A/N: So... my laptop died... then my desktop died... and through it all I lost a soul-crushing amount of data... However! I've finally revived the laptop long enough to retrieve most of the data! So cheers for the power of persistance. (Seriously, the damned laptop would shut itself off before I could get past the logon screen... . ) There might be a few subtle changes in my writing style from then and now, but that's mostly because I never stopped writing.

Pitiful excuse of an excuse aside, it's time to get back to the show!

Aya awoke with a sudden jump, and set his hand around his neck in fear. His heart was racing, and with every quickened pulse he could feel the warmth of blood gushing from an open wound. "Sora..!" he whispered lowly under his haggard breath as the ending of his nightmare replayed itself: Sora's body, half-eaten and mutilated, rising from the dead and tearing a chunk from Aya's neck. "I'm sorry..." Aya choked out as tears started to fall down his cheeks, "I never should have left your side... Sora..."

"Vulture!?" Senji called out as he came bursting through the bathroom door with a first-aid kit in hand. He was spattered in blood, coated in sweat, rigid with worry, and completely naked.

A faint blush spread across Aya's cheeks and he quickly turned away, hiding his face with one hand while the other remained clasped over the wound. "... er... hello again, Senji..."

Immediately Senji realized the change, and with a blush far darker than Aya's he shifted the first aid box to not-so-completely cover his exposed nudity. "S-sorry, Aya! Vulture and I ... uh... I... I'll go put some clothes on..." Senji stammered briefly before retreating to the bathroom once more, only to remember that his only article of clothing had been left somewhere in the bedroom. "Shit..!" he muttered under his breath before settling on a towel instead, and only after he had securely wrapped it around his waist did he leave in time to realize a second problem.

Aya jumped again as Senji barged through the door, and he quickly yanked down a pillow from the bed to shield his own nakedness... even if Senji had seen it already thanks to Vulture. "It's okay..." Aya said nervously, clearly lieing but trying in vain to hide the fact.

Senji nodded and carefully approached, taking a seat on the floor close enough to Aya to tend to the wound without things being too awkward. "So... what happened?"

"I was going to ask you the same question..." Aya replied quietly, and lowered his hand from the gashes in his neck. He tensed for a moment as Senji first touched him, but calmed himself as the other man gave him a worried apologetic look. With an audible breath Aya steadied his resolve, and nodded for Senji to try again.

It didn't matter. The moment Senji made physical contact Aya flinched once again, but this time Senji chose to ignore it. His one and only focus was tending to Aya's wounds, both the scratches on his neck and the gashes on his hand, and though Aya remained skittish through the whole process Senji stayed firm. Within a few minutes everything was cleaned and bandaged, leaving an uneasy tension between the two. "... I can leave if I'm making you feel uncomfortable, Aya..." Senji spoke at last, breaking the silence.

"No..!" Aya responded immediately, his lack of hesistation making it clear that above all else, he didn't want to be left alone. The pale blush returned as he averted his eyes, "But I... Can you close your eyes? Just for a second..." As soon as Senji followed the request Aya made his move, grabbing his previously discarded clothing and bolting into the bathroom to change into them.

Senji opened his eyes again as soon as he heard the door slam shut, likely from the momentum Aya built up in his frantic hurry. "Well... at least he's just as flusterred as I am..." he sighed to himself in relief, and took full advantage of the chance to put his shorts back on. "What the fuck am I even doing here..? How could I let Vulture do... th-that to me!?" Senji asked himself with a heavy blush, and without thinking he plopped back onto the bed, eyes staring blankly at the cieling, "At least he's alright..." With another heavy sigh Senji's eyes fell closed, and finally he started to calm down. First Vulture tries to strangle himself, then he bleeds all over the damned place, and then he completely blacks out and Aya wakes up in a panick; whatever Firefinch did to them, he was definitely not the type of Deadman Senji wanted to face off against.

"... Senji?" Aya said quietly from behind the bathroom door, "Is it okay for me to come out now..?"

Senji sat up with a gentle laugh, even further relieved that he was dealing with shy, polite Aya rather than the cocky and manipulative Vulture. "It's fine. I'm... not naked," he answered, unsure of whether or not his work-out shorts would count as being propperly clothed.

Slowly Aya opened the door, but he didn't dare walk through until he was certain. With a relieved breath he walked back into the bedroom, but even the sight of a topless Senji was a bit more than he could handle; he turned his bright blue-green eyes to the floor instead, eyeing the stains of blood with a heavy feeling of unease, "Is this... all mine?"

"No," Senji answered, then ran an apprehensive hand through his spiked hair, "At least, I don't think so. Vulture mentioned Firefinch whenever it happened; some of the blood might be his."

"I see..." Aya replied, but his voice was hollow and distant. His eyes were fixated on the blood, unfocused and unblinking as his supressed memories bubbled to the surface once more. The white tiles transformed in his blurring vision, turning into dark stone, and all source of light faded to darkness... All that remained, the only thing Aya could see, was the trail of blood. Tears pooled in his eyes once again, and even though he managed to close them the image still lingered in his mind, unrelenting. The blood, so much blood, and the horrified, agonized screams crying out in the distance, echoing, distorted, fading...

"Aya!"

Aya jumped as his name was called, and opened his eyes to see a very worried Senji right in front of him. "S-" Aya's words were cut off before he could even get them out, interrupted by his own sudden coughing; it was as if he had forgotten to breathe, and as a result he was choking.

Senji felt a rush of relief as Aya finally came back to reality, and before anything else could happen he took Aya by the hand and gently led him to the love-seat... not that the name had anything to do with his intentions. As quick as he could Senji dismissed the pesky thought of sitting in a love-seat with the same body that had thoroughly ravaged his own just hours ago, and instead he set his attention on Aya. "You're still crying..." Senji remarked nervously, completely lost about what he should do.

Aya immediately turned away from the other man and tried to wipe away the tears, but despite his efforts they just kept coming. "... I'm sorry..." he whispered, embarrassed, "I'll try to stop..."

"No!" Senji replied, then regretted the word immediately after and shook his head in shame, "I-I mean... I don't want you to cry... But it's fine if you need to! Really! I just..." With a frustrated growl Senji roughly combed a hand through his hair, struggling to find the right thing to say. Dealing with Vulture was often a struggle - mostly because the madman was so exceptionally skilled at getting under his skin - but a broken Aya..? Senji was never good at facing someone's tears, though in his experience it was usually a woman crying in a fit of hysteria after a tragic accident. This was... different. Slowly Senji exhaled, then he raised his gaze to Aya and spoke once more, "I'm not... I'm not good with this kind of thing, but... if something's bothering you, I just want to know what it is. I don't care if you cry. I-I mean I care, which is why I want to know what's wrong, but... What I'm trying to say is that you don't have to apologize for it."

"... you really want to know..?" Aya inquired, his voice cold and empty as he reigned in the pain.

"Well... yeah," Senji answered, plainly, but sincerely.

At first Aya only glanced at Senji from over his shoulder, guaging his response and considering the request thoughtfully before fully turning back to him. "During the Red Hole Incident I was..." Aya inhaled sharply as the sting of his bitter life struck him, but with a heavy sigh he chose to press on, "I was enslaved; I had been since I was a child. My parents sold me off to repay a debt to a powerful crime organization... At first I was-" Aya silenced suddenly as a dark chill came over him, and fell back against the loveseat with his knees held to his chest. "I'm sorry... I've never spoken of this to anyone other than... Sora," Aya said shyly, and took another breath to steady his fears. "Eventually I... got too old... so they threw me to one of their mines."

"Too old?" Senji asked him, clearly confused.

Aya shrank back further and hid his face from view, struggling with the shame. "Too old to keep the clients satisfied... They wanted a child, and I was close to adolescence..."

Senji's pale grey eyes went wide as he caught on, and for a moment he was renderred speechless. To think that Aya, so shy, so gentle, had gone through something so horrible... "No wonder he has to rely on Vulture," Senji thought to himself, his fists clenching at the thought of some dirty old man abusing a smaller version of Aya; it left a sick, bitter feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Sora helped me get past a lot of it," Aya continued quietly, still hiding, "We watched out for each other... ensuring that we both reached our quotas, sharing our meals, steering clear of trouble... He made life bearable again, and I... loved him. He eventually shared my feelings, and we were actually happy until-" Aya choked on his words as the memory of Sora's death resurfaced once again, and for a while he silenced with his teeth baring down together.

"Aya..." Senji called out to him gently and weighed the consequences of physical contact. After thinking it over he decided to give it a try, and set a hesitant hand on Aya's shoulder; he tensed, at first, then gradually accepted it. "... you don't have to push yourself to continue if you don't want to, Aya," Senji said in a near-whisper, "I'll understand."

Aya responded by leaning against him, but still he refused to lower his limbs. "I'll be fine... I want you to know," he replied quietly, and finally found the strength to continue. "The Red Hole caused several cave-ins throughout the mine, and many of us were trapped inside... The mine was known for its gas leaks, but still someone decided to light a match; the gasses ignited, and several people died in the explosion... I was knocked out by the blast for an undetermined length of time, but aside from that I was uninjured. Sora was there when I woke up and to my relief he was fine, but the rations were quickly dwindling... The blast destroyed most of our supplies, and we knew that no one was coming to save us; we were just slaves, after all. We took turns working to break our way to freedom, but without enough food to keep our strength it was a hopeless venture..."

Aya paused with a low, solemn sigh, and finally unravelled his limbs to sit normally in the loveseat. "I made a mistake," he admitted reflectively, as if he was confessing to a dark secret, "I was already the smallest man of the survivors, and the lack of food wasn't helping... I was just slim enough to get past the cave-in caused by the explosion, so I volunteered to venture through the mine in search of supplies. I couldn't risk using a fire for light, so I had to feel my way through the darkness... and through the bodies. It felt like it took days, but eventually I was drawn in by a distant red light, thinking it was caused by the emergency glowsticks... I did find the glowsticks nearby, actually, but the red light vanished when I reached out for it; that was probably how I was infected with my Branch of Sin... I made my way back as quick as I could, dragging the supplies along with me, but I was too late."

Aya's deep voice quiverred at the end of his sentence, and his supressed tears started to bleed through as he pressed on. "I could hear Sora's voice from far away, echoing through the tunnels... He was begging for his life, crying out in pain, choking on his own blood... and then... there was only silence. I ran as fast as I could but it was already over... The other survivors had killed him. They killed him, and then they ate him..." Aya said darkly as his tears finally breached and started to fall, streaming down his cheeks and landing on his slender, trembling body, "Some of them were too impatient to even cook him; they ate him raw, biting into his corpse like a pack of wild animals..! I... I just stood there... I didn't even try to stop them! I let them devour my beloved without so much as a word..! I-!" Aya cut himself off with a pained sob, and covered his eyes with his hand to hide his shame. "I never should have left..."

Gently Senji wrapped his arms around Aya's shuddering shoulders, careful not to trigger another startled jump, and pulled him into a tentative embrace. "It wasn't your fault, Aya; you shouldn't blame yourself..." Senji whispered quietly, and rested his chin against Aya's head as he nestled closer, burrying his face into Senji's chest.

"But I-"

"But nothing," Senji interrupted immediately and pulled back. Firmly he set his hand beneath Aya's chin, and lifted his gaze to give him a stern and commanding look. "It wasn't your fault," Senji repeated. At first it seemed like Aya was going to protest once again, but Senji's resulting frown quickly vanquished the thought; slowly Aya nodded, his teary eyes locked on Senji's, accepting his judgement. Senji gave him a quick smile and brought Aya back into his protective hold, allowing him to expend the last of his tears in a warm embrace.

Finally, everything was starting to make sense. Why they so strongly abhorred eating, why Aya always seemed so hesitant and lonely, and why Vulture was so intent on keeping Aya safe from enduring any more traumas. Senji wrapped his arms tighter around Aya as the full weight of his burdens sunk in, from being abandonned by his family and thrown into sexual slavery as a child, to seeing his first love murdered and his body devoured by starving cannibals, and finally landing in the wretched hell known as Deadman Wonderland... And yet, always when he had spent time with Aya he was smiling, laughing, and with his gentle nature Aya always put his concern for Senji first, never complaining, never asking for anything, and never revealing the true extent of his pain.

Without truly even thinking Senji placed his hand on Aya's cheek, and lifted his gaze to place a tender kiss on his lips.

A/N: ._. I had forgotten just how evil I was to poor Aya... No regrets though! *dawns a cheerleader outfit and waves pom-poms in the air* GOOOOOO SENJI!