3 A little sympathy for the devil

I could hear the sound of the waves, the granular touch of what I recognized as sand. I opened my eyes to an eery purple sky so similar to the one I knew had been created in the underworld by my brother and the other Satans.

"You're finally awake," I heard a familiar voice say on my side.

I turned my head and here she was as if she had never been out of my life, as if I hadn't run away. Curly Red hair and Olive skin. Features that could only be called aristocratic and Freckles doting a face that could only be said to be the perfect mix of fierce and beautiful as if I was before a royal being.

"Am I in hell," I asked her.

A bitter laugh escaped her "Maybe it's the damnation I think you deserve, maybe it's not and I'm just a figment of your mind."

I removed my gaze from her and turned it to the sky "It sucks," I spoke.

"Language," she instantaneously said.

"I'm grown Mom, you can't censure what I say anymore," I told her.

"You've always been ungrateful. I gave you everything and you discarded it, you discarded all the sacrifices I made for you," she said.

"I chose for once myself. I chose to be selfish and I don't regret it, Mom. You gave me what you thought, what you wanted me to need when I'm sure that deep down, you knew it wasn't the case. You wanted to mould me into something I didn't wish to be."

"I've lived more than half a century. I may have made many mistakes but those things I've done, I don't regret them, I don't think they were wrong," she spoke.

"It's always the same thing, dismissing what I think or feel because I'm young. You had told me in the past that you had wanted me to feel good, to be free and happy but it had never truly been the case when I was with you. You only taught me to lie, to hide."

"How dare you?" she shouted. I merely sighed. "I gave you things that most would not dream of. I gave you privilege and in return, you only gave me ungratefulness."

I turned towards her and her angry face "Things have changed Mom. I won't hesitate to hurt you back if you hit me."

"I had thought at your birth you were a blessing but it's clear that you were a hidden curse."

"Thanks, Mom, I can totally feel the love."

"If I could have chosen, you would not have been my child," she said to me while looking at me in the eyes.

"Same," I answered her. "I would have preferred to either not been born or to have another mother but as you had told me, we can't unfortunately choose who are our parents."

We stayed in silent. I tried the old familiar panic I could feel, how difficult it was becoming to breathe and how my heart hurt.

"In the end, all of your actions, do you really they were worth it? You died alone," she spoke after a moment.

"I did die alone but at least it had been on my terms. I had wished to die with the least regret possible. I won't say that there were things I wouldn't change if I could but honestly, I feel content plus this death was just another beginning."

"All I've ever done," she spoke softly "was for you. I didn't want to hurt you. I loved you."

"I know this. You dealt with the cards you were handled and tried your best." Her best just wasn't enough.

I remember endless expectations, a never-ending amount of it. I wished I had been the child that she had wanted me to be.

I wished that all her efforts hadn't been vain. I wished that she could still look at me with love like she once did.

I knew that it would never happen again. I had left her because I knew that if I didn't, one of us would have inevitably ended the life of the other.

It was a world where hurt people hurt other people. When all your life, what you've been taught and exposed to was suffering by your own parents or your own families, it wasn't unexpected for a person to try to push all their hatred, all their despair on the indifferent world they lived in, on others.

It didn't excuse their actions because hurting others just to feel better about themselves were the actions only committed by someone weak, an animal and rabid animals were put down.

"I don't think even after everything, I could stop loving you," I admitted. Everything we went through, every moment we shared, good or bad was engraved in my mind no matter how much I wished and prayed for them to be gone.

My back left the sand. My gaze travelled forward to a scarlet ocean, one I knew was of destruction, deep and dark. It didn't matter what could have been. I had taken my own path and I didn't regret it. Love itself wasn't enough.

I stood up "You're leaving again aren't you?" she asked even though we both already knew the answer to this question.

"Yes," I answered. ****** was dead. Only Rias remained.

I walked to the sea and entered it. I looked back a last time, to a past I wished so much was different, to a gilded golden cage, to the sadness on her face and let myself fall into the dark waves of red.

Destruction filled me, it felt like an embrace. Even though breathing was becoming impossible, even though I felt myself being consumed, I didn't panic.

What was the quote again? From the nothing they came and to the nothing they would go back. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them up, it was to the sight of a white ceiling. I felt something covering my body. I checked and it was a blanket of red colour.

I looked at my side. I wasn't the only one present in what seemed to be a hospital room.

They were at my bedside or on couches sleeping in what were clearly uncomfortable positions, my family, my peerage.

Koneko and Akeno were at my bedside. I could see dried tears on the face of the white-haired girl. My Queen who always looked usually composed looked like a mess, her frazzled, going in all directions and with visible eye bags on her face even though she was asleep.

Yuto was on one of the couches. It was clear that my knight had tried to fight against Hypnos' grasp and had lost. On the other couch, Asia and Issei were sleeping, the former in the arm of the latter. My pawn looked so innocent. No one would imagine him to be the pervert he was if they had seen him in his sleep. Asia and he looked cute together.

I wasn't like the canonical Rias who would have fallen in love with Issei because he had beaten her Riser and It was very unlikely for me in this timeline to fall in love with him plus I've always thought that Asia and him were better together.

My thoughts were interrupted by a wave of something I could only call wrong, dark and twisted. My peerage members stopped breathing. It was as if someone had used a remote and had used the stop button. I saw with my sight how the atoms themselves stopped in their movement.

A dark circle appeared on the ground and illuminated the room. It was made of intricate geometrical forms. Its colour was reminiscent of blood. I could through the past memories of Rias recognize the demonic runes for sin and Greed.

From it, he rose. With his shoulder-length scarlet hair, his androgynous face and his blue-green eyes, he and I looked as if we were twins the person before me could not be mistaken for someone else than my older and only brother, Sirzechs, the prince of lies, the Satan Lucifer, one of the strongest being in existence.

I watched him walk in a way so gracious it seemed that he had instead glided. He sat at my side on the bed. His emotions were laid bare on his face. I could see anger, sadness, despair. "Hello Rias," he said to me.

"Hello, Sirzechs Oni-sama," I answered.

He was looking at me as if trying to dissect me, find something that don't think I was aware of. From the memories I inherited from the original Rias, I could not remember one moment where he laid on me such a gaze. "You scared me Rias," he spoke softly. "It has been six days since your rating game. You've been unconscious since."

"I watched your rating game so many times Rias." His voice broke "I watched how you, my only sister chose to end yourself and almost succeeded so that she could win."

I felt guilty. It felt like a pang piercing my heart. I turned my head away from him. Looking at the figure that I've always seen as the symbol of strength looking so devastated was unbearable. "I won't apologize," I answered.

"I did what I had to do so that I would not have to marry Riser so that I would not be forced to be married to someone I hated for all eternity."

"You didn't need to go to such length. I am your brother. I would have found a way so that it wouldn't happen," he told me. In canon, Sirzechs and Grayfia made sure that Issei was able to crash my wedding. I could have done nothing, given up, and let myself lose but the thing was that I wasn't certain if I could count on what I remembered of Canon.

Someone wasn't supposed to be reincarnated in Rias Gremory. Riser wasn't supposed to turn into an infernal Avian monstrosity. Counting on Canon wasn't something I could have done.

There was also the fact that all the parts that made me, from the original Rias to the human I was before incarnating and fusing with Rias Gremory were exhausted, tired of being stripped of their ability to choose, to just be themselves instead of the thing people expected them to be.

I turned back my gaze on the form of my brother "Could I have really depended on you Brother?" I asked him.

I saw how his lips were beginning to move probably to confirm the fact that he would have done something. I talked before he could "You're the Satan Lucifer. You had told me in the past that you had the duty to make sacrifices for all of the devilkind. Don't tell me that there are laws not allowing you to interfere brother. I know that if you had really wished for my betrothal to Riser to be broken, you could have done it no matter what the consequences were."

When I was younger, Sirzechs had told me one thing. He had told me that he would always be there for me, that there was nothing he wouldn't move in this world to make me happy. "You're a liar. I trusted you, I thought that you would have done something and you didn't. Do you remember the promise you made to me when I was six?"

"How could I forget," he spoke softly.

"Rias, I am sorry. I never wished for things to be this way," he added.

I leaned my head on his shoulder and used it as a pillow. "I never wished to be a Satan," he revealed "or the Heir of the Gremory clan."

"What did you want to be?" I asked him.

"I wanted to be a music teacher," he answered. From my memories, I knew that one of the things that my brother liked to do when he had time to relax was playing the guitar. He used to play for me until I slept.

"I'm sure you were a good one," I told him.

A broken smile bloomed on his face. "I hope that it was the case. If things were different, maybe if we weren't devils, descendants of demons with war and savagery inscribed in our essence, maybe I would have been allowed to remain a music teacher."

"Rias, you have to understand that the world I was born in wasn't a kind one. It was one so much crueller than this one. Lucifer and his subjects had died against God." A headache erupted in my head for an instant before disappearing.

"The Descendants of the old Satans wanted to continue a war it was clear should have ended thousands of years ago, a war I knew would have resulted even if we won at the end of our kind. War is excuse me for the pun hell Rias especially when it's one between families, childhood friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and Fathers. With those hands, I had to claw to victory, I had to do so many atrocities and slaughter so many that Genghis Khan would look like a child compared to me."

"I did all of those things," he continued "so that our race could live on so that devils would never have to lose loved ones in non-sensical bloodshed."

Our gazes met "You and Millicas were the greatest things that happened to me. You were the proof that everything I've ever done wasn't vain, that all the sacrifices I made were being rewarded. I knew you hated the Phenex boy. I talked with Mother and Father about dissolving the marriage contract. They refused."

I could hear a hatred so deep in his voice that it seemed as if the world itself had become darker, dull, dying. This was the kind of hate that could make someone torture another while smiling. "Everything we've built depends on our neutrality, on the fact that we follow rules made by weaker beings than us. If I had forcefully broken the contract, I wouldn't be better than the Old Satan faction, I would be showing that the only thing that mattered was strength, that the laws and conventions we had created for devilkind were worthless. If the strongest forces himself to follow the law, it means to everyone he's ruling, choosing to not impose his complete will on that perhaps things should be different."

"If you had lost, I would have found an indirect way to break the contract. I never lied to you Rias." I looked at him and could only see sincerity.

The light novel hadn't been able to show how deep the relationship between the canonical Rias and Sirzechs was. The first word that this body had uttered had been his name. The person to whom I've always cried has been Sirzechs.

Zeoticus and Venelana even with all their failings and the fact that they had intended to forcefully marry their daughter to another devil were the most loving parents that a supernatural being could ask for yet Sirzechs, my brother had been more of a parent to me than my biological ones.

It was the reason why in canon, Rias had always tried to do things without asking his help. She had done this because she had wanted him to be proud of her but looking at his face, at how he looked at me as if I was the only thing to matter in the entire universe, I couldn't call the original me anything else other than an idiot. Her brother, Sirzechs would have always loved and been proud of her no matter what she did. The love that he had towards me was one I easily recognized as unconditional.

It was the love parents were supposed to have towards their children but most of the time didn't give it to their children because those weren't what those parents wished they were.

"I believe you," I told him softly. "I won't lie to you and tell you that the same thing will not happen again in the future."

I thought about Kokabiel, the Khaos brigade, Ophis, Rizevim and so many other threats that I surely have forgotten.

I couldn't count on Issei, on Canon for my safety. I could only count on myself, that was the only certainty I had. Words were winds. Actions differed from them, from what we promised, and wanted to realize.

"I already failed you Rias. I won't do it again," my brother said with steel in his voice.

"Brother," I said regaining his attention.

"I don't want to see them for a moment," I told him. I couldn't understand how Rias after being subjected to a forced betrothal from her parents would be able to interact with them after the Riser arc as if nothing had happened, as if her choice hadn't been stripped away by them, as if she hadn't been almost married for all eternity to someone she hated.

Saying that I hated them would be a lie. I still loved them but that feeling of love was submerged by a feeling of immense disappointment.

I had heard in the past that in relationships whether they were with family members or friends, as long as there were positives, those relationships shouldn't be cut because negative things had happened. You were supposed to forgive and forget and go on as if nothing had happened because not always being a complete piece of shit was supposed to be a sufficient criterion for a relationship. You were supposed to be fine with that and not search for better.

My brother didn't try to convince me away from such action, he didn't judge and his loving gaze on me didn't change. "Consider it done Rias," he spoke.

I didn't thank him verbally. I just snuggled closer to him. I spoke after a moment of comfortable silence "Did you know that Sona and I had an argument three years ago when we came to Kuoh?"

"Serafall and I knew that something had happened. We didn't know exactly what it was. We didn't try to get involved because both of you had always talked of how you had wanted to be able to do things by yourselves without us interfering," he revealed.

Sona and I had grown together. She and I both were siblings of two Satans. We were of the same age, something rare amongst pure-blood devils due to the low fertility of devilkind. Our families had been allied for thousands of years. We both had been each other confident. We had been more than friends. "Sona had once told me that I was lazy, that I should be trying to do anything that would allow me to get out of this contract. She had told me that I wasn't doing enough, that it was as if I didn't want to get out of it."

I saw my brother wince. Sona had known how I'd hated Riser, she had known how I had hated that contract yet she had dared say that I was choosing to not escape from it, that maybe I wished for the betrothal to truly happen. Even thinking about felt as if nails were being slowly plunged into my heart.

In my past life, a lot of people had deemed Rias as a lazy, spoiled heiress, who had everything given to her, and who chose facility over what was supposed to be done. What Sona and they thought were if not identical mirrors to each other.

I was now Rias and none of them, none of them could ever understand or had tried to. They talked as if living beings were logical creatures. They talked as if doing what needed to be done was easy.

The original Rias had tried to grow stronger. She had trained when she had learned of her betrothal and the only thing she received from training was almost nothing. No growth in demonic energy, no more stronger physically while she had seen how Riser through each of his rating games grew stronger and stronger.

They didn't know the despair of knowing that all your efforts, all your tears sweat and blood were worth in the end nothing.

They talked as if the act of trying when faced with an inevitable loss was easy. The original Rias Gremory had tried and like most that did, she failed. The only ones who loved to complain about laziness were the ones who were never in the same situation as the person they deemed lazy.

It's as if a millionaire was saying to a homeless person they were homeless because they didn't work enough as if most people because of the conditions they were afflicted at or surrounded by at birth weren't already predisposed to it. What people hate to hear is that most of the time, success comes from luck. Without it, nothing done even if it was perfect would work.

This is why the original Rias loved Mangas and Japan. This was why she had loved the human world. It was her form of escapism. Here, She could escape notions such as her being a heiress, and responsibilities that she never asked for. Here in Kuoh, in her town, in my town, I was only Rias Gremory, a student and the president of the occult club, nothing else.

It was easy for Sona to speak. Unlike me, she had been given the choice of how she would choose who she would marry. She couldn't understand. She had been able to have what I have always wanted, a choice. How could she dare come to me and say that I wasn't trying enough when trying in itself was worthless when trying in itself was as if being Atlas holding the sky?

"In retrospect, Maybe she was right. Maybe I was just hoping for a solution to all my problems to present itself to me. Maybe I should have or could have tried better. It doesn't change the fact that those words still hurt."

"Unlike many, I was born strong," my brother spoke. "Even if I had done nothing to increase more quickly my strength, I would have still been one of the strongest if not the strongest of the Satans. Only those of my generation know the fact that once, I Sirzechs Gremory was betrothed to someone other than Grayfia."

I couldn't stop the gasp of shock that escaped me. "You? Bethothed?" I said disbelief evident in my tone.

The only lover that my brother Sirzechs was known to ever have was Grayfia. It was something even written in the history books of our races.

It wouldn't be wrong to say that Sirzechs and his wife Grayfia were the equivalent of Romeo and Juliet for devilkind except the fact that unlike Romeo and Juliet, they had their happy ending.

It was the tale of two different Devils on different sides that shouldn't have been together, whose love story should have ended in tragedy and who instead had been able to prevail against all.

"To whom were you betrothed?" I asked him. Even before being a Satan, my brother had been considered as the strongest devil in his generation and devilkind had always gravitated toward strenght. Our clan was also a royal one even if we were technically at the bottom, unlike the Bael clan.

It meant that for lower pure-blood houses like the Phenex clan, marrying one of us would have meant a greater status and for higher houses, an acceptable candidate to marry with. This was why my father had technically the right to marry my mother, the daughter of the great king Bael.

In any case, it was impossible that Both the betrothed of my brother or their clan accepted easily the rupture of a marriage contract.

"Few devils were born around the same time that I was and do you think our parents would have married me to someone they thought would have not brought something at our clan? Let me give you a clue. They're still alive".

I began to think using all the knowledge that I had before being inserted and the memories that I had inherited. The thing with devils was that we were natural shapeshifters. We unconsciously affect and change the way we look to appear as something we would like.

Some devils with good control over their demonic energy could do it at will. It wasn't wrong to say that there were no ugly devils.

We could change our biology in ways that shouldn't be physically possible. It was also the reason why devilkind didn't truly care about stupid concepts like sex or gender.

What pure-blood devils cared about was the bringing of new pure-blood devils into the world. If we had been human and limited like they were, things would have been way different but in a society where every member is a literal demon shapeshifter, one care less about things like gender or sex and more about finding pleasure in any way possible. It's not also as if it was a good idea to try to restrict the sexual urges of an Omnisexual devil capable of blowing up a mountain by sneezing.

There were tales of devils growing men's genitalia or vice versa. Unfortunately, most of those times, the reason why they had been doing such things wasn't what could be called consensual.

Anyway, I tried searching mentally for different Devils that had been around for five hundred years or more and that were from a similar or greater status than our clan. My analysis directed me towards only three possible candidates. "Please, tell me it wasn't one of the other Satans," I begged.

His only answer was "I don't want to lie to you Rias but you're right in thinking it's one of the other. Our father and Sona and Serafall's grandfather who was called Sreaszex are what could be called a special breed of devils. They were the only children of the demons Gremory and Sitri. They had fought together in the Great War. The grandfather of Serafall and Sona had died in the arms of our father Zeoticus. The both of them Father had told me had wanted to fuse our clans and our lineages but they were unable to because the Original Sitri already had plans for Sreaszex. When Sreaszex's son and my father brought to the world devils the same year, they had seen it as a sign from Lucifer himself."

"I was married to Serafall not even a year after my birth and I hated it just like you did with Riser Rias," he said to me.

"How did you break the betrothal?" I asked him. A Betrothal between devils was not only a physical or verbal contract. We were devils. It was a soul-binding one that could only be broken through certain conditions. A betrothal could only be enforced on a pure-blood devil by the authority of the head of his clan. Most contracts had clauses because devils liked to act as if there were chances of escaping their plots when most of the time, there were no chances of doing such. To break a betrothal contract made by devils, you were supposed either to find a way to realize one of the stipulated clauses as I did with beating Riser in a rating game or by Killing the head of your clan, usurping his authority and with it break the contract.

We were devils from the Gremory clan. Familicid was antithetic to us, in the same way, the light of either the sun or divine beings was for devils.

"I was able to break it because when I became Lucifer, usurped the lingering power our progenitor had left behind before his demise I was cast out of our clan. At a metaphysical level, as long as I hold the mantle of Lucifer, I'm unable to be bound by the decisions of the head of our clan," my brother revealed.

"Was Serafall as happy as you when you broke it?" I asked him. I couldn't imagine the Serafall I knew from both set of memories I have be happy with the fact that she would be forced into a marriage.

Sirzechs chuckled darkly "Unfortunately she and her clan weren't happy. It is said that Grayfia and her fought over the title of Leviathan but it couldn't be more wrong than this. Serafall didn't fight Grayfia, she slaughtered her. She would have murdered her if I hadn't intervened. Serafall can be called many things that are probably wrong except for one thing. She's the strongest devil our kind has ever produced."

"But you and lord Ajuka," I objected "are seen as the strongest of our race."

"Ajuka and I aren't technically what could be called devils but this is a discussion for another day. To appease the Sitri clan that had followed and supported me against the old Satan faction, I made her a satan, and made sure with the help of Ajuka that she would be able to usurp a part of the lingering authority of the great serpent, the prince of envy."

"You said it was to appease the Sitri clan but Did it appease Serafall?" I questioned him. If I had been Serafall and the one that I was betrothed to and that I supposedly loved to the point I had been ready to follow him into a civil war and tried to kill the one he supposedly fell in love with because I was jealous, even the highest title or seat of power would not have been enough to get rid of my jealousy and hatred.

"It wasn't," my brother admitted. "I had to promise her something. She wanted me to at least give her a part of the future she said that Grayfia had stolen from us."

He looked me in the eyes with a sad gaze "She asked me for a child and I gave it to her."

Shock erupted in me before being replaced by sadness. If Sirzechs had a child other than Millicas even though it was an illegitimate one, I would have known. That child would have been both a Gremory and a Sitri and there was nothing more sacred for a Gremory than family.

The fact of me not having met that child meant one thing "That child died, isn't it?" I asked even if I already knew the answer.

My brother closed his eyes "Yes," he confirmed. "A stillbirth it was said. Serafall's mind with the loss of the child broke. It took me centuries to try to put back the pieces. I had been able to have what I wanted, the freedom to love who I wanted to pass all my eternity with but in return, I broke the heart of one of my childhood best friends who had always been there for me. I had tried my best and in the end, it felt like a pyrrhic victory where I both won and lost. I tried my best and in the end, it didn't really matter. I wasn't able to completely avoid what I wanted to avoid so I understand you Rias. Maybe like you said, we could have done things differently, we probably should have but it was we who had to make those choices and no one except us really knows how it is. What they say or think doesn't matter. The only thing we can do that I would loved to know sooner is to treat ourselves with compassion, not like something that should be perfect because no being has ever been perfect Rias."

I rose with difficulty from my bed and hugged him. He leaned into it. "I love you, Brother," I said to him. I had lost many people that I had loved before without being able to say those words. You never know when you will lose your loved ones. Life was fragile. No one even if they thought they thought they were was prepared to confront death. It was better to show them that you loved them before it was too late because not doing such a thing would be something that would haunt you forever.

I felt his arms close themselves around my body. "I love you too Rias."

I could feel wetness on my shoulder. I acted as if I wasn't aware. What did Dante say? Even devils may cry.

After a moment, I retreated from his arms. My brother looked happy as if he was a construction worker and at the end of the day, all of his struggles had been rewarded.

I went back into using him as a pillow. He was surprisingly soft and comfortable for a being that had supposedly slaughtered millions willfully.

"What will you do now?" he asked me.

I thought about his question. My gaze wandered over the members of my peerage. It wouldn't be wrong to say that every one of them was at some level traumatized.

Akeno hated herself, more precisely her half-fallen angel side to the point that she chose to restrict her own strength, that she loved to hurt fallen angels in a more sadistic way than she was usually.

She was my queen, my confidant. She had known how I hated Riser and I knew that she cared for and loved me but that love and care hadn't been stronger than the self-hatred she had in her heart.

If she had used her half-fallen angel side, if she had used the light and the divine lightning she had inherited from her Father, Riser would have lost at the beginning of the rating game. She had been after all in canon able to hurt Fenrir even if he was limited, one of the strongest beings in this world with her lightning.

She hadn't and a part of me saw it as a betrayal but looking at how unkept and distressed she looked even in her sleep, this feeling was washed away.

The same could be said about Koneko and her use of Senjutsu. Most people either had Daddy or Mommy issues. Koneko had Sister issues and they were linked to her own heritage, to the senjutsu that should have been instinctual for her because of her race.

There was also the issue of her name that left a bad taste in my mouth. Koneko literally meant little kitten. It was more the name you would give to a pet instead of a person integrating what you considered your family.

Kiba or Isaiah my knight has done his best. He hadn't a secret power or bloodline like Akeno or Koneko that he could have used but thinking about it, there were so many things that my knight could have done to be better to the point that it was almost insulting.

He had been born with a sacred gear allowing him to create demonic swords with the effects he wanted. The only thing that I knew he had done with his sacred gear had been to create either sword of different forms with no effect and the light erasure that he had used when fighting against Freed Selzan.

He should have been A Shirou Emiya-lite. He could create demonic swords with the effects he wanted. If he was also using his demonic energy that produced effects only depending on our imagination, I don't see why he couldn't have created with time a sword as strong as the Excalibur of Artoria in Fate. I would have to check if Fate Stay Night existed in this universe. If it did, I would make sure that Kiba would be watching and playing the shit out of it because I could only see his actions or lack of actions as a waste of potential.

My gaze slid on the sleeping forms of my pawn and my bishop. Issei and Asia were the only ones I think that had tried their best to go beyond what was expected for my sake and it had not been more than one month and a half since the both of them are in my peerage, unlike the others.

There was also the case of Gasper who had so much social anxiety that he preferred the stay alone in a box instead of interacting with others and instead of I don't know maybe trying to send him to a therapist, the original I had instead fed his social anxiety by enabling him.

A ten-wings fallen angel, general of the Grigori that had fought against God and his seraphs and Lucifer and his Satans and that had survived the both of them would soon be coming to try to kill me to begin a new great war. It was another possible problem I would have to take care of in the future.

I felt already tired. There were so many important things to do and not doing them would only cause me a disfavour.

I knew that because of the essence, I would surely grow stronger than even I'm sure what I predicted. I know that I only needed one thing and that thing was time. I needed time so that I could grow stronger. The essence allowed me to adapt to things I faced and grow stronger but to adapt to a thing, I needed to be able to survive it at least for an instant. I lived now in a world where higher beings like my brother and gods viewed concepts like time and space more as guidelines than things that restricted them. If Sirzechs had tried to annihilate me, I don't think that my essence would have had enough time to make me adapt and grow stronger than him before he eradicated me.

"I think that I would try to focus on my peerage. There are a lot of things that I could have done better as a king and I want to do them now before it's maybe too late."

He chuckled softly. "I know you will do excellent work and even if you don't, that's fine Rias."

He kissed the crown of my head before slowly standing. I hadn't felt any difference even though he had left his duty of pillow. I don't know how but the spot where I was using him as a cushion had been replaced by a scarlet pillow. He must have used magic.

I watched how a teleportation circle lit up under his feet. "I have to go take care of the repercussions of the breaking of your betrothal. You would have thought that by being able to stop or slow time, you would have enough time but it's not the case at all. Riser didn't wake up since the end of your rating game. His regeneration isn't apparently working the way it should and the Phenex clan has been a pain on my side since."

"I wished I could have hit him harder," I told my brother.

I saw vindication and Schadenfreude in his eyes "I'll let them worry about their youngest son for a while before asking Ajuka to help them."

"You're evil," I simply said.

"I am the Satan Lucifer. It's the requisite of the job."

His expression softened "I won't let anything like this ever happen again Rias."

He began to sink into the circle before disappearing with it "I love you," I heard his voice say.

"I love you, brother," I said back to a room devoid of him.

The wrongness that I had been feeling, the unnatural stillness disappeared. I saw how atoms and molecules began to move again.

At my side, Akeno slowly opened her eyes. "Hello Akeno," I told her softly.

My voice seemed to have awakened the other members of my peers. Moments later, I was buried under their crying forms.

Yes, they weren't perfect. Yes, there were a lot of things that they either could have done or done better but they were before all my family. The only thing I was sure of was that they truly Loved Rias Gremory, that they truly loved me. I would worry about the future and what could have been done later. Right now, I would allow myself to get lost in their embrace.