The entrance and exit of Manic Pixie Dream Old Man. Enjoy! (Most of this was written on a train, because they are so conducive to fiction writing somehow.)

The sounds of crashing waves, breaking against the rocks in foam and stiff ocean breeze: they were his only companions inside the dark, dank cave he'd woken up in. Outside sometimes there would be gulls, and other seabirds besides, but Frankenstein wouldn't know. He counted the days, unsteady beneath his breath, from the passage of stars. The light would wax and wane, and every new morning did not bring him closer to being able to sit up. An old man came to him every night, fed him through a wooden spoon, and he would sometimes wash Frankenstein's clammy skin.

The old man wouldn't speak much to him, and Frankenstein had no idea what to say to him either even if he could. He couldn't remember how he'd ended up here, much less as to who he was. The only memory his mind had refused to give up was his name, and he'd told the old man as such. He'd received no answer for his troubles, however.

Other than that, there was only one thing he did know: unrelenting pain and agony. He wasn't sure what it felt like to not be in pain, maybe once he'd been a man who did not suffer from what ailed him, but he would be hard pressed to believe it. He breathed slowly, through his nose, as the brackish water splashed against the mouth of the cave, spraying the insides damp, and sunlight glimmered somewhere out of reach. The world was blue and white out there, but Frankenstein only knew the black and damp interiors of the cave. That was his world as far as his memory stretched, and beyond it was a yawning void he couldn't comprehend. Who was he? How had he come to rest here in this hell? Was he being punished for something?

The rocks around him were unyielding – they would give him no answer. Frankenstein closed his eyes to them and downed in the red-hot pain that burned through his body.

It was during the fifth or the sixth day, by a rough estimate, that the old man came to him while it was still light outside. He was dressed in worn clothes, his beard hung low on his chest and his face was weathered. He was carrying food with him, and water – Frankenstein licked his parched, chapped lips and sighed. Food he could not stomach even on the best of the days, but he was always thirsty and there was never enough. The old man cupped his head, lifted it, and then pressed the waterskin to his mouth letting him drink. Frankenstein drank until he felt sick from it, tearing his lips away with reluctance and the old man let go.

"You're starting to look more alive," the old man remarked, tucking the waterskin away and fiddling with his bag. He had brought food with him, fresh fish and fruits, ready to be chopped and eaten.

Frankenstein licked the roof of his mouth, found it unpleasant and let out a soft groan. If the old man noticed it, he did not give any indication. He simply prepared a modest lunch and sat down to eat, passing Frankenstein a little bit of fruit when he could. Frankenstein ate what he could, whatever he could keep down, shaking his head when he reached his limit.

After the meal was over, the old man turned to him and ran careful hands over his limbs, pressing and probing gently at his stomach and shoulders. He did that time to time and by now Frankenstein had learned not to make a sound when the pain got too great.

"Your spine is shattered," the man said. He withdrew his hands, tucking them into his lap and watching the mouth of the cave with disinterest. "You might never walk again."

It might be life-changing news to anyone, but Frankenstein was so adrift he couldn't even begin to care. He was already in hell, so if he didn't get to walk ever again what would it matter – assuming the pain would stop at some point. Besides, he did not even know his own identity. Was there someone out there who would be sad if Frankenstein perished here in this cavernous gloom, not even able to remember their name?

He blinked, scattering those thoughts and looked at the old man. The shadows in the cave grew longer until there wasn't any illumination left to even see the whites of his eyes. The old man uncurled himself then, lit a torch on the far-off wall, lit another with it, and left in complete silence, just as he'd come. And at that moment, Frankenstein was half-convinced that he would never see what lay just beyond the edge of the rocks that guarded the outside world from Frankenstein's eyes. Hotness welled up in the corners of his eyes, sliding free of his lashes and dripping into his ears as Frankenstein wished desperately for only one and one thing alone.

The first stirrings of memories inside him came at the end of his second week inside the cave. It was no longer as painful, nor as agonising to simply exist, but the solitude around him had driven Frankenstein beside himself. The old man still came to him, either at night or during the day, and they did not speak much as usual. Frankenstein could eat the fish now, finding taste in its rawness when he'd once turned his face away. But the cost of taking solid food meant putting up with the humiliation of having someone clean him up. The old man did it deftly, without a moment's hesitation as if he were a doctor – and perhaps he was, for he did save Frankenstein's life from whatever it was.

Then he remembered and even the comfort of an ignorant wish for survival was taken from him. Once his memory started returning, it just wouldn't stop. He thrashed on the ground, the weight of his crimes heavy on his chest, and struggled not to drown in them. By the time the old man arrived, Frankenstein hadn't managed to calm the turmoil inside his heart altogether. The old man took one look at him and seemed to know. He shuffled closer, took out a soft linen cloth and poured water over it. That done, he gave the remaining water to Frankenstein to drink, which he did wearily. Once the waterskin was empty, the old man wiped away his face, hands terribly gentle. Frankenstein felt fresh tears in his eyes, he felt that unworthy of such kindness.

"At last," the man said in the quietness that followed. "You have recovered your memories."

Frankenstein nodded. He couldn't trust himself to speak just yet.

"Will you tell me why you killed all those people?"

And here he thought nothing could surprise him anymore. Frankenstein turned his head to stare at that man's face, guilt eating away at him. "I –"

"I was called over to look at the corpses. I'm a doctor and I've seen so many people die, and gruesomely too, but that was quite something. There wasn't anything anyone could do for them." The man paused, rummaged into his bag and drew out a bottle. He opened it and took a small swig from it, filling the narrow space between them with the smell of alcohol. The man continued: "It wasn't hard to find out the people responsible, of course, once everyone had gotten over the shock. Only you managed to escape because they said you'd committed suicide."

He drank again and wiped his mouth. If he'd stopped to give Frankenstein a chance to explain or deflect the blame, there was no need. Frankenstein felt as if his tongue had been glued to his mouth and he'd never speak again from the knowledge that burned him from within.

"Tell me," the man asked then. "Do you still want to die?"

Frankenstein averted his eyes.

The old man huffed quietly and recapped his bottle, gathering up the rest of the things. He left within the next five minutes and Frankenstein wasn't sorry to see him go. It seemed that he would go hungry tonight, but that was fine by him because the mere thought of eating was abhorrent to him.

The next two days passed in a haze. He hadn't had a drop to drink nor a bite to eat, and while he'd been too sick to eat during the first day, his resolve had crumbled miserably the second day. He had to have water. His lips were cracked and bleeding and he knew he was severely dehydrated. It wouldn't be surprising if he got delirious and died right here, all alone. And wasn't that what he deserved? The thought offered him no comfort from the persistent dryness in his mouth and the burning thirst.

On the eve of the second day as the cave darkened to the point that Frankenstein couldn't see anything – thought it could very well have been him losing his consciousness, that he could hear the sound of footsteps. At first he attributed it to delirium and dismissed it from his mind, but when a pale light threw long shadows over the slate grey walls, Frankenstein cracked his eyes open and looked at the source of the light. It was the old man, come to find him and with him he'd brought water.

It was excruciating to wait for water, but the old man was slow in giving it to him. He also cleaned him up so Frankenstein wouldn't have to lie there in his own filth. Little by little, his senses returned to him and the feeling of being human returned to him. The old man worked in silence as was usual for him, and when he was done, he went to sit beside Frankenstein, regarding him with solemn eyes.

"Because you had chosen to poison the water supply of the hotel, the poison only affected the people staying in the hotel itself. The indigenous population of this island, including one such as myself, managed to escape unscathed and for that I'm thankful every day. I cannot even imagine the absolute massacre it would have been had you chosen to fry a bigger fish, as it were."

It wasn't good to lie, so Frankenstein said, "I wasn't the one who chose where to dump the poison."

"Ah," he said. "Is that so? Were you the one who poured it into the water tank then?"

Frankenstein nodded.

"And is that why you threw yourself off it?"

"No, I did it because I was the one who made that poison. I never wanted to be responsible for all that, but that couldn't be helped. Still, I could prevent it from happening in future, so I took the knowledge of the poison and jumped."

"Perhaps," the old man said after a long silence. "It would have been kinder to simply let you die at the bottom of the valley. One of the men from our village found you there. I recognised you, so I brought you here where nobody ever comes. I thought—"

"You should have left me to die," Frankenstein said, voice bitter. He couldn't physically crawl away and throw himself into the roiling ocean just yet.

"I'm not a man who believes in things like fate and such, but—" The man reached forward and brushed away a few tears from Frankenstein's eyelashes. "If you survived that sheer drop, it means you should yet live. If only to right the wrongs you've committed. You feel guilty enough to end your life, whether it's to stop people from using your knowledge or you, I don't know. There might come a chance when you can use this life of yours for something better than hurting people."

"But I—"

"I don't know anything about you," the man conceded with a wry chuckle. "It may very well be impossible for you to go against the people you were a part of, but as the man who saved you, I'd like to ask you to try. If dying is your end goal, you probably will die along the way, so why waste the opportunity to hurt them a little?"

"How can I, with this broken body?" Frankenstein asked, despite himself. He wasn't the type to simply given in and give up, but he was so tired. He was grateful to the old man; however, there was no way he could take on the entire Organisation on his own. It was impossible.

"If I could help you fix that, what will you do? Have you forgotten your desperate desire for water? Did you see how unsightly you were, trying to survive in such a situation – how is it any different?"

Frankenstein had no answer for that.

"Here," the old man said, drawing out a slender chain from his pocket and placing it next to Frankenstein. "I've been holding onto it for you, but I guess it's time I returned it to you. You were holding onto it very tightly even in your death throes, so I assume it means something to you that you couldn't discard it right until the end. Hold it close and think about what I've said."

It was Tesamu's chain and a grim reminder of how everything had gone wrong. Could he really do it? Fight the Organisation that had used him so and kept him prisoner for so long? He closed his fingers over the pendant, clutching it close. The old man left him there. Frankenstein thought that entire night and when morning sun finally slanted its way through the craggy edges of the cave, he had come to a decision. It was the only decision he could have made, really.

It wasn't strange that taking dead souls into his body – souls teeming with unbridled anger and malice – without having carried out extensive trials and testing would be a bad idea. He had no idea how long he'd lost his consciousness, or how long he'd spent rampaging. When he was able to see, he stood over the mangled remains of what might have been Krans. The tunnel had collapsed because of extensive damage to the walls and there was a great barrier of dust that blocked the sun and the sky. In this isolated pocket of space, only he and the hatred existed. Krans was dead, but the dead had not left him. They demanded satisfaction: all those lost lives and potential, all those broken bonds and severed lifetimes, the blood of one man was never going to be enough to pay for it.

He could sense that Tao and Takeo were still alive, just beyond the curtain of rubble that separated them and they were logically the next to die. He did not want that, though, because he knew they could be saved. He wasn't exactly unaware of the victims of his own making, the black cloud that should have swallowed him up if not for Raizel. It wasn't wrong to want to save them, for them to be given a chance to redeem themselves as well – he couldn't afford to have their lives snuffed out now.

But.

He tried to resist as hard as he could to stop his legs from walking into Tao and Takeo's direction. He did not want to kill them. He did not want to hurt any of the people he'd known back then, people he'd realised were stuck in the same rut as he had been. He had tried to protect them when he could, as much as he was able to – it was strange to see it returned to him when he met them now, a traitor now – he had no desire to harm them. But the people who'd fallen victim to Krans did not differentiate between intent and action. Death did not seek logic, only its prey.

The moment he stepped beyond the veil of dust, he was relieved to see that everyone had managed to escape the caved in ceiling with minimum scratching. Seira and Regis had pulled the three human children away whereas Tao and Takeo had pulled Sangeen and Yonsu away, though by the sour look on the latter's face, Frankenstein assumed she had been alert enough to have dodged that on his own. Still, he was glad that Tao and Takeo had gotten to them anyway, because in case she hadn't, he wouldn't have been able to forgive himself. And as his feet drew him towards the four of them, he was sure that if no one – including himself – stopped him, it would all be for naught.

His hand raised against his will as the space between them decreased, crackling with energy of the dead inside him, and every face around him drained of colour. When his fingers closed around Tao's throat, lifting him off the ground, nobody dared to move. Tao struggled in his grip, sounds of distress escaping him as he tried to pry off his fingers, and Frankenstein watched, horrified. Was there truly nothing he could do? He wished they would attack him, push him away, and yet none of them made a move. Even Yonsu watched in mute shock as Tao was being slowly strangled to death.

It took everything, every single bit of will power he had to wrest some measure of control back from the dead, and he used it to turn towards Seira because she was the strongest amongst them. "Can you stop me?" His voice sounded strange to his own ears – it was hard to recognise it as it was.

Seira's eyes seemed to assess him, cool and measured, despite her earlier reaction. She blinked and shook her head, voice rueful when she spoke, "I cannot sever these things from you nor can I kill you."

"Chop off my arm?" Frankenstein asked, hopefully, wincing when he felt his grip tighten against Tao's windpipe. He could feel Tao's struggling get weaker by the second. "Anything would help."

"I cannot even get close. The energy that has taken over your body is making it impossible for me to even move much less get closer to you." She paused, still evaluating. "I don't understand who could have given you such a power."

Raizel. The word echoed inside his mind, solid and deep, and he wished if only for an instant for Raizel to come and stop him. In the next, he had the horrible realisation that if Raizel stopped him, it would only cause him more pain because of Frankenstein's foolishness. However, it was already too late. A familiar presence gathered itself next to him, so nostalgic and large that it threatened to swallow him up. His fingers loosened by itself, the presence of the dead souls pushed away from the mere brush of Raizel's powers.

He was back in his adult form, grim-faced and eyes full of pain – not his own, no, he was sad for someone else, as always. Frankenstein closed his eyes and wished for the dead to leave him – leave before Raizel had to cut them out of him, waste more of his powers on someone like him.

"I'm sorry," Raizel told him.

Frankenstein didn't understand, but he didn't have time or leave to ask because Raizel's wings were out and everything else lost importance. He could feel the thrum of Raizel's might inside him, could feel the malice excised from his body, could feel the gentle strength of Raizel support him as the dead departed through the path Raizel had opened above them. The black mass he'd cut from Frankenstein's body was sucked up in the vortex that had suddenly appeared above their heads. The rip disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. The moment it was gone, sound and life returned to the world that had fallen eerily silent and a great clamour rose from behind.

Tao was back on his feet, sticking against one of the still-standing walls and staring at them with wide, fearful eyes. Takeo was crouching a little ways away, the same look in his eyes as well, to say nothing of the two Scotland Yard officers. The most worrying were the ones given to them by the two children, shocked as they were at the open display of power by a being they did not know. Raizel did not look at any of that; his eyes were fixed on Frankenstein alone.

"Are you all right?" He asked.

Frankenstein was able to stand now by his own power, so he gave a nod and looked everywhere except at Raizel's face. He saw Raizel reach for him, then aborting the motion halfway. "I'll see you back at home," he said quiet enough so that only Frankenstein could hear, and then he disappeared.

"What," said Yonsu after an entire minute had passed and no one else spoke, "the fuck was all that?"

"I can explain," Frankenstein said, wearily. He felt like his body had been wrung out and left to dry. The exhaustion he felt wasn't anything he'd encountered before. "Sort of," he amended when he thought of the nature of the explanation he could, technically, give. "You two," he said, turning to Seira and Regis whose faces were warier than ever. "Before you report to the Lord about this, I'd like to have a talk with you as well. If afterwards you still want to report, I won't stop you." He had no idea what kind of trouble it would cause Raizel and the others should the Lord know of them, but he had to try and stall for time as long as he could.

"You know of the Lord," Seira said, eyes widening a fraction when Frankenstein affirmed with a nod.

"Right," he said, when the two did not disagree with him openly. "Let's get out of here first, shall we? Tao, Takeo, I'm sorry about earlier, but it's best if you come with us too. And yeah, bring the children too." He said pointing to the kids in the back, sleeping blissfully unaware.

Takeo nodded but he did not put his gun away, whereas Tao rubbed at the ugly red bruise around his neck and looked at him with a cautious look in his eyes. It stung, but it was his fault so he didn't fight it. He turned away and began to climb out of the hole, jumping over the fallen ceiling and pieces of concrete.

"Say," Yonsu called from below. "One thing before we go: are you the devil?"

Unable to help himself Frankenstein let out a mirthless chuckle. "Close enough," he said, and pulled himself out of the abandoned tunnels.