#!death

But Wasp wasn’t having it. He charged into the fray, bodyslamming into one of the particularly large feral monsters, his tiny body somehow managing to send the feral flying. He pulled out his crossbow and shot another feral, its body exploding into dust instantly. He made it look so effortless.

This wasn’t the way Dread wanted it to go. There were too many, and even if Wasp was so, so much stronger than him, even he would have trouble taking on so many at once. Dread called out to Wasp, told him to turn back, to save himself. That Dread would be fine on his own, even if he knew the ferals would eventually take him down, too.

Wasp didn’t listen. He cut a dusty path through the feral monsters, made his way to Dread. And then walked right up and pulled him into a passionate kiss. It was like something out of an action-romance movie or something. Once they were done with the makeout session, they turned, back to back, facing the crowd of enemies around them. And they fought like that, Wasp slaying every enemy who got too close, while Dread simply beat them up until they surrendered. Or at least until they backed off.

One such monster circled around, hiding behind its fellows. Dread saw it lunge for Wasp, just a moment too late. He tried to call out to Wasp, tried to swing around and stop it before it could reach him, but he was either too slow or just simply missed.

Because the next thing he knew, Wasp was crumbling to dust in front of him.

Dread jerked awake, one arm pinned to his side by the tangled blankets. The blankets constricted him, made it hard to move, to breathe. His breath came in short, ragged gasps and his soul pounded in his chest. Tears stung his eye sockets, forcing their way out and dripping onto the bed below him.

It was his fault. He should have protected him. He should have fought back. He shouldn’t have pulled his punches, he should have…

Dread shuts his eyes tight as a sob escaped him. It was just a dream, just another bad dream. He should be used to them. He had them all the time, after all.

He managed to free his arms enough to dig out his cellphone and pull up his boyfriend’s number. He stared at the screen for several long moments, seriously contemplating calling or texting him. But it was the middle of the night. Surely he was asleep by now.

Madarame hadn't really been intending to take Kitagawa's work when he'd initially taken her in. But when he saw the self-portrait she'd spent so much time on, poured so much of herself into, he knew it was going to be successful. He knew her work was going to outshine any of the mediocre pieces he could pump out.

He was jealous.

This woman, a young widow dealing with her own failing health on top of a young child, had a fair bit of talent. And considering her youth, she could well end up having a successful career ahead of her. The public loved bittersweet rags to riches type success stories, after all. Madarame, though? Madarame was already past his prime. He wasn't quite an old man yet, but he wasn't exactly young anymore, either, and his career was starting to decline. Nobody appreciated the classics, it was all about recognizable brands. (It had nothing to do with the fact that he was too terrified of losing the roof over his head to focus on anything other than making money, and had fallen into a creative rut because of it.)

Kitagawa had stayed with him long enough that he recognized the seizure coming on. She'd explained her condition to him, and while neither of them were medical professionals, he knew enough to understand how serious this was. But as he saw her lying on the ground, body contorting in ways that should not have been possible, a thought crept into his mind. With her out of the way, he could profit off of her art himself. No one had to know it was some dying woman's last note to her precious child. No one would even care about the saccharine sentimentality behind it. Recognizability was more important than emotional connection, that much he'd learned over the years.

So as she lay dying on the floor in front of him, Madarame plotted. He had to make sure to remove any signature she might have left on it, which will require some alterations. How big of a signature was it? Did she stick it in a corner or somewhere more inconvenient? Should he add or remove anything, just to make it a little more "his?"

He slipped out into the hallway, away from the dying woman (and away from the lingering guilt). Only a few steps down and he ran into her barely three year old child. Little Yusuke, clutching a blanket in one hand and blinking up at him in the afternoon light filtering through the window.

"Mama?" the sleepy child said, rubbing an eye.

The guilt flared in his chest. Right, her child. Something had to be done about her child. As far as Madarame knew, her child had not inherited her frail health. But then again, Yusuke was far too young for an illness like hers to be noticeable. And while Madarame was (much to his own concern) perfectly willing to leave a young woman to die, he drew the line at murdering a child. Would a child this young even understand the death of a mother? Or would discussing it simply cause unnecessary distress?

Madarame put on his best, most reassuring smile and gently herded the child away. "Go back to bed, Yusuke. Your mother will come see you soon enough."

For the most part, the spectres and shamblers seemed to ignore him. His only speculation on that front was that maybe he was too quiet to attract their attention.

He was cutting through a quiet alley when he saw the woman duck behind a dumpster. She must have heard him coming and hidden, thinking he was one of the dead.

“… It’s alright,” he barely whispered, but hoped she could hear it anyway in the stillness. The sand under his feet crunched as he approached.

“… It is, however, inadvisable to remain in hiding here.”

Yesod peered around the corner. She was very small, in a white labcoat, holding onto her knees and pressed close to the wall of the alley with her face turned away from him. Her brown hair was held in place with a red band. There was a clipboard next to her – was it garbage, or had she dropped it?

Everything inside of him rose and fell. Yesod fell perfectly silent – silent enough that he could hear the woman breathing. Every rough breath of air she took felt like a cold knife dragged down his bones.

“Malkuth. Come with me. Malkuth!” Finally, he reached out to touch her shoulder – lightly, lighter than the touch of a ghost.

She whirled on a sudden hair trigger as his touch shattered her stupor and she slammed Yesod into a wall before he could react. Even with the cognitive distortion in effect, there was a clang of metal from Yesod’s real body as he hit the white bricks.

Instinctively, his hands went to her arms to try and hold her back, but that didn’t stop her from slamming her head into him.

Two of her teeth hit the pavement, knocked free from the force of her own blow.

“Malkuth!” Shouting her name did nothing. She slammed her head into him again. “You’re hurting yourself!”

She was writhing in his grip and bending her wrists so far that he was afraid they were going to snap. Her nails were missing; he could see that even though he wished that he couldn’t. And she wouldn’t stop.

When Malkuth slammed her head into him again, he wrapped his arms around her to trap her there. She stumbled, but finally… she went lax against his chest. With his shaking hands and arms, he couldn’t hold her for long, and she slipped out of his grip to the ground.

She’d stopped moving.

All he could do was hold himself upright and try not to choke on his own ragged gasps for air as he looked at Malkuth.

The thing that terrified him, was that when he had touched her, she had been soft and… not warm. Not alive, no, not alive… but human, and not machine. He slumped down to the ground like a useless bag of sand, only still upright because of the wall at his back. It didn’t matter if anything – anyone else – found him now. Something inside him felt rattled, twisted into knots. She must have knocked something loose in his internal workings – that was all.

Damaged as he was, he wasn’t going to get much farther regardless. And his skin was crawling – itching – at some point his fingers had made their way to his face and started digging and scratching. Yesod didn’t have the willpower in him to stop them.

He didn’t even have the willpower to stop looking at her corpse.

If he died waiting here…