/For some people, they share happiness when they love someone because that's what love means to them. Did you ever care for me? Didn't it ever occur to you that sharing my pain with you was the purest thing anyone could have given you? That I could give you? I showed you a world inside me that no one, not even my half-brother, was allowed to reach. In a way, I shared a part of it with all my children, but you, you were special.

Inside you was the same anguish that I recognized in myself. In my own way… misery loves company.

I thought you'd understand.

I doubt you remember now, it was an age ago, to say the least. But we did have our dance, didn't we/

In the darkness, the voice was a light all it's own. It was tangible and as he walked, it was the voice that led him against the endless silence of forever. He knew the voice and he knew the place to which he traveled. It was the memories inside of him, the part of him that belonged to his master. The thing in his soul that fueled his unnaturally long life. Under his feet, the nothingness gave way to the smooth gray steps of a church. Unable to stop himself, he walked on, knowing the nightmare that waited at the end of the path.

The steps lead up to a cathedral that seemed to rise forever in the night sky. At the very top, the steeple's cross stood framed in a rich full, red, harvest moon. Turning his head up, the way he had all those countless years ago, he felt the same dizziness he had then. The night chill was as real and the irrational hope was the same.

Step by step, he ascended the stairs, slowly at first, lightly caressing the handrail, then faster until he was taking them two-by-two.

/What are you playing at/ He asked, though his lips did not move.

The doors stood open before him, allowing the night breeze in to the chapel. The stain glass adorning the tall walls looked unexpectedly empty without the sunlight breathing to life their vivid colors. It seemed foreboding and held none of the comfort he was use to. Even the silence, broken only by the flickering hisses of the candles, was heavy. Yet the reason for his coming here weighted on him more, pushing his steps forward with a single-mindedness that was broken only when he noticed a figure in white already kneeling at the base of the altar's cross.

/I/ Answered the voice in his head, rolling with its deep tone and arrogance. /I, play at nothing, my dearest Tsuzuki. It was you who started this game. Tsk, tsk./ The man rose up from the floor, with deliberate grace and ease that let Tsuzuki know he hadn't been startled by the younger man's intrusion. /You just had to try and taste him, didn't you? Him, who I had marked./

"Excuse me." Tsuzuki said out loud, as he stopped a few steps before the man. The words were so much younger than his voice now, though he would die only a few weeks from now. It was the voice of a mortal with something left in him that gave his voice an undertone of emotion. To his ears, it sounded muffled as if in memory they had lost some of the volume they were once carried with.

There was no use fighting against it, the scene would play out as it always did. Once, Tsuzuki had wondered if his master picked this particular reverie because it was the first time they had met, or if it was because it was in these next few minutes that Tsuzuki would doom everything he had ever loved, to die.

Nothing he could do now could change that fatal past. In his mind, he willed every muscle in his body to extend his tongue and bite down until his mortal blood flowed freely from it but instead…

"…I was just…"

The man turned to him. The white baby's breath of his hair fell perfectly over his right eye. The other, through the frames of his glasses, was silver. A silent tear finished its trail down his face, catching the candle light once before falling to the floor.

"How embarrassing." He said quietly as he wiped the remains of the tear away.

/Don't do this, Muraki! Don't make me remember./

"Not at all." Tsuzuki answered quickly, flustered at the emotion showed to him by a stranger.

"Was there something you needed to ask me? Are you from the hospital, by chance?"

"Uh…no… I came here--."

"—To pray, of course, how silly of me." With a turn of the head, he gazed over his should to the cross, an unreadable smile on his face. "I always assume everything and everyone has to do with my work. I suppose you could say that I'm a bit obsessed."

In his head, Tsuzuki was screaming as silent as it was heartbreaking. The clothes he wore were covered with dust from the street. His hair hadn't been washed in ages and he was skinny enough to be some farmer's scarecrow. How had this man mistaken him for someone important? If he had stopped to think, he always believed he would have been suspicious of the angel standing so dream-like before him. Would it have mattered?

"You…you're from the hospital? Are you… a doctor, by chance?" The fragile hope in his voice must have sounded like a plea, for the man turned to his attention back to the youth.

In reality, there had been a long silence that had followed in the memory. Muraki filled it now with his own words.

/You shouldn't be so hard on yourself, Tsuzuki. I can feel your rage from here./ The perfect, pale face remained still and beautiful as he regarded the man before him. /Really, you never stood a chance. Do you think I'm the type to enter something as useless as a church, unless I knew how to make my own use of it/

"My name is Kazutaka, Muraki. Dr. Muraki, I work at the hospital." Was all that needed to be said. The younger man, violet eyes widened with relief and so much hope, moved forward and to bow low before him.

"Please Doctor, my name is Asato Tsuzuki. I have a sister…and, she's, she's very sick. We can't afford to get her treated."

Muraki's face remained emotionless, but his words had been kind. "I'm a very busy man, Tsuzuki. This is why you find me at a church at such an odd hour. Night seems to be the only time I can get anything done. Where do you live? I'll see if I can't stop by tomorrow night after work and take a look at your sister. It would be the… right thing, to do."

/It was that pitifully easy./ The rich velvet voice chuckled in his mind, savoring the moment as much as Tsuzuki was reviled by it. /And I did come by, the next night, didn't I, my dear/

This time the voice that answered wasn't angry like it had been. It was as empty and broken as the man using it. /I can feel the gratitude I feel for you then like a second skin. I thought you were the answer to my prayers./

Again, the laughter, thick enough to choke on. /Who said the devil can't answer prayers/

Around the pair, one still bowing, the other standing over him like a white tower, the church began to fade. Like the cobwebs of a dream once awakened, it simply dissolved back in to the black sea of nothingness. Alone, the two stood, suspended silhouettes in the darkness.

Tsuzuki rose with utter defeat written on his eternal features. The anger had costs him as all passionate emotions do. In the end, the blame always came back on him. It was always his fault.

Muraki closed the distance between them, running a hand against the line of the other man's chin, tilting it up to meet his gaze.

"Ah, still such beautiful eyes. Every time I see them, it's like I have to relearn how to breathe around such a marvel." With his hand lingering against Tsuzuki's skin like a bad omen, Muraki caressed the flesh with his thumb. "A continual, disappointing, pleasure." Each syllable brought him closer and closer, until the two men stood so close, a thought would cause their bodies to touch.

A whisper against his ear spoke like thunderclaps down Tsuzuki's spine. The black underneath them bled to crimson as bright as a fever, the color of Muraki's curses. He had to close his eyes against the growing light, letting the words wash over him like wind-blow sand.

"Tell me, Tsuzuki, how does he taste? Can you taste his life slipping away, as you are trapped here with me, unable to stop your body from filling a need that has gone too long unheard? In a matter of minutes, he will die by your hand."

The laughter came in echoes, no starting point, no ending, rising and falling but never fading. It engulfed every other sense until Tsuzuki was drowning in it. All that remained was the intolerable heat of the man pressed before him and the sorrow.

From behind him, a second pair of hands, small and tender encircled his waist. It was as if a second star had risen in the red darkness of Muraki's power. And it was golden, with oh so green eyes.

The cool soft press of a shorter body filled the space against his back like a cold towel against a feverish head.

/Tsuzuki… you baka…fight…

Fight./