In My Hands, Know Suffering

46: To Hell and Back Again

A person's laughter, when it was someone close to you, was the approval of a relayed train of thought, voiced out through opinions, sometimes insults. More often than not, you'd grasp the concept of what made the person laugh and repeat it through multiple instances. Arguments were a different matter. They are the slices of life that sought to deepen a relationship, be it to anyone, as long as there was a solution sympathetically drawn.

There are certain sentimentality in life that a person holds dearly no matter how far one had gone through time. In any variety of form that might be, some things that even in an unjustified life just never waver. Despite the uncertainties obstructing a precious train of thought, they are often the ones worth remembering through and through.

Those names are the treasures that even the yellow pages of a lifetime could not eradicate as mere taillights fade into dust, leaving trails of a memory that will surely be cherished. Somehow and someway.

There was a hand reaching out from the darkness that was the abyss, where lost souls linger in search for closure. There was a voice calling for remembrance that wanted to save a beloved from sinking further into oblivion. And there was a shadow in between that single ray of light that wanted to eradicate those memories forever.

"What was that thing you made for her again?"

Castellone followed behind Abrielle's figure. The terrain they've walked on was an eternity of flat and a wall of whiteness. There was nothing but the two of them in the empty background. Somehow, it brought peace and tranquility, like the dangers they've faced was nothing.

He had been following her the minute they've entered what appeared to be the border of the farshore. He didn't understand it, he could even be dreaming, but he chose to believe it was the other side. He must be dead, it was a thought that crossed his mind.

Abrielle was in front of him, walking ahead by a few feet, watching her the same way he always did. She was in a white dress, a first and probably the last he'll see her in. Her voice was calmer, her face was serene, and there were no traces of the bruises and wounds from her suffering.

They had been talking, walking, but Castellone couldn't feel the same Abrielle from her. She wasn't the real one. It was more like her own image, much like how Specter copied his own. But her aura was peaceful, like there was nothing to destroy her, nothing to absorb her. But he doubted even that part. He was uneasy.

"It was the glazed cinnabun." He said.

Abrielle's ghost, like how he wanted to call it, stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. She smiled. "I remember Abrielle didn't say anything when she had that, but I thought you should know, she's never had something like that before. Sievetech didn't allow anyone to."

Abrielle's list of 'first times' was still growing despite the events that was happening. He understood where the roots of her ignorance, and innocence, came from. Being lead to believe that punishment was another term for living had made her look at the world differently. Living in a world that didn't know light or the buzz of civilization shaped their minds of what they knew within their walls. No wonder she was weirder than most people he knew.

"Yeah..." It was all Castellone could say, looking away.

He remembered Abrielle's reaction the first time she had that bread. It appeared like it was her first birthday cake. She asked him for another one, which he teased in not sharing while taking a bite out of it. Abrielle couldn't protest, she never did. But he leaned over to kiss her, surprising her, and the next thing she knew, she had cinnamon in her mouth and blushed when he fed her that way.

He stared into the whiteness. If this was heaven, he wanted to laugh at it. What was he even doing there? Where was Specter? Why couldn't that bastard drag him to hell instead? Life was a ball of irony and a cycle of pain.