Warnings: Suicide, Slash...kinda... like if you squint and are high. Self-harm. Sadness.
Disclaimer: Someone once told me i kinda look like Trey Parker... or was that Matt stone... Anyway it was probably because i had this really twitchy blond with me.. you know the one. Dead sexy and has a coffee mug with him, sometimes he might be accused of having a conspiricy theory or two.
Summery: Pip isn't as happy as he seems. An angel may be his only happiness. He'd do anything Azreal say's.
Notation for da Reader (that happens to be you): This is Pip's one-shot for my newly named One-shot series called Final Moments. Pip is super hard to write cause he's super happy and shit... and british which i am not. So seriously, i like my writing to be good. I want you to tell me how to fix this. Don't get me wrong, mindless praise gets me off too, but you can bitch me out if you feel like it.
His name was Azreal.
He was gorgeous in a way no mortal ever had been, including the plastic botoxed American models. He was golden skinned which was sometimes puzzling because I never saw him in the daylight. Years ago when he first appeared – the fifth grade I believe – I asked him if he went to an island in heaven that was tropical and warm and sunny all the time, his skin was simply the color that brought to mind sandy beaches and ocean views.
It took me a few more years to realize the irony of that question and his laughter as response.
He was built tall and muscular, fine bones overlain with the corded muscle. His face was sharply carved, his tight golden skin pulled taunt over cheekbones knife edge thin. A roman nose, like something from an ancient coin. Broad forehead with delicate topaz brows arched across it.
His lips were pale and thin but always graced with a benign smile. His hair the color of melted Carmel was in a perpetual braid flowing down his back, loose wisps escaping tor frame his face.
His eyes were the second most remarkable thing about him. Quite intimidating as well.
He had a condition called Heterochromia, two separate eye colors. His right eye was a light icy blue, pale as frost on an English morning with faint flecks of deeper navy. His left eye was deep brown, fresh turned earth framing a pitch black abyss of pupil.
The two eye colors always threw me off on first glance.
When I looked into the blue eye I caught the drift of innocence and purity. He was a clean and untouched as a unicorn foal. Bright and cheery as if everything good in the world resided there. Inspiring my trust, just let him lead and everything would be peachy.
But deep in the brown eye's depths I found myself lost. Whereas the blue eye could make me feel as though I'd been tossed a life preserver I never knew I needed, the brown one made me feel like I was tumbling down a chasm I had leapt off of in full confidence of my safety only to find myself forever falling. That eye was the reason I distrusted him in the beginning.
The number one most remarkable thing about him were his wings.
When he had first came to me I was curled in a ball sobbing, not as infrequent occurrence as one might suspect. I'd ran deep into the woods behind Starks Pond and fallen to the forest floor at the base of a large oak. My body was bruised and battered and I felt myself cracking.
The careful composure I prized, my mask made of a cheery face and soft excuse. It was falling apart around me. Sometimes when I felt this way I would think back and try to pin point when my cheer became a mask, when the happiness I was belittled for became a lie, a shield.
One would think it was my parents sending me away to an orphanage. I could understand that, even if it still hurt as much as a ragged slice cut into my heart. When you don't want a child, you give it way. It's common.
Another good guess might be my hatful sister and her abusive husbands treatment of me. Not so. I could rationalize that as well. She resented me. And he… He drank more than was healthy.
The girl I loved turning me down? No. Estelle hurt me, but my scarred heart hadn't truly expected more.
Being sent away to America with more neglectful caretakers had perhaps started the process. It was so hard to remain truly optimistic when so much pressure surrounded me. But even then I had survived relatively hopeful of the future.
Then Damien had come.
Being the son of Satan and the Anti-Christ one might think he would have taunted and tormented me. He was nothing like that. He was as lost and lonely as I was. The single child upon whom the apocalypse and end of humanity depended had few friends or even confidants. He was somewhat abrasive and self-centered.
He wanted friends and all he got were enemies. So for his brief time in South Park we banded together – the misfit foreigners. We had gotten close in a relatively short time, on my part at least. I'd told him my greatest fears and all the pain I suffered. He had sympathized and reciprocated to a point, describing Hell and his father and all the confusion he had.
And then he had proceeded to throw our friendship and me away for a cheap party trick. He had set fire to me to simply befriend Eric Cartman my lead tormentor. The very next day he was gone, but I found myself in the hospital for weeks afterward and suffered some nerve damage and slight scaring on my chest – right above my heart.
That's when I was so broken I had to build a wall of isolation around myself. Build this mask that broke so easily. I learned I had no one and to never trust any other human again, I had been burnt and I would not stick my hand back into the fire.
Most of the time I could handle the teasing, the names, the punches. Most of the time I smiled. Most of the time a simple "Right-o!" was all that I could say. Most of the time my shield absorbed the hits and rolled right by.
I'd spit out two teeth once and kindly thanked the boy who's fist had knocked them loose for "Getting those out of the way". I was the sort of push over who smiled through it all. Trying to look at the bright side of a fist.
Most of the time.
Right at that moment all the hate built up around me broke something inside me. I was clawing at the dirt, leaves and loam flying everywhere. My pageboy hat tumbled to the ground and my hair was flying wild. I scraped my fingers raw on the earth, blood and dirt beaded in the creases of my hands.
I screamed myself raw then. Tears of shame and hate pouring down my face.
What had I done to them?
Why me?
Just… Why?
It could have been an hour, it could have been minutes, but finally I calmed down enough to feel the sting of my bleeding fingers and the ache of my throat. I lay panting on my side trying to gather my breath, eyes shut with silent tears still leaking.
A rustle sounded and I tensed ready for a blow. It would figure they had followed me and found my moment of weakness to exploit.
And then I felt the softest of touches I'd ever felt. Like butterfly kisses and baby's breath. It was delicate and soft. I found myself leaning into the warmth it provided.
Safe.
Then my reflexes kicked in and I opened my eyes. A face full of grey feathers greeted me. They were the same color and texture of ordinary pigeon feathers, grey marked with tips of white and flecks of black throughout. They seemed to glow more than any bird though.
A chuckle caused my eyes to snap to the gorgeous face of Azreal. In moments I found myself shivering on his lap, those large wings wrapped around the two of us protectively. A little world where no one could touch me, us.
The smell of spring wreathing us calming me and making me feel safe in a way Damien never could. Better than the hand of friendship I craved, better than the mother's hugs I'd never receive. Perfect and I found myself content.
I'd been very polite but after he had me in his lap I began to feel uncomfortable. Perhaps this was an American custom I didn't know?
I allowed the contact to continue for a while before pulling away. I avoided his miss-matched eyes and stared up at the stars, the rest of the night was spent lying on the soft grass and leaves staring quietly into the heavens.
After that not one night passed without a visit from him. He came to me weather I was in my room, outside or even on the odd occasion in the hospital.
It took two years and quite a lot of practice avoiding directly looking into his brown eye for me to trust him, but I did finally.
I'd gathered my courage and asked him what I had wondered all along.
Why did you find me that day?
Who are you?
What are you?
Why do you only come at night?
Why do you have wings?
He'd smiled a wide smile, equally scary and inviting showing all his glowing white teeth. "I've waited for you to ask."
He explained he was an angel, my angel. He had wings because he was of the heavenly choir and an important angel in god's army. He was a guardian. He was lead to me that day through my cries of misery, they tugged at his heart. He'd found me and been unable to leave someone so shattered alone. He could only come to me at night because the moonlight gave him substance.
I've never known if I believe him or not. Angels'? Really?
I'd seen the church house paintings and heard of them. They were tiny cherubic babies or androgynous characters. Nothing like this hulking Adonis of my night times.
Then again it was South Park. We'd had the anti-Christ and zombies, why wouldn't we get something from the opposite spectrum.
Regardless of weather I believed him or not he was my savior.
In the darkest part of night I would whisper all my hatred and rage of the residents of South Park to him. I could yell and scream, he would only smile. I could sob and rage, he would hold me and murmur promises.
I could take off the mask and break away the wall around my heart. For six years he never wavered. I could trust him, if no one else. He was my lone dream, keeping me as sane as I could ever be in this lonely place I'd been given.
We never crossed certain lines though, telling enough but never giving more. It was a safe communication. Sometimes I would refuse to describe a certain act of abuse and he would not push, just give me the comfort he could. Whenever I asked a question to prying, where he went in the day, why god did this to me and the like, he would simply give me a look and I would drop it.
One of the most generous gifts he had given me was control.
As the years went on my rage got worse, my mask becoming more brittle. By the time I had hit eighth grade I'd become afraid I would lose control of my actions, already a smile was becoming difficult. I had become more removed from life and less likely to talk, even to a teacher let alone a tormentor.
Others began to notice.
I panicked and one night blurted the entire problem to Azreal. The next night he came to me with the perfect solution.
He taught me to control my rage. When it built up so bad I wanted to hit and kick and beat I would take a razor and slice my thigh. At first I'd been weary, cut myself? I'd heard the stories of those who cut for fun, for silly reasons. And then I heard of those who simply had given up on life. Which category was i.
How pathetic am i.
But then he'd taken the rusty straight razor he'd brought for the purpose and held my short's clad leg in his strong hands. The razor had ripped my skin, pulling the edges apart like clay until the red came flooding out. The two of us stared at the liquid pooling and staining the edge of my white shorts, going into the creases of his hand where they still clung to my flesh.
I'd been ready to freak out on him, demand what the hell he thought he was proving. When I realized he had already proved it.
I was mellowed.
The blood and pain were not new to me. I was beaten and abused often. But the control. The ability to say when and how deep. That's what drew me in.
This was what I miss out on in the course of normal life. I couldn't get this feeling anywhere else. It gave me the strength to smile through the broken bones and beatings. I was even better than before.
I quickly became addicted to the feel and found myself cutting my legs until I had patches of ripped and stretched scar tissue. Azreal had made me stop for a while. To make me more in control of my control he said.
He explained I couldn't cut so often, I might become anemic. If others knew what I did they wouldn't understand. I would have to stop. They would ruin the last thing I could truly control.
So I became more careful and meticulous. My cutting became more rare, only when I needed it. I still relished each slice and waited for the next opportunity, mostly doing it during the night when Azreal was with me.
He was my friend and savior.
And just maybe my angel.
So when he told me it was time to leave the earth I was almost elated. No one in this wretched town likes me.
No one cares.
Besides that, my Azreal was elsewhere. I could be with him forever, no more daylight partings.
Heaven or Hell could be no worse. My situation was as pathetic as it would ever be. I was forced to cut myself for any form of freedom and if punishing me gave these humans joy, I was eager to take that away from them. Let some other child suffer this life, none had ever came to my rescue. None but my Azreal.
I wasn't worried about where I'd go.
Azreal said heaven had the gate open for me. And well… if he weren't an Angel for real, that must mean he was a demon. And if he were a demon and I killed myself I would go to hell, and still I'd be with him for always.
Just to not be alone I was willing to take the risk.
So I found the gun where he promised it would be. Slick steel underneath the tree we met. My memories flow back sweet and hazy.
The barrel is pressing towards my temple and I let loose a soft chuckle.
My savior is waiting.
Just before my finger closes over the trigger I spare a thought for the empty medicine bottles under the loose floorboard in my bedroom. If they checked they'd know I never once took a single one.
Schizophrenia was so rare; it was hardly diagnosed correctly anyway.
With that final thought I pulled the trigger, the sound of the shot rang out for a moment.
The faint word "Azreal" fell from my lips.
My angel of mercy.
The demon that loved me.
My last forever in this final awakening.
StarGuide2011