Myers had noticed them already, of course. The ugly, red holes on her beautiful, porcelain skin, right under the line of her jaw, on the place where he had loved to kiss her.

"Can you tell if she's been turned?" He had forced the words out of her mouth.

The doctor had shaken his head. "Not for sure. There are no traces of vampire blood in her mouth, but as you know, it only takes a few drops. So no, we cannot be certain, Sir."

"Right." Myers had laid his hand on Margot's shoulder. It was so cold, stiff. She was dead, and for a few moments he had let that knowledge to sink in.

"What do we do, Sir?" the doctor had inquired after a short while. "Do we wait, or…?"

"Cremate her." Myers had pulled the sheet back on Margot's face.

"Right away?"

"The sooner the better." He had turned to walk to the door, not once looking back as he left.