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thirtysixsavefilesPrompt fill for an Anon on Tumblr
When he’s seven years old Akira chases a ball into the street. He’s old enough to know better but young enough to forget, and as he picks up the ball the screeching of tires fills his ears. He looks up into the oncoming headlights, but there’s no time to move, no time for fear, no time for anything except the thought that his mother is going to kill him.
The world goes silent and his vision is swallowed up with blackness; he can smell burned rubber and hot engine oil, but nothing hurts. Was he hit? Is he dying? As the first spark of panic lights in his gut, the darkness ripples in front of his eyes and there’s a sound like the rustling of a thousand feathers. Then the darkness is sweeping back, and Akira is staring across the hood of a car at the white-knuckled driver, the bumper centimeters from his legs.
Akira’s nearly bowled over by his mother as the driver gets slowly out of the car. “Kid must have a guardian angel,” the driver says shakily as Akira’s mother holds him too tightly, and she agrees; but even at seven Akira knows enough to know that she’s just being polite. She’d explained to him very matter-of-factly about things like superstition, about angels and ghosts and other things that don’t exist.
So this couldn’t have been an angel. Besides, the wings had been black, not white.
When he’s thirteen, too old for imaginary friends but not sure he’s old enough for hallucinations, Akira looks up angels online. There are a lot of cutesy cherubs and websites whose owners clearly have too much time on their hands to wade through, but he finds himself drawn to the illustrations with inhuman proportions, with halos that crack the sky and eyes that burn.
The he looks up demons, and the results are less comforting.
The eyes he sees in his dreams are made of fire, but the smile beneath them is knowing, confident, and Akira shouldn’t feel soothed by something so jagged but even waking to the sensation of over-sized claws in his hair only leaves him wanting more.
Then he’s sixteen, and the worst night of his life has turned into a week, a month, a long drawn-out nightmare he can’t wake up from. Akira sleeps as much as he can. It’s preferable to being awake. He dreams of chains, of fire, of the susurration of a thousand black feathers that he can almost feel sweep across his face. He wakes up with wet cheeks and the sick, dull conviction that whatever he might have seen, whatever he might have thought, in the end he hadn’t been worth saving.
Then he’s in Tokyo, and then he’s - somewhere else, somewhere fantastical, in the dungeons of a castle that can’t be real with a boy he’s just met and an impossible choice. Akira swallows past the memories in his throat and the blades at his neck; another time, another place, but the same choice. He got it wrong the first time but he can’t seem to get it right here either because the lead that’s been moving through his veins since that night is turning molten and clearly there are no such things as guardian angels, because if he had one it wouldn’t let this happen twice.
The world slows and stops, and a low bass chuckle rumbles through Akira’s head.
I cannot save you, it says, and Akira nearly screams in rage because what is the point, then, what has this even been all about?
I cannot save you, the voice repeats, but call my name, and I can give you the power to save yourself.
There are gas-blue flames whirling around his feet, and Akira bares his teeth in a razor smile he can feel echoed in his heart. He doesn’t have to ask; he hadn’t known it before this moment but he can feel the name written in his bones, in his blood, a compact he will gladly sign.
“Come, Arsene!” The words burn as they leave his mouth and the flames wreathe him from head to toe but Arsene is unfolding behind him, stretching his wings until they brush the corners of the cell. His laughter thrums through Akira’s bones, and as his veins fill with fire Akira laughs with him. Angel or demon, it hardly matters because what matters most is that Akira has the power to set things right, the power to end this.
This is hardly the end, Akira, Arsene purrs between the beats of his heart. This is only the beginning.
(From this prompt list) | (original post)
When he’s seven years old Akira chases a ball into the street. He’s old enough to know better but young enough to forget, and as he picks up the ball the screeching of tires fills his ears. He looks up into the oncoming headlights, but there’s no time to move, no time for fear, no time for anything except the thought that his mother is going to kill him.
The world goes silent and his vision is swallowed up with blackness; he can smell burned rubber and hot engine oil, but nothing hurts. Was he hit? Is he dying? As the first spark of panic lights in his gut, the darkness ripples in front of his eyes and there’s a sound like the rustling of a thousand feathers. Then the darkness is sweeping back, and Akira is staring across the hood of a car at the white-knuckled driver, the bumper centimeters from his legs.
Akira’s nearly bowled over by his mother as the driver gets slowly out of the car. “Kid must have a guardian angel,” the driver says shakily as Akira’s mother holds him too tightly, and she agrees; but even at seven Akira knows enough to know that she’s just being polite. She’d explained to him very matter-of-factly about things like superstition, about angels and ghosts and other things that don’t exist.
So this couldn’t have been an angel. Besides, the wings had been black, not white.
When he’s thirteen, too old for imaginary friends but not sure he’s old enough for hallucinations, Akira looks up angels online. There are a lot of cutesy cherubs and websites whose owners clearly have too much time on their hands to wade through, but he finds himself drawn to the illustrations with inhuman proportions, with halos that crack the sky and eyes that burn.
The he looks up demons, and the results are less comforting.
The eyes he sees in his dreams are made of fire, but the smile beneath them is knowing, confident, and Akira shouldn’t feel soothed by something so jagged but even waking to the sensation of over-sized claws in his hair only leaves him wanting more.
Then he’s sixteen, and the worst night of his life has turned into a week, a month, a long drawn-out nightmare he can’t wake up from. Akira sleeps as much as he can. It’s preferable to being awake. He dreams of chains, of fire, of the susurration of a thousand black feathers that he can almost feel sweep across his face. He wakes up with wet cheeks and the sick, dull conviction that whatever he might have seen, whatever he might have thought, in the end he hadn’t been worth saving.
Then he’s in Tokyo, and then he’s - somewhere else, somewhere fantastical, in the dungeons of a castle that can’t be real with a boy he’s just met and an impossible choice. Akira swallows past the memories in his throat and the blades at his neck; another time, another place, but the same choice. He got it wrong the first time but he can’t seem to get it right here either because the lead that’s been moving through his veins since that night is turning molten and clearly there are no such things as guardian angels, because if he had one it wouldn’t let this happen twice.
The world slows and stops, and a low bass chuckle rumbles through Akira’s head.
I cannot save you, it says, and Akira nearly screams in rage because what is the point, then, what has this even been all about?
I cannot save you, the voice repeats, but call my name, and I can give you the power to save yourself.
There are gas-blue flames whirling around his feet, and Akira bares his teeth in a razor smile he can feel echoed in his heart. He doesn’t have to ask; he hadn’t known it before this moment but he can feel the name written in his bones, in his blood, a compact he will gladly sign.
“Come, Arsene!” The words burn as they leave his mouth and the flames wreathe him from head to toe but Arsene is unfolding behind him, stretching his wings until they brush the corners of the cell. His laughter thrums through Akira’s bones, and as his veins fill with fire Akira laughs with him. Angel or demon, it hardly matters because what matters most is that Akira has the power to set things right, the power to end this.
This is hardly the end, Akira, Arsene purrs between the beats of his heart. This is only the beginning.
(From this prompt list) | (original post)
