Spoilers for Retrace 59 and up!

This is a little something I wrote in response to a request from the 'Pandora Hearts Kink Meme' (which I think everyone knows about… XD). The prompt was to write a 'what-if' scenario where Elliot falls into the Abyss instead of dying as he did. And so, this… meeting between Elliot and the Will of the Abyss was born!

This is my first time writing for PH, though I've been lurking long enough! I hope I've managed to stay in character! Though there aren't really any pairings here, I suppose there's a bit of a Jack/Will of the Abyss, Elliot/Leo, and Glen/Lacie bias… Oh well…

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: 'Pandora Hearts' doesn't belong to me in any way: if it did, then be sure that Elliot would not be dead… It, however, does belong to Jun Mochizuki and Square Enix.

Fiery Brilliance

He wasn't truly certain when exactly it had happened, nor in what precise fashion it had either; far too many times already he'd floated between the endless darkness and the light of the world, sinking somewhere amid excruciating pain and oblivious silence. All he truly remembered with disturbing clarity was the fleeting moment before his mind had succumbed to his mortal body's wounds; a moment when the world burned with a fiery brilliance so beautiful his very heart could have burst. And then, he knew nothing more than the oppressive darkness.

Though he highly suspected the transfer to have taken place whilst he'd been unconscious, this revelation did nothing to alleviate Elliot's concern and confusion when he'd painfully awoken to a haphazardly checkered floor in a room lined with fiendishly cackling dolls, whispering words he could not understand so feverishly they were spoken. A concern and confusion that were rapidly growing the more he took in his surroundings, gnawing at his heart with an overwhelming dread. As no small amount of fear began to course through his veins, Elliot found the strength to raise himself from the ground, poising his body to the best of his ability into a defensive stance whilst remaining halfway sprawled across the vast expanse of black and white.

As slow as he'd been to regain his senses, perhaps, he pondered, it would have been best to remain oblivious to the devious words that floated about his defiled body.

"Oh look at him…"

"Smell the blood… So good…"

"… Almost like her…"

"Oh yes… Alice will be so pleased!"

"So pleased!"

"Yes! She hates her…"

"Just like Glen…"

What… where was this place?

"Please stop."

And abruptly, the sound came crashing down to a startling halt, replaced by a silence so ominous that Elliot could not suppress the involuntary shiver that racked through his entire body, chilling him to the bone.

"Come now all of you. You'll frighten the poor thing…"

Elliot whipped around, and stared wide-eyed at that which stood in the doorway, half concealed by a tattered curtain, but undeniably recognizable all the same.

"… Alice…?"

And yet.

And yet she was not the same Alice, not the one who Oz held in such high esteem. Not the fiery Alice with her dark locks and eyes of the deepest violet. Not the Alice who, through all her roughness, was truly kind at heart.

No, decidedly not the same Alice, with hair so brilliant a white it should have hurt his own eyes, with a smile so malicious and painted with madness that his body, once again, shivered of its own accord. Her smile widened at his exclamation, almost comically so much of a farce it was.

"Yes, that is my name… But of course you would know, wouldn't you…?"

She slowly approached him, her clear violet eyes widening with an almost feverish lunacy, and somewhere in the back of his mind, a small, disturbingly feminine voice called out to him in pure desperation,

"Run!"

And as desperately as he wanted to, he couldn't bring himself to move whilst the girl with a face the very parody of the Alice he knew approached him, as the tiger walks towards the injured lamb.

She stopped before him, a mad gleam in her clouded gaze.

The dagger hidden beneath the immaculate dress thus plunged within his flesh.

The agonized scream that tore from his throat could not even begin to explain his incomprehensible suffering as the tarnished blade bathed in crimson cut through his already wounded body again, again, again. And as his awareness faded with each stab of the lethal weapon, all he still managed to perceive was the maddening cackles of the dolls, and her words, screams that rivaled his own in their intensity, as she sentenced him as surely as the condemning blade that pierced his skin.

"Scream for me, bleed for me!"

"Suffer what I have suffered!"

"Because of Jack, because of Glen, because of YOU!"

"He killed my Jack because of you, and she took him away from me!"

"And now I'll take you away from him! Again!"

And whilst the black and white checkered floors became bathed in crimson, whilst the unbearable noise dwindled ever-slowly into silence, he heard the small voice speak again,

"I'm so sorry… Please forgive me Glen…!"

'I'm so sorry… Please forgive me Leo…'

"Be happy, and don't mourn me…"

And as the world focused into yet another fiery brilliance before the inevitable darkness, he saw the fury, the madness in those eyes as the accursed blade descended for a final time:

"Welcome back to the Abyss, LACIE!"