E la sua volontate è nostra pace. 

In doing His will we find our peace.

"We have done it, haven't we?" My lips elevated in a merry smile, one I have forgotten how it felt in a while.

"Yes." He answered in the same degree of elation, his features illumining as he blessed the restored vase with an airy touch. "This is just as beautiful." Emmanuel hummed, a soft tinkle of laughter filling the room.

I gasped, my palm forthwith meeting my lips. He laughed. My assumption was faulty, after all. I always imagined the burst in his vocal chords as an assembly of untarnished mockery, laced with just a blot of supremacy. Reality, however, dethroned any previous expectation – his laughter made angels shed a tear at how purely it sounded.

The ludic pitch of his voice eventually rewound time. It rewound him – the eighteen-year-old, not yet a man, but definitely not a boy, who picked junior Aida from school, carrying her backpack and handing her a caramel-flavoured ice-cream each day of each season.

I would always gaze at him from afar, chewing on my bottom lip and trying to ignore my clique's pestering comments.

"You want him to bisect your triangle, don't you?" They used to say, wiggling their eyebrows as if their blatancy was left unnoticed.

Truthfully, my attraction towards him was of no sexual origin. I longed for him to be my mentor, to teach me how to discard my mask and be proud of my existence as an outcast. Of course, such title was solely known by myself, for my so-called friends described me as Medusa.

I was, indeed, one of the Greek villains. No timid high-schooler escaped my serpents. Tears were the only drink I sipped on and the only rewarding meal of the day. I walked on aisles of bombastic praises, although I was not even worth a dime lost in the tumultuous waters of Niagara Falls.

I was a low-life, not those I have wronged. And oh, dear Lord, were they many...

"Leonore?" Emmanuel's voice brought me out of my reminiscence.

I drew a breath, one I had unconsciously held as my memories unfolded. "Sorry, I z-zoned out."

"Are you alright?" He soul-searched me, furrowing his brows with genuine concern.

"Hermes would have been proud to use his lyre for immortalizing your laughter." I beamed without much ease.

Emmanuel rose from the chair, put the recently-bought cyclamens in the vase and then back to their rightful spot. Was he going to expel me again?

"Your compliment humbles me, but my question is still unanswered." Was that a brotherly tone I sensed?

"I-I just..."

He approached me all of a sudden, until our eyelashes almost met.

"Even hours before her death, Aida told me you were God's innocent child. She made me promise that I would always see the good in you. I have not honoured my promise so far, but I want to engage myself in doing so from now on."

Emmanuel cupped my cheek and brushed a thumb over the few tears that glided down my skin. I shivered at his touch – it was too warm and soothing for me to deserve it.

"How could she value me so much, after all the affliction I have caused? She had been a child of Light, and I made her shine no more."

This time, the stream of tears fell interminably, words turning into mourning sobs and then into hiccups. If it wasn't for his arms engulfing my shaking frame, I would have collapsed.

Weep after weep, my body moulded into his, absorbing every speck of consolation my senses perceived. It was unethical of me to expect his embrace to persist for as long as possible, since I was Aida's moral slaughterer, but I could not help it. I needed it.

"Light is still her companion. It never left her." He whispered, a soft lullaby teasing my ears.

"B-but..." I rose my head from his chest and drowned myself in his azure pools. "S-she..."

"I know suicide normally closes the gates of Heaven, but I also know, even more certainly, that your prayers were so diligent that God had mercy on her. She now stands beside Him, and you are the only one who made that possible."

He smiled again, ten times more vivaciously, and without any trace of wavering, I smiled back.

"I thought you were an atheist."

"I was. Presumably, it should have been the other way around, but it was Aida who gave faith a meaning. You were not the only one whose path has been changed by her passing-away."

Emmanuel took a step back, leaving me with an odd feeling of ailment. He turned around, opened a lateral drawer of his bureau and removed a thin white sheet. Occupying the same spot in front of me, he placed the paper in my hand, his gaze motioning me to read it.

"It isn't Leo's fault, my journey ends of my own will,

Her heart is just as pure, her kindness just as still.

She is a little lost, misplaced her moral guidance,

The perfume of her soul is not devoid of fragrance.

I shall not call my brother sulky, sad or bitter,

She's worthy, just forgive her, mommy raised no quitter."

I pressed my eyelids together, unsure of how to react. Almighty Lord, what a precious creature Your hands have sculpted!

"I found this note over a year later, stashed in between some red paper leftovers. It did not take more than a stanza to reconsider all my hateful feelings."

He spoke so earnestly that not a single movement or sound could have distracted me. Was there any bridge between us that kept my feet under lock and my breath hitched in my throat? If not, I would build that bridge myself, damn it! Aida lived through Emmanuel – she breathed and smiled and healed through him, as much as he and I did through her.

"You had not come to me that instant, though." I observed, fidgeting with my hair.

"It took me a while, for it pained me awfully lot, but now I am here, am I not?"

"You are. Time, whether it is seconds, days or years, does not matter as long as we promise to learn forgiveness." I exhaled intensely, anticipation coursing through my veins.

Emmanuel nodded. "God has my Aida now. They will watch over us as we fight to keep our promise."

He resumed the embrace I ached for, and started rubbing imaginary circles on my back. If he and I were laying on a sofa, I would have fallen asleep right away, grateful that no demon would haunt me ever again. 

And if it did, Emmanuel will be my shelter, as I will be his...