Gren froze, poised to turn the corner. "Oh?" He shook an errant tendril of shadowed hair from his face, and eyed Vicious with a single, distant blue iris. "That's your opinion." He continued to walk.
Until a steely hand clamped around his wrist on the backward swing. Gren jumped, shocked nearly out of his mind more by the fact that Vicious touched him.
Was still touching him.
"Bastard…let me go." He heard his own voice twisting into a desperate growl.
The expression of the ice sculpture grappling with him began to melt, to warp out of shape.
That's not…no, he doesn't look like that. He can't. Sorrow never found a definition in his dictionary.
"What makes you think I'm incapable of feeling, Gren?"
Gren. He'd never called the man by the affectionate form of his name…to that effect, never called him by his given name at all…even when they were…
"Past experience."
"Past experience, bullshit. You have no idea what it was like…"
"To turn me in?" Gren spat, "To know that I was taking the fall for something you had done?"
"What the hell makes you think it was my doing?" Vicious could have squeezed harder. He could have shattered the other man's wrist. Gren winced at the intimation of power behind the grip, but refused to back down. "Why should I think otherwise? You almost got away with it, too. If Julia hadn't said something, I'd never have known. Maybe in a few years I could have convinced myself that you really did believe I was guilty of espionage. Then…maybe I wouldn't have wanted revenge so badly."
Vicious snorted. "You aren't capable of vengeance. That's for the dying souls."
"Don't tell me what I'm capable of! You don't know me! You stopped knowing me the day you practically locked me into hell with your own hands!" A hysterical note crept into the musician's voice.
He couldn't stop. Couldn't stop imagining that beautiful voice…betraying him…hearing the false testimony over, and over, and over, and…
"I did what I had to do."
"This isn't about you anymore, Vicious." Gren tore at the restraining hand, "It's about what it takes to be free of this, for all."
Low voice. Lower than ever. As if he was terribly, terribly frightened of what he had to say next.
"I don't want to be free of this, for all." The words rasped rawly out of the silver-haired man's throat, leaving a burning ache behind. It hurt. Despite the walls of indifference, the rime of ice crystallized over empty years of killing and suffering with his conscience in silence. Underneath the bitter frost, a heart still pulsed. There was a human inside the machine, after all. A human in the grip of utter torture.
Blue eyes narrowed, and Gren's lips thinned. "It's a little late for that."
Vicious released him, and he was gone.
But never entirely gone...never again.