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Leonardo doesn't like to think of his life in two phases, "before Hellsalem's Lot" and "after Hellsalem's Lot".
Yet it stands undisputed that his life has gained new meanings, perhaps more than what was lost, after he set foot in Hellsalem's Lot. A world bigger than any he's ever dared to dream of, colours more vibrant than any he's ever known.
In its labyrinthine streets, friendships were forged to shield him against evils, unbreakable vows of loyalty clinging to his goggles. Though for the evil that comes from someplace in him, close to his lungs, extending hands to strangers didn't work the magic he'd been expecting. Ever-warm breath puffed into his turtleneck not enough to thaw the rails of ice surrounding his heart.
Everything he can get his fumbling hands on eventually sees the light of the day, where it is revealed: they are the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle he is trying to fit into the wrong template. A sister-shaped void is not to be patched up by anything the eye of the apocalypse could offer. As the distance wraps its poison ivy around his throat, fume sticky with sweet promises, struggling for breath, Leonardo comes close to momentary bouts of forgetting. His God's Eyes, he wants to spit on, blown from thankless glass, they're always ready to forget the moment they lose sight of anything.
He used to think he ought to give up on his life, the joys living for oneself could offer, to achieve what he set out to do. To make up for a moment of weakness, as compensation for the eyes he never asked for. For the life he stole from his sister; not because it'll give her back what's been lost, only to feel better. Thinking of himself again, thinking of saving his sorry self yet again, selfish, selfish. He used to, but it's all past tense now, because a swan's spotless white wings passed by with their blessing, rained it over his head; now he sees.
When forces larger than himself, larger than the pair of them, larger than life confronted them, it wasn't among his options to fight back. You can't fight God with the eyes he vouchsafed you. And when you have the sword of Damocles hanging over your head, you simply don't spend your remaining moments, the ending of which you can never predict, repenting for sins you were deceived into.
You make the best of the moments.
A swan found him, or he found the swan, in the most unlikely of places. Pretty, royal girls, after all, do not belong in hospitals, just like spineless cowards like him do not belong with pretty, royal girls. Yet his mouth was sealed; experience had gained him beneficial habits; he knew how to count his blessings. He didn't let self-consciousness have its way; he offered his thanks to the one he hoped was still listening to him, and he held the girl’s hand.
He got the girl. He got so close.
Snow-White, the one who reminded him of the things his traitorous eyes had come so close to forgetting. Snow-White, a stubborn seed in dry soil blooming into vast petals. Snow-White, tearing through the dark behind his eyelids.
Later, after Snow-White melted into the greying skin of the top of his hand, didn’t even see the light of the day but got away anyway, he had a difficult time reminding himself the rules again, revising them to cover the expanse of the new bend. You don’t blame yourself. You make the best of the memories.
Snow-White branded her shape onto his chest, from the inside, connecting a sister-shaped void to the void left behind by so close. Snow-White brought more tears than she’d prevented, staunched the bleeding on one side to leave the other exposed, but Snow-White was Leonardo’s sweetest heartache. They were bound by ties that ran deeper than the core of the very universe.
As the sun rises, he loses yet another friend to the unforgiving pits of the night. But onto the back of a wandering sunray, he can load renewed hope to send his sister, and keep a relic of it to force his thankless glass to remember.