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"You know, I thought about sending you to prison. That's what you were going to do to me in the first place, after all. Send an innocent man to jail to satisfy your own ego." Through the sunglasses and cold expression, Cabanela could feel the ghost's eyes piercing into him, looking down on him. "But why should I should I show you any mercy when you killed her ?"
"I doooooon't know who you're talking about, baby." The inspector drawled back with a snarl, attempting to hold back any grunts of pain caused by the still bleeding wound in his side. "My memory seems to be a little foggy there. Would you mind telling me who I was that I allegedly killed?"
A white knuckled fist slammed down on the active stove top next to him, although he couldn't even feel the pain that would have given his anger retribution - all sensations of physical feeling lost to him ten years ago. "You killed her! You killed Sissel! Just admit it already, you bastard!" He spat back.
"Don't forget, it was you who drew first blood.” Cabanela's expression steeled, completely unimpressed by the raging ghost. “You shot my best friend that day in the park, and there was no justice to be had when the murderer was already dead himself."
Yomiel halted. He'd known that Detective Jowd had died shortly after their altercation, but the time he'd spent as a cat shortly following his death had made the details a little unreliable. Unreliable enough that he couldn’t remember who had shot first anymore. But did it matter? One way or another, both men had wound up dead.
"Besiiiiiides, I don't know how you intend to prove anything. A lovely lady like that, distraught by the news that her fiance was a spy, and died while running from the law and taking a child hostage? It's no wonder they passed it off as a suicide." The cold, matter-of-fact tone that the Inspector spoke with only enraged Yomiel further.
In an instant, the man in the red suit lunged forward and threw himself at the black coated inspector, his pale fists desperately gripping onto the collar of his shirt. "You have no right to speak about her that way. " He screamed.
"Oh, then pray tell, what do you intend to do to me, baby? You already shot me and broke my legs."
With only a moment’s hesitation to think about the situation, Yomiel grabbed a pen from the superintendent's desk next to him, and jabbed into the bullet wound in Cabanela's stomach, twisting it for good measure. Finally, a scream of pain from the inspector. It was the one thing Yomiel had been waiting ten years to hear.
"Once you kill me, you won't be able to do it again. But I won’t even make it satisfying for you. On that, you can rely." Cabanela had to admit that going to damage the bullet wound was something he would have done if their circumstances were reversed. If Yomiel had been the one shot down and stuck in the old desk chair, if he had gotten his chance to get revenge for the murder of his best friend. A nice little touch, even if he was on the receiving end of it.
This was not the man Cabanela remembered from the interrogation room years all those years ago. He was someone different now. And Cabanela had realised that, in a sense, this was a monster of his own making.
"I am the one in control now, finally. Not you. And if you keep talking then I'm going to make it as slow and painful as I possibly can." The ghost was still as he loomed above the black coated inspector. No need for breath, for feeling, for anything other than the satisfaction of vengeance.
"That's what your whole little revenge scheme is about, isn't it? You've never been in control of anything, and then on the one day you decided to do anything about it, you lost it all." Cabanela’s cold expression gave way to a smile, knowing that he had Yomiel worked out before anyone else, and knowing that he was going to be infuriated that someone could read him so easily. "Isn't it a little late to be demanding respect now?"
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Yomiel shouted back. “This is only the beginning! Once I'm finished with you, I'm leaving this godsforsaken country to get a new life. Your life is at my mercy right now, and you're starting to wear it pretty damn thin." Yomiel could feel his grip on the situation slipping, but he wasn't going to give up - he was simply too far along now to give up. "So give me one good reason I shouldn't just shoot you now and be done with it all."
"Bah! What's the point of that? I know I'm not walking out of here alive, so I may as well enjoy myself!" Cabanela’s haughty laughter soon turned into a cough as he began splattering up blood. For all his talk, he was still the loser. Legs broken, a bullet in his side, with his would-be killer spitting in his face. He knew it was over. "You'd never listen to me anyway."
Yomiel knew what Cabanela had meant - he knew what it was like to feel so powerless, like the only thing awaiting him now would be the reaper himself. Of course, it was just what Yomiel had wanted. He wanted the man who drove him so far into that corner to finally know how he’d felt all those years ago.
And yet, the inspector still persisted. Battered and bruised, he’d still been able to talk back to Yomiel as if they were even remotely on the same level. He knew the fate that awaited him, but he didn’t understand the same level of fear that Yomiel had felt. And if he didn’t understand now, then he most likely never would. They would never be the same, and it had taken Yomiel this long to realise the differences between them.
So what was the point in prolonging the inspector’s death for some twisted catharsis that was never going to come? It didn’t matter. And after the night was over, none of it would matter anymore. That was the point. Once he was done here, he would be welcomed onto the Yonoa, and he’d make his way out of the country and into the new life that he had bargained for.
He could demand respect all he wanted to, but Cabanela would never respect him.
Drawing the pistol from his breast pocket, Yomiel pressed it up against Cabanela’s forehead, pulling the trigger for the final time that evening.