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“Hello,” Klein says, and Leonard immediately snaps his head towards the direction in which the voice came from. In the midst of a dark voidlike sea, seemingly floating over the waters stood Klein Moretti.
The wind played with Klein’s hair, causing it to block his eyes. His smile was slightly off, something that set it apart from the ones he had given in the past, but Leonard couldn’t put his finger on how. The inside of his mouth tasted bitter, and in some strange, twisted way, he couldn’t help but savour it.
This acrid feeling that burnt his mouth was the only thing that kept him going after all, fueled the fire of revenge within himself. Reminded him over and over and over and over again that he was simply too weak, so useless, he couldn’t even save them, couldn’t help them, Captain and Klein- and oh, Klein, he was still standing in front of him, wasn’t he?
Klein’s hands were shoved into the depths of the pockets of his brown coat. The edges of his pant legs were scuffed with dirt, and Leonard inwardly frowns, knowing the real Klein would have never let that happen. But who was he to muse on what the real Klein would be like? He had only known him for three months after all.
Klein was still smiling at him in that endlessly patient way that Leonard couldn’t help but instinctively relax, instinctively return the smile, instinctively reach out for him. He could even ignore how it was just the slightest bit different.
“You’re late,” Klein berates, and Leonard could choke on the familiarity. He opted to just settle for shrugging. The world was transforming under his feet, shifting, brick by brick, falling away, falling down. It spun, colours, bright yet with a dreamlike consistency, and now they were standing before Blackthorn Security Company.
Leonard looks down at himself, only mildly surprised to see the clothes he had used to wear in Tingen. Klein was observing him in that quiet, cat-like way of his, head almost imperceptibly cocked to the side. Leonard smiles disarmingly at him. “I am,” he agrees, sounding calm.
Klein’s eyes didn’t narrow in suspicion. They should have at such an uncharacteristic acquiescence. Another abnormality. Another stinging reminder. Leonard swallows it back, ignoring the burning feeling.
Klein nods, moving forward. Leonard falls into step behind him, what else could he be expected to do? They move through the illusory crowd. Logically, he knows that this was a mere fantasy, a trap built by his memories. He had been told what this task would entail. He even had an inkling to what the ‘hard choice’ they would have to make would be.
But still, he couldn’t help but hope.
They were making their way to the bridge. It was spring. It had never been spring. Leonard bends down to pick up a fallen celandine, turning it over between his fingers with all the gentleness he could muster. A petal tears off regardless. What a pity. It would have looked pretty braided into Klein’s hair.
He looks ahead. Klein had already moved forward, and he had to jog to catch up to his heels. He had once seen a fortune-teller divine futures with tarot cards. He had pestered Klein to look into his future after that, despite having no interest.
Klein was too polite to roll his eyes, but the look in his eyes betrayed his true feelings. He had lain out his tarot clubs in the table between them, silver edge glinting sharply in the lamplight. Leonard had looked at those sharp edges, and thought with a smug, yet warm feeling blooming in his chest, this is what trust is.
Then, he had not known what that warm feeling was. He wished he had never known, yet he couldn’t imagine not knowing at all. The cruelty was kind in itself, a solace, a home that he built for Klein in his heart, quiet unlike the cold earth.
He had long since forgotten what the cards he had gotten were, too focused on Klein to bother with anything else. The curve of his lips, the scrunch of his eyebrows. His voice, calm with an accent that wasn’t like anything he had ever heard. If they had had more time, Leonard would have forced him to read aloud poems with a flimsy excuse that he would have seen through. Bathed in his languid presence.
Klein kneels by the edge of the river. It looked as if it had rained the previous night. His shoes slowly sink down in the soft soil, and water lapped at the toe. Leonard merely observes, quietly.
Klein turns to him, smiling. It was still wrong. What use was this torture if it couldn’t reproduce Klein properly?
“Look,” Klein says simply, and Leonard follows without a single thought, like the dog at the Fool’s feet, constantly tracing his shadow, constantly following him, yet never managing to get close. Leonard would quite happily play the role of the dog, bark and come to heel, if it meant that Klein were alive. A bittersweet smile rises to his lips. He lets it. Once again, it is a false hope.
Celandines blew with the wind. Leonard shivers. He is ankle deep in the river water. His shoes are wet, his socks uncomfortably so. He does not mind. “What did you want to show me?” he asks, peering at Klein over his shoulder.
Klein comes closer, slinging an arm over his shoulder. His chill bleeds through the layers, and he shivers. Klein doesn’t seem to notice. The arm disappears abruptly, and then another arm snakes around his waist, and Leonard leans into it, goosebumps rising on his skin. Warmth blooms across his face, and Leonard turns away, ducking to hide his face.
Klein laughs, and thank the goddess, it is the exact same sound he remembers. Leonard melts. If Klein demanded him to bring him the heavens right now, Leonard would do his very best.
“Look,” Klein repeats, gesturing to the river, to the world, to the setting sun in the sky. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Leonard follows his gaze. “Yes,” he agrees. Not as much as you, he doesn’t add, finding it too corny for even himself.
He clears his throat. “Klein,” he asks, a smothering feeling settling on him. Klein’s hand rests on the small of his back, vulnerable. This is trust, Leonard thinks. “Klein,” he tries again, gasps it out like a prayer, like a blasphemous want, like a curse, like a blessing, like it is the taste of the most glorious fruit of all.
Klein hums non-commitally, his hand moves away from the small of his back. Leonard’s danger intuition tingles and he bends around, throwing himself away from Klein no matter how much he wishes he could stay, and he knocks the dagger poised to strike him out of Klein’s hand.
It lands with a splash and gets swept away by the currents. Klein looks up at him. His eyes were the wrong shade of brown, and cruel and cold in a way Klein’s eyes could never be.
“Really,” Leonard jokes, despite the lump of emotion in his throat, “if you wanted my life, you could have just asked.”
“Would you have given it to me?” Klein asks, cocking his head sideways, like a curious cat. Leonard’s breath hitches, shoulders tense, before he relaxes, smiling softly at Klein.
“Of course.”
Klein didn’t respond, nor did his expression show any inflections. “You know what I am.”
Leonard turns his gaze away. “Even in an illusion, you can’t let me slack off, can you?” he lampoons, but even a curly-haired baboon could not mistake the affection that bled through his words.
Klein doesn’t answer. Leonard doesn’t expect him to. “I know,” Leonard admits. “Can’t you let me indulge in this for just a bit longer? I missed you.”
Sometimes, Leonard wonders what it would have been like if he had died there in the cold depths of Saint Selena’s cathedral along with the Captain and Klein. Or what would have happened if it had been one of them who survived instead. He was sure they could have done a better job of surviving, of living than he was doing.
On some rare nights, in which he couldn’t help but feel lucky that he survived. This, at least, gave him the slight chance to witness the light fade out from Ince Zangwill’s eyes, and cause that with his own hands. It is this bitter fire that keeps him going.
Klein doesn’t say he missed him too. That’s fine. Leonard doesn’t need that.
“What are you going to do now?” Klein asks instead. Leonard stares down the river. He knows what he has to do.
Oh, but how cruel.
Leonard understands duty, it has been taught to him so deeply that it’s in his bones. His loyalty, his life has been given to the church, to the place he could first call ‘home’. (Whether he could call the church ‘home’ any longer is another question entirely, but it is still the closest thing he has to one.)
“I haven’t thought about it yet,” Leonard replies. It’s a lie.
“I’m not real,” says Klein. His voice is slightly dreamy, slightly flat. It’s a complete contradiction (an oxymoron, a past memory adds) yet it fits perfectly. After all, wasn’t Klein himself a bundle of contradictions in one? Wasn’t that what drew Leonard to him in the first place?
“I know,” Leonard replies. The sun is setting. The sunlight makes the water seem like liquid gold. The celandines have settled on the river water and are flowing downstream.
“In certain parts of the world long ago, people used to be cremated out at sea after their death,” Klein says, dipping pale, bloodless fingers into the water. It creates ripples. Leonard hums to indicate he is listening.
“They used to set them afloat on boats filled with accessories,” Kein continues. “Including flowers.” He turns to Leonard.
Leonard doesn’t meet Klein’s gaze as he continues, “When I die, float me out too with flowers?”
Leonard looks down at his palms. He doesn’t reply, he can’t bring himself to. He can remember the warmth leaving Klein’s body as he cradled it, begging, pleading for him to return back to life. His hands were red then, like the red of the gloves he will wear soon. Are the gloves red to hide away the blood? He looks back at Klein, his silhouette harshened by the setting sun. He can’t help the tenderness that bleeds into his heart. He hides away his smile. The grass is soft under him, he grips it with his fingers and tears it out. The tip of his sleeves are stained with green.
Does it matter how long he knew Klein? He already knows the answer. It doesn’t. How could it matter when Klein was the world, and he were the stars that always hopefully reached out for it. How could it matter when Klein, living, breathing, dead, cold, was so vibrant? When he was like the sun that entered the room and brightened it up and drew everybody’s attention with his mere presence?
The sun is almost down. It’s almost time. He can’t afford to fail. He tries to look Klein in his eyes, and is struck dumb by their unfamiliarity.
Oh. He can’t remember what Klein looks like.
He should feel sad. Devastated. The home that he had built in the depths of his heart is broken. He reaches out to try and fix it and can’t breathe as he realizes how much stuff he has forgotten. Will he next forget Klein’s laugh? Will he forget the contours of his face? Will he forget the expression that he wore when he ate something sweet, or his happiness at reimbursement or extra pay? The little habits, the little facial expressions that made him himself?
Will he forget Klein Moretti?
His mind violently rejects the notion. However, his memory has already failed him at the critical junctures where it shouldn’t have. If there had ever been a way to ascend to Sequence 6 without going through Nightmare, he would have taken it, just to hold tight to those halcyon reminiscences.
Their final task before they could graduate the Red Gloves training was to grow beyond their past and make a difficult choice. This would be achieved by the usage of sealed artifact 1-266 formed by a merging of the characteristics of the Spectator and Sleepless pathways. For this period of time, a handful of Red Glove captains would be recalled to the Cathedral of Serenity, and they would be chosen and assigned to various teams.
Leonard’s gaze falls on Klein. He is bathed in the colours of twilight. He looks ethereal. Leonard loses his breath looking at him, before his gaze hardens. Making the projection of Klein attempt to kill him to force his hand, how heartless.
If this world were truly a book, Klein and Captain Dunn’s deaths would be the catalyst, the burning motivation that drove the protagonist forward, haunting his existence until he got his revenge, and then he would heal, move forward.
But Leonard wasn’t a protagonist, no matter the foolish delusions his past pathetic self had. And this world wasn’t a story written in typewritten perfect letters into the pages of a book. But, one thing was right, he would have his revenge. For Captain, for himself. For Klein.
Klein would look pretty in red. But, not in the reds of blood. Klein lying on the floor of the cathedral, heartless, mouth parted and eyes widened in an expression of shock and pain flashes through his mind. He can’t bring himself to muster up the courage to stab him.
Klein would look pretty underneath the water. He can almost imagine the scene to look like a painting.
In the end, he makes his decision.
The light is just enough to see. He reaches a hand out, cups Klein’s face. It’s cold. He steadfastly ignores the memory of his cooling body which he cradled in his arms. The memory of the freezing body which he buried grounds him.
Klein leans into the touch, his eyes closed. Leonard is glad. He’s disappointed. It would have been nice to see those eyes once more, even if they were the wrong colour. Klein’s lips are pale, like a corpse’s. Would they be dry to the touch, or still soft? He swipes his thumb across them. They part lightly under his ministrations, Klein’s breath ghosting his fingertips.
Leonard is a weak man. He knows this in the way he knows the moon is red, the sky blue. He is weak when it comes to defending his teammates, the closest thing he had to a family, he is weak when it comes to refusing the hallucinations that haunt him both while he is dreaming and while he is awake. The digestion of the Nightmare potion still stings, and pettily, he can’t help but mourn the fact that Captain and Klein’s shadows will never again haunt the corners of his eyes.
And since Leonard is a weak man, he succumbs, leaning over to slot his lips over Klein’s.
Please, forgive me, he murmurs against his lips. Klein falls backwards, balancing himself on his elbows. Leonard brings one hand to rest against the small of his back, holding him up. Wholly, completely. This is trust, he reminds himself, sunlit Tingen days flashing in front of his eyes.
Forgive the fact that I was too weak to save you, he whispers into the air between them when they part for breath. Klein’s eyes are hooded, his eyelashes casting a soft shadow on his cheeks. His lips are slightly red. Good. They make him look less lifeless.
I’ll avenge you soon, he promises and he tilts his chin in a bruising grip to meet his lips better. Please, wait for me wherever you are.
Perhaps, perhaps. Maybe, if he tries hard enough, he can carry this Klein, flawed and incorrect though he might be from the actual past, in himself forever. Immerse him into his own self. Kerosene to the fire of revenge and the fire in the hearth of the home he has built in his heart for someone who’ll never come back.
He brings his other hand to Klein’s waist as well. The crimson moon is poking out through the clouds. He can’t delay any longer. He’s already extended far beyond the time limit he had set for himself.
But then again, it is Klein, after all. And Leonard is a weak man.
Klein’s eyes flutter open as he leans away. His eyes are dark, shadowed under the trees. His suit is ruffled. His lips are slightly puffy. There is a faint red mark on his chin where he had grasped him. Leonard rubs the spot with a thumb in lieu of an apology, faintly smiling. Klein looks gorgeous. His is the type of beauty poets speak of ever so yearningly. Leonard could drop to his knees and worship him like a god, uncaring of the blasphemy he would be committing.
He reaches, fingers brushing the nape of his neck. This is trust, he reminds himself. He wraps his fingers around Klein’s neck, feeling the way his Adam’s apple bobs under his touch as he swallows. Klein opens his mouth to speak.
Leonard cuts him off, raising his other hand to grip around his neck too, stealing away the words. It’s a light touch. Wouldn’t hurt. Klein smiles at him, confused, so trusting. Leonard chokes. It is a quiet evening.
He tightens his grip, slowly, imperceptibly as if to ease Klein into it. Would it have been better to do it quickly? He doesn’t know. Klein doesn’t struggle. A mercy? He doesn’t know.
He leans forward to kiss him one last time, stealing the remnants of his breath away, biting his life away. Is it being selfish when it’s not even the real Klein? He doesn’t know.
“I love you,” he says when the light finally starts to leave Klein’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. Klein smiles at him. Blood streams from his nose, a fetching scarlet. Leonard tsks to himself as he wipes it away. There is a stinging sensation in his eyes that he refuses to acknowledge, the lump of emotion in his throat threatens to break out of his skin. Then they would be a matching pair.
Laughter bubbles within him, and since he can’t cry, he laughs instead. His hands still grip Klein by the neck, kneeling on the ground as they are. He shifts till he is holding him, cradling his cooling body like he had done so many ages ago. At least, when he opens his eyes, when he leaves, this Klein will not remain (except in the tapestries of his mind)
Klein’s muscles have relaxed after death. It’s easier yet harder to maneuver him. Leonard buries his head into Klein’s chest, hiding his face from the world. His shoulders shake, and it is not laughter, neither tears.
They say the brain lives for seven minutes after the body’s death, replaying life’s most treasured moments. Who’s to say the reverse can’t happen, that the brain lives on, imagining a nonexistent life? Perhaps, Leonard is already dead, and this is the made up delusions of him lying bleeding out on the floor of the cathedral, his heart torn from his chest, mirroring the bodies of Klein and Captain.
A person is defined by his relationships, by the way they are known by the people around them. When they die, they are remembered. Who would mourn him if he were gone? He presses a hand to his heart, squeezes, maybe if he’ll press hard enough, he can tear his heart out too.
If Klein were alive, he would have offered him the torn out heart. Since he isn’t, Leonard stops, and straightens, carefully laying Klein down on the grass.
Klein looks so peaceful. His lips are still bruised red. His tie is crooked. His hair is messy. The collar of his shirt is upturned. Slowly, tenderly, he straightens his tie, and fixes his collar. He closes Klein’s eyes, unable to bear the softness in them. He brushes the hair out of his eyes, and smiles to himself when they fall back again. If he closes his eyes and forgets how to breathe, he can imagine that Klein is merely asleep, having dozed off on a picnic, a date, if he dared to be bold.
“I miss you,” he tells the corpse, before standing up. Klein can’t answer. It’s foolish expecting one. (He still strains his ear for a whispered answer.)
He looks at the horizon. He reaches his hand, and wills the world to break. The scenery shatters like glass, and colours flood his vision again and Leonard finds himself standing in front of their supervising officer, as well as two red gloved men, and a woman.
He bows once, shortly, tapping out a crimson moon on his chest. His supervising officer nods at him. He’s sure that her name had been mentioned earlier during the day, but he has already forgotten it.
“Good work, Mitchell,” she tells him, and pats him on the shoulder. “Your next test will be held in an hour.”
Leonard nods again, before leaving.
Crestet Cesimir’s blackish-green eyes were focused on Leonard’s back as he disappeared around a corner. His eyebrows were knit in something that resembled worry.
“He has potential,” Soest said next to him, leaning back against a pillar.
Cesimir nodded once, saying nothing.
“I think he would be a good addition to my team,” Soest continued, raising a hand to his chin in thought. “What do you think?” he targeted the question to the woman standing next to them.
“I have no objections,” said Daly Simone. Her lips were set in a frown, a steely glint in her eyes.
Soest turned back, tracing Cesimir’s gaze. A look of contemplation flitted over his face too.
The other trainees so far had exited the test either screaming, crying or kneeling there with hollow expressions. Leonard Mitchell was the exception. Regardless, he had passed the test.
The most dangerous thing, Crestet Cesimir muses to himself as he tears his gaze away and moves forward, is to love. His mind travels back to a bloodstained floor and to Leonard Mitchell beating his fist against it, tears, sweat and dirt mingling together.
Ince Zangwill will get his dues one day.
When Daly’s later told about Leonard’s flying performance in the subsequent tests, she finds herself unsurprised. Instead, her fingers outlined the well-worn picture of a man with deep grey eyes. A bittersweet smile bloomed on her face.