Chapter 32: The Sin and the Sentence.

No bad deed goes unrewarded.

He remembered that he wanted power.

A plain sparring room, featureless.

A single candle, its flames reflecting in the pupils of a young boy, no older than eleven. Empty grey eyes gazing without purpose.

Darkness.

Darius felt fine, comparatively. He was clean, sated, and warm. He was alive.

Or so he was told.

In truth, his situation was a marked improvement over what he had just over a month ago, when a strange man with a raspy voice and a soft step approached him in a dimly lit, abandoned alley in the deepest recess of Atlas' undercity, where blood flowed like water from his hands, mixing with the thawing mud. Darius assailed the man without a second thought by tossing his shank at him, only to watch him disappear into the shadow. In the next moment, he awoke in a clean bed, in a place he didn't recognize, and was greeted by the same voice.

He introduced himself as Lin and gave him food. It looked delicious, and it wasn't poisoned. Clearly, that man was up to something, Darius figured, and that something involved him. He asked him what his name was, and how he ended up where he did. Darius answered truthfully and without reserve. The worst that man could do with the information, he reasoned, was kill him.

Instead, the strange man asked him if he had anywhere to go and if he wanted to stay and recuperate here. Darius took a look at his surroundings, noticing the dramatic differences between the room and his previous arrangement, and nodded. He then fell immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Thanks to his aura, physical recovery was swift. He was allowed to keep the room, was fed regularly and amply, and had ten hours of undisturbed rest every day, despite being worked like a horse in physical therapy the other fourteen. In just a week, his ribcage no longer stretched his skin taut, and in two he felt almost as strong as he was back home. His body felt spry, he no longer had to keep his aura active at all times just to keep the various maladies gnawing at him at bay, and the parasites that infested both his inside and outside were gone without a trace. It was as if the last six months were nothing beyond a fleeting nightmare.

Not so fleeting, as it turned out.

Now, Darius wasn't going to pretend that the fancy words he overheard the therapist say to Lin in hushed whispers as he eavesdropped from outside the office made a lick of sense to him. 'Onset PTSD' this, 'selective mutism' that, 'parasomnia' there, didn't mean anything to him. The nightmares that had him bolt from his bed drenched in cold sweat did, though, his cramping hand stuck repeating the same stabbing motion over and over until he'd pin it to the bed. Or how his vision seemed to dim to the point of blindness at the first mention of Dusk, chest locking up as his aura activated with complete disregard of his will, black talons protruding from his fingers just like that time. The therapist lady seemed rather upset when this first happened and he accidentally raked deep gashes into the stuffing of the armchair he sat in. He didn't mean it, he really didn't, he said as much, but their next session he sat in a wooden recliner chair.

Honestly, he preferred that one.

Though the schedule imposed on him didn't leave Darius much strength to do anything beyond collapsing into his bed, on rare days he had both the time and energy to dedicate to other things. And while his access was limited, he was, in broad terms, allowed to explore the facility he was given refuge in. He was told this was a research facility on the fringes of Atlas, but very few of the staff looked like the scholarly type. Still, their bearing looked distinctly familiar, and eventually it dawned upon Darius; when it did, he just about smacked himself on the head for not realizing it immediately: they were soldiers. He'd seen how men like them would patrol the downtrodden streets of Atlas' underbelly in their vehicles, armored crews sent down from the city above once a month to quell unrest and maintain a pretense of order by any means necessary, whether through relief rations or lead supplements. Once, they seemed the only way out to him and Dusk: once they'd reached the appropriate age, they would have approached them and asked to be conscripted.

Though the personnel of the facility bore no identification that could out them as Atlesian military, it was obvious that military they were. Darius caught glimpses of group drills that he definitely couldn't picture a bunch of eggheads doing, as well as conferences that looked less like scientific debate and more like briefings. Lastly, he noticed how everyone, even Lin himself, seemed to have the exact same Semblance as him: black energy, whether as mist or hard light, serving the wielder's will, to protect or even completely conceal their bodies from sight. To Darius, so used to skulking around in shadows and out of people's vision, the latter became almost second nature as soon as he saw one of the 'researchers' do it in an exercise and tried it himself.

Darius held no illusions about what would happen once his body made its recovery. Nor did he harbor false hope as to what would happen if he were to once again find himself alone in the filthy streets of the undercity. The nightmares made that much clear: voices whose owners he figured he ought to have known, but drew a blank every time he tried to concentrate on any one of them, sometimes pleading for mercy, sometimes cursing him, sometimes goading, but always stoking in him an uncontrollable anger and fear at the same time. Nothing but death awaited him back there.

He said as much as he confronted Lin by the end of the third week. Yet in that conversation he was surprised twice. The first time was when he assured Darius that he could stay for as long as it took for both his body and his mind to recover. The second, however, was when Darius pressured further, insisting that he was not telling him the whole truth, and how questionable a decision it was to keep someone like him - a juvenile criminal, for all intents and purposes - at what amounted to a military facility not even trying to disguise itself as a research one, and how them not turning him in already was a clear sign of ulterior motives.

Lin made no attempt to rebuke him. In fact, he assented to all points. He told Darius that it was no coincidence nor negligence that he still remained here, and that perhaps not even their first meeting was mere happenstance. He told him of a secret order whose ranks he, and everybody here, was a part of, how they were all bound by the same pact of loyalty towards their mistress, to the Darkness that, in tandem with the Light, gave birth to this world, and how they all put the powers granted to them to its safekeeping. He told Darius that happening upon him, a candidate with such clearly inclined powers, could not be mere chance, and that if he so wished, he could join them in their service. He pointed out that such a decision could only be made by him in clear conscience, and reiterated that even if he should refuse, their previous arrangement would remain valid until his full recovery. Yet, after about a minute of consideration, Darius nodded, and said he wanted to join them, as thanks for the kindness shown to him.

Yet he was not genuine in this display of gratitude.

For in truth, he had made up his mind the moment he heard the word 'power.'

And so, here he was, another two weeks later, sat still in the center of a sparring room which he was given all to himself just for this day, eyes transfixed upon a candle burning with a gentle, even glow. For today was a special day. Today, his preparations were finished: his body in as good a shape as it was going to get without significantly more involved training, his knowledge of the world considerably expanded, and, frankly, even his mind somewhat at ease. Even the voices that plagued his dreams seemed to relent in the last few days, perhaps in fear of the entity that was to occupy his mind instead. In this room, he was to be left alone and meditate for as long as it took him to find his answer.

"What answer?" he asked, confounded, as he was first presented with the room and his 'assignment', if he could even call it that.

"Why, the most important one," Lin, as time had come to show, enjoyed himself a spot of humor at his underlings' expense, and today was no exception. "This isn't a nine-to-five job you're signing on for. One's service to the Lady ends only in two cases: death or exile, and honestly it's a tossup which is worse. You told me you wish to serve as a way of thanking me - I'll take your word for it. But we both know that deep within your heart there's something you want out of this, as well. In the initiation, whether or not you'll find it in you to look yourself in the eye and face it, is what will decide if you pass… or not. This here is your final chance to prepare. You'd best make use of it."

He remembered that he wanted power.

But why?

He remembered that he wanted power as he first wandered the undercity, void of purpose and thought, drifting aimlessly as reality began to set in. Rancid air and biting cold assailed his senses as he flung himself from corner to shadowed corner, his only prerogative to avoid getting seen, as he was all but certain that every hunched silhouette was out for his blood, and his flank burned unbearably in pain and humiliation, reminding him of his misbegotten overconfidence. If only I were stronger, he wept, biting down on the pain from the festering wound in his side and choking on his grief so as to not rouse the attention of those dwelling within the dark, grimy alleyways, I could've stopped them and saved mom and dad.

He learned, then, how to step lightly and to look meek, that, should the occupants of that miserable place notice him in the first place, they consider him not worth the time and effort.

Was that it?

He remembered that he wanted power when he first attempted, against Dusk's better judgement, to bargain with someone for as little as a corner of a room. In the coldest, harshest days of Atlesian winter, when the freezing wind burned the skin, the two, through a series of truly unfortunate events and no fault of their own, found themselves stranded in a place where the sole source of warmth to weather the night was under fierce gatekeeping by its supposed owner. When Darius pleaded with the man to just let the two of them huddle in the corner until daybreak and swore he'd never see them again afterwards, he found himself cut off mid-sentence, with a rusted, jagged knife lodged deep in his liver.

In hindsight, trying to reason with a meth addict was an endeavor doomed to fail.

In the next second, however, the back of the man's skull was caved in by Dusk swinging for the fences with a loose brick clutched in his grip. The hideout was theirs, in the end, not that Darius felt any better for it. If only I were stronger, he lamented in the brief and sparse bouts of lucidity as he thrashed about in feverish throes, while his Faunus companion tried his best to refit some of the less disgusting rags the addict wore into bandages, I could've just knocked him out until we were done here.

Still, as day supplanted night, he was still alive, and even fit enough to move on with Dusk, thanks, no doubt, to his aura. The knife, that terrible, dented piece of metal that the junkie wielded, remained with him. He learned, then, to strike first and negotiate later.

Was that it?

He remembered that he wanted power when he took his first life. If death followed him and Dusk subtly, just five steps behind, always looming from behind the corner and from the shadows of a dark, shadow-bound passage opposite of the one they hid in, then hunger was their perpetual and reliable companion in all their days. Wild dogs, rats, things the rats were after, anything begins to look significantly more appealing once you reach a point where you can feel your stomach wrap around your spine. Because of that, Darius' first confrontation with what passed for a big honcho in the district the two of them happened to skulk through one day left a rather jarring impression. He'd send his goons to collect their individual relief rations doled out by the Atlesian military once a month disguised as run-of-the-mill beggars and stragglers. He'd then have the same goons jump civilians for their rations in plain daylight, and racket the rare businesses, hospitals and kitchens out of them for 'protection', redistributing them among the populace himself at cutthroat prices and with a… very disproportionate bias towards himself.

Initially, the intent was for Dusk to humbly beg for the both of them, maybe offer to do some work on his behalf in exchange for a share in the pie, however miniscule. That plan, however, fell through the second Darius laid eyes upon him. A disgusting, bloated parody of a human being, his beady little eyes could barely be made out from beneath the flaps of fat and drab skin, grotesque body pressing down on a couch direly unfit for such loads. Completely outside his control, his fingers coiled around the heft of his knife and remained locked there, as if paralyzed by a cramp, while his sight shrank until only the abhorrent figure of the mobster remained. In the fraction of a second that it took Darius to cross the distance between them, he didn't manage to so much as sit up straight as the boy plunged his knife into him, again and again. Yet despite the fervor behind each blow, his technique was sloppy and his weapon ill-fitting, so even after no less than ten slashing and stabbing wounds, he failed to strike any vital organs. Though his victim was in no shape to resist him in any meaningful way, the wild flailing of his arms and the resulting inertia resulted in him toppling off his couch, trapping Darius underneath, whose arm reflexively continued to plunge the weapon into him as he watched life drain out of him, metaphorically and literally, for the next half minute.

Eventually, Dusk managed to nudge the massive husk just a little bit, enough for nearly asphyxiated Darius to crawl out from under it, soaked in blood from head to toe. The Faunus managed to nab what - comparatively - little the mobster hoarded in his quarters before the two had to scramble as far away as their legs could carry them. In a bitter turn of irony, Darius, who was just about falling unconscious from hunger shortly before they got their audience, could not stomach the sight of food they made off with. If only I were stronger, he cursed, hunched over as his spasming body forced out what microscopic amounts of sustenance were within him while Dusk propped him up, preventing him from falling into his own vomit, I would have killed this fat sack of shit before he could so much as squeal.

He learned, then, to strike from behind and to go for the heart.

Was that it?

He remembered that he wanted power when months later he, in an act of desperation, crossed the one man that Dusk always told him not to slight even in his thoughts. If only I were stronger, the only thought in his head thrummed with frenzied panic as he watched Dusk bend over himself begging Fenrir for their lives, while he brought up every trick in his pathetically thin book and still came up short of a solution.

If only I were stronger, I'd kill them! I'd kill each and every last one of them, so that…

He learned, then, that he was alone.

And in that solitude, he discovered the power he so desperately clamored for. Only he had no more use for it.

The candle's flame blurred and doubled in Darius' eyes as he felt tears prickle at them, the sensation breaking his stupor and bringing his mind back into the present. With an unsteady, trembling hand, he reached up and wiped the moisture from his eyes, watching as, unbeknownst to him, the black mist of his Semblance slid down his arm, viscous and heavy, drips of it dropping from his fingertips and solidifying into the claws with which he shredded seven people, including the infamous gang leader, into bloody giblets. Shoulders slumped, he clasped his hands around his head. This couldn't be right, this couldn't be right, this couldn't be…

"Darius."

He shuddered, standing up and turning to greet the familiar voice.

"Master Lin. Is it time?"

"It is. Are you ready?"

"Yes, master."

The candle's flame flickered and went out as he walked towards him.

And as he left the room, Darius remembered why he wanted power.

It was simply a repurposed break room, cleared out of all furniture and other items unrelated to the ceremony. Due to the Order's clandestine nature and significantly more decentralized structure when compared to the Church, their initiation traditionally required less pomp and circumstance, and conventions of conduct were much looser. Only three candles remained, arranged in an equilateral triangle; on the wall facing its vertex, the Order's insignia was immaculately emblazoned no doubt by Lin himself: a hooded figure cradling a star in her hands, creation and destruction made manifest. Upon command, Darius knelt down in the middle of the triangle, facing the insignia.

"Say your vows," to his right, his mentor's voice resounded, his figure completely consumed by the darkness the candles couldn't hope to penetrate. "May no ears hear them but your own, and may no eyes see your works, but only their fruits."

As silence descended upon him, Darius let out a long, slow exhale, evening out his breathing and settling his nerves. Up until the last second, he couldn't help but hang on to a certain skepticism against the general believability of the events transpiring around him, but there was no more place for it. He could feel it. A presence in the room beyond Lin to his side: a darkness so overwhelming, so dense it all but consumed the flames surrounding him, to the point where their light couldn't even reach their stems. Once they went out, it would consume him without trace.

Little did she know.

"Merciful Dark," he spoke, and the words of the ancient oath filled his voice with strength. "Gentle shade which shelters the innocent and the meek, hear my vow. I swear now and forever to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Grant me compassion and temperance, that I not grow prideful."

To his left, the first candle was snuffed out, a fact he felt more than saw, so miniscule was the light cast by it, as the darkness bore down upon the remaining two candles, and their flames flickered.

"Infinite Dark, starlit cloak which harbors the diligent and the cruel alike, hear my vow. I swear now and forever never to stain your beauty with cowardice nor selfishness, but pursue justice through all of my works. Grant me vision and perseverance, that I not grow callous."

For a second time, the candle to the right flickered and its flame vanished. A single, tiny wisp of light remained right before his eyes.

Darius grit his teeth.

"Devouring Dark, all-consuming void, hear my vow. I swear now and forever to hunt and slay wickedness and evil in all forms until no trace remains: to unveil those who slither, unbidden, in your embrace and smother those blinded by their arrogance. Grant me teeth sharper than my own, that I never grow complacent."

And the last candle before him went out.

It was hard to tell how much time had passed as darkness engulfed him, but Darius realized at some point that he was no longer in the same room as before. He stood up, sweeping the space around him with curious eyes. It perplexed him, yet also intrigued him: nothing even reminiscent of a light source was present in his vicinity, or anywhere, really, yet he could see his own body just fine. Beyond that, however, his gaze swept across enormous swaths of absolute nothingness, a motionless black sea stretching infinitely in every direction with no horizon to speak of. Paradoxically, his footing felt as solid as ever, yet as he lightly stomped his foot, no sound reached his ear as his shoe hit the ostensible floor. He shrugged and decided not to probe further.

"Going somewhere?" he said. Wait, what?!

He was certain his lips didn't move.

His body contorted in an instant as he spun on his axis in the direction of the voice while simultaneously dropping into a low stance, where his right hand reflexively reached for the dagger at his shin, yet came up short. As his mind processed the sight before him, his body froze: just about ten steps from him, he himself stood in front of him, arms crossed; same build, same face. Same grey eyes, yet a strange, unfamiliar emotion he never saw in his own. An emotion that stirred something in his very core, resonating with rising anger.

Is that…

Is that pity?!

"Well?"

Darius stood up straight, abandoning attempts to grasp his missing knife. Whatever the figure was, it didn't lunge at him while his back was turned, nor was it trying to do so now. Tell tale sign it couldn't be him, he figured.

"Solid reasoning, wrong conclusion," his doppelganger sighed.

It reads my thoughts?!

"Our thoughts. You gonna keep staring slack-jawed like this or?.."

"The Grimm are you?" Darius scowled, eyes squinting to find anything that could give away a difference. Futilely.

"It's like you didn't even listen to Lin," the phantom shook its head. "What did he tell you just this morning?"

A big, fat load of cultist mumbo.

Just play along for now. Could be one of his tricks.

"Several things," he feigned thought. "I'm guessing you mean the part where he said that whether I pass or fail will be decided by my ability to look myself in the eye. I guess I should've taken that literally, huh?"

Clearly, the phantom did not share his sense for irony.

"What disrespect to a man who sheltered you, fed you, healed you, clothed you, asking for nothing in return," it frowned. "'Cultist mumbo', seriously? Did you miss the streets the entire time you were here, or have they just dulled your sense of gratitude this much?"

This thing actually reads my thoughts. Holy shit.

"Just the opposite," he smirked, dropping the pretense. "A few things got sharper. Particularly my sense of when someone takes me for a sucker. I don't know what kind of part of me you're supposed to be, but if you believed for a second all of that wasn't so they could indebt me up to my fucking gills and rope me in that way, you must be the gullible one. Honestly kinda surprised it still remains after all the shit that happened."

"I am all of you," the phantom's voice grew harsher, and its eyes widened, just like Darius' own eyes grew wide when he was about to go for the throat. "Each and every part of you, just with a smidgen of self-awareness. That aside, though, even I can't believe how fucking arrogant you must be to think that an organisation with their kind of reach and resources would throw that kind of charity just to rope you in. You heard what he told you about their history, right? I know you did. In Atlas alone, they have free pick of soldiers, scientists, agents, whoever the fuck they could want. You really think you're still here for any reason other than Lin's personal favor?"

"Yeah, and I'm sure he can't wait to call it in once I'm out of here," Darius grumbled, more out of spite than anything.

"He's the fucking Chapter Master! Like he needs a favor from you," following this brief outburst, the phantom let loose a loud sigh and rubbed its temple before toning down. "You know what, screw it, that'll be on you to sort out. But since you brought this up, you gotta tell me: you still accepted, despite all the rugged cynicism. How come? Couldn't be that you actually believed him?"

Darius clenched his teeth. Damn thing imitated his manner of sarcasm to a tee, which stung doubly, seeing how on point it was.

"You felt it there," the phantom asserted, its voice low and its eyes locked on Darius. "Just now, when you said the oaths with that lying mouth of yours. Tell me, did you intend to also bullshit the Primordial Dark into giving you powers?"

"Fuck you," he replied, his own whispering seething with anger. "It worked and got me here is what matters. That I still have to beg her for scraps after the shit I've been through is humiliating enough, but if that's what it takes then that's what it takes. If I have to follow those oaths to the fucking letter until my death throes, that's fine too. Anything for her power."

"Incredible," the phantom shook his head again, disbelief clear in its voice. "You seem to think you're owed this."

In a maneuver that was, by all accounts, physically impossible, the apparition closed the distance between the two of them in a single stride and before Darius could react, the phantom grabbed hold of his shirt's collar.

"You really think you're the only unfortunate person in this whole wide world?" it asked him, its features contorted in a hideous grimace of rage ill-fitting for a face this young. "I'm certain all the people you murdered also wished they were stronger just before you killed them."

"Eat shit!" with the skin between his thumb and index finger stretched taut, he jabbed at the phantom's throat with a lightning-fast strike, sending it reeling. A supplementing knee to the face sent it tumbling back the ten steps it so egregiously ignored when approaching him. "Look me in the eyes and tell me I had any other choice!"

He didn't think this was possible in this place, but he felt his vision blur and dim until the phantom's figure was all he could see with clarity as blood surged into his head, muting coherent thoughts. With his own lips stretched to mimic the expression on his doppelganger's face, he screamed:

"Look at me!"

Obeying his command, a fraction of the darkness surrounding the two swirled around his hands and solidified into clawed gauntlets as he leapt up to the phantom, grabbing it by the throat and hoisting it up to his eyes with one hand.

"Whoever's in charge of handing out powers out there must have thought it'd be fucking hilarious to hand me my Semblance the second I got screwed over by the only person I thought I could trust. But fine, message received, now pony the fuck up!"

As the fingers on his right hand curled into a fist, he slammed it into his adversary's face with a brutal hook. It had… less of an effect that he'd expected.

"...Only you would think you could beat the power out of yourself," it gasped, a streak of blood running down its ear. "But now that you mention Dusk… " it flashed Darius a half-smile; at least two teeth were missing. "What about him?"

"I'll..." Darius stumbled, sucking in a ragged breath as his chest locked up all of a sudden and left him dizzy. As his hands were gripped by an uncontrollable shaking, his grasp loosened and the phantom slid down onto the pitch-black ground, slumping down on his knees and breathing slowly.

"I'll kill him," he stuttered, and his voice cracked as fury flooded out uncertainty. "I'll fucking kill him! I'll track the double-crossing bitch down wherever he may hide and then I'll FUCKING KILL HIM!"

"Ah," the apparition chuckled. "Going to put the power to good use, I see. What a simple, accommodating worldview: if I had enough power, I could just murder people who slight me!"

On unsteady legs, it rose to its feet, stumbling a little.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" it asked of Darius as it limped towards him, bloody droplets falling from its chin. "To be able to take life on a whim. How about a primer?"

With his fingers spread out, Darius' hand slashed across the phantom's throat faster than the eye could see. Yet just a moment before his claws pierced its skin, it burst in a cloud of black mist, blinding him and confusing him into stumbling a couple steps. Not for long, though: on pure instinct, his body threw itself into a dive roll to the side as his senses screamed danger.

A towering abomination no less than three meters tall ambled in his direction from the smoke, every step sending tremors across the nonexistent ground. Engorged knee joints struggled to support enormous hamstrings that had the firmness of a water balloon and wobbled with every stride, while the overstrained ankles bent to unnatural degrees every time they had to endure the enormous weight of the bloated carcass perched upon them. Arms, thick as logs but nowhere near as solid spread from the torso at no less than a forty degree angle, jointless fingers unable to bend due to the fatness of the hand they were attached to.

If the tiny beads of eyes, all but invisible from beneath the fatty tissue upon its comically undersized head, nor the gargantuan gullet that reached all the way to its feet that looked like it was ready to burst into disgusting viscera at any moment didn't give it away, then the truly countless wounds, gashes, and incisions covering every square centimeter of its stomach and torso cemented that repulsive thing as an even uglier form of the mob leader Darius ripped into until he bled out, and by the Light was there a lot of blood. Some of its wounds bled a disgusting mixture of arterial blood and pus, others have begun to fester as necrotic tissue ate away at its body, exposing slabs of meat half-cut with epidermal fat and cracking white bones.

A wicked grin cut into Darius' face. Was that display meant to dissuade him?! Was the sight of this revolting animal, who stole food from those who could not protect themselves, gorged himself to the point bursting, then sold it back at a markup that would make any hyena in the upper city green with envy, supposed to make him reconsider?! He would kill him, anyone like him, a thousand times over before it got its filthy hands on someone else's food one more time!

He felt a rush of strength unlike anything he'd felt before as he dropped low to the ground. Whatever that ground was made of was pliable enough for his claws to dig in deeply, affording him immense momentum as he pushed forward with all of his limbs, sending himself flying directly at the monster with wind screeching in his ears. Slowly, it raised its arm towards him, palm hanging limply from the joint, but Darius blazed right beside it by simply twisting his body in the air a little. Like a knife through fetid mud, his hand raked deeply along its length, cutting through drab skin and adipose muscle alike, causing bone to fall out of the loosely hanging sleeve of flesh. Now anchored firmly with his hand wrist-deep in its back, Darius sank his right hand deeply into its neck with a single thrust of his hand. Wholesale ignoring the agonized screaming undercut by the gurgling of a man drowning in his own jugular, he liberated his off-hand and jumped down, his own weight dragging the hand through its trunk of a neck. And as his feet hit the ground, easily dampening the impact with a light crouch, the tiny head of the creature hit the ground just a couple seconds later, while the diseased body stood in place, rancid, boiling blood spraying from the stump, dousing him richly. Each drop burned his skin as it made contact, but it burned so.

Damn.

Good.

He laughed heartily as he turned around and sent the body barrelling away from him with a kick of incredible strength, yet the celebration was cut short. Once more he followed his instinct and ducked, and immediately saw a hand grasping a knife stab where his neck was just a second ago, and then the weight of the assailant's body running into him on inertia. Playfully, he grabbed the exposed appendage and yanked, twisting his entire body to bear the momentum further and throw the attacker over his back. The faceless shade's back cracked as it hit the ground and its chest crumpled like paper as Darius steadied himself by burying his foot in its ribcage. His hand still grasping its forearm, flesh parted from flesh accompanied by the crack of dislocated and broken bone as he ripped the arm from its body with a single jerking motion, knife still clutched in the stiffened hand. Once more he laughed as he swung the arm in a semicircle, cleaving the throat open and tossing the limb aside. His own arm shot out straight ahead, black claws going straight through the sternum of another attacker that charged him blindly and coming out of the back, its heart still beating in the bloodied hand. Darius spun to the right and tossed the skewered body forward ten meters, knocking down three more malformed shades stalking towards him and sprung at them with a triumphant holler.

He lost count of the creatures he'd slain. Tens of them, hundreds, thousands, in every size and shape. Gangly, hooded shades with arms longer than they were tall, whose very touch seemed to suck the life out of him, every fingertip leaving frostbite marks upon his body. Seemingly human figures that stalked on all four limbs with tails that lashed at him incessantly and who pounced at him, hoping to claw him with hands and feet alike. Faceless humans with mouths that took up half their head smiling at him with crooked grins and swarming him in numbers too great to count. Neither human nor Faunus, monsters each and every last one of them.

And so he jumped, punched, kicked, slashed through the hordes row after row. Power and vitality overflowed his body, and he knew that every strike would be stronger than the last. His hands tore through flesh and muscle like paper as he ripped them limb from bloody, screaming limb. His feet broke bones like glass and burst heads like overripe melons as time after time he reached new heights of dexterity. The very darkness permeating every inch of his surroundings came to do his bidding, as roaring waves of energy that ground masses into bloody paste and whips which felt as natural in his hand as if he trained with them from birth.

And so his spirit rejoiced in the euphoric carnage, the truth of his purpose clear to him. Wrench their ribcages open, that their filthy lungs may not taint the precious air! Gouge their eyes out, that they may never set their sights on another victim! Rip their jaws asunder, that they may never command their underlings! Tear their limbs from them, one by one, that they may never lay their hand on an innocent ever again!

He stumbled, widened eyes darting around in their sockets in search of the next wretch to gore, when pain shot through his left flank right where his scar was, searing his vision white. He rolled to the opposite side, and as he turned around, his heart froze. Two shades stood before him: one of slender build, the other a towering, musclebound monstrosity. The smaller shade had no features, no clothing he could make out, yet its head was wreathed in the same flames as the sword in its hands, so impossibly long that no matter how much Darius traced it with his eyes, its point always remained just out of sight. Conversely, the titan next to it gazed at him with ravenous hatred burning within a single eye on the left side of its face, the smoke rising above its forehead and descending behind it like an ashen mane. There was but a moment's hesitation between the three before pandemonium broke loose. The swordsman swiped horizontally, and Darius had to fling himself into the air, just narrowly avoiding bisection, while the cyclopean giant charged towards him at a speed that belied its enormous physique.

Yet as Darius hit the ground on all fours, feet planted firmly and clawed hands buried into the strange soil, all of the energy in his body exploded like a spring, sending him forward with the power of a jet engine as he steeled his spirit. They were but shadows of his past, and he was stronger than ever! He assailed the lumbering hulk first, denying the swordsman freedom of attacks lest it risk striking its supposed ally, and though even a grazing blow from its gargantuan fists would certainly pulverize every bone in his body, he was much too swift for it. He leapt gracefully from its punches, evaded its attempts at grabbing hold of him, and as he sidestepped its leg trying to punt him away, a tendril of black smoke snaked around it, catapulting Darius high into the air. With a thunderous crack, his whip bit into the cyclops' only eye, exploding it in a squall of gore and flame and taking away half of its face, revealing the empty eye socket and the skull.

The giant roared in agony, frenzied flailing tenderizing the air around it, yet Darius was long gone by that point, engaging the flaming shade in a battle to the death. Predictably, the swordsman's blade grew only more agile as he neared it, and what were rare sweeping slashes he'd had to throw himself away to avoid became a blindingly quick flurry of attacks as he got up close. He dodged, ducked, dipped away as fast as he was able, yet still time after time the blade bit into his body, every slash burning just as badly as the deep cut in his flank. Still, every cut meant an opportunity for a counterattack, every second spent a chance for it to make a mistake. As the shade buried the blade into the ground in a sloppy vertical slash, Darius' shoe became shrouded in a protective layer of black smoke as he slammed his foot on it, and the fight ended in an instant with a wave of energy bisecting the shade at the torso.

Darius then turned to the blinded colossus who slowly stumbled towards the sounds of battle, leering with a cruel smile. In an instant, he vanished from sight, merging with the surrounding shadow, and reappeared directly behind him. Two cracks of the whip, two tendons ripped into frayed string, one giant brought to its knees. A scowl spread across his entire face, and a second whip manifested in his left hand as he broke into a crazed dance, flaying the helpless monster with relentless abandon, every strike ripping chunks of flesh from the bone. He stripped both of its legs down to the bone, shattered its lower jaw into individual broken teeth, ruptured one after another its liver, kidneys and lungs. Finally, after about ten minutes of deafening cracks and tearing flesh, when he was whipping nothing but a skeletal carcass with some intestines left in it, he struck with both whips at once, breaking through the sternum and exploding the heart and the entire skeleton into bone shards and bloody spray.

And then nothing came.

The whips in his hands evaporated without a trace. Exhausted, he sunk to his knees, and laughter shook his body, quiet at first, but eventually it thundered through the dark expanse. Every molecule in his body burned in agony, every tendon was overextended or torn, every muscle was pulled or cramped, and his own blood burned his veins with every heartbeat.

He had never known a euphoria such as this.

"You fucking animal!"

It all stopped in an instant.

His blood, so ecstatically hot just a second ago, froze solid in his veins, and his heart almost stopped as a wave of terror washed over him at the mere sound of a voice he never thought he'd hear again. His head jerked to turn around, yet his body failed to follow suit as he fell face first into a pool of viscous liquid. Groaning as he pushed himself up, Darius realized it was blood, streaming from his face and down his arms, back into the opaque puddle.

With dread, he forced himself to raise his head and look ahead. Just about ten, fifteen steps away, Dusk's timid figure cowered before him, trembling hand shielding his eyes and another covering his mouth.

"D-D-Dusk..." Darius stammered as he tried to stand up straight and approach him. He managed to force himself upon one knee, yet as he attempted to push up, something cracked and his leg failed him, sending him plummeting back into the bloody asphalt. His voice caught as he tried to force sounds past his vocal chords. "Dusk, why are you angry with me? Did they hurt you? D-D-Did I hurt you? I'm sorry if I didn't notice..."

"Don't you come any fucking closer!" he shrieked and jumped away from him Darius, his voice feeling like a burning knife straight through the heart. "You fucking butchered them like pigs, you monster!"

"They would've done the same to us if we let them!" he screamed back, losing all control of his voice as an unbearable prickling in his eyes culminated in a stream of tears mixing with his bloodstained face. "Just like they did to everyone else who came across them! They would've done the same to you! And now they can't do it to us! And now nobody's gonna ever fuck with us!"

"Shut up! Just shut up and look at yourself!"

He saw it. He saw his shredded and burned clothes, the entirety of his body covered in blood and internal organs. He saw piles upon piles upon piles of broken and torn limbs, splintered bones, and decomposing flesh that littered the streets around him, bloody mist rising to obscure the sky. He felt how there wasn't a spot on his body that wasn't bruised, cut, stabbed, or burned, a hideous web of scars covering him head to toe, front to back.

"That's the kind of life you want?!"

"I JUST WANTED TO PROTECT YOU!" he wailed, every breath burning his lungs with frigid air. "I didn't want you to die like everybody else!"

No answer came.

It felt like every movement caused his broken ribs to jut into his lungs, but Darius managed to flip himself over onto his stomach and prop himself up on his broken elbows, just to look at Dusk, yet he wasn't there.

"Dusk, please don't leave..." he whimpered. His body felt like it was on fire, yet the bluish hue of his skin suggested otherwise.

"Please, Dusk! DUSK!"

As his strength failed him and he slammed his head on the pavement, the only thing that remained clear in his fading vision were Dusk's grey eyes gazing at him with fear and contempt just five steps from him.

…

GREY?!

It felt like every bone in his body had broken and reset the wrong way, like a tidal wave that turned his body inside out in a rage unlike any he had experienced before. From his outstretched hand, a wave of black energy surged forth like a snapping string, cutting Dusk's body clear in half and crumpling the mirage around him, bringing him back into the limitless black where he first encountered the phantom that now shed the disguise and was slowly attempting to crawl away on just two hands. Though his body hadn't healed one bit, the rage that now burned every particle of his being like a furnace lent him strength enough to stand up, walk up to the bisected phantom and slam it into the ground.

"How dare you pull shit like this!" he screamed as he railed into the unresponsive body, with fist after fist sinking deeply into the flesh, leaving bruises and tears. "How dare you taunt me with his image! I lied for him, stole for him, bled for him, killed for him! I was damn near ready to fucking die for him, and he ditched me the second he thought I couldn't bail him out!"

His strength spent, he fell onto the phantom's severed torso, chest heaving and his throat feeling like a thousand needles pierced it with every breath.

"Give me back my power," gripping its head by the hair, Darius gazed into his own glazed-over eyes. "I gave everything for him. I'm not getting used by anyone anymore."

And for a brief moment, the phantom's eyes focused on his own, only for it to spit out:

"Fucking… choke on it."

To his front, right, and left, three lights sprung into existence, then quickly grew into flames that spread with the speed of a gas leak. Circling around him, the flame caught onto a trail of blood that trailed Darius, and engulfed him in a flash. It hurt worse than he could have possibly imagined.

Yet the futility of it all hurt worse, still.

Darius screamed out, and never stopped.

This can't be right.

This can't be right.

This can't be right this can't be rightthiscantbe…

The instantaneous transition from the unbreachable darkness of the dreamscape she was in to the static lighting of her infirmary cell would have blinded Blake, had she the mental capacity to process the fact. A singular frenzied thought was repeating over and over in her mind at maddening speed as all of her being - her body, her mind, her very soul - overflowed in agony so exquisite that it dwarfed even the sensation of her flesh charring bit by bit.

For nothing burns quite as badly as regret.

Like toxic fumes, it ballooned within her chest, robbing her of breath, until it wasn't enough to confine it. It rose past her throat, ripping through her vocal cords, and would spill forth in a scream devoid of hope or reason… were it not for her own hand rising to muffle her unbeknownst to her as Blake suddenly regained her sight, reality reasserting itself against the nightmare, while its engine, the thought looping frenetically in her head, shorted and went silent as another one established itself: it wasn't her. It was not her body being swallowed in flames. Nor was it her regret hollowing her like acid from the inside-out.

Her arms felt no more responsive than a pair of wooden stumps, and thrice as heavy; only through a concerted effort did Blake manage to bring both of them up to her face, covering her eyes as she hunched over in her cot, body trembling as she tried to sort through the jumble of memories within her head, so vivid she could barely tell which ones were her own. Darius did not exaggerate when he warned her that it would feel as though she lived through them.

Oh no.

It was a tragic sight. That which came upon and passed Blake as a brief, albeit staggeringly vivid, nightmare, was immutable reality for Darius, and as her gaze shifted to her right, she saw in his slumped form the inevitable conclusion of that reality: a husk, burnt out from the inside by guilt, one hand clawing with abandon at the sucking emptiness within his heaving chest while the other raked into the vinyl floor, tracing blood from underneath the ruined fingernails. All to contain the same terrible scream that never stopped racking through him, bringing his entire body to tremors and breaking out in quiet, strangled sobs.

It broke Blake's heart to see him like this, but to be so completely powerless to help him felt even worse.

That…

That was it for him, then. No do-overs. No escaping it.

She shivered, hands instinctively balling up into fists as a wave of cold, sticky dread slowly spread up her fingers, numbing sensations in them.

Well he's still here! He's been here all this time, do something!

Heat flooded Blake's face as her heart pounded into her ribs like a jackhammer, unable to avert her eyes. Every cell in her violently shaking body was screaming at her to take action, to do something, even if that something was to grab hold of him and to drink in his pain and grief until the last drop, despite the memories of both still smouldering like coals in her memory. Anything to snap him out of it.

In reality, of course, her constrained movement only left her so many options.

Sitting up straight in her bed, she reached out to Darius, broken leg be damned, until her palm cupped his cheek. It burned to the touch.

The reaction was immediate, if somewhat removed from the hypothetical ideal. Somewhere far, far away, an invisible thread gave way under the strain, a sound so faint that, had Blake not known any better, she could have written it off as a trick her mind played on her. Darius froze like a salt pillar, his breath stuck in his lungs; a single, torturous second. Trembling like a leaf on the wind, his mangled left hand slowly rose until it met Blake's, bleeding fingers wrapping around it with a desperate grip while his other, unwounded but no steadier for it, covered his face as tears streamed from his unseeing eyes. He wept silently, as those who learned that there is no one out there to hear of their plight do, as Blake cursed herself and the words that failed her as she, too, was on the verge of breaking down.

Little did she know, of course, that no words she could say would reach him.

"It hurts..."

At some point, Darius' tears had run dry, and as his bloodied hand still gripped Blake's, he spoke in an hollow whisper that even she could barely hear:

"My Lady… It hurts just like before..."

Is he…

"Why have you spared me?" he asked, firmly in the grips of delirium. "How could a wretch like me ever serve you?"

"Darius..."

Yet her words fell on deaf ears.

"Couldn't protect my family. Couldn't protect Dusk. Couldn't protect her..." he shuddered when something between a coughing fit and a chuckle wracked through his body. "Couldn't even protect myself."

"Darius, you have to-"

"She's afraid of me, too. I saw it." As his fever grew, his tempo hastened and his speech began to slur as he tripped over words. "Afraid of me just like Dusk. My Lady, please, I can't do this, please just let me die like I was meant to before I hurt someone e-"

"Snap out of this!"

Somewhere, a boundary had to be drawn, and to Blake, pleas for a mercy killing just about approached that boundary. Her hand shifted and her fingers dug into Darius' shoulder, for lack of a better way to grip him, and with a yank she brought him all the way up to her bunk, where, without even trying to liberate her right hand from his clutches, she raised her left hand up and whacked him across the face with a back-handed slap that rang through the room.

It was crude. It was unrefined. It was, in all frankness, absolutely insensitive.

But damn if it wasn't effective. As his head bobbed to the side, the arteries in his neck momentarily swelled with black blood to contrast against his rapidly paling skin, but it was over before it began as his eyes flung open and processed his surroundings. The momentum carried him further, yet his right hand braced on reflex against the floor, bouncing him back into an upright position. That, however, seemed to be the limit of the distress he could endure: chest heaving, his eyes darted wildly in their sockets as his mind tried and failed to process the whiplash of transitioning between whatever realm of delirium it was trapped in and the waking world; he began to hyperventilate. His gaze jumped to the left for a split-second and immediately his grip on Blake's hand loosened as he jerked his away, blackened bruises left by his fingers fading out in a second.

Further intervention was warranted, she decided.

Regrettably, in lieu of Blake lacking any semblance of education into such delicate matters, she was guided not by a fundamental understanding of the underlying processes behind her actions, but instead by gut feeling, as well as blind hope that that which worked for Darius would also work for her. In an imitation of the audacious maneuver the Atlesian pulled earlier today, she reached out once more and grabbed hold of his head with both hands, turning it until his eyes, flung wide open in confusion, met her own. It nearly overwhelmed her in the first two seconds, the roaring maelstrom of emotion roiling about within these grey eyes, all scorching in their extremes: shock, pain, shame, guilt.

So much guilt.

"Darius, come on!" she called out to him, every word a struggle against herself to keep looking. "It's alright."

One breath after the other, his breathing slowed, and he appeared to deflate about half a size as strain went away from his chest and shoulders.

"I'm here."

The turmoil of feelings that raged in his eyes subsided, and as he blinked, there was recognition in them as they opened again.

"It's going to be alright, you hear me?"

His gaze shifted away from Blake. His eyes shut, and in a whisper devoid of strength he responded:

"I hear you."

That wasn't exactly the reaction she was after, but it was progress. Blake made do.

"Shall I let you go?"

He nodded. Gently, she unclasped her hands around his head. Slowly, he sank to the floor, where his left hand, long since healed but still marred by strips of congealed blood running down his fingers, braced him against the floor as he gathered his bearings, right hand covering his forehead. Eventually, he slowly shifted about on the floor to lean back against Blake's bed, legs curled inwards and both hands on his face, where he drew slow and deep breaths.

"You okay?" she asked, leaning over the edge to try and sneak a glimpse of his face.

His breath hitched. There was a pause before he responded:

"I will be." He swallowed. "Just… just give me a moment, please."

One didn't need to be Blake to see that he wasn't.

"Does it still hurt?"

There was no answer.

"You know I can sense it."

He exhaled slowly, almost forcing the air out.

"It hurts," he whispered. "To be near you. To look at you. To speak. Your voice cuts like a knife..."

'She's afraid of me, too.'

"I'm so-"

"Sh-h-h," Blake interrupted him in his tracks, an idea springing up in her mind. "No talking, then."

Leaning back on her conveniently stacked lodging, Blake's hand snaked down to rest on Darius' forehead. It burned like a furnace.

"Is this better?"

Without a word, Darius' head swayed back to rest against the bed's frame, his eyes still closed, yet his breathing notably relaxed. It was all the answer she needed.

She smiled to herself.

"We don't have to talk about what happened right this second. Honestly, I could use a moment as well. That fine with you?"

No objection followed. As the two sat in absolute silence, a positively divine experience after the stresses and tensions of tonight, Blake's thoughts turned once again to the memory in which she partook. To the frigid streets of Atlas and the cruel lessons they taught. To the ancient words of covenant, broken within minutes. To the uncompromising truth forged in burning blood.

Wrench their ribcages open.

Gouge their eyes out.

Tear their limbs from them, one by one, that they may never lay a hand on an innocent ever again.

'He ditched me the second he thought I couldn't bail him out!'

'That's the kind of life you want?!'

Was it?

'Couldn't protect my parents. Couldn't protect Dusk.'

'Couldn't protect her.'

'Why have you spared me?'

"Darius..." she began, her hand still resting on his head. Cold seeped through her skin and dripped directly into her heart, it felt like."What happened then? What happens when a candidate fails the initiation?"

A pause.

"It depends," he spoke, and though quiet and devoid of strength, it didn't sound as though existence itself inflicted him pain anymore. "Some go back to their training and, once deemed fit, attempt again. Usually that applies to those who have already done work for the Order and proved their resourcefulness and dedication. Some have their memory wiped and are released back into the world. In cases such as mine..."

He sighed.

"Should an initiation backfire so catastrophically, the candidate typically expires within two, three months at best. Historically, therapy has proven ineffective, while tampering with the memories served to exacerbate the issue."

Blake shuddered. Something pricked at her eye, and as she rubbed at it with her free hand, she discovered that her cold went from a mere feeling to very corporeal cold sweat running down her temple.

"Furthermore, a failure of such proportions demonstrates hastiness and inability to judge character in the servant curating the initiate. Lin Greystone went from the Master of the Atlesian Chapter to a pariah, and was forced to resign from his post. He brought me to the very edge of the polar circle, hoping that the frigid weather would, if not snuff out, then at the very least somewhat temper the madness that raged within me. There, I would train until my body gave out, wake up, train again, hunt, wake up, train… and so on."

A light tremor ran through him as he quietly chuckled.

"Well… I say train, but really it was just physical and lunging at every errant shadow. Practicing form was impossible, and the academical subjects Lin attempted to teach me in the rare moments of relative calm never stuck."

"How… How long did that go on for?"

"...Four years."

The air within Blake's own lungs froze into solid matter. She thought back to the agony she felt at the very tail-end of the memory.

Four years of that?!

"I was not a pretty sight by the end of that," he paused and steadied his breath again. "In fact, there was barely any of me left. I have all but faded away… but then She spoke to me."

"She?"

"The Lady," he nodded, and that alone was enough to breathe vigor into his voice. "In a dream, I heard Her call out to me, and in an instant my delirium fizzled out like a burnt-out match. She asked me if there was anything She could do for me in exchange for me doing something for Her. Without hesitating even for a second, I fell to my knees before Her and begged to serve Her, to give my very life for Her. And when I woke up, I felt at peace for the first time since..." he stumbled. "Well... since I still had a family."

She felt Darius stir beneath her hand. Moments later, the nature of that stirring became apparent as choked, bitter laughter bordering on hysterical reached her ears.

"And I just begged Her to let me die. After butchering no less than seventy people like a fucking animal, after almost murdering you, after making you live through my shame, I begged Her to just let me die! To take back the life She gave me! Lin would've ripped my head off for this and then had a fucking aneurysm if he saw me!"

"That's enough!" Leaning over to look directly down at him, she craned Darius' neck so he would look her in the eyes. "If she has any sense at all, she will see that you weren't yourself. I mean, fuck. Even I barely stayed sane after that, and it didn't even happen to me, so stop with the nonsense!"

That seemed to have an effect equivalent to a bucket of ice water being dropped on his head. Piping down immediately, Darius' hysteria faded away with his exhale as he shrank from her sight. As she reclined back onto her pillows, Blake couldn't hold back an exhausted sigh.

So. Where do we go from here?

Usually, that's where Darius steps in and changes the topic.

Well, there's an issue with this right now, isn't there?

"Hey." She stirred in her bunk to the limits that her fixated leg allowed, letting her head hang freely from the edge to be level with Darius. "Sorry about that. That was a little harsh."

Without turning, he glanced at her, blinking slowly.

"You can't be serious, Blake," he whispered. He seemed to also be on his last legs. "You can't seriously be saying these words after what I've done to you tonight. I involved you in a situation you had no business being in in the first place and put your life in danger. I murdered several dozens of your comrades before your eyes and only avoided you by a chance miracle. I… I-" his words lodged somewhere in the windpipe region as a ragged sob slipped through his gritted teeth and he pressed his fingers into his eyes, wiping the nascent tears. "I have not earned this kindness."

I honestly can't believe I actually have to explain this.

"Like you get to decide this," Blake grinned briefly, before reaching out and turning his head to face her. "Listen to me," she continued in a more somber tone. "I was White Fang. You don't need to tell me that killing people is bad."

She sighed.

"Believe me, I know that really well from firsthand experience. I learned that the second I watched a guy's life drain down my sword and soak into the dirt. However. There is, and I can't believe I have to tell you this, a difference between killing out of cruelty and killing because you're going to die if you don't. It doesn't make it any better, but you're not going to get a chance at retrospection if you get shredded into ribbons and bleed out in the middle of nowhere. For me, thirty armed men with Bullhead air support is way past that line."

Her eyes narrowed, piercing through Darius as her voice rang out with steel undertones:

"So let me get this straight so we both know where we stand: if our positions were reversed and you ended up in their clutches, I would have cut them down like the disgusting, treacherous, spineless mongrels they were!"

She felt her jaw cramping in pure fury.

"I can't believe that they would bend over backwards to filth like Torchwick! What was Ada-" Blake muffled herself with her hand as her eyes went wide, and she only continued after a deep, slow breath. Much to her subdued delight, she recognised the sharp glint in Darius' eyes as they watched her intently. "...Sorry. I'm… a little rattled by what I saw of them there. Not the point. In fact, I'm pretty sure I already made my point back in that strange dream realm."

She sighed.

"Of course, the difference between you and me is that in that scenario, there are a lot of probable outcomes where I get pelted full of holes. I suppose that with the kind of power she gave you, that line might lie elsewhere for you. Probably did, didn't it?"

Darius remained motionless, neither agreeing nor declining, rapt in thought.

"That's something only you can decide for yourself, and hope it doesn't get you killed. Or the ones near you," she quietly said, feeling her voice falter. "So please, Darius, I'm begging you, don't blame yourself on my behalf when making that decision. Or on Dusk's, for that matter."

His eyes widened.

"You did say you'd show me 'the full truth'," Blake snickered. "Doesn't take a genius to see the similarities."

She was silent for a moment.

She considered her words.

"I know that what happened, happened, and that this won't undo years of pain," she leaned in, stopping just millimeters short of Darius. "But if nobody told you this by now, let me be the first. If what I saw was true, then… I don't think you're at fault for what happened to you. I saw how important he was to you. I understand feeling betrayed. I… I understand why you couldn't accept the truth offered to you."

As if struck by lightning, Darius recoiled from her involuntarily in one jerking motion, having to grab hold of the bed just to stay upright. There, he froze solid as color drained from his face and his left hand once more began clawing at his chest, completely outside his control. One after another, the same emotions that just barely loosened their grip emerged again in his bloodshot eyes, clinging to him as tightly as he clung to them and contorting his face into a tortured, emaciated mask of pain.

Blake wagered that the pain that ate at her just from seeing him like that wouldn't amount to even half of what he felt, in all likelihood.

But even that much was more than she could bear.

It seared away any semblance of thought within her head, stripping it all down to the basest, burning impulse: to be near him. To be one with him. To reach within him and take, take, take from him all his pain until he was Darius Silva again, even if it burnt her to cinders. Because if he was himself again, he would most certainly bring her back, no matter where she was. He would set things right again, just as he always did.

Her body tipped over the edge of her bed, and before she knew it, she was on the floor, her fall cushioned by her good leg in a flawless somersault. Ignoring Darius' stupor, who, even in this state, was left somewhat dumbfounded by this impressive feat of acrobatics, she lunged at him, pulling him into a tight embrace. And even though his skin scorched her to the very bone as she pulled closer, and the feverish pounding of his heart left her completely numb as it reverberated all through her body, even as his guilt and regret pierced through her and left only a vacuum behind, causing her to gasp for air, she wouldn't let go.

"Please snap out of this, Darius!" she cried as her tears flowed freely. "I was afraid back then, I admit! I didn't understand what was happening and I was afraid, just like Dusk was! But he only got to leave you because you saved his life! And you saved me tonight, as well! And I'm not going anywhere, just as I promised!"

Something in her throat scratched, and she broke into a coughing fit as her voice abandoned her, leaving her to talk in hoarse whispers. Thankfully, at the distance they were at, her ear pressed tightly against his stiffened neck, that, too, was sufficient.

"I know it hurts. I saw it all," she breathed, struggling against a treacherous shaking in her limbs. "But you're more than your pain and your guilt. I know that because I also saw it with my own eyes. And I'm going to show you. Thanks to you, I have a place to go back to, so I can see it through with you to the very end, just as I promised. You hear me?"

This wasn't going to last, she knew. There was only so much energy available to her after an emotional outburst like this and her body still struggling to heal her damaged limb. Her grip on Darius was weakening by the second, and she couldn't help but curse both herself for this weakness and the orange-haired racist piece of shit who put her in this position in the first place.

Her grip slipped.

Yet she didn't move an inch. For just a second before that happened, Darius' arms wrapped around her in reciprocation, one arm completely encircling her frame and grasping her opposite shoulder, while the other coiled around her waist. He gripped her just as desperately as he did her hand in throes of delirium; she all but heard her bones creak as he pressed against her, leaving her precious little air to just barely cling to consciousness.

It was nothing short of paradise.

Blake knew not how much time had passed, nor did she care. In their fiery union, where the notion of 'self' melted away like snow in summer, when their very hearts beat in unison, it felt like, she breathed in deeply, and Darius' being was revealed unto her on a level far more primal than her eyes ever could convey. He smelled of steel that wound like rope and string all around him, binding him to his discipline. Of blood taken unwillingly, tinged by the damp, withering musk of regret, and of guilt whose icy caress sapped at her will to live. And deeper still, buried and neglected far beneath all this, lay the root cause of everything before it. A single kernel of desire that burned hotter than every star in the sky combined, overpowering everything beside it like day overpowers night. A desire to live, to give and to take, to fight and to triumph, and to assert the truth held to be self-evident to all the world. A desire that, if given even an iota of supplication, would engulf said world in a flash and warp it in its image, yet could bring light into its darkest, bleakest corners with just a bit of temperance. The most terrifying, most beautiful thing in all of creation.

Indeed, Darius smelled just as he once did.

And though it is ubiquitous for all the best things in this world to be, at best, impermanent, that truth of life came with its own, not at all unpleasant caveats. And though it seemed at some point that this moment of burning bliss would go on forever, its passing was inevitable, yet the peaceful warmth that came to supplant it felt, in some respects, incomparably better. Significantly less taxing on the mind, for instance, Blake absently noted as her consciousness began to drift, her body held securely in Darius' gentle embrace. But only for a moment, for reality reconstituted itself in an instant as a voice replied to her:

"I hear you, Blake. I'm sorry it took this long to get through to me… Thank you."

She didn't bother to open her eyes, for there was no misattributing that voice, just as hoarse as hers, yet so painfully familiar. Instead, she simply tightened her grip on him, a smile stretching across her face as she laughed quietly in relief, exhilaration, and plain happiness.

The hands that laid upon her body began to shift, yet just as she was about to voice her decisive protest and demand that Darius keep his damn hands firmly on her, all indignation was snuffed out as one of them gently cupped the side of her head, calloused fingers - something, she noted, warranted future investigation - sliding across her cheek as if it were delicate porcelain. And though the treacherous appendage sought to separate her from him, the sight of his grey eyes peering into hers without a trace of hesitation or guilt, but instead smouldering with the same desire she witnessed just before, was a perfectly serviceable compensation.

Actually…

That alone was not quite sufficient, Blake decreed in a snap decision that rebelled against all rationality, something she suspected had been long since exhausted over the course of this evening. Her arms wound around his neck to grasp at the back of his head, and she leaned in while simultaneously pulling him in, the world around her fading out of existence all in favor of just one more moment with him…

Yet as the clock at the far wall counted one second, then another, Blake found no purchase.

Her eyes flung open in confusion, only to widen further in a cold whiplash as Darius' face laid barely a centimeter away from her, separated only by his other hand laid firmly on her forehead, the desire in his gaze shackled firmly by the restraint that still was second nature to the Darius she knew.

"Is- is something wrong?" Blake stammered, cold shivers running down her spine.

"Please don't misunderstand, Blake," he spoke, his hand lightly caressing her in reassurance. "I..." he breathed in deeply, slowly exhaling through his nose to calm his nerves. "I want this just as badly. I can hardly even breathe."

In affirmation, he filtered another slow, heavy breath. Good thing too, for had Blake not had Darius to mirror, she likely would have forgotten to breathe of her own accord.

"But this would be a markedly bad decision on both sides," he continued, and though he didn't take away his hands, he did lightly push away her head so the distance between the two grew exponentially. On the bright side, he did not attempt to throw off her hands. Blake took respite in that. "We've both said some very heated things to each other. Neither of us is in our right mind."

Darius was right, of course. Every last word out of his mouth was unequivocally true.

But damn if each and every one didn't feel like an icy droplet just sliding unabated down the length of her spine.

"We both have a lot, and I mean a lot of things to think about. Very, very carefully. But I swear there is going to be a better time for this," he said, and Blake knew there wasn't anything in the world that could stand in the way of the resolve in his voice. "I… I have much to consider. About us. About my duties. About how those fit together. And so do you. But I will do everything in my power to be the person you seem to see in me, and there will be a time when we can… cross that bridge… without second-guessing ourselves. I say this without doubt, because I, too, made a promise. Do you believe me, Blake?"

She simply smiled.

"Of course I believe you. That's the whole reason I went through all this effort to get through to you."

His demeanor deflated somewhat as his eyes drooped to the floor.

"I… really went off the deep end there, didn't I? I knew this would be… ugly, to put it mildly, but I suppose even I somewhat forgot how bad it was after seven years." He frowned, shutting his eyes intently and decisively purging the unbidden visions.

"Cheer up," Blake accompanied the command by ever so slightly tilting Darius' chin so that he would once again look her in the eyes. "We got through this. Makes it worth every fried nerve cell in my book."

He chuckled, and for the first time after their awakening, a timid smile emerged upon his lips.

"I cannot in good conscience say we're through this just yet," he mused. "But this is a step that needed taking. That being said: are you sure this was worth a potential second fracture in that there leg of yours?"

The leg was, indeed, an increasingly pressing concern, Blake considered.

"So… don't suppose you could help me get back in there? As a token of thanks?"

"I'm honestly amazed you pulled this off without so much as knocking anything over," Darius remarked, swiftly rearranging his arms to scoop under Blake's thighs and her back. "Your hand, if you please."

"It's already there, though," puzzled, Blake nonetheless slung her arm a bit tighter around Silva's neck as he carefully lifted her up as if she was no heavier than a feather and equally carefully let her down into her bunk. Just as he was about to let go of her, their eyes locked once again, so very close to each other. It lasted no more than a second, yet even in that second Blake couldn't help but curse silently her indecision, hoping quite openly that perhaps if not her, then Darius would give the other a reason to reciprocate the impulse that burned so brazenly in their eyes.

In the next one, however, pending a very deep breath, she resigned to put her trust in her friend's decision. That was, after all, why she kept him around.

"Four o'clock in the morning," Darius intoned, after a brief pause was held out to let both temper their senses. "Absolutely no time for a patient in your condition to be up… I think it's time we both put this terrible day behind us."

"No kidding," Blake heaved a sigh. Then she looked at the wall. "Could you please kill the clock first, though? Damn thing's going to drive me up the wall."

Without so much as a word, his shadow extended in a way physics did not intend, and a pair of black feelers grabbed hold of it, taking the clock off the wall, extracting the battery that powered it and hanging it back on in quick succession.

In all honesty, Blake rather hoped it met a significantly more violent demise.

"I should probably mention that we may have to spend the next afternoon here, apart from each other," Darius spoke up. "You should be fit to be discharged by tomorrow, but there will be… hoops I'll have to jump through that have to do with this incident. I'll arrange that you be shown around once you're free to go, alright?"

"Hey, as long as I get to huddle with a book in a corner somewhere, I'll be fine."

"Library it is, then," he smiled. "Good night, Blake. Rest well."

He stood up straight and headed for the exit.

"Wait."

It came unbidden, slipping right past Blake's defenses just as she thought she'd finally come back to her senses. Darius' hand froze as it hovered over the doorknob.

"Something the matter?"

"I..."

Just say it. Can't be worse than what you tried a minute ago.

"Could you stay with me a bit longer?" she said, finding it increasingly hard to look him in the eyes as a blush crept up her face completely against her will. "I… kinda got used to falling asleep with at least three other people around me."

Smooth, Belladonna.

If Darius caught on, he most definitely did not give the fact away with so much as a muscle twitch.

"Certainly."