XVIII. will you marry me?

Sinclair groaned from an abyss.

His consciousness had taken a hit when Capucine pulled him out of his body. Now he was present, and while he'd been reduced to a sphere of light, he could see. By default, the will of a Premier was strong enough to do this.

How long has it been?

A quick scan of his surroundings revealed that he had been inside the Office, behind the conference room where the small wall of books were. Capucine had left him on a shelf.

Sinclair floated with ease, and it confused him. Surely, Capucine would have prevented him from moving. Was she in a hurry?

With a downward tilt, he saw his body seated on the floor against a shelving unit, with a back hunched over.

The sphere he was drew closer. He aligned himself with his forehead and two became one.

The first thing he did was rub a small headache out of his temple. Sinclair stood with eyelids lowered. "Something's going on," he murmured, rushing towards the door that lead him into the conference room.

On the other side, something roared and rumbled. Sinclair was full of questions when he pushed the door open. He was frozen when he saw past the spanning windows.

Across the barren field of what used to be Danes was. . . sand.

He slapped himself across the cheek lest this were an effect of losing consciousness.

It was real, though. The sand was a lot and alive. It hurled itself this way and that, each grain vengeful and quick. With how thick the air was, it had taken Sinclair a while to see its victims. His cousins were splayed across the ground, helpless and. . . unmoving. They were engulfed underneath it, as each hurl buried them even more into the ground.

Souls can infiltrate inanimate things. . .? If that was written in any textbook, it was done with whiteout.

Sinclair rounded the table and advanced with his forearm pressed firmly over his nose. He sensed the soul in the sand. I didn't expect to see Isla this way.

He pushed against the door and, using his newfound knowledge, he split his soul into two, and was ready to fling it towards her.

Something was off, though. In the near distance, was a pile of unfamiliar bodies and a cat, each one soulless. All five Yägers had come here, but the sand only reeked of Isla. Are the others hiding?

Over his forearm, Sinclair's eyes darted left and right for reason. He landed on Marceau, who was chest-down. From the distance, he looked knocked out, but actually, he was aiming a Reaper at Isla.

He wasn't the only one.

"S-Sinclair. Get down." The advice was given through a hoarse voice, and it was followed by a coughing fit. Nearby, Jacques was struggling to keep his eyes open. A single grain inside it was a sure way to blindness. "It's like a fucking boulder!"

Sinclair stepped forward. "I'm going to stop her."

Jacques caught his breath. "We got the other four. She's the only one left, but she's moving her soul around too quick, I—" He struggled against the storm, spluttering what entered his mouth. "—I can't catch up to it."

"That's because you're beaten, Jacques."

Sinclair had his eyes nearly shut in their squint. They focused on the ball of light in the sand. She was indeed quick. He'd never known that non-Premier souls could move so quickly on their own.

Sinclair inspected his cousins. They were all battered and bruised. Good. They're not conscious enough to keep the Game going.

Into Isla, he flung a piece of his will. When it met hers, it reverberated with the timbres of his voice.

That's enough.

Sinclair watched as the sand receded. As if the force of gravity heightened, it dropped abruptly. The sheer weight of it shook the ground, even crushing most of them. Too many of them.

He saw only two of his cousins.

Marceau was hacking a dry throat. Jacques had barely lifted himself from the ground. The only strength he had, he used it to point the Reaper. "You fucker. Die."

His bullet went into sand and only sand. Isla had shifted her consciousness again.

"Sin, get rid of her. I can't fucking focus."

Sinclair kept his arm as a shield on his nostrils; the air had yet to recover. "Hold on, Jacques. There's something I want to ask her." He approached her, his lips pressed together.

Jacques exclaimed at that. "Huh?! There's no time for talking!"

As Sinclair's journeyed across the desert field, the sand stirred with energy. A part of it grew taller and thinner, and soon there was the unmistakable silhouette of a human body. Isla had created a sculpture of herself.

It was clear the difference between Yäger and LeRouge. Skill, experience, knowledge.

Born from desert, Isla stood in wait for him. The dent that mimicked her lips moved a little. "I was hoping to see you."

Sinclair halted on a thin layer of fallen sand. He stared at her, unamused. "I'll thank you for putting an end to the Game, but that's about it," he began. "Tell me, Isla. Were you laughing at me the whole time?"

She snorted. "What's this about, Sin? I thought you'd be happy to see me, too."

Sinclair cast a tired glare in her direction. "When I was searching for my family, I'd tell you how worried I was for them, and you'd tell me they were just fine. Was it funny to you, lying to me like that?"

"Hm?"

"It's not a coincidence that every one of them had to endure the worst in every life they were born into."

The world halted. Behind him, Sinclair heard Marceau make a what?

"Sin, what the hell are you saying?" Jacques groaned. "We said we'd never bring that up."

"Sorry, Jacques," Sinclair answered, never pulling his eyes from her. "You'll just have to cover your ears."

Isla began to cackle. To that, Sinclair's disdain was silent.

Her sand arms parted from her sides. The dents that made her eyes were upside down U's. "You finally get it."

He gritted his teeth. "Why did you do that to them? Why, when you saw how much we went through?"

She broke into a laughing fit again, her silhouette shaking with each guffaw. "Why?" she repeated after him. Her shoulders rose and drop, indifferent. "Because I was bored."

Words failed.

"You were. Children from a royal family," she replied. "You were used to fun, and ease, and joy. Meanwhile, I was stuck in a stuffy room doing the same thing every second of every day for the thousandth year. Take a soul from there, put it over here. Do that again, and again, and again, and again, and—it's endless, Sin. I wanted something different for once. After seeing you all go through what you did, I thought, well now it's my turn to have fun."

Sinclair heaved. "We were children."

"And we were bored." She grinned. "All of us Yägers were. We wanted some entertainment. Call it an experiment."

His eyes widened.

Isla placed a hand on her chin and looked at the sky. "We thought, what would happen if we gave these kids trauma in every single life, and forced them to remember it all? Just how shitty would they turn out?"

From the silence behind him, Sinclair could almost paint the expressions on Marceau and Jacques' face. They were just as speechless as he.

"We looked carefully for babies who were bound for trauma." Isla dropped her head and tilted it. "And then I thought: what if we made one of them immortal? Made it so that person never got to move on, even for a little bit."

"Sin, give me the word and I'll erase her."

A cloud of dread on his forehead, Sinclair couldn't remember the last time he blinked.

"Despite anything I ever said, I never loved you, Sin." Isla told him, humor in her tone. "You were a handsome face and good in bed. That's all."

He looked at his palm. "I don't think I ever said it back to you."

That made her click her tongue. "Oh, whatever."

"I never believed you, Isla. I always thought it was weird, that you'd only say it whenever we'd sleep together."

"Hah. Then why didn't you erase me when you had the chance?"

He looked at her. "I felt bad for you."

"Of course you did. After the coup, we thought, oh finally we get to take a break. To be honest, we could've retaliated within a day. We only took ten years because we wanted to rest." She laughed.

"Sin! Any fucking time, now!"

To her poor attempts at humor, Sinclair had no hint of a smile on his lips.

He found that he couldn't accept the reason why. Not easily, anyway. For everything to have occurred out of boredom was ___. Indeed, there was no word in the dictionary adequate enough.

"We were children," he said for the second time.

A new voice chimed in. Capucine's body was halfway buried underneath sand. Her words were a strained. "There's no use, Sinclair. She's desensitized to murder."

"And you aren't?" Isla placed her fingers on her forehead. "Oh, the hypocrisy."

"You're right." Capucine hummed at the ground. "But we're not the same, Yäger. Our sins didn't come from something as stupid as boredom. No, we. . . we had a right to be angry." She gritted her teeth. "We had a right to destroy the world."

Isla was grinning. "I'll admit, seeing the results of our experiments makes me feel sorry for you. You've become completely brain dead, LeRouge."

"Far from it."

"Hey, Sin."

Sinclair twisted. Marceau was dragging himself on the ground with one arm and one leg. "So, you're telling me it wasn't just our luck?" He heaved, eyes ablaze with anger and anguish. He had his finger ready on his Reaper. The sand underneath him darkened from his falling tears. Yet, he grit his teeth and spoke as though he knew nothing about crying.

"Yeah, Marceau. It was them."

"Sorry, Sin. Guess I'm impatient."

The shot was immediate. Blankly, Sinclair watch the sandy figure fall. He blinked, and shook his head.

"Are the rest of us gone?"

"Yeah. The Yägers were hiding their Reapers in the sand," Capucine answered. There was a bit of silence before she spoke again. "I'm sorry, Sinclair."

"Huh. . .?"

"I can't find it in me to be guilty about what we've done. I'm trying, but it. . . it's not working."

"Oh."

Jacques had had his palms clamped to his ears the entire time. He peeled it away at last.

Marceau was staring daggers at his Reaper. "Yeah. I don't think I'll ever be okay with that I went through." He placed the gun in his mouth.

Sinclair exhaled shakily. His arm reached for him. "Wait—!"

Jacques was also shifting his weapon around. "I feel the same. Unless I can forget everything, it'll haunt me forever."

"Jacques. . ."

"Sinclair," called Capucine. "Whenever I look at you, I remember the time we were all happy together. It's good to know we didn't all lose ourselves."

She smiled, then looked at her other cousin. "Let's do it together, Jacques."

A heaviness in Sinclair's chest kept any words from forming. Despite how much he wanted them to talk it out, he knew very well that what they did with definitions was nothing he could ever control.

The two readied the Reaper against their foreheads. "Goodbye, Sin."

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Near Past

Evaughn ate his lunch on the porch stairs with his brows stuck in furrows. He sat amidst thoughts that sought reason.

Why won't my body listen to me? Is it something about this world?

The plate of rice and salmon sat on his thighs. Evaughn stared blankly at it, hoping the answers would come to him. He threw his head back to look up at the blue sky.

"Dimitri, where are you?" Evaughn wrung his brows together. "Whatever this is, it's scary. . .," he admitted to himself. "J'ai peur." [I'm scared.]

As immediate as it came out, Evaughn slapped a hand over his mouth, eyes wide with confusion and fear. "What did I just. . .?"

However weird he thought the foreign movement of his tongue was was nothing compared to what came next. Evaughn blinked and the world transformed. Somehow he was inside a mansion, looking at a line of armed men.

His view was lowered to the height of a child. His heart was beating, and his eyes darted left and right where others as small as he were breathing just as hard. It was all happening against his will.

Even his lips moved on their own. "M-Marceau. Sin. J'ai peur."

What is happening?

The boy to his right took his hand and held it tight. "N'aie pas peur, Dimi. J'suis la."

When the soldiers started to talk amongst themselves, his vision became blurry with tears. He was cold despite being sandwiched and shielded. Marceau's voice cried out a protest in his native tongue. A soldier responded, his tone menacing.

The lack of a translation was trivial to Evaughn who caught on quickly. Now he was battling his own mind to snap out of it! and get out! Outside the strange vision, his teeth were gritted.

After a struggle against will, he finally blinked. The sight of Danes Lobby spread relief over him.

Evaughn had to stand to catch his breath. "Oh my god. . ."

Unfortunately, the relief was fleeting. The next time his eyelids open and shut, his body went rigid.

Again, he was a young boy from a different world. This time, dirty basement walls surrounded him, and a tall frame towered over him, eyes dark and menacing.

Evaughn blinked once, twice, and the world skewed in yet another transform. He'd taken a hit and a fall. The pair of large hands responsible then grabbed his small body to easily hurl against a wall. He screamed at the pain but panicked even more at the one closing in, trapping him against a wall with a knee on his thigh.

No. . . G-Get me out. . . I need to get out!

Out he was, and out he wished to remain. If Evaughn could, he would tape his eyelids apart. The next scene was ice cold and gruesome. Something no child should ever know of.

It took five harsh slaps against his cheeks to get out of the loop. When Evaughn was himself again, he had an imprint of his fingers on his cheeks.

He heaved breaths from the deepest of his diaphragm. "Th-those were. . . Dimi's."

~

From the sudden visions to the sudden sandstorm, the feeling of surprise was too overdone to occur anymore.

"Tell me if it hurts," Evaughn was saying to the one without a finger. His wrapped the boy's disformed hand with a stretchable strip of cloth. They sat on his patio stairs away from the turmoil.

While carefully securing the bandage, Evaughn studied he whose replies were soft shakes of his head. "It's okay."

He came when the sand came, but. . . it doesn't seem like he's with them.

Eyes narrow, Evaughn mulled over fragments of information. Inside his mind was the chaos of puzzle pieces. Despite how tiny and how many, the pieces had started to fall into place.

He secured the last of the elastic. "How's it feel?" He asked although the answer was obvious. There was a lot of blood loss, the wound was fresh, and the cut was too straight not to be the work of a knife. Did someone stab him?

"I-It's good. Thank you."

"Yeah, no worries. Are you hungry, by any chance? I have leftover lunch. . . or maybe it's dinner."

The boy without a finger looked at him. "Um, I'm okay."

Evaughn nodded. He should've urged him to eat, but his gaze drew upwards again. The stirring and swirling up ahead was enough to cause a stirring inside. Evaughn swallowed dry. What if Dimitri's in there. . .?

His anxiety was pushed aside. In the space in front of him, Dimitri was materializing from the bottom up. Evaughn stood, and when he heard a shaky gasp from the boy beside him, he assured him not to worry.

As soon as the last of his curls were formed, their gap was reduced to zero. "Dimitri—" For Evaughn, words were stuffed in a shoulder blade, chest against the other, and thoughts muddled by the feeling of soft lips on his skin.

Dimitri hadn't let go of his hand. He was saying something inaudible to the one whose thoughts were now full of memories. With eyes softened by compassion, Evaughn regarded him.

Dimitri paused whatever he'd been saying. "What's on your mind?"

Their height was separated by a single inch, but just for a moment, it was as though Dimitri was much shorter. Evaughn saw the little him. The one who suffered.

He knew not to bring it up, though. Not yet, anyway. "Let's talk over there," Evaughn said before speaking to the boy without a finger, "Hey, I won't be far, alright?"

He was too lost in thoughts to hear him.

"Hey, you okay?"

Evaughn couldn't wait for a response. He was veered away from the house. Dimitri leaned closer as they walked towards the tall hedge that surrounded it. "Who is that kid? His soul is weird."

"What do you mean, weird?"

"It's got something familiar. I don't know. Forget it."

They halted, Evaughn with his back to the shrubs. "I can't go anywhere past this house. Is it because you did something to me?" He voiced the puzzle he had nearly completed, but it came in a tone far from confronting. "Is it your soul I have?"

Dimitri had yet to let go of his hand. For that reason, Evaughn felt them tremble. The skin on his forehead scrunched.

"I did it to protect you."

"Don't worry. I'm not upset with you." Evaughn pressed their palms together, spread his fingers apart, waited for Dimitri to do the same, and slid his digits through each gap.

Dimitri gazed at their intertwined hands. "You're not?"

"No."

"Really? I'll be honest, I expected you to—"

"To not understand?" Evaughn asked with his brow raised suggestively.

In a moment of revelation, Dimitri shook his head at himself. "Yeah."

"That's what brought us here, isn't it?" He smiled. "I'll always understand."

While Evaughn played with their intertwined hands, tints of red dyed his cheeks. He sensed Dimitri's gaze linger on him like a gentle caress, as though he were the only person in the universe.

"Dimi—"

"Will you marry me, Evaughn?"

He chuckled, the sound barely more than a breath.

"I'm serious."

Evaughn's smile fell. His lips were parted for seconds before his tongue joined in. "Dimi." For a while, his gaze had been lowered to the other's wrist; there, laid a puzzle piece. "How bad is it this time?"

"What?"

"How many did you kill this time?"

Dimitri paused entirely. It seemed like the blood in his veins had turned to ice. "Who told you?"

"No one had to."

Dimitri followed Evaughn's view down to his hand. There were splotches of blood staining his skin. Dimitri loosened his fingers to pull away; Evaughn had no other choice than to do the same. When they parted, he felt empty, but he had anticipated this.

Their end, that is.

Dimitri's lips were parted for a while longer than normal, most likely to let the realization of he knew this whole time sink in.

Evaughn was quite blank in his expression. "Last time, it was three. This time, you have power. You can control people. You controlled me," he added, then putting space before his next sentence. "So how bad is it? Is it hundreds this time? Thousands? I-Is it more than that?"

He exhaled. "I won't apologize."

"I know." Evaughn stared, but after seconds, he tore his eyes away from Dimitri's; he was seeing a little boy again. "I know about. . . the reason you're doing this. I saw your memories."

Dimitri's eyes widened out of shock, but they calmed down quickly after. "If you think I'm doing this for myself, you didn't see all of it."

"What does that mean?"

"It wasn't just that one, Evaughn. Every life I've ever lived was shittier than the last. Guess it's just my luck," he reasoned, a pained look on his face. "I've always thought the world was hell, but back then, I never wanted to destroy it."

Evaughn wrung his brows.

"Until you."

Until. . . me?

Dimitri's eyes tunneled in on him. "When you were just the boy with duct tape, I'd have dreams of you that drilled guilt into me. They'd force me to be good again. When I realized who you were, I cried for the first time in a long time.

I was me because of you.

And maybe it is the drugs still working, but who cares? All I know is that I get angry that the world could ever be mean to you."

Evaughn had prepared a retaliation. But for some reason, all of the that doesn't matters, the people are dyings, the go and stop its, the right now or I won't do this anymores—they were elsewhere.

Instead, there were thank yous in front of him. Evaughn forced himself to look at the grass. There, he found the others. "Dimitri, people are dying."

"I did it for you." Dimitri closed in. He brought his hand to Evaughn's chin, placing a thumb on his bottom lip. He did nothing more with it, though. At least, nothing that Evaughn was waiting for. Instead. Dimitri dropped his arm completely. "And you like that."

The upward flick of Evaughn's eyes was subconscious. As the words hung in the air, a heavy silence landed on his shoulders, suffocating. He looked at ground. Retaliations had gone again. Frantic, he searched inside blades of grass.

"You like that I blur out the world for you. You're not satisfied if there's anyone else in the picture."

"That doesn't matter, Dimi. Go and stop it. Right now, or I-I. . ."

"You like that I'm a murderer."

One of his exhales ended prematurely.

"But that's why we make sense." Dimitri spread his arms and smiled. "I want you, and you want me to want you. So just say the word, Evaughn.

Let me have you."