Title: Abandoned (7/?)
Author: WolfPilot06 ), Imbrii
Category: AU, shonen ai/yaoi, NCS, angst, angel dudes flying about and angsting, possible OOCness
Pairings: MurakixHisoka, (eventually) TsuzukixHisoka, various others.
Rating: R
Archived: Phantom Moon, , CLAMPESQUE board
Notes: Dude, no chapter should ever be so hard to write. It started off that I was handing this chapter over to my beta, Imbrii, to write. She had trouble starting it, so I decided to try my hand at it. I had trouble starting it, so we compared the tiny bits we had written and decided to combine them. Finally, I got into the swing of things and managed to hack out some fairly nice paragraphs (if I do say so myself). Then she wrote some when I couldn't write a bit, I skipped ahead and wrote most of the end bit, and then it kind of…died. Incomplete chapter, with an important bit that neither of us could write. Imbrii was going to write it, but after two months of virtual inactivity from either of us, I finally hauled myself to my laptop and literally forced myself to write the bit out. The three month hiatus from writing is rather noticeable, I think, so I apologize for the abrupt change in flow and writing style in the middle of the chapter. Maybe the next few chapters will be easier to write. . Anyway, here is chapter seven, co-written with my beta, Imbrii. Enjoy.
Edit Note: I've just removed a line from the end of the chapter, because I've changed things around a little, itty bit. It's not much of a change, but it makes the next chapter make a bit more sense in the sequence of things.
--
He had never realized how deafening silence could be before now. Every creak, every scuffle, every drip echoed into infinity, dying slowly into the maddening quiet that filled his ears until he felt insanity creeping at the edge of his mind.
He hated the silence. Too many years had he spent in solitude, shunned by his people and shunted from caretaker to caretaker until at last he was labeled as a lost cause and set loose to wander as he would. Silence had become an integral part of his life then; he would go days without speaking to a single soul, and even when he did speak to another, it was often only a plea that was met with refusal and scathing insults, reminders of the cursed state of his existence.
Now the silence swallowed him, drawing him further into its unwelcome embrace even as he struggled to escape its grasp. Vainly, he strained against his bonds, nearly sobbing in relief as the cross upon which he was bound creaked or groaned from the force of his pulling, breaking the silence for a few brief moments. Then he would collapse against the wooden structure, panting from his efforts, weeping as the silence set in once more.
He would return any moment now, and his reappearance would herald a new chapter of agony. Hours ago, he had left; once again the cursed moon called, beckoning him to his damnation.
Agony throbbed through his body with each passing second, time serving to increase, rather than diminish, the pain that seared his every nerve. The world was cold and hard, pressing down upon him painfully as Hisoka struggled to recover what was left of his sanity, the ominous silence seeping into his every pore, threatening to suffocate him with its oppressive weight. A tiny moan escaped him, breaking the still air.
"The angel awakes at last," intoned a deep voice, cold and razor-edged. Hisoka wished he hadn't broken the silence. There came the sound of rustling cloth and slow, measured steps, each footfall augmenting Hisoka's fear to the point where he felt that he must scream or go insane. And so he screamed, each heart-wrenching cry echoing in the rafters and mingling until it seemed as if a hundred Hisokas were screaming. Finally, the screams died away and Hisoka was left with nothing but the sound of his own ragged breathing and the sickening knowledge that his tormentor was still near. A low chuckle vibrated through the silence.
"Scream all you want, beautiful doll. None other than myself will ever hear you." A hand caressed his face then, cool and almost calculating as it trailed along the edge of his jaw to his neck, one thumb brushing over his pulse lovingly. The young angel shuddered violently, turning his face from the unwanted touch. The hand tightened slightly around his throat, preventing further movement. "I did not give you permission to turn from me."
Reluctantly, Hisoka allowed the hand to grasp his chin and turn his face forward, though he resolutely kept his eyes shut. The voice spoke again, quietly menacing and commanding.
"Look at me, doll."
He didn't want to see this human, the epitome of every barb hurled in his direction. This thing called human was fear, violence and a chill that froze his very soul. How could he look into the eyes of such a thing? How could he look into those depths without the fear of drowning in them?
But what he wanted was none of the human's concern, and the frightening, white phantom menace was the one in control. The hand gripping his throat, the hand cupping his chin were his world.
"I said, look at me."
Obedience wasn't even a question. He opened his eyes and fell into the pale gaze, hypnotized and horrified all at once. Terrified he jerked on the restraints, not caring about the pain or the blood, just wanting away, away from those silver eyes that he couldn't turn from. It didn't matter that the hands were removing the tattered toga with deceptive gentleness: all he knew were two moonlight eyes fixated into his mind.
Cool hands, rapidly warming from his own body heat, stroked along his sides, silently worshipping the soft skin beneath experienced fingertips, tracing along the edges of barely prominent ribs. Hisoka breathed in sharply as his terror grew, the hands ghosting down his abdomen to linger teasingly below his navel, coaxing a violent reaction as the touch triggered memories of what similar touches had earlier led to. He jerked against the nails piercing through his tender flesh, ignoring the agony that screamed through his nerves as he strained against the implacable spikes, blood streaming down his arms to lace white skin with crimson ribbons of heat. The old wooden cross groaned as he struggled, thrashing his head from side to side as he babbled in incoherent fear and pain, screaming as a hand caught his chin and held him still, the damned silver gaze boring into him relentlessly until he slowly fell silent. Gradually, his breath evened and smoothed until it was almost like that of a sleeper. Luminous green eyes grew blank and lifeless; as the hand released him, his head fell listlessly to the side and he stared sightlessly into the darkened depths of the dilapidated old church.
His captor emitted a quiet chuckle that did nothing to stir Hisoka from his hypnosis-induced stupor, the hands that had previously grown idle resuming their meandering path along the young angel's vulnerable body. The man's eyes tracked the progress of his hands with a fascination that had not diminished within the days since the child-angel's capture. Skin that had once been as flawless as carved ivory now held the marks of ownership, crimson lines and patterns spreading across the smooth expanses of Hisoka's torso and limbs like sinister lace, intricate whorls and spirals that had taken the silver-haired man hours of bloody work to accomplish. The screams that accompanied every knife-stroke had been music to his ears, proof that God's own creatures could indeed be harmed and controlled by a mere mortal like himself. He nearly shuddered in delight, a loving sigh escaping his lips as he leaned forward and rested his cheek against the child-angel's chest, listening as the beautiful youth's heartbeat quickened to a rapid staccato. He allowed his arms to slip around the slender waist before him, fingers trailing lazily along warm skin before moving to hold delicate hipbones in a curious grasp. Blue and black bruises marred the crimson and ivory flesh, accompanied by rosy patches that promised to darken with time. It was a shame that such wondrous beauty had had to be broken, but now the beauty belonged solely to him and he found that he did not at all regret his actions. His only displeasure was the ease with which he had claimed his angel; he had expected a struggle of some sort, a show of the power he knew the apparently delicate creature suspended before him held, but there had been none.
A smile twisted his face in sudden delight as he raised himself on the dais, cupping Hisoka's face in one hand and placing his lips by the unmoving angel's ear.
"Beautiful child, I know you can hear me." He breathed, his voice saturated with desire. "Is this not extraordinary? A mere man holding God's own creation in his stained hands, using him for his own pleasures and sins- surely you were not made merely to please me. Or perhaps you were…? I notice that none have come to take you back. It has been a full two days since I found you, child." He hummed with pleasure, his lips browsing along the soft skin of Hisoka's neck. Pausing, he whispered the next in hushed, almost reverent tones, his voice filled with hidden menace. "God hath abandoned thee, and God wilt not take thee back." A barely perceptible shiver ran through Hisoka's body at his words, a single tear forming at the corner of his brilliant green eyes. "But, my doll, you never need fear that I will abandon you. I have claimed you and your beauty; I shall never let you go. You are mine," He pronounced his words slowly and deliberately, pressing a possessive kiss to Hisoka's temple as he did so. The angel's slender form fit in his arms perfectly as he moved to embrace him, nuzzling against the soft, blood encrusted brown-blond locks that adorned his beautiful doll's head, ignoring the fresh blood that gushed from Hisoka's wrists and wings at the movement. A faint whimper came from his captive. He drew back slightly to peer into his angel's face, noting the blankness that continued to reside in Hisoka's eyes.
"I can sense, my doll, that you do not think I love you. Darling boy, when will you ever learn that love and possessiveness are one and the same?" He let out a disturbingly normal laugh. "I love you, therefore I never want to let go of you. Pain is but part of love, dearest child, and as I love you very much, I must also hurt you very much. If I didn't hurt you, love, how could you know the depth of my emotions for you?" Soft and warm, this beautiful creature in his arms was. He buried his face in Hisoka's hair, breathing in the angel's somehow clean and innocent scent. Slowly, he became aware of the tremors running through Hisoka's body, an almost imperceptible shaking that he might not have noticed had he not been attuned to the child-angel's every breath and movement. Reverently, he touched the young angel's face, stroking his beautifully sculpted cheekbones and nose with a loving hand, pausing over rose-petal soft lips.
"How I love you…" he breathed, "And I have found you, and I shall never let you go…"
Hungrily, he claimed the same lips he had just worshipped in a dominating kiss, his mouth muffling the feeble, startled cry his actions ripped from Hisoka's throat. His hands roamed over the bared figure before him with a burning curiosity, delving into every crevice and dip of Hisoka's body, his desire growing with every panicked whimper his captive uttered. With deceptive gentleness, he knelt before the crucified angel, bowing his head in seeming prayer, like a sinner come to beg forgiveness from an angry god.
"Dear God," he murmured, raising his eyes to stare into Hisoka's. Slowly, he lifted his hands to the spikes nailed through Hisoka's crossed feet, wrapping his fingers delicately around the bloody metal. "I have found an angel." A cruel smile danced around his lips as he jerked the spikes from Hisoka's flesh in one smooth movement. The young angel's back arched in sudden agony, a terrible ripping sound accompanying his actions as a shower of bloodied white feathers fell from his wings, shrouding both him and his tormentor in a crimson-hued cloud of whiteness. "I have him, and I shall never let him go. He is mine, now, as you have abandoned him." Feather-light touches ran over bared skin and he gently parted Hisoka's legs as he stood, trailing his fingers along soft inner thighs. Smiling darkly, he leaned forward to kiss the angel's pale lips once more.
Mine.
--
A breath in, a breath out, and once again, over and over in the same endless cycle. He hung in the dark void of his mind, suspended on a cross much like that which held him in the material world. Was he not so much in pain, and was he not so afraid of the darkness that loomed on every side, he might have laughed. Insane laughter it might have been, but the rampant symbolism of an angel crucified on a cross made him want to laugh. No, correction: it made his captor want to laugh. He himself would never have noticed or even have known it. Panic welled in his throat as he realized that his captor's mind was beginning to meld and override his own. Knowledge that he could not –should not have had began to come to him, filling his yet uneducated mind with concepts and ideas beyond his comprehension. The realization that he was losing himself alone made him want to cry – the fact that this knowledge so intrusively imposed upon him was directed towards and involved him and the defiling of his body made him want to scream at the unfairness of it all. He wanted to curl up in a corner of his mind and die, fade away and leave the empty, wasted shell of a body for his captor to do with as he would. He wanted to melt into the darkness that was his captor's mind and forget himself- forget that he had ever existed and thus stop existing altogether.
Then he felt it.
It was the merest brush of a mind against the edges of his empathy, a faint wavering in the solid blackness of his captor's mind. For a moment, he froze in disbelief, unwilling in his helplessness to believe that salvation could be so near. Then he reached out, thrust his mind towards the other's, screaming and crying out for help, begging for the other to simply step into the church, see what his captor was doing to him, and somehow make the agony and humiliation stop!
It was a desire so strong that he threw every ounce of his being into his cries for help, feeling the other mind stop in surprise and begin to reach back. He felt the man turn towards the church doors with a questioning gaze, felt the man begin to reach for the doors with one faltering hand-
And then the darkness slammed around his mind with overwhelming force. He screamed again, jerked abruptly back to consciousness to the feeling of a heavy body on his, a sharp hardness within him, and, stronger than any of the physical pain, the irrevocable, seething fury that roiled within his captor's mind. Through the agony, he felt the other man turn away, the presence of his mind fading and eventually disappearing altogether. He sobbed once as the man holding him placed up new shields, trapping his mind within his body, before he fell victim to the man's lust once again.
--
The sun was setting outside, bathing the world in hues of crimson, violet, and gold. A few dreamers sat upon their hilltops staring at the dying behemoth as it settled in its bed beyond the horizon, wishing for hopeless dreams in their blissful innocence and naiveté. Mothers sang their babies to sleep and set about preparing meals for their chattering families, smiling with loving benevolence as they reached out to pet a head of soft hair or chastised a wayward child with stern admonishments. Fathers sat in their great armchairs, watching the newscasters discuss serious happenings in the world, nodding gravely as the death toll in some distant war grew and shaking their head sadly as the death of some person or another was reported. None knew of the unforgivable sin taking place in a rundown old church set on the outskirts of a forgotten town; none knew of the momentous events rising on the distant horizon of fate as demons stirred and angels sang. Only two men had heard the dying scream of an innocence and purity far beyond mortal comprehension: one delighted in the blood that fell from a body once untouched by mortal sin, raising his stained hands to the sky in supplication and defiance; the other was swallowed in the shadows of his own painful past, the scream joining the ranks of haunting memories that echoed and grew in the silence of the night as he wept on the floor of his lonely bedroom.
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TBC
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A rough ending, but as I said, I'm having major writing problems lately. Sorry about that.
Wolf