[1.1]

"Do you want it, Chelsea? To be free of pain forever?"

An alluring promise, a faraway dream, something she had longed for. But such promises and those like them are often too good to be true, too beautiful to be flawless. All her experiences, all the things she had lost because she had been too hopeful - asked for too much - they should have taught her that much by now.

I know that.

But she is a weak person. She knows that as well, has had it proven to her too many times. So even though she knows she should know better, knows that she does know better, she hesitates. The insistent coldness of Kurome's hand continues to burn into the flesh on the back of her neck like a malevolent flame, allowing her no peace.

Then, a strange tingling in her limbs, followed by a soft whirling sound, tells her that her arms and legs - those cursed, disgustingly white, metallic things that have forced her to go on living when she could, should have left this world behind, weightless and formless at last - have been switched off.

There is an on/off switch, a little cyan blue ring, connected to a small plate at the back of her neck where it merges with the skull, beneath her long, shaggy hair. There, it would be able to send signals to all places in her body. They had placed it there so that it would fill in the role of those precious bones and nerves and whatnot that had disappeared back then, torn out of her body with disturbing ease. Kurome must have flicked it off with her free hand.

"Let... let me go." She says. She had intended it to be a forceful statement, a command, but it comes out as a desperate plea, her voice shaking slightly with something that she told herself wasn't fear, while knowing perfectly well that it was. "Let go of me."

The black-eyed girl does not respond, and with an impossibly smooth motion, flips herself into an upright position and vaults over the balcony railing on the above floor in a single, effortless arc, taking Chelsea's limp form with her. There is an incredible lightness to her movements, almost like what she is carrying so easily with one hand is not the weight of an entire person (albeit an incredibly thin one), but a rag doll.

A rag doll. Without strength, without will, without purpose or life, it's only purpose to be tossed around and played with. In a way, she thinks, it's an apt comparison. She doesn't struggle as Kurome wordlessly carries her limp form into the flat above her own. She can't struggle, not when her limbs are not hers to move. This thought crosses her mind often - that she is living in a body that is more machine than flesh, more someone else's than her own.

It's okay. I don't deserve a body. I should have lost it back then.

The interior of the room she finds herself in is a far stretch from her own, almost featureless home. The floor is littered with all sorts of things that she presumes are junk but can't really make out in the darkness, which is lit up only by the faint blue a single computer screen. The pale glow frames the silhouette of a dishevelled young man, wearing what looks to be a dark blue jacket. He turns around when the two enter and reaches for the light switch, instantly flooding the room with a soft, strangely warm yellow light.

Chelsea's eyes widen slightly as Kurome gently sets her body down on an unoccupied bean bag to the side of the room, surrounded by clothes, books, rough pencil sketches of things that she can't quite put names on, all dumped haphazardly on the floor. The man sitting at the chair is unmistakably Wave, the sailer, owner of Grand Chariot - but at the same time, someone markedly different.

She had always remembered Wave as a kind, optimistic young man, almost naive. But above all, he had been young, had that spring in his step, that confidence in the way he had carried himself, that inexplicable energy of youth in all of his movements. His blue eyes had shone with a sort of light that Chelsea had once recognised in her own but had now lost.

The Wave sitting before her now, though, is someone else. His face is leaner than she remembered it being, covered with an unkempt stubble. His hair is longer than it was before, sticking up in odd angles and drooping, tiredly, over his eyes - once shining, now dull, dead, emotionless. No light reflects from them. He slouches forward on his chair, the perfect posture of a sailor and a soldier having disappeared. His clothes are wrinkled and, while unmistakably the same as the ones he had been wearing when they first met, now seem to hang loose over his body.

Kurome, too, looks different from before. Her already thin form seems to have shrunken even further, her pale skin becoming even paler, looking more like a ghoul than a girl. Her hair is messier now, it's previous blackness somehow even more overpowering, like it's sucking the light out of the air, devouring it and leaving nothing behind. A few, blood red highlights can be seen - which is strange, considering that Kurome had never been one to dye her hair.

Esdeath's attempted coup must have taken it's toll on them. Judging by the way they are now, it must have been even worse than she had been lead to believe from the few snippets of conversation she had heard regarding the matter.

Before Chelsea can speak, Wave lets out a long sigh, and greets her.

"I'm sorry for bringing you here under these circumstances," he says, his voice soft and sort of raspy, "But I had no choice. Top secret orders, from Commander Najenda. She asked that you receive no prior warning."

It's a strange feeling, lying paralysed under the gaze of two people who were once your enemies, one having saved your life when it shouldn't have been, the other being the one who would have taken it. She finds herself praying for her own safety, then for her own death, then both at once, two inner voices, one of fear and the other of despair, intertwining into a relentless crescendo that echoed on the inside of her mind.

"Water?"

It's a stranger feeling, being offered a glass of iced water by the person who had made you unable to procure one for yourself without the aid of several thoughtless machines, designed to help you live but only really serving to delay, painfully, your inevitable death.

Her arms can not move, but her mouth opens ever so slightly, her parched throat and the tingling pain it caused suddenly coming to light, the previous distracting circumstances suddenly stripped away. Taking that as an affirmative, Kurome steps forward and delivers the cup slowly to her lips, in a manner all too similar to the way she had approached her prone body years ago, a maniacal grin on her face and a bloodied blade in her hands.

Pain, like she has never known it before. Blood, seeping from parts of her body she had never even known existed, a crimson river spewing forth, tainting the grass beneath her form, painting it red. The blade swings through the air, without finesse, without control, propelled by rage and hate and a sadistic pleasure. The black eyed devil's laughter blends with her own screams and pleas to form an ear-grating but strangely entrancing symphony of uncontrolled sounds.

She attempts to pull away but can not, and the cold water refuses to go down her throat, which had been dried by the air conditioning of her bedroom over the night. She chokes, her body spasming as it rejects the devil's gift, sending it spilling out of her mouth and onto her t-shirt, turning it's pale grey into a slightly darker shade.

Corruption. Spreading darkness. Who am I to accept such gift?

Kurome pulls away, and a silence falls over them. Wave winces.

"Sorry." He says, standing up, pushing his body off the chair using both arms, like a weary old man. "Kurome, do you mind leaving? Just for now?"

The girl nods and averts her eyes, a small gesture barely visible unless you are looking for it, and, turning silently, leaves the room. A wraith, an apparition, fading away into the darkness, just as discreetly and noiselessly as it had manifested itself into the light.

Chelsea watches the thin form of the devil girl disappearing behind the closing door, not noticing when the sailor had circles around her and lifts her head up, reactivating her limbs. At least, until the beeping sound and the searing pain thrusts that fact in her face, like it had only minutes ago. Minutes ago, she had finally mustered up the courage to do the deed. Now, like everything else, that courage had been robbed from her.

Enough of your self pity. There are others who have lost more, and done less.

"You can drink now," he says, gesturing to the translucent, pink plastic cup on the table next to her, the kind you would find in an IKEA store, labeled as being for a child. Strange, so out of place. His voice is soft, calm, and warm. Going out of his way to be welcoming, afraid of hurting her. Almost like a grandfather, consoling a child.

Stop it. Don't talk like how he used to talk. He won't talk like that anymore, I'm sure. Because of me.

She stares at the cup. At once, it beckons to her and repulses her, reminds her of a time when she was still a child, naively laughing her life away. The water that she had coughed up weighs down her shirt, pulling her down. She knows that in reality, the weight is negligible, but the reality of the mind is different from the reality of the body, and no matter what she does, she can't bring herself to lift a finger.

Instead, without thinking, three words escape her lips: "I hate ice."

Wave pulls back and winces, but hides it quickly, and well. "Don't we all." He mutters, slumping back onto his chair. Once again, silence wraps itself around them. "Don't we all."

A/N: Whew, that's the second chapter! No coffee this time (only green tea, which isn't quite the same), so it might be worse than the previous one XD. The next chapter, which I'm working on, will probably be in the form of a massive info dump about the AU and all the differences in the timeline. It might take a while, though - I've got a ton of other ideas I want to pursue, and another fanfic should be coming up soon.

Again, thanks for reading.