Words fairly rocketed through his brain as he stumbled out into the hallway, the sight of that damned Caesar Gabriel and Dorian, *his* Dorian, entwined emblazoned on his retinas, screaming at him. He could feel nausea rising sharply at the words, the *orders* Dorian had given him, just as if he was only another one of his *boys*, one of his little henchman, seduced and kept.

/Perhaps,/ he thought to himself wildly, /that's all I've ever been to him. Perhaps.../

It didn't matter, though. Not really, not now. What image he'd kept of himself shattered, the entirety of his devotion to Dorian breaking him as he sobbed, dropping to the floor. His own tears didn't matter, did they? Dorian never cared if he cried, and he fell so easily to that *stupid* little blond git, a few sparkling tears and all was well, no one would *die*. All because he'd cried, and Dorian had *caved*.

No!

"No!" James declared to himself, standing up and fairly storming towards the room in the castle that he *knew* housed weaponry. Dorian hated guns but he, *he* didn't mind them, much, *he* could fire one, *he* could... could...

He didn't know how the cold thing came to be in his hand, bullet chambered, pressed to his temple. He didn't remember arriving, picking it up, didn't think he had even gotten there at all, but the chill of the metal prompted him to awareness again, though perhaps it was not the same sort of awareness he'd had before. Stress and pressure and the force of living seemed quite to have cracked him for the moment, perhaps forever, and he wasn't at all the James of before. If asked, he couldn't have said that he was any different. He couldn't have known, only it had all been so much, too much, and how could he change any of that? Death and pain, harassment and suffering, rape and abuse, and what had there been to look forward to in life but Dorian?

And now...

There wasn't even that.

/Yes,/ he thought woodenly, grimly, standing up with the gun in hand. /I'll kill them. I'll kill them both.../