He was well versed in this journey - wandering through a massive crowd as the onlookers watched in disgust at his disfigured face. It had once filled him with shame, long before he had grown cold and distant from them - his supposed fellow human beings. He had hoped life above-water would prove less judgemental, but as soon as his new teeth had grown in, he had come to realize that no worlds had place for monsters. Then again, he was no less judgemental; he was trying to rid the world of them, himself.
Still, it tore at a few remaining heartstrings as they gathered around to watch him hobble over towards Zeke and his packs, where he’d find a fresh mask to cover his face as he ran for the sunset - possibly with Luna at his back. Or perhaps she, too, now having seen his face and his lies would detest him with the same ferocity that humans hated the Monstrum. Clever girl, in that case, he thought.
Behind him, the priest and his graduated apprentice stopped to look at the smoldering pyres that had once been the beast’s arms. The crowd was sullen. Their eyes were wide - grieving lost loved ones and the horrors they had seen.
“I’ll get out of your hair…” Logan spoke, raising his arm to shield them from any further horrors, but allowed a few of the citizens to see his profile as he shambled onwards to the exhausted Zeke. The hound had grown older that day, having seen his partner flung between rocks before consuming nearly the entirety of a Monstrum before riding him into battle. But despite his well-known oddity, he was loyal and loving and greeted his compatriot with a lick across Logan’s calloused palm.
“Don’t you put that fucking mask on.” A cold voice spoke from the crowd as he reached inside his pack to retrieve one of his last remaining porcelain masks. He looked between his fingers to see Luna there, standing atop a box of ammunition with the rifle trained on him.
He had to grin his best, most handsome smile.
With every passing second, her remaining slivers of doubt drained away. It was Guy, all right - different, more monstrous, but Guy. With his face-covering hand, he grabbed hold of the remnants of the mask and threw it to the stones - shattering it against the granite as if to expose his red, Logoruum eye to the crowds. Still, they didn’t gasp nor shirk away. They just stood there - staring. Until Ethel raised her voice and asked: “So, are we done? It’s not gonna come back to life and kill us?” He had heard reactions before, but nothing quite as calm as that. At this point, he’d usually been chased from town with pitchforks and torches.
With his naked face, he found the redhead and nodded. “Yeah. It’s over…” He declared. Finally, they broke from the silence to clap. The clap soon turned to cheering and before he could process the shifting of the mood, they were roaring in celebration, clapping each other’s shoulders and kissing one-another. In the lull, he reached inside his pack to produce a white packet of meat and raised it to his sharkish teeth, biting into it - eating before people for the first time in a decade. He didn’t like it, but the crowd’s attention was forced elsewhere - he was starving, weakened and not entirely sure Luna wasn’t going to pull the trigger if he put the mask on, after all.
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He was surprised to see them in his peripheral view - the grins of the hundreds of Anzanites and the many young who seemed determined to approach him, had it not been for their parents ushering them away; not with disgust, but rather, with respectful nods in his direction.
He supposed, by the sound of a trembling rifle, that they all realized he had more pressing matters to attend to.
Zeke supported him around a corner, where the Ghast fell to his knees and devolved into a bestial frenzy- devouring the packs of meat one by one.
Luna had lowered the rifle, but kept staring down at him with disbelief and with a pained expression painted across her face. She had drawn back the hood, hanging her long, similarly colored hair over her shoulders.
He finally paused his frantic eating to speak over his shoulder. “The explosion… it took my teeth. The symbiote filled it in the best it could - same with the eye.” She let him continue his feast in silence, simply staring at her long-lost companion.
But he continued with a mouth full of meats: “I knew as soon as I saw you… Your symbiote was calling out for its sibling. That’s why I heard you - that’s how I knew to come. It makes sense - the psychic-”
“Stop talking!” She commanded - her shout reverberating between the cobbled walls of the stables. Darkness was already falling. On the town of Anza, but what little light remained bled through the explosion-racked cracks to illuminate the tears in his shirt - giving her the familiar view of the holes in his shoulders.
“I don’t give a shit about your science. Why’d you lie to me? Why didn’t you take that fucking thing off the second we met!? Wh-why didn’t you come after us… why didn’t you come back to me?” Her voice shook with fury and emotion - tears and rage.
His dark form lurched forwards as he turned back to face the wall and explained: “I didn’t want to ruin the past. The few good memories you had - you drew strength from them.” She shook her head and kicked the rifle to the side.
“You moved on, is that it? You’re just happy to leave things like they were and let me keep living with the pain of having lost you?” Logan dropped the last paper to the stable and rose, shambling to his feet before turning to face her. His one red eye and his one black, the mouth of shark teeth - he was used to people rearing away for it. Screaming. Roaring. Not so much crying.
Her red eyes glistened with tears of fury as he took a step closer to shake his head in the beam of light. “I never ‘moved on’. What little good dreams I still have are still about you - they always will be. Can you say the same now that you’ve seen this? Or will you find them warped to better fit the monster?” She raised her hand to slap him and commanded: “Don’t you put words in my mouth, you asshole! You don’t get to decide how I look at you. You could have no teeth at all and you’d still be Guy or Logan or whatever the fuck you call yourself now! You didn’t want to show me your face because you’re a coward. You just didn’t want to take the risk I’d call you a monster, which is why you wear that thing, isn’t it!?”
His lips thinned around his teeth. He nodded agreeingly - pained as she turned to stomp out of the stables, leaving him alone with the exhausted hound.
When her supple form had finally disappeared, he turned towards Zeke to put his fists atop his hips and sighed. “That went about as well as I could’ve expected, boy. Just as fiery as ever, that one.” Zeke opened one eye to raise a pitying eyebrow at his comrade, as if to say: ‘That’s a monster you’ll have to face on your own.’