Final flashback chapter here! :)

The song for this chapter is "My Skin" by Natalie Merchant. This piece of music is absolutely beautiful, just haunting, and I thought it was perfect for this chapter (very dark in nature). I highly recommend that you look up this song. The lyrics perfectly fit both the bitterness of a bad relationship, and, if you think about it, the horrors of pollution and the way in which we as humans mistreat the earth.

Okay, rant over. I'm a big environmentalist, as you might be able to tell. Anyway, on with the story.

Anger shone in her gaunt, red face as she snatched at the Russian's clothes and hair and skin with sharp, red nails, as if trying to take something from him. He recoiled, but it did not stop her savage attacks. Again, she clutched his throat and, this time, began to throttle him. It did nothing; he was already drowning.

What do you want? He wanted to ask.

Her eyes were sunken with an indescribable pain….

"I need the darkness, the sweetness, the sadness, the weakness..."

As if attempting to appeal to the devil-like apparition, Dragunov held out an open hand, caressing her formless face with his black, gloved fingers in what was seemingly an attempt to comfort her. She reacted; her anger melted into a strange mix of disgust and confusion, almost sorrow. Her grip loosened, and, irrepressibly, Dragunov breathed in yet more of the sickly, red water, sending another incredibly painful spasm through his system. It was this action that seemed to truly affect the red woman; realizing the unbearable torture he was enduring, her features softened with sudden pity. Empathy.

Without warning, she grabbed his chest with both hands. Her nails dug into him and he could feel a strange ripping sensation, an alien pain lost to a background of agony like a beam of sunlight in a roaring bonfire. Paralyzed by death's grip, he could neither resist her nor respond. Suddenly, she was kissing him.

"Angel, sweet love of my life..."

Still very afraid and in horrible pain, the Russian remained motionless save for the occasional dying jolt, unsure whether he was hallucinating or already dead.

"Better shut your mouth, and hold your breath, and kiss me now, and catch your death."

Done with resisting, he finally gathered some miraculous shred of remaining strength and pulled his arms around the lady that held him, accepting her for the tormented spirit that she was….

It was then that Dragunov felt life return to him. The lady sucked the poisonous fluids from his lungs and breathed, pure, precious air back into his once dying body, saving him from a certain end.

I cannot do this, he heard her say. I cannot kill, I can only love. In my fury, I have shared all my pain and suffering with you, and I have damaged you beyond repair, but I cannot…I cannot kill.

Dragunov felt her hands move across his wounds, numbing them with the power of her mercy. His death throes subsided, and a sudden, warm rush of relief enveloped his whole being as, finally, the spirit woman let go of his body and allowed him to float, damaged but alive, to the surface.

Let us remain damaged but alive together…forever.

Dragunov broke the surface of the lake arms first, then flung his head into the open air and gasped back his life, spraying millions of crimson droplets into the white, afternoon sky, as if ejected from his silhouette. He reopened his eyes, now the palest shade of blue; so near to colorless; so near to completely lost. Alive, he pushed his way to the shore, dragged himself onto dry land, and heaved up all the poisonous water he had swallowed. For many moments afterward, he lay silent on the ground, hidden in a field of tall grass, shaking from trauma of every conceivable kind.

Faintly, he became aware of the sound of helicopter blades slicing through the gray, Russian air. They grew louder, closer.

Dragunov stood up, dripping with indistinguishable amounts of blood and red water. He watched the mercenaries' helicopter land on the field and its remaining occupants climb out, weapons in hand. They pointed at him, first with hands, then with guns. Dragunov ran at them. They fired, but could not seem to damage him no matter how carefully they aimed, and he could not hear the gunshots or feel the bullets pass by. Soon, he was upon them.

Only a single strike was needed to down each enemy. He broke the first man's neck with a palm to the chin, then the second by elbowing him in the temple hard enough to shatter his mere twenty-year-old bones. A kick to the third man's nose sent his a mass of cartilage shooting back into his brain, killing him instantly. The fourth mercenary, a woman, was jabbed in the eye so forcefully that Dragunov's fingers punctured her brain. Upon retracting his arm, he swung back and caught his last enemy by the hair, ending the conflict by simultaneously yanking the mercenary's head downward and driving a knee into his forehead with enough force to indent his skull, fatally crushing his head.

Like that, it was over. Dragunov had never experienced such ease with killing before. In fact, he had hated such savage violence all his life. But now it filled him with energy, even…joy. He looked around at the destruction that he had wrought and, fists clenched, a powerful, ecstatic feeling overtook him.

Yes. Yes! That was…awesome!

He felt possessed by a great, dark force. It was as if the devil itself had infected the very core of his being. Yet the emotions that filled his subconscious somehow failed to reach the surface. Both his exhilarated, almost giddy feelings that had resulted from the slaughter he had just carried out-and his lingering fear as to what had happened in these past moments-could not come through and manifest in any noticeable way. His thoughts remained trapped in a tiny place in his mind, the only place where he felt emotion. Only that inner peace of his soul remained.

The rest had been lost to his near death experience, to all his pain and fear and hopelessness…to the lady in that deep, red lake.

At this realization, Dragunov turned back to the crimson waters, walking to the shore's edge, realizing what he had lost. His eyes were filled with horror, but his blood-streaked face remained black and void of feeling. Desperate, he opened his mouth to scream, but…no sound would leave his lips. As hard as he tried, he could only emit a strangled hiss; the sound of an ocean wave; a gust of foggy wind; a handful of sand brushed across the soil. Along with part of his soul, the lady had taken his voice.

Resigned to silence, he stood at the water's edge, stiff as the soldier he had always been, reflecting on it…just as it reflected him.

Two days later, twenty-two-year-old Commander Sergei Dragunov returned to the Russian military base in Chelyabinsk. Alone and half dead, he was immediately taken to the infirmary. He had been shot not just two, but three times, and numerous pieces of shrapnel had to be extracted from his arms, torso, and legs. His hair had turned completely white in the time it had taken for him to walk back to the base, either from chemicals he had been exposed to in Lake Bogorodskoe, or from the stress of his experiences. It grew back as its natural color within a few weeks; nevertheless, this strange occurrence, coupled with his newly gained, ruthless killing abilities, earned him the longstanding title, "White Angel of Death." Regarding the moniker, one Russian general later admitted that he sometimes wondered whether the real Dragunov had been killed back at Karabash, only to have a white-haired, soulless monster take his place.

When questioned about what had become of the rest of his unit, Dragunov was unable to respond verbally, but wrote of his story, explaining it in vivid detail. He did not seem emotionally connected to the things he wrote; it was as if he were objectively copying each word of his horrifying story out of a textbook. He did not mention the woman he saw in the lake either, simply noting that he had difficulty getting out of the water because it was so thick with toxins. Never did his facial expression change, nor did he show any reaction when told that none of the soldiers under his command had returned after the ambush and that half of the town's population had been wiped out in the fighting. It was later learned that he was the sole survivor of his unit, and all the mercenaries involved in the skirmish at Karabash had perished.

Dark, vengeful forces had been at work on that terrible day.