@diviinus
Dolcetto would not speak of the past, of his youth as a man who destroyed lives or of the military raid on the Nest. He had returned; he had forsaken his beliefs in sterile examination rooms and in the classrooms of the Military Academy, and again he had forsaken his nature when he had been torn away from Greed, blood in the water. But he kept his sorrow tucked beneath his ribs and the photograph straining in the background. When he had returned to the empty bar, he and Roa had scrubbed the dried blood from the walls, and had tried not to remember whose it was. The memories found him regardless, in his sleep as awful recollections, unbidden during ordinary life, in the midst of conversations, during walks to the city center.
Slowly, the Nest had come back to life. Slowly, under the new government, the chimera program dwindled, and new souls found their way to Dublith. It wasn’t the same, a hollow approximation of home, but Dolcetto had a duty to these chimeras. They weren’t Martel, or Ulchi, or Bido, but somehow, he found it in his heart to love them.
And there was the angel.
Dolcetto had taken to sleeping near the angel, to calm the nightmares, to find a modicum of peace in sleep that he couldn’t find in wakefulness, which felt like taking advantage. Felt like lying, like using him. He had not needed to dissect his heart to find affection for the child, a doting adoration.
That afternoon, Roa hadn't shut the door out of the sewer, and the draft curled through the labyrinth of the Devil’s Nest, unnoticeable by many but freezing Dolcetto. So he took the angel back into the sewer, just them. His whole body reacted viscerally as they passed through the doorway, touched the hilt of his sword just for the comfort of holding it, even as he rested his other hand on the angel’s back and pressed forward. He could still see the dark stains of blood on the stone, scrubbed to the point where their raw fingers threatened to spill fresh blood overtop. There Greed had fallen. There the suit of armor had dragged Martel across the floor, and had been unable to spare her. ( How Dol had prayed, to no god he knew, that Martel had survived. He had not seen her fall, though; he had not seen her chest still. )
He sat beside the water, beckoned the angel to join him. ( Home, if home left memories of violence and death. ) His hand clenched and relaxed around the sword. “It’s time I level with you. About the past, what happened here. From the start.
“It’s a nice story. A chimera escaped from one of the old labs, and they realized they’d have to dispose of us failures, so we made a sanctuary.”
