Hello all you lovely people! Sorry so late on the update, I'm back up getting more medical treatment so writing has been kind of a bit of a sidebar. But whatever, new chapter. Oh, and before I forget, there's a poll on my profile that we would love if you would check out. Amanda and I would like to get your feedback to help us decide what story to write after we finish this one. So make your voice heard and choose your favorite, but read and enjoy this new chapter first. Love y'all!

Minutes stretched into hours that were marked only by the agonizing fire that engulfed every inch of Alfred's body. His mind was completely numb and emptied. His body, stripped of clothing, was broken and torn to shreds. His head lolled forward so that his chin rested against his chest, and he drifted in and out of consciousness. Blood flowed freely from various cuts on his nose, cheeks, and head, and mingled with the sweat that drenched his body and the open wounds that covered his torso and arms. A deep and jagged gouge that crossed from Alfred's right hip across his stomach and up to his left collarbone still bled fresh and brightly red. Samuel's stinging words still hung in the air, despite the fact that they had been said over a half hour ago when he had buried the knife deep into Alfred's flesh: "I'm going to show you what you've done to this nation. You've ripped it limb from limb, pitted brother against brother, spilled the blood of countless men where there was no need. The cries of widows and orphans and the screams of the dying will never leave your ears. Look around you. This is what you've done, and I'm going to make sure you never forget it." Alfred's legs lay crumpled under the chair and were wrenched below his knees at sickening angles where they shouldn't be able to bend. Bone broke through the skin, starkly white against the dark and sluggish red of drying blood and exposed muscle. Fresh and dark bruises mottled Alfred's swollen face and his ribs. Every breath rattled through split lips and his strained lungs with extreme effort. The rusted metal stake quivered with every breath where it was planted deep in Alfred's shoulder. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and the other was not far behind. Thick blood dripped slowly but steadily from his slightly parted lips.

He was beaten nearly beyond recognition.

Samuel sat with his knees pulled to his chest in the far corner of the room. He had dismissed the other two men hours ago, and now he sat and watched Alfred slip in and out of the dark recesses of his mind from the dark of the corner. The cold of the middle of the night burrowed under his clammy skin and worked its way deep into his bones. A cold sweat pricked at the back of his neck and sent chills down his spine.

A noise from the center of the room caught Samuel's attention. A low groan had escaped Alfred's lips and his head had rolled weakly to one side. Samuel watched from the corner, veiled in darkness.

Alfred tried to open his eyes, but gave up shortly after his first attempt when his eyelids parted on one eye enough to see that the darkness around him had not changed since he last came to. He listened for any sounds that he could possibly detect through his blood-caked ears, but came up with nothing but dead silence. However, he knew better than to assume that he was alone. Alfred knew that Samuel was there, but he sighed quietly and let his body fall limp again. His breaths became less sharp and shallow and fell into a shaky but steady rhythm. Unconscious again.

Samuel frowned from where he crouched in the far part of the room. Something was stirring inside of his chest, something strange. Something alien.

His legs straightened almost on their own. His feet crossed the space between himself and Alfred's broken body hastily. His jaw was set. He had a job to do, and he had to do it quickly.

Down he fell to his knees at Alfred's feet. Blood splattered away from where his knees hit the stone and it soaked up into his pants, lukewarm against his skin. He reached a hand out to touch Alfred's face to examine it, but wrenched his hand back wide-eyed when he saw the dried blood that clothed his forearms and hands and speckled his arms all the way up to his shoulders. He looked down in horror to realize that his earlier perfectly white shirt was now splotched crimson with blood. Disgusted, he hastily peeled it off of his skin and tried to wipe away as much of the blood that drenched him as he could. The red only smeared over his skin more, so he gave up and pitched the sopping-wet clothing away into the corner. He didn't even want to imagine what the state of his face must have been.

Looking at Alfred's body, Samuel was at a loss. He didn't even know where to begin. Did he try and stop the bleeding now or did he take Alfred somewhere else to do a more comprehensive treatment? Did he set the broken bones now? Did he remove the stake here while Alfred was still unconscious? How much blood had he even lost? The questions made him dizzy, and he knew the definite answers to none of them, so he decided to follow what his gut told him.

Shut down your mind. Just do what you need to do. Don't think, just do.

Samuel hardened his expression into a thoughtful glare. His hands flew on their own accord. He was a machine.

There was a towel on the table by the wall. Samuel snatched it away and set it to the side well away from the pool of blood.

Next, he dug the key for the shackles that bound all four of Alfred's limbs out of his pocket. In seconds, the spiked and rusty metal was flung away from Alfred's right ankle, then the left, then he moved his attention to Alfred's mangled wrists. Samuel didn't realize that the twisted metal that bound Alfred's arms was what was holding his body upright until Alfred's first wrist was freed and after Alfred's body slumped forward unhindered toward the stone floor. Samuel's arm flew forward and caught Alfred around the shoulders before he had time to hit the ground, and Samuel drew him back so that his back rested against the chair with a nervous sigh. Satisfied that Alfred was still unconscious, Samuel finished unlocking Alfred's final bonds and tossed them aside. The clatter of the metal against the wet stone gave a certain finality to the whole situation that urged Samuel to hurry.

He grabbed ahold of the towel by his side and every so gently draped it around Alfred's body to cover as much bare and chill bump-covered skin as he could. It wasn't much, but it would work well enough for the time being.

Now lay the final obstacle, yet it would also prove to be the most difficult. Samuel would carry Alfred's dead weight until he found a place isolated enough to care for him without the danger of him being discovered that still had a roof over it. He knew that this would be difficult, but not entirely impossible. He didn't care if he had to carry Alfred for ten miles. If he needed to, he would carry him for ten more without a second thought, and then another ten after that. He just had to decide on how. He couldn't throw him over his shoulders for his wounds, and he couldn't carry him on his back for the same reason, which left only one other option.

Samuel knelt down beside the chair, carefully slid his left arm under Alfred's shoulders and wrapped his hand around his ribs for grip, and positioned Alfred's head so that it rested easily on his bare chest. His right arm caught Alfred's legs behind the knee, and with a quiet grunt, he straightened up and swept Alfred into his arms. Samuel took a moment to steady himself and adjust Alfred's body in his arms so that it was easier to carry before he realized just how incredibly light Alfred's frame was. Samuel looked down with a furrowed brow and studied Alfred's body for a moment.

For the first time, Samuel noticed the state of Alfred's body. His muscle mass had declined rather significantly since Samuel had last seen him. He had lost enough weight that Samuel could start to see his ribs under his purple and red blotched skin. His cheeks had become a little more hollowed, his bone structure a little more pronounced. Alfred was weak, tired, worn ragged, exhausted. The war had only been waging for just around a year and a half, but aside from the damage that had been done at Samuel's hand, it already looked as if Alfred had been dragged through the mud. In the faint gray light of the early hours of the morning, Alfred could have been a thousand years old. Samuel thought that though his body may not have reflected it, he felt very much the same way.

Samuel huffed, then strode across the dark room. His heavy footfalls on the stone masked the drip drip drip of blood from Alfred's bare feet and from his fingertips. His steady breaths were light and warm against Samuel's chest. The metallic scent of blood drifted up into Samuel's nose, which he met with a frown. His own heart pounded loudly against his ribs and he tried to not think of the warm and sticky liquid that was coating his arms and chest anew.

He knew exactly the place that he could take Alfred where he would be safe, at least for the time being. It was a hard way, a long way, but not too hard or too long for Samuel to deny him. It was far enough away from other Confederate soldiers to be safe but not too far away from civilization to count as truly being in the middle of nowhere, so it would be perfect.

Samuel inched the door open with his booted toe and saw no one in every direction that he peered. The dark halls were empty. He only paused for a half of a second to wonder what exactly it was that he was doing. He came up empty. He didn't have a reason, he just was going to do it, and no one was going to stop him.

-x-x-x-

The dark of the night pressed in heavily from every side. The moon was hidden so no light could pierce through the thick clouds and trees to the forest floor below.

Samuel didn't need the moonlight to know where he was heading, but he could have done without the hidden tree roots and stones that caused him to stumble every other step. Alfred's dead weight, for the first ten minutes, was relatively easy to carry, but once Samuel had been stumbling through the dark for nearly forty-five minutes, fatigue had set into his biceps, chest, and shoulder muscles. His arms shook with the strain of Alfred's body weight, but he kept pressing forward. His breathing became haggard and labored. His legs felt as if they were made of lead. Sweat dripped into his eyes. The string that he used to tie up his small ponytail was long gone, his hair was mussed by the tree branches that scratched at his face, and his pale gold hair stuck to his sweaty face and neck. A grimace was plastered across his face, his jaw set and his teeth bared.

It shouldn't be too much further–

Samuel's thought was dashed as his right boot caught on a hidden stump, hurtling his body forward into the dark. His right arm shot forward to catch himself and his left clutched Alfred's body against his own as his body hit the ground hard. Alfred cried out weakly from underneath Samuel's weight, still half unconscious. Samuel cursed between clenched teeth and shook his hair out of his eyes, then pushed himself up onto his knees. Mud and dead leaves were streaked across his arms, pants, and stomach, the same was smeared up and down Alfred's back and sides. Samuel took a second to draw a deep breath into his burning lungs, then scooped Alfred's legs up into the crook of his arm. He pushed himself to stand, then he pulled Alfred's whimpering body close. His body, a roaring furnace, made Alfred's seem just a little less cold and clammy.

"Come on, we're almost there," Samuel whispered hoarsely. "Just hang on, just hang on."

He said it as much to Alfred's half conscious form as to himself.

A thought sprang up in the back of his mind.

What on earth are you doing?

He still had no idea.

What are you doing, Sammy? he asked himself.

He plodded on through the dead leaves and mud. The night sang its sweet song in Samuel's ear.

You haven't got a freaking clue, do you?

A tree root jutted out into his path. He made sure to avoid it this time.

-x-x-x-

Samuel nearly gasped out of relief when he reached a break in the trees and laid eyes on his long-sought destination.

There it is.

It was a wooden one-room shack with a broken brick chimney and creeping ivy that cloaked an entire wall. The one window in the middle of one of the walls was painting with dirt so thick it was nearly opaque, and a crack ran in a jagged pattern from the bottom corner all the way to the top. The door stood slightly ajar on rusted hinges.

The place obviously hadn't been touched in months, and Samuel had never been so happy to see a place so dilapidated and abandoned.

It's perfect.

The final fifty feet to their safe haven weighed Samuel's feet down the most. The earth seemed to swallow his boots into the mud as if it were fighting his every move and wanted to draw him down into the depths of Hell itself. He kept his eyes on the shack that was christened in the silver light of the very early morning, just as the sun begins to rise to begin a new day. Every step brought his exhausted body that much closer to the shack and that much closer to the completion of the mission that he set out on hours ago.

His entire body shook as he poured his last reserves of energy into the final stretch. He was so close…

A strangled gasp sounded from the helpless man that lay in his arms, and fingernails dug into the skin of his back. Startled, Samuel halted in the middle of the small clearing and stared down wide-eyed at Alfred. Alfred's bloodshot eyes were opened as much as the swelling of his face would allow, and his pupils were constricted to the size of pinpoints. He stared upward at the starless sky and gulped air like a fish out of water. His body shook like an autumn leaf being tossed to and fro by the wind. Samuel sighed and pulled him closer to himself. He knew Alfred was completely out of it and going into shock. His body was growing colder by the second. He wasn't in his right mind, no, far from it. If Alfred knew what was going on, Samuel would have been genuinely shocked. Alfred muttered incoherent things from his quivering and bloody lips, the random, off-the-wall thoughts of a failing mind that Samuel couldn't hope to try and follow. He settled for closing the last few feet between himself and the shack as quickly as his body would allow.

Once he reached the door of the shack, he kicked it open with his foot. The door swung open with an ear piercing shriek and allowed Samuel to get his first good look at the inside of the shack.

The shack was one room, maybe ten feet by ten feet, with a floor of dirt, covered with dead leaves that were blown in through the open door by the wind. The roof, upon a cursory inspection, seemed solid enough, but Samuel hoped that there would be no rain to leak through the haphazard shingles above his head. The shack was completely gutted. It had been looted long before by passing soldiers, most likely. The only things inside were dirt, leaves, and cool early morning air.

Samuel took all of this in as soon as he set foot inside. He stumbled to the middle of the room, hit his knees, and laid Alfred down as gently as he could manage on a bed of dirt and leaves. He himself crumbled to the ground beside of Alfred's shivering body, completely spent. His chest heaved and glistened with sweat.

He had done it.

He had actually done it.

Three and a half miles of tripping through the forest in the dark while carrying 120 pounds of dead weight. His own steadily weakening 140 pound frame had protested nearly the entire way. Now that he had finally made it to this one-room shack, the one place that he knew where Alfred would be safe, he had to finish what he started.

Just… Once he managed to catch his breath.

The cool early morning air drifted into the shack through the open door, chilling the sweat that drenched Samuel and raising goosebumps on his arms and legs.

He turned his head so that he could look squarely at Alfred lying beside him. Alfred was staring up at the roof. His body shook like a leaf. Sweat was already dampening the dirt around where he lay. The blanket that Samuel had wrapped around him had fallen away, so he reached over and draped it gently over his shivering and bloody body. It didn't help to calm his shaking, but Samuel felt that it was better than nothing.

Alfred's bloodied and broken body was pitiful to look at, and Samuel couldn't stand it any longer. He pushed himself up with shaky arms to his knees and leaned over Alfred. Alfred's eyes were glazed over, staring ahead at nothing, and his teeth chattered harshly. Samuel sighed and pushed a lock of hair away from Alfred's clammy forehead and let his hand linger on his bloody cheek. Absolutely pitiful, he thought. His gaze then drifted down to Alfred's gore-covered chest and over to the rusty spike that was still embedded deeply into the flesh of his shoulder. He clenched his jaw and positioned his body over Alfred's: One arm pressed down firmly across his chest, one knee pinned his hips to the ground. He put his entire body weight onto Alfred, which warranted a strangled cry from the man underneath him. Samuel didn't pay it any mind. He wrapped his fingers around the bulk of the stake and tightened his grip.

He let himself glance back up at Alfred's face. His expression was one of confusion and of agony.

"Sorry, buddy," Samuel whispered. A split second later, he ripped the spike from Alfred's flesh with as much force as he could muster.

The agonizing scream that shattered the silence of the gray morning cut into Samuel's heart like a knife.

I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry…

Hot tears sprung from the corners of Alfred's swollen eyes and rolled down the sides of his face into his filthy hair. He struggled under Samuel's weight with a renewed strength that shocked Samuel into throwing his entire body on top of Alfred to keep him from hurting himself even more. He held Alfred's arms against his chest and yelled into Alfred's face only inches away.

"Alfred! Stop, you're making it worse!"

Alfred's eyes shot open and bore into Samuel with a complete and utter rage. His face contorted into an almost inhuman shape that was as far from the Alfred that Samuel knew as the East is from the West. Spittle flew from his lips with every hateful syllable.

"Go to hell, you miserable piece o–!"

Samuel cried out in anguish and slammed his forehead into Alfred's, effectively cutting his words out of his mouth. His head lolled to one side and his body went limp under Samuel. He was out cold, and would be for a long time.

Samuel gave himself a moment to take a breath before he pushed himself up and onto his feet. Seeing Alfred explode like that sent shivers down his spine. That wasn't the real Alfred, far from it.

But, Samuel thought, I deserved that.

He absentmindedly rubbed his forehead with his palm and shook his head. His mind was numb, yet fiery doubt licked at the fringes of his consciousness. Doubt about himself as a man, his control over himself, his own sanity.

"Dear God in heaven, what have I done?"

The tables have turned... Dun dun duuun. Ok so I'm lame.

But please check out the poll in my profile and cast your vote for what the next story should be. As always, we thank you for being such loyal readers and for being so dedicated to this story. You mean the world to us, really. *blows kisses*

Love as always,

Harley and Amanda