He was alone, completely alone in the wide manor where he had hidden after the pact stipulated with Vincent, pact sealed with tears and anger.
His servant wasn't there, his languid eyes, one bloody red and one golden, were elsewhere, watching who knows what behind their opaque patina of apathy.
Leo felt free without that annoying look above him, finally he could afford the luxury of staring at the sky without fathom the air.
The amethyst irises that he had cursed so many times, the same irises that could see over the others and that had condemned Elliot, now got lost in the slice of light blue sky that was shining outside the wide gothic windows.
That azure, so clear and cloudless, reminded him his friend's eyes, it was the same disarming and serene color.
Suddenly his look became blurred, while the eyes' corners begun to burn due to the tears.
He grabbed a thin cartridge pen and dipped it in the inkwell, then laid it still dripping on a sheet of letter paper and started wounding it, filling it with thoughts that wanted to escape from his desperate head.
His hand didn't stop trembling until he didn't put the sheet in a fair envelope and incarcerated it with a scarlet seal.
He sneaked silently towards the wrought-iron cemetery's gates, standing on his guard not to be seen.
He disappeared since the day when Elliot died, he joined the Baskervilles' cause without even noticing, and he didn't want to come back.
He walked quickly and noiselessly through the cobblestoned path until he reached the elegant zone reserved to the Nightray family.
He passed the older graves with ample lodes, now covered by merciless ivy and forgotten by the world, stopping sharply in front of a marble tombstone white as milk.
Ramblers hadn't had yet the time to make their work, but Leo bowed to pull up some evil weeds, leaving in change a bunch of wildflowers.
He would like them.
The lips, swelled by the bites that he inflicted himself not to cry, opened in a slight smile, remembering a proud boy like Elliot who melted in front of a flowery blanket and close a little his eyelids to let the gentle inflorescences' fragrance fill him.
Leo awaked and picked up a letter from his pocket, then put it on the flowers.
An hushed clamor reached him, probably it was someone who was visiting an ancestor, or some curious vultures ready to laugh at the unlucky Nightray family's massacre.
He grinded his teeth in anger, but he couldn't stand there to defend those people's honor, no more.
He swallowed hardly and disappeared behind a huge and majestic redwood, leaning his shoulders against that rough trunk.
Unexpected, Oz and Gilbert's voices reached him while they were sharing few and throttled words near Elliot's grave.
Leo sighed with relief, Elliot was with people who loved him… He could leave that place.
A lonely, crystal tear dropped down his cheek, dissolving as soon as it touched the ground, while the boy was vanishing beyond the cemetery's brick-built wall.
Dear Elliot,
This letter is for you, to answer you even if you can't hear me, no more.
I'm sorry, I should have confided in you.
I should have trusted in my master, in my friend who picked me up from the cool floor of that orphanage and brought me with him.
Instead I locked myself in my own problems and I left you alone when you were needing me.
I'm really sorry.
But I hate you, I detest you, if you were still alive I'd slap you till you bleed.
Why did you bind to me?
I condemned you with my own hands, you should have kept away from Sablier, away from the Abyss.
And instead to save you, to bind you again to my fragile existence, I forced you to drink the blood that infected your algid body, corroding it second by second.
I hate you because, is spite of everything, you remained the same immutable Elliot I knew.
And you changed only in your death's moment.
You hated Edgar, and yet you sacrificed yourself as he did, to save the others…
It's not fair, Elliot.
I should have died for you, I that attracted that damned chain.
Heroes like you are contemptible, they only break the hearts of people who love them, they trample them believing to save them.
You know, I stopped hiding.
Now my cursed eyes that you longed to see took off the mask.
Maybe I did it to see the sky easily, sometimes, when the breeze blows the clouds away and the sun is free to shine, the air has the same color of your eyes.
Those are the worst days, all that cruel light blue pours into me, enters forcedly and pierces my heart.
Every look is a stab, while your irises of sky smile at me, inexorably unreachable.
And I curse my tears, that shut out my view.
When I dry my eyes, your face isn't here anymore.
I hate you, stupid hero.
I wait for you in our sunny days, forever.
Leo.