Title: Mind the Gap

Rating: R for some violence, boi on boi love and scenes of a sexual nature

Summary: Every time an angel cries, a demon gets its wings. And every time an angel falls a demon learns to fly.

“Need more friends with wings,

All the angels I know put concrete in my veins…”

            All angels share stories when they’re young, and every angel learns about the Dark Ones. Beautiful angels with pale skin and dark hair and dark eyes. Every generation, the Lavinter line spits out a Dark One, and he or she would rule Elysia until the next Dark One came. Some believed that the Dark Ones came from a long stretch of ancestry, way back to the legend of Jateiah, the demon who fell in love with an angel. No one believes it anymore. Except me. I believe it. I’m a Dark One. I should know. 

            The Dark Ones ruled Elysia, the high mount of Olympus, and the light ones live in Evanescent as guardians of Earth. But the Dark Ones have been few and far between of late, some even dying at birth.

I snuck down from Elysia to Evanescent all the time, to sneak peeks through crystal mirrors and jade pools at humans and demons in other worlds. I wished to be with them all the time, like there were strings founded there and wrapped around me, tugging me down. I didn’t even feel the need to resist.

The elder Dark Ones tried to train me as best they could to be a worthy leader, but I wouldn’t speak to them. I didn’t speak to anyone. They called me Deaf One or ‘Iátheiá’ (one of no words). I could speak; I talked to myself sometimes, but not them. They taught me languages and when asked if I understood, I simply nodded my head. They taught me our history and about our perpetual feud with the demons. I wrote to them once and asked them about Jateiah. They told me he never existed. I didn’t believe them.

It was night when I snuck down to Evanescent again. I was always noticed, but not one disputed my audacity. I liked looking through the jade fountain best, so I sat on the pearly, cobblestone floor and leant over the edge, twirling my pale fingers in the liquid until they shifted and parted for me. I looked through them into different worlds, sifting through until I found what, or rather who, I was looking for. I would have reached out to touch him if it wouldn’t have disrupted the image. His hair was dark, like mine, but so much longer and silkier. His parted bangs hung over eyes I’d watched with more intensity than ever. I knew them if I closed my eyes, could see them if I sought the memories. The right one: light violet, almost lavender but bright and tinted blue like periwinkle. The left: gold, amber, brown, I couldn’t tell. Ears, like a kitten or a fox were always folded to his hair, blending perfectly. He was a demon. We weren’t meant to be. I loved him anyway. I thought, no- I knew he was the one holding the ropes that tugged me from the pedestal of Olympus.

I was in the keep with my teacher, who taught me about Falling. He told me about angels cutting holes in the ground and jumping through and never being seen again. He told me about angels done wrong who were simply swallowed by the ground. I wanted to know more, so I spoke, for the first time.

“Cut through the ground?”

My teacher’s reaction was great, an ‘o’ forming on his lips like a hopeful symbol. I think he was encouraged by my speech. It was too bad my chosen subject of interest had very little information to tell of, or I might have asked more.

“Yes, yes, they cut through the ground with a sword. The sword’s been broken, the fragments burned so that none can ever attempt it again. And those that fall otherwise deserve their fate.”

Unfortunately, there was nothing else to be said on the subject and I returned to my silence. My teachers still pretended that my momentary ability to speak was encouraging, but I drifted in all other lessons, never really there, somewhere else with the beautiful demon boy.

One night, I awoke in my chamber, kept in my own castle like a prisoner to solitude with only servants for company. I had planned it ever since I’d found out, only waiting until the full moon to execute it. My footsteps were like drums at a funeral march and I could almost hear the bagpipes wailing their eerie notes of agony while I walked. I found a servant and told her to follow me. She didn’t question me, they never did. I walked down the cold steps, bare feet still beating like drums, hers just an eerie clip clip like water dripping from a tap. No, like blood. I lead her outside, down the marble streets to my teacher’s keep and I ascended each step with dread in my stomach like disease. I reached my teacher’s chamber in moments and told the servant girl to stand in the doorway and watch while I moved to the bedside. I could hear the servant girl shaking while I stood there, her breath like shivering puffs of air in winter. I think I was scaring her. She should have been scared. I scared myself that night, as I ripped my mentor apart with my bare hands and made her watch. I made sure she saw, so no one could make excuses for me. I’d killed him. I even had the blood on my hands to prove it. I can still hear the symphony of screams as the servant girl’s cries awoke every bloody angel in Elysia. I didn’t even feel the hands on my arms that pulled me back from the massacre and I don’t remember the way my mentor looked after I’d torn him apart but I do remember her face. Crying, sobbing into her hands while other servants wretched at the mere sight of crimson stains on my hands. I felt sympathy for them, I felt sympathy for the angel I’d killed, I felt for everyone.

I don’t remember anything except the girl’s face and the jade fountain they led me to, the same fountain where I’d watched the beautiful demon boy so many times before. There were loud, violent tremors and the ground beneath my feet suddenly became a black void to swallow me. I fell down the monster’s gullet and my memory is painfully blank except the buffet of air breaking my wings and the ache of my entire body as I hit the ground.

I’d Fallen.

“This was never my world,

You took the angel away,

I killed myself to make

Everybody pay…”

Author’s Note: There’s the Prologue for you. As you may know if you’ve read other stories by me, I tend to like putting songs at the end of chapters. This is no different, except that the songs are not by me this time. They will have something to do with the chapters, unlike some of those in Klutz. This particular tidbit is from Coma Black by Marilyn Manson. I like some of his songs, mostly for the lyrics, the rest tends to be depressing. The beginning song lyric will start at every chapter and is from a song called ‘Nothing to Lose’ by Billy Talent.