He did not want to turn around, though his body worked on instinct. Knelt on the edge of the dark earth, Vincent glanced at his old friend from over his shoulder. Strange how he showed his face at the absolute worst time for it. Nevertheless, the Quiet God was not going to complain. An endless amount of time had been spent looking for him.
Given the expression of horror clear as day on his face, he supposed he was not too happy to see him either. It was not a pretty sight, though not a hint of their surroundings was pleasing. Vaguely, his panic and distress reminded him of the shocked expression he wore the first time Vincent saw him on the stairwell, holding up a flip-phone to take a picture of his bruised and battered body.
As he looked sympathetically to the deceased Vincent vessel in Charles’s arms, he wondered with a sick stomach if that one died before or after that incident was replicated in one of the world’s many alleyways. It was difficult to tell with his blurry-eyed vision, straining to see through his tears. He wiped at his face with his sweaty palms and peeked between shaky fingers amidst his efforts to hide his mourning, observing the other boy’s long white hair. Perhaps that was proof enough that the abusers who littered and swarmed Charles’s world in droves had at least not gotten the chance to take out their scissors on that boy.
Vincent shuddered at the memory and went back to a child’s pose, his fingers aimlessly twisting through his gray hairs and pulling, pulling, PULLING in frustration and guilt. How could he possibly answer the other God’s question? The body count surrounding them was all the more imperative to be discussed. Two arms, two legs, one head, a heart, a brain, and all the rest dangled in Charles’s arms: but what was the missing piece? What was the most important part missing from all the Vincent vessels inside Charles’s House? A soul was what made a life matter. It guaranteed there was going to be something better for them in the future. A soul was a golden ticket to a new heavenly kingdom, a paradise for them where fantasies could take root and flourish. Instead, within Charles’s chasm of pain and darkness, all Vincent could smell was rotting flesh and decay.
The blood on his hands scared him half to death. Instead of continuing to pull at his scalp, Vincent’s hands gripped tightly on the pit’s edge in front of him, causing a few pebbles to fall into the depths below from in-between his fingers. “It’s my fault they’re just empty vessels, isn’t it?” He asked, finally. His voice was shaky and raised in volume, tone seemingly unable to be controlled with the rush of panic coursing through his veins. As foolish as it was to ask, for he knew he was at fault, the words came out regardless.
Standing up from the edge of the pit proved to be difficult. His knees felt weak. And as he turned to face Charles and the body he held in his arms, the Quiet God felt a wave of nausea pass through him. One of his hands formed into a fist and covered his mouth, while the other —
“They don’t have any soul data,” Vincent rasped, reaching out for only a moment to brush the pure white strands of hair out of the vessel’s face. He stopped short, however, as the pain in his chest tightened its grip on his heart. Tears threatened to fall once again, so Vincent shut his mouth tight for a moment and forced his expression to flatline. The Quiet God waited for the pressure behind his eyes to leave him before he spoke again, choosing to instead stare at Charles. Only at Charles’s face. Only his. If he continued to acknowledge the corpses in the room, he was definitely going to lose himself completely to the hopelessness of it all.
He needed to get ahold of himself.
“…There’s no meaning or use for them, so they die, right?”
“There has to be something better than this. Please, let me try to find a way to help them.” He worried his voice sounded accusatory as if Charles hadn’t tried his best for his hopelessly suicidal creations. What the hell did Vincent expect to accomplish beyond his long-lost friend’s attempts? He wasn’t the God of Charles’s world. If Charles, the king of all the House’s grief, could not use his power to their benefit, it was incredibly unlikely for Vincent to have any power to remedy the situation.
Charles wished the sound of that broken and weak voice didn’t match the one of his memories. The hesitation of the final plunge, a picture of what could almost be called fear on a perfect being of admired confidence. A perfect person that he was the one to break.
But of course, anything that Charles Eyler touched would become just as broken as him. Anything he touched would be just as tarnished as he would become if imagined monstrosities even laid a single hand on him. How ironic. Even in his death he could only either be nothing at all or cause harm by his negligence. The last final attempt at curing his rotten soul from both himself and others accomplished nothing.
“You- You... Vincent you shouldn’t be here.”
Staring at a dead boy who only stared back at him, even this world created by his own two hands didn’t quite seem real. It felt too still, far too still beneath his feet, around him, his expression and hands and legs and eyes not knowing where to settle, what to do, what to know. It all felt wrong somehow, and yet he could not move an inch. His mind swimmed with past images, of broken legs and blank eyes.
Were the eyes looking at him now full or blank? Did they have a soul, or were they just as soulless as the others already in the pit? Why couldn’t he tell, why couldn’t he tell? The world was moving too fast, and yet too still.
It used to be all too easy to act natural while the world around him split and dripped. All too easy to look past the stained smears of blood and organs on the faces of his classmates. Silently moving from watching committed tragedy to committed tragedy, the injustices of the world quiet on his tongue. It’s been too long, much too long.
How could he allow creations of his own world souls when his own was already so rotten? Even as his creation he could not risk infecting Vincent with such a cruel fate; it simply was never his place. Or perhaps it was that cowardice that only granted him a even crueler one.
“Get. Get away from there. Ple-please. Don’t sit there.”
Each pull and scratch upon the grey haired boy’s skull felt as though a sharp pain in Charles’ own, echoing against hallow bodies. It rang in his ears, his dead heart twisting in his gut as he raised no hand to stop the torment in front of him. Observing a broken child in a broken world, again and again and again once more.
There was no good answer to these questions, no good answers to anything here. Nothing for Vincent, nothing for himself, nothing for the millions of dead bodies, nothing for the House itself. Charles didn’t have any answers, he never did. He wished Vincent wasn’t here at all, a bile of frustration rising from the fear held in his chest. He didn’t know, he didn’t know. Stop asking. Stop asking him things he couldn’t explain, he didn’t want to explain, he didn’t want to do anything more. He couldn’t.
He just wanted Vincent to go away. He was annoying. He was frustrating. He was looking at him like that and he didn’t know what to do. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing he could answer to, neither to him nor himself. The answers didn’t matter, not when they were already here. Not when this already happened, continued to happen. Answers were useless when the world was unfair. When his world was unfair.
There was nothing he could do, couldn’t he see that? It was futile, all of it. Stop looking at it. Stop looking at him. He didn’t even care anymore.
It wasn’t until the other God had stumbled up and started for the white hair cradled in his arms was he finally able to physically react. His body forcibly jerking the body out of his reach, instinct overriding all other thoughts and feelings; a need to protect even against it’s original.
“Don’t..! Don’t touch him.”
What was he even defending against anymore? What was he doing? Charles wasn’t even sure, he wasn’t sure what his body was doing, nor what his mind wanted. It was all just too much. He didn’t mean to, he didn’t. But he could feel that anger inside of him, rising and washing against the confusion he felt. He didn’t want that either. But it was there.
He shook his head, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. The body was cradled against his chest, still held far away from Vincent, as though the other God would snatch it out of his hands at any moment. Breathing heavily as though that took all the strength he had. This wasn’t helping Vincent, he knew that, He knew. But he felt out of control, this felt out of his control.
“There’s nothing you can do. They are already gone, there’s nothing left. They don’t want your help.”
The unspoken, ‘I don’t want your help’ rang in the silence, only for the dead to hear.
“The House won’t change. I can’t make it change and you can’t either. So why did you come here?”
He could feel his own tears start to slip down his cheeks as he spoke, perhaps too harsh yet unable to stop himself either. Nothing would stop, everything would keep going. Even in death he could not stop anything. Even in death he was the one who had no use or meaning. Why wouldn’t Vincent just learn to live with it like he had? He had already given up on his own life too right? So why didn't’ he understand when Charles was giving up? When Charles couldn’t fix anything that he wished?
“Nothing here has meaning, you can’t attach any. There’s no use to any of it. That’s how the House works, you see? How it always worked. Coming here, coming all this way just for this was worthless. Coming here for me was worthless.”
