He had killed him.

Impulsively, without allowing herself to think about it.

He didn't even know his name.

The man had approached him with obvious fear, but it was just as obvious that he hadn't thought he would die today.

No one did, really.

A few seconds ago, his gaze had been fixed on the future.

A future of ambitions.

Now, the only thing in his eyes was the darkness of death. He wasn't dead yet, not quite. To be more exact, he was watching him die.

He couldn't say he was dead.

But he couldn't say he was alive, either. He was close enough to death that it was as if he were dead.

He couldn't escape death.

He wasn't like Desmond.

Though, of course, he himself wasn't aware of that. He wasn't aware of anything, it seemed, other than that there was "something" stuck in his chest.

As if he was no longer getting enough oxygen to his brain to make the connection.

Or as if his mind was protecting him from realizing what was happening.

Of a few last minutes filled with the ultimate terror. The man writhing weakly in front of him, his sword buried in his chest, was not a man of the Empire. He was not one of those dogs.

But, even if he were, anyone would look human at this moment.

The end of all things.

He had killed one of his compatriots.

Y... So what? He had killed dozens of them last night, it was nothing new. No, even as a child, he'd killed a few, the men who held him down, who threw him to the ground, who...

So what? So what? So what? So what? So what?

What did it change?

He...

I don't feel anything, he realized.

Nothing at all.

Like he hadn't killed anyone. Not that he was the kind of person who would burst into tears just for killing someone.

After getting blood on his hands so many times, that wouldn't make sense.

It's not like he would have expected such an extreme reaction.

But... But something.

There should have been, even if it was just a tiny spark of regret that things had to end this way. But there wasn't, there still wasn't, as if nothing had happened.

He felt nothing.

How long had he been like this?

Desmond ripped the sword from the enemy's chest.

The man, with nothing to support him, fell backwards and slid to the ground. Leaving a thick trail of blood on the wall.

His eyes were already lost in a horizon he could not see.

But the blood was still spurting out, driven from his body by a heart that was still trying to beat.

Everyone was striving to go on living until the last moment.

No, even after...

Even afterwards the body desperately refused to accept death.

But I... I don't feel anything.

Not that he had done anything wrong by killing someone who had directly threatened him. But...

Nothing. There's nothing.

So what? So what? So what?

Tell me what exactly is going on?

Desmond pursed his lips.

With his death, Desmond hadn't become the only person in the alley. But he forgot that.

He forgot about it until a shout brought him out of his thoughts.

It forced him to focus.

"The man from the other night! Of the fire in the port!"

He shouted this as he turned and ran.

Desmond wouldn't let him.

Immediately, he stepped into his path and swung his sword. Separating his head from his shoulders. He rolled on the ground and lost himself rolling in the darkness of the alley.

But the damage was done.

No, even if he had killed him before he had time to even open his mouth, killing the first man had been more than enough to seal the shape of things to come.

He had been unable to escape the disaster that now loomed over him from that very moment.

If he could go back to the past, he wouldn't make a different decision. That much was clear to him.

Screams. People running in panic, alerting others to his presence. Of what had just happened. Of what could happen.

Desmond emerged from the alley.

He walked slowly. More than walking, he seemed to be staggering. The blood of his enemies dripped from his sword continuously.

Surely he looked like an apparition in a terrible nightmare.

But this was very real.

Desmond looked around, as if he didn't know what he was seeing.

He looked at the chaos and panic.

The blood-chilling screams. The fear in the eyes of his people, searing inside him.

I feel like throwing up, he thought clearly.

In front of him, several pieces of ground lit up in purple, forming burning circles.

Wrapped in that light, out of nowhere appeared more than a dozen policemen.

All of them were armed. Even those without a visible weapon, for he was still in Albion. The people who were looking at him as if he were an enemy were mages.

They were like him.

The light went out. The circles did too. They could no longer be seen with the naked eye but of course they were still there.

They were well prepared. That system was no good for receiving reinforcements from outside the city. Teleportation had its limits.

But it was more than enough, in theory, to react to any crime occurring outside the houses almost instantaneously.

To deal with any enemy.

Desmond opened his mouth.

He closed it without saying anything. But he was going to say that he was not a threat. That they shouldn't look at him with those eyes.

As if he were a beast.

Like he wasn't even human.

"Desmond, what are you doing? How did you...? "Abigail, who had just reappeared, had asked him.

What are you doing?

I wish I knew, he thought. He felt like he was in a dream. As if he were floating.

The officers approached him slowly, carefully. Gradually encircling him. He felt like he was in a narrow room and the walls were bearing down on him.

"Get down, don't move, we don't want any trouble," said, that is, ordered the one who seemed to be the boss. "There's no need for this to get ugly. We'll tie you up, take you to the police station. You'll get a fair treatment. And a fair trial.

"I didn't do anything wrong," Desmond said at last. Even he didn't sound sure of his own words.

"If that's true," the officer replied, "you have nothing to fear. "

I...

He didn't know what he was doing. He hadn't known since that fateful night, where he betrayed Abigail. Where he betrayed himself and his promises...

And them. The memories he had of them should be warm, should help him move on.

But they had become wounds.

The only thing he received when he dug into them was pain. It couldn't be any other way.

"Desmond?" Abigail wanted to know what he was thinking.

And she was worried, of course. The city guard was approaching and he doing nothing. As if he was pinned in place.

He moved, finally.

Getting down on his knees. Laughing?

He looked down.

He still had the sword firmly clenched in the trembling fingers of his hand.

They were almost there.

They were slowly closing in on him, but almost there, soon they would be on him.

He had the sword, so what?

One thing was criminals, but he wasn't going to kill, or even hurt, officers of the law who were only doing their job.

Nor to any citizen of Albion, of course.

No one who didn't deserve it. He was not like that. He was no beast.

So don't look at me like that! Stop looking at me!

But he could only protest within his own mind. Only inside his own mind.

A leaf in the wind.

Floating. Flying away.

Yes. He was nothing more than that. His words reached no one's ears. I'm not even here, he thought strangely.

It wasn't something that made sense, but the phrase resonated powerfully in the confines of his skull with all the intensity of a premonition of his future.

"Desmond... Don't do anything foolish."

How many times had she told him that, just today?

Someone was about to lay a hand on his shoulder.

Desmond stood up suddenly.

"Watch out!" One of the guards shouted in warning. No one needed to hear that, though.

In a way, he appreciated it, though.

Many reflexively backed away when they heard the shout.

And then Desmond brandished the sword.

He swung it around him, swiftly, like the blades of a windmill. It wasn't an attack meant to do harm. He hadn't lost his mind.

He just wanted to get them to back off and that's what he got.

After taking one last look, Desmond broke into a run. He had killed a lot of people. Criminals or not, he did have something to fear from the police.

Besides, the sentence wasn't what worried him.

Even if he was judged innocent, what really worried him was all the time he would waste. So he couldn't afford to get caught.

But neither could he afford to hurt his pursuers in any way.

It would be... complicated, but he believed himself capable of doing it.

Even though this wasn't a kind of battle Desmond was used to.

That wasn't saying much, all Desmond was used to was beating his opponents until they wouldn't stop moving.

No more, no less.

Still, Desmond could draw on his old experience.

Long ago, he had been nothing more than a frightened, lonely child, who could only defend himself by running away.

Running as if his life depended on it.

Which, frequently, it did.

Running from children like him, who wanted to steal the food he had worked so hard to obtain.

Running from the people he had gotten that food from.

And running from the city guard, like now. From being 'taught a lesson'.

From... worse things.

He'd heard stories. Not only that they sometimes went too far and killed children by beating, by physical trauma.

Also that, well, that the children came back alive.

Even with their possessions.

But they were never the same because...

He felt like throwing up.

This is not the time.

Not the time or the place.

Desmond ran back to the alley he had come from. Over the corpses, without stopping.

He heard no verbal commands.

But he knew from the sounds, from his mental picture of his surroundings, that they were working to cut him off.

Of course.

Anyone would do the same.

The streets were not as wide as those in the Empire, where the use of vehicles was common. Personal vehicles, not just things like trains. The name of said personal vehicles didn't come to mind now, but that wasn't the point.

The streets weren't that wide. That included the alleys.

In other words, there was a good distance between the walls of the buildings on either side.

He saw the 'wall' of guards waiting for him on the other side.

And decided to avoid rather than try to pass through it.

Desmond changed direction, heading straight for the wall.

He put one foot on that wall and gained momentum, leaping towards the one behind him.

It was crazy to try to get out of this one with something he had never tried before.

He was out of practice, it wasn't a move that was like instinctive for him.

But it was what it was.

Under ordinary circumstances, he would have simply cut through that wall of guards. But these circumstances weren't normal as he had emphasized before.

He got farther than he had dared to think he would, jumping twice without losing altitude.

But he didn't get that far.

He fell. He would go back to the ground having accomplished nothing.

The fall wouldn't kill him, of course. That didn't mean it wouldn't fucking suck.

Time wasted, and as he got to his feet, they would come down on him without him being able to do much of anything.

He didn't go down.

He was going to, but managed to grab hold of the fire escape. The impact on his arms transmitted throughout his body like an earthquake.

He had been lucky. He hadn't noticed that there was a fire escape before he started jumping, trusting that he could grab there if something went wrong.

He'd just been lucky.

A little luck, for a change, was fine.

Pushing with only his arms, he managed to climb over the railing and to the other side.

Desmond ran down the fire escape to the roof.

He didn't look back to see what his pursuers were doing for a second.

He didn't want to.

He didn't hear or feel spells being cast at him. He supposed they didn't want to damage the ladder or the buildings.

That was their role, after all.

Good.

But Desmond wasn't so pleased when he realized that real criminals could also abuse that weakness...that is, up to a point.

He had reached the roof.

He could jump from rooftop to rooftop. He could, even with his skill, and then, after he lost them....

After he lost them, Desmond would think about that.

But now Desmond couldn't allow himself to think about the future, what he should do, what should happen.

He had to concentrate on not being captured.

On being out of sight. No more, no less, just that.

He reached the edge of the roof.

Desmond jumped to the next roof.

He turned his head back for a moment. Just a small glimpse.

They were catching up with him.

Somehow, some physically, some with spells, they had managed to get up on the rooftops as well and were catching up to him.

Fuck.

One of them reached for him, throwing himself on top of him, wrapping his arms around him. Pushing down, trying to pin him down.

How the fuck had he been able to catch him, at the speed he was going?

Desmond gritted his teeth.

He shook off his grip. He lifted him as if he weighed nothing, armor included.

"I'm sorry. "He might have thought he was making fun of him, but Desmond was being very sincere.

He was sorry things had turned out this way.

But that didn't stop him from throwing him without much force back the way he'd come. To make sure he didn't hurt him. And that he didn't fall off the roof, which would make the impact ten times worse.

No, which would kill him for sure.

"I'm sorry," Desmond said again, and kept running.

♦ ♦ ♦

It was hard, but in the end he managed to shake off his pursuers.

Going back to the cave where he had started that day was an excruciating waste of time. He dropped on his ass as he fell into the darkness of the cave, exhausted even though he hadn't done much. Not today.

He supposed the fatigue of the night before contributed quite a bit.

But it was the mental fatigue, not the physical fatigue, that weighed most heavily on him.

That desperate feeling of being lost, like a leaf in the wind. Of not even knowing what the hell he was doing.

Desmond took a deep breath.

He didn't know what the hell was happening to him, but he could imagine that he couldn't go on like this for long.

Desmond ran the back of his hand over his eyes.

They weren't wet.

They were itchy and he had thought... but no. They just stung.

It was a very shallow cave, in fact, could it even be called a cave?

If there was a better word, it didn't come to mind.

He should read more books. Like Christina, he thought ridiculously.

He grimaced. Here's to memories.

I don't have time for that. Yes, time has passed.

He sighed deeply.

One thing and another and another and another and another. Endlessly.

I feel like throwing up.

But if I throw up, I'll only feel worse. 'It' can't be expelled.

No matter how hard he tried, he wouldn't be able to expel 'it'.

Fuck.

Desmond put a hand right over his heart.

He didn't squeeze, though.

Before, when he' d killed that guy.... It hadn't affected him. And that, for some reason, had disturbed him.

Maybe it was because he was far away from everything that threatened him, for the moment.

Maybe it also had to do with distance, but with the distance of time.

In any case, he suddenly realized why.

Whether that realization made him feel better or worse, he couldn't say. Or if, it could also be, absolutely nothing changed.

It bothers me because it wouldn't have been the same if I had been with them.

The thought had a crystal clarity.

He didn't understand the reason, but he knew it was true anyway. As firmly as his heartbeat was.

Abigail reappeared.

He was worried about her disappearances, about what she was going through while he couldn't see her.

He was going to ask her about it, but she beat him to it.

"Desmond, this isn't something I do often. But I think you need it."

"What do you mean?"

At that moment...

Like a ghost from the past, Amy appeared before his eyes.