Author's Note: Happy Holidays to all! Here's a gift from me to you, though honestly the timing is purely coincidental. I struggled a bit here; everything has the intended feel but I don't know that I got the magnitude right. The jagged edges do need some smoothing eventually, but here I think they need to be jagged and jarring. You'll have to let me know what you think. We're super close to the end though, maybe two or three more chapters. Anyway, as always, thank you all so much for reading and for your patience with these glacial updates. I hope you enjoy the chapter and I'll get the next one up as soon as it's done!
It was perhaps counterintuitive, but when Vera woke she was oddly exhausted. Not the loopy delirium or peculiar focus of an all-nighter, just exhausted. Like the little sleep she had managed was entirely ineffectual. And her head hurt. She stirred a bit to indicate consciousness and heard a brief shuffle and then sizzling. Someone else was up and they were cooking, which she found enticing, but not any more so than the prospect of lounging for a few more minutes. She didn't actually commit to getting up until the smell of bacon began to drift her way. Then, yawning loudly, she stretched, sat up, and opened her eyes.
"Morning," greeted Soul from the kitchen, pushing eggs around a pan with a spatula and calling over his shoulder.
"Morning," Vera repeated, rubbing her eyes and wondering if she meant it as a salutation or a question. Blinking, she noticed something odd out the window to her left. "The sun's not up yet."
"It's like 4:30 am," Soul tossed, turning with the pan in hand and dividing the eggs and bacon onto two plates. "Not my usual style but I guess it still counts as morning."
Vera gave a sort of hum that was intended to be conversational and came out disinterested. She couldn't help it; her gaze had swept the room and found one of the kitchen chairs out of place. Next to the couch and exactly where it had been in her dream. Rolling her lips and giving it a skeptical look, she redirected the conversation. More a jibe than a change of tack, but it was too early and their situation too chaotic to bother with smooth transitions. Right now it was just innocent curiosity, but…
"Did you sleep here last night," she demanded in the most congenial way she could manage, gesturing to the chair.
"Oh," he answered slowly, rubbing the back of his neck in what would've been considered a sheepish manner from anyone other than Soul Evans. "Yeah. Yeah, I did. Hope that's cool."
"Yeah, no, I don't mind at all. Totally cool. I just must've heard you bring it over or something because I had the weirdest dream and it started with you being here, sleeping in this chair next to me."
"Given everything that's going on, I'll take weird over disturbing. So what, did I say something weird or do a dance?"
"Damn, I wish," she giggled a little, tossing him a playful glance before returning her thoughtful amber eyes to the window, visualizing in the dark. "I would've liked to have seen that. Can't decide if you're a smooth dancer or if you have two left feet; it's hard to tell with cool guys like you. No, it was nothing so outlandish. I was watching us both sleep from, like, a hole in the ceiling, except there was a layer of water. And when the water rippled you were in a room made out of this super nice red wood playing this big piano. I can still hear the tune, it was catchy for classical music, something like:"
Vera hummed the first few phrases of the main theme as best she could, wondering passively if it was at all recognizable. Soul's lack of commentary made her pause, suddenly uneasy, and turn back to him. She'd expected some kind of response to her attempt at music, some comment or snort or correction or something. Instead she got a deadly serious frown and white-knuckled grip on the spatula, as if it were more a spear than a cooking utensil. He waited for her gaze to lock securely with his to speak.
"Fugue in G Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach, more popularly known as the Little Fugue," he started in a carefully controlled tone. "I played one part and the other three echoed around the room. Crona was under the floor, listening for I don't know how long. He grabbed me, tried to pull me under, into the Madness. It was so real, thick and almost impossible to move through, exactly like I remember. Then I woke up."
"And I didn't," Vera whispered as if to finish his sentence.
For a long moment they just stared at each other. Soul wanted to know something more, had some question she could hear perfectly in the silence. Something necessary, regardless of how badly she wanted to just be a normal person again. Moving her jaw like she was chewing on the words, Vera slid from the couch and blankets. Repositioning by the window, she folded her arms tightly across her chest and spoke to the condescending moon.
"I dove in after you, through the Madness and into the place where Crona was. The physical place, or where he'd been recently, or what he was thinking about maybe. It was Dr. Stein's lab, just outside it, in the sand. Ms. Marie had an injured leg and was bleeding pretty badly, Dr. Stein smelled like… burnt human, and Maka was there, in the sand looking sick or something. Then I was with Crona again, not in a physical place, but on some astral plane, in the gray. He's such a pain, like he's being intentionally obtuse, but I got him to tell me… something… and then he was pulled away. I tried to go after him and instead went right back into… myself? My body?"
"What did he tell you," Soul cut her off, keeping his distance. "Vera, this is important."
"I fucking know, okay," she snapped, giving him a scalding sideways look over her shoulder and a heavy sigh. Still, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back in thought, licking her lips with an exaggerated slowness. "He's broken. He thinks he's evil and that you're all going to kill him with this fatalistic certainty. Still he said something, something I don't think he thought I was going to remember. It didn't make any sense anyway; he told me to follow the threads from his mother's journals. That all her creations are connected and if I wanted to find him I just had to follow the threads."
"The threads," Soul repeated, frowning. "That doesn't make any sense."
"Yes, that's what I just said. Glad you were listening."
With about five more scathing comments prepared, she turned to face him directly. And all five died on her tongue when she saw his face, genuinely bewildered, frustrated, with the lightest touches of pain highlighting the edges. She couldn't be upset with him, not when he looked like that, so instead she sighed again, extracting one arm so she could wipe her nose with her thumb. Then, chewing the side of one cheek, she covered her eyes with that hand. There was only one thing to do, an obvious thing, and still she hesitated. For the first time in so long she'd experienced safety and was not eager to feel exposed again. But if they couldn't save Crona, then what was the point of all the strain and suffering? If they didn't do everything they could, then why had they bothered doing anything at all? Fail or succeed, those were the only options. Vera had been accused of many things, but half-assing it was not among them.
"You need to go," she resigned herself to the inevitable, but couldn't look at him while she did it. "Maka needs you, and you need to get everyone on the same page. Come up with a game plan. I'll stay here. See if I can find these threads."
"Are you going to be okay," Soul asked after a moment, finally releasing his death grip on the spatula and taking a few steps towards her. "I don't like the idea of you trying something like this on your own. What if things go sideways?"
"You are very sweet, but we don't have time for sweet. Go on, go to Dr. Stein's as fast as you can. Get everyone caught up and then come back and get me. I'd go with you but I think I need to be here, where Crona used the journals the most. I'm right in that this is where he read the journals more often then not?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "Mostly in his room."
"There you go, now you know where to find me when you're ready. Now get out of here. You're probably going to run into Maka on the way. We're really on the clock now."
No sound of movement reached her ears and, after a few seconds, Vera gave a third sigh. Dropping both arms, she met Soul's concerned stare and gave him a half smile.
"I'll be fine. I promise I'll be fine. Just… don't be too long."
The world was black with a red, viscous sheen that dripped upwards and formed gummy hands. The world was filled with whispers, sinister and just past what he could make out, constant like the buzz of swarming insects on the horizon. The world was dark and unrelenting and utterly devoid of time. Crona had known this, had understood it with the purest, most certain clarity anyone could experience, the clarity brought on by Madness, and yet…
Maka…
Sunlight was a myth; it could not exist in this world of terror and chaos. He knew that, but at the same time he also knew that Maka existed. And Maka was sunlight and sunlight couldn't exist and Maka did and the confusion boiled inside him and when the bubbles burst they scorched his vulnerable organs. Nails digging into his heart. Chains constricting his chest as he fought to breathe and stay airborne. The centipede that had become a part of him pulsed poison into his blood, poison that reacted with the heat and tried to dissolve him. Hemotoxins becoming cytotoxins becoming neurotoxins. The "him" it was trying to dissolve moved from his body to his blood and finally to his mind. A mind that needed to die, that should die, but refused to. The battle had created space between Crona and the centipede and his mind was expanding into the void. Even as his directive drove him back to Pendra to repair the space his mind scratched at the edges, picking and clawing and reaching for the sunlight that couldn't be but was.
He hit the sand hard, his knees buckling and sending him into a skid. Blood hardened within him and kept everything intact, including the pain. Because he deserved the pain, had earned it with his weakness and wavering. He was disgusting, a bad child, and this was his punishment. Ironically it was a soothing punishment, appropriate and expected in this upside down turned right side up world in which he found himself. Slipping just a little, he pushed himself to his feet and staggered, wanting desperately to support himself on the stone entrance to Pendra's cave. But his body was unresponsive, driving forward despite his spinning head and rolling gut. Unsurprisingly he lost his balance more than once, bumping into the damp tan walls with their grey veins of magnetite. The magnetic fields served as a natural camouflage, distorting any attempts to sense their soul wavelengths and, in his disoriented state, Crona's sense of direction as he honed in on Pendra. Candlelight lurched in the breeze that came down the cave entrance and sputtered as moisture from the cave ceiling assaulted it, warping the tunnel even further, until he all but fell into the main chamber which served as Pendra's laboratory.
It was too much.
Heaving, he braced himself on a nearby table, grabbing it with both hands and bending forward to position his head between his shoulders. Then, overcome by a sudden pulse of knowledge that he didn't want to be there, he screamed and gave the table a hard shove, shattering it and everything on it against the far wall. The centipede constricted inside of him, injecting even more venom, trying to squeeze him back into submission but only succeeding in igniting new levels of agony in his head. Howling, he twisted long fingers in his hair and bent backwards, contorting in a desperate attempt to escape the pain and simultaneously hold himself in place. His pink locks brushed the backs of his knees and the centipede's chitin cracked as he twisted.
"Enough!"
Pendra's voice snapped like lightning and Crona righted himself so quickly it seemed he separated from his body altogether in an instant of dizzying dissociation. Her eyes, garnet and smoking, burnt as she glowered at him from the other side of the cave. The cloth of her skirt rustled as her weight shifted and he could've sworn he heard her curls slide over her hunching shoulders as she tensed. Yet other than that she was still and quiet; no air hissed over her lips and the brass bands at her wrists didn't so much as clink. Like an enraged cat coiling before a kill.
"Enough," she repeated, softer this time, the thunder from which one gauged the hazard level of a storm. "I sent you to do one simple thing- one tiny thing, for which you were designed, and yet you failed. How, exactly, did you fail? Explain to me how the most destructive weapon a witch has ever constructed could fail in killing an old sleep deprived man in the middle of the night."
Crona parted his lips, though no words came out, and as her gaze began to feel more and more like a vice, he started to tremble. His shaking orbs went ice blue as air rattled over those dry lips, hail in the stillness. Pendra waited, twisting her head without moving her eyes, brittle patience cracking almost audibly as her brass bands clicked together asymmetrically. He would answer- he couldn't not answer. The longer he hesitated the worse the punishment would be for hesitating; he understood that and still the silence churned.
"Well?"
Louder, closer; the electric current pulled the fine hairs on the back of his neck and on his arms straight up. His vision went white for a moment, to a place made of fog as he tried desperately to flee. Tried desperately to find some alternative to obedience even as the certainty that only submission was safe pulsed within him.
"I-I didn't want to," Crona finally stammered, feeling a knot loosen inside him as he complied. "I don't want to. I was going to do it any way but-"
The words caught in his throat and he choked on them, unable to go on. Pendra, however, was not satisfied. Twisting her head in the opposite direction while maintaining perfect eye contact, she pressed.
"But… But. What."
Not a question, a command. Something else Crona desperately didn't want to do. He fought to breathe, tears pricked his eyes, and the shaking intensified. He reached across his chest to grab his other arm, seeking some comfort, any comfort, and yet the centipede wouldn't let him. It forced his hands to his sides and held him at attention, squeezing in his mind until the reason burst forth.
"Maka," he gasped.
Pendra grabbed the nearest piece of glassware, a cumbersome 500 mL beaker, and with a horrible jangle threw it at Crona. Her aim was not good and it impacted the wall behind him, shattering so completely the air shimmered with glass dust. The centipede held him petrified and unresponsive as she threw a second beaker, which also missed, and a third. The fourth one clipped his ear and the boiling wrath in her eyes made Crona wish he could've moved and taken every one full in the face. In spite of the insect burrowed into his spine, he flinched as Pendra decided to inflict her punishment more directly and advanced, looking away and closing his eyes. He heard her brass bands clang, harbingers of the blow that was imminent. And he could feel the heat from her hand, magic flickering in her palm like the candlelight around them. Then she grabbed his face, her fingers digging in just below his cheekbones, turning him towards her with a soft tinkle.
"That girl- that meister," she started in a low voice, annunciating each title as if it were something filthy. "Locked you up and abandoned you. She fears you, Crona, and she was bred to kill you with just as much care as you were created to kill her. Neither of you have any choice in the matter. How can you still not understand this? What draws you to her?"
Crona kept his eyes shut and his face scrunched, braced for the imminent pain. Not satisfied with that, Pendra tightened her grip and gave his head a single, hard shake. The forcipules in his neck dug in, bringing forth beads of Black Blood and making his head spin with venom. Or was it not the venom at all… Lethargically, he opened his ice blue gaze to Pendra's molten stare.
"What binds you to her? What is it about her that compels you to resist your very nature, deafens you to the consequences of that resistance, and keeps you from pursuing your potential? What has she done that causes you not only to maintain these chains of sanity and morality, but embrace and even desire them? Why do you let her keep you from being the weapon you have no choice but to be?"
She did not release him as she was not expecting a verbal answer. Instead she pressed her palm even harder across his mouth and searched his vacant eyes. Her magic crawled within him, a hundred sharp legs undulating and curling and probing and he felt nauseous from the motion. Maka's hand was like a ghost across his palm, the feeling of her smile a shimmering mirage in his mind. Pendra was… exploring those feelings, cataloguing his experiences and responses as he all but relived them, his body responding to the memories outside of his control. Until she found what she was looking for.
"Oh, so that's it," she cooed with an insidious smile, releasing him by moving her hand tenderly to his cheek. "How simple, a piece of minutiae I had thought inconsequential. Yet that was foolish of me, wasn't it? A juvenile mistake that is fortunately easily rectified. Now Crona, you do realize that I can make you feel good as well. I can do it with no more than a thought."
Crona didn't have time to process what kind of a threat she'd made before his vision went blindingly white again. Heat rushed through his body, igniting every nerve, exciting every hair follicle, tensing every muscle, just not with pain. Pure, overwhelming, mind shattering pleasure like he'd never experienced before passed over him in a flash, leaving him panting and dazed. Pendra came back into focus slowly, her garnet eyes and dark curls eating the white, recreating a reality around her. A reality that was all wrong. He didn't like it; the desire to not be there returned with even more desperation, washing over his still paralyzed form like a tidal wave. Still she smiled, smug in the knowledge that her point had been proven, and drummed her fingers on his cheek.
"Did you enjoy that? Rhetorical question, of course you did. I can do it again. And again and again until that's all you know. Or we can try something more… hmm… old fashioned. I realize I've been selfish in the past, sating my own desires without even considering yours. Don't worry, I can make you enjoy anything I do."
A gasp burst its way through his lips, parting them as a fresh wave of heat swelled inside him. Before he could inhale Pendra had closed the gap, locking her lips over his as her hand slid through his hair and to the back of his skull. It was hot- he was hot, despite the desert night, burning with a warmth that slid down through his stomach and concentrated, pulsating, between his legs. Aching. Hungry. For the first time his tongue went into her mouth, swirling around hers, two identical muscles engaging in a passionate, twisted dance. Sickeningly wrong- he couldn't stand how wrong it felt or the wanting whine that exited his mouth when she pulled away. She moved her attention to his left ear, nibbling on the lobe and delicately coating the contours with saliva. One hand still held his head, her fingers curled in his pink locks like a tether, and the other went to his chest. Daintily she traced his nipples, erecting both with a feather-light caress, then began to move downwards. Trickling over his sternum and gliding across his taught abdomen.
There was a space between himself and the centipede inside him, legs torn away during the confrontation with Miss. Marie and Professor Stein. As Pendra exploited his body he fled there with his mind, a seemingly futile attempt to get away from what was happening, and the more he pushed the more certain he was that he'd found a gap. A gap through which he could escape… for a price. He hadn't wanted to pay it, but Crona knew where she was going, and what she was going to do when she got there. If he didn't act now, if he didn't fight… The cold, black ooze with its red sheen collected in the space, dripping down his spine and propagating across the dirt floor, hands clawing their way outwards, heralds of a different sort of hunger. And there was no turning away, no going back.
"No-" he managed to choke out, though no other part of his body moved. "No-stop. Stop it- don't touch me."
She didn't stop; she giggled in his ear, biting down hard enough to cause a stab of pain to punctuate her violation. Her fingers found the throbbing place between his legs. Pleasurable fire shot instantaneously through his nerves and warmed the chains within him into red-hot irons. Black Blood mobilized just as instantaneously, quenching the heat with a horrible, bitter chill. The irons, turned brittle, shattered.
He was free.
Pendra went stiff against him, her hands contracting as she took painful fistfuls of his flesh one last time before going limp. Falling with a fatalistic jingle in the viscous stillness his freedom had extruded. She pulled away, blinking, uncomprehending until she met Crona's inky black stare. Then a terrified realization dawned on her and her lips parted in utter shock. Crona, in sharp contrast, had no expression, no triumph or joy or even vengeful satisfaction. Even his tone was completely flat, each word evenly and softly annunciated when he spoke.
"I told you not to touch me. I told you to stop. You should've listened. Now you've failed."
The sound the thick, thorny vines of Black Blood made when he removed them from Pendra's stomach was a sick combination of ripping something dense, low and almost more a sensation than a sound, and squelching. Whatever pain she was experiencing had to be excruciating, she was already pale and sweating as her body reacted in every way it knew to react to damage, yet the futility of screaming kept her oddly collected. She gasped and staggered back a few steps, bracing herself against a table with one hand and pressing the other over her unrecognizable midriff. Blood oozed from the wounds, glistening in the candle light like something with a life all its own, pooling at her feet at a remarkable rate without spurting. This was by design; a gut wound was a slow, painful, and certain way to kill someone that, while creating a mess, was not particularly messy. Cutting a major artery would've been quicker, but blood can spurt up to six feet when propelled by a strongly beating heart. Spraying him with liters of slimy red syrup. Crona had had one book as a child and within its pages had learned these things. Even though the blood would evaporate and coalesce into her purple soul as soon as she died, he didn't want it on him. He didn't want any of her on him ever again. Maintaining perfect eye contact, he reached behind his head and, as Black Blood pushed from inside him, tore the centipede from his back and neck in a second cacophony of sounds that should never be made by human flesh. To accentuate his point, Crona tossed it at her feet.
"No…" she whispered, eyes flicking down to her greatest creation. "No, I haven't. I haven't failed at all, have I?"
She looked once again into the void of Crona's stare and this time smiled at the horrors she could see just past it, sinking into the spreading puddle of her own blood. It was like liquid ruby, much more vibrant and red than he expected. It always surprised him, the redness of fresh blood that is, and as he found his fascination building he began to suspect what she meant. He tilted his head off to the right and his neck let out an unhealthy crunch. Pendra laughed outright, one last hollow noise.
"Maybe I won't be able to witness it, but that's not important. What matters is that… I did it. I unleashed you- I forced you to accept what you are. Now… you can't fight it anymore, and better still, you don't want to. Nothing can change that, nothing can stop you, not even your own will."
He blinked at her, a whisper of uncertainty coming into his pitch black eyes. Though it took all of the little strength she had left, Pendra stared back, groveling at his feet, begging for something he didn't understand. Seconds ticked by endlessly, never making it into minutes in the abyss between them, until Crona faltered, breaking eye contact to consult the far wall. Until he did understand, or perhaps more accurately, until he admitted to understanding. His expression wasn't upset or even sad, not in any active form of the word. No he looked passively resigned, at peace even. A molted creature finally free of the painful restrictions of its own skin, a flower shed of its petals and beginning to form a fruit. What that fruit would be and what it would mean for the world was still unknown, but he was curious. She could smell it on him and the glee she felt at his realization compelled her to expend what life she had left smiling.
"Still," she cackled, struggling to stay upright. "It's a shame… I would've liked to have… seen her face… when she understands what… you've become… when… she…"
Pendra's arms gave out under her weight and she fell unceremoniously into the thick puddle. Not yet dead, though that inevitability was near, just quiet. Crona didn't look at her again, didn't acknowledge her silence or lingering presence. When she finally finished dying, he would ignore her soul too. Such things didn't interest him at the moment; there was a different sort of hunger gnawing at his insides now. Without concern for the blood, he walked across the lab, leaving a glistening smear from the hem of his robe and footprints trailing towards the bookshelves. There was something he wanted to do, desperately, yet exactly what that was or how he would go about doing it were elusive. Regardless knowledge would be useful, and there was still so much Crona didn't know. Maka would come, again too late, and he needed to extract what he could from Pendra's lab before she arrived. Something told him he didn't have much time. Even so his actions were lackadaisical, his hands remaining limp by his sides. Pitch black eyes scanned the unmarked volumes, settled on one, lifted it from the shelf, and opened it to an arbitrary page. Using nothing but his mind to handle the tome, Crona flipped to the first entry and began to devour the only sustenance he currently craved.