Percutio is Latin for, "to strike hard, pierce, transfix or shock".

Chapter Six: Percutio

"So that is all. After all of this, you will end it just like that."

"We both knew that we were not a good match," he reasons, not at all kindly. "We were never supposed to feel anything for each other."

"But we do."

"You do."

"And you do not?"

"You make me feel uncomfortable," is his cool reply.

"Uncomfortable," she repeats softly, her disbelief evident.

"You come into my life with your candor and unwanted feelings and you now have begun to project your own feelings of infatuation for my own," he stops to shake his head for emphasis. "What you think we had was something your own imagination developed. Not something that is real."

"Just tell me the real reason you are doing this," she challenges, not angrily, like he had counted on, but sadly. Her reluctant acceptance for what he has obviously decided, but that does not mean that she concedes readily. "Tell me that I scare you and that you are too afraid to stay and fight for us. Do not try to tell me that I have imagined your feelings for me because we both know that is untrue."

"Have I ever confessed to having any of these feelings?"

"You did not have to."

"I have already stated that you making me uncomfortable. You are doing it very marvelously now."

Those violent eyes that never hide anything did not fail to tell him all that she feels at that moment. So he can see the hurt, the disappointment and the underlying understanding that shines from their depths. An understanding that scares him. He sees a person that cares for him despite having no reason to. A person who had more to lose than gain by loving him and loved him regardless. Her. This ray of light in his world of dark and he knows that he would do anything to make sure that light would never succumb to the darkness that shrouded everything that he touched. Even if that meant breaking both their hearts in the process. Even when it made him the coward. Even when it made him the villain.

"You will not fight for us," she says, seeing the resolve on his features. She stared at him beseechingly, but finds his mask fall firmly in place. "Will you fight for anything?"

"I am fighting all the time."

"The wrong battles," she says with a shake of her head. "You know you are the villain and you support for what you should not."
"That is a matter of opinion."

"That was your opinion before."

"You say this because it is not for you that I fight for. Something you so desperately want but know that I will not."

"Not just for us," she says, stepping closer to him and it takes all that he is not to flinch. "But for yourself. You fight for a side you do not believe in just so you can avoid conflict. You do not really fight for anything at all."

"I do believe in it."

"You lie."

"It is just you blinding yourself from the truth of what I am again. You are romanticizing me into a hero which is not logical and grossly inaccurate."

"I wish I could be as unfeeling as you try to pretend you are," she remarks with that same grieving sadness. There is that rare genuineness of feeling that is still so foreign for him to witness so openly on her face. "I wish I could turn off my emotions and hide. But unlike you, I do not have the skill to suppress how deeply I feel."

"Like me?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes, like you," she repeats with another sad smile. "I hope that one day you will be able to be free. Free from all that you have to hide from. To be who you really are."

Her statement so stuns him that he does not know how to respond. He cannot even think of a lie because all she has said is the truth. He just cannot explain how she knows so much. How could she know him so well when he tried to hard for her not to? Before he can even try, she places a hand on his cheek and places a soft kiss upon his lips. A soft touch that says good bye and he feels it pierce him.

"Hopefully that day will not be when the world has fallen apart."

The soft melody of her tone and the taste of her lips are like a torment when he opens his eyes from this dream. Her sweet voice echoes in his head like a steady conscience that heightens his guilt. He hates these quiet moments of weakness. The ones that make him remember when he does so much to forget that last encounter with her. Knowing that those would be the last words he would ever exchange with her. The one who had loved him. An impossibility that he had never even dared to wish for. Would he have been her last thought in those final moments before her city was lost? Had his callous words to put her off made her last moments those of bitter disappointment? Were her last thoughts the knowledge that a part of him would die along with her?

Throwing off his comforter, he steps off his bed and moves to stand in front of his many windows to stare out into the cityscape. His city at night, always beautiful in his eyes, though marred by the presence of the Dome. The city and people that would soon be looking to him as sole leader if the murders continued. Another situation that weighed heavily on his mind. New conspiracy theories centered around him being the mastermind behind this strategic method of gaining complete power of the government. He does not completely consider that a bad thing and as long as no one tried to challenge his authority, he would let them continue to think that he was.

Will you fight for anything?

He shudders at the voice in his head. Hearing those words, in that mourning tone of hers from that last encounter make him back away from the window and move towards the fireplace. The deep rich tones of the flames remind him of her vibrant spirit. Bright, brilliant and beautiful as it consumed the darkness. He reminds himself that he had done what he had to in order to keep it alive. No matter that it had died anyway. The regret of that once dazzling light could cave him within himself if he let it.

"What would you say to me now, Stella?" he asks aloud, turning to eye the Dome from across his bedroom. "When I am more the villain now."

He lets out a long sigh and knows no more sleep will be had this night. Angrily, he makes his way to the closet and dresses quickly. There is nothing else for it. Methodically, he climbs his way to the top of the highest tower of the castle and steadily goes on his way. Teleporting from rooftop to rooftop across the city he alternates in his exercise to keep his mind from straying from anything but his next move. With each teleport, he practices rolling and running, leaping and lunging to push his body until he can push all those thoughts of her away again. He does not stop when he begins to feel tired. He only pushes himself harder until all he can feel is the burn and it blocks everything else out. Muscles straining and legs pumping, he has built up a good sweat before he finally comes to a rest in a residential street. Quick steady pants form a white cloud in front of him while he catches his breath. Hands on hips, he looks up to watch the stars glimmer through the night sky with the beacon of light shining down from the heavens and his mind is finally at ease.

"Do you come here often?" he asks before turning to look at the dark man already lounging a few feet away.

"When I have to," is the amused reply, but his gaze remains fixed upon the sky.

His own eyes make a quick glance at the mansion across from them before he settles down not far from his would be companion.

"Do the stars look different from where you are from?"

"Yes," is the somewhat quick reply. "When the gates appeared, our stars disappeared."

"A blank night sky?" he asks, remembering the vision of that first dream.

"They were replaced."

"Replaced?"

"The stars we saw at night each represented the life of a Contractor. It made the effort of keeping track of us easier by the government and anyone who employed us." He watches the other man let out a long breath while he continued to look up. "I used to gaze up at them, even knowing that they were fake, foolishly hoping that one day I might see them again." The mask turns to look at him a moment before turning back to the stars. "Your stars are the ones I have missed for a very long time."

"Yet another thing that is different from your world. Our stars did not change."

"A welcome change."

"In an otherwise unwelcome place."

"I've never actually been welcome anywhere," is the steady reply. "People don't take kindly to murderers, no matter what wold you find yourself."

"And that is what you are. A murderer?"

"Yes."

"I would say that it all depends," he points out after a moment.

"On what?"

"Did you take pleasure in the killing?"

"Does that really matter? I was not given much of a choice in most cases, but in others, I did revel in it."

"Condemnation will always be there, but maybe, some day, someone will understand why it had to happen."

He feels a shift in the air at the same time the man beside him stiffens in alarm.

"It's happening," the Black Reaper states just before jumping to his feet and leaping off the edge of the building without waiting for a response. He watches him thrown a wire from his belt and swing down to the street.

They both reach the bottom at the same time and race toward the safe house that had been hiding one of the last councilmen inside. Which, he has a quick moment to realize, was a laughable effort all around. Their enemy obviously knew their secrets and their attempts to keep them a failure.

"Reinforced door and bullet proof glass. The house is heavily protected. How did they get in?"

"Contractors are capable of anything."

An explosion rocks the building, causing the windows to blast outward towards them. He quickly pulls up his shield just in time to block the aforementioned armored door from smashing into them.

"He must have been in the panic room," he explains quickly, making a run towards the blaze but is halted by a hand gripping his arm tightly. He is about to jerk out of its grasp and demand an explanation when a secondary explosion bursts through the house. His eyes flash from red to blue for a moment in confusion that the other man had anticipated this.

"Two blasts to make sure," is the strange explanation before he is let go and they both race into the burning house.

The parts not destroyed by the blasts and being devoured in flames is flooding by the automatic sprinkler system set up within the structure of the house. The water pelts down on them in steamy gushes while the flames retreat under the pressure of it.

"Where is the panic room?"

"Bottom level. Basement," he shouts over the noise, while they maneuver around chunks of ceiling and move towards the back of the house.

The basement entrance is located by the kitchen, not far from a group of large already shattered windows and it is once they reach is that he feels that strange, inexplicable shift in the atmosphere again. Then the sudden drop in temperature, but before he can begin to fully process what this could mean, a hand grabs him gruffly by the collar and is propelled outside one of the empty window frames to land unceremoniously on the grassy backyard. He looks back towards the house in time to see the flames completely dissolve into ice.

"What... the...?" he begins to ask when he notices the figure beside him is frozen in a posture of stunned shock. He looks to where the mask is faced and then he too can only stare in stunned surprise at what he sees. Something he should not be seeing. For standing there, is a ghost from the dead and beside her stands a pale haired female with no expression on her petite face.

Body still locked in shock, he can only move his lips to form one word.

"Stella?"