Consider this my apology for not having Castle of Glass ready for all of you. This takes place shortly after the end of Knight but before the events of Castle of Glass. As usual, I do not own Pandora Hearts, its characters, its universe, or any part of its franchise. Dedicated to one A(zadari) for always encouraging me and for helping me come up with the premise for this drabble-type-thing.
Alyss' kiss tormented him, past, present, and future. Her lips slanting against his own, soft and pliant as she parted them invitingly, haunted his days and his nights. She had left him quite literally breathless that night, and he had yet to recover from the sensation. As hard as he tried to breathe, there was no air in his lungs and nothing but the taste of her on his tongue. His mind could not process the incident or the feelings it stirred in him, and it left him with a deep emptiness inside and a perpetual feeling of nausea. Surely, a simple little kiss could not have upended his world so easily? He was kidding himself if the thought that kiss simple, true, but he was a grown man!
A strangled grunt escaped the former professor as he slumped to his knees. The migraines, too. This was perhaps his twentieth in the days following that debacle. What had that girl done to him? With the debilitating ache pounding through his skull, he struggled to his feet, wavering there with one hand on the wall until a gentle touch came to rest on his elbow. He shoved it away with more vehemence than he had ever shown another living creature.
"What did you do to me?" he growled, clawing at the area over his heart as a searing pain flared against his pectoral.
"Al…phonse…?" whispered a hesitant voice.
"I asked you what the hell you'd done!" he roared.
Swinging around violently, he grabbed the small girl by her shoulders and fixed her with a demanding glare. Her pretty lavender eyes went wide at the rough handling, showing him a reflection of himself, some monster looming over her with his teeth half bared like a feral animal. She gave a tiny whimper, shrinking away. He paid little mind other than to pull her closer, but the action was entirely without affection, and her feet dragged helplessly against the floor. Rather than answer him, she lifted her tiny hands and shoved against his chest, pleading for him to let her go. This he did only reluctantly as he saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes.
I'll take care of you, he recalled himself saying, protect you.
What was he doing? He let her go as if she were an angel and he a demon, her presence painful to him. That was certainly what it felt like. Little purple flowers with green roots blossomed where his fingers had pressed into her tender skin, and he stared at them with a chilling vortex of horror where his stomach had been. Hardly daring to breathe the same air as her and overwhelmed with surge of claustrophobia, he lurched away from the wall and stumbled behind the sofa. Like a child, Alphonse crouched behind the sole piece of furniture in the room and made himself as small a target as possible.
In an attempt to stave off the residue nausea from having witnessed the pain he'd caused Alyss, the despondent young man tucked his knees up to his chest and bowed his head between them. Never before in his life had he experienced such a strange rush of emotion as in those past few minutes. He could not recall a time, even his time in captivity, in which he had felt so angry, and certainly had he never laid his hands on a woman in such a manner. What was the matter with him? Whatever it was, he'd had no right to take it out on Alyss in such a manner. Good Lord, Alyss! She probably—
At a cool touch in the sweat-soaked tangle of hair on his head, he jerked his head back in reflex, succeeding only in exacerbating the throbbing at the base of his skull as he made contact with the hard Victorian backing. While he nursed the injury with restrained hisses and gasps, a small warmth parted his knees and slipped between them to nestle against his chest. When the stars and blinding lights faded from his vision, he found himself blinking slowly into quiet lilac irises. She didn't say anything to him yet, but she took a soft cloth she seemed to have dipped in water and held it against his forehead.
"Alyss…I…"
"It's okay," she promised. "Are you?"
"No, I…I don't think so…I don't feel like…me," he confessed, clenching and unclenching his hands at his side to circumvent any urges to put them on her body again. "Something is wrong with me."
"Maybe it is because you are a Chain now," she suggested innocently enough, but the notion, so simple, threw him for a loop. "I have seen many humans…change."
"Is that what you did when you kissed me?" he asked slowly. "Made me into a Chain?"
She did not seem to hear him, her brows drawing together and her eyes shining with worry. "Please don't become a monster, Alphonse! I want you to…to stay as you are…with me."
"Chains are…humans that have been changed by the Abyss. In making me a Chain, you took away my humanity." The old anger he felt before threatened to surface, gnashing its teeth and snarling for recompense for the precious thing that had been taken from him.
But I was given Alyss in return; is she not just as precious?
Without a doubt. But he'd hurt her, and there the guilt surged again, the anger distracted by a mere mirror image of itself. Catching the crestfallen expression on her face as he had uttered those words, however, he tactfully shifted his tone and gave himself leave to brush just one white knuckle across her cheek.
"…These headaches and emotions are…just…changes my body is going through as it adapts. You do not have anything to worry about."
At least…I will endeavor to be sure nothing more to worry you should happen.
He tried to smile for her, but it came out as a grimace instead. She scooted closer and folded the cloth a new way so that it was cool again against his skin. They sat that way for a long while, his muscles quivering as he endeavored not to touch her—not to hurt her again. In spite of his promises, he did not know if he could trust himself with her. Did not know what he would do to her, besides. His body shook, too, as muscle spasms related, he now assumed, to the change began their assault. Not one minute of all the research that he had done in his life had prepared him for becoming part of this world. It was akin to suffering from the withdrawal of a drug, he thought morbidly as a cold sweat began to bead up on his back, save for the fact that his drug had been humanity.
"Alphonse…"
She was calling to him, a siren sanctuary in the storm. How could he have ever hurt something so dear to him? Beckoned from the depths of his thoughts, he saw that she had dimmed the lights for him and was holding on to him with her arms wrapped around his neck. Exhaling a trembling breath, he dropped his head forward to her as she caressed the skin of his throat and pressed her lips to his. With the couch at his back, there was nowhere to run, but she would not have allowed him to do so anyway, cradling his head in her hands and enticing him with those sweet little movements of hers; a stroke of her lips here, a tilt of her head there. A noise of need escaped him, low and new, every piece of her being calling him in. When at last he let his hands settle on her waist, she let air pass singularly between them again, bringing his head down to rest on her collarbone while she rubbed circles soothingly on his back.
Yes. His drug had been humanity. But, like it or not, he had traded his humanity in for another drug to which his soul would be chained forever.