PITIFUL
Chapter 2: The Skies were Broken and Gray. A Steel Rain Fell.
He felt the tiredness creep into his bones, an exhaustion that ate away at his core and grew more profound with each passing day. It wasn't just the "emptiness" anymore that Dark Pit felt. There was something that he knew, but did not want to admit to. He could not admit to it.
It would mean that he truly wasn't his own person. It also meant that he had a terminal disease.
He'd been looking for Pit's soul for months. What remained of his light-clad and lighthearted counterpart had been laid in his stone grave in the marble shrine on Skyworld's center island. The centurions beat their breastplates whenever they marched by it on their drills and duties. Whenever Dark Pit molted a black flight-feather, he'd lay it on the coffin and wish he didn't feel the ache of absence. All of his offerings eventually blew away in the wind - like lost souls, themselves.
Dark Pit, so far, was conscious, awake, aware and alive. He held no particular allegiance to Skyworld or to Palutena, but the emptiness that nibbled at the inmost part of his spirit kept him on this assignment for the goddess. He'd agreed to it – nay, volunteered it of his own accord - only because an entire half of him was gone and he needed it back. The black-winged angel was on his search for purely selfish reasons – or at least, that's what he told himself. He refused all other duties the grieving goddess had tried to foist upon him. He reminded her often that, despite appearances, he was not Pit and never would be Pit. He did not bow his knee to her, or compliment her every move. He was not quick with jokes – at least ones that didn't drip with sarcasm and dark humor. He happened to like eggplant-tempura. If she was radiance, he was shadow.
"I miss you," he spoke to the wind. "We all do, but I don't think they understand what I feel. Why couldn't you have held on? Where are you? You have to be out there, somewhere, otherwise I wouldn't be."
He looked at his hands. "If you'd been eaten or faded away, I would have dropped from the sky by now. I'll find you, and once you're back, I'll have to pound you for putting us all through this!"
The crow-winged angel took off; dropping off the edge of the island he was on into the sky. He didn't need to beg Palutena to give him the Power of Flight. She'd given him a way to activate it himself because she did not want to bother. It was still limited, though, and in all the trips he took to the Underworld, Dark Pit looked for some sign of one of the lesser Underworld gods almost as urgently as he looked for Pit, so he could have something to kill and steal power from. He despised being dependant upon a limited source. It wasn't even his fault – when he was mirror-born, he'd somehow gained the same scars that Pit had. Both of them had been ruined for flight by some battle long ago that neither of them had remembered and he couldn't have remembered. It wasn't fair, but neither was life, Dark Pit supposed.
Palutena had become apathetic lately, about everything. She did not want to bother with activating the Power of Flight, nor with any other miracles. Her "constant duties" suffered; even those things she had always done of her accord, things she did not require Pit's presence for. The light in the land had become dimmer. The sky was perpetually covered by gray clouds. Even where the sun shone through, the light was pale and colors were washed out. The land was not in darkness, but it was dressed in grays and browns and colors that were more tints than colors. It was as if all Life had been sucked out of Light.
It was as if the world was no longer one of a Nintendo game, but a videogame from some other company, devoid of cheery landscapes. This is a Kid Icarus: Uprising fic. You didn't expect it to break the fourth wall a little? You silly reader. The author of this story is a big fan of the Playstation 2 game, Shadow of the Colossus and imagines that the new Angel Land looks quite a bit like the Forbidden Lands of that game in regards to tones.
The Goddess Palutena had little reason to bless the land with the light it had once enjoyed. Nights grew progressively longer and the days were clad in steel. The mortals below tried to adapt, but crop yields had gone down and a general depression had settled over everything. Palutena had not destroyed the land with explosive expressions of light like she had that one town, only because Dark Pit reminded her that Pit's spirit would be against it. Not having Pit's spirit with them was enough to make her cease caring and to become the enemy of all mankind as the Chaos Kin had been in her guise, but she knew that if Pit was found that he would be ashamed of her if she'd continued down that path. Palutena remembered her patronage – she was a goddess for humans – even though her heart was no longer in it. No sacrifice of grain, vegetables or wine was sufficient to lift her heart or to gain her favor. She wanted only one thing, and she'd laid him down in stone. She could never make another angel quite like him, and so did not even try.
She no longer protected people from Viridi; yet, the young Goddess of Nature was surprisingly subdued. Viridi had found no need to use reset bombs on any more than a few towns that were endangering sensitive areas. Vines and forests had a tendency to grow up where they "did not belong" according to humans and those same forests were much more dangerous than they had been in eons, but Viridi refrained from bringing Humanity a full extinction. It rather amused her to watch the remnants of mankind revert to an almost primordial state. There were many towns, unable to rely on their harvests, that had taken to a hunter-gatherer economy. The people of the land were learning their place again – as just another species of animal among the myriad beasts. Enough people had died from days shortened and light dimmed by apathy that a balance had been struck.
Viridi remained a misanthrope, but knew that Pit would have wanted her to stay her hand. As it was, she had not completely, and was barely restrained. The idiot had loved mortals – born crying and soon dying as they were. Whenever she'd prepared a reset bomb to take out some city that wasn't doing a particularly great amount of damage to her realm and did not need to be obliterated, she'd hear his voice in her mind saying something stupid and naïve but somehow uplifting and cute and would end up stowing or dismantling the weapon every time. She reminded herself that it was humans that had killed him, but even that did not stop the chatter of her memories. She'd grumble or rant to one of her servants, or to the mountains and the trees that she'd become a "domesticated rose bush" or a "tamed beast," all because of one dead angel whose memory she felt bound to honor.
It was pitiful, really. She had become pitiful. So had Palutena. So had they all.
Would she have been this screwed up inside if Phosphora or Arlon fell without her being able to restore them? One thing for certain was that she had seen Pit's last city after Palutena had annihilated it. The damage had surprised her. If she had known what light was capable of, she would have tried to court Palutena to her erstwhile cause long ago. Viridi did have some problems with Palutena's method of wrath, however. It wasn't just hostile to humans; it was hostile to all life. The animals in the town had died, too – the livestock, the companion animals and all of the little wild things that made their homes in the crags and crannies of human homes. Some of the new plants that had sprouted in the fields wiped clean were exhibiting problems with their genes due to the burst of radiation, too. Palutena's power fully unleashed was truly a terrible thing to behold.
As it was, Viridi's realm was suffering from the Goddess of Light's depression now. All days, no matter the season, had become as short as they were in deepest winter. The light that did show was washed out and gray. Viridi's green children were having problems photosynthesizing properly.
Palutena probably would never have admitted that Pit was a major motivation for her doing anything before. For Viridi, he never had been, but had become a motivator for restraint, at least, in his absence
Viridi looked out over the forest from the front step of her vine-covered temple in a great and ancient tree. A few squirrels and birds paid her respect as her feet shuffled in the fallen leaves. Little insects chittered around her and cicadas hummed. The daylight was waning. "Was she like this before she acquired Pit?" Viridi asked herself. She couldn't imagine it and was too young a goddess to remember the eons that Palutena had governed before her time. She'd heard a rumor that Pit's soul – like those of a certain type of angel that did not exist anymore save for him – had once belonged to a mortal. If his spirit had been a reincarnated essence… well, she didn't have a lot of contact with Palutena and her lackeys until relatively recently. As far as Viridi was concerned, she was there to make the light that her children needed for life and that was it until the Great War.
Only a kindled love could tear a heart like this and make someone, even a god, lose their mind to this extent. Love was a weapon more devastating than anything. It was uncontrollable and even more destructive than the hominid-species…
Of course she didn't love him! She'd tell herself. Viridi shook her head whenever she was tempted to think of Pit as more than an interesting diversion. He was a pest that had interfered with her works – and he was obnoxiously determined…and brave… and would do anything for her, too… Okay, so she did care, and that's what pissed her off.
He used to make little offerings to her on the sly just to see her smile. "Argh!" Viridi groused as she shook her head.
Her attention was caught by something diving through the trees. An angelic form landed like a sack of rocks before her, panting on a bended knee.
"Pittoey, what are you doing here?" she asked.
Dark Pit shakily stood. "Don't call me that. You know my name."
"Well? What are you doing here? State your business or get lost."
"Harsh. I… I need rest… I've been… doing my hunting." He looked pale and sick. Viridi waved her staff and created a sturdy column of vines to hold the boy up as he swayed.
"On the surface," he continued, his breath coming painfully. "I figured that I've scoured the entirety of the Underworld at least twice already, maybe Pit is on earth… maybe… maybe he's been reincarnated. Would you know? You are the goddess of living things…"
Viridi shook her head. "Why don't you come on inside. I'll have Arlon make you some tea."
"I thought he was at the Lunar Sanctum."
"We haven't gotten it fully rebuilt yet. Arlon will be glad to see you again."
"Yeah, I think I will take you up on that," Dark Pit sighed.
"What's wrong with you?" Viridi asked. "Did you eat some bad floor-ice cream or something?"
"No…" Dark Pit struggled to convey. "Emptiness. Emptiness eating me…I have to find him. I have to…"
"You need more than tea. Let's get you to a bed."
"Viridi… I haven't told Palutena as much but… I think the emptiness is catching up to me. Everything is gray inside me, like the sky. I'm weak… I keep getting weaker by the day. I can't keep my wings up."
Rain began falling, heavy like projectiles from a bullet blade.
"I don't think you can really help me," Dark Pit said. Fear shone in his eyes, caught red in the storm-light. "I'm halved. Pit and I are bound together. I don't know why it's taken this long, but, Viridi… I think I'm dying."