The Key is Lost

Rating: T for the ending

Summery: Rufus Barma has lost his gate's Key and he lost it to Xerxes Break of all people. And now he has to deal with the consequences. AU speculation. Liam and Rufus Barma centric.

Characters/Pairings: Rufus Barma, Liam, Cheryl, Shelly, Sharon

Comments: This is based off a bit of pure speculation I had after that talk about Keys in chapter 46, that Liam is the Barma gate's Key. In the end this piece ended up ramblely and with an ending that wasn't really what I expected. Enjoy. And please leave me a review and let me know what you think!

Spoilers: Err manga chapter 30 spoilers? Kind of.

"The owners of the gates possess a sphere of light called a "Key" which they carry with them at all times, concealed in some kind of object."

(Vincent, Chapter 46)

Rufus Barma had been a fool.

Duke Barma stood in the doorway of the room watching the young man sleeping on the bed with a frown tracing a line between his brows as he wondered exactly how it had come to this.

He had made a drastic miscalculation. A horrible mistake.

He had lost his Key to Xerxes Break.

Oh, not lost as one would loose one's hat or their favorite pair of gloves but lost lost, the true lost of things that have no chance of ever being regained.

His Key had been stolen. Liam had been lost.

Though it had been many years ago, he remembered the day he had received his Key with vivid clarity. He was twenty-eight, the same year he would be frozen at for decades, and his uncle had been temporary holding the post of family head for the past six years until he was ready to assume it.

"You have mastered the chain of this family," his uncle said. "That makes you the head of the Barma dukedom. That and one other thing. As you will have been told gate to the Abyss is entrusted to each of the four duke houses and each of the heads have a Key to their gate that they protect." he reached a hand up to the elderly hawk perched on his shoulder -his uncle had been a very keen man for hawks and hunting- and snapped his fingers. The bird, a molting, elderly creature disappeared as if it had never been and there was a ball of light in his uncle's hand.

"This is your Key," he said, holding it out to his nephew.

"It's been a bird all this time?" Rufus Barma looked at the proffered Key with surprise, he had long wondered what the Barma Key looked like, but this had not been what he had envisioned.

"It took the form of a ring for your father and it was a bloodhound for your grandfather. For you," his uncle shrugged, "Who knows what it will be."

Reaching out Barma closed his fingers over the ball of light and found that it was warm, giving slightly under his grip. He held the Key up and frowned at the sphere, wondering exactly how something so small could be- and then there was a flash of light that blinded the both of them.

When he blinked sight back Barma found that his hand was empty. "What happened?" he starred at his hand, turning it over in case the Key could be hiding on the other side. "Where did it go?"

"Don't worry. It will find you soon." His uncle gave his brisk nod. "You're officially the head of the Barma household now, Rufus. Try not to make a mess of things."

The next day his uncle left the country for the one their family originated from.

The day after that he found a orphan sleeping on the steps of his mansion. In point of fact he tripped over her while heading for his carriage. But as soon as his hand touched the snarled and dirty hair of the little girl -he had been checking for head wounds, not being sure where his boot had hit her- he knew exactly what form his Key had decided to take.

The girl was three, as best as anyone could tell and was completely without name, history, or family. And he could not help but remember how his late wife, not very late at this point, had wanted a daughter so very badly.

He called her Yanna, since she didn't have a name, it meant 'treasured' in the language of his family's home county and as she was his Key he felt it most apt. Adopting an unknown orphan into the Barma household was not as difficult a process as it might seem and he quickly took the appropriate steps to ensure Yanna would carry the Barma name her entire life.

And Yanna had been… perfect. Kind and sweet and gentle and impossible not to love. Her smile was the one thing that made him happy and he made time out of Pandora business to see it.

He made sure to get her the best of tutors growing up (though he saved the joy of teaching her how to read for himself) and saw to it that she learned everything a young noble lady needed to learn. He gave her everything she could have wanted, fine clothes and books and ribbons but she somehow still grew up sweet of nature and miraculously unspoiled.

But even after she came of age he never told her what she really was.

When Yanna turned sixteen she made a contract with Eques and officially joined Pandora. Since Eques was better suited to information gathering Yanna was rarely in the field and he could sleep a little easier the he would have had she made a contract with any other chain.

"I'm just glad I can be useful to you, father," she told him one day with a smile. "You've been so good to me; I want to repay that in what ways I can."

He had smiled and drawn her into an affectionate hug, as he often did. "You don't need to do a thing." he had told her. "Just existing is more than enough for me, Yanna."

She was the daughter he had never been able to have.

And she had never reached thirty.

An illegal contractor attacked the carriage she rode in and killed Yanna before she could summon Eques to her defense. The two other contractors with her were not able to save her life but managed to prevent her body from being devoured by the contractor's chain.

To Barma it was not only a failure as a guardian of his Key but as a father too. He had let Yanna be in danger, let his daughter be in danger, and she had died. If only, if only he had stopped her from joining Pandora, but she had wanted to help so much…

He buried his Yanna, in the Barma graveyard, as a full member of the family, in a cloud of despair. After all, he had failed one of the most important duties he held.

At a complete loss as to what to do he wrote to his uncle, only to receive reassurance in return, "It will find you. One way or another. Don't worry Rufus."

Despite his worry, his uncle was correct, the missing Key turned out not to be as much of an issue as one would have thought.

His gardeners found a boy sleeping under the rosebushes not long after that and as soon as he saw the boy he knew what form his Key had taken, besides, the boy had Yanna's light brown hair and red brown eyes, Barma would have recognized the features everywhere.

He took the boy in, gave him the Barma name and when the boy reluctantly admitted he had no name of his own Barma named him Phillip. Again he saw to it the boy had the best tutors to teach him and then buried himself in Pandora work.

It didn't help matters that Phillip was the complete opposite of the bright and cheerful Yanna, he was sullen and moody and rather prone to dramatics. As he grew older Barma found he quite disliked the boy, they clashed over issues often and all too often the arguments turned quite nasty.

Perhaps it was this dislike, coupled with the sting of Yanna's death, so close even after more than ten years, that lead Barma to do a cruel and stupid thing.

On the night before Phillip's coming of age ceremony he told his what he had loved Yanna too much to break to her. He told Phillips he was the Key.

"You are a thing, a tool for me to safe-keep until it is needed. The fact that you even take the form of a human is a complete coincidence. In essence you are no more human than a chain."

A terrible expression passed briefly over Phillip's face and Barma remembered, a moment too late, that Phillip had had a terror of chains ever since he was young. But there was no undoing what had been done.

The next day the boy's valet found that Phillip had hanged himself in his room. The note he left said, "After all, I am replaceable."

Phillip, Barma admitted to himself on some particularly bad days, was his mistake. That had been too great a burden to drop on a fifteen-year-old boy, especially one (for all his faults) as clever as Phillip.

He named the next, a boy also, Faltan, and tried to have less to do with him than he had with Phillip.

Faltan was gregarious and charming and soon after his arrival had charmed the entirety of the house staff. He also was the best person at spotting Barma's illusions that Barma would see for a long time, able to spot the fakes at a glance, even in a crowded room.

He grew up with no great incident, joined Pandora, made a contact with the Baby chain, and was killed in his very first mission by a stray bullet from one of his own comrades.

Finding the next form of the Key proved more difficult than previous times because word had gotten around that he was in the habit of adopting orphans into his family and not a day went by that a brat wasn't found sleeping on the steps of the mansion or hiding in the garden. If he sensed no prickle of the Key from them he sent them off to that Nightray orphanage in Sablier until they were old enough to be used as house staff. This meant his staff were unusually loyal servants, since they owed their positions entirely to his kindness.

The next form of the Key was another girl (big boned and sturdy where Yanna had been small and slight, but still with the same color eyes) she became Amelia and grew up with absolutely no interest in Pandora. She never understood why her foster-father never let her marry one of her dozens of suitors and then she died of a sudden illness in her twenties before he could think of a gentle way to break the truth to her.

After that came Jake and Antoinette and Pauline and Robert… and Barma found he hated the form his Key had chosen. They were just human enough to care for and just human enough to die ridiculously young.

The next boy was small, solemn, and frowned as he starred up at him, frowning slightly.

"Do you wish to take him in, sir?" his butler asked delicately, recognizing the pause in his master's choice from long years of working for Barma.

"… Yes." he said slowly. The boy had Yanna's exact eyes. "What is your name?" he asked the boy.

"I don't have one." the boy replied (they never did, the Keys) then he added a moment's thought, "Or if I did have one I don't remember it."

"Very well. I will give you one. Your name is Liam." he thought for a moment then made the decision he had been toying with for days after Robert had choked out his last breath and finally escaped the illness that had plagued him for months. "Liam Lunettes."

"Lunettes, sir?" his butler repeated carefully.

"It means 'eyeglasses'." he said. "Get his eyes checked, he rather looks like he might need them."

"But… sir… Lunettes?" the butler repeated, mystified by this break in the settled pattern.

"Have him run errands for you," Barma said in an offhand way. "You've needed an errand boy, haven't you? See to it."

"Of course, sir." his butler murmured, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder to guide him out of the room.

And although he did his best to keep away from the boy as much as possible his butler seemed to be determined to keep him as much informed on Liam's actions as he could. Everyday Barma was in the manner house it was, "Good evening sir, today's tea is mint tea and your boy has tried to take more books from the library than he could possibly carry, burying himself in the pile he made when he dropped them. Is there anything else you require for the evening, sir?"

"He's a servant, Nigal. Not 'my boy'."

"Very good, sir." the butler murmured deferentially and inevitably repeated the epithet later.

And so even though he kept as far away from Liam as he could Barma found himself knowing about every scrape and every adventure and every incident that the boy got himself into, whether he wanted to or not.

Liam grew to eleven, reading every book he could lay his hands on and his eyes only worsened as the years went by.

When Cheryl visited the Barma mansion (as she made a point to do often) and brought along her young granddaughter, Sharon, who was only three. Rather unexpectedly Sharon latched onto Liam for the duration of her stay, trailing behind the servant rather like a duckling.

However when Barma thought about it he supposed it made a sort of sense, children were uncommon in both the Barma and the Rainsworth households. And Cheryl and Shelly approved of the friendship, Liam was young enough to play with Sharon but old enough to be responsible and take care of the both of them. So Sharon made many trips to the Barma mansion with her mother and grandmother and Barma often gave Liam time off so that he could go to the Rainsworth manner house.

And so it could be said that the two children grew up together, despite their age difference. Not that Barma paid much mind until both children ended up in front of the Rainsworth gate when the man who would later claim his name was Xerxes Break fell out of the Abyss.

What they were doing there he never did find out to his satisfaction, but Barma immediately forbade Liam to go near any gate. He didn't want to think what would happen if Liam went too close to a gate. In fact, it could have been because of his nature that he had gone near the gate at all, very little was really known about the Keys.

At fourteen Liam disregarded the order he was given.

"I would like to join Pandora, sir." he said to Barma.

"No." said Barma, instantly, not even bothering to look up from his paperwork.

"I've made a contract with a chain." Liam said.

Barma's head snapped up, "You what?" he demanded.

"I made a contract." he repeated.

"A legal contract?"

Liam dug in the pocket of his servant's coat and held out the chain with the appropriate medallion on the end with one hand that barely shook, showing only hint of fear of his master's quite well known wrath. "I did a lot of research, sir. And I talked with the Rainsworths. Then I found a box of these."

There had been a box of contact necklaces kept in the library since Barma could remember, he had never thought anything of it, until now.

He didn't let his surprise show on his face, instead asking, "Which chain?"

"The March Hare."

"I see." Barma said flatly.

At that point he had no choice but to let Liam join Pandora, he had to learn how to control his chain properly, after all. Besides, Amelia hadn't gone near Pandora in her short life and that hadn't kept her safe.

And so things had progressed through the years…

Liam shifted slight in his sleep, that small sound jerking Barma out of the past and back to the unfortunate present.

He had turned his head so the wound on his temple caught the light from the open doorway. Barma had honestly not expected for Liam to stand there and let him hit him, he had thought Liam would dodge away or deflect the blow, if he hadn't pulled his hit at the last moment Liam would have been on the floor with a dented skull.

It had all come to a head in that sudden, shocking moment when Liam had stepped between he and Xerxes Break and taken a blow to protect that criminal. In that split second Barma knew for sure what that his suspicion of the last few weeks was true.

He had lost his Key.

He, Rufus Barma had lost his Key to Xerxes Break.

How and when had his Key gotten more loyal to a criminal than his own master? And how had he not even noticed?

Yes, he had buried himself in his work, done his best to ignore this new incarnation Key as much as possible, but how could Xerxes Break have stolen his right out from under his nose? How could have have lost the loyalty of of the one servant he could not afford to loose?

Because he had lost Liam.

He had seen it in Liam's eyes as the young man had stood in front of his friend, the look in his eyes that said, "You might be my master, but this man has my respect, not you."

He had lost control of his Key, and to a potentially, no a definitely, dangerous element at that. Who knew what the Mad Hatter would do with the power to open a gate to the Abyss. No doubt release that madness on all of them or even worse.

What did that leave him? What was the path from here?

"After all, I am replaceable."

Phillip had said that, so long ago it might as well have been another lifetime and the thought that it put in his mind made him wince. He liked Liam, in a roundabout, vague way, but this really was the only solution. He couldn't control Liam.

And that was not a situation he could allow.

The choice lay obvious in front of him. There was really only one available path to him at this point.

Barma walked quietly up to the bed and put a gentle hand, far gentler than he thought he was able, on Liam's forehead, rather as a father might. With the other hand he eased the pillow out from under the young man's head.

Liam frowned in his sleep and his eyes flickered half open. They were Yanna's eyes (they had always been Yanna's eyes) but the question in them was one she had never had in hers.

"…sir?"

Barma said nothing. He just put the pillow down over Liam's face and held it there until the struggling finally stopped.

He would come back, after all. One way or another.

Or, at least, the Key would.

And that was all that really mattered in the end.

Rufus Barma had lost his Key…

"That's because the existence of the Key is of vital importance to the four Dukes."

(Vincent, Chapter 46)

end.