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Roman met Neo when he was young. They were both young, enough so that in any fair world they wouldn’t have been alone on the streets.
But the world they lived in wasn’t fair, it was cruel and unusual, a creation shunned by its creators, left to be governed by a fate that had nothing but the knowledge of the light of life, and an all consuming desire to snuff it out.
Neo was sick when Roman met her, something he would find out to be far from an uncommon occurrence, and there had been times it felt she was sick more often than she was healthy. That tendency to fall ill was never one she quite outgrew, it waned with age but never fully disappeared.
If they had acted with any sort of logic Roman and Neo wouldn’t have stuck together. If Neo hadn’t stuck with Roman she wouldn’t have to share the food she so gracefully stole and If Roman hadn’t stuck with Neo he wouldn’t have had to scrounge around and risk his neck for the medicine she needed.
And yet they stuck together.
When Roman met Neo she had already unlocked her semblance, How that had happened they didn’t discuss, there was no pleasant way for someone as young as Neo to have a semblance, Roman knew that, So did Neo. But whatever consequence of malevolent fate had led to it happened before they met and they didn’t speak of things that happened before they met.
Not when Neo double takes when she sees a woman with long and messy black hair, or enjoys the killing blow a little too much. Not when she wakes up with tears in her eyes and barely audible, painful apologies trapped in her throat cowering from someone who isn’t there.
Not when Roman doubles back into danger to grab his hat, or when he checks and rechecks and rechecks his cane. Not when he jolts from his sleep begging for just one more chance promising to not screw up this time.
They don’t ask questions.
Instead Roman’s eyes follow Neo’s and sizes up the potential threat taking care to make sure Neo can tell. Instead he gives Neo a pat on the back and praises her for a job well done. Instead he gives her a cup of tea and whispered reassurance.
Instead Neo covers for him. Instead she needlessly checks her own weapon again and again and again, as long as it takes for Roman to be satisfied with his own. Instead she hands Roman a cigarette and listens to him blabber mindlessly about anything but the past.
It’s hard to fall asleep again after they wake up, but when they do it’s in each other’s arms, the rest of Remnant fading away into nothing.
They understood each other, they knew each other better than anyone else.
Neo can’t talk. Roman can.
Roman understood Neo perfectly, her head tilts and facial expression, her gestures and posture shifts held more meaning than any words could convey.
Neo understood Roman in more way than one. There was the obvious, Roman could talk and she could listen, but then Neo also understood him in the same way he understood her, through his gestures and face.
Roman loved to talk but with Neo he didn’t always need to
Cinder had approached Roman one night with a plan to rob Vale blind of its dust, he was the who and how. But the why went without answer.
It had seemed clear to Roman that Cinder thought herself a charismatic manipulator, and to some, perhaps more foolish than him, she was. Roman however could see her for what she was, nothing more than a puppet who thought herself the master.
Roman only trusted two people, one was Neo, and the other was himself. When he spoke to Neo, It didn’t take much discussion to agree on the path of least resistance.
They hadn’t accepted Cinders offer because they trusted her, They accepted because they could see the writing on the wall.
Something big was coming. And they could either go with it, or against it.
And going against the current was a good way to get capsized.
The night of the dust robbery that ruined everything, the night he met the persistent thorn in his side that was Little Red, Neo was sick. And Roman would maintain until his death that her absence was the only reason he had to retreat, because it was true. Roman wasn't a fool, he’d never admit it out loud, but he knew wasn’t a good fighter, not on his own.
When he fought alongside Neo they became something more than themselves they were each one part of a whole, they were always on the same page, like they shared a mind they always knew what the other would do
Without Neo Roman just one part, there were openings in his defense that he expected to be covered by someone who wasn’t there, he left room for hits that wouldn’t come.
Neo didn’t have that problem, she was, without question the best fighter Roman had ever seen, with or without him. Every hit she landed was precise and brutal, and she danced between blows with a natural graceful effortlessness.
When they came together they were a force to behold. When they came apart, they did so like a wishbone, one side more whole than the other.
When Neo fell off the airship Roman knew, logically, that she would be okay, that her umbrella would float her back down to safety.
It didn’t stop the scream that tore out his throat as he watched the only person he’d ever truly cared for be ripped away by the wind.
And it didn’t stop the pit of anxiety from settling in his stomach. Or the rage at Little Red.
And perhaps it was that negative emotion that’s attracted the nevermore.
And for the few moments, the eternity, that passed as Roman died all he could think of was Neo.