Both Desmond's hearts were beating as one.

Racing for the same purpose. More or less, Desmond was simply giving his all to try to save a friend. The specter had a greater purpose.

He didn't want everything he had sacrificed to end up meaning nothing.

If Christina was killed here, it would start all over again. A loop. An endless maze of punishment.

A maze with no way out.

They saved her. They reached her and pushed her out of the way of sight. The specter, once again, went one step further. Despite everything, for no reason, it took the time to push his other self out of the way of the beast they were now on top of.

It was a waste of time. A stupid mistake. That wouldn't repeat itself.

And, of course, he'd never intended to sacrifice himself for him or anything like that. He'd sacrificed enough already. He moved to escape as well.

That was his intention, at least. But it was too late.

The snake opened its mouth as wide as it could go and swallowed him in one bite.

***

"Saved me? Me..." He mumbled as soon as his back hit the ground.

The other Desmond was not so lucky. The monstrous winged serpent swallowed him. Just like that. Right in front of his eyes.

Desmond tried to get up. To escape.

But not fast enough, again, making the efforts of his other self futile. The darkness of the snake's mouth closed over him.

"Desmond! "Abigail's voice, of course. The same thing she'd said a moment ago, but the voice transformed that one word into something else entirely.

Into all the things he wished he had said to her, in an instant. And then he was engulfed.

Before he lost consciousness, it only gave him time to think that maybe he had been wrong. That maybe Christina had been nothing more than bait to lure them both in and that they bit it.

***

Abigail could only watch helplessly as that beast swallowed her little boy not once but twice. She had to accept it. It was madness.

Something that couldn't happen. And yet it was true.

That was the least of her problems, currently.

Worst of all, she'd been unable to do anything about it. She had been unable to do more than let out a desperate scream as she threw herself forward, in an attempt to help, but only that. Just that. A motion.

Helpless.

She wasn't used to feeling that way. But she was used to the black hole where her heart should be, which seemed to devour her from the inside, as she watched that horrible monstrosity take flight with her child inside and start to move away from her.

She wouldn't allow it. She couldn't allow it.

If she did, she would lose them forever. Them?

Yes, them.

She walked, staggering, toward the beast.

"Desmond! "she shouted as if, even if her voice reached him, it would change anything.

The whole situation was too much.

And now this. This.

He couldn't be dead. None of them.

She'd seen it.

Helplessly, but the important thing was that she'd seen it clearly.

It had swallowed them whole. Alive.

It couldn't be too late.

She chased after the winged snake, which flew a great distance from the ground, with a bit of wind magic.

She was willing to do anything.

Go as far as it took to get him back. She wasn't going to hold back or stop at anything.

But she didn't even chase the snake for long.

The snake spiraled to the ground. At first she thought it had flung itself down, but it soon became obvious that it was a fall, that it wasn't in control.

It hit the ground hard. It was as if the whole world shook.

She went down too.

Its landing point was clearly marked by the cloud of dust it had kicked up on impact. And by the shattered trees. An empty, open space in the middle of the forest. Artificially.

On the way, she passed very close to the treetops. And she heard murmurs, heard raised voices. Surely she would have seen fingers pointing if she had looked.

Abigail didn't. She didn't look away once.

She didn't care. She wasn't like Desmond. She only cared about one thing.

"You have to be all right." That was the first thing she said when she landed. A desperate wish, as if she were praying to the very gods who had condemned her to this existence.

Then she began to slit the snake open.

Her forehead pearly with sweat, hands trembling.

They had to be okay. Both of them. She wouldn't accept one or the other, it had to be both. She'd find them.

And then?

After?

She would see about that later.

***

He hadn't been able to keep it from swallowing him and now he was paying the consequences.

Going down the inside of the tail, little by little. He was so hot as if he was on fire. This heat was coming from the walls that were crushing him as he descended, from all directions.

His strength robbed him of his ability to think clearly. And the oxygen in his lungs.

He had never thought he would die this way. He was nothing more than food being digested.

He had once fallen into the sea. Long ago, when he was still unstoppable, with the closest thing to Abigail's immortality on his side and enough strength to shake the capital of the beasts.

Still, he had come very close to dying.

For regeneration didn't empty his lungs of water.

It wouldn't have kept him from sinking into that darkness. He had made it to the surface, barely. That was the only thing that had saved him. And now? It wasn't like he could 'swim' up.

Hell, he didn't even have room to move enough to swing the sword and open a way out. Yes, he had managed to hold on to the sword even through all this, albeit barely.

Desmond was descending face down.

He had been the second to be swallowed, and was in such a position. However, he didn't see his other self. He wasn't someone he could overlook, even though they were so different. He wasn't sorry either, incidentally.

He would wonder what was up with that if he could think in the first place. The crushing weight of the creature's inner walls was robbing him of everything, even the ability to think. And soon his life as well.

His vision was already dimming, even though his eyes were still reinforced. Which could only mean one thing. He would lose consciousness soon, if something didn't change. He would just lose consciousness. But, in a situation like this... he wouldn't wake up again. He could be sure of that. He would be digested by the creature, melted, and die without even realizing it.

That had always terrified him. Not being aware of his death. He couldn't even count the times he had gone to sleep as a child, fearing he would never open his eyes again. There were few things more terrifying in his narrow world.

Narrow. Yes, and it was getting narrower and narrower, here and now. Until he finally died.

It was inevitable at this point. His vision was gradually dimming. Until he was completely in the dark. But he had not yet lost consciousness.

That struck him as odd, but he guessed it was only a matter of a few seconds. It was said that people could live a few seconds longer after decapitation. Desmond guessed that this was something like that. And that maybe he was dying, not merely losing consciousness. It didn't happen, one way or another. There was nothing but darkness around him, but he was still conscious. Of himself and his own body. Speaking of which...

The light wasn't the only thing that had vanished. The walls crushing him as well... no, that was silly, but they had relaxed, as he couldn't feel the pressure anymore. He stretched out his arms to reach the walls to the sides. Or that was the intention, but he touched nothing but air. And in the process he discovered that he had regained full will to move. Ridiculous, of course. He hadn't lost consciousness, so he couldn't have been saved without even realizing it.

That, anyway, wouldn't explain why everything was so dark. He made an attempt to stand up. He found he was capable of that, too, now. As if nothing was holding him back. This...

"Where am I?" Desmond's voice echoed in the dark void he found himself in.

While he was at it, he hadn't noticed until now, no, maybe he hadn't wanted to notice. But, even though his surroundings were in darkness, he could see his own body perfectly just by looking down.

None of it made any sense. But of course. The whole situation had been complete madness that he couldn't have imagined even in his wildest dreams.

He had to concentrate. Assess the situation.

It occurred to him that maybe everything had changed without him realizing it... because he had already died, passing into the next world. And this was all there was.

A dark void. Bleak.

Desmond felt a shudder at the thought.

That told him enough. That it couldn't be, he couldn't be dead. Because he had already died more times than he could remember. He knew what was after death, and that was true nothingness. No thoughts, no feelings, no pain. No consciousness. Neither of himself nor of his own body. He had both.

Altogether, this couldn't be death. But then, what was it? What the hell was going on?

It wasn't complete nothingness, certainly. Nor was he really alone, even if it seemed so. He felt it in his bones. As clearly as the beating of his heart.

"Are you here?" he shouted, but he already knew that.He knew that... and that he was getting closer.

Desmond turned around, just in time, albeit barely, to block the attack that would have snapped his neck.He knew that just as instinctively, as if he had nothing protecting him.

He had his other self in front of him, of course.But it was different.

It wasn't like looking in a mirror.His body was still like that of that living shadow that had given them so much trouble, except for the ashes stuck all over his body.

And the face.

Half of his face was torn off, but not violently and bloodily, but as one would tear off a mask.

Revealing, of course, his own face.Only half, but undoubtedly his own face.Even though he had known it for some time, Desmond reacted as if it was a surprise.Pulling back, feeling as if he had been punched.It was one thing to know and quite another to see it.To look into that twisted, dark mirror.

"Stop it!" Being angry at himself wasn't out of the ordinary, but this was next level. How could he be so stupid?

The other Desmond took a step back, parting the clashing blades. His next move, of course, was to attack again.An attack he dodged with relative ease. But that wasn't the point.

"It swallowed us up! And now... Now this..." There were no words to describe this shit.

But he should understand all that as well as he did. They were the same person, after all. And yet, he didn't.

It was more than clear.

Because he made a move to attack, once again. He was anything but reasonable. He knew it, but he still found it hard to think that he would react that way. Well, he had the complete opposite reaction.

His other self should have come to the same point as he had. But it was clear that he hadn't, yes. As clear as it was that there was no turning back.

"You want to do this? Okay. We'll do it your fucking way!" An evil, hoarse, rage-filled roar escaped from his throat.

And as they screamed like dying animals, they attacked each other.

Desmond looked down. He was not at all surprised to see the sword buried in his chest, blood flowing like a river. None of them had dodged. As if this had to happen. He didn't worry about the wound, or the fight that wasn't over yet. Because it was on pause.

His other self was also standing there, as if his attack had affected him.

Desmond staggered forward, losing his balance, almost falling. His lips smeared with blood and his eyes spinning, he lifted his head. To look at himself in the mirror.

And stared, as if searching for answers in those eyes. One inhuman, burning like ice. And the other moist, full of pain.

Vulnerable.

He stared at it for a long time.

His twisted reflection stared back at her the whole time.

***

It seemed to Abigail that she had been cutting for a long time. But in reality it wouldn't have taken that long to slit the snake open, exposing its innards to the sunlight.

Its empty entrails. So Desmond jumped out immediately, with no chance of confusion.

There was no blood, venom or other bodily fluids that might have been inside the creature. He was intact, in other words.

But the other Desmond was nowhere to be seen. As if he had vanished.

He felt a prick in his chest. No, like a stab. Abigail bit the inside of one cheek hard. She had to put such things aside.

At least for the moment.

And concentrate... concentrate on what was important.

"Still breathing. He's still breathing."

She reached out a hand to Desmond, to shake him, to wake him up. Her hands were shaking. They hadn't stopped shaking since she'd started cutting. She wanted to put those things aside, but she couldn't. She couldn't stop thinking about what it meant that this other Desmond was gone.

For him. For this Desmond in front of her eyes.

And for herself. For herself, too. She didn't touch Desmond, didn't shake him either. She let her hand drop.

Because she saw that Desmond was slowly opening his eyes. Abigail stared at him, holding her breath.

Wondering who or what would return her gaze, when those eyes opened all the way.

***

Desmond opened his eyes slowly. The sunlight bothered him, his eyesight had to get used to it again. Even before that, however, he saw the silhouette of a person looming over him.

He didn't feel a shred of fear. For he recognized her even before he opened his eyes fully, and before the light stopped bothering him so much.

Abigail, of course. She was always by his side when he needed her most. Seeing her hovering over him, especially that divine smile she wore when she saw that he was well, inevitably reminded him of that day. The day he had died and been born again. The day Abigail had left him, leaving behind only a smile. And leaving behind a sword that was both a bond and a promise. The path that awaited him in front of the ruins of his old life.

A sword with which to forge that path, blow after blow.

It reminded him so much of that day, as if he were reliving it. But this time she hadn't abandoned him. This time they would be together and...

"Desmond. Are you all right?" Why would she ask that?

His head ached and his eyes still bothered him a bit. But otherwise he was fine, wasn't he? Who else would know?

Desmond raised his hands to his eye level, looking down at them. Closing them into fists and opening them. Then he turned them over. Not the hands, but the whole arms.

As if looking at them from another angle he would find something he had missed.

Wounded? Was that what you were looking for? If so, there would be nothing.

"Yes," Desmond answered.

"Where's the other one? What happened?"

The other one. His head hurt even more as he tried to remember, but the effort paid off. Of course Abigail had reason to worry about his well-being. All this madness, the other Desmond, the snake? It had swallowed them, hadn't it?

Desmond glanced around, backwards, realizing he was still inside the creature. Technically.

Only technically, because now his insides were on the outside. Desmond was sitting on the snake's open body, and nothing was happening. Because it was shut down, defeated. Dead.

It had wanted to get Christina out of the way.... Them. Get them out of the way.

There was no trace of his other self anywhere, but he couldn't have just disappeared. Right?

"I don't know," Desmond said, answering his own thoughts as well as Abigail's questions. "I have no idea."

The whole thing had been crazy beyond anything he'd ever been through. It had been like daydreaming. He couldn't explain it. Yes, he couldn't explain this whole mess, this nightmare while awake. And there was something else he couldn't explain. Something more terrible, or at least he thought so, the way his heart felt like it was tearing apart.

He had the feeling that he had lost something important.

Looking up at the sky, Desmond Orosco shed his last tear.

"Why are you crying?" Abigail asked.

Oh, oh. What a question.

"I wish I knew."

Abigail walked over to him. She got down on her knees, then hugged him. Desmond closed his eyes, slowly sinking into her maternal warmth. I've never been in her womb, but....

He couldn't finish the thought.

But the two of them couldn't stay together, in their own world forever. Desmond heard noise, the noise of people, not animals. And as usual he tensed and expected the worst.

He immediately broke the embrace, getting up.

He shouldn't have worried so much. Well, yes. Just not in that way.

Christina and Amy emerged from the vegetation. He didn't know how to deal with them. Especially Christina, whom....

Maybe because of that, a headache came over him. Very intense. As if a knife had been stuck between his eyebrows. Only without killing him in the process and he was feeling it there, scraping against the bone.

The worst headache he'd ever felt in his entire life.

Grunting and groaning, Desmond put a hand to his head.

Not looking away from Christina. Unable to.

***

She had been most of the time barely conscious, agonizing in silence. As she fought for her life, in more ways than one. But, towards the end...

Towards the end, she'd woken up. And then...

"Don't add me to the weight you carry.

Those had been her last words. Her last wish.

Speaking not for herself, but for him.... even though she knew that was the end of her. Even in her last moments, she had enough goodness and inner strength to care about other people.

She was a good person.

Gods, of course she was. But she'd asked too much of him, in the end.

He hadn't been able to fulfill her last wish. Though unbeknownst to him at first, he had gone against her last wish, as well as time and space.

All to get her back.

***

Suddenly, a memory had come to his mind so vividly....

Only it couldn't be a memory.

Living proof of that was the girl who was approaching him, following close behind Amy. Christina. He'd remembered her dying, but she was right here.

Ridiculous. A product of the terrible headache, which was already gradually fading.

Nothing more than that. A trick of his mind.

As if he needed lies to torment himself with. As if he didn't have enough truths as ammunition.

Abigail put a hand on his shoulder.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"No. But... I'm not really unwell either."

"Desmond!" cried Christina, tears in her eyes.

He braced himself to greet her, and felt a pang in his heart as she walked past him. Without even looking at him.

No, instead, she walked over to the snake's open corpse.

Looking frantically. Looking for something. Looking for...

***

They ran each other through. You could see it coming, as neither of them bothered to dodge. Thinking only of finishing off the enemy in front of their eyes. Still, it was funny in a way.

That they were evenly matched, even in this.

Desmond honestly thought it was funny, even as blood gushed from the hole in his chest.

In fact, if it weren't for the pain sealing his throat, he might have laughed.

The most he could manage now was a smile, though.

He lifted his head to look at the human eye of his other self, which until recently had been shrouded by the darkness that covered his entire body.

"I think this was meant to end like this."

Whether those words had come from his other self or from his own throat, he couldn't tell.

In any case, he thought he understood their true meaning.

They didn't refer to such extraordinary circumstances, which none of them could have dreamed of.

It was about something simpler. Definite, cold and cruel.

But true.

Desmond Orosco had always been destined to destroy himself.

***

Christina turned to him, on the verge of tears.

"Where is he? Where is the other one?"

But that she needed to ask should be answer enough, for her. If he were close, she could feel it. Was that what he had lost? A part of himself, literally? It sounded like the easiest conclusion, but that wasn't always the right one. Not always.

Desmond had a feeling, for some reason, that wasn't it.

"Christina," Abigail said, as if in warning. He thought it was strange.

"I need to know... Please."

"Desmond is standing right in front of you," Abigail insisted, warning about something, again. He didn't know why she was so angry all of a sudden.

Hadn't she already had enough stress, with all the craziness of the last few hours?

This was supposed to be the part where they breathed easy. And got ready for the next craziness.

"It's not the same. It's not the same and you know it, not quite. I owe him my life and... And I... "Christina swallowed.

Her pain was his pain.

For being family. But he thought there was something special between Christina and him. Not in that way. Not in the boy-girl sense.

He trusted her. He had told her something he hadn't even told Abigail about.

Because it embarrassed him, and he didn't want Abigail to know.

She wouldn't turn her back on him for something like that, but he was sure she'd treat him differently. Not badly. But he wouldn't put up with her looking at him with pity for it either.

It was the last thing he wanted. Just thinking about it was like having ants under his skin.

He felt the urge to scratch, and barely stood still.

But anyway.

Getting back to the point, no matter what the reason, the point was that Christina knew something about him that even his mom didn't.

No, wait.

Wait. He hadn't told her.

It was true that he had considered doing so, to reassure her. A sort of quid pro quo, though many would have said, even Christina herself, that he didn't need to go that far.

But in the end he hadn't gotten there.

Desmond hadn't had the courage to do it, no matter how much he had thought about it. So he had been flatly wrong.

It was true.

He hadn't had the courage, but he had drunk alcohol for the first time in his life, despite how much he detested it, to see if a little liquid courage would be enough to push him over.

And it had been. In the end, he'd let it all out on her.

Hadn't he?

He frowned.

Confusing was putting it mildly. Two memories, two different conversations, were intermingling in his head. No wonder he was breaking in half!

"Desmond, you look bad. You're... very pale."

Christina had forgotten her earlier concern, or so it seemed, seeing his condition. Desmond smiled in spite of himself, to reassure her, wondering exactly what he looked like.

Then he returned her gaze.

"I'm here."

"Huh?"

"We're both here."

In that dark void, no one had killed anyone, defeating the other, as he thought might have happened, but everything had finally fallen back into place.

In place, huh?

Who was he?

The Desmond transformed into a shadowy specter, who had gone back in time to defy fate?

Or instead the Desmond who had known nothing, not until the last moment.

Which one was he?

Which one of them was standing here?

There was no way of knowing.

Maybe such a distinction didn't even exist to begin with. Not anymore, at least. Two different memories of the conversation in the bar.

"What exactly do you mean?" Christina asked, stuttering.

If he focused, the memory of the conversation at the bar wasn't the only one that had two different versions. Although with effort, he remembered saving her from the assassin. He remembered himself as the shadowy specter of time. But he also remembered watching as said specter saved her. Helpless, knowing that if not for the appearance of that 'creature', he wouldn't have had time to react. And he would have watched her die. In front of his own eyes.

There were fates worse than death. Many, plenty of them.

He remembered going after the second assassin, hiding in a building, watching everything through the window. The person who had almost thwarted his efforts to save Christina, making them mean nothing, giving the girl a heart attack.

Almost.

He'd chased after him, because of course the coward had turned and run away with his tail between his legs as soon as he realized he'd caught him.

Desmond had thwarted all his pathetic attempts to stop him, a feeble resistance that reeked of desperation, despite the fact that his pulse had not trembled when it came to taking another person's life, and then he had put an end to the man.

An end too quick, more than he deserved. Because he had other worries on his mind.

Because...

He also remembered picking Christina up in his arms and rushing her to some hospital, looking for help. Not knowing that it hadn't been the first time he had endeavored to do that.

He remembered a lot of things.

It was only a couple of weeks of difference, but even a couple of weeks was enough time for so many things. Some changes were clearly because of his direct intervention, some were not.

Because even if you rolled the dice again, nothing guaranteed the result would be the same.

Simply because of that.

"We are one," Desmond said, at last. Yes... He felt it. In his heart. He put a hand to his heart, squeezing.

***

"I don't know what I expected," he admitted to everyone. What else could he say. "No future, no freedom. You were left empty-handed."

The legends about the mountain said that ghosts dwelled there who could tell you your future. Desmond knew the legend was true, but if one had told Theo his future, it hadn't been to open the path he desperately sought.

But to cut it off. All of it.

Desmond shook his head.

Theo's milky eyes were fixed on nothingness. Desmond reached out a hand toward what was left of the man's face. What he intended was, of course, to close them.

As if it would do any good.

He dropped his hand. Close what?

One of the eyes hung from its socket by single strands of flesh. If he touched it, he wouldn't close it, he'd make it fall out. The one on the other side of his face wasn't much better either.

It was a sign of respect, but no.

He couldn't even offer him that.

Desmond stood up again.

"This is what you wanted? To find him?" Abigail asked.

"I wanted to close this chapter, so to speak. And to make sure that a specter like me wasn't running around, trying to change something."

It was something that had bothered him quite a bit along the way.

It could happen to anyone, in theory.

And it would be none of his business, normally. Everyone had their regrets. Things they wanted to change. The problem was that he had been hit with unpredictable consequences when he tried to change things.

The unpredictable consequences of what Theo wanted to change could have ended in Christina's death, directly or indirectly.

Or worse, who knows.

By tinkering with time, it could have resulted in Christina never being born in the first place. But that was no longer anything he had to worry about.

Theo was dead, and with him his chance to change things....

Although he had come close.

"How did he die?" Amy asked suddenly.

It was a good question. His corpse gave no clue, at least not in that state. Maybe it would have been obvious before the decay. Or maybe it wouldn't.

"Does it matter?" For a moment he thought that snappy reply had come out of his mouth, unintentionally. It was evidently Christina's voice, however.

"No, I guess it doesn't."

That was all.

They turned and walked out of there.

Leaving Theo's corpse behind, rotting in that fetid darkness, as they marched into the light.