Author's Note: Please review? Pretty please? And for those of you who have reviewed... many thanks! Godchild and all of the characters belong to the wonderful Kaori Yuki, not me.

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Chapter 1: Hell

"He's gone, Cain. His spirit was fading away when I called for him."

"He can't be gone. He wouldn't abandon me. He promised!"

That was Lord Cain's voice. Who was he talking about? I wanted to ask... to figure out why there was barely-disguised panic in Lord Cain's voice, and why someone else was here, talking about invoking spirits, of all things. But I couldn't find my voice. I hadn't used it in... so long. However long that spell in the darkness had lasted.

Perhaps I had been sick. But that was wrong... I shouldn't have been sick. And that darkness wasn't something that came with a normal sickness. Had I blacked out, perhaps? That was the only thing I could come up with. I only... I only had one day to live? That realization was the final crack in the dam that had held back my memories. Now they were pouring back into my consciousness in a flood... drowning me. The Doctor, the lightning-struck tower, Lord Alexis, Lord Cain... and blood. So much blood, being drowned in blood as Lord Alexis watched and something... some beast inside me grew ever stronger...

"Interesting. What else do you remember, Riff?"

There was a note of satisfaction to that repulsive voice, the voice that continued to haunt me. I had killed him... I swear I had killed him. As his harsh laughter filled my mind, I felt a ghost of unimaginable pain shoot up my right arm, like a bullet wound reopening. I gasped, trying to put my hand over my arm... to stop the pain. I had to stop the pain... anything to stop the pain...

"You caused this pain, Riff. Remember? You shot me."

"Riff?" What was that frantic emotion in Lord Cain's voice? "Riff!"

"He's disgusting. A repulsive little insect. A weak little bug begging to be stepped on. So weak that he relies on someone like you... you're pathetic, both of you. Do you want to see how weak you are, Riff? How useless you are in protecting your precious little lord?"

I couldn't breathe. That throbbing, burning pain... it was blotting out everything. I couldn't even hear Lord Cain anymore. There was only pain... pain, and Riffael's laughter. Everything was fading... I vaguely felt my body moving, acting at Riffael's command instead of my own, as I sunk into the shadows. Lashing out, trying desperately to hurt someone who I hated so much... no, not me, it was Riffael, Riffael wanted to kill...

"Get away from him, Cain!" There was something... someone... restraining me. Thank god... thank whichever god or devil pitied me. That was my last thought before the darkness, that gentle, healing darkness, wrapped me in its embrace.

When I awoke, I couldn't see anything. The only difference between unconsciousness and awakening was that I was aware of small noises around me. A small rustle as a page was turned in a book, a slight creaking as someone shifted their weight in a chair...footsteps... and then someone's voice. A deeper and brusquer voice than Lord Cain's... Crehador? "This won't help him. You're killing yourself like this. What are you trying to accomplish?"

"He was here. I can't let him get away from me again." That was Lord Cain. Again, they were talking about some mysterious other person... some man... were they talking about me? I tried to speak, to ask what was going on, but my voice wouldn't respond to my will. All I managed was a soft moan.

Immediately, there was a scraping sound and hurried footsteps, like whoever had been sitting in the chair had flung himself hurriedly out of it. "Riff?" Lord Cain's voice was much closer now, as if he was right beside me.

"Cain, be careful!" Crehador said quickly. His heavier footsteps followed closely after his voice, until he too was beside me.

"Yes, be careful, little lord." Riffael paraphrased, a twisted sort of glee in his voice. No. Not again. I wouldn't let him harm Lord Cain. Never again. There was a light touch on my forehead, someone's hand brushing across it, then a cold rag replaced the person's warm hand. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I had been sick. This didn't make any sense... there was no illness recorded that should result in that strange, all-encompassing darkness, but putting a cold compress on a person's forehead was the easiest way to treat a fever or a weak headache. Even though it didn't make any sense, I could feel the haze around my mind clearing up.

"...Lord Cain?" I said softly, confused, as I finally opened my eyes. It was him. His golden-green, cat-like eyes were the same, utterly unchanged from when I had seen him last. But he seemed... different. Older. His build, though slender as always, had changed from the wiry frame of an older teen to a broad-shouldered, thin-waisted body of a young man in his twenties. His face, too, had lost the last vestiges of boyhood, though he still had angular, handsome features.

Some unidentifiable emotion shot across his face as I said his name, and then he quickly retreated back into impassivity, as he had always done. "Lousy servant," he muttered. I smiled lightly despite myself. Lord Cain was still Lord Cain, no matter how he might look. He could never express himself well, especially not in front of others... I found my glance drawn to Crehador now. He, too, was older, appearing to be at least in his late twenties or early thirties. He was obviously attempting to be detached, as he always did, but the concern he showed when looking down at Lord Cain wasn't concealed well enough to fool anyone. Once again, I found myself wondering what had happened. Perhaps, if I was still sick, I was hallucinating. This was nothing like the hallucinations I had gotten before with the spider's venom... nor was it anything like the frequent dreams I had about the fire. Why would I hallucinate about days yet to come? A sudden wave of nausea overtook me, and I wrenched my eyes shut.

"Cain, get back," Crehador ordered calmly. It sounded like he had taken a few more steps forward, perhaps to block Lord Cain from my reach. Perhaps... perhaps that was a good idea.

"Oh, no. I would never dream of interrupting this touching reunion." The sarcasm in Riffael's voice was palpable, and I quickly forced his cynicism and dark amusement out of my mind. I could do that. I was stronger than him. I had to be... for Lord Cain. In that moment of distraction, Crehador and Lord Cain had come to some sort of agreement... at least, there was someone bending over me. I could feel his presence... it was Lord Cain, I was sure of it. Not for any particular reason. I just knew it with the same sort of certainty that I had when I had searched for him on the grounds of the Hargreaves' mansion so many years ago.

Suddenly something was being pressed against my mouth. Something warm. Was I supposed to eat it? Medicine of some sort, perhaps, or food... I opened my mouth, and a harsh, metallic taste overwhelmed my senses. Blood. Someone was feeding me blood. It was disgusting, wrong... yet... I could feel myself regaining strength, my body acting on its own and licking at whatever was giving me this sustenance. What was wrong with me?

"Nothing at all."

Riffael's voice was the happiest I had ever heard it. What... why was he so gleeful? What did he know that I didn't? I came back to my senses in time to realize what was going on. Lord Cain had bent over me, and Lord Cain... he was giving me his blood?

My eyes shot open once more, and met with Cain's. His face wasn't far away from mine, and his golden cat's-eyes were staring almost eagerly at me. What was he thinking? His face was pale, and his wrist was still pressed against my lips, though the blood had almost stopped flowing from the slash just below his hand.

What had I done? I sat up, raising his arm and turning his slashed inner wrist upwards, so the blood would stop flowing as violently. Then, as I pressed two fingers above the cut to check his pulse, I realized that I was moving. None of this made sense. How? I had been immobile minutes ago.

Crehador had obviously noticed my revelation, and his eyes were cold as he stared at me. "A deadly doll only needs blood as nourishment," he said simply.

A deadly doll.

I was a deadly doll? One of Delilah's inhuman, blasphemous creations? But... Delilah had been destroyed. I knew that for a fact. Then how was this possible?

Once again, Riffael's harsh laughter rippled through my head. Then, as Lord Cain made some small movement, I was able to forcibly ignore that horrible cacophony. Lord Cain needed me right now. "Get..." I paused for a second as my own voice startled me. Even my voice was recognizably stronger. What sort of demon was I? "Get clean bandages for Lord Cain, please."

If I was a demon, that was fine. As long as I was with Lord Cain, as long as I could serve him and help him, I would be able to take anything that God or the Devil threw at me. Anything for Lord Cain. Crehador silently walked away, apparently satisfied that I wasn't going to harm Lord Cain in his absence, and I was able to turn my attention fully to my master.

"Lord Cain, I don't understand," I said quietly. I still was supporting his wrist, though the blood was no longer freely flowing from his wound, and his pulse was completely normal. With his free hand, he gestured to the book that now lay on a table beside my bed.

The Bible? That made even less sense. Lord Cain had never been religious, no doubt greatly due to Lord Alexis's persecution of him using Biblical allegory. But that was apparently what he had been reading when he was sitting, waiting for me to wake. His actions had pieced themselves together in my mind, but his reasons for doing them, as always, were an enigma. Then I noticed that there was a marker sticking out of the holy book. Just a single, small piece of paper. Perhaps that was what Lord Cain wanted me to notice?

I questioningly turned my gaze to Lord Cain once again. I wasn't going to take the book. That would mean dropping Lord Cain's wrist when the bleeding had almost stopped. Lord Cain smirked slightly, the expression still familiar even on his older face, then glanced towards the book again. " 'He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die,' " he quoted, his golden eyes sparkling with some sort of amusement as he looked at me. "John 11."

Even I had to admit that he looked half mad in that moment. But that appearance quickly faded, and I noticed that he didn't just look pale because of blood loss. There were deep, bruise-colored circles under his eyes, and he was slightly underweight. His hair was even longer than he had kept it before, and subtly uneven in style, as if he had been cutting it himself. What had he been doing with himself?

How long had I been gone?

"Have you been eating poorly, Lord Cain?" I asked gently, keeping myself on the most important topic... Lord Cain's wellbeing.

He made a small, disgruntled noise, then explained it with, "I haven't had your tea in eight years. Of course I haven't been eating well. I should dock your pay for that, you know."

Eight years. No wonder he looked older... but I would have time to ruminate on that later. Lord Cain's health was the pressing concern now. I set his arm down on the bed as the blood clotted over his wound, looking him over with a physician's eye. "How much sleep have you been getting, sir?"

"I haven't slept for three days."

Apparently my shock had broadcast itself on my face, because he chuckled quietly and darkly. I heard footsteps once again. Obviously Crehador's, judging by the heaviness of the steps... not to mention that he was the only other person I had seen so far.

"You first awoke three days ago," the medium supplied evenly, explaining away a confusion I hadn't even vocalized. Apparently he had been listening in on at least part of our conversation. Lord Cain had deprived himself of sleep... to sit at my bedside? After I... or, rather, Riffael... had tried to attack him with this body?

Wordlessly, I took the bandages as Crehador offered them. They were good, clean cloth, so I wasted no more time in gently taking Lord Cain's arm again and binding the wound on his wrist. This was insane. But what right did I have to sanity, if I had abandoned Lord Cain for eight years?

"You should get some sleep, Lord Cain," I said calmly. He needed rest. The human body wasn't meant to handle intense sleep deprivation like he had apparently forced on himself. I was surprised he was functioning normally. But even if he was still rational, he was causing himself harm every second he stayed awake. He had opened his mouth to protest, but Crehador had taken matters into his own hands. The medium put one hand on my lord's shoulder, guiding him subtly out of the chair and towards the doorway. That was when it became obvious that Lord Cain wasn't feeling well... if he had his wits about him, he would be protesting even that gesture. Or would he? Could he have changed in the eight years I had been gone? The thought was enough to cause a slow ache in my chest: not another symptom, simply an emotional response. Something like a parent must feel when they realize that their child is now an adult. Was that how I viewed him? As my child? That was wrong.

He was my master. That was all.

"How poetic."

The dark amusement in Riffael's voice confused me. What was he talking about?

"Didn't you see his wrist? That wasn't the first time he had cut himself there. And the last time left a scar."

Lord Cain had tried to kill himself. My mind became blank, numb with shock. Poetic? Riffael would think like that. An inhuman thought, something that would only cross the mind of a twisted, sadistic soul...

"Oh no." The humor in Riffael's voice was palpable. "Poetic in the sense that you no longer have your scar, but your little master gave himself one in your place."

I glanced down at my own wrist, no longer sure if the look was under my own volition or not. In this body, my wrist was unmarked from the several times I had slashed it after the fire. After my entire family had died. What had Lord Cain been thinking? He was too good, far too good, for Death to take for its own.

The door opening shook me from my thoughts, and loosened whatever grip Riffael had on me. Crehador had returned, which meant that Cain had to be sleeping. That was good. But the look on the usually impassive medium's face was perplexing. He looked almost... angry. Perhaps annoyed was the better word.

"I didn't do this for you," he said evenly, though there was an unmasked tension to his voice.

I wasn't sure what to respond to that. Was I even supposed to respond? Would that make things any better? "Do you know what happened after you died? He tried to kill himself four times. Because of you!" He continued. His hands were balled into tight fists, his knuckles white, but his face was perfectly impassive.

"Thank you for keeping Lord Cain safe in my ab..." I started, trying to placate him somewhat. I sensed years' worth of frustration bubbling up in the way he was talking. I cut myself off as he started moving towards me. For a second I thought I had succeeded in my attempt to calm him, because the medium was no longer obviously in a fury. His pose had relaxed, and he slowly walked to my bedside, meeting his eyes with mine.

"He tried to poison himself with arsenic. He tried to cut his wrists with a glass shard. He tracked down a deadly spider and coerced it into biting him. He even tried to jump off some old tower in the Lauderdale family's garden," Crehador said, his voice quiet, but his eyes blazing. In a way, I had calmed him. He was no longer heatedly mad... instead, he was coolly furious. Angry in an utterly chilling way. And that was only augmented by his words, which he pronounced as evenly as Death itself. Lord Cain had tried to kill himself four times... all in chillingly symbolic ways. Crehador wouldn't know that, of course. He wouldn't know that Lord Cain's father had regularly poisoned him with arsenic as a child, slowly weakening him. Nor would he have possibly known of the glass shards that fell as London's Tower of Babel fell on top of us. He couldn't have recognized a touch like Mikaila's in the poisonous spider. And the tower in the Lauderdale's garden... Lord Cain would try to commit suicide the way his lover, Meridiana, had.

That was unmistakably Cain's way of thinking. He had been insane in a cold, logical way, trying to kill himself in any way that would make a good, final ending to the story of his life. Perhaps that was his father's final way to influence his child. Lord Alexis had deprived him of everything. And Lord Cain took it upon himself to take the last thing he had from himself. His life. "But how..." I stopped myself before I could ask anything more. I wasn't even sure what to ask. How did Crehador keep him alive, perhaps. Or... how had Cain survived this long? When Lord Cain wanted something, he would have it. If Lord Cain wanted to die, he would have killed himself. He wouldn't let something go until he accomplished it.

"A gardener at the Lauderdale's who saw Cain jump mentioned something that started a different train of thought," Crehador stated, obviously interpreting my stopped question as the latter of the two. "He was a former member of Delilah, and he mentioned the deadly dolls..."

I understood now. A gardener at the Lauderdale's... that was... as I thought back to Lord Cain's experience with them, I slowly realized who that supposed "gardener" was. The same man who had a reason to want Cain to live... because a man he had cared for had died keeping me alive. The doctor's assistant. Cassian. He had always been taking up odd jobs, using them as a way to keep an eye on the doctor... and he had been a gardener's assistant before, while the doctor had been influencing Gilford.

Once Cain had an idea, he wouldn't let it go. And obviously he had seized upon the idea of bringing me back as a deadly doll. "What you are goes against every law of nature," Crehador finally said, his voice quiet. "This was for Cain, not you." The medium had obviously calmed, and he sat down in the chair that Lord Cain had previously occupied.

"I know," I responded simply. I knew, and I accepted it. That was the only reason I could forgive this... the only reason that turning me into a monster was acceptable. It was for Lord Cain.

"How sweet." Riffael's sarcastic voice had invaded my thoughts again. I was starting to understand that... whenever I was feeling any sort of negative emotion, he regained some of his power. And since I was feeling regret over abandoning Lord Cain...

"Oh? You think that you have any sort of control over me?" The sarcasm in his voice had been replaced by anger. "Let's test that, shall we?" Suddenly, the mind-numbing pain that had washed over me before returned in full force. I had to fight it. I had to. Riffael would try to hurt Lord Cain, try to kill him, try to...

I couldn't think any more...

"Riffael..." I groaned, not sure whether I was talking to my other personality or trying to warn the other person in the room. I didn't even know if Crehador would be able to interpret what I had said. All I knew was that I was losing control, losing the fight... I couldn't lose, not when that could mean that Lord Cain would be...

Strong arms slammed me back down into the bed. Crehador again. Even if he hated me for this... even if touching me repulsed him... that was fine.

Lord Cain was safe.

"Perhaps. For now."

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