I flew. Avaritia’s sins rose to a crescendo, then cut to an abrupt silence behind me, letting me know ey’d retreated to the Forest. I should have done the same. Instead, I flew until the sky grew dark enough to let me feel like I could vanish into it. Only then was I calm enough to tear a hole in the fabric of the world and follow Avaritia back to the Forest.

Avaritia was waiting in my room, sitting on my bed. Eir eyes lit up when I entered and ey tried not to look worried.

“Chiro!” ey greeted me. “You’re okay? Nothing bad happened back there?”

I thought of the sensation of my hand around Inessa’s neck.

“I’m fine,” I said instead. My tone didn’t quite manage to reach reassuring.

“I,”Avaritia hesitated, eir tail between eir legs. “I got you a cake. Wanna chat about how things went?”

I wondered about that. Did I? What would my partner think of me if ey knew how close I’d come? I hadn’t meant to hurt Inessa; however much she irritated me, however impossible it would be to go back, however much I wished I could take everything she had and make it mine. She was too wonderful and amazing to hate. I didn’t want to hurt her.

And yet, I wasn’t sure what would have happened if Ida hadn’t intervened at the end. Would I have stopped? Would I have been too caught up in that unfair anger at how she refused to see me as the monster I was?

“I beat Inessa,” I admitted. “I had her on the ground, one hand around her neck. Ida intervened, so I ran.”

Avaritia glanced at me, still clearly worried. “That’s great!” ey said, forcing a smile. “Let’s see if they underestimate you now!”

“I almost hurt her,” I tried to return the smile.

“But you didn’t, right?” Avaritia said as if that was what mattered.

“Like I said, Ida stopped me.” I shrugged. I’d been glad to be freed from the impossible situation. And yet, I couldn’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t been there. Would I have pulled myself back from that edge? Why had I gotten there in the first place?

“The Saints are tough,” Avaritia said. “They wouldn’t have stuck around if they’d break that easily.”

I wondered if that was comfort or irony in eir voice. I didn’t know how to respond.

Ey stretched eir legs, then rose to stand, “I’m proud of you partner.”

Avaritia stepped toward me, looming in a way that felt ever so uncanny.

“You proved that my jealous bat is strong and brave and beautiful now, that you’re more than just a victim. You showed you can do this!”

Ey reached out for a hug. I froze for a moment and before I could return the gesture, Avaritia had smoothly stepped past me toward the door.

“Sorry, I guess you don’t want to be cheered up, huh?” Ey laughed in a way that was almost natural. “I get it, it’s scary, to fight and realize what you could do. It’s okay to give yourself some time to get used to it, and you shouldn’t pressure yourself if you can’t handle it, partner!”

There was a hint of tremble in Avaritia’s voice, the ‘partner’ more question than statement.

I shook my head clear, “Thanks,” I said. “I think I just need a little time to think through things.”

“If you’re feeling up to it, we can go celebrate tomorrow,” Avaritia said, almost sounding reassured.

I tried to smile. Avaritia deserved none of my anxieties.

“Thanks, partner.”

The tension fled from eir shoulders, and Avaritia made eir exit with an almost suave line about letting eir jealous bat get her beauty sleep.

I spent much of the night wondering how the girl whose face I’d stolen was handling my actions.

---

I would have slept in if I had the option. That wasn’t my habit, but for all Superbia haunted the Abyssal Forest as my father had haunted home the place still felt so much safer and more welcoming.

Unfortunately, Avaritia Wolf had very little respect for existential horror induced sleep deprivation. At least, not when ey didn’t know about it.

The knocks started at 8am. I checked my phone’s clock, rolled over and ignored them until they stopped. At 8:30am, the knocks returned. Again at 8:45. At 8:50, unable to fall asleep anticipating the next knock, I gave up on spending the day sulking in bed, dressed myself and cracked the door open.

Avaritia slipped in a few minutes later.

“Morning Chiro!” ey greeted me with far too much confidence for someone who’d spent the past hour knocking on my door every few minutes.

I tried to smile back, “Morning.”

“Rough night?”

I shrugged.

“I had a lot to think about. I guess sleeping helped.” At least the sensation of Inessa’s throat under my claws felt a tiny bit more distant. I wouldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have done it. And now, at least, Inessa would never forgive me and wasn’t that exactly what I’d wanted? What I deserved?

Avaritia sighed, “You sure?” ey said as if something about my answer had conveyed anything less than absolute serenity.

I hesitated. C would have withdrawn, hidden his feelings and spent the day ignoring everything around him or hiding in his room alternatively picking at scabs and drowning himself in distractions to avoid any real semblance of introspection.

But I was Chiro now, and I’d stolen Inessa’s face. She would have shared her problems, talked them out and probably come out the other side a better person in about half an hour. Maybe that’s what really drove my envy deep down, more than her looks, her loving family, her power or her ability to connect to people like she’d stopped being a hollow shell of a human being or…

Okay, I had a lot of reasons to envy Inessa, but that was one of them.

“Chiro?” Avaritia was looking at me, at Inessa’s stolen face. I shook the cobwebs out of my head and smiled at em. Avaritia, of all people, would never deny the severity of my sins.

“I’m scared,” I admitted. I wasn’t like Inessa. For me, being honest felt like tearing off my skin and shoving my bleeding insides into everyone’s faces. But envy demanded imitation, and here that seed of sin could give me the little push I needed to do the impossible.

“That you hurt them?”

“That I might have hurt her. That I can’t go back, not that I want to, but I can’t go forward either because I finally stopped running from all these negative feelings and what I became was so violent and I almost…” I took a deep breath.

“You didn’t.” Avaritia interjected, the substance of what I had or hadn’t done to Inessa going unsaid, “Did you?”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

“You got a little caught up in the fight,” she said, as if that legitimized the heat that had taken over me in the moment, “and you lost track of what you were doing. Besides, they’re enemies! I get that you don’t hate them, I don’t hate them. But they’re trying to stop us from doing the right thing. If they really don’t want to fight, they can just not show up.”

I hesitated at that. I couldn’t imagine Inessa—or any of them—stopping just like that. They believed in standing up for what they believed was right no matter what. Avaritia was the same; eir faith in eir cause was almost existential.

Something in my face made em tense, and Lupin deflated a little. “But you still aren’t really sold on sin are you?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess, it’s just… It felt like I was someone else. Like, I’ve spent so long avoiding my feelings, avoiding jealousy and anger and wanting things at all and now that I know they’re there I can’t stop and they’re so strong from moment to moment. I was feeling good and then she said something and I couldn’t resist the urge to lash out. I don’t know if it’s the seed pushing me to choke Inessa or some part of me resents her so much I want to crush her.”

“Okay,” Avaritia breathed a sigh of relief. “We can work with this! You just need to get a better handle on your envy. Figure out what it is your seed wants and how you can direct it better. That way you’ll be in a better space next time you encounter her.”

I wondered about that. Would knowing that that envy howling inside my chest had nothing at all to do with what I’d almost done free me? Or was I better off sinking back into denial?

“How?” I asked despite myself.

Avaritia’s only answer was a grin.

---

The cold winter sun refracted off the last bits of compacted snow struggling to endure early March. It made being outside that much more unbearable.

“Why?” I asked, staring at Avaritia with all the overacted frustration I could muster.

Why, when faced with existential crises, was eir only answer shopping? At least, we hadn’t gone back to the mall. The area was at least a little better, one of the bigger streets in town trailing off from the city center proper to offer a number of shops, cafes and other miscellany that I’d never quite been able to conceptualize people actually visiting.

Avaritia grinned, and waved a hand around us.

“You see young Chiro,” eir tone was insufferably smug, “you’re worried about your sin, what the seed wants from you, or rather, what you really feel.”

I wondered if that was true, was the seed simply a reflection of my own envies? Its influence felt more like an intruder at times. But I also hadn’t realized how much Inessa’s simple existence made me burn until so recently.

“And?” I asked, curious despite myself.

“Look around you! What do you see?”

I looked down the street, heavy with foot traffic.

“An unpleasantly sunny day?”

“And?”

I was a bat! I was supposed to be nocturnal! There wasn’t supposed to be an “and” after that! I sighed.

“Shops?”

“And?”

“People?”

Lupin pumped eir fist. “Exactly! People, full of wants, of virtues. Sin.”

Ey was right of course. The street was a cacophony of little songs. Envy entwined with a kaleidoscope of other sins I was far less attuned to hear. None called me the way Mr. Brown had called to me. None sang so loudly or so enthrallingly that I could not but gravitate to them.

Lupin nodded, “Right. Take it in, let their cries flow through you and figure out what matches your own. Make them the mirror that shows you what you really need.”

Was that okay? It was different when Mr. Brown’s envy had been so loud that I could barely help but hear. But this was spying, spying on the parts of strangers that they wanted more than anything to to hide, even from themselves. Who was I to peek at all of that for my own gain?

The thought of anyone else doing that to me made me sick to my stomach. And yet, wasn’t it just because Avaritia had done that that I’d made it here instead of collapsing in on myself? I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing yet. I couldn’t believe the way ey did for all I desired otherwise.

“It’s fine,” Lupin whispered in my ear. “You’re not hurting anyone. You’re not outing their secrets with the whole world or turning anyone into a Resinner, even. And, look.” Ey took a deep breath, “It’s obvious you’re broken up about the fight. And the only way you’re going to move forward, partner, is to figure out what envy means to you. The better you understand yourself, the better you’ll understand how to guide that envy of yours and shape it and use it in the right ways.”

“Isn’t envy, well, envy?”

Avaritia bopped me lightly on the head. That was fair, it was a silly question. Mr. Brown’s envy was a haunted longing composition as different from my own howling emptiness as night was from day. Of course it couldn’t suffice to delay the inevitable.

“How?” I asked, accepting once more that I would put my own interests over the right thing to do.

“Just pick someone with enough of your sin to get a feel for, and, you know…” ey waved eir hand ambiguously.

“What?”

“I have faith in you, partner!” Avaritia gave me a bright and cheerful thumbs up.

“You,” thinking of it, Avaritia had talked a lot about how little human contact ey’d had until recently. “You’re just making this up aren’t you?”

Ey had the nerve to wink at me as ey grinned. “Well, I mostly came to Greed in a big empty castle, but it definitely seems like a good idea,” ey said cheerfully.

I glanced at the street.

“Is this an excuse to go shopping together...” I felt bad for saying it. I didn’t think Avaritia would really take advantage of my malaise like that. Sure, ey’d manipulate me if ey thought it would help or shove a supernatural seed into me without asking first if ey thought it was in my best interests, but for all eir impulsiveness, ey cared in a way that seemed almost impossible to explain. It was just easy to fall into the habit of teasing em, to let that mask slip and poke em the way I’d only ever really needled Inessa and…

“It’s youth! Youth!” Avaritia said, cutting through my circling thoughts with mock outrage.

“But, seriously, I think… Well, we couldn’t really do much of this kind of thing back in the forest. But, just going around school it’s wild how different everyone’s greed feels. I’m not that good at sensing things. But, feeling all the different ways it can express itself, all the emotions that are greedlike but don’t quite have that sinniness to them, it seemed like it would have helped a lot if I wasn’t amazing and already had everything sorted out.”

I sighed. It was invasive; it was wrong. But I’d already done so much worse. And, I… I’d almost hurt Inessa. I didn’t want that. I couldn’t do that again even if I did.

Letting Avaritia take my hand and guide me down the street, I took a deep breath and listened.

All around me, songs spread out, quiet and desperate and beautiful in their own ways. I let them sweep me away as I looked for any that might spark something.

A hollow, thumping beat caught my attention. Slow and echoing, it seemed to almost pull everything around it into itself, or it would have, were it not so poorly nurtured. I had it in me to fix that.

Avaritia tugged on my arm and, embarrassed, I withdrew my free finger from my mouth and wiped the drop of blood off against my skirt, eliciting a painful wince from the wolf next to me. Right, I was listening, not making monsters.

“Well, what’d you find that made you react like that?” ey asked, glaring at my skirt as if there was anything noticeable there!

“It’s hollow,” I admitted as I actually looked at the source of that beautiful little baseline. She was smiling as she window shopped with her friends.

“I tend to think of my own envy as a hollow kind of sound, so one like that seemed like a good place to start.”

They were laughing and chatting and I had almost turned their day out into the subject of horror. And yet, the envy was there, thumping quietly in every gesture, as steady as her heartbeat. A part of me ached to release it still, to make her face herself and stop denying that dark little emotion in her heart.

“Tell me more,” Avaritia’s voice helped ground me.

“It pulls everything in,” I answered, thinking. “Or, perhaps it makes everything into more of itself, harmonizing as if it could insert itself into their melodies and pull them toward itself.”

I looked more closely. They were staring at a display of jewelry, one of her friends talking. Wondering if she should buy it perhaps? The tiny song in her heart grew ever so slightly louder.

“She’s jealous,” I said, then blushed. Obviously she was jealous. I wouldn’t have noticed her if she wasn’t.

“Money, I think,” I said at last. I wasn’t sure why, but that felt right, or at least close enough. “She has a lot less than her friends; it makes her feel bad and a part of her wants to drag them down to her level.”

Understanding came as soon as I put the first bit to words. She hated that they had more, and yet, her envy didn’t drive her to grow or copy or become, or perhaps it did. Perhaps the little ways it tunneled into their songs weren’t just to drag everyone down but to puff herself up in comparison? She had good friends, so obviously she could be worth something. And yet, it also wanted to tear everything away from them, to expose them for the privileged fools they were and drag them down to the world of have-nots.

“It’s complicated,” I said at last. Was that bad? Hating the well-off, just a little? I liked to think that society probably should be more equal, and yet, that didn’t seem the way to get there.

Well, Avaritia would say that obviously sin wasn’t bad, that virtue just maintained a restrictive status quo that only served those on top. But it was hard to think that that kind of quagmire of a vice could really change anything or save anyone. And yet, I still wanted to make her sing at the top of her lungs.

“Want to share more?” Avaritia asked, squeezing my hand gently to help pull me away.

“It’s all messy,” I said, watching the woman smile and joke. Who was I to judge? Her envy hadn’t supped on her veins and replaced her face with a mask. She was nice and kind and happy and that envy was a tiny little thing, not like mine.

“Most people are,” Avaritia said cheerfully. “It’s a reason why people who are all about virtue are wrong. It’s normal, you know, to want in the wrong ways? Anyway,” she said, turning from eir imminent campaign speech to the immediate topic, “how do you think it compares to your envy?”

I wondered at that. We were both hollow. We both saw ourselves as failures compared to our friends. And yet, this stranger wanted to ruin her friends, to pull them down. What did I want? I had literally stolen Inessa’s face, but I hardly thought I deserved to be Inessa Brandt. Both I and this stranger were hollow, and yet our emptiness was so profoundly different as to be incomprehensible from each other’s.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted.

Avaritia nodded companionably, “Plenty of fish in the sea Chiro, you’ll figure yourself out sooner or later.”

And so it went. We walked down the street and pretended to window shop and talked and I spied on any stranger who crossed my eyes. At the very least, it got a little easier to hold back that urge to set free every petty desire I found.

That particular want, even Avaritia agreed, was the seed mostly. And yet, refusing that urge earned no punishments. Ey were probably right, though it wasn’t like I couldn’t sympathize. I ached to tell people that those petty desires they buried were fine or good or that they could face those and be richer for it. My envy had grown in the shadows of my heart until I couldn’t control it anymore, until it was all I had left. These petty desires weren’t like me. They didn’t need to eradicate themselves to change.

And yet… I caught my face—Inessa’s face—in a window and sighed. Had accepting that twisted desire fixed anything? Envy had given me everything I’d never been allowed to want and that same envy would never let me confuse it for something of mine. I was happier, I thought, as a beast wearing the mask of a hero. But I wasn’t fixed. My envy would give me any facade I needed, but my essence couldn’t change. It would let me pass on its gifts or not, take the stage or not, so long as I didn’t forget that Chiro and Invidia were people I could never be.

Something deep inside my chest pulsed comfortingly, offering a silent affirmation. So long as I basked in my nature, the seed wouldn’t turn against me.

“It’s strange,” I said to Avaritia, watching a manager who’d just gotten promoted and begun to resent his employees for ‘having it easy’.

Ey looked at me curiously, urging me to continue.

“Just, for so many envy isn’t about wanting to change yourself. It’s hating what you don’t have, but a lot of them just want to pull everyone down with them.”

“And that’s not how you feel about the Saints?” Avaritia was rapidly developing a habit of rhetorical questions.

“Inessa’s…” I didn’t know how to express it. “She’s a person I could never be. She has things I’ll never have, but she’s good and right and I don’t…”

I didn’t want to hurt her, did I? It would explain why I’d been so eager, why I’d needed to escalate this conflict at every turn.

“I don’t know.”

I’d like to say that I just wished I could become like her. But even I couldn't delude myself into mistaking that kind of admiration or aspiration for a sin. Sins were bitter and dark and twisted even if we needed them.

“Let’s take a break!” Avaritia’s words cut off my musings.

I blushed, even now, ey were taking care of me, watching and looking and knowing me better than I knew myself. In others, I’d hated that pushy halfhearted kindness, but Lupin seemed to get it in a way that they didn’t.

“And do what?” I asked, sticking my tongue out at em.

“Well,” ey tapped eir finger against eir chin, pretending to think, “I am a greedy greedy girl of course, and I just so happen to have a cute girl out with me, so, it would simply be outside my nature not to take her shopping.”

I blushed at that and stammered agreement, letting Avaritia take the lead with a great deal more purpose. And there it was. For all it hurt to see Inessa looking back at me in the mirror, for all the people I pretended to be could never replace Charlie deep down, the pretense alone was light and joy and laughter in a way I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

I giggled to myself and nearly bumped into a pedestrian.

He was tall and thick and he smelled of alcohol.

“S-sorry,” I muttered. Then our eyes met, and he really looked at me and for one terrible moment I was back home.

I wilted under that scrutiny, waiting to be named, to be seen and to be dragged back where I really belonged.

There was nothing resembling recognition in his eyes.

The moment passed and the man walked past, muttering something under his breath.

Avaritia said something; I didn’t hear it. Ey froze for a moment, then grabbed my hand and pulled. I stumbled after Lupin, down an alley, through a tear in the world, and back into the comforting emptiness of the Abyssal Forest. Somewhere in that process I managed to tell Lupin I was okay, that it was fine. I wasn’t sure if that did anything to assuage em.

It took till I was in my room hugging a pillow before I could manage to give word to thought.

“I bumped into that man and,” I took a deep breath. “I thought it was him for a moment. Umm, dad that is.”

Lupin’s frown took on a much more serious pallor.

“I don’t think it was.” I admitted, then laughed. I hadn’t seen him in, what, two weeks? And I couldn’t even tell him apart from someone who looked like him.

“But, I just… I expected him to see me and know because, well, even if I’ve changed I’m still me and even if he hates me, he’s still my dad. I was terrified and, even then, I still wanted him to say something. Some little part of me still wanted him to say it had all been a mistake and to accept all this and welcome me back,” I trailed off pathetically.

Avaritia, ey was far too much a wolf in that moment to go by any other name, nodded bittersweetly.

“It’s hard, isn’t it. There were good times too and they’re never all bad and you want to just cling to those and you wish that others could see that little bit of it instead of just lashing out or telling you what’s good for you. He,” I wondered if it was my father ey was talking about or someone else. Either way, the words soothed, “hurts you sometimes and does bad things and that’s not okay but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t also do nice things or that he’s not suffering too in his own ways and you want to change things and make them work, even when you know that no matter how hard you try to greedily hold on to every tie you can, something’s going to break.”

Avaritia stopped abruptly, clamping down on something ey hadn’t meant to share.

“Yeah,” I said, wondering which of those that had hurt Avaritia so was the one in eir mind now. “And yet, eventually you have to go, and then you can’t let yourself go back, can you?”

Ey didn’t answer that. In its own way, the silence and the commiseration helped to soothe more than any advice would have.

And then evening came and Avaritia went to answer Superbia’s call, to face eir monstrous savior alone to avoid any hurt to eir precious partner. When ey returned, eir hands were behind eir back, clutching something I couldn’t see.

“Hey,” ey said, radiating a casual confidence even more brittle than eir usual.

“Hey,” I answered back.

Avaritia gave me a confirming nod.

“Thanks for earlier.” I added when the conversation froze there into a moment of quiet uncertainty.

“I got you something,” ey said mischievously, as if ey hadn’t taken every opportunity since the mall to shower me with gifts. “I was going to wait for a happier time to give it to you, but, well, you seemed like you might need it now.”

I blinked at that as Avaritia shoved something soft with a pleasant furry texture into my hands. I squished it experimentally. The plushie flopped. I looked at it and fell in love.

It was pillow sized, and dark purple, with large floppy wings protruding from the sides. It—he had a tailored waistcoat around his round body and long fangs protruding from his mouth.

“I’ll name him Count Fruitula,” the ears were short and the face had that youthful energy associated with fruitbats, or at least as associated with fruitbats as a plushie could be. Besides, he was clearly too nice to be a vampire.

Lupin’s mouth shaped itself into a savage smirk and I felt my cheeks turn beat red.

“Thanks,” I said at last.

“So, partner,” ey said more seriously. “Superbia wants, well, if it works we could all get a lot stronger, but it’ll be a little bit, well, I’ll be fine because I’m kind of amazing, but, well, I need to think about this a little and I wanted to see if you thought you’d be okay on your own tomorrow after, well, everything?”

I mock-glared at em. “Of course I’ll be fine!” I said at last, “Honestly, I’m not sure what I want to do or what my sin means, but I’m strong you know.” Or at least I could fake it now, “I’ll be fine on my own.”

Ey grinned and thanked me with a quick, eep-eliciting hug, and then ey were gone.

I wondered at that. Avaritia, who declared eir greed was keeping others close and giving them the world, pushed me away the second ey faced eir own worries; that wasn’t fair at all. But, well, I didn’t understand them the way ey so effortlessly seemed to pull apart my issues. And platitudes didn’t feel like the right response. I had too much experience to think that would do anything but make them wall themselves off, desperate not to seem like eir continued worries were my failure.

So Sunday passed in quiet contemplation. Besides, I might have been quite so embarrassed to spend so much of the day hugging a plushie and watching bat videos if Avaritia had seen me.

And, when Monday finally arrived I felt almost whole enough to look my former friends in the eye after everything I’d done. Well, at least I could mimic Inessa’s confidence and pretend it was so.

NEXT WEEK ON SHINING VIRTUE ANGELIC HEART!!!

In order to help Inessa cheer up after her failure to transform, Ida takes her and their new friend Chiro for a girl’s day out. Unfortunately for the girls, this puts them right in the path of Invidia’s latest Resinner. Will Inessa be able to reawaken the flames of purity in time to help Ida defeat the monster!?

Tune in for Episode 25: A Close Shave!! The Root of Inessa’s Worries

Shadell

So, this one took forever! I'm still not happy with it in some ways I think, but if I let myself tinker with it more, I'm not sure it's going to turn out better than it is and most of the betas said it was good, so YOLO I guess.

I'd like to thank betas as usual, especially @Clown Bean who gave it a very thorough look! As always, if you want to see chapters a bit before they come out here, or join in on the discussion about this little story, I'm posting things a few days to a week early on Sufficient Velocity.