Chapter VII | Ghosts of the Past

ALYA COULD STILL FEEL THE BRUSH OF VINCENT'S FINGERS AGAINST HER CHEEK. She could still remember how gentle it had been, how human. How could anyone ever think he was a monster?

She wished she could have gone with him to the Forgotten City, but he was right. There were still children here, in Edge, who needed her help. If she went, who would protect them? So she stayed with them, cleaning their wounds, helping them change into fresh dressings, keeping their bellies full with what meagre supplies she had. Every time she felt her muscles clench up and her lungs begin to burn, she would hide herself in the shadows until the pain passed, masquerading as just another sick orphan in the shadows. Then she would go on working as if nothing had happened, as if she was not slowly rotting away from the inside.

When Vincent returned, later in the day, Alya knew something was wrong. She ran to him the moment his dark, brooding form appeared at the end of the street. She wanted to ask about the children, ask if he had saved them, but there was something different about him that made her want to tread more carefully. The shadows haunting his face seemed deeper than usual, more ingrained.

"Vincent," she said slowly as she stopped in front of him. His eyes seemed to pass over her face without seeing her, as if he was somewhere else, somewhere far, far away - lost somewhere in the past, somewhere deep in his memories.

She said his name again, and his eyes finally found hers, and she saw the darkest part of the sky inside them, somewhere the stars couldn't reach, locked in eternal twilight. Alya took him gently by the hand, his fingers cold against hers, and pulled him along after her. He didn't shy from her touch, but he didn't return it either.

"What happened?" She asked, her voice hushed, unimposing. They stopped beneath a blossoming cherry tree, the silver and pink petals clashing with the shadows that seemed to follow him, like ghosts. Ghosts of his past.

"The children... I'm sorry. I couldn't help them," he said, his voice low. She could taste his regret, like poison in the air, dark and bitter. "The remnants - the strangers - are using them as puppets. They remain under their control, but from what I could see, they are unharmed."

She stared at the ground, feeling her blood thrum angrily. The children had been turned into puppets? "What do they plan to do with them?"

"I don't know. But they're on their way here. As soon as they enter the city, we'll have a better chance of apprehending them. And perhaps we'll find out what their intentions are."

Alya nodded. "Thank you for going," she told him, and returned her eyes to his, trying to understand what lay beneath those closely-guarded shadows. Something else had happened, she was sure. His eyes looked different than before. Sad, and a little bit lost. "And you? What about you?"

Vincent looked at her strangely, as if not understanding the question. Alya pressed her lips tightly together, then released them. "Are you... unharmed?

Vincent frowned, but nodded. "I sustained no injuries."

"That's not what I'm asking," she whispered, and gestured instead to his heart, her fingers barely ghosting the fabric of his cloak. "Are you okay... in here?"

Vincent looked away. "I'm fine."

"But you're not, Vincent. I'm not blind. I can see that you're hurt. That you're hurting."

He swallowed, and a shiver moved slowly through his body, like he was trying to suppress something below the surface. "It's nothing."

"Talk to me, please. Maybe I can help," she said, resisting the urge to take his hands again. Sometimes she felt like he was a skittish animal, and she was scared to get too close in case she frightened him off again. Vincent sighed heavily, his whole body sinking beneath it, and he began to walk away.

Alya stared after him, silent and unmoving. She saw petals sitting in his dark hair, like snow against ash.

Then he stopped, looked back at her over his shoulder, his eyes dark and sad. He didn't say anything, but she understood.

He started walking again, and this time, she followed.

"Cloud, an old friend of mine... was at the Forgotten City. He was investigating the children's disappearances too, and I helped him get out of some trouble. After, when we were talking, he... he asked me how I moved on from the past, how I managed to let go of all my failures and mistakes," Vincent began as they walked, his hands folded stiffly over his chest. It was the most he had said of his own volition, and Alya didn't want to interrupt. "But it made me realise that... I never did. I never tried to. And I still haven't, even after all this time. I'm still trapped in this... this nightmare. I'm constantly reminded of my past, and all of my failures, and my regrets. They're all still there, waiting to cut me down."

Alya felt his burgeoning sorrow in her own chest, and she clasped her hands tightly together, nails cutting into skin.

"I don't know if I ever will move on."

"But you can," Alya said after a moment, her voice barely louder than the rustling of leaves, "if you let yourself." Vincent kept his eyes straight ahead, but she let hers drift to him, tracing the hard edges and dark lines that made up his face. Scars and ghosts and lost hopes and forgotten dreams. It was all there, written in his eyes, on his skin. "Sometimes we think it's easier to hold onto everything, even if it hurts us. Sometimes these memories, no matter how dark they may be, are our only link to the past, to ourselves and who we were. It's hard to move on because it hurts to forget. To forget the past, to rip all those memories out of us - it's not easy." She paused, letting her words sit in the air, snow on ash, cold and fragile. "But holding on can be just as painful."

Alya stopped walking, and turned to face him. "Tell me," she said, her eyes seeking his. He still couldn't meet her gaze. "About yourself, about your past. Talk to me. Let me hear what you're holding onto, and maybe I can help you let it go."

Vincent looked conflicted, caught between burdening another, or keeping all of that burden to himself, on his own shoulders. It was a feeling Alya had contended with since her parents died. All that anger and guilt and regret. It had just kept piling up, putting more and more pressure on her until she felt like she was about to break. She often wondered if that was why she had gotten sick. Maybe the stigma was her body's way of saying it had had enough, it was giving up. She'd kept all of her pain locked up, and now it was rotting away inside of her, poisoning her body until she was just dust and bone.

"My past was not an easy one," he said, and his voice was so gentle, so sad. He didn't speak again for a long moment, as if he was trying to work out what to say, how much he wanted to reveal. "I lost a lot. Not just those around me, but myself as well. Sometimes I feel like my body is no longer my own. It's more monster than human."

"I don't see a monster," she said.

"You don't understand. What I am... underneath..."

"But I do understand the man standing in front of me, right this moment," she said, willing his eyes to meet hers, but they lingered instead somewhere over her shoulder, somewhere else. "Hold out your hands."

She saw his brows furrow, but she focused on his hands instead as he reluctantly held them out to her, palms up. Pale skin, cool metal. She laid her own hands gently on top of his, and felt his fingers curl slightly against hers.

His touch was gentle and cautious, despite the callouses on his skin from wielding a gun, despite the metal of his other hand. "How can hands so gentle belong to a monster?" She asked, and saw the corners of his face tighten, as if it hurt him to listen. Because what she was saying went against everything he knew. "You've only ever used these hands to help me - to lift me to my feet, to show me I'm not alone, even to bring me flowers. Those aren't the deeds of a monster, Vincent."

His lips parted, but no words came out. They were trapped somewhere inside.

"You're kind, and brave, and loyal," she continued. "You protect those you care about. How can a monster do that?"

"I... I hurt people. I've... killed..."

"To protect others. You've only ever hurt those who mean harm."

"It's still wrong."

"It still doesn't make you a monster." She sighed, and her breath stirred a petal clinging to her own hair. She watched it flutter down to the ground. "The truth is, people fear what they don't understand. The people in this town see you as someone different, someone unlike them, and they fear you for it. But that's because they don't know you."

"Do you... know me?"

Alya smiled - a soft, sad flutter of a smile, there and gone in a heartbeat. "Maybe more than you realise. I know your loss, your regret. I know how hard it is to move on from the past. I know how easy it is to blame yourself." She released his hands, watching them linger in the space between them for a second before he let them fall back to his sides. "When I lost my parents, I blamed myself for their deaths. I regretted everything that happened that day, from when I left the house that morning, to when I went searching for their bodies amongst the ruins of Sector 7. I kept thinking, if I hadn't left, maybe I could have done something to help them, maybe they would still be alive now. I never even got to say goodbye to them." Her voice stilled, and it seemed as though the air around them had too. Something felt different somehow. Like the changing of the seasons, an unseen shift in the air and in the ground. "Sometimes I wonder if that's why I got sick. I was so full of pain and guilt that my body decided to just... give up."

"No," Vincent said quickly, recovering his voice. "I don't think that's true. I think... I think you're stronger than you give yourself credit for." Alya's heart clenched at his words. "I lost someone close to me too. In the end, she... she wasn't who I thought she was."

"I'm sorry."

"There's a lot of loss in this world."

"Yes. But that doesn't mean we should let it hurt us like this. Don't you think... we've both been hanging onto the past for too long? Don't you think it's time to let go?"

"How?" There was a crack in his voice then, some emotion coming through. Something different, something desperate. Alya wished she could take all the pain from his body and put it in hers, so she could take it with her to the grave.

She sighed, and looked down at her feet, at the ground beneath. "It's not easy to forget. But we have to try. Find a place, and bury those memories, deep in the ground, so that new ones can grow in their place."

"Like flowers," he murmured, almost thoughtfully, and Alya found herself smiling at him, a full smile this time, like a rose in bloom.

"Yes," she agreed. "Like flowers."

Vincent nodded, and looked at her, and she looked back. It wasn't so painful anymore, to see what was right in front of them. They had taken only a small step, but things felt different between them now. They had taken that first step together, and now the words they had spoken, and the ghosts they had shared, would tie them together like a thread.

More petals drifted from somewhere above, and brushed her cheek, and she smelt their sweet fragrance, and wanted to savour that moment for as long as she could.

But then her smile fell, and Vincent's face hardened, and the moment between them shattered, because suddenly she could smell something else in the air. Something that scorched her nose and made her blood thicken and burn.

Fire.

Wow, a long chapter for a change. There was also quite a bit of dialogue (which I'm not the best at), so I hope it wasn't too clunky or fast-paced >.< Thank you to everyone still reading this, despite the slow updates! I really appreciate it ♡