Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Endless emptiness has filled Caim from birth and he has tried, time and time again, to fill the bottomless vase that he had been born with. To get the seeds sown within bloodsoaked earth to bloom into beautiful flowers that are worth a damn. It is hard to withhold a liquid that either overflows or shatters his vase. He is either too much or too little, now. It is pitiable because he had been successful, for a small blip in time. Even though that time had been short and since then he has discovered himself to be a glutton for a life that he can no longer lead. He had been a silly child only recognizing what is lost once it was dead. 

Caim mourns for his past and in this flooded pool of ruinous envy he lies. The King Gaap had been full of eternal folly and the Gods just laughed at him and spit upon the memory remaining of him. Caim misses him viciously even if he had been little more than a fool in the end. Her embrace feels similar to his when Caim had been young, he doesn’t know if it is a trick from his own decaying mind and body, but he can feel her, here. It feels warm and welcoming though Caim can feel her wrapped around him far too tightly. Completely encasing his entire body like the sheep intestine covering of the breakfast sausage that had been favored for festivities. Always to be found on the breakfast table of Caerleon’s royalty during celebrations and holidays. 

He feels sickeningly and intimately close to her and yet he finds that he still does not know what to call her. Should he call her a Goddess, Deity or Reality? Is there a title that she would prefer or a name? The anger biting at his lips and clawing at his tongue is telling him that this doesn’t matter. Though the questions still nag at the back of his mind; should he reference her with a name that is more entwined with her area of existence as this places World or Presence or Existence? Or perhaps he should reference her through a grander title; The One Above All or The One Below None. He almost feels like he has known her since birth and almost instinctively thinks that those titles, that are so grotesquely gaudy, are fitting for her weakness to flattery and all-encompassing ego. Flamboyant monikers for Her Grace, and titles that he’d rather choke on then let roll naturally off of his tongue. Caim gets the feeling that she is all powerful in comparison to everyone and everything in this world, except for maybe Angelus and Caim with the way that they have poisoned her. Introduced to her as viruses in her blood, there to make her bed-bound with magic and to infiltrate to upheave her delicate order.  

They have given her an incurable disease through the magic- the maso that they carried along with them from their reality and into her chest. Maso is foreign and parasitic to this world. It is a type of power that the fragile bodies and minds of these humans, who, cannot carry, conjure or hold the power that it creates. Their constitution is far too fragile to withstand the innate harshness of maso. The maso that they are addicted to harnessing the power of is little more than a disease to them. One that has spread into a pandemic, and they are too stupid to see that they are all sick .

It is a coarse and noxious feeling for Caim to remember that their pathway for reigning in maso is paved through Angelus’ corpse. Their escape from the poisoning is much the same. It is vile and depraved and Caim loathes them from the pits of his stomach up into his head. There is no space left for pity. These people are barbaric and unnecessarily cruel. Caim is just lucky that they didn’t sink their claws into his own remains.

He is ‘alive’ is the message conveyed as she presses down on every available surface of his body- of his soul - smothering him. Only to distort herself and her presence around him so that she can be suffocating. There is a tension conveyed through her choking actions and all of it is held within this disgusting embrace feels as if she wants to love him and yet… yet she cannot. 

So, naturally, she tries her best to kill him gently. Because she cannot love him. She kills him tenderly. Lovingly. Softly. To convey her love through this violence, she smothers him. Because it is the only way that she knows how to love him. The only way that she knows how to love her own children, too. For it is the same way that she shaped her children into the figures she wanted. This motherly strangling and wringing of necks is how she crafted and pushed her own children into her preferred forms and beat them into being a monument for her perfection. As her self-defined masterpieces, she loves them. She desperately wishes to do the same to him with a burning want and desire, despite how he writhes against her hands with his own incendiary anger and spiking, bitter rage. She is frantic to inject him with her rancid poison. She wants him to become something softer and weaker so that he may love her and her children in the only way that she has made them able to love and able to care. He is a child to her that is similar enough to her own, that his actions frustrate her. He can feel it. It is like she is pulling a bandage around his chest, binding it too tight. Squeezing his appendix and stomach into something smaller. Into a form that is more desirable to her.

It is almost as if she is attempting to force him into a pact with her. A being with all of the abilities and none of the knowledge. She doesn’t know how this works and she is poorly attempting to mimic something that she is never going to be able to reproduce. She wants to warp him into a form that he wants no part of, because he has no desire to bend and change according to the whims of others. Not again.

As she attempts to prune away at his existence further, she is only to be met by his resistance. He behaves as if he is some loathsome, unmanageable and polluted bush made of the same steel as the sword that he swings. It is through this brutality that he stumbles into a flash of insight. The fact that the only reason that he can resist her putrid care is because he recognizes this type of horrifying care. It is the same that was part-in-parcel with Furiae, the baggage that she innately came into his world with. Even if Furiae had gone about her obscene mentality with a subtle quietness, she and this Goddess are one and the same with their deranged form of kindness. Furiae, who had to worry about the trivialities of the public's opinions had adopted this subtly as a trait that aided excellently with the preservation of her reputation for being a vision of a Goddess, one that is comprehensible to the human mind. Though their methods are different, they are both the same with this twisted tender care. This Goddess and Furiae.

They feel so similar to each other that it is vile. Caim can feel the bile corralling in his throat, with the intent of rebellion. Threatening to push out of the captivity of his body, into his lungs and throat, onto his tongue and out of his flesh. Splashing vomit and bile onto the floor. Caim feels as if he has fallen off Angelus’ plunging through the cloud cover that they had been obscured within and onto the battlefield. It brings to mind the death pact he had made with Angelus where he could only think that the Devil's kiss was glacial rather than overflowing with a blazing heat... although, he supposes that the difference should have been expected. After all, one would need to have some emotion other than hate in order to produce any sort of warmth. 

Furiae and this Goddess, he draws back to this point again as this Goddess forcibly reminds him of her. Both of them are cloying and abominable with an unyielding obsession which would have been honorable had it been honed in a different field. They generate a cutting, spitting obsession and possession that is aimed only at Caim, truly. They destroy him in worship held within the frame of mind that to adore him in their lust and treat him with a tenderness he does not wish for… does not want… is some sort of sacred and lovely ritual.

Perhaps he would have craved this carefully maintained care, once, but he does not crave it any longer and he really wishes they would stop. They will not, however, because this ritual is something personally created and with that creation it holds more meaning to them. Though it is not official they will march with this conviction to him even if it leads to the silver lining of their deaths. This worship is a sacrifice that is honorable to die for. They will kill themselves in the pursuit of his body and his heart. To love him with a frantic fevered fervency to this extent and to continue to be part of this wretched coven is a blessing. For this whole pursuit that they have found they are willing to sacrifice close to anything at all. As long as it is not him. They will kill themselves and each other to be the person of his affection, even if it is false. They treat obsession like a religion, and it is nauseating to see. It feels offensive, the idea that to love Caim is so taxing. That they must form a crazed cult to do so feels like a slight upon his character and a praise to their horrid devotion.

The idea that she loves Caim feels closer to a lie with this Goddess. Especially when he can feel the volcanic inferno boiling and burning with her touch taking bites from his body. Sending sparks of agony skating across his nerves and bones. She is atrocious, and he hates her and the chilling, frostbitten crystalizing coldness that is chewing away at his sanity. The frigid chill and the scalding blaze sparks smoldering infuriation within him as the two sensations take turns to eat him from underneath her skin.

It seems that there is not a halfway with loving and accepting Caim. She clings further still with the revolting love that is dripping from her seams. Creeping closer and hanging tighter even as Caim lashes out against her with his own gullies of nettle and thistle. His thorns are dripping with hues of red. Her watery, yet congealing and slimy blood is flowing out of her and yet she still comes closer. She is irrationally attached to an existence- his existence - one of which had not been grown and birthed from the waters of her womb. Instead, he had been crafted in the womb of a sister, perhaps is the best way to say it. A sister or a twin that she was never able to meet, separated by time, reality and powers above even them.

Yes, Caim’s world had been a mirror image twin that had been created by time and who was erased, now. For now. Though that sentiment is nothing more than a witless hope that Caim nurtures in his chest; that his world will come back. But he knows that it is far more likely that his world is gone now, so to hope for the contrary is fruitless. It is a sour and bitter thought, but Caim knows that he was the one to drop the blade of the guillotine on his home, the moment that he had left through that portal on Angelus’ back he had destroyed his home. 

It feels illogical that his world, time and planet have faded into obscurity for everyone and everything but Caim and his memories. However, he knows this to be the truth, because Caerleon never existed here, on this Goddess. Caim’s kingdom didn’t exist even in tales of fantasy and subsequently he and the people who resided in Caerleon and the rest of his world are forgotten with nothing to show that they had ever existed at all. It is… lonely, to be the only person in existence to recall an alternate ancient past. However, Caim has learned to accept this loneliness and what it brings in its luggage as it makes its home on his back. Caim’s existence, half-dead, will remain in this state of loneliness, anger and almost-grief, poisoning her until she finally finds it fit to kill him and let him go. That is unless she can find a way to send him back to his original home, the parallel world of her- one that is magic and wretched and one that she loathes. 

She does not want to let him go. 

The parallel, Caim’s home, feels to her like a mockery of what she- this world, this time, this planet, this Goddess - has become. Is becoming something that holds a candle to the cruelty of Caim’s own world, though she still functions fundamentally differently. More of an emphasis on emotions and psyche than physical capabilities and forceful war. War borne from two beings who humanity had no hope of wrapping their minds around and yet a war that they are caught between. Used as fodder in a battle that had been waged before they had ever even existed. Only the twisted and the wretched could find their home there. In that dystopia those horrid wayward souls had found the perfect home, Caim included. He doesn’t belong somewhere this soft . It feels wrong and like every breath he takes is catching and cutting on all the wrong edges of his soul. The longer it takes for her to banish him the more that he can hear her screams and feel her claws as she tears away at him with feeble and bitter anger, loathing and disgust. Her agony that is slaughtering his senses feels like a retribution and a penitence for Caim in more ways than one. It is with a lemon-sour reflection or revelation that Caim comes to terms with the fact that death doesn’t feel like resting. For it cannot be considered something peaceful, calm, tranquil or an eternal slumber when he is stuck here in this lowly acidic agony of this Goddess that detest him and his home. It is an unpleasant and stifling, green-lined jealous tinted loathing that leaks through her form as she mutates and twists tighter around his limbs as if he still exists cocooned within a physical form.

 With this sour and despicable love, it seems more relevant and prominent, now of all times for some unsaid and unsought reason that the most that Caim can taste is the ash upon his tongue. With exhaustion weighing down his limbs he finds his stamina running out from fighting this ‘this Goddess’. Caim doesn’t know how much longer he can hold out as the ash, soot and coal that is soaking up the blood, remains and gore that is all that survives from his original plot. The viscera, cartilage and minds of the people that he has killed for his rebellion and mutiny against the storybook of the Gods are the only salvageable pieces of the narrative that he was supposed to lead in the beginning. The mud made by blood and the weapons crafted from bones only remain in his memories, forever imprinted onto his soul so that he may never forget what carnage he has caused. Caim was supposed to, allegedly, be a great hero. One crafted and smithed by the Gods for the Gods. Born by prophecy or by something grander- something greater. Born by this ‘Something’ that feels like barbed twine in his throat and iron books bound to his lungs and suck into his chest. The metal makes a fantastic conductor for the anger lacing through his veins and shooting up his nerves, it pushes his fury into his lungs, heart and mind, leaving blots of morbid pus-yellow ink blotting his blood and dying the mind that rests within his head. With vitriol and anger, he had taken that title of ‘Prophetic Hero of the Ages’ and broke it with his sword. Be they a deity or not, Caim is not a puppet, and he will not dance for them . Be they Gods, Goddesses, Dragons or Kings, Caim will not become their monkey to do with as they please. Caim is not a puppet, and he will not dance for the macabre cultists and their rituals or for the kings to lay down peace so they can birth an eon for the lazy and for the weak. 

Caim has only ever known one rule to be true above all others; Living is not for the weak.

People can be cowards, lazy and faint-hearted but those are things that Caim, at least, can say he is most certainly not. He would rather cut off his own head before bowing down to those who would have been torn to shreds by the wolves in the woods. Survival of the strongest is a rule that one cannot ignore and Caim can proudly say that he was the strongest in Caerleon and the surrounding kingdoms. He had not been weak, even after the Black Dragon, Legna, killed his father and his mother, he had not been weak. Not in the same way Furiae had been, curling in on herself until she had found a foundation once more, no matter how fragile and feeble that foundation was. His father had made sure of that with the training and the schooling to become the next ruler of Caerleon, Gaap had been a fair, charismatic and strong ruler. But that does not mean that he knew how to be a father. Even if he had taught Caim things that he took pride in and was grateful for, he loved his father but his father valued strength above much else. He may have turned heel to protect peace within his kingdom instead of dominating the rest, but he had made sure that Caim could finish the conquest he had started even if that meant nothing more than shit at the end. Caim was unable to complete the conquest, nor did he really care to. 

Revenge had always been more of a prominent fixture in Caim’s mind. The feeling of losing his drive and goal within this endless second between death and dying, truly dying, stirs a violence within Caim, centered around the fact that Caim is furious at her even attempting to prune him into something more palatable to her tongue and the fact that Caim can taste her own bitter anger for him and his kin. The savory and spicy flavor of her loathing lies heavy on his tongue. Though her wrath tastes so similar to his own, the one that has consumed him from the start- specially catered for those who seem to be so much greater than him. It is a paradox for all that she is everything and nothing, she loathes him for the same reason that he loathes her. They seem to be cut from the same cloth, their hatred runs in the same vein and wins the same races. She resents Caim and his magic, she holds nothing but contempt for his very existence in her own time. He is poison to her and one that is eating away at her, shaping her into the same monster that makes him and yet she cannot help but hold him close. To pull him ever closer to her bosom as if he is an infant that is worth saving after all.

No matter how much she loathes him she will not kill him in the end.

Because of one simple, little truth and reason; for all that she hates him there is one agonizing truth that she must abide by, and that truth is that he shall not die.

No, he will not die.

She will not allow it. She will not let him die.

She will fix this, all of this. And she will fix him, because she hates what he has made her. She hates what she has become because of him and the wounds that he has caused. She hates his foreign existence and the infection that he has inflicted upon her and her children, so, naturally she thinks that if she fixes him or if… If he had never existed in the first place her children would go back to being- to being healthy. Or perhaps, she could obtain the highest of kindnesses and they would still be alive. Though now it seems that she- this planet or a better way to phrase this ‘this Goddess’ is that this whole reality is only ash, metal and dust. Cloned corpses reanimated for a cause that they can never achieve that are starting to go sideways due to errors and malfunctions. It seems that the highest truth for her, however, is that there are only robots and androids on her planet now, void of any ounce of life that they could have had. Life in the truest sense. They cannot go against the mainframe. They cannot innovate and adapt and change- and that is what she needs the most. Not this stagnant battle for a cause who has already been driven extinct.

She knows that one remains, but he is not nearly enough, there is no way that he could ever be enough. Not with his form as he is, a skeleton and unable to breed. Unable to repopulate or anything else of the sort. She pities him and she cares for him. She wants him to go back to being human instead of the weapon that Angelus’ maso has made him into.

“At least he has his mind.” Caim has heard her whisper.

What they, the humanity of this realm- this reality, have become is something far from human. In the barest bones of the sense they still live on forging their paths and striving ever onwards. They do not possess bodies and those that do exist have gained a consciousness of their own, but even those bodies, those vessels, those replicants- they are not wholly human either. Caim can't tell if they possess a spirit or if all of humanity has collapsed into being in a unstable state of semi-permanence, one that is consistently and constantly on the brink of madness and collapse. Caim finds this world's humanity repugnant and repulsive in the same way he found his allies, the dragons and the gods despicable and disgusting. Though he could make room in his head and in his chest for respect of his allies' separate strengths, Caim cannot claim that he did not find them to be vile.

She is a compilation of insanity and possession, a book flipping through endless empty pages trying to find a nonexistence answer. She is sloshing over with a gushing, twisted and contaminated tsunami of gluttonous, envy and wrathful greed colored love. She is clad in it head to toe and at the core of this madness is Caim and the depressing skeleton kid.

She grotesquely wants her children back and she cannot let Caim go because he is not from this world, so she is stuck with him and his tragedies. She loathes him as much as she loves him because though she cannot consume, rebirth or recycle him like the rest he is still a child from a similar world, and she cannot bear the weight of the sin that is to kill a child. Not yet. Not now. He is a wretched child but he is still hers and she does not give up what is hers so easily. He may be from a differing convergence of time but he is here now and that is what matters. The fact that she is a glutton with a bleeding heart matters little to anyone at all even if it means the world to Caim. 

Because she will never let him die.

Caim thinks he hates her for it.

She is greedy for the life that she calls 'human' and cares little for the others; a fact that had settled into solidity when erased Angelus without a second thought. It feels like a betrayal that all Caim could feel was an unjustified anger stemming from a cause he does not want nor need to understand. After all his anger has been a lifelong companion and the only thing pushing him ever forward into the next disparaging and revolting day, hour and second. The vile and nauseating malice that consumes him from one atom to the next washes him into pondering and wondering if the reason he's still here is because of the fact that he is human, unlike Angelus who was a dragon?

It is without shame that the answer of; "Yes," spills him into a blackened bloodied wrath. His view feels stilted, tilted and he is unable to right this wrong. He feels the prodding of her presence and makes his fury writhe. Like a wounded horrid animal he snaps at her with acidic leaking malice, he feels ravenous and starved frothing at the mouth like a rancid, feral dog trapped within a fighting ring. The feeling is very apt for who he has turned out to be. Damn the narrative of the Gods for he only knows survival of the strongest and that means he must kill. Caim thinks halfway that Angelus would agree with him for this sentiment and almost knocks for her dry opinion before he remembers that she is dead.

It hurts that she is gone.

He feels like he is left in some sort of shock, stuck in the realization that it never had occurred to Caim that Angelus might die before him. After all they made their pact to live and little more. Even though they eventually grew quite fond of each other that means little when in the beginning they would have rather had each other's throats. Even then. When he had no desire other than to kill the dragons he hadn't really envisioned what it would be like to have them dead. It's surreal in some ways but it hurts like Leonards punches to Caim's stomach that had happened often when they sparred. For all he was a slimy man he did pack one hell of a punch. And for that Caim was grateful.

Sometimes when existence in and of itself seems at its bleakest, Caim wishes that she would erase him, too. Just like she did with Angelus, something painless Caim foolishly hopes. He knows that they were - are? (If he's been stuck here for six endless eternities or more is he really still an alien?) - foreign and thus unknown to this reality. Which begs the question of why must she cling to him so viciously? Even as she watches the annihilation of her children she coils tighter, locking him against her core. Afraid to let go, perhaps, though that is a foolish thought and one best left unsaid and forgotten. Caim can think of her preservation of himself as nothing else other than a punishment for his existence, his intrusion into this realm. Despite her loathing for him she keeps him still even as she steadily watches the downfall of her sole remaining child, the only one left after so many millions have died. She, herself, and the only other one that is not himself that is left trapped within a cursed existence due to her selfish ineptitude. There is a sour bitter coating on the roof Caim's mouth and his tongue for the fact that she loves this other child with all the same fervor that she loathes him with. Caim can feel her agony as she watches the little boy wander alone in a desolate world, lost yet not afraid. Not yet, for there is still not enough to fear. She wants to save him from this fate that much is obvious, but she cannot bring herself to do so because that would mean trapping him with Caim.

Watching the kid Caim wonders if by growing up breathing in toxicity he’s grown up lame. Distorted maybe. After all how can someone laugh after growing up through torture? Caim wonders vaguely if he could have done it, he knows by now that his father was not a great man by any means. The King of Caerleon was not favored, because the king was corroded and acidic. Trampling others to get to the top of the totem pole that spelled his downfall. Destiny is not kind.

It feels like far too long before Caim ever figures out his name. The only one 'alive' to her even if he's not entirely sure the kid is even human anymore. There is one other Caim would have classified as 'living' though this planet disagrees- she reminds Caim of Furiae in a stilted, unsightly way. Perhaps the way they walk is only slightly the same. Or a theory that is more likely is the idea that he is looking for relations that never existed in the first place. It feels like some sort of grand shaming that he has only learned the kids name now, when this world seems to covet him so dearly.

Emil. 

That is the child's name, he finds out. Though Caim doesn’t know if one could call him, the being, a child or even human any longer- doesn't know if he would even call Emil alive- this world loves him dearly. This world weeps for his losses and mourns for everything he cannot have. He is trapped in an empty existence due to the desires of a selfish planet and because of this Caim cannot help but feel a kinsmanship with the boy. Stuck with only silence and nobody at all because there is a being of existence that is far greater than them all stuck in the past, stuck in former glory and unwilling to let anything go. This state of existence is only mournful for the both of them, especially as Caim has the suspicion that they are both keenly aware that she could just kill them and start anew but that she cannot bring herself to. And that is the truest tragedy of them all.

That she cannot let go.

It would be far kinder for her to just kill them- for that would be their salvation from this hollow and gutted existence of nothing more than pain.

He feels her shift closer and like always he cannot pull away, he, who is one with no body and her, with her ghastly and godly hands that are wrapped around his spirit like he is a well-loved doll she has had with her since childhood, and he can feel nothing but disgust. She keeps him like a toy that she cannot bear to throw away even as its prime has passed and it has become little more than rags. She tsks at his state and hates him all the more for it and for how he has infected her. Clinging to her like black mold he refuses to fade and let go, yet she keeps him around just the same, refusing to hose him down with the insecticide that would surely truly kill him for the final time. She feels the need to protect and preserve what has happened to herself, him and the lonely only kid. She will archive and defend what is here even if what she is doing is protecting and preserving agony. She does this with all of the honor and duty of a soldier going into a battle where they know they won't come back alive. She does this even now forging her way through the thicket of the anemone, lobelia and the marigolds with all the perseverance of thyme.

It seems that Inuart has rubbed off on Caim in unexpected ways for him to know the language of the florists. Even if it is just barely and hardly something of an understanding that is to be considered fluent.

“You know what I think? I cannot help but pity you and that disgusts me.” Caim tells her the same way he used to talk to Angelus. Silent but with feeling and intent, words projected through movements, feeling and his mind. For all that he has been through at least, Caim can say he never had a mental break, not in the same way that Arioch did or Manah. Not in the same way Inuart crumbled and not in the same way that Leonard had snapped before being forced to stay alive. Perhaps there was some sort of break but at least Caim knows himself to his core unlike the rest of them. He cannot even say that Seere, the cleanest of their group truly knew who he was at his core, after all. Though Caim cannot speak- doesn't know if he wants to try for that might mean that Angelus is well and truly dead, Caim knows when the exact moment she understands- comprehends- his unspoken words is as he can feel her flinch away mere seconds before she is smothering his mouth and throat with more vigor than before. She wants him quiet; she wants him silent. The loathing that is coating his words curls his tongue like acid and he cannot help but spit on her, for Caim knows hates her. 

Why won't she let him die? He is not Furiae, Goddess born and divine, nor is he Manah corrupted yet still divine. Perhaps it is because he still has his mind and though those two may have been touched by the divine and godly, it didn’t make them any less of a fool. It did not make them survivors of any given kind. They still died, presumably, despite being godlike and something considered to be a step above the rest. Now though, even when he had known Manah and Furiae and met the gods of his world, now most of the time Caim thinks that there is no divinity here within this world. Which he is almost certain is the truth, especially given the fact that though he rarely forgets this is not his world nor home. Though he has died here, and she won't let him go, this is not his home.

She doesn't seem to realize that the longer he stays here, trapped, the more his anger builds burrows in his throat and etches out catacombs in his mind. It rises cathedrals in the name of loathing built up into his head from his stomach and carves out tunnels in his bones. Hatred mingles with his nerves and muscles and sinew, threading itself together like they belonged there from the start- ever since his untimely birth. Fury stretches and twists his lungs, liver and guts and engraves itself onto and into his senses till he is little more than mindless anger that makes him feel less dead.

Caim hates this world.

This world- this... this god, this existence or reality is a being with a shovel who is unkind and uncaring. Unjust and unloving. Yet he finds that he craves more as she slams the tip down into his stomach and levies the flat of the shovel head against the bones of his hips and the squishy substance of his intestines to pry out his ribcage. Because in the end at least this is something. At least he feels a touch other than anger, fear and loathing even if it is pain. Though there is a bit more of his mind and a feeling of smoke in his chest that prostates before his own self-loathing all the more for it.

“This is for the best.” She whispers. “You will be a better person once I kill what’s left of you.”

In the end the most devastating thing of all is that Caim almost believes her.

She is picking and pulling him apart and not even from the seams. Through this cruel form of love Caim wants little more than to crawl inside his brain and rip out his eyes. He never wanted to be here, and it looks like there is endless agony in this life and the next and the next and the next after that. The next one next too. And he can only haplessly and helplessly wonder with little to no hope; When will it ever end?

She hollows out his insides and replaces his innards with taffy lined with tacks and butterfly knives. She kills him softly, somewhat, with silk woven words laced with honey. There is a chuckle... than a laugh, before, “you think this is gentle?” Spills oh so mockingly from those soft-spoken lips. Caim thinks he is crueler now. Perhaps he is now finally understanding the mind of Arioch, consumer of children and kindred flesh. Though Caim has committed atrocities he was not a cannibal nor a child killer, though he can now see how madness can lead one to such conclusions and actions, now. He knows her logic, somewhat and he cannot find it in himself to fault her for it. Not when all he really wishes for is that she would eat him now instead of this shackled and draining existence consisting of nothing really at all.

“I want you to devour me, ravish my flesh, sinew and bone until there is nothing left but decay and rot.” Caim echos to her ghost within a conversation that is held wrapped in whispers. An intent that passes through the gate of captivity that is his teeth and lips. He wishes to die.

For all he wished to live now all he wishes for is death.

This feels like a mockery of what he once held dear, and this commentary is not one that he wishes to last. Caim rediscovers it seems, time and time again the true meaning of hatred and this time he learns through losing his own hope that; hatred breathes deeper than love. He does not hate her, this Goddess, for killing his home and those that he had loved, he hates her for killing him in a way that feels so natural. To the point that he’ll forget again when he wakes up in the morning.

 “Lost the noose yet again,” a God from Caim's own world laughs maliciously in echoes that scatter across the wall. It seems that God enjoys watching misery.

 He can feel her anger now. Burning brighter than before, it hurts in more ways than not. “Just accept it.” She hisses. “This is your divine given chance to be holy. This is a kindness and not a scorn.” She says even as he can feel her ripping him apart atom by atom, bit by bit. Caim doesn’t think that she is a God. There is some justification that is going on that is too mortal for an all-powerful being. Caim knows with certainty she is not because God is a tool people use to lie to themselves. To say to themselves; this is good, and that they are not evil. That he is vile, evil and cruel, that the problem is him and not them. Not them, never them, for if they ever find out that the problem, the issue, the evil was them all along they would surely break. They would shatter into millions and trillions of small little stars resembling dust more so than glittering stars. They will tell him that this is a soft sort of justice- a repentance, a gift, a fix. Just as she is telling him here and now, for this is not evil. This twisting, morphing and destroying of every iota of his being is for his own good. To trick him so that he will finally sit there, motionless, docile, tamed in place and thinking that this is all good and just and right. Divine. That this is the euphoric heaven that so many chase after.

 Everyone, all of these Gods, Goddesses, Dragons and Deities want him to remain unmoving as they start trimming away the bad and rotten only to keep the fresh and good. They wish for him to remain housebroken and domesticated to suit their tastes as they ruin their chosen prey. As they ravage him. Caim knows she, this Goddess that he has found named herself Earth, shares this sentiment in correlation to him. She seems to covet this idea far more than the Gods that he has known before. And, yet it feels jagged, broken and wrong because as surely and brightly as she loves him as a fish loves a flood, he knows she hates him the same way a forest hates the fire that consumes every last leaf and branch from within.

 Caim realizes he hasn’t known hate. Not really. Not until now.

 Hatred is something that blooms from his chest and spreads through his veins. Makes him feel as if he is one of the porcelain dolls Furiae played with as a child. One that she dropped and let crack. His loathing spreads that crack further across his skin, opening up his core to the world only to show that he was always empty anyways. Some sort of puppet only led on by what he had been told was right. Perhaps there is something there now though. Something sharp and hard and jagged. Something cruel and something that will let him move on into the next life. 

 “A decaying body doesn’t know life. In the same way you don’t know how to fight.” Caim finds himself whispering, voiceless one day. Lost within this eternity he finds he really wishes that Angelus would’ve stayed. Though he has been trapped for an eternity or more, his memories have yet to fade. He will cling to them like a drawing rat if he has to and he will not let go. If he could go back, he would make different decisions: he would kill Inuart and Verdelet and Manah. Fuck he’ll kill Furiae, Arioch, Leonard, Seere and even the Gods from his world if he must. He wouldn’t need to be a decent man or compete with anyone so long as he would be able to stay away from this hell. From destroying this world with what they call Maso, infecting them all with the White Chlorination Syndrome and killing the rest through some wicked twist of fate.

 After all, a decent man doesn’t mean that they are the better man.

This stupid little shell of a boy has doomed them all. They are all encouraging him and Caim feels nothing more than disgust for this collection of ‘people’.

 Ignorance is only ignorance when it is not a purposeful blindness, in the end. There is a line in the sand where one can play it off as nativity and willful stupidity. And there comes a point when a person is actively choosing to willfully ignore any sort of knowledge or hit. They choose to ignore it all and they are choosing to march forward to spell the damnation and end of their entire world and civilization.

This idiotic little boy is destroying his people. The ruler that Gaap had groomed within Caim is crying out in his chest, throwing itself into the flames that lie beneath his ribs and sending smoke up his throat to choke him with burning anger. How could any sort of person destroy their people and throw away any hope that they had to live? It doesn’t matter if the ruler lives in the end if their people live on, that is what matters, because what else are rulers- kings, queens, emperors, empresses and monarchs, for? If they are not there for any other reason than to serve and protect their people? This is the code of conduct that he had hammered into his head since birth and he may have forgotten it, lost within the haze of his own madness. But seeing it so blatantly disregarded makes him want to rip out this boy’s throat.

Which is something that no matter how bitter it makes him feel and how much it coats his tongue with the taste of harsh sand and raw bloodied fruit, he can empathize with. For after all this shit all Caim wants in the end is to disappear quietly. With Angelus even if it means the end of his world. It feels silly that he finds himself wishing for Angelus yet again when he knows that she is gone. The hundredth found realization of Angelus' death is still a sharp and bitter feeling. The sort of bitterness that is the same way expired milk tastes like is the one that makes its way home, from all of the gods and his existence to Caim, himself, and he cannot help but welcome it. Because though it is composed of a bitter biting cold, it is a harsh winter that he has read and studied and that makes it a feeling that has always accompanied him, and its loss would be something that is raw and new and foreign. Perhaps it would be nice, but he never expected any less and he never thought it would stay gone for long, for he always knew that it would make itself back home, to him. Nestled in Caim's heart, muscle, mind and bones. The regaining of this cotton-spun loneliness is like a liquor to him, something he cannot function without. To do so is odd and it is difficult. Something he’d much rather not think about. Caim thinks that welcoming this harsh state of being, state of mind and state of life back isn’t so horrible, in the end, after all. The feeling completes him in a way that, sadly, harshly and unjustly, his former convictions and companions never did and perhaps that makes him horrible, in the end. But he has found that he is selfish, and he is cruel for as it is his former life's parting gift to him, at the end of all ends of his home and the memories shared with that planet and those people, he shall take the cold and chilling feeling gratefully and gracefully. Never let it be said that he wasn’t thankful. Because he loved them and he is so, so thankful for what had been his people and his world. He is so thankful. Even if it is twisted and false he will continue to tell himself this to try and sell the lie; for in the end he knows the core truth of his world, this one and any others that exist in parallel to his reality and hers. The world was cruel from the start, rocks on stone and bones on bones. There is no space for fragility here.

The next thing that Caim discovers is that he isn’t so thankful after all. She had been corroding and poisoning his mind, trying fruitlessly to save her from himself. He thrashes against her and her existence with no other goal that to escape . She is destroying him, and he will not have it. He is disgusted with himself for not noticing it sooner and that feeling creeps up his throat with the ferocity of tsunami waves. He can taste her sorrow; it is a despair that lingers; a drop in the bucket that withers. Bitter tastes swathed in fallen tears. It is a feeling that Caim knows well and that he can ignore because he knows from experience that none can tell if his tears are salty when the ocean's here, above and below. Caim knows with a ferocity that is rekindled that water's a stronger binding than iron could ever hope to be, and he will not let her chain him here.

Chapter Text

It eventually comes to a point where Caim is wondering if there is a… feeling. One that had existed once and one that he cannot recall. An emotion that this twisted and disgraceful Goddess had made him forget about. It is something that slips through his fingers like sand or water and the farther he stretches in an attempt to remember- the more he reaches for the memory, the feeling , the moment, the more elusive it is turning out to be. The more slippery it is to obtain the more desperate Caim is to get his hands on it. To wrap his fingers around the forgotten emotion and to strangle it back into being. Perhaps violence shouldn’t be the first way he tries to get a faded memory to come back to him out of nonexistence, but he cannot help himself.  He is a creature forged from violence for violence and he is positive that there would be no reason for her to hide this emotion other than the fact that it is key to him escaping her wretched grasp.

This forgotten moment holds some sort of hint or critical meaning, way or path that leads to his freedom from her. His liberation from her suffocating thrall. What it truly means is buried deep within his chest. Hidden somewhere behind the labyrinths built within his heart.

Caim loathes her for everything that she is and at this point he doubts this will ever change. Not when the acid sits heavy on his tongue at the mere brush of a thought about her. This hatred is no longer directed at the child, however. Emil is… not pitiable but he is not strong either. He doesn’t have strength in the same way Caim does. Designed and designated into slaughtering those who stand in the way- in the path- of his ultimatum. For until now, the only thing that Caim could have truly claimed to care about was his goal, his predestined path, of ravenous revenge.

Caim had almost forgotten… the rage that boils beneath his skin forming foaming pustules, oozing blisters and deep, dark bruises that litter across his skin, bones and soul. Caim knows he should not have forgotten this emotion. His rage. The way he had forgotten is the same as the way that the rest had faded and blended into the background, his forgotten wrath, desire and paranoia. He had forgotten them not in the sense of them not being present, but in the way of forgetting something or someone that isn’t normal.

Caim is starting to think that his life is an unfortunate series of events, and this is tragedy act three. Act one being the death of his parents, act two the betrayals and deaths leading up to Angelus’ own demise. Act three is this. Here and now. Where Caim is slowly going mad in this silence that Earth has greeted him with since several years ago.

He doesn’t know how long it has been and he is unsure if he wants to ever know. 

Caim wants to rip her apart piece by piece, turn her into little more than a spectacle for himself and none other. He wants to turn her blood into baths and look her deathly form in the eye as she remains a corpse and play in the pool he has created of a Goddess’ blood. It is as he sits here, within her veins that he sees that she is, in every sense of the phrase, Hell. She is composed of rubble and ash and eternal flame, she is the essence of loneliness, grief and terror. The thing that is reaching out and branching above this all is a pure encompassing despair... She's rock bottom. And that is what makes her divine.

Caim wants to look her in her eyes, dead and void and smile at her existence with bloodied teeth, “I guess you should’ve been a harsher God.”

He wants to hear her wretched cries and feel her tormented gaze, a reminder that he shouldn’t call this place his home. To consume the remnants of her reverends as she can do nothing but watch and wail to him through echoed sobs and screams. A sound that sounds like nails on a chalkboard to others but sounds like sweet honey-like music to his own ruined ears. He thinks that perhaps Emil might feel the same. Being trapped in a needless and useless existence such as they are sure to nurture a well of hatred beneath anybody's skin- bones. Caim had come to the conclusion several hours of forgotten hatred ago that perhaps, if love had a different meaning, he could bring himself to love Emil. In the same way he could have loved a younger brother. 

Caim knows in a detached sort of way that being stuck, here, with this child has covered his heart the same way moss, thorns and earth cover a small and little rock. Even with how slowly it has taken Caim to learn the true meaning of hate, he has always known that he doesn't hate this kid. Caught in the crossfire between himself and this god. Caim wants to hate him, though. He wants to hate Emil with a fiery and burning passion and yet he cannot. He cannot help being in awe filled rapture. It rubs something raw within him and Caim is helpless to do anything but pony up and admit that he is weak. This child is so much stronger than he is.

It blooms a sprig of envy in his ribs and curls around his heart but he swiftly stomps it down. Burying it beneath the earth in the same way he has buried bodies. A nicer funeral than deserved, for it is a solitary burial and not a mass grave birthed from the womb of wars. Caim halfway wishes it had been such a farewell. At least he wouldn’t need to know that only his blackened envy lies beneath there.

It feels ever so slow that it dawns on Caim that it seems he has never known what it means to truly hate, afterall. Even when he can scream into the sky with lungs full of air that he hates her. He hates her. He hatesher hehates her hehatesherhehatesherhehatesher hatesherhatesherhatesher.

He hates her for even existing in the first place. 

It feels reasonable, justifiable , that an existence like her should have never been born. To some this thought may strike as harsh but to Caim it is a piece of clarity that brings the same understanding of knowing the sky is blue. After all, there is a difference between being shown pictures of a sky and being told; “this is blue,” and seeing the real thing for oneself. One can know that the sky is blue being trapped in a windowless room, but they won't be able to understand or envision it until they see it for themselves. An idea that is the core of the concept of understanding anything that is simply the law of this world and the next and his own. Caim doesn’t think that anyone else could begin to fathom or understand the depths of his hatred towards her. Not without going through the same shit he has.

She is starting to treat him as little more than an unruly five-year-old and he believes this to be the most insulting thing of all. She treats him like a dog and expects him to bend to her whims. As if he isn’t sentient and capable of rational thought. It is insulting, he can think, see and understand things for himself. The only thing stopping him from truly seeing anything is her. A fact that she doesn’t wish to acknowledge, she fights for her ignorance in a way that burns . In the same way that stupid nameless child had fought to keep his own, if only to feel no guilt when he destroyed them all. Caim can look down upon that insufferable kid who gutted his world and became a blight on his people and feel nothing but disgust. No pity and no sympathy. Not like her who only looks upon him forlornly and whispers to herself in incompressible murmurs. The only thing that he is able to catch is a choked out line of; “Oh, my Nameless Child, you were never meant to dream…” 

She sounds like she’s drowning, for once. 

And it is within this sound that Caim cannot help but twist the knife as he digs himself a little further up and out of her broken soul. She bristles around him with barbed wire fencing, only for him to push through with the weak links she’s given him in his time of need. He is finding that these moments of weakness are as sweet as the apples of his home world. Only eaten for rations occasionally, for desert or a celebration, they were a delicacy that had a shelf life of close to none. It is as he breaks through her bones and chews through her muscle surrounding him that he comes to a realization; that apples of a different birth don’t taste so different, after all.

One was born from a farmers field, his sweat and blood, another borne from the bloodshed it takes to break free from the womb of a decaying Goddess. She is rotting from the inside out and Caim thinks he has found an answer to a question he had heard Seere whispering, once. 

“Can a person rot from within?” was a mumbled cry beneath his breath. One uttered on a near silent night when he had taken watch over the campsite. Caim doesn’t know if Seere had thought all of the others were asleep besides himself or not. For when they are all awake and active, Seere takes extreme care to not be so macabre. He takes care to preserve his image of purity and kindness, even when all his allies are dyed so red with their sins that they are the same black as coal. Caim knows that there is something Seere had been hiding from them all, but he had never been able to find it out. There is something dark and twisted lurking within the kids body, there is little to no chance that there is- was not. For like attracts like and there is no other reason as to why someone so wholesome would become a party member to a group consisting of; A child cannibal, a pedophile and someone half mad from bloodlust and loneliness.

Caim can taste her anger as the empty child kills the red-headed twins. He can feel her bile as if it is his own creeping through her lungs and into her throat. Pooling in the back of her mouth in a vain hope as to not let it spew out from between her lips. She can try all she likes to choke back her vomit crafted from betrayal, but it will come out eventually. Even as the arsonist words of; “How dare you, a child with no name, spit upon the deeds of god?”

She says this with the entirety of her heart even as she curls in on herself in shame as she does so. 

It feels like a betrayal of the highest order, to hate her own creations. 

She hates them for all of their careless dreams that were built on the backs of weaker men.

Caim cannot help but bask in this hatred as if it is the first time he has had water. He is a man who is starving and this is his food. She energizes him with her own self-loathing and he is able to take another gouge out of her spine. The idea of seeing the night after so long is intoxicating. He wants to see the stars twinkle out in the morning as they mourn over their loss of life within the confines of the suffocating day. They mourn for themselves and for the something that they guard at night. The something that they watch over until it is all out of sight. They cry out in sparkling little pangs as they watch that something destroy itself. They are watching a “little” wretched creation. Something with no known education– something that is called mankind.

Caim had been told, once, that he can't kill the greater God. A small piece of ‘wisdom’ that he feels like spitting upon the face of now. As here he sits in the ribcage of this Goddess and he is killing her. Rotting her from the inside out in a vile way of proving that the answer to little Seere’s question is, yes, people can rot from within. Caim will take this several steps further on his quest and rip out her throat to consume what remains of her broken, decayed and withered body. He’ll taste her blood and flesh cascading over his tongue as he gazes upon her broken body with distaste. He’ll never let her do the same that Angelus had done, where she had ripped out his tongue and pinned it to the wall. She had stayed around and had seen what he had become within that aftermath. 

Caim is sitting in her esophagus, almost free, when she becomes a monster. She is picking bones out from between her teeth, as she, the giant, consumes another corpse. He doesn’t know if it is some sort of fucked-up ritual to heal herself or not and he finds that he really doesn’t care, in the end. Leeches are sucking her bones dry and he doesn’t care to stay around and let the same happen to him. 

He breaks through another pound of flesh.

Caim thinks that this is a mercy, ultimately, that he is killing her. For the deathly disease of being a fool is only cured by dying. Caim thinks that he can see the sky though her throat and he is stuck with awe. It is almost as if he has never watched the sky, for it looks like heaven is crying. It looks like the cloudless, nighttime sky is mourning. The smell of pines in the rain, they make him think, momentarily, that the world can be beautiful, sometimes.

Sin stains his hands, and it will never leave, even with all the baptisms in the world. No exorcisms, or chemical burns or intense flames can burn away what he has done. And yet, he still can think that this world is beautiful. Even when he has seen monsters that hide within his own forces. A war where they are losing in which nameless faces are strewn across the field, bloodied and broken; freed from the shackles of their loyalty. A mercy, even if they were only freed by the ultimate sacrifice. Their sacrifices, their deaths, are of little importance when there are only so many hours within a day to rot. Such as there is only so much life within a corpse. Caim struggles to think that they would even care. Not when their body lies, consumed by the sinking mud of a blood drenched battlefield.

Perhaps he would understand more and shine brighter if he wasn't choking on his own delirium.

As he rips through her into her brain he finds that there are the words of stained saints inscribed upon her altar. Unholy wishes and desires that break through from Caim’s own ribcage. The things that his heart yearns for with impossible desires, the kind he can never obtain. Such as the dream to go home. Home to Caerleon when his mother and father were alive and well. Home to Caerleon when he wasn’t insane and Furaie wasn’t a twisted harlot. Though he knows if he were to go back he’d hate it with the same viciousness as he hates the time of today and now. For it isn't joy clad in crowns and gowns, the rosy hues of nostalgia only serve to trick him. A picture of the past painted in glowing romance.This is not something that he can reclaim, he knows this surely. As surely as Caim knows he is composed of two parts; a little boy that is long gone and a man that is farther gone. His innocence and positivity was a child that eventually did die and became a child that turned into more of a monster than a human. Because that was the only way for him to survive.

He cracks open her skull.

He could have left through her mouth, but that wouldn’t render her dead. He knows this with a bone deep certainty. He couldn’t leave her breathing, not when she was the one who states that; “This is for the greater good.” Even as everyone dies in the flames of ‘good’.

She just laughs above and around him doing nothing, all while he limps down the street, broken, beaten and bloody; all while he and the people listen to her broken record that states, a vile and simple lie to his face,  “This is for the good.”

It wasn’t for the ‘good’ and it never was. Her spool of silk-twine lies, all spun around a small coil of truth, is indistinguishable to all but herself from the reality of it all. The lies are an avoidance of sorts and, certainly, a death of more than one soul. She is slowly deteriorating into a monster and he into a God. This feels all the more true with every bite of her brain that he takes. He is consuming her until there is nothing left. The reason for his agony dances at the tip of his tongue the more he hollows out this Goddess’ body. No matter how much the name wants free, he will not acknowledge it. Or revere it, place them upon a pedestal of awed hatred and wrath. He won't listen, for he would rather be ignorant, this time. 

It seems he has become her boogeyman as she listens to him whispering, “this for the good,” into her ear, behind shadows. It feels like sweet vengeance as he plays the role of the Invisible Brother. She helplessly listens to him repeating, “this for the good.” He sits by the windows, her agony feels like rolling waves of euphoria beneath his fingers. It still seems that there is a constant within the bounds of these worlds, which is; whatever anyone might say, he’ll always be like this. He casts down his eyes, and looks at all of the blood and carnage that lies beside all of his severed bonds. These people might call him horrid and cruel but he feels little to nothing at all. They would be aghast and call him broken. And there is something broken within him, that he knows well. For why else would he care little about their deaths.

Eventually, Caim thinks that he has damaged her enough. She is only bringing him boredom through her pain and suffering. It is through this apathy that he claws his way into reality by crafting trenches and caverns that lead out of her left eye. 

As he breaks through the flooring of some dilapidated manor there is a mantra that he repeats in his head. That there is no ‘higher’ truth and there is no ‘future’. There is only the here and now. The truth of what is happening in front of your eyes. Now. Not then. And not soon. Even if he has walked the road that never was, he is now here. Alive and breathing. His pulse beating steadily beneath his flesh. He has walked that path and came out alive, even though it was not meant to be walked in the first place. This idea of freedom is exhilarating, even if he doesn’t catch the eyes watching him in the shadows.

Chapter Text

Her voice whispers insidiously to him in the back of his mind, haunting and possessive. A set of last words is echoing in his head. Not her dying whispers, but something she said when she was whole. Her words creep back into his psyche and burrow into his veins and nerve pathways, sticking to his skin like some sort of disgusting slimy mess as he claws his way out of this dust, rubble and ash. Breaks his way through the floor of a home like a demon creeping up and into the mortal plane from the underbelly of hell.

“This is a blessing, from me to you.” She had murmured so sweetly into his ear, worming her way into the crevices of his subconscious. Her silken honeyed tongue had drip acid into his mind as she tore him apart in her womb as if he was made of rags and sculpting clay. She had meticulously ripped him into shreds and folded his heart into neat, perfect, thirds as if he had ever meant anything to her at all.

It was mortifying but he feels like there is a breath of fresh air, enough to wipe her remnants from his mind, as he pulls himself out of the hole in the Earth he had created. He can shake off the weave of silk that she had thrown around him. With the spiders that had crawled out of her mouth in the form of lies, they had spun their webs of deceit so thoroughly and intricately that she, herself, couldn’t have helped but been caught in the web of her own making.

“No, it’s really not.”

He banishes the thought from his mind.

He looks up and sees someone made of ivory and heavy, black velvet. Though she has her eyes wrapped up in another scrap of velvet, she winds backwards from his gaze. Taking one step, then two as if having him merely looking at her is something corrosive. His gaze may be composed of an act of opening fire, but that doesn’t account for her wariness of him. She looks at him as if he is something unknown and unfounded.

A treasure, perhaps. He disagrees.

He takes one step closer, boots clinking against the castrated tile of this crumbling manors floor. The sounds grating, like nails on a chalkboard. It is echoing in this ghastly chamber and he can hear them scream. It is not soothing or cathartic like he had hoped his first expedition into the surface of this Earth would be. He takes a stride towards her looking for some sort of sign that she is hostile and not only scared. After all, Caim needs someone who is strong to aid him in adjustments, if she is a coward he’ll just break this world himself. Maybe he is looking for some sort of rebound, from his past life. His past world. Caim will treat her cruelly and he finds that he does not care.

Caim looks upon her, impassive, as she is backed up into a wall. She is showing no emotions, her face a stoic mask and Caim feels the wily and unruly desire, no, need to rip that look off of her face. It seems that she is a coward after all and Caim watches her hand twitch to grasp at a blade that had been discarded across the room. There is a pipe on the floor and it seems that she had seen it too. Though Caim is quicker and he wraps his fingers around her throat first.

He pulls back and slams her against the wall. Her neck is slender and it is small. Something that sits perfectly between his fingers. Her face is still impassive and it only adds fuel to the flames of his insatiable anger. Something that is burning and something that is unreasonable and illogical. He should have a level head, but he finds that he doesn’t want to. He wants to feel his loathing crashing over him like a tsunami and overtaking him with its vengeance.

He wants to be boiled alive in the gentle caress of what is known. What he knows and what knows him. Intimately. Indefinitely and infinitely. The thing that knows him as intimately as he knows it is blood. Gore and war is a sensation in every conceivable way that he has known since the age of five or so. Caim knows that he is a kid of war, a boy soldier who knows not how to speak. Even if he did his voice would have weaved a story of tragedy and horror and it will always be so. Would have always been so. It is something that will never change so when someone looks at him, well aware and says; "hey, boy soldier, let's talk." Caim cannot help the icy slush of fear from flooding his veins.

There is nothing left for them here. Not within Caim himself.

They shouldn’t need him.

They shouldn’t know him.

He gazes upon her form, pinned to the wall as it is like a butterfly pinned to the examining board. Dying. Decaying. Slowly rotting away upon that board as the entomologist takes care in preservation of a species that they have driven extinct. Unknowingly and unwittingly. Perhaps they will never discover this folly anyways- or maybe they’re like Caim. Knowing full well that they have just destroyed life and not caring in the littlest bit anyway.

Pressing down, he strangles her. Though it seems she does not breathe as she shows no reaction and he feels no puffs of gasping air from her nose or her mouth. Her chest does not rise and fall and the moment Caim presses down enough and twists to break her neck and rip off her head all that is exposed is circuitry and wires.

Something that he has witnessed at surface-level from the Emil boy’s eyes. Caim hadn’t thought much of it at first and now, marveling at this golem-woman’s neck, Caim wonders if perhaps it was witchcraft. He should have paid more attention as it most certainly is. The type of witchcraft that some of those vile gods had endorsed. Encouraged even. After all, one of the most powerful pact-makers they had created were golem’s forged through belief in their power.

It seems that Caim is barbaric in comparison to everything and everyone else. He stands over this golem made of metal, wires and plastic and he feels no remorse. She had shown no fear and would have shown no mercy, there is no reason for Caim to grant her grace. Even if there was, he finds that he wouldn’t have given her an out, given her mercy, anyways. For she was baked within a vile kiln and he has no desire to reform her. Shatter and break to smooth out the imperfections into something- into someone- who was human.

Caim moves away from her unmoving form with a jerk.

She should’ve counted her seconds, because that was all the time that she had to live.

Caim picks up her discarded sword, curling his fingers around the hilt feels like coming home. From the cradle to the grave and beyond it seems that the only place Caim finds comfort is within the harm of others. Drawing the blood of his enemies and painting battlefields red. The comfort of a hidden campsite is the best home he knows. It is time to move on from here. Stumbling past the ruins of destroyed hallways and crumbling rooms he finds his way outside through the door hanging on only by the top hinges, the other one blocked with boulders of white stone and rusted shut.

As he emerges from these ruins he is met by a skull of the boy.

Emil.

Caim tastes blood coating the back of his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He slips into the dream of a world where he smells only blood and rot, well he sits on the back steps of the cottage the fool boy called home.

He has his sword pointed directly between the eyes of this skull and he finds that he cannot make himself finish the attack.

Arbitrary traits are bequeathed only to those most animalistic, it seems.

Chapter Text

Caim knows that he detests inaction and yet he finds himself frozen, still. It seems his distaste and this knowledge is useless when his legs will not move . Stirring a violent feeling in his chest and ladling soup into his lungs of needles and the feeling of a shockingly bitter and icy wind. His distaste morphs in his lungs and forms a hatred that bleeds into his sternum, sloshing and leaking out of their confines of which they were supposed to stay . 

It makes him feel unstable in a way. A way in which Caim finds he loathes, a loathing that is easily woven into a blanket of security that lets him finally move. His legs are finally ungluing themselves from their stationary position and he carefully sheaths his sword for a reason that is unknown to him. The first act, free from paralysis is to take a step, then two away and to the left of this skeletal head. He knows with a burning certainty who this is and yet he is reluctant to acknowledge it again. 

It seems there is something Caim has missed if there are golems running amok made from metallic alloy and this boy is just a head. Caim is in a position where the only path he considers to take is warily considering the still very much alive, decapitated head of Emil. It seems he is loath to find a new body and though it is female, Caim considers slamming the boy's head on the golems form. After all, the body is still usable, it is only the head that has been pummeled into disrepair. It is an idea worth having and one that Caim is unsure if he should shelf for now. 

Emil still hasn’t said a single word to him, only staring, unblinking upon his form. A form that towers over his disembodied head and yet he remains unfazed. It seems that there is a mettle to this boy that Caim had not realized. It seems this is a stalemate and Caim cannot speak, so thus it continues ever onward and just drags on. 

Finally, mercifully, the boy breaks this stalemate, “Who are you?”

It is an innocent question and one Caim cannot completely and wholly answer. 

It is fortunate, Caim thinks, that the art of sign language is the same between this world and his own. It makes it easier to answer Emil with little complication even if his wording is archaic. “Caim.” Is all he spells out for the boy's mind to chew on.

Perhaps this answer is frustrating to some extent as he can see Emil’s frown even if it does not present itself upon his face. For there is no way to paint facial expressions onto bones. Caim knows that his answer is dissatisfactory and the concern and burden that Caim feels at Emil’s confusion with the answer of only his name, is next to null. It is not his fault, after all, that Emil asked just a basic question that only required a name. Eventually, once it seems that Emil is done chewing on his answer and the dissatisfaction brought along with it, he speaks once more. His head rolls around slightly on the ground as if to signal his curiosity. 

“Caim? That doesn’t sound like the name of one of the YoRHa androids… or any of the androids, actually.”

“It’s not.”

“You don’t need to be so angry! I am not an enemy… though…” Emil trails off for a brief moment before admitting, “I know my appearance is scary.” It is almost like he is apologetic for the form that has kept him alive and Caim can barely hold back his disbelief that this boy would not be grateful, even if it takes a moment or two, for something that has saved his life on countless occasions.

Caim scoffs at this notion of fear. As if within the comedy of errors and tragedy that is his life that he would cower in fear to this boy. Heh, it is laughable afterall, if this insipid boy was a foe he would have been cut down long ago and Caim would already be on his way. To wherever his ‘way’ may be, most certainly not here. In all reality it wouldn’t matter if he crushed Emil’s skull into a fine powder, as it would weigh little on his mind. There would be no apocalyptic mark on history if he decided to destroy the Goddess Earth's favorite toy. That time has already long since passed.

“Then why is he not dead? Why is this simple slaughter not done?” A poisonous voice whispers in the back of his mind. A voice that sounds like himself and none other. He squashes it down and drowns it with the rest of the memories and thoughts he’d rather not examine too closely. For he fears they’ll cremate him and dust his ashes over a bloodbath if he attempts at any sort of introspection too closely. If he veers to close into this swamp he knows that he will drown. Even as he reflects that perhaps, once upon a time he may have drowned. The feeling of water brings him a special sort of clarity. And from the scant visits to the shore he had loved the ocean and more importantly he had loved the silence that the submersion beneath the waves had brought. He had loved the feeling of the water around himself and he had loved the peace that it had brought to him almost like it was a little present wrapped neatly and with a bow. Sometimes he thinks he’d love to drown.

This is a delusion kept alive before reality slaps him soundly across his face and he is reminded that one of the things he values most is self-preservation. It is better to live and adapt than to die. Fight and live or adapt and live- even adaptation is a battle that few survive. But it is better than the cowardness of hiding under the floorboards, in the wardrobe or in a cave. The cowardness of running away . Caim cannot stomach hiding and running for he knows that he’ll never outrun his past and nobody else can either. One lives and dies within the legacy they have carved out in the tapestry of life, even if their empire of blood and bones, gold or kindness never make their marks in the history books. 

Caim eyes the sentient ball of bone, who swivels to face him as he creeps around his head with lighter footsteps than of which he would usually have. Caim knows that he is not made for being or staying quiet, if not speech than his actions and movements. Caim is not a gentle being and this he knows well, a small and roaring part of himself wants nothing more than to kill. This small and little voice normally consumes him when he is enraged or in battle. When there are enemies around, there is no point in holding back when he can oh so very easily paint the field with slaughter. The feeling normally sends a riptide to his throat from his toes. He can always feel the blistering, burning and decaying, hell-bright blazing loathing settled in the Adam's apple of his throat. Something that easily cascades into a riptide, clawing its way up through his throat and into the back of his mouth. Ripping him to shreds, the same way a hundred thousand blades would, uncaring and unyielding as the fury chokes him with its disgusting, yet addicting, whip.  A scythe that is held to his throat in hopes of his renewal. Of a rebirth which will never come. It is the flavor of too ripe lemons, the taste is the same of the hope he once fostered, as if the long dead past is enough to score and scorch all of the sins and horrors that made home in his veins.

It is a feeling that, regrettably, all the alcohol and painkillers in the world can not cure or stifle or drown.

He should really put into practice all this loathing, wrath and hate that he nurses in his lungs and in his heart. It would be a grand sight more than rotting in apathy and inaction. Laziness is the greatest destroyer of things and the one that is most intoxicating to anyone and everyone. Unless they are like him and itch from unmoving inaction, unable to do nothing. Else they scratch out their eyes and rip off their skin. Flay themselves alive for something to do- for a sensation and a feeling and they sit there and expect these actions to matter to anyone. Anyone at all. Almost as if they had ever mattered at all.

Eventually Caim forces himself to answer, “I know.” Something simple and an acquiescence to the truth that he has turned biting.

“Time mourns all those that are lost and within time is when we all heal.” Echos in his head, these words voiced by a stranger of whom he cannot remember are gauging holes into his head. The picture Emil paints of a young boy who is still so sheltered despite the horrors he has lived through- the confusion that Caim can almost taste in the air is recklessly infuriating. It is within this horrifying and disgusting innocence that these words come back to Caim. Voiceless in their line, all he can remember are the words and not the speech. 

“Do you know who I am?” Emil asks him sickeningly innocently from the floor. His voice pulls across Caim’s ears like molasses and he finds himself reluctant to admit the convoluted truth. Yes he knows this boy, yet he refuses to say how. There is no holy grail of knowledge and acceptance awaiting the end of his long and winding tale. This is something that Caim knows with utmost certainty.

“No.”

“Oh, shame. I can’t remember anything, so I had hoped…” 

Silence. Caim does not know how to respond to this statement. He hadn’t thought that the Goddess Earth would have let Emil ever forget anything. Though perhaps it is because she is now dead and through this thought- true or false realization Caim does not know- he finds a pit of satisfaction open in his gut and almost swallows him whole. It feels like vengeance of a sort. Though it is baseless, it is satisfying.

Something that Caim digs his teeth into and locks his jaw, for he does not want to let go. It is so rarely that he feels anything like this sort of pleasure that he fixates upon it. Something that in the back of his mind with a voiceless whisper, he knows will make this joyous pleasure and vindication deteriorate faster than if he had left well enough alone. It is hard to care about this fact.

“Let's be friends!” The bones rattle up at him, “maybe I’ll remember something if we stay together. You feel familiar.”

Caim can only reluctantly nod at this pathetic sight and he picks up Emil’s head without pause. Letting out a harsh breath he moves them out of the rubble and into what seems to be only overgrown foliage and heat, turning what must have once been a home and a town into a jungle. He doesn’t wish to stay near the golem and he can only hope that they’ll find shelter for the night. 

When his stomach lets out a rumble of anguish, Caim amends his thoughts to food, as well. Shelter and some sort of sustenance is all they need. All he needs. Caim doesn’t think Emil needs to eat. It would all fall out of the base of his skull, after all. 

The boy is quiet as Caim picks his way through the twigs and the rocks. He finds a decent sized tree and places Emil there, not saying a word well he goes to hunt.

It passes by like a fever and Caim returns with nothing, even as he could have easily left the humming head there. Abandon the boy to which there is some sort of twisted obligation ravishing the back of his skull where his spine meets his eyes. Caim builds a fire and collapses next to it, the feeling of exhaustion tugs over his eyes and he is out in seconds. A blurry dream covers his mind and wraps him in a fog- or is it a memory? One he’ll surely forget in the morning. 

The scene comes in hues of burgundy and powdered dirt brown and red. He finds himself reacting with loathing, before caving to the scene his mind has conjured. Something to torture him with or something to please, he doesn’t know. All he does know is that it is intoxicatingly vile and he is nothing if not a glutton for his own agony and demise.

Slowly as he sinks into this dream Caim can feel her mouth pressed against his own, open-lipped and coaxing. She wants to delve deeper than what he desires- already he knows somewhere in the back of his mind that this… this love, these kisses, her touch and affection, is already crossing the line, and yet he cannot muster up any ounce of care. Care for what is wrong and care for the fear of what is taboo- what is vile and wretched and sinful. He cannot care when she coaxes him to pleasure on her own, her mouth traveling from his own and down his neck. Fingers splayed across his collar bone, pulling at the collar of his rough cotton shirt- one made for peasantry and war. He can feel fire coursing through his throat and pooling like lava in the pits of his abdomen. 

He knows, faintly, that loving him is rather similar to loving the dead- a corpse, he fancies is the best way to describe his affections for her. No, not just her, for anyone… anyone at all. Because he is rotting and cold, even with the scorching and searing fire working its way through his veins and his nerves, nudging his brain into foggy ineptitude and boneless stupor. Caim can feel his cock straining against his harshly woven pants, the kind used for training and mud, the kind that are uncomfortable because they are new. Caim can feel Furiae bearing down on him, her breasts pushing against his stomach as she moves agonizingly slow with her open-mouthed kisses, leaving a trail of saliva and rogue she has painted on her lips as she sluggishly works her way down. He is not and will never be comforting- so it comes as a surprise sometimes, that she chooses to do this. To debase herself with none other than him. 

She loves him anyway, even when he struggles not to see red. His breathing is rough and ragged, as she slides his shirt off of his shoulders undoing the fastenings; the lacings and the buttons. Her hands are gentle and she caresses his neck with her tongue. Moving away from the place he wishes she’d go. Perhaps she knows Caim is likely to never return after this upcoming battle- this siege. There is The Red Dragon and it is Caim’s mission to slay it like the monstrosity it is, even if the task costs him his life. 

“I love you.” She whispers, reverently, her breaths are coming out rugged, jagged and harsh. Perhaps there was no higher calling for her after all, he finds himself thinking. Indulging in the fantasy of a notion that her being the Goddess was a sham and a lie. That her only purpose and place would be on his bedside. There only to warm a freezing corpse. She is so slow and Caim knows that he shouldn’t move as it will spook her and she might skitter away- after all he is supposed to be asleep, after all. Yet the longer she takes the more will and force he needs to focus onto his hands to not drive her to his cock. The chaffing of his trousers is almost painful and he wishes little more, with a mind full of arousal and sleep, than to have her wrapped around him. Mouth or cunt it would matter little. 

His breaths are coming out sharp yet slow and he feels her fingers stutter as they reach his pelvis. It sends sparks through his nerves- dancing a sensation that is utterly intoxicating across his skin. He can feel her hesitation and his will is breaking- she started this and she will finish it. She was the one to engage within this dance with the dead. Perhaps a waltz with a carcass is the best dance she can hope for- the only one that she will ever have as her own. It is, in part, a depressing thought- one that does little, however, in dissipating the single minded lust that has consumed him. 

Caim feels her breath fan across his neck and he finds his will power snapping. The cobbled together splinters are falling apart and his hands twitch. There is a pause and she doesn’t move, though the action does lend her a pause. A pause for only a moment but it is far, far too long for Caim’s addled psyche. He wraps his fingers around her wrist, elisting a small little, ‘eep’ that only fuels the borderline painful heat in his gut. Pulling her hand to his cock, even above his trousers brings a sort of relief that has him grinding into her palm. 

Slowly, drowsily opening his eyes he sees her flushed face, enraptured. Caim can feel the heat of it all flushing up his neck and pooling into his cheeks, encompassing the entirety of himself. She can pretend that this is a waltz with someone living and not the almost dead, she is entitled to it after all.

Undoing the lacing on the waistband, he wraps her fingers around his swollen erection and only lets go when there is no shadow of a doubt that she won't let go. She is transfixed as he takes control, slowly pumping her fist around his dick, Caim almost loses himself in the friction. He is losing himself within false divinity and he doesn’t care in the slightest. The softness of her carefully sheltered palms is mouth-watering and he doesn’t care for her to stop. Pulling her to him he ferally rips off her clothing, caring little if the material is destroyed and unmendable. Buttons pop off of the skirt she has elected to wear and roll off into the night. The embers of a long gone fire smolder next to them and despite the openness they do no care. 

She is getting feverish and frenzied- eager to please and yet Caim rips her hand off of his cock and she peers up at him through her thick brown lashes and he forces her to her knees, standing up. Taking her jaw in his hand he forces her mouth open, a painful affair as he can see the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. He does not care. Pushing his way into her mouth she takes it willingly, her breasts covered in shining sweat as if she is some treasure and not currently acting as a whore. Caim gazes down upon her, lolling his head back somewhat and grabs fistfuls of her hair. He works her mouth along his length and drives himself into the back of her throat making her choke.

Caim hopes she enjoys the pain, after all, this is the devil that she invited in.

He has never claimed to be kind.

This is still but a waltz with the dead and though he is living, the harsh breaths that are leaving his mouth are almost as if they are the wind moving atop her, whispering in her ear and brushing her cheek. Even from down where she is drooling and struggling to breathe. Rushing roughly against her ear and sinking into her head, making her tremble and quake, her throat constricting against his cock as he drives it to the base. Though this is painful for her, she takes care to make sure that her teeth never graze. Only wrapping and sloshing her tongue around the underside, trying to make herself useful in a pitiful way. He knows she’s never done this- perhaps only studied in the dark of night. Indulged with the glow of the starlight and hid away her shame in the first rays of the daylight. Perhaps she pretended that his hands clutched at her body- her breasts and her ass just as desperately as hers are wrapped around his thighs. 

He doesn’t want to pull out yet he does as her eyes are beginning to roll back. So, generously, he resigns his pulsing cock to the shock of the night's chilled air. Expecting it to damper his arousal, somewhat, he is surprised when the wet popping sound of him pulling out, even as he was on the cusp of cumming, riles his lust and perversion up a couple notches more. 

This should be sickening and yet it is not. 

Caim only finds himself wanting more. In the same way a starved beast craves for meat. 

He lifts her up by her wrists, her eyes look doe like in the half-light of dying embers and he throws her to the ground, her breasts scraping across the dirt and the rocks. Pulling her ass towards him he drives in, caring little if she is ready or wet. He is shocked that she is soaking , her pussy greedily sucking him in even as he meets resistance in the way- pushing his way through signals the end of her expected virginity as the acting Goddess. There is blood running in rivets down her legs and she bites her lips to muffle a cry pushing herself up before Caim slams her head back down into the dirt. Leaning over her back and pushing himself further in, he hooks his fingers into her mouth and presses them against her right cheek as he rips her up. Her nose is running with blood and she is freely crying in pain as he rips her suddenly up by her mouth. The dirt is mixing with blood- smearing her face with mud and it only drives Caim to fuck her harder. 

His fingers find her tongue and he hooks it between his fingers forcing it outwards and out of her mouth. Her drool runs down her slick neck- already covered in saliva, sweat and mud. The slapping of flesh on flesh wakes no one- or perhaps they are all too cowardly to make their awareness known. Caim feels as if he is succumbing to madness but he discovers that he does not care one whit. For if it is madness of pleasure, even by the basest means- by the standards of the beasts, he would take it any day over the insanity of pain that haunts him every day. 

Caim feels her teeth press down for only a breath of a moment but the action enrages him and he  finds himself violently ripping his fingers from the caress of her lips and bunching up bundles of her hair. He rips her head to his chest and her back arches beautifully, her breasts are covered in scratches and he hears her cry of pain and he drives into her harder. Faster. Harsher. Her legs are quivering and yet she is moaning. Even through the agony that is loving Caim her wanton moans are ones of ecstasy and Caim wishes to make her cry . Whether it is in pleasure or pain is not important and he shifts his position. He drops her head and hair and in shock she falls with a thunk, not having expected him to let go. She lets out a little whine and her walls start to clench tightly around him as if she is afraid to let go. He flips her around and her back lands with a hard smack on the rocks and the dirt. She is looking up at him with wide eyes and her chest is rapidly falling and rising with her sharp and tangled breaths. 

Caim pistons into her as he grabs her breast pressing down upon her as if to impress upon her his dominance over every iota of her being. She accepts this greedily and she is pliable and willing to do anything, anything at all , to please him and her legs wrap around his back and her heels press into the flesh near the base of his spine. 

His hands slide down to her hips and he slams her against him in a way that stings , before she is finally tipping off of the edge and he follows soon after. 

When they wake up in the morning, she is already washed and freshly clothed and they speak nothing of it. Nor do any of the men that had shared their campsite. 

Caim cannot look at Furiae without thinking of the fact that he knows and that he indulged her whorishness. For all that she may try to hide it- to forget about it- he knows it was her beneath his sheets on that night.

He feels slimy and rank as his eyes rip open in the birdsong of the morning.

Chapter Text

It seems that there isn’t even a river around as to where Caim can wash away the grotesque nature of his sins. He feels vile and filthy as if he had just been bathed in manure and grime, though it’s not like anything of the sort has happened to him. Not really. The strings of sinew and silken swathes of skin that he had broken out of the earth within does not really count. Not in any sort of tangible way, after a point. The muddied blood and ravished flesh have fallen off of his form and dissipated into vapors and smoke, rejoining the atmosphere that is still a part of her. Even though he is free, no longer in her core she still affects him in these little itty bitty ways. She has shattered him into pieces, or at least, whatever was left of him.

He is, in the end, still haunted. 

It is humiliating, as Emil watches Caim itch his arms till they are weeping in silence. It is a way to remove the itching of the spiders resting just beneath his skin. The bugs and arachnids are scurrying along his muscles and burrowing beneath them to rest atop his bones. He itches with this feeling of disgust. Aimed somewhat unnaturally towards himself. It is not that he is a stranger to self-loathing, not at all, in fact he knows it well. It is the fact that when he is colored in with the feeling of infected yellow pus and vivid wicked green, it is not normally something that is directed at himself. The people around him, surely. However, Emil has done nothing but sit in silence, occasionally humming. Content with observing. 

It makes Caims teeth ache. 

It makes him want to lash out and hurt everything and anyone around him. Yet, when he makes the move to do so, he figures out quite quickly with the clarity of daylight that he doesn’t want to after all. The only person, if you could call him that, that he could harm is Emil and that writing and twisting part in the back of his mind that is eroding everything around it tells him that he cannot harm this boy. For he has done nothing wrong. Emil cannot do wrong, for he is too pure or some such similar nonsense and yet Caim finds himself believing this sentiment full heartedly. Emil is pure and Emil is good . He is everything Caim is not.

It is with shaking hands and pathetic whimpers mangled with cries that he manages to finally, finally ground himself. Caim breathes slowly in and releases this breath inch by inch from his lungs. He’ll breathe on, even if he is just living by doing whatever works. It feels like a betrayal to the deepest and darkest part of himself that he doesn’t lash out at Emil. There is a voice that sounds suspiciously like Verdelet, though Caim cannot figure out why . “Is that all you are? You’ve always been a coward.”

It sets every nerve within Caim on fire and he finds himself needing to move with a frenzy that isn’t normal with him. Caim loathes the small part of himself that agrees. There is a need churning in his bowels that desires nothing other than to blame someone for the creation of that little shard of himself that agrees. He is a coward and everything he has ever done has been done to avoid the core of all of his issues. He has always been hacking at the leaves of the trees and waiting for them to fall- as if that would do anything to them at all. 

Caim is not weak . He will continue to tell himself this until he eliminates any part of himself that believes this to be untrue. He is not a coward and he is not weak, not in the slightest. 

This feels like a karmic welcome into a world where he is a monster. 

Far too slowly Caim drags himself together. Pulling on the cords that collect the parts of him that make him, well, himself . Tugging until they are bundled so tightly together it chafes and hurts. It drowns out the part of himself that wants comfort. The ita of his being that crawls out in the middle of the night and is found wanting and wailing, with shaking hands and pathetic whimpers for that is all that he is. A part that Caim doesn’t desire to give more credence to and he would much rather watch it burn . Like a witch upon the stake he’d watch it like a spectile and cheer as that sliver of himself screamed . Consumed by the inferno that is his loathing, wrath and hate.

Even as Caim feels like a ravenous dog snapping viciously at a blood soaked string. Emil is a constant. Even as Caim packs up their meager possessions- things that are the barest of basics for some sort of survival he does it as if that sinew-y string is dangling in front of his saliva soaked mouth. Spit falling though his lips and running down his chin. Dropping with the lightness of raindrops and none of the soft, tender innocence. This string- getting away, moving, doing anything, anything at all. So long as it isn’t just sitting around is tantalizing and falsely divine for Caim. It holds no substance, however, and he is left hungry and wanting. No. Needing.

He needs to get out of here.

There are spiders up his back and he knows that there is someone watching them .

Call it paranoia if you must, but it is the paranoid that stays alive. Caim has been through enough war, treachery and bloodshed to know that this much is true. Frantically with the air of a fanatic meeting their idol, Caim carelessly bundles things together without an ounce of care if something rips or snaps beneath his hands. Scooping up Emil’s head in shaking hands he launches himself full-speed out of the roots and trees of the forest. He needs to find somewhere safer. Somewhere They wont find them. Though Caim does not know who ‘They’ are he finds that dread curls his toes and churns his stomach with nausea that sticks in his throat and makes his head dizzy and light with vertigo at the very idea of meeting ‘Them’. 

He knows that his gut instincts are not normally wrong, so he’s trusting that no matter who ‘They’ are They’ll only bring bad news. Nothing good will come of people who make every fiber of Caim’s being stand on end. It is almost like his flesh had met a cheese grater and he is living confined within the aftermath. Trapped within this pain, someone out there enjoys the fruits of his muscle, blood and bone. 

Perhaps that person is Arioch. 

Perhaps they are not, it would hardly matter in the end.

Caim pushes the thought aside, he shouldn’t be thinking about this. He should just ignore it and move on, like he is from their camping spot that he hardly remembers frantically erasing any traces that they were there from. Destroying the small fire and scattering leaves, debris or dirt to cover the tracks that they were ever there. Though the site is far enough away now that he could slow down pace, Caim finds that he doesn’t want to. It feels good to stay in motion and know that he is moving away from something he’d rather not confront. This feeling may be cowardly, yes, but it will keep him alive. This is something that Caim knows as surly that the sky is blue. 

So, naturally, he will keep running.

Emil is quiet, perhaps he knows that Caim is agitated and the smallest sound will set his nerves alight. It is only with his experience of battle that he does not fall when he hits the roots of trees breaking through the ground or ditches dug by animals that have long since stopped calling this place their home. Honestly, he isn’t even sure if there are any animals left in this world. This place has already experienced two apocalypses; it wouldn't be a stretch to say that only plant life is left. That plants with their tenacity are the only things that can remain.

When it hits the tail end of the day and the sky is darkening is the only time when Caim stops. Breathing heavily in ragged gasps he stumbles over to a small lake sitting next to some ruins. Staggering until he is at the shoreline he falls, hard and heavy onto his knees. Then his side and back. Relinquishing Emils head, he rolls gently away. 

Caim forgot that Emil can move on his own. 

It is a morbidly fascinating sight to watch. One that Caim feels off handedly guilty watching for reasons he cannot parse or figure out. After all it is not like he was the one who decapitated the boy. Emil being without a body is not Caim’s fault by any means. It would be stupid for him to think so, a twisted form of manipulation to try and pin that tragedy on himself. Caim knows this and yet, it does not stop the thrashing guilt, coiled in his stomach. It is gnawing at his ribcage as if he’ll ever let it out. 

When Emil rolls out of Caims' sight there is a stabbing flash of fear before his exhaustion numbs it. He had rolled his head to follow Emil’s movements but it was all for naught as the boy had left him for who knows what. It is distressing but Caim is far too tired to exactly care at the moment- even with the monster called Fear chewing and clawing at the bars that hold it captive. Ready to flood his mind and body with adrenaline at any given moment should he just set it free . 

Caim doesn’t want to set it free, for he knows it will consume him.

The moment he lets anything like that out of its cage, everything else will come with and Caim will be forced to deal with it all. He doesn’t much like the idea of confronting all of his demons- not here, not now. It would mean acknowledging that everyone he knew is gone now and it’s been that way for a while. Which isn’t something he thinks he can feasibly handle at the moment. He had come to terms with Angelus’ death, but facing the death of the world that he came from is different all together. 

He hopes that they are okay. 

Though that hope feels vile. It burns and pricks at the muscle of his lungs and sends thick and cloudy fog up his neck in a way that makes him choke. It feels like something that will inevitably let him down and yet he cannot help but drag himself further in- it is like a drug that he is drawn to. Addicted to from the first shot.

Caim loathes himself for this weakness and for a moment as he is left alone, the color of dark ink dyes his memories and now they are not rose-colored and lovely they are crumbling ash and charcoal beneath his grip. They feel the same way that tragedy does. The part of his mind that yells the loudest asks him, as he lies there, delirious; were things truly ever better?

Caim wants to say, “yes.”

But he discovers he cannot. His tongue is a useless stone in his mouth and will not move to form the words. His arms will not move and his mind is too numb. He cannot communicate this to anyone. That, once upon a time, things were better and he just wants to rest right now . Even as the only thing that the Goddess of this place has shown him is that he has been a monster from the start. Even monsters need to rest sometimes, right?

It is as Emil comes rolling back that Caim feels the tightness in his chest loosen. It is as if he had been a dying man submerged in water and has suddenly been pulled out. Though it is not with gasping breaths that he greedily drinks down fresh air. It is with the siren's song of sleep tugging at the corners of his eyes as he falls unconscious into some sort of not-quite dreamless sleep. Within this breath before the blackout he comes to terms with what he has always known. 

Sometimes it’s nice to have someone care .

Chapter Text

He still feels as if he is covered in slime and gore, molding into a pile of decay and rot. His tongue tastes of blood and vile and he cannot rid himself of the feeling of Furiae’s touch, wrapped around him in the most intimate way. It’s not as if he hadn’t fucked anyone before then, heavens know that he’s layed his fair share of women to bed, before and after the fall of Caerleon. But nothing had been quite like that and he finds himself trapped here, within this memory. Though this room and this field no longer exists he still finds himself confined within it. Buried alive and trapped, choking on the mud and dirt that signal his fall. 

 Clawing around him as if he’s been buried within a snow drift- an avalanche- and he finds that he’s been frozen. Solid to the touch- buried underneath this all ill, rotten and alone and there is some sort of roach on his spine and lavishing in the warmth that was left on his tongue. Burned and marked as it is, it still holds warmth, wet and moist he cannot bite down with a paralyzed jaw. He feels as if he’s going to be sick. There is spit trailing down his chin as Emil watches him attempt to rid himself from these memories, stuck to the sidelines for Caim doesn’t know nor care about anything he says. 

Emil says he feels familiar, what fucking bullshit. 

If Caim is only familiar through the twisted remnants of that son-of-a-bitch white haired boy, he thinks he might as well just up and fucking die. It is a pathetic and humiliating way to be viewed as comforting or memorable and Caim cannot buy into this comedy bit for even a second that he is any sort of charitable. Not that the Little Boy was either. 

With the stark white hair and thin, pale and tightly drawn lips. They might as well not have even ever existed in the first place with his permanent soured expression directed at close to everyone and everything. Perhaps he would have presented the viewpoint he wanted if he had traded them for skeletal teeth, bone and flesh melting and melding into one horrifying scene. They both embody something that some would call bipolar and others insane, but to Emil, somehow they are darling. Someone he has yearned for and longed for throughout the long and empty hours of the countless slowly dragging and passing nights.

Caim doesn’t know if he’ll care when he shatters this caring fantasy he’s sure Emil has built up about him. As he scavenges for food, berries or roots, he can feel a soft, subtle warmth pulsating off of the spherical bone that represents a kind, foolish kid. Though Emil doesn't talk to Caim much, he knows that some of the things he has done are unsettling to the boy. He’ll never say it but Caim can hear the unease loud and clear through stuttered hums and small, little jolts. 

Perhaps he’ll be more inclined to talking and keeping Caim sane, once he has a body of his own to stake claim.

It is turning out to be a slow process, making Emil a body that is not wretched. 

Time drags onward and Caim has yet to find another golem like her . He has yet to see anyone else besides the poor little piles of rust that dared to claim sentience and call each other companions. To speak words of pain when they are getting eaten alive through exposure to the rain and sunlight and sand. It feels strongly hypocritical of them all to pin their numbness as pain when he’s positive they cannot feel anything close to what real pain constitutes to being in the first place. 

It’s not like they have emotions, they are like the flocking idiots of his youth. The ones that are emulating the sick for the sake of the divine. Creating epidemics of their own volition, built atop their own psychosis. They trapeze in hysteria for the sake of making sure their ‘God’ and their ‘lives’ will stay. It is disgusting and Caim feels a rush of a misplaced vindictive pleasure when he hears the siren song of their false heavenly screams.

Maybe there will be a time for forgiveness, but it wasn’t then and it’s not now.

They have no right to cry out when he’s suffered worse. He ate the umbilical cord of a God so that he may usurp her. Even if the event is only recorded within his own wretched memory. He’s died a million times in hundreds of tiny, little ways, in every minute and every second of every hour and every day. He is not the same person he was less than a second ago. He has died sixty thousand times over to achieve this result and this status. And he will not let it be in vain.

They meander through thinning out woodland and rocky terrain as Caim finally meets the area where sand marries dirt. This place feels important, somehow. As if he is standing at the cusp of a historical monument, a depression of a memory or something like such. Similar to an impactful monument to those who have fallen for the sake of the rest.

But there is nothing here and for as far as his eyes can see there is only sand and more sand. It feels wrong to even set a toe in the land so he loops back around in hope of finding a far enough game. Something that is not fish, nuts or berries for if he must eat another root once more he might become batty. 

Thus it is with great relish that Caim finds himself killing again. Sure, it was only a lamb, but the action was the first form of taking an actual life from when he first breached the floor. This lamb was the first thing that was living and breathing, not made of metal and wire, that he has seen around. The only thing that would actually sustain him and keep him well fed. Even if it is through the haphazard chopping of its meat and its flesh. Its purpose is now fulfilled as protein for Caim’s diet. 

He thinks that he would have gone insane if the only things he could eat for the rest of forever were berries and nuts. Only plants wouldn’t have been fulfilling or wanted. 

Perhaps he could be growing into the mindset of understanding Arioch, just that little bit more. Even if the only thing they would have in common is partaking in the act of eating the flesh of their own same species. 

They would be cannibals together of different regimes, him to survive and her to play martyr. 

Eventually there is no more of a reason not to step into the ruins of the sand and he finally sets foot there. The task of building Emil a new body firmly fixed into his mind he sets off, once more. A rotting hope is burning in his breast that once Emil has a body there will be something more comforting and less weighted about having him nearby. 

Maybe it will finally take the toll off of his mind that his tongue is burning and melting alive every single time he opens his mouth in the little skulls direction. It feels as if he is consistently lying to the boy though he hasn’t said so much of a word to him in what is likely to add up to a month. Despite all of this melodrama and such it doesn’t mean that Caim doesn’t toil away until some sort of functionality that they agree upon has been built.

Chapter Text

It’s with a clawing, ravenous stomach and dripping, leaking disappointment that Caim eats the last of the mutton from that sheep. It’s still the only living animal that he’s seen around the surface of Earth and as he’s feasting upon the remnants of dried and poorly ‘packaged’ mutton, there is a moment where he wonders… 

Is this all that’s left? Did he just kill the last remaining sheep? Has he become the apocalypse and extinction for this species- is… is he all that’s left that is organic and not built from metal and wires? From synthetic flesh, skin and faulty memory cores? He’s heard of the stories behind the golems before and he knows how the fables say that they were made. From the Gods who’re long since gone, replaced by the newer, fresher and more savage blood. The ones that know how to make each and every cut sting as they aim to kill their predecessor's creation. 

Or- were they eternal and they just had come to loathe what they had made?

With the same sort of all consuming loathing that he found for every living, breathing thing that trapped him to Caerleon and the lands beyond. It is with a bitter tasting disappointment that he must let the fact that he cannot remember reign above his head. Swing its sword of hollow feeling forgetfulness that only makes him mad. Furious in a way that makes his tongue curl and his throat close in as he begins to choke . There isn’t a kindness in this world that could make the burning hatred for himself and his own faulty memory go away. Emil could fill Caims head with another one of his stories, ones of the likes that Caim knows well and the ones that Caim doesn’t know at all. 

He is intimately familiar with every single God damned fucking aspect of Emils sad and horrifically extensive, seemingly immortal life. Anything that Emil tells him as an anecdote that’s patented beneath his own name Caim already knows well even as he plays stupid as to not come off as creepy.

Because beneath all of his hatred and rage, loathing and longing- he still cares . 

He cares in a way that makes him want to do nothing more than rip his aching and rotting teeth out of his skull for all he knows that they are healthy if not entirely clean. 

It feels like all of time has slipped by him far too quickly, like slipping sand or fading, puffing and ghostly breaths in the crisp and cold air of winter. The seconds slip and fall crashing to the ground silently and dying without a sound. They end with a finality and they will never come back and Caim cannot help but feel that he’s wasted the sacrifice that time has given him. 

Disappointment scrapes at his rips and along the corners of his lungs as he settles into the realization, once again, that the meat is all gone. There is nothing left from the slaughtered little lamb- for all that the sheep had been fat and heavy an adult through and through it almost feels disrespectful to think of the animal as such. He isn’t quite sure as to how or why and dwelling on it further only makes him feel ill. 

The mutton from that woolen sheep doesn’t last long and neither does the wool. This is a fact that heHe’s no spintress or seamstress so the raw material rots beneath his care and vanishes beneath the care of Emil. Perhaps the skull has trapped the material within some sort of spacetime witchery or perhaps he’s done something else. Caim doesn’t know what the head has done with it and he finds himself far too disinterested in the actual answer to really ask. 

All he knows for sure is that there is a small and subtle, diminishing hope that Emil is keeping the wool for his new body. One that will be better than the fragile one of bone and magic that he had last. The one that had shattered beneath the grotesque generosity of the bottomless void that comprises Emil’s own horrific power. Consuming him to let him live, why it’s almost the same sort of deal that Caim had given Earth. Only his slaughter and destruction was for his own freedom, for he was never Earth to begin with. Only a parasite that was heartbreakingly familiar to this Goddess. 

He’s not even sure she’s dead or just recovering. There is a disgusting part of his mind that is so, so fearful that she’s going to consume him whole, once more. Trap him and warp him further than she already has. Into someone- something - entirely unrecognizable ravaged and destroyed to the point that he is unfamiliar with his own face. Even as it is still the one that he has had from birth and not some foreign… thing… that has been foisted upon him by a Goddess who only knows how to love through suffocating affection and adoration. 

Who only knows how to love and care and cherish in a desolate way now, for she cannot bring herself to create new life to replace the one that he and Angelus had destroyed so completely.

A slick and oily hatred rests, pooling beneath the muscle of his tongue. Sinking into the rest of his flesh and sliding down his throat in big slimy blobs and plops. Loathing is wetting his mouth and his lips so completely that nary a flick of flint against steel may set his innards ablaze. Part of it is corroding his mind and skittering along his nervous system from there carting along pulsing, aching self loathing. 

“What do you think of this idea, Caim?” Emil pipes up from where he’s been strapped to Caims back. Shaking him away from the reverie of being lost within his own mindless, sinking head. His thoughts are nothing but quicksand and it's best if he gets pulled out of them before he loses too much of himself within her gaping maw. 

She wants him back.

Desperately. 

He can feel her yearning push through the soles of his feet slowly like a gentle and soothing warmth. Seeping into him from the coil that she’s spiraled herself into to form the dirt and rocks of this world. Of this Earth that is not his own in any shape, way or form. He rips himself out of his thoughts, once more, so that perhaps he can be kept in a favorable view by Emil. He grunts in acknowledgment a wordless beckon for Emil to continue with his words. The desire to please him welling up from the back of Caim’s throat and spilling across his teeth, the mere idea of ignoring him feels like needles getting pushed beneath his nails and he’s reminded of how he’d loathe to disappoint the boy. 

“What if I became a car, instead of taking over one of the androids?” He chirps merrily, seemingly unseeing of Caims own inner turmoil and rolling, treacherous thoughts. 

Caim freezes for a second, his mind stuttering as he tries to recall what a car must be. He finds that he cannot remember- shame begins to blacken the earth beneath his toes and sweat is clamming up his palms in a way that makes him feel vile. Dirty and unclean, embarrassment is blooming up his throat in bloody blossoms and he’s reluctant to admit that he doesn’t know what a ‘car’ is. 

Emil, bless him, picks up on what the silence means, Caim thinks. Or perhaps he has some sort of spell that lets him read Caim’s mind- either way it lessens the burdens off of Caim’s own shoulders with needing to admit to such a stupid thing.

Only…

“It’s a good idea, I promise , Caim! I can be useful- carry around our things and we can go places a lot faster, too!” 

His hopes are crushed into dust the moment that Emil stops speaking. The boy hasn’t explained anything at all and with what he has Caim can only hazard a slapdash guess as to what he means. The momentary stop is overcome as Caim continues walking- his mind puzzling over what Emil must mean. His brows furrowed in concentration as he tries to unwind what Emil is trying to tell him. 

It’s almost dusk when Caim must admit defeat for the skull is speaking in riddles and they are ones that he cannot hope to decipher. His jaw is tense and sore from how tightly he’s been clenching his teeth together at the dawning realization that he’s going to need to ask what in the world Emil means by this fantasy of his.

He’s setting up camp in the ruins of some grandiose house or another- though it might be a library all things considered. What with the hardwood shelves towering to the sky even as there resides no books on them at all. There is a fire started in the middle of the marble flooring and it’s only after he’s settled down for a long night to unwind that he finally decides to bite the bullet.

“What are you saying; what is the meaning of being a ‘car’?” 

Emil blinks at him once, then twice. 

Almost as if he’s amazed that Caim has not grasped his bizarre meaning behind these words. It is as he explains bit by bit that everything falls into place to form a clearer picture. It- it’s not one that Caim can honestly say he likes for Caim is taken with the idea of Emil wearing the form of something more humanoid. And it seems that while Emil chains a heavy leash around the neck of his words he’s not going to listen to Caims wishes, this time. For Emil, himself, has evidently decided to play the contrarian and has become twistedly enamored and dedicated to the idea of becoming an autonomous carriage as of late.

Or perhaps… well. 

Has it been longer than that?

How long has it been since he’s conceived this curiously odd idea? How long has it been that he’s been clinging on to it as though it’s some sort of odd passion project, before he breathed a word of it to Caim? 

The more Emil speaks the more that Caim loses his willpower to say much against the idea. The thought that he’s too soft to speak his mind on the matter sends him spiraling, a little. Curses flail about in tiny mauls and gauntlet clad fists inside of his mind. Wreaking any sort of stability he might’ve formed since his escape from the Goddess Earth. He opens his mouth, his tongue almost ready to flay Emil to next week before his voice locks up and he finds himself unable to say anything and only just listen to the boy prattle on about his grand scheme and idea. 

“It’s not going to happen for a while though! We need to get the body of a car or something first!” 

Emil’s words bring him some form of small and pitiful comfort. That it's not like a carriage will be Emil’s new body for the foreseeable future or anything. For now. 

The reason why Emil is so set on this is beyond Caim, when they could much more easily claim an android body for the skull. 

He goes to sleep to avoid thinking on this much further.