She remained still, head down, chest rising in laboured breaths. Get up.

Too hard — she was running on empty, completely drained. The immense urge to just lay on the floor where she was in the shadows of the room was so overwhelming, involuntary reflex making her want to stay still, muscles desperate to loosen…

Get up.

You know you have to. Get up.

How you fall doesn't matter. It is how you get up.

::

She hurt.

By all rights she should still be in the healing ward of the Institute resting her still mending bones. But she had convinced her cousin to carry her to the Institute's expansive, half enclosed roof top garden and let her rest under a flowering cherry tree. It was early spring and the blossoms were at the height of their glory, delicate pink and white flowers which hung above her like a soft cloud.

She saw her life in those branches and the blossoms that had formed at the end of every branch. Each one was a different possibility, a different path or outcome. One branch, dipping down close to where she lay very still, had two blossoms at the end of it. One of those, she thought, was what she thought the life of a mundane might be: a college degree, a home, and playdates for her children. The other was the life of the Shadowhunter: a degree in demon killing, a military-esque fortress, and death.

She sighed. There were many more blossoms beyond and above those two that she couldn't make out in the dimness of the softly lit garden. They were there, just out of sight. All of them possibilities, variations of the two extremes she saw before her.

A petal from one of the blossoms she had been gazing at drifted down, landing gently on her hand.

Foolish, whispered a voice, to dream of what never could have been. You were born to this. There was only one path.

When she woke it was in the dusk of dawn, the sun not yet up. But Helms Deep was busy, plans were being made and the King of Rohan clearly did not want to linger long on the field of victory.

She dressed and armed herself, leaving the small room she had made her sanctuary after the battle. It was with some relief that she learned from Legolas who she found relatively quickly that they were to depart within the hour. The King and a small envoy of the Rohirrim that included Eomer along with the White Wizard and what remained of the Fellowship were to ride to Isengard.

To the Shadowhunter's surprise, the King of Rohan thanked her in front of the assembled warriors for her services both before and during the battle. He apparently credited her runes for saving at least some of his men's lives and her fearless pursuit of the white-skinned orcs and their explosives had also been noted. From the whispers, Aiedale suspected that it might become the stuff of Rohirrim legends. Well…there were no Clave doctrines here about not letting mundanes see you.

Aiedale was gracious, neatly turning it around to praise the efforts of the Rohirrim and their defence of the Wall, but she was relieved that she was able to nudge her horse beside Legolas who had Gimli behind him near the back of the company. The hood of her grey elvish cloak up, she tried not to think about the looks she was being sent by the men.

The land was much changed. Far down into the valley of the Deep the grass was crushed and trampled brown, as if giant herdsmen had pastured great droves of cattle there. The trees had returned the previous night to the dark dales of Fangorn.

The ride was swift, they stopped only briefly to sleep and let the horses drink. The river Isen had returned, flowing with white capped fury down its bed. The light was grey and pale, the air heavy. The road to Isengard, however, was broad and hard, and well-tended. As they rode on it became clear the changes wrought by Saurman: what had once been a fair and green land through which the Isen had flowed before it found the plains, had become a wilderness of weeds and thorns with no trees. Through this hellscape they rode and Aiedale could understand the fury of Fanghorn.

The road eventually changed, becoming a wide street paved with great flat stones, laid with skill. They finally passed a tall pillar, black and carved with the White Hand. Not far beyond lay the gates of Isengard, but a kind of mist had gathered and made it hard to see ahead. It was through this mist that they finally came to the great arch delved into the southern wall of the towering cliffs. But the gates which had once guarded the arch had been hurled and twisted to the ground. Stone lay all about, cracked and splintered, and the cliff-like walls had been torn.

Aiedale's eyes widened as she took in the scene before her. The ring of Isengard was mostly underwater. It was like a bubbling cauldron. Aiedale had read in Imladris that the grounds and buildings surrounding the tower of Orthanc had been beautiful. They had been dedicated to learning and contemplation with many houses and passages cut and tunnelled back into the walls. Shafts driven into the plain to caverns which acted as treasuries, store-houses, armouries, and furnaces. But now the land surrounding the obsidian tower that rose black and sharp looked like the fallout of a natural disaster. Mangled bits of destroyed war and metal buildings were sticking out of the ground at jagged angles.

And there they were.

Two small figures, grey-clad, perched atop a rubble heap beside a guard tower. Small plumes of curling smoke rising from them.

Oh for the love of the Angel—

Hobbits, she snarled inwardly. Idiotic, isn't going to anything less than a maiming to get the hint…

But alive, she thought to. They are alive.

"Welcome! Welcome my lords and ladies" called Merry Brandybuck as they moved nearer. The hobbit sketched a dramatic bow. "Welcome to Isengard!"

Pippin stood up beside him, his curly hair tangled and muddy but beaming at them.

The Rohirrim stared, confused.

"You young rascals!" boomed Gimli, his outraged voice breaking the silence as he leaned sideways to see them properly. "A merry hunt you've led us all on! You woolly-footed truants! And now we find you feasting and…smoking?! Where did you find the weed, you villains!"

The hobbits looked rather pleased. "We are sitting on a field of victory, enjoying the comforts," said Pippin with a wave of his pipe. "Besides," he continued, "we are under orders to guard the way!"

"From whom?" asked Aragorn, a smile still on his face.

"Treebeard," Merry said, extinguishing his pipe and stowing it. "Who has taken over management of Isengard."

"Where is Treebeard, Merry?" asked Gandalf.

"Waiting for you on the north side," said the hobbit with a wave of his hand.

And so it was that they entered the desolation. The waters that the Ents had unleashed had nearly all subsidies. Here and there gloomy pools remained, covered with scum and wreckage; but most of the wide circle was bare again, a wilderness of slime and tumbled rock, pitted with blackened holes, and dotted with posts and pillars leaning drunkenly this way and that.

"Walk warily!' said Merry. 'There are loose slabs that may tilt up and throw you down into a pit, if you don't take care."

As they followed what was left of the road from the gates to the tower, Aiedale cast her eyes over the hobbits. Merry now rode behind Aragorn and Pippin was behind Eomer. They were alive. After all that —

She wanted to tell them off.

But she also knew that sometimes one had to learn by trial and error, by being flung into the sea and told to swim. The two hobbits had been the most inexperienced of their Company. For all their obliviousness and recklessness, they clearly had a role to play in all that was unfolding and perhaps a far greater one than had ever been imagined. Between the two of them they had roused the ancient forest and been active participants in the destruction of the White Wizard's forces and Tower. So, however much she wished to take them to task as an officer dressing down a junior for something outrageously stupid might, she bit her tongue. She'd done plenty of outrageously stupid things and survived them…and learned plenty of important things from them.

And she could see that they had learned some things. There was something not so straightforwardly happy and victorious about Merry and Pippin. There was a certain exhausted cast to their faces, a tightness to their smiles, and a certain amount of evasiveness when they spoke of their time in captivity and what had happened after. She could still remember how it had felt after her first few patrols, how the reality of the world had crashed into her, that strangely uneasy feeling that had made everything seem somehow askew…and how the most normal things had felt jarring. She had worked so hard to seem unbothered, unchanged.

"I'm glad to see you again," she told them, nudging her horse forward.

"We ran across half the bloody world for you!" said Gimli again with a shake of his helmeted head, seeming to still be miffed that they had found the hobbits smoking as if they didn't have a care in the world.

"Not quite half," said Aiedale easily. "And I am impressed. You didn't need saving and you found yourself an army."

The hobbits stared at her as if she had grown two heads. In fact, Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn were all staring at her with similar expressions of disbelief.

She smiled innocently right back. "I'd love to hear how you managed it. Especially the finding an army part."

But then they were temporarily halted by the Ents. Striding up to them was…Aiedale did not fully know how to describe what she saw. A tree? A tree with eyes and arms? Eyes that were so vast and deep it was like looking into a endless pool. Even Legolas seemed awestruck.

"Hoo! Come now!" said the Ent in front who must be Treebeard. "You have come, wizard."

Aiedale watched the…trees…that seemed like the best way of thinking of them, but also…she had seen some strange things. Ents ranked near the top of that lengthy list.

"Yes," said Gandalf. "Where is Saurman?"

"I am pleased you've come. Wood and water, stock and stone, these we can command. But the wizard must be managed and he is locked high in his tower."

They hadn't made it far. The Ents leading them, Treebeard speaking to Gandalf and the King of Rohan, when Aiedale felt a warning bell clang in her head. A thrum of instinct more than anything else. She turned her head, eyes searching…only to see a flicker of movement by one of the jutting bits of wreckage. A movement that she knew instantly. Every single muscle tightening, no time to wonder at how—

"What's that?" asked the King of Rohan in horror.

The demon lifted its misshapen head and screeched. A Ravenor, young by the look of it and hungry to.

Training, drilled into her until it was absolutely impossible for her not to react, kicked in. The terrain was treacherous but she had fought in the water before. By the Angel she had fought in sewage.

The thud of her heartbeat marked out stretched seconds as her breath slowed, head clearing as the icy burn began to fill her. She was already moving —

Aiedale was gone, replaced by a Shadowhunter with one grim purpose: kill the demon.

She could not hear her companions warnings. They were distractions, white noise, mundanes that could not see what she could and did not comprehend what it meant. She leapt lightly from the horse, landing in the knee deep water with a splash. Every instinct, every deeply ingrained lesson and every single inch of focus all gathered into one single intent —

Kill.

Unconsciously her hand closed around the hilt of the seraph blade given to her by Celeborn.

The demon saw her, it recognized what she was and it let out a long, low howl. Hatred for her and all she was gleamed in its bulbous, yellow eyes. In a blur of motion it leapt from the stone tower at her, claws flashing in the grey light.

She smiled.

The cold smile of the Nephilim. The smile that was all fire and resolve.

Downworlders said that Nephilim burned. They blazed like torches in high summer.

Her blade was a shining, flaming arc of motion as she caught the demon across the front, the water splashing up around them and drenching her in grey, foul smelling water. The demon howled, drawing back but not defeated — not even seriously wounded.

Had she lost her touch? Had her time in Middle Earth made her rusty?

What a terrifying notion, she thought in that split second.

Aiedale took a step forward but the ground shifted suddenly and, at the same moment, the demon leapt for her. The two went down, plunging into a suddenly deep shaft that had once allowed smoke out of Sauroman's orc forges. Now the shaft was full of cold, slimy river water, deep and dark.

Water closed over them both, the Shadowhunter and the demon plummeting downward as they struggled against each other, fighting to get on top, to get an advantage.

The Ravenor kicked Aiedale hard in the chest but she refused to let go, the two twisting and struggling as Aiedale attempted to wrench herself free just long enough to get her longer bladed knife up. The Ravenor, however, was intent on drowning her even if it killed itself in the process. Her chest burned from the kick and she hadn't taken a full breath of air before falling into the water. Her eyes stung.

In a desperate wrench of her arm she pulled herself away from the writhing demon long enough to bring the blade up. It was still glowing with white fire, the adamas not affected by the cold, foul dark water.

As she moved to slash it through the water, ready to end the demon, the blade flickered and died.

She didn't have time to understand this shocking thing. Her lungs were burning and the demon was still alive. Her eyes were stinging even more from the water. She was in a precarious position, needing to stay close enough that the demon couldn't get her with its stinger but running out of air at the same time. A knife was a knife and the seraph blade was deadly enough even if it wouldn't work.

The demon fell away from her, a mortal wound slashed across the soft underbelly as Aiedale flailed her arms in an attempt to get free.

She kicked hard, her lungs burning from lack of oxygen. It was a long swim to the surface, she had to fight against the weight of heavy water pushing her down, desperately trying to avoid the sharp spurs of rock and wooden debris that cluttered the shaft and which she could barely make out in the black, watery tomb she was trapped in—

Her lungs were burning, each movement costing her a little more—

Light was a distant flicker far above her—

Air.

She took a great gasp of it as her head broke the surface of the filthy water. Her eyes stinging, her lungs burning as she struggled to find something solid with which to pull herself out. Her flailing arms found a broken wooden strut and, with a great heave, she pulled herself out, still gripping the damn seraph blade in one hand. She crouched, her eyes sweeping the watery wasteland with its moving, talking trees and stone tower. Her companions were calling her name, their voices loud and worried, discordant to her waterlogged ears. They had not yet seen her, the jagged wooden struts partially concealing her.

Her eyes flicked upward to the tower which loomed close above her. Burning lungs, stinging eyes and aching chest be damned. There was one thought on her mind: Where did that demon come from?

She was going to get answers. From Saruman. Right now.

She was on a hunt, her blood was up and there was nothing else but the mission. A demon. Find. End this threat now before it got out of control. This what she did. It had been a while since she'd been in the field as a Shadowhunter and not a hobbit protector or spare bow, but she loosed her shoulders as she settled into the deadly calm.

Balancing on the strut of some shattered structure, her eyes took in the tower rising up from the watery wasteland. She couldn't see the wizard but that didn't mean he wasn't there. She knew he was there.

It was a short distance to the top of the steps that led into the tower. One long leap up a set of stone steps to the pair of double doors that stood, impregnable, before the Shadowhunter.

She hit the solid stone with her shoulder but the door did not budge. There was no handle, no apparent way to enter Orthanc. The heavily carved doors were as unmovable as a stone wall.

Arargorn was saying something and so was Legolas. She heard their protests and knew they were a moment away from riding their horses up to the steps and physically stopping her. But she did not heed them nor wait for them to physically block her way.

"Aiedale," snapped Gandalf, his voice rising with dangerous warning, containing just enough authority to break through the fog that enveloped her adrenaline clouded mind. She caught a glimpse of him in her periphery as he moved Shadowfax forward, "stop…"

His voice might have echoed with similar authority as her previous Nephilim commanders' voices had, but his words could not stop her. She had never answered to a wizard and she wasn't about to start now. No Downworlder or mundane ever came between a Shadowhunter and their hunt. Only a superior Nephilim officer had the authority, the power to order her to back down, to cut through the haze which had fallen over. She felt the former grey wizard's power building in the air, a kinetic energy that set her even further on edge, but she still did not answer to him.

Aiedale yanked out her stele, and slashed a rune across the door. It allowed her to pass through the door as if it was not there, but it left everyone else on the other side. This matter was between her and the disgraced wizard. This was a Shadowhunter's business and it did not wait for Gandalf. It did not wait for mundanes or for Downworlders. It was a Shadowhunter's and a Shadowhunter's alone.

There was a long spiralling stair in the centre of the tower with rooms and open spaces branching off in an endless upward spiral. But Aiedale paid those rooms little attention. Saurman had ensconced himself at the very top of this tower and she sensed nothing that would give her pause on her climb. The tower was deathly quiet. Had she not been so focused and intent upon her mission she might have paused to glance in some of the rooms, to consider the many treasures that had been stored in the tower of Isengard.

She slipped the stele away and the useless seraph blade. Drawing out one of her longer knives from behind her quiver, Aiedale continued, three steps at a time, leaving wet puddles on the black stone as she went, the silence runes on her boots preventing her from squelching as she moved. She went up and up until she reached the top of the stair case which opened onto a flat landing.

The slime ball of a mundane didn't even have time to be surprised.

Grima Wormtongue fell heavily. Dead. The little snake.

She stepped over him, eyes fixed on the wizard at the end of the circular room. The knife raised in her cold, wet hand.

"A Shadowhunter," said the wizard. "You were very impressive…although a little slow off the mark."

"Saruman," she said cooly, her voice very low.

"You look a great deal like that Shadowhunter who Gandalf brought to the White Council," said Saurman, his eyes never leaving her as they squared off. "I wonder…."

"I have no idea what you talking about," said the warrior brazenly, the lie coming easily and with not a shred of hesitation.

"Did you enjoy the little surprise outside? I arranged it just for you."

"Where did it come from?"

"Oh," said the wizard with a small smile, "but there will be more. They are coming. That is just one. Soon there will be more."

Obviously there will be more, snarled Aiedale inwardly, but it was the highly disciplined field commander that answered the wizard's provocation. The acting officer who was professional to the very end. The acting officer who had been thrust out of her depth for much of her time in Middle Earth, but was rapidly finding her footing once more. Get whatever information you can, do not let him bait you…

"How?"

"Sauron has struck a deal with a demon of your world," said the wizard conversationally. "Soon Middle Earth will be as your own Earth is…the demons will join Sauron's cause."

Demons.

Demons that terrorized and killed for the mere sport of killing. No Shadowhunters to shield the blind mundanes. There were no runes or Angel blades to defend against the oncoming rush, to hold the hordes at bay with Angel fire and resolve. Demons swarming over this land like the orcs, destroying all that was good and right about this world—

She knew all about what demons did.

Her mother's dying scream still echoed through her mind.

Aiedale felt it again. She felt the familiar burn, something cold and hard, something that twisted with a vicious kind of fury grow within her. But she contained it, turned it as she had so many times before into iron hard resolve that made her stand straighter in her water logged Gear.

We are given the chance to step beyond, whispered a voice in her mind. You have been given this chance. Take it.

"Did you know," said the wizard, trying to twist the knife deeper, unaware of how his words merely stoked her fury, "that soon all magic, all life, all hope, will be drained from this world by the demons. As the magic leaves so to must the elves and the Ents and the dwarves…all that will be left will be weak willed men. The forests shall wither, the seas shall turn black and darkness will coat the land. Sauron will rule."

"No," she said, "I will not let that happen."

Be ice.

Words could wound. But if Saurman had wanted to see the Shadowhunter flinch, wanted to see despair take her then he was sorely disappointed. For in that instant, Aiedale had come to the reason for why she had been sent to Middle Earth. She had found the real reason — the calling that had summoned her and perhaps it had also summoned her mother. The calling that now echoed through her with the force of a summer storm, with blinding intensity. The realization lent her a quiet calm, an icy resolve that no broken wizard could take from her.

A simple resolve that — for now — gave her courage to face the snake eyed wizard.

She would do her best to save this world from demon flames. The burning feeling in her that had been ignited by the sight of the Ravenor had coalesced into a bight, hard ember within her, the runes that traced her body seemed to be on fire with it. It lent her a clarity of mind, a fierce resolve that grew and grew within her.

She didn't needed hate or anger. She cultivated distain, staring down at this wizard with stele in one hand and knife in the other.

"I think my allies," said Aiedale, a grim smile twisting her tips as she spoke with icy calm, "wish to speak with you, wizard. I would get out on that balcony if I were you."

"You will fail," spat the wizard, taking a threatening step towards her, staff raised as if —

"I don't think so," said the Shadowhunter taking a step forward at the same moment. "My kind do not suffer defeat. We win. Always. One way or another. But you've failed. Miserably, in fact. So I don't think I'll take any more advice from you."

She was graceful action, perfectly calculated force, unblinkingly fast speed. Aiedale caught the wizard's outstretched arm, bringing her body around so that she body checked him backwards, unbalancing him and sending him careening out onto the open balcony. He scrambled upwards, staff still raised, but Aiedale moved forward calmly, eyes alight.

"You will die—"

"So unimaginative," said Aiedale coldly, her words carrying loudly on the crisp air. "I mean really — even the commonest of demons can come up with better threats. Yes, I will die. My kind always die and usually very unpleasantly. But not here. Not today. You might, wizard, but not me."

"Saurman," came the echoing voice of Gandalf from below, "show yourself—"

"I'd answer him," said Aiedale calmly.

The wizard made to slash his staff down, but Aiedale was too fast again and caught his arm. Her dirty, calloused hands at stark contrast with the white robes. She brought herself close to him in a half spin of her body. She hit him hard with her shoulder as she brought herself in close, knowing that her slight stature meant that her greatest weapon was speed and the correct application of that speed. The swift movement and sharp impact her shoulder sent the much larger wizard reeling back and onto the open ledge below which the Ents and rest of Aiedale's companions waited. She felt the fire, felt the fierce cold battle rage that told her to lay the killing blow—

But she contained it, conserving it for her the battles she knew were a Shadowhunter's to fight.

The staff rolled away and off the edge.

Aiedale stepped back. She watched as the wizard spun, desperately reaching out for the staff but unable to grasp it before it was gone. As the staff fell away it seemed to glow and then, as fell end over end, it vanished with a dull crack.

Gandalf called out something—

But the wizard had overextended himself in his final desperate attempt to grasp the staff. His feet slipped on the polished floor, his arms propelling him forward in his desperate attempt to grab the falling stick of wood. In the process his windmill arms caught against a sphere, a globe of crystal that glowed and rolled away and off the ledge. It was not enough to slow the wizard's fall.

He fell to his death, an inglorious end for the corrupted wizard.

Aiedale turned, unwilling to look over the edge and down to her companions who were now calling her name. Instead she turned around, moving as if in a hazy dream-like state. She walked down the long stair and past all the rooms. The silence enveloped her, her thoughts and mind strangely empty. She was still soaking wet, her hand clenched around the hilt of her knife but she didn't even think about that. Everything was distant, just a numb feeling that echoed through her. When she reached the doors, Aiedale simply reused the same rune and walked through the door into the bright sunlight, unflinching as she passed through the once solid barrier. Her companions were waiting for her with looks that ranged from worried and frustrated to open anger on Gandalf's face.

She stood for a moment on the steps of the tower and faced them. Head thrown back, shoulders straight and knife in one hand. The resolve that stiffened her spine was laced with fear. She had never felt more alone than she did right then. Pitifully, horribly, terribly alone and the only thing keeping her standing, keeping that knife in her hand was the Mandate. The Mandate that had been carved into her very soul. The Mandate that had fired through her with such painful intensity as she faced Suaruman.

The only Shadowhunter in this entire dimension to stand against what Saurman had warned her was coming. He had told her the truth. She had seen it in the malicious pleasure he had taken in telling her. And one demon…there was always more than one demon. That was the first lesson a young Shadowhunter learned. Always, always there were more demons.

A broken seraph blade, stele…she hadn't faced such dismal odds ever. But she would face them because that was what she did. Because that was what every Shadowhunter was raised to do with unflinching resolve until they could fight no more…until their life blood was spent and no rune could heal them.

She did not need to justify her actions to the wizard glowering at her from atop Shadowfax or the King of Rohan who stared at her with shocked fear. Her oath to Frodo had long since been fulfilled and now once more she turned to what she knew intimately, completely, and without a shadow of doubt. The hunt, the fight, the kill…yes she knew this.

No matter how far you go, how far you stray or challenge, came an inner voice, you cannot outrun what you are, what you were made to be. By blood and by training.

She walked down the steps, picking her way through the muddy water and reclaimed her horse's reins from Legolas who gave them to her wordlessly, his blue eyes studying her with open worry and hesitation. But she was silent and face emotionless. The elf knew she was beyond hearing any word he might speak to her.

"What were you thinking?" demanded the wizard, seeming to be unable not to say anything in the face of her silence.

She turned and fixed him with a look. She had moved past such petty concerns as wanting to placate the wizard and drew on the cold arrogance, the dismissive scorn of a Nephilim warrior whose mandate let them do whatever they damn well liked. It was like slipping on an old pair of gloves.

"I am Nephilim." Her words echoed, the snap making the hobbits flinch. They all, from the King of Rohan to Pippin, looked uneasy and unsettled.

"Aiedale—"

She mounted the horse.

"Listen to me—"

She lifted her chin just a fraction, "No." Her hands tightened around the reins, "You listen to me, wizard. I am Nephilim." She met his gaze, cold fire burning in her eyes, "I do not obey orders from you. I am a warrior sworn in service to the Clave. And you do not command me."

For the first time — maybe he saw something in her eyes or heard something in her voice — the wizard backed down, did not seek to batter down her defences or challenge her.

Aiedale did not look back. Instead, she spun the horse around and nudged it forward, ignoring the Ents which watched her pass with their quiet stillness.

Along with the arrogance had come the cold anger. It coiled around her heart and she allowed it…a kind of emptiness that was preferable to any emotion. It beat back the terror, freed her from the paralyzing, terrifying silence that threatened. It was the kind of cold anger that could hold you steady before something dripping poison from multiple heads and think: so you want to kill me? Come try. Nothing you do to me could hurt any more than what I've already experienced.

Too slow, she thought. Too slow and you were an idiot. Make the choice, make the call, and accept the consequences of your actions.

She did not regret fighting the demon or confronting the wizard. She had long ago stopped regretting the choices that had led her to being what she was. A killer, some would say and some had. She had been called cold hearted, ruthlessly calculating, vengeful, and arrogant.

No regrets…at least not yet. The regrets always seeped back in when you had a chance to think about the full scope of the mess you had made for yourself.

The silence which wrapped around her stayed through the rest of the day as the small party turned their mounts back towards Edoras.

The ride was uncomfortable at best. Everyone skirted her. They avoided her. If she had disconcerted these mundanes before she now terrified them.

They did not know the black depths she had journeyed through. They could not guess what she had seen, what terrors she had hunted night after night. They did not know what was in her. They did not know what she was capable of. But they had seen enough of the demon, then watched Gandalf yield to her, to have firmly decided it was best to leave her alone. They treated her like an explosive device that might blow up at any moment.

And she really was a kind of explosive. There was rage in her. There was a fierce flame that lived and breathed within her. There was no sanity to it, no gentleness. It was always there, dwelling under her skin, in the flash of her knives. It was the fire which held back the darkness which stalked her steps, lent her the strength to call upon a greater power. Seeing the demon had brought it to the fore once more.

Her own kind would have approved.

Her kind would have matched her fire with their own. They would have drawn her out of her silence with debating and planning and the occasional dark joke. They would be checking the edges of their blades and testing each other's sharpness of mind with whip fast insults. They would have been contacting assets, sending rigidly formal requests for assistance to the Silent Brothers, checking each and every seal, every rune, every defence across every single Institute and Shadowhunter refuge. Her brother would have been beside her, eyes sharp and mind turning, and so would have her cousins…her comrades.

But here…here she rode a horse through a wide open plain surrounded by mundanes who did not know…who would never know—

And so she stayed, wrapped in her thoughts, mind turning over the details, the consequences…coming again and again to the cold, hard understanding that somehow she was going to have to come up with some sort of plan to stop a full-scale demon invasion of Middle Earth.

By the Angel…this was a situation.

She'd trained her whole life. They all had.

Instructors told them the ability to keep moving under pressure was a learned response. It was why a Shadowhunter had to be broken down, taken to the edge, pushed past every limit.

You are lucky, they had all been told. You have the gift of Angel blood.

They said they would teach her to be strong. A validation launched at her, a judgement found wanting.

But sometimes it felt a lot more like they wanted to break her. But desperation was strength in a way.