A Quiet Embrace

Chapter 2 : Fresh Restart

Neo's POV

I wake up the next morning, feeling better than I did yesterday. Some proper rest is what I truly needed. I slowly raise up from the couch and walk around looking for Damien. I couldn't find him however. His armor and cloak were also gone as were his swords. Oh yeah, he did say that he had business to attend to. He more than likely brought his weapons just in case he encountered the Grimm. I'm still uneasy about him. He seems nice, but I can't take any chances. I have to check the place out while he's gone. I go upstairs and check the room on the end of the hall which I quickly found to be Damien's room. It looked normal. This entire house seemed normal but I still have this odd feeling I don't know the whole truth. I pull open the drawers of his dresser and all I see are clothes. Some his, but some that definitely wasn't his. Damien was tall and semi-built but these clothes were smaller. In fact, they were similar in size to the clothes he gave me. They were clothes that were obviously made for a female so there lies the question. What female lived here? I check underneath the bed for more information but I find a shoebox. I drag it out and set it on top of the bed before slowly opening the lid and revealing the contents inside. They were...pictures. Each one containing him and countless others. There was one with him standing in front of around a dozen other people wearing all black like him. I look through them all until I get to one that really piqued my interest. There was one of him with his arm around a girl's waist. The girl was exceptionally pretty. She had this gorgeous purple hair, with black lipstick. She was also wearing all black. It seemed to be a constant theme with these pictures. Suddenly I hear someone clear their throat behind me before I promptly throw the pictures back into the box and turn around. Damien emerged from the dark corner and sighed.

"Don't be startled. You're not in trouble. I see that you have your doubts about me. I understand completely. My aim was never to make you think that I was untrustworthy. Those pictures are very important to me, for very many reasons." He said.

How long have you been standing there?

"I got back maybe twenty minutes ago. I heard you start coming through the hallway so I hid and waited to see if you would do what you inevitably did."

I'm gonna be honest here. I'm still overwhelmed by all of this. I feel like you're telling the truth, but I don't know enough about you to really trust you. I mean I literally just met you yesterday.

"My name is Damien White and to the rest of the world, I no longer exist. I took many missions all across Remnant to help out wherever I could until one day, something went wrong." Damien said.

What happened?

"Grimm were attacking a small village not too far from Vacuo. I showed up to try and save everyone but...my recklessness ended up getting a little girl killed. She was only around six years old. I was fighting a Beowulf Grimm and I slammed it into a wall that wasn't holding up very well. The wall gave...and she was underneath it when we found her. The impact of the wall collapsing on top of her crushed his ribs, piercing her lungs and effectively ending her life. I went into hiding for awhile...until I met a woman. Her name was Khloe. Khloe Knight." Damien said.

The girl from the pictures...

"Yeah. She found me, wallowing in self pity outside of a bar in Mantle. I wanted to disappear from the world entirely, but she showed me that I could disappear, but not in the way that I was hoping for. So...she took me in with her people. They were called the Black Legion and she was their leader. I ended up taking her on her offer and I joined the group. We grew closer, we got together, we had our own wedding in the middle of our camp, and everything was going great. That was until she wanted a child, regardless of the camp doctor's warnings. Her body was fragile, and she wasn't safely able to birth children. Despite my warnings, along with the doctor's, she still wanted to try it. So...we did and when it came time for childbirth, she bled out and the child... didn't make it either. It was like history was repeating itself so I disappeared again, and this house, I built with my bare hands. Of course I had help from the town's construction crew, but to them, I'm not Damien White. I'm just...a random dude named Freed." He said.