Disclaimer; obligatory: I make no profit from writing these horrible things, nor do I own Trinity Blood or any of the characters, I only molest them on the weekends.

Warnings: Graphic ncs between child Dietrich and Isaak, with squicky messy dirtiness. Things are not happy here.

Nurture of The Beast

"Isaak."

I did not look, Dietrich's voice was dripping acid. I refused to play this game.

"Isaak."

I pushed my sleeves up off my wrists, and poised my hands over the organ's keys, ready to deafen myself to Dietrich's growing impatience.

The sound of the bottle exploding against the wall shocked me enough that I spun around, to see Dietrich waving the jagged neck of it at me. "Tell me you love me Isaak! Say it!"

Calmly, I stood up, and smoothed the wrinkles in my pants down. "Dietrich, I know children need love, but really…" He tried to glare into me, tried to threaten me with his ten-year-olds' stare. Our eyes locked for the briefest of moments, stretched and pulled tight across a shared eternity.

Dietrich dropped what remained of the bottle of claret-not so good a year- and clasped himself tightly about my waist. I stood stock-still, frozen and surprised, unsure what to do. Dietrich sobbed into my chest, quivering against me.

He had always striven for attention, could never stand being out of the spotlight. One moment Dietrich would astound you, spurting off as a boy genius, the next throwing a tantrum screaming and flailing, without warning. In the three and a half years I'd been Dietrich's guardian, I'd come to suspect he'd endured more than beatings at the hands of his father.

I sighed, and pulled my arms loose of the death grip Dietrich tried to hold me in. I wrapped one arm about his shoulders, and ran my other hand through his hair. I did not know what was appropriate, I couldn't recall any affections from either of my parents, ever, but I knew I couldn't hold this boy as I'd been held by my first love. And I knew I should not hold him how I was now held by my second love-my god; I opted instead to hold him as I'd first been held by Cain-embraced by god until the shadows not only recessed, but obeyed.

Dietrich was frail in my arms, slumped against me now, gasping through his passing hysteria.

"Why don't you love me Isaak?" It was so quiet, the barest utterance of syllables possible, I was unsure I'd heard it at all. Dietrich turned his face up though, eyes red and swollen from crying, searching for something. I kissed him on his forehead, unsure why, unable to stop. I wiped back his tear soaked bangs, and hugged him tighter, until he looked away. Then, just as quickly as it had all begun, the storm was past, and Dietrich wriggled out of my arms, a delighted look on his face.

All he'd wanted was love, something it was increasingly hard for me to muster the older I became. What a pair we were, the child without parents, the child that was now a parent, something so terribly sycophantic about it. And betwixt the two of us, we held a flickering light, wavering only on the darkest corners of the cracks we navigated.

Dietrich could never be anything but lost, too clingy and too needy. I would never be anything but cold, and jaded, and broken so deeply inside no one could ever begin to imagine.

"I knew you loved me, Panzer Magier. I knew it." He smiled, wildly, as though drunk.

"One could hardly doubt your conviction, the way you waved that broken glass in my face."

"Oh that, well that was just to get your attention. Worked like a charm, didn't it?"

"Indeed."

Dietrich smirked at me, "Anyways, Isaak, are you coming to put me to bed?"

"You're too old for that Dietrich, I haven't tucked you in for two years." He was desperate tonight.

"Please Isaak?"

"Absolutely not. Go to bed by yourself." The initial trouble averted, I knew a secondary tantrum was beginning to build, so I took a step back from the spoiled rotten broken thing in front of me, and allowed my shadows to begin growing and bending.

Dietrich turned with a "Hmph," and pulled the door closed behind him.

I spent much of the night reading, and drinking. My mind ran in feverish circles, and I re-plotted all my plots, imagining every possible move and counter move, every scenario worked through unto completion. A long time before, I'd learned and accepted that the only value I truly possessed in Cain's eyes was as a thinker, and everything else was just a bonus.

I am not photosensitive, but the windows in my study block the sunlight anyways. As dawn began to crawl greyly across my desk, I allowed my fourth and final bottle to slip from my fingertips, landing dully on the rug. I stood slowly, swaying from the movement my body hadn't expected, then I drew the blinds, and snuffed my candles. Cain has, in the past, accused me of being a romantic, in that I prefer candlelight to electric any night, but it's much simpler than that-the shadows are better by candlelight, and it is in the shadows that I am best at what I do.

The hallway was longer than it was supposed to be as I finally stumbled to bed. I stepped into my room, knowing it perfectly in the dark, and at some length I managed to remove all my clothes and lay them on a chair, then I flopped onto my bed childishly, as Dietrich would. Even as tired as I was, laying there in perfect dark, sleep had decided to elude me, and I endured fitfully and fidgeting, curling and stretching, and rolling this way and that.

When I at last managed to become comfortable though, and began falling into numb oblivion, an alien hand stroked the hair from my face, and soft lips landed strongly against my own. Shocked, I recoiled into my mattress, and the body pressed so tightly against mine straddled my hips in victory.

Dietrich.

Cain would have never sat astride me, and despite all his amazing abilities, he could hardly be the size and weight of a ten year old child.

I sat up and pushed Dietrich off me as hard as I could, but drunk as I was he only thudded against the floor at the foot of my bed. Immediately he jumped back up and flung himself at me, trying to wrap thin arms around me and push me down. It would have been ridiculously laughable to anyone watching (had it been light enough to see) but I was far from amused.

"What the hell are you doing?" I hissed, backhanding the boy.

"I love you Isaak! I love you! Can't you just love me? Please, just love me!" Dietrich was screeching like a creature possessed, clawing and kicking, tears streaming down his face and splattering pregnantly against my skin.

Dietrich would thrash one way, and knock me against my headboard, or he would manage to get his arm against my throat and cut off my air for a second, but I wrapped him up, and held his arms to his side. He kept struggling for a moment or two, and then slumped against me in defeat.

I held Dietrich tightly still, feeling his chest heave and pulse, waiting for his blood to slow down, waiting for the oxygen to reach his brain. When his breathing became regular I let him go, and he immediately turned around and slipped his hand into my shorts. Moving quickly, Dietrich pull my shorts open and wrapped his mouth around me, his tiny hands gripping my hips.

Stunned and disgusted, I recoiled noticeably, and Dietrich allowed his teeth to barely graze my growing desire. I knew that if I pushed him away he would bite me. He thought he was claiming me, that this animal act equated with love. I wanted to vomit.

Disturbed isn't really the appropriate word, and in my shock I froze for a moment, then I put my hands on Dietrich's shoulder and head, causing him to moan in discomfort. I knew that Dietrich fancied he held some real control, and had no idea how unpleasant I could make this on his end; apparently he did not appreciate being coached, because he immediately became stiff and puppet like, as though controlling his own body from standby. He began pushing against my hips then, begging to come up for air, even though I wasn't actually gagging him, he only thought I was, and I let him go. He pulled away from me so quickly that his mouth made an audible plop noise.

I pushed Dietrich away again, ashamed that I could possibly be aroused in such a situation, unsure what the next move should be. Dietrich sat on my knees, shuddering and mechanical, but he didn't need long to recover. He straddled my hips again, and gripping me with one hand, he pushed his full weight down on me.

The horror of the moment was lost in primal necessity, and I pulled him against me and pushed into him with all I had. He wriggled and laughed and gasped , and I gripped his shoulders tightly, and helped him to keep my beat.

The act, horrible as it was, was enhanced by its very wickedness. Small and light, Dietrich was easy to manipulate, and though he moaned like a whore, he was tight and hot. It didn't matter. He was doing this to me, not the other way around, or so I tried to convince myself.

"Isaak, you love me… I know you love me… Oh Isaak… Oh… I love you, oh god… Isaak I know you love me…" Dietrich's voice had became shrill, his insistence a mantra. The words floated across a chasm, and echoed in my brain, and I was lost in the madness of it all. "Tell me Isaak. Say it. Say you love me. Tell me. Please."

I couldn't.

Sickness pummeled me, and I pushed Dietrich (who seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly) off me, and leaned over the side of my bed and threw up. My erection withered immediately, but that could not take back the terrible events I'd just fallen into. In the midst of my retching I could hear Dietrich sobbing like a little girl, and it occurred to me that he had to be hurt, that his little body could in no way accommodate what had just transpired.

I felt sick, as though a black and ghastly cancer was consuming me wholly, swallowing me and delivering me into some hopeless abyss where I would suffer always. I was still vomiting when Dietrich threw back the curtains, illuminating the room, and began to scream at me.

"Why? Why don't you love me Isaak? Why can't you show me? I want to feel your cum seep out of me! I want to become part of you! I love you so much, don't you understand? Touch me Isaak! Make me something better, something true! Make me belong!" And he collapsed on my floor, on my favorite rug, as though cast down from heaven. I could not look at him.

"Are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere?" I stammered at length, unsure what else to do.

Dietrich answered me with his large liquid eyes, and said hollowly, "I've been fucked harder."

I left him there, on my floor, a broken and ragged thing, dead on the inside, the same as he'd come, and I tried to scrub the sins out of my flesh again, a repentance I'd never complete, the age old ritual of my life.