Disclaimers: I don't own Chrono Cross. I can dream can't I?

"Wha... wher... Serge?" her voice echoed through the curves of the deified, pagan dragons whose chiseled limbs and tails were lynched with mossy rope, statues decadent from chipping and cracking and armed with crumbling claws from years of neglect. They circled her, their eyes glowing, with a surreal hum and scales of light emanating from those stoic, reptilian sculptures, staring her down. Condemning her with subliminal authority and the inheritance of their primal ancestry. They espied her. Hated her. Idols with mercy and empathy as broken as their ruined stone, yet spite still endured the weathering of time and elements-- Scratched and shaven, but still erect. Still sturdy.

The rush of scalding blood throughout her body and the sudden jostling of her muscles as she tried to rise forced Kid back onto the ground, moaning and writhing stiffly while trying to dissipate the haze that filmed her eyes in a premonitory veil of red and gray. Deep and dark. Reminiscent of a forgotten consequence or feeling, though she wasn't certain. A damp, cool cloth skimmed across her abdomen, staggering her breath as a torrent of pain doused her body and forced a growl from her throat.

"Quiet, Kid," Serge's voice commanded her as he skillfully cleansed her injury, ringing out the cloth and placing the dripping, crimson-tinted rag on her forehead, not even bothering to look at her. "You need to lie still."

Heady from blood loss and the peculiar emptiness in her gut she suffered, a vengeful pit of, she somehow suspected, immediate, memorial absence, Kid narrowed her eyes, her pupils dilating and losing focus for a moment when she observed her companion's face. She questioned him hoarsely, "I… How could ya, Serge? Why'd ya have ta..."

"You're delirious from the fever. Don't start making accusations you can't substantiate or deluded yourself into believing." He was so cold, caustic with his scolding, spouting words she never imagined he could utter without sounding ridiculous with his sky-blue eyes that sparkled like drizzling storm clouds. With that awkward smile. And yet-- It seemed right. Somehow, the words concurred with his remoteness and solemn poise. With those new eyes as tempestuous as a summer squall and even more fierce. Threatening.

"After everything we've been through-- After I saved ya from Karsh an' 'is bloaks, an' ya saved me from the poison... I don't understand, Serge." She reached a shaky hand to his cheek. "I just don't get it." Her cerulean eyes glinted, stubborn with doubt and her posture recoiled and defensive. Betrayal was something she never could understand, much less tolerate.

"Kid," he whispered harshly as his fingers clutched at her baled, straw-colored bangs, causing her to pull back and grunt in defiance. "I am obliged to prostrate before Fate. It is by Her hand that I was brought to you and your world. She controls what Lynx has done to you." Her neck was taught, craned; her breath became ragged and her heart raced with the venom and asinine subtlety he injected into every syllable, with which he laced his implications. Her upper lip tasted of acrid, petrified sweat.

"But ya stabbed me!" A tormenting fire lit in her belly and incinerated her moist breath into feeble, smoked ashes, inducing her to wheeze and choke on that sudden dryness and burning pain. With a contorted face, she locked eyes with him and spat, "You left me alone like everyone else has, you Bastard!" She bit her bottom lip, groaning from the intensity of the needle-like stabs in her stomach, with tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, wetting her lashes.

"My dear," the stoic boy replied comfortingly, deceptively sympathetic-- His eyes glittering madly in the radiance of the serpentine idols and a purr resonating from his breast. "How can you accuse me of slaying my own soul!"

He wracked her lips, grating his fangs across her sensitive flesh and lapping the blood from those wounds passionately; intoxicated, sultry, and seduced by the pungency of runny, morbid water, sweat, blood, and skin. Growling, screeching. Digging into her with his nails, scraping her arms and neck and shoulders as though a predatory feline--just raking her body with its razor, ravenous claws so as to release more aphrodisiac crimson and moans. He licked at the sides of her mouth, causing her to regurgitate blood and innards and spit into his orifice, like savage beasts that must relieve their starving families.

Tearing his mouth away, dripping with red saliva, he growled harshly, "You-- You have always called us 'mates!'" She coughed on her own blood, spattering his face with scarlet speckles than ran down his chin and cheeks, ensnaring his eyes and lips in a tenuous, gory spider's web. "It's now time to consummate that vow."

She tried to scream, attempted to resist-- But he pinned her down. Ripped off her clothes. Ravaged her. Possessed her.

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"Serge-- Serge? Are you okay? Wake up Serge!" Norris shook him, gently at first, then with increasing desperation as the island boy grimaced and writhed in unconsciousness. The soldier's brow furrowed when Serge began to pant and bite his lips, seeming to suppress a carnal pleasure. Sweat slicked his body; fists clutched the grass around him. But in those moans resounded an echo of guilt, a reverberation of derision, perhaps. Shame for culpability he didn't realize he had. Serge?

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"Perhaps we can come together again, in a whore's vengeance." Lynx took her then… the Sergian Lynx took her.