By Steph
Alone in the house, surrounded by shattered glasses and haunting memories, he could still hear the echo of her cries in his ears. He sat in the middle of the rubble, his eyes blank, staring straight ahead, seeing nothing. The crow perched on a broken chair, staring at its charge. Even after the vision ended, he said nothing, only sitting motionless, frozen by the sheer reality of it all.
Horrible. It was too horrible.
‘Filia. Oh gods, Filia. I never meant for that to happen to you. I should have been able to stop them. How did they seal our powers? You should have been able to defend yourself. I should have been able to stop them. How could they have destroyed us both so easily?’
He had never expected his race to find out about he and Filia. He had not even planned on having a relationship with her; he just liked to visit her to annoy her. However, he soon realized that he went to visit for more than that. He was beginning to enjoy her company, and it seemed like she enjoyed his company, as well. At first this intrigued him, because anything new intrigued him to a certain extent, and this was certainly new for him.
Then one evening, for no reason that he could think of except he’d had an impulse, he kissed her. Expecting a blow to his head from Mace-sama, he instead found himself being kissed back, very passionately. Needless to say, it didn’t stop with the kiss, and a few hours later, he and Filia were wrapped around each other, both feeling quite content if not somewhat exhausted.
Filia had agreed with him that it was wise to keep it a secret. He knew that he shouldn’t go back, but he did anyway, quite regularly. He knew that his master suspected something, but he had thought he was off the hook since she didn’t say anything about his frequent absences.
How could the Mazoku race have known? He had been very careful, making sure there were no Mazoku spies lurking around whenever he went to visit Filia. How in the world could they have known? He sighed. It didn’t matter now how they knew. The deed was done, and Filia was gone.
He turned to the crow at last. “Why have I been brought back?” he asked.
You’ve been given a chance for revenge.
“A chance for revenge,” he repeated quietly, taking a few moments to let that sink in. He’d been given a chance to avenge Filia’s death. To set the wrong things right, for once. Filia, you won’t have died in vain. I’m going to make them all pay.
In his life, he always wore a mask. One of happiness and contentment, and of deceptiveness. As he had said once to Lina, if you can fool your friends, you can fool your enemies. And he had been a master of deception. The mask of a smile and laughing eyes always hid his true face.
Now that that life was gone, and all that lay behind him and before him was death, he would put on a mask of death and sadness. It was all he could feel. For once, he wanted the entire world to know his true pain. He wasn’t going to hold back anything.
He wasn’t going to let Filia down this time.
And so he put on his mask, painting his face white, with black streaks resembling tears down his cheeks and around his eyes. The sadness he felt would now be revealed in black tears that would fall forever. He felt that this was fitting.
He then found a black shirt and a black cloak in the closet, which fit him perfectly. Filia had bought it for him.
Fresh tears fell from his eyes as he lifted a corner of the cloak to his face, inhaling the scent of it, imagining Filia’s fragrance. Filia…
Come on. Think of her when you must, but if you lose yourself in your grief, you will not be able to win the battle ahead. Now is the time to focus on the task at hand.
Xelloss dropped the material from his hands, his mouth twisting into a dark, bitter smile.
“Of course.”