“I don’t trust him.”

“You’ve said that three times already.” Eric turned his hand over to look at his watch. “Three times this hour. And I’m sitting right here, y’know.”

He’d had a feeling he was going to be treated like he was a spy or something of the like. He hadn’t expected Uriel to keep a gun trained on him nearly constantly for the second straight day. They had taken all his gadgets, and he didn’t really know what they expected him to do. At least they let him fix - and keep - his arm. Uriel wanted to take it from him, but he convinced them that the arm ‘doesn’t just detach.’ Here he sat in their temporary military base, surrounded by idiots in white robes and armor.

He had never seen a Vatican operation up close before. Sure, he had invaded that base once. But he never really got to see how they operated. It was actually kind of interesting. They were incredibly well organized, although that didn’t shock him. Apparently, all the little markings on the squadron’s armor meant different things - specialization, rank, things like that. Eric had always thought they just liked to look pretty.

“We don’t have a choice, Uriel,” Michael sighed from where he sat across the room, polishing his sword. “He’s right. We need him to fight Isaac. We don’t know where they are. He does.”

Eric smiled at Uriel.

Uriel apparently spent whatever remained of his temper trying not to put some bullets in Eric’s brain. “I don’t care! He’s playing us, Michael! He’s going to give us up to Isaac the first chance he gets.”

“No, I won’t,” Eric insisted. Again.

Michael sighed and rubbed a hand over his face and through his curly brown hair. “Okay, Eric. If you want us to believe you, you have to tell us why you want Isaac dead.”

Eric sighed and sunk into the chair. At least they hadn’t chained him up. He was sure Michael really wanted to and silently thanked the fact the Crusader was apparently taking the high road. He really didn’t want to tell them why he wanted Isaac dead, partly because he knew that any information they had would probably get his friends into trouble. Also, he was still trying to convince them that he only to wanted to take the sorcerer down, no one else. Not to mention, he had trouble admitting it to himself that he was sitting here in the middle of a Vatican base as a turncoat.

“Eric,” Michael said sternly. “If you want us to trust you, you have to be forthcoming with us.”

“Fine,” Eric breathed out and rested his head on the back of the chair, staring up at the ceiling. White. Like everything else around here. “I just… I can’t take what he does to the people who are loyal to him.”

“How so?”

“Like, Victor.” He stood up suddenly, needing to move. Uriel lifted his gun suddenly, his eyes narrowing. Eric smiled nervously at the older crusader. “Easy there, Champ.”

“Don’t call me ‘Champ’.”

“Please-“ Michael interrupted. “Just let him talk.”

“Fine,” Uriel said with a grunt.

Michael motioned for Eric to continue talking. Shoving his hands into his pockets, Eric began to pace. It was another habit he shared with his brother. Their mom always yelled at them about it, about making her dizzy. He didn’t think she’d care this once, as he felt he had every excuse. Pivoting to retrace his steps again, he gathered his thoughts. “Vic hasn’t been a vampire for a long time, only… like… sixteen years. Isaac’s making the whole thing worse.”

“Worse?”

“Vic’s becoming a monster…”

“He became a monster when he was turned,” Michael replied simply.

Eric tried not to roll his eyes. “Right, sure, but - he wasn’t some - he wasn’t like he is now.”

“How has he changed?”

“He didn’t use to eat people,” Eric shot him a narrow look. He saw Michael visibly go pale at the memory of what Victor had done to him. “He never would have done that if it weren’t for Isaac. First, he left Victor behind… and that douche not only makes it okay for Vic to do things like that, but he encourages it! Encourages him to like.. jump through windows and kill people…” Eric trailed off. “I know we’re hits for hire, but… it was his idea, not mine.”

Eric slumped down into the chair and put his head in his hands. He knew he was rambling, but at this point, he just needed to get it out. “I don’t like killing people. I really don’t. I stayed out of the Retribution because I didn’t want to get involved. Vic fought for you guys, believe it or not.” He ignored the scoff that he heard come from Uriel. “Then he got turned. At first, he was afraid of what he was and just… lived a normal life. A few years later, Isaac approached us with an offer - work for him, and he’d pay us a crap-ton of money. It was hard to refuse… I said no, but Vic won the argument. After that, I’ve seen him just slide further and further downhill…”

“So you want Isaac dead because you believe it will keep your brother’s grasp on humanity from further slipping away,” Michael said. Eric had expected him to laugh, or to tell him he was stupid. But the tone of his voice was quiet, almost sympathetic. Eric looked up with an eyebrow raised. “I suppose that is noble.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Uriel snapped and stood up, rounding on Michael. “You’re falling for this tripe?”

“I’m not - It’s not tripe! I’m not lying to you! Why would I?!” Eric shouted.

“To con us into a trap, that’s why!”

“If Isaac wanted to kill you guys at this very instant, don’t you think he would have by now?! The man moved a house from one coast to another. He offed your friends without breaking a sweat!”

“Then why hasn’t he?” Michael asked the logical question to which Eric had no answer.

“I don’t know. I don’t know why he didn’t just kill you all. He can, I know. I’ve seen what he’s capable of. He opened a gate to Hell. I’ve seen him walk through walls and I’ve seen him bleed out, only to get up and keep walking. He could will us all dead with a thought. Something’s going on that he’s not telling us about, I know it. There’s some game going on, and we’re all pieces in it. That’s part of the reason I can’t take it anymore. I can’t trust anything he does because it’s all a lie in some grand scheme of his. The man plays us all like pawns, and it drives me nuts! I’m apparently the only one around him that can see it!” Eric ranted.

That seemed to do some good. Uriel slowly sat back down, and the anger in his eyes seemed to have faded some. Eric clenched his fists. “There’s something going on. Just under the surface, and he won’t come out and say it. I’m sick… I’m sick of being used. And Christ, what he did to Muse-“

“Wait, what?” Michael cut in abruptly.

Eric swore. He didn’t mean to give that part up. Wherever Muse was, he hoped she would forgive him. He put both of his hands through his hair and was shocked for a moment to not find his goggles. Right, they had taken them. He had forgotten that.

“What did Isaac do to Muse?”

“That poor girl is suffering because of you. I mean… the worst possible thing you could imagine Isaac could do to her, he did. She did it because Isaac couldn’t beat a heart out of her. I can’t…” Eric snarled angrily, unable to finish his sentence. Muse was such a sweet kid, he thought of her as family. To see what Isaac did to her turned his stomach, and was the last straw.

“What did he do?” Michael insisted.

“He… brought her back to life. Somehow. Smashed that necklace that had a piece of her in it, and… she’s alive.”

“That’s impossible,” Uriel snorted.

“Yeah, you tell that to her,” Eric shot Uriel an angry glare. “She’s in a coma in some hospital by now, if Isaac hasn’t flayed her skin off and turned her into wall art.”

Silence fell over the room. Michael had a strange expression on his face that Eric couldn’t read.

Finally, the younger Crusader stood up and gestured to Uriel. “Come on.” Michael turned his attention to where Eric sat in the chair. “We’re going to go talk this over.”

Uriel stood up and followed Michael out of the room. “Don’t try anything stupid,” he snapped.

“Oh, like betraying Isaac and coming to you guys? How do I get any dumber?”

The only response was the door clicking shut.

With a small grunt, Muse sat down in the kitchen chair and stared at the bowl of soup in front of her. Pushing the noodles around with her spoon, she dejectedly began to eat, lamenting her situation. God damn, she was sick of noodle soup. “Vic - it’s been a week now… I think I can get off the Gerber food.”

“Not until I’m sure you’re okay,” Victor replied from his spot by the stove. He was doing his best to cook - of the three ‘boys’, somehow Victor wound up the best cook of the bunch. It wasn’t exactly fantastic, Muse quickly discovered. Although she admittedly didn’t have much to compare it to. Noodle soup tasted like noodle soup, no matter who made it. She hoped, anyway.

“Aww, damn, Fangs, c’mon - chick’s been eatin’ for a week now as she said. You still all up playing nursemaid?” Mal grumbled from where he sat next to Muse and smirked with a wink. Mal slid his beer across the table to her. Muse turned to Mal and raised an eyebrow. Mal only grinned silently in reply. Shrugging, she took the bottle and took a sip. Screwing her face up, she coughed.

“Goddamnit,” Muse wheezed. “I forgot what that tastes like.”

“Mal!” Victor snapped from the stove, glaring over at the bigger man.

“Oh, get off it, Mom,” Mal snickered. Muse could only laugh as a fight ensued between the two men - bickering back and forth.

Ezekiel walked in, grinned broadly at Muse and sat down next to her, throwing his arms around her in a tight hug. Muse found she had missed the weird little man and hugged him back. He looked up, sniffed, and giggled suddenly, whispering loudly up at her with an unusual look of sanity in his eyes. “Daddy and daddy are fighting again.”

And thus, the two-way argument ceased and a three-way argument ensued.

“Oh, shut up, you prissy stupid little silk-wearing-”

“At least I’m not an overgrown steroid bomb!”

“I don’t use steroids you-”

“Dweeb!”

“Frog-face!”

“Bacon!”

Muse got up from the table, steadied herself on her feet, and quietly excused herself - although she wasn’t honestly sure if any of the three men noticed - as the argument continued. Halfway up the stairs, she grumbled under her breath about how obnoxious it was to use legs that didn’t feel like being used, as it took her much longer to go up the stairs than she liked. She was so used to being able to just simply move through space without gravity taking hold. This wasn’t just an annoyance, but a painful annoyance.

Yawning, she rounded the corner down the hallway towards her attic room. Passing by Isaac’s study door, she stopped. Shutting her eyes and steeling herself, she stepped up to the door. It had to be done. It was only a matter of time. This had to happen. Whether or not it wound her up in a grave again, she couldn’t keep tip-toeing past the door. Gripping the knob, she gave it a twist.

To her surprise, the door wasn’t locked. She opened the door and stepped inside, shutting it behind her with a quiet click. She looked around the room and saw Isaac standing by his lit fireplace, a book in his hands, reading. One of his many coats hung on the coat rack by the door, and he stood in a simple white button down shirt, cuffs were undone and rolled up to his elbows, and a thin black tie hanging loosely around his neck. His black hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail at the base of his neck.

“You should knock,” Isaac said simply, turning his gaze to look at her from above the rim of his thin-crammed glasses. He - at least for now - didn’t sound annoyed. But the look in his eyes made her want to disappear through the door again. Before, when she could walk through objects, maybe she could have. Now? Not so easy.

“Knew you wouldn’t answer if I did,” she replied quietly. Fear made her stomach curl into a knot. Even though she had spent nearly seven or eight months living in the house with him, something was different this time. He wasn’t safe before, but now the gloves are off, she thought to herself and chewed on the corner of her lip.

“Generally that means I do not wish to be interrupted,” Isaac said again matter-of-factly. She searched the tone of his voice for any irritation and surprisingly found none.

“Right.” Muse waited for something, anything, to come out of the man’s mouth. Nothing. He simply continued on like she wasn’t there. It figured that he would make her do all the talking. Of course, he probably didn’t think there needed to be a conversation. She watched as he turned with the book and walked back to the desk and resumed his ever-popular position of sitting at his desk with his back to her. Placing the book down, he picked up a pen and began to write in another book slightly to the left. She had never noticed he was left-handed before. Brushing off the idle thought, she took a deep breath and tried to gather her nerve.

With everything in her telling her to just leave and save herself the pain, Muse walked up to him and stood behind him, watching him. Honestly, she couldn’t think of what it was she was wanted to say to him. Okay, she knew what, but didn’t know how. Especially not how to start.

“Yes?” Isaac said quietly, lifting his head from the book but not turning around.

Muse clenched her fists for a moment and took a slow breath. She wished she could somehow reach into his mind and give it a hard shake. He was acting like nothing had happened. How dare he?! “The boys tell me they haven’t seen you in a while. I think they were concerned you were dead.”

“Concern isn’t the word.”

“Can’t say I blame them.”

“Hrm.” Isaac lowered his head and continued writing.

Muse stood there for a long moment and finally lost her temper. “Isaac. Look at me,” she said, trying to sound firm. She wondered if she succeeded.

With a sigh, Isaac slowly placed the pen down and swiveled the chair around to look up at her from where he sat. “Yes?”

Muse shook her head slowly, shocked, as he just sat there, waiting. “Nothing? Really? You’ve got nothing to say?”

“Why would I have anything to say?”

Muse shut her eyes and cracked her neck to the side. Opening her eyes, she clenched her fists and slowly let her body relax. Whelp, I don’t know if this counts as suicide, but you’re about to find out. She smiled oddly down at him, a sharp, bitter smile. Then, she slapped him hard across the face.

Isaac reeled to the side, not having expected the blow, his glasses falling to the carpet. He stayed there with his head to the side for a long time before leaning down to pick his glasses up off of the floor. Slowly, he stood up.

Muse hadn’t realized how tall Isaac was - maybe being dead put a different perspective on height when one was almost always hovering above floor level. She had spent so much time floating up and over his shoulder that she didn’t realize exactly what kind of visual impact the man had. The knot in her stomach that had already formed took another hard twist. She tried her best to hold her ground.

Slowly and with all the time in the world, he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and began to slowly clean his glasses. Carefully stuffing the handkerchief back into his pocket, he casually replaced the glasses on his face, pushing them up his nose with his ring finger. He finally turned his grey eyes down at her, the light from the fireplace glinting off of his glasses, giving a rather bizarre orange twinge to his eyes. How it was possible to make him look even more dangerous, she didn’t know.

Muse suppressed a shudder. She was famous for stupid moves, but this was probably one of her better ones. And probably one of her last. But nothing happened. Isaac just stood there, staring at her like a statue. “Go ahead,” she said finally.

“Go ahead what?”

“Hit me - kill me - whatever - just go ahead. Do it. You can’t zap me anymore, so you have to do something. Just get it over with,” she said a little too fast.

“You are afraid of me,” Isaac said - his eyes narrowing slightly - tilting his head quizzically to one side. “You are…. I can sense it. You’re hiding it well. But you are. Curious.” He took a step towards her, moving to close the small gap between them, and Muse took two backwards too quickly, stumbling. “Ah, yes, look at that… you are terrified of me.”

Muse barely caught her feet under her, straightening up. “I-“

“Was I unable to sense it before? Were you always afraid of me?” He took another step forward.

Muse kept backing away from him. “Maybe I had nothing to lose…”

“I think this proves that everyone always has something they can lose,” Isaac said with a small, thin-lipped smile. The smile wasn’t his most threatening she’d ever seen, but something about it twisted the knot in her stomach again. “And here I thought that through your cloud of audacity, I could never intimidate you.”

Muse twitched as her temper took hold. That was a bad habit of hers. Fear quickly turned to anger, which got her into trouble. Okay, she did a lot of things that got her into trouble. At this point, she’d be surprised if she walked out of this room. Snarling, she suddenly shoved Isaac hard in the chest with both hands - knocking the startled man off balance and slamming him back into his chair.

“Is that what all this is about?! Is it?! Some goddamn superiority complex? Is that why you did this to me?! You just wanted to prove you were bigger than me?! You want me to fear you?! You wanted to be the boogeyman, huh?! Is that it?! Fine!” she fumed. Unfortunately, she felt her rage start to slip. At this point, it was the only armor she had, and now she was losing that, too.

In the absence of anger, everything else that sat at the edges rushed in to fill the void. Fear and pain began to muddle into one big ball that made her want to turn and run. “Fine. You wanted to prove to me that you were superior? That you could torture me because I had the ‘audacity’ to disrespect you? Fine… Yeah, I’m afraid of you. You win, Isaac. You win. You terrify me. You give me nightmares. I don’t know what to do with myself now that you’ve done… I want to starve to death, but they won’t let me. You messed up my - my whole existence. To teach me a lesson. Congratulations.”

She quickly spun to leave and felt his hand wrap around her wrist. She turned her head away and shut her eyes tightly, wincing - waiting for the pain, the blow, anything. Part of her mind envisioned him just tearing her arm off right there to a bleeding stump. She started to cry again as a well of emotions rushed over her. She angrily wiped her free hand furiously across her eyes. More tears. Why couldn’t she stop crying?!

She could almost feel the grey eyes boring a hole into the side of her head. Muse heard the chair roll away, felt the shift in weight on her wrist as Isaac stood up. “Look - great. One more victory for you.” Muse wiped at her eyes again furiously, anger at herself welling up in her chest. “I’m so sick of crying and-”

“It was an accident.”

Muse stopped short and opened her eyes, but couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Isaac slowly let go of her wrist and stood there for a long time before he spoke again. “It was an accident, Muse. I acted in rage. To be truthful, I am not entirely sure how I did what I did at all.”

“An accident.” What he was saying wasn’t quite sinking in. She avoided looking at his face, as she couldn’t take what she saw there, no matter what it was.

“Mmhm.” He motioned to a carved rock that sat atop the desk - the one he had used to smash the necklace that a piece of her soul used to occupy. “Mixed magics have always been dangerous. In the heat of the moment, I simply grabbed the closest thing I could. It apparently had unfortunate side effects.”

“What was it you were actually trying to do?”

“I am not entirely sure. ‘Kill’ you, I believe.” He let out a small chuckle, finding some strange humor in the situation.

“I’m - was - already -”

“You know what I mean.” Isaac waved his hand slightly, gesturing as he talked. “Send you to oblivion. At that point, I wanted nothing more than for you to cease to exist.” Muse felt her jaw twitch. She wasn’t sure where she stood with Isaac - but hearing that for some reason felt like a sucker punch to the gut. She turned toward the door. “Do not ask questions you do not want the answers to,” Isaac said quietly from behind her.

“What now…?”

“Pardon?”

Muse turned back to look at him and met his eyes for a long moment before looking down at her hands and picking idly at the sleeve of the button-down shirt she had borrowed from Victor. Fear of another kind pulled at her. “What now? I’m useless to you. There’s no reason for you to keep me here, now that I-”

“Muse,” Isaac sighed out her name and walked up to her. She reflexively twitched and took a step back as he placed his hands on either side of her head, resting on her shoulders, his thumbs on her neck. He held her in place as she tried to fix desperately on his tie, wanting to look anywhere but his face.

“Muse,” he repeated firmly. He took one of his hands and gently tilted her head to look up at him. “I was right to be angry at you when you interfered. I should have punished you in some way.” Muse turned her head away from him and he gently turned it back with his hand. His grey eyes almost seemed to look through her, and it was unsettling. “Listen to me,” Isaac smirked suddenly, laughed once and said something quietly in a language she didn’t understand. The humor left his face, leaving only the same stoic seriousness as before, but now with something that looked like sorrow in his eyes. “I am sorry.”

“What…?”

Isaac chuckled quietly under his breath. “Of course you would have me repeat it. I am sorry, Muse - for having done this to you. It was not what I intended. I am not sure how to, if I even can, rectify the situation. You may discover that returning you to your previous state is not what you truly want.”

Shrugging lightly he turned, walking back to his desk. Sitting down in the chair slowly, he turned his back on her again but did not resume writing. “You are welcome to stay here, Muse. I understand that you functionally have nowhere to go - and the ‘gentlemen’ downstairs would miss your presence.”

Muse tried to pin a finger on just one of the emotions spinning around in her mind, but she failed. It was like grasping for balloon strings. Whatever. Walking towards the door, she placed her hand on the knob and twisted it, opening the door. She stopped to look at him again. She opened her mouth to say something, but couldn’t think of the words. She shook her head and walked out the door.

“Goodnight,” Isaac said from his desk as she was shutting the door.

She stopped, paused, and shut her eyes. “Goodnight, Isaac.” She shut the door and rested her head against it for a long moment before turning and starting the long walk up the stairs to the attic.