Chapter Text
Chrome opened his eyes as a dim blue light entered his vision. He was slumped against a wall. He didn't even need to do his diagnostic. There was a hole in his body, several inches across. The knife passed straight through him. By the pain, it passed horizontally through his left lung and just under his heart. A familiar catboy was looming over him, emitting a blue light from his hands that was undoubtably dulling the crippling pain.
'Anesthetic... good time...'he pushed through the brain fog until he was capable of movement. As soon as he began to move, he was confronted by his healer.
"Oh? You shouldn't be awake right nyow!" Felix muttered, the blue light increasing in intensity.
Chrome held a hand over the wound on his chest, pressed the matching wound on his back against the wall of the newly destroyed loothouse, grit his teeth through the immense pain, and took a breath. He did his best to fight the instinct to cough up all the blood. Pooling, Sinking, Gouging. He'd felt worse before. On the bright side, the pain cleared the fogginess away. He shook off the instinct to gasp. After all, it would only make it worse.
"I have to talk to you." he rasped.
"Why aren't you falling asleep!?" Felix whisper-shouted, probably to himself.
"Why are you healing me? Of everyone I've met, you must hate me the most..." Chrome asked in whispered confusion.
"Nyow's not the time. I'm going to heal you, and you're going to go... to... sleep...!" Felix urged as he pulsed his mana into Chrome, but...
Sleep didn't come. Instead, Chrome's overcoat began turning purple, despite all the blood. The more Felix pumped mana into Chrome's body, the more purple his cloak became.
With only a cursory glance at his newly regal attire, Chrome slowly began to get up. Felix tried to hold him down gently, but Chrome resisted Felix's hands. Another battle of wills. Was the catboy willing to hurt him to get what he wanted, when he's already so injured?
"There's something I need to tell you. It can't—" Chrome rasped before a shuddering, violent cough pushed a cloud of blood through both wounds and his mouth.
"Alright alright, I'll listen!" whispered Felix.
"There... Children... Sick... Scurvy..." wheezed Chrome, covering his wounds once more so he could get a breath in, and pointing toward Jackie's house with the other arm. Every breath submerged him deeper into a sea of pain. It wrenched through him, heedless of the anesthetic magic that was supposed to dull it.
The coughing had exacerbated his wounds. He's lost too much blood...
'Push through'he ordered himself, eyes hardening.
"Promise me you'll heal them when this is over." he breathed.
"I'm worried about YOU right now!" Felix shouted.
Chrome took a deeper breath, ruined by his hand and back not sealing the wounds enough, sucking in blood that instantly triggered his coughing reflex. He suppressed it long enough to get his next words out.
"PROMISE ME!" he shouted, before giving in and coughing copious amounts of blood onto the ground.
Oh, right. He's exacerbated his wounds. He couldn't help but vomit blood and bile immediately afterwards, pretending like he wasn't at the border of exsanguination.
"Fine, I promise!"
Felix quickly turned Chrome onto his bad side so as to not drown in his own blood and vomit. Chrome winced, but couldn't find the strength to do anything except gasp soundlessly from the pain.
"And promise me you'll wake me up... once the wounds are healed. I need to talk to Felt and Rein..." Chrome whispered near silently, trusting Felix's demihuman hearing to catch his mumbling.
"I will. I promise." Felix replied sincerely.
To that, Chrome visibly relaxed and slumped fully against the wall again. The resistance to sleep left as his cloak returned to white, stained a deep crimson with Chrome's blood.
Felix's mana pulsed again, and Chrome began to fall asleep.
"Oh... I have a... concussnnnnn" Chrome muttered as he passed out.
Chrome entered a dreamless sleep. His consciousness floating through a white void alone. It didn't take long before he heard someone speaking to him.
"You are incorrigible, trying to redeem a bitch like her."
"I'm trying to redeem a bitch like you, so how is she any different!?" Chrome spat.
The voice hummed a bit disingenuously. "So much venom..."
Chrome harrumph'd at the facetiousness. "Yeah. Where the hell were you!? Leaving me to fight Elsa alone... I almost died!"
"And who, pray tell, created those rings?!" the voice retorted.
"It probably helped sell the bit, but still, you should've been there!"
"If you had paid attention, you may have noticed I was not present for much of today." The voice said, as if it were obvious.
"Yeah, wasn't the plan that you were manifesting with me for once?" he asked the voice.
"You did not have the ability to manifest us both without losing control, and have not expressed enough Light to make it possible."
"So it's somehow my fault." He crossed his arms spitefully.
"Yes. It may have been possible had we remained within a mirror of The City, but without a White Nights and Dark Days, it is too much."
"Look, I didn't CHOOSE to come here." Chrome spat indignantly.
"You never do."
Chrome sighed.
A moment passed in the void, with neither having anything to say.
"...I was worried, you know." Chrome said, just above a whisper.
"Yes, worried about me distorting the denizens of this world." The eye-rolling sarcasm was so thick he could choke on it.
"YES! These people don't have the ability to handle a Distortion, except maybe Rein. It's a completely reasonable thing to be worried about, ESPECIALLY when you were entirely absent!"
Chrome watched as the void formed a woman in a tan polo, black short shorts, shoes that are tan for the ankle half and black toward the toes, and a white lab coat. Her blood red eyes and brown, matted hair contrasted well against the white void.
"Am I present enough for you now?"
Chrome clicked his tongue and turned away from Carmen.
"I did try my best to help. Your obsession with seeing me as some monster is hampering your judgment."
Chrome turned back to stare at the researcher and sighed.
"That was you, wielding Soda to keep me awake, wasn't it?"
"Yes. I knew how much you wanted to help those children and took action to ensure you could succeed."
"You're saying it like you don't care about those kids."
"And why should I? I do not know them. I have no relation to them at all. Remember that not everyone shares your... compassion." she replied dispassionately.
"Still, even in the Backstreets—"
"Their situation is common to many children in the Backstreets. People may attempt to help them if they have a relation to them. They may not. In either case, they are that woman's concern, not yours." She shut him down.
"Even Vergi—"
"Vergilius is a Color fixer with near unlimited resources both personal and from connections. He is an exception. We have been adventuring with exceptional people. Do not forget that." She shut him down again.
Chrome closed his mouth, turned away, and sat in silence once again. After a few moments, Carmen approached him once more and waited for him to speak up.
"... Do you think there was any chance for Elsa to take my deal?"
Chrome caught Carmen smiling, but she quickly frowned instead, like she aborted the feeling.
"That one... would be an excellent source of Light. Like I said, points for trying." Carmen hesitated.
"That's not what I'm asking and you know it." Chrome stated sternly.
Carmen sighed.
"I believe that if you had anything concrete to offer her, there was a good chance that she would have accepted. From what you said, she is trapped under another's thumb. Without concrete proof that she could live the way she wants, she will not take the risk."
Chrome got the distinct impression that Carmen was restraining herself from saying something, and raised an eyebrow to her.
"And?"
"And that is all."
"No, what were you going to say?" Chrome demanded.
Carmen sighed.
"You need to let go of them. Binah and the others."
Chrome was struck speechless by the accusation, staring at Carmen for a moment.
"W-what are you talking about?" his thoughts staggered out.
"... You cannot honestly argue that it is mere coincidence that the first person you try to help with the Light is a copy of your favorite Patron Librarian." Her tone was stern, like a parent lecturing their child.
"Elsa is no copy—"
"She is a busty sad*st dressed in black—"
"Binah was refined, ladylike! She was someone you could talk to for hours! Her bloodlust was only ONE part of her!" Chrome burst out.
Carmen opened her mouth and closed it again.
"You have exerted yourself enough for today."
"No. I still have to talk to Felt, get everything settled and make sure we're going where we have to."
"Your crusade will never end. Know when it is appropriate to rest. Your ability to find trustworthy individuals is enviable, so trust the others to solve this."
Chrome's brow furrowed as he spoke, weary of this conversation.
"No. No I can't."
This argument would go nowhere.
Carmen sighed.
"It will break you. But very well; I will be watching."
Chrome drifted from the void back to unconsciousness, the argument lingering in his ears.
"You never were any good at self reflection, were you?"
