The vampire carried her gently. He was cold. He smelled of nothing.

"A little longer, Darklighter," he said into her ear.

She was too weak from the demon's poison to walk so she let the vampire carry her and she thought. She thought about what he had told her. How vampires were forever separate. Damned. Alone. How each vampire had to decide whether or not to be a demon with a human face or to fight the demon until the end of time, knowing they would gain nothing in the struggle.

And she began to think she was wrong. The seed had been planted, the words echoed in her mind and she began to wonder what it might mean to say she was friends with a vampire.

.

.

She was still in her gear, still armed from that night's scheduled raid on a demon nest, when she was ordered to her aunt's office in the early hours of the morning. Her aunt was reading a piece of paper with exaggerated interest, so she was left to stare dead ahead for a long time, waiting for punchline. Her aunt didn't even look up to deliver it. "Says here you accepted aid from a vampire after sustaining a wound during a patrol two weeks ago. That you were insubordinate to your commanding officer and ignored a direct order to wait for reinforcements."

"Yes. No."

Her aunt studied her for a moment. "That is no small charge. Clarify the no, Aiedale."

"You read my report."

"Are you telling me you accepted help and ignored a direct order?"

"I did accept assistance, but I never received a direct order to wait for reinforcements from Commander Tory."

Her aunt glared at her, but even a sixteen year old Aiedale was used to that particular stare from superior officers, so held it without flinching. "And you stand by that report?"

"I do."

.

.

The Silent Brother's had executed the vampire.

An ally, however short lived it had been. The vampire who had helped her that night when she was lost and wounded. Who had carried her back to the Institute and left her on the front doorstep. Someone who had placed their trust in her and whatever protection they thought she, by virtue of her blood and skill and name, could provide.

They had killed him in the name of the Law. In the name of the Clave's Law his death was justified. Because he had been at the wrong place at the wrong time and Commander Tory was embarrassed at his mistake. Easier to blame it on a bloodsucker than take responsibility for having misread a fight that had gotten three Nephilim injured and two mundanes killed. In the end it had been her, Peter, and two other juniors words against the more senior commander.

Betrayal was too kind a word to describe what Aiedale felt.

The world was never fair. There was no justice.

The world was and is a place where cities burn and innocent people die. War was and will always be a constant. There were wars before, and there will be wars in the future. But there is one war that matters to her kind. Only one war that will ever matter. And she is a Shadowhunter and she has one loyalty, one purpose in life. The Clave could not have made that anymore clear by executing the vampire.

But she was angry. She was angry at the world and the way it worked. Angry at the Oaths and at herself. Angry enough to think things she should not.

.

.

She walked onto the darkened street, and into the crowded rush of people searching for fast gratification — laughing and joking, high on alcohol or drugs, or both. The youth nearest her almost walked into her but she neatly sidestepped, annoyance flaring through her briefly.

Knowing the streets well, she walked quickly down a side street opposite, taking a staircase set into the side of a building and following it up onto a first floor balcony, where it led to an eatery serving greasy, flavourless food to people too high to care. She stopped on the overhanging balcony, hidden by the blinking neon sign which hung down from the balcony above, her figure hidden by the shifting clouds of cigarette smoke.

Waiting…watching…

She could bring him in easily. A Shadowhunter against a Downworlder — it wouldn't be a fair fight. She knew she should do it and be done with it.

Emotions flared in quick succession to fire wildly differing loyalties in her — to the Clave, to her friends. She wanted to be callous, to shut out any compassion and simply do the job….she'd done it so many time before.

But she couldn't bring herself to do it. This Downworlder had done nothing more wrong than threaten an idiot junior officer Shadowhunter and start a bar fight at a werewolf den where said Shadowhunter got decked with a chair after being rude to the proprietor. The only reason Aiedale had been told to bring him in was to send a message to the wider werewolf community about respecting Shadowhunters even if they were drunk idiots and to soothe said-idiotic Shadowhunter's wounded ego.

She looked up to the darkening sky high above, a thin ribbon of amber and blue hemmed in by endless tiers of buildings, which jutted out to cast deep shadows over those unfortunates who dwelled below. Down here in the streets, the brooding bulks of the buildings seemed invulnerable.

Nothing was invulnerable, she thought. Everything falls.

She waited a little longer, let her prey move away.

.

.

"I'm sorry," she said. It was blunt and it was guilty and it was heartfelt.

The vampire's beautiful face was a perfect emotionless mask. "Sorry is not enough," she said at last. "Sorry will not bring him back."

"I know."

"I know your kind think you are not like us," continued the vampire and now there was a glint of anger in those perfect jewel eyes. "And maybe you're not…and you have your reasons and your Oaths. Your precious Angel blood. But everything that gains you, Darklighter, it takes twice as much away." She leaned closer, her canines lengthening into fangs, "And he was worth twice as much as you. He was better than all of your kind. And still you killed him."

She had no answer to that.

The vampire slammed a hand against the polished wood of the bar, face twisting for a moment with grief and pain and rage.

Aiedale felt the coolness of her blessed diamond cross on her throat, the familiar weight of the sapphire gem on it's etched silver chain right below…the press of a seraph blade on her left side where it would be easy to pull out in case of a fight.

And the keen sense of being on the wrong side of an unequal situation.

.

.

She made inane small-talk, but all the while her head range with greater knowledge, alternating between cool logic and the disconnected calm of denial, and momentary flares of misgivings. Part of her couldn't believe she had gone this far — that she had decided to listen. She knew her past and present associations, allies and enemies both. She had neither the desire nor the need to reassess them…so why was she here?

If her superior officers knew…if her colleagues among the Nephilim knew…she would have much to answer for. And she had no one to tell, not even her brother. Maybe it was denial, maybe it was simply that these were dangerous truths. And she also knew that she would leave this place different from the girl who had walked in.

Basic training — things pummelled into her as a child. The Clave instilling the kind of loyalty into the soldiers that never broke, whatever the test.

And she would die for the Clave. Even now, she still would. But she was no child, and her world had grown increasingly complex, rendering her commitment less reflexive, less deferential, less…no she would not think it.

It was a little known fact about covert operations that one spent most of one's time with people one couldn't trust. They were traitors and liars according to the Clave. But one called them assets or informants.

It had taken the rage she felt over the injustice of the vampire's execution to bring her to this moment. To make her willing to have the conversations…which tuned into debates. Which made her aware of the prejudice and outrage that constrained and dictated the lives of Downworlders. Working with them challenged the intolerance she had been taught. She had come to recognize the double standard. Some Downworlders — those who paid large sums to certain members of the Clave or did certain favours were allowed free rein and did not fear Shadowhunter authority.

And when she joined the evening briefings? In the council room with its long table and closed windows? She would sit there, breathing in air stale with deceit. And when the wine was passed around? She drank what was placed in front of her and thought that it tasted like liquid corruption.

In the late morning the dark clouds began to overtake them: a sombre canopy with great billowing edges flecked with dazzling were no clouds overhead yet, but a heaviness was in the air; it was hot for the season of the year. The rising sun was hazy, and behind it, following it slowly up the sky, there was a growing darkness, as of a great storm moving out of the East. And away in the North-west there seemed to be another darkness brooding about the feet of the Misty Mountains, a shadow that crept down slowly from the Wizard's Vale.

They had been moving along a rough road that traced along a swift slowing river, climbing up towards the mountains which had emerged on the horizon. Despite the slow pace, Aiedale was informed they should arrive at their destination by late evening.

But whatever luck had allowed such a large caravan of civilians to pass without incident across the open plains of Rohan did not hold. The first warning was a cool breeze that made Aiedale tense, instincts firing. She could catch, faint upon the air, the distant sound of howling.

Wargs.

Her head whipped up, body tensing. The horse below her let out a nervous snort, sensing the sudden change in her demeanour. She gathered up her reins and nudged him forward until he was alongside Aragorn.

"Wargs," she hissed at him, trying to keep her voice low and not panic the civilians scattered around them. They moved so slowly.

The man's hands tightened on the reins of his own mount and he gave a tight nod, nudging his own horse forward at a quick canter towards the King of Rohan. Aiedale looked for Legolas and Gimli and found that the elf had also sensed the approaching danger. He waved his hand at her, Gimli seated behind him. She nodded and moved her horse to join him.

Already warnings were spreading through the warriors, filtering down to the civilians who were starting to glance around, panic growing.

Aiedale nudged her horse forward, preparing to take off beside the elf. As she did so, however, she caught a glimpse of the Lady Eowyn staring after them. A look of intense envy in those bright blue eyes as they landed on Aiedale. The Shadowhunter had seen that look before in the faces of junior warriors being told to stand down and remain in reserve. That hungry, desperate look of someone who wanted nothing more than to throw themselves into a fight and prove something.

But there was no time to consider it or the order of the King of Rohan to his niece to get the civilians to the safety of Helms Deep. Aiedale was already away, her horse galloping across the grass. Behind her she heard orders to mount horses, to ready spears—

The orc pack was not far.

Wargs were howling, bloodthirsty and egged on by the shrieking battle cries of the orcs as they caught sight of them.

Aiedale felt her horse's mouth harden, throughly spooked, terrified by the howling monsters. She could ride, but she knew she lacked the skill to effectively fight from horseback. Better for her and the horse if she did not try to acquire that skillset in the middle of a fight. Aiedale let the reins go, pitching herself forward and allowing the momentum of her spooking horse to send her into a controlled roll. She hit the ground, rolling as she did so like she had been taught all those years ago as a young Shadowhunter in the training room of the Paris Institute.

The sharp blade of her knife caught the underside of the warg's neck, sending a spray of blood into the air.

The dying warg's jaws snapped just above her head, as she allowed herself to continue rolling safely out of reach of its claws. The close shave with death making her breathe hitch for a brief moment before she settled once more into the calm, focused state of battle.

She was aware of Legolas and Gimli along with the other warriors of Rohan, but she was totally focused on the wargs racing towards her. Legolas was somewhere behind her, firing smooth, accurate arrows from his powerful bow. Aiedale kept low, moving quick, blade out in front of her. The orcs had spears and scimitars, but they were slow and their mounts, while sharp toothed and strong, were not easy to maneuver.

She caught sight of Aragorn, not mounted, dispatching an orc to her side.

But Aiedale was moving, always moving, her blades never still for long. The orcs recognized she was a threat, but she was too fast for them and their mounts. Leaping into the air, landing with nimble grace on the back of one warg, only to vault off once rider and warg were dead.

Like any good soldier she was aware of others around her: the Rohirrim, Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn.

She gravitated towards the Company, knowing their fighting styles better and feeling more able to complement them. It was unwise to get separated, she knew.

As she dispatched an orc, instinct made her turn slightly to search for the Company. Legolas close by, knives flashing as he fought from horseback, Gimli with his ax moving with grim efficiency, and Aragorn —

Aragorn was engaged in a fight with an orc too stubborn to realize it was beat, too close to the edge of the down to the river that they had been following, swift and cold, fed by the high mountain snows. It narrowed here, white capped rapids some distance down. Aragorn was close to it, having either lost or dismounted from his bay war stallion.

It was Moria, but reversed, she realized in a horrified split second.

She saw it happen before it did, her duelist eye recognizing the danger. Saw the Ranger make one fatal miscalculation and overstep, killing the orc but sending him forward and then back. The orc, nearly dead, reached out and pulled at Aragorn's sword arm, a desperate attempt to take the man with him. And then…even as she leapt forward, a warning rising on her tongue…he was pitched forward, sword tumbling out of his hand and onto the bank of grass…

Gone.

She froze, mind unwilling to confront the truth before her. The Ranger was gone—

She had wanted this world different than her own. A world of chivalry and good men, a place where things went right for the good people because they should.

She stared over the edge of the steep river bank and into the rolling rapids of the fast flowing glacier water. He might have survived the fall, she tried to tell herself, after all she had. But had she survived because even in this other dimension she was marked by Angel runes, fated for some greater purpose? But so was he, she thought. He was meant to be a king…and fate wouldn't care about that, she knew. Death didn't care about the hopes and dreams pinned upon a person. It took and you accepted it.

Her hands clenched into fists, she was barely aware of Legolas's gasp of horror or Gimli's low cursing. They had also seen the fight and realized what was going to happen, too slow to make any difference either.

Aragorn had tried to help her, she thought. He had tried to understand her, to open her perspective, and even to protect her. There had been very few who had ever done that unless it gave them some sort of control over her. She'd been a tool, a loaded gun, a useful source of information, but very rarely a person. He had always seen her as a person. It had been an unexpected comfort, she realized. A gift that he had given freely and, for that, she would be forever thankful to him.

If she could have stayed and made some marker, pressed a rune into a stone or searched downstream, she would have. But the King of Rohan and his people were marching on. She thought about not going with them, could see similar sentiments on the faces of her two companions, but she also knew that Aragorn would be disappointed if they didn't keep going.

And maybe there was a dark, cold, angry part that though of fucking course. People like Aragorn were rare and it was just like fate to steal them away before they could realize even a quarter of their potential.

Only death can pay for life, Shadowhunter.

She had railed against it once. Had thought to make the world fair by force of will and the skill of her knife.

As she stood on the edge of the cliff, staring down at the white froth and dark blue of rushing water crashing into submerged rocks, she felt that old, familiar ache in the place where they said her heart was. That ache that had been there when she came back, tired and strung out by too many close calls and not enough sleep to report to her superiors that someone wasn't coming back alive. They'd muffled the pain and the guilt of it all in clinical routine, in the debriefing meetings held when memories were still crisp, in brief two page reports written in terse, short sentences sent with the morning mail to be glanced at and thrown out, and in the rituals of funerals that followed where, more often than not, there was not even a body to burn.

Just like then she felt that sense of not being good enough. No matter how many times she told herself things happened in fights, you could only plan so well…she felt that cold weight of responsibility and a deep frustration at her inadequacy. She'd been told once that it was what made her human. If she didn't feel anything then she was nothing more than a tool, devoid of all sense of right and wrong, incapable of love and grief, a mindless, soulless killer.

Legolas came up beside her, his face a mask of shock and pain and grief. He bent and picked up Aragorn's sword from the grass stained with black orc blood, holding it as if he had never held a blade before.

He stared down at the blade.

"Take it," she told him, not sure where she found the ability to speak. "We can't leave it here."

A Rohirrim warrior, his eyes carefully averted from her, was holding the horse she had leapt off at the start of the skirmish. Someone had clearly recovered it for her. She nodded to him, suspecting he might not understand her. The horse bumped her shoulder with its soft muzzle as if sensing the weight of her emotions and wanting to comfort her. She stroked his neck, walking beside him, eyes focused on the grass, until Legolas with Gimli perched behind him rode past her and she realized she was about to be left behind.

With a final look back, she started jogging beside the horse and then vaulted onto its back.

She'd done this before. Too many times. Like all those times before, she was expected to turn away, to keep going. She would be of no use to anyone if she didn't.

At Helm's Gate, before the mouth of the Deep, there was a heel of rock thrust outward by the northern cliff. There upon its spur stood high walls of ancient stone, and within them was a lofty tower. Aiedale had heard it whispered that in the far-off days of the glory of Gondor the sea-kings had built here this fastness with the hands of giants. The Hornburg it was called, for a trumpet sounded upon the tower echoed in the Deep behind, as if armies long-forgotten were issuing to war from caves beneath the hills. A wall the men of old had made from the Hornburg to the southern cliff, barring the entrance to the gorge. Beneath it by a wide culvert the Deeping-stream passed out. It came out of the sheer wall of the cliffs like the bow of a ship, its levels and internal walls formed from the stone of the mountains.

Her eyes swept over the stone walls of Helms Deep.

Impenetrable?

She had heard that before. The walls of the Glass City, gleaming and invincible, had been supposedly impenetrable to demons. Fire and ruin had been rained down on the Shadowhunter haven, the towers shattered and the streets turned into bloody chaos as Valentine's demon army overwhelmed unprepared Nephilim. She remembered all too well the cold claws of terror and disbelief that had sunk into her heart when she had realized the defences had been breached. Aiedale had never thought, not even in her worst nightmares, she would do battle in the streets of the one place all Nephilim thought was safe from demons…the one refuge they had.

But there was a deeper memory, so jagged and painful that to think of it was almost too much for her. A memory only half-remembered of her father's deep voice saying they would always be safe here…there was no demon who could break the wards around their manor house.

Aiedale cast her eyes around the tired, worn faces of the civilians now pressing into the fortress and the warriors who stood guard. Too few to defend too many. A cold pit of dread settled within her.

Should these walls fail and the impenetrable fortress prove not so impenetrable after all…the orcs would give no quarter for the young nor for the old. Such a slaughter would cripple this nation, destroying not only it's future but it's past. Rohan was a society built on the oral transmission of stories and knowledge. Without the old storytellers, the knowledge of the horse masters whose calloused hands could coax a weak foal to nurse…even if someone could spirit away the children before the massacre Saurman had planned…it wouldn't matter. Rohan would be lost.

And that is your plan, isn't it Saurman? Raze Rohan to the ground before it can ally with Gondor and never rise again. Already the orcs were burning and pillaging the land behind them.

The sick feeling was growing within her as she stood there, her mind unwillingly turning back to the dream of Amon Hen where she had seen Sauron's power spreading across this land. She had a limited grasp of Middle Earth politics, but you didn't need to know much to know that Saurman had succeeded in bringing this nation to its knees and robbing Gondor of a critical ally. Theoden had brought his people to this trap, hoping to buy them safety when all he was doing was setting up the most perfect execution stage Saurman could want. Gondor would be next. The killing blow to the world of men was coming, just as Aragorn…her breath hitched.

Her hands clenched into fists before her. Stone…simple stone was all that would protect these people that Aragorn had died to protect.

No.

Damn it all. Fuck it, no.

It surprised her, that sudden resolve that lit within her as her horse trotted up a ramp and passed within the gates of the Hornburg. She wasn't sure where that came from. Why did this funeral pyre of Rohan made her feel so? Why did she suddenly felt that familiar burst of rage to defend, to kill…

Aragorn would have wanted her to fight for Rohan. He had wanted her to be a part of the mundane world, to see herself as a person and not just a loaded gun ready to be fired.

He had been a good person, she thought. And she was angry that once again good people, smart, kind, honourable, well-intentioned people with gifts that could have made the world a better place died, while she watched on. She was not good, not kind, not honourable, her intentions were as ambitious and calculating as the next Clave warrior. A first class bitch, some had said and they weren't wrong.

Aiedale gripped her horse's reins tightly and set her jaw even as lines danced across her vision, patterns of burning runes in a language only she knew. The coming army of orcs would burn.

The King of Rohan had never encountered the girl without one of her companions present to manage her. He found her on her own to be quite…alarming…and overwhelming. Something about the impressive collection of visible weapons and those arresting eyes. She turned everything he thought he knew about how to treat young females into useless horse shit.

"How can I help you?" he asked shortly, in no mood to be gracious least of all with this strange creature. She stood at one end of a long hall, on the other side of a wide, thick table stacked with maps and there were at least twenty capable warriors standing guard, but he could not shake the feeling none of that would matter.

There was the faintest curl to her lips. She knew that he found her strange and disturbing. She clearly knew that she would not have been allowed to speak to him at all or stand here had she not come with the wizard and the Ranger. She let the awkwardness grow between her and the King of Rohan, allowing the moment to stretch just to emphasize her control over the situation and her apparent ease.

"I have come," she said very slowly and clearly so that her words were perfectly understood, "to ask permission to reinforce your defences with the methods of my people, the Nephilim."

The Shadowhunter could not have looked more confident. She looked at the men as if she could smell their stupidity and it made some men instantly dislike her and others shy away from her, frightened by the force contained in those cool eyes and the strangeness. In their heads they were remembering how she had fearlessly flung herself in a controlled roll from her horse straight into the jaws of a warg.

She was a loaded bow, a drawn blade hungry for the clang of battle, thinks the King, and he had no authority to command her.

"And what methods are these?" asked the King with grating patience.

"My people's runes," said the Shadowhunter, "have a power of their own. They can be used to strengthen walls, ward away malicious intent and provide protection to those who defend them." She gestured at the stone around them with one hand, "I am offering my power in service of your people's defence." She said the last part with exaggerated slowness.

"I doubt your efforts will be able to do much good."

"They will," said Aiedale with complete conviction. She lifted her chin just a fraction, "I know what makes a fortress impregnable." She gestured at the door and the walls, "And these walls will not hold. Let me at least try." Those arresting eyes were gazing at him with complete sincerity, "You have nothing to lose, King of Rohan. You are desperate to save your people. Why not call on the power of a foreign people?"

The King of Rohan suspected that the young woman would do whatever she wanted regardless of what he said and then his already shaky authority would be damaged further. He also had the feeling that there was no prison of man that could hold one such as she.

"Very well," he agreed somewhat reluctantly.

Sorcery, he thought and he knew his men were thinking the same thing.

Aiedale Darklighter was unnatural. She was strange and frightening. But she was very good — exceptional even — and the King of Rohan was pragmatic enough not to turn away such assistance no matter how unnatural or dubious the source. Had she come at any other time he would not have welcomed her and she clearly knew that. He saw it in her eyes, in the contempt which lined each word she spoke and he could do little to evade it. She pinned him in place with that voice, that intense stare.

The King of Rohan thought that she seemed used to being hated and feared. She dealt with it as one might deal with a bit of bad weather or lost horse shoe — an inconvenience, an annoyance you made allowances for but never allowed to stop you. And he had the feeling no one — not him or even the white robed wizard — could stop the girl when she had set her mind on something. In a way he respected her for it. She was grounded in this world, in the hard reality that saw some live and some die.

She turned away, walking out of the room straight backed and confident. All eyes followed her.

The King of Rohan turned and said to one of his captains, "Make sure that no one interrupts her. We do not need another fight when one is about to arrive on our doorstep."

You are a good person. It is hard to be a good person and a Shadowhunter.

I am not a good person.

A head tilt, an appraising look. You tried. That is enough.