Wires, there was wires everywhere. Wires and beeping machines. Day and night, the infernal things beeped consistently. The mattress beneath me was as thin as the straw bed I had slept on as a child, and the sheets were so thin they barely kept out the chill. The meals they fed me were bland and tasteless, nothing more than a mush, of what I can only imagine used to be actual food.
I couldn't sleep; every time I closed my eyes I saw her. Her liquid silver eyes, her flowing gold hair; saw the evil swirling the silver in ever changing patterns. An angel, Mathias had called her, Mans guardian angel, his polar opposite.
Mathias was wrong.
Aaliyah may be an angel, but she was evil, pure and simple. The Egyptians had known her as the angel of death, and the Norse called her Valkyrie. Others claimed she was no angel, nor winged beast, but the queen on the underworld, Persephone. She thrived on chaos and darkness, death and destruction. She was the angel of darkness. She was death.
"Miss Flynn?" A gentle hand was placed on my arm, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I hadn't heard anyone enter the room, I hadn't been able to detect anyone at all since I woke up.
The voice had come from a young nurse. She looked at little taken aback at my reaction, but then what else would she have expected? Wasn't it in my records somewhere that I was easily frightened?
"Miss Flynn, I've come to inform you that as of this evening you'll be moved on the psychiatric ward. Someone will be by shortly to remove all you wires and tubes." I grabbed her wrist as she turned to leave, holding so tightly that she would have a bruise later.
"Please."
Mathias' POV
"Please." Her voice was so quiet and timid, quaking with fear, like a mouse pleading with the lion for its life. "Please don't let them get me." I closed my eyes and hung my head at her words. She was terrified, and yet she still wouldn't tell me what she had been through in the month she'd been asleep, trapped inside her own mind. All she could say was that Aaliyah had broken her, but Aaliyah had been dead almost a millennium. I had watched, as her wings had been cleaved from her back, as my better half turned to nothing more than stardust on the ground.
When I'd seen her face, she wasn't the Nina I knew; her face was ashen and drawn, her once sparkling blue eyes no longer shone, but were dull orbs of grey, void of life and joy. Her once pink and pouty lips were chapped and almost colourless. Her yellow hair hung around her face and over her shoulders, matted and tangled, lifeless and straw-like.
My fearless little Huntress, was haunted with terrors and ghosts. Nina Flynn was as good as gone.
"Sir?" A gentle hand on my shoulder and a delicate female voice woke me from my sleep. I had managed to fall asleep in the plastic chair I'd been sat on for days. I sat up a little straighter, rolled the knots out of my shoulders.
"Sorry to wake you, but I was wondering if you were Miss Flynn's family?" I dragged a hand over my face, as the young looking nurse stood before me smiled sweetly.
"Her cousin, the only family she has left." My response was feeble, but what else could I say? 'No she's immortal and I'm an angel left to protect her'? Because that would be so believable.
"Then, we discharge her into you capable hands." The nurse smiled sweetly, her grey eyes twinkling as she took in the flawless ness that faced her.
I must have seen a thousand women fall in love with what I was, but I never thought of any of them the way I had thought of my precious Aaliyah. I sighed a laugh at her naivety and waited for them to bring Nina to me.
She turned and walked away, putting an extra swing to her hips. Her raven black hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, revealing a scar at the nape of her neck. Something about where it rested reminded me of a scar I had on my own back; an upside down 'v' between my shoulder blades, where my wings had once been.
I thought then how her face has almost instantly reminded me of my Aaliyah, my sweet angel warrior. Though her eyes no longer swirled like molten silver, and her skin no longer shone, she was...
"Aaliyah." I hadn't meant to speak, but even as her name left my lips, the nurse turned and smiled, not so innocently, and then began walking back towards me. For a second I could have sworn I saw the outline of the wings that had once adorned her back, saw in my minds eye the iridescent pearly feathers that had once shone behind her.
"You called, my love."
"But, how? You're... you're dead."
"No, my love, simply thrown from one existence into another. And for that, you charge will pay. She has cursed us to suffer for a millennia, now it's out turn to make her suffer."
Aaliyah was alive. My thoughts could barely process the information, and yet there she was, stood in front of me, alive. And yet somehow changed.
The Aaliyah I had loved was gentle and loving, she cared for any life, no matter how damaged the soul was. This Aaliyah was vengeful and hateful, wishing death, happy to cause it if necessary.
"No." She stopped and just looked at me, her top lip twitching in rage. "I will not let you hurt her. She has a suffered just as much as you and I, if not more. She has lost her family, her soulmate," I paused a moment. Perhaps I had no right to continue my words but did so nonetheless, "she has lost her soul to a monster beneath her skin. A monster residing in her own DNA. A monster she can't run from but wants rid of. She has suffered, so if you don't fix her, I will find a way to send you to your permanent rest. Despite the love I have always borne you." Her nostrils flared at the threat, her top lip still twitching. "Make your choice, my love." Tears burned the back of my eyes but I refused to let them fall, refused to let her see my pain.
I hadn't realised I had stood up until I turned to walk away, forgetting that I was waiting on Nina, a girl who was both a hero and a villain.
The hospital around me faded to nothing, nothing but whiteness. Whiteness... and Aaliyah.
"You care for the girl?" Here her eyes swirled and her wings were real. There was a distinct disgust in her tone, sharp and piercing.
"And that has what to do with you? You have a choice to make, so make it."
"You do not make the threats here! Only I will say when she has suffered enough!" I had never seen Aaliyah angry in all my years, and it did not become her. Her face became a crimson red and knuckles, snow white.
"I did not threaten you, Aaliyah, I made you a promise. Release her from whatever curse or hex you've put on her, or I will put you in the ground, eternally."
