There was quiet in the room, after John shut down the laptop. His thoughts circled around the obvious last point on the list that he absolutely had to attend to. ‘Has enough time passed?’ he asked himself, checking the clock hanging on one of the walls. Shortly after 8 PM, it read. Over an hour since he had left Eliza in her room.

There was no set amount of time she had asked for, just that she wanted to think. Maybe an hour was a bit short for that, given what she had to work through. If he went there now, he did risk going against that wish. However, John was far too worried to wait any longer and he was out of excuses not to occupy himself with this topic.

If it was Lydia or Rave or any other of his girls less prone to self-doubt and panic attacks, John might have found the patience to wait things out. Might being the operative word. As it stood, however, it was Eliza.

‘Eliza, my sweet little broken angel,’ John thought and started to move towards the door. ‘An hour has to be enough.’ “Gnome, Metra,” he said, mentally calling out to the other elementals that hung around incorporeal as well, “do get into the city and help with the clean-up. I’ll follow you as soon as I am done.”

“I… I think you should keep someone around.” The soil elemental knew exactly where John would go and what the consequences could be.

“No.” Regardless, John’s answer was a firm denial. “She won’t hurt me.”

‘She skewered Jack earlier,’ Salamander weighed in.

‘That was then and now is now,’ the Gamer responded, wanting every word of this discussion to be the last. ‘She did not attack me on the way back.’ “Eliza won’t hurt me,” he spoke out loud, so Metra didn’t have to wonder what was going on. “If this sounds like the words of a lovestruck fool, then I will be the fool. I will work this through with her on my own. I am the one who keeps dragging her into the world and makes her change, so it is my responsibility to help her shoulder that change.”

He looked from Gnome to Metra and back. The berserker babe was fine either way, but the earth spirit was remarkably defiant. Eventually, she, too, lowered her gaze and let out the tiniest of sighs. “Just be careful, John. I, uhm, well, I really like Eliza, alright? I don’t want to lose either of you, so I want you to be careful and…” She realized she was repeating herself and stopped with a last, “just be careful.”

“I will,” John assured her and they parted in the hallway. Metra, Gnome and the materializing elemental girls went the quickest route to the exit while John, alone, walked towards Eliza’s apartment in the monumental building. As ordered, Beatrice was still standing in front of it. The only moving she had done since John left had been the regularly timed blinks. “Go help in the city as well, would you?” he asked. She doubtlessly had followed the happenings mentally.

“Command acknowledged,” Beatrice stated, bowed and turned towards him. “I require secondary confirmation to demote my stance on it from ‘denial’ to ‘reluctantly obedient.’ Question: does Master truly desire to be alone with one of the few people able to permanently harm him, potentially in a harmful state of mind?”

“Yes,” John kept it short.

“…Command acknowledged, Master.” The passive maid bowed again and started walking. “I shall proceed to leave you alone with your potential doom. Earnest: I wish you success.”

“Thank you,” John only reacted to the last part. While somewhat annoying, he couldn’t fault any of his girls for being worried. Past incidents had given more than enough reason to assume things could turn south quickly. Either way, he moved on and knocked on the door. No answer. He waited ten seconds and knocked again. Still, no answer. “Eliza?” he knocked for the third time. Nothing.

At that point, John threw decency to the wind and just grabbed the handle. Pushing it down, he found the door unlocked. Not that it would have stopped him either way, he could unlock any door in the Palace through a few taps on the menu (or good old violence).

A peculiar smell reached John’s nose. It was the odour of fresh paint, with a slight note of wax. It was a kind of smell that he wasn’t terribly familiar with but recognized anyway due to that unusual blend. It was the fragrance of oil colours. No reason to be alarmed, at least not on its own merits. Just not what he had expected.

Into Eliza’s apartment led its own, smaller hallway. A small alcove held an empty closet for shoes. A sharp right turn led into the living room. If the apartment had been situated next to the outside, there would have been another door there to keep the cold air out. As it was, John stepped in without any barrier.

It was dark.

All curtains over the three windows were neatly shut, only frames of light entering through the tiny gaps between window and cloth. Those flimsy remains of the day, weakened by the late time, were the only source of light in the large room. Reflecting that illumination softly was a white wax cloth that had been spread over the black carpet. It was quite large, shielding the floor across the entire width of the right-hand wall, opposite of the window.

As for the wall itself, it was entirely covered in paintings. Maybe just one large painting. The border was difficult to draw in this case. Individual canvases had been placed next to each other, some so close the border was barely discernible, others with a noticeable gap between them. Seldom were they perfectly aligned. More often than not, the corners didn’t touch, giving the entire thing a disconnected, chaotic foundation.

What was depicted on them was wildly different. Some were a portrait of a person, others of a scene. Looked at in their entirety, they were all connected into an overarching motive. John almost wanted to call it a narrative, the colours flowing on and on. Red, blue and white were predominant, although other colours were used as appropriate. There was just a difference in detail between where those three colours were used and anything else.

The green of the tree was accurate, the blue sky vibrant. The pink colour of skin was detailed, the red of blood seemed to flow despite the use of simple colours. The gold of winding decorations was beautiful, the white all-encompassing interruptions.

Finding himself in there was easy. His face stretched over an entire canvas and his upper body consumed the majority of the two underneath it. Those were located in the bottom left. Finding Eliza was also easy. Her picture was right in the middle.

The blood mage had drawn herself smiling, although John could see from where he was that many more layers of paint had been applied to that particular section than anywhere else. It had seen a large number of redrawings. Another one would be necessary soon, a large slash of four claws ruining the wonderful rendition of herself. Only one eye had escaped it. The painted Eliza was looking towards the painted John.

The entire construction was brilliant, and John found his attention involuntarily drawn towards it. He recognized many scenes, albeit the angle was different than his own. There was a picture of the containment room he had first seen her in, drawn from the inside of the tank. Sigmund standing between the pillars of tree and rock, the Hidden Tradition’s sacred resting place. Above himself, John spotted Rave, surrounded by the other girls, all sitting around a long table. One detail at the border of one picture flowed into the neighbouring one. Gaps between pictures became walls in a visual maze of beauty and horror.

One scene he couldn’t place at all was the image of a bible in a largely empty closet. The book loomed as menacing as a book could loom, placed in the top right of the wall-stretching creation.

John’s eyes returned to the rendition of himself. Not because he wanted to, but because the entire thing was built that way. It lay right where the golden rule put the natural focus point of human perception. On one hand, it pleased him that she had given him that important spot, on the other, the implication was to his disliking. Eliza had made herself the centre of this assortment, but failed to make herself the focus.

John finally managed to rip himself away from the fascinating painting. There were more details to explore, more things he wanted to see where words failed. This was a sight beyond private, something he felt only he was allowed to explore. Just like he took responsibility for Eliza, he had earned himself the right to know everything about her. He would gladly let her know everything about himself in return, if all of it could be expressed through words.

He turned around. All of the furniture that had filled the room by design had been pushed into the left-hand third of the room. Tables, chairs, couch, laptop, dresser, decorative plants, they all had been shoved and piled into one giant mess in front of the large TV hanging from the wall. The tables were entirely claimed by a chaotic mixture of oil colour tubes and paint spots. In that chaos and darkness, John needed a second to find her.

Sitting on, perhaps, the only unclaimed surface of the couch, the white-azure haired girl was motionless. Her legs were pulled to her chest, arms tucked away between thighs and lower legs, her face entirely hidden between her knees. She was naked and clean. It appeared she had showered, at least.

Carefully, John made his way through the mess. “Eliza,” he said softly, stepping through the legs of a toppled chair. No reaction. “Eliza?” he asked, more urgently this time. Still, no reaction. “Eliza!” he almost shouted, now alarmed. He tripped on some pillow he failed to see in his hurry, fell forwards, but caught himself before he could fall on top of her. Immediately he started inspecting her for signs of self-harm. There was nothing she could do to herself that was lethal, to the best of his knowledge, but she could still do things that would hurt. She was as warm as ever, no signs of willingly slowed metabolism. At his touch, she even raised her head a little bit. He was greeted by shattered purple eyes, the golden dots and lines inside seemed to glow. Eight dots and six lines. “Thana,” John said and immediately pulled his hands back.

“Thana,” the goddess of genocide repeated her own name after him. “A title. Something they gave to me as I formed. Thana…” She lowered her head again and remained motionless.

John wasn’t sure what to do in this situation. For a start, he decided to sit down. If Thana wanted to be violent, she had just missed her best shot. That aside, that time in their relationship seemed over anyway. “Thana, why are you here?”

That question got a weak chuckle out of her. Nothing about it sounded joyous. Nothing about it sounded wolfish or murderous even. It sounded like the colour grey looked. “In some corner of my human mind, I hoped you would be asking about me,” she stated. “Hoped you would care for how I am feeling. How fucking awful. I hate all of this.”

“I’m sorry.” The Gamer was equally honest and blunt. “I really am. Under other circumstances, I would be happy to try and help you. I…” He took a short pause to try and put these next words as adequate as he could. “…I told you before… I don’t enjoy making you go through your personal hell. The alternative is just that you become the hell of everyone else, including me and Eliza, and I can’t have that. Normally, I would love to try and help you through the troubles I caused for you, but… but I…”

“You’re too worried about her,” Thana interrupted, her voice just loud enough to hear. Once more, the goddess raised her head a tiny bit, enough to look at John with one eye. Slowly, firmly, he nodded. “How sickening, that I understand this,” she bemoaned. “How complicated… how ironic. We used to fight over control of this body. Her love for you was what pushed me out again and again. Now we compete over the sweet silence of subconsciousness. I wish both of us could relinquish the duty of being an active mind.”

John just listened to her, until silence took hold again. Then he leaned towards her. “If it was love that ensured she always stayed with me, then love can bring her back to me, right?” He took hold of Thana’s chin and guided her to raise her head further, turn it towards him. There was no need to force her, she offered no resistance, just let him go along the motions.

“Perhaps I will rip off your face instead?” Thana wondered out loud. “You could heal the wound, but the scars would be hideous. I can ensure that.”

“It’s a risk I am willing to take and a price I am willing to pay,” John decided. “Just as long as I still have her.” Without further delay, he leaned in and pressed his lips on hers. There was absolutely nothing he got in return. No love, no hate, no passion and no retaliation. It was just a kiss, as plain and boring as pressing two planks of wood together.

The motion itself was entirely unsatisfying. What the situation made it, though, was important beyond everything. Especially once John pulled back and stared into the same eyes that had met him. He just had his first kiss with Thana. It wasn’t something he had ever thought likely to happen, but had imagined would be at a more impactful time if it ever happened.

“I can respect you,” Thana stated, her voice regaining something of her old wolfishness for the next words. “How utterly reprehensible.” She closed her eyes, pressing the lids forcefully together. A few moments passed, then they opened again. Lines and dots were reversed.

“Eliza,” John spoke her name with utter relief and immediately closed his arms around her. Just as she did. “Don’t ever hide from me like that again, you hear me?”

“You should have left me in Rome.” The blood mage entirely ignored the plea. “I hurt you, John.”

“No, you didn’t, it was just a copy of metal and magic,” he pushed against that, just wanting to hold her right now. He knew that was an answer that dodged the core of the problem, but now he just needed her to be happy. “We have learned the lesson now, you can watch yourself, right? Face these problems with me – for me. Please, Eliza?”

“It’s hard, John.” She quivered between his arms. The words poured out of her, too quick to be spiced up to the usual degree. There was only the sadness of the realization. “I hurt you. I did it. Not Thana. It was always our… it was always my body that did it. Never actually me. When I lost control over it and she got control, she hurt you. This time, I… I just felt these urges and I couldn’t control them. I wanted to devour that corpse and I wanted to slaughter you when you startled me. I… am so fucked up, John. I am just messed up piece of shit.”

“Stop,” he interrupted her and embraced her so tightly that he hoped it would press the air from her lungs. He didn’t want to hear anymore self-deprecation. “Take it slow, Eliza. One step at a time towards betterment. Do that, can you promise me?”

“I have been fucking trying, you asshole.” He could feel her fingers digging into his back, her tears on his shoulder. “It’s not working.”

“Of course it’s working, you dumb slut,” he couldn’t help but retaliate in kind. “Just because you’re making progress doesn’t mean it’s getting easier as you push along. I have been beside you every step along the way, haven’t I? I am telling you it’s working. Don’t give up on me now, do you hear me?”

“John… I hurt you…”

“Yes,” he admitted. “And I would take every scar for you.” She took a trembling breath, but he continued, ignoring any attempt of hers to interrupt him. “I know you hate to hear that, but you will not leave me, do you hear me, Eliza? You’re mine and I, I am also yours. What it takes of me to give to make you whole, I will give, because I would be even less if you left.”

“Fucking hell, you’re just reasoning yourself into an abusive fucking relationship, you moron,” Eliza sniffed, sounding oddly happy all the same.

“No,” John hardly disagreed. “You’re not abusing me, Eliza. You’re not forcing any pain on me. All sacrifices I give are on my own accord. What I am, my sweet broken angel, is in love with you. So never hide from me again like this. If you need to think, I will give you all the space you need, but if you feel sorrow and anguish, you should cry in my arms.”