Author's Note: This story is dedicated to a friend. You may not be dead, but you're as good as dead to me.

Disclaimer: Kuroshitsuji belongs to the amazing Yana Toboso. I just used her character to get out my anger.


He had heard it, he knew that he had. It hadn't been very loud, and it only lasted for a few seconds, but he had heard it. That scream; he knew what that scream meant. That was the last sound any of the experiments made. He had gotten used to hearing it. Normally he wasn't bothered by it. But that scream, it had sounded just like his friend. His closest friend. He couldn't be dead. There was no way that he was dead. It must have been someone that just sounded like his friend. Yes, that was it. They would be bringing his friend back any second now, unconscious, but alive. Just like they always did. If he lost his closest friend too, he wouldn't be able to take it.

He could hear footsteps coming down the hall. That must be them, bringing his friend back. They would put him back in his room across the hall, and then they'd leave again. He waiting for the sound of the key in the lock and the door opening, followed by the thump of his friend hitting the floor. But it never came. The footsteps walked by without stopping. That couldn't be right. No, that was wrong. The only time they didn't bring someone back right away was when they were . . . no! It wasn't true. Maybe he had just gotten the time wrong. Yes, the next footsteps would be the ones bringing his friend back. Because he was still alive. He had promised that he wouldn't die after his little bird friend had died. He had promised. So he wasn't dead.

Resting his head against the door, he listened carefully for more footsteps. He waited, and waited, and waited. As each minute crept by, he could feel his heart squeezing tighter and tighter. Why was it taking so long? There was a set scheduale here, only changed when an experiment died. It was only a slight change. Instead of bringing them back to their rooms, they were taken away. No one knew where, and he refused to think of the smell of burning flesh that always blew through his window on the days when people weren't brought back. There were enough images that haunted him when he closed his eyes, he didn't need to add the bodies of his friends being burned to the list.

He had almost fallen asleep when more footsteps came down the hall. He folded his hands in front of him, and prayed for them to stop. Prayed for his friend to still be alive. They didn't, and when that smell drifted into his room, he knew that he wasn't. He knew, but he didn't believe it. Wouldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it. He had promised. He . . . he . . . lied. He bit his lip until he could taste the blood on his tongue, his sight blurry from the tears falling down his face. His friend had lied to him. He had died. He wasn't ever coming back. His body was being turned to ashes. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Driving his fist into the metal of the door felt good for a second, but the feeling quickly passed. Now he just had a dent in his door and a broken heart. A shattered heart. He had been betrayed, and now he was alone. All of his friends were gone. Forever. He wanted to join them. Be thrown into the fire and disappear into a pile of ashes, never having to feel pain again. Maybe if he ran his head into the wall hard enough, it would kill him. But there was no maybe. He knew it wouldn't kill him. His body had been changed so that it couldn't kill him. They had tested him. He had ran his head into walls before. It didn't kill him.

Curled up in the fetal position, he realized that this experiment was going to be a failure. No matter how strong they made his body, his heart was still as weak as it had always been. They could spend their entire lives making the human body immortal, but in the end, a simple broken heart could kill them. All it took was one betrayal, one death, one rejection, and everything unraveled. They had wasted their money, and the lives of his friends. He knew that they were never going to succeed.

But he wasn't about to tell them to stop.

Not when there was a chance that their experiments could kill him.

Reduce him to to ashes.

And then he could be free.


Author's Note: Angsty short story is angsty orz. Writing a past Finny is a lot easier than a current Finny. I love Finny to bits, but he's a bit too happy for me to know how to write for. I can't imagine him being very happy in the past though . . . I apologize if it seems OOC. This was something I had to write, and since Finny needs more fanfiction love, I thought I'd give it a try. If I write another Finny story, I'll try to make it longer. This just kind of wrote itself, and it decided to be short . . . Yeah, um, thanks for reading.