Desmond felt like throwing up, but he had nothing to throw up. He hadn't eaten anything in weeks, fuck, it was possible he didn't have a stomach or anything related. Like bile.

But he felt like throwing up, anyway.

A feeling from which there was no relief, because he couldn't throw up. He couldn't free himself from it.

He thought vaguely that the police would be here any minute.

Then he began to crawl forward. Toward them.

He had harbored the secret hope that...once he accomplished his mission, this form would disappear and the other Desmond would disappear. Or they would become one again.

But he had already killed this worm. He had already saved her. And everything was still the same.

So, what? He'd... Lost his place in the world?

"Don't take another step," Christina said, stepping in front of Desmond, one hand on his chest, pulling him back. To defend him. To defend him.... from himself.

That's me, he wanted to scream at her. That's me!

And, at this point, what reason was there to keep quiet? What was in it for him? Desmond opened his mouth to say something to her.

Christina cut him off, not speaking first.

Letting out a choked gasp. Then she fell to the ground, put her hands to her chest and began to writhe in pain.

Desmond, the other Desmond, summoned the sword back to his hand.

That sword is mine, he thought.

He extended it toward him. He didn't look like an imposing figure, barely standing even with the aid of a crutch. Besides, if he knew how to defeat one person, it was himself. Even under better circumstances, the other Desmond couldn't have been a threat to him in any way.

But that didn't worry him. Christina...

"What are you doing to her?"

"Nothing. I don't... I didn't..."

What was happening? A heart attack? He had saved her already, but was she still going to die in front of his eyes? Was this the World correcting something that should never have happened? Turning things back to their course, and nothing could be changed?

Had he been brought here only to learn that no one could fight fate?

No.

No.

She wasn't going to die here, he couldn't let her die.

And it couldn't be about that. He had already changed the future, revealing himself to the group, talking to them. That hadn't happened the first time. So he had changed something. You could change things, time wasn't so inflexible.

So the next explanation was....

"You're lying."

That someone was doing this. One assassin had been taken care of, but why couldn't there be another waiting nearby? In case that one failed? Someone with an affinity that allowed him to cause heart attacks, or perhaps grab someone's heart with an invisible hand, piercing skin and flesh.

If so, he would surely be close.

If he wasn't close... then he had no chance of saving her. Not this 'time'.

"Pick her up and take her to some hospital," Desmond said. He was the real one; he took a few steps back. "I just want her to live. We just want the same thing. And you've wasted too much time already."

The other Desmond looked at Christina, then at him, then at Christina again.

What was he thinking, what was making him fucking hesitate?

"Go the fuck away! How much more do you want to lose?

The other Desmond looked at him with wide eyes. His words had pierced him. They had reached beyond the skin, to a place no knife could reach.

He grabbed Christina in his arms and ran out as best he could, steeling his body.

Killing the assassin hiding in the shadows was an option. But also getting Christina far enough away for the effect to wear off.

Which didn't mean he was going to count on that and stop looking for the assassin, of course.

His appearance and the gruesome spectacle he had presented was scaring more and more people away. It shouldn't be hard to find the assassin, considering that.

Even if he wasn't mixed up in the crowd.

And he wasn't, he was leaning out of a window. It was undoubtedly the face of a killer.

Even if Desmond hadn't noticed, the killer would have revealed himself. By the way he reacted when he realized he was looking directly at him.

That is, he turned around. Running.

You think I'm going to let you get away?

Desmond took a leap and landed on the front of that house, halfway to the window, feet and hands buried in the wood.

He climbed up the wall like a huge spider.

And naturally, as if he did it every day, as if he had practiced it ad nauseam, once again he went through a window pane, his body becoming immaterial. Or maybe it was the glass that was changing, not his body.

Either way. In a matter of seconds he was on the other side.

The assassin hadn't yet escaped. I mean, he had opened the door to the room, but got caught in the hallway. How slow. Perhaps he had been slow to open the door because his hands had been shaking too much.

Yes. Fear made human beings predictable.

"Where do you think you're going?" Desmond asked, defiantly.

The other assassin turned around to look at him. There was fear in his eyes, but then something changed. A flash of confidence.

Or rather, arrogance. Mages tended to suffer from arrogance.

The assassin extended a hand toward him, clenched into a fist, concentrating. Nothing happened. Of course. Fear reclaimed the lost territory on his face.

"Why didn't it work?"

Because not only could he not feel Abigail's heartbeat in his chest. He couldn't even feel his own anymore.

"There is no heart to affect," he replied simply, approaching him step by step, unhurriedly. While the other did nothing.

Not until Desmond stopped in front of him. That seemed to rouse him from his stupor. But by then it was too late.

Desmond drove a hand into his chest, through his ribs, deep, deep, deep, until his fingertips touched the beating heart. And then they clung.

The assassin's face contorted, as did his entire body.

Desmond pulled, ripping his heart out of his chest. And held it up so he could get a good look at it. Still throbbing, pumping blood through what were now not veins, but holes.

"What... is this?"

Those were his last words.

Then Desmond crushed his heart and the corpse fell at his feet. Everything, from start to finish, was so easy.