Not going to lie, I could spend the rest of this fic just writing Kirsty and the Unbound Prince scenes if I didn't have a plot I also cared about. Ah well. To continued productivity!

Also: I just started a FictionPress account! It's the same username, so you can find me there doing some more original, experimental work! I'll be posting my first chapter soon.

Be kind and stay spooky, everyone!

-Inky


She'd been whimpering when he left her side, and it was a beautiful sound. It was the sort of small, vulnerable noise that detailed a few of his tamer visions, the smallest admission of vulnerability to him. This time, however, it hadn't been so sweet; not brought forth by sensation or submission, but from the depths of troubled sleep. He'd cast his best mask of rest over her eyes, gently pushing her hair from her face.

"Nightmares, Kirsty? No wonder you so desperately run from sleep." He'd cast a glance at the spilled coffee as he'd carried her, setting Kirsty's sleeping form down with care on a large crate. Hardly a bed by his standards, but nothing here met his standards but her. The one that escaped - his infuriating, magnificent Kirsty, who drank coffee like it was a lifeline and ran from sleep as she ran from the embrace of the Lament Configuration. He hadn't even needed to prod too far into her mind for that information; just a touch of her face and her sleep aversion leapt from her thoughts into his. "Such sweet torments you've yet to witness," he'd mused, "I will show you the exquisite darkness of a nightmare."

But before he could - before he had the opportunity to weave a blackened fantasy into her mind - he heard footsteps at the stairs, and smelled the stench of the Labyrinth grow stronger. The Princess had returned. So he'd left his Kirsty's side, however frustrating it was when he'd only just had her again, to entertain his peer.

He would not share her, he'd decided, not with Angelique, nor with his fellow Cenobites. She had walked into his arms - she was his prize.

Finally Angelique disappeared back up the stairs. The Prince waited and counted the moments - one, two, three, four - for her to fade away. Satisfied she was gone, he returned to where he'd hidden Kirsty away.

Of course she wasn't there, but he'd expected that. That meant she was awake, and Angelique was already gone.

All the more time to play, he thought. The Prince smiled and strolled in her direction - after all, she'd hardly gotten far, and he wasn't in any rush to scare her off.


Kirsty woke to darkness - a soft blue darkness, but darkness nonetheless. Her heart thrummed anxiously for a moment as she looked around, pushing herself up from a wooden crate she didn't remember sitting on, but it soon settled as she realized she was alone.

Alone where?

She slid off of the crate and picked her purse off from the floor. The strap had held, thankfully, and she felt... surprisingly rested. Had it been a full night's sleep, then? She couldn't remember the last time she'd managed eight hours... No, she could hear people buzzing upstairs. Nobody would be up this late, certainly not in such a large group. It must have been the same day.

Why was I asleep? The thought struck her abruptly. She had been... running. Something in the museum had startled her, that was right...

Kirsty started walking, not in any particular direction, trying to think. She'd heard a noise and started running, because she was in... the museum. She turned along a stack of crates. The museum scared her, that was right... so she'd run and gone downstairs. It was blue. So that's where I am now. Good, she knew where she was, that was good. So she'd run downstairs, and before there was the panic attack, so she'd been drained already. So she must have fainted, not fallen asleep.

But how did I end up on the crate? Kirsty found a mirror. It was actually three, a folding structure waiting for her, and she approached it. A fourth mirror, smaller, stood at face level. Kirsty gazed in, looked at herself for anything odd, any clues. She was still in her work clothes, no coffee stains, no injuries. Her hair was a bit tussled - had somebody messed with it?

Cool fingernails running across her scalp-

Kirsty barely had time to panic.

"If only the mirror could show your true worth, Kirsty." She spun around and froze - there he was, pale and tall and wrapped in black. She swallowed, opened her mouth, found her words were dust in her throat. She closed it again, instead watching as he took a step closer.

The Cenobite leader. The last one to fall to Channard. She looked at his forehead.

He hadn't replaced the pin.

"I wonder what others see when they look at you," he continued, and she let him approach despite herself. He loomed over her, voice somehow darker than before, something in his eyes... different. Colder, hungrier. She couldn't explain why. "Do they only see your face, your human beauty? Are they ignorant to your potential, Kirsty? Can they imagine your promise, see you as I see you?"

"You're alive," she finally said, voice frail. "You... You came back." He smiled a little at that, and it looked just a little wrong, though she couldn't explain why.

"I did." His words stirred her soul, with that impossible voice of his that she'd never quite forgotten. "Did you think this chapter would end so abruptly, Kirsty?"

"You..." she swallowed, hesitated. "I don't know," she said with honesty, finally straightening up a little, trying to meet just a bit of his height. "I remember what I saw, but I had to reach the door before it closed."

"You could have stayed." He leaned closer, the pin on his nose almost brushing hers. "I would have waited for you, Kirsty. I have waited so patiently for you." She didn't know what to say to that at first - just looked at those pitch-black eyes, trying to work out what she wasn't seeing in them.

"...I'm sorry," she finally said, letting her words be soft. "I didn't know." That smile again, and he took her hand - for a second she thought he might kiss it. Instead he ran his leather-clad thumb over her fingertips, before squeezing her palm just a little more than was comfortable. She swallowed again, but didn't look away. Words that had lingered in the back of her mind were bubbling up, crying out, but she hesitated.

"You want to say something," he said, and it did bother her a little that he already knew that. "Tell me." She finally looked away, towards the ground, trying to process him and the words unsaid that'd she'd expected would stay unsaid. "Kirsty."

"I..." dust again. She cleared her throat. "I never had the chance to thank you," she finally managed, "for saving my life. Mine and Tiffany's." Finally there was a spark of surprise, a spark of anything, in his eyes.

"...You're welcome," he said, but there was something different in his voice now. Doubt? "How fortunate that I did, that we find ourselves here."

"I suppose so," she said, to her own surprise. "What... are you doing here? I didn't..."

"You didn't open the box." He finally let her hand go. "We have time to change that." The Cenobite surprised her again - he offered her his arm. "Walk with me, Kirsty. I have long awaited your company." She stared at his arm for several seconds - even in the dim blue light, she could see the cravings in the leather that was practically his skin. This is a bad idea, she thought, but everything about this was a bad idea.

Kirsty looked up at him, smiling at her. She took his arm.

"Alright."