Chapter Text
Kyrie was staring at the square shaped white tiles that were lining the hospital corridor.
She was taking in all their tiniest details, like this was a matter of life or death. From the pristine pearly white color they showed along the walls, to the yellowish and the broken edged ones at the center of the narrow space… she was counting the squares and sorting them by type.
27 were perfect, 59 were deeply worn down, 14 were broken and one of them had been poorly cut and fixed at an odd angle underneath the plastic seat next to hers.
But Kyrie already knew all of this.
Because she had been sitting in the exact same chair one year ago, waiting for the same doctor to come see her. And just like last year, Kyrie was stuck in that nightmarish moment where she was waiting for someone to tell her if her lover was going to make it.
The opera singer’s hands shook as the bone deep fear that she might lose Nero was trying to snuff out all light from her heart. She was so scared. So terribly scared.
Without him… she didn’t know what she would do. She didn’t know if she would ever be able to stand back up. She had already lost so many people she loved… How could she recover from losing Nero ?
Please don’t take him away from me. Anything but this, please…
Repeating the old prayers addressed to Sparda, words that all children growing under the Order of the Sword knew by heart, Kyrie fought to find comfort in the old verses. In the reassuring familiarity. Even if she didn’t believe in them.
Pushing her terror to the back of her mind, the girl’s eyes drifted to the white ceramic shapes lining the floor again.
Counting them was a way to keep sane, to keep her mind occupied. It proved far more efficient than any prayer to an absent godly figure.
The mundane and boring observation was soothing her, reminding her to keep her thoughts grounded and to not let them spiral down into the darkest pits of despair.
Kyrie had been sitting in this dreaded chair for six hours now, and there was still no sign that the medical staff was coming to bring her any kind of news, good or bad.
Nothing.
And that felt like a bad omen in itself…
The singer had been home with their three foster children when she had started to grow worried about Nero and Nico being late for dinner.
It wasn’t anything unusual per say, as demon hunting was pretty unpredictable. Her dear man would often end up running through the entire city before he could finally come home.
But … Nico always used to call home when she thought that a mission would take longer than planned or if things grew out of hand. But this time… nothing. No call making the phone inside the entrance ring. Only silence. Endless, crushing silence, just like now.
Kyrie had ended up tucking the kids in for the night, and waiting for the familiar sound of the van to echo in their garage, but the large car had not made it home.
The heavy silence had stretched on endlessly through the night, until the sun had started to rise on the next day without any news from her two family members.
It had only been much later, once she had brought the boys to school in the morning and eventually arrived at the Opera House, that a call from the police had come in.
Kyrie ? There’s a call for you. It’s Fortuna P.D….
Kyrie could still hear the deep masculine voice on the other end of the line, announcing that there had been an accident on the hunt that her lover had taken on. That Nico and Nero had been both injured and brought to the hospital.
Her heart had felt like a frantic bird trapped into a too small cage, and she had immediately made her way to Fortuna General Hospital.
Once there, she had asked about the two hunters’ state but no one had been able to give her any useful information, and she had been asked to wait. Which she was still doing a quarter of a day later…
From the few snippets she had managed to painfully extract from the medical staff after harassing them for updates, and then calling the police department multiple times, Kyrie had eventually learned that Nico had been injured inside the van when a large demon had rammed the car and sent it tumbling wildly.
The gunsmith’s ribs were broken and she sported a nasty cut on her right leg but she should be okay, even if the wounds would take a few weeks to heal.
Nero on the other hand was still in surgery.
Kyrie didn’t know the details yet but from what she had been told by the police officer, her lover had been caught in an explosion.
The mission had taken place in a restaurant, and it seemed that Nero had been chasing a demon until the fight had led to a massive gas explosion in the kitchens.
Her man had been caught in the blast and been partially buried under the rubble. The firefighters had found him alive but grievously injured. They had transported him to the hospital and he had been in surgery ever since…
Kyrie felt her eyes burn, and the perfect squares on the ground grew treacherously blurry. Hot tears pooled in her eyes and trickled down on the pearly white floor without her consent. Ploc. Ploc.
She was trying desperately to keep herself together and not let panic take a hold on her head, but it was growing almost impossible to do so.
Seeing her man injured on the job had always been hard, even if it was just a bruise or a small cut.
It had always been her worst nightmare to be forced to come back to sit on this plastic chair in the hospital corridor, and to wait endlessly while being useless to do anything to help.
This wait, this silence, this uncertainty…it felt like Hell. Her own, very personal version of Hell.
Her “current state” wasn’t helping her handle this situation any better either… Her body was slowly going through some very complex changes…
Kyrie had had no idea that something had been different inside her, but the Opera-House requested a full medical check-up from its employees every year, including a blood-test.
She had taken care of this formality at the start of the week, not expecting anything out of the ordinary… But to her surprise, the doctor had called back her with very unexpected news.
She was pregnant.
But she hadn’t had the opportunity to tell Nero yet.
She was at the very early stage of her pregnancy and her body had not shown any sign that something was changing. Her period had been late, sure, but she had assumed it was simply a small fluctuation …
It seemed that she might have been a bit naive… It wasn’t bad news, the opposite in fact. Kyrie was thrilled ! Scared ? Yes, that too, but excited and happy.
The day the doctor called her, she had felt stunned by the news, shocked even, for the entire day, and she had not found the “right moment” to talk to Nero about it.
She had wanted to tell him right then and there, but her man had been in a rush. He and Nico had been storming through the garage because of a demon attack inside a restaurant and Kyrie had chosen to wait for him to come home and calm down to tell him about the baby…
She had no idea that neither of them would make it home after that mission… If only she had told Nero right away, maybe it would have prevented her man from going into that place, and both he and Nico would have stayed safely at home.
How was Nero going to react to the news? It wasn’t their “first" child, because they had already adopted three little boys, but it would be their first biological one…
And by God, how were they going to fit a fourth child into their small house? Would they need to move out? Would Nico accept to become the Godmother of their baby ? Perhaps Dante could be the Godfather ? If the hunter ever came back from Hell that was…
So many questions, mostly happy ones. But for one.
What if Kyrie never got the chance to tell Nero ? What if he never came back home?
No… I can’t think like this. He’ll make it. It will be alright.
Chasing the dark thoughts from her mind, Kyrie sighed and stood up. Her legs felt numb and her back was aching from the crappy chair’s poor design.
She walked down the corridor to stretch her legs and made a stop at the vending machine, buying herself a bottle of cool water. She unscrewed the cap and took a sip. The cool liquid flew down her throat, soothing the thirst she hadn’t been aware had been there and helping her clear her head.
She took another sip as she turned around and came back to sit on her chair, eyeing the corridor again in hopes of seeing a nurse or a doctor coming her way.
It was the middle of the afternoon now and there was still no information about Nero’s health, and that was driving the opera singer mad with worry.
Kyrie wasn’t even allowed to see Nico yet, her friend had been sedated because her cut had needed to be stitched and her ribs patched up. She had been in a lot of pain and so she had been put under a heavy dose of painkillers so that she might stay still and rest.
The hours went by - oh so slowly - and the hand of the clock on the wall seemed to be the only thing moving inside this corridor. It would soon be the end of classes for Julio and Kyle…
Thankfully, Kyrie had been able to call a neighbor with the hospital phone booth, and asked her to watch over the boys after school until she came home.
But the more she waited here, the more anxious she grew that she might not be able to pick up the children before dinner… She would need to apologize to the neighbors and then face her children’s interrogations…
What am I supposed to tell the kids ? They will have so many questions…. They will be so scared if Nero and Nico don’t come home…
Kyrie sighed and rubbed her hands over her face, trying to chase away her tears. Nero would be fine. He wasn’t a normal human after all. His body was far more resilient and he healed extremely fast… He had survived after losing his arm and almost bleeding out in the garage, and he was even stronger now than he had been last year.
The hospital staff here already knew that her sweet man wasn’t “normal”, because they had taken care of him after he had lost his arm. He would be okay. He had to…
“Kyrie?”
The opera singer’s head snapped up as a male voice called out to her in the corridor. It was Dr. Asper, the doctor who had been in charge of Nero last time. He was a very competent and very kind man that Kyrie trusted deeply.
But the relief of seeing this familiar face here quickly turned to ashes.
The girl felt her stomach drop as the man’s milky white skin showed deep angry red marks left by the mask he had been wearing during surgery. The cap, and mask, had left deep groves on his face, adding new lines to the already tired looking face. He was still in the pale blue scrubs, his pristine white doctor’s coat nowhere to be seen.
All of these small clues led her to believe that he had just left the surgery room a few minutes ago, and judging by the purple lines underneath his eyes… It had been a very taxing fight for her lover’s life.
“Doctor… How… How is he?” She rose to her feet as the man walked up to meet her.
Dr. Asper looked down at his hands, fleeing Kyrie’s gaze for a moment, and her heart turned into a stone. Why was he avoiding her gaze ? That couldn’t be a good sign…
The man sighed tiredly, looking worn down and discouraged.
“Kyrie… I need to be honest with you. I do not know. He is alive, and that is already a feat, but his state is extremely worrisome.”
The opera singer felt her legs grow weak and it must have shown on her face because the doctor motioned for her to sit down.
“The firefighters have brought him in in a state of absolute emergency and if it wasn’t for his extraordinary resistance he would have stood no chance in the explosion.”
Kyrie listened to the familiar voice who was confirming all her worst fears, but still gave her some hope at the same time. She was listening to the doctor’s calm voice, hearing his explanations clearly, but she felt like she was standing outside of her own body.
She was there and she wasn’t, all of her focus on the doctor and yet her mind fleeing the pain and the fear that were threatening to tear her apart.
“Both his legs are broken, as are his ribs, three vertebrae, the right collarbone and his right arm. We have managed to retrieve all the shrapnel from inside his wounds and stop the bleeding but… There is a deep fracture on his skull that led to a severe brain injury. Sadly, we will have to wait for the swelling of the brain tissues to recede before we can know how extensive the damage truly is.”
The long list of her lover’s injuries made Kyrie feel like she was about to faint. The corridor was spinning around her, Dr. Asper’s tall figure grew blurry while her heart was pounding too hard. She was trying to process all the doctor was telling her, to make sense of his words but she couldn’t think past the horror and the crushing fear permeating everything.
“H-How… how bad is it ?” She murmured, needing more accessible information while she tried to wrap her head around Nero’s condition.
The doctor paused and looked at her, looking ten years older than he usually did. He kept quiet, his eyes filled with pity and understanding, before he summarized her lover’s condition in a few brief words.
“He… is in a coma. At the moment, we cannot know when, and if, he will wake up from this. We will have to wait and see how his health improves in the next few days. I’m sorry Kyrie, I wish I could tell you more…”
Tears were running down her face and Kyrie hadn’t even noticed them until her nose started to run as well. She fumbled through her purse for a tissue, and bit her lower lip to try to keep her composure, while she nodded her understanding of the doctor’s words.
“Can I see him?” She sniffed, fighting to keep her voice steady but the words came out weak and quivering.
“I’m sorry but he is still in the operating room, my assistants are doing the last stitches. Maybe tomorrow.” Dr. Asper squeezed her shoulder gently, trying to give her some comfort while she was breaking down.
Her breath hitched, a painful hiccup escaping her throat and the world around her grew out of her reach. She felt locked inside her head, panic and grief slicing through her defenses and taking over everything.
Nero was in a coma again, but this time it wasn’t just blood loss that had made him unconscious. His head was hurt. A brain injury was something that could very well be fatal, even for him…
The singer didn’t know how long she stayed stuck in her pain, but she was startled to hear Dr. Asper’s voice and finding him sitting in the chair next to hers, his hand still on her shoulder.
“Go home, Kyrie. We will call you if anything happens.” The doctor gently coaxed her into leaving the hospital and heading home to the children.
She eventually agreed and started to walk down the corridors, her steps echoing on the tiled floors of the hospital gloomily. Kyrie felt like a zombie, mindless and hollow, but somehow she crossed the entire building and reached the right bus stop.
She blinked in confusion as she found herself under the small glass construction, not even remembering how she had made it all the way here.
The weather was cloudy but mild, the end of October promising additional rain over Fortuna Island. Kyrie looked up, locked in a daze, watching the thick layer of white sheep crossing the skies at an impressive speed.
She was so lost in the hollowness inside that she jumped when a large bus stopped right next to her, the glass doors opening up sharply demanding that she get in quickly.
Heart in her throat, she forced herself to focus. She went to sit down on one of the seats, her thoughts spiralling inside her mind even if her head felt desperately empty at the same time.
She was in shock. It wasn’t hard to guess that… but she had no way to snap out of it.
What now? What am I supposed to do?
Nero was alive, yes, but there was no guarantee that he would ever wake up… Even poor Nico was stuck at the hospital for an unknown period of time.
How was Kyrie supposed to go on now without them ?