~*~Chapter II~*~

Dead.

That's what the brown-haired boy standing in the hallway had said to him. Dead but said as a question. That was odd, to ask Dead. Why would a complete stranger ask something like that to him? It didn't make any sense. Didn't that boy know what asking Dead meant? Ran knew well what it meant. Dead meant long gone smiles and shadows in the night and hatred made solid. Dead meant forever and never again.

Dead was the only  way to find peace. Dead was all he wanted from life and wasn't that a bit funny,  to want from life its exact antithesis?

His wrists burned beneath the stained gauze bindings.

Ran didn't know why someone would say such a peculiar thing to him and he didn't like it. It kept echoing in his mind like a bleeding child persistent memory. There had been something about that boy, something off. Something ominous. Ran knew that surely as he knew his name but he didn't know what it was. Not exactly. When his eyes had first fallen upon that boy, strange words had come into him, into his head.

A world gone entirely scarlet...

He had heard himself speak those words out loud. He knew those words weren't his own. That made his head feel a bit scared. How could he have words in his head that weren't his own? Was it like seeing the smearing blood of another? Those images weren't his own. These words weren't his own. They had just been clinging inside his mind, like the beginning of a homicide that would not let him be. Whose words were they? The boy's? A killer's? But they didn't feel cruel, just sad. What could it mean?

I watch myself die.

Thin fingers tugged at itchy wrappings. They traced the pattern of horizontal scars hidden below. Despite promises and debts and his own waning rationality, Ran wanted it. He wanted death so desperately that without it he was alone with scarred wrists incomplete, broken. It was past bearing, that he should see murders beyond grisly behind his eyes. Rotting within his mind. Night after night, to live without peace. Screams and arcing blood ruptured at his heels. His steps were stained. Inside he was so filthy. Was this really what he deserved?

He could never save them, those countless, defiled corpses once veiled in innocence. Catching killers wasn't enough, not when every tear and every shriek and every pain still lingered inside his soul.  He was saturated with memories horrible and they were nothing he could expunge. He couldn't live with these realities any longer.

Ran stepped out of the police station and stood blinking in the bright afternoon sunlight. It was nosy, with people and cars rushing rapidly rushing by. A group of loud high school boys walked past, throwing him odd looks. He didn't mind, not so much. Just as long as no one Dead talked to him. He didn't like talking to people. Sometimes they got into his head and sometimes he simply couldn't bear their purity. Because when they would die, their thoughts would be horrible. Their faces would blacken and their terror was unspeakable.

Unbearable.

He knew these things much too well.

Ran walked away, his legs moving as though of their own accord. The crowds of people and the busy streets vanished, leaving him to walk upon cracked asphalt. Stained asphalt. A boy with messy  hair and freckles on his nose was dumped in his path, his little jean overalls torn and dripping. He stepped over the boy's small body, even as his head turned to look back from over his shoulder. There was a gooey plastic robot clutched in limp fingers. A little boy who he would never forget.

His way was littered, jammed. Some eyes were open and they watched him pass with expressions blank. Others were closed or gone and could not see the one who had no right to see. His legs moved, bidding him forward, even as he wanted to stop and to touch. Empty faces he recognized. Screams that still echoed in his head. He could remember them all; knew who had suffered in what kind of pain. Every image  was branded against the imprints of his being and from it there was no release.

It was impossible for him to separate himself from the things laid bare inside his mind.

As Ran strode on, his fingers continued to work against his bound wrists, scratching and chafing. There was wetness and he knew it was crimson in colour. It bothered him, grating in the manner of an itch. The need to cast off the flimsy bandages and slide his finger into the red mess below overwhelmed him. That wasn't so wrong and that wasn't breaking his promise at all. He just wanted to see his own fluid and suffer as so many around him were suffering. It was no more then he deserved. Afterall, it was his skin and his injury. He could do as he wished.

Tearing away stained stripes, Ran let them fall onto the sodden pavement. His skin was white, splashed with drips of red and soggy pink. It was familiar, this type of damage. It was what he craved ...but he had promised. He couldn't break his promise, not to the one who had wanted him when even his own parents hadn't. He owed Crawford. Crawford was watching him. Crawford could see things like this.

And so Ran couldn't  seek out what he wanted, not for now.

He walked on, his wrist splashing.

~*~*~*~*~

A perky secretary ushered Ken into Bradley Crawford's office. Ken entered on shaky legs, in a state of stunned shock. His stomach rippled with sharp jerks, as though he'd just been hit. Inside his mind there was nothing but blaring static. Through it all, only one figure was made lucid.

Damaged wrists...the one with hair the colour of blood...

Yes.

One figure with eyes so dead. What else was there to know? It was the truth, despite all appearances. The truth that was a pale man who had echoed his words. The truth was words running through his head that weren't his own. The truth was an instant where he and the dead pale man had shared something that surpassed anything he'd ever felt with another. The truth was a bloody image and it terrified him because...

...that man had committed suicide.

Ken pressed clammy fingers to the pulsating skin of his temple.

"Hidaka Ken?"

Blinking, Ken saw before him a foreign-looking man with dark hair and glasses come into focus. He forced himself to cast aside rioting thoughts and bring his mind into clarity. "Yes," he croaked, sitting down onto one of the hard visitor's chairs.

Crawford didn't concern himself with polite preliminaries. "What exactly did Kudou tell you?" he demanded.

Ken swallowed painfully, his stomach still writhing. "A suicidal informant of yours needs protection."

"And?"

Ken hesitated for an instant. "He dreams about...strange things."

"Things similar to your own dreams," Crawford expounded, watching him shrewdly.

Ken bit back a startled noise of shock. "You know about that?"

"I make it my business to know." Crawford pushed up his glasses, a cynical expression marking his grave features. "Why do you suppose I contacted Kudou of all people?"

"But-" Frowning, Ken tried to assimilate what Crawford was saying to him. He had known and lived with Yohji for the past three years. He couldn't imagine the detective telling anyone about his dreams. "This isn't something Yohji would tell you. I know he wouldn't."

"He didn't tell me anything," Crawford replied, slightly irritated. "He only confirmed what I already knew. You aren't the only one who sees things."

"I guess not." Ken twisted at his numb fingers, chills scribbling up the length of his spine. That others might see as he saw hadn't occurred to him. "What is it that you see?"

"Glimpses of the future, of things to be." Hard eyes locked with uneasy ones. "I see you with my ward, binding his wounds."

The words slipped from him, of their own volition. "Wrist wounds?"

Crawford assessed him with narrowed eyes. "You've seen him."

Alone with scarred wrists.

"He's not the one who-"

Died...

Opening a drawer, Crawford removed a slim manila folder and tossed it onto his desk. "This is all you need to know."

As Ken reached across the polished surface for the folder, his hand began to shake with an obvious violence. Embarrassment coursed through him. He was horribly exposed before this grim, perceptive man. It wasn't a feeling he was used to or liked at all. Sensing his face burn, Ken hastily yanked the folder open.

Pale features adorned with a pair of empty purple eyes stared up at him from a glossy photo.

Somehow, he couldn't be surprised.

~*~*~*~*~

Abnormally long walls made of glinting steel distorted the reflection of two figures, one standing and one seated, working at the row of black technology that dominated the room's farthest edge.

A soft click was heard as a colourless image appeared upon the computer screen. "This is the one he pulled from the asylum two weeks ago."

The standing figure, a tall German man by the chosen name of Schuldich, leaned a bit closer to the screen. The picture was of a young, scarlet-haired man with hollow eyes staring off in the distance.

Another click and a new picture, this one in colour, emerged on the monitor. "This is the man we want."

Schuldich was surprised to see that the dark-haired man wasn't Japanese. "This is the Homicide Chief? A foreigner?"

"Bradley Crawford is half Japanese." Acute dislike washed over fine features. "He came from New York to live with his father, the previous Chief of Police, some years ago. He entered the force upon connections alone. This is unacceptable. Such an honourable position cannot be held by the likes of an American bastard. We want all his secrets exposed and his reputation disgraced."

Schuldich smirked, flipping his bangs from his face. "By the time I'm through with this guy, he'll be as fucked as up as his ward."

Full lips curved. "This pleases us." A few files and a series of small disks were gathered and handed to the German. "Above all, we desire answers. Why should Crawford take on an unstable ward of no relation to him? How has he been suddenly solving such complex, deadbeat murder cases? These things you must seek first. We want any and all information you are able to find on both he and his ward. You are to report to me each night at midnight. The balance of your price shall be paid upon completion. Take whatever measures you choose to fulfil your assignment. We will cover your tracks. All avenues are open to you. Do whatever you must in order to complete this assignment, understand?"

"Perfectly," he drawled out, pleased.

A nod of satisfaction. "Then we shall speak this evening."

~*~*~*~*~

Ken stood before the brick building that was Fujimiya Ran's apartment, hurriedly drowning a cup of scalding coffee he'd purchased from a nearby restaurant. The meeting with Crawford had left his mind in such a fragile state of turmoil that even his vision had been affected. Leaving the police station had been a conscious chore, with everything in sight blurring in triple wobbling lines. His head was filled with Ran, filled with that ashen face and those haunted eyes. There was nothing else. He was to protect one who should have died. A man who saw just as he saw.

Ken's tongue stung as he finished the remainder of his hot drink. His head felt solid and he supposed that was something. Still, anxieties coiled within the pit of his stomach. He didn't know what he had to fear and he didn't fear easily but fear was there all the same. It wouldn't be easy to separate the image of Ran attempting suicide from everything else. That crimson-soaked picture lingered in the front of his mind. Guarding Ran was a task that could easily fracture his fraying rationality. As it was, his sanity hung upon gossamer webs, each unravelling a little bit more as new gore continued to tarnish his dreams.

But putting everything else aside, the bottom truth was that something strung between him and this Fujimiya Ran. That was what petrified him the most. They both slept in scarlet worlds, he had born witness to Ran's death, Ran's words were inside his mind and his own words came from Ran. Whether it was the dreams or the death no one was meant to see Ken didn't know, but it bound both of them together.

Tossing the empty styrofoam cup into a nearby trash bin, Ken inhaled sharply and entered the building. The interior was dim, contrasting harshly with the bright sunshine outside. His eyes adjusted as he waited for the elevator. There was a gloomy feel to the place. The carpet and walls were dark and the few paintings which adorned the lobby were morbid in nature. The picture which hung between the two elevator doors depicted a skeletal hand covered in oozing boils and flaking skin. Three gaunt, black rats were chewing at the diseased flesh with sharp teeth. Ken turned his head as his stomach churned.

The elevator was empty, as was the eighth floor corridor. It was unnerving. The sensation of people watching him from behind shut doors overwhelmed him. He walked quickly, his steps echoing about the silent hallways. Apartment 818 was at the very end of the hallway. He stared at the closed door, his heart throttling frantically.

Bleed these sins away...

He saw inside his mind Ran sinking to the kitchen floor, blooding slipping from shorn skin. That very scene was etched inside his mind, there to stay. It would not be repeated.

Ken knocked on the door and waited. There was no answer. Perhaps he was...damaged...? Ken yanked out the copy key Crawford had given him and unlocked the door. The scent of chemicals, turpentine possibly, drifted out over him. The apartment was dark and uncomfortably warm. He closed the door behind him and cautiously crept down the hallway and into the living room. The room was meticulously tidy and bore no signs of any type of personality. Everything was perfect in its place. There were no personal belongings or clutter to indicate what sort of person lived there.

Ken moved into the next room which happened to be the kitchen. The shock of seeing this room, the room from his dreams, nearly undid him. He gasped, stumbling against the doorframe. The room was an exact reflection of what ate at his mindflesh. His brain exploded in pain. The drawer with a knife inside, the tiled floor, apples on the table, everything was frozen. The only difference was Ran. He wasn't crumpled upon the floor but rather sitting on it in front of the fridge, leaning his tilted head against the white, plastic door. His long legs were bent up to his chest, his open hands resting on his knees. He was watching his raw wrists bleed. They weren't bleeding as heavily as last night but there was enough to drip crimson blobs all over the floor around him.

Ran looked up at him with those stark eyes. They were as bright as his spilling blood. "You're in my house," he muttered, a frown creasing pallid features. "And your words are in my head."

Ken took a step forward. His legs were shaking. He had to forcible smother down the rising pain inside his head. "You promised," he stated firmly, his tone much stronger then he actually felt. "You promised Crawford that you wouldn't hurt yourself again."

Ran's eyes widened. "I only just took the-" He stopped, his face darkening. "How do you know what I promised Crawford?"

"He told me." Ken grabbed the roll of gauze that still sat upon the counter and knelt down beside the redhead. "I have to bind your wrists." He caught hold of one pale, leaking wrist.

His very reality imploded.

Colours that actually pulsated ribboned around them. The room swirled, bursts of air rushing into their bodies. Ken could see nothing but smoking violet eyes, mirrored with what his own eyes held. His blood pumped and his heart beat in sync with the one before him. A hundred murders squirmed into his mind so that he could see what Ran saw. His own memories fled, gathering into the mind of the bleeding redhead. He could feel himself both lose and grow.

For in that instant, as their skin scorched against the other, they existed as one.

And then it was severed as Ran's wrist falling from limp fingers.

"What did you do to me?" Ran's voice was a breathless whisper. He pressed at his forehead, blinking hard.

Ken couldn't speak. All he knew that the excruciating pain inside his head was gone. With shaking fingers, he managed to pick up the roll of gauze. He bound Ran's wrists as best he could, his skin tingling in shock as it touched the other. The astonishment was still there, if ever it would leave. Blood pounded into his head so hard that he could barely hear. He could feel Ran's heartbeat from where he knelt.

"What's your name?" Ran whispered, also trembling in his hands.

He didn't think he could speak but at the last moment it splashed out. "Ken."

"You dream like I dream."

"Yeah." Ken let go of Ran's hands. His fingers were literally buzzing, as though electricity was surging through them. "That's why I had to come here. I had to see you."

They stared at each other, the air around them crackling with awareness.

In this sorrow I remain...

...bound to you.