So, I'm leaving in two days, right? So my thinking is that I'll just post a bunch of chapters ('a bunch' as in 'maybe two if I'm lucky') and then probably disappear off the face of the earth while I figure this university-stuff out.

Anyway, story-time! MY INTERNET CAUGHT ON FIRE YESTERDAY. Yep. My little bro discovered it and went 'omg the internet box is melted' and then the next four hours was spent trying to replace / fix it. Honestly, from my corner of wifi-less despair, I didn't think it would work. But it did. And it's GORGEOUS~

So, that's my story. But whatev. Here's the Gehenna POV (yeah, I changed the names of the chapters; did anyone notice?) and enjoy the show. A pretty dang long chapter this time because shit goes down. This is for you, blood-guts-and-gore dudes. Comments at the end, like usual.

*** I changed the title again; honestly, I never liked Finders Keepers. I really like Dust and Ashes. It won't be changed again, I promise hahah

...

Raziele POV

...

The fire of the torches, mounted to the wall, flickered as Raziele walked past. The flames seemed to wave to him, but in a greeting or goodbye, he didn't know. All he knew was that he hated this place, hated this place and everyone in it.

Well, there were a few exceptions. Agni was one; if the rations were low and all he wanted was another bite of food, she would end up giving him ten. Rin was the other exception; the hybrid, like him, didn't know anything about this place. Didn't know of the brutality in the corners, didn't understand the tight weave of control this place truly had. If he got caught in its web, Rin would be lost. Raziele knew that, and knew that time was running out.

The grace period was ending.

And Rin would have to face the real world: This world, and somehow come out of the experience without losing himself.

Raziele smiled, a helpless smile, and used the wall to lean against. His vision was swimming; Hades, and the slaves beneath him, hadn't been very kind. Even now the still-healing whip lashes on his back burned and stung as they struggled to regenerate, but Raziele hardly had any energy left to spare. He was too busy focusing on just walking in a straight line.

"Isolation my ass," he hissed. Hades had better get his slaves in line before Satan decided to pay a visit, or he'd lose half of them at least. Hell, maybe some of the slaves would be better off dead. Lucifer knows how bad they have it off.

But at least, he grimaced, forcing himself to stand again, it's not me. It was almost him; after Beelzebub killed his mother with the bubonic plague, he had 'adopted' Raziele. Little Raziele, who didn't know anything, who missed his mom more than anything, who watched her die as her skin blackened and rotted while she was alive, who watched her puke blood as her lungs filled with water. He watched his mom, the sun in a world so dark, have seizure after seizure until one day, she just never woke up.

They dumped her in a pit after that. A nameless pit, full of other bodies, and burned them all. Raziele remembered the smoke curling to the black, starless sky, the feeling of Beelzebub's large hand painfully crushing his small, child hand as he forced the toddler to watch. Raziele remembered screaming, crying, and when the fire went away, all that was left in that black pit were charred bodies. Just charred, nameless, smoldering bodies. Little Raziele cried that day.

He had never cried again.

He made certain of it. Not even when Beelzebub chained him to the floor and fed him worse than animals, not when Beelzebub beat him, futilely, into submission. He didn't make a sound, not a single sound. It was like he was dead inside.

But one day, something inside of him broke. He was a little bit older then and hid inside one of the cupboards of the kitchen. He was so tiny; malnutrition had a role in that, and the sight of all the food dragged more emotion from his numb body than years of beatings ever could.

And that's how Agni found him; little Raziele, curled up inside the cupboard, holding onto a loaf of bread like it the most precious thing in the world. He smiled at the memory; he had tried to attack her, actually. He, after the early years of living in a room with his human mother and the more recent chained to the ground, he had hardly any human left inside of him. The human was beaten to practically nothing; the demon, however, was more alive than ever and it demanded to live.

Agni was a threat, and he quickly learned that, in Gehenna, it was better to falsely destroy a perceived threat than wait until you knew for certain. He remembered that he had bit her hand, like a stray cat, but instead she placed a single apple in front of him and walked away.

That red apple was the best thing Raziele had ever tasted. The sudden sweet taste, the sugar, had almost made him faint when he had bitten into it.

Hades had told him not to give himself up for someone else. But in truth, Raziele say a bit of himself in Rin; the cluelessness, the innocence, and what would happen if the others got his hands on him. Raziele balled his fist against the wall; he couldn't let that happen, couldn't let Rin fall like Raziele fell.

After all, they were brothers, weren't they?

Suddenly Raziele's vision swam. The attack was so intense he fell to his knees. The world around him darkened, and he blacked out.

...

Rin POV

...

Rin wasn't sure how long he stared out the window, stared at the sky and wondered if there was maybe a single star hidden behind that cloud, or that the lighting was off and he just couldn't see them. It was such a little thing, almost insignificant, but it unnerved Rin more than cared to admit.

Suddenly, he didn't want to be outside his room anymore.

He turned away from the window to the outside world and began to run, run down the halls like there were shadows on the floor, shadows that were chasing him, screaming behind him, their long midnight fingers reaching for his ankles. His heart beat like a wild thing in his chest; suddenly, for a reason he could not explain, he was terrified.

The emotions he had kept buried and locked away from the moment he arrived began to crack. His vision was going white, his ears rang. His breathing was harsh in his throat, and cold sweat trickled down his spine.

He wanted to go home.

He didn't want to be here. He couldn't take it, couldn't take it a moment longer, couldn't take having to look where he walked just in case something would kill him just for walking the wrong way. He wanted to go home, to where Yukio and Shura and Shiemi and Kuro were, to where his friends were, to where he could wake up without wondering what would happen the next morning. He hated this, hated this place, missed his home, missed it to the point that he could barely stand it. It was like a physical ache in his chest, a steady throb that made the slightest movement painful.

Why did I draw that sword on that day?

He turned the corner and slipped, then hit the ground hard. His head thwacked against the hard floor and, for a moment, his vision went blank. But it passed a moment later and Rin was running again, running with nowhere to run to, running like the devil was chasing him home.

That is, until he saw a familiar body lying on the floor. Rin paused, breathing hard; Raziele? Was that Raziele? It had to be; the faint pink hair, the slender body, the pale skin.

But it was paler than it should be.

"Raziele," Rin whispered, a harsh sound in his throat. Adrenaline made his hands shook and he knelt beside Raziele; blood had seeped through the white cotton of his shirt, just angry scarlet lines that looked like an etch-a-sketch. "Raziele," he said again, panic making his throat tight.

The demon's rosy eyelashes fluttered open and suddenly his arm snapped up, his slender fingers wrapping around Rin's throat. Rin hardly breathed as his own hand instinctively clenched onto Raziele's wrist, but he was careful not to accidently bruise the pale skin.

"Ra - Raziele," Rin whispered. "It's me. R - Rin."

Raziele's partially opened cherry eyes widened briefly, and the hand that held Rin's neck relaxed slightly. "Rin?"

"Yeah," Rin replied. An icy calm suddenly came over him, and the emotions that had overtaken him moments ago were stuffed back into the dark corner of his mind. "Come on; we need to get you out of this hallway."

"Damn you," Raziele murmured. His hand fell limp to the ground like a dead thing. "Damn you for finding me first."

"You'll thank me later," Rin replied, slowly helping the older demon sit up. Raziele leaned against the floor, his gaze locked on the ceiling. "What happened?"

At that, Raziele dryly laughed. A little color came back to his cheeks. "'Isolation chamber'," he said, using his fingers as quotations. Suddenly his voice got an icy chill to it. "Isolation chamber my ass," he continued with a hiss. There was no happy-go-lucky attitude to his voice, no hidden smile, no cheery thought embellishing every word.

Instead, for the first time, Rin saw Raziele as the demon he was truly capable of. But instead of scaring him, it reassured him. There wasn't a doubt in Rin's mind that Raziele wouldn't be okay. "Here," he said, holding out his hand, "I'll help you - "

Stand.

But he never got to that last word. A sudden hand, large and muscular, wrapped around Rin's head and threw him backward. He slammed against the far wall, leaving a tent. He felt a few ribs crack, break, shatter beneath the pressure and he cried out. He then fell heavily onto the floor, onto his hands and knees, but even they gave up on him and he toppled over, wondering what just happened.

However, it was only when the frothy blood, mixed with his own spit, suddenly splattered onto the floor when a cough wracked his body that he knew that he was seriously hurt.

"Rin!" Raziele shouted, and Rin could hear him struggling to get to his feet. However, there was a second blast beside him; when Rin mustered the energy to look, Raziele was slumped beside him on the floor, blood seeping through his white cotton shirt, the back of his rosy head turning scarlet from the blood.

"Raziele?" Rin whispered, reaching over with his arm. He gently nudged the demon's shoulder slightly. "Raziele?" he said again, but there was no response. Nothing. Not even a breath.

Dead?

Something chilled inside of Rin.

Is Raziele dead?

He slowly glanced upward to the attacker, but the most he could see were the bottom of black dress-trousers and black shoes. Hatred swelled inside of him; hatred, fear, panic, self-loathing, denial.

Raziele can't be dead.

It just . . . it just wasn't possible. Inconceivable.

And yet his chest didn't rise with every faint breath, he didn't stir, didn't speak, didn't move. Nothing. Just laid there on the ground like a dead thing as blood tripped from his pink hair and onto the floor, from his back to the rubble of the wall they laid on.

Dead.

And Rin went berserk.

He didn't have Kurikara, but at this moment, he didn't need it. Blue flames enveloped him and his upper incisors dug into his bottom lip, drawing blood even as he opened his mouth in a scream. Within moments he had gotten to his feet, his arms swaying lifelessly in front of him even as the bones snapped back into place, the tendons stitched themselves together. The skin that had been torn off of Rin's face from the initial blow pieced itself together like a puzzle as the world went blue, the same blue as the sapphire sky, the ocean, the blood-lust he now felt.

He didn't know who attack them. He realized that he didn't care. The lock and key his emotions were buried under didn't just crack; it shattered, the fragments spiraling in all directions, and the blaze burned brighter.

When he opened his mouth to scream again, it no longer sounded human. This was Rin the demon, through and through, the Prince of Gehenna that demanded to be paid for the attack in blood-money.

He crouched, his body now pieced together, and lunged. The world passed by in blurs of sapphire hues as his hand flattened, exposing the lethal claws, and he swung at the demon's neck.

Thick neck, the chest covered by a black suit and tie. The demon laughed, a familiar laugh, and his hand snapped forward to catch Rin's at the wrist.

"Good," the demon whispered, his breath hot against Rin's elongated ear, "but not good enough."

Suddenly the demon grabbed Rin's arm with both hands and brought his knee up, cleanly breaking the bone at the forearm. Rin screamed but the pain didn't register; nothing did, only hate, hate, hate -

- I am going to kill this man, burn him dead, dead, dead, dead -

- dead, dead, burn him to soot and ashes.

His pupils elongated, the three-patterned swirl began to form.

Burn him to the ground.

Rin, with his good hand, reached forward and grabbed the demon's face. The blue flame inside of Rin began to build, a physical ache in his chest that demanded release, demanded to be set free but there was no way, no way to just let the flames go, so the pressure just continued to build and build and build and Rin's hand spasmed on the demon's face; he couldn't take the pressure much longer, the pressure that ached and screamed inside of him like a wild thing, and it just kept on building and building and building . . .

Snap.

The world exploded in a titillation of sapphire blue and star-flame white. Rin screamed. The air popped from the sudden change of pressure and the air began to boil. The thick carpet, warn down the center, burned into a fit of flame as the walls blackened and burst with blue fire.

And yet the demon in front of Rin continued to laugh, laugh and laugh and laugh . . .

. . . and Rin, completely spent, collapsed to the floor. The flame that surrounded his body disappeared completely, though the flames around him continued to burn and belch black smoke into the hallway. Rin didn't care. He felt hollow, numb, empty, just a dead thing on the floor. He couldn't even feel pain.

A hand reached down and wrapped slender fingers around Rin's neck, lifting him off the floor until his feet dangled in the open, heated air. A piece of the ceiling gave way and crashed to the floor, sending bits of wood spiraling into the air where the burnt away to ash.

"That was good, Rin," the demon whispered, "but pointless. You're coming with me."

And then Rin was suddenly cradled in thick, warm arms. A part of him screeched that something was wrong. The other just wanted to close his eyes and sleep forever.

"But, my lord Satan," said another voice, "there's another one, on the floor - "

"Leave it, Azazel," Satan stated, turning to walk down the burning hall. "It's useless to us."

There was a pause, and then, "Of course, my lord."

OOOOOOOOOH SHIIIIIIIIIT. Another King of Hell. Dun-dun-duuuuuun! :D :D :D

But I won't say another word about that. How was the long chapter? :) It's literally two-three times as long as regular chapters, so you all better appreciate the two hours of work I put into this. Yes, two. whole. hours.

And you know what I just realized? I get emotionally attached to my own characters. Ack. This story is gonna be brutal.

Anyway, comment's time!

Edwenlas: Well damn. I wish you had an account so I could just PM you and not use up an entire crippin' paragraph to explain why Yukio is cleaning his pistols, but whatever. Yukio will be taking this one step at a time. Why clean the guns? Because he needs them later and if they screw up the mission, they're all dead or worse. Why not interrogate Amaimon then and there? Because the dude will continue to be there even after the whole rescue-mission because 1) he has nowhere else to go and 2) he will be sticking to Mephisto like glue, and so there will be plenty of time for questions after the rescue operation (if it goes well) and, instead of asking Amaimon who's communication skills suck, they can ask Mephisto who's the mastermind of the entire operation. That's why Yukio is cleaning his guns instead of interrogating the demon; like a said early, one thing at a time. Trust me, I actually think about these chapters before I scribble them down. And yeah, I know, I'm probably being an ass and sorry if I sound a bit rude, but it really rubs me the wrong way when people tell me how my story should be written. I'm totally fine with ideas or people telling me I got some typos; I actually appreciate those. But reviews that flat-out tell people that they could write it better? That's a thousand times more rude than what I'm being right now. If you have a problem, please write your own story instead of criticizing other people's. Thanks.

InsaniumArtisan: Really? o_o I don't read M-rated material here, so I'm not really sure how far to go hahah. And by the way, you're dead-on; the demon - drugs are INCREDIBLY important to this story. :)

Clarity in Scarlet: Whooo go Shiemi! (and yeah; I'm still working on how to write an M-rated story. It's so much different from T, actually. I was surprised. But no worry; I'll get the hang of it eventually! :) One chapter at a time!) :D

Dowgma: hahahahah dude I love how excited you are about this story. Thank you so much! Literally, it means a lot to me :)

Emily Blue Paw: About the Raziele - tab . . . I should do that. I'll get started next chapter! :D thanks for the idea!

Six-page story complete (not counting the other stuff).

Have an amazing day and stay awesome,

Rand0mSmil3z

(PS - has anyone been reading/watching Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titans)? Because I discovered this yesterday and I'm obsessed hahah)