C lulessHamlet does not own the rights to Square-Enix

The thick air of the Slums was heavy in my lungs as I trudged down the streets with nothing but the clothes on my back. I couldn't stand the inability to breathe any longer. I'd never been down here before. It was like descending into a sewer.

My mind wasn't working right. The trauma of the day before was still affecting me. Images of a grim, black-haired man in a blue suit with a gun kept shooting through my mind. That man had killed them. My parents had been killed by a Turk.

Finally giving up I slumped against the building and let the oppressiveness take over. Not a single soul even looked at me as I lost all feeling and fell into an almost comatose state.

I awoke to find myself in the arms of a boy who couldn't be any older than fourteen. My own age. He smelled of alcohol and the myriad other curious scents of the Slums .He didn't notice I was awake. A curious look came upon his face and he kissed my cheek.

I kissed him back.

I blushed. It had been a stupid reflex, and he was so warm and comforting I felt like a little girl again, in my daddy's arms. He smiled though. I took a breath and felt a sharp pain in my lungs. I cringed and he held me closer, a smile playing upon his lips.

"You've never been down to the Slums before have you?" he said. His voice was like a butterfly, small and feathery on my ear. I just shook my head and moved closer. Why were we getting so intimate?

"Relax," he said, "I'm not gonna hurt you." His breath smelled of whiskey. "I had to hold you down 'cause you wouldn't stop shaking. You coughed up a lot of blood." All I could do was cringe at the pain and shudder at the feel of those butterfly wings coming from his mouth and onto my ear. After a while I felt my muscles slowly relax and calm returned to my mind. Finally, I was able to look into his face.

His eyes were the blue of water, fluid and icy at the same time. His hair was a deep brown. He wasn't handsome by most standards, but something in his face made me think he was beautiful. Was it honesty? And, oh god, those eyes… If I were to paint him as the butterfly he was I would have taken the tears from his eyes and used them to color hi wings.

He seemed to see what I was thinking and smiled. He looked right into my eyes. What did he see? Fear? Awe? I couldn't stop staring at him, and slowly, ever so slowly, our lips met. I touched him gently, afraid to scare the butterfly away. He responded by pulling me into his embrace. I held myself against him and felt the butterfly flutter in his heart. My own heart was racing.

After a minute or so more of us was touching, then slowly more and more. Finally we were together and I kept my lips held to his lips, the taste of the whiskey dripping into my mouth like honey. Finally we separated. I gasped for air, and slowly he dressed us both. He sat up, and pulled me up with him, reaching down on the floor for something.

I saw his room for the first time. It was empty but for the window with faded blue curtains and a few boxes in the corner where empty glass bottles were sitting, some of them knocked over. I took in the worn out quilt we had been sleeping under and the bareness of the bed. It was nothing but a twin with a foot rail, yet somehow it had seemed so much bigger a moment ago.

Then he was back and taking me into his arms so I could rest on his shoulder. He offered me a bottle of whiskey he had pulled off the floor. I took a sip, my lips tasting not just the liquor, but the crusty layer on the bottle, and the pure taste of glass where some of the crust had worn off. The drink went down my throat and I coughed.

He took it back, smiling, and took more than just a swig before replacing it on the floor. It was then that the seriousness of what we had just done hit me.

"Oh my god," I moaned, my voice barely even a whisper. Then comprehension emerged in his eyes and he took a breath, like he didn't know what to say. I held him closer; it was all I could do. He held me back, and slowly I began to cry. He shushed me and laid back down, cradling me in his arms. I was too weak to protest.

Eventually I got the nerve up to ask him why he had saved me.

"Your eyes," he said. I knew that the color of my eyes was odd; the color of lilacs, and icy sometimes like his. I had never really thought they were special. Nobody had ever paid any attention to them until he said that simple sentence. I found myself smiling, and running a hand down the side of his face. He smiled again, and I decided I wanted to see him smiling every day.

"One time," he said, "when I was little I was standing near the rim where there's a crack and sometimes you can see the sky. It was daytime and a lilac came falling down to hit me on the face. I ran home to my mother with it and she told me it was trash. But I kept it until it died and I buried it somewhere close to the crack."

I gasped. "When I was a kid," I said slowly, trying not to upset myself, "we were standing near the rim and I dropped the lilac daddy had given me through a hole in the sidewalk."

We both just looked at each other for a long moment. Then, looking at the ceiling, he said, "You'll get used to the air eventually." I rolled to put my head on his chest as he lay on his back. I fell asleep with his one arm wrapped around me.