A/N : This story has been written for the WA's One-word Prompt challenge. It's also the first story I've written directly in english. Big kuddos to Zagzagel and StopTalkingAtMe and Igenlode Wordsmith who have been over this story many times and spotted my non-english native SPaG mistakes and explained me how to correct them.

While Sebastian and David's characters are my creation, this story is largely inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's Pickman's model. And a bit by the graphic novel ''Mauvais Genre" by Chloé Craduchet for it's powerful depiction of WWI conditions and post-traumatic syndrom.

Hey! You! Yes, you! I have some questions to ask you!
- Is Sebastian too passive?
- What do you think of that ''humming sound?''
- What do you think of the 0 and 1?
- Should I write back this story in present tense or leave it back to past tense?
- What do you understand of the finale?

Best regards!

Psst! I listen over and over again to Station 13 and Memoria, from Indochine while writing this. You might want to try it and translate their lyrics from french to english?

November 11th 1921, London, United Kingdom.*

The red spot spread across the canvas like a parasite eating away at its host. I saw it destroy everything I had done today, devouring every details I had carefully painted. I lowered my head. My ears were buzzing. I was dizzy, so dizzy, as if I was falling down. How many hours had I worked on that last night? Or yesterday? Or the day before? I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember anything.

I removed my filthy glasses and stared at the basement ceiling. A section of plaster was missing and a hole in the mouldering wood revealed the pipes that ran under the flooring above. The rain that had been pounding the windows all day had gone silent, and the steady drip of water from the bulge on the ceiling had ceased. The drip that had ruined the painting hadn't come from the leak. I sighed and moved my swollen fingers as if I wasn't sure they still belonged to me. I stuck my brush in a dirty glass and took my army knife from the table behind me. I scratched, carefully, on the canvas to remove the unwanted spots, but another drop fell on the painting. I looked at what I had done. I couldn't let that dreadful spot stop me now. I'd delayed it too much. They were furious. My time was over. They were here now.

I wasn't alone anymore.

- 010010010100000101001101 -

"…tting married, Sebastian."

I froze, for a moment. I pulled the door of my workshop behind me to enter in the other room. I wiped my paint knife with a scrap of cloth, put it into my apron pocket, clinging with all my strength to the knife. The metal hurt my palm, but I couldn't care less. I couldn't move or speak.

David.

After all these years, he was in the middle of my rooms, standing there in front of an unfinished painting I'd abandoned there because they weren't pleased with it. His gabardine trench coat was dripping on the wood floor and his army boots were shining, as always. There were three golden stars sewn to his epaulettes, so he had been promoted to captain since the last time I had seen him. His throat quivered as he stared, without a word, at the canvas, nervously biting his lip. As if I wasn't there, he turned away to look at the rotting food abandoned on a plate by the camp bed. He stared a moment at the torn yellowed sheets and at the rusty old sink in the other corner of the small room. He removed his soaking wet cap to pass a hand over his damp, fair hair. The scar on his right temple had faded, but I could still see how surgical it was. He lowered his head for a moment before looking up again at the painting.

"Those bloody caves at the Somme. You keep painting those caves over and over again. And those repugnant beasts, all skin, bones and claws, covered in dirt, crawling in the shadows like… like… My god…. Is this how you honour the memory of your dead comrades? Don't you know which day we are?" He groaned with pain and wiped the sweat from his forehead. "In that appalling art gallery window, the one on Newport Street, I saw your name on a sign. I thought- I don't know what I thought… I thought I might see one of your beautiful drawings of those little French villages I was so fond of. God… I mean, it was as if I could see them coming back to life under your pencil. I never understood why your father forced you to join the Army. You were far too sensitive for all that. But you had so much talent, Sebastian… Did you think I wouldn't recognize those inscriptions that we engraved on those cave walls together?"

He stopped to catch his breath, almost panting. He took one step toward the canvas and stroked it gently with his fingertips, showing fascination, tenderness, fear and guilt. Always guilt. It was the same gesture he'd used to touch me in the darkness of those caves. He stared at the bluish light that came from the closed shutters behind me. "The war- The war is over, Sebastian. You need to move on. Find yourself a girl. What happened there was-"

His voice broke, falling below even a whisper. There was a strong metallic taste in my mouth and my throat was sore. I wanted to reach for him, to feel that scar against my fingers, but my arm was heavy. My own voice sounded strange and distant, almost like a rusty growl. "Don't you remember, David?"

His gray eyes fell on me as if he was seeing me for the first time since he had arrived. His expression changed into one of surprise, yet his lips were moving with incomprehension

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"… bleeding, for Christ's sake!"

I stared at the knife in my palm. It had left deep, red marks on my skin. As I looked down, red drops appeared on the floorboards, reminding me that I needed to finish my work. David's voice sounded so far away, buried by the buzzing in my head. I wanted to return back to those caves and feel his body against mine once more. But I was so late. I closed my eyes for a moment. Just a moment.

His cold hands removed my glasses and moved the hair away from my face. His warm breath tickled my left cheek, the pulse from his wrist beat against my skull, as he pressed his handkerchief to the side of my head.

"What the hell happened, Sebastian? It- it looks like an animal's bite. It's going to get infected. What kind of rats do you have in this dreadful pit?"

I looked at the door that led to my workshop. Fool that I was, I'd left it ajar. The rain had started again and was beating on the shutters even harder now. I could hear the growling getting nearer and nearer. Was that something moving in the shadows? I closed my eyes again.

Shy fingers stroked gently at my beard, and the springs of the camp bed squeaked, as David stood from it and kneeled in front of me. He cupped my face in his hands, forcing me to look at him, and sadness flooded, in his eyes full of tears. "When was the last time you shaved? When did you last sleep or even eat, Sebastian?"

I glanced at the plate next to my bed. The untouched bread had gone moldy. Rats and flies had eaten what was left. I couldn't remember when I'd put it there. I looked at David without a word. What was there to say?

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"… Sebastian."

His damp hairs tingled against my forehead and the heat of his skin was against mine. I felt his fingers going down slowly on my neck and the gentle pressure of his thumbs against my throat. His voice was a whisper in my ear. "I do remember, all right? Everything. How could I ever forget you? I still wake up with the feel of your warmth on my chest. You were so sweet… so innocent back then. But... but because of what we did, forty-eight men died that night. It was our guard shift, for God's sake, we knew the Boche were surrounding us at the surface. And… and what we did was… an abomination, you understand? These men were our comrades, our friends. They trusted us. We failed in our duty. We failed them. They all died because of us, Sebastian."

He stopped for a moment to catch his breath. His hands were shaking now. I remembered well that guard shift. He had volunteered for it and had ordered me to follow him. I remembered his impish smile when he said the Germans wouldn't dare attack in that thick fog. His hand leading me through the unoccupied part of the caves, that cognac bottle he pulled from his coat and my bare skin against the stone as his hands were on me.

"When I close my eyes, I can still hear the echoes of their screams, and their agonized gurgles in the darkness, as the Boche butchered them. I know you hear them, too. I see it in all your paintings. Those accusing, distorted, inhuman faces standing just below those insane words of love that we carved on those walls. It's like they're going to climb out of the canvas and shred us to pieces, like the Boche did to them."

His handsome face was now covered in sweat, drawn by pain. His speech was getting more and more frantic, rising in pitch, and I could smell his fear. I knew damn well what was torturing him. These incoherent and horrific flashes that must have been appearing in his mind while he was trying to live a normal life and connect to that woman he didn't love. I just knew.

His grip tightened on my throat. "You need to stop, Sebastian. You need to stop painting those horrible things and those inscriptions. One day, someone will trace us back and find out what we did. And they will jail us in Wandsworth for buggery and hang us like dogs for murder and high treason. Is that what you want?"

"You're wrong, David." I gasped for some air. "Don't you remember the sound of their jaws crushing the soldiers' bones? The scraping of their claws on the stone? Or the sound of their restless grunts as they forced us further and further into the darkness to escape them? And their inhuman laughs when their… their masters took us into their viscous arms like disarticulated puppets?" My parched lips were painful as I gave him a wretched smile. "It wasn't the Germans, David."

David's eyes widened as he looked at me. Was he beginning to recall something? Slowly, I pulled his head to my chest and stroked his scar with my fingers. I felt the raised skin against my thumb. I found myself once more underground, freezing to death in those gloomy cells, deep down.

I could feel those needles piercing my skin and the coldness of the metal digging into my skull. I could remember the pain in my arm as I tried to reach the warmth of David's unconscious body. I could feel the sticky hot blood in his hair and that metallic thing they implanted inside him.

"Don't you remember the boy in that nightmare with us, David?"

Beneath that dreadful buzzing sound, I could hear the terrified sobs of the poor German boy. Had he even been sixteen? Why did they send someone so young to the front? Why did they send us to that carnage? I couldn't tell where he was, in that pitch blackness. All I was able to understand was that he was crying for his mother. Mutti, mutti, he had cried, over and over again. I remember trying to sing him a lullaby my mother used to sing to me as they tore his body apart. His agonized screams still echoed in my mind.

David released his grip on my throat and his whole body began to shake, a long moan escaping him. Was he crying? Then he slowly lifted his reddened angry face. It was deformed in a cruel and mocking laugh, like the ones we had heard while our men were dying.

"That bloody Boche brat. He pissed on himself and didn't know how to handle his fucking bayonet properly. It's probably why they abandoned him there in the first place. I would have done the same. God knows how he managed to hit me in the face with it. We gave him forty-eight blows with his the butt of own gun. For each of my men he and his little friends had put down…"

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"…killed him."

The tip of his tongue brushed against his lips. His mouth widened into a beastly smile, as I shook my head, trying to explain again what really happened that night. I couldn't understand what he was saying; the humming sound was too loud now. They wanted me to return to work and to finish that appalling painting, I knew it. He shoved me away in rage, wrenched the army knife from my hand, and pointed it at me. Where did this disgust I saw in his eyes came from?

" You're totally insane, Sebastian." David lip's curled into a dreadful grin. ''You're–"

He froze and slowly turned towards the entrance of my workshop. He was pale as a corpse, his hand tight on the knife. He had heard it this time, too. The stealthy scraping of their claws against the wooden floor. The door was now completely open and shadows were dancing in the twilight. I heard him breathe hard and whisper to himself. "That was not a rat." He took one step towards the door and gave me a frightened glance. "No... The Court Martial... Who paid you to frame me, Sebastian? It's Gordon, isn't it? That jealous arsehole bastard! He's the one who should rot in jail. Not me! Who the bloody hell is in that room? Who's there?!"

I tried to stop him, but he pushed me violently and my head smashed into the wall. My body refused to obey. I wanted to intervene, put myself between him and the door. My cries were almost incomprehensible as I begged him not to enter.

"David, please! Don't go there! Don't–"

I heard glass shatter on the floor and the canvas I was working on in my workshop ripping violently. His screams of terror echoed throughout the basement and the gurgles that followed as the claws pierced his flesh would scar my mind for ever.

I do not know how long I stayed there on the floor. Slowly, I got up and went to my studio. I picked up the knife that David had abandoned in his terror. In the dim light, I saw the man I loved, curled up like a child in a corner, his mouth screaming silently and his eyes fixed on what was left of the canvas, in front of him. And two red spots, glowing in the shadow above him, like blooming flowers. I smiled and cautiously draw near him, humming a sweet lullaby to him. All I had to do was get David's head between my hands and carefully remove what they had planted beneath the scar. Then he would have his memories back. He would remember everything and we would be together. Together. Toge01110100011010000110010101110010 –

The end.

A/N : While in the U.S., November 11th is called ''Veteran day'', in Canada, the U.K. and other Commonwealth Countries, it's call ''Remembrance Day', 'Armistice day' or ''Jour du Souvenir'', in Québec. Its symbol is, of course, the poppy.