Content warning: Suicide attempt / Self-harm
He stood still in the rain and let it soak him. It felt surprisingly gentle, not a punishment, but a strange, cool pressure. This rain—it was the same rain that fell on her body, the same rain that had met her in her final day. It almost felt like she was touching him through the weather.
"I am not alone." He was surrounded by the only element that truly remembered her the way he did.
He gripped the railing, the city a smear of light below him, and tried to measure how much noise the world would make if he stopped being a part.
No one would even notice.
His palms were slick, and the hem of his shirt clung to him like a second skin. His gaze blurred by tears, he didn't know he was crying. His chest felt too tight, his skin too thin. The world had swallowed him whole and spat him out raw.
"I'm too dirty to live," he whispered to no one, the words strangling him. Memories flickered: his mother's scream, his father's silence, his uncle's laughter. Each one is a brand. Each one was proof that the world had always been against him.
He should just let go. Let the rain swallow the rest.
Jump. Let go. You're too stained. Too contaminated by their sins. Why— why am I not jumping?
"Kaien, stop."
He flinched at the sound of the voice — deep, calm, and impossibly composed. He didn't know when the room had stopped being empty.
Kaien's hands tightened on the railing, the chill anchoring him. "Don't… Don't come closer."
The footsteps stopped, he could feel the eyes though — piercing and analytical — digging into his back.
"What are you doing?" That tone again, steady — impossibly steady as though he was just a child being theatrical.
In the eyes of his Alaric, perhaps he did seem theatrical, always one for dramatics.
"What does it look like I am doing?" Kaien flinched at the sharpness in his own voice. "Don't act like you care. You think if I die, the stain dies too." His voice sounded scraped. "One less broken boy off your conscience."
The rain didn't feel soothing anymore, it felt cold. God, it was so cold. Like a thousand irritating needles digging through his skin. Was this how she felt when she had lain there under the rain for hours, a tangle of white and red? Cold.
"And what makes you think I'd want that?" Alaric's words were small, practiced. "You think I married my daughter into that family because I knew this would happen?"
The irony should have been bitter enough to make him laugh. Instead, Kaien's fists clenched. "You let it happen," he said. "You gave her away. You left me there."
Alaric didn't flinch at the accusation; he had been waiting for it like it was part of a ledger that needed closing. "I thought I was buying safety," he said. "I was wrong. I know I failed her. I know I failed you."
The rain blurred them into a painting of two ruined men. Kaien felt the anger like a live wire: at his father who had shoved a life into the dark, at Celeste for every bruise and lie, at the uncle who had taken what a child had no business losing.
Kaien sighed. "You don't understand…. I am… I am not worth—"
"Shut up." Alaric's hand was on his shoulder before he knew it. Solid. Unyielding. "Look at me, boy. Look at me."
Kaien's eyes met his grandfather's. Alaric didn't flinch. He didn't plead. He just… watched. And in that watchfulness, Kaien felt something he hadn't in years: someone steady, someone willing to hold space for his pain.
"They think they own your fear," Alaric said softly. "Your anger. Your shame. But they don't. None of them do. The ones who deserve to suffer? It's them. They're the ones who hurt you. You? You survive."
Survive. The word felt heavy in Kaien's chest. And impossible. He shook his head. "I can't. Everything they did… everything I am—"
"That's exactly why you will." Alaric's voice hardened. "You will live to make them feel the weight of what they've done. Not because it will make you happy, not because it will make you whole. Because it's yours to wield. Your scars, your rage—they are your weapons."
"I can't live with this," he said, voice thin. "I can't… I don't want to wake up and watch them smile. I don't want to carry their laughter as proof that I survived."
Alaric's hand tightened, not on Kaien but on the rail—one slow, decisive movement. "Then don't live for them," he said. "Live to make them pay."
Kaien swallowed hard, there was nothing on his face but a small, terrible curiosity. The wet edge of the balcony seemed to mock him, but the hand on his shoulder anchored him. A flicker of something dangerous ignited in his chest. Revenge. Purpose. Fire.
"How?" he rasped. "How do I… do it? How do I survive knowing—"
"You rebuild," Alaric said. "You leave. You become a storm they never saw coming. And one day… You come back. And when you do, they will remember your name, and they will pay."
Kaien's hands unclenched. His body trembled, but the tremor was no longer panic—it was ignition. A plan, a path. Pain and fury distilled into cold precision. He would live. Not for them. Not for anyone. For himself. And for the mother whose memory still screamed in his veins.
He stepped back from the railing, breathing hard, rain plastering his hair to his forehead. He didn't feel whole. He didn't feel safe. But he felt ready.
If the world had taken everything, Kaien Liroux would take it back. Piece by piece. And they would pay.