A New World

by MeyRevived2

the rules of the game are changed as our heroes recieve new roles to play. friendships and relationships are tested, new loves and bonds are created. what will become of X as the world they live in changes complely.

37. The Ship of Memories

Disclaimer: I don't own X/1999, I didn't come up with any of their brilliant characters, they're the geniuses not me

The character of Alex, Jacob, Venus, Charlie, David, Anthony, Dvora and Dimitri are all mine. The Noters are half reality. The rest belong to all the book/movie/TV/anime/manga they came from. If you can spot where they're from then good for you!

Author's Thanks: To LadyofTheBlackWings (Alex scheming? What made you think that? XD yes, foreshadowing is fun to play with. I can't wait for you to continue writing your story, yay!) and to atannenbaum from my LJ (if you bug me enough I'll cooperate and put Nancy in. I already thought of a place for her).

Also many thanks to Cait-hime-sama-dono, my beta, for working so hard on making A New World a better fic.

Youz Guyz out there: A NEW WORLD IS GOING TO CHANGE A FEW STUFF IN IT'S CHAPTERS DUE TO IT'S BETA-ING SO, WHEN I SAY, CHECK OUT THE CHAPTERS AND SEE THE CHANGES! YAYS!

Author's request: Since the fic's going to go through some massive renovations, I think you aught to inform me of what you want. If there's something that irks you/you want to see happening/you don't want to see happening/would like to see more of inform me via reviews or email and I'll work on it for the new and improved version.

WARNING: This chapter contains some heavy material. And dirty words. So be warned. Yeah.

Brace yourselves for a long one. It's as long as the exile, as we say here.

---

Chapter 37 – The Ship of Memories

A cloud of snowflakes blew towards a lonely horse and its rider, so thickly flying together they looked like a wall racing towards the man and the beast.

Winter beat Auvergne hard that year. That did not deter Lestate one bit; he was young and courageous and his mission was for the sake of the peasants in his father's land. That pack of wolves was not going to hunt itself, nor will it be hunted by anyone other than him; he was the only one capable of doing it.

Twenty one years old he was back then, a royal savage, a hunter, a handsome rebel of his family, a creature completely different than anything and anyone around him.

No one understood him and no one tried. His father scolded at him, widening the abyss of unsolved anger and hatred his son created when pulled away from the monastery's arms. His brothers mocked him and looked down on him, thinking him a bizarre beast of a boy with his shabby clothes, huge mastiffs and hunting obsession. His mother was the only soul who understood him and yet even she was aloof and unreadable to him at times.

When he wasn't hunting wolves he hunted food for his home, food for his family; and still they refused to give him the thanks he deserved.

Lestate drew his cloak back and checked on his firearms; three Flintstone guns, one Flintstone rifle, his father's sword, muskets and a mace. His beastly mastiffs exhaled clouds of white mist, bigger than Lestate's breath.

Back then he had breath. Back then he needed oxygen and food. Back then he could look at the sun, was conscious during the hours when the sun was up. Back then when he cried, and he seldom did, the tears were crystal clear rather than the bloody stream they were now. Back then he needed candles to light the darkness for him and half the colors before him missed his dim vision.

Back then he was human and a mortal.

Far away, up on the mountains, the wolves howled. Their solemn cry challenging the cruel January blizzard's roar. The sky was black from the dark clouds gathered above them.

On they rode; towards the wolves, towards a battle.

Lestate opened his eyes to darkness. He was inside his coffin. The earth on which his coffin lay swayed gently and the sound of waves softly lapping against one another, against a wooden wall, reached his sharp ears.

He was not in pre-revolution Auvergne; he was in the Lost Dimension, in the Dark Side again. He was on a pirate ship, in a room where his coffin shared the same space as another vampire's coffin, a vampire from another world where blood drinkers sprung from a single act of sacrilege rather than a bodiless spirit which possessed the blood of an ancient queen.

Then why was he in Auvergne just now?

It was no dream, nor was it a vision. No; the cold was too bitter, his buckskin coat was too heavy on his shoulders and his rawhide boots too tightly secured on his feet. This was a flash of memory, but what a flash! Like traveling through time and being back there in the flesh.

Truly amazing. As he pushed his coffin lid open Lestate decided to walk around the ship and see if any of his other companions to Death experienced the same thing.

---

"You dead? You dead? ehee hee, hey, hey! You dead, copper?"

Victoria, a mere child not even old enough to have learnt the alphabet, hid in the closet of her parents' bedroom and gaped. The room was dark; the shutters were closed and already the sun set outside the simple building in Essex inside one of its apartments a family was crushed into bloody fragments.

"Is he dead? Is he dead?" The talkative neurotic one wore a dirty beanie and a black jacket too big for him (probably stolen from another one of his victims) which's collar and sleeves were adorned with shabby fake fur.

"Yeah, he's plenty dead alright." The second murderer was a more civil, probably older man, with a simple black shirt and bright jacket. His hair was parted in the middle and his face was unshaven.

"Fuckin' pig. You regret it now, fuckin' pig?" The walls, sprayed with blood, echoed the man's hoarse hisses of hate, "This is what happens to a punk cop who gets in too deep. Got that?"

The family pictures on the wall looked blankly at the horror, those whose eyes weren't covered by blood.

Her father, shot in the head, his blood sprayed in a circle of bloody lines, half leaned against the dresser in his bedroom.

Victoria never saw her father stay in one place or position for so long; he was always so lively and busy with things, even when he was relaxing with a cigarette after a long day's work. The child stared at her lifeless father trying to comprehend what she was seeing.

"Listen very carefully to me, Victoria(1)! No matter what, stay in here!" Her mother's words as soon as the woman realized what's happened to her husband.

Victoria might have been panicking at the sounds of the mayhem outside the room they hid in, but she obeyed her mother nonetheless.

Her beautiful, warm, soft and strict mother who loved her so much.

"Mum!...Mu…!...Mum!...Mum!"

Gunshots sounded in the room, the room where Victoria hid. Gunshots after her mother shut the closet doors tight on her child and turned to face her home's attackers. Something fell on the wooden floor, something with long limbs to fall a bit after the bulk of the body.

Victoria glued her small ear to the wooden door of her sanctuary and struggled to hear what happened in the room through the noise of her confused child's mind's frightened mess.

Where's Mum? Where's Mum? Victoria peeked once more through the crack between the two doors and saw.

Her mother lying on her back on the bloody floor, crimson spreading through her soft white blouse, above her stomach. Her beautiful blond hair spilled on the floor in shiny waves now soaking up the small droplets of blood from the wooden surface.

Her mother with her large blue eyes gaping in horror, her mouth hanging open. Two lines of blood streamed out the sides of her mother's mouth, flowing down to mingle with the blood coming from the hole in her forehead, another stream, reaching her eye.

The child was screaming now and she was out of her closet. Still screaming, she grabbed a fork she spotted lying on a table. Charging at the chatty murderer kneeling by her mother's body, Victoria plunged the cutlery into the man's eye.

"GYAHHHHHH!"

"Godforsaken little brat!" The second man pulled his gun out, aiming at Victoria.

The bullets hit her small body so hard they knocked her back to the closet, to hit its doors shut and leave a mark of blood all over it.

It seemed the whole room was flying in the air, with rushing bullets hitting everything and throwing them around. Victoria saw photo albums, plates, drawers, trays, lamps, picture frames, and cabinets in the air around her.

When she hit the floor it was all scattered around her, sprayed with the blood of an entire family.

Victoria lay on the floor like a broken bloody doll, eyes open like her mothers. Mouth bleeding like her mother. But not dead, no, not yet. Not dead yet.

"That little piece o' shit! DAMMIT!"

"Hey! Get up, we've got to move!"

"God that hurts! Shit!"

Still alive, watching as the man who shot her tried yanking the second man to his feet. They were going to leave her here, in the room filled of shattered pieces of the first life she lost.

"Bloody 'ell! This didn't even seem worth it." The man she hit stopped feeling out his damaged eye, "I'm gonna rape the old bag!"

"She's dead, you ass."

"No problem," He tore the shirt off her pure, dead mother's body, looming over her, "she's still warm."

Victoria jerked herself to sit up so hard her head punched through the wood of her coffin lid. For a long while she stared forward, head caught in the thin smooth wood, woodchips scattered around her and in her hair, and blinked. Warm blood streamed down her face. Her head was dizzy.

Of all the scenes of her strange life, this one had to come to her in a dream. Why?

The blood kept flowing from her eyes, warm and comforting. She lapped at it, tasting salt and iron.

"Ah, you cry bloody tears as well, how curious."

For a moment Victoria was filled with the deepest, most powerful and all consuming feeling of hate she ever experienced towards her immortal roommate.

They never got along; he always patronized her and looked down upon her strange features, her underdeveloped abilities so different than his.

He will mock her current state with her head through her coffin lid and she's in the mood most unfitting for his annoying French banter.

Glaring at him, Victoria hoped to shut Lestate up. But as she looked at him she didn't see those lips twitched in that patronizing half a grin, nor the eye blazing with amusement.

Lestate's eyes were observing and soft, his face clean and smooth. There was something else there; he looked old and brooding.

"You dreamt of your past as well?" he asked her and the corners of his eyes twitched.

Victoria mumbled a shy yes.

He was sitting on his well cloaked piles of velvet, legs gathered to his chest childishly.

Now he stretched himself like a cat and climbed off the pile, walking with a light stride towards the room's door.

"Me too. It was not pleasant."

Victoria blinked at the door behind which Lestate was now, and frowned.

She wondered what Lestate saw that made him so quiet and brooding. She secretly hoped it was something nasty and painful.

The tears started streaming again. Victoria felt like staying just the way she is; half lying in her coffin with her head through the lid and scream for David to come. To scream like a child in panic.

Then David will come to her and wrap his strong arms around her and ask her with his sheepish stutter what hurt her and burn through the whole world if it meant that's what'll make her feel better. Then she'll calm down and snuggle up to him and fall back to sleep.

Instead she pulled the lid off her head and climbed out of her coffin to search for Death; she was hungry. Then she'll find David and get from him that healing hug she ached for so much.

---

The house was dark, it was already very late in the day and he should be back home at the dinner table eating his mother and bigger sisters' cooking. Instead he stood in the corridor outside his rabbi's room, where his parents listened to his teacher's angry rebukes.

The walls smelt of old wet wood. The cold wind coming through the crack in the window smelt of rain-soaked earth and upcoming snow. The yellowing lace curtains blew gently on the breeze.

David repressed a shudder from the chill and clutched his fists. His shoulders hurt from their hunched position and his neck from holding his head so low. The floor beneath his feet was covered by soft warn rug. How many bad pupils stood like this outside the rabbi's room before him? He probably shouldn't think about it; he must be the only child who's as bad as he is.

Beyond the corridor, his cheder(2) room lay, empty of the rest of his classmates; they were all back home already. Only he was here to be scolded before his parents. On the other end of the corridor the mesivta(2) lay, from which soft murmurs of the boys hard on studying came and, once in a while, a random remark from their rabbi.

Will he ever get to be one of those boys? David doubted it.

"But he can't even read the Talmud(2) properly! Not even a single verse! Do you understand? Do you realize how lazy this boy is?" His rabbi's voice echoed off the walls of his office's room sounding as cold and harsh as the man himself.

David cringed.

His mother sobbed softly and mumbled apologies. She was sitting on a chair before the Rabbi's desk, holding her forehead with her palm as if to hide her shame filled eyes from the man before her.

His father stood much the same way his son did; shoulders hunched, fists clutched. His clothes smelled of sawdust and oil.

He came directly from the work shop as soon as David brought him the letter the rabbi gave him. He gave his son a good slap and dragged the boy by the ear back to their home and from there hurled him to the house's carriage and off to the yeshiva, to hear the rabbi's complaints.

"He sits at the cheder and stares out the window, day dreaming! And when I tell him to read out loud to the rest of the boys, he can't! He screws his eyes and frowns, then he brings his nose so close to the page as if the letters are too small for him to read!

"Such pranks I will not tolerate in this institution, I will not have him set such a bad example for the rest of the boys. They already like him too much. And why is that? Because in recess he climbs the trees and plays ball games and spins the hoop like he was one of those scheigetz(3) out on the street!"

"We're really very sorry…" his father's deep voice, like the thick oil he rubs into the wood in his workshop, "W-we come from a very simple family…"

"That is nonsense!" the rabbi slams his palm on his table, "Your son Avram was a great scholar before he got those crazy ideas into his head to go to a gentile university! Why, they say even David's sister, Sheindel, who is five years younger than him has a better grip of the language of the torah than David!"

Someone was walking towards David with soft deep steps and just a little bit of shuffling. Inside the room David's mother blew her nose and quietly as she could. The wood panels under his father's feet creaked as the man shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"At this rate, mark my words, at this rate he won't be able to read his parasha(2) in his own bar mitzvah! What would you do with such a shame then?" The rabbi's voice boomed in the room again.

David wanted to go in there and punch the man in the face for talking to his parents like that, like they were children in his classroom.

"My, who is he talking to so harshly?" a man's voice came from above David.

At once the boy turned around sharply, startled for not having noticed the man approaching him.

He saw another rabbi, a little thinner than his chubby rabbi and with a beard only a little shorter. He held his fur lined hat in his hand, his yarmulke almost drowning amidst the soft white and gray curls on his head, wiping at his forehead with a napkin. The man's jacket was slightly ruffled and the first few buttons in his shirt were open.

David blinked at this stranger, confused at the sight of a rabbi looking so unkempt and casual. Yet the man asked him a question and, having the notion of a rabbi as a man of complete authority imbedded in him, David had to answer him.

"My parents, sir, about me…I'm a very bad pupil…"

The man's small eyes scanned David up and down, assessing him.

"Why? Do you daydream in class? Bored with the Talmud?"

"N-no, sir! I'm not bored with it at all, sir! I like the Talmud…only…" David lowered his head again, biting his lower lip as he whispered, too ashamed to say it out loud, "I-I'm too lazy to learn how to read it properly…"

"There's no such thing as being too lazy to sit on a chair and read a book, dear boy. I bet there's something else that keeps you from reading. Do you like playing out in the yard rather than sit in the cheder?"

Tears gathered in David's eyes. He fought them, trying to stay as calm and mature as he can. "No, sir, I just….I can't read, rabbi…I'm a very bad boy…"

The rabbi crouched to have David in the same eyelevel as him. He raised the boy's chin gently with his soft hand and smiled sweetly at the nervous boy.

"Come; explain me why it's difficult for you to read."

David gasped. No one ever asked him why he couldn't read; all they did was frown and scold him about it. Suddenly a lump of heat gathered in his chest, riding to choke him with emotions. With it came the tears, flowing freely down his cheeks.

"T-the letters, rabbi, they dance on the page…" he sobbed, biting his lower lip cruelly again and clenching his fists even harder. His fingers ached from the slaps of his rabbi's ruler as punishment. "And t-the words…they cling together and I can't make out a word out of anything…"

"But you know the alphabet, yes?"

David shot his head up, hanging powerful yet miserable eyes at the man before him, "Yes! Both Hebrew and Polish!" despair took over him again and his head drooped, "But I can't read them…they don't let me…"

With a bit of a groan the rabbi stood up and ruffled the boy's hair gently. Once more he brought the boy's head up to look into his eyes.

"You look pale, boy; perhaps you've been cooped up in the cheder too much. What's your name?"

"David Cohen, rabbi."

"What a wonderful name, David. Did you know; he was our king once? He ruled over the whole of the Israelites." A humorous glint played in the man's eyes under his thick eyebrows, "And though he was a great ruler admired by all his people, he too was a bit of a naughty boy at times. Don't worry, David, you're not a bad boy at all."

He cupped the side of David's face softly, his chubby palm radiating heat, and walked into the room behind the boy.

"Ah, rabbi Titenboim, you've arrived earlier than I expected." David heard his rabbi said. He was amazed at the tone of his mentor's voice; he never heard the man speak in any form other than with the authority of a teacher or that of a rebuke.

"Yes. Hello sir, madam; good evening." Rabbi Titenboim, as David found out, sounded far more humorous and cheerful than David's rabbi. "Tell me, Yitzhak, who is that boy cowering behind the door of your room like he's about to be put against the wall?"

"Your tongue has always been too loose Moishe," David's rabbi sighed, "you find all the wrong words to describe such simple matters. The boy is nothing but a lazy student, he needs a bit of shaking up, and that is all."

"So I heard." There was a pause as Titenboim turned around to observe David's parents better. David's father offered his hand in a shake; rabbi Titenboim was known to be one of Krakow's community's biggest scholars and tutors and was famed as an admirable man.

Thinking back on the talk he heard of the man who spoke to him eye to eye as if they were both equals, David's head grew dizzy, trying to comprehend the miracle of meeting such a praised man as rabbi Titenboim.

"The boy says he cannot read because the letters jump around on the page and stick to one another until he can't read them. He says he knows the alphabet, both Hebrew and Polish, what do you say to that?"

David's rabbi snickered dismissively, "His little sister reads better than this boy. If he knows the alphabets then why make up ridiculous stories about letters jumping around and keeping him from reading? He has an active imagination, but not a brain."

"Now you're the one who uses the wrong words, Yitzhak; the boy's parents are here in the room while you say their boy has no brain!"

David's limbs became rigid with fear, cold sweat dripped down his spine. Here was this great rabbi, arguing with harsh tones with his rabbi, who is also a renowned for his wisdom, and all because of him!

"Please," Titenboim turned to David's parents, "pay no attention to the words you just heard. Yitzhak is merely unfamiliar with methods to teach boys like your son."

David's father gaped at the man before him, still unable to realize what was happening. David's mother, however, finally shook herself out of her gloomy shame and turned humbly to the man before her.

"Then you know of a way to teach our son the Talmud? There's a cheder for children of his kind? Is he not just lazy?"

"Oh no, no." Titenboim's voice sounded like he smiled while talking, "Your son has a very small problem that keeps him from reading, that is all. It's very easy to treat, using a method of reading, and soon your son will be able to read like any other boy. Why, in two years' time he'll have his bar mitzvah, am I correct? He'll be able to stand there and read his parasha with no problem, I guarantee it.

"My cousin, who suffered the same problem when he was a boy, developed this method and has begun taking in students and teaching them this method. He has a small cheder of his own estate and is slowly gaining a name for himself…"

"Oh no…" David's mother shrank before the man humbly, "I'll never dream of bothering you, rabbi Titenboim, like this…"

"Please, it's nothing."

"Ah, t-the tuition…"

"None at all, nothing but help my cousin build himself a reputation. My brother is a wealthy man so my cousin has very little need of money."

David stumbled away from the door until his back hit the wall. His head still swam and the tears were unstoppable. What was happening in there? What was going on?

His world was about to change for the first time in his life.

A week later, with a small case containing his few clothes and some food for the travel, David rode rabbi Titenboim's carriage, sitting next to the man like two pals out on a vacation.

"I have something to tell you, young David." The man turned to David with a childish smile playing on his lips. "I lied to your parents and rabbi. My cousin has no cheder, or even a yeshiva!

"My cousin is a very young man who had just gotten himself a wife and a farm on the land his lovely wife's father owns. It's true that my cousin complained about the same dancing of the letters when he was young, like you, and that he developed a method to help himself with this problem, but he does not teach it to anyone. Well, he will teach it to you, as a favor to me for persuading his father in law to give his daughter to my cousin."

"I-I'm going to a farm, rabbi?"

"Yes, a farm. You've never been out of your little town, have you David?"

"No, rabbi..."

"Well, you could do with a bit of fresh air and good labor to build your body up. Not all of us are made to sit in a room and study all day, you know. There's a whole movement about it lately, a Zionist group, perhaps you'll join them one day. But for now you can stay in my cousin's farm and help him around while he teaches you to read. And if you ever feel like seeing the big city, you can ride to Wilno, it's not very far away from my cousin's farm."

They were approaching the farm and already two figures were seen coming out of a field which surrounded a small but cozy wooden house.

There was a tall and broad young man with a sun scorched face containing a warm and bright smile.

A lovely young woman wrapped in simple soft clothes, her hair loose and blowing on the wind, her belly slightly sticking out with pregnancy and her bright blue eyes sparkling merrily, stood next to the young man.

David gawked at her soft features and her long loose hair and gasped. He never saw a married woman with her hair grown and uncovered; never saw a woman quite so fresh and beautiful as her. Immediately he fell in love with her and immediately he understood what a fool he was.

The cousin was Leon and he gave David a powerful pat to the shoulder, remarking that he needs some months of work in the field and he'll be strong like a bull.

The wife was Lea and she welcomed David to her house with a soft warm voice.

The sun shone down on them through the usual Eastern Europe thick blanket of clouds. The field behind them was green and vital. Titenboim smiled at David before waving goodbye and heading back to his home.

It was all too good.

It will all end in a few years, they all died.

David leaped out of his bed as if out of the dream. He found himself standing, huffing, in the small room on the ship where there were wooden bunks he shared with Death. It took him a while to recover the information of where he was now and what he was a part of.

Shaking his head finally, as if to shake the last fragments of the memory out of his hair, David stumbled clumsily out of the room. He felt too big and inept for the narrow wooden corridors.

He wished to see Victoria, to embrace her soft warm body. He felt impure and his hunger for the vampire girl crushed. How can he touch her with his bloodied hands? How can he think a creature like him deserves her greatness?

Leon and Lea's faces flashed before his eyes, rabbi Titenboim too. David's stomach lurched.

He fled up to the bridge, desperate for fresh air.

As he came crushing into the railing, leaning forward to inhale as much fresh air as he could, David noted Seishiro leaning on the railing smoking silently. The undertaker ignored the assassin and closed his eyes, trying to calm his frail nerves.

---

The room was completely dark all around him and cold.

His eyes moved and he noticed lines of light on the floor. White diagonal lines, ten of them, parallel to one another. Stretching slowly, they marked the move of the sun in the sky outside the room. The light of day crept into the room through the iron bars on the window to Seishiro's left.

He was a small boy and already so cold inside he never thought he had warmth once, or could gain it one day.

He could hear the rustling of a fabric, of silk, in the room before him. Someone sat there. It only took a while before his eyes adapted to the dark and saw her.

The woman who was his mother, the woman who always looked like a young girl. The woman with the small suggestive smile painted with dark red lipstick.

She was sitting on the black floor of the room, one leg folded beneath her and one half folded directly towards Seishiro. Her kimono was of a bright color and Seishiro couldn't make out the pattern on it because of the room's darkness.

Her hair spilled forward on her chest, caught in the crook of her pelvis and folding there to spill down to the floor. The intricate ball of hair tied at the top back of her head was getting slowly worn down and Seishiro didn't know why. He only noticed his mother was softly banging her head on the wall behind her later, when he saw the hairdo give under the pressure and collapse. Hair spilled behind her back and reached the floor.

The woman's face did not change. Her large eyes, half lidded, did not open at all or moved to see him. Her lips did not stretch nor twitched to erase the tiny smile. Her head did not move from the slight cocked angle she set it in, it only moved backwards softly.

One of her small, pale palms lay hidden inside the wide sleeve of her kimono, which reseted in her lap. The other held a red comb which it moved through the girlish woman's immaculate hair.

The comb's crimson hue shone brightly in Seishiro's eyes as if digitally enhanced to overcome the room's gloom.

Seishiro's mother did not turn her eyes to her son, did not stop running the comb through her hair.

The white diagonal parallel lines stretched on and on until they reached the small woman's feet. Seishiro wanted to see how long his mother could sit there combing her hair. He wanted to test his patience as he observed the woman.

The lines stretched and moved until they lay full on Seishiro's mother.

Without the light on her Seishiro wouldn't see the paleness of her skin and the fully blazing red of the comb. He wouldn't see the camellia stuck in her hair where the arranged ball was once. If the sun did not illuminate his mother's face, Seishiro would have never seen the light streaming into her large dark grey eyes. He would have never seen how empty they were.

Seishiro tore himself out of the memory and sat up on his bed. An afternoon nap stretched into the evening; the window in his cabin showed him the dark blue sky above and below the black sea of the night.

Subaru, who was sleeping beside him as best Seishiro remembered it before he closed his eyes to sleep, was gone. Perhaps he too had a dream like his.

The source of this dream? Seishiro wondered. He remembered how shaken he was on the ride from his mother's home in Tokyo after that piece of memory. His head was empty yet noisy, and his heart beat in his chest dully.

Will he become like that too? He wondered back then and knew, despite his early age, that he will not be able to ask anyone about it.

Perhaps it was that very moment that marked the first crack in the Sakurazukamori emotion-binding spell. All Subaru had to do was to walk in and shine his light through the crack to break it some more.

Why for him, of all Sakurazukamori, the spell was cracked? The question would loop around his mind, settle down for a while and then suddenly surface again to pester him.

Perhaps the spell was simply too weak for a man of his power level. He is, after all, no ordinary Sakurazukamori; he is a Harbinger possessing enough power to participate in the Battle of the Apocalypse.

Surely they'd know of such a thing in the clan, surely his mother knew something of her son's future emotions.

Maybe she was too crazy to notice, to care.

Or maybe she knew and intentionally did not enhance the spell to fully cover her newborn baby. Maybe she did it deliberately, to give her child hope.

She was crazy enough to do it.

Seishiro needed a cigarette.

---

Hokuto bought a new hat and was very excited about it. She yanked Subaru from his work table where he was preparing ofuda, and dragged him to the living room of her apartment where her shopping bags lay in a pile, like loot.

She first yanked out the other items she bought, half of which were for him, a half of those too extravagant and bizarre for Subaru to imagine ever wearing them.

But the hat, the hat was left last so she can brag about it the most. It was for him and it was M-A-G-N-I-F-I-C-A-N-T!

However, the box in which the hat came in was empty, which made fourteen year old Hokuto tear it open and gawk into it, blinking her large green eye with amazement, with such an adorable expression Subaru's heart melted.

Her eyes darted to the bag in which held the hat and several other items. The lid of the hat's box was somehow moved open by Hokuto's walk and the swinging of her shopping bags, and the hat spilled out somehow.

Fishing around several other items in the bag which she did not show her twin (underpants, stocking and several boxes of things Subaru was too innocent and ignorant to ever recognize), Hokuto found the hat.

It was a black velvet squared hat with soft wide rims and three immense peacock feathers sticking out its left side. Subaru gagged with fear of ever walking around any populated area with the item the moment he saw the first and smallest feather.

But the hat was slightly crushed by the mess in the girl's bag and had become crumpled. The shiny smooth velvet was now wrinkled and the feathers were mussed.

Hokuto stared at the hat in its poor condition and emitted the longest, most high-pitched scream of frustration Subaru ever heard coming from his sister.

"H-Hokuto-chan? Are you alright?"

"The hat…" his twin was now in tears, her face red with anger, "The beautiful hat I picked for you…it's ruined. Look at the feathers, would you look at the feathers! I can somehow iron the velvet, but the feathers!" She ran her fingers slowly through the crumbled plumes, shaking her head softly, "It's ruined. I'm so sorry, Subaru…"

A smile crept up Subaru's lips. He crawled to sit at his sister's side and gently took the item from her hands. He placed it in his lap and began combing the feathers against the tendrils' direction.

"There's a way to comb a feather back into its former shape, did you know?"

Hokuto sniffled and leaned onto her brother's shoulder, exhausted from the shopping spree and the sudden gush of emotions. "Show me."

Slowly, delicately, dextrally running his thin fingers up and down the tendrils, one feather after the other, Subaru managed to bring the decorations back to their original shape. All the tiny knots were smoothened, each tendril returned to its original location and once again the natural pattern on the feathers became clear to the view.

The hat returned to its full glory.

Staring at the play of the light on the glowing colors, moving the hat softly to make the hues change, Subaru admired Hokuto's purchase.

"Do you like it?" His sister asked softly, her chin on his shoulder, her lips inches from his ear.

"It's lovely. Thank you very much. Did you buy a matching hat for yourself, Hokuto-chan?"

She drew away from him and immediately drew back, wrapping her arms around him and once again laying her head on his shoulder, "No, I only wanted you to have it."

"Why? You'd love running around with something like that."

"Because you're special, Subaru, I wanted to give you something special."

"I-I'm special?" A fiery blush covered his cheeks.

Hokuto let him go and took the hat from his hands. She placed it on his head and turned his face to her. Yanking the rims softly to cover the sides of his face, she brought their foreheads together, smiling sweetly.

"You're special to me, Subaru."

Subaru opened his eyes to see Seishiro lying at his side sleeping. He didn't feel like being near that man at the moment, not when the texture of feather tendrils and velvet was still so clear and sharp at his finger tips.

He threw the blanket off himself violently and dressed as briskly as he could. Walking out of the room, he winced.

"You're special to me, Subaru."

Is he sinful? Is he treacherous?

---

"Y-you dreamt about anything?"

The vampire shuddered in his arms and dug her nose into his shoulder.

"Hmm…I did too."

Victoria shot her eyes to her lovers', "Really? What of?"

David looked away. They were all so beautiful and shining and healthy. They all died. They all burned. "N-nothing…"

Her eyes darkened, "You won't tell me…would you…"

"You better not hear, Victoria, it won't do you good. You'll end up hating me…"

"Never!"

"Like I hate myself. Please, enough of this."

"But Da…" Her mouth was sealed with a kiss.

They stood in a storage room at the bottom of the ship, holding on to each other desperately and kissing hotly. The oil lamp above them swung gently as the waves tilted the ship. The soft light shining on them was golden and warm and it filled Victoria's hair with glittering fair diamonds.

Moaning happily, Victoria moved her lover's hands over her body. It didn't help; David was unresponsive, and to add to it he was already with his eyes closed.

Sensing her body stiffen and shake with mild anger, David turned around and reached for the lamp above then. He snuffed it and darkness fell upon them softly. Now he could love his vampire.

His vampire wanted none of it. She pushed hard against his chest and fled through the wall of the room, fighting back the sobs and bloody tears.

"Victoria! Victoria! Where did you go? What's wrong?" David kindled the lamp again and realized that he was alone.

What happened? Is it something he did wrong? Is it was he said earlier, that she'd hate him?

Oh, if only he could better understand women.

Storming through the ship's corridors, Victoria sought her coffin's room and hope for Lestate's sake that he won't be there.

Whatever happened to their love? To their attraction? Is she so ugly that he cannot look at her while they make love?

Every time they lay together the lights were off. No, more than that; it was pitch dark, so dark that David had to grope and she's the only one who could see what was going on.

Why won't he look at her!

A mortal arm reached out and grabbed her arm, firmly at first and then softer. Victoria turned around and glared at Subaru.

Immediately they bother regretted their behavior. Subaru feared his sudden grab for the girl was too rude and too violent, while Victoria kicked herself mentally for glaring at the usually kind and harmless man.

"Is everything alright, Sears-san?"

The vampire giggled sadly, "Calling me by my family name and adding 'san' means you treat me with a lot of respect. I think I like the way Yuzu calls me better. She calls me 'Bicky-chan' she can't say 'v'." Victoria was crying. She looked away, fearing her crimson tears might frighten Subaru.

"Is everything alright, Bictoria-san?"

Wiping at her tears, Victoria nodded first, and then shook her head.

Leading her gently into her room, Subaru sat them both on Lestate's coffin. Waiting patiently for the vampire to cry her fill, Subaru rubbed her back gently. He wondered if there was a connection between her bloody tears and the bloody tears he saw Death cry.

---

Pages filled with English alphabet printed on them in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The page he was holding was covered by 'A's and 'B's and 'C's. The next page was 'D' to 'F'. There were too many pages of that sort in his hand.

Alex sighed, rolled his eyes and threw pages away from him. They fluttered in the air, spinning around and swaying madly before they landed on the floor, lushly covered by a soft carpet.

"Why did you do that?" The man sitting where his naked feet lay, his orange eyebrows knotted as he looked at him rebuking, "You know you need to learn how to read."

Alex folded his arms on his chest and sulked, "But it's boring and I don't want to do it anymore." He was thirty years old, looking like he was fifteen and not a year older.

The young man, who handed him these pages and was leafing through the pages of simple text he was about to give Alex to read, was eighteen years old and looked like it too, which is why everyone around them treated him as the adult of the two.

"Your father said that if you didn't learn how to read you're not going to London, don't you want to go?"

Alex, who wasn't Death yet, arched his back and pouted some more, "I don't want to learn how to read. I don't want to learn anything. Can't we go riding?"

"No, we can't. We can't even get out of the house; your dad's sitting in his work room and it's right by the door. He'll see when we leave and start asking you what I taught you today."

The year was 1868, in the large estate belonging to Alex' last adopting family, a few miles east of Rockford, Illinois. Outside it was autumn and the world was dyed orange and red.

The young man named Jack and Alex have been a couple for four years and no one in their unique community of inhuman creatures paid it much attention, if they knew of it at all.

"I don't care, he can't really tell me what to do."

"Well I'm telling you what to do now and I'm telling you that it's a shame that a boy your age can't read!"

Alex stared at the red headed man, his ponytail resting lazily on his jacket's collar, and nibbled on his thumb, "I'm older than you…"

Anger flittered across the man's face and for a moment his dark orange eyes glowed with rage, "Look, just finish covering the pages I gave you," his powers levitated the cast off pages off the floor and sent them flying slowly to Jack's palm in an orderly pile, "and then read this simple text and then we'll be able to go riding."

"I want to make love."

"Not now."

Alex sat up, pushing himself off the couch's armrest on which he was splayed like a cat, "What? You don't want to sleep with me?"

A sneaky smile splayed on Jack's lips, "I do, but not now. Just finish that damn reading already."

Alex slid back to lying and shrugged childishly.

"Alexander, read!"

"No!"

Jack thrust the papers under Alex's nose, poking them to the side whenever Alex turned his head to avoided the parchment. "Read! Read! Read! We're not going to do anything else until you finish this stupid task already! Godammit, how hard can it be to read?"

"Language young man!"

"Bah! You talk dirtier than me. You talk like the negro slaves."

"They're not slaves anymore. And they don't appreciate being called like that."

"Fine, negro servants."

"I meant the 'N' word."

"Ah, so you know the letter 'N'."

"You see! I know alphabet, now let's go riding." Alex tried to leap off the couch and was stopped by Jack who leaned on his knees.

"You will stay right here, young man, until you know the other letters of the alphabet and read this simple text!"

Folding his arms on his chest again, blowing away the soft light brown hairs that fell on his eyes, Alex yanked the papers out of Jack's hand and pretended to resume his studying. "You're no fun anymore."

"Whatever, just read already."

For a while Alex pretended to read, darting his eyes to look at Jack from time to time. When his patience finally ran short on trying to study or pretend to do so, he began thrusting his feet into Jack's face, pressing his toes into the man's orange bangs.

A small fight began, with Jack trying to seize the offending feet and Alex constantly squirming out of his grip, giggling like a child. A charming pink blush tainted Alex's soft plump tanned cheeks and with his bright green eyes, Jack found his lover too beautiful to fight against.

"ENOUGH!"

Alex sank back into the sofa and pouted. He didn't like getting yelled at, especially not by his lover. Insulted, he threw the pages back into the air and shot off the sofa, storming out of the room with a fuss.

"Alexander! Oh for god's sake, why do you have to be such a baby sometimes!"

Alex slammed the door behind him, not before poking his head into the room and sticking his tongue out at Jack.

But jack was gone now, Alex killed him for the crimes he committed later and the world in which the memory happened was lost for Alex, lost for good.

He was no longer the innocent, arrogant, ever rebellious, ever energetic boy that he was back then. His hair was now black as grief and his skin was now white as ice and snow, often bluish as if he was a frozen corpse. His eyes were still the same yet harder, older, crueler.

Alex sighed and discovered that he was not on the bottom bunk but on the floor, beneath the bed. Yes, that is where he always slept where there were wooden bunks like that. Only the bed was slightly different than those bunks, and there were no mattresses at all. Still, Alex moved in his sleep and slipped back to his natural location.

He dragged himself from under the bed and climbed to his feet. He closed his eyes and listened for his men. David was roaming the ship, looking for Victoria. Victoria was sitting in her room with Subaru, the two were talking softly. Seishiro was on the bridge, smoking his third cigarette and was very nervous. Must go and check on Seishiro to see what's going on. Lestate was climbing the ship's mast to look around. Must go and tell Lestate to get the fuck down from there before he falls and breaks something.

Kamui was staring out his room window. Will was leaning over the bridge's edge and vomiting.

Was there something wrong with Kamui? His thoughts were extremely gloomy. His thoughts were of Fuma. Alex withdrew his searching mind from the boy and sighed angrily.

Soon, soon, they'll be back in the city and you'll have your stupid precious Fuma.

He exited the room to go check on Seishiro and yell at Lestate.

---

He was nine years old and it was his birthday.

Kyogo bought him clothes. Kamui never saw the man talk so much to anyone who wasn't his child or his wife. Kyogo fumbled with the small shirt and pants and mumbled something about a soccer team (they were soccer uniform) and how it's important to join a sports club. The shirt and pants were blue and, as he placed them by Kamui's small round face, he said the color flattered the boy's eyes.

Saya beamed at Kamui and gave him a lost soft hug. No one, not even his mother, could give hugs like Saya's. It seemed like everything endearing and loving in the world gathered together and became an essence which heated and beamed through the woman's body.

She gave him a camera for children. It was frog shaped.

When Kamui stared confused at the strange ogling black plastic eyes Fuma snatched the toy from his and placed the camera on his head, moving it sideways to look like it was dancing on his sculpt. Fuma pressed the activating button accidentally and the picture he took was that of a bewildered and sweetly amused Kamui through the thin layer of Fuma's untamed hair.

When the pictures came back from developing Fuma snatched that picture from Kamui's hand and hung it in his room.

Kotori gave Kamui a pink bunny plushy he could hug. It had long ears down to its feet and was forever sitting with its loose arms hung at the side of its soft body. Kamui's hug the bunny at night until he reached the age of fourteen and felt it was humiliating to be a boy his age and still cuddle a plushy in his sleep.

Tohru gave her son a soccer ball and a toy small goal post. There was tension in the air while she chatted merrily with Kyogo about how their presents matched and Saya looked nervous.

Fuma gave Kamui a toy car with a remote control that made the car drive around when he pressed its buttons. Kamui took some time to fully grasp all the different ways he can manipulate his car to move in.

He was sitting in his room, on the floor; legs splayed lazily at his sides, tongue sticking out through his small soft pink lips with the effort of trying to work the car, and desperately pushed the remote control's buttons to make the car draw eights on the tatami.

The car would get stuck in the grooves between the tatami and would flip onto its roof or simply stop completely, which frustrated Kamui to no end.

The front door of their house was opened and the dim voice of Saya was heard, saying a merry "Hello!" to his mother. His mother's low voice sounded thick with happiness as she greeted her high school friend.

The sound of mad stomping soon neared Kamui's room and the small boy raised his large eyes (his face was still very small back then that his eyes looked always disproportionably immense in comparison to his other features, which often made people call him 'chibi', which he didn't appreciate) to his room's door.

Fuma stormed in, dressed in their school's basketball team's uniform, and at once caught his toe on a gap between tatami and came crushing face first into the floor.

Kamui stayed where he was and stared at Fuma, blinking.

Usagi (name picked by Kotori, agreed with by Fuma and Kamui and frowned upon by the adults of the family), the Shiro family dog, came rushing into the room. He was barking and leaping on his hind legs with the joy of a child-made mess in the house and was licking Fuma's face as soon as he calmed down.

Slowly pulling himself off the bamboo fiver made mats, Fuma giggled at his own clumsiness and crawled on all fours towards the other boy. "What are you doing, Kamui?"

"I'm playing with the present you gave me." Kamui answered simply, testing Fuma's eagerness to be close to him by pretending to be completely immersed by the play of the small buzzing car.

Fuma reached Kamui and sat, staring at the car. It got caught in another gap and flipped onto its back.

"I'm not very good with it. I'm sorry."

"Don't be silly, Kamui," Fuma ruffled the boy's hairs, giving him a short hug (he was completely incapable of not touching the boy back then, and completely ignorant to what made him do it) and pulling himself to sit behind Kamui, "It's very simple to control."

"I know, and I can't do it." Kamui pouted.

Fuma pushed himself against Kamui's back and placed his legs close to Kamui's. With his larger, more tanned hands on Kamui's small pale ones, he pushed the buttons on the remote control and perked the car into all sorts of magnificent tricks.

Kamui stared at this seeming miracle and giggled, sometimes shrilling out with laughter at the wonderful things Fuma could do with the simple toy.

Upstairs Kamui heard his mother's bedsprings creak and soft laughter he knew was Saya's.

Right now, however, he was more tuned in to the boy behind him. Fuma was almost hugging him and nothing else in the world could have made him feel better.

Fuma was tall enough to be able to lay his chin on the top of Kamui's head. His chest was already wider than Kamui's back, his arms and legs longer. By being so half sunk in the bigger boy, Kamui felt the safest in the world.

He leaned his head to the side to rest of Fuma's shoulder and looked up the older boy's face. Fuma smelt of faint sweat and rubber from playing basketball. Also he smelt faintly of the fabric softened Saya used and of one of Kotori's silly perfumes she got for her birthday and was spraying all over anyone who came near her at the wrong time of the day.

Fuma stopped playing with the car and looked down at the boy. He couldn't help but smile and he couldn't help but feeling extreme joy at looking down at the beautiful face.

"What?"

"Remember when I said I want to become Kotori's bride?"

Fuma frowned a little, "Yeah."

"I lied. Kotori wanted to play husband and wife so I played along."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Fuma…?"

"Yes?"

"I'll be your bride one day."

Fuma jerked his face a little away from Kamui's with the surprise, "You will? Really?"

"I promise."

"Yay!"

"Fuma…?"

"Yes?"

"Do you know what a bride and groom do?"

Fuma blushed and suddenly wished to be somewhere else. The notion that Kamui might be smaller in build than him but his mind was quicker about certain things in life is something Fuma learnt from the moment he first met the boy. Proofs of it always made Fuma a bit uneasy.

Usagi sniffed the toy car and was beginning to bite it to try and pick it up but the boy to which the toy belonged no longer cared.

"N-no, what do they do?"

"They kiss. On the lips. With teeth."

"O-oh….okay…" Fuma was blushing even more. But Kamui was blushing as well and the sight of that lovely face suddenly so vibrant in pink erased any doubt or hindrance from Fuma's heart, "Do you want me to kiss you?"

Kamui rolled his eyes, thinking, "Well….we can't until I'll be your bride, can we?"

Fuma let go of the toy remote and wrapped his arms around Kamui, "But I want to kiss you."

Pushing playfully against the bigger boy, Kamui pretended to fight Fuma, "But it won't be proper; you have to marry me first!"

"No! I want a kiss, now!"

Kamui turned his head to the side as Fuma dipped his head and tried to catch Kamui's lips with his. They struggled like this for a while until Kamui was completely trapped in Fuma's arms and was unable to escape.

Fuma's lips were soft and it felt strange to be kissed like that, unlike the chaste kisses on the cheek he'd get from everyone who ever kissed him before.

Fuma's eyes were also closed, unlike Kamui's which were open and observing the bigger boy blush again.

When Fuma drew away Kamui gaped at him for a moment before squirming out of his arms with a shriek and fled the room.

He ran around the house in a spur of energy the source of which he didn't know, arms flailing and screaming all sorts of things like, "Fuma kissed me! Fuma kissed me!", "Ewwwwww!" and, "I'm impure, I'm impure, I'll never be able to marry, ever ever ever ever!"

As he ran past his mother's room Tohru stuck her head out, brown curls spilling at the sides of her neck, and stopped her son from stomping around some more.

"What's the matter, Kamui?" her eyes were frightened.

Fuma caught up with the smaller boy and was blushing so badly his whole face was red.

Saya stuck her head out as well, her blond bangs mixing with Tohru's chocolate ones, "What have you done, Fuma?" she sounded far more humorous than the slightly worried Tohru.

"Fuma kissed me! Fuma kissed me! Now he'll have to make me his bride because he made me impure!"

Fuma nearly fainted.

The two mothers gaped at the boys with jaws hanging.

Tohru tried to recover, "W-wha…"

"How sweet!" Saya chirped, her face beaming.

Tohru turned her face to Saya, "Sweet! Sweet! Where did you learn such a thing, Kamui? You've been watching soap operas instead of doing your homework after school again, haven't you?"

"Kamui-chan, are you going to marry Fuma?"

"Yes! I'm going to be his bride!"

"Where on earth would he learn such a thing!"

"Don't worry, dear, I heard him say the same thing to Kotori the other day."

"Oh."

Tohru's newly gained calm was broken again as she sent a mellow glare at Saya, "Kotori didn't kiss him, now did she?"

Saya covered her mouth with her small palm and giggled wildly.

Fuma decided he's been humiliated enough and turned to flee. Kamui was after him in no time, screaming at him to get back here and play with him, or with Usagi, or the car, and that mommy made cookies today, would he like some.

Fuma stopped and ate some cookies, avoiding eye contact with Kamui.

Kamui was in a smallish bed and Will was twitching and kicking next to him in one of those doggy dreams of his. Sighing, Kamui climbed out of his bed and walked to the window.

There he plopped down onto the windowsill and stared out into the nighttime sea. So much foreshadowing in one single memory, and so many of destiny's ugly fingerprints.

He missed Fuma's lips and he missed Fuma's arms. He missed his mother and Saya and he missed Kotori. He missed Kyogo, he missed Usagi.

Will's tail beat the mattress powerfully and his legs still kicked the blanket into tight knots around him. Kamui will have to untie him before he'll wake up in hysteria over this strange new binding.

But Fuma was on his mind now, and his old world was on his mind now and everything else seemed trivial and silly and unimportant. He wished to shake his current condition off his shoulders like an impropriate piece of clothing and become pure again, fit for Fuma.

Fuma…

---

At first the world was like a large glass bawl filled with noise through which he was looking at things. The noises would bounce off the glass walls and hit his ears until they'd hurt.

That's why for the first few years of his life he'd run away from the company around him and would bite anyone who dared to try and come near, everyone including Doc.

Then they moved to a new place with bigger corridors and above the ground and the walls didn't bounce off noises so badly because they were wider. So he became calmer and started looking around his surrounding.

He'd stumble on his tail a lot and would always close doors on it, which made him immediately start whimpering and crying and gained himself the nickname "Schreihals Schrodinger(4)".

Everyone was so much taller than him and there was no one his age in the whole base. Will was very frustrated.

When he reached the age he'd start craving for something to chew he gained a horrid reputation of a little demon.

He'd sneak into rooms and destroy the precious wooden tables smuggeled with many efforts from the fatherland. He'd appear in the officers' bedroom and steal their fancy leather boots to chew on their soles when he was bored. He'd howl at the moon when all everyone wanted was some sleep.

He was led around the base on a very short leash with a collar around his neck and he hated it. Every time he wanted to run to smell something interesting or chase a mouse or butterfly he's be yanked back to order by Doc and would receive a horrible scolding for misbehaving.

Always Doc threatened to anesthetize him for good if he won't stop it.

But Will had so much energy pent up in him he couldn't help but misbehave.

The moment he realized he could chew his leash and tear it he did and immediately he was off looking for an adventure, or trouble, whatever came first.

He found a room with the tall lean woman with thick long black hair who was cleaning a huge rifle, singing to the sound of opera. If Will hadn't known it was opera from what Doc taught him he'd call it "Lady screaming like someone's pulling her teeth out."

He lingered at the door of the room and barked at the woman inside. The woman glared at him and, used the end of her rifle to shut the door on his nose.

He curled at the feet of the door, rubbing his aching nose and whimpering when a heavy boot moved him aside. The big scary women with doodles all over her right side didn't even look down at him as she opened the door and entered the shrill-filled room.

Will bit down on her boot and immediately regretted it. Before anything could be done to retaliate the damage he's done to the leather of her boot, Will took off and disappeared down the corridors.

He was reported as missing and was immediately caught by one of the officers the Doc said Max called 'the old opera house men' or something.

This man grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and sighed. "You know what you lack, boy? Education, that's what you lack."

Will blinked at him and whimpered.

"Can you talk?"

"Maybe…"

"Hmph. You need education, yes, education." The man put him down until his feet touched the floor and, resting a palm on the back of his head, began guiding him to one of the rooms of the bottom floor.

This was the cinema, Will knew from the map hung on Doc's office wall, and he's never been inside there. They were showing all sorts of films in there sometimes and only the simple soldiers really liked it; they'd overcrowd at nights and fill the room with enough noise of manly cheers and burps that'd wake Will at night.

The room smelt of stale beer, musk, starch and gunpowder. The officer sat Will on one of the front seats and walked off to place a roll in the screener.

A man's face appeared on the screen (if Will was not color blind he'd know it was a black and white film, unlike several films in color archived in the cinema's small storage room) with many officers much like the one who guided Will here, sitting in rows behind the man.

The man stood behind a tall box with microphones on it and was yapping away at the crowds cheering before him. The crowds cheered and saluted the man and the man yapped on. He was jerking around so much and with such sharp movements that Will had to laugh. The man looked ridiculous.

Of course Will saw that man before; there was not a single room (save for bathrooms and toilets) that didn't have at least one picture of that man in them, may it be a photo or a drawn picture. Several officers had pictures of themselves with the man.

But Will never saw the man moving and never heard his voice and he never heard the speech the man was saying, though bits of it were often repeated by many people around him, sometimes even chanted.

Will giggled, holding his stomach which soon ached with laughter.

The officer poked his head through the gap between Will's seat and the one next to it and glared at the werewolf cub, "What's so funny!"

"Hitler, he's funny. I never knew he's funny."

"Funny!"

"Yeah, he's crazy, he moves like his wearing itchy underpants. Why is he so mad? He's so funny!"

The officer huffed and stormed off to turn the volume up so Will's giggles would be lost in the blaring speech.

But the man's voice was already intolerably high pitched without the volume increasing and the cheers of the crown made Will's temples hurt with the noise.

He covered his large ears and snarled at the officer who returned to his seat, crossing his legs elegantly, "Turn it down! I can't stand it, it's too loud!"

"So stop laughing at the fuehrer! It's unacceptable! This is your punishment."

Will's head spun with rage. He's had enough of everyone kicking him around and laughing at him and now this pompous idiot was trying to punish him, something that only Doc was allowed to do (and even Doc got a bitten hand if he ever tired to outdo a punishment).

"TURN IT DOWN! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR THIS SCREECHING IDIOT! TURN IT DOWN! NOW! NOW! NOW! NO…."

The officer slapped him hard across the face, "How dare you call our leader like that?"

Will was knocked to lie on his back on the floor, "He's not our leader anymore, Doc said he's dead, how can he lead like that?"

The officer was trembling with rage. But Will didn't want to run away, he wanted to stay and annoy the officer even more. His head hurt and the noise in the cinema kept beating at his sensitive ears.

"H-h-how….dare you!"

Will was caught again and slapped again and slapped so hard his head spun. It took him a while to realize that he can fight back and that he should.

But by the time the officer's palm was in his mouth, bleeding onto his tongue from the cuts his sharp canines punctured in the man's flesh, the door to the cinema was opened with a small slow creak.

Both Will and the officer turned around the moment they realized that whomever it was who opened the door was not going to say anything about the strange scene before him.

The tall man who stepped into the cinema was someone Will never saw before, though he smelled him alright. There was another one of his kind here, a fully grown one, who was serving the Major ever since The War.

He did not wear his ears and tail out, he was completely human-looking. Also, he didn't talk; either he didn't want to or couldn't, Will didn't know.

They called him the Captain, and though they gave him much respect, they also called him "Max' lapdog" and Will didn't know why.

So far their paths did not cross because Will was mostly kept locked in a room or caught and taken back to said room in Doc's laboratory. Also, Major was a very busy person and would run around a lot, accompanied by his Captain.

Now the Captain walked slowly, with wide steps, towards the officer who held Will by his shirt collar, and placed his large palm on the Officer's wrist. With what looked like an innocent twitch of his long fingers, the bigger man snapped the officer's bones and forced him to let Will go.

Landing on the floor in a heap, Will stared up at the man towering above him. He wore a simple cap hat, a long coat and an unimaginably long mauser to her belt. Will could smell the road dirt on his clothes and the exhaust gas clinging to his gloves and boots.

The man winced, frowning angrily at the screen still flickering with sights of the man and his crowd, and walked to the screener. With a single blow he punched through the machine and plunged the room into silence and darkness.

Will opened his mouth to say something but found he had nothing to say that would befit this strange creature.

Instead he climbed to his feet and began sniffing through the Captain's clothes, often burying his nose in the fabric to better examine the scents.

The Captain allowed this and was raising his arms a bit whenever they'd be in the way of Will's sniffing.

Whatever messages he picked up from the personal scents clinging to the man's uniform, Will was unable to translate. The man filled him with awe and slight dread, yet it sparked such curiosity in him that Will couldn't wish for anything other than to tag along to the man and see and hear and smell all that he could to learn about the man.

Fingering the loose bit of chewed leash, The Captain scrutinized the cub at his feet. Then he grabbed the loose end and began gently guiding Will out of the room, out of the building.

Will woke up and found that he was on a pirate ship in a world where he was forced to forget everything about the place where he was created and the people he knew there.

Doesn't matter, they were all dead; Alex showed their death to him when he was punished.

Will pulled himself off the bed slowly and shuffled around the room to the table where a bowl of water stood. He poured himself a cup and gulped it down in one go.

Kamui, who was sitting on the windowsill all this time didn't even look towards him.

Will's heart ached in deep longing. He knew everyone in his birthplace were evil and wrong but he will not acknowledge this on one person; the Captain. No, he will net be able to believe such a thing about the man who…

But there was something missing about his memory, about the Captain and those around him back then. What was it? Whenever he tried to remember it he'd once again feel like he was standing on a cliff edge and below a cruel wind blew madly, coldly up at him.

His stomach turned suddenly, as he pressed himself to remember. Before he'll soil their room, Will shot out of the cabin to the bridge and threw his head as far from the ship as possible, hurling out his lunch.

---

"So, you've all had dreams of memories from your life? Hmmm." Lestate rubbed his chin thoughtfully. They gathered in the Onmyoujis' room, which was the biggest, to discuss what they all experienced after what they thought to be an innocent afternoon nap after the heavy lunch the pirates shared with them.

Kamui and Will remained in their room and only those of Death gathered to this discussion.

"I'm beginning to think the Forget Stones have something to do with it." Alex said.

"What makes you think that?" Subaru was slightly ignoring Seishiro and it hurt the assassin. He tried edging towards his lover and though Subaru did not edge away he avoided eye contact insistently.

"Well, the Forget Stones suck your memories into themselves, so I thought anything to do with memories might be associated to them."

"Hmm…"

"Alex," David spoke up, he was in desperate need to not think of why Victoria placed herself at the furthest corner of the room, away from him as well as from Death, "Do you think the Forget Stones have to do with the Tramfaldores?"

Alex's brows soared up his forehead, "Uh…well…I've never thought of that. A mean of stimulating memories in their victims so they'll experience emotions from which the Tramfaldores feed? This is an option I never considered before.

"But then again, the Tramfaldores still managed to play with Pelican's memories…"

Subaru coughed politely, "…Who?"

"Ah, the Dragon Valley's Noter officer who was lured into the craters and became their prisoner when the Tramfaldores just arrived. So if the Forget Stones are here and not with the Tramfaldores, how were they able to force Pelican to remember things?"

"Perhaps they have not only the stones but technology to stimulate memories?" David suggested.

"Yes, haven't thought of that."

"Look," Seishiro became impatient, "how much more of these flashes do you think we're going to have to go through?"

Alex shrugged, "I have no idea. I guess we can ask the pirates, but since they lost most of their memories they might not suffer these effects."

"A memory can be that of the day you've experienced before you fell asleep." Subaru suggested, "Perhaps they go to sleep every day and dream of this."

"Let's hope it won't be every day…" Seishiro sighed.

Subaru stared up at his lover thoughtfully, his face completely unreadable to the assassin. After a moment of staring Subaru cocked his head a little and a smile spread on his lips.

Seishiro was taken aback, but not without a great deal of relief. Perhaps Subaru didn't dream of something that bad after all.

"So what do we do now? We just go to sleep and hope we won't dream about memories!" David grumbled, feeling extremely uneasy.

"What else can we do? Not go to sleep at all through the whole two weeks? It's ridiculous!" Death sighed.

"Some of us have no choice but to sleep." Lestate mentioned, pointedly staring at Alex.

"Well what do you want me to do! Take all the Forget Stones and hurl them out to the sea! The pirates will kill us."

"Surely, just as you created the carriages and the tents for our journey so far, you can create a ship?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Any of you know how to sail a ship by any chance?"

The room became silent.

"We should have never boarded this stupid boat anyway." Seishiro folded his arms on his chest. Already the late hour of the night and dinner's load in his stomach was making him sleepy, a feeling he did not wish to give into at the moment.

Alex pulled himself out of the chair he sat on and began walking out of the room, "That's a bit too late now, ne?" he left his men alone.

"Hmph, great answer."

"Seishiro," Lestate's voice rang sweetly like a bell, "Have you thought of what kind of memory might have played in Alex's sleep?"

The room fell silent again. Subaru covered his mouth, his eyes twitching with worry. David stiffened and wished very much for Victoria to be by his side.

His point made, Lestate left to go after Death and get a drink of blood. Perhaps he'll be able to peek into Death's soul through the blood and see what he dreamt of, though he doubted he'd see something he never saw before in his previous drinks.

The onmyoujis were left alone in their room and the atmosphere began to tense.

Swallowing his pride and fighting back his fear, Seishiro turned to his lover, "Subaru-kun…what did you dream of?"

Subaru's voice was calm, his features unchanged, "I dreamt of Hokuto-chan. She bought me a hat and said I was precious to her."

"…."

"What did you dream of, Seishiro-san?"

"Uh…nothing important."

Subaru fixed his lover with a straightforward, powerful gaze, "Tell me."

"I-It's not…proper…I-I…godammit!" He turned away violently and walked to the other end of the room. His palms on his sides, Seishiro tried to rein his storming emotions and stop fearing for one moment, at least to stop himself from behaving like an idiot and then feeling humiliated along with fearful.

Subaru's voice was still calm and patient, though a taint of authority was clear in it, "I won't be angry. Tell me."

Seishiro sighed, "I dreamt of my mother and how for almost five hours straight I stared at her and she didn't move an inch besides combing her hair. I remembered how crazy she was and I remembered how, as a child, I realized it and feared for my future."

Subaru took a moment to comprehend the words of his lover. "Y-you worried for your future, as a child? You mean you realized the damage of the Sakurazukamori spell back then already?"

His lover's curious, harmless air coaxed Seishiro to dare and turn to face Subaru, "Kind of, yes. I didn't know the one placed on me was cracked, only realized it's effects and worried for my sake."

"Ah…"

"When I woke up I realized that there must have been something flawed in the spell cast on me from the beginning. Without this flaw, I think, I would have never been able to love you."

Subaru blinked in silence, waiting for the dark onmyouji's words.

"And I wondered what might have caused this flaw. I think I prefer the explanation that my mother placed a weak spell on me on purpose."

Subaru frowned and sat on their bed.

"She was mad, and maybe not just because she was a complete Sakurazukamori. Later, when I received her house as heritage, I discovered that the iron bars in the windows of the room she'd always be in were not from the same date as the windowsill and wall. They were added in, perhaps by my grandmother, or grandfather."

"You don't know who came before your mother?"

Seishiro shook his head. He felt exhausted and wanted to finish this conversation already, preferably with his arms around Subaru, preferably after making love to the man.

When he settled on the bed by his side, Subaru wrapped his arms around Seishiro tightly, leaning his head on the bigger man's shoulder. "Let's go to sleep."

"Mmm…"

---

A week past them on the gentle waves. A week with only one mild storm and rain for a whole day. A week of roaming the ship, staring out at the sun playing on the water, a week of being trapped in the wooden cabinets, fearing the time they'll go to sleep.

Around them the pirates continued their routine, careless for their guests, making very little contact with the riders.

A week passed and not one of them dreamt of memories. Slowly, as each memory-less night passed by, they unwound and feared sleep less and less.

Yet, each night, they'd close their eyes wondering what they might dream of, if they'd dream memories. Some of them had very short life and so the topics of their dreams were very few, but some had lived for many centuries and had to wonder for a long time about the night's fate.

With each day and every hour and every minute they were drawing closer to the shore nearest to the City, which was another subject to ponder about.

Victoria longed for Yuzuriha as she did her best to avoid David's presence. She wanted her good friend to talk to her, to share with her everything they've been through in these past crazy six months.

Lestate wanted to see Tara and Charlie again, and hear their laughter as he told them his version of their adventures.

Kamui longed for Fuma. Will wondered how the City might look.

Subaru wondered what became of Arashi and if she gave birth yet.

Seishiro thought about Kazuki and how much she must have learned from months of having only Anthony as company. He wondered about Anthony and realized he was worried about the aging man's health.

Alex preferred not to think about the time they'll arrive at the shore. Instead he made as many maps as he could from his memory of the Light Side and set to correct the first maps he made, before he perfected the skills of map making to the level they were today.

One night, he picked up Grim Reaper singing and began banging his head into the nearest wall in morn for having to meet the woman-like thing when they get back to the City.

---

He was living his hundredth and third year, that fateful spring, yet he didn't look any older than eighteen or nineteen. The only change in his features that aged him was perhaps his slightly sunken eyes, a result of many sleepless nights in Paris' underground cafes and late night parties with his husband, as scarce as they were these past few years.

His husband wasn't at home when Alex unlocked their cozy little Parisian apartment and entered, pushing before him whatever food he managed to buy in the wartime shops. 1942 Paris might have been completely infested by German troops and officers, but it was still a west European city with too much pride to become strained and starved like its eastern Europe sisters.

Realizing he's home and safe, Alex placed the bags on the kitchen table, thus exposing the pink triangle badge sewn on the front of his jacket. He didn't fully realize the true meaning of this marking, but he was made uncomfortable by the looks he was getting when it was exposed and so he took up hiding it with whatever he could, whenever he could.

The time was one in the afternoon and his husband was only due back from his shop in four hours' time, so Alex had spare time to kill.

He cleaned the house a bit, watering the plants and dusting the furniture. He tidied their bed and disinfected the toilets and bath. He put some order in his husband's work table and dusted the carpet through the window, picking up the sight of two Nazi officers enjoying a cup of coffee in the tiny café across the street to his house.

Realizing he did not unpack his shopping yet, Alex hurried to the kitchen to deal with that. He put the milk and cheeses in the ice box. He sliced the fresh bread he bought and made himself a tomato and cheese sandwich.

Glancing at the clock, he realized he has two hours before his husband returns home and set to work on dinner.

Donning an apron, Alex began chopping vegetable and boiling water. Today he'll make spaghetti with cooked vegetables and minced meat. He'll add some cheese too, to make it extra tasty. His husband loved his cooking. His husband loved the way he kept the house tidy and homely. He told Alex he was a perfect housewife and if only Alex was able to give him children he would be completely content.

Young Alex sighed and turned the gas in the cooker a little lower to keep the spaghetti from cooking too fast.

An hour and a half before his husband returns home. Alex had nothing better to do than to wait for the meat and the vegetables to finish cooking.

In the meantime he sat to the table in the living room and rummaged through old prewar leaflets about vacation resorts.

Before the war, he and his husband went to Venice and enjoyed themselves much. They wanted to go to Berlin but it was no longer a place his husband preferred to go to. Then the war came and they couldn't even leave their own country, let alone their city.

He was fingering a leaflet about Dublin, which's English text he was completely ignorant to, when a violent knock came from the front door. Alex had only time to look up in wonder at the intensity of the knock before the door was kicked open.

Three officers barged into the small two room apartment, their hard boots landing too hard on the delicately designed tiled floor.

Behind them, cowering by the doorframe, Alex's neighbor from the floor above observed the scene before him, glaring at Alex through his thick eyebrows with tiny piggish eyes.

Alex got up and opened his mouth to say something. He received a left hook which knocked him onto the table before he was yanked off of it again by the collar of his soft bright green shirt.

The officer who struck him was yelling at him to pack his things and come with them because he's arrested for homosexuality. The sentence was laced with several words Alex preferred not to relate to himself. He wondered where he learned German to understand the shouts he heard.

The two other officers were rummaging through his and his husband's belongings with the metal clubs they held; often knocking something down it was made of glass or porcelain and was could be broken.

Alex nodded, still very much baffled by this sudden intrusion to his little sanctuary, and mumbled that he needs to go pack his things and turn the fire off under the spaghetti. Where will he be held, he asked, he needs to leave a note to his husband?

The officer informed him that it's none of his business and kicked him towards the bedroom.

Alex noted his hands were shaking and his head was swimming and thought that maybe, while cooking and running around the city in direct sunshine, he forgot to drink and was dehydrated.

He stuffed as many shirts, pants and underwear's into the nearest suitcase he could find and hoped the mess and lack of clothes would somehow explain his husband the reason why he wasn't in the apartment when he gets back, if a note was not something he could leave.

At the doorway to the room one of the officers stood, making sure Alex didn't try anything funny.

Alex didn't try anything funny; he was most obediently packing clothes for a week's time (how long would they be able to keep him in prison before his husband would come and bail him out? Couldn't be more than a week, right?)

Then his large, clear and innocent eyes lay on a picture standing on his small toilette table. It was a picture of mentor of his who taught him about Marx and his theories, the man who later got him his first spying gig.

That mentor, when did he meet him? Was it not back in his first visit to London, in the winter of 1869? Yes, it was.

But the year was 1942 now, and he is no more than twenty, though he orphan and didn't know his exact birthday.

Surely he couldn't have met that mentor in 1869….surely that means he's older than twenty… that he's…

Not human…

He's not human and whatever they may do to him will not be a real danger to him. Alex straightened his back, a new light shining in his eyes, and calmly closed the suitcase on his few belongings. Calmly, he walked out of the room, and followed the officers who surround him like he was a dangerous convict.

Alex shook himself out of the memory, shot out of the bed, out of the room, through the corridor and up to the bridge where he hurled the content of his inhuman stomach down into the sea.

They did harm him, though he was not human, and they made him forget his inhumanity. As he arrived there he went through such horrors that his mind erased all the memories of his past, even his name. He became nothing but the number the carved into his skin, when his skin finally allowed the ink to sink in.

Alex shuddered again, convulsing and vomiting again. His hands shook badly as they clawed the wooden railing hard enough to carve ten holes into it. He laid his forehead on the salt filmed cool wood and tried to put some calm into his mind but the shudders won't end.

A palm landed at the center of his back, above the scars that place gave him. Immediately he straightened his back and turned around to see who dared to sneak up on him and touch him.

It was David, and his eyes were bulging, bloodshot, his face was carved with pain. He too dreamt tonight.

Still shuddering, Alex reached out slowly and embraced the other man. The wind blew around them gently, cooling their feverish mind.

---

"Please hang your clothes on one of the hangers and remember the number of hanger you put your cloths on so when you step out of the shower there won't be any confusion." The most bitter, vile, treacherous, poisonous lie he ever told.

But what else could he say? "Run away! They're going to kill you!" where would they run! "Kiss your husband and children goodbye, miss, you will never see them again." That will only create panic. What can you say in a situation like that?

A cruel thought crossed David's mind, he could say "Don't grab for your dears, when you'll be dead and rigid I'll have to yank you apart." But he won't say it; he wanted to throw himself into the fire for even thinking of saying it.

The floor was slowly covered by jackets, skirts, underwear, shirts, and shoes, cast off casually or accidentally. David looked at socked feet, shoe covered feet, naked feet, children's feet, men's feet, women's feet with varnished nails. Looking at the floor is the only thing he could do; he was completely unable to look these people in the eye, just like with every delivery ever to decent the deadly steps to the hall where David and his coworkers waited.

After a year of the horror of being a Sonderkommando(2), David was sure his emotions were worn to the ground and completely gone. After recognizing your brothers and sisters on the elevator leading up to the crematoriums, after seeing your father and mother a moment before they were shoved into the fire, what emotions could have been left in his hollowed chest?

After meeting Lea's gaze in that damned hall, another face in the group of unimaginably thin women, with her beautiful head shaven and her face terror stricken, her eyes so empty from her ordeals in that hell…

Leon met a slightly different fate; he was one of those who leaped at the fences to end their suffering and was only brought in the truck, ironically marked with the sign of the Red Cross like David's shirt, with a whole heap of other corpses. David recognized him still and pushed the other inmates away so that no one would handle the man who taught him how to read and how to hunt and how to work the earth into giving fruit.

During the long nights above the whole compound, as David lay on his bed and tried to not think while his neighbor at the bed to the left rummaged through his mattress to make sure the grenades he hid there were not discovered, he wondered if he of all the people in the room was meant to arrive in this particular group.

After all, he had the power to start fire, and fire is what he condemned his people to.

When he was a young boy of no more than thirteen and first discovered that sparks came out of his fingers when he was cold and that he could ignite anything he wished to.

He fell in love with the roaring flames and the dancing bright red colors.

He never thought he'd learn to hate fire and smoke so much, to hate himself so much.

"…David…" a familiar voice tore him out of his thoughts and brought him back to the men and women slowly stripping all around him.

Daring to look up, on a mere instinct he immediately regretted.

Before him stood rabbi Titenboim, though it took David a while to recognize the man. The rabbi grew infinitely thinner and much older. His beard was bright white now, though it was half as long as it used to be; he must have been pestered by Germans and to taunt him they cut off his beard and dreadlocks. His jacket, which hung loosely on his body carried the yellow star badge and informed David that before he arrived here, rabbi Titenboim was in a ghetto.

"R-rabbi Titenboim…" David's voice came out choked with shame and regret, how he hated himself now. His throat was dry as he bent his head again and hunched his shoulders, clutching his fists like in that long forgotten day which seemed like centuries away, when the two men first met.

The man did not have to reach out and bring David's head up to look at him now because by then David grew and was two heads taller than the rabbi. Titenboim merely gazed deep into the hollow eyes which immediately escape his gaze. He began removing his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt.

David looked away, biting his lower lip until it split open. No blood came out of the wound for he was not human, but David was not in a state of mind to remember that, nor was he ever aware of why he never suffered any human affliction.

"You grew to be a big boy, David, a healthy boy; I knew the farm was the right thing for you."

No, the farm was in an area which got 'cleaned' and sent to death earlier than his hometown, so that David had to be rid of his family's remains after enough months of his new surrounding and have the horror play itself more furiously and painfully all over again just when he thought he became cold and hard as stone from Lea and Leon's death.

And if he was not such a big strong boy from all the farm work then he would never be chosen for a work like this, to which only the fittest of the men were taken.

But he couldn't say anything to this man now, or say anything at all.

The rabbi was now ready to walk into the seemingly harmless sanitary room, already heading towards it. With a sigh, the older man stopped and turned his head to look at David who was still staring at the floor trying to make himself die.

"Goodbye, David, say Kaddish(5) for me."

David choked on a sob and fought back the shudder through his limbs. He cannot have the people still in the hall see him like this or they might suspect, if they do not already know as the rabbi knows.

That evening, as he climbed to the sleeping hall, David did not turn immediately to his bed to try and sleep away the day's events like he and many other did. He walked to the small group of men who still clung to their belief and were performing the evening prayers.

"Let me in," he whispered at the group who huddled around a torah scroll they smuggled from Kanada(2), "I need to say Kaddish…" he needed no more words than that, he was not the first to do this.

David gave up his religion a long time ago, when he first saw the doors of the gas chamber open and the corpses inside spill out, but the rabbi asked him to say Kaddish and there were very little people other than the man for which he'll say the prayer.

David woke with a scream, grabbing the sides of his head as if he was trying to tear the skin and break the skull so the images flee out of his mind and never return to haunt him again. His body was shaking, covered with a thin film of cold sweat.

He leaped off the bed and fled to the bridge, grabbing the mast violently to stop himself when he realized he was going to hurl himself off the deck.

He clawed at the wooden pillar powerfully, gluing his body to it.

He was beyond thoughts of wishing to embrace Victoria until the visions stopped playing before his eyes whenever he blinked; he was still too immersed in the memory to think about it.

The cool sea breeze blew on his feverish forehead and calmed him, reminding him that he's in a world where that hell never existed. Fire here was never so harmful, so destructive.

David inhaled a lungful of sea air and exhaled slowly, repeating the process until his chest stopped beating and his hands stopped sweating as they clawed the mast.

Then he spotted Alex shoot to the railing, leaning over it with convulsions and shudders. He must have had a similar dream. David's head cleared completely; someone here was in need of his presence.

He walked up to Alex and waited for the man to finish what he was doing. They were brothers, in a sense, and they needed one another.

---

Outside the base a jungle lay. It was teeming with life, buzzing and vibrating with it even. There was not a moment of silence between the thick trees, shrubs and climbers. There were flowers everywhere and bugs in such immense numbers that Will's head almost ached with their noise.

He could not get enough of the jungle, couldn't find a single spot to look at and not find something he must investigate with his nose and fingers. This was an enchanted land and he never explored it, never knew it was there; he was trapped in that building full of sever frowning men all the time.

The Captain removed the collar from around the boy's neck and Will was off like a rocket, zooming from tree to shrub, to small animal he scared out of it's perching. He chasted the large parrots, the shapes of which he never saw in the ancient books about birds of Europe he always leafed through while he was still confined inside the base.

Behind him the Captain settled on a rock, took out a wooden stick and began carving something into it. While he sat there calmly, Will was all over the jungle running and jumping and babbling endlessly about everything he saw.

When he barked at a monkey was the only time the Captain got up to place a palm on his head and silence him. Other than that Will was mostly unguarded.

He realized this as he ran deep into the jungle, chasing after a strange gazelle, and realized he lost his way back. No one stopped him; there was no leash to limit his movement. He was lost and completely cut off from his home.

The sun was starting to set through the thick foliage of the jungle above him. Will sat down on the soft ground covered in rot, fallen leafs and moss. He gathered his legs to him, wrapping his arms around them to curl up into a ball and gazed around, frightened. There were predators in this jungle, Will could smell them and the blood they spilled, everywhere he roamed.

He shivered as cold began surrounding him and was whimpering like a frightened puppy. But who will hear him in the very heart of this jungle so thick he couldn't smell traces of people ever penetrating it?

His clothes were dirty with mud and the green goo of crushed leafs, small branches and flower petals caught in his hair. Will was on the verge of tears. He was hungry and thirsty and lost and miserable. He should have never walked out of the small cleaning the Captain lead the two of them to play in.

Sounds of footsteps and crushing, rustling branches came to the left of Will and the boy cringed, fearing a jaguar might emerge from the thick foliage. Instead Will picked up the scent of exhaust smoke and men's cologne which belonged to no one but the large and silent Captain.

Will leaped to his feet and as soon as the grown werewolf emerged from the wall of trees and greenery, holding a branch of the three to his right to his nose, Will ran towards him and crushed into the man.

The wide arms wrapped around him, picking him up from the forest floor and curling him close to his chest.

Will snuggled into the brown fabric of the Captain's coat and closed his eyes to sleep. He was exhausted from the day's adventures and his fear.

Slowly, with long sways of his wide steps, the Captain carried him out of the jungle and back to the base.

Will only woke when the guard at the gate told Captain the Major was looking for them, especially the young one in his arms. He didn't feel like unfurling himself out of the embrace; he was warm and safe here, he never wanted to leave the Captain's side.

But the Major called him, wanted something from him. What was it?

He was standing above an abyss and below, where the wind blew hard and cold, were layers on layers of corpses. The wind howled in his ears, voices trying to form words; his old name.

He knew the voice carried on the wind, the same voice that bid him and the Captain welcome back as the werewolf with the cub in his arms stepped into the wide, lushly decorated office.

Reluctantly, Will poked his head out of his curled limbs and the Captain's arms and looked around with sleep-dazed eyes. The Doc was in the office as well, looking agitated beyond what was usual.

What happened? Was it a rumor of the Jewish detectives who wanted to kidnap him that frightened Doc so? Why was he holding a chrome trey in his hand with a small glass bottle and a syringe by it?

"Thank you for bringing the little one here, you're dismissed." The Major had a nasal, slightly shrilly voice though his thick fat neck should have meant his voice would be deeper, "Were you out in the jungle playing all day, little Schro?"

Will cowered a bit, though from whenever he'd meet the Major the short chubby man was always infinitely nice to him. He just never liked that smile of the man's, like a ball of dough split in half by a row of small teeth.

Back then Will was too small to have the overflowing confidence that would later lead him to make remarks about the Major's piggish appearance.

The officer ruffled Will's hair with his small glove covered chubby palm and reached to rub at his soft black ear. The touch was pleasant, but there was something in the strain of the man's plump fingers that made Will tense.

"C-come here, Schrodinger, you need to get a vaccination." The Doc ordered Will, his face starting to sweat, his small brown eyes shooting nervously from Will to the fat man standing by him.

After placing the boy on his own feet, Captain lingered at the door, staring wordlessly at the scene before him. The two men inside the office noticed him and for a moment stared awkwardly at him.

The bottle danced softly on the chrome trey and the syringe rolled to its other side, "Y-yes, just a simple vaccination, nothing more. You don't want to get sick, do you?"

Looking deep into little Will's eyes, the Captain finally took his leave, giving the Major a long leveled look.

The Major huffed and plopped onto a wide deep oak sofa, crossing his legs in patience.

"What is a vaccination?"

"It's not really a vaccination, Schrodinger…"

The man behind Will coughed and the Doc's hands shook a little more.

"I-it's your genes, little one, t-they don't get along very well with one another…"

"….Huh?..."

"You know, boy, you were not created a werewolf; you were made as one by forging a wolf's genes with a human boy's."

"….!"

"So they don't get along very well, this is why you've been getting those headaches lately."

"You said it's because they're building the zeppelin hangers and the metal roof creaking is straining my ears."

"Yes, but I'm suspecting it's not only this so I'm going to give you this shot so your genes will stop fighting."

"…And what if it is the hangers' metal roof and not the gene thing? Won't the shot harm me?"

The major laughed, slapping the armrest delightfully, "You're such a clever boy, Schrodinger, maybe you'll become an officer one day."

"Yes, very smart. But I'm smarter," he sounded impatient and angry now, and was not bending down to talk to Will eye to eye, "and I say you need this shot so you'll be getting this shot, alright?"

Will shrugged.

"Come; sit on this couch here where you can lay and rest afterwards." The Major indicated to a sofa to his left.

"Rest! Will it hurt?"

"N-no, it won't hurt a bit. I've taken blood samples from you that hurt you more, sit still now, roll up your sleeve."

"You hand is shaking! You'll poke me too deeply."

"Ach! I should have brought a rolled newspaper to beat you with, rude boy!"

"Ouch!"

"Enough, enough complaining, take it like a man. It doesn't hurt, it won't hurt, you won't feel a thing…I promise…"

"…Doc…"

"…Yes?"

Will yawned instead of saying that he's sleepy.

"Sleep now….r-rest it off now boy…"

Before his heavy eyelids shut and black empty sleep took him over, Will noticed a somewhat blurry Major rising from his chair and the Doc leaving with his shoulders hunched.

Will opened his eyes and his head was clear. The abyss was gone and the wind stopped speaking to him. Yet he knew it wasn't everything; the dark night around the abyss and him hid yet one last trace of buried memory, too deep to dig up on his own.

"Ze shots…I hafen't got any in a very long time…how long, I do not know, it cannot be good to not get these shots…" Will sat up in his bed.

"Will? What are you talking about?" Kamui's soft voice came from his side; he had woken the boy up just when Kamui was starting to doze off.

"The shots…b-back in my world…" Will lowered his eyes, too sheepish to look Justice in the eye and speak of his birthplace, "Can ve go and speak to Seishiro…I know you hate him but I sink I need to get these shots or I get sick."

Kamui's worried face told him his doppelganger was not holding it against him that he might have to tolerate Kamui's arch enemy.

"Of course, right away."

They climbed out of their bed.

---

"Y-you just drank that man's blood, didn't you?"

Lestate let the man's lifeless corpse go and stared, stunned, at the mortal who caught him in the act of feeding.

"You're a vampire, am I right?" the Tramp asked, taking small cautious steps towards Lestate.

The vampire backed away from the Charlie Chaplin who was smiling at him, softly for some reason.

"Yes, I am. Will you hurt me for it?"

The man seemed to be taken aback. He looked away, musing. "I don't know…"

"Will you answer me something before you pass your judgment on me?"

"Yes, I'd love to."

"Where am I?"

A smile broke across the Tramp's face. He took a few more steps towards Lestate who backed away no more.

"You landed from the sky just now?"

"…Yes, how did you know?"

"We all do. Rather, we all did, each in their own time. We do not know how this came to be and why we were the ones to arrive here, but we did. You better move now."

"Why is that?"

"You hear that crackling noise from the ground?"

Lestate moved away from the spot where he stood just in time to avoid a tall column of fire which erupted from the earth at his feet.

"Mon deou..."

"Ah, you're French! You wouldn't happen to be the vampire Lestate, would you?"

Lestate straightened his jacket, flickering a stray bang of his blond hair away from his face, "The very same. Have you read my books?"

"I watched the movie based on the book telling your story. You wrote that book where you came from?"

"…They made a movie out of my books? How exciting! When did this happen? How was I not informed? Was it good? Who played my role? Was it Jonathan Rhys-Meyers(6), he's the only one close enough to my looks to play my part."

"A-actually, it was Tom Cruise…"

"Who?"

"You don't know Tom Cruise?" Lestate shook his head, "Never heard of him before?" shook his head again, "Really? He's very famous, wherever he is now…"

"Hmm, no, never heard of him. Does he look anything like me?" Lestate struck a pose, turning his good side to the Chaplin.

"Well, he's nothing like you now that I meet the real you."

"Oh…is he handsome at all?"

The Chaplin chuckled, "He's got your style in the movie…maybe he even undertoned it."

"Oh."

"And Brad Pitt played Louis, Antonio Banderas plays Armand…"

"WHAT! Brad Pitt is far too ape-ish and too short to play Louis, and Antonio Banderas is too old to play Armand! What were those movie makers had in their mind I know not! Honestly!" Lestate kept his scuffing and hissing, folding his arms on his chest angrily.

"Oh yeah, yeah, yeah!" the Tramp clicked his fingers, pointing at Lestate with a beaming smile, "Now I know the other books you're talking about! I had a friend who really liked the books."

Lestate stopped being angry and scanned Charlie from the corner of his eyes, waiting for the warm and smooth flattery to come from the man.

"You mean The Vampire Lestate, and Queen of The Damned," Lestate nodded proudly, "and Taltos and Blood and Gold," Lestate was not nodding anymore, "and Tales of The Body Thief and…"

"No, no, no, no, no! I never wrote any of those!"

"No, 'you' didn't 'write' them, you pretended you were a woman called Anne Rice and published it as fiction…I see, clever!"

"Anne who! You're raving, you mad Charlie Chaplin imposter."

"Ah yes...I am an imposter…" a suddenly dark mood landed on the Tramp and at once his whole body language slumped, "But I try my best to be funny, to look at life with an air of humor…you better move again…"

Lestate didn't have to wait for the cracking; he leaped to Charlie's side without effort.

"Would you look at that; you really do have such powers."

"Yes…I do…and they were not written about by no Anne Rice! Tssk, what a simple name to choose, of all things!"

"Can you really set things aflame?"

Lestate scrutinized Charlie carefully.

"And explode things with you mind, move them too? Surely you can leap more than you just did…am I right?"

Lestate took some time to search Charlie's mind to seek out traces of that dangerous curiosity mortals have that eventually gets them to hate him and see him as a monster. He found none.

"Yes…Why?"

Charlie's eyes glittered with excitement. He reached out and grabbed Lestate by the lapels of his jacket. "Because I'm thinking…I'm thinking we need people like you here; with special powers and stuff like that, who can fight things and save people…"

"Who are 'we'?"

"Well…the people of this wretched settlement…and me. I'm a doctor, you see, and I try to run around this place and help as many of the sick and injured as I can but, as you saw, the danger here are enough as they are and that's just the fire coming from the ground we're talking about. There are more dangers, oh so many more dangers…"

"And you want me, a vampire who feeds on mortals, to rescue these same mortals from death?"

"There's no one else who could do it." Charlie's eyes were full of hope and compassion and Lestate couldn't help but fall in love with this frank and energetic man, "I cannot do it all by myself."

Gently, Lestate removed Charlie's hands from his jacked and took them in his, "Alright, I'll help you. And I'll have you know that I do not feed simply upon any mortal who comes my way; that man was an Evil Doer who slew a whole family because they discovered him sacking their larder…"

"Yes, yes, no one will call you evil after the first time you'll rescue them from a monster's grip, believe me." Suddenly Charlie withdrew from his new friend with a jerk. He gasped and covered his mouth with his hands.

"That's it! That's exactly it: rescue! And there are two of us now, so we're a team! We'll call ourselves…" he paused dramatically, checking to see if Lestate was paying him attention still, "The Rescue Team! How does it sound?"

"Corny."

"Oh, you're too cynical for me. Come; let's get you to my little dump of a shack."

"Sounds delightful…" Lestate sighed as Charlie grabbed him by the hand and began dragging him out of the small dark and muddy alley where they stood and towards a gathering of filthy, shaky huts.

Lestate smiled as he rose from his coffin. Yes, Charlie was ever so energetic and happy back in those days. Mostly because he saw enough horrors to force him to pretend he took it all lightly and because he didn't see half of the horrors yet to befall them.

Oh, the adventures the two of them saw through together, Lestate couldn't help but recall them with joy and longing. He'll give Charlie a good tight hug when he sees him again.

Two similar footsteps passed the door of his storage room; the little snake of a boy and the wolf cub. They were heading towards the room of the magician lovers. Not good; Death was there, something good will not come of it.

Sighing, Lestate pulled himself out of his resting place and walked to open the door. Victoria was already stirring inside her coffin as she woke.

---

The headmaster in her orphanage was always a man who made her fill with fear. Her homeroom teacher was not any nicer than him. The two of them combined, and sitting behind that large heavy oak table in the dimly lit dusty office was something Victoria wanted to see as little as she could.

Sadly, she saw it too much, too often. She was not a very well behaved girl, never was really, no matter how much her caretaker in the orphanage's lodging said she's the sweetest girl she ever saw.

Standing in the office waiting for her deeming from the ominous adults before her, Victoria wanted nothing more than that nice woman's embrace.

"Has Victoria caused some problem again?" the man boomed, his thick floppy neck shaking with the vibration of sound.

"Yes headmaster." her teacher screeched, "A boy snatched a toy away from her, and she thrashed him with a rock."

Victoria cringed, the picture of the young boy crying with his head bleeding flashed before her child's eyes.

"None of the other teachers take kindly to her, either." The man spoke, his thin slimy lips snarling a bit, "I suppose the effect of the incident are still potent. But if she continues to cause problem we will not be able to continue caring for her at this orphanage."

They didn't, they sent her to a boarding school with lots of kids far tougher than what Victoria ever met before. Still she lingered somehow, clinging to the goodness in her, the innocence in her small girl's heart.

"Why do you want to become a policewoman?" Her boarding school's headmaster was a lot thinner than the orphanage's, though he was just as cold and patronizing, "Can't you think of any other path?"

"No." she will become a copper, a good copper, even if she'll get too deep and be 'offed' like father.

"You're too stubborn. Your father certainly was a good policeman."

Victoria could see he was looking at the wall to his side where a picture of him and Victoria's father, holding a fish rod and a gigantic fish dangling from a hook, hung amongst many other pictures. If it weren't for that friendship her father shared with the man, Victoria would have never gotten to this boarding school, the third she's been through, and get the high leveled education she received now.

"But you do have bit of potential. It seemed that you yourself are wasting that."

She became a policewoman. Then she became Police Girl. Then she became a Rescue Team member, and Yuzuriha's best friend.

Then she became an orphan again.

Victoria stirred in her coffin and woke.

There was a man she wished to receive a hug from and suddenly, after avoiding his presence for a week already, every bit in her No Life flesh longed for David. Even if he can't love her because he doesn't like her body, even if he has to close his eyes and pretend she's not herself; she longs for him to hold her and sooth her pain.

Victoria climbed out of her coffin and shuffled out of the room. She couldn't hear David anywhere and all she saw walking the corridors and inhabiting the rooms she passed by were these strange huge young men dressed as pirates, donning the hungry jewels of forgetfulness.

Perhaps she wished to forget all these things in her mind; to erase everything that ever hurt her. To forget about her mother's blood tainted hair, her father's pierced forehead, the fork in the murderer's eye. She will let go of kids who abused her and teased her because she cried when they did, forget cruel teachers, demeaning headmasters and teachers. She'll erase the Cheddar forest filled with ghouls, who were once her closest comrades, the freak vampire priest who threatened to rape her before he'll kill her, the unfathomable pain of that shot to the chest.

She'll forget her poor aloof master, the one who's flaming crimson coat she was wrapping tighter and tighter around her as she walked closer and closer to the cool evening air in the bridge. Forget that he's dead and gone.

"You're the girl he's with now." The voice of a man cut her train of thoughts.

Victoria blinked at the thin, fair young man who leaned on the doorframe of a room to her right, his arms folded on his narrow chest, his small blue eyes digging deep into her eyes as if to search her soul.

"P-'parden?"

"You're the girl who's with him, with David. He's with you now, am I right?" The young man's voice came out half mocking, his english carrying a Russian accent to it.

At once she remembered the story Subaru told her of pirates' princess, and straightened her back proudly, sticking her breasts out as if to taunt the man. "Yes, what of it?"

The pirate's eyes grew dim and tired, his composition softened as if he ran completely out of energy. "I have something for you. Come in." he turned to enter the room, gesturing for her to follow him.

"Ei!"

The young man did not wait for her to follow him. He walked up to a large wooden chest in the room and threw the latch open. Slowly he brought the lid up, stopping for a moment to stare at the chest's content.

Overcome by curiosity, Victoria entered the room to peek into the box. She only stopped herself from standing by the lean man's side due to the lesson she learned from the ship's original owners.

Instead of a huge jewel, the pirate pulled something equally precious; a dress.

It was made of bright blue silk, embroided by diamond-laced cream colored lace. The sleeves were thin at first, and then they grew wide where the lace ending was tied upon by cream colored silk ribbons. The skirt of the magnificent garment was wide, sprayed with small imbedded diamonds and golden threads, lined as well by lace.

Victoria gasped, ogling at the amazing dress, "Oh…" she exhaled, placing a gloved palm on her chest, "T-this dress is breathtaking…simply breathtaking….oh…it's fit for a queen, this…"

"It's yours." The young man thrust the garment at Victoria, surprised she didn't reach for it immediately.

"O-oh no! No, no, I-I could never wear something so posh….I couldn't."

"Wear it, it's yours." The pirate's voice was bitter now, his eyes hard and sad, "You're his princess now."

Victoria forced her eyes from the dress to the man. "Thank you…"

Shrugging angrily, the man walked out of the room, the dress slipping out of his grip and into Victoria's cherishing hands, "Wear it; he'll love you in it."

Love her in it.

Was he? Could he? Is he still in love with this man's image as a princess? Is that it? Is that why he cannot look at her? Is this who he imagines when they lay together?

The dress might have been what her newly discovered enemy wore for the man she loved, but Victoria didn't want it to be stained by her bloody tears still. She placed it gently on the wooden chest and collapsed into a nearby chair, covering her eyes with her palm wrapped in her master's oversized glove.

She wept bitterly.

---

"Pick a card, any card, pick a card. Pick a card, any card, any card, pick a card. Pick a…"

"Aright, alright, alright already." Subaru reached out and lowered Death's hands which were holding up a brand new flush of ofuda mere inches from his face, "You make so much noise sometimes when you're in a silly mood."

Alex's eyes dimmed a bit, "I'm not in a silly mood; I'm only pretending to be."

Subaru studied Death's face, waiting for signs from the man that would tell him he could ask what was bothering him.

Seishiro snickered. He was sitting with his back to the two, rolling neat thin cigarettes cylinders.

"Seishiro, care for a game of chess?"

"Hell no. I won't suffer another scorching defeat by you."

"Aww, you're a sore loser."

Seishiro shot Alex a glare across his shoulder, "I am not a sore loser. I just can't stand that smug grin you have on your face whenever you so casually win."

Alex beamed that very same grin, only with a touch of innocent sweetness and a whole lot more gleeful smugness.

"Bastard."

The grin was quickly wiped off Alex's face, his jade orbs sharpening into cold cruelty as they hung on the room's closed door.

Worried, Subaru turned his eyes to where Alex was staring.

The door swung open and Will's head poked through. Immediately he recognized Alex and withdrew.

"Why did you back up?" Kamui's voice came into the room, muffled by the wooden door.

"A-Alex ist zere…"

"So what? You need those shots, don't you?"

"Y-yes…but…"

"Then come on in already and let's be over with it. If he tries anything nasty or snappy I'll deal with him, okay? You deal with Sei-bastard."

"I heard that." Seishiro growled through his teeth.

Again the door creaked open, much slower this time, until Kamui pushed Will in and it swung ajar.

Daring to take only a few shy and short steps into the room, Will stood with his head bowed, daring only to cast a few glances at Seishiro. Kamui stood by his side, arms folded on his chest irritably.

"That mutt is the last thing I need now." Alex hissed, looking out of the room's window to try and limit his exposure to the werewolf cub as much as he can.

"Uh….umm…Z-zere….I-I need….Umm….back in my…I-I mean…I need to get vaccinations, and I haven't gotten zem since I came here…"

"Vaccinations?" Seishiro put aside the last cigarette he made, paying complete attention to his patient, "You mean for rabies and the likes? I'm not sure these diseases exist in this world, perhaps you don't have to get them at all."

"Nei…I mean, no. Zey veren't for rabies but for my genes…"

"Your genes?"

"Yes, Doc…uh…zey said my genes fought one another and I had to get shots to make zem not fight or I vould get zese headaches…"

"That's bullshit," Alex' growl boomed across the room. He was still avoiding eye contact with the cub, "the monster who created you would have destroyed you at the first sign of something flawed in you."

"Also," Seishiro added, "genes do not fight one another. If you mean that your body's wolf parts and human parts fight then it'd take on the form of an allergy and headaches are not a symptom of allergies I know of in dogs. These headaches, how often would you get them? When did they start?"

Will dared to straighten his gaze to Seishiro, "Vhen I became fourteen. My ears vould ache first, zen my head. I thought it vas the hangers zey vere building for ze zeppelins and the construction noises vere too loud for me, but Doc said it vas my genes…"

Seishiro shook his head gently, trying to talk as kindly and softly as he can to the confused boy, "If it was something as sever as your human and wolf parts fighting then it'd appear much earlier…however, there is a possibility that puberty began this process, which would explain why your headaches started at the age of fourteen. What puzzles me still is why it is headaches and not something more specific such as your ears or tail hurting; your wolf parts being rejected by your human body.

"Try to remember; what color was the shot's fluid?"

"…Uh….transparent?"

"I see. Did it hurt you when it was injected? Did it burn or numb you in any way?"

"It didn't burn, only the needle hurt. But after I'd get the shot I vould become immediately sleepy and vould vake up hours later vith some parts of my body very aching."

This made Alex jerk a bit and shoot his eyes to the werewolf, "Sleepy…?" he seemed to mumble to himself, "What parts of your body hurt exactly?"

The room became silent. No one could comprehend that Alex spoke to Will without a single hint of hostility in his tone, and was looking at the boy with eyes devoid of anger or scorn.

Will gaped a bit, before cowering a little, looking away and wrapping his arms around himself, "…Uh…m-my neck sometimes…and my thighs…a-and….ummm…." a powerful blush burst across his face and he burying his eyes in the floor to hide his face, "I-it vas a bit painful to sit after…"

Kamui frowned. Subaru stopped himself from gasping. Seishiro frowned and leaned back into the chair, at a loss of what to do. Alex was almost burning with rage.

"And when you would receive these shots, where would you get them? Was there anyone else in the room other than you and that monster?" Death hissed, his fists clutched tightly and shaking.

Now daring to look directly at Alex, though still terrified of the man's inraged condition, Will frowned in innocent puzzlement, "V-vhat do you mean? How do you know? Vhy? Vhat does it matter?"

He was standing at the edge of the abyss again and the wish was calling him, the voice of the sneering man on the wind which now caressed him with white-gloved hands.

"Who else was with you in the room?"

Will looked away, sweat slowly covering his blushing face. The wind was not wind anymore; it was only the hands, hands which touched him all over. Touched him all over. And the voice, praising his thin frame and his fair hair, who did it belong to?

"…Major…"

He was not at the cliff edge anymore; he was in the realm of memories again. He was lying on the sofa on the Major's room.

He had accidentally woken up from his slumber for a fragment of a second. He heard that voice say those things and, with drug-blurry vision, managed to make out the plump face and the light reflecting off the surface of the Major's glasses. The man above him was swaying up and down and the pain….the pain was there, concentrated between his…

No. He shook his head slowely, as if this would change history. NO!

Will crushed to the wooden floor, kneeling there as he covered his head with his hands, whimpering, "Nein, nein, das ist ausgeschlossen…ich glaube kein…..ich glaube kein hiernach

davon….(7)" He continued to shake his head, shaking with sobs.

Kamui gasped, taking a frightened step back. He wanted to do something to aid Will but didn't know how he could help. What could he say? What could he do? What did he understand anyway!

Seishiro stared at the boy and blinked. He too was at a complete loss as to what to do. He felt obliged to help Will; the more small treatments he gave the boy as a vet is the more he began feeling some kind of an inkling to the cub, which was bordering parental worry.

If he is feeling some kind of a parental responsibility towards Will, then isn't he supposed to do something now and aid the boy with his shock?

But how?

Seishiro cast a glance at Subaru across his shoulder, hoping to see the man get up to comfort the boy.

Subaru sat still on the bed, staring at the small ball of weeping, whimpering werewolf. In his heart he felt that pull of someone's need for comfort and warmth, but he wasn't sure he was able to provide such a thing. For such a long time he considered Will as something to ignore as a way to show loyalty to Alex, now gathering enough care in him to tend to this creature was something difficult to achieve.

The bed on which Subaru sat groaned as Alex moved off of it. The floorboards creaked as his soft boots slid-stepped on it. Alex was walking towards the youth on the floor. Would he deem him more anger and scorn; kick him while he's down?

Alex knelt by the ball of a boy and placed a soft palm on the cub's head.

Will froze under the touch, knowing full well whose palm it was on his head.

Alex moved the hand off Will's head and around his shoulder, down his side, under his shin, and pulled the boy to his chest. He sat Will on his leg and warped his arms around the boy to steady him, pressing Will's head to his chest with his other hand.

Slowly, the notion that this was not Death's almighty wrath given to him but the comfort the creature was capable of giving. The same comfort he observed given to Kamui that night, was now aimed at him, given to him.

His whimpers now came short and rapid, but definitely more hushed. His tears never stopped flowing, nor did his head stop to shake in eternal denial. He dared to reach and cling to Death's black vest, to warp an arm around the man's wide and powerful waste.

He was not denied these comforts. Finally Will allowed himself to hurl himself full force into the sheer horror, disgust and pain of it. To cry as hard as he could, to rage inside as much as he could; to be one with his emotions until he'll run out of them and be rid of them for good.

"Cry as much as you can, boy," Alex's voice was soft and thick, almost velvety with how comforting and warm it was.

Kamui's jaw hung as he stared at what he thought is the complete impossible. Seishiro and Subaru did pretty much the same. All were staring at these two arch enemies finding comfort in the other.

"It's over now, it ended, it won't happen again. You're far away from those evil people, oh so far away; they're dead, they can't reach you anymore."

Memories pulled Will out of the storm of woe in his mind. Alex killed them all. They were dead. He was dead. Alex killed them.

He thought back to Kamui's request of him to run away quickly when Alex was slaughtering the real pirates. He remembered the look in Alex' eyes; so crazed and angry. He understood.

He did that to him. He was not punished. Not until Alex came to Will's world and he was dead. Alex killed him, taking revenge without knowing the full extensity of said revenge.

He is gone now and he is not coming back. He is far away, he cannot reach him anyone. He is dead. Alex killed him.

"…Goddamn them…" Alex's loose hand, the one stabilizing Will, clenched its fist and shook. Alex' whole body shook with anger, "Goddamn them! No matter where they are, no matter who they are, they're always the same. Same symbols, same believes, same techniques, same fucking crimes. They don't even mind hurting their own men…goddamn them…"

Two victims of the same crime.

Subaru's eyes filled with tears which spilled quickly down his cheeks then stopped. Though the hurt in the room was immense, it was beyond his help. They had each other, for as long as this strange pact could last, and they needed no more. They needed no one else to look upon them, to talk to them, to make their existence known.

Seishiro retreated from his chair, and sat by Subaru.

As the light onmyouji looked at the dark one, he came to realize that Seishiro was like a child; clinging to the only figure of authority he knew for knowledge and explanation. Subaru smiled and placed his warm hand on Seishiro's.

Kamui stared at the two men and wondered. Is he to feel jealous, if only for this great comforting force shared with someone other than him? Or should he be happy for Will? Of course he should. But what to feel about Alex?

After thinking it through, Kamui decided that what he feels is hope that the long and scorching grudge Alex felt towards the werewolf would be over. May it be.

Noticing the cub in his arms have cried himself to sleep, Alex climbed to his feet slowly as to not wake the boy with his movements, and turned to Kamui.

"He's asleep. I'm taking him to your room."

Staring deep into those suddenly unreadable and blank emerald eyes, Kamui could only nod and follow Alex down the corridor to their room.

There, Alex placed the cub softly on the bed, tucking him deep under the mantle. He tightened the thick blanket under Will to best insulate the warm cocoon he created for the boy and did this with such concentration and graveness. Kamui thought Death suddenly looked like a loving father, tucking his child to sleep.

Will's sleeping face never looked this clear and calm. The tears have brought a soft pink gentle swallowing to the circles under his eyes and his cheekbones. His lips, which he bit into so nervously before, were now puffy and bright crimson.

Softly, Alex ran his fingers through the boy's blond hair and brushed a few stray bangs from above the boy's closed eyes. Then his fingers moved to the boy's ear, testing its fur's softness with the tips of his fingers.

Arching his eyebrows suddenly, Alex removed his hand from the cub and straightened his back. He looked thoughtful, aloof, detached from reality.

Kamui dared not move.

As Death passed by him on the way out of the room, his head slightly bowed and his eyes half closed, he whispered, "This will not happen again. Ever."

"Thank you."

The door creaked shut behind him.

Inhaling slowly, letting the air out again, Kamui walked up to his bed. He settled at the head of the furniture, legs crossed, and placed Will's sleeping head in his lap. He continued the soft touch started by Death, running his fingers through Will's hair and over his ears the way he learned pleased the young werewolf.

---

The scene was not missed by the undertaker amongst the Death Riders, and it made his blood boil.

There, it finally happened. David always knew that one day Alex' unexplained and crazed love for Kamui will lead him to love anything that has to do with the boy and accept everything the boy threw at him.

After all, he watched as Alex hurled himself into a time and energy consuming task that was finding Kamui in the whole dizzying variety of dimensions out there.

Then he watched Kamui lead Alex to chase after him like a desperate puppy, always keeping him guessing whether the boy loves him or not.

He watched as Alex's heart was broken by the boy, crushed and shattered and splintered and destroyed. And Alex even allowed that Fuma kid to live.

Then keeping the boy in a luxurious tent when the boy should be in a prison cell, letting the boy rid on a horse, as free to run away as any man when he should be chained down and restrained.

Letting the boy step all over him, letting the boy land another blow on him, and another, and another.

Then came that blasted werewolf brat, this filthy remnant of a regime both he and Alex despised more than anything. The werewolf even came in clothes most fitting for the immediate and bloody slaughter of that wretched mutt.

But no! Oh, no! Kamui asked and the wretch was allowed to live. TO LIVE! And ride with them; be around them, live near them! How….why!

All because Kamui asked Alex, because Kamui looked deep into Alex's love-crazed eyes and said, "Pretty please, Alex, maybe I'll love you if you did."

This is not the Alex David knew, oh no. This is not the short tempered warrior David knew Alex to be. The man who pulled his sword out faster than his enemy's eye could even register it, the man who passed his judgment upon people as quick as lightening and executed their verdict just as quickly. The man who fought through the fog of his strange love for Mouse and dared to speak up to the man, even killed him eventually for what Mouse did to him.

Mouse never gave Alex half the misery Kamui did, why can't Alex just take up arms again and destroy the boy!

It's not like he never eliminated the ones who dared to approach anyone he loved; David saw Alex do that before, for merely flirting with someone he was with. Why didn't he rid Kamui of Fuma, that righteous version of him?

Didn't Fuma disturb him; this existence of himself that did not suffer as much as him, allowed to live? Why did he not remove the disturbance from Kamui's life and claimed the boy his again? Why didn't he destroy the both the moment Kamui showed the first sign of unfaithfulness?

Kamui was like poison; running through Alex' veins, slowly destroying him, tissue by tissue. Now his brain's gone. What will come next?

Well, David decided, he's not going to let it happen. This evening, as they both woke from their nightmares, they clung to each other like only two of their kind could, for support and comfort. He will not let that comfort be given to something as vile and impure as that wretched dog!

If Alex is too blind to realize Kamui spells his own death, then David will eliminate the boy before more damage will be done. If Death is taken in by a false spell that the wretch has anything in common with Kamui and becomes suddenly soft and forgiving for the wretch's sins, then David will burn the thing to a crisp so that no more crimes against their brotherhood can be committed.

Alex might hate him, his wrath might be turned against him, but David didn't care. Death might try to kill him, but David knew better than that; Alex will not hurt his brother, could not hurt his brother. Eventually, when the rage and the grief are gone, that noxious love will be finally drained from Alex and the man will finally be free.

Then he'll thank him, he'll realize what a great favor David did for him. And they will be brothers again; looking out for one another, free again.

David was not afraid of what punishment he might be given before that happens; he already hurt Kamui to try and get Alex to realize that blood is thicker than water before.

And blood is what he'll spill tonight. Tonight, the nightmare that is Alex's love for Kamui imprisoning him will be over for good.

David's bare feet softened their step on the wooden floor as he neared Kamui's door. He will step in and speak to Kamui, explain to him his emotions and as soon as Kamui starts preaching him of justice and how Alex did all this to himself he'll burn the boy down.

Yes, burn him down, burn the wretch too. He hadn't done it in more than a hundred years, and the thought of smelling that sweet stench again sickened him, but for Alex he'll do it. For his brother's freedom.

His large palm landed flat and open of Kamui's door, pushing gently. His heart was racing, his head was dizzy. His vision was blackened randomly, with sheer emotion and flashes of memory. He will eliminate the boy and may god help him rein his emotions enough to not make a blundering mess of it.

Kamui was on the bed, cradling the wretch's head in his lap.

'Oh, sweet beautiful poison in the shape of two identical bodies. Soon Alex will love the both of you and nothing will stop him from becoming your slaves, beauty. Treacherous, venomous beauty. I will not be fooled by your mask of exquisiteness. I can see the black core of your evil inside.'

He remembered, that night in the Men's city, as Alex exited Victoria's room and found David to tell him of Victoria's ache. How his eyes were heavy and clouded, and ever so old. David hated it when Alex was like that.

"What's the matter?"

Death's brow creased, his eyes looking deep into the past of another world, "When I asked him why he allowed himself this imprisonment, why he let himself be caught and manipulated by mortals," David learned enough by then to know Death referred to Victoria's master, "why he was made to kill his own kind….he said…"

David will never forget it, Alex's eyes turned to the room where Kamui slept, "He said 'I was bored, eternal life does that to you, I was merely bored.'," his eyes were tearing again; new blood drops flowing down the red path earlier drawn on Death's marble white cheeks.

"'It will happen to you too', he said, 'as soon as you've lived for long enough it will happen to you too. Everything you once were, the exact opposite of that you'll become. If once you were an admired hero, a hated monster you will become. If you were once moral and righteous, a wrongful criminal you'll be.'"

Now the jade orbs filled with horror as they stared at Kamui's door, "'And if once you were a master of your domain and reigned supreme over all, a slave you will become. One day, mark my words, one day,' he said 'you too will become a Bird of Hermes; you will eat your own wings to make you tame.'"

Then Alex' eyes turned to David, to the only man who will ever fully understand him, and they were filled with terror, "He looked away and said, 'As I drank from you, I saw the boy, this Kamui you remembered suddenly. He was sitting on you and you were on the floor in your prisoner's uniform of stripes and pain. He turned to look at me and scowled and said that you are his and I am to leave.' He looked at me, he said, 'Perhaps you've already accomplished the latter of the changes, perhaps you are already a Bird of Hermes.'."

'Ah, Alex, you should have listened to that vampire. You are no longer a master of your domain, no longer reigning supreme over all. You ate your own wings.

And the boy who made you do it, he will die now because I will put an end to it.'

Kamui raised his eyes slowly, as if in a dream, to the fire handler on his doorstep and saw the man in his condition.

"David."

"You, what have you made Alex do now? How low did you pull his leash to make him kneel and grovel before you?"

"I did no such thing."

"Ah, the age old excuse; he did it to himself, I have nothing to do with it. You didn't give him direct order; you just made a cute face and he danced to your tune. You lascivious wretch, you treacherous brat!"

Kamui blinked. Most of the words coming from David's mouth were beyond the English he knew. He needn't understand the man's words, the hostility and wrath oozed out of David's body like hot oil.

"You saw everything that happened in Subaru's room, or did you just see Alex bring Will here?"

"It doesn't matter what I saw; I saw enough of it. You're not going to have Alex break down the last law of morality he built for himself just because it might start some kind of a warm emotion in you."

"But I don't want any warm emotions from Alex, and I'll never have any of them towards him."

David took a few powerful steps towards Kamui. His eyes shot across Kamui and the sleeping Will, the pupils were tiny and the irises were crazed. The air around the undertaker was hot, as if he'll soon set the whole room afire.

Just like Seishiro in the tunnel; Kamui needs to pay for his wrongdoings now as he faces Alex's most loyal men. One already took his vengeance, now the other will. What Lestate would do, Kamui wondered for a fleeting moment.

Doesn't matter. He must keep his cool and stand with his head high before this man's deeming, before this man's rage. He deserves every ounce of it, every hurt his body will suffer.

"I decided something," David's voice grew hushed now, yet it still bore that energy so possessed with wrath, "I will kill you and that mutt and then there will be no more of you to poison Alex until he rots from the inside."

Kamui bit back a gasp. David meant business; he will kill him if Alex won't come here and stop him.

But no, he will not rely on Alex to save him, not again. He faced Seishiro, who could have killed him just as easily as David can, he can do it again.

He must rely on his own wit, on his own intelligence to save him from this pinch.

Must think calmly, must ignore this horrid heat in the room. Oh, David draws ever so nearer.

What makes the man angry? What makes him so hateful? And now of all times, of all the times Kamui did bad things to Alex before.

He's not angry at the harm Kamui inflicted on Alex directly; it's the sudden warmth Alex showed towards Will that was the last straw for the undertaker.

Will was once Schrödinger, once brought to David and Alex dressed in that outfit, he once was what he once was. Alex then condemned the werewolf, and David agreed to it, agreed for Will to suffer as greatly as they did. Now Alex reached out to snuff some of Will's suffering and David was in a rage.

Will's suffering was David's suffering, shown to the boy as his punishment. That is what David is angry about; his own suffering.

That's it!

And the heat in the room; David was going to set fire to the both of them. But he will not look at them as he does that; he will not be able to, even after all.

That will be his chance, his chance to defend himself with his own powers.

Kamui grew calm.

Stopping suddenly, David moved to turn around. He took a few steps away from the bed, gathering his powers and slowly unleashing them towards the boy and the cub.

The heat was not coming from the undertaker anymore; it was coming from the mattress under Kamui and the boy knew that it's now or never. The edges of his bed sheets began smoldering, smoke curled up from the edges of his pillowcase and the wood of the headboard blackened.

Terror; fear beyond his wildest imagining. Impossible grief, crushing frustration at his own impotence. These emotions, where were they coming from! Kamui was suddenly so taken by them that he could not see or hear anything around him.

Instead he saw blackness all around him, and small flames licking at his blanket and pillow, at the four posts of his bed, at the veil of his bed's draperies.

Someone lay in the bed next to him, his head severed from his neck. It was Fuma and not Fuma at all. Someone stood on the bed, in full armor of black and orange in the shape of flames. A mask was on his face but Kamui knew that underneath that was Alex, and not Alex. From the mask's eyes tears came, tears of fire, fire that increased the burning of his bed.

No! It's not him! It doesn't happen now! Must snap out of it, must get back to reality and deal with what's before him or he'll really burn alive.

Kamui shook his head, and saw his room in the ship again. The sheets were hot beyond what was comfortable, the mattress and the headboard too. Sweat broke out all over his body. Will moaned and frowned in his sleep.

David was with his back to them and Kamui could see, from the man's face reflecting from a small mirror hung on the wall by Kamui's door, that his face was crazed with resolution and hate.

The undertaker was prepared to set him completely ablaze. Must speak now or he will die, or David will truly go mad.

Inhaling as much air as he could, the smell of ironing and fire in his nose, Kamui reined in his calmest, cleared tone and cried, "You're innocent!"

The heat did not stop, nor did it increase or die down, and David's shoulders jerked a bit.

"You're innocent of all those crimes you relate to yourself. All the things they made you do, they are not your fault. I am Justice, I can see a man's crimes on his hands and in his heart like they were blood. You may scorn and doubt my skills as Justice due to the events that lead us to where we are now, but believe me or not; you are completely innocent."

The heat stopped; his bed cooled down as if a wind swept whatever fire David started around Kamui.

The fire keeper was shaking all over, so violently that it seemed he was going to lose balance and crush to the floor at any given moment.

Will opened his eyes and stared around. Choosing to stay down and silent for now.

"They sent you there; you had no control over that. Then…you wanted to survive, like everyone did, you had no other choice. And you took place in the rebellion, did you not, you fought them back.

"You think I don't know anything about it, that I've never even laid eyes upon a single picture taken there, but I did. When I was a vampire and drank from Alex, I dug deep into his soul and observed it, observed it all. I saw it, and though I'll never be able to fully understand, I know at least some of it."

David's shoulders hunched, his head dropped nearly down to his chest. He was standing still, his arms to his sides, his fists powerfully clenched. The light from the window behind Kamui's back reflected off David's white knuckles and the budging veins all over the man's skin.

Kamui's tone was no longer that of soft reassuring plea, it was strong and full of authority, "They were the ones to pour the poison into those rooms, they were those who chose who will die and they delivered the condemned to the halls. They are to blame, they are guilty. But you, David, you are innocent; that is the deeming of Justice."

The undertaker left Justice's room. The door hung ajar behind him.

Suddenly, Kamui realized that all his muscles were clenched and that he was powerfully grabbing the sheets under him. He was saved, and beyond that; he was complete with his new destiny and role. He passed a completely perfect and true judgment.

Noting the werewolf in his lap was awake, Kamui looked down at him gravely, "Remember what happened now, Will, and remember what was overcome to bring you to comfort in this bed."

Will nodded.

---

He did not know where he was going for he could not see a thing, as if his eyes no longer functioned. Somewhere at the back of his mind something very primitive told him to turn right here, open the door there, and turn left now.

He arrived at the bridge as his body was burning like the ovens of the long lost dreadfulness. He stepped onto the railing and cast himself into the great sea beneath, to cool the tormenting heat in his inhuman flesh.

The water was cold and soothing, but they did not satisfy anything beyond his body; his soul still needed release.

As he fell down to the side of the ship a view sparkled before his haunted eyes for a fragment of a second; a dress of bright blue and cream, glittering with diamonds.

The princess. No. he did not love the princess anymore. He loved Victoria.

It was Victoria in that dress.

Victoria. He must have her in his arms or his head will explode, or he'll set himself aflame and wait until the fire consumes his body's energy to extinct him.

He stepped into the wooden room, his ancient stripy trousers dripping saltwater all around him. Fat water droplets slid from his shaved head, down the back of his sun scorched neck, down his powerful back between the black wet wings which could not fly now, over the Red Cross mark, to soak into the wretched pants.

He stood at the door, looking at Victoria who stood, just as stiffly in the room.

He stood like a brainless zombie; mind so full of buzzing thoughts it was a vacuum, his eyes still crazed.

She stood in the room stiff with fear and pain, trying not to move might she ruin something or do the wrong thing.

The dress did not fit her perfectly; the sides of its corset were hanging loosely on her waist and the skirt was blissfully wider over her hips and behind or it would never be able to hold her body's fat reserves perfectly. The upper part of the corset, where a modest but revealing neckline was supposed to be laced together with a cream colored silk ribbon, Victoria's ample breasts broke through, tearing the delicate silk and opening an impossibly promiscuous full neckline. The only thing the pieces of fine silk were able to hide from David's eyes were her nipples.

Yet she looked more than magnificent in that dress, more than royal and beautiful and amazing and elegant. She looked like a heavenly creature, still innocent and staring, who landed in this ship before David's damned eyes to torment them with her glow and magnificence.

Like an idiot, he stumbled towards her, extracting a frightened whimper from between her undead lips. She did not feed that night and was pale and weak from the lack of blood.

Her large red eyes scanned over his wretched appearance and wondered what on earth happened to him. It was definitely a bad thing. It was definitely another horrid memory.

But if he here for comfort from her, or is he here for comfort from this new embodiment of that damned princess he loves so much?

"…Victoria…" David's voice was so hoarse it sounded like it came from the depth of some pit dark pit.

It was her name he called.

"…Victoria…so beautiful…" he stumbled towards her some more until they were nearly pressed one against the other.

Victoria dared not even breathe.

He reached out to her, placing his roughened palms on her bare white shoulders, "So beautiful. And pure, so, so pure…You are innocent…."

He was staring directly into the tiny squeezed valley between her breasts. Then he raised his eyes to hers and they were filled with watery tears, and so much sincere pain that she was first unable to recognize it.

"It is complete, all the wounds are prepared to heal….Will you heal me? Will you help me, Victoria?"

She choked on her answer, bloody tears running from her eyes as freely as his watery ones, "…Of course…" she whimpered poorly.

"You see…" he was looking down on her body again, "You're so enticing in that dress, and so sexy in your normal clothes. Your master's clothes, your original blue clothes, this dress, it doesn't matter. You think I can't be aroused by your natural body, when I am, as soon as I can't look at it.

"It hurts you and you don't want to be with me, when being with me is the one thing you could do to heal me.

"I cannot ever think of telling you my sorrow; I will never hurt you this much, the knowledge will burn you from the inside as it burnt so many others. All I need is you at my side, to hold me, dressed or not.

"But you think I'm not attracted to you, and you're so unconfident that it breaks your heart and you think I don't love you. Because I don't tell you. Because I don't look at you."

She clung to his shoulders, hoping he'll stabilize her before she'll collapse backwards and faint on the wooden floors. He read her so openly that she felt like he was reaching into his heart and opening it, and it hurt so badly.

But David was not the one who was going to keep them both on their feet because he himself came crushing to his knees at her feet and she sat down on a chair before they both tumble on one another.

His hands were deep inside her dress, cupping her. His head he buried in her lap, in the deep soft pillow of blue and cream silk and her strange vampiric cold warmness.

"I love you and only you but I cannot look upon you because…because of my sorrow, because of what I saw. I saw so many, men and women, naked and broken. You have no idea what that gas does to human bodies – no! I won't tell you, I won't break your mind!

"You don't know, Victoria, but I grew so cold inside. Like a stone in winter, I grew tight and cold and hard, until nothing I looked upon meant anything. Not even my own mother and father, my sisters or my brother. I saw nothing as valuable, nothing as meaningful, because it all met the same end; the fire. The human body, it still means nothing to me, nothing without emotions within me to make it warm and meaningful.

"You fill me with warmth, Victoria, and you chase away the horrors that play before my eyes at night. You heal me. You must heal me, you must stay with me. I have no one else and I am so cold…so very cold…

"Please….stay with me, tolerate this wretched, smoky firebrand and all his quirks in your company, because he loves you…and needs your company so very, very much."

He raised his eyes to meet hers and they were warm and red with blood. She nodded, biting her lower lip to stop herself from sobbing loudly. "I will," she managed to whimper through her fangs, "I promise…"

Finally relieved of the last dam keeping him from flowing completely, David buried his face in her lap again and hooked his arms powerfully around her waist. He cried then like he never cried in a long time, since he was a child, and he cried for it all.

---

The Sakura rained pink petals all over the grass beneath the gigantic tree. Seishiro watched the green change its color, dotted with pink until it was completely bright, cruel crimson.

The little girl hooked on his arm, was growing cold. The blood on his fingers caked and Seishiro wished to rub his palms against one another to shake the red layer off.

One day he'll be big enough to hunt bigger prey. Despite his already towering size, way over the average Japanese boy of sixteen, Seishiro was too small to pick on adult victims. So he killed this little girl, this teen idol who saw her agent buy drugs from the wrong people and earned her death.

Seishiro stared at the ribbons in the girl's hair, her short shining black hair, as they were caught by the wind and danced happily. The girl will never be able to dance. It's a shame because she danced so prettily. Oh well. Seishiro untied the ribbon and set it free in the wind.

Something picked on his mind and Seishiro, who was brought to the vicinity of a Sumeragi before as training by his mother, knew that a powerful onmyouji of the cult opposite to his was nearing him.

He watched silently as the boy, who couldn't be more than nine or eight years old, chanted his ofuda to create a circle around the Sakura and began working his magic. Seishiro's flesh crawled, every cell, every sinew suddenly scotching softly. When the Sakura is attacked it alarms him to make sure he defends it.

No need to act against the child's charm; the Sakura was far too powerful for this kid to act against it. The ofudas tore to pieces and the boy was hit by sakanagi.

Ah, sakanagi, the child did not yet learn how to channel it away from him. How silly of him to try and not only charge head on against The Sakura but to also do it without preparing a proper channel to deflect the sakanagi away from him with.

This child was so inexperienced it was painful to watch. Seishiro wanted to laugh at the boy. He wanted to leap off the Sakura's branch, like a frightening big cat, and attack the boy.

This is, after all, the next Sumeragi clan head, and killing the boy will be an achievement no one will ever expect of Seishiro.

The world would shake, destiny would quake. This boy, who will one day fight him for the earth in that far off, unimaginable Battle of the Apocalypse, will die before his time. Oh, the havoc Seishiro could create by snuffing out this petty, defenseless candle.

But first, let us toy with the boy. He reached out the arm on which the girl was hooked and shook the light corpse a bit until drops of blood landed on the boy's chubby face.

"Rain?" the child said with a clear squeaky voice, "But…It's red…" then the boy looked up and saw Seishiro, saw the dead girl as well.

From the shock in the boy's eyes Seishiro knew the child noticed the hole in the girl's chest, the bright red exposed flesh, and the protruding white bones.

Seishiro smiled kindly and shook the girl off his arm. The blood kept dripping n the child's face and he, stupidly, reached for the sticky drops to touch them. His eyes were empty with shock.

The girl plopped down to the ground. The sound of smashing flesh and breaking bones.

The child reached to cover his face and hide his innocent mind from the horror.

Seishiro leaped to the ground and threw an erasing spell on the boy's memory. No more of that.

A beautiful boy, this little thing, now lying limp in his arms, like a beautiful doll. Seishiro felt something in his chest, but decided to ignore it, push it away. Heresy.

Instead, he'll be coldhearted as he was taught, and speak like a villain, like the core of wickedness that he is.

"No one has ever witnessed me in the act of killing," remove that hand with which you brush the boy's blood tainted soft cheek with, at once! "and on top of that, this boy is in the same trade as me. Hmmm…what to do?"

Kill him; he saw you kill. Kill him, end it all.

But the boy is so beautiful and so interesting! Something is moving in his chest.

Maybe…just maybe…oh, but he'll do it harmfully, all in malevolence, yes, malevolence. He will not be kind.

The boy, that delicate and precious, fragile, young body moved in his arms. The eyes opened, that unique color was revealed to Seishiro more closely.

At once he leaped away from Seishiro's arms, shaking his head and glancing around like a confused faun.

"Oh, I'm sorry! I…did I faint…?"

Innocence. So much innocence. And there's pain now in Seishiro's chest, like something inside is struggling to break through his ribs and join the child, to attach itself to him.

The boy bowed deeply, his tiny hands disappearing in the sleeves of his oversized shikifuku, "I'm sorry to have troubled you. Thank you for rescuing me."

The thing in his chest struggled more but Seishiro pushed it back. He was truly curious now, like a leopard is curious of the moved of the gazelle it's stalking.

"These cherry blossoms are beautiful." The boy chirps. The trap shuts tight on his small gentle body.

"You like cherry blossoms, do you?"

"Yes!"

The boy smiled and the sun broke through the clouds that never covered it. The boy smiled and the Sakura was gone. Leaving only the petals, the colors of which so flattered the boy's healthy complexion and his charming blush of an excited child. The boy smiled and the grass, so pampered and well watered, which so far glittered in magnificent green in the sun's rays, paled and bowed humbly before the boy's emerald orbs.

What is this? This light coming from the boy? This warmth in Seishiro's chest? The world shakes, destiny quakes, for him. Because the boy was beautiful and the boy was perfect. Because the boy was full of light and innocence the likes of which Seishiro never saw.

The boy was anything but Seishiro. He wore a bright white shikifuku, as if to match his purity and, his unblemished soul.

And Seishiro? Seishiro was as black as his uniform, as black as his dark soul, as black as frozen blood. Seishiro was sin incarnated in a human body, he was so unclean and wrongful and evil.

This boy, this boy…what was this boy? Was he a messenger from the world to remind Seishiro of what he will never be? Was he a hint, a message? You are different, you are evil, you are bad.

And why this boy? Was the young and innocent girl he just killed not enough of a reminder? Were his classmates not a reminder, and everyone he ever passed by in the street, were they not enough of a hint to that point?

Why this boy?

Because the boy was beautiful and the boy was perfect and more than anything in the world right now, Seishiro wanted to embrace the boy and pick him up and hug him and own him completely.

He wanted to take the child, like a toy, like a stray kitten, and take him home. To feed him, and care for him and watch him grow. He wanted to play with the boy like he never played with anyone, and be happy. He wanted to have the boy snuggle up next to his in bed at night.

Yes, at night, and reach his blood-tainted fingers to touch the boy's innocence and taste it, touch it. He wanted to consume the boy, body and soul, and own him so completely, like an adopted pet, like a slave.

Why this boy? Why these needs and wants?

Because his mother sat like a broken doll in her semi prison cell and slowly brushed her hair. Because Seishiro, more than anything right now, wanted to not become like her one day.

This boy, this boy will bring him warmth and chase away the dark madness that one day will surely consume each and very Sakurazukamori. Just like those breathtaking jade eyes catch within them the rays of the sun.

Seishiro did not want to kill the next Sumeragi clan head and did not want to eliminate this future enemy in a war too far in the future for him to care about now.

He wanted to touch the boy and take him. Then, maybe, he'll one day grow to become as warm and emotional as this boy who was so sure he could help the tormented spirits trapped within the Sakura.

He will never be able to do that. It landed on Seishiro like a crumbling building. He will never be able to have the boy to himself and the boy will never be able to free him.

He will be like his mother one day; trapped in his room and in his madness, the stripes of light penetrating through the bars on the window illuminating him.

Suddenly Seishiro hated this boy more than anything. Why can't he be saved? Why can't he be free? He longed to be free, to let the thing in his chest carry him to the boy, to become one with the light and warmth and that wonderful body. Those magnificent eyes.

Seishiro hated Subaru. Has been hating him for a long time, still hates him a little for that pit between them; the chasm they'll never be able to cross to truly be with one another.

Because one was Sumeragi and forever righteous, pure and true and the other was Sakurazukamori and forever wrongful, evil and murderous.

That's why young Seishiro wanted to hurt Subaru; that is why he did what he did.

"But did you know? They say, buried underneath every cherry tree, is a corpse."

Shock in the boy's eyes, the emptiness of recognizing human suffering, "A…corpse?"

"Yes. The reason cherry trees bloom so beautifully every year is because of the corpse buried underneath. You see, cherry blossoms start out white. White like snow. So do you know why cherry blossom petals turn a pale red?"

The boy shook his head. He looked up at Seishiro like the teen was a tour guide explaining some fascinating and harmless fact of nature.

Oh, how Seishiro hated that innocent trust in people, knowing you'll never have to reach into those people's chests and kill them.

"Because they drink the blood of the corpse beneath."

The boy is in tears. Yes! He's suffering!

"But isn't that person in pain?"

Perfect. So perfect. So hateful. So wonderful.

"I'll make a bet with you." The wind blew around them; destiny was moving to the next stage.

"If you and I should ever meet again let us live together for a year. My heart is the direct inverse of yours: you are kind, and pure, and honest," and I hate you and love you for it, and those are emotions, "and I'm sure that is how you will continue to grow up. Your heart will remain pure.

"So, if we should ever meet again I will try my hardest to learn to love you." Or learn to be human, like you, to get used to a normal life where I'm not bound to sacrifice humans like me to a tree and kill cold-heartedly and fear the madness that will one day meet me too. I will try my hardest to settle in the hot water and become relaxed and warm like you, "Just for one year.

"And after that year, if I can consider you as 'special' you will have won, and I will not kill you. But if I decide that I cannot consider you special to me, if I cannot distinguish the difference between you and that corpse….

"…Then I will kill you.

"And so, today I will let you go. But so that I may recognize you when we meet again I will carve a symbol onto you."

Despite the hate, despite the horrible way he was widening the chasm between them, Seishiro still wanted to touch the boy so desperately.

Tenderly, he took the tiny soft palms in his hands and touched the perfect skin to his bloodthirsty lips.

"A symbol to show that you are the prey of the Sakurazukamori."

The boy fainted again. Seishiro walked away.

They met again, years later, in a train station. Subaru was chasing his shiki. Seishiro was reading a newspaper and so bored with his life that he wanted to start pushing the people near him onto the railing, just to see what happens.

The madness, that dawning madness; it was nearing.

And once again, as if Subaru knew he was calling him, the boy walked into his life.

So fresh he was, and full of youthful energy. And so heartbreakingly beautiful, yes, even more beautiful than he was as a boy.

Seishiro's hunger rose in him and he knew; now is the time.

Seishiro tore himself out of the dream and woke in his room, on his bed, in the ship, in the Lost Dimension.

He was no longer as bitter, lonely, angry and frightened as he was back then. He now feels emotions all the more powerful than back then, but at least they are not those emotions. Not the emotions that led him to destroy the only thing that could have ever cured him.

He hurt Subaru because he hated Subaru. He hated Subaru because Subaru was so good and pure and kind. He loved Subaru because Subaru was so good and pure and kind. It was a circle Seishiro was trapped in and the more he thought about it the more he wanted to break out of that circle by destroying Subaru.

Subaru clung to him despite the ruin Seishiro brought about him. Perhaps Subaru, somewhere in his unconsciousness, picked up Seishiro's call for help and followed him everywhere, relentless to let go until Seishiro is cured.

'S.O.S. Help me. Deliver me. Liberate me. Love me. Show me better. There is something wrong with me and I cannot handle it. Help me. S.O.S'

Subaru homed in on that signal loyally and he didn't let go.

Subaru was not beside him on the bed; Subaru was above him on the ship's bridge. Subaru must have dreamt about something as well and if he's not here then it's something bad. If it's something bad then it's something Seishiro did.

Maybe, when he'll come back to their room, Subaru will carry in his heart a resolution to leave Seishiro and stop this gift he's been giving Seishiro since that strange night where destiny was shattered by Death.

If so, then Seishiro will not be angry. He will not seek out revenge or any kind of agreement with Subaru to give the two of them another chance. Seishiro will accept it if Subaru would want to break up with him now.

Because he deserves it. Because he shouldn't have tried to break out of that circle by violent means. Because he should have lied to Subaru whenever he wanted to tell him that he loves him, instead of filling the boy's heart with lies to make his sixteen year old head dizzy with promises. Because he shouldn't have lied to Subaru in that hospital room.

That was his crime. That was his wrongdoing. That was what he should pay for. If he will pay for it he will agree to it and suffer as much as the punishment makes him.

The time he spent with Subaru in his strange world is enough to last Seishiro a lifetime of joy, even if Subaru comes into the room now and dumps him. He has enough sweet memories to live with, happily.

He needs to say this to Subaru if the man comes into the room and acts like nothing happened. If Subaru chose to stay with him he'll tell him all those things.

Why? Because Seishiro wanted to pour all those emotions out of him. Because his love is making him lightheaded and silly.

---

What he saw that night was brought to him by Kakyou, and he didn't know it. When he woke up and frightened Obaa-san, he tore himself out of a dreamscape and not out of hiding within his soul. A dreamscape Kakyou wove for him, so that he'd know what happened.

This time, as he watched the dream again, Kakyou was there too. This time his eyes looked at it different, from a more nostalgic view point; looking at something that meant a great deal to him a very long time ago. Ages ago. But Kakyou doesn't matter.

Subaru appeared in Ueno Park. He knew it was Ueno Park because only Ueno Park contains that immense, cursed cherry tree. The Sakura.

Seishiro-san was there, the bandage off his face, with a brand new white-irised glass eye.

Who was it walking towards Seishiro-san in white shikifuku? It was his shikifuku, but it wrapped Hokuto's body.

Hokuto, Hokuto-chan, it was Hokuto-chan! What was she doing in Ueno Park, under the Sakura, when Seishiro-san was there!

The wind blew madly, as madly as it blew whenever it hid Seishiro-san's words of the bet in his short snippets of confused memory he saw. It blew the small petals all around the man and the girl at the bottom of the tree.

Hokuto-chan's feet were naked save for the one finger socks, they crushed soft petals beneath them.

Hokuto-chan's eyes, so hard and resilient as they settled calmly on Seishiro-san.

Seishiro-san's eyes, so cold and uncaring as they lay on the approaching girl.

"Finally," Hokuto-chan says with a smile, "I found you."

She squares her shoulders, frowning a bit, and gazing at Seishiro-san so powerfully, so uncharacteristically of her. Subaru, young Subaru, wondered if this is true or if it's a dream; he never saw Hokuto-chan so intense around Seishiro-san.

They were always such a crazy pair, the two of them, always harassing him and joking around. Seishiro-san would throw a joke and Hokuto-chan would give him an audience of giggles and that trademark "OHOHOHO!" of hers.

Sometimes Subaru wondered what Seishiro-san found in him, when he got along with Hokuto-chan so well.

It was all over now. Seishiro-san was the Sakurazukamori who kicked him around like a stone on the hot day's pavement and broke his arm. Hokuto-chan didn't look like she could giggle anymore.

"I won't let you…I will never let you kill Subaru!" She says, almost shouting against the fierce wind.

The Sakura must be nervous; a Sumeragi of some power in its vicinity, with obvious harmful intentions.

"I will never let you kill him."

Seishiro-san's so calm but the more Subaru looked at him the more he saw the hidden cruelty, the bloodlust of his cold-heartedness.

He closes his eyes – never do this when facing the enemy, it's like letting your guards down – as if to enjoy the wind like it was some refreshing cool sea breeze. "But you don't have the power to kill me…Hokuto-chan."

His precious twin lowers her head and voice, "I know."

He called her in his dream, he pounding the transparent layer of the dreamscape created between him and reality with his fists, "Hokuto-chan! Hokuto-chan!"

Please stop! What are you doing? You're shattering the last pieces of that soft, warm illusion I liked to bask in, to believe in.

All the old pacts are falling apart and a wonderland, a heaven of exactly one year is ruined.

"I know I cannot beat you. There are certain spells that only I have the power to cast."

Seishiro-san looks different; his eyes lose that mask of calm and become sharper. He doesn't look surprised or frightens, oh no, he looks observant. Forever the predator observing his prey.

"Only you?"

Hokuto-chan! Don't do it! Hokuto-chan!

She didn't hear him. This was reality and he was in a dream, inside himself, in a coma. Far away, in his bed in the apartment he and his twin once shared. Hokuto-chan was not bustling around in the kitchen, nor was she fussing over his and hers outfits. She was in Ueno Park, facing Seishiro-san alone.

"That's why…I want you…to kill me instead."

He was too shocked to even call her name.

Seishiro-san closed his eyes again, as if to think, and his face was blank.

Then he opened his eyes and smiled. That small, kind smile of his that Subaru learned now to identify as 'fake', 'cruel', 'a mask'.

"I shall."

Hokuto-chan!

The Sakurazukamori raised two fingers to prepare for the act.

HOKUTO-CHAN!

The Sumeragi raised two fingers and chanted, preparing to cast the spell.

HOKUTO-CHAN!

Blocked, he cannot run to her to save her, she is beyond his reach.

That long, strong hand penetrated the chest he was embraced into so many times before. The blood flowed through the sickeningly huge wound. Hokuto-chan fell backwards from the sheer force of the blow she received.

Falling backwards, arms swapped upwards in a circle, shikifuku sleeves flailing in the wind dramatically. The blood spilling out her chest created a semi circle above her before landing on the white fabric and staining it.

Her head tilting back, her eyes closed now forever, she called his name.

"Su…

"Ba…

"Ru…"

The spell came out of her like a gush of water, circling in the air and embracing Seishiro-san, hiding him from Subaru for a moment.

Glass shattered before him, but that was just the embodiment of his coma breaking apart as he wrenched himself to reality.

What he saw last before he yanked himself out to reality was Seishiro-san's face, the blind side lit as if to remind Subaru of that fateful day when Seishiro-san saved his life. The smile on Seishiro-san's face a cruel reminded of the coldness of the man's heart, as cold as the white glass iris.

Subaru opened his eyes. He knew Seishiro lay beside him on the bed but didn't feel obliged to even look at the man in order to better think of the memory he just watched.

He climbed out of his bed, dressed, and walked up to the bridge to smoke a much needed cigarette.

The air was cool and sweet and the random showers of sea spray delighted Subaru. For some reason, a smile spread on his lips.

'Am I cruel to smile after that memory, Hokuto-chan?'

He folded himself at the feet of the smaller mast at the front of the ship and looked up to the starless night sky.

'You know I still love you, still miss you, still long for your company daily. But, I'm with Seishiro-san now, and that's something you wanted, right?

'You're not angry now, are you? Your soul, is it even here with me in this world? I'll never know.

'Seishiro-san's so different these days, Hokuto-chan, that you'd never recognize him. He's all emotional and confused and sweet and loving. Don't get me wrong, he's still of stuck in his 'tough aloof man' attitude, but he's much…softer.

'He sang to me, Hokuto-chan, even if it was under a spell, and he said such sweet things.

'The more I learn about him, the more I compare it to our lives as Sumeragi, the more I realize what puppets on Destiny's strings we were. We all were, even you, Hokuto-chan.

'We're together now, Hokuto-chan, and we're so happy.

'He's so tentative about your death, Hokuto-chan, that he's scared of ever taking up the subject. I'm sure that if I'll ever bring it up to him he'll either turn completely silent and angry at himself, or apologize. I think I prefer the first. I don't know why.

'Kamui, I think I told you about him, he tried charging Seishiro with murder for you. I don't know about that. I am the one who will decide if this crime is forgiven or not.

'Is it a crime? You told him to kill you. He could have refused. But you wanted to die.

'What for, Hokuto-chan? Didn't you know that of all the people, you're the one who could really pull me out of myself back then? Obaa-san never could, Seishiro-san wasn't even around, and who else did we know?

'You pulled me out, back then, but in the wrong way.

'I'm so lonely without you, Hokuto-chan. Still so lonely. What else would one half feel when the other is forever denied of him?

'For now I'm satisfied in the fact that I'm still a half of something else, which completes a circle with another half. Together, me and Seishiro-san are whole. Ying and Yang.

'But without you, Hokuto-chan, we're still incomplete. That is our bane.

'I love you, Hokuto-chan, and I miss you. Forever, my beloved bigger sister.'

---

When he was a child everything was simple and painless. Since one last cold and rainy night, the night when he found Usagi, Kamui the child never knew sorrow for a long time.

When he was a child Kotori and Fuma were there, his mother and Saya were there, Kyogo was there. They were neighbors, they were friends; they were one big family.

When he was a child there was never a time of peace and quiet; someone was always turning on the TV or radio, always stomping down corridors in socks or slippers, always dropping a book to the floor or washing the dishes, or saying prayers or cleaning the house or sleeping and snoring.

When he was a child he was never alone and never without someone who loved him nearby. When his mother was at work he'd be at the Monous and if Kotori and Fuma weren't there then Saya was there, and even if Saya wasn't there then Kyogo was there.

Until Saya died, her body torn to shreds as much as the lives of the two families were now, and he and his mother moved to Okinawa, Kamui knew no pain and no suffering.

That's why, when he saw and felt things beyond what his mind could comprehend and accept, he hid within himself and took on the shape of a child.

Event this infantile shape did not save him from running around within his own sanctuary of a heart and watching one horror after the other play before him.

The first moment the Dragon possessed Fuma fully. For one silly moment Kamui thought that by bringing his hand to his lips, Fuma was going to kiss them and then kiss him. He was wrong.

Fuma killed Kotori. Fuma wounded him so badly he needed physiotherapy for months later.

This was unacceptable.

Child Fuma cracked in the middle and torn apart. A grown Fuma, wielding the shinken, reared up from him. The big Fuma impaled child Kotori with his sword and killed her. Oh, how clear and innocent Kotori's babyish face looked in her death.

Kotori died, sliced to pieces like cheese. Fuma was mad. Mad. Bloodthirsty and mad. Fuma wants to kill him. Fuma was about to kill him.

No! No! It can't be true!

"Heed me boy!"

That's true; someone else is here. He's tall and his shoulders are broad, not as broad as Fuma's, but definitely broad in that adult-male kind of way that made Kamui immediately tune in to the man's voice. The man had deep, sad eyes, so green it fascinated Kamui. His hair was black and his skin was white and his face was shaped so well, Kamui thought that, save for Fuma, this man must be the most beautiful thing he ever saw.

This was Sumeragi Subaru and he was here to help him, to pull him out.

"You are in the depths of your soul right now."

"The depth of my soul?"

"Yes, and I'm here too. Something awful happened and you refused to keep living and thinking in the world of 'reality', refused to choose yourself a path." Subaru closed his eyes for a moment, musing, "you ran away and this is how you are avoiding reality – by staying here, deep inside."

That's right! Sumeragi Subaru was here to help him back to reality. But Kamui didn't want reality. Right now, he was constantly running away from the things Subaru told him. He was drawing his hand away; trying to flee from the cold hard words Subaru was handling him.

Sumeragi Subaru showed him his sister's death. Kamui cried. Sumeragi Subaru told him his story, of how he too withdrew into himself one day. How it didn't help. What happened when he was inside himself, how he was unable to stop it.

Kamui was beginning to understand something. It made him want to cry for Subaru.

Sumeragi Subaru was kneeling before him, to look him eye to eye, and held the sides of his face gently.

"You can stay here forever if you think it would make you happy." Sumeragi Subaru's eyes were so soft, "but here…there can be no beginnings and no endings. There is no change, no flow of time in this part of the soul."

Kamui didn't want Sumeragi Subaru to look him in the eye, so he bowed his head a bit and squared his shoulders. But Sumeragi Subaru's fingers still ran softly through the hair at the sides of his head, so softly.

"Here, you can only watch, over and over and over…a mere bystander in your life's most crucial moments! And each time you dream it anew…another part of you will die – barren, impotent, hopeless, cold…

"I'm so cold, Kamui."

How can you look at the man as he says such things? Though Kamui's hear was filled with pain for Sumeragi Subaru, and he wished to crush into the man's arms and cry for him, he remained standing still and merely stared deep into those painful emerald orbs.

"One I loved dearly was killed – by one I loved equally.

"Just like you.

"But the pain I feel and the pain you feel…they are not the same. Yes, I lost my dear sister… but that pain made me come back to 'reality', not avoid it, run from it.

"I did not give up.

"I can't. I must continue to live…to create the future I want. There is still a chance that I may be happy."

He looked away from Kamui's all-searching eyes, "and yes…that's probably going to sadden the people who love me. They may even hate me for it. But if I don't follow my heart's true path…no one else will."

Kamui understood everything. Kamui understood Sumeragi Subaru. Kamui understood his heart's path to Fuma. Kamui no longer felt the need to be a child.

"So you want to live on…since he's the one who's 'special' to you?"

"I guess that's why." Back then, Sumeragi Subaru's eyes hurt and dimmed when he thought of that man.

"And you, you have the same choice to make. Whether to live in your memories, blaming yourself forever…or to awaken from this dream, and choose a path – a path to your heart's desire.

"I know what I want. In my heart, I want to get Fuma back."

To get Fuma back. Fuma.

Kamui woke up.

Where's Subaru?

Sumeragi Subaru sat leaning on the second mast, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the sky with a faint smile on his lips.

Kamui sat down at Subaru's side, the one to which the wind does not blow the smoke from the onmyouji's cigarette.

"Good evening, Kamui."

"Good evening, Subaru-san."

"San? Is everything alright?"

"I dreamt a memory." Kamui noticed Subaru flinched and frowned in worry at him. He looked away, angry at himself. "Please, don't look worried about me. Don't be worried about me at all, I'm not worth it."

"Kamui! I wo…"

"Don't, please." Kamui folded his legs towards him, laying his arm on his knees absentmindedly, brows crossed, "you saved my life at the risk of your own. What did I ever do for you?"

"Ka-Kamui! What on earth do you mean?"

If his anger wouldn't make him turn his gaze to the Sumeragi, Kamui would be too ashamed to do it on his own.

"I tried to kill Seishiro, Subaru! The man who is special to you, the man you hunted all you life to try and capture the heart of, the man the path to your heart's desire led. I tried to take him away from you, Subaru, to take him away forever."

Subaru opened his mouth to say something, but Kamui shot his hand before the man, as if to physically block whatever he was about to say.

"Worse than that, Subaru…I never told you but…for a while, during those first days when I was kidnapped, and was so desperate to leave and run away back to Fuma, and I noticed how you were always at my side and so tentative…I…" he was crying, but his tears were hot with rage, "I wondered if I can somehow persuade you…or seduce you…to help me escape."

He kicked the wooden floor powerfully, grabbing at his hair, shutting his eyes tight, "I'm so horrible, Subaru, I was such a horrible conniving bitch! I was so horrible!"

"Kamui…surely…it isn't that bad…"

"No, Subaru, it is that bad." Kamui turned his big tear eyes to the onmyouji, "I look myself in the mirror and see crime, crime, Subaru! And I'm afraid I'll never be able to wash myself of it." He was shivering with sobs.

"How will I ever be able to get back to Fuma with all these horrible things clinging to my hands like spilled blood? How is he ever going to take me back in when I'm so filthy with bad things? How will he ever love me?

"Oh, Subaru, we're so close to him that I can feel it; his power beckoning mine to reunite and be one again. But I'm so wrong and so evil, so dirty…what am I going to do!" he was curling into a ball again.

Subaru grabbed the youth by his wrists and shook him until Kamui looked into his face again with clear eyes, "Kamui! You're getting hysterical, calm down."

"B-but…"

"Listen to me…"

"'Heed me boy'" Kamui giggled, a faint smile playing on his lips.

Subaru blinked, ruffled, "What?"

"When I was inside my soul, I was hysterical like I was now and you grabbed me and screamed at me. You said 'listen to me, Kamui!' you said 'heed me boy!' and I didn't know what 'heed' was." He giggled again.

Subaru gawked a bit, darting his eyes sideways a bit as if to look for a dictionary in which to show Kamui the meaning of 'heed'. "It means 'listen', in fancy language."

Kamui collapsed into Subaru's lap in giggles, laying his arms softly on his belly, looking up into the empty night sky.

The onmyouji brought his cigarette hand as far away from Kamui as possible.

His giggling fit ended, Kamui stared at Subaru's hand, extended sideways in an awkward angle, "Don't be mean, I can take the smoke." He sighed.

" You always said it made you dizzy and sick."

"I lied. I was full of opinions my mother had about cigarettes."

Slowly, suspiciously, Subaru moved his cigarette hand to where it was before.

Kamui stared at the burning cylinder thoughtfully. "Give me a draft."

"What!"

Kamui leaped off Subaru, settling himself on all fours, staring at Subaru with glittering excited eyes, "Let me have a try at it, come one, what do you mind? You can have as many cigarettes as you want from Alex, one cigarette less won't harm you."

"K-A-M-U-I! I can't believe I'm hearing this from you!"

"Oh pah-lease, stop pretending you're my mother. Here, one draft won't hurt me."

He was reaching for the cigarette and Subaru kept moving it away from him until they were shuffling across the bridge, one on all fours and the other butting himself backwards.

"Stop it, Kamui! You're making them look at us funny." Subaru was referring to the two night watchmen behind them, who were really looking at them funny.

Kamui knelt up, folding his arms on his chest stubbornly, "What do you think I did in junior school, Subaru, during all those classes I skipped? Sitting under a bridge reading books!"

Subaru blinked angrily, butting himself back to the mast while strictly keeping the cigarette out of Kamui's reach, "I-I don't believe you one bit."

Kamui pouted, then erased the pout immediately and placed a more mature expression on. He leaned back on the mast and stared at the sky, blankly musing in silence.

Subaru stared at the boy. Kamui could have easily pouted and whined enough to nag him for the cigarette, but he didn't. He stopped in the middle, he forced himself to behave like a mature grown man and stopped the princessly behavior. Subaru was so proud of him.

Trying to fight back the moral arguments still going in his mind, Subaru dug into his coat pocket and pulled his cigarette box. He poked a cylinder at Kamui's direction.

Kamui stared at the cigarette, amazed. He sat up, staring at Subaru with excited giddiness, "Really? Really, Subaru? You're really letting me have one?"

Subaru shrugged, "You said so yourself; I'm not your mother. More like an older sister, I'd like to think."

Kamui placed the cigarette between his lips, his finger shaking with exhilaration, "Nah, more like the cool aunt who slips in condoms and pot behind your mother's back and tells you everything about life."

"…."

"Can I have a lighter?"

"I can't believe you, Kamui, you're turning into a real teen delinquent; talking about condoms and drugs."

"You smoked pot in the hippies' tent, Subaru, I saw you! Now give me the lighter already…please…"

Subaru handed the lighter to the boy, turning his head away so that he won't have to see the youth light the cigarette.

"And I'm not turning into a teen delinquent; I'm merely revealing my delinquent side to you. This thing won't light up."

"Suck on the cigarette a bit, draw the fire into the tobacco."

Kamui did and for five minutes straight was choking and coughing hard enough to wake the whole ship.

"If you keep coughing like that Alex would be here to cure you and then he'll kill me for giving you a cigarette in the first place."

Kamui, who finally managed to rein his breath into some kind of a sane function, took a deep draft from the cigarette, inhaled the smoke, held it in as much as he could, and then exhaled it out in a long column towards Subaru, "probably."

"Don't blow it at me!" Subaru was waving his hands madly, and then pulled at the hair above Kamui's ear.

"Ouch!...Subaru…Are you sure you're not angry at me?"

"I rather not talk about it."

"You are still mad at me."

"No, I'd rather not think about it."

"The Lady of Light told me that I was meant to do it, so that I can learn my lesson and become true Justice."

Subaru turned to look at Kamui thoughtfully.

The boy was holding the cigarette strangely between his middle finger and forefinger and was slowly tapping it to remove necessary layers of ash which gathered on the burning end.

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"I do."

Kamui's eyes were tearful again as they turned to look at Subaru, and not because he was coughing for his life a moment ago, "Really?"

The onmyouji smiled softly, "Yes, Kamui, really. I believe in you. You're changing, you're growing mature and I'm so proud to see you at it. You're doing it on your own, on your own accord. That must be what I'm proud of the most. You're becoming a good person, Kamui, a really good person."

Kamui frowned, "Really?" his voice came out cracked with emotion.

"Yes, and don't worry about the things you did once. I think you've paid for them. Am I right?"

Kamui nodded silently, pouting uncontrollably. He reached to Subaru and pulled the bigger man into a tight embrace.

"Subaru…I want you to know…that if you're ever in pain, or angry at something, or in trouble…I want you to come to me and tell me about it. I want to be there for you, to be the one on you'll lean on. For once, I want to be the one to help you."

Subaru laughed softly and rubbed the boy's back, "Alright."

"Promise?"

"Yes."

Kamui drew away from the man, offering his hand with its little finger up, "Pinky promise?"

They shook pinkies. The pirates behind them looked at them even more oddly.

"Is this pot?"

"What!"

"It makes me dizzy…Is it?"

"Kamui, I'll never, ever smoke pot, ever again. No, that is not pot and you're dizzy because you've haven't consumed nicotine before."

" …What….never?"

"Never!"

"Okay, okay, no need to b so anal about it."

"Language, young man!"

"Yes mother."

They burst into giggles a moment later.

A thoughtful silence later, Kamui turned to look at Subaru. The bigger man was drawing inverted pentacles on the back of his palm with the butt of his second cigarette.

"Subaru…do you think you can remove that."

The onmyouji had to shake himself out of his daydreams before he could focus on Kamui's question. He looked down at the back of his hands and wondered.

"I'm sure Seishiro can do something about it. Or Alex. Or something."

Subaru frowned at the black sky above them. The torch on the mast behind him cast golden light on the smoke their cigarettes created.

"No, I don't think I'd want that. I think…I think it's like a reminder to what happened. And whether one day I'll look at it with love or rage or sadness, it'll still remind me of what happened so that I'll never be able to forget. May it be for good or for bad."

Subaru reached for Kamui's palm, the one nearest to him and the one holding the now half burnt cigarette, gently turning it up and down.

It took Kamui a while to realize the onmyouji meant to draw his attention to the ling thin lines of scar on his palm. Where Fuma pinned him to the concrete slab with glass and the shinken.

Yes, a reminder. A connection to the painful past that both of them and their loved ones would always want to forget. The reminder of the difficulties and hard times they had to overcome to be together with their loved ones.

Oh, how alike the two of them were.

The ship sailed on. The sea was calm, rocking the boat gently with soft low waves. The wind blew gently in the sails.

(tbc)

---

(1) Yes, yes, I know the original version said Vicky's mother called her 'Seras', but I think it's downright stupid to have a British girl called 'Seras' when there's the far more Anglo-Saxon-sounding name 'Victoria' is right there to use.

And if you don't like that explanation then just think that from the dimension that this Vicky came from, she's Victoria Seras but out there are many other dimensions where a Seras Victoria lives, okay?

And Anderson is four-dimensional XD.

(2) Look it up in Wikipedia or something.

(3) Scheigetz; a gentile boy, usually used to describe a boy who's behaving badly.

(4) Crybaby Schrodinger. If you don't remember that Schrodinger is Will's original name then shame on you. Go read Hellsing! At once!...or just re-read Kamui's Companion.

(5) Referring here to The Mourner's Kaddish, a prayer which is part of a mourning ritual.

(6) He he he, a little inside joke for me and my pathetic little lifeless self. I imagine this version of Lestate to be Jonathan Rhys-Meyers-looking, though Tom Cruise was just as handsome in his role as Lestate.

(7) "No, no, I don't believe it, boo hoo, angst, angst EMO EMO"

A.N: Good god that was ghastly. And tediously long. And sappy. Yuck. But this is what my brain fermented and this is what you'll have to deal with, ne?