Ch10 (as promised.. wow.. I should really try to keep on top of this)
The bus slid off into the darkness, just another soaked, cold, lonely stranger in a world of strangers. Somehow… it no longer felt strange that the rain didn't hurt. Truly, he hardly felt it. After a while, Raziel lost sight of her completely.
Just like everything else.
After a little time alone, he sank back against a wall, head bowed, thoughts turning to Rhapsody once again. She had been so…so… the word for it wasn't human… it was… real. Did she think of him after their parting, he wondered, or did she forget.
No, he snapped at himself. She wouldn't, not out of fear but out of being part of something that he, being what he was should never have had the right to have experienced. In Raziel's mind she was never the skinny little broken thing that she had been before her death. She was still the lean, vibrant child fighting (as best she could) by his side, a constant candle in the ever threatening, unavoidable darkness.
Rhapsody…his Rhapsody.
He wanted her to be there.
To remember.
Anyone else who would remember.
"I can't not be what I am. It's too hard" she muttered again inside his mind. She hadn't meant him to hear but the truth in those pained words was terrible.
The rain didn't stop for hours but nevertheless, Raziel walked like the dead that he was, pursuing Kestrel's trail for miles, the memory of her fresh in his mind. The tarmac felt unnatural and every petrol tainted breath of air brought back painful memories. He would find Kestrel and Rhapsody would follow soon after.
That house.
In there.
"Don't touch me!" she backed up against the door, swinging it open. Lightning flashed against the rain highlighting for a slip second the weary, lonesome figure waiting on the street behind her "Fucking leave me alone!" The door slammed and as expected, no further attempt was made to reach to the so called 'problem' child.
Some people are always misunderstood.
Raziel watched her reaction on seeing him with a little pleasure. She froze and stood still as if she had been strung up, eyes wide, heart thudding.
"You're there?" she said eventually, shakily. The memories of Rhapsody that had originally come into being had quite quickly been washed out of existence by far more disturbed images of the alleyway incident. The obviousness of her question hit after a few seconds without a reply. "Yes… you are" she muttered and combed through increasingly damp hair.
"Kestrel" Raziel addressed her calmly, keeping his distance to avoid her fleeing again "Hear me out and then, I promise you, I will be gone" She nodded, eyes never leaving him. Her boldness reminded him of Rhapsody... "Do you have anything of Rhapsody's? A handkerchief? An item of clothing? Anything?" He doubted extremely that she would have been the type to carry a handkerchief however he was learning many new things. Kestrel's watery eyes squinted through the rain at him and after a moment's thought she said.
"I think so… it's pretty important though. Why d'you want it?"
"That is my business"
Perhaps now he would see his beloved Rhapsody again.
So it seems like it's going happily, right? But what will Rhapsody's reaction be when he turns up at an unexpected point in her life. Will she even know who he is?
Btw, I'll stick a little review response type-thing on just after this seeing as my computer's being all crappy right now.