Ghosts of Eden

Chapter One

He woke to the soft, lulling hush of the ocean, of dwarfed waves rushing upon the sandy shore and chasing one another back into the sea, like children at play. It was an endless, interminable cycle of tides swelling, rolling, gliding over fine golden plains, before diffidently slipping away in retreat. There was the faintest hint of a breeze, sweet and gentle as it caressed his face, absently tousling stark raven hair and plucking at loose folds of his clothing.

It was all he knew for what felt like an eternity as his mind faded in and out of darkness, drifting forth and ebbing away like the whispering roar of the tide in the distance. Delicate fingers catching rogue locks of hair, the cool, tender kiss of wind inflating rippled, salt-crusted fabric before ghosting away through tears... As the tide carried his thoughts closer to the shore, he became aware of more than just the muted shushing of the ocean, the delicate play of the breeze against his skin, lowing in his ear. Surfacing above the black waves of oblivion, a single pale finger jerked with the smallest nuance of a twitch atop its white-gold bedding.

The world began expanding, growing beyond the darkness and the surf and the breeze. Lashes beaded with sand, an enervated ruby eye weakly fluttered open, unfocussed and unseeing as the sunlight threatened to blind him. Beyond the impossibly brilliant radiance of the daylight world, there was green all around him; clean, earthy arms of grass, stretching up towards the heavens, rippling in the wind... It registered nothing but the verdant vibrancy of the delicate organic barricade around him, before it rolled up, up... There. Blue; such a radiant, unspeakably blue dome spread above him, encapsulating the world. So blue it almost hurt, its blinding perfection only enhanced by the soft, irregular white vessels languidly traversing its depths, traipsing through the heavens.

Clouds...

Yes, that's what those strange, ephemeral vessels were called. Clouds; nurseries of rain, sleet, and snow, harbingers of disaster, eternal yet transient, ethereal and divine. It was the first coherent, if groggy, notion that had deemed the time appropriate to make itself known. Above the deep, hollow howl of the wind against his ear, he could hear nothing of the thoughts that had continued to dwell in the void. Just the surf, and the secretive moan of the breeze. Nothing of his own mind, or an awareness of himself as a living creature that had existed before the moment he woke up on this grassy knoll.

He possessed no memory of how he'd come to be there, sprawled in a leaden body atop a grassy mound on the beach of a foreign, tranquil ocean as it lapped at the shore – no memory of what had led him to this place, or who he was. But he remembered the clouds, remembered their celestial purity and indifference as they drifted across the perfect azure blanket of the sky, and cast quiet, serene shadows on the undulating world below.

A single pool of scarlet marked with its pinprick pupil was locked there, transfixed, lost within the vast expanse of the heavens and eternity as the clouds lazily scudded transversely through the atmosphere. He remembered them… But why?

Weak, groping fingertips extended into the murk of his awareness, probing blindly for something – anything – that might indicate a fragmented sliver of identity. He found nothing within the shadows but exhaustion, while the darkness beckoned to him, calling his thoughts back to its bosom like the distant memory of a mother. The knowledge remained anonymous to him, spectres lurking beyond an opaque and impregnable veil erected within his own mind by unknown forces, with unknown intent. Part of him had escaped, and yet... Still, the void retained all, clutching it greedily, rapaciously to its blackened breast. Nothing had been left to him but the present… and the clouds.

The ocean continued to whisper to him in the distance as it rolled upon the shore. The wind murmured of secrets in his ear, playfully mussing his hair and plucking at his clothing as though in beckoning to places unknown.

The clouds crept ever-onwards, ever-changing, into infinity amongst the purest cerulean of the sky as he faded back into the darkness – but they gently compelled him to follow.

Something was thumping in the darkness, slowly at first, insignificant and transient and far off in the distance, waning from his awareness as quickly as it had arrived. The hushing of the ocean was drawing him in again, luring him back to that place on the dune where his body lay, prone and heavy and useless. Why was he there? A timid breeze plucked at his clothing again, compelling him upwards, onwards… To where? To what?

More thumping, dragging his awareness away from the empty, curious void that existed just beneath the muted roar of the ocean. He couldn't see the sky anymore. Couldn't see the sand or the sea or the verdant green grass of the knoll upon which he'd found himself. Thump thump thump. The waves began to recede into the distance, the lowing of the wind in his ear dampening to a secretive whisper, the last dying breath of a still-born babe.

Thump thump thump thump

The darkness swallowed him whole, engulfing him once more in the warm, safe confines of the womb.

THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP-

A dense little mortar shell slammed into the back of my shoulder, dragging my prone body partially over in its sheets before the pissant clambered back upright to drop like a lead weight onto my side, forcing a grunt from my lungs.

"Wakey wakey Uncle Cloud!" The high, brazen voice announced above me, twice as loud as my alarm clock and ten times as aggravating, setting nerves that hadn't even fully woken up yet to bristling with violence. I felt tiny hands on the covered lump of my hunched shoulder as my tormentor leaned towards my ear, voice beaming brightly as it cried, "Time for haaaaaaaaaa-!"

"Get the fuck off me." The snarled words erupted at the exact same moment that I violently swept the creature off, barely even caring enough to take delight in the sounds it made as it tumbled aside and over the edge of the bed. Even the ungainly thump that erupted to accompany its child-sized body hitting the hardwood floor elicited little more than an ill-tempered growl as I rolled back over and blearily curled into my blankets. Much as I fucking loathed to consider the notion – not that I was awake enough to do so with more brainpower than a mentally-challenged tortoise – I knew that wouldn't stop him. It never did, and for one brief moment, I groggily considered the notion of seizing his too-long dreadlocks and using them like a sling to launch the little shit back out of my room the next time he came within reach.

Didn't take long before I could feel him recovering like the fucking cockroach that he was to pop up beside my bed, all sunshine and rainbows and practically begging for a metaphysical fist in the face. If I'd had more energy, I would've done it, too. "Y'know Uncle Cloud I really think you should talk to someone about your morning cranks 'cause one o' these days you're gonna end up hurting someone real bad and-"

Lids still heavy with sleep dragged themselves open for mismatched irises of azure and blood red to glare murder into the wall. My brain was just calm enough to realize that Osiris was no longer by my side before I very deliberately peered over my shoulder, blue eye blazing with malice, to stare at the small boy – dark-skinned, dark-haired, with brilliant and infuriatingly innocent golden irises – kneeling at the edge of my low, unkempt bed. "And that person," I venomously grated, "will have only their-fucking-selves to blame, because they've made a habit out of screwing with me first thing in the morning." Considering the sunlight beaming in through the loft's windows, I knew it was far past the ass-crack of dawn, but that didn't change the fact that – as far as I was concerned – I'd just started getting some decent sleep before Dryas had burst in to use me as his personal fucking trampoline. Again. For about the hundredth time that month.

The baby-faced boy merely stared at me for a moment before his countenance crumbled into an obstinate frown. "It's not my fault that you have an unhealthy tendency to stay up all night and sleep all day. Mama Crow says it's bad for you, and you need to stop doing it."

"If Mama Crow told you to go fuck yourself with a lead pipe before running out into oncoming traffic, would you do it?"

"She'd never-"

"I would," I interrupted with a nasty smile, the natural rasp of my voice rendered a low, grating rumble – not entirely unlike two tectonic plates grinding against one another – from sleep. "I'd throw you into the street myself, and I'll do it right now if you don't get the fuck out of my face."

But the little shit just kneeled there, staring at me with a deadpan expression that wasn't disturbed in the least by all of my threats and obscenities, and, with a calmness far beyond his apparent years, said, "Mama Crow says you have a visitor, and if you don't get your sorry ass downstairs to deal with him, she's going to make you wish you'd never been born." The sweetest smile a kid could be capable of plastered itself onto the homunculus's round brown face, a grin full of small, bright white children's teeth, and a vitriolic sense of certainty. "And you know how creative she is. After all, she just got a fresh batch of reagents in from Africa, and she says she can't wait to find out what they can do, but the supplier made her some veeeeery interesting promises."

The snarl that had been set into my lips twisted slowly into a grimace as Dryas held my gaze, unblinking, unwavering, and smiling, when anyone else might have balked, blanched, and turned away.

Fuck.

Fucking piece of shit on a…

"Goddammit," I grumbled under my breath, deflating under the homunculus's brilliant, child-like little smile and groaning long and deep as I rubbed my hands over my face. If Dryas had been talking about anyone else, I would have stuck to my objections like superglue to foreskin to a frozen metal pole, but I'd been living under Raven's roof for too long, and I knew better than to test her. The woman was a fucking witch doctor, and what was worse, she had a temper that put my own to shame. Fucking with me was like setting the match to ten pounds of C4.

Fucking with Mama Crow was like tossing a nuclear bomb into a super-volcano. It just had "bad idea" written all over it, and if you didn't want life as you knew it to come to an abrupt, premature, and impressively gory end, you'd do well to steer clear of it whenever the opportunity presented itself.

I flopped over onto my face and muttered a petulant, "Get the hell out," at Raven's creature. Because I'll be damned before I ever openly admit defeat to the cocky little shit.

"Ham?" Dryas chirped hopefully, all traces of malice and abnormality vanishing like smoke.

I thrust myself up onto my elbows and fixed the homunculus with a snarl and fingers that were pinched nearly to touching. "Dryas I am this close to slinging your annoying fabricated ass out the door like fucking Goliath's on the other side, now get the fuck out."

And finally, finally, when the aggravating little prick realized that I was speaking nothing if not the absolute truth – I had not even the slightest qualm with going David all over his unnatural kiddie-freak hide – he stuck out his tongue at me and trotted out of my flat, slamming the door shut behind himself with enough force that I couldn't help but wince as china rattled.

I stared at the door with blatant disgust for a second longer before heaving a disgruntled groan and crumpling limply back down onto my bed.

My sheets, tangled and torn half-way off the mattress, still smelled like Osiris. Actually, they smelled like a tantalizing mixture of Osiris – sage and sandalwood and all things both earthly and divine – and sex, and I couldn't help but pull in a deep, gradual breath that escaped only in a tiny nostalgic rivulet through the crack in my lips. Nuzzling into the pillows and hugging them close, I permitted myself one moment of weakness to relish that smell, one moment of weakness to let my mind wander helplessly into memories of the night prior, dominated by alabaster skin turned gold by the light filtering in through the windows, lush, soft lips courting heatedly with my own, and a face merely a shade away from androgynous lax, feverish, flushed with rapture.

Part of me had been hoping to wake up and find Osiris still dozing beside me, his obsidian hair and the duo of platinum blonde streaks he'd had cut in a perfectly asymmetrical design rumpled into utter chaos. I'd been hoping to wake to the sight of him perched in the window, wearing nothing but a button-down shirt two sizes too big, as he stared out into the city with those seductive, sinfully green eyes of his. Hell, I would have been okay to waking up just in time to see him finish dressing before he left, but instead…

I just had to get the goddamn kiddie-freak from Hell.

A weary blue iris cracked itself open to peer up at the vague rumors of life beyond the filthy barrier of my windows, wistfully breathing in Osiris's scent, and pretending that I could still savor his warmth. Osiris wasn't here. Hadn't been for hours, as far as I could tell. He'd dressed and ghosted out of my loft with all of the ethereal grace he possessed whilst I had still been rendered next to catatonic, tangled haphazardly in my sheets. Not a peep, not a shake – not a single kiss or whispered farewell.

A fraction of the tension leaked out of my body as I melted into my mattress, eyes sagging shut, and a deep, heavy sigh of resignation heaved itself out into the atmosphere.

Fuck. I'd just woken up and I could already tell that today was going to make me wish I'd gone straight back to sleep. Preferably after drinking myself into a catatonic stupor. I'd wake up feeling like a hydrogen bomb had gone off behind my eyes, but it'd still beat the shit out of the rather rude awakening I'd gotten instead.

The mere thought of it had a low, resentful groan rumbling out into the silence of my loft as my mind turned, with only a great deal of reluctance, to the business presently at hand.

Dryas had said that I had a visitor. The only time I ever received 'visitors' was when they wanted something from me – a favor, a trinket, a bite of information, a snitch in need of tracking down to be put down. Visitors meant work, or the nearest thing to, and considering how hot and bothered Raven sounded about it, I had a pretty good idea who it could be. More likely than not, it was one of my more morally grey kind of visitors, the kind that pissed her off like nothing else because she felt they were bad for business. Made her customers twitchy, she'd said, coming into her shop to find someone who looked like they belonged to one mafia or another perched quietly in a chair, waiting.

Never loud, never sharp, never violent. They would just wait, and then they would wait some more until I came downstairs to strike a deal or tell them to go fuck themselves with a switchblade. Things being what they were, however, I had a tendency to lean towards the former of the two options. Had to pay for rent somehow, after all, and my beguilingly charming smile had stopped working on Raven a very long, long time ago.

Osiris would have insisted in that soft, suggestive way of his that I could piece together my own business, that I shouldn't need to wait until one mob or another found themselves in a pinch and sent their people to my – well, technically, Raven's – doorstep. I had the contacts, I had the discipline, I had the skills and the knowledge and enough of a reputation that underlings would treat me with respect, simply out of fear for the repercussions that might come otherwise. After all, I was practically infamous for being a rather unpredictable little fucker; personally, I considered it a compliment, and a strength.

The responsibility that came with having your own cell of organized crime, though… It was beyond my comprehension entirely why anyone would want to be saddled with that, but let the mobs play their games. All I wanted was the freedom and the money to do what I pleased, when I pleased, and how I pleased to do it. It was a life of pure self-indulgence – responsible for no one, answering to no one, being held accountable for no one's actions except my own.

Ankou, I knew – the single, enigmatic intransient in my long, scarcely remembered life – would have been disappointed in me.

"Tu fui, ego eris."

But then again, I hadn't seen him in almost fifty-odd years, so fuck what he thought. If he wanted to scold me for living the way I was, he could damn well show his face every decade or two to tell me so.

The lethargy began melting away, withering under the heat of the familiar ire and arrogant irreverence that burned within my core, fuelling everything I was and more – the lone wolf that had long since learned that the only way to survive was to be a bigger, nastier motherfucker than anyone else out prowling the streets.

So why was I taking jobs that would have contented any two-bit bottom-feeder? Snitch. Fetch?

I remembered the hillock on the beach from my dreams, the surreal lack of everything that made me who I was. The breeze, plucking at ripples in my shredded clothes as it blew through the fabric.

I shifted my head against my pillows, and mismatched eyes of the brightest azure and most lurid crimson peered up with disdain at the grimy, silent panes of glass above my bed.

The muted, rushing roar of ocean tides seething against the sandy shore of someplace I'd never been.

I didn't have the answer for a lot of things. Why should this be any different?

No time like the present, my mind grudgingly muttered to itself. Might as well see what they've got for me today. After, of course, I'd had a very long, self-indulgent shower, mostly because I could, even if only for the sole purpose of pissing my newest customer off and making Raven squirm. And, hell, if I was going to have a shitty day, I felt wholly entitled – nay, obliged – to drag down as many of those conniving, bottom-feeding little motherfuckers as I could with me.

After all, misery just loves company, doesn't it?

-x-

Threading my arms through an oversized canvas army field jacket as I clomped down the stairs, I'd almost – almost – managed to coax myself into what passed for a good mood when I rounded the corner and descended the last of the steps, flicking the collar of my coat into order. When I lifted my eyes from the worn hardwood flooring, I was greeted by a sight entirely too familiar. The intricately carved cedar lattice acting as a barrier between one side of Raven's counter and the other. On Raven's side, a beaded curtain hanging in the doorway didn't quite obscure glimpses of a scarred wooden table and elaborate and cluttered shelving systems, populated by innumerable jars, vials, and large glass bottles of meticulously labelled substances. Powders, herbs, mosses, flowers, liquid, desiccated animal parts… You name it – Raven had it. Name your ailment – gas, migraines, food poisoning, a duplicitous soon-to-be ex – and she probably had something for that, too. Concoctions hand-ground, stewed and boiled and turned into tinctures or tablets or balms for dedicated locals and curious tourists alike.

On the patron side of the latticework, there was a simple, unassuming yet cozy sitting area, usually occupied by at least one individual over seventy-five, but the only person warming the cushions today was a younger man. Pale, dark-haired and slick as a switchblade, he was reading the newspaper with a deadly, detached sense of tranquil nonchalance. All it took was one glance – from anyone – to know that this man had not come to Raven for a cure to deal with a problematic case of crotch-rot. As for me…? I knew better than most. The pricey suit could have tied him to any of the mobs vying for control over the city, but the whiteness of his skin, the sheer pallor of his lips and silvery-white eyes… I knew him. He - Sebastian, specifically – was Sanctum, one of the lapdogs for the Five. And he wasn't human. Hell, no humans were involved with the Five unless they had been awarded the distinctly unappealing, yet dressed-up task of providing cheap, expendable labor or live bait.

No wonder Raven had her tits in such a twist. The Five were the closest effigy to law in our world, and they didn't take kindly to things like individuals playing god and creating homunculi. Not that it usually worked out, anyways – making a body was easy, but it was the soul that made the creature resemble something human, and very, very few people managed to accomplish that as well as live to tell the tale… But Raven had, and she had Dryas to prove it. How the Five didn't know about the dreadlocked little shit was beyond me entirely, but as long as I wasn't dragged into it, I also didn't much care.

Unsurprisingly, Dryas was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Mama Crow. Griffin wouldn't be dropping by until later in the afternoon, once his classes were finished – 'versity boy by day, 'prentice poisoner/shop-bitch by night – so it was just me and Seb, alone in Raven's storefront to talk business.

Sebastian's "business" usually involved hunting someone down and… Well, the latter activity could be almost anything. Collecting money, passing along a friendly warning, cutting off a finger or two… I never knew with him. With any luck, all I'd have to do today was rough someone up a little. I wasn't really in the mood for playing Which Little Piggy Went to Market; I'd left my good knife in its hiding place upstairs, and the last time that happened, I'd had to make do with a really dull and shitty pair of bolt cutters.

It hadn't been pretty.

Afterwards, Griffin had tried to be a smartass by taunting me with a greasy paper basket of deep-fried mozza sticks he'd brought to work with him; I'd told him that if he didn't shut the fuck up within the next five seconds and get me a bucket of ginger root and a fistful of horse tranquilizers, I was going to grab him by the shirt collar and vomit violently and with a great deal of relish in his face. Raven had cuffed him upside the head, gave me a wicked tongue lashing, and then sent me packing my sorry ass upstairs with a warm can of ginger ale and some melatonin.

I felt that getting absolutely shitfaced would be more effective, so I'd resorted to vodka, instead. Spent the entire day after that huddled up in bed or stuffing my face into the toilet bowl, but I'd been way too hung-over to even fucking think about sawing and wrenching off someone's fingers at the knucklebone, so as far as I was concerned, it was a resounding success.

Christ. I really hoped that wasn't what Seb had on the agenda today. I choked down an abrupt surge of bile and managed to compose myself just in time to make a proper appearance.

"Well well, what have we here," I rasped as I sauntered towards him. "Council's golden boy come to ask favors again?"

Sebastian graced me with a cool platinum glance before he meticulously folded up the newspaper, set it aside, and rose to his feet, absently smoothing his suit with gloved hands as he did so. Most people wouldn't dare to mock someone like Sebastian – if there was ever a poster boy for a lean, mean, killing machine, he'd be it, at six-foot-three to my modest five-foot-eight and mobster to the core – but we had enough of a working history that he took it in stride like a champ, and I didn't doubt that he'd give it back to me with interest within the day. "The Council of Five knows you're the best person to ask," he returned with an infinitesimal smirk. "We will, of course, reward you for your services, should you feel inclined to lend them. As we always do."

"You'd be a dead man if you didn't," I shot back with a broad, chipper grin that was utterly empty of malice. Me? Personally? I hoped like hell the day never came when I might actually have to make good on that threat. Lean mean killing machine, after all. I could talk all the shit I wanted, but Sebastian was one of the absolute last people I'd want to catch myself in a fight with. He didn't end up in brawls often, but what action I had seen him in had been viciously cold, brisk, and nightmare-inducing in its efficiency. Luckily for me, I had been on the winning side, but every now and again, I still felt the slightest bit sorry for the poor bastards who hadn't.

Idly tonguing the ring at the outer edge of my lip when Sebastian merely smiled in a way that spoke volumes I couldn't – or simply didn't want to – understand, I jerked my head towards the door of Raven's shop and whipped out my aviators. It was looking a little too bright out for my liking; after all, I had indulged in a rather late night, and I would've killed to participate in a repeat just then, especially considering my current circumstances. "So you gonna tell me what this is all about, or am I gonna hafta take up mind-reading?"

"It is nothing we have not asked of you before. Come. We have a car waiting, and we do not doubt that our friend will be growing restless."

I bit back a curse and grimaced as I trailed after him, bells chiming and jingling above our heads with the motion of the door, into the afternoon's sunlight.

Friend…? Ah, fuck. That sounded exactly like finger-chopping was on his agenda for today, and I was wearing some of my favorite goddamn rings, too.

-x-

A river of bodies was flowing beyond the water as he watched; a seething mass of humanity plugged into MP3 players or superphones while they jogged, pairs of mothers with strollers engaged in fervent conversation that had been silenced by the distance. Vendors hawked their wares in stalls erected on the innermost edge of the walkway, uncaring and unruffled by the would-be patrons that simply ignored their existence. He knew how they felt. They were ghosts, shoved to the outskirts of society.

Businessmen taking their lunches on wooden benches while envious aerial scavengers fluttered and hopped nearby, businessmen marching along in their suits and ties, snarling orders into a cellphone. Nearby, further in from the river's edge, a paved square where the bodies had conglomerated with women, children, lovers and siblings and friends, street performers and craftsmen, cheering and leering masses of faces that all looked the same, excepting minor variations, from his perch across the water.

There was only one face that interested him – one face that he had memorized down to the most infinitesimal of details from photographs taken within the covert embrace of shadows. One face that blazed in his mind's eye as he scanned the throng through his scope; one face that would be surrounded by the painfully obvious ghosts that passed as security for a high-profile event. A festival, overflowing with gaiety and goodwill, at which a man was going to be murdered.

His scope drifted over to the platform set up so usefully within the depths of the celebration, empty now – but only for the moment. Soon enough, he knew with a glance at his watch, there would be a man in his crosshairs, painfully exposed in spite of the shadows forever lurking nearby, linked into a singular network, forever watching for a threat they'd never see coming. He could hear their chatter. He could hear the patrolling police muttering to each other through their radios, a never-ending drone of white noise through the bud plugged into his ear.

Soon, everything would be ready. The festivities would crawl to a stop; the milling swarm of bodies would either drift away or sluggishly turn their attention towards the platform with a podium on it, the one he was watching with such obsessive interest. There was no ache in his bones now, no restless tension in his muscles as he watched through his scope, finger hovering with perfect stillness alongside the trigger. He knew this dance, willed himself into the silent white space inside his mind as he waited for the man in the photograph to pull up in his sleek black Mercedes at the back of the venue. Just a little longer. He had only to wait until his target took to the podium on the stage, unaware that he was being watched by more than just the spectators in the crowd. Blissfully oblivious to the ghost, the reaper across the river, waiting for him to take his position on the stage.

Perhaps things would have been different if he'd felt anything. Regret, perhaps. Sorrow. Hatred, even, for the life he was about to take from the world. But he was numb, just as he'd been every time before this. Utterly and completely apathetic, interested only in completing the task with which he'd been assigned and paid for. After all, for him, it was just another day. The stakes were the same, but so was the routine. Take his position, assemble his gear, and wait. Wait, and continue waiting, until the moment came for him to kill. And then, disappear, like a phantom in the mists. Just another day.

The chatter gained a notch of tension in his ear, activity surging as the car pulled up to the back of the stage, and he hefted the rifle against his shoulder, steadying himself in his nest, bracing himself for the inevitable kickback against his shoulder. A gloved finger curled around the trigger, hovering perfectly still, close enough to kiss but never touching.

Soon.

A grandfatherly man who had yet to lose his vitality emerged from within the depths of the vehicle, his ghosts muttering into their suit cuffs as they surrounded him like meat shields. A smattering of applause sparked into life across the river, growing with whoops and cheers as the target emerged into general sight. Attention was shifting, so immense in the enormity of it all that he could almost feel it when the crowd began gathering before the killing ground and uninterested parties drifted away, back into the flow of bodies along the riverside. Energy was mounting as the old man climbed the steps of the stage, waving off his guards with amicable confidence that would ultimately be the end of him. His life had been reduced to minutes, nothing more than a series of breaths that began slowing as his crosshairs found their target, and his finger went taut against the trigger.

Just another day. Another death. Another murder that should have been weighing on his conscience like a leaden mantle.

The only thing he felt was the weight of the rifle in his arms, embraced and cradled against him like a lover as he made some last minute adjustments, double-checked his range, accounted for a fresh, tousling breeze off the river, and settled himself. One shot – that's all he would get. That's all he'd ever gotten… But then, as it would turn out, it seemed that was all he'd ever needed.

One shot. One bullet. One minute of bated breaths.

The old man was waving to the crowds, smiling cordially through a snowy white moustache and moving with all the ease of someone thirty years younger while he approached the podium. Applause continued as he took his place, dampening only when the old man paused, taking in the crowd before him, readying himself for the first word of his speech. Unbeknownst to the target, he was not the only one gathering in his breath, preparing himself for that first, and last, syllable.

That was when the thunderclap ripped through the building, shaking dust from the ceilings, the shockwave slamming through his body before something erupted far below him and suddenly the whole world was falling apart in a chaotic hell of crumbling-

A jingle of keys. The soft, thick click of the deadbolt turning across the room as awareness sucked itself back into its mortal confines. Each tiny breath labored through battered and bruised lungs, fractured ribs aching with every carefully measured pull of air through his lips, heart beating to a suicide beat against his breastbone. Though his back was turned, his eyes closed, he heard the door snick open, heard the crinkling of plastic bags, and despite himself, when he extended a thought to it, he found his hand under his pillow, clenched white-knuckled and aching around the familiar handle of a deadly, partially serrated seven-inch bowie knife.

The weighted door whispered shut behind his guest, latching back into place with another soft click. He fought to steady his breathing, fought to ignore the pain raking white hot steel claws along his ribcage and loosen the wooden grip his fingers had clamped into around the unsheathed knife he slept with as someone deftly toed off their shoes in the entranceway and moved with faint, padding footsteps into the kitchen. His entire body was cold, clammy, even under his blankets, hair left damp with sweat sucking to the flesh of his brow. A slash across his cheek – since stitched and bandaged – began to throb as his jaw worked itself beneath the skin.

More crinkling. Another click, this time to ignite a light to hold the gloom inside the apartment at bay, regardless of the fact that his internal clock – and familiarity – informed him that it had to be at least mid-afternoon by now.

After all, Vaan would only buy groceries after the day's classes were done. He was the only one with a secondary key to the loft, and he was certainly the only person who would ever deign to pay him a friendly visit… Especially now, after a failed job, while he was injured and seething with carefully suppressed rage, targeted at the faceless entity who'd decided to drop a building on him. Vaan was the only person who'd dare, and even then, he dared only because he was family… The only family they had left.

"Yael?" His brother's voice was muffled by the overwhelming silence of the large open room around them, sparse in design, even more Spartan in furnishings.

It took every ounce of will he possessed to peel his fingers, one painful fraction at a time, from the knife under his head. Vaan was no threat. He was family. His brother. His baby brother, and his only friend in the world – or, at least, would have been, if only he knew what friendship was like. Friends were a luxury he could not afford, which left only three kinds of people in the world: innocents, targets, and clients. Vaan was the only shade of grey he had ever known, and despite the sheer force with which Yael had tried to eject him from his cruel life… Still, Vaan remained.

As he gingerly withdrew his arm from beneath his pillow, forcing himself to inhale a slow, deep breath in spite of the pain that shrieked along his right side, he could feel Vaan approaching him, knew his little brother was watching the movement with keen, concerned eyes. He also knew his brother would make a point of carefully avoiding the subject of the knife hidden beneath his pillow, and the reasons that had left him reaching for it more often than ever before.

"How are you feeling?" Vaan's voice was soft behind him, as smooth and warm as the caramel tone of flesh they both shared, inherited from their late mother.

Yael simply focused on his breathing, welcoming the sharp stabs of pain brought on by the ribs that had been fractured in the explosion that had rendered him weak, bedridden, and a failure. Someone had tried to kill him, of that he had no doubt, and yet he lived on; he would harness the pain thrust upon him, and he would channel the rage it inspired to make himself stronger.

"Okay," Vaan drawled with tact, padding around to the left side of the bed, where a chair had been pulled up. "Let me rephrase that." He was in front of him, now, voice resonating from the place near the chair. He was hovering. Not quite sitting. Not quite sure whether there was any point in sitting, or whether he should remain standing if his queries continued to extract nothing but stolid silence. Instead, as though resigned to indecision, Vaan leaned his weight down onto the arm of the chair, wood creaking slightly under the burden even as he gave a restive sigh of his own. "How are your ribs?"

When the words crept out of him, they were hoarse, grating and rasping like gravel and sand in his throat – voice deeper, colder than his brother's – and only then did it occur to him how long he'd gone without ingesting fluids. "Still fractured. Still…" A grimace pulled his lips thin into a muted snarl as he minutely shifted his weight atop his injured ribs and stiffened in discomfort. "Fucking useless." Settling his head more comfortably against his pillow, forcing down the arid fist in his throat, Yael clawed bruised leaden lids open to look at his brother for the first time since his arrival with dismal, rainwater grey eyes.

Vaan's long-fingered hands were twined together in his lap, concern written plainly across the cordial planes of his face as he watched on from his perch. "It's only been a week and a half, Yael." Lean shoulders gave a helpless shrug. "These things usually take at least six weeks to heal, and that's when someone's had the shit beaten out of them with a bat or they've gotten into a car accident or something." Vaan would have held his gaze if Yael had let him, but instead, Yael allowed his weary eyes to sag shut as his brother carefully picked out his next words, as though to help him to understand. "You were in a condemned parking garage that was bombed and then collapsed. That you got out of it…" Something abruptly choked his voice off, and although he wasn't looking, he could tell his brother was struggling with the information, wrestling with the surge of emotion that came hand in hand with watching his older brother travel uncaring down a dark, lonely, and interminably dangerous road. "That you got out of it at all is a fucking miracle, as far as I'm concerned."

A skeptical bark of laughter began to erupt from his chest before imploding into a choked and ugly cough. "A conditioned contract killer crawling out of a rubble heap is a miracle? God must be running low on ideas."

He could feel the dark look his baby brother pinned him with, not that it would do Vaan any good, and they both knew it. "Y'know if it weren't for the fact that you're recovering from several fractured ribs and a building collapse I would punch you right in the friggin' mouth right about now."

It was an idle threat, utterly empty. Vaan was a pacifist, always had been. Even if the going looked bleak, if there was a way to be found that would avoid physical confrontation, sooner or later, he would find it – but Yael had no qualms with his brother's penchant for quiet solutions. After all, he embodied enough violence for the both of them, and as far as Vaan was concerned, substantially more, as well.

A soft, dejected sigh escaped from his bedside, the prelude to an argument more familiar and worn than a favored pair of shoes, but Vaan took it upon himself to engage in this exercise of futility regardless. He knew what would come of it – they both did – but that had never stopped his little brother from trying. "When is enough going to be enough, Yael? When you're crippled? When you're dead?"

He had no place in normal society, and Vaan knew this as well. He was a monster born by violence, raised by violence, sustained by violence. Ever since he could remember, that was all he had known, all he'd ever been good at. If there existed an answer to his little brother's question, Yael didn't know it. How does one deny what they are? How does one simply stop being a murderer for hire, when a lifestyle of death and assault is all they understand? So he remained silent, quiet as a corpse as bolts of pain rippled up and down his entire right side.

"Why do you keep risking your life, your freedom for these people when they couldn't possibly care less about what happens to you once the job's done?" Vaan persisted, agitation leaching into his voice and mingling with all of the worry. "What happens when your luck runs out and something really does backfire? Not just a job gone wrong, but if these people decide that you're a liability… What happens if they turn on you, or the cops catch you? What then?"

"Then I would suspect, little brother," he wheezed, "that I will either die or spend the rest of my life incarcerated."

"This isn't funny, Yael!" Vaan snapped. "This is your life we're talking about! This isn't just the occasional gig where you go out and bloody your knuckles on someone's face. This isn't bodyguard work. This is fucking murder. For crime lords. And for what? A few brownie points here and there while everyone else out on the street is adding your name to their hit list?!"

"Occupational hazard," he grunted. For a moment, he expected Vaan to explode, to launch into a tirade about change and concern and escaping the trap he'd designed, constructed, and then imprisoned himself in, but when nothing but silence followed his coarse voice, leaden lids pried themselves open.

Vaan's face was a mask of agony, his head shaking itself as he stared at him and visibly wrestled with the torment Yael had spent their entire childhoods shielding him from. "Then what about me, huh? Fine," he conceded, voice hoarse, clogged by the tears cinching his throat shut. "If your life means so little to you, fine. I can't change that. But as little as it's worth to you, it means everything to me. You've been looking out for me my whole life, Yael-"

"And one day that fact will be the death of you." For the first time, molten ire found itself sharpening his words, a dangerous, defiant look lancing his young, naïve sibling through.

"You're my brother," Vaan persevered, more stubborn than ever, even in his despair, "and I am not going to abandon you."

"I have told you time and time again," Yael wheezed, "that if you ever want to be safe – if you ever want to live a normal life – you need to stay the hell away from me. Even if I was dead to you, it wouldn't be enough. You think my 'employers', my 'enemies' would hesitate even for a moment to use you to get to me? They won't think twice about taking you off the street in broad daylight and bringing you to places that make the deepest circle of Hell seem like a day spa to flay the skin from your bones while you're aware and chemically paralyzed, Vaan."

Expression crumbling, rainwater eyes slid down to stare in futility at the soft, bony, bloodless hands furled in his little brother's lap. The muscles in Vaan's jaw weakly worked themselves against the emotion he could see swelling inside of him, the silent acknowledgement that his words were both true and irrefutable. But still, that didn't stop his brother from swallowing back his sorrow and murmuring, "When is enough going to be enough…?"

He wanted to comfort his brother. He wanted to rest a beaten, calloused hand on his soft dark hair and reassure him that, sooner or later, things would get better, the way he had when they were children. But he was a man grown, now, and Vaan a promising young adult in hot pursuit of a degree in forensic pathology. Things were no longer the way they had been, and never would be again. So he rested on his fractured ribs, immobile and useless, gaze averted, and quietly told his brother, "You know things aren't that simple."

But the real truth of the matter was this: When had they ever been?

-x-

Fucking hell. There was no such goddamn thing as easy with these jobs, was there? Because today was turning out to be just fucking fantastic. Grumbling an unending stream of obscenities under my breath as I clomped down the narrow, grimy stairwell, I unhooked my aviators from the neck of my shirt and stabbed them back onto my face with a briskness that, honestly, I'm surprised didn't result in a leg gouging me in the eye in the process. That would have been par for the course for the day, and it likely would have triggered an abrupt outburst of violence that probably would have left the seedy building's inhabitants all but shitting themselves in terror. And that was only if I didn't bring the whole thrice-damned complex down on me first.

As it would turn out, the "friend" that Sebastian had mentioned earlier was a Scale junkie who'd ostensibly come across some rather sensitive information, and the Council was harboring a healthy suspicion that the loser intended to run and likely sell it to the highest bidder. Naturally, they wanted to know precisely how much he knew, and what it would take for him to keep mum about it. That's why they'd sent Seb to fetch me, because I am, if nothing else, a master of persuasion who's not afraid to get his hands dirty.

Even if I was suffering from a powerful urge to shove my hands in a vat of boiling water and disinfectant for the next three hours.

More than that, I was a neutral party. I had no hard allegiances with any of the gangs vying for control of the city's underworld, and they all knew it. I had a reputation, in fact, for being an exceptionally indifferent neutral party. I didn't care what they wanted, or what the job was… As long as it didn't start a war that would inevitably drag me into it and paid well enough to keep me cooperative – not to mention serve as compensation for how often my ass was the frequently the only one being parked directly on the line – I was willing, at the very least, to hear my potential employers out.

As luck would unfortunately have it, however, this guy was so baked that he could've passed for a vegetable with amnesia, and I could have spent all day bashing his face in without it making a single goddamned bit of difference. As things were, my knuckles were aching, I was mottled with spatters of blood from the fists up, and my mood was just bad enough to merit drawing on a smidge of mana to help the hobbled interrogation along a little. Dumb fuck only laughed and burbled up some blood while his eyes rolled up to the ceiling, glossy, numb, and stupid.

And the Council considered this guy a threat… how? As far as I could tell, the tweaked-out fuck was too scaled down to even remember his mother's name, much less navigate the Black Markets and retain critical, and crucial, information – never mind the niggling question of how he managed to obtain said information in the first place. He'd obviously been using long and frequently enough for the substance to start bleeding out of his skin in the form of crusty, chemical-infused flakes, so how someone like that could possibly manage to infiltrate the Five's tightly-knit security and escape with some tasty tidbits of secret knowledge was beyond my fucking comprehension entirely. They could have sent an entire SWAT team in there, bashing down every door available with their guns blazing, and he still would have been lounging around in the soiled armchair I'd found him in.

Needless to say, I was somewhat less than impressed.

A shitkicker flew up and slammed the building's back door open, the murky daylight of the alley nearly blinding in comparison to the dim tones of illumination I'd found consistent throughout the grimy apartment complex. Sebastian, of course, was exactly where I'd last seen him, casually leaning against a brick wall, a thin paperback sprawled open in his gloved hand while he waited. I didn't have to see his freakishly pale eyes to know that they'd flicked up to me from behind his sunglasses as I stormed over; the way he tucked his book away into an internal pocket and withdrew his hand again with a packet of wet wipes, which he flung at me in a lackadaisical backhanded toss, spoke volumes that did my mood no favors whatso-fucking-ever.

"Well that was a resplendent fucking waste of my time," I growled at him, tearing the flap open on the wet wipes and stuffing the rest of the package in my pocket as I set about scrubbing the blood from my hands. And my rings. My rings were a gory fucking mess, god damn it all. "Dumb fuck wouldn't recognize his own mother if she was holding a gun to his head." Fucking hell, I needed a smoke. Instead, I scowled down at my hands, working with an industrious determination to wash the dried-out splatters from my skin, digging with my nails into the little crevices of my steel rings to try and scratch it out. I glowered up at Sebastian over the rims of my sunglasses. "You sure someone didn't fuck up and give you the wrong information?" I jerked a thumb back over my shoulder, "'Cause once that concussion clears up," like I said, I was a far cry from being impressed, and I may or may not have lost my temper and beat the bloke unconscious, "that little prick ain't gonna be doin' nothin' but diggin' more scales outta his skin to see how long it'll take before his brain starts melting outta his fuckin' ears. And," I held up my palms in deference, "maybe this is just me, but that just doesn't seem like something the recon type would be keen on trying."

Much less when it's the Big Five they're trying to fuck over with a lead pipe and no lube. They weren't even asking them out to dinner, first, and, hell… That was just rude.

But Sebastian…? He couldn't be bothered to share even so much as a twitch of the irritation I felt as he clasped his leather-clad hands in front of him. "When the security of the Council has been compromised, we do not make mistakes, Mr. St. Vier."

Like hell they didn't. If this wasn't one giant walking, talking, miserably misinformed fuck-up, I didn't know what to call it, and I let Seb know that while I stared at him over the rims of my glasses. I finished wiping off my hands and tossed the dirty pink cloth aside, utterly indifferent to the one piece of litter I was adding to an already filthy street. "Well if you wanna go up there and take a shot at getting some sense outta that miserable scaled down fuck, far be it from me t' obj-"

"Such activities are not in our job description."

"Of course not." Because far be it from the Council to require their lapdogs to stoop to the lowly level of bloodying their own hands, instead of someone else's. "Y'know," I snapped, advancing on Sebastian with an accusatory finger levelled at him, "one of these days I'm gonna take that 'job description' and shove it right up your pasty undead a-"

That was when we heard the solid metallic clang, thump of a body crashing down onto a fire escape, and then a dumpster. Sebastian's gaze shifted only minutely to a point of interest over my right shoulder, but I whipped around just in time to see a haggard, silver-haired man cast a look of pure, hunted panic back over his shoulder at us – fine-boned countenance framed by the hood of a too-big sweater, ashen eyes huge in dark circles of sleep-deprivation – before rolling off the dumpster and booking it down the backstreet at a dead run.

Shielded azure and scarlet eyes snapped back over to Sebastian in question, a faint smile playing over his pale lips as he regarded me with all the smugness in the world and more.

Don't fucking tell me…

That infinitesimal smirk grew the slightest bit wider as our gazes held, and Seb's ghastly pale lips formed but a single word. "Woof."

… Right.

Muttering a snarled, "fuck," under my breath as the realization struck home, I pivoted on a heel and bolted down the alley after my prey. Not the scaled down piece of shit I'd been busting my knuckles on, but someone else. Someone who, in that fleeting second of frozen awareness, had matched every possible description one could hope for when it comes to identifying a person who had in their possession far more information than they should. How he'd managed to slink past me, I hadn't the fucking slightest, and couldn't much afford to fucking care, now; he was on the run, which meant I had to give chase, and that's all there was to it. Let Sebastian worry over the details, because he sure as shit wasn't going to be of any help to me now. After all, running down scum like this…? Not in his job description, you could bet your first born child – or your ass, if that wasn't an option – on it.

Best to just leave it to the dogs like me. Go fetch. Woof-woof.

Bark.

Fuck my life.

-x-

To Be Continued…

-x-

So, like it? Hate it? Wish it would spontaneously combust? Leave me a review and tell me all about it! C'mon, I wanna know everything!

Okay, so it's another short chapter, but right now, life's gotten a little bit busier than I'm used to, so finding time to try and write has been… difficult. That, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around this new world and its characters, so… Baby steps. I'm also trying something a little new in how I'll be writing this story in particular. So, just to clarify in case anyone is confused, Cloud will indeed be the only character who will be written in first-person; everyone else will be in the usual third-person, as it was for Yael's scene.

And I do believe that is all for now, so until next time…! (And a great big thanks to DarkLadyKnight and Cassandra Testarossa for the reviews! I hope to hear more from you as the story progresses!) Thanks for your time everyone, and I hope you enjoyed!