☆Deathbringer☆

I'm in love with Glory Bright.

That was the only thing that passed my mind when I walked home from Greatness' car. I loved her much more than I had realized. I was walking towards her even when I didn't want to, worried about her when I had just broken up with Greatness.

Yeah, I was a piece of shit. I agree. I just didn't know that I was capable of feeling so strongly for a person. And because I didn't know, I hurt a lot of people. Greatness was one of them.

I think I always felt it, but I had been lying to myself until that moment. When I saw Glory crying at my doorstep, I knew it had come to a point that I would someday burst.

I also realized then that I could never let Glory know.

I realized how horrible I had been to Greatness when we were eating chocolate ice cream in the living room. Watching Gone with the Wind and seeing how Rhett Butler, a man that has chased the main character for years, tell her how he didn't give a damn- that hit me. Seeing his tired look, just letting everything go. She must have felt like that.

That was when I started crying, silent tears dropping from my face. Glory was too intent watching the movie to know, thank God, but I kept seeing Greatness out of nowhere. I had been a jerk, leaving our dates all the time, leaving her all alone. Letting her like me, telling her I liked her when I knew I loved Glory. And maybe I did like her, a lot. Still, it wasn't enough to outshine Glory. Nothing was enough to outshine Glory.

Maybe I tricked myself into thing that someone as same as me- coming from the same kind, someone who knew my secrets- might be able to outshine her someday. Because I could never be with Glory.

Because fate was cruel. No matter how much I regretted it, it was there.

Why?

First, I was a criminal. I simply had killed too many people. I never told her, and she would leave me if I ever did. I never wanted her to know. I wanted to remain in her head as nice, charming Deathbringer. Not a boy that killed people for money.

Second, one of my assassinations were on Glory's father.

Yes.

I shot her father in the head.

☆

"I killed Slaughter," he says when the guards come into the room. "Let me go to Battlewinner. I will go to the mission with Mother and leave the camp."

He hides his bloody hands in his pockets. Partly because everyone is staring at him. Partly because they are shaking. He doesn't look at Slaughter's dead body on the ground. He can't.

Battlewinner laughs when she sees him, her lips so bright in the darkness. Mother is staring at him with- fear. It's a look that says, what have you done? You are a murderer, an assassin, your innocence is dead.

It has been long dead, Mother, he wants to say, but no words come out. He patiently waits for instruction.

"You probably heard that you and your mother will be able to get out of this place one you complete the task, haven't you?" Battlewinner gives him her sharp grin. A girl is next to her- a girl with black hair, staring at him with dark eyes. "Expect your mother to be killed if you don't succeed."

Mother. The mother he had sworn to protect from harm, the day he killed for the first time.

Mother is narrowing her eyes. She seems to be more bothered by his bloody hands more than the death threat. Battlewinner smiles as she huffs in smoke from her cigarette. The room fills with sickening air.

"I won't fail," he replies. "Who's our client?"

Battlewinner leans close. Whispering another secret again. The more he looks at this woman, the more he's convinced that they are alike. "I'll only tell you, because you're one of my favorites. It's one of the stars."

Stars? He frowns, but he doesn't really care. "Until when?"

Battlewinner's lips are shining. They are always shining, the hint of bloody red. "In two days, the man should be dead. His name is Tempest. To my knowledge he is single, with no family. A woman visits him time to time, and he sometimes goes to a big house on Mondays. He usually comes out with a little girl and they take a drive somewhere. Our client wants him killed."

"Do they prefer a way?" Mother isn't saying a word, so I'm leading it. "Plain assassination or natural death?"

"They say they prefer natural death. The death can't be teased back to them, ever. Understood?"

"Yes, Battlewinner. Let's go in and discuss with Mother how you'll let us cut ties with everyone. You might be lying." I give her a grin, just to show that I'm joking. I'm not, though.

Her sharp grin again. "Of course. A little haughty, aren't you? So convinced you'll get the work done."

"Of course I will."

☆

"I can't. I won't. Go back, Deathbringer. You have enough blood on your hands."

"Mother!" Panic. Why is she being like this? This wasn't a part of the plan. "Mother, how could you? I can't go without you. I- I promised to keep you safe."

Her eyes are so empty that they're almost scary to look at. No. No. His mother's sudden morality isn't going to let her die. He won't let her. "Is my life worth that man's? We should stop this, Deathbringer. We can run away, we can start anew, we don't have to murder..."

Innocent.

His mother was innocent.

The car. It was a sports car with the roof wide open. She was supposed to shoot him in the head while he was running through the road in the forest. They had double checked if anyone was there, and nobody was. It was perfect. It was a plan that kept both of them safe, and his mother was suddenly wanting to stop?

"Mother, do you think we can get out of this? Do you think they would let us go? We'll be dead in a few days." If you keep living this way, the roaches that call themselves human will get you. They'll do to you what they did to me. "Mother, it's too late. It's him or us. And I want you alive. Mother, please, he'll come soon."

He could hear the faint noise of the car. If they didn't shoot him now, their mission would fail. He lived in the fourteenth floor of the apartment, so sneaking into his house was out of the question.

"I'm sorry, this is all my fault." Mother was crying. Feeling sadness over someone that they didn't even know. "I should have never joined them in the first place. Perhaps then you would be a normal boy...going to school...not having to murder.."

His voice was low. "Listen to me." He gripped her shoulders. "Listen to me, Mother. I don't want to lose you, do you understand me? If I have to lie, if I have to kill, I don't care. I never knew that man in my life and I will never know him. I will never give a shit about what happened to him. It's his life or yours. It's HIM or YOU. If we kill him, we can get out of this mess, we can live together without killing anyone else. Isn't that what you want, Mother?"

Mother is sobbing.

Why? He thinks. Why are you sobbing? Why are you crying? You're the one living. You're the one that's in a place higher than that man, the one pointing that gun somewhere so it won't be pointed at you. It needs to be pointed somewhere. So why feel remorse that it's not you?

The man comes closer. Mother doesn't raise the gun.

He takes it from her. And suddenly she is begging, taking her foot with her hands. "Please, Deathbringer, don't put any more blood in your hands. You will go to hell, you will regret it, it will be too much to bear...Don't shoot at that man, I'm begging you. Let's run away..."

Running away. But that was too risky. One wrong move and the gun was pointed at them. One wrong step and she would go through the things he had gone through. Why not have the control of the gun themselves so it would never point at them?

He didn't know that he could point the gun at himself and not even know it until it was too late.

Maybe she knew, how the murders backfired. Maybe that was why she was crying as the car got closer.

He has never seen her like this, so vulnerable, so weak.

In the end, she was someone that was too weak, he realized. Someone to protect the world from, like his classmates. Someone who couldn't take the outside view, how the real world was like. Quickstrike will have to live under thst veil forever.

He raised the gun.

He fired at the man, saw the blood thst spurted out. His expression was filled with shock and horror- he steered to the left, and it was like time stopped- he crashed into the tree- the flames shot out like firecrackers.

The fire would be even better that hiding the evidence. He tugged at Quickstrike and soon they were running away.

He had fired that shot, and the bullets had gone two ways- one to the man, whom they would learn later as Glory Bright's father, and one to himself.

☆

Q: Would you be able to forgive a love interest, someone you desperately love, if they killed one of your family members?