knightsoflegend | CHAPTER TWO ♔ a sigh escapes from heaven and worlds end

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CHAPTER TWO ♔ a sigh escapes from heaven and worlds end

♬ The Dream Within - Lara Fabian

WHO || Rafael Giovanni, Burt Becksworth, Isabella Alessandro, Finnick Odair, Myrilandel de Tanos, Buffy Summers, Spike, Elena Gilbert, Dawn Summers, Desmond Descant, Jeanne Gar, Kat Samcelot, Mark Sandazhard, Violet Fiore, Sterling Archer
WHAT || CHAPTER TWO: Following the traumatic and tragic events of Finnick and Rafael's concert, our heroes are taken to be interrogated at the police station
WHERE || Concert Hall > Chicago Police Department, Chicago, IL
WHEN || July 3rd, 2013 [ forward dated]
HOW || Actionspam

Nothing is okay.

What was meant to be the Knights' triumphant collaborative effort to cut off Chad Becksworth's bid for total control of NOVA Records, allowing them to follow the trail elsewhere, has descended into chaos. Rafael's songs triggered some kind of reaction in Jade that allowed her to regain her lost memories, only to have their reunion cut tragically short by the actions of a hitman who took her hostage on stage, demanding her necklace. While Myri and Violet attempted to convince him that the necklace did not lie with her, Jade signaled to Rafael that she meant to utilize the distraction to break free - but things went out of control and Rafael's bullets struck Jade instead. The Knights felled the hitman, as the world watched, and Rafael begged a distraught and enraged Des to end his life. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure that only Buffy & Spike could see assisted Myrilandel in healing Jade enough to hang on for a little time more...

Time for people to say goodbye.

In the meantime, the police have arrived, arresting Rafael, Archer, and Des (or attempting to), and preparing Jade to be taken to the hospital. Everyone else is being ordered to head outside to be taken down to the station for questioning. It's a hectic scene, but people can finally snatch a few moments amid the chaos to try to make sense of what just happened...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ rain one - varekai

her forehead furrows as she stares at des, something slowly sinking in. she sounds angry as she retorts: ] I never said that was what she wanted. She was as much as fault as he was. They were both wrapped up in their dramatic ideal of love, and they both encouraged it in each other. She could have been honest with him about how she felt, what she wanted, but instead she wanted him to prove his love, could not just accept that he might be acting in her best interests. [ pointedly: ] You do not need to go idealizing her as well.

[ she reins herself in and takes a deep breath ] Instead, because she could not simply tell him what it was she wanted from him, it fell to me. She hugged and kissed me goodbye, as a sister would, and headed down to the back courtyard, to the garden. I ran to the front door, as Rafael was coming back inside, and as I regained my breath, he made some kind of comment about the strange weather for that time of year. It was raining then. It always rained when Eterna cried, something we never thought twice about before we knew what she was. And I blurted out everything she had said to me, that she was leaving, that she had wanted nothing but to stay with him, with us. I screamed at him about what fools they were, but he did not stay to hear me. He bolted for the garden, and I watched hopelessly from the back window.

Jade was standing in the center of the courtyard, the rain streaming over her upturned face. Rafael tore around the corner, shouting her name, and I remember, she dropped her eyes from the heavens and looked back at him, tears still streaking her cheeks, and I could see regret in her eyes. And then there was a flash enveloping her - so brilliant, I had to look away - just as Rafael caught up to her, followed by an overwhelming darkness that ate up the light just as quickly as it came. Rafael fell to his knees on the ground where Jade had stood moments before, and shouted her name over and over again until it tore at my brain like thunder... But, there was no calling her back. She was out of his reach, completely. He had been too late - by only a moment. A moment less from me and perhaps... [ she shakes her head woodenly ] Perhaps not. Perhaps there was no changing it. It is possible we can not know that. But Rafael- [ she seems overcome with a sort of horror at the memory, shuddering slightly. ] He sat there for I don’t know how long, tears running down his face, his eyes empty, as the tears of his angel fell upon him...

And I do not think that he ever really left that spot in the years that followed. In the end, I should never have told him. He should never have known.

What became of him -- [ and she has to stop again, but apparently this next part is the very worst of it all to her. ]

You did the right thing.

[ she says it reluctantly, because this is isabella we're talking about here, but she feels like she has to say it - isa deserves to know that, to stop wondering if she should have somehow spared rafael that pain. ]

What Rafael did, how he chose to deal or not deal, that was his choice. Keeping that kind of secret from someone you love, it would have eaten you away inside. He would have found out sooner or later, and it would have been worse for everyone.

[ and it's clear in the hardness of her voice that she has a wealth of problems with the choices he did make, but the fact is they're his - they aren't on isabella to prevent. ]

[Des just glares daggers at Isabella like he wants to leap over the couch and strangle her.] She was just a girl, princess.

[No idealizing about it.]

Sounds like they were both morons. [Spike's feeling less jealous of Rafael's life by the moment. Spike may not be darkly handsome and Italian with a voice like an angel, but he's also not... stupidly roundabout and dishonest about his feelings. Love doesn't exactly make him smart, but at least it doesn't make him this melodramatic.

He can entirely imagine loving to the degree Rafael and Jade presumably loved. But he can't ever imagine letting his lover believe he'd willingly go a day without her, let alone an eternity. It's too bloody stupid for words.]

Buffy's right, you did do the right thing. [Her agreement is soft, as she stands up. But then she looks to Des.] And Isabella's right. That girl, that we all knew? She was just a shadow of the woman she should have been.

[She holds up a hand to bar any protests.] I am not excusing what Rafael did, he shouldn't have done it without her permission and he sure as hell shouldn't have done it when he did. But it was killing her. She lived in a world that was grey because all the vibrancy was sucked out of it and she felt like she was lost. Rafael fucked up, he did, but Jade needed her memories back. Even if it was just for a couple minutes. The woman we saw on stage, that was who she was supposed to be.

[Archer actually suddenly gets a little choked up... though - that may just be because his Bloody Mary is empty.]

Look. Just because YOU didn't understand their brand of love doesn't mean they weren't in love, ok?! Who are you to judge them?

Sometimes, you just know, and that's it - and it's crazy and stupid and magical, like a goddamned unicorn on an acid trip in the Bahamas - And then some asshole named BARRY crashes your wedding, and murders her. And that's exactly what this faceless SONOFABITCH did! [Archer hurls his empty glass at this point and stands up.] WELL FUCK THAT! This time someone is going to pay!

[KATYA!!!!!!!!!! *projecting anger*]

[/Crickets chirping "Sound of Silence" in the background.]

[finnick is so astounded by archer's display of genuine human emotion that he drops his cup of coffee — and somehow manages to catch it with a 16 ref save.]

[ madness - muse

isabella chooses to ignore most of archer's ... whatever that was over there. ]

Rafael did what he did there and then because he knew it would be his only chance to have her listen. Do you think it would have been truly better for him to spend months or years pursuing a woman who, as Violet says, was nothing but a shadow, and who would be overwhelmed by his advances, or not want them in the first place? Who was not even the same woman? He was not so cruel as to subject her to that, and it would have felt like a betrayal to the Jade he did love. But you cannot believe for a moment, he thought giving her her memories back would mean replacing everything she had known since. Who could predict such a thing? [ she unbristles a bit, shifting in place ]

But it would not matter. Because Des was right about something. [ those words do not seem to come easy. ]

He changed after she left. Everything changed. The things he did in that time-- [ there's a clearly haunted look in her eyes, over things she does not care to discuss ] He threw himself back into the resistance movement, almost in defiance of what had happened. There were something so much darker to him, and it took some time for me to see how much his sanity had slipped. He began to mark his victims, to leave a sign for those who found them, and word spread to the people. They called him Il Flagello Nero after the weapon he would carry to leave his mark: the Black Scourge. His fame spread, now that his crimes were clearly the work of one man, and he became renowned as the most dangerous assassin in Italy.

He would no longer sing the songs he once sang- the songs he sang with Jade, or even before her. Instead he wrote new ones frantically, all of them calling out to her. He became desperate to regain what he felt he had lost. He blamed himself for “sending her away” but I felt as much at fault for not holding her back only seconds more.

Rafael did not see it that way of course. He could only hunt her, and hunt his prey. Hiro joined us eventually, and Rafael became an enigmatic threat to Italian Shadow-haters.

That was not all.

He also began bringing young women home on occasion, women that reminded him in some aspect of her. Physically sometimes, but on most occasions, girls who had the same spark of fire in them that she had. I tried to discourage this foolishness: for after dinner with them, he would send them home and sink into a depression that they were not a reincarnated version of his lost love. [ her eyes slide over to kat, gar, myri, and then settle on buffy ] Do not be surprised. You were hardly the first. But you were the first he-- [ and she stops herself, lips pressed together firmly for a moment as she looks away, obviously not wanting to open that can of worms, and frustrated by something about it. ] In short, he was losing his mind. And I understand him well enough to know why. He had banked everything on his vision of their great love, and to have his faith in that questioned, to be forced to confront the possibility that it was never meant to be, would force him to question everything else he had done. How far he had gone. The lives he had taken. Things he had once justified as being all in the name of their love.

The only recourse he saw was to take it to the very end. He could see nothing else, think of nothing else, because if he veered from that, he might lose what last threads of sanity he had.

[ and her final, bitter point as she looks down, exhausted. ] And I think he has. I think his illusions, his fantasy, have been shattered beyond repair. And I fear what it means for him. And if any of you care for him, as you have professed to do, you should too.

He does not know how to live without them. And he is a dangerous, reckless man on a good day, let alone when he may be broken possibly beyond mending.

[Des arches an eyebrow at the mention of him being right, but the longer Isa talks, the more annoyed he gets. His emotions on the situation are still complicated, twisted by desperation born from the fact that Jade's barely clinging to life and she'll likely die surrounded by strangers when she shouldn't be dying at all and confused by grim resignation that he never could have kept her and that's one of a hundred reasons why it took so long for him to man up.

It's not until Isa looks at Buffy that he reaches out and clamps a hand on the girl's shoulder and actually looks like he might lash out. What he did to Jade is a controversial and touchy subject. What he's likely done to Buffy's feelings is much more real and less based in presumption.]

Maybe it's about time he wised up. The rest of us can slap duct tape over our wounds and keep functioning- why the hell does he get to be a preteen girl with a murder fetish about everything? 'Cause I'll tell you right now, princess- the minute we get him outta jail, I'm clockin' him one and I don't think anyone's gonna argue with me. Maybe it'll knock something loose in that screwball fluffy head of his. I ain't catering to his hoity-toity little melodrama. We're getting him out, we're getting back on the case, and he can either be a man or Blondie might actually have to do something rash. 'Cause if he goes off the deep end and puts these people in danger? She'll make it hurt. I guarantee it.

[ the pointed stare pierces into her like a spear and sticks her to her seat. she wants to get up, wants to flee the room before it becomes all too apparent how isabella's words are cutting her up inside, but she can't budge. all she can do is stare right back into the italian woman's eyes, expression contorting as she tries harder and harder to cover the damage she's leaving.

but tears well up behind her eyes and they take on a glossy appearance. she raises her chin, blinking quickly, turning away and swallowing hard to try and get rid of the lump in her throat, to try and compose herself again, but she can't.

he'd used her.

not just to get to jade. not just the concert, which had felt miserable enough to realize. he'd used her because she reminded him of the only woman he really did care about. she'd never meant anything to him at all. she'd been a shade, someone that rafael could simply surround himself so he could watch the shadows of his former life dance off the walls.

she might as well have been a piece of furniture.

it's impossible to stop the tears entirely, and as she blinks most of them back, a few trickle quickly down. she ducks her head to try and disguise it as she reaches up to rub them away hastily, though it's obvious what she's doing (will save 10, hide 7).

the worst part of all of this is that none of it changes a damned thing, because she still feels that pull in her heart, that iron-tight grip that he has on it making her buckle. she still can't imagine actually allowing this to continue, for the american police to extradite him back to italy for trial for any of this. she still feels that connection to him that she'd always felt, that had grown stronger in november, and proven to be a point of no return.

des' grip brings her back to reality, and she straightens quickly. she clears her throat, glancing around at the others and pretending there isn't a telling red puffiness to her eyes. she doesn't address des' threats, because honestly she can't bring herself to talk him down from the violence he keeps promising rafael, buts he also can't guarantee she'd rough him into assisting herself.

she's always thought of herself as their weapon, but not against him. so with a cracking voice, she moves onto what's really important here; ]

One step at a time. How do we get him out?

[Spike hasn't noticed Buffy crying (crit fail whoops). He's too busy being distracted by having no freaking clue what that dot dot dot is (wis 10) and generally brooding over the fact that no one told him their Itialian rock star ally was a crazy person. And Buffy thought Spike was evil. At least Spike hadn't gone on any murder sprees. That... he... remembered.]

Better question: do we really want to?

... I don't know how many times I have to try to tell you people love makes people batshit crazy.

But he's still our crazy Italian dude.

Y... yes, as Kat... said... [ gar's weak response is cut off by the hotel room's phone ringing. someone gonna get dat? ]

[Apparently Vi's got it.]

Hello, you've reached Princess Buttercup. What up?

Brilliant. Wanna make a royal fucking decree to the rest of your pals: I pulled some strings, Giovanni's made bail. Just need someone to come pick him up.

Sweet. [Her hand covers the mouth piece.] Italia's out on bail, someone needs to pick him up. I vote Des.

[Back to Burt:] What about you? I mean, are you... safe? Or whatever?

So long as Finnick's little piece is done threatening to bash my face in, now that I held up my end.

[Finnick's little... Myri? She glances back and she is just thoroughly impressed. Thumbs up sis.] ...for now, I can hold her at bay.

Good. Any sign of my Golden Boy?

Starshine is aces, no worries. Anything else you desire before I hang up on you? [She's not even being rude, okay, just honest. They have stuff to do and Burt is not the dude she wants to talk to.]

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