The Demon Lord Is An Angel-Chapter 491: *Constellation - Part 4*
Guilt snaked its way through Ferro’s guts as he sat in an unfamiliar place with the man for whom his life had been twisted and his sister’s life sacrificed.
It was a small space, with a common area that was simply two desks and a wall, a small bathroom, and a pair of bedrooms off towards the edges, with the only windows looking out. After arriving, Kir led him to the left of the two bedrooms, letting Ferro sit on the bed as he took a chair and sat by the window.
The guilt twisting inside Ferro made him feel strangely cold, and so he pulled the blanket around himself, feeling no better for it but a little grateful not to be as naked as he had been... a strange thing, perhaps, given where they’d just been and given the half-naked metatron in the room. Kir’s chest was marked with hypnotic, ripple-like tattoos that drew Ferro’s eyes as he avoided looking at the male’s face.
As the silence dragged on, Ferro stopped looking at Kir altogether, simply staring down at the bed as he kept asking himself...
"Why..." Kir whispered. "That’s the question, isn’t it?" Ferro looked up to find Kir staring out the window sadly. "Why did it happen? Why here? Why now? Just... why?" he reached up and brushed aside a stray lock of hair, before turning to meet Ferro’s eyes with his iridescent gaze. "I didn’t mean for any of this to happen," he confessed. "But I want you to be alright, because the truth is that your sister died because of me." He took a breath. "And I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am."
The swirl of emotions in Ferro’s gut rose to his chest and twisted itself around his heart, anger and tears fighting until two words left his lips.
"Why you?" Ferro’s breath caught before he forced out the rest of the question. "Why are you worth all the pain we’ve suffered?"
He knew how cruel the question was, but right now, he needed to hurt someone. Anything to keep from feeling, knowing, that it was his own decision that doomed her. His own fear or overconfidence or just... not wanting her to have to deal with the titans he’d wound up surrounded by. He wanted to scream and lash out. To claw and rage at Kir, who had never even known Valera existed until... until...
"I’m not..." Kir said with a sigh. "I’m not worth any more than anyone else. And the more I think about it, the more I’ve learned... the more I know that Aelias could have picked anyone. But she chose her own child. She chose me to use and manipulate... and even with all my ideas, I still can’t see where that ends. Was I just a distraction? A vessel for Kiryu? Whatever I was created to do, clearly... " With a gesture, the wall and window disappeared, revealing the near-frozen cascade of destruction outside. "I’m not some hero who gets to save the world."
He looked away from Ferro, fingers covering his eyes.
Something seemed to reverberate out from Kir and into the room, charged with an emotion that washed up against Ferro’s wall of grief and connected to it. Ferro wanted to understand... but so did Kir.
He knew then that he could not hate Kir for the role that had been thrust upon him. They were both adrift on the tides of destiny... doing the best they could. Even at this very moment, Kir held tightly to the power that let all of them almost freeze time in place. That let them all find a tiny bit of love and peace before what could not be stopped happened.
Another shudder rippled through the world in an egg, Ferro barely aware of it despite being right next to the source. The destruction cascading outside seemed to slow just a tiny bit more... but then the pressure eased as Kir’s efforts brushed against the exponential demands of time - a barrier that only truly infinite power could cross, not the paltry division of infinity Kir knew...
Ferro knew this because he could feel Kir’s thoughts as the metatron struggled through them. He felt the moment Kir recognized the barrier of time and backed away from it. Felt his despair... and his determination.
Perhaps the latter was what bolstered Ferro’s heart into standing and crossing the small distance between him and Kir. The catkin reached up and pressed against him, unable to wrap his arms around him but still wanting to share some comfort.
This close, he could still feel Kir’s mind calculating, almost reaching through power to push their little slice of reality just a bit faster. Just a bit closer to the speed of light... just a bit closer to making something truly impossible...
"Kir..."
Ferro’s call snapped Kir out of his reverie, true shock and a hasty retreat from grief registering on Kir’s face for just a fraction of a moment before he offered up a weak, sad smile of acknowledgement. "I’m sorry, Ferro. This shouldn’t have been about me..." he turned a bit more to face Ferro, the wall appearing next to him, this time without a window. "I... wanted to see if you’d talk to me about what you’re going through. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, though..."
"I don’t know if I’ll ever want to," Ferro admitted, accepting Kir’s open hand when it was offered. "But if you’re willing to listen, I’ll... try."
He gently pulled Kir toward the bed, and together they lay down.
At first, they were just next to each other as Ferro began to talk.
At some point, without noticing, Ferro had started to hold Kir’s hand, his smaller fingers laced with the metatron’s long ones.
Sometimes, he felt Kir’s mind reaching back outward, testing infinity, but for the most part, the youth was attentive, asking questions only when it seemed Ferro was inviting them. Kir didn’t offer any answers or advice, instead gently steering Ferro towards the good things he remembered about Valera.
Their childhood had been brief, and yet the more he talked about it, the more Ferro remembered and was grateful to remember who she had been. How strong she’d been when their parents had died, to journey halfway across the world on the promise of magic and a better life... How strong she had to have become to survive the brutal lie that killed that same promise.
He felt guilty for not having the chance to understand who she’d become, but when he finally confronted this, he realized he was afraid of it... Because he knew she’d thrown her lot in with slavers and killers. He hated to think that perhaps it was better this way...
A surge of emotion curled Ferro’s spine as new feelings warred with each other for expression. He found himself in the fetal position, with Kir embracing him in a loose hug, and Ferro buried his face in Kir’s chest as he cried and cried, spilling a babble of thoughts and feelings without order or logic- except for the stream of renewed grief.
And when he could cry no more, Ferro still found his hand laced with Kir’s. He still found himself staring into the eyes of a face so gentle it seemed impossible to associate with the hard eyes of Kiryu, though a corner of Ferro’s mind knew that it was the exact same face. Something else stirred, a sense of... resonance.
He felt an idea of Kir, not as the avatar of a fate Ferro failed to avoid, but as a companion soul to a shared journey. One in which they would need each other, just as he needed Malzkael and Anko; as people he wanted to know would be alright.
Kir shifted forward, and Ferro readied himself to accept a kiss when he felt the metatron touch his forehead to Ferro’s. It was a gesture that felt somehow more intimate to Ferro than anything sexual. An act he’d performed with Malz the first night they bonded as more than friends.
Closing his eyes, Ferro lay with that dot of warmth and slight pressure. His breathing steadied, and his tears slowly stopped their flow. It wasn’t enough to end his grief, but it was enough to remind him that he was here. That he was alive and present and close to people who cared that he was alive and present. People who would protect him no matter what, despite barely knowing him...
He wanted to be worthy of them, and he could feel Kir’s thoughts were the same. The strange lines that formed a constellation of misfits had wrapped their way around his heart, and Ferro felt in that moment that he truly wished to explore what it was that kept everyone together... and to find his place amongst them.
So it was with a lightness in his heart that Ferro reached up and brushed the soft pads of his fingers along Kir’s chin, inviting him to lift his face as Ferro tilted into a questioning kiss.
He knew it wasn’t love... not yet. But in his kiss was a question of how to start again.
