“But it makes you hurt.”
“It does… it hurts… but I can’t run from it forever, no matter how much I want to. I became such a monster. I wanted my father to pay. I wanted my mother to pay. I wanted that place from hell to pay.” I turn to Asmodeus. “I saw my father preaching about it yesterday and then hours later El had destroyed it… and still I blamed him.” I hold my hand out to myright and Asmodeus takes it. “You’ve been trying to get through to me for days and I just couldn’t get it.”
“I don’t believe that you didn’t ‘get it.’ I think it just took you some time to realize that as a child, you needed that protection from El… but as an adult, you are strong enough to do it alone, though you shouldn’t have to. That’s why El and I are here. Aspen too.”
“How could I have twisted things to hurt you, Asmodeus? I don’t know how to forgive myself. Because if I accept that El did these things to protect me, then I have to accept that I tried to hurt you.”
“Because you were afraid. And fear, when left unwatched, can manifest into some wild things… so many emotions can. If I hadn’t been forced to suppress my own emotions since the second I was born… maybe I wouldn’t have done what I did. But Ellison, you can stab me all you want and I will happily take it with open arms.”
“That’s not… no.”
“I can handle whatever you throw at me.”
“But I don’t want you to have to. I want to cherish you.”
“Oh, My Lord of Suits… our lives would be very boring if you treated me like glass. I need you and El and Aspen.”
I hold my other hand out and El slowly walks over to it. El’s fingers wrap around mine as I draw him down to the ground next to me.
“I need both of you to make sure I don’t fuck up and fall into hell again because I’m not sure I’d make it back out.”
“Good thing you have a demon or two to hoist you out.”
“Good thing,” I whisper as a tear runs down my face for the brother whose life I took, for the childhood I was never allowed to have, and for myself… for hating myself for so many years.
Asmodeus rolls into me and brushes the tears away. “What if we both just start again?”
“Can I?” I ask.
“Of course you can. Your brother sounds like he was a really good person; he wouldn’t want you to punish yourself any longer.”
El rolls into me and I feel him pressed against me without a word, holding me like he had when I was a child. When I would hide from the things that haunted me, the things that tore my life apart.
But this time, I have someone on both sides of me.
“Hey now, I feel left out,” Aspen says before lying on top of Asmodeus. “I’ll take this one. Do you know how hard it was to pretend to be all grumpy like Ellison?”
“Were you the illusion I was following in the mall?” Asmodeus asks.
Aspen gasps. “You knew it was me? Am I special?”
“You’re letting Aspen steal him from you?” El asks me.
“At least I didn’t try stabbing him… I mean… I want to stab him with something, alright—” Aspen says as he smacks Asmodeus’s ass.
I try to get up so I can banish all illusions and hurry for home, but Asmodeus won’t let me up.
“Frisky,” Aspen comments.
“No! Aspen, you are prohibited from speaking.”
“No thanks,” he says, trailing a finger over Asmodeus’s cheek.
“I have to apologize to you too, Aspen, because I tried to control you for years. I tried to force you to hide your personality away because I was too afraid to face myself.”
“It’s okay. I still knew that you loved me,” Aspen says. “And now I have more to love.” He kisses Asmodeus’s cheek.
I’m quiet for a moment before asking, “Why would you guys ever forgive me for all I did to you?”
