"Kieran Seth McCormack, when was the last time you laid eyes on your younger brother, Aiden Sean McCormack?"

Behind the one-way glass that separated the remaining members of Dethklok from the room in which their manager was conducting his interrogation, the band exchanged surprised sidelong glances. None of them had ever known Pickles' full name until now.

Seth's snarling voice redirected their gaze forward; Pickles' brother sat in a straight-back wooden chair, his arms tied tightly behind him. The only light in the room shone down fiercely into his squinted green eyes.

"I haven't seen 'im since ya shipped my ass off t'Ahstralia, ya know it good n' well!" Seth jerked his arms; the chair legs screeched across the dark tile floor.

The back of the manager's hand connected with Seth's cheek so suddenly that Toki—more than a little drunk, and therefore unsteady on his feet anyway—sucked in his breath and grabbed hold of the nearby desk. Nathan, who stood beside him, pulled the chair from the other side of the desk and pushed the younger man into it.

"Please sit still," Charles muttered, when Seth finished howling in pain. "This will be so much easier if you just cooperate."

"Why should I c'ahperate with ya? Ya got me tied up down here like some kinda fackin' criminal when I ain't even done nothin' wrahng…"

Smack.

"That will be for us to decide," Charles replied. "Now shut up and answer the question." He pulled a small white cloth out of his pocket and began to clean his glasses as he waited for Seth to comply.

"Th' last time I seen m' little bro was right b'fore ya shipped me off t' Ahstralia. I swear!" he added, flinching as the manager raised his hand.

Disappointed, Charles let his hand fall. Instead, he tucked them both into his pants pockets. "Very well then. When was the last time you heard from him?"

"Dood, do ya really think he'd ever contact me voluntarily?"

Behind the glass, Toki began to snicker, then to hiccup. Skwisgaar glanced at him; Nathan smacked him on the back of the head and hissed, "Shut up!" but the Norwegian wasn't fazed. He continued giggling to himself as the manager began to pace up and down in front of Seth.

"I will, ah, be asking the questions here," he said. "Now, I ask you again…when was the last time you heard from your little brother?"

Seth's reply was drowned out by Nathan's incredulous, booming voice.

"Toki, what the fuck are you doing with that?" he snarled, furious. He snatched the vodka bottle from Toki's left hand,; he, Skwisgaar, and Murderface stared in horror at the two inches of liquid left inside of it. "Don't you fuckin' understand what's going on here?"

Skwisgaar flinched as Toki looked up at Nathan with eyes that were bleary red and dangerous. "Sure. Set's beings inter…inter…interrogsogatesded," he shrugged, and made a grab for the bottle. Nathan jerked it away and thrust it into Murderface's pudgy hands.

"No fuckin' shit, Sherlock," he shouted, rounding on Toki completely, "But he's being interrogated because Pickles is fucking missing, you numb fuck, and this is no goddamn time for you to be drunk!" Nathan's fist came down on the desk behind Toki with a thud that cracked the wood. Murderface and Skwisgaar shrunk back—Toki, his bloodshot eyes narrowing to slits, stood.

"How's the fuck would you be knowings when it's times for be to be fuckings drunk, Nat'ans?" he asked, and all the alarm bells in Skwisgaar's mind sounded in a violent cacophony. He actually took one step toward Nathan and Toki before Murderface's arm cut him off.

"Don't think now'sch schuch a good time to get between thosche two," he mumbled. "Let 'em be."

"It's never fucking time for your ass to be drunk!" Nathan bellowed, "You're a fucking one-man wrecking machine if you so much as take a fuckin' shot, and we don't need you hammered out of what little mind you've got while we're tryin' to find Pickles!"

"Nat'ans, stops—" Skwisgaar began, but the words barely made it out of his mouth. Toki was grinning; his teeth looked feral as they flashed in the light. Before anyone, even Nathan, knew what was happening, Toki had reared back and clocked the frontman on the side of his head. Nathan stumbled backward, hand pressed to his temple; Toki took advantage of his distraction, siezed the bigger man's shoulders, and bashed his forehead into Nathan's skull.

"Or not," Murderface muttered, dropping the vodka bottle. "Get the kid, I'll get Nathan."

Most men would have been down for the count after suffering blows from Toki, but Nathan, bleeding from his split forehead, lunged after the Norwegian football-style. Murderface sacked him in the legs before he could reach his target and looked back at Skwisgaar, who stood rooted to the spot, staring in horror at the swaying Toki.

"Get his assch outta here already!" Murderface shouted, "Ya think I can hold thisch guy all day?"

Before Skwisgaar could compose himself enough to make a move, Toki began to laugh. He looked up from the struggling Nathan to the paralyzed Skwisgaar, laughing with no mirth whatsoever. Blood streamed from his forehead, striping his paled face in rivulets of red. The knuckles of his right hand were lumpy and misshaped, already turning a hideous shade of blue from their connection to Nathan's hard head. He picked up the vodka bottle in his abused hand and chugged what little remained, then smashed it on the floor in front of Nathan, laughing even more as the dark-haired man sliced his forearms on the tiny shards.

"You can forgets that, Will," Toki sneered. "That guy woulds never do nothings for me. He'll just stands there…" Toki took a step toward Skwisgaar, who had begun trembling as soon as Toki began laughing.

"…and stares at me…" Toki continued, taking another step toward the blond until Skwisgaar could smell the liquor radiating from his pores.

"…and nots do a gods…damned…thing." Toki shoved him backward, hard; Skwisgaar went sprawling to the floor, the breath knocked out of him, Toki's bright, hellish eyes burning into him from above.

"This guy wouldn'ts be doing a gods damned thing for me," Toki repeated, lips twisted in a cruel smile as Skwisgaar tried to gain his footing. "No matters how bad I be needings him…fuck. Y'should knows by nows that he never does nothings for nobodies unless there's somethings in it fors him."

"Toki, wait—" Skwisgaar coughed, panic and nausea rising in his chest. "Just…wait—"

"Fuck you," Toki hissed, and left, slamming the door behind him.

Shaking, unable to breath properly, with his saliva thickening into poisonous paste in his mouth, Skwisgaar wrapped his arms above his head and tried to choke back tears. It wasn't until he had composed himself somewhat that he realized the other two members of the band were staring at him. Nathan's face was a mask of blood; his arms and palms were striped with it. Even the backs of Murderface's arms and hands were bleeding.

"The fuck did you do to him, Skwisgaar?" Nathan asked at length, trying to wipe the blood from his face with a hand that was equally as bloody.

"Yes, Skwisgaar," said a voice from the doorway. "What have you done to him?"

Ofdensen stood there, tie loose, arms crossed, glasses low on the bridge of his nose.

"Dude…are you crying?" Murderface asked.

"…Ja. Get da fucks out da way."

He hurtled the singer and the bassist in one stretch of his long legs, and shoved past the manager so hard that he fell into the bits of bloody glass himself.

"What the fuck is with that guy?" Nathan asked, as the three of them stood up from the circle of glass.

Ofdensen gave no reply, but there was a small smile on his face as he urged the two men to the infirmary.

"Toki!" Skwisgaar called, running after the trail of blood the Norwegian had left behind him. "Toki!"

Faint laughter was his only answer-it came from somewhere far up the dark, stone staircase that led out of the bowels of Mordhaus. No elevator would take someone where the interrogation room lay.

"Toki, stop running away. You need help, you're hurt, just stand still-" Skwisgaar was taking the steps two at a time, trying to catch up. Toki was drunk; he would be slow getting up the steep steps.

"Oh, now you wanna help me. Now that you're following a trail of my fucking blood up a flight of steps, after I called you out in front of the two people you were most worried about finding out what went on between us…now you wanna help me. Is that it?"

Skwisgaar paused on a landing, gazing up the set of steps that led to the next. He could make out Toki's burly figure standing there, swaying even though one hand was braced against the wall.

"Toki..." he took a tentative step upward. "Toki, we can talk about this. I promise we can, but right now you're in no shape to do it. You're drunk and you're angry and you're hurt pretty badly."

"What the fuck else did you expect me to be, Skwisgaar? Sober and happy and all right?" Toki's hand slipped and he lurched forward, arms waving-Skwisgaar took the rest of the steps three at a time and caught him, pushing him back toward the safety of the landing.

Skwisgaar opened his mouth to speak, but Toki, whose bloody face was settled into the crook of his bony shoulder, snickered softly. The sound sent chills down Skwisgaar's spine strong enough to make his cock twitch; but it also made the hair on the back of his neck stand up again. He had fallen into a trap.

"I know what you wanted from me now," Toki muttered, his lips close to Skwisgaar's ear. He maneuvered the Swede's skinny body into the nearest wall, pressing himself against it so tightly that there was no chance for him to wriggle away. "You could've just asked, you know. Spared me from thinking you actually fucking cared."

He ground his hips into Skwisgaar's; the blond felt his cock perk up again.

"Toki, no. You've got this all wrong…"

"Shut up."

Toki pressed his mouth against Skwisgaar's so roughly that their teeth clicked together. The kiss was like rape, fueled by rage and flavored by blood, but Skwisgaar was too physically weak to escape it. In fact, though his mind and heart were screaming at him that it was wrong, his body was begging him not to move.

Finally, Toki pulled away; his smile was cruel as he ran his good hand down Skwisgaar's leg to grab the erection that strained the zipper of his jeans.

"Now you'll know what it's like to wake up alone…motherfucker."

The last thing Skwisgaar saw before he was shoved down the flight of steps was the hateful knowing in Toki's eyes. Toki knew. He knew everything, and had used it, as cruelly as he believed that Skwisgaar had used him.

By the time Ofdensen, Nathan, and Murderface found Skwisgaar sprawled on the landing, Toki was as lost as Pickles.