God's Gone AWOL

[9] Bentley's Reply

2026.

It took Bentley more than an eternity to say a single word.

Once the memory was completed, Atticus withdrew his gentle hold on her face. The circle where their foreheads has been connected now felt cold in the absence of her touch. His hands were trembling slightly, both as a reaction to the spell, and simply out of nervousness for what would follow next. Bentley was silent for just a little too long, after all.

He had shown her all of his memories from his own perspective, and he hadn't bothered to censor anything. Not only had she just witnessed the reality of her own death through Atticus' eyes, she had also been filled with every single one of his emotions as they had occurred back then. Of course she couldn't say a single word, Atticus had just traumatized her.

Along the far side of the glittering horizon, a light flush of pink started to tint the Parisian sky. Purple clouds overhead began to glow orange at their tips as they floated silently above the noise of the city. Morning was about to break, accompanied by a cool spring wind atop the spires of Notre Dame. There was a marvelous tranquility to it, as the night gradually came to an end and the blushing dawn claimed the kingdom of Earth's heavens.

Bentley was still quiet. Under any other circumstances, Atticus wouldn't have minded her silence. He would have given her some comfort in the fallout of his own memories, if not for the question hanging in the air.

Atticus wasn't the most expressive person. He owed that mostly to his father, and the fact that nobody in the universe actually cared about his feelings enough for his expression to matter. However, after years of bottling it all up without the slightest crack, he had just willingly poured out the most vulnerable and darkest set of emotions his soul had ever hidden away. Although it could be said that Bentley was one of the few creatures in existence whom he could truly be vulnerable with, the feeling of nervousness didn't subside at all.

Even though he told himself that it was going to be okay, he still felt extremely nervous. Was she silent because she just witnessed something traumatic that her body had already forgotten? Or was she silent because she couldn't accept the raw reality of Atticus' true feelings? Either way, the angel didn't dare make a single move. He just watched her as the silence between them grew with a deafening crescendo.

And then...

"So that's..."

Bentley took a deep breath and turned to look at him, but she only made it halfway through the sentence before falling silent all over again.

"...That's really..."

It was clear that she was struggling to form any sort of sentence. So Atticus spared her the effort and just nodded once.

"Take as long as you need," he told her.

"What happened to Damaris?" she asked.

"I informed Gabriel that you were not responsible for their death. He believed me, and I presume he handled the rest privately. I never heard about it again.

"Thank you. They deserved so much better, especially since I ended up dying anyway,"

"..."

"Even though I don't have my own memories anymore, I understand why I behaved the way I did," Bentley said, staring out at the horizon. "And now, seeing all that, I know I would do the same thing if it were to happen again,"

When he heard this, Atticus stomach tied itself into a knot. But it was a sign that he had proved his point. So he looked directly at her and spoke again.

"Now do you understand why I asked you to kill me?"

"I think so, but—" She paused for a moment. "But at the same time, I don't. You... always hated me obsessively but you also... I just don't know..."