He was a very manly asshole, wasn’t he? Everything from his jerky, tender movements, to the hitch in his voice I could hear a mile off—all of it screamed ow ow ow this shit fucking hurts but I gotta admit he was playing it off impressively. And he wasn’t the tallest dude I ever met but he had a presence all the same, like his own shadow thrummed and vibrated forcefully around me, making him impossible to ignore. He smelled powerfully like a dude, complete with sweat and musk and a tinge of copper all hanging all around it, adding even more to the mystique of it. I realized that I was getting a lot of Grey-ish vibes off this bastard; that he was giving me a lot of childhood flashbacks of many people who stood like indomitable walls and that, if I hadn’t just watched him get his ass royally kicked, he’d seem just as indestructible.

Even through all that though—the bravado and the pulse of a heart that beat powerfully—his attention turned immediately to Kis and there was a desperation that slipped through the cracks of the mask he was fixing to his face. It confirmed what I had seen in his eyes before, but I wasn’t ready for the swell of something that moved inside me as he asked after the Earth demigod. It was impressed but pained to watch this guy shrug off his hurt to ask for the person he—

loved.

Who, coincidentally, hated his ass.

“Hey, man, take it easy,” I tried to coax with a low voice, knowing it might be useless but trying to calm him anyway, “She's the one who walked away from this mess. You ain’t so lucky.” I was starting to hurt for this guy and I realized that thing inside me was an enormous pity that I tried to swallow back. Motherfucker seemed proud and noble, even though love seemed like it was still whoopin’ his ass even as we spoke (I mean, love does that to all of us in some way, doesn’t it?). I didn’t know how to answer him; the devotion in his voice was too much to admit hatred to. I didn’t want to crush the poor bastard even further. That wasn’t my job.

(Jeez, how the hell did I get caught up in this?!)

But something in me told me he wasn’t gonna stand there and take silence as an answer. I had the impression that if I kept my mouth shut, he’d stumble off and find Kis’ ass himself. Which was a fucking awful idea for him, if he still liked life for some reason. “She’s…” I started—almost saying fine before I remembered I can’t lie that easily. “She’ll be…” Fine? But I wasn’t even sure of that, not really. I’d never seen an emotion affect her like this before; I wasn’t even sure if she knew how to handle them. And I know from experience that kind of thing could shred you alive if you didn’t have the strength to face it.

I sighed, rolling my shoulders. The only thing I knew how to do was spit truth. So I guess that was the only thing I could do in that moment. “She’s still messed up, man,” was all I could say. That’s all there was to say about it. How else could I describe it? “She’s got a lot of shit to figured out.” And that was true too, and all of it was none of my business so I couldn’t really elaborate on the issue.

“…Volterra,” I said, saying his name to him--meeting him I guess, even though I wasn’t really feelin’ like giving my own name back to him. “Did you…Do you know what happened to her baby?” I was gonna ask him if he had killed the child—but something like a conscience stopped the words in my throat before they could fly out and destroy him.



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