Author's Notes: I still haven't done that college homework. This is all I have to show for my 5 hours of internet surfing.
Guards everywhere. Why are they so afraid of him escaping? He's just a kid.
As if he'd be able to get out of the more secure cells anyway. Those cells were so dark that you couldn't even see your hand in front of your face.
Fang was probably drugged all to hell too.
Zelos took a deep breath to calm his nerves, standing underneath the manhole in the sewers of Meltokio. A rat squeaked at his feet and Zelos glanced down at it, "You got any shortcuts to suggest?" he asked it.
The rat hissed and scurried off into the darkness.
"I totally wish that was an option right now," he sighed.
Reluctantly, he put one hand on the ladder that led up to the streets. He could hear the guards disappearing off to change shift with their comrades.
It took ten seconds of intense thought on that ladder to convince himself to surface onto the cobbled streets of the city he once called his home.
He swiftly swung into one of the alleys and pulled himself onto the rooftop of the church. The castle was right there. Fang was inside in one of the old hide outs of the Princess, he was sure. They were the perfect prison and doubled as the perfect place for a child to hide away from her parents.
That hiding place just so happened to be located inside the throne-room of King Dickhead.
Slowly, Zelos's feet led him into the castle through one of the back rooms. He opened the window and slipped inside. He silently carried himself out of the empty room and into the hallway. In the room diagonal to where he stood, he heard voices.
"Your heroism is quite weak. It makes me wonder if you feel pain? Because, you are nowhere near feeling the pain I feel from your current betrayal," he could hear Dickhead's voice inquire to his newest victim.
Zelos held his breath and hoped that it wasn't Fang in there.
"Yes-s, don't hur-rt me any-anymore, King-g Ir-ir-ir-" the poor sap couldn't finish because he was sobbing so hard from fear.
The sadist in Zelos made him look around the corner into the room.
Just as he got a good view, he saw Dickhead slice the throat of Whidmore, the blacksmith from Palmacosta that had gave Fang and him the sword.
"Motherfucker," Zelos whispered, pulling away from the corner and running to the throne room where, luckily, Dickhead hadn't been. You can't get blood on those nice plush rugs after all.
Every guard he saw, he killed. It was so fast and fluid that Zelos couldn't tell where one guard started and the other began. All he knew was their blood was flowing on the floor of the Royal hallways, and that, once upon a time, he would have resented that.
He slid into the throne room and darted immediately for the throne that had once belonged to Hilda when she was small and innocent and beautiful. Before any of this had happened and she was just a figure-head at her father's side.
Zelos felt the nostalgia choking him and he shook it off before it could suffocate him. He needed to stay calm. He needed to find Fang.
His hand slammed into a stone behind the throne and a small passage opened.
Just as King Irving walked into the room, the door had closed behind Zelos.
King Irving sat down in his throne, not expecting a thing.
The redhead gasped inside the dark room. He'd forgotten this feeling of absolute darkness. It made him want to give his entire fortune to a charity that helped the blind, if there were such a thing anymore.
He stood, frozen by the enveloping black, before his mind slowly began to work.
Take out your wings. They glow.
He did this, because his mind was usually right when it came to technical things like that.
It brightened the dirty hallway of the secret passage enough that Zelos was able to maneuver through the path. Finally he made his way to the small nook where Hilda used to hide whenever she didn't want to deal with her father's stuck up guests. Usually Zelos was right there beside her, egging on the defiant behavior because there just wasn't enough of that in nobility.
There was Fang, his wings wrapped around him to keep him feeling secure in the only way he knew. His body was shaking, which was the only reason Zelos could see him because of that invisibility gift he had.
And, in that tiny nook that Hilda had outgrew when she was about ten years old, they had stuck Fang so tightly that he couldn't move other than that pathetic trembling. Zelos reached out to touch Fang, to let him know that help was there.
His hand met something hard and glass.
Fang was in an even tighter spot than previously conceived. He was sealed in the nook like a fish in a tank. And, by the way Fang couldn't see the light, Zelos guessed it was a one-way mirror of sorts. The mirror thing didn't matter due to the unbelievable darkness on the other side.
His gut wrenched in an unfamiliar manner when Zelos realized that it would take startling Fang extremely to get him out. He had to break through the glass after all and, since Fang couldn't hear him, it would catch him off guard.
Given Fang's current emotional state, it would be a rough reunion for the both of them.
Zelos lifted his hand and placed it close to the glass, freezing it over with one of his older spells. Fang's shivering increased tremendously; Zelos ignored it and let the ice completely freeze over. Then he cracked the glass and let it fall at his feet.
Fang lifted his head, timid and slow, looking down at the glass as though he had just realized it was there. He stared at the frost that had formed on the feathers of his wings for a moment too while his shaking slowly stopped. Finally, he lifted those dark eyes up at Zelos. Never before had Fang looked so much like the child he was. Zelos almost felt guilty about not getting captured. Almost.
"I told you to hurry, this is what happens when you don't listen to me," Zelos said, smiling to lift up the mood.
"You just left," Fang croaked out.
"Yeah, cause if I got free I could come and rescue your tall lanky ass," the redhead kept up the teasing. 'See, this doesn't make anything different, kid. We're going to get back to our usual bickering selves and kill the Jabberwocky,' is what he wanted to tell Fang. But that would be just too sentimental for either of them.
"You didn't help me at all. You just left me there," Fang's wings were pulled tighter now around his lean body.
Zelos leaned over and stared into Fang's eyes stubbornly. "I didn't help you at all? You think I came back to the castle for tea?" he scoffed. "Are you really so blinded by your claustrophobia that you're going to sit there and insist I'm not helping you right now? Look at where you were two minutes ago and look at it now."
Fang didn't look anywhere else but at Zelos. His gaze was so empty and stoic that Zelos had a flash of Kratos Aurion staring at him. It gave him chills.
"Get up. We need to get out of here, get those sedatives out of your system, and then polish our Jabberwocky plan-"
"They have my sword, Zelos."
"Well, he just fucking killed Whidmore so I guess we better get your sword back," Zelos ran a hand through his hair, pacing around restlessly while Fang stayed coiled up in the nook.
"He killed…" Fang's voice trailed in shock.
"Yeah, he sliced his throat," the older man snapped.
Finally, Fang pulled himself out of the tiny hole they had put him in.
"Watch the glass," Zelos lectured without much thought.
"You act like you're my older brother sometimes, Zelos," Fang said, suddenly a warm smile on his lips.
Zelos turned to look at Fang like he had to be kidding. "Sentiments are a little…" he couldn't settle on a word.
Fang grinned, "Everybody needs a little sentiment."
"Stop that, you weirdo," Zelos scowled, "I was going to say 'meaningless'."
"I guess your wings do beat mine in some areas," Fang motioned to the fluttering wings that sprouted from Zelos's back.
"Stop flirting with me. We need to get out now," Zelos grumbled.
"You got in. How much harder should it be to get out?" the avian-hybrid inquired.
"Well, King Dickhead is out there chillin' like a villain in the very first room that's connected to this secret hobble in the castle so I'd venture to say it'll be really fucking hard, kid."
"Don't forget, we've got to find out where my sword is," Fang reminded.
Zelos turned and glared at him for a long moment.
"You're obnoxious."