"First, I have three questions I'd like to ask you."

The fallen angel stiffened, keeping his back against the wall, holding his head high in silence while Ethan flapped over to the side of his prison cell.

"You can answer them, or you can sit there in silence all valiant-like and pretend you're some martyr for a great cause. But I'm gonna ask them, and then we'll see if you have any questions for me – beyond the obvious."

"Do you often interview your prey before you consume them?" Artorious scoffed.

"Question one," Ethan said, completely ignoring the angel's remark. "Why didn't you ever fight back against your Greycloak masters?"

The question hung in the stagnant air of the dungeon for some time, and Ethan thought that perhaps Arty had simply decided he'd keep his mouth shut after all. Or, it could be that he simply couldn't produce an answer good enough – convincing enough – to satisfy his pride.

It surprised Ethan then when he finally came out with something.

"There is only one Master," he said. "And He cannot be resisted."

Ethan rolled his eye even further back. The fallen angel was still moping around in the wake of his defeat, his honor crushed, barely able to even acknowledge that he'd been defeated by the Archon again. This time – decisively.

"You'll still run defense for him even though he's hung you out to dry?'

Arty didn't falter. "Kaedmon often tests his most faithful servants. This could simply be a test of my reso-"

"Oh, cut the crap," Ethan broke in, flapping right up to Arty's cell bars so that he looked right into the Lightborn's now very-much-ordinary blue eyes. "You can lie to yourself all you want. You've been doing it your whole life, haven't you? But don't lie to me, now."

Artorious scoffed at him again.

"You are expecting me to trust you?" he snarled. "The enemy of all mankind?"

"Yeah," Ethan replied tetchily. "And the one guy who probably knows, more than anyone else on this entire earth, what your whole damn existence has been like."

Artorious growled down at him. His face betrayed nothing but raw hate mingled with confusion, and Ethan found himself slumping back against the wall outside his cell door.

"I was once human, too," he said.

"Nonsense. Hybrid propaganda meant to sway us from the proper path."

"Why would I lie to you now, of all times?" Ethan chuckled dryly. "What possible motive could I have for deceiving you here and now when, as you so eloquently put it, I hold your life in my hands?"

"I am already dead."

"And dead men don't interrupt."

Arty met his cold, hard stare for what seemed like a full minute before he tore his hateful gaze away, closing his eyes and wiping a shaking hand across his forehead. Ethan watched him with curiosity, wondering what was really going through his head right now.

"…the fact is that you answered my question, Artorious," he finally said. "You didn't once try to rebel against your Greycloak masters because you didn't think you could. Kaedmon's Law, right? You were the Lightborn – the Hero – and it was your job to take down the villain. That's just how it's supposed to be. How it's always been, right? It didn't matter how much you hated them and hated what you were supposed to be. Hated the man you were becoming."

Artorious banged a fist against the cell, his fury rejuvenated.

"You don't know me, Archon. You never sat atop my head. Not truly."

"I don't have to," Ethan said sadly. "Because the fact is that I've been there, too."

This time, Arty looked at him with a far different look. It almost approached curiosity. But this time, Ethan didn't face him.

"I've always felt like there's a job I've had to do. But it's never felt like my job," he said quietly. "All my life back on Earth – the place I originally came from – seemed like nothing but a set of expectations that I constantly had to meet. I had to be this to be a man. I had to do that to contribute to society. I had to have the right thoughts. I had to have the correct opinions. I used to think I wanted to be a writer one day. Sci-fi. But then I learned that if I didn't meet genre expectations, I'd never succeed. Even when I tried to be free, I was always stuck with something."

He shook his head, stifling a laugh at the thought.

"I had to be a cog in a system that I'd never even signed up for. And, yeah, I hated it."

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Artorious regarded him curiously, though the seething hatred never truly left his face.

"I suppose that makes me an Anarchist," Ethan giggled impishly. "Appropriate, don't you think?"

The fallen angel shook his head in utter befuddlement. But Ethan could see that he'd piqued some interest.

"This other world you speak of," he said. "How did you leave it and come here? How was it that you – a person as insignificant as you were – became the Archon?"

"Beats me," Ethan replied. "I guess I just wanted another life bad enough."

"So you just gave up," Artorious sneered. "You ran from your old world and your pitiful life."

"Now, in fairness, I didn't know for sure that there was another life to live."

"You ran," Artorious repeated sullenly, his shoulders sagging as the thought seemed to overtake his mind. "And you came…here."

The angel looked to be mulling that fact over, and Ethan let him. He was in no hurry, here. In truth, he wasn't sure what he was going to ask Arty in these final moments between them. He knew that if the other Hybrids waiting outside were in here right now, they wouldn't exactly be bandying words with the genocidal fanatic that had slain their wives and children in cold blood.

But Ethan needed to know a few things. And he'd hear them from the horse's mouth, no matter how thoroughly deflated the Lightborn looked right now.

"Question two: when you killed Carliah Argent, how did it feel?"

Artorious looked up from his pallid hands and fixed him with a disdainful stare once again.

"You killed Carliah. I simply destroyed what she was becoming."

"And you didn't feel even the slightest bit satisfied?"

Artorious grit his teeth in response.

"Arty, I knew her for the best part of five minutes and knew what kinda person she was. And unless there was some subtle but palpable sexual tension between the two of you, I know you hated her guts."

"Even now you insult me with your vulgar words," Artorious spat. "Carliah Argent was the leader of the Greycloaks for a reason. That reason was simple: she got things done."

"The ends justify…" Ethan sneered, not even bothering to finish the cliché. "Yeah. That philosophy just rules your heart, doesn't it?"

Artorious simply bit his lip and looked away, pretending to focus on a match of moist stone to his right.

"…if you know the answer to your question," he sighed. "Then why ask it? Do you want me to say that this world is better off without her in it? Fine. Tell your people that you dragged those words from me. But tell them too that you are no better leader than she was, Archon. You are cut from the very same cloth."

At Ethan's raised, thready brow, Artorious closed his eyes and leaned back against the solid stone wall of his prison.

"You fight to dominate. You fight to control. You fight because you believe that you – out of everyone who ever came before you – have the right answer to what you perceive are the world's problems."

"And that's not why you fight?"

"I fight because it is what I was born to do."

"We're going in circles," Ethan tutted. "You were born to live, Artorious. Nothing more. When you saw your mother die that day, buried in the fires of your home, that's when you chose to fight."

At the mention of his mother, Artorious flew to the bars of his cage again, teeth practically salivating with fury.

"It was a choice between dying and surviving, Archon," he snarled. "Not much of a choice, if you ask me. What? Do you think I would have chosen death? Do you think any child would have willfully followed its parents into the next life at the hands of the vicious monsters your kind unleashed on our world? Would that have been preferable to life?"

"If you'd died," Ethan said quietly. "None of this would have happened."

All at once, Arty's rage seemed to abate once more. His eyes flashed with the certainty of Ethan's statement, knowing that those words rang with a truth that he'd never wished to admit to himself, even though he knew them.

"None of this would have happened if you'd just stopped," Ethan went on, hopping right up to his face again. "So, why didn't you?"

Both hat and now-mortal man stared blankly at the other before the answer came from Arty's mouth:

"Because I can't."

Ethan took a small intake of breath before he nodded. "Because you can't.

In the wake of this, Artorious retreated back into himself again. His burned wings curled up as though trying to shield him from Ethan's gaze. It was the first time Ethan had seen him look so vulnerable, and so strangely relieved. Perhaps those words were words he'd never been able to articulate.

"You said you had three questions for me," he muttered from between his fingers before straightening up and facing him again. "Ask your final query, and then let this charade be done."

Ethan couldn't help but smile inwardly at Arty's disdain. Even now when he was beginning to realize that he had more in common with the Demon Hat than he first thought, his pride simply wouldn't let him acknowledge that fact. He instead held on to the rage that had kept him going all this time.

Because, Ethan realized, there truly was nothing else there to grasp.

"Question three: if I let you live, and give you your freedom, what will you do?"

Artorious seemed quite entertained by this question.

"Are you asking me to plead for my life, now? Is that it?"

"You think I'd ever ask you to beg for anything? You know me better than that, Arty."

The angel considered the notion, and then shrugged his shoulders in a gesture so nonchalant for him that Ethan almost did a double-take.

"I would do exactly as you did," he replied. "Fall on my sword and hope for another life. Preferably, one as a [Tailor] or a [Cobbler]."

"Makers," Ethan replied with a thready little grin. "Not breakers."

"Something like that."

"But could you really do it?" Ethan asked, genuine surprise overtaking him. "You, who failed to sacrifice yourself already?"

Artorious stiffened, but no anger came out. Instead, he exhaled deeply, letting the sweat that had been building on his forehead all this time dribble off the frayed strands of his once-golden fringe.

"My Lord has released me from his service," he said. "I am now free to leave this world behind. You could say that for the first time in my life, I am truly free."

"Ironic, isn't it?"

Artorious fixed him with cold, dead eyes. "In more ways than one," he muttered.

Both men then strayed back into silence, Ethan pondering what had passed between them, Artorious studying the Demon Hat with curious, searching eyes.

Neither of them could ever know that the other was delaying the inevitable conclusion to their meeting, and what that meant.

Neither could either of them know that this delay was for entirely different reasons.

Finally, Artorious cleared his throat.

"Your last question was more of a hypothetical, I assume," he said. "Because I think we both know you won't be letting me leave this place alive, don't we?"

Ethan caught the tinge of finality in his tone. When he looked back up at him, Artorious' unblinking stare demanded his own answer, this time.

"Yes," Ethan said. "I suppose we do."

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