#amoirsetpacis 39

[punisheye]

The old man in the chair laughs and it sounds like a death rattle. He sits there, pale and bloody and rotting, a cruel reminder to Vash just what he did. Heat is cruel to a dead body. Without a grave he had been left to the elements, to the mercy of the twin suns and the sand and the worms and the carrion birds.

"You left me to rot," Chapel rasps. "What a cruel angel. We would have worshiped you."

One mangled hand lifts, pointing a weathered finger Vash's way. Those dead eyes still have some emotion in them. Despair, perhaps. Betrayal. Grief.

"I could never forgive my student," he laments. "Despite everything I did for him, he still put me here. And then you... what did you do to him?"

He sounds despairing, agonized. Those dead eyes now look wet and red-rimmed, like he's on the verge of tears. A purple tongue swipes over cracked lips.

"Perhaps... were it not for your meddling... undoing all that he was taught... he would have survived. Isn't that a sad thought? You made him soft and he died for it."

The ghoul gives a rattling laugh again. And he moves, jerky and unnatural, limbs torn and bones splintered from bullets. He looks like he's about to get up from the wheelchair, and—

Someone breaks through the mist, coming up right behind the undead in long, fluid strides.

The man in black is no phantom. He's not the small, shaking, terrified child Vash had just seen. He's tall, strong, stone-faced, a dark shadow in the mist, and he's nuzzling his gun right into Chapel's filthy hair. It stops the old man's movements entirely.

He doesn't pull the trigger. His eyes flit up to Vash and his lips pull into a frown.

★ --;; The mist is just as thick as it had been before; feeling heavy in his nose and throat as Vash breathes through his long, quick strides, as though it held so much more weight hidden within itself, oppressive in every way it can force itself to be. Still, even through its impossible curtain, Vash is able to pick out the figures in the fog from at least several feet away. Sensitive ears pick them up first as their voices become clearer before their outlines gain clarity.

Soo enough Vash is entirely upon them-- in time for the gun to be brandishes, for the child's horrified eyes to widen as he shakes, ( "Stop--!" ) as blood paints the boy's front and face as he's forced to stand there and watch, face pale. The body jolts with each new wound before going completely still, no more force to move it.

Fury that hasn't been felt so acutely in years flares beneath his veins in an instant, bright and hot. Vash lurches forward again to reach, to do something, just as the mist thickens and undulates with its whims; one, two large steps forward until he's face to face with the heap of a man as he'd last seen him.

Or at least, almost. The man that had been spattered across what was left of the orphanage floor had been left in such a state by Razlo's final bout of fury that it was a wonder he could even be recognized, torn apart by so many rounds of bullets ripping him apart.

Vash had seen him, then. Hadn't payed attention to the dark lump against stark sand until well after the fact; until everything had felt like a dull ringing in his ears, until he'd been left hollowed out and empty, until he'd gone to fetch the shovel.

Only one grave had been dug that day, and it hadn't been for him.

The old man is barely being held together, now. Even as his body jerks unnaturally upwards he still doesn't sit straight, held up only by the careful geometry of his spine and the way the mist has placed him in the chair. By all accounts, his heart should not be beating. He's riddled with holes, see through in places; its a wonder there's anything left to hold him up at all. That blood doesn't continue to poor freely from so many open and festering wounds, left out in the heat of the suns.

From feet away, he reeks of death.

The anger doesn't simmer.

"You," he says, voice terrifyingly even, "should go back to how you were. Stay that way."

[punisheye]

"You should be grateful."

That voice is low, cold. It speaks slowly, as if talking to a particularly incompetent child. And in the speaker's opinion, that's exactly what he's doing.

"Plucked from that slum of an orphanage and given purpose, and yet you continue to spurn it."

As Vash breaks through the mist, he'll see them: there is a young boy there before the towering figure in white. That boy can be no more than fourteen, but looks particularly small for his age. He's shivering, eyes wide, skin clammy. There is a gun in his shaking hands. Even with a face so round and soft with youth, his identity is unmistakable.

The man looming over him is unmistakable himself. Younger than Vash would remember, but not by much. There are less lines on his face, but his hair is already white. Instead of a beard there's a thin layer of stubble.

Neither of them seem to be aware of their audience.

The mist swirls then. A heap appears between the two. Looking closer, one would see that it's a body. No, not just a body. Whoever it is is still alive, just barely.

The boy tries to speak: "I'm so—"

"Enough. You are not sorry. If you were, you would do as you are told. But it seems that I, once more, have to do it for you."

And then the man brandishes a gun and points it right at the heap on the ground. One shot, two, three, four, more—overkill. His stone-faced expression and the way each shot illuminates him is almost hauntingly similar to the sight of a man in black shooting a samurai dead.

Blood splatters across the boy's face. He lets out a weak little whimper.

"This man was a traitor. He sought to destroy the Eye of Michael from the inside. And where would that leave your home? Without food, without money; no way to keep that hovel afloat. If you cannot kill anyone, how can you expect to keep your family safe?

"Do as I say, Nicholas, and all will be well."

The mist thickens around the three, obscuring them from sight. What's left is silence that seems to last forever.

And then it thins, and there is still a man there. Sitting, now, in a wheelchair. Older, clothes dark, torn from bullets. Blood is caked onto his face, in his hair. His skin is pale as death. He looks like he could be a corpse sat upright.

Until his head jerks up, eyes staring straight towards where Vash stands. The voice that comes from the bloody form of Chapel's throat is rough, creaking:

"Ah... it's you."

★ --;; This isn't.... it's not new, but that doesn't stop the rapid descent of mist and fog from striking a chill through the entirety of Vash's body. If anything, after the few moments it takes for the recognition to settle in, that same recognition is exactly what makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The sudden flood of it, roiling and descending as though in a dream, is familiar in a way he so much wish it wasn't.

"Just once," Vash huffs quietly to himself, as if trying to distract himself from the buzzing of his nerves beneath his skin, "Just once, could I catch a break?"

So much pain, blinding light. A memory like his is both a blessing and a curse, so many things so crystal clear-- it had only been a short time ago, at least sin comparison to the rest of his life, but the memory of the last time this mist had cut through bone and sense still sits so vividly behind his eyelids.

He doesn't know where anyone else is. Doesn't know what they might see. What might see them.

Moving. He's got to move. If he keeps standing here as he is, he won't find anyone. He's good at moving, he reminds himself. Good at channeling movement into his feet, quickly, instead of the spiraling of so many thoughts.

But as he does, it doesn't take long for voices to be heard. Or-- a voice, rather. Stern and harsh and biting. The sound of a bullet ricocheting off the pavement.

Vash's feet choose the direction to carry him in, without second thought.

@punisheye