Chapter 8 - Same

Iris

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"So, you're awake."
Valkyre let out a small sigh as he watched Iris stir, blinking open dull gray eyes. The boy didn't reply, just lay there, gaze flickering up to the angel. The hunter sighed again as he got to his feet, wincing at the dull throb of pain through his body. His wounds were already healing though, hurried by his angelic blood, and he was only too thankful that no bones were broken, though several muscles in his arm were ripped. It would take, at the least, a full two days for that to mend.
The angel, uneasy, started to pace. The small room they were in should've seemed rather constricted, but it was almost entirely empty but for a few broken pieces of furniture and rubbish, dust settled long ago stirred up again under his boots.
"...That was some stunt you pulled back there."
Valkyre's deep violet eyes flickered over to the boy, who sat up slowly from where he lay against the wall. Iris leaned back against the wood, closing his eyes as his head dropped back against the wall. He made no comment.
The hunter was well-used to this by now. But still, the reaction gave him some answers to the bewildering puzzle he was trying to put together. Apparently, Iris knew this could happen, and had perhaps done it before. The boy knew what flowed through his own body then, yes, but did he know the true potential of his power? What he might be capable of?
...And just where had he come from? How was he created?
Valkyre sighed again as he stopped, then stepped closer to the boy, sitting down cross-legged in front of him.
"Well?"
Iris blinked open his eyes, lowered his gaze to study the other. "...Yes?"
Valkyre paused, searched for the right words. He found that he suddenly had little to say. Did the boy even know the answers?
"...Are you going to run away from me?"
It was something else that suddenly sprung to his head; the realization that he had come to assume too much, to suddenly take too much for granted, immersed too deeply in his own thoughts to think reasonably.
Iris smiled, softly.
"No."
The angel frowned, 'hmph'ed softly under his breath. "...And why not?"
The boy leaned over, small fingers just lightly touching the sleeve of the hunter's arm, the bare tingle, whispering of magic, passing through the cloth passing between them. This time, Valkyre didn't pull away.
"Because... I'm not really your bounty anymore. But you still wouldn't let me go. ...Would you?"
Valkyre blinked at him, not sure what to say. But he knew it, inside, in some corner that he tucked carefully away, he knew that it was true. But he didn't say this to Iris.
Instead, he pulled away, rising slowly to his feet again. He stepped out of the room, turned aside to find the bathroom. The sink was cracked and leaky, washtable covered in dust, pieces of glass from a shattered and probably stolen mirror littered the ground, but the pipes seemed to be intact. He tried the water. A gusty wheeze of air at first, but then an uneven splurt of water spattered into the dirty white sink. Valkyre left the cold water running as he stepped out quickly to retrieve a knapsack he'd picked up earlier, while Iris had still been unconscious. It was a simple leather bag with just about the only possessions Valkyre bothered to carry around; a thin blanket, spare clothing, necessities mostly suited only to a bounty hunter.
He pulled out a washcloth and wet it under the wavering stream of chillingly cold water, then wrung it out a bit, enough to keep it from dripping.
Valkyre pulled out some metal cups and filled them with the water as well, scrubbing first at the faucet end to get out any pieces of dirt and rust. It was by no means sanitary, but it would have to do. He didn't dare risk exiting the abandoned house they were occupying, afraid that someone would detect his aura. This time, the barrier he set up around the small building was much stronger.
The hunter went back to the main bedroom, dragging along the knapsack. He handed one of the mugs of water over to Iris, who was where he'd been left, back against the wall. The boy took the cup without a word and drank little sips of it.
Valkyre sighed as he sat down a distance away, back turned. The bathroom was too small a place, dirty and sour. The angel pulled off his jacket, careful to pick out the fabric tangled in his torn skin, and to work it slowly over his ripped arm. The long-sleeved, black shirt he wore underneath was harder to remove, crusted blood sticking his clothes to his skin, his bare flesh underneath shivering as it met the cool, thick air.
Valkyre tossed the shirt aside, the rips in it making it impossible for him to consider washing it and sewing it back up. The angel ran fingers tenderly over the gashes in his arm, feeling to see if anything really was broken underneath, but there was nothing, just slashed muscle and tendon.
The hunter picked up the wet towel and wiped off the blood from the bloody gashes over his chest and side, gritting his teeth as he tried his best to clean the wounds. By the time he'd washed off his arm, the towel was more red than white, and too dirty to be used anymore. Valkyre dropped it, then rummaged around in the knapsack left-handedly, pulling out a roll of gauze and another long-sleeved shirt.
He was in the middle of attempting to unwrap the bandages when he was startled by the feeling of cool fingers running over the flat of his back, small hands pressing against his side, blunt fingernails whispering as they brushed lightly over his bare flesh. Valkyre shivered, remembered what he'd momentarily forgotten.
He could feel it now, reiterated as Iris ran a finger from the hollow between his shoulder blades, up along the right side of his back near his shoulder, then arched back down in a smooth sweep, fading before it met his waist. He knew what the boy was tracing; it was something he'd seen often times, faced with himself and the mirrors...
Iris sat down behind Valkyre, cool palm pressed to his bare back.
The angel didn't reply to the wordless query of the other, didn't say anything about the depiction on his back- black demon wings etched permenantly into his skin, a remembrance of what he was, what sins he'd commited. He'd seen them before, staring into the cold, cruel glass of a mirror. They were dark, their inky bodies bleeding him and staining his body with their eternity of ebony night, curled and arching over the expanse of his back, artist's depiction on the smooth canvas of his flesh. Tipped wings, velvety membranes, jutting, stark bones. Black demon's wings for the black-winged angel.
"...Why?"
Iris' voice was a whisper in Valkyre's ear. He sighed, turned his head the other way as the boy draped his arms loosely around the other's shoulder, leaning against him. His skin was so cold, so cold, faint singing of blood through his body making the other uneasy.
"...I guess it's 'cause I'm not really an angel..." Valkyre stared out the grimy window at the other side of the room, miraculously unbroken, that let in the foggy light of night. He turned his head back, just catching Iris out of the corner of his eye. "...My master... he was the one who raised me, took care of me... he told me I should've been a demon instead."
Valkyre let out a sigh, relaxing. Iris, wrapped around him, slid down to sit next to his left, leaning against his side. "...I don't blame him, either. It's true. I never wanted to be an angel."
Iris didn't reply, just remained where he was, cheek pressed to the other's shoulder.
"I know," was all he said.
The hunter looked down at the boy, but his face was hidden underneath the tangled mass of his soft gray hair. It felt cool, if a bit rough, on his skin, and tickled on the edges, like the mild unnerving of the presences brushing against Valkyre's skin.
Iris shifted, fingers fluttering as he ran them along the other's bare arm. It was decorated with smaller tattoos- a curling vine, angelic and demonic symbols, a snake wrapped around his wrist, vanishing under the edge of his glove. They were matched with more emblems on the other arm, siblings drawn from pen, writhing as they flowed into each other and twisted in a frozen dance.
Valkyre's fingers twitched slightly at the other's touch, but he did nothing.
The other tattoos were his own; his need to try and discover himself, reinvent himself as what he knew he had to be inside, shrouding and protecting himself with the impenetrable barrier from the smooth ink, drunk into his skin, enfolding him in its dark, thick embrace. ...How could he explain?
Valkyre sighed, then picked up the roll of bandages again. He tried to unravel the cloth, and found Iris' thin hands holding it out for him. He raised his dark amethyst eyes to meet soft gray.
"Here." The hunter searched the empty gaze, tried to see something behind the nothingness, but couldn't find it.
"...Fine."
He accepted the offer almost grudgingly, and managed to bandage up his chest, shoulder and arm with the help of the boy, watching silently as the other tied up the ends, tightly but not too closely as to stop the flow of blood. The boy's touches were soft, careful.
"...Thanks." Valkyre took Iris by the arm, undid the boy's dirty bandages to avoid meeting the other's eyes. He paused as the last of the gauze was pulled away, staring at the bare skin, smooth but for a small white scar.
It had healed.
Valkyre paused, looked back down at the crumpled mass of cloth in his hands. But... the wound had been re-opened just a short while ago. He saw the brighter blood dyed over the darker, browning blood on the cloth. It must've healed rapidly, and in just the past few moments. It... Iris.
Valkyre didn't bother trying to find an answer. He found a decently clean patch on the sodden towel and wiped away the last of the stains of drying blood from the boy's arm. Iris didn't do anything, simply held out his hand, quietly observing as if from a distance.
The angel folded up the towel quickly as he finished, rising to his feet. "Here, just stay here," he muttered, as he headed for the bathroom again. Inside, he washed out the towel quickly, watching as the pink stains of blood swirled away down the drain, wondering what that blood contained, hidden away.
Stepping back into bedroom, Valkyre closed the door behind him, hoping the room would be safe from the chill now of the cold night that brushed the corners of the rest of the house, let in through the broken windows and ripped, agape doorframes.
Iris sat where he'd been, tilting his head slightly as he looked at the other's entrance.
Valkyre wiped the dust away from the corner of a broken shelf, and set the wet towel to dry. He kneeled next to the knapsack and put away the gauze, then pulled out the blanket he had- thinly layered but small enough to fit as nothing more than a small bundle inside the leather bag, a bit rough but warm and soft enough.
The boy only sat where he was, watching quietly as the angel spread out the blanket on the ground, folding up the edges on one end as makeshift pillows. Valkyre picked up his jacket from the ground and pulled it on, ignoring the frayed edges on the right shoulder. He flicked off the weak light from the dangling bulb, casting the room into soft, silvery shadows.
"Here," he muttered, "You better get some sleep." He knelt down at the edge, running gloved fingers over the worn-smooth wooden floor, uneasy.
Iris touched the angel's arm, pulled the other down towards him. "Valkyre..."
He was smiling. "...We're not so different, are we?"
The hunter studied him carefully, frowning. ...Were they? Exiled, refused by the world, without anywhere they belonged, able to perhaps understand each other better than they could themselves... Maybe. Just maybe.
Valkyre muttered something noncommittal, folding up the blanket to cover their bodies as he lay down.
The angel closed his eyes with a sigh, letting his body relax, tension of everything that'd happened seeping slowly out of him. It had been a tiring day, and much had happened. He found himself now firmly entangled in the matters of this boy, or rather, his own matters. He didn't really know what he wanted out of Iris- it wasn't just a bounty though, to be sure. And it wasn't really just a need to know what the boy was... There was something about him, something more he couldn't explain, but that linked him to the other, kept them tied together as if by invisible silver threads. Valkyre, though he was by no means a philosopher, sought a reason. A reason for why existence itself remained, why it could carve and shape so many things, why it worked the way it did. And somehow, he felt that if he could understand Iris, then he could finally understand himself.
...It had been a long time since anyone had ever touched him, had ever spoken to him like this. This feeling suddenly, the end of his loneliness and solitude, broken by an impossible boy, somehow made him feel... almost happier, at ease.
He paused, blinked open his eyes again, amethyst gaze focusing quickly in the dull dark. Iris lay facing him, his face peaceful, eyes closed, curled up onto himself.
Valkyre wanted to say something, but the night's soft lull was pulling at him, and he let his eyes close, drifting away into oblivious sleep.

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AN: First off, I'm soooooooo sorry for how late the updates are! Good thing though, as of now, I have JUST finished my sci fair project. ^^- Makes me uber-happy!
And now I've got this chapter done at last... It has a rather different tone and I'm not sure if I really like it... I wanted a world with nowaday technology and customs that I could describe easily, but I dislike having to make it all fit with the laws of the human world... -_-;; Therefore, blow things up, eheheh... As I've mentioned before, I adore post-apocalyptic settings. ^_^-
Aaaanywho. ...Chapter actually didn't do as much as I wanted it to... But I've got the two charries into the general 'okay, I WON'T stab you on contact' relationship step, so things should go on easier from this. Hehe.
I've got a bit of idea for the next chapter [probably kind of short] and after that, things'll just run off. ^^-
So. I think updates will still be a bit slow... I've got work to do for a festival in school just on the last day before school ends for winter break... And I'm gonna be away for a lot of winter break... So sorry! ::croesses fingers for a tablet or PS2 for Christmas:: Hehe...
Thanks for reading! See ya!

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