Athena's Saints
Eirini
ONE
The Beginning of a New Era
IV. Aldebaran
Maur turned out to be a very funny kid and very good at sarcasm too. He didn’t let one thing pass without noticing it, and Aioros was having lots of fun with him and Roberto, even more, to him, everybody at Sanctuary was very stiff and he missed greatly his beloved Brazil. He wanted to go back there really badly, but he knew it wasn’t possible.
Roberto was a poor kid from one’s of Rio’s quarters, who loved to play soccer with his friends on the street near his house, or just go and walk along the beach. Those things he really enjoyed.
‘Smile Roberto. Always smile, no matter the path before you. Smile, my beloved son.’ his father used to tell him, and he himself had put it into practise ever since Roberto’s mother died giving birth to him, he had been too big for his mother’s body, and the words Paula used to say, remained in Caetano’s heart and he passed them to their son.
Yet, there was a little spot in the picture. Caetano, started to drink, and the last few months it had become a serious problem. Everyday, he came home totally drunk and sometimes, Roberto was forced to stay over a friend’s or to work just to get some money so he could have a decent meal.
But he never stopped smiling.
And it was something Taurus Farris found alluring, when he went to America looking for an apprentice. He had already been observing the child for weeks, and it was always the same. Caetano came home, drunk like hell and very late at night, and beat Roberto up, the child accepting an undeserved punishment and never crying or uttering a sound. Then, when his father passed out because of the alcohol, the child helped him to get into bed and went back to the street. There, in an alley near his humble home, he played alone, some empty cans serving well as balls, and he dreaming of him carrying the Soccer World Cup, after he had made the Brazilian team win. He raised his arms at the sound of “GOAL!” and smiled.
Strong as a rock.
‘Always Smile.’
And Farris smiled with him.
But one night, the beating was so hard that Roberto couldn’t get up from the floor, sunk in his own blood, but still, he was forcing his lips to move up, please move, he pleaded, but it didn’t happen. In fact, he thought he was dying, his unusual strength was leaving him, when he heard footsteps behind him, approaching, then a pair of strong arms took him, making him turn to a chest where he held tight, while he felt the tears falling down.
“Cry my strong ‘Rock’, don’t hold it back, you don’t have to.” And Roberto’s hand grabbed the man’s cloak and held tighter, crying silently and non-stop. Farris embraced him with sincere affection; after all these weeks, whether he had made his choice as if he hadn’t, he had come to like this little brat who looked like a giant for a five year-old.
“Would you like to come with me?” he asked after a while. Roberto looked at him and moved away, free from his arms.
“I can’t leave him. I can’t leave my father.” Was all he said.
Farris came closer again and knelt, cleaning the child’s face with a part of his cloak. “But he mistreats you, how come you want to stay?”
“He’s my father. I can’t go, I’m all he has, if I’m not here, who will give him his food? And—keep him company?”
The child sounded more than honest, willing to remain, to fulfil a tacit promise of not leaving him alone. A promise of love. Taurus simply smiled in a tender manner and didn’t object to the child’s reasoning. As time passed by, he felt more and more respect towards him.
“Would you allow me then, to play with you?” The child nodded although he was sure of wanting to play, more than tired, he felt emotionally wounded, and at the moment any ideas, no matter how absurd they were, seemed fine to him, therefore he just accepted and both walked out the house.
Roberto was still trying to feel different and once or maybe twice, Farris saw him smile lightly, while he smiled broadly walking behind him, encouraging to tell him about soccer which made the boy speak eagerly about it, until he stopped abruptly.
A body was lying lifeless on the staircase. It wasn’t the first time Roberto saw one of those, sometimes, it happened on the street, but this body was way too different.
It was Caetano’s.
His heart had stopped beating on his way up, when he had been walking back home, feeling dizzy because of alcohol, regretting what he had done to his son, but his body couldn’t endure five years of abuse and he had fallen; his final thoughts full of love for his son.
‘Always smile, Roberto.’
The boy turned to look at Farris, a new river of silent tears running down his cheeks. The Taurus Saint stretched his arms and caught him in a new hug. Roberto cried helplessly, holding him with the anger of a child who couldn’t understand why his father was taken away from him. He cried endlessly, until he finally looked at Farris and felt he could trust the stranger.
“Would you take me with you?” The man nodded. “If I cry again you would leave me too? He’s there so cold because I cried, you know, because I didn’t smile when he hit me—”
Farris felt his breath leaving him at listening to his words. How could a child react in such a way before a situation as sadly and pitiful as that one, but then, when Roberto was about to say something else, Taurus stopped him and hugged him tighter against his chest, covering his eyes from the sight of his father.
“People come and go and it’s OK to feel sad or even cry, as long as you always remember that there are still reasons to smile, that is fine.” The child heard him and stopped sobbing gradually. “And yes, I’ll take you with me, Roberto.”
“How do you know my name?” he said yawing.
“I know a lot of things and I’ll teach them all to you—and I’ll never leave you.”
But the child was already asleep. Farris flared his cosmos and healed the boy’s wounds while he teleported them to Greece.
And here they were, Farris looking at him greatly pleased that his ‘Rock’ had found new friends.
Spellbound by his smile.
During dinner, Arless looked at all of them intrigued. Distrusting each of them, from the highest Master to the lowest apprentice. He saw them as false people, as treacherous; because he knew Shion’s secret.
Arless knew about the treason.
Shion would never accept it before them. In fact, he hadn’t even accepted it before him... His own brother. But he knew. He had been listening to Shion’s screams for weeks now. Always in the middle of night. Cold sweat glistening on his forehead, and he had seen fear in his eyes... those fearsome eyes he once knew...and every time he could get to see him without his mask, he could see those horrible shadows beneath his eyes, and his heart ached, because he couldn’t do anything about it, because he was too to weak to prevent anything, because he wasn’t worthy of his brother. All he could do was to be there for his older brother and offer him his shoulder to cry on and support him silently.
He knew God damn too well.
But he had finally found out. Just before the meeting early in the morning. He was preparing everything when he heard his brother talking to the Libra Saint. But nothing had prepared him for what he heard. Nobody would have ever told him what he heard.
‘I can’t take it any longer old friend. It’s going to happen, Athena is coming and I’ll die, by the hand of one of them...’ and he had heard him sobbing, and crying helplessly as he shouldn’t have been crying, and Dokho telling him to endure it, to face fate as he should. He hated them all. But then by, the strength in his voice... the precise moment in which the crying increased... he realized Shion wasn’t afraid of dying, in fact, he had been waiting for it to happen for so long...but the question was who was going to be the murderer? Shion feared his murderer...
Arless left the place at once, feeling his heart more than aching, hating. Thick air filling his nostrils, his lungs, and he wept...bitterly...for hours. His life torn into pieces because of a secret he wasn’t meant to know. Feeling on the verge of slapping his brother and forcing him to tell him the truth and then, cuddle him in his arms and telling everything was alright...But more pieces of the puzzle where coming to light...The sudden coming of Mu, of the Masters; the privacy in which they talked previously...and here they were, all of them and he looked at them sternly. Hating each and one of them.
‘By the hand of one of them...’
He was looking at them. All laughing. Uncaring. Uninterested. Ignorant of the reality. They were talking and sharing and he felt hatred filling his heart. And he felt guilty for it. For years, he’d been Shion’s help. His Prime Minister. The one he could always count upon, and the fact that he had to face that he couldn’t help his brother was killing him. He didn’t have the strength. The preparation. He was a diplomat. Only that. And he ate angrily. He wanted to fathom the other half of the truth; that in which he knew who owned the hand.
Then, he started looking for inexistent foes. Daring to feel suspicious of them all. Analysing looks, words, movements: yet, he found nothing, although, he focused on one especially. On Sanctuary’s ultimate assassin. It had to be him, Arless thought; no other would have the strength of being a cold-blooded murderer and live with it. It had to be him, he repeated to himself.
Who else could it be?
Next: Neo Mathritia
Back: Mystikos
Ariadne, 2004