Bitter It Beat At Waking [FIN]

[Dark]

Aiolos had never been more tempted to tell Minh 'no;' she had brought him back from the brink, given him his name, loved him, and while he did the best he could to repay her for that kindness there were some lines even he wouldn't cross. Or so he thought, and running after Mnem's children should have defiantly fallen into that category. Which still didn't explain why he was trudging through the rain, sopping wet, in order to retrieve a runaway brat.

Vishne, the little sod, had taken off about a week prior--the reasoning behind it having something to do about no one loving him, cutting his wrists, and poetry. (Aiolos was having a hard time seeing the correlation.) And unfortunately, somehow Aiolos had found himself netted with the task of dragging the brat home.

Which made no sense, considering the extremes Mnem herself went to rid herself of her spawn. But maybe it had something to do with control issues. Who knew.

He glared resentfully up at washed-out neon, announcing cheerfully to anyone that cared that he'd reached his destination: The Endless Abyss--Poetry From the Soul

He'd never felt more like slitting his wrists in his life.

[Bee]

Vishne quited like living in the back rooms of the little club, on the whole. He became fast friends with quite a few gender-confused and sexually ambiguous poets and actors, and he felt like he had finally found a group of people who understood the complex workings of his deep and wounded soul.

But he was kind of annoyed that no one was missing him. A week, he had been gone, and he had never seen anyone he knew in the crowd. No one hid in a dimly lit corner, looking longingly up at him, wishing that he would return home, because they missed him ever-so-much and had finally realized how much they needed him. He hadn't even seen Venka. His own twin.

Of course, he poured his pain out in his poetry. He stood still on the stage, looking solemnly down at the dark room of coffee-sipping youths, and spoke with voice choked by unshed tears.

"I wander lonely as a lame lamb
Through this empty wasteland, crooked,
Shedding tears of acid and blood.
You know, all that harmful shit.
But no one trails behind;
No one cares.
I wander lonely."

The crowd applauded. Vishne bowed slightly. Then he saw him.

Aiolos.

Someone had finally come to take him home!

[Dark]

Aiolos had never been one for the deep-machinations of the soul or any sort of introspection, for that matter, but he knew bad poetry when he heard it--and Vishne was atrociously bad. In fact, it might be doing the world a favor if the brat didn't ever make it home--maybe Aiolos would leave him in a ditch somewhere, instead. Mnem hadn't really specified what state she wanted her wayward son in when Aiolos supposedly dragged him back, and Minh never even thought to set those kinds of stipulations.

He eyed the canine across the dim, smoky room, and would have rolled his eyes--if he did that sort of thing, and he didn't--at the carefully schooled expression of indifference that shuttered Vishne's face when the brat saw him--the stupid brat was ecstatic to see him. Probably was waving elegantly inside his head about feelings; Aiolos shrugged his shoulder in disgust.

He stayed where he was; let the brat come to him.

[Bee]

Vishne shuffled his way off the stage and accepted the pats on the back from his fellow performers with a slow nod. He was happy to have Spoken to them in such a deep and emotional way.

Though he was a bit perplexed as to why Aiolos had not yet come up to him. He had thought that, after he slipped off stage, the crazy Ace would have slowly walked over, put a hand on his shoulder, and looked at him with pleading eyes. Come home, kid, he should have said. Nevermind that Aiolos would likely jam a fork in his own eye before utter a sentence like that; his joy at having found Vishne should have made him a bit sentimental, damn it.

After twenty-minutes of heart-wrenching waiting, Vishne made his way to the back of the club, where Aiolos had been. He did not approach the man; just took a seat at a very nearby table and sipped nonchalantly at an abandoned drink of--cranberry juice. Well, it looked like wine in the dark.

He glanced at Aiolos out of the corner of his eye.

Aaaany minute now.

[Dark]

The kid was living it dangerously, that was for certain. Aiolos arched a brow--a habit he'd picked up after spending too much time around Minh--and considered the best way to get the brat outside without causing much of a scene. In the end, he decided to hell with subtle and took the offensive. This involved a lot of scowling and fingering the edge of his knife.

He slammed the blade into the table, sharp steal squeaking through wood, and let it quiver there while he gave the brat his ultimatum, "You have five seconds to get your ass outside, or I'm going to eviscerate you. You will die choking on your own blood; there won't be anything poetic about it. Do we understand one another?"

Aiolos really hoped they didn't, because the kid was really asking for a good evisceration what with making Aiolos walk all the way over here. So bothersome.

[Bee]

Vishne took a very long, ragged breath and stared at the knife. It was such a sharp, sharp knife. It caught the faint reflection of cranberry juice and looked quite red. Vishne imagined it dripping with blood, his very own sweet life-giving blood.

He very much did not want to die. Near-death was an incredible and emotional experience that made for very deep and thoughtful poetry that touched the hearts of millions of sad-eyed youths and would make him a deep and emotional icon, but actual death only served as fodder for someone else's poetry, which was no good to him at all. Plus he would be dead, which would be unfortunate in a number of ways.

He turned slowly and squeaked a couple of times at Aiolos--he squeaked at a lot of people; a couple of fellow poets had asked if he had any mouse blood in him somewhere--before actually getting any words out. "Did you miss me?"

[Dark]

Very few things in this life shocked Aiolos; Vishne's tenacious grip on the ridiculious idea that someone might have actually missed him just happened to be one of those rare instances. It might have been funny if it hadn't been so very pathetic.

"...you realize my answer has no weight on my threat to eviserate you, right?" And if nothing said 'no, I didn't miss you; did your mother drop you on your head as a small child or something?' it was that. Of course. considering this was Vishne he was dealing with... the little fairy would probably take his omission as some sort of unspoken sentamentality, as if 'eviseration' was some sort of code word for 'I'm going to hug you. kid.'

He was beginning to understand why Mnem drank.

"So, let me say again: unless you want me to strangle you with your own entrails, you will move."

[Bee]

Vishne got to his feet so fast he knocked the chair over. A bipedal feline carrying orange juice mixed with some ice and cranberry to make it look like a tequila sunrise tripped over it and went flying into a table. Vishne noticed that people had been staring before, and even more were staring now. He sniffed back tears. Oh god, he was going to be a laughingstock, getting pulled out of his sacred realm of poetry by a madman. They would never allow him back.

"Hey," said one of the poets, who called himself Raven, "what are you doing with Vishne, man? He looks terrified."

"You some kinda creep?" said his girlfriend, suspiciously.

Vishne wiped away his tears. They thought...Aiolos was some kind of pedophile. He did not quite know what to do with this information. He sniffed again.

"He's--he's my--my babysitter, kind of...." he said, trying to clear up the matter. His small audience nodded incredulously, as though "babysitter" translated directly to "kiddie-fondler."

"You want us to call the police, soul-friend?" asked Raven.

[Dark]

Aiolos starred at them all incredulously, eyebrow twitching as he surveyed the little mob that had come to "save" Vishne. They thought he was fucking that? Aiolos had little to no personal morals to speak of and normally the idea of pedophilia wouldn't cause him to bat a lash, but... Vishne? He glanced the kid over, coming to the conclusion that he supposed he was relatively attractive. Just...not Aiolos's type.

Of course, trying to explain he was asexual could really go either way with this crowd...and he really just didn't want to bother.

So he had two options. He could slaughter the entire presumptuous bunch and have Vishne...tragically die in the crossfire...or he could just drag the brat home and let the kid's moron-friends think he was a pedophile.

Since he'd promised Minh to stay out of the headlines, he grabbed Vishne by the arm and dragged him toward the door.

[Bee]

Vishne choked back a few more tears as he was pulled away from his beloved group; this was all ending so very poorly. Aiolos was going to be so angry with him now that everyone here thought he was pedophile, and gossip spread quickly with this crowd; who knew who would find out next?

The group save him sympathetic waves and sad smiles as he was dragged off.

"What a brave soul," said Raven's girlfriend, clutching her purse close to her chest. "All this time, I never knew. He hides his deep inner pain so well."

"We'll call the fuzz later," said a middle-aged human man with a soul patch. "That abomination won't get away with what he's doing that poor boy."

A young woman nervously took the stage; attention was diverted from Vishne, and about three lines into the girl's poem about her deep turmoil that comes from loving and hating your angsty boyfriend at the same time, they forgot about him entirely.

Out in the chill night air, Vishne hiccoughed, cried a little more, and then stopped completely.

"I hate my life," he moaned.