They saw the battle from a long way off. Bright fire in the distance, and a figure rising up into the sky on dragon wings. Patrick urged the horses into a gallop, swearing sulfurously. Please God, don't let it be too late, Ewan prayed desperately.

They found the demon kneeling in a field, with Mary's body cradled in his arms. Blood was everywhere, black on sunset gilded grass. Ewan's vision went white, then red. Too late, too late. He jumped from the wagon, ripping his sword from its scabbard, racing across the field, crying Mary's name.

The demon made no sign that it even heard him, head bent over Mary's limp form. As Ewan approached the demon looked up, stopping him in his tracks; he had never seen such a look of utter despair before. Never seen such a look of utter relief.

"I killed her," the demon said, voice cracking. "You could not stop me, you could not protect her. Her blood is on my hands, do your duty." The demon almost died then. Ewan's sword moved in an instinctive arc, stopping just short of the demon's neck. The demon didn't even flinch, staring up at him with wide dark eyes. Its purple hair was matted with sweat and dirt, and it appeared as if the horns on its head had been broken off at the base. The sword creased the demon's flesh, and a line of red ran down the blade. "Do your duty," the demon repeated.

"Put her down," Ewan grated between clenched teeth. "And step away from her." The demon obeyed, laying her down gently, and smoothing her hair away from her face before rising. The demon's hair and clothes were soaked with blood, its cloak and shirt ripped. To all appearance it was unarmed, its clawed hands held open, palms outward and just below shoulder level. It made no move to reach for the rifle that lay a short distance away near the remains of what was apparently its camp. A pocket watch hung on a chain around his neck, its hands stopped at midnight.

Awareness that the demon wanted to die filtered through the rage Ewan felt. Do your duty, it had said. You could not protect her. It had been holding Mary like a lover, and its face was wet with tears. "It appears you couldn't protect her either," Ewan said. He was distantly aware of Patrick's approach, but didn't look away from the demon's gaze. "What was she to you, demon?"

"It doesn't matter," the demon said. "She died. She died, and I killed her."

Fury rose again at the demon's words, but Ewan was in control, and there was something here he didn't understand. There was blood on Mary's dress, true, but there were no corresponding holes in the fabric. There were rents and rips in the demon's clothing. "Patrick," he said.

"There isn't a mark on her, beyond a few bruises and scratches," Patrick confirmed.

"I killed her," The demon repeated, almost shouting the words. "I ate her soul."

"What was she to you," Ewan repeated relentlessly, closing in on the demon, sword held ready to strike. What were you, to her?

"I was her death. She died, healing me," the demon said. "Will you do your duty now?"

"Kneel," Ewan heard himself say, as from a great distance. The demon obeyed, slowly lowering itself to the ground, its arms held behind its back. Ewan took a deep breath, and raised his sword. Swinging as hard as he could he struck--and the flat of his blade connected hard with one of the horn stumps. The demon grunted, and dropped to the grass, unconscious. Ewan stood over the demon's body, breathing hard, and leaning against his sword, now set point first in the ground. He heard Patrick come up behind him.

"You didn't kill it?" Patrick asked curiously.

"It--he wanted to die," Ewan said. No being with such a look of grief on his face could be referred to as 'it.' "Mary wanted him to live. From what he said, Mary had made a Contract with him." He nodded toward the wreckage that was the demon's camp. "We know there was a fight here--he must have been fatally wounded, and drained her soul."

"His horns have been broken," Patrick noted. "Maybe it would be better to put him down. He won't live long like that."

"Patrick, he's an intelligent being with a soul, not a horse with a broken leg," Ewan said irritably.

"Weren't you going to kill him just now?" Patrick asked in an ironic tone. Despite his words, he squatted down beside the demon, searching for pulse points and checking the dilation of the demon's eyes. "Not sure how long he'll be out."

They bound the demon with rope, though Ewan wasn't confident that the ropes would hold. They wrapped Mary in linen, and placed her body in the wagon bed. Patrick and Ewan cleaned up the ruined campsite, noting signs of a companionable relationship between Mary and the demon. Two bedrolls placed close together, an over turned coffee pot by the remains of the fire, tin plates and a frying pan. Next to the bedrolls was a book of poetry opened page down, and a half-mended shirt. Inside the book was a note written in pencil. Ewan, forgive Chrono, he has a good heart. The note read in Mary's fine, precise hand.

"Chrono," Ewan murmured, glancing at the unconscious demon.

"Ah?" Patrick said.

"Mary used to ask about someone named 'Chrono' when she was younger," Ewan said. "No one thought anything of it, since aside from mentioning that he was sad, her visions of him seemed mostly happy."

Once the demon's camp had been cleaned, and everything of value had been placed in the wagon, Ewan and Patrick made their own camp. Ewan was on watch when the demon awoke around midnight. Chrono stirred restlessly, calling out Mary's name. His eyes snapped open when he realized he was bound, his eyes glowing like embers in the darkness. The world seemed to narrow down as their eyes met. "Chrono, that is your name, isn't it?"

The demon made a soft sound, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. "Sinner, Slayer of a Hundred Thousand, The Crooked Horn, the Ignoble One." A deep breath. "It's one of my names."

Why 'Sinner'? Ewan wondered, but didn't ask. "My name is Father Ewan Remington." It felt very strange to be exchanging introductions with a demon, but it seemed wrong somehow to treat this being as less than a person.

"A Pursuer, of a sort." The demon's voice was darkly humorous. Ewan wasn't sure he wanted in on the joke.

"If that means we were trying to find Mary, yes," Ewan said.

The demon hissed, a long drawn out noise that raised the hairs on the back of Ewan's neck. "Yoooou caaaaaammmme toooooooo lllaaaaate,"the demon whispered in a voice that seemed to crawl beneath Ewan's skin. An ugly, dark voice that invoked anger and the blackest grief. "Yoooou fffaaaaiillled," the voice said mockingly. "Yooou miiiiight hhhhhaavvve ssssaaaavvved hhhher, buuut yoooou wwwwere toooo ssssslllooooowww."

Anger surged through him, a terrible desire to kill, to destroy, to avenge--feelings that some part of him knew were not entirely his. He resisted the demon's sibilant, insistant whisper, centering himself with deep, calming breaths. "In the name of Saint Mary, beloved of Christ, she who subdued the wolf," Ewan said in a voice edged with spiritual force. "Avert! Avert! Avert!" He made the sign of the cross, and the dark anger inspired by the demon's words vanished. The demon itself flinched as spiritual energy crackled between them. "Your words of pain and anger have no power over myself or my partner, Sinner Chrono!" Ewan shouted. The demon cried out in pain or grief, and went still, breathing hard.

"What the hell?" Patrick asked, having awakened during the exchange.

"Chrono tried to make me kill him," Ewan said shortly. "And it's your turn to keep watch." Ewan retreated to his bedroll, his head aching.

In the morning, the demon had freed itself from the ropes by the simple expedient of being too small for them to fit properly. Ewan stared at the child-shaped being sitting by the fire. The demon's arms were wrapped around his knees, and a headband marked with a triad of diamonds set in a triangle covered his eyespots. He appeared to be watching Patrick make breakfast. "Why?" Ewan asked sitting down across from the demon. Why are you here, if you had the chance to escape? Why assume the form and appearance of a child?

"The other form used too much energy," the demon said. "I felt myself drifting toward this form after your invocation of the saint, and let it continue."

Chrono was nearly a ghost by the time the work on the tomb began. A silent shadow of a child the workers hired thought was a Indian orphan the two Militia members had taken in out of Christian charity. He was quiet and to all appearance shy, and Ewan would sometime forget that the "child" was in fact an adult demon--and sometimes, Chrono himself would seem to forget.

He would stay close to Ewan's side, and ask a seemingly endless stream of questions about everything. Questions of religion, faith and the natural world. Angels and fireflies seemed to be creatures of equal wonder to him, as well as astral forces and the birds in the trees. Everything seemed new to him, strange and wonderful. Ewan began to enjoy these conversations with the demon, answering as many questions as he could, Patrick filling in when he ran out of words to describe and explain the world the demon was so curious about. It was a tenuous, strange sort of friendship, where Ewan felt as if he were part confessor, part debate partner, and part older brother for the demon.

That friendship was badly strained when Chrono asked to be buried beside Mary. The sticking point wasn't the burial, not entirely. Ewan thought he could make a very good case that the tomb of a holy woman of the Order of Madgalen would be a fitting place to bury the remains of a demon.

The sticking point was that Chrono wasn't dead yet.

"Damn you to hell!" Ewan said angrily when Chrono broached the subject, glaring at Patrick when he snorted. "You know what I mean," he snapped at the older man. "Dammit, we are not burying you like some kind of heathen sacrifice!" He said to Chrono.

The demon smiled an unchildlike smile. "I'd only be a sacrifice if you actually killed me," he pointed out reasonably.

"Well, I'm not going to do that either," Ewan growled. "I'm not going to kill a man who won't fight back. And I'm not going to bury you alive either!"

"What will you do then, take me prisoner? Lock me up somewhere? Let me sleep beside Mary and you'll have accomplished the task." The hell of it was, the boy sounded so completely reasonable about it. As if this were only a small favor, instead of a looming horror.

"Chrono, you've come so far," Ewan protested. "You can't just throw it all away."

"I'll be falling asleep soon anyway, Father," the demon said. "I'm not throwing anything away, I'm reaching for something I've never had before."

"I don't understand you, Chrono."

The demon smiled. "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible," he said, and went on to recite the entire Nicene Creed. Ewan couldn't remember if he'd taught it to Chrono, or if Chrono had read it, or even if he'd learned it from Mary, he was too stunned by what he was hearing.

"A Stylite demon?" Patrick asked under his breath, much to Ewan's annoyance.

"Chrono, is this truly what you want?" Ewan asked. "You aren't suggesting this because of--grief?"

Chrono shook his head. "No, I'm certain this is what I want. Please let me do this?"

Ewan sighed. "All right then. We'll seal you in with Mary."

"Thank you, Father Remington," Chrono said.

Ewan would not see his friend for fifty years.

---

AN:Why hasn't anyone else speculated why Ewan let Chrono essentially bury himself alive?

Vocabulary:

Nicene Creed: One of the first statements of faith for Christianity.

Stylite: Ascetic monks who lived either on the tops of pillars or in holes in the ground, fasting and practicing other acts of self-denial.

Grave goods: Offerings and gifts placed in a grave during burial, usually useful objects intended for use by the recipient in the afterlife.

AN: In real-world Christianity, angels, demons and other spirits lack souls. In Chrono Crusade demons do have souls, following a more Eastern concept, where even gods might end up reincarnated. I wanted to play with the idea of Chrono having had a conversion experience due to close contact with Mary.

AN: "Patrick" is the name I came up with for Elder. Because at this point in time, the Elder is more Middle-Aged than an Elder.

AN: I perhaps arbitrarily decided that the "psychological attack" employed by the Pursuers in the manga when Chrono and company were pinned down in a warehouse is an actual psychic attack demons resort to when trying to goad a response out of an opponent.

Comments as always, make me happy.