CORAZÓN / DEATH

[LAZARUS]

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-family: arial; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.4;letter-spacing:.1px"]He should have paid better attention to what Gabriel had told him all those months ago. The words had hooked deep underneath his skin, a thin wire that wrapped around his ribs and cut into his heart, but it just stayed there uselessly, suffocating but not changing. He hadn't known how to leave. Parts of him had already been carved out by the need to simply survive, and maybe leaving wouldn't give him those parts back. No, he knows that it wouldn't, because when he did end up leaving, he still bared his teeth at anyone who got too close to his food or his body. Those were the only two things that would ever matter to him, it seemed. He had no room for kindness or an easy charm. People bantered with the hybrid and he stood there awkwardly, tripped up by social cues he could never catch and a whole world that he had never seen.

He'd needed a sign for a while, a warning to everyone that he was dangerous, that he wasn't normal the way that they were. It didn't bother him, not when he knew that people deserved to know that much about him.

What bothered him was that the world was all sort of right to avoid him, and maybe it was best to avoid them too. Sometimes he still thought about heading back to those dark corners, because that was where the world made sense. Not here, where people stood still and asked permission to enter, where they shared food and helped each other without expectations. Lazarus knew that when somebody took care of him, they wanted something. He would listen expectantly for some way to repay them. That was just how things worked. But Gabe didn't want anything back, and neither did these people. It left him a little off balance and all the more intent on taking care of his own.

Gabriel was a part of that now, whether he wanted to be or not. Nobody asked him to pull his weight, but he still tallied up the costs. Raising him, teaching him, protecting him. If there was one thing that he could do, it was help. Just a bit, maybe enough to make what he was going through stop. He can't pretend that this wasn't entirely selfish. No matter what he said, the hybrid wasn't okay. And the world deserves more of what he has than whatever Lazarus could think of offering. More kids deserved to be picked up when the world kept knocking them down, and that was something that he was good at. For a while, he couldn't help but be jealous of everyone else who got his time, but it started making sense. The world deserved him, the people here deserved him.

He's still relieved that he got here in time. The Cane Corso's head lifts slightly in the hybrid's talons, a weak, ragdoll movement despite his size. Contact feels distant, so removed from this world already, but it feels nice to know that he was there. Words register dully, the feelings much stronger. This place is like sitting here and staring at the water, or falling asleep warm for the first time. He feels cold and tired, but in a comfortable way. Hazily, he can still see the way Gabe blocks the sunlight and panics. "Te preocupas demasiado, anciano," he rasps, voice soft. Laz had mentioned before that sometimes, a bad option was all that was left to choose. Gabriel's started him on this path, it wasn't his fault. But this was his. "Quiero dormir. Todo estará bien.

"Te amo mucho, papá." For the first time, he finds that he's afraid. Of what will happen now, of where he'll go. He'd heard stories from others, they just weren't things that he could confirm without this. So he lurches closer, head knocking against Gabe's. It doesn't make it stop, but... it makes it easier. "Esto no es tu culpa."

That, for now, is the end. And the truth.