A/N:- Written for Mako, who I love very dearly.
For Her
He had dreamed of this moment for years, decades... centuries.
Abel Nightroad had longed for death and the sweet release it would bring, he had ached for it in every fibre of his being. During the long years beside Lilith's inanimate body, he had sent prayers to a God he didn't believe in, begging to be taken wherever she had gone. If the God she had believed in did exist, why would He have taken her and not him?
Yet who even knew if he could die without relinquishing the Crusnik to one of his siblings... and how could he do that? If he allowed Cain to take what he had forcibly stolen from Lilith, then he would surely be too strong for Seth to fight and her defeat, her blood, would be on his hands. Yet he couldn't allow the burden of Crusnik to fall even greater onto Seth's shoulders; he had already failed his family too much, even one more failure would be too much to bear.
Still it didn't stop him selfishly wishing to end it all, silently begging for the oblivion of death. A release and kindness that he didn't deserve. After all he had done, after the astronimical way he had destroyed everything he held dear, and even things he didn't realise he held dear until after they were gone, he had no right to take an easy end. He deserved to suffer on with his pain, perhaps eternally.
Or so he had thought.
That was until the smiling-eyed demon wearing his brother's face appeared, stealing his breath from his body in an all-encompassing rage. The hesitations over being seen as a monster had evaporated, an anger and fear unlike anything he had felt in centuries exploding out in force. He could not let Cain harm Esther, he could not allow the same mistakes of his past to repeat themselves. He would kill the thing that dared to emulate his precious twin, and allow him the rest that Cain surely deserved. Abel charged with resolve firm in his heart and...
...in a heartbeat he was gone.
Dead.
Yet there was no peaceful calm or rest, it wasn't as he dreamed. He didn't see her. He had waited for so long to feel the touch of her hand and smell the sweet jasmine scent of her hair, to feel the touch of skin that always felt as warm as though she had been sat out in the sun. But most of all, to hear her voice.
He felt none of it, saw none of it. There was only nothingness until the Crusnik repaired the damage done, and restored him to his life of pain. For a single moment when he opened his eyes, the grief was so terrible that it felt as though his heart would stop again. He missed her, every single day since the one she had been taken from him, and after all this time... But a monster like him didn't deserve to see her. That was the truth of it, a bittersweet joke of fate that made him the punchline. And just like that, even after centuries, Abel wanted to die again. But he wouldn't... he had promised her that he would atone for what he had done, that he would protect the humans. So he would get up and carry on.
Sitting up slowly, Abel took a deep breath and slipped the glasses back onto his nose. He had things to do, and he had no right to be lingering down here in the dark, wallowing in self pity any longer. People were waiting for him, and he had a promise to fulfil.
For her.