Disclaimer: I don't own it. I just play with other people's toys, but this will be the last chapter, so no need to worry about that anymore... It's sad, so I'm just warning you. This is it, guys, so I hope you've enjoyed it! I love you all, an thank you for sticking with me through it! My first complete multi-chapter, can you believe it?!

Chapter 17: You'll Be In My Heart

Anastasia
oOo

Location: The Mansion, Crows Landing, FL
City Population: Unknown
Current time: 12:45 a.m.
Current date: September 3, 2013
Current alias: Someone brave

I couldn't bring myself to look him in the eyes as I wrapped a ripped-up cloth somebody had gotten from somewhere around my hands, just as I'd been taught. He'd done this to me. He'd ruined the life I could have had, but never had the chance to live out. I could blame it on anybody I wanted to (my parents, Dylan, my parents, my parents…), but nobody else seemed just right to play the role of the evil witch kidnapping the beautiful long-haired damsel in distress. But anybody who knows anything knows that I am no Rapunzel.

"'Fraid much, Rhodes?" Diablo snapped my wandering thoughts back to the moment, though I doubted I would have been capable of allowing them to stray too far.

I only glanced up briefly to see him flexing a hand, but I was back to winding the torn cotton around, around, around. Loop the wrist, then the thumb, around the hand and tie off. So many times I had boxed without gloves against live opponents and dummies that it was programmed into my hands to make a wrist-wrap, even after all these years.

"'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,'" I said as I turned to face him.

Standing there like a king, hands held up and ready, one foot and front of the other and looking for all the world like God had granted him with the gift of the win, as if he was sure this match would be over in less than an average round time, tops.

And here I was, hair tied back, measly gloves rested upon my knuckles by my own hands. My tank top was ripped and snotted upon by Clara's fingernails and runny nose, a pair of black sweats trying hard to stand out against the pitch of the night.

The King and I. Starcrossed boxing match, as it were.

"Franklin Roosevelt, Rhodes?" he shot at me, regarding my quote. "When did you stoop so low?"

I gave him a smirk that must have barely passed for a lip-twitch as far as smirks go. "Since I stopped obeying you, it should seem."

He flashed me a trademark grin, and suddenly I found my arm blocking his fist. Just a hair's width closer and both of us would have hit me in the face. He took my arm in his free hand, bending it as far backwards as I could imagine was humanly possible. Before it get to the hurting-like-hell part of that move, I was flipped around and crouched, weight on now both of my free arms and helicoptering (as I liked to call it) around so that my leg took him down right behind the knees.

I was standing again as fast as I could, but he was quicker, grabbing me by the leg and pulling me down right on top of him. I came down hard, knocking as much air out of him as I could and sparing myown. My fist raised and colliding with his lower jaw in a painful crack that seemed to have echoed across the city below us.

I rolled, pushing myself to stand while he ground his jaw once and got to his feet as well. Seeing no opportunity, I waited for him to make a move. Even some of the greats can make a mistake.

I pushed hair from my face, breathing hard from my previous impact. I took another boxing stance, my eyes drifting for a split second to the device laying on the ground not but a few meters away. No chance to get to it-not while I'm occupied with a death fight, trying at the same time to stay between the crew on my side and Diablo. Who knew what he do do to them to torture my brain before he killed me. I was protecting them while I could, because I knew there was no way I was about to win this fight. 'What man defy the devil? Consider, he's an enemy to mankind.' Thank you, Shakespeare.

My discretion must have faded at some point during my periods of no practice, however, because Diablo noticed. "Oh, Rhodes," he sighed. "You know you can't possibly protect them forever."

"Maybe not forever. But from you? I'll die trying," I hissed.

He laughed heartily as I struck out with enough momentum, in my mind, to take down the Empire State Building, but he ducked just in time to avoid it. I was flying forward, and he pulled the same flip-over-the-back stunt I had taught the Horsemen. Not only was that part of the irony, that I had fallen for my on trick, but the fact that I had been faked out by the man who taught me the trick would have been enough to send my cheeks burning, had this been a lesson.

I was on the ground, my head cracking on the concrete, and I was lucky it only sent stars firing off in front of my eyes. I couldn't see for a moment, and I was reminded of Clara. But only for a moment.

Diablo was standing over me when the bright faded into dark and that faded back into shapes and my eyes adjusted to the small-town-Florida night light.

He brought a foot up, clad in mud-caked hiking boots (I wondered how he could still be pulling off moves like that in shoes as heavy as these) to place it on my stomach. I could feel the cold seeping through my tank to my stomach.

My breathing was ragged, heaving in my lungs, trying to get enough oxygen to my brain and my heart and everywhere else. His foot adjusted so that it was right on my lungs, pressing down, down, down harder by the second.

"You know… something… Diablo?"

He looked down at me with a malicious smile and eyes black as the night. The only expression I could get from that was glee. "What, my dear?"

I twisted my leg so that the inside was facing up, trying to take the strain off of it from where his other booted foot was pressing against it hard enough to leave a mark.

I was almost too busy trying breath shallowly and spare what air I could get to feel a hand, not Dianlo's, not Henely's or Daniel's or. Black's or Dylan's but Jack Wilder's on my leg, holding it still while the bottom of my boot was slipped from my foot. I nearly groaned, annoyed and pissed off and scared and mentally screaming 'you idiot! Do not try to make this your fight, because you will not win!'

Henley had told me the story (when I had the memory span of a goldfish) that I had once told her about these boots. She brought them down from my room one day when Jack was quizzing me for the ten-billionth time and told me how I had told her I had had them since I left the Caste-they were the one of the things I had custom-made for me and only me on my sixteenth birthday, the day before I left. The whole sole slipped out, and if one knew how to open it, because it was not obvious and not easy unless you had the code, then you could open the piece like a book and keep whatever you wanted in the little compartment.

In my case? A knife. A nice foldable one that I had never used, not even once. I always thought I would save it for things that didn't involve killing or humans or anything, just normal things that normal people do with knives. But I guess fate picks it favorites. That must have been how Jack remembered it, and my little foot trick was enough to trigger an idea.

Idiot. This story doesn't have a Prince Charming. The book is about to finished, and no more plot twists are necessary. I don't want and I don't need a knight in shining armour. I don't want a happy ending-they just mean that the camera has stopped rolling too early.

"You should know…" I wheezed, trying to concentrate enough to form a coherent sentence. "That if you were twice as smart, you'd still be stupid."

"That is the worst insult you have ever come up with in your entire life. Haven't I taught you anything?"

I couldn't think straight now, and my vision was once again becoming yellow and streaked-I knew that feeling well enough to realize that I wasn't about to be standing up anytime soon, especially if this was to keep going on. I would pass out, and then he wouldn't take his foot away and my unconscious body wouldn't know how to react and I would suffocate. And the deal would be done, and Diablo would have my journal that only Jack knew about. On accident.

There was a scream, and I'm fairly certain it was Diablo and not anybody else, but I couldn't be sure. His foot was off me and I heard him swiping around at people and everybody was yelling.

And then I could see.

Henley was rushing towards the button, Daniel was telling her to be careful. Jack was fighting Diablo with a my knife, and he was winning. I could see blood slowly seeping through a Diablo's shirt from a cut I figured was going to need stitches at some point. Merritt and Dylan were running towards me and Conlin and Helen were getting Clara to the safety of the car, probably per Dylan's request that they stay out of it. Definitely a good idea, considering the things I knew this man could do.

I struggled to sit, Dylan on one side to check for injuries and Merritt leaning over me, waving in my face and holding up fingers and probably saying something, considering his lips were moving. It was like an odd sense of déjà vu. probably because this was what I seemed to remember as a similar scene from not too long ago.

I felt weak and helpless and selfish, because this was my fight, my deal. Nobody else should be taking it on for me.

"Stop…" I stammered. "...Stop Jack. My fight. I got to stop… him…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, little darlin'! You just fought the bravest and most death-defying fight I've ever seen, and I've spent three years staying out of sight of the FBI-one before the scandals, on during and one after. That's a lot of time to see fights, but never one this bad."

"Merritt, check if she's injured her head."

"She's not responding to me. She's trying to get up."

I could see again now, hear everything they were saying, even if it echoed in my ears and rang and bounced in my head. I grunted as I tried to stand, using every ounce of strength I had left to untie the tight bowtie from my sweatpants, pulling the string so hard from the loops that it was sure to leave a rope burn around my hips.

The two were trying to pull me back down, but I wasn't about to have it. I shoved them out of the way, wrapping the ends of the string around my still cloth-covered and bloodied hands. I stalked forwards, thinking of nothing but killing that man, the Devil. I didn't hear them shouting at me, or Daniel screaming that he had gotten off the bomb, or Henely saying that she was working to disable the switch.

I was right behind him, and he hadn't even noticed yet, but Jack had. Not in time enough, however, for I had thrown my arms in front of him and was pulling the string back against his throat… tighter, tighter, tighter. He put his hand to the string, pinching at it in failed attempts to yank it away from his throat, get some air, stop it from digging into his skin, drawing blood.

I thought that maybe I should feel the slightest bit guilty. I vowed to myself that day I left that I would never harm another should, not even if I thought they deserved it. I never thought I would need to.

But now I have people. I care about them, they care about me. I have people now; people to protect, to help, people to die for. And I guess that now that worse has come to worse, they're people to kill for.

"How's it feel, Diablo?" he gurgled out a sorry excuse for an answer. "Can't talk, can you? Well, luckily I think I can do the talking for both of us. How's that sound? Good? Good."

I loosened the string only the tightest bit. I could feel a drop of something fall onto my arm, and another drop, and another, and I figured it was probably blood.

"You've been lonely all your life," I whispered in his ear. This was personal, between me and him. Like it should have been from the beginning. "Even your own son loathes you. You've pretended not to mind, but that kind of pain and that kind of facade is the type that's only strong enough until you can't keep it up anymore, and then it breaks. It's the type that makes you cry when you think nobody's looking, pray to God at night that somebody out there is going to love you. You would take anybody and believe anybody if they told you that. That's your weakness. You know, my parents left me a note. 'Everybody's got a secret, Anastasia. We love you.' That's all it said. Sometimes, I wonder what your secret is. But I guess we'll never know."

Diablo's breathing now mimicked my own, and the blood from his mouth had now soaked my wrist-wraps from earlier and was trickling down my arm. He would drop soon. But I could feel the pounding in my head, something wet, very similar to what was on my arm, soaking my hair, the dizzyness and the light feeling, like a helium balloon, just under my skull, filling any thoughts I might have been able to get out.

He spat something out, using up most of his air, I guessed. His fingers had fallen to his sides by now and could no longer try to save his exposed neck from suffocating.

"You want to know my secret?" I asked him, so quietly I was wondering whether I had even said it. His tiny little movement in his head was my only affirmative. "My secret… I fell for Jack Wilder."

But then there was something at my side. Something cold and metal and with a barrel. A gun. Inching down as the man holding it fell, but he was more than capable of even after he had died, I reckoned. The grip on my strong loosened, and he managed to squeeze out another sentence.

"No. You just fell."

I heard the pop, loud and clear, before I felt the pain, but it was unbearable once it reached my semi-shocked system. I heard screams, and crying, and phones being pulled out and dialing three digits and talking urgently into them. But I could only focus on the pain and Diablo's limp and absolutely dead body falling on top of me.

Heavy.

There were arms pulling me out from under him and his bloody neck, taking the string away from me, pressing on the wound and trying to top the bleeding, cradling my head. Doe eyes, brown and soft and worried and pure and innocent greeted my own.

"Jack..." I managed out.

"Shhh," he whispered lightly. I could feel other people around us, but I didn't pay attention to them now. Just Jack. "Don't try and talk."

I coughed, and it was blood that made its way up and past my lips. "It hurts, Jack."

I'm dying.

"I know," I heard him say, but it was becoming more distant, hard to concentrate on. I couldn't think. The dark was closing in, and I'm dying, but I'm not scared. "But you have to hang on. Help is coming. You have to stay awake."

I smiled weekly and closed my eyes so I could no longer see him. The tears,not my own, that I felt drip onto my cheeks... That was worse, I think. Becuase it just showed how much he cared. For me. After what little I had done for him. I told him so. That last part, anyways. After a pause, I added softl, "If I had any reason to stay, y'all were the ones who gave it to me."

"Don't give me cheesy lines, Anatasia. Not now."

I shook my head. "Help won't get here in time." I could almost not talk, the pain became so bad.

"It will. I promise it will," he said. I could hear him crying, too.

"Don't make a promise you can't keep."

He chuckled, then I felt him lay a wet face by my shoulder, on my hair. He sniffled, tring to hide it. "Please stay." He begged.

I turned my head to face him slightly. Only slightly, just so that I could reach his ear with my bloodied lips that had begun to gurgle up more of the red iron liquid. "We won. Don't cry." I stopped for a minute, just thinking, it came to me then. "There's a song, you know, that I just remembered."

"There's lots of songs."

I breathed out a hoarse, croaking sound that was made to resemble a laugh as I began to hum - unable to sing now - the words flipping around and upside down in my head, though I knew Jack would know it even without the words.

"'Oh, stop your crying, it will be alright.

Just take my hand, hold it tight,

I will protect you from all around

I will be here, don't you cry...'"

I couldn't go on any more, could keep humming, much less talking. I finally opened my eyes and he tilted his head just so that he was facing me, raising it up the tiniest bit. Then and there, Jack Wilder kissed me, soft and sweet, everything sad and unbearable pain and loss. I kissed back.

It was me who had to pull away, me who had to suck in a staggered breath, one that only just began to fill my lungs. I looked up into the night, space, high above me. I wouldn't go up there after it was all over, I was sure, but I could hope. I could always hope. I'd be back with all those other people soon, though; even the ones I never thought I would miss or be glad to see again I was sure would bring a smile to my lips.

The stars. That's all I wanted to look at before the total darkness surrounded me completely.

With the last of my energy, I blinked slowly - I felt tears begin to trickle, my own this time - and I said softly, but just enough so that Jack could still hear it: "The last thing I want to see is the sky."

And when I opened my eyes again, it was.

FIN