[ where your hands don't heal ]
ficathon: write your darlings
fandom: prosa; prose: alphaverse
characters: alpha (& axis)
prompt von nameonehero
it's like an avalanche
i feel myself go under
'cause the weight of it's like hands around my neck
“This is a little out of your comfort zone.”
He glares at you, murder in his brown eyes, like you just insulted his family and everything dear to him, but you don't even know if he has a family or if he cares about anything at all. “I don't have a comfort zone”, his voice is sharp and clear, not like months ago when he barely spoke or looked at anyone. You liked it better that way, when he wasn't looking at you with this longing behind the ripped mask he pretends to wear. Sometimes you catch him, because he's not good enough to conceal it yet - even if you are without doubt that he will become good enough, maybe better than you, better than the leader, if you do it wrong - looking, no, staring at you from across the room, sitting with the other recruits, like you are the night sky and he's the dark star and he's daring you to swallow him whole.
“I can do everything.” You cross your arms in front of your chest and just stare at him for a couple of seconds, until the anger in his eyes flares. “I'll show you.” “You don't need to show me anything. I'm not the one you need to impress.”
“I don't need to impress anyone”, an edge even sharper than before has crept into his voice, one that gets you on alert, “I'm not anyone's puppet or plaything and nobody here owns my existence.”
You want to reach out to him and calm him, before somebody starts noticing and you start to draw unwanted attention, but only the slight movement makes him flinch, face moulding into an expression of pure horror, teeth bared like a cornered animal.
“Don't ever try to touch me”, his voice between clenched teeth is raw and harsh and when you try to meet his eyes, he looks away, like he doesn't want you to see what's behind the anger and the stubbornness.
“I'll show you”, he repeats, and when he whirls around and leaves the room, you stare at the bruises his nails have left in the soft palm of his hands and a part of you wishes he would never come back, because it would be so much less trouble.
He hates himself, but that's not a thought he likes and certainly not one he says aloud. It's a kind of thought that sneaks into his mind when it's dark outside, but he lives in a world where it's always dark outside, which is both ironic and, well, very ironic. It's a thought that's always with him, these days, the only company he really keeps, even if he's hesitant to, even if he doesn't like the visits and the soft fingers of the words stroking across his neck, and he remembers and remembers and remembers and drowns, don't touch me there, no, everything but please don't take me back don't make me weak spare me spare me spare -
Hate weakens everyone, and this time, he isn't an exception, he's the rule. He knows that hating himself will eventually get him killed, even if the weak moments have grown lesser and lesser during the training, because for the first time in his life, people look at him like he is something to be feared, something to be careful around, not because he might break, but because he might break something, someone. It makes him feel powerful and invincible, the fear, but in the dark moments he remembers who he is, where he came from, he remembers his name and the names of the ones who hurt him, and it drowns him.
What he told Axis is not true - there is no one he needs to impress, and yet there is. He craves it, the feeling of success in his bones, the whispers behind his back when he aces another test, aces another mission, gets another one of the grades that has earned him his nickname, except it's not a nickname anymore, except it's blurring into something else, something much realer than Ju or J had been. Something far more powerful. If it's the name he wants to keep, he wants it to be a name that's feared, and he's on a good way for that. Alpha, Alpha, Alpha, it's like a prayer he repeats within his head over and over again, while he double checks his gear, the switch-blades, all hidden, puts on the casual clothes the guild has provided - not the black he usually wears and prefers, but dark trousers, slightly dirty and worn out, a long sleeved shirt and a metallic-grey pilot jacket, a size too big for him, the sleeves reaching until his knuckles instead of his wrists, and by the time he picks up the package with the goods he's already annoyed by the cloth tapping against his bare knuckles. But he's been through worse, a lot worse.
This is so much more easier.
He has the route memorised - words might not make a lot of sense to his brain, but this comes to him a lot more straightforward. He knows the hotel the drug dealers - or rather this specific one and a handful of others use as their meeting point, he's been there before, silently complaining about how easy it was to enter the hotel through a window on the third floor, crossing a sleeping or maybe dead body on the bed, sneaking along the corridors. He knows the other recruits think he's careless and reckless, and he gave them enough reasons to believe it, because it comes in handy when people underestimate him. He never knows who might get on his wrong side, and he would be one hell of a fool to trust the people around him, raised to become assassins just like him. In the end, they are competitors for the same job, for the praise of the same people.
But most of them are kids and most of them are weak and none of them has been through what he has been through. Some of them might have been forged with fire, but people forged with fire aren't a match for someone destroyed by fire who rose from the ashes only to be forge with blood again and again and again. They are unlucky to be here today. He earned it.
This time, he walks through the front door, into a dirty room, occupied with a single empty table, a woman sitting behind it, shadows under her eyes worse than his, too worn out to be pretty, even if she tried to cover it up with cosmic surgeries - he isn't an expert, but judging from her looks, probably both illegal and bad surgeries. He isn't her to seduce her - if it was his job, he would, but this way, he couldn't care less about this thin, empty-handed and empty-hearted woman with the fate like all the people down here.
She hardly looks at him before she continues to inspect her cracked fingernails - he needs a quick glance to figure she's in too deep with a lot of bad drugs, the synthetic ones, that tear your body apart until you have nothing left except watching it break.
“Get lost, kid.” He stops in his step, and just stands there, until minutes pass and she looks up again. “You're still there.” Her brow furrows. “Told you to get lost, right? Run to your parents 'n don't bother hard working folks.”
A part of him wants to crack into laughter, but he's a professional by now. “I'm not a kid.” Edge as sharp as a blade, he reminds himself, speak loud and clear and tear them apart. He's better at tearing people apart with an actual blade, but this way happens to be useful sometimes too. “I'm here for someone. And I got them the play of the yellow king, like they wanted.”
For a second she stares at him, and the part of him that's still a fifteen year old boy wonders if he did something wrong, messed up the words. The part that calls himself Alpha and is on the way to become the best dual-wielder of their guild has enough confidence to hold his ground. “Whatever, kid.” She shrugs and throws you a key, in a surprisingly fluid movement. He catches it without effort.
“It's room number four, and now get out of my view.” For once he's happy to oblige.
He's a smart kid.
He's smart, so he knows he's walked into a trap the moment the door closes behind him, and he damns himself for following the exact instructions of closing the door behind him. It was an arrogant act, and he knows it, and a tiny part of him is glad he gets to pay for it, because that means he won't make the mistake again. If he survives, and that's the other problem.
The room is as empty as a room can be, an unmade bed in the dim light of the light bulbs outside on the street, a lamp that's been knocked over on the small table next to the bed. The wallpaper is coming of, it's ugly yellow color worn out, showing raw metal behind the shreds. There was supposed to be someone here, and he knows it.
He's a kid in a very cruel, very dark world, so he doesn't realize until too late that there is someone in the room. Except he's above him, and Alpha can hardly dodge the first strike, dropping the fake drugs onto the floor to get his hands free, two of his blades in his hands before the other man can strike again. Something in the way the other man holds himself tells Alpha that he's not fighting a street rat, but someone far more experienced and far more dangerous. There's a knife in his hand, the blade glinting black in the faint light.
“What do you want?”, his voice is still steady while he tries to get a good position for the fight that's about to follow, because he has grown up down here and he knows that diplomacy won't solve anything here. A fight will. The other man - at least he thinks it's a man, shrugs, his voice almost amused. “I don't want anything. The guy who ordered me wants something very specific.”
Alpha sees it coming, but that doesn't save him. He dodges the first strike, the second, but the third makes him stumble, and the other man moves fast enough to make his vision blurry, pinning him against the wall, the knife inches away from his neck.
“I thought you'd put up more of a fight”, he purrs into Alpha's ear, so close their cheeks almost touch. “Shall I tell you what I came for?”, his fingers brush against Alpha's neck and it's enough to make his vision shift and the groan falling out of his mouth into the silence of the room makes the man smile. “An old friend of you wants to see you again.”
His bare hands close around Alpha's neck and for the first time in years, Alpha hears himself screaming.