Author's Note: Finally got my crap together enough to get this update out! This is the last full chapter of this fic, but there's still an epilogue to come... and possibly a sequel, if anyone wants to read it. We'll see how things shake out, hmm? A huge thank-you to all my reviewers, I was so happy to see the interest that this story generated, and I'm so sorry this update took so long!
Feather Lies: Aw, that's too sweet! I'm really not, though, I'm actually super sarcastic and kind of egotistical sometimes. Glad to see I wasn't the only person in the world who wanted a CM/CF crossover, though!
Cherrie-san: Okay, seriously, I owe you so many heaps of thank-yous. You left so many lovely reviews, it was wonderful reading them all! I remember you asked about the possibility of a sequel to Blood Destiny - I'm not really happy with that story anymore, it was one of my first efforts and even just the year and a half that I've been writing fanfiction has really improved my technique, so there probably won't be a direct sequel. HOWEVER, I am actually planning a rewrite of that fic that will continue well into the events of WTNF - I've got quite a lot of backstory written up, but I'm having trouble finding the USB stick I stored it on so it's on hold for now. I'll get there eventually, though. Thank you again for all the glowing complements!
Hobgoblin123: Oh stop it, darling, you're embarrassing me! *blushes like crazy* Sadly, I didn't quite manage to work in a reveal of Gerald's TRUE true identity - it just didn't want to be in here. However, I could most definitely be sweet-talked into putting that in the sequel. If, say, perhaps, there was a continuation of that gorgeous 'verse you started with 'The Sleeping Beauty' and 'The Garden of Earthly Delights'...? And yeah, I just couldn't resist twisting the knife a little bit. Poor Gerald indeed. He gets his compensation, though. *snicker*
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Damien and his team had never saddled their horses so fast as they did that day. The call had come from the apartment a few blocks from the Fae Shoppe where Ciani had once lived, where Damien had stayed with her for a time: it was vacant now, though Ciani still held the deed. She usually rented it out while she was away in the rakhlands, but at the moment there was no tenant, the last one having moved out and no replacement taking their place.
They raced through the streets of Jaggonath, the thunder of their horses' feet a warning to the pedestrians in their path to move aside; people sprang up onto sidewalks and out of the way as they passed, watching in surprise as the team of profilers thundered past. Damien was nominally in the lead, but Gerald was almost dead even with him, bent low over his horse's neck with grey eyes gleaming and face a mask of determination. The rest of the team followed close behind, urging their horses faster in a bid to reach the apartment before their suspect could escape.
When they reached the familiar brown-sided building, Damien barely waited for Jahan to clatter to a halt before he swung down out of the saddle, drawing his gun as he moved toward the apartment house.
"Boss, wait up!"
Emily staggered a little as she leaped down from her own horse, hurrying forward. "Boss, we need to be careful going in - we have no idea what's waiting for us in there. This is almost certainly a trap."
"The hell with being careful; people are dying, Prentiss, and I'm going to put a stop to this!" Damien snarled. Emily flinched back a little, and the rest of the team cringed; it was only Gerald who dared reach out, gripping Damien's wrist so tightly that it sent a shock of pain up his arm. Tension spiking, Damien whipped around to face the adept - and found himself snared by bright, piercing grey eyes that were narrowed in unmistakeable warning. The look was like a dousing of ice-cold water, but Damien still bit his tongue almost to bleeding before he said tightly, "Alright. Reid, Hotch, Rossi, you take the back: Morgan and Prentiss, you're with us. Everyone go slow and keep your eyes open and your weapon out."
The team looked shocked, but obeyed nonetheless; as Damien led the way toward the front, he cursed himself silently. Yes, he was worried - the fact that his psychotic former girlfriend was hunting both himself and Gerald was eating at him mind like a faeborn parasite, but rushing blindly into things wasn't going to get them anywhere. He was sure, though, that he wouldn't be hearing the end of that little incident any time soon. Way to advertise who the real alpha dog in their relationship was, Gerald.
After a brief word of warning to the alarmed building manager, Damien led his half of the team up the stairs. The sight that met their eyes when he kicked down the door to Ciani's apartment, though, had even Derek bent double and gagging with revulsion.
There were no actual bodies; not this time. The entire inside of the room, though, was painted with blood. Literally - every square inch of wall had been covered with a warped, crimson sigil of some kind. Damien recognized symbols of summoning and binding, a history of recent Ernan demon-worship scrawled out in human lives across the painted plaster. The air was thick and cloying with the coppery-rot smell of warm blood, and the sigils glistened, still slick and wet where the light caught them. Damien gestured for his team to fan out, but a moment later, it was confirmed; the gruesome redecorating had taken place a very short time ago, but Elana was gone.
The rest of the team came in, exclaiming in disgust, and they regrouped in the main room. Damien slotted his gun back into its holster, swearing in frustration. "Damn it! We were so close - and who the hell knows where she'll strike next?"
"I'm going to take a quick look around this floor, see if there's anything in the currents." Gerald said quietly, the lines of his mouth tight and his eyes narrowed and dark. Damien nodded silently, chest feeling entirely too heavy as he looked around at the carnage that filled the room and shook his head, feeling ill.
"What the hell happened to her?" he whispered, more to himself than for anyone else's hearing. Rossi sighed.
"Seems like every other story we've heard, boss. Kid gets hurt, hurt turns into anger, kid grows up, and pretty soon you've got a broken person with no limitations and all the reason in the world to lash out. This isn't your fault, though - from the sounds of things, it was only a matter of time until Elana snapped. You happened to be the stressor in this case, but something else would have done it eventually."
Feeling defeated, Damien sent Emily and Rossi to talk to the manager while he and the others studied the sigils scrawled across the walls, hoping against hope for some kind of clue. Damien lost track of time while he fought to decipher the messy lines, but there was a growing knot of dread in his gut that he couldn't quite ignore, although he didn't know the cause. When Emily and Rossi returned some time later, though, it hit him, and he straightened abruptly, heart pounding against his ribs.
"Guys, did you see Gerald on your way up?"
"No." Emily said, blinking in surprise. "Isn't he back yet? How long does it take to check the currents?"
"Fuck." Damien's blood ran cold, and he felt as though his stomach had just dropped out. Before he even knew it, he was moving, shoving Emily aside as he bolted out into the hallway - instinct led him to the left, and he nearly stopped breathing when he came around the corner of the hallway.
There, on the dusty carpet near the back stairwell, was Gerald's familiar intricately-etched pistol, lying abandoned on the ground. Damien picked it up with hands that shook so badly it looked like he was having a seizure: swallowing painfully around the aching constriction in his throat, the profiler managed to choke out a single pained sentence.
"Elana's got Gerald."
~CF~CM~CF~CM~CF~
The next twenty minutes were some of the worst in Damien's life. They couldn't trace Gerald through the fae, with the currents unWorkable to anyone who wasn't an adept; even Karril, who had responded with unaccustomed swiftness to Damien's frantic call, couldn't find a clearly defined fae-trail from Elana - only the quickly dissipating traces of utter chaos that she had wreaked on the currents in her wake. Damien was beside himself, pacing frantically and ceaselessly as his team tried futilely to develop their profile enough to predict where Elana would have taken Gerald.
"Not the hotel. Elana hates Tarrant, but D is her real target - he doesn't have enough of a personal connection to that place." Derek insisted. "It'll be some place very symbolic, but private enough for her to take her time."
"But where? She's already struck at most of the places where Damien's spent time in Jaggonath." Rossi argued. "She obviously has a flair for the dramatic, but she's already struck at the Cathedral - why? Why didn't she save that for last? What could be a more symbolic place for the last step of her plan?"
Damien froze mid-stride, the connection flaring in his mind. "I've got it!" he shouted, mind racing to turn the idea over and over in his head, each second's examination only reinforcing his sudden conviction. Hotch looked up, dark eyes penetrating.
"Where?"
"Senzei's house. He and Ciani were the two I left Jaggonath with, and he was the first person to die during our journey - he was killed by one of Calesta's ploys in the rakhlands." Damien explained, the words spilling out of him with feverish urgency. "The first person we lost, and Gerald's the only left now besides me and Ciani, Elana's already hit Ciani's and I'm her endgame - she's got to be heading to Senzei's!"
As the team sprang into action again, the thought of losing Gerald was like a knife in Damien's heart, and the former priest could only pray that they were not too late.
They reached Senzei's house in record time. Damien knew even as the house came into view that his hunch was right - there was an unfamiliar buckskin horse tied haphazardly out front, munching on the hedge and eyeing them with the wary consternation of an animal whose owner is not entirely sane. The team dismounted and entered on foot, Damien, Hotch, Derek and Emily creeping in through the half-open side door with all the stealth they could muster while Reid and Rossi slipped around the back.
As he set foot in the carpeted hall, Damien could hear a woman's coming from the living room. Elana's voice had grown shriller over the years, and there was a hysterical edge to it now, but Damien recognized it all too easily.
"You see? They aren't coming to save you. They won't be allowed to. You have to die, Gerald Tarrant - and Fate has chosen me to make sure that it happens."
Damien gestured to his agents to fan out and try to get a good shot: he himself crept up to the living room door and braced himself against the wall in the shadows of the door, before trying to catch a glimpse of the room through a conveniently placed glass sidelight.
The wash of relief that hit him at seeing Gerald alive and apparently unharmed nearly brought Damien to his knees. The adept was tied to a chair in the middle of the room, watching Elana with a look of pure disdain: Elana was pacing in front of him, disheveled and wild-eyed as she ranted. The years had not been kind to Elana - her once-willowy figure was now rake-thin and skeletal, her golden hair hung lank and matted over her shoulders, and her sunken eyes burned with the fire of the religious fervent and the utterly mad. Gerald seemed unimpressed by her righteous ire; when he spoke, his voice dripped with scorn.
"I believe you've made the common mistake, Mes Rawlston, of assuming that I require rescuing. I have never yet failed to extricate myself from whatever unfortunate situation I find myself in."
Liar, Damien thought, a smile twitching at his lips despite the gravity of the situation even as he scanned the room for other potential threats. Resolving to remind the former Hunter of a certain incident involving living crystal and approaching sunrises, Damien silently cocked his weapon and waited for an opportunity.
Elana sneered at Gerald. "You don't frighten me. I know the truth - you lost yours powers when the Hunter died. You're no more powerful now than those helpless girls you brought back for your monstrous master."
The knife-edged smirk that spread across Gerald's face then sent shivers down Damien's spine. "Is that what you believe?" he murmured, his glittering gaze fixed unwaveringly on his captor. "How extraordinary. If you are really not afraid, Mes Rawlston, look into my eyes and tell me again that I am powerless."
Damien held his breath: the memory of a bone-chilling sight witnessed in the rakhlands flashed through his mind, and he wondered. Just how much of Gerald's power had been tied to his nature as the Hunter, and how much was simply the feats an adept could learn to accomplish with ten centuries of time to experiment and learn?
Scoffing, Elana met his ice-cold, burning eyes - and screamed.
With no warning but that piercing, blood-curdling screech, Elana staggered back, clutching at her head, face contorting in pain - then her eyes rolled up back into her skull, and she dropped like a marionette with severed strings, her tangled blonde hair spilling out across the floor as she crumpled to the ground.
"Vulking hells!" Damien bit out, stunned, reverting to autopilot as he rapped out quick orders. "Prentiss, notify the office we've got her - everyone else, spread out and check the perimeter, make sure she was alone."
As his agents hustled to obey, Damien allowed himself a breath of relief. He clicked the safety back onto his gun and eased his white-knuckle grip on the weapon before moving out of the shadows where he had been concealed, approaching Gerald. The adept had leaned back against the chair he was bound to, grey eyes fixed on Elana's limp form with a look of mingled hatred and regret. Sighing, Damien raked his hand through his hair and stepped forward, throat tight and heart beating against his ribs as he said quietly, "You can still do that?"
Gerald shifted slightly: there was the bright flash of metal, and Damien caught sight of a familiar knife in the adept's hand before Gerald shrugged out of the suddenly slack ropes, rising smoothly to his feet and brushing at his sleeves. "It's something of a natural talent." he responded just as quietly, grey eyes inscrutable as he looked down at Elana's crumpled body. "I may have lost some of my former powers, but my adeptitude is fully intact. She's only unconscious: when she wakes up, there shouldn't be any lasting effects. It was only a mild push."
The clench in Damien's chest relaxed a little, and he breathed a bit easier, holstering his gun with a slow nod. "Good." He followed Gerald's gaze to Elana's body, and felt his own mouth twist. "She may be unbalanced, but... Elana used to be a sweet girl. I remember a time when she wouldn't have hurt a fly."
Gerald's expression seemed to close off even more, and Damien realized with a pang that he must have touched a nerve unintentionally. Before he could even think of apologizing, though, the rest of the team was filtering out of the shadows with congratulations on their lips.
Damien allowed himself to be distracted, for the moment, but he couldn't quite shake the feeling that he was in trouble.
~CF~CM~CF~CM~CF~
From there, it was a whirlwind. They brought Elana in for booking, and the unconscious woman was handed over to an FBI medic to make sure that she would awaken in a reasonably similar state to the one she was in when she was knocked out. Then the media descended, vultures to the last, and it was only by dint of the sheer bond he still felt with the adept that Damien noticed Gerald slipping out a side door while the reporters fawned over Damien's team.
Making up a quick excuse about filing the report, Damien shook off the reporters himself and followed Gerald outside. He found the adept leaning against an ornamental statue of a rearing horse in the elegant garden that wrapped about the back and both sides of the FBI headquarters, arms wrapped tightly around his lean torso and inscrutable gaze fixed on something in the distance.
"Gerald?" he called softly, wary of startling the adept. With a barely-audible sigh, Gerald looked up at him, expression tired but guarded.
"Yes?"
"What's wrong?" Damien asked quietly. When Gerald frowned, he held up his hand quickly. "Look, whatever I said, I'm sorry. I know I should probably already know, but... I almost lost you again, today. I really, really don't want to argue tonight, so please just tell me what's wrong so that I can fix it."
Gerald's glare eased a little, and he replied, "Nothing that hasn't been wrong for a very long time, Damien."
A chill settled over the former Knight, and Damien moved closer, frowning himself now. "What are you talking about?"
Gerald looked away, every line in his body drawn tight as violin strings, his expression cold and brittle as he said, "Deranged she may have been, Damien, but Mes Rawlston did have a point. I have done terrible things, committed unspeakable crimes... and whatever your current employment, Damien Vryce, I know you too well to believe that you ever stopped being a man of faith. How this possibly work?"
Damien was completely sure that he wasn't meant to hear the waver of poorly-concealed vulnerability in the adept's last sentence: still, the words hit him like a punch to the solar plexus. Apparently, Gerald hadn't made peace with himself quite so thoroughly as either of them thought. "Gerald, that doesn't matter." he breathed, reaching out instinctively before stopping himself and letting his hand fall, knowing the gesture would not be well received at that moment. Gerald's head snapped up, a terrible, bitter smile twisting his lips.
"Really?" Gerald said quietly, that horribly familiar tone of icy mockery in his voice as he looked up at the other agent: Damien quailed a little, cringing at the look in Gerald's eyes. He hadn't seen the adept look so much like the Hunter since they had reunited at the BAU. Gerald turned to face him fully, eyes narrowing as he hissed, "You can honestly stand there and say that it doesn't matter that I abducted, tortured, and almost killed your former lover? That she went insane and killed a half-dozen people because of me, but it doesn't change anything between us?"
"Yes!" Damien broke in firmly, cutting the adept off as he stepped forward, reaching out and grasping Gerald's slim shoulder tightly this time. "Gerald, please, listen to me. I haven't forgotten what you are, what you used to be. You're forgetting that I've already seen you at your worst: if that didn't stop me from caring about you, nothing will." He watched Gerald's eyes widen slightly in surprise and continued in a softer voice. "Have you forgotten about Ciani? The rahklands? The Terata? Hell? I'm under no illusions here, Gerald: I've already accepted that those things are part of what you used to be, and you're not like that anymore." He lifted his hand from the adept's shoulder to his cheek, staring into those enchanting grey eyes as he finally said the words he'd been fighting for so long. "I love you, Gerald. I don't even know how or when it happened, but I've made my peace with it, and I'm not going to give up on you now. I dare Elana or anyone else to try and make me."
Gerald's eyes brightened instantly, a mixture of wonder and disbelief and something far warmer filling his gaze as his mask of cold disdain crumbled away. "Damien..." he breathed, clearly stunned. "I..."
For once utterly lost for words, Gerald leaned in and kissed him. Damien's heart clenched: he could feel everything the adept couldn't make himself say, the loneliness and the longing and the tentative, cautiously blooming tenderness and care. Damien settled gentle hands on Gerald's waist and kissed back just as warmly, waiting until Gerald pulled back to breathe before meeting the adept's suspiciously bright and wetly glittering eyes before he said softly, "I know, Gerald."
Gerald smiled shakily and pressed himself silently back into the other man's arms. For a long time, they both just stood there, holding each tight beneath the glittering stars. Only then did Damien allow himself a long, slow sigh of relief.
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There we go. Just an epilogue left, now - one which is going to be a lot different than my original plans, I might add, thanks to certain RL events that have taken place since I started this fic. Let's see if you guys can guess where this is headed now!
*headdesk* Yeah, because it's totally not obvious that they're going to end up in bed. Really. It's a total secret. No one on the team even suspects, so shhh...