Chapter 33 - Earth

Iris

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"What..." Valkyre shook his head, unsure of what to say. "How...?"
Iris smiled emptily. "I'm not supposed to exist," he murmured. "It... It doesn't matter who made me. I can't... keep going. Like this."
The angel breathed out slowly. His voice shuddered. Valkyre touched the boy's hair, seeming suddenly to fragile beneath his fingertips. Then, all along, Iris knew, and it still hadn't mattered...? What did he want? What purpose?
"...Then do you still... want to live?"
Iris didn't reply at first, only curling up tighter in the other's lap. His breathing was almost inaudible, soft exhalations barely stirring the air.
"...Iris?"
The boy looked up at him, expression empty again. "...Sometimes," he murmured. A tiny flash of a smile as gray eyes brushed against dark purple, then nothing again, wiped of emotion.
The angel stroked the other's hair, sighing, in part out of relief and part still in frustration. The silence seemed to stretch between them, thick and stifling. The dark earth around them was quietly shuffling with sound, but none of it seemed to reach them.
"What... makes you want to do so? To live?"
Iris smiled at him again, hinting at a soft, warm emotion, hidden somewhere deep down, but he said nothing.
The angel stared at the young boy, at the shadows that he hadn't noticed before under the eyes.
"I..." Valkyre shook his head. It didn't matter for now. Nothing had truly changed, and it was pointless for him to be worrying so much.
"...What should we do now?"
Iris closed his eyes briefly, smile still faint on his lips.
Live.
It wasn't spoken, but Valkyre could feel it, a wordless, unheard shift in the air between them, letting him know the answer was already there, long-since spoken.
As long as they kept moving, would Iris continue to live?
"Leave."
The angel blinked. "...What about Corryn?"
The boy blinked, apathetic. "...Get past him. He'll hurt you if you stay."
Valkyre sighed, but helped Iris up and stood.
"Wait." The angel watched as the boy walked off a pace, then returned quickly, pulling out of the shadows a familiar knapsack. Valkyre stepped over and took it from the boy, looking it over. Everything still seemed intact.
"How did you get...?"
Iris sat down on the ground again, hugging his knees to his chest. He smiled, faintly. "I asked him to keep it," he murmured.
Valkyre opened his mouth, wanting to speak, to ask. How was it Iris could get Corryn to do things like this? ...Was it because Corryn truly cared about what Iris thought? Did he seek to be seen as equal before the boy, as a... protector?
The angel felt a cold chill run down his spine, and he shook his head lightly, pushing away the feeling. ...If Corryn truly cared about Iris, why didn't he listen?? Why... how had they ended up on the wrong sides, pitted against each other? Could it all just be because of... Jealousy??
"Valkyre."
The angel blinked, bringing himself back from his thoughts. Iris was holding something in his small, pale hands, and somehow, Valkyre already knew what it was. The black pen looked like a coiled snake in the boy's hand, made of pure black ebony in the darkness, dripping with venom.
Abruptly, Valkyre shook his head.
"No."
Iris watched him calmly, pen still in his hands, unmoved. The angel sighed in frustration.
"I'm not doing it. I... it shouldn't be. ...It's too dark here, anyways. Why do you want this, now?"
Iris sighed in mirrored response, leaning in closer, resting his head against the other's shoulder. "I don't want it," he murmured quietly. "I need it."
Valkyre wrapped his fingers around the boy's thin hands, touching the smoothened surface of the black pen beneath, writhing like a creature about to jump from his grasp. "...Why?"
Iris only shook his head. "Hurry," he whispered.
The angel pulled away, stared down at the empty, emotionless alabaster face beneath him. He frowned, but the boy didn't respond.
With a final, surrendering sigh, he slowly pulled away the pen, rubbing his fingers along its sleek surface, wanting to throw it away into the darkness and never find it again.
"...Where?"
Iris raised his arm, turning it so the veins beneath the skin at his wrist and forearm stood out, blue and purplish through the pale, white flesh.
"A snake," he murmured, looking almost content. "...And a hawk."
The angel touched the boy's cheek, forced him to stare back into his eyes. Iris gazed back, showing nothing, and Valkyre could pull away no answers. The boy only smiled.
This time, he was careful, and the snake remained a thin shape, twisted in loose coils from the center of the boy's forearm back along the shoulder, tail end whisking at the flickering bat further back. The angel realized the darkness didn't really matter, faced with the boy's light, almost translucent pale skin.
The hawk was opposite, a small shape caught in mid-dive, wings half folded, just barely avoiding touching the wolf at the far edge of the boy's back, talons tucked and sharp, hooked beak prominent.
It didn't matter how small they were. Valkyre felt a heavy guilt over himself as the boy pulled his shirt back on, the snake's sinuous body showing along his left arm, a dirty crust of black on the pristine, pure white-gray of the skin.
...What was he doing??
"Valkyre."
Again, Iris brought him around, eyes calm, empty gray leading down to fathomless pits that the angel couldn't bring light upon, couldn't into nor comprehend.
"We have to go."
Valkyre looked around him, realizing that he'd, over time, adjusted to the darkness, and was now able to hazily make out the shapes around him.
The entire place was a mess of catacomb-like structures, crumbling earth lining walls that branched off haphazardly, at random. More than one probably led off into a dead end. The angel peered down some of the tunnels, but had no idea as to where they were, or to where Corryn had gone.
Valkyre closed his eyes, reaching up a hand to touch the seal around his neck, fingertips rubbing lightly on the smoothened stone at its core. The view he saw was different now, one he followed emptily with his mind and not his body, in flickering, grainy images. Darkness all around, image after image, broken only by the shredded, jutting clumps of soil, all one and the same. But the light came, and the black specks turned to white, condensing into a clear, colorless core.
The angel opened his eyes again, blinking slowly. He paused, then shook his head, clearing his mind.
Valkyre took Iris' hand, so small and thin in his own, coldness seeping in around the edges of his glove. "Let's go," he murmured quietly.
They ran, loosing track of everything in the winding, twisting darkness, everything but for that flicker of light and that guess at sunlight, or moonlight, either welcome from the darkness.
It was an odd thing, that. Valkyre had thought he'd always love the dark. He could hide in the darkness, could be seen by no one while he could watch everyone else, innately, unafraid of being seen, unafraid of what they would think of him. In black on black, in empty abyssmal space, no one would see scars or closed hearts or tattoos on your skin, sunk into your flesh, devouring you alive. You could forget. Your body could be feather-light, you could be powerful as the crushing waves of the ocean, you could be someone, anyone.
But the darkness left out beauty, left out realization, left out dawning. It left out life, existence. And he was yearning for it again, in a way he hadn't done so since what felt like an eternity.
How odd.
So here he was, running through darkened tunnels like on a star-fallen night, lost without its crescent sliver of moon.
He needed fresh air. There was earth here. There was promise of life, of living creatures not born of man nor grown under their overly-protective, tender care. Here was existence.
But he couldn't stand it. It was too dark. Nothing would grow here, ever.
Someone deep down, the angel knew too that even the spiders couldn't survive here. They weren't here just for the purpose; they were linked to Corryn, somehow.
And if he were to stay here, no matter what he'd gone through at the labs, no matter what he could survive without, it wouldn't be living. Never.
They needed to go. Needed to escape, get out of here.
Where?
Mountains to the north? Perhaps. The coast, far from the cities. Where the cold made it too hard to live, for humans?
It didn't matter.
Soil in dark clumps on the ground turning to smears and dashes beneath his boots. Valkyre stared at them, then finally realized the image for its worth.
Light. It was growing lighter.
...Maybe, sometime, they could return. The could use the soil, grow life again, treat it preciously. Maybe...
Of course, the world was not his concern. Earth was not native to him, and he didn't know how to take care of it, to ensure it was not drained to empty, rocky sand-like grit. It wasn't for him to do.
Light, growing brighter. Speckles of green along the edges, giving life to nothingness, to earth again.
Hope, so slim? Maybe. Just maybe.
Escape. Escape to somewhere, to anywhere, it no longer mattered at all.
Of course, he should've known. Even before he rounded the corner and the light cast a pale, watery shadow behind him, he should've known. He did inside, somewhere, staring down at the shadow that stretched down towards him.
Corryn crouched before him, golden-black eyes glinting through the shadow cast over his face, darkened and accented by the hair that fell over him, black-on-black in the eternal shadows.
"Valkyre," he whispered, "You've gone too far."

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AN: Man, finally another chapter done. I'm not quite admitting to a writer's block, but it was simply that I haven't had the chance to get around to the work! So much stuff to do, as the fourth marking period is drawing in, and there is so much for me to do!
Well, I'm swinging back into Iris some though, and I'm hoping to get some more work done throughout now and spring break [which is only 9 days long, unfortunately], though I'm afraid a great deal of that time will also be given to Star Ocean, ehehehe... Sorry!
I've also got some loosely-done up ideas in my head, and a bruising sore to get back onto TC, if only I can manage both stories at once... we'll have to see. :)
Oh, and some news! I have got new fanarts done for Iris! A lovely pic of Valkie and Iris-kun, by DefyDeath_DefyMe, as a birthday present, and another giftie from SenayDragon, of sweet little Iris-kun. :) I love both pieces to death, thank you both so much!!
Oh, and Senay? I have a reason for not doing the dragon as a tattoo, so sorry, but, well, it didn't work out... as in, I have a little problem that gets in the way, and I need to solve it first beforehand, as I can't seem to come up with the right... ...yes. ^^;
I'll work on that. Don't be insulted, in any way!
Ah, I'll cut off the raving early now. Sorry for the wait, and hope they won't all take so long! ^______^-
Thanks!

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