Even through the darkest days.
This fire burns.
Always.
I never believed in angels much. They were a myth to me, a beautiful idea but…nothing more than words on parchment. After the destruction of the world, I felt only physical truths.
But after seven years, sheltered by the shadow of a human being I owed my life to, I began to wonder if my first assumption was untrue. Kyle was a guardian, a nurturing entity that, in his early youth, devoted himself to the posterity of our humanity. To love him, I thought, was to love the wind…giving everything, but receiving nothing in return.
He found me in a heap of garbage, near death and rendered suddenly taciturn by the events of the premature apocalypse. Before, with my mother, I vaguely recall contentedness…a sort of innocent extroversion that was the existence of every child. But it was such a frail memory…I have nearly lost it now, along with the innocence I once carried so artfully.
As I grew, Kyle became the only separation from intangibility that stitched me into the harsh fold of our reality. Months transcended into years, and with years brought age…I began to grow, and so did Kyle. In a way, we grew together, despite the development that nudged itself between us.
I think it was how I came to find that my love for him, at first founded on the grounds of strict camaraderie and guardianship, was not so platonic as I thought. The years did something to me…they warped me in some foreign way, inflicting not only the strange concepts of physical womanhood, but the mental aspects as well.
I began to see Kyle in a strange new light. The eyes that were once paternal to me now revealed themselves in an even more terrifying way than ever before, growing beautiful and unrelenting in their intensity. His gentle embrace, first to shield me from cold and danger, now became the tangling vines, ensnaring in me in the novelty of it all. It was as if he had become some sort of danger…some exotic new world that I longed to discover, but feared all at the same time.
I couldn't understand, not for so long.
I had been only eight when my mother died, and amidst the memories that I could not remember, one began to show stark against the rest. She told me about love, about the lengths a man would go to win the affection of the woman he adored. If I asked for the stars, he'd bring me the moon, she said…if I wanted a home to call my own, he would give me the world.
When I was old enough to begin to understand what she meant, it was already too late for him. Kyle had given me his world in one last attempt to keep the shards of humanity that threatened to leave him. And in his desperation, his innocence, he had imparted his soul to me – never knowing of the consequences such an action would bring about.
But what I didn't realize was that it was too late for me as well.
If I didn't believe in angels before, I certainly did now.
AN: It would be fun to write a full-length story about this. It has potential. But for now, it's just a one shot. I didn't read it over, it's more of a writing exercise...so it might have mistakes in it and feel sort of like its rambling. If so, I apologize...like I said before, this is more of an exercise than anything.
Disclaimer - I don't own Terminator. It belongs to James Cameron, who, might I add, is a genius. Also, the lyrics at the top belong to Killswitch Engage, not me. :)