In the humid silence of the locker rooms, each one alone, the fight still ran through their veins.
Theo could feel the marks his body carried, bruises burning like memories, his arm marked by the bite that reminded him of territory claimed and Ceres's surrender. Every drop of blood washed down the drain increased the pain, but also reminded him of the intensity of the moment, the strength of someone who would never bow.
On the other side, Ceres stared at her reflection, pale skin streaked with bruises, wounded lips, but not a single sign of defeat. In every mark, every bruise, there was surrender, contained madness, a dark pleasure in losing herself and, at the same time, recognizing herself in Theo.
The locker room was not merely a place for hygiene: it was a space to process the battle, to feel the residual tension, the power, and the brutal intimacy that only they shared.
The battle was over, but the echo of savagery remained — an invisible thread connecting them, made of pain, blood, and recognition.
The world beyond those walls did not matter; there, alone in their respective locker rooms, both absorbed what no one else could understand.
In the separate dormitories, night fell heavily, interrupted only by the sound of the ten o'clock warning sirens.
In the girls' dormitory, Ceres rested with an almost frightening serenity, as though the fight had left no marks, as though nothing had happened. But even beneath her apparent calm, her body still carried the signs of the savagery, and in her eyes lingered a distant echo of the madness that had broken loose moments before.
In the boys' dormitory, Theo groaned in pain. Every movement awakened the purple bruises, his lower rib throbbed, his head ached beneath the bandages, and his right forearm bore the mark of the bite, now covered by a thick cloth dressing. Holding Ceres, controlling his own strength, still dealing with Dark in the infirmary... Theo's endurance had been pushed to its limit.
The silence of the dormitories was not peace, but the aftermath of an intense battle, both physical and emotional. The echo of strength, surrender, and savagery remained between them, invisible but palpable. They breathed in separate worlds, processing what had happened, aware that something had changed forever.
The entire cafeteria noticed. There was something different in the air. It wasn't just the bruises, nor the silence charged with tension. It was the way Theo and Ceres looked at each other, as though one were the blade and the other the sharpener. Neither backed down.
Theo put down his spoon, breathing deeply through a sharp pain in his ribs. He fixed his eyes on Ceres, his bandaged arm resting on the table.
— You could have done better. — he said with a half-smile, ironic.
Ceres slowly raised her eyes from her tray, her split lip pulling into a cruel smile.
— Ah, Theo... you always think I'm holding something back. — she replied, her voice low and firm. — If I wanted to, you wouldn't be sitting there. You'd be lying on a stretcher beside Dark.
Theo let out a restrained laugh, which immediately stole his breath. He pressed his ribs with his free hand, still keeping his eyes fixed on her.
— And yet, you lost. — he said provocatively.
Ceres tilted her head slightly, as though savoring the poison.
— I never lose. Not even when I bleed. — Her tongue passed over the corner of her injured lip. — You know that.
The silence around the table was suffocating. Daime watched with wide eyes, somewhere between frightened and fascinated. Dru, at a distance, merely confirmed what she already knew: that relationship could not be understood, only feared.
Theo leaned slightly toward the table, as though throwing down a silent challenge.
— You love watching me suffer, don't you?
Ceres leaned forward as well, her pale face stained with bruises.
— No. — she said coldly, almost intimately. — I love breaking you and watching you come back to me stronger.
Their eyes met, firm and arrogant. It was a wordless pact: they could destroy each other every day, but deep down they completed each other in that symbiosis of hatred and desire. Inseparable, dangerous, loyal only to each other.
And everyone around them understood. Theo and Ceres were not merely warriors. They were a living myth in the making. Two predators who would never allow themselves to be domesticated.
Dru was stunned. The cafeteria seemed full, yet empty at the same time, as though only that table existed. Her eyes moved from Theo to Ceres, and what she saw left her shocked: Theo, completely bandaged, radiating pain with every movement; Ceres, serene, purple bruises across her pale skin, ignoring her own suffering as though it were part of her nature.
Dru imagined herself in his place — if she had been the one to face Ceres, she would already be dead, broken into a thousand pieces. And yet Theo had placed himself between them, had taken the pain upon himself. For her.
Even when everyone was against Dru — even when she chose to stay beside Dark, in a sick and dysfunctional romance — Theo never abandoned her. He had been loyal. That was why guilt consumed her now: Theo had sacrificed himself, but not to defeat Ceres. No. Because Ceres was not like Dark. Ceres and Theo were one, two halves of the same fury, wall and storm, complement and poison.
Ceres's eyes met Dru's. For an instant, Dru shuddered, expecting the fury that always followed. But nothing happened. Ceres simply ignored her, as though she were invisible. And that said everything: the pact was sealed.
Dru took a deep breath. She felt she could no longer approach Theo — not in that old way, with passion. Ceres was his, and he was hers. But something remained: friendship, the gesture that had freed her again when no one else believed in her.
Theo, feeling her gaze, turned for a moment. He smiled despite the pain, as though saying: don't worry, I endured it. And then he continued on his way.
Daime, who had been watching everything closely, raised his eyebrows. Something told him there was more than bruises and exchanged glances. Ceres was far too calm. Dru was far too free. It made no sense.
— What did you do, man? — he asked, leaning against the table, his voice full of disbelief. — Make a pact with a demon?
Theo let out a short laugh, which turned into a grimace of pain.
— Only when I breathe. — he replied.
Ana slowly approached Daime, still somewhat shy. She saw his condition, the crutches leaning against the wall, and felt an unexpected warmth.
— How's the treatment going? — she asked, her voice low but full of concern.
Daime smiled in his irreverent way.
— Going well, sweetheart. — he said, patting the bench. — Sit here with us.
Ana sat down, and then noticed Theo across from her. The shock was inevitable: bandaged, sunken eyes, short breaths, his right arm immobilized. He looked as though he had come out of a war — and, in a way, he had.
Daime wasted no time.
— See, Ana? Love did this to him. — he said, laughing. — Look how a man suffers.
Ana laughed awkwardly. Theo tried to laugh too, but immediately brought a hand to his ribs.
— Don't make me laugh, fuck. — he said through his teeth, with a pained half-smile.
Daime widened his eyes theatrically.
— Imagine if a nurse came in here and said you're pregnant with Ceres's baby? They'd send you to Pietà, you'd have appointments with the nuns, and suddenly your tits would grow so you could produce milk!
Ana burst into laughter. Theo tried to hold it back, but the laugh escaped, half hoarse sound, half groan of pain.
— Shut up, Daime. — he said, still laughing, a tear at the corner of his eye from trying to hold it in.
Daime rested his chin in his hands and looked at Theo as though savoring every second.
— I love seeing you like this, you bastard. — he said, laughing. — Suffering and laughing at the same time. Beautiful.
Ana shook her head, smiling, but inside she felt a pang seeing Theo like that. It was a strange moment: a small oasis of laughter in the middle of chaos, where even pain seemed shared.
Theo carefully stood.
— I need to go to the infirmary. Take more pain medication. — he said, his voice dragged down by the pain in his ribs.
Daime and Ana said goodbye with jokes and laughter. Ana gave Theo a worried look beneath her laughter; Daime, as always, was mocking and sharp. Theo smiled through the pain and made to leave.
In the hallway, the fluorescent light stretched long shadows. Kan appeared leaning against the doorway, the kind of rival who smelled of leadership: confident, observant, practical. He was a captaincy rival in Flagball and already led the boys at the school with the authority of someone who knew he had a voice.
— Brutal love. — Kan teased, looking from Theo to Ceres and back again. — She's going to kill you, you know? She passed through here without looking at anyone. Too cold. How do you deal with her?
Theo laughed, a short sound between pain and cynicism.
— It's my charm with the scent of flesh... and blood.
The two laughed — Theo groaning at the end of the laugh, his body remembering every impact. Kan looked at him with warm respect and a hint of calculation: there was a man there who endured the unbearable. Unlike Dark, Cors, or Vanks, who only barked, Kan saw in Theo a wall of flesh that did not yield.
— There's something in the air today. — Kan said, almost whispering. — The air feels lighter. Even Ceres seems calmer.
Theo struck his own chest with his fist, a theatrical gesture of sacrifice.
— I gave my blood for it.
They both smiled at the double meaning. Kan offered, half-provocatively:
— Want me to talk to Ceres to ease things up?
— Fuck no. — Kan quickly refused, smiling. — That's your problem. I'd rather deal with Cors and Vanks; they chase me and annoy me. You and Ceres... nobody gets involved. Everyone knows about the relationship between you two. It's no secret.
Kan looked Theo straight in the eyes, assessing him.
— You look wounded on the outside, but inside you're still a wall.
Theo returned the look sharply.
— Save your compliments. You'll need energy and bravado if you want to face me. I'll break you too.
They laughed again, the laughter serving as armor and provocation at the same time. Kan flashed a challenging grin.
— If Ceres doesn't do it first.
They exchanged one last look — a mixture of admiration and threat — and headed in opposite directions: Kan toward the auditorium, Theo limping toward the infirmary. The hallway was left with the sound of footsteps, and the school returned, as always, to being a place where alliances and dangers took shape in everyday life.
Daime and Ana left the table and walked down a less illuminated corridor. They had barely gone any distance when they came face to face with Ceres, standing there as though she were part of the wall. Her expression was the same as always: cold, indifferent, as though nothing in the world could touch her.
Daime froze. For a second, silence hung heavily between the three of them. Then he exploded, without a filter:
— I can't stand that soul-devouring stare of yours! — he fired back, his voice cutting. — You're lucky Theo cares about you. He's the only one. I wanted him to kill Dark in that fight, I swear I did. But Theo — loyal, stupid, and strong. One day he's going to break all of this. You're part of that crazy motivation of his.
Ceres did not move a muscle. Latent hatred filled the space, but her face remained impassive.
— I'm not threatening you. — Daime continued, without letting up. — I'm warning you: care about the one who bleeds for you. I know you like tormenting Dru, but spend that energy taking care of the person who actually gave you flesh and blood so you could have some piece of peace here. You're dying to strike back, I know. Use that hatred to protect the one who protects you.
Ceres bit her lip, fury contained like a spring ready to explode. For an instant, a fierce glimmer appeared in her eyes — then nothing. Only the wall of ice.
— A former cripple talking. — she spat dryly, trying to reduce Daime to ridicule.
— A former cripple who's right too. — Daime shot back, relentless. — You have more to lose here than he does. I don't know how to lead, but I recognize a leader when I see one.
Without waiting for an answer, Daime and Ana turned down the hallway and continued. Ana's concerns were the kind written plainly across her face: fear, pity, understanding. Daime, meanwhile, walked calmly — explosive but honest as always.
Ceres remained there, motionless. The door closed like the slam of a press, and solitude reclaimed her body. Daime's words, as rough as punches, echoed inside her with an effect even she could not measure. Theo had stood beside her — always — even in her blindest fury. She remembered the night: when she lost herself, how she bit and drank, how she felt, for the first time, the calm on the other side of that savagery. And now, hearing Daime's contemptuous jokes, seeing the cruel irony in his eyes, it hurt.
Daime spoke truths that cracked like gunshots: they were harsh, but precise. And beneath her pride and anger, Ceres knew how to admit, only to herself, in a silence no one would ever see: the bastard was right.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, touched the skin still marked, and took a step. Not to follow them. Something inside her was reorganizing itself. Not affection. Not surrender. A cold decision, possibly as violent as everything else — but now with a new thread: to guard that possession of Theo with the same brutality with which he had guarded her.
Ceres walked down the hallway. The lights flickered, the echoes of her footsteps mingling with the distant alarms of the school. With every step, her body throbbed, reminding her that she bled too.
But not as much as he did.
Theo had always bled. He had always been the first to stand between her and the blow, between her and the world, between her and herself.
Theo, the idiot who endured. Who tolerated the chaos, the insults, the fits of rage.
Theo, who carried her secrets — and Ceres's secrets were heavy, damp, difficult to touch without getting dirty.
He had given up a friend to protect her from the graffiti in the cafeteria. He killed a dog with a violence even she did not understand — and never asked why. She knew there was a reason, and that the reason was her.
Theo killed invaders, killed for her, fought for her.
Theo endured the loss of his brother, Dru's betrayal, the weight of every sin she pretended to forget.
Theo laughed even at Daime's jokes — perhaps so he would not cry.
Theo endured her fury... and still protected her from herself.
Ceres slowed her pace. The hallway seemed longer now.
She knew what Daime had meant.
She knew, and hated knowing it.
He had called her cold, but coldness was how she prevented herself from falling apart.
Theo, on the other hand, was too much heat — heat that melted, that hurt, that left marks.
For a moment, she wanted to turn back. Apologize. Say something simple.
But there was nothing simple between them.
So she took a deep breath and changed direction, heading toward the infirmary.
Every step a weight.
Every memory a thorn.
And in the middle of the hallway, she thought — without a voice, without a face, only a whisper inside her:
"He bleeds and still calls me life."
Ceres raised her chin, and the metallic sound of the siren once again dominated the air.
The pact, at last, pulsed inside her — not as guilt, but as condemnation.
Ceres remained at the entrance for a while, her silhouette outlined by the cold hallway light. Through the infirmary glass, Theo was leaning against a chair, a syringe inserted into his arm, his eyes half-closed — dulled by the medication, but with the memory of the previous night engraved into every muscle. There was no one there except them; the rest of the school was only a distant murmur.
She crossed through the doorway and, without fanfare, touched his shoulder. The gesture was automatic, intimate in the way a hand becomes accustomed to a scar. Theo reacted with the same reflex that had taken over on the ground: he mobilized his body, placing a hand against his ribs as though anchoring himself. He breathed deeply, heavily.
— Calm down... — Ceres murmured, her voice almost muffled by the tie she still wore like a trace of a mask. — It's me. Calm down, Theo. It's me.
Groggy, he opened his eyes as though awakening from a dream in which she was the storm. Doubt hovered, blurred between sleep and pain.
— You? What... what are you doing here? — His voice came out low and distant.
Ceres sat in the chair beside him, close enough for the arm bearing the bite mark to be within her reach. She looked at the wound that had marked Theo's skin and, for a moment, the mask of calm fell away: there was an attempt to manage fear, and there was curiosity.
— Why do you bleed for me? — she asked, with the sincerity of someone discovering a crack inside her own chest. — I hurt you and you stay by my side. You lost your brother and you remain standing. You're here and you remain standing. Teach me how to be like that. I... I want to be like you.
Theo listened, unable to tell whether it was a request, an order, or a confession. In her eyes, he became lost — not only in Ceres, but in the name she carried, in the echo of Mother Ceres who had shaped their world. There was something primordial there: not only desire, not only fear, but a need for a mirror.
He spoke without knowing whether it was an answer or a blessing:
— I don't know how, Ceres. I don't know how to teach it. I... I stay. I stay because someone has to hold you before you break yourself or break everything around you.
Ceres narrowed her eyes. Her voice came out harder, almost surprised by itself:
— You did this — she pointed toward the bite, toward the bandages. — You let me bite you. Do you carry that with pride?
Theo touched the place with his fingertips, as though recognizing both a trophy and a wound.
— It's a reminder of you. — he said. — A time. A warning. A map. I carry it because protecting you is... my way of loving. It's not beautiful. It's not clean. But it's what I know how to do.
She laughed, a short sound mixing disbelief and pain.
— How could I like that? — she confessed, surprise leaking through. — How could I hurt you and — deep down — like it?
Theo looked at her with the calm of someone who had already decided where his place in the world was.
— Because at the same moment you hurt me, you give me back. — he murmured. — You break me and call me back. That's the pact. We are two people who refuse to let each other go. You drink my blood, Ceres, and I let you. Not because I want to be a victim, but because it measures what we are: wall and storm.
For a moment, the entire hallway seemed suspended. The infirmary — its smells, cloths, lights — shrank until it became nothing more than the space between them. Ceres moved her hand closer, hesitated, and placed her palm over his forearm, over the bite scar. The contact was brief, almost ceremonial.
No apology was spoken. No explanation could translate the intensity of that gesture. Only the heavy silence, as dense as the blood that had already passed between them, filled the room.
Theo let out a small, pained but genuine smile.
— Stay. — he said quietly. — Just stay.
She stayed, and in the quiet that followed there was something that was neither tenderness nor war, but an alliance neither dared to name: a complete, dangerous, absolute symbiosis.
Theo rested his hand against the edge of the chair, his body a framework of pain. He looked at Ceres with the same calm he used to hold walls against storms.
— You're like a storm in the distance. — he said slowly. — Black, heavy, dense. It passes over everything and sometimes doesn't even rain. When it rains, it rains just enough. But when you lose control... damn.
Ceres's eyes glimmered with something that was not only anger: there was curiosity, hunger, intensity. She leaned closer, as though trying to understand her own poison. Theo remained firm, the wall she always found.
— Why are we like this? — she asked, almost as though trying to convince herself more than asking. — Why, deep down, do I like this, this irrational side?
Theo smiled, a dry smile that seemed sharper than any blade.
— Mother wants this. — he said, with the certainty of someone already shaped by greater orders. — She's relentless. Think about it: of all the schools, why did you end up here? You know where you come from. You know who your father is. Mother Ceres has greater plans for you — precisely because you carry that blood. She wants mirroring. She takes our broken pieces, our failures, and makes us into what we need to become.
Ceres bit her lip, finding in that both an explanation and an accusation. Theo continued, firm:
— We do it for Mother. You carry her name. You like this — even when you pretend to deny it. You manipulate me, and I like it — you make me bleed, and I accept it. We'll remain this way forever: never together in the way the world calls “together,” but bound to each other, tormenting one another because we're always apart. We don't yield. We're too arrogant for that.
She looked at her own hands, still trembling slightly from the damage of the night.
— We know what we are. Mother Ceres wants strong children. We love her. — Her voice came out almost as a hard whisper. — Deep down, I want to be punished by you, as if you were her intention. I... I hurt you thinking of Mother and of myself — revenge and devotion at the same time. I like this. I don't want it to stop. And I don't want you to stop either.
Theo made a slow movement, as though signing an invisible pact.
— You can question it. You can try to escape this logic. But the truth is this: Mother wants us to be leaders — not because we are meant to command, but because we have the spirit for it. You feel it, Ceres. Even when you won't admit it. And even if I have to break you — if necessary — I will. Because that's the currency we know: pain for order; blood for devotion.
Her eyes filled with something close to reverence. There was madness there, yes, but also recognition: two twin pieces on a board no one else dared touch.
In the silence that followed, the infirmary seemed smaller, as though the entire world could fit into that instant between two marked bodies. They did not ask for forgiveness. They did not promise healing. They simply reaffirmed what they had always been: wall and storm, bound by blood, duty, and desire — and by the certainty that Mother, cold as she was, would smile at the order they created.
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