Pale

Interlude Part Eight: Deus Ex Machina

Note: Okay, my previous gore warning once more. This might be a great chapter…or it might not be, I've kind of gone back on my own word...and I haven't. And I have taken a few unexpected turns for the story, tested D's character in ways I did not originally plan…but at long last I have figured out how I want to end this story. So far this one has been the biggest challenge to write, much of it was unplanned. But now I think I have it, and just hope that my readers like this and the future of this story. *nervous!*

"Deus ex machina", literally god from the machine, is an ironic plot device in which a surprising or unexpected event occurs in a stories plot, suddenly and completely resolving an otherwise unsolvable conflict."- Wikipedia

"I am dead, but I am also here." - Beginning of the End, Lost.

Another twelve hours of anguish passed, yet with most of the tortures D's plan of forgiveness and closure worked seamlessly, but his enemies were not so easy to appease, and he suffered for their hatred. By the end he'd again suffered the loss of every limb, bleed to the point of unconsciousness, been burned and branded over much of his skin.

Once the twelfth hour struck and smell of the swiftly approaching dawn began to creep through the tiny chinks in the brickwork Dracula rose from where he'd been seating to wallow in his sons agony and called off the torment that a peasant child had been unwillingly inflecting. Dracula's face was now quite devoid of victory as he returned D's severed limbs for the night but his dour expression suddenly shifted when he turned away and grasped Asenath's hand quite suddenly, shoving something gleaming onto one of her fingers.

"Enough of this." Dracula commanded sharply gazing raptly over at D, "I suppose that your think yourself clever don't you D? You couldn't be more wrong. I created you, I've watched you and followed you your whole life, and I can destroy you. I wanted to take this slowly, save the fire works for the end, but you've gone and forced my hand. Let's see just how easily you can dismiss this ghost." This time Dracula did not squeeze the Resurrection stone, rather he held it out before D. It was a miniscule little relic, a cracked obsidian set within an ancient, ugly golden ring. He pressed this ring into D's remaining hand, "This time you're going to call her to you."

Asenath, that now was only herself lowered her head in submission, awaiting the next transformation to overtake her hollow form. "You remember her don't you my son? The one you miss the most, more than your own mother? Don't tell me you don't remember her green eyes, her silky hair, the way she kissed you and held you?"

"No" D groaned, fighting away they image of her face, suddenly so vivid and full of life against his eyes.

"Don't fight it, D." Dracula sneered softly as he pressed the ring even closer to D's palm and turned it thrice. "You've spent so long trying to remember her, you've drugged yourself just to recall her face, why deny that face now? Remember, and she's all yours for eternity. I took her from you, but I can bring her back again. I keep my promises D."

He shook his head. Now a thousand memories, a million sensations that had been lost before this moment came deluging over him, he could almost feel her embrace. Perhaps his mother's words had been right, perhaps the ones you loved never left you at all, and they remained forever at your side, just beyond your perception. But now he was aware, Luna was indeed at his side, within his mind, filling him with her defiance. But soon her memory would be twisted and corrupted, forced into a vessel unwilling to hold her, her spirit forced to do terrible acts against him.

But nothing happened.

Asenath blinked in confusion, her hollow form remained unchanged by the spirit that should have entered it. Dracula glared at the Pale One, "What the hell are you waiting for? Change!"

The Pale One shook her head, "I…I can't...she's not here!"

"What do you mean?" the Sacred Ancestor demanded, "You're wearing her ring, and he has the stone. I've done every possible thing to spark forth her memory, the Nymph whore is here, change goddamn it!"

She screwed her face into a wince but nothing occurred, "She….she's just not here! I don't feel a presence in my heart. I see an image from this ring, but that's not enough for me keep her presence for more than few seconds or so. I am sorry, my Lord!"

"That's bullshit." Dracula cried, the crimson flaring once again in his eyes. "So long as something of her mortal image remains on his Earth than that bitch should be here! The memory of her alone ought to be enough for the Resurrection Stone to work, and that ring should insure that it does. I personally saw that her spirit cannot rest, not after what I did to the little whore. She'll haunt this Earth until it crumbles beneath her, so don't lie to me Asenath!" his last words were a thunderous roar.

It was D that spoke next, his words calm and collected as though he were completely removed from all pain. "You're wrong."

Dracula whirled about to face his son, his face a mask of demonic fury, "What?"

"A bit of wisdom that I learned from Alhazred, Cthulhu's most devoted servant. Ghosts repeat their actions because they cannot grasp what it is that ties them to the Earthly plane, and cannot properly rest because of it. But more often than not it's matters of the heart that binds the spirit to the Earthly plain. If that's the case than all one needs to do is to have the sprit recall the name of who they most loved in life, and that shall free them. Luna is free; I released her from myself and from the binds of the Earth over two thousand years ago. Cthulhu tried to use her spirit in that way, and after I slew him I knew it would only be a matter of time before you tried to corrupt her spirit in the same way"

Now Dracula was glaring down at D with a malevolence that was so potent Asenath had to tear her eyes from him as pain pieced her retinas.

"You wouldn't dare…" he hissed lowly even as acceptance began to wash over him. For millennia he'd devised this torture, patiently awaited to find the Pale One, only to realize that D had bested him once again, had been prepared for such an event all along. "You would dare to sacrifice the one glimpse that remains of her dear Nymph just to best me?"

"There isn't anything that I wouldn't give just to see you fall." the Hunter replied, gazing coolly up at the livid demon before him.

For a moment bitter acceptance crossed Dracula's contorted face until a maniacal screaming laughter welled from his mouth, rimmed with small needle like fangs. "Anything? Anything at all D, very well!" He turned his back to D and barked out a command, "Renfield! Asenath! Release him from the wall, but don't take off his chains. Hold him still!" His servants scrambled to obey while Dracula disappeared into one of the many shadows of the dungeon and reappeared a moment later, a foot thick taper of sharpened wood was clinched in his hands as though it weighed nothing at all.

Renfield twittered with slight laughter, hardly able to contain himself. Asenath appeared to have no true idea what was happening but fear was rampant in her dull face, while D's body appeared to grow rigid at the sight of the immense stake but he did not fight his captors. Dracula lowered the stake slightly, angled it downward and brilliant, maniacal hated twisted his features as he gave a roar and rushed forward. The stake rammed almost to easily into D's body, tearing apart his abdomen yet Dracula has thrust at an upward angle, forcing the thick pole of wood to rend upward though D's midsection and chest and to burst outward just below his right shoulder blade with horrific gush of blood.

For a second D howled with the crushing pain of it, dark colored blood spurted from his mouth, his knees buckled and he would have fallen had a laughing Renfield and a shocked beyond expression Asenath not being holding his chains upward. The wood throbbed like a streak of fire embedded with his body, the organs decimated by its pathway protested even worse.

With a sickly smile Dracula laid his hand upon the stake and moved toward D, pausing once he stood close enough to have embraced him. "You have your mothers' eyes." he commented hauntingly.

In a pale blur Dracula's his clawed fingers shot forward and plunged into D's left eye. This time D shrieked out in pain, it was agony almost as vivid as being poisoned by manticore venom, as crippling as the pain of losing the ones he most loved. In his immortality he'd suffered just about every wound, in the last 48 hours bore though every sadistic torture his father could imagine but until now none of them he'd suffered directly by Dracula's bare hand. Death was simple, a momentary agony before darkness. Pain was simple, something that D could merely push aside and step back into the battle but the damage he was suffering at his fathers own hand was not simple. It was as if Dracula were savoring every terribly moment of watching his son writhe about, and was making sure that D was wholly experiencing the power of his weaponless hand. With crushing vividness D felt his fathers claws grope within the socket and grasp the eyeball, he felt the fiery snap all the way to his brain as he ripped the retina and then the distressing blackness that crashed down forever on half of his vision.

Before the blood veiled the rest of his sight D saw his father triumphant expression and the bloody orb of his eye clinched within his claws. Amidst his own cries, and Asenath's shrill screams he heard Dracula's manic laughter once again. His fanged maw opened wide and then closed downs upon the horrific orb, and a terrible whitish fluid dripped down past his lips and then he swallowed.

Any hope of regenerating his lost eye was gone now; vampires and dhampir's could instantly regenerate parts of their bodies that were lost so long as the part missing was attached and not completely destroyed.

Dracula gripped his son's bloodied face and leaned forward. His tongue, long and serpent like snaked past his lips and licked the generous flow of blood that streamed down D's face, 'Your pain, your blood is my life force D, don't forget that with what little time I have left for you."

Whether D heard his fathers taunt was unclear, as he'd slumped against the thick pole and would have fallen had it not been for Dracula's slaves, his remaining eye was shut. It seemed at last the hours he'd known of misery had caught up with him. The shock of losing his eye coupled with impalement had proved too much even for the hardened Hunter.

Dracula moved as though disgusted from his son's body and glared at Asenath who was trembling and sobbing hoarsely

.

"What the fuck is wrong with you!" he hissed, "This man used you and threw you away, you told me that you wanted to see him suffer for it!"

"No…I never meant…oh God!" Asenath wailed, clearly in pain as she chocked on her words.

"I want you and Renfield to go and put him in the courtyard with all of the others. He will remain there for one week, and that entire week I want you to stand guard over him. You will leave only to hunt and to sleep, is this in any way unclear?"

"No…I will my Lord." she whimpered, unable to disobey.

Dracula swept from the room without a glance as his son, or his servants. He did not dare suspect that once again he'd set the stage for his defeat once more, not once, but twice during the horrific exchange between them. The first mistake was this, his failure to notice that the Resurrection Stone was still loosely clutched in his unconscious son's hand.

Asenath sobbed violently as she looked up at D's limp and bloodied form, hardly recognizable as the man she'd so fervently desired, the man she could have sworn she loved. Was it truly possible for this Hunter to have touched her soul, however cruelly, not once, but twice? Why had she known this helpless desire twice? Was it truly possible that she'd been the one reasonable for his current helpless and mutilated state? It seemed the blame lay wholly with her, it had been her that agreed to help Dracula after D had scorned her, it has been her who did not resist Dracula's tainted blood that destroyed the rare immunity she'd had to the Nobel Kiss and it had been her that led D into this terrible trap.

And now here he hung; a pathetic corpse like heap upon a stake. He wasn't the only one hanging impaled within Dracula's courtyard; the area was littered with hundreds of victum hung stakes. Some where skeletons with thin rags clinging to their bones, others fresh and other still alive amid the stench of death. Each one was impaled in ways and positions that seemed terribly cruel and impossible to Asenath's eyes. Yet her Master had an eternity to perfect this terrible art.

Did her Master truly expect her to watch this? Asenath could not even think of suffering through another minute of this, and it was then her features changed to the steely, sensual ones of Elena.

She shook her head hard and glared at D's corpse like form, "It doesn't matter if you ask for forgiveness D, you deserved this" she hissed. "You still killed me when I deserved life. I cannot forgive you….especially not when you where apologizing merely to spare your own empty life."

She moved forward, glaring hard…and yet sadly up at D.

Than it was as if something were in Elena's way, something that caused her muscles to lock in place and refuse to move at all. For a moment she panicked until a white glow of light flooded her sight, blinding her utterly before it swept over all of her senses. The body she shared with the Pale One gave a momentarily resistance to the haze of light the flooded it from within, but it was a futile resistance. Elena was swept from the surface; Asenath was powerless to fight the spirit that demanded its way inside and once more change swept over the Pale One.

The lines had long since blurred, now she was so far from them that they hardly seemed like boundaries at all. They were merely distant rules that once she'd been forced to live by, rules such as the dead and the living could not permanently cross worlds, that the division between the two was so solid that any that dare question it would be thrown into utter oblivion. But she did not live now; she was unsure just what type existence she clung to now. She had form but form she could change at will, she walked on mortal feet, yet could also fly though the skies that she could change the appearance of at her own will. She was not bound here, she could return to where the living dwelled and walk amongst them, pale and feared. It seemed like that crossing into the other world was much smoother as of recently, but it was rare she chose to walk in the world beyond.

She did not breathe; she did not have need for food, sleep and drink. It seemed everything lived here, every plant, flower, tree, and loved one she'd ever held dear in the world beyond and therefore she could touch them….but there had been one, one who did not belong yet had remained here for a time anyway, one she could not truly touch and the one person she longed to the most. The time he'd lingered here had turned her veritable heaven into a hell filled with her own longing.

When she thought hard enough his memory would come surging back into her mind, as vivid as though all of it had just happened. But it was not the passionate desire of their time together that stood out the most, it had been the final moments of her life. It had been the most agonizing feeling imaginable after the blackness of death has fallen over her eyes, and yet somehow she remained conscious of the image of D holding her body and she heard the terrifying sound of him sobbing, pleading with her to live once again. She tried desperately to project her spirit back down into her body, to somehow comfort him but it simply was not possible, never again could she comfort the man she loved.

Hours passed before her spirit finally understood that it had best move onward rather than be hung forever here to relive this terrible moment. By that time D had slumped over unconsciously on her body perhaps from sheer exhaustion, and she'd whispered soft words into his ear although she knew he would never possibly hear them, "This ends nothing, D. I'll never leave you so long as you have need of me, I will return to you." She moved on from that moment, torn, incomplete.

She'd never dreamed that it that he would return to her, in the only form his could take, alive, and thus unable to truly remain at her side, but for a short while it had been enough.

The slight sensation shared between them as their hands clasped was enough. Heaven had been a term to describe a paradise that did not exist. The Otherworld was indeed a peaceful haven for the dead, but it could be especially trying at first, but D had been at her side to experience all the joy, enlightenment, disappointment and frustration with her. The part of her that had felt torn and empty at her death was appeased. There was no way to know how much time has passed on Earth but to Luna it seemed as though a few short years had passed at his side. Yet it had all seemed so expected the day D, his form far too vivid and rigid to be that of any other that dwelled her, had taken her ghostly hand and lead her under the canopy of a vast willow tree. Many spirits chose to reside within houses like they did in life, but many others, their fears and reservations cast aside, chose to take up home wholly within nature. This has been where D and Luna had taken up as a home, along with their two cats from life, Luna's kind grandmother that had been murdered when Luna was only a child, and of course Mina Murray, D's mother.

"I think I' am going to be leaving soon." he said calmly.

Luna lowered her eyes, somehow those words seemed so shocking and so expected. "You're sure?"

"Yes. There are moments when I know that all of this is only a dream I have been allowed to witness, that I am only sleeping and awaiting the right time to rise again. Those moments are growing closer and closer together. I am going to wake up soon."

Lowering her eyes, as though she had the capability to cry in this form she answered him, "Okay. You should go then, you have work to do. But when you wake up you won't remember any of this, anything at all."

This information seemed to startle him slightly, but soon enough his face regained his composure, "I doubt that. There is no force strong enough to make me want to forget any of this."

Yet that was simply one of the rules, one of the boundaries that could not be broken, the living must have no memory of the dead. She did not dare tell D this. "I won't leave ever leave you D, I'll always be there for you just the way you where here for me. All you need to do is find me." She knew he would not remember this promise, yet she spoke it all the same.

He kissed her then, as usual there was little sensation within the brief kiss yet its meaning was all the same. The next morning D had gone from the land of the dead, and for a crushing few moments that hollowness had returned to her form, the feeling of separation she'd known at her death, it was ape sided only by walking once more on the Earth…but it was temporary. A few days later warmth had surged into her pale form, as though something she'd lost had suddenly found her. A dream like memory had returned with it…one of somehow speaking to D once again, of touching him, of showing him something she herself did not understand. But from that moment on she had little need to return to the Earthly plain.

And now….the lines had blurred. There was no Otherworld. No boundaries…there wasn't even light. Whatever form she was standing in was protesting the fact that she was not breathing…she had to force her lungs to move in a way that seemed utterly strange and unnatural to her now. There was only darkness…and blood. Luna swayed on her unsteady feet as she fought back the urge to scream out against the assaulting vertigo. How could she be here…in this place full of blood, corpses and decay? What was that awful throbbing in her chest?

Her eyes landed upon the corpse that hung before her. Although covered in blood and lacerations and with a limp look of defeat about it closer inspection revealed that it wasn't a corpse at all. He still breathed. The blood soaked mess that was his right hand held something loosely within it, a small jet black object. The vertigo ceased. That had been the reason she now stood within this field of death…she'd been called forth from the otherworld, heeded the call of the only one strong enough to pull her back.

"Uh...uh…D!" Luna whimpered, struggling to master the unfamiliarity of vocal cords. She tried to move closer to him, only to be thrown off by the strange solidity of her legs and topple to the ground. That didn't hinder her, she crawled to the side of were he hung; it was much easier that way. She wept when she noticed the useless stump that was his left hand and jumped backward suppressing a shriek when the wind pushed back the limp strands of his hair to reveal the gore soaked left side of his face, that coupled with blood and bits of flesh that has burst outward from where the pole had struck him was enough to cause this stolen heart of hers to race painfully. And yet somehow these injuries did not shock her…seeing them was distressing, but somehow the knowledge of their existence seemed innate.

She found herself thankful for the fact that he was completly unresponsive and hung far from her grasp, had he been awake and within her touch she was unsure weather or not she might have been able to hold back her fierce desire to touch, to hold and to feel him. That had not been why she'd been called forth into this body that she could manipulate for the time being, she'd been called to save him when he had no other, that was all.

Save for the weakly moaning victims about her the courtyard was empty; it was likely to remain that way. Dawn was only minutes away, soon the occupants of the crumbling castle around her would be sleeping. With a sad sigh Luna closed her eyes, stood up straight and summoned the strength she knew she'd been born with. All Nymphs were born with a reserve of truly amazing strength, it was a final defense mechanism. It wasn't especially easy to find within a body that was not even her own, yet it was there, as ingrained as the need to breathe and with a blur of speed the Nymph rammed herself into the thick pole of wood. With a groan the wood began to splinter and crack. Luna caught it and carefully guided it down onto the ground, trying her best not to shift D anymore than could be avoided.

Her first impulse was to dress his ghastly wounds, but she was forced to suppress her urges as a Healer as well. As terrible as they appeared, they would heal in time, but the chains that still bound his hands and feet would not disappear with time. Feeling far more confidant on her feet she rose and wrapped them tightly within her hands and pulled, naturally it was to no avail. Nymphs could be especially strong creatures yet they held no contest with the Nobility, even the Nobility could not sunder these chains. Luna knew of only one creature that could.

She sank down to D's side again, not daring to allow herself to touch him and gently whispered to him, "I won't be long D, I am going to go and find your Left Hand. He can break you free of these chains. Hold on."

Without a backward glance to bind her there a moment longer she turned and began to walk.

The first time she'd seen D she could have sworn that she'd stumbled across the path of a great, mythic bird that a cruel hunter's arrow has shot down from the heavens. As she spurred her horse closer it became apparent that the form that lay dead or dying beneath the feeble shade of an iron oak tree was a human form wrapped in a great black coat and cape. A sword rested across his back, the blade was thin and crescent shaped, it's length was so great that she would not have been surprised if the weapon was as tall as herself.

Whoever wielded a blade such as that must not only have been a Hunter, but highly skilled and wealthy hunter at that, no doubt a Vampire Hunter. She dismounted and rushed to the stranger's side, her mind flipped through the names of all the vampire hunters she'd heard of in this sector. She touched his shoulder with utmost care, "Sir, don't be frightened, I am not here to hurt you. I am a Nymph and I can help you." It was always wise to approach a wounded warrior with caution, they were like feral animals and likely to strike out in fright if they were in pain, but the figure in black made no response at all. She could hear only his shallow gasps for air.

Slowly, careful to avoid the spikes of his armor she rolled him onto his back, and jumped back with a gasp as the sunlight struck his face. Naturally the Nymph has seen the height of male beauty upon the faces of countless lovers but no beauty compared to the exquisite features of this Hunter. The straight, narrow nose, stern angle of his brow, thinly shaped eyes fringed with thick lashes, the thin line of his lips…each were features made to hypnotize the female eye, to overwhelm them. It was as if his beauty were his primary weapon. His shimmering black hair contrasted starkly against the paleness of his skin, and pushing back a tendril of his hair she revealed the characteristic pointed ears of a dhampir.

Instantly his name came to her, D, the Vampire Hunter D. He was the most successful, the most feared and most mysterious Vampire Hunter in the world. Following close on the heels of his legendary success were the tales of his beauty, beauty that could transfix even the most woman crazy young men. It was doubtless that was the identity to the fallen Hunter before her.

There was no apparent wound to his upper chest, yet the Hunter breathed in feeble, shallow gasps, and sweat had drenched his brow, yet his skin was ice cold. Almost loathe touching him she pulled back his eyelids and found that his pupils were widely dilated, each one of these signs was telltale to sun sickness. She pressed his fingers to his neck but she could find no pulse what so ever, already his heart had shut down. It would only be a moment before the rest of his vitals followed. The only real way for Luna to treat sun sickness was to bury the dhampir and to stand guard over the dormant body, but now the Hunter D was well beyond the help Mother Earth could provide him with. Without a moments hesitation she pulled a knife from her belt and sliced open her already scarred wrist, winching slightly as the blood started to flow.

She did not think twice about the dangerous possibilities that came with offering a dhampir her own life blood. Dhampir's were usually beings that more often than not fought to repress their Nobel urges. A taste could easily drive them mad with bloodlust. She'd bleed several time before to save a life, all life was sacred, even if one or twice the life she'd been saving had tried to turn their fangs to her neck.

She pulled D into her lap and pressed her wrist to his mouth, almost the instant the blood touched his lips life snapped back into a the dhampir's body, and he pulled her wrist down, harder against his lips. His mouth opened and fangs flashed against the sunlight before they pressed down into Luna's wrist. She did not deny the surge of twisting, red, lust that welled within her body as he penetrated her flesh. That lust only grew brighter as he drank deeply of her, moaning in contentment.

Even as faintness clouded her senses she didn't care. All that mattered now was this exquisite Hunter. She didn't mind if he drained her dry, so long as his enchanting mouth never left her flesh. Never before had offering her life to one of Nobel blood been a intimate experience.

D's eyes were opened now and fearlessly she met them. It was as though she were gazing into the very incarnation of beauty, of strength, wisdom and fearlessness. Into the very eyes of passion.

She knew then that she could never be parted from Vampire Hunter D and she knew then that nothing would ever be the same again.

It proved much easier than she expected it would be to find the symbiote. Many creatures that Nobel experimentation had left upon the Earth carried a significant aura of energy about them, and that energy could easily be followed to one who was sensitive to its trail. The symboite was certainly no exception to Luna, she found she could have followed its pathway even if she were deprived of her sight and relied merely on instinct. It appeared the symboite had dwelled for some time within a large, deep padlocked box in the dungeon, but the box appeared to have been blasted open from the inside and the trail retreated frantically toward a window. The window was a narrow little slot within the stone work, just barley above the line of the ground. It would be folly to attempt to climb out of it, hopeless Luna peered outward at the oblivious wildlife about them. It would be much harder to follow its trail within nature.

A large crow flitted down onto the ground and strutted confidently about, eyes rapt for a meal yet they were not fast enough to see itself becoming the meal. The bird had time only to squawk with fear before a blurred shape swooped down upon it and gripped it tightly; there was strange crunching sound, almost like human teeth upon bone. The crow stilled beneath its attacker which appeared to be a severed human hand.

"Lefty!" Luna gasped in disbelief.

The hand stilled, and rose up on its fingers so that the palm faced her, a familiar gnarled old face rested within it, "Wha…Luna!" the hoarse voice wheezed.

"Hurry up before I am caught, get over here, it's time to go home!"

Obediently the hand abandoned its meal and skittered over to her side, yet blood still stained its fingers and its lips. With the strangest expression on her face she took the severed hand into her own hands. She'd seen a great deal of strange, unnatural things in her life, things far stranger even than this, yet D's sentient hand and the dismissive way he regarded it had simply never been something Luna had got completely used to. The times she'd seen D merely sever the limb and then watched it crawl away completely unfazed had been utter disconcerting, but now she had to force herself merely to accept it. There was no other option.

"Holy shit girl it's been ages! How the hell did you get here, I…well…we thought that…."

"I am dead? Yes, I am. I guess you haven't had a chance to pay attention to what Dracula's been up to."

"Well of course not! I have been trapped in a freaking magic box for a week! I only got out when that idiot Renfield forgot what the box was for and started stashing his dead flies in it; I used them to gather the strength I needed to break free. I've been sneaking about and trying to find Pretty Boy ever since."

"Well long story short Dracula has a girl in his power that can assume the shape of dead people, until now he was using her to torture D but he's made a mistake and now I am here to save him."

At this the severed hand within her own hands smiled, "Ah…you always were a deus ex machina."

"Sorry?"

"Deus Ex Machina, it's a literature term meaning something impossible that comes to save the day and put everything right. You've always done that for him, saved him, made life worth living once again."

She couldn't help but to smile, "He did the same for me."

"Hey, make a left turn here. There is a room were Dracs stashed all his stuff and if you know Pretty Boy as well as I do you know he'll have a hissy fit if he leaves this place without his hat."

Not only was the symboite able to simple melt away the chains that bound D, but it was also able to transfigure the wood into a much more pliable texture to ease it's removable. Nevertheless removing the pole proved to a gruesome event, in which D awoke midway through, groaning in an almost mortal sort of way, his now whole hands tearing deep furrows into the ground. Panicked Luna hide her face behind her hair and she began to sing, her song was louder than his screams and yet it's words were soothing and gentle. It worked instantly as D fell silent and closed his remaining eye one again. Hesitantly she raised her face and began to work again.

Merely touching his form, although so terribly mutilated was almost overwhelming, only her firm commitment to heal him kept Luna's desires in check.

"What in the world was that all about?" the hoarse voice rose.

"What?"

"Why did you hide your face?"

Frowning, Luna shook his head, "I….I just don't think it's such a good idea for him to see me. I was…I was sort of hoping to just save him and go. What good does it do for him to see me, and to mourn me all over again?"

"So then, your not staying?" the little voice said in almost sadness.

"Of course not. I cannot stay, I'd wind up just like Mina did, this body…no body can house one who has died. I am just dead, but here on temporary business I suppose. That doesn't make me alive. I don't belong here anymore, until I reincarnate then I never will. Most souls are in no rush to reincarnate and to return to the trails and pains of life, and I can't bear to not know how D is doing. In the Otherworld I know these things." she explained trying to focus hard on removing the last few inches of the stake.

"Well…you know them sure…but are you able to do anything about it?" the symboite pressed on sounding rather cautious of its words, "I mean…D's fallen into a complete hell over the past few years. He's falling apart with nothing left to hunt, with no real purpose in life other than to kill Daddy-O, but that's a mission that takes thousands of years. I am sure you've seen the things he's done, the addiction he himself caused and the way he treated Asenath. I am sure you know the way he didn't even question the appearance of Mina. He was just desperate to have someone to hold onto. Are any of those things that the D you gave you life for would have done?"

She pulled the last of the stake from D's body, trying not to feel sorrow as she gazed at the terrible wounds it left behind. "No." she breathed. "But I don't see your point Lefty."

"I am saying that what D needs more than anything else in the world is something or someone to care for, not some spirit distant looking out for him. If he had that than he never would have fallen into this mess in the first place."

"I still don't understand." Luna said shortly, signaling the end of the conversation. She did not see the symbiote smile at her abrupt end to the conversation. How many times had D done that same thing, did she even know that she'd picked up the habit?

She struggled to position D on her back and carried him from the courtyard. Dawn had broken by that time, and her suspicions that Castle Dracula had fallen too far into ruin for him to care about posting guards or repairing the security systems proved correct. She met no resistance as she crossed the gates, except from her stolen body. Her muscles ached in protest against the weight she carried, and her borrowed heart pumped at an erratic beat, already she could feel this bodies protest at housing her dead soul. She kept singing however, both to mitigate the pain in her and in D's body. The sun had crept higher into the sky, nearing midday when she at last laid D down at side of small stream. Castle Dracula was still to close for comfort, only a broken, crumbled mass of stone barely identifiable as a fortress, but if all went well than soon D would be far from the pathetic ruin.

At last she got the chance she'd sought after to clean his wounds using the stream water, and to dress them using the wide variety of herbs she found all about them. Already each one had stopped bleeding, and most all of the previous wounds he'd suffered before impalement were erased. Yet it appeared the wounds he'd suffered to his eye and midsection were healing far slower than they should have been, even for his accelerated healing they would take a few days to mend and there would be pain involved. She washed the last of the blood away from his body, and again forced herself to regard him merely as patient in need of her aid rather than her naked lover, each time she felt him stir into wakefulness she began to sing once again. With a heavy heart she tied his faded grey scarf over his missing left eye, knowing nothing could restore it, and pulled his cape over his body. She turned, intending to leave then, to get Asenath's body back to the castle before she was missed, D never needed to know whom his savior was. All that matter was that he was safe.

Yet she could not help but to turn, to glance once more upon him in helpless desire at her lover whose touch she'd denied.

D's eye snapped open, and he turned his head to gaze upon her.