"Things which matter most, must never be at the mercy of things which matter least."

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

                                                                             ***

Sirius startled badly when something banged against the roof of the car, yanking him out of his own head, freeing him from his nightmarish memories. He looked to the side to find the Hunter standing there, and rolled down the window.

Caleb leaned down, his good arm resting on the roof of the car as he looked at Sirius. He narrowed his eyes at the Hound, and said, "When was the last time you ate?"

He didn't know. He couldn't remember. It didn't matter. With a shrug, he said, "Sometime before."

There was no need to elaborate. There was only the one 'before'. Well... that wasn't quite right. There were actually two befores. The one before he met her, and the one before he lost her.

Caleb sighed. "Then let's get something to eat, and we can get this thing hammered out."

Sirius couldn't even begin to describe how uninterested he was in the idea of food. His wrists were burning, and he had a headache right behind his left eye that kept messing up his vision, creating a little shimmering spot in his peripheral. It wouldn't go away.

When the Hunter hissed threateningly under his breath, Sirius opened the door and stepped out. Caleb eyed him warily, then pointed across the street to a small restaurant Sirius hadn't even noticed. He started to walk, then turned, raising an eyebrow when he realized that the Hunter wasn't shadowing him.

Caleb gave him a harsh look, then said, "I need to make a call. Go ahead without me. Try not to kill anyone."

It took Sirius a second to realize that last bit had been meant as an insult. Instead of responding in kind, he tapped at his wrist and said, "Don't forget."

The Hunter snarled, then crossed his arms, obviously waiting for Sirius to leave. Raising his hands in surrender, he walked across the street, forcing a northbound car to screech to a halt, the driver swearing at him before zipping away. Sirius just stared after the car before walking again. 

It wasn't like getting hit by a car would kill him.

Sirius opened the door, a small bell above his head chiming. He took his shades off, the bright sun through the windows still painful. As a creature of darkness, he really wasn't built to operate in the daytime, but Galloway had loved the sun, so he'd forced himself to deal with how it burned his eyes.

She would turn toward it like some kind of flower, unconsciously. Her chin tilted up, eyes closed, lips parted. She'd do it all the time, and he'd be dying to press his mouth to hers before she opened her eyes, just to see what she'd do. 

He choked down a whine as he accidentally thought of that first time, in the car. How she'd gotten dressed, then stepped out and leaned against the cool metal, her face turned to the rising sun. How he'd finally felt like he was allowed to step up next to her and kiss her neck, then her mouth. How he'd reveled in the fact that her scent had been mixed deliciously with his. 

His body ached for her.

He slumped down into a booth tucked into the corner, trying to avoid the odd stares of the other patrons. The waitress frowned at him when he asked for nothing more than a coffee. The older woman looked at him critically. "Are you sure you don't want anything to eat?"

All he could do was shake his head. The smell of food was making him hungry and nauseated all at the same time. In the glass of the window, he found a false reflection of Galloway sitting across from him, butchering a pancake rather than eating it. He looked down at the grey-and-blue speckled tabletop.

He closed his eyes and let his hearing expand. He gritted his teeth for a painful moment as he was battered by an onslaught of sounds, but then he found what he was looking for and honed in on it, effectively ignoring everything else.

"I know what I said, Rick, but things change," Caleb said, sounding angry.

Sirius wondered why the name Rick seemed familiar. Then he remembered Galloway saying that she hoped some guy named Rick would watch Caleb's back on some hunt. Except...there had been no hunt. Just a lie.

One that had cost him everything.

He put his hands in his lap as his claws extended, responding to the hateful emotions roiling inside him.

"Please just...for Christ's sake, Rick," Caleb said, snatching Sirius' attention. "Can you and Alex just freaking meet me in Vegas instead of Cedar City?"

Sirius had his eyes half-closed, unable to quite hear what was being said on the other end of the line. The street between himself and Caleb caused too much interference for him to be able to hear something that low.

"Thank you," Caleb finally said, hanging up the phone.

Slowly, Sirius opened his eyes, watching as the Hunter crossed the street. When he entered the restaurant, Sirius didn't bother flagging him down. Instead, he contemplated on whether or not he should just ask, or let the Hunter believe he had some kind of privacy.

Caleb finally spotted him and stalked across the room. He threw himself into the seat, glaring out the window until the waitress came back, then he was disgustingly charming. With his West Virginia accent, easy smile and good looks, he played the role of good ole country boy quite effectively, getting the waitress to smile at him and playfully bat his shoulder after he ordered.

Silence hung thickly between them, growing uncomfortable judging by the way Caleb shifted in his seat. Sirius let it stretch like taffy, drumming his fingers against the side of his coffee cup.

With a hissed out breath, Caleb finally said, "So slight change of plan. They'll meet us here."

"Okay." Sirius decided it would be more profitable if Caleb continued to believe that distance afforded him privacy. The Hunter didn't need to know just how sharp his senses were.

"Would it kill you to show a little life here?" Caleb muttered. "Enthusiasm, maybe?"

Sirius blinked, then shifted his gaze to the Hunter. Caleb's eyebrows pulled together, but he didn't look away. Finally, Sirius said, "I've been dead for three days. I'll show some fucking enthusiasm when I can hold her again—probably more than you'll be comfortable with."

Caleb grimaced before just as quickly slapping on that irritating smile as the waitress slid a plate onto the table in front of him.

"What is your problem?" Caleb demanded after she'd gone, sprinkling Tabasco sauce over the majority of his plate.

"You want it alphabetically, or by importance and magnitude?" Sirius said unthinkingly, then cringed when he remembered saying almost the exact same thing to her.

Caleb calmly flipped him off before picking up his fork. He ate in silence for a little while, Sirius staring at nothing. Then, the Hunter said, "Look man, I already have some extreme reservations here. So maybe you should try and ease my paranoia a little."

Sirius sighed. "Nothing I say will manage that."

"Try." Caleb gave him a nasty smirk.

Blandly, Sirius said, "Well, let's see. I've sworn that I'll find her and bring her back." He held up his arms, showing Caleb the matching bands of black runes around each wrist. "I've literally chained myself to that promise, not to mention chained you."

Caleb scowled, stabbing his eggs with his fork.

"I'll swear not to do anything that would get you dead," Sirius continued, voice still monotone. "That's what she wanted. God, she harped on that. Why, I don't know. I can't possibly fathom why you even matter, but she insists that you do."

"Why'd she have to harp on it?" Caleb asked casually.

Sirius lifted an eyebrow in disinterest. "Because if I thought that I could throw you in the pit and get her out for my troubles, then I would, no questions asked."

This made Caleb set down his fork. "So, instead of playing nice, you made her choose. She was stuck with you when she could have been back with Logan, perfectly safe while you talked to this Valentine chick."

Sirius flinched, but couldn't deny it. Caleb snorted derisively, and picked his fork back up. Around a mouthful of hash browns, he said, "You're a selfish bastard, you know that?"

"Yes," Sirius replied curtly, making Caleb gape at him. When he just continued to give him that stupid look, Sirius sneered. "But what really makes you mad is that you know that she knew that, and she still picked me anyway."

Caleb's mouth thinned down to a furious line. His knuckles whitened around the fork, and Sirius wondered if he was going to throw the utensil at him. 

"She picked you because you told her a bunch of pretty lies and tricked her into thinking you were more than a soulless, evil son of a bitch."

"Is that what you've been telling yourself?" Sirius asked.

"At least I ain't lyin' to myself," Caleb hissed, his accent getting thicker as his temper rose. "What makes you think she even wants to come back to you? What makes you think that being around you is better than being in Hell?"

"Now you're just being nasty," Sirius said, baring his teeth a little.

"No. I'm nowhere near nasty," Caleb said. "Nasty would be me saying when I kissed her, she kissed me back. It would be me telling you how she hesitated when I told her to come with me, to forget you and all the ruin you've brought into her life."

Sirius was shaking. "Stop. Now."

Caleb just smirked. "What? Can't deal with the truth? Because I'm not finished yet."

His claws were out, digging into the top of the table.

The Hunter said, "The real truth, the reason you look at me with all that hate, is because you know that she would have gotten wise to your little game and come running to me."

Something inside Sirius snapped. Black swirled across his vision before he was shaking it away and lunging across the table. Caleb snarled and punched him, but Sirius didn't feel it.

Instead, he buried his claws into the Hunter's shoulder. Caleb swore and hit him again, but Sirius tore him out of the booth. People were screaming as Sirius raked a clawed hand down his chest, shredding the red plaid button-down he was wearing, along with the black t-shirt under it. Blood sprinkled the floor as Caleb jumped back out of reach.

Sirius tried to chase, but Caleb's leg snapped out in a vicious side-kick that caught him right under the ribs, forcing the breath from him. When he staggered back, Caleb moved farther across the room, picking up a butter knife. 

It was stainless-steel. Basically useless.

He couldn't smell any silver, and wondered if the Hunter had left his gun in his truck.

Sirius lunged at him, trying to tackle him, and was rewarded with that stainless-steel knife in his shoulder for his efforts. Carelessly, he yanked it out and threw it at the Hunter, who ducked, crying out as his bad arm was jammed up by a chair.

A laugh fought its way free, and his teeth lengthened. He snarled at Caleb who gave him a defiant glare, body tense and ready.

"Told you," he gritted out, "all just games. You would have fucked up sooner or later, just like now."

"You're wrong," Sirius hissed, bolting forward.

Caleb grabbed the back of a nearby chair and flipped it up, trying to crash it down onto Sirius' head. He raised an arm, the cheap wood shattering against his forearm. An elbow drilled into his temple, and Sirius rolled over the top of a table, traveling with the force of the blow.

The sound of breaking glass was followed by the blare of sirens.

Both of them were beyond the point of caring.

Caleb had another knife in his hand, and threw a plate at Sirius before charging in after it. He stabbed the knife forward, his movements short and efficient. Sirius grabbed his wrist, holding the knife away from his stomach. Caleb's face was less than five inches from his. He jolted his body forward, managing to dig the tip of the knife into Sirius' stomach, but not breaking the skin.

Sirius grinned and grabbed Caleb's bad shoulder, digging his fingers in. The Hunter let out a strangled cry and tried to yank away, but Sirius drove him backwards until he slammed against the door. It flung open, spilling them into the street.

They scrambled to their feet. Furious, Caleb bellowed and lunged at Sirius, catching him around the middle in a driving tackle. Something caught at the back of Sirius' left foot and he was slammed down into the pavement.

Blindly, he jabbed with his left, laughing when his fist connected and something crunched. Blood that wasn't his splashed across his face. The weight on top of him disappeared. A boot drove into his stomach, then crunched down on his lower ribcage.

Sirius caught at an ankle and twisted sideways on the concrete, dragging the Hunter down to the ground. Using his knee to propel himself up, he came back down with an elbow to the Hunter's shoulder. Caleb roared in pain, then flung his arm at Sirius. The backhand caught him in the mouth, splitting his lip.

Before he knew what was happening, a beefy arm was being wrapped around his throat in a chokehold. He was dragged to his feet, his arms pulled roughly behind him. Spitting blood, he tried to lunge after Caleb, who was struggling against two other cops.

A small female cop stepped in front of him, the sun flashing off her grey eyes and Sirius stopped dead, staring at her. She gave him a fierce look and started rattling off his rights, saying things he'd only heard in bad daytime TV shows.

Handcuffs cut brutally into his wrists, burning whenever they rubbed against the brands. He spit another mouthful of blood, then snarled as he was hauled backwards and shoved unceremoniously into the back of a cop car.

Seconds later, Caleb joined him.

The Hunter was bleeding from a cut eyebrow and a broken nose, a bruise forming rapidly on his jaw and spreading down his neck. His shoulder hung wrong in the socket, made worse by the way his arms were held behind him by the handcuffs.

They were both breathing hard, but Sirius felt no urge to go in after him again. His tongue poked at a loose tooth, and he spit another mouthful of blood onto the floor-mat.

They were thrown backwards as the car started moving, Caleb yelping as it jammed his shoulder once again. His voice thick through the blood pouring down his face, he asked, "We done with this bullshit?"

"I don't know," Sirius panted, his ribs aching. It felt like one might be broken. "Are you going to insist on being a holier-than-thou dick?"

"Only if you keep pretending like you care," he snarled, then choked a little as blood tried to fill his mouth.

"I do fucking care!" Sirius said. "I care about her more than you could possibly understand. I'm not fucking making it up when I say she's all that matters. I'm not being figurative. She is so literally my entire world that I considered going back to Valentia's just to take that demon blade and shove it through my heart because she's gone."

Sirius didn't both to try and stop the tears. He didn't care. He was beyond caring. An ugly sound tore its way out of his chest, and he couldn't tell if it was a sob or a snarl. Caleb gave him a shocked look.

"I don't want to fucking work with you, but I have to. You think I don't know that she would have been better off with you? I do. I know that she's dead because of me. I know that in her last moments she was scared and alone and hurt. Dying all by herself. I've watched it over and over again—"

"Shut up," Caleb suddenly hissed, his eyes going to the cops who were obviously listening intently to everything going on behind the cage.

But Sirius didn't care. He'd started and he couldn't stop because there was some relief in finally admitting what the darkness had been whispering to him since she'd been killed.

"She was in fucking pieces, Caleb. It was all I could do to pick her up without her falling apart." He spit more blood, tears pouring down his face now. Another of those ugly sounds tore at his aching ribs. "God, just, her fucking blood everywhere, like a little lake on the pavement. It was in her hair."

"Sirius, sh!" Caleb said frantically.

"No!" he howled. "No! I killed her. She's fucking dead and it's my fault." His breath was too quick. "It's my fault!"

He doubled over on himself, wracked by vicious sobs. He was babbling now, the words tripping over themselves. "She was such a mess. I mean, I've seen that before. Hell, I've done it before. But this. This was just. She screamed for me. I don't know if she even knew she was doing it. I could fucking hear her as she screamed, but I couldn't make her stop. I couldn't stop it. She just kept bleeding and bleeding and bleeding. I didn't even know someone had that much blood until it was all spilled out for me to see."

Caleb was still trying to shush him, but Sirius was beyond himself. Eventually, the Hunter gave up, hunching down against the onslaught of horror and agony that poured out of the Hellhound like a river.

His throat was raw by the time they pulled up to the police station. By the time they were processed—which took what seemed a horrifically long time since there were no records on Sirius, and Caleb was in the system as a kid who'd gone missing back in the nineties—Sirius had managed to calm down.

Now he sat slumped next to the Hunter in a holding cell, ignoring the speculative glances he was getting from some of the rougher-looking denizens of this place.

Caleb sighed and shook his head. "They're going to question us about all that crazy you decided to puke up on the way here. They're gonna throw us away for a murder no one even knew had happened."

"When do they turn the lights out?" Sirius muttered, eyes half-lidded. Exhaustion curled fatally around his throat

"What does that matter?" Caleb asked listlessly.

"I can get us out," Sirius said, dreading the idea of letting the darkness touch him.

"How?" the Hunter asked, voice low so he wouldn't draw attention. 

"I can walk through walls," he admitted. Then, "Why doesn't Rick want to meet you in Vegas?"

"Next you'll try to get me to believe you can walk on water," Caleb said, though he seemed to have run out of venom for the time being, too. He let out a long sigh. "Rick just likes to be difficult. And he doesn't like knowing that I haven't told him everything."

Sirius was silent for a second, then asked, "What haven't you told him?"

When the Hunter gave him a sidelong glance, Sirius started to smile a little bit, the expression drunken. "Holy hell, he doesn't know you sold your Soul."

Caleb hunched down, holding his shoulder. It had needed to be snapped back in place after their fight at the restaurant. His head bowed, he said, "I didn't tell anyone. No one needed to know."

"One person needed to know," Sirius said a little cruelly. 

When all the Hunter did was nod, Sirius looked at him, studying the other man. "Why the big secret?"

Sighing, Caleb looked up at the flickering fluorescent lights, then back down at Sirius. His eyes were almost black. "Because they would have tried to find me a way out."

"Which would have negated the Deal," Sirius said, nodding. "Okay, so what about now? They'll need to know what happened."

Stubbornly, Caleb shook his head. His voice hoarse, he said, "No. I don't want them to know."

"Why?" Sirius asked. He didn't understand why it mattered.

Caleb just shook his head, mouth pressing into a tight line. Sirius finally just shrugged. He didn't care enough to try and drag an answer out of the Hunter if he didn't want to talk about it.

Silence fell between them again for a long time until Caleb said, "You really meant it?"

"Really meant what?" Sirius answered, half-asleep. He stifled a yawn, shifting against the cinderblock wall in a bid to get more comfortable. It really wasn't working, but he was so exhausted he almost didn't care.

Quietly, Caleb said, "You meant what you said when you thought about killing yourself?"

That seemed like kind of a weird question to Sirius, but he decided to play along. Closing his eyes, he said, "I didn't think about it. I was going to do it."

"So what stopped you?" Caleb asked, and Sirius was surprised when he didn't sound cruel or derisive. He just sounded curious. 

He wasn't sure he should say this, then decided that the Hunter probably already thought he was crazy. "I heard her voice telling me it was my responsibility to get her out of Hell."

After a long moment, Caleb finally said, "What?"

He didn't bother repeating himself. The Hunter had heard him just fine.

Caleb struggled for a moment. "You, uh... you hear voices in your head often?"

"No." Sirius thought it best to not mention that shadows whispered to him, urging him to murder the Hunter. 

Those voices weren't technically in his head, anyway. 

"It started after she was taken. She told me to tell you the truth about why I called you." At Caleb's nervous glance, he muttered, "Relax. I know it's not real. This isn't a total break from reality. I know where I am and what I'm doing. I just also happen to hear the voice of a person I know isn't there."

"Oh, is that all?" Caleb said, but the sarcasm was weak. "So...what? This voice is like your Jiminy Cricket?"

"My what?" Sirius blinked. What did crickets have to do with anything?

"You know," Caleb said, waving a hand. "Always let your conscience be your guide, and all that?" Sirius shook his head. With a sigh, the Hunter said, "She tells you to do good things like tell the truth."

"Oh," Sirius said, then frowned. "I... yeah, I guess. But she also tells me to get to Hell and paint the walls with Theron's blood."

Now Caleb blinked. Then he shrugged. "Meh. Seems good enough to me. So I guess the question is how do we do that."

You better tell him now, she whispered as if on cue.

Sirius' eyelashes fluttered for a second, but he didn't blink until he could manage to pull in a whole breath. When he turned, he found Caleb staring at him shrewdly. 

"You just heard her, didn't you?" he asked, eyes shifting around the holding cell like she'd magically appear in front of them. 

Sirius gave a short nod. "She wants me to tell you what we're going to have to do to get that demon blade."

"I'm not going to like this, am I?" Caleb said, sounding resigned. 

"Probably not," Sirius muttered. "But at least if you try anything cute there's a nice warden over there who will smack you upside the head for me."

All this garnered from Caleb was a dry look. Sirius scrubbed a hand over his face, then said, "When I said demon blood, I didn't mean a pint or two."

"I'm definitely not going to like this."

Nodding, Sirius said, "She wants four gallons."

"But if you take that much, they'll..." Caleb trailed off, sitting up straight. "You can't."

"Why?" Sirius asked plaintively. 

He didn't get it. He just didn't. 

Demons left their human hosts destroyed mentally, if not physically as well. Most of the time, demons were walking around in someone who was already dead anyway. Even if a Hunter could manage to pull a demon out of its meat suit, the struggle usually left the human twisted into a pretzel. They might leave their host alive, but that didn't mean they were in any better shape.

So why weren't they better off dead. Why was alive so much better than dead to these people, even when being alive meant trying to deal with the fact that a demon had been parading around with your face.

"Because!" Caleb's voice rose, earning glares from everyone else in the cage. He tried again at a lower tone. "Because," he growled, "those are people we're talking about. You don't have the right to bleed them dry."

Sirius just stared at him, mouth gaping slightly. Shaking his head, he said, "I don't care about right. I don't even care about wrong. She's more important than them."

"To you," Caleb said, looking torn. "But she wouldn't—"

"Want people to die. Yeah, I know," Sirius hissed. Then he sighed, and said, "But she's not here. She's in Hell, and trust me, the last thing she is worrying about is a couple people who'll die with a ticket to Heaven in their hands."

"I... wait, you know which direction they go?" Caleb asked.

"It's so Hell can't cheat. If a demon possesses you and does a bunch of damnation-worthy acts, then it's on the demon. That blood isn't on your hands, and Heaven will take you as recompense for being used by a demon. That way demons can't just go around possessing people and racking up Souls for Hell. It's a free will thing." 

Sirius had the vague feeling that he might have a foothold here. Caleb scowled down at the floor, then he watched in disbelief as the Hunter shook his head. Looking almost regretful, he said, "I can't."

"I can," Sirius said quickly. "You don't have to do anything but help me catch them."

Caleb was still shaking his head. "What if we just take a little blood."

"You want to waste the time it would take catching eight or twelve or however many demons it would take to collect four gallons that way?" Sirius said, his temper beginning to get the better of him. 

"I want to be able to look her in the eye when I see her," Caleb suddenly snarled.

"I just want to be able to see her," Sirius said, his voice much more desperate than he wanted it to be. Trying to rein in those insane emotions, he whispered, "I need her back, Caleb. You don't understand. You can't, and I wouldn't want you to. But I can't keep going like this for much longer. Please."

The last word slipped out without his permission.

Heavy silence settled over them, until Sirius said, voice ragged, "You don't have to do anything but help me get them tied down. You can leave after that. You can have all the plausible deniability you want."

He still hesitated, and Sirius said softly, "I don't have much of a Soul anyway, Caleb. And what I do have is already steeped in sin. I'll do whatever it takes to get her back."

"Even if it's something that could make her hate you?" Caleb asked, sounding almost thoughtful.

Sirius looked across the room, feeling like the bars were slowly pressing their way toward him. How he hated being in a cage. Blinking, eyes burning, he said, "Even if it's something that would make her hate me."