Sophia’s POV

When I heard Ash’s desperate plea through the beacon, I finally understood the feeling of suffocation that humans have mentioned to me. It was as though I couldn’t access something that I desperately needed to continue existence. No, more than that, it was as though that life saving substance had been forcefully ripped from me. Stolen. A small portion had been returned to me when Leo was no longer in danger of dying, but it hadn’t been completely restored until just now when he finally woke up.

A furious storm of emotions ran through me. Relief that Leo was alive, rage that he had almost killed himself, pride that he had put his life on the line to save someone close to him, regret that I hadn’t been paying attention to the bond since he wasn’t supposed to be fighting the elemental in the first place, fear at how close I had just come to being alone again, remorse that I hadn’t pulled him in before he could set off a bomb only a foot away from where he was standing, fury that he was stupid enough to set off a bomb only a foot away from where he was standing.

The only reason Leo had survived as relatively unscathed as he had was due to the toughening of his body brought about by the baptism. If not for that, he would have been blown into bits, with nothing I could have done for him. Did he know that in all likelihood he wouldn’t have survived? Did he intend to sacrifice himself to save that damn girl? I felt some of my rage slip over to Ash, and how this entire situation had come about because she was stupid enough to put herself in a helpless situation right next to her enemy. Why the hell did she go and dump out all of her mana into the elemental? She wasn’t a freak like Leo who could fight or at least escape even with an empty mana pool.

I also couldn’t be mad at Ash because if it hadn’t been for her yelling at me through the beacon, there’s a chance that I wouldn’t have noticed in time to do anything for him. As it was, when I transferred him over to the subspace Leo had practically already been dead. His Markings were glowing, seemingly holding him together at the seams, but without knowing what Aspect was being employed, there was no telling how long that would last. It was clear that it wasn’t the same Aspect that brought about the cloud of white and gold, as this one seemed…darker. Sinister, yet…also heartbreaking in a way. It was as though whatever was saving his life could also destroy him. Turn him into something else entirely, a twisted man who could never truly be whole.

The only way to stop that Aspect from flowing through his body was to save him so that it would no longer have to. I fixed as much as I could, but healing magic really wasn’t my forte. Not to mention that with my full powers available, if I let slip even just a little bit on the mana control, instead of healing him I would have just exploded him into more pieces than the bomb nearly had, so I ended up undershooting how much I healed him at any time, preferring his treatment taking longer than accidentally killing him.

When he awoke from the short nap, I gave him a minute to get his blindfold turned on and go to his shed to work on adding the new hearing enchantment. This one would just be a pair of ears, another magical fix to maintain his ability to exist as a fully functioning person. As he worked, I unloaded all of the emotions that had been bottled up until I could be certain he was fine. My anger, my fear, my resentment, my pride, my guilt. I shared them all with him, and I told him in no uncertain terms that he could never do anything like that again. That I couldn’t handle seeing him in that state, and he needed to do a better job of keeping himself safe in the future.

He put down the blindfold he had been sewing, and tilted his head upwards. Despite not facing me, I knew that with his 360 degree vision, he was looking straight at me. He spoke calmly, and rationally, almost entirely devoid of any sort of emotion as he always has with serious discussions. To those who don’t understand the way he is, it would be easy to mistake his tone for boredom.

“Sophia, I told you about my sister right?”

“You mentioned her, yes.”

“Yeah. My whole life, I spent every moment thinking about ways that I could turn my parents’ attention on me. How I could protect her, how I could be the one who took all pain and punishment in her place. Despite not being able to process emotions correctly, I knew that that was what I needed to do. When I saw Ash was about to die, it was exactly the same. I didn’t even really have a complete thought that entire time. My body just moved on its own and did whatever needed to be done in order to protect her. This is a big part of who I am Soph. The murderous wrath, the obsessive tinkering, and the lighthearted joking around, these are all pieces of me, and along with those somewhere in the core of my being, no matter what my Title might be, I am a guardian. If I find myself in another similar situation, where someone I care about is at risk, I cannot promise you that I won’t do the same thing again. I can try to make more things, learn more spells, build my strength in order to give myself more options, but those are just bandaid solutions that don’t solve the actual problem. I need you to know that this is a facet of who I am on the deepest level, and even if you consider it my worst quality, I need you to be able to at some level accept that. If you can’t…I don’t think there’s anything I’ll be able to do about it. I suppose…the choice is yours.”

Once more, I felt the false state of suffocation envelop me. The fuck?!? Did he really just take my sincerity, toss it aside, and say ‘that’s how I am so deal.’?? This cocky ass motherfucker!!!

I felt new rage simmering inside of me. Rage at his response. Rage at its validity. Who cares if it’s logically valid?! If it’s logical to die you just will?!?? That’s fucking Bullshit. Bullshit he just spewed with that goddamn emotionless tone of his, as though he was merely remarking on the weather. ‘Oh hey Sophia, it’s really windy today down on Earth, and by the way, I’m liable to get myself killed.”

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Calm down, that’s not what he said. The part of me that was a bit too similar to Leo for my liking right now assuaged. He was perfectly respectful and only spoke in terms of worst case scenarios. He’s not asking for your forgiveness, he’s not dismissing your feelings. Part of caring about someone is learning how to handle the parts of them you dislike.

This isn’t dislike, this is hatred. Burning, seething loathing that makes me want to crawl inside of Leo’s soul and rip out that one piece and burn it to ashes. But at some level, that quality makes him who he is. Without it, would he even truly be Leo? I don’t fucking care. I still want to take it out. Why? The annoyingly calm and rational part of my brain questioned. Why?! Because that’s the damn part that’s going to get him killed!! That’s why!!! And why do you care if he gets himself killed? The FUCK?!? BECAUSE I FUCKING LOVE HIM THAT’S WHY.

Oh. Wait. What?

I love him?

I Love him? When the hell had that happened? No, no, this is too soon, too rushed. I’m not a damn hormonal teenager thinking that every relationship is love. I refuse to accept that. Did I hope that one day it would turn into love? Sure. We both knew even before we started seeing each other that this would be something permanent, between my race’s bad habit of quick attachments and his fear of isolation, but love takes time to develop. It’s a gradual process of mutual learning and growth, figuring out who they are, and redefining who you are in relation to your partner. We aren’t there yet, and with Leo’s emotional colorblindness, not even he really knows if he’s even capable of still feeling love. He can barely handle just having a friend, seeing as how he damn near killed himself over the first one he made.

You love him, but you’re scared to admit it. What? No. Why would I be scared of love? Isn’t that the whole point of dating him in the first place? To build up to that? You’re not scared of loving him. You’re scared of something impermanent meaning too much to you. The fact that he might not be able to love you back, and even if he does, that he would never even know it for certain. The fact that he is a broken child who one day might completely snap and change entirely overnight. The fact that he is a weak human who can die so easily, and be taken from you. You are scared not that you might be in love with Leo, but that you love something you can lose.

I had no answer to that. I thought of my life, the long millenia I had lived. Avoiding extended contact with anyone to prevent forming attachments. Alone, trying to build a world for me to exist in solitude. To make my own everything so that I could be okay with having nothing. Making contracts, using people so that I could study the magical borders and interferences between worlds.

I thought of meeting Leo, and watching this human learn his first magic spell. His almost instantaneously developed obsession with enchanting. I thought of the night he first murdered. Watching him fight, and kill, not because he had to, as at any point in that fight he could have turned invisible and flew away. He killed those 5 attackers because he wanted to. Because for the first time in his life there were no real consequences for his actions, so he could finally be free to do what he wanted.

I thought of the beauty of the night above the oppressive dark sky of hell. The radiance of the shimmering stars off in the distance, the raw hope and relief that flooded through my body when I looked upon the moons of Hell, and realized that that which I have worked towards for millenia was finally within my grasp.

I thought of the bed we shared, and the various feelings that rushed through my body as I surrendered my everything to this man. The lust, the Desire, the possessiveness, the heat, the closeness. The odd sensation of being protected that occurred after the various things I allowed him to do to me, when he would sit me upon his lap, holding me in his arms and kiss my forehead, singing to me with a beautiful voice.

I thought of the shattered boy, scared that he would be left alone. Born too broken to truly consider himself to be human, broken further by his father, and ground into dust by that bitch who called herself his mother. The part of him that was larger than he would ever admit, that would always be a scared child desperately clutching a knife, dreaming of freedom from the terror of his life. Looking back on it, considering how many knives he made, could you even really say he ever let go?

But mostly…

I thought of the countless nights we sat on the couch, playing stupid meaningless games. The subtle victory of taking his knight, the bitter defiance of being put in checkmate. The regret of discarding that one card that gives him rummy and lets him lay down 3 more sets. The meaningless triumph of not being the last one holding the joker. Compared to the millenia I had spent alone in Hell, it was such a short time. Just one year, that’s as long as I had known him. And in that one year, I had seen so many different sides to him. I had never known anyone as well as I know Leo. No one had ever really seen Me or interacted with Me before him. The few people I did interact with only really interacted with Desire’s Flame. That’s all that we could allow after all, given our race’s propensity for fast attachments and intense emotion.

Huh.

So it’s true.

I love him.

So…What now.

Well, that depends on you. Do you love him enough to accept him for what he is, even if that means he may never truly love you back? To accept that sometimes his nature will lead him to do things that make you want to kill him?

That’s a damn good question. I considered going back to my life before Leo had summoned me, going back to just building my world in isolation, and…I couldn’t. No matter what, I couldn’t take that again, not after learning there’s another way to live. It would be crueler than giving a blind man eyes only to rip them back out of his skull. It may not be the healthiest decision, and it would probably end up causing another fight later on down the line, but right now? I don’t really care about that. Right now it’s a choice between being alone, or accepting the fact that Leo isn’t always going to act exactly how I want him to act.

It came to my attention that the entire time I had spent spiraling and thinking, Leo had been sitting there, waiting for my response. He was still moving his hands, working on his blindfold, trying to bring back sound, but it was a great deal slower than he had been working originally. He also held it up at an angle, so that he would be able to both work on it and observe my reaction. I couldn’t truly be certain, but I think he was feeling the same sense of fear and suffocation he had made me experience earlier. Covering my mouth with my hands, I took advantage of his current deafness and spoke so that he wouldn’t know what I was saying, giving him my response.

“Fine you damn bastard, I love you. You win.” Just because I had made a certain realization about myself didn’t mean I was ready to share it yet. I sent through the connection, “Fine. But you will be getting a new piece of enchanted defensive equipment that you didn’t make and you are never taking it off, and I will hear no complaints that you want to make your own stuff, am I clear.” A relieved smile tore at his expression, and I think if he still had eyes, he may have even shed a tear.

“Sure thing. Thanks Soph, just please don’t make it too gaudy. I kinda like the mountain man vibe I got going on.”

I scowled at him, feeling the tension in my body ease as our playful banter returned.