Phantoms Among Justice

XII - What To Do

                                 Segregatio I

Vic had called De'Addison, and when he arrived in Milissa, to her own house, he'd noticed that The Artist had a black eye and a bruised face. He carried Santiago in, and to the basement. De'Addison she'd tears as she defibrillated him. Vic's world closed in around him, as he heard the heart monitors squeal, indicating that there was no heartbeat. She injected him with a small dose of adrenaline, and he gasped. His eyes never opened, but he was speaking. Muttering about Evan.

Vic had knew about Evan, though Santiago hardly spoke of him. He had good reason never to. The heart monitor started to slowly beep, and De'Addison started operating. Vic cried as he slowly walked up the steps, being as now he had time to.

Five minutes later, when he heard slow-moving footsteps coming up the stairwell, he put his head into his hands and bawled. "Be calm, my child. It is I, your friend beat me savagely for not getting out of her space soon enough. I have been involuntarily scrutinizing her ever since you left. She has beaten me rather harshly, as you see" he pointed to his face, and showed his ribcage. "She must conjure that since she is medicinal to my needs... She is not a humanitarian by any means. How are you, my child?"

Vic's ululating had dissolved once he seen it was The Artist. Vic put his mind among other things, with the image of De'Addison battering The Artist. He chuckled relentlessly. "Jesus, well how'd you do that?"

The Artist forced a smile, and sat down. "Her and I believe quite differently on... I could lie and say some things, but many things. I believe wholeheartedly, ever since you and David left us to our own means, forcing one another's heads together, that we did not agree on a single thing. She is... sadistic." Vic laughed at this. He got along quite well with The Artist, but being as he was very much like his brother, Pety, he assumed she didn't correlate with The Artist for the same reason she didn't get along with Pety. Vic didn't know why, they just didn't. As his own mother used to say, There's a reason why The Good Lord didn't put 'em together. Why you did is beyond me!

He chuckled at his mother's words, and missed her very much at that point. He almost felt like crying, just because he missed her. He needed something, anything, to cling to. Ah... t'hell with it all. The Artist helped me through many things, may be he can now.

Vic didn't have to say anything, for The Artist was an empath. He somehow felt other people's emotions, and Vic thought that is why he made such such good listener, and for therapeutic needs, he couldn't be beat. "My child, you worry for our friend, I need not ask for consent. But I must inquire, why? He has been through a very hard life, and fir him to meet his eternal reward would be good. You would be selfish to deny him that. He is, among other materialistic things and sentimentalities, your greatest friend. I understand that very well. You have been through a lot with him, enough if One were to ask. But you do not believe so, so now I ask, when is enough?"

It didn't take long for The Artist's words to sink in, but it didn't keep him from quickly retorting. "When we've killed Eddie" he cynically responded. "He's got more hate for him than me, and I wouldn't like to see him miss that"

"Because of his nephew?" The Artist asked. "Especially because of his nephew. I've never seen anything like that before... it's like... I'm agnostic. But that, as far as firsthand accounts will go? Is the closest I have ever came to Christianity." Vic replied. The Artist slowly nodded, and rested his finger on his chin. "Do you view him as some sort of Deity?" The Artist asked, and Vic went to speak. He stifled himself and shrugged his shoulders. "If he's not a God, he's a demigod" Vic said.

"How does he come close to the loving Jehovah?" The Artist asked. "He doesn't." Vic replied. "He's just the opposite. If he's not Lucifer, he's Death." The Artist was shocked at this response. He couldn't even come up with a legitimate thought, not even a simile.