<center>

*** Potential Bleeder Title Match ***
Infinity & the New Hellfire Club barred from the arena
"Titanium Insomniac by a lot of people considered the most dominant world champion ever. Darkness by a lot of people considered the most dominant rookie ever - only considerations are out the window now, it's not about world titles or rookie streaks or anything like that, hell it's not really about the Bleeder title either even if the new rules could mean that it might be on the line. No this is personal, very personal for both of them, they have been swimming in each other's soup long enough and it's time to settle it. Neither Infinity nor the New Hellfire Club are allowed at ringside during the match, but Freya is allowed to be in Darkness' corner. Will it be big? We think so. Will it be a huge read? You know it!"</center>

Moonlight streamed into the dark expanse of the empty warehouse, crystallising everything into extremes of black and white. For a second, the figure paused at the door, wondering if this was wise, but knowing he had nothing to fear.

"Welcome."

"Don't you usually say ‘to bedlam' after that?"

The Titanium Insomniac tilted his head slightly where he sat, his grey eyes watching the shadowy form of his opponent approach across the bare concrete of the warehouse floor. Their breath misted in the November air that was freezing even in this Mediterranean clime.

Darkness finally reached the centre of the gloomy space and looked down at the table where Titanium Insomniac sat. There was a chess set out, ready to play.

"A game?"

"Isn't it always," the Sleepless One smiled through his mask of face paint, "I considered Hungry, Hungry Hippos, but dramatic necessity rules over enforced absurdity, despite the cliché of..." he waved his hand across the board, "...all this."

Darkness gave him a flat look, a strange doubt lingering in his cold eyes. The Insomniac raised his hand, showing it was bereft of the sovereign ring he usually wore. "No magic rings, okay?"

The former Shadow Slayer grunted and seated himself, casting a critical eye across the chess board. "I should warn you," he said, "I'm not very good. I always forget how the knight moves..."

Titanium Insomniac moved his head slightly at that, but declined to comment. "So...I assume you'd rather play white?"

"Of course."

"Because white moves first, or some other reason?"

Darkness shrugged noncommittally, "I like white."

"Makes sense. You know, I have to complement you on what you did at Endgame - the hero in black and the villain in white. It was simplistic but...effective..."

"It wasn't intentional."

"No, I suppose that nothing ever is with you, is it?"

"Pardon me?"

The Insomniac smiled, but there was little humour in it. "It's your move," he said softly.

"Very well." Titanium Insomniac watched as Darkness reached immediately for a knight, pausing as he raised it but then placing it down before the ranks of pawns.

"I thought you didn't know how to move that one?"

"I guessed."

Titanium Insomniac watched the board thoughtfully for a few moments. "You know," he began after a short while, "That move says a lot about you."

"Is that so?"

"Of course. Most men would move a pawn first, sacrifice the weak to save the strong for later; an uncommitted opening gambit to feel out one's opponent. But you reveal your hand at the first possible moment, sending forth the warrior before the cannon fodder."

"I don't believe in cannon fodder," Darkness said, meeting the Sleepless One's eyes with another flat stare.

"I, on the other hand," the Insomniac said as he pushed a black pawn forward, "Prefer to wait and see."

"And to sacrifice the pawns?"

"They're called pawns for a reason."

Darkness nodded silently and considered his next move. Titanium Insomniac watched him carefully, noting the stitches that snaked across his opponent's forehead. Darkness had not acknowledged the attack at Havoc in any way since his arrival, and the Insomniac pondered whether the man was bottling up an intense rage towards him and, furthermore, how he could force him to release it.

Finally, Darkness reached for the other knight and moved it into the mirror position of his first one.

"You like those knights, huh?"

A cold glance. "I have an affinity for them."

"Presumably for the imagery with which they are associated rather than its unorthodox nature. Do you know the origins of chess, Darkness?"

"Enlighten me."

"There is a myth, and then there is the truth. The latter can never be know, but India is the best candidate for its birthplace. You see, only Indian armies had the three cavalry animals represented by the knight, the bishop and the rook - the horse, the camel and the elephant respectively."

"I see."

"The myth is just a fun piece of math-play. The inventor demanded an increasing amount of rice for each square of the board used for his game. One for the first, one plus two for the second, one plus two plus three for the third, and so on. Do you see the problem?"

Darkness looked at the Insomniac again. "It's easy to underestimate an opponent, to miss important details and not think ahead."

"Are you still talking about the story?"

"It's up to you."

Titanium Insomniac laughed and then moved another pawn forward on the board. "Do you fear me, Darkness?"

"What is there to fear? You're just a man."

"So are you."

"Then why should I fear you?"

The Sleepless One sighed. "Always so unwilling to let your guard down, always so unwilling to show weakness, to admit that you can be wrong. Doesn't it get tiring?"

"I'm used to it."

Finally, Darkness committed a pawn to the fray, moving one diagonal from his king forward just a single square.

"I considered forcing you to play black, given that tattoo on your shoulder." He pointed, even though Darkness's leather jacket - mirror to the one Titanium Insomniac wore - covered up the black king on his upper bicep. "They're very cute, you know," the silver-painted man continued, "Though I'm not sure why Acolyte is the bishop. Is there something I don't know?"

"He's the religious one."

"Ah, like our mutual friend Mutaaz."

"Something like that."

"And you're the black king to Dante's white, yes?"

Darkness nodded, not taking his eyes from the chequered board.

"The queen is the more powerful piece, but I suppose you could do without the jokes. There are already rumours hanging around about you..."

Darkness frowned. "Is that so?"

"What was that little friend of yours called? John Doe? Yes, the dirtsheets are always wondering why Darkness seems to insist on partnering himself with a chiselled, handsome man instead of the usual ringrats." Insomniac's finger hovered over the black pieces before him and, finally, he moved one of his bishops out into the battlefield where one of his pawns had cleared a space earlier.

"Ringrats don't interest me." Darkness's hand hovered over one of his knights.

"No, of course not. I suppose nothing could come close to Anna, could it?"

Darkness's hand paused. A slow smile spread across the Insomniac's face. He was a little surprised it had been so easy to find the chink in Darkness's armour, but he wasn't complaining.

"Nice try." Darkness picked the knight up and moved it towards the bishop.

"What? Your angst has stopped eating you alive all of a sudden?" Titanium Insomniac spat.

"Angst isn't my thing, despite appearances," Darkness replied with an odd smile, "But I'm flattered that you do such careful research."

The Insomniac barked a laugh. "And here I thought you and I had so much in common. Dead families, black coats, face paint - I had you pegged as Cortez to my Balboa."

"Or Keats to your Chapman."

The Sleepless One's head moved imperceptibly at the comment, his brow creasing slightly. For a second he seemed dumbstruck, but then a smile crept across his face. "Interesting. I dearly hope you made that comparison intentionally."

Darkness's face didn't change and, after a few seconds, Titanium Insomniac moved his bishop again. Darkness paused, his finger hovering, but then drew it back.

"Yes, that's checkmate, Darkness. You made a rookie mistake."

"I told you I wasn't very good."

"And I thought you were just being modest." The Sleepless One stood, hefting his cane and stepping away from his chair. "This has been an interesting discussion, Darkness, but I sadly feel that there is little for me to do here. You're too easy to exploit and you know it. Frankly, you're not even much fun to pick apart."

He began to walk away, leaving Darkness sitting alone, but when his enemy began to speak, he paused. "Doesn't it bother you to be replaced by one so transparent? To be usurped by a man like me?"

The Insomniac turned to Darkness, moonlight framing his face and twisting it into a ghastly parody. "Usurp? Replace? Do you even know what you're saying? It takes more than a black coat to occupy my position of eminence in this organisation. No, you're nothing more than a cheap copy, Darkness. You can throw Keats out there, but I'm afraid you'll fall very short of the mark, no matter how clever you think yourself."

Darkness stood up, turning to the silver-faced man who regarded him so contemptuously. His face was shadowed, making his expression unreadable.

"Like a dull actor now,
I have forgot my part, and I am out,
Even to a full disgrace. Best of my flesh,
Forgive my tyranny; but do not say
For that 'Forgive our Romans.' O, a kiss
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge..."

The Insomniac paused, trying to place the quotation for a few moments. "Coriolanus," he finally said, "Scene five, act three, yes?"

Darkness nodded.

"The general, enemy of the people, has returned to Rome after his rejection for a position in the senate and ire-filled condemnation of democracy at the head of an invading horde. He initially rejects even his family who come to beg for mercy for their city."

"I trust you understand the significance."

Titanium Insomniac inclined his head one last time, ceding Darkness a moment's respect. "Perhaps you'll prove a worthy foe after all. Farewell: thou canst not teach me to forget."

"I don't intend to."

"Good."

Turning, the Insomniac walked from the warehouse, his cane tapping on the concrete as Darkness watched him leave.

"I always preferred Marlowe," Darkness reflected to himself quietly as the door of the building closed behind his foe.

Titanium Insomniac steps out into the crisp night air, the breeze biting at his scalp as he produces a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He cups his free hand around the lighter to preserve the small flame long enough for it to achieve its purpose. Satisfied, he breathes in deeply, the exhaled cloud whipping around the side of his head with the wind.

"'A vanity and a chasing after wind,'" he mutters as a second man emerges from the shadows.

"What is?"

The Insomniac turns his head slightly to acknowledge his associate. "I didn't think that I needed to specify."

Jeremiah steps forward so that he is even with his charge. The two face the same direction, looking out onto the dark abandoned street. This is a street appropriate for the pair...if it weren't for the streetlights they'd be bathed in the night's black. They ignore the chill, as well as their shivering limo driver waiting for them to move.

TI offers the other man a smoke, and is waved off. "You know that's not a habit of mine."

"If I didn't at least give the opportunity, you'd observe that I was being impolite. After all...I owe you a cigarette or some bullshit."

Jeremiah shakes his head. "You misunderstand. I only expect you properly to recognize my role in your recent accomplishments."

TI takes another long drag, a new cloud rolling out from his lips and nostrils as he replies somewhat venomously. "Once you properly recognize mine, I suppose I'll do that."

Jeremiah turns, incredulous. "When have I not done so? When have I not said that this is all for you...your destiny, your position in the universe? You are believing what you want to believe because it places you in an air of misused victim of circumstance. That is clearly not the case. You've known for years that your story is your own to write, no one else's."

TI makes no immediate indication that he has heard this diatribe. He savors his latest nicotine-laced lungful of air, content to focus on the warm sticky feeling within him rather than further speechmaking. This has been the ongoing argument since before Havoc, before Dante stole a victory from him. TI had returned to the dressing room in no pleasant mood, the subsequent domination of the other stable providing little consolation.

The Insomniac doesn't feel like starting that argument again. "I just filled my quota for enduring others' posturing for the evening. I'm afraid you've started on me a little too late tonight."

Jeremiah's aura changes from irritation to interest in the task at hand. "How did it go?"

TI lets another breath of tainted air escape his lungs. "I never cared for chess that much. Truthfully, most games that I haven't devised myself are corrupted with the sort of ill-conceived false notion of purpose that I despise. Chess is an apt metaphor for who we are and what we do, but it is a fruitless exercise in and of itself. It served as a means to an end this evening, but it is otherwise an idiotic pastime for people who want to prove they aren't idiots."

The Sleepless One starts toward the limo and the driver—thankful for the opportunity to move—rushes around to open the door. "Which just proves...that they're idiots."

Jeremiah hurriedly walks after him, sitting across from him in the car. The driver relishes his own chance to get back inside, savoring the warmth of the vents blowing on legs only protected by the cold by his thin uniform.

"But how did the exchange itself go? How did he react?"

"He reacted as I'd expected him to react. I am below him. I am the latest in a long line threatening his position but who will ultimately fall short due to my own hubris. In that sense we truly have so much in common that it's almost frightening. Almost. As I'd suspected, cheap insinuations about sexual orientation and one-liners about Buffy and He-Man aren't going to crack him. I'd suspected as such, but needed to see his eyes to be certain. No, his mindset is one of cold indifference and intimidation, even toward a larger man such as myself. To him I am a challenge but ultimately will be quite a feather in his cap. I'd even venture that he's a little bored with me. That is true hubris...he assumes that history will simply write the future. But the future is frequently surprising."

"You know about that."

The Insomniac reaches for a shaker and a bottle of vodka. "I do. And soon he will as well. What better act of charity to be had than to teach another through fire? ‘Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.' What Wells didn't acknowledge was that catastrophe educates better than anything else."

"He does not fear you."

The Insomniac removes the top of the shaker and pours his mixture into a martini glass. "You know he doesn't. That was apparent months ago. But he doesn't need to fear me."

The Sleepless One leans back and sips.

"He should be more afraid of himself."
______________________

"I suppose that this is sort of cliché for me to be doing by now. I apologize for that."

Darkness has just stepped into his hotel room. He easily sensed the second man waiting for him. Darkness nonchalantly discards his trenchcoat, tossing it onto the bed. "It is your first encounter with me, so you need to offer no apology."

Jeremiah stands, the room offering little light for either man to read the other's expression. "Nevertheless, a competitor of your stature deserves more creativity. It is something that I'm not able to offer, at least not in how I approach my associate's adversaries. I assume that you know who I am and whom I represent."

"Of course. Dante has mentioned you, although not in great detail."

Jeremiah smiles. "Good. I probably don't deserve a lot of description. After all, who am I among marquee players such as yourself and Dante? In the long run that is true. But tonight, I'm afraid you may have set something in motion that you can't stop."

"What do you mean?"

"There is much to prove between yourself and Titanium Insomniac. One could call it Past vs. Present, a battle of eras, except my associate is not from an era that far removed from the present. Nevertheless, there is more at stake here than perhaps either of us realize. Darkness...how far are you willing to let this go?"

"Again, I am not clear as to your meaning."

Jeremiah sneers. "Let me show you."

With that, the smaller man grabs Darkness by the wrist, and he finds himself

at the warehouse once again. The musty air fills Darkness' nostrils, mixed with the pine of the wooden crates. Dust dances in the moonlight, flittering aimlessly in what little amount of air there is stirring in this place. His every movement—the rustling of his trenchcoat, the creak of his leather holsters, his boots on the bare concrete floor—all produce a hollow echo off the poorly insulated walls.

In the middle, the same chessboard sits. The pieces have been reset. It is his first inclination that he is not alone. He senses another pair of eyes watching, waiting. He'd even go so far to say that he's already felt these eyes once.

Darkness steels himself as he attempts to locate the source of this watching. "I thought that we had finished our game."

A disjointed voice adds to the echo. "I figured I'd give you another chance. We learn from our mistakes, after all. I have confidence that you are one who learns more quickly than others."

"I cannot play with one who hides in the shadows."

The slightest chuckle echoes from the corners. "Fair enough. Are you sure that you're prepared for this?"

Darkness sighs. "I do not have patience for this. I do not even know why I am here again. Your game was barely amusing the first time."

"Your lack of competitive nature is disappointing. I wonder if I want to come out and play now."

Darkness' eyes grow colder. "But chess is not the true cause for such a rematch, is it?"

"I underestimated your intelligence. That was my mistake. That, or my remaining in the shadows made that an easy guess. ‘The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am.' Gambling is as much a futile exercise as chess, but I'm willing to bet that your imagination and perception are quite in sync, aren't they?"

Darkness hears the footsteps, and inclines his gaze in the direction of the source. For the first time, he sees The Insomniac, the shadows of the building causing the black of his facepaint to appear even darker. He is smiling, but it is a different kind of smile. It is more maniacal; less playful. "You and I have both seen too much to be bothered with much imagination beyond what we have perceived."

"What is the meaning of this second encounter? Why do you invite me back?"

The Sleepless One's smile broadens. "You said so yourself. This is our rematch."

"Are you still talking about chess?"

TI darkens. "It's up to you."

The Insomniac's trenchcoat drops to the floor. His bare arms add a stark flesh tone to the scene as he wields his cane like a club. TI steps toward his protagonist, the smile showing less calculation and more furious abandon.

Darkness's eyes go cold. "This is a game that you cannot win."

The Sleepless One's eyes are wild. "Check your history. I've subdued you on two separate occasions. ‘Here's my fiddlestick, here's that shall make you dance.'"

There is no time for further talking. TI lunges at Darkness, who easily sidesteps the swing of the cane and with a sharp chop to the wrist knocks the weapon to the floor. On instinct, Darkness grabs TI's arm and wraps it up in a hammerlock while moving his other hand to the attacker's head...

...and the larger man's body slumps to the floor as a sickening crack now echoes through the building.

Darkness surveys the scene he has created: the lifeless body of the painted man, followed by the untouched chessboard. What he feels, only he could tell you. But right now, there is no one else around him with breath with whom he can share.

Jeremiah releases his grip of the larger man's hand and steps back. Jeremiah wears no particularly noticeable expression as he keeps his eyes locked with Darkness'. There is a scolding tone to the smaller man's look, like a disappointed father to his son.

"Quite excessive, don't you think? And yet, how often has that temptation arisen? He had a weapon, that much is true. Most would have tried to equalize. But you...again, how far do you want to go with this, Darkness? How well do your strength and your will match up?"

For the first time, Jeremiah breaks his gaze and turns to open the door. "Not as well as you think, apparently."

The door clicks behind Jeremiah, and Darkness is left with his thoughts, much like he was in his vision. Here he has no fresh corpse over which to ruminate, only the suggestions of another. Those suggestions would be easy to dismiss, if they hadn't seemed so real.

I charge thee wait upon me whilst I live,
To do whatever Faustus shall command,
Be it make the moon drop from her sphere
Or the ocean to overwhelm the world.

The Insomniac looked up from the small mahogany table in his dimly-lit hotel suite from the book he was reading. It was late - late enough that the position of the hands on the clock was irrelevant.

Late enough that the Sleepless One was unmasked.

Jeremiah stepped into the room, his feet making almost no noise on the expensive carpet.

"Brushing up on your literature?"

Titanium Insomniac held up the battered copy of Coriolanus. "Not one I had in my collection," he explained, "But Athens has its share of libraries."

"Not taking the time to read up on Greek tragedy then?"

"You know how I feel about the veneration of source material, Jeremiah."

"And I'm sure Darkness would agree with you." The man did not pause to witness the fallout of his comment, but instead crossed the room to where a bottle of decent red wine sat, opened, on the desk. He examined it before holding it up and shaking it lightly to demonstrate its almost complete emptiness. "Trying alcohol to cure the insomnia again?"

The Sleepless One raised his empty glass. "No, but I'll take what's left in that if you don't mind."

Jeremiah didn't bother with a reply, but poured his companion the remainder of the wine. The Insomniac sipped it for a moment, before returning the glass to the table. He didn't lift his eyes from the book.

"Why Coriolanus?"

"Darkness quoted it."

Jeremiah raised his eyebrows at that. "Funny. He didn't seem that bright when I spoke to him."

Titanium Insomniac's eyes rose from the words on the page before him and fixed themselves on his associate's playful smirk. "You went to see him then?"

"Of course."

"And?"

Jeremiah shrugged languidly. He crossed the room again and looked out of the French windows that led out to the balcony. A full moon hung over the ancient city, crystal-clear in the late autumn sky.

The Insomniac continued to look at Jeremiah, waiting for an answer. Frustrated he finally pressed for information. "Well? Jeremiah?"

The man turned sharply, a thunderous expression on his handsome face. "Are you the only one allowed secrets, Insomniac? Can others not keep their own counsel, or is silence a special privilege afforded only to the Dark Harlequin?"

Titanium Insomniac frowned at the unexpected outburst, but refused to be cowed by the anger of his strange companion. "Why visit him if not for my benefit, Jeremiah?" he asked with his lip curled in indignation, "Or was it just a social call?"

Jeremiah smiled. "Perhaps it was."

"Tell me what you found," the Insomniac spat, his hand straying towards the cane that rested near the chair he had been sat upon, but from which he had now risen in his anger.

"I found that he'll break you if he can. That he may go further even than that."

"You...saw...that?"

Jeremiah nodded, but raised a hand as if in warning. "One of the reasons I hold back though, Jonathan, is that he wasn't what I expected."

The Insomniac stepped back with another frown. "How so?"

"Remember how I told you that what I show is a mixture of...desire..."

"And memory, yes," Titanium Insomniac finished for him, trying to hurry his benefactor on to his explanation.

"Darkness's memories are not what I expected and his desires..." he paused as if searching for the right words.

"Yes?" The Sleepless One stood closer now, with his eyes fixed on Jeremiah.

"Tell me, Jonathan," Jeremiah finally said, "When you looked into his eyes, did you see this?"

He reached out a hand and grabbed Titanium Insomniac's wrist forcefully, as if he expected resistance.

It lasted only a few heartbeats.

Around the two of them was a scene from some nightmare. Flames filled the sky, staining the ruins around them a bloody, baleful red. Corpses littered the streets of the crumbling city, but everything felt recent.

The Insomniac regarded the scene indifferently, but slowly the reality of it closed in, and, as if recalling a half-forgotten dream, it seemed as familiar as the face of the man against whom he had played the one-sided game of chess earlier that evening.

"This is what you saw?" he called, his voice hoarse as the burning air began to fry his lungs.

"No. But it came from the same place as this."

"And what is...this...?"

"The End."

* * *

I am Wrath. I had neither father nor mother. I leaped out of a lion's mouth when I was scarce an hour old, and ever since have run up and down the world with these case of rapiers, wounding myself when I could get none to fight withal. I was born in hell, and look to it, for some of you shall be my father.

Darkness's mind replayed a dozen events in his life as he stared at the moon hanging low on the horizon as dawn paled the sky. His moment's hesitation before his execution of Dragon in Cambodia; his fist rearing back to cave in Dante's skull in Dayton; the moment where he concluded Cameron Jones had betrayed him and his desperate fight against a heavily armed SWAT team; his sword arcing towards Lucifer, reflecting the infernal light of Hell and being stopped just in time by Dante's rapier.

Just in time, but he had still paid the price for that one.

Every act of anger, of revenge, of hatred that he had committed in his life was repaid a hundred fold. Darkness didn't believe in karma - it was his self-appointed duty to protect every human being on Earth, no matter what their sin.

No man was beyond redemption. Even Darkness himself, who had chosen to fight and live rather than protect his family and die, had been given the opportunity to redeem himself, albeit from the least likely source of all.

Which reminded him: he really ought to pay Bruce a visit.

He turned from the window before the sun rose. His eyes roved sluggishly over his weapons laid out upon the pristine, un-slept-in bed and he wondered whether, when the time came, he would fail once again.

Darkness had once told a good friend of his that revenge was never worth it. That it was, in fact, actively evil. Revenge was something weak men did to satisfy carnal desire. He considered it akin to theft; to rape. His discipline made him better than those who would give in to such hollow and ultimately destructive instincts to inflict suffering on those who had hurt them.

Darkness was not interested in revenge.

And yet...and yet...he had allied himself with one who had no compunction about the fulfilment of base desire. Who he knew would avenge any loss to himself with murderous efficiency. Dante, Son of Lucifer, was a man who would not hesitate to destroy anything in his path.

The two men had each absorbed something of one another at Endgame in being forced to acknowledge that they were linked in some fundamental way that neither truly understood. Every day, Darkness saw the effects of his own influence on Jason Dante. Indeed, it was the realisation that Dante loved and was loved in return by the demon Selenia that had caused him to soften towards his old enemy.

Dante was beginning to redeem himself, validating Darkness's worldview in the process.

But if Dante was more like him, was it not clear that he was becoming more like Dante? Would he stoop to anger, to revenge, to wrath?

Slowly, Darkness began to prepare himself for the coming day. Unlike the Titanium Insomniac, he had no trouble sleeping, but he often chose not to exercise that ability, something he imagined would vex his opponent. He pulled his coat back on and began to don his weapons, sliding magazines home so as to be ready for whatever he might encounter.

Would one of these bullets find its way into the Sleepless One's flesh today? Would his sword separate leering silver face from pale body?

Darkness did not have the answer to these questions. He was defined by his rigid discipline, his iron self-control and yet even now he could remember a dozen instances where he had wavered and been punished as a result. What more could be thrown at him if he failed again?

He stepped towards the door of the hotel room, but paused as he sensed someone behind it. He waited for the knock and then opened the door, eyeing the Greek bell hop carefully as he nervously proffered a note of some kind.

Darkness took it, pressing a small tip into the man's hand and swiftly read the words written on it.

Dinner? Tonight?

7 pm. The restaurant is called ‘Spondi' on Pyrronos Street. Dress appropriately.

Darkness grimaced at the invitation and wondered idly what the Insomniac's game was now.

* * *

Then, Faustus, will repentance come too late;
Though art banished from the sight of heaven.
No mortal can express the pains of hell.

The invitation's advice was sound, though Darkness had not found it easy to obtain suitable clothing. He hadn't had a suit to his name in years, and only flashing money around some fine stores along with some advice from Jay Ecks (since Dante was apparently nowhere to be found) had secured him an entirely black suit and tie ensemble.

He wondered for a moment why he was pandering to this kind of formality, but he knew that if he was going to play this game he was going to win. He could storm in, sword in hand and terrify innocent people with his bravado, or he could calmly and patiently go about this by the rules his foe set down and then defeat him on his own terms.

Plus, in this garb, there was nowhere to hide his weapons. If he wanted to kill the Insomniac, he would be forced to do it with his bare hands. Not an impossibility by any means of course, but it would at least give him a few extra seconds to resist, to avoid what he feared might be inevitable.

He stepped into the restaurant, casting his eyes around for the familiar sight of a giant in silver face paint waiting for him. Instead, he caught sight of someone else that he recognised.

Darkness walked towards the table, laid out for two, with a frown on his face. He didn't have to say anything, as his would-be dinner companion stood up quickly and offered him a handshake.

"I didn't introduce myself properly last night...my name is Jeremiah."

"Of course. But...I thought..."

"Then you were mistaken. Please, sit."

Confused, Darkness did as the strange man asked.

The End.

It will take quite a while for the odor of sulfur to dissipate from the Sleepless One's nose. He can even taste it a little, which ruins any further sip of Merlot for a time. He resents the evening's turn from one of quiet study to...to what, exactly, has it transformed?

The Insomniac leans against the railing on the balcony. He is privy to the beginnings of the sun's rising, a sheen of brilliant reds and oranges creeping into the sky.

His drink has changed as well, from the soothing velvet of red wine to the contrasted reawakening effects of coffee...black, as one may expect. The caffeinated drink does more to smother the smell trapped in his nostrils, like a hot liquid blanket running through his insides.

His face paint has also returned. In fact, it had reappeared shortly after the vision. The imagery was a far cry from what he'd endured at Dante's hand...these were not his memories being thrown back at him. They were someone else's, and while not torturous as his own, still unsettling even to one like himself. His mask returned as a game face of sorts, a piece of armor to protect him in battle.

"I found that he'll break you if he can. That he may go further even than that."

Many had tried. Only one had even come close to succeeding. And he'd been of the same origins as these pictures of destruction and agony.

"There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, as sand eddies in a whirlwind."

The Insomniac recalls these words from The Divine Comedy as he sinks onto the bed. He'd abandoned his mug on the table next to his copy of Coriolanus.

The forever dark air, a thought of solace before now. Starless indeed, no longer for fanciful wandering.

Clearly Darkness was capable of more. But what he was willing to do was something else.

TI stands and reclaims his cup, sipping once again. The sun, a great red sphere now hanging just over the horizon, provided a reassuring contrast to Dante's literary landscape.

Was he afraid of an adversary? He might call this fear.

The chessboard had been upset. They'd have to start over, perhaps even with a different game.

The Titanium One had once made a stop in Vegas. He'd been quite taken with poker, less for the gambling itself and more for the stoic exteriors on display by high rollers who'd accumulated fortunes.

He'd accumulated a similar fortune through similar means. And if he was to face whomever and whatever the hell Darkness was, his armor needed to remain right where it was.

The deadness reappearing in his eyes, TI pours himself his third cup of the morning and looks back out over the dawn. With a concentrated amount of poise, the drink again helps smother the burning sensation within him, as well as his doubts.
________________________

"Again, I must apologize for my lack of creativity in this scenario. I set up quite a few of these dinner appointments for my associate. However, they hardly ever actually feature dinner, so I hope at least to change the outcome. Of course, I changed the set-up slightly as well, so that is a far greater possibility."

Jeremiah earnestly sips his glass of wine, continuing his gaze at Darkness.

Darkness had been slow to take his seat, decidedly wary at the invitation and now at how it had begun to play out.

Jeremiah notices this. "You are probably entitled to be suspicious, although I assure you that you won't need use of your hardware. In fact, I wish they'd confiscated those things at the door."

Thoughtfully, Jeremiah adds, "Then again, we both know you can do just as much damage without them, don't we?"

After the momentary surprise, Darkness has regained full composure and clearly is not amused by the extra comment. "What did you do to me last night? How did I see what I saw?"

Jeremiah smiles. "Unsettled by your own mind. It happens quite often. But so few are privy to what I can give them."

The warrior's jaw stiffens. "The two of you are cut from the same cloth. You both dance around the edges rather than address what is at the center. The chess game was a tiresome spectacle which I had to endure, and this dinner is becoming the same. I will ask you to cease the pettiness and tell me what I wish to know."

Jeremiah puts a hand up to signal his understanding. He maintains his smirk, enjoying the larger man's irritation. "All right. You are quite aware of your own experiences. You have created memories using whatever sort of filter you've created for yourself."

A waiter approaches and sets down a glass bowl of salad with a generous helping of feta cheese.

Jeremiah regards the food and can't help himself. "I suppose they don't call it Greek salad here...they probably just call it salad, no?"

Darkness' glare signals to Jeremiah that he probably should continue his explanation.

The smaller man begins loading his plate with the vegetable mixture. "When a loved one dies, people don't remember objectively what the deceased was like. They either celebrate him or her through the remembrance of the departed's strengths, or demonize him or her through the wrongs he or she committed. How such a remembrance plays out is determined by desires, conscious and subconscious. We don't remember what happened. We remember what we want to remember. And what we want to remember influences how we approach the future."

Darkness cocks his head slightly. "That means that you have seen some of my memories, does it not?"

Jeremiah uneasily helps a bit of lettuce into his mouth with two fingers. "Um...yes."

"And what did you see?"

Jeremiah's eyes drop to his plate for a moment. He picks at an olive with his fork, and to give himself more time he raises it to his lips.

"Jeremiah. What did you see?"

Jeremiah raises his head and looks directly into the warrior's eyes. "I saw existence as we know it ceasing to be. I saw a cavalcade of death, chaos, and the fiery remnants of the universe."

"And what was desire, and what was memory?"

Jeremiah goes back on the offensive. "You tell me. I'm not the one snapping The Insomniac's neck like a twig, apparently absent any remorse. How about if, instead of you interrogating me about what I saw, you give me some insight as to how humankind's self-professed champion of truth and justice nonchalantly kills our mutual acquaintance with little more than a shrug?"

Now it is Darkness' turn to smile, first at the ignorance of the term "self-professed," as well as the rest of Jeremiah's comment. "I needed to do a little more than shrug. Certainly we may agree to that."

Jeremiah slams his fist on the table, attracting a few glances from neighboring diners. "Do you know what you really are, Darkness? That's not rhetorical. Your boundaries are murky, your moral code more ambiguous."

"My moral code is more strict than you can fathom."

"In principle, yes. How about in practice?"

The two sit in silence for a time. Neither is smiling. Jeremiah is content to pick at his salad. Darkness has yet to make a move toward the bowl, the wine, his napkin, anything that may add to the illusion that this is an actual dinner meeting.

"I wish to pose another question."

Now returning to his more discerning exterior, Jeremiah gulps down half his glass of wine. "What?"

"What is the combination of memory and desire that you have shown to The Insomniac?"

"His or yours?"

"His."

"I've told him about the hellish state you apparently are looking forward to."

"I am no longer asking about my thoughts."

"I told him about the sociopath within trying to escape."

"I am asking about his thoughts."

"I told him about the deep-seeded, unaddressed toxic wasteland of emotions that Anna's death planted deep inside you."

Darkness half-rises from the table, which attracts a few more sideways glances. He closes his eyes for a moment as he returns to his seat. Sneering, Jeremiah finishes his glass of wine and reaches to pour himself another. Darkness' gloved hand is there to meet Jeremiah's at the neck of the bottle. This time, no vision comes to either...only Darkness' stern gaze.

"The other night, your associate said something to me about cannon fodder. He likes the pawns in chess because it helps to advance his plan while sacrificing what is non-essential. I must wonder, Jeremiah, how long he will consider you to be essential to the moves that he wishes to play. You will not divulge to me what you have shown him. I cannot compel you to do so and ultimately it is of little consequence. However, surely you must realize that the day will come when he will sacrifice you for his own greater good."

Jeremiah tries to pull back his own hand, but the larger man's grasp is too much.

"If there is something that you have relayed back to Titanium Insomniac, I hope for his sake that you took the time to assure him of the great lengths to which I go in order to restrain myself from such acts as you depicted last night. Perhaps you can think of it thusly: for the handful of moments in which I have allowed my rage to get the better of me, there are countless amounts of those moments which have been avoided. You could say that inaction speaks volumes that your suggested scenario cannot."

Darkness finally releases his grip, and Jeremiah forgets that he wanted another drink.

"The Insomniac cannot and will not sacrifice me...not for you or anyone else. I'm quite essential to him. I've assured myself a lasting place. We all may be pawns one moment, and kings the next. And then, may we be obedient or rebellious servants, and may we be benevolent kings or tyrants?"

Jeremiah stands, buttoning his suitcoat. "All three of us now know that the lines are more blurred than we imagined. We don't see your inaction...we only see your action. And in my case, what actions you're fully capable of committing. Not only capable, but which you'd consider."

Jeremiah looks at his half-eaten salad and sighs. "Looks like I couldn't set a new precedent after all."

The smaller man leaves Darkness sitting at the table, ignoring the host's plea to "Come again" as he shoves open the front door. As he makes his way onto the sidewalk, he encounters two other men in black suits standing statuesque alongside a dark Mercedes. Jeremiah immediately knows that they are meant for him.

The taller one speaks. "There was a disturbance sensed last evening. We traced it to you."

"I was well within the bounds of our Purpose."

"No, you weren't. Get in the car."

Jeremiah opens his mouth to argue further, but thinks better of it. The one who did not speak, a more stocky, bald man, opens the car door. There is a third figure sitting in the backseat, but anyone curious enough to pay attention couldn't make out who it is. Jeremiah knows, however, which disturbs him even more. He steps inside, and the car quickly pulls away a moment later.

Darkness finally makes his own exit from the restaurant and takes a moment to assess the streetscape.

"All three of us now know that the lines are more blurred than we imagined."

The words reverberate in Darkness' mind as he embarks out into the cool Athens night.

The dregs of the last cup of coffee stuck in his throat as he sipped them. He had let this third cup grow cold in his contemplation; turned to muddy ichor in the chill morning air. Though the sensation was unpleasant, the Insomniac welcomed it as stark relief from the reek of Armageddon.

With a grimace, he turned from the strengthening sunlight and deposited the coffee cup on a small table on the balcony. Obviously sleep had evaded him once more. That was hardly a surprise, but now the source was at least something more immediate.

This should have been something routine. Another usurper who thought to stand in his way that he would eliminate in short order. A child who thought he knew better.

The chess was a child's game designed to expose that child; to put the fear of defeat and humiliation into a prideful boy who sought to displace his elder and better.

The Sleepless One had been mistaken though, and now had stumbled in error. Had he showed his hand too quickly? Would Darkness pounce as he had intended to pounce so early on in this strange, twisted game?

Somehow, Titanium Insomniac doubted that. Darkness was not the type to destroy with precision or ferocity. He was neither scalpel nor sledgehammer; rather he was an entirely different instrument, conceived for a purpose other than destruction.

The silver-faced figure paused as he surveyed his suite. It was lavish, as would be expected. He disliked discussing financial matters, considering it crass and vulgar, but his contract to return had been...lucrative. He could afford to keep himself better than he ever had.

Not that it gave him much pleasure.

Slowly pacing the room, the Insomniac considered how best to approach his newfound problem. He had considered Darkness an obstacle at first, but it had since occurred to him that his enemy saw him in exactly the same light. This man was no Matt Strikmore, to be exploited and worn down. He was no Freya, to be cracked open like an egg and consumed with reckless abandon.

"...he'll break you if he can."

Break him?

The Insomniac was not the one who was usually on the receiving end of such treatment. Except for...

His grey eyes flicked to the object that hung over the back of one of the chairs in the luxurious suite. Something unbidden suddenly rose in him; something that made the thing seem hateful to him in that instant. As the sun crept over the roofs of the Athens skyline, white light filled the room and for a second he staggered back, blinded by the reflection from the metallic surface of the belt.

"O thou, that, with surpassing glory crowned," he spat, summoning words from deep within without stopping to reflect upon their source, "Lookest from thy sole dominion like the God, Of this new world..."

A new world indeed. Since this thing had come into his possession, he had encountered two men who, he knew, represented the legacy of the one for which it had been named. He hated that. He hated their presumption. He hated the fact that others would be so arrogant as to proclaim some connection to the man...the creature...with whom he had once shared so deep a bond.

He reached for it, squinting against the reflected sunlight and then placing his broad frame between it and the window. The shadow did nothing to enhance the leering, blood-spattered face that stared back at him with uneasy ruby eyes.

"I wonder what you would say to them, if you could hear what they call themselves..."

He half expected a reply. Even if it was his own psyche manufacturing the presence of the Bleeder, it would have been fitting for some sort of response to have issued forth from the air.

Maybe he craved reassurance that he had one ally at least against children who should know better, even if that ally came in the form of his most hated enemy. Bleeder, he supposed, would break Darkness with ease.

As he placed the belt down on the chair, for some reason that he had no wish to confront turning it so the demonic face was against the seat, he idly wondered if the two had ever crossed paths.

So...where was he left now? Alone in the dawn, with Jeremiah more antagonistic than ever and an enemy who had more beneath the surface that he could possibly have imagined. He had his usual repertoire of tricks up his sleeve, of course, though he had grown tired of his old games. The little scene in the warehouse was something of a throwback, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Which left his other mainstay. He wondered what kind of restaurant Darkness liked as he dialled the number for his hotel. The man on the other end started in Greek, but switched to broken English when it became clear that the man on the other end wasn't much of a polyglot.

"I'd like you to deliver a message to someone staying at your hotel...

"The name? Darkness. I doubt he'll be booked in with anything else.

"Thank you. Yes, a dinner invitation. For...what...?"

The Insomniac frowned. Apparently Jeremiah had already taken it upon himself to book them a dinner date. The Sleepless One certainly recalled asking him specifically not to do that, and it angered him that he had once again gone over his head to make arrangements.

"No. Thank you. Never mind...I...my memory is not what it was. Could you...uh...tell me what the earlier invitation said?"

Titanium Insomniac reached for a pen, scribbling down the details of the dinner Jeremiah had arranged for him.

"Okay. Yes. Thank you again. Goodbye."

He placed the receiver down and narrowed his eyes at the invitation that he had apparently issued without being party to. He was less annoyed about Jeremiah doing this for him as he was about the fact that he hadn't even told him. Perhaps he would call ‘round later and explain himself. Perhaps the Sleepless One would use that opportunity to explain that this was unacceptable.

No doubt Jeremiah would then use that opportunity to remind him about California, and the little unhealthy dynamic they had going would continue.

With a grim expression on his silver-painted face, the Insomniac planted himself down on a chair and awaited the arrival and belated explanation of his associate. As he sat in silence, he wondered what he would say to Darkness over dinner.

* * *

He waited until the stroke of seven. The day had faded when he finally stood up, resolved to the fact that Jeremiah had no intention of explaining himself. He would be late, but the Sleepless One was too angry to care very much at this stage.

The audacity, even from someone as deep in his counsel to him as Jeremiah, was outrageous. Not for the first time, he considered ending his association with the strange man.

It took him half an hour to prepare, but he was soon striding forcefully through the streets of Athens, attracting the usual stares from bystanders. In the monochrome streetlamps, his face was a shadowy landscape of light and dark contrasts; the reflected surface of some twisted lunar facsimile, plastered onto the body of a man.

He reached the restaurant at a quarter to eight as a dark Mercedes pulled away. The Insomniac strode towards the doors but before he could place a hand on the door, it was opened from within.

Titanium Insomniac took a step back, taking in the strange juxtaposition of style that stood before him.

"Darkness?"

His foe, wearing a dark suit that, Titanium Insomniac had to admit actually looked pretty good on a man like him, with his hair tied back into a neat ponytail, looked just as surprised to see him.

"Is this your plan then?" Darkness asked after a second, "Have your friend leave me at the table and then you jump me outside in the street? I expected better of you."

"What?"

The Insomniac felt the odd sensation of being suddenly not in control of the situation. He didn't know what was happening and he didn't like it. His initial assumption had been that Darkness had come to dinner on time and left in frustration when his host had not arrived punctually. The Sleepless One had at first considered it a lucky coincidence that they could meet like this and avoid the inevitable dinner confrontation. Now he was simply lost.

Darkness gave him a strange look. "What are you staring at?" he asked bluntly.

"Why are you here?"

The long-haired warrior arched an eyebrow. "I think you should answer that question first."

In that instant, something snapped within the Insomniac. He reached for his cane and brought it up in a flash of movement slamming it against Darkness's throat and pinning him to the wall. "No," he said through gritted teeth, "You will be answering first."

The two locked eyes.

Fire.

He had seen the same thing in Bruce, in Dante and even, at times, in The Bleeder.

Swirling in the depths of dark pupils, tiny whirlwinds of writhing flame, dancing to some monstrous tune.

"There the companions of his fall, o'erwhelmed," he murmured softly, "With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire, He soon discerns; and, weltering by his side, One next himself in power, and next in crime..."

Darkness's strange eyes narrowed. "Milton?"

The Insomniac seemed to come back to his senses, as if he had been in some far away realm for a few moments. "Yes...yes I believe it is..."

He could smell the acrid stench of balefire in his nostrils again. He didn't know whether to press his advantage or fall back and flee. He was consumed by hatred and fear in equal measure; wanting to both destroy the source of this vision and to cower from it, lest it consume him too.

Titanium Insomniac knew then that he had no desire to give Darkness any more reason to, as his associate had put it ‘go further even than that.' That he did not wish to tempt fate, let his guard down and allow this enemy to play out whatever scenario Jeremiah had shown him.

He could not know that the second the grip on his cane had tightened, the same fear had risen up in Darkness.

When you combine memory and desire, you sometimes get the balance so perfect that you create something entirely unexpected.

Prophecy.

The Mercedes pulls up to a towering mansion set back amid the olive trees and shielded by a large brick wall. The cast iron gates creak and groan as they pull back mechanically, adding to the feeling of foreboding welling up within the car's added passenger.

Or captive. At this point, captive was probably the better word.

No one had spoken with him since he entered the vehicle. He was well aware of the man to his left, one especially charged to keep him firmly in his seat, then on the unwavering path to the front door and into a room he'd rather not see.

"This is all uncalled for." This latest protest, like those before it, had fallen on deaf ears. He didn't know whether he said it for them to hear or for his own reassurance.

The car pulls to a stop, perpendicular to the door he'd have no choice but to enter. The house was ominous from a distance, and now as it seemed to bear down on him, it had only grown more menacing.

Jeremiah is given a solid shove to make his way up the front steps. The taller man who had first spoken with him leads the way, the others following behind their prisoner. The door is opened for him.

"Second door on the left." The man breaks his silence just long enough to give instruction. Jeremiah glances behind him and comes nose to nose with the third man from the car. Second door on the left it would be.

The walk seems to take longer than it actually does. He passes an elegant mirror hanging over a dark oak sidebar, and sees himself for the first time since he'd left his hotel. They hadn't roughed him up or softened him before the inevitable, but his eyes give him away. This is not where he wants to be.

Jeremiah enters the second door on the left to find a dozen or so other men clad in black suits. They stand as he enters, but it is not for him. It is only because they can begin.

"FIST!" They bellow in unison, as Jeremiah is forcibly sat in a chair at the end of the room.

"Gentlemen," another figure at the far end opposite Jeremiah says, "What are we to be about in this world?"

"Power! Purpose! Brothers! Self!"

"Thank you. Please be seated." The men take their seats. The figure at the end does not turn his gaze from Jeremiah. "It seems that one of our own recently mixed up these four tenets. There is, after all, a reason, they are in that order."

"I can explain..."

"You'll have your chance, although it won't do you much good. Our Purpose is to influence one subject. Naturally, you will know that such influence implies the use of designated ritual on that subject AND THAT SUBJECT ALONE."

Jeremiah leans forward. "But what I did was only to further my subject's mission. If there was any true drawback to my action, it was that the new target proved to be more complicated-"

"I don't think you heard me. The stated code of our brotherhood permits one subject, one target of influence. ONE SUBJECT, ONE TARGET OF INFLUENCE. NOT ONE SUBJECT, MULTIPLE TARGETS. A minimum requirement of the Brotherhood of the Fist is reading comprehension. Perhaps we overlooked such a basic trait in you."

Jeremiah sucks on his lower lip, unable to come up with a reply.

"This is not the first infraction from you. I thought you'd learned your lesson after last time. I've overestimated your adaptation skills as well."

"Our Purpose states that we are to pursue the ends of both the brotherhood and our individual selves through our subjects. I maintain that what I did was to aid my subject in the furtherance of those ends. Why should my gifts be placed in such tight restrictions?"

"Because it is our way. It is our Purpose."

"Well, perhaps we should alter our Purpose."

The figure's face takes on a deep red as the rest of the group mutters among themselves. They are incredulous to the very notion and look on the violator with increased malice. What began for them as a disciplinary measure is becoming personal. What an insult.

"This is also not your first time questioning the order with which the brotherhood that accepted you into its fold set out for you. You were aware of the limits. You've let yourself become drunk with what it has given you and thus your judgment is clouded. I've grown weary of the amount of times you have appeared before this body. There is no further mercy to be shown."

Jeremiah's eyes widen as he takes in the full meaning of those words. The man who had ushered him into the room now walks up behind him, reaches into his dress shirt, and yanks the small medallion from around his neck.

"We remove your membership, but you keep your life. Naturally, any mention of our brotherhood to anyone outside its membership—indeed, any mention of it at all—and the latter part of my judgment will be revisited."

These are the last words Jeremiah hears before a white handkerchief is aggressively cupped over his nose and mouth. Then there is nothing.
__________________________

The Insomniac keeps his white-knuckled grip on his cane, unsure of what he will attempt. His first mistake was allowing Darkness back from the wall, and he winces slightly at the miscalculation. All it would have taken was slightly more pressure, and then he'd have turned Jeremiah's tale on its head.

Darkness is carefully vigilant of TI's movements. They had not made their way back to the warehouse, but the other elements had appeared: The Insomniac's wild eyes, not from lack of sleep but from some fanatical desire within the larger man to change the course of events. Also, TI's use of the cane. Would any response to its potential use be as cold or as excessive as Jeremiah had shown?

The Sleepless One seethes. "What did the two of you talk about in there?"

"I would imagine that you will hear a full report of that later."

"I'd rather hear your side first."

Darkness continues to keep an eye on the cane, the intention behind his opponent's intense gaze. "What good will it be for you to hear my so-called side, Insomniac? My belief is that Jeremiah has already shown you things that will tell you much more than anything disclosed in our earlier conversation could manifest."

The Insomniac's nostrils flare as he grows increasingly frustrated. "This was the second meeting between the two of you. I'm not much for paranoia, and my control freak of an associate knows better than to seek another alliance. I won't worry about such things. But I have to wonder, Darkness, whether you came back to seek a second opinion."

Darkness balls a fist at TI's sudden jerk of his cane, but nothing comes of it. Darkness refocuses his gaze to match his adversary. "What sort of second opinion?"

"Do you know what does it feel like to snap a man's neck?"

Darkness doesn't immediately answer. His gaze even falters a little as the flames within his eyes dim. TI grins.

"It's a disgusting sound, isn't it? A disgusting, powerful feeling to know that you've just either changed or ended a man's life. And it stems from another feeling...whether premeditated or in blind passion, you felt that you had no choice. Call it self-preservation or preservation of the greater good. But you needed to. It was somehow necessary, and there's little time to reflect until you've done it. We can't judge pros and cons until we've experienced it. Then it's real. Then we know what the deed truly is."

Darkness recalls what was necessary to him at various points in his strange, "alternative" career. What could have been avoided? What was necessary? How much DID he reflect before and after? Another jerk of TI's cane brings him back to the present moment.

TI's grin becomes wider. "Perhaps you wanted a second opinion to know how necessary it truly would be to destroy me, Darkness. What am I to you, after all? I have no part in your origins or your ultimate goals, do I? What bearing does facing me have on the ultimate pathos that guides and determines who you are? Can you afford to leave me alone? Can you afford not to?"

TI's eyes soften, much to Darkness' relief. Perhaps this will not come to the predicted conclusion. Perhaps there is no prophetic culmination to the evening, which would end in tragedy for both men. It is around this moment that Darkness realizes the amount of control he possesses in this situation.

"I am not going to fight you here."

TI's jaw tightens. "Why not?"

"Your associate's outcome will not come to pass. I will ensure it."

Any hint of gentleness disappears from The Sleepless One's eyes. He hadn't come here for compassion. He'd come here for liberation, to deliver himself.

"I don't want you to ensure anything."

Darkness raises an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"My soul doesn't need saving. I don't need mercy. When did I ever tell you to take it easy on me? When did I give you permission to do that?"

Darkness furrows his brow. "I did not seek permission from you. It is simply what must be."

"I don't give a flying fuck what you think must be. This isn't about what you think you can control. This isn't about my well-being in the name of your allowing it. I am not fortune's fool. You are not my benevolent savior. And you sure as hell do not have the ultimate word in what happens to me from now until the end of time!"

The Insomniac fully raises his cane, and Darkness conjures as much self-control as he can will as he expects an attempted blow.

But none comes, at least not to him.

The Sleepless One's painted countenance, once silver and black, begins to mix with a familiar dark shade of red. A second blow and the color increases. A third, and the deep crimson almost completely engulfs the other colors. TI peers through his new mask, the intensity in his eyes ever more prominent.

"Do you thirst, Darkness?! Come take a drink! The fountain flows freely and is here for your satisfaction!! I dare you to taste it, get it on your tongue. Come on...COME ON!! You NEED to drink! I control the output, I control the size of your serving!"

Darkness takes a few steps backwards as TI drops to his knees.

"What? You think that you're in control of this, Darkness?! Are you enacting your benevolent will once again? What do you REALLY want, Darkness? What's calling to you inside?!"

Darkness won't have any more of this. The scene is embarrassing, not just for TI's display, but also because something within him conjured this scenario to begin with. He elects to walk off into the night, leaving his taunting adversary behind him.

"You won't be able to hold out forever, Darkness! If not me, who?! If not now, when?!

"What are we first? First, animals; and next
Intelligences at a leap; on whom
Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb."

The Insomniac's rage begins to dissipate as he angrily observes the warrior's departure. The smile returns to his lips, the off-white of his teeth a marked contrast to his red-coated masquerade.

Darkness walked through the streets of Athens at a brisk pace. Bereft of his weapons and in unfamiliar attire he felt exposed; naked. The words of the Titanium Insomniac outside the up-market restaurant hadn't helped with that either.

All his life he had struggled against his native anger, against the force of rage that existed within him. It was this fury that he had once unleashed on Anna over twenty years ago and which had driven him to pursue his calling in life.

With discipline, he had suppressed the ravenous hunter and replaced it with the measured warrior. But the struggle between these opposing forces defined him, and defined the world he sought to protect. It was the struggle between the selfless and the selfish.

But...these last few months, things had become more complex. In learning of his own destiny, he had seen the necessity of the hunter, both in himself and in others. Forced to ally with old enemies against a common foe, he had to sacrifice his discipline to survive.

And yet, if he lost that, what would he unleash upon the world?

He knew his destiny, but he knew also that he would never be ready to embrace it.

That was what made the Insomniac's words cut so deep.

"You won't be able to hold out forever, Darkness!"

And he was right. He would not. He could not. He had been told his destiny, and though the entity that had revealed it to him was not known for his reliability, Darkness knew the truth of his words in his heart.

Someday, somehow, he would snap. His iron will would fail him and he would usher in the end of the world as he understood it. How long before that day came? How long before he broke?

Lost in his thoughts, he almost collided with a man standing in his path. He looked up, ready to apologise, but then took a step back as he met the eyes of his fellow pedestrian.

"You..." he said, in a tone that was half aghast and half accusatory.

Bruce gave him a disarming grin and threw his arms apart. He held that pose for a few seconds until it became clear that Darkness wasn't going to hug him.

"I was hoping to bump into you, Darkless..."

"It's Darkness, remember?"

"Right, of course, of course." Bruce gave him a reassuring thumbs up. "Hey," he continued, giving Darkness a pat on the shoulder, "I like this new look. I'm glad you finally got out of that shabby coat and that old t-shirt. I didn't want to say anything at the time, but..."

"Actually I just dressed like this for dinner," Darkness replied with a flat look, adjusting the lapels of his suit jacket a little self-consciously.

Bruce raised his eyebrows and made an odd clicking noise while nudging Darkness in the ribs a little too hard. The entire scenario looked like something Bruce had seen in a movie and was poorly imitating. "So you finally found yourself a lady, eh? I know you were kind of hung up over..."

Darkness caught Bruce's hand as he moved it towards him and stared balefully at the new TCW enforcer. "You of all people should know to tread carefully when speaking of matters of that nature."

Bruce's hand, still wrapped in black athletic tape as it had been when Darkness had last saw him, writhed in an odd manner as it hovered near his face, causing Darkness to shy away from its strangely textured surface with a look of faint disgust. He looked back at Bruce and saw that the former time traveller was looking at him with a strange expression.

"What?"

"Were your eyes always like that, Darkest?"

Darkness frowned. "Like what?" he asked, knowing exactly what Bruce was talking about.

The S.T.D. agent saw through his lie and gave him another broad grin. "You've been spending too much time with Dante," Bruce chided, "Plus your choice of club name doesn't help..."

Darkness was in a bad mood before he'd had the misfortune to bump into Bruce. Already torn apart by doubt and confusion over his role in life as well as the fear deep in the pit of his stomach that he was just a short step away from betraying everything he had ever stood for, this was the last man he wanted to meet.

"Bruce, I'm really not in the mood for..."

Bruce was still smiling. Darkness narrowed his eyes at him. "What is it?"

"You think I don't know, champ?"

"I'm not the champion anymore, actually..."

"Oh I know. I was just mocking you."

"Thanks," Darkness replied with a grimace, "But what is it you know?"

"Who you are. What you are. What you'll do."

Darkness's face froze and his grip on Bruce's wrist tightened. "How?" he asked hoarsely.

"Uh...I'm a time traveller, remember? I know what happens in the future." Bruce rolled his eyes extravagantly.

"But I thought that your future..." Darkness released his hold and ran his hand across his beard. "Didn't we change the future?"

"No no, what we did was...uh..." Bruce looked upwards as if thinking deeply. "No, you tried to kill yourself in the past and then we...uh...there was a beaver involved, right?"

"That wasn't me."

"Oh yeah, yeah - you were the one with the demons, weren't you? In the house?"

"Yeah."

"Well that was...there was something about a guy with a gun who never really existed?"

"Yes...look, can we..."

"And he had those chroniton radiation scars and you...hey, did you ever find that daughter of yours?"

Darkness lunged at Bruce, closing his fingers around the man's throat. The fire blazed in his eyes again as he recalled his bizarre misadventures with Bruce that had resulted in him learning that his daughter was not dead, but had instead been kidnapped. And that Bruce, acting as a slave to destiny, had been responsible for it.

Bruce was choking from Darkness's grip, but he still managed to grin. "Guess the Insomniac's words back there finally make sense now, huh?" he rasped.

"Which ones?" Darkness growled.

"Well, all of them, but mainly the Milton quote...can you...uh..." he gestured at Darkness's hand around his throat. The former Shadow Slayer released him and Bruce readjusted his cowboy hat that had been knocked askew in the struggle. "See, I know where you got those eyes from. They're the same as mine here," he pointed two fingers at his own dancing crimson pupils, "And the same as Dante's. I bet his chick even has a couple a' these baby-reds, huh?"

"I haven't checked recently..."

"No, I guess not." Bruce leant in to Darkness, his trademark grin still plastered across his unshaven chin, "But the thing you have to understand, is that you're part of a very exclusive little club now, Darkness..."

"Hey, you remembered my name..."

"That's because this is important," Bruce said, with an odd threat in his voice, "You're part of a club - not the one you started with Dante and that big blonde lug, but one a lot more important. You, like me, like The Bleeder before us, now have the blood of the Infernal realm running in your veins. That means there are certain things expected of you...certain duties you have to fulfil."

"I don't know what you..."

Bruce grabbed Darkness's lapel and pulled him closer, "I came here to be the TCW enforcer, Darkness, not to chase after you. This isn't a social call, and I'm only going to tell you this once. One way or the other, this conflict within you has to be resolved, or we're all going to be destroyed. Do you understand me?"

The two men's oddly similar gazes remained locked for a long moment.

* * *

Blood coursed from the open wound on the Sleepless One's forehead and, his body wracked with despair, he clawed at it. Around him, diners and promenading Athenians recoiled in horror from the spectacle of the black-clad giant tearing at himself and howling angry rebuttals into the night at a man who had long ago walked out of sight.

As he saw their revulsion, his grin flicked on and off like a dying light bulb. The tumult of emotions swirling within him refused to resolve itself into something he could focus on and control. Crimson spots had begun to cover the sidewalk beneath his feet and he looked at them with something approaching contempt.

Was this how he made his points now? Had he become so reliant on Jeremiah and his machinations that he was reduced to acts of vulgar blood-letting to break into his opponents' psyches?

"Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight," he murmured softly, "Alone and palely loitering..."

Someone reached out a hand as if to help him, and he batted it away with a look of contempt. "I don't need your help," he hissed, "It is not for you that I wear this mask, it is not for the benefit of you onlookers that I display myself thus."

The Insomniac stood, straightening himself and briefly supporting himself with his now-bloodstained cane. He looked in the direction that Darkness had gone, wondering if his words had had their intended effect, fearing they hadn't, some part of him praying that they must.

He had charged Darkness with watching for the threat he himself posed, but now he wondered if Darkness had unintentionally exposed a threat to the Sleepless One that lurked within. He had begun this because he saw Darkness as a crass imitator, an inexperienced fool trying to bite off more than he could chew. Now the Insomniac wondered if it wasn't fear of his own inadequacy that had motivated him.

Was he the spent force?

Or...

He stopped. As he blinked his own blood from his eyes, the events of the day crystallised in his mind. The hours of sitting in lonely silence, awaiting the knock at the door that never came, the wasted day and the embarrassing misunderstanding of the failed dinner.

"Jeremiah," he swore under his breath.

As the Insomniac strode off in the direction Darkness had gone, he began to whisper under his breath.

"I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd - ‘La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!'"

* * *

Bruce had gone, leaving Darkness stunned, turning over his words in his mind. Dumbly, he continued to walk the streets before, once again, coming across a familiar face.

"You..." he said for the second time that night but this time it was laden with far more vitriol.

Jeremiah looked at Darkness blankly. "What? Why are you..."

Again, for the second time that evening, Darkness's hand shot out and grasped the neck of an enemy. "You are the cause of all this," he spat, "This is all some perverse game you and the Insomniac have cooked up."

Effortlessly, he hauled the smaller man off his feet, suspending him in the air with his rigid, muscular arm. "This ends here. Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art..."

At that moment, the Sleepless One rounded the corner and saw the tableau frozen before him in the soft light of the Athens street-lamps. His eyes narrowed. Jeremiah glanced in his direction, his eyes pleading, begging him to intervene.

Darkness stood poised, ready to make his choice, ready to finally break.

Titanium Insomniac stood still as a statue, his gaze flicking from one to another. The choice was his now, and his heart beat fast as he felt control finally resting back in his hands again. One of these men would fall.

Only he could decide which.

When is a choice not really a choice?

It may be when either outcome would bring more than a shrug.

It may be when only one option is truly within one's power to choose.

It may be when only one option does not bring dire consequences to the one choosing.

It may be when only one option preserves something of value.

The Insomniac blinks to clear his eyes of the blood blurring his vision, drop by drop. He locks eyes with Jeremiah, his man of mystery for a half year or more; the provider of closure for the night that changed his world forever...and his ever-present antagonist, trying to play the authoritative parent for one who needed no such thing.

He turns his gaze to Darkness, his more immediate antagonist; the supposed usurper of his legacy and even perhaps the foreseen destroyer of his life...now holding his associate a good foot and a half off the ground with ease.

Issue a final "thanks, but no thanks," freeing himself from any further meddling? Or destroy the alleged destroyer and ensure that his own eternal legend is preserved?

When is a choice not really a choice?

The Insomniac smirks.

"You won't hit me, but you'll hit him?"

Somewhat startled, Darkness looks toward TI, sharing his threatening gaze with his smug opponent. TI remains undeterred as drops of crimson hang from his chin and splatter on the concrete. Jeremiah's face remains one of panic, even as he is slowly lowered back down to solid ground.

Darkness is now fully focused on TI, although he keeps his strong grip on Jeremiah's throat. "This one is expendable. He began this for us, and now I am going to remove him from the equation."

The Sleepless One takes a step forward. "What he began is the revelation of what you're really about. What you're capable of. What you're willing to do."

"You know nothing about those things."

"Yes I do. I know what he's shown me."

Jeremiah winces. The Insomniac's words are painful at a level deeper than the physical pain he is feeling from Darkness' firm clutch. He gasps for what little air he is allowed.

"He deals in exaggeration and distortion."

"If he does that, why is your hand wrapped around his throat? No reason to be defensive or violent, is there? ‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much.' Sorry, that's the line. I couldn't avoid the cheap shot at your manliness that time. I know, it won't rile you up. It wasn't the point. The point is that you're getting awfully defensive about what he showed you, and if you think he's wrong, why bother with him? That was all quite pedantic, wasn't it? I don't give a fuck."

With a stiff show of force, Darkness releases his hold, shoving Jeremiah to the wall. Jeremiah sinks to the sidewalk, now gulping in air as much as he can. Darkness turns fully toward The Insomniac, who has not dropped his smile.

"I am aware of the reference to ‘Hamlet.'"

"I know you are."

Darkness nods toward a cowering Jeremiah. "The reason I showed violence toward him is to put a stop to any further falsehood. I protest because I have full control of my emotions."

TI drops his smile slightly. "I know. Your cowardly abandonment of me outside the restaurant was proof enough."

"Cowardice would have been shown in my acting on your ploy."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night."

A tense silence passes between the two. Jeremiah now rests with his back against the cool brick, still catching his breath. He surveys The Insomniac and wonders at what caused the gash in his forehead gleaming under the streetlamps. Had Darkness acted? TI's words and Darkness' reply signaled that he hadn't, which only meant...what had he done?

Sometimes it takes a fresh perspective to see more clearly.

"Desire and memory..."

Both men look toward the disheveled smaller man, now resting his head in his hands.

TI is the first to look back up at Darkness. "Exaggeration and distortion doesn't explain what I saw. We don't need to deal in such things. You and I, we're both monsters doomed to each our own destinies but ultimately the same fate. You've been to your hell and I've been to mine, and neither makes for a healthy pathology. No, exaggeration and distortion isn't necessary for the two of us."

"Technically, you're right."

TI looks back down at Jeremiah, who has raised his head and can't completely bring himself to look at the painted man.

"What are you talking about?"

"It isn't necessary, but it's still beneficial."

Darkness' eyes dart back and forth, wondering where this is going.

"We're not talking about benefit. We're talking about truth-telling."

"I'm talking about both."

Darkness watches for TI's reaction, which falls somewhere between irritation at the riddle and confusion at his advisor's statement. Why have this argument here, with their mutual enemy not eight feet away? Wasn't this the stuff reserved for private consultation?

Somewhat painstakingly, Jeremiah uses the wall as leverage to climb to his feet. He leans back against the building, wanting to meet TI at eye level. "You and I both know the benefit in exaggerating the truth, and the truth is that you've always wanted a target for your rage and that the source of that rage is the death of your family. You benefited from finding a target, and I benefited from providing it."

Again, Darkness watches The Insomniac, who is still trying to make sense of what he's saying.

Jeremiah wipes the side of his mouth. "Your memory created a desire, Insomniac. I used both to get you to do what I wanted. Mike Trompent abused a neighbor of mine three years ago."

Jeremiah steps out from the wall, not wanting to stand eye to eye with TI, but knowing that he must for what he says next. "And that's the only time he's ever inflicted harm on someone else."

Darkness realizes it almost immediately. If TI understands it as quickly, he doesn't show it. In fact, he makes no movement for several moments. The blood begins to dry, mixing with the paint and together both begin to flake off. The Insomniac looks at Darkness, his face growing warm. He then looks at Jeremiah, standing helplessly and apologetically.

TI's lips slowly form into a thin line.

When is a choice not really a choice?

The blow comes suddenly and with a speed carrying all the force of betrayal, deception, and rage behind it. It was so unexpected that the sound of wood cracking against bone seems to arise out of nowhere, and Jeremiah's stunned form reels against the wall once again, the most sure signal that something caused him to move.

It had taken The Sleepless One three hits to his own skull to produce blood...it had only taken him one for his betrayer. The dark red mixes with equally dark brown hair, producing a thick irregular clump on the side of the smaller man's head.

Darkness takes a step backward as he witnesses the final implosion of this unsteady alliance. He begins to wonder at the truthfulness of his own visions now, whether they had been for the pair's benefit as well.

Further sickening thumps follow as TI alternates more cane shots to the skull and ribs. If any decorum had remained outside the restaurant, it had been abandoned now. The Insomniac strikes with little regard for onlookers, for his opponent, for anyone outside himself.

The severity of the beatdown culminates in a primal scream that resonates throughout the Athens night. TI takes a few steps back from the limp form, fresh blood splattered across his face, though not his own. He looks back at Darkness, who readies himself for the rage to continue.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"I take no pleasure in what either of you are enduring."

"Bullshit."

TI impatiently pulls his cigarettes from his jacket. A shaking hand holds his lighter to ignite the end. He lets his head roll back and lets the cloud lazily waft out his mouth and nostrils.

TI looks toward his adversary. "Pawns are fooled into thinking that they have a destiny, even theirs is to sacrifice for the greater good. Kings...kings are the ones who call for that sacrifice. Their destiny is greater. Their destiny is one that brings coronation...that celebrates the achievement of the living and an everlasting name."

Another cloud of smoke escapes from TI's lungs.

Darkness steps forward. "Your destiny is not what it seemed. Jeremiah played on your imagination."

The Insomniac snorts. "Please. You and I have both seen too much to be bothered with much imagination beyond what we have perceived."

Darkness stops. He's heard The Insomniac speak those words before. But they hadn't been spoken on any physical plane...

The Insomniac begins an abrupt departure from the chaotic scene. Darkness silently watches him, unsure of what more can be said.

"The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am."

These words return to Darkness sharply as he ponders TI's parting comment. Had it truly been little more than Jeremiah's manipulation, or was truth still yet to be discovered in his implanted vision?

TI, meanwhile, allows another puff of smoke out into the night. He walks slowly and deliberately, as if he's not in a hurry to reach his location, or as if he's still trying to decide on one.

"Walks" probably isn't the best term, anyway.

"Meander" would be better.

Darkness finally begins his own departure in the opposite direction, still turning over the details of that vision, trying to separate fact from fabrication.

The long-haired warrior walks with a purpose; a decided goal. He has a destiny.

TI, dried blood and paint breaking away from his face, has just discovered that he has none.

One can be dangerous when pursuing such a destiny. After all, there will be obstacles that need to be removed.

One can be equally as dangerous without such a destiny. There are no obstacles...only objects of rage.

When is a choice not really a choice?

It may be when only one option preserves something of value.

Or when there's nothing to preserve at all.

"One way or the other, this conflict within you has to be resolved..."

Darkness stopped, his brand-new black shoes that felt so odd on his feet after years of his customary boots halting abruptly. He turned around slowly.

When is a choice not really a choice?

It may be when only one option preserves something of value.

Then the question becomes not about the choice, but about the nature of value. Is it a choice between good and evil? Between life and death? Between the paths of selflessness and selfishness?

Do you put aside justice for revenge? Discipline for personal satisfaction? When the time comes, do you give up everything you have stood for in the name of self-gratification?

Darkness's cold grey eyes, the tiny spark of red deep in the pupil still writhing like an angry inferno, looked into the dark eyes of what was left of Jeremiah. Bleeding, breathing heavy, ragged breaths, the man tried to pick himself up, to maintain what dignity was left to him, but he was broken and defeated. For a second his arms supported his weight as he clawed up the wall, but then he collapsed inward as gravity won over the remnants of his willpower. Jeremiah slumped into a bloody heap.

No one approached him. No one wanted anything to do with this situation.

Darkness didn't understand the details of his and the Insomniac's relationship. From their words he guessed that it could be described as ‘antagonistic' and from the Sleepless One's actions, he had seen that it was now better described as ‘over'.

He mulled over their words. Darkness didn't know who Mike Trompent was, but he could guess. Jeremiah had given the Insomniac an outlet for his vengeance and satiated his own bloodlust at the same time. Both men were guilty of a crime against decency in his eyes.

Revenge...the revenge he had been about to take but which Titanium Insomniac had taken for him.

All three of them had erred tonight. Now it was time to do something right.

"One way or the other, this conflict within you has to be resolved..."

Titanium Insomniac's words echoed through his mind as Darkness began to retrace his steps.

"Pawns are fooled into thinking that they have a destiny, even theirs is to sacrifice for the greater good. Kings...kings are the ones who call for that sacrifice. Their destiny is greater. Their destiny is one that brings coronation...that celebrates the achievement of the living and an everlasting name."

Darkness stretched out his hand to Jeremiah.

"I don't believe in pawns," he said softly.

* * *

The Insomniac's path continued through Athens. He attracted stares wherever he went, a blood-spattered, silver-faced monster. His eyes told them not to approach him, not to interfere. They wouldn't call the cops, they wouldn't tell their friends. They'd just scurry on home to their beds and forget he ever existed.

Like ants.

Like children.

Unlike Darkness, the Titanium Insomniac wasn't here to protect the ignorant, the innocent, the meek. He had nothing but contempt for those that didn't help themselves, for those that relied on men like his adversary to protect them from the harsh reality of the real world.

And yet what claim had he now to superiority? He had shed the blood of the one who had deceived him, but what had it given him besides fleeting satisfaction?

The Insomniac knew now that he had laboured these long months in vain. He had intended to return, rejuvenated, whole and take back the crown that had once been his.

‘California' had slain the last of his demons, he had believed. Now, he had thought, sleep may finally come.

But it had not. And he knew why.

His demons were as real as they had ever been, but now brought into stark focus in the moonlight, leering and foul before him like the masks suspended above a stage, mocking and mourning him in equal measure.

"Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish;
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendant rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon 't, that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen
these signs;
They are black vesper's pageants..."

It was over three years since he'd last spoken those words. He thought back to that hotel room, to his visitor that night. To his life then, and his life now.

He's not better.

He's a mockery.

And apparently ignorant all the same.

Words he thought about a different man, in a different place, a thousand years ago...give or take...

But it wasn't Darkness to whom he directed these mental epithets tonight, or even the one who had once called himself the Adamantium Insomniac. No, tonight the Dark Harlequin reserved his contempt only for himself, and for the man he had thought himself become.

The Insomniac's pace did not change as he was consumed by his thoughts and his anger. Every step only increased his feelings of self-loathing and of unreasoning rage.

He had no regrets about his treatment of Jeremiah. When he had first confronted the man who called himself Darkness, he had seen him as a crass imitator; someone ripping off his act for a new and less discerning audience. What he had learned was that Darkness was something else entirely.

Darkness would spend forever debating between revenge and redemption, the Insomniac knew. A warrior condemned to use his art for only good cannot ever be victorious, and Darkness's tragedy would be his ultimate failure when the time came for him to truly choose.

Titanium Insomniac had tried to hasten that choice, but he knew that Darkness would pass his test. Anything else and the game would be over.

And game over for that one would...well...the Sleepless One believed the evidence of his own eyes, but how much had been manipulation and how much truth?

Jeremiah had tricked him once he knew now. Could he manufacture the burning city he had seen? The charred corpses? The cries of dying children?

Darkness's eyes told him the answer was no.

So...

What now?

The Insomniac raised his head and took in his surroundings with a brief glance. He was far from the affluent area of town now, standing beneath flickering lights and standing upon buckled asphalt. A filthy vagrant watched him from his perch in a crumbing shop-doorway.

This place was derelict; forgotten. It suited him in this hour.

Slowly, he crossed the street and looked down at the lumpen figure swaddled in the rags of his bad decisions, heaped against the door like the human detritus he was. He was content with such company tonight.

"Hey, you got anything to drink?"

The figure proffered a hip flask from within his clothes. The Insomniac took it and sipped. It tasted as bad as he expected, the alcohol burn turning his throat to ash in an instant.

It was what he wanted though. To hurt. To feel.

He took the flask from his lips and offered it back to the homeless man. The figure looked up at him and the Insomniac paused for a second.

"You."

It wasn't a question, and there was no accusation or horror in his tone. It was simply a statement of fact as he met a familiar gaze.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Watching the show, of course," the man with the eyes of shattered glass told his old enemy.

"Enjoying it?"

These are the only words a fatigued, bloodied figure can muster. The tragic act of his play was supposed to have been played out, used up. He's re-enacting it all now, slightly nuanced, but the entire episode has a familiar feel to it.

The demon rises, clutching his tattered shawl close. He neither smiles nor laughs, he neither frowns nor shows displeasure. He remains unaffected by the question, as if he is beyond the answer.

"No joy. No offense. However, I am intrigued by each moment when you self-destruct just a little more."

Likewise, this observation conjures no reaction from The Insomniac. His eyes have turned a dull grey, his shoulders hang loose and slightly forward. It could be that he'd spent all his energy on Jeremiah. It could be that he'd been worn down by his adversary's withstanding of his accusations. It could be that he was truly more sleepy than he'd ever let on to anyone.

And yet, he is beyond that. He feels neither tired, nor worn down, nor sleepy. He only feels trapped.

Trapped inside his own existence.

He'd only felt this way one other time...at the hands of this thing before him.

The Bleeder lightly sways back and forth, still beyond emotion, still studying the remnants of the Sleepless One, reflected darkly in the demon's eyes.

"I once told you that you were only meant to tell the joke, not become the punchline. Surely you haven't slipped back into becoming the victim rather than creating one."

TI offers no response.

"No...this is something else. You forgot how to tell the joke...no...no...there are plenty of jokes to tell. You know them all. You've told them effortlessly for some time. People clamor to hear you tell them because no one tells them with as much finesse or detail. You haven't forgotten.

"You just don't think they're funny any more."

For the first time, The Bleeder smiles his toothy, blood-soaked smile.
__________________

Jeremiah coughs as his arm is hoisted across the shoulders of his assailant-turned-Samaritan. He spits against the wall; a mixture of blood and saliva slowly creeps toward the sidewalk. In the moments that he is fully aware of his surroundings, he wonders why he is being helped. It gets no more specific than that. It is not surprise that it is Darkness who is helping him...it is surprise that he is being helped at all.

He is a deceiver.

An accomplice to a horrendous event that rendered another man severely crippled.

One who uses others for his own gain.

Who would help him?

Darkness steals a quick sideways glance to check the smaller man's status. He chastises himself for his own involvement in tonight's affair, internally recoiling at his own initial threat to Jeremiah's well-being. The Insomniac's words ring in his ears:

"You won't hit me, but you'll hit him?"

Freya had warned him about TI's accusatory nature, his opportunistic way with words. Always the emotional predator, The Insomniac—and, indeed, the one he was now helping—had both tried to pick at an opening. What were the limits of Darkness' temperance? Ironically, the accusations themselves had nearly answered that question. Indeed, perhaps "nearly" had nothing to do with it. He had almost ended the accusations by ending the accuser.

But surely he wouldn't have. Would he?

It was the subsequent confrontation between Jeremiah and TI that had stopped him.

But surely he could have stopped himself. Couldn't he?

Regardless, one tragedy had been avoided only for another to be played out. All three had participated, all three had suggested, encouraged, avoided, and threatened. This was Darkness' own retreat back from his part, his penance for a sin of omission against this broken figure now dependent on him to play the part in which he'd been cast ages ago.

"W...why..."

"Do not try to speak. Save your energy."

"But...why..."

The words crackle hoarsely between labored breaths. The attempted question is genuine, and one the warrior has heard many times. The answer is always the same.

"Because it is what I do."
_______________________

"This is quite the turn of events to befall the one who now wears my namesake. I believe you once asked me about those who carry around such titles. I was never one for self-promotion...my actions were always about what they did in and of themselves. They were never for furtherance of my name. But I'm afraid that is the frequent fate of those who attract such a following. The one followed is venerated more than what they offered the world."

The two are walking now. The only destination is what they share verbally. The demon is in quite the sharing mood at this point, his usually garrulous companion still without much to contribute. The Bleeder silently acknowledges this as he continues his own musings.

"It is immortality by proxy. My name and my group's name endure on scraps of gold and a professed ‘reborn' entity, respectively. And you...the crown jewel for those most blatantly and shamelessly pursuant of such ends. What more pathetic way to simultaneously declare your fear and combat mortality than to call yourselves ‘Infinity'? You are their immortality symbol...a legend such as the Titanium Insomniac? On OUR side? It must be true."

TI has yet to respond. He gazes ahead at whatever happens to be in front of him, keeping pace with his associate. Further flakes of blood and paint fall from his face. The demon notices this.

"Two layers of anguish now, rather than one."

"Not anguish. Purpose."

"Oh, really? What was that purpose?"

"Provocation."

"The blood, yes. And the paint?"

The Insomniac's impassive eyes fall on the other's dark mirrors. His words carry a hollow tone, as spoken from inside a tomb. "Provocation takes many forms. One is provoked by appearance as much as action. By intimidation as much as offering an open wound on which to feed."

The Bleeder nods. "That has been one of your hallmarks since you donned a mask."

"You took my mask."

"But you replaced it. More clever and more genuine, but more fragile. More indicative of your temporality."

"Temporality is all that is real."

"Nothing else?"

TI glances again at the demon, his eyes still without much expression.

"Nothing."

The Bleeder stops them both and leans in. For the first time, The Sleepless One sees what has transpired on his face over the past several hours reflected back at him. He sees the dimmed manifestation of three different personalities all struggling to take prominence...the desperate blood-soaked appellant, the arrogant playful harlequin, and the vulnerable weak human being who created them all. His countenance is a kaleidoscope of flesh, crimson, and silver, and he marvels at the entire presentation. It is the first bit of emotion he's felt in the past hour.

The Bleeder is more stern now. "I've always admired your work, even as I pushed you past your comfortable pet tricks. If temporality is all that is real, and nothing else...then that's still something."

TI's eyes deaden once again. "Don't tell me to look on the bright side."

The Bleeder darkens. "I'm telling you the very opposite."
_______________________

Morning has finally broken upon the city of Athens several hours after the most fiery moments of the previous evening. Darkness reclines in his hotel room, further reflecting on his own coda to the night.

Normally, Darkness was content to be fairly oblivious to the curious glances that his appearance invites. Still dressed in his dinner attire, these glances had lessened aside from his presence during a silver-painted man's self-abusive tirade and as he'd assisted a bloodied figure into the emergency room. The staff scrambled to make ready for their latest patient and ordered him to sit in the waiting area until he'd been stabilized. The dried blood on his dress jacket had made him more self-conscious than he'd usually be. It wasn't at his hand.

It wasn't.

It had been an hour and a half before he was allowed back to see Jeremiah, freshly bandaged and adorned in a thin white gown. The plan, he was told, was to be transported to a permanent room for a few days' observation. A concussion, some broken ribs, and internal bleeding were his reward for his lies.

Actually, one doctor mentioned to Darkness, he's lucky one of his ribs hadn't punctured a lung.

All in all, a small price to pay at the hands of one capable of so much more.

Darkness had come back to the station in which Jeremiah rested. His eyes were closed, as Darkness had expected. A hefty amount of painkillers had been administered. There was little chance of any further conversation at this late hour.

The police were contacted. Would he remain in the area for questioning?

And it was over.

Darkness had made it back to his room a half hour later to decompress. His eyes once again fall on the blood-spattered dress coat, a lasting memorial of the previous night's events. He wonders where his opponent ended up. He pictures the typical room in which Jeremiah now rests, hopefully comfortable from the care he is receiving.

There is a knock on the door, and the warrior's mind runs down the short list of who it could be. He peeks through the peephole and is slightly surprised at his visitor.

Unlocking and opening the door, he greets a familiar face, showing a look of concern.

"There are reports in this morning's paper," says Freya, her tone a mix of worry and irritation. "What do I need to know about all of this and why didn't I know sooner?"
________________________

The Insomniac also emerges from a few hours' rest. His exhaustion has left him; it is replaced by...he still can't name it. The concoction of makeup and blood has been wiped away. A small white bandage on his forehead is currently the only addition to his features.

He stands and pours himself another cup of coffee. This time there is no other taste to suppress...there is only the rich black texture with a hint of hazelnut coating his insides.

A light sweat causes his tattoo to glimmer in the morning sun, though he feels no pride. It is not for being replaced with humility or being damaged. He simply feels no need for reparation or restoration.

"If temporality is all that is real, and nothing else...then that's still something."

"Don't tell me to look on the bright side."

"I'm telling you the very opposite."

The Insomniac reaches for his paint kit, studying the assortment of brushes and colors at his disposal. There is no immediacy to begin his day, no eagerness to avenge earlier setbacks.

What he needs to do first is think.

Who will emerge from what remains?

What will he look like?

The Sleepless One sets the kit on the bed and studies himself in the mirror. This time, his reflection is much clearer. His face carries a more unified color.

"My name is Might-have-been;
I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell."

TI refills his mug and walks back out onto the balcony. A new tattoo gleams in the morning rays from his upper right bicep.

A modest black pawn.

Darkness narrowed his eyes at the young girl standing before him. He had been surprised to see her, yes, but not for the reasons an outsider might think. He stepped back to allow her to enter but still didn't offer a reply. Freya produced the paper to which she had referred and held it out to him.

Gingerly he took it and scanned the page for a few seconds. The report wasn't on the front page - this was a capital city and beatings happen every day - it seemed the altercation was only considered noteworthy because it had occurred in an up-market district of town and involved some minor celebrities. The article referred to him as ‘Dark'.

"Nice to see the standard of reporting is as stringent here as it is in North America..." he said to himself.

Freya placed her hands on her hips, giving him a frustrated look. "That's all you have to say?"

He looked at her. "This isn't exactly the first fight I've been involved in," he said slowly, "So don't expect to be regaled with an anecdote."

Freya stepped fully into the room now, letting the door swing shut behind her, but she didn't take her eyes off Darkness. "So you and the Insomniac did beat up some innocent diner then?"

Darkness frowned at the article a second time, picking up details he had missed with his first reading. "No," he said, "He was an...associate...of the Insomniac's, not a diner...or, at least, not exclusively a diner anyway..."

"But you did beat him up?"

Darkness paused, ruminating on the question for a few moments. "No," he replied at least, "I definitely didn't beat him up."

"Why the pause, hot shot?"

"Hot shot?"

"Your eyes," she pointed, "Are they contacts or what?"

"No."

"So you were saying?"

Darkness placed the paper down on the bedside table and folded his arms. "I wasn't, actually."

"Right."

Freya didn't seem to take the hint, looking around the room with interest. "Nice suite - it's bigger than the one they gave me."

"I expect that's because I paid more."

"Obviously. I guess you earn a little more than me, huh?"

Darkness gave her a strange look. "I prefer not to discuss matters of that nature..." he told her.

She barked a little laugh and continued her inspection of the room. "It's good to hear a familiar accent anyway," she said, looking out of the wide French doors at the view across Athens, "Where are you from?"

"Chicago."

Freya looked at him and laughed again. "You might be able to fool all the guys who never hear you speak, but that's not going to fly with me, sunshine. I know a voice from home when I hear one."

Darkness shrugged under her chiding scrutiny, "I've lived in a few places."

"Ever get anywhere near Oxfordshire?"

"No, not really."

"Ah. Never mind then."

She continued to wander the room before finally stopping abruptly and fixing him with her piercing green eyes. "So, you aren't going to tell me anything about what happened to you last night, and you're certainly not going to tell me anything about yourself, so how about we change the subject a little?"

"To what?"

"To me." She wasn't smiling now, and her stare didn't waver even though Darkness stood a head taller than her and could stare down creatures most people couldn't imagine. "How about you start by explaining what the deal is with this ‘me in your corner' crap, eh?"

Darkness arched an eyebrow at her. "Do you have a problem with it? If you want I could talk to Commissioner Stern and..."

"No, no," Freya interrupted, holding up her hands, "Stop dodging the question, Buffy. I didn't ask not to be involved - God knows I have enough reason to want to see Titanium Insomniac get his arse kicked by you - I asked where the idea came from in the first place. I get why you showed up at the end of my match - and thanks, by the way - but why keep me in the picture?"

Darkness gave her another strange look and raked his fingers through his hair. "I don't know," he finally admitted, "Would ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time' be explanation enough?"

Freya laughed again. "Alright then, hot shot. I guess that'll do." She began to walk past him towards the door. "But don't treat me like a damsel in distress that you need to save from the big bad wolf, okay?"

"I'll bear that in mind."

She paused as she opened the door and smiled genuinely, "Hey, I'm meeting a friend of yours later if you want to come sight-seeing."

"Friend?"

"Yeah. Cordazer."

Darkness looked at her for a moment, confused. "Acolyte?"

"Yeah..."

"Oh. Uh...I haven't..."

"Spoken to him in a while? I didn't think you had. You know, people are starting to talk about you guys backstage. You lot might want to start thinking about actually hanging out with each other now and then if you want people to start taking you seriously."

Darkness opened his mouth to reply with some barbed comment, but stopped himself. "You're right," he admitted.

She nodded and moved to leave, but noticed the large man still looking at her with his steely gaze. "What?" she asked, her pretty brow creasing.

"I know what you are, Ms. Green," Darkness told her.

She shrugged. "I know. Mum told me to watch out for men with a tattoo like that," she nodded at the interlocking rings around his bicep. "But given the company you're keeping these days I guess I'm the least of your problems, right?"

"Good point," he conceded.

"Anyway, we'll be at the Acropolis this afternoon, I think. I think Cordazer would like to see you."

"Thanks...I'll...I'll think about it..."

She smiled once more and waggled her fingers slightly by way of saying goodbye before finally disappearing.

Darkness watched the door close behind her, considering the strange girl's words for a few moments. Oddly, he had found her presence reassuring, seeing himself reflected in her green eyes that...despite the secrets he knew they hid...represented a life that had been far more normal than his own. Her visit was a strong contrast to the whirlwind of events and emotions he had experienced the previous evening, and it was as if some calming aroma now floated through the air of his hotel suite.

"Strange," he said to himself.

The warrior was still plagued with the doubt that the Sleepless One had inspired in him, but now he knew that he had done the right thing. In what could have been the moment where he sacrificed everything for his own satisfaction, he had held firm...or firm enough at any rate...

He had passed this test.

But it had been just one night, and he knew that he was by no means done with the Insomniac yet.

* * *

"Appropriate."

The Insomniac looked at The Bleeder with a cold expression in his grey eyes. "Don't you ever knock?"

The demon gestured at the air around where he was perched, balanced precariously on his haunches atop a wrought-iron chair, his tattered black patchwork coat trailing on the tiles below. "On what?" he asked, "Besides, what would be the point?"

"It might make me feel better," the Sleepless One replied, turning back to the sunrise with a dull look.

"Come now - we've been through too much for me to care how you feel about anything." The Bleeder smiled his blood-stained grin.

"Why are you here?" The Insomniac asked after a minute or so of silence.

"Because you need someone to speak for you at a time like this, Insomniac. You can't trust your inner-monologue anymore so here I'm sat to tell you what to think, to reflect on your failure..."

"And to taunt me?"

"I said I was replacing your own mind, didn't I? Taunting is part of the act; you know that better than anyone."

"My mind is a little more self-assured than you give it credit for, Bleeder," the Insomniac spat, refusing to rise to the demon's snide comments.

"Come now - I wouldn't even attend the audition if I though the part might be filled already. Do you think I'd waste my time with you if I wasn't serving a purpose?"

"How noble of you."

The Bleeder watched his now black-painted charge as he stared out at the sunrise. Gradually the red sky faded to familiar blue as a crisp, late-Autumn day began. The glare of the morning sun reflected off the Insomniac's newly darkened countenance. His stare was unwavering as he watched the city wake up far below.

"What now then?"

"What do you care?"

"Did you think I only came here because of you? I have a history with your friend Darkness too, you know..."

The Dark Harlequin turned sharply, his grey eyes boring into Bleeder's broken mirrors, fearless of their implacable depths.

"Does that bother you?" The Bleeder asked, his tone edging towards mockery again.

"No. Why would it?" The Titanium Insomniac turned away again, but his lie was already betrayed.

"Because it's another reason to think that he might be your equal - or more - after all. It's another way in which you fear he will surpass you. You've known for years that your story is your own to write, no one else's...now you're beginning to have your doubts..."

The Insomniac frowned at his companion's choice of words, but dismissed the lingering phantasm of confusion from his mind as coincidence and prepared a retort. His mouth was dry though.

"You've permanently marked yourself with a symbol of his devising; that represents his words to you. You've lost control of your own play, Insomniac. You're dancing to his tune now and you know it."

"No...I..." the Sleepless One paused as he looked out from the balcony, catching sight of a figure walking down the street below.

"And there's our puppet-master now. A scrawny man in a battered jacket carrying a sword he barely knows how to use..."

"Where's he going?" the black-faced man wondered aloud, transfixed by the purposeful stride of his enemy.

"Didn't you know? He has his own life to lead. As you guessed when you first met him, you're nothing more than a distraction for him. He's beaten more powerful foes than you without breaking a sweat - did you really think that you could provide a challenge to one such as him?"

The Insomniac didn't reply.

"O cloud of darkest guilt
That onwards sweeps with dread ineffable,
Resistless, borne along by evil blast,
Woe, woe, and woe again!
How through my soul there darts the sting of pain,
The memory of my crimes..."

"You know I'm not much for the classics, Bleeder," Titanium Insomniac said, his voice hanging bitterly in the cold air, "Plus that's a translation..."

"You don't speak Greek."

"I suppose not."

"Doubtless you can sympathise with Oedipus's victimisation by fate though. He was an honourable man, living his life as best he could and then suddenly he becomes the unwitting orchestrater of his own damnation. Filled with hubris, he promises to banish Laius's killer, never imagining it could be him...for that would make him the husband of his own mother, and his children into abominations."

"I fail to see the significance..."

The Bleeder smiled a predatory grin, "You know, deep down, that you could simply have left Darkness alone. That he never had any need to come looking for you - that he would have been content to wait for you in the ring. Instead you sought him out, taunted him as you have so many others, but your own weapons have been turned against you. Because of Darkness, Jeremiah's lie was exposed and you were damned by your own unwitting actions - just like Oedipus. Your pride drove you to tempt fate and push Darkness, and what has it bought you? Only despair; madness renewed. You've welcomed yourself to bedlam this time, Insomniac."

"I am..."

"Fortune's fool?" Bleeder finished for him. "I couldn't have said it better myself."

For a time, the only audible sound is the soft slurping of caffeinated beverage as The Insomniac ponders the last fleeting moments of his adversary's disappearance around the corner of the hotel. He watches up until the final corner of the warrior's jacket flits behind the building.

It is a long moment before he drops his thoughtful gaze from the intersection. The light changes, cars race to make it through the yellow, busy consumers and entrepreneurs hurry through the clearly marked white lines reserved just for them before traffic continues its carefully choreographed dance.

All of it...from the rushing vehicles to their espresso-filled handlers to the briefcases and suits and housewives out for their morning spree with laughing children in tow begging for some candy in the big display window...he hears them all. They pace and fret and zigzag and crave and consume all under his nose.

And for the briefest of moments, he can feel them all, too.

He flinches at the realization, stepping back from the railing. For years he'd been disgusted by their preoccupation with the mundane and the frivolous. As he'd watched this morning, something else had replaced the disgust for less than a second, something that had washed through him, as hot as the coffee he was drinking.

He doesn't dare name it, because to name it is to lose it.

Where had Darkness been headed? And of what concern was that to the Sleepless One?

First things first.

TI lingers on the balcony for a few more moments, absorbing the energy of the populace below.

They're busy.

They're stagnant.

They're hurrying.

They're going nowhere.

Just like him.

The Insomniac breathes in the revelation, filling his lungs with the sweet toxicity of truth. He smiles a smile of understanding. In all its malevolent efficiency, fortune had indeed made him its fool.

And it was about time.

TI gently runs his fingers over his new tattoo, still raised and a little tender to the touch. It is as if he's just now discovered it. His choice of a chess piece—indeed, this chess piece—had already inspired its first theory of origin. The Insomniac shakes his head at The Bleeder's words...

"You've permanently marked yourself with a symbol of his devising; that represents his words to you. You've lost control of your own play, Insomniac. You're dancing to his tune now and you know it."

He silently scoffs the demon's explanation. True, the Bleeder has a netherworldly advantage...but that doesn't include omniscience.

I'm the one who made the crack about pawns. I'm the one who's been dismissive of their value since this began. It is of my devising. And yet, it is no one's devising.

After all...I never said I was his pawn.

TI abruptly turns about face and ambles back into the room. He pulls on a black sleeveless t-shirt, the new tattoo still clearly visible. He throws on his trenchcoat and takes a moment to check his freshly applied paint in the mirror.

"Ah, off to attempt a new strategy against our dear Gepetto. Your continued attempts to prove yourself superior will only fail yet again. Perhaps it would do you better to contemplate the fallback of your series of tired games before pursuing another round."

The Insomniac stops and looks back at the demon, his eyes communicating boredom. "You know, for a demon you can be pretty fucking clueless."

The demon's bloody smile vanishes.

The Insomniac begins his departure, but the demon will have none of it.

"Surely you aren't able to dismiss the reality of the situation, Insomniac. Trying to show dominance against Darkness will only lead to your slipping further down the spiral into failure. I thought that that was made clear to you last night."

TI scowls. "It was."

"Why persist?"

"I'm not."

"Why pursue further antagonistic measures?"

TI sighs, irritated. "You've changed your tone quite a bit since we began our conversation. At least make up your mind before floating along beside me."

The demon's smug tone drops completely.

"I'll return to you at an opportune moment."

"Take your time."

The door latches behind The Sleepless One, and the bloody grin returns to the one who remains. He reflects on his own ruminations from the previous evening.

"If temporality is all that is real, and nothing else...then that's still something."
____________________

The chilled morning air is much the same as the chilled night air, Darkness muses. With the sun comes a modest rise in temperature, but it still necessitates a jacket.

Freya had pointed out something so obvious, so simplistic. The New Hellfire Club wasn't much of a club with its membership's current philosophy of communication. Acolyte had been sent on his own mission, but it was becoming clearer to Darkness that maybe if he and Dante supported the big man in his endeavor a little more, it wouldn't seem so much like he was little more than a lackey.

That wasn't the only reason for this trek, however. Politely asked...no, that wasn't right...strongly encouraged by the young woman to meet up with them, he'd obliged, though not without an equalizer. The Insomniac was still out there, though this particular equalizer was for other much more unsavory characters.

Not that TI wasn't unsavory. He was just a different brand of disagreeable than the others.

The flick of a lighter sounds behind him. He knows immediately.

Without turning around, the warrior asks, "How did you catch up with me?"

"I know a shortcut."

Something is different in the other man's voice. It is absent the playful edge that had seasoned his diatribes the previous evening. It is as if his words may freeze in the cool air and shatter on the ground.

Darkness finally turns to find The Sleepless One, a fresh cloud of smoke lingering above the other man's head.

"Miss me?"

"Your associate is in intensive care."

"And I'm sure he'll be there for quite a while."

"He's lucky to be alive."

TI smirks. "Aren't we all?"

Darkness grows impatient. He has an appointment to keep. "What do you want?"

"I've come to make my concession speech."

The warrior furrows his brow. "What do you mean?"

"How does anyone keep pace with a destiny such as yours, Darkness? You know yours to be genuine. Mine was paper-thin, fabricated by the cunning of others. It tore and evaporated easily. You...you're a man on a mission at all times. You have something to give and the ability to take. I've been taken, as yet not by you, but by the world around me. I'm in good company. But you're alone in your quest. I recognize the signs. A loner, basically bored by the same people he's been charged to save, moving from one adventure to another, not pausing for too long to marvel at what he's accomplished. Do you ever stop and think, ‘Holy shit, I saved a life today'? I wonder if you do. Or, I wonder if you've come to realize what Jeremiah's little escapade finally caused me to realize."

Darkness eyes The Insomniac warily. "What's that?"

"That people will always be in need of saving, that others will always be in need of sacrificing. That cannon fodder is avoidable yet necessary, and that indeed we're all cannon fodder. Even me."

"I fail to see how your so-called revelation applies to me."

"Yours is an endless task. I think it has numbed you. That's probably a good thing, considering what's lurking just under your skin. Can we be saved? Of course. Are we all worth saving? In some sense, if you consider it in terms of the act of saving. But then it's time to save someone else."

"I don't save, as such...I protect."

"Semantics. Regardless, it is an impossibly high calling. Powerful. Meaningful. And you've lived into it well, just as you've lived into our mutual profession."

"What sort of concession is this?"

Another billow of smoke. "It is the kind that realizes that I've been taken at my own game. Sure, you weren't the one who pulled the trigger, but the fact remains. It is the kind that realizes that pursuing dominance in our particular case is a sort of ill-conceived notion reserved for superheroes and nameless, faceless thugs. Ours was supposed to be a clash of destinies, to prove something about supremacy, but how can supremacy be achieved by someone already supreme? Likewise, how can supremacy be aspired to by one so...ordinary?"

TI takes one last puff before grinding out the butt under his heel. "This is a game-"

"This is a game that you cannot win."

"-that I cannot win."

Darkness waits for the larger man's pontification to continue, but no further words come. The warrior shuffles his weight from one foot to the other, unsure of how to respond.

"So...are you...conceding the match?"

"No. No...I'll be at the match. If I come as one with thoughts of eternal reputation, I lose. It is too much. It is not me. If I come as who I am—a pawn in a world of pawns—I at least come with integrity."

"Are you...are you afraid...of me?"

The Insomniac's smirk returns. "Of you? No. The universe has taken you as a playing piece as well. You serve your purpose, I serve mine. And when played skillfully...pawns take kings.

"Enjoy your morning."

The Insomniac turns on his heels. More slowly, Darkness turns and continues his trek toward the Acropolis.

On the way, Darkness thinks about the words used in this latest exchange. Bored. Ordinary. Again, cannon fodder. Supremacy. Was this another ploy, the latest of The Sleepless One's mindgames? What might this latest game bring if that was the case?

On the way back, The Insomniac thinks about one thing and one thing only: it had been an awfully long time since he'd had a nice steak dinner.

Another homeless man reaches out, hoping for some spare change. For a brief moment, the shawl slips away from his face, reflecting the sun off twin broken mirrors.

"What was that?"

"That was the truth."

"How do you expect to defeat him?"

"I don't expect it."

"What will you gain by this?"

The Insomniac stops and comes nose to nose with his tormentor. The demon is incredulous at the nerve of this lesser being.

"I won't gain anything. I haven't ever gained anything. There is nothing to be gained. I am unable to gain, regain, ungain, and gain for what? For more gaining? To say that I have gained? To be one of the gainers? If I gain, I have something to lose. I tried gaining, and gaining begat false gain. No more gaining games, because gaining games are for gamblers unable to gain truly. I'll leave the gaining to him. He's better at it. I am more content to remain gainless."

The Bleeder sneers. "Cute. But without much of an answer."

The Insomniac sneers back. "That's the universe for you."

"Hey, wait a minute..."

Darkness turned to Freya with a frown on his face. "What?"

The young girl had a stunned expression on her face and, after a moment, she approached him and jabbed one small finger at his chest. "That didn't take much persuading - why do you always give up so easily?"

"I...what do you mean?" her words filled Darkness with confusion - he had never given up on anything in his life: it was simply not in him to quit.

"You said you wanted to find your daughter, but as soon as I gave you a reason not to bother you backed down. That doesn't strike you as kind of...odd...?"

Darkness shook his head. "It's not that simple. I believe some allies of mine may be nearby," his hand once again strayed to the pocket where he kept his cell phone, "And I have chosen my battlefield. They are charged with finding my daughter."

Freya's brow creased. "That makes no sense. I know what your tattoo means - and I just saw you face down a werewolf without flinching. If your daughter is missing or whatever, don't you think that you're better qualified than anyone to be the one to find her?"

Darkness turned away, casting his eyes over the vista of Athens spread below them. There was a chill in the air, but otherwise it was beautiful; a flawlessly clear day, like crystal on the verge of shattering at any second.

"It's complicated," Darkness began, not looking at the girl or at Acolyte who stood off to one side, still taking in the events of the previous twenty minutes, "My life is an endless struggle to suppress my instincts; my anger. I can never simply do what I desire, because in order to preserve myself...maybe to preserve all of us...I have to have iron discipline. I must exercise constant self-control, lest I give way to the beast that lurks within me. If I waver from my course for even an instant, I could literally bring down Hell on those that I care about." He looked at her with his steel-grey eyes, "So I hope you can understand why it's not as simple as running off to fulfil my desires."

A long silence hung over the ruins after he finished speaking. Freya looked hard at Darkness, wondering what else he would come out with.

"What?" she finally asked, the volume and strength of her voice causing Acolyte to take a step backwards and Darkness's eyebrows to raise in surprise.

"You wouldn't understand..." Darkness began to explain, but Freya cut him off before he could continue.

"What?"

"I..."

Freya stormed up to him and, without flinching, pushed the larger man up against a crumbling wall with one forearm, pinning him there. Her eyes were blazing with fury.

"Don't you dare talk to me about self-control, Buffy," she said between gritted teeth that, Darkness now saw, were beginning to elongate before his eyes. As the sunlight caught her cheek, the former Slayer caught the impression of dark hair bristling in primal anger. "Don't you ever fucking dare presume to lecture me on discipline. You're not the only one struggling with anger...with ‘the beast within', alright? You want to know about self-control? Try having to hold your breath every time you walk past a fire hydrant so you don't have to smell an update on the local canine politics - and let me tell you, when it comes to fighting, humans ain't got nothin' on dogs, hotshot."

Darkness tried to reply, but Freya pushed her forearm harder against his throat and carried on talking.

"Can you even imagine what it's like growing from a girl into a woman, knowing that you can rip the throat out of every little dickhead boy who tries to hit on you? How about the fact that, when all you want to do is be normal, everyone just gets a ‘weird feeling' about you? Getting turned down for job interviews, never being able to make any friends that aren't outsiders like yourself - that's when you need fucking self-control, okay? Every day I wake up with the knowledge that I can kill anyone that pisses me off and never even be a suspect, and also that there's a whole bunch of people out there who'd think I was an abomination if they knew about me. You know why I want you to go easy on Fenris? Not because he's my brother - believe me, growing up in my house, that'd be enough reason for me to want you to chop him into werewolf steaks - but because I can see why he's like he is. Don't you know how tempting it is for me to just give in and go renegade? Go out and kill indiscriminately for all the shit you humans have put me through?"

Darkness didn't try to speak this time.

"And then I come here. To this wrestling federation, because I think that maybe some of the people here are just as weird as me and, hell, maybe I can work out some of my bestial aggression on all the Highones and Titanium Insomniacs who think I'm just some little girl they can try to grope in the ring or intimidate into running away. I come here...and who do I find getting all the cheers? Some gothy little Shadow Slayer - someone I've grown up hating and fearing my whole life. My father used to dream of slaughtering men like you, did you know that? My clan longed for the day they could rise up and destroy all of you poxy little do-gooders. So maybe, just fucking maybe I already know a bit about self-control, okay?"

Throughout the last few days, the Titanium Insomniac had pursued and taunted him, playing with his mind and posing him dozens of questions about himself and his way of life. But the Sleepless One's barbs, Darkness knew, were carefully considered and crafted to hurt and destroy - they were as much weapons as his own guns and sword. Because of that, he had shrugged them off like so many other hurts in his life. What were the words of a man like the Insomniac to Darkness?

Freya's words, however, were motivated by pure vitriol. The anger of the pretty young girl who concealed a Hell-born savagery cut to his very heart, unlocking for him all of the Insomniac's taunts and bringing everything he was crashing down.

"What? You think that you're in control of this, Darkness?! Are you enacting your benevolent will once again? What do you REALLY want, Darkness? What's calling to you inside?!"

The Hunter.

"Pawns are fooled into thinking that they have a destiny, even theirs is to sacrifice for the greater good. Kings...kings are the ones who call for that sacrifice. Their destiny is greater. Their destiny is one that brings coronation...that celebrates the achievement of the living and an everlasting name."

The Prince.

"Yours is an endless task. I think it has numbed you. That's probably a good thing, considering what's lurking just under your skin. Can we be saved? Of course. Are we all worth saving? In some sense, if you consider it in terms of the act of saving. But then it's time to save someone else."

The Darkness.

The Insomniac had been right. Darkness was scared - no, terrified - of who he was; of the power he could unleash. But what was more, he was the worst kind of hypocrite. He who had been so disparaging about the weakness of others, who had espoused his life of aesthetic discipline had actually only ever been running from his fear.

He remembered someone once saying that bravery wasn't being immune to fear - it was conquering it. Darkness had never known fear from another, simply because his own fear of the fire within him and the so-called discipline that had allowed him to blindly ignore it his whole life had eclipsed anything else.

And he had never conquered it. Not once.

He had either run from it, ignored it and suppressed his own desires in the name of self-control, or he had given into it and been undone every time. Where was the middle-ground? A true warrior would harness his rage and make it a weapon for his own ends, not cower from it as he realised he had his whole life.

As Freya stepped back, Darkness began to slide down the wall, slumping down against it. He bowed his head.

He had been arrogant. Aloof, even. He had tried to stand apart from the humanity he worked so hard to protect.

Unlike Freya, who concealed and reviled, but did not fear what she was, Darkness had removed himself from human experience - becoming an extraordinary man in an ordinary situation. He had set himself up as greater than human, when really he was just as flawed and weak as everyone else.

"Hey, you okay?"

Acolyte stooped down near to his stable-mate, unsure of how to react to this apparent despair. So far, Acolyte's experience of Darkness had been limited to seeing his forceful stride, his unwavering strength and total devotion to his warrior ideal. This shattered individual wasn't someone he recognised.

"I...I..."

He couldn't find the words.

Freya now stepped forward. She looked sorry that she'd spoken so harshly, but it was clear that she didn't regret telling him the truth. Darkness looked at her, tears glistening in his grey eyes.

"I'm human," he said hoarsely, "That's what the Insomniac was showing me - that I'm weak too; that I can't always stand apart and above and that it's my fear of myself that makes me a man just like any other."

Freya nodded. "You can't always be a selfless hero, Darkness - no one can."

"Since Endgame," he continued, "I thought I was on an inhuman rampage; destroying those who came in my way using the demon within. I struggled between light and dark, wondering where the die would eventually fall and which side of me would emerge victorious. It made me inhuman, I thought, but now...now I realise that it made me more human than I've ever been. The demon isn't some monster from somewhere else - it's me."

Darkness began to stand, steadying himself on the wall as he did so. "So now the true test comes," he whispered.

"What's that?" Acolyte asked.

"Whether I can be human. Whether I can be a hero when I know that I'm as weak as anyone else."

"That's what being a hero is, hotshot," Freya told him, "Overcoming fear: not ignoring it."

"I know," Darkness nodded, "I always knew. I just didn't accept it before now."

His pocket suddenly began to buzz. Frowning, he reached down and flipped open his cell phone. The screen bored two letters: "JX". He pressed the green button like John Doe had told him over a year ago.

"Hello?"

"Darkness? It's Jay...have...have you heard...?"

The former Slayer frowned. What news could Dante's closest friend have for him? "No, no I haven't. What is it?"

"It's Jas'. He's...he's..."

Darkness knew what Jay Ecks was about to say. And he also knew that the man was wrong.

"Jay, don't worry - whatever you've been told is wrong. Jason is fine he's just...far away...but I'll find him, okay?"

"I've seen his body, Darkness, he's..."

"No. Ignore what you saw. He lives. I'll bring him back in plenty of time to beat Hammer, alright?"

Darkness reassured the man some more before hanging up. Both Freya and Acolyte looked at him with wide eyes and an unspoken question hanging in the air.

"There are apparently reports that Dante is dead," Darkness told them, holding up his hand to calm them, "But they are not correct, and I'll inform Commissioner Stern to that effect."

"How...how can you know?" Acolyte asked.

"We shared something when I was in a coma, Cordazer," Darkness told him. He pointed to his head, "It's not always there - like his link with Selenia - but if I concentrate, I know he lives."

"So why do they...?" Freya began to ask.

"I don't know. He is very faint; very distant. I have an idea of where he might be, and I intend to bring him back."

"Or die trying, right?" Freya asked, a tad sardonically.

"Not this time," he smiled, "I intend to live at least long enough to kick the Titanium Insomniac's ass."

"Why's that?" Acolyte asked with a laugh.

Darkness turned around, so he was framed by the Athens sun that now hung high in the azure-blue sky. "Because I fucking want to, that's why..." he grinned.

It's difficult to describe the enjoyment of a fine steak.

What sort of words would really capture the feeling of molars sinking down into each piece and the moist chewy sound that resounds through your jaw and in your ears? How to describe the running of juices over your tongue and even occasionally down your chin? What sort of words would really illustrate how it sits in the stomach, making you sleepy and satisfied that you have experienced something so completely fulfilling?

The Insomniac, reputed for his wordplay, has no words. He simply takes in the feeling, the smell and taste with each morsel. He is not sleepy, but he is certainly satisfied.

Time has passed since the evening that wouldn't end. TI occasionally thinks back to that night's events, trying to recreate the timeline that resulted in who he is this new night.

The next bite entices him away from dwelling on it for too long. With each mouthful, he is fully in tune with his senses. They seem to clamor for the spotlight and almost overwhelm him with such a swirling mixture of ecstatic firing neuroses. He wants them all. He feels them all. He feels them. He feels.

TI couldn't explain why this particular steak at this particular time tastes as good as it does.

He couldn't tell you why the sensory barrage seems more important to him tonight than the thousand steaks he's eaten before this one.

No one around him could, either. The Insomniac's attention rests completely on his plate. His intent does not stretch beyond the borders of his silverware to the left and right, his wine ahead of him, and his coat draped over his chair behind him. This is a strong aura, too. Staff will talk about it during their smoke break in the back alley, trading comments about "the guy at Table 12 who never looks up."

It's actually a good thing that he doesn't look up. In fact, it's a good thing that he doesn't look up until he has no choice when he feels another's presence just outside his little bubble.

Usually, The Insomniac is the one who draws the stares from others, but this time all eyes fall on the other's still-bruised face. He leans on a cane, almost as if he's about to impale himself on it. He now looks down at the painted man and braces himself for the eventual acknowledgement.

It comes without TI ever looking up.

"The size of your balls is astounding."

Jeremiah keeps a steely exterior. "I've come here for closure."

"My beating the shit out of you wasn't closure enough?"

Jeremiah's lips tighten. His own confidence has vanished, gone the moment his amulet was yanked from his neck. Without his equalizer, without his leverage, he himself has yet to come to grips with his...commonness.

"May I sit down?"

TI looks up for the first time. The ugliest of smirks has appeared on his face at this request. He gives his former advisor a once-over glance, taking in a now slightly twisted form, turned inward out of fear and reservation, before locking back on his eyes.

"You may."

Jeremiah sits tentatively in the chair opposite The Insomniac, who has returned to his steak. He opens his mouth several times, but thinks better of whatever he was about to say.

"Our mutual enemy recently told me that you're lucky to be alive."

Jeremiah looks down at the table, knowing how true this is.

"How do you feel now that you're sitting four feet away from the man who almost killed you?"

Jeremiah shifts in his chair. TI notices.

"Uncomfortable? I would be as well. And yet you survived, albeit still a little worse for wear. And now with a new chapter of your life to be written, there are any number of clichés that you could begin. You could become the Comeback Kid, grateful for his second chance and ready to rise back to the heights of success. You could become the Internalized Alcoholic, waking every morning to your Jack Daniels breakfast and wondering about the exact moment when it all went wrong. You could be the Angry Antisocialite, hell-bent on revenge and being your own man from now until the day you die, living out every punk song ever written. You could be the Timid Accommodator, recognizing that it's far easier to go along with the majority than to suffer the way you have again."

Jeremiah keeps his attention on the tablecloth, his eyes preoccupied with the silverware arrangement even as he has heard every word that the Sleepless One has spoken.

TI sneers once again. "I've lived all these parts, Jeremiah. Let me say that I'm bored with them all. Comeback Kid? Nothing to come back to. Internalized Alcoholic? It all didn't go wrong, it just goes. Angry Antisocialite? No one is his own man. Timid Accommodator? The majority will end up the same place as everyone else. You can ask yourself who you will be now, but you'll really just be choosing which pigeonhole you'd like to suffocate in."

Jeremiah ventures to look up, hating the look on TI's face, hating that he lost, hating that everything has spun so far out of his control.

"And which pigeonhole have you chosen, Insomniac?"

TI's smirk diappears, as if he's just been insulted. "Your question is so simple and predictable."

"I helped raise you out of them all. You were a ship without a rudder and I gave you purpose."

"A fake purpose. A contrived purpose. And it wouldn't have been any more genuine if I'd come up with it myself. I am surrounded right now by people who have come up with such purposes, men and women spanning the ladder of society believing that if they work harder they'll make it, they buy the right stuff they'll look the part, they raise their children correctly their legacy will live on. But what is the part? What is their legacy? Biology and an impassioned eulogy."

"Darkness' purpose seems pretty real."

"And his is the only one. For someone like him there's so much pressure to live into who he is. But why? Because someone else still contrived it for him. As lofty a destiny as he has, it was given to him. Someone else is still forcing him to be who he is. He is as much a pawn as I am. The reason he never let his anger get the best of him during our little games is because his purpose won't allow it."

"So, what is your purpose?"

The Sleepless One looks up at Jeremiah. For the first time, his countenance is absent the anger and arrogance that Jeremiah is used to seeing at variant points throughout their time together. It is as if Pavlov has just rung his bell, and this is the response that this particular subject has been trained to give.

"None."

Jeremiah raises an eyebrow. "None?"

"None."

TI turns his attention back to the last few bites of his steak. Jeremiah starts to press TI, but again thinks better of an attempt. For a few moments, there is no other sound but the clinking of TI's steak knife against his plate.

Sensing his dinner companion's gaze, The Insomniac looks back up. For the first time, Jeremiah looks deep into the black pit of TI's eyes. It is a disturbing realization for him.

He sees nothing. Nothing at all.

Jeremiah finally blinks and grips the end of his cane. TI watches as he slowly stands through winces of pain.

"Good luck in this match, Insomniac."

"There is no luck. There is only the moment."

Jeremiah shakes his head. "It really sounds like you've given up."

"Then get your hearing checked."

Dissatisfied, Jeremiah refrains from any further observation. It is time for him to go. Stumbling slightly, he turns and begins his departure. He'd meant to say so much, had meant to bid goodbye with dignity and respect for the one he'd tormented for so long and now had become his tormentor.

It hadn't worked out that way. For months after this encounter, Jeremiah will live out a little of the Internalized Alcoholic, wondering where it went wrong for both of them. Eventually, he'll settle on the moment when he told TI that all they'd done together was based on deception.

At that moment, TI had lost his purpose. And he hadn't replaced it with anything.

Nothing.

Nothing at all.
_________________________

Hours later, The Insomniac has once again stripped himself of his painted exterior. He studies his plain features in the mirror, which he has been prone to do more often. His most recent self-inflicted wound will leave a scar, this he accepts. The man staring back at him, the closest resemblance to Jonathan Hoffman that there will ever be, has nothing to offer. The reflection tells a story of memory that can never be recovered.

TI once thought that he'd killed this man...this deluded, self-giving person who never imagined that everything he loved could be taken away so suddenly. TI used to hate this man, used to feel sorry for him. Now he is content to let him exist. Perhaps Jonathan won't die first after all. One never knows.

The Sleepless One turns his attention to the golden prize lying atop his suitcase. He reflects for a moment on its new more violent context. He must bleed to lose it, and he can bleed at any time. He chuckles at his own thought.

He can bleed at any time.

A finite title for finite people who must recognize their finality in order to claim it. How hardcore, they'd all exclaimed. No, TI muses. Finally, they get it.

"Is it lonely at the top?"

The Bleeder's familiar black eyes gaze playfully at the champion from the corner of the bed.

TI turns toward him. "Only if I believe that I am at the top. And at the top of what?"

Apparently, the demon has begun to understand since they last spoke. "Yours is a most compelling tale, Insomniac. For so long, you were angry with the place in which you felt forced. For so long, you were an evangelist of the good news that nothing is final except what is truly final. For so long, you showed others the absurdity of their lives through your own brand of satire. But now...satire isn't enough, is it?"

"Why evangelize? They'll find out soon enough."

The Bleeder smiles his familiar bloody smile. "Indeed. And yet something has changed. You used to revel in the futility of it all."

"'Our revels here are ended.'"

"So has the rage, the sadness, the intentionality. Darkness has poised himself to make a violent example of you in a few days. He'll do it out of pleasure. He's going to finally indulge himself a little. And you are now refusing to respond in kind."

"The only thing that I have to prove against Darkness is that there's nothing to prove."

"That sounds profound. But what is it really?"

"I was basically asked that same question earlier. Everyone assumes that I've given up against Darkness, that I've lost something since Jeremiah's deserved dismissal. So many have tried so hard against Darkness...they've tried so hard to live up to his level and out-destine him. They've failed because of the pressure. So many people in the world fail their own expectations. The truth is that all we have are expectations. Let Darkness believe that history will write the future. Let him overlook the present moment. And let him overlook that a man without a destiny is just as dangerous as one with so great a destiny as his."

The Bleeder is eating this up. His grin widens. "You've been purified."

TI nods.

"Good."

With that, the demon departs, leaving TI with his belt and his thoughts once again. He looks back at Jonathan, who is also grinning ear to ear.

It isn't lonely at the top. He's in a world full of his closest friends.

You can't lose what you don't have.

And he has Nothing.

Nothing at all.