Pandora Hearts © Jun Mochizuki

... ... ...

Eliot awoke somewhere around three in the morning, drowsy and disoriented (a pleasant change from his usual nightmare-induced awakenings) but nonetheless irritatingly uncomfortable because he needed to use the bathroom. After yawning and rubbing his eyes, he blearily stepped over Leo's bundled form (they had camped out on the living room floor since neither boy wanted to share a bed, no matter how much Vanessa professed it wouldn't be as weird as they thought; teenaged girls did it all the time. Yeah. But those were girls) and half-stumbled his way down the hall, trying his best to avoid running into any open closet doors along the way.

After he relieved himself of his discomfort and washed his hands, Eliot, still sleepy, splashed a bit of water on his face to keep himself cool. The worst dreams liked to creep upon him when he was too warm; he wasn't sure why. Patting his face dry on the peach colored hand towel, he habitually glanced at his reflection in the mirror with the expectation of discovering a tousled tangle of hair not unlike a shorter, blonder version of Leo's (except that Leo kept his hair untidy all day; Eliot only had bed-head that severe after tossing and turning all night in a cold sweat and-).

The grin he saw was not his own.

Startled, Eliot wheeled around, finding himself face-to-face with a painting of a woman hung upon the wall for simple decoration: a beautiful girl in a billowing, lavender-and-lace skirt, picking lilacs as her caramel hair escaped her bonnet and blew behind in the breeze. Glancing quickly away from the image (a particular favorite of his mother's), Eliot's eyes swept the entirety of the bathroom. He found no one hiding in there with him.

That's a relief, he thought. It would have been a little weird if someone else was in here. He let out a chuckle: soft, yet high-strung. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as he leaned against the counter, breathing deeply to calm himself. It was just your imagination, Eliot. It's late, you're not in your room, dinner was that strange fish dad likes, and you're still half-expecting your best friend to spontaneously turn into some creepy psycho and murder you in the middle of the night.

After a moment Eliot sighed, told himself it was silly to worry about dumb things that hadn't even happened yet, and turned off the lights. Opening the door, he strode through and attempted to regain his confidence so he wouldn't spook himself into having the nightmares he was trying his best to avoid. (How embarrassing would that be? With Leo over? Only little kids had bad dreams!)

Eliot's stride was promptly interrupted by a solid body. He let loose a strangled gasp of surprise as he tried to regain his balance, but two small hands deftly shoved him backwards before he could do so. He landed hard on the tiled bathroom floor. "W-what th-?" he started to say, but didn't finish.

That grin. It was that grin.

"Enigma," he breathed.

"Enigma," the other boy confirmed with a near-pleasant smile.

Eliot held himself still for a moment. Logically, he knew he could take Leo in a fight; he had already proven this point twice before. But tonight there was something especially unnerving about the way Enigma smiled, about the way he deliberately pushed up his glasses while they caught and held onto meager strains of trickled moonlight from the hall windows, about the way he bent down to retrieve a hidden kitchen knife from its resting place against the wall. Eliot saw the metallic glint and swore.

Reacting to the danger as quickly as he could, Eliot half-rolled to the side, jumped to his feet, and charged Enigma like a football player, bodily shouldering himself into the smaller boy's midsection. He carried them both to a crashing stop against the opposite wall: a move which promptly spilled both boys to the floor. (Enigma let out a cry of surprise as he was hurtled backwards like a rag doll, and a cry of pain when his unexpected momentum abruptly ceased. Eliot let out a grunt as he carried Enigma, and another curse when the opposing wall refused to absorb his head.) Stunned, both boys moaned their discomfort on the carpet before Eliot snatched the knife from Enigma's slackened grip. Eliot swiftly sat back on his heels, holding the weapon behind his body and away from Enigma's grasp. Thinking better of it, he placed himself into a more solidly defensive stance, still highly conscious of keeping the serrated blade away from any danger which may cause it to bite into his flesh. Enigma continued to lay on the floor gasping for air as he stared dazedly at the ceiling.

"That's all?" Eliot asked incredulously after enduring a long moment in which nothing spectacular happened. "That was it? That's all you've got?"

Enigma wheezed.

"I can't believe this! I was actually afraid of you!" His laugh was nervous.

Enigma coughed in response, groaned, and rolled over, clutching at his stomach as he lifted himself into a sitting position.

"That's incredible. I mean, I thought you'd be a lot scarier this time. I was expecting something...grander. A struggle. A fight to the death. Blood. Something."

Eliot promptly quieted when Leo connected a fist to his lower jaw.

"SHUT UP!" Leo yelled, trembling in rage. "JUST SHUT UP."

Taken aback by the sudden strike, Eliot blinked in confusion and carefully assessed the damage wrought to his lower lip (it was split against his teeth, but not badly; Leo punched like a little girl). "What the-"

"Shut. Up," Leo hissed again, face dark and vehemently angry.

Eliot sat back on the carpet and did as he was told. He realized he was no longer facing Enigma. Enigma was psychotic; Leo was volatile. The boy trembling in front of him was just that: a boy. Not a demented, alternate personality with a lost sense of humanity; not someone who wore a twisted, eerie grin for the simple sake of contorting such a gentle-looking face. Eliot mentally breathed a sigh of relief.

Wishing to placate Leo, Eliot decided to pursue a new line of conversation with as non-confrontational a manner as possible. "What are you doing all the way over here?" he asked, trying his best to keep his tone curious, friendly, and non-threatening.

He received a glare in response, but eventually Leo decided to spit out an answer: "Finding you."

"Why?"

"You woke me up. I thought you were sick or something."

"So you followed me to the bathroom?"

"Like I said: I thought you were sick! I came to see if you were okay!"

"That's what girls do!" Eliot screeched. "Guys don't do that crap!"

"Excuse me for caring!" Leo retorted.

"That's just wrong!"

"Get over it!"

"I will!"

"Fine!"

"Fine!" Eliot crossed his arms and huffed. Why did Leo have to be so awkward? Wait a minute... Eliot thought as his eyes settled on his pouting friend. He followed me to the bathroom. He couldn't hold even the barest threads of conversation at dinner. He brought his own dessert, and was uncharacteristically shy when I met him on the doorstep...

"You've never been to someone's house before, have you?" Eliot blurted.

"So?" Leo challenged, posture rigid, daring Eliot to make a snarky comment about it.

"You don't have any friends."

"Do you?"

"That's not the point!"

Leo shrugged as if to say it didn't matter to him; he already knew the answer, anyway.

Eliot sighed and changed the subject. "Where'd you get the knife?"

"What knife?"

"This one!" Eliot displayed the weapon in question, irritated, but still careful to keep it out of Leo's reach.

Leo silently regarded the blade for a moment. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said.

"You don't remember anything, do you?" Eliot asked quietly.

"I remember you waking me up. I couldn't get back to sleep so I went down the hall. You opened the door, and then I was on the floor and you were babbling all sorts of idiotic nonsense, doing a fantastic job of making me angry."

"How long were you waiting? I was in there for a while."

"I don't need to know the details!"

"I was washing my face!" Eliot roared, flustered. He couldn't see beyond Leo's glasses, but he knew Leo was rolling his eyes. Whatever. "The point is," he continued grumpily, "You don't know you're Enigma."

"I think I've already told you that," Leo spat, "at least a time or two before."

Eliot ignored the retort, continuing on because the disconnected puzzle pieces of his suspicions were finally being confirmed and the picture was making sense: "It means you're being possessed."

"What kind of ludicrous idiocy are you spouting now?"

"I've heard of it before. Possession. Although I don't know why your personality changes so much. Compared to you, Enigma's a sweetheart."

Leo met the comment with a dirty look. "Save your hocus-pocus for a campfire ghost story."

"Possession is real," Eliot corrected. "I've seen it."

"Sure you have. Because your mansion is haunted, is that it?" Leo didn't look the least bit impressed.

"No. There are no ghosts or spirits involved...nothing like that. Those things don't exist."

"Then what?"

"Chains."

Leo fell silent. Apparently he was already familiar with the term, and judging by the frosty look that crept over his face, his experiences hadn't been entirely pleasant. That worked well for Eliot; it meant he wouldn't be peppered with ignorant and foolish questions concerning things Leo had no business knowing and Eliot had even less business sharing.

"Chains," Leo repeated, sulkily.

"A single Chain, actually: Jubjub."

Leo looked up. "Jubjub?"

"Yeah. I knew it, once."

"You were possessed?"

"No," Eliot answered. His pale face was grim. "The contractor is my mother."

Leo looked at Eliot for a long moment. Eliot couldn't hold his gaze.

"Your long-lost mother's Chain possesses my body and makes me go insane?" Leo finally asked, tone skeptical.

"I've never seen a response as extreme as yours," Eliot confessed. "Usually people get a bit disgruntled, but they don't turn demonic. You're weird."

"Thanks a lot."

"Anytime."

Leo glowered before he leaned his head back against the wall and sighed. "This is crazy," he said.

"I know."

"I guess you do," Leo whispered. Then: "I'm going back to bed." He carefully stood up and wandered back through the dark, hardly moonlit hall, cautiously making his way through the heaping, disarrayed piles of blankets scattered across the living room floor without so much as glancing back at Eliot.

Eliot could hear Leo shuffling around for a few minutes, trying to get comfortable in his makeshift bed. He gave Leo a moment to settle down before following, making sure to step carefully over his friend, and quietly nestled himself in his own pile of blankets. Drawing his covers close, he sighed and closed his weary eyes, burying his head beneath a pillow. He tried his best to pretend he had successfully shut out everything around him, telling himself he honestly couldn't hear the unspoken questions emanating from the other side of the silent room.

...

Eliot had anticipated encountering a very distant Leo upon arising, but, as usual when it came to predicting the actions of the smaller boy, Eliot found himself irritated with his own erroneous judgements: Leo was positively ebullient by breakfast. His smiles were bright, his laughter easy, and he animatedly involved himself in conversations he would have run in terror from the night before. Eliot wasn't going to complain (it was nice to see Leo smiling again), but it was he who was unusually pensive and withdrawn, pushing piles of hash browns and scrambled eggs around his plate instead of enthusiastically digging in with his usual mealtime gusto. (Enamored by their guest's sudden friendliness, the rest of the Nightray household had yet to mind their middle brother's sullen countenance. Their lively conversations continued to revolve around Leo, and Eliot quickly became invisible on the outskirts.)

Eliot didn't mind being ignored; it gave him plenty of space to think without appearing as if he were tuning out his best friend in favor of daydreaming (spacing off into Eliot's La-La-Land; ha ha, very funny Claude, Earnest, Fred), and for that he was grateful. As it was, however, the idea of possession seemed ever more plausible when Eliot considered the way Leo and Enigma so abruptly switched dispositions. It was as if Leo was merely an actor changing roles; his body simply conformed to match the personality of the next corresponding mask. As such, the characters of Leo and Enigma could never meet upon their shared stage; the actor was only able to don one façade at a time. This severely dramatized the switch between the two personalities, giving the appearance that either (or both, depending how the situation was scrutinized) characters suffered a certain degree of memory erasure while acting as the other, when the truth was they never attained those "missing" memories in the first place.

In other words, Leo could not be privy to the happenings which transpired while wearing the guise of Enigma. "Leo" was, in essence, absent from the performance. Consequently, Enigma would have no knowledge of Leo. The two players belonged to the same body, but they didn't belong to the same mind: one was controlled by Leo and the other by either Jubjub or Eliot's mother (Eliot wasn't sure whose will was more accurately reflected during a Chainal possession, but he thought he saw more Jubjub than his mom in this particular instance; Enigma was a rather unnerving thing).

Eliot sighed. The entirety of the situation was perplexing to consider, but, in effect, the Chain-based character swaps (and hence temporary blackouts, amnesia, and nasty argumentative statements, among other things) were a result of the fact that Leo and Enigma were not the same person.

Except they were.

(But he already knew that.)

Eliot groaned loudly in confusion and ran a frustrated hand through his hair. His actions went generally unnoticed, but little Gilbert blinked and paused in his reach for the jar of peach jam to hesitantly ask if Eliot had wanted it first. Eliot, partially distracted, declined with a mechanical wave of his hand, so Gil began to enthusiastically smother a piece of toast, handing the finished slice to Vincent while he prepared another for himself. Eliot frowned at Vincent (the two of them didn't get along, but that was no surprise. Nobody liked Vincent, save for Gil) but smiled when he looked back at Gilbert because the kid had somehow managed to get jam smeared all over his face.

...

"I've been thinking about Enigma."

"That's nice."

Venturing to control his immediate vexation (he had already frustrated himself trying to figure this damned thing out, the least Leo could as thanks do would be to cooperate and listen!), Eliot chewed the inside of his left cheek. He didn't need to be goaded into fighting with Leo right now (no matter how much he'd like to yell at the annoying brat); he had things on his mind and he wanted them discussed. Or at least laid out for inspection; Leo had a tendency to see things Eliot couldn't. (Leo was more analytical, more critical, more observant: able to spew out copious amounts of dry, dry facts whenever prompted. Eliot was more opinionated, and specialized in coming up with creative ideas, but that was besides the point. It just showed they were different.) Eliot only wanted to lay the cards on the table and let Leo make sense of the hand.

"I've been thinking about how he interacts with you."

"That's nice," Leo repeated, still not bothering to raise his gaze from the age-yellowed pages of his novel, much less grant Eliot any semblance of undivided attention. Well, that was fine with Eliot. He'd just keep talking until Leo had no choice but to put the book down for lack of proper concentration.

"There's something wrong with you," Eliot continued.

"I thought you had already reached that conclusion."

"I'm not talking about Enigma as the problem."

"Then why'd you bring him up?"

"Because I want to talk about Enigma!"

Leo lifted his eyes and looked irritably at Eliot. "You're contradicting yourself, do you realize that? Maybe you should sort out your thoughts before you open that big mouth of yours and say more stupid things."

Eliot ignored the provocation. Leo resumed reading.

"You've been touched by the Abyss. You're an illegal contractor," Eliot declared.

Leo smiled, but it wasn't genuine. It was...disturbed.

"Not really," he said softly.

"What does that mean?"

"Just what it sounds like: I'm not a contractor. Not really."

"Then...how do you know about the Abyss?"

Leo sighed and carefully set aside his heavily dog-eared book. Silently regarding Eliot, he seemed almost ready to answer, but stopped himself before he opened his mouth to give voice to his story. He instead leaned his head back against the wall of Eliot's room and managed to avoid catching the overhead light on his gigantic, mirror-like lenses. As a result, Eliot could clearly see his eyes. They weren't happy.

"The House of Fianna," Leo sighed with a halfhearted shrug, "did experiments. They made us kids drink this or that, forming a partial contract with a Chain. But I was different; I couldn't make the contract. I already had a legal one."

"You what?" Eliot asked, suddenly quite alert.

"My father used to work for Pandora," Leo continued bitterly. "He made me form a legal contract when I was young. It wasn't properly documented; I guess in that way it could be considered illegal; but the contract itself was quite legitimate."

"But you said you weren't a contractor!"

"I'm not. The illegal partial-contract cancelled out mylegal one and I lost my Chain. You can't hold two contracts at once when the methods are at ends with one another, and you're not considered a contractor without a Chain."

"That makes no sense. Legal contracts are made on a pendant, not a body."

"But the contractor is the same. Even if you took someone else's pendant, you wouldn't automatically become the holder of his Chain. That much should be obvious."

"Oh." Eliot's eyes suddenly lit up with insatiable curiosity. "What Chain did you have? Was it strong?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Surprised, Eliot looked at Leo, but the other boy had since closed his eyes. "Well," Eliot said slowly, "I guess that explains that, then."

"...you were saying?"

Eliot smiled. "Well, my idea still works. Jubjub's techniques produce more sinister results on you because it's reacting to the tendrils of Abyssal power leftover from your previous contract. I know it's true because regular people without contracts don't go nearly as batty when they're possessed. For them, my mother's will is reflected in their actions. But for you, it's more of Jubjub."

"Marvelous."

"Shut up, Leo."

"Your arguments are redundant. We had this conversation last night; didn't you already decide it was Jubjub then? What does it matter how it works if we can't stop it?"

"Shut up!" Eliot repeated. He angrily threw a pillow at Leo's head, but in his haste to take action he had forgotten to take aim. The pillow missed by an embarrassing margin; Leo didn't even bother to flinch.

"Besides," Leo sighed, "while it's good to know your brain does make connections-"

Eliot scowled.

"-I don't think your assumptions are entirely correct."

"Why is that?"

"Because I don't."

Eliot snorted. "That's hardly a reason, genius."

Leo smiled, but he refused to retaliate. Instead, he turned his attention back to the patiently waiting pages of his novel and instantaneously submerged himself beneath the waves of a world completely untouchable to Eliot. (For all Eliot knew, Leo could ignore an approaching tornado if properly engrossed in a good book.) Having realized the futility of carrying on a conversation by himself, Eliot sighed, lethargically chose a Holy Knight volume for himself, and flopped on the floor next to Leo. It was in this manner the two best friends spent the remainder of the afternoon.

...

Leo had wanted to return home before he became an inconvenience; however, given the sudden, ominous darkening of the sky before dinner (the boys had failed to notice the storm's approach, having been completely entertained by fantastical journeys with missing maidens and territorial dragons and swashbuckling sword duels; and also whatever else was happening in the book Leo had been reading), Fred suggested that, since Leo's folks were dead and nobody at the orphanage expected to see him, anyway (Fred phrased the situation more politely, sure), perhaps it would be better if Leo simply stayed over for another night.

Eliot had no objections. Leo had tons.

Both annoyed and exasperated with Leo's unabashed attempts at escape, Eliot finally exhausted his small stores of patience. Clenching his fists, he angrily shouted: "So, what? I'm not good enough for you anymore?" His outburst was met with silence as all five of his siblings ceased their own activities and decided to pay much closer attention to the proceedings of his discussion.

Leo blinked and took a mild step back. "Pardon?"

Eliot, upon realizing how his outburst had been interpreted by the others, flushed deeply. "Not good enough company. As friends," he restated, trying his best to not appear sheepish despite the fact his collar had somehow become a tad too warm and a bit too tight.

Leo sighed, conceding defeat with a shrug. He stepped out of his shoes and laid them back in line by the doorway. He attempted to ignore the awkwardness of the situation by plastering a positively cheery grin upon his face (Eliot swore he could see flowers floating by the kid's head) and hopped lightly up the two steps leading towards the kitchen. "If I'm staying," he said with a smile, "then I think I'd like some crackers with that crabapple jelly. Want some, Gil?"

It only took a moment for Leo to disappear. In another, Gil hesitantly decided to follow, his timid steps immediately shadowed by the unconcerned stride of his little brother Vincent (predictably wielding the remains of a maimed stuffed toy, the creepy kid). The remaining four Nightray siblings said nothing as they watched the youngest two leave, but the grin which had so recently eased itself upon Ernest's face did nothing to help Eliot feel better.

...

"Aren't you afraid I'll turn into Enigma again?" Leo inquired as he propped himself up on one elbow, glasses off, facing Eliot's general direction despite his inability to see a thing with the lights turned off.

"No. Go to sleep."

"Are you sure? You seemed nervous earlier."

"I can handle you."

"Can you handle Psycho Me?"

"I'm still alive, aren't I?"

"That's true."

"And you're the only one who gets hurt."

"Also true."

"Then what's the big deal?"

"Nothing. Just worried, is all."

"About what?"

"You."

Eliot sighed and snuggled deeper into his blankets. "You worry too much."

"Like a girl?"

"Yeah. Like a girl."

"You only say that because you're insecure."

"Shove it." Eliot couldn't see the answering grin, but he knew Leo was wearing it.

Satisfied, Leo crawled under the protective cover of his own pile of blankets. He closed his eyes, wondering. He truly admired Eliot (for all he harassed him) and had always paid close attention to the changes in his best friend's moods, knowing very well Eliot was too stubborn to complain when something was amiss in his life. But, after all the time they had spent chatting over the Internet before they finally met in person (a time during which Leo had developed a fairly clear idea of who Eliot Nightray was on the inside) Leo wasn't about to be fooled by the seemingly unconcerned façade Eliot had recently donned.

He couldn't shake the suspicion that something strange was happening within the elder boy's mind; a persistent feeling which told him something was eating at Eliot from the inside. Whether it was a result of the pressures associated with living up to the Nightray name, or perhaps the grief that accompanied losing his mother to Isla Yura three years prior, Leo didn't know. But he felt sorry for Eliot, and felt terrible knowing the whole mess with Enigma (with him, as it were) wasn't easing any burdens.

Leo sighed. He reached the unsatisfying conclusion that he hadn't the least idea of what to do or how to help his friend, so he instead resigned himself to rest, hoping Eliot would have an idea in the morning. Pulling the blankets closer, he thusly drifted into a fitful sleep of worrying dreams and scrolling uncertainties even as Eliot snored softly beside him.

...

The colors swirled, twirling around like the billowing skirts of macabre dancers trapped in an eternal waltz, condemned to dance their lives away on an unearthly ballroom floor. As he watched, his vision swam, narrowed, blacked out, and reappeared, but through it all the dizzying colors remained forever the same. He felt trapped, as if he were imprisoned within a kaleidoscope, tumbling around and around with the colors while an unseen force jostled the device; but still, the colors remained separate, never changing, always rotating. As he struggled to understand his surroundings he stopped tumbling. He was now confined within the vivid, bright bounds of a continual game of ring-around-the-rosy, watching while the mocking dresses of colors (like laughing playground children) shrieked around him in spiraling circles.

It was making him feel nauseous.

He fell into the colors, fell through the colors, and landed in a vast ocean of dark, soft velvet. He stood; rippling, shimmering waves of velvet rolled off him, pooling fluidly around his feet. Grasping hold of a bundle of cloth, he tugged it aside, suddenly noticing a fleshy elbow buried beneath its liquid folds, lying still in this whirlwind of ceaseless, pinwheel motion. Dropping to his knees, Eliot clawed through the dark sea, searching desperately for the rest of the arm. Discovering the wrist, he immediately felt for a pulse. There was none. Fighting the urge to panic, Eliot scrambled to uncover the face of the person suffocating (suffocated?) beneath the layers of heavy cloth. He struggled and struggled, pulled and pulled, but no face revealed itself until the body had rotted and become nothing more than white, dust-covered bones. It was then when he finally pulled the last of the cloth from the person's body, and then that he screamed.

He had uncovered the grave of his mother. In his hand was her black velvet burial shroud, around his feet were piles of fresh dirt raked from her unearthed bed.

Around him dropped the bodies of those dancing colors, each falling with a heavy, sick thud. Some spasmed, some twitched, but all (in unison, like skilled dancers) laid eternally still while their bodies seeped through the floor, melting into glistening pools of crimson. He stepped back, hands shaking, voice denying, but still he couldn't escape the endless scene. The colors were dead, the colors were bleeding, and he was holding a screaming, accursed, rusting sword in his right hand (the hand that composed their death song on ivory-coated keys of fancy and whim) while soft rose petals rained upon his head. The sword corroded, falling away into a quill which dripped ruby red drops on the pristine marble floor, his fingers holding it tightly while the splatters composed for themselves a song of misery, death, and pain. He felt hot and watched as the blood-notes became fire, fire that raged around him, and now he was surrounded by flaming bodies and had no one to blame but himself, even as he listened to that terrible song and knew it was his.

Ashes, ashes.

(They all fall down.)

...