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“I’ll rip their teeth out through their throats.”
Issei looks away from the corpse. A little ways away from himself, a young man stands with fists clenched. He’s dressed in a kimono at odds with the climes of Garlemald, his bare arms splattered with the fruits of a field surgeon’s labors. The youth’s eyes burn dark.
A spitting image of Issei at seventeen.
Esteem spits to the side, incandescent with fury. Spittle lands bloody in the snow. Issei feels the ghost of it pooling in his mouth. The transference hadn’t been clean. Esteem begins to pace, hardly even disturbing the white blanket.
Issei turns to the corpse beside him. Myste kneels there, digging into the snow with their small fingers. It’s a good thing they can’t bleed. They’ve only managed a small depression behind the soldier’s head, allowing it to nestle into the frozen slope. Myste whispers so quietly the snowfall almost drowns out their litany.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…. I’m sorry…”
Esteem scoffs, disgust carving deep into his features. He turns away, spreading his arms wide to all the ashen ruins of Garlemald in the distance.
“Of course! Pity the common man, pity the soldier! Those poor bloodstained lambs, their only sin trampling where they were led! I can understand that sort of foolishness!”
He whirls around, stabbing a finger mere ilms from Issei’s face.
“But this?! This I don’t understand!”
Issei does not respond. His eyes linger on the soldier’s corpse, where Myste continues to dig. Esteem grabs him by the collar, forces him to look him in the eye.
“Pity for your enemy? After what they took from us? After what they did to us?!”
Issei meets his gaze, and says nothing.
Esteem sees something in his eyes, his grip loosening on Issei’s coat. His brow furrows, features twisting in a murk of emotion. It’s strange to see that feeling from the outside looking in.
“No. Not them. Just him.”
Issei takes Esteem’s wrist and gently, firmly, pulls him down to sit, squeezing Myste between the two of them. Myste only frees themself enough to keep digging. He leans over Myste’s head and into Esteem’s side, nudging their horns together. He had never had anyone to do this with, before. Esteem mutters darkly under his breath.
“It’s disgusting, what they did to us. You know that, right?”
Issei gazes into the frozen expanse of Garlemald. The white snow filling its blackened craters almost made it beautiful. A veil pulled over a corpse’s mouth. Cotton packed into a wound.
A prince setting fire to the stars.
Issei speaks quietly, his throat stinging from the cold air.
“... Perhaps I’m just as twisted, to want to help him.”