When he jerks awake, it’s to the sounds of screams, of fire devouring everything in its path, to the sounds of his ghosts as they howl and scream inside his head. He awakens to the way the guard at the Oasis had stared up into the sky with empty eyes, her gaze haunting him, and his stomach churns with bile that he just barely manages to swallow back. Somehow, this time, he hasn’t awoken Sam with his nightmares -- how many nights has it been since he had slept through the night? -- and he takes great care not to wake his lover as he untangles himself and stands.
In the chill air of the coming dawn, he can feel his joints creak with every step he takes into the library, and he wonders when he had become so old that even the barest nip in the air is enough to make his legs protest, when he had shed the arrogance of youth for the exhaustion of growing older, for the creeping realization that had settled into his bones that he didn’t know anything about himself that wasn’t tainted by rage or marred by ghosts.
‘Who are you?’ A boy with too-big knees had asked in the courtyard of the library the morning before, and he’d choked on his reply, hadn’t been able to spit out any of the words that had come clawing into his brain. ‘A god-killer,’ he’d told Teiran in the cobbled streets of Solterra, his voice breaking around the truth of it all, ‘a monster.’ She had called herself a monster too. ‘The Bastard Prince’, sneered at him in the halls of Zion while his skin had prickled beneath the judgemental stares of Adriana’s devout. ‘A broken weapon’, Adriana had told him.
Who was he?
The aftermath of violence. The simmering of rage.
Had he ever been anything beyond angry, beyond hurting so badly that he lashed out at the world to make it hurt too?
He doesn’t remember.
He thinks, maybe, he has left so many pieces of himself scattered across the world that he will never be able to bring himself back together, that he will always be hollow and aching where he had once been filled with rage, that he will never find a suitable replacement, but Sam --
Sam still believed he could be gentle. He’d never had a chance to be gentle, had been honed sharp and harsh by Adriana’s cruel words, and yet… Sam still believed that he could be something other than a monster, still looked at him each morning like he had hung the stars in the sky the night before, and he aches for every moment of it. How long had he spent telling himself love was a lie, because all he had known had been hatred? When he looks at Sam, he doesn’t want to reach out and hurt something, doesn’t want to lash out to rid himself of the strange curling tendrils of emotion that have rooted themselves firmly in his chest.
With a soft sigh, he finds himself back inside the courtyard of the library, where the birds are beginning to wake up amongst the trees -- he can see them flitting from branch to branch, coaxing each other into full awakeness, and instead of being annoyed he can only find it in himself to smile despite the chaos inside his mind. Sam had shown him where a small bag of bird seed could be found (he thinks maybe Sam hid it there himself) and he reaches for it now, beginning to scatter the seeds across the courtyard and waiting for the first brave souls to venture forth.
Perhaps… perhaps Sam was right, and he could still be taught how to be gentle.
no red feathers, all red ashes.
listen to me, child;
it always starts with you saying:
"I am doing something right."
Andras has been watching him.
He's propped up on the table before him, head angled to lay on one bent knee. Andras watches him as a spider might, through the window as he paces the courtyard - endlessly patient and only tangentially interested. It is easier to watch than to read, he supposes, and tilted like this he does not have to look at the stack of books piled on the table beside him, or the squeak of his clenched teeth when he adjusts his jaw, or anything at all that is not this creature come from Solterra to haunt Viride.
He sees them, too - caretakers of the library, perched on shelves and door frames and windowsills, all milling about in barely-veiled curiosity, gathering in the wide entrance hall in an attempt to look busy.
The wind groans through the trees - dark trees that haven't let go of night, dark trees that shield the library's knotted walls from the creeping light of dawn. And Andras cannot hear anything but the curious cooing of birds and the drumming of his raging heart.
It was not tragedy that brought Andras to Mathias. It was not some clever trick of fate, some sad and strange will that tells him you must, here is your mirror--you must. It is only the sigh of the wind and the high-pitched wailing of something buried, some deep and dark pit that yawns open in him, a pit that was born alongside and within him. Andras was born wrong. Andras was born with this boiling lake in his stomach. Andras was born with something black that sizzles and pops in his skin.
Something that echoes as loud as his footsteps, when Andras lifts his cheek from his knees and flows into the hall like ink.
At the door to the courtyard he can see the scars, the tense line of Mathias' back, the same rumbling echo that bounces between them, and the black pegasus folds his wings against his side the way someone else might clear their throat.
There, the scattered seed, held in the stranger's grip. Andras' face is bleak.
There, the glint against his glasses, a flash of something unsavory and thrilling. "What are you doing?" he says, though it is not a question. More of an excuse.
He doesn’t notice the folding of wings, or even perhaps the barest hint of footsteps against cobbled stone -- no, what he notices is that those first few brave souls who dare come to the seeds that he scattered go flittering off, chirping out in alarm as they perch back in the safety of their trees, and he swings around to face the intruder with his face already twisted into a scowl at the intrusion. He used to be good at this sort of thing -- at pulling on the mask of the charming young rogue, of the hotshot fighter who didn’t give a single shit what others thought of him. Now, though… now, it feels like too much effort to even try to wear a smile when everything inside of him is breaking apart and reassembling itself into entirely new pieces that he isn’t ever quite sure fit where they’ve decided to place themselves.
Even so, when the pegasus poses his question, or perhaps his statement, the painted stallion utters a short, incredulous laugh, something that rumbled deep in his chest and sounded more like a snarl than any sort of humor. When he looks from the stallion, to the birdseed, back to the stallion again, there is something sharp and pointed in his gaze despite the missing eye, and he wonders if the strange lightness he can feel beneath the shadows might be humor at the situation. “What the fuck does it look like i’m doing?” He answers anyways, because it’s truthfully a stupid question, and no amount of humor has ever made those particularly tolerable.
He doesn’t leave, however. It’s not that he senses the way that Andras is full of rage, the same way he is full of broken glass emotions -- he is not nearly so emotionally astute, not nearly so observant when he can barely identify his own chaotic feelings.
He doesn’t leave because he was there first, damn it, and Sam is still sleeping up in their shared room, and he doesn’t want to risk waking his lover up by returning and bringing the dawn with him.
“You got anything useful to say, or you gonna fuck off to wherever you came from to annoy me?”
who would believe the fantastic
and terrible story of our survival?
The woods are silent. The scattered birds are perched nearby, eyes wide, waiting. Here they are, two sides of the same rotten coin, two stallions and a bag and some seeds in the dirt, and Andras can hear the enging of his heart clunk as its pieces fall into place. Then, the groaning. Then, the bubbling. He does not share Mathias' laughter, does not even avert his gaze, does not move an inch. Mathias' insults land in the pit of Andras and the heat spikes behind his eyes, hot and white.
He is trying to swallow a thing that crawls up his throat from the black pit of his stomach. He is trying to swallow some laughing thing, some raving thing, something that feels better than it should when the painted stallion fixes his single eye on Andras and some echo of danger passes over him. A shiver rolls from between his ears to the base of his tail. It feels too good.
"Well," Andras says with every cell in his body either screaming or laughing, the wild crackling of his hateful heart the loudest thing he's ever heard. His teeth are still clenched, clamped tight, as if the act of breaking his teeth would set him free. They do not break, and he does not feel free. "I rarely have anything useful to say."
The pegasus smiles now, wolfish and unkind.
"But, since you insist," he says, and slides out of the doorway, inching closer, close enough that he's sure Mathias can hear the hum of his black core. It is dizzying, staying alive - staying calm, when you have never known peace. And here is this thing in him, urging him onward, a recollection of purple bruises and the sting of impact and blood, spit in the dirt. Something worse than the anger. "I was mostly wondering who you were. So... who are you?"
He is hoping.
Andras refuses to acknowledge what he's hoping for, and he's not sure he knows, anyway, but there it is.
Hope.
His tail snaps against his side like a whip, the crack echoing through the still morning air, and he can’t help the way his ears pin back against his head as though they’re glued there when the pegasus slides closer, close enough to be within striking range, and for a moment he swears he can feel his teeth digging into flesh and hear the surprised squeal that usually followed ringing in his ears.
He doesn’t move, however, except for the twitching of a muscle in his shoulder. He doesn’t move, even when he notices that the vulture has perched among the songbirds in the swaying branches, and he has to exhale hard to avoid cursing at the world around him, to avoid slipping back into that pit of rolling blackness that threatened to overwhelm him with every step he took.
“Mathias, though I don’t know why I’m apparently so fuckin’ interesting,” He answers between gritted teeth, and still he doesn’t move, his stubborn pride holding him to the spot, his hands still holding the bag of birdseed cradled close. He doesn’t give a last name -- what last name would he give? Blackwell, the name that he’d never been truly given, the name he’d been a bastard of? Erebyx, the name he’d chosen when he’d embraced the monster, when he’d burned down Zion?
no red feathers. all red ashes.
listen to me, child:
it all starts with you saying
"I have done something right."
He is singing.
Andras can feel the tension, pulled tight like cord around their throats, and he has completely forgotten who he is. All he can hear is the screech of his blood and all he can feel are his lips pulling back in a grin. Manic. Wolflike. Giddy.
"Oh, I like you," he says and his voice is thick with something he doesn't say, doesn't think, just takes a moment to bask in. He doesn't know what it is except the crunch of bone and the agony of broken skin. It feels like a swift punch in the gut and he can't stop the breathless chuckle that chases it any more than he can stop the grinning.
The thing in him is telling him to push, to push and push and pushpushpush until Mathias breaks, come what may. The thing in him is hungry, starving, even, and its song is louder than his rage has ever been.
Mathias, he says through teeth clenched as tight as Andras'. It's the gritting teeth that gets him, the echo of something unholy that he does not see the irony in, but the irony is definitely there. Andras is too busy hoping Mathias will do something that he does not see the picture as a whole: these creatures, diametrically opposed; the way Mathias is clutching the bag of seed close, white-knuckled; the dirt beneath him; his own trembling wings.
Who the fuck are you, then?
He wishes he knew. Sometimes he wonders.
This is what pushes the feeling down. And suddenly he is Andras in the dawn and the dirt. And the fox-like staff that have gathered in the doorway are staring from behind, tense and silent. He makes a mental note to apologize. He probably won't.
"Oh. Um," says Andras, searching through the fog of his head, "Andras Demyan. I'm... new. And sorry."
He recognizes the manic, wolf-like grin on Andras’ lips, the way they sing to each other in voices made out of teeth, in silent waves of rage and desperation. Two broken boys, shattered into pieces by the world around them, made of sharp-edged glass that slices against anyone who gets too close to them, who dares to reach out and touch with anything but cruel intentions.
He scoffs. He can’t help it. What is there to like about him? He is a monster pretending to be a lamb, he is a murderer whose hands will always be stained with blood, he is rage and pain wrapped up in a skin that is too tight and feels as though it might burst at any moment. He is trying. He is tired.
He doesn’t know who he is.
He never did.
The tension between them simmers and shifts, a noose around their necks turning into a tug rope laced between their fingers. He glances between the winged man and the few scattered birds brave enough to approach once more, their feathers ruffled, and he slowly clears his throat. His fingers are still white-knuckled when he offers up the bag of bird seed to Andras (Andras Demyan, it sounds nice to his ears, it sounds like a name someone could claim without the ghosts of the past haunting it) and scuffs a cracked hoof into the dirt.
“If you scatter it… they’ll come closer. Slowly. They spook easy.”
Is he talking about the birds, or the two boys in the courtyard?
"All you want to do is dance out of your skin into another song not quite about heroes, but still a song where you can lift your spear and say 'yes' as it flashes."
Andras draws in a breath. It is long, and it trembles as his lungs fill and then, just as slowly, empty.
The courtyard is quiet except for two boys with their hearts on their sleeves - bleeding hearts, hearts like firebrands that burn in the pit of them, hot and fierce. Maybe Mathias is just the coals - maybe Mathias is what's leftover when blazes like Andras have burned down to nothing - and maybe he has been trying to be coals this whole time. But, Andras thinks, he is still the fire - blinding, simmering - and he has never wanted to be anything else. Andras does not want calm. Andras does not want peace, such as it is.
Andras wants to scream so loud that the ground shakes beneath him. Andras wants to burn and burn and burn until he has become something holy. Andras does not want to hurt anyone (not nearly as much as he wants to be hurt) but he does not want to be told to calm down.
Mathias offers him the bag of seed. Birds have started singing again, comfortable in their trees. There is a sense about them of something unfolding, or a door closing, or a door that unfolds as it is created, and the room on the other end is soft, and warm, and dark. Andras stares at it--the bag, the room, the man--and Delumine herself sighs along with him.
The little black pegasus reaches for the bag and takes it more gently than he should, floating it close to his chest as he looks from Mathias, to the seeds already scattered on the ground, to the doorway of the library behind him. "Fine," he says. Andras digs deep with invisible hands, sifting around in the bag for a generous handful before scattering that handful in one sweep across the courtyard. The single bird that hops toward them leers at the boy as if worried - it is there in its tense feathers that fluff up around its frame. It chirps loud, inching its way across the courtyard.
Andras watches it come. Andras watches it pick at the ground, and give a relieved shake of its wings, smoothing the feathers that had been displaced. Andras feels... nothing. He looks again from the bird, to the bag, to the man - Mathias, who is watching him with some ineffable expression that Andras doesn't focus on for long enough to decipher. He clenches his teeth tight.
The pause before his statement is too long, and when he does speak it is sudden, and loud, and desperate. "Well, have a nice day." he says, unbidden, and tosses Mathias his bag of birdseed before turning to disappear into the cool shade of the library, wings tucked tight against his side, hunched over his racing heart like it's all he has.
It's all he has. And he feels... something. But not something he understands.
Who would he be, to tell someone else to calm down?
He had breathed in ash, had breathed out destruction, had tasted the copper-tang of blood on his tongue until it had become the only thing he could taste. His ribs had housed an inferno, his heart a blackened husk, his sins too numerous to count and too heavy to carry unless he had buried them deep. He had burned down a kingdom, had faced down a self-made god, had existed purely on rage and spite until he hadn’t known anything else.
He thinks, maybe, that Andras doesn’t either, that they are two damaged boys who would shy away from a gentle touch but rush headlong into the hurt that comes with the comfort of rage, would dance on the edge of a knife before they’d dance with a lover to a soft melody. He doesn’t comment on it -- what use would that do? -- only allows the barest, weary smile to curl his lips into something that isn’t quite a snarl but isn’t quite a smile either.
He’s still not entirely sure how to smile without baring his teeth. Maybe he won’t ever be.
The silence between them stretches, broken only by the chatter of the birds in the trees. There is an understanding between them, heavy on their shoulders, and he notices for the first time how much smaller Andras is, that if he wanted to he could curl his neck over the winged back without having to stretch too far. He wants to say something smart.
He wants to bare his teeth and see if Andras would smile or snarl back.
He catches the bag of birdseed instead, fumbling just slightly with the rough-hewn fabric, and by the time he looks up Andras has already turned and begun his departure. He opens his mouth, his tongue tripping over the words you too -- and then he closes it with an audible snap of teeth, turning his shoulder so that he is facing towards the curious flock of birds instead.
It was just a fluke, he’s sure. Better to pretend it had never happened.
