the pearly gates had some eloquent graffiti; else

[Caius]

when is a monster not a monster? oh, when you love it He dreams of her. Of course he does. Of course she haunts every inch of him because he is a creature who begs to be haunted, be possessed, be taken. He is weak and open and trembling to be invaded. He is made for ghosts, both the literal kind (the dead spirits who take delight in lurking at the corner of his vision, or his father, burnt and tragic and watching) and the more figurative (Else, always there and not-there, alive but seemingly beyond his grasp). He dreams of her and sometimes the dreams are sweet, like the way her skin smells. Like the way she listened while he spilled his heart out, telling her about father, telling her bits of how – what – mother was. (He cannot tell the whole story because it tastes like bile in his mouth and he doesn’t want to speak such vile things to her, doesn’t want her to know that a wretched part of him still loves mother so.) He dreams of her and sometimes they are not dreams, they are nightmares. He dreams he sees her and she is a ghost, she is dead because he could not protect her (he has never been a good warrior). The haunted boy is in the deserts. He almost always is. It’s his home, where he was once prince (not anymore, though, with Vanquish gone – now he is simply their failed solider, with bloodied wings and an eye for ghosts and little else). He hasn’t seen her in months. He misses her, and the ache is different than the ache of how he’d missed mother. It’s somewhere in his stomach, a strange lurching, like he’s not quite sure how to function without her. He dreams of her, because dreams are really all he has. c a i u s vanquish x chantale