hi guys!
So, I just checked, and this will be the 200th piece of combat! Fanfiction posted on this site! Yay!
So, it's short, I know, and any mistakes are due to my horrible, awful, bane-of-my-existence... Auto correct. Yes, you heard right. Auto correct.
Anyway, enjoy!
Disclaimer: nein. Don't know what it means, go look it up. In German. Google translate will be your best friend.
He had always hated the cold, it was like a shadow, slowing people down. Making them sad. When he was a kid, sometimes the streets of Chicago felt colder than the North Pole.
Growing up he's never had it easy. There had been days when time felt as though it might stand still, the air was so frigid in both physical and mental ways. He had taken the weight of his own survival onto his own shoulders, though, and was absolutely determined to keep it there, no charity involved.
However, it was one blustery night in late December, Christmas Eve, in fact. Young William Kirby shuffled his feet along the icy gutter, head bowed in reference to the biting breath of Jack Frost, clutching bruised or maybe even cracked ribs. All along the streets, Christmas candles burned on evergreen trees in the houses, and had he been bolder, Kirby would have stuck his face on one of the windows to see inside. However, he was too afraid of the impending wrath of a Scrooge-minded old lady to try anything. Instead he kept shuffling. The snow- or rather, slush- was seeping up through his boots already, and yet he didn't want to go home. His house was dark, in the poverty-stricken section, one of many in Chicago, and his drunk father had just beaten him up there, so...
He wasn't afraid to walk here. He was safe in the arms of the rich, metaphorically of course. Of course, they weren't terribly wealthy, no one in Chicago was, except for the extremely upper class people, but these people were certainly more so than the Kirby family ever would be. His train of thought began to go numb.
Slowly, he realized his feet were frozen to the point of uselessness, and he began to fall without realizing what was happening. He landed hard on the wet street. Voices echoed through his mind, worthless. You are nothing. You're the reason we live in this hell! Kirby tried to push himself up, but his exhaustion dragged him down, his dirty cheek still kissing the road.
His thoughts were halted when he heard a door creak open on one of the houses above him. From inside there was laughter, and the warm smell of cranberry sauce and baking bread. Cinnamon, too, assaulted his senses, and he almost staggered to a stop. Only the cold propelled him forward.
"Young man?" came a voice from the door. A woman's voice. Now Kirby, who was seventeen, perked, and tried to right himself, still to no avail. He brushed his hand across his face to wipe away to blood, and hoped that his father's handprint wasn't on his jaw.
"Ugh..."
"Are you alright? I... I just saw you walking on the street, and you fell." she stepped over the threshold, hugging herself to keep warm.
"Now, ma'am, you'd better not come out here," he almost drowned in a cruddy snowbank trying to stand up. "It's powerful cold out."
"Yes I-" she started, but froze. "My goodness! You're bleeding! You're head, behind your ear!"
He brought a handful behind his ear. Indeed, a warm, wet substance oozed abundantly. He sat up slowly, groaning. "Yeah, I um, hit my head." With my father's whiskey bottle.
"Well come inside, before you freeze to death."
"Now miss, I'm a street rat, you don't know me-"
"Street rat or no, you're a human. And if you are dangerous, my father and two brothers are inside waiting to clobber you with a candlestick. Come on." Suddenly she was at his side, helping him stand.
As they walked in, she said to him, "I'm Eliza."
He blinked, and watched her face stretch into a pleasant smile. He smiled too.
"I'm... Kirby."
Tell me what you think!
I know I haven't finished Dance With me, but crazy stuff happens in this here head of mine, and I gotta get it out. Anyway, drop a review if you get the chance, you know how much they mean to me... And to poor, freezing, beaten up Kirby...