Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 172
172
Mateo has lived pretty much his entire life feeling at least some amount of curmudgeonly anger. You could almost say it was his default state. There was always something to be slightly grumpy about. A pebble in your shoe, for instance. Or an annoying chore that just won't go away. A fly in your soup. A nasty hangover followed by an even nastier 'cure' of chimney soot and milk. And, perhaps most of all, his own stupid temper, always causing him to mess everything up, constantly sabotaging his every attempt at bettering himself, at making everyone see him as something more than just some hot-headed Fox who's always making an ass of himself, screaming at random passers-by or talking to an inanimate crossbow. It was his anger that always got him into trouble, and his anger that always made things worse, because (let's be honest here) there's nothing quite as stupid as getting pissed off at your own short temper. It created an endless cycle of vitriolic outbursts and instant regret. Because of this, Mateo was intimately familiar with all kinds of anger, from the slow burning grudge to the all out tantrum explosion.
But he had never felt an anger quite like this. Rather than fragmenting his attention, scattering it in every direction, it seemed to be having the opposite effect. He felt focussed, collected. Lives were at stake here, and he couldn't afford to make even a single mistake. In short, he couldn't afford to be his usual, useless self.
The only source of light in the entire building was one tiny little lantern at the top of the staircase, and not even a very clean one, by the looks of it. The light it cast was all murky and smudgy, barely a match for all the shadows it created. But even so, he saw everything perfectly, noticing small details his eye ordinarily would have skimmed right over, and that only served to fuel this strange new anger.
Ander was near the foot of the stairs, slowly dragging himself upwards one step at a time. He was... not in good shape. His foot was missing, for one, and half his face looked like it had been chomped off and vomited back on by a bear. And that wasn't even touching on all the other bite marks and scratches adorning his body.
As difficult as it was to believe even for himself, it made him angry. Mateo did not like Ander. He'd probably never like Ander. But yes. Seeing him like that made him angry. Ander was his mother's son, his own half-brother (as much as he hated to admit that) and that sort of made him family. No, scratch that, it _did_make him family. Sort of messed up, but true. He had done a lot of good for this valley since he came here. He had touched many hearts, had enriched many lives, and even now, when his own heart was surely broken and his life was hanging on by a thread, when he couldn't even stand, when he shouldn't even be conscious, he was still trying his best. If that did not deserve respect, Mateo did not know what did.
His eyes travelled up the stairs to the second level, past the lantern, and up to a small girl with yellow fur, probably Jonah's cousin, all tied up like a pork roast. The poor thing had been crying, he could see that even from here. Her eyes, a beautiful shade of sky blue, were terribly bloodshot, and that made him angry, too. A cute little thing like that should never be made to cry.
Hanging next to her was Kiana. There were two red lines beneath her eyes like war paint, matting her fur. Her dress was torn, and four spots of blood were clearly visible against her white belly.
If you love that baby so much, I hope it's a stillborn!
His own words floated back to him through the mists of memory, so sharp, so poisonous, so filthy and cruel. He didn't want to admit that they had come from his own mouth and not the maw of some horrible, loathsome creature dripping with venomous slime, but he knew the truth. He did say those things, and the marks on her belly were like a sobering slap in the face, as if the world itself was posing him one final question.
Are you sure about that? Are you absolutely positively sure? Because if you are, then you almost got your wish. You might still get it.
Does that make you feel happy?
Mateo's lips peeled back into an unconscious snarl.
No. That did not make him feel happy.
It made him feel angry.
And off to the side, where the light of the candle barely even reached...
Mateo's claws began to dig into Agatha's meticulously polished stock. There was a dull ache pounding behind his eyes, throbbing in time with his heartbeat, and an all-consuming heat building up inside his chest, going from red to white-hot. He had clawed his way through fire and coals, pouring snow and freezing cold, had wandered from arrow to arrow, carved into the bark of winterdead trees in a semi-delirium, following half-remembered whispers heard through a veil of dreams, whispers that may or may not have been real...
I'm sorry, Mat. I know it goes both ways. I have no right to be mad at you for nearly breaking your promise when I'm about to go and break mine. That would make me the worst kind of hypocrite. All I can do is ask forgiveness...
Nilia. Her arm was a crimson mess. It looked like she had stuck it into a barrel full of knives. Blood dripped from her fingertips like rain. And her face...
Mateo growled from deep inside his throat without even realising it. Truly, he had never been this furious in his entire life. This wrath, this uncontrollable rage, made all his previous outbursts feel like the petulant floor-stomping of a spoiled brat.
There was a jagged cut across the bridge of her muzzle. Blood flowed from her mouth, down her chin and across the bear claw necklace she held so dear in a steady stream. It created a crimson mask over the bottom half of her face, like she had just slaughtered a hog with her bare teeth.
You are my heart.
He had kissed those beautiful lips not too long ago, had listened to them whisper things into his ear, things he never thought he would have heard from anyone, things that made him feel like the Fox he'd been trying to turn himself into for years.
He wanted to hear more from her, and he wanted her to hear from him, he wanted to make her feel just as good as she had made him feel, he wanted her to make him the happiest Fox alive by allowing him to make her the happiest Wolfess alive.
He wanted to love her.
And then his eye fell on him. The black Wolf who just wouldn't drop dead.
Banno. He was in the worst shape of anyone here, not that Mateo would have been able to tell by the way he was carrying himself. His body was carved up like a summer-end turkey. Entire chunks of flesh were just hanging off his bones by sinewy threads. Broken arrow shafts still stuck out of his back like a hedgehog's quills, and his right shoulder was just a mess of raw, minced meat. His missing eye now had a missing lid to go with it, creating a deep red pit inside his skull, and his jaw was in even worse shape than Nilia's. His mouth didn't even look like a recognisable mouth anymore. It was just two hunks of raw muscle lined with teeth, teeth that had murdered his friends, teeth that had tried to dig Kiana's baby right out of her womb, teeth that had bitten Nilia in the face, teeth that had tried to take her life away, teeth that had bitten down on the promise they had made to each other.
Teeth that had caused her pain.
Pain he had been unable to spare her from.
"You little rat!" Banno screamed, tentatively patting the spot where his right ear used to be. "Daaargh!" He turned around and slammed both hands down on the railing, staring at Mateo with one burning black eye. "You just keep coming out like cockroaches!"
The light shone directly onto Banno's face from this angle, and Mateo could clearly see the path his bolt had taken, going right through the membrane of his ear and cleaving a thin line over the top of his head, splitting the skin and grooving the skull beneath.
It made Mateo angry. If he had aimed just a little bit lower, then this fight would have been over. But he had been too afraid, too doubtful of his skills. In the critical moment, just before he squeezed the trigger, he was filled with a vision of what would happen if his aim was off by a hair, how Nilia's face would explode, how bits of her brain would splatter against the wall. Their jaws had been locked together. Banno's head was practically overlapping with her own. There was no way Mateo could have risked a shot like that.
"Are you even listening to me, you little bastard!? Huh!?" Banno shrieked. "You took my ear! You altered me, you sack of filth!"
Mateo took a single breath, in and out. It wasn't deep or slow. It was a perfectly normal breath. He was furious, but calm - two states he never would have thought could coexist in such harmony.
"Banno." His voice trembled only slightly. "You killed my friends. You hurt Ander, Kiana, and that little girl. You even hurt the Wolfess who understands exactly what I am, and somehow, by some miracle, still manages to love me for it. And that is why..." He ran his hand across Agatha's name, feeling the slight dip of each letter across his fingers. "...I am going to kill you."
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