AN: this started as a RP application for a fansite and then kind of spiraled into some type of weird artsy thing, proving once again that I am incapable of doing anything other than short reflective angst.


Long ago there was a velvet sky that stretched taut above the silhouetted steeples of Coates, a clean, blackened canvas carved from the ashes of the sun, studded with twisting pockets of light that winked goodnight. It has been drowned; in its place, the usurper sits contended, a dripping pit of tar that consumes the bones of stars and spits them out onto the heads of hopeful devils.


Once upon a time Caine had slept and he had dreamt. He dreamt of pretty crowns and pretty thrones and pretty queens but more than that, more than the gold or the gems or the girls, he dreamt of people. Maybe not people, maybe not so much people as a faceless mess of limbs and minds and hearts that were surely somewhere there among the crowd that clamored at his feet. He did not want their faces or their limbs or their minds or even their hearts. Caine wanted what he had always wanted – he wanted them on their knees, heads bent towards the earth and voices lifting his name towards the sky.

Now there are people, a faceless mess of limbs and minds and maybe hearts. They clamor for his every move, his every breath. They look at him with wonder in their gaze and his name upon their lips, he thinks, although he cannot hear their voices behind the wall. It is everything he wanted and it is nothing he wanted and it is a spinning storm of lights and words and eyes.


There aren't many safe places left, but Coates Academy is one of them. It kneels weakly with the last of its strength as its previous glamour drips down into the thirsty grass. Caine thinks maybe Coates is bowing, beams collapsed and corners crumpled, body stripped of bricks and beauty. It's bowing to him, struck by his great return, and he laughs at that but he's so tired and he doesn't know why. He is so tired. He had been tired when he had set foot on this ground and dragged himself up the stairs and pushed open the door and now he sits amongst the ruins of Babel, the statue of a fallen king carved in fallen moonlight beneath a fallen roof.

It's quiet here, as quiet as he could hope. More importantly, he's alone – no one is watching him, staring at him. Sometimes he can feel their greedy glares soaking up the moisture from his pores and the force behind his breath. Maybe tomorrow he can step back out under the sun and face it again, maybe tomorrow he can remove the bars from these thoughts of mom and kid and Diana and cameras and Sam. Maybe tomorrow, but not today, not tonight when he is gripping the icy pole of a flashing carousel. Right now he needs the dark and the broken; he needs the dusty scraps of pride that filter through the air. With shaky legs, Caine stands, and amidst his shattered chambers he is lost.


Long ago there was a velvet boy. He had been dark, he had been tall, he had been red and orange and grey and smooth and strong.

He has been drowned.