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None of them were without scars.
It was an unspoken fact within the Red Gloves. Even those without physical scars (for some reason) would end up scarred at some point in their service. This was the normal course of events within all elite teams frequently sent on dangerous missions. Many of the older members wore the scars with pride, some unable to hide them to begin with: the jagged edges of broken skin proudly displayed over their faces and necks telling harrowing tales of danger and survival. They were marks of experience, of failures, and a life well-lived.
Most of the younger members— quiet, jumpy men and women with dead eyes and grimly determined expressions, covered their scars up with extra clothing. Their uniforms were quite concealing, and their distinct gloves were both a way to hide and draw attention.
Leonard Mitchell sighed as he sunk deeper within the bathtub, admiring the silvery scars all across his body thanks to Sealed Artefact 1-42 and wondered if there was a way he could keep them. He imagined himself quite dashing with them.
“You should have let me wear the armour,” the sullen voice at his side said.
Seated on the ground next to the tub was a fully dressed Klein Moretti, with only one red glove on as the other held onto Leonard’s wet hand. The young man was expressionless, his displeasure easily hidden thanks to the abilities of his pathway, but Leonard could hear the sulk within his tone nevertheless.
What a ridiculous statement. What a ridiculous man.
Leonard let out a huff, half a laugh, and leaned over to press the knuckles of that pale hand against his face, his eyes closing at the touch of warm skin.
“No,” Leonard murmured, turning his head so that his lips grazed those fingers as he spoke, “I won’t let you gain any more scars.”
“That’s not something you can prevent— and what are you talking about?” Klein demanded back, obviously still upset. “Those will fade away!”
It had taken Leonard an excessive amount of pitiful pleading for Klein to stay there with him, to hold his hand, and Leonard was willing to throw all his pride away to get his way when it came to Klein nowadays.
Klein Moretti had gone missing for nearly a full month after Tingen’s interrupted doomsday.
A month full of panic, grief, and terrifying revelations.
(Blackthorn Security Company had been visited by an angel, an actual angel, amidst their grief over the Captain’s death and rebuilding their destroyed headquarters. A real angel of Evernight sent to counter a supposed angel of Death who came to whisk one of their own away. Her Eminence Arianna investigated the events to unveil Ince Zangwill as the culprit behind everything, and the unexpected interference of a high level Corpse Collector Beyonder— higher than anyone else of the pathway within the Evernight Church— one who had taken Klein’s dying body away—)
Leonard could barely remember that month outside of his haze of shock and anger. Anger at himself for being so useless in the fight, anger at the unknown angel for whatever happened, and absolute fury at Ince Zangwill, the traitor to the Church who caused all of this to happen. Madam Arianna brought with her an artefact that allowed her to view the past events of an area, and Leonard begged his way into the viewing as well.
Immediately after that, he applied for a sequence promotion and to the Red Gloves.
With the old man silent under the dark eyes of Madam Arianna, both of Leonard’s applications were accepted almost immediately after he informed the Moretti family of Klein’s unfortunate kidnapping, likely death from grievous injury beforehand.
A month later, a pale Klein Moretti reappeared in the Backlund diocese under the watchful eyes of both Madam Arianna and the Angel of Death, who seemed to have come to a tentative agreement with the Evernight Church.
Leonard had not been privy to what happened, and Klein was tight-lipped about the events, but the important thing was: Klein was alive.
It was practically a miracle. From the Sealed Artefact, Leonard had seen Ince Zangwill rip Klein’s heart out—
Shock after shock as it was soon revealed that Klein was promoted to sequence 7 (and the sheer speed of his promotions prompted waves of uneasy whispers eventually quelled by Archbishop Anthony himself), followed by the mad scramble when Red Glove teams realised they could have access to a sequence 7 Seer.
It was practically unheard of in the Evernight Church. A mid-sequence Seer as an official Beyonder within the Loen Kingdom? One with the apparent backing of an Angel of Death? Klein Moretti was a genius advancing quicker than even Madam Daly, and he was applying to the Red Gloves.
Leonard only heard the details of the application later— that Klein would not be constrained by the Church’s system of merits; would be allowed to advance on his own strengths and at his own speed. The Evernight Church would provide what they had for his advancements, but were not required to go out of their way to find ingredients for him. Instead, the unknown Angel of Death would be his benefactor.
‘What are you moping around for?’ The old voice in his mind complained as Leonard closed his eyes in the tub, cold face pressed against Klein’s warm hand. The unnatural iciness caused by 1-42 was slowly being seeped away by the hot water, the silvery marks running across his skin slowly fading. ‘Aren’t you the special protagonist of this era?’
…Of course he was. But these days it felt as if he were running to catch up to Klein, held back by weights on his ankles that were the merits needed for all Nighthawks to accumulate before promotion. Despite his own uniqueness, Leonard had to grit back his complaints in regards to working within the system (now that he knew there was a way to work with the system instead).
But that didn’t matter. So long as he could keep up. So long as Klein stayed.
“Oddball,” Klein complained under his breath, but his tone was far from cold and neither did he pull his hand away. Leonard smiled without opening his eyes.
Perhaps it was providence, perhaps Klein requested it, or perhaps Leonard’s pleading had borne fruit, but Klein Moretti had been placed under Captain Soest’s team alongside him during their stint in Backlund for the case of Jason Beria. The rest of the team was somewhere between nervous and elated, unsure how to behave around someone so obviously different from them (and not just because he was from a support pathway).
“Yes, yes,” Leonard agreed with some amusement to Klein’s accusation, ignoring the scoff in his mind from the occupant who had little to say ever since they reunited with Klein. Leonard opened his eyes a slit to gaze at the other through his lashes, “...Will you stay?”
He missed Klein’s obvious and often exasperated over-expressions. It was now impossible to know what the man was thinking without being given outside context.
In this case, Klein sighed. His fingers twitched in Leonard’s grasp.
“...I’m already here, aren’t I?”
Leonard wondered if Klein was controlling his own movement and actions since he was promoted to sequence 8, or if those actions were now stillness and he had to remember to give indications of involuntary movement. Either way, those microexpressions and movements endeared and delighted Leonard to no end.
The water sloshed as Leonard moved upward, sitting up straighter with shining eyes.
“—Then you’ll stay the night?”
“You! Get back in the water, you—”
Leonard allowed himself to be pushed back into the water, grinning as Klein’s sleeve was soaked and the other man’s eyes darkened in irritation.
Anything was better than him not reacting at all.
Although there was barely any physical reaction from him, the exasperation rang heavy around his tone and the slight tension at his mouth that Leonard wanted to smooth away with his fingers.
He wanted a lot of things.
For the most part, Klein Moretti was still that same pale historian with soul-searchingly large brown eyes that Leonard first met in the more downtrodden parts of Tingen City. And while the Red Gloves now deployed him on the front lines (Leonard still boggled over a sequence 7 Magician’s capabilities) as opposed to sequestering him in the back as support, Leonard’s mental image of Klein remained that pale and slightly too thin scholar who stared up at him in surprise and a little helplessness their first meeting. His mental image of Klein came with memories of over-emphasised sighs and easily-read body language: the other man had never been able to hide his delight, his exhaustion, his doubts, or his apprehensions.
Compared to the rest of their team who had only ever known Klein with that blank expression and confident demeanour, Leonard dug deep to find the friend he knew before. He had to, he thought, because if this was how Klein was going to be from now on, then it was Leonard’s job to remember and evoke the emotions from before.
All Red Gloves had scars. Leonard himself, although without the glaringly obvious physical scars, had delicate skin that retained a map of his life for more than a decade. Every scratch and scrape was etched onto his skin in near-indistinguishable white marks along his knuckles and arms up to the slight cuts he gave himself along his neck when he first learned to shave.
None of them were battle scars, the type which Leonard was waiting to gain.
Klein, on the other hand, didn’t scar easily. Leonard had seen him accidentally cut himself on the blunt ceremonial dagger (of all things!) enough to leave a trail of blood down his arm, yet the man merely wiped it away with a grimace of pain and then bandaged it with a complaint about having to come up with an excuse for what happened to his siblings… and the bandage was gone a week later without a trace on his skin as if the cut had never happened at all!
In that manner, following what Leonard had seen, Klein remained perfectly intact from a physical standpoint, especially now that he had damage transfer to add to his abilities, allowing him to hide wounds that might scar in obvious places.
Hide all wounds, that was, except the one that Leonard spied once on his back through a thin shirt: red, mottled, and freshly healed; larger than a fist, with what Leonard imagined would be a corresponding wound on his chest as a memento of his near-death encounter with Ince Zangwill.
It fit the collection of scars held by the Red Gloves. It was too grievous for Klein Moretti to hold.
As the silvery scars left by 1-42 faded, Klein left to give Leonard some privacy to wash up, as if they hadn’t stayed together in the very same bathroom waiting for those scars to fade.
What a ridiculous man. Leonard wished that Klein hadn’t already mastered the Clown potion just so he could see that endearing flush of embarrassment again, but alas.
Yet he was pleasantly surprised as he left the bathroom with fresh clothes and still-wet hair to see that the other man stayed.
“What’s that look for?” Klein asked, seated on the edge of Leonard’s bed. They were assigned barracks for their stay in Backlund, but Leonard had gone and rented his own house near St. Samuel’s Church, aware that old man Pallez wasn’t comfortable within the Evernight Church, but also uncomfortable too far away from the Evernight Church.
Not that the old man chimed in often on things lately, quieted by the presence of angels within Leonard’s (technically, Klein’s) vicinity.
Leonard stood there, frozen, hair dripping onto the collar of his shirt as he took in the scene of Klein sitting on his bed, dressed down to a mere white shirt (unbuttoned at the top) and dark slacks. He was the very image of— something, something, that made Leonard’s heart stutter within his chest. That made his breath hitch and catch.
He must have stood there too long, as Klein turned his head away and said with a tinge of embarrassment, “You’re the one who asked me to stay!”
He had, but Leonard also never knew when Klein might listen to his requests. On the one hand, the other was now more aloof than ever, more mysterious with more secrets than even their time in Tingen, yet on the other hand…
Leonard could only nod, bobbing his head, even as he made his way toward bed.
Perhaps the events during those last few days in Tingen had affected Klein just as heavily. Perhaps he, too, sought the comfort of a familiar person in this uprooted world they found themselves in. Perhaps that was why he requested to be placed on the same Red Gloves team as Leonard.
Leonard recalled the chase after Jason Beria, the feeling of Sealed Artefact 1-42 seeping into his skin, freezing him from the outside in as he ran in the heavy armour, chasing the renown serial killer of Backlund.
He recalled the dread in his chest finding the man too late, and seeing a dark spectre standing over his corpse. A new unknown danger.
Backlund was nothing like the small and comfortable city of Tingen. It was filled with threats Leonard had never dreamt of.
Klein angled to sleep facing away from Leonard, but Leonard crowded into his space ruthlessly, hair dampening the pillow even as he pressed his face up against the back of Klein’s neck, lashes skimming against warm skin as he pressed up against Klein’s back to leech warmth from him, wrapping his arms around the other man so that he could press a palm over his heart to feel the steady beat under his skin.
“Clingy,” Klein complained as he squirmed in Leonard’s grasp, and then sighed and gave up the pretense of getting away. “When did you get so clingy, Leonard?”
Ever since Megose, Leonard didn’t say, instead pressing closer. Ever since the two of them became survivors to a fight they weren’t supposed to survive. It was the same for Klein, and he knew it, because the other man used to value his personal space highly, yet now only gave the slightest of pretenses before relaxing in Leonard’s grasp.
Whatever secrets Klein was keeping, it was part of what allowed him to survive, Angel of Death or not. And for that, Leonard was grateful. He was grateful and endlessly relieved that he had been correct, that there was something special about Klein, and it meant the other man would definitely— would have to be— okay in future endeavours.
But Leonard was special too, and would be all too happy to use himself as a shield, and would cover Klein’s heart with his own body if need be. Any enemies that came for Klein would have to get through Leonard first. Especially now.
It was a promise made to himself: so long as Leonard was there, he wouldn’t allow any more scars to settle on Klein’s skin.
A sigh, and a warm hand pressed up against Leonard’s, thumb brushing over his knuckles. The hand was slighter, gun calloused, but strong and alive.
“Go to sleep,” Klein said in a low, soft tone. His thumb continued to brush against Leonard’s knuckles, soothing him. His warmth and scent lulled Leonard further, even as he pulled Klein closer to himself. Those of the Sleepless pathway didn’t need as much rest, but the softness of his bed and Klein’s warmth leeched all restlessness from him, until he sighed against the skin of Klein’s neck and settled deep into the moment.
Outside, the red moon was just starting to rise, its light peeking in through the curtains to cover the room in a red glow.
“Go to sleep,” Klein repeated, even softer this time as Leonard drifted into dreams, lacking the nightmares that his sequence was named for.
“Tomorrow will be a new day.”