Fate spins along as it should

No time, nothing he could have done, just like Themmy, or so everyone said. Still, he hadn’t needed Heartbreak’s influence to want to throw himself down, too.

“A simple civil service, then?” the lady working for the funeral home asked; the first thing Ricardo had registered since the meeting started.

He was seeing Isabelle’s smile as they fell.

“They uh—Bel—Isabelle was Catholic,” he said, his voice dangerously close to betraying his emotions.

“What? Since when?” Wei asked. Ricardo’s lips quirked in a quick, small smile. Bel had always been too evasive to his liking.

“I don’t think they were especially devout,” he added. “But…we talked about it, together. It seemed somewhat important.”

The funeral lady gave him a compassionate look and he hated it.

“We can arrange for a religious service, then. We have representatives for most major religions.”

“Thanks. Just the main prayer, at least.”

The meeting went on without much of his interventions after that. Due to the nature of the…incident and the worry of contaminants of any kind, there was no choice between burial or cremation—not that he would even have to worry about that, since no body had been found. Thinking about making that choice in the first place made him want to throw up anyway. That the choice would be up to him. That Isabelle had gone ahead of him. So he acquiesced to most things, made small suggestions (“No songs with lyrics. Anything too sentimental would make their eyes roll” and quickly made a small list of what he thought they would like, or, “Preferably no flowers with intense smells like lilies. Something smaller, like forget-me-nots” because Bel had often been saddled with severe migraines), and eventually stumbled his way back to his office. Wei hovered until he made it there, a steadying hand at his elbow.

Without expectations of having to respond to anything, he let himself get lost in remembering. Bel didn’t let him come to their apartment very often, so he cherished every time he was invited over, tucking every memory like pressing a flower in a book to preserve it. He opened the pages now, finding one of them in the catalogue of his mind. Most of the décor was nondescript, standard cheap furniture, very little interior design, but his eyes were quick to find a pearlescent rosary on top of the dresser in their room—or at least the part of their studio that served as a bedroom. He’d picked it up carefully, not having held one in so many years, his mother would have been disappointed. Bel was staring at him, frozen in place.

“I didn’t know you—”

The fear had gone from their eyes. Sometimes, he wished they had let themself be more vulnerable instead of relying on teasing and bravado. They had shrugged.

“It’s comforting.” A little pause. “Familiar.”

Maybe vulnerability was still on the table.

“Yeah. I get that.”

There weren’t many churches around, let alone Catholic, in Los Diablos—or really anywhere. It was hard to find the same quiet peace of sitting alone in a pew, the light of votive candles flickering in the corner of his eye, and the overbearing smell of frankincense.

“You too?”

Bel had slipped closer to him, almost touching. He threaded bead after bead through his fingers, without the prayers. If he reached far back enough in his minds, he would remember all of the words.

He had just nodded as an answer.

“Oh,” they had said. And slid the rest of the way to him to press their body against his. “I don’t know why I still keep it, or pray at all. With everything we see, everything that happened—”

“I don’t think you should stop,” he said, painfully aware of his earnestness he knew had a good chance of scaring Bel away. “If it helps.”

But they had stayed. They had found his gaze, and replied, “I think it does.”

They hadn’t spoken more of it, then, but Ricardo never forgot. Clearly, since now there would be a priest or someone with the right qualifications to say some prayers at their funeral.

“You’ll—you’re sure? I’ll—”

“Be. Quick.”

Ricardo just nodded and sprinted down. Behind him, he could hear that Wei had turned around and started to follow.

An apartment door was open. 412. Bel was frozen a few steps into the room.

The first thing he noticed was that Isabelle had removed their mask. The second was the gun in their mouth. The third was their finger ready to press on the trigger.

“Isabelle!”

Instincts fully took over, his body acting faster than his mind, to get that gun anywhere other than in Bel’s fucking mouth. Their grip was strong, though, and the barrel clacked against their teeth when he pulled it away. He couldn't get them to let go of the gun fully. Their eyes were…distant. Glassy. Terrifyingly determined to go through with this.

“Stop, please, what are you doing?” he pleaded, aware of how desperate and panicked he sounded. “Please, Bel, look at me. This—thing, it’s influencing your mind. You need to put up your shields, please! Mira—look at me!”

But Bel wasn’t looking at him. They turned their head to the window. Ricardo’s heart somehow sank even further down. Bel’s grip on the gun did not lessen, nor did they move their finger away from the trigger, but at least he was holding them, keeping them in place near the door. They wouldn’t run that way. He was stronger than them, and he wanted nothing more than for that gun to be on the floor, but their hold was—he didn’t—anything more would hurt them. He wasn’t going to break their fucking hand. This is Bel, this is—his—

“Mi amor,” he sobbed, out of breath, and out of options. Wei had to be close, the dampeners were their only chance to stop this from happening without—he didn’t even want to think about using an electrical shock to concuss Bel or—

The gun went off.

His hand let go.

Isabelle ran.

Time slowed. With the flash of green still behind his eyelids, without thinking, he took off after them, threw his arms out, spread his fingers, anything, to try and catch them, to break their momentum. But they were Sidestep. They dodged.