#d-v

....Hera hates Fragment Remnant. She hates everything about him: his mismatched eyes, his awkward smile, his apologetic voice, his scent of sour ash, blood and hot rain. She hates all six or seven feet of him. She hates what she can see and what she can’t.

She remembers the day he was born- it comes back to her violently some nights when she feels weak- and the scars it left. It had been a long battle upon the Edge. At the very perimeter of the Holy Verse something wicked and turbulent had come seeking them. It wasn’t odd. Scum were drawn to the light that came off their universe. She had requested her unit, her knights, ride out to face it and its gnashing teeth. Bamf had put on the mask by then to become D-V, they were growing up and it was time to act like it.

But it was bigger than they expected. It came to eat. To push past them and eat and eat and eat… till it had eaten all the light in their world. Hera doesn’t remember its original name but she knows it was old and pointless and savage. Maybe that was what attracted Bamf.

They’d succeeded, in a mass of sweat and blood splatter, to slash it and push it away from the Edge.

Bamf had stuck his head over the rim, leant, and pulling back had turned to walk towards them. Hera could still see it if when she closed her eyes. As he came toward them, Victoria and Kismet chattering, something had shot up over the Edge and lanced him. The look that crossed his eyes on impact, that spaced eyed shock between pain and panic, is tattooed on the back of Hera’s eyelids. Her baby brother, she had realized, was being pulled back. Apparently if nasty couldn’t eat a god it would settle for an almost-one.

Bamf was falling then, just like her stomach, and as Kismet seemed to register she should scream in horror Hera realized the gap between them was too big to run. She lashed out. A bit of gold chain latched onto a bit of Bamf and she felt the line pulled abruptly taunt as he fell over the Egde and a fissure of chaos sprung up. It was like a tornado crackling hot white something out of the frayed corners. She held on, the chain cutting into her gloved palms, and wouldn’t let go. She made a noise, too focused to order, and the rest of the Knights were by her suddenly grasping the line and holding desperately.

She wouldn’t let go. The wind whipped them, the sky split, the earth trembled…but she wouldn’t let go. The end of the line had weight. Bamf was still there. So she would not let go. She was a big sister. Big sisters did not let go and—

And yet....

The lightning smacked them, the air pressure oscillating wildly in sudden rain and lashing gusts, it knocked Kismet off her feet, sent Victoria flying, the twins hit their heads and fell limp…Eventually it was just they two- Amun and Hera- holding on together like that had every day since forever.

Hera would never forgive herself for losing hold first.

Suddenly she was skidding across the earth, the force rolling her and battering her till she couldn’t see and by the time she got her head up her ears were ringing but Amun was holding on. Amun held fast the whole time. He never let go.

Thank the God he never let go.

A wailing, horrific, shriek rose up and Hera knew it was about to end. The winds of the storm scattered and the tug of war turned their way. Bamf crashed to earth, bits of the mask broken, and another body rolled with him. It was the most hideous thing Hera had ever seen. A piece of shit wheezing atop her baby brother and she scrambled up to kill it before she realized Bamf was holding onto it. With every breath Bamf took it seemed to fill with air despite how its damaged body resisted. Light shone off them.

In the days that followed Bamf went into that room. His room. It was a funny place not quite of this plane. She didn’t like that. Hera was much more physical, common sense and down to earth than anyone in her family should be. She didn’t like the nonsense of it. Like Heba, her mother, she was a little distrusting of magic. The plague crowded her warrior’s focus and held her back. She rejected the metaphysical. She left the godly for her little brother and the legendary heroics to herself. She wanted to be a Hercules since she was six.  

In that room Bamf had the thing. No one could get in. Hera paced however, she tried, but the Fathers had not forbidden it and there was no one except he or Father Seventh who would halt Bamf when he had his nose down on something. So she watched the flowers sprouting out of the wood lacquer and marble flooring round the door. How did Bamf do that?

Bamf was putting pieces into it, bits of things or… people, Hera was sure. Not that Bamf killed anyone. Oh no, he was a bloody pacifist to the nails but he was bad at letting things die. Even wicked things. He kept collections of bits hoping to give them a burial in some kind of reincarnation. He’d never yet been strong enough to breathe the spark of life into anything but somehow that day one of his little switches went off. He lost a bit more of the crinkling human wrapper.

He cobbled it all together and, eventually, he came out of that room with that thing hanging off him. It was mostly black, claws and messy seams, with only one blue eye and no long hair. It was big and hideous trying to walk. It stumbled Bamf hushed, caught it, and helped it up. It looked jittery, an animal in a human shape, but he loved it. Love radiated off Bamf in all things. It reflected off the creature and Hera hated it.

Fragment Remnant looked at her then, sharp eyes darting, and in that second she filled with air on a tense inhale and hated it. It seemed to know, he seemed to know, because he recoiled into Bamf. He’d been recoiling into Bamf ever since.

Fragment Remnant- stupid loathed name and all- looked far more human now. He was cleaner, handsomer, with every day. That light he leeched off Bamf, the love fed to him, made him grow. It fixed the ugly patches where he was joined together and made the skin smooth. Some had warmed to him and his shyness as he gathered up the skill to use mortal words. Some had softened at Bamf’s insistence. Seventh let it live, Fathers let it live, but they watched. It was made of too much badness. Bamf was too good. The plans, the dreams, Bamf had for it that Hera could see in his eyes were too good for it. She wasn’t one to hate but fear bred it in her. She’d never grown to it. She would never trust it. She would never like it.

When little baby Bamf was born, Elder-Bamf standing on undercover as D-V the angel, she had made threats to Frankenstien. It was hard however to keep them shattered or splintered. Her work was consuming and very soon she found the baby…

She walked in once on D-V at the window, Remnant in seat hunched towards his knees and the baby Bamf- only two or three- groping his long, skeletal, claws with interest. The infant Bamf was afraid of nothing. There were no monsters in their world, let alone the Capital, and Father Kor dissuades all discomfort in the foreign. So the child was rather enamored  innocently interested, in the long black digits wiggling within its grasp. Remnant just held his hands there, smiling, letting the babe fondle them as long as it liked. Hera saw red, almost severed him top from bottom. Bamf was as much her child as any other. He was this unfathomable older-younger brother to whom she had always been close. She couldn’t dissuade Bamf to dismantle him and it got worse the older Remnant got, the longer he hung about like a bad smell, till after the whole chaos with the Dark-Verse it was neigh unmistakable that…

He was learning to be stronger, to put all his dreadful weapons to use despite his timid demeanour, and he was prettier then- now. Perhaps it was just that she had not seen him a week or three, she off fighting the front line and he in seclusions with the her infant self and adolescent Bamfy, but when he came back with D-V, adult-Bamf, leaning into him she seemed to notice the new look in his eye for the first time.

Not adoration, Remnant had adored Bamf for decades, no…. No it was that intimate, soft, kind of loving look… Familial? No, sweeter. Friendly? No, not plain and honest enough. That little upturn of the lips, the wetting of the eyes, the contracting of the crow’s feet… It was a crush: a sweet, spring, kind of longing. Love.