Night had fallen on us like it always has, silent and forgiving of our gentle sins of the day. The light on the bedside table cast its candle-weak glow on the wall.
Even in his sleep, Nero curled away from me, as exposed and vulnerable as a miscarried fetus. His bare form was hardly noticeable, shapeless and worn out under the scarlet comforter. The sheets twisted around him like bloody gauze. He seemed to bewithering away, petal by pale blue petal,carried away by a black winter waft.
I listened to him mumble and stir in his bad dreams, riddled in such heavy misery as I cradled the wedding invitation in my lap, studying the red-haired girl until she no longer seemed alive, forever locked in her nuptial bliss. Her skin looked so flawless and smooth, like it would be as easy to shape and misshape as warm wax.
She had meant the world to him once upon a time, and still did, from what I could gather. The boy's love for her was like an idol, or religion; something untouchable and unimaginable that the devout swore on their lives was real.
I had nothing to say about the man, but I could tell that the Kyrie was the type of person who would let a snake bite her for fear of hurting its feelings. A rabbit-hearted girl child— they were a dime a baker's dozen, you could find them in every curve of the world.
As I stared at her smiling face, turning the photo this way and that, the sweet smell of the pressed rose petals swirled through the air; along with the delicate scent of thyme and onions, like she had slipped the invitation into the envelope just after making dinner.
There was something about her that seemed maternal to me, as if she loved children and was absolutely thrilled at the idea of having her own one day. I tried to imagine her pregnant, swollen with an infant, but the only image my mind could conjure was a little girl with a round cushion stuffed under her dress.
Behind my back, Nero tossed and turned, sluggish and sweating out his liquid poison; moaning in a pitiful way that excited me just a little bit, as I had not heard him make noises like that in a long while.
"You cut my hair." I heard him murmur without any liveliness at all, having the sort of voice that was so frail that I had to still my breathing and listen for it. I turned my head to look at him, positioning myself in such a way so that he could see what it was that I was holding.
His words were nothing substantial, only a careless observation; like he had walked into a room and only realized that the curtains had been changed to a different hue just as he was about to exit.
"I did give you a light grooming, yes."
"Why?" He did not care to know, he just wanted to fill the bottomless void of silence inside of him.
"Your hair was unmanageable, Nero. It wanted cutting."
The boy's gaze was uneven, nearly tumbling with light-headedness, sliding slowly from my face to the invitation I held. "That's…not yours," was all that he said, his voice quivering and limping weak through the stale cold air, still smelling like a drunk in spite of the thorough washing I had given him.
I looked down at the thing as if I had forgotten that I was even holding it. "Yes, I know," I folded the letter up and slowly slipped it back into its envelope, leaning over and placing it besides Nero's inert knee, noticing how he did move to pull away. "Believe me, I don't want it." I patted it.
I only watched as he struggled to sit up in the bed, scarcely able to carry his own weight, as slight as it had become. The blanket slipped down his bare shoulders and ruffled at his waist, though his nudity did not seem to bother him in the slightest as he picked up the invitation; if only to keep me from fingering it again.
"Who is she, Nero?" I asked gently.
A visceral ache seemed to rattle through him and made him pinch his eyes shut,and the images that lay behind his blue eyes came spilling out of his mouth, like drool or rancid old teeth. The words were murky and sour with the memory of the half-breed's alcohol, which had loosed Nero's tongue to the point of unfettered freedom.
It was familiar to me, those little sounds. Half-spoken words shuddering and choking themselves to incoherency. A throat that had grown worn by despair, saline tears falling like watery stars down his pale cheeks.
He had been meaning to speak of this for a long while now, perhaps hoping to relay this to the cur when the time was appropriate, to have his heart opened up and the poisonous recollections bled out to free him of their dreadful sting. Though unfortunately for him, I am his only audience now.
He was giving her to me, freely of his own shattered will.
Kyrie…
"She…she treated me like a person."
I could immediately tell that he was nostalgic for her presence, her delicate mortal softness. He told me how people would smile and brighten in her company, that a sunlit warmth seemed to follow her wherever she stepped, making it sound as if the girl could make flowers bloom simply by standing near them.
There was a moment of silence as I tried to make sense of what he said, reiterating each word in my head to wrench out its importance: basic decency, humane interactions, and an old-world femininity that had become quite the rarity as time takes its usual stride forward. "Is that all?" I said finally, bringing my hand to my chin and narrowing my eyes in emphasis of my confusion.
"You don't get it, do you?"Hespoke so coldly that I was actually astonished by the change, his face taut with a dissonant reluctance. "You're just a demon," The sudden sharpness of his tone was instantly dulled by the hypocrisy of his statement. Still, he tried to drudge up some form of proper defiance, but quickly dropped his eyes away from my face, causing my smile to widen on its own accord.
Neroquietly admitted that he was a problem child, a bad seed, the unofficial poster boy of every bastard of Fortuna whose only sin was being born. There was the constant gossip of a problematic birth, complications due to negligence from his blood mother, or even potential inbreeding. His pedigree was an eternal enigma even to himself.
"But none of that mattered to her," he murmured, his hand habitually moving up to brush some hair out of his eyes, only to find that there was nothing for him to touch, letting it fall limply to his side.
He said that she taught him certain things growing up, things that every human knew but Nero had to learn by trial and error. Though the girl was more than happy to educate him, gentle in her ways, she was a mouthpiece for human rhyme and reason.
The things that he needed to learn were simple; to wear a coat when it was cold, even if his body could not recognize the bitterness of the temperature. To say 'ow' when he fell, even if the pain he felt was so slight that it did not deserve the reward of acknowledgement. He has no idea how she managed to do it, as he often found his own impertinence exhausting even to himself.
Everyone had given up on him since he had been born, except for her.
"Ah, so you imprinted onto her like a hatchling to its mother. She was the first human to treat you with genuine affection, perhaps the first to steer your hand away from a habitual incivility and succeed. That's what bound you to her."
"Yeah," He refused to look at me as my words sank into him. "Yeah…"
He immediately digressed, letting the girl alone as he spoke of something completely different. A demon attack on his home, a rather large one that had overtaken the entire place, is all that I could gather from it. The event was labeled the "Savior incident" but he refused to elaborate on the deeper intricacies of the story, instead focusing on what had occurred after the dust had settled and the blood had dried.
The dead— he spoke of the dead, how it was impossible to know just how many there were, littering the streets of Fortuna in such great numbers. Looking like nothing more than piles of clothing crusted with dried blood; bodies were rendered unidentifiable due to holes burned into their faces, teeth and gums and soupy bits of brain exposed for all to see.
Blood stains trailed thick from where heads had been crushed and the bodies dragged from them. He said that he could tell how many of them died, on their knees in prayer, either in need of protection or begging for their lives from things that did not know what reason was.
He mumbled that there was much difficulty in identifying the bodies. How there was little to go on sans bits of clothing, scars or birthmarks, the occasional piece of jewelry that took the form of a necklace or a wedding band. Though more often than not, there were only parts of people left behind, a severed arm, a finger, a lone dark eye trailing its gummy mouse tail.
He and what few soldiers were left over had to partake in the removal of the dead, many citizens lending their hands as well, if only for the terrible closure that came with it. Fires were set and mass graves dug to protect what was left of theliving.
He told me of the girl, Kyrie, and how after the worst of it was over, she had gasped and pressed her face into his shoulder as they walked through the streets to their brutalized home. (There was not a single place they could go wherethe dead did not taint) How hard she had gripped at his arm when her boots touched limpthings and wet puddles that were made of neither stone nor water.
"I waited…I-I waited until we were by ourselves…" Nero wiped his face, his damp eyes and his nose with his pallid human hand.
To tell her all that had happened during the incident that she seemed unable to recall at all. It was as if she had been asleep, or comatose during the attack on Fortuna, as there was nothing of it in her memory, except for…
"She asked me about her brother, Credo."
Oh, how impossibly wide her eyes went when she asked him, desperate to know if he was alright. He wasn't hurt was he? When could she see him?
Nero paused and brought his hands to his mouth, seemingly unable to go on, his throat choking down his grief, his skin reddening with suppressed trembling wails and unshed tears. I noticed that his devil arm was even duller now, in spite of what hideous emotions lay inside. It did not glow at all. I briefly wondered if it was dying, rotting from the inside out.
"And what of this Credo?" I asked in order to move things along, a little irritated at his prolonged pause.
"He died," Nero murmured from under his hand, not looking at me; so gently did he speak that the cut on his cheek did not move at all.
Murdered during the incident without a second or even first thought, having tried and failed to protect Nero from had bled to death from a wound given by a sword that now belonged to the boy that lay haggard before me.
Regret rolled off of him, as real as a smell. "If only I had been stronger I could've—"
word.
If. It is a curse that reigns over humanity. I'm sure that it plagued the girl as well. If, if only Nero had been stronger then Credo would have lived. If only the girl had done something different then her brother would not have met the end that he had. If only she had worn a different color, or made him poached eggs for breakfast instead of , if, if.
"And does that bother you at all? Carrying a murder weapon around on your back?"
"That's not the sword, it's a different one. I never use it unless I have to…" was all that he said, running his hands down his now bloodless face, his scarred chest heaving with sigh after heavy sigh, looking as if it were about to split back open.
It appeared that Credo's death was a catalyst of sorts. Instead of bringing him and Kyrie together as anytragedy would, it formed a permanent wedge between them. (A wedge that grew into an impassable wall, covered with briar).
Neither of them had any time to indulge in the pleasures of their newborn relationship, had none of the emotional vigor required to pursue such an outing. She was tired and aching, her body and mind put through far more than what a human should be able to bear.
Still, it appeared that Miss Kyrie was rigid in her role in their household. How even after their searing loss, she still made two lunches in the morning, and always set three places at dinner time, cooking far too much food that ended up being given away to others who needed it so much more.
The girl's grief was not a guest. It was not a pet. She would not feed it or make it comfortable. She would not entertain it; it was not welcome.
She worked in an orphanage, gave herself up to good works the way that lesser beings would surrender themselves to heavy drink. She fed and clothed the children and often would forget her own needs in the process, placing theirs above her own just as any good caretaker would. But perhaps that was what she had wanted anyway.
Nero said that she grew to despise idleness and free time, as did he. As any moment of stillness would give their sorrow the strength to pull itself back together and begin anew, wounding them in such fresh and painful ways that it would be as if no time at all had passed from the tragedy. Throats would swell, eyes would water, and skin would redden in agony once again.
The girl would do everything from braiding her hair to pulling her pendant along its chain to keep the stillness at bay. Nero would throw himself into his devil hunting, staying out late into the night to satisfy the bereaved madness that ran through the red river of his blood.
He told me a story about her, which brought to mind an image of the girl mending a tear in the seam of her brother's pants. But why was she doing that? Credo was gone and had left no body behind; they would be of no use to someone without form. Nero said that he tried to get her to stop, begged her to please get some rest and that she could finish them in the morning. But the little innocent was adamant, determined for whatever reason to mend the tear that had rendered them unsuitable for wear.
He did not understand it. Nero said that he felt helpless and didn't know what to do, (that came as no surprise to me, he never seemed to know what to do) He felt that he had no choice and left her there, stitching perfect seams before angrily tearing them out again.
He found her in the morning, barely awake and swaying in her seat, quietly hugging the trousers to her shoulder and patting them lightly as if they were an infant to be belched, crying without a sound.
"I even prayed about it, asked for help. I didn't know what to do…" Nero sighed.
"You were brought up in a religious household?" I did not know this."What sort of deity did you worship? One of the Judeo-Christian variety?"
He swallowed and did not answer me, keeping his eyes on the Dante-shaped shadow on the wall. "Sparda," he murmured finally.
I let out a soft chuckle, which sounded guttural and only a little mad, coming from the snake burrow of my throat.
Worship him? Pray to him like the humans would pray to any other god?
Treating the damned like the divine?
"And did the great Sparda answer your little plea, Nero?" I leaned back onto the mattress, brushing my fingers over his wounded foot, causing him to hiss and pull away from me this time."How many innocent prayers rolled from the mouths of orphan children and down into the depths of Hell?"
That demon couldn't protect his wife.
His own son couldn't protect you.
"I couldn't take it. We needed each other but we didn't want each other and everywhere I looked in that house I was reminded of him and that I had failed him. I failed. I know she felt the same way, I know it."
Of course, the little reminders that the dead leave behind without meaning to. Good Credo could not be gone, surely he wasn't! Why, there are his things just as he had left them! There's his coat and his boots, there's that cut of meat that he wanted for dinner. Don't touch it, don't touch it, he'll be hungry for it as soon as he gets home.
They are only human.
Her salt-of-the-earth empathy had mutated into a low and imprisoning kind of frustration, abasing her and Nero from a close family into nothing but careful strangers with shared memories.
She no longer regarded him with any sort of kindness when they were together, there was only a hollow expression that could hardly be thought of as one human recognizing another.
That was the final straw.
Nero left her without a spoken word. As distant as they had grown, he would not be surprised if a week had passed before she had noticed. He had done nothing but scribble his foolish reasons on a piece of paper that he left on her pillow for her to find.
The day of his self-exile was lovely and he hated every moment of it. His bag was packed with the barest of necessities, his pockets filled with his native currency that turned out to be worthless the moment he stepped off the ferry.
"I called her once and talked just long enough to give her my address, but that was it. This is the first time I heard from her," He tossed the invitation onto the bedside table, face down in resignation.
It did not surprise me. Time and distance could make the strongest affections wane. Absence makes even the fondest of hearts wander off in search of something better. But perhaps it was not the wedding itself that had provoked his outburst, but with it the reminder of his shortcomings, his omission not only with Credo but with Dante as well.
And with the knowledge of this story making me a little wiser than before, it seems as if he had accepted this just as he had accepted his death.