crossoverfic | Warbound Prologue 4/4

author: banditobane

beta reader: pen 37

charactors: Robert Cross aka The Crow, Michelle Del Gato

rateing- R (don't say I didn't warn you)

summery: a new incranation of The Crow rises from his grave.

A/N; Thanks again pen
I wanted to make his outfit as mixture of all the previous incarnations of the crow. The long sleeve shirt and jeans are from the Eric Draven incarnation, the biker vest is from the Ashe Corvin incarnation, the cross hanging of the right pocket is from the Alex Corvis incarnation and the black cord arond the neck is from the Jimmy Cuarvo incarnation.

Prologue 4: Robert Cross – The Crow

The tombstones inside stood as testament, a promise that no one could ever out run death. A low mist blanketed the ground and the eerie silence of the dead was broken by the caw of a lone crow flying over the cemetery.

The crow landed on a gravestone. The black bird seemed to be looking for something or someone. With flap of its wings it flew into a crypt. There on the side of the crypt was an inscription that read ‘Robert Anthony Cross 1981-2008, dedicated man and brave soul.’ The crow landed right in front of the tomb and tapped the marble surface with its beak. It then flew to a perch on a crucifix and waited. Suddenly the silence of the grave was broken by pounding within the structure.

The marble slab gave way and a man in tattered clothing, with mop of tangled black hair and covered in dust and spider webbing crawled out. When he was free he took his first breath of new life and screamed towards the heavens. He fell over and curled into a ball on the ground shivering from the cold touch of the grave.

He could remember who he had been. He had been a criminal. Until he met Michelle Del Gato.

Her love had changed him. With her by his side, he’d become more. She had given him a second chance at normal life and was ready to give up everything for him, but one night changed it all.

His mind shuddered away from memories of that night. He’d died. He was dead.

The crow landed in front of him, breaking, him free of his grief and shock. It seemed to be looking at him as if it were studying him. It turned and hoped towards the entrance of the cemetery. There and it turned around and cawed as if telling him to follow it. Robert got up on unsteady legs almost losing his balance several times.

As he walked out of the cemetery he wrapped his arms around himself in futile attempt to ward of deaths cold embrace.

Through the dimly lit streets, the crow led him to the one place he didn’t want to go, the small house he had shared with Michelle.

The place showed obvious signs of neglect: several windows were broken, and graffiti covered the walls. The windows and doors had been boarded up, probably by transient squatters to ward of the cold. But whomever had done so was long gone. Obviously, the house had been abandoned since the day the police found their bodies. Robert doubted that anyone come to clam their belongings, Michelle’s parents had disowned her for wanting to marry Robert, and he was never close with his parents to begin with. What hadn’t been taken by transients was probably a picked-over mess inside.

Above the front door an ancient symbol that was painted in blood. As Robert studied it further, memories that he’d tried so hard to shut out battered down his shaky defenses and hit him. Memories of him being held in front of a sacrificial alter being forced to watch as men and women tied a struggling Michelle to it.

Mercifully, the caw of the black bird brought him back to present. The crow led him to a small crawl space that he could use to go in. Once inside he looked around at what had once been his home, but now it was just a hallowed shell, like him. The furniture was broken, dusty and infested by vermin. Just as he suspected, everything of value had been taken, and whatever was left was thrown on floor.

A wooden picture frame caught his attention. He picked it up and wiped the dust from the glass. The picture was of him and Michelle.

“Michelle,” he sobbed as held the picture to chest.

Just seeing the face of his lost love caused the memories to return in force.

He stumbled back against the wall as they washed over him.

“I love you,”

“I love you more,”

He remembered coming home from the jewelers, their wedding bands in his pocket.

“It’s beautiful,” she said to him when he showed hers to her, “I’m gonna wear mine know,” She laughed as she snatched her ring from his hand.

“You can’t,” he said as he tried to get it back, “We’re not married yet. Give it back.”

“No,” she replied as he playfully tried to wrestle the ring away,

Like a poisonous snake, the last memory slithered into his mind.

He’d been asleep on the couch, when a banging sound woke him. He’d looked up to see several people in shape-concealing robes come through the shattered door. Michelle screamed as one of them lunged for her.

He rolled from the couch, but before he could stop them, they drug her from the house. He turned to fight, but there were too many of them. One of them pushed him into the wall. He felt his head connect with the heavy doorway frame-then nothing.

When he next awoke, he was tied to as old girder. Judging by the dusty old machinery, they’d been taken to an old steel mill.

He watched in horror as they tied Michelle to a makeshift altar.

“Please,” he begged, “You can kill me just don’t hurt her.”

His pleas fell on deaf ears as they prepared her for as a sacrifice, all the while chanting a prayer of evil. As their chant reached its pinnacle, an ominous figure approached the sacrificial alter. As he laid his hands on her, he looked at her as if she were a meal.

“Get your dirty hands off of her,” Robert yelled,

But he was quickly silenced with a stinging slap by one of the robed figures.

“Don’t you dare speak that way to our lord.”

The figure produced a wickedly curved dagger and proceeded to carve in to Michelle. Robert could only helplessly watch as her screams of pain pierced his ears.

Her screams finally stopped when the figure raised her heart over his head like a bloody trophy bringing cheers from the robed zealots. Robert crumbled to the floor, feeling numb to his very core, as the figure began to eat the heart of the woman he loved.

Robert began to sob, heedless of his surroundings. When the head priest came to stand over him, he glared up at the man in impotent rage.

“Do not worry,” he told him, his lips still sticky with Michelle’s blood, “You’ll join her soon.”

That face lingered in his mind long after the other memories had faded. Roberts felt the rage began to take over him, and welcomed it.

With blind fury, he flung a love seat across the room, kicked a book shelf to splinters, and broke a stool with his head. Then he smashed his fists into glass top coffee table. He was pounding the shards of glass into dust when he came back to himself. He saw that glass was sticking from his hands but he felt no pain. In shock he took the shards out of his hands and saw them heal right before his eyes leavening his hands whole and unmarked.

A caw from the crow caught his attention. As he turned around he saw his face in the cracked mirror of a vanity. He was no longer Robert Cross; he no longer had a future, only vengeance.

As if prompted by some long-dormant, primal instinct, he walked to the bathroom, and pulled out the drawer where Michelle had kept her make up. Then with methodical precision, he painted his face with her make-up. When they’d moved in, she’d bought a set of mask at a flea market to decorate the bathroom: The images of comedy and tragedy. One eternally laughing and, the other eternally crying.

At the time, he’d thought they were creepy. But now, he understood. Like him, tragedy wept, because he no longer had heart. He turned back to the mirror, and painted his face in the image of tragedy.

The crows caw turned him towards the wardrobe that was by the door. When he opened it, he was pleased to find that his clothing had been missed by the looters. He selected his clothing for function: black, to blend in to the night. Durable, so that he could take his revenge on the people who’d harmed Michelle. A skintight long sleeve shirt, a leather bicker vest, jeans, work boots, fingerless gloves and a leather trench coat.

He walked to one particular part on the floor and lifted the loose floor boards; under them was small safe, opening it he pulled out the wedding bands of him and Michelle. He slipped them on his ring and pinky fingers of his left hand.

The crow called to him. He turned, to see that black bird stood on top the small tarnished silver cross, that Michelle had hung over their bed. A black cord was in its beak. When Robert walked over to it, it dropped the cord in his hand. He examined it closely: it had been one of the ropes that the cult followers used to bind Michelle to the sacrificial alter. He tied the cord around his neck; he then clasped the cross to the left pocket of his vest where his heart used to be. The picture of him and Michelle caught his eye; he broke the frame and put the picture in the inner pocket of his coat.

Robert walked out of what was once his home with the crow perched on his shoulder. He began to walk towards the lights of Pittsburgh with a wicked smile on lips, a smile which promised both pain and death.