_D_E_P_T_H_S_

"Mukuro-sama!"

I can hear her fear. It ripples in the dark air around me. I slowly raise my head.

"Mukuro-sama, please!"

She needs me. She is one of the only three people in the world who depend on me. I want to help. But the darkness is so strong. Chains wrap around my body and the darkness wraps around my mind, more of an obstacle than the chains even. I know that escape will mean pain.

"Please . . . ."

I cannot stand to hear her voice like that. Her normally strong tone is broken and defeated. I call on my magic and separate my mind from my body. Now the darkness is all I have to face – I am only freeing my mind.

I open my eyes. My right eye is blind but in this darkness my left might as well be too. My right eye reminds me that I have beat down pain every day of my life. Pain is my enemy, but the both of us know it can not defeat me.

I activate my magic again and pull my arms in front of my chest. I can feel the darkness tearing as I do, burning into my bones. It is an illusion, but one as realistic as my own abilities make. It shreds across my skin like thin wires and even though there is no blood, I know that it is cutting through my arms. I can feel it. The pain. But I know that I am stronger. I make no sound; I just endure.

I walk forward, agony ripping through me as I wade through the darkness. The invisible wires are tearing through every part of me now. I can feel them slicing through my skin and leaving my bones exposed to the air. The blood I know I am not really spilling creeps over my skin and I have veins of heat spreading across my cold body. The temperature difference encourages me to shiver but I restrain. I will not shiver just as I will not cry out or even flinch from the pain. If I give it the slightest sign of victory, I know it will overcome me. I have learned that many times in the six different realms I have been forced to endure.

"Mukuro-sama?" her voice is a hopeful sob. I open my mouth to respond – even though it should be impossible, she can always hear me – but the darkness floods in, tearing into the soft flesh of my throat. I clench my hands into fists and close my mouth again, but keep all other signs in my mind. I have lived through worse.

I am at the end of the darkness. I take the final step – the final plunge – and the darkness screams in my ears. It does not want to relinquish the hold it has on its prisoner. The wires rip through me at a blinding speed, trying to find that hold where they can wrap around me and pull me back. I keep it at bay, not allowing my magic to fade back into dormancy. The darkness can not have me again – yet.

As my step completes, the darkness is forced to disappear. But even though I can no longer see it, I can still feel its pull and I know I cannot evade it for long. I must be quick.

I am standing in the peaceful clearing of Chrome's mind. Such a simple, foolish girl. Her mind is filled with a scene of spring grass and gentle blue sky with drifting clouds.

She is kneeling on the ground before me, hunched over, head bowed. Her dark, short hair has fallen forward, obscuring her face.

"Chrome," I say softly.

She looks up and her eyes widen, her entire face falling into an expression of relief. I give her a smirk, because it is the easiest expression for me.

"Need some help?" I say.

Her eyes shine with unshed tears and I know she cannot bring herself to say it because she feels that would be failing me. She could never fail me of course, but that is what I cannot bring myself to say.

I kneel before her and place a hand on her shoulder. Pain sears through my hand at the contact but it is another thing I endure. In the state I am trapped in, I am not meant to come into contact with someone like Chrome. Someone living.

"Let me take over for a while," I say, holding out a hand.

She hands me the weapon she is holding. It is really my weapon, just as the abilities she fights with are really a portion of mine. I have kept this girl alive with my powers, but I wonder again if all I really did was cause her more pain. Innocent as she is, she was never meant for the dangerous life that association with me has thrown her into.

"I'm sorry Mukuro-sama," she says miserably, looking down at her now empty hands. "I wasn't strong enough again."

I don't ever want her to be. The strength she would need to fully master the powers of darkness I share with her is a devil's strength. My strength. The strength which is really a curse I gained through blood and sweat and pain over six different lifetimes in six different realms, the mark of each burned permanently into my right eye.

I gently touch the band holding her eye patch in place. The eye patch that covers her right eye. The eye that is now blind thanks to me – the link she has to my powers.

"You did well, sweet Chrome," is all I can say.

I lower my hand and leave her mind, appearing in the real world. I recognize the man she has been fighting and my face is impassive even as fury burns inside me. The man's grudge is with me, not Chrome. Just as it always is. Yet, because of me, she always must pay for the repercussions of my actions.

The man sneers and comments on how much Chrome must mean to me for me to show my face again. My only response is to raise a hand to my blind eye. My fingernails tear into my skin as I drag them over my eyelid, stopping at my cheek. This time, blood does snake its way down my skin. I lower my hand and open my eye, feeling the power I have just awakened course through my veins. Even though I cannot see it, I know my eye has changed to show the sign of the human world. The worst realm I ever endured and yet it reaped the power I depend on most often.

The man is barely worth the taunts I give him as he dares to attack me. My weapon is comfortable in my hands and I am confident. There is no way he could beat me, and he doesn't. I stand over his unconscious form and the only thing that holds me back from killing him is knowing that I don't want Chrome to open her eyes to a corpse.

"I'm always here, even if I'm invisible," I say to the man, hoping the words etch themselves into his subconscious mind. "If you attack the only things precious to me, nothing will save you."

I can resist the pull of the darkness no longer and the world around me dissolves. The weapon in my hands disappears and they are pulled back into the position I am frozen in, the darkness laughing at the return of its trophy. I close my eyes and re-link myself to my real body, my only comfort being the knowledge that Chrome is safe for another day. I know that she will keep the other two safe in my place as well.

I return to my endless existence of waiting.

Authoress's Note: I know it's a little odd but the idea just came to me that I wanted to write about how Mukuro might think; I couldn't let it drop. I hope you liked it - please review!