Thanks all of you for reading, following and commenting on this story. It really means a lot. This is the final chapter, but there's a short epilogue following.
fairymangafan if you read this story, I have some notes for you at the end.

6
...and crimson was the blood.

Night

A hair-raising sound creased the stillness, as rusty bars, older than time itself, begrudgingly creaked open. A Stygian figure marched in and the world cartwheeled into darkness. The wan light shed by the electric lantern outside the cell sketched out the shadow on the splotched walls. It was looming closer now, imposing and dreadful, amplifying its size and menace with every booming step. With the crumbs of strength she had left, she dragged herself away. The onyx shade towered over her, an enormous smudge born and forged in nightmares. Her back was flattened on the cold, cement wall. Within her mind, she was screaming.

"Gou!...Gou it's me!"

Her ruby eyes focused just as he lowered his hood and rolled down the charcoal balaclava covering half his face. How could she miss that sapphire glow, the same sparkling stuff of which fairy tales were made?

"Sousuke-kun?..."

Frozen fingertips patted his cheekbones and jaw in disbelief. After all the endless days enduring in the dark, Gou had to make sure it wasn't just her unleashed imagination again, playing one of its dirty tricks and rubbing its dark sarcasm on her face. But when the man before her didn't vanish in thin air, and the heat evaporating from his skin touched her arctic heart, she allowed herself the one luxury she had tenaciously disregard all along. To dissolve into tears.

Sousuke carefully gathered her bedraggled body in his embrace and she instantly wrapped her arms around his neck. They had yearned for each other's touch way too long. A rain of feathery kisses saturated his face, as Gou struggled with every particle of her being to consume every last drop of his warmth. To taste the man and thank the savior. To prove he's real. He lowered himself beside her, physically and mentally brought down to his knees for her alone. And as she kept exploring his face with the avidity of a lost child, his feelings finally urged him into motion and his mouth seized her lips. They kissed again and again, as their suffering and torture, their passion and anger, everything poured out in a welter that had been sheathed and suppressed for a week. As he sucked and teased her lips, he could sample her salty tears of pained relief. The dirt of her soiled skin, betraying her ordeal. And her love, oh her love, manifesting itself with every gasp for air.

Gou trailed her breath across his jawline and buried her face in the manly scent of his neck.

"Thank God, I'm so glad you're fine."

A strand of memory scissored Sousuke in half. He was fine. She wasn't.

Gou sensed the baleful vibe surging his stiff body and pulled back. Her hand came to rest on his cheek and she sighed away the bitterness. She peered into his obscured face, those features that were stony and uncharted, those eyes that glinted steely and bleached. His austere expression didn't lean into her comfort. There was a sadist hidden beneath those sea-green pools, ready to punish every rascal that caused her pain, starting with his own self. She could eavesdrop the sadist's lament behind the steel, poorly cloaked away for years.

"Don't do that to yourself. We're gonna be ok."

He gently brushed her hand away. Not even her soothing voice could penetrate the callous scales his rage had slowly molded through his guilt's brimstone.

"Are you thirsty? Hungry? I've brought you something to eat."

"Just water, please."

He took a flask out of his coat's lining and, as Gou eagerly gulped down the elixir of life, his eyes strayed to a crumbled plastic bottle, forgotten on the begrimed floor near used condoms. One sniff around its nozzle was enough to confirm the harrowing truth; drugs.

"Bastards..."

Only a pack of cowards would use sedatives to wrap up their crimes. Crimes that were awakening all over Gou's bruised body. From her shredded floral dress to the cigarette burns on her arms, every jagged scar was unmasking an unfathomable scene of horror. Sousuke took off his coat and swathed her shoulders with it. Whether he was offering its warmth or sealing the sight his heart wouldn't bear, he couldn't honestly tell. Gou poured the remaining water on her face. Its cool rush streamed down her sully cheeks and soaked her knotty hair, a refreshing droplet in that ocean of slime she had been thrown to drown. Oh how she longed for a bath to scrub off the memories of that decay!

"Sousuke-kun, you need to go back. If they notice you're here..."

"Don't worry, for the time being they think I'm Nakagawa. I paid him a little visit earlier and now he's just a sleeping beauty, bound hand and foot below his blankets. Mind you, I was lucky we were about the same size and these clothes fit."

"What if he wakes up?"

"Even if he does, the tape on his mouth will keep him quiet. Listen, Gou..." he caressed her chin, tilting her face upwards to meet his determined gaze "...we're getting out of here tonight. Together."

Hope flitted in her eyes in an erratic rhythm. A twinkling star plastered on the murky nightsky that epitomized whatever she had brooked.

"H-How?"

"Remember, I told you before, there's an hour's gap between the last patrol and the first one with the new dawn. During that time, only the front gates are guarded. I've already arranged everything with Nitori, a car will be waiting for us at the dirt road that circles the facility away from the gates. All we have to do is stay here for a little longer, pretending I'm watching over you, until the last ones of them withdraw to their holes."

"Ai-chan...can he be trusted?"

"Honestly, that boy? He'll probably slit his own throat out of guilt if you don't escape soon."

Gou needed to hear no more. She surrendered herself to the lavishness of his broad chest, like a tortured castaway that had just spotted the outline of a ship in the vast horizon. She would have time to count her wounds later. They would heal them together.

"Tell me...tell me you're not scared."

"Scared?" Gou muffled her tearful humming with a low snicker "Those vermins can't scare a Matsuoka, you should know better."

Sousuke rested his forehead against hers. Her hot breath came in soft pants and their closeness lead it into his own system. He had missed this union, this wholeness that rippled through him every time he was around a Matsuoka. It was a unique feeling of belonging and with Gou, unlike with Rin, it was also the self-tranquilizing sentiment of finally anchoring in a harbor. Forever.

Unbeknownst to him, his thick fingers were drafting ellipses on the small of her back, lightly pressing her onto his body. Her smooth skin was tickling the nerves of his lips and releasing a low grunt he didn't know he was withholding, he let his teeth barely scrape along her cheek. How her cherry taste could outlast all this crud and still galvanize his masculine senses, was beyond comprehension. Yet it was happening and his mouth tugged hers once again, this time driven not by nostalgia and relief, but by a desire deep and carnal. Gou responded, her mind still in mild, narcotic haze. They sensually braided their tongues together and Sousuke lapped up any confusing emotions lingering past her lips. He angled his neck and steadily delved deeper, earning himself Gou's surprised moans. Latent hormones sparked his insides and he started claiming the velvet of her flesh with stronger zeal, a sinful act in a place so damned, in a time so improper. His hands traveled their own path, unknowingly stroking the crimson marks on her bare thighs and as his mouth demanded her bottom lip, sucking and coating it with his passion's dribble, he leaned in, pushing her down with the weight of his body.

"Oooww...Sousuke...wait..."

In the echo of her pain, Sousuke froze. Her plea paralyzed his body like an unseen, mind numbing force and mortifying thoughts flew discordantly through his mind. He jerked his hand out of the cleft between her thighs and stared at it in shock and shame. What kind of impure demon had possessed him and was sneering at him now out of the corner of his eyes?

"I'm sorry, I didn't..."

"It's ok, everything is so overwhelming. It's just the bruises that still hurt."

Of course they still hurt. He inwardly cursed himself again and again for allowing his emotions to overpower him.

"I'm sorry."

"We'll get through it."

Gou steadied her forehead with her palms. The world around her was blurring again, the familiar, light dizziness creeping into her head. Sousuke's face stiffened, as he landed back to reality. He was well acquainted with those methods, having used various substances in the past to neutralize security guards.

"It's the drugs. It will take at least two more hours before their effects completely wear off. How do you feel?"

"Sleepy, exhausted. A wreck."

"Get some rest then. Either way we have to wait till the last patrol leaves."

Gou painfully smiled.

"I fear that, if I close my eyes, you'll disappear. I know it's dumb and childish, but..."

"I'll be here." He nuzzled her temple with his lips, kissing her worries away. "I'll wake you up when the car is ready."

Despite his objections, Gou returned the coat to him, insisting that his act of concern would look gravely suspicious in case another Samezuka member decided to check on them. Besides, the dusty rugs she was curled upon were all she needed. Shrouded in the shadows of his disguise, he intently watched her from the wonky desk outside the cell. His eyes followed the uneven rising and falling of her chest, as sleep lured her to its kingdom. Momentarily, a peculiar feeling of being spied alerted his acute senses, but when nothing except the wind wailed through the gnarled branches of trees, he disregarded it as a figment of his agitated imagination. Besides, if someone from his Samezuka brothers had indeed come, he would have probably mistaken him for being asleep.

Minutes sluggishly ticked away in loneliness. Silence had spread its sheer web throughout the abandoned facility. But inside Sousuke's mind, the cogwheels were spinning relentlessly, raising a cloud of chimeras. He could envision his life months ahead, far away from that shoddy hole. He could see Gou clung to his elbow, gracefully walking beside him in a brand new, airy dress with embroidered cherry blossom petals. Amidst the light, he could even make out Rin, cordially patting his back and flashing his trademark, shark grin. Letting bygones be bygones in the name of their old friendship.

Such were the images quelling his mind, when he heard them.

The wind carried their rustle as they were crawling along the drains. The moon unveiled their shadows as they were closing in. One...two...three, maybe even four of them. Sousuke could tell by the men's efforts to keep quiet, that these night visitors didn't just wish to check on him. His Samezuka brothers had come to satisfy a different type of cravings. His eyes drifted to Gou's asleep shade and his heart throbbed within his chest. They were too many for him to just shrug them off without revealing himself. His only chance was to ambush them and take them down at any cost. A commotion would follow, without doubt, but it was almost time for them to meet up with Nitori. If Luck scaled to their benefit, he and Gou would probably reach the car unscathed.

Sousuke slid his fingers through his brass knuckles and clenched his fist. Their footsteps thrummed against the rotten stairs of the outpost. At any second, they would turn around the corner. Any given second.

"Rin, wait, it's a trap!"

He emerged from the blackness and lunged at them like a predator. High adrenaline pulsated through his veins, condemning him deaf to the cries around him. His iron punch landed on soft flesh and he could feel the bones getting pulverized under his brute force. The man before him tumbled backwards, ending up a tangle of limbs with one of his companions. But Sousuke couldn't see them. He was fighting against the shadows that had sneaked their way like bloodthirsty hyenas in the dead of night, just to feed on the woman he loved.

"Shit, the guard was never asleep."

One of those monsters was hooked around his legs, impounding him to the spot, while another one seized his arm to block his attacks. He floundered and roared like a bear, but their combined weight was shoving him back to the dimly lit office. That was when he grabbed his revolver. The steel was cold against his inflamed skin and its barrel gleamed under the moonlight, as it locked on the bloodstained shadow that was rising before him.

"Mako, he has a gun!"

Those names. Those voices. The fog distorting his reality began to dissipate around him, leaving nothing but ashes in its aftermath. Because, suddenly, that crimson shadow shaped into a painfully familiar face and shrilled in front of him to claim its name. The cruel truth petrified his hand around the trigger.

"Rin?"

His mind spoke to him. And he listened. Eyes widened at the sight of his lost love, time slackened its frenzied pace. His arm relaxed and an elated voice inside him hollered with all its might.

"It's..."

Excruciating pain sprayed through his chest. The dagger had just ripped his flesh apart like a sanguine fruit. Sousuke's eyes dilated and his shaking hand grabbed a fistful of his rival's leather jacket. His fingertips stroked lovingly the edges of that scarlet hair, those silky strands that spilled over Sousuke's pillow countless lazy mornings. Trapped in the arms of his enemies, Sousuke struggled to breathe underneath his balaclava, to beg the redhead to recognize his friend behind those pools of teal.

"It's me."

But only incoherent sounds and blood leaked past his lips. And Rin, frothing at the mouth with rage, twisted the knife deeper in the wound.

A single, forsaken memory flashed before Sousuke's eyes. A summer scene hibernating somewhere in their common childhood. The creamy beach was sparkling under the lukewarm rays of sun, and the rhythmic pounding of waves against the rocks soothed the innermost corners of the soul. Seagulls were gliding across the immense sky-blue and their happy giggles coursed through the balmy air. Rin's father was still alive, and together with his wife were strolling along the idyllic seashore, Mrs Matsuoka holding her beautiful straw hat with the red ribbon that flowed in the breeze of June. Little Gou was gathering seashells in her tiny palms, a delicate cherub as she was, with her rosy cheeks and her playful pigtails bouncing around her burgundy head. Rin was basking in the sun next to him, droplets of seawater trickling down his back and hot sand drying between his toes.

That bright day, in that beautiful scenery, the boy that Sousuke once was, completely mesmerized by the Matsuokas, had chosen the path his life would tread upon.

"Oi, Rin. You're so lucky to have such a perfect family."

The redhead had chuckled, his young chest swelling with pride and childish innocence.

"I know. I'd kill for them."

Back then, Rin's shark smile was nothing but a ghost of the infamous shark grin he would develop later, establishing himself as a total magnet since his early teenhood. Only some of his sharp teeth had just perished for good, crushed by the unyielding metal of the brass knuckles and the brunet's raw ferocity. For years, Rin would sport the black holes on his once dazzling grin, as proud marks of the direst chapter in his life.

But Sousuke wouldn't see that.

In fact, he wouldn't see Hazuki Nagisa running towards the dim outpost to prevent his comrades from committing the inevitable, after chancing upon Nitori Aiichirou just outside the old factory. He wouldn't hear Gou searching for him during the flashes of clarity deep within her drugged state. He wouldn't see Ai eventually driving her and Rin far away from that cursed junkyard and into their treasured freedom. He would never witness Seijuurou Mikoshiba's seething wrath falling on those Samezuka dregs, upon returning from Tokyo and finding the ruins of his golden empire. Nor he would ever learn about the chaotic revenge that Rin took for the honour of his sister, one murky night he set everything his old gang held dear on fire. And when nine months later a baby boy with sparkling sapphire eyes would greet the world with its first bawling, Sousuke wouldn't be there to cradle it.

Because all Sousuke ever saw were those piercing eyes of red , boring into him full of blistering rage. Those eyes that were so similar to the female ones he had worshiped during that blissful captivity, and yet quite different. That was the last image that flickered like a candle flame before him. As those crimson eyes rummaged through his soul.

As that steel blade pierced though his heart.

UPDATE: The story has now a short epilogue, click next chapter to read it.

Notes:

Well this is it guys, I'm afraid the final curtain just fell for this story. As most of you had predicted, Sousuke's fate had been sealed from the very first paragraph of this story, and there was no turning back without changing the entire plot idea. I do feel though that I left some of you hanging there sad, so to somehow make up for this, I'm preparing some new stories. For those of you that enjoy RinHaru and SouGou , I have a period - pre WW2 -drama on the works featuring both ships (and others as well). For those that like SouRinGou (yes triangle and threesome), my story "A Gift of Sin" will get a second (and final), more dramatic, chapter. I think I'm gonna be damned for what I'm about to write there, but anyway. Apart those fics, I have some fantasy AU stories coming, featuring both m/f and m/m pairings.

Regardless, I want to thank you all for reading, leaving kudos or comments on this story. It meant a lot to me and , despite its tragic end, I hope you enjoyed the ride!

fairymangafan: I don't really know what to say. It's like you are a crusader that wants to dig further into my stories and bring them forth. Thanks a million times for your support. Regarding "The World of Lovecraft" , I won't hide it, it's my biggest challenge to write in the Free! fandom. I have a plot made of epic in my mind (not sure if what I have in mind will reflect on the story as well ofc lol ) and no, I didn't abandon it, it's just that its theme (fantasy AU based on WoW) isn't exactly what Free! fans are after, hence I was taking my time with it (since I figured no one would desperately miss it lol ) while writing other stories. Now regarding your suggestion on a MakoHaruRin trio if I understood correctly? My email is: adoring. darkness gmail. com (without the gaps), if you want, I'll be happy to hear from you and elaborate on your idea. If not, I'm sure I can write something about them down the road.