already legends

EVIE

He burns out like a sputtering piece of coal, and the deadweight grief is almost worse than his flickering anger. She clings tight to him, wrapping around what she can even though he had outgrown her embrace long before she met him. Evie wishes that wasn't so, longs to have raised him herself, or to have found him earlier. Her love for him astounds her at times, and it makes it all the harder to see him suffering so deeply. His tears are damp and hot against her skin, and her own prick painfully along her lashes in empathetic response as she pulls him impossibly closer. "It's not. It's not fair, Dante, and I'm so sorry sweetheart." She can't say that Clem will be at peace with Mort, because his soul was not allowed to leave The Voice's grasp. She can't say that they will even be reunited, and Evie would rather cut her own heart out with a piece of the broken pottery that Dante had destroyed beneath them than tell him that. It's too raw, too soon, and the unfairness only seems to grow the more she considers it.

"All you can do is remember him. Honor him by continuing to live. Take it day by day, and know that he is watching over you always." She can't tell him to find purpose, not when he is still so newly deposited in this land. She can't tell him to move on, not when she knows how painful a loss such as this is. "I'm here. I'm here for you always, we'll get through this okay?" Somehow. Evie isn't sure how, but she'll figure out anything for the young boy in her arms.

Don't look up, just let them think
There's no place else you'd rather be