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"Well, that wasn't the most graceful way you could have rescued me," Jay says, keeping pace with her as she takes the semi-familiar turns through the halls.

"I could have left you for dead and just published the findings, you know. I had a dose of my own venom, or a sick mockery of it, just to get to you. It's not fun."

"Oh, believe me, I know," Jay says, halting. Look at what it did to your sense of direction."

Arya slows to a stop, blinks, and glances around the hall. In front of them, one of the guards lays down, still unconscious. She hisses a curse and twirls around. "Do you have any bright ideas? It was your plan that got us in here in the first place."

"Oh, so its my fault you let your uncle choose where we had our date, now?" Jay asks, pressing his palm to his chest.

"He... persuaded me," Arya says, wrapping her arms around herself. "I had no choice..."

"And yet, here you are," he says, a smile spreading over his face. "Really, though, thank you. But we gotta put our drugged-up heads together if we're going to get out of here alive, don't you think?"

"Right, wait..." She holds her hands up. "What's that?"

Jay's whiskers twitch. "Footsteps. Quick, this way." He grabs her wrist, leading her down another corridor.

The two run down the seemingly endless passage until the blare of the alarm forces them to stop and re-evaluate once again.

"Great, the whole place will be on high alert, now." He said.

"My Uncle is going to get away with using me..." Arya says, snarling and punching the wall. Her shoulders shudder as she fights back the anguish building up inside of her. "His plot to use my venom will succeed, and we'll be stuck here, or... he might just end me now that he can manufacture me."

"Hey!" Jay says, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her from the brink. "Don't you dare think like that. You're a real smart, powerful, and beautiful woman. Sure, he may have something that's a part of you, but he can never recreate you. And if he does end the two of us, we haven't lost."

"W... what?"

"I sent my information off to the right people," Jay responds. "Even if we go down, we have to believe that your Uncle will go down, too."

"How can you be certain?" Arya asks. "He's got friends all over the place. They could swipe this under the rug and the world will go on as if neither of us existed."

"Heh," Jay says, his breathing growing labored. "Well, at least we won't know if he offs us, will we? We can both die... thinking we won..." He presses against her, slumping over.

Arya spins around and examines Jay. He breathes with a ragged regularity. She presses the back of her hand to his head and hisses. That fever is blistering. "Damn it, Jay..." she says, "Why didn't you tell me you felt like this?" She knows all too well what an overdose of her natural defense can do to someone. Usually, she only administers enough to make people compliant, yet the doctor must have added too much. She slings his arm over her shoulder, pressing a hand to his side as she slithers along the hall, dragging him slowly along with her. "We have to get out of here. I refuse to let him win in the end. He's decided how I lived my life my entire life. There is no way he gets to pick how I die."

"Now, that's a noble sentiment from someone with no say in the matter."

Arya freezes as she hears those words.

Slithering from around the corner, her Uncle emerges, a predatory gleam in his eye. "You know, your... sire? He used to listen to me. We were like brothers. But he crossed my family, and that is a line you don't cross. I see his rebellious streak in you now. I guess I just wanted to hope you were like my dear sister more than that traitor."

Guns cock as two guards stand on either side of the snake boss, training their weapons upon Arya and Jay.

She stares him down, not taking her focus off of him. "So, you're going to kill me, just like how you killed him?"

"You're assuming a lot, Pretty girl," he says, running a hand over his brow, tracing over his scar. "But I wouldn't think you'd be too upset with me if I did, after the horrors he's done."

"You used me... How do I know you didn't use him, either?"

"Oh, that's simple," her uncle says. "That's because he was a real piece of work. A true devil in snake's skin. You, however, are nothing but a little doll, playing dress up and doing everything I say. Now, put the rat down and we can talk this over, possibly somewhere nice and secluded, where we won't get in any trouble."

The clanking of boots upon the metal floor tells Arya that there are more behind her. Despite every fiber of her being telling her that this snake is not the loving, caring person she had thought she had known. Despite knowing that he has taken everything from her--her livelihood, her love, and her very biology. Despite how she just wants to pounce him right then and there, she gently lowers Jay to the ground. Once he is placed safely down there, she slowly stands tall, her arms raising up over her head, but her eyes never leaving from her Uncle's, not for a second.

"Good girl," he says, his tongue slipping out a second. "You've made a smart choice today.

No, perhaps she isn't making a smart choice. Perhaps this is the worst choice she could possibly make. But its a choice she has to live with. So she makes it now, with no turning back.