Phoenix Rising
a k a n t h a e - h i m e
Authoress' Note & Disclaimer: I based this one-shot off a story called The Sweetest Thing is Salt. I can't remember what it was about, barring that it was Hell Kaiser-centric and included a romance between HK and an original character. Should you be the author of the story (and yes, I will check) reading this, mail me and I'll edit this. Eventually. Or...just, like, post a review saying you wrote it. While not without errors (riddled with them, actually,) TSTS was pretty good. Kudos to the author; and to Meii, who'll probably be mad at me for only showing her the draft of this before posting it. All standard disclaimers apply, my nameless original character is...well, nameless. She's the only thing that belongs to be unless I'm allowed to claim the plot idea. Which I doubt, because everyone hates me like that.
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i. staged phrase
Words, words, words.
He talks too little but she talks too much.
His silence is brooding and full of tragedy but hers is of the kind that bubbles and brims full to the top of the witch's cauldron with unspoken words of saintly eloquence. Light, death, sanity, essence, wings; and something else that's much too much like blood for her taste but painful enough to make him relinquish the last feelings of human attachment he nurses beneath the gaping sore that he likes to imagine has replaced the beating heart in his chest.
She likes to imagine something happier than he does, too, which makes it all the more surprising why she even exists so beautifully in a place like this.
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ii. feathered stave
It's dank, dark and full of unholy animosity. Here - unlike everywhere else she knows - she shines like an incandescent light bulb in a dark chamber with shadows that dance on walls and demons that haunt one's footsteps. Hell, of course she doesn't belong. It's not right to have to trap an angel in the midst of heartless demons who would rather eat her heart whole than nurture its healing potential. He knows better than to brush her off so easily as someone who just doesn't fit in because she's the only one out of all of them that still has a chance for a life that is normal, unique, enlightening...however terrifying her previous life was.
In short, she has a chance to obtain everything that he doesn't want, once wanted, and will most likely never have. Gabriel, they call her mockingly, for the imaginary angels she wants to see and still can't. Her vision's too crowded with things that don't belong.
The things that do belong aren't visible anymore. Strayed far down the path has Gabriel and now the angel's lost her wings. One feather at a time they were plucked by people like him and now they are strewn on the floor next to pieces of a soul that's now in tatters.
Angels are resilient; he finds this to be true for her and admires her not because she is so optimistic (heaven knows that she doesn't deserve to act with such chivalry in front of people like him who have never known such a thing.) No, the thing about her that he finds solace is in the fact that her words are of encouragement and that her actions prove that even a wingless angel is not flightless. She tells him, admonishes him, scolds him like a mother to a child, "If I can do it, so can you, Mamoru-kun!"
(Her pet name for him; he's forgotten what it means, but it is obviously something that he isn't.)
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iii. mildly obsessive
It amuses him in much the same way a cat catches a mouse and then plays with it before the meal even begins. He does little things for her, unnoticeable in the grand scheme of things, and if she does take notice he gives no truth to the notion that he did so. He has yet to actually tame the mouse or make a meal of it for his dinner because, to put it simply, he's gotten attached. It's the sort of attachment he'd rather not have but has anyway. You can't stop your destiny even if you can still make it.
So while he's pondering how life spins round and round and round so damn fast he's also tuning out a certain redhead's annoying voice out.
"...Listen, Mamoru-kun! You shouldn't be smoking, 'cause...Um...'Cause it'll turn your lungs black and you might get cancer!"
She pauses. He glances down at her diminuitive physique, jolted out of a midday reverie by the sudden silence (barring the murmur and snickering of others in the distance.)
"Mamoru-kun, I don't want you to die. 'Cause if you keep on smoking you'll die. I know it! My mom died the same way!"
Her lip quivers and he puts a hand on her shoulder. The gesture brightens what seems to be one of her most melancholy moods today. She's too much of a fool to see the gesture for what it really is.
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iv. fork in the road
He looks down at the cigarette in his hand; then to the luminous girl doing cartwheels across an uneven floor - attention straying far and wide, as always, going from a maternal attitude to care-free childly antics in seconds. His gaze goes back to the cigarette - the little tube made of paper and ash and addictive cravings. It only takes another moment (seeming as fast as if his thoughts were traveling faster than light) to make his next decision. It takes another moment (one that feels like his feet are encased in concrete in comparison to the weightlessness of the moment prior) for him to actually take charge of the situation and do what he promised himself once upon a time he would do...Someday, somewhere; any day and anywhere.
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v. decision's aftermath
After he's done he lifts up a shoe, moving as elegantly as one can whilst standing on one leg, and brushes off a little collection of ashes and regret trodden underfoot by his truly. He doesn't like getting dirty doing frivolous things like making sure he honors his own promises.
Because cigarettes are a little like her - they lie dormant for a while waiting for the only chance they'll ever have. When that opportunity finally comes along they flare up and give off an intoxicating scent that will, sooner or later, be crushed underfoot by someone like him. So too comes the end of the flame; and so too comes the end of another wheel made up of cigarette smoke and incense. There'll be another phoenix eventually - born from the ashes of something like him, something being the perfect pronoun to describe someone that was once human and is not human anymore - but for now there's no more whispers rising from still-smoldering ashes underfoot.
For now, there is silence. It's one of a different kind than any he has ever cared to mishear.