WHO: Serefin Meleski, Diego Hargreeves, and Vax'ildan WHAT: Serefin isn't hiding his bullshit anymore, tries to take out Diego, and Vax saves the day, much to Diego's displeasure. WHEN: Very early Tuesday morning WARNINGS: Violence, blood, the usual betrayal~ STATUS: Complete
He knew it, but the temptation; chaos was a heady call. How easy it had been to pick Jiang Cheng's pocket for the totem, using the skills he had oh-so-innocently studied from Jacob Frye. There had been so much elemental power at his fingertips, Serefin could understand the allure if he didn't have his own divine magic crawling through his veins. Flooding the shop had been like a meal to a starving man—he couldn't ignore the opportunity, the desperate need to take his fill and satisfy his hunger.
Someone would put it together eventually, but now they could scramble. And if luck would have it, George and Jiang Cheng would be indisposed long enough to prolong giving details to the situation.
But Serefin didn't go back to the train, and that might cause Jacob to worry. He had been worried for some time now, nosing into things that Serefin couldn't keep pushing off. Too many eyes on him with concern. It was sickeningly infuriating. There was no good excuse to explain his absence now either, so perhaps this was it. Shrug off the ruse, and do what he intended from the beginning—rid Vallo of those who proved to be difficult. No more almosts, no more subterfuge, no more playing games.
As he leaned against the brick wall of a random alley in downtown, Serefin took stock of where he was—a familiar shop across the street, and similar highrise to his right, and a street sign that read Cedar Avenue. He knew this route, not because he took it, but Diego did.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon at the end of the street, off the chrome-and-glass structure on the corner. The city was so quiet in the mornings, and all Serefin could hear was his own breath as he waited, patiently. And then there, there the familiar rhythmic cadence of feet hitting the pavement at a brutal pace. Closer, closer, closer, until Serefin ran out from his spot. He was a terrible actor, but Velyos could pretend a little longer that he had just been running for his life.
He crashed into Diego, purposely disrupting his run, making it unrecoverable to keep his stride. Diego had to stop, Serefin was making him. "I am—" Serefin said, gasping for breath he didn't need, "so glad to see you."
Diego was a creature of habit, as much as he wanted to think of himself as otherwise. As much as he instinctively bucked against structure, thanks to a childhood of nothing but every minute being meticulously regimented and scheduled, he still found comfort in running every morning. Every morning, painfully early, a routine he had started from when he was too hyped up from nights spent patrolling the streets to fall asleep, Diego ran. Now it was just because he liked cardio, his body was a temple and all.
Plus, early as it was, he tended to avoid people, which was always a perk for Diego.
“Jesus Christ!” Diego swore, when he was all of a sudden in fact not alone or avoiding people. He had taken a hold of the figure’s shoulders, ready to either headbut them or--well, it was Diego, so headbutting was probably going to have been his move, for better or worse. But the person ended up being Serefin, and Diego was legally obligated to help him, no matter what. And, given that Serefin didn’t wake up until literally the last minute possible, and even then he just ran late and shrugged it off, so Diego’s Danger Radar/”Dangdar” was pinging like crazy. “The fuck? What’s wrong?”
For all his hard exterior, Diego truly was squishy on the inside. What was wrong?—already assuming that Serefin wasn't the something that was wrong. Serefin had gathered so many people who could put down their defenses when he was in trouble, and such disastrous shame that he was breaking the trust. Slowly, painfully, unthinkably with his disarming personality. Not that it was going to be needed much longer.
He clung to Diego, clutching to his shirt, his sides, trying to stand in his characteristic gracelessness—he could feel one blade, and another. It was all in the art of distraction. Something he had learned from Jacob; again, those skills ruined each of them with Serefin's knowledge.
The most obvious visible knife on his shoulder blade was in Serefin's hand, but he didn't quite let go of Diego, weaponizing himself by hiding it in the pressure of his embrace. Perhaps this was why Diego didn't hug anyone; Serefin was unquestionably convinced that he wouldn't in the future after this.
"Something is happening, something terrible, something I can't control—" Serefin said, regret and pain coloring his voice. Perhaps it was a flash of the real Serefin, the one not being controlled by Velyos. That was until he jammed the blade into Diego's side, between his ribs.
"I'm sorry," was all he managed out, but he didn't sound sorry at all.
“Okay, hey, slow down,” Diego said, quickly. “It’s okay, I got it, we can--” That was the problem with Diego. He was blinded by emotion, too quick to jump in with both feet before looking to see if there was anything solid to land on. Too quick to jump in to realize that the danger was right in front of him.
Searing, white hot pain shot through him, and even then, Diego hadn’t exactly put together what had happened. He put his hand to the wound, it came back crimson. Instinctively, Diego bunched up his shirt as much as he could so he could apply pressure, but he was crumpling to the ground before that could do any good. Diego’s breathing came out shallow and labored. For as much as he trained and fought and threw things with pinpoint accuracy, Diego was still very, very human.
“What...the fuck…?” he wheezed, coughing. Which was a ridiculous thing to say when you had just been shanked in the rib by your mentee, but it was all that Diego could come up with in the moment.
Serefin moved away and let Diego fall. He watched him with casual disinterest as he frantically bunched his shirt and tried to stop the blood that was pooling around him on the sidewalk. It would be a slow and painful death, that was for sure. Perhaps that was cruel; Diego had shown him kindness from the beginning, in his own brusque way, and Serefin should have returned the favor, even in unfortunately early death. Velyos, however, was not so sympathetic.
He bent down and wiped the blood off the dagger on Diego's shoulder. "I admit, I thought this might have been less ironic. You always did like knives, and now? By your own? You should be laughing," Serefin said, holding the semi-clean blade to the rising sun. It glinted and shined in all the appropriate spots, and Serefin worked his mouth in the reflection. Too bad he wasn't someone who would appreciate the weapon properly. Just a means to an end.
Tucking the blade into his back pocket, Serefin looked down at Diego, with almost pity. "It was nice knowing you," Serefin said, and placed his boot on top of Diego's hands over his wound, and he pressed down, agonizingly slow to exact that last amount of small torture. Then, he stepped back. "I will let them know you were a mediocre mentor and a terrible role model. Someone will remember you better but it will not be me."
Without any other pretense or preamble, Serefin left, a single bloodied footprint following behind him until it was gone.
Normally Vax wouldn't find himself in the city quite so early, but as luck would happen to have it, he turned just the right corner that morning. On a more typical day, he would be back home, trying to wrangle Velora to get her off to school or making a breakfast of likely oversalted eggs or toast that was just this side of burned. This morning, though, he'd had a handful of odd errands to run before going into work -- which, it would seem, had put him in the right place at the right time.
Fate-touched, indeed.
A few strides away from the heap of a bleeding person on the sidewalk, there was no real moment of hesitation or thinking for Vax before he hurried over and dropped to his knees at their side. That was no different from the usual; Vax'ildan was the physical embodiment of act first, ask questions later. Perhaps had he taken at least a handful of seconds to look over the aforementioned bleeding person, the recognition would have set in quicker. Instead, it took him a moment of assessing how much blood was on the ground and where the blood was coming from before he looked up and realized who he was looking at.
"Fuck," Vax breathed, expression of concern only multiplying on his face as he looked at Diego. Several questions nearly surfaced, most of them variations of what the fuck happened?, but instead he reached out a hand to touch Diego's bleeding side and immediately emptied the entire pool of healing Vax had at his disposal into the other man. It wouldn't fix things entirely, but it wouldn't hurt, either.
Vax’s healing poured into Diego, enough that his eyes shot open and he gasped as if coming out from under the water. Strangely, the healing made everything hurt worse. In the time from Serefin’s departure to Vax’s arrival, the numbness had settled in. It would have been a really shitty way to go, and Diego was relieved to see Vax. Limited healing or not, it was enough. Not that he would let him know that, of course.
“Fuck me, just put the knife back in,” he mumbled, putting all of his weight onto one arm to push himself up with a wince and a groan. Which reminded him, he didn’t have his knife--which, after he punched Serefin (or whatever that was) in the face, the next thing he was doing was taking back his knife because fuck that. God, the more he thought about it, the angrier he got, which was good because the alternative was betrayal and Diego didn’t do well there. He did better in anger, he would argue that he thrived in it. And he would use that adrenaline until he burned himself and everything else around him down.
He gritted his teeth, absolutely not leaning on Vax for support. “Move out of my fucking way. No, first, give me that fucking teleporting knife so I can teleport.”
Relief rocked Vax was Diego not only opened his eyes, but also sounded very much like himself. He still had a worry that the healing he'd done wouldn't be enough and that there was a chance for internal injuries or his further hurting himself if he moved too much, but at least he was grumbling like always and Vax, with his only medical knowledge and healing ability being divinely gifted from the goddess of death, took that to be a good sign.
Vax moved with Diego, taking his weight as he helped him up and tried to keep him upright; the last thing he needed was for Diego to fall and potentially hurt himself more, when his healing could only spread so far.
"That's not how it works," Vax said without hesitation, arm wrapping around Diego to better support him. "I'd explain to you all the ways that's not how it works, but you'd probably bleed out before I finished." Despite that, he couldn't help but ask, "What the hell happened?"
Diego wasn’t sure which slight to his dignity would be worse: leaning on Vax or refusing Vax’s help and then falling flat on his face and having to be carried--not by Vax, obviously, but someone else. “I can throw that knife better right now than you can, ever,” Diego grumbled
He very obviously was reluctant to answer Vax’s question, choosing instead to jam his fist again against the wound and grunt against the pain. That’s what he would focus on, that and his anger to see him through, instead of thinking about the look of utter disregard and apathy on Serefin’s face. It made Diego think of another time, when he had been stabbed by his father and--he wasn’t going down that road. Diego’s lip curled in a snarl. “Serefin. Something that looks like him. I’m going to kill it and then punch him in the face.”
But breathing felt like Diego was inhaling hundreds of tiny knives. He staggered, stopped, bent over--and that was a big mistake, standing back up had Diego seeing stars. “Okay, no, better idea. You’re going to go to the clinic and steal the medical stapler and then I’m going to go kill what’s got Serefin’s face, and then I’m going to finish my run, and then I’m going to do like, five million push ups.”
"Okay, so -- " Vax looked Diego over, wishing not for the first time that he had the various supplies that he might have carried around on him back home -- healing potions, healer's kit, a bottle of fucking whiskey -- or that he'd had the foresight to prepare a more useful set of Paladin spells that morning. His worry about Diego passing out again on the sidewalk was high, but not quite enough to quell the spike of concern that hit him over it being Serefin, or someone who looked like Serefin, being the culprit in all this.
Later, he decided. First, Diego. Then -- whatever the fuck was going on.
Vax huffed a quick breath, then continued, "That's a great idea and has a lot of merit, but counter idea? We don't do any of that and you just let me take you to the clinic." Vax put an arm back around Diego to give him support and added, "Either that or I'll just knock you out and fly you there."
“Or I knock you out and fly you to the clinic because that sounds like something that’s much more likely to happen,” Diego snarked. Which was, he thought, a pretty genius comeback.
Or would have been, had it not sounded more like, “I knof PLU od n f PLU to--” right before he dropped deadweight on to Vax.