He had lost the will to fight.

Genuinely, he no longer had fight in him. He was physically and mentally exhausted.

Just holding Christina as if she was his lifeline. Yes, his only form of salvation as long as he was lost in the middle of this dark, deep ocean.

Salvation?

Ha, what nonsense. Not even relief. He didn't want to kill himself, he didn't want to kill the bond he had with his dearest people either. Losing Amy's friendship had hurt him almost as much as Christina's death, as selfish and petty as that sounded.

He was selfish and petty, after all. He had no way around it. He couldn't look away.

He couldn't look anywhere.

He had nothing and no one. He was lost. Lost forever.

"This doesn't fix anything," he whispered to Christina in that inhuman voice that sounded so little like his own, even how he might have sounded in his worst moments as a human being. "Nothing. I'm here... but I'm not here."

"Desmond." She wouldn't let go. She squeezed him tightly. But she had nothing to offer him.

And neither did he to her, not anymore. If he ever had.

"It's like I'm already dead," Desmond continued in a whisper, but the anger boiling underneath him (and worse, the despair) could freeze the blood in anyone's veins.

He should go mad. Get up and strike whatever was closest to him and well he knew that was it, now, because he literally had her on top of him. He should scream and shout, rebel against the unjust world. No one could accept such a cruel truth as that.

He was angry. But not angry enough for that.

Really, he had lost the will to fight. But after that, after the compression, what was left?

"I don't want to die. I don't want to disappear."

Christina released him, slowly and after a while. Then he stood up. The girl didn't pull him, didn't even hold his hand, but Desmond followed her as if bound to her by invisible strings.

He couldn't look away from the traces of tears on her face.

This was the only thing he could do for the people he loved.

If he had ever given them any joy, well, okay. He was happy too, happy for that fact alone. But it had to be admitted that it didn't make up for even half of what he had put them through simply by being associated with him.

The collateral damage was immense and at some point it had to end.

Desmond felt empty. It was like he was dead, and maybe that was the thing. Maybe he was the one who should have died in that town and not Christina. Things would never have turned out this way.

And yet he couldn't even sincerely wish for that. Because it meant ultimate damnation for Abigail.

He let out a deep, long exhale, as if he were expelling even his soul. Or what's left of it in this dark, twisted shell.

"Desmond?" Christina repeated. But now there was no affection there. Now she was just worried.

Desmond took a step forward.

His other self, his reflection, was appropriately doing the same. With blood already running down his chin. Surely he had drunk directly from Abigail. It didn't matter, even with that power he couldn't beat him.

He wasn't even human anymore, after all.

But, more importantly...

"Wait, wait," Christina insisted, running to his side. Pleading, practically. "We had already come to an understanding. You should already..."

This wasn't a fight.

Desmond handed him the sword. His other self stared at it as if he didn't understand it, but like so much else about them it was practically an act. He wasn't being fake, but the person didn't matter here.

The animal he had been reduced to for a long decade understood right away. His surrender.

And not only did he understand. He was pleased.

Especially considering his current state. The sense of inferiority he'd had to struggle with for so long. Not even a month, from his perspective.

But an eternity for Desmond Orosco.

Of course he couldn't read his mind, but he didn't know what he was thinking, who would?

"Christina. I'm not doing this anymore, but it doesn't change anything. One of us has to disappear. No, one of us is already gone. I'm already... I'm already dead... I'm not even sure why I'm still here."

He swallowed saliva.

He didn't feel like crying, but he felt like screaming again. It was all so fucking unfair.

His monstrous face, painted in the black of a starless night and the white of the ashes of the dead, completed by cold, ice-sharp eyes, shouldn't be able to reflect anything human.

Surely it didn't. But he'd like to think it did.

He would like to think that he would be understood. That at least a small part of him, a specter of a time that had never passed and should never pass, remained in this world.

It wouldn't change anything. But...

It meant something. Which was enough.

His other self picked up the sword, but did nothing with it. Yet.

"Come on. We're the same. You know you have to. Deep down you know. Deep down you've always wanted to do this, haven't you?"

Then the specter grinned from ear to ear.

He knew a way to push him to kill. Who else would know?

"I am you. I know all about you, but they.... They don't." Not even half of it, really. He laughed. Friendship was, or should be, a two-way street. They had given him everything and more and he had given them very little in return. He was neither a good friend nor a good son. It was too late to fix that, but not to clean up his own mess. "Do you want me to tell them?"

For the first time since he'd known them, he wasn't afraid of what they would think if they found out about it.

However it turned out, he wouldn't be the one who would have to deal with the consequences, after all. Perhaps this was his last show of resistance. A futile, petty gesture like a spit in the face, but it was something, after all.

"What are you talking about?"

Pretense, again.Deep down he knew what he was getting at. He saw it in the shadow that spread across his face. The curtain of night. Better to disappear behind the curtain of night than into the flames of hell.

"The reason we don't like to be touched. The reason we tense up a little, even when it's mom doing it."

He hadn't touched him, but his other self had tensed up, as if ready to pounce on him. It wouldn't take much more for him to do so and finally this nightmare would be over. Time had wreaked a lot of havoc on him, no, on them, to be fair. On their souls. But at last there would be peace and rest.

Vaguely, the specter noticed that Desmond was the only one who knew what he was referring to.

That is, even Christina looked confused. He had told her, but hey, it had been his Christina. She was dead. And so was he.

Maybe his other self had chickened out, this time. Maybe she seemed confused for another reason. In any case, it didn't matter.

"We were a child wandering alone in a war zone, with a sword we could barely wield as our only protection." He wasn't being very subtle, he knew. Maybe they wouldn't realize it in the heat of the moment, but then they'd put two and two together, even if his other self didn't give him time to blurt it out, stabbed him and got it over with already. "Actually, it was inevitable. That there would be an attempt, not what happened. What those men...

That was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The breaking point.

Desmond stabbed the specter deep in the chest, to the point where only the handle of the sword was visible. He stabbed him cleanly, through and through.

Too clean.

Christina screamed, Amy brought a hand to her mouth. Horrified. Thinking it was the end.

But nothing happened.

The sword should have killed him and nothing happened. Nothing at all. He had no skin. Inside him there was no flesh, no bones. There were no ribs protecting the lungs and heart. Yes, he didn't even have a heart to pierce.

The specter couldn't look away from the hole in its chest. Because it was just that.

A hole, not a wound.

"Oh. I see..." he said in a very low, barely audible voice. But there was absolute silence here, and everyone was transfixed by his words. "I was worried about disappearing, but maybe I should have worried about staying like this... forever."

His other self withdrew the sword.

And the specter watched as the hole filled, the mass of darkness reconfiguring inside him. Once again, he couldn't say healing when it wasn't a wound.

From behind, Christina touched his shoulder. He knew she loved him and wished him well. But it didn't seem like a sympathetic gesture. Somehow, it seemed like the final nail in his coffin.

"Now you know that's not going to work. That's enough, isn't it? Please. Let's call it quits."

That he had to admit. It was the truth. He should call it quits, now that he knew that killing his other self wouldn't fix anything and that he couldn't die.

He should...

A strong wind blew, so strong that it ripped hundreds of leaves off the trees, some trees even bent. For a moment he thought that someone, a stranger who had no right to meddle in this, had seen him and attacked him. But he felt nothing, it was normal wind, not wind magic, nothing like that.

He looked up.

He looked way up, and he wasn't the only one.

It was a huge creature. A kind of snake, with a terrifyingly human face. Out of its mouth was constantly spilling a black-colored venom. The other half of its body was not the tail of a snake, but like... wings coming out of the stump, spreading out like the petals of a flower. Wings of metal, around the creature.

Wings that also spilled venom.

It was huge, but it looked a little bigger than it was.

For it didn't touch the ground, but hovered a few feet above it. Above all of them.

The specter had never seen such a thing. He wished he didn't know such a thing existed.

The winged serpent emitted a sound that chilled the blood in his veins. And it went for them, its wings flapping.

No, not for them.

Right for Christina. Was it here to correct fate, to undo the changes? After all he'd sacrificed, he couldn't let that happen. Then nothing he had had to go through would have any meaning.

The specter broke into a run, lunging toward Christina.

So did Desmond.

The two Desmonds ran as one.