A/N: Hey guys! Sorry to keep you waiting so long! Especially with that mean cliffhanger. I've got a lot to do at the moment with my studies, on top of the writing difficulty, but I'll try to do better. Thanks again for reading, I know I'm not exactly on the fluff road lately, so I really appreciate all of you who allow me to just take these characters wherever they might go. Now enough out of me, let's get to it.

Cordelia felt empty again. And stupid. A blind, unobservant naïve excuse for a woman. She felt like she had taken so many shocks over the past few months that nothing should surprise her anymore. Yet this did. Even though she knew on some level that there was a deeper and graver reason for Misty's silence than the fear of losing control, she never pieced it like this. It shocked, it surprised but above everything else, it hurt. So much that every other emotion faded in comparison.

She couldn't breathe. On the surface she was deadly calm, but on the inside she was crumbling, screaming and falling apart all over again. Once again she prayed for the black hole, but maybe Misty had it right; she had grown stronger. The prize of her new strength was that there was nowhere left to hide from her pain.

Misty sat in front of her, wet tracks on both her cheeks and the deepest regret in her eyes. Cordelia could glimpse her in the periphery of her vision, while her gaze focused on the wall a few inches beside Misty. She sat silently, awaiting her sentence. This was what Cordelia loved most about her. She never presumed, even if she did know, she always allowed Cordelia to speak her mind.

"And you remember everything", Cordelia said with a voice foreign even to herself. It trembled less than she would have thought. Her entire exterior felt frozen. "You didn't black out, which means…"

"That she didn't compel me. She only forced me to choose."

"And you couldn't bring her back again, because you… Because she made you… cut…" Cordelia couldn't finish the sentence. She suddenly remembered what Hank had said to her. It looks like she's been stabbed. He had it right. And then she had gone to Misty and Misty had told her she didn't deserve to know what she knew. God she wished she had taken the advice and never demanded to know. She looked out the window as Misty answered:

"And even if I hadn't, she's compelled not to use my ability. Can't heal no one so long as she's in my head."

Cordelia let out an exasperated breath. She didn't know how else to respond. Now there certainly was no more room for surprise or to in any way process that Misty couldn't even protect them the way she used to. It didn't matter. Her abilities were never her true value. It was her mind, her person, the purity of her heart. And that purity was tainted now. Her mind captured by someone else. Her person not her own.

"You killed my mother", Cordelia said, as if she hadn't heard anything Misty had said since that first sentence. She still couldn't wrap her head around it.

"Yes. To protect Cage. You know it was to protect him."

She knew that. Of course. The hate Misty felt towards Fiona had never been strong enough for such an act. But Cordelia still couldn't look at her. She couldn't believe it. It made sense in its own twisted way, but she didn't want to believe it.

"I have… I need some fresh air." She got up from the bed and went for the door.

"Cordelia please", Misty begged with a broken voice. But Cordelia didn't stop. The room had started to crowd with shadows and she needed to get away. Needed to clear her head. She left the room and fled down the hall. Behind her, she heard Misty sobbing.

She found Zoe and told her to watch Cage, before she left the house. The poor girl was in the middle of her own crisis and Cordelia felt horrible for leaning on her now, but Zoe assured her she didn't mind. She liked the distraction. And thankfully she didn't ask any questions, only looked at Cordelia with shocked eyes. Her face must have said everything. Cordelia was grateful for the girl; Spalding was much too erratic after learning Fiona's death, which made Zoe one of the two people Cordelia had left to trust her son with. Today she had only her.

With nowhere to go, Cordelia wandered about the city. This was never a habit of hers, especially not without the company of Cage in his stroller and she felt awkward. Had she inherited her departed mother's weakness for alcohol she would have visited a bar. Alas she had not, but she was tempted even so.

It was in times like these she remembered how friendless she truly was. The few she might have had had scattered over the course of her breakdown or moved away since for other reasons. Misty was her confidante, her everything, now lost, and while her mother had very slowly become something of trustworthy figure, Cordelia could not talk to the dead. Neither could she burden Zoe, the poor girl, because she had enough worries on her own. And her counting ended there.

All the while the shadows followed her, the whispers taunted her and a pulse of agony resided in her chest. None of these forces ever took over; they only kept her sharper now, more apt to notice the chaos in her soul, as the outside world faded away.

She went past the bar Misty used to work at. It only passed her in the periphery, on the other side of the street, but it drew her attention and the sight of it earned her another stab of pain. She rushed past it, fighting to keep level with the flow of emotions and the inner berating she received for acting as childish as she did. She should be home with her son. He would soothe her, he always did. But she couldn't face Misty, not now.

Instead she went into the next bar she happened upon and made herself sit down in there. The entire world around her had turned into a queer kind of haze full of shadows and distorted sounds. She couldn't make sense of any of it. Colors had gone out, mixed together into a smear that could barely be put to words. She felt as though she was wandering through a dream, a lucid dream yet still out of control. She vaguely heard someone ask her if she needed anything, but she couldn't locate the voice. She wasn't even sure it was a real voice, though it crawled into her ear instead of spawning inside her head.

She must have sat there for hours before sounds started to appear normal again and the strange shadows crept back into the corners enough for her to make out the shape of the bartender hovering above her. Upon first glance he appeared to be floating, but now she could see his feet securely fastened on the floor.

"Ma'am? Can you hear me?"

"I-I'm sorry, did you say something?" Cordelia thought her own voice sounded strange and foreign as well. She tried to focus on his face.

"I asked if you were okay. You've been sittin' here for an hour, starin' into space. Can I call someone for you?"

"Oh…" Cordelia said, still fighting to put sounds and light together in a picture that made sense. She asked the man to repeat his words and then slowly spelled out a number for him to call. He left her and came back with a glass of water, which he placed in front of her. Cordelia thought the colors looked odd. Sort of floating out of the glass instead of keeping inside it. The bartender left her again.

Cordelia sat in her slowly lifting haze, trying to make sense of sounds, when a hand touched her shoulder and a familiar scent reached her senses.

"Cordelia? Are you okay?"

She looked up to find Hank looking at her with deep-rooted concern. His worry went beyond that of the bartender, she could hear, and she figured it must be because he knew just what forces she was likely battling now, as opposed to the friendly stranger. Which was why his was the name and number that appeared to her in her need.

"I don't think so", she said. When she came in here, she remembered being full of despair and hurt, blinded by it really, but now she couldn't tell what she was feeling. She was trying to escape, she thought, but the shadows weren't quite thick enough and Hank's entering brought some of reality back. With it, the hurt.

"I got this", she heard Hank tell the bartender. Then he leaned into her again. "I have a rented car outside, let me take you home."

"I can't go home." The admission was said as much to herself as it was to Hank.

"Why? What happened?"

Cordelia shook her head. "Not here."

"Okay", Hank said, but motioned to get her to stand up anyway. "Then come to my place."

Cordelia looked at him for a moment. She was clearer now and an alarm bell was ringing at a distance. "This is not an invitation for you to-"

"I know", he said quickly. "I know."

"Good." She got to her feet then and allowed him to steer her outside into the car. The world around her still felt odd and slightly out of beat, and she was grateful for his arm of support.

The car ride back to his hotel room was a blur. The only thing to enter her mind was the notion that she kept putting more distance between herself and home. And the more distance the harder to get back. She would have to return tonight, for Cage and Misty both, for Zoe even, but it felt impossible at this moment. This moment, this state of mind she had been in ever since leaving. It felt like one single, never-ending second, one thought she couldn't finish and so she was stuck in its middle. It was a moment of impossibility. It was different this time, she was clearer despite knowing that she had left the borders of reality for a while back at the bar.

Hank steered her through the lobby and to the elevator and by the time she reached his door, colors and sounds appeared normal again.

It felt wrong being back in Hank's hotel room. There were too many wounds carved into the tapestry of the walls here, too many whispers calling her a fool for expecting comfort in such a place. Did she deserve that after what she had committed here?

Do any of you really deserve to be saved?

That made her stop. The whispers had never talked so directly about Misty before. It made her think thoughts she'd rather not touch.

"Now will you please tell me what has happened?"

Cordelia walked a little around in the room, seated herself on the chair, where she had sat once or twice before and tried to wrap her brain around the whole story. That was when the air started to clump in her throat and the tears finally pressed on. She wanted to tell the story from the beginning, but instead the cry of a little child came out: "Misty killed my mother."

Then her voice broke and the tears spilled free. The rest came out in pieces. Hank stepped close and embraced her the best he could in her sitting position. It was awkward, but she welcomed his warmth even so.

When her breathing finally calmed, she sniffled once and pushed him out at arm's length. "You were right it seems. About Fiona being… About what you saw."

Hank crouched down in front of her, rested a hand on her knee. He shook his head in disbelief. "Jesus, Cordelia. I wish I wasn't."

"So you see why I can't go home? I don't know how to go on from this." The tears pressed on again, but she did nothing to stop them. It all felt so useless now. Hank looked up at her and something changed in his face. He got up and drew the other chair close.

"Don't say that. I know you two, as much as I wish I didn't sometimes. You can get through anything, and you won't feel better alone."

Cordelia sat quiet and stunned for a minute. She wanted to ask him why he was defending her all of a sudden – and Misty of all people – but a much darker notion overshadowed her question.

"I don't know if simple love is enough to get through this." It weighed down on her heart to say it. She used to doubt Misty loved her enough and while she could never again question Misty's devotion to her, the new doubt wore some of the same colors.

But Hank wouldn't have it. "There is nothing simple about your love", he said with incredulity. "Come on, Cordelia. You've been in love with her your entire life. Even when we were together and you hadn't seen her in ten years, you still missed her like I used to miss my booze. And I tell you, if that wasn't what brought her back from the dead… How will this get any better without her?"

There it was again, Cordelia thought. The knowledge that she couldn't possibly get by on her own. She needed Misty and in this moment she hated that she did. But reluctance or even hate didn't change the fact at hand.

"I'm not saying that what she did was right", Hank said, his tone suggesting that his speech was at an end. "I'm saying I don't think she saw a way around it, that could protect you and Cage."

"I know. I…" There was still so much of it she didn't understand. This power Laveau had over Misty for one, how it had taken all the ferocity out of the girl Cordelia used to know. If they would face the same kind of emotional cleft, if Cordelia hadn't cheated first. But none of these questions were something she meant to burden Hank with. It would not be fair. "I know", she ended up repeating. She looked up at him, into his worried face. "Thank you for taking care of me. I don't know what came over me tonight. I'm glad I can still count on you despite everything that has happened these past months."

"Yeah… I should probably have stayed out of it, but when a guy calls me up like that- was it a black hole?"

Cordelia shook her head. "No, it was something else. Something vaguer I suppose. But thank you again."

Hank nodded, then sat quietly for a moment. Cordelia thought about what he had just told her. And how she owed it to him to at least make an effort, even if she didn't know how to be in the same room with Misty tonight.

When she motioned to leave, Hank's head snapped up. He looked thoughtful and Cordelia haltered, offering him room to speak.

"Can I ask you something?" He said. His voice had changed completely. The security that was in him just moments before, when he urged to go get home and fix her life, had vanished completely.

"Of course."

"Was it ever real between us?"

Cordelia hadn't expected this. His gaze sought hers, sought beyond her, begging in a way. Cordelia found it odd that he could change so abruptly. How able he was in speaking his insecurities. It was something he had struggled with when they met, although perhaps not as much as she. Cordelia suddenly found herself remembering the day he came to visit her here in New Orleans, after her first mental breakdown when her auntie Myrtle had died. He had nothing with him, nothing but a few dollars and the clothes he had on, because he had left as soon as Fiona had called him, not bothering to even pack. Cordelia had wanted him there, because he was her tether to reality then, the love she had chosen.

Cordelia nodded and smiled at the older, much wiser version of Hank in front of her. "Yes, it was. I promise you it was."

He sighed – with relief she thought – and sat up. Then he threw her a wry smile.

"It's going to take a lot to stop fighting for you."

Cordelia couldn't help smiling, but it quickly turned sad. She wished he would. Only then would she stop causing him pain.

"I'm sorry it happened like this", she told him. She reached out and gave his hand a brief squeeze. "I have never wanted to hurt you. I should have handled everything differently."

Hank gave a squeeze back and shrugged, in the way he used to.

"You're human. Shit happens."

"You are different." He looked up to meet her gaze and they sat like that for a while. Hank shrugged again, giving her the right of it. Then he got up and gestured towards the door.

He drove her home in silence and only offered a reassuring smile, before Cordelia got out and made her way up the isle alone. The sense of calm that Hank had managed to create for her rapidly dissipated into the cool night air. She dreaded the other side of that door in a way she never had before. She felt as though the shadows were reattaching themselves to her heart and the inside of her skull. They snapped at her feet again. She stopped for a minute, just inches from the door and waited for the shadows to take her, but they never fully consumed her. They only clouded her brain, trapped her in this wicked feeling of loss. Just what the loss was she didn't know yet, but she felt it all the same.

Then she opened the door.

She hadn't heard any steps approaching, so Misty must have sat there on the floor of the hall even before Hank pulled up. Maybe she had been sitting there ever since Cordelia left. It would be just like her to do so. Misty looked straight at her and their eyes locked instantly. Cordelia felt all the air leave her lungs and she diverted her gaze.

"Cage?" Cordelia asked, turning around as she removed her coat. She suddenly found herself fighting for control over her own voice again. Just seeing Misty's face, red swollen eyes and curved mouth, brought the hurt back with such force it made her head spin.

"Asleep. He was askin' for you." Her voice was rough and raw from crying.

"I'm sorry I left like that. I couldn't…"

"It's okay. You needed space." Misty got up from the floor. Cordelia could hear the floor boards whine just a little under her light steps, as she moved closer. Cordelia stayed by the coats, studied the black fabric without really seeing it, while the sound of Misty consumed her ears. She didn't say a word, but her presence wasn't hard to read. She stood still beside Cordelia, awaiting her verdict again. Cordelia struggled for words.

"I know you didn't murder my mother in cold blood. I understand why you did it, even if the entire circumstances is still a mystery to me."

Misty sighed, tugged gently at Cordelia's shirt, but Cordelia didn't move.

"Can you still love me?" Misty asked her instead. It felt like the air turned to razors, cutting the inside of her throat the way a cold winter wind back in Boston used to. Only there was no chill in here. Tears pressed on, wetted her eyes, itched in her palate.

"Of course I still love you."

"But you can't look at me."

She wanted to break. She wanted to, but she knew that the time for breaking down was past her. Wishing for another kind of hurt wouldn't save her from this one. All she needed in this moment was to look at her son's sleeping face and find a scrap of peace there.

"I'm sorry", she said and went for the stairs.

O0O

Hank had waited to start the car until Cordelia had stepped inside. Then he had gone driving towards home, but he never pulled up at the hotel. Instead he drove around town, wasting gas money, thinking about the past few hours. He had surprised himself, being so calm about Cordelia and her new crisis. He could even swallow the fact that it was Misty who had Fiona's blood on her hands. In truth she was about the only one who could have done it. Even Laveau never touched his mother-in-law herself. Hank always knew Misty had that kind of violence in her, even if she never used it.

He was calm because he had to play his part. He found himself in a debt now that he could never be free of. Misty might have steered the blade and Marie Laveau might have directed her hand, but he… He was the first piece. Hank had given her the plan, the map to the scene of the crime. He had been lying to Cordelia about his knowledge and his part ever since the beginning of it. And that would be the last piece to send Cordelia tumbling into a black hole.

The thing was, when he was alone the guilt rarely popped through the paper filter, but whenever he looked into Cordelia's face, it would strike him like a sledgehammer. Hank had learned the worst way that the yearning for a family with Cordelia wasn't the only thing to slip through the filter. The raging guilt of what he had done to her blazed through like nothing else.

No, he thought. She would have found Misty without my help. But no matter how much he kept telling himself this, the guilt still rode him like a demon on his back.

And it drove him back to the front step of Marie Laveau's house. He didn't have anything new to add, nothing but his own pain to offer for an argument, but if he didn't do something to stop the war he wasn't worth the breaths Misty had given him back.

He went to the door while desperately trying to form a plan. He could feel the unease prickling under his skin already at the thought of facing her again. This was nothing compared to facing Fiona back in his married days. And even Fiona had a weak spot. This terrifying women had to have one too.

Once she opened the door and stared into Hank's face with cold eyes, he wasn't quite so sure.

"Oh. It's you again."

"Yeah it's me again. I want you to stop. You have gotten your revenge, now leave my family alone!" His sudden agitation surprised even himself and he kept going before he lost courage. "It was Fiona you wanted and you got her. Now leave Cordelia and Misty alone, they've suffered enough!"

Laveau looked at him for a moment or two, perhaps waiting to see if there was more air in the balloon. Then she asked: "You done?"

"If you do as I ask I am."

Laveau sighed, stepped back and slammed the door in his face.

It took Hank a few moments to absorb it, and he still stood there debating if this really was all the heroism he had in him, when a blood-curdling scream ripped through the halls behind the closed door. It sounded like a man's voice, but so shrill with fear that he couldn't tell for sure. The sound of running steps thundered through on the inside followed and then there was a wheezing kind of cry. It must be just on the other side of the door.

Hank debated leaving, thought he probably should have, but a newfound heroism urged him forward. He gave hell in Laveau's terror and pushed through the door.

He had expected chaos on the inside, but the hallway was deserted. Muffled groans came from a room down to the right and he thought he heard that peculiar wheezing as well. Carefully, he treaded down the hall. A small part of him wanted Laveau to have been the one screaming, but he didn't really believe it. There was mumbling down the hall now and just seconds before he came into view Hank realized it was Laveau's voice, singing.

Then he stood in the doorway of the small room with all the peculiar noise. At the far end corner, a young man sat, pushing himself up against the wall and clutching a bloodied piece of cloth to his left shoulder. His face was wet with tears and his eyes full of fear. He didn't look at Hank, but at something happening to the left of him. Hank turned his head to Laveau crouching down in front of something that Hank at first couldn't make out the shape of. It was too grotesque to be what he thought it was.

But as it turned its head Hank recognized the features of a young, malformed child.

The rumors from his countless trips to bars all agreed on one thing: Marie Laveau's child had died. Some said it had filled her heart with lust for blood, some said it had just made her mad. None of them said that child was still alive.

Hank wasn't fooled though. He had intimate knowledge of the spectrum between life and death and this kid was more like him than a normal living child. He would have known if Misty had brought him back, so that left only one.

Marie Laveau herself didn't notice him enter, but seemed to be in the process of calming the child. It had blood smeared all over it's face and it didn't take Hank long to connect it to the bleeding man in the corner. Laveau had a hand on her undead son's shoulder and when she touched him his eyes fluttered with sedation. It made Hank think of Misty, despite the fact that they were opposites in every other aspects than their unearthly powers.

"Marie." It was the man in the corner who spoke and Laveau's eyes darted up from the child to him and then in the direction he nodded. Her eyes narrowed on Hank.

"You ain't got no regard for your own safety, do you?" Hank had lost his words and instead continued to stare from the Voodoo Queen to the ravenous remains of her son and back. Laveau's annoyance grew. "Why don't you leave this alone, while you still can? I thought you wanted that homewrecker witch outta the picture?"

He opened his mouth to talk, but nothing came out. What he wanted was for Misty to ease back into the role of a childhood friend, Cordelia's best friend, and let him have his wife. But he had long since realized no such role had ever truly existed. And this was too high a price. If Fiona's murder wasn't proof enough that he had made allegiance with the wrong witch, this definitely was.

"Your kid…"

"Don't you talk about my kid, Foxx!" She rose to her feet and as soon as her hand left the little boy, the sedated look vanished from his eyes and he hissed at Hank. "Don't you even look at him! I know what you're thinkin'!"

Hank tried to snap out of it, but the child had turned and started to limp towards him on his horribly stunted arms and legs, hissing all the while hissing. Hank couldn't take his eyes of it.

"If you think your miserable existence can change anythin' now, you're dumber than you look", Laveau snarled at him.

The kid snapped his remaining teeth at him and Hank uttered a "fuck", of shocked surprise.

"Now for the last time GET OUT!" Just as Laveau screamed the words, the child lunged at him with a speed he hadn't thought possible, screaming as he jumped.

The impact of the kid blew the air from Hank's lungs and he felt teeth dig into the side of his stomach. He yelled out in pain and terror and stumbled backwards while trying to push him off, but Damian Laveau was latched onto him like a rabid koala bear. His remaining arm and leg had strength enough for double the limbs and his teeth alone felt enough to hold him up. Hank smacked into the back wall beside the doorframe and the hit sent jabs of pain through his body. He looked down to find blood pulsating from the hole the undead child had gnawed in his side. He barely sensed the rest of the crowd, had only thought to fight off this one enemy. Somehow he had expected not to feel pain in his new state, but it turned out to be yet another myth of his second life. He had only enough distance to fight off the panic long enough to shove the kid from his body and bolt out the door before he got caught again.

He ran out into the hall and towards the front door. The wheezing screams followed him, along with the uneven rhythm of child stumps galloping over the floor. He felt a claw at his heel and while this wasn't enough to hurt, it brought another wave of terror. Hank yelled, ran into the door and fumbled for the handle.

"Damian!" Laveau's voice cut through and the kid halted. Hank didn't wait to see what it planned to do next, but swung the door open and ran towards his car. The last he heard from the house was Laveau yelling. "Don't come near me again or you know where I let him loose next!"

He threw himself into the front seat of his car and was on his way before his mind could take in the full experience. Black spots had started to appear in his field of vision and his stomach cramped. He wondered briefly what kind of cruel irony it would be to die behind wheel a second time and then hit the speeder, heading for the nearest hospital.

He burst into the emergency room just moments before the black spots overtook his view and he collapsed.

O0O

Marie tended to Chinwee the best she could. Then went back to Damian to calm him down again. She had locked him back in the room, because whenever she left him, the rage would return to his little body. He was only ever calm with her; everyone else was a threat to him. The slightest show of fear would tip him off but Marie had no fear for her child. Only heartbreak. And she had the abilities that kept him calm. Chinwee had none of this.

She went back and forth between her two boys all evening, caring for them as well as she could. Sometimes she took a small break in between rooms to feel for the witch. She had difficulty reaching her now. It wasn't the distance, it was the witch' stubborn mind always fighting her off. No one had ever resisted like this before. She would need the last of the dust in her jar to pull Misty under again, if she needed her. And she might.

Chinwee was asleep now and Marie went back to Damian's room. She had put toys in here, but none of his old things interested him anymore. Yet there was still a boy in him, he still wanted to play. He had been playing with Chinwee when Hank Foxx showed up, but as soon as Marie left the room, the calm went out of Damian like air from a punched stomach and the playfulness went with it. The laughing chase became a screeching attack.

She could never leave him alone. But she wasn't his playmate either. She was his mama. He needed more people in his little life, someone who wasn't afraid of the mystery of him, someone used to the extraterrestrial.

Someone like Cage Goode.

That little boy had been around the unearthly his whole life. He had not been afraid of her either, not if his mama hadn't looked so scared. He would not set Damian off the way normal mortals did. Marie remembered the way the boy fought to get to his mama the day in the shack. He must have felt the vibes, known that his mother could be dangerous to him. Children understood these things better than adults. Yet he did not hesitate to run to her. If she could teach him to love her son, have them form a friendship, maybe there was hope that Damian would grow to be human again. If he would ever grow. Marie didn't know. But Chinwee had told her of the way Zoe Benson taught her beau to be human again. The same could be done for Damian. She only needed the boy. He would be the perfect teacher.

Marie shook her head and tried to push the thought away. She didn't want to go near that family again. Not ever. The witch herself was poison to her son, Fiona's daughter a constant reminder of years of misery and now this aching hole of dissatisfaction. The ex-husband was a downright pain. She had scared Misty from coming near this area again and that was the most important. Marie still had power enough to keep her away. She needed them out of her life.

But as she listened to the shallow breaths of hurt and unease coming from her son's room she realized that what she needed was an actual life. Not this in between she was living. It occurred to her that some part of her might have died with her son in the swamp that day. Neither of them were truly alive and this dark side of existence was not real. She needed something to light the way, lead them back to living, both of them.

Again, she felt the weight of the little blonde boy on her lap, the feel of his sleeping body against her torso. He was the light. She needed him. And if she could use her powers just this once to sever the boy from his old life and bring him to hers, that was the last she ever needed to do as Voodoo Queen.

The thought was so tempting, the urge so powerful it made her shiver. Then she thought of the mother who would lose what she lost and she fought to contain herself. One slip of control and she would go straight to her basement for the last of that dust.

She tried to push the thought away. Instead of going to the basement, she went back to Chinwee's room to change his dressing.