A/N: Still own nothing. =3

…pain.

Rin tried to move, tried to shift the weight from the hard edges that pressed into his shins and wrists; nothing happened. His body was wax. Numb. Dead.

Cold. So cold. Damp cold, raw cold; cold that ate through flesh and into bone. Rin gasped for breath and felt the cold sting his lungs, make them scrunch up to preserve what little warmth was still in him.

"Where am I? What is… what is this?"

The domed ceiling was made from hewn stone blocks, dark grey, with ashen arteries of mortar slowly bleeding out and coagulating into stalactites. Teeth. They looked like teeth, a palate full of teeth hanging menacingly above him, ready to bite down and swallow.

The ceiling transitioned into walls, made of more stone and more mortar. Iron bars, rusted and withered by neglect. The place was a dungeon cell: where… Where, he had no idea.

The stand with the IV-drip looked bizarre in the setting. So modern, so… civilized. It was the only thing in this place that didn't look crude and menacing. It was menacing in a different way: sleek and menacing. Menacing with medical precision that fed an unknown liquid into his system through a syringe taped to his arm. Rin tried to move again, even something as little as a finger. Nothing. It must be the liquid. Some form of paralytic.

Why?

That question echoed back to him with every shout for help he called out to the deaf walls. Why was he there? Why was he naked? Why was he cuffed to a wooden board that looked like an old torture instrument? Why?

Time spun circles, as trapped and helpless as he was. It could have been minutes, hours, days. The dripping water fooled his ears plenty of times, scavenging on his hope to make him hear the sounds of footsteps in the dark. Was anybody searching for him? Where? Would they… they wouldn't give up, would they? Not now, not when things were sorting themselves out and looking up for the first time in forever…!

Rin's shouts had died off in rattling coughs long ago when they really came. The footsteps. They weren't slow, like someone searching, and they weren't fast like someone coming to get him out. The rhythmic echo was steady, and it grew louder. A yellow light slithered along the damp stone walls. Rin remained quiet, breathing in shallow puffs of mist. He had an ominous feeling that he didn't want to be found by the person holding the light.

"Your trick fooled them through and through, demon. You must be pleased."

His voice had always been pompous, full of confidence and pride. He had, as Shura had so accurately described him, always been a man who wore a saint's façade over a demon's mind. In the shadows of a dungeon far away from prying eyes, there was no need for him to pretend anymore.

"I haven't fooled anyone!" Rin protested hoarsely over his thundering heart. "This ain't no trick, you saw it yourself – the holy water didn't burn me! I'm-"

Rin's breath left him in a grey wisp of smoke that hid the Paladin for a moment. Then it cleared, and it was there again. His face. His features cut out in grotesque light and shadow by the lantern.

Rin could barely recognise that man as Arthur Auguste Angel.

"Satan's son, blessed by the Lord?" The Paladin's voice was low, a cold more unforgiving than the damp breath of the dungeon as he entered through the broken, rusty bars of the cell. "Satan's son, chosen by the Lord?"

The lantern's glare stabbed Rin's eyes. Somewhere behind it, the Paladin's gaze bore into him more viciously than any demon's claws when he hissed:

"You would have me believe that, demon?"

"Angel, listen, this is-"

When the first lash of the whip lit his frozen skin on fire, Rin's pleas drowned in screams.

Fire. Ice. Blind. Seeing. Blind – again. Repetition. Cold, so cold. Sleep...? Black... Ice. Cold. Ice cold. Pain. Fire. Pain. Pain. Pain

The IV drip inhibited Rin's nerves from communicating with his muscles: it didn't inhibit his cells from regenerating. Angel took full advantage of that. Through it all, Rin prayed. Through the lashes, through the stabs and the tears and his body's pleas for death, Rin prayed the Lord for help. Not for another miracle, he didn't expect something like that again.

He prayed that Angel wouldn't notice the liquid in the IV was running out.

"Whyh… do you hate mhe…?" he wheezed on hitching breath. Crusted blood crumbled from his lips. "WhatdidI… everh do to y-nAHHHGG!"

"You're an abomination."

Another lash, another crack of lightning through Rin's flesh.

"You're Satan's son."

Another lash, and his system was on fire, screaming at him to tense and bolt and save his life.

"And they wanted to spare you!" Angel roared, and held back nothing.

The cat o' nine tails had always… appealed to him. It had a venerable history in the service of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom, it was simple to handle, and it did its job; did its job very well.

Each gash the steel-wired tips of the thongs tore in the demon's flesh should have been dealt by the Vatican's executioner. Each one of his screams should have been heard by the hundreds – thousands – gathered on Saint Peter's Square to witness the triumph of God over devil. And instead… The bastard son of Satan would be declared a miracle. God's chosen to fight evil.

Angel held back nothing.

And then it flared. The bright black flames the demon had brought forth at the hearing burst out from his body and enveloped both of the men. There was still enough of the IV liquid in Rin's system to prevent his muscles from moving, but this one ability had returned to him. He reached out for Angel through his flames, sought the evil in that man's heart that made him do these horrible things. He would cleanse it away, as God had sent him to Assiah to do.

"B-but…!" Rin's horror pried his eyelids open wide. What was this? What was going on? "These flames should burn evil! Why aren't you…?!"

"You dare call me evil, devil?!" Through the flames – flames that simmered on the Paladin's white robes like harmless wisps of mist – Angel struck him with the whip again. "I am righteousness!" And again. "I am the Paladin!" Again… "I am God's champion on Earth!" The whip's wire tore into his eye, blinding him to the snarling madman. "It's my mission to purge the world of evil like you!"

The black flames flickered around them, not fuelled by anger but smothered by shock when Rin saw the Paladin for what he was. What he truly was.

"You're not righteous. You're jealous." The statement earned him nothing but a whack across his face from the handle of the whip. He turned his eyes – eye – to Angel again, and he pitied him. Pitied this sad, lost distortion of a man. "And you can't even see i-"

Rin choked as the Paladin stuffed the whip's handle into his mouth. He gagged, thrashed, body convulsing as the handle was forced deeper and deeper down his throat.

"Never listen to a demon's words", the Paladin hissed.

Rin bit the handle, anything to keep it from going further down; Angel thrust the whip in. Rin's front teeth snapped off like dry twigs, a brittle crack that fired lightning into his jaws.

"They're poison in the hearts of men."

Rin's larynx twitched in spasms, struggling to suck air into the lungs of his thrashing body. Vomit shot up from his heaving stomach, acid vomit that made his eyes flood and burnt him from inside. The whip kept lodging deeper down, blocked off his lungs and made bright lights dance before his wide eyes.

"They weaken our faith, make our determination falter."

Angel stared him down along the handle of the whip. Bright eyes. Bright devil eyes in an angel's face.

"You think your cheap tricks would work on me, demon?!"

Rin's fingers closed around the wrist and the hand that held the whip, frantically trying to free his throat. He was weak – the IV was wearing off but he was still weak, and Angel broke out of his grip with ease.

"Caliburn", he said grimly, grasping the hilt of his claymore, "lend me thy strength."

"Oooh~ For a bad boy like you – of course, Arthur~!"

The IV was wearing off. But Rin was still weak.

Angel held back nothing.

A/N: Because those who believe themselves just and holy have always had a hard time accepting it when blessings fall on ones they consider unworthy of them. If we take a moment to look at history, you are quite likely to be killed for claiming you've been chosen by God – especially if the authorities interpreting God's will disagree with you.

Why Rin's new flames don't burn Angel? I don't know how clearly this came through in the chapter so I'll give a brief elaboration. The "manual" mellra provided said that they burn evil. But one man's good is another man's evil, no? An individual who firmly believes that he is just and his actions good… will not think or feel that he is evil. Is there then evil in his heart, if he acts under firm conviction and intention of doing good; of doing God's will…?

(I had a second idea that I won't be writing because it would take too much time and I already have one epic length fic to wrestle with. I'm giving it away to anybody interested in writing angsty, psychological horror about Rin and Yukio.)