D-Bear had always made him feel safe.
Even all those months ago, when she had confronted him with a face smeared with war paint and a roar in her throat, he had known she represented protection, even if it was protection from him. He had felt the waves of strength emanating from her, and he had known she was the campus' own Joan of Arc, that she would be their beacon of hope, their light in the dark, their hero. He would have followed her off a cliff if she had asked.
Now she was changed. Now she felt different, strange, harsh. And it wasn't just that she kept feeding off his blood. Something had broken in her.
Her eyes were harrowed and dark, no longer the intense, bright blue he had once lost himself in, but a brittle, empty grey. Her cheeks no longer flushed with colour, her voice no longer resonated with righteousness. Her lips no longer smiled, not even in exasperation at his failed references or half-hearted attempts to make her laugh. She had gone somewhere he couldn't reach her.
Kirsch shivered in the dark corners of the catacombs, knowing his tremors came not from the lack of warmth in the pit, but from the reality of a world where Danny no longer cared for him.
