Ernestina, Eris, Aequitas: to obtain that which is just we must ask that which is unjust.
AN: Sorry for the long wait! I've been studying for a remedial exam whose outcome will dictate my future. I just took it Friday, and I'll know within a week if I'm going onto second year or not! Wish me luck! Oh, and if anyone wonders, angelos is the Greek word we get Angel from in both English and Spanish, but its literal translation means 'messenger'. I thought the double connotations were suiting for this chapter.
20: 21 EST
Friday, August 30th
Ave Maria Boulevard
It's getting dark. The sun disappeared half an hour ago, but long fingers of dusk still trail across the purple sky. The world is caught in twilight, those eerie hours between light and deep darkness where the good fear to tread the streets for the evil, and the evil for the good. So the empty streets glide slowly by, light pole after light pole, block after dirty block. More passengers get on. More get off. I cannot see them, their faces lost in a greyish fog of anonymity and complacency, content to live as shadows, shadows and dust…
Gotham United Methodist. ER. The air conditioning hits and sends a cold breeze across sweaty skin. Goosebumps run down my arms and legs. I feel my breasts go taut. Pale, sickened people line the hallways, crying silently. After thirteen years on the job, that shudder going down my spine has nothing to do with the sudden cold. This one's going to be ugly. I feel it in my gut-
"It's a Zsasz." Nora's mild voice warns. "Be careful." Zsasz. I should've guessed it. Public place. Risky. Adrenaline rush. Quiet and quick. The bastard gets off on it. He wants his victims to be found, and as close to the time of death as possible. We interviewed the motherfucker in Arkham once before Fear Night. Said it was art, said it was a medium, said it was freedom of expression, religion, that given time he'd convert the blind and pitiful masses…
Jeremiah thought he was 'criminally insane with sociopathic tendencies' and should be locked up for 'his own safety and the safety of others.' I'm not a trained psychiatrist and I don't give a damn about the correct diagnosis. We should've put a bullet through his skull when he had the chance. At least he's not like those other monsters, I seethe silently as we stalk the sterile halls. The ones who play with their food before they eat it…
She holds out a gloved hand of caution, wrinkled face lined with worry. "Lawless, you might not want to-"
"Damnit, Nora, my wife works here!" He barks gruffly. "You're telling me some jackass walked in here and killed someone and now you don't want me to do my job-!"
We round the corner, and in an instant I know Nora to be right. "Fucking A." I snarl. She's young. Dark haired. Dressed to a T in hospital issued surgical scrubs. From the doorway, the victim could easily be Amy Lawless. But on closer inspection she's Latina. Bronze skin gone pale in death, desanguinated from the carotids, dark hair slicked lovingly behind her, burgundy scrubs hiding the bloodstains. Dark eyes open, she looks like she could still be alive…and that's the point. How close we are, the dead and living. How feeble, how fickle, how easily severed is our grasp on life. A silver stethoscope dangles between her buxom breasts, and the ipad with patient files is still clutched in her warm fingers.
From the door there's a wretch and a splatter. I don't need to turn my head to look to know Lawless just puked all over his shoes.
"You good?" I ask him.
"Yeah," He pants, wiping sick from his beard. "I'm good."
One time in Pakistan this Marine took a shot. Straight to the gut. Rode him back to base, three hours in a convoy. Nothing we could do. He was brave. Didn't cry. Told me not to. Called me soldier. He didn't make it, and I bawled like a baby. Those are the ones that stick with you, I tell Lawless in the silence as we ride back to the station. The ones you take home. Lose sleep over. Make you wake up in the middle of the night and roll to the one you love to feel for breath from their nostrils, feel the soothing sound of a living heart beating in a rising ribcage…you'll get over it. You'll be fine.
Yeah. He says. Yeah. I'll be fine. We'll be fine. And he will be. He'll go home. Hold her close. Make love. He'll never forget it but the panic'll be gone in the morning. At least for him. I go home to an empty house, an empty bed, reach for the warmth and comfort of a man's body I haven't felt in years and wonder what the fuck I've done to ever deserve this. I toss and turn, try to sleep. Yearn for the peace and consolation of Angel's sleeping face, for the son I haven't seen in years and never will again…
Give me blunt force trauma. GSW. Slicer-dicer Ripper style action. I can take the blood and gore. Can stomach the smears of CSF and bloodied entrails. Anything but this. The calm, the normal, the peaceful and surreal. The fucking waste of life for no reason, no reason at all…These are the ones that stick behind your eyes when you close them, haunt your dreams and make you slick with sweat when you wake up to piss.
…These, I whisper to Lawless miles away from the midnight barrenness of my empty bedroom, are the ones that make you wish to God you didn't sleep alone.
Zombies, Zsasz called them. The living dead. Better to release them, spare them pain, kinder to kill them than let them continue to exist. Bitter, broken and barren, only now do I finally understand him: death is a welcome rest to the weary. My heart beats slowly in my chest, struggling against the infection and exhaustion that threaten to overwhelm its final defense. The dead. I go to join them…
But not yet, I promise Angel's killer as the last sunrays fade into inky blackness. Not yet.
Angel. I reach my fingers across the bedclothes to the sleeping boy's curls-
Rubber. White rubber, red canvas and fraying white laces. It's just a shoe. Angel's shoe. I sit up. Open my eyes. Wince at the crick and strain in my neck and back, stretch and groan. This bus wasn't built for comfort, sitting, leaning, or standing.
I yawn. Blink. Fret with my aching limbs. Feel for my gun. My badge. My bag.
Dried blood is caked and crusted on Lawless' dark clothing. Some stains the strap between my breasts. I pick at it absently with my nails, eyes searching the deepening gloom for the distant horizon.
Wrought iron gates. Stone walls. Sisters of Mercy sprawls like a medieval castle across the suburban landscape, the third largest Catholic Convent in North America. But I'm not here for history or nostalgia. Not here for native groups demonstrations or protesting for gay rights. Not here to light a candle for Legacy victims…
…I'm here to bury my son.
20:47 EST
Blessed Sanctuary of the Sisters of Mercy
Abandoned lot. Overgrown ruins. Sisters of Mercy Foster Care, now entombed under flowers of well-wishers, candles, vines of ivy and crumbling concrete. Of the 43 fatalities that night, only 15 remains were ever identified and returned to next of kin. The rest lay, scattered to ash, forever buried in the wreckage of the building that consumed them.
A forlorn stone Angel stands, forgotten and crumbling, a broken fountain, an empty cistern that holds no water. It casts a shadow from street and distant starlight, and I find myself standing in its wake. Light rain begins to fall. The drops are cool. Welcome to a weary body and aching joints. I stand, face upturned, let it run down my face in place of the tears I am now too empty to cry. That broken fountain begins to bubble and trickle as rain water ebbs down in eerie flows around a weathered copper plaque:
This fountain is left forever broken in memorial to the families and homes that were forever sundered on March 1st, 2023, when Sisters of Mercy Foster Care was destroyed by fire. May they find peace.
I bend. Move the ivy. Scrape away the dirt and grime, that bluish film of oxidized metal. And here, at last, are the words I have been looking for:
But God has granted us a remnant. Let the light of their lives forever be testimony to His goodness and grace: Achilles Dumas, Rosario Juarez, Maggie Kyle, and Jimmy Connolly.
…And Jimmy Connolly.
Suddenly I am sobbing. I have lost my only child my only son my Angel my beautiful baby boy nothing I have ever done in penance or faith has erased my sins, they are scarlet before me my hands bloodstained, bloodstained like that last night at Underworld bloodstained like the last night I stood here before this statue did penanceprayerrestitution begged forgiveness and mercy a second chance, promised I'll be good I'll be a good person a good mother Angel I promise I'll do whatever it takes to find you-
On my knees now. The right burns like fire but the pain is nothing, nothing compared to the choking guilt in my heart and throat, sorrow drowns me and I am suffocating-
Breathe. Cough. Choke. Gasp. Lips turn blue eyes go blank empty lungs draw another so I can sob again. This is the fourth time my child has been taken from me. I kiss that shoe, kiss and weep, sobbing like a fucking baby can't control the tears the bitterness the grief the sorrow the rage that consume me in this unending moment I am not vengeance, not fury nothing but a woman, a weak, pathetic woman kneeling in the mud before a ruined sculpture in the rain, clutching a shoe to her breast and keening.
21:03 EST
Blessed Sanctuary of the Sisters of Mercy
The night is cold. A church bell rings. I sniff. Wipe slickened hair from my mud-stained face. The rain has ceased to fall. I am sprawled in a puddle before that broken statue, soaked sheer to the bone. Angel's shoe is still clutched in my shaking fist.
...It's time.
The ground is yielding, fingernails filled with rich, dark sod. It is earthy, loamy, so kind to me in my despair. The task is easy. It is nearly done. Gently I lay him down, kiss him one last time, eyes fill with ice and diamonds as dark clods cover him as though tucking him in, one last time. I turn away.
I am a mother. My task is done.
I sniff. Wipe my tears. Gaze out over the empty ruins and wonder what our life would be like, think of report cards and soccer trophies I will never get to hang, of birthday cards and Christmas presents, the fear of getting his license, the loneliness of his first girlfriend, the elation of the college acceptance letter he was too nervous to open and placed it into my trembling hands instead. Wonder why he was given to me as Isaac only to be slaughtered. Wonder why there could be no ram for me to find in the thicket, why I could not have died in his stead, why it is the innocent must die for the guilty when we are the ones who deserve true suffering. I look to the sky, to the hidden stars above the dome of pollution and light, wonder if there is a God, if He sees or cares at all…
…but mostly I wonder what two of Meroni's henchmen are doing entering Sisters of Mercy so late at night. The wind picks up, dries my tears. Above and Angel's grave, the Night has heard my weeping, and offers what condolences she may.