Reverse, Reverse

Rating: T

Summery: Omake sequel to "Mr Grey Knight" and "The Price" The resolution. Short, depressing, and finite.

Characters: Liam

Comments: I chopped this off the end of 'The Price' because that ended okay where I left it and I only really wrote this out of an insane want for knowing what the hell Liam would do next. Since it's so horribly depressing I didn't want it sitting around on my computer, all that angst gone unfulfilled, I decided I'd stick it on as a little omake type thing. Only without the laughs and fun an omake usually has.

Three days later the news that Liam Lunettes was both alive and the details of why he had been missing were common knowledge among Pandora. Not used to actually distributing information rather than concealing it the story was mangled with each retelling, but the fact that everyone knew about the hero Xerxes Break and his quest to find his lost friend helped keep the core of the story comprehensible.

The highest award for bravery in Pandora was awarded to Liam Lunettes, for his previously unknown actions in the Baskerville war. On the night of the ceremony he was strangely late. When an agent was sent to his rooms to see what had delayed him they found that the man was not there.

A top to bottom search of the Pandora headquarters turned up no clues as to what had happened. Liam Lunettes had once again vanished.

Three weeks later a Pandora agent named Adrian observed a thin, tall man with glasses leaning against an alley wall, coughing blood into his hand. When he walked to the man to offer aid he noticed that under his coat the man was wearing a much worn Pandora uniform.

This led Adrian to rush to support what he assumed was a fellow comrade who seemed none too steady on his feet. The man reacted violently, pushing his hands away and staggering back. At this point Adrian demanded that the man identify himself as he realized did not recognize him.

While starting to reply the man winced, grabbed the fabric over the left side his chest, and fell to his knees, apparently in great pain. Adrian knelt too but did not try to render aid as he feared this would distress the man further.

He reports that during the few minutes he knelt there he heard the man muttering, what he caught he described as: "Less than eighty years back… no killing… no killing!… I just have to wait… have to change… have to fix… I just have to wait… She'll help… I just… Eighty years… have to help…"

When he cautiously inquired again of the man's identity the man apparently came out of his trace long enough to stare straight at him and state that his name was, "Mr Gray Knight."

Adrian claims that this was the most coherent he had seen the man since the conversation began. He cautiously asked the man what the 'eighty years' he kept repeating was about.

The man replied, "Calculations, very important."

He asked, "Important for what?" as while questioning the man didn't seem prone to descending into incoherent muttering.

"Because," the man said, "Everyone goes forward, but no one's ever tried to go back. And I have to go back, it's the only way to fix this, 'price' be damned. All I have to do is wait for the Abyss to drag me back in."

It was at this point that Adrian noticed that where the man clutching on his shirt was right where an illegal contractor's seal would be. He reports that he inadvertently made some sort of noise, he was not sure what, to draw the man's attention to where he was looking and the expression on his face.

The man glared at him and said, "You should leave, before you get hurt, contractor."

Adrian states that before he could reply a chain appeared behind the man, one that he recognized as the Mad Hatter. While the chain made no move to attack its malevolence and the way its angry single eye seemed to promise ill will to him made Adrian decide it was best he retreat.

When, at an appropriate distance back, Adrian looked over his shoulder for the man he reports that there was no one on the street.

This was believed to be the last known sighting of Liam Lunettes.

Of course, that was before everything changed. Again.

End