“I feel like a dog, like you’re taking me on a walk or something.”

Lucas cracked a small grin. “So long as you don’t shit on my lawn.”

“Yeah, about that. How’d you get such a huge house? I’m guessing it’s hard to get a mortgage when you’ve been dead for centuries.”

“We don’t die and we call flaming swords out of thin air. You think we can’t scrounge up some cash?”

“Ahh. Good point.”

Justin looked down at his feet as they continued the long walk around Lucas’s estate. It was funny, Charmian’s apartment was so small and yet Lucas had a large house and sprawling gardens. It was certainly as big as anything Justin and his millions had managed to procure if not bigger. He had been assured that the entire perimeter was protected so he was as safe in the garden as he was in the house. Of course for the last few weeks they hadn’t allowed him the luxury of using the garden – too tired of him trying to hop the fence. Slowly but surely they were loosening the leash on him, but Justin had to wonder whether that was because they trusted him not to escape or because they wanted him away from the influx of unfamiliar avengers. 

“Look, as aware as I am that you could kick my ass from here to eternity and I probably shouldn’t order you around… you need to cut the bullshit and tell me why you brought me out here.”

Lucas grimaced, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans. Wrapped in a black wool sweater he looked astonishingly normal. “I swear, usually I’m not so transparent.”

“Hey, we all get a little off our game when the hordes descend. It’s like having the whole bickering family for Thanksgiving, only with more chainmail.”

Glancing at Justin from the corner of his eye, he frowned. “You noticed the bickering, huh.”

“Nothing specific, but you all got the vibe. What gives?”

“Where to begin?” Lucas gave a short, harsh snort.

“Does this have something to do with Charmian?”

Lucas wanted to laugh. He’d witnessed it enough times over the years but the way Justin always seemed to hone straight in on Charmian in every single way was astounding to the point of lunacy. If humans had been capable of a sixth sense – and none of them were despite many claims to the contrary – then Justin would have had one for topics involving the head avenger. He didn’t even have to mention her and yet somehow the boy knew it was about her.

He stopped in the middle of the rose patch, looking around but not really seeing. Normally he liked coming outside to think. Somehow the riot of colour cleared his mind and breathing the fresh air shook away the cobwebs. This time it wasn’t so simple; as ever with Justin or Michael or whoever he was this lifetime, Lucas really didn’t know how to handle things. It didn’t help that he’d never in any lifetime known their secret before. He was wary of treating him like he was or should be in on every aspect of what was happening, but on the other hand knowing even a little then necessitated knowing a lot more for his own safety. That cat was long since out of the bag.

“Well, obviously you’ve noticed that our reinforcements are bitching. Want to guess what they’re bitching about?”

“Not really, but if you’re telling me it can’t be good.”

“Charmian, Nate and I all agreed that we shouldn’t tell anybody else who you are. Fewer people know, the safer the knowledge is.”

The first thought that fluttered through Justin’s head was a slight annoyance that Lucas always seemed to be in on the decisions about him. He wasn’t allowed a say in his own life lately but Lucas was? As soon as the pettiness had come however it was swiftly beaten back by a more reasonable voice. He might like Lucas a little less than Charmian or the strangely fatherly Nate, but clearly the guy had to have some smarts to be the global second in command for a bunch of holy soldiers.

The second was a creeping fear. What was so dreadful about his identity that it had to be a secret?

“So?”

“So they’re not stupid. They know something has to be up for us to be guarding you so tight. And Charmian being…” he abruptly cut himself off.

“What?”

“Ahh.” Lucas kicked at a small clump of grass, sending it flying into the bushes. “I really didn’t want to tell you this, but you know Charmian’s not totally recovered yet?”

“Yes.”

It had been rather alarming. Justin had become oddly used to the way the avengers healed right in front of his eyes. Even though he had witnessed what should have been a fatal wound fade to scars in less than three days, compared to what he knew to be normal avenger recovery time it was disconcerting. That was how crazy his life had become –anybody else would have been dead within minutes of such an injury, yet he was anxious that a miraculous healing was taking a little while instead of being instant.

“Well, people are starting to talk. We…” he fidgeted nervously with his wrist guard, twisting it around his hand. “I don’t want to get into our internal politics too much but a lot of people begrudge the four of us for being singled out - especially Charmian. She’s been top dog for a very long time now, untouchable in the big boss’s eyes, and people lower in the chain of command resent it.”

Justin’s eye fell on the axe and the bat, the heraldic symbols of their elite team. He’d never considered such a thing – they were the good guys, nearest thing in existence to angels, they weren’t supposed to be petty – but he supposed it would make sense. Nate had stated more than once that immortals still had some semblance of their humanity remaining, so why would it exclude the flaws?

“You don’t want to put her in front of them while she’s still recovering,” he guessed.

“Exactly. But the problem is that while we keep her out of the way, it creates a mystery around her. Add that to the mystery around you and we think that soon they’re going to start demanding answers on one or the other.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying…” He breathed in. Lucas really didn’t think this was a good idea at all, but he had little choice. “We’re going to send you home.”

“What?”

That was the last thing Justin expected to hear. What surprised him was that far from the victory dance he’d expected on hearing such news, he actually felt a little panicked. Now that he’d become accustomed to the avengers and started to believe them when they said he was in massive amounts of danger, he wanted to leave the safety of their walls a lot less than he’d originally thought.

“I don’t like it and I don’t want to do it,” Lucas said bluntly. “But Charmian trusts you to avoid temptation and be smart and she outranks me.”

Justin considered making a sarcastic comment, but despite the slightly infantilising inference he grudgingly understood where Lucas was coming from. If he really did have the entire underworld after him and all that stood between them and their goal was his ability to be a good little boy… he probably wouldn’t trust himself to be strong enough either.

“We’ll still keep watch, but we’ll have to do it from a distance. Zac and Carmel will keep a tail on you so expect them. But this is really important – do not trust anyone but them. Not your friends, not your family, not anybody, and especially not anybody who comes to you claiming to be an immortal. If it’s not somebody you met before – one of us, Nate, Micah or Katherine - you say no.”

“What have my family got to do with this?” He said angrily. “They’re not demons.”

“No, but they can get infected by one and you’ll never know the difference. It’s better to piss somebody off because you were wrong about them being bad than to die because you were wrong about them being good.”

“Wait, wait…” Justin shook his head out as if that would break the confusion away from his brain. Lately it felt like it had been welded on. “After all this trouble you’ve been through to protect me you’d rather risk me getting caught than the rest of them finding out that Charmian got hurt? Why?”

The look on Lucas’s face scared him more than anything he’d witnessed since he’d met Charmian. That was no small feat.

“What happened to Charmian proves that this poison is potentially a huge threat to avengers, it’ll make us a hell of a lot easier to take down. We can’t die, Justin, but we can be caught. A torturer’s biggest issue is making sure they don’t overdo it and prematurely kill their victim but we don’t pose that problem.”

Despite the balmy California air Justin felt a chill. He also felt a little vomit rising up in his throat, though he swallowed it back down.

“None of us like leaving people unprepared but the problem is that once this news gets out it’ll get to the demons pretty quickly after. Immortals gossip as much as humans do.”

“And as soon as they know this stuff really works it’ll be their favourite new toy, right?” Justin said slowly, starting to comprehend a little. It wasn’t much but it was an improvement.

“Exactly. I was back on patrol the next night so they have no idea that it slowed me down. Charmian is taking longer but since she’s our leader she’s not on the streets as much as we are anyway; it takes longer before her absence gets suspicious. If we can keep her away a couple more days she’ll be fine, but she’s still visibly slower right now and if that gets noticed we’re toast with our bosses as well as the demons.”

The wheels in his brain weren’t turning fast enough to deal with everything Lucas was throwing at him, it was maddening. “But how does that fit in with what you said about the internal politics? You want to give them less reason to ask questions, I get that, but doesn’t getting rid of me focus more attention on her?”

Lucas shifted on his feet, hesitating. Finally, after a few long seconds of silence and against his better judgment, he answered.

“Charmian’s off her game. Which would be understandable to any normal people but these are avengers and they don’t have emotions like humans do. Plenty of them don’t give a shit and they use it to question her leadership. If they find out she got that badly hit, especially when she knew that the blade was tipped with this stuff and should have been on her guard, they’re going to ask why.”

His hands were shaking. “Still not following.”

More of the lawn went flying as Lucas vented what was clearly some very long held frustration. “There is only one historical reason that Charmian ever screws up and it’s you, Timberlake. It won’t take them very long to put two and two together and realise that if she’s guarding somebody so closely and it’s messing with her head that it’d have to be you. And that’ll give them yet more ammo.”

“B-but…” Now he was so bewildered that he was stuttering. “Why would I-I give them ammo?”

Lucas sighed, pushing his hand through his hair and shaking his head. “You have to understand, Justin… you two have this big love across time and she’s had to watch you die so much and she blames herself for failing to protect you. After about death number three it really started to fuck with her head.”

Justin’s mouth gaped soundlessly. If Lucas had expected a response at this point he wasn’t getting one, so he continued.

“Charmian on a bad day is still pretty good by most people’s standards, but she’s not held to that. She’s expected to be perfect, and when you have a bunch of vultures on your back just waiting for an excuse… you became the excuse. Not just the fact that we keep losing you, but that she’s let herself get so involved that it affects her like this. And the last thing we need right now is to have somebody attempt a coup with all this other shit going on. We’re better off getting you out of here, taking the microscope off and letting them get the impression you were only a passing problem.”

Luckily there was a bench nearby otherwise it would have been the ground that Justin helplessly slumped onto. He wasn’t sure what was harder to take in – that he had fuelled infighting amongst the forces of good or that the baddest and most deadly warrior on the planet only messed up if he was involved. To have that kind of power over such a powerful being was heady but at the same time terrifying.

“I know this is a lot to take in, but I’m telling you all this because you need to understand that we are not letting you go because it’s safe. If it were up to me I’d have kept you here until we could grab Anton’s ass and pound it all the way back to the pit, but we have no choice. I’m telling you this so that you understand how careful you have to be.”

“Anton?” Justin asked in a barely focussed haze.

“Yeah, that was the other thing I meant to tell you in my big ‘danger, beware’ speech. We think a guy named Anton is behind this so if you come across him…”

“Run like hell?”

“No.”

“No? Some demon’s after me and instead of getting the hell out of Dodge you want me to play sitting duck?”

“No,” Lucas said patiently. “To begin with Anton won’t try to hurt you or do anything by force. He’s a player, he’ll try to ingratiate himself with you and lead you astray – but if he works out that you know what he is he’ll drop the act and it’ll get ugly. So what you need to do is act normal but disinterested – don’t let on that you know, just turn him down.”

“So… trust nobody, everybody might be a demon, say no to everybody, yet act like everything’s normal and I’m not a paranoid freak. That’ll be cake.”

“Hey, you wanted to go from music into acting. Think of this as good practice.”

In the only bit of clarity he’d managed for the entire conversation, Justin pointed his middle finger in Lucas’s direction.