“I won’t be a part of this.”

“You cannot flee from this battle.”

“Watch me!”

The Puppeteer turned away and left the room.  Well, he supposed that counted as permission to fight this battle as he pleased.  The Batter tightened his grip on his weapon, and took a step forward.

The boy had been hiccupping and crying, feebly trying to cover his head before each blow came down.  The Batter was actually surprised at just how many it took to silence him.

For a long moment, he stood above the boy’s body, unsure of where to go next.  The Puppeteer hadn’t returned yet, and the battle was over, so now what?

It was all going to be over soon, now that the Room was pure at last.  All he had to do was turn it off, and his sacred mission would be complete.

Time continued to pass, seconds turning to minutes as the body below him turned cold.  Something… something felt wrong.  He didn’t feel satisfied now that the guardian of this Zone was pure.  He looked around, assuring himself that the walls were white now and everything was clean, as it should be.

As it should be.

… why was he doing this again?

“Papa, there’s a specter… please make it go away.”

Oh.

Everything had to be clean for Hugo.  He was sick, and the tiniest amount of dust made him cough.  He had brought Hugo comic books, and a black teddy bear, and medicine to help with the sickness.  He had checked in the closet and beneath the bed and in every last cupboard to assure Hugo that the ghosts he was seeing weren’t real.

But… but this was the right thing to do.  He was sure of it.  The specters came from Hugo, after all.  Hugo made the specters and the ghouls while he slept and shook from his nightmares.  With Hugo gone, there would be no more specters. Hugo was gone.

“I’m… scared of the dark….”

The bat in his hand clattered to the floor.  He thought he was doing the right thing.  This was his sacred mission, but... he didn’t know what he believed in any more.  He could feel his chest tightening.  Something was coming, and he had no idea what it was.  It felt strange, and he didn’t like it.

For the first time in his life, he wept.  It was a howling, hitching, mournful cry with no grace or glory to it.  It was just noise for the sake of making noise.

The boy had made him to be strong: a father who never wavered and was able to chase the monsters out from under his bed.  Hugo had given him thick arms, sharp teeth, a nose like a hound’s, and big glassy eyes with which to see the ghosts hiding in the darkness.  Hugo made a monster to protect him from monsters.  For so long, the Batter had thought the boy had forgotten that a father needed to be a man as well.  Now he knew he was wrong, and he knew that he felt pain as men did, and it burned in the backs of his eyes.

Tears, clear as crystal, dripped down from his chin one by one.  Each one a prayer; each a glass marble to add to a growing collection.  He fell to his knees, strong arms curling around the child’s limp form.  He held Hugo like he could break at any moment.

Maybe the Batter would break first.  Maybe he was already broken.

“The monsters won’t hurt you any more,” he said, trying to sound like a father now, but it was too little, too late.  There had to be something he could do to make this right.

If he turned it all off, he would disappear.  The last monster would be gone.