For just a single second, his heart stopped functioning. Then its function returned, beating incredibly and unusually fast for a few moments before slowing down to a semi-norml rhythm. All this n the space of a mere five seconds, the time it took for Eleanor to push open the small wooden door that lead to the upper-floor house that he and his beloved wife used to rent, in the days before Victor had put an end to his idealic lifestyle by forcing his wife into infidelity and kidnapping his daughter.
The room was almost exactly how he remembered it. The same black curtains, the same green carpet, the same crimson walls. Yet it was different. The curtainsn were faded. Inside Belladonna's crib, the teddy-bear he had bought for her two days before that fateful day - the day that he had been siezed - was nearly falling apart. The paint's colour was fading too, yet it had become darker, now a blood red.
"Come in, love," Eleanor's soothing tone of voice snapped him instanty out of his trance-like state. His body tensed, but her gentle touch relaxed him as he was ushered into the room. Eerily, a non-existent gust of wind caused the door to slam behind them, with no physical prompting from either he or Eleanor.
He gazed around him, drinking i every little detail, treasuring every little moment as though it would be his last.
"So, Ben, what are you - "
"No!" he turned on her once more.
On her, not to her.
"That man is dead, do you understand me? Dead. It's Todd now, Stephen Todd, and he will have his revenge.
"Well...that's nice!" she chirped cheerily, forcing her usual happy, innocent smile to come.
"Will you help me?"
That question caught her off-guard.
Would she help him?
Could she help him?
Lauralie wouldn't have helped him.
He knew that, and she knew that he knew that.
Lauralie was too girlie for what the newly born Stephen Todd had in mind.
"Yes," her voice was dark and determined, fiece yet feminine. "I will."
A sinister smile crossed the blank canvas that was his deathly pale face as he held out a bony, rigid hand to his ex-best friend. She held out her own tiny hand, pale as paper, white as white could be, and slid her fingers through his. Their fingers intertwined, their souls intertwined. This gesture, this simple gesture, symbolized the birth of a twisted partnership. Partners-In-Crime.