A/N-- Considering my recent obsession with this song, I have been so eager to write this chapter. I hope it comes out right! M&M's to my reviewers:

PineappleIce- I hope this was soon enough for you to not implode! You're a funny one... thanx for all your reviews!
Ragweed- ROFLMAO. I must say that you took this the best! I love your story.... too bad I didn't have time to read it today. I'll r&r when I return from my trip!
kydasam- You crack me up! I've never had someone quote me so extensively... And I'm glad you like my metaphors! I used to waaayyy overuse them, but apparently I've outgrown that stage now. I better see some CarlGabriel snugglies on your story soon! I feel so bad for what I do to them on here!
The Wishmasters- I can't wait for your next installment! was screwing with my formatting this morning.... hence the lack of indentation on that last chappie. Actually, I thought that was one of my worst fight scenes. I was trying to concentrate on how surreal it felt for Gabriel, how it was sort of like an out-of-body experience, and I'm afraid it may have gotten a little vague at points. But I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Papilio()- Thank you! You flatter me too much.

This chapter's song is 'Hello' by Evanescence. Next chapter's song is 'Slipped Away' by Avril Lavigne.

Chapter Ten:
Hello

Carl awoke feeling dizzy and cold, like he had fallen into a raging river and then decided to go to sleep while being carried across several hundred waterfalls. In short, he was in no mental condition to face the world that morning.

He had fallen asleep on the floor and fully clothed. It felt odd, after so many nights of being with Gabriel, to be waking up alone. Looking around sleepily, his normally sharp mind seemed to have difficulty registering everything around him.

"Something feels odd." Carl murmured, standing on wobbly legs. Indeed, something about the morning felt rather... off. There was something strange about the air, about the faintest of sunbeams falling into the room. He couldn't get to the root of the problem, couldn't quite point out what was wrong... but it was there.

His first thought, upon going downstairs, was that it could've been the inn's food. One look at it easily had his stomach cowering in a corner, praying that it wouldn't have to digest such punishment for being so wretchedly hungry. Carl then went on to wonder if all the world's food had been poisoned and that was what was wrong with it. His mind continued with the train of thought for several more stops, trying to puzzle out how this could have happened. He was on the verge of a breakthrough when he remembered that he should have done his morning devotions.

In love with a man or not, He reminded himself. I still owe something to the God that put me here.Cannot I be devoted to both him and his left hand?

Carl assumed the best pose of prayer as he could manage by kneeling on the barstool, putting his elbows on the counter, folding his hands, and closing his eyes. Normally it was easiest to pray in the morning. The world had yet to awaken, so all was quiet, and the glory of the sunrise made him feel closer to the glory of God. But this morning, the words of his prayer, however mechanical, would not come. The world didn't feel like it had just begun to stir; it felt weary, like it had stayed up all night standing some pained deathwatch.

I shall have to tell Gabriel about the food poisoning....

He opened his eyes. Something was definitely wrong. The world felt... hollow, sort of. Like it was sick from sorrow. He could feel that sorrow, all around him. The whole world was mourning for something. And every time he said or thought Gabriel's name, it seemed that much keener.

Shaken, Carl got up and left the inn. He had seen a small bistro just down the street from the local church and school. He would eat there.

Everyone was very quiet as he passed through their ranks, following the tolling church bells. The silence made their clanging all the more eerie, even though it should have reminded him of the holy ground he was approaching and how that clanging would keep at bay the pagans and the demons. Even when his course drew up past it, he didn't feel safe. Somehow those metal bells made him angry, as though they had betrayed him but he could not speak out against them.
A small wrought iron fence contained the courtyard of the church, where children were outside playing. It was a Wednesday, the thick of the week, and they were likely about to go to school. He paused to watch them as the school teacher came out, ringing her small hand bell to call them inside. That tiny bell was the antithesis to the church bells overhead; while the church bells represented feigned innocence and hidden betrayal, the tiny bell was the embodiment of pure open sorrow.

But the children don't know that. Carl thought, a little sadly, as he watched them scamper inside. Or did they? Even they seemed sad too. But why?

-
Playground school bell rings
Again
-

The Friar continued on slowly, rubbing his temples.

"God, why did you pick me to be insane?" He whined softly. "It doesn't work wonders for my physical condition. You'd think that insanity would constitute a lack of brains, yet my head pounds as though there is too much up there. Too much to think about. I feel so strange..." The second he realized that he was talking to himself, Carl shut his mouth and looked nervously around. But the streets were empty, he was all alone. And then he realized it.

He was all alone.

Gabriel had not come home that night.

His pace quickened until it doubled and he was practically running for the bistro where he hoped a non-poisoned breakfast awaited him. Gabriel had not come home last night. Where was he?

"It's probably just taking longer than he expected. Or maybe he was too tired to come back to the inn. Maybe he just spent the night outside. In Transylvania? He's just crazy enough to do it. I told him so myself. And I'm crazy enough to stand here talking while the nice sane people inside stare at me like I'm crazy. Which I am." His small rant finished, Carl took a deep breath and opened the glass door to the bistro.

He was greeted with the scent of brewing coffee and baking bread and the queer looks of the bistro's patrons. Not that it was much of a greeting, anyway. It was more like a forced, hostile acknowledgment of his presence. He blew off all but the scents and went to the counter, ordering a croissant and a mug of coffee, all the while hoping that his theories about food poisoning were incorrect.

"Thank you." He managed a smile as he accepted the food and paid. The owner did not respond, but turned his sad gaze on the next customer. Carl felt somehow embarrassed; he was the only one in the whole establishment who had smiled all morning. He ducked his head and exited quickly.

If possible, it seemed even colder and darker than before. The church bells had stopped ringing, but somewhere in the distance the cloudy sky was gurgling. The sound was low and faint, an ominous overture of a storm. Carl continued his idle walk around the town, nursing his coffee and nibbling on his bread. All the while he carefully checked the alleyways he passed, half-hoping to see Van Helsing bursting out at any moment, trying to scare him.

There was no one.

That is, there was no one until he reached the very fringes of the city.

Then the mournful silence was broken by peals of laughter, garish in the grey morning. Carl felt angry upon hearing them. He didn't know why the world had gone into mourning, but if even the schoolchildren had sensed it than everyone else should have, and the men up ahead who were laughing were disrespecting that feeling. He quickened his pace, finishing off his croissant and setting the cup of coffee down. His heart sank to the ground with it when he noticed what the men were holding.

An automatic crossbow.

"You did a good thing by falling into that hole!"

"No, his horse did a good thing!"

"Who cares if it was so injured we had to shoot it? Imagine the herd we can buy with the profits of this!"

"Don't forget the bounty!"

"Where did you get that?" Carl asked, his voice hoarse with anger and fear as he ran up to them. The three men, none older than thirty, turned to him.

"Why does it matter to you?" asked the one holding the crossbow in a suspicious voice.

"Give that to me." Carl demanded. "Give it to me."

"No. I lamed my horse finding this, we had to kill it! Do you know what kind of a horse it was? Pure Transylvanian! It will cost me a fortune to buy and train another just as good as it was! I need this-" The man's sentence was cut off by a gasp when Carl seized the crossbow, braced it against his shoulder, and readied to fire it.

"I said: show me where you found this." He snarled.

With an obviously furious Friar holding an automatic crossbow at their backs, they were all too happy to lead him to the place.

All the hollowness of the world centered over that hole in the ground. Vaguely, Carl prayed that the world was morning for the horse that had died, but he knew his hope was misplaced. In his heart he knew what he would find, descending into that hellhole. Soon its dark halls cut off the sky, but he knew instinctively that it had started to rain.

-
Rain clouds come to play
Again
-

Finally he arrived at what he also knew was the place. The place. It deserved a name better than that, to have brought the world to its knees in anguish, but none would come.

It wasn't very special. Just a cave the vampires had hollowed out for their nest, lined with torches that had recently been relit. There were maybe eight, ten piles of dust lying helter skelter all around the room, but no living creatures of the night. Living or dying, whichever way you wanted to put it. Carl felt like saying dying, but the word was too hard to get around. But even that word was seconded to the one that came out of his lips next.

"Gab-riel...." The word was torn from his suddenly dry throat and drawn out like a note of some long-forgotten lament. There lay Van Helsing, curled up in a pile of wood. It looked as though a desk or other large wooden object had been shattered by a lightning bolt and had taken Gabriel down with it too; some of the larger pieces had pierced his skin and little rivulets of blood ran in slow, ashamed, trails of red away from his body. But other than that, there was no wound visible to them.

The crossbow fell to the ground, but neither of the three men moved to retrieve it. They were too mesmerized by the small Friar falling to his knees beside it, his whole body trembling. Gradually, Carl fell forward onto his hands too, until he began to crawl towards the fallen Hunter.

"Gabriel...." He whispered. "You didn't come back.... but I'm here... I'll come to you..." His whole body was convulsing by the time he finally reached Van Helsing, shaking with repressed sobs. Sobs too painful to be cried, but too needed to be ignored. He dropped his head to the Hunter's chest and rested there, reveling in the feel of the strong, muscled plane. He imagined there was warmth there.... Alive? Was he still alive?

"I must take him back to the Vatican." He whispered, to who he wasn't sure.

"Why?" The second man said.

"The dead should be left as they are." The third added gravely.

"Dead...?" Carl whispered faintly. He hadn't thought of that. He was physically incapable of thinking Gabriel dead, even after all he had said to him the previous night. He couldn't be. He couldn't be dead...!

-
Has no one told you?
He's not breathing.
-

"We'd leave him here to rot, but the bounty's far too high to do so." The first said.

"You ignorant bastards!" Carl screamed, jumping to his feet. "Who do you think killed Dracula? Who destroyed this nest before they could rise to his level of power? Who comes here time and time again, dropping his life to save all yours?" They were silent.

"We do not trust the dead. Even when they're left to rot underground." One of the men said sullenly.

"You can't leave him here to rot..." Carl murmured, his voice growing with morbid excitement. He pressed his head to Van Helsing's chest again. "Because he's not even dead yet...!" The Friar was on the verge of leaping to his feet and dancing with joy. There it was, a faint, subtle heartbeat. Gabriel wasn't dead! But he wasn't well off either. "Please, if you have any gratitude to Mr. Van Helsing, go back to the village and get a doctor! No! I'll bandage him myself. You must get someone with a cart who can take us to the nearest port!" He cried urgently. The men shared glances, but nodded reluctantly when they noticed that the crossbow was still sitting near to the Friar and the man didn't really have a sane gleam in his eyes.

Carl sat beside Gabriel the whole time while they were waiting, bandaging the wounds he could find. Mostly they were minor; a cut here, a bruise there, nothing like this. He did have a nasty gash on his temple, but not one that he thought could kill a man. And that was what worried him.

Where was the wound?

If there was none, why did his lover not stir when his name was called? When his lips were kissed?

Why?

In the days it took to get back to Rome, he would be left with nothing but that word. Why. Why didn't he wake up? Why had he left him? Why? Why? Why? All he had was his mind, whispering that word over and over again, trying to comfort him but having forgotten what comfort was.

-
Hello,
I'm your mind
Giving you someone to talk to
Hello...?
-

Coming home to the Vatican was not what he had expected.

Having not really wanted to leave in the first place, Carl had expected it to be a relief. It wasn't. Because with the relief of coming home (though it was not sweet, but anguished) was warped by the coming true of his greatest nightmare. He had always known that one day Van Helsing would be carried into the Vatican, for once not walking tall and proud, but he had never even thought that he would be the one to carry him in. It was torment of the worst and deepest kind.

Cardinal Jinette woke early that day. Something felt amiss, even when he prayed. He tried in vain to shake it off, eventually settling for burying it deep inside where his underlings would not see. Never let them see you panic, He reminded himself. Never. There were times when he heavily regretted being a leader, having to keep all those emotions inside. But this day he was glad of his self-control.

Around noon, as was his custom, he went up to the confessional. He wasn't expecting Carl and Van Helsing back yet, but he was nonetheless looking for them with an odd mixture of hope and dread. The hope he could understand; he cared about those two in a rough, sort of paternal way. But the dread? Though he asked God many times for explanation, none fit.

None, of course, except death.

Feeling severely jaded by his worries, he was nearly asleep when the first confessor in an hour arrived.

"Bless me f-father.... I have sinned..." The voice was shaky, terrified. Had some great sin taken place? He sat up quickly and composed himself, prepared to devote all his attention to the parishioner. But as he came back to his senses, he was struck with the sound of the voice. He knew that voice.

"Carl! Back so-" Jinette froze as the grate slid open, his aged face turning a sickly shade of grey with shock.

Carl was there, yes. But had had not heard his voice he would not have known that. He hadn't ate, slept, bathed, or shaved in what looked like days. His eyes were puffy and dark on the outside, dull and lifeless within. His hair was scraggly and uncombed, and his face was smudged with dirt and the dried trails of tears. A beard ghosted his face, making the normally youthful Friar look twice his age. And in his lap lay Death itself.

Gabriel Van Helsing's skin, normally healthy and bright, was drawn and pale as a death's-head. His eyes were closed, and did not rove as the eyes of the sleeping do. However, his face was carefully washed and his hair combed; Carl had obviously taken very good care of him. Other than his slight tremors- probably born of Carl's -he didn't seem to be moving much.

"Sweet God above! What happened Carl?" Jinette cried, leaping to his feet and flinging open the door.

"Help him...?" Carl said feebly, a single tear sliding from his blue eyes, before he followed its path and slid to the floor, in the iron grip of unconsciousness.
Carl proved himself to be a fighter. He broke free from his unconscious state an hour after he entered into it, and didn't even say anything to the worried monks trying to coax some food into his mouth. The only thing that would pass his lips was one word: Gabriel.

"Gabriel." He said hoarsely as he vaulted onto his feet, bare seconds after he had woken. His knees hit the floor not long after his feet touched it, and he fell onto his hands just to support his weight, however meager it was.

"Friar Carl, you must-"

"Gabriel." He said seriously, jerking himself to his feet. He trembled visibly and his steps were rigid, but he would not be swayed from his course. He began to limp out of the room.

"Where are you going?" cried the monk who had been trying to feed him.

"Gabriel." Carl said insistently, making it out into the hall. Once he was there, he turned back around to the befuddled monks. "Gabriel?" He questioned urgently. Still confused, they pointed to the left. Without further ado, Carl began to sprint off down the left passage.

He stumbled as he ran, crashing into the floor and into walls several times, but he never once stopped. He pushed everyone out of his way, except at forks where he would frantically call Gabriel's name and point down the different passages. When at last he saw the medically trained monks, he put every ounce of his willpower into running. There was the door that they buzzed in and out of, there was the door to the hive of his king. There was the door to Gabriel.

"Gabriel." He whispered over and over again as it drew closer and closer. His hands reached out to open it.... and were smacked back when the door was flung open on its own. The force also through his weak and weary body to the floor, where he struggled to get up from.

"It's Friar Carl!" "I thought he was asleep...."

"Come now Carl, let's get you back to-"

"Gabriel!" He screamed as they took gentle hold of his arms and helped him up. His thanks for the help came in the form of two surprisingly solid punches into the faces of the two church guards and another scream of Van Helsing's first name.

"Quick! Take hold of him!" One of the still-standing guards cried. They were about to when Jinette materialized.

"Let him in! Van Helsing stirred at the sound of his name!" He cried hoarsely. Most unceremoniously, he pushed his way through the gathering crowd and took hold of Carl, who suddenly looked like a little child without its mother: lost, lonely, afraid. He practically shoved him into the room.

It was a simple room, sparse as all the rooms of the infirmary were. But it lit him up with joy nonetheless, for a wakened Hunter decorated its bed.

"Gabriel." He whispered, relieved, as he stood by the bed. His reward was a sleepy murmur from Van Helsing and a caress on the cheek.

Nothing could have made him feel richer.... and nothing could have made him feel poorer.
Van Helsing froze, mid-caress, as another tear from Carl traced a wet path down his hand. His eyes glazed over and his hand fell to the bed, limp as a boned fish. [1] He went entirely slack and still. No. God no. He couldn't be dead. He couldn't be. Why hadn't the world ended...? But then he stirred, sitting up with a vicious cough, like he was forcing breath in and out of his lungs. His hand choked at his throat. He was at once trying to save and kill himself, and the attempt didn't go over well. Carl cried quietly and tried to still Van Helsing's hands before he hurt himself, but he could do nothing until the Hunter stopped on his own.

When at last he was moderately still, his breaths were deep, but choppy. It was a wet, sickening sound. Maybe he had been internally injured? Some unseen wound in his lungs? Could he tell them?

"Van Helsing, what happened to you?" Carl whispered, reaching for a rag on the bedside and soaking it in the basin that had been provided, cleaning the Hunter's head of sweat.

In instants, he had fallen to the floor, his breath even more labored than Gabriel's had been. He had just wiped Gabriel's own blood all over his forehead. He tried to scramble back, crablike, but his foot struck the nightstand hard enough to topple it. The clay basin shattered, spilling Van Helsing's blood all over Carl's legs. The Friar choked back a sob, ignoring whatever the Cardinal was shouting in favor of racing back to Gabriel's side. He was trying to say something.

"I am-" But his phrase was suddenly, violently cut off, like a thunderbolt had seared it in half without warning. Carl's hand had lightly touched his, he had moved his face closer in an effort to hear better. Yet Van Helsing seemed not at all comforted by this... his gaze was hostile, afraid. He jerked his hand away, watching Carl with the wild fear of a cornered animal. Who are you? His eyes screamed accusingly at the Friar.

"It's me. Me." Carl assured him, running his hands over Van Helsing's forehead and into his hair, a motion he had repeated often on his lover when he had been asleep. But it only seemed to frighten him more.

"No." He cried hoarsely, making a feeble shoving motion that still shattered Carl's fragile world. Once more he was on the floor, shaking. His hands could not support him, and he slid onto his back. Why was the floor so slick, again? He raised his hands to his face and realized why.
Gabriel's blood was on his hands. This was all his fault.

He stumbled out into the hall and retched until he coughed up blood. It was his punishment.
But afterwards, he felt oddly calm. Now he knew what was going on. He wasn't mad with the fear of not knowing what had happened to Gabriel. He knew something was wrong, but he knew that he was still alive. Knowing something was wrong he could handle. It was not knowing that drove his scruples into madness.

He got himself to his room, cleaned himself up, ate a light meal, and then headed back to the infirmary. A knot of the Order's people had gathered there, small compared to the knots in his stomach. Carl felt oddly distanced from the world, and was shaky because of it. He wiped his sweaty palms on his wobbling thighs, then plunged into the sea of humanity.

He went straight up to a pair of younger men, who quickly turned their attention to them.

"Excuse me, but could you show me where I might find my aides? I must start research right away." He asked as politely and calmly as he could. The two men glanced nervously at each other, before the older, black-haired one spoke.

"Friar Carl? We are your aides." He said timidly.

"Oh." Carl intoned slowly, his brow furrowing in thought. Yes. This was them. Thomas and Matthias. "Good then. I already have a sample of Mr. Van Helsing's blood, we'll analyze that first. Off we go." He set off a surprisingly jaunty pace, leaving his bewildered aides to follow.

They spent the next hours in Carl's lab, analyzing and theorizing and generally working their brains to the limit. two things proved bizarrely interesting; for starters, his blood was rather odd. When a foreign agent was added, the white blood cells did nothing. Sometimes, they would attack each other, or go to the foreign agent but seem confused as to what they were supposed to do about it. After this, Carl wondered if Van Helsing had suffered mental trauma; there had been that incident when he had been at a loss as to who Carl was, yet moments earlier he had recognized the sound of his own name. He feared going back in himself, so he sent Matthias to go interview the Hunter while Thomas scurried off to get some books.

Thomas returned first, and Carl was ankle-deep in books about psychology, head trauma and mental illnesses- including amnesia -when Matthias returned.

"Well? Does amnesia fit the bill?" Carl demanded mildly.

"If it is, then it is the oddest sort of amnesia I have ever heard of." The blonde murmured. "I sat beside him. He was awake, but did not face me. I called his name, first and last and then both separate, but he did not acknowledge them as his. I tried several other names: places and people he knew of. When he saw how insistent I was, he turned to look at me, but seemed confused. "I asked him a few basic questions, none of which he could answer. But suddenly, his face lit up with worry and he seized my shoulders. He begged me to bring you to him, and I told him that you couldn't be had, you were trying to figure out what was wrong with him. He sat back very slowly, frowning, and said 'Why is someone I don't know trying to help me?' After that, he turned away from me and didn't respond to anything else I said or did." Carl sank down in a nearby chair, massaging his temple with his fingers.

"We'll figure it out, don't worry. He will live." Thomas assured him from across the room.

Matthias nodded emphatically. Carl merely smiled at them, then dropped his head back into his hands. He hadn't slept for days.

-
If I smile and don't
Believe
Soon I know I'll wake from this dream
-

He wouldn't sleep for two more days. Those days were spent in the lab with Thomas and Matthias, researching and wondering and sometimes just mentally screaming in frustration. At last, he sent his young aides away to have some rest while he continued on alone. They had poured over every book that could be found, even ones that had only the vaguest relation to Van Helsing's 'condition,' hoping to find the tiniest crumb of a clue. A cake might have been nice, in more ways than one, but they would settle for just a crumb.

Carl was at his wit's end. He scratched that thought with disinterest. His wits were entirely gone, in fact. He had sent them away. What use were they if they could not figure out what was wrong with Gabriel...? He wanted to throw all the books away too. None of them had helped. At best, they had provided false hope. But, sighing, he reached for a new one and began to pour over it. With so much at stake, he would cling to whatever hope he was given.

He hadn't even known he was asleep until he awoke; that is the way of things when you are so tired. It was Thomas who had awoken him, Thomas and his steaming plate of food.

"How long?" Carl asked inarticulately as he began to nibble on the food.

"Just the night, Brother."

"Did you research?"

"Not without you. We wanted to... ask your permission on something. It's a bit of a theory, actually." He began to fidget nervously.

"Well?" Carl sighed, taking a deep swig of the red wine he had been given.

"You said he had gone to fight a nest of vampires, to stop one in particular from rising to power. Couldn't one infer that magic was involved?" He left the sentence hanging.

Carl stopped eating, setting his plate on the floor. He dabbed lightly at the corners of his mouth with the provided napkin, then used it to wipe his face clean of sleep. When he met Thomas's eyes again, it was with a mild and unreadable look.

"You are suggesting that we research spells?" He asked softly.

"Yes, Brother." Thomas said, wavering.

"Don't even suggest that." Carl's voice was the barest of centimeters from a snarl. "If it is magic, then we have no hope left now."

"But Friar Carl, maybe-"

"Don't bother me with that word." Carl snapped, standing up from the chair and beginning to storm out.

"You have nothing if you don't have hope." The aide ventured to say. Carl paused, turned. Immeasurable sadness filled his eyes. There was something graceful about it, something that was... beautiful. Because, like most all beautiful, graceful things, it was born of a deep and passionate love.

"Then I am nothing. And how can you fix something that is nonexistent?" He whispered, before he left. Thomas didn't know what to do from there. When the Friar had left the room, all beauty and grace had left with him.

-
Don't try to fix me,
I'm not broken.
-

"I need to get away from this madness..." Carl murmured, wandering the Order's catacombs.

His only aim was to avoid the infirmary. With only so many places to go- for the place was rich in memories of Gabriel -he soon wound up at the library. "A little reading would do me well. And didn't Gabriel say he'd meet me here later, when he's done in the infirmary?" Carl said to himself, concocting the lie without thinking about it. He smiled, stepped inside.

He needed the lie.

Cardinal Jinette walked briskly through the halls of the headquarters, stopping everyone he saw and asking for news of Carl. Van Helsing had awoken again, and was begging to see him. They had tried, quite fruitlessly, to ask him about what had happened, but he would say nothing other than words about Carl. He seemed so stricken with desperation to see him, that it might kill him at any moment. So the Cardinal had set off himself to find the Friar and bring him back with him.
At last one of his aides mentioned something about Carl leaving, heavily depressed. Jinette thought for a moment on what he knew about the man. What would comfort him best, beside his friend Gabriel? Books. He was a bookish man. So he set off for the library.

Surely enough, there he was, curled up in an armchair with a single, heavy tome on his lap. He did not look up as Jinette entered the room.

"Researching, Friar Carl?" the Cardinal asked quietly.

"Hmm? Oh, no." Carl grinned, looking up.. "Just some light reading about physics and psychology. Gabriel said he'd meet me here. I have to worst dream to tell him about...."

"Carl... I think you need to come see Gabriel. He wants you to come to him." Jinette said softly, gently, his hand on the Friar's shoulder.

"Oh... Oh. Very well then." His smile and movements were shaken, though he tried to hide it, as he set down the book. They both knew that his facade was fading quickly.

They both knew silence would reign as they walked to Van Helsing's room. They both knew that they would pause just a foot from the door, being careful not to look at each other, and compose themselves against tears when they saw their Hunter so wretchedly low. They both knew that they would hold their heads high and push open the door bravely. They both knew that when they closed behind them, all the pretty little lies would go away.

It was so hard not to cry.

-
Hello,
I'm the lie
Living for you so you can hide
Don't cry....
-
Jinette stayed to the back of the room. Emotion was thick in the room, anything but Spartan in contrast to the decorations. Carl shuffled forward, his eyes fixed on Van Helsing where he lay on the bed. But his reluctance didn't last for long; his pace quickened drastically when he got closer and he sank to his knees in something like worship. Not caring that the Cardinal was watching, he reached up to gently touch Van Helsing's cheek.

The Hunter turned his head slowly; it took him a moment to recognize who it was. But then he reached up to barely grace Carl's hand with the touch of his own, something like apology in his eyes.

"Hello Gabriel." A smile ghosted Carl's lips.

"Carl.... I was-" He tried to say something else, but the words wouldn't come.

"You don't have to say anything... please, don't say anything..." Carl whispered, taking Van Helsing's hand and kissing it, Cardinal Jinette be damned. The whole world be damned, in fact, if it continued to go on when Gabriel was dead.

He couldn't bring himself to say 'if.' Hope was too deadly a thing to toy with.

Van Helsing smiled a phantom smile, but shook his head and continued trying to speak. It came out in the form of a hacking cough. Blood rushed up and gave color to the 'words' and the pale sheets of his bed. His whole body was convulsing uncontrollably; he clutched at his throat, trying to make the coughing stop, but couldn't. Carl staggered back, the tears he had sworn he wouldn't shed burning down his face.

Cardinal Jinette whisked him away and sat him down outside, but Carl hardly noticed. He sat there, listening numbly to the hustle and bustle. After awhile, it died down, and they forgot him there.

He was alone all that night.

-
Suddenly I know I'm not sleeping
Hello...?
I'm still here
All that's left of yesterday...
-

A/N-- [1] GO RETURN OF THE KING!!! Of course, I can no longer take that movie seriously... because every time I see Faramir.... Carl pops into my mind.
Obviously, I had to edit the lyrics in one point. Anyone familiar with the song knows where. hehehe, I'm having so much fun with all this depressing stuff... maw ha ha ha ha.... But the next chapter will be my favorite yet, since it's based off of one of my all-time favorite songs. Review and I get the joy of writing/posting it! I'm sorry this one took os long.... I worked my ass off on thursday night and got it finished only to realize that Fanfiction WAS DOWN so I had to wait until today to post it. My apologies!