A/N: Life is butts right now, but after I get the next chapter for my main fic up I'll get to work on requests/other shorts.

Magery- I'm so glad you liked it ;-; I have a loooot of love for Kayle and her character, even though I don't think I've ever actually mentioned it to anyone before lol. So I am very glad you requested her c: That was SunnySplosion, and yeah that was me :D I was doing well but I was playing Syndra top against a Nasus who just… ruined us. Oh boy.

Ulcaasi- I actually have an idea for a project short now, especially since you mentioned it. I'll get to working on it after I've updated HTLB c:

Drzshadowboy999- Thank you c:

An entire village.

Not one person, not one family, but an entire village.

It was artful, surely, if you had the eye for it; the problem was that aside from the Virtuoso himself, no one else did. Zed didn't see artistry in meticulously planned blood splatters, and he didn't see a grand performance in bodies that no longer lived and breathed. He had only seen, for the last three and half years, needless and gruesome death. It was nothing he and Shen and his father hadn't seen before, but this was… different. The murderer wasn't angry, he didn't want anything, he wasn't exacting revenge; he was, in his mind, creating art of the most wonderful and exquisite kind.

And the longer they went without catching this Golden Demon, the more and more Zed felt his own mind slipping away.

He'd seen it in Shen, and even their Master. The grim mission wore on the trio in different ways, but Shen rarely had a word to spare anymore, and his father even less; he'd grown haggard, lines creasing his face and silver hair falling into silver eyes, and Zed wondered how much more of the grotesque art the three of them could possibly stomach.

In a tiny lodging just beyond the murdered village, Zed sat now, head cradled in his hands. The inn was tucked into the roadside and empty but for the traveling ninjas and the innkeeper, and Zed could hear every creaking floorboard and the whistle of wind against the cottage walls. They weren't especially loud noises, but they grated on Zed's nerves (thinning by the day) and his fingers curled tightly into his hair. It wasn't so much the disruption to the silence that bothered him, but that Zed's thoughts inevitably turned, as they always did now, to the twisted horrors he had found and left behind; he couldn't put into words why the murders of the Golden Demon affected him so, but there was something so deeply, profoundly disturbing about the elusive serial killer and his sadistic art. The fact that it had been more than three years and they had nothing to show for it exacerbated Zed's torturous thoughts, and he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes as if that might wipe away everything they'd seen.

It couldn't. Nothing could.

Interrupting the quiet were light, even footsteps outside of Zed's room, that paused outside of his door as if they were considering a knock, and continued inside without one. Zed looked up, blinking bleary eyes and lacking the energy to greet his companion.

"You should be resting."

Shen had closed the door behind him, but didn't venture more than a step or two into the room; his silver eyes, so reminiscent of his father's, flicked over the tired lines of Zed's face, and Zed looked away when Shen's scrutiny became uncomfortable.

"As you should be."

They both could have used a decent night's sleep after the day's events, but tortured thoughts and a clinging guilt kept them both far from any rest, and Zed knew that was why Shen was there at all. The Master's son looked no better than Zed felt, and the silence that fell between them was unusually uneasy.

It wasn't always this way; there was a time when neither of the two felt so aged or somber, when Zed would laugh at Shen's wit, when they weren't burdened with the terrible knowledge that the Virtuoso killed because they had yet to stop him.

How distant that time felt.

Shen did walk further into the room, pausing at Zed's bedside and tentatively lifting a hand that he placed gently on Zed's shoulder. The grip tightened, and Zed couldn't tell if it was because Shen meant to reassure him, or to comfort himself.

"We will catch him, brother. You and I."

His voice was hollow, just like Zed felt, and he lifted his hand to clap over Shen's reluctantly. He didn't doubt Shen's sincerity or their ability to eventually bring the Demon to justice, but Zed would be naïve to think that things would be as they were before the venture. They wouldn't be the same people, that he knew for certain.

But, if Zed had nothing else, he had his brother.

"You and I."