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He opens his eyes to blood on his hands, and blood on the grass beneath him, which is strange, since when was it possible for the dead to bleed. Lying face down in the dirt, he turns his head to the side to see… oh. That is where the blood came from then. Not from a wound of his own, but of one he inflicted, in this case a tall, burly man whose glasses lay cracked beside him.Emil feels sick. He caused this. It wasn’t the first time he had either. He could remember the previous evening clearly till the point this man had collapsed with the exhaustion of carrying the boy to his grave after a mere hour of toil. Then, blackness.No, not black, red. The red of ripping and tearing and shredding flesh. Of stabbing sharp fingers into the man’s vital organs while he writhed on the ground, helpless as the atrocity that Emil had become destroyed his mortal body and turned his young soul from its vessel prematurely. Through the half-darkness of the oncoming night, Emil ponders his morals, that he knows what he does is wrong, and he sure as hell feels the crushing guilt of it afterwards, yet in some, twisted way these deaths make up for all the years ripped from his own life. Of course, any knowledge of the world he has is gained through that mystical intuitive force that all spirits possess, and the years he has spent tormenting humans.He was abandoned as a baby, left to die like the runt of the litter he was, and die he did. ‘They tore my life away from me,’ is the overwhelming, overpowering through that jolts through his body when he commits his crimes. Little baby Emil born with white hair and purple eyes. Cast away as a weakling or demon (he’ll never know quite why). He just wants to lay in a grave and finish. His attention turns to a crumpled sheet of paper fluttering in the slight forest breeze, struggling weakly to escape from the dead man’s hand and to the air, where perhaps it will meet the person intended to read it. Like a spider with a fly, Emil snatched that chance away from it, takes the paper and examines the words. Somehow he knows how to read. He doesn’t know how, but since when did he know anything at all?It reads: Tino, my love, I am sorry it has taken so long for me to reply, so sorry in fact that I have taken it to my duty to deliver this in person.Emil can see the blush on the man’s face when he wrote that line, as if something so corny was not beyond him, but almost.I would like to confirm that I am willing to take on this child you have found. It has always broken my heart to hear of babies abandoned so heartlessly, and to be able to save just one, this young Peter as you have named him, and give him a loving family would bring such joy to me.I wonder if this is the time to formerly ask for you to spend the rest of your life with me? Tino, I have never met another who has made me feel this way, and…Why, why, why? Emil fumes at the realisation that not only was he the ultimate villain of this man’s life, but he is to be hated by the man’s lover and potential child. A child like him. Why couldn’t he have looked at Emil as devoid of compassion as his parents had been and walked away to spend a happy life with a child who deserved it?Emil doesn’t know for how long he cries for, but when he looks up the new moon has emerged to the night and what waving, wavering tendrils of sunlight had clung to the horizon there have been subdued. The man still lies dead nearby, and Emil clutches the letter to his chest, pain where his heart would be overtaking him. Through the trees, as if guided by instinct alone, emerges another man, and the evening is reminiscent of the former night when Emil made first acquaintance with the former. Yet where the former man’s sturdy frame towered over him, this man stands weakly, round and full, a single quaking hand held to his mouth as if that could mask the cry of anguish that escapes. He stumbles to the now cold corpse, draped over him as is by sheer will alone his body will heat the other’s back to life. A pain in Emil’s head causes him to wince as a memory of the life he stole hits him like ice water. That same face, smiling up, cheeks flushed in embarrassment as their lips join again. Held safe and secure in the man’s arms, Berwald is who he killed, and Tino, his lover.Tino, here, broken by his lover ripped away.Tino, wailing because of him.Emil.The spirit who kills.Emil wonders if the man can sense his presence in any way, and is almost surprised when the rounded face turns in his direction. Through the glassiness of his eyes, Emil can sense an anger, a questioning, a plea that it isn’t, as is obvious, Emil’s doing that Berwald is dead. But it is.Tino wipes his nose with a tattered sleeve before speaking, “Was it you who killed him?”Emil is silent but for a nod.Instead of the expected anger, Emil receives a small yet loaded question. “Why?”“…I” Why won’t the words come to him. He should be able to justify his actions, but who can justify taking a life, “I-I’m s-sorry!” Emil breaks down, a flickering spirit small in the moonlight and crushed by the weight of his actions, “I didn’t mean to, I just wanted to die p-properly, I’m s-sorry!”“H-hey!” Tino exclaims in alarm, crawling to the spirit of the boy and taking his half tangible form in paternal arms, “You didn’t have control, did you? W-whatever sins you have committed… the gods must surely forgive, a soul dying so young... How did you die?”Emil goes quiet at the question, nuzzling into the unfamiliar warmth of the man’s chest, and Tino thinks he’s entered dangerous territory before Emil speaks, “I died as a baby, not twenty-four hours into my life. I don’t know why I have grown, but I surely died for being a demon.”“No, no,” Tino coos, tightening his hold and rocking the boy gently, tenderly. Through his grief for his dead lover, Tino found comfort in comforting others, even if, as this boy was, the other was he who stole Berwald’s life away. Tino didn’t see spirits such as this as the enemy, not when the world had stolen their lives so cruelly. “How can I guide you to the other side?”“… take me to my grave,” Emil asks in a small voice, and so, Tino standing up and carrying the boy with him, they set off, leaving Berwald broken in the grass.There is an instinctive pull to Emil’s resting place, and both of them can feel it, Tino having no need to second guess his step, and Emil feeling more and more at peace as the journey continues. However, it wasn’t in the god’s minds when they sentenced Emil to such a fate for his resting to be so easily achieved, and as they neared the grave, closer and closer, Emil grew steadily heavier to Tino, at first presenting itself as an unpleasant ache, before growing to his arms quivering and breath catching with the pain of withstanding the weight of the boy he carried. Finally, at his limit, Tino collapses to his knees, Emil still clutched tightly to his chest as he feels the boy’s unease grow, the spirit shifting in frustration, which grows to anger which grows to blinded rage.And yet, with Emil’s hands circling his throat and crushing his windpipe, Tino clutches him tighter still, loving in the last moments of his life as he realises that this spirit bears no control over the murder. Emil, the boy, the soul, is innocent; a victim. There is nothing of him in the inhuman face that snarls at Tino’s last living breath. Thank the gods he’ll be able to be reunited with Berwald so soon.