Sometimes Crescendo misses Jazz—and not just the darkly frightening and fearless man who bears his name. He misses the boy he knew as a child, the one with freckles and baby fat and choppy black hair that never laid quite flat. He misses the merriment he used to see in those too-wide amber eyes. He misses his laughter. He misses the Jazz that had been beaten down over and over again, raped and wounded and pushed and shoved and laughed at and spit on... the Jazz that stood up every single time with nothing harder or meaner in him than a rueful smile.
He remembers himself back then, too: a shy, blonde prince that had to be wrestled into his royal vestments every morning. He'd liked to read and draw and watch the snowflakes twirling down, and he'd been taught by strangers who didn't love him things he would spent the rest of his life trying to forget. They had showed him how to fight, how to swing a sword and throw a punch, and how to fake diplomacy and sex and the subtle art of giving a damn.
They showed him how to become the very thing he despised, a man with enough power to rule the world and none of the strength to wield it. Even now, looking over the papers and reports that bear Count Waltz's name, Crescendo shakes his head and whispers to himself, There but for the grace of God go I.
And there, he fears, without the grace of God, goes Jazz.