Summary: Mephisto is ever the architect of his own suffering. We create our own monsters.
Notes: Does this count as victim-blaming? XD Sorry, Mephisto. Literally, this is my favorite chapter tho forreal. I cried writing the second half, tho also that was when I was almost thru nano so I was already functioning on like 2hrs of sleep and it was also like almost 2am when I was working on this ch so I may not have been in the most sound headspace XD I make Good and Smart decisions :D
Song of the Chapter:
And the World Was Gone by Snow Ghosts
The Woods by Sam Fermin
Mephisto pressed a button on the console and scowled at the teary-eyed response his selection earned him, resetting and wondering how he'd gotten it wrong.
The entire month had proceeded like that, a string of minor annoyances that he'd normally be fully able to look past with his usual humor. Something was preventing Mephisto from attaining that level of detachment he enjoyed and seeping over into the rest of his activities, even the ones meant to take his mind from work.
It had all started with the damn head popping off his figurine and headed downhill from there.
Despite a lack of any further appearances by his own personal ghost, Mephisto couldn't shake the feeling that he was hunted. The sensation was familiar, he'd lived with it before, and it still hit him on the odd occasion when he thought he'd worked through it all in his head. He'd wake, fever flushed and clawing at his throat as though suffocating around a sweet flavor on his tongue, then come back to reality and go to eat something so extraordinarily spicy that he couldn't taste much of anything anymore.
Not that he'd looked a hair out of place in front of the media circus. It would take more than a spectre of the past to phase him after so many years fending off the hounds. Playing with them, more like. He couldn't help that they made it so easy for him to string them along.
A polite knock sounded and his secretary entered, Belial bowing and waiting for his questioning hum to speak.
"A call from the station, sir."
That was interesting, especially with his favorite little hound out of town on another case, which meant it would be…
"Ms. Kirigakure," he purred down the line, "to what do I owe the honor?"
He could practically hear the squeak of enamel from her grit teeth, smiling as she responded.
"Governor Faust," she said, his grin widened, "he's back."
His grin swept away as if it had never been.
"Back, you say?" The words came from him, and an expression never made it to his face, but it was the mask he used when all others fell.
"He's targeting Inspector Fujimoto's boys. Twins."
Smiling again wouldn't be appropriate, but still, his lips twitched, stretching until they ached and he thought he would split apart at the seams.
"And I supposed you'll be wanting to get any statements or information I might have, hmm?" They'd have no other choice, not with dear Shiro out of town. Case records could only tell you so much about the creature you hunted, first-hand experience would always trump reports.
"Yes," she sounded grudging about that and he stopped fighting the grin, leaning back in his seat and glancing at the ornate gun above his table where he'd sat and thought he'd seen a certain murderer. The sight took him in until Shura's voice brought him back.
"When can we come by?" Shura stated it more like a demand for the first immediate moment he had. She was in luck, he had all the time in the world for this meeting.
"As soon as you're able," Mephisto said and began to neaten his desk. He would have to prepare for their arrival.
"We'll be there within the hour. Sir."
The phone clicked and he set it to his desk in a slow movement, the edges barely tapping to the base as he traced a finger to it and thought.
Memories prickled like the thinnest slivers of glass at his mind, drawing blood the longer they pressed until his head felt heavy with it. Despite the room temperature in his office, a chill settled into his bones and he let it consume him until he'd fully wrapped the shards of the past beneath his skin.
He began to laugh, and laugh and laugh.
When the laughter trickled to a halt, he sighed, ignoring his aching stomach the hysterics had caused and resumed clearing the important documents from sight. The figurines on his desk watched, and he flicked a finger to the one that had mysteriously beheaded itself in a fit exactly three weeks ago today.
Finally, when everything had been cleaned, he sat to wait. It would be interesting to see what Shiro's boys had grown into, and how they would fit into the threads he had been weaving since before they'd been born.
A clock in his office ticked and he pulled out a game, letting the music wash over him as his blood thrummed in his veins. The ticking grew louder, louder still until it became a knell in his skull and he tasted blood on his tongue, each tick matching the beat of his heart.
He's back, returned, not done with you yet–or you're not done with him–
Oh no, he wasn't finished. Not by a long shot.
Another knock, the door opened, and there were his players.
"Ms. Kirigakure," he said in greeting. Her fiery hair almost stole the show, but for the two striding in behind her that took his immediate attention.
Blue eyes beneath dark hair and the spitting image of Shiro and Yuri. It was no wonder he had taken a shine to them, with that resemblance. Trailing at their backs was another officer he doubted would have much interest, a useful tool, at best.
Nodding to Belial had him closing the door.
With it, came a chill that swept up his arm he stilled at, fingers twitching where they skimmed the pad of his console. Something seemed to fill the empty space that his office had become the past three weeks.
"Well," he said to start things off and shake the strange feeling of a filled void, "it looks like you've got a pest problem."
Snorting came from the shorter of the twins, and his gaze sharpened on him as he spoke. "Yeah, that's pretty much it, he was all over my apartment doing who knows what to it."
"Ah," those blue eyes blinked at their twin, "and your apartment too, Yukio. He left a note there for me."
"He's a little more than a pest," Shura snapped. "This is serious, Rin!"
A worm was a worm, no matter where it made itself at home; the ground or the core of a fruit.
"May I see these letters?" he asked to interrupt her and move things along. "After-all, the chance that this is a copycat is always there. I've seen so many over the years."
So many, and each he'd delighted in tearing down when they failed to keep themselves from his reach.
"Sure," the shorter twin spoke up again, reaching to his back pocket where he pulled a rumpled letter.
Then, after so long, he saw the twinflower settled soft and sweet across the paper. The mocking words carried the names of the twins; Rin, the one who the card had been addressed to, and Yukio, and he wondered which was the eldest.
"There's no question," Shura said, then pulled out something from her pocket, a compact mirror, by the looks of it, and gestured to the taller of the twins,Yukio, the one who'd remained silent until that point.
"And you're going to want to take a deep breath and prepare yourself for this."
At her directive, he produced a small bowl and a bag of what looked like tea.
"No question, hm?" His curiosity had been piqued as Shura brought the bowl to his desk and emptied the contents of the bag into it, then pulled a lighter and set the whole thing on fire.
"Is there a point to this ritual? I have allergies, you know," he said half-rhetorically. "Unless this is some kind of delayed vengeance and you're planning on drugging me."
Cold drifted across his shoulders and he raised a brow as he fought the shiver it caused. There shouldn't be any drafts in this room.
"So, this is going to sound crazy," Rin said, hand at the back of his head as he bit his lip. "But we know for sure because your brother told us."
Ice doused his curiosity.
Mephisto laughed.
It tore from his lungs and from the hollow place beneath his ribs where he'd once had a heart, or something like it, because even before he'd become the creature he was today, he'd never quite fit into the little holes they made for their lives.
One small place had existed, though, one solid bit of bedrock for him to rest on he'd shared with no one because that piece was his. The shadow that trailed after him and asked as many questions as there were stars in the sky, trusting that he'd have the answers.
And these bumbling, short-sighted interlopers had the cute idea to use him like a bargaining chip.
"Hah!" he gasped a final bark of a laugh and wiped a tear away. "My brother hardly spoke to others when he was alive, and most certainly not now that he's been buried for over twenty years."
"What makes you believe you can use him?" he hissed, and saw tension string through dear Shura's spine. In the other's, too, all except Rin.
To Rin, he directed his attention, waiting for an answer and waiting for it to be a good one.
"We know," Rin said, "because he's been haunting me for the past three weeks."
"And," he continued before Mephisto could string him up outside the office window for suggesting what he just had, "he told us if you didn't listen to that, then he says, 'to tell Samuel he'll rip the head off another of his figurines.'"
For the second time in a day, his heart stopped, frozen over and choking him from the inside.
"He said 'Samael,' Rin," Yukio finally spoke, and drove the ice deeper into his body.
"Didn't I say that?" The words rushed along with the white noise in his head, lost in the storm they'd whipped up as they replayed over and over.
"Amaimon," he whispered, the sound broken and small, of a name, one he hadn't spoken in so many years he'd forgotten the flavor of it on his tongue. His shoulder ached with a deep cold, something unnatural that lingered like frostbite and brought him back to a winter he'd played so many times in his head he could draw it scene for scene.
A long-ago call of his name brought it into stark clarity.
"Samael," a childish voice called him from his books and he frowned. "I'm bored."
There it was, the common complaint from his personal shadow who couldn't seem to find his own entertainment. Johann sighed and closed the book, knowing better than to think Ambrosius would tire of bothering him until he thought of something to do.
"Don't you have classwork to do, Amaimon?" he said, already prepared for the response his reminder would get.
Sure enough, he got an acid glare from green eyes so light they were almost yellow and a scoff as Ambrosius kicked at the nearest shelf in their family library. At his feet, a low whuff sounded from Behemoth, the large mastiff ever faithfully by his side.
"That's boring."
It was, which was why he had cut as many corners as he could to complete his own for the day so he could pursue his actual interests. Ambrosius didn't have even that drive, hating the minutiae of the busy-work they received every day and only grudgingly completing it with Johann's prodding.
"Well," he raised a brow and leaned back in his window seat, "I was listening to the gossip on the grapevine and there's a new family in town, their youngest boy is a bit older than us, but he may be entertaining."
Ambrosius sniffed in derision, beginning to pace the room in that way that made it seem like he balanced on a tightrope, tottering around like he fought his own body. Behemoth looked beneath soulful eyes at Johann like he would provide attention next.
"He's boring. And weird."
That brought a laugh from Johann, bearing the scowl Ambrosius sent his way with long ease.
"And you discovered this, how? Talking to him?" He was curious, but there was only one real answer he'd ever get from Ambrosius.
"I observed," Ambrosius enunciated. A last pouting glare came at Johann before he began running his fingers to the spines of the books, going down aisles but always returning as if Johann would have something new for him when he made it back.
"Observations can be clouded by bias," Johann pointed out, knowing how much Ambrosius hated that particular reminder, having got it in his head that he was perfectly objective in all his analyses.
"We'll have to talk to him to know for sure if he's 'boring' and 'weird,'" he said and stood, deciding Ambrosius had given him something interesting to do instead of the other way around.
They made their way from the manor, down the long drive and past the gate to the rest of the sleepy neighborhood while Behemoth trailed at their feet, well-trained by Ambrosius. Johann had made note of the address after learning about the new additions and had been planning on doing his own close observations later that week, but Ambrosius had moved up his timeline.
His own observations, naturally, were of the sort one gained from actually communicating with the ones observed. Watching could only tell you so much about a person, but seeing how they reacted to questions was where they really revealed their secrets.
A home separated itself from the rest as they arrived, Johann taking the lead as he always did to stride up to the gate and ring the buzzer, announcing who they were to the person on the other side and letting them know their intentions.
Soon, the door to a smaller manor opened to reveal an older man, somewhere in his thirties with freckles and a white streak of hair that went back from his hairline. The expression he wore seemed to concur with Ambrosius' initial conclusions about this family's interest potential, especially once his lip raised in clear contempt of Behemoth.
It consisted of a brow lifted in condescension after a once-over, turning to a patronizing smile as if relegating them to children and not worth conversing with.
Johann disliked his type immensely.
Still, he smiled and turned on his charm.
"Hello, we live nearby and came by to greet our new neighbors." He layered on his most winning smile. "We've heard there's someone in your family near our age and wanted to see if he was interested in spending the day with us."
There, that would do it. He'd won over every adult he'd come across with his manners and respectability, never letting on that it was anything but a facade he put on to get his way.
"Heh," the man snorted, turning to look over his shoulder and shouting, "Hey, Saburota, some kids actually want to spend time with you! Maybe you'll make some friends at your level."
"Obnoxious," Ambrosius said in a mutter beneath his breath only Johann picked up. He more than agreed.
"Oh, haha," a soft voice came from further in the house, moving forward to reveal someone a few years their senior, possibly already into college. "Th-thank you."
He had dark hair, the beginnings of that light streak forming at his hairline–something genetic they shared in the family, clearly–and a scattering of freckles across his nose. His only difference between the older man was his age and shorter height, otherwise they could have been copies of each other, twins. The light eyes that turned to them when he made it to the door brightened before a hand at his back jerked them down towards the floor again.
"Go on, get out of the house," the man said, shoving until Saburota stumbled from the porch. "You're making this place depressing, just lingering around."
With that, the door closed behind Saburota and he flinched at the sound. The smile he sent them after was weak and defeated.
Johann held out his hand and took control of the situation. "Hello, I'm Johann and this is my brother, Ambrosius, we're happy to meet you."
The hand that gripped his shook in a slight pressure that screamed 'anxiety' at him, and which he ignored to gesture down the drive.
"We're going to cure Ambrosius' boredom in town, if you'd like to join us."
"I-I'd like that, thank you," Saburota stumbled through his sentence, startled and apparently unused to being spoken to in such a way.
They left, Ambrosius trailing behind him as he always did, observing while he did the talking. By the end of the day, they'd have their new neighbor dissected down to his atoms and determine if he was worth their time.
"Why are you still talking to him?" Ambrosius said from where he shredded a dead branch into splinters beneath the dormant tree in the family garden and tossed the strips to Behemoth.
Johann hummed, wrapping his scarf more tightly to his neck and considering his answer.
"There aren't really many options for conversation in our age group in the area," he said the reason he had chosen, letting it out to test it against whatever argument Ambrosius would come back with. "And I need someone to debate the finer points of poetry and philosophy with–which you've told me many times you hate."
"I was right," Ambrosius pressed, his gaze hard under his bangs as he peered up at Johann. "He is weird."
True, but, "That's rich, coming from you, dear Amaimon."
Snapping sounded in the walled garden as Ambrosius broke the stick he'd been toying with and scowled. "It's not the same. He's pathetic. A creep."
He laughed, a wry smile twisting at his mouth. "You've been forced to interact with those older siblings of his, yes? I imagine we'd both have turned out some manner of pathetic with them as role models."
Truly, the thought of growing up surrounded by enough pretentious windbags to fuel a hot air balloon for a week made him shudder. It was no wonder Saburota bent over backwards to appease the buffoons–both at their home and where they worked together for their family's company–there wasn't any other way to survive in such a household.
"I don't like him," Ambrosius said, and Johann took it to mean he didn't have any other arguments, paring it down to the base component and leaving it for him to do with it what he would.
"Well," Johann said, beginning to walk away. He wanted to get out of the cold. "I'm bored, so I'm going to keep him around."
"There's another set of twins in the neighborhood?" Saburota asked in that timid voice of his.
"Technically, we're triplets," Johann said. "Mother says the third died in the womb. I and Ambrosius like to pretend he's still here."
He could see the concept wasn't clicking with Saburota–unsurprisingly, because so many things about he and Ambrosius rubbed others the wrong way–so he moved on.
"But, to answer your question, there is," Johann said and tried not to drop the polite expression on his face. "Lucius and his younger brother, Angel."
"They live in that estate," he nodded as they passed the ostentatious marble and gold gate that gleamed in the cold winter sun. "But Lucius rarely leaves, he's got an illness. Terminal."
It would probably claim him any day now, or so he'd been hearing for years. Johann had an ongoing bet with Ambrosius over when that day would come.
"Angel's a sweet boy." Johann had heard it said so often from the others in their neighborhood. How sweet and gentle and kind Angel was. How brave he and his brother Lucius were. "He's also dumb as a box of rocks."
Saburota's gaze trailed the gate until they left it from view.
"He's like your little shadow," Saburota said, looking only half as ready to receive verbal abuse as he had at the start. "Do you two ever do anything apart?"
Johann stopped where he'd been sipping at his tea. "I'm sorry?"
"Your brother."
Actually, Ambrosius had taken one look at Saburota in their driveway and pointedly said he would be in the garden, vanishing before they had to interact.
"We do everything together," Johann said and shrugged. "I can't see that changing soon, if ever."
They would need to, eventually, he knew. The day would come where they chose different paths in life. But it would only ever be an artificial distance. In the end, so few could ever hope to understand why he did the things he did, how he looked at the world and the ants scurrying about it.
Just Ambrosius, his shadow who viewed the world just a step to the left of his, ducking where he peered overhead, picking things apart while he put them back together in whatever ways he saw fit.
While their lives might take them to different places, that attachment would always exist.
Someone like Saburota couldn't hope to understand, not trapped as he was by the obligations to a family so unlike him only their blood tied them together.
"It's not stifling?" Saburota's question confirmed it, and Johann smiled.
"I think we're bound by different tethers," he said and wondered if Saburota would realize he could break his at any time.
He came across Saburota and Ambrosius in the kitchen. By the intense, empty expression Ambrosius wore, he'd encroached on some sort of staredown.
Johann paused in the hall, waiting to see how things developed. Ambrosius could be cruel like so few others had the heart to withstand, and Saburota had gained his ire by taking Johann's attention these days. No matter how many times he'd told Ambrosius Saburota was a passing entertainment, even the slightest lessening of his time was too much.
"Don't you ever spend time with your own siblings?" Ambrosius opened with, his eyes gleaming in the lights as he cocked his head and picked at a cupcake he'd pulled from the fridge. It was blunt, but so often Ambrosius didn't have the patience to mince words and it had led to many hurt feelings from anyone not Johann throughout the years.
A tensing of Saburota's shoulders said he was shocked by the attack, and the way he tugged at the sleeves of his pullover let Johann know the intended hit had struck exactly where Ambrosius meant it.
"W-well, no, not really," Saburota mumbled. "We don't have much in common, I'm afraid."
Frosting wound up on Ambrosius' fingers as he swiped some into his mouth, taking his time where he usually inhaled food like a snake unhinging its jaw to swallow it whole. Johann wondered if he'd sought Saburota out or just happened to run into him in search of a snack.
"They don't want you around, huh?" Ambrosius stated more than asked.
His words did make Saburota flinch then, but, instead of curling up in defeat as Johann would have expected, his shoulders straightened, and he seemed to vibrate with the taut line his body had become.
"You don't like me very much, do you?" Saburota said, and it came out mild, not cutting or a blunt attack as Ambrosius had done.
The unusual turn of events narrowed Johann's eyes. Saburota rarely, if ever, showed this side to himself around Johann. Most often, it was in little slips, places where he got caught up in his philosophy or poetry he was so fond of.
"I just wonder when Johann is going to get bored of you," Ambrosius cut to the quick, teeth clicking as he bit unnecessarily at the frosting in his mouth, licking the rest from his fingers and gaze sharp, merciless, on Saburota.
"I see," Saburota said. He paused, a long moment passing where Ambrosius finished his cupcake and began to tap his nails to the counter in a pointed pattern, something meant to irritate and goad.
"Have you considered when he'll tire of his constant shadow?"
Johann frowned, that again.
"Have you thought about when you'll tire of being one?" Johann froze, mind playing over that future Saburota had just suggested.
Some future where Ambrosius no longer trailed after him, going through his observations and asking Johann's opinion of them, discarding anything he didn't like, but more often than that, accepting his points and bringing them into the encyclopedia that he'd created in his head.
His chest tightened. He didn't like the taste of that future. It soured his gut and had him clenching his hands into fists before the pain of squeezing too hard at his palms loosened them again.
"Something to think about, hm?"
"I don't need to think about it at all," Ambrosius said in a hard snap, teeth grit in a growl.
I think about it all the time," Saburota said, his voice almost a whisper before he shrugged and waved a hand in a half-hearted motion. "Sorry for interrupting you. I'll just go find your brother, if he hasn't gotten bored of me yet."
The mask Johann so easily wore in his waking moments took time to fold around himself again, shaken by thoughts of Ambrosius being the one to decide he had no desire to exist alongside him some day.
When Saburota found him in the library, he'd slipped back into the sly smiles and easy conversation like the second skin they were, and kept their talk far away from shadows and Ambrosius.
Reddened eyes peered up at Johann as he stared down at a shivering Saburota where he'd discovered him hiding that day.
"I don't think I can live in that house much longer," he said, pitiful, as if asking Johann what he should do.
"You know, I have a niece," Saburota continued unprompted. Johann hadn't cared to know, but he filed the information away regardless. "She's just a kid, but I can see them stifling her, too. It'll just be a matter of time before she's just like me."
"Why suffer them?" It was an honest question. Saburota could leave and start his life free from his family's image, if he really couldn't take it anymore. "Why live like a shadow in your own home?"
It baffled Johann. He saw so many instances of Saburota trying to win favor from his family, fitting himself into their desired image that his older brothers naturally wore by cleaving parts of himself away and ignoring the blood from wounds that wouldn't heal.
The winter days had grown long, darkness coming sooner, and Johann spent more time indoors.
So he'd been surprised–yet wholly unsurprised–to find Saburota sitting by himself on a sidewalk bench in their neighborhood the one day he'd finally grown stir crazy enough to leave the warmth of his house. Ambrosius resolutely refused, having approached near hibernation levels with his aversion to any sort of cold.
"And so you're out here attempting to freeze yourself to death instead?" he said, partly out of curiosity, partly because he would prefer to spend as little time outdoors as possible, and if he had to remind Saburota it was currently freezing, then that was what he would do.
Even the winter clothes he wore couldn't prevent the cutting wind and snow it kicked up into his face from chilling him, and Johann knew Saburota didn't have nearly the amount of layers he should have to stay out for any length of time.
Laughter came out in halting bursts from Saburota's chapped and blue lips, and he smiled, the edges of his mouth splitting to let red bead up as he bled.
"I don't know, actually," he said to Johann's slowly growing frown.
"I'm not sure why I suffer them," he added, his smile stretching as more blood began to spill and freeze on his face. "Maybe it's them who should suffer me!"
A giddiness had overtaken him, so strange, so wrong, when put in context to the miserable creature he'd found that Johann had to stop himself from taking a step back, feet frozen to the ground, kept there by something more than the snow building around his boots.
But, Johann was compelled, mouth parting around his words half before he'd realized he'd begun to speak. "The only one keeping you there is yourself. You can break that tether anytime you want."
He regretted it as soon as he'd spoken, though he couldn't say why, a clenching in his gut twisting over in on itself until a knot formed.
"Why should I live like a shadow to my brothers?" Saburota murmured as if to himself, snowflakes on his cheeks a stark contrast to the red he had yet to notice.
Johann left him, giving some advice to get out of the cold; he wasn't sure if Saburota heard or not. He didn't care.
"Johann!" The frantic call of his name from Ambrosius, something he rarely heard, jerked him from sleep in his room across the hall.
Wide eyes stared from Ambrosius' face where he stood in the door, hands clenched on the frame with Behemoth at his side. "There's a fire–outside the kitchen window. It's huge."
What size fire would show up from their window? How close was it? He didn't bother asking about why Ambrosius had been awake late, his insomnia and midnight cravings long unchecked by absent parents and caretakers over the years.
They went to the kitchen, and Johann immediately saw the fire. It came over the dark horizon, black smoke nearly invisible against the sky this time of the night, but the sheer size of the fire illuminated the billowing trails.
"It's from somewhere in the neighborhood," he said, unable to look away.
"Should we go check?" Ambrosius sounded awed instead of horrified, and it echoed the interest in Johann. With a wordless glance to each other, they went and layered themselves in their winter clothes, adding extra because it was truly bone-chilling outside.
Flames grew larger as they made their way down the quiet streets until sounds other than that of their feet crunching through the snow began to layer along with the crackle of fire.
It was Saburota's home. Ice gripped at Johann's chest.
"You think he's dead?" Ambrosius said, shaking him from what he realized was fear, not ice, filling his veins.
"Let's go," Johann didn't answer, continuing down the road. Around the corner, sirens flashed and a crowd had gathered of various neighbors Johann recognized.
All eyes fixed on the driveway leading to the pyre the manor had become. An ambulance and several police cars and a firetruck crowded the areas, the noise ringing in a cacophony through the night. They nearly masked the calls from further up the drive, but Johann caught sight of the figures emerging from the front of the building.
Two shapes connected by their tightly clasped hands walked bundled in what he guessed were fire blankets, ushered by the firemen behind them until he could make out their features.
Saburota, and a girl, barely older than a toddler, walking at his side. She had the same freckles he and his brothers did, possibly, the same streak of white that would grow at her crown he would have been able to see in the light of day.
The only thing he saw was the stunned expression Saburota wore, disbelief painted in the way his mouth parted and gaze fixated straight ahead without taking anything in.
A snap cracked through the night as a piece of the roof caved in, sparks flying into the clouds of smoke.
"Johann? Ambrosius?" Saburota's hoarse voice pierced his focus and Johann realized he'd noticed them on his way to the ambulance.
He vanished before they could respond, brought to the back of the vehicle to get inspected by paramedics and then taken, most likely to a hospital. The police waved the crowds away, and Johann found himself walking back home, surrounded in silence once more.
"Well," Ambrosius spoke up once they'd begun down their own drive, "at least he won't have to worry about his family anymore."
Despite himself, Johann noted Saburota's absence from his life. A quiet part of his routine had vanished, burnt up with the home still being torn down. The entire family had perished in the fire, leaving just Saburota and his niece behind. They hadn't been back since.
Ambrosius flopped to the floor by his feet, a cupcake in hand and humming, pleased.
"Anymore of those and I'll think you're actually getting ready to hibernate," Johann said from over his book.
"Why do we live here?" Ambrosius said, his non-sequitur not phasing Johann as he bounced topics without letting on whether he'd actually heard the other person talking or not.
"We live here because our family home is here, and we are neither emancipated, nor adults, yet," Johann said the obvious, waiting to see what Ambrosius was getting at.
He rolled over, unwrapping the paper from the cupcake and breaking off the bottom, creating a sandwich with the frosting between both halves. Behemoth eyed it in wait for the crumbles that would inevitably fall for him to clear.
"I want to live somewhere warm, where I never have to deal with snow again."
After so many months of winter, Johann could see the appeal. "One day, sooner than later, if I have anything to say about it."
That was a promise. He would enjoy the new scenery, it was boring to stay in one place so long without change.
Lips parted as Ambrosius widened his mouth, about to do his best imitation of a pelican.
"Ah!" A shriek burst from Ambrosius, cupcake abandoned to tumble to the floor and hands scrabbling at his mouth as if searching for something.
Gagging sent fear racing through Johann's veins, heart slamming as he dropped to the floor and pulled Ambrosius' fingers from his mouth before he choked, not helped by the panicked snuffling from Behemoth until he shoved him away with a snap and returned to the hands in his.
They came back red, and Johann sucked in a sharp breath, gaze narrowing on the sight while Ambrosius' eyes rolled in his skull.
"What is it?" Johann shouted as he pressed until Ambrosius was forced to open his mouth, more blood falling from the corners of his lips and obstructing his view. "Stop struggling and calm down! You'll choke on your own vomit!"
There! A glint of something wedged against the side of the tongue Ambrosius kept trying to use to dislodge it caught his frantic gaze. His fingers trembled once before Johann glared, the physical reaction and the fear exchanged for one of his masks, cool and empty as he forced Ambrosius' jaws wider and pulled the object from inside.
It had pierced deeply, scraping what he thought was bone and gouging more of the bed and roof where it had been stuck.
Tears streamed from Ambrosius and joined the blood on his face, now a splotchy nightmare as he panted on the floor, taking moments to realize he wasn't caught anymore.
"What–what was that?" he said in a pained whine, palm wrapped to his jaw and alternating between spitting the blood out or swallowing it.
The pulse in Johann's veins slowed to a crawl as he stared at the object in his hand.
"It's a needle," he whispered.
He'd needed stitches in his mouth, Ambrosius pouting as he was forced to eat foods that wouldn't disturb them until they could be safely removed. But, behind the pout a new wariness had formed, something they both shared, especially after they hadn't been able to discover the source of the needle.
The police had questioned the bakery, finding nothing, and the needle chalked up to a freak accident.
Ambrosius had begun checking all his food, pulling things apart on his plate unless he'd made them for himself, and even then, taking time to chew instead of inhale. His caution didn't sit right with Johann, hating to see the methodical way he approached his food and hating that they still had no idea where the needle had come from.
Snow drifted through the air on the other side of the window as Johann stood in the kitchen, realizing he was cold despite the slippers he wore and robe he'd wrapped himself in. At the kitchen island, Ambrosius engaged in his new manner of eating and Johann ignored him to begin preparing tea.
He pulled out his favorite blend, a looseleaf tea he got imported regularly at the rate he consumed it.
His hands moved on automatic, Johann lost in thought as he prepared his drink and focused more on the snow than his actions. They soothed him, giving him something to do in the background as he thought about the future, his plans. In a short time, they'd have to decide on careers and a school, something far away where they were out from under their family's sphere and closer to true independence.
Whistling in the air from the teapot brought him to pour it into his cup and he hummed his pleasure, taking it and the strainer to the island to settle across from Ambrosius. He'd finished tearing apart his food and began inhaling it now that he was assured of its safety.
"I think I've almost run out of books in the library," Johann said as he brought the cup to his lips, blowing and taking a sip and enjoying the sweet heat warming him from the inside.
Ambrosius raised a brow, hand mid-way to his mouth. He froze, eyes wide on him and food dropping to the plate.
"Stop!" His shout echoed in the kitchen, hand reaching to grab the tea from Johann's hands, ignoring the hot liquid that splashed to his fingers and staring into the cup, face blanched of color.
"What?" Johann began, frowning. Then a tingling made itself known on his tongue, suddenly thick and numbed as if he'd been sedated. His heart tried to beat faster, thudding in a slow pattern that refused to pick up as much as it should. The cup set back to the table and Ambrosius turned his attention to the strainer he'd initially focused on.
Between the fingers Ambrosius used to pick at something in his damp tea leaves, a white berry with a black part on the bottom like an eye rested there innocently. Ambrosius trembled, lips parted as he let it fall to the island counter and pulled another from the cup.
"It's only two," he said, voice hoarse as he let the second drop. "And you didn't eat them, so it's fine."
"What is it?" Johann said through a mouthful of cotton, watching as if detached from his own body as Ambrosius went to get water and instructed him to swish and spit.
"Baneberry–doll's eyes," Ambrosius said, back turned to him so he only saw his hunched shoulders over the container his looseleaf tea rested in.
When Johann made his way to his side and looked, he saw eyes staring up at him from the container, stark white and littered between the leaves.
They hadn't been there the day before.
"What's happening?" he said in a rasp.
"I think…" Ambrosius shivered as he answered, scattering the tea to reveal just how many eyes there were.
"I think someone's trying to kill us."
Nothing. The police had left after a cursory–Johann thought, at least–survey of the house, their parents baffled at hearing about the call to the property and in the end. Nothing.
Johann and Ambrosius sat in the library in the window seat, legs nudging against each other and silent, thinking. Behemoth rested on the floor, his steady snores comforting in the otherwise quiet room.
"Do you think they'll try again?" Ambrosius said eventually. He picked at the threads of the cushion they rested on, using the fidget to concentrate.
"Undoubtedly," Johann said. "They haven't succeeded, whoever they are.
"And why?" Ambrosius frowned around his question, the one that plagued them ever since realizing what was happening.
A shrug, Johann unable to think of anything, though his lips quirked in a humorless smile. "Did you happen to piss off the wrong socialite at school, Amaimon?"
Snorting answered his joke. "As if any of them are smart enough."
True. "Then we're as in the dark as the authorities." Sobering and terrifying as that reality was.
"So what do we do?" Ambrosius said again, coming to the crux of the matter, the one Johann had been turning over in his mind the entire fruitless time the perpetrator had failed to turn up.
"Get a bigger dog, or possibly several," Johann said, using his foot to lightly kick at Behemoth and getting a lazy huff in response.
"I don't need any more," Ambrosius grumbled. "Behemoth is good enough."
"Lock our windows and doors tighter?" It came out in a sigh, Johann running through the list of pointless things they could do to make themselves feel better that didn't actually solve the problem. "Sleep in the same room while one of us keeps watch? Keep the guns next to our beds?"
"For the rest of our lives?" Ambrosius cut in, coming back to the crux of the matter.
"Surely this person will slip up." Reveal something, forget to cover their tracks and let some clue slip that they could use to point in the direction of their identity.
"Or one of us will." Ambrosius' eyes were heavy beneath his bangs, and it was just then that Johann noticed he'd gained bruises there. He hadn't slept well, more than his usual insomnia.
One thing that Ambrosius couldn't stand was being forced to wait for something. Johann more than related, their current situation intolerable, made up of the fear that they could be made vulnerable at any moment, and forced to wait for ineffectual authorities to act on their behalf. Their options remained limited, stuck in a purgatory that could end on another's whims.
It infuriated Johann, and he could see it was the same for Ambrosius, too.
"Our hands are tied," he finally determined, letting his head fall back to the wall and glancing to the window where the snow obscured every object into some gray, indefinable figure that could be anything.
Silence once again took over, Ambrosius idly picking more threads loose and Behemoth beginning to snore.
Until, "I still want to stay in your room with you," Ambrosius said, gazing out the window as Johann's head came up at his sudden words.
"Okay," Johann said after a moment.
He didn't want Ambrosius out of his sight either, now that he thought about it.
The lull between occurrences extended until it itched maddeningly at Johann. Days of nothing passed, of them sleeping huddled and wary in a room that seemed exposed and vulnerable even with the new locks that had been installed on all the doors and Behemoth snoring at the foot of the bed.
Just the two attempts and then…
"I hate this," Ambrosius muttered into his breakfast.
Classes had stalled with winter break, though they'd been taken out early and given the rest of their assignments to finish at home because of their unique circumstances. Really, it just meant Ambrosius had taken to pacing the long halls and grounds of the garden like a caged animal.
Johann had even less tolerance. He could hide in his room and entertain himself perfectly well, but the need for outside stimulation sent his gaze twitching for the gate like he planned an escape.
His shoes pushed the snow aside when the urge grew too much, the surface hard and iced over after a few days as he made his way to the gate. He wouldn't leave, but Johann at least needed to remind himself the outside world existed away from the white expanse of the grounds and his hollow home.
In a few more paces, he could make out the individual bars of the gate.
Then, color caught his gaze, something small and easily passed over if not for the blinding white surrounding it.
He approached, darting a glance around on habit but not seeing anything–surely footsteps would show in the snow if someone had entered nearby–until he reached the entrance.
It was…Johann frowned, hand rising to take the flower from the gate and letting it rest in his palm. A simple thing consisting of twin heads whose pink petals bowed, looking like cups rising from a single, thin black stem.
Why was a flower on their gate? His blood chilled, colder than even the frigid temperatures had left him, as he jerked his head around, searching–the snow outside the gate? Had it been disturbed?
No. The snow had no signs and any footsteps that were there had long been destroyed or covered, leaving a fresh flower where it shouldn't be and a growing sense of alarm in the back of his mind.
Then his gaze caught on a thin, translucent line pulled taut on the gate. He'd just missed it when he'd gone forward, somehow stepping over it in the snow, and only saw it because of the way it sheared off parts of the snow it hovered over.
And at the end of it was…
His breath hiccuped from his lungs, the flower falling to the ground as he saw the thin wire that would have snapped to his throat like a noose, garroting him until he strangled against the gate where no one would hear his last struggle.
The clear air shattered with a scream and he was running before he registered it. Johann knew who had made that scream.
"Ambrosius!" he shouted over the distance, heart drowning out every sound except the pained cries he ran after, leading him to the back grounds where the garden resided. His lungs burned in the cold air, face flushed and legs trembling from the exertion.
Still, he ran, stumbling when he hit a deeper bank and clawing his way free in desperation, high garden walls in sight and Ambrosius' screams piercing his ears.
He'd never heard screams like that. Animalistic with the agony echoing in his head and sending him around the corner of a brick wall, catching his palms on the next and scraping them raw–ignorable, had to get to Ambrosius–until they cut off as he made it to the center of the garden and fell to his knees.
A long, thin wail escaped his mouth.
Red steamed in the air, vivid and contrasting against the snow it had splashed to.
There was so much.
And there, the source of it all, was–
–Pain exploded against his head, stunning him as he collapsed to the snow. His keening broke off, mouth open and gasping for air he couldn't feel enter his lungs, head ringing and body twitching where he lay.
Lips pressed to his ear, a voice speaking over the agonizing sensory whirl.
"Thank you for helping me, Johann." The lips smiled, a hand brushed his hair from his cheek. "I never would have broken my tethers if it hadn't been for you."
The hand at his jaw tilted him to look at the center of the spray of blood and he whimpered.
"I wanted to help you two. It looks like Ambrosius fell first."
His gaze caught and froze on the glassy eyes across from him, sightless and empty.
"Originally, I thought I'd start with Lucius and Angel–you were right, he is an idiot–" Originally? His eyes rolled in his head, beginning to pant the longer dimmed eyes wouldn't brighten– "but Lucius is tethered not by another, but by his own body, so there's nothing I can do to help him, you see."
You see you seeyouseeyouseeyousee
"Enjoy your new freedom, Johann."
He moaned, unable to do anything, helpless and lost as the hand left him, footsteps departing until he was alone.
Ambrosius lay pinned across from him, Behemoth sprawled to his side.
Still, they were so still.
Without thought, Johann reached, pulling himself through the snow and further past the radius of blood where it stained him, too. His hands clasped to Ambrosius'. He was still warm.
Steam rose from his wounds where blood slowly seeped around cruel wrought iron rods, the same that ringed the garden. They'd sprung, triggered by a line strung to the tree they'd grown up playing under, and each of the sharp ends impaled points on a body leeching warmth no matter how he shook and cried and searched for a pulse he couldn't find.
Don't leave me! Amaimon. Ambrosius. Don't leave me alone. Please.
Please don't go.
Johann lay in the snow next to Ambrosius until he had stopped feeling anything in his body.
His fingers intertwined to ones that had curled into a rictus imitation of a return hold and he wondered at what point he might join Ambrosius. How long before he grew just as cold and empty?
Before his listless gaze, he tracked the light snow that had begun drifting around their bodies, the only movement in the silent garden.
Except…his gaze fell to a body beginning to disappear beneath the snow. The snow, which seemed to move in a steady pattern, slight though it was. So slight, he thought he imagined it.
The longer the pattern continued, the more he came back to himself, mind returning with each passing moment.
"Be-hemoth?" Johann whispered, the name hoarse and raw and barely past his lips.
"Behemoth?" He tried again, stronger this time.
Behemoth!
His hand left Ambrosius–left him, he's alone, don't leave him–as Johann scrambled to the body he'd thought as still, as gone, as–
Breath steamed from a parted mouth when he turned Behemoth, ignoring the congealed blood from a wound he had no idea the extent of to check and sobbing when he found life left in the body.
"You stupid, stupid dog," he cried, tears burning down his frozen cheeks as he hauled the heavy mastiff into his arms and trudged the long distance back to the house. "Why didn't you tear his miserable throat out?"
Why had he survived where Ambrosius hadn't? Whywhywhy–
Every step took him further and further away, every breath felt like a betrayal. Every curse from his mouth wasn't towards Behemoth, but to himself, and it all hurt just the same.
Johann made it to the steps of his house, made it to a phone, and waited without a word as his home filled with strangers and noise and chaos that swirled around him in a dark wave he barely registered.
He didn't look when Behemoth was taken from him, or a light shone in his eyes and questions, both gentle and stern tried to reach him, not even when a black bag was taken past the window to an ambulance and both left.
When his parents, who may as well have been strangers who bore a physical resemblance to him and nothing more, cried and made unnecessary sounds and hugged him to their unfamiliar bodies, he didn't move.
When everything was silent and empty, mirroring the void that had made a home inside him beneath his ribs, Johann curled to his knees, alone in his too-big bed that still smelled like dog and them, and sobbed.
"We're doing everything we can for him, but his condition means he could go either way. We just don't know at this stage."
Johann stared up into the face of the sincere veterinarian and heard the underlying words.
"Let me see him," he said.
"Well, we usually don't let people in while the animals are in such critical condition," the man said, wringing his hands and looking very apologetic.
"Let me see him. Now," Johann hissed, but felt nothing. His rage came black and cold at this pitiful worm of a human denying him the one thing he had left.
He was led to a separate room where a body lay intubated and sedated.
"I'll let you know when I'm done here," he instructed, his pointed tone chasing the man from the room until he was alone.
Alone.
The musk of sick animals and sterilizer used to wipe down the surfaces burned at his nose as he approached the faintly breathing body. His fingers found the greased and matted fur that hadn't had a bath since the last time he and Ambrosius had forced the lazy beast into the tub and gotten completely soaked in the process.
That had been exactly a week ago. Johann had refused to allow Behemoth in his bed unless he'd had a bath first. Three days had passed since Behemoth had arrived at the clinic. He would need a bath when he got out.
"Why didn't you die, too?" Johann asked as his hand moved in steady patterns to the fur.
"What kept you hanging on?" He didn't know who he was talking to. "Why, when you could have let the cold take you?"
A shallow, steady breath echoed his questions.
"It would have hurt less," he said, a faint twinge in his chest that came out as a twitch of his hand against the warm body. "You wouldn't be here, stuck to these tubes and so drugged up you can't even move."
It would have been easier. So much easier.
He clenched his fingers to the fur, lips pulling back in a snarl. "How am I supposed to wash you on my own?"
"I don't even like dogs!" His shout ripped free, Johann glaring through his bangs, head bowed on the lazy, loyal animal Ambrosius had loved, had trained himself, taken everywhere he could get away with and some places he couldn't.
"They smell–and you always chew my books or favorite shoes!" The words spilled from him in a stream he couldn't stop once it had started. "You snore, and slobber, and you weigh a ton!"
His arms still ached even after three days from his long path carrying the two-hundred pound dog in them the whole way to the house from the garden.
"What am I supposed to do with you?" Salt reached his lips, and Johann fought through his tears to keep hurling every bitter word from the cage of his ribs.
"What am I supposed to do?" His voice whispered and broke and he gave up pretending he was only talking about Behemoth anymore.
The words came alongside a perfectly regretful expression, something kind and sincere, but used to giving that sort of news.
"I'm sorry, this isn't an easy decision to make." Lips moved on the lined face. Johann saw them, more than heard them, staring without speaking. "There's nothing more we can do."
"You may be in the room with him if you'd like, or you can stay outside, whatever you're comfortable with."
His body is too strained. He was out in the snow too long with a severe wound. It put too much stress on him, and he's past the point he'll be able to recover from.
Johann heard all of it, nodded, and requested to be in the room.
A large paw rested on the hand he'd reached out to take it with, the same one he'd held to Ambrosius, he realized through a wall of ice a mile long between Johann and the rest of the world.
A simple motion by the technician removed the tube from Behemoth's mouth, another took the sedative away and replaced it with the drug that would stop his heart.
Johann watched.
One moment, Behemoth breathed, the next, he didn't.
"Would you like to cremate him?"
Yes. Yes, he would.
In his hands, a thick collar rested. He held it the ride back to the manor, turning it over and over and remembering the feel of another hand in his.
It rested in his room, locked away in the cabinet out of sight, and joined by a box of ashes a few days later.
Some of the ashes scattered in the garden, the rest sat with the collar.
He went back to school the following semester.
"What do you mean, you can't find them?" Johann said and the words came cold, brutal in their condescension as the officer several years his parent's senior in age refused to look him in the eye.
"We're putting everyone we can afford on this case," the man said.
Johann narrowed his eyes. "It should be simple. He's an incompetant coward with a toddler walking around after him and a distinct appearance."
"Yes," came the weak agreement, "and we'll gladly keep you and your family apprised of any developments as soon as they happen."
His parents nodded and simpered and thanked the useless sack of flesh calling himself an officer. They left, Johann forced into tow behind them while they worried about later plans this meeting had delayed.
The school year progressed. Johann ignored the stares following after him and the whispers from worms he wouldn't bother to call his peers he caught around every corner.
He finished the year, beginning his last without a word of change on the case.
Soon, next year, in fact, he would begin applying to universities. He still had to decide on his major.
Ahead, his future stretched on a thread unspooling into the void. He couldn't see a clear path anymore, not when he'd planned for two.
When summer arrived, Johann was sat in his library ignoring the empty space on the other end of the window seat and the remembered feel of legs nudged to his where they curled, reading a book he only half paid attention to.
The news came with a stutter in his mother's voice later in the evening about another murder.
One half of a set of twins, and a simple pink flower left with the one who remained.
Johann had learned it was called a twinflower, and made his decision about what he would do with the rest of his life.
He would be going into the political sciences.
In the end, he'd realized that, if he couldn't rely on the authority to work, he would become the authority.
And then he would track down Saburota to show him just how thankful he truly was.
"Here," a clear voice tore the shades of memory from his eyes and Mephisto sucked in a breath to see a compact mirror held out to him over his desk in Rin's hand. "You can see him through this–though he's-he looks kinda rough, you know."
His hand shook despite attempts to control it as Mephisto took the mirror, tilting it until he saw himself and…
"Samael." His name he hadn't heard in years–so many years–and a voice that sounded the same as he remembered, before the screams and silence and time had stolen it away.
"Leave us," Johann snapped, a snarl on his lips he didn't realize he'd made until the order left his mouth and sent the mice scurrying from his office.
Blue eyes were the last thing he saw as Rin shut the door behind him and then it was just Johann and Ambrosius. Samael and Amaimon.
The ticking of a clock filled the silence between them, all the words he imagined he'd say dried up in the blood that slid down the body from a face ruined by a bitter cold so long ago. Still, under the bruised and stained flesh, the unnaturally glowing eyes, was Ambrosius, exactly as he'd been the day he'd died.
Johann slipped the tether that death had loosed back around his neck and relished the weight.
"I couldn't save Behemoth," the words fell from his mouth, an apology, or several, wrapped into one.
He still knew Ambrosius like he knew his own mind, and Ambrosius would want to know about Behemoth.
"I know," Ambrosius spoke without judgement, as Johann had imagined–feared–in the deepest parts of his nightmares. He gestured to the mirror in Johann's hand, fingers flicking down, and Johann tilted it without question.
A moment passed, nothing visible, before an outline struggled into view. The colors were washed out, light from the window streaming through the shape as if it were a gossamer shroud, translucent and difficult to see unless he looked for it.
But Johann recognized the form of Behemoth where he lay at Ambrosius' feet.
"He's not strong enough to form completely," Ambrosius explained, "but he's here."
He's here.
He's here.
"You're here," Johann gasped the words, hand gripping to the mirror until the plastic creaked. "All this time."
"I never left," Ambrosius said softly, "I couldn't."
Just as Johann couldn't let go. He'd clung to his end of the tether with bloody fingers and kept it possessively, a miser hoarding the most precious thing in the world close to his chest.
"I'm sorry," the second thing Johann needed to say came out ragged and wet. "I'm sorry, Amaimon."
"Don't be." Ambrosius was implacable as he spoke, then an ugly expression took over his face, transforming it into something inhuman with too many teeth all stained with blood. It should have been horrifying. It was comforting.
"Be angry."
And he was. So, so furious some days it was the only thing he could feel at all.
The ugliness in Johann mirrored Ambrosius', a void that leeched the warmth from his surroundings and fed off the singular goal he worked towards every waking moment.
"Are you ready to stop playing games, Samael?" Ambrosius–Amaimon–said while the flares in his skull glowed a steady sulphur yellow.
"Yes," Samael said and his gaze flicked to the desk where a figurine stared over the mirror in his hand.
"Amaimon," his voice cracked on a sharp laugh, "did you have to actually rip the head off? That was one of my favorite figurines!"
"Tch, they're all your favorites, you'd have bitched at any one I destroyed," Ambrosius scoffed, the exchange so familiar. It was exactly as they'd always been, like they'd never left off for over a decade.
Giggles loosed close behind his complaint, a trickle Johann couldn't stop once he'd started until his chest ached with hiccups and tears streamed down his eyes. A piece of the mile wide wall of ice had sheared off, allowing the person he'd once been to catch a glimpse of the light so long locked away with the collar and ashes.
His stasis had ended, Johann freed from a long hibernation. He wiped the tears from his eyes and a knife-like smile sliced across his face.
Now…
"I made a promise to us, years ago," Johann murmured to the vengeful creature Ambrosius had become. "I intend to fulfill it."
"I know," Ambrosius hissed through bared fangs, "and you will. We will."
"Good." It was good. Johann let a certain insidious joy slide through his veins.
"And do you have a plan?" Ambrosius cocked a head, bird-like and waiting to sink deadly talons into unsuspecting prey. "Because if not, I have something that may help, and it involves Rin."
Johann sat and listened, and, at the end, nodded his acceptance.
Several curious expressions met him as he threw open his doors and beamed.
"Everything okay?" Rin said, the first to recover.
"Almost," Johann said, gesturing until they shuffled into the room again. "But we have some planning to do."
"Yeah," Shura agreed and strode to his desk, arms crossed and expression hard. "Just remember, whatever it is, these two will not be in danger."
"Of course," Johann said in placation, hands coming up along with a smile that wouldn't melt butter. "I wouldn't dream of putting them at risk, not when I know no law would protect me from Shiro and Yuri's wrath should the worst befall them."
"My wrath too," Shura said with narrowed eyes.
"What's the plan?" Yukio, the younger twin, according to Ambrosius, spoke up. His skin shone with an unhealthy pallor, and Johann suspected that he'd dealt with the brunt of Saburota's attentions.
"Now, I realize you have some reservations about this," Johann tutted as he slipped into his chair and folded his hands in front of his smile. "But we have something now that we didn't before; Ambrosius."
Cold at his shoulder sent his heart rising and smile becoming a grin.
"We don't want to go into witness protection," Rin said abruptly, gaze darting to Shura, which made him suspect she'd suggested the idea.
He waved his hand. "That will hardly catch that wretch of a creature."
No, he wouldn't lose his next best chance because Shura got cold-feet. Something he and Ambrosius had taken into account.
"Firstly!" He raised a finger. "You, and you, will both return to your normal routines."
"You mean back to school and work?" Rin said with confusion clear in his voice and face.
"Precisely," Johann stabbed at him, only growing the confusion in the poor thing.
"And Shura–" she stiffened– "you will join Rin, shadow him, keep him safe, this should make you feel more secure with these plans, yes?"
"Yeah, yeah," Shura grumbled. "What else?"
So harsh. He'd just begun. Johann pointed to Yukio next, though the glazed eyes said he struggled to focus. "You, Yukio, will have Mr. Suguro join you in class as your shadow."
"How is this going to catch him?" Suguro said, arms crossed and as suspicious as Shura. He'd dealt with so many like them that it almost felt cruel to string them along as he was.
The cold at his spine flared in a blanketing wave and Johann continued outlining the plan, seeing wariness, anger, then acceptance in equal measure go across his audience's faces.
"I'll see everyone no more than a week from now, if even that long," Johann promised, "I guarantee it."
"Now, run along," he said in a waggle of his fingers, getting several irritated looks before he was once again alone in his office.
Except, Johann closed his eyes, he wasn't alone. Not anymore.
He opened them again and summoned Belial.
"Bring me a full-length mirror and bulk bags of dried flowers, whichever they brought with them–find out." Belial nodded and left without question.
Johann and Ambrosius had more catching up to do.
End Notes: Let me know what you guys think about this one! I'm really proud of it. It's rare for me to cry while writing or reading so I was happy I managed to move my stone-cold heart XD
