Winter's chill sent bumps to their skin beneath their bundles of clothing. Rabbits hopping through the cold ignorant to their insignificance momentarily halted… before their stomach was penetrated by a dagger. Blood pouring out the wound, heavy human footsteps crunched against the white ground. Grabbing the animal from the hind legs after tearing out the knife, Katie returned to her bystander father.
"You've never had to hunt, right?" Azazel asked his daughter.
"Nah, I'm just good at using knives. Have been ever since I was little," Katie replied, handing the rabbit to him.
"Mm…" Azazel grumbled knowingly, leaving her to look at her face with sparkling eyes.
"Dad, you know it's not your—"
"Let's just get back to the fire."
Reconstruction had been ongoing since the middle of July. As of right now, with it being a Friday, she'd been granted the day off of attempting cloning experiments with her cousin. While she quietly dragged her limbs through the snow's depths, her eyes lingered; head retracting. Big-cheeked squirrels effortlessly climbing, a rustling of shrubbery while stags walked around so ignorantly, Katie smiled.
Such wildlife she was blessed to witness, not to mention the landscape of the widened corridor of the snowy path ahead. She couldn't shake this inherent feeling, that what she stared upon was no normality. Whether or not she realized it, surely, it must've been true—for an inimitable painting like this to exist—that they were in the midst of some great tale.
Their stories would be told for generations to come about, about this one day. Whether it be a casual stroll or spilling blood onto the snow, that guilt struck her suddenly as she subconsciously walked. Would her descendants be so lucky as to experience this as she was now? She could only hope the path she was walking on was the 'right' one. But all those hopes were interrupted once she felt a sliver of heart sneak into her being.
"There you are. Taking in the scenery?" Azazel asked, already having skinned the rabbit.
"Yeah. It's kinda mesmerizing, ya know. Riverton was always so confining—you could only go to so many places without a job, as a student. I didn't get to thrive with the Agent status, so… I forgot what benefits we got," Katie admitted, sitting across her dad on a wooden log.
"You're relieved about not having to deal with Rivers anymore, I see. I can't help but feel the same way. That ambition with those powers… it's hard to imagine he backed down so willingly," Karlo rotated the cooking rabbit while speaking.
"At first, I didn't know if he was telling the truth or not. But… I don't know. He's caused so much pain for everyone here—he's the reason this happened in the first place. And yet, I couldn't bring myself to end him."
"From what I gathered, Callum isn't the best person but I don't think he's bad in the slightest. He killed thousands of people and altered the world for good, but he wanted to. He wanted to start anew, but he was corrupted. He didn't know it but he was always destined to fail. In retrospect, it's kinda saddening," Azazel commented.
"I guess so. I don't think about it too much anymore. But y'know what I have been wondering about though? Where that Jester dude comes from!" Katie loudly stated, pointing her finger forward, "I heard Master Saiai say that he was simply an incarnation of Lucifer, but that feels less accurate when I think about it in retrospect."
No words slipped from Azazel's lips, the wildlife stalking them periodically chirping while perched on branches. The silence's burden shifted to her—too heavy for her to carry alone, and so she upturned a brow.
"What're you so quiet for?" Kate asked.
"Huh?" Azazel jumped as if he'd been shaken awake, "O-oh, n-no reason. Just… thinking."
"You have been thinkin' for quite a while. What's on your mind?"
Yet again, he was quiet. But his lips started to part. In a few moments, he'd start talking. And she'd be listening to what her father had to say—every single word. No matter how minuscule in length or shallow in-depth, to hear her father speak to her with such familiarity and warmth. It always brought that red to her cheeks. Enthralled to have a man so knowledgeable and respectful… be her parent.
"I…" He stuttered, "I don't know. For a while, I've felt responsible. Ever since you came back and reconstruction started, you and I haven't had a real chance to talk about things. Riverton and your dream."
Katie shivered at the mention of her fantasy but regained composure with an extended breath that seemed visible by the chill.
"You said you were in my memories, but they were altered. To make fit for if you, Ace, and our kids were to exist but you never detailed what you approximately saw. Who you talked to," Azazel said.
"I didn't want you to feel responsible for anything. But, I talked to your mother, and August's father. I also met Mom—she was really pretty," Katie admitted.
The two mutually chuckled, then nodded.
"Isn't she? I kinda scored lucky when I managed to bag her, especially under the circumstances…" Reminisced Azazel.
"You did, heh. But, I remember seeing something. A kid getting kicked by men while women—their wives—watched. It made no sense to me. For such a place built under the New Allfather's jurisdiction, to think crime would still exist. It's ridiculous. But it made me realize how blind I'd been to how horrible the things Ace was doing. But then I turned out to do something horrible too. Everyone on Riverton that I killed isn't even recognizable as 'human' anymore. And the fact that it occurred while I was realizing how the wrong Ace was, should've made me realize how wrong I was, too. But, instead, I understood. What he did was for the sake of his justice. And what I did was for the sake of my justice. And if I felt bad about it… if someone like Callum Rivers can seek forgiveness after a lifetime of sins, then, maybe I'm worthy of it, too. Does that make sense? Sometimes I suck at saying things that sound better in my head," Stated Katie outright.
To speak so freely, without the constraints of the mind confining her mouth to nonlinear babbling—he nodded. His daughter, speaking freely and clearly, articulates her words. He looked down.
"So you only want to kill wrongdoers and save people who've been wronged. Abuse victims, oppressors, whatever. Does that classify… as the soldiers, too? When you saw it with August, what did you feel?" Azazel asked.
Katie remembered that immortalized sight—how could she forget it? Such dreary despair hungover that white plain where not a speck of snow had fallen. To see those war-ready faces forever crystallized, she couldn't help but shake her head at the memory. A stick's end moving around the flaming logs in front, she spoke.
"I don't know, honestly. At the moment, I felt elated. Their sacrifice paved the way for the Remnants' extermination, which is one step closer to my dream. On the other hand, I feel guilty. I shouldn't be feeling that way, I should mourn them. But, within me, I can't find a fraction of remorse to spare for any of them. I'm very contradictory," Katie stated this like it were a discovery had been discovered.
"Back before the Advent, Natalia was being manipulated by the Old Allfather to challenge August and I. I wanted to try and save her the same way I did when I was the Crow. But he wanted to kill her before she could take any more lives. I realize now that we were both foolish. All my life, I'd been a puppet used to take others' lives. For once, I wanted to do the opposite. August was thinking about other people. If Ace were to be killed, what would Kima do? She'd be alone and afraid. That's how he felt when Celine died, so he wanted to make sure no one else went through that. Yet again, he was selfless and I was the selfish one. He always thinks about the bigger picture. I think in terms of the present. To him, a battlefield of frozen soldiers is unimportant to how we'll prosper in the future. That's just the kind of person August is," Azazel explained.
Katie seemed puzzled. The upturned eyebrows, the parted lips, her head leaning forward—it all made for a confusing image. Azazel understood with a chuckle.
"What I'm trying to say is that we're all contradictory. That's how humans are, sometimes. And we can get all the help we need to get better but there are some faults you can't chase away. There are some we just have to live with."
"Mmm. I guess that makes sense. I don't think of myself as selfish—rather, I'm myself. I don't believe I'm righteous. Or rather, I don't care. After a lifetime of hardship and abuse courtesy of shitty people, I just want to ignore the bad and focus on the good, for once. That's all for me," Katie confessed while shrugging at the start of her explanation.
The look on her face and the way she spoke—he chuckled again. Leaning forward with another puzzled expression infecting her features, her head turned. As he'd assumed, she was waiting for his explanation, on why he laughed. And that came when he raised his head and locked their identically-colored eyes.
"Your mother… Blaire said this."
He remembered his time as a teenager in the Old World, in that abandoned room with the brown-haired tomb of the dead August Rivera covering the wooden desk. Looking out the window while he sat on the bed, as tears ran down her cheeks, Azazel's eyes expanded… she was smiling. While crying.
"For the longest time, I've wondered about my place in this world. After all, being my father's daughter, my uncle's niece—I can't help but wonder what path lays out before me for the future. Then it hit me when everything started going awry. August got a girlfriend, and he fought for her… then he died. He fought and fought for the love he wanted because he could. Because he had a right to be who he wanted to be and love who he wanted to love. I didn't talk to him a lot, but, from what I can tell… he loved you, too," While Blaire turned her gorgeous face to his own, Azazel's eyes only shifted wider, before his head turned away and his upper lip hid within his mouth.
"August is like his father, but I'm not like mine. I'm not selfless like August, so I can't be beside him. But, I think he did what he did because he wanted to. Not because he was privileged or special in any way, but… because he was born into this world. He's just a good person. You want to be the same way, right?"
Azazel sheepishly nodded.
"Well—" Her hand grabbed his leg, "You don't have to be alone in that. I want to be a good person, too."
As they ventured off the coast, each carrying a bear over their shoulders effortlessly, Katie halted while Azazel continued mushing through the cold. Just one glimpse at those trees stabbing the sky, layered with ivory cream over the branches sent that line to her head… however artificial it might've been, in her mother's voice.
And all she could do was smile.
"A good person… huh?"
To Be Continued.