Verboten - Vietato - Kinmotsu - Forbidden

WIP 3 of 13

AN: Hello my friends. I'm updating midweek, because I have been having a very stressful time since my ultrasound last week and I wasn't up to updating or writing much last week. It turns out that I'm going to be delivering a couple of weeks before planned due to complications. But don't worry me and baby are okay, everyone's just making sure that we stay that way. So instead of her birthday being after Thanksgiving it's going to be this Friday. I'm a bit nervous… ok a lot nervous. I've never done this before. But I figured that you would like a chapter before I went into the hospital this weekend. So here it is. It may not be the best thing out there at the moment, but then I may go back and revamp it later to make it better once the sleep deprivation kicks in.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

-Simon and Garfunkel "The Sounds of Silence"

Disclaimer: I do not own Chrno Crusade, just what I've done to them. If you want to sue me, you can have my insane cat and my medical bills.

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"I know what it's like to lose a partner. I lost mine a long time ago. . . . I felt so lost, . . . I'd give anything, anything, to have her back."

Dreams inevitably lead us on a path that we cannot always follow clearly and must therefore stumble along uncertain and afraid. In some the way becomes clear and path stands out in stark relief against the haze of possibilities that surround it. In others the path become so covered in our own self-limiting uncertainties that one is left hesitating, afraid to make a move or take a change. Stagnant in anxiety. Wistfulness replaces conviction. Dread and sorrow replace the thrill of discovery. And the past becomes either that to which we cling or the thing we renounce.

Gabriel Santo once thought that his path in life was clear and that there was nothing in any world to keep him from obtaining anything and everything that he desired. But then life went and turned out to be quite different from what he had expected. He had always had the confidence of his family behind him and his father at his side. He had thought that there was nothing that could change his life or make him doubt that which he had always been assured was his by right.

He couldn't understand how one female could, in a single turn of phrase, take him and turn his whole world upside down and inside out. Turn him into something, or rather someone that he didn't know and would have never acknowledged within himself as being.

How in all the nine hells could he possibly be that which she had so readily pronounced him to be. This person whom even his haughty father respected as he did no other creature in existence.

Though in his heart he knew that the words she had spoken were the truth, he did not want to understand them. That is, if he were to be honest with himself. Which at this very moment he did not even want nor try to be.

At the moment he was concerned, in a more immediate, though superficial, way, as to the whereabouts and intentions of his host.

Gabriel was no fool. He knew that Mr. Anthony had very few if any charitable reasons for taking him in and keeping him in such luxury. Gabriel knew that the man was using him for some nefarious purpose. He could only assume that the man's quick acceptance of him had something to do with the work he was doing with his father and the Magdalene Order.

The thought of his past as a member of that Order being a contributing factor to Mr. Anthony's behavior was brief and quickly discarded.

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There's a ticking in my mind.

I can feel my life slipping through my fingers. It feels like ice.

"We did it love."

That soft voice again. I hear it always in between the ticks.

"Hold on."

Everything is green. It flows through my mind like water.

"You've got to hold on."

Hold on?

What is there to hold on to in a world where everything is cold and love hurts.

"Don't leave me."

A soft touch to my face is all I can feel of the real world. Fingertips that are warm like a candles flame.

"I love you."

Crimson eyes shed crystal tears above me.

"Please don't leave me."

I sorry my love.

Oh, the ticks have stopped.

"Rosette!"

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Gabriel gasped as he woke from his dream. The same dream that had haunted him as a child. It was only now as an adult that he understood.

"Madre de Dio! It cannot be true."

But it was and he knew it. He truly was who the beautiful nun in New York thought he was.

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Silvered eyes narrowed as they watched the young demon bury his head in his arms and cry.

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