“Even death cannot release a fiend from the curse of their past,” Leon said. “They always return to repeat their sins. I’m the only one who can stop the endless cycle. The only one who can break those chains and grant them their eternal rest.”
She knew that. Alice knew that. It was Leon’s destiny to deliver Rheinhardt’s salvation.
“B-but if you do that, you’ll die!”
If Leon were truly the same as his monstrous brethren, then Alice would have no cause to object. But he was a Red-Eye and thus would not revive. If killed, it would truly spell his end. If killed, his existence would be gone for all eternity.
“…Please. Don’t do it. Don’t go.”
Alice pleaded. Even though she knew what he would say.
“Don’t leave me behind, all by myself. I…can’t do it without you.”
But Leon spared not even a glance toward his partner’s face or her trembling lip. The image of his fellow apprentice was scorched into his eyes—into his very mind, and that was all he saw.
“…He’s crying, Alice. Deep down, he’s crying. ‘Kill me,’ he’s saying. He’s waiting for me.”
Leon saw it, when the two reunited beneath those vast boughs. Hidden in the murky gloom of Rheinhardt’s heart, there was something still shining. Beneath the anger, the hate, the destruction, the humiliation…
“He wants me to stop him. His only family in the whole world.”
Leon could not betray him a second time. He would save his partner, even if it cost him his life.
“…”
Alice said and did nothing. She stood stock-still and stared. But nothing seemed to change, and after a long while, she turned and silently left the room.
A few days later, Alice went over alone to Unbreakable, the weapons shop. She cut through the artlessly arranged storefront and into the workshop in the back.
Suddenly, she was hit by a rusty iron stench. The smell of fresh blood. It was so overpowering that it made Alice wonder just what Leon had been subjected to when he came through here just earlier.
In the center of the workshop sat Emilia. Scattered around her were nineteen empty wine bottles, with the twentieth in her hand on the way to her lips.
“I don’t get drunk, you know…no matter how much I drink. I can down a bottle but the bottle’ll never down me…!” Emilia turned her giddy, weary smile on Alice and asked, “So? What’re you here for?”
“You know very well why I’m here.”
Emilia sniffed nonchalantly. “You know,” she said, immediately and inelegantly changing the subject, “the other day, the Church designated Rheina as an Archfiend.”
“…An Archfiend?”
“Yeah, a fiend even more powerful than a Special Class. He’s really gone off the deep end, that one. There’s no doubt his aim is to destroy the Holy City. When the Church realized that, they started putting together a plan to fight back. Leon’s name came up, of course. Guess they finally found their chance to dispose of him while getting some use out of him.”
Emilia’s eyes indicated how she truly felt. She was thinking about giving up. About resigning Leon to his fate.
But Alice wasn’t going to surrender him so easily.
“There is still hope. Miss Emilia, you have influence with them, do you not? Surely you can negotiate on Leon’s behalf. You don’t need to persuade them all, just a majority, and then—”
“Get real. That’s never going to happen.”
Her dark green eyes were filled with apathy. No doubt she had spent the past four years trying to do precisely that. Trying to save Leon, to alter his fate, but all her attempts had ended in failure. The anomalous fruit had been her last hope, but it vanished like a mirage on the desert sands.
And this was the result. A woman totally resigned to an unwinnable future. To Alice, it was like looking in a mirror, and that was why she had to deny it.
“…Is that all Master was to you? I thought you’d been together for ten years. You know him better than anybody. Even Claire and Rheinhardt weren’t with him for that long!”
Alice’s ceaseless, unending emotion poured out of her as words.
“Why give up? How can you possibly give up? How can you look at your relationship as though it’s a purely transactional one? Maybe if you’d kept fighting for Leon, then—”
“Shut up, missy.”
Those dark green eyes. Emilia’s eyes. They glared at Alice with a red-hot incandescent heat.
“What? If I’d kept fightin’ for Leon, he would have abandoned his promise? Don’t make me laugh! We both know that would never happen. He’s the same as other fiends: chained to his past and bound by it. He couldn’t give a shit about me.”
But again, Emilia’s gaze said what she really thought:
What could you possibly know? What could you possibly know about me? About us? Nothing, so stay out of it. You had your chance, and now there’s nothing you can do.
Alice wasn’t about to let that go unanswered—even if it hadn’t been said. But before she could speak…
“Besides, you have no right to stop him.”
It was as if Emilia was trying to open up Alice’s old wounds and rub salt in them.
“Don’t think I forgot how happy you were when you learned Leon was the only person who could put fiends down for good. That wasn’t just because he could save the world…was it?”
There was nothing Alice could hide from her piercing gaze. Emilia went on.
“I looked into you, young lady. Your mother turned into a fiend and attacked you. It was then that Leon turned up, killed her, and saved your life. You felt sad, you felt angry, but that’s not all. Somewhere, deep down, you felt relieved, didn’t you? Relieved that your mother would never come back and commit any more sins.”