When people died, their skin will have shades of green. Being an albino, the shades of green in Gilbert's body were the most vivid I had ever witnessed. His skin was porcelain, only the green tones of decay telling that he had once been a living body. And I stood beside his body with a gutting blade in my hand. I kissed his frozen lips as I pierced my blade into his pelvis and ripped open his stomach and chest. The skin had become tough due to being frozen, making it rip and break in irregular forms. "That fucking hurts you know." I heard Gilbert say. "It was all your fault idiot." I replied as I gutted out his intestines and pulled them out of his body. Cold crusted blood tainting my hands. "No." He said. "It's all fucking eyebrow's fault." I burrowed my hands inside his chest, cutting out his lungs and pulling out the rest of his digestive system. "You think West is going to be mad at me?" he asked, raising his head to stare at me with dead red eyes. "He will." I sighed. "But if it helps, he will be angrier at me once he finds out what I am doing to you." I shoved my hands once again into his chest reaching for his heart and pulling it out. His heart was as red as his eyes had been. I held it in my hands, looking at it, feeling its weight. "It's yours you know." Gilbert said. I looked down to his grinning corpse and then back to the heart in my hands. "No Gil, this is your heart." I answered back. Gilbert laughed, spiting blood out of his mouth and making it flow out of his open chest. "And it always belonged to you moron." I looked back down to the heart in my hands, Gilbert's heart. "It's mine?" I asked unsure. After all I had done? All I was doing? I didn't deserve this heart. "It's yours frenchie. You better keep it safe for me." He moved his head back, closing his eyes, finally accepting his death as he should have since the beginning. And I was alone with his heart in my hands. But it was also my heart that I held. It didn't feel right to hold my heart like that, I had to put it back into my body. But my chest was perfectly closed, and I would die if I tried to open it up to shove my heart back inside. So I lifted it to my mouth and took a bite out of it. Its meat was tough to rip apart, and the blood from within it gushed out into my mouth dripping into my chin. I had to eat my heart to put it back, it was the only way. "So this is the real you frog?" I looked up to see Arthur tied up in a chair much like Gilbert had been before he died. "Arthur?" I asked as I cleaned the blood from my lips. What was he doing here? Why was he tied up like that? "You're a bloody mess you monster." Arthur sneered at me, and I realised I probably was looking like a bloody monster. "Non, Arthur you don't understand." I was eating my heart. I hadn't actually killed or hurt anyone. "You fucking ate my heart you bloody freak!" Arthur screamed at me and I then noticed the hole in his chest. A hole where his heart was supposed to be. "Non, It was my heart. Not yours. I only ate my heart." I tried to explain. I didn't know what happened to his heart, but I had not eaten it. Or had I? Had I eaten Arthur's heart? No it had been my heart. "Do you want to eat my heart too Francis?" A soft voice called behind me. I spun around and was faced with Matthew. "Here you can have my heart if you want to." He said, and with a blade in his hand he stabbed himself. "Non, Matthew what have you done?" I rushed to him. He was hurt, and I had to help him. "Matthew your hurt! Why did you do this?" And he looked at me, with his sweet violet eyes and smiled. "Don't you want to eat my heart Francis?" With trembling hands he raised his own heart to me. "Here. You can eat it too." He wheezed out before he started to cough blood out of his mouth. "Matthew!" I screamed and held him, not knowing how to stop his now convulsing body, unable to help him as he died in my arms. I felt hot tears running down my cheeks. I was so useless. My loved ones were dying in my hands and I didn't know what to do to stop it. Something pulled be back, a leash I had not realised was around my neck. It dragged me away from Matthew, away from Arthur's yelling tied up corpse, away from my unfished work on Gilbert. And the leash kept on dragging me away until I only saw the person who held the other end. Ivan. "My monster." He said. "My lovely little wicked monster. Have you eaten well my hound?" He pulled the leash closer to himself and pulled me into his chest. I couldn't speak. I saw an open hole in chest, exactly where his heart was supposed to be. "Don't worry my pet." He whispered to me softly. "I don't need a heart. No. All I need is yours." And suddenly his hand pierced my chest and I felt him ripping out my heart.
The sudden pain inside my chest jolted me awake from my terrible nightmare. I gasped and coughed forcing air to enter my lungs and allow me to breath. One of my hands firmly pressed against my chest searching for my heartbeat. I felt the cold sweat of fear dripping over me. Visions of corpses haunted my vision and I was unable to tear them out of my mind. I feared now having escaped the dead inside my dreams.
"Francis?" A cold hand gripped my shoulder and I screamed and jumped expecting my nightmares to have followed me in reality. I fell onto the floor and crawled away from the bed, letting my panic lead my actions, letting the need to survive make me back up against the walls. I finally felt my heart beating wildly against my chest.
The figure above the bed turned on the lights and Ivan looked worriedly at me. "Francis? Is everything all right?"
No everything was not all right. Gilbert was still locked up in the freezer and at any moment my nightmares would become a reality. Arthur, the one person I had always trusted to actually help me when I needed had lied and betrayed be when I had needed him the most. I had no news concerning Matthew, Chells or Mona, and didn't know if Alfred had kept his promise to keep them safe. Antonio was somehow stuck in the Italian Mafia, probably also Gilbert's fault, and I would never be able to properly speak to him again. For all I knew my nightmares were real and everyone I had cared about had died and it had all been my fault. And I was damned to a life I didn't want, forced into being someone's property, to be his pet and lover to save my own life until he decided to kill me. I was still living in hell. I wanted to die, to disappear, to be rid of this cruel distorted reality that my life had become.
"I can't do this. I can't do this anymore." I gasped out. I felt tears running down my cheeks. I was finally crying out my misery. "I want to die. Please just let me die."
Ivan moved from the bed and sat beside me. Wrapping his arm around me and pulling me into his chest. I latched myself into him, crying into his shoulders. It was his fault too. He was part of my problems. Yet I would take any comfort regardless of where it came from. Ivan held me close soothing my sorrows with a calm steady stoke of my hair.
"I never did tell you why I joined the family did I?" Ivan whispered softly. I didn't care about that, I only wanted someone to hold be and tell me it would all turn out fine in the end, that happiness would still be in my reach after today. I wanted to be free from misery.
"I was living in a foster home with my sisters when it happened. It was a good home, but there were twelve of us living there. I was eight, and had been an orphan for four years already. Yakaterina was thirteen and had her hands full taking care of Natalia who was only five at the time. I was able to take care of myself so I mostly stayed out of the way. I spent most of my days alone back then. I was twice the size of boys my age so they were all scared of me and never wanted to play with me, and all the older kids and adults around me would only speak to me out of pity." Ivan paused, taking a heavy breath. "Back then I thought it would be better if I simply disappeared. And that's when I met old General Winter."
Ivan's tone of voice had changed when mentioning Winter's name, and although I could not see his face while he held me in his arms I knew he must have looked pained. So he knew what I was feeling then? He knew what it was to wish to die and be unable to?
"There was a very large mansion in our neighbourhood. Kids would tell each other stories about the man that livid there, but no one had ever seen him. There was a rumour that whoever entered the house uninvited ended up dead. Therefore, I had decided that I would break in and ask the old man to kill me. That way I would no longer be a bother to those around me, and my sisters would have a better chance of being adopted and having a better life."
"What happened then?" I asked. My crying had ceased and although I had not yet released myself from Ivan's arms, I looked up to him expectantly.
"I used my height to climb up a tree to jump inside. As soon as I jumped in the old man faced me. He had been tending to the garden. Without hesitation I told him of my intentions and reasons. He laughed at me. Said that what I needed wasn't death, it was purpose. I told him he was wrong that if no one needed me I was better off dead. He told me to leave, to find out the name of the man that always sat at the left window of the café in the end of the street, and come back to try again after I had figured it out." Ivan laughed. "And I climbed the walls and left to do just that, without even realising that two men had been holding guns pointed at me from inside the house the entire time."
"Quoi? They could have killed you!" I exclaimed a bit shocked detaching myself only enough to look at Ivan. He was smiling at the memory.
"Da. They should have actually. I was told they hesitated because I was a child, and that they were severally punished afterwards. But it didn't matter after that. I came back a few days later with the answer he wanted, entering the same way I had the first time. This time one of the guards found me and grabbed me, he took me to see Winter inside the house unsure of what he was supposed to do with a brat like me. I asked him to kill me again, but he just told me to go find some new kind of information and try again after. And I did as he told me."
"And that's how it started? You kept sneaking into a mobster's house asking him to kill you and he kept sending you on errands?" I asked astonished.
"Da. After a while my wish to die disappeared. Winter gave me a purpose, a reason to live. I would sneak into the house and find him so he could give me something to do. He always had something for me, as easy or as worthless as the errand was, he always had something only I could do, I felt like I was finally needed by someone, I wasn't a burden anymore."
Ivan's arms pulled me into his lap. He pressed a kiss upon my lips before his forehead pressed into mine and his hands rested on the back of my neck keeping me still, facing him.
"I have a purpose. People need me, depend on me." A sigh escaped his lips. "I know that keeping Gilbert alive was probably your only purpose for a very long time moy dorogoy. That is the only reason I will allow him to live this time." Ivan whispered.
I felt the tears coming back into my eyes. Gilbert would be alive. He would be able to escape this place. I had no words for the relief I felt. The small spark of hope that having Gilbert alive gave me. I kissed Ivan, hoping to convey at least part of my gratitude for such mercy. The tears ran once again from my eyes.
"You need a new purpose moy dorogoy. Because I am not willing to give him a second chance. This is a one time thing. The next time I see him I will not have such mercy, even for your sake." He calmly explained pulling my hair back and kissing my face. "I want to be your purpose Fracis. From now on I want to be the reason you live for. Do you understand?" Ivan whispered whipping away my tears, and I could only nod in agreement.
"Good." Ivan said a bit more cheerfully himself. "Pass me the phone so I can call the Italians then." He asked and I happily obliged. Standing up and reaching out for the cordless phone as Ivan climbed back into bed. Back beneath the warm blankets of the bed, with my head laying above his chest, Ivan dialled and called the Italians. I could hear his heart steadily beating beneath his cold skin and the vibrations of his voice as he spoke on the phone.
"Is this Vargas? Da, I know it's three in the morning but I have a message. This is Ivan Braginsky. Da. Well, tell the Vargas that I found their albino mutt inside my property and that if they want it back they need to come pick it up. Da. I am being very kind and I am willing to let him go this time. Be warned that he disturbed my pet and if he does it again I will personally snap his neck so I would recommend you keep a closer eye on him. I will be expecting you to pick him up soon then. Da, I will see you soon. Goodbye." Ivan hanged up and curled himself over me, pulling me closer and wrapping his arms strongly around my waist.
"Merci." I said once again, kissing his chest.
"Don't be yet. If they don't come pick him up I might just get rid of him. I am also not allowing you to be there when he leaves. I would still preferred to have killed him." Ivan grumbled.
"I know mon cher. That's why I am so grateful." I replied. It was the truth. Just knowing Gilbert would be able to live was enough to ease my heart for now.
"Just go back to sleep. We can talk about it in the morning after that pest is gone." Ivan mumbled.
I closed my eyes and went back to sleep just as he told me. His beating heart lulling me into a peaceful dreamless sleep until the morning light woke me from my slumber. It was morning and the bed was empty. I could hear the movement of men walking and talking around the house due to the broken door that remained semi open. I grabbed a pair of pants and left the room, heading to the window that showed the entryway in front of the house. No one there would be able to see me in the second floor watching out. I was expecting to glimpse perhaps a parting car, or nothing at all. But just as I reached the window I could see the strong built of Ludwig's frame carrying his older brother inside a black car. Gilbert's legs and arms were twisted in odd angles and there was fresh blood in his face that kept twisting in painful expressions. Antonio was trying to help Ludwig while Vargas stood beside Ivan with someone with a striking resemblance to him standing behind him. They were probably brothers, with the same odd curls raising from their heads. Ivan remained in front of the house with his back turned to it, observing the Italians taking Gilbert away, yet I knew he would have a pleased smile on his face the entire time. When Gilbert finally settled inside the black car, they left, without looking back. I heard the front door opening and Ivan's footsteps walking up the stairs, and I was expecting it when his arms wrapped themselves around me.
"You broke his legs." I simply said, needing to mention it to get the image of Gilbert's broken limbs out of my head.
"Da. I also broke his arms, his nose, jaw, and two of his ribs I think. Unfortunately he will survive." Ivan hummed quite satisfied into my ears. "Didn't want to set a bad example by letting him simply walk away."
"But he will live." That was the important part. Gilbert would still be alive somewhere else, and that was the part that I was most grateful for.
Ivan turned me around to face him, grabbing my hair and pulling me into a deep kiss. He hummed in contentment as we parted our lip, licking them in a self-satisfied manner. "I am your reason to live now. You live for me, and only me. I own every single part of you, your heart, body and soul. From now on, I want you to tell me you love me, every day, all the time. You will love me, you will surrender every aspect of yourself to me, and you will keep repeating that inside your head until it becomes the only truth you know. Do you understand moy dorogoy?"
"Oui." I nodded. I looked up into his violet eyes. "I love you Ivan. Je t'aime." I said, knowing that my lies would have to sound true to him at some point. If I kept repeating them enough, just as he said, then perhaps they would sound true even to me.
He pulled me to another kiss. "Good boy." He praised.