...𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐋, 𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 || gameknight999

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

LIKE FREAKS OF NURTURE

===

It took about fifteen minutes for Tom to exit Angel's room, eyes weary and heavy with concern scanning the house for Erebus. "Hey, magpie," he greeted softly, walking over to him. Erebus glanced up from his hands, watching as Tom grabbed a chair from the dining table, pulling it over to him.

"How's she doing?" Erebus shifted a little where he was sitting, moving closer to Tom as he sat down beside him.

"She's..." Tom sighed heavily. "She's going to need some time to recover from seeing her parents again. We helped her calm down initially, but she's still quite upset. However, she did ask for me to explain the situation to you, so that you understand everything going on."

Erebus nodded. "If there's anything that she wants to omit, that's alright," he told Tom. "All I care about is her comfortability."

Tom smiled softly. "I admire the bond that the two of you have," he said. "Despite how upset she was, she still wanted to make sure that you were going to be alright, and that you understood what was going on."

A sudden rush of warmth flowed through Erebus at Tom's words. "That's... That's very kind of her," he mumbled. Tom looked down at his hands.

"Forgive me if some of this is hard to relate," he said. "Much of the important stuff only happened about a year ago, and it still has had an effect on Angel, Clara, and I."

"Take your time," Erebus told him, offering him a reassuring smile.

"How much do you know about Angel's parents?"

Erebus thought back to his time in Minecraft, when Angel had told him details about her parents to distract him from the aftermath of Malacoda's torture. "I know that they weren't accepting of her being a girl," he stated. "I know they made her live in a bad place that she shouldn't have grown up in, and I know that they believed very strongly in a God, and that they tried to get others to believe in that God as well."

Tom nodded, letting out a dry scoff. "Very strongly is an understatement," he mused. "My brother, Joseph, Angel's father - he was a pastor, which meant that he preached the word of God officially at a church. Of course, this made him think that everything he believed was right, which rubbed off on his wife, Lydia. To put it simply, everything that Angel believed that wasn't strictly aligned with their own beliefs was shut down as soon as possible. This included the music she listens to, the clothes that she wears, even the thought of wanting to transition..."

Erebus's brow furrowed with unease. "That's horrible," he murmured.

"It gets worse," Tom told him gravely. "In March of 2012, after her eighteenth birthday, Joseph and Lydia decided that they wanted to save Angel from going to hell because of the choices she made. They believed that God wouldn't allow her into Heaven due to the fact that she enjoyed the things that they had prohibited, so they..."

A heavy silence weighed down on the atmosphere, and Erebus's nervousness only grew further. Tom's gaze met the ground, and it did not return to Erebus for some time afterward. His hands trembled ever so slightly.

"My own brother..." he murmured. "My brother and his wife thought that the best way to ensure Angel's redemption was to perform a second baptism - a cleansing of the body with holy water. Except at that time, they didn't just want to baptize her."

The firm weight of realization settled inside Erebus, and he practically went rigid in his seat at the thought. "They tried to drown her?"

Tom nodded. "They believed that the holy water was pure enough to cleanse her soul, so that when she died from it, she would go straight to Heaven." His hands tightened into fists. "Such delusional people, torturing an innocent girl like her for enjoying something... I am embarrassed to be related to them."