Chapter 31: The Hated Path.
Tread not the paths of hate, for they grow longer with every step.
In a cell with four white walls, an old-fashioned analogue clock counted seconds with the calm, meticulous ruthlessness that only a machine was capable of, its internal workings disturbed not by rain, nor sleet, nor hail. And certainly they would not be disturbed by the bitter tears of one young woman sat in a cot on the opposite side of the room, every step of the second arrow lacerating all four of her ears as an inherent symbol of the reality towards which she felt nothing short of boiling hatred right now.
One would be mistaken to attribute the cause of such anger and pain to her broken leg, or to the many diagnostic apparati closely monitoring her cardiac activity, owing to her very recent recovery from the brink of death. Indeed, the wound that inflicted so much pain upon her could not be mended by even the most skilled surgeon that dwelt in Remnant.
For her friend had just told her that he would die. Worse, still, that his death be by his own hands.
That is, if he were to survive until dawn in his condition. By all reason, men with his profile of injuries should not be sitting in a chair next to her, but instead be as still as a log in their bed struggling to take a breath on account of half their ribcage being cracked with several degrees of severity and most of their torso bruised to the point of resembling a plum. Yet to Blake, the surest indicators of his wounds were his eyes, sat deep within their sockets, even deeper than usual, capillaries bursting one after another, leaving irregular stains of red upon already bloodshot whites.
To hear such words coming from a man of his fortitude only added to their weight, which already felt insurmountable to her weakened heart.
"What mother would demand that her son take his life?" she whispered, fighting back the lump in her throat. Just like after her awakening, Blake felt her thoughts scatter as painful thrumming took more of her headspace, while her shoulders shook as if under a fever. "What 'parent' would condemn their child to such a miserable existence?! You-"
Her indignation was smothered in the crib as her exhale lodged inside her windpipe, causing her to double over as a dry cough wracked her body, vision dimming as her diaphragm strained to get the airflow under control. It hurt to feel this angry… yet to keep all the frustration inside hurt even more.
Outside of her world, now so comfortably narrow to include only her and the seething anger in which she simmered, a hand reached out to touch her shoulder. On pure reflex, her right arm jerked forcefully, her mind only realizing what she was doing mid-swing. Belatedly, her vision cleared momentarily, only for her to witness her right wrist gripped tightly by Darius' left hand, millimeters away from his face. It didn't take Blake's eyes to notice that his hand was shaking, visibly struggling against her.
As if every bone in her right arm evaporated at once, it immediately went limp as horror set in at the realization of what a backhanded strike of someone with an active aura, even as weakened as her own, would do against a shackled human if connected. Completely in the clutches of fearful paralysis, Blake could only vaguely register her arm being lowered somewhat as she fought with all of her remaining might not to fall apart into a myriad little pieces from the volatile concoction of anger and grief.
She… managed, if only barely. And though her vision was still blurred from a thick veil of tears before her eyes, she could make out Darius enveloping her hand in both of his, gazing aimlessly at it, likely too exhausted to do much else. Sensing the attention, he slowly raised his head, taking a long look at her.
Alas, there was not much to make out in his eyes beyond overwhelming pain.
"You wanted to say something."
That she did. Not like she had any reserve left in her to keep silent.
"You talk about them with such reverence… such affection," wiping the moisture that pricked so treacherously at her eyes, Blake resumed. It… took effort, to say the least. "But it seems to me like you're just playthings to them, to be tossed away once you're too broken to toy around with! What kind of god are you serving that demands such bloody service from you, only to kill you once they have no use for you?!"
"'God' is very appropriate here, Blake. They would be the kind to demand something like this," even through the pain, steel flashed in Darius' eyes for but a moment. In the next second, however, his voice softened as he shook his head. "...I'm sorry. I… demand too much from you."
It took a solid three seconds for him to continue speaking.
"I misled you, if unintentionally. Neither the Lady nor the Light demand that we sacrifice ourselves… they never did. They… don't have to."
"Then why, damnit?!" having lost control of her voice, Blake's control over her breathing went as well, and as her tears flowed anew, she could not contain ragged sobs from raking her throat. And as he spoke, even she could barely hear him, his hands shaking while still holding hers in their grasp.
"Please do not weep for me, Blake. I'm the least deserving of your sorrows tonight. Surely..." he clenched his teeth. "Surely you understand already. Think back to tonight. To what it was you saw..."
And so she did.
And once again that damnable Atlesian was right.
"You've seen what this power does. The only thing it does. To simply possess it is to exercise a tyranny over the world that any worldly dictator could not imagine in their nightmares. And when I actually use it… reality itself screams in violation. Those misguided Faunus? Their lives will seem but a drop in the sea; and sure, I might have a better reason for the next life I'll take than frothing rage, but to the world, it matters little. What kingdom would grant refuge to a being of such power? What court would show mercy to me, whose hands are already shoulder-deep in red at the ripe old age of eighteen? Who would..." he swallowed with exertion, trembling hands slowly pulling away from Blake's. "Who would suffer the presence of something like me anywhere near them, knowing what I am?"
Never in their time together in Team RWBY, not even after the most grueling, nerve-racking and physically straining bouts against Grimm, when the team were all but drowning in their unholy blood, had Blake seen Darius so close to crumbling like the paper his skin so resembled. His chest only expanded ever so slightly, as taking any bigger breaths probably hurt him, while the irises of his unseeing eyes were completely drowned out by red as a bloody tear trailed down his cheek. Blake estimated he was approximately a hair's breadth away from collapsing.
And that just wouldn't do right now.
"Fine. Be that way."
With a snap of her arm, Darius' right wrist was suddenly in her clutch, where the accursed bracelet rested firmly on his forearm. From cursory observation beforehand, it seemed to have no locks of any variety, and closer inspection confirmed that, allowing easy access and removal, seeing as the bearer was in absolutely no condition to resist. Simply touching the metal had Blake fighting through a sudden onset of nausea and fatigue as for a brief moment, the aura that had been keeping her in relative lucidity for a woman just back from the brink of death ceased to function, yet that did not stop her from unclasping it and slamming down on the cupboard, which bore the assault with dignified stoicism.
The effect was immediate: through the engorged veins, black ichor surged through the muscles slackened just a second ago, restoring them to their former relief; his barely moving diaphragm expanded like a bellow as he breathed in fully for what had to be the first time in their entire conversation as Blake all but heard the cracking of bones mending and resetting; the awful bruise, grown almost black by this point, receded like burning moss, giving way first to marble-white, then, later, to his normal, slightly less sickly pigmentation; lastly, his reddened eyes, flung wide open, were drowned out by a black so intense she could almost see it glow, casting shadows on the ceiling. And as the shadows dissipated five seconds later at best, the only reminder of Darius' sorry state was a congealed blood trail spanning his right cheek.
Though hardly absent, the healing factor of Darius' aura was normally a far cry from the likes of Yang or Jaune, who could shrug off cuts and bruises by the dozens, but would still most definitely need at least an evening's rest after going through anything like what he did tonight. And yet there she was, having witnessed with her own two eyes how he regenerated from a bloody pulp to top form before that abominable clock opposite of her could count so much as ten seconds. Even disregarding the healing itself, the speed with which his aura had to regenerate to support it, considering the beating it had to have received for him to sustain that kind of injuries, boggled the imagination. If Blake were to be honest with herself, it almost answered the question she had in mind.
Almost.
Taking another glance at Darius, all but reborn from dust like the mythical heraldic beast of his grim legacy, it did not escape her notice that Darius himself examined his incredible restoration with disbelief. Said disbelief, however, ended the moment he once more picked up on the fact that Blake was looking at him, her gaze all but daring him to call her out.
And yet just two seconds into their staredown, he bowed his head with a sigh.
"...Thank you. It seems I misjudged your fortitude… and mine, for that matter. I'm sorry."
He's really not giving himself any breaks.
"...I suppose you had plenty of reasons," she frowned. "There was a time for that bracelet, and that time has passed. You owe me one more question for this, though, then you can go-"
Teeth almost biting down on her own tongue, she sealed her lips with a hand for further security, lest that damnable appendage betray her three times in the span of a single evening. After triple checking her damn mouth, she allowed herself to slowly exhale through her nose.
"...Sorry. I… really can't seem to keep a filter on this thing tonight."
Darius remained silent.
"You..." rubbing her temple, Blake sighed. There was no good way of just going around this. "You know what the question is… right?"
He nodded.
"Then you know what I want to hear. No deflecting the question, none of the 'collective duty' excuse. You. Why."
But no answer came.
A shallow breath had interrupted Blake's pace as she felt her sore shoulders sag somewhat, realizing suddenly that even maintaining her half-reclined posture took considerable exertion. Wave after wave, a kind of fatigue washed over her that had nothing to do with physical exhaustion. Even with her aura suppressing both her physical trauma and the malign effects of the inhibitors coursing through her veins, keeping a clear head became more and more impossible as the overwhelming mass of information of the most disturbing portent was dumped on her heap after heap. Yet still she asked for more.
Why do I even care?
'We both know what it's like to fear for one's life.'
'Let us hope one day no man on Remnant will.'
"Since we first met..." she spoke slowly, beating back apathy in a determined attempt to arrive at a point she herself couldn't yet see. "You always went about dealing with things with compassion and reason, even if I refused to see it at first. From all the way back when we first became a team to today's… squabble between Weiss and I… you never resorted to violence if it could be helped."
Even tonight at the harbor…
I can't say in good faith that he didn't try to talk them down.
"But now you talk about this terrible duty of yours, about your..." Blake's entire being recoiled in revulsion as she forced the sounds past her lips, barely even processing the meaning of the word. "...Death… like you have no choice in the matter. Like this kind of violence has ever done anyone any good. What happened to all the talk about clearing your family's name? Your hopes about a world where people don't fear for their life? Were those all lies? Have you ever told me a word of truth?!"
She slumped back into her bed, her indignation gone as quickly as it built up, along with all her remaining strength, left with nothing but tears pooling in the corners of her eyes.
"'Cause I believed all of it. To the last word. I… Need to know. Please."
The dry click of a door lock was her response.
Contrary to her expectations, Darius hadn't moved a centimeter from his seat, and the clicking was not caused by him silently leaving the room, but instead a tendril of black smoke emerging from his shadow and turning the knob counterclockwise, disappearing the second it had served its function.
Yet he himself remained motionless.
"I…" he breathed, and had Blake not heard him acknowledge her before, she may very well have been fooled into thinking that his vocal cords were not affected by his incredible regeneration, so different this was from his usual way of speaking. "I never could lie to you. Or anyone on the team, for that matter. Obfuscate, deflect, outright dodge questions, if need be, yes. But I never lied to any of you.
Which is exactly why I can't tell you."
The brief flash of hope that Blake thought stirred in her chest at his first words flickered out just as quickly, replaced instead by confusion, as well as familiar gnawing suspicion in the back of her mind, a staple for tonight, it would appear.
"Why not?"
"There are no words that could possibly give you the answer you want," he chuckled mirthlessly. "That could justify what happened, or make me seem the victim. I… can't put your mind at ease, Blake."
He lowered his gaze, glassy eyes staring into nowhere.
"But I might be able to show you the full truth."
"Show… me?"
It wasn't that this proposition didn't surprise Blake. On some rational level, she realized fully that the suggestion came completely out of nowhere, yet this long, long night seemed to have fully exhausted her capacity for any emotional response. For the time being, she elected to just roll with it.
"Yes… show you," Darius repeated slowly, as if mortified by his own offer. A bitter frown distorted his face as he came to grips. "A luxury like few others has been afforded to me - to know the exact moment in time where things went wrong. As consolation, maybe. And if you wish, you will know of it as well, exactly as I do."
"How?"
Darius pondered for a second.
"It… might be easier to explain post-factum," he eventually admitted. Seemingly aware that this copout of an answer would in no way satisfy Blake, he continued reluctantly, forcing the words through gritted teeth.. "I realize that I'm asking a lot of you. Yet if it is the truth that you want, may I ask you to just… trust me on this, preposterous as the demand may seem after today?"
There were always things left unsaid between the two of them. Implications not so much veiled as, in stark opposition, put on display through morbid humor or, failing that, in a fashion most direct, so as to indicate that a red line was being approached, which would test their amity in ways neither was willing to deal with at a given moment in time. For indeed one needs not tell lies in order to deceive somebody, especially one who wishes to be deceived. This arrangement satisfied both of them for a while, where without a word of untruth they would fool and be fooled, lulled into a sense of contentment with one another. Blake wondered how long it would have lasted if not disturbed.
Blake wondered when it was.
Was it when, having taken up Darius on a free drink, offered in jest, she probed one step too far into the sore spot that was his family name, only to be rebuked, and worse - convinced - with vigor and conviction she never expected to find in someone she considered a Silva to the core?
Was it when, caught-off guard by means of mint-spiked beverage and pleasant conversation, she listened on with dread as her past was picked apart, step by shameful, guilt-ridden step, by the last person she would ever want to be privy to such information? When she was met, to her great shock, not with admonishment or condemnation after her tearful confession, but with the kind of compassion she, to this very moment, was not sure she'd ever be able to reciprocate?
Or were those occasions too recent as well?
It mattered not.
Him or her, at some point, action was taken.
And though time may seek to separate them, action and consequence will, invariably, have their dreadful reunion.
"Do I have to… do anything?" Blake asked, eyeing her leg. "I'm in a bit of a bind."
"Nothing beyond making yourself comfortable," he shook his head as his shadow lengthened once more, a feeler reaching out to the far end of the room, before recoiling back to him… depositing what looked a lot like an incense stick into his hand.
Although perplexed, Blake elected, in keeping with her agreement with Darius, to reserve her questions for a later occasion. She watched in silence as, confirming her suspicions, a flicker of black flame sprung from his outstretched index finger, where he held the incense for several seconds, before gently extinguishing the flame and using the smouldering end to trace a circle above his and Blake's heads. Contrary to her expectations, she found the aroma surprisingly unobtrusive, as even her sense of smell struggled to register the, in frankness, rather pleasant fumes unless explicitly concentrating on them.
"Don't focus on the incense," she heard. Turning to face Darius, she found him to have abandoned the chair, now planted firmly on both knees beside her bed. "It is only meant to help soothe your mind. Your… your hand, if you please."
She noticed the hitch in his voice as he said that.
She decided she could lament this fact at a later date, slightly reaching hers out.
"Close your eyes and focus on yourself," with their hands locked, Darius proceeded with instructions. "Your breathing, heartbeat, anything. Then breathe deeply and evenly, and I'll match your tempo. I'll tell you when you can open your eyes."
Seems… familiar.
Still, after tonight's seemingly never subsiding tensions, this momentary reprieve was more than welcome. In this fleeting moment of tranquility, where there were no revelations that threatened to turn her worldview upside down, where no terrible truths gnawed like vermin upon her aching heart, where time stood perfectly still, unbound from the cruel tethers of cause and effect, Blake felt serenity wash over her as her consciousness floated freely, drawn unwittingly to the even, rhythmic thrumming of Darius' pulse against her palm.
It took her some time to realize that she could no longer feel the binds and restraints that secured her leg. Nor could she hear the irritating ticking of the clock grating against her ears.
Or anything, for that matter.
Her pace interrupted immediately, Blake was moments away from kipping up in her bed to the best of her ability before she felt her hand being gently squeezed, as if in reassurance, a familiar voice calling out on her right:
"Everything is fine. Please just stay like this for a bit more. I'll tell you when you can look."
This just raises further questions.
Nevertheless, the hand remained in place, if shifting somewhat from time to time, so without further causes for concern, Blake resorted to counting seconds for lack of a better time sink.
"Done. You can look now," she heard after reaching seven, and Darius' hand released hers.
She found herself in a room radically different from the austere, bordering on barren infirmary cell. Even based on the lighting alone, which contrasted starkly with the sterile, homogeneous illumination of her cell, she could tell this was a place where people actually lived. Though roughly the same size and even proportions, the room felt significantly smaller on account of every wall and corner being occupied with either tools or books; opposite of her, a cabinet that spanned the height and the width of the adjacent wall was packed tightly with what had to be hundreds of books, and though at first glance they all appeared to be arranged in perfect order, Blake realised she couldn't even make out their names, squint as she might. In the far end of the room to her right, a desk stood against the wall just below a wide window, its curtains closed tightly. The desk itself seemed unremarkable, its only distinguishing feature being a lone lamp with a green lampshade perched in its far right corner. On the left, Darius loomed over the desk, his gaze lowered at something clutched in his hand.
"If you feel like stretching your legs, feel free," without turning, Darius addressed her. "Physical injuries mean nothing in this place."
Eyebrow raised, Blake snuck a peek of her leg, only to realize that not only were the restraints gone, so was the pain she would expect from a non-fixated broken leg. Tentatively lowering it off the bed and putting a fraction of her weight on it, she discovered that, indeed, it felt as good as new.
"I'm not going to wake up to find it in even bigger disrepair because I stubbed it or something, right?"
"Your body doesn't move during the meditation, no. It's perfectly safe."
No time like the present, I suppose.
Blake couldn't deny that all the sitting around was slowly getting to her either. Her body felt light and limber as she sprung from the bed, as if she hadn't endured multiple concussions, a crushed kneecap, and multiple subsequent heart failures all in a span of fifteen, twenty minutes tops. With a crack in her neck, she approached Darius, who put down what seemed to be a photo frame face-down on the table, now leaning back onto it, watching her.
"So… what is this place?" Blake decided to address the Goliath in this very, very compact room.
"This room is an… artistic rendition of my father's study back in our residence in Atlas, reconstructed from memory," he looked around, reaching towards one of the myriad unnamed books in the cabinet to his side. "As I'm sure you noticed, it's… barebones at best. I normally don't even put up this many decorations, but for someone unfamiliar with this, the experience may be... unsettling otherwise."
As his fingers grasped a pair of books and pulled them from the shelf, Blake realized that the hard covers were hollow on the inside, like ledgers. And as she peered into the openings left between other, no doubt just as hollow, books, she found herself staring at a vast, empty expanse of complete darkness, with no notion of up, down, floor or ceiling.
She took care not to look for too long.
Darius then put the empty covers back in their places.
"I can't help but feel like you didn't answer my question."
"It's a complicated one," Darius shrugged. "As to what that over there was… It's one of the gifts granted to us by our Lady upon swearing fealty and, I imagine, by the Light to our brothers of the Church. A particularly lucid form of trance where the mind and soul are at their most distant from the body, free to wander and improve even while the body rests. This is how I spend most nights. Newly initiated acolytes typically require some time training before they can enter it consistently, but with the guidance of someone more experienced, the passage is made… considerably easier, and can be shared for ease of acclimatizing."
The concept seemed rather outlandish, but Blake knew better after tonight than to ignore what her own eyes were telling her, and so deemed the answer enough for her. Yet as Darius fell into silence, it was glaringly apparent to her that a key point was being overlooked.
"I assume there was a reason you brought us here?"
There was a pause before Darius spoke up.
"Indeed." He was clearly not looking forward to returning to that main, pivotal point. "Among other things, one can experience past memories here with all the fidelity of living through them. Every detail, every word, every errant thought. It's… virtually indistinguishable from having lived through it again."
"So what is it you want to show me?" Blake asked as she, too, approached the table, settling to the left of Darius and leaning onto it.
There was no answer.
We've gotten this far.
I suppose… we could take it slower.
If Darius wasn't going to stop pushing himself, someone would have to do it for him. Momentarily dropping the topic, Blake cast her eyes on the table, to the photo frame which, inscrutably, fed her curiosity more and more with every second she spent in this mysterious realm. It did not escape her companion's notice as she tentatively slid her hand towards the frame. Yet, rather than object, he averted his gaze in one ragged motion, and Blake could swear she saw him shiver slightly, only adding to her fascination.
Although most of the furnishings in the study were, as demonstrated, no more than empty husks to shield her eyes from the dark beyond, there was a strange air of… inconsistency about the small frame, as though this was no single object, but instead a vague, chimeric aggregation of the many attributes things like this one were supposed to have, all clumped into one, never able to settle on which one to show her at any given moment. Thus, though the oval frame itself looked like run-of-the-mill wood, Blake's fingers each registered a different material as she lay her hand on it, ranging from lacquered wood, to generic plastic, to frosted glass, if only for a moment, before settling on the smooth texture of birch crust. Holding onto it for another couple of seconds to see if it had any more tricks to play on her, Blake flipped it over, only to almost drop it as Darius' grey eyes peered right through her from the photo, a warm smile spread across his face as he posed against a blank, vaguely light-blue background, his left hand wrapped around the shoulder of a diminutive child's figure next to him, who looked significantly less amicable than himself.
Having reaffirmed her grasp on the frame, a closer look at the photo told Blake that, contrary to her initial impression, there were some notable differences between the two, incredibly similar as they admittedly were. Though of roughly the same size and bulk, the shape in the photo, its face in particular, lacked the sharpness of features attained through years of grueling physical drills. Instead of a strict crew cut, the man in the picture grew out his hair to shoulder length, swept back in a dense mane of pale blond hair. Eyes of grey shining brightly above a happy smile; the same sharpness, but distinctly unfamiliar folds around them, left by the merciless passage of time. Looking at her was none other than the late Julius Silva: former CEO of Silva Armaments and all associated enterprises, persona non grata within the Menagerie, business mogul considered ruthless even by Atlas' standards and bearer of no less than half a dozen other, no less unflattering titles.
Not that any of them meant much anymore.
Logically, then, the child in his embrace must have been…
"It never occurred to me how much you looked like your father," Blake probed, gauging Darius' reaction from the corner of her eyes.
That seemed to have knocked him out of his stupor. Shuffling slightly closer to her, Darius sighed as he looked at the photo.
"I remember getting that a lot way back when. Especially when I used to grow my hair out," he said as the very corner of his lips tightened in a faint shadow of a half-smile. "Good thing I dropped that habit, I suppose. I imagine our first meeting would go considerably less smoothly if you recognized me then and there."
"You're not wrong, I guess. Then again, your dad's appearance isn't something I'd held onto in my head for seven years… no offence. I doubt that'd be the first thing to spring to mind."
"None taken."
"Seriously, though. You? With long hair? Why'd you stop?"
"...Circumstances," in an instant, the nascent smile was gone from his face. "Turns out that without means to properly take care of them, a luscious mane becomes a feeding ground for lice in as little as two weeks. Not to mention that the likelihood of someone trying to get their filthy hands on them was directly proportional to length. I'd shorn them to the root the second I got ahold of something sharp. It… stuck since then."
"...Right. I'm sorry, I should've figured."
"You couldn't have known, Blake," he shook his head wearily, still looking at the picture. Though she could not speak with certainty, Blake could swear she saw suspicion building in his eyes. "More importantly, there's something I have to tell you about this photo. It's… I'm pretty sure it's not real."
"Excuse me?" eyebrow raised, she eyed Darius before taking another look at the picture. Disregarding the smile, the image of Julius lined up perfectly with her memory of him. "Seems pretty accurate to me."
"The likenesses are, indeed," he nodded. "However, I don't remember my family ever taking such a photo, or ever having such a frame to put it in. In fact, I never even meant to make this when I was putting up decorations."
"If you say so. I assume this is leading up to something?"
"Leading u..." Darius froze for an instant as he stumbled over himself. And albeit he seemed to regain his bearings in a couple seconds, his gaze remained unfocused as his hands searched for purchase upon the table, shoulders slumped. "No, not really, it doesn't. I'm… not sure why I brought this up. I don't know what my mind is trying to tell me. This place… it's a realm of thoughts and memories. My thoughts and memories, namely. It would seem they're more than a little out of sorts right now."
"I would be concerned if they weren't after tonight, honestly," Blake allowed herself a small snicker at his expense, before taking another glance at the supposedly not real photograph. It occurred to her that perhaps there was some merit to Darius' words, if only because a family as rich as his was could have certainly afforded someone with skills beyond the amateur display she held in her hands. Both Darius and his father barely occupied more than half of the picture; in fact, a portion of Julius' elbow didn't make it into the frame, while the entire right third of the photo was completely barren.
Concerningly so.
"There's someone missing here, isn't there?"
There was a pause.
"Like I said, this photo never existed in real life," Darius spoke after forcing a breath through his throat, clearly making an effort to keep his voice even. "That said, for something like this, it's strange that it would exclude my mother." Without looking at Blake, he stretched out his hand. "May I?"
Wordlessly handing over the photograph to him, Blake ruminated on these words, arriving eventually to the baffling conclusion that for, for as much as she knew about Julius Silva, the exact inverse was true for his wife and Darius' mother that, based on her admittedly pedestrian knowledge of biology, he ought to have had.
"It's strange," she scratched lightly at her temple. "Now that you mention it, I realize that I've never even heard anything about her. Your mother, that is."
"Nothing strange about it," he responded, his eyes locked upon the picture clutched in his hands. "Mother always eschewed publicity in all its forms, especially after they married and I came along. Father was always insistent that we do our best to avoid getting caught in the public eye. In light of what happened, I can't really fault his line of thinking."
"Could you… tell me about her, maybe?" Blake asked, simultaneously questioning in her mind if she really wanted to know. "You never seem to bring her up."
That earned her a sideways glance.
"Unlike my father, you mean," Darius remarked wistfully, completing the unsaid thought. "You're right, of course. There just… never was much to say. My mother - Iris - wasn't the kind of influence that Father was. He tried his hardest to be there for me, of course, but there's only so much time a man of his profile can spend away from his duties. Mother, instead, abandoned her post in his enterprise just to raise me. There's not a memory in my head of..."
His eyes glossed over, unable to turn away from the photo. Blake couldn't help but notice that it trembled in his grip, his fingers white from strain.
"...Of those times, without her presence. She taught me how to read, write, speak. She buried me in books that she'd have me comb through front to back, and personally made sure I kept up with my training. Then, she'd patch me up when I got hurt, and read me stories as I collapsed into a heap come nightfall. I lived for a word of praise from her, and checked thrice whether I covered my tracks before doing something I thought would anger her."
With a barely audible creaking, a web of cracks cut into the wooden frame and soon spread onto the glass cover, originating from beneath his fingers.
"Darius?"
"Her face..."
Belatedly, Blake made a motion to grab hold of the photo, only to freeze over in place at the sight: starting from the fingers, Darius' own skin cracked and split open, black light shining from within the lesions as the tissue at the edges flaked off like plaster. In a blink of an eye it spread from his palm and shot up his forearm, surfacing once more at the neck. Centimeter by centimeter, it crept along his jawline, strained as it were, teeth clenched to the point of grinding as sorrow and rage contorted his face into a pained grimace.
"Why can't I remember her face?!"
With an ear-piercing jingle at the very top of her hearing range, the frame burst into a thousand splinters and glass shards, tiny needles darting in every direction, yet turning into harmless black mist millimeters away from her skin. Only the photograph itself slipped from Darius' frenzied grasp, drifting slowly through the black protuberances left by the now vaporized frame. Twisting his entire body, Darius's left hand shot out towards it almost quicker than Blake could register. But just as his fingertips made contact with the paper, it too disappeared in a cloud of smoke, enveloping the invading limb in a manner frighteningly similar to what she had seen her companion do on multiple occasions: a gauntlet of solid black protecting the hand, every digit ending in a ghastly claw.
And in the next second, it too was gone.
The inertia carried him another couple of steps forward before he lost his footing, stumbling to one knee in the middle of the room, his left hand still reaching for nothing. Bouncing off the table, Blake went to check on him just in time to see him keel over to the right and slam shoulder-first into the book cabinet, slowly turning over to lean back on it, covering his face with his palms. Hunched over, his legs curled inwards and his chest heaving in stunted, uneven motions, Blake couldn't tell whether the muffled sounds coming from him were sobbing or laughter.
"Merciful Dark, what am I doing?!"
On second thought, she could probably rule out laughter.
This was not a situation Blake was equipped to deal with, largely on account of never expecting anything even remotely like this happening. Attempts to think up a solution on the spot had her drawing a blank, so for the moment she decided to simply sit down right next to him, shoulder to shoulder.
She could feel it, though, like a knot tightening in her gut. Even at a low like this, Darius was not allowing himself even a momentary reprieve. With hands balled into fists at his eyes, with deliberate, slow breaths forced through gritted teeth biting down on his bleeding lip, his grief was being smothered in the crib. Blake witnessed it twice today: way back in Vale, which left her with an uneasy feeling at how coldly her friend went about recalling his own trauma; just minutes ago in the waking world, where her eyes finally opened to the cruel truth of its nature; and now, in this mindscape Darius erected solely for her benefit, yet which seemed to bring him nothing but torture, she felt its terrible effects as acutely as if she were performing it herself. It was like suturing an open wound without narcosis: a steel string pulling together the screaming flesh that it might not bleed anymore, that it may serve again, ignorant to the pleas of the mind.
That could not stand.
Even to her, a simple observer, the process was suffocating, just moments from completely cutting away her air without laying a hand on her. Yet it was from that unwanted involvement that Blake could tell how precarious a procedure this was, taking up the entirety of even Darius' concentration and leaving him balancing upon a single, miniscule point.
It only took her gently laying her hand on his shoulder.
"...Hey. You don't have to put on a brave face in front of me."
His next exhale lodged in his windpipe, completely throwing off his focus and sending him into a wicked coughing fit. Grabbing his throat with his left hand, Blake saw Darius' bloodshot eye dart around frantically in its socket for a few seconds before settling on her.
"What… meaning… of this?" completely lacking in accusatory notes, his question, interlaced with coughing spasms, was addressed to himself more than it was to her. Having spent the last of his breath on it, however, Darius was left completely taciturn, succumbing to yet another fit of coughing and just trying to get his breathing in working order.
"Take it easy," Blake lightly clapped on his back. "That… whatever you were just trying to pull, isn't helping me and it's certainly not helping you. Just take a moment, alright? I'm..."
Blake's voice hitched as her determination to not let her tongue get ahead of her any more than it already had this night paid off, as a phrase she might have just blurted out thoughtlessly otherwise crystallized moments later inside her head. A phrase… a phrase that resonated with a strange warmth inside her chest.
A phrase evocative of a feeling which she never thought she'd awaken to at the time and the place that she first did, and one she never would expect to rear its head here and now, if only as a faint mirage.
A phrase she had to finalize.
Quietly, she said:
"I'm here for you."
All froze. Darius, having just wrested control of his breathing from his own panicked body, sat petrified, likely questioning how deep the recesses of madness he sank to had to be for him to hear such a thing. Pooling beneath his chin, his tears, the one thing he couldn't seem to control, splattered one after another on the laminated floor.
One.
Two.
"Not… by choice," he swallowed, the sound from his shot vocal cords cut the blessed silence between the two like a knife. "What a fucking... absolute disgrace. What… what was I thinking, bringing you here like this?"
"Nice try, but I vividly remember explicitly agreeing to this."
"Trusting me on this, you mean," Darius rebuked, but the meek attempt at resolution in his voice didn't even fool himself, much less Blake. "And this is what I made of your trust… Let's leave, Blake. Please," he whispered.
Blake looked around quizzically.
"I'm not going to pretend like I have any idea how this place works, but I suspect that if you wanted us to leave, we'd already be back in the real world. You still haven't shown me what you wanted, remember?"
"What I wanted..." that seemed to amuse the Atlesian greatly as he broke into uncontrollable laughter, which transitioned into another bout of equally uncontrollable sobbing. "There is nothing for you in my past, Blake. Nothing but more misery. Make that double - no! - triple for that memory."
But even that came to an abrupt stop as he threw his head back against the cabinet, turning to face Blake, his eyes completely raw, only to mouth at the very edge of what she could hear:
"Have I not hurt you enough today?"
His head drooped down to his chest, empty eyes glaring at the floor without motion.
But what a question, though. Do I have an answer?
Well… Yes, actually.
For real this time.
"Do you remember how we first met?" she asked, a wistful smile timidly emerging upon her face. "How you walked up to me in the great hall and tried to dupe me into talking to you?"
"...Yes," Darius said.
"Remember why?"
"It was as I claimed. I wanted to thank you for helping out Ruby."
"Remember how I just… let you chat me up like that?"
"Yes."
"I could have just reined in my curiosity and stonewalled you. Didn't know why I didn't do it then. Still don't. And you could've stuck to your book."
Darius remained silent.
"Right after our team got formed, I probably could've raised a much bigger fuss than I actually did. I'm pretty sure Ozpin would understand. It would kill the team in its infancy, but I probably would be rid of you and of Weiss. But you decided to step in and clear the air right away, and I decided to believe you, no doubt on that lingering good impression from the Initiation."
Although Darius mentioned at the beginning that physical injuries had no bearing in this strange place, mental fatigue definitely did, and Blake was certainly starting to feel the strain. Without much thought to it, she lightly craned her neck to the right, where Darius' shoulder just so happened to be at the perfect height for her to rest her head on. Though he seemed to grow even more still than before, he didn't object.
"Then you came to me two weeks later and cracked me like an egg, and laid out my hypocrisy in plain view. I probably could've kept clinging onto it and only tolerating your existence as I did." She pondered, then shook her head. "That said… I'd like to think that there was no other way I would have acted than how I did then. My point is… So many times we have had the opportunity to never cross paths again, to keep each other at arm's length… Such a short time ago I was ready - expecting, really - for you to forever resent me for literally dancing on your parents' burning pyre, yet you forgave me. Just today I was scrambling to run as far away from Beacon as my legs would take me, yet you came after me. Who knows what would've happened if you didn't."
She shuddered.
"Just this night I was ready to go and probably put my brothers to the sword," she whispered. "Yet you kept trying to save us from each other until the last possible second." She sniffled, wiping her nose. "I don't think there ever was a peaceful resolution once I didn't tie Torchwick down. Still...I… I want to forget what happened this terrible night, more than anything. It's clawing at the back of my mind. How you ripped them to pieces, what was happening to you… But it's not going to happen. Nor is there any backtracking to be done. Once again, we have to choose whether we go our separate ways or not. You said today that you're with me no matter what. Is that not so?"
Unsteady, Darius shook his head.
"This path of mine… It began in a place of deepest desperation and hate," he said slowly, his voice barely above a whisper to not strain his throat too much. "And there is no place else where it can possibly lead me, Blake. If indeed this is how you see things, run, I beg you."
"I remember you singing a very different tune earlier today," Blake shot him a mocking glance. "Not that I'm in any shape for running, either."
She gripped his hand.
"Darius, I refuse to believe this. I refuse to believe that anything claiming to be as benevolent and smart as your Lady, with the kind of power she had given you, to boot, to have given you only one possible way to tread. If you alone can't see it, maybe the two of us will?"
Slowly, focus returned to Darius' eyes, as second after second, the theory that he had finally lost his marbles collided with the apparent reality that he was hearing.
"Two of us?" he repeated, incredulously.
"Yes. Start to finish."
He blinked, clearing the last of the moisture from his eyes, now gazing with the same sharpness as before.
He looked at Blake's hand gripping his, finally realizing the reality of it.
Slightly raising it, he cupped her palm with his other hand, taking a deep breath.
"Start to finish."