I've finished writing this fic completely, and it clocks in around 320,000 words long. I'm going to post a chapter a day until it's completely posted, which means I should be finished on March 1st (120 chapters + the epilogue). Hope you enjoy the ride!

Some scenes are illustrated by heavymetalzenmaster of tumblr fame. My tumblr account (same as my name here) has a tag for the artwork. If you want to see it, shoot me a message and I'll get the link to you somehow. :)

"A villain is just a victim whose story hasn't been told."

- Chris Colfer

Stockholm's weather since Toki's arrival late the week prior hadn't varied much. Snowflakes fluttered past the limousine window, fragmented ghosts lost to pre-dawn darkness. The atmosphere weighed heavily, making for the most oppressive winter he ever experienced in Scandinavia. It zapped his energy just as much as all this sitting around and waiting.

After the seven and a half months it took for Skwisgaar's case to reach court, one more week or two of irresolution shouldn't torture Toki so deeply. No one besides Charles could visit Skwisgaar during his remand in Kronobergshäktet, so at least it rendered physical space between them moot. Unfortunately, that meant coming to Stockholm did nothing to alleviate the sense that Skwisgaar merely fell off the face of the planet. Hard to believe, that they occupied the same city these days.

The limousine's only other occupant cleared his throat. "You ah, feel ready?"

"Ready as I'll evers be, I guess."

"You're going to do fine. Just remember to take your time. It'll only be me, you, the prosecution, and the judges."

Toki heard that at least a million times since this entire nightmare began. He appreciated the repetition, as his attention span tended to flit about. When last could he actually concentrate on anything? At least, when the judge delivered Skwisgaar's sentence, Toki could pick up the pieces and move on. Even if Skwisgaar was destined to stay here for the next twenty years or so, some vestige of certainty would offer closure.

Stockholms Rådhus came into view ahead. As expected, their vehicle slowed. All throughout the private trial, Dethklok fans and the media alike clogged the streets. Signs held aloft by supporters boasted similar messages: 'Free Skwisgaar', 'The World Needs You', and 'Sweden's Favourite Son'.

"Ignore all the reporters," Charles reminded Toki. The door opened and before Toki could even poke his head out in order to follow, the cacophony of questions and clicking cameras bombarded him. A hand tightened around Toki's upper arm. External awareness slipping again, he merely watched his feet avoid tripping up the stairs. Klokateer escorts grunted against the strain of pressing bodies, and spoke warnings to those more determined to gain proximity. For all his anxiety to get to Sweden, to so much as lay eyes on his bandmate, Toki now urged to return to his hotel room and hide away with a bottle of something hard. If only he could go back to his mother's house, or get dropped off in the middle of nowhere, where he could hide until he either died or everyone forgot his name.

Things calmed down after they signed in and surrendered their personal possessions. Outside the courtroom, Charles placed a hand on Toki's shoulder. Even more than the face looking Toki back that morning in the mirror, this man appeared exhausted. "I'll see you on the floor. Good luck."

Toki searched for an orange jumpsuit as they entered, though came up short. He perched with his hands folded nicely in his lap where instructed, then waited for a broad man in black robes to take a seat front and centre amongst his fellows. The large doors behind him shut them off from the murmuring hallways.

Nausea pressed Toki's tongue to the roof of his mouth. He'd been prepped, and had rehearsed both alone and with Charles how best to relay his story. Even though Sweden couldn't touch Toki for the crimes he himself committed in America and Mexico, that failed to suppress sudden illness. His heart rate flew into overdrive when a block of bright colour off to the left appeared in the court's second entrance.

Besides the jumpsuit and new glasses, Skwisgaar barely changed since their paths forked. The ends of his hair still looked damaged, from the bleach job Serveta did to strip the dark brown dye Skwisgaar used to obscure his identity during their weeks on the run. Distance made it difficult to tell, but he appeared thinner than usual. If not for the frames obscuring his eyes, Toki might've seen bags to mirror everyone else's stress. The smallest upward twitch of his lips' corners denoted relief to see Toki; his smile failed to spread beyond his mouth though, as the bailiff led him by the cuffs to the defence table. Skwisgaar rubbed his wrists briefly when they were removed, and looked back again.

Before the second meeting of their gazes could potentially mean anything, His Honour Meshuggah cleared his throat. The translator seated nearby readied herself as well for a surprisingly high and reedy voice. "Good morning. As of now, we will commence the case of Sweden vs. Skwigelf. Today we will hear testimony from Toki Wartooth, who spent two months with the defendant prior to the murder of Serveta Skwigelf. Wartooth, if you would come forward, please."

Toki's tie suddenly felt too tight, his suit too hot; he couldn't focus on the bailiff showing him to the witness stand. His gaze stuck to his hands, growing pale as they clutched each other. When his breathing evened back out and he felt able, he looked up. Charles stood behind a podium nearby. Fighting the tightness of his face, Charles offered as comforting a smile as possible.

"As the court is aware, Toki, you and I are going to go through the events beginning on April tenth of last year. Do you remember that evening?"

Toki nodded.

"And what exactly happened?"

"We—we all dranks in the hot tub and watched TV. It wasn'ts anything special."

"What happened next?"

Toki fiddled his thumbs, watching them overlap each other as he gathered his wits. As often as he went over this in his head, that didn't replace emotion with mechanical demeanour. More than anyone else, he sensed Skwisgaar's gaze drilling into him. "I thinks we all ended up drunk. It isn'ts a weird thing, at Mordhaus. We gets palling around, the klokateers keep givings us beer, the TV is on, and then it happens. I's not sure who left the hot tubs first. I was last, except for Pickle. Nathans, Moidaface, and Skwisgaar all wents to bed."

"Or so you assumed, in regards to Skwisgaar?"

"No, I was rights. He took a lady."

"Is the fact that he took a lady to bed relevant?"

"Ja, is what starteds it all." Toki paused. "I wents to bed drunk, and I was pretties much sober when he wokes me up, so I wants to say that it was a whiles later but it was still darks outside. . ."

Skwisgaar hadn't bothered to turn on the light in Toki's bedroom when he shook his shoulder, although it filtered in from the corridor. As result, Skwisgaar formed a thin silhouette with a shadowed face. "Hey Toki. Wakes up, ja?"

"Hrrmmm. . ." Toki rolled toward the wall, instead. "Is still night. Goes to bed."

"I can'ts. I needs your help."

"Doings what?"

"Just come."

"Can'ts it wait?"

Skwisgaar continued to badger and poke, eventually forcing Toki to stumble into a pair of jeans. If Toki didn't rub his eyes so profusely, he might've noticed Skwisgaar's strange behaviour right off the bat. Skwisgaar walked stiffly ahead of him, arms tightly crossed, and led Toki back to his room. When they entered the sparsely decorated quarters, Toki studied the heavy form supine on Skwisgaar's bed.

"Oh. . ." Toki cupped his chin. "What happeneds?"

"She wanteds me to chokes her. It, uh. . .maybes went a bit too far?"

"Ja, maybes." Still not fully awake, Toki couldn't completely comprehend what he looked at. Of course he'd seen tons of naked women, as well as many a dead body, but never like this. Skwisgaar accidentally choked someone to death? It refused to grasp his mind. At least for that, one of them remained calm. Now that Toki woke up more, he registered Skwisgaar's red-brimmed eyes and shallow breaths, as well as that he worked his bottom lip relentlessly. "I don'ts understand what you wants me to do, though."

"I gots to get rid of her."

"Why nots ask a klokateer?"

"I don'ts want Charles to know, and dey woulds tell him."

"He'll erase her and just gives you a talkings to about being more careful, next time."

Skwisgaar shook his head. "Just helps me. Cans you carry her?"

The courtroom filled with an entirely different breed of silence as Toki rested. Despite Charles' reassurances that jurisdiction kept him safe from arrest, Toki hated to paint himself as an accessory. He lost sleep every night over what he could've done about the situation, instead. First and foremost: call Charles, regardless of what Skwisgaar wanted. They shouldn't have lugged a corpse down the hallway, dodging into nooks and crannies whenever a klokateer on night-shift neared. None of it made sense. Toki could speak from experience that Charles expunged all the marks they left on legality—he himself escaped prosecution in Los Angeles after beating a man to death at Sobertown. How did choking the life from some unfortunate woman in the throes of passion equate or bypass?

"What did she look like?"

"She was older. Blondes hair, blue eyes, in fairlies good shape. Kinds of big-boned, and heavy for that."

"Did you ever notice, in all the years you lived with Skwisgaar, that he tended to gravitate toward certain aspects in his sexual partners?"

"No."

"Can you elaborate?"

"He likes all kinds of womens, regardless of colour, size, or age. I've seens him with men too, and I've even seens him fu—uh, have sex with inanimate objects if he was too high to tells the difference." Toki suppressed a nostalgic smile when remembering the time Pickles slipped Skwisgaar some MDMA.

"Let's come back around, then, to this blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman you helped the defendant dump when her life ended. Did it ever strike you as strange that Skwisgaar enjoyed the company of older woman?"

"Ja. We used to tease hims about it all the time."

"Did you notice, on April tenth of last year—or have we crossed into the eleventh, now?—that the victim resembled your bandmate's mother?"

Toki shook his head. "I wasn'ts really thinking about that. Skwisgaar had so many different ladies, and I was kinds of too busy to notice when this all happen."

"How about in retrospect? Do you see the similarity now?"

"Ja. But I didn'ts think it had anything to do with types. Skwisgaar just accidentallys choked a lady too far while having sex, and wasn'ts thinking straight about how to handles it. He freaked out, likes anyone would."

"Would you elaborate on his signs of distress?"

Skwisgaar was no help in the chore; Toki carried the woman himself down to the garage, laid her in the trunk of a car, and got behind the wheel. Neither of them spoke through sign-out beyond what was necessary, and both breathed easier once they hit the road. Deliberation led them down to the bay below, and a grunt of effort landed the solid mass amongst the rocks. Even though death rendered pain a lost sensation, Toki cringed when the woman's head harshly bounced. He wet his boots by pushing her further out, while Skwisgaar sat against the vehicle's front passenger tire.

"Skwis." Toki attempted to get his attention when rejoining his side. He tapped Skwisgaar's leg with his toe. "Skwisgaar."

"Hm?" Big blue eyes peered upward.

"You okay?"

Skwisgaar sighed. "Just kinds of sucks, you know? I likeds her. Knew her a longs time."

"Dids you ever choke her before?"

"She likeds it. Likeds to black out. Amn'ts really my t'ing, but. . ." Skwisgaar shrugged next. "I don'ts know. I's not shore how to feels, right now."

"You wants to head home? Goes to bed?"

"Eh, nots really. Woulds you want to sleep where someone just die?"

"Whats you wanna do, instead?"

In the courtroom, Charles cleared his throat. "How would you describe Skwisgaar's reaction to the entire incident?"

"Shock," came first to Toki's mind. "He didn't really seems to understand what happen, and he was useless to does anything. I hads to help him backs into the car, and he stoppeds talking except for one-word answers for a bits after that."

"So the two of you returned to Mordhaus after dumping the body?"

"No."

"Where did you go?"

Toki's gaze shifted again toward Skwisgaar, who leaned back in his chair with crossed arms. "We wents into Mordland, instead. Wents for milkshakes."