The Demon in the Pastry Shop

42: Such Brutal Benevolence

 The old muse kept the edge of his mouth pinned into his cheek by a worn dimple. He watched the fish go by outside the train window and Silus' back pressed into the back of the seat like two boards stacked together. His snakes liked to watch the fish too, with devious little hisses and plans to attack the pretty orange one despite the thick glass in the way.

"Before she comes back, go ahead and tell me why you're so smug," Silus closed his eyes. He'd been staring at the velvet cushioned bench and faded, beige, floral wallpaper with the brassy luggage rack above for so long, he could see it on the backs of his eyelids but he could at least pretend for release from it.

Jude chuckled low through his lungs, triggering a torrent of coughs but even as he pressed his bandaged hand to his chest to quell the fight, his eyes glimmered across the booth at Silus.

When the coast was clear of his respiratory distress, Jude laughed again, "I knew it, that's all."

"What did you supposedly know?" Silus grumbled.

Jude touched his fingertip to the glass, a black fish with spots and whiskers kissing it from the other side. He smiled, toothily and slightly crooked. "I knew that you weren't going to go through with it. You wouldn't turn Kit in."

Silus huffed.

The muse's face went from pleased to troubled. He dropped his hand from the window. The softened halo of light from the glass cupped bulbs overhead made his prism pulse look faint.

"Will you be okay?"

Silus hadn't been consuming anything but still choked on words he didn't speak. With a forceful breath, he pushed his shock down, compressing it into a rock in his stomach before he squinted and asked as though he had swallowed a handful of sand, "what?"

"Sparing Kit means that you won't be able to get your heart back. Did you find some other way of getting it?"

The idea that this stranger would care at all about what happened to him, especially in light of the problems he caused, was beyond confusing to Silus. There was no mailbox in Silus' brain to put that message.

"N-no," he responded after the long pause.

"You sacrificed a lot to save her then," Jude acknowledged with a bow of his head, "thank you."

"I... I thought that you thought the quest for my first heart was worthless."

"I don't know if I said that," Jude furrowed his brow, "I may have said it wasn't worth killing Kit, but it was something very important to you, wasn't it? Just because it was the right thing to do doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It doesn't mean you can't wish it could've been different. Is the heart you have right now... is it enough? Will you be okay with this one?"

Silus hadn't factored compassion into his plan to get Kit and Jude to safety. It was gumming up his gears and he worried he might get stuck caring about this family too much.

"Well... this heart is a mistake," he told Jude plainly. His heart didn't even feel insulted by this. It kept space in his chest like a prairie without wind. "But so am I. So, I guess... we're as good a match as any after all."

Jude took in this answer thoughtfully, though he didn't share anymore of his thoughts on the matter.

"What about you? Don't you play an instrument?" Silus gestured to Jude's wounded hand, "what will happen to a muse that can't play his instrument? What will happen to your human?"

"I haven't thought about it."

"Really?" Silus' eyebrows shot up.

Jude shrugged, "it's not about me right now. It's about getting Kit out of this mess and keeping her safe. My career, my passion, that's for later. But I suppose I'll have to retire a hundred years early. My human will be one of the rare ones who gets reassigned. He'll hate it, I'm sure. I'll probably hate it too. But he'll make good music without me."

"You really love her," Silus stated, though Jude's love for Kit was obvious the day he faced the gun for her, "I don't think all father-in-laws are like that."

"Yeah?" he laughed, the humor returning to his eyes, though he said sincerely, "Kit was very kind to me when I didn't deserve it. Now I do my best to deserve it."