Page 65 of Where Light Cannot Follow

As though he felt it, he turns toward me, rolling against my form, his face pressed into his hands as he weeps. If my chest had any substance, his face would rest against it, warm and solid, his tears soaking through my sweater. If my heart still beat, he would hear it, hear the way it would quicken at his closeness.

I hesitate no longer. I wrap my other arm around him.

It is awkward, in a way. I can't feel him at all. My arms rest on nothing, and I must hold them suspended in that strange, aching manner. But it's also... correct. In some way I cannot name, the intention matters more than the physics.

His tears break apart, great heaving breaths interspersing the sobs. Then slowly, slowly, they subside. He shifts slightly, a small movement, like a warning that he's about to rise. I slide my arms away, and he sits up.

His face is swollen. Blotchy. His eyes bloodshot, rimmed with red. His nose raw from wiping.

He's beautiful.

Just like this. With the horrors of hell stretching out around him, his face puffy and sticky from tears, his sweater rumpled, and his dark hair disheveled, falling across his forehead.

He was beautiful when I first saw him, in that intimidating, perfectly pressed manner. A young god, all sculpted planes and sharp edges. The kind of creature who could, with time and unchecked ambition, become like the old god who rules this realm.

There is no god before me now.

Instead, there is a man. Broken and imperfect and humbled. Harmed and harmer both. Afraid, and causer of fear in others.

That is a different kind of beauty. It is real. Not an image, nor a statue of some long-dead deity meant to inspire worship or terror. Instead, it's the kind that wakes in the morning with bleary eyes and tangled hair. That stumbles and admits it. That reaches for another hand, even knowing it cannot truly be held.

It's human. And I have missed humanity so desperately.

Dante sniffs and drags his sleeve across his eyes. He clears his throat and looks out at the hellscape before us, the rivers of shadow, the distant fires, the mountain that waits beyond everything.

"Thank you, Virgil."

"You're welcome."

A long silence follows, filled only with the steady ticking of his watch. It never stutters anymore. Never freezes.

Time has returned for him.

His journey is nearly finished.

"Is my mother here also?" he whispers. There's an ache in the words. A crack in his voice.

"No." I shake my head. "I don't sense any other strong connections to you in this realm. Perhaps, if she came here once, she's already passed through."

It's an odd thing that he has no other bonds lingering in this place. Most who arrive have at least a handful of others whose lives they touched, for good or ill. But Dante isn't that man. He spent most of his life doing the opposite, building an existence that required no one else.

"Good," he says quietly. "She... she wasn't perfect, but..."

"Yes," I say. Because nothing more is needed. People are complicated. Love—especially with parents—is a terribly complicated thing.

"I spent my entire life chasing that man." His voice is haunted and liberated in equal measure. "I wanted to be just like him, Virgil. Even after everything. I wanted to prove I could be him, but better."

"I understand."

"It was all..." He exhales, shaky. "All such a bloody, pointless waste, wasn't it?"

"I wonder about that," I say carefully. "I'm not certain any experience is truly wasted. But I confess I'm not certain of much."

Dante sighs and turns toward me. "How do you bear it? Being so unsure about things?"

I smile. "The more one learns about any subject, the more one realizes how little one truly knows. I guided an astrophysicist through here once. Do you have any idea how terrifying existence becomes when you understand the scope of human reality?"

I shake my head at the memory—a kind, quietly panicked man who couldn't stop talking about the fragility of everything.