Leon Lioness

Place: Berlin, Germany Mentioned: Benjamin Kraft, Amando Ricci, Damien LeBlanc, Avery Ford, Amara Leon-Ford, Ari Leon-Ford, Adira Leon-Ford cc: @alicemorganwrites, @levi-writes​ 

      Near-silent tread and a ghostly echo sank into the unilluminated asphalt of a nearly unfamiliar German street. Meticulously calculated steps carefully evading the sights of anyone assumed to be near, though the constant, shrill ringing only now began to dissipate from the confines of an occupied mind betraying a misstep. Fatal miscalculation.

      Right hand pressed against the partially untucked grey fabric lilting over hips, Chanel obsidian, hand-pressed faux leather—a reminder of a life once lived—groping the subtle curve of lithe limbs. Even now, the lioness never arrived underdressed. Brief stint in normality a simple flicker in the wind, no trace to be found in her gait or gaze. Abandonment, it had been termed. Necessity rang in the key of veritas to the blonde reaper—bringer of death. Solemnity never rearing its head. Such was fate. A lioness alone. 

      Gentle chill of 3AM, a stark reminder of the night’s ilk, seeped through a curtain of pale blonde. Desolation. The putrid illumination of faltering lamps in the distance calling kin home. Children of Nyx—cursed to roam under the cover of chaos’ mother. Nothing beautiful stepped foot from shadow at such an hour. Only shards of Eris herself and non-dominant fingers found home in the crook of steel, trajectory bringing cover and isolation into view.

      Several moments hung, reciting a slow kaddish, trudging past to reveal a familiar apparition. Cerulean illuminating even the disconsolate organ encased in bone beneath a single breath. Dark tendrils dissipated into the ether, irises never leaving the vision. Locks tousled in the breeze without sign of fading into nothing. Not routine. Hazel caught in azure, frozen in time. A welcome into netherworld, then. To waltz with Hades; a fitting end. Right hand dropped from its protective perch, acquiescing. Sanguine nectar devouring fabric with ferocious immediacy.

      Fates finally poised to sever thread.

      This wasn’t how she thought it would go—dark and filled with boundless regret. Regret for being alive. For surviving. How she wished she had been wrong, though the ache in her bones told her decades earlier she was a walking sepulcher: the ghost of someone else. She was barely out of her teens when it happened—when she died, face planted against the street, its uneven surface tearing into her skin, vision blurring and obscured by the blood of a man she knew well. One that had taken care of her. A man she knew now wasn’t all he’d seemed.

      She remembered the face of the boy who had pried her lids open to watch—a boy not much older than she, but far more jaded. She never forgot his face. His lifeless eyes. How could she? She’d inherited them when she killed him a decade later.

      She remembered waking from her nightmare after a week in the care of strangers when a soon-to-be leader stole her from death. His golden hair a single fleeting moment of hope in endless darkness. And she remembered Ben.

      Always Ben.

      Barely a year older than her—they had both been so young and tossed so carelessly into the arms of what looked like redemption, or a paltry attempt to find it. His crystalline blue eyes caught sight of her when they dragged her in, but she couldn’t remember it. Could hardly remember the first time they spoke—likely when she ripped needles from veins and tried to run. She remembered stumbling and arms reaching out to catch her. He’d always been protective. She remembered his brown hair and those blue eyes.

      Those blue, blue eyes.

      How his lips curled when he said her name like they were the most amusing two syllables one could utter.

      Astrid.

      She remembered how he’d let her curl into herself beside him to sleep; the countless half-silent meals they shared; the odd hour texts and endless insults at which only they laughed. She remembered the last time she heard from him—it played on an endless loop in her head:

if being ordered into the city again to find daniel and the others gets me killed, i want you to find that asswipe who did it and do what you can do best. kick ass and stay safe, dumbass! love you.

      She remembered dying all over again and how she wished the gunshot to the stomach had been lethal. Remembered someone telling her he’d been found. She couldn’t remember who. She couldn’t remember anything beyond hovering for hours over those blue, blue eyes that someone had so carefully closed. They were supposed to die together. Astrid wasn’t supposed to outlive him—she was supposed to be the ghost, dammit, why wasn’t she a ghost?

      Astrid remembered crying, thought she might be crying now too.

      Her back pressed against the wall of an overpass and Astrid felt the world slow. She’d been here before—three times to be exact—but there was no one to steal her away as blood poured from a litany of open wounds, now. This was what she deserved, wasn’t it? What she’d asked for.

      Astrid remembered Avery and how his relentlessness tore her further from death—blue eyes a paltry replacement for all she’d lost. She remembered loving him once. Remembered waking from a final coma, Damien’s blood still under her fingernails, and how everyone smiled at the miracle and no one noticed she wasn’t alive. Not really. She thought of Avery’s blue eyes in Rome and the children; of Amara and how this would be the most difficult transition she could ask of her eldest—how she would likely know within the hour; of Ari, her perfect boy, and how she’d loved him so dearly, more than she’d ever thought possible; of Adira and how much like Ben she was. How much of him reflected in her brown eyes and how Astrid hoped Adi would be half as gentle. Benjamin would have taken to being an uncle well and Astrid felt her throat seize as she spit blood on the concrete.

      Ben. 

      They’d told her Ben—her Ben—had died quickly, but Astrid knew better. Her life had been dedicated to the unravelling of humans, peeling back their skin to peek underneath. He’d suffered first, wondered, agonized, and only then did someone give him reprieve. Astrid deserved to suffer and welcomed the life draining into her lungs. How horrid it was to drown.

      One pained cough carried chest to asphalt, blood pooling at her lips. Familiar.

      The hallucinations had gotten worse over the ten years she’d survived—apparitions more corporal than humans wandering under putrid flickering street lamps—and she saw them: lifeless eyes staring, staring, staring. Calling her to where they were. She wouldn’t follow. She would wait for him.

      Astrid gagged, gargling remnants of lost breath and for a moment she was afraid.

      Vision went white as life vanished from her exsanguinated veins and all that remained was a final fleeting thought of blue eyes.

      Those blue, blue eyes. 

The ichor of poisoned veins was nothing short of a tar-black hue and sticky substance, suffocating and nausea-inducing. It was not golden or hallow, nothing sacred or naturally holy. Cursed and with razor-honed fangs, eager, full of vicious desire for a ravaging feast on all that was left of harmful normalcy.

Surrealism rendered him blind and numbness enveloped him. Like a mother’s loving embrace, risk of painful asphyxiation edging nearer. A gesture, as soothing as it was foreign, doused in ounces of the wrong mantle of something not much unlike security, a false notion of comfort to weaken iron guards shielding a heart, much too bitter for his relatively young age. It didn’t meet logic’s soaring expectation – didn’t stand to reason that it held on to this desolate life for as long as it had. He could not shake the dreadful inkling biting at his skin, unremittingly in its undertaking of building an empire underneath battered skin, torn and marked by scars, ghastly souvenirs from years spent at war – this reunion was a fatal error, a grave flaw in the way their reality was wired. It felt lawless, liable to retribution. It felt as though he would soon pay the price for the eerily rhythmic throbbing of his reprehensible heart.

The gut-wrenching realization hit with blunt force. This moment was never meant to be, manifest itself a solid scene and turn into a reality.

Tiny slivers of silver struck the asphalt in a sharp angle. Thunder rolled, though the jolt of sharp lightning behind the veil of dark clouds had yet to join the tiny lights of Berlin in unison, for a split second. The storm increased gradually, took its time. Drop by drop it proved immense patience. Building up, as though the grim heavens above the city were merciful, gracious enough to grant lost souls precious minutes to seek shelter from the oncoming downpour.

Streets, soused in the incessant droplets of increasingly heavy rain, lay deserted ahead of them. Somewhere a car’s engine was roaring, a sound drowned out only by the cry of thunder and lightning’s blinding flicker. Attention slipped down a terrible decline, decreased by a significant amount, when he hurried toward a doorway leading to a place where warmth was awaiting tired bones. His friend the only thing on his mind. Brief glances kept scooting over to ensure she was not falling behind, succumb to the growing spots of sanguine on clothes and skin.

Long fingers curled around a cold bundle of keys, rattling metal, their edges digging into calloused skin. The doorway sat slightly hidden from sight. Four steps lead upward to a heavy door. The building itself was old, indecipherable graffiti lettering adorned the exterior walls of old stone, their initial construction dating back a roughly estimated century. A heavy breath trembled from his lips as he unlocked the door, pushed it open with his left shoulder. Looking back, his eyes targeted Astrid’s unnatural disheveled appearance, adding to the almost nightmarish surreality of this instant. “The apartment’s on the fifth floor.” A hushed declaration and he was unsure whether she had the mind to perceive the fractional amount of faint skepticism in the undercurrent of his low voice.

Threats of an intricate mirage surfaced the longer Astrid allowed her psyche to be molded by the absurdity of the moment. He was dead. She should be dead.

The lioness could not help but wonder if this apparition—her only reason to keep marching to the quiet kaddish—was indeed leading her to oblivion. To meet him. To be together, an abandoned isle, for eternity. She would follow him willingly—she did.

The deluge of pain, waterfall of agony, refused to cease, but Astrid isolated her thoughts from her body and trudged forward. An abyss of existence seemed to tug at the very fibers that held the once-regal lioness together. The pair could not exist in the same temporal space—the universe crafting a paradox to tear them apart with each step. It seemed it was her time to die this time.

How things would have been different had she known. Had she not accepted word of his fate so easily. Had she searched longer. A knife lodged into the artery of a former teammate being the least of things for which she should have spared a moment repent.

Lightening cracked, shattering introspection with its debilitating glare. Astrid felt her chest grow tight under its illumination. Lungs fighting to fill.

Flat palm pressed to the wound staining fabric crimson, the lioness limped up four steps, leaning her shoulder against the frame of the open door. Hazel eyes closed for the faintest of moments, blonde hair matted to her temple as the familiar timbre sliced through air, tearing lashes from an embrace.

Though she was glad to hear his voice again, Astrid could not shake the thought that she would not survive the night and leave him as she had been—alone.

“Okay,” she managed, though the syllables were labored and remarkable unconvincing.

“Okay,” Astrid managed one last time before stepping into the hall, acutely aware of the simple fact that the more she moved the flesh around her wound, the more likely it was to break free of its clot. Stepping forward, slim fingers wrapped around cold metal, aiding her assent to a place not unlike oblivion.

Sound began falling away one wavelength—one step—at a time. First, the bright treble of footsteps, then the gentle alto of fluorescent lights and labored breaths, until all that registered were the blood rushing through her veins and the throbbing of her heart. Her clothes were soaked through as they reached the fourth floor, though Astrid had no recollection of walking so far.

She was weak.

So weak.

Knees connected with the step in front of her. They were so close.

Right hand tightening over the galling hole in her abdomen, sanguine nectar fought its way through the spaces between her fingers, carving ruby paths down the back of her hand to pool at her wrist.

She needed to get up.

To move.

Even her eyelids protested.

Blonde tendrils billowed over her bowed head, forming a curtain in front of her face. It was peaceful; reverent, even. The lioness could have been mistaken for someone in prayer. She spoke to no gods, however—asked no deity for aid. The lioness uttered only one word.

Life had a gruesome penchant for resolute unkindness. It had proven stamina, made its lurid preeminence clear; forever enduring without the abominable sacrifice of great resilience, and the path leading toward the victory over those absolutely grotesque demons he let sleep in his chest was of an unending kind. He’d consecrated himself to the art of awe-inspiring self-destruct, he left the space he walked upon hollowed, turned it into barren and purely arid soil. An unmistakable spoor of fatal desolation he trailed behind him, rendered incapable of shaking it off by the overbearing weight of rattling bones.

Rome’s sanctified memoirs wore a wraith’s threadbare clothing. A heavy cloak of noxious dust and baneful ash, a doused fire’s scent still sat interwoven with loosening thread, fibers tearing apart at the weakened seams.The mastery of falling apart was by no means beautiful – neither were the malignant memories of a time so long ago it barely held a semblance to realness. Images drenched with sanguine rivers, the color of blood hauntingly omnipresent.

Death and grueling pain were their daily bread. They fed it to mice and gods alike, served grave reminders of their brutal humanity with the aid of agonizing menace. Dances with the devils in palatial abodes, modern-day castles of concrete and glass in exchange for damp pavements and the city’s dirt, trust like a razor’s edge.

He felt the touch of skin on skin, lithe fingers embraced his palm and he could feel something shift back into its rightful place. Completeness, sense among sickening madness. The presence of a kindred spirit, a friend in a crumbling world surrendering to the feet of fiends with serene expressions, falsehood-bearing masks. A gleeful masquerade, a waltzing crowd with knife-wielding hands.

A pause lasted a second at the most, held no measurable degree to the spirits patrolling the intricate asphalt-veins of a false metropolis. Stark blue eyes were lost on the strenuous endeavor of keen observation. The lioness, regal in her cruelty, even with blood-caked hands. Her words were woven heavily into the brisk night air, the big city’s nocturnes ongoing with no pause. Not even to the ungodly hour, to which you may find yourself in the slender arms of Lady Luck, or the austere company of the Devil himself.

He could feed him acid and it was bound to make no difference.

Any alteration, impossible turn of irreversible events besides the point. This was his reality. A burning realm of layers of rust and unabating forsakenness, mitigated by her presence just slightly.

To assume a response beyond a reticent murmur, an incoherent mumble under his breath where she could not hear would find its match in utter disappointment. A nod followed suit, and he began moving his feet into the gloomy shadows of the underpass, to where a lantern’s gleam flickered buoyantly, caught up in the web of its lonesome dance.

“I know a place we can stay at not far from here.” A half turn of his head, full of vicious thoughts, granting her the privilege of hearing the rasped words in lowered tone exclusively. If he had found himself enabled to follow her, devoted eagerness to unravel the mystery surrounding potential hunters and their hounds were lowered to the most trivial degree.

Dimly illuminated hallways of marble and slate seemed eons away; volcanic ash compressed into tile mirroring the picturesque blonde traipsing through them with her feigned family. An attempt that was never anything but hollow. Hints of green dancing in hazel irises betraying the monster contained within the hollow clay of a beautiful golem. 

Astrid was a lava flow, her destructive nature only ever mitigated by Benjamin’s tempestuous waters. Together they creates isles. Stunning in their isolation. A perfect pair. Few ventured through the treacherous territory to reach them, fewer still reaching the shore. The terrain always proved too difficult for anyone to stay. And so they return to equilibrium. Living, dying as they were meant to:

together.

Speckled irises found home in the sight of familiar fingers cloaked in crimson, wrapped around a welcoming palm. Reluctance clouded judgement, momentarily slowing the release. Lingering doubt allowing terror to consume a mind unwilling to let him go again.

Careful steps placed precisely in the diminishing shadow of a German devil who she would follow through the gates of hell without question. Berlin, in its tattered, dark beauty, looked enough like eternal damnation. 

A silent single nod followed his hushed tone, each breath pressing flesh against a wound forced to heal. Ceaseless pain. Nothing so excruciating as life without the enveloping warmth of magma meeting the ocean. Precisely where she belonged. 

Astrid kept a metre behind. No more, no less. The deafening rush of blood forcing a strict focus on their surroundings. A brief flash of debilitating pain--like lightening--swept the ground from its place. She stumbled; a hand pressing to the wound in her side, desperately hoping it remained closed. It had. 

For now.  

Breathing vertigo from behind a dim gaze, Astrid straightened herself once again. Poised to continue. Her reason an arm’s length away.

Agonizing alienation was a devilish curse that had befallen him. In this crepuscular realm he walked among rapacious thieves and proficient liars, rogue murderers and cold-blooded kin. A bad kingdom, where honor was merely a modern myth shrouded in segregated fragments of the ageing population’s idiotic disbelief. Scatters of misleading mystery. Bread and circuses for the seething masses, beclouded eyes and hollow hearts hungered for a marcabre spectacle. Callous deities set on blood for a great show and he had never been one to grovel, request for mercy that wasn’t his to have.

                                                            Lang, lang lebe der Tod. 

The dulcet serenade of bone-chilling lullabies was no longer sufficient for soothing purpose. His wolf-heart craved something stronger than the unreliable emotion an eerie nursery rhyme would ever be capable of transferring. Songs of how beautifully life lied to them. Cradled them in an intricate tangle of delusions and warmth, eased them into the shallow waters of wrong beliefs. A large coil, tightly wound-up. Love was a preposterous cure to lethal disease and bestial famine and people swallowed the untruth like pills. Their happy-go-lucky-medicine for those wistfully glum days, when a gloomy afternoon sky wore thick clouds clothing and nothingness became threateningly real. He’d once lived for these days. Now, it all seemed terribly absurd, bizarre and oh so very painfully futile. 

It had felt wrong to suffer with each throb of his withering heart. Somewhere inside him there was a bad seed, rotten flesh and it began to show, transparent for curious wanderers to admire. Fleeting glances of passersby, so eager and yet too ashamed to glare openly. They admired his tragedy in secret, the confines of their mind where questions hung loosely by a fine thread. It had felt so, so wrong, but now—-

His hand on her shoulder grounded him, a robust anchor underwater, keeping him steady against vigorous currents. They would have ripped his body open, peeled skin from muscle tissue and crimson would have merged with liquefied salt. A call of fatal attraction for those big whites. The final prelude. Feast time. 

But he blinked rapidly and found himself aboveground still, kneeling near the obscuring shadow cast by the underpass. A nearby corner. Few cars parked alongside damp sidewalks. The harsh wailing of blaring sirens creeping closer and he could tell it was a mere matter of moments until they would close in on them, disrupt order of an illogical reunion. And she was still here. 

He mimicked a mirror, reflected the nod with a split second’s delay. Rose gradually, slowed down motion. A hunched back gradually turned upright, though he took his time with it all in spite of momentary urgency’s uncaring flame’s flicker. The foreign feeling picked at his bones, grossly intruding, interfering with the aid his hand provided her with, were she to find herself in need of steadying help. 

Apologies resonated in the inquietude of a mind humming with fluorescent memories. Ancient thoughts of a life once lost, only now nearing a faltering grasp--previously thought to have been beyond the precipice of death. Somewhere over the edge of an abyss the lioness had been poised to meet. Enthusiasm for the end fraying the tapestry of a hollow life weaved out of obligation. Muted tones slowly regaining vibrancy. Only in the shade reserved for Benjamin.

La mort n'a peut-être pas plus de secrets à nous révéler que la vie.

And there he was. Alive. The greatest secret the world ever kept. 

Drying sanguine stains littered tattered flesh mimicking the remnants of the ballistic fabric near slim ankles. Adrenaline wearing through veins, carrying the pain of prolonged self-destruction, slowly dissipated though refusing to take throbbing, debilitating agony with it. Such was the curse of life. A curse gladly accepted. They were inexplicably here. 

Now. 

Together. 

Still fingers wrapped around dark fabric, pulling the material over sullied features before following suit. Her turn to mirror--surely able to right herself on her own, only reaching out for assurance. Security. Fingers wrapped around a palm ensured she could continue. 

And she would. 

Breath and body steadied, at once hyper aware of the openness with which they were surrounded. Pseudo seclusion only ever lasted for moments. Threats in unfamiliar territory certainly only briefly deterred. Nothing would take solace from the lioness now. Never again. 

One true attempt at movement brought her left palm to the torn, stained fabric. Abdomen held closed by polymers expanding with movement. The clot was a success. The pain excruciating. Nothing impossible to work through. Possibly. 

“I’ve been made.” The words were simple, cloaked in hoarseness from lack of use. One clear message. They needed to find somewhere that wasn’t where she’d been staying. And fast. Always easier said than done and it could be terribly dangerous to waltz through the streets at this hour if her statement were true. If word had made it back. Astrid took one extended breath.

The long night would eventually fall, surrender to their feet once the fuliginous gloom lifted and Berlin’s dishonest facade was revealed, stranded into the shallow waters of deception. It was a masquerade, not much unlike various mundane things in a world at the pinnacle of its very own viciousness. Dishonest it lulled concerned specimen, devoured by their sickening worry of all things he desperately wished to neglect, into faux security, a sense of harmlessness making them blind to predatory intention until the lethal bite. 

As lethal as the bullets should have been. As lethal as the thoughts he’d left Rome with, to a time he never desired to return to. She was the only reason for certain flashes of fondness, threaded into the systematically manufactured memories. Forged by justified bitterness, hurt he oftentimes believed to be irrational. It had once been on him. 

It would not be much longer, would not withstand the fight of light on its accelerating quest towards victory – the darkness pulled above the sky and he thought a foolish thought. Was lost for a single moment, wondering who was watching the scene of an unlikely reunion unfurl. How many times this instant might have occurred, in all the different worlds some believed to coexist peacefully, to hope for sought comfort, ease the pain of the brutal cross commanding them to their knees. Some would never reach the end of their long journey, their mission remained unfulfilled. 

But not them, even with all odds turned against them. 

How could it be their chests were giving beating hearts a home, when the end of their stories had seemed to be etched on yellowed parchment with crimson ink. The contract they’d signed with their blood, a deal with the devil to return home once their use to this reality ceased to hold its withering importance. 

Why were they still here? 

It was a deep breath he took and his lungs strained under the pull of oxygen. The night’s cold slid into the far distance, out of reach where sensory canals blocked the perception of harsh temperatures. Or perhaps it was subtle flashes of euphoria, disbelief not quite conquered by trust in a reality, for once not mantled in a nightmarish cloak. 

“I’m here, Astrid.” They were here. 

Words like assurance for his own faith in this moment’s certain authenticity. It wavered, stood on shaky foundation and he feared the next shallow breeze could tip it over and the ghost in his arms would vanish, fade into the nightly air and be carried away with icy winds. 

Arms tightened around her frame momentarily. The lightest of squeezes, like the planted fear manifested and threatened to thrive, bear the blossoms of anxiety he wanted to struggle against. Another deep breath. 

They were here. 

They were real. 

Lips parted, words longed to be uttered against loose strands of blonde, though sirens began to wail, cut him off before the first sound could come tumbling from the barrier of tongue and lips. It was what initially made him tear his arms from around her, loosen the embrace with heavy shoulders, weighed down by sorrow’s kin. His hands rested on her shoulders, closeness not yet gone. The risks of treacherous night-time, luring in tenebrous shadows behind each turn on the city’s map, heightened, sense kicked in. “We need to get you out of here.” 

Irises panning desolation wrapped in the putrid glow of faltering street lamps would know nothing more than was immediately evident. The crimson stain littering pavement appeared only a shadow in the darkness, tattered flesh hardly visible from a distance. Likely, it looked like nothing more than an embrace—perhaps the way they would look contorted to fit perfectly in each other’s arms after a night filled to the brim with drunken stupor. Normality to anyone who cared to peer over the scene for more than a moment. 

Cyanide thoughts dissipated, flitting through the stale are as though death had never been further away. Reckless self-destruction finding its way back into the ether from whence it came. The unlikely presence of two damned souls on earth settling the tremors of instability. Thought to have been left alone—to die alone—or perhaps worse: to live surrounded by fabricated perfection and yet, remain as bitterly alone as that fateful night. Bereft of the comforts provided in final moments; required to continue a hollow life in the wake of night’s obsidian tendrils tearing that devilish life-giving organ from its ivory cage. 

Yet again, the angel of death had not been called home. 

Sick salvation. 

A name. Hers. Astrid. Two syllables rang almost foreign if not for the familiar timbre of a gentle cadence carrying them through frigid winds. Something akin to comfort. Almost like home. 

Shoulders rounded, acquiescing to the momentary increase in pressure while adrenaline slowly filtered out of lithe war-torn limbs. Pain resurging with a vengeance mirroring that buried deep within the confines of her mind. That too would vanish now. Reality flooded in violently, though it was no match for the relief this singular moment brought. 

One hand, caked in crimson, lifted to rest atop the forearm linking him to her shoulder. She finally saw him. Hair that had certainly gone too long without washing, eyes tired from overuse, child-like features only marginally more worn by time’s relentless kaddish. 

He needed a new jacket. 

Still she merely gazed at him. A singular nod signifying she had heard and agreed. And for the first time, hazel irises showed sign of life. It nearly reached the apples of her cheeks.

It had not once been about brutally heroic measures or intended martyrdom, that fateful night of sanguine rivers ripping through the streets of Rome. No, it had never revolved around his own hedonistic interest in the masterful art of beautiful self-destruct, wrongful pain accepted as a natural given, like it was something undeniably holy. Deserving of pure worship. Sacred. It had been no less than a dignified tragedy, began and ended with the very same acquired realization that nothing would ever persist the wavering tides of time until the world was shrouded in unending darkness. 

Some things seemed abiding, unchanging throughout the dreadful historical march of evolution, in which humanity was a disgraceful misstep and he was proof with beating heart, pumping blood. 

Some things might just count few aspects of alleged positivity, and suspicion thrived their shared story could happen to be one of them. 

Years had strut straight past with no care for him and his lugubrious awareness of his own curse. It was another reminder that he was equally as meaningless to an uncaring god, this postulated presence of higher power and sheer omnipotence, as the dead souls wandering in their midst. They swirled among the living, held him surrounded and provided him with their hollow company in sleepless nights. And he believed, as though it was merely something he knew to be true. Sin-like faith. 

He’d left her.

He hair had grown longer, as expected, though the strangeness of the sight was still foreign. May took another moments of getting used to, before a new image settled, superseded the pictures of their last shared memory. And it felt oh so very wrong to be unknowing of what time’s unforgiving wrath had done to her. 

He’d left her. 

The urge of sincere apology swell to immeasurable degree, consumed his hazy mind while he looked on, observed movements and the syringe lead by a knowing hand. Skill’s mastery was not unlearned, and he took comfort in knowing not all things fell victim to uncompromising alteration and drastic mutation of character. Will bent, and for reasons unbeknown he was reminded of how not all broken things were designed to be mended, fixed and duct-taped back into shape, until they barely held semblance to what they’d once been. For some it might just be too late. 

And as he found himself again, enveloped by slender arms his lungs were bereft of oxygen. All it took was a trembling breath and suddenly the threat of asphyxiation seemed alarmingly real. “I’m so sorry.” It sounded foolish. Like it could make things undone, bring the final shift he sought, for things to return to a natural order. He could barely find his voice’s familiarity in his own utterance. Flat intonation with the volume of a whisper, terribly uncertain of what it was. And only then he realized his arms lay draped around her torso, careful to evade pierced fabric, stained spots of darkened crimson. Guilt only vanquished by the gradual evanescence of homesickness. A feeling not much unlike peace. 

Where the lingering numbness of death once pierced flesh now housed an unfamiliar warmth the likes of which this angel of death had long since forgotten. Roman sun refused to touch porcelain skin. No incarnation of the blonde bringer of death could withstand the terrors of existence after one fateful night. The decrepit star could no longer reach her. 

Nothing could. 

The putrid glow of street lamps brought a vision of the night more clear than it had been in years. 

One message. Stay safe. Final reply. love you.

That night a slug tore through her torso, the pain of it as clear as day: pressure lifting the lioness into a violent contortion as searing heat tore through flesh. Even the scar lingered, but nothing compared to the moment silence reached through bone, tearing a once-beating heart from her chest, several hours later in the mansion–the place they had once called home.

Waves of auburn had long since disappeared below the horizon as the foyer was flooded with bloodied, broken bodies of a gang once known as the Revelations. Astrid hardly recognized them that night. The deft hands of her comrades were nowhere to be found. Her defiance of direct orders to remain in medical driven by one thing and one thing, alone. The single word her broken body could muster.

“Ben?”

Met with silence.

Wounds healed, puckered flesh and scar tissue dissipating over time, but the lioness never recovered. Her quest to meet her own demise only expedited by the need to be with him again. 

Death never came. 

As fate would have it, life endured. Lives endured. No incarnation of the demon veiled by a golden halo truly existed without him, after all. Life was a hollow ritual. Ripping breath from Damien’s sanguine grin felt bereft of catharsis. The lioness had already died. Only now, with trembling fingers winding themselves in chestnut tendrils, did she feel anything. Her hold on him tightened. A disembodied soul transplanted into its host once more. He’d had it with him–with his return, so too did it.

Whole.

Silent assurances confirmed his presence made everything alright. A single inquiry turned statement. Confirmation. 

“Benjamin.”

But there had always been a sense of something bigger than design. He’d always been eager to believe in something brutally similar to fate and it guided him down a crooked path. Somehow lost on the open sea, raging and powerful. Someone, somewhere in this world, succumbing to decay and destruct, had to make a sacrifice for war to rest, even if only for the beat of a brutally human heart. Stone-cold sirens with their dulcet voices sang the melody of the killing season, the full moon’s wan glow their dishonest witness. His faith lay beaten, torn to shreds beyond repair to the soles of their hangmen – agony and brilliant misfortune. Company like old friends he pulled close to himself, like they fulfilled the wasteful purpose of keeping him warm in the dark night and not let the mythical creatures, feral predators with sharp fangs painting sanguine get too close. 

There was the hum, distinct city noise rumbling through bone-chilling atmosphere, the nightly ambiance of flickering street lights and smog tinged pallid neon colors. And he felt as if he should have been happy for it – to be saved by the lesser of two evils. It was a lie they’d sold him. They had made the promise of utopia, a grandiose paradise of calmness to await him, when his home country had cursed him with spellwork of loneliness, he’d thought to last for an eternity. 

He had given up on the endeavor of talking to many people, more than necessary. Save for those occasional chance encounters in concrete towers or somewhere inside the tunnels shaking beneath the asphalt where traffic roared, that only ever lasted for a brief instant in time. And when he was busy to rush over to where she knelt, struggled with gravity’s attraction, he thought he could blame time for all of it. 

It was Death who had invented time, so he could reap the souls of those who ran out of such privilege. Not quite logical – he’d met death by a fleeting glance and he didn’t look frightening, but like regret and a promise of peace. 

He’d said to not decline were he to make his offer once more but now, how could he still be certain?

Fabric scratches along the tiny irregularities of pavement’s surface when he comes to a gradual halt. One hand reached out, was brought to sit between shoulder and neck and the tips of his fingers almost found themselves buried by blonde tresses.  It was really her. “I’m here, Astrid.” There was so much blood. “I’m here.” 

Trembling hands could no longer manage to conceal tremors with pressure. Astrid released her grip on the wound, only now possessing the presence of mind—or the will, perhaps—to continue life on the desolate rock orbiting a sickly star. Crimson-stained fingers reached around to dig in the side of a black boot concealed by fabric, one thin plastic vial tumbling out along with a small syringe taped to its side.

Hardly able to steady herself, Astrid’s quivering fingers grasped the pair, flicking off the top with her thumb though it took far greater effort than usual. Vision blurred momentarily, but determination sunk its claws into lucidity, refusing to let go. Not now. Not while he was still of this earth. Leaning back only slightly, to avoid vertigo forcing gravity’s hand, Astrid poured white powdered granules into her left hand, barely keeping consciousness as they were unkindly shoved into her open wound.

Red blood cells latched onto the proprietary marine biopolymers contained within the hemostatic agent and expanded, coagulating into a robust clot—as they were supposed to—but Astrid had forgotten the extent to which she would feel each connection. The polymers connected with ferocity—again, as they were meant to in order stop the tributary of crimson nectar, but Astrid’s strength had long since dissipated and she found herself lurching forward the moment the presumed apparition made contact.

Both knees finally pressed against pavement, brackish rivulets carving paths down flushed cheeks—though from pain or relief would prove an impossibility to discern. Each moment passed with Thanatos’ grin diminishing without the opportunity to bring his damned sister home. Perhaps she would truly live another day. Now that her reason was within reach.

A breath.

Fingers steadied, flicking the rubber from the syringe tip, though much of her weight remained in the care of Benjamin.

Inhale.

Steel pierced fabric—skin—muscle. Plunger drained its contents. A sudden flash, chest heaving as the apparatus was tossed away. In one swift motion, Astrid’s heart caught up to the world and she took in one labored breath as both arms wrapped Ben up in desperation.

“Ben.” Her voice was louder now. “I thought—”

He fluctuated between the ill desire of sought isolation and sheer loneliness and the almost natural need of closure in the confines of familiarity, far beyond the company of his own meager demons. Berlin’s thrumming heartbeat could only do so much in her fleeting efforts of extending shallow comfort. The city and the Spree did their best, but not all was ever meant to be. Good intentions had never helped anyone. Crystal night fell as fast as he did, and it resembled a strange kind of peacefulness, easily mistaken for the art of flying in a moment, purely ephemeral. 

Everything must crumble beneath the soles they wore, fall and surrender to willful intention from unkind gods, no one cared to devote their faith and floundering belief to any more. It was the new world’s first order, new rules for this prolonged gamble of unlikely stakes, established by unscrupulous monstrosities in human disguise. The friendly expressions were etched into their visages all the same, and there would be no redemption for those who did not know remorse. He could not recall a time in recent history made, when he’d succumbed to such emotion – it felt much more kin to strange concepts, delivered in foreign tongue and void of any semblance of coherence. 

Ferocious dreams had begun to change, shift into distortion beyond possibility of certain recognition. Even his nightmares had gone on a journey of forsaking him. Those first nights, it’d felt an awful lot like being given up on by the most inner workings of a twisted mind, the overzealous abandonment of your own subconscious. Strangeness used to muffle him to each time he awoke with an asphyxiating void lingering where once beads of sweat had stuck to cold flesh. One might call it acceptance of life’s latest amendment, but him it had once left shaking with bother, rebarbative notice. At least an insomniac’s curse proved its loyalty and devotion, sleep a struggling rarity.

And his inner conflict blossomed and thrived anew, rising from impure ground, barren soil. Acceptance had found him long ago – taking his place in this rotten world in a close embrace and leading an existence closely entwined with the knowledge gained. But as he stood with her in hazy line of sight, he faltered and the vicious disease of hope arose. 

                                       And oh, what an awful illness it was to call his own. 

It took an instant of careless disorientation inside the mess of a sleep-deprived head, but when she mirrored his movement her lean body underlied gravity’s relentless pull. A knee collided with old pavement, a hand soon to follow. Knee-jerk reaction. He rushed over, his own voice and its sounded yell a warning-sign of the moment’s dreadful reality inside his mind. “Astrid!”

Hazel obscured by vertigo, palms remained pressed firmly against their charges. Steady. Slow. The faint beating of an organ long since forgotten seemed to race—its throbbing pressing against bone. An ache. How such a lost sensation could return with such fervor. Whether from death or something entirely different, Astrid could not discern. Not now in the sweet chill of night. Nearing morning.

No one mourns the wicked.

Lungs refused to expand. Stale air wafted atop skin, but never reached beyond the precipice of a discolored pout. Her senses were failing. The lioness was walled in by water, allowing only dull vibrations to register on ice-pricked skin. And suddenly the beauty wrapped in the stunning timbre of a voice she had nearly forgotten echoed in her mind and the world came back in an instant—loud and frigid.

Astrid coughed violently, the speed at which the world became clear nearly incapacitating, but she could not help the fatal flaw usually concealed by carefully crafted countenance. Dangerous desire to allow the tentacles of potential room to stretch. Expanding into something akin to hope. Should time prove her a fool, the lioness would gladly acquiesce to the end. A dénouement. Having seen his face—even if only in her mind—one last time.

Beyond better judgement, hazel irises forced a downcast gaze to lift into the dimly illuminated night. Astrid shivered. The organ throbbing in her chest feverishly directing sanguine traffic, pulse accelerating to the tune of the passing moments, distant siren calls never for her.

Culling strength from thin air, lips pulled into the faintest of vanishing smiles.

The haze of night time enveloped him like a grim reaper’s cold kiss goodbye from this gruesome place. Concrete jungles and cityscapes kept him unholy company, offered some picturesque imagery for him to descry, all for the sake of aiding him in his undertaking of passing time, for as long as it took for sunrise to creep on where the sky met the edge of this brutally mortal world. He remembered the moment as though no day had gone by; when blood came pouring from open wounds and the agonizing electricity setting fire to nerve endings. The delay of processing incessantly prolonged and he remembered everything. Everyday, all he did was to dwell on those memories. 

In the distance sirens wailed, the slurred yells of a drunk with no home echoed through the cold air and few cars drove past a junction some few streets down from where they stood. Concealed by the shadows, a cape of gloom to cloak them in darkness. Berlin serenaded them with unholy nocturnes and he, again, realized there was nothing godly left on this earth. Among rubble and rust he claimed a singular path through an empire of ash his own. Everything after Rome was forged from misery and solitude and he felt lost in this forsaken palace of delusional hopes and daft reveries. It all seemed foolish – this terrible act of humaneness. 

He came to face a gun’s barrel and it was like a calling from a place like home. Azure eyes were barely fixated on the threat of eternal nothingness but the bringer of death herself. The cloud of fatal dizziness welcomed him like an old companion and slack limbs had resigned function. Unmoving. He solely stood frozen in place and the breeze kept painting skin with kisses of ice, chilling caresses. The haunting image of her rendered him useless, a temporary instant at last. 

She lowered the gun and a whisper inside his mind wished she hadn’t. He didn’t know what to think about that or what it made him. An abstruse notion, that forgiveness would be bestowed upon her had she brought a bullet to pierce his body, lead to lethal malfunction. 

And only then he saw the slowly flowing cataract of sanguine, a gradually thriving blossom of red where a hand with its slender fingers had previously sat. The realness of the moment, which might as well have been nothing but mischievous treachery of a war-torn mind, commemorated its arrival with a feeling much like falling. He stepped further from the cloak of gloom that swathed him in shallow mystery’s veil. False secrecy turned transparent as he neared, fearful suspicion confirmed. “Astrid–” It was her name, sounded by the aid of a breath’s bitter company, hopeful and a conflicting mirror of the dread crawling underneath his skin. Hoarse, like his voice had not been set to use in this entire lifetime of tragedy. And he wanted to laugh a desperate laugh, but his countenance did not betray him. Stoical and vacant of emotion, when his eyes crawled from the wound up to a familiar face he’d believed to never see again. 

Encased in a glacial gaze, extremities remained frozen, only useful enough to carry the weight rapidly increasing with the oft forgotten insistence of gravity. Edges of a city with an eerie familiarity blurred into visions of the surface from beneath the sea. Saltwater setting hazel irises aflame, lashes meeting in desperation for stability. The comfort of cerulean adorning never-forgotten features would surely disappear into the depth of Erebus calling her home. A mere breath in the eternal orbit of a dying star. She could see it now. Her own gas giant imploding, crumbling into itself, bringing anything near into the lioness’ event horizon. Everything she reached torn into subatomic nothingness. For what was the fair-haired sister of Thanatos but a black hole tearing herself to pieces one moment at a time from that ill-fated night eons past.

Thin skin retracted from a glassy gaze, chill drifting through lashes, crisp winds pushing invisible tumbleweeds between the pair frozen in time. Shoulder-length blonde tresses tousled and stained by the night’s will. Milliseconds stretched into decades, the remnants of a life once lived launching brick and mortar memories toward a fragile psyche, shredding stoicism. The effect induced vertigo. Shrapnel tributes sliced through stillness, gravity taking hold.

The only movement a single steadying step to the right. Suddenness of the motion exacerbating the dark place where steel had made its home in flesh.

Line of sight cleared, though there he stood. Still. Suspended psyche came crashing into the windowpane of consciousness, shattered glass tearing through stillness into lucidity. Reality crashed upon the shore of lifted brows relentlessly. Illuminating the poignant moment in which the lioness was trapped. 

         Caged.

          Benjamin.

Flickering signs lead the way through night time’s ubiquitous gloom. It was dangerously sharp, an atmosphere like a razor’s edge, willfully keen on the idea of shedding blood, painting sanguine lines across a blank canvas. How many years it’d been was beyond the point. Upon the superficial risk of a first glance, easily mislead by the changes of time, those faded memories in the darkness of the witching hour and it seemed less than anything extraordinary. But he never scanned the stand-alone surface. Underneath it all, it was eerie and his skin was crawling, spiders moving underneath his flesh, biting and scratching their way through the system of tunnels they’d built – an empire for unshakeable dread. Even if doubt had still lingered on, he ceased to abandon the endeavor of the pursuit, had yet to find certain recognition in familiar features he suspected underneath the pale blonde head. 

Engulfed by night time’s scent, the crowd loosens its suffocating grip when they slide through the streets underneath an uncaring sky, shrouded in thick clouds and the threat of rain seemed palpable, made raw nerves tingle with ire, grotesque anticipation. It was as though 3AM was meant to devour him, birthed by hollow corpses of a past he longed to push further towards the borderline of oblivion. A broken heart was not to be mended, his bore the weight of a condition stemming from idiopathic nature. An unknown cause, doomed. 

One corner away and the sound of footsteps had died a sudden death. Or he’d been lead to be mistaken and it’d gradually built up toward this hollow point in time, that he might just failed to notice, as he stood, barely concealed around a corner. Shadows bit off pieces of his flesh and clothing, an eyeball and some strands of dark hair, messy in the breeze sending a shiver down his spine. An illusion trick or bitter fact, he swayed among several options. And yet, the only thing he was certain of was that he needed confirmation, sole assurance.

@leonlioness

Porcelain stained crimson mirrored a new name—no longer golden, as once had been. Shimmering. Pristine. Ideas ringing false in the aftermath of a revenge-fueled death-wish where life proved too stubborn to acquiesce. Peace a fever dream for the lioness. Pride culling the ability to keep moving from obsidian walls of a soul long ago plunged into the abyss.

Habit.

Near-silent tread and a ghostly echo sank into the unilluminated asphalt of a nearly unfamiliar German street. Meticulously calculated steps carefully evading the sights of anyone assumed to be near, though the constant, shrill ringing only now began to dissipate from the confines of an occupied mind betraying a misstep. Fatal miscalculation.

Right hand pressed against the partially untucked grey fabric lilting over hips, Chanel obsidian, hand-pressed faux leather—a reminder of a life once lived—groping the subtle curve of lithe limbs. Even now, the lioness never arrived underdressed. Brief stint in normality a simple flicker in the wind, no trace to be found in her gait or gaze. Abandonment, it had been termed. Necessity rang in the key of veritas to the blonde reaper—bringer of death. Solemnity never rearing its head. Such was fate. A lioness alone. But not at present.

Gentle chill of 3AM, a stark reminder of the night’s ilk, seeped through a curtain of pale blonde. Desolation. The putrid illumination of faltering lamps in the distance calling kin home. Children of Nyx—cursed to roam under the cover of chaos’ mother. Nothing beautiful stepped foot from shadow at such an hour. Only shards of Eris herself and non-dominant fingers found home in the crook of steel, trajectory bringing cover and isolation into view. Preparing for battle.

Seven seconds.

Pivot and pirouette. Grace obscured by a charcoal barrel aimed at shadow. Several moments reciting a slow kaddish, trudging past to reveal a familiar apparition. Cerulean illuminating even the disconsolate organ encased in bone beneath a single breath. Dark tendrils dissipated into the ether, irises never leaving the vision. Threat nullified. Rather, those obscured irises were home. Never a threat. Hollow click of a holster jarring in the wake of deafening silence.

Dark locks tousled in the breeze without sign of fading into nothing. Not routine. Hazel caught in azure, frozen in time. A welcome into netherworld, then. To waltz with Hades; a fitting end. Right hand dropped from its protective perch, acquiescing. Sanguine nectar devouring fabric with ferocious immediacy.

Fates finally poised to sever thread.

Location: Paris, France Mentioned: Benjamin Kraft, Avery Leon-Ford, Ari Leon-Ford, Adira Leon-Ford Trigger warnings: Blood

Location: Roman Street & Revelations Mansion Mentioned: Jordão Abrantes, Amando Ricci, Damien Leblanc Trigger warnings: Violence, Needles, Blood