93 | liar; in the midst of disaster

Kane collapsed onto the hospital floors after enduring through hellish tasks; Stories that seemed fated with no happy endings. He owed it greatly to Adelaide and Julian for his survival—reminding him of his lack of ability.

Although Julian was too fearful of his own powers to utilize them properly, only thrusting an arm out and scrunching his face if it meant protecting his companions.

Adelaide, clearly, had been the one in charge despite her age.

Rome and Will rushed to help Kane to stand up, the doctor's legs weak and weary. A horde of children ran out to help him, acting as if their thin and small arms could lift him up entirely.

And really, they could. The might of children couldn't be looked down upon.

Berry clutched at his shirt, tugging insistently. The boy pouted for attention after being ignored by Lucas for so long. "...Kane... you won't ignore us too, right?"

Kane immediately noticed the word, 'too'. His mind was cloudy, and the scent of blood was still fresh in his nose, but he cast his gaze down the hallway deeply. There was an ominous sensation stirring in the depths of his mind.

He cleared his throat, every word feeling like fire scorching his throat. "Lucas... where's Lucas?"

Will exchanged a glance with Rome, helping Kane to fall into a chair. "It's... been a month... doctor. Since... Lucas came... back."

"A month?" Kane snapped his head over, shocked.

It'd felt like a week in Tartarus, though he couldn't deny losing track of time. He'd been prolonged after a pair of twins attacked Adelaide and Julian, hoping to sacrifice the young, innocent appearing youths.

Naturally, the doctor had involved himself. The pair didn't really need protection, but Julian's lack of control and fears often overwhelmed him, and Adelaide couldn't protect herself and Julian all the time.

No matter what time had passed, that didn't explain Will's grave expression.

Kane knew the teenager well—responsible and protective to the children he considered family. Will had originally been like a stray cat, unwilling to approach. Eventually, he warmed up to Kane.

And Will was the type to answer questions directly, and not in a roundabout way.

Kane's lips were dry, and he swallowed harshly, propping himself up on the chair. "Where's Lucas?" he repeated, suddenly terrified of the answer. "Has he received an injury, is he in a perilous state? Tell me, please."

He scrambled to stand upright, determined to search for his brother instantly, but Rome tugged him back down hesitantly.

"That mister—Lucas, he's... he's fine. He's not injured. Not really." said Rome slowly, carefully.

Kane saw the nervousness in the boy's expression, and settled back down despite his feet that were itching to storm the halls and knock on every door. Patiently, he raised hiss gaze. "Can you tell me where he is?"

"He's not here." A bitter voice said from down the hallway.

The hallway that was crowded with the clamouring children suddenly seemed long and expansive at that moment, a wide distance between the slumped doctor and the approaching figure clad in black.

Several of the children appeared nervous, shying to the other side as they peeked at the man warily. Smart, children were, to know who and who not to be cautious of.

If Elias noticed their reaction, he didn't care.

Hollow loss carved out his gaze, a lack of amusement of sarcasm, or even indifference. Rome curled up in the chair beside Kane, miserable and sullenly glimpsing over. Before, it was a little fun arguing or speaking to that man, but now it felt as if he weren't the time of Elias' day.

Elias gave the doctor a sweeping glance, shoulders pulled back and chin tilted with arrogance. It was a facade of confidence, because he didn't know how to act without it.

The white lights above were harsh, and flickered once as if to contribute to the stiffling atmosphere.

"Well, look whose come back in one piece, dearest big brother?"

Kane would've gazed with reproach, but there was an utter lack of emotion or teasing in the bland tone that it only made dread fill the space where irritation should've.

He didn't beat around the point, only one topic in his mind.

To his most precious person.

"Where is he?"

The question provoked Elias as he cocked his head, a sardonic smile playing at the curled corners of his lips. A blaze of anger flickered in the lukewarm blue, a contrast that couldn't go unnoticed.

"Much as I'd love to tell you, dearest big brother, I don't seem important enough to know that information."

He was seething, through the cracks that divided his white teeth, through every atom that made him. An anger at the loss of trust from the one person he wanted on his side. Even if the world scorned him, he could endure it. After all, why did it matter?

So what was this agony that itched and disturbed his mind and body, that irritated him to the core to think about?

Rome slightly unravelled his curled body, and then shrunk further into himself. He spoke glumly, in a soft mutter. "It's been a month and... and he keeps going in and out of Stories non-stop." He reached out to grasp Kane's sleeve desperately. "Doctor, I'm... scared. He always comes back really, really, injured but he refuses our help. Am I..."

A pause as his voice, if it were even possible, went even quieter. "Am I that useless?"

Kane comforted the boy, pulling the child closer to him as he ruffled the soft mound of hair, wilted and sorrowful. "Rome, you're a survivor. Know that. Remember it."

"...you really are related to him."

A laugh, half-forced, escaped the doctor. "I'd like to think that means I raised him correctly?" But despite the light atmosphere, his free hand gripped the chair viciously. He stared deeply at Elias.

In response, the man's shoulders slumped and an exasperated sigh left him. The man, always arrogant and tall, was weighed down.

Elias sneered. "Now, don't look at me. There's nothing I can do." Then, he added in a slightly quieter voice. "There's nothing I haven't tried."

Bitterly, he continued. "He only cares about claiming the Forsaken Throne, even if it costs him his life and his soul. That fool, he's finally snapped. He can no longer bear watching those around him die."

He was staring at a fixed point at the wall, and decided he wanted nothing more to do with the conversation. Elias was never a people person, and he'd only passed by to confirm that Kane had returned alive.

One foot raised in the air, the black cloak behind him fluttering behind like a trailing gloom.

"Well, well. Look whose back, in one piece, thankfully." A woman's voice echoed next, and Kane sprung to his feet grabbing her collar viciously.

Wren raised her arms in the air, amused. "What a greeting."

"What have you done?"

"Nothing terrible. I told him what he needed to do. No more playing nice, no more sweetness." Her gaze turned dark, covered in frost. "It doesn't matter anymore."

"Even if Nora was the only person you cared to play nice with, don't twist him to your whims, Teller!" hissed out Kane with a burst of anger.

Wren's jaw ticked and she wrenched herself out of Kane's grasp. "You don't get it! He's given up, he's panicked and desperate to not lose the one thing he absolutely can't live without. He'll do anything to achieve it."

Her voice raised, and she lifted her chin defiantly. "Listen, I'm a poor woman whose lost their love, and I pity him. What else can I do but help him succeed?"

Bang--!

The walls shook violently, a tremour spreading down the hallway as Elias slammed his fist against it up ahead, where he stood frozen.

Wren arched her eyebrows with a snicker. "The one who can't do anything is him, don't you think? Don't put all the blame on me. He isn't stopping Lucas either."

"I'm a bastard, and a murderer. I'll claim any title you give me, I'll be thrilled to." snapped Elias, the back of his head radiating anger and frustration. "But I can't stop him from what he's decided to do. If he fails, he'll be good as dead even if he somehow survives. So tell me, do you think I'm not doing anything because I want to?"

Rome had scampered to his feet, ready to jump in and interfere. The other children had long evacuated. However, Will pressed him gently by the shoulders and shook his head.

It wasn't their place to interfere.

The teenager cast his gloomy gaze to each person, to the tension that shaped itself around and between all of them. He adjusted himself in front of Rome, so that if a fight did break out, it wouldn't put the boy in danger.

Kane would want to stop Lucas at any cost—even Will could tell that whatever that adult he admired was doing, slowly chipped away at his sanity, bit by bit.

Wren decided to go along with Lucas' whims, her only purpose to help him achieve his goal.

And Elias... Will wasn't sure what that man wanted. Elias wanted Lucas to succeed in his ambitions; Elias wanted to lock Lucas away to ensure he'd continue breathing, living. It was a miserable group, all circling one person.

And through their silence, a single voice cut through.

"What the hell are you doing?"

A door swung open, and a man with dark circles under his eyes and a body that wasn't narrow, yet seemed on the verge of collapse, exited. He observed the three-way arguement for a mere moment before understanding what the topic of conversation was.

When his sharpened gaze landed on Kane, sight still blurry as an after-effect of his previous blindness, relief softened his eyes.

Kane, who'd gone missing for a month without knowing if he were still alive.

Lucas had been prepared to make another trip to Tartarus, even if it meant killing another ten people to meet its requirements.

A white shirt hung loosely over him, a laziness over his entire body that was marred with scars and blooming bruises.

Kane jumped out of his seat, not minding the watching eye sof the others, as he scanned Lucas' body up and down. Horrified, he clutched the man's shoulders. They were broad, grown over the years, but it was impossible to see Lucas as anything but his little brother.

"Lucas." The doctor's voice trembled under the dimming hospital lights.

Lucas couldn't look him in the eye. "Kane. I'm glad you're back alive."

"Lucas, what are you doing? What have you already done?"

"What I should've done in the beginning." His voice softened a notch, quiet and less aggressive. "I'm fine. Rest well and recover. I'll be back soon."

"Back? Where are you going?"

Lucas had already turned away, nodding at Wren who wriggled her fingers in the air jokingly. "You read my notes about the next Story? Our important long-nosed wooden boy awaits."

As Lucas walked away, shadows gathered at his feet, trailing in his every step. The darkness spread, reaching higher before engulfing his entire body. Lucas glanced back once, his snowy eyes painted with emptiness.

"He's powerful, just as he wanted." said Elias wryly. "Enough to stand on equal grounds with me, eventually. Or close enough."

"Oh stop your sulking, mister powerful and all-mighty." Elliot had been watching nearby, hardly interested in getting involved. In fact, he respected Lucas' change in character, the way the man abandoned his old morals. "You'll either support him, or watch him miserably from the sidelines."

Lucas, untainted by others thoughts or opinions, stubborn in his will. Elias had realized that was an aspect he craved to make his own, wanting to paint his own colours over the white that would refuse.

Now, Elias hated that trait in the foolish sponge, one foot in his grave.

He laughed at his own misery. Everything had been insignificant, and now that he found something of significance, he realized that his significance to that person didn't matter.

There were two months until the next ranking.

Lucas had worked tirelessly, ignoring the state of his own body and mind. His sleep twisted with nightmares, of the clawing and fragile bones that tore at his mind, wailing and blaming his own uselessness. He knew it was false, that to carry all the blame was something idiotic and miserable.

He couldn't help it, the same way a person couldn't help falling in love with another. It was an ever present thought, a state of mind that couldn't be rid of by simply realizing its stupidity.

Powerful? Yeah, he was powerful.

And it still wasn't enough.

Wren had warned him, and though time was a blur and the presence of others even more so, Lucas had stared at a wall, thinking about how it wasn't really a white wall, and in fact a pale shade of beige, and that everything didn't matter, and really, why was he working so hard?

Wren swung the door to the hospital room he confined himself in when he wasn't forcing his way through a Story, turning his head away from whatever truth the Tellers held, whatever made them human once.

He was becoming something he wasn't.

She had crossed her arms, snapping her finger twice to the man in a daze. "Are you sure you want to keep going? I already promised I'll help you, so I won't stop you. But you're miserable, look at you. It's sad."

Everything—it would all end soon. Lucas closed his eyes, and all he saw were the echoing screams that painted blood behind the black of his vision.

He'd regained his sight, but the world lost its colour.

Why did they live? Why did they persist? For him, it was for the sake of his older brother who sacrificed everything for him, once upon a time. Even that almost felt meaningless now, but Lucas clung to it, because if even Kane lost meaning, what would be left of him?

He'd even doubted, for a moment, what saving the world would appear as. Would everything return back to how it once was, regular and common?

The boring, mundane days seemed far away.

And he wasn't sure if he wanted to return to them.

He had considered, in the month where Kane had been missing and Lucas felt drifting between worry and nothingness. He considered how the most common wish made, supposedly, had been to save somebody. To see the light once again, from the Yuki-Ona.

Why none of them had been to return the world to what it once was, to save everybody, to save everything. And wasn't it because, in some twisted way, humanity had become used to the apocalypse?

That they could hardly imagine what it was like in the recent past, to live and work without bloodshed and drama? That the apocalypse had become normal. Maybe for some, they thrived in the apocalypse, finally become somebody when they were once nobody.

Elliot was a person like that, more satisfied in the times of chaos than reality.

Lucas slumped against the ruins of an old building, likely abandoned even before the End's Delusion begun. He'd just exited a Story, the tale of Pinocchio, a puppet that just wanted to become a real boy.

The Teller, when he was human, was possibly a child treated like a doll, as if he were a puppet on the string to adults, playing to their game.

Perhaps, he just wanted to be seen as a human. As a thing with feelings, with thoughts and ideas.

Of course, that was all hypothetical.

Lucas wouldn't ever know or learn the Teller's thoughts.

His abdomen throbbed with a heavy injury, a stab from another person in the Story. Pain had become regular, dull to his mind. If he gave it attention, it would still remain. And if he ignored it, it would also still remain.

He knew he was running away. From Kane, who'd just returned. From everybody who stared at him with worry, concerned with the state of his mind and body.

Lucas, he—he'd never felt so insignificant.

The night sky hung above him, weighed by the shadows and the lack of any stars. He lifted his chin, gazing at the emptiness that surrounded him, the wind that quietly brushed by. One hand rested over his stomach, blood soaking his clothing.

Nearby, the rubbles of stone on the ground clacked together with the movement of somebody's footstep. Lucas didn't turn his head.

A shadow knelt before him, their head lowered and hair hanging over their face to obscure whatever expression they made. Lucas' gaze flickered distantly, and he lowered his eyes to stare at the person.

The shadows of the man's cloak pooled around him like a second night sky, its colour so deep that it contrasted the darkness of the evening.

"Do you think I betrayed you?"

A low question waited in the air, in the midst of their silence.

Lucas stared at the man, kneeling in front of him on the rubbles of broken stone and dirt. The Puppeteer. The greatest villain of his story—well, it wasn't really just a story, was it?

The Catalyst of Everlasting End.

Kneeling at his feet.

"What I think doesn't matter."

"It does."

"To you?" wondered Lucas softly, though every word was the edge of a knife's blade, sharp and chilling. "And does whatever matter to you, mean anything to me? The Catalyst destined to stop me in my path, the final boss of the stupid End's Delusion."

Lucas was in a time filled with doubts. Every firm thought, every choice and every action was riddled with hesitation.

What if the next thing he did killed somebody else?

What if his next assumption, the thing he was always so confident in, was false and doomed another?

What if, what if, what if?

What if, had the End's Delusion not occurred, Lucas would've remained alone, without anybody to ever infiltrate his enclosed world? The reality was that he was alone, and the delusion was that he was loved.

Lucas cursed himself in his mind for thinking of such foolish things.

"Do you think I planned any of this?" Elias raised his chin, and bitterness lined the sharp corners of his blue gaze. "I never meant to love you, to the point I'd learn how to feel again."

Another confession. Lucas wondered if it was true.

But Elias—the one he thought he knew—was a liar, and a cheat. A manipulative bastard that had been perfect to make an alliance with, a perfect ally for him brother.

The Elias he learned, was still a miserable and wretched bastard.

And a man that had confessed his feelings when he was uncertain, and confessed again when he became certain. A man that wouldn't say such things half-heartedly, a presence that Lucas had grown accustomed to.

Lucas tried to imagine an ending where Elias died, and decided he didn't like that ending, just as he would refuse an ending where Kane died.

He moved forward, leaning closer to the other.

His eyes remained fixated on the arrogant face, every line and curve that made of Elias' face. He reached out a blood-stained hand, tracing Elias' jaw, and if the other found it strange, he didn't say anything.

"I'm ignoring your injury right now, and I won't stop you from doing what you're trying to do, even If you're a fool." said Elias slowly, tilting his head to allow Lucas further access. "But tell me, darling. So I can watch you fail, and despair over it."

Despair and cry over the death of Lucas Silvius, to be miserable over the death of a human for the first time in far too long to imagine.

He bared his exposed skin, and it seemed to tell that even if Lucas were to draw a blade across his neck, he wouldn't mind.

Lucas scowled. "Are you saying I'm going to fail?"

"You're focusing on the wrong point."

"It's the only point that matters. Are you cursing me to fail?"

Elias felt a little speechless, and he questioned whether he really did like this irritable sponge who was currently wallowing in depression.

And because he was foolish, of course he did.

Elias shook his head. "Because I'm magnanimous and utterly kind, I'll allow you to continue avoiding answering me."

"You're full of nonsense." Lucas scrunched his nose, his gaze clearly reading 'bullshit.'

"Call me by my name."

"What?"

"I'll take it as your answer if you call me by my name. I'm giving you an easy way to keep me, a powerful Catalyst and King of Aces, to stay. If not, then the next time we meet will be at the Forsaken Throne."

Lucas eyed him squarely, pulling away. "The deal we made was that you'd give that Title to Kane."

"Well, a lot of things have become undone since then."

"You're a damned liar."

"I'm a liar that wants you, darling. Your answer?"

Elias decided, even if Lucas was heading on a path of ruin, even if Lucas had abandoned some of his morals and thoughts that Elias had found stupidly hopeful and blinding, none of it would matter.

No matter what happened.

The name that he abandoned, reduced to ashes as he became a Teller, a Catalyst whose existence meant misery, was known by many now.

But Elias just wanted to hear it one more time, from the person who called it out first. If he would die, he wanted to die as a human.

And maybe everything would fade from existence, maybe they'd all die and maybe nothing mattered. Maybe they didn't really want to return to reality, to return to their insignificance.

But Elias didn't care for any of that. Because when he heard it, the low and uncertain voice cast under the darkness of the sky, the white eyes that stared at him, more beautiful than the abandoned moon, Elias didn't care for any of it.

"Elias." said Lucas quietly as Elias lifted off the ground, closer to the other as Lucas was pressed back against the broken wall and closed his eyes.

He closed his eyes, and for once, didn't see the bloodied hands that curled around his vision and mind, clawing and begging to be saved.

They kissed under the starless skies, in the midst of disaster and ruin.