He came to some way away from the bridge, the fact that he'd been up there at all only vaguely recalled at first by the bottles that he'd left up there, and the feeling of water against his face.
Would they have even noticed, if you were gone? If you'd stayed down there, with no second thoughts.
Of course they would have. Of course. But at the same time, they were Yuusei, and Jack, and they'd get over it, and Kiryu was dead and insane anyway.
He kept pushing the bike back to the safety of his makeshift garage, looking it over this way and that for the thousandth time. His bike. His Blackbird. Together, they'd fly.
They'd always care, that lot. It's what'd be their downfall, in the end, he mused as he tightened a screw.
He hesitated, just for a moment, thinking with a niggling suspicion that there was something wrong with that sentence. Something... off.
He shook his head. It was probably nothing.
He followed Yuusei to Old Momentum, and was distracted by something he saw as the others made their way in, just as something else was telling him that it just might be a bad idea if he stayed that close, too long.
What he saw interested him, piqued his curiosity. Old Momentum's ruins, as they were, almost... almost untouched.
He brushed the dust and broken glass off a framed photo, a family shown that seemed eerily familiar.
Who? Now, who could that be? It was almost on the tip of his tongue, the forefront of his mind, but something kept it back. In the end, he shrugged, and put it back down onto a table rather than the floor, and carried on.
The end of the corridor found a room, with... a body. Which yeah, sure, creeped him out just a bit. Because he knew that face, he'd seen it on TV just the other day.
The hell had the Director been doing down here? With... a robotic arm... and cards.
Who knew. He stepped around carefully, uncomfortable with the idea of touching the body or cards, either of them.
He thought he heard a whisper as he passed, calling his name.
"Crow," it said. He turned around, seeing nothing, backed away, scattering cards with his feet. "Crow,", it continued to call. His eyes darted from one corner of the room to another, looking for something - anything - to explain. "Don't fall after me, Crow..."
He ran, as though something were chasing him, the hairs on the small of his neck standing on end. He'd say ghosts didn't exist, but he was a spirit trapped on the Earth by the will of an evil god, both of them with unfinished business, so what room did he have to talk?
He didn't stop until he heard voices again, but this time, they echoed, instead of whispering inside his head.
Yuusei... was that Yuusei? It sure sounded like him, and someone else, dueling... and then when Yuusei started going off on one, and everything seemed to him like Yuusei was losing.
Now, that won't do. You wanna defeat him yourself, don't you? Sooner, later... who cares. Jack's beaten him. Kiryu's damn well nearly killed him. Why shouldn't you... at least have a chance?
Wrong, wrong, there was something so very wrong about all of it - but the sudden thought in his head, the temptation, at least had one thing right.
Yuusei wasn't about to lose here. To some old guy who thought he knew what it'd been between them all that time-
But you do hold it against him, don't you? Just a bit. Just a little, little bit.
Maybe. But that wasn't important.
A picture of a family, was it? And who do you think that was?
He could worry about that later. For now, he had to concentrate on getting out alive.
He thinks, perhaps, that Rudger looked at him before he died. Looked him in the eye.
I don't know what you're doing, that look had said, but don't screw this up.
He didn't know what he meant. He didn't even, really, know what he was doing.
Isn't it obvious? You've known all along.
Had he, though? Had he really?
Oh, yes. Dust in the air, Crow. Dust in the air.
He tensed, and the others looked back, wondered if something was wrong, and went back to their own worries.
That wasn't their fault.
He hadn't even noticed that he'd begun to argue with the whispers in his mind.
It wasn't, was it? Then whose was it? Who should we shift the blame to? The ones who can't protect anyone?
You know they could have. They could have done it. You saw it back there. The kids could have SURVIVED-
He dragged in a harsh breath. They couldn't have known...
...could they?
Who says not? The whispers said seductively within the safety and danger of his own mind. You could do it. All. Now. It would be so... easy...
"Oi, Yuusei. The last one has to be around here somewhere," Jack was saying, holding a pair of broken glasses in his hand.
Yuusei was frowning. "Perhaps they're playing dirty. They might not want to be found."
Crow leaned back against his bike, trying to hold back the snickers that would give him away.
"You guys go on ahead. Scout around," he said. "I'll stay back here. Keep an eye out."
Yuusei regarded him closely. "You'd do that?"
"Hey," he said, waving a hand. "They might be here by the time you guys get back. I'm sure I'll find a way to hold 'em around for you."
They left, and he was just seeing the dust in the distance, dust in the wind, Crow, dust in the wind, when he started to laugh, such a laugh, and the white faded from his eyes, staining them with black, as robes replaced his normal attire and the Blackbird got a paintjob.
He was still there, just as he'd predicted, when they turned tail and headed back, once they came close enough to see that it was, indeed, him.
"Took you long enough!" He said between laughter. He went from leaning to seated on the bike in seconds flat, in a fluid motion. "Just like I told you, I'm still here."
...
AN: Oh wow well. This came from Whatacartouchebag on Tumblr suggesting that Crow would become a Dark Signer with 'little whispers' in his mind. They did their thing and I... came up with this. *Hides*