In celebration of one of the most important days of the year: October 1 aka jungle321jungle's birthday. I'm a little late but it's also 11500 words long so everyone can just be happy for Jaz's birthday. (or end up crying depending on if you read it to the very end, up to you of course.)

Anyway, Happy (late) Birthday My Friend!

Fallen

The thing about mortals, Ethan thought, is that they are so easily influenced by things they can't see.

He stood outside a mom-and-pop grocery store that had gone out of business last week. The windows were covered up with newspaper, which Ethan had scanned the headlines of at least a million times.

He had barely gone through half a cigarette before one of the worn down, ragged businessmen stopped a few feet from him and collapsed against the wall as he fumbled to his own pack of Marlboro.

"H-hey," the man stuttered as he patted down the pockets of his thrift store trench coat, "Hey man. Can I get a light?"

Ethan exhaled a breath of smoke, adding a dark gray to the hazy of the lamp lights nearby.

"My wife, ya know," The man went on, "She says I needa stop, and I do when she's nagging around. But what she don't know can't hurt, am I right?"

Ethan glanced at the man before him, taking in the rugged look of a business man tired of living like a business man. He was physically older than Ethan by a decade at least, his eyes wearied with the low city life. His clothes were crumpled and uneven, hanging from his body in surplus. His shoes were mucked up, with dirt and mud and his pants discolored from some liquid or other. Ethan slowly moved, dipping his free hand from it's dangling position to his pocket.

The man surged forward eagerly, his stress-wrinkled face pinching at the thought of the stranger being a buddy, a pal, and giving him a little light to forget a little reality.

Ethan gave him the sharp edge of his knife. The man froze, sloppily stumbling over words of apology. Ethan waited until he had exhaled again, his posture defending years of casual fighting, deadly fighting, and victory fighting all at once. He let the mortal before him realize that he was not someone you approached on the way home in the city to ask for directions, much less ask for a light.

"Beat it," Ethan told him.

Ethan doubted the man had ever run faster in his life.

He amused himself for a moment, watching the man's retreating back fall into the faceless crowd of home goers. He imagined himself, with a flick of his wrist, a tiny movement, a presentation of weight and physics that mortals loved so much. He imagined the solid thud of the weapon lodging in the man's back, the strangled gasp of surprise and terror and realization all at once coming to his face as it paled to a ghost like complexion, the warm spit of blood that would douse his fingers as Ethan tore his blade from his back without any remorse for the plaything lying on the ground. He imagined hearing the man scream, and scream, and scream and the people around him panic because blood was a terrifying sight. Ethan imagined standing amidst it all, completely invisible once again.

He dropped his unfinished cigarette on the ground and slammed his toe on the ashes grinding them until the black smear had added to the assorted ones all around him.

Another man slid off the traversing path of the sidewalk to join him outside the store front, a cigarette and lighter already flickering to life.

Ethan growled something, curses in a language no human would understand. The second man glanced at him, "What? You got a problem, Bud?"

Ethan stalked off into the flow of strangers walking every which way. He made his own path, hands shoved deeper in his pockets than before, but his knuckles white with the effort to hold the knife. He didn't want to hold the knife, but he craved the feeling more than anything. Here he walked head down, hood up, and black hair covered the marred over eye that was an ever constant reminder that he was made for more anyone else. He was meant to do something, he had a purpose. He stood in a sea of mortals forever grasping at straws, trying to find something he had been born knowing.

He was above all of them.

He deserved their respect: their loyalties, their fear. They should be bowing before him, building temples to his honor, praying to his statues, trembling when he walked. They should see his form, a glimpse of his shadow and feel awe more than if the gods themselves had strutted past them nude. He was an--

He was nothing.

He was nothing more than a person. He walked the same ground mortals did.

Occasionally he didn't believe in gods like them too.

It made it so much worse when he finally found his faith again. It made moments like these feel long and tiring and much not worth the battle. What was the point of it? Who was he trying to impress?

"Hey! Hey mister!"

Ethan felt a jerk on his jacket, a hand on his shoulder, and he jerked around. It was reaction to have his knife out, just as much as it was reaction for the girl opposite of him to scream when it missed her face by a few inches.

She was shorter than him, which worked in her favor; had she been his height, he might have had to recommend the nearest hospitals for her to go to, in between the feeling of drowning in liquid damnation. Her eyes were wide with chocolate irises and freckles splashed across her face like a pattern of stars. She looked afraid to breathe, her olive skin the lightest shade he supposed it got.

"Bianca!" Another voice called out, a new figure appearing beside her. He was tall; Ethan wouldn't have had any trouble slicing through him. He grabbed her hand tightly, desperately, watching with a knowing look. "Look, man! She's sorry!" He started, words coming forth as if his mouth was a waterfall. His tone was pleading, green eyes terrified.

(Part of Ethan was overjoyed.)

"She's not from here-- doesn't know you can't just grab people and ask for directions! I swear she didn't mean anything by it! She's so sorry!"

Ethan stared at him. His grip was shaking on the knife. The taste of nicotine on his tongue made him excited. Excited to see what he could do with single knife and two mortal playthings.

(Part of Ethan wondered if Luke was nearby.)

The girl before him shuddered on a breath, it's warmth reached his hand from where he held his blade teetering between a threat and a a bloodbath. Ethan stared at her, taking in her appearance as her friend, boyfriend, whoever rambled about how sorry she was. Anyone walking nearby turned a blind eye, as was custom in a city like this; whatever was going on, it was less painful if you weren't a part of it.

She was a runner. Her frame was built of someone who didn't feel free unless they had earbuds in and open road before them. It was taking all of her will not to run now, while they were so close and he could fatally injury with her sign of one movement. She wore jeans and sneakers decorated with the badges of dirt and grime and love. Her jacket was thin, not quite enough for city nightlife. She'd be warm when she walked in her house without realizing she had been freezing. Her hair was shoved under a floppy green hat, like she had been attempting to hide behind it.

Somewhere along the line the green eyed boy had shut up, only breathing heavily with panicked breath. Ethan blinked.

"Are you sorry?" He asked the mortal girl before him.

Her mouth opened, forming an answer before she glanced at the knife. "Y-yes," She told the blade, "Very sorry."

You should be.

Ethan snorted, "Don't lie." He retracted the blade and both of them seemed to breathe for the first time in ages. "It's unbecoming."

He turned looked past them, and moved on, like he had been doing all his life. Moving on. Just going. Anywhere.

"Hey!"

Her voice again. Her touch again, this time his empty wrist. Skin on skin, that burned in ways he had forgotten it would. He glared at her, and now she did look sorry, in a pathetic way, like a dog kicked away again and again, but still believing it's owner love it. Her hand yanked back to her sides, fingers curling on themselves.

"We need directions," She said. "My cousin got us lost."

"Bianca!" The boy, the cousin, hissed at her, "Leave him alone." He glanced around nervously, "We'll just...I'll go talk to the clerk in that store."

She ignored him. "Do you know how to get to the Apartments in downtown?" She asked Ethan.

"Well I suggest you go to downtown." Ethan replied with a smile that was nine-tenths obviously fake and one-tenth a threat.

"Which way," She asked again, "please."

For a tense moment, Ethan thought he could feel it. The warmth that ran through his body, an invisible wind that could sweep through his muscles, his blood his thoughts. The force that had once spelled to the world the only difference between ruling the world and destroying. The feeling of the itch under his skin as he disappeared completely.

He pointed down the road, towards where most of the mortals were already moving. She looked at him nodding slowly, then faster as she realized the thin ice she was standing on wouldn't last for much longer.

(Part of Ethan was sure Zoe was nearby.)

"Thank you." She said, linking arms with her city-bred cousin, who might have dropped dead other wise. "Come on Percy. Your mom and my brother won't hold off dinner forever."

Then like that they were gone. Ethan stood in place for a moment longer watching nothing. They hadn't disappeared like the man earlier, where Ethan had been able to see him move, him in the crowd. When they had disappeared, they did it much like how an angel did.

Completely and all at once. Never to be seen again.

(Part of Ethan ached to spread his wings and soar off into the sky until this city was just a tiny speck on the damn planet.)

***

"Castellan." Her voice was dark, like a thunderstorm, with under currents of hatred and malice.

"Nightshade." He addressed, fake cheer turning into something real. It was always fun when one of them was around.

She stood in silver, eyes dark and all knowing, yet always so oblivious. "You are not suppose to be in the city. This is a banishment, not some punishment you follow when you feel like it."

"And I suppose you are going to be the one to drag me out?" He laughed at the picture. "Don't get your tunic in a twist. I was just checking up on a friend." He pushed himself off the wall of the boreded up plaything's store. The owner had really been a fun one; his screams were infinitely more entertaining than the Funnies printed in the newspaper across the windows.

She watched him with trigger happy hands. They danced across her bow as if just waiting for a reason to use it. He had no doubt she would use it if she could. She hated him. He liked the idea of there being such a paradox existing.

"You won't sway him." She said.

He smiled, a wicked little thing that he himself despised when he saw it in the mirror. He smiled until his mouth hurt and he was sure she was properly perturbed. "I don't have to sway him. He's already Fallen."

***

Ethan didn't have a job. Unless lurking was a job. Then he'd say he did his job very well.

He spent most of his days roaming the city, the good places and the bad and the grey area in between, at a varying pace. Sometimes he sped through the business areas and but spent hours at a sidewalk cafe. Sometimes he did the entire wall through in forty minutes and then smoked a cigarette right next to a no smoking sign just to piss people off. Sometimes he would spend the entire day trying to figure out why he'd never noticed that tiny book story before.

The little things, he decided, were the most surprising.

He bought a couple books with a credit card that had been stashed in his safe house from what felt like a million years ago. He had never been much of a reader, but maybe it was time to change that.

In reality, he was well aware that the books might get a couple pages read and then sit collecting dust in his apartment for the rest of the era. Why did he need a poorly written book about himself? Mortals never got their fiction right.

He had been to the sidewalk cafe before once or twice. He sat himself at a table fit for four, with his feet tucked under the metal chair and a bored look on his impassive face. He took a break from lurking to eat dinner and read a book, sure why not? Is this was mortals did day in and day out?

The book was in Spanish about a drug queen looking for love.

The waitress approached him once or twice with a fake smile and a pocket of straws. She took his order and he promptly forgot what she looked like. Whatever. The sun peeked from the smokey clouds almost making the day feel nice. Ethan wondered how many invisible eyes were watching him, mocking him.

"This is what happens when you don't follow the rules." They would whisper to one another, as oblivious as always, as if they hadn't seen what had happened to him first hand. He was an example.

His back ached with phantom pains, sharp jostles of a white hot knife digging into his flesh and leaving elegant bloody scars, tearing through muscles, destroying the very thing they prided so much on.

"This is why you have faith." They'd say. "Because if you don't you lose everything."

Except Ethan hadn't lost anything. He set down the book and leaned back in his chair as if to shout "Fuck You!" at the assholes above him. He had never lost anything. What he and Luke had done, what they had accomplished had needed to happen. A pact, a promise to see it to the end, knowing that they were the villains in everyone else's books and that the villains never got the happy ending.

So here they stood.

He paid for the meal with the same credit card as the books. He had no clue how much was on it, but the waitress returned it and he signed the check. He left both books on the table.

Ethan glanced across the lunch crowd the cafe was starting to fill, fast and loud. For a second his heart dropped in his chest. A flash of blue and blonde.

A flash of gold, a smirk he knew so well.

He mouthed hello to Ethan, then he was gone. Ethan's hand dug into his knives blade, his limbs tight with defenseless dread. He spirited his gaze around the cafe, but the other man did not reappear. Ethan wasn't stupid enough to think that it meant he had left. Ethan stumbled into the crowd, before the aura could hit him.

If he could get away, out of the distance, he couldn't be touched. That's how it worked around them, any kind of them.

He made a swift turn into a side alley, where less mortals were in danger if the aura washed over him. His pace picked through the community of hobbled old men and woman who lived the streets. He barely noticed a couple becoming agitated and gripping things around them like weapons.

He ducked the corner again, knowing the paths from his millions of walks through the city. He knew it better than the people who lived there. The bad part of the town was only dangerous if you couldn't defend yourself.

"Stop it!"

Ethan drew up short on his next turn. He took in the scene was an all knowing feeling, a calm and cold calculation.

The girl was there, Bianca. Her jacket ripped off one shoulder and jeans dirty at the knees as if she had fallen recently. Her hat was gone, her hands in pale fists. She was horrified, with tears, those ugly girl tears that picked strings in Ethan's chest. Her dark locks, as beautiful as they were loose, had betrayed her.

Some upstart gang members had her held back by those locks. His meaty hand tugging the silk in tight painful knots, and his other arm wrapping her waist in effective hold. She was struggling desperately, but his strength was greater than her nails and stomping heels.

Neither noticed him; their attention was consumed by the sight of the other two gang members killing her cousin with baseball bats. The green eyed boy spit out a mouthful of blood as the bat sent him into the brick all behind him. Something cracked. Ethan didn't need X-ray vision to know he was going to need medical attention.

"Percy!" Bianca screamed. Her cousin struggled to move but a well placed kick to his jaw knocked him down again.

Ethan walked forward before he knew what he was doing. His knife in his palm before he had decided how it should end. His presence made known before Ethan had judged any of them righteously.

They were all pathetic. Gangs attacking people, unarmed in a back alley, holding a girl hostage by her goddamned hair, tears streaking her face. They were all beneath him, and he had never wanted more desperately for them to know it. He wanted them to beg for mercy at his hands, apologize to this naive little girl for showing her the horrors of the city, for making her feel helpless.

"What's going on here?"

His voice was so cold he didn't realize it was his at first. He stood in front of them, causal, loose, and deadly. They were all wearing handkerchiefs over their mouths as if that would hide their identity. Ethan wanted them to know he could see that their fucking souls were headed to Hell.

One of them-- they were all faceless blurs now, shades-- pointed his metal bat at Ethan, "Fuck off, dipshit. It ain't your business!"

Bianca looked at him. He wondered if she recognized him with his hood down, "Help him." She begged, "Please."

"Hey, you shut up!" The boy holding her yanked her hair, and she yelped.

He wondered if his smile terrified her more than the thugs beating the crud from her cousin.

He didn't remember moving, but he remembered the sound his knife made when he wrenched it from the one boys back. His foot plunged into the stomach of the other one. They both fell to the ground in less than a second. One vomiting, one struggling to breath.

He turned to face the last one, the one holding Bianca, the one he was wanted to see in Hell so badly his own skin felt flushed with excitement. The air was tense, Ethan waited for his brain to catch up with what had occurred. His blade was wet, something warm and sticky dripping off the handle and twisting around his wrist.

Such a familiar feeling. A feeling of victory and defeat. Blood paid a better currency than most money, it bought you things green paper or a credit card couldn't. It made the mortals know fear.

Of him.

He knew they were both there, other either side of him. He felt them both hovering over his shoulders, with breaths of icy cold and flaming heat. Of promises made into lies and lies that told the truth.

"Pick a Side," They both whispered.

The boy dropped her, shock over riding his brain. Bianca hit the asphalt like a ragdoll, but she scrambled back up and scraped her knees in her desperate movements to get to her cousin. The other boy whimpered, maybe shouted a curse or two. He left running like a dog with his tail between his legs.

Ethan didn't move.

The one that he had stabbed spit up blood. The other one grabbed his bat in a his grip and let out a growl. Ethan shot him a single glare and he bolted the other direction.

"Hmph," A voice said, quietly, mournfully. Ethan's blood turned to ice in his veins, "Next time then, Nakamura. Chow."

Ethan glared at the brick wall, before flinging away his knife in disgust. His hand was covered in mortal blood, red that he would see every time he closed his eyes.

"Percy!" Bianca sobbed, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

The other boy coughed. Something was definitely wrong in his chest. "S'ok B, I'm fine!"

"Fuck Everything," Ethan spit. He shoved Bianca to the side and grabbed his collar, lifting him to a standing position. "Can you stand?" Percy's knees caved at the thought. Ethan caught him before he face planted on the asphalt. "Carried it is." He slung the other boy's arm over his shoulder and wrapped the other on his side careful of the ribs. If he was lucky then the breaks would be simple, and the lungs wouldn't be fractured, and Percy wouldn't be dead come morning somehow.

Ethan glanced back at Bianca who was furiously sniffling, "Are you coming?" He snapped. She nodded fast, like she had last night, well aware of thin ice.

(Ethan mentally begged Zoe to leave him alone. He didn't care what happened to either of them; just let him live in peace.)

"Get your phone, call your mom or whatever." Ethan told Bianca, glowering at the blank brick wall where he knew her royal righteousness was hovering with a scheming smirk. He would talk to her later, and if he was lucky, they both would survive the night.

"Where are you taking him?" Bianca sniffled again, struggling to wipe away her tears and type in her phone at the same time.

Ethan sighed, "My place."

***

Ethan didn't have a house that was strictly his. He roomed in an apartment that he was sure wasn't winning him any trusts upstairs. When he had first walked in, he'd thought it was ridiculous. A mortal apartment? Really?

The furniture was second rate to even most homeless people, shabby pillows held together by a polyester skin and when that failed, duck tape. The TV had about five stations, most of them in Spanish. When he was really down, he enjoyed watching the subtitles translate certain phrases wrong. The walls were an olive green, with wallpaper peeling drastically in some locations. Ethan never had company so he didn't bother keeping it up-to-date. The kitchen was well stocked, better than when he had first arrived. He might skimp on decorating but he never cut corners on food and Advil.

So sue him.

"Wow," Bianca hummed under her breath when he unlocked the door. Ethan realized he had a regret list a mile long, but somehow he still wished he'd cleaned before Bianca had come in.

"I'm really fine," Percy mumbled.

"Yeah, dipshit," Ethan huffed at him, "and I'm horrible in a knife fight. Now we're both liars."

Ethan deposited him on the couch careful of the boy's chest. Percy winced in pain, taking shallow breaths to compensate.

"Take a deeper breath," Ethan instructed, as he roamed to the kitchen cabinets, "I'm not having you get pneumonia and die. I watch tv on that couch."

"I'll do my best," Percy wheezed something between sarcasm and blind terror that Ethan would make his ghost suffer if he died.

Bianca followed him into the kitchen like a lost puppy. Her eyes were downcast, and she hugged herself tightly as if trying to make herself as small as possible. Ethan snorted at the thought. She was already so short, so small, it was hard to picture her smaller.

Ethan distracted himself with filtering through his cabinets, searching for the materials he needed to make tea. He could feel Bianca watching him, but he ignored it. She didn't make a sound until he had the water boiling in the kettle and was checking the expiration date on his milk (It was today).

"Thank you."

Her voice was soft, like it had been last night, scared and determind, suddenly aware of all the big bad monsters in the world. Ethan kept his back to her, putting the milk away.

"Did you call your mom or whatever?" He asked, "the last thing I want is the police questioning me about kidnapping two kids."

She was quiet. Ethan glanced towards the living area where Percy was staring at a ceiling with one arm wrapped over his chest and face screwed up in pain.

"My mom's dead," Bianca said.

Ethan poured the boiling water into two cups, and grabbed a bottle of honey and two tea bags of something Luke used to like but Ethan hated. They were prepackaged with the little ties that were signature to the Angel tea shops. They were expensive, probably cost more than the entire downtown district, but they had healing powers and he wasn't sure that he would ever find another use for them.

"She died a while ago," Bianca said. "I don't really remember her."

Ethan snorted, "Good. Most moms suck anyway."

She frowned, "Percy's mom doesn't. She's the one that takes care of Nico and I now." She hesitated, "Nico's my brother."

Ethan handed her a cup of tea and went back out to the couch. Percy blinked weakly at him. His breathing sounded like a squirrel stuck in a garbage disposal, but at least he was breathing.

"Drink it." Ethan told him without much ceremony. He left the cup on the coffee table, and glanced back up.

Bianca was watching him again, her brown irises like orbs of solid bronze. She was hold the cup in both hands but she hadn't taken a sip and looked like she would avoid taking one until she left.

"It's not poison," Ethan said lamely. Then he grumbled somewhat defensively, "You watched me make it."

Some part of him was annoyed with them both. They were already in his house, one broken and the other in shock; what was he going to do to them? Mortals.

"Why would I drink something when I don't even know your name?" Bianca snapped at him, her fiery spirit making a four second comeback in the wake of his agitated aura. She buckled as soon as the words were out, which was a disappointment. "Sorry....I'm just.... scared."

Ethan raised an eyebrow, but then he reminded himself he didn't care what she felt. If she was scared of him, there was less chance of her ever bothering him again.

"Whatever," he hummed, "Don't break my shit, drink the tea, get me when your mom comes." He slipped his cigarette pouch from his pocket, and added as an afterthought, "or don't; I don't really care."

(He ignored the strange warm feeling in his chest when he saw her take a sip as he left.)

Outside was a perfect slap in the face when he needed one. The balcony that clung to the fire escape like a hangnail rattled when he threw himself down on it. He shut the window behind him and leaned against the glass.

Cool breezes carried sounds from all over they city up to him in a cascade of sleeplessness. How mortals could be so noisy and still hear nothing was beyond Ethan. He flicked his lighter and watched the little light glow for a moment before he lit up his daily cancer stick.

The taste of ash had long since settled on his tongue, mixed with chemicals and poisons that should eventually kill him if he allowed himself to live that long. With his current mood swings and the startling sight of blue eyes and a devil's grin, Ethan wasn't sure he'd live to see the end of the week. He exhaled a pent up smoke cloud and hesitated before taken another inhale.

"I know you're there." He told the empty air around him. He waited a second to see if she would risk a shimmer, a glow.

She didn't. Ethan found himself disappointed but not surprised. She had always thought herself on another level and being invisible was a perk to the other level.

"I'm not generally nice for no reason." He continued, "so either you're there, or I'm having regrets. One of those is impossible." He hummed, "it's because of Luke, isn't it? Because he was here today and you think he has a chance of turning me."

The stars shined too brightly in the light filled city.

"You're wrong." Ethan told them, "I'm not picking another side. Yours or his, so both of you fucking leave me alone."

If Zoe was impressed she didn't show herself to say it. Not that Ethan expected her too. He was a human, a mortal with no faith and no divine will to connect them. He couldn't see her, but his skin itched with the thought of all the ways she could see him: all the sins that turned his skin a muddy red, his heart a coal black, and his halo a lifeless silver.

Neutral, as if Ethan had ever been anything more in his life. He had picked a side once, almost, not enough to turn him, but enough to break his wings and lose his halo. He picked a side enough to become irrevocably visible to mortal eyes.

"You are weak." Was the thin voice hidden in the ruffle of the wind, the rattle off metal under his shifting weight, the hiss of smoke between his chapped lips.

"You are one to talk, Nightshade." His smile was humorless, "Now go play your game somewhere else, with someone else, and take your demon with you. I'm not your pet project; I'm sure you must have something better to do. Maybe plan a muntany like we did."

His cigarette went flying into free space and he had not thrown it.

"That's just petty, Zoe." He huffed but he knew she was gone, no flutter or sound.

He reached behind him and opened the window with barely a sound. The light was dim and he was strangely hungry.

Strange because he was never hungry, strange because he was visible, strange because being mortal was strange.

He could hear the sounds of Bianca moving through the darkness, her footsteps careful on the carpet. He could make her profile easily; her small frame stood out from his meger decoration, and she was moving, uncertain shuffles, breath nervously short like she was expecting him to jump out and knife her from the darkness.

When he saw what was moving towards his blood froze.

He didn't have time to tell her to stop, the words clutched in his throat like he had swallowed a rock. He moved faster than he meant to, without warning, and shoved her away from the wooden door across from his bedroom. The door he hadn't dared open since that day.

The door he knew hid the secrets of insanity.

"Don't." Was all he managed to get out, startling a yelp from the girl. Just like that they were face to face again, her breath hissing into his cheeks like a heater. How was it possible for someone so small to generate so much heat. Her eyes were wide, shock and fear and some other emotion that definitely didn't make sense-- relief? Whatever. Ethan glanced back at the close wooden door just to make sure it was still closed, still unopened.

"I'm S-sorry!" Bianca stuttered, "I called for you, but you didn't answer--I don't know your name--I didn't mean--"

"Don't--just stop!" Ethan hissed, agitated although he had no right to be. Bianca huffed, brows narrowing with a mirror expression.

"It's not my fault you didn't tell me--"

"Shut up-okay? Just shut up." Ethan ran a hand through his hair, calming his jackrabbit heart, calming his panic over nothing, over emptiness. "What did you need?"

Confusion flashed over her face doused with the shadows of the awful lighting. It occurred to Ethan that they were still rather close, too close. His skin burned from contact with other but he felt no sense of pain here and now. He found the wall to his side, and leaned just to give him a focus. Bianca bit her lip hesitating like she could read every thought in his head, but she couldn't.

"I wanted to say thank you." She managed, "For helping me and my cousin when you didn't have to. Percy's mom came to pick us up and I wanted to...." She frowned as if struggling to find the right words, "....just thanks I guess."

Ethan pretend like his chest wasn't throbbing, and his head wasn't pounding. His mouth was not turned to sandpaper by a girl foot shorter than him and he was most definitely not picking a side. 

"Whatever," He settled on, his lips itching for the rest of the cigarette Zoe had deprived him of, "Get out of my house."

She did, quickly. Glancing back at him only once to check to see if he was real and not an illusion. Ethan stood stalk still while she left, his legs concrete poles and his body part of a living statue. The thrumping of his heart in his throat didn't dull until long after the sounds of his front door closing had faded from echo. He couldn't bring himself to move until he was sure he wouldn't collapse at the first step.

It might have been hours, or minutes; time like hunger had always been abstract to him. He ate what he would, slept when he did, existed when he wasn't doing the other two things.

When he did go to the kitchen to scavenge something, anything to eat, he found both the cups washed and drying in a strainer with the rest of the dishes from making the tea and from the previous days that he had been too lazy to clean.

Ethan downed four painkillers but he still couldn't get the strange melty, hurty feeling from his chest. He went straight to bed and dreamed of anything that wasn't wide brown eyes and scattered freckles.

***

Ethan left his routine for the first time in years the next day. The idea hadn't really bothered him much until he was standing in his own kitchen trying to remember how mortals made eggs. Fuck he never made scrambled eggs?  He never had a reason to make eggs when he strolled the city from morning to night and ate whatever he saw first. He was surprised his eggs weren't already expired, though he tossed the milk out without even looking. He could get milk later.

That was the first time Ethan had spent the entire day home. Doing nothing really. He ate, slept, got really into a Spanish Soap Opera with a famous actress guest staring. For lunch he made a sandwich with turkey and peanut butter just to see what it would taste like (awful) and then made mac and cheese successfully. 

He didn't admit to himself that he didn't want to go outside. He was afraid that maybe, just maybe, he'd run into Bianca again, even if any smart person would stay camped at home after an incident like her cousin's. He didn't like that fate seemed to be throwing them together.

He liked it even less when he doorbell rang at six o'clock and startled him from a crossword puzzle he'd been doing in deep concentration. He paused for a moment just to stare at his door in wonder, tapping his pencil twice on the coffee table. When he finally did get up, the couch whined. He opened the door against his better judgement.

Bianca had cut her hair. 

That was the first thing he had noticed. The long locks now short and scruffy. If she tucked her breasts in a bit more she could have passed for a guy under a heavy sweatshirt. Her freckles were prominent in the hallway light, a memorizing glow that sucked away the words from Ethan's mouth.

"Uh," She said, a blush creeping up her neck and to her face. Her lashes were long, and her eyes darted past him so she could talk to the couch. "Hi."

Ethan wasn't sure what he said. It might have been a curse in ancient Greek or just a bunch of vowel sounds thrown together. Whatever it was, he felt a swell of embarrassment raise the tension between them. "What are you doing?" He dug his fingers in to the door handle until the wood started to creak.

Bianca took a deep breath, gathering all the courage she could amount. "I came to make you dinner."

"What?"

"I'm making you-"

"Why?"

She looked at him like she didn't understand. Ethan knew she could; he knew he had slipped into Latin or Russian.

"Because I want to?" She said it like a question, speaking only to the couch.

"What?"

They stared at each other, this time her eyes carefully aligned with his. It felt a lot like baring his soul to her. All the ugly awfulness that had driven everyone else away, right there displayed his face. He wanted to see her go, just leave. He wasn't a nice person, and he didn't want to be. Nothing she did could change that.

Bianca merely cocked her head, "Are you going to let me in?"

Ethan was still muttering with confusion as he let a total stranger, a common mortal, into his house for the second time. He didn't want her in his house. He didn't want her in his pathetic mortal existence.

He didn't.

She had brought her own supplies to make him fucking dinner. She set her basket --fucking little red hiding hoods basket-- on the counter, along with a half gallon of milk that caused him to raise an eye.

"What?" She asked defensively, "I saw you check yesterday."

"So you're perceptive along with having a death wish." Ethan ran his hand through his hair. Gods she was annoying. He rumaged around the cabinets behind her looking at nothing, until he found where he left his pain killers. He let the cabinet slam shut, and Bianca flinched.

He drowned the empty satisfaction with the meds.

He watched her work without words, arms crossed, and a furrowed brow. She moved around the kitchen like she owned it, like she was the master chef, simulatiously chopping and stirring and checking the oven. She was a flurry of movements, moving with ease that came from the act of creation. If Ethan was one for being impressed, he might have made a comment on it.

"Italian dinners are the only thing I'm actually good at." She said modestly. Ethan doubted that.

"You're good at getting into bad situations." He pointed out with a biting tone. She pouted into a pot of boiling water and noddles that she was stirring.

"You seem to be good at getting me out of them." She countered, almost like a challenge.

"Just because I help you and your demented cousin once--"

"No!" Bianca flicked off the oven burner (which Ethan could honestly say he didn't know how she turned on) "Before that, you helped Percy and I find our way home, you helped us in the alley, I don't know what you did to that tea but whatever it was it pratically fully healed Percy! He was standing this morning and his bruises were completely gone!"

Ethan rolled his eyes, manuevering out of her way so she could pour the noodles into a strainer. The gust of steam filled the kitchen with a warm heat. Though Bianca looked passionate and open, Ethan felt boxed in and restless stanidng there in the kitchen while she worked. What was he supposed to say? The tea was magic? He hadn't helped her of his own free will? There were angels and devils that were flaoting over his shoulders because he wasn't entirely human?

"I don't like your hair short," he said instead.

"I don't like your smoking habit." She replied snappily, "Pull that out of the oven, will you?"

If the corners of Ethan's mouth flickered upwards for a moment, Ethan would have been the last one to admit it. He grabbed a barely used pot holder from the counter and opened the over while she did somthing with tomato sauce behind him.

"Is your roommate joining us?"

Ethan nearly dropped the pan, "Who?" The warm and cozy feeling of the kitchen suddenly felt far too hot for him-- it felt like fire licking his limbs and the hiss of the chicken in the pan before him sounded like laughter.

Bainca waved a spatula around half heartedly, "You stopped me from going into thier room? Is it a girl? Oh god is it your girlfriend? This'll be weird."

Ethan's chest felt like a balloon, swelling and swelling with horrible negative emotions while memories stacked against the wall he'd built in his head.

"I don't have a roommate anymore." He said finally, his voice cold and hard.

"Did they move out?"

Ethan snorted, "Yeah, moved out of life. One way pass straight to motherfucking hell."

Bianca nodded like she could hear the pain in his voice too, understand the anger and fustration and the longing that was undetectable even to himself.

He chanced a glance in her direction, wondering why she took it in such good graces. Why was she still here? Why wasn't she afraid of him like he was sometimes?

He shifted across the kitchen to reach the cabinet next to her. She was tossing noodles in sauce staring at nothing. He recognized the tension in her shoulders when he walked over, but when he opened the wooden cabinet she seemed to relax. He pulled out two plates, decorated with garden ivy that he had liked at one point before the world seemed to implode on him.

"My brother tried to kill himself." Bainca said. Then her voice lower, "It was my fault."

Ethan snorted, though it was impossibly rude, but he never claimed to be a nice mannered human. "Bullshit." He stalked over to where he kept the glasses, and then the drawer where he kept silverware. "You're too impossible for it to be your fault. Plus mortals are jackasses and fucktards. If he tried to kill himself it was because he wanted to take the easy way out of things."

"Is everything that comes out of your mouth always an insult against everyone?" She spit, "Or are you just a spiteful, insenitive jackass?"

"If you're so worried about him, why are you here?" Ethan took the forks and cups and plates in his hands moving them onto the coffee table in the other room, because he didn't have a real table. Bianca made a sound of complete anger, and threw her rubber spatuala into the sink with more force than necessary.

"I don't know!" she shouted. Ethan vaguely wondered if the landlord would bother checking up on them if he heard the female shouting. "I don't know why I am here! I don't know why I keep running into you. I hate everything about you!"

Ethan flinched at the force of her words. He wasn't prepared for her response to sting as much as it did, he wasn't prepared for her to turn her carefully culivated english into a knife and thrust it into his chest. He wasn't prepared to be standing just a couple feet away, and have his mind repeatedly bombarded with the thoughts Fuck she's beautiful, fuck she's passionate, fuck, fuck, fuck.

"I've got Red wine in the cabinet behind you." He waved flippantly.

She growled out something about him being an idiot, a bastard and the son of a bitch in Italian. Ethan couldn't correct her on any of it, so merely picked up his forgotten crossword puzzle and tossed it on top of his TV.

"I hate you." Bianca said as she stormed into the room, with the bottle.

Ethan uncorked it with a smile that was more real than he was.

***

Ethan walked her home after they ate. They had managed only a forth of the bottle between the two of them, before Ethan put it away. Bianca was as good of a cook as she claimed, and pretending to be unimpressed at it was past even Ethan's capabilites, as frustrating as it was to admit.

They traded insults like trading compliments, bickering, and arguing and laughing. Ethan had never known he could smile so much, let alone actually laugh. But once it got out of his mouth and he saw Bianca's eyes light up, he found himself doing it more frequently.

"It's P-E-R-F-E-C-T." Bianca waved her fork, "not P-R-E! Gods, even my brother can spell better than you!"

"Shut up!" Ethan snatched the crossword back, "No one asked you to correct my spelling!"

"I've never heard you ask for anything, jerk."

"Princess."

She pouted, tugging her jacket tighter around her. Tehy were walking rather close; if their arms had been swinging they would have bumped hands and brushed skin. Ethan held his crossword between them, reading the clues, and arguing over ideas that could answer them, though they were both really bad at it. In the street lights, Bianca walked like she had no fears, head held high, and small smile reserved just for him as he guided her through the dismal city.

Maybe it was looking at her in the halo of the orange light, maybe it was because Zoe was lurking nearby like a stalker, or maybe simply because they had both run out of something to talk about.

"Ethan," He said, his stomach flipping unexpectedly.

"Ethan?" She repeated, "Who's that?"

"Me," He shrugged. As if it didn't matter, because it didn't and she had no right to smile at him like that.

"Ethan...Ethan..." She hummed, "I don't like it."

"You are judgemental as fuck, Bianca." He sneered, "Remind me why I didn't run you through with my knife two nights ago?"

"Hmmm, my charm?" She suggested.

"Fuck your charm," He grumbled.

Her laugh seemed to light up the whole night. It was something dangerous. Ethan wondered if she knew how much of a weapon that was. His heart did a flip.

Percy's mom had an apartment on the third floor. Ethan hadn't meant to walk her into the building, and certainly not up to her floor. He felt mostly awkward standing outside her door.

"Does your family know where you were tonight?" He asked, "Or am I gonna get arrested the second you open the door?"

"What are you worried about your clean criminal record?" She shot him an amused look but it dissolved when she noticed him glaring down the hall at nothing.

If she knew even a part of his criminal record, even Bianca with her lack of common sense and trusting nature would have enough sense to stay away from him. Zoe wouldn't be able to send her to him anymore and he could move on with his neutral existence until the day he died.

"Don't worry," Bianca shurgged, "I told them I was going to hang with a friend, so I wasn't lying."

Ethan rolled his eyes, "Do you even know the definition of a friend, Princess? Because, get this, we aren't."

"We could be."

Ethan shook his head and turned away, "Don't show up at my apartment again. It's weird."

"Goodnight, Ethan."

Ethan made it to the stair case and down two floors before he had to stop and clutch his chest. His knees felt weak and his stomach heavy, the taste of red wine on his tongue which he had to bite to keep the goddamn smile off his face.

He fumbled around for a cigarette and his lighter, stumbling out into the nightlife. He managed to fish the latter from his pockets, flicking the sliver lid up and barely giving a thought as he lit the small pocket flame.

Then he remembered Bianca didn't like smoking.

He stared at the light, huffed once, and extingushed the flame.

***

"We are not friends." Ethan told Bianca, "Damnit, why do we keep meeting?"

"It's like external forces are throwing us at each other."

Ethan might have found it funny if it probably wasn't true. He glared at the sky as if he would see Zoe dancing along the morning rays breaking the grey sky.

***

"I didn't know you liked anything."

"That's rude." Ethan pointed his chop sticks at her, "But mostly true."

"What's your fortune say?"

"'You will run into that dumb girl again tomorrow at a steakhouse.' I think this is rigged."

She hummed pleasantly, "You should avoid steakhouses then. What about....a pizza place?"

***

"Don't you get tired of running into me?"

"Not really."

***

Ethan paid for their movie tickets, but Bianca insisted she get the popcorn.

***

"Bianca talks about you a lot." Was the only thing Nico Di Angelo said to Ethan before he went back down the hall to the room he shared with Percy.

"Don't mind him." Percy told Ethan with a brilliant smile, "Honestly he's just as bad with his boyfriend. I think you're good for her."

It was the first time Ethan thought he'd ever been called good for anything.

***
"Tick tock, devil's advocate." Zoe said smuggly from her perch on the fire escape.

"That's not really an angelic expression, now is is it Nightshade?" Luke responded, his smile just as smug. "You think putting them together will save him? You really are the stupidest Angel out there."

"You won't away him, Luke," Zoe said firmly, "I made sure it."

"No," Luke turned his cold blue eyes to the window inside where the two mortals sat together laughing, "You made sure he'd fall straight to Hell."

***

"What do you think about angels?" Bianca yawned, her head on his shoulder as they laid on his couch. They were watching a crappy comedy and throwing popcorn at the actors faces.

Ethan knew he went too still when she shifted to look at him with her dark brown eyes. Her hair was slowly growing back, leaving it at an awkward in-between stage where it wasn't long enough to pull into a ponytail but long enough to be annoying. (Half of their conversations had been about how annoying her hair was.)

"I think they're rather self righteous." Ethan said, careful of his words. "Why?"

"I don't know." She sighed, "I don't think they exist."

Ethan snorted, "I wish."

She sat up, and Ethan realized just how warm she had been. His arm prickled with the rush with cool air. "Do you believe in them?"

"I love this part." Ethan motioned to the tv, chewing on a popcorn kernel. He should have known she wasn't so daily distracted. Bianca bounced on her seat.

"Ethan!" She whined, "Come on tell me."

He sent a glare her way, but by now she was use to them, read them like a book. She nudged him, "You know you wanna."

"I really don't want to talk about this."

"Well I do."

"I think I regret not stabbing you."

"This is more interesting than your dumb movie, Ethan!" She nudged him again, "I'll make you dinner again."

Finally he hissed out a breath, "I was one." He turned back to the movie, "Can we get back to the movie now?"

She was quite for a moment, before she pursed her lips. "Dick."

Ethan threw his bowl of popcorn on the table.

"What do you want me to say?" He snapped, "Angels are great? Praised be them? All they are, are stubborn idiots so afraid of change, of difference that they'd rather stand by a God who let's children die on the street from gangs, from starvation. They'd rather be kept in the dark from the "grand master plan" and accept that death happens! And when someone, anyone questions it, angels are quick to silence them, with flaming swords and unjust trials."

He stood up, annoyed, and knowing that if he let her talk her words would come out as a mirrored emotion. "I'm going to go smoke a cigarette and when I come back, we're dropping the conversation."

She glared posion at his back until he slammed his own front door closed. His fists were white knuckled, and he had to pry his fingers apart just to open his box.  He had already lit it by the time, he had made it the roof staircase.

The sun was setting when he got up there. Which meant that they only had an hour at most before Bianca was demanded home by her sickening nice caretaker. Which meant that if he let it, that argument would be the last time they talked, ever.

Certainly Zoe would get the hint this time, with his outburst. His words were bound to ruffle her feathers and etch a target into his back for her divine arrows. Bianca was just as likely to let this conversation go as she was to marry Percy of her own free will, especailly now that she had seen it had put such a rise on him.

Ethan shouldn't have let it get to him.

He scowled at the smoke exhaling from his own lips. Since when did he admit it was his own fault? He had never felt that before, never taken the blame. He never had a regret before.

Is that what Bianca was? A Regret? That mystical thing all the angels whispered he should have but didn't?

"Careful you might hurt yourself, thinking so hard up here Nakamura."

Ethan froze at the sound of the voice, at the teasing laugh that came with it. His cigarette dropped between his fingers as his eyes darted around, desperate for a glimpse of the enitity he need to back away from.

"What, no Hello for your old friend?" Ethan whirled around to find him standing right there, barely a foot away, dressed in black jeans and a red t shirt that read 'Hell is where the fun is'.

Ethan scrambled back until the back of his knees hit the concrete wall surrounding the roof. His heart leapt to his throat as he tried to block out the crashing tsunami of impulses that came with his presense, the lapse in judgement that ate away his control, the will to do wrong that led to inreversible consquences.

Luke Castellan, the Devil's advocate, stood not three feet away, were a smile medicated with unadulterated evil. His eyes were crisp with violent emotions, his blond hair glistened ornage in the sunset like the fires of hell.

"What are you doing here?!" Ethan demanded, "You were banished!"

"Well," Luke spoke with the tongue of a reasonible man, a liar from heart, "It is my apartment and I heard you got a girlfriend. I had to check to make sure you weren't doing anything nasty on my bed."

Ethan felt the urge to do something incredibly wrong on Luke's bed. He wanted to break down the door he kept closed for so long, he wanted to walk inside and tear apart everything that Luke had left there, he wanted to wipe that stupid smile off the bastards face. He could easily palm his new knife, one Bianca had found him, and drive it into Luke's chest because he dared come here, where Ethan was, where Bianca might be, because the devil brought nothing but blood and horror and bad descions in his wake.

He longed to rip Luke's heart out and shove it down Zoe's throat.

"No." He said through gritted teeth. He pressed his hands to his templed, "I'm stronger than that. I'm stronger than you were."

Luke laughed, "Not by a long shot, Nakamura. But I hear it's good to hope for the best things. Do you hope one day you and her can be a thing? Do you really think the angels will let you find happiness after what you did?"

"What you did!" Ethan shouted, "Just because I didn't try to stop you--"

"Because you agreed with me. Because we were right. You were the only one of us that hasn't joined yet, Ethan. My feelings are beginning to be hurt."

"Get over it!" Ethan snarled, hunting his back pocket for the knife he should have started the conversation with, "I didn't start off trying to kill God!I never meant to go that far. That was all you!"

Luke clicked his tongue in a disappointed manner.

"I'll tell you the same thing I told Nightshade! Fuck the hell off! I'm not being swayed by either of you! Not ever again!"

Luke's grin was sharper than Ethan's knife, "I'm not here to sway you Ethan. Not yet." He stretched his arms wide, "I'm going to make you miserable first."

Ethan had just enough time to be confused before he heard the scream. Bianca's scream, which was so perfectly seared into his mind from that day he found her and her cousin in the alley. Ethan cursed, flushed with fury and anger at himself. He turned on Luke, but the shadow of the man was gone, leaving nothing but ghost laughter and the burning scent of sulfur.

Ethan rushed down the stairs, his body numb, and his heart pounding. He struggled to unlock the door-- Bianca must have locked it after him when he took his keys. He forgot how strong Luke's sway was, especailly when he appeared to mortal eye.

Every feeling that Ethan had been prepared for, the urges that he had withheld against, Bianca had been subjected to without warning.

And they started with going in the room of a monster.

The movie was rolling end credits, but Ethan barely paused. He jumped the couch, and raced down the hall where his room faced Luke's former one. The door was open.

There was blood on the carpet, but when he blinked it was gone. Like an illusion, like a lie. Like Luke himself. Ethan tumbled into the baren, white walled room, forcing himself to see the other world, the real room Luke kept: The walls splattered with dripping red paint, the lights kept only by a series of candles arranged in a Satanic pentagram on the ground. The heat was unbarely, the ceiling oozed a black liquid, the ground was covered the jagged edges of broken blades. Directly across from him were the worst sights: the sights that could drive anyone mad. Pined up on the wall, like part of a butterfly collection were wings whiter than any real color. They glowed even now after having been seperated from their angel.

Ethan knew those wings.

They were his.

Bianca knelt in the middle of it, all of it. Her head tilted back and her eyes flickering. Ethan didn't know what she was seeing: what she had expected to find or what was actaully there or what she had hoped to find.

"Bianca!" He yelled, "Bianca!" He threw himself in front of her, grabbing her head gently, "Look at me!"

She was crying. Her hands dug into his arms but she was only staring at his wings. He could feel her losing her grip on sanity, her body jerked, her brown irises were losing color and melting into a horrible black abyss.

"Look at me, Bianca." He begged, "Please!"

He dragged her out of the room, through force of his will alone. He stumbled them both into the wall, but he was more concered with the way she suddenly seemed to loose all the strength in her body. Bianca dropped to the floor like a puppet with cut strings.

Angels and Devils were not something mortals were made to see. They were either side of the line that Mortals walked on. Insanity was a common side effect of seeing too much. Losing your wings was a common side effect of starting at munity against God.

Ethan had never prayed for a moment in his life: most of it was spent as an angel, unappericated, and unloved. The other part was as a mortal too angry, to aware of the world above him, that he discarded all attempts at religion.

He prayed now to anyone who would listen.

He didn't want to lose Bianca.

He didn't want to stop bickering with her, to stop tugging her locks of hair, to never feel her warmth by his side, or hear her laugh at stupid things he did. He didn't want to admit that she had grown on him like a weed, an ivy that twisted around a tree trunk again and again and again, until it's grip was so tight, Ethan didn't think he could go on without it there.

This is what Zoe had done. She had made him dependent. Vulnerable.

He thought it would be okay as long as Bianca Di Angelo was safe. Even if she never talked to him again, even if she dispeared off the face of the earth, even if she dragged his knife from his pocket and sliced him apart.

Her eyes focused on him so suddenly he nearly cried. "...Ethan?"

He hugged her, burrying his head in her shoulder, and knowing that might be the last time he got to touch her.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I'm sorry."

And Ethan who had never known how to be grateful in his entire life, thanked Zoe in a small whisper. The air shimmered to his left, and the feeling of comforting warmth, left them in the hallway.

***

"You lost."

Luke merely smirked.

***

Ethan didn't see her for a week after the incident. He stayed in his house and chain smoked a cigarette pack out the fire escape window until he felt his lungs exploding. Whatever eating habit he had created disapeared. Hunger, like Time, was incomprehenisble to him.

Ethan felt empty.

Which meant that at one point he had felt full.

Numbness spread across his body, with ease as he stared into the night. He couldn't hear anything but his own thoughts, his own miseries. Zoe hadn't visited him again, and neither had Luke. Either they were both too busy or they were finished with their pet project: they had broke the toy they had been fighting over.

(Ethan was the toy.)

(He was broken.)

He was also out of cigarettes because he stopped buying when Bianca had first shown up. His control and awareness had made fighting the addiction far easier than most mortals did, but now that he knew she was never going to dare step foot in his house again, he felt the craving carve into his lungs.

What was he to do? What had he ever planned on doing?

He stared into the open space, wondering what it would be like to fly without wings on his back.

"Ethan," A voice behind him called.

He spun so fast he hit his head on the window frame. With a curse and a bit more scrambling he looked up to see her standing there, impossibly. But then again Bianca had always been known to do the impossible.

"Oh great I'm hallucinating." Ethan laughed pathetically hollow.

"Sorry, you didn't answer when I knocked, so let myself in. Geez, I leave for a week and you forget how to shower." She said with a sad smile. "What am I going to do with you?"

"We have got to...." He struggled to erase the strain in his voice, "We've got to work on your self preservation skills."

"I don't need self preservation." She replied, stepping forward, "I've got you."

"That is awfully dangerous thing to say."

She didn't take it back.

***

He told her everything he knew about Angels. She told him everything she knew about Lung Cancer.

Her hair was long enough to put in a pony tail, but she kept it down so he could mess with it while they watched TV.

***

"So Fallen, huh?"

"Yep."

"Can I say you've fallen for me?"

"I hate you."

"Well, as long as you don't try to kill anyone else, I guess we're okay."

"I fucking hate your jokes, Princess."

"Get used to them. We're officially the bestest of friends."

Ethan groaned.

***

It happened that they were walking down the street at night. Bianca like she had no fear, head held high, and a smile on her face. Her hand was tucked neatly into Ethan's as she walked guiding them forward. Her hair was to her shoulders now, braided back and it swung in a hypnotizing manner.

Ethan listened to her talk with very little actual input. He liked hearing her talk and talk. She made even the boringest things interesting. Her hand was warm too, like his own little hand warmer. His eyes watched for threats but he was relaxed more than he had been ever before in his life.

"Percy met this girl the other day," Bianca told him, "Said she was the smartest person he'd ever met. Should I be offended? Like I thought I was pretty smart, but nooooo, Percy just goes on and on about Annabeth and her smarts and her curly hair, and her grey eyes." She gagged, "Please tell me I wasn't like this with you."

"Of course not." Ethan said, "You had a death wish, not a romatic interest."

Bianca raised their clasped hands, "Excuse you, I'm still living aren't I? Someone out there must be looking out for us."

"I...." Ethan hesitated, glancing towards the sky, "Maybe, but wouldn't count "

It happened that Bianca stepped into the road first, when the whole world seemed to flicker. Ethan's eyes caught the sight down the street block, a bright red shirt, and a smirk that belonged in Hell.

It happened that Talos Olympia had not taken his car to the shop in too long. That the car was old, and the breaks still worn and never replaced.

It happened that Luke Castellan smiled when Ethan screamed.

He wasn't fast enough-- he'd been trailing too far behind thier interlocked fingers-- her pace had been three steps too much faster than his. Their hands not been held tightly enough, and they slipped through when Bianca was thrown away by a four thousand pound metal machine going twenty miles over the speed limit.

Ethan wasn't sure what happened to himself. His body had landed somewhere, with road burn crisscrossing his arms and back and legs. His right arm wasn't moving on his command and the entire world moved like someone had replaced the skyscrapers with jello lookalikes.

Ethan didn't care.

He cursed, and screamed and shouted. He knew somewhere he had started crying. But he knew when he knelt next to the mess that had been the most beautiful girl on earth, no divine intervention could bring her back.

The neck wasn't supposed to twist that way and blood didn't naturally come from those places. Ethan couldn't even see the light in her eyes, the laughter in her face.

She had disappeared.

Something like Hate bubbled in his stomach. He could distantly hear the sounds of sirens and people yelling but when he looked up, all he saw was the boy with his phone out, an ugly complextion that reminded Ethan far too much of a shelled out Luke.

He saw that the boy was video taping the entire thing, standing there without moving to help either of them. Ethan saw that the boy wore an expression surprise, like this was something that would make him famous, a greedy look, that made Ethan churn with violence.

It happened that Ethan was just as good with a knife in his left hand as he was with it in his right. That screams are so much more satisfying when they aren't your own. That Ethan remembered what it was like to be invisible, right there on a public sidewalk stuck between his girlfriend and a stranger and a knife in his hand.

It felt like being dropped in the Arctic ocean, his limbs flushed with a cold so sharp, so painful, he could only stand there and TA it. His lungs burned, his head throbbed, his back wretched with agony that tore apart the scarred area on his shoulder blades. Something twisted curled in his stomach, stretching across his numbed limbs, reaching into the deepest part of his blood red soul.

"Do you see now, Nightshade?" Luke said, placing an arm over Ethan's shoulders as new black wings stretched themsleves out among the panicking playthings. Zoe glared at him from where she knelt next to the carnage that had been Bianca, from where she had been trying to ease the pain of passing with a hatred for the man before her.

"The thing about Mortals," Ethan said with a sick smile that was nine-tenths obviously fake and one-tenth a threat-- something that had been his once upon a time but now belonged to an undeniable evil, "is that they are so easily influenced by things they can't see."

Standing in the sidewalk, right outside a boreded up mom-and-pop store where the windows had been covered with funnies from newspapers of weeks ago, Ethan spread his black wings and took to the sky with a wave of nothing but fear and bloodshed in his wake.