A/N: It took me a bit to get this one out but I'm hoping you enjoy this chapter as well!
To The Mad Writing Center: I'm so glad that you're enjoying the story so far! As for her age, I modeled her after myself so she'd be 18 as well- or was, I guess.I'm glad you're enjoying the Spanish! That was something I wasn't sure would go well with the readers but receiving such nice feedback about it makes glad that I incorporated it into the story. I love worldbuilding lol, so you'll see me rambling about the background of places quite a bit or just adding things here and now that solidify the setting. The D. Gray-Man world is odd in its mix of technology so that's something I'm trying to make my own in this story without compromising the late 19th century vibe that the story originally has. And about Tyki, I'm so pleased that someone finally pointed it out! I can't disclose too much about what I have planned but they will meet eventually as a result of that proximity to Portugal. I'll try to tone down the use of parenthesis so thank you for the advice. Anyway I hope you keep reading and enjoy this new chapter as well.
To sousie: I'm so glad that you're liking the story! I hope you enjoy this chapter as well.
To hello friend (guest): Thank you for taking the time to leave such a nice review! I'm glad you're enjoying the use of Spanish. I hope you enjoy reading this chapter as well.
There was a truth that Rénee learned upon her waking.
Death itself was not cruel.
She, like whoever she had been a lifetime ago, was aware of her own mortality. Of course, that awareness was far more intimate now than what past her would have been able to reach but she had always known how easy it would be to die.
And so it was. She died without even knowing how it came to be.
That part, she would have been able to understand.
That part, she would have been able to move on from.
That part, she had been prepared for since she understood the meaning of the word 'death'.
But she hadn't stayed dead.
She had opened her eyes to a world much darker than the one she had left and felt nothing but despair. And since then Rénee had lived, marked by death in a way that only one who had experienced it could, with the darkness sunk deep into the marrow of her bones and the echo of nothingness reverberating through her veins with every beat of her heart.
The emptiness that had greeted her at the end of who she had been had followed her into this new life; it crept and swallowed the light in her eyes without her knowing and twisted itself around the smiles that curled her lips.
"Does everyone that look at me know what I am?" She asked her reflection when she looked into a mirror for the first time and saw a monster wearing the skin of a little girl looking back at her. "What kind of unnatural thing are you?"
The truth Rénee learned upon her waking was that death itself was not cruel. It was a truth that would be reinforced as the years dripped away- when she survived her infancy with nothing but luck and pity; toed the line between starvation and freezing more often than not; and fought in a war that she didn't believe in.
Death wasn't cruel. It was quite the opposite really.
Life was cruel. A part of her felt as if she had always considered that as a possibility, even far before she died, but that it was only upon her rebirth that it was cemented as truth.
There were nights were Rénee felt like she was more machine than human- like her heart was made of clockwork and it was slowly rusting to a stop. As she grew older, as the weeks turned to months that became years, those nights came more often and there was nothing she could do but question her humanity.
Akuma were demons born of despair and grief, stealing skin of another and killing thousands for no other reason than to evolve.
Rénee had been born to a woman reeking of despair and grief, hadn't she? Hadn't she stolen the skin of whoever this child would have grown to be when she came into existence as well? Didn't that make her just the same as an Akuma?
Was she really even human?
She understood that technically, the body she had been born in (had stolen) had never died. This body, the freckled Spanish girl with wide doe eyes, was just as human as everyone else. Pain licked at any injuries she acquired like it used to in her past life, the hurt burning her nerves and making it clear to her that this body was human human human.
Her blood ran just as red as it would on any other human being. It dripped from her forehead when she hit her head on the corner of a kitchen chair and hit the ground with a thud when she had just turned two. Maria Elena had screamed when she saw her.
The blood had been sticky and a bright red- but Rénee couldn't remember whether Akuma bled oil or just as red as the rest of them.
It hadn't seemed like an important thing to keep in mind in her past life. How could she have known that the story from a lifetime ago would become her new reality?
Rénee remembered plenty of details about the story she had been born into. How could she not- when her most common nightmare was waking up one day to see the skin peel back from her flesh and only see the gleam of metal underneath.
The thing was- knowing what was to happen, jolting the future on one of the empty journals Maria Elena had given her to practice her alphabet, staring down at everything she could remember from her past life with a numbness in her chest- there was nothing she could do with the knowledge she had.
How the hell could she expect to change a thing?
Her head reached just above her grandmother's knees. Her body didn't function in the same way an adult did. She was still physically a two, almost three, year old girl.
How did she expect to keep her abuelita safe from the Akuma when there were only two ways to destroy them and she had access to neither?
Even if she found the Black Order and told them everything she knew, she'd be trapped in the cage of the Order walls. She would have to leave her grandmother behind, the only person that she had left to live for. Telling people what she knew would only draw the attention of creatures and people she would much rather stay away from.
It was safer to pretend that there were no such things as monsters- even if she still wasn't sure if she was alive or just another demon wearing human skin.
At some point that she couldn't quite place- something changed.
For Maria Elena, it was the burden of what she felt toward her granddaughter. It was the press of fear and confusion, the guilt of not knowing whether or not everything that Maria Elena had seen of her grandchild was real or simply in her mind. It wasn't unheard of for mothers to go mad from the grief of losing their child- and heaven knew that Maria Elena had grieved.
Not that Rénee would ever know any of that. At least not in its entirety.
Maria Elena loved Rénee enough to never want her to find out the truth.
For Rénee, it was the realization that she had grown to care for the older woman more than she had anticipated. There was something about her grandmother that made the loss of the ones she had loved settle into something less painful. Maria Elena was the salve to ease the burn of loneliness that had ached inside Rénee since she had woken up.
She found that it was easier to laugh now. The world was brighter in her eyes and more colorful than she remembered it being. If she were to put an explanation to this new development it would be simple.
It had always been easier for her to live for someone she loved than for herself.
Rénee was sprawled across the edge of her grandmother's bed, tossing a peseta into the air and lazily catching it with her left and right hand alternatingly. The silver coin gleamed as it flipped in the air above her and she watched it with a distracted gaze.
Her mind was elsewhere.
She had heard an interesting rumor while in the market earlier that week but that wasn't what her thoughts were stuck on. She couldn't stop replaying what had happened that day.
It had started with a simple enough sentence:
"Las minas de Rio Tinto estan embrujadas," a man said quietly from the stall besides where Rénee had been marvelling at small wooden carvings. ("The Rio Tinto mines are haunted,")
It was only by chance that Rénee happened to overhear his statement; startling at the man's declaration and whipping around to stare at him with wide eyes.
The mines of Rio Tinto were… what?
This was the first time she had heard someone speak of the mines that way, with none of the fondness some of the old miners that passed through town held towards them. Rénee had heard enough of those conversations to know that while working in the mines was hard, the labor was worth it when it came to the reliable money the miners were offered.
There were myths about the mines- about the Rio Tinto mines and the fabled mines of King Solomon being the one and the same. It made for fascinating folklore to erupt from the people living in the towns nearby but with the exception of the few accidents that had occurred inside the mines, there wasn't much to speak badly of.
It was the first time that Rénee had heard anything of the mines being haunted.
Intrigue piqued, she slunk closer. Her eyes caught on the profile of a single man, seemingly in his early twenties, with an arm held to his chest by a sling.
"¿Porque dice algo asi?" The woman working the stall asked in shock. ("Why do you say something like that?")
"La gente está desapareciendo en las minas," ("People are disappearing from the mines,") he replied grimly, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them again, with a glossy sheen over them, "y están comenzando de desaparecer en los pueblos cercanos." ("and they're starting to vanish from nearby towns.")
There was something about his posture that screamed exhaustion, as if it was mere willpower keeping him going and he wasn't sure what to do when that ran out.
Rénee bit back a gasp. People were going missing in the mines?
Mining accidents weren't as common as they had been once upon a time- but since Spain had sold the mines to England, there had been an enforcement of safety regulations that had not been present until recently. From what Rénee had heard, England had established what would later be known as the Metalliferous Mines Regulation Act and since the Rio Tinto mines were now property of England- those regulations applied to them as well.
There hadn't been any news of missing miners and townspeople of the nearby villages, something not entirely surprising if the English were trying to avoid negative publicity.
It raised another question for Rénee; where had this man gotten his information?
"¿P-Porque me esta contando esto?" The older woman was shaking. ("W-Why are you telling me this?")
Simply looking at her, Rénee could tell that she had an idea of why the man had come to her and that she was hoping with every fiber of her being for it to not be true.
The man sucked in a trembling breath and he bowed his head.
"Vine para decirle que su hijo ha desaparecido." ("I came to tell you that your son has disappeared.")
His words made the woman reel back as if struck; as if the weight of the world had made its home upon her shoulders and she had no idea how to remain upright from the pressure.
"Lo buscamos por días," ("We searched for days,") The man continued speaking; as if he hadn't noticed how telling a mother that her son was missing would destroy her; as if he couldn't tell that with every word that came out of his mouth, he tore a bigger hole into the weeping woman's heart.
Maybe he hadn't. His eyes were blurred with tears.
"Lo buscamos por dias," ("We searched for days,") he repeated with a sob, "pero todo lo que encontramos de él era su ropa y nada más." ("but all we found of him were his clothes and nothing else.") He dropped to his knees. "Perdoneme. ("Forgive me.")
Rénee was frozen in place.
After days of searching, all that they could find of the woman's son was his clothes? How cruel it was for that to be the only news to give to a desperate mother. Is that why hearing those words made it so that Rénee's stomach rolled in horror- because she had no clue as to what her mother had been told about the death she couldn't remember?
An agonized cry ripped itself from the mourning woman's lips and she screamed a chant of 'no no no' to the open blue sky overhead.
Rénee felt the urge to do the same but bit her tongue.
"Por favor… Perdoneme." ("Please... forgive me.") The man whispered one last time before Maria Elena pushed her way through the crowd and grabbed Rénee by the arm, towing her back to her own stall where she hastily closed it down.
Rénee didn't pay much attention to what happened next. All she knew was that now, a week later, the woman's stall was nowhere to be found. Rumors said that 'Inez' had sealed herself up inside her house and refused to leave it until her son was found.
Rénee knew that meant that Inez would most likely never step foot outside again.
She tossed the peseta once again.
Her left hand was the one to pluck the glistening silver coin from the air this time. The girl's fingers curled around the peseta tightly, as if holding the coin tighter might stop the faint trembling in her hands. The edges of the coin dug into her palm as Rénee pressed her right hand to her eyes to ease the burn in them.
Had her mother collapsed to the ground like Inez had when they brought her the news of her only daughter's death? What would her brother tell her nephew about the sister he once had, now long gone? How many people showed up to her funeral?
How many people had she not had a chance to say goodbye to?
The man's words from the market rang through her ears again- though not the ones she expected, not the ones begging for forgiveness that had echoed in her mind for days.
"Pero todo lo que encontramos de él era su ropa y nada más." ("But all we found of him were his clothes and nothing else.")
Thinking over the words gave her something else to focus on, something other than what had happened to her loved ones in her sudden absence. There was something about that sentence that had made her skin crawl when she had first heard it, but it had been lost amidst the emotions Inez's mourning had invoked in her.
Rénee frowned. What could it be that had bothered her so?
Rénee dissected the sentence in her mind, saying the words aloud as she did so- trying to find what it was that was putting her on edge.
"Pero todo lo que encontramos de él," ("But all we found of him,") She repeated quietly, "Era su ropa y nada más. ("Were his clothes and nothing else.")
She mouthed the words to herself one more time and then it hit her.
Her eyes grew wide. It couldn't be.
"...Su ropa y nada más." ("...his clothes and nothing else.")The peseta in her hand forgotten, Rénee sat up with a gasp.
Her chest burned as if she were drowning. Like she couldn't draw enough air into her lungs to ease the wildfire in her ribcage. Like there was flame inside her airways instead of breath and it was searing its way out her from the inside out.
The nothingness that curled around her bones bloomed outward, into a garden of darkness that spotted her vision. Tiny black dots danced before her eyes, meshing together to form larger blobs of black as ringing grew ever so louder in her ears.
It didn't feel like any oxygen was being dragged into her lungs, no matter how quickly she gasped for air. There was a pounding in her skull. It reminded her of her dying mother that first night- of her racing, fluttering, hummingbird heart.
"...Su ropa y nada más." ("...his clothes and nothing else.")
The answer was staring her right in the face.
The ringing in her ears, the pounding of her heart- they all screamed the same thing. The buzzing of her blood, the darkness in her eyes- they all whispered that word, the one that had haunted her since she became Rénee.
Akuma, the fire burnt into the soft tissue of her lungs.
Akuma, the blackness stained into the ivory of her bones and the delicate nerves of her eyes.
Akuma, the fluttering heartbeat carved onto the inside of her skull.
There are Akuma in the Rio Tinto mines, Rénee thought when there was a moment of reprieve in the panic that she was being swallowed by and choked back a hysterical laugh.
It seemed that no matter how set she was in keeping away from the monsters that filled her nightmares, Rénee could not escape from the machines.
After her panic attack had passed, Rénee did something she hadn't done in almost a year.
She put her head down and cried.
A/N: Thank you, everyone, who took the time to read this story! Don't forget to leave a review telling me what you think so far.