Chapter 96 Past Memories: The Meeting II
"... were they killing each other, I mean... all of them?"
"Pretty much... some of them allied together, some of them betrayed one another, everything for power... to topple the very gods and earn their freedom. In every samsara, they're always enemies, for that's their nature... they have killed one another endless times, and they will always instinctively fight one another regardless of their reincarnation. But that wasn't the case this time." Nova's tonality resurged with curiosity.
"..." Isabella noticed with a frown, that whenever she talked about her son, there was this... tone, that she wasn't quite liking.
"Your son made all my daughters fall in love with him, to the point they don't care about their own fight... they even SHARED something for the first time in dozens of thousands of years! Those girls don't even share the stars we gave them for toys!"
'S-Stars... TOYS!?'
"That's why I desired to meet you, the person he had loved the most in his entire life, from start to end." Nova finished her summary.
"That's impossible." Isabella bit her lips and shook her head, she refused to believe it, she refused to be the person he loved the most, even if proof said otherwise.
"Why do you deny it?"
"I'm old and-" Once again she began to the point even Nova felt annoyed.
"You're old and? didn't he stay with you until the end..."
"He was disgusted by me."
"Isabella." The white-haired lady could literally feel the goddess tapping her fingers in a disciplinary way.
"..."
"You know that's a lie."
"He shouldn't have stayed with me for so long." She sobbed, breaking down.
"It hurt me so much... that I couldn't... be up to his level... he always shone in brilliance while I... I was at most a forsaken noble lady that just happened to be a little sexy... It sounds ridiculous, right? I always regretted that I couldn't give my virginity to my son of all people... when he made love to me despite my wrinkles, when he was so attentive sacrificing his own time just to self some flowers with me, despite being the Emperor... how comprehensive he was with me when I told him... that I was already too old to lay down with him, *sob* how he came back to me... even when I told him that I didn't want to see him anymore. Nova, I didn't deserve him." Her heart wouldn't stop stirring. "I don't deserve to be the person he loved the most."
Even if those were her feelings, the goddess wasn't planning to hold back.
"The truth is that... you're the person he loved and still loves the most in his entire life, for a year after your death, he held suicidal thoughts and almost achieved it twice."
!!!
She gasped, feeling a big sting mercilessly piercing her chest.
"If not for my daughter, Caroline... convincing him, he would have killed himself in his despair to follow you. It was only after this that he finally moved on and loved my daughters truthfully, sadly... it never quite reached what he felt for you... what he went through with you pained him so much, yet he still choose to live to the end until every single one of my daughters passed away their samsara, I don't know what to tell you. You raised a magnificent son and I'm thankful to you, Isabella... because he made my daughters who up to that point knew nothing but pain and war, genuinely happy."
She cried madly... Isabella couldn't contain the happiness in her chest, for many reasons, the fact that her son had gained such an achievement with a powerful existence, yet all that paled in comparison, the pride of a mother paled in comparison to what she felt as a woman, to know that he had moved on from her and kept living.
Nova couldn't understand, and the more her senses rested on this woman, the more she wanted to know, so far... her instincts were screaming and they weren't lying.
'This is the right person.'
"Isabella..."
"..."
"Were you happy?"
"He made me so happy... so loved. Nova, I WAS... SO HAPPY!" Broken yet reaffirmed, she stopped denying what she believed as the truth, it would be an insult to her son otherwise, to keep denying his hard work.
Every single pain that she lived, even the worst ones... if it meant that she could have Constantine in her life again, she would go through them a hundred times with a happy smile, give birth to that perfection of a son, and engage in the most pleasurable and happy affair that she could have ever lived... this time early on instead of having wasted so much time, so many nights... being such a bad mother to him.
Isabella Greenwood just couldn't stop crying in desolation, she wouldn't live that ever again... and there was no balance in her heart, she received tones of love, and only gave away grams.
She died but this debt hadn't been paid.
Isabella felt someone pat her head and that was when she saw her.
That beauty that shouldn't exist in this world, her hair seemed to be made by the very stars, her dress concealed a body that made her -an astoundingly sexy lady at least in her prime- feel envy.
If her hair was the stars, her dress was the space that contained those stars and the myriad nebulous.
"That's the reason I needed you... that unparalleled happiness that not even the very gods can conceive, that love that only mortals can understand, I... want to understand it... would you allow me to live it through your eyes?" She requested, raising the old lady's chin, what remained of a woman that had lived her life and sexuality to the maximum extent.
"Can't you do it?" Isabella didn't understand why this goddess was asking for permission.
"I can... but... I want to ask you because those are your most important memories, I don't want to look them up without your permission, I will be seeing what you saw, feeling what you felt..."
"... why?" Isabella frowned, those were precious memories, those she didn't want to share with anyone, her son and herself during the most primal euphoria, no one had ever known and she held no doubt that even after her passing, her son hadn't told anybody.
It was not because the secret couldn't be revealed... several times they went beyond that boundary, and their love and desire for one another took them to the most precarious of places... they even made love in the barracks when the soldiers were still amidst their training... surely more than a hundred or a thousand people amongst the nobles of the empire already speculated it, but knew saying a word meant their heads being removed. The reason to conceal it was... that those memories belonged to them, no one was qualified to know.
But even then, Nova insisted.
"Because my power is so abysmal that... I don't understand what love is, but I must... for the sake of 'balance' between Time and Space." Nova gave her words, rather ambiguous but with deep seriousness concealed within.
For several seconds Isabella didn't answer.
"What is going to happen to me?"
"I took you away from death... the reapers will come after you, but since this is my private realm- an isolated dimension out of the very multiverse- they can't reach you... there is the option of staying here forever in this white world with me."
"..."
"There is the option of going back to Death and obtaining the result of your karmic score, whether it be paradise or damnation."
"... is there a way for me to go back to him?"
"No."
"..." Sadness.
"Not conventionally at least, lucky for you... I am not a conventional goddess."
"What way is there!?"
"Allow me to see your memories and experiences as if I was you... and after I finish, you will know."
"Is this some sort of extortion?"
"Of course not, but I can't wait... I want to experience it Isabella, please."
"Are you attracted to my son?" She asked, threateningly.
"I am a being unable to feel love."
"..."
"But yes, your son attracts me."
"Hey!"
"What? I'm space, attraction and gravity are forces working under my domain, I don't love him... but I have this desire to know more about him, even if I see the entire timeline over and over, a hundred million times, I can't understand... it is beyond my comprehension as a high goddess and primal element of the universe to understand the affairs of mortals, yet I want to know."
"..."
"And even compared to my daughters, you're the perfect individual for this, Isabella... will you allow me?"
"I don't get it but... okay... if it will help you, just... if you can make any choice that I couldn't and can somehow alter my actions, please... love him... with all your heart."
The lady giggled, "I shall~"
She then placed her hand on the lady's forehead and the event that would switch the entire axis of fate in the multiverse began.