A moment to die for

An incredulous arch of his brows was all the effect that the redhead's rage elicited from Vito, as he allowed himself to be bathed in the brilliant green of the Killing Curse, to which his lifeless vessel did not respond. He had not uttered a word as the splotches of blinding light had dissolved around him. Rather, he had turned to face the near mirror, so to adjust the hem of his right sleeve, and the knot of his tie.

"You should know better than to burst into my personal room without knocking," He informed her, simultaneously mopping the blood from his lips with the tissue that he had retrieved from a pocket in his suit jacket. Without so much as paying the familiar young woman a glance, Vito continued, "Just look at the mess you've made of my door. I assure you, you will be the one to repair it."

Jack stumbled back as the air around Vito seemed to absorb the green light of her curse. She felt no regret, no remorse for trying to kill Vito. He began to speak about his door. His f*cking door. Her friend, her only friend, lie dead by his hand and he was worried about his door. His five galleon, plain wooden door. She felt rage and extreme anger flood her whole being. This was wrath. She strode over to the bathroom and pointed her wand at the mirror. It popped off the wall and she grabbed it. She walked out of the bathroom and threw the mirror, with all her might, at Vito.

"F*ck you, bastard! F*CK YOU! You hear that!? I've tried, Vito! I've tried!" She tore the lam from the wall and threw it up and down in her hand. "I tried, so f*cking hard. And you thought I didn't try, didn't care, didn't give a f*ck. Guess what? Now I don't! You are alone, you pitiful, sad little monster! You are going to die, but you best believe you won't be alone. I will be there, Vito, oh you better BELIEVE-" she threw the lamp towards his head "that I will be there!"

With a quick side-step, Vito narrowly avoided the incoming sheet of glass, which then proceeded past him and shattered violently against the wall. He snarled angrily as his eyes flicked across what had once been his bathroom mirror, now strewn across the hardwood."You broke my mirror? The frame was gold plated! Do you have any idea how much that cost?" He was infuriated, but if only for the sake of money and prized possessions lost.

His gaze spun from the destruction that Jack's fury had resulted in to meet with her hellish orbs. "Pathetic? You're the one throwing my furniture about! And to what end? To justify your inability to save the life of a loved one? Find another outlet. Get the f-ck out of my nightclub."

He ducked away from the lamp that had been intended to collide with his skull, "Take your temper tantrum and your dead whore elsewhere," he gestured with a sweep of his wrist in Chase's direction, expressing his expectation that the corpse be disposed of.

"IT'S NOT JUST YOUR GODDAMN MIRROR EITHER!" Jack screamed, pointing her wand at his dresser. "REDUCTO!" She heard the explosion and the splinters flung about the room, catching onto Jack but she stared at Vito. "I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR F*CKING MIRROR OR YOUR DRESSER OR ANYTHING ABOUT YOU- DON'T YOU GET IT? YOU ARE NOT SPECIAL!" She was waiting- why had he not attacked her yet? She wanted it. She wanted it so she could kill him. She would do it. She swore to Merlin- she would do it.

He told her to leave and she took a step forward. "It's still my club!" came the triumphant hushed whisper. Her eyes bulged, her heart pounded. "Uh huh! You left and I took it in my name and you haven't changed that yet, I'm still getting paperwork done. So..." She put her hands on her hips. "You, Vito, get the f*ck out of MY nightclub, or I'll have Aurors in here before you can say your hairline is already starting to recede." She held her wand poised, ready. "Get the f*ck out of my club."

Home. What had once been a satisfied smirk, strewn gracefully across his face, had become a horrific display of grating teeth, and reddened lips curled back. Home. Home. Home. It was an unfamiliar word, one with which the poltergeist had only ever honestly described two buildings in existence. The earliest of which he had been exercised from, and his mind often proceeded to wander off to in moments of silence. Home. My kingdom. Once more, the room in the midst of which he stood mingled in a formless blur of crimson and black as his anger overwhelmed him. Home. My palace. Satan's nightclub. His shoulders were drawn back, and his eyes narrowed in an instinctual and predatory action. My home.

The post-murder bliss that had previously enveloped Vito was shaken from his core and rolled over his back as he strode towards Jack, his steps pin-pointedly precise. He threw his arms forth and clutched in curling fingers Jack Dyllan's throat. "You loathsome, volatile b!tch," Vito spun, thrusting her roughly in the desired direction. "How dare you! My presence," more violent shoves ensued, punctuating his every word spoken, "should have you on your knees. You will have nothing to do with my kingdom."

Having arrived an arm's distance from the window, Vito growled aloud his final statement, "I'd say you've just about overstayed your fcking welcome," and forced upon Jack his weight until she collided with the windowpane in a flurry of splintered reflections.

She saw it. She saw the change, the flicker, the transformation in his face. She had spurred him to act. She felt a flurry of morbid triumph within her. Her adrenaline surged and her blood boiled- she was about to stare Death in the eye, and she would come out victorious. Who was she kidding? She had stared Death in the eye time and time again, and while not always exactly victorious, she had become very accustomed to Death’s soulless brown eyes.

He approached and her eyes shined, begging him to rise to her challenge, to look at her and react because he knew she was right. She was. She had the paperwork. She’d go and lock them in Gringotts. She would talk to those who had issued her the deed in the first place and secure it for longer if she had to. Her sense of revenge, her reservoir of wrath, were all strong enough to make her ensure she kept Satan’s in her hands.

His hands flew out and she had a brief flashback to where it all began, where he had grabbed her by the throat and forced understanding and care into her skull. With this movement, those contents drained from her entire body. She could not see coming back from this. Chase had been an anchor. Chase had kept Jack in check. Jack had said to herself that as long as no harm came to Chase, then she could handle this all. This was one thing too much.

Her body screamed in pain but she glared at him, her hands going up to grip his neck too, though her lack of air supply left her unable to grip him back in a way that would harm him. She glared at him, reflecting his wrath. He thought his sense of loss was deep- he had no idea! He released her and spun her away. He approached again and she pulled her fist back to hit him, but he gave her a shove. Her hand grasped at caught onto his shirt and as she felt her back hit the window, she snarled, “We’re in this together for one last time.”

And they fell.

The rain.

Droplets spit-spattered between the slits and cracks of cobblestone, the water dirt-flecked by its journey: slithering across spiderweb glass, which dangled graciously within the windowsill, and plummeting to the streets below.

And they fell.

Blood - deluded, pooled. It mingled with ribbons of rich brown hair, and they lazily swayed in the midst of the liquid to the faint rhythm of raindrops. Vito stirred, shifting his head against the unforgiving surface beneath him, and said locks fumbled in their calm ballet, flopping messily against his face. Beneath the cover of hair, a red starburst had crept across the broken flesh of his forehead, revealing his fractured skull.

Vito batted his lids vigorously against the blood that had painted his vision, and he pushed himself upward upon flattened palms. "Ngh - nnnno.No," Vito murmured defiantly, struggling against slurred words as his injury interfered. "Nnnno. No. Nononono." He spoke, almost incoherently against the chilled alley street, aware only of the flaw that had been scattered across his face.

The rain. 'The sky is mourning her death.'

The glass with which everything had been peppered slid beneath Vito's fumbling fingers. 'It's raining glass.' Those transparent razors were endless. Everywhere, was the sharp bite of uneven edges - until alas, Vito's clawing hands met with even plains of smooth skin. Jack Dyllan. He panted, breath weighing heavily within his lungs, and he grasped with desperation that familiar, freckled flesh. "Mmmgah," He gasped as his head was pulled downward forcefully by an abrupt, agonizing headache. "Juh-ack," he whispered from where he lay beside her.

Jack wondered how many bones were broken. From the feeling of it, every single one of her 300 something bones had to have split in half. The impact of falling two stories, two very tall stories that almost felt like three or four, onto the unforgivingly solid cobblestone street below was beyond decription. She knew she was not dead because she was too aware of the pain in her body. All of this pain was proof that she simply could not be dead. The dead had relief in this aspect.

She blinked and blood filled her vision. She reached up a hand and brushed hair and blood out of her eyes, tilting her head so the stream of crimson travelled down the side of her head and into the street. She moved each of hrer limbs. All still attached. She was fairly sure she had a sprained wrist and as she moved her torso, a few broken ribs screamed out their presence. Her knee was possibly disloacated, or just severely bruised. As was her tailbone. Oooh, her aching arse.

As Jack had shifted, she felt glass grab her clothes and skin and tore at her. She scrabbled for her wand, fingers bleeding and she muttered a few course words that sent the glass blowing down the street, away from her. She felt something touch her and her mind reeled, trying to relate the touch to who it could possibly belong to. Her mind was wighed down with pain. All else had leaked out her ears.

Jack blinked, panting ever so slightly in the chilly air. Air was hard to come by with these collapsing ribs, pushing down on her lungs. The hand that was reaching towards her touched her arm and she reached for it too, needing help. Her fingers momentarily reached the fingers of the other figure's and she held on. That was when it spoke. The voice registered, Jack's brain caught up.

She yanked away and pulled herself away, rolling and collapsing her ribs even further. "Don't touch me," she gasped haggardly.

The warmth of mortal contact set ablaze Vito's fingertips, and the arm with which he supported his weight faltered as a result of the abrupt relief it had inflicted upon him. He collapsed upon his shoulders, his head swaying unnaturally from his neck, as though bound to his body by no more support than standard thread. And within the otherwise silent dome that his body had formed; a small space in which he cowered, with Jack's hand wound tightly with his own, a familiar voice did whisper gently against the shell of his right ear, 'It's okay.'

Oh, how he had longed for the utterance of those words; those which possessed the power to chase from the darkened, damp confines of Vito's mind the memories of the Hell to which his previous creators had thrown him, time and time again. That voice which stilled the flow of blood from the wounds that tore through his vessel, and pierced his true being with a shamefulness so concentrated as to render him motionless. Those words which had fled from him so very long ago.

"Don't touch me."

His haven crumbled as his warmth was wretched with ferocity from him, and he fell flat upon his stomach, bloodied and broken. The King had fallen from his thrown - and with him, his Jester.

Jack had to do something. She was not going to let herself come to ruins in the street outside of Satan's. She had too much to do. Too much to achieve and accomplish. Too many people needed her, too many people needed her help and education and safety and protection. It would be rather cowardly and weak of her to allow herself to die on a street in Knockturn Alley next to a man who had undone so much of the good she had caused. She had too much pride for that.

She gathered all of her strenght and pushed herself up, using her knuckles. That brought her to her hands and knees. Her left knee throbbed, and her left wrist creaked and groaned under the weight. One more time, Jack told herself. One more time of pushing through immense pain and coming out the other side. Come on, ol' girl. One. More. Time. She coughed and felt blood gather in her mouth. She carefully spit it into the street and looked up. Thinking.

Now what?

There was a thump next to her and she turned her head. Vito had collapsed. She stared for a long, hard moment and then cursed. "F*ck. F*ck, f*ck, f*ck." She tried to imagine one person she would leave like that. Not even Ne'Os, and she had to admit, she hated Ne'Os more than any person in the world. And she could say Vito was dead to her, or that she did not care if he died in the street... But they had a bond no one could sever, like as she might to, and that instinct reminded her: she was responsible.

She looked forward. How the hell was she going to do this? She collapsed again, her head thumping against Vito's overturned shoulder. "We've killed us," she mumbled. "Vito," she said, wanting his attention. "We've killed us." She sighed, almost believing it. "Dammit, no. I have things to do." The fall had jumbled her brain. She had no control. "I'm going to fix you. But you have to fix things too. I can't fix something bent on being broken." She exhaled, closing her eyes. "In a second, I'll get up and fix everything and briefly forget everything. I need you to say something reassuring to get me through the next few moments so I can save us. Then we go back to screwing each other over."