T H E W E I G H T O F V E N G E A N C E
“Gravity remembers what it is owed.”
——— • ———
Word count — ~4, 370 Character(s): The Protagonist (reader), The Lover (in flashback), The Savior, and The One (the Savior's companion) Warnings —Religious trauma, institutional homophobia/transphobia, erasure of identity, grief, and character death (violence/murder)Note — A story about the cost of "sameness" in a city built on holy lines. Loosely inspired by the themes and atmosphere of Gravity from Hazbin Hotel. This is an exploration of queer identity, religious authority, and a vengeance that feels as inevitable as the earth pulling you down. Also, if you know who made this artwork do tell, I found it on Pinterest^^
——— • ———
The sky over the capital is too bright, the kind of brightness that makes your eyes ache even when you look away. White stone climbs toward it in obedient lines, towers and spires catching the light and throwing it back at you, polished and blinding. The city prides itself on that. Clean angles. No shadows that linger too long.
You stand at the overlook anyway, boots planted at the edge, the wind worrying at your cloak like it wants to peel you loose and send you down among the rooftops.
Heat clings to your skin. Not the heat of summer, but something tighter, heavier. Pressure without relief. The air smells of dust, incense and distant rain that hasn’t decided where to fall just yet.
Behind you, the cathedral sings.
The sound spills outward through the arches, layered voices rising and folding in on themselves. You don’t turn around. You don’t need to. You’ve heard these sounds your entire life. Forgiveness shaped into melody. Unity stretched thin and polished until it shines.
They sing as if nothing is broken.
Your hand rests at your side, fingers curled around the familiar shape of your blade. The leather wrap is worn smooth where your thumb presses hardest. You don’t remember when that started. Sometime after...
Sometime when your hands stopped shaking and started aching instead.
“Eye for an eye,” you whisper.
The words don’t echo. They settle. They always do.
Below you, the city moves. People crossing squares, pulling shutters closed against the brewing storm, adjusting collars and headscarves and faces. Everyone looks more or less the same from this height. That’s the point of the city. That’s always been the point.
You remember when it wasn’t enough for them that you complied. When the ‘sameness’ stopped being simply encouraged and started being heavily enforced.
You remember when they took notice.
——— • ———
It had been a small thing at first.
A look held too long during prayer. A question asked after doctrine was recited, quiet but curious, as if curiosity itself were not already a sin. Your lover never learned how to disappear into the crowd properly. They tried, sometimes, for your sake. You remember the effort in their shoulders when they stood straighter than felt natural, the way they lowered their voice in public spaces heavy with listening ears and prying eyes. You remember the days they chose clothes that softened them into something more acceptable, something less likely to be noticed. Less likely to be stopped.
It never lasted.
Something in them always pushed back. Not loudly. Not defiantly. Just enough to remind the world they were still there. A laugh that slipped free before they could catch it. A hand that lingered in yours a moment too long after the bells rang. A refusal to answer questions about themselves with the words people expected.
They did not perform themselves correctly, by anyone’s measure but their own.
The sermons changed before you noticed the guards did. The language grew careful and sharpened. Not cruel. They were never cruel. Just precise. Words like order. Design. Purpose. The priests spoke of harmony the way one speaks of architecture. Load-bearing truths. Necessary supports. They warned, gently, that deviations weakened the whole.
Your lover listened from beside you, hands folded, face unreadable. Later, outside, they would roll their eyes and mutter something about how the land never feared variety. You would shush them, heart racing, and they would smile at you, soft and apologetic, and squeeze your fingers like that made it better.
It didn’t.
You loved them anyway. Completely. Recklessly. You loved the way they spoke about themselves in pieces, assembling who they were out loud as if saying it might make it real. You loved the care they took with other people’s names, with pronouns, with small kindnesses that never made it into sermons completely. You loved the way they believed the world could be better without needing to burn everything down first.
The city noticed.
It always does.
The day they were taken from your shared home, the square was full. Markets open. Incense drifting from the cathedral doors. Bells ringing out the hour with mechanical devotion. Normality performing itself perfectly. You’d been arguing about something, something big and something small. The windows were open despite the neighbors’ disapproval, letting in late light and the distant sound of bells marking the hour. You remember standing near the table, arms crossed, trying not to raise your voice.
“You don’t need all of that,” you said, glancing at the list on the table. The paper was creased where they’d folded and unfolded it, numbers written small in the margins, crossed out and rewritten. “We can make do.”
They were standing by the counter, sleeves pushed up, hands braced on the wood like they needed the support. “That’s not the point.”
“It is when we’re counting coins again.” You kept your voice low, even though no one else was there. Old habits. “You know how it looks lately. People are watching.”
Their shoulders lifted with a breath that didn’t quite become a sigh. “They’re always watching.”
“Yes,” you said, a little too quickly. “Which is why we don’t give them reasons.”
They turned then, really looked at you. The late light from the window caught the line of their jaw, the tightness there you’d learned to read long ago. “You’re starting to sound like the sermons.”
The words landed heavier than they should have. You felt them in your chest. “That’s not fair.”
“I mean it,” they said. Their voice wasn’t loud, just tired. “Listen to yourself. Careful. Quiet. Don’t draw attention. When did you start agreeing with them?”
You rubbed a hand over your face, the day’s weight pressing down all at once. “I’m tired,” you said. “I didn’t sleep. I’m just— I’m tired.”
They watched you for a long moment. Something in their expression softened, then tightened again, like a door almost opening and then being shut. “I’m tired too,” they said. After a beat, quieter, “I’m tired of pretending.”
The words sat between you, fragile and sharp.
The room felt suddenly too small. The kettle on the stove ticked as it cooled. Outside, a cart rattled past, wheels loud against stone. Life continuing, indifferent.
You reached for your cloak instead of for them. The fabric was still damp from the morning rain. “I’m going out,” you said, already moving. “I’ll get what we need for dinner. And… I just need air.”
They nodded once, the motion stiff. “Fine.”
“I’ll be back before dark.” You hesitated in the doorway, waiting for something. A protest. A joke. Anything.
They didn’t look up.
You closed the door more gently than necessary.
They didn’t stop you.
That was the last ordinary moment of your life.
The street outside was busy enough to make you feel anonymous. Carts rattled past. Voices overlapped. Bells marked the hour with mechanical devotion. You remember thinking, absurdly, about which spices they preferred. You remember rehearsing the apology in your head, shaping it until it sounded light, easy.
You would laugh about this later.
You always did.
When you returned, the door was open.
Not forced. Just open.
The room felt wrong immediately. Too quiet. Too still. The table half-set. Bread cooling untouched, its crust already hardening at the edges. One chair sat slightly askew, as if someone had stood up too fast.
You called their name.
No answer.
You took another step inside and saw it then. The mark on the floor where boots had tracked in rain and dirt. Dark. Unequivocal. The imprint of authority in a space that had never allowed it before. Outside, the neighbors’ doors were closed tight, their windows dark. Silence, heavy with knowing.
They had come for them in your absence.
The city didn’t tell you how at first. Your mind filled the gaps on its own.
The square would have been full. Markets open. Bells ringing. Normality performing itself perfectly. Someone selling fruit. Someone laughing. Someone turning away at the wrong moment.
You imagine the hands on their arms. Firm. Certain. The sudden weight of bodies between them and freedom. The way sound drops out of the world for half a breath before it comes back louder, sharper, wrong.
Order, the soldiers would have said.
For the good of the city.
You know your lover didn’t fight. You can see it. The way they would turn their head just enough, searching a crowd that doesn’t know to look back. Eyes fierce. Bright. Carrying a message they never had the chance to say aloud.
Don’t bend for them.
You never saw them alive again.
Later, when you demanded answers, they gave them smoothly. Practiced. “Difference,” they said— calling your love by a name unuttered in years, “invited chaos.” Some people existed in ways that threatened stability. The words were spoken gently, beneath stained glass, by mouths that had never known a boot at their back.
They said it had been lawful. That your home was unregistered. That two people living together without blessing was already a transgression. That your lover had too long been offered mercy. Time to repent. To name themselves correctly. To align body and soul with divine intent.
They said the intervention had been quiet. Respectful.
“This was for the good of the city.” one said.
“For the good of their soul.” another chimed in.
You never got to finish the argument.
Never got to apologize. To tell them you loved them.
Never got to hear them say it back.
What you were left with instead was the echo of your own voice in an empty room, and the knowledge that the last thing between you had been unfinished.
That the last thing they heard from you wasn’t love, but frustration.
That night, the city slept.
The bells rang as usual.
And Sanctus, once again, kept its hands clean.
——— • ———
The gardens open slowly, like they’re being revealed rather than entered.
Stone paths curve with practiced grace, guiding feet where they are meant to go. Hedges rise shoulder-high on either side, clipped into smooth obedience, their edges softened by rain. Lanterns burn low beneath wrought arches, light blurring as water streaks the glass. Everything here is designed to calm. To reassure. To make distress feel impossible.
You step into it anyway.
They’re exactly where you were told they would be. Not by any specific person, but by a person’s specific actions.
Near the fountain, where water spills endlessly over carved saints and never seems to stain. The Savior stands with their back half-turned, one hand resting lightly on the stone rim, the other occupied with the person beside them. A quiet moment. An intimate one. Heads inclined toward each other as if the world were not ending in increments.
You stop just short of the light.
For a moment, you let yourself see it. The way the Savior’s posture eases when they think no one is watching. The way the other leans in, trusting, unguarded. A private softness the city never gets to witness.
They used to stand like that.
The thought lands without warning and sinks its teeth in.
You remember standing like that once, shoulder to shoulder in your kitchen, the window cracked open despite the neighbors. Your lover had leaned into you while water boiled, head resting briefly against your arm, as if the world couldn’t touch you there. In your sanctuary. You remember the warmth of it. The weight. The quiet certainty that this was allowed, at least between the two of you.
You remember how they smiled when they thought you weren’t looking.
The memory is gone as quickly as it came, leaving behind a hollow ache that settles low in your chest.
The rain thickens, drumming against leaves, stone, skin. You take another step forward. Then another.
The fountain masks the sound until it doesn’t.
The Savior turns first.
Their eyes find you and hesitate, sliding past your face before snapping back. You see the confusion register. The brief calculation. Stranger or supplicant. Threat or nuisance.
Then recognition settles in, slow and unwelcome.
Their hand drops from the fountain’s edge.
“You shouldn’t be here,” they say.
Not shouted. Not whispered. A statement of fact, like gravity, like law.
The person beside them turns at the sound of your voice— or maybe the absence of one. Their gaze meets yours and lingers too long. You see the shift there, too. The instinctive pull inward, closer to the Savior, as if proximity alone can promise one’s safety.
You stop a few paces away.
Close enough to be seen clearly. Close enough to be heard over the rain.
“This is a private place,” the Savior continues, recovering themselves. Authority settles back over their shoulders like a well-worn cloak. “Consecrated ground.”
“So was my home,” you say.
The words cut cleaner than you expect.
The Savior stills.
You watch memory flicker behind their eyes. Not grief. Not remorse. Administration. A document recalled. A case once closed. Still closed. A name filed and forgotten.
“I remember,” they say slowly. “If you’ve come to seek absolution—”
You shake your head once.
“No.”
Behind them, the other shifts again, unease finally surfacing. They glance between you and the Savior, rain plastering their hair to their face.
“This isn’t appropriate,” the Savior says, firmer now. “You’re upset. Understandably. But this is not the way—”
You take a step closer.
The rain swallows the sound of your boots. It swallows the fountain. It swallows the city.
“Don’t,” you say.
The word is quiet. It doesn’t need to be louder.
The Savior falters. Just enough.
“This doesn’t need to become something else,” they try. “No one has to get hurt.”
You look at the person beside them again. Really look.
They’re close. Close enough to touch. Close enough to matter.
“That’s what you said before,” you reply.
Thunder rolls overhead, nearer now, the sound cracking through the garden like a warning no one asked for.
The paths around you feel narrower. The hedges taller. The city further away than it’s ever been.
Something in the air shifts.
——— • ———
The rain softens again, thinning to a steady hush that turns the garden inward. Water gathers in the seams of stone. Lanternlight blurs until edges no longer matter.
The Savior straightens.
It is a small motion but practiced. Authority resettling itself. You’ve seen it before, at the pulpit, beneath stained glass, when a question has gone too far and must be put back where it belongs.
“This has gone on long enough,” the Savior says. Not unkindly. Not harshly. As if length alone were the problem. As if endurance were the same as justice.
Behind them, that one shifts, uncertain. Close enough to feel the change, not close enough to name it.
“You’re grieving,” the Savior continues. “Grief distorts. It makes enemies where there are none.” A pause. Measured. “I won’t fault you for that.”
You say nothing.
Rain slips down your collar, cold against the skin at the nape of your neck despite the cloak around it. You welcome it. It gives you something simple to feel.
“We’ve spoken,” the Savior goes on. “You’ve been heard.” That isn’t true, but anything sounds like truth when spoken this way. With this authority.
“There’s nothing more to be done here tonight.”
They glance around the garden, as if taking inventory of the damage. Of which there is none. Not now. Not yet.
“This is sacred ground,” they say again, softer now. “It deserves peace.”
You lower your gaze.
It costs you nothing. It gives them everything.
The Savior takes that as agreement.
They turn slightly toward their person, the one, hand lifting in a gesture meant to reassure. A touch that stops just short of contact, hovering where comfort should be. One leans toward it anyway, instinctive as breath.
“You should go inside,” the Savior tells them. “The rain’s worsening.”
One hesitates, looking at you. Their eyes search your face for something—anger, threat, permission. They find only stillness.
“You’re safe,” the Savior adds, and this time the words are meant for you as much as them. A boundary drawn. A line closed.
You nod once.
It is almost imperceptible.
The Savior exhales, the tension easing from their shoulders as if they have just finished something difficult and done it well. “We’ll speak later,” they say to you. “When emotions aren’t so high.”
Later.
Always later.
They step back, creating space. Distance. The kind people mistake for resolution.
“I’ll pray for you,” the Savior says, already turning away.
The words land and slide off. They mean nothing. They are a habit.
Their footsteps retreat down the path, swallowed quickly by rain and hedges and the soft geometry of a city designed to forget. The lanternlight bends, then steadies. The garden closes ranks around their absence.
They do not look back.
One watches them go, relief loosening something in their posture. They laugh softly, an exhale more than a sound.
“I thought—” they start, then stop. Shake their head. “I thought that was going to be worse.”
You lift your eyes then.
One notices. Really notices. Something in your expression gives them pause.
“They’re gone,” One says, as if that settles it. As if absence were proof of safety.
“Yes,” you reply.
The word carries weight you don’t explain.
Thunder murmurs again, closer now, a low pressure beneath the sky. The fountain keeps spilling its endless water, unchanged by any of it. Saints stare blindly into the rain, stone faces worn smooth by centuries of weather and worship.
One turns back toward the fountain, fingers brushing the carved edge. “I’m sorry,” they say, awkward. “About… everything.”
They mean the confrontation. They mean the discomfort. They do not mean what was taken from you. They do not know how.
“You loved them,” One says after a moment, tentative. Not a question.
You swallow.
“Yes.”
They nod, as if that fits neatly into the world they understand. As if love were a past tense thing. As if it ended when the body did.
“I can’t imagine,” One adds. “What that must be like.”
You think of your lover’s hand warm at your back. Of the way they said your name like a promise. Of the night you left and didn’t come back in time.
“Do you think your Savior can?” you ask dryly.
One’s smile fades then returns faintly, misreading your question as connection. As shared ground.
“I should go inside,” they say, echoing the Savior now. “They’ll be wondering where I am.”
They take a step away from the fountain. You move at the same time. Not fast. Not sudden. Just enough to close the distance.
One stops, confused. “Is something wrong?”
The rain thickens again, as if the sky has made a decision.
“No,” you say.
It is the truest thing you have said all night.
Behind you, the garden paths stretch empty. The Savior is already gone. Already convinced they have chosen mercy. Already certain this story is finished.
You feel the blade’s weight where it rests, familiar and patient.
Your chest is calm.
Your hands are steady.
This was never about rage.
This was never about spectacle.
This is about balance.
About returning what was taken.
One looks at you, waiting.
The city holds its breath.
And somewhere deep beneath stone and law and prayer, gravity remembers what it is owed.
——— • ———
One is still looking at you when it happens.
Not with fear. Not yet. With the polite attention people give when they think a conversation is winding down. When they think the danger has passed because the authority has left the room.
They wait for you to speak.
The rain answers first.
It comes down harder now, thickening into something deliberate. Leaves bow under its weight. The fountain’s steady spill grows louder, masking smaller sounds. The city exhales, satisfied with itself.
You step closer.
One doesn’t retreat. They smile again, tentative, apologetic. “I didn’t mean it like that,” they say, gesturing vaguely, as if words can still smooth this over. “I know it’s complicated. Faith is… it asks things of people.”
You think of what it took.
You think of hands forced apart. Of a voice silenced mid-syllable. Of how easily the city decided what was acceptable to lose.
“I know,” you say.
Your hand finds the hilt.
The motion is simple. Familiar. You’ve carried the weight of it for months, learning its balance… the way you learned the shape of grief. It comes free without a sound.
One notices then.
Their eyes flick down, then up again. Confusion sharpens into something else. A laugh escapes them, breathy, disbelieving. “Wait,” they say. “This isn’t—”
You close the distance.
Not fast.
Just enough.
They stumble back a step, heel skidding on wet stone. The fountain is behind them now. Nowhere left to go without turning their back on you.
“No,” they say again, louder. “You don’t want to do this. They’ll—”
“They won’t,” you say.
Because they aren’t here.
Because they chose to leave.
Because they trusted the ground beneath them to hold.
One’s breath comes faster. Their hands lift, palms out, a gesture learned early. Compliance masquerading as peace. “Please,” they say. “I didn’t do anything.”
You think of the sermon voice. The careful phrasing. The way guilt is always reassigned.
“You were loved,” you tell them.
The words land wrong. They frown, trying to understand.
“So were you,” you continue. “That’s the difference.”
They open their mouth again.
You don’t let them finish.
The blade moves because you tell it to. Because gravity does what it has always done. There is no flourish. No hesitation. Just the clean, irrevocable act of taking what the city taught you could be taken.
One gasps.
Shock arrives before pain. It always does. Their hands clutch uselessly, fingers slick with rain, with something darker. They sag against the fountain’s edge, breath stuttering, eyes wide and searching.
Not for you.
For their Savior.
For someone who is not coming.
“I—” they try, their knees buckle.
You catch them before they fall.
Not roughly. Not in haste. Your hand comes to their arm the way the Savior’s had earlier, instinctive, practiced. You take their weight as if this were an ordinary thing. As if this were how people are meant to be held here.
You guide them down to the stone beside the fountain, careful with the angle, mindful of their balance. Rain slicks their clothes, darkens their hair. They lean into you without realizing it, breath stuttering, forehead tipping briefly toward your shoulder.
For a heartbeat, it looks almost tender.
You kneel with them, close enough to feel the warmth leaving their body, close enough to hear the uneven drag of air in their chest. The fountain spills beside you, constant and intimate, the sound filling the space the way it did when you first stepped into the garden.
This is how the Savior stood with them.
This is how they trusted.
“This is what they gave me,” you say quietly, not unkind. “Waiting.”
Their fingers clutch at your sleeve, the way someone reaches for reassurance, for permission to stay upright. Their eyes search your face, unfocused now, still expecting salvation to arrive if they look long enough.
It doesn’t.
You stay with them as their breathing falters. As the tension leaves their body in small, final increments. As the rain smooths everything down, erasing urgency, erasing sharp edges.
When it’s over, they are still leaning toward you.
Just like before.
Their gaze finds yours then. Real fear, finally unmasked. Understanding dawns too late to matter.
“You think you’re safe,” you tell them. “Because someone holy says you are.”
Their breath rattles.
“You think peace is something granted,” you continue. “Something bestowed. Something that survives at someone else’s expense.”
Thunder cracks overhead, sharp and immediate. The sound echoes through the garden, through the hedges, through the bones of the city itself.
You lean closer.
“See where your savior is,” you whisper. “When you needed them.”
The light fades from One’s eyes in increments. Not all at once. Slowly. Like the city going quiet after curfew.
When it’s over, you remain where you are.
The rain seeps through your cloak, heavy now, insistent. Your hands are still steady. Your breath comes even.
Their weight rests against you, slack and unfamiliar. For a moment, brief enough to resent, you recognize the posture. The way a body leans when it trusts it will be caught.
They used to rest like this when they were tired. Head tucked close. Shoulder against yours. A quiet claim made without words.
The memory arrives whole and then it breaks.
This is not them.
It cannot be.
The thought leaves behind something sour and sharp, twisting low in your chest. Not longing. Not comfort. Only the reminder of what was denied you. What was taken without ceremony. Without goodbye.
You ease them down onto the stone.
The fountain keeps spilling beside you, steady and uncaring. Water washes over the blade in your hand, thinning the dark until it disappears into the rain.
You let go. You stand.
The garden feels altered now. Not ruined. Not violent. Just wrong. As if something essential has been removed and no one has thought to name it.
You turn away from the fountain.
The paths stretch ahead of you, empty. The hedges hold their shape. The lanterns continue to burn, indifferent.
Your footsteps sound too loud in the hush.
At the edge of the garden, you pause.
For half a breath, you expect to feel something… relief, satisfaction, collapse? Instead, there is only the same absence you’ve been carrying for months.
The door does not wait for you here.
There is no threshold to hesitate at. No room to reenter. No table half-set.
You step out into the rain.
Behind you, the garden closes ranks. Stone and leaf and light settling back into place. The city does not stir. No one comes running. No voice calls your name.
It is the same as before.
You walk away, cloak heavy, hands empty now except for what you have chosen to keep.
The night accepts you without question as you leave Sanctus behind.
“Amans mei, parce mihi.” (my lover, forgive me.)
