Archive of Our Own ^beta

The small fire burned with crispy melodies in the middle of the small refugee of the two creatures. The fog surrounded them. Like an unearthly thin veil between the desolated darkness of the forest and the fire burning dormantly in front of them.

Ash watched it, though all he saw were abstract hues of yellow and orange.

He heard Gear stab pieces of meat into sticks, though all he listened to was the way the psithurism accompanied the crackling of the fire with a sublime tune; a gentle note that caressed his ears like a soft whisper spoken into it. A whisper of warning that they ignored. A whisper of help that they disregarded.

The crescent moon stood high into the sky. A sky with stars swallowed up by blackness. A sky blanketed by scattered dark clouds, that floated in a miridical air of mysteries and secrets thrown over the entire ambient. Like a barrier Ash begged and implored for protection against the tenebrous susurrus inside his head, and the foul sensations of bloodthirst crawling up his spine, creeping along his arms and scratching at his throat with demonic nails.

He gulped, but it burned. He palmed at his arms, but they formicated him with the gore desire. He tried to blink, to bite his tongue, looked from the werewolf to the miasma of his mind. And everytime, he failed. Everytime, the distractions rejected his silent call for help.

Owls spoke and crickets sang. Bushes trembled with the small nocturnal animals moving from side to side. The smell of nature complimented the one of cooked meat that Gear made, but it tickled Ash’s nose with fragrances of unease only the moon noticed. Just fragments of an idyllic atmosphere that hid mordacious sentiments underneath the cold skin; only striking to get out of his mind and body, only dispiteously lying on the verge of his sanity; twisting it and ruining it to their own malicious liking.

And every crick became an insult. Every breeze became a kick, and every loamy scent became a veil of the odor of death and decaying dreams.

He hoped that nature’s duet of smells and landscapes could become his soul haven and turn his suffering into an ephemeral ache. But the demon still teared holes into him in search of a ray of freedom. And Ash fought against it, against himself for a sparkle of peace and a glimpse of relief. He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists into his clothes as subtly as he could. Tensed his body and bowed his head just to keep all monsters within, just for Gear to not notice his lethargy. Just for that inner demon to stay in the dern world of his mind. Even if he tortured him, even if he pulled him into that darkness stained red that stole away from him the irenic hope he held onto.

As long as no one entered this blasphemic punishment with him, Ash didn’t care. As long as his walls stood high and mighty with the perseverance to not let anyone in, he didn’t care.

However, Gear noticed him from across the fire’s flames. Every wrinkle of worry on his face. Every crease of fear near his mouth. Only Gear stopped from roasting the meat in order to study his deplorable state, and only Gear dared to sigh and call his name in a tone so low and raspy that it almost molded with the night’s symphony.

“Ash?” Ash only raised his eyes, and watched him through the flames, mesmersised by the reflection in Gear’s golden eyes, by the contrast with the fire blending in with that yellow shade as if they were immediate soulmates. An innermost ambiguity searching for his secrets and looking for his reticence in comparison to his red ones shining like the soul of the fire. And when Gear spoke, his voice sounded like a enchanting melancholy over the fire’s roars, “Do you need blood again? Wasn’t the one from four days ago enough?”

Quivers electrocuted Ash’s spine and his head raised. Eyes blinked wide for a spasmic moment and he witnessed Gear’s acridity with eyes empty of any light or any hopeful thought. They reflected the exhausting emptiness within him, the languor and the timor. It wasn’t enough, he thought. It was never enough when Gear’s blood had the flavor of a wonder for the beast. It wasn’t enough when the moon shined so bright in the sky that even the clouds seemed to fade under her majesty.

Ash averted the werewolf’s gaze before he could read his pain and his inanimate spirit. Gear’s eyes have always been too intense for him, too powerful and too sharp for him to handle. They pulled and snatched the secrets from Ash as if he were just a mere puppet under the spell of a puppeteer. His eyes hid from Gear’s glare, but found a small tree branch by his own foot. It looked as miserable as him, he thought. Shabby and dirty in ways only time and life could do. Has the rain broken it the way his inner demon broke him? Has the wind thinned it the way his inner demon thinned his mind?

“It’s him again.” he muttered in a croaky voice, head bowing until his hair hid his troubled eyes in a curtain that only obscured his misery. Like a delicate blanket used to hide the biggest sin, like the smallest drapery covering the biggest secret.

Gear frowned, freezing, reflecting over words with a piece of meat stuck in his mouth, “It’s weird so early.” he thought out loud, looking away just to stir the fire with a stick. “He’s usually calm for about two weeks after you drink blood.”

Silence swallowed Gear’s sentences. A silence faintly caressed by the night, by the bonfire, by ruffling and whispers stirring ghosts of other worlds. A silence where Ash contemplated and overthought thoughts that only drowned him in the darkest of mental waters. Questions that weighted, insecurities that scraped at his brain. Would it work? Would it be possible? Was there hope for him? He asked himself, before hoarse words escaped his tight mouth; house of sorrows so high he felt them strangling him with hands made of tears and the texture of primordial failure.

“Can’t you try another magic cure of yours?”

He couldn’t see Gear looking at him, yet he felt the intensity of his stare in the crown of his head, where it laid for so long that Ash could nearly feel the thoughts Gear telepathised to him. He felt the exasperation, the pity, frustration and disappointment.

He felt it all until Gear lowered his gaze on the meat at his feet. He listened to Gear moving, cutting, grunting and stirring the fire with irregular moves. He waited in that enigmatic silence and that dim illumination like a silly pup abandoned in the rain who still waits for its family to come back. He waited for a confirmation that could lift him up or a contradiction that could knock him down.

Then he heard Gear's voice, blunt and clear. “You know it’s impossible.”

He twitched at the reminder, with the taste of defeat fresh on his tongue as he licked his front teeth. He knew. But he didn’t want to let go of that hopeless hope he was holding onto, so desperately, so horrified with the hands he watched unclenching and clenching into fists. He didn’t know where to direct his focus, didn’t comprehend the existence of other chances nor the possibility of another aim.

And in spite of his expectations, Gear’s reminder turned into an obscurity that hugged Ash with the most gentle punishment inflicted on his conscience.

“You almost died,” a pause, “when we tried to pull the rest of him out.”

He tensed his shoulders while the words got carried away by the gentle wind. Lips pressed together and jaw tensed when the monster chuckled at him. A faint sound, a short key muttered in his head until Gear’s voice spoke again, “All you have left is fight it, and win it. Accept it.”

Fight it, he retorted in his mind. But how? How could he fight when he feared facing his demon? How could he fight when just the thought of being surrounded by all those repulsive feelings and memories horrified him? How could he fight and win when shabby chains kept him captive and sharp nails lacerated his mind, his veins and infected his blood with the poison of a madman? How could he win a lost fight?

He grunted, getting Gear’s attention. The werewolf glanced him earnestly; reading Ash’s unbalanced body language. He spoke, predicated and scolded with words Ash blocked, with sentences he couldn’t hear over a blank turmoil that menaced to consume him.

But he kept reminding himself, at every twisted thought, every sanguinous urge and every self mutilation he unconmciously left on himself. He just kept on reminding himself of the same lie he repeated like a hex.

“I’m human.”

Gear glanced at him, with perforing eyes that seeked to find a core of light; of hope for one’s own acceptance. He looked in Ash for the resilience to reach his hand towards those things. However, he saw nothing but a pitiful sight of a newborn creature running from its own new skin. Its own new self. Pathetic, he thought. Pitiful, he realized, yet confusing, he decided.

“Then what’s the problem?” he voiced his thoughts.

A short silence fell upon them. A silence that intimidated even the soft crackling of the fire and the quiet duet sang by crickets and owls. They faded, they fell into muteness, they watched. And just as silently, Ash replied, as if spitting all the venom simmering inside of him.

“I don’t feel like one.” I feel like a decaying corpse, he wanted to add. However, his words weighted so harshly on his throat that they knotted together. He swallowed. It didn’t go away. It grew with the anxiety, expanded with the depression and changed colors with the anguish. It became as black as the memories he tried to remember and bury six feet underground at the same time.

He felt like the remains of a human. A nothingness voidly of a description. An abomination of varying theories, legends and myths.

“Why?” was the werewolf’s question, spoken in a bored voice. It stirred Ash. Made his jaw twitch and chest agitate with a frustration he despised. Gear didn’t understand him, he realized. Didn’t understand the fear, the suffering, the sleepless nights he spent contemplating futile ways to die. The days he wasted in cold sweat trying to chase a faith that turned its back on him and watched him with murderous grins.

Gear didn't understand.

“Humans don’t drink blood, Gear!” he snapped, with words smeared by acid and his head burying even deeper in his chest. A few night birds flew through trees at the volume of his voice; a volume that exteriorized his inner anger and frustration. All the despair and fright he carried and laid just above the surface of his skin, just like bugs gathering for a feast.

He heard Gear stand up. Heard his steps tickle the ground as he walked closer to the vampire. Ash only noticed the lower part of Gear's legs before he sat next to him, so slowly that Ash held his breath until he couldn't see the werewolf in their new position. However, both their eyes stayed on the calm fire burning the old wood. Ash searched into the flames the words to convey and Gear reached for the expectancy to get his partner to listen.

“So?” Gear nonchalantly started, “Having urges doesn’t make you human anymore? Maybe they don’t drink blood, but they eat animals, and you still consider them humans. They hurt and kill each other for pathetic reasons, in the most gruesome ways, and you still consider them humans.” he growled, then leaned to throw other wood into the fire, far enough so that his back faced Ash. “What’s the difference between us and them?” Ash stayed silent, gaze alternating between Gear's back and the fire. “If you can’t see yourself as human anymore, then don’t. Let that part of you die and work on building a new you.”

Shock engulfed Ash’s veins in a warmth that made his eyes widen, and his mouth part in a small gasp as his head raised at the werewolf. Gear didn’t look at him. Didn’t move more than a hand that still stirred the fire as he greeted Ash with the back of his head painted by the flames, in a glow that bleached the black of his hair and surrounded him in dim mystery.

“The new me?” Ash voiced incredulous, with disgust lingering over his next question, “You want me... to build a monster?!”

“If you want to see it like that…” Gear spoke unfazed, before looking at him over his shoulder. He watched him expressionless for one moment, though his eyes told Ash all the words Gear’s mouth didn’t dare say. The understanding that sparkled under the flicking of the fire. The compassion that shined, the care that glimpsed. They resented but pain in both his lives. As words represented the reason for his death.

He tensed at the memory, biting his tongue with a futile dream of controlling the amalgamation of thoughts and feelings conflicting inside of him. Actions brought him peace of mind from a wounded perspective, but they were things that consumed Ash. Things he never knew how to react to.

He looked down in thought, and noticed from the corner of his eye how Gear looked at him. How fixed and etched, how profound and engrossed his eyes were. Ash gulped, and his lips slightly parted without any sound to come out. When he looked up, Gear looked away. His golden eyes stared into the red hues burning orange. “If you want to see it like that, then yes.”

A gasp scraped the air between them. A deep inhale so quiet that even the white noise nearly covered it. Only then, when that little breath dissipated into the cool air, did the vampire dare to speak.

“You don’t understand.” he hissed through a suffocating exasperation. “You don’t understand. I don’t want to be in this skin!” he admitted with all the disgust, repulsion and repugnance he held inside. He yelled that phrase with all the bugs crawling up inside his veins, under his skin, with the ferocity that made him nail at his arms. He spat those words with the affinity of his stomach contorting and his chest twisting all his nightmares of caustic touches and venomous lies. In all that chaos, he only had one wish; a wish he whispered so brokenly that even himself failed to hear it as more than a dream.

“I want myself again.” Which part of himself, he didn’t know. The part that wasn’t damaged? He didn’t remember it; didn’t remember its existence nor its memory, as faint as it may have been. The part that wasn’t battling itself? The part that didn’t know the rawness and the rancuor of having its own home abused again and again, until only a cold void remained? Because this is how he felt, this is how his body felt. Like a destroyed house with stains of stolen innocence dirtying the floors and blotches of abuse tainting the walls. Or did he miss the part that lived in fear, waiting for the next catastrophe to destroy yet another part of himself? Or the part that was yet blind to all these feelings maybe? The part that buried everything under fake happiness until he believed his own lies?

Did he even need those parts of himself?

Gear’s eyes softened just in the slightest, similar to a phantasm appearing like an illusion as his mind succumbed into the similarity of his own despair on the full moons. But he had no comfort, no human compassion to offer. He looked down, he looked away. He quivered and he stiffened. He walked towards Ash and he stopped by his side. Then he raised his hand above Ash’s head, from behind, with no plan in his mind, yet so many heart beats warming his chest. He stopped barely inches from Ash’s blue hair, but had no sweet words to voice. He watched the depths of the forest like a reverie, hoping to find in it the coziness it offered to his soul. He watched it as if begging it and threatening it at the same time.

Until his hand slowly lowered and the hair strands tickled his fingertips. And he lowered it slowly, carefully until his palm felt it too. He put his hand on Ash’s head; a touch so soft that Ash felt the warmth of the hand propagating on his scalp more than he felt the actual touch. But his hair was mellow, Gear noticed. Cold and dainty like the owner.

The owner who tautened at the suddenness, eyes widening just in the slightest, only until he heard Gear’s words reverberating next to him like bad news received on a phone call. They fell on him like heavy clouds, taking away his breath, his judgement to rationalize past the mantra of the words screaming in his ears, past the wall they built around him and kept him trapped to relive the same sentence and the same sensation on repeat.

“You’re not going to go far on this path if you’ll walk it with this mentality.” he spoke. Then, he turned, and walked the few steps towards the fire, letting his hand linger just one last second into that warmth, as a forbidden wish of having it encrypted into his heart like a nostalgic memory, “You gotta heal that.” he added, crouching to stir the fire.

Ash watched his back with a hard stare, for moments that the pain of the bloodthrist stole away from him.

“But how…” he whispered to himself. How does he heal something he can’t remember? How does he heal something so deeply hidden and oppressed that even his heart refuses to acknowledge this aftermath? That even his heart is foreign to those ghostly dark feelings that haunt his mind like a residual energy of a murder mistaken for a dangerous ghost.

He didn’t know where to dig to find the cursed treasure within him. Was it his dark mind? Was it his cursed heart? He didn’t know what exactly to heal to taste the internal freedom. Was it the betrayal? Was it the abuse? Was it the discrimination? What could he heal if everything was broken? How do you even heal something that’s independent of you? Something that lives within you, that shares one body with you and provides you with the life you dispise so ardently? Can you heal something that cages you in eternity and offers you sorrows even the shadows fear?

The pain answered. Sharp in his throat; like one hundred bees stinging him at once. Like boiling water scorching it from within. He held it with his hand, but only uselessness looked at him. He swallowed the burn in his throat with disgust, and all he received was a cloud of depression falling over his head; clinging to it like a leach on a bloody hand.

He clenched and unclenched his fists, clicked his teeth just to cicatrize those internal wounds. But they bled on the outside, like a droplet of rain over a wounded soul in search of cleansing their dreadful agony. Heat engulfed his body with the promise of a fever. The burn and the sting traveled down his throat, traversing his chest like a worm covered in needles, taking away pieces of his cells and muscles. He chewed on his lips to keep quiet, ravishing them until they turned chapped and inflamed. His thumbs grazed the skin around his nails, ripping it, slashing it with the demon lurking with the essence of death behind him.

“Ash?” Gear called him, making the vampire raise his head as if he just pulled out of the water and he tasted air again. Gear regained his place across from him, Ash observed. Gear squinted his eyes at him, but laid all his questions and answers into a piece of cooked meat stabbed by a stick that he handed Ash.

The vampire gulped at it, eyeing it terrified how tiny red bubbles boiled on it, resembling his darkest frights and trepidations. His throat clenched when he tasted its perfume; so sour and sweet, matching the sanguinous image that froze him in the same dread he’s been fighting with clenched teeth and a strenuous tenacity transfixed by the voracious appetite he hated. “You left blood on it again.” he pointed out, as he took the stick with trembling hands.

The warmth that the meat emitted down his hand made him melt, relax in a way that made him exhale through his nose. Yet, as his eyes still looked at the bloodied meat, his breath hitched, throat clenched and chest tightened. He breathed roughly, silently gasped a helping signal that got caught into the knot in his throat, and muted by the fire and nocturnal nature. He gaped at the blood on the meat as if it resembled the tastiest drug. You can’t escape the fascination for death nor the deception of the false contentment. You’re scared, you’re worried. But it feels good. It calls you, yet it pulls you away.

The demons tempt you, yet the fear of losing control blocks you.

“I’ll go to sleep.” came Gear’s reply, like a glass of cold water over Ash’s disturbed mind.

And indeed Ash had to watch Gear turn on him and retract into their tent; leaving Ash with the stench of blood whistling under his nostrils and the flames that waltzed in front of his eyes like a mocking dance a demon would haunt you with.

“Such a pain…” he grimaced as he looked away, trying to let himself get lost into a dark landscape that revealed only darkness, and a fog so thick that it twinkled into the dim light of the fire. His hands shaked with the force applied into the grip, and he squinted at the food like a wounded animal; from the corner of his eyes, with his fangs in sight just over the corner of his bottom lip. He didn’t want it. Didn’t want that blood that boiled on the surface as if it laughed at him. He didn’t want that fragrance that tickled his nose like a capital sin. He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t look at it anymore, couldn't smell it anymore, couldn’t keep it near him anymore.

He threw it into the fire.

He heard it scorching, smelled it burn and watched it burn. It wasn’t enough. The nightmare still ran free inside of him. He felt numb to a pain that trapped him in the dark with invisible chains. Even the smell and the melody of nature failed to enter his obscure room of the heart and sooth the mist of his traumas.

Nature’s melodies turned into white noise. The white noise became emptiness. The emptiness turned into numbness. The numbness became insanity. An insanity that controlled him; stole his body and abused him into loneliness as he abruptly stood up and ventured into the obscurity of the forest. Behind the first tree that could hide him from the eyes he couldn’t see. Sitting on the soil that could let him disintegrate into his own misery.

And his hands sunk into his hair. His nails perforated his scalp, in search of a relief that he knew he couldn’t have. Unless he gave in to his urges. Unless he accepted the part of himself that he hated the most. Still, his nails scratched and mutilated the skin as ferociously as the inner pain butchered his mind and heart; his innocence and his life. He grunted; in pain, in fear, in an agony and a despair so intense that his own breath got lost into the little lurid dance his thoughts and emotions engaged into.

They twirled and swirled with his need, his hunger and thirst until they pushed him into its malefic arms owned by madness. Was this fear he was feeling turning in his stomach? Was it hurt? Was it anger?

Then it happened. So harshly that couldn’t even fight against himself. So fast that he didn’t even realize that he lost.

He lost.

His fangs sunk into his own wrist. They perforated it, with the roughness of the monster fighting within him for freedom. The freedom that Ash denied him, until he could no more.

His own blood broiled his throat. It toxified his mind and intensified his self disgust to the point where his face contorted, to the point where new inner monsters creeped onto him and tickled his whole body with a resentment that made him let out the most broken cry of pain. And he cried. He cried to the moon, to the night, the cloudy night, the trees and the entire forest. Because no one ever noticed him. No one ever looked his way when he walked the streets with the gloom hand in hand. No one ever heard him and his alews.

But Gear heard him. He smelled him. He heard his quiet sobs blending in with the symphony of the nightly nature. Smelled his blood staining the freshness of the woods. And upon opening his eyes, he noticed his absence into the empty space in the tent they shared.

He sighed. “Not again.” he mumbled, sitting up and grunting at the chilly air hugging his shoulders and back immediately, “It’s the second time this week.” he stood up, shivering at the cold.

Getting out of the tent, he first noticed the fire dying down; burning so faintly as if it got lonely. Struggling to keep on burning the little branches around it as if trying to show its usefulness. It burned small, yet steady. Courageous and nice until Gear took only one hand of wood from his tent and threw it over it. The flame that rose blazed like sincere thank yous. Sincere enough for Gear to use its light to look around.

Where shadows claimed the trees. Where the night hugged her children and the moon hid under a cloudy blanket disturbed only by the illumination of the fire.

His ears twitched at the muffled sounds of agony echoing in the sinister atmosphere. Just like a faint song whispered in the distance. You’re almost unsure whether you heard it on not, yet your mind races with possibilities and your instinct dwells in intrigues. And Gear’s gut feeling reacted at the silent whimpers in a way he hoped it wouldn’t; in a way that slinked into his chest like cursed water in an untainted land.

With the sharp smell of earth and grass in his nose, Gear’s eyes searched through the trees, through the bushes and through the shadows for any movement or any familiar figure, His ears listened through the melodic talks of the night for the subtle cries faintly whispering for him, for someone, for a help that he’s always denied and refused even through the harshest torment his mind and body used to assassinate him.

Gentle steps guided him over crunchy leaves and fragile sticks, that dueted with the eerie song of the owls. And with every forestry wind, Gear’s mind wandered. Like the tenebrific ambient leading him with palpitations of fear towards a doom he secretly prayed to never encounter. Never again. Never again he wanted to experience the anguish of defeat and impotence.

But as the trees became fewer, his nerves became more. The moon caressed the grass and mud with a mystic light that softened his harsh gaze and soothed his frightened soul enough to permit him to find focus between his mental blue clouds.

He walked the path in silence, with the animalistic cries of his heart in his ears. With his jaw clenched, his fists tight and his back straight.

“Ash?” he called. Groans and grunts of pain reached his ears, like an unconfundable cry in an empty house. He walked, looked around, tried to calm his palpitations and keep his breathing under control.

Then he saw him. Beneath the shadows, underneath the desolation.

His skin turned cold with unease; like a flood of perturbation sinking his mind into a vivid nightmare that worked in slow motion. His breath got stuck in his throat with every stroll his mind took through the horrors he feared the most, while his body bathed into the feeling he hated the most. It was the thing he’s always pushed away, hoping for it to disappear on its own, to dissolve into a memory riffled by a spring breeze.

Helplessness.

The failure of protecting and the helplessness of fixing engulfed him into a maze of dirt that he pushed even deeper inside, hoping that it will one day rot or heal by itself. It digged tunnels inside of him, infected his veins and arteries with misery and rage. But he forced it away. He casted them, sealed them in the darkness of his being and convinced himself to forget, to deny. Turn them to ash and let them flow somewhere far away. It will be ok, he assured himself, as he forced everything in and rushed with determination towards the vampire; towards his friend and companion who stood behind a tree, curled into the blackness like a dying creature waiting to be forgotten.

The hood of his cloak hid his head and kept away from the sight his misery. His shoulders trembled with the spasms of his cries, and his feet occasionally flinched with each jaded sob, leaving behind rugged lines in the dirt.

“This stupid cat.” the werewolf hissed, walking towards Ash with steps as heavy as the emotions spreading within him, with a new kind of fear that reflected his eyes upon taking a peak at the dilapidated creature.

Because he’s seen Ash scratch at his skin, he’s seen him harming himself, sleeping, crying, screaming and imploring mercy so, so many times. But Ash’s despair never pushed him as far as to bite himself and drink his own blood.

“Ash!” he shouted, but Ash didn’t hear. He kneeled in front of him and snatched his hand away from his fangs, but Ash didn’t react. How could he when the parasite inside of him came to life again? How could he when he felt his rationality slip away between his fingers? How could he when the vitality of the demon within him fogged his world?

Blood dripped from his wrist and from his open mouth, staining the corners of his lips with the essence of the monster he became. A grotesque sight that stirred in Gear new feelings that tightened his stomach in a way he felt the old ones be devoured and swallowed. He felt the warmth of Ash’s blood slowly kiss his hand; sliding down in such a mesmeric way that Gear observed it for a moment. Sliding down so enthrallingly as if trying to unify their hands. Yet, so slow, as if shy to do it.

“Ash, you idiot.” Gear cursed, frowning at him as he brought their joined hands a little bit closer to his chest. They felt sticky where the blood dripped, and petrified in the areas where the blood dried, though his mind registered it as a mystical rope tying them together in the prayer of union, “I told you to come tell me when you need it, didn’t I?”

Ash didn’t look at him. He couldn’t through the haze of his delirium. He couldn’t through the layers of shame falling over him. He didn’t want to when the guilt binded his throat. And especially not after hearing the disappointment in Gear’s voice. So his head stayed lowered, with his hair covering the void stare pointed towards his knees, that unfolded to him the mistakes staining his clothes and hands red.

“C’mon, hurry and have some of mine.” Gear ordered as he revealed his forearm. Goosebumps decorated it as soon as the chilly air embraced it, but Gear didn’t flinch, didn’t move nor hesitated to bring it in front of the vampire’s face.

Ash gulped the heavy lump in his throat as he pushed his head deeper into the trunk tree with the most terrified expression Gear has ever seen on him. The sight of clear skin tempted him, it tempted the monster inside. It nudged his urges to lengths that ustonated him. Tortured his body with such deep wounds that even the self hate faded before the misery of consuming what disgusts you.

“Ash, stop this.” Gear scolded, hand curling into a fist, “For how long will you run in circles? You know you can’t run away from yourself. Accept that the old you is dead already!” a smack on the side of Ash’s head accompanied Gear’s taut voice. It forced the vampire to bow his head; in shame, in misunderstanding, in a frustration so thick that its intensity electrocuted his spine and arms and his jaw clenched with built up pain.

He wished he could let the fog swallow him. Erase his memory like the mist erased evidences of nature’s mistakes and violences. He swam through a velleity of the night to bury every sign, every scar adorning his body, every thought that didn’t belong to him, every desire and urge he deemed foreign and every taste left in his mouth that displeased him to the cores of his being. He longed to run away, to disappear, to fade away and be forgotten. He yearned for death. He wanted to die and he wanted to yell it into Gear’s face.

He didn’t.

Instead, he sighed through his nose, and mumbled an empty response.

“It’s not… that.” it was more; so much more, so much darker and so, so heavy on him that no words, and no kind of art will ever be able to describe it. It went beyond suffocating feelings, uncontrollable cries and death wishes. Beyond numbness and beyond emptiness. But the monster strangled his voice and forced him to silence once more.

And yet, Gear squinted his eyes at him, before speaking with the voice that Ash hated. The voice that reminds him that his humanity surpassed the stage of evanescence.“What is it then?”

Another gulp, another attempt to hide his face from his partner. Other nerves from Gear, other words swallowed by Ash. Other sinking thoughts, other moments of Ash feeling trapped in a sick mind with no hope for a stable cure, with no chance of a permanent peace. He felt chained by invisibile demons biting off pieces of him at every move done, at every word spoken, at every emotion felt and at every thought had. Mini demons born from nightmares of reality. Mini demons at the mercy of the one having home inside of him like a deathly parasite; a parasite that killed him so slowly that he could feel himself decay and disintegrate within his own fear and his own calamity.

His lips chewed on each other at the corroding thoughts, making Gear narrow his eyes at him and at the way his body stiffened. At the way his fingers fidgeted, the way he swallowed several times, the way his toes curled and moved inside his shoes and the way his teeth gritted as if he was trying to eat himself off, as if trying to eat that hunger that gnawed on him.

“Ash.” came from Gear; something as scolding as the hand he pushed onto Ash’s forehead to tilt his head, until the back of it touched the trunk of the tree. It was cold, Ash noticed. Rough parts punctured his head and he groaned a grimace as he tried pushing through Gear’s hold to look down; to hide himself in the obscurity of his hair again.

Because letting Gear see him so miserable, so weak; so pathetic and disgusting just gave power to his inner monster. Like the memory of the events that changed him. Like the realization that once he was human, he was normal; then something happened and it changed him. It killed him and let him stare helplessly at the putrescent recollection of the boy with the smile made of sunshine and moonlight.

“I hate it.” he grunted as he looked down; just to hide the distressed expression in his eyes, as trembling lips confessed with words laced with acid. “I hate how… he slowly turns me into a monster, Gear!” he yelled, hands snatching away from Gear to sink into his hair, so atrociously that his nails scratched his scalp, “I don’t want to be with myself. I don’t want to be a monster, I don’t-”

Gear slapped him. A slap so strong that it turned Ash’s head to the side, forcing his hair to hide the darkness on his face. A slap so heavy that it weighted on the beast inside of him. A slap so hard that its echo lingered in the air and froze them both for a few moments drown in languor and lethargy.

Ash stared at the ground and at the little messy patterns of dirt it contained. Gear looked to the side; at the sinister forest witnessing them. At the shadows spying on them. The darkness inspecting them. And when he spoke, he peered at the steam leaving his mouth.

“That happens because you’re weak.” he told him, “if you’ll keep on running away from thinking your thoughts and feeling your feelings, how can you expect change?” his eyes fell on Ash’s bloody wrist laying on the ground. He fixed it with compassion laced within anger. His lips tensed at the blood, at the wounds, at the proof that his partner needed him and chose to run away. Again. And he laid there powerless against Ash’s self negligent choices. Because, after all, he couldn’t help Ash unless Ash wanted that help.

But he didn’t, Gear read in Ash’s ensanguined hand. And his heart contracted as if clamped by a cocoon of barbed wire with every passing moment he observed the proof of another failure.

He grabbed the vampire’s hand in his; quietly, and so delicately that his fingers had to curl around it to keep it from slipping away. He observed Ash's painful grimace, analyzed his silence and his muscles tensed with agony. And he knew; he understood what Ash needed, he understood that he tried to run away, to block his thoughts and the lacerating burns within his body.

He understood because, he too, has felt that kind of pain. He too felt the agony of the self disgust and the despair of the fear of himself. He also understood what Ash needed. He understood when he needs a good slap and when he needs to forget. He has always understood when Kuro needed to be forced into self confrontation and when he needed to be forced into a submission that erased all his negative overthinking.

“Come.” he ordered, before standing up, intent on guiding them both in their tent, “You need blood.” he remarked, with choleric eyes glued on the sluggish way Ash stood up, and on his dispirited expression facing the ground. Irritation floated in the atmosphere, though all Ash perceived was pain. One step traversed the dirt, one subtle thunder tickled the silence. The werewolf scowled, the vampire didn’t notice.

Two steps marked the mud and a weak lightning kissed the sky. Three steps touched the dead leaves, and a roar of thunder resounded in the obscure ambient.

They froze in place. “Damn it.” Gear cursed under his breath, eyes facing the blackened sky with an annoyed scowl. Lightning illuminated the horizon, and Gear understood with another series of thunder that he and Ash must abandon their tent and leave the gathering of trees. “Come on, don’t stay around like that.” he hissed, though the hand holding Ash guided him as softly as the wind sung to them safe directions to follow, “The rain will soak the tent so we gotta go find something else.” he explained.

And Ash followed Gear like a ghost with no destination or purpose; just a lost entity wandering in vacancy.

Gear rolled his eyes, though his fingers curled tighter around the vampire’s, in an innocent symbol of the other amount of care and affection he bottled away from him. It made the vampire look down, tensing with a cold, numbed warmth borning inside; inside where his inner demon grapsed it with both hands, an evil smirk and malice in his eyes. He tightened it until Ash couldn’t feel its existence anymore, until it took the form of the emptiness he hated, the void he feared and the numbness he fought against with his clenched jaw, until he snatched his hand away from Gear’s.

The clouds yelled above them once again; more aggressive, louder, longer. And then, the first droplets of cold rain fell; like a soothing hum in a mental chaos. Like a gentle song in an empty house. It gradually intensified, screaming over Ash’s dark thoughts like the cry of a lullaby, bathing both him and Gear in the frigid promise of a flu shared together.

“Run!” Gear shouted. They ran, but it was too late. Under the fights between rain and thunder, only their steps resounded. Water penetrated their skin through the ruined clothes and blocked their view like a thin veil of hope in desperation.

And with soaked clothes, they ran. With the cold biting their skin, clothes clinging and cloaks weighting on their backs their sprinted through he curtain of water; through the mud that got stuck on their shoes, through small puddles of dirty water that splashed their pants in an abstract drawing matching the labyrinth of their languor, and through the droplets that fell down their eyelashes like the acidic yearning down their throats.

One yearned for blood, the other yearned to offer it.

The path ahead darkened under the heaviness of the brumous sky. The earth trembled with the roars of the thunder, trees light up creepily under the light of the lightning and bushes danced after the growing rhythm the rain aborded. It looked eerie, Ash thought. But with Gear by his side, every nightmare became a dream and every fear became bravery.

When he looked up, into the depth of the path, he noticed the back of the werewolf walking only two steps ahead of him, with steps so heavy that nature’s hands seemed to claim him. The night blended into his soaked cloak, the mud painted the lower part of it and most of his pants with in an artistic madness while his steps were as acrimonious as the dance the tree branches did under the weight of the rain.

And just above Gear’s head, at the end of the route, stood a small, lonely hollow carved into a rock; hidden behind a door of vegetation and years of neglect. A little cave chosen to host their secrets, stories and moments that built their connection to a union so strong that only time and faith could break.

Nearing it, felt like glimpsing into their past, at those moments that built their friendship, at those experiences that formed their relationship. Memories that only Gear reminisced as Ash's mind still flooded with deprivation.

Stopping in front of it, Gear could faintly feel all those memories caress his hands with nostalgia, while Ash's scalded in torment.

“This is the cave we used last time it rained…” Gear reminded as he peeked inside, scowling as he supported the plants with one arm and the water dripped onto him and his clothes. Behind him, Ash stared at the dirty ground with elegiac eyes, noticed Gear’s feet walking in front of him and observed the tenebrous obscurity surrounding them. He followed the werewolf deeper into the cavity, in spite of his mind only following the waves of his wretched mind.

The whole environment smelled of rocks, musk and earth. But all the vampire smelled was blood. A smell so fragrant, so inviting and tempting that he raised his head just in the hopes of finding a distraction from his malignant iniquity.

He watched Gear hurry inside, and he made only one step into the blackness with nerves so thick that they suffocated him. He leaned against the frame of the cave and sighed at the coldness of the rock. The rain drenched his back, and the plant caressed his shoulder and arm with frozen raindrops. But he didn’t care, he didn’t feel it, as if lost in the stupefaction of his pain. As if foreign to the human senses and the outside world. The rain faded in his ears, the inner design of the cave fogged in his view.

A glacial air stung their faces with frosty needles, and pierced their nostrils with icy breaths. Gear grimaced at the humidity, greeting it with a low irritated growl. Ash experienced it identical to a cold compress pressed on a feverish forehead, though the thirst still resided inside of him as ardent as it used to be. Still as fervid it stirred his gums. Still as barren it piqued his throat.

Gear squinted his eyes at the obscurity hospitating the desolate area. He spinned in place as he analyzed its interior. He scrutinized the climbing plants that decorated the walls with their naked sticks, glanced at the small rotten scraps of what used to be a leaves bed, and glared at the deteriorated blanket carelessly lying over it.

Then he turned and observed the circle of rocks and antiquated wood constructing the remains of a bonfire, The rocks were round, and dirty, as if picked directly from the mud somewhere deep in the forest, away from their small river where they always picked their corrosed and clean rocks. When Gear crouched and touched them, they where as cold as the walls surrounding them, and the wood bathed in ashes, laying in it half burnt and fragile; too burnt for a warm fire meant to last the entire night. Too burnt for Gear to even identify their destination. But he had enough. Enough to realize.

“These aren’t ours.” Gear noted with a low voice, as if scared of disturbing the ambient, or deranging the shadows and the impiety of the bats squeaking quietly deep in profundity. The only sounds that pushed Ash out of his inner hell, just enough for his judgement to remark Gear's indignation.

“Someone needed a refuge.” Ash muttered with a gruff voice, “What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s our place.” was Gear’s reply, spoken with such asperity that the air trembled and a soft tension raised. Ash tasted it condimented with the blood in his mouth, so foul that he bit his tongue in futile wants to erase it.

He fought to focus on Gear crouched in front of the decayed bonfire, and at the way he ruffled the woods and ashes with disgust. He struggled to focus on the rain falling on him, or on the clothes sticking to his skin like ice.

But he could only gulp his worries, and lower his head at the impulses lurking inside of him. He could only swallow and let himself turn hollow as a toxic distraction. Until Gear spoke.

“We only have like two hands of wood.” he heard Gear say, with small eyes and red hands moving the long sticks around. “We should have taken the ones we had in the tent, the cave ain't that far after all.” he complained with a glare, as his body moved to get the fire started, “These might keep us warm for half a night.” he estimated, though his doubts danced around his mind like the dust and antique ashes did in the fireplace when he placed the pieces of wood into it.

Ash didn’t answer, yet he heard him. He heard his voice fighting its way through the charms of the ghost haunting his head and the thirst savaging his interior. He heard him working up the wood to bring the fire to life and he heard his soft curses that frequently anchored him to reality, keeping him away from the animalistic fate that fought to crawl its way out to the surface. Ash inhaled sharply to keep it controlled, and his hooded eyes raised towards the fire in a robotic way.

It was weak; as weak as their hope for a warm night. But as red as the nutrition he craved. He swallowed the hunger that clawed at the walls of his neck, but he felt it in the way his stomach contorted, the way his arms trembled under electrifying roots creeping on them, the way his tongue dried and his gums ached.

“Come in, will you?”

He didn’t want to. He feared that his insanity will launch him into a deathly claustrophobia. He was afraid of that little cave becoming the cage of his monstruotisation. But he felt Gear’s gaze on him. He felt his glare, the call, the expectation and the irritation he refused to hear.

When he made the last step to enter, and the door of leaves closed behind them, the outside world fell asleep. It was just them and the little space swallowed up by Mother Nature. The sound of Ash’s footfalls, the tune of the rain hitting the rock, and the shadows dancing along with the movements of Ash’s body as he walked towards Gear for shelter, or towards the source of light for safety – he didn’t know.

He didn’t know why he felt nothing of that when he stopped only a few steps away from the fire, just enough for it to illuminate his legs and bath the rest of his body in a sinister shadows. Just enough for him to simultaneously feel the bitefrost of the cave through his wet clothes and the gentleness of the fire on his toes.

Then he noticed Gear standing up, and discerned his eyes on him like an omnipotent being, moments before Gear passed by his side and slid off Ash’s hood with one hand.

“And strip those wet clothes.” Gear hissed next to him, already undressing his own tunic, “We’ll dry and then use them to cover ourselves for the night. I’ll also try to keep the fire awake as much as I can so we won’t freeze.” the fire occasionally flickered, sometimes crackled as a new piece of wood fell in its hold, but the strength was never marvelous; just enough for it to offer a fading light and a delicate warmth that could only be felt in its vicinity.

A warmth that Ash felt on his bare legs when he stripped, and when he approached Gear with his handful of dump clothes. They felt cold on his arms, in a paradox with the heat of the fire caressing his skin.

“You can sit down. I don’t know for how long this fire will last.” Gear admitted as he took the clothes from Ash, and used the ragged branches on the walls to place all their belongings by the side of the fire, where the little droplets of water stained the floor.

Ash watched them as he quietly sat down on the cold blanket. They looked as if they could fall anytime, but in this small refuge, even such a mistake could turn in a cosy memory, sliced in bits of horror and tragedy. He trembled from the cold, and goosebumps adorned his body like the evidence of the humanity he failed to see. He failed to see it in the way his knees pulled closer to his chest in search of warmth. He failed to see it in the flames he switched his attention to.

He felt Gear sitting next to him. Felt it in the subtle touch of their bare shoulders, the delicate body heat radiating from him and the scent of his wet hair. The fire gradually warmed his wet skin, though it was Gear’s body heat that engulfed him into an abyss with no persistent reality. Only sensations that made him twitch, emotions that made him tense.

Then the sharp pain in his throat replaced them all with dread and suffering. A suffering so familiar that he felt himself slowly suffocating in the anger, the hurt, the anxiety; all this amalgamation of negativity that ate at him so slowly and lustily that he felt it in the pressure on his chest. In the way they chewed his rationality and devoured his conscience. It was worse; much worse than before. As if he was punished with flaming whips for deceiving the devil, for daring to force him, to fool him with a blood that was cheap and toxic for them both. Like a venom which consequence is another venom; one that scorched his psyche, everything he owned and represented.

He forced himself to focus on the way the flames fought to rise higher and grow bigger, at the way they occasionally flickered and at the swift dance they battled to maintain. But he failed. He forced himself to listen to Gear’s gentle voice speaking words he couldn’t process. But he failed. The eerie voice haunting his existence replaced the one that usually brought him comfort and anchored his rationality to sanity.

And now he felt lost. With Gear by his side, he was constricted to feel lonely and lost, like a person astray in a cornfield. He traveled through the maze of his insanity, roamed through monstrous voices and grotesque nightmares in search of an exit. But he found hell. A hell that was alive, that tortured him, pulled and pushed until his mental capacity could only comprehend the existence of the demon smirking down at him from his throne, and shadows that shoved their starvation through him.

He faintly, through a mental distance that forced anxiety into his veins, heard Gear move, perceived his withdrawal by the absence of his body heat. He strained himself to look up, to search for his partner and snatch himself from the demon’s grip, but he failed.

He failed to dull the pain in his gums. Failed to control the singe down his throat from building up.

Now his teeth bit his tongue until he tasted the putrid subsistence that stained his life, his dreams, his beliefs and all his quintessence.

“Ash~” it muttered in his head, “Taste it, Ash. The blood. Taste it.”

Ash clenched his jaw. He curled his fists till his nails perforated his palms, wishing that those lacerations would reach the devil and kill it. Though they only seemed to kill him. His eyes closed tightly as his head bowed and knees pulled more against his chest. There was no hope. And he was tired; mentally, emotionally, he was tired to struggle with no win, to try with no rewards and keep on moving and living and not feel like it's worth it.

He decided to let the pain devour him until he would disappear. He wanted to let the shadows, the fear, the despair and all his traumas consume him until what remained of him would be memories and masked words of help scattering into the world like his ashes, hoping that his remembrance could one day become the light of the broken people that will guide them through the darkness.

His trembling hand softly grabbed his neck as his lip twitched. Red eyes fixed the ground, yet his mind deformed in morbid thoughts that reflected in the way his fingers spasmed around the pulsing veins of his own throat. Resist, he chanted to himself, his other hand moving over his mouth, fingers pressing his aching gums. Don’t give up, don’t turn, don’t look, don’t think. Don’t kill. He kept praying, kept begging until his thoughts lingered through the dark ones and they became one. One tangled mess that pushed him into the hands of an agony without escape.

The voices flooded his mind; a quiet distant voice that he believed buried within so many times. A voice that he fought to keep buried in his mental box, where he hoped would rot and forget about him.

“Ash.” it said, “Accept me. Don’t ignore me.”

He struggled to breathe through the stifling fever that consumed his body, tried to inhale the humid air surrounding him, tried to listen to the soft crackling of the fire and Gear’s quiet ramblings when he moved closer to the fire and stirred it alive with a stick, just to not let go of the judgement he still had. He kept clenching his jaw up to the moment it hurt, just to control the ache in his gums and the burn inside his throat.

But as the ghosts of his nightmare hugged him tighter into their torture, he pushed his own finger into his gums, just like a baby looking for relief. The texture tempted his inner demons with urges he dispised. The voice grew tantalizing with abstract words, hunger severe and self strength diminishing. He was losing, and the realization constricted him to bite his finger, not yet enough to draw blood, to fiddle with the ones from the other hand and to look around with alarmed eyes in search of an escape, in search of safety.

They ate at him. Chewed on his brain and all his hopes, clawed at all his thoughts and beliefs pending to reduce him to this terrific hunger that felt like acid on his inner walls. His gums throbbed harsher– he pressed his fingertip against them; looking and searching for relief.

Gear noticed. And he tensed.

With the fire now brighter, his eyes melted into the warm colors that hugged Ash. On the gentle dance of the fire reverberated onto his bare body, on the way his fingers subconsciously scratched his forearm and on the way his hand sunk into his mouth again, while red eyes stared into the void of the ground with what Gear recognized as turmoil and greed. As the hunger Ash hated, but Gear always found himself admire in the quarter of his twisted mind.

Now though, his tension turned into fear. He analyzed him till he reached the bones and the secrets inside them. Then he walked towards him, so slow and quiet that his footsteps became one with the sound of the rain. He walked until he reached Ash, until his presence barely brushed the vampire’s awareness. And he only leaned his torso towards him.

"What are you doing?" he frowned, while his hands grabbed Ash's wrist and pulled that finger out of his mouth.

Ash stiffened visibly, with muscles so tight that they hurt. With limbs so rigid that they tremored.

The werewolf sat down next to Ash’s haunted shell, with intense stares and glares that studied the little part of his face visible from their new position. He studied the way the fire hugged his face in shades of orange, he observed how the strands of hair caressed his cheek and neck, barely brushing his shoulder so gently that Gear felt the urge to reach and touch it, feel it, fix it to reveal the secrets behind his partner’s pensive gaze.

He couldn’t when Ash suddenly twitched. Pain, Gear read. A pain that made Ash’s hand twitch in his hand while the nails of his other and curled farther into the skin on his arm.

“Ash.” Gear called with a low voice., as his hand let go of Ash's and grabbed his shoulder with moderate force; lightly pulling towards himself, yet not enough to instigate Ash to turn to him, “You need blood.” Ash didn’t look at him, but Gear felt him stir under his hand, as he faced the ground, the dirt and the dust just to not look at Gear, just to not look at his golden fierce eyes he felt in the back of his head.

And Gear understood – god, how well he understood him. And how desperately he wanted to give Ash that little push he needed, that little shove towards his inner tunnel towards healing.

How well he understood that Ash right now needed that.

“Look at me.” Gear ordered. Ash didn’t listen. He only tensed his lips and swallowed. He swallowed frustration and disbelief. For himself and for his mangled needs that gradually obscured his rationality and fogged his sight with stains of red when Gear breathed his next words on his nape, in a voice so smooth and guttural that Ash subtly jerked. “He hurt you really badly, didn’t he?”

Ash didn’t answer. However, feeling the way he tensed under Gear’s palm, Gear knew that he heard him, that he listened. That he understood who the “he” was, who the monster under that name was. Sometimes, only a memory that left with the wind. Rarely, only a whisper that disappeared with the sound. Often, an aftermath wrecking him like a poltergeist on a full moon.

Gear looked at the fire, searching in the flames the correct words to say, “He hurt you in ways you’re scared to fully remember." he declared, giving Ash just one quick side glance before continuing, "Ways you’re too terrified to think about. Every day, every night. You had no safety, no hope, no help and no escape.”

He wanted to escape right now. He want to leave, to run. Every word hurt, every sentence arrowed him in places of which existence he didn’t remember, in spots of his heart he just discovered and areas of his brain he feared to explore. Not those memories, not those emotions, not those nightmares, crimes, abuse. Please. Which God to beg for salvation? Which Goddess to ask for help? Which forces to implore for protection when none of them heard his cries during those times?

He wanted to escape these thoughts, but the silence amplified them. Everything was too loud, everything reminded him of his shadows. The fire sputtered and popped each time more quietly, as if gasping for its last few breaths. The rain tumbled, thunder roared and wind howled, but inside, everything shined in nuances of numbness.

Gear peered at Ash, reading yet again all the tragedy novels the vampire wrote with his gloomy expressions. All the dramatic stories and all the sad poems inked on his gestures. A muscle twitched on Gear’s head with every sentence he read in Ash’s eyes, in every line he took in from his distressed body language.

His hand slowly snaked from Ash’s shoulder to the back of his neck; so diligently that the vampire shuddered, and a thin layer of cold goosebumps erupted on his skin. He let out a quiet breath when Gear’s fingers traversed the hairs on his nape, tickling his senses with a warmth that made him bite his tongue. Then they permeated into his hair, until he felt Gear’s palm cup his nape, like a support against his darkest monsters.

“Ash…” Gear muttered his name. His inner demon grabbed his hand. Gear teased his scalp in search of attention. But his inner demon teased his mind with eerie chuckles, and monstruous smirks that only warned the imminence of his mental distruction and temporary death. The demon remained silent. Gear spoke. “For how long will you run away?”

The vampire clenched his jaw. So hard that the pain turned torpid, and his teeth sunk deeper into his tongue in an useless attempt to block the barbaric hunger for the blood he felt moving on the skin on the back of his neck, just like a river in a desert that calls to drink, to empty it of its last drop of life and let it dry into a remembrance. The thought tightened his stomach and the knot inside his throat.

Why were they disturbing him again? Why was his existence always tainted by parasites that lived in his head? Were they part of him? Were they him? Was he supposed to live with their hands over his eyes and their whispers in his ears?

Who was he then? Who was he besides the monster who killed people with his hands and drunk their blood with his mouth?

How empty was he that the demon filled him whole? How many broken parts did he hold? Some people say they take back their own broken parts and repair them; they stick them back together with courage and hope and make themselves whole again.

But not him. Not him when his broken parts represented just blurred memories that lived inside his heart like an old letter soaked in water. Not him whose old self wasn’t broken, but it’s been killed, massacred tarnished and sipped by the hands of a devil wearing human skin. A human he should have found safety with.

He had nothing to heal because they are dead, that part of himself is dead. And its only funeral consisted into the bending and molding of his persona by the hands of that monster. He didn’t know who he was anymore; who was Sleepy Ash? Was it really him or the demon within? Who was he then? Only a puppet with no rights? A tool made to be used?

“Ash.” Gear scowled at him, his voice taunt and harsh, “What are you thinking about?” his eyes squinted, as if knowing, as if feeling all the lies that laid underneath Ash’s skin, and daring him to tell him one more lie. And Ash did.

“Nothing.” he mumbled, fixing his gaze towards the fire, though his eyes didn’t see it, didn’t perceive its suave dance, nor the gentle heat it offered diminishing or the space he and Gear occupied. All he viewed was the waltz between himself and the demon inside his head. All he spotted was the disaster of his dreams cataclypsed by the demon’s fangs with a dastardly smirk that made his muscles tense and wish for the flames to swallow him, to burn and deprave him of his shameful existence exterorizing through his spiteful grimace.

A grimace that Gear scrutinized with ease and engrossed himself in with all heart and soul, in search of trying, in search of finding and unravel the mysteries that made Ash, Ash. Mysteries he learned, mysteries he still has to discover and unfold. But that look; that lost aspect and countenance in the vampire’s eyes, he witnessed it so many times, so many days and so many nights. “You’re thinking about dark things again.” he guessed.

“How could I not...” Ash growled, glaring at his hands, at those grotesque hands tainted with murder and filth, “when I feel him inside me?” he struggled to spit the words out, stiffening with his fists clenching until they trembled. The repugnance he eyed them with pierced Gear like a stabbing with a needle. “When I look at myself – I see all the things he made me do.” Ash confessed. But inside of him, the darkness settled in again. With every second passing by watching his sins in his palms. With every crackle of the fire, darkness surrounded him like a smoke of anxiety.

Why though? Why? Why is fear his best friend? What did he do?

Gear failed to see all this. Gear looked at the fire before replying, “Those things…” he started, “Those burdens. They’re part of your life, not of yourself.” letting the enchanting duet between the rain and the fire settle in the words into Ash’s mind, Gear watched the dance of the flame with an intense look, before directing it towards the vampire with more fervour, and adding in the same monotonous voice, “Are they?”

His companion didn’t answer right away. He balanced the words, replayed them, examined them and immersed into them and pulled out their core, absorbed it until he dismissed it and its heaviness.

“But even so,” he clenched his jaw and bowed his head until his hair gave him the illusion of the refuge he searched, “that past is mine.”

Gear looked back at the fire, “So?” he retorted, then reached for the sleeve of one of their tunics, “This shirt is yours too, but it’s not you.” he explained, letting go of the sleeve, “It’s the same for mistakes too. You people too often tend to take onto you parts that aren’t yourselves. This is why you have no identity and don’t know who you are. I’ve told you when we met to not forget to be a person before everything else”

“I just want to feel safe…” He whispered; a wish, a prayer, a dream so deep embedded into the universe that it seemed to have gotten lost. It abandoned him into a hell where suffering came into the form of unsafety and carnal cruelty. Of an anxiety so deep and profound that even hiding faded before its maleficent claws.

He only wanted to feel safe. In his own skin, with his own thoughts, in the company of people, in a room with a person. He just wanted to feel safe.

“Letting that part of you die – the part that’s in the past, and getting to know yourself again - creating yourself again, it’s the only thing that can set you free from the turmoil you’re living. It’s the only way you can remain a person.”

Ash looked away after Gear’s predicament, eyes set on the way the rain shaked the leaves of the plant covering the entrance. Though his mind wandered through ideas and phrases that made the existence of nature fade before a dark road decorated on the sides with his sins and mistakes. The same road the demon forced him to travel on through the sleepless nights and tiring days.

Then Gear pulled him back when he turned to look at him and spoke, “By doing that, you’re letting go of a part of you that became rotten to find the you you’re actually looking for and been thinking about.”

“I don’t want to be a monster, Gear!”

He didn’t feel safe, he didn’t feel welcomed, deserving of living in the presence of a monster who impersonated his deepest fears and insecurities. And it lingered in the air; this psychological tempest. It grew like an abyssal slashing, like a ruinous wound that infected his sanity. It mingled and deformed with the tension and the silence that blanketed the cave; so hastily that not even the rain could compare to its intensity.

Gear, however, tasted it. He witnessed it, observed it until it faded into a fog that he molded with his husky voice, “What’s a monster other than a word created by people?” Ash tensed with a sickness that tightened his throat. He didn’t want to hear that question again, didn’t want to listen to the torpidity of the same words again, couldn’t handle the bitterness of their truth anymore. “What’s a monster other than a label? Why are you letting a label control your life? It’s boring.”

He trembled with fury under the heaviness of his own thoughts. Memories, flashbacks and remindings grabbed at him with pliers made of blood and tears. He closed his eyes, but he heard them. He heard the mockery, the residual pain of having his life, his light, his own persona taken away from him, until only the memory of his body remained in his place.

Just a lifeless body that Gear watched with a light frown; for moments in which only the rain and the fire moved, Gear waited. Because even if it’d be the most boring thing of his eternity, Gear would always wait for Ash. He would care for him and look over him, like a wolf in the shadows protecting its pack, Gear glanced at Ash, studied and analyzed ways to understand, solutions to heal and modalities to help.

So he smacked the back of Ash's head. Hard enough to wake Ash groan in pain and for his body to lightly jerk forward. Then retreated closer to the fire, close enough for his bare back to face Ash. Close enough for its odour and color to tempt the vampire’s urges and pierce it with a sinful glare that peaked through his blue strands of hair.

“Stop letting yourself get dragged into your own mind if you’re not going to do something about it.” still snapped Gear.

But Ash couldn’t. What was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to do?

How do you fight the demons you can’t see? How do you fight them when they’re in your head? How do you fight them without fighting yourself first? He couldn’t fight himself, he couldn’t look at himself, at those times he feared, those memories he hated and those moments that hurt. He couldn’t get over them, couldn’t forget them. Couldn’t kill them when their source was still alive. He couldn’t kill that demon, how could he kill him?

How do you kill something that’s inside of you without killing yourself first?

How do you do it when you’re tired of fighting? He didn’t want to fight anymore. Was it safe to stop fighting?

His fists clenched at the question, and his jaw tensed in the anguish that poured on his head like the waterfall he and Gear used to bath themselves. He sighed, but the heaviness only grew within his chest; the heaviness of the void he struggled to ignore, to push it away and to forget it somewhere into the mud that gradually submerged his conscience to a state where even Gear’s calls became just curses and hexes damning him to a life where death turned into a dream, and life reduced to a rotten memory of its meaning.

Pull him out – pull him out of this mental misery. Pull him out of this sachet of pests that snatched off pieces of his skin at his every inhale. Pull him out of this dismay that haunted him. Pull him out of this agony that locked him inside this total blackness. Take him away from this ghost that chewed off piece after piece of his light and existence. Take him away from the thing that turned him into a muribund object with no destiny or wish for survival.

Closing his eyes, he blocked these thoughts out. Tuned them out of his frequency and sat into nothingness. However, his body clenched. Muscles screamed and trashed for saving and freedom, yet this cursed abyss kidnapped his mind. It held it into a disturbance that was so decaid he didn’t feel himself anymore.

Only the demon. Only this low way of survival he accepted with broken fists, an illness of aptitudes that forced his fangs deeper into his tlip, pushing through the sting, through the ache and all the misery convulsing and pulsing in both his mouth and his head. Where did he fail? He didn’t fail. The demon craved. The demon asked. And after being denied, the demon took. Without consent.

It tarnished Ash into the dirt of the traumas left in his brain. And he tasted defeat in his own blood that filled his mouth. He tasted the failure in its warmth and in the acridity of its flavour.

He quietly grunted, closed his eyes until twinkles of colors flickered behind the darkness, clenched his fists until his nails lacerated the skin and the sting caressed it with a new kind of suffering. And he let himself float through the wicked sensations and blasphemous smells that dispersed throughout the ambient.

Now the little cave smelled of blood.

A smell so acute that it reached Gear’s nose in an instant. His eyes widened with the realization of the scent he hated. Of the scent he grew to hate when its symbolism now matched the perfume of his failure as a partner, and the bloodcurdling aroma of memories belonging to a younger version of himself, a version that lived with a pack now no longer existent.

The pack he failed to protect.

He couldn’t fail again, he reminded himself. He couldn’t lose another loved one again. Not because of a stubbornness that he knew how to soothe. Not because of a creature that he knew how to defeat.

He gasped when he turned; so suddenly that a shadow of dizziness hugged his vision, and so fast that nor he, nor the vampire processed the entirety of the bloody damage before their eyes. Not again. It couldn't happen again in front of his eyes. He couldn't watch Ash fall so low in front of himself again. He couldn't bare to watch him fall victim to his own mental inquisition again.

“Idiot!” he shouted in a strident voice, with all the fear he had inside, as he grabbed Ash’s cheeks in a tight, desperate grip and snatched his head up. His hand trembled in a way that mirrored that panic beating inside his chest, but Ash didn’t dare look at him. “What are you doing?!” Gear kept yelling, kept glaring, panting and mentally imploring for things he never dared to voice.

His heart pleaded mutedly as the blood from Ash’s mouth dripped down the sides and dirtied his own chin as well as Gear's hand, like the blasphemy mocking Gear for forcing someone to face demons he’s never dared do. It annoyed him. He wasn’t good at taking care of people, at protecting them and keeping them safe. Not people like Ash, who didn’t even accept help as an option. And the pained expression on Ash's face only demonstrated this to him.

His jaw tensed at the thoughts, at the realizations, and the glare hardened with a frustration that blazed within him a toxic adrenaline.

An adrenaline that guided him on his knees, closer towards the vampire, with careful movements that resembled his wolf’s ones. So quiet and delicate that Ash noticed his closeness only when Gear's chest stopped in front of his knees. His head flinched to free himself from the grip, and Gear’s hand then circled his throat; with his thumb and pointer finger pressing on the sides of it. Pressing points that tempered Ash’s bulversed mind and lulled his deranged soul. Points that unfocused his sight, mollified his harsh breathing and turned him into a quiet doll whose life Gear felt pulsing under his fingers.

“You’re like this because you need blood.” he declared in a dark voice, and a glare so coarse that even the obscurity trembled before it. “So if I give you blood again,” he warned lowly, as his hand guided Ash’s to look at him. But the vampire couldn’t; not when Gear’s fingers pressed even harder on the veins in his throat and sent him in an oblivion with no escape, one so deep that his sight blurred in its delighting web and the thoughts inside his head molded in an incoherent mass of distanced susurrus, “...you’ll come back to your senses.” Gear finished his sentence.

Then the loudest thunder vibrated in their stomachs and the brightest lightning cut the sky. At the same time, the fire died down, leaving them in a darkness that not even their thoughts could penetrate into. Only their senses, their thrills and all their secrets.

No one spoke, but both of them stiffened with a tension that danced between them like the smoke raising from the ashes. They smelled it dissipating in the cave, and felt the cold kiss their skin with goosebumps. Ash groaned at the discomfort; a sound so low that Gear perceived only the echo of it. Only the whisper of the helplessness that aroused in him his predatory instincts.

His other hand raised slowly towards Ash’s hair. His fingers brushed through the soft strands with an admiration he didn’t dare voice as more than his breaths did. His palm rested on the side of the vampire’s head. The heat emanating from it made Ash squirm with a subtility that no sound betrayed it.

Ash's fingers twitched on his knees with the nervousness eating at his stomach, and bowed his head until his hair tickled Gear’s chest. It constricted the werewolf’s fingers to gradually clench into Ash’s hair. And Ash huffed at the gesture, fingers stopped moving, and eyes closed as softly as the wings of a butterfly flapping in the rain.

Then a sudden gasp reverberated in the whole cave when Gear fisted Ash’s hair and forced his head to tilt back. Ash felt Gear's grip on his throat slightly tighten in an action that maintained his head tilted all the way back. He heard movement, heard a grunt from Gear and his breath hitched out his wide open mouth. The heat surrounding him intensified when Gear pressed his chest against his knees and forced them to open. Gear’s hips barely tickled his. Gear’s chest barely brushed against his. And his body heat fanned against Ash’s like the coziest touch of warmth.

Afterwards, he gasped when the hold in his hair tightened so hard that his scalp stung, the darkness glittered with abstract colored stars before his eyes and all monsters went mute.

His gasp resounded into the cave like the susurr of chimes in a soft autumnal wind. A gasp that muffled a choke when Gear let his neck go and pushed his arm into his fangs so brutally that his body slammed Ash’s on the bed of leaves behind him.

The coldness of it pierced Ash’s back like a bed of icicles. And all the bliss turned into nervousness. All the warmth turned into a piercing adrenaline. His heart beat too fast, breaths rugged with delirium and all he felt was blood, blood and blood. Blood in his mouth. Blood down his throat and his stomach. Blood dripping from the sides of his mouth as Gear’s pushed his arm a little deeper. He felt it blazing everywhere. Like a drug stealing you away from life’s hands.

The skin to skin contact made them both let out a trembling breath and they vibrated against each other with the passion of a daydream on a gloomy day; just enough for their chests to faintly caress each other at every inhale they took. Just enough for their stomachs and hips to press into each other with so much intemperance that a quiver awakened passages of nerves that lured them; like a dream that lets you earn to venture and to know more, to experience more, to feel more.

To feel more than just the heat that made them sweat as they throbbed into each other.

Their legs tangled with the vow to stay together, they moved with the friction of the goosebumps and hairs on them as they laid in a mess of warmth with the finding of a sensual position.

The downpour resounded in the darkness like a romantic melody put in the background. The occasional lightning offered them more intimacy than a lit candle, while the darkness stimulated in them the delight and the rousing seduction of a blindfold. All senses amplified, and they felt more, they heard more, they experienced everything so arduously, so intensely and passionately that they engrossed in all they had to offer at once.

The texture of the blood filling Ash’s mouth and the warmth of it sliding down his throat convulsed his mind into an anoetic fog. He tried to squirm away from it, from this cursed pleasure consuming his rationality. He fought to turn his head away from Gear’s hand, but it only followed him with the disastrous emotions fused inside his stomach with wild butterflies. He attempted pushing his fangs out, pulling and tugging on Gear’s arms with shaking fingers, in spite of the werewolf refusing to let go and to surrender to the frights of his eternal companion.

Then Gear growled and Ash froze under the miasma of the decisive squeeze Gear gave his hair. He became paralyzed under the way Gear's hips thrust into his once; like a seductive warning for impatience, like an arousing call for discipline.. He felt Gear’s hot, rapid breath kiss his cheek, heard the noise of his respiration so close to his ear that it tingled with the melody of his own heartbeat.

He heard the rain intensify, in the departure of his mind. He smelled the fragrance of the blood dispersing around them, felt the warmth and the stickiness of it drip down the corners of his mouth in gruesome quantities. He felt dirty, stained in the way only a wild animal would be. In the way he refused to be. He tried adjusting his mouth around the limb with guttural grunts, struggled to move his head up or to the side, with movements that only revealed his despair, and hinted at his fight with the urges.

With movements that, in the end, only pushed the accumulated blood in his mouth down his throat.

He froze with a new kind of fear.

The first swallow made him dizzy with rapture bliss and desimbodied starvation. It filled his veins with euphoria and his bones with ecstasy. His heart raced to accords that suffocated him, that asphyxiated him with invisible hands burning black, and replaced his breath with a hunger burning too hard.

He failed. Ash thought. He failed to run away from what he became.

He failed when the blood filled him up like a drug. He failed when warmth engulfed his entire body from within, when adrenaline pulsed through his bones and exhilaration throbbed inside his head. All the texture going down his throat, all the metallic smell and all the breaths Gear puffed above him chained him to a dreamy state where all he felt was the famishment of the beast boiling inside of him.

And he truly boiled, he simmered, he burned until only ashes remained of his old self and his biggest nightmare took control over him, paralleled with the demonic possession of the most defenseless person. His eyes shined darker, redder, deeper with a malice and a confidence that they transfixed even the darkness they were in. That even the bats inside retreated under that danger rising in the air, as if recognizing the imminence of the agony that triggered to come.

And he pushed to escape it. With everything he still owned physically, emotionally and mentally. He pushed, he struggled, he assailed.

He wailed and lamented the misery he felt. Closed his eyes as he fought to block them off. But he felt them; he felt them feed on the last thread of human judgement, ravage him from within with a savagery only associated with beasts.

“I know,” Gear told him, just as his other hand snaked its way behind the vampire’s head and pulled his forehead closer to his, “I know what werewolf blood does to vampires.” his eyes squinted at all the blood he felt dripping down his arm, and at the precise points the tip of Ash’s fangs pierced it. A truly gruesome scenery for the eyes, yet such an alluring feeling for the heart and the nerves trailing his spine.

Ash inhaled deeply around Gear’s arm, and his fangs bit into it with all the accumulated temptation and torrid enticement awakened within him. And he took everything Gear offered him. He took it greedily, reflecting in the way he sucked the blood the way the demon made him to. He took until he lost himself into that detrimental spark and he comprehended only the rancorous tempest of this masochistic oblivion.

“Breath.” Gear whispered on his nose, only foresing Ash to writhe more. “It’s alright.”

Gear let out puffs and grouses as Ash sucked on his arm. He gritted his teeth, moved his head in ways that compelled his erection to rub against Ash’s with the sweetest of tortures. He exhaled in the vampire’s face when he let go of the latter’s hair. Numbness kissed it, and formication grasped it as he propped it next to Ash’s head, on the blanket that burned with their bodies.

“Ash…” he huffed with a tight throat, a voice so hoarse and smoky that Ash let a low moan onto Gear’s arm, and one of his knees bent in a way that made Gear’s hips press into his harder.

He tantalized Gear as he moved in unison with the blood he desperately drained from him with grunts and groans. He gripped and clawed at the skin in Gear’s shoulders until his mouth pushed to reach for more, and puffed in frustration when he couldn’t. When he couldn’t take more, when he couldn’t make them become one, when he couldn't take a taste of the core of that blood that so treacherously electrified and inflamed his veins with fresh lava.

With a loud exhale, he let go of Gear’s hand. No one moved, yet both breathed. They breathed coarsely into each other’s faces, with chests that bumped into each other and feelings that floated past their ears. Only when Gear adjusted his position above Ash, the vampire’s lips parted with a malice that the shadows kept hidden. And Ash tilted his head until his lips touched the middle of Gear’s neck. They tickled it, like a silly warning or a mocking advisory before his mouth suddenly opened wider and long , white fangs shined in the obscurity.

When Ash’s bit Gear’s neck with all the hunger that consumed his body, the werewolf let out a short yell that echoed in the cave like the ending of the most profound love song.

“Stupid cat!” Gear shouted, head tilting back as he burned as hot as the desire inside of him. Harsh breaths left his wide open mouth, before a hand covered it and a “Shhh.” replaced them, followed by few words that offered him comfort from the mesmerising bite, “There are bats in here.”

A desire that wretched everything on its way; it wretched the patience, the maturity, mentality and all the wishes Gear had to play the protector in Ash’s narrow range of experiencing safety. Because while werewolf blood enticed and agitated vampires, the venom on a vampire fang represented the most smoldering and maddening substance for the moon creatures.

“Idiot.” he lowly grunted, followed by a rough growl. “Ash, slow down.” he begged, “vampire bites… fuck us up as much as our blood does to you.”

Ash didn’t listen. He couldn’t hear, not over the stimulating blizzard consuming him, not over the erotic wave that made his hips thrust into Gear’s in search of the little friction he got in his crotch from Gear’s short moves. Knees bent in desperation for more, and Gear fisted Ash’s hair; harder with every sip the vampire took from him.

He gasped and moaned, his jaw ocassionally clenched and eyes shut as tightly as they could. With hands that explored, nails that scratched, fingers that clenched, palms that traced and wrecked every inch of the skin they encountered, leaving behind only the symbols of this addiction. The signs and the proof of their need, their desperation and the feelings poured into the red markings adorning backs, thighs and arms.

And Ash felt free. During these times, when the blood warmed his body and when Gear built up a mental mist around his awareness through his sadistic touches, he felt free.

During these times, he only felt Gear’s hands wander and explore points of his body that made him twitch and flinch; parts of his body that forced his eyes to close, mouth to open wide and head to fall back as a blazing fire spread from within his body, like the soothing cure he needed for the aches the beastiality tormented him with.

During these times, he was bathed in ineffable sensations that kept him captive in an oblivion where the way Gear’s claws grazed his skin, fangs scratched, tongue tasted and erection rubbed against his felt like the dream he always used in order to escape the harsh reality.

Moans and whines blended over groans and grunts, giving birth to chilling electroshocks kissing their spines and limbs. Breathes became rougher, heartbeats faster, touches vulgar and lewd.

Ash trembled under Gear, Gear sweated over Ash and monsters broke loose. The patience evaporated under the heat of their bodies, and all rationality dissolved into their carnal needs.

Fangs shined with the night, flashed with the lightning before they sunk into each other’s necks. They devoured with the necessity to take everything and let nothing. To offer and to take. To entice and to devour like the creatures residing and flaming in their bodies.

Ash’s nails marked Gear’s back as Gear’s claws groped his waist with an insatiable lust that made the vampire gasp on Gear’s neck. The heat of his rugged breath made the werewolf’s muscles contract so hard that they hurt. But he tasted the pain. He savoured it long with the reactions from the vampire like a sadistic criminal enjoying its victims before demise.

Gear snacked his hands down Ash’s arms, prying them off his own as he traversed his wrists with motions that excited in him the instincts of submission. When Gear’s fingers slid past his palm and reached for his fingers, their hands immediately squeezed each other. He secured his hands in his like a vow, one of unspoken love that sparkled rows and rows of passion down on them.

He guided Ash’s hands down above his head with care, teasing the strings of Ash’s patience and sentiments of anticipation. When Gear’s hips bumped into his, his lips parted widely, with the permission to inhale the smell of rain spreading past the little crater.

When Gear’s hot tongue licked the blood staining his neck, he wailed. He sighed from the depths of his throat all the pleasure built up inside of him. His legs moved, they searched and seeked the union with the werewolf and the liberation with their lustful act with such desire and urge that his entire body itched to feel more.

His hips jerked into Gear’s, making the moon creature growl in a warning that only turned the vampire on more. And Gear gave him what he yearned for when he placed open mouthed kissed down his neck, when his hips slid down Ash’s and his stroked his member against Ash’s testicles and the opening of his butt. He writhed at the warmth emanated by Gear’s genitals, and the breath spreaded on his skin,

“Be good.” Gear rasped against his neck, and with a dominant squeeze of Ash’s hand, he kept on moving. He kept on moving and stole away all the blasphemous thoughts Ash had, leaving him just a mess of delirious trance that transported him in a place where he didn’t have to be Sleepy Ash, nor a vampire, nor a monster.

“You’re nothing right now, Ash.” Gear muttered in his ear. “You’re only mine this time.” Yeah... he was nothing right now. No monster’s victim, no trauma survivor, no tragic hero or a wounded villain. Just nothing and no one in Gear's arms.

That was his liberation; that euphoric feeling where he forgot his name, his personality and his existence; his sorrows, his misery and his terrors. In this time, he knew he couldn’t exist beyond what Gear’s touches and kisses permitted him to. He couldn’t feel beyond what Gear made him feel. In this moment he was no more than a lost autumnal leaf carried by the gentle nudges of the wind towards a soft blanket on the ground.

During these times, he was free.

______________________________________________

The atmosphere was breezy when Ash opened his eyes again; a marvelous ambient that matched the ataraxy left within him. A wonder of the mind that matched the magic of the creak he faintly heard hissing behind vegetations of greens and rocks. Two rays of moonlight traversed the corner of the cave, bathing it in a gentle glow of miridical medicine that bewitched his demons like a hazy individual watching a muribund fire.

The rain stopped, he realized. And left in its spate of torrent a hushed tenor of crickets and leaves rustling. He sighed softly, on the verge of timidity for disturbing the pacific ambience, or the mortuar silence settled inside the cave, where not even Gear’s serene breaths tinkled outside the comfort zone.

He felt alone, yet not lonely.

Not with nature’s harmonies engulfing him like a safe blanket hugged in childhood to keep monsters away. Not with nature’s symphonies surrounding him like a soothing lullaby sung by a mom to lure you into a safe sleep.

Not with Gear’s arms draped over him and with the heat of his chest pressed against his back. It was in this mental security that he let new eerie ideas birth new sinister emotions. Emotions he fought to contain; emotions contorting into new realizations of understanding and new cognitions of acceptance.

He breathed them all in; as deep as his lungs could handle the humidity in the air.

The demon was calm, he noticed. Quiet and satiated. Now, after he tasted and engorged into Gear’s blood like a starved animal, everything was calm again. He clicked his tongue at the thought, and immediately tensed. His mouth stenched of blood. It stung and pinched him like a sin executed in the purest of lands. Now the grounds were dirty - rotten under coats of filth and sacrileges.

Then he noticed the blood dirtying his hands. It shined under the fading light, under the obscurity and the moonlight.

Looking down, he noted all the red smearings, the stains, all the traces and the wounds adorning it whole. It looked like a murder scene. The murder of a body he hated. The murder of a body that he’s forgotten about under those layers of self disgust and self hate. A body that he’s neglected when it didn’t feel like his anymore, when it felt like someone else’s.

It felt like theirs; the persons who abused it, as if his body was a simple abandoned house that deserved to be destroyed. A house that they abused without conscience of the wounded or the mess they left behind. They stole, broke and massacrated and then ran, leaving the house empty, foul, tarnished and disgusting.

His heart swam in rage. For the ones who did this him. For the ones who turned him into a monster, the ones who hurt him so bad that he had no other choice but to shake hands with demons and become one with him. It was an anger so intense that it made his fists clench, and a thirst for justice so atroscious that his jaw tensed and eyes narrowed; in a surrender to his self, a rendition that trapped him between the sweetness of healing and the bitterness of losing a fight, someone, a part of himself he held dear until they snatched it away and teared it with hands dirty with loathsome profanities.

He grieved it, mourned for it for so many years and centuries that he was afraid of what was beyond it. However, now, he let it go. He let it go and replaced that grief with the anger for the ones who hurt him, for the ones who condemned him to this eternity.

Because he did nothing wrong. It wasn’t his duty to punish himself for the mistakes that nibbled the innocence, the light and the life out of him. That anger was for them, not for him. That forgiveness Gear talked about was for him, not for them.

It was now time to give his old self the funeral he deserved, he realized, as he closed his eyes yet again. He told his old self goodbye, he apologized to him for the inability to protect him at the time, for not having the courage, the strengths, the power to protect him and keep safe from all the harms he's been through.

He inhaled the coolness and the freshness of the late night and let one single tear, one single symbol of his grievance fall down his cheek.

Now his body belonged to him, he realized, as he curled his fingers with a sigh. It moved the way he ordered it to. It got touched the way he allowed it to, by who he allowed to. And if he had to share it with another being, another entity living within him, he was willing to abandon all the resistance he gripped onto and embrace himself with both his faces.

He sobbed. He suffered. Struggled and gave up.

But no one ever noticed him and his sorrows. No one ever heard his pleadings and cries; as silent and as loud as they were, they only symbolized whispers carried by the wind, somewhere far away from the ears of those surrounding him.

No one ever noticed him.

Except Gear.

Gear, whose breath hit Ash’s nape with a gentle rhythm, as if singing soothing songs in his head without speaking the words. He exhaled rather loudly, with an echo that caressed the silence. Then slowly turned to face Gear.

Gear, who slept so graceful that Ash gulped with fear of evil eyes or touching him unconsciously. Gear, who rested with easy breaths like a masterpiece in an antique museum.

Ash’s body acted like a shield between the moonlight and the werewolf, dressing him in shadows that clouded the evidences of their breakdown. Only a gentle layer of bluish light skimmed above Gear, just enough for the bruises and the blood to glint their existence to Ash; like a quiet order to see it; to see the truth, to understand it and embrace it with both his light and darkness.

So he watched. He noticed, he observed, inspected and admired with feelings still dormant in his heart, and thoughts still drowsy in his mind. He scanned and witnessed silently how the blood pigmenting Gear’s skin didn’t scare him. The scratches adorning his arms and shoulders didn’t disturb him. And the bitemarks shining on his neck like two snake punctures didn’t disgust him.

Ultimately, his eyes slowly closed with the gentlest of sighs, and he capitalized in the quietest of voices a truth that could either set him free, or throw him deeper into the darkness of his traumas. The power stayed in him to decide whether he wanted to heal or not.

“We’re just monsters of the night.”

The End.