The flashes of the strobe light caught the dancers' motions in a thousand frozen instants, flickers of stillness like photographs, there and gone in less than a heartbeat. At the bar sat those more interested in conversation and conquest than in losing themselves in the throb and pulse of the music -- and those who preferred to watch from afar.

One such watcher absently traced patterns in the condensation coating his untouched glass of beer and stared, all but unblinking, at the dance floor. The room, even the other dancers faded from his sight like ghosts -- unreal and unimportant -- as he strove to store away in his mind every snapshot image of his lover dancing. Each flare of shadow-dark hair around the pale, whirling form, each precious moment of eye contact from across the room, each and every movement of those deadly-graceful limbs was carefully enshrined in remembrance as if there would never be another because, in all likelihood, there wouldn't be.

Putting the warming, untasted beer down on the bar, the blond watcher rose from his stool with a contained, careful grace, firmly suppressing the feeling of urgency that had overtaken him the instant he let himself admit that this was the last dance. Crossing the dance floor, Gabriel slid his arms around his lover's waist and turned Lucifer to face him. Dropping a gentle kiss down on those black-painted lips, the blue-eyed angel swallowed the dark-haired demon's surprised exclamation.

Gabriel let his partner's movements guide him, lead him into the intricate depths of modern dancing. It was controlled chaos, this dancing -- no pattern, no steps to follow, only the sketchy path of the rhythm pounding through one's bones, the steady throb of the music. Hips pressed against Lucifer's with all the heady roughness of fucking, fingertips tracing down velvet-covered skin with the sweet tenderness of making love, Gabriel let it all go, let himself get lost in heartbeat of the music.

Dawn was only a few hours away when they finally left the dance club, staggering and leaning against each other as if drunk. Neither of them spoke a word as they exchanged one last kiss, nor as they turned to leave in opposite directions, to return to opposite sides of the impending war.

*****

"Max, Heero, I'd like to see you for a moment."

Turning his attention from the view of the empty battlefield, Max answered Lucifer's summons and ducked into the command post. Heero joined him, after a moment, and they stood in uncomfortable silence. Max still wasn't sure what to make of Heero -- he seemed kinda interesting, if uptight, but he'd hurt Duo badly and Max felt obligated to resent him for it.

Lucifer was a pool of calm in the midst of chaos, sitting elegantly in his chair, reading a report while his lieutenants and aides bustled around him frantically. Preparing for war involved a lot more paperwork than Max had imagined. In fact, it was all kind of boring. "Are we going to fight soon?"

With a soft little sigh, Lucifer put down the report and gave Max a Look that made him want to cringe. "No need to be so eager, Maxwell. We'll fight soon enough. Now, you two have only recently come into your wings, and neither of you has quite mastered aerial maoeuvering yet, so I'm going to insist that you pull in your wings and fight with the ground troops."

Max bristled at the humiliating order, opening his mouth to protest, but Heero just said "Yes, Sir" quietly and pulled his wings in, so Max had to shut his trap and follow suit or he'd look bad in comparison. <<I'm really starting to dislike him.>>

::He does take some getting used to.:: Duo's thoughts were quiet, barely brushing Max's mind, but the young demon could feel his excitement, flowing dark and strong beneath the surface.

<<Do you miss it? Fighting, I mean.>> Max was a little surprised to find that he was getting more and more genuinely curious about his Other's life.

::Sometimes I do, yeah. Don't like it that we have to fight, 'specially not with Wu and Quatre on the other side, but since we have to... yeah, I'm gonna enjoy being out there again, even if it's only as a passenger.::

There was a sharp snap right in front of his face and Max jumped, snarling at whoever had startled him. Of course, it turned out to be Heero. "You'd better not zone out like that in the middle of the fight."

"I was just talking to Duo!"

"Hn. Well, talk to him outside. We're in the way here." Heero was already turning and marching out of the command pavilion before he even finished speaking, and Max found himself having to break into an undignified trot to keep up with Heero's longer strides. Yeah, he was liking Heero less with every passing minute.

"What's your problem, anyway! Got a 2x4 rammed up your ass?" Max snapped at Heero, his short fuse running out.

Heero stopped dead, turning to look back at Max with a closed, unreadable expression on his face. "My problem, if you must know, is that I never wanted to see another war. My problem is that everything I've worked to build for myself is pretty much screwed now, because some winged jackass chose my friends to mess with. My problem is that, if I do have to go into battle, I'd rather do it with my lover and my best friend by my side, but instead I'm stuck on the ground with my best friend's evil twin, while my lover fights up in the air, where I can't reach him, can't help him, can't do a damned thing if he gets hurt. Is that enough problems for you, Maxwell?"

Flustered, embarrassed and not sure what to do about it, Max shrugged stiffly and stalked off to stare down at the battlefield again. Limbo was a really disturbing place, as far as he was concerned. When they'd first come here it was all flat and completely colourless -- not gray, or white, it was a total absence of colour that made his eyes hurt. Now, though, Lucifer's command post was perched on a tall cliff, looking down on a wide, grassy valley that stretched for miles, the identical cliff that housed Michael's command only barely visible off in the distance.

Max gasped a little and leaned forward, squinting at the distant figures moving down into the valley. He felt a presence at his shoulder and glanced back to see his father standing there, his expression every bit as unreadable as Heero's had been. "He's starting to move in his ground troops. Go find Belial, you and Heero will be with his troop." Lucifer was silent for a moment, staring down into the valley, then he squeezed Max's shoulder and said softly, "Be careful, Max. Michael is sure to have people out there looking for you, and I don't want to lose you."

Awkwardly, Max hugged his father, then took one last, long look down at the battlefield before running to catch up to Heero.

*****

Wufei had thought he knew everything about war, but this was beyond anything he'd even imagined -- a duel on an impossibly massive scale, each soldier really only an extension of Michael or Lucifer. A war fought according to rules and traditions, it was an oddly surreal thing to see; offensive magic had been banned for the length of the battle, so the field below was lit with thousands of flaming swords. It was like something out of an earlier age, only twisted by some madman's dark hand; two armies crashed against each other like waves of flesh and metal and fire, but even from above Wufei could see that fewer than half were even remotely human-like in appearance, and in the sky, an even stranger battle was being played out.

He'd tried to keep his small squad in order, but the aerial battle had quickly dissolved into chaos, a strange counterpoint to the seemingly choreographed dance below. Everywhere Wufei looked, angels and demons were locked in single combat or, even worse, a flock of one would surround a single member of the other and tear them apart. He could hardly see the ground through the haze of bloody, plucked feathers and writhing, tangled bodies, much less find one lone demon!

Swooping low, just barely out of reach of the swords of the demons on the ground, Wufei skimmed over Lucifer's army, searching, seeking, barely aware of his second-in-command following close behind. He had to find the Maxwell-thing, or what point to all this?

A flash of green against white drew Wufei's gaze back to the airborne combatants, and he recognised Trowa -- no, Mastema -- holding off two angels by himself. And where Mastema was... Wufei veered towards the dragon-winged demon, searching the crowds below Mastema, and even still he would have missed his quarry had he not spotted Heero first.

Heero was standing over a small, prone form, his blade a blur of blue-white flame as he fought ferociously, protecting his charge like bear would her cub. After a few desperate moments, the figure at Heero's feet started to stir, staggering back upright and summoning its own blade. Wufei was close enough now to see the blood flowing down Maxwell's cheek, and yet he found that he couldn't get close enough to strike without first being caught by the swords and claws of the demons surrounding Maxwell.

Gritting his teeth in frustration, Wufei circled the area, watching for an opening. The way Maxwell and Heero were fighting, they'd open up a clear space around themselves soon enough. It was unsettling, though, to see them fighting, back-to-back, moving with a coordination that spoke of years of practice and familiarity. It looked so much like Duo!

Then, with a wild whoop that Wufei could hear even over the roar of battle, Maxwell leapt at the trio of angels in front of him, its flaming sword lengthening, narrowing, curving at the end, until the black-haired demon was wielding a flaming green scythe. The sight sent a jolt through Wufei, and as Maxwell took down an angel threatening Heero's blind side, Wufei felt as though he had been thrown back in time, watching Wing Zero and Deathscythe again.

He really did look an awful lot like Duo...

Wufei felt lost, as blood rained down on him from above and screams floated up to him from below. Maxwell looked like Duo. Maxwell moved like Duo. Maxwell laughed like Duo, that same dark chuckle that sent chills up the spine. Duo always had styled himself a death-god... really, how big a step was it to demon?

There was almost no warning, an instant's flash of heat against his skin, and Wufei couldn't entirely evade the sudden strike that came from behind. Whirling, wings beating to keep him aloft, Wufei expected to find himself facing a demon that had somehow crept up behind him. Instead, he found himself facing his own second in command. Off-side arm throbbing painfully, Wufei snapped, "What the Hell was that?"

Sneering, the angel attacked again. "Michael knew you'd lose your nerve! Go down there and join the demons in dying!"

Michael had arranged beforehand to have Wufei killed if he hesitated? Michael had known he'd hesitate? Wufei parried desperately, his tumbling thoughts distracting him almost fatally until he pushed them aside and concentrated on the duel. He could think later, if he lived to see "later."

Once Wufei regained his focus, his second-in-command stood no chance at all of defeating him, even if he was down to one working arm -- it wasn't long before the angel fell, screaming, to join the other corpses littering the battlefield.

Hurting and angry, Wufei retreated a little farther, trying to gather his thoughts. Why would Michael assume that he'd lose his nerve? He never lost his nerve! But Michael had been acting very strangely all day, for that matter.

~~~~~~~~~~

"Michael? Have you seen Raphael? The Healers want to set up camp but they don't want to leave without him." Wufei frowned, annoyed at having been asked to run errands for the Healers when he was trying to get his squad in shape for the battle. But... he couldn't find Raphael anywhere, either, and that did worry him a bit.

"Raphael isn't with the Healers? How irresponsible of him. I haven't seen him, I'm afraid." Michael never looked up from washing his hands, apparently fascinated with watching the red-tinged water wind its way down to the drain and out of sight.

"Well, if you see him, tell him the Healers are going on ahead, and he'll need to catch up." Feeling vaguely unsettled, like something important had happened and he'd missed it, Wufei backed out of the room and returned to his squad.

~~~~~~~~~~

The water had been red.

Raphael was missing.

And Michael was washing blood off his hands.

Raphael was missing and...

      the

          water

                was

                    red...

An agonized, wordless shriek tore through the air, and it took Wufei a heartbeat to realise that it hadn't been him who screamed. Wufei started to turn towards the source of the scream, the air feeling thick and heavy around him, and then... everything stopped.

*****

Everything hurt, but most especially, his head hurt. There was the crunch of glass under his hands as Raphael tried to get up and he looked down, bemused. The world tilted and swayed, his vision doubled, and something wet and warm and sticky trickled down the back of his neck, just at that tiny movement. It was a long, painful moment before Raphael's vision cleared enough for him to see that he was lying on the shards of a mirror. Memory fluttered out of his grasp like a crazy butterfly, and Raphael wondered how the mirror had gotten broken.

Then something other than his reflection appeared in the largest of the glass shards, and the Healer-angel's stomach sank, a sob choking him. Not a mirror... the mirror. "Oh, no... what happened? Who did this to you?" Moving his jaw sent another stab of pain through Raphael's head, and his voice came out slurred and indistinct when he corrected himself, "Who did this to us?"

The mirror was slow to respond, but eventually a face that was not his own looked back out at Rapahel from the surface of the glass. The smear of his blood that covered the mirror-shard tinted everything red, distorted the shapes, but Raphael still knew his brother's face when he saw it. "Michael hurt us? Why?"

The surface of the mirror flushed orange under the blood, and Raphael frowned. "I'm sorry, I don't understand you."

Another scene appeared in the mirror then, a distant view of what looked like a battlefield. Then the perspective zoomed in so fast that it made Raphael's stomach curl in on itself in misery. The blood made it hard to see, so Raphael tried to wipe it off; it was only after several tries that it penetrated his fogged mind that not all the blood was on the surface of the mirror. The scene snapped into sickening clarity -- Gabriel, lying on the grass in a motionless heap, a knife sticking out of his back and blood staining his shirt in an ever-widening circle.

Raphael thought that his world couldn't possibly shatter into any smaller pieces, but then the view panned back out again and he saw the figure standing over Gabriel, flaming sword lifted high, ready to be brought down onto that vulnerable back. Michael. Michael... "Michael! Nooo! Why? I don't understand! Why Gabriel, why Michael?"

Nauseatingly, the mirror panned out further yet, showing the battlefield, every angel and demon on it frozen in mid-movement, even those who had been falling from the sky. At first Raphael assumed the mirror had stilled the view of the scene, but then he caught sight of a single figure walking calmly through the ranks of motionless soldiers. The view dipped in for a closer look and the figure stopped, glancing up, right at Raphael, and smiling.

It was Lucifer's son, and yet not. He was taller, leaner, and his wings were as silver as his eyes. Maxwell walked past another frozen group, and Raphael recognised Wufei's former friends... and Maxwell. The Maxwell he had seen only days ago was lying on the ground, seemingly unconscious, while his double walked right past him. It clicked, then. He'd manipulated time. The older, more powerful Maxwell had stopped time. How? And why?

The elder Maxwell looked up again, an amused little smile on his face. "So you can save him, of course." And the picture in the mirror winked out.

"Save him? Save him? I can't even stand up!" The room lurched around Raphael the instant he stopped speaking and the nausea he'd been fighting with since he woke up overwhelmed him.

When Raphael was done retching, he looked up to discover that he was in a completely different section of the vault, and one he'd never even been to before. The largest piece of the broken mirror seemed to have come with him, too.

With a clatter that sounded painfully loud to Raphael's ears, a plain wooden bowl fell off one of the shelves to land just beside the glass shard. "Gee, could you be a little more cryptic? How is this supposed to help?"

It was the mirror than answered, displaying a view of the vault from just behind Raphael. At the sight of the mess of blood and bone that was the back of his own skull, Raphael felt sick again. How was he even alive, much less awake? The mirror very quickly zoomed in on the blood trickling down Raphael's neck, and then flashed to a view of the bowl. "Blood? My blood? ... In the bowl?"

The mirror flashed a merry pink in response, so Raphael sighed and scraped a little of the congealing blood off his skin, smearing it on the bottom of the bowl. Almost immediately the little bowl started to fill with clear, almost sparkling water. "I guess I drink this...?"

At another "yes" from the mirror, Raphael winced and sat up a little, lifting the bowl to his lips.

The first sip took away his pain.

The second sip returned his memory.

The third sip suffused him with strength.

Reverently, Raphael lifted the bowl again and kissed the rim, murmuring, "Thank you. I won't forget," and then he put it back on the shelf.

Raphael stood, scooping up the mirror as he did so. "So. Now how do I get out of here?" Raphael asked the empty air, bemused, floating, energy still flowing through his veins. And so he was not overly surprised when a blank stretch of wall between two sets of shelves turned into a door that opened at his touch.

*****

Idriel had taken to the air when he heard Lucifer scream in despair, his heart pounding fit to burst. Only two things could have caused Lucifer to lose it like that -- Gabriel had been badly wounded, or Maxwell had. So, for all that he was supposed to be staying with the non-combatants, because of his conflicted status as both angel and Maxwell's Guardian, Idriel took off like a bolt, and had almost made it to Max's side when the whole world froze.

What seemed like only an instant later, everything started moving again and Idriel went tumbling to the ground, caught off-balance. Just about everyone else was staggering, disoriented and confused, until Lucifer screamed again. "GABRIEL!"

Almost as one, the thousands upon thousands of combatants, angel and Fallen alike, turned to look in the direction Lucifer was staring, the spot he was fighting against the restraining arms of his lieutenants to get to.

Only Idriel kept moving in the opposite direction, with eyes only for his charge. His father was hurt, maybe even dead, but all he could think of was that the last glimpse he'd gotten of Max had shown him crumpling, falling to the ground. When he reached Max, he discovered that the little demon was unconscious, though apparently not too seriously hurt. He had a nasty scalp wound, but the blood was dried and old, surely not the cause of his faint. But whatever he did, Idriel couldn't wake Max.

"Shh, he's okay. He just can't be awake when I'm here," a resonant, but hauntingly familiar voice whispered into Idriel's ear. Turning his head sharply, the blonde angel almost bumped noses with... Maxwell?

And lying on the ground beside him was... Maxwell.

::What the fuck?::

<<I... don't know, Solo.>>

The other-Maxwell grinned, silver eyes glinting. And that shit-eating grin clinched it for Idriel -- this second Max was really Max. "How...?"

"Oh, you'll figure it out eventually. But hush, the last player is about to make his entrance." Max made a gesture, and the milling crowd of angels and Fallen parted before Idriel, though they didn't seem to be aware of doing so. So Idriel had an unnaturally clear view of his father lying on the grass, to all appearances dead, and Michael poised over him, flaming sword held in both hands, his intent obvious. What was also obvious was that Michael, at least, was still as motionless as a statue. Which meant Gabriel might be so still because he was frozen, too, and not because he was dead.

Pushing through the crowd on the other side of the macabre tableau was a familiar, blue-haired figure. Only his hair was as much red as blue, now, for some reason. Raphael came within a few steps of Michael and Gabriel and stopped, one hand pressed against what looked like thin air. And then he staggered forward, just as Michael resumed motion, his sword coming down like an executioner's axe.

Before he could cleave Gabriel's head from his body, a blur of black and white and gold barreled into Michael, tumbling them both over and away from the angel of Light. The figure managed to pin Michael for half a second, and then the enraged archangel tossed his assailant off with negligent ease.

Michael lunged for his fallen attacker, but Raphael got between them, shouting, "Don't you touch Wufei! Haven't you done enough? Wufei, tend to Gabriel!" The black-haired angel nodded and knelt at Gabriel's side, starting to tear his shirt into bandages.

Now Idriel was really confused -- last time he'd seen Wufei, the Asian youth had been trying to kill them all, at Michael's behest.

At Raphael's words, Michael seemed to hesitate, his expression growing confused and upset. But the moment passed, and his features twisted into a snarl again. "Gabriel is a traitor! And so are you, if you defend him!"

"Then why are my wings still white, Michael? Why are his?" Staring down a maddened Michael, Raphael somehow stood his ground and remained calm, soft spoken.

"He's fucking the Devil!"

Two armies drew in a single, shocked breath at that, save for the very few amongst the crowd who had already known.

"He's in love with Lucifer, and loved in return. To love is no treason." Raphael's cool, calm statement, and the continuing purity of his white wings, started an angry, confused muttering amongst the angels, and blank stupefaction amongst the Fallen.

Growling, all but foaming at the mouth in his madness, Michael backhanded Raphael, knocking the slender Healer to the ground.

That snapped a dozen of the angels nearest the scene out of their shock, and they leapt to pull Michael back, though they were fairly ineffective in restraining him due to the fact that they were very obviously not willing to hurt him. Still, they managed to hold him for long enough for Raphael to get back to his feet.

Wiping blood from his lips with the back of one hand, Raphael pulled a glinting shard of glass out of his pocket, a strangely sad look on his face. "I did warn you, Michael, that the magics you abused would one day turn on you."

When Raphael tilted the glass so that Michael could see its surface, the redheaded archangel started to scream hoarsely, clawing at his eyes and backing away. Falling, thrashing on the ground, blood and spittle flecking his lips, Michael dug his thumbs into his own eyes until they burst in a spray of flesh and fluids.

Idriel had to look away then, gagging helplessly. It was a long time before the screaming stopped.

By the time Idriel gathered the courage to look up again Raphael was kneeling over Gabriel, running his faintly glowing hands over Gabriel's bloody back, the wound vanishing under his touch.

Gabriel started to stir almost immediately, pushing himself up to his knees and looking around at the hosts of Heaven and Hell, all of them staring back at him. And then his gaze landed on Michael's body, and the angel of light turned a sickly green.

Raphael put his hand on Gabriel's shoulder and said softly, "Michael is dead. You are Eldest. What do you want us to do?"

Letting Raphael help him to his feet, Gabriel announced tiredly, "Go home. The battle is over, and we're all going home... those of us who can." Radiance flooded the battlefield and every corpse it touched, angel and Fallen alike, burned to ash in an instant.

As the angels started to file away, solemn and murmuring to each other uncertainly, Max groaned and shifted in Idriel's grasp. He didn't even remember pulling Max into his lap at the first place, but there the little demon was, stretching and yawning like a kitten.