14: THE_BEAUTIFUL_ONES

Jisako's hair was greasy.

She wasn't actually the queen of all wonderful things. Despite Adelaide's beliefs, she was not the inhuman beauty of all the things that existed within Adelaide's mind. Her hair wasn't silk, it was a bit straw-like and more than a bit greasy. She would go a few too many days without showering at certain times because she hated the sensation, and would avoid baths like the plague.

Her skin was oily, with scars and strange textures left from a life of misery. Her neck was long and thin, but also so marked and reddened, scabbed over. It was a neck which was a joy to kiss, but it was also one she frequently complained would ache.

Despite all of that, Adelaide's idea of beautiful had become Jisako, so to her it did not matter her bride was not the ideal. To Adelaide, the candidates didn't align right. The rules were wrong. Jisako was beauty. There was nothing about her that was not beautiful, for she was its definition. Amongst the goddesses who had statues built in their honour, Jisako was the truest among them. She had walked the earth.

Jisako usually sat hunched over an oak desk, her hair falling over her face and disguising her. She was usually mousy and if there was trouble, she would hide under that desk. Some days she would just hide under it because she could. She worked on documents. Something about theories in maths and music which Adelaide did not understand and could not pretend to. It was difficult work. And something that generally kept Jisako busy.

Adelaide understood Jisako's music, but music was not the only work Jisako did. Adelaide simply could not understand the beauty in numbers which Jisako had claimed to have found. To her, they were no more than numbers. She had attempted, desperately, to comprehend it, and fall in love with it, the same way she had fallen in love with Jisako's music.

Jisako didn't present her own maths work by her own name. She used an alias; Bhadra Mortin. She didn't have to do that, but she did. She did it because Jisako was the sort of woman who didn't want to exist. She wanted to fade and be forgotten. And even by her own wife, she tried to do the same. Keep her head down and show affection when it was asked, but not make herself a presence otherwise.

Jisako was gracious with the blanket, giving most of it to Adelaide. She kept her clothing tightly packed and out of the way. She didn't keep tchotchkes or photos. The only place that emanated her presence was that single desk, which had been pushed into a corner of a room they didn't use. Left with ink blemishes across the surface, and with scratches from where her engraving tools had scraped against the wood and scraped off the lacquer. It was the only evidence of Jisako.

Adelaide hadn't dared touch what was left on it after Jisako left. She had looked through the shelves of completed works, and had poured for ages over the seven pieces she had fallen most in love with, but she did not dare glance at the unfinished piece on that desk.

Adelaide had only touched the desk once when Jisako had died, to place a sheet over it. She hadn't moved any of Jisako's engraving tools. She hadn't even dared read the score which had been left sitting on the table, the product of a hasty decision to leave.

So now, in a dream, Adelaide reached out toward the sheet. Brave enough to wonder if the music would open itself to talking of Jisako's mind in that twilight. Under the weight of their love's dämmerung, what was she thinking of? How would she translate that to feeling? Would she have still written equations in the corners?

Something was beckoning her to pull it away. To read what her wife had written before she was taken out of the world and forced into another. She could've sworn there were hands in the mist once more, moving her hands for her. Encouraging her. Goading.

She fell for it. She gently pulled the sheet away. She prepared herself to read it.

Adelaide awoke laid on a dirty cot once more. Underneath her was ash, which stained her skin and clothing. It merged with her hair and left her dirtied even more than she already was. The whole thing must've been some sort of clownery, really. She felt a bit like a corpse in a morgue, because the room she was in, on top of being dark and small, was frigid. As though they were attempting to place her in cold storage and eat her later.

There were no windows. For a moment she wondered if perhaps she'd been pulled into a bunker, but that wasn't it. At least, it didn't feel like one. She rose up from where she was laying, and slowly she saw a bar. Protected from the nuke for real. Or at least, with a demon powerful enough that her eyes couldn't decipher the illusion.

She had been gripping the mattress as tight as she could manage somewhere in her dream. As she rose, her hand was sore. The sad lump her cross had been reduced to had become even more of a puddle, and it was stuck to the ground. She spent a bit trying to scrape it up. To peel it away from the ground with her nails.

But she couldn't.

So she grabbed that which remained of the chain which the hanging man had once hung from, and she continued on. She put the chain around her neck, because there was no more use having it hanging around her wrist. She could no longer use the hanging man to stab her foes. She'd need a new tool for that.

A new cross?

She debated it with herself, but opted against it. She would not want another cross. It had run its course. The rest of her work would have to be done with her hands as her aid. It wasn't easy, it wouldn't be, necessarily, but she wanted to at least do it that way for the satisfaction of it. She would have to pay for her own sins. If that meant a cross which had melted into nothing being her only tool, so be it.

She found a door, and turned the knob. She was able to walk outside from there. Look around and breathe in the strange air. She was inside a bar– the cot had been in what remained of its old freezer. Evidently, there was no power left to the thing now that the bombs had destroyed all the powerlines. But the metal cage must've been rather solid.

Adelaide couldn't help but morbidly joke to herself, it would be a great place to hide a corpse. Maury should've taken a look at local walk in freezer options.

A piercing scream tore through her head. Adelaide winced, and sucked in a sharp breath. She looked and reassessed where she was. The scream echoed again, quieter, but no less filled with rage. She attempted to ignore it. She had to.

The cot stuck out to her as perhaps the oddest thing in her immediate vicinity. She couldn't fathom why you'd have a cot in there in the first place, but she decided not to think too hard on it, as the only ideas which came to mind were rather gross ones. There was no more point in thinking too hard about anything, since everything was clearly beyond understanding or worth caring for.

Adelaide stepped outside further, and quickly she spotted Rainmaker. He certainly looked nervous, because the simple creak of the door got him jumping to his feet, as though he were ready for a fight. He had taken the single gun they shared between them, and despite obviously fearing the damn thing like it was going to bite his hand off, he was also holding onto it like it were made of gold. He had nearly shot her, but Adelaide found herself confused. The idea of such a thing did not frighten her any longer.

Adelaide raised a brow at that. "Why are you acting like a Tasmanian devil just jumped out of the trash at you?" she asked, dryly.

"There's good reason to be jumpy right now," he grumbled.

"Well. Don't hide it from me. I'd love to know what the hell's gotten into you."

Rainmaker shook his head. "Not right now." He continued staring around, as though some demon was about to erupt from the ground and drag him down to the bowels of the earth.

Adelaide walked closer, putting her hand on the bar he was sitting on. She hopped up to sit on it. The thing creaked under her weight, and only protested more as Rainmaker sat back down onto it. As per usual, Adelaide was being stupidly stubborn. If they fell in a sharp mess of splinters and metal rods, she'd take the wounds before she'd take the hit to her ego and give Rainmaker any space. "You're acting up."

"And you're not acting up all the time?"

"It's my usual behaviour," Adelaide explained. "But you acting like me is very strange, because you're not me. I expect better of you than I expect of me."

"And you barely know me."

Adelaide laughed. It was bitter. Of course. She didn't want it slapped into her face, but it was the truth. She knew basically nothing about this kid. The only reason she'd cared to latch onto him so much was because she'd lost contact with someone she actually cared about. She knew nothing and she'd be damned if she lied and said she was even all that interested in learning. But she realized there was no keeping him if she didn't try to learn about him. And Adelaide had decided at some point she was too afraid to die alone. Or perhaps too good for it. She was, after all, a creature dominated by a twisted, easily toyed with mind.

She put her hand on his shoulder, sinking her fingers in. Rainmaker bristled against the rough touch, but he was a bit too young, too naive, to realize the power play, and he just assumed it was another symptom of Adelaide being the strange hysteric she was. "Then tell me. What's the story?"

"I told you I did a bad thing," he repeated. "Well that man knows the thing."

"Well there's no one to persecute your crimes here, is there?" She found it stupid. Who cared if your crime could be exposed when you were going to be dead in a week? There's no need to bother with fears about if a crime is found out."

"You're here."

"We're both going to be martyrs. Your sins, whatever they are, will be repaid in blood soon enough that it does not matter."

"Well I'm having second thoughts."

Adelaide's grip on his shoulder tightened, and he let out a yelp. Rainmaker jolted off the bar, landing awkwardly on his feet, staring at her dumbfounded. She brought her hand down. "There's no room for second thoughts anymore." She watched the expression on his face, contorting into something she couldn't quite place. She added to her words. "We all have second thoughts about some things. But you're going to die of radiation poisoning, whether you like it or not. And you could either die the way you were meant to– make up for whatever you did, or you can die snivelling. Don't be stupid."

"I want to be stupid." He sniffled, as though he were about to cry. Adelaide wanted to slap him for acting so childish about something so important. She just barely stayed, herself, but she glowered at him.

Rainmaker let out a handful of childish whines and the topic was dropped rather quickly. She only realized afterward how much Rainmaker was retreating on himself in much the same ways as Jisako had. An ugly replica of what had happened to such a beautiful woman that the celestial spheres themselves lived in awe of her. Adelaide's chest tightened. Now she was most certainly convinced that whatever that comedian had to do with Rainmaker, he had to die, because otherwise, she wouldn't be surprised if she lost the boy the same way she'd lost her wife.

There could not be an escape this time. There could not be some sneaky path out of trouble. Fate needed to be concrete this time. The journey had to end in a violent death for all involved as a repayment for Jisako. Of course. Jisako must have wanted them to die. Merciful in life yes, but her ghost must have wanted some sort of vengeance?

That sweet woman, driven to a desire to hurt and rip apart all that which was available– was that not enough of a reason to submit to her will? That woman so beaten down? Surely it was what was best for all involved. To place your head upon the rock and surrender it– that was the only truly well course of action.

"I'm sorry. I'm losing my cool. It's like you– back then, when you were going a little mad and all I could do was nurse your mind, even as you caused trouble. I'm sorry if I upset you," she said. "Let's handle the situation at hand."

Adelaide hopped off the counter and walked closer to Rainmaker. Every step she took closer, he tried to step backward. She grabbed his shoulder again, before pulling him in, wrapping an arm around him, like a friend. She made sure her hand hovered above where she'd pressed down before. Just in case she needed force to make a point. Because she was no longer interested in reparations, or cajoling, or anything of the sort.

She just wanted someone to die with. Whatever excuses that took, whatever nonsense she had to spout for the sake of his agreement, she did not care. "We can get this all done right now, if we just focus."

"How– how should we handle it?" Rainmaker asked, breathlessly. He sounded a bit like he was choking on his own saliva. He could not look Adelaide in the eye as she only leaned closer, only seemed more dangerous, and only seemed more interested in ripping him apart.

"You have a pistol. We can silence him. You can stuff something soft in my ears, and it'll be a promise. I won't listen to a word he has to say. You can have your repentance, and I won't have to know a thing. I won't have to do anything you request at all. I can stand back and just ignore whatever you ask me to ignore. I can even ignore watching the execution if you'd prefer some privacy in that situation. And after all that: the problem will be dealt with."

She'd thought before that there was no way in the world she could kill a random man without reason. But she was certain that right now she had a handful of good reasons, and even if she didn't, it shouldn't have mattered because none of them were going to live long anyway. Even if they didn't kill him now, he'd be dead soon anyway. What did it matter?

There was nothing to answer to, and she of course saw no issue in the killing of a dead man, so Rainmaker was just being a coward. A spineless little boy with nothing in him that was brave nor actually seeking justice for whatever it was that he had done wrong.

Rainmaker shook his head. He shook it vehemently. "I can't just murder him."

"Why not?"

"I– I have my reasons."

"Well he'll die soon too, so it'll be merciful."

"No, no it won't be. It really wouldn't be merciful."

"Why not?" she repeated, far harsher this time. She pressed her hand down on his shoulder. The young man flinched and she could've sworn she saw something well up in the corner of his eye. She pressed down harder in response. She knew by this point. Adelaide knew for a fact she was hurting him. Breaking him down and dismantling something deep seated. She didn't care. She hated his cowardice. She would get back at him for daring to be so weak.

"I can't tell you."

She pressed harder.

"It's complicated. I– I have a reason to care."

She lessened the weight on his shoulder. "What's that reason, exactly?"

"I can't– I shouldn't– that hurts!" he whined, in an obnoxious falsetto.

"You sound like a child."

Rainmaker cursed at her– several colourful bits of vocabulary which she wasn't even entirely sure were the right language. She raised a brow at him. He cracked. "Jorahai… Jor… It's my brother– just, under a fake name."

Adelaide chuckled darkly. "Then there shouldn't be any reason he needs to be left alive."

#

The bar had gone quiet for a while. As Rainmaker left to hide in some other room, just to get away from her, and Jorahai still made no appearance. It was a bit before Jorahai returned when Rainmaker wandered over. He was dead silent, but he was close to her. He trembled at her touch but he refused to go and stand further from her.

Adelaide was rather surprised to realize just how fearful of being alone Rainmaker truly was. Genuinely, it took her as a shock. She had assumed he needed to be dragged by the hair. It seemed, however, that some of her words, at some point, had dug into him well enough to destroy the last vestiges of personhood which he carried with him.

His will was no more present than the pages of a book destroyed in a blast.

"I want to die with you," was what he'd whispered.

And she'd smiled at him. "Of course you do."

Jorahai had walked in before that conversation could continue any further. He entered with a grin and eyes half lidded. The remnants of the cross, the chain, burned against her neck. Adelaide wasn't surprised. She had assumed before that it must've been some sort of dream. A hallucination. A product of a mind which was falling apart with every few moments. No matter. She was sure of it now. That this man had to die. "You two must be getting cozy," Jorahai lilted. "You must be feeling wonderful."

"I am," Rainmaker responded, with as best fake cheer he could manage. It wasn't very good. Adelaide took a little pride in that. She'd gotten her hooks in deep, and ripped something from its core. "We were talking about our futures."

"What must heaven be like?"

"Don't know. And none of us are going," Jorahai replied, with a laugh.

"So confident in his words," Adelaide commented. She walked closer to Jorahai, scanning him over. Of course, a familiarity permeated a part of him, but other parts of him were entirely foreign. In a most literal sense. He seemed to have some mixed blood to him which his younger brother either didn't share or had better hidden in his genes.

But it was more than just some spattering of features which weren't local. Adelaide took a sharp breath in when she finally figured what it was. Plastic surgery. She almost felt a little stupid, because it should've been obvious. But she opted against voicing that. Jorahai tilted his false head to the side. "What is a man who lacks confidence?"

"Him," Adelaide joked, gesturing to Rainmaker, who said nothing, and instead hunched his shoulders further in. As though he wanted to melt away. She could've sworn she saw some sort of 'approval' in Jorahai's eyes, though she didn't push it and didn't bother to ask a thing about it.

"Let's not be too cruel. He's still young. And you know, boys who date old aren't too good at being sure of themselves. After all, why would they chase cougars if they were?" Jorahai spoke without a care in the world. He laughed and yapped as though he were some god among men, uniquely drawing in for all peoples, when he was in fact rather a nuisance.

Adelaide faked a laugh. She hated the thought. Rainmaker was no more to her than a child. A whiny one, at that. The sort that irritated her to her core. She would never have tainted Jisako's name by daring to actually date around again. Jisako was her one true love and she had ruined that. There was no one else and there never ought to have been, because Jisako deserved better than to be forgotten along the way.

"I understand why you must've been a comedian. You should've lived when I was a girl, I'd have adored your humour," she said. It was the most blatant lie she'd told and she was almost baffled he believed her.

"Of course, of course." He smiled. "Anyway, why don't we speak somewhere else? I want to ask you something."

Adelaide laughed. "Of course. I'll follow wherever you lead me."

Jorahai looked rather proud of himself when he heard that. It seemed to get to him far too easily, in fact. Of course, men like Jorahai were stupid beings. He wanted her to be invested in whatever he would say. He wanted her to follow him with the blind devotion of a dog. He was among the ranks of boy-men who needed validation from someone and who would preen at whatever woman would give it to them. A part of her couldn't help but be disturbed by the thought he was under the belief she was his brother's girlfriend. That certainly made Jorahai no more redeemed in her eyes.

It was right as Jorahai turned when Rainmaker fired the two shots.

Their sound echoed in the dingy remnants of the building. His bones crunching was barely audible under the sound of the shots. Adelaide's ears rang. She hadn't realized just how loud bullets were.

They struck rather easily. There was no moving out of the way of a bullet– especially one shot behind you. And the damage was clear. Barely something which could be brushed over or ignored. The first shot was in his lower back– Rainmaker's cowardice. It was the same place Jisako had first been shot. Though, unlike for Jisako, the man didn't have the bullet leave an exit wound. Adelaide considered that a mild cosmic injustice.

Though the second shot was a bit better in her eyes. It went somewhere toward the head. The man's head went splattering in all directions, and part of the splatter splashed over Adelaide's own face. She looked at Rainmaker, smiling at him. "Doesn't it feel better now?"

Rainmaker lowered his head as Adelaide walked closer. She smiled at him, holding her arms out. "Come here, I'll hug you. It must feel horrible to kill." She didn't like the thought of killing another human being very much either. This one was of course an exception. She wasn't entirely opposed, but one who had no involvement with a demon was a harder sell than most. This man was still an exception, even then. Jorahai had deserved it. Still, she found it easier when someone else had done it for her, and spared her the needless trouble. The weight of the sin.

Rainmaker could bear the brunt of the guilt for it. Plus, it would bring him some loyalty, wouldn't it? Give him a final act to repent for, if his old one wasn't enough. He stood there, staring at Jorahai's body, which was of course no more than a wet mass, which had somewhat earlier been a semi conscious form.

Rainmaker rubbed at dry eyes, before he collapsed into her embrace, and the gun dropped to the ground. She hugged him as she'd promised. And he had only one thing to say.

"Why did you have to use me?"

Adelaide did not bother to answer. Instead, she silently ran her hand through his hair, smiling down at him. Perhaps Maury had once done the same thing when Jisako cried to him.