a/n: hello, my name is duilin and i lied about it being only two genres — there's actually several that i'm planning to span into.
also chiaroscuro said no to being updated
apologies
brother, i've come to take you back to hell
This area of town was the abandoned, dilapidated remnants of the time that had worn it down—a sad testament to the fact that, yes, things were easily forgotten and buried between the 'nothings' and 'other things'. This place was something of a disremembered realm that held everything left behind; the mangled footsteps were left to die in the dust, as were the children behind the door that broke their spirits each time it shut with a pained croak. His eyes were immediately drawn to it, drawn to its discolored, weathered surface as he slid his fingertips down the rough wood and pushed the door open gently with his foot.
It wasn't even locked—as if no one would bother to break into an orphanage anyway.
The first time he had come here, it had been pure coincidence. His friend Finn and he were scavenging through the towns for adventure, and they stumbled upon an old superstition.
The children there are supernatural. They went beyond this world and have come back.
Naturally, he didn't believe in that sort of mysterious voodoo sham, but Finn convinced him to give it a look—and the experience ended up haunting him. That day, walking past an entire window of curious and resigned eyes, ghostly fingertips pressed against frosted windows, was his nightmare. Finn didn't seem bothered, but something about walking past all of them—"Finn, I'm going into that building"—sent apprehensive tingles ricocheting down his spine.
He was feeling the same apprehension now as the eyes of every child in the vicinity pinned him where he stood. The door had creaked loudly, and he only now registered in his mind that he must've frightened a good few of them with the foreign noise.
"May I help you, sir?"
He turned his head to face the woman that suddenly appeared from the top of the dusty staircase-a thin old bag of skin and bones with long raven hair bundled at her waist, lines emblazoned across her expressionless face as she held her elbows and stared down at him with hawk-like eyes. Those eyes were old and tired. Dry.
"I had an appointment," he said nervously, tugging at his hair.
She raised an eyebrow at him, and he fought down the wince that had been meaning to surface the moment he'd stepped foot into the dismal threshold.
"Is that so?" Her tone was flat. "Come up here, sir."
He schooled his expression and made his way up the stairs, gripping the banister tightly as seventeen pairs of eyes burned into his back. The old woman gripped his wrist—damn, her hand was a claw of ice—and pulled him down the hallway and into an office. She forced him into the seat opposite her own, separated by the worn desk in the middle.
"You came here to adopt a child," she said. Her eyes roved over him. "The paperwork speaks for itself; however... how many summers have you seen?"
He stared at her blankly. "Pardon?"
"Your age, sir."
"Oh — I — I just turned twenty."
"Did you have a particular child in mind?"
Another blank stare. After attempting to contact the orphanage - seeing as there wasn't any sort of agency he could converse with - he had instead scheduled an appointment with the woman before him now and mailed the paperwork to her beforehand. But he hadn't really contemplated his next course of action after arriving, and this was the consequence. Tongue-tied before the old hawk, he shook his head. If he hadn't known better, he might have thought that her face showed the faintest signs of exasperation. Next to her hand a cord of rope lay. Her fingers curled around it, and he followed the cord to some sort of odd machinery.
"I will ring a bell. Stand at the staircase and choose."
He nodded and went out into the hallway, ambling down to the top of the grand staircase again. The sound of the bell rang through his bones and rattled him to the core as the heads of all the children lifted reluctantly to face the stranger at the top of the staircase. One by one, they trudged to a stop before the staircase, all of their eyes averted from his own. Those eyes were older than he was.
He swallowed and looked slowly from left to right. All of them looked equally submersed in abject misery as they inspected their feet, but with resigned faces as if they had already consigned themselves to their present lives.
But one child stared straight at him.
Something painful went down his spine, and he stepped back, gripping the balustrade. Sweat broke across his forehead.
Icy blue eyes. Cold.
He shut his own eyes and breathed in deeply. When he opened them again, the child was still staring at him, tilting his head to the side. Strands of oily black hair stuck to his unwashed, grimy face, and his mouth was set in a firm line, a determination not to look away.
Then he felt something on his shoulder and nearly jumped away. It was the old woman from earlier.
"You could."
I could...what? His mouth was dry and left no words to say behind on his tongue as the confusion fogged his thoughts.
"Thank you, sir."
I haven't...chosen...yet...?
"He's yours."
He opened his mouth to interject. Nothing came out but an unintelligible rasp of faint protest.
"Please care for him well."
Something in her eyes spoke devilish tones to him. He flinched and bowed his head in thanks, making his way down the stairs as the children dispersed. A few gave him glances, almost disappointed—you didn't save me from this hellhole—and the others didn't even bother to look. How many times had they not been chosen?
He brushed his thoughts aside with a hard swallow and came to a stop before the child he was now to take care of.
Owlish blue eyes stared up at him with the same intensity from before. Then the boy extended up a hand upward and grasped his hand—and it wasn't so hard to breathe. He allowed himself to relax and led his ward out of the orphanage. As they stepped outside into the dismal grey area and reached his car, he turned to the boy.
"Are you...hungry?" he queried.
"It took you five months to decide that you wanted to adopt me?" the boy asked, as if in response. Icy blue eyes pinned him again. "I waited for you."
He opened the car door for the shorter male to step in and gave the child an apologetic grimace. "I'm sorry I kept you waiting..."
"You've always kept me waiting," the boy said with a knowing smile.
He wasn't sure he understood the meaning behind it.
But as an afterthought, the little boy added, "Maedhros."
His nerves short-circuited and were promptly lit aflame. The ground came up and met his knees, and he clutched the car door as he choked. His neurons killed themselves over and over; his lungs refused to fill with air, and he was left asphyxiating on nothing. A light laugh came from above, but if he moved his head in the slightest, even to look up, he was sure that his skull would implode, and all that would be left of his neck and up would be brain matter.
"Sorry. Next time, I'll use your other name."
Something soft placed itself on his head, and the throbbing started to recede.
When there was only a dull reminder of the agony, he inhaled shakily. Then he counted to ten—one, two, five, seven, eight, six, three... I'm not getting any nearer to ten—and looked up, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth and rubbing his eyes. His body was drenched in cold sweat that chilled even his bones.
"Sorry," the boy repeated with another smile. "Let's go home."
