A/N- Enjoy.
Disclaimer: Not ours.
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The Thinnest Veil
Prologue
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Cold. Wet. Hard. Fingernails clutched at the satin, clawing their way through the fabric and hitting the mahogany walls that held him so tightly, like a babe sheltered in the arms of it's mother for all eternity, never moving. Amethyst, Crimson… the colors flowed together… making only black. Eyes that had not seen, were not meant to see ever again, blinked into the blackness of his confinement. He pushed with an inhumane strength, hearing a satisfying noise as the wood wrenched apart.
Strong arms, deceptively delicate fingers curled around the outer edges of the casket as he forced it out of his way. His lungs seemed to fight for breath, but felt no need to breath. It was a delayed reaction, not one that was truly needed, for the dead did not need breath.
The comfort of the dirt that had been his home for a year, a year of what was supposed to be peace… his eternal rest. Rest was the worst word for it. Death did not bring rest, not for him. It had brought an endless repetition of the end. The worthless, senseless end of things. The end of life that had become the beginning of his torment.
The dirt flowed through nimble fingers, as would water were he in a pool. But this was now pool. This was a grave, his grave. He had to free himself of it, were he to assuage the bloodshed his fingertips were craving. A craving. A smile touched at cold lips, their first movement in that year, in anticipation of the hunt that lay ahead of him. He would have his revenge. Senseless to all things but that craving, he plowed upwards, endlessly through the weight of the dirt, until at last he was rewarded for his efforts with the coldness of open air.
He brushed himself off, a maneuver that only served to prove the silliness of this situation. Strawberry blonde hair, matted with dirt, glinted in the moonlight as he stripped himself of the black coat that had been cut up the back. Rigor Mortis had NOT been fun. The young man stared at the gravestones, reading the names of the four that rested together in death as they had in life, to himself. Lips moved silently as blue eyes moved over the names.
There was no real reason to read the names, he knew them as surely as he'd known his own. Hidaka Ken, Fujimiya Ran, Fujimiya Aya, Tsukiyono Omi. A soft squawking behind him alerted him that his time to move along had come. The night was young, as was he one more. The time for vengeance had been predestined, preordained, pre-established, and it's time was now. The Crow had returned to Tokyo.