Love on Gaia: Never Forgive. Never Forget. (Agape - Unconditional Love)

Category: Agape - Unconditional Love
Nickname: Kyttan

A handful of creatures know why I left the Templars. Why I may or may not have opened a Sheol portal in the Templar shooting range. Why I only answer when Dame Julia calls and none other.

But any who have mentioned Orochi Tower, know that I hate them with an unhealthy, unwavering, probably unhinged passion. The kind that gave Niko, our Bloody Sun, her nickname among demons.

I have always been protective of babies…didn’t matter the species or their value to society. Ugly or beautiful. Healthy or sick. Wanted or reviled. They saw me, and either cried or gurgled with reaching hands, the latter may be my favorite for their rarity, but I made sure the former got to a safe place all the same.

It was one of those gurgling, grasping types that I found one snowy day in Romania…cuddled up in her cold mother’s arms, covered in her blood. The forest gives, and the forest takes, the Romani understood that, so it was to them I gifted the babe.

Over the years, I found myself time and time again in that camp, watching her grow from swadling to toddler to teething hellbeast…her screams could vibrate my eardrums, so fierce in her vocal displeasure. But a drop of clove-soaked whiskey always settled her, safe and easy across my chest. I didn’t even mind when she drooled on my favorite jacket.

In the blink of an eye she went from toddler to teenager it seemed, one that never understood why the males stayed away from her. Never noting the shadow that stood behind her, the glow of my gaze shifting from blue to red.

She called me Katya. I called her Sweetling.

I held her when she cried over her first heartbreak. I laughed with her when Smokey set his trailer ablaze…he wasn’t in it of course. I think…

And the Secret War continued on, and the stench of the Morning Light continued to spread, but she was my sweet sanctuary, my anachronistic love.

Petrov left me a message when she lit up like a Phoenix, but I had lost my legs…thanks Lillith!..then was neck deep in Dreamer filth. Five days passed in the waking world, but it had been a blink to me.

When I reached the camp, my sweetling was gone.

A “talent agent” had shown up, yet no Faction claimed them when I dragged their bloody and broken body down the streets of Seol, New York City and finally London. Nor did any of them know what had become of my Sweetling.

I rage-quit the Templars, emphasis on rage. The building still stands because I adore Dame Julia, but if it wasn’t for that woman…

And so my bloody slog through bodies began, until a Wasp found me, and told me of The Hive…

The hole that all the Bees who didn’t want to join a Faction got dumped in.

It took me thirteen days and countless bodies to find it…but it was empty, they knew I was coming. Not as if I had been quiet about it. Thirteen days to clear out hundreds of cells…

It took me another three days to find a reporter in a bunny costume who had heard rumors of extremely dark $hit going on at Orochi Tower. Experiments on Bees in particular, so I climbed the Tower with an assist from some like minded individuals. Smokey came along for $hits and giggles…and to protect ‘dat ass’ as he had begun saying. Human slang endlessly fascinates the Jinn.

But the Tower was a bust…until I found files on the Mitsubachi. The robots that swarmed Kaidan weren’t robots…if you pull them apart enough, you get to the fleshy bits the tech was built on. And those fleshy bits were Bees.

Once I reached the penthouse, I bartered with Light-lickers. They wanted Lillith. I wanted my Sweetling. Seems I’m on a no-kill list in high places, so a deal was struck, and my Sweetling appeared on the doorstep of my Brownstone the next morning.

Her body was whole, but her mind…I had to sedate her the first few weeks, or she’d start screaming like she did when teething, unconsolable and heartbreaking.

I would hold her against me each night, and Smokey would wrap his large form around ours. He offered to slip into her mind, to erase what had occurred and pull her from her protective shell…but there are some Lessons that may only be learned through Pain. I had to believe that. For isn’t that what my long existence had shown me?

Niko and her younglings arrived soon after, and it was the sound of children’s laughter that began to call to my Sweetling. A twitch of the lips here, a huff of laughter there.

The healing process was slow, but it was steady. Her time in The Hive changed her, no longer my Sweetling, she wants to be called Raz, short for Razbunare. Revenge in Romanian.

I don’t ask Raz about her time at The Hive, or wherever she went after that. If she wants to speak of it, I will always be there to listen. A part of me waits with baited breath, for the day she allows Smokey into her head. Just give me a face, that’s all I need. The Living can’t hide from the Dead…and I know a lot of Dead.

So for now, we plot, and we train, and my body count keeps rising. But I still make it back to the Brownstone each night, and we still sleep three deep in my massive bed on the third floor, surrounded by the scent of campfire and sandalwood and cinnamon.

Who would ever have thought a Jinn would save my sanity, while I was trying to save hers?

“Love you, Raz. Always.” I murmured into her hair once her breathing had evened into sleep.

“Why do you only say it when she is sleeping?” Smokey whispered as he settled my small spoon into his big spoon.

“Then she never has to feel like she needs to say it back.” I stated simply as I settled into the warmth of his form.

“I love you, my little lunatic.” His body rumbled against mine, his version of a chuckle.

My soft snore was his only response…not like he needed one. I’d never tried to kill him, in my world, actions speak louder than words. And when you bedded down with a bloody monster like me, waking each sunrise was an ‘I love you’.

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