Falling Feathers Chapter 26

Falling Feathers
Chapter Twenty-Six: End
HWF

At four o'clock the next morning Sterling opened one eye at Maka and Soul's kitchen table for the first time since having been stabbed. Granted it was with great difficulty but at least he was conscious. Kris patted him gently on the head as Coraline peeked over the table to see what had just happened and Stella walked in from the living room, Andrew remained seated on the couch facing away from them with something in his lap.
Sterling's eyes burned and his head pounded but he smiled none the less.
"Are you alright?" Kris asked laughing happily.
"I-… I can't move," he replied through gritted teeth.
Her eyes glistened with a thin layer of tears. "N-no?"
"… No."
Kris bowed her head and placed a hand on his arm.
"What's going on outside?" he asked trying to change the subject.
"Nothing," she said with a sigh. "It's been quiet for over an hour."
"… How about Helena and Karsh, are they alright?"
All fell silent and bowed their heads.
"… T-they didn't make it?" he asked becoming nervous.
"Karsh took Helena's body to bury it… but he wouldn't let us come."
Stella nodded, "He said she was… really cut up."
"What about the baby?!" Sterling choked.
Andrew stood up and turned toward them, a very small bundle of cloth lay in his arms. Sterling watched closely as he walked into the kitchen and extended the blanket. The Kris took it carefully and moved the cloth off the pouting face of a very small and pudgy baby girl. Her colorless eyes were closed and there was a single tuft of delicate strawberry blonde hair that fell lightly on her forehead.
Sterling couldn't breathe, unable to accept that this child would be taking Helena's place in the universe. "What's her name?"
"Avery… Avery Helena Parker," Stella answered. "That's what Karsh said."
Sterling took a deep breath full of pride in his godmother and Kris touched the child's freckled cheek gently.
"She did a good job, didn't she?" Kris asked looking at Sterling.
"Yeah," he smiled widely as the door opened and Karsh walked in, wearing his usual broken smile which seemed to be more fractured than ever. He'd lost his wife, which he'd only just accepted, and now he was alone again with only a child that was supposed to be taking her place in his soul.
"Alright?" Karsh asked looking at Sterling before taking his daughter from Kris.
"No," Sterling said, "I-I can't move…."
Karsh bit his lip and drew his magic with his free hand. "… A spinal injury?"
"Yes," Kris said.
Karsh nodded and opened the pouch of magic, he then tapped it out gently over Sterling's body. It began to glow like he had hoped, but instead of returning to him it sunk into the teen's skin and he sat up.
Sterling smiled for a moment before realizing something was wrong, his left arm was still, no matter how many times he tried to move it. He looked to Karsh with a worried expression and Karsh looked down frowning.
"I already healed that arm once because it was paralyzed… I can't do it again," he sighed, "Besides, you just used up the last of the magic."
Sterling swallowed hard and glanced at his limp arm, of no use to him now, or ever again.
"What should we do?" Kris asked touching his left arm, but Sterling didn't feel it.
"Get rid of it," Karsh replied rocking Avery slowly.
Sterling clung to his arm, "Cut it off?!"
"Be glad we're not cutting off your body," he snapped causing the baby to stir. "If you weren't going to be a meister it's fine, but be honest, how will a meister do with an arm that doesn't work? Without it you can still fight, with it Kris should find a new partner."
Kris and Sterling nodded solemnly.
"We'll take you to the hospital tomorrow," Karsh said with a little more sympathy as he glanced at his daughter.
Sterling swallowed hard and moved his arm with his good hand.
"…Looks like Helena, right?" Karsh asked after a moment while looking down at the baby.
"Yeah, but the pout looks like yours," Sterling added as Karsh kissed Avery on the forehead and she blinked hard.
"Sterling," he said still smiling, "You should probably know something else too."
Sterling looked up, "What?"
"It's your brother."
"Pike?"
"No, Hace." All, including Avery, looked up at him.
"Is he alright?" Stella asked anxiously.
"He's… he's fine," Karsh grinned, "He actually took control of Legion."
"He did?!" Sterling exclaimed, "He's in charge of us now?!"
Karsh shook his head and rocked Avery gently in his arms.

--

"Crovix?" Hace asked lifting her shoulders so she came to sit upright rubbing her head. A strange red light glowed all around her and as she became more conscious she realized it was due to the red keshin souls that hung in the air around them. Hace was sitting in front of her, he was terribly bruised and cut up; his whole face was bleeding a swelling. But his right cheek was the worst, bleeding terribly from where he had been cut and dripping down his face. It was plainly obvious that a scar would form over his Legion tattoo that would never fade, but it didn't seem like he minded in the slightest. Crovix was sure she didn't look much better and looked down to see a bleeding slash from one shoulder to the other, her hair was matted to her face with the blood that ran from the cut on her forehead, and she was almost positive she was going to get a black eye.
"Did we get 'em?" Crovix laughed wiping some of the blood off Hace's face.
"… Sorta," he said looking down, "but it's okay, Lord Death took care of the rest."
She smiled and looked over the edge of the building to see that most of the keshin souls were now being picked up by meisters, but also by several members of Legion.
"Why are they still here?" she asked looking down at them.
"…."
"What happened?"
"After we got attacked the other meisters got things under control," he replied also looking at them. "I woke up a few minutes after that."
"What about all the Legion members that didn't come after you?"
"Gone…."
"They just left?"
"… I disbanded Legion," Hace said softly, "There were only about a hundred left that didn't try to kill us. I said that I didn't care where they went just as long as they didn't go back to Venice. A few went back to get the infants at the organization and if someone had the power to teleport they took their families with them somewhere else, so these are people who don't have anyone."
Crovix frowned and watched them with pity in her eyes.
"Where are they going to go?" she said standing up.
Hace shrugged, "They're staying here I think."
"That's not a bad idea."
He shook his head.
"I mean it's the perfect place to branch out of."
"I feel… bad though," he muttered, almost to himself.
"Why's that?"
"So many of us were corrupt, what does that say about the organization I looked up to my whole life?"
"It's just a place," she sighed.
"I thought it was just Pike, but he might have been the least corrupt."
"Hace, we weren't raised in very different situations, but we both ended up in the same place."
"…?"
"That has to tell you something."
"That we really are soul mates?" he smiled.
"No, that birth doesn't matter, it's the soul that comes from it."
Hace grinned.
"Where it leads us, and yes, who the soul draws us to," she added to make him happy.
Both sighed after a moment and watched as the last of the Legion members took off their cloaks and disappeared.
"What do you think they'll do now?" Crovix asked tucking a long strand of hair behind her ear and looking up and the smoky blue sky.
"Go start a new life?" Hace said placing his arm around her shoulder.
Crovix raised a hand to pinch his skin again, but stopped slowly, then tipped her head toward Hace shoulder, hesitated a moment and leaned on him. Hace smiled sweetly and kissed her forehead.
"That doesn't sound like a bad idea," she whispered watching the dark purple sky become touched with pink on the horizon as they sat down again on the window ledge and watched the city, trying hard not to think about what the future did hold, but instead what it might. They weren't just themselves anymore mostly because Crovix couldn't describe herself and Hace couldn't himself anymore. If ever someone wanted to know all the good things about Crovix Hace would be the person to tell them about her, and if anyone wanted to know the positives about Hace they would need to ask Crovix. After all, that's what being soul partners meant, and that was what they were if nothing else.

--

One Year Later
An eerie fog swept through Death City as late night citizens turned their lights out and closed their windows in preparation for a sleep that would only last three or four hours before the sun rose. It was the darkest time of night for anyone prowling the streets, not to mention the smiling moon was now just barely visible behind a thick layer of clouds, and it was so dark one could hardly see the figures and shapes that sat on rooftops and waited for a lone sound that told them to move. With ears perked and weapons clutched tightly they waited silently for the silence that hid them to be broke.
After a very long ten minutes of quiet a scream in the distance broke the silence and the figures stood, now very much alert even though they had not slept in almost twenty-four hours. The cry that reached them had not come from very far away, only a street or two, and it was exactly the sound that they were looking for.
The two shapes drew backward and leapt with only slight difficulty to the next building, and then to the next after they had made their previous jump.
The came to a halt looking down the edge of the building as a strong wind began to blow and cast the clouds out from behind the moon so they were fully illuminated. Below was a creature that undoubtedly was once a human, but its soul had become corrupt and it looked as if it was the farthest thing from a human now.
The two on the rooftop watched for a moment as it swallowed two blue souls at once and ran its tongue along its pointed teeth, before a female voice spoke.
"Double Murder Borden!" exclaimed the voice, and the creature looked up. On the roof stood Crovix with one hand on her hip and Hace in bow form held behind her head, he grinned happily exposing his canine tooth and flipped hair out of his eyes. Next to her was Sterling, crouched by the ground, holding Kris in her sword form, who grinned and looked at her meister while his left sleeve flopped emptily in the newfound wind. All four grinned.
"Your soul is ours."

Fin