"-Yes, I´m sure!"
"-It´s gonna take a while to finish something so big."
"-I don't fucking care!"
"It felt better when that was done, yes, but still not perfect. Aphrodite and DeathMask had had the right idea though. You needed to be able to see it, to see the face of your nightmare outside of your head for it to leave you at least. Milo kept dreaming. Dreaming of that shot. The sound kept chasing him. Dreaming of the sound of the body dropping to the ground, of the deformed cranium and the red and white. But most of all, he kept dreaming of them both, alive and away, among roses, among people, in the streets of a city with no bloody trees anywhere to be seen. He kept dreaming of what could have been, so vividly he prayed never to wake up. He always woke up though, when his imagination couldn't fill in the small details he didn´t know, like what brand of wine Aphrodite would order, or what type of movies he would like. He then opened his eyes in despair, with the feel of an invisible hand still holding his. Once, in his dreams, he had tried to joke with Aphrodite by making fun of his name, and then, he had woke up, when he realized he didn´t know it. Some things he knew though. He knew his favorite flower, and his favorite color, and his favorite type of sweet, and his favorite food, and his favorite band, and that he hated tomato in burgers. He also knew he had been in at least two wars before this one, and had been a marine before sniping. He wielded those treasured bits of trivia like revenge against the universe. The universe never looked back at his vengeance though, because it didn´t care about him or any of them, and soon Milo couldn't tell the things he had made up about Aphrodite to feel his dreams from the things he remembered.
The tattoo kept growing, The rose of the tip of the rifle that took over most of his neck got company. Lots of other roses. A bed of roses and abysm and beautiful home which Aphrodite was either curious to see or either had seen and liked, in the background. Roses grew from the bed to his shoulder, where he could see them easily, and stretched their thorny branches down his arm, growing among smashed skulls and jungles and stars, bright bright starry nights shared with the most beautiful creature in the planet. More partners died. Shura on the same day than Aphrodite, Saga soon after, Kanon after a while, and the painting feed on them to grow more. It got knives and swords for Shura. It got birds and bombs for DeathMask, and the Eiffel tower for wherever the hell Camus was from exactly, and brainy quotes from a French author Milo didn't even like. It got twin figures, twin roses, twin anything that tormented him at the time. It got all that, and it got poker cards from an incomplete deck they all shared, and more roses, and laughter and tears and everything in between./p
"By the end of the war, that he now knew useless, the left half of his body was completely covered in ink. He still dreamed with roses though, with roses and with Aphrodite´s face twisted by the pain of the raw surgery Mask was performing on his leg to extract bullet fragments. He had never seemed so handsome to Milo than on that day when he first realized the sniper was human, a human with a mask that was killing him slowly.
P style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He dreamed of stars, stars in the company, the warmth of the other body crawling to him through the grass, and of nights of sad pleasure in strong white arms. How would those nights had been, if they could have happened with nothing to mourn for if they had been about the two of them only. What would he give just to feel it once; just once...just that...
"He dreamed of that painted smile, of ripping it off and kissing the muscle and nacked teeth behind it, of liking the real man that he got to see through glimpses of honesty, all scars, and bitterness. He had eventually managed to rip the fake grim off, but it hadn't been with violence but by paying his heart as a prize. Still then, the fake mask always crawled back between them and, eventually, it had deceived him and robbed him with the chance of saying goodbye. Of saying "I love you too," "I´ll never forget you," "wait for me, it won´t take long"./p
p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium;"He dreamed on his true smile, the one he saw so rarely, that looked the same than the other, but that took his breath away. He dreamed of eyes bathed in their eternal moonlight before he made them detach and fall on the jungle
Why did Aphrodite have to die? Sure milo was not expecting the whole ïnfiltrating in the base"plan to be that easy. No, of course no. He knew there would have to be some trick to get in. It never occurred to him to ask. Earn their trust. Prove you were always forced to join the rebels. Prove that you were not one of them. And how? Well. It had been persuading, that was for /Aphrodite knew. The bastard knew. Shura knew too. They agreed. They both knew and blindsided him. He would beat the shit out of the sniper if he could get his hands on him. He would kiss him after, beg him never to leave him again and ride his brains out, but that was /Why Aphrodite and Shura? They were the oldest ones? Shion knew them and knew they would do the job if ordered to? Were the ones Saga had brought and the ones he knew the most about? Were they merely the right ones? If Milo had to choose one of them to do a suicidal job with a straight face, he would go for Aphrodite indeed. Why did Aphrodite have to be the one killed by him? Why THE BLOODY FUCK did he have to be the one?BR /He had broken the back of so many chairs between his hands because of that question he now only bought stools. Maybe it was the sniper's cursed sense of duty. He had trianed Milo, so if Milo fucked up and got himself and the bite captured and tortured until insanity it was his responsability to go through it because the failure was his? That soudned like somethign Aphrodite would think. He thought. He may be making things up. It has been so long ...and still, not long enought. Maybe APhro just wanted to say goodbye. Milo thought he had seen something like that in the beautiful blue eyes. Maybe he jsut wanted to see him before dying and did not ocur to him ...or actually... perhaps he knew Milo would want to say bye too. He laughted and threw a shirt over his tatooed body. He had work to /Maybe it was nto even about him. Maybe Shura just wanted to give Aiolia the chance to take revenge and blow his brains off, and his pairing with the sniper had only been a side effect. He did not know. He did not know Aphrodite well enought to even guess. He never would have the chance to know him, and at the same time he felt nobody would ever get to know him like the sniper did. Like he still does, in his memory, forever twenty five, handsome and inocent in his own, broken way, the most precious laughter on Earth and eyes up in the /The new recruits were too young, but that had ceased to surprise him long ago. He had to pick and train a couple of kids to do what he does. What Aphrodite still does for him, from wherever he is, whenever Milo's hand shakes, and his heart can't take it anymore. He has to break a kid. All he wants is the sniper, the real sniper, to come back and be through this with him too. Br /Still, his heart breaks and flutters at the same time. He has never done this; he will now. He will understand his lover a bit more, understand something he went through that Milo had not understood before.
Milo was insane, in his own opinion, but he didn't care. As far as he kept being able to find out things he never knew abour Aphrodite, to find new ways to interact with him, the sniper was not dead. He wasn't. It made sense in his head. He lived in that stary field more than he lived in the godforshaken desert he was in now. He was crazy, but he didn't care. In his madness time did nto exist. There he could kill in cold blood as if it was in self-defense, ad he could rest forever in the warm embrace of his one true love. He was not leaving that place for real, and Aiolia had finally stopped bringing the issue up.
