A/N: 'ello to all of you in the Shadow Hearts fandom! Matinee Idol here, offering up some KarinxNicolai, because they're amazing and should be canon but, woefully, are not.

So I'm really not sure how this is going to work. This little Saints and Sinners thing was supposed to be this nice little one-shot, until it started coming in fragments. I could have either frustrated myself to oblivion and tried to still continue it as a one-shot. Or I could take the lazy way out and do drabbles.

Guess which one won?

So this is essentially my first dabble into the SHC fandom. If anything's off whatsoever, tell me! I still haven't finished the game, so I'm probably missing a few important character building things, though I know how it ends. (Remember the Battleship Mikasa? I've been stuck there two months, even with walkthroughs. WOE.)

Also, this is for Remi, who I blame my entire madness for this pairing on. If she had not given me this game, I would not be writing this right now, wasting my free period doing things that are unproductive. Unimaginable. I love you, Remi. :)

So, without further ado, sit back, relax, and tell me what you think. Review if you're so inclined—I'd like to be better at this.

Saints and Sinners

I.

Liar's Rosary.

Karin Koenig and Nicolai Conrad both wear crosses at their throats, a brand to the world that they are baptized, fed, and confirmed in the Lord. Theirs is a religion of sinners and saints, and while they stray, they go towards the light whenever they can. The crosses say that, but the world doesn't listen and tends to look instead. Hers is large and black, framed by silver, dangling above the standard-grade military shirt at her collarbones. His is small and gold, more a status symbol than anything else, but a handsome and rich one nonetheless.

She wears one for the sake of her mother, who is long-dead, but who feared for the safety of her daughter, a lieutenant in the German army. It is a promise she intends to keep, and she can promise herself or anyone else anything. She trusts the world, even if her privates tell her it's a stupid idea. But they're younger than she is and they grew up differently than she has. They know nothing about her and what she's planning, and she intends to keep it that way.

He wears one because it's a prop in this drama of a trick, the ultimate deception. Deep down he remembers his beliefs, the ones his mother told him before the pneumonia took her. His beliefs are uncomplicated and not full of stupid, illogical things like souls and damnation and hellfire. He has lied to the Church when his loyalty belongs somewhere else, and the Russian sorcerer in the shadows is all to blame.

Both of them are lying by omission if nothing else, and the eighth commandment told the God-fearing races: "Thou shalt not bear false witness." And that's what brings them together in the first place.