Pandora Hearts © Jun Mochizuki

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A single rose can be my garden...a single friend, my world.

Leo Buscaglia

The breeze that day was ephemeral, nearly evanescent. Unaccompanied, Eliot stood quietly, dark suit heavy beneath the sun. The weather was the opposite of what he had expected. A black umbrella lay discarded at his feet.

Leo, ever contrary, decomposed without complaint. His cross-adorned grave rested amid rows of sleeping Nightrays, blanketed beneath a quilt of fresh earth and pillows lily-white with petals wide open.

Vanessa was the last to leave (Eliot had thought it would have been Gil - but then again, Vanessa had always stepped up as the strong one when their family broke in crumbling eggshell pieces). She relinquished her place beside her grieving brother's shoulder to (reluctantly, he knew; he could hear her hesitation, even through his grief-soaked fog) follow the trail trod by five other siblings, winding through the cemetery in dark-heeled boots toward a somber limousine. Little Gil and Vincent were already tucked inside, wailing great tears and sorrow, small hands clutching elder brothers in an attempt to find stability. Claude and Ernest held them tightly - faces drawn, lips pressed tight - not saying anything. They let the children cry. There were no answers to the repeated questions of why.

Fred remained outside the vehicle: watching the cloudless sky, the mounds of motionless stones. He blinked when Vanessa touched his arm.

They spoke in hushed tones, unwilling to disturb fragile stillness. He opened the door and helped her inside, making sure each of his younger siblings had a seatbelt secured before he climbed in behind. The driver gestured toward Eliot; Fred shook his head. The engine started with a choking rumble. Someone would return before dark.

Reim watched the family leave, himself and Break having already made their way to his own car. Break sat with Emily on his lap instead of his shoulder; he occupied himself with tipping her over. (She made little "oomph" noises whenever she hauled herself back up.)

A single breath of wind ghosted through the car's open windows and tossed Reim's earrings. (Break heard the movement, listened to the sound of tiny chimes. Tiny, tiny chimes. The buried child had returned home; he could name precious ones who hadn't.) He poked at Emily and missed. She giggled when he tried again.

Reim broke the silence, watching as the boy atop the hill lowered himself to his knees to place a bouquet beside those of so many others. There was a defeated sag to his shoulders, a mournful hesitation before he let stargazer lilies drop, a moment of stillness where Reim could almost see the soul behind blue eyes break.

"Xerxes...?"

Break, wanting to avoid the possibility of having to rely on a teary-eyed man to drive him home, decided to explain as clinically as possible. He shrugged an unsympathetic shoulder. "Inevitably, monsters are tied to the Abyss. There's not much else to it."

Reim crossed his wrists over the top of the steering wheel. "That doesn't make any sense."

Break sighed. It was Reim's job to think through these types of things on his own, but the melancholy was muddling his head; Break didn't appreciate having to explain. But, while they, as adults, hadn't been particularly close to the two boys, Reim had come to think of himself as a silent guardian (and goodness knew he put enough effort into figuring out the past to feel close to the present). Break smiled bitterly. He had, after all, been the one to tangle Reim up in this mess; he may as well help him sort out the knots. "Do you remember the child's first Chain?"

"Yes," Reim replied. "It was the Boojum."

"That's right," Break affirmed. "A gift from his father: the Chain that carries a curse of its own."

Reim frowned.

Break continued, undaunted: "I wonder if he knew it had the power to destroy those most beloved to its contractor before transferring ownership?" Sensing Reim's responding glower, Break turned instead to Emily and spoke through a whisper, "I'll bet that was a really bad day."

"Now is not the time to make jokes," Reim retorted. "That child lost his entire family because of that one contract."

"Yes, yes," Break waved Reim's disgruntlement off as insignificant. He leaned his head against the headrest and fixed his sightless gaze out the windshield, holding Emily in a loose cup of clasped hands. "You're missing the point. You see, the orphan was introduced to Humpty Dumpty, and Boojum refused to play nice. The two destroyed each other." He rolled his head to the side and gave Reim a grin, "Simultaneous end and beginning of story."

Reim stared at the steering wheel, brows furrowed. "I imagine that much power colliding in a human body would be enough to fracture anyone's mind...especially that of a mourning child."

"Ah-ah, Reim-san, that's where you're wrong. Boojum didn't do anything to his mind."

Reim raised an eyebrow. Xerxes' story had suggested little else.

"It left him with a Pathway to Abyss," Break chuckled, raising a finger. "It took Humpty Dumpty down and something else rebounded, something held in limbo for a hundred ugly years."

"You're talking about a human?" Reim asked. He sat back, astounded. Jumping a century's worth of time via unstable Pathways was one thing...but to actually exist in the Abyss for that long? Held there? Captive?

"The man we call Enigma was a victim of the Disaster. Lucky for the boy it wasn't a Baskerville come out of holding, hmm?" Break asked, poking at Emily's head.

"Xerxes, this is serious."

"I wouldn't suspect he was entirely human."

"Well, you didn't come out as anything else," Reim retorted, then, after remembering to whom he was talking, added: "Did you?" He laid a suspicious eye on Emily.

Break gave a short laugh, thought about accompanying it with one of his signature grins, but let the moment pass. "There was a unique toll to pay," Break shrugged, trying not to think of how much he still hated Cheshire, even though there was nothing more to be gained by it. "In this poor fellow's case," he continued, "the man had already begun conversion. Had he stayed, he'd have become a Chain."

"...but now he's back in the Abyss, becoming one anyway."

"Yes," Break conceded. "Though he did find fulfillment in whatever he was seeking on this earth before he returned. That was enough to release his hold on humanity, to let go and let himself die. What becomes a Chain isn't the human soul, Reim-san. That moves on as it should at the moment of death; it is the body which remains, decaying to the Will's manipulations."

Reim rested his head against the frame of the window. He had heard rumors about the horrible nature and origins of Chains, but that sort of information wasn't easily verifiable - Pandora was secretive about such things. So instead he stopped thinking about Enigma's inevitable, inhuman fate and let his thoughts trace themselves back to a much fresher grave. "And Leo?" he asked. "What about him?"

"You saw the truth at the orphanage."

Reim lowered his eyes.

"The child had already died," Break said gently. "You knew the file in your hands couldn't possibly belong to him, because Leo had left years ago. That rejected half-Chain was the only thing keeping his spirit bound to its body all this time."

"He was so young," Reim whispered, inwardly staring at red letters spread across the child's papers - garish words of failed and deceased. "It doesn't seem fair."

"Of course it doesn't," Break replied, placing Emily on his shoulder. He buckled his seatbelt and waited for Reim to turn the key. Rolling up his window to cut off a swelling wind, he mused softly, more to himself than either of his companions, "But at least he had time enough to make a friend."

...

Eliot wandered through his room in a daze, eyes searching silent, shadowed corners where Leo loved to sit and read. His mind conjured phantoms of mirrored lenses, bright reflections of light where there was no substance of body. It looked much too real. He had to turn away.

The computer sat, quiet and still, screen dark and blank. But every blink of sad blue eyes brought to life lines upon lines of scrolling text defending that shit-bag Edgar just because Leo knew it would piss Eliot off. He saw cryptic questions and rapid-fire answers, strings of codes and numbers. Screens without names and faces without screens. An entire community stopping to witness the work of one brilliant mind, the carefully worded results of a kid who kept way too much time to himself, unable to just sit his ass down and enjoy a good book quietly like normal people do. Nerd King, Eliot laughed. You had to go and be book-wormier than all the others.

The video game controllers were left untidy and tangled in the middle of the room. Empty cans of soda and wrappers from too many candy bars filled the wastebasket. A haphazard pile of socks dumped in front of the dresser. (They were clean, but Leo didn't like to fold them and Eliot didn't know how.) And of course, there were the various mounds of open, half-open, and open-but-upside-down library books which would soon become overdue if Eliot didn't hurry up and take them back already. (But they were Leo's books and he just couldn't. Not Leo's. He couldn't even bear to close them.)

The room was quiet and empty, oppressive in terrifying stillness. (He even left the door open, because it hurt to have it shut.) He couldn't look at anything without seeing residual images of that messy-haired idiot he called his best friend. Even the blades of the lazy overhead fan dropped shadows, which, if seen from the corner of an eye, might trick the mind into thinking someone was there. The carpet seemed to depress of its own accord, suggesting the weight of a body which no longer lived. The windowsill creaked and Eliot remembered that was where he had first seen Leo - right outside that lilac-filled screen in the dead of night, just like now - with the moon glowing from dark, star-filled eyes.

He shut the shades.

He crossed the room and lowered himself on the bed. He flopped back, avoiding the pillows (pillows which had once smothered his face...a lunatic in his room in the dead of night...a half-assed attempt to cause suffering and suffocation. A bright sword reflecting the light of the moon like those deep, corybantic eyes, but they were just too beautiful to dim and then they were real, Leo was real, and he was nuts to become friends with the idiot but he just couldn't help it. There was something about the way he was so damn honest, the way he didn't let Eliot get away with anything, the way he was nervous when he came over for the first time and brought dessert and stammered at the doorstep until he called him an ass and Eliot never did say thank you. The way he saw strange things but Leo didn't mind, the way Leo was a strange thing but Eliot didn't mind, the way they got along even when they didn't, and the soft hold over trembling hands to let him know those nightmares didn't have to be lived alone. The way they sat on a piano bench and played long-forgotten keys forever, stumbling and cursing and fighting and always arguing about something, and throwing vases at each other's heads...no, Leo throwing vases and Eliot ducking, but still. Then the compositions which Eliot had once abandoned brought back with harmonies that flourished in renewed confidence and the notes scrolled like water from his pen and he couldn't believe someone else shared such a deep interest in all the same things he did. A friend who understood the words behind the notes and the tears behind the words, the sorrow behind every curse and the loneliness behind the bite. Someone who understood and accepted and had his own little quirks and read too many books all at one time and never really brushed his hair, who liked to wear green tee-shirts but always stuffed them at the bottom of the dresser drawer where they were sure to get lost and sorely wrinkled and grimaced when he had to fold socks because he'd rather fold anything else, so just hand him something that wasn't a sock and be done with the whining already you big baby.)

Eliot laid an arm across closed eyes, letting the memories run unhindered behind the projector screen of his eyelids, unable to stop the unwinding, flickering film, unwilling to even get up and try. He shuddered a deep sigh. There was nothing left to hold him back, no one else here. The room was too big, filled with too many ghosts. The door was open but they just wouldn't leave.

He ceased fighting and wept.

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Soft footfalls trod an outside garden path. Red and gold eyes passed by windows tightly shut without a glance, focused ahead on a series of cold, stone steps. The child wandered into his secret place, a sanctuary sheltered from the world beneath an open sky filled with stars. His rabbit still wore a pale, pale ribbon neatly across its throat, but its face now bore a continual stream of drip-drop tears; Vincent was crying so many he thought they'd never dry out.

The stars twinkled. Laughed.

His mismatched eyes closed.

Water fell like crystal.

...

A trail of roses and peonies and daffodils, standing silent and calm outside pulled shades stained silver. A purple bush blossomed with swirling colors their mother had favored and tended herself - a special bush planted just for her favorite son, her little Elly (although they all were given one: Vincent's was honeysuckle) so they would never forget her tender touch, no matter how far away her travels took her.

The shadows beneath the lilacs danced as well, black and midnight-deep, swirling and twirling like the skirts of her favorite dancing dress, the one she wore when Eliot played at a recital or concert, the one she wore when he performed just for her. The one she chose on stage, on those rarest of rare occasions, with the bow of Elly's violin and her fingers dancing together, the way music was something that tied them together with a special bond that none of the other siblings shared.

The gentle caress of a mournful breeze set blossoms in motion; they bounced and swayed in a soft pendulum swing (whispering regrets that Mother would never again return, and although Eliot didn't actually know that, he had always known it), dancing ever so gently, purple flowers bobbing up and down, colors saturated to a hue of nighttime lavender so deep it sparkled with absolute cruelty.

But still they were just flowers, and still they bobbed on heavy-laden branches, innocent catalysts of enigmatic phantasmagorias plaguing the minds of those helplessly bereaved.

With insubstantial shadows they all held hands, dancing gently back and forth.

Back and forth.

Tick and tock.

...