In Fahllyn's Shadow

"Then why?" He snapped at her, green eyes flashing with anger that hid what he was really feeling. She wanted to reach out to him, to tell him that she'd changed her mind. That in the end everything would be okay, but it wouldn't be and she knew the damage lying now would do. IT would only get worse the longer she waited.

"I..." I what? I'm sorry? If she were him, and had the balls to say that, she would have made him regret daring to be so condescending. Her back was pressed to aged brick, and he stood like a wall before her. Better then six feet of lean muscle, topped with a mane of rowan red hair. "...I'm not in love with you." Better to be honest, she told herself, in an vain attempt to bolster her resolve and not wilt under the touch of emerald fire that licked at the outer corner of his eyes in a manifestation of his outrage.

"Your either a liar or a very good actress." He breathed, swallowing his anger he stepped closer to her, his bare chest radiating heat as the distance between them diminishing until all it would have taken to bridge the gap was a deep breath. "I know your body, I always have. I know right where you live and breath." His fingers slid along her cheek, cupping it with a tenderness that was alien to him, unless they were having this conversation. This wasn't the first time. "You've loved me from the moment we met." There was an arrogance to his tone, he was so confident. So wrong.

Lids lowered, and for a moment she leaned into his touch. She ached for him, still after all these months. He knew it, it was written across the satisfied smirk as he leaned ever closer, for a kiss. Her hands were light as they slid up his chest, the gentle caress banished under the sudden application of force as she cast him away from her. Calling on her strength to push him back a good five feet. "It's not enough! Your not enough!" Her lips snapped closed in the silence that followed, she hadn't meant to say it. He was no mortal, hell Ben couldn't even be considered a good guy. But he had a heart, and she'd just driven a knife through it. Good. The little voice in the back of her head whispered to her. Break it clean, make sure he doesn't return.

"Remember that..." He spit in her direction, rising beautifully to the occasion. Just like she'd known he would. "...When you lay down some night soon, and remember how cold your precious solitude really is." Cast a hand at her, dismissing her presence as he turned on his heel. Collecting his few possessions took barely a full minute, and when he walked out he didn't bother closing the door behind him. Leaving her in promised seclusion. The fading warmth where he had touched her cheek was a cruel reminder of everything she had just sent away.

Verona stood silently and watched him go. In her planning this moment had been so easy. His touch forgotten by tomorrow. She had spoken the lie to herself so often inside her head, that she'd believed it. It was going to take more then one tomorrow, but far fewer then it should have. It would have been easier if she could have hated him, but she didn't. Couldn't.

It was deserved she supposed, in a way. It always happened like this. A few months of fire, that eventually burned away to ash. She was well aware the 'honeymoon' phase only lasted so long, then it was either commit or bail. It wasn't like she had asked for this, but it never failed. One stupid morning, no different then any other, she would look up at them, and feel nothing. Look at them and find herself left with a landscape painted in grey.

Ben had been one more in a long line of handsome faces, and broken souls. Each with their own story. Noah had been a musician, Blake was a homicide detective, Christian a tattoo artist with dreams of becoming a stuntman, Felix the painter, Jeremy the writer, James from the rough side of town, and then there was Ben. Who had come along and the dance had started all over again, and here she'd been hoping seven would be her lucky number.

Whatever happened to third times the charm?

She's given up on humans years ago. Noah had been enough to show her how fragile they could be. Blake was a vampire, Christan a member of the ever delicious Cult of Ecstasy. It had trailed down hill from there, her choice for lovers left the proverbial line of acceptable far behind and ventured into the darkness beyond. She'd roamed from Sidhe, to sluagh , skipped merrily from mage to shifter until her careless steps placed her square into Ben's path. There had been something scrumptious about falling into bed with one of her own kind. He had understood things about her that she hadn't so much as glanced at in the past. He'd taught her her tricks, turned her into a prodigy, and in return, as thanks, she'd cast him to the wind.

Even she thought it a little bit cold. They all had cursed her for it, but it still kept ending the same.

----

Time passed, several months of nights stained with neon colors. Sunset to sunrise remembered as little more then a passing haze of hands and bodies. The drugs helped, but left the taste of Fahllyn's grit on her tongue. It was so easy to dive into oblivion, but eventually, no matter how tightly she was clinging to the bottom, everyone had to come up for air.

Lifting her head from the pillow she blinked wearily around at the room, turned back into a pumpkin in the light of morning. The black candles, atop tall rusted silver stands, had burned themselves away into puddles. The wall paper now a dingy grey was listless, like it had simply given up the fight. Large patches missing, leaving drywall and wood paneling open like a wound to any that cared to look. The wooden flooring was scratched, and the bed seemed much smaller then it had the night before. Imagine her surprise when she remembered suddenly that she was in one of her crash spaces.

What had she been thinking?

Far from home, with the rough musical accompaniment of Five Finger Death punch rattled out at her from the large speakers against the far wall. 'All the places I've been and things I've seen. A million stories that made up a million shattered dreams. The faces of people I'll never see again, And I can't seem to find my way home.' Fate was a real motherfucker sometimes. After banishing the stranger in her bed from her apartment, she spent a good hour under the spout in her shower. Ignoring the fact that there was no shower curtain, and the hot water seemed to come and go in no particular order. However clean was clean, and redressed she found herself standing in the center of her loft. Wide awake with nowhere to be.

Alone again. She could almost hear Ben's voice mockingly asking the question. Whispering it in a breath against her ear.

He was long gone, but occasionally he manifested as the small deceitful voice in the back of her mind. Despite the fading bruises, proof of her escapades the previous night, she felt deeply unsatisfied. The feeling had been building up, and nothing seemed to be enough to appease it. She wanted to strike out, to scream... Something. Anything. To make the world start spinning again.

Maybe she had died at some point, maybe this was hell. It certainly didn't feel far off.

Well that wasn't true, she knew what might do it. But she was unwilling to bend to his law. Better to die on her feet, then live on her knees. It would just mean his judgement was sound, and she was more aware then most how desperately far from that it was. 'It's not fair' might sound childish to everyone else, but the punishment laid on her for sins of the past was about as unfair as it got. So far as she was concerned, she had every right to clutch so tightly onto her rage.

Then again, she would wryly admit in the same breath that no excuse was really enough to forgive her recent habits. She'd never claimed she wasn't a little bit of a hypocrite.

An immunity to disease made her preferred social community less dangerous for her then it was for most. That too, probably wasn't fair. Did it make it worse that she always took the time to consider how bad something was for her, then went ahead and did it anyway? Perhaps even because of the taboo attached to it? Breaking social stigmas had become a favorite past-time of hers.

With a lack of anything else to do, she cleaned her place up. Did the laundry, washed the dishes, made the bed. She even repainted the walls, and replaced the candles, this time choosing deep blue instead of black. The menial tasks took up most of her day, and it was nearly seven by the time she flopped down into her armchair and lit up a bowl.

The green helped, but not enough. She was halfway through it, when she realized suddenly that her problem was that she was working with a safety net. No matter how much trouble she got herself into, there was always someone to pull her back out of the mud. But there was nothing to do about that. Her families influence was worldwide. Hell, it even crossed into other planes. It was like being lo-jacked, always locked on this side of the safety glass.

What she needed was an out, a place she could go that they couldn't get to her, a place where she could make a difference. Where the worlds problems weren't already effectively being sorted out by a thousand meticulous hands. Was it possible for the world to have too many hero's? Chuckling dryly at the thought she attempted to dismiss the idea as ludicrous, there was no place far enough. No place out of reach. She was lying to herself again if she believed otherwise.

The bowl was finished, and set aside as she got to her feet. Her attention was turned toward changing, and heading back out into the city. Perhaps an unexpected opportunity would present itself.

Yea, and maybe Hell would freeze over, and God would stop being such a hard ass.

Oh if he wasn't a looker. Chin length hair the shade of melted chocolate that seemed to hang and fall on it's own time to frame features which were saved from feminine beauty by the perfect line of his jaw that radiated sheer force and strength. Body's weight was carried with an easy fluidity that seemed lanky at first, skin a pale marble unless you were in just the right light. Then out came the shimmer of tawny flesh reminiscent of some giant dessert cat. Not that he was a shifter by any means, far from it honestly.

Honesty. Such a funny word that one. It wasn't that he purposely lied. Or that he went into a situation with the intentions of being deceitful, it just kind of ended up happening that way. Also if you looked at it, there was the stigma that came along with being what he was. That much he couldn't blame anyone for either. Not even his once Creator, his one time Father. Eyes a shade of ink on midnight weren't bored so much as they were empty. Things had stopped holding much interest, if any long enough ago that these days he did what he needed to for pure and simple survival. The rest he left for the new ones that still felt the need to prove themselves.

Streets were like ash beneath his feet, bare digits tugging at the ground with each step he took. The multitudes around him went about their usual business, immune to his presence, unaware of how close he passed to some of them. A few would pause in conversation,a hand here or there halting their normal actions to make a sign warding off the evil eye though even they weren't exactly sure why they did so before returning to their regularly scheduled life. As if that would even do them any good. There was a time when it would have angered him, now it was merely the same old, same old shtick. The effort wasn't made, the desire simply not present unless they were one of the powerful ones, their minds so very vulnerable to his infiltration. Even those were carefully selected through. The worst and best sorted into separate boxes, before the potential candidates were kept, the rest cast about like chaff to the wind.

It wasn't them that he was out here for now though. The one that he'd been watching since his protege had returned to him was growing increasingly dull. Boring to the point of being dead. It would somehow be his fault if she faded while in one of his districts and good as he was, skilled enough to find a way to survive most definitely, he still held enough common sense to NOT want to deal with her parents when they were in a piss off. The Angelic Outcast who had rewritten Heavenly mandate, and her consort, or husband depending upon which terminology your pretty little mind liked best. An Angel of Death whose name he had better things to waste his time on than actually saying, they and their merry band would hunt him down like a rat.

The girl needed a break though. Demon or not. Fallen from the spires of the ascended or not, even he winced at the string of bad luck that girl was running on. So was his purpose for being out and about tonight. Granted the Faith gauge was running a bit on low, the last bargain he'd struck long enough ago. Oh what a tasty one that had been though. Even now he could remember the veritable taste of that deal sliding and slipping over his tongue. Unwrapping a piece of candy and popping the sugary sweet confection into his mouth, he knew it was a good thing his body didn't rot from things like it the way a Mortal's would. Otherwise his pearly whites would have fallen out Eons ago.

He was slipping into her humble then, the scents of mundane, human chores filling the loft. Fingers brushed a plate here, a piece of unfolded laundry there. Nostrils quirked at the smell of paint, not one he had even been fond of before his gaze would turn to his reason for being out tonight. Even as she moved out of her chosen seat, the nimbus of weed scented smoke still clinging to her and the area itself, he merely watched. She was definitely a looker, though most of their kind were, and when you added her genetics into the mixing pot, it was kind of impossible not to be. Even if she didn't have anything else going for her, she had that much.

Taking her chair once she had evacuated it, he lifted the bowl and sniffed at the edge of it. At least she had good taste in Green, that much was a definite. Shifting it from hand to hand, much like one who was playing the child's game, "Hot Potato", it kept his hands from being idle as he looked at her more closely. He had an offer to make her, had actually planned it's wording while walking. If anyone could survive this it would be her. It was a fond hope that she did because if not and it was ever found out who had struck the bargain with her, there would be no hole deep enough even for him to crawl into.

Waiting until she was at least halfway through changing, he would finally let his body fade into the physical realm of Mortalis, his form finally taking to solidarity like a long lost lover. Bypassing the bowl for a cigarette instead, a halo of smoke soon was in place around his head as his body was slung rather haphazardly about her chair. Long, jean clad legs were sprawled out before him, charcoal toned hoodie zipped midway up torso. For all intents and purposes, he looked nothing more than a very attractive human Male at first glance. Another one of those wastrel druggie kids who squandered Mommy and Daddy's money on anything but something lasting. Then again, a wise man would remember what was said about not judging a book by it's cover.

"You're looking delightful as usual V. Have any pressing plans for this evening ? No ? Good. Consider me penciling myself into your datebook for the evening."

He knew that he was a completely unknown entity to her, that his face was not one that would be among her catalog of friend nor enemy. He had seen it best that way, though it was a very quick thing for enough of the human to his appearance to fade away, just barely enough at that to let her see what rested just below the surface. He wouldn't outright attack her if she got jumpy, then again he didn't need to. At the moment, he was more curious to her reaction to his sheer presence alone, much less his actual spoken words.

Something in her gut had told her she wasn't alone before he spoke. She hadn't known what the source of it was until that moment, but the little bit of foreshadowing was enough that he didn't catch her completely by surprise. No girly squeaking to reward his uninvited entry. The last hook on her bra was fastened before she turned around. She was quite the vision wearing just that and her leather pants, no shoes adopted to the outfit yet. Ebony hair swept around her shoulders in a tumbling mass of loose curls.

He was a stranger, then again, everyone started that way. He was also strikingly handsome, almost unreasonably so. Sinfully so. The thought was enough to earn him a quirked eyebrow, and the barest sliver of a smirk. "Great thing about lead, it's erasable." She strolled toward the twin doors that stood open into her room, reaching out her fingertips brushed either side of the door frame as she passed through it and into the living room/kitchen/dining room. The vaulted ceilings were the only thing that allowed the apartment claim to be a loft, and not an efficiency. Some lingering taste of old world charm, that time hadn't managed yet to steal away.

"What exactly is it you want?" He was too casual to be a burglar, too smooth and confident to be just another boy from the scene. She would have bet a fair amount that he wasn't human. Which cut out a great deal of possible reasons behind his arrival. It also put him in the category of potentially dangerous. Every so often someone came along with a grudge, another lovely bit she had managed to inherit from her creators.

"It's not about me. The real question at the center of all this is what do you want ?"

He never even bothered rising from the full on lounge position that he had staked out in her chair. Impressively comfy, he turned his focus from her to the empty, freshly painted wall nearest her. The images came then, not as swiftly as one might expect, but just quick enough to leave her on edge with his silence after such a question. Then again there was plenty of time to ponder her answer, if she even intended to give one that was.

But ah the images. Crystal clear they were when they finally did come. As detailed and as life like as if they were truly standing there beside her. That was the thing about truth though, especially when it came to a Fallen. Truth was NEVER what it seemed.

First came the images of her mother and father. The beings that had brought her into existence. Then came the long, exceptionally long at that string of males that had either been consort or mere fuck. Each in their own way had been a safety net, some more so than others, but each had played a part. When he had run the gauntlet of them, the last image faded with an audible pop, returning her wall to it's still damp, tacky surface.

It had always bugged her when someone got the upper hand, now especially. Still he offered a unique opportunity, he seemed to know a great deal already. It would save her precious time. The flickering images of familiar faces didn't leave her unmoved, though it couldn't be guessed from the blank expression she gave him in response. Within her chest each set of eyes struck chords within her she had thought long withered. They were gone, but not forgotten, some of them at least. Others, others truly meant nothing, their gaze failing to offer so much as recognition. It wouldn't have surprised her a bit if he had simply tossed in a few extra faces, assuming she would never know the difference.

"I know how this works." Pushing forward again, she dropped into the chair opposite his own. "As I'm sure you do, so let us cut to the chase." A smirk formed then. "Make your offer, and if it's good enough I have a great deal I can pay." A long fingered hand gestured impatiently as she continued. "And none of that tell me what you want crap. You know what I want, or you wouldn't be here. The fact that you came at all either means your so wet behind the ears, you don't know better. Or your powerful enough that my backing doesn't matter." Flicking her wrist she produced a pile of ebony parchment, and set it on the table before her. There had to be better then thirty pacts. It was a great deal of faith she was offering up. "If your the latter, lets do business. If not, get the fuck out."

"You have spunk, and you have balls. That's definitely the start to a good business relationship. While that stack does hold some significant weight, if that's what I was looking for, I would have gotten more, and better at that on my own. If it puts your mind at ease though, we can always keep those on the table."

Eyes had fallen shut somewhere during his lofty little speech, though let it not be thought that it meant he was unaware of his surroundings by any means. In fact, if you were a betting woman, odds would tell you that he was more aware of the goings on in his surroundings by the sense of sound alone then with sight active as well.

"What you're looking for if understanding serves me, is a chance to spread your wings. An opportunity to get out of the proverbial nest and see how far you can fly without the saving grace of having Mummy's and Daddy's protective arms to break your fall should all go to Hell, either literally or figuratively. Or both, as such things have been known to happen on occasion. While there's a couple of options that I could make open and available to you, there's one in particular that I think would be right up your alley. Though I'll do a bit of honest business and tell you up front that there's a catch."