A/N: I've received so much positive feedback for this fic that I'm so pumped to write more! I know that I said I wouldn't have a very clear update schedule but rest assured, I don't plan on taking so long to update next time.

Usually, I take the time to personally thank and answer any questions you have around here but I figured I might as well address a few things as a whole beforehand.

Number 1: Canon characters will be showing up in a few chapters! So please hold on tight and buckle up!

Number 2: I didn't write this fic to focus on a romance between Rénee and the characters of -Man. I think that there are plenty of platonic kinds of love that are exemplified in -Man and it's this kind of love that I want Rénee to explore during her interactions with the characters. While romance isn't out of the question, I think I'll only consider it if it seems like the characters have a natural chemistry but be warned, as of now I don't have any romance planned for this fic.

A/N: I'd like to thank all of you who took the time to leave kind reviews and hope that you enjoy this chapter before we jump into the plot in the next one. I hope you enjoy reading this chapter as well! Thank you all.

"Es tiempo que conozcas a tus padres," her abuela had whispered earlier that morning, voice raspy and the hand wrapped around Rénee's own as tight as a vice. ("It's time that you meet your parents.")

Rénee had sluggishly rubbed the sleep out of her freshly opened eyes and let her grandmother stuff her into a simple black dress. The weight of her abuela's words didn't hit her until they scurried out of their home and stopped to buy two small bouquets of flowers to place upon the graves of both of Rénee's parents.

The June sky was clear and the sun blinding. Rénee's hand was held in her grandmother's calloused one, their footsteps in sync on the hard cobbled road. A small breeze twined the hem of the black dress Rénee wore around her knees and chilled her exposed skin.

The mood was heavy between Maria Elena and Rénee; just like it always was on the days leading up, and of, Rénee's birthday. It was, after all, the day Maria Elena's daughter had been declared dead. It was the day Rénee's grandmother had been given a dead girl in the body of an infant to take care of- not that Maria Elena knew that- one that had grown to look so much like the daughter she had lost.

It was as if Maria Elena was raising the ghost of the little girl her Teresa had once been.

It was almost fitting in its irony.

A dead girl as the mirror image of a dead woman.

She was a child with the same face, with the same laugh, the same smile, as her dead mother. Rénee wondered whether or not she would be able to look at her reflection when she grew older and not see the image of her mother's final moments echoed in the shape of her lips, in the splattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose, in the width of her eyes.

In the years that followed, Rénee would think that maybe it wasn't just her grandmother that was haunted by Teresa's ghost. Although, at that point in her life, Rénee would have more ghosts haunting her than just that of her mother. The people lost to her in another life were the first ones. Teresa was among the ones that came after.

Despite the time that had passed, the events in the market and the mines had left the people of Ayamonte unsettled and wary.

Rio Tinto was on the other side of the Huelva Province and for word of the disappearances to reach Ayamonte, things had to be worse than they seemed. Even though weeks had passed since the first news of the disappearances, it seemed that the rumors had only managed to evolve as they were passed from one person to the next. The stories grew warped and twisted as they floated through the town and every time Rénee heard them they shifted closer to the truth.

"They dug too deep and found something they shouldn't have found," she heard more than once. "Monsters slept in the mines but they're awake now. They're awake now."

The rumors weren't wrong. Akuma were the same as monsters and there was one living in the depths of the Rio Tinto mines. Or were there multiple? How many monsters did it take to kill significant chunks of the population? She wasn't sure if finding out that it only took one would make her feel better or worse.

Rénee just wondered when it was that she began hoping that it wasn't the soul of her father that was bringing so much death. Maybe she didn't want to imagine that the body of a woman with the same face as her was killing so many people. Maybe she didn't want the soul of the man she was named after to commit such atrocities.

Maybe she was terrified of the thought of there being another living dead thing so close to the home she had made in the small town of Ayamonte.

Nevertheless, even from the other side of the Huelva Province, the missing miners and villagers were having an effect on people. Most of the town's inhabitants were doing their best to avoid being outside longer than they needed to. It was obvious in the tenseness of their shoulders, the downward slant of their lip- that everyone was scared that what was happening to the miners would make it's way to their town.

The marketplace had been somber and full of muted voices earlier that day, enough so that as Rénee and her grandmother crossed it on their way to the church, the girl quickened her pace and did not look back.

There was a certain weight in the air that only fear wrought. Rénee had her own terror about the monsters that lurked in this world; not all of them truly monsters, some perhaps closer to human than she was. She didn't need to see the frightened faces of civilians that knew nothing of the demons hiding in human skin. She didn't need their fear to seep through her skin and pile itself atop of the fear that already dwelled within her heart.

The church bells tolled as the sun climbed higher into the sky.

Her grandmother led her to the back of the church. Leaving behind the towering doors and heading towards the small graveyard past the courtyard gardens. As Maria Elena took her through the gleaming metal gates and the winding labyrinth of tombstones- Rénee wanted to do nothing more than run away.

Rénee understood grief.

If there was nothing else that she could understand, she would still know love and grief like it was tangled in the very fibers of her being. Perhaps in this new life- after her soul came back from death like that of a demon clinging to a spider thread- everything that made up Rénee Castillo was simply grief spun together with whatever remained of who she had been.

She was a fractured being pieced together with so much grief it was able to transcend lifetimes and enough love that she clung to life with the desperation of one who had lost everything and everyone once already.

Sometimes she forgot that she hadn't always been Rénee.

Graveyards though? The nightmares that woke her up with lingering images of butterflies chewing their way out of human flesh?

They made Rénee remember that no matter how real she felt- in the warm embrace of her grandmother with her bare feet gritty from the beach sand; with caresses of the ocean cold against her skin as she held Maria Elena's hand in her own; as she listened to the song of the wind as she watched the sun sink into the embrace of the sea, setting the sky aflame while it did- she didn't belong in the world she lived in.

Maria Elena had no way of knowing that Rénee was the soul of a dead girl in the body of an empty child- and therefore had no idea that Rénee felt her skin crawl with the remembered embrace of death every time she laid eyes on a tombstone.

"I should be buried here," Rénee wanted to say, "Me and the girl I killed when I clawed my way back to life and wore her corpse to pretend I was still human."

"¿Como se murió mi padre?" ("How did my father die?") She whispered instead, tongue curling around the words before she could think about what she was asking.

It was an impulsive request; one born from the letters she had found beneath her bed with curled edges, pressed flowers, and her mother's name scrawled across the front of the envelopes. She had almost read one out of curiosity but something had stopped her before she could pull one of the parchments out of its envelope. It was a small, hastily scrawled note, on the same side where wax had once sealed the contents of the letter shut. As if the author had felt the need to write on the outside of the envelope as well as inside. As if what they had to say was so important that it couldn't wait for the parchment to write it on.

In crooked handwriting- slanted, rushed- was a simple message:

Mi Teresa, mi tesoro, te amare siempre.

(My Teresa, my treasure, I will love you forever.)

Mi amor para ti nunca morira.

(My love for you will never die.)

-Rénee-

She had dropped the letter as if burnt as the memory of her mother's haunted eyes; of the way the dead Rénee's name had escaped Teresa's lips like it was the only prayer she was capable of murmuring; of the weeping of the akuma after he killed her mother. Of the sound of her father forcing his Dark Matter skeleton down the throat of her mother's corpse in a sickening song of snapping bones and dripping blood that echoed in her empty room.

It all looped in her head.

Rénee threw up

After she had stopped heaving and felt well enough to clean up the mess, Rénee had tucked the letters away in their hiding spot with trembling hands and wondered just what kind of man her father had been.

At Rénee's request, Maria Elena flinched and turned haunted eyes towards her. Aged gray stared into darkened brown eyes and something flickered in Maria Elena's eyes before she looked away. Her grandmother took a shuddering breath and replied in a voice so soft that Rénee almost missed it.

"El mar se lo tragó entero." ("The sea swallowed him whole.")

Grief weighed heavy on the words. Rénee could almost see the way they had caused the spine of a strong woman to bow under the strain of them. Maria Elena placed a bouquet of flowers, almost reverently atop each of her parent's graves. She cast her eyes upward- let a moment of silence float between them.

Then she told Rénee about her mother, her father, and the love they found in each other.

Rénee's father had been desperate for enough money to support his new wife and the child they had on the way. He had been desperate because the fish he had been bringing in didn't seem to be enough to support the small family he had made. His desperation gave way to action and he left to fish further from shore. Then a storm swept in and he was swallowed by the sea. Just like Maria Elena had said. He had been twenty-five.

Teresa had been twenty-three when she had died. That's what stuck out to Rénee the most about the woman that had met her husband-to-be at twelve years old and married him ten years later. Teresa had still been so young, a mere five years older than what Rénee remembered being before her own death; when she became a bride, mother, and widow in the span of a year.

Rénee wasn't sure that she could judge her mother for the desperation that eventually claimed her life. And Teresa had been desperate. People didn't strike deals with devils if they thought there was another way out.

In the end, it had been a choice between the daughter she just gave birth to, between the mother that had seemed impossible to tear down, between the sister out of reach and in another country- and the love of her life.

That night, three years ago, Teresa's choice had been made. There was nothing Rénee could do about it. The only thing she was able to do was to do her best to soothe the hurt that festered in her grandmother's heart from the loss of her youngest daughter and the estrangement with her eldest daughter that resulted of Teresa's death.

Rénee closed her eyes and reached out to clutch at Maria Elena's trembling hand.

"Disculpeme abuela," ("I'm sorry, grandmother.") She murmured and kept her eyes on the two tombstones. She pretended that she couldn't hear the weeping coming from beside her.

They stayed in the graveyard until the church bells tolled for the sermon to begin.

And then, after Maria Elena had pieced herself together enough to pull herself away from the damp earth of her daughter's grave; they pushed open the heavy doors of the church and stepped inside.

A/N: Don't forget to leave a review telling me what you think about this chapter! Thank you for reading!