Hal of course was torn. There were so many things that could go wrong in so many ways. If more attacks came he'd be weak, weaker than Mitchell, than Lauren even. The girl who had cheated her humanity. And of course there was a voice in the back of his head begging him to do that, to do anything other than destroy him. Sometimes it told him it would make no difference, that Lord Harry was not born of his recruitment but of an evil already within him. One that not even mortality could contain. What then, what if he found a more powerful breed of vampire to ally with. Of course he'd never been one for second place.
He was giving up 500 years of hell. 500 years of blood and torment and that was what he had to cling to. This was what he had wanted for so long, what he had wished for every time he'd cycled, every time he'd thought maybe he could have a chance to be normal.
The bauble offended him. Offering everything and nothing all at once. Offering hope, and a crippling fear. And god, if he was never to taste blood again couldn't he have it just once, just a taste. It was everything he hated about himself and yet everything he so craved and would it really do so much damage to...
No. No he knew better than that.
When Alex did arrive he was staring intently at a spot of dust on the desktop he had cleaned so recently as if it was the most hated of his enemies.
"Last time you'll get to do that of course." he said simply. "Its funny. I've wanted it back for so long and I thought, especially here that it would just happen. I thought I'd wake up one day and it would be fine. But it's a choice. A choice to make when others shake off the bloodlust with a few words. And I'm stronger than her, I don't hide from crosses, sunlight doesn't hurt my eyes. I..I'm stronger than them. By far, by centuries. I'm an Old One, Alex. By all accounts the last Old One and yet this, that should be so easy, that is and remains everything I've ever wanted is harder than I could ever have imagined. It's just a few words, and I've been trying to make them come, but its fighting, he is fighting, what if it makes me the man from the Battle of Orsha, minutes left to live, you won't be able to rentaghost the living. What if he's still there, even mortal, what if Mr Snow comes here. I hate Lauren for what she did, for wishing it away because its made that an option."
And it was an option he knew he couldn't take.
"Of course without the bloodlust, without the reason I keep myself in check. What's to stop him?"