Title: One-winged Angels
Author: Rayshia
Fandom: Heart no Kuni no Alice
Genre: Horror, Drama
Rating: T
Characters/Pairings: Alice Liddel, Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee, various Faceless
Summary: "Have you heard the story of the one-winged angels?" she asks while taking a sip of her tea. Her companion shakes his head. "No, I don't believe that I have. Do share." She nods and folds her hands on the table. "Really? Alright, it goes something like this."
Suggested Soundtrack: Your Kotodama Curse by KAITO
Warning(s): AU, character death (?), angst, blood and gore
Word Count: 2374
"Have you heard the story of the one-winged angels?" she asks while taking a sip of her tea.
Her companion shakes his head. "No, I don't believe that I have. Do share."
She nods and folds her hands on the table. "Really? Alright, it goes something like this."
"Once upon a time, there was an angel."
"Brother, hurry up!" A short dark-haired boy yells over his shoulder as he climbs over the last rock on the side of the canyon, reaching the top.
His brother frowns as he continues his efforts, making his way slowly up the rocks. "Then wait for me! You know I'm not as fast as you, brother!"
The first boy just laughs at his brother's comment, and smirks. "Tell me about it, I'm leaving you in my dust! Heh, slowpoke!" he jeers, causing the other boy to frown and pick up his pace.
"Shut up! There are plenty of other things I can beat you at!" he objects, stumbling slightly as he loses his footing on a loose rock. "Wo-woah! Ah!" The blue-clad boy falls down, rolling over several rocks and lands awkwardly on his left foot. There's a small cracking sound, and he whimpers slightly in pain.
"Brother! Are you okay? You klutz!" The red-eyed boy asks, half concerned, half scolding. He rushes down to where the blue-eyed child is lying, checks for any blood (There's none), and then examines the injured foot.
After a few minutes of analysis, the first brother comes to a conclusion. Smacking the other boy on the head, he yells, "Such a crybaby! It's only a sprained ankle, nothing major." But inside he's just trying to hide his relief that nothing bad's happened to his twin. Standing up, he rolls his eyes and says, "C'mon, now that you've gotten yorself hurt, we might as well go back home."
But a sapphire eye burns defiant as the second boy insists, "No! I want to go to the top to see the view! I'll go by myself if I have to!" Slowly and shakily, he manages to get up, but not without some level of pain, and hobbles towards the rocks, ready to try climbing them again.
The red brother sees the other boy wince every other step he takes, and lets out a huff of exasperation. Before the blue-eyed boy realizes what's going on, his brother is right there beside him, draping one of his brother's arms over his shoulders and placing one of his own hands on the other's waist. "C'mon, brother," he says gruffly. "We'll get to the top together."
The blue-eyed boy just smirks. "Heh, I may be a klutz, brother, but you're a big softie."
"He only had one wing, so he couldn't fly. But he wished to be able to fly more than anything else in the world."
"Brother... The view's beautiful..." The blue-eyed boy breathes as he surveys the valley below from his vantage point on the top of the rocks.
The other boy nods, red eye wide in awe as he takes in the scenery. Tilting his head up, he notices a bright globe in the distant sky casting a flood of orange light on the whole landscape, and that parts of the sky are already turning dark. "Heh, it took us so long to get up that the sun's already setting," he teases, even though the both of them fully know that day and night in Wonderland are completely random.
Smiling roguishly, he sits down on a flat part of the rock, and motions for his brother to take a seat next to him. The blue-clad boy does so with a grin of his own, and the two of them just talk and talk about everything and anything, the strange shape of that bush over there, the stars, about their new boss-that weird guy with the hat, Blood Dupre-and just enjoy each others' presence and the conversation. Time flies, and before either of them know it, the sky is an inky black, adorned with dozens and dozens of twinkling little stars that look like fairy lights in the darkness, and illuminated by the pale half moon, that sheds an ethereal-looking light on the surroundings.
All of a sudden, there's a thin diagonal streak of light in the sky, and the red-clad boy points up excitedly, yelling, "Brother! It's a falling star! Make a wish!" There's a moment of silence as both children clasp their hands together, and send up a wish to whatever deity or force that governs the prayers of those who wish on stars.
When they're both done, they look at each other, and the blue-eyed brother is the first to break the few moments of silence between them. "What did you wish for?" he asks, voice filled with anticipation.
His brother crosses his arms. "There's no way I'm telling you!" he objects. "Wishes don't come true if you tell them to other people!"
There's a bit of squabbling with shouts and objections of "That's not true!", "Yes it is", "That's stupid!" and "Why don't you go first then?" But in the end, the red brother ends up losing and has to reveal his wish first.
"I wished... That I could see this world with two eyes," he murmurs softly, one of his hands unconsciously going up to touch the gaping hollow space where his left eye should be. His red eye doesn't dare meet his brother's gaze, and he just stares out at the view of the valley, which, suddenly, doesn't seem as beautiful anymore.
His brother nods, hand also brushing the empty, obsolete eye socket on the right side of his face, lone blue eye blinking sadly. "Me too."
"When he could only watch other angels fly around, he felt lonely and left out, so he went away and isolated himself from everyone else."
"Brother, I don't like going into town," The red-eyed boy states flatly as he and his brother head into the neutral territory to buy groceries for the Hatter Mansion, seeing as the servants and maids apparently have a vacation today.
The blue-eyed boy sighs ruefully and scowls. "Neither do I, but Blood says that if we want dinner tonight, we have to go buy food. At least the newbie-hare's the one doing the cooking," he reasons, looking at the list of ingredients that they had been told to bring back, and not hearing his red-eyed twin muttering a dark comment about hoping that the weird rabbit-eared guy that boss had randomly brought back to the mansion didn't try to poison them both.
"First up is... Stupid hare! What's he doing putting so many carrots on the shopping list?" The blue-clad boy complains, glaring vehemently at the shopping list, as if his stare can change the words written down in ink on the paper. But alas, to no avail.
His brother grabs the list from his twin's hands. "Whatever. Let's just get this over with," he groans. But when he notices that the blue-clad gatekeeper had fallen behind a bit, he raises an eyebrow slightly in concern. "Are you alright, brother?" He asks. "Is your ankle all right? It should be okay, it's been over a week..."
The other boy shakes his head. "It's alright," he insists, catching up to the other boy. "I just... Really hate carrot dishes, and I get the feeling that this new guy might like them… A lot," the child admits, sighing in the defeat.
The first brother smirks and puts an arm over his twin's shoulders. "Don't worry, we can just thwart the stupid rabbit's plot by not buying any carrots for him," he laughs, prompting his brother to do the same.
As the two walk into a crowded square en route to the market, the brothers can't help but notice the fact that the faceless civilians there are making way for them, shying away and clearing a path. They push it to the back of their minds, assuming that it's simply because they fear role holders. However, a little faceless girl clings to her mother and whimpers, "Mommy! One-eyed monsters!", she steps over the line.
The first boy's sole red eye snaps over to where the girl is, with a glare fearsome enough to rival Blood Dupre's. The second boy's blue eye is cold and tense as he forces himself to look forward.
The red-eyed boy reaches for his gun, but is stopped when his brother grips his wrist, stopping him with a stare. The first boy snarls as he turns and stalks away. The blue-eyed boy shoots a cold stare at the girl before following. As they leave the square, they can already hear the whispers of the gossiping faceless.
"Did you see that? He was about to shoot that little girl!"
"Role holders. They think they can do anything. And did you see their eyes?"
"One side was completely hollow, like a skeleton's! And their eyes looked evil, like demons!"
"They really are monsters!"
The red-eyed twin bites his bottom lip and clenched his fists until his knuckles are white as he tries to fight back the tears welling up in his sole eye. His brother grips his shoulder tightly and leads him away.
"Ignore them. They don't know what they're talking about, brother," he whispers.
They don't answer Elliot's questions about what took them so long when they return to the mansion. They also never speak of that incident ever again.
"One day, he met another angel who also had only one wing. The two made friends immediately and shared their griefs about not being able to fly alongside their companions."
One of the two gatekeepers enters their room to find his twin sitting calmly on the ground, back facing him, and head tilted upwards, seemingly staring out the window. An electric fan creates a small breeze blowing towards the boy and towards the open window that he is mesmerised with. Outside, in the dark night sky, the half moon hangs in the sky like a Cheshire Cat's tilted smile, it's luminescent, reflected light blocked only by the thin wisps of clouds deciding across its image.
"Hey brother," A voice whispers, soft and uncharacteristically gentle, coming from the boy seated comfortably on the crimson carpeted floor."It's a half moon tonight, isn't it?"
The brother that has just returned nods, a small smile playing upon his lips as he takes off his mafia uniform, stained with blood and dirt from a hard day's work and play, preparing to change into his sleepwear. He can tell what's coming next. "Yes, it is a half moon again, brother."
The boy on the floor moves his head slightly, as if in a lopsided nod. "Remember that time we climbed up canyon to look at the stars, brother? It was a half moon that time as well, wasn't it?" He asks, voice cracking and breaking oddly at some parts. His brother raises an eyebrow, not sure why his twin seems to be getting so emotionally worked up over a mere memory. He hears the sound of dripping, and drops of liquid landing on the floor. Is his brother crying? That's uncharacteristically sentimental for him.
"Yes, brother. I remember. We even made wishes on a shooting star, didn't we?" Wishes on stars indeed. He smiles slightly at the silliness he and his brother had in their youth.
The latter nods vigorously, and though the former can't see it, he can tell that the other boy has a huge grin on his face, almost as wide as the moon hanging in the sky above them. "Yes, yes. We wished on that, didn't we, brother? Do you still remember what we both wished for?"
His brother's smile falters slightly and the boy quickly answers, "It doesn't really matter. It won't come true anywa-" He's about to finish the sentence, but it is then that he finally notices the puddle of wetness on the floor pooling around his brother, which has been hidden and soaked up by the red carpeting on that side of the room. His nose finely catches whiff of that all-too-familiar scent, which has been blown away from him by the electric fan until now. It all makes sense suddenly.
He runs over to where his brother his, about to yell something, ask him what happened, and why he's injured. But before the words manage to form on his lips, his twin turns around.
Gaining a demonic, haunting glow in the fake, stolen light of the moon, the boy crawls over the red, blood-soaked puddle on the carpet towards his brother with rivulets and streams of blood flowing from an empty socket where an eye has obviously been gouged out, and dripping down his face down onto the floor. A sickly pale face where all the blood has been drained out of his cheeks, is stretched into a crazed, maniacal smile that looks just so plain wrong, and for the first time in his life, the gatekeeper that's still standing feels as if he's about to wretch at the sight of this carnage.
"I love you so much, brother," the boy on the floor rasps, head tilted up though he has no eyes to see with. "This way... Our wish can become true." Grasped tightly in the bony, bloodstained fingers of his right hand, is an eyeball.
"Take it... Now we can see together."
"Finally the angels discovered that one of them had a right wing, and other the left. Holding each other closely, if they each flapped the one wing they possessed, the two were finally able to fly together. The end."
She smiles as she concludes the tale, taking another sip of tea. "The book I read it from told the story so much better... It's quite a popular tale. Are you sure you haven't heard of it?"
Her companion takes a polite bite out of a small pastry and smiles. "I believe I might have heard of something similar before, but I think that my version of the tale may not be quite as innocent..." he comments. The dark-haired man smiles yet again, and opens his eyes to reveal one eye crimson, one eye azure.
"Would you be interested in hearing it?"
A/N: And thus concludes the story. Thank you for taking your time to read this. This is actually a WIP from long ago that I just decided to complete recently. I'm not so sure about it, and the plot seems a bit overly dramatic to me, but I thought I might as well finish it. Please tell me what you think, and if it wasn't obvious enough, the story's basically an AU were Dee and Dum are born with one eye each. One eye, and one hollow socket. One of the brothers gives his eye to the other so that he can have both eyes. (He probably dies of blood loss right afterwards. Orz) Don't ask me how the transplant works. If Naruto can do it, so can I. Anyways, the companion to the storyteller at the end, is one of the twins grown up, with both his and his brother's eyes. Which one, I'll not say. Thank you again for reading this, and I hope it's ok. OTL
-Rayshia