A/N: Honestly, I have no excuse.
Sorry about the wait guys.
The star glimmered, lights small and blinking in the distance between the earth and the sky. The fire was extinguished. Rénee was quiet. The space between her and Allen was filled with more than just shadows, with more than the things he let himself forget, with more than the promises she had made to the ghosts of people she had never truly known.
"Allen, have you really forgotten?" She wanted to say, "Have you really forgotten that I knew you before you even had a name?"
She wished she hadn't agreed to this, that maybe after her last words to him- that declaration of loyalty to people he didn't know, to people he wasn't aware he was even a part of- he would let his curiosity die down.
"Hey, Rénee," He said, breaking the silence, determined to hear the answers she had promised him when they met once more, "What is Ayamonte?"
Hearing the name aloud made her stomach twist. "Where did you hear that?"
Allen looked away, "In my latest mission, some of the Finders briefly mentioned it. They mentioned you but wouldn't tell me what it meant, or what you had to do with it."
Rénee knew that even decades after the incident, what had happened was still used to refer to worst case scenarios. She had heard it herself, from Finders who weren't aware that it was her that was mentioned in the reports.
At least it can't be as bad as Ayamonte, they would say to each other, with a small shake of the head, like the horror that had haunted her for years wasn't real- like making it into a basis of comparison for missions gone wrong wasn't the same as spitting in her face.
Even if remembering made her sick to her stomach- even if all she had tried to do for years is forget just what kind of tragedy she was shaped in- a part of her was desperate for Allen to know her in the same way she knew the injustices, the aches, the despair of his own childhood.
She just wanted someone to know her as much as she knew them, as much as the Innocence she wore unknowingly had forced her to witness throughout her youth. She wanted her story to live on in someone's memory after this war destroyed her, not just what was listed in the files she had read about herself, but who she really was.
Not that she had any idea what that was. Not that she would dare bring up the truth to Allen, or anyone in this new life. Knowing this didn't make spilling her past any easier.
"Ayamonte," she said, throat suddenly dry, "Is the town where I was born. It's right on the border between Portugal and Spain, next to the Spanish coast. It's where I lived with my grandmother until I was three and-" She cut herself off, her hands curled into tight fists in her lap.
She should have known better than to think telling someone about what it was like living through what happened would be anything but agonizing.
"What was it that made you leave?"Allen gently asked, voice soft as if not to spook her.
But this was a wound that still wept blood despite the years. This was something that had never fully scabbed over. Just like Tyki, just like James, just like Allen and Mana. It was another of those wretched things that had made itself home inside her, something that begged her to carry its memory- one of those tragic things that wanted to be passed on like an infection.
Inez's fingers were talons, holding Rénee so tightly that there were sure to be bruises in the shape of fingers imprinted on her skin. Stray strands of gray-peppered hair entered her line of sight as Inez brought her head down, tilting Rénee's head to the side with a bony finger under her chin. Despite the throb of pain from where Inez held her, and the stunned terror at the hard look the Exorcist tossed her way; Rénee couldn't help but think that Inez smelled like rosemary and sawdust, with something rotten nestled underneath it all.
Inez smelled like something dead. Like something carefully hidden until the sweetness turned putrid on the senses, something festering and forgotten until the stench grew too sickening to ignore. All this time, how could she have missed the smell of death? Wasn't that even further proof, Rénee realized, that she had been ignoring everything that might have torn the safe little life she had been so desperately clinging to apart?
"Tu madre te extraña, querida Rénee," ("Your mother misses you, dear Rénee,") Inez said, words cutting through the mounting panic bubbling inside her chest. At having the Exorcist stare at her with such a hard expression, at seeing that Rose Crosses, silver and shining in the lights. Inez's breath was hot and sticky against Rénee's ear, her hands like steel cuffs, "Y te pide que la esperes por un poquito más." ("And she asks you to wait for her just a little longer.")
Rénee's heart raced inside her ribcage, each thud pounding out demon, demon, demon- until every one of the nerves in her body trembled. The Exorcist stood before her. The Finders just a few feet to the side. The church door remained open behind her and Inez. She wanted to tear her arm from Inez's hand, take Sofia by the hand, and run as far as she could.
The thing holding her in place wasn't Inez. It couldn't be, not with it holding knowledge that only monsters and dead girls would know. Not with the rot of death wafting off her breath; not with the burning, burning, burning of the necklace that wasn't a necklace at all against the hollow of Rénee's throat; not when through the hot, hot tears Rénee could see that the look in Inez's eyes was empty- like the vacant gaze of a corpse.
"Monstro," ("Monster,") she whispered- voice a raspy, choked thing. She shook, breaths pulled into her lungs like the heaving of a desperate animal. Her heart fluttered frantically behind her ribs. "Sueltame." ("Let me go.")
Inez clicked of her tongue but didn't correct her. The silence was agreement enough. She pat the top of Rénee's head one last time before releasing her, stepping away with an amused little smile. Rénee's legs nearly gave out from under her but she willed them to hold her for a little longer, as she raced towards Sofia with tears dripping down her cheeks, paying no mind to how the Finders tensed and the Exorcist drew his weapon.
(If he had struck her down there, if he had sunk that Innocence into her flesh and stolen the life she had herself robbed, Rénee might have not have to live through what happened next. Sometimes, she wishes he had.)
Sofia caught her with a soft grunt. She looked between Inez and Rénee in bewilderment, blinking in surprise at the trembling girl in her arms and the old woman that had already turned away.
"Que paso, pequeña?" ("What happened, little one?")
"Tenemos que correr," ("We have to run,") Rénee said, clenching the fabric of Sofia's skirt in bloodless fingers. Wide eyes darted from Inez's turned back; to the Exorcist discussing her mother with Father Antonio, hand still curled around the spear he had drawn, shooting her glances out of the corner of his vision. To the blue-eyed Finder that watched her with unwavering suspicion, like he knew what she was inside.
(It was not until everything had already happened that Rénee would learn just why the Finders and Exorcist had looked at her so, as if seeing someone else in the lines of her face, shocked by the resemblance and wary that it meant she was a monster too.
Maybe they could sense the fact that she wasn't really alive, to begin with. That maybe Fate had given her the face of a dead woman to go along with the corpse she dwelled in so that anyone that knew enough could piece together what she really was.
Maybe back then, it was obvious that she wasn't ever alive at all.)
Her words carried through the cavernous walls of the church. Those who could hear them turned to peer at her in curiosity. The Exorcist snapped his head in her direction. The Finders touched the machines on their backs and stepped between her and the other churchgoers. As if she was the danger, as if it was her that could snap and kill everyone here, as if she wasn't three years old and terrified- a dead girl and a toddler all in one.
"Por qué dices eso, niña?" The blue-eyed Finder snapped, earning a hard flinch from her. Sofia bristled, turning to glare at the Finder, turning her eyes away from Inez- who Rénee watched, ashen and fearful.
Rénee didn't hear exactly what Sofia was hissing at the Finder, she didn't know that Sofia was tearing into the man for speaking to the child of her deceased best friend that way. If she had known it would have made her affection for the woman grow, it would have made her heart swell with warmth. She would have known this kind of love, the loyalty to someone long gone, to a precious person, even though all that remained of the time spent together were memories and faded dreams.
But Rénee didn't hear her and nothing changed, not that it would have made a difference in the end.
Inez's attention was on the massive doors, at the heavy wood that Father Antonio had closed, on the crucifix hanging high above the entrance. She moved in confident steps, until she reached the doors, dragging wizened fingers across the wood. Her touch moved downward, clicking the latches of the door shut. The townsfolk quieted as the thud resounded, peering at Inez in confusion, glancing between her and the door like the answer would be hanging in the air.
Rénee yanked Sofia back with her, interrupting her argument with one of the Finders with a startled shout. "Rénee!? Que haces?" ("Rénee!? What are you doing?")
Rénee just glanced back at Inez, meeting those empty eyes (did her gaze look the same? Were those vacant eyes the same as hers?) and feeling her bones shudder in terror. She didn't answer Sofia, but somehow managed to tug her away from the front doors, closer to the altar and to the hall just beyond. Sofia, in her shock, complied, casting helpless glances at her fiance, and at the girl leading her deeper into the church.
Rénee had seen that hall only a few times, from the outside of the church peering in through the massive windows visible from the gardens. So she knew that the windows were a way out, breaking glass was a small task compared to pushing past Inez to flee through the front door.
Sofia didn't know what was going on though, and so she eventually stopped walking after her, wrenching her hand out of Rénee's grip with a a bewildered expression. "Muchachita, que pasa contigo!?" ("Young lady, what's going on with you!?")
"Por favor," ("Please,") Renee begged, "Tiene que seguirme. No hesta salva aqui." She raised her head and looked at the townspeople gazing at her in concern, "Ningunos estamos salvos." ("You have to follow me. You're not safe here. None of us are safe.")
At this, the Exorcist broke away from Father Antonio entirely, dropping any pretense that he wasn't listening to what she had been saying. "Porque dices eso, niña? Que sabes que nosotros no?" ("Why do you say that, girl? What do know that we don't?")
"Ella sabe que no debería haber venido aquí, Exorcista." Inez said, voice reverberating through the church, voice raspy and jagged. Her eyes were empty and lifeless, head tilted like a bird of prey. A sharp smile formed on her face and widened, spreading until it was too large and showed too many teeth. ("She knows that you shouldn't have come here, Exorcist.")
There was sweat beading on the Exorcist's dark skin, eyes flicking between Rénee and Inez with a look of such concentration that Rénee's pulse went wild.
"Y porque no?" ("And why not?") He asked, reaching his hand up to grasp the base of his spear. His mouth was pressed in a firm line. In his hold, his Innocence began to glow. Tucked under the collar of her dress, hidden from sight, her necklace did the same.
The Finders stepped closer to the crowd, moving slowly as to not attract attention, but Inez glanced at them dismissively and looked back to the Exorcist.
Inez cocked her head and grinned, a too-wide, inhuman baring of teeth. "Que no sabía que hay mounstros aqui?" ("Didn't you know that there are monsters here?")
Then, she burst out of her skin and lunged.
In the darkness, those memories haunted her. Not even the presence of Allen across from her could change that, not when the years hadn't, not when all the other people she had loved hadn't either. She raised a hand and brushed it across her neck, trying to dispel the phantom weight of the necklace she no longer carried around her throat from her skin.
Rénee exhaled, chest hollow. "It was one of the worst days of my life," she murmured at last, nails digging into the bandaged palms of her hands. "I still hear the screams in my dreams. Sometimes it feels like the taste of ash never fully left my mouth."
"And everything that happened… you saw all of it?"
A mirthless chuckle. Her lips quirked into a humorless smile, eyes as empty and black as the sky above them.
Her voice was hollow, "I saw enough."
She would dream of it like she was living the horrors again; like she was a little girl forced behind Sofia's back again and she could do nothing but watch as other people she thought she knew exploded out of their skin like it was made of paper mache. Like she was still screaming words she could no longer remember at Sofia, trying to drag her back into the hall, to escape out the window, to at least save someone, to at least get back to her abuelita before she died again.
But Sofia didn't move, just stood there, mouth open in a soundless scream- meeting the eyes of her fiance less than thirty feet away as besides him, his friend changed shape into something monstrous, something dead and hungry and unnatural.
She would dream of how the Finders spun their machines on their bodies, so that it was resting on their chest, and raced to the terrified civilians, desperate to reach them before the Akuma did. They were so fast that Rénee only saw a white blur of where they had been but it wasn't enough, the Akuma aimed and they fired and the bullets hit and-
The first people that crumbled into dust didn't have time realize what was happening.
The ones that followed, however, had seen how the black stars spread like constellations on skin. They had seen how the darkness grew and grew until every inch of flesh was the color of soot, until it gave way and crumbled like it was nothing more than dry clay- like it wasn't a human being falling apart before their eyes. They watched how there was nothing left of those who were stuck, nothing but mounds of ash and scattered clothing.
Those were the ones that screamed, the ones that stampeded to the sealed door and pressed against it in frenzied throngs. It was those that made better targets, all lined up and ready against the door. It was those that knew what was happening to them when the stars started to spread on their skin too. And oh, how they screamed.
(The screams that rung out would be featured in Rénee's dreams for years to come, burying themselves inside her memory like parasites infesting her mind.)
Later on, when the metronome of time had ticked by enough that her infancy was long past her, it would be hard to tell what part of her was made up of guilt and what wasn't. It would be nearly impossible to tell apart what each layer of regret came from what part of her life- but the one that she could never forget, the one that kept her awake at night for years to come, would be stepping foot in the church that day. If she had stayed home that day, she wouldn't have had to see so many people she knew, she had cared for, die right before her eyes.
She wouldn't have to live with Sofia's howl of grief as Ernesto crumbled into nothingness, or how Sofia's drew in a rattling, agonized breath, but did not cry. Rénee wouldn't have cowered under the altar, with only a thin fabric separating her from the destruction, once Sofia shoved her there. She wouldn't have held still as Sofia took a moment to brush her hair out of her weeping face, kissing her forehead with a tenderness that haunted her, murmuring a soft, "Vive, Rénee," before standing and walking away, into the chaos below.
("Live, Rénee," Sofia had said to her, as if she hadn't stepped right in front of the Akuma's bullets with her eyes locked on Ernesto's empty clothes and a small smile on her face.)
Akuma were made of death and sorrow, of love and despair. They were made of curving Dark Matter, of the souls of the mourning, polished enough that the glow of the gaslights bounced off their metallic shells, and reflected the shocked faces of the church goers. They were made with humanoid eyes in a humanoid face in an artificially round, metal body, and those vacant, empty eyes turned to the screaming townsfolk, guns following moments after.
They were made of corpses, of the twisted souls of people she had known, hidden behind the masks of humanity, walking amidst those who were unaware of their true form.
They were made of tragedy. They created tragedy.
Ayamonte never stood a chance.