5: Justin

No one knows what it's like

To be the bad man

To be the sad man

Behind blue eyes

No one knows what it's like

To be hated

To be fated

To telling only lies

But my dreams

They aren't as empty

As my conscience seems to be.

- The Who, "Behind Blue Eyes"

Justin Russo stood in the stairwell, panting and leaning against the wall. Below him, sprawled across the stairs, was the body of the blonde girl who had tried to fight him. She'd been reasonably strong, moderately skilled - but neither strong nor skilled enough to be a real threat.

She'd been threat enough, though. Alex had gotten away, and although he knew where she was going, he was injured now. Grimacing, Justin moved into corner, leaning back into it, doing his best to ignore his left leg. She tried to turn me into a fish. Succeeded partway as well.

Never mind that now, though. The girl had known him. He knew without a doubt that he'd never met her - yet she'd known him, had known Max, had known Alex as well. And that, plus the way that Alex had behaved during the Competition and after, confirmed what he'd suspected for years.

I'm someone else's alternate reality. It explains so many things. And now Alex - the Alex from that other reality - is trying to end this reality, to return things to what she knows.

He snarled and punched the wall then. Another Justin. Somewhere, in that other reality, there was another Justin - and for this reality to have been spawned by a spell, where he'd made Alex pregnant, that Justin had made another Alex - the Alex he had been fighting - pregnant.

And she loved him. He'd heard it in the tone of her voice, when he'd caught her momentarily at the Competition grounds. He saw it in how hard she was fighting him, fighting to get back her own reality. Damn her. Damn him.

I will not let them win. I didn't ask to be born - but I'll be damned if I'll let them kill me. Justin gritted his teeth again, this time in a vicious smile, as he gestured at the body of the girl on the stairs, levitating it up beside him. I'll have to work quickly. And then I'll need to erase my memory, so that Justin won't know what I've done. But I can do this.

He conjured a knife into his hand, then quickly cut Tutor's still-cooling body, began to draw the diagram on the floor with quick, practiced strokes. I need something beyond my own magic. Something that can cross dimensions, and won't end with my own physical destruction. And I know just the one.

But first - at any moment, his universe might end. Justin looked down at the fish tail that was his left leg, raised his wand and steeled himself. "Incendio," he whispered, and the light on his face was bright, casting the clenched muscles of his jaw into stark relief as he used the spell like a cutting torch, removing the leg. He'd chosen fire deliberately, to cauterize the cut as he made it, but even he was surprised that he managed the thing without fainting.

Now then... "Geilsjay timesday," he said, then grinned. Can't set down a foot I don't have, can I? Taking a breath, he continued working, more slowly now that he knew he wouldn't run out of time in the middle of things.

Ten minutes later, Justin looked up at the thing he'd conjured, standing inside the circle. It looked back down at him through beady eyes mounted in the head of a rooster, while its other head, a dog's head, looked about the room. It was the dog's head that spoke. "You have nothing to offer me. Why should I grant your desire?"

"I have given you blood and pain." Justin lifted his left arm, where he had cut into it. "You will have my soul, when the work is done. And all the pain and suffering I can inflict, I dedicate to you. Is this not enough?"

"You ask much, for such payment." The demon shook its rooster head as the dog head continued to speak. "I cannot give you what you desire."

"I could release you, into this world -"

It laughed, a sound like tearing metal that echoed up and down the stairwell, paining Justin's ears. "This world? This world is but a glimmering - barely more than a score of years old, and soon to no longer be. What would I, I who was old when the stars were made, want with it?"

Justin ground his teeth together. This wasn't working the way he'd hoped. And even though he could not set both feet down, he could not hold back the press of time indefinitely. "What can you give me?"

The demon told him, and he smiled as he nodded. "Yes," he said. "Give me that." And as his spell tore loose, and his reality shredded around him, Justin Russo laughed.

Now, I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.

- The Bhagavad-Gita

Author's Note: This is the end of Broken Things. More could have been done in this story, I know, but I didn't want to break my promise that nothing in it would be 'required reading' for following the main line of the AGP stories.

I hope you've enjoyed reading it.