(no subject)
Terac was a truly beautiful boy, his light grey eyes nearly always hidden under a mess of dark brown hair that he eventually dyed black. It was rumored that there was a litter of scars up and down his forearms, but that rumor was never proven one way or the other before the day he took his fall. He almost always wore his red leather jacket. He was a boy of Hamburg boots and long soft glances. He was quiet, despite the way he dressed; it was always his eyes that gave him away. He had a tendency towards shyness.
In the end all of this contributed to his neighbors surprise when he took a leap out of the third story window. When the shock of the sickening cracking sound subsided all he felt, with a somewhat startling detachedness, was a deep regret that all he broke was his right leg. That regret did not resurface when he thought about the incident over the next few months, which he felt the increasing need to do as time passed. After all, it was only after he took the leap that he met the girl.
She wasn't beautiful. She wasn't special. There was no defining feature to her; there was nothing especially striking about her. She was just a girl who happened to see him when he took what was meant to be his final fall. In his own detached way Terac was annoyed that she even took the time to acknowledge him there. When she actually knelt down beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder all he could do was glare at her with a weak irritation.
"What do you think you're doing?" He managed to say through clenched teeth and glazed eyes.
She didn't respond to his question, but fixed him with a firm look. Her amber eyes were nothing spectacular, but the orange lines that ran through her irises in an offhand way did seem a bit peculiar. He tried to focus on those while she spoke.
"Your leg's broken."
"Yeah, I know."
Her accent left something to be desired, although it did signify that she was foreign. That was something to ponder over, he supposed.
"I can fix it."
"Can you now?" Terac smiled.
Looking back believed she smiled back, but he could never be that sure. She hit him after that, and everything faded into a grayish black.
~*~
When Terac awoke it was to a surrealist's dream. The notes of a flute floated fluidly through the air, caressing the waterlogged workings of his inner-ear. He felt disembodied; he felt out of sorts.
"Where am I?" was an unuttered question, though it still was answered once the flute-notes stopped.
"You're in my room. Number 42. I couldn't find your keys on you. You're locked out of your apartment."
The answer didn't seem satisfactory. A dull throbbing in his leg was his only reminder of the air and the rush of the ground.
"You had a fall."
"I'm aware."
The girl smiled once more and might've said any number of things before taking up the flute once more.
Terac fell silent. The music was a message, a metaphor for something deeper in his life and he opened once more to the agonies that had led him to the leap in the first place. He was aware of the origins of his being, his parents in their City and the overpowering force of his father's fist. He was once more aware of the torn upholstery of his mother's Cadillac. He was aware of the stinging loss of the Girl he had come to know and love, and the stinging loss of his best friend in the fire of metal and light.
Terac was aware of the failing grades and his final expulsion from the school system. He was aware of his lack of education, lack of any escape other than the ones he had already tried. Terac was aware of his own fall. In remembering it over the few months that remained, he never would admit to crying. He would only admit to the sudden surrender he had made. The way he had finally succumbed to the sounds and the erasure of pain that followed. When he fell asleep there that night, he could've been anywhere.
~*~
Then he awoke.
"Where am I?" he asked, the old movie cliché.
"You're here." The girl's only response.
"My leg-"
"I fixed it."
"Thank you."
A conversation barely had. The wholly unremarkable girl handed him a cup of tea. He sipped at it in silence, watching the swirling smoke of half-burned incense.
"You didn't have to, you -"
"I know," she said. "It was quite a fall."
Terac nodded. It had been.
"My name's Adira." She extended her hand, which he shook. Her hand felt like burning.
"I'm Terac."
She smiled once more. She smiled a lot.
"I-" Terac paused, he licked dry lips. It was getting hot.
"It's not every day somebody takes a fall like that."
Terac didn't respond, she took the tea from him without a word. The mug was placed on a nearby table. The incense smoke swirled, thick.
"Quite unusual, actually." Her tone was quiet with a lazy tinge.
Terac unzipped his jacket, removed it. He didn't think she'd mind. She didn't seem the type. It was getting hotter.
"You had the sense to open the window, at least. There weren't too many cuts. Save for your arms." She gave him a meaningful look.
"It's... hot..." His throat was parched, he was sweating now. A sharp pain had begun to manifest itself in his upper back. He bit his bottom lip. His eyes were on her, wide, pleading.
The girls gaze was not cold, necessarily, but rather a cool melancholy. A certain detached awareness.
"Just... relax..." She was quiet, "It will go faster that way."
Terac had spent most of his life trying to relax, his tight grip on that precious belief that it would be easier that way had never lessened. Trying so hard to hold on and live his belief had taken away much of the time he could have been using to relax. His body was burning up.
"Just relax..." she said once more "Relax..."
Her hand was on his forehead, caressing his cheek. Her hand was on his chest, holding him down as his back arched sharply, a scream ripping out of his throat. Her hand was on his shoulder, grabbing, rolling him over. Her hands were on his back tearing apart his shirt. Her hands were on his shoulders and back, moving, rubbing, trying to soothe newly ripped skin. He was dimly aware that he couldn't stop screaming, that the fire of blood was in his eyes, and even stranger, feathers were falling. Grey feathers were falling. Terac found the time to be confused, before being shot into nothingness again.
~*~
He awoke to the sound of a flute once more. His stomach was tense, his back a mess of tight agony. He felt something new. The air swirled with blue vial smoke, Adira sat in the corner.
"Good morning."
"The... flute?"
"Rein," she said, as though that explained everything.
"What happened?" The boy was a mass of clichés.
"Roma," she said, "gypsies." Her face was a smile.
"They look good on you," she said. She meant it.
~*~
Inside of Terac lived a demon, a monstrosity brought on by the flute and the smoke and the fall. Nevertheless, he found none of this shocking. He found none of what happened a reason to react out of his normal emotional spectrum.
"What do I do now?" He asked.
"You learn to fly," said Rein, the shadow of a girl in the doorway, "what else would you do?"
Terac stretched his wings with a quiet groan. They hurt like hell.
~*~
There was a church near the edge of town, the steeple towering fairly high above the countryside. He stood atop it, holes ripped through the back of his red leather jacket to accommodate the large grey wings. There was a storm somewhere, he could smell it brewing. Adira and Rein watched him wordlessly.
He jumped and spread his beautiful wings. He moved them gracefully, as he felt in his mind he should. He fell to the ground in a few short moments. He didn't understand.
"It was beautiful," Rein said.
"Are you hurt?" She asked.
He didn't understand.
"Oh."
The mass of feathers and flesh slowly sat up in the wet grass.
"Oh."
Adira looked at him wordlessly.
He understood.
~*~
Terac sat alone in the corner of the alley, his eyes reflecting darkly the world all around. It had occurred to him at some point that this was all there was, that this was how it would be. He hid his words in the light of day and walked his silence within the night. Sometimes Rein would walk with him, and that was how he knew something was real.
At times he would doubt his existence; he would doubt he was still alive. When he spread his wings he lived in suspended animation. It was only those few seconds that he flew that he knew bliss, but always he would fall. Terac knew that nothing would last forever, and he nursed his wounds as he lived his life; in silence, in contemplation, in a lack of true existence that seemed to mark everything he did in time. Rein would look at him, and in her eyes all he would see was a pointless reflection of himself, curved and inquisitive and lined with the whites of her eyes.
~*~
He roamed the streets, a silent threat. His hostility lurked in sprints and outbursts. A sharp word, a hard glance, his posture gave away his anger, his resentment, his wings curved outward under the streetlight. He was a freak; he was a terror. He was tired. He relished the way he fell with bitter cynicism. When he hit Rein for the first time he realized what he had known from the start.
She stared up at him in wide eyed silence.
"I'm the only one who can change me."
His voice was ragged, he stumbled on into the darkness.
He wanted to go home.
~*~
Terac stood atop a bridge in the night. Beneath the winter lake was near frozen. He could recall something about the blood on his hands and the rumor of scars making pretty patterns up and down his arms, but he would have liked to be sure. Terac stood atop a bridge in the night and looked down into the waters.
"You can't fly." Adira was standing beside him.
"I know," he said.
"That wasn't the idea of the song."
"I know."
Terac stood silent atop the bridge in the night.
Adira looked at him in silence. She knew what he had said and done. His eyes were black holes, though he somehow hid the circles. She had seen the fist let fly, she had seen Rein's body soft on the ground. She had watched but not made a move. It had been like this for months.
"I'm sick, y'know," Terac looked at her, "There's something wrong about me."
She nodded.
"You... made me sick."
She shrugged.
"What was the point of all this?"
She remained silent.
"Oh." He understood.
He jumped once more into empty space. He fell beautifully.
~*~
Later on Adira would say that she tried to save him. That all she could pull from the lake was his ruined jacket. That by the time his body came up he was choking and spitting up saltwater. Later on she would say that he was dead when he looked at her. She wouldn't say that she tasted his whole life every time she kissed him. She wouldn't say that he tasted like gun dust and sorrow, although she knew that he had. She knew he had. There were a lot of things that she would never say, although she knew them all..