Chapter 59: Holding Out for an Angel

                                    

                                          
      One Month Later
                          
...
                          
Rias sat alone in the ORC's homeroom. She was buried in paperwork. Her pen wrote word after word, some of them spelt incorrectly.
                          
The truth of the matter was that she didn't even need to be doing this paperwork as it didn't matter, but she wanted to do it. She wanted to keep writing so she could escape the reality before her.
                          
It had been over thirty days since she'd last seen Y/N. She didn't know if he was gone for good but she held out hope that he would return to her. She prayed that he swagger through those doors, fixing his tie and popping his collar. However, every day that he didn't come back made the light in her soul gradually dim down.
                          
Almost everyone else had lost hope. She still believed that he would come back but now she was keeping that to herself. Sona had been the one to say they should try to move on. She told them that she was hurt over the loss of their Angel but she wasn't going to be trapped in the past.
                          
Rias wore a blank face, refusing to show any emotion. Since he'd been gone, her attitude had changed. She'd become dangerously distant. They hadn't had a meeting in a couple of weeks. She didn't talk much either. It was like she didn't trust her own voice.
                          
A quiet 'plop' caught her attention. She looked down and saw a tiny drop of water on the document. It didn't take her long to realise that it wasn't water.
                          
She reached her hand up and removed her glasses. She wiped a couple of tears from her eyes that she didn't even know she'd had. She'd been crying unknowing for a while now.
                          
She put her glasses back on and got back to work, hoping to forget about her feelings by drowning herself in writing.
                          
Unbeknownst to her, the Fallen Angel leader, Azazel, stood outside her door with folded arms. He leaned against the old wood in silence.
                          
Rias wasn't herself anymore. All that training she'd gone through was completely useless now. The team had lost their moral compass, and Azazel knew she wasn't the only one that was suffering.
                          
_______________________________________
                          
Y/N's apartment was silent, deathly silent. Rias didn't really show up here anymore. She usually slept in the ORC to avoid coming home.
                          
In the bedroom was Akeno who sat on the edge of the bed. Her legs dangled over the side and her feet touched the floor. Her black hair wasn't in a ponytail, nor was it straighten. She hadn't found the strength to stand up and fix it.
                          
Her eyes were the worst part. They were red from crying. Underneath them were purple bags that showed that she hadn't been sleeping much. Every time she laid her head to sleep, she was plagued with nightmares and memories of that day. The day she'd lost him.
                          
She had hidden away from everyone, only appearing for class and when Rias called upon her. Rias rarely called her anymore and when she went to class, she wore enough make-up to cover her fatigued eyes. She avoided as many of her classmates as she could and when class was over, she would use a magic circle to get straight home.
                          
When she and the others had returned from the battle, she had been surprised to see that Baraqiel, her father, had been with Odin, acting as the man's unofficial bodyguard.
                          
When he found his daughter, he could sense that she had unlocked her Fallen Angel side. Akeno refused to look him in the eyes. She still despised him for what had happened with her mother and now that Y/N was gone, she didn't want to talk to anybody.
                          
One day, when she had been sitting at home, watching but not paying attention to the television, there had been a knock at the door. Akeno willed herself to stand up but her mind had been too tired to realise that she hadn't checked the peephole.