Hey! So I wrote the first bit of this chapter over a year ago...and when I realized where I was going with the plot, I honestly walked away from it. I returned eventually, with a lot of trepidation, to finish this bit, so I could continue onward. I don't mean for it to be a statement on anything, I'm just trying to establish the characters how I planned. If gore or any of the things that follow bother you, then please feel free to take your leave, and accept my apologies for upsetting you on the way out. I'm sorry if things are too strong, but that was my plan from the beginning, and I realize I can't tone things down and continue with the story. And I can't abandon it either. I hope you understand.

"Are you okay?"

Law groaned. He was not okay. There was a pounding in his gut that made him sure he was close to vomiting from the building pain, he could hardly breath with his face pressed into the mattress like this, and now he had to open his damn mouth to answer this bastard.

"Shut the fuck up, I'm fine. Just finish already."

Above him, Police Commissioner Smoker tightened his grip into the flesh of Law's left ass cheek, getting enough grip to send a drive that sent bile washing up the doctor's throat. Swallowing it with a grimace and gritting his teeth, Law sunk his forehead into the sheets and tried to last out for another sixty seconds.

Thankfully, Smoker's pace became erratic and lost rhythm quickly, as he jolted to a stop embedded deep into Law's backside, moaned gutturally, and finished. Law pushed forward, feeling the man's cock slide out of him, and rolled on to his back to collapse.

Smoker followed soon after, lying on the mussed sheets next to him, dripping in sweat, his gray-white hair stringy and pushed back from his face. "You didn't cum," he said as he peeled the condom from his cock and tossed it in the bin.

Law glanced down at his half-hard cock and shrugged. "I don't care one way or another."

Hearing fumbling in the dark, the doctor knew what his partner was searching for, and he picked up a vile-smelling cigar and planted it in Smoker's rough fingers. After lighting up and taking a few puffs, the man relaxed with a hand behind the back of his head and looked over at Law. The doctor did not look back.

"What the hell is your problem, mate?"

Law looked away into the musty darkness of the apartment and didn't say a word.

"You've called me three times this past week or so to fuck, and every time you never finish and you leave right after I fall asleep." He grabbed Law's wrist and squinted at it in the dark. "Doing drugs or something?"

Wrenching his arm back, Law scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm a human being, you know. I just wanted a lay."

Smoker groaned, tapping out his cigar at the ashtray on the nightstand. "Not by me, clearly. Some jerk's got you hot and bothered, doctor, don't lie to me." When greeted with silence, he continued unhindered. "How long has it been? Years, now. When you first came here you must have been a goddamned kid. I won't forget how aggressively you seduced me back then. And not just me."

Law stiffened beside him.

"You must've been fucked by half the male population of London back then. Shit, I knew the signs when I saw them... I see poor bastards like you everyday, usually woman -"

"Don't fucking pity me," Law snapped. "I got by just fine. And I'm fine, now."

Smoker roughly massaged the back of his own neck as he sat up in bed and looked down at the doctor. He had his hand on his chest, absentmindedly tracing the lines of his heart tattoo, his face composed and yet very distant.

"You sound like a child, still," Smoker said. "Whoever this guy is, maybe he's really what you need. But you won't let yourself, will you? When are you going to let go of the past, Law?"

When? Law couldn't meet Smoker's eye as he thought on that question. Since Eustass's surgery, he had contacted him, nor even seen him. A relationship with that redheaded mechanic wasn't something that he even had considered. He was enamored with the man's history, his biomedical arm, and his fits of rage - all which must somehow be in conjuncture with each other. The friendship between them that Law had cultivated has simply been a means to an end.

Despite that, he would admit that he enjoyed Eustass's brash humor and blunt mouth, as well as his misplaced tendency to collect lost boys and broken toys like some demonic and demented Peter Pan. It was endearing in some odd fashion, but it was nothing that Law needed in his life. He wasn't lost, and never was. His destination had always been clear.

"I won't let go of the past...until it's six feet under," Law whispered, a smirk gracing his lips. His met Smoker's wide eyes and furrowed brow with his gaze, as he sunk contentedly into the mattress. "I need to paint it red."

Smoker groaned and put out his cigar in the tray. "That's what I get for trying to be a bloody therapist, don't I?" He rolled over and fished Law's hoodie off the floor, handing it to its owner. "You don't need to wait for me to sleep, go on and get. I know you have things to do."

Law accepted the hoodie graciously and slipped into his clothing. He kissed the man goodbye on his brow before he took off into the biting cold wind of January in England. The streets were dead quiet, and Law stalked them with a mission. The past few days had been spent remiss, but Smoker had helped him remember his purpose, as Law trusted the man to do. And he was no longer going to allow himself distractions from the greater plan, the desire that he was not going to deny himself for another day.

He would ruin the Joker before the turn of the new year.

Only a millisecond after feeling cool, dry skin touch his forehead, Kid's right arm darted upward to clench the wrist in a death grip above his head. His eyes flew open, desperately trying to adjust to the darkness in his room and make out the face of the intruder.

"Jesus Christ, Kid, calm down. It's just me."

Kid released the wrist and settled back down on his sheets. "Killer, what the fuck," he groaned, batting his roommate's hand aside. He grumbled a bit more, gathering the edge of a blanket in his hand before turning away from the window.

There was the soft squeak of the mattress as Killer sat down on the unoccupied edge, hands in his lap. "You were moaning in your sleep. I just wanted to make sure you didn't have a fever."

"Tch," Kid said dismissively. "Bullshit. If you came into my room every time you heard moaning -"

"Alright, alright," Killer surrendered, and Kid could hear the smile in his voice. He chuckled back in turn, reaching out for his partner's hand. It was easy enough to find, and he wrapped his discolored and colder left fingers around Killer's warm, scarred, but living right hand. "You were moaning, though."

Kid shifted in the sheets nervously, but didn't release his friend's hand. "Maybe I was dreaming about a big-titted bird sucking me down like my cock had the elixir of life."

Killer did not even pretend to laugh at this comment. Instead, a heavy silence began to stuff up the room, until the only noise of the two men breathing in tandem in the darkness sounded nearly religious in its harmony.

"Marasta," the blond eventually said softly though the sound of his latest breath. Kid's breathing quiet obviously seized up at the comment.

"It means help," he said. "I don't know where she thought she would get it, though. Stupid broad." It had been this past night's target. The woman, in her mid-thirties, had easily spilled her guts to the two men in her native tongue, after Kid managed to calm her down. He killed her quietly after. Her body was passed off to some organ dealer's lackey an hour later, to a rather mussy-haired individual by the name of Shachi.

"It means help in Pashto. Farsi. She was Afghani, right?"

"Mmm."

"And who commissioned you to question her about her husband?"

"A fucking idiot, that's who." She hadn't said anything of interest about the man. Sure, he had been involved in the mujahideen, but he remained generally uninvolved in modern affairs. According to his young wife, it sounded like the worst thing he had done in the past ten years was dealing a meager amount of opium into Southern Europe. "Racist as anything, still. Nothing'll change."

Killer wasn't surprised in the least. "I thought you wouldn't take jobs from the suits anymore," he commented.

"The pay was good," Kid smirked a bit. "Damn good. Bet you they thought she had some sweet intel on AQAP or something."

"She didn't, though."

Kid shook his head. "Dumb twat." She had told Kid everything he could possibly need to know after she had finished sobbing, still hiccuping every other sentence or so. After that, he left her alone with Killer to make some phone calls, but he could still hear her from the other room. There was nothing there but the silence of his partner and the muffled desperation in her prayers. The dua'a she stammered out was a familiar one, too; the plea to God to save the subject from black magic and sorcery. Oddly enough, it wasn't the first time it was directed at the redhead.

"Want to talk about it?"

Kid groaned and buried his head in his pillow. "Fucking really? I have half a mind to punch you in the dick for that comment."

Killer lightly snickered. "I figured as much. Well, get some sleep. We're starting on that Buick's transmission tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah. Idiot cunt scorched that thing. You'd think she did drag racing with the way it's destroyed."

"Maybe she does."

"You don't drag in a goddamn Buick."

"I bet I know somebody who would be an idiot enough to try."

Kid swatted in the darkness and connected with the side of Killer's bicep. "Ha-ha, very funny." He rolled over and faced the window, streaming in the mild light from the street lamps. "You can fuck off now."

Killer nodded and stood, the bed creaking as his weight left. He shut the door quietly behind him, leaving Kid alone with dried sweat on his skin making the bedsheets sticky and uncomfortable.

Kicking against the bed restlessly, Kid eventually settled on his back, his false arm resting over his heart. It infuriated him that he would have a dream about that time so many years ago. It wasn't like he couldn't talk to Killer about anything, at least usually. But no matter what, he still could not bring himself to go up to his best friend and speak of the guilt and regret he harbored of being a demon of massacre, of losing his arm and his insanity in a pit of fire and blood.

Because the truth was, he harbored no regrets.

He knew he should, but a smile threatened to twist the corners of Kid's lips. After all, no matter how much he fought to deny it, that day at been so much fun.

"So what the fuck do you want?"

The soldier scoffed and crushed his cigarette in the blackened ashtray. "You're a maniac criminal. We just want you to do what everyone would expect of you."

Kid considered the words, looking up at the ceiling. "So you want me to do your dirty work, huh? You know, I don't take orders well."

"I know," he replied. "That's what makes you the filthy animal you are."

If it was meant to be an insult, it wasn't taken as one. Kid chuckled and grinned at the man in a way he knew made him nervous. More teeth showed as the soldier shifted in his chair and tried to avoid eye contact.

"I won't lie that I fancy killing," Kid confessed easily. "But I like living my life by my own rules. It's what freedom actually is, not this bullshit you fuckfaces are fighting for."

The soldier relented a nod to this. "That's pretty fair, but let's not bring philosophy into this, because anyone with half a brain in their head knows what's gonna go down here is wrong as hell."

"So you can't find your target, basically," Kid said, steering the conversation back on track.

"Abdullah bin Ali, yes."

"Abdullah bin fucking Ali, Jesus, do you know how many thousands of those there are? How the Christ am I supposed to find one damn Abdullah bin Ali in bloody Afghanistan?"

"You aren't." The soldier pointed to the map plastered on the wall, the corners peeling off in the drenching heat. He indicated a small village near the border of Pakistan. "We're desperate, but we think he's here."

"And the problem?"

"It's populated entirely by mainly women, children, and old fuckers, got a few sheep as well, and any investigations -"

"You mean raids? Where you run into their house and turn shit over and then leave?"

The soldier rolled his eyes. "Don't get smart with me now, just listen." He shrugged his stiff shoulders and pulled another smoke from the pack. "The investigations haven't turned up shit, but intelligence keeps pointing us in that direction. We still haven't gotten clearance for a drone strike, but the Major keeps riding my ass to show some sort of progress in this sector or we'll all be relocated across the border."

Kid let out a low whistle. "All this to cover your ass, huh?"

"And my troop, yes. Not just our asses, you know. Our lives, most likely."

"Save your lives at the expense of some oppressed third-world bitches?" He eyeballed the officer for some sort of squirming in his conscience, but none was present.

"Not just our lives. Your boyfriend's, too."

Kid groaned and stamped his foot like a child. "Look, I know you really like to wank off to that idea, mate, but I'm not jamming it in Killer. He likes chicks, I like skull-fucking. We got different tastes."

The soldier blew his putrid smoke in Kid's face. It reeked of the cheap brand he was dragging on. "Son, do you want him to die or not?"

"Obviously not, no."

"We'll clear your name if you do this. Both him and you. Poof. Erased. As long as you stay fucking quiet in one goddamn city, you'll never have another worry again."

"Stay quiet? Bullshit I'd do that."

The officer buried his head in his hands. "Then don't get caught, right? Really, I could care less what you do at this point. The fact remains that if you don't want your friend buttfucked to death with a rifle, then you're gonna raze that stupid village to the ground, got that?"

Kid looked over the soldier's shoulder at the map on the wall. "How many civilians?"

"I don't know, couple dozen."

"Firepower?"

"There will be a pack waiting for you halfway to the destination. We certainly aren't gonna hand you a glock at our doorway." He sighed and took his last drag from the crumpled mess of a cigarette. "You don't have to waste 'em all -"

"Bullshit. If I just smoked Abdullah out and gutted him, it would be a bloody obvious connection to some fucking agency. Top of the list of suspects, you guys. Consorting with a criminal. Not pretty."

The soldier grimaced. "It's true that if they're all dead, it would make it easier to pick you up after. We wouldn't have to park around the corner, so to speak."

"Again, bullshit. You'd leave me for dead."

Another shrug. "Likely, you deserve no better."

"Deserve." Kid scowled. "I hate you, and I hate the motherfuckers you work for even more."

The soldier slammed his hand on the table. "I don't have time for this, you monster. Are you in or are you out?"

Kid chuckled, his eyes glinting dangerously in the half-light of the fluorescents. "If I hadn't been in from the start, you wouldn't still be breathing, old man. Let's go for a drive."

It was a bust. Kid knew that from the start. He stood behind nothing but the clouds of sand that bustled up and around the meager village as he observed. Children fetching water, women doing wash... Kid spared only one fleeting thought on the kindness of such a life, and then another on the fleeting nature of homeliness. Then he kneeled in the dune, loaded the bazooka, and fired.

It was hot, and he could already feel the scalding burns of the backlash on his face. The googles provided to him proved nearly useless as his eyes watered and his vision blurred to nearly nothing.

Kid ripped the goggles from his face and used them to push back his hair instead. He threw aside the now useless launcher and began his slow and steady trek into town.

The village was in chaos. Kids crying, women running and desperately trying to put out the fire. What did he hit? One home, it appeared. They were dragging a corpse from the wreckage. It was a small body... a boy? A girl? Kid didn't care.

All eyes were on him as the smoke cleared about him. He heard their yells, and although he had been living amongst them long enough to understand, as of now it all sounded like gibberish. He stepped up on corpse with one foot and kicked the tending woman's hand aside.

"You're all going to burn."

"Marasta," the woman breathed, and for a moment Kid could see nothing but her, in spite of all the smoke and fire. She was middle-aged, fine lines around her tired brown eyes, small pieces of thick black hair sticking out of her hijab. Her hands were shaky, but they were callused from years and years of hard work. Her lower lip was trembling, and Kid could see the strength nearly fleeing from her eyes. A working woman, a woman just trying to survive in this hell of a world. And her reckoner had come.

"Allahu, min-"

Kid fired a bullet straight between her eyes and kept walking. The women and children gathered around her scattered like dust on the wind. He ignored them; he'd round them up soon enough.

Oil tankard in one hand, Kid was all business as he sloshed it up and down the walls of the next home. He lit a match on his teeth, threw it on the fire, and walked on.

More fire behind him now, more crying. In all the heat, vision was near zero. Kid reached out and grabbed the next person who came across his way. Lifting him off the floor, Kid realized it was a boy, in his teens or near there. He solidified his grip on the boy's wrist, placed another on his shoulder, and tugged.

The boy screamed. Kid watched in near fascination as the face before his twisted in pain. Tears stinging wide open eyes, mouth open and dry lips bleeding. It was almost there, he sensed. Kid could feel the blackness closing in on his vision. Just like a drunk is familiar with the moments before the pitch, he knew.

There was a snap, and then a gut-wrenching tearing sound. The smallest of smiles graced Kid's lips as he watched the flesh begin to stretch. The bone was broken, the tendons were tearing, and there, there finally the blood began to leak and then gush like a dam had broken and in one hand he had the boy and in the other he had the boy's spurting and useless ligament. It was still twitching and warm in his palm.

"Chera?," the child sobbed, breaking into a pile of flesh and bones as Kid released his shoulder.

Kid looked down, nearly drunkenly, at the mess at his feet, and picked the dying child up by his collar. "Why?" he echoed. "Because it's you or me, kid."

It was there. The blackness had nearly closed in on his vision. A woman came up behind him with a gun. She fired a round into his lower back. He felt the warmth and the fire and the pain as distantly as he felt the metal crack beneath his fingers as he tore the gun from her hands, as distantly as he heard her crying as he crushed her skull until there was no face left amongst the blood and bone soup to recognize.

Kid lifted a 47 and fired a round from his hip around the village. People went down like dominos. He charged into houses and ripped people out from under their beds and then stomped their brains to mush in the street.

He chased down a runner who had gotten fifty yards out of town. She was a girl, and around six months pregnant. He threw her in the blazing fire and watched for nearly a full minute before moving on.

Complete abjection, they call it. A realization of one's humanity, one's mortality. That was the psycho-babble name they attached to the horror when someone sees a mutilated body, or when they hold their own stomach in their hands and understand that it's supposed to be inside, not outside, damnit, what's going on?

Abjection was Kid's drug. He loved what simple people became as he emptied the entrails of their mothers' in front of them. He was delighted with the opposite: when a girl didn't see how she was already dead even as she was screaming and crying and whacking at his ankles.

The last was a dirty, run-down home, and any sheep left there had fled. Kid busted down the barricaded door with a lazy nonchalance. Like a distant and faraway dream, Kid could still recall the soot-covered, tear-track, wrathful face of the man in the doorway. He saw his shaking and saw his hand on the detonator.

"Blowing me to hell, huh?" he chuckled. The man didn't respond with anything other than the press of the button.

That was the last Kid saw of most of his arm. It wasn't the only injuries he had sustained, surely, but certainly was the most shocking. Because with a charred and blackened forearm, burnt down completely to the bone, he dragged the scattered bits of the corpse of the promised man into town and threw him on the pile of flesh and ash, in front of nearly a dozen witnesses, still too injured too move, still not injured enough to die.

They watched as the red haired demon impossibly flexed his dying fingers and smiled at the bleeding crowd. "I was right to sign up," he said, and then he laughed as his own blood began to drip in thick globs upon the dusty sand. "I haven't had this much fun in years."

A woman charged Kid, and he knew he was out of bullets, so he unleashed the burden of the weapons from his shoulders and flexed his freed muscles and he lifted his black and bloody fist and -

Blackness.

Blackness for no longer than an hour, he supposes in retrospect.

He is in a military vehicle and there is a man with arms the size of bazookas screaming down in his face, his blue hair in disarray and secured back with a headband.

"Franky -" he had said. "My name is -"

"Yeah, I hear you," Kid grunted. "No need to yell."

"Your arm-"

"Fucked, right?"

Franky lifted a bloodied cloth over Kid's left arm and then hummed affirmatively. "Well, I just need to know though, bro, can you feel this?"

A searing pain ran straight across the top of Kid's brain as the solder prodded something inside of him. "If you do that again I'll rip your eyes out of their sockets."

The soldier threw back his head to laugh loudly. "Uh-huh, uh-huh," he said. "So you're a tough guy, huh?" He tossed a glance back at the driver, and then turned back around. "The troops out here told us not to go into this area today. But we're really shit at following orders, you see?"

He stared down at Kid for a long minute and between the rocking of the truck and the pain, it was all Kid could do to keep eye contact.

"I'd reckon they don't want him alive," the driver mused aloud.

"No need to reckon," Kid responded. He was surprised at how strong his voice sounded despite how he felt. "They were planning on me dying."

The bazooka-blue-haired man before him gave him one more long look before he seemed to come to a decision. "Well, then, we're just gonna have to show them, huh?" he answered, and the laughter that followed was nearly contagious.

Kid saw smoke in his left field of vision. They were still so close. But there was no more crying, no more screaming.

Only silence.

"I'm game if you are," he said.

"Oh, I'm game." The soldier gave one more meaningful look under the blanket and then placed a large, rough-skinned but gentle hand on the side of Kid's face. "But I gotta ask, bro, I think I can do something for you..." He smiled, and his eyes were nearly alit with his own thoughts. "...but it's gonna hurt like a true sonavabitch until we finish it, ya see? How you feel about this though?"

He thrust his bazooka arm out and flexed it, and Kid watched the muscles move in a mechanical fashion, until he realized with the trained eye of a mechanic that there the limb was not truly human at all.

"Wicked," Kid coughed, and a bit of blood came up with it, but he hardly minded.

Neither did the soldier, apparently. "Perfect," he declared, slapping a large and painful hand above Kid's left shoulder. "Goddamn perfect! I'm in business yet, I swear!"

He turned about and starting telling the driver, Ice-something, directions to the nearest air base, but Kid couldn't bear to listen any longer. The pain that had been a loud drum in his head was transforming into a symphony and it took all his concentration to grit his teeth until he felt them grinding inside his own skull.

"Bear it," the soldier encouraged. And it could have been a dream, but Kid had sworn after he said,

"You deserve it, after all..."

And then later, much later, and in a haze of pain that had eventually brought screams out of Kid's throat,

"...forgiveness."

To anyone who is still with me - thank you for reading! I will be continuing, hopefully now at a more steady pace :)