41 — Live, Love, and Leave Behind

Calista

It felt wrong.

Or perhaps, that was just her shame talking.

Here she was, getting the words of absolution and a chance of redemption for her wrongdoing, her horrible action, and all that while having her face cupped by a hand whose thumb was stroking gently over her cheek and smudging away tears that continued to fall.

When he reached out and rubbed his fingers along the corners of her lips, gently grazing his fingertips against the corner of her mouth, her legs nearly turned into liquid. "Damien..." She shuddered and sniffed, looking up at him. Where had the cold, unfeeling Calista, the distant and pragmatic sister from before, gone, and who the fuck replaced her? She felt hot and flushed, weak and shaky.

'But, I suppose... we all wear masks... until that mask slips off and our real self comes out.'

If Damien was affected by anything that happened before, he didn't show it in the slightest. If this was simply a ploy for revenge or blackmail, he was being more than considerate about it.

That was not like Damien.

If her actions had traumatized him enough to spin his entire self into a frigid, emotionally crippled persona, she'd have noticed it by now.

And while it was true that the current Damien was vastly different from the one of the past, she didn't really think his change could've been attributed to that incident.

"I'm sorry..."

She was on her knees and she was apologizing. She had already apologized before, and she'd apologize again, and again, and a thousand more times. She'd do it until it stuck, and she'd finally feel absolved of her guilt. She owed him this much.

"I'm so fucking sorry, Damien..."

"It's fine, Calista." He sighed, brushing her hair back. "As I said... let's leave it in the past. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Are you going to get up? I'm getting a cramp from craning my neck."

Calista blinked, and despite everything, a light smile broke out through the tears. 

She looked so damn ugly, but she couldn't help the way her lips quirked up. She stood up, slowly, feeling her knees buckle. She had to steady herself against the desk, her legs feeling like jelly.

"God, I'm going to lose my voice today." Calista managed a short, humorless laugh before rubbing at her eyes, taking some tissues and blowing her nose.

"Here comes the trumpet, hehe..."

She stopped blowing her nose to glare at him.

Damien laughed lightly, making Calista self-consciously waddle toward the bathroom as quick as she could to to fix herself up.

He could wait, right?

"You look awful. But that's the cutest I've ever seen you." He told her from her bedroom, once she walked out, and she swiped the tissue box on her way, ready to throw it in his face.

"Oh, yes, I'll show you my cutest!"

He craned his neck in that lazy, graceful manner he had, and sighed with a slight smile.

Her hand stopped before the target, then she relaxed and dropped it to the side instead.

"I'll be right back..." She muttered, and walked to the bathroom.

The mirror's reflection was quite unpleasant, even after she splashed some water on her face.

It was a huge weight lifted off her chest. The guilt she had been carrying for a while now had finally found an outlet, and even though her confession had left her a wreck, it was so worth it.

She had been forgiven.

After all she had done, he was willing to forgive her.

She hadn't realized just how much it meant for her, to hear him say that he was willing to let go of the past.

Calista sniffed one last time before turning off the faucet and drying her face. She looked up at the mirror once more, and her red-rimmed eyes stared back.

She had made a mess of things, but it was never too late to start over.

And she was going to do it right this time.

Right.

Right.

Damien's playful eyes flashed in her mind. 

The way he was looking at her when he sang. She started trembling again. 'Damn it. Damn it, damn it!'

She slapped her cheeks to snap herself out of her thoughts. No, no, no. Not now. Not after all that.

'Not again.'

That's right, she'd been allowed to start fresh, and that meant she'd do it right this time.

Whatever feelings she had for him, she'd hide them deep down and just be a supportive sister. The good sister. Yes. The one who'd look out for him. Not the creep who'd try to molest him.

Calista took a deep breath and straightened up, smoothing down her clothes. She could do this.

That was her resolution.

No more mistakes. 

She had to be strong.

Calista stepped out of the bathroom and found Damien exactly where she had left him. Her heart raced a little, because he was looking at her quietly, waiting, almost expectantly, as she neared and sat down again.

"Cali?"

"Y-Yes?"

She was about to reach for her cigarettes, until Damien snatched the entire thing and set it further away from her, clearing his throat. Calista turned to him, and was about to argue, but honestly couldn't even muster the strength, nor did she see much reason in arguing over this.

"Feeling better?"

"... Y-Yeah." She stammered. "Thanks."

He smiled slightly, and nodded his head. "Let's look forward, then. Don't you think we're both guilty? A clean slate, then. Should make for a much cleaner dynamic."

Calista nodded again, quietly. What else could she say to that? 

It was already a great act of kindness that he was bestowing upon her. She couldn't imagine what would have been the general reaction if it were another man.

"Then, let's leave this behind and talk about the song instead, hmm...?"

"Oh. Oh, yeah, the song! Um..." Calista stumbled on her words as she cleared her throat. "Th-That song. What else? Let's talk about that."

"Yeah, well you didn't let me finish singing." He stared at the guitar. "Though I'm unsure whether this is the right mood for it. What do you think?"

"Totally!"

"Okay, then." He smiled again. "Then... please do listen and, if possible... forgive me for my voice crack."

He picked it up again, set it on his lap, and the riff flowed like water. 

"......"

Calista was in a semi-daze as Damien began to play the song again from the beginning. And if she thought the beginning was already powerful, the rest of it was on another level. By the time the chorus hit, she was already feeling her eyes sting.

Crying over a song? There was nothing lustful or naughty about it, just an unwavering desire to belong to someone else. 

"Even though we're going through it and it makes you feel alone—♪"

"Just know that I would die for you—♪"

"Baby, I would die for you, yeah—♪"

"The distance and the time between us—♪"

"It'll never change my mind, 'cause baby—♪"

"I would die for you—♪"

"Baby, I would die for you, yeah—♪"

The thing about Damien's new song was the construction of it.

Calista had heard love songs her entire professional life.

The industry made a living off of them. 

They were the most commercially reliable emotional territory in music because the desire to feel understood by a song about wanting someone was essentially universal and essentially bottomless.

You could not oversaturate a market that size. 

Whether you were a woman singing it for a man, or a woman singing it for another woman, a woman singing it to children. 

The emotion of that type of song would resonate regardless, because everyone could feel, at the most base level, the impulse to want and to love, and that, above everything else, was what made a great song.

What truly set the songs apart was the execution.

Of course, things changed when it was a man singing it. Perhaps, in a different world it might've been considered normal, but Calista had never heard a man writing and singing and meaning every single line that came out of his lips. 

A man dying for a woman? Killing for a woman? Doing anything remotely violent or self-harming for a woman's love? It sounded so ridiculous it simply couldn't be real.

She had previously believed that a good song would almost always come from pain, but only because that was what she had experienced. Through her lens, the pain was almost always the best tool to create something that resonated, something that would make the listener feel heard.

However, Damien's first release 'On My Knees' felt like a slap to the face. Wake up to reality. And this new one, the very one he was playing in front of her, was on a completely different level. It had a sense of maturity, a certain sense of confidence and... obsession.

This is what love is now

So, this was what it would feel like to be someone's singular, consuming priority. Coming from a man, no less. Obsession. Desire. A love that would make the heavens tremble.

When the song ended, Damien's fingers stilled over the strings.

Calista wetted her lips and lamented not having a cigarette between her lips, because she knew her brother was about to really be the end of human civilization.

"Thoughts?"

He asked with that tilt of his head and the ghost of a smile. A playful glint in his eyes; the damn bastard knew what he had just done. 

"None. Not a single thought in my head right now."

Calista replied truthfully, and immediately snagged her pack of cigarettes, because fuck it. She lit it up and sucked in deep. 

"Nothing?"

He laughed.

"No. None whatsoever."

xXx

Damien

I didn't know whether forgiving Calista's actions—her attempt of sexual assault—was the right choice.

I knew it was the most sensible one, considering the circumstances. 

For one, I was not the Damien she had wronged, and two, the original Damien wasn't even here anymore, so holding a grudge would be pointless. And three, she had stopped herself just in time. Nearly didn't mean she had done it, after all.

Of course, I had no recollection of it, so she could've been lying. But hadn't she confessed with the awareness that I also knew the truth? She didn't know that I had forgotten everything. 

Whatever the case, Calista had given me a clear answer about where we stood as siblings.

She was willing to go down a certain path that would lead to our mutual destruction if things went south. 'Is incest even a thing here?'

Now, as for my own thoughts regarding it.

I was... not sure how I felt. I knew what I'd think in my previous life; that shit was a no-no, absolutely disgusting and something that should never be condoned, let alone enjoyed or celebrated. 

But this was a different world with different moral values, different societal norms.

Did this world even know what incest was, or was it such a rare occurrence that it wasn't even in the public consciousness?

I was beyond saving, anyway, knowing what I did with Freya. 'We didn't have sex, it was just for that donation, but still...' A fool could justify that they had already fallen into the deviant spiral, so what was one more step down the rabbit hole?

All of that aside, I didn't know how to feel about Calista's attraction to me. A woman willing to nearly assault her own brother... it was a bit too much for me to process without a drink in hand.

I also had to tread more carefully with my family, because it meant that it wasn't necessarily a far-fetched idea to expect a similar thing could happen to me again, not by Calista, but perhaps with another member of my family.

"Can we talk for a minute?"

"......"

The next day, Freya managed to find and corner me alone. 

There was a very serious look on her face. 

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