The Awakening

The Awakening

Wine red eyes opened slowly, still glazed with sleep. They blinked a few times; the drowsy film evaporated. The owner of the eyes hauled himself into a sitting position, grunting as his vertebrae clicked back into their places. Still groggy, he leaned heavily on his right arm; it lay on the elevated edge of the coffin, his bed once more. His left arm, clad in a metal glove, gripped the wood also, keeping his fading balance as he swayed, weakened from sleep. Sighing tiredly, he slowly bent his head down upon his right hand, preferring smooth, soft skin to lie upon over cold bronze.

Carefully, he scratched the side of the coffin with his claw-tipped, metal-clad fingers. Intricate sketches have already been carved into the oak surface: his beloved’s face, smiling; her husband’s hands, armed with a syringe; her child, as he first saw him — a baby with wide green eyes, pressed against her husband’s chest, spider-like fingers clutching the defenseless child away from his screaming, wailing, sobbing birthmother. He eyed them lovingly, as one watches a sleeping child, as he remembered his beloved. A small smile wavered on his frozen lips, before fading out of existence.

But instead of engraving yet another memory into the wood, he let his claws settle into familiar grooves and, as he had many times before, slowly traced them upwards into a fist. Thin wood shavings curled under the sharp metal and floated to the floor in an ever-growing pile. The solid oak was being mercilessly dug through, claw marks deepening as the years passed...

A step creaked from down the hall. The raven-haired man’s head snapped up, his long, uncut hair briefly obscuring his vision. Quickly, he abandoned his task of whittling away the oaken coffin and lay down on the cushioned bottom of his bed. He closed the lid of his coffin as silently as possible and felt for his gun; it lay comfortably in his palm, promising security.

He heard the door to the room open; it screeched horridly - a rusty hinge broke and fell the stone floor, eliciting a resounding, painful, clang. The coffin-dweller regulated his breathing, as to not be too audible. His head rested upon the burgundy velvet stiffly, cautious.

Slow heavy footsteps announced the arrival of someone within the crypt. Three steps - no, four. An odd sound reached the still man’s ears. More measured footsteps. They paused again and the odd sound occurred once more. Still more footsteps resonated within the tomb. Hiding, the man realized the odd sound was a knock, muffled through the ancient oak. Whoever was in the forbidden room was looking for a full coffin — looking for him. Dread stole its way into his chest. The pattern of footsteps and knocking did not cease.

A knock came upon the coffin the man hid himself in. His body went cold; quietly, he readied his pistol. The coffin lid shot open! The gun jumped to a ninety-degree angle, the trigger pulled simultaneously.

Click…!

The coffin tipped over as easily as a matchbox. The red cloaked man inside tumbled to the ground, biting his lip bloody as his chin slammed into the stone floor.

"You should keep your gun loaded." The attacker kicked the handgun from the owner’s hand, not giving him the chance to load fresh bullets. The eyes of the normally demure man flashed opened as he spat out a mouthful of dark blood. He stared at the black leather boots before him. His reflection gazed pitifully at him in the bright, steel surface of the boots’ soles. Frightful recognition flashed in the fallen man’s eyes — it was his beloved’s son, now grown, and long dead also, killed by his own hand. Slowly, he stood up.

"What do you want?" he asked in a deep voice, hoarse with disuse. He faced the one who so casually desecrated his resting-place; red eyes met glowing green. A handsome pale face, like his own, but framed with the silver hair only an age of wisdom could adorn — as opposed to his black of prolonged youth — looked into his own as if to read what was written on the inside of his elder’s skull. It created an eerie feeling and the garnet-eyed monster’s heart felt as if it was beating somewhere in his throat, trying to break out from his chest cavity and fly to freedom from his mouth. There was no doubt however that, if it escaped, it would be killed, cut open with an ancient blade. The wielder of the sword was an experienced assassin, though unlike his prey, he had not atrophied his muscles, and his body still remembered movement — a rather recent romp around the world in hopes of reaching divinity, and before that, several years of war in Wutai; he served as the General of the Midgarian Elites, SOLDIERs.

A moment passed, though it seemed eternity. The milliseconds trickled slowly, as if in an hourglass with too small a neck. Cat pupils flared and narrowed, parting the cool, green irises like the Red Sea, as if the angel was inwardly in outrage, but hid his anger as he analyzed his now-alert, rather than somnolent, elder.

"I would like to give you a gift," the younger man said in a voice as deep as that of the red-cloaked man, though instead of stale hoarseness, a smooth, velvety, and rich - rich as the darkest chocolate — sound flowed forth from the green-eyed man. He shook his head slightly, removing the overly long bangs from his eyes and causing the thigh-length curtain of silver hair to sway as if in a gentle breeze.

"A gift?" the monotone voice asked again. His questions sounded more like statements; he did not spend his energy on inflection.

To think — the wine-eyed man was once a hero, worshipped as the killer of the pale, heartless angel before him. To think he was an assassin before the heartless angel was born. That he once thought the silver-haired man was his son, only to have the hope dashed, shattered into oblivion — only then did he find the strength to kill the repulsive product of his beloved and her sick scientist husband. And now the one most call "One Winged Angel" stood in front of him, eyes full of burning hatred and lust for revenge.

The elder listened quietly to the fallen angel, calmly speaking of giving a gift to the man who betrayed him. For it was betrayal — this… monster, for monsters inhabited his body, was the man who did not have the strength of heart to claim him as a son, the man who gave away his beloved to some abominable man because he could not tell her of his love.

"A gift," the angel repeated. "I will give you something you ask Lifestream for everyday. I would almost call it a prayer." A low laugh bubbled from his lips. Those lips trembled, in anger most likely. He was Lifestream - the blind worship to the heavens and hells of the world were made one in a current of souls. Anyone who prayed to Lifestream prayed to him, the child born of a corrupt soul and innocent one, the child with the currents of heaven and hell born within him.

The darker man looked down and swung his head slowly, then looked at the younger.

"Redemption." Again, it was spoken like a statement. Redemption. He did pray for redemption, the guilt of the angel’s death lay heavy, like a lead weight upon his heart; it somehow outweighed the cruelty of his beloved’s death, and the deaths of those he had killed so long ago. Maybe it was because he still felt that paternal responsibility he lived with for so long. Maybe it was the shame of being an inadequate father — he had killed the one he was supposed to protect.

"No," came the answer, flat and careless. The cruel, evil angel of death turned, disgusted with the sight of his victim. He walked to the broken door and paused, glancing over his shoulder — a silent request to follow. Haltingly, the elder did so, but leaving his gun behind, trusting fate to carry him safely back to sleep in his coffin as he left his charnel.

The failed God led the sin-laden, yet worshipped devil out of his cold catacomb. He led the elder down the empty hallways, their footsteps echoing in the hollowness. The ebon-haired man took the time to look over his opposite. He had not changed these years; time ignored his passing. His face, whenever seen glancing back — checking if his follower had run — was gorgeous still. Women would fall on their knees before him, and they have, just to glance at his complexion. Indeed, divine pulchritude radiated from him; in the pagan myths of Wutai, he would bear comparison to Cupid, and Adonis, though of demonic sorts. In the new religion Midgar had taken fashion to, he might possibly remind one of Lucifer and his beauty, only Lucifer had two wings, this Mephistophelean specter had only one, lone, black-feathered wing protruding from under his right shoulder blade. The one mentioned finally gave the crypt-keeper a full glare; quickly, eye contact was averted, and incarnadine eyes fell to the cold, stone floor in humble compliance.

The argent-haired angel led his elder through the library, where hell had once broken loose from the seraph’s heart and conquered the innocent heaven residing there. The books were still strewn on the floor; the heavy bookcases had remained toppled. Bits of broken shelving littered the worn out carpet — a memoir of agitated pacing by the god when he sank into madness and obliterated the library which revealed to him the painful truth of his life; scientific journals described his inhumanity, the death of his human host, his extraterrestrial mother, and revealed to him that his sworn enemy was actually his father. The edge of sanity he had balanced himself on his entire life bucked from under his feet; he fell into madness, guided only by his mother’s voice, echoing from her otherworldly cells. Cells his father inserted into him in a desperate experiment to make him stronger, to make him into a perfect soldier; it was an experiment the scientist did to save his own reputation, and an experiment which later caused his son to attempt, in his madness and possession, to rule the world as God.

Connected to the library, was the laboratory — the birthplace of the demonic seraph. Like the library, the laboratory was small, consisting only of a few sterile rooms where even spiders feared to nest. Everything here was either broken, or rusted. The former General led the shell of a once strong man to the very room where the "One Winged Angel" was "born." In the center, a metal table, the last piece of furniture, stood on four rusty legs. That table served many: it had served the obdurate angel, as his birthplace; it had served the seraphic creation’s host, as her deathbed; it had served the dark man, both when his dead body was reanimated and when his demons were implanted.

Vague memories floated to the mind of the crimson-cloaked man. Dimly, he recalled lying on the cursed table, watching in terrified fascination as a scientist’s sharp-bladed knives dipped into his numb flesh, slicing through his skin as though a warm knife through butter. He had gazed upon his own blood bubbling up from deep wounds and flowing from the table, cascading in thin cords from the metal to the white linoleum floor tiles; he had seen it all in the broken mirror across the room. The mirror was gone now, and the linoleum was yellow with age, but the table was still there. Dry, brown blood decorated it as liberally as rust. It was to the table the fierce archangel nodded towards.

"Lie down," he commanded. He unsheathed a blade, a six-foot masterpiece of death made in the Wutaian Odachi style - the spoils of war.

"Why?" came the monotonic question. A furtive glance ran along the edge of the sword — it seemed to hum in anticipation.

"I’ll give you what you want."

"Redemption is all I want."

"You will never reach redemption," snapped the silver-haired man, "Nor find salvation, nor receive my forgiveness." He glared into the ruby eyes of the saint-like devil, before taking a deep breath and schooling his face into the usual cool, decisive mask. The raven-haired man paused, more shame washing up on the shore of his soul. He hid his face behind his cloak, fleeing from the aspish tone.

"Then I do not understand what you want to give me," he said tiredly from behind his cloth barrier.

"Death," the heartless angel said and finally smiled. Perfect white teeth gleamed behind perfect, pale lips. His voice once again was smooth like melted chocolate, forgetting its cold, steely edge. He seemed to be amused by the prospect of killing someone that had hurt him so much; the wounds were young but deep, the angel had been desperately close to a normal father, a normal life, but the demon that stood before him had not taken the chance. Had he taken his beloved away, the seraph would have been another normal child. It was his fault he had lived a hell before "Mother" took his body, and given him the dark ambition of Godliness. But the beloved had taken her own form of vengeance — guilt. Though this did not satisfy the Azrael-like character — he wanted the man’s blood on his hands, and he knew the man wanted it spilt as well. The dark man hesitated.

"I never prayed for death." He hadn’t. Had he?

The glowing green eyes waited surprisingly patiently. Slowly, the reluctant red-eyes resigned to receive his gift. He sat down on the table; it screeched sharply in protest to the added weight. The man’s arms started to shake softly and the claws tapped the metal table in a quick, nervous, rhythm. The green eyes, ever patient, watched. The slate-haired man lay down on the groaning table, trying to relax and not shiver as the steel’s icy touch seeped through his cape and chilled his spine. He unbuckled the thick cloth and tilted his head back, exposing his neck. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his pale throat and he closed his eyes, unwilling to witness his approaching death.

He felt the sharp edge stroke his vulnerable skin, then felt it leave as the elegant blade lifted. Death was coming… soon. Sudden cold fear ran through every vein in the victim’s body, every one of his bones lit on fire with dread. He trembled. Death, his desire for so long, had become his greatest fear in less than a heartbeat. Many second thoughts began to crowd his mind. Do I wish to die? I hoped, and yes, I did pray for it. My infinite bliss is here, only a couple inches away…coming closer… Beloved, will I join you? Or will there be heartbreak on the other side of life as well? Will there be no warm breezes against my skin?

Memories of his beloved flashed behind his eyelids. She had laughed at him when he fell asleep to the lull of the gentle summer winds. She had said he was a horrible bodyguard, sleeping on the job. Though that picnic they shared was far from her scientific duties as well. His thoughts continued rapidly. Will I keep my bittersweet memories? Or will Lethe erase them, and with them, you? He began to doubt. Or is Lethe also just a fragment of my Wutaian imagination? Beloved, will I at least see you once more in the Afterlife? Or Is Lifestream so hard to navigate through that you will be lost to me forever, even if Lethe does excuse me from drinking its eternal stupor? Will your son haunt me there as well? If I live, I will remember, but if I die I could forget, or suffer worse. So is death my answer…? His thoughts raced as fast as his heart. No! He panicked. Death is not the answer!

"W-wai-!"

End