Chapter Text
"Satan only has one son, but my sisters are a legion, son of a bitch."
The world is the hilt of a knife in the wrong hands, the exclamation that escapes from his lips —almost without permission— and the familiar, damp and sickening sound of flesh against the floor. A blink in the apocalypse. It's barely half a second, but for him, it's an eternity that is not measured by clocks, but by how quickly Cordelia bleeds out two floors below.
And then he feels it. The breath of life, of lost power without a host fluttering like a sigh, like a breath. A breeze about to unfold its wings.
A new Supreme about to rise.
The girl. he thinks, wildly. Where is the girl?
Transmutation comes naturally.
Another fraction of a second and he's there. And then there's screaming and desperate, badly pronounced Latin. Michael throws himself across the room, the red-haired witch distilling fire from her eyes before ceasing to exist by a simple movement he makes with his wrist.
He doesn't even bother to look at her body.
The haste has made him sloppy, stripped him of his usual grace. The raw panic in his chest awakes the instincts of the most human part of the body he inhabits, and then there is no magic but the voice within himself that says, orders, yells —stop her, stop her now.
Michael is at her side in a flash, his hands already curved in claws, suspended over her underwater form - ready to attack. And then he notices it. The mantra that the girl was chanting.The water as black as his pupils that have swallowed the blue of his eyes. Tempus infinitum.
The girl is almost completely submerged, the only thing in sight is her hair in that hideous bun. Michael grabs her forearm tightly under the water and drags it to the surface with the same violence, eyes wide with anger.
Mallory gasps for air, but Michael doesn't waste time in wrapping his hands around her throat and squeezing, seeking to hear the pleasant snap of bone.
He's not going to make the same mistake after underestimating Cordelia. No magic. No more security than the one of his own hands. He is going to indulge himself with the sureness that he finally ended every fucking witc—...
"Congratulations," he almost cooes before hissing "You almost did it."
"No. " Mallory seems to be choking with his own spit, but somehow manages to mumble that. "Not yet." With the strength that one could only find in someone who is at the brink of their life, the girl grabs roughly two handfuls of his long hair and sinks them both into the depths of the tub.
Michael feels the bubbles rushing from her mouth against his face, and then the pull of power between them.
He's not sure which one of the two wins before the world turns around them.