Adventure between the Line

AN: OMG! I updated! I will soon redo all the chapters since there are a number of things that are highly inconsistent for each chapter.

The plot is going to somewhat remain the same though.

Albert: Mind I ask, young one, what plot?

K-chan: ………You know what?

Albert: No, I do not know what.

K-chan: Do I need to get you a bottle of ENSURE, you cranky fart?

Albert: ……..no….

Disclaimer: I do not own Shadow Hearts.

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Chapter: To Divorce A Corpse of Death

"Keith…….." It was a matter of truth now. She had lied so long ago. It had been a little white lie at first to keep her heritage from being known that had grown. To keep face about her parents then to lie eventually about herself……

She had lied and she was facing the consequences.

"No." She felt as if she had been whipped by the mere controlled tone he held with her. He was not just pissed. He was ready to kill anything. Those eyes haunted her as she looked up to meet his eyes to only bow her head in shame.

She never wanted that on her. She wanted him to yell, to scream…….
ANYTHING. She wanted him to be able to let himself out but she should have known better. Those eyes were nothing more than a simple gesture of anger for they were now stuck in her thoughts.

Lucrezia squinted her eyes in hope that she would not have those eyes, the ones that showed such contempt for her, on her again. It was then that she was startled by a calloused hand, one she had the mention of remembering often in her memories and even more in the waking dreams of the cottage she shared in heaven with her cousins.

"What are you crying about?" His voice held that barely contained contempt and disgust as he tried to show concern though he could sense that his sarcasm was cutting as tears fell about her face. The small rivulet down one cheek and the beginning of the other only caused resentment in him.

Maybe his wife was too afraid of his reaction to an heir that would not be able to do magic? Maybe she was afraid of giving a woman heir that would not be able to curb her own magic to the side of good? In his eyes, deep down, he had to wonder whether or not she was afraid of him.

The quivering chin she tried to calm or the admonished face that she was holding up as hard as possible slipped into oblivion as she fell down to her knees in her robe of gold and purple silks. The skirt pooling around her as she grasped onto his connecting arm to her shifted as if leaving her to settle upon her clothed ankles.

"Forgive me………" A whisper that was barely heard as she felt herself fall away into the darkness, barely holding onto the arm that was hold close to her. She wanted him to let her go into his hell. Let her burn for that was what she was worth in his memory. She didn't want him to remember the loving wife.

It would be too painful to see how all that no longer right by her was trespassing into lying to him like a rat, a Varuna rat even. His grip tightened as she was ready to collapse away into the pit that surrounded them from the darkness that his mind had become. Was she willing to let go finally?

She wasn't.

Every second he stared down at her with those haunting green eyes, every single nano, she wanted to let go, despising her weakness as a woman not worth the time that was she was taking by not leaving.

She commanded her fingers to let go, to release themselves away from the strong limbs he held to himself. Her body though didn't listen to her commands, even to her pleas as she wanted herself to leave. She wanted to curl in the darkness and fall into the insanity it promised so she didn't have to see those eyes.

Those eyes of hatred, loathing, and disappointment ripped through her soul like nothing had ever before. Uriel's persona and magical power had not even done as much as pain to her when she was being unnaturally fused with her essence. Her soul felt as if it was being raped shamelessly in front of the one man she loved.

And he was the perpetrator, the one who kept pumping into a corpse of the dead, a soul of non-living. Her consent never given for her soul to be torn away from her in such a manner before especially since he was the one doing it.

He had eyes that could make her fall away into the deepest secret of the minds of the misunderstood to the conventional freak.

She only had a thought before his eyes closed to show the world of his blood tears, the very sorrow of his life through the dark red liquid that rolled down such cheeks of perfect vampirism significance.

And that was, 'Why can I not let go?'

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Alice sat in the car, legs shaking in anticipation as she thought of her holy roller of a mother meeting her unknown fiancé, the very same fiancé who was slouching just to piss her off! Didn't he know that her mother was a perfectionist?

Her mother would be pissed which would be an understatement to the true state of the matter. She'd be down right dead if her mother became truly angry. Though wondering on her mother's take of the shaggy-haired derelict that looked as if he was kicked out of his own home, Alice could only worry for she was too frightened to admit the idea that her mother might take Yuri as a basket case.

Yuri was too imperfect for her mother.

Her reasons were listed when Alice had left to live in the city with her father to become a reporter and to finish her master's degree in Boston.

Yuri violated every single rule in some way that was new.

The boy couldn't be a nut bag waiting to crack. Broken with golden colors.

He couldn't be without a job. Yuri sometimes went at least a month without a job.

He couldn't have piercing. She would never tell anyone where those piercing might be. Her mother would grow red in the face and start spouting the Old Testament like no tomorrow.

He should have graduated college. Yuri dropped out of high school. College was a no go.

He could not have done drugs. Alice herself was pissed off at that one but he had quit when Margerete treated him to a special group for people that did those things.

He had to have graduated high school. The circumstances were already clear on that one.

He had to have an excellent well caring dream. This was Yuri and Yuri's dream job had been to become a tattoo artist. Not exactly racking up points there, kiddo.

He had to be clean cut. Hell no. He looked like a hobo from the alley half the time that tried to take sneak peaks up her skirt whenever she gave him food or change when she passed by.

He had to be all down American Homeboy. Yuri was a hybrid Japanese-Russian anti-hero man from Tokyo. America hadn't been his exact dream.

He had to be a church going boy. Yuri in a church……..Well, Alice couldn't picture it even for their wedding day.

Which brought her to the last rule that Yuri had broken quite easily: He had to get them married in a church.

Yeah.

Right.

That was going to happen………………when pigs fly and hell freezes over and Yuri finally decides to help with the wedding preparations by giving a gods be damned date.

"Relax, Alice. Your mother is not going to say anything about me to my face so no worries." Her snowy man snapped upwards with the jerk of her resting head. Her hands fell apart from the clasped prayer they had been in. Blue oculars eyed the man next to them with a critical overview as if he'd committed a sin which would not be the first time or the last time.

He was relaxing, head lying down on his arms, hanging back as if this meeting wasn't going to determine whether or not she'd have the only family member she had to come to her wedding. Her weird Uncle Gepetto and his bratty child, Cornelia, being the tad exceptions to that rule.

He was acting as if he wasn't about to go up on trial against the woman she most highly respected. Her mother was one of the most amazing women that Alice had ever met except when it came to being lenient. His ease nearly stunned her when Alice decided to bring light to the matter that was concerning her the most.

"How can you be so relaxed when you're about to meet the most unlenient and most important woman in my life? She's going to judge you, Yuri Vorte Hyuga! And I can tell you that you're not on a good head start to the man she's been wanting me to marry since I was little!" Her furrowed angelic brows created the intense sight that Yuri Vorte Hyuga wanted to smother forever in his bed sheets with pleasure though he thought twice since they WERE in a taxicab and certain male reproductive organs were getting too worked up over that smoldering look of anger.

Okay, so he had blue balls. Any guy would if they faithfully listened to his girlfriend, like he constantly had to for two whole damned years. She BARELY let him KISS her even! That could justify his…….staff……as he tried to hide it and tried to get away from quite provocative and nasty thoughts that her intense furrowed expression was causing him to go to.

"Uh…..I don't know……." Her mother must be hot as well…….OH, spirits! He could shoot himself with that line of thought. What if Alice became a MILF? That was it! He had to make sure that Alice would not become a hot mother but then wouldn't he be screwed? "I..If your mom wants to m-make a judgment then she can. S-She's either going to hate me or…..like me…."

Thinking about Alice in a Gothic Lolita doll dress…….

She was going to kill him.

Her and her mother both.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Not even Lucius, Satan's son and major lover of all human things, could figure this thing out if he tried.

Well, at least on what exactly it was used for.

Which, a certain bewildered sexy sword spirit had no idea of.

Oh, finding out what that little pokey thing went into was easy. He knew how to play a mean game of matching.

So the outlet had been easy to do.

Now was the hard part. Where did it turn on at? Margerete had been yelling at him for the past five minutes to get to cleaning when he only continued his intriguing stare at the offensive human contraption.

He wasn't going to lose this battle, after all, he was a SWORD spirit and swords were usually the sharpest things in the sheath. Well, normally except if one was an old sword that hadn't been taken care of. Gods above and below that could be frightening!

Shaking his long braided black hair, Tryving put his mind away from the aging process of a sword spirit and to the process of how the hell the thing turned on. There were three switches or doohickeys on this and he didn't want to try it.

That was until he heard her move towards the door where he stood, holding the nose of the robotic machination. The toy seemed to be slightly lighter than most things in his grasp.

Trying his best to look busy, like he'd figure out how to use the thing, Tryving held the nozzle towards the most likely place that it seemed to go to in his mind.

The lacy blue drapes that Alice had picked out were rather waiting for some kind of godsend that a certain human-ignorant sword spirit would not figure out what one of those three switches would do.

That was when Margerete came in to see the sight before her. Tryving's hands clasped tightly around the bendable nozzle, squashing the round frame of the hose, while the nozzle tip was pushed up against the lacy blue drapes that Alice had picked out for her home.

It was then she decided that she should give him something simple to do, like dusting. Dusting was always easy and it wasn't noisy. She would do the vacuuming in the only rooms that were to be seen by the public aka the living room and the unoccupied guest room since Alice would be sleeping with her more than likely by the sound of it.

Dusting couldn't be that hard for a demon to figure out, right?

"It's okay. You look like a goof, Tryving. There's a feather duster in the kitchen. You can dust the shelves in the living room and the guest bedroom where Alice's mother will be sleeping." The ex-spy gently grasped the nozzle and crushed frame of the vacuum cleaner from the sword spirit and only sighed in thought as said sword spirit began to send a degrading look in her direction.

A haughty narrowing of his eyes warned her greatly of his displeasure at doing something for a mere human. He hated humans a lot, though he didn't mind women of any type, or harmonixers and other mystical races that looked like them. Their stupid mechanical items and their ideas were not pleasing to his stomach, though there was always the chance for darkness in the cities where demons did thrive quite well.

It just wasn't like the old days where there was the thrill of getting a pure human with magical talent or a wish to be done and to finish it for them. Oh, that was long gone nearly a hundred years before.

So he was stuck in the wrong era, but he still felt as if this was the right place for him now, otherwise who would protect Margerete from Albert Simon other than him? Yuri could try but he needed to watch over his own woman otherwise Albert would get her and give her to one of his lesser wanted colleagues.

That would never bode well. Rolling his eyes and smiling as he noticed a certain pair of buns bending over to switch on the vacuum cleaner, he forgave his silly mistress. She was his after all.

Damn his horny self.

"All right, poppet."

As he went around her to pick up a hair band, he accidentally let slip a hand and then ran before Malkovich could register what had exactly happened.

LLLLLLLLLL

He looked upon the failing woman. It was then when his eyes caught hers in a harsh contest that he noticed that her eyes were that of his dead wife. Those irises drew him into a world of death and destruction.

Then it clicked.

This was no servant of the Varuna. She was no mind-ghoul or spirit guide. The royal purple robes reminded him of her wedding dress with the gold trim, like the garb adorning her body. He could remember the bewitching factor those things had given him and now, well, now…………..

He was still bewitched by those pair of eyes and it was then that he could see the past.

She was his past. Lucrezia or as she was called really, Lilliana, was telling him to move on, to leave her since she was no longer his. She was God's angel now.

His anger at his wife smoldered deeply and he wanted to crush in her precious little face that he loved. She was holding onto him with tears in her eyes, the eyes of sacrifice she was paying to him as her payment for her time of freedom from the curse of her name and background.

The drugged acuteness of the magic in her caused Keith to stiffen. She didn't have very long. She didn't want to lose her time causing him to regret everything. She was giving him the consent to kill her, to let her go into the abyss of his memories as nothing more than a liar to his virtuous nature.

She was asking for him to do it as she felt she wasn't worth it. Those salt drops falling away from her face, such uniquely crafted by her spirit to fall away into the darkness surrounding them.

"I…….." Was he sure about this? It was just like with Malkovich. In a flash of his mind, he could see the woman be replaced by her blonde twin with blue eyes to only shake his head in thought as everything was slowly falling away into the red hue of his tears.

She was looking defeated, shamed, and more than even when her body had died and all his dreams of her afterward…………she looked dead.

Her eyes didn't show the way she had wanted to live. They now only showed a past that was no longer able to be lived in since both people in them had moved away from each other.

He knew now that he could be sure of his actions as his anger ebbed away into the void that was now surrounding the spirit of his dead wife.

"I……forgive you." A small trickle of blood from his eyes made it all the way down to the floor, swallowing away into the darkness making the ink resemble nothing more than splotch of velvet in a satin-covered coffin.

Lilliana's eyes widened in disbelief as her hands tightened immediately upon the arm of the vampiric outlaw. His simple words brought such shock that Lilliana wandered into her own mind in a sense of reverie over the years.

She wanted this, waiting forever for those three silly words to escape his mouth when he would learn about the truth of her and her line. She could never be happier in her life as she felt a burden rise away from her though the truth still left a bitter aftertaste in her mouth.

Pulling her up with his will, Keith only stared at her before he gave into holding her as close as possible to his body, teeth hungering for her soul as he held her close. Her eyes fell away with tears before she knew she had to stifle them.

It was time.

She could feel her soul leaving, magic going away into its new body, the one that she was willing to go away for, the one that would give her vampire husband another chance at happiness for himself.

"I don't have much time, Keith. I am happy to have heard those words from you. I must not tarry for any longer than I have and you will watch my soul die and that is a sight I wish to stray you from." Her eyes were calm with the serene peace she had finally accomplished in her life.

He stared bewildered, only nodding in response, his mind numb and body satiated with her simply filling his arms once more though he saw another flash of blonde hair and blue eyes instead of the brunette tresses and golden green eyes his dead wife held.

"Loki Simon is the daughter of my cousin, Katarina Varuna. Please do not kill her. She is a kind child and also the last woman of the Varuna line. Albert Simon is your true enemy. He wants to completely eradicate all who live on this Earth so he can create another world where Earth's magic is returned to undo the curse of his child." Sighing, fingering a string of her own curly mess of curls, Lilliana continued.

"We do not know who he will use as his summoning, but we do know that the magic in this world is slowly evaporating into nothing. The only thing I can ask of you is to help Loki and to protect Marianna Nicola Malkovich from Albert's plans, for she will contain the powers I had when I was alive." Lilliana looked down to his chest were he still smelled of her perfume, a lavender scent amongst the sandalwood.

"This is goodbye then? How will I find this Marianna?" Smiling as her body began to pull away from opaque sight, the Varuna woman told him a simple thing.

"She's here in your last memory. You already know her. All you have to do is protect her." Keith nodded, thinking over to the blonde haired beauty. He knew her scent by heart, and even more, he knew that he could find her if he tried within a few weeks if he sent word to all he knew.

There was hope for her yet, and hope for him as well.

She was fading fast. He noticed how suddenly light her frame started becoming by the second. His eyes, the green forgiving sea in them, widened in alarm as he felt her frame leaving him with the open air instead.

"T….This is goodbye then?" His heart lurched in his memory as he could tell the very ounce of details from her last death compared to the void of this last one. Her soul was going with all ounces of her magic.

"Yes……..I have no time. I am giving my essence to Marianna. I will no longer exist. You will never meet me in heaven or in hell, Keith for I will not be anywhere." She would no longer exist? Had he heard her right? In his questioning eyes, he could see the affirmation of her words as she nodded. It was true then.

He knew he had to tell her one last time before she went. He knew the words would comfort her and weaken her fears if she had any.

"Lucre-I mean, Lilliana……I will always love you……" He knew the moment he had said her true name that true happiness spread throughout her increasingly disappearing body. The smile on her transparent face widened into a grin to make even the highest choir of angels to sing.

"As will I to you, but we must go our separate ways…." But it was her eyes that saddened only slightly as she traced a faint finger trail down the side of his face, washing the blood tears into nothing.

"I know." He didn't want to know. The mere acknowledgement that he was going to lose her forever this time, registered calmly in his mind. He was no longer attached for he knew that he could not be.

"Goodbye, my love." It was with the briefest of touches upon his lips and the glimmer of a smile that he last saw his dead wife.

It was the second time he had lost her and this time it was permanent.

LLLLLLLLLL

"Mom!" The woman with the cat-eye glasses looked up from her bible, held comfortingly in her lap, to see her young late daughter, the apple of her eyes, Alice. A rougher on the eyes individual sauntered behind her with a curious grin as he looked towards the woman that the young pristine lady was walking towards in a manner fit for a young woman of her stature.

The ruffian behind the girl however caused her mother's eyebrows to knit with worry as she was followed by the brigand much like a puppy dog. Had her daughter's fiancé turned out to be this thing trudging a trail of embarrassment after her rather pristine young lady?

She had to question in her mind that the boy just might be a slight homeless puppy waiting for a scrap from the dinner table at her daughter's home. Seeing a rather careless look on the ruffian, the woman was highly affronted by his posture alone. It was then that she made her first impression on him, metal clasp included.

WHACK!

"MOM!" The attack had surprised Alice as she watched her mother rush off to hit the man behind her with such speed that surprised the girl for the woman was an elderly woman who had retired from excorisms. Her knowledge to whether or not her mother worked out caused Alice to wander into the midst of thoughts that had no bearing on the situation at the moment.

"WHAT THE?" Evidently, Yuri was surprised as well when he felt the sudden heavy ominous burn from the holy book of god against the side of his cranium. His eyes were squinted shut for a mere second before he saw another ominous shadow above his head.

WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

"OW! STOP THAT!" Growling, Yuri blindly lashed out for the offending object to only feel nothing but air as Mrs. Elliot dodged his hands as she frowned heavily at the boy.

"MOM! HE'S" Alice thought of the only thing that could stop the fight was if her mother realized that this ruffian that had followed her was her fiancé and potential husband. She wasn't sure what to do exactly. Her face moved between both faces, unsure of herself.

WHACK! WHACK! THWAK!

"GODDAMNIT!" Yuri cursed as his head was hit with another round of resounding hits, which turned out to be the wrong move to make in front of the extreme Catholic. His mind hadn't registered this fact of truth yet.

"MY!" Alice was highly alarmed for her fiancé had used a highly unwanted extreme use of language that she knew her mother would not like. Oh, her mother could be no more furious as Alice went into action trying to hold back the iron arms of her mother.

" NEVER USE GOD'S NAME IN VAIN!"

BAAAAAM! THWAK! WHACK! With a squawk of rational anger, the crazed Catholic rammed the book into the brigand's stomach crushing his diaphragm with metal clasp digging in and scratching as the metal unclasped sharply against his shirt. The abrasive weapon was raising up for a final strike.

"….all………right…..ladiiieeeeee……." Bent over and clutching his stomach, Yuri wondered why he ever agreed to come with Alice. Hell, he even wondered how in the hell he decided to ask for her hand in marriage. First it had been the deal with her being a reporter, then with her informant's craziness, and now her mother and whatever minor crap he put up with. Then he remembered the exact reason as he fought the urge to fight back on an old lady. He loved Alice and he would endure this for her if he had to.

"FIANCE!" Alice's hold on her mother tightened as she cringed from the feeling of her mother's stare. Relaxing as her mother's body stopped tensing, Alice opened her wide blue eyes to see the apologetic smile in green ones like the grass in the sun of God.

"Oh, I didn't notice, dear." And this all left Alice grandly wondering on the reaction her mother would take to them all living in Margerete's apartment.

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AN: OMG! I UPDATED! This is like beating Meta-God all over again! I am pissed off though right now. I can't beat Shadow Hearts: Convenant simply because my disc got scratched and my friend is the one with a disc cleaner because he's just that motivated to be a gamer. (Game freezes up whenever I defeat the Queen's Garden.)

Anyway, I finally got a working laptop that I love and is loving me back right now by actually working. I love it when my lappie does that.

Anyways! I gtg, LOVES TO ALL! PLEASE REVIEW!