His vision was blurry.

Through the pain, he could barely see the forms that he was slowly crawling towards. The blood that clung to his black clothing and to the tips of his fingers smeared with each reach that he gave, leaving streaks as he pulled his body across the floor. They were the tracks of a wounded animal; the written language born out of human desperation. Soon, he realized that his legs were not useless, as heavy and frail as they seemed to be, and he pulled his knees underneath him. The pain shot through his entire body again and the priest gritted his teeth as the blazing heat reached out through all of his limbs and made coherent thought near impossible. Had he not been taught that pain was supposed to be suffered through as a revelation of the human condition; an example of the pain of this temporal world he lived in? He knew, however, that it would all be over once the pain ceased.

Pain was being alive.

Hazy vision meant there was still a world for him to see.

Through labored breath he finally managed to reach his goal: a hump against the flattened surface with clothes that hung loosely over its broken limbs and dark hair fanned out so it looked like unraveled spools of thread across a spreading, red sea. It was lifeless and cold; its existence already fleeting. This is what he grabbed on to and what he draped his body over as if to protect what was left. Just an object of his temporary attention that was all too human. Grasping at its side, he forced it to roll onto its back and suddenly it all-too-human wasn't human enough. Bullets had made her once fair facial features indistinguishable so that she was no longer Little Abigail.

His eyes, in their weakened and quaking state, had been the only things that had been spared the burning sensation. Now, however, he could not do enough to stop them from stinging. Hunching over her body, the tears came freely. Where was his strength at now? What had his resolve brought him? Where was He at now? What had he done?

Was He watching all of this occur?

'The bastard.'

His own sobbing nearly drowned out the sound of booted feet approaching him. It was when those black leather boots kicked over another body and a sickening bubbling groan cut through the air did his grief seize up in his chest. Someone else was still alive.

Click.

"…No."

Silence.

"Don't… do it…"

There was a cracking blow as if lightning had struck through the small church and it was followed by one, last gasping sigh and then… nothing. Ulquiorra clutched at the dead monstrosity underneath him, soaking what dry spots were left in its clothing with his free-flowing tears. Nothing was working out the way that it was supposed to. Nothing that he believed would happen was occurring. He had been told countless times that it was all hopeless and yet he foolishly placed his faith in the improvable and this is what it had gotten him.

Outside, the sun had already fallen like his hope and the moon had risen to take its place as a silent and cold vigil of the bleakness of reality. A deadly chill started to wash over the small town and just outside of the walls of the church, the marching and mechanical trudges of jeeps, tanks and soldiers made a warring symphony that fell of deaf and dead ears.

"The Fuhrer would be proud of this accomplishment. You should be thankful that you served a purpose for him, Father," the woman said as she pulled back on the charging handle of his weapon, dropped the magazine and slapped in a new on. She stepped forward until she was standing in front of him and waited with mocking patience as he lifted his head to look at her.

"What have you done? These were innocent people," Ulquiorra whispered as he pushed himself to his knees.

"They were enemies of the Fuhrer and weak at that. You're wasting your tears on the impure, Priest," she spat at him.

"They were simply survivors. Civilians. They could do no more harm to you than a fly would," Ulquiorra said as he pushed himself to his knees, though he couldn't find the strength to lift his arms or to get to his feet. There wasn't a need to, though. What did he expect to accomplish even now? What purpose did he have now that everything that he had hoped to accomplish had been pulled from under his feet and then chased like vermin and put down like strays? His mouth moved but only inaudible whispers came out.

The woman knelt down in front of him, the SS insignia on the corners of her jacket still having a brilliant shine in the light of the moon's rays that peered through the windows. She must have heard some of it for his eyes gave an inquisitive stare straight into Ulquiorra's sea-green eyes.

"What was that?"

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

"A prayer? Do you want absolution, Father Cifer?" she asked with a wry smirk splayed across his visage.

She searched his eyes for an answer and soon found that he wasn't looking at her. Her brows furrowed and the corners of her lips were drawn down into a frown as she turned her head over her shoulder to glance at what he was looking at. Behind her was the very same pulpit that she had watched him give sermon and where they had shared their first kiss… and beyond that, the crucifix to which a Statue of Jesus Christ was melded onto against the wall. She sighed.

"Father, do not disgrace yourself," she whispered to him. She took one of her gloved hands and pressed her fingers into the blood pooled on the ground around them. Starting at his forehead, the Nazi officer helped him make a cross over the front of his body. She handled him with such gentleness that he imagined, for a brief moment, that this was all a terrible dream; that something was missing; something that would give blessed reason to the hell that he had been cast into. She let his hand drop back down and she stood up. "Enemy of the Fuhrer or not, we would not want a servant of the Lord to go to Hell. We are soldiers and servants, but we are not devils, Father Cifer."

"I thought… I thought that thing would be different. You said there was something different about me," he let out in hoarse words that strained the muscles in his throat.

"I said a lot of things to you, Father."

"How many of them were true?"

He took his attention off of the crucifix and rested it on the woman who slung her automatic weapon across her back. She pulled out a pistol from her side, loaded a bullet into the chamber and raised it to Ulquiorra's forehead. He wasn't afraid, though. He was already a dead man and the cold, dark embrace of death would be a welcome change from the hell that he was surrounded with.

"How many of them were true, Elisa?" he demanded with a roar that caught the both of them off guard.

Ulquiorra fell forward onto his hands and coughed. Crimson liquid splattered on the ground and he wiped it away from his lips with one hand before Elisa nudged his head back upwards with her pistol underneath his chin. His gaze was different then, she realized. It excited and scared her at the same time. This was not the stare of a priest trying to search for the good parts of her soul… it was hateful. She canted her head to the side as she curiously watched him.

"None of them."

The physical pain that he had endured previously was dwarfed by the clenching squeeze of his heart being ripped from his chest with just those three words uttered so coldly that even Elisa shook when she had spoken them. She pulled back on the hammer of her pistol and held it in front of her with a single hand; a shaky grip with quivering fingers around the final resolution to months of theatrics. This was all that she had worked for and she was gleefully excited that this was going to be the end of it.

Ulquiorra moved his eyes towards the ground, suddenly finding himself unable to find comfort in the cross or in her face. While he was thinking of the end, of how his entirely life had amounted to hurt, betrayal, disgust, pain and death, Elisa was thinking of the future. It was a future serving the Fuhrer and the glorious dream that he had helped her entire country to realize. She had resolve. Purpose. And she had solidified it by plucking it from the man who had placed his faith in false hopes and love.

"Ulquiorra."

There was no response from him. She tapped him on the cheek with her gun.

"Ulquiorra, Dear."

She saw his lips move and through the relative silence between them, she finally took notice to what he was saying. Over and over again, she heard her own name being whispered from his lips and she strained her ears to hear them. He was recounting his sins again and they all were about her. Though she had betrayed him, she couldn't help but feel infuriated with what she was hearing.

Elisa readied her aim and sent a bullet straight through the center of his chest. Ulquiorra's words were cut short as he toppled backwards towards the ground and made no movement save for the twitching of his fingertips and lips. The world was still burry. Shaking now, but he could still see.

The ceiling wasn't his sky for very long for Elisa soon stepped over him; her long dark-range hair curtained against the sides of her head. Blood was seeping from the priest's exist wound but she didn't hold any regret in her heart for him. Her eyes, dark brown, still sang of fiery grief that was a sort of her own. This man had dared to reduce her to nothing but a horrid footnote in the scope of his life to be easily written off on his path to heaven? She tucked a few stray strands of hair behind her ear and put her pistol into its holster. She didn't need to raise his gun at him again.

'Let the bastard bleed out,' she thought as she waved a hand in the air and ordered her men to begin the purging operation. She left the church without another word to him. The town was set to go up in flames and with the fires and plumes of smoke, she'd burn away and the cloud the memory of the priest forever. She'd make sure that all of his regrets would perish with him, or at the very least, become mode as the coming rain would wash against the ashen remnants of the town.

By the time the fire began to stalk closer, Ulquiorra had ceased being able to breathe due to his injuries. Only chortles of bubbling blood spurting out from the gaping wound of his chest came when he tried. He turned his eyes downward so he could still see a bit of the cross and the man that he had put his faith in. Perhaps if Elisa had waited, she would have taken comfort in knowing that she was not his biggest sin or his biggest regret.

No, that had been reserved for the last thought that he had as his eyes remain latched upon the holy symbol that had was being clouded by smoke and licked at by fire.

'I regret that I ever believed that any of this mattered… that anything mattered.'