Prompt: "So you know that part where Break's like "Don't die, you're being stupid?" Ok but, what if Break lives and Vincent ends up dying somehow, either protecting him, or using his power as a child of the abyss to try and stop the abyss or something and Break's still alive after failing to save Vince and ends up at his funeral or over his grave or something iunno-" (from Ro, who is my Vincent)
Rating: T
Warnings: Character death mentions. And stuff.
Still laughing at how long Ro's prompt is for this. This relationship really is fascinating to me.
He hated Vincent—nothing more, nothing less. That much is a simple truth; that much, he can be certain of.
What seems strange, then, is why he feels so upset standing at the drain rat's headstone.
In a strange and passionate and final moment, he had said such strange and passionate and (or so he thought they'd be) final words to a man who he even now feels nothing but loathing toward; there is nothing but irony in the fact that he is alive now and Vincent is not. It's all wrong, as so many things seem to be; he still can't see the site of the grave, but he can feel the cold melancholy in the air inhabited only by the dead. Maybe Xerxes fits better in a graveyard than anywhere else, too—isn't he a ghost, too?
A ghost in flesh and blood, a man who should have died many times over by now, yet still he can stand and ruminate over another.
His gut is twisted up and he kicks some of the dirt on the ground, hoping it conveys his discontentment and disrespect well enough—a click is expelled from his lips, mixed anger and disappointment and he's not even sure what the names for all those emotions are but knows that he doesn't like them. Does he want to say anything to this person, still? Does he want to yell at him again, to hiss his disapproval without concealment? Does he wish to clear the air with the dead, to reveal himself to someone who can't say anything about it?
Xerxes lets out a long sight—it's the only expression he can settle on, because even though he's not sure what he means by it, it still seems to untangle some of the tightness in his core. "I guess you're happy," he mumbles, looking upward into the blackness, feeling the dry wind ruffle his hair, "you got what you wanted, didn't you? Well, part of it…"
Another deep breath—he wants to leave his regrets here, he thinks, but he's never been good at leaving anything behind. Something in him wants to say he understood, or that he got what was coming to him, or that he was a complete idiot to the end, or that he's sorry he didn't speak up sooner, maybe. But honesty is not, and never will be, the albino's specialty.
"Rest in peace," is all he can bring himself to say, instead.