A/N: This chapter will contain sexual content of a possibly disturbing nature, you have been warned.

Malleable Iron

Cain's arms slid around Caterina like bands of immoveable steel, his chin on her shoulder as he grinned over at Abel in the silence that followed his declaration. Abel's head was swimming, he felt sick looking forwards and seeing that smile and that pale but determined face side by side... no matter what, he couldn't fail here today. Not again... he wouldn't let anyone else he loved suffer for his mistakes, he wouldn't be Contra Mundi again.

"C...ain." His voice came out in a hoarse whisper as he forced himself to calm, even though his eyes sparked with something distinctly unbalanced. "Let her go, she has... nothing to do with this."

Well now, that was so ludicrous that it evoked a laugh from Cain, his head turning slightly to push his nose into the velvety skin of Caterina's throat, enjoying the sensation of her helplessness even if the blood that pulsed beneath the surface was useless to him.

"She's everything to do with this, dear brother." His hand trailed further down Caterina to rest on the rosary settled against her stomach, the joining together of old and new. "She's the negative influence."

Abel shuddered violently at those words, barely holding his composure only by repeating to himself desperately that Caterina needed him. Winter blue eyes held none of the genial warmth of the priest as they fixed on the identical ones of the monster, alight with madness and a rage that would be more at home on the face of the long-gone Commander. This was different, Caterina might be the terran who had drawn him out of the tomb, but it was still Lilith's ideals that guided his life now.

"You do seem to have a knack for finding them." Cain continued, as though he were unaware of Abel's distress, a hand coming up to tangle long fingers in blonde curls. "You'll have to give me your secret, I never have beautiful women falling in love with me~"

Caterina couldn't help herself then, she flinched just once, her composure cracking for a heartbeat as her stomach turned to ice. She silently pleaded with Abel not to have heard or understood... she would take hours of physical torture over giving her precious knight the knowledge of her secret unworthy affection for him. Hardly daring to breathe, she raised her chin to meet Abel's eyes and... his surprise at seeing her reaction made her heart shrivel in her chest. No...

There were no words for the shock Abel felt, he hadn't believed any words dropping from those liar's lips... but then her reaction. That flinch and the look of despair in her eyes that spoke of truth, it hit him like a freight train and left no room for anything but that one thought for long seconds.

Love.

She loved him?

But why? A small bitter chuckle escaped his lips that he didn't even notice, shoulders shaking at the cruel irony of yet another failure. How long had she felt this way and he had been oblivious? Guilt filled him at failing to notice, at failing to cushion her feelings, and even at himself for not returning those feelings. He loved her, that was never in question, but not in the way she wanted... his heart would always lie in a tomb with his greatest of sins.

"Caterina..." He stopped with a soft choked noise, pushing back words he didn't even have. Whatever this mess was, it had to be dealt with after she was safe from Cain. Just the thought of his brother had mindless anger raging in him again, pulsing white hot in his veins and filling him with the desire to rip him limb from limb.

Cain's smile grew softer, those fingers still running over the ridges of the rosary at Caterina's stomach, his lips barely brushing her jawline as he spoke. "So blind, Abel, always so blind. So selfish not to give the good Duchess what she desires."

Caterina was acutely aware of Cain's nakedness as he pressed close to her, the damp liquid from the statis chamber soaking into the fabric of her dress and a coil of fear and anger slowly growing. She would not be used in this manner to torture Abel, and if he were expecting her to beg and cry then he was severely mistaken. She was proud of how steady her voice was when she finally spoke, assured and seemingly unaffected by this whole situation, however much it was killing her inside.

"My desires are something you are extremely ill-informed on, and these games are nothing more than childish."

Cain just laughed low and soft, fingers sliding along her stomach and pressing into the fabric of her dress, eyes meeting Abel's with a malicious promise. It really wasn't important, he couldn't even picture her as a sexual creature, it was like imagining a rotting carcass of meat engaging in such acts. It was the significance this act would have on Abel's psyche, as he took her purity away while she was wearing that symbol of his lost lover. It was a desecration of present and past, and an ultimate display of Abel's helplessness to save anyone, his status as Contra Mundi as all he loved was destroyed so utterly before his eyes again.

"The Iron Lady." Cain's fingers began to pop open the buttons at the back of her bodice, the noise as loud as gunshots in the small room. "Shall we see how malleable iron is? How strong your will truly is when tested?"

Abel was in an agony of guilt and fear as he watched this, barely even feeling the strain on his shoulders any longer as he pressed against the chains binding him. Mind frantically pulling for the muted buzz of the nanomachines that refused to respond to his call, trapped by the infected blood-spell on the Auto Jaeger he had consumed. He couldn't allow this to happen, and yet he was helpless to do anything but utter a strangled noise as Caterina's clothes slowly fell piece by piece to the floor, pooling in a soft rustle of fabric to leave her naked and yet infinitely composed. That pale determined face lanced right through Abel and made his heart pang so painfully he wanted to moan, hating the fear she must be feeling underneath... but far more than that, hating himself for giving her a life where she had been forced to forge this strong facade instead of living a normal and peaceful life. He truly was a monster, wasn't he?

The cold air pebbled Caterina's pale skin as she was left bare except for that rosary, resisting the urge to show her fear and shame by covering the intimate areas now exposed, leaving her arms hanging by her sides as she focused on controlling her breathing. She would not break here, she would not... it was almost easy to maintain the mask of calm, even as Cain's hand slid up over her naked breast; because even if she didn't realize it, some part of her still believed implicitly that her brave knight would save her.

Cain noted the purely instinctual reaction to his gentle touch with an almost dispassionate interest, some part of him darkly amused that he was taking something Isaak had wanted for so long when he had no actual interest in it. It was pathetic how weak the terran body was against its own hormonal changes and subconscious instinct. Even though she didn't want his touch, the longer he explored and touched her body with gentle caresses, the more her body reacted. It was almost funny to watch the fear in her eyes and note the soft change in the scent of her skin and the hitch of her breathing as he learned where sensation was the strongest. Those that raped by force were foolish, a terran way of thinking to take it by force when with a little subtlty you could make biology work on your side.

The room fell into silence but for the endless broken pleas of Abel for him to stop, a litany of Cain and Caterina's names in a jumble through tears he hadn't even noticed start to fall. Caterina was disgusted at herself for feeling an alien warmth as the monster slid his fingers almost tenderly across her sex, the panic rising in her throat to choke her as her eyes began to plead with Abel to save her.

"I never understood your desire for this, Abel." Cain's voice broke the silence, covering the whimper of protest wrenched from Caterina as he continued his almost distracted ministrations. "I remember hearing you moan for Lilith in your dreams, did you ever fulfil that dream?"

Abel couldn't even form a reply for the choking guilt and pain, eyes fixed on Caterina's as though he could somehow convey to her just how much he wished this were not happening, as though there weren't a monster proving to her just how useless and ineffectual her knight had always been. A cracked begging from Abel as his vision blurred from the tears.

"Please... please stop..."

Cain's laughter seemed jarring against the tension of the situation, bright and delighted as though Abel had just told an extremely amusing joke. This was pathetic... this was all his marvellous other half had been reduced to? A broken mess that could only plead for the nightmares not to come true; it was disgraceful that this terran woman was bearing the torture with far more strength and pride than the man chained to the wall. Naturally, arousal was something Cain did not feel now, a sexual thrill holding no interest or value to the nanomachines at all, but it was a simple thing to manipulate the blood in this body to achieve the needed effect.

Her skin was soft and warm as he slid himself into her, the sound of her pained cry delicious after so much determination to stay composed. She was trembling like a leaf, blood running down her inner thigh as she struggled to force ragged pants past the sheer agony of the tearing inside.

"...Abel..."

Her voice was raw, a betrayal in her eyes as she shuddered with each new thrust inside her. A demand to know why he had let this happen, why he hadn't been strong enough to protect her... it hurt almost more than the physical pain and the sense of intrusive violation, it was the death of the last part of that innocent child that had promised to protect the world from him.

Abel was frozen, even his chest still of breath as he watched out of eyes too wide in their sockets. The anguished accusation of Caterina's face seemed to morph and layer with a much older memory of serene golden eyes and dark skin. The rosary swinging between her breasts with each violent movement tied them together and made this a rape of something so sacrosanct his mind couldn't even comprehend the horror.

Failed. Again.

Contra Mundi...