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Azriel was facing the setting sun, unaware that it didn't want to go without seeing him crack a small smile, and the best it could do was kiss the monster's gorgeous features golden.
His hazel eyes rested closed, oceanic flecks no more than mere, powerless waves.
There was so much peace canvassed onto his face, a scary contrast to the hurricane in his head.
There were blurry voices singing a haunting memory in his thoughts, and despite the muddy vocals, their words remained deafeningly transparent.
His scars lay gaping, they ran so much deeper than just his freshly bleeding knuckles.
He looked terribly at terms with giving up.
He didn't know what battle he was fighting, he didn't know what to pick up the sword for, he didn't know what to defend.
He meant what he had said to Warren about not knowing who he was.
What would I be losing?
Nyx didn't make even a pinch worth of sound as she walked over to the boy, stopping only when she was right next to him.
She stayed quiet even when she noticed the box of cigarettes sprawled open by her feet, one of the death sticks missing.
"I'm not smoking," Azriel broke the silence. "If that's what you're wondering,"
He opened his eyes, tilting his lolled head to the side.
Where he'd expected for his little sister to be, stood the nyctophile.
She was frowning at him. Her jaw was clenched and her eyes were glassy, fists clenched numbingly at her sides.
His heart let out a shaky sigh.
His gaze stayed locked on her for countless moments, wanting to confirm if she was really there or not.
When the girl moved to take a seat by his side, letting her legs dangle off the edge of the roof, mirroring his posture, he knew that his sight wasn't betraying him.
"What are you doing here?" Azriel asked, voice low and husky.
When she didn't say anything, he licked his flushed lips and tried again.
"Seriously, Nyx, what are you here for?"
Without missing a beat, Nyx announced, "You."
She was looking right at him now.
He was amazed at how her amber irises were holding the same fire as the fading sun, beautiful and fierce like the tangy sky above them.
He wanted to be there and nowhere else, underneath the setting sun, feeling the dying embers of the day with her, wanting to give her all of his stars that were to come.
But, reality kicked in.
Caging his feelings, the raven monster let out a dry chuckle and broke away from her.
"You've got too many fucks to give, Nyx. Why not save them for someone who'll return just as much?"
Azriel's tone lacked any sort of venom that he'd intended to layer his words with, it made them hollow.
Crossing her legs, Nyx turned to fully face Azriel. "What is it? What's so bad that's holding you back from giving yourself a chance at something you deserve?"
"I'm scared."
Nyx froze in her spot the moment Azriel spoke.
She had expected a lot, she had expected different - anything but this. His reply shot a bullet of fear through her own chest.
"I'm terrified of possibilities," the boy confessed, letting his eyes gloss over with bundled up tears, a broken smile on his quivering lips.
"There's so much that could go wrong. I'm afraid of all that'll happen. I'm ashamed of what I won't be able to give. I'm frightened of losing something I haven't even found yet. I'm terrorised by what might happen all over again, of falling back into a hole I haven't fully crawled out of yet,"
Nyx shuffled closer to him.
"Hey," she called out, daring to bring her palm up to his cheek delicately. "I've got you. Whatever it is that you're scared of, I've got you - just as much as you've got me, remember?"
Azriel shifted his face to lean into the girl's cold touch till his lips were brushing her skin.
He wanted her, all of her, even the night that bowed down to her.
He wanted to give her all of him too, all of him, even the thunder that roared in sync with his soul.
For this, though, he knew he'd have to vomit everything that he was forcing down his throat. He'd have to let go off of the burns from the past, no matter how badly they still stung.
"Who did this to you?" Nyx asked softly, caressing the corner of the raven head's lips with her thumb.
Closing his eyes, Azriel tried to focus on the girl in front of him, his haven, instead of the girl sketched onto the canvas of his thoughts, his hell.
Her voice drummed in his ears, her laughter echoed in his mind, his skin blazed with memory of her touch, nothing about her was making him feel good.
Afraid that he'd collapse, the boy grabbed onto the hand holding him, wanting to feel the nyctophile's presence more than anything at the moment.
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DROWN
boy in space
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"Maya," Azriel breathed out.
There was silence for quite a few heartbeats, only the evening song could be heard.
Not wanting for Azriel to do something that was affecting him negatively, Nyx was just about to part her lips to tell him to stop, but he beat her to it.
"She was what her name meant - intoxicating. Dangerous like a drug. . .addicting like a bad habit," the raven monster began telling a tale that had made him what he was.
"She took parts of me that I didn't even know I had, made me do things I didn't think I was capable of. I was ready to do it all for her, too foolishly high on her lure to comprehend how bad it was, everything that I was doing. I tore down my world into-into. . . pieces, putting these very crumbs in her hands for her to destroy whatever was left of them,"
Nyx's heart was beginning to hurt.
There was an irritating sting crawling up her throat as she heard the boy talk.
It was evident in every bit of him how much of a mark Maya had left.
The tattered image of a wicked Maya Salazar flickered onto the surface of Azriel's thoughts.
Platinum hair colourless like snow, onyx eyes soulless as a starless night, crimson lips of a deadly dagger, claws for fingertips glazed with venom. She was gorgeously brutal, a villainous beauty with a malfunctioned mind and crooked heart.
"Damian and I used to be friends back in eleventh grade before I switched schools," Azriel carried on, opening his eyes and staring at the cigarette in his free hand.
"He was nothing like Warren. It's unimaginable to even compare them - it's like the obvious contrast between all things rotten and everything radiant. Damian was - is - of the worst sort possible. He wasn't as bad back when I met him, though. I was always fucking oblivious and ignorant to the trouble he'd get himself into all the damn time,"
Licking his lips, he continued, "I met Maya because of him."
That was when it hit Nyx.
That day at the rink, every time Damian mentioned a 'her' he was referring to Maya.
"Maya and Damian, they were both trouble - the kind that I was told to stay away from. But, there was something about her that had me wrapped around her fingers. It started out fine, no feelings, nothing. After a few weeks, something changed. There was a very noticeable shift in the way she acted around me, the way she treated me. It was suspiciously funny how after not caring enough to give two fucks about me, I became the only boy that mattered to her. She was doing and saying all the right things, pretending as if there was nobody else she could lay her eyes on,"
Nyx's thumb moved from his lips to his cheek, caressing it just as delicately - a form of support she hoped could assure that she was still here.
"It's hard not to fall for someone who gets it all right," Azriel said. "And so, I fell. I fell for her pretence. I fell for becoming her puppet. I let her dance me around the way she wanted. I allowed her to toy with me in accordance of her desires."
It took a lot of courage for him to admit, " I. . .I ended up giving her all of me,"
The shameful regret in his hazel eyes glowed like diamonds, the wretched pain glittering in the blue flecks of his irises resembled broken crystals.
It was when he locked gazes with the girl, sight blurry with salt, that she understood what he really meant - and it hurt.
It hurt so badly, not because of how they'd shared an intimate bond, no.
Nyx ached because he hadn't been valued enough, she ached because he had to give his first, his innocence, his honesty to somebody who was cruel enough to have tampered with it and left him devastated.
"Inspite of all this," the boy explained further. "I had no clue where we stood. We had become so much more than friends, but we were so far from a label."
"Even though it happened only once, I couldn't help feeling like we were constantly only fucking around without having anywhere to go. I needed to hear it from her, I needed to know what we were. I wasn't going to force her into anything, absolutely not. But after three months full of what had become so. . .stupidly important to me, I had to talk to her." he carried on.
With a painful gulp, Azriel revealed more of his troubled past, "I was way too deep in, Nyx, and I didn't want to sink any deeper without knowing that she was in the same place as me - which back then, for obvious reasons, I thought she was. It wasn't a game to me and I could only hope that it wasn't a mere pass time to her either."
It appeared as if he had gone back in time as he recollected, "It was during lunch hour one day, just after the weekend where she had completely ignored my attempts at reaching out to her, that I began looking for her. I was worried that something was wrong with her when, now that I look back, I should've been concerned as to why the girl who had turned my world upside down was avoiding me. The last spot I went to was the back of the school where the dumpsters were, I knew she'd be there since. . .that was where everyone in need of an urgent smoke went,"
Nodding to let him know that she was listening, Nyx gave him a moment, knowing that the hardest part of this story lay waiting to be told.
Wanting to get it out of his head, to puke it out of his system, Azriel closed his eyes again and went on.
"I found her. She was sitting right there with Damian, impossibly close to him. It wouldn't have been so much of a bother if. . .if it wasn't for the cigarette they were sharing. Maya had no way to explain herself, and I don't even remember if she had said anything. All I could focus on was her smudged lipstick that had also been staining the corners of Damian's lips,"
Nyx heard the first crack of her heart echo painfully loud in her ringing ears.
"He looked so fucking victorious when he took one last drag from the cigarette, held it up to me with a grin so taunting, and dropped it before crushing it under his foot. Just the way everything between me and Maya felt that moment - gone to dust. I remember walking out of there, there was-there was this heavy feeling somewhere in my chest. . .it had somehow gotten harder to breathe,"
It felt like the weight of his story was weighing him down still, but he knew he had to hold on, and so he did.
"Damian had followed me all the way to the parking lot. He'd said to me - she never wanted someone of your kind, someone who would make her change her habits."
His heart felt strangled.
"Maya hadn't bothered to chase after me, she had no reason to, she didn't want to because she never cared. It was all a lie. I drove back home that day with nothing but Damian's words screaming in my head to a point where it felt like my skull was bleeding. The next day, they were in the same place. Like the fucking lovesick idiot I was last year, I grabbed the burning cigarette right out of Damian's hand and. . .I-I took a fucking drag. It wasn't a surprise when I coughed it right out. I didn't know what irritated me more, my lungs or the fact that Damian was right - I could never be what Maya wanted. I couldn't handle the same habits as her,"
Azriel stopped for a couple heartbeats, clenching the death stick in his hand, eyes still shut.
"That was the day I found out that. . .it - it fucking hurt, Nyx, it still does,"
His grip on her hand tightened. It was like he was begging her to make it stop, to erase the fire and its burns from of his memory. He brought her palm down to his chest and held it there.
Then, he opened his salty eyes and, with a beaten smile, let a tear fall. "They had a bet."
"No," Nyx's whisper broke.
No.
This was wrong. What they did to him was cruel.
Maya Salazar had found Azriel Logan's sincerity, his goodness funny. He was too right, too straight, too innocent to do any wrong. And that wasn't her type.
Maya let out a cold laugh, "How are you even friends with this guy? He's so. . .not like us,"
Damian took a large gulp from the bottle in his hand, "His sort's entertaining in a way, it feels fucking amazing to spoil him."
The platinum headed chimera snatched the alcohol from his hands and asked, "How has he kept you of all people around still?"
The green-golden eyed serpent lit his second cigarette and shrugged, "He can be a little too naive for his own good."
Biting her lower lip, Maya declared, "Bet I can keep him around longer."
Ridiculed, Damian passed the burning cigarette to her and let out a wicked laugh, clapping his trembling hands together, "I'd like to see you try. You're more of a goner than I am, Maya. There's no way you can handle him and his fucking good boy ways."
"Then maybe I'll turn the tables around, make him keep me around," Her onyx eyes twinkled with haunting malice. "Besides, like you said, it'll feel fucking amazing to spoil him - even though I don't plan on sticking around that long,"
Damian rose his pierced brow, "Didn't know you were into virgins."
The chimera's smirk was vile when she replied, "Oh, he'll be anything but that when I'm done having my fun."
The brunette boy, after taking a long drag and breathing the remnants of it out, leaned in closer to the girl. "I don't like the sound of that."
The pair's breaths then mingled together, reeking of whatever they were smoking and drinking, tasting disgustingly satisfying to them both.
When they pulled away, Damian's smirk matched hers.
"But, I'd like to see how this ends. So, I bet that you won't last a whole week with him," he announced.
She licked the corner of her lips and spiced it up, "I'll do you one better - let me have my time and I'll have tricked not just his trust, but his innocence too."
That night, the serpent and the chimera shook hands on breaking a boy down till only shattered bits of him were left .
They didn't know it then, but they'd made him the raven monster.
The nyctphile's heart had never before mourned in so much sadness.
It seemed incomprehensible to her how Azriel had gathered the courage to not only listen to every word of the deal that Damian had gladly taken the pleasure of telling him that day - bringing his world down in a single moment - but to also sit here and relive every second of it while sharing it with her.
"I didn't know what I'd done wrong. I did everything, I gave everything. If only I'd known that all she wanted was to drag me down into whatever hole she'd dug for herself, only to leave me behind and never look back." Azriel murmured in ruined wonder.
"Two days after that, still unsettled and lost, I came back home with a box of cigarettes. I don't know how I lit it, I don't even remember breathing it in. All I remember is my father being there, having seen everything. When he sat me down in my room, I-I just, I couldn't focus on anything except the disappointment in his eyes. He was disappointed because of me, and I've never felt like more of a failure. He didn't yell at me, he didn't lash out, he just waited for me to explain myself. So, I did. I told him everything, all about Damian and Maya - not once putting them at fault because I knew that I was to blame. Neither of them told me to fall, they didn't hold a cigarette up to my lips - I should've known what was good for me and what wasn't,"
Nyx waited to tell him that it wasn't his fault upon sensing that he had more to say.
"I told my mom and Roar about it too, not leaving any bit out. I couldn't keep it from them. All I'd asked for was forgiveness. I promised them I'd never do something like that again, that I'd never fall prey to anyone's obviously bad intentions, that the next time I choose my person I'd do it right. They supported me when I wanted to change school a month in the middle of eleventh grade, and the least I could do was give them the bit of comfort of how I was helping myself and coping by taking counselling,"
Azriel then fell silent.
Not a single tear after the first one slipped.
His voice didn't waver anymore. It was plain, bland almost.
Biting her lower lip, wanting to make him understand that he was wrong for thinking that he was at fault for the whole ordeal, Nyx pulled his hand, the one that she was holding, into her lap before dropping it for a moment to take off her wrist gloves.
She brought their palms together, turning their kissing hands around so that their bruised knuckles were facing each other.
"Releasing anger is important," Nyx said. "It's like living, you can't go on without it. But, harming yourself isn't the only option,"
Azriel's gaze swept over the girl's healing bruises, hating that she had been hurt once.
Sliding his fingers between hers, he pulled her closer to him.
"Why'd you do this?" His tone was deep as thunder, yet somehow soft like a hush.
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FALLIBLE CREATURES
scott quinn
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Deciding that it was time to confess her bottled up troubles as well, Nyx let out a breath through her mouth.
"I have my moments too. They're hardly ever bad enough to drive me to do something. . .well, something like this. But, now that I think about it, it's mostly because I've been wandering around in denial. You must've probably already gathered from earlier that my family isn't exactly the steadiest,"
With his eyes situated on the girl, Azriel momentarily held her hand tighter to confirm his presence and attention, ready to hold her up if she collapsed.
"My - my parents aren't together anymore. They're still legally married, but that's where it ends," she began.
"Last year, just before high school started, my father was offered a promotion in another state. He had worked hard for it all his life. My mother didn't want to stop him from getting what he deserved, from what he'd earned. They both knew that this would cost them a lot of time together as a family. They were, however, ready to do everything possible to make sure he got the best of both worlds. They set some ground rules - you know, he'd fly back home every weekend, calls everyday and whatever else it'd take,"
Taking a deep breath, the girl continued, "It was going fine in the beginning. It was almost as if nothing had changed expect for the fact that my father was miles away and I got to see him only two days a week."
"A little less than six months later, though, things started to get harder. The regular visits lessened till they finally stopped, the calls were shorter till there were absolutely none. A distance so endless and unimaginable had lapsed between us. My father grew apart from my mother, he grew apart from me. My mother longed for him, she tried to reach out to him everyday, until just like him, she stopped too. It took a her a few months to realise and accept that the man she loved had slipped from her hands, that he wasn't in the same place as her anymore. He took so much of her away, her zest, her soul, her heart - he left her with nothing except the fear and guilt of not having been enough. Just like that, I lost my mother to a living corpse,"
Azriel listened carefully, not interrupting her in any way.
He did what she'd done - held her hand as she dived back into her scariest memory lane.
"It took some time for me to accept that nothing could get my parents back anymore. They had let each other go. It. . .it was surprising how two people so in love could handle not being together so easily - either they're incomprehensibly strong or their love wasn't," She wavered.
With a strangled chuckle, she confessed, "Me? I still try. I did everything to save my relationship with my father. How can you let a parent walk away? More importantly, how can a parent walk away from their child?"
Her eyes had become impossibly glossy, trembling with tears, lips crying shakily.
As the first drop of salt fell, so did Nyx's ability to hold herself together.
"I'm always t-the first one to c-call him, always the last to h-hang up," she stuttered, crushing her bottom lip with her teeth to stop her voice from breaking.
"I've stayed up countless night waiting for him to return my calls, all of which he'd ended abruptly. He never did come back, not in any way. My mother. . .she-she did the same, chose work over family. She cut herself off from me. It's like living with the shell of the person she used to be. We were so disconnected from each other, I still can't entirely accept that the exact same space, large and boundless, has fallen between us. I'd lost both the people I could call home. I j-just couldn't deal with how empty and cold our house felt. . .so I joined the diner. I wanted to spend as much time possible away from it, maybe I was running just like my parents were, or I was finding a place to be - I don't know. I've spent every evening for the last seven months watching friends and families walk in, served so many smiles, heard so much laughter, craved so much for all that I once had. I didn't care about having something better, I just wanted things back to the way they were before,"
The nyctophile then looked up at Azriel with blurry eyes and cracked a broken smile.
"It's not all bad, though. I've got Jane, Lou and Isaiah - they're not blood, but they're family. They'll be there for me in a heartbeat. So, I guess what makes me feel so alone is that there's a difference as big as day and night between listening and understanding - they'll listen, but they won't always understand,"
Azriel's heart ached for his girl.
He wanted her to have the world.
How sad was it that he didn't think he could give it to her?
"I can't lose home again, Azriel. I can't lose you."
The raven monster's demon strangled his words before they could even leave his quivering lips.
Instead, it made him say, "There's a thin line between pressure and will. If you're willing to do something, you drop and use pressure as an excuse for doing it,"
Nyx swallowed and watched the battling boy as he elaborated.
"Everyone thought that the pressure of wanting to save Maya had made me do all those things. But only I know how wrong they were. When I was holding that cigarette in my hand, I wanted to save not just her, but the twisted sort of happiness I'd found in her. I was selfish then, it was my feelings that mattered. I made a mistake, I did it for myself just as much I did for her, and I was always told otherwise,"
The girl gave a small smile, "You've got it right, but you're so wrong at the same time, Azriel."
"Don't try to defend me, Nyx. For once, see me for who I am," Azriel begged.
She nodded, "I am doing only that. You said it yourself - you wanted to save your happiness, and Maya had become just that. You weren't tempted to smoke, Azriel, you were willing to give up your world and all that it stood for, it was for somebody who'd made you believe - there's a difference. The only thing that it tells me about you is how you'll do anything for the one you love. Of course, it's not always the right choice, but it's a brave one - and you were tough enough to take it."
The boy let a dry laugh escape, "My resurfacing doesn't change the truth of my drowning."
Nyx shook her head a little and disagreed, "I don't believe you drowned. Because if you had, you wouldn't have been sitting here with an unlit cigarette in your hand. It would've been suffocating the life out of you."
"That's still not enough to excuse how I let everyone down," Azriel argued.
Waiting for a few moments, letting the dying evening speak to him through the song of the birds, forming a halo above their heads, gracing the darkening sky, the girl licked her lips.
"You were right. It takes strength, an inconceivable amount of strength, to blame yourself for something that somebody else did to you. It takes strength to not once say a hard word about the one who left you bleeding. It takes strength to live in fear of having let everybody down. It takes strength to accept your wrongs and be prepared to leave for good."
"It wasn't your fault," Nyx stated. "It was hers, it was his, not yours."
"You were perfect, everything that they weren't. People like them, who are in a bad place and not mighty enough to fight their out of it, feed off on tearing down all others who aren't as purposeless as they are. They couldn't do better than to completely break the person you were, someone they couldn't even dream of being. What they did to you was twisted, it was cruel. Why satisfy them by losing yourself that easily without even making use of the power you possess to fight back?"
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HEART BEAT HERE
dashboard confessional
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Moving her hands to hold the raven monster's face gently, caressing his cold skin with her thumbs, the nyctophile revealed, "Nightmares end, Azriel, but only if you wake up."
"You have to crawl out of this delusion where you're the bad person because really, you are not the villain of your story, or anyone else's for that matter. Fight back, Azriel, defy your demon - it's stronger only because you let it be. Without your fear, it's nothing but a pile of memories that you can let go. Learn from your scars, let them heal, but don't let them cripple you," she told him, bold and firm.
Azriel felt a feather grazing his skin, kissing Nyx's words onto it ever so gently, melting away his old bruises, tickling the pain gone.
This time, it was Nyx who pulled him close to her, barely a finger's inch spared between the pair.
"The day you'll let us down is the day you decide to walk away. We're all here - your family, Warren, me. We'll always be right here, that's a promise. You're worth a lifetime, live it - with all of us and for yourself. Just let yourself breathe, allow your feelings to dethrone your fears,"
Then, the girl dropped a small smile, small but honest.
Bringing his forehead down to touch hers, she closed her blazing eyes and admitted.
"My world's small, too, Azriel, and you've become all of it."
Then, it dropped. The knife dropped.
The cigarette that Azriel had been clutching in his other hand fell from his grip, his fingers untangling from the hold of death, and rolled away from him till it reached the end of the roof.
Nyx felt a wave of happiness wash over her when he brought his foot down to stomp on it, leaving nothing but ashes.
It was in that moment that she knew - the demon in him had turned into dust, too.
Azriel looked down and locked gazes with his person, eyes swirling with a dying storm, "This isn't your fall to take, Nyx."
Nyx smiled, "Too late, I've already fallen."
Similar to the time in the hallway earlier today, Azriel's palm fisted around Nyx's top to nullify any distance between them, holding on to her.
Except this time, it wasn't to let her go.
He leaned closer to her, descending his neck down so that he could trap their lips in a soft, tender lock, both of them finding it hard to not smile through the kiss.
Around them, the breeze picked, dancing in pure joy. The sun smiled, dedicating the last of its dying rays to the pair, bathing them golden. The sky cried out in glee, preparing to fade into the colours of the coming night so as to celebrate.
It was all things happy, and it was only for the nyctophile and the raven monster.
Nothing in the world could matter more than these souls finally finding warmth in each other, a feeling of belonging to someone that they'd always needed but never had.
It wasn't sparks running through either of their veins, no frenzy was happening in their bellies, no.
Instead, they were engulfed in a state of absolute peace, a form of calm yearned for.
Their minds felt clear, their shoulders were empty of weight of any kind, and their senses weren't fogged anymore.
It was bliss.
As Azriel moved his free hand up to Nyx's cheek, grazing her skin with the tip of his thumb, his bleeding knuckles weren't hurting anymore.
He never wanted to let her go.
The girl was holding the back of his neck in her delicate palms, her fingers lost in the ends of his raven hair, and her other arm was draped around his shoulder to keep him from slipping, afraid that he'd disappear.
They'd found each other.
Their bodies were begging for the other's touch, not having felt anything like it in their lives, wanting to stay tied for as long as they had.
When the pair pulled away, their elemental eyes clashed, twinkling with all things vibrant when they realised that it wasn't just a dream.
It was after a couple heartbeats of undisturbed silence and gazing at each other that they heard a squeal and a call of relief sound from below.
Nyx and Azriel looked down where Warren and Aurora were standing, beaming up at them with glistening eyes.
Warren's smile had never been wider, his dimple was ever so radiant. He had always been golden, but today he shone brighter - and it was all for and because of his best friend.
Aurora had never been more relieved, the halcyon soared with so much happiness upon seeing that her brother was still here, better than ever.
"You asshole!" Warren called out, wiping the corner of his twinkling eyes. "You scared us all,"
For the first time in many, many moons, Azriel Logan broke out into the widest of smiles, allowing the world to see how beautifully euphoric he could be, a small dimple on the corner of his lips.
His fears were no longer dominating him. He had conquered his demons.
The raven monster and the golden boy held each other's gazes, conveying gratefulness and appreciation.
They were brothers bound by so much more than blood.
"You're willing to take the fall?" Nyx asked softly, turning her head to look at Azriel.
Azriel did the same, resting his forehead against hers and smiling willingly, "Too late. I've already fallen."
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