Ganta's eyes opened as if they were triggered to do so. But really, they weren't. This was just how he was used to sleeping and waking up in this prison. Deadman Wonderland. Heh. It was the exact opposite of a Wonderland to the prisoners in G Ward, to the other Deadmen. Unless you counted the fact that it was just as twisted, if not more than the world Alice from the classic tales wandered into.

Sigh.

Ganta felt every inch of his body, the feeling he got after recovering from any Carnival Corpse. The feeling he got after finishing any fight against a fellow Deadman. His body was not in pain, but he could still feel the residue of injuries, his joints and muscles stiff but numbed. Shuffling a bit on the bed he was expected to sleep on, he felt like his limbs were swimming in some kind of lukewarm liquid, even though they should be completely dry. He was alert, yet his head was swimming at the same time.

Sigh.

He closed his eyes again for a few seconds, and listened to his slow breathing. He tried to remember who the previous Carnival Corpse was against, but couldn't seem to recall. He wasn't even sure if he had been in a Carnival Corpse recently, or just fought a Deadman somewhere around the prison. All his past opponents blurred together, their different Branches of Sin appearing on Deadmen who didn't even possess them. His mind was collapsing under the strain to try and remember something that it had tried so hard to forget. He let his thoughts go blank and all he could see in his mind's eye was darkness. He listened to his quiet breathing again. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes later he realized how quiet the prison was today. That was strange.

Sigh.

He got out of bed and walked out of his room. That was when he realized that there was indeed something odd going on in Deadman Wonderland. Not only was it eerily quiet, all the doors were unlocked as well. Could the power have gone out?, he thought. But no. The power couldn't have gone out because the facility still had all its lights on, and other appliances were working as well.

"Hello?", asked Ganta, to nobody in particular. There was no answer. There was no trace of any living soul around G Ward at least. Ganta wasn't so sure about the rest of the prison but he was curious. What could make Deadman Wonderland so quiet?, he thought to himself absent-mindedly. He didn't actually care for the answer. Bitter thoughts started infiltrating his psyche and slowly wormed their way into his scarred mind. As he walked around through open doors, noticing no people whatsoever, he started thinking about how unfair his current predicament was.

He was just a boy, unjustly accused of a crime he would never even think of committing, locked up in some madman's funhouse of horror. In Ganta's thoughts, Deadman Wonderland had become synonymous with torture, pain and mental attrition. He woke up to this reality every day. Every single day, he would wake up, only to continue his futile fight for survival. So what if he lived a few more days? So what if he kept consuming the vile-tasting Candy that would temporarily reset his Death Timer? He would die eventually. If not by dying in a Carnival Corpse or getting his body parts harvested after at least losing in one, then by meeting a Deadman in the hallways of the facility and getting cleaved, punched or gruesomely decimated in any number of unimaginable ways. It was completely hopeless. In fact, as far as he was concerned, his existence just made the lives of the other Deadmen worse. They would inevitably have to fight him, if they lost, they would lose a body part. If he lost, same thing would happen to him. Any way you tried to cut it, life in Deadman Wonderland was an illusion. You did not live in this place. You just survived. Ganta didn't want to live or survive anymore. It was too painful.

No matter what I do or how hard I try, all I'm doing is delaying the inevitable.. nobody who's a Deadman really deserves to be here, they were all framed, just like me. We're human beings too. And hell, even if they did commit a truthful crime, they don't deserve to be treated this badly. It's completely inhumane, it's torturous. If you don't die at once, they make you die piece by piece.

The boy walked through the prison slowly, occasionally peering into open rooms, seeing medicine cabinets, surgical tools, flickering lights, snack bars, all manner of strange objects and even other Deadmen's rooms (which were again, oddly empty). As Ganta strolled leisurely through this place of suffering and saw that there was not another living soul residing in it, he couldn't help but feel completely alone.. Walking out into a courtyard with high walls topped by barbed wire surrounding it, he sat down on a concrete block that looked like it may have been used as a bench of sorts.

Sigh.

A gentle breeze flowed over the top of his body and ruffled Ganta's hair slightly. The slight wind only made him feel worse. He was a bit like the wind.. going from place to place, never really meant to stay anywhere. Even before coming to Deadman Wonderland, he was nobody really special. All he had were his friends.. and now, he didn't even have any of those.. Anybody that claimed to be his friend in this evil place was either just using him, or meant to betray him later. Allies is a word that carried a much different meaning from friends. And, although he did have allies, he would inevitably have to fight them some day.

Even if you're a relatively good person, they force you to fight and kill.. even Owl.. Owl was forced to fight against his girlfriend. Even when she was pregnant with his child.. even when he lost on purpose and lost his vocal chords, that bastard Tamaki had her killed.. Owl couldn't even see his child. All he wanted to do was hold his kid.. and they denied him that too. I hate this place. I hate this cruelty. I hate myself for not being able to fight back. I'm weak. I've always been weak. Even when I got a little bit of power, it still does more harm than good. I wish I was like Crow, or Karako, whose blood doesn't just leave their body as soon as they use their Branch of Sin.. It's as if I was designed to be weak.. Using my ability shoots out my own blood, Crow said it himself, "Don't you know what happens when you shoot out too much of your blood, kid?" Yeah, I know what happens when I shoot out too much god damn blood.. I die! And maybe that's what I should do.. maybe I should just die..

As Ganta felt progressively worse and worse, he thought of his fellow Deadmen who were just as much a victim of this twisted system as he was.

Their lives would be so much better off without me. No need for me to fight them, one less Deadman to worry about. And that's what I am too. A Deadman. A dead man walking. I'm already dead, maybe I should just confirm it and finish it.. Nobody would even bother to save me even if I tried. Everyone's gone..

His mind going on several tangents at once, fueled by the sorrow of survival and all that it implied, the other people he'd have to hurt just to keep himself going, he came across a warm thought, which was pushed away by his depression, already taking over..

Shiro.

The last time Ganta said he wanted to just die and get it over with, Shiro saved him.

Well, not quite. She encouraged him to save himself, after attempting to beat his head in with a pipe or elongated piece of metal of some kind. He barely remembered exactly what it was that she tried to beat him with, but he remembered her vividly.

Shiro.

Shiro seemed to be the only person who ever actually cared about him as more than just a mere toy. As more than an expendable object designed to fight and die, and be watched in his final moments. Ganta realized how much time he actually spent thinking about Shiro. When there was nothing to do and he was bored, when all other thoughts filled his heart with sorrow and rage, the only person that he didn't feel pain thinking about was Shiro. She was the one thing Ganta could focus on when he felt weak. Which was good. Anyone would feel weak all the time if they were sent to have their spirit broken in Deadman Wonderland.

As he was thinking these thoughts, he heard a loud sound of someone landing behind him.

Without even thinking, his reflexes and instinct kicked in. Biting his thumb as hard and fast as he could to release the flow of blood, he gathered it in the palm of his hand, turned around and fired it at his attacker in one swift motion. Despite the skill with which Ganta had launched the attack, the person he shot it at dodged it with ease. Lucky too. It just barely missed the left side of her face.

Lucky because, speak of the devil, it was Shiro who had turned up behind him.

Sigh, she always manages to come up at the most intense moments..

"Why would you do that? Don't scare me like that Shiro, I almost took your head off!", Ganta screamed at her.

Shiro replied with a smirk and a bubbly voice, "Haha, that's OK. Shiro is fast enough to be careful of Ganta. Shiro knew Ganta was going to try to defend himself, so she just dodged it."

She stopped speaking, then started looking at him intently. She cocked her head a bit to the side and made a small noise that sort of sounded like she was questioning the current situation.

"Ganta looks sad.. Shiro will help! Does Ganta want a cookie?", she asked cheerfully.

Ganta just looked at her, eyes full of sorrow and not doing a good job of masking his pain, anger and sadness.

He said "No Shiro.. I don't want a cookie.." He then thought of the first time they met in the prison, he was on work duty shoveling god-knows what, he didn't even remember anymore.. and he felt despair then too. "Hey Shiro," he asked, "do you remember the first time we met here? I said I wanted to die right? Well.. what would you say if said I felt the same way now.."

The girl in the bodysuit and mittens looked at him, even more puzzled and said, "But Ganta didn't really want to die! Shiro said she would kill Ganta, and he dodged her attacks. If it would make Ganta happy, Shiro would kill him, but Shiro knows Ganta doesn't really want to die. Shiro knows Ganta.. she knows Ganta very well.. Shiro thinks Ganta would be happy if Shi-"

Before she had time to finish her sentence, another blood bullet zoomed beside her, right above her head.

"Shut up! Shut the hell up! You don't know me! Nothing can make me happy anymore. I'm not like you! I'm not strong! I can't just be cheerful and happy all the time! All I had were my friends, and I don't even have any of those left..", Ganta screamed at the top of his lungs as he shot more Ganta Gun bullets at her.

With each subsequent shot, he began to feel weaker and weaker, he just kept firing them.

Shiro didn't understand why Ganta would want to hurt her. He was her friend, right? Ever since the first few days that Ganta lived in Deadman Wonderland they established that they were friends.. so why was he trying to kill her?

She didn't quite get it, but she did a good job of dodging his Ganta Gun anyway.

He collected blood bullet after blood bullet into the palm of his hand and shot them away at her, and he missed every time. One was shot at her feet, she did a backflip and jumped away, another went near her head and she leaned back just in time for it to miss her. A third Ganta Gun bullet was headed straight for her, but she put her mittened hands out and stopped it completely, using the unbelievable superhuman strength she was known for and that she had used to kick a security robot one time.

Ganta started swaying. His vision felt more and more clouded. The colors of the world around him seemed to desaturate and he couldn't help but feel amazingly sleepy, with a loud pounding coming from his chest that he could hear in both his ears. Sounds disappeared, except for his slow and quiet breathing, which grew more and more labored and sounded like the loudest ocean in his ears.

Shiro looked at him, realizing now what he was doing the whole time. He was deathly pale and his eyes were having a hard time staying open. He stumbled forward a bit and somehow regained his balance. He had been shooting every bullet away from her so she could dodge it easily. Ganta wasn't trying to kill her or hurt her. He was just trying to lose so much blood that he would die.

Distressed by the fact that Ganta was trying to kill himself even though (she thought) he actually didn't want to, Shiro ran over to him, and just as she reached him, Ganta collapsed into her.

With Shiro and Ganta on their knees in front of each other, she put her arms around him and she felt his head collapse onto her shoulders. Ganta could smell her hair. He didn't know why, but it was the most wonderful smell in the world at that point in time. He couldn't move or use any energy to do anything. He felt his head pounding and his heart slowing down. He didn't want to move. He knew it would be over soon. But he was glad that Shiro had been there.

Ganta was glad that Shiro, the only person who ever really cared about him was there, holding him as he took his last breaths. He couldn't tell her he appreciated her. Too much energy. He couldn't even order his arms to move and wrap themselves around her. He couldn't open his eyes. Knowing that he needed to do something, one last thing before he died, he used all of the rest of his remaining strength.

"Shi..ro.. I.. I love...", he whimpered, and everything faded into blackness.

A harsh light hit Ganta's closed eyes, and he cracked them open slowly. He was on a hard, cold floor. He looked around and saw metal bars in the distance. The room he was in was obviously very large. Rubbing his eyes a little more, and waiting for them to get accustomed to the light, he saw that the room had a circular fashion with the bars rising even to the ceiling, which was very tall. He appeared to be in some kind of giant bird cage.

Oh no. Oh God no! Not again! Please, not again! Another Carnival Corpse... Another Deadman match! I can't do another one of these! Someone.. someone save me.. No.. nobody can help me. The only way to get out of a Carnival Corpse is either by winning or losing. And I'm in no shape to be winning right now. This is it. This time I'm going to die.. either that or get a part of me taken by those bastards. I hope it's the first one.

As Ganta broke down in the middle of the giant bird-cage that made up the arena for Carnival Corpse battles, he heard heavy footsteps running towards him and saw droplets of blood splatter the floor around his face. The enemy Deadman had cut themselves and was ready to finish the fight. Even before it had started, Ganta already felt finished.. until he thought he heard a quiet voice.

-anta! Ga..ta..-ke up! Wake up!

Ganta's eyes opened very slowly. He took a slow breath. His body felt numb. He felt every inch of his body, the feeling he got after recovering from any Carnival Corpse. The feeling he got after finishing any fight against a fellow Deadman. His body was not in pain, but he could still feel the residue of injuries, his joints and muscles stiff but numbed. Shuffling a bit on the medical bed, he felt like his limbs were swimming in some kind of lukewarm liquid, even though they should be completely dry. His head was swimming uncontrollably..

He noticed something warm enclosing his hand. It twitched a bit, and rubbed around his hand slightly. His mind was barely able to make out the fact that it was another hand holding his own. But it felt really wooly and puffy. Almost like.. a mitten. Shiro's mitten.

He looked up at her slowly, with his eyes barely open, and heard her quietly say, "Shiro was worried.. but Ganta is safe now."

Ganta did not question how she was let in to visit him, or how there seemed to be nobody else there. He was so out of it he didn't even quite know where he was. He just kept getting a feeling that it was a bad place. But Shiro was with him.. That calmed him down considerably.

Shiro leaned down to whisper in his ear, and he could hear her saying, "Shiro heard what Ganta said. She heard what Ganta said to her, outsi-"

Before Ganta could finish hearing her sentence, his vision went black and he lost consciousness once more.

He woke up to find Shiro lying on top of him, with her head on his chest. He could hear her breathing, slow and steady. He wondered if she had fallen asleep to the beat of his heart. Moving his hands on top of her to hold her in his arms, he closed his eyes again and fell asleep. Shiro was the only one who cared. She had saved his life multiple times, and here she was, doing it again.. She was like Candy for his mind and soul. Because of her.. he would live a little longer. Falling asleep with Shiro in his arms, the last thought he had before being pulled into peaceful slumber was that maybe, with her, Deadman Wonderland wasn't so bad..