Chapter Text
Allegro blinks slowly, the wash of heat searing and comforting.
Screams rend the air, the chorus a crackle and flare of growing flames. He feels like he's dreaming. None of this is real. It can't be. Can it?
The pews are empty, overturned and charring quickly. In his hand, the gold band flickers under the firelight as he twists it over and over between his fingers. The officiant's podum is overturned by his feet, and the metal of the blessed bells overhead groan from the change in temperature. Limp in his other arm, the dog pants haggardly, snuffling closer as her blood stains the rich cloth of his wedding robes.
It's… strange. If Allegro could, he'd cry, he'd howl and shriek, because. Because this must be a dream. It must be. He just needs to wake up. Any moment now.
Because, if it isn't, then that means… that means she didn't pick him. That Fine chose otherwise, chose that Warm anyway. Didn't choose him .
Is there any world where she would have? Allegro wonders, and his fingers spasm.
The ring tumbles, disappears into the growing flames, and he staggers down a step. He can feel the cold blood dribbling down his lips beginning to sizzle, bubble. A faint popping under the thunder and gnash of bullets and teeth.
He finds himself in a heap against the altar stairs in the next moment, the ceiling a dizzying whorl of bright red and orange. Allegro gazes across the growing sea of fire, the still and buring bodies of vampires and Warms alike. He meets the dead, blistered and black gaze of the root of this all, and cannot conjure up even the barest of hatred, of rage nor anguish. He watches as the fire curls and eats up her long hair, darkens the hollows of her thin cheeks and cleanses her bones of rotten flesh.
Everything is numb. Nothing hurts, not even the weeping wounds dotted across his back.
This must be a dream.
It has to be.
"Dear God," he prays, the snap of the flames rising in pitch. "Dear God in Heaven, please draw the sleep from my eyes and provide to me perfect and clear sight."
Dear God, please let me wake—