They called it the Nightmare, with a capital 'N'.

They were gods, controllers of power that no mere mortal could handle- so of course they were not. Every god in existence was dead, quite literally- their spirit, their soul, was all that remained.

They had all died once.

Kagen had been mauled by a bear, torn apart in the wilderness whilst training. He wished he could have been stronger.

Shuuchi had been killed in a rock slide, killed by the cruel hand of nature. He wished he could have gotten away.

Fuuka had been out with her friends when the cliff edge crumbled. She wished that she could fly.

Utsuho… well, nobody really knew what had happened to him. The same with Takushiki- they'd just never spilled.

But so far, Fuuka and Takushiki were the only ones who knew what happened to Suiren. And frankly, neither wanted to know.

Fuuka had been sent that night. Takushiki sensed the mortal Suiren's- then called Ahiku- death approaching, although far too early. Fuuka was sent to see if she could prevent it in any way- and she arrived too late.

A Hunter had found the young girl. Hunters were a very secretive group- not even its own members knew of the names or locations of the others. They hunted the mortals that were to become gods after death, killing them before something else could. The trick was that they destroyed them. They mutilated the body so badly that the soul and the spirit could not stay long enough to be resurrected.

The man had tied the girl to a tree, arms and legs bound. She fought, oh, she fought, but he overpowered her easily and stood grinning, wolf-like, at the child.

"So, this is the girl rumored to be the next goddess…" he mused as he stared at the struggling child, his eyes glowing with disturbed energy, licking his lips. "Too bad, really. You put up a fight, at least. A pitiful one, but a fight nonetheless." He lifted her chin with one hand, meeting her glaring amber gaze unflinchingly.

He shook his head. "Too bad." Dropping her head, he raised the knife grasped in his left hand. Jabbing the point of it into directly under her collarbone, he split her abdomen open.

Shoulder to hips, as they called it, he slashed across her belly next, allowing him to open her skin like a twisted, bloody package. He grinned as her organs came into view, ripping her further open so he could see clearer.

"How cute. You look just like your mother, eh? Inside and out." he laughed over her pained, panicked scream, that was what Fuuka could remember most clearly, her scream. Singular. One sustained scream throughout the entire ordeal.

He went through all of them, all of her, making a checklist, stabbing a few as if just to hear the girl's scream escalate. "Ahhh." He muttered to himself as he pushed her hide up further, bringing her ribcage and what they protected into his sight. "No extra rib. Those sly gods, thought that if I couldn't see her missing part that I'd leave her alone." An almost maniacal grin cut across his face. "Wrong."

Fuuka threw up at that point.

He sighed dramatically. "Shame, really. You would have been the water goddess, or so I'm told. Rather nice substance to be supreme ruler of." He was making small talk. Just to elongate the child's suffering.

She snapped.

Flying out of the rocks she had been stationed in, Fuuka dove towards the bound, bloody mess of a life and disappeared into the tree behind her. After taking a moment to thank any higher power that there may be- and Takushiki- for being incorporeal when she was out of range of her shrine, she drove her rather ghost-like hands into the back of the girl. There was no earthly way possible that she was going to let her spirit die so easily, and especially not at the hands of a Hunter. Removing the spirit and soul of a mortal being while it was still living hurt it immensely, and Fuuka faltered for a moment when she realized that she was adding to the child's pain- then began again, stronger than before, as she noted that being skinned alive would be all the more agonizing.

The man noticed her scream heightening, sharpening, and that pissed him off. "Oh, for the love of God-"

No, asshole, Fuuka thought bitterly as she worked.

"Shut the fuck up, dammit! You should be dead!" He shouted angrily. "Die! Die already!"

He drew the knife and slashed her throat. He smiled when he saw blood running out of her mouth, down her shirt, mixing with the sticky fluid running from her torso to the ground-

He plunged it into her heart, twisting and pulling, just grinning wider and wider with each new spurt of red. "DIE, BITCH!" He screamed, laughing in a way that nobody could call sane.

Her scream tapered off pitifully, coughing and spluttering for air, and then finally she couldn't breathe, couldn't move, and fell limp.

He slashed the ropes and let the small body fall to the ground. "Feh. Another 'god' in the hole." He smiled, as he had been doing throughout the utterly grotesque scene, and then he walked off.

And two miles above him, cradling the newly-dubbed Suiren in her arms, Fuuka swore that she would be the one to kill him.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

Suiren had been murdered. She wished that she'd been able to defend herself, though no one had been able to hear the futile desire. Takushiki had kindly wiped the incident from her mind, leaving Suiren with the 'knowledge' that she'd just always been a goddess- to be honest, their deaths were all that the gods could remember from their previous lives.

But she'd find out. Fuuka knew that she'd figure out the truth, and not from one of them. She'd find out courtesy of her own subconscious.

They called it the Nightmare with a capital 'N', because they dreamt of their own deaths, and dreaming did not dull the pain one bit. Fuuka jokingly referred to her own as '… you know that falling dream? You're just randomly falling, and you always wake up before you hit the ground? Except I don't wake up." But it hurt; it hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, hitting the ground, feeling the pain of every bone in your body shattering into a thousand million pieces.

Fuuka dreaded the day that everyone would wake up to a certain water goddess's scream.

Scream.

Singular.

-fin-

A/N: Wow that certainly wasn't creepy as all hell. Poor Suiren. ;~; I love her, really I do, but I'm sure you know my penchant for making all my favorite characters have shitty pasts.

Also woo first M fic.

okay next one I write will be lemon I promise probably. I write gore better than lemon.