Chapter 50 - Remember

Iris

+--

"...No."
That was the first, last, and only word that Valkyre could form in his lips, could utter coherently.
The candle shivered.
A wave of darkness swept over him, something he hadn't ever felt before yet instinctively recognized, something primordial, something that'd lain inside of him all along. Something with a mind and teeth and burning eyes and claws.
Something that could see the darkness, could sense in a completely different way, could smell the wood and wax and burnt air in a way he never could've as... as an angel.
Valkyre shuddered, shivering, drawing in on himself. The brush of his skin on skin was loud, thundering, deafening. The candle's light hurt his eyes. His fingers twitched, trembling, as he stared down at them, and there was something about the way his chest and stomach felt, like they were warping, changing, his each inhalation drawing in deep, heavy breaths, a million things besides just air funneling down his lungs.
And, watching over it all, his wings sprawled up against the wall, impossible.
Valkyre paused, then slowly, tentatively stretched his hand over his shoulder, fingers trembling.
They touched wet, slick leather, touched something soft and smooth yet hard and reptilian, almost like scales. Something like bat's wings, something he felt and knew, now, was truly real.
No trick of the eye. No illusion.
No.
His hand dropped, Valkyre too stunned to think of anything else to do. What was going on?? What... what was he...??
A million jumbled, confused thoughts ran through his brain. Pain throbbed behind his temples, though much weaker, almost nonexistant. As if somehow, this freedom, this unacknowledged release of the black, pounding darkness inside of him had... somehow...
"You are Iris."
Camael's words echoed, rebounded, tore their way through his skull like a hurricane. Valkyre winced, flinching visibly, almost raising his hands to his ears. The words hurt.
Camael paid no notice, however, and went on.
"Rather, you are an embodiment of what Iris stands for. And of what it is that he stands for."
It was a stream of words now, a stream of words buffeting him, tearing him to shreds. Valkyre felt a sudden flare of anger, of hatred he couldn't find the depths of, the answer to.
Angel, angel, it screamed in his head. He wanted to rip it- Camael, himself, everything- apart.
"Iris is the organic. He is the impossible created by the world itself, though to what purpose, is all up to the perceiver."
Valkyre stared into nothing, staring at the wall with his impossible, new vision in heat and wind and sound. Everything hurt his eyes, his senses. He wanted it all to go away, forever.
"And you... are the man-made. The creation from the sentient."
Valkyre blinked, twice, three times.
"...Wh... What?"
Camael was moving, each step pounding heavily in the ground.
He stood to Valkyre's side now, and he smiled.
"You are the impossible, created entirely from the whim of mankind. ...In a sense."
Valkyre listened. He tried his best to understand the words, to process them past the heat and the cold and the darkness that flooded up within him, boiling over.
"Your mother and father were foolish. But it was their folly that led to what it is that is happening now. ...To... what has been destined to happen."
He lifted up his head, intently. ...Mother? Father? Valkyre hadn't ever even known so much as his parents' names.
"...What...?"
Camael smiled, the image of a calm, patient teacher lecturing his pupil.
"Your father was a demon, and your mother an angel. The two were in love."
Valkyre froze, felt what saliva he had left in his mouth dry up, leaving him thirsty, parched, dehydrated all of a sudden. ...What?
"You should know, Valkyre, that from all the races in the world... None are more human than the angels and the demons. In thought, in actions, in whims. Fallen angels, after all."
Camael smiled, beginning to walk again, pacing. The silvery-brown hair fell over his face, shadowing his eyes.
"Despite the knowledge, despite the pain, despite the downright impossibility... they remained together, and attempted to have a child."
The dark, nearly black eyes glanced over at Valkyre, holding on to them.
"...And they succeeded, of course."
Valkyre blinked back, numbly.
Himself? Angel and demon? Since... his birth? Since even before?? How could it be possible...?? No, it wasn't, it couldn't...
"Your mother even survived the birth, though how that happened, I do not know."
Camael walked over until he stood in front of Valkyre, smiling placidly, looking thoughtful.
He continued, mercilessly, progressing towards the finish of a story that Valkyre, with a lurching wave of dread, realized that he did not want to know.
"...They thought it a miracle. They thought you were a blessing, a portent of a new code to live by, a world where opposite races need no longer hate themselves. ...Of course, they were wrong."
Valkyre shivered, trying to remember. A father, a mother? ...A family, parents?
The very idea was alien to him, and he could recall nothing. Nothing, but...
"They soon realized their error. I don't really know what happened, as I was not there, of course. But they recognized their mistake, and tried to remedy it.
"They bound you with a seal, particular to you, honed. They decided to seal up your demonic half, and pretend you were a normal, pure-blooded... angel."
Camael smiled, then stepped closer, leaning down, dark eyes piercing into Valkyre's, glinting in the dancing, shifting candlelight.
"Haven't you ever wondered why your wings are black?"
The candle shivered.
Camael stepped back, slightly, but kept his gaze locked on the other's.
"You can't ever hold down someone's blood. The demon's half leaked out anyways, though it was greatly restrained. And, of course, one of the first things to be affected by the bloodstream... would be your wings.
"Even though you, as of then, had your demonic side repressed, it still had an effect on the rest of you, particularly since young age. And it stained your wings black."
Camael paused, tilting his head slightly to one side.
"And your hair too, I believe," he added. He reached forward, touching Valkyre's bangs, pulling gently at a few strands, holding them up against the light.
"There's a slight tint of violet in your hair..." he murmured, tanned, lined hand rubbing the individual strands of hair between them. He let them drop.
"Your parents were too soft-hearted to kill you. ...Selfish, too."
Camael sighed then, shaking his head.
"They were too idealistic," he said.
"And, of course, that led to their destruction."
Valkyre felt his blood, hot as it was, run cold.
No. He didn't want to know. He wanted to stop Camael right now, silence him for good. He didn't want to hear...
"Your seal broke," Camael continued, relentless.
"And that was when our lives overlapped."
Camael paused, stopping, watching Valkyre intently, unblinking, shadow still dancing wildly behind him, cast into life by the candlelight. When he continued, his words were slow, carefully-chosen. This was where his reality had interceded, and here was what was truth and tangible, what he'd experienced and seen for himself.
"I had felt an impossible aura suddenly flare up. Intrigiued, I'd searched for the cause. ...I found a house, filled with death and decay. I entered, wondering what had happened.
"Inside, everything was shattered and broken. The furniture was smashed, the glass of the windows broken. There were signs of a struggle, clothing torn and thrown on the ground."
Camael stepped closer, eyes intent, viewing a scene from sometime, somewhere else. Something that Valkyre didn't want to see, didn't want to hear.
"...And there was the reek of the dead, of rot. Everywhere.
"I found your father first, lying in the hallway, mangled. His skull was smashed in. ...There was blood all over the walls."
Valkyre wanted to shout, wanted to scream. He closed his eyes, trying to fight away the voice, fight away images that were coming back to him, images that he shouldn't remember...
...That he didn't remember, not as an angel.
...But as a demon...
"Your mother was in the bedroom. Neck broken, I believe. ...She was covered in blood."
Camael's voice was hollow now, emptied of emotion.
"...And then... I found you."
Valkyre stared into the dark eyes. Into the eyes of the man he'd deemed his master, of the man who'd taken him in from a house of death, from the cold bodies of the parents that...
"Your hands were stained with their blood."
...His crime.
His sin.
Valkyre felt an empty vacuum where his heart should've been, felt nothing but cold and darkness and a bottomless drop into eternity.
He'd killed them.
His own parents... with his bare hands...
...Hands stained black-red, digging splinters of rough wood up underneath his fingernails, feeling pain, feeling blood drip from his own wounds, unable to understand what was going on...
...What was going on...
Camael nodded, emotionless.
"...The rest, of course, you know. I took you in. I returned later and buried both of your parents."
Valkyre looked up blindly. He felt no compassion, no wave of thankfulness to that last phrase.
Only empty, cold bitterness.
"...Why..."
His voice found himself again, forced its way along his windpipe, breathy and hard. His words were a whisper, hoarse and dry.
"Why... didn't you... ...kill me...?"
Camael merely smiled, eyebrows arching slightly.
"Come now, Valkyre. I knew there was more to you than simply death."
He shook his head, clearing away some thought perhaps, then continued.
"Of course, you were still a trouble. I had to deal with your demonic side before it destroyed you."
Camael stepped closer, eyes distant again, seeing something else.
"...I realized what your parents had attempted when I found the seal, crushed, under a table. I took matters into my own hands then. A seal was too deficient, carrying too high of a risk of letting out the demon again."
He paused here, then smiled.
"I think you know what happened next, Valkyre."
Valkyre stared straight ahead, watching the candle flames.
Yes.
He remembered now.
The dank, the dark, the candle. The pen lying on the table.
And cast in front of him, on the wall...
...His wings. His two pairs of impossible wings.
Impossible...
Camael stepped to the wooden table, picking up the pen, observing it calmly under candlelight.
"The glyphs carved from the magic I learned to wield are quite powerful. Even for a mere human to attempt to control. And were quite effective as a seal, when you knew what you were doing. ...It was a sufficient way to lock away the demonic blood, though I knew it would never last forever."
Camael dropped the pen gently onto the table again, stepping back, crossing his arms over his chest.
"So. Now you know."
Valkyre stared ahead blindly.
No, he didn't know. He didn't know a goddamned thing.
He wanted to shout a million questions, wanted to deny anything and everything that Camael had just told him. He wanted to burn away, catch fire from that tiny candle and dance like his shadow.
He wanted to curl up and will everything else away, wanted to fade into shadow and emptiness.
No, he didn't know a thing.
Hadn't.
And his parents had been killed by his hand and he remembered the blood, but oh he couldn't remember a single happy moment or what his mother's face looked like, or the laugh of his father's, and he didn't remember his wings, his wings...
And yet...
He did.
He remembered.
He remembered arms around him, warm and soft. He remembered light and heat and pretty violet eyes smiling down at him, though he could remember nothing more of the face.
He remembered a shadow, arms crossed, in the far corner of the room.
Of pale hands that never touched him, though they longed to.
Of dark red eyes hidden behind dark hair all swathed in dark clothing, silent, elegant.
He remembered tears and screaming and crying and weeping and shouting.
He remembered laughter, faint and blurred like an old, grainy sepia photograph out of focus, fading away.
He remembered dark gray curtains. Polished wood smelling of sweet somethings he couldn't place. Clean white dishes bordered in blue and decorated with small, violet flowers. His father had loved his mother's violet eyes...
He remembered the black bubbling darkness inside of him, of startled red eyes and white and thin, nimble fingers...
...And then blood.
Dark, black-red blood, everywhere.
Splashing, sticking between his fingers, pooling underneath his nails...
And then...
...Darkness.
Splinters.
Shapeless forms in the room. Ripped clothing. Stained blood roses, blossoming from the mangled cloth.
Pain.
Fear.
Tears, running hot down his cheeks...
...Or had that only been blood?
And then, of course...
...Camael.
'Come with me.'
The hand, extended to him. The low, quiet voice, those dark eyes...
'Don't look at me like that. I'm not your guardian. ...But I'm going to have to take care of you.'
And then... more darkness... and silence.
Valkyre blinked, staring back emptily at Camael.
Something started to trickle down his cheek, something warm and hot.
...It must've been blood.
He heard Camael laugh, a short, low sound, more a chuckle than an actual laugh. The other leaned closer, reached out a rough, work-hardened hand. It brushed his cheeks, came away moist.
"There we are," he heard Camael whisper, leaning so closely now that he could feel the other's breath, the candlelight flickering between them, every hardened, aged line on the other's face in clear focus.
Valkyre smelled blood, smelled warmth and heat.
He wanted to kill something, everything. Wanted everything to go away. Die.
"Look, Valkyre."
Camael's fingers pulled back from his skin, not touching but still levitating just above.
"Can you see yourself, Valkyre?" Again, that hint of laughter in his voice.
Valkyre stared into Camael's eyes, dark like obsidian.
And he saw his own reflected eyes.
...They were blood-red, crimson, pupils tiny and dilated, hard like smoothened cores of ruby, burning.
Demon eyes.
"You're the demon," Camael whispered, dark eyes narrowed, laughing.
"Welcome back."

+--

AN: Thank you all for your patience, and I'm sorry this took so long. ...I am. I was just... so... busy... >>;
Anyway, there. Big chappie of explanation-eded-ness. Yolui~! 8D
Man, what I notice to be the problem now is that I have nothing to call Valkyre. I used to refer to him as 'the angel' and I even managed to work around Eire, but now, he's not technically just an angel anymore so I can't even use that to help me. XD
But, whatever. I'll have to figure something out. (Though anything you guys (or just you, Deffy XDDD ) can offer will help! ...Greatly!)
I'll try to bring out plenty more chappies, but I can't guarantee it because things are slowing down again. I need something more interesting to keep me going. :<
So, sorreh.
Oh~! And, btw, we've hit chapter 50, darlin's. :DDDDD
Enjoy, and I'll try to grind out some more chappies soon as possible~
Luv ya all duckies~

You are not authorized to comment here. Your must be registered and logged in to comment