“Era!?” Gabriel stumbled over to him, his heart racing at the sight of the bloody scythe he held. “Fucking hell, what happened in there?”
Era looked up at him, his expression still stony and emotionless. “He is dead,” he stated simply.
“Kid… you sound different. You’re not yourself. Are you alright?”
“Yes.” He focused his attention on the scythe, making the blade disappear and causing Caine’s blood to collect on the handle of the staff as the metal phased through the wood. “I’ve done what I needed to do.”
He’s just… reacting really badly to this mess, Gabriel assured himself. He’ll be fine in a few days. Or weeks. “C’mere, kid. You’re a wreck. You need to sit down or something.”
“Perhaps you should be focusing more on Jarred,” Era replied, looking over Gabriel’s shoulder. “He still hasn’t stirred.”
“Shit, shit, you’re right.” Gabriel went back over to the still-unconscious Jarred, throwing a pained look to the corpse of Crisilla as he did so. He knelt down and felt through the man’s hair. “Probably has a concussion,” he mumbled. “Or worse, a fractured skull.”
“I’m sure we can find a medic who can take care of him.”
Gabriel looked at him suspiciously. “You know, you’re being awfully calm for someone who just killed somebody.”
“I suppose I am.”
“Oh, what? Do you suddenly just not care anymore? You got revenge on this guy, and suddenly the world can just go fuck itself?” He advanced on Era, glaring into his eyes. “What’s your fucking problem, kid? Why aren’t you freaking out? You’re acting really fucking bizarre, you know that?”
“Perhaps you need to calm down, old man.”
“Calm down!? You’re fucking telling me to calm down!?” Gabriel screamed at the top of his lungs, his tanned cheeks reddening with rage as he shouted inches from Era’s unmoving and emotionless face. “I’m the one who should be telling you that!! How dare you fucking tell me to calm down!! In case you haven’t noticed, you just killed a man, Jarred may never wake up again, we’re at the scene of a triple murder, and Crisilla is part of the body count!!! Is this getting through to you at all!?”
“Back off,” Era said quietly, enunciating each word slowly. His voice carried a veiled threat.
Gabriel brought his hand back and smacked Era sharply across the face, sending him stumbling backwards.
Momentarily stunned, realization snuck into Era’s expression. He began to breathe heavily, his eyes widening as he gently clutched his stinging cheek with the tips of his long fingers. “Gabriel?” he whispered, his voice wavering and childlike.
Gabriel merely glared at him.
“Ah,” he moaned, clutching his head as if in pain. He sank to his knees, shuddering as he began to feel again. “Gabriel… please… I don’t know what’s happening to me…” he whimpered.
“The fuck are you talking about, kid?” he said angrily.
“You’re right… I’m not myself. When I… when I killed him, I didn’t… I didn’t…” he sobbed.
“What, you suddenly get fucking possessed or something?”
“No,” he shouted, whipping his head up. “It was me. It was me like I was. I was the me from before,” he said desperately.
Sighing angrily, Gabriel leaned on the wall close to him and crossed his arms. “We don’t know that, Era. The guy you just killed murdered the guy who could’ve given us a lead on that, if you hadn’t fucking noticed.”
He doesn’t know yet, he realized. “I remember!!” Era shouted.
Gabriel froze. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that… that I remember. I remember everything.” He clutched his arms close to his chest, shaking as he locked eyes with Gabriel.
“What… when? How? What are you talking about!?”
“When Caine… on the sword… I blacked out. I… went back to Death.”
“You died?”
“Almost. He… my book, he took the pages out to punish me, and Caine…” He lowered his face, shaking more violently. “He didn’t deserve to die, if you’d seen the things I’d done to him, I should’ve been the one dying, and I cut him down when… when he was most vulnerable…”
“Era,” Gabriel said, the edge on his voice softening, “Era, listen to me…”
“I’m sorry,” he cried. “I’m sorry I threatened you, I’m sorry for making you mad… I should be dead, I shouldn’t be alive right now, and… my sister… I brought her to her death…”
“Era, you’re not making any sense. What sister? What’s going on?”
“Crisilla… my sister…”
Horrific realization crossed Gabriel’s face. He looked back to the slumped figure of Crisilla and then back at Era. “She’s your sister!?”
“And I led her to her grave,” he whimpered, “right into the arms of the Reaper.”
Dumbstruck, Gabriel leaned his entire weight against the back wall. “This is… a lot to take in.”
Era nodded, pulling himself to his feet with the help of the staff. “It is.”
Gabriel looked over to the pathetic figure of Era that was shambling over to him, the blood covering him and the weakness of his posture making him resemble one of the living dead. His eyes, however, proved that he was still very much alive, overflowing with regret and exhaustion as they were. He closed his own eyes, breathing deep and slow to calm himself. “We need to alert the authorities about what’s happened here,” he muttered, “and get Jarred – actually, all three of us – to a healer immediately.”
Era nodded even as he collapsed against the wall beside Gabriel. Gabriel moved closer to him and pulled his face down into his shoulder gently but firmly, helping support him with his other arm. Era gripped him tightly and buried his face into Gabriel’s robes, shuddering violently with sobs and wails as he finally allowed all of his pent-up emotion to boil over.
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