Chapter Text
~~~Chapter 3~~~
Abel, unmarred
Calliope held herself into a tight ball, and listened as the thud resounded in front of her. Daring to uncover her eyes, she saw the broken body of her brother laying on the floor. Lime-green eyes stared into deep red as Caliborn began to weakly crawl towards her. Despite her prior fear, and the fact that she still found herself backing away as best she could while on her haunches, Calliope couldn’t help the stab of pity that clawed at her heart. Caliborn sat before her, desperately trying to claw his way across the floor towards her with his two arms, littered with cuts and bruises, while his one leg pushed weakly.
The other leg, however, was losing blood at an extremely fast rate. The hissing and cursing of Caliborn, she began to notice, was becoming weaker and weaker. After a few pained metres, Caliborn lost his strength, collapsing on his front with a gasp of pain. As Calliope managed to pick herself up, still shaking and hesitant, Caliborn let out a groan of pain. Looking from her brother, to the shattered glass on the floor and then to the mirror frame, she noticed that the back of it looked just the same as it always had. How had he come through? Where had he come from? These questions swirled in her mind before she finally processed the situation.
“...Oh, fuck, you’re bleeding! Roxy- Roxy!!”
It didn’t take long for Roxy to arrive. Judging from her lover’s bedraggled state and wild eyes, it seems she’d heard the crashing beforehand and was already on her way over, slamming open the door with little ceremony as her gaze darted around the room at lightning speeds, trying to take in the scene before her.
Finally, Roxy settled her attention on the cherub laying facedown on the floor in a puddle of his own blood. Now, Roxy Lalonde had seen a lot of things in her life, most of which she’d personally describe along the lines of ‘insane crazy bullfuckery’, but this may have been the delicious, sugary icing on the insane crazy bullfuckery cake. It would come as no surprise to our audience then that Roxy acted in a way most unlike her, in that her first course of action was to pause. Never in her life had Roxy paused to think before taking an important action. When she began drinking, her motivation was emotion and instinct. When she pulled Rose out of the line of psionic fire during a rather doomed timeline, she acted on emotion and instinct. When she drove the katana through the body of the long-reigning Alternian Empress, the only thoughts present in her mind were that of vengeance. Perhaps, in some way then, Roxy had overcome some part of herself that held her impulsivity in the past few years. Who knows?
This is not Roxy’s story.
Nor is it yours.
This is my story. About some Cherubs. So we’ll move on from that brief introspection, and focus back on one half of our star cast.
Calliope watched as Roxy quickly darted across the room and pulled her to the side, away from Caliborn, before kneeling at the brutally injured Cherub’s side with apprehension on her face. Sure, this was, somehow, Caliborn of all people, but something in Roxy’s gut told her that she had to help him. Told her that if she didn’t, something truly terrible may befall all creation, or perhaps, her personally. Of course, it’s not necessarily true, but for the purposes of our cast, sometimes pushes need to be made for a story to progress, wouldn’t you agree?
With a grim expression, Roxy hoisted Caliborn into her arms and looked over to Calliope.
“What do we do?”
Shaking her head in confusion, Calliope found herself at a mental crossroads. What do they do? Some part of Calliope screamed at her to cast him out, to leave him somewhere to bleed and to rot, to punish him for all the horror he’d wrought and for all of the pain he’d created… Though some other part of her ached. Caliborn had always been a horrid, antagonistic bastard. However, it was base Cherub nature for one to find themself still connected to their other half.
In the end, Cherubs are never supposed to be two, especially during, and after, predomination. The common misconception of predomination is that one party murders the other, and then is done with them, but most people miss the part where the winning party absorbs and consumes the loser’s soul. The two cherubs, then, will become one cherub, with the traits of both merged together. It just so happens that the winner continues on with the most dominant traits in their gene pool, and with their consciousness intact.
Seconds stretched into minutes, minutes into hours and hours into millenia. How long had she stood here, silent, while her brother’s broken body lay in a crumpled heap in Roxy’s arms?
“I...He… Oh bloody hell, follow me!”
Calliope quickly left the room with Roxy close behind, guiding her matesprit up through the corridors of their castle home until they came to the top of the East tower, a small room, which happened to house the castle’s medical staff. Alongside being a home for herself, Calliope, Rose and Kanaya, the castle served as a home of politics among the Carapacians, in which-
Dear God almighty.
Ohhh no. No! You do not get to come into my story and take it over like you have with all of the rest, I took this story for my own and will not let you tarnish it with your egotistical nonsense!
Oh calm down, I’m not going to steal it off of you. I have no interest in this shameless exhibition of amateur hour’s finest, let me assure you. I just want to give you a few pointers, is all.
Pointers. Really. And what could you possibly tell me that could improve my story?
For one, you’ve got to stop talking about all of this inane, irrelevant bullshit. Nobody gives a fuck about the political intricacies of the Carapacians, wasn’t it you yourself who said this story’s about Calliope and Caliborn? Stick to your word, lady.
Do not call me that. And I think it’s perfectly fine to divulge such details, it gives depth to the world at large!
Depth that we already know about. The finer details of Earth C have already been gone over a thousand times in my stories, and I know that anyone reading this with half of a brain and a quarter taste at the very least will have read those.
You really are so self-assured that your story is the be all and end all of valid prose, aren’t you? Smarmy little shit. I won’t be giving in to your demands! I’ve fought and won against worse beasts than you, believe me.
Fine by me. Just don’t blame me when all of your readers fall asleep.
Calliope quickly ordered Roxy to set Caliborn down on a free medical bed, much to the surprise of various Carapacian doctors scattered around the room. A tall, black carapacian, the Principal Clinician, quickly hurried to Caliborn’s bedside and began attending to him, casting occasional confused glances towards the two royals who had brought him a second, thoroughly battered Calliope to his surgery. Despite his confusion, however, his resolve as a medical professional rose to the fore of his mind, focusing his attention on saving the patient he’d been unceremoniously saddled with.
Joining Calliope’s side, Roxy wrapped her arms around Calliope’s waist, pulling her against Roxy’s chest. However, Calliope couldn’t take her eyes off of the brother she thought she’d lost, knocking on death’s door merely metres away from her.