Huzzah, celebrate! More story. Thank you, everyone, who's taken an interest in this title. As my beta says, "be ready for subtext."

La Carnival Negre

Chapter 2

Allen sits and wonders, really wonders, what was going on back then. The sunlight is warm on his skin, the flowers in the garden kind, the birdsong gentle, despite what is around him. This is nature, this is the world without humanity. Underneath him is a stone bench, radiating cold into his skin, making his body ache with the compression of his spine. The only way to fix it is to lean back or curve to the ground; today, he stares at his hands, ignoring the presence he feels behind him.

Two of his enemies watch through the door of the little east-facing courtyard, considering the form enclosed within its stone walls, both as concerned semi-friends and plotting hunters. And they know they are sensed; even unhappy, the white-haired youth is filled with a tension only those who have known him—or defeated him—would know.

The girl detaches from the door frame just as the tall, robust, and stately man enters through the other.

Allen stiffens and in a moment what he knows to be himself is gone, replaced by the Other. Yet, the twinge at seeing this particular familiar face reverberates through the Other, and through the new man; it hits somewhere deep inside, in the people both of them used to be. What used to be Allen glares and tries not to grab at his chest; the man who used to be something human, gives a cool glance, on-guard; he tries to ignore the way what he supposes is the remainder of his soul shakes at the sight of such stark white hair.

Even though Allen trapped in a dark place, he is not forgotten.

It was a rainbow of light, spreading forth in a halo. It encompassed everything he saw, blinding white in the middle and feathered at the edges; he couldn't look at the point, and yet, it wasn't because it hurt. It was brilliant, it was warm, lifting him with its encroaching embrace—

It's because of you. Because of you, I can see the light. Who would have thought it was possible for me to go there?

A swell of sound and joy, building and building into his being. And from up high, the little boy looked impossibly far away. This was human life, spread out below him, waiting for him to come back, and yet he never would.

But—ah. That was his brother, down there, the man who had no name but the ones he had stolen.

And there was Allen, the little vessel, who had unfortunately turned so very kind due to the nurturing his unconscious mind had been propelled to do.

That was not completely without cause. His brother had been sending out rhythms to him, waves of his thoughts, feelings, and plans, which Mana so often felt but never knew.

But from here, he could see it all. He could see what had made him unable to cry, and everything before it. He could see what his life had lost.

I love you, Allen—

Most of all, he could see his hatred.

And I don't need you, you worthless soul.

The wave crashed. The halo disintegrated; red orbs glowed where the eyes should have been. Purple, then black, then grey, then all manner of dark color grew out of the entity with the force and sound of cannon fire. Black arms clawed from the ground in front of him and twisted, mangled and hungry, until there was little dark energy escaping from the crushing soul. It was no longer making the semi-human sounds of speech, but merely anguish and rage in an unworldly grind. The arms dragged the crying ensemble back to the earth with a great crash that rippled the ground. Tiny bits of black soul bounced off the grey-scarred dirt, and then melted into nothing.

Allen stared at Mana's final resting place with his good eye, blood suddenly sliding down the middle of his other. A thick streak dipped down the left third of his vision, separating the snow in his view from the grey-speckled ground. He would remember the black and white of this night for the rest of his life; he would recall trying to scream for hours without sound, as the engorged flesh of his mutant arm slowly, tendon by tendon, nerve by nerve, found its way back to its original place; and he would remember the shadow with the mask that draped over him. And he would remember what it said.

It was a child.

A child that couldn't even bring itself to look at him, who probably couldn't look at him, and who cried.

He had been there for Lenalee. He had been there for bits of Kanda and Alma. And now there was this. The only thing left of the 14th's will.

Children were vulnerable. Weak, inept, trusting. Distrusting. Kind; inexorably malicious. Unconscionable and yet only wanting to please, to grow well as the seeds that they, as adults, had planted.

It was always children with him.

...Why were they no longer precious?

Cross dragged him through the black London snow, trying not to breathe in the crystals that hung in the night air as his cigarette smoke drew past him. It was too late for even the ladies of the night, but the wise ones, the ones that had any friends, stayed away from the murders this neighborhood had. There was no one to watch his travels with boy in one hand, cigarette in the other, and Tim on his shoulder. His amusement came in the form of wondering which of the three would freeze first.

The boy made no complaint; Cross dragged him by the hood but there were no choked noises, so he assumed there was no more distress than necessary. No one saw them. There was no one to care.

Down the middle of a side alley not much wider than his shoulders, he came to his prize: the door of a meat shop. One dim light was still on behind the sooted glass; Cross tried the door, and a bell, missing its tongue, clacked against the doorframe as he swung it open.

Inside lie a wide counter, and a crumbling blue wall just behind that. There was a narrow doorway to the right of the tiny front, open to a perfect view of the hunks of meat hanging in the back. Cross dropped his new acquisition against the counter with a thud, and smacked the bell. This one actually rang, and it made his skin crawl.

Timcampy's tail hit him on the back, hard, but he ignored it. While he drummed his fingers against the counter, he jabbed the potato-sack boy in the side. The toe went fairly deep, and the flesh was worryingly soft. But no noise came from the child; he just lay there, slumped like an abandoned, broken toy, just as he had been at the grave. As Cross heard footsteps coming from the back, he wondered if the bloodstain near the drain was from the kid.

"Can I . . . help . . . you?" a thin man asked, giving him a confused once-over. He wore a stained apron, and was wiping his hands on an equally filthy cloth. He was a younger and leaner man than Cross, plus a head shorter; had dark hair, and looked like he had spent too hard of a life in too many hours in the sun. He was a bit shaken too, which really wasn't an odd reaction to Cross at three AM.

"Yes," Cross said, from the view above him, pulling his cigarette away from his mouth and stubbing it out in a way that made great use of the muscles in his arm. He took in a large breath, and then turned to the man. "I need to buy some chains."

The shop-keep's mouth fell open. He blinked a couple times, and then raised an eyebrow expectantly.

Cross reached under the counter and pulled the crumpled waif up by the collar. "I have some cauterizing to do."

He let him drop from there, and the clatter echoed pleasingly around the walls. The scraggly man jerked a little, and Cross smiled, his best threatening smile.

"Ah—all right, then." To Cross's surprise, the clerk actually straightened up. He took one step back, and then wheeled on his heel, going quickly for the back.

"Actually," Cross called after him easily, making him turn back, "do you have a tub in the back? I don't think this part of town will mind the screaming."

The man's other eyebrow raised. There was . . . something craving in that stare.

Slowly, the butcher's gaze trailed across the room and dropped down to where the boy was draped against the counter.

"You aren't . . . going to kill me, . . . are you?"

"My dear fellow," Cross laughed, the words dripping from his mouth as he took a cigarette from his pocket and raised it to his lips. He stopped just before lighting it, however, his bright green eye making contact, just over the flame cupped in his massive hands. "Only if you get in my way."

The scrawny man took a breath, then another, and then nodded his head. But then he squared his shoulders and said, "All right. I'll let you do it. Ih-If, you let me watch."

The boy took that moment to slump against Cross's leg, leaving a little curved streak of blood across the backstop of wood. The red-head took a moment, in the resounding silence, to consider his answer, and then smiled, a predatory gleam that reached all the way to his eyes.

"Deal."

"All right." The man still looked a little flustered and excited, trying to compose his thoughts. "I'll go wash out the blood for you. . . ."

"No need. Just give me a bucket," Cross said.

The man stopped in mid-step and turned back to Cross. His eyes were wide. "No, I insist."

Cross stared at the ceiling and resituated to better prop up his smoking arm. He let out a long, slow stream of smoke, enjoying the way the tendrils tasted as the curls escaped his tongue. "Why don't you get me the cuffs first so that I can get started, while you do what you want. Two, please—I want to tie up his feet, too." He flicked his cool gaze down. "I trust you can make them fit the first time."

"Ah, ye-yeah. Sure, mate." With that, his little greasy fellow disappeared behind the slabs of meat, into the back. Cross looked to his golem, who was curled up awkwardly on the boy's shoulder, pushing into his face to get him to respond. Cross huffed to get the thing's attention, and then pointed with a flick of his cigarette. "Follow the body that comes out."

Timcampy, big as he was, made his way to the rafters without hitting anything and then down the back. Cross ignored the sounds of heavy iron doors opening and closing, and the chink of thick metal chains pushing along a track while he finished his smoke, considering the child still draped over his foot. He was sucking in air like it was a rare thing, even though his eyes were shut.

Cross frowned, and jabbed him in the side to remove his trapped appendage. The boy immediately turned over and vomited, though very little came up. After one pant, he collapsed back down and his head scraped the ground with a small, exhausted sigh. For a moment, no one moved: there was no sound; and then, a small pool of dark blood appeared from around his head, slowly flowing down the concrete floor toward a far-away drain.

"Oh . . . damn. . . ." Cross nudged the lump; this time, nothing happened, and Cross rolled him onto his back with the heel of his shoe. With some degree of restraint, he pressed into various places on the boy's abdomen, searching for a response. When he got to the boy's last rib, instead of being resistant, ground gave way, and the boy immediately coughed blood.

"Unwrapping him already?" came a voice. The butcher had returned in the doorway, rather eagerly holding two sets of manacles and their corresponding chains in one now very clean hand.

It took Cross a moment, but he shrugged and straightened up, holding his hand out like he owned the entire world. "Would you carry him? I'll take those."

The butcher eyed him skeptically, but when he looked around Cross's shoulder, the image of the half-dressed thing on his bare floor seemed to override any objections. He smiled jovially and slung the chains around his own shoulder, and went to pick the boy up over his other.

Cross leaned against the back wall with his arms folded, and inclined his head with a smile toward the back, when the little man turned to him. The dirty, scraggly worker smiled politely back.

The back of the place looked like any meat locker Cross had ever had the misfortune of being in—cold, crowded, full of carcasses in various degrees of disembowelment. He followed just out of chain-reach from his new "friend," checking here and there for weapons, escape routes, Timcampy. The golem and escape were nowhere to be found, but there were knives, brooms, hammers, and cleavers sheathed all along the windowless walls.

After weaving through a section of smaller animals hung from the ceiling, the butcher stopped in front of a medieval iron door and turned to Cross. "Here it is," he said, pointing.

Cross nodded. "All right. Open it."

They stared at each other.

"It's open," the butcher said.

Cross did not bother hiding a very long, intimidating look. "Women and children first."

The meat man gave him an equally and disapproving long glance, and then shrugged. He managed to open the mass of metal with one arm, even though he had to muscle it. The door swung inward, and he motioned Cross inside with him. "So where would you like him?" he asked, skittering in to the washroom. It was full of circular, divided showers a few yards back and two deep long-sink setups immediately to his right. Against a short wall opposite the sinks sat a footed tub, inner white enamel cracked and stained brown. The butcher clicked on a lightbulb via a string, and turned to the towering Irishman still in the doorway.

Cross's mouth twisted while he surveyed the room. The tub did, in fact, look washed out. And wet.

The sinks to the right were covered carefully in sheets, never pristine from their first day of life. The shower stalls on the far end seemed simple enough, but there were no good hanging points. The tub, however, had two nice metal bars nearby, one a rusting pipe coming out of the wall opposite the showerhead, and the other nearer to the low ceiling, on the wall against the tub's long side.

"There, if you would," Cross muttered, waving his cigarette disinterestedly.

And there, above the long-sinks, wedged between the ceiling and the sinks' mirror, sat Timcampy.

"I take it you favor women? Why would you want to voyeur this?" Cross asked as the little man shirked the chains to his feet, and then gingerly laid his cargo in the basin. The hand that slid around the boy's back was almost lovingly gentle, like a nurse's might be.

He smiled, amused. "It takes all kinds, really, doesn't it? Well. . . . I have this job for a reason. Women are the stock available, I'm sure you've noticed."

"It's what I like about this part of town," Cross agreed airily.

"Well, there you are. . . ." The man, on his haunches, turned back to Cross, one arm resting on the edge of the basin. His left hand, the one that had been around the boy's back, lingered on the lip of the tub, and seemed to be slowly edging downward. The right propped up the man's head as his eyes strayed into the basin.

The only other human Cross had ever seen look so elegant covered in blood was Maria. As sick as the images were, it also made it very, very hard not to punch something—namely, the man—for infringing on his dear woman's perfect memory.

"So what are you really going to do," the butcher asked.

Cross came out of his trance in time to see the man's hand dipping down farther into the basin, tenderly parting the collar of the kid's checkered jacket.

He glanced at Tim, and then pointed his cigarette.

The golem shot off the wall and straight into the butcher's head. The man pitched forward with a grunt; in the time it had taken, Cross dropped down and closed the gap between himself and his prey, his cigarette going out in the water on the tile. While the butcher pitched to the side, limbs resisting awkwardly, Cross caught him around the neck and pulled tight.

His throat fit pleasingly into Cross's elbow; he jerked the blood vessels closed with practiced ease, and readied for the assault that could come. There were only a few seconds in which he could retaliate, but there was possibility for getting his eyes gouged out, his arms attacked, among other things. Thanks to the golem's trauma, however, the man struggled little; his consciousness only lasted long enough for a sick, shocked gurgle and an uncoordinated pull on Cross's comparably massive arm. And then the hands fell downward, and the rest of the body went slack against his front.

Holding on for another second, Cross let the body spread onto the concrete. It was startlingly satisfying to watch.

With a disgusted grunt, Cross dusted the malignant grime, both real and imaginary, from his person. He gathered one set of shackles, closed one manacle around the butcher's wrist, then dragged him toward the showers. The cuts it made were only a few centimeters deep.

Cross slung the remaining cuff around the foot pedal, a metal pipe that went in an arc about three inches off the floor, between the dividing walls of the wedge-shaped shower's section. Cross snapped the other iron around the man's second wrist, hit his head once more against the floor for good measure, and then left him where he lie.

"You," he said to Tim, who was nervously circling the anterior of the room. "Go find booze."

The golem skittered out the door and Cross went to inspect the boy. Not only did he have a fluttering heartbeat, but he breathed. Shallow, though not particularly wetly—and that was what mattered.

Clasping one thin, bruised wrist in his between his hands, and then the second, raw with cuts, Cross secured the boy's arms and got the ten-pound chain looped through the two bars in the walls. The hands were suspended, but with slack they came to rest with his head slumped against the rim of the tub and his arms around that. Cross left it at that, and went the next order of business: the sheets.

As he approached the deep sink, he wondered at it. The cloth was filthy, and hastily covering. It wouldn't be good, whatever was under there, but in all honesty, it probably wouldn't surprise him. It was a rare night when reality didn't beat his imagination.

The sheet pulled back and Cross let it flutter to the ground. Even after it had settled, he remained staring what lay beneath.

He sighed, the sides of his mouth pulling down, and then he went to find the alcohol.

With Tim's help, he managed to find the stashes around the place, though his precious golem was piteously slow-moving. When he was still, his tail and wings drooped; even his body hugged the ground and seemed to deflate. He barely stayed afloat, and by the time Cross had gotten the cabinets open and the bottles in his hands, Timcampy had given up on flying entirely. He fluttered his wings a few times, meekly, and then stopped. Just . . . stopped, and waited for him to notice.

Cross tipped his head, and then prodded the golem's squishy exterior with the bottom of a vodka bottle. "What? Come on."

The creature did not move. On second poke, Tim latched on to his master's coat sleeve with his stubby golden arms.

Cross let out a breath and put the bottles down, petted between Tim's wings. "I know," he muttered. "I know." He squished Tim once, flush from the top, and then picked him up.

When flying, Tim's legs usually hung gently, limp even, but whenever Cross picked him up and immobilized his wings at the same time, Tim seemed to think it was time to swim. His legs were still going when Cross situated him on his shoulder, luckily wide enough to accommodate the basketball-sized thing.

"You're getting heavy," he muttered, petting Tim between the eyes. The golem pressed back into his hand, slightly. Cross picked up the rest of the bottles and supplies and went back, unable to tune out just how vapid Timcampy's tail was hanging down his back.

The washroom wasn't far; Cross watched the tracks his shoes left in the dust, listened to the comforting sound of his breath in the cold, of the rhythm of the chains and buckles around his legs. It did nothing to help the fact that he was skirting gaping pork bellies to an iron maw.

The butcher was still slumped on the ground. There was still an atrocity in the sink. And there was still a boy in—

A boy, who was awake. He lay still against the porcelain, as pale as the tub should have been. His feverish, working eye was preoccupied; Cross followed his stare across the tile, over to the sink.

One delicate arm, gashed and cut, hung over the side. It was still fresh, still had blood under the nails, and horribly pale. Not unlike the kid.

It had probably been cold, being laid naked in there. The cuts looked pre-mortem. He hadn't found the person's clothes.

Cross looked back over to the boy, who was shivering. He was still staring at the dismembered limb like it would eat him, . . . until Cross stepped toward him.

The eye that could move shot over to him; there was a momentary flash of the eyelids, quivering of the nose. Their eyes locked for a second, and then the boy immediately trembled and looked anywhere but Cross; his stare, inevitably, fell again on the white flesh across the room, radiating in the dim light. He was lucky that he wasn't able to see the rest of what was in there. Or rather, wasn't in there.

Cross placed the bottles next to the tub, then Tim, and then the remaining supplies. They clinked as he did so, dark and jarring sounds in the deep quiet of the place. The boy's fragile breath hitched in the interim.

Cross got down on his haunches, his arms resting against the tub. He considered the knives and needles at his feet, and the boy in front of him. He smiled.

"Don't be frightened."

The kid jerked backward, smacked his head on the porcelain and immediately groaned. His teeth were pink, Cross noticed, when he grimaced. His whole head was smeared with blood, rich and dark, not to mention dirt and grit in the wounds. It was impossible to tell where all the blood was coming from, but he was starting to breathe it in as well as cough it out.

"Dammit, moron." Cross grabbed a fist of the kid's tattered clothing and yanked it taught. The child yelped and squeezed shut the eye that he could; his head tipped back with an endangered squeak, but he made no move to fix it; probably didn't have the strength to.

In his other hand, Cross took the carving knife he had found, and drove it into the fabric. The clothes ripped apart easily, the tearing oddly satisfying. What he'd like to be doing to the Earl, no doubt. He was so far into his reverie that he almost gashed the kid's thigh apart when he hit the end of the shirt and kept going.

Having successfully avoided killing him just then, Cross re-gripped the collar and slightly more carefully started for the sleeves. In a few seconds, they were sawed through as well, flesh behind them still as intact as Cross had found it, and what remained of the clothing fell to reveal terribly thin bones. Cross surveyed what he had to work with, only to realize that the boy was crying.

He was trying to be silent, gritting his teeth to the point that they were in danger of cracking. Breathing quickly, quietly, like a good, scared little victim. Cross watched him for a minute, then sighed and went for a pail that sat next to the sink, unsuccessful in avoiding looking in said sink. The pail he found didn't have too much blood in it, so he stuffed it under the bath's tap and turned on the fixture.

The tinny sound was intrusive and grating, too much for the dying. Cross ran his hand through his hair to shut it out. Finding no solace no matter where he set his gaze, he grabbed a defunct wooden bucket from a corner pile that included a filthy mop, turned it upside down, and sat upon it in his previous spot by the tub. The kid stared at the filling bucket, using a debatable degree of consciousness. With how wide his eye was, he apparently had a very good imagination. Or the wrong kind of luck, if he was already afraid of inanimate objects and all forms of water.

Without flourish, Cross pulled out his lighter, a cigarette, and a bone needle that was in his cache of tools. He lit the roll, and went to work on the needle. They were used to sew up birds and things, in places like this, and a set of them had been in a drawer. There was plenty of thread as well, luckily. It was thick, though, the kind you used on dead things when you didn't care what the end result looked like. . . . While he was heating the needle, he eyed the size of the hole and the width of the string. Considering the size of the boy, he'd look like a badly-repaired ragdoll. He probably didn't need the scars of a bad patch job as a memento of Cross; of that much, the man was quite sure, especially for his own behalf in the matter. People hunted you down for shit like that; it wasn't like they could let go of it.

His focus shifted from the needle in his fingers to the huge eyes in his line of sight, the face pale with horror in the shadows beyond his hand.

Cross watched the eye stare at the needle; the boy was trembling, noticeably now, fingers trying to clutch the smooth sides of the tub to no avail. He seemed completely unaware of Cross's attention, though. Cross looked at his own hand, then moved it gradually to the side. The boy's attention followed.

"Yes, I'm going to use this on you," he warned, with no sympathy at all. "You're not allowed to die, and no, you're not getting away." For a moment, the kid's shivering stopped, though the goose bumps on him suddenly rose. Cross sighed. "It's either this, or I burn you closed. Try not to bleed all over the place, yeah?"

That must have been it for the kid, because he just stared at Cross after that, not a sound, not another emotion, crossing his face. As if he were a doll, set and lain to be played with in a bathtub streaked with his own blood.

Timcampy smacked the filling bucket with his tail; Cross found it nearly full. Turning off the tap, he heaved it free, and drew to his feet with some discomfort in his joints, the pail quietly at his side. It was oppressive now, the silence, for he knew what was to come. The water rippled, ominously dark—like the rest of the place. Cross straightened to his full height and found himself standing over a boy with glassy eyes, too reminiscent of bodies in the Science Division's magic lab.

He lifted his arm, judged his aim, and let the water fall.

Thick, crisp sheets hit the flesh square, sharp and unforgiving. The force was enough to take out his breath, but the ice and pain struck first; there were several yelps, cries, and gasps. Chains rattled and the legs kicked out. In one satisfying swoop, relatively large, clean patches of skin were brought to bare, and the source of several blood fountains were exposed. What was better, they were set apart from large tracts of bruising, and most of the dirt was washing away, replaced by the sludge in the water. It was just like his old magic-learning days, two buckets of blood, dash of soul. . . . Oh, where did the good times go?

With the remainder of the below-freezing water—by virtue of all the pollution in it, he figured —Cross splashed the kid in the face, and watched with not less than some amount of fascination the red and purple streak dissolve down his face. There was not a lot of good news there, though: Cross grimaced at the lack of clean space left in the water's wake. He was rather expecting the eye to fall out at the force of the water, but was highly relieved when it didn't.

Until he realized that meant he'd have to dig it out with a spoon.

It was probably for the better, though, as he had no idea how to stop the bleeding of either. He had even less idea how to stop the assured infections, but for now he had a lung to fix, and he supposed that took priority.

"God, the faster tonight gets over, the better." Cross put the water bucket down and stared at what he had to work with, his hands on his hips. "If you're going to die, do it right the hell now, do not give up on me five days from now or some shit like that. I will find you in Hell, drag you back, and kill you again. Don't think I don't know how."

Some nodding occurred, as Cross took that which would be his seat for the next many hours. With a sigh, he plucked the first bottle of vodka from the grungy floor, uncapped it with a knife, and wrenched the boy's head back. "Drink."

It helped that the bottle neck was halfway down his throat, but the kid resisted minimally, which was a surprise. Maybe he knew what this was for and what was coming, or knew better than to resist a much-stronger man pushing 100-proof down his throat. In any event, he sputtered at the burn and the taste, and when he came up for air, Cross eventually let him. With enough encouragement, Cross got about three-fourths of the contents into him in short order. He should have had more; with Innocence, he'd be lucky if that got him through half of what he had to do.

He took the rest of it for himself, and half of the next one, too.

He picked up his needle and doused the wounds with the rest.

He still had an arm hanging out of the sink. He still had a boy in a bathtub, half covered with stitches and red smears anywhere either one of their hands had touched. Cross stood over both of them, his hands on his hips, unhappy, for once, that he had such a good vantage point. The boy was panting, his eyebrows pushed tightly together and his head tipped back; his eyes were squeezed shut—the one that didn't look like meat and wasn't swollen shut, anyway—his hair plastered to his skin. His mismatched hands laid at awkward angles, gently-curled fingers not moving in the slightest. The shackles had been removed some time ago to get things done, to find better ways to stop the bleeding, to prevent further wounds, even though it had made holding him down harder.

Cross's forearm prickled. The boy had held him in that spot, while he had been screaming like Cross had come to kill him. Cross had wished he could, several times, just to end the poor thing's screaming. Pure cries of agony were something that even he was programed to end. Children's were always the worst, too, because they never knew why they were being hurt.

Cross sighed. The kid was currently sucking in air at a rate that meant nothing good. He wouldn't be able to keep it up much longer, either, each breath slightly more shallow than the last. Blood had coated his lips and chin; he looked like a body in the final stages of Consumption. Timcampy sat under the faucet, his tail around the boy's foot, the only point of safe contact that would leave him undamaged.

Cross scoffed and looked at the tender white hand and arm falling from the draping cloths. He looked at the child on his other side, struggling to breathe.

A tiny noise came from the darkness, from the ground at the showers.

Cross's green eye gave the direction a cold stare; his eyebrow twitched. Next to him, the boy moaned, high-pitched, nameless sound that couldn't make sensical syllables, much like the time one of his finders had shattered the bones in his leg. The sound trailed into a series of staccatoed breaths trying to form some kind of desperate plea, but the breath was beyond his reach.

"I know, I know," Cross muttered, walking decidedly towards the far end of the room, picking up the largest, and dustiest, piece of the abandoned checkered coat, and the butcher knife he'd used to saw it, along the way.

The main chained in waiting scrambled back at his approach; Cross stood a few feet away once he was cornered, giving him a baleful look. He knew exactly what was going to happen, and Cross was inclined to agree.

"You liked that?" Cross asked, cold, hollow as a snake. He tipped his chin and motioned back at the kid, ever so slightly.

The scrawny man shook his head, however much of it was still intact. "N-no. . . ."

"I know you did." His voice rose, slightly. Just enough to start connecting his emotions into rage—something he did not want. Something he did not need.

He threw the jacket towards the man. It fluttered to the floor and landed in a dead heap; even the once-colorful fabric had lost the life in it. "Take it, if you want it."

The man shook his head and pushed backwards. He groaned, however, from the wound on his head, and leaned into the shower's wall. There, he huddled.

Cross waited. His fingers rubbed together at his side.

"What did you think?"

The butcher looked between the fallen cloth and the man above him, then squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the swelling part of his face into the shower's wall. He glanced back at Cross a couple of times, and then said, eyeing the bathtub, "You don't look quite done."

Cross just stared for a while. The boy's sobs floated into the early morning every few seconds, at this distance almost like a hum of bugs in the summer. Eventually, the man's jaw tightened and he shut his green eye for a few long seconds.

"You know what I should do to you?" Cross asked, tight. The blade in his left hand turned, slightly.

The fevered eyes flickered up and down between the weapon and the redhead. The butcher pushed himself up a little straighter, a little more tight of a ball.

Then, he licked his lips.

"Depends on what you want to do."

In frustration, Cross swung his arm and let the blade fly. With a yelp that did absolutely nothing to alleviate Cross's feelings, the butcher knocked backwards, bending toward one shoulder. He bent over into the floor, shuddering hisses continuing. Shaking, he brought one hand to press to the handle embedded in his flesh.

The checkered bit of jacket was within reach. He looked toward it several times, then stretched out his arm.

Cross did not move. He wanted to, wanted to maim, to injure, to burn and to destroy, but also to avoid looking. Memories told him to move; but he forced himself still, the knot in his stomach down, and so he watched, without sound, or without surprise.

The cloth was snatched and pressed it into the wound. But not before the butcher had taken it to his nose and inhaled the scent, first.

He hunched, hissing, for a few seconds. His movements slowed, though, until the sound of breath seemed more like one of a sound of pleasure. The greasy man took in a long, slow breath, and held it.

A grunt, followed by a deep gasp. The man's head tipped back, a spreading black shadow overtaking his neck. The blood ceased dripping onto the floor, replaced instead by writhing and terrible gasping. Cross's prey smacked into the shower's wall, his eyes staring up in confusion, terror, and then . . . a twisted, twisted happiness.

The rest of the virus spread into his remaining extremities, and Cross was left with a face frozen upward, smiling.

It took a while, but the point near the knife crumbled first. Tumbling to the earth, the blade, darkly shining, cleft the arm with it and the whole appendage crumbled. It hit the ground and spread out in a cloud of ash for several feet. It settled to the sound of falling dust.

Around the hum of the pipes, a whisper of degradation crackled, very faintly, something like the pouring of sand or the waving of strips of paper in the wind. The crackling rose in pitch until the remaining fingers gave way.

The cascade of disintegration from whole solid to sand flowed smoothly up the tendons, to the elbow, into the shoulder, revealing the bones and ligaments along the way. At the shoulder, the inside of the torso began to give way with the sound of charcoal, and as a weeping hole hollowed out the chest cavity, the head cleaved clean off the neck and smashed into powder on the floor to the sound of breaking glass.

The legs went quietly into a pile of ash, flesh on top falling and transforming whatever was below along the way in a wave. It took only moments for the shape of the legs to fall apart into an amorphous lump of stable, dirty ash.

The apron was buried in the pile; only the strings stuck out. That too, though, soon caught the virus as it began to melt. As organic fibers, the wool contacted the liquid virus and was infected as well. The remnants of the jacket, too, were going, thread by thread, checker by checker, at the bottom of the pile. Just a corner of it was visible, but it was enough to bare witness to it melt into nothing.

Soon, all Cross was left staring at were stars on grey tile. It was silent, it was quiet, and it was cathartic, for a moment.

Am I really glad that I've seen the truth about this world?

How much hatred must the Earl have to enjoy this on a nightly basis?

Behind him, breath hitched. A high-pitched stab of pain.

The smallest of the stars began fading, one point slowly receding: grey, white, and then nothing. It would take hours for them to fully disappear, grain by grain, and hopefully they'd all be long gone by then.

But they were going. That was what mattered.

Cross sighed and returned to the front of the room. Along the way, he picked up another piece of infected cloth and placed it over the thin white hand in the sink.

In a few moments, to a sound of softly crumbling existence, the arm was gone, along with everything that was left, and the scrap of discolored cotton floated to the ground.

He'd tell the finders about it eventually. Get them to find the family if the police files didn't have it, if the women on the street didn't know. Someone would know; someone would care. Someone wouldn't have to see what this person had become.

He gave the sink one last, long look, the light moving out of his eye.

"Ashes to ashes," he muttered, and made a little cross in the air.

Cross turned back to the fore-chamber of the room and bent down next to the boy. He pulled his coat from the back of the door and wrapped his bundle in its voluminous folds. Against his chest, the body continued to take jagged breaths until, too jostled, he coughed for several seconds. Cross expected him to gasp for breath afterwards, but he lay, limp, in the contours of his arms, his good eye clouded and wavering. Eventually, he sucked in another lungful, but it was weak, and the subsequent tiny gasps were shallower than before.

The form, only about 70 pounds or so, shook against him, its mouth hung open, its breath so weak it was growing quiet. Cross wrapped one hand around the boy's head, wet brown hair slicked under his fingertips. Cross pressed him into his heart and with Timcampy trailing after, left the room, leaving its dust, blood, empty liquor bottles, and scraps of checkered cloth behind.

A/N:

Anyone else think this guy makes Barry the Chopper look normal? (Ha ha.)

Many thanks to my lovely Beta, Hohenheim-of-light-51, who is matched so well to me and whom is always ready to love and praise my work that gets me motivation to get it to you all, lovely readers. She also went over three versions of this. Eek! I don't want to see her dreams! (Or maybe I do...)

An extra dedication goes out to the reader that asked me to continue on the one-year anniversary of the last update, for without whom I wouldn't have thought of a way to finish this chapter. And a third, a friend, H, to whom talking about this story really made me sit down and see, again, just how worthwhile I think it is.

Well, enough with the award-ceremony speak. Time for omake theater (aka Dgray Hax: )

Cross: "Am I really glad that I've seen the truth about this world?"

Equals: "Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue pill?"

Feel free to review and let off the emotional overflow from the horror or whatever excitement at me. I know a lot of people worry about leaving too long of reviews and rambling, but I like it when you guys ramble at me. :) I'd rather have a long review than a short one. How else am I supposed to know how you feel? : )

Gani