the world is spinning and he can't breathe through the smoke in his fragile lungs , and he is waiting - for something he isn't quite sure what , but it is brewing in his bones like the beginning of a wildfire.
[word count: around 27,500]
/NICO DI A...
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He has seen the decades melt into an obscure century he cannot remember, passing through as if only a ghost for a lifetime he has not lived. The sky is melting from blue into orange, dusk slanting through the sky that has never seen so big, so daunting in a way he can't think about.
There is cigarette smoke curling around the air and the memories of a 40s smoky alleyway his throat. The streets are crowded with tired eyes and heavy souls, fear residing in the hollow bones of those who have seen too much of this world, seeking their redemption in the big sky that watches them. (People are scared, and maybe a lot of changed but maybe not enough).
-
There is a girl glowing softly in the early evening sunlight, shimmering with a glow of incandescent brilliance. She looks young, a flannel shirt tied around her waist and her hair falling in gentle waves, glancing behind as if to check that he is still following. She casts no shadow onto the cracking pavements. Perhaps she is not there after all.
His eyes are dark and focused and she is smiling like she has all the time in the world in the spectral light, young and slight with an elegant neck thats beauty is only marred by the grotesque scar that runs across it. As if testingly, she laughs and the gentle sound reverberates through the distance between them.
He slips under a bulky arm with a sleeve of tattoos and darts out of the throng of people cramping the pavements. Quickly, the girl slips into an alleyway and he bites down his bitterness at the whole game of cat and mouse, smoothing down his hair and following her in the alleyway.
"I know who you are," she starts, and her voice is soft and mellow and it reminds him of hot summer nights of pomegranate and sultry laughs. She looks older now, maybe a few years older than him perhaps, but she is still far too young for this.
He nods. "I know," he says, and she narrows her silver eyes at his extended hand. "I'm sorry for this."
She doesn't take his hand, and he isn't really surprised. There are those who can accept their deaths and those who can not. (Most people are in the latter; it doesn't surprise him she is one of them).
"No you're not."
He's not sure what to say to that.
It is almost dark now, with the last shards of sunset skimming the building tops, painting them both in the ichor of golden hour. Her t-shirt is stained with dark splodges, colourless in her death but sinking into her skin the way it does his heart.
"Don't shoot the messenger," he bites, but drops his hand knowing that she won't give in so easily.
(There is a trash can to his left and a boarded up window to his right. There is a chain link fence at the other end. One exit. He doesn't want to be here after dark).
Fingers entwined, he notices, knuckles even whiter. "We need your help."
"Excuse me?"
She steps forward, surged by a sudden burst of confidence. Cat-like, her eyes, long and narrowed and piercing even in their transparency. "We won the war the first time, but I guess not well enough."
