Leon hadn't been back to the house he'd shared with his family for months. Now, he stood outside the garden staring up at the dark windows and wide open front door. They'd left it like that when they'd all left, not bothered about what happened to anything. They'd taken their valuables and walked out.

Since then, it was obvious someone else had been there.

The burnt out remains of a portable barbeque sat in the middle of the garden, grass slightly longer than Yao always liked to keep it. He'd have had a fit if he'd have seen it. Yao had always liked things to be in a fairly straight forwards order. It was almost a good job he wasn't around anymore. The front door, though it had most definitely been open when they'd left, looked as though it had been kicked a couple of times, as though it had been closed. The porch step was littered with various cans in different stages of abandonment – some squashed, some upright, some piled in the gutter, some covered in a substance that Leon didn't want to think about.

It hadn't taken the locals long to move in after them, had it?

Carefully, he took a few steps up the path, picking his way in between the odd week in a gap in the stones, until he got to the door, stepping over the cans and inside. It wasn't exactly dark outside, though the descending sun made the sky not quite as bright as it had been when he'd arrived, but inside the house, it felt dark. Not a nice dark, like the type you can fall asleep to, or the type you find in the cinema just before the screen lights up and the film you've paid to see comes on; but a dark that seeped into every corner and curled around everything, him being one of its newest posts. He shuddered and walked down the hall, past family photos swinging on one corner or smashed on the floor, towards the kitchen, the last room he properly remembered.

The second he got into the kitchen, the smell hit him - a stench of rotting meat and something else unpleasant over the top. They'd been in such a hurry to get out, they hadn't even taken the time to sort out the bodies. They were all still there in similar states of decomposing - a couple of skeletons, one headless, one curled up.

That one was Mei.

The other one was his fault. Both of them pale grey with grinning skeletons, one across the other side of the room, and both with little leech like shapes of flesh still attached to the bones. Through the grimy windows, he could see the third in the garden, a pitchfork lying discarded next to him. Xiao.

That one was because of Kiku.

The table was still half cluttered with harmful objects, like pans and scissors that they'd scooped together as soon as they'd figured they weren't safe. A couple of arrows had joined them, which definitely hadn't been there before. That was probably Batukhan. Many of the objects had fallen off the table, creating a scene of disarray around the base of it. 

Leon stood in the doorway peering through the dark at it, hands buried deep in his pockets. One of the corners of the room was now dominated by a spider's web, the spider itself, a huge hairy thing with thick, bony legs, sat moodily in the centre of it, a cotton wool like egg sack hanging a few centimetres away from it. He shuddered at it and stepped away towards the staircase. He wasn't quite sure why he'd come back now, at all times, he just sort of, had. That, and he'd become sick of wearing the same two shirts and pairs of jeans for a month. Not that any of his other clothes would be in any sort of condition that would redeem them acceptable, but Arthur might be able to do something about them? Heck, he'd been able to get a wine stain off one of Francis' outfits once!

The upstairs of the house wasn't in as big a state of disrepair as the rest of it, more just dusty, dark and cold. Of course, it wasn't very nice, but at least there wasn't any blood, still decomposing skeletons or grumpy spiders. Although, when he opened his wardrobe door, a moth had very kindly chewed holes through most of his stuff. Now, it was chewed up itself, hanging from a thin thread.

Leon didn't wait around to see that spider, just closed the doors and turned around. He'd seen quite enough. He didn't need to be here anymore. He didn't want to come back either, ever.

He turned on one foot and walked back down the hall, floor boards creaking under his steps. Dust churned at his feet, creating new clouds of brown and grey, although, now the fine details didn't matter to him. Now, he just wanted to leave. He didn't need anything anyway. He'd just borrow some money and get some new stuff. It wasn't as if that was all going to go soon.

As he got to the top of the stairs and started to go down them, there was a scurrying of feet from downstairs and something that hadn't already been destroyed, was smashed. Leon stood, blinking, on the landing for a moment before shrugging and continuing down. It wasn't as if whoever was there was going to do much harm, was it? They were probably only looking for a place to stay the night, alone. It wasn't until he'd got to the bottom of the stairs and glanced towards the living room when he figured they hadn't exactly been looking for a place to stay.

There were two people sat limply against one of the couches, leaning against each other heavily. Simply out of curiosity, Leon padded into the room. They were asleep, so they wouldn't mind if he just saw who they were now, would they? Instead of a couple of strangers though, he was met with Yong Soo and Kyung Soo, both with eyes closed limply, Kyung Soo's head on Yong Soo's shoulder, hands clutched.

Leon stared at them for a second, mouth half open, and then grinned. "You bastards" he shouted, hitting Yong Soo on the head. "Where the hell've you been? I'd almost given up hope! I told everyone you survived that blast, but no one believed me, and now... now..." he trailed off and stared at them again. Neither were moving, and as he looked closer, they weren't breathing either. Kyung Soo's eyes were ringed in black and both of their cheeks looked sunken to a certain degree. "Hey?" Leon reached out and put two fingers against Yong Soo's wrist, praying to find something. Instead, the wrist was deathly cold and quiet, no pulse breaking through to him. "But..." Leon slowly took away his fingers and blinked. "But... you're just sleeping, right?" Then, it dawned on him like a slap to the face. "You... you survived the bomb. We left you there." He balled a fist and shoved it in his mouth, biting down on it harshly. "We left you. You were alive, and we killed you, and..." He shook his head and fixed his eyes on the floor, feeling them brim with tears. "I'm... I'm sorry."

***

Oliver was in the middle of icing a fresh batch of cakes when Luciano kicked open the door to the kitchen. The noise startled him and he over iced one of them, his hands slipping, sending a perfect line of pink onto the plate underneath and across the top of a perfectly iced cupcake.

"Fool" Oliver sighed. "I've messed it up now."

Luciano glared at him and Oliver did a double take, stepping away slightly. "We have bigger problems on our hands."

"What do you mean?" Oliver asked, turning back to his cakes to try and correct them.

"Kuro and Klaus went out" Luciano said gruffly. "I knew where they'd gone, so I went to find them at the conference building. They're both dead."

Oliver froze in icing and put down the bag. "What?"

"Dead" Luciano snapped, slamming the edge of his hand into his neck. "Like, no heart beat, no pulse, brain shuts off, no breathing..."

"I know what dead is" Oliver said. "But, if they're dead..."

"Yes" Luciano huffed, flopping down in a chair. "It's just us two left." He reached out and took one of Oliver's cakes, biting into it before it had been properly iced, much to the disgust of Oliver. "This was a mess right from the beginning."

"Well, you were the one who decided we try and get them back, right?" Oliver said curtly, pulling the cakes away from Luciano and continuing to ice them.

"Yes" Luciano finished the cake and pointed at him, not looking in his direction. "That's a good point."

"What's a good point?" Oliver frowned.

"Get back at them" Luciano's eyes lit up. "We simply have to get rid of all of them. Even if that does mean it's just us two left in the entire world..."

"World meetings would be easier" Oliver said grinning.

"One a year" Luciano nodded, imitating the grin. "England and Italy as the only two countries in the world. Of course, it might be a little bit hard to get specific ingredients or foods to begin with, but we could figure out how to grow them ourselves, and then..."

"Take over the world" Oliver whispered. There was a minute of silence before he threw his head back and startled to cackle. "Britannia rules the waves!"