Sigh.

For once, I think I should give some love to Eka, too, alright.

So, here it is! I was listening to '(My Love) - Kisnou' on repeat while making this short story. Don't search for it if you don't like instrumental song.

I don't know what I was thinking, but it's definitely not a bright thing. Sorry it's so short, but I just want to rearrange my mind back together again.

Enjoy.

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[ My Loves. ]

Let's switch things up.

To me, you are a man who loves this city down to his heart. And you just distinctly has forgotten when it doesn't used to be this way.

Eka is the man who believes in right and wrong. Things which should be done, and things which should be stopped, both legal and illegal. And, yes. I'm talking about a man – you, Eka – who has stopped thinking about the concept of illegal but morrally right. But maybe, you actually got that from somewhere in between evil and greater good. Maybe you got that from your boss now, Bangun.

Except.

Except...

You looked at the man trailing off his mind, when you have just decided to also liked the lives of his people. The men made of cardboards and strings, with such meaningless life of a stage they aren't even invited to watch, but to perform. Although you do sorted things into things that need doing and things that need terminating, so... you also aknowledged that there's a legal and an illegal, but really though. That's just... the public face of what a system can endorse. You've left that path long ago.

The law just determines whether you do it in the name of law, or whether you just... don't. It's a simple concept. It keeps the streets clean, really. Jakarta was born riddled with criminals, murders, and thieves fleeing the laws of the old and (or) new words of freedom anyway – this is a fact. And you know that Bangun was born to get rid the continent of the Scourers and restore orderless chaos into something in order – this is another fact. But the last thing you know is that... his son is just...

Just...

You just don't know how to see it, do you?

Bangun knows crime, and he knows how to deal with criminals. He's one of the strongest ones, after all. This is why, for the love of seven skies, he always in the clean state. You know. His whole family becomes influental in politics, as a starter. And the sons and daughters from the past of his great-great grandfather were canny leaders with fierce accurate powers, even with both hands tied behind their back. They know how to bring out the order in orderless chaos and they did. They did so with extreme force and trails of blood that Bangun begins to pretend that it doesn't exist; it won't happen ever again.

Bangun is more subtle than his ancestors. He prefers to leave a hungry silence in places with a trail of blood within it. A wisp of shadow, curling around the doorway – a spatter of ink on the alleyway steps. When you walk right past the signs, even under his roaming aura, you barely can notice it.

But the criminals underworld lives in fear of the black death's freezing touch, for it is this one is his one, and only son.

They know. Uco is the name, and he is taught to believe in the law and believe in greater good for the sake of the family trade with this city. Because cases after cases, his family have caused with even more invisible bloody traces. It becomes easier to judge the immoral calls that are never too grey to make.

Uco is the son of the king. He'll have all, someday. The king's men, the lands, and the stars. The sacrifices, and bloods again. And he wants proof. Lots of them. Lethal and darker, because... he is a legacy. He wants fear, and he wants it visible.

And do you think he could just... waltz in and take it? Layers of deception that whisper like lies in his every steps. A line of the deads that stretch to hell and back following their piper through the alleys of his kingdom – do you really think Uco could have taken this? Let's take a step or two back, and think again.

Many years of this prison that keeps you alive. With every inch, you are now used to the darkness around. So, you shouldn't think that it's another torture, right? To keep pacing again one more time for another, living death. The fragile, spider-web of fractures waiting to break. A mire sharp edges that never healed smooth. For all this year, Uco has never been in good hands to be shaped either.

Maybe it's your fault, you think. Or maybe it's his father's misfortune of a lifetime, too. And for that, you start to pour liquid gold in every crack of his broken, and remake him into something... beautiful. And you promise to the world that it is with honest words that never hide the ice burning in his smile and heartbreaking glare.

The guilt you've built is now strong with it's own form, and even it has voices.

It is now screaming at you.

Uco needs love, yes, but Uco was given love and taught not to trust it, by his own father, so you give him truth. And you decided, just show him your empire and the bones of those who oppose his father; show him the strength and how it can be used to protect himself. And you show him loyalty, and how it's won through respect that still can sing like fear in the waiting night.

Now, he understands bringing death to those who have brought hurt to you. He understands power a lot faster and how it surges when his family is threatened. He understands fear and how it never lies like love. Uco was a boy who could have been good, and Uco was a boy who wanted to be kind. But Uco is a man who will be great, and Uco is the man who shows mercy in death.

You can't really think that Uco could have taken this from his father now, can you?

And then, there's another man, though – the one who has same place to go home too, just as same as you once. The man with scars and messed up bones and mad determination that you would realize after the very first glance at. This one is the one who you are careful to keep the truth from. He never lies, but deception is woven so much tighter than words, and there is something bright in this man that even Uco's shadows would tarnish, and...

He is the one who welcomed Uco with relieved stare after life and death. He is the one who took Uco's hand and leads him into the touch of the slightest light, before returning right back into the dark to finish what he never intended. And he keeps his words with actions, and turns them into nightmares for those who hisses threats and bothers your dreams of quietness for Uco to stand tall.

In a blink of an eye, you just know that he is you, and you are him.

Then, the man is precious, and to be protected for that. Because you can not stop yourself for pleasing your guilt, and so you can not stop him for being a suicide machine either. So you do your job, and hover over him and around him until whispers spread through lightning rain for days to decades – the black death hunts those who hunt Yuda, the bodyguard of the wicked, and there is a demon feeding off the destruction in his wake.

You give Yuda your empire. You give him a soul, Uco's life, and Yuda gives him a garden of sun-kissed love. You witness Uco takes his hand and leads him forwards, and you gladly swirls behind to sweep their footsteps clean, and they're happy.

However, you get the feeling that somewhere in the fringes, Bangun knows this and has his throat bleeding as he screams warnings that neither of you can hear.

And perhaps not everyone believe the lie, but it doesn't matter for as long as you still have more important people to deceive than neither the king nor his people.