Layers
Chapter Nineteen
By: Brenli and Jael
"You're late."
Of course that fact stuck out like an enormous red flag, for the King of Hell. In all his years serving in the court of Sheol, Jinho had never once been late. On the contrary, he was always early... a habit that had earned him enemies almost instantly. Others of his rank whispered that he was a try-hard...
Not today, though. Today had taken nearly everything out of the man, just to rouse him, just to attempt to dress. Even now he was lacking in the usual ensemble – the suit coat, missing. The cravat, too. The fabric seemed to suffocate him, and he'd left a few buttons on his white dress shirt undone for the same reason. At least he remembered his cane, holding it under his arm... He had decided on a vest in a black and deep red damask. It almost seemed blood-spattered, but maybe that was appropriate. The Vampire stood from his respectful kneel and looked up at Hell's royal couple.
They sat upon thrones of wood polished nearly ebony, embellished in bits of gold, the King all in black and the Queen all in white, and they said nothing. They allowed the great expanse of the throne room to fall utterly silent as they stared at him. Read him. "I apologize for my tardiness, my Lord. My Lady."
"Are you ill, Jinho?" Alexiel asked, and it was hard to tell if she meant to criticize or if she was merely musing out loud.
So Jinho attempted to keep his face careful and blank, as careful and blank as both hers and Lucifer's. "My Lady?"
Her fingers followed the large brown waves of her hair. "Your hair looks as though it's gone wild. It's unlike you, unless perhaps you're ill."
His dark strands felt heavy as they swayed with the shaking of his head. "No, my Queen. I'm not ill."
"Perhaps he's merely post-coital, again?"
Jinho turned toward the direction in which the question had come, ink-black eyes slightly wide when they settled on the older man, the dandy Count Asmodeus. He was not the only one to arrive, stepping, or slinking, or slithering from the shadows and corners of the throne room. Mammon. Beelzebub with his persistent, buzzing hum. Astaroth, long strands of blood-red hair falling over his moody face as he leaned against a dark marble pillar, veins of gold spreading throughout it. Why was he here? He hardly ever showed up for anything; in all of Jinho's years in Sheol, he could count the times he'd seen Astaroth on one hand... From one of a line of enormous fountains, water bubbled, frothed like sea foam, and Leviathan's scaled dragon's head emerged, taking up the vast majority of the fountain. Him, too...?
From his other side, the Mad Hatter spoke, the Satan's body slipping out from the bottom of a black and white jester's hat. "Even you manage to clean yourself up when you leave your Door, Prince. Perhaps the little Gehenna boy who could makes a better Lust than you, then?"
Asmodeus merely smiled. "He wishes. He's certainly tried hard enough, dressing like me."
Why were all the Satans gathering here? The question dissolved as soon as it popped into his mind, and Shinryu help him, Jinho couldn't begin to explain why. The ruined, torn up, frantic part of him had picked out the word 'post-coital' and stuck it firmly inside of himself with a sharpness that felt like the edge of a dagger...
"I'd say the Vampire dresses more like me."
"I don't dress like either of you; I dress how I desire." If his voice was still cool water, it ran over jagged metal thorns, now. Not stones. "And I am not post-coital."
"Dear, dashing Jinho gets cranky after sex, it seems. I should warn you all." Pride sat upon the set of stairs leading to the pair of thrones, long, slim legs crossed.
"Cranky, and in denial." Asmodeus agreed.
"I'm not either of those things." He bit out the words, breathing in through his nose in some attempt to calm himself. Despite the chaos all around him, he was still before the King and Queen...
The Count crossed his arms over his broad chest. "You're doing a marvelous job proving us wrong, aren't you, Dragon Worshipper? As you stand there scowling with your sex hair, leaning on your cane just as I do with mine."
It happened before Jinho could contain himself, his head whipping around to deliver an ink-black glare. "If you hate my cane so much then I invite you to come here and take it from me!"
Asmodeus only laughed, though it was brazen, head thrown back, light playing off of his cheekbones and off of the gray wings hair growing at his temples.
"Jinho."
Lucifer's single word immediately brought the Vampire to one knee, though Lust continued to laugh and laugh... Mammon even joined him, each of the two bird heads craned back as he cackled.
"Is this really what you dragged me out here for, Belial?" Sloth grumbled, and Jinho could hear his scowl.
"Mad Hatter," The Satan corrected him.
"This is pathetic. I don't want to watch Lust and the Vampire squabble like fools over canes!" Astaroth snapped. "Give me blood, or I'm leaving!"
So that was why all the Satans were here? Cordially invited by Pride, to come and pick at all of his wounds? He had half a mind to grant the Marquis his wish... but the other half of his mind berated himself for it, cut him down until he wasn't sure he'd be able to stand back up from his kneel before the King. What was he doing? Snapping, challenging the Satans? Showing up late for Lucifer's summons? On top of the way he had betrayed everyone he'd left... the way he'd violated Lilith... He was flirting with death. Maybe he deserved death, though. Maybe he wanted it.
Lucifer continued, ignoring the Satans' bickering with an ease Jinho wished he could find within himself, once again. "Why don't you tell me what's happened since you've left?"
What hadn't happened? He found himself falling for a girl he disliked, who turned into a woman he hurt for. He'd been beaten and blackmailed into complying with the enemy, and then he ran, no, slithered back to Sheol like the snake he was... but not before further betraying his betrothed. Intimately betraying her. He could hardly recognize himself. "... My sincerest apologies, my Lord." The dandy goth struggled to find the right words. "There is much that has happened. If you think it has affected my service to you-"
"Jinho." The Dark Lord cut him off, resting his ankle upon his knee as he sat back in his throne. "Your sugary words won't work on me. What happened up in Assiah?"
Ink-black eyes met steel-gray ones. He didn't want to spell out that he had become a traitor. That he was ruined.
"Sex," The Hatter said merrily. "And it has made a dragon out of him."
"Hatter!" Jinho snapped, fighting back the urge to senselessly, stupidly charge at the Jester when she shielded a smile behind a hand with an immaculate manicure.
"I see no dragon, here." Asmodeus spoke out, ignoring Leviathan as he growled and sent water spilling over the marble edges of the gold-flecked fountain. "I see a man who hasn't had enough sex."
Yet again, Jinho sent the Count an incensed, dark-eyed glare. "Enough, Lust!"
He merely smiled in the face of Jinho's thinly-veiled rage. "You should have fucked that bitchy Dragonmaster a few more times before coming back, here. Sex should leave you loose-limbed and sated, not wound up tight." Asmodeus' hands rested over the head of his cane, the tip tapping on the floor as the Vampire immediately rose to his feet. "Oh no, have I offended Lord Lucifer's favorite pet?"
"I am no one's pet!" He pointed at the Satan of Lust with his own cane. "And you will never speak of Lilith again!"
"What are you getting so angry for? It's your right to fuck her. To claim the virginity the Gehenna Elder Council gift-wrapped for you. It took you long enough, considering how long it's been since you've last had a good romp. It's been decades since your sixth wife passed on; you were overdue to fuck! I'm actually proud of you!"
The Gehenna Vampire could handle no more. He'd thought he was already ruined, already broken before returning to the heavy air of Sheol... but in the moment it took for him to turn and charge at Asmodeus, he felt himself crumble apart, giving way to something horrible. His ink-black eyes were wide with rage, and a jagged roar came out of his mouth.
"Hah!" Lust blocked Jinho's cane with his own, "The angry Gehenna boy thinks he can hit a Satan!"
The Vampire's bare hand curled into a hard fist, and he sent it crashing into Asmodeus' face. "Seems he can!"
A deep, rumbling roar, such as only a Satan could make, shook the throne room, and the sheaths of each cane blade were pulled away, thrown aside. A death wish... and Jinho didn't care. He was too furious to care. His sharp, thin blade tore a line through the Count's vest, cutting a button free, and Lust would have drawn a horrible gash into his body if he hadn't slipped through the floor.
"Are you running away?" Asmodeus challenged, only to feel his legs grabbed, his feet pulled out from under him. His cane blade swung forward and pierced the Vampire, a line splitting along the curve his face, from jaw to cheek... and Jinho kept coming, despite it. Reckless and wild...
The duel carried them across the throne room, past the cawing cackle of Mammon, the aggravated buzzing of Beelzebub. When Asmodeus cut open Jinho's shirt, stabbing into his shoulder, the Vampire yelled out and kicked the Satan into the air.
Asmodeus flipped, momentarily a dangerous dark trail in the throne room until he reformed, upside down, three-headed, with the bull's head and the lamb's head braying.
The Organic Angel's hand lifted from her throne, but paused when the King reached out to stop her. She looked over, and his chin was resting on his free hand, a finger tapping his jaw as he watched with unreadable gray eyes...
Jinho stood, pulled Lust's blade from his shoulder, and went after the Satan with both weapons, even as he bled. The dark, heavy bat's wings he never chose to call upon, yet another symbol of his roots in the Kingdom of Gehenna, unfurled from his back as he flew up to Asmodeus. Ink-black eyes were hard and mean as Jinho stared into the eyes of the middle face... his blade sinking into the lamb's skull, and the other one catching the ring in the bull's septum, ruthlessly tearing it from the flesh.
As the Count roared in pain and pressed against the force of the enraged Vampire, the bloody septum ring dropped and rolled, leaving a red trail as it stopped at Astaroth's feet. "That's more like it!" Sloth purred happily, picking up the metal hoop and twirling it around his finger.
One cane blade finally pulled free from the lamb's head, only so that both weapons could begin drawing slashes all across Asmodeus' three faces. "I will kill you!" Lust bellowed as Jinho disappeared in a plume of smoke, "Filthy creature from the land of Evils!"
But the Gehenna Vampire reappeared behind him, smashing the Satan to the floor with his wounded shoulder and pinning him there with both blades. "Kill me, then!" He was sure the Shinryu knew he deserved it, for what he'd done to their former Dragonmaster...
Lucifer stood, his countenance calm as he smoothly moved down the stairs, along the marble hall, not noticing the Hatter's frowning head tilt as though listening for faraway noises and disappearing into the jester's hat. He was too preoccupied watching Jinho as he knelt over the pinned Count, hitting him over and over...
Fury had given the Vampire tunnel vision, and prevented him from realizing that the Dark Lord reached for him until he was already grabbed by his wild waves of hair... grabbed and thrown so hard he sailed through the air, cracking the back of his head against the marble edge of Leviathan's chosen fountain. Jinho wasn't conscious to see him deliver a strike that made Lust pass out, to see Alexiel silently slip down the stairs and pull him from the water spilling over him, as Leviathan left with an animal grumble.
Lucifer pulled the cane blades from Asmodeus' body, and Hell's royal couple shared a look that said everything and nothing.
"My Lord," The Hatter seemed to drip from the incredibly high ceiling, the black and white jester's hat left neglected on the steps to the thrones. "You have a call on hold."
"Take a message." He spoke without looking at Pride.
"Your brother insists."
That... that much was enough to make the King of Hell look upon the Jester. Even these days, Michael rarely called him...
"He says that his news is urgent," The Mad Hatter watched his hold on the cane blades slip just slightly when she continued. "I would guess from his voice, that the news is most dire..."
xXxXxXx
The days following the viewing of that horrid video were heavy, weighed down with tenseness. Sadness. Anger. Mourning... Even during prior days of stress, the mansion always breathed with life, with people going about their business, with children playing. Now everyone kept closed up in their rooms... apart from Raphael and Barbiel taking turns checking on the former Dragonmaster, the mansion seemed dead, and Lilith felt utterly alone as she slowly made her way along the hall.
Both of the Angel medics had said that she should rest often, but despite the way her fevers came and went without warning, she couldn't stay in bed. Her mind wouldn't allow it, every thought and question and concern forming a thick web all across her brain. Walking didn't help her reach any answers... but somehow, it helped keep her from having a breakdown of her own.
Maybe she hoped she'd catch him in this hall, sooner or later.
Lilith's hand instinctively reached out, fingers tapping, then idly scratching at the wood of Jinho's door. They grabbed on tight to the doorknob...
She took off, her hand dragging along every wall and door. As if breaking into his room was going to help her at all? As if she'd find him in there? As if barging into his personal space would right every single thing that had gone wrong? As if-
One door gave seemed to give way under her touch, and once she realized whose room it belonged too, she jumped, her hands held up passively... But when her garnet eyes turned to look at the Angel she hadn't seen or heard from since the day that horrible video came to them, she found herself not looking at anyone's face. Her eyes had come to focus on a broad chest, covered in perfectly-tailored black silk. Lilith's head tilted up, and her breath caught in her throat as steel-gray eyes assessed her.
"... Interesting."
People weren't kidding when they said that it was virtually impossible to read the Lord of Hell. Lilith used to find Jinho's ink-black eyes utterly unreadable, but Lucifer's whole face was strangely careful. Calm. Touches of arrogance all around it, just enough for her to feel offended at his single word, but the way the chilly steel of his eyes pierced into her kept any retorts from leaving her lips. A first, for her...
That was when Michael appeared from behind him, and finally Lilith managed to speak. "I'm sorry." For thoughtlessly scratching on his door. For ruining his life. She expected him to snap and yell and maybe wash her down in flames...
Instead he replied, "I know you are."
And that was it. Michael was too defeated for much else, gently bouncing his daughter in his arms. One pudgy hand wrapped itself around his dog tags, tugging on the chain. The other gripped on hard to one curved bar of a mini-crown...
But the worst thing of all was the way those huge ruby eyes locked onto her, the way she held out that white and silver mini-crown and shook it at her as she asked, "See Mama?"
Lilith's mouth dropped open, and Michael's eyes shut tight. Before she could even think of an answer, Lucifer reached out and carefully took the child from his brother's arms.
"Lulu...!" The child greeted her uncle, and the Devil shared with her a small smile that seemed to crack the former unreadable smoothness of his face, the slightest of sighs escaping his lips.
"Congratulations, Princess of Evils," He said, and the words cut through the air so suddenly that it shook her, made her rest her golden hands across her belly.
"How...?"
"I told him." Michael grumbled. "Raphael told me, the other day."
The other day meaning, the day he'd nearly roasted her alive... But she frowned down at her belly. Congratulations? She assumed most people would be happy about a pregnancy, yes... Not her. Not like this. Not alone. "... Thank you, Lord Lucifer."
"Now that we've finished with the niceties, we'll let you be on your way." Just like that, he was shooing her away, without an ounce of remorse for his abruptness. He had a way of playing on every tense string within... no wonder it was said that these brothers didn't often get along. Lilith wanted to snap at him, but settled for a glare as he continued, "Seeing as you don't seem to have scratched all over the door with anything to say."
"I do, actually!" Oh, there was her snapping.
But it didn't even begin to faze him. A corner of his mouth lifted, and steel-gray eyes shifted over to Michael's moody head.
"Is he done?"
There, that seemed to actually affect the man, somehow. His dark brows briefly, gently pinched together when he realized her words were meant for him. "Is who done?"
Her cat-eye pupils thinned into slits. "Jinho. Is he done with whatever stupid errands you've dropped into his lap?"
"Aren't you presumptuous?" He responded to her heat with an iciness so cold, it burned. "I haven't had anything assigned to him in the past two weeks."
… Then where the Hell was he? "Is he there? In Sheol?" Her voice grew sharp and demanding.
"Yes." He answered simply, "Though I didn't see him until today." Already the Dark Lord had half-turned away, looking down at Isobelle as the child reached up and grasped at his cheek.
"Wait!"
Michael's hands suddenly shot out, planting themselves firmly against the doorjambs. Only then did Lilith realize she'd nearly charged into Michael's poorly-lit room.
"Yes?" Lucifer said coolly, patiently.
"Then..." Shinryu help her, she didn't even know what she wanted to ask the King of Hell. "He's...?"
A sudden, short, dark laugh rumbled in his chest. "He's not dead."
The answer didn't comfort her. She wasn't sure that it was meant to. But Lucifer walked away, listening to Isobelle ask him for what probably wasn't the first time, "Lulu, see Mama?"
Hearing his daughter ask for her dead mother yet again visibly struck the Fire Angel, made his voice strained and frayed. "Get out of here, Lilith."
"No, wait...! Wait!" Lilith felt a warning throb in her head, but persisted, gesturing desperately.
"Why?" Michael spat back in a hiss. "Wait for what? You've apologized how many fucking times, already?"
"I know, I know that I have!" And yet she stood there, trying to find words for impossible feelings.
"And now you're pregnant, to top it all off...!" He seethed. "Can I guess from the way you just tried to hound my brother that it's the Vampire's? The guy your people wanted you to get with in the first place?" Michael watched her eyes drop to his chin, no longer able to look directly at him. "It is. It fucking is. Why didn't you just stick with him? I mean, what the fuck was wrong with him? Nema's always had nothing but praise for that asshole!"
"I haven't-!" She cut herself off, fingers clutching at her shirt.
Michael's moody green eyes narrowed into slits. "You haven't what? Chosen him? You just put out at random?"
"I don't know! Okay? He had me and then he left! I haven't seen him since! Am I supposed to choose him after that?" The Evil heard tears spring up in her voice. "There is so much shit going on right now. I can't make sense of it. It's a mess..."
"You could fucking say that again. You're a God damn idiot, you know that? Tell me, whatever stupid shit you said to Nema, were you even being genuine, or were you stirring the pot for no good fucking reason?"
"No! I don't know!" Lilith fumbled to explain her reckless self. "I thought that I was... genuine. I guess. I-"
"You guess." Michael pushed himself away from the doorframe. "Why me? Why the fuck did you pick me?"
She sighed hopelessly. "... You... I wish I could explain." Her hands rested on her still-flat stomach, and she stared at her feet. "You have this way... you can be so... aggravating, but..." She frowned up at him. "Out there, pushing me as hard as you did. I don't know... you made me feel like I could be more. Be better." And her frown only grew when she saw him rake his hands through his fiery hair.
"Jesus..." Michael felt the tears stinging his eyelids, which had long since gone raw from prior weeping. "Nema left me because I gave you a fucking self-esteem boost?"
Watching him struggle to keep from crying, only caused her to cry. "I'm sorry..." She had said that so many times... but she wasn't sure that it could be said often enough.
"No."
Lilith blinked through her tears as she saw him lean heavily against his door, knuckles rapping against the wood as he frowned in frustration, in mourning.
"No... You can be as fucking sorry as you want to, but..." Michael paused, and his hand closed around his dog tags, around his wife's abandoned wedding ring. "... I have to be sorry, too."
"Michael, none of this is your fau-"
"Shut up." Michael suddenly snapped, pulling hard on the chain around his neck. "Shut the fuck up. I have to be sorry, too. I'm the one who let her go. I even told her to go. I was so fucking pissed off and she just..." He released the chain, and the pink diamond clattered against the steel plates of his dog tags as they fell back against his heart. "... slipped through my damn fingers."
The Evil watched him as his lip quivered, and felt hers quivering, too. He fought back the tears that lined his eyes, as the fingers of his left hand twitched and rubbed against each other, feeling his rose gold wedding band.
"God... you know, I should've known better. I should have. I already knew what it was like to feel like I'd lost her forever. When she was Wing Cut..." Finally, despite all his efforts, a tear managed to escape from between his lashes. "For two fucking years, I was miserable...! Then she was brought back to me... alive and healthy and... I swore I'd never let her out of my sight. I'd never let myself lose her again... but look what I did."
Lilith wanted to reach out and shake the poor man. "But it wasn't your fault, Michael. You didn't know that she would run into Azrael and you didn't know that he would..."
"But it is my fault for letting her walk out of this fucking door. I got so used to having her in my life, Lilith. I got cocky. I felt like nothing could get in our way, anymore. We'd been through it all. We won... and I got careless. She got mad and I told her to fucking leave. And she did. And now she won't be coming back... Neither her nor my son."
"Raphael-"
"I know what he said." Michael's voice went low and gruff. "And as much as that's the truth, I can't believe that Azrael hadn't thought of that, himself."
The implication rose up like the beginnings of yet another fever. "... You think he... got rid of the bodies?"
"Either that or he had them hid somewhere we'll never find them." Every glimmering tear lining his eyes suddenly seemed threatening. "But I'll still find him. I'll find him, and then I'll run him right through his chest. Just like he did to Nathan."
She met his eyes, and the fire in them made it hard to bear his conviction. No one could have doubted his claims, his plans. "... Isobelle-"
"-is why I haven't left to hunt him down, yet." He stood up straight, attempting to draw in all of his pain and lock it tight within himself. "She's needed me here. She keeps... asking where Nema is. And I've tried to tell her..." Despite his best efforts, his brows began to pinch together, again. "But it's like she refuses to believe that Nema's gone. Nathan's gone. I feel like the only reason why she hasn't asked about Nathan is because she just... knows he's with her." A subtle, sad quiver ran through his body. "Some kind of child's intuition. But she's too young to understand... She needs me, here. For now."
Lilith brushed her hand across her forehead, realizing that the fever was definitely returning. "Maybe you need her, too. More than revenge."
Michael confessed, "God, Lilith, my Bell is the only thing keeping me from turning into an inferno." Pain had a way of cracking through his throat, but he didn't acknowledge anything else. Rejected her suggestion for anything beyond revenge...
She knew she couldn't reason with him, once his heart was set. "Are you gonna be okay...?"
"I don't have a choice... I have to be okay. Isobelle needs me. If I can't be here for her after all of this... then I never deserved to have a family." He wounded himself with his words, but accepted it with a sober, solemn face. "I have to be okay. For her."
Lilith sighed, partly from sadness, partly from illness. "My fever's coming back, again..."
"Then get the Hell out of here. Take care of your kid." He watched her gently clutch at her stomach, and read the uncertainty all over her face... Michael knew that look well. That was the look he'd worn when he first learned that he would become a father. He hated it, he sympathized with it, and he hated that he sympathized with it... "No more being selfish, Lilith." He spoke firmly, and he meant it in every single way he could think to mean it.
He left her with those words, that lesson, shutting the door after she wordlessly nodded a farewell.
"That went well. Surprisingly well."
"Shut up." Michael strode back into the room and found his brother near one of the windows, curtain held aside with his broad shoulder. Isobelle was right at home in her uncle's arms, softly jabbering something about Lulu and 'birbir' and smacking lightly at the glass, scaring off a sparrow. "And was that shit even necessary? I already told you I nearly killed her."
"Being put in fear for her life doesn't exactly change how I feel, little brother."
Michael was never going to get used to the fact that in some significant ways, Lucifer had known Nema before he ever did. So what, if he'd been – unwillingly – assigned to watch over her since her birth? He wasn't the one who had taken the time to pay attention to her, in her youth. To actually reach out to her... even if it was only by letter. Even if it was under the name he'd shared with another, way back when. So her death cut the Devil deep, under his carved-marble face. Deeper than Michael had expected. "'He's not dead.' Fucking really?"
"Well, he isn't." Steel-gray eyes met Michael's. "And I'm surprised she cares, at all. From what I'd gathered, she despised him."
The Fire Angel scoffed. "I don't fucking know, anymore. Nothing makes sense." Leaning against the window with crossed arms, he continued, "So the dandy Vamp fucked up Lust?"
A corner of his mouth lifted. "They fucked each other up, in your terms."
"I'm shocked Jinho's still breathing, going up against a Satan."
"He's not to be underestimated, actually. There is a reason I sought him out."
"Yeah, that had nothing to do with you not liking an age-changing Vampire hanging around Nema when she was a damn kid."
Mentioning her name brought a silence between the brothers, a silence that Lucifer only quietly broke. "Fine, then. There is a reason I have kept him around."
But suddenly Michael had no interest in talking about his late wife's best friend. He reached out, and the Dark Lord handed over his wiggling daughter, the white and silver mini-crown waving about as she held it. "Papa..."
God, that word was his damn anchor. "Bell Bell..."
"Papa, see Mama?"
The other two words pulled him apart, and it showed all over his face. "No, Bell..." His frowning mouth quivered, "Bell Bell, Mama's not here..." His voice cracked. "Mama's not coming back..."
Like all the other times he'd forced himself to tell his daughter the truth, the words seemed to bounce off of her, unheard, ignored. All she did was embrace him as well as her little snowy arms could manage, murmuring like he was a child to be cooed into comfort. He held on tightly to Isobelle because she was the only thing even vaguely holding him together, and didn't look up until he felt his brother grip onto his shoulder.
"I should go, before one of the other Satans decides it might be a great idea to pick a fight of their own." Lucifer paused, releasing the War Angel's shoulder. "My offer stands. If being here is too much."
"You know I fucking hate staying in Sheol." The retort came sharp as his glare. It had taken eons to even entertain the idea of going there... and only since Nema became a part of his life did occasional visits become an option, for him. But never anything longer than a day... It simply wasn't home. It just wasn't.
But Lucifer had known he would respond in so many words. "And all the same, the offer stands." He didn't say goodbye. Neither brother ever really did.
The door creaked open, and Michael blurted out, "After I destroy Azrael." He looked up to meet steel-gray eyes, calm and expectant. "Maybe."
He gave him a single nod before slipping through the door. "Maybe, then."
xXxXxXx
"Chiyo… Chiyo, wake up, my little bird." Serissa cooed softly to the sleeping girl she loved.
"Mmm…. Serissa?" Chiyo squeaked out a yawn and rubbed sleep from her eyes. "What time is it?"
"It's very early, my love. I'm sorry to wake you." Serissa's hands, still discolored from her black hair dye, gently combed through Chiyo's mussed white hair. "Listen to me. I only have a minute, but there's something I need to tell you."
"M'kay." Sleepy red eyes fought to stay open when Serissa continued to gently stroke her hair.
Serissa couldn't be sure Chiyo was still listening, but she spoke anyway. "Chiyo, I'm sorry I haven't been a better mother to you. I'm sorry that… you had to grow up without a real mom. If I could, I would do anything to give your real family back to you. All I can do is give you this one last gift." She sighed and leaned down to kiss Chiyo's temple. "I love you, little Chiyo."
"Seri…?"
"Shhh. Go back to sleep, now. I'm going to see Maya. I'll… I'll see you soon." Serissa nearly choked on her own lie.
She was never going to see Chiyo again.
Tears welled in Serissa's eyes as she pulled Chiyo's pink blankets back up to the girl's chin and left out the window.