Fanfic: Welcome to the Black Parade (Gen; Barnaby, Kotetsu)
Title: Welcome to the Black Parade
Fandom: TIGER & BUNNY
Characters: Barnaby, (Kotetsu); Gen
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst. Written in a very disjointed style.
Word Count: 570
Summary: Popularity is a double-edged sword.
Note: This is rather weird and experimental, but it just came out that way orz
(Welcome To) The Black Parade is the title of a song by My Chemical Romance.
1. Popularity, as dreamt by many, is a world of spotlight and glittering brightness.
2. There are those who thrive in it and there are those who sink, swallowed by its preying fireflies; either has its own ghosts.
3. Barnaby Brooks Jr. floats in between, a child of half-light and slinking shadows. Popularity makes him both smile and cringe as the bloodied snake coils at his feet, an endless circle.
4. With popularity comes fans-legions of them. A hero is nothing but a pinnacle of fame.
5. There are three kinds of fans.
6. The first is the harmless kind. They love him for what he is and what he does. They clap and fawn over his deeds. They cheer when he emerges from a collapsing tower with an old woman safe in his arms. They are harmless.
7. Until they trample each other in their frenzied excitement for a glimpse of his smile, or an indifferent touch of his hand.
8. The second is the damsel kind. These are the ones who will throw themselves from the roof of a skyscraper in the hope that he will come and save them.
9. Sometimes he can save them.
10. Sometimes he cannot.
11. Sometimes he has to choose; sometimes two of them jump at the same time, each convinced that he will choose her and not the other. There will be one dead, or two, but never zero.
12. Sternbild is a city of glittering brightness, but it has a hell lot of suicides. The statistic persists, an unseen sarcoma in the light-flooded world-like there will always be criminals no matter how many heroes or Lunatics appear. Sternbild is a city built on illogicality.
13. And then there is the third. This kind will turn heaven itself into hell for one purpose: him.
14. It begins with a love letter. Then, a bridge falls down in his name, a plane crashes, a liner sinks. A challenge is issued with each, but sometimes he is one second too slow, one minute too late.
15. He corners her at the top of Sternbild’s Lady Liberty, bathed in golden light. “Barnaby…” Her voice is sweet and his name is ensconced atop a quiet sigh of contentment, wreathed in pleasure. At their feet, the city is an inferno.
A few months ago, Barnaby would have asked why; now, he stares mutely at her sallow, complacent face, and there is so much hatred-anger-despair howling inside him that he does not move when she casts herself into the sea of fire. His eyes are blind to every movement and his ears are deaf to every sound.
16. Except his partner’s voice-and Kotetsu is yelling at him to move.
17. He does.
18. When he catches her, one hand grasping at the statue’s marble dress, she laughs and kisses his angry lips. It is all he can do to still his fist, under the bend of her knees, and not relinquish her body into the waiting purgatory underneath.
19. At court, she justifies the loss of one million lives in the name of love and a slice of recognition. He has stormed out of the room before her eyes seek his, before her laugh reaches his ears-but even then he knows, without doubt, that there are ghosts one cannot escape from.
And these are his.
20. Fact: popularity is a double-edged sword, and Barnaby Brooks Jr. is only beginning to discover how much.
One of them will bleed out first-he or Ouroboros.
End
Note: Thank you for reading! Comments are LOVE :3
Fandom: TIGER & BUNNY
Characters: Barnaby, (Kotetsu); Gen
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst. Written in a very disjointed style.
Word Count: 570
Summary: Popularity is a double-edged sword.
Note: This is rather weird and experimental, but it just came out that way orz
(Welcome To) The Black Parade is the title of a song by My Chemical Romance.
1. Popularity, as dreamt by many, is a world of spotlight and glittering brightness.
2. There are those who thrive in it and there are those who sink, swallowed by its preying fireflies; either has its own ghosts.
3. Barnaby Brooks Jr. floats in between, a child of half-light and slinking shadows. Popularity makes him both smile and cringe as the bloodied snake coils at his feet, an endless circle.
4. With popularity comes fans-legions of them. A hero is nothing but a pinnacle of fame.
5. There are three kinds of fans.
6. The first is the harmless kind. They love him for what he is and what he does. They clap and fawn over his deeds. They cheer when he emerges from a collapsing tower with an old woman safe in his arms. They are harmless.
7. Until they trample each other in their frenzied excitement for a glimpse of his smile, or an indifferent touch of his hand.
8. The second is the damsel kind. These are the ones who will throw themselves from the roof of a skyscraper in the hope that he will come and save them.
9. Sometimes he can save them.
10. Sometimes he cannot.
11. Sometimes he has to choose; sometimes two of them jump at the same time, each convinced that he will choose her and not the other. There will be one dead, or two, but never zero.
12. Sternbild is a city of glittering brightness, but it has a hell lot of suicides. The statistic persists, an unseen sarcoma in the light-flooded world-like there will always be criminals no matter how many heroes or Lunatics appear. Sternbild is a city built on illogicality.
13. And then there is the third. This kind will turn heaven itself into hell for one purpose: him.
14. It begins with a love letter. Then, a bridge falls down in his name, a plane crashes, a liner sinks. A challenge is issued with each, but sometimes he is one second too slow, one minute too late.
15. He corners her at the top of Sternbild’s Lady Liberty, bathed in golden light. “Barnaby…” Her voice is sweet and his name is ensconced atop a quiet sigh of contentment, wreathed in pleasure. At their feet, the city is an inferno.
A few months ago, Barnaby would have asked why; now, he stares mutely at her sallow, complacent face, and there is so much hatred-anger-despair howling inside him that he does not move when she casts herself into the sea of fire. His eyes are blind to every movement and his ears are deaf to every sound.
16. Except his partner’s voice-and Kotetsu is yelling at him to move.
17. He does.
18. When he catches her, one hand grasping at the statue’s marble dress, she laughs and kisses his angry lips. It is all he can do to still his fist, under the bend of her knees, and not relinquish her body into the waiting purgatory underneath.
19. At court, she justifies the loss of one million lives in the name of love and a slice of recognition. He has stormed out of the room before her eyes seek his, before her laugh reaches his ears-but even then he knows, without doubt, that there are ghosts one cannot escape from.
And these are his.
20. Fact: popularity is a double-edged sword, and Barnaby Brooks Jr. is only beginning to discover how much.
One of them will bleed out first-he or Ouroboros.
End
Note: Thank you for reading! Comments are LOVE :3