Wings

28: I'm Peeking Through Cracks In The Old Tiffany Glass

WPOV

Track: Bubble Wrap, Precious Pepala

A/N: I highly recommend listening to this song. Also, I hope you're prepared for the most furious and vengeful version of Will Solace that I've ever written in my life :) Me personally? I think Will deserves for once in his life to just fucking rage.

Without further ado...

When night falls, I pray to Nico, and then I pray to Bianca to bring him back, and then I pray to every other star in the sky, hoping that maybe one of them will help me, that anyone can help me, why won't anyone help me? Can't they see Nico doesn't belong up there, or I don't belong down here? We should be together, always next to each other just as the lungs are next to the heart or as muscle attaches to bone. Not across the universe.

Praying doesn't work. I've felt abandoned by God before, when holed up in my room hoping that I could be someone other than I am or when I found myself alone in the woods with seemingly no one in the world who could watch over me. But now I do not feel abandoned by God, I feel hated by God. If man is made in God's image, then I am all of the parts of God that He hates about himself; I am his scorn and his fury and his self-righteous rage.

And goddamnit, I'm going to fucking find God and make Him pay.

I find myself stumbling back to the village when morning hits. I didn't sleep all last night; praying to every star in the sky takes time, and before night fell I had spent considerable time trying to beg the tiny remnants of stardust scattered on the ground to turn back into my love. I pleaded with those tiny glowing specks, offering my life and offering the whole kingdom and offering everything that is and isn't mine to trade away. Then when that didn't work, I resorted to threats—telling the starstuff that I will turn away from God and toward hatred for the rest of my life, that I will never stop resisting the stars, that I will snuff out every star in the sky until Nico di Angelo is returned to my arms.

But that didn't work either, so then I screamed and screamed and screamed, and when I lost the energy to scream, I sat next to the dead remnants of the first campfire Nico helped me build, and I remembered that the first time I met him, I called him a monster, and I hated myself. I've never hated myself more than I did staring at the charred remains of our first meeting. Ironic—the fire burned when we first met, and now it's fucking dead.

And Nico di Angelo is gone with it.

I can't be alone right now.

So that's why the next morning, I find myself stumbling to the village. I can't be alone. I don't care who's around me so long as it's not no one.

I go to Mr. Chase's house.

The door is ajar.

I push it open, heart thundering, and find no one is here. That's not right. People should be here. Why would they all be gone? The King is gone, the army is gone; the group should have returned here aftering being split up.

My head spins. I can't be alone.

I go back out to the village and hurry along the dirt path until I get to the marketplace, where vendors are just beginning to set up their stands for the day. I approach the first one I find—a woman selling rice cakes—and ask, "Where is Dr. Chase?"

The woman leans in conspiratorially and whispers, "I heard he committed treason, along with a few of the others. The King locked them up last night and posted a notice—something about the Monster." Then she pauses, frowning at me. "Wait. Weren't you the apprentice who..."