XLV

The night had passed in the most unusual of ways. When they woke up the next morning, they realized they had slept in each other's arms.

They got ready and walked out of the dive bar that had hosted them.

They walked through the streets, smiling, joking like old friends. She was really trying to cheer them up and, for once, not in the way they had always thought was right.

They arrived at the orphanage and were greeted by Margot who, as soon as she saw them, lowered her gaze, bowed her head and tried to hide her tears and an expression that promised absolutely nothing good.

Agnès and Adrien had understood just by looking at her, in the first few seconds, that something was wrong.

<< Margot...>> Agnès tried to unlock the situation, but the words died in her throat when, finally, the woman raised her head and let her emotions show. Something poignant.

<< I was going to have you call...>> She managed to pronounce in a feeble tone, almost as if she were a flame in the wind.

<< What happened? >> Adrien asked, trying to have a calm voice to reassure his friend as well.

She merely lowered her head again and shook it in pained denial.

<< No...>> Agnès whispered before quickly entering the building and running down the stairs, << No!>> She screamed during her desperate run.

<< Adrien she...she was worse than we could have imagined.>> She pressed a piece of cloth to her face to blot it and wipe away her tears.

Adrien was petrified. A new cry, higher pitched, heartbreaking, horrifying, ripped through the tense air.

The boy ran to reach Agnés. He found her bent over the child's body, crying, calling out to her, despairing, screaming.

<< No! No, Amélie, please don't...my baby don't...>>

Adrien approached her, put his hand on her back. He too wanted to scream, to turn the room upside down and take the lifeless body of yet another sister he had seen die in his arms.

Agnés quickly turned to him and threw herself on his chest, her sobs muffled by the fabric of the boy's tunic.

<< Adrien she...>>

<< Ssh, you couldn't have done more than that.>> He stroked her brown hair.

Yes, maybe Agnés couldn't have done more than that, but he could. If only he hadn't wasted time chasing stupid fantasies.

It was his fault. Time had always been against him, and he'd wasted too much of it.

Inside he felt torn, he could imagine how his friend felt, he could understand how great the desire to be in the child's place could be.

He would never forgive himself. It wasn't even fair to console Agnés, to hold her like that and comfort her, he, who had caused the death of his sister, the death of that beautiful little girl he was so fond of.

His girlfriend.

On the bed she saw the horse he had given her a few days back. He gritted his teeth.

He released his grip on Agnés who slumped at the foot of the bed and, as cold and stiff as possible, not even if he was the corpse, he headed out of the room.

He headed for the wing used as a small chapel. A wooden crucifix, bare, stood behind a small altar, also made of wood, in front of a few seats and a few lit candles.

He stopped in the long corridor, between the pews, in front of the altar, let himself fall to his knees with a dull thud, clenched his fist and lashed it, with fierce arrogance, against the brick floor.

<< Give me a break!>> he screamed in desperation.

<< What is it! Are you taking revenge because I took away the most beautiful and sacred angel you sent on earth?! Did you want to watch us poor mortals worship his beauty and take pleasure in observing how we would never feel enough? Does it bother you that one of your creatures could love someone like me?! What?! You took her away from me and left me alive...and now she too...she was just a child...>> The ardor of despair in her voice slowly faded, leaving her delirium to die down to a whisper.

Was it so wrong to blame God?

Good and just...

No, he would never be only good and just if he could be omnipotent and this was the proof.

He had the fate of humanity in his hands and he preferred to make a poor beggar in love pay for it. It was true, it was his fault, he had preferred to steal the purity of the angel when he could help the girl and it was also right to pay the bill, but not for the envy of a God who will never know what it feels like to love a woman, to hold her close and kiss her all over her body.

He wanted to have just a little respite.

He wanted something in his life to settle down or return to normal, to before he spoke to that woman in the stalls, to before he found the perfect poem to represent her.

What was he going to do now?

Agnés...would she have hated him? Would she have acknowledged his guilt, or would she have never made him one? Would she ever forgive him?

<< Adrien...>>

He turned around shaken by that child's voice. It was Felix.

A squeeze seemed to crush his heart.

Amèlie was the girl he cared about, the famous princess.

<< Adrien, she...I...I didn't...>> He burst into a weeping cry, for Adrien looked at him, unable to finish the thought.

<< Felix...come here.>> He spread his arms to invite him closer.

The boy didn't let him repeat it again and rushed to him, let himself be held by those strong arms of his big brother and cried harder.

<< Everything will be alright.>> she whispered into his blond hair.

Why did she say that if he wasn't convinced either?

<< Everyone I care about is leaving...even you are gone.>>

This had hurt infinitely.

<< I'll never leave you, flea. You can swear it.>> He took the child's face in his hands and looked him straight in the eyes, trying to instill his own confidence in those words.

<< I don't want to lose anyone anymore. Why does life suck so much?

He felt a punch on the pit of his stomach at those words.

How could an eleven year old boy already wonder that? Already giving everything for lost, already hating the fact of being in the world, are not emotions suitable for someone so young.

<< Life is not easy, this is true, but you will always smile. A certainty that life gives you are the smiles and the good times, as it is certain that in the sky of August you can see bright stars and hear the songs of crickets for too much heat.>>

He traveled, with memories, his life to review all the moments that, even believing he did not deserve, he had lived with a spontaneous smile on his face and alongside his dearest friends. There would always be a "in spite of everything" in life and he had to make her understand that.

<< There will also be stories worth remembering, things that will amaze you for the first time, and though you'll get used to it, you must never lose that amazement. You'll see the darkness give way to dawn and you'll want to see it again, you'll wait for letters and replies and, I hope, you'll see the sea with its waves, because there's nothing more like the human soul than a stormy sea. >>

With his sleeves creased and worn, he wiped Felix's face of tears.

<< And it's okay to cry, too; there will be even sweeter tears. You'll see the sun kill itself and you'll wonder why it always does that to make way for the moon. The answer is love, it's always all about love. Everything is in correspondence with that. You live for that and it will never be all in vain.

You will fall in love and probably suffer because you are young and inexperienced but it will be okay.

There will be a succession of snow and rain but then autumn will return with leaves the same color as the flames in your heart and then spring again and summer again. You will understand that life always goes on and you can only follow it, let it take you, you can rest but never stop, not even if everything seems empty, you don't stop, not even in the disappointments of a friend, you never stop, not even for the deception of a woman.

Take your time, rest, but don't stop, even if with small steps you'll go far, you'll keep walking and you'll forget the pains, you'll stop just to dream a little, but then chase those dreams and recover the lost time.>> He put his hands on the small shoulders and shook him a little. Felix pulled up with his nose, he had the concentrated expression of someone who was trying to catch every little meaning of those words, even the most hidden.

<< I hope you will always have at least a little hope, not like me, and that you will always have some love left to give. For if you give love, you will receive love.

You'll look for new words, during sleepless nights, to explain yourself, to try to understand yourself, you'll look for unknown roads that you feel you have to walk alone and bridges that you'll lean over to look at your reflection on the flowing river, you'll smoke your first cigarette and your throat will burn, you'll pass new Christmases, you'll find yourself a strenuous job and wake up with the dew still fresh.

You'll have chills and thrills, rocks to kick or bounce off the banks of the Seine, objects to find and forget. You will have all this and more and I hope to always be by your side to see you face everything head on. I will never leave you.>> He put her forehead on Felix's, who had stopped crying.

After all, there would always be another Sunday.

He didn't say it, but he also wished him to never keep too many speeches inside, to never close himself up too much, to always have the curiosity to rummage through life's emotions and to be able to win the war, which in everyone, sooner or later, rages. The one that he felt he had not been able to win.

And above all, he should never believe that he had given everything. There was always something more. He should never spare himself.

He wished he understood that one can never love enough.

As he formulated that thought, his gaze fell back to the hand gripped by the ribbon.