.:ᴀᴠᴇɴᴏɪʀ:.
[REBELS AGAINST GOD]
—prologue—
avenoir
n.
the desire that memory could flow backward
he walks in.
The front door—worn, torn, age-washed—tries to inch back to its original place but stops short. It is left slightly ajar in the sudden wake of him forcefully thrusting it open, almost tearing apart the flimsy, peeling wooden opening.
Nothing is left untouched in the face of calamity.
Propelled by something (was it nostalgia, or curiosity, or the dark gut-wrenching intuition that leads you towards a light, only to let you know you've been delusional the entire time?), the young man steps further inside, broken wooden beams and fractured windowpanes snapping, crunching, finally disturbed, under his heavy coal-black boots.
Picturesque in the reminiscence of tragedy, it almost is.
He instinctively reaches for the wall, brushes his calloused fingertips against the crusty, stripped off paint, feels for the light switch, until he halts abruptly.
A veil of dust and ashes delicately conceals the ruins. Ground littered with fallen planks and chunks of brick, cement, the grime of catastrophe. Old boxes that were crushed oh so easily in the presence of what has caused all this destruction. A lone light bulb, broken and dysfunctional, hangs from the ceiling above what used to be a table, all sturdy and glossy and stable, now only some splintered arrows of wood.
The man looks at the crippled interior and sees himself, imagining a little boy, with messy raven hair, bounding down the staircase with a one-hand grip on the railing and a smile—genuine, warm, like those summer sunsets—on his lips. He looks to the demolished windows and sees her eyes in the disintegrated panes, sees her blue dress in the rippling curtains, hears her petal-delicate words and giggles as the loose window frame rocks in the breeze, feels her everywhere he turns.
It's amazing how memory can alter things that never were, he muses right then.
And as violently as he fights against it, he knows (solidly and aching) that little boy is no more, and so is she.
He skims by the different rooms blandly—trudging along what was the hallway with the roof crashing down—most of which are presented to him with the same demolition as the previous one, until he comes to a standstill in front of the third door down the hall. His bedroom. The door is shut tightly, one of the only doors still intact. He leans all his weight on the now-fragile wood and pushes, almost expecting it to break quickly, to no avail. Something—something heavy—is blocking it from the other side. And he remembers why, clear, desolate, and remorseful.
What can't be unseen is best avoided. What can't be forgotten is best never learned of.
If only I knew either.
He advances outside and rounds to the back of the house, taking half a second to take in the exterior of the structure that once looked so grand and beautiful and safe, way beyond dilapidated, already crumbling and about to vanish into the ruins that were once homes. There's a tall, gnarled tree in the back.
A young boy used to climb to his bedroom from here, just to make it harder. Just for fun, the man remembers. He glances up. And a girl used to follow him.
A few branches are missing, leaving jutting, splintered wood where they broke off (from what, who knows). Cinders clung to the bark. A dead bird hangs from the top by its plucked wings, dangling, lifeless, ominous. He examines it up and down before heaving himself up on the first branch.
I can still make it.
A large gap between his foothold and the highest windowsill. Without hesitation, he leaps.
It's the one room he recalls clearest. It's the one room where it happened.
Just like back then.
A snap in his head. Puzzle pieces into place. Memories conjuring themselves up, like a little sailboat out of the storm. He jumps down from the ledge of the windowsill and releases a breath he didn't realize he was holding.
He can almost picture her again, sitting on his bed, looking at him, saccharine smile on blushing cheeks with lapis eyes, before all of this ever happened.
There's an envelope on his bed, half-hidden under the blankets that turned to soot.
And in the face of adversity and sorrow, in the face of him, he notices—heart that was frozen for so long pounding, fingernails digging into his clammy palms—how it is the one thing left flawless.
The raven-haired man tenderly picks it up, caresses the envelope with his thumb—one, two feather-like strokes—until he finally gathers up the courage to slowly drag a frail shard of glass across the top, slip out the long letter (still new and clean as he imagines her writing it years ago in that elegant cursive of hers, still melodious and golden as he remembers her laugh) and he starts reading:
Dear Gray-sama,
(He smiles—faint, rueful, wistful—tears nearly welling up. And he envisions her doing the same, somewhere, sometime else.)
It's been a while, hasn't it?
Juvia hopes you are doing well…
A/N: I don't generally like A/Ns so don't expect a lot of these but… important(ish) note, y'all? c:
Before I get any Capitalization Nazis (apparently that's a thing now, people, observe) doting on me, please excuse the lack of capitalization in the first "he" because that is done on purpose as you will find out later—if you decide to stick with my crap writing, that is.
This story is a post-apocalyptic/dystopian AU, and can be labelled into many genres (including angst, friendship, hurt/comfort, romance, tragedy) which I couldn't fit all of them in, but for any of you who only like sweet, fluffy, happy stories, this might not be perfect for you.
Reviews are always extremely appreciated. hinthinthint
I love you all! ;)
