Time, for an Ascended, can seem trivial at best. Their lives so long-lived, their bodies so strong and capable of weathering most of nature’s creations. Clemente hadn’t meant to be late. To lose track. So consumed with the knowledge of Nate’s attack, so off-balanced and emotional, he’d simply...forgotten. It’s pathetic, that a case of forgetfulness - of sentimentality - is what is liable to get him killed. After years razing every emotional attachment in his years on the street, this singular love for the man who has become like brother and father alike to him is what secures his demise. At first, he forgets entirely about his unused patch of invisibility. He merely runs. Runs as fast as his legs can take him, hunting through the oppressive darkness that swallows any light or hope the boy could count on to save him. Each cry for help is met with demonic, overlapping howls and screeches of mockery and malice that no human throat could utter. There is no panting or wheezing as he runs for his very life, his vessel too perfectly crafted for such human debilitations. All the same he is not free of the burden of human emotion; terror, despair, the clawing hope that persists even when escape seems impossible. And he calls into the dark as he nears the Temple, tears cold against temples that cannot feel it. ”REX! MOM, HELP!” Praying to his Goddess, his creator, with all his might that she will hear him - and against all odds, all notions of safety and the rules she’d helped lay down - and emerge into the dark to save him as she had that first starry night.
Maybe it’s Ascended hearing, or simply just the senses that something is wrong that drives her toward the boarded up door in the corner. Azrael has been given to Bastien while she searched those that had entered the Temple. Searching for a familiar face, searching for Clemente and when she’s unable to find him, she hopes he’s decided to stay in Torchline for the week. But she’s not quite that lucky, not as she nears the door and hears that faint cry, that scream. She knows it could be a trick, knows it could just be LongNight out to get her as it had last time. She’s made it through two of them now, she understands how it works. And still, it does nothing to quell the worry in her gut. So she tears the boards down, steals a glance back toward those gathered in the Temple, and slips through the door and closing it tight behind her. And then she’s scanning, searching with all the adrenaline she can muster in her newly replenished body. “Clem?!” She calls out, peering through the darkness, listening through the howls, searching for a sign and a direction to follow through the snowy night.
There’s no physical need for it, and yet his lungs seem to squeeze and a sob is forced through in relief at Rexanna’s familiar voice. He’s terrified to lead them to her, to potentially kill her with his own foolish mistake. At his heart he is still a child though, no more than a teenager, and in that way there is still the surety that the woman who has become mother and matron to him will be strong enough to stand against these monsters. That she will shelter him, save him. Foolish or childish it may be, his steps never faulter as he runs towards her voice. ”Mom! Here, I’m here!” He calls helplessly back, voice shrill and terrified. Not knowing how to activate the chip even if he was aware he still had it, not knowing what else to do but run straight for the safety of her embrace. The monsters snarl and snap in ravenous delight as they hound him towards the Temple like dogs moving cattle. He doesn’t want to die. Not now, not after everything. Rexanna had given him a reason to live - perhaps she can save him once more.
There. She hears his call, immediately begins to move under the cover of darkness, eyes attempting to adjust to little to no avail. So she relies on listening for him, following his voice until an arm reaches out to grasp him. But she can sense something else’s approach, a swarm so similar to the ones that had appeared and taken her sight - the low buzzing begins in her ears and the grip on Clemente grows tighter - her other arm flinging out to shoot a firework toward where she thinks she can sense the majority of them. “Hold onto me.” She instructs him, letting her eyes adjust to the light sparked from the firework, searching for where they’re at in the sense of location and how to get back. Perhaps the firework did enough damage to the creature nearing in that they might be able to slip away, however briefly, before the assault begins again.
She’s there. She’s there, and everything will be alright. There’s nothing else he needs to know, to fear, as her magic blooms before them in a wall of light and fire that shields them from the darkness beyond. He clings to her as she demands, activating his chip now that he has a spare moment to think, hoping that perhaps it will confuse the monsters if nothing else to have one of them disappear. He moves as she moves, mimicking every step and shift of weight, a dogged shadow. ”Thank you. ‘M sorry, ‘m sorry, I’m so sorry,” trembles softly from his lips, wanting so desperately to apologize even as his mind screams that he needs to be as silent as possible. Cocooned in her protective, defensive form, he is sure that nothing here can harm him. That they will emerge victorious once more, as she had done even with the vestiges of life clutched in her powerful fingers. Clemente trusts her. With everything.
“It’s alright, love.” She coos to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders to keep him near and her other arm free. “We’ll make it back and you’ll be safe. And you can meet Azrael.” She whispers to him, knowing his Ascended hearing will pick it up. Still, the shadows swarm despite their disappearance - and she uses another firework, aimed bright toward the Temple and familiar steps she’d know blindfolded to lead her back to the front. She can hear the monsters shrieking and buzzing around them, waiting for the moment to strike, for it to attack, and all she can do is keep Clem as close as possible, searching for the door, for the way in. She knows it’s Ascended barred, but that shouldn’t stop her from being able to knock on the door - to tell Deimos or Amalia or whomever sits on the other side that they’re out here and that they need in.
She’s ready to prove they’re themselves in order to get into the safety and warmth of the Temple, to quell his worries and fears with a new sibling and herself and Bastien to embrace him.
The soft crooning cadence of her voice is a balm to the torn bits of his heart that Nate’s injury and the monsters had ripped open. There’s scarcely an inch of his skin that isn’t magnetically attached to hers, afraid to let go lest he be swept into the dark and forgotten forever. Devoured and tossed aside where nobody would care to look or retrieve him. Only her light can shield him from that fate, and he clings to every word she bestows. Trying to parse a name he’s never heard - perhaps the baby? Has it finally come? - as his emotions war between relief, lingering terror, and budding excitement. Could he be a big brother then? Like Nate is to him? Someone more solid and eternal than his own blood family had been. Maybe the cycle can start anew with Clemente, and he can prove that he’s worthy of being trusted, of having someone love him. That he won’t abandon this small child that has become part of his family without him even being there to welcome them into the fold.
As they make it to the door he shuffles close, hands clinging to her clothing like a small child. ”Will they open th’ door? You sure?” After all he’d heard the strictness of the rules, the constant impressing of the importance of keeping every single door, window, and opening barricaded against the monsters.
It’s almost like the monsters are corralling them closer, and she does her best to ward them away - forgoing the fireworks for a bit of flame to illuminate the door as they approach. “Of course they will. They did for me last year.” She assures him, as the monsters swarm in closer with the source of light, trying to ignore that last time she’d been impaled and blinded. “Just hold on tight, okay?” Rexanna hums to him, keeping her arm as tight as physically possible around Clemente until they’re just before the door. And then, she reaches up, extinguishing the flame and hoping the invisibility works as the Voice had assured them. “OPEN THE DOOR.” She calls out, hoping that her voice is distinguishable enough to have it open. “It’s Clemente and Rexanna, and we need you to open the door!” Another yell to the side of the door.
But perhaps knocking might attract more attention?
Her hand is already raised and she reaches forward to bang her fist against the door. And then… And then - her skin touches the door, and everything goes wrong, and there’s a blinding light within her systems, burning and vibrant, brilliant and terrifying and she can’t get her hand off the door. She tries to pull back, tries to act as though it’s burning, and keeping Clemente so close only sparks the electricity between them as the door rampages through her systems, blocking pieces out one by one. She doesn’t even know if she’s screaming, too many alarms and confusing signals sent to her brain and her internals, her body shuddering with the pulses of it.
When it comes, he isn’t expecting it. Any tension he feels is directed towards the monsters that circle around them, gaze focused on their antagonistic approach. Rexanna’s words keep the panic at bay, and for once he leaves the adult to do the adult things. To save them, really. So when it comes, his guard is down. One moment there is only fear and the ticking of the clock, the prayer that someone comes to the door half-constructed in his mind when his systems start going haywire. There’s no real pain, at least not in the way he’s used to, but everything is shuddering and sparking and going up in sizzling blue flames and he’s terrified. ”Mom?!” he tries to scream, but the word comes out distorted and ruined, glitching halfway through with death throes he can’t seem to shake. If Clem thought he knew terror before, with the monsters at his heels and the darkness closing in, he stands firmly corrected. There’s a tiny voice inside that whispers I’m going to die. This is it. I’m dying. He doesn’t know if he cries, if his systems even register the prompt. But he feels it. He feels it as he always has, Physiology or no. Inside he has always had a soul, capable of all the good and bad any human could lay claim to. His humanity is undeniable in his final moments, and he wishes those who hate him and his family could see it. Because in that last, dragging, eternal moment - he too fears death. Even knowing with certainty that his creator will be waiting on the other side to welcome him into eternity, he's terrified. He doesn't want to go. There's so much he still needs to do, so much to live for. He wants to meet Azrael. He wants to tell Nate he loves him one more time, thank him for a single extension of kindness in a run down church during a week of darkness. He wants to tell Dante that he loves him at all, in a way he's never felt for another person. He wants to thank Wessex for taking a chance on a dumb kid with a big mouth, for loving him when he didn't deserve it in the first place. He wants to see Bastien again, and apologize for taking away the one thing the man loves most in this world. It's all his fault. And most of all he wants to beg Rexanna for her forgiveness. It's all his fault, and he doesn't even have the decency to die quietly, unobtrusively. Instead he drags Rexanna down with him, snuffing out the only light of good that has persisted in his life since the day he came here.
Clemente doesn't know if his body responds, but he reaches for her as he falls to the earth, crumpled and shorted out like a bad wire so easily discarded. He can't tell if he's choking on tears or if the fluid rises from within, drowning his systems one by one. But he tries. He reaches with his small hand to try to find Rexanna's, to hold on tight through the terror of the unknown that bears down upon him. I want to live, he thinks brokenly, wishing there were stars in that blackened sky to gaze upon in his final moments. But nothing answers his broken plea. So there's only one thing left to say. I'm so sorry.
And then there is nothing more.
There’s so much more she needs to do too. She needs to prove to Kiada, to Deimos and everyone else that she can raise and love a child in this new version of herself. She needs to prove that despite her constant shift of attention, that she loves them with all of her heart. But she can’t even think as she feels the shuddering pulses grow more and more. And then she’s falling, a disconnect from the door but it still ravages her systems, shutting them down one by one. And suddenly, she can’t move her one arm, her leg, she can’t think aside from the fact that Clemente is pulling her down, and she clings to him with the parts of her that still work. Her eyes start glowing, start dimming, start glowing again with the rapid shift and change in her internals.
And all she can think is that she’s sorry too - sorry she didn’t seek him out before now. Sorry that she had been under the assumption that it only repelled Ascended and didn’t harm them in such a way. She’s sorry she doesn’t get to tell Bastien that she loves him one last time, but she knows he’ll be a good father - no, the best father she could’ve ever asked for with any of her children.
She hopes she’ll see him again to tell him, but for now all she can do is wait until the systems shift into nothingness and her body doesn’t work anymore, and her throat tightens up and the light to her eyes fade out, and the darkness creeps in. At least… At least her and Clem get to go together, get to walk together to where the Voice keeps them. At least they won’t be alone. At least they have each other.
And then there’s nothing more.
Maybe it’s Ascended hearing, or simply just the senses that something is wrong that drives her toward the boarded up door in the corner. Azrael has been given to Bastien while she searched those that had entered the Temple. Searching for a familiar face, searching for Clemente and when she’s unable to find him, she hopes he’s decided to stay in Torchline for the week. But she’s not quite that lucky, not as she nears the door and hears that faint cry, that scream. She knows it could be a trick, knows it could just be LongNight out to get her as it had last time. She’s made it through two of them now, she understands how it works. And still, it does nothing to quell the worry in her gut. So she tears the boards down, steals a glance back toward those gathered in the Temple, and slips through the door and closing it tight behind her. And then she’s scanning, searching with all the adrenaline she can muster in her newly replenished body. “Clem?!” She calls out, peering through the darkness, listening through the howls, searching for a sign and a direction to follow through the snowy night.
There’s no physical need for it, and yet his lungs seem to squeeze and a sob is forced through in relief at Rexanna’s familiar voice. He’s terrified to lead them to her, to potentially kill her with his own foolish mistake. At his heart he is still a child though, no more than a teenager, and in that way there is still the surety that the woman who has become mother and matron to him will be strong enough to stand against these monsters. That she will shelter him, save him. Foolish or childish it may be, his steps never faulter as he runs towards her voice. ”Mom! Here, I’m here!” He calls helplessly back, voice shrill and terrified. Not knowing how to activate the chip even if he was aware he still had it, not knowing what else to do but run straight for the safety of her embrace. The monsters snarl and snap in ravenous delight as they hound him towards the Temple like dogs moving cattle. He doesn’t want to die. Not now, not after everything. Rexanna had given him a reason to live - perhaps she can save him once more.
There. She hears his call, immediately begins to move under the cover of darkness, eyes attempting to adjust to little to no avail. So she relies on listening for him, following his voice until an arm reaches out to grasp him. But she can sense something else’s approach, a swarm so similar to the ones that had appeared and taken her sight - the low buzzing begins in her ears and the grip on Clemente grows tighter - her other arm flinging out to shoot a firework toward where she thinks she can sense the majority of them. “Hold onto me.” She instructs him, letting her eyes adjust to the light sparked from the firework, searching for where they’re at in the sense of location and how to get back. Perhaps the firework did enough damage to the creature nearing in that they might be able to slip away, however briefly, before the assault begins again.
She’s there. She’s there, and everything will be alright. There’s nothing else he needs to know, to fear, as her magic blooms before them in a wall of light and fire that shields them from the darkness beyond. He clings to her as she demands, activating his chip now that he has a spare moment to think, hoping that perhaps it will confuse the monsters if nothing else to have one of them disappear. He moves as she moves, mimicking every step and shift of weight, a dogged shadow. ”Thank you. ‘M sorry, ‘m sorry, I’m so sorry,” trembles softly from his lips, wanting so desperately to apologize even as his mind screams that he needs to be as silent as possible. Cocooned in her protective, defensive form, he is sure that nothing here can harm him. That they will emerge victorious once more, as she had done even with the vestiges of life clutched in her powerful fingers. Clemente trusts her. With everything.
“It’s alright, love.” She coos to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders to keep him near and her other arm free. “We’ll make it back and you’ll be safe. And you can meet Azrael.” She whispers to him, knowing his Ascended hearing will pick it up. Still, the shadows swarm despite their disappearance - and she uses another firework, aimed bright toward the Temple and familiar steps she’d know blindfolded to lead her back to the front. She can hear the monsters shrieking and buzzing around them, waiting for the moment to strike, for it to attack, and all she can do is keep Clem as close as possible, searching for the door, for the way in. She knows it’s Ascended barred, but that shouldn’t stop her from being able to knock on the door - to tell Deimos or Amalia or whomever sits on the other side that they’re out here and that they need in.
She’s ready to prove they’re themselves in order to get into the safety and warmth of the Temple, to quell his worries and fears with a new sibling and herself and Bastien to embrace him.
The soft crooning cadence of her voice is a balm to the torn bits of his heart that Nate’s injury and the monsters had ripped open. There’s scarcely an inch of his skin that isn’t magnetically attached to hers, afraid to let go lest he be swept into the dark and forgotten forever. Devoured and tossed aside where nobody would care to look or retrieve him. Only her light can shield him from that fate, and he clings to every word she bestows. Trying to parse a name he’s never heard - perhaps the baby? Has it finally come? - as his emotions war between relief, lingering terror, and budding excitement. Could he be a big brother then? Like Nate is to him? Someone more solid and eternal than his own blood family had been. Maybe the cycle can start anew with Clemente, and he can prove that he’s worthy of being trusted, of having someone love him. That he won’t abandon this small child that has become part of his family without him even being there to welcome them into the fold.
As they make it to the door he shuffles close, hands clinging to her clothing like a small child. ”Will they open th’ door? You sure?” After all he’d heard the strictness of the rules, the constant impressing of the importance of keeping every single door, window, and opening barricaded against the monsters.
It’s almost like the monsters are corralling them closer, and she does her best to ward them away - forgoing the fireworks for a bit of flame to illuminate the door as they approach. “Of course they will. They did for me last year.” She assures him, as the monsters swarm in closer with the source of light, trying to ignore that last time she’d been impaled and blinded. “Just hold on tight, okay?” Rexanna hums to him, keeping her arm as tight as physically possible around Clemente until they’re just before the door. And then, she reaches up, extinguishing the flame and hoping the invisibility works as the Voice had assured them. “OPEN THE DOOR.” She calls out, hoping that her voice is distinguishable enough to have it open. “It’s Clemente and Rexanna, and we need you to open the door!” Another yell to the side of the door.
But perhaps knocking might attract more attention?
Her hand is already raised and she reaches forward to bang her fist against the door. And then… And then - her skin touches the door, and everything goes wrong, and there’s a blinding light within her systems, burning and vibrant, brilliant and terrifying and she can’t get her hand off the door. She tries to pull back, tries to act as though it’s burning, and keeping Clemente so close only sparks the electricity between them as the door rampages through her systems, blocking pieces out one by one. She doesn’t even know if she’s screaming, too many alarms and confusing signals sent to her brain and her internals, her body shuddering with the pulses of it.
When it comes, he isn’t expecting it. Any tension he feels is directed towards the monsters that circle around them, gaze focused on their antagonistic approach. Rexanna’s words keep the panic at bay, and for once he leaves the adult to do the adult things. To save them, really. So when it comes, his guard is down. One moment there is only fear and the ticking of the clock, the prayer that someone comes to the door half-constructed in his mind when his systems start going haywire. There’s no real pain, at least not in the way he’s used to, but everything is shuddering and sparking and going up in sizzling blue flames and he’s terrified. ”Mom?!” he tries to scream, but the word comes out distorted and ruined, glitching halfway through with death throes he can’t seem to shake. If Clem thought he knew terror before, with the monsters at his heels and the darkness closing in, he stands firmly corrected. There’s a tiny voice inside that whispers I’m going to die. This is it. I’m dying. He doesn’t know if he cries, if his systems even register the prompt. But he feels it. He feels it as he always has, Physiology or no. Inside he has always had a soul, capable of all the good and bad any human could lay claim to. His humanity is undeniable in his final moments, and he wishes those who hate him and his family could see it. Because in that last, dragging, eternal moment - he too fears death. Even knowing with certainty that his creator will be waiting on the other side to welcome him into eternity, he's terrified. He doesn't want to go. There's so much he still needs to do, so much to live for. He wants to meet Azrael. He wants to tell Nate he loves him one more time, thank him for a single extension of kindness in a run down church during a week of darkness. He wants to tell Dante that he loves him at all, in a way he's never felt for another person. He wants to thank Wessex for taking a chance on a dumb kid with a big mouth, for loving him when he didn't deserve it in the first place. He wants to see Bastien again, and apologize for taking away the one thing the man loves most in this world. It's all his fault. And most of all he wants to beg Rexanna for her forgiveness. It's all his fault, and he doesn't even have the decency to die quietly, unobtrusively. Instead he drags Rexanna down with him, snuffing out the only light of good that has persisted in his life since the day he came here.
Clemente doesn't know if his body responds, but he reaches for her as he falls to the earth, crumpled and shorted out like a bad wire so easily discarded. He can't tell if he's choking on tears or if the fluid rises from within, drowning his systems one by one. But he tries. He reaches with his small hand to try to find Rexanna's, to hold on tight through the terror of the unknown that bears down upon him. I want to live, he thinks brokenly, wishing there were stars in that blackened sky to gaze upon in his final moments. But nothing answers his broken plea. So there's only one thing left to say. I'm so sorry.
And then there is nothing more.
There’s so much more she needs to do too. She needs to prove to Kiada, to Deimos and everyone else that she can raise and love a child in this new version of herself. She needs to prove that despite her constant shift of attention, that she loves them with all of her heart. But she can’t even think as she feels the shuddering pulses grow more and more. And then she’s falling, a disconnect from the door but it still ravages her systems, shutting them down one by one. And suddenly, she can’t move her one arm, her leg, she can’t think aside from the fact that Clemente is pulling her down, and she clings to him with the parts of her that still work. Her eyes start glowing, start dimming, start glowing again with the rapid shift and change in her internals.
And all she can think is that she’s sorry too - sorry she didn’t seek him out before now. Sorry that she had been under the assumption that it only repelled Ascended and didn’t harm them in such a way. She’s sorry she doesn’t get to tell Bastien that she loves him one last time, but she knows he’ll be a good father - no, the best father she could’ve ever asked for with any of her children.
She hopes she’ll see him again to tell him, but for now all she can do is wait until the systems shift into nothingness and her body doesn’t work anymore, and her throat tightens up and the light to her eyes fade out, and the darkness creeps in. At least… At least her and Clem get to go together, get to walk together to where the Voice keeps them. At least they won’t be alone. At least they have each other.
And then there’s nothing more.
