falling slowly

[imugi]

title: untitled.
dedication: flown

series: Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
characters: Aiacos & Sisyphus

rating: g

summary: An epilogue of sorts for Aiacos. Because he didn't get one, boo.
author notes: I meant for this to be... better. And have a little more interaction between the two. But it's actually an idea that I've been wanting to write for a while, so I hope it's acceptable.

You must continue to move forward.

They fell from the sky almost like rain, but slowly— Drifting white feathers, set aglow by a warm cosmo. The sky had become clouded over by lifeless angels, but these feathers could not have been shed from their wings. Even the villagers must have known that— the ones that had come to fear what the world would become, the ones that had come to anticipate a promised salvation, the ones that still held hope in their hearts for tomorrow. It was the latter of them that held out their hands, reaching for the reassurance that those small remnants of a soul offered them.

In another part of the world, a small, brown-haired girl sprinted forward over the rubble of her hometown, catching one of those feathers before it could touch the ground and dissipate into fragments of light. Her face became streaked with tears, and she kept her eyes locked on the sky, as if waiting for the storm to pass.

Aiacos could not be like those people, could not accept a human name.

The rock face he was leaned against had long since become painted in the color of his own blood. It wasn't enough to kill him— The wounds were already healing, a clear sign that his power had not faded with the loss of his title. Kagaho had stripped him bare of his responsibilities but left him with nothing else in the process; it was a huge, cosmic joke. He laughed even when it wasn't at all funny, laughed when the sky started to cry feathers and laughed when the angels started to disperse. It was a scenario that had been repeated so many times in numerous different ways, but he thought that this might have been a first.

“How is it that you can be so nauseating even after you've died?”

He held out a hand, still crusted with blood, and allowed one of those feathers to touch his palm. His world melted into white.

“That is no secret,” the ghost of a shining Saint laughed, eyes a shade bluer than Aiacos remembered— or maybe it was just that he remembered them better as being damaged. Even now, some part of him wanted to tear apart this perfect image being projected in front of him. (Was it perfect? There seemed something missing, a hollowness that he couldn't identify right away.)

“You came to laugh at me?”

“No,” Sisyphus said, holding out a hand, ignoring the way Aiacos frowned at him. “Just to offer an alternative.”

There were no such alternatives. That was what he'd believed— until he'd seen the sky light up in red flames, seen the image of a phoenix stretch its way across the stars and into the sun. He had not laughed then, even when it was all too funny. The sky that bird had vanished into was now completely out of his reach. The sun was bright and warm like that girl's heart, nauseating, like this Saint's cosmo.

And here Aiacos was now, covered in dirt and blood. He slapped that hand away.

“Keep it.” He smiled up at Sisyphus dryly. “And then leave me in peace.”

What useless kind of understanding was it that he had gained from this man, from Violate's tears? Sisyphus crouched down in front of him until they were eye to eye. An apparition, and yet Aiacos could feel the unmistakable warmth of another person's presence. It made his chest tight for reasons he couldn't explain, and his lips pulled back in discomfort.

To die in solitude,

“Your eyes are much clearer now than before.”

A shade bluer,

He wanted to tell the man to stop speaking as if he knew anything, but in the end could only settle him with a hard look. Aiacos felt that he could no longer predict himself, but it was impossible for this man to have more insight into his own feelings than he did himself. Perhaps that those feelings had been allowed to exist at all had been his most fatal mistake. He had lost his kingdom. Here, with his wings torn from his back, what was it that he was supposed to do?

“That is why you will stand,” Sisyphus continued patiently. Move forward, like the message in those feathers.

Even if the road ahead is the same road that you've always walked until now.

He really could not accept an alternative.

Forcing his body to move, he got to his feet again with some effort, one hand against the rock for support. Sisyphus watched him quietly throughout, hopefully having tired of nagging him. When Aiacos was finally able to glance up again, his vision had already started to clear. The sky was blue and untainted, and he felt the feather melt into his palm. He flexed his fingers to rid them of the tingling it left behind, and when he glanced back, that Saint was already gone.

“... Next time,” he began, choosing a direction and starting forward unsteadily, “I am going to tear that disgusting heart from your chest myself.”

There was another laugh on the wind, “I look forward to that.”