til death do us part [danna]

[JESSE MERCER]

He was supposed to be here at precisely eleven o'clock.

Jesse glanced at his watch. 10:55. He exhaled, his breath slightly visible in the cold night air. He was to meet an ally here, someone new whom Danna had recruited. He was in the middle of a market, with grocery stores and book stores and other various shops all around him, all closed down for the evening, and not a bar in sight. It was completely dead, a perfect meeting place. Jesse pulled the man's picture out of his pocket, studying it momentarily before folding it back up. Anyone approaching him at this time of night in a place like this would likely be the man, but he couldn't be too careful. Even if Danna had practically bent over backwards to lay low here in London. She wanted the focus on Voldemort while she rebuilt her army.

Jesse, for one, was just glad to be back in it. He'd reunited not only with Danna, but with his son, Corban, as well as a daughter, Courtney, whom he'd never known he had. And he'd never seen his Cassie's face light up like it had when she'd met her mother and realized her boyfriend was actually her twin brother. Where that might have deterred and even traumatized most teenagers, Corban and Cassie only seemed to be more enamored with each other upon learning they were related. Nothing really surprised Jesse anymore.

However, he wasn't really expecting a piercing, vibrating agony driven into the soft part of his throat beneath his Adam's apple. The arrow quivered in his flesh, having buried itself all the way through to Jesse's spine. He had little time to take one choking breath, the pain and sudden dizziness sending him to his knees as a single drop of dark blood trailed cleanly down beneath his robes.

The world turned black.

[DANNA DEVILLE]

Hailey wasn't suicidal. When she decided she was going to have Jesse Mercer murdered, she went through great lengths to be sure it would be executed flawlessly with no interference from anyone, and without a single person tracing it back to her. It hadn't been easy. She and Christian had been away for so long, that it took time to make the right sort of friends and connections in England.

Their clan, gang, army, whatever it was people were calling it these days, had been better once upon a time, in the era before Jesse came into their lives. Before Paul's death, everything had been perfect. Paul Vulcan had been the perfect soldier, the perfect lover, and if Danna Deville was ever going to love anyone, he was going to be the guy. Hailey hadn't liked him to much to start with, either, but that was beside the point. He had grown on her. He had been good for Danna, good for their family. His death the first go round, when it had been staged, had destroyed her enough. And that was the state of their group when Jesse arrived. Even if he himself had done nothing, which Hailey very much doubted, his presence had been a curse upon their family. Everything had gone straight to hell when he arrived.

Look at the state they were in! It had all fallen apart in Amsterdam, shortly before her mother and Mercer's union. Just a couple of years after the birth of the twins. They had lost so much there, so much that her mother had driven herself to near insanity, reproducing nearly nonstop in hopes of rebuilding her army. It wasn't even working, was it? The new editions to the family were nothing in comparison to the likes of Christian or Hailey or Dominic or Lexi or Tory or Rick or any of the others! The best of their soldiers were gone, their new allies were hardly anything....They were slowly rebuilding their empire, but Hailey knew it would go nowhere if Jesse was back in the picture. And she and Christian had not been slaving away in various countries, struggling to help bring the fame and fortune back to the Deville legacy these past fourteen years just so that pathetic excuse for a wizard could waltz back in and fuck it all up again.

So when Christmas holidays came and went, Christian and Hailey remained. It hadn't been hard to convince her older brother to stay with their mother, the mother he worshiped like a goddess. He hated being apart from her, and while he was torn, wanting to be useful to her, Hailey convinced him they would be of more use nearby. After all, Danna didn't have anyone other than them she could truly trust.

The next step had been just as easy: getting rid of the "others." Danna wasn't overly fond of most of her children, so Hailey's idea of sending them away worked like a charm. The only hesitance Danna had was wanting them properly trained. They would still have to be useful to her one day. So together, Hailey and Danna organized a plan for her older children to take custody of the younger ones. When the holidays were over, Lexi had taken Samson to Rome with her. Tory had taken Byron to Canada with her. Orlando took Mason, Brooke took Tara, and Megan took Balthazar. Rick was supposed to take Nathan, but Rick didn't trust Jesse anymore than Hailey did, so only a few weeks after leaving, they had returned to the manor. When the new editions were born, Max, Laney, and Sebastian were sent to Megan, Lexi, and Tory respectively. The only ones Danna hadn't bothered trying to send away were the twins or Laurie , not for lack of trying on Hailey's part. Danna was convinced they'd be more useful than the others. Hailey didn't buy it. They might have been better than the others of the younger brood, but not by much. Not at all.

It seemed the only way to really get things on track was getting rid of Jesse. Maybe then she could work at getting rid of his children. After all, he was the bigger issue than his offspring. So Hailey stayed, making friends, seducing allies...It was in her nature, as it was her mother's, to make people fall in love with her. But she needed to make the right person fall for her.

Hailey found women were easier to work with in this way. They tended to be more emotional, needier than their male counterparts. And she needed this done fast. It wasn't hard at all to convince Jocelyn Monroe to love her, or that she loved her in return. The tricky part was turning that into obsessive love.

Most might have found the use of potions and spells more practical. Maybe the whole mess would have been done faster. But manipulation was the art form Hailey preferred. Potions and spells were easy to trace, if it was discovered as the motivation behind particular actions. She needed to look innocent in all of this, even if it somehow found its way back to Jocelyn. She didn't want to have to tell someone to kill Jesse.

That was why it took so long. Hailey knew her reasons for doing this were justifiable. But she couldn't say anything to her mother. The last time she tried to make Danna see how awful Jesse was it had blown up in her face. And while Christian might not be all that warm to him, he would never question their mother. It would be dumb of Hailey to seem as though she disagreed with Danna or that she had orchestrated something like this, which she knew Danna would be against. Even if this got back to her, the most they could say was that she had merely mentioned a distaste for Jesse, which had led to the whole ordeal.

It hadn't been easy. Love was easy to create, but obsessive love was tricky. Even then, what she had in mind were near impossible. In the end she opted for low dosages of a few different potions that would alter behavior and judgment just slightly, a few damaging spells they had used to brainwash Regina and the others. And always with someone else's wand. A bit of Confundus in a crowded bar with the wand of a wizard she had been dancing with just before Jocelyn arrived to meet her. A lucky chance of being in the middle of a Death Eater raid, using her contacts with Rosier to get him to Crucio the woman. Imperius was easy. Jocelyn found she liked the use of it in their kinky bedroom games. After all, Hailey wasn't going to Imperius her into killing Jesse. But the long term affects of being hit with an Unforgivable that many times would be useful.

Jocelyn wasn't brainwashed to the same degree as her nieces, but it had muddled her brain enough to make her more susceptible to suggestion. Suggesting her own hatred of Jesse hadn't been enough to earn more than Jocelyn's own disdain for the man she had never met, but a few cooked up stories about suspecting the man was the right hand man of You Know Who, that he was behind the majority of murders these days, that he was trying to kill or recruit her mother, fears that it would all come back to her, had been enough to lead Jocelyn to action.

It had taken a lot of convincing to keep Jocelyn from killing Jesse herself. Hailey didn't want that. Instead she led Jocelyn to talk her best friend into talking to her husband about him, as her husband worked for the Ministry. The husband, Kyle Morrow, had a close contact in the DMLE, so he left word with them to look into it. The allegations were so serious, and they must have found some sort of evidence, but the head of the department enlisted his best Aurors to hunt and kill Jesse.

It was supposed to happen tonight.

Only Danna had a contact in the Auror department who firecalled her not too long ago, warning that Jesse was being targeted. The contact had only just recently heard about it, which meant they were all in a hurry to find Jesse.

Danna had Christian, Hailey, and Rick follow her. They didn't know exactly where Jesse was, but they had a general idea, aided by the Point Me spell. It was hard to use the magical compass in areas with Muggles, but it was night and the further they traveled, the less crowded it became.

It was sad her mother was so concerned over this man. But it was for the best. How attached her mother had become to him was disturbing. It needed to be fixed. Now, more than ever, Hailey knew she was doing the right thing.

If only it could be done.

While Danna was working hard at finding Jesse, Hailey was doing her best to sabotage it. It wasn't easy. Danna was listening to anything she had to say. She could only hope those damned Aurors were quick with it.

Eventually, though, they found him. The last whispered "Point me to Jesse Mercer," had her wand pointing directly down a dark alley where both Christian and Rick claimed to see movement from above. The men ran for it, Rick jogging far ahead of Christian. Hailey had a feeling Rick, too, had been working tonight to be sure this happened. From the sly looks he had been shooting her, she was also sure he must know she was behind it somehow. As long as he was the only one, it was find.

"Mother, be careful," Hailey warned worriedly.

"I know what I'm doing, Hells," Danna hissed.

Only when they were in the alleyway and Danna could see that Jesse was still alive did she relax, regaining some of the composure she had lost along this trip. It was short lived. She had just opened her mouth, just starting to say something, when the arrow shot through him. Danna gasped, freezing on the spot as Jesse fell to his knees. A shot of bright light was caught in her peripheral vision, so she glanced up to see Rick disappear. Frowning, Hailey focused back on her mother who took a shaky step towards Jesse as he fell over dead.

The night was cold and silent. Hailey wrapped her arms around herself, standing right beside her mother, looking at her concernedly. Danna wasn't fine by any means. The shock might have been prevalent, but Hailey could see the anger and the despair just beneath it. Danna had cared about Jesse. Yes, it was good he was gone. Very good. On the bright side, Hailey didn't think this would be as bad as it had been when Paul died. Jesse hadn't been Paul, after all. Danna would recover much faster, she was sure of it.

Something fell from the sky, slamming to the ground beside Jesse. Hailey didn't notice at first, not until Danna was stepping towards it. Seconds later Rick Apparated, dumping the body of a man in scarlet Auror robes beside it, Christian appearing shortly after. Danna moved slowly, as though it was taking all of her will to move at all. Christian was faster, plucking the wallet from the ground, shuffling through it, finding the necessities, handing them to Danna while Rick moved closer to Hailey, both standing a few yards away from the crime. Hailey hadn't dared move closer with her mother, not when her brothers had shown up.

"He needed to go. You did what you had to do," Cameron whispered quietly, so quietly she nearly didn't hear him. "Not everyone will understand. You were careful, right?"

"It'll be a long hard trail back to me," Cynthia assured him.

"Mother will want to find those responsible, so I got this one," Rick said, jerking his head in the direction of the Auror. "He's alive. I got there before Chris. Tipped them off. Guy's partner went to go lookout for Christian. I let him do his thing then Stunned him. Figured Mom could use the distraction...keep her off your trail and occupied from..."

He didn't bother finishing the sentence, but he looked just as disturbed as Hailey felt. If Danna was truly upset by the man's death then it was their duty to protect her, comfort her...Hopefully she wouldn't need it. Then again, they had been secretly hoping his death wouldn't bother her at all. Though knowing better, they secretly hoped he was just as disposable as the others were.

But she was too cold, too shocked to be unaffected. They both knew it.

Before they could say more, Christian was throwing the limp body over his shoulder while Danna stalked towards them.

"Find out everything you can about Galen Cross," she said without stopping, Christian following after her.

They could have just Apparated. They hadn't bothered earlier because they didn't know Jesse's exact location. But now?

No one bothered to say anything.

It only worried Hailey more. She felt no regret for what she had done. Jesse needed to die, especially if his death could do this to her mother. But until Danna was her old self, there would be something very cold and heavy weighing down on her. If this was the price she had to pay for her mother and for her family, though, Hailey would gladly pay it. So side by side with Rick, they followed Christian and Danna on the long, cold, silent journey back home.