Chapter 104 : Notre Dame - Sanctuary.
Chapter: 104 - Sanctuary.
Location: Notre Dame
Characters: Axel, Vexen, Marluxia, Larxene, Lexaeus, Zexion, Organization XIII
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for swearing.
Summary: A long, long journey is nearing its end.
Authors’ Notes:
Silvy: Wow. It’s been such a long journey, for the Nobodies and us writers alike. There have been many ups and downs along the way, and many a time when I was certain we’d never make it to the end. Somehow we all managed to pull through, though, and here we are, finally at the end of the road.
This has been an experience of a lifetime; thrilling, daunting and exhilarating - and we could never have done it without each other or you wonderful readers who supported us every step of the way. Thank you so much for your encouragement, you’re all awesome and we love you. Here’s to endings and beginnings, to bittersweet closures and looking boldly to the future! Happy New Year, y’all. ♥
Abby: And so my part in tpbod draws to a close. It's been a wonderful three (? sure seems longer) years. I remember when I was first given the opportunity to work on tpbod. I promptly fell ill with a terrible flu a week or so later, ran a fever of about 103 degrees, and hallucinated that Silvy and Chi IMed me over MSN while I was trying to sleep around 3 AM, my computer was off, and so the Trillian window appeared on my wall. We proceeded to talk about tpbod until I managed to convince "them" that I really was quite ill and I needed to sleep. Yup, that's when I knew this was going to be a special story. ...ok, I knew it after I got better, but that's not the point. The point is that this has been a really wonderful project, and it's been made wonderful not just by my fellow authors, but by you, the readers. We really wouldn't be here without you and without your unending support. Thank you all. <3
Chi: Thank you for these wonderful years! I never imagined, when we started spinning this tale in 2006, that we’d be here now. We made it all the way! And it has been such a journey to bring this story from start to finish and over all be bumps in between. I’ve had so much fun and met so many people. It’s been great having you all along for the ride!
Chapter 104 : Notre Dame - Sanctuary.
Rain washed all colour out of the bleak world, gushed forth from the mouths of the gargoyles high up on the stone walls of the cathedral. It glittered on the cobblestones of the finer streets and gathered in puddles in the mud of the poor.
They arrived high above the sprawling city, stumbled onto a rain-washed balcony, almost too weary to stand, staggering, leaning against the rough, wet stone.
All around was the sound of church bells, the world was filled with it, so close and loud their entire threadbare beings vibrated with it.
Seeking shelter from the rain they entered the closest tower, the gargantuan shapes of the bells silenced to a restless hum in the gloom high above.
Larxene hung on Axel’s shoulder, the redhead’s face drawn in pain as she clung to his wounded arm. The sock wrapped around it was crusted red with blood. She herself looked no better, face ashen and empty from exhaustion.
They had only just collapsed against a wall to rest when the tower’s hunchbacked, disfigured keeper found them. He seemed shocked at their presence, baring his teeth in anger at the unwelcome intrusion, urging them to leave at once. He looked quite strong.
Almost too tired to speak Zexion made a feeble attempt to plead their case.
“Please… Let us rest here, just for a while, we beg of you. Let us just regain some strength before… Before we…” he bit his lip, squeezing Lexaeus’ far too cold and grey hand.
Larxene hurriedly picked up where he trailed off, wringing her hands and feigning pathetic helplessness - or perhaps not pretending at all.
“Just for a little while, please? We have nowhere else to go. We just need a few hours, just a little bit of sanctuary. Please?”
That seemed to hit home.
The bell-ringer asked them if they were gypsies, and when they looked at him blankly he asked if they were of the travelling folk, of the hunted. That, at least, sounded familiar, and they simply nodded tiredly.
He told them, then, that they could stay, for a short while, but that they must remain hidden. As though they didn’t know that.
The keeper looked sideways at Larxene with a mix of shyness and suspicion, mumbling what sounded like “Your eyes look like hers.”
And then, with grace unexpected from such a bulky, misshapen creature, he disappeared back among the beams toward the bells.
They sank back against the wall, huddling together in a desperate search for warmth. Vexen forced himself to relax his arms around Marluxia. The Assassin looked frail enough to break from the slightest strain, as if a strong grip could dissolve him into nothingness. But he could not bring himself to let go all together.
And so ended the first day.
Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy)
***
The second day was a day of fire.
The city below was burning, soot-tinted red reflecting dully in the smoke and dark clouds above.
Axel sat on the parapet high above the city, watching it burn, reminded of another stunning view, another world painted red, but from eternal sunset. Lost in thought, he picked at his bandaged arm and didn’t realize he was no longer alone until Vexen spoke up, his voice unusually hushed.
“It’s a horrifying thing. So utterly destructive.”
Glancing over his shoulder he saw the bony man standing a few steps behind him, arms crossed tightly over his thin chest as though to protect himself from the very existence of fire. He looked back at the burning city.
“So is ice. At least fire only runs wild through accident or madness. Winter is a killer for months, every year.”
Without looking at him Vexen joined him by the parapet, staring down at the city.
“Cold is a merciful killer. Silent and gentle. Like sleep. Not so… viciously ugly and painful.”
“Hn.”
He dangled his feet over the abyss, staring at the distant inferno but only able to see sunsets long lost.
“Well. Sleep’s an old man’s death. Me, I’d rather go down in a flash, with a bang. A huge fucking blaze of glory.”
He felt the older man’s eyes on him, fire-tinted green, unreadable.
“Glory.”
Vexen dully repeated the word, looking away.
“What glory can there possibly be left for us? We will leave no mark. When we die we won’t be grieved, nor remembered. Only finally lost and truly forgotten.”
Well. What could you say to that?
“Never forgotten,” Axel stubbornly stated, staring back at the setting sun.
Red light was the light that travelled the farthest. He’d heard it said long ago, and for some reason the pointless fact had stayed with him.
“We have left our marks,” he said. “We will be remembered. If nothing else. If everything else is lost.”
He sighed and swung his legs back over the parapet to look at the older Nobody.
“We should move on.”
Vexen avoided his eyes.
“I know. Soon. We just need a little more rest.”
There was no time for rest, they all knew, but no-one had the strength to keep running.
Soon.
Beyond and below, Paris burned.
***
Marluxia found Larxene in the deserted cathedral below, quietly staring at the multitude of candles, so still one might mistake her brooding look for prayer. Her childish face seemed so old and worn, so weary and resigned.
He silently sat down on the bench behind her.
“We shouldn’t be down here,” he reminded her, making a conscious effort to force his raspy tone gentle. “We don’t want to be seen.”
“We shouldn’t many things,” she replied, her answer the only recognition of his presence. “We shouldn’t linger here. We shouldn’t have made so many mistakes. What difference does it really make?”
He looked past her at the floating sea of candles, at the coloured light filtering through incense and smoke from the high windows above.
“You’ve given up, then?”
She sighed.
“Not yet. Not quite yet. But I am… tired. If I look at the lights for long enough I can almost feel them shine right through me…” She shuddered. “There is so little left of us, sometimes I forget why we’re even struggling so hard to keep existing.”
He closed his eyes. Darkness constantly tugged at the corners of his frayed being, kept at bay only by strength of will.
And by now there was so little strength left to spend…
“I regret nothing,” she said, her voice clear and strong again for a moment, the Larxene he had once known.
“If I had to make the same choices... I would stand by you again. I would stand up and fight for myself. I would fight and plot and scheme and wrench my freedom from whomever tried to take it from me. And if we fell again, I would run. Maybe it’d work better next time.”
The ghost of a smile crossed his lips, but the emptiness inside ached with the pointlessness of it all. He stood and leaned forward to press his lips chastely to her cold cheek.
“You always were my one hope of making it. I would be honoured to have you by my side again.”
He turned and walked away.
She remained, still and unblinking, staring at her candles; a broken figure of darkness yearning for impossible light.
***
There was no need for words anymore.
Lexaeus and Zexion just sat together, close but only barely touching. Everything that needed saying had been said a long, long time ago.
They didn’t say, we pushed our limits and lived it to the fullest, triumph and failure, pain and elation, a life we didn’t even know we wanted.
They didn’t say, I had forgotten how to feel these things.
They didn’t say, you are the one reason I keep going.
They didn’t say, I know the end is coming.
They didn’t say, I love you.
They didn’t say goodbye.
***
In the dead of the night, only a few hours before dawn, the guards brought the bell-ringer back to the clock tower. Their eyes were full of disgust and contempt, their hands rough and brutal. He barely noticed.
He had only wanted to save them, and instead he had doomed them all.
Tool. Pawn. Truly a king of fools.
All his life he had lived surrounded by devils and demons carved from stone, and still he had failed to recognize the face of the true devil right in front of him.
Such a fool.
Such a blind, trusting fool.
And now everyone was going to burn, burn like the city he had condemned through his silence, and it was all his fault.
“Stay in here, bell-ringer!” a soldier barked. “And if you cause any more trouble we’ll slap you in irons like Frollo commanded!”
He rushed into the musty darkness, clung to the silent bells, wanting to cry but could not, wanting the bells to cry for him, howl, roar with the injustice to be committed, but he couldn’t bring himself to awaken their voices.
In the end, however, the silence was too much to bear.
He wept, broken, and the soothing, grieving thunder of the bells wept with him.
And so the second day ended.
Judex crederis esse venturus (Our Judge we believe shall come)
Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy)
***
The final day dawned slowly into quiet madness, the city restless and tense like a large beast smelling blood.
As the mists rose from the river in the first bleak light of dawn the only sound heard was the dull, sonorous toll of a single bell, a call irregular and forlorn; the only soul alive and grieving on judgment day.
The Nobodies slept, entangled, slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted, worn too thin, too damaged to move on that night.
They slept as the bell rang out, slept as false dawn tinted the smoky skies blue.
They slept as the pyre was built outside the doors of the cathedral.
And they slept as the Darkness came alive and faceless black shapes stepped forth from the nothingness to look down upon them.
***
Vexen moaned and reached desperately back for sleep when a spotless boot prodded him, then jerked awake so violently it almost hurt.
They had come at last.
Surrounding them were the Nobodies of the Organization, sleek figures of shadow, whole, pure. What their kind had always been meant to be, what they had once been themselves before they lost their path.
It felt so impossibly long ago.
He couldn’t see their faces. Was grateful for that small mercy.
And through the blind terror, anguish and despair a treacherous part of him kept thinking thank all Powers, it’s over. It’s finally over.
Around him the others awoke one by one, some in panic, others as resigned as himself.
Axel crouched silent and still near the shortest shadow; his face was hidden but under the shock of red hair his frail shoulders shook.
Lexaeus slowly stood, mustering his last vestiges of strength, the look on his face one of hopeless determination. Then Zexion placed a hand on his arm, shook his head invisibly, and the large man relaxed, closed his eyes, gave in.
Neither of them spoke.
Torn from his sleep Marluxia was on his feet, hands raised and eyes wild, before the impossibility of resistance caught up with him. He let his hands fall back empty to his sides then, proud, poised.
At his side stood Larxene, head held high, weary eyes blazing her defiance.
***
In the end no-one tried to run. No-one tried to fight.
There was no just chance of winning, nowhere left to go.
“Grew a bit tired and careless did we? But fair is fair, you really gave us quite the little chase there,” one of the shorter figures laughed. Xigbar, damn him.
“Turn around and count to ten and we’ll give you another,” Larxene shot back, but the cocky tone sounded hollow and forced.
“Traitors,” Saïx sneered, choosing his words with delighted satisfaction, “I told you running was futile. You will be severely punished for your treachery.”
Saïx always had been fond of talk of punishment.
At the sound of a final portal opening, the dark figures turned and stepped aside, giving way to the much too familiar figure of the most heartless of them all.
Lord. Superior.
Xemnas.
Even with his aristocratic face hidden in the shadows beneath his cowl they felt the scorching gaze sweep over them; empty, emotionless, judging.
“So here you all are,” he finally said. “We have been searching for you for so very long.”
The deep charismatic voice was soft, kind, understanding. Promising all the forgiveness they so desperately yearned for and knew they would never have.
And yet...
And yet.
One by one they submitted, sank tiredly to their knees, averted their eyes in surrender.
He watched them in silence until they were all bowed down before him.
“Come,” he said then, making a beckoning gesture. “You have been lost to us for far too long. Your trying journey is finally over. It is time we return home together. We have so very much to talk about.”
One by one the surrounding shadows surged forward, reaching out, summoning the Darkness.
No-one ran. No-one fought. No-one spoke.
A few moments later the room was empty.
Even before dawn had broken, the day had come to an end.
Like their long desperate flight, like all hopes of freedom or redemption.
And from Notre Dame the bell tolled, the sound ancient and unearthly, as though the last day had truly come.
Quando Judex est venturus (When the Judge is come)
Nil inultum remanebit (Nothing shall remain unpunished)
Quem patronum rogaturus (To what protector shall I appeal)
Cum vix justus sit securus? (When scarcely the just man shall be secure?)
Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy)
Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy)
End.
Location: Notre Dame
Characters: Axel, Vexen, Marluxia, Larxene, Lexaeus, Zexion, Organization XIII
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for swearing.
Summary: A long, long journey is nearing its end.
Authors’ Notes:
Silvy: Wow. It’s been such a long journey, for the Nobodies and us writers alike. There have been many ups and downs along the way, and many a time when I was certain we’d never make it to the end. Somehow we all managed to pull through, though, and here we are, finally at the end of the road.
This has been an experience of a lifetime; thrilling, daunting and exhilarating - and we could never have done it without each other or you wonderful readers who supported us every step of the way. Thank you so much for your encouragement, you’re all awesome and we love you. Here’s to endings and beginnings, to bittersweet closures and looking boldly to the future! Happy New Year, y’all. ♥
Abby: And so my part in tpbod draws to a close. It's been a wonderful three (? sure seems longer) years. I remember when I was first given the opportunity to work on tpbod. I promptly fell ill with a terrible flu a week or so later, ran a fever of about 103 degrees, and hallucinated that Silvy and Chi IMed me over MSN while I was trying to sleep around 3 AM, my computer was off, and so the Trillian window appeared on my wall. We proceeded to talk about tpbod until I managed to convince "them" that I really was quite ill and I needed to sleep. Yup, that's when I knew this was going to be a special story. ...ok, I knew it after I got better, but that's not the point. The point is that this has been a really wonderful project, and it's been made wonderful not just by my fellow authors, but by you, the readers. We really wouldn't be here without you and without your unending support. Thank you all. <3
Chi: Thank you for these wonderful years! I never imagined, when we started spinning this tale in 2006, that we’d be here now. We made it all the way! And it has been such a journey to bring this story from start to finish and over all be bumps in between. I’ve had so much fun and met so many people. It’s been great having you all along for the ride!
Chapter 104 : Notre Dame - Sanctuary.
Rain washed all colour out of the bleak world, gushed forth from the mouths of the gargoyles high up on the stone walls of the cathedral. It glittered on the cobblestones of the finer streets and gathered in puddles in the mud of the poor.
They arrived high above the sprawling city, stumbled onto a rain-washed balcony, almost too weary to stand, staggering, leaning against the rough, wet stone.
All around was the sound of church bells, the world was filled with it, so close and loud their entire threadbare beings vibrated with it.
Seeking shelter from the rain they entered the closest tower, the gargantuan shapes of the bells silenced to a restless hum in the gloom high above.
Larxene hung on Axel’s shoulder, the redhead’s face drawn in pain as she clung to his wounded arm. The sock wrapped around it was crusted red with blood. She herself looked no better, face ashen and empty from exhaustion.
They had only just collapsed against a wall to rest when the tower’s hunchbacked, disfigured keeper found them. He seemed shocked at their presence, baring his teeth in anger at the unwelcome intrusion, urging them to leave at once. He looked quite strong.
Almost too tired to speak Zexion made a feeble attempt to plead their case.
“Please… Let us rest here, just for a while, we beg of you. Let us just regain some strength before… Before we…” he bit his lip, squeezing Lexaeus’ far too cold and grey hand.
Larxene hurriedly picked up where he trailed off, wringing her hands and feigning pathetic helplessness - or perhaps not pretending at all.
“Just for a little while, please? We have nowhere else to go. We just need a few hours, just a little bit of sanctuary. Please?”
That seemed to hit home.
The bell-ringer asked them if they were gypsies, and when they looked at him blankly he asked if they were of the travelling folk, of the hunted. That, at least, sounded familiar, and they simply nodded tiredly.
He told them, then, that they could stay, for a short while, but that they must remain hidden. As though they didn’t know that.
The keeper looked sideways at Larxene with a mix of shyness and suspicion, mumbling what sounded like “Your eyes look like hers.”
And then, with grace unexpected from such a bulky, misshapen creature, he disappeared back among the beams toward the bells.
They sank back against the wall, huddling together in a desperate search for warmth. Vexen forced himself to relax his arms around Marluxia. The Assassin looked frail enough to break from the slightest strain, as if a strong grip could dissolve him into nothingness. But he could not bring himself to let go all together.
And so ended the first day.
Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy)
***
The second day was a day of fire.
The city below was burning, soot-tinted red reflecting dully in the smoke and dark clouds above.
Axel sat on the parapet high above the city, watching it burn, reminded of another stunning view, another world painted red, but from eternal sunset. Lost in thought, he picked at his bandaged arm and didn’t realize he was no longer alone until Vexen spoke up, his voice unusually hushed.
“It’s a horrifying thing. So utterly destructive.”
Glancing over his shoulder he saw the bony man standing a few steps behind him, arms crossed tightly over his thin chest as though to protect himself from the very existence of fire. He looked back at the burning city.
“So is ice. At least fire only runs wild through accident or madness. Winter is a killer for months, every year.”
Without looking at him Vexen joined him by the parapet, staring down at the city.
“Cold is a merciful killer. Silent and gentle. Like sleep. Not so… viciously ugly and painful.”
“Hn.”
He dangled his feet over the abyss, staring at the distant inferno but only able to see sunsets long lost.
“Well. Sleep’s an old man’s death. Me, I’d rather go down in a flash, with a bang. A huge fucking blaze of glory.”
He felt the older man’s eyes on him, fire-tinted green, unreadable.
“Glory.”
Vexen dully repeated the word, looking away.
“What glory can there possibly be left for us? We will leave no mark. When we die we won’t be grieved, nor remembered. Only finally lost and truly forgotten.”
Well. What could you say to that?
“Never forgotten,” Axel stubbornly stated, staring back at the setting sun.
Red light was the light that travelled the farthest. He’d heard it said long ago, and for some reason the pointless fact had stayed with him.
“We have left our marks,” he said. “We will be remembered. If nothing else. If everything else is lost.”
He sighed and swung his legs back over the parapet to look at the older Nobody.
“We should move on.”
Vexen avoided his eyes.
“I know. Soon. We just need a little more rest.”
There was no time for rest, they all knew, but no-one had the strength to keep running.
Soon.
Beyond and below, Paris burned.
***
Marluxia found Larxene in the deserted cathedral below, quietly staring at the multitude of candles, so still one might mistake her brooding look for prayer. Her childish face seemed so old and worn, so weary and resigned.
He silently sat down on the bench behind her.
“We shouldn’t be down here,” he reminded her, making a conscious effort to force his raspy tone gentle. “We don’t want to be seen.”
“We shouldn’t many things,” she replied, her answer the only recognition of his presence. “We shouldn’t linger here. We shouldn’t have made so many mistakes. What difference does it really make?”
He looked past her at the floating sea of candles, at the coloured light filtering through incense and smoke from the high windows above.
“You’ve given up, then?”
She sighed.
“Not yet. Not quite yet. But I am… tired. If I look at the lights for long enough I can almost feel them shine right through me…” She shuddered. “There is so little left of us, sometimes I forget why we’re even struggling so hard to keep existing.”
He closed his eyes. Darkness constantly tugged at the corners of his frayed being, kept at bay only by strength of will.
And by now there was so little strength left to spend…
“I regret nothing,” she said, her voice clear and strong again for a moment, the Larxene he had once known.
“If I had to make the same choices... I would stand by you again. I would stand up and fight for myself. I would fight and plot and scheme and wrench my freedom from whomever tried to take it from me. And if we fell again, I would run. Maybe it’d work better next time.”
The ghost of a smile crossed his lips, but the emptiness inside ached with the pointlessness of it all. He stood and leaned forward to press his lips chastely to her cold cheek.
“You always were my one hope of making it. I would be honoured to have you by my side again.”
He turned and walked away.
She remained, still and unblinking, staring at her candles; a broken figure of darkness yearning for impossible light.
***
There was no need for words anymore.
Lexaeus and Zexion just sat together, close but only barely touching. Everything that needed saying had been said a long, long time ago.
They didn’t say, we pushed our limits and lived it to the fullest, triumph and failure, pain and elation, a life we didn’t even know we wanted.
They didn’t say, I had forgotten how to feel these things.
They didn’t say, you are the one reason I keep going.
They didn’t say, I know the end is coming.
They didn’t say, I love you.
They didn’t say goodbye.
***
In the dead of the night, only a few hours before dawn, the guards brought the bell-ringer back to the clock tower. Their eyes were full of disgust and contempt, their hands rough and brutal. He barely noticed.
He had only wanted to save them, and instead he had doomed them all.
Tool. Pawn. Truly a king of fools.
All his life he had lived surrounded by devils and demons carved from stone, and still he had failed to recognize the face of the true devil right in front of him.
Such a fool.
Such a blind, trusting fool.
And now everyone was going to burn, burn like the city he had condemned through his silence, and it was all his fault.
“Stay in here, bell-ringer!” a soldier barked. “And if you cause any more trouble we’ll slap you in irons like Frollo commanded!”
He rushed into the musty darkness, clung to the silent bells, wanting to cry but could not, wanting the bells to cry for him, howl, roar with the injustice to be committed, but he couldn’t bring himself to awaken their voices.
In the end, however, the silence was too much to bear.
He wept, broken, and the soothing, grieving thunder of the bells wept with him.
And so the second day ended.
Judex crederis esse venturus (Our Judge we believe shall come)
Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy)
***
The final day dawned slowly into quiet madness, the city restless and tense like a large beast smelling blood.
As the mists rose from the river in the first bleak light of dawn the only sound heard was the dull, sonorous toll of a single bell, a call irregular and forlorn; the only soul alive and grieving on judgment day.
The Nobodies slept, entangled, slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted, worn too thin, too damaged to move on that night.
They slept as the bell rang out, slept as false dawn tinted the smoky skies blue.
They slept as the pyre was built outside the doors of the cathedral.
And they slept as the Darkness came alive and faceless black shapes stepped forth from the nothingness to look down upon them.
***
Vexen moaned and reached desperately back for sleep when a spotless boot prodded him, then jerked awake so violently it almost hurt.
They had come at last.
Surrounding them were the Nobodies of the Organization, sleek figures of shadow, whole, pure. What their kind had always been meant to be, what they had once been themselves before they lost their path.
It felt so impossibly long ago.
He couldn’t see their faces. Was grateful for that small mercy.
And through the blind terror, anguish and despair a treacherous part of him kept thinking thank all Powers, it’s over. It’s finally over.
Around him the others awoke one by one, some in panic, others as resigned as himself.
Axel crouched silent and still near the shortest shadow; his face was hidden but under the shock of red hair his frail shoulders shook.
Lexaeus slowly stood, mustering his last vestiges of strength, the look on his face one of hopeless determination. Then Zexion placed a hand on his arm, shook his head invisibly, and the large man relaxed, closed his eyes, gave in.
Neither of them spoke.
Torn from his sleep Marluxia was on his feet, hands raised and eyes wild, before the impossibility of resistance caught up with him. He let his hands fall back empty to his sides then, proud, poised.
At his side stood Larxene, head held high, weary eyes blazing her defiance.
***
In the end no-one tried to run. No-one tried to fight.
There was no just chance of winning, nowhere left to go.
“Grew a bit tired and careless did we? But fair is fair, you really gave us quite the little chase there,” one of the shorter figures laughed. Xigbar, damn him.
“Turn around and count to ten and we’ll give you another,” Larxene shot back, but the cocky tone sounded hollow and forced.
“Traitors,” Saïx sneered, choosing his words with delighted satisfaction, “I told you running was futile. You will be severely punished for your treachery.”
Saïx always had been fond of talk of punishment.
At the sound of a final portal opening, the dark figures turned and stepped aside, giving way to the much too familiar figure of the most heartless of them all.
Lord. Superior.
Xemnas.
Even with his aristocratic face hidden in the shadows beneath his cowl they felt the scorching gaze sweep over them; empty, emotionless, judging.
“So here you all are,” he finally said. “We have been searching for you for so very long.”
The deep charismatic voice was soft, kind, understanding. Promising all the forgiveness they so desperately yearned for and knew they would never have.
And yet...
And yet.
One by one they submitted, sank tiredly to their knees, averted their eyes in surrender.
He watched them in silence until they were all bowed down before him.
“Come,” he said then, making a beckoning gesture. “You have been lost to us for far too long. Your trying journey is finally over. It is time we return home together. We have so very much to talk about.”
One by one the surrounding shadows surged forward, reaching out, summoning the Darkness.
No-one ran. No-one fought. No-one spoke.
A few moments later the room was empty.
Even before dawn had broken, the day had come to an end.
Like their long desperate flight, like all hopes of freedom or redemption.
And from Notre Dame the bell tolled, the sound ancient and unearthly, as though the last day had truly come.
Quando Judex est venturus (When the Judge is come)
Nil inultum remanebit (Nothing shall remain unpunished)
Quem patronum rogaturus (To what protector shall I appeal)
Cum vix justus sit securus? (When scarcely the just man shall be secure?)
Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy)
Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy)
End.