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Sometimes, sleep wasn’t enough. It could temporarily solve many problems, such as numbing pain or distracting thoughts. But there would be rare nights where it just didn’t work.
At first, Sinclair tried to solve it by repositioning himself. Minute after minute, he would toss into a new form of rest under the covers. That only helped so much. Eventually, he couldn’t consciously keep his eyes shut anymore.
A hard stare into the ceiling was nothing new for him. That was what he would do if he needed a moment to completely empty his thoughts. And by the Wings, did he need those moments once his family was murdered.
Though, maybe… he was feeling too energetic tonight? Did he want to get up and move? Because in the end, that was what he decided to do.
He shuffled out of the bed like the dead rising from their grave. He slowly, clumsily tossed on the clothes he left on the floor next to him. Then finally, trying his best not to make a sound, he departed from his room.
He didn’t even know where to go. He had no set destination, only the need to keep his feet moving. However, the design of Mephistopheles meant there was only really one direction for him.
And so, he crept forth, passing by doors with the same appearance as his own. In his tired mind, it felt like an endless loop. But there was for sure an end, the front of the bus adorned with seats, so he should head off there and maybe take a res-
Stomp. Thrash.
One of the doors wasn’t like the others. Sure, it possessed the exact texture seen on his, but the content behind it was what mattered. And although he was careful not to make any noise with his footsteps, all of the racket behind this door was impossible for him to ignore.
Especially since the Sinner who lived in that room was the one who he ended up cherishing most of all throughout the journey.
He stepped closer, still trying to keep his presence obscure. As he listened to the loud cluttering, he thought that he heard… no. Surely not. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Because it had to make him act.
Knock… Knock.
Almost immediately, any noise within the room became inaudible. A deadly silence filled the air, which sent a severe shiver up his spine. But still, he had to be brave, for this could mean no ordinary outcome.
“Quixote…?”
That was all which Sinclair chose to whisper. For a good dozen seconds, there was no response, let alone any resurgence of noise. It slowly made him regret the effort, and he was this close to turning around and minding his own business, until finally, the door cracked loose with an eerie creak...
“GH-Hhh!!”
…and an arm whipped forth, grabbed him by the tie, and yanked him into the room with as much force as it could muster.
- - -
Sinclair couldn’t see anything going on around him. He was locked into way too tight of a hug, threatening to crush every frail little bone in his body. There was absolutely no chance of escape, but right now he didn’t even want to try.
Because there was something that he heard. Something terrible.
“EEEEEeeemm-IIIIIiiiillll… haah, WHAAAAAAAAAAHHHH - HAAAAHhhh, haaaaaaaahhhh…”
The sheer volume and intensity of this wail was already conveying a lot of information. Don Quixote, as much as she presented herself as a crybaby, couldn’t consciously reach this level. It was an emotion stirring from deeper in her core.
Only Sancho would behave like this. Every single one of the Sinners knew it, because that was how she ultimately responded to the tragic downfall of her home, La Manchaland. And with it, the deaths of her family.
“Gh-GhAAAaaaahhh - AAAhhh - haaaaaahhh…”
Within moments, Sinclair’s clothes were face-to-face with a flood. The tears fell so ferociously that he could swear he was getting pounded by a rain storm. If this kept up much longer, his shirt alone would probably be dripping that stuff onto the floor.
For a while, he was nigh-completely despondent. All of his muscles, frozen up like ice. All of the nerves in his brain, refusing to operate. Just standing there, letting Sancho cradle and rock him with her arms, letting her cries swallow him whole.
Though there was one part of him still functioning. He was fighting desperately against the urge to shed tears of his own.
“EEEeee-mill, hh-haah, EEEE-MMIIIILLL!!!”
It was at that point which Sinclair, quivering all over, proceeded to move. While Sancho was still distracted with her own wails, his arms crawled up her back, in his noble but futile attempt to defuse the situation.
He could easily join her in the misery, but before he let himself succumb to that vice, he wanted answers more than anything else.
“S… S-Sancho…”
No response, except the continued expression of Sancho’s yet-unexplained wallowing. In spite of that setback, Sinclair continued to push for a conversation, doing everything in his willpower not to replace it with mindless sobbing.
“Could… could y-you… listen, to me…”
He wasn’t sure for a moment, but soon it was clear that his prayer worked. Her coil around his body softened, and though it took a considerable amount of time, she managed to suppress the loudest of her cries. But still, she was unwilling to use her words.
“Sancho, I… I-I haven’t ever seen you like that since… well, you know…” The boy’s voice fell to a barely audible whisper. “I’m scared.”
Finally, after some more seconds, the bloodfiend had the nerve to answer, albeit with struggling effort, and only using her voice. Her eyes, locked shut by her lids, still refused to establish contact.
“Ghh… hhh… Eee-miill… GH - sniffff - c-can we, sit down…?”
With slow and steady motions, Sinclair at last had the vision and movement to fully understand his situation, courtesy of Sancho dismounting from him. The fixer merchandise adorned around her room was… despite everything, seemingly in their proper place. It was her bed which instead suffered the full extent of her rage and despair, torn up and presenting a few noticeable stains.
She nonetheless expected him to have a seat there, and if he wanted those answers, he had to comply. It wasn’t easy, not just in the way which a familiar locale of his was ripped apart, but also with the addition of Sancho’s uncontrollable sniveling.
He remained silent for a very awkward while, waiting patiently for her to speak through her turmoil again. Thankfully, after a minute or two, she did.
“Haah, haah… Before I, I say anything… you must - hic - not tell anyone else. Anyone. Do you understand…?”
Sinclair needed a long, winded sigh before he could formulate his answer. “I’ll… try the best I can, Sancho.”
Even with that reassurance, the bloodfiend wasn’t one to start talking. Not until after she could fight through her tears and be at least somewhat confident in what she needed to say.
“It’s… it’s about our conflict back at the House of Spiders…”
Despite everything which happened there, events which shook him to his very foundations, Sinclair didn’t immediately pick up the context. He nervously furrowed an eyebrow in Sancho’s direction, in the silent hope that she would continue to elaborate.
“The mark… your mark, Emil. D-do you remember what happened with it?”
“…No. Not really…”
The only thing Sinclair knew for sure was that the mark, in some shape or form, did activate. He concentrated, something resulted, but then he woke up with no awareness of what exactly transpired.
“I may not have been there to see it myself, Emil, b-but… I was told…”
Sancho turned her head away from Sinclair, staring into a void blocked off by the wall of her room.
“…you… summoned, a future version of yourself. Much, much older than you are now. And he… he came from…” The bloodfiend had to really push herself to finish the sentence with a whisper. “…a huge war.”
Sinclair’s eyes were wide with shock, and obscured by a shadow formed of his hair, but he dared not move the muscles in his lips. He needed to hear this gripping tale to its bitter end.
“The way that he spoke… he seemed to be confident in himself… but at the same time, he was so… so bitter… so nostalgic…”
Sancho looked back to shoot daggers into her only audience member’s eyes. “And do you want to know what he said…?”
Silence was the only answer from Sinclair. But his body language said all that his storyteller needed to know. He was ready for the truth.
“Don’t grieve everything all at once.”
Sancho then shuffled closer to Sinclair, raising her hands up to gently caress his shoulders, all the while putting all of her visual attention on his alarmed face.
“Because… b-because… this company, and everyone in it… fell apart from his life.”
Within the moments after her tale concluded, everything in the world seemed mute. No noise. No voice. Nothing. Just a cold, dead mockery of what used to be a spectacle of life.
It was just Sinclair, with the most mortified expression on his face he might have possessed since his unwilling reunion with Kromer, glaring at the broken woman in front of him. After all, she was the one to eventually undo the silent air.
“How many more times.”
“I… Sancho, I-I…”
“How many more times… am I going to watch my family die?”
Sancho, with empty eyes but quivering lips, did nothing but gaze into the one body who was willing to hear her, no matter the circumstances.
“Again.”
She was moving.
“And again.”
She was getting closer.
“And - sniff - and again…”
She was too close.
“And again… gh - hic - and again, and again, and AGAIN, AND AAAHH-GAAAIIINN!!??”
There was no possible way for Sinclair to respond to the shriek. He was paralyzed with that fear. That dark fear of unavoidable loss. That gnawing fear of disconnecting from everything and everyone which he got to know from all of this time riding on the bus. That gutwrenching fear of Sancho, and many others, being gone from his life.
She had to answer for him. It was as if he hadn’t been removed from her iron grip in the first place, nor dried of her tears. In fact, her fingers were digging even deeper into his back.
“Uuuaaaaahhhh-gh-haaahhh…”
Now that he had the whole morbid idea, the realization that Sancho was terrified of what she could lose, Sinclair was free to share what she felt, in all of the worst ways.
“S-San-S-San-choo… gg-hhh…”
Maybe on a better day, the boy would try to give a pep talk to the bloodfiend. That was what he did before, to steer her back into the dream which she had initially attempted to defy by any means. But that was when she had a relatively clear head. As it stood now, she was all but screaming her head off. His only option was to bury into her chest.
“Gh… gh-hehhh… sniff…”
For what it was worth, Sinclair held himself together a tad better. He could get so much louder with his sobs, but since he was already tired, that latent energy of his wasn’t bursting out in full force.
But by the Wings, did he need Sancho’s touch. It wasn’t even a carnal matter, which was a rare thing to say about him. If he was going to cry, then he had to do it in the arms of someone else, and fortunately that someone else was the most treasured individual he could ask for.
However, he was uncomfortable with the exact position he found himself in. He impulsively tried to push away from her so that he could toss and turn, just like when he was in his own bed.
Big mistake.
“E-Ee-mill, EMIL, NO, NOO, DON’T LEAVE ME!!”
Overwhelmed with emotion, and not being able to rationalize the situation correctly, Sancho was assuming the worst case scenario with Sinclair’s innocuous reflexes. She perceived a very real threat, when there wasn’t actually one. And she would do anything to resolve it, locking him tighter around her arms.
“Hhhuuwwaaaaahhh - sn-sniff - Ee-milll, I love you, Eeee-mmiiiiiillll… ghhh, d-don’t go, don’t go, pleeaase…”
Oh no. Sancho just had to pick that time for the confession. Her instincts couldn’t let her say it at any better moment. Sadly, Sinclair was backed to a corner, and there was no way he would be able to weasel out of it.
But maybe he didn’t necessarily have to speak his mind. Actions could be worth more than words.
Which was why, in spite of his sniffling, he nudged his head closer to her. Once he was close enough, he slowly aligned his lips together against hers, anticipating that she would understand what he intended to express.
She delivered on that front, and then some. Her lips sealed him as strongly as her arms did, bringing their tongues together for a dance to distract from the chaos around them. Though they fought valiantly, snaking against each other, he could hear muffles.
“Mmmgg-ghhuaaahh… g-ghmm…”
The pair soon departed their mouths, a thick trail attempting to tie them, but only for a fleeting moment. As they looked into each other’s eyes, comprehending the mutual pain behind them, the vicious cycle was reinstated once more.
“Ghwhaaaaahhh, h-hh-haaaahhhh… Eeee-miiiiillll…”
“Hhh, gh-hhhh - sniff - San-c-chooo…”
“Oh, Emill, Eee-miiilll, gh-haaaahh-hhh…”
“San…cho… - hic - ghhh…”
Alas, the human body was like a fire. It may spark and crackle with energy, but sooner or later, it burns out.
So much time was spent crying that not only was the already pathetic husk of the bed soaked to its bones with tears, but the night was also quieting down by the second. As much as they wanted to stay like this forever, sobbing out every last drop of their agonizing love, the pair were approaching the limits of what their systems could handle.
Eventually, nothing remained but silence. No signs of activity were detected in the room.
Sinclair finally fell into rest.
But at what cost?
- - -
That was enough sleep. Sancho decided as such, and woke up first. She wasn’t exactly sure what had happened the night before. Whatever it was, it was intense, and a lot of energy had been drained from her body.
So much, in fact, that it took her a few seconds to process that Sinclair was in her bed. Still unmoving, still unconscious. She jolted back at the revelation, but not severely enough to disturb him.
A few hours have passed, though… so maybe it wouldn’t hurt…
Brush… Brush.
“E-Emil...”
“…San, cho…?”
It took Sinclair much quicker to comprehend the situation. His self-consciousness gave him better long-term memory. However, he could tell from Sancho’s puzzled expression that she didn’t share his sentiment.
Before shedding light on the matter, he gave her a weak grin. ”You told me that you didn’t want me to leave your side… didn’t you, Sancho…?”
A sharp gasp. Followed by unmoving eyes. Then followed by a thin, gentle stream of tears.
She was done wailing into the void for now, but it appeared that Sancho needed some more time to fully recover.