Chapter 62 - Alive

Iris

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“Valkyre.”
He blinked, eyes re-focusing in the darkening light, staring down at the boy curled against his body, knees drawn up under the chin, one arm wrapped around his legs, the other resting on Valkyre’s thigh, loose and light. The crossbreed ran a finger through Iris’s tangled, neglected hair.
“What is it?”
Iris’s face was hidden behind his gray hair, eyes downcast, the boy’s lips almost at his kneecaps. When he spoke, his voice was hollow, words distant and dry.
“…Why… are you here?”
Valkyre blinked, taken slightly aback. Iris opened his eyes halfway, gazing sleepily at nothing, face expressionless.
“Why… Why I’m here? For-For you, of course. What else would I…?”
Iris closed his eyes.
“No,” he whispered.
Valkyre’s fingers stopped moving.
“…No…? No what? What are you talking about?”
Iris shook his head, almost imperceptibly.
“No,” he murmured. He turned his face to Valkyre now, resting his cheek on his knee, eyes idle, yet seeking, searching.
“Not for me,” he breathed. The boy’s hand moved from Valkyre’s leg, up until it pressed to the crossbreed’s chest, small hand pressing gently against the other’s stained, stiff shirt.
“Look.” Iris paused, then smiled softly, just the slightest bit, as if to himself.
“You’re warm…” he’d closed his eyes, small hands clenching at the fabric, slipping. “You’re alive,” Iris murmured.
Valkyre felt himself shifting, felt his own rough, callused hands take the boy’s, wrapping around Iris’s cool, soft fingers. He felt himself pull the boy close, felt the soft curve of the spine and roll of shoulder against his body.
“What… do you mean?”
Iris buried his face in the other’s shirt, shaking his head again.
“Don’t …live for me. You’ll only…”
The boy pulled his face away, looking up into the other’s eyes. Valkyre’s hair was drifting down into the boy’s face; it’d grown longer, and more unkempt, oily and sticky. It reminded Valkyre of his other life, so far away, before any of this had happened. Back when he’d had stability in the form of the singular pair of wings on his back, the gloves on his hands and the familiar touch of cold metal in his hands.
Back before things had begun. Back before he’d realized… no, become- this creature, this thing he couldn’t understand, this thing that was not himself.
This being with cold red eyes and an apathy masking a deep-down sensation for something more… something dark, something harsh and rasping he couldn’t comprehend. Black as shadow, smooth as silk. Something burning, smoldering slowly deep down.
“Valkyre.”
He blinked his eyes, once more finding himself, feeling the hard earthen ground beneath his body, the brittle stone against which they were leaning.
Iris was smiling.
“You can’t live for me,” he whispered.
Valkyre’s eyes sharpened. He took in Iris’s soft, pale face as if for the first time, staring at each clean, crisp strand of hair framing the colorless skin, at the individual eyelashes around the heavily-lidded eyes, at the gently-parted lips, sighing.
“Then… for who?”
Valkyre already knew the answer.
But that didn’t mean he understood why.
“Yourself.”
Iris was smiling, gray eyes warm.
…Himself? Valkyre stared back numbly.
Why…? He was nothing. A misconception. Something slowly deteriorating, breaking down. What did he have to live for, after all, but for Iris? Iris, he… he had been the only thing keeping Valkyre going. Without him… Valkyre had no purpose. No meaning. No existence.
…How could he possibly survive, only for himself? It wasn’t…
He had nothing. He had two sets of wings, neither of which he had ever truly wanted. He had cold apathy as his companion in the dark, he had silence as his shield. He had sharp razor steel, his only comfort in his earlier life which was no longer any form of life, but merely an illusion.
Even then, back then, he hadn’t been living for himself. He’d been… waiting. Anticipating.
Living in the past, in an uncertain future yet to come. Nostalgia for something he’d never felt.
Live.
To live, for… himself?
Valkyre was startled by the press of a cool finger to his lips, tasting of dust and dew.
“Promise me.” Valkyre’s explication was silent.
…To live?
Iris leaned closer, small body weighing him down, gray hair tangling with jet black, strands caught and sliding off of each other.
“Promise.”
Valkyre felt a tremble run through his body, with Iris’s face so close, eyes so soft and wide, lips moving soundlessly, echoing, shaping that one word again and again. The finger slipped on his lip.
“I-I promise. Promise.”
Iris’s lips curled up shyly into a smile. The finger fell away.
And then he leaned up and he kissed him.
Valkyre’s eyes widened, feeling the boy’s one arm loop around the back of his neck, small, thin fingers tangling in the crossbreed’s dark, sticky hair. Iris tasted of flower petals, his lips soft as their skins, small tongue lapping, gasping softly. Valkyre was taken aback by the boy’s fierceness; Iris’s mouth was pressed hard to his own, small lips seeking as if to engulf him whole, the thin hand tugging at the roots of the crossbreed’s hair, forcing them closer together. The boy’s body was curved to fit against Valkyre’s, small frame pressed hard to the crossbreed’s ribs and legs, one knee digging into his thigh.
Iris tasted of dusk. He tasted of dried, parched ice, of sharp bitter glass. He tasted like rain, which Valkyre had never felt upon his lips. There was a rushing sensation which the crossbreed could not explain, like stepping out of a fire and breathing again for the first time; like slipping on the sand cool on the beach, finding the deeper grains still warm beneath your heels. Like snapping along nerve endings, flashing brilliant neon colors with no name, ripping apart veins and branches, coaxed along crackling threads.
Like falling, upwards, into the night sky. Knowing you’ll never crash, knowing you’ll swim through the sea of stars, dripped with light.
When they broke and gasped for air, it was like a broken rip in the belly of a cloud. Valkyre felt his body trembling, blinking his eyes open to realize that his hand was clenched tightly around the back of the boy’s head, his other with the palm pressed hard to the small of the boy’s back, sharply pinning Iris to his body. The crossbreed let go, compulsively, startled. He couldn’t understand this longing he felt, the stirring in his body.
There were faint bruises on Iris’s neck, small red crescent moons marking where his fingernails had almost pierced the tender skin.
Yet at the same time, he felt Iris let go of him as well. He felt the sharp burning sensation in his scalp, knew the small fingers had dug into his flesh all the same.
Iris slipped down, slowly pulling away from the other’s body. With a half-suppressed shudder, the boy drew up into himself, arms wrapped around his legs.
“…I…ris?”
Valkyre’s voice came out in a hoarse croak. His body was trembling, his skin tingling. “What is-?”
“-Now.”
Iris’s word was a gasp, sudden and sharp. Valkyre blinked in response, brows drawing close. “…What?”
“The… dragon. Valkyre, finish…”
Iris turned around. His eyes were large, expression forced, possibly painful. Valkyre was shocked by the emotion he was seeing there, by the way the boy was biting at his bottom lip, eyebrows crunched, small hands trembling.
“Please.”
The crossbreed took the boy into his arms. He felt Iris breathe in a long, slow shudder, felt the small heart somewhere down inside beating, faint and irregular. He closed his eyes, and he could feel what Iris was; alien, in a sense. Strange, changed, different. A piece of glass, swirled and whorled, but starting to crack, brittle and frail, splinters running through the clear body. An amorphous shape, its innards pushing and heaving, each seeking to escape. And all contained in such of a frail, weak body, a puppet shape unable to sustain the sweeping, thick wings it was forced to bear. Wings with which he could never hope to fly; wings which only bore him down, made him fall, harder and faster, spinning in circles, ground rushing up, wind shrieking past his ears.
“O-Okay. All right.”
Valkyre fumbled in his shirt, suddenly feeling a coldness at the pit of his stomach, fearing he’d find nothing, fearing that somewhere along the line, he’d lost this thing that he’d once hated, which he now needed so badly, somehow.
The pen was still there, simple and silent, like a pooling shadow.
Valkyre’s fingers moved as if of their own volition. He pushed up the bottom of Iris’s shirt, exposing the boy’s thin, gaunt back and gentle curve of spine. Running his finger down the center of the other’s back, Valkyre realized with a start that Iris had gotten even thinner than before; although his skin color was no different, there was no doubt that his body was weakening, the ribs starting to show through the skin and the torso so narrow it was almost inhuman.
Valkyre pressed the flat of his palm to the boy’s back, feeling the coldness through his fingertips, knowing that Iris felt his warmth. High up to the right of his hand, at the top of the shoulder blade, the edges of the wolf’s jaws showed, opened as if about to sing, about to howl, to sing to the moon. A corner of the bat’s wing tip peeked out through the bunched-up folds of the boy’s shirt, up to the left.
With all of these tattoos, these seals… the only space remaining was the one Valkyre had dreaded to bring himself upon; the open expanse of the boy’s back and shoulders. Although he didn’t want to, the crossbreed could already see the pattern engraved into his own flesh, the twin demon wings rising high, curling elegantly around his shoulder blades, talons tipped and curved, webbed membranes drawn in smooth folds.
“Dragon,” he muttered to himself, under his breath. Dragon, and…
“…Phoenix.”
Valkyre began. Under his left palm, he could feel Iris’s body trembling, shaking. He himself couldn’t quite lose completely the sensation that had just so recently come over him, the burning fire, the ripple like the first gust of a storm over the glassy surface of a lake.
His hands moved on, ignoring his thoughts. The dragon’s head formed, a sharp, angular shape with long, elegant forked horns, the pen effortlessly depicting the fiery, twisting mane, curving around in quick, fast strokes to form the claws, the arched and elegant body, the sleek muscle and smooth scales. Its long, winding tail became a feather, flaring into fire. The phoenix began then; a thin, curved beak, a sharp eye, a crest of feathers crowning and running along its long sleek neck, twisting until it met the huge, spiraling wings, layered in feathers, sweeping down into the flow of the tail, the feathers long and thin, tipped in fire, speckled with ash.
As he worked, Valkyre recalled the legend and reality of what he was creating. Dragons and phoenixes were rare, oftentimes shrouded more in myth and belief than true physical claims. Dragons were ancient beings, wise above all others; phoenixes were immortal, rising again and again from the ash. Indeed, it seemed improbable at all for such creatures of myth to exist. Direct opposites, like fire and earth, light and…
Valkyre’s hands slowed, the pen lifting from its live canvas of skin. The crossbreed stared at his work.
The dragon’s one wing was simple, folded and held near its side, talon curved inwards. However, the other wing rose at a sharp angle, flaring out across Iris’s right shoulder blade and even edging onto the boy’s side, the membrane meticulously detailed, edges frayed, the outline of bone clear through the tight fitting of skin, and the taloned tip…
The tip wasn’t right. It wasn’t the hooked tip of a dragon.
It was the straight, sharp tip of a demon’s wing.
Valkyre’s hand moved on. He knew there was no changing what he had done, no erasing and starting over. In a way, this was as it should have been. On the other side of the boy’s shivering back, the full picture was already taking shape. Even as Valkyre’s hand moved in fast, short strokes and painstakingly found the texture and detailing to the feathers, the angel wing was already there, furled from the phoenix’s shoulder, its other wing smaller, more restrained, bent back just out of reach of the dragon’s claws.
The angel wing was light, done with the slightest touch of ink to flesh. The feathers were soft and smooth, long and thick, curling and spinning about the left side of the boy’s back. They were turned to gray by Iris’s skin, as if frozen in stone. Valkyre’s constantly-moving hand soon added quick swiping lines, giving the wing depth and layer after layer of feathers, the inner ones small and fat, the outer long and angular, sweeping in gentle strokes over the expanse of the boy’s back.
Angel and demon.
Dragon and phoenix.
The ageless and the immortal. And yet…
Staring at his own handiwork, Valkyre felt a cold pit of emptiness open in his stomach, felt a hard lump of uneasiness settle in the back of his throat, felt the heavy plunge into fear.
If he had just sealed away the dragon and the phoenix, then… what did that do to Iris? Had the boy ever been immortal in the first place? After all, how old… was Iris?
By sealing everything away… what would happen to Iris’s lifespan? And…
…What had Iris become, now?
Valkyre felt as if his body were frozen. How much did Iris know? Why did he have him do this?? To achieve what purpose, in the end…??
The pen slipped from his fingers, landing on the ground with a hollow clunk, rolling slightly. Valkyre didn’t bother to pick it back up. His hands had pulled back from the boy’s body, fingers trembling. This sensation, this feeling…
Iris turned to face him, eyes hidden at first, gaze cast down.
“…Iris?”
The boy looked up, and Valkyre felt his hands fall limp to the ground.
Iris was smiling, lips trembling, small hands clenched. A drip splattered on the back of his hand, rolling down to stain the dusty earth a dark brown, almost like black, like blood, like shadows. Another drip followed, landing on the boy’s bare knee, rolling and slipping down over the pale gray skin.
Iris was crying.

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AN: Sorry about the last chapter title, guys. :'D
Anyway! A nice long chapter, yes?? Yes???
...Because I'm a-gonna be not working on Iris for all of about a week or two, while I cram for AP's. Sorry. ;A; But, I've got Calc BC and APES, so it's... it's hard... ;A;
Please forgive me. Sorry. AP EnviroSci testing is done by May 15, so I PROMISE PROMISE to get back to it after, okay???
Thanks, guys, for everything. Hope you guys are liking Iris!
I recently realized that Iris is rather flat and amateuristic. Along the way, Iris-kun was supposed to start acting a bit more... individual and outspoken, but by the time I'd firmly established Iris's character... well, he goes away. >>; And hence I kinda didn't do too good a job there. Hoo well.
Hope you guys still approve. Thank you. ;D
Promise! Goin' to the end! XC

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