Themes used: Power, War, Zeppelin, First encounter
1.4 Naming
"Follow me," Doc said peremptorily and left the room without looking to see whether Butler obeyed or not.
Butler glanced down at his wrist and remembered the pain that would come with disobedience. He had no reason to think there was anything worth that pain – at least not that he'd encountered yet.
Wordlessly he followed the man out of the room, past the guards flanking the door. He twitched his fingers as they approached them and caught their suddenly startled eyes. Their fear had a flavor and he savored it.
He absorbed every detail as he followed the bloody white coat through dimly lit corridors. Something about the place felt wrong – as though they were not in a building, but moving.
Following Doc up a set of metal stairs, he understood why he had felt that way. He stopped in the doorway that led to the surface of a great zeppelin, transfixed by the sudden array of sensory input.
He was suddenly bathed in the full intensity of war.
Butler stared down at the burning city. Memories stirred in the back of his mind and he groped for them only to have them slip through his fingers like minnows in a swiftly moving stream. He watched a soldier tear a child from its mother's arms and bury his face in the child's throat. The clarity of the image was striking, as though he were standing there on the ground to witness the killing in intimate detail.
He could taste the heat of the blood that would be flowing in the soldier's mouth, he could feel it on his fingers and spraying over his face, the mixed smells of blood and war filled his senses until Butler nearly went to his knees under the force of it.
Angel.
He stared down at his bare fingertips and saw them pushing snow away from a cold blue face. A small hand in a white glove caught his and pulled it away from the frozen skin under his touch.
He looked up to see who touched him, but the vision faded, leaving him with a clear view of the present and a helicopter.
The helicopter drew closer; it didn't take anything other than simple observation to know that it threatened the men on the surface of the zeppelin.
The filaments that dropped from his fingers flew almost of their own accord. If he'd been able, Butler would have smiled at the ease with which he tore the machine to pieces. Such power at his fingertips. It was too easy.
The words the tubby man and Doc exchanged washed over him. He heard and noted, his attention sharpening in on the small man when he heard the words, "The Death's Head is a fitting match for the Angel of Death."
Todesengel.
Angel.
He had been named again. He was Butler, but he was Angel.
They were not the same man.