Title: Three Days During the End of the World
Author: Rhinemaiden Number 4
Word Count: 8,157
Warnings: Disturbing imagery (about on par with the game), language, and heavily implied sex. Also, spoilers for the entire game.
Prompt: After Yuri gets Amon as a fusion, with Alice trusting him more than he trusts himself.
Summary: The end of the world turns out to be the least of Yuri's problems. Written for Het Challenge summer '07.

Considering how much he'd already been through, this one last completely unfair kick in the teeth was really too much. If it had just been the world ending, no problem. They'd faced tougher odds, he was pretty sure, and one more "unknown god from beyond the ken of man" or some shit like that would be just business as usual. Adding this to the annoying philosopher with a penchant for playing God: Roger Bacon, or Albert Simon, or whatever the hell his name was - Yuri frankly didn't care about the intrigue with names, due mostly to the fact that both Albert and the real Roger were creepy in their own ways: megalomaniac and mostly mummified, respectively. Adding yet another demon to the zoo inside his head, that was pushing it, but he had come out the winner against the enormously more powerful Seraphic Radiance (barely, the anxious part of his mind whispered, the one where that angel waited and crooned songs of lust and madness in his sleep), so one more infernal spirit vying for legroom in his head should be no sweat. Of course, these were added to the more mundane trials of patience, including but sure as hell not limited to: Wanderer Meiyuan's wandering hands last time (and every other time) he got acupuncture, Zhuzhen's constant bitching, Margarete's pyromania, Halley's decision to use Yuri's head as a goddamn moving target, and Keith's - no, scratch that. Keith didn't do anything irritating, which was a frustration by itself for reasons unknown. What made everything even more intolerable was the fact that, in addition to all the other reasons that his day amounted to a complete total of suck, he had a headache, and he had a good idea that Amon, Master of Destruction, King of the Fusion Monsters, Massive Pain in the Ass to Fusion With, was to blame, and in a roundabout way, Cardinal Albert Simon, formerly known as Roger Bacon, the one who had given him Amon in the first place, albeit grudgingly. The fact was that while Amon was an extremely powerful force to have on "the good side", as Yuri had taken to call it, it was also by far the most dangerous, unpredictable, and willful of the demons. When it didn't get its way, Yuri paid for it, one way or another. No, any of these aggravations, taken alone or together, would only be heavily annoying. The icing on the cake was that Roger would just not shut up.

"Listen, Yuri, this is very important. Have you felt odd for some reason you couldn't explain recently?" There he went again. Seriously, it was getting old.

"Odd for no particular reason? Well, yeah, but that could have something to do with the fact that I have a ton of fucking monsters in my head, and when one of them isn't happy, none of the rest are, and I get to pay for it. So yeah, I have been feeling odd for no reason lately. That answer your question?" In the middle distance he heard Margarete cover Halley's ears, over his protestations. In between blinding pains in his head, he wondered what she was trying to prevent – he knew for a fact that Halley had a filthy mouth, and took it upon himself daily to expand the kid's vocabulary. Yuri also suddenly realized that Roger was yelling, and kind of jumping up and down.

"You ungrateful brat! This is vital! Amon is in your head, dense though it may be, and all you can do is come up with half-witted repartee? I hope Amon does hijack your mind and take your soul, you little… argh!" At this point Roger lost the power of intelligible speech and descended to garbled syllables, which Yuri assumed were either curses or just really angry words. He didn't blame the old fart – everyone was on edge lately, considering that the world had only a week to go until BAM the apocalypse, courtesy of the Alien God or whatever. Hell, even Alice was jumpy lately, and was doing an unsuccessful job of hiding it by healing anyone who got even a scratch in battle. The healing was appreciated, sure, but there were some times where it would have been easier to just kill the damn things thanks to some well placed exorcisms than heal a barely bruised Halley.

Noting that Roger had stormed off (well, stormed off as well as a four foot man can try to), Yuri turned to find the girl in question. She wasn't with Margarete and Halley, wasn't with Keith or Zhuzhen, both of whom were watching in fascination as Roger attempted to power his wheel-track-generator thing by himself, seemingly motivated by pure frustration. Yuri looked up a level and saw Alice puzzling over the strange vending machine the philosopher had invented. Apparently, she had taken it upon herself to restock the entire party, which was just as well, because Alice was the only one they trusted with the money (that is, Halley stole it, Margarete bought explosives, Zhuzhen used it to help Meiyuan with his business, Keith had once forgotten their entire savings somewhere, and everyone else assumed that Yuri would have bought naughty magazines if he had been given money. Which was mostly untrue.)

Eager for the distraction from the still-pounding headache, he looked up at Alice. Even considering the piss-poor odds of victory, she still managed to look as quietly happy as always, and if nothing else Yuri took solace that, no matter what, Alice would always be there to stop him from going crazy (again). It was so easy to imagine her smile as a prelude to something else, even as he knew this sure as hell wasn't the time for it. So easy to imagine running a hand up the back of her thigh, crossing that border between white stocking and skin, and then clawing and rending that flesh to bloody ribbons as she cried out in pain and fear and sweet Mother of God what the fuck was that, he thought with no small amount of surprise and terror. The sudden interjection and corruption of thought was gone as quickly as it had appeared, with his slightly lessened headache the only detail that he could tell had been changed. Oh, shit, Yuri thought, with the dawning and sickening realization that a fusion monster had been responsible for that violence of thought, and that of all the creatures he had caged in his mind, Amon was the only one powerful enough to forcibly jerk his mind out of his control, if only for a second. So this was what Roger had been jabbering about.

Alice took that moment to realize that Yuri had been staring at her, and turned to face him. She smiled, dimpling, and Yuri didn't think tear the smirk right off her sweet face, ruin her, destroy, devour. However, he did think: oh, shit.

…

The night of the first day of the seven they had left to enjoy was a weird mix of cheer and hopelessness. Roger agreed to let them stay the night; that is, he gave Alice and the others permission to use the spare rooms (where the doors had emerged from, Yuri had no idea, other than one moment there was a wall and the next there were two rooms with an attached bathroom and a small kitchen, with some sort of machine in the center of the bath that did nothing other than screech loudly at odd hours, as far as he could tell), and then gave Yuri a look to curdle milk and stalked off. Yuri figured that the permission was implied, and helped himself to the hospitality.

In the rooms, practically everyone was stuck in that kind of abject despair that generally only hangs around graveyards during rainstorms and condemned men. The only smiling one of the bunch was Halley, who wouldn't shut up about how he was going to see his mum soon in London and wasn't that awesome! Honestly, Yuri didn't blame the kid for his enthusiasm, but the fact Amon was giving him all kinds of hell, so to speak, in the form of thoughtslike,"If Zhuzhen drinks the last of the coffee one more time I'll smash the pot and grind the shards into Zhuzhen's face, make him drink the coffee boiling as he chokes on his own blood," added to having to avoid Alice (if only to prevent Amon from a repeat performance), left him a little worried and a lot pissed off.

"Are you all right, Yuri?" Alice asked, looking up at him from wherever the hell she had just popped up. Damn, he thought. Avoiding Alice was a hell of a lot harder than he'd anticipated. He should tell her the truth, that Amon was in his head, thinking thoughts like, "She has such pretty hair; I want to rip it out." Yeah, that would go over real well.

"I, er, I'm really tired. I'm gonna go to bed," he said in a rush, and fled to his room, where Keith sat on the bottom bunk sharpening his sword. Amon, apparently, had no feelings one way or the other for him. This was better news than Yuri had had for a while. The vampire looked up, an eyebrow raised in question. "Long story," Yuri said, suddenly and terribly tired.

Minutes passed, with nothing but the rhythmic passes of the whetstone over steel. "You know," Keith said, abruptly, with no interruption in his movements, "you should probably tell her how you feel."

"What are you talking about?" Yuri asked, annoyed.

"Otherwise, she'll never assume anything," Keith continued in the infuriatingly patient manner, and put away his whetstone and sword in precise, practiced movements. Afterwards, he went on in the same tone of voice, "Then you'll both have nothing. If there is one thing that I've learned about mortals, it's that unless you strive for something, you'll never achieve it."

"What the hell do you know?" Yuri answered, angrily, and ignored the calm face of the vampire as he climbed into the upper bunk. Damn vampires, he thought angrily, and tried to sleep.

…

When he dreamed, it was of mirrors and the reflection of Amon holding Alice's body in its arms, lifeless, cold. As Yuri lunged forward towards the mirror, a sudden weight dragged him to the floor, and as he looked down he saw the corpse with white-silver hair in his arms and screamed and screamed.

…

A voice, too cheerful by half, broke his reverie.

"Hey. Hey. Hey! Yuri, wake up! Come on, you're so lazy!"

"It's too early to get up, you bastard. Leave me alone!" Yuri growled against the pillow.

"No, you have to get up!" the voice continued, and then promptly grabbed hold of the blankets and yanked. Unfortunately for Yuri, he had ended up tangled in the sheets, and for several dizzying seconds he was airborne before crashing to the floor.

"What the hell's your problem? I'm awake, I'm awake, geez…" he shouted from a painful sprawl. The voice guffawed, and that alone was enough to convince Yuri that the voice's owner should be identified and killed, though not particularly in that order. He cracked an eye open, moved the blanket out of his line of sight, and glared. "Halley, what the hell." This lovely morning was made better by Amon's observation of "You should make him suffer for this; just break a finger or two. Think of how he'll scream. " Wonderful.

Not the least repentant, the thief explained. "Zhuzhen wants to visit that weird grave by the Ruins, and Alice wants to come too. But Zhuzhen's gonna be praying or something so Alice wants you to go with her and explore. Or something like that, I'm pretty sure that's what they were talking about last night, so I'm gonna get some breakfast," he finished, and Yuri puzzled over the one odd phrase Halley had used.

Halley was heading for the door when Yuri asked, "You heard them talking about it? Did they even ask you to wake me up at," he checked the clock, "Six o'clock in the goddamn morning?" The look on Halley's face (and the way the kid ran out of the room) was all the answer he needed. "You little brat!" he yelled, and hurtled after him, trailing bed sheets and curses.

Only to find that the kid had taken shelter behind Margarete and Zhuzhen, who were in the kitchen having some kind of philosophical discussion. "You see, Margarete, that is why people need to live their lives in balance," Zhuzhen was saying. "Otherwise, they only serve their own selfish interests, and then no one achieves anything!"

"Well, that's fascinating, but I still think that if no one does anything for themselves than all we'll get are a bunch of self-sacrificing martyrs like… Oh, good morning, Yuri. Isn't it a little early for you to be up?" She looked pointed at her oversized wristwatch-compass-explosive thing.

"First, it was all Halley's fault," he glared at the partially hidden Halley, "And second, what were you gonna say before I showed up?" There were no comments from Amon: it must only enjoy pondering destruction when Yuri had time to actually think.

Margarete sighed. "Listen, Yuri, I was talking about Alice. I swear to God, she has to be a martyr for all that she goes through for you, and do you care? No," she continued (Margarete had been upset about this for a while, judging from her expression), "All you do is go, 'I am full of literal and figurative demons inside my head, I can't let anyone get close to me,' and she's the one who comes to me upset because you're too busy avoiding her. Avoiding her badly, I may add, because you suck at stealth, kiddo. What are you so afraid of?" she ended, and while Yuri was struggling to come up with an answer that covered even one of those questions, Zhuzhen followed up.

"She's right, you know," he agreed. "I still don't know what a nice girl like Alice sees in you," Zhuzhen continued with a meaningful gaze through his monocle.

It really was too fucking early. "Listen, you two: I had a bad day yesterday, and this one isn't turning out so good either, so can you guys just cut me some slack, because I'm doing the best I can. And what the hell was Halley talking about, that you," he looked at Zhuzhen, "and Alice wanted to visit the grave or something at the Ruins?"

Zhuzhen nodded. "Yes, there's something about that grave that I'm curious about. Alice and I also want to pay our respects to him."

"You mean that O'Flaherty guy? Yeah, I guess that's important. But why the hell d'you want me to come along?" Yuri asked.

"There are still monsters in the Ruins, you dimwit!" yelled Roger, appearing suddenly and completely out of nowhere. The group's reaction was spectacular: Halley screeched and clung to Margarete's coat, Yuri jumped no less than one foot in the air, Zhuzhen looked as if he were having a minor heart attack, and Margarete, unused to Halley's not inconsiderable weight, fell to the floor in a pile of fishnets. Roger cackled maniacally at the wreckage.

"What the hell did you do that for?!" Yuri yelled, once his heart rate had fallen to a manageable level.

Roger shrugged. "Someone needs to scare some sense into you, you naïve little brat! If Zhuzhen's praying, who is going to make sure nothing happens to Alice? The fire got rid of most of the lingering evil about the place, but for a psychic as sensitive as Alice, it could still be a tremendously dangerous thing. If she's anything like Koudelka, then even walking near the place could be enough to give her shudders! Or don't you care about her?"

Yuri was really, really sick of people asking him that. "Of course I ca-," he broke off, then tried again. "Of course I can go with Zhuzhen and Alice, it's not like I have anything better to do here. And besides, it's not like the old crackpot could even do a halfway decent job protecting her. When are we leaving?" he asked.

"I can do a better job of protecting anything than you, boy! And we leave to go to the Ruins in about an hour or two. Be ready," Zhuzhen took a breath, as if to continue with his diatribe, which Yuri wanted absolutely nothing to do with.

"Okay, well, see ya guys until then," Yuri said, then stepped over the combined Margarete-and-Halley heap on the floor and moved for the door. But right before he left the room entirely, Margarete called out from somewhere under Halley's torso, "Don't forget what we talked about earlier! You can't weasel your way out of this one, sonny boy!"

Amon seriously considered breaking everyone in the room's neck. Perhaps even more disturbing than this was the fact that Yuri was starting to think that might be a good idea.

…

Four hours later, Yuri regretted agreeing to go in the first place. Being closer to its "home", or whatever the equivalent was for an unholy demon with major destructive capabilities, did nothing to improve its mood. The small trek up to the overlook that housed the Ruins was testament to that: Amon's thoughts increased in violence and number. Yuri was so focused on trying to think of anything other than Zhuzhen and Alice, dead on the rocks, that he didn't realize how close he was to Alice until he ran into her, causing them both to stumble and breaking Yuri out of visions of gore. "Uh, sorry," he muttered self-consciously.

"It's fine," Alice said, giving him the same grin he always got after doing something slightly embarrassing and mostly klutzy. Yuri wondered at that, at how he had managed to tell one smile from another, before Amon noted that her skin would look so much better with blood on it. Christ, and the day hadn't even really started yet. He forced Amon out of his head with an effort and tried to smile back, nonchalant. Considering her concerned look, it hadn't worked. Thankfully, before the Inquisition could start yet again, Zhuzhen broke in, but not before it thought about breaking the old man's jaw in four places.

"Listen, you two. I'm going to see if there's anything odd about this grave. It seems like there's something important there, and I want to see if it's there or not," Zhuzhen said, with the air of an explorer about to go on a tour of uncharted land. Before, Yuri would have asked what the hell else did he think was in a grave other than a corpse, but if anything he had learned not to question bizarre flashes of intuition. After all, it was a sudden flash of insight that had led him to check the teapot at that old bastard Dehuai's palace, and what had that gotten him? An erotic book. Sometimes, it paid to have intuition, he thought smugly, and nearly missed what Alice said.

"…isn't that right, Yuri?" she asked.

Damn. "Ah, could you say that again?" Yuri grimaced.

"I'd like to see some more of the Ruins, if that's all right, Yuri. And I'm sure that there are more weird items out there as well. Will you come with me?" Alice asked.

Damn, damn, damn. Thankfully, Amon was too busy appreciating the destruction around it to contemplate ruining the hopeful face before Yuri. "Sure, I'll come," he said, and the relief he saw in Alice's eyes made him want to tell her why he was being so aloof in the first place. Amon agreed: Yuri should tell her everything it had thought about her, from the blood to the broken bones to the screaming. Yeah, the truth, and watch her run screaming away, Yuri thought morosely, and almost missed what Alice was saying again as they walked deeper into the Ruins.

"…feeling fine?" she asked, concern written on every line of her face.

He felt like the world's biggest loser. "Um, sorry, I didn't catch that…" From the set of Alice's face, he knew that his behavior sure as hell wasn't convincing her that he was in any way, shape, or form "fine". "You were saying?" he asked, trying to cut off the questions he knew would follow.

Alice looked like she knew that too. "Yuri, are you feeling fine?" she repeated. "Ever since that battle with Albert Simon," the small shudder that accompanied the name was, Yuri knew, involuntary, "you've been acting differently, like something's been bothering you," she continued, with Yuri listening to every word in hopes of a phrase to end the conversation with. Those hopes were rapidly fading. "Yuri, you know I'll help you with anything, if you just ask me," Alice implored, and the sincerity in her grey eyes was enough to make him tell her everything.

Or would have been enough, if Amon hadn't chosen that moment to remind him, in vivid detail, exactly what he'd been thinking lately, voluntarily or not. That did more for the cause for avoiding the subject altogether than practically anything else mentally possible. "Listen, Alice," Yuri said, knowing that she wasn't going to be fooled, but also knowing that it was worth a shot, "I'm fine. I'm just a little stressed right now, what with the end of the whole damn world and all. Once this mess blows over, things'll be great, you'll see," he finished, and was relieved that the speech didn't sound half as contrived on the air as it did in his head. He wasn't as relieved to see the gleam of some unrecognizable emotion in Alice's eyes, before it was suppressed in favor of her usual kindly smile.

"If you say so, Yuri," she smiled, and continued picking her way over the small debris that had been scattered all over the area. Minutes passed, with only the drone of the waves and the harsh biting calls of the gulls to fill the silence between them.

It was during this dreamy kind of late-afternoon stillness that Yuri remembered what Roger had said earlier, something about "lingering evil" and how it would affect Alice. A quick check proved that she was, by all appearances, fine, but still. He had to make sure, if only to make up for brushing her off earlier. "Hey, Alice," he called. "Are you feeling all right? Roger said something about how this place would be bad for you 'cause of the evil here; are you fine?"

"Yes, I'm feeling fine. Most of the malice here," (and at the word "malice" Yuri grimaced), "has been exorcised. Did Roger tell you anything about what happened here?" Alice asked.

Honestly, no; he had been too busy nursing his headache to pay attention when the alchemist had been explaining everything. "Er, maybe a little, but I don't remember much of it."

She grinned, knowing what Yuri hadn't said. "Well, you know that before it was destroyed this place was called Nemeton Monastery. However, it wasn't simply that – it was used by all the great powers of Europe as a place to store political prisoners. Usually, those people never left the gates. It was," she paused, as if remembering some awful memory, "horrible. After years and years of being used as little more than a glorified torture chamber, it was abandoned, until a man called Patrick Heyworth moved into the building with his wife, Elaine.

"They lived peacefully for some time. However, one night while Patrick was away on business, robbers broke into the house and killed Elaine. When he returned, he was devastated and became obsessed with bringing her back."

"Bringing her back? So that's where the Emigré Manuscript came in," Yuri interjected.

Alice nodded. "Yes. Patrick had dabbled in the Dark Arts for years, and Elaine's death brought him to his wits' end. He used the Emigré Manuscript and brought her back, at the cost of hundreds of innocent lives; however, what he resurrected wasn't his wife. It was a monster with Elaine's form. Heartbroken by something even worse than her death, Patrick died, leaving all of his unfinished work behind."

Yuri began to see the connections. "And that's where Koudelka and O'Flaherty came in, right?"

"Yes. Koudelka, Father O'Flaherty, and a young man named Edward Plunkett all met at the Monastery, though for different reasons. Together they defeated the monster that Patrick had created. Unfortunately, Father O'Flaherty died during the battle. However, he set the fire that tore the building down, so he helped exorcise most of the spirits roaming this place. If this place had been standing, I don't know if I could have helped all those poor people," she confessed, looking guiltily at the ground.

"Of course you could have!" Yuri protested, and Alice looked up in surprise. Damn, he hadn't meant to say that so earnestly. "Well, that is, you're just as strong as Koudelka, if not stronger. You'd have been fine."

She blushed, modestly, and that had to be the time when Amon wanted to make her bleed, so the moment was entirely ruined. Through the thought, though, he had to point out something. "So, this is another time when the Emigré Manuscript did nothing but mess things up, huh? You'd think that these people would realize that it doesn't work." He wanted to add something else to that, some dig against the stupidity of people in general, but the look on Alice's face stopped him abruptly.

"Sometimes, it's worth anything just to see someone again," she murmured, less to him than to herself. There was nothing Yuri could say that wasn't enormously inadequate, since he was sure she was thinking about her father, so he let the silence swallow up the words he didn't say, or couldn't say, and thought about his parents, dead all those long years. If he had the Manuscript, would he…?

They stayed like this, silent against the wind, for what seemed like ages, until Zhuzhen yelled the edges of the Ruins, "Where are you? You'll never believe what I found!" The stillness broken, they turned to each other, reluctant.

"We should go and see what he found, I guess," Yuri mumbled and, at her nod, they returned to the grave where Zhuzhen was waving an elaborately decorated book around, yelling, "I didn't even think that this book still existed!"

"What the hell is that, old man?" Yuri grumbled. "It looks like someone grabbed a book and scribbled all over it!"

The adept was incensed. "You wouldn't know a powerful tome if it hit you in the face!" He made a throwing motion just convincing enough to make Yuri duck – that book must have weighed at least ten pounds, probably more. "This is the ancient Book of Rituals!" he crowed, showing off the "powerful tome".

"Oh! You found that here?" Alice asked in her most confused tones. "I heard that it was somewhere in Barcelona – what was it doing here?"

"I'm guessing that Father O'Flaherty came across this book somewhere along his travels while searching for the Emigré Manuscript and kept it. While it's not what he was looking for, it certainly was and is enormously powerful. We're lucky to have found it!" Zhuzhen enthused.

"So, uh, we're done here? 'Cause this place gives me the creeps," Yuri complained, though he seriously doubted that the Ruins were causing the general feeling of death breathing down his neck.

Zhuzhen was too happy to yell at Yuri, in a shocking turn of events. "Yes, we're finished here. Alice?"

She nodded, preoccupied. "Yes, let's leave." The look on her face was troubled, and Yuri unconsciously stepped closer to her in the hopes of cheering her up by proximity. That plan backfired rapidly: Amon showed up again with a good idea of how to make her even more troubled, and damn if that didn't make him back off quickly.

Zhuzhen noted this and narrowed his eyes. With the monocle shining like a medal against the setting sun, the effect was disconcerting. However, he said nothing, and Yuri at least had that to be thankful for as they walked down the path and to Roger's house, if the word "house" was used in the loosest possible sense. The walk wasn't long, but the general oppressive feeling of being caught between Amon's constant influence and Zhuzhen's continual glancing over served only to make the trip thoroughly uncomfortable. Alice continued to look distressed, adding to the general unpleasant feeling of the walk.

With all of these factors, it was a relief to finally reach the door. It slid open with a sound that could only be described as "whoosh", and then the distinctive scent of ozone drifted out from the open doorway as they entered the house. A morose Halley looked up at them from the bottom level, where he was apparently stuck in some kind of argument with Margarete and Roger. Keith was nowhere to be found, a fact that Yuri found equally relieving and disturbing. "Oh, you're back," the kid yelled up, still managing to look like someone had run over his favorite pet. "We worked out the travel plans, y'know."

Zhuzhen headed down the winding path to the bottom. "Well, how are we getting to London?" the adept asked, shoes clanking on the metal flooring. "I thought we were going to try out Roger's teleporting system."

"No, we are not," Margarete ground out in a frightening tone of voice. "There is no way in heaven or hell that we're taking that contraption," she gestured to the machine in the middle with the same expression usually reserved for guillotines or that one horrible chair in Calios Mental Hospital, "all the way to London."

"We could take that machine! It'd be a lot faster than taking a coach all the way across the island!" Halley argued, his face flushing red. So this had been what they were arguing about. However, now that they were closer to the group, Yuri could pick up more details.

"Hey, Margarete – why is your hair all frizzy and burnt?" he asked, tactfully. "It looks like you got struck by lightning and then stuck your head over a candle."

Her face turned an impressive shade of red as she ignored Yuri's comments. "Halley, we're taking the coach, end of story. Just deal with it," she ground out.

Next to Yuri, Alice asked, "Um, everyone…where is Keith?" Dead silence reigned for several telling seconds as Margarete and Halley looked at Roger accusingly.

Roger cleared his throat guiltily. "Well, as Margarete has said, it would probably be best for you to take the conventional method of transport. Given a day or two of tinkering, I don't doubt that the teleporter will be in working order by the time you all get back."

"A day or two?" Yuri yelled, a little concerned. "We only have one stinkin' week – no, scratch that, six stinkin' days before the whole world goes-," he was cut off by a hollow knocking sound, followed by a whoosh. Keith walked in, nonchalant despite having seaweed in his hair and water noticeably trailing after him in boot-shaped puddles.

"We might want to consider a different manner of transportation," Keith said, and then shook the water out of his right sleeve.

Halley looked convinced. "Yeah, coaches are good," he said, eyeing the strand of something unidentifiable and probably living caught in the vampire's brocade.

Screw this, Yuri thought. He fucking hated long coach trips: the steady rocking of the box was too similar to being on a boat for his tastes. "I'm going to sleep, see you later," he said to no one in particular, and retired to his chambers.

…

That night, Yuri dreamed that Albert Simon was laughing at him as he tried to control Amon, failed, and destroyed London in exactly the same way as he had destroyed Shanghai, in a rush of wind and brimstone and hellfire. As he screamed against the destruction and the insanity, he only heard the spit-crackle of flames and the low, echoing roar that he knew belonged to Amon as the oily smoke coiled against the red sky like a hideous snake.

…

For the second time in a row, a voice woke him hours before reasonable people got up. "Yuri, wake up. We're leaving in ten minutes. Get up," it said, less chipper than the day before but still extremely irritating.

"Halley, I swear to God, if it's you again you'd better start running now," he growled, if anything grouchier than the last time this had happened. He had not slept well. No surprises there.

"No, we were going to get Halley to wake you up, but he refused. Said something about 'a crazy psycho chasing him around for nothing' and then just made himself scarce. We had to call out the big guns to wake you, kiddo," another voice helpfully supplied. He opened his eyes to see Keith eyeing his throat, with Margarete smirking behind him.

"I'm up, I'm up!" Yuri yelled, and in his zeal to get out of bed managed to trip over the sheets once again and land on the floor. "Shit! And stop sniggering!" he continued from the floor, looking up at Margarete trying to stifle her laughter. "Get out, I'm awake!" Margarete's chuckles trailed out as they both left the room. What a wonderful start to the day, Yuri thought, and winced as a newly-bruised knee made contact with the floor. Just wonderful.

…

The coach ride to London was completely miserable, at least for Yuri. The others seemed to enjoy looking out the small windows to see the passing landscape. Zhuzhen and Keith were the most interested of the group, and had badgered Halley into telling them what little he knew about the surrounding areas. Yuri honestly didn't care about the passing scenery: he was too concerned with trying not to puke.

"Yuri, how are you feeling? You look a little pale," Alice asked quietly. They were sitting near the back of the box, away from the others, who had taken one look at Yuri's face and moved him as far away from them as possible. Yuri didn't blame them, in between bouts of nausea.

"Ergh," he groaned, and leaned against the coach's cool wall. Luckily, Amon hadn't shown himself since the beginning of the trip. Yuri suspected that his current nauseated state had a lot to do with that, which at that moment was not improved by the rocky terrain.

Alice patted his shoulder comfortingly. "It'll be all right, Yuri – we're almost there."

"Urk."

"Oh! Someone tell the driver to pull over for a moment! Now!"

…

Once they finally arrived at twilight to the Old Castle Street Inn in London, Yuri made a beeline for the spare rooms in the abandoned mansion, though not without a loud, "Oh thank God, solid ground." Lying on the bed, he could feel the queasiness retreating; about damn time, he thought emphatically. There was only so much of that rocking he could take. But at least that driver knew that when Alice asked him to stop the coach, she meant business – after the first incident the driver stopped whenever she asked him to. Her pleading look had worked, too: the driver hadn't charged them extra to cover cleaning expenses. If Yuri hadn't felt so horrible, he might have thanked the man; however, he had lurched out as fast as possible to enjoy the luxury of not moving. He was pretty sure the driver got the picture anyway.

At least staying still on firm ground for an hour or two helped get rid of the nausea in record time. Amon, however, was still feeling poorly, judging from the lack of response Yuri had received when he'd been thinking about Alice's kindness during the coach ride. Everyone else had told him to deal with it whenever he had commented on their utter callousness. Commented, not whined, like Margarete accused him of. Yes, Amon agreed suddenly, we should make her- and Yuri cut that thought off right there. It was easier to do than usual – Amon must not have enjoyed the ride either.

Yuri was thinking more on the happy relative lack of demon influence in his mind when someone knocked softly on the door. "Who's there?" he asked, feeling generous despite the late hour.

"It's Alice. Can I come in?" the muffled voice asked.

Damn, damn, damn, he thought, not for the first time. Amon may have been weak, but he was still more than willing to show Yuri exactly what Masters of Destruction did for kicks. "Um, actually I'm feeling a little-," the door opened anyway, "bad," he ended lamely, staring up at Alice's concerned face. No, it wasn't concern, he noted; it was determination. She entered quietly and closed the door behind her with that kind of unique halting grace she always had; Amon, still groggy, only had the strength to half-heartedly wish for a bruise on her pale skin as she walked closer.

"I hope you're feeling better," Alice said, and Yuri cursed that she had learned to select comments with care so he couldn't just brush her off.

"Yeah, you'd be surprised what a few hours on solid ground does for nausea," he tried for a joke. It stumbled, but managed not to fall flat on the air as Yuri grinned awkwardly and Alice looked on, undeterred. This was going to be harder than he thought. He braced himself for her questions.

"Yuri, I know you're under a lot of pressure. Even Halley's realized that you're more angry than usual, and that it's probably the demons' fault. So, if there's anything I can do to help you, please let me know. I want to help you," she implored, the emphasis on the "want" making the statement seem almost like a proposition. Yeah, like that would ever happen.

"Um, Alice, I know you want to help me but I doubt there's much you can do," Yuri said, leaning more comfortably against the bed's headboard. "I mean, demons inside skulls are dealt with on a pretty personal level. I guess you could pull a Hades and smash a hammer against my head to let them out, but beyond that, not really."

Alice blinked in confusion. "Yuri, don't you mean Hephaestus?"

He shrugged. "Same difference. Point is, as much as you want to help, there's not a lot you can do."

She paused at this, and seemed to gather herself for her next plan. He could handle this. "Are you sure there's nothing I could help you with?" she asked, stepping forward slowly to put one hand on the bed and one hand at the collar of her blouse, fingers idly toying with the button in a way that could not possibly be innocent.

What the hell. He couldn't handle this; he had no idea what was happening. Perhaps retreat would have been a better option, he thought frantically, before blurting out, "Alice, are you propositioning me?" in tones of surprise and disbelief.

Immediately, she backed off with a furious blush on her face, hands rising to cover her flaming cheeks. "I'm so sorry," she not so much said as mumbled, horrified. "I just, I knew this wasn't a good, I," she continued, words running over themselves in their haste to flee, "I'll just go now, I'm so sorry," she repeated, and turned to go.

That was a bad idea, Yuri instinctively knew, and rolled off the bed again with a thud before managing to stand up and reach her. "Hey, Alice, hold on. Don't go, wait, please," he asked, grabbing her wrist. Amon took the opportunity to consider crushing the bones together, but Yuri thought quickly and angrily shut the hell up. This was important – Yuri didn't care that the demon was enormously powerful; Amon could fucking wait. Alice turned to face him slowly, her cheeks still crimson in mortification. "Alice, were you asking me to…?" he paused, looking for appropriate words and coming up blank. Before Alice, he'd never had to spell it out, bold and coarse. Yuri settled for silence, letting the pause make its own question.

She nodded slowly, looking up at his face before staring beyond him at the wall, a neutral territory. "Yes, I was," Alice answered, if anything blushing harder. Then she shook her head. "But, it's a bad idea, so, I'll just, I'll go now," she muttered, blinking heavily in a strange way Yuri couldn't place immediately. Alice had turned away from him to the door when he recognized it: she was blinking against tears.

Suddenly the night made sense again: Alice was upset because he had apparently rejected her. Now fix it, he told himself, and said, "Alice, wait. I didn't say no." She stopped, turned, listened. "It's just that I was telling the truth when I said that there were demons in my head, you know that. Life's been a little weird lately." He paused and considered. "Weird-er, I guess."

"Has Amon been giving you trouble?" Alice asked.

Yuri spluttered, trying to make words out of the surprise hitting him like a hammer. "You knew, all this time?" he eventually got out.

Alice smiled, very slightly. "I knew it had to be something important for you to work so hard at avoiding me all this time. Amon is a very strong demon; it's no wonder he's giving you trouble."

"Yeah, Amon hasn't really learned control yet," Yuri explained, opting for the most basic explanation as he told the protesting Amon not now, deal with it. "I just don't want to…hurt you," he grimaced.

"Yuri, I trust you," she answered simply, angling her body so that they were face to face.

"That might not be the best idea. I mean, right now I probably wouldn't trust me," he said and sighed, already seeing the end of the night: she'd realize that the whole thing was a bad idea once she'd found out all about Amon's little mind-hobby, and then it would be wet dreams and cold showers until the end of the world. Possibly longer, Yuri thought angrily. Better start preparing for the refusal.

"Why wouldn't you trust yourself?" Alice asked, stepping closer in a completely unexpected move. He'd better stop anticipating things; at some point his whole frame of reference had been knocked on its side and the surreal reality was laughing maniacally at it.

Another step, and she was right in front of him, inches away from his body, looking at him like the only thing in the world. It became harder to think in complete sentences. "Because, I want…"

"What do you want?" she was leaning against him, tilting her face up, and it had to be here that Amon showed up, thinking her flesh, her body, her heart.

And that was the answer. "Everything," he whispered against her lips, and kissed her.

It was suddenly obvious in the set of her lips that she had never really kissed anyone. That knowledge thrilled him even as he brought a hand to her cheek, half holding her there and half reassuring him that this was real, that it was all real. Her skin was smooth and warm against his palm, even as he deepened the kiss, mouth opening to slide hotly, wetly against hers. Alice made a small, whimpering noise and pressed closer to him, which was all the invitation Amon needed to suggest that biting right there, at the neck would be a good start. Yuri agreed: he moved from her mouth to her neck, pressing sucking, noisy kisses against that pale column as she tried to hold back another one of those cries. Tried, and failed, as Yuri very, very lightly scraped his teeth against the skin, which tasted like holy water without the burn and a unique something else he couldn't get enough of. He stroked an apology against the trembling line of her throat as she finally found a place for her hands, one sliding through his hair and the other resting lightly on his shoulder. "Yuri," she moaned, breathless, and he had no choice but to go back to her lips, to taste his name like a benediction on her mouth.

This time Alice knew what to do, and knew what she wanted, as she pulled him down to her and did something so distracting with her tongue that Yuri hoped to God that she was just born with a lot of natural talent and hadn't practiced that on anyone, or else someone was going to have to die. He was so distracted, in fact, that he failed to notice what Alice was beginning to do with her hands until she had actually started unbuttoning her blouse, mouth still occupied. He broke away with an effort as Amon growled – realizing that destruction wasn't going to happen, the demon had instead decided to go for a more Alice-and-Yuri-friendly option. He reached for her hands and held them there, then forced himself to think responsibly. "Alice, are you sure?" he asked, trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to look at her eyes and not her swollen lips.

She smiled, and Yuri knew her well enough to see the nervousness in the trembling of her lips and hands, contrasting with the determination in her eyes shining through that one unrecognizable emotion from the day before. "I'm sure," she said against his mouth, and then drew another breath. "Yuri, I love you."

Suddenly, everything made sense through the thick fog of the demons' thoughts and his own confusion. He knew that unrecognizable emotion – he was feeling it now, pressing against his chest like a pillow of lead, heavy and warm and soft. But even more terrifying than this was the expectation: he had to say it too. Amon laughed, enjoying his emotional distress.

Then Alice leaned up again to kiss him, just as warm and soft as that emotion, with no requirements to be met, no obligations to fulfill. And as he met her halfway and pressed her close to him, he wondered how the hell he had got so lucky; that she would know that he was better with actions than with words, so that he could whisper a thousand words against her mouth and skin until she knew exactly how much he felt for her.

…

"Yuri? Yuri, are you awake?" Again, a voice.

"Hmm?" Yuri mumbled, accepting yet another rude awakening. But it only felt like he had had a few hours of sleep, if that, since before that he had-

Immediately, he woke up from the light doze and looked at Alice, lying at his side. "Hey," he said quietly, smiling in an embarrassingly involuntary way. "Guess I must have dozed off for a little. What time is it?" He looked at the sliver of night sky visible through the dusty curtains.

Alice lifted her head from his shoulder. "It's probably around two. You were pretty tired after all," she teased, in that whispered bedroom way that sounded so appealing from her. If possible, Yuri would get her to use only that tone from now on, if she'd agree.

"I wasn't tired, I was just…" he searched for an appropriate answer, "resting. I almost broke my ankle on that cup thing rolling on the floor, you know," he protested at Alice's knowing look.

"So, you're tired because you fell over? And the Oath Grail is a very powerful object – we only have to find out how it works," she said, lightly. Then her face changed. "Yuri?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I sleep here tonight?" Alice asked, cheeks pink. "I'll go back to my room before the others wake up, I just. I feel safe when I'm with you," she finished in a rush.

She's been having bad dreams, Yuri thought to himself, and answered, "Of course you can stay. I wouldn't be doing a good job protecting you if I let you leave, would I?"

Alice laughed quietly, but was interrupted by a wide yawn. "You're right. I'm going to go to sleep," she murmured, and kissed his shoulder. "Good night, Yuri," and she curled up beside him. It was only a few moments until her breathing evened out in sleep, broken only occasionally by little sighs.

Amon, absent for so long, made his presence known but said nothing. The demon's thoughts were scattered and, from what Yuri could piece together, relatively peaceful. Good, he thought, and kissed Alice's forehead before turning towards her – he had been serious about protecting her, and this way anything that would harm her would have to get through him first. Listening to her sighs, Yuri slowly drifted off to sleep with only the curve of Alice's smile in his thoughts.

…

That night, Yuri dreamed of nothing at all.

the end