Author's Note: Phantom of Inferno AU! Why? Because I just played the game again. I took the Claudia route the first time I played and this time I took the Ein route. And holy shit. I ended up getting bad endings both times. I tried not to, I swear DX

Anyway, the writing in this is cryptic and shitty. Really cryptic, really shitty. Bad. Just plain bad, my usual crap with a dash of ambiguity and an extra disjointed writing style. Highly mediocre and worthless. Doesn't follow any particular arc of the game because I don't want to be a cylon.

And here's a tip if you want to play Phantom of Inferno: don't try hard not to die and you'll probably live o3o

Murphy's Law.

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. And it has, yet again. Their plan has shattered, quite literally, the pieces of it showering. The most important one has ended up in Nathaniel's throat.

Castiel is made up of many things, he's been groomed to be a strategist and he feels like he's probably always been an opportunist and sometimes these conflict with each other and sometimes they don't. Right now he doesn't know what they're doing, all he knows is that with a few shots fired and a few windows imploded their plan has failed fantastically.

Time doesn't slow down, but it feels like it does and he's not sure if it's his training or his shock that makes it so. Logically speaking, the courses of action he could take right now are varying. He could try to make it out of the building undetected. He could surrender to Inferno. He coul—

He's scrambling over to Nathaniel before he can finish weighing the options, body on autopilot. Glass crunches beneath his shoes, obnoxiously loud. Anyone who heard it would scoff at the idea he used to be an assassin. He catches Nathaniel softly by the shoulders and lowers himself in unison, holding him awkwardly in his lap.

There's a lot he could say right now. Namely I'm sorry. There's a lot to apologize for.

I'm sorry I met you, Nathaniel, you bastard.

They met when he was thirteen. They met when Inferno scooped him off the boulevard, going who knows where — he sure doesn't — to be their next lab rat. They met when an equally thirteen year old Nathaniel mercilessly put him to the test with a sawtoothed blade and agility like a cat's.

'Why!?' he remembers screeching, terrified out of his wits, not just because he was being attacked, but because he suddenly didn't know who he was, where he was, when he was, or how he was.

Nathaniel didn't answer, merely sliced his shirt off and pressed the keen point of the blade under his chin. He grabbed him by the neck then. He doesn't remember how, burst of adrenaline maybe, misstep on Nathaniel's part maybe, primal instincts maybe. The why didn't matter, what mattered was he passed the test.

I'm sorry I trained with you.

Inferno didn't give him a choice, but in eighteen short years, Castiel has learned that there's always a choice. He could have refused. They had the proverbial gun to his head, guillotine over his neck, fire under his ass, but he still could've refused. He could've planted his feet and refused to move, refused to speak, refused to do anything.

But he didn't. Petrified, amnesiac, despairing child he was, he agreed.

He trained hard, put effort into it. He tried not to think about the family he might've had somewhere. He tried not to wonder if he had friends who missed him. He tried not to conjecture what his name might've been or where he could come from. Nathaniel wiped the floor with him just about every day. He slept in a windowless box of a room and struggled against weights and held guns almost as heavy as they were terrifying.

Conversing with Nathaniel was nearly as hard as the training, but he did that too.

"Why do you have a name?"

"I'm not like you. I wasn't a random scooped off the street. My parents are Inferno executives. I hope to be one too." Nathaniel cupped his chin in his hands and leered at him from the perch of a rafter, eyes as steel as the blade on his arm.

The next day he managed to take it from him and nick the nape of his neck.

I'm sorry I let you.

He let Nathaniel become an executive. He didn't have the standing to do so, but he did have the skill. At fourteen he surpassed him, he was good enough to be the Phantom and so he was. Nathaniel wasn't needed for the spot anymore, no, he got to move onto the politics involved, the trade, orchestrating the sabotage, assassinations, intimidation tactics.

He was just the harbinger of it all, the Phantom.

"From this point on, you exist solely for the purpose of killing other people. That, and protecting me." Nathaniel announced it with that razored grin of his, white suit spotless and tie like a silky noose. He just didn't notice it then. Neither of them did.

"That last part wasn't in the original description," he grunted bleakly, not quite sure if he minded. He probably didn't.

"Now it is."

I'm sorry I listened to you.

He was the best, without a doubt. Inferno never had a better Phantom. He was rapid, elusive, shadowy. Never unnecessarily brutal, but always as brutal as they wanted him to be. Perfection. Undercover he could pull off whoever they wanted him to be and erase that caricature as easily as he erased lives. Bodies piled up and up and up and up.

He might've minded it if he had anything else to fall back on. But he didn't, after all, he was just the Phantom. It's not as if he ever killed anyone particularly undeserving either. Inferno dealt with shady people, Inferno silenced shady people.

His life was relatively luxurious. He had a waterbed, tasteful furnishings, whatever weapon he asked for. As per his position as Nathaniel's personal guard dog, he dined with the other executives and carried a favorable popularity.

He fucked Nathaniel too, sometimes.

I'm sorry I failed you.

It took a couple years for him to fail, and then he only failed once. By all means, it was an awful failure. Embarrassing. Messy. He doesn't remember much of it. He was aiming to take out a Godoh associate, then there was a blade that wasn't his, and he woke up to the impersonal white of a hospital.

"I fucked up." He almost laughed about it. It wasn't funny at all, but they had him on the good dope. The kind that has you fuzzy and warm, the feeling where you're encased in a fleece blanket fresh out of the dryer and parked right in front of a crackling fireplace.

"You did. You're going to be in here two to three months." Nathaniel sighed through his nose. "You were a disaster when they brought you in, I hope you realize. You needed surgery. I had to clean up the mess you left myself."

"I'll make it up to you next time." However bad it was, the damage couldn't be permanent. Inferno wouldn't have bothered patching him up if it wasn't, they would've thrown him out like trash.

"You're fired," Nathaniel stated flatly, eyes pure golden ice.

It took a moment to sink in and by the time it did, the blonde was already walking to the door. But that couldn't be right, couldn't be right at all. People didn't get fired from Inferno. When they weren't wanted anymore, they got killed. He bolted upright, feeling a wound on his side scream as it reopened.

"Wait! Nat, what—!"

"You failed. The Phantom doesn't fail. You did. You're fired. It's simple." Nathaniel never even turned back around, tone as frigid as his gaze.

"One mistake in three years, that's it! What the fuck else am I supposed to do!?"

Nathaniel was quiet for a moment. "One mistake is one too many. It's tolerated from others from time to time, but you're supposed to be infallible. You've proved you're not. As far as what else you're going to do with yourself...I'm not your boss anymore. Figure it out. Your first name's Castiel, we picked you up in France. They burned your file and I don't remember anything else, but if you want to do something with that, go ahead."

"You...I'm not weak!" He couldn't go anywhere, too late to process thoughts of going anywhere, Inferno was home.

"I didn't say you were weak. I said you were unemployed."

And then he left.

I'm sorry you never knew what it's like outside of this twisted business.

He wanted revenge on Nathaniel for that shitty little stunt; kicking him to the curb when he'd never even known anything else. Or he supposed he had, before Inferno wiped his memory, but that was besides the point. But he put revenge on hold. It would be unwise to go after Nathaniel when he wasn't one hundred percent, and after two and a half months of being laid up, well, he wasn't one hundred percent.

He went to France instead.

Life outside Inferno wasn't perfect. People were still cruel, people were still idiotic, most things had strings attached one way or the other. But it was nicer. Nicer than life with Inferno. He met decent people, picked up hobbies. He could breathe without tasting Cuban cigars or someone else's blood. He had time to think about other things.

He thought about attempting to track down who he might've been, or family he might've had, but never did. It wouldn't be easy without a surname and narrowed down location and anyhow, it'd probably be weird. Whoever they were, if they even existed, likely thought he was dead. And they would certainly have questions. He could definitely bullshit them, he'd been undercover numerous times, but it felt like it'd be wrong.

It took leaving Inferno to realize he hated Inferno.

Somehow a job in an old record shop was suiting. In there it smelled like dry sponges and mint gum. Music emitted from a dusty player scratched and skipped and still managed to be wonderful. Customers were frequent but the place was never packed, and they were a lot less annoying than most of the people he'd encountered in his prior occupation.

Putting off vengeance became forgetting vengeance. He liked his new life too much, it wasn't worth the trouble. Clean fingernails were infinitely more comfortable than his waterbed ever was. Having a name was better than having a German number and conversations with others were just that, conversations. There was no game of layers lacing the words, syllables hinging on the greedy hope the other would tip their hand.

He dyed his hair red. No particular reason, he just felt like it.

I'm sorry I didn't understand you.

Apparently Nathaniel didn't have the clearance to fire him. He may have been Nathaniel's defense, but he was Inferno's pet. They found him after he started rooming with Lysander (this really weird, mellow dude that he found at some bakery, wandering around lost). It was Kim they sent, and apparently if he came back willingly there wouldn't be any problems. None at all.

He was naturally stupefied. Why in the ever loving fuck would Nathaniel drop him when he wasn't even allowed to?

It occurred to him with a sharp, jarring pop he heard in his head and somehow also saw. Nathaniel didn't fire him because he messed up, Nathaniel fired him because he got hurt. That spooked him, so he wanted to make sure it wouldn't happen again. He fired him because he cared.

Ha. Who would've thought?

But there was no way in hell he was going back to Inferno.

I'm sorry I came back for you.

Okay, so he went back to Inferno. Not to offer his services, that was never going to happen again, but he went back for Nathaniel. Because evidently Nathaniel cared. He cared too and Inferno was toxic. He put a few knives in his former superiors' backs and fished him out of a detention pocket. Bruises rented his skin, pulsing new ones over fading old ones and Castiel knew exactly why.

"You told them I was dead, eh Nat?"

"Yes." Battered or not, he was as cold as ever.

"Then put the gun down. We both know you're not going to shoot me."

Nathaniel paused and then slowly did as instructed. "It's a habit."

"It wouldn't be if you got out of here. C'mon, Nat. There's more to life than taking it." He held his hand out. "And hey, I broke a lot of rules to get here. You're either picking Inferno or me. Who's it gonna be?"

Nathaniel accepted his hand.

And now they're here. He has eight sorrys for eight seconds, but he can't choke any of them out. So much to say, so much to say, but all he manages is,

"You're fine. You're fine. Just focus on me, okay? Look at my face, think about how bad you want to punch it." He feels like there's glass in throat too now, and he just can't swallow it down.

Even when his breathing is labored and rapid, moist with blood and painful to listen to, Nathaniel has that gaze. Terrifying, unmoving, gelid suns in his skull. As keen and vivid as a lion's gaze. It's his gaze that shakes since he can't really shake his head.

"I'm sorry," he rasps out, broken voice nearly inaudible and as erratic as his dwindling breathes. "For everything, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Liquid ruby drips from every syllable.

"Idiot," Castiel grunts. "The last thing you should be doing right now is talking."

"The last thing you should be d...doing...Is sticking around to listen." A fragile jagged bubble of noise floats up Nathaniel's massacred throat and leaves his bloodied lips, followed by another one. Laughter.

Castiel's never heard him laugh before, ever. Well shit, he sure picked a time for it. He dies like that. Hell, laughing is probably what speeds it up. It takes everything Castiel has to set him on the glass-strewn warehouse floor. After being primed on a cycle of slaughter, it shouldn't make him feel so sick to listen to the low crunch of shards under Nathaniel's lifeless weight, but it does.

He almost vomits in his mouth. He almost cries too. He does stand up.

There's a distint click as the muzzle of a gun nudges the back of his head. Its owner giggles coyly. He knows that giggle, Inferno's latest product, Drei— Debrah. Their next Phantom.

"It's cute how you thought you could actually get away with this," she chirps, words dripping with sugared poison. They're the last ones he's ever going to hear.

Now to pursue the Mio route and try not to die. Wish me luck...Or not, my mediocre self really don't deserve it e_e'