Chapter Text
When Saul wakes up, it's not on the hillside overlooking Aster Dell.
It's dark. It's night, it has to be, but there's no stormy sky over his head, there's… timbers? Lumber?
He blinks and tries to sit up but the agony in his hip stops him. Jagged webs of knifepoints thrusting outward, making him grit his teeth and clench his hands like talons against the bed he's lying on—because it is a bed, he can feel the softness of the sheets and the wetness from blood he's dripped onto them—
Panic floods through him, fed by fear, confusion, increasing alarm.
Betrayal. Fucking Andreas—Rosalind—
The pain stabs him with every motion but he fights through it, the darkness of the room does nothing to prevent the vision of Farah, Ben, and Rosalind on that hilltop, lit by an unnatural glow, arms raised as lightning strikes perdition—
There's a door and he finally reaches it on his knees, gripping the doorknob like it's the only thing keeping him upright, feeling the metal stiff beneath his bloody hands—his hands are still bloody—why the fuck won't the door open, why's the deadbolt removed, why why why—
A movement from the corner of his eye startles him and he twists, a sudden jerk that routes through him again and makes him gasp but he doesn't care about the pain, even in the environment of some stranger's house, he knows the shape of Andreas, even if he's stooping, even if his own face is wracked with pain.
As if he cares.
He shoves himself to his feet—not fully his feet, but as much upright as he can manage, and lunges.
Andreas is expecting this but like Saul he's not in top form, either. Hands go up to protect his face but Saul's not going for his pretty, if scuffed-up, face. He's going for his throat.
They hit the ground with a thud that almost knocks the breath from Saul but he manages to hang on to Andreas' neck, feeling skin twist and muscles clench and fine hairs from his beard rip beneath Saul's furious grip.
"What the fuck did you do," he spits out. "Aster Dell—"
Andreas' reply comes out around haphazard breaths. "Destroyed," he gurgles, but there's a mocking satisfaction in it that makes his face vanish beneath a screen of red fury.
"What the fuck," Saul roars. Andreas' nails scrabble at his face but he doesn't feel the pain; all he sees is lightning and smoke and faces wrought in horror pressed up against window panes.
They did that. Andreas did it. Rosalind.
He wants to scream, to shout at Andreas, to somehow make the betrayer feel the agony and anguish wrenching through him but it's no use, every vindictive, every epithet is useless against the impenetrable, invariable veil of evil cast over the town. Over Saul. All he can do is squeeze tighter against Andreas' throat, watch the man's once-fine face turn ruddy and bulging and—
And then Saul hears the cry.
He doesn't relent, not at first. He's a soldier, he's trained better than to be distracted.
But then it comes again, and two things registers somewhere in the back of his mind: First is that it's close. Behind a wall, behind Andreas.
And second, it's a child's cry, and it's too high-pitched, too nasally, too... new. He hasn't heard Sky scream like that in months. A year, even.
Despite himself he loosens his grip, a new wave of horror encircling him.
This time, when he says it again, he has to mask the fear. "What the fuck," he whispers.
Andreas says nothing, just raises his eyes to the wall behind him. The child wails again, a desperate noise from an infant.
"Our new assignment," Andreas finally rasps.
Saul fights down the growing nausea and terror. "What did you do to Sky."
Andreas heaves himself up onto his elbows and Saul lets him, too stunned to keep the man pinned.
"Her name is Beatrix."