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When he impales the heretic upon his mighty halberd, its voices echo within the confines of his mind, paired with Kromer's incessant giggling—the sharp bells ringing as her laughter muffle out the static coming out of the heretic's voice-box, and the rippling gold of her hair clouds his vision so he needs not see the blood oozing out of its puncture wound.
"Oh, Sinclair," she draws his name out as he always does, voice husky with the promise of a threat akin to the fateful day his kin's blood marred her school uniform, "you always surprise me the most just when I think I've had it with you."
The putrid tincture of oil and blood alike trickles down his halberd as he retracts it, staining the rough fabric of his gloves; as he turns his weapon upright there is a great jab of pain stabbing at his ribcage—as though
he
was the one with a jagged hole where his heart should be, as though
he
was the one to blame for all the heresy and nonsense there was in the world.
"Did I do well?"
Kromer's hand upon his shoulder feels warm, unnaturally so; the blood within her veins must be pumping with endorphins that hail her victory over what she—what they, the two of them, always and forever together—deems unacceptable. A travesty to humankind, if one will.
"You always do well, Sinclair. You always deliver."
The praise goes straight to his heart, as though soothing the gaping hole in his chest that he stabbed through the heretic whose machinery now lies on the ground; among the static noises there is a scarily human gurgling, blood oozing through the wound he had inflicted, and Kromer's hand seeks his out.
"Oh, Sinclair. I knew you had all the potential to rule the world." In her gaze he finds a predatory animal prowling around for prey; in her gaze he finds someone he would form a blood pact for, someone whose praise fills him with a thousand joys' content. His eyes are bloodshot, for he had not slept in three days now and counting—his eyes stare up at Kromer's. "We shall be together, always, and let us never part!"
"Yes," Sinclair rasps out, "of course."
What follows next is nothing but a flash of white and yellow, the sickening odor of decay that follows Emil wherever he goes—he finds himself mangled within the electrical wires and the oil upon the burnt soil; beneath his eyelids there is a great flashing of light, and suddenly it strikes him that Kromer is not helping him to his feet. Sinclair lies there, in a puddle of a heretic's remains, and Kromer's face remains stalwart as ever—there is a wicked grin plastered on her face, and he distinctly makes out the words what's the hold-up, before the world as it is turns into a blinding black.
"You've changed your own fate, Sinclair," a figure steps lightly in front of him—there is light seeping from beneath the ghastly pallid of his skin, a healthy flush high upon his cheeks fills his face when he turns around to look at Emil; "Right now, you're neither a coward, nor a hero—but you have yet to let go of your fears completely."
When you fear someone, that's because you gave them the power to have control over you.
Kromer's face lies upon a pile of corpses, entangled between them; the figure gently scoops her severed neck up from the ground and stares into her gaze—it is hollow, devoid of her usual fervor, but it is nonetheless a look retaining a certain air of craze and obsession with triumph that very much suited her.
"What a hypocrite," the man sighs, "wouldn't you say so, Sinclair?"
The shadow this figure of light casts is one of Emil's own as the flesh of his legs is devoured, consistent as though quicksand, by the dead bodies he recently trampled upon.
"Hey, Sinclair!" Kromer's back—her voice is gentler than ever, genuine concern dirtying her features greatly, so out of character. "We lost you for a second. You keeping up alright?"
Emil stands up, with shaky legs, and pukes all over the mangled corpse of a heretic whose life his own two hands ended. Behind him Kromer's laughter resonates, shrill as ever, as she pats him on the back affectionately.
"Your face was just like when I killed the husks that were once your parents," her voice gains a surprisingly gentle lilt, "isn't that just… beautiful?"
He pukes again.
When they flee the scene Emil walks through what remains of Calw; bodies and scraps of metal littering the streets he once roamed with Kromer had soiled the idyllic townscape, and nothing but ruins remains of the spot they would meet up at. He is taken back to the time he lied, for the very first time, to Kromer—he had claimed with all his might that he stole an apple from an orchard, and his friend lit up a cigarette to puff its smoke directly in his face.
He wonders, now, how many times he has repeated the same boring lie to Kromer's face.
Of course, we'll be together; I will follow you wherever you go, Kromer, for I know your mission is right. I understand you; I feel you; I am at your disposal.
When he passes by the stream he used to chat with Kromer by, the young man reflected within that polluted jet-black is not Emil Sinclair. He is not right, and neither is he well—he has been strung the very scruff on his back upon a puppeteer's controls, the wooden blocks of Kromer's praise and affection backing up the inhuman ichor that marred his gloves, turning him into a person he once swore to never become.
A figure of light materializes by his side; the man reaches out to touch him, but retracts his hand when Sinclair instinctively jerks—he was, after all, not used to love and gentility from anyone who was not Kromer, for she told him time and time again that
nobody deserves you but me, Sinclair.
A vomit-inducingly delicate voice speaks out: "What a shame."
"There's no turning back," Emil declares, "I am what I have become."
"Your shell is broken, and the bird has hatched," the figure mumbles, "but it has been undone by an outside force. A chick with broken wings can never hope to fly on its own, Sinclair—a chick with broken wings may rely only on whatever soul takes it up to nurture it."
"No," he pants out, "no!"
"A chick with broken wings in the hands of the wrong person is naught but meat for the slaughter."
"Get away from me!"
Emil turns to push the figure away; it vanishes without a trace before his skin could collide with the other man's, and yet a mark of red burns its spot beneath Sinclair's eyelids.
The little stream, in his memories, is clean and pure. Kromer lights another cigarette after putting her last one out with the heel of her school Oxford shoes, leering down at Sinclair as he squatted by the water's surface.
"Who's that weird guy you've been hanging out with? You know, the weirdly pale one?"
"Him?" Sinclair can't help but smile, "Oh. That's Max Demian, you know, from another class."
"The transfer student?"
She crouches down to his level, and he watches their reflections in the water—the smoke ripples above and beneath him, drifting down to his face as it enshrouded his vision as a clouds' gathering enshrouding the stark clarity of the moon. "Don't talk to him… He seems weird."
Emil laughs, absent-mindedly. "He's fine."
Demian is an interesting person—his gaze is stalwart, and the tangents he goes off on make Sinclair grow stronger as an individual. Even if his words of freedom from earthly yearnings turn out to be naught but sophistry, Emil believes them with all of his heart—he believes in the eventual liberty of his own from his fears, from the gaping wound in his heart. Demian's eyes always soften when he meets Emil in the schoolyard and harden noticeably at the very silhouette of Kromer, but what for?
"No—Sinclair,
Emil,
look at me," she forcibly turns his head so that their gazes meet, "he's not someone you should hang around. He's not—he doesn't
understand
you like I do."
"Does he…?"
"No," Kromer rises up to her feet. She had smoked another cigarette through—its burning ash leaves another hole in Emil's uniform vest for his mother to patch up—and thus, she tosses it into the depths of the river until it wafts down to block the reflection of Sinclair's face. "He really doesn't. What's with your taste in men, anyway?"
He turns to look at her, and Kromer's face is severed from her lower body, limbs multiplying all at once. In her lifeless features he sees the shadow of his own demise, and before he can scream out in horror, she—
"Ah, you woke up," a lady drawls out; it's not Kromer, for her hair is a radiant brown, neat and wavy, "you really scared us there, kid!"
Rodion.
"Sorry, Rodya…"
<Just don't scream out in your sleep like that,> Dante ticks out in short bursts—losing patience, are they? <You nearly woke Heathcliff up… who knows what he'd do this time."
Sinclair gathers himself from the refractions of possibilities laying themselves out before him, gathers his breath to inhale and exhale deeply with his chest. Rodya seems fairly concerned, and once more feigns it underneath a look of apathy; but within her eyes he feels a well of affection and warmth bubble, a certain care he had never once felt before, one that echoes even within Dante's face striking twelve. And thus there is a sudden surge of energy overflooding Emil's senses; he catches a glimpse of his own, albeit translucent and yet ghostly, reflection in the bus' windows and smiles at it.
"Where are we heading next?"