Tears were rolling down a girl's face as she collapsed onto the floor in front of a boy with a distant gaze. His eyes were glassy and in pain, and his body was shivering slightly from both the cold and his current mental state.
"I saved you..."
The boy continued to say this sentence over and over, neither questioning it nor expressing it; rather, he just said it to say it.
The words continued to repeat themselves over and over, both out loud and in his own head.
The gaze that was focused on the wall across from him finally broke, and his eyes slowly shifted down to the girl at his feet, and once more he spoke.
"I saved you?"
The girl, who had for most of her life experienced nothing but torment, looked back up and spoke; the emotion that had been sealed away was free for the moment.
"You, Solaris, saved me. I wouldn't be here today if it hadn't been for you."
Solaris was at a loss for words; his lips moved as if trying to find the correct words to express what he was and was supposed to feel.
He should've felt overjoyed, excited, relieved even, but instead, he was conflicted.
He wasn't happy, nor did he lose the emotion; he wasn't sad, he wasn't angry, he wasn't even sure if he wasn't those emotions; all he knew was that he was confused.
His own hurting mind, damaged by his own mistreatment of it, though both internal and mystical forces, was having more trouble digesting those words than it had ever had doing anything before.
After a few moments, Solaris opened his mouth and spoke.
"I didn't save you; all I've done is kill. I've killed and killed and killed some more; sometimes it wasn't even me killing and was just my body moving on its own. I couldn't possibly have saved you; you are an angel. A murderer shouldn't be able to save an angel. I shouldn't even be able to see you."
Solaris averted his gaze back to the spot on the floor next to Selen, where it had started.
I am a useless murderer. I can't save anyone; I can't save her. I couldn't save Ember. Why is she lying to me, all to make a murderer feel better?
Selen looked up at him; she was breathing heavily and sniffling from the profuse crying that she had just been doing.
"You... You are no murderer, Solaris... You've never killed a human soul... I can tell... Because I am a murderer."
Solaris's glassy eyes widened, and something within him shifted slightly.
He wasn't sure what it was.
But in this moment, he felt as though looking at Selen was the best idea in the world.
Slowly, he began to move his eyes to Selen; they darted back as they saw the edges of her blonde hair, then he tried again and again, moving closer and closer to her, and eventually they met her beautiful blue eyes.
Solaris squinted as though he was gazing upon a sun, but he continued to look at her.
His body was shaking from the chill of the room.
"You cannot be a murderer. That's not possible; only the worst of the worst are killers. Demons are killers, but you are an angel, so don't lie to me just to make me feel better! I'm a terrible, worthless, useless murderer. I've never saved even a single person. So please don't lie to me; I can't take it anymore. I can't take any of this anymore. Hell, I'm not even a good murderer. Those kills I racked up in hell, the ones that make me an Executioner, the ones that make me that Folk tale, the Eclipse. I didn't face them down one-on-one; almost all of them I simply caught by surprise. All I did was hide in the shadows and then tear their crystals out, crushing them fast enough so that they couldn't counterattack."
Solaris gritted his teeth as he recalled the painful memories; his hands rose up and slid into his hair, then he grabbed hold of it. Pulling slightly, the tension caused a slight amount of pain, but Solaris didn't mind; all he needed was for the pain in his head to disappear.
"The ones that I did have to fight, I stood no chance against; the only way I ever could've fought against those demons was by using..."
Selen looked up at him, her eyes continuing to pour tears, no longer from her brutal confession, but from hearing Solaris's retelling of the story. She had heard it once before within the conference room, but he had told it much differently; he mainly focused on the details they discovered, and only momentarily did he mention the kills he racked up.
He had never spoken of it since, not until now.
Selen felt a tug on her heart and raised her head to clench her chest in pain.
"Using... What?"
Solaris shut his eyes in pain.
Don't tell her you are worthless; you shouldn't cause her more pain. Don't do it, you murderer.
Solaris couldn't drown out the voice in his head, the voice yelling at him to not share the primary contributor to his current state with anyone.
He listened to the voice for so long; he understood the reasons not to share this information, the pain it could cause, the pain it had already caused, and the pain it removed.
The voice continued to shout at him, demanding he never reveal this to Selen; it reminded him of how it went down last time, but...
He finnally stopped thinking and opened his mouth.
The voice that had been causing pain to surge in his mind stopped; his own voice stopped.
And his real voice spoke.
"Selen, I have an ability... No, it's called a blessing, called surpass... and every time I have the will to fight- no, to win- it activates, slowly, to make me surpass whatever I'm willing to beat, but the price is... The fuel to keep this Blessing, the sacrifice I have to make... Is my own humanity."