Note: Follows "Passion"

WARNING: Dark, bloody, violent, gross...don't read while eating, watching telly, breathing...

Survival

"Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope" -Hal Lindsey

"I wonder...how long you two could survive...without the other," he said, laughing as the door slammed shut.

They had been somewhere in China...or Hong Kong...hell it could had been Afghanistan for all Saguru could remember, when the darkness had claimed him. That had apparently been a week ago, according to the masked asshole who had just visited. The time in between had been filled with blood and pain and enough blows to the detective's head to make him question just what had happened in between now and New York.

He laid back on the cot beneath him, desperately squirming against his bonds as he tried to find a position that didn't hurt, staring at the gray ceiling above him. Somewhere, through the walls, he could hear Kaito scream.

…

They started removing pieces in the second week, a finger here, a foot there, some they left with him so he could spend hours staring at the piece of his body he had lost. Never anything he could use to hurt himself or insert into his self, but just a little something as a gift.

He spent four days with his appendix. He named it Samuel and had quite a few conversations with it.

They changed his restraints to metal after Kaito broke his own leather ones, and later wielded them to the floor instead of the bed when the vampire killed one of his guards with the bed. Saguru forced himself not to smile every time he heard the muttering of the masked man, desperately glad that Kaito was still alive...still fighting.

They took his eyes for the smile he had let slip.

…

It had taken four months, for the adrenaline to wear off, to stop healing him. There was a rush of fear, blasts of pain...and yet nothing changed. He was immortal...and he was dying. The masked man smiled as he bound Saguru's wounds, keeping him alive through the barest of means. Saguru wondered, in a faded manner, how Kaito was fairing...Anesidora kept him alive, but she needed blood, as much as Saguru needed the endorphins and dopamine to work. He hoped the vampire had died, had been freed.

He doubted it when the masked man came in holding a bleeding wrist and a syringe.

The cocaine injected into him did little, giving him a high and healing the most superficial of his wounds...his body was too damaged. It had made for interesting lights across the eternal darkness of his sight, and that made Saguru happy for the few hours it lasted before his body burned through the drug.

…

Kaito screamed as the red hot spike was driven through his thigh, right through the barely healed wound on his thigh where they had done the same trick the morning before. He panted, eyes wide, whites showing as he jerked against the metal table he was bound to. The torture turned away, placing the spike back on the fire and turning to his table of toys, consulting with the masked man over what to try next.

Kaito lowered his head, bangs hanging in his eyes, body convulsing as his empty stomach searched desperately for food...for blood. He vomited the breakfast they had given him, gagging at the taste of stomach acid that had joined. As his body jerked, another vomiting spasm taking him, he noticed something...different, then a moment before...the metal was weakened.

It was only on one side, one bond, the left forearm, but that weakness was enough to crack the restraint, free the lower half of Kaito's arm as he threw his body against it in another spasm, focusing his strength in that one section.

When the torture returned, a pair of bloodied pliers in his hand, Kaito's arm snapped up, grabbing the man's neck, squeezing down. The masked man acted, grabbing a pair of shears large enough...strong enough to remove Kaito's fingers, only to be send backwards by the torture's body as they ended up running into each other, one trying to get away, and one trying to move forward.

Kaito manipulated his body, twisting and squirming until he could get his entire arm free. It took him longer for his chest and by the time that bond was released the men were on him. Kaito strangled himself against his neck restraint as he lashed out, using the metal piece from his left forearm to slash the masked man's throat. The torture ran, but had been locked in the second the restraints broke, a back-up security that was proving a failure as Kaito slid from the last of his restraints, growling deep in his chest, pushing himself to his feet.

The man screamed, fighting off the thief, desperate. It was choked off, turning wet as Kaito's hands tore into his throat, teeth and blunted nails ripping flesh apart. Kaito drunk hungrily from the man, feasting even as his body consumed the blood it was given, Anesidora running in overdrive to fix it's host, to survive.

Kaito let out a frustrated scream as the man's heart stopped and the blood stopped flowing. He used his teeth to tear into the man's chest, fingers and hands tearing at bone and flesh before his brain started to kick in and he reached under the man's ribs, ripping out the still heart, biting into it, swallowing convulsively as he tried to catch every last drop he could.

He kicked the body aside, staring at the door that bared his way out, his way from more bodies...more blood. From Saguru.

…

The smell of blood, fecal matter and smoke was thick in the air as Kaito stumbled into the last room he had to look, crawling the last few feet to the bed. It was brown, the colour of old rust...and old blood. A decayed, rotten foot was facing him from under the bed, gone dyed orange with the colour of the fire behind him.

Kaito crawled onto the bed, curling up against the blond, ignoring the way his hand slid across the boy's chest, almost sinking into it. He gently brushed his finger over Saguru's cheek, skin stretching and sliding off with the movement of his thumb. "Found you," he whispered, patting Saguru's cheek and resting his head on the detective's chest, the smell of death and decay seeping into his nose.

Anesidora glinted at him from where he rested in his palm and Kaito turned his hand over, staring at the diamond. One of the guards had gotten lucky, a blast from a riffle to Kaito's stomach removing the diamond without any trouble.

Kaito could imagine, now, how Pandora had felt. Watching all that she loved die...everything that mattered gone. Kaito had lasted three years and he was already glad for death. He never had a chance, not when he knew...not when he had been told, seen that Saguru had died long before him.

Four months. Saguru had endured this hell for four months before his body gave out. Kaito had outlived him by six without ever knowing...

He was more then ready to go home. To return to the blond's side.

He turned, placing a gentle kiss on that was left of the detective's mouth before closing his eyes, waiting for death.