Chapter Text
Kieran came home in the morning, the sun still not peeking through the mountains. He had gone out half an hour earlier to buy Sophia's favorite bread before she woke up. He would make toast, bacon and fruit salad for breakfast, she needed enough energy for school.
As soon as he set foot inside the house, he knew something was wrong. The door was ajar and the lock looked forced. Someone had waited for him to come out to enter and had succeeded.
He ran quickly to Sophia's room with the heart in his throat, the bread rolled across the floor, spewing crumbs. The little amount of light caused him to crash again and again against the objects in his path, but he ignored the pain and kept on going. When he got to his daughter's door, the lock was stuck.
"Sophia ?!" He tried to open the door several times without success, the silence on the other side made his hands shake against the doorknob. When he saw that the door did not open, he began to kick it urgently. A cold sweat ran through him, the feeling of terror coursing through his body like poison ivy.
After several attempts the door gave way open with a creak, revealing his daughter's white room and what he found inside froze him completely.
Sophia lay on the ground, a reddish puddle spreading beneath her. Hundreds of purple hyacinths surrounded her, a clear mockery of his dark past. And on the wall, written in her innocent blood, was a message. 'Death is an easy escape, you said. We fell thanks to you. Now enjoy your living death. '
"Daddy..."
Sophia held out a hand to him, her gaze begging him not to leave her alone.
The image of his other red-haired love clouded his vision, multiplied and mixed with that of his daughter. His vision turned red, gray, purple. His two loves, the two halves of his heart ... Pain spread through his chest like a burning ember and he dropped to his knees beside her.
"Honey, you're going to be fine. Easy, don't be afraid, dad is going to take care of you, okay?"
Kieran pressed a clean towel to his daughter's abdomen and carried her to the hospital. He was not going to let them take away the only thing he had left, not his precious daughter. The blood felt terribly sticky between his fingers as he pressed the wound to stop the bleeding, the flashbacks blurring his vision to remind him of the fateful day he held his wife the same way. He couldn't allow it to have the same ending.
He ran through the streets in despair, tears running down his cheeks and splashing her daughter like raindrops. His throat burned raw, as if his breath refused to go in and out properly.
"Daddy..."
"Shhhh, don't talk princess. We are almost at the hospital, you will be fine"
Sophia smiled through her pain, and the similarities to her mother gave her goose bumps.
"You mustn't lie, daddy ..." Sophia caressed her father's cheek, leaving a mark of blood behind it. "I love you."
"And I love you, my girl. Please resist ..."
"Mommy loves you too, do you know?"
Kieran did not want to think about the meaning of those words, he felt that he was running out of time and that was tearing up what little hope he had left. Sophia's rosy cheeks were now pale and her little hands were cold against his face.
"She and I ... we both love you ..."
Without warning, her daughter's bright blue eyes faded and her body sagged in his arms.
"So ... Sophia?"
Kieran stroked her face, searching for any sign of life, but found none.
"Princess, please ..."
The heat of her small body began to drop no matter how much he covered her with his coat. God, he didn't want his daughter to be cold. The fire that glowed within her had been extinguished and would never return.
Tears flowed freely from his eyes and he screamed with all his might. He screamed at the sky, he screamed at life and fate, and his shattered screams echoed through the empty streets, multiplying the sound of his pain. He had failed, he promised them that he would make them happy and take care of them. He had promised to use his life to paint smiles on their faces, but something had gone terribly wrong along the way. How was it possible that he was still alive when they were no longer by his side?
"Please, honey, open your eyes. Please come back ..."
But he knew that his pleas would not be heard. They were only words of pain from a broken father, they were desperate prayers thrown into the void that would never be answered.
People began to come out of their houses to find Kieran on the ground, rocking Sophia as he cried to pieces. He rocked her for the last time as he did when she was a baby, whispering sweet words to make her dreams pleasant. And with his voice cracking with infinite sadness, Kieran sang to her to sleep even knowing that he would never see her wake up.
________________
That night Kieran came to the house with an empty soul. This no longer felt like a home, it was now an empty shell from which the colors had been extracted. He must have known that his daughter was too good for this world, that she belonged to the light and stars like her mother. He should have ...
He should have finished off the remaining members of the Scythe when he had the chance. They stole everything that he had ever cared about. They took away his freedom. They ripped off his innocence. His childhood was beaten to pieces. They killed his wife, and now they had taken his daughter from him as well. They snatched his heart piece by piece. The fairest thing was that he did the same, right?
Kieran smashed the floorboards in the living room and pulled out a shiny katana. He had gotten it years ago after Lauren's death, but he had never touched it again. He was determined to bury his past, but apparently it kept coming back to stab him. And this time he would do something about it. They painted his life red and had smiled as they did so. Now he would paint theirs black and make them wish they never existed.
All his life they had tried to turn him into a monster.
Well, they had.
Now they would have to play with him.