summertime—
and if there ever was such a thing, he saw it in her.
There was something about this town he was walking in. Cracked buildings with rat-infested nests from the bottom floors to the needle of the skyscraper, broken streets that always seemed to find each other, and the dark, smoky alleyway he had stopped in front of—there wasn't anything that could hold his attention these past few days.
Life could be so unexciting at times.
He snapped LOVELESS closed with gentle ease, sending out signals through the thick, dusty air. He heard a scuffle of a shoe hitch against a rock, forgotten, but still there.
He walked with his pristine coat fluttering against the black abyss surrounding him. He felt something trying to hide away, and today he needed to find it.
Everything was being much too boring.
There was a shudder—so small, soft, secret. He stopped.
His boots would have turned noiselessly, had there not been a puddle he was stuck in. He looked down.
If he wasn't so artificial already, he wouldn't have seen the broken figure on the ground, feigning a strong bravado, killing the charred sidewalk with her glare.
He kneeled, leaning more closely. A knife trimmed off some eyelashes.
"Why are you here?" Oh, was it menacing.
Genesis smiled, intrigued, but he opted for silence. She was much too beautiful for an answer he didn't have. Because why was he here, right now, looking through a cracked warrior? It wasn't just because of his overdramatic boredom, no. It had to be something else working too, something greater.
There were always deeper meanings to things like this.
He saw a hand held fast on a hilt, silver glinting. He saw muscled legs shaking with involuntary precision. He saw a chipped off heel a few inches from a foot—the ankle was twisted in such a way, it shouldn't have still been attached.
But it was her eyes, redder than the blood soaking into his jacket, through the stitches of his boots. They made him breathless as they recorded his face, scalding his cheeks, burning off his eyebrow.
His perfect, shapely, not really feminine, but almost eyebrow.
He found himself wondering if she was the goddess, who came from a nameless place, from a star that had died, from the canvas of the sky. Perhaps she landed in the wrong place.
If Genesis wasn't mistaken, the season was winter—a cold, dry, unmistakably rotten winter. But it seemed it had always been winter, here.
And just looking at her, right now, hearing her voice that should be just as cracked as her body—but wasn't—made him think that all of this was too sudden. She shouldn't be here yet.
"Answer me, you imbecile."
Then, looking at her busted lip, an answer dawned on the top of his head. He deftly pressed his fingers into his right wrist and held up his hand. The hand gripping her knife turned a bleak white.
"I'm here to heal you."
His hand was already placed over her ankle and she lurched backward.
She was hissing—not from pain or from the spell—but at his hand and at his face.
"Get away."
He ignored her, hands still working their magic that she really didn't want.
He let out a breath, his left hand putting pressure against his cheek. The gash wasn't as shallow as he would have liked, but he should be grateful. His shoulder was more than reachable distance to the blade, and it was still connected to his body.
He looked back up to her, watching her chest heave and nostrils flare. Her eyes could have been exuding blood just like the whole of her body, and her knife was still raised and ready to populate him with death.
"I am Rosso the Crimson and you are nothing more than the scum that pastes this city together." Her tongue rolled with a foreign accent that accomodated her nose, eyebrows, and hair.
"I don't need you," she said. "I don't need you or anybody else." Something was telling him that she may be saying that to convince herself more than to convince him. It was exactly like a dangerous threat, but he felt an odd twinge of certain pity.
He let his eyes trail over her various injuries, their placement, wondered if there could be something living in the shadows that had the ability to get through her defenses with such a fine embellishment.
But he realized that even if he did heal her and let her keep living, her death inside was down to the last seconds. It was imminent, known before it had been set. He had an impulse to stop it, because she had more meaning to her than he could see.
Her character was something this place wouldn't be able to understand. All that anybody would be able to see was death caked behind her eyelids, a promised killer lurking in the cement of the bricks, agile certainty with no mercy.
And if anyone besides Genesis was to walk by her this climactic night, her timer would have already gone off.
He grabbed her wrist and pushed it against the crumbling building wall. His grip was so tight, faces so close, the glowing weapon clattered onto the ground.
There was too much blood, and Rosso the Crimson had never been so crimson before. Her paling face was more noticeable with all the stains marring her skin.
If anyone besides Genesis was staring at her so hard, they wouldn't have realized that the frost surrounding her body held something bright. Something nonexistent. Something not really there.
The foot he healed punched him in the gut, and his grip slackened. She took the painted knife and rammed it into his forearm.
She wobbled to her feet, pushing the wall for support, and didn't notice the cut on his cheek had long since healed and that the puncture in his arm was weak. She had never been this weak before, not ever.
He stood, shaking his arm, and glanced to her slumping form with a kind of caution. Any second now.
But he saw, in the lightless space she was holding to herself, she held a glow. A glowed hue that had a yellow center.
And to be honest, she reminded him nothing of this perpetual winter in which she had found herself. No, no. Genesis thought it was the exact opposite.
Like a summertime. A dilated, manic summertime, where there were no flowers. Where there were no butterflies. A picture devoid of a colored prism.
It made him want to show her what she didn't have to be. If he could show her a Banora apple in a place with more color and more light, with life instead of underlying death, he would.
They were so alike, really. He saw it.
So he let her trip over to him, standing right in front of him with a grotesque grimace. The sharp tip of her blade was digging into his adam's apple with building force.
But she never broke the skin.
"I never want to see your disgusting face ever again."
He blinked at her a few times, waiting for her to slam it through his neck.
But it disappeared as fast as she did.
And all that was left was the puddle of the withering summertime, basking in the glorious darkness.
He forced his mind not to blame himself, but it stayed with him throughout the years.
He never cleaned the stains from his jacket and boots, and he didn't let himself join Deepground.
He didn't want to see her winter, and so he never did.
a/n: Genesis/Rosso need much more love, don't you think? x) They're like cracktasticular cancer that I can't get rid of. So hopefully I got them right.
DEDICATION TIMEZ:
Strawberry Zix,
Hope you liked at least a part of it. :)
LOVE,
the ugly cupcake
For everyone else who reads this, I hope you enjoyed it. 8D