It was almost morning by the time they'd all managed to settle down and tucked into their respective beds. The Lord and the others had offered to clean up after him, which had come as a relief to Frankenstein who wasn't used to having people taking care of things for him. He had wished to explain things himself, but he wasn't going to refuse their generosity. Besides, he did have more pressing concerns.

Such as Raizel.

He had stayed beside him while he patched up Tao and Takeo, offered them clean clothes and offered them a room to rest. They were quiet, mostly, and did as they were told. Frankenstein did understand and gave them privacy and space they deserved. When later they were willing to talk about it, he was going to be there for them all the way through. Once they had settled in, Raizel had quickly disappeared upstairs while Frankenstein cleaned up the living room and the kitchen. He wiped down the counters at least four times, fingers clenching and unclenching over the damp cloth in his hands. It did not help, so he put it aside and stretched: the sun had already risen while he was busy sorting out his brain. Shaking his head, he set the kettle to boil and leaned against the counter to watch the morning sky. The dark purples were already dissolving into warm blues and the mist was slowly receding as far as his eyes could see.

The kettle came to a boil and he prepared the tea, then poured it into two cups and straightened himself. It was time to go talk to Raizel, as he'd already put it off for far too long.

Raizel's room was bathed in semi-darkness, the light of dawn not yet having reached here fully. Raizel was standing at the window, half-obscured by the fluttering drapes as he gazed out of the window with his back to Frankenstein. In their association up until now, Raizel had never felt as remote as he did right now. Not even when he'd been a wraith barely existing inside a dilapidated castle.

Frankenstein set the tray down and then took a seat at the coffee table, gazing at Raizel silently, waiting. He was rewarded not two minutes after, when the aroma of fresh tea became too much for Raizel to resist. He turned away from the window with a sigh and took a seat next to him, picking up the cup and taking a sip from it. Something melted inside Frankenstein at the sight of it, but he still felt cold all over despite that.

"I am not angry," Raizel told him after a couple of more sips.

"I know." Frankenstein swallowed. "You aren't angry. You are sad."

Raizel did not say anything, confirming Frankenstein's worst fears. He picked up his tea and clutched at the warmth seeping through the ceramic. It didn't warm him up at all. He realised he was trembling and there was no relief.

"I'm not sad because of what you did," Raizel said, softly. He raised his eyes to meet Frankenstein's, unfathomable but gentle. "I'm sad because I was too weak to prevent you from making such a decision."

"It's not your fault." Frankenstein was emphatic in that at least. "It was my choice. For myself. Call it atonement if you will, but I owe them something."

"The souls need to be released from their torment and sent to the afterlife," Raizel said. "But you've already set destiny in motion, and there's little I can do about it right now." He sounded pained enough to make Frankenstein wince. "And I don't know what you've offered them in return either."

It has nothing to do with you, Frankenstein wanted to tell him. He refrained, however, and instead took a sip of cooling tea. "There is nothing you need to expend yourself over. Just," he shrugged. "Take care of yourself for now because I'm not entirely helpless."

"But at what cost," Raizel said, setting the empty cup down. He stood up once more and walked back to the window, mouth drawn in an unhappy line.

"Will you not forgive me?" Frankenstein asked eventually, staring at the dark liquid swirling in his cup, virtually untouched once Raizel had left the table. Helplessness clogged in his throat.

"There is nothing to forgive when it comes to you, Frankenstein," Raizel said. He turned his head slightly to let Frankenstein catch the look on his face, to let him know that he meant every word he said. "The one who is beyond forgiveness is me."

"Please don't," Frankenstein said, panic fluttering inside his chest. He hadn't meant to cause this. Hadn't meant to make Raizel so sad he could barely stand to look at Frankenstein. He got up, knocking his knees into the table and then taking a few unsteady steps towards Raizel. Only to stop short a few inches away from Raizel's back, wondering if he still had the right to touch the other so unreservedly with his tainted hands. "This is my choice. My will. You have nothing to do with it."

Raizel's shoulders drooped a little, but he said nothing, and Frankenstein couldn't bring himself to reach out and bridge the few remaining inches between them. He stood there, in total silence, for a long time as all the good and happy memories of the past few months shrivelled up inside him, leaving behind blank and hollow despair.

Trust Frankenstein to ruin the only good thing in his life. Once again.

Frankenstein set his alarm for five in the morning, and then he turned around in his bunk, drawing the thin blanket up to his chin and tried not to shiver. He had lived through worse in life, even at the age of thirteen, as an orphan, but the streets did not make him claustrophobic. Trapped here inside this six feet by six feet room, with one bunk bed shoved into a corner that was too cramped for his upcoming growth spurt felt suffocating.

The child below him was just as quiet; he'd stopped whimpering and crying quietly into his pillow a few months ago, knowing now that it did nothing to help. The cheap, fluorescent lights glared up ahead, providing little cover and privacy. They would be turned off eventually to maintain their circadian rhythms, but the Organisation relished in making them as uncomfortable as they could. Frankenstein had realised that, and realisation had been the first step in conquering the demons surrounding him.

"'s cold," the child below said, misery colouring his tone.

Frankenstein didn't reply for a long time. His clock ticked away relentlessly next to his head, and when the hands touched midnight, the room was suddenly plunged into an abrupt, complete darkness. Frankenstein waited for a space of five breaths, before he peeled away his tattered blanket, bunched it up under his arm and climbed down. Once there, he placed his hand over the child's forehead gingerly, grimacing when it turned out to be too hot to touch.

The child tossed restlessly, tears still clinging to his lashes, even in his sleep. Frankenstein took a deep breath and then covered him up with his own blanket and climbed back up to huddle in a corner. He'd have to wake up before the alarm rang and take back his blanket, so that meant less sleep, but that was just how things were. He couldn't afford getting discovered sharing his blanket with his…friend, or else he, too, would be taken away.

Frankenstein couldn't afford to lose more than he already had.

The classes had started to become monotonous: the teachers were unable to keep up with the progress Frankenstein and the others made – clearly not cut from the same cloth as the children the Organisation had abducted. Their teaching methods were deeply flawed too, Frankenstein realised, the deeper they delved into the curriculum, and while most of them were wise enough to keep it to themselves, Frankenstein lacked that tact. As such, he spent most of his school time being punished. So much for fostering talent, Frankenstein thought, disdain bordering on amusement as he scraped the dirty canteen floors.

If he'd been by himself, he'd have run away long ago, but he felt somewhat responsible for the little boy in the bunk below him, shivering and crying at nights, calling for his mother. Frankenstein's fingers clenched around the dirty rag in his hand and he glared at the clock on the wall. The classes would be out soon, and everyone would flood the canteen, undoing all of Frankenstein's hard work. Ever since Frankenstein had started speaking out, the floors around the facility that housed them had become squeaky clean. Frankenstein would have been proud, if he wasn't so annoyed by everything else.

The bell rang then, and Frankenstein stood up, wringing excess water off the rag into the bucket by his side. He went to place it in the closet, shut it, and handed the keys to the janitor before he went to wash up for lunch. Well, he hoped he'd be allowed lunch today considering that the teacher had only been somewhat irate and not completely livid.

When he returned to canteen, it was full to bursting with children in the same drab uniform lining up at the counter to receive the gruel the Organisation pretended was nutritious replacement for food. Frankenstein took his own tray and went to the end of the line, completely unsurprised to see his roommate hanging at the fringe of the queue.

"Late again?" He asked, mouth quirked in half a smile.

His roommate blushed a little. "I wasn't feeling that well and fell asleep in class. The teacher was most displeased."

"You should get that checked out, Tesamu," Frankenstein told him, not unkindly. "It's been two weeks since you caught the flu."

Tesamu rubbed his nose with his sleeve and looked sheepish. "At least I am not spreading it around, so it can't be that bad."

"But it's also not getting better. I can hear you sniffle at night – it's most annoying."

Tesamu clutched at his tray, ducked his head and mumbled an apology. The matter rested there, because Frankenstein knew better than to push him now. Tesamu would go see the doctor because he figured he was inconveniencing Frankenstein, and that misunderstanding was worth it.

Tesamu was slender for his age, always a little too shy and frail for Frankenstein's liking. It made him think of the child – only a couple of years younger – as a brother, as family for Frankenstein to protect. So he did it in the way he knew best, while keeping a distance so that he would not be used against Frankenstein.

So he would wrap Tesamu in his blanket, opting to go without one because his days on the street had toughened him up. He would wipe Tesamu's tears when the boy would be asleep, with gentle fingers and enough warmth to drive away the persistent chill of their lodgings. In and out of class, he would make sure that Tesamu was safe and well-fed, and healthy, while keeping as much distance as he could.

Even when they switched facilities, and they got access to better teachers – an improvement on the previous lot, though by no means perfect – Tesamu was still allowed to room with Frankenstein, even though their friendship had always been tentative at best on the surface. Frankenstein sometimes wondered if that was the case, but could never decide just what degree of paranoia he wished to settle on.

Time passed regardless, and Frankenstein shot to the top of their class, and then beyond with little competition. The crowd inside the facility dwindled: the lesser being relegated to menial jobs off the facility, being sent to other parts of the Organisation, but Frankenstein always had the niggling doubt that they weren't just repurposed into other jobs, but rather –

Tesamu still stuck with him, despite not being as brilliant as Frankenstein just yet, though everyone recognised that the potential was there. For that, Frankenstein was grateful. Despite the awfulness of their situation, it was better for him to be where Frankenstein could protect him rather than somewhere else. Of course, by now Frankenstein had become fully immersed into projects for the Organisation, and started relishing in the power he'd been allowed, the sheer leeway provided because of his capabilities.

If he felt any remorse at all for potentially playing with the lives of others, it was drowned out by the joy of being so successful in every single thing he did. He could feel the balance of power shift and he revelled in it, every single day.

Finally, when Frankenstein was seventeen, they had finished culling the new recruits and only a handful of them remained, their time to graduate came near. Now, Frankenstein knew that they'd lived so far on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean and escape from here was virtually impossible. However, upon their graduation, they'd be transported to the mainland and then to the main base of the Union operations.

And that small window when they'd be stopping in transit would be when Frankenstein would make his escape. As much as he'd enjoyed his time here, having food, clothes and a shelter, and as much as he didn't care about the ethics of what was going around him, Frankenstein had no desire to submit to an evil organisation that exploited orphans and robbed people of their children to raise an army of scientists. With methods as ineffectual as the ones he'd gone through personally. It would be such a waste to fall in the hands of masters as ridiculously unfit as them, and Frankenstein had far too much self-assurance to do so. So he collected all the information about their travelling plans and made plans of his own, feeling only somewhat anxious about his re-entry into the outside world after four years of absence. Still, if he managed here, he would be fine out there.

According to the plans, they'd sail from their current location next month, and land on the cost of a tropical island in the Indian Ocean sometime around the month after that, where they would wait for a chartered plane that would fly them all the way to the Caribbean where the Union operated from. All the new recruits would be held in a metal cage, like penned feral animals while they were on land, only let out when they would be safely aboard the plane. Frankenstein had seen the metal cages that would be used to cage them: they'd arrived with their last shipment of food and amenities from the mainland. It was some kind of alloy that was resistant to most corrosive chemicals, but Frankenstein was a genius. He'd managed to concoct a formula in relative secret, thanks to his increased privileges, and modified one of the strength enhancing pills they handed out to the staff around the facility. It was poison, but Frankenstein reasoned that there would be no gain without some gain.

Now, the only issue that remained was the involvement of human element within his plans: that was to say, his fellow graduates, especially Tesamu. Ideally, he'd have rescued them all, but he knew that if they all departed in one large group, it wouldn't be long before they'd be all caught and put back into the cage. He wasn't going to leave them behind, of course. But he'd decided that he'd only allow Tesamu to follow him to a safe place, and then he'd draw attention to himself and lead the Union mooks on a wild goose chase so as to avoid getting Tesamu caught. It wasn't a perfect plan: too many variables, too many what-ifs, but not having been outside for such a long time, Frankenstein knew he'd have to improvise a lot.

And Frankenstein was good at improvising.

Even the best laid plans tended to go awry, and this had been a hare-brained one at best. It went good as far as getting everyone out of the cage. They had been left around luggage, so Frankenstein hadn't wasted any time breaking through the metal bars. Afterwards, he'd instructed everyone to run off separately, and he had taken Tesamu by the hand and rushed towards the nearest thicket he could see.

He would have preferred an urban landscape, but they had made port next to a thick tropical forest, and the nearest spot of civilisation was a few miles away, from what he could see or gather. Which meant he needed the cover of night, at the very least, to lose himself in the city. Except, their bright hair stood out like a sore thumb. He wondered if he would be able to borrow a couple of hoodies when they finally made it to the town.

"What are we doing?" Tesamu said, quiet and soft, fingers clutching his very tightly. "Where are we going?"

Frankenstein placed a finger on top of his lips and shook his head. "Let's get a bit further in before talking."

Tesamu obeyed. They navigated the humid rainforest, hand in hand, getting farther and farther away from the beach. About two miles in where the trees were at its thicket, almost not letting any sunlight in some patches, that Frankenstein deemed it a safe spot to take a breather. He handed his water bottle to Tesamu and went to sit down on a gnarled root sticking below a tree.

Tesamu looked around before taking a few sips out of the bottle. He recapped it and handed it back to Frankenstein, and Frankenstein did not miss the way the boy had made sure to not take too much water. Tesamu joined him, sitting next to him, legs tucked close to his body and started trembling a little. It made sense that he was terrified, after all, and Frankenstein had to resist the urge to comfort him.

"Don't worry, it's almost dusk. We'll start moving as soon it gets dark. You know how to reach your folks when we reach the city?"

"Yes," Tesamu said and hunched over himself. "I feel a little sick."

"It'll be over soon," Frankenstein said. He didn't tell him he would be fine, because he didn't want to make promises he couldn't keep.

"Where would you go?" Tesamu asked, raising his pallid face to pin Frankenstein with a worried gaze.

"You don't have to worry about me." Then: "I'll try to disappear into the city for now. You just get yourself to a phone booth and call your home, okay?"

Timid fingers wrapped around his sleeve. "Will you be okay?"

Frankenstein nodded, too weary to shake him off for now. Just for now, he'd tolerate it.

Tesamu placed the speaker on the cradle and then stood quietly in the booth for several long moments. Frankenstein stood a little ways away, trying not to intrude on what must have been a stressful moment, but also full of relief. Know that he was no longer alone, no longer lost – going back home. His heart clenched in happiness and he bit on his lip, hoping that Tesamu would never have to spend another night crying into his pillow, covered in threadbare blanket that barely gave him warmth.

He had no idea what Tesamu's parents looked like, but considering the kind of child he was, Frankenstein imagined them to be warm and kind, with gentle eyes and hands. To raise a child so innocent and sweet, they could only be kind and loving – nothing like anything Frankenstein had ever known. It did not matter. He was happy for Tesamu.

So when Tesamu stepped out of the booth, eyes red-rimmed and stuffed nose, Frankenstein finally gave him a smile and patted his shoulder.

"I hope you can get home soon."

More tears slid down Tesamu's cheeks and he shook his head. "I'm sorry."

"Whatever for?" Frankenstein asked, stuffing his hands into his pockets and backing off a little.

"For going home," Tesamu said, voice wobbly with tears.

"That's a good thing. Don't worry about it. I'll see you sometime, okay?" He lowered his hoodie over his face, waved at Tesamu and walked away, hoping the best for him. His hand trembled a little when he pulled it close to his body, but at least he had not let Tesamu see it.

When he turned around the corner, he took a deep breath and prepared himself to get away from here. But first he needed to draw attention to himself so that Tesamu could escape unscathed. Even if he wasn't a good person, he at least wished the best for Tesamu.

Sighing again, he tugged on his hoodie and decided to just walk in a random direction that he felt something prick at his neck. He reached back on instinct, only to find a metal dart embedded in his flesh. He stared at it for a few moments, uncomprehending, and then he turned around to see who had fired it.

"You should have just gone home," he told his assailant, clutching at the thin metal dart in his hand. His legs turned to jelly underneath him and he slid to the ground, the world spinning around him, unable to control his limbs. "What did you shoot me with?"

"I'm sorry, I really am," Tesamu told him, holding the gun that had fired the shot. His hand was completely steady, even though his face was splotchy with tears. "If I had a choice, I'd have made the one you wished for."

Tesamu's fingers brushed his cheek even as Frankenstein's consciousness faded. And at last, Frankenstein could not tell what his friend, his brother was thinking as the Union operatives closed around them.

"'s okay, Tesamu," Frankenstein told him, trying to hold the thread of his consciousness in his hands desperately, speech slurring against his will. "Don't blame you."

Afterwards, he didn't remember much. If Tesamu had said something in reply, he either did not hear it or did not notice. When he woke up, he was inside a dark prison. And when all of his memories returned to him, Frankenstein spent the next fifteen minutes laughing until his throat hurt too much to continue.

Because clutched in his grip was Tesamu's precious necklace and his fingers were sticky with blood.

The flashback isn't really complete, as you can tell, but I can't quite explain why or what happened just yet. That comes later, so if this chapter feels a little disjointed, that's the problem. What happened to Tesamu? Well, Franken doesn't wanna talk about it quite just yet...I'm sorry. I'm sorry that it took me so long to update, and then with an update like this...lol.