Chapter 63 - Sky

Iris

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It had taken Valkyre a long time to pin down the word. He’d searched through his mind for the simple syllables, dark violet eyes open yet seeing little, lips brushing the boy’s hair. Iris lay pressed against his body, curled in his lap. Valkyre kept his one arm wrapped around the boy’s lightweight frame, hand resting on the opposite shoulder, feeling the boy’s frail chest rise and fall with each slow, faint breath. He felt a shudder run through his body, like hot, muted fire.
Human.
That was the word.
Valkyre squeezed his eyes shut momentarily, doing his best to ignore the flare of boiling blood through his chest and abdomen. It didn’t matter what happened to him any more. It was only… distance. Unrelated, a thing of the past, a thing of the future. A pain he could deal with later, when the time came for it. When Iris… when everything had settled and resolved itself into matters he could understand again, into shades of black and white.
Valkyre knew that things were coming to an end.
He just didn’t know how.
“Iris.”
He dropped his head, let his cheek press to the boy’s crown, feeling the solid bone of the skull through the tangled gray hair. Iris’s small hand, resting on the crossbreed’s knee, twitched slightly in response. Valkyre found the fingers of his free hand running through the boy’s mussed hair, slowly pulling through the knotted ends.
“Tell me. Why are you here? …What do you want?”
Listening to his words hanging in the silence, Valkyre felt the hints of a rueful smile tug at his lips. All this time, he had never really known. He had never truly found out what it was Iris had wanted. Did he simply wish for silence, for solitude? For meaning, reason, a purpose? For…
Valkyre paused, blinking. He remembered. He remembered a room, long ago, and a young, gray-stained boy sitting slumped on cold stone, back to a shelf empty of books. A night without a breeze, a velvet curtain and broken glass.
It was the second time he’d ever laid eyes on Iris.
And yet, the memory was clear. And Valkyre remembered what Iris had said.
“…Iris?”
The boy shifted, slightly. He made something of a ‘hm’ sound, more so felt than heard through Valkyre’s body. Iris’s hand dropped from the crossbreed’s knee, running down along his calf, then stopping abruptly.
Valkyre felt his blood run cold.
Iris’s hand rested on the guardless hilt of the blade sheathed to the side of his boot. The boy’s fingers absent-mindedly rubbed over the worn, smoothened leather of the hilt, a single thin blue vein shifting underneath the skin of the back of his hand, rising and falling, vanishing beneath the surface only to appear again, a gentle pull and tug.
“Iris.” Valkyre’s voice was sharp and almost harsh, the crossbreed’s arm raising, hand out as if to touch him, or to stop him. Iris glanced back over his shoulder at the other, gray eyes hollow. He smiled, gently, and his hand fell away.
…Death.
Iris had once asked for death, had once risen to the softly breathed word like a soundless moth, face tilted back, eyes closed, expression utterly at peace, lips mouthing the words…
“…Iris? What are you…”-
Valkyre cut off abruptly, head snapping up. A rustle broke the thick silence of the air, a shape shifting in the muted, blending colors. Night was falling, and the clouds were skudding away.
Corryn stood at the edge of the grove, awkward on his two feet, one tanned hand gripping the flaking bark of a nearby tree as if in need of support. When he stepped forward, it was in quick and decisive movements, thought Valkyre noticed the slightest unevenness in his gait. A step before them, he stopped, staring down through the cropped and ragged tangle of oily black hair. Corryn cracked a smile, the whites of his teeth sharp against the black shadows and hair framing his face.
“Hello, archangel.”
Rather abruptly, he dropped down into a squat, wrists on his knees, balanced on the balls of his feet. Corryn’s gaze ran from up to down and back up again, settling on Valkyre’s wary face. He spoke through dry lips, words barely above a whisper.
“Tell me, Valkyre. What are you doing?”
The crossbreed blinked back, but held his tongue. …After all, what had he to say?
He wasn’t doing anything. He was sitting here, waiting. Anticipating. Hesitating.
Corryn made a ‘tsk’ing sound, scoffing. He leaned in closer, one hand pressed to the ground, close enough for Valkyre to see the individual hairs on his eyelashes, to count the specks of black scattered around the molten-gold pupils. Corryn blinked, like eclipsing the sun. In the darkness, his eyes glowed with a brightness whose source the crossbreed could not find.
“Let’s put it this way. What are you going to do, archangel?”
Valkyre opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came out. After all, what was he to do?
This entire time, Valkyre had played on the defensive side. He’d sat and he’d waited, he’d fled and he’d hidden himself and Iris, seeking only to escape all those who sought out the boy. He’d played the part of a protective guardian, following wherever had Iris led, stumbling along blindly.
Valkyre had not minded. He had not cared. He would follow Iris to the ends of the earth, to whatever final ending awaited them. He would do it all willingly, and yet…
If Iris wished to die… Valkyre was not sure he would-
“Will you?”
Corryn peered closely, words mirroring the crossbreed’s thoughts as if he were speaking them aloud.
“Would you let him die? Would you go against his will? …Would you kill him?”
Valkyre felt a growl begin low in his throat. He made a move as if to push the other away, and Corryn teetered back on his heels, elbows on his thighs, shoulders hunched. He was still grinning.
“Valkyre.” His words, however, were serious, and his eyes sharp and narrowed.
“You’re not bound to him, you know. You shouldn’t be. If you’re going to do something, if you’re going to save him, doom him, kill him, whatever you want… Just make sure you’re doing it for yourself.”
Corryn smirked, nodding slightly.
“I realized that, Valkyre. I realized that I don’t need him any more. I don’t need anything.”
He paused, rocking forward again on his heels. Corryn’s eyes had softened, somewhat, gaze cast down. This time, when he spoke, his words were almost muffled, nearly inaudible.
“I… I’m not here for you. Or Iris. But… you better not stop him. You better not…”
Corryn looked up, and Valkyre could see it in his eyes. He could see the imploring, the fear. He could see the fragile resolve the other had scrounged up and shaped into a weak, paper-thin frame, as if to block out old feelings and severed ties.
He saw the plea in those pale amber eyes, saw the fingers curl and relax, tense.
Valkyre said nothing, but he lowered his hand, letting his arm fall limply to the side.
Corryn reached over, slowly, hesitantly. His fingernails were black with dirt, chewed and torn. His hand was smeared with soil and dust and riddled with old, faint scars that stood out light against his dark, dark skin.
Corryn pressed his hand lightly to Iris’s forehead, fingers brushing away the long gray hair, thumb running along the edge of scalp. The touch was gentle, soft, and tentative, as he were afraid of breaking skin, bruising flesh. It was an awkward gesture, yet at the same time, it was infinitely delicate, almost affectionate.
Iris’s eyes fluttered, then opened. The boy blinked once, slowly, then smiled.
Valkyre did not move. As if he’d lingered too long, Corryn suddenly snatched his hand back, almost roughly, and stepped backwards, hopping to his feet. He stood again, slightly unsteady, one arm out as if to seek support, forgetting that he was, perhaps, originally meant to be a human and not some beast crawling along the ground.
His eyes were hidden by his hair, and before the crossbreed could catch the other’s gaze, Corryn had turned away, head tilted back, staring somewhere up into the sky.
Valkyre’s eyes followed, and for the first time, he saw how much the world around them had changed as dusk had faded to night.
High up in the sky, shuddering into life, stars burned themselves into the canopy of midnight blue, tiny pinpricks of light scattered over the vast expanse of sky, dense as a field of grass, unmarred by clouds or fog.
Valkyre had seen stars before. He had seen the full moon, high from the rooftops of a city, with thick and sluggish clouds rolling past, a siren wailing below.
But he had never seen a night sky like this. He had never before seen the milky way, a brushstroke of pure white light and emerald greens and dark, soft blues fading to cool violet. He had never realized that the whole sky had remained right where is was, above the smoke and the smog, out of sight, but so closely within reach.
“It’s time, Valkyre.”
It was all Corryn said. Out on the fringes of the clearing, Caerwyn appeared like a shadow, dark on dappled darkness, spear in hand.
Corryn paused, then looked back. The scars stood out on his back, illuminated by starlight, sharp and jagged, rippling along his back. His lips moved, the single word more like a breath slowly exhaled, silent, hardly stirring air that had come alive at night, air reaching up to a sky soaked with stars.
“Go.”

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AN: ...Saying sorry wouldn't cut it, would it?? /. .\
Anyway.... ...I'm sorry. :duck: It took me forever to even try to get anything written. And I've been in a slump. And lazing about.
I still can't quite come up with the whole storyline/ending/knocking about of remaining characters and whatnot. I'm trying. (This is why I don't create so many characters!! They all converge when I don't want them to, or else they're left unfinished~ XC )
Anyway. Anyway anyway. Almost done. I'm not stopping now. No way.
I'm sorry if my writing is crap lately. My enthusiasm for Iris... well, it's not so much enthusiasm. It's just... a general feeling. I've got so much behind me, and when I look back and compare or read over, I can't seem to match the style, and I can't seem to make things sound as well... I dunno, I've lost some of my focus somewhere along the line. There are so many things I want to fix.
Oh yes, and this is my final decision. Despite the cheesiness of that whole star shebang (sorry) I've decided to do the conclusion at night. Yupyup. :> Take that.
...I hope it'll work out okay. It took me a while to decide on this. (Not like you can tell, anyway... ...no one notices these things in a written story... :huddle in corner: )
Anyway. I'M BACK ON IRIS and I SWEAR I'll finish it. A chapter a week, at the very least. I SWEAR.
Thank you everybody!!!

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