The flames licked and spat into the pitch black night sky, illuminating it with a crackling warmth that Ivan had never seen nor felt before. Even from this distance, the crumbling, blackening building gave off a radiance that reached Ivan's tiny shivering frame, the tears from his eyes quickly drying away.

He grasped the girl's hand tighter as he watched, his eyes lost in the roaring flames and the brittle wood that it engulfed. The fire was eating away at it, tearing into what was once a formidable prison for Ivan. He eagerly absorbed every sound, every sight, inhaling the thick smell of burning charcoal as it rose up in the night air.

To Katyusha next to him, it was a terrifying spectacle, an image that would hang over her wearily for a long time. But for Ivan, it was a new beginning. In order to create anew, something must be destroyed — even at his young age, Ivan understood this well. After all, what other reason was there for the purple blemishes that covered his body? For the agonizing pain of an empty stomach? For the searing thrash of a belt across his trembling back? It was just as they said. For Ivan to be a good boy, he had to learn his lesson. He had to be punished.

However, they had not been good. The giants who did as they pleased, who sought every opportunity to inflict pain — they were the bad children. They did more than just punish. They revelled in it, greedily drank up spilt tears like hungry dogs. It only seemed right for someone to discipline them for it.

Ivan felt Katyusha squeeze his hand as the orphanage roof collapsed, the ribbons of fire spitting and rising higher with a low rumble. There were screams, wails and cries overtaken by the roaring of flames. Not everyone had made it out, some perhaps burnt alive in their own beds. Children younger than Ivan, swallowed up by the building as it fell to the ground, immolated by Ivan's own hand. A drop of the match it had been… and the beautiful flames grew and grew, as if by Ivan's own design. They spread and coiled around everything, dragging the rotten prison down into the barren ground, into ashes and dust where it belonged. He relished in the destruction left by his own bony hands, watching it unravel as if hypnotized.

It was a kind of beauty that Ivan was too young to comprehend, a kind that an eight year old's words could not even begin to describe. In time, however, as Ivan grew and grew like the flames he had been born out of, he would come to understand it. There was perhaps no word for it, the nameless beast that resided in Ivan's heart. But it was the things that you could not name that were often the most beautiful, the most spectacular.

It was this that Ivan encompassed, even as the flames that reflected in his eyes died out and dissipated. Even as his identity was stripped away, as his innocence was shred into wisps, as his face grew pale and sickly.

When all was taken away, it was only the beast that had remained.

.

This one's a fighter, Yao thought bitterly as he struggled to keep the man still. He was a large, bulky man — almost twice the size of Yao. Regardless, Yao had managed to tie his hands and legs on his own. It was placing the gag in his mouth that seemed to be a difficulty. The man's bald head thrashed side to side, yelling and screaming. But the noise was not an issue. The house was large and empty, comfortably placed amidst wilderness and large fields. Not even the night birds would hear him scream. Yao's patience, however, was beginning to wear thin with every ounce of strength the man was struggling with.

'Ivan.' Yao looked over to the fireplace, its warmth crackling and spitting into the dim room. Ivan was stood in front of it, eyes glazed over as he stared into the flames. His expression was drawn and focused, as if an old memory were playing out in front of him. 'Ivan,' Yao called out again, a little louder this time.

Ivan turned around, his expression looking lost as he blinked at Yao. 'Yes, myshka?'

Yao straddled the bald man and pushed his hands down on the man's large shoulders in his attempt to keep him still. He looked to Ivan, somewhat unnerved by his lack of participation.

'A little help here would be apprecia —'

The man abruptly rolled over, knocking Yao down and crushing him with his weight. The man threw his head back and knocked it against Yao's forehead with a sickening thwack. Sparks of light exploded in Yao's eyes, a throbbing pain sprouting on his forehead as he struggled and clawed at the heavier man. The bald man gnashed and snapped at Yao, resorting to using even his own teeth in a desperate struggle for survival. A pair of gloved hands gripped the bald man's shoulders from behind, lifting him off Yao and throwing him to the side. The man fell against the wall with a loud thud, knocking down a mirror in the process. Glass shattered and spread across the floor, the sound piercing Yao's aching head as he sat up.

'You're bleeding, myshka.' Ivan offered a hand to Yao, not particularly minding the bald man crawling on his belly as he recovered. Yao took Ivan's gloved hand and pulled himself up.

'I'm fine.' Yao felt his forehead for the injury, wincing as his hand met a bloody patch of skin. 'I'll take care of it later.'

He looked to the bald man as he crept towards the door like a worm, a pathetic attempt at an escape. He wondered if the man really thought he could make it out of this house alive, if he genuinely believed there was even a sliver of a chance.

'Let's take care of him first.'

'Mm. Da,' Ivan hummed thoughtfully, joining Yao in watching the man wriggle across the laminated floor with an apathetic interest. 'Do you know who he is?' he asked, his eyes still fixed on the bald man as he said this.

Yao turned to Ivan, his curiosity peaked. '… Who was —'

'I'll tell you.' Ivan's gaze flickered towards Yao somewhat teasingly, as if they were playing a game of sorts. 'No need to ask.'

Yao furrowed his brows in puzzlement, to which Ivan smiled lightly before continuing.

'This man,' Ivan stepped towards the pitiful figure on the floor, his heavy boots making a dreadful sound as they approached him, 'is Dr. Rothaugen.'

He shut the door the man had been so desperately reaching for. Ivan then placed his boot onto the man's hand, slowly pressing down to crush it. The man screamed out, and Yao couldn't help but think —

(You should reserve that scream for the real pain.)

'He worked at the Glen Hills Asylum,' Ivan spoke as his the sound of bones crumbling resounded beneath his boot, his voice steady and calm. 'Remember that, doctor?'

'Please…' the man whimpered. 'I don't know what you want from me. Just tell me. I'll give you any —'

Ivan twisted his boot, eliciting a cry from the bald man.

'Please…' the man continued to cry and beg incomprehensibly.

'You told me I was sick.' Ivan knelt down, his foot still not easing off the man's hand. 'That I needed help… Look at me.' He grabbed the man's chin and roughly tilted it up, Ivan's voice barely restraining a growl as he spoke. 'I said look at me.'

The man's contorted face stared up at Ivan, his eyes wide and full of terror. Then, upon seeing Ivan's face, something changed. Recognition, perhaps, as his expression morphed into one of shock. A startling laugh left the man's curled lips.

'You were one of them, weren't you? I suppose I should be glad you're not dead, then! Sixteen years later and the drug still hasn't killed you.' The man laughed louder, more nervously. 'If you ask me, that's a good result!'

Ivan stood up, his foot lifting off to reveal a pulpy mess of a hand, bleeding out into the laminated floor.

'You did more than treat me for a disease I didn't have. You remember that?' Ivan began to pace around the man, his expression cooling and becoming vacant, the beast slowly emerging. Yao shifted his balance as he watched, uneasiness sprouting in his stomach.

'What are you talking about?' The man's face was reddening as he continued to laugh uncontrollably, his mangled hand lying uselessly in front of him. 'Oh! Oh, you don't mean —'

Ivan stepped onto the man's other hand, pressing into it as bones cracked. A cry of pain pierced the air, still riddled with the unsettling cackles that escaped the man's mouth.

'You were never punished for it.' Ivan glared into the man as if he were no more than a pathetic worm writhing beneath his boot. 'But I can help you with that, da?'

'You'll punish me the way I punished you, is that it?' the man grinned, twisting his head to look at Ivan with crazed eyes. 'The way I made sure you kept your little mouth shut?'

Ivan said nothing in response, a flicker of anger falling across his eyes before his mask of composure returned. Yao took a step closer, knowing he shouldn't interfere and yet not being able to stop himself from doing so.

'What did he do to you, Ivan?'

Ivan looked up at Yao, his expression melting into one of pain, of not being able to speak the words that were trapped in him for so long. It was this subtle expression that told Yao everything — of the hurt and terror Ivan had felt at the hands of this man, of the bruises that would have been patterned across his skin, of the tears spilt by a child who knew nothing of comfort and warmth. Yao could see the cruelty in the man's beady eyes, the insatiable malice in his grin. Yao felt Ivan's resentment towards him, the anger that so desperately wanted to be unleashed. Yao understood in this one moment what Ivan's words could not convey.

Taking out his pocket knife, Yao approached the man on the floor without another word. He knelt down by his head, tilting it up to face Yao. He pried open the man's mouth, pulling his tongue so that it stuck out. The man's eyes widened in realization, his head shaking and voice crying for mercy.

'You won't be needing this anymore,' Yao spoke softly, slicing the knife through the man's tongue. Deep, deep crimson red spilled out of the bald man's mouth, a puddle quickly blooming out onto the floor. Yao flipped the man over so that he was on his back. He looked up to Ivan, finding him smiling gently at Yao.

'Keep his head propped up,' Yao told Ivan. 'We don't want him choking on his blood.'

'Of course….' Ivan spoke quietly, his eyes gazing fondly at Yao. 'I'll do that for you.'

Ivan sat down by the man, placing his bald head onto his lap and tilting it upright. He placed the gag into his mouth to soak up the blood as Yao proceeded to trace the knife around questioningly. What would Yao tear up first? What fragile piece of flesh should he rip up into tiny little pieces?

Yao's eyes settled onto the man's mangled hands, the one that was bloodied and barely a hand anymore. The other, however, was merely bruised and broken. Yes… there was plenty of work to do there. Yao took hold of the man's trembling hand, the knife flicking and slicing away the skin, slicing away the rotten flesh that had once marred Ivan. Tearing away the hand that so viciously destroyed and defiled the frail little child whose eyes were so weary and afraid of the world. Ripping apart the form that had abused and violated countless of children, eating away at their innocence day by day. When all but a flayed hand was left, twitching and writhing in agony, Yao moved up higher. Removing the repulsive skin there, too. Peeling away until the man's muffled shrieks became music to Yao's ears. The man still resisted, still struggled, but Ivan kept him still — kept him watching and feeling every piece of his being tear away.

When Yao lost interest in the ugly, bare arm, he dragged his knife across the man's chest. He marked him with red crosses, red lines and curves, until the blank canvas had become something hideous and malformed. Crimson paint to mark the vessel of a repulsive and rotten heart. The man's screams became louder, so much that the bloodied cloth no longer concealed it, shrieks ringing out into the room and through the hallways. But no one would hear. No one would come. He belonged to the knife's jagged edge now, clay that was to be molded by Yao. Molded until he looked like the monster that he was. Yao worked the knife into the man's face, drawing lines around and around his eyes until they met soft and squelching pupils. Beady little eyes became soups of red, a mouth contorted by screams became a grin, and the mask that concealed a monster was peeled away.

Yao sat back to examine what he had created — no, what he had revealed — and looked to Ivan's blood flecked face, beaming with a juvenile kind of excitement. Yao stood up and walked over to Ivan's bag, opening it and rummaging through it. Somehow, he knew what he was looking for, although he could not at the time understand exactly why he was looking for it. His body moved as if of its own accord, Yao merely spectating himself from a distance. His hands felt around the bag until they touched the cold handle of a gun. He pulled the small revolver out of the bag and slid it across the floor, towards the crying, mangled man. Ivan looked at the gun curiously, picking it up gently.

'No, Ivan,' Yao said. 'Leave it there, by his hand. Come and watch from here.' He gestured to the space next to him.

Ivan dropped the gun by the man's hand and stood up, making his way to Yao's side. His expression was puzzled, unsure of Yao. Yao smiled at him reassuringly before turning to the man on the floor.

'There's a gun next to you, doctor,' Yao spoke coldly, his voice not trembling like it used to when blood had been spilt. 'Now I know you don't practice euthanasia… but I think your case makes a very compelling argument, don't you think?' Yao approached the man, his knife dangling in his hand. His footsteps were not quite as heavy as Ivan's, but even so the man flinched with every soft thud. 'I'm afraid the only thing waiting for you now is agonizing pain, doctor. I'll make sure you feel every excruciating stab of it when I start slicing away at your legs.' Yao gently kicked the man's foot, but it was enough to send him whimpering in dread. 'However, the gun is waiting for you, too. It's right next to you. Just pick it up, put it to your head, and pull the trigger. Wouldn't that be a nice way to go?'

And then, without even a moment's consideration, the bald man's shaking hand reached for the gun and grasped it with quivering fingers. Yao stepped back, standing next to Ivan to watch it all unfold before him. The man, like a marionette whose strings were being manipulated, raised the gun to his head with a disfigured hand. His hand slipped and dropped the gun into a pool of his own blood, groaning in agony as he reached for it again. He picked it up and held it to his head, the revolver wobbling by his temple. He cocked the gun and fired.

A loud bang echoed in the room, piercing Yao's ears as he jumped up in surprise. He had not expected it to be so loud. He had not expected the overpowering smell of gunpowder and the ringing in his ears, either. But even so, the sight before him — a limp and flayed man — had become an oddly satisfying one. He looked to Ivan, finding him already staring at Yao.

'Ochi chernye…' Ivan murmured, his eyes betraying a strange mix of emotions. Yao saw a kind of amusement in his eyes, but he also saw something else flickering in his lilac irises. Was it uncertainty? Mourning? Yao wasn't sure. It was a strange, delicate expression that gazed back at him, and Yao could feel the invisible snakes returning as they wrapped around his chest. The room was suffocating him, drowning him in the blood soaked air, although he did not know why. Speechless, Yao stood there with the knife still dripping in his hands.

Almost without warning, Ivan closed in on Yao and cradled his face with gloved hands. For a fleeting moment, Yao wished there hadn't been a glove between Yao's skin and Ivan's hand, longing for the familiar ice-cold touch that made him shiver.

'Vizhu traur v vas po dushe moyei…' Ivan crooned, his lilac eyes luring Yao closer — perhaps dangerously close — to him. Foreign words spilled out of Ivan's lips teasingly, their meanings tangled and riddled between vodka scented breath and the amethyst gaze that bore into Yao. He was lost in those cryptic words, the musty smell of blood and gunpowder fading away into the background as he felt his own breath become shallow.

Overwhelmed and unsure, Yao instinctively pulled away from Ivan, his pulse beating and throbbing loudly in his ears as he struggled to rationalize what was happening. He averted his eyes to anywhere but Ivan, taking feigned interest in the hideous corpse on the floor.

'…I don't think he'll fit in the body bag,' Yao said curtly.

'We can just burn him here,' Ivan smiled gently, his hand clamped onto Yao's tense shoulder. 'No need to carry him all the way home.'

'R-Right.' Yao nodded weakly, the word home somehow sounding strange in his ears. He wouldn't exactly call that crumbling house a home, exactly… and yet in some way it was precisely just that. The suffocating feeling returned to Yao as he thought this, a kind of nervousness overtaking him as he and Ivan proceeded to cut up the man together, throwing limbs into the fire. The smell that rose up from the flames was an unbearably rotten stench, making Yao choke on the air as he breathed. Ivan, however, didn't seem to mind, his eyes lingering onto the fire with fascination as flesh scorched and burned.

When the flayed man was nothing but ash, Yao put out the fire — noting the flicker of disappointment on Ivan's face. They left the house wordlessly, Yao nearly falling asleep against the window in the car as Ivan drove, his limbs aching for a soft bed to melt into. When they finally got home, Yao went straight for his room, stomach empty but eyes too drowsy to care. He threw himself onto the bed and felt his eyes close effortlessly against the pillow. Silence. Yao could finally rest, the absence of blood scented air having turned into a strange luxury in recent times.

The sound of the door creaking open jolted Yao out of his drowsiness, a sound of heavy footsteps approaching the bed. A small sigh escaped Yao's lips, shuffling to the side of the bed in anticipation of yet another one of Ivan's odd, drunken rambles. The light flickered on, making Yao squint his eyes as he turned to look at Ivan, whose expression was placid as ever.

'Something wrong?' Yao croaked out.

Ivan gestured to the cotton pads and antiseptic in his hands. 'Your wound.'

Yao blinked, his hand reaching for his temple to find dried blood. 'Oh, right…'

He furrowed his brows, wondering how he had forgotten about the cut on his head. Then, without invitation, Ivan seated himself on the edge of the bed and began pressing antiseptic drenched cotton onto the wound. Yao winced, Ivan's hand pressing a little too hard on the wound and antiseptic trickling down his temple. Yao didn't have to ask to know this was Ivan's first time treating someone else. He bit back a complaint and waited, Ivan taking his time in 'cleaning' the wound — though Yao had a feeling Ivan was doing this deliberately.

'Why are you doing this?' Yao asked, his temple stinging and burning.

Ivan pulled back the cotton wad and furrowed his brows. 'So the wound doesn't get infected.'

'N-No, I meant…' Yao gestured his hands into the air, not sure himself what he was gesturing at exactly when he spoke. 'This.'

He looked to Ivan and hoped he understood. Yao couldn't put into words what 'this' was, or rather, it wasn't something he wanted to put into words out loud. Killing and butchering people, dissolving them away in acid, listening to Ivan's soft ramblings at night — these strange and unsettling things which had become so normal to Yao. When Ivan only returned a perplexed look, Yao sighed.

'When I first met you, at the Poisoned Apple… that wasn't the first time I saw you.' Yao propped himself up on the bed. 'You had been following me around for weeks.'

Ivan's eyes lit up. 'Ah, yes. I remember…' He smiled nostalgically, as if recalling a pleasant memory. Yao supposed that for Ivan, stalking someone might have just been a fun game. However, there was still something Yao didn't quite understand.

'But why were you following me?' Yao asked, studying Ivan's expression as he said this.

Ivan blinked back, perhaps caught off guard by the question. Then, as if to conceal this, he chuckled lightly. 'You've already asked your question today, myshka.'

Yao sat up. 'No, I haven't.'

'Da, you did.' Ivan tilted his head playfully. 'Just before you killed the doctor.'

'But you didn't answer that question. So I'll ask another one instead,' Yao said, shifting uncomfortably beneath Ivan's amused gaze. 'Why'd you stalk me?'

Ivan sighed lightly. His gaze now trailed away from Yao, looking into something distant and far away for a moment, before returning his lilac irises to Yao. A soft smile graced Ivan's lips, a gesture that made Yao's stomach twist and churn. It was strange, how both Ivan's tender smile and his terrifying glare seemed to affect Yao in the same way. Was it fear he felt when Ivan smiled? Or perhaps it was some other, deeply buried and nameless feeling that ailed him.

Nearly forgetting himself and where he was, Yao flustered as he wrought out the words. 'You're not answering the question.'

Suddenly being in the same room with this man became uncomfortable for Yao, weariness settling over him as he watched Ivan, who merely continued to smile at Yao wordlessly. A momentary silence fell, and Yao wasn't sure if it was because Ivan didn't know what to say, or if he was deliberately keeping quiet to unsettle Yao. A dangerous kind of playfulness was written in Ivan's expression, one that made the air stifling and overwhelming for Yao. He struggled to breathe normally, to think clearly, and could only huff out in frustration.

'Never mind. I'm going to sleep.' Yao scowled as he buried himself back into the bedsheets. 'Close the light on the way out,' he muffled into the pillow curtly, waiting for Ivan to leave.

A hand gripped Yao's shoulder, Yao's entire body immobilized by this one touch.

'Sladkikh snov, myshka,' Ivan murmured, his hand releasing Yao's shoulder gently.

Footsteps resounded in the room, the quiet click of a light switch allowing Yao to release a breath. He was enveloped in pitch black darkness, the sheets wrapped around him tightly and securely. He should have fallen asleep easily, as effortlessly as before. The drowsiness, however, was gone and left him with an uneasy alertness. Alone with his own thoughts, his own strange and tangled emotions, sleep did not come easy.

The bald man's screams and shrieks rang in Yao's head. Skin peeling. Blood flowing. Ugly and hideous sights and sounds. But in their own monstrosity, they were beautiful. There was something just so right about it, about seeing that man's face contorted in unbearable agony and suffering. A poetic kind of justice, Yao supposed. A cruel aesthetic that only broken people could enjoy.

And then there was Ivan's blood flecked face, white and glowing in the warm light of the fireplace. His tender smile and the bittersweet expression in his eyes. Everything about Ivan was tainted, marred in some way. Child-like happiness blemished by old bruises. Affection poisoned by the memory of pain. Yao wondered if he too, would be intoxicated by this imperfect bliss — if perhaps he was becoming the very same beast that he feared in Ivan. The very same beast that Yao was finding himself wanting to protect, to shield from further harm.

Yao was slipping away, away into a dark abyss of emotions he could not cope with. It was with this thought that the black curtain fell over Yao's eyes, drowning him in dreams of crimson red ribbons and ice cold hands.