Disclaimer and Notes: Kid Icarus and its characters belong to Nintendo… as much as I would love a cheerful little angel like Pit to keep me company and cheer my days…

I've had the germ of this idea for a while. I suppose I'm writing it as a way of taking a break from the sad, dark, morbid and weird original stuff I've been working on of late, which is saying something as this isn't the fluffiest of fics.

DESTRUCTIVE

The world around her was ashen.

In the soft glimmer of her light, scales shimmered, loosened from their former moorings. In what little light filtered down through the bloody skies of the Underworld – the place had always been "dark" never "pitch black" - the sheen of them was like the sparkle on fresh snow. Feathers, too, dotted the courtyard of the ancient palace. Plate armor, bent and broken here and there, also lay scattered.

Her army… the centurions… had made one last push. She'd given them her strength, saving the very last of it for the final blow. It wasn't supposed to be this way. The plan was to put her power into assisting her captain, who was more than competent to finish this job. After all, he'd done it before and back then under great weakness – without her being able to help.

The Goddess Palutena picked up the hem of her dress as she stepped around ashes and remains. She winced as she looked at a charred and bloody bone from a centurion's head-wing. She did not have the strength to resurrect her soldiers right now. She was tired and could barely walk without stumbling. Why did she prefer to wear heels again? Things hadn't gone as planned at all, at least in the final fight. Some of her men were statues, having met Medusa's withering gaze. A few were intact, but most were broken, transformed mid-flight and left to crash upon the stone.

She found the single statue she was looking for – a young, handsome boy formed in gray granite. Palutena stroked his cheek. A single tear streamed down one of her own.

Pit was clad in the Three Sacred Treasures. They were as stone as anything else on him now. He was standing tall, his wings stretched and rigid. What was once the Mirror Shield was held up in a gesture of defiance. The bow associated with the Arrows of Light was likewise up and out, ready for the fight.

Palutena saw it happen. Pit had taken a bad hit and was cast down from the sky. He'd hauled himself up immediately, ready to take off and fight again. He was screaming some cocky words at Medusa when her gaze had hit him directly. Apparently, he hadn't blinked or turned his face away, nor had he raised the Mirror shield in time because here he was, stiff, cold and gray.

"Turning your little angel into stone is a nice first step…"

Palutena shook her head and bit her lip. She tasted iron. She ran her fingers along one of Pit's stone wings. The truth was she didn't know how to bring him back from this. She did not know if it was possible. He'd been temporarily turned to stone a few times due to the actions of random enemies. If he'd been a poor mortal, he would have been dead, but was able to take the hits and keep on running due to her protection and his nature as an immortal creature. This turning, however, was done by Medusa, herself – a full and equal goddess to her.

Palutena was weakened to a dire degree. She almost felt like she'd become a mortal (and was left wondering if the muscles of mortals hurt this much all the time). She would need to rest and rebuild her strength before restoring a single centurion (a relatively simple task), but for her last elite angel…

All she could do was to drape her arms around the statue of Pit and weep. "I'm…I'm so sorry, Pit," she whispered, running a hand along the top of his helm.

She couldn't feel his soul and had no sense for where it had gone. Was he trapped within his static form? Was he stuck in an eternal moment of looking up and screaming defiance?

Palutena decided that she would have Pit taken back to Skyworld and made a statue to watch over her garden. Resting and building her strength and taking time to figure out weaknesses in the stone might yield her being able to restore him someday.

Then again, staying too long as a statue may guarantee the loss of his soul. In Medusa's conquest of Skyworld long ago, many angels of Pit's breed were lost, some of them through becoming statuary, unable to have their bodies restored before their souls fled.

Palutena wept in earnest, stroking his once-soft face and once-soft wings repetitively, almost obsessively. The tips of her fingers, brushed over a sharp-edged set of feathers, began to bleed. "Pit!" she cried, "Pit, Pit, Pit! Stay with me… if you can hear me or sense me in any way, stay, please."

She swiped his cheek with her bloody fingers, leaving streaks. His dead, angry eyes continued to gaze skyward. He'd been able to weaken Medusa up to the point at which Palutena could finish her off. The rest of the army, however, had jumped the gun. Against her order (perhaps the first time they'd ever displayed any will of their own), they swept in, all roaring Pit's name, eager to avenge their captain.

The centurions loved Pit. He was a firm and decisive leader for them, but he was also caring. He knew their limitations and understood them, assigning them duties according to their various skills. As they'd been made, they were eager for honor and self-sacrifice. He kept them out of most of the "real fighting," – both out of personal arrogance and out of knowing when they'd just get hurt needlessly. Gods that visited Skyworld on business with Palutena took them merely for grunt-soldiers and regarded them as they might have regarded grazing cattle or an army of automatons. Pit, on the other hand, knew all of their names.

He made the mistake of having a drinking contest with Brutus exactly once. Galen's arrows were nearly as quick as his own. Arturo had found a way to harvest more hearts from enemies, perhaps as a side-effect to his gambling habit with the other soldiers over contests of blade-skills. The old knight usually won when he bet on Pit.

As single-purposed as they were, they were Pit's men and he treated them with respect.

In turn, those men were willing to follow their captain into the depths of the Underworld, itself. They were willing to be turned to stone, stripped of their wings and torn apart, not just for their Goddess Palutena, but for their Captain Pit.

The war was won. Humanity and, indeed, the entire world of the living would be safe. Palutena still thought the sacrifice was too much. She caught a movement out of the corner of her right eye. Wings flailed in the shadows and something limped into view. The light goddess immediately tensed.

"Pittoo… what are you doing here?"

"Step out of the way," the boy said darkly. The way his scarlet eyes shined in the red-sky light was disturbing as he stepped forward – or rather, hopped. Apparently, that kick he'd delivered to Medusa's castle-guardian had hurt him. He carried something huge, sparkling with magic.

Palutena immediately threw her arms out and stood between Dark Pit and the remains of the original Pit.

Dark Pit was carrying an impossibly large hammer. The goddess' heart clenched. Was he planning on destroying Pit to become the only one? The poor black-winged creature thought he was the original and that Pit was the copy. Would a clone want to destroy that which was true in order to mask its own counterfeit nature? If only she wasn't so weak. It did not help that this was her own realm. Light and Darkness weakened one another. She didn't have it in her right now to muster a smiting. Her gesture and stance was such to mask this. She acted like she was ready to blow the dark angel away. She tried to look like she was just toying with him, hearing him out for her own amusement.

And Pittoo stepped closer, raising the hammer.

"Step back, Pittoo!" Palutena demanded. "I will not have you destroy him! He is mine, you hear me? You are nothing but a flawed copy and I will tear apart your very atoms if you take one more step toward Pit!"

"Heh, as if you could," Dark Pit said with a short laugh and a cunning smirk. "If you were able to do that, you would have done it already. My pathetic copy should have chosen an honest goddess, or at least, one that was a better liar."

Palutena called her staff into existence and raised it, ready to fight if she had to.

"You are acting like a cat backed into a corner. Step aside. I am trying to help him."

Palutena's jaw dropped. "Help? You mean help as in putting out of his misery, don't you?"

"No, I mean help. I know how to save him. I don't know why I want to save him, but I do."

"With a giant hammer…"

"Hey," Dark Pit said, shrugging, "I don't know why, but I have this weird feeling that a hammer is what will do the trick to restore him. I have this… vague memory. Pagh! I'm not going to explain it to the likes of you! Just step aside if you want your little lap-dog to live!"

"You are inherently wicked and destructive!"

"Says the lady who turned this entire courtyard into ash and body parts."

Something flitted just above Palutena's head. She took notice of it after it spoke.

"You should let him do it, Goddess."

It was one of the centurion archers – one of the few in the rearguard that hadn't been destroyed in the final charge.

"Have you turned against Pit, too?" she asked, sadly.

"No, my lady," the sky-bound man answered. "I think the clone has some of the captain's memories."

"Huh?" Palutena tried to process this. She also had to remind herself that she wasn't talking to one of the strongarms. The archers actually had a degree of intelligence.

"Pit saved us with magic hammers," the centurion explained, "twenty-five years ago. When we were turned to stone, he'd crack us with a hammer and we were freed."

Palutena bit a fingernail. "That's right, isn't it? I must have forgotten about that. I did not see it first-hand, as I was trapped in the palace…"

"Enough yapping." Dark Pit spoke up. "Step aside. Just trust me, okay?"

Palutena reluctantly stepped out of the way. She balled up her hands, afraid of what she was about to see. Her imagination painted images of crumbled stone and shattered limbs, painted in blood. Dark Pit brought the hammer down atop Pit's helm.

Pit screamed.

Palutena caught the light angel as he finished off the scream he'd started in challenge to Medusa. He collapsed into the arms of his goddess, confused. Chunks of granite and stone-dust sloughed off him. He did not hear Dark Pit's footfalls as he ran off, but he saw the magenta-sparkling from his wings as he disappeared into the sky. The centurion, for his part, went to gather the remaining troops.

"What's going on, Lady Palutena?" Pit asked as he looked over the devastated courtyard from beyond her shoulder and was utterly bewildered at how eagerly she was stroking his back and wings.

"We won," she said simply, parting from him. She grasped his arms, examining them. She ran her fingers under his helm, over his hair and generally squeezed and prodded him all over, like she was trying to make sure he was in one piece.

"Are you alright, Lady Palutena?"

"I'm fine," she laughed the kind of laugh that was an attempt to mask distress and express relief at the same time. "I'm fine now."

"The centurions!"

"I'll be able to restore them later. I am too tired now… after that fight. You were awesome, Pit."

"Aren't I always?" the boy said with a smug smile.

"Let me see you for a moment," Palutena demanded. Pit didn't know why she was licking her thumb and wiping dirt from his cheek, nor would he ever know what that dirt was comprised of. The goddess didn't want him to see blood there. As soon as he learned it had belonged to her, he would panic and the last thing she wanted was a panicky Pit.

"What was up with Pittoo? I thought I saw him here, flying off like a bat outta…well…here."

"Don't worry about it. Let's go home."

"Yeah," Pit agreed, making an uncomfortable face. "I think I've got stone-dust in my underwear!"

Palutena laughed.

They both froze when they heard a voice deeper than darkness speak to them from beyond the Underworld sky. "Now just wait a second…"

END.

Shadsie, 2014