Cloud buries his head further into his pillow, trying his hardest to go back to sleep after waking up for the third time with sweat trickling down his back, knowing that there is no returning now that he is awake.
But who would want to return to their nightmares when they are constantly being confronted with the memories of facing fires, some they even had a hand in starting themselves?
Now his nights usually follow the same pattern, seeing himself standing in front of the burning church of Babylon, with an empty gasoline canister swinging in his hand, feeling the heat of the flames up close.
After that it usually devolves into flashing images of Mortelix and, because of the previous night's events, he hears the screams of the damned trapped inside the blazing building. Locked in place. Helplessly watching from the side-lines. Questioning if his gratitude for surviving such a thing makes him a bad person.
Cloud lazily stretches each of his limbs, his feet kicking out of his sheets, the soreness of his muscles blurring into a single, numbing, ache that ebbs and flows with varying intensity. He may be awake but his eyes still feel heavy with sleep and rubbing them only results in his vision worsening.
He eventually crawls out of bed, expecting the night to be further along but only being met with disappointment once he discovers it is still dark out.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Cloud huffs, creeping past the Hellhound laying outside his door and consciously choosing to avoid waking the entire house as he goes to get a glass of water.
Only, when he makes it downstairs, he finds the low powered lamps in the living room still on; finding his mother cuddling an empty glass of wine with the bottle sitting on a coaster on the coffee table, surrounded by stacks of abandoned files and her laptop that seems to have reached the end of its battery-life some time ago.
Cloud retrieves the empty glass from her clutches, throwing her favourite comforter over her to keep her warm before turning all the lights off around the room. He makes sure to wash the wine glass in the kitchen sink but takes the half-empty bottle with him as he heads back upstairs.
He sits on his roof watching nothing but the forest and the sky as he drinks from the bottle with his headphones on his head, humming along to a quiet indie song.
Someone else might have noticed how cold it is but he is warmed by the memories of the fire on the day when his revenge was finally complete, only saddened by the thought that he barely made a dent in their string of operations.
He thinks about going back in eventually but right now he needs to clear his mind.
After everything, his head is too full of smoke.
However, his moment of solitude is eventually shattered by Helel’s sudden appearance as he suddenly emerges from the woods, once again without shoes or a shirt but strangely wearing a cowboy hat around his neck that covers his shoulder blades.
Cloud carefully removes his cushioned headphones off his head, tracking his movements with an apathetic gaze. “Where have you been?”
It takes a moment for Helel to recognise where his voice is coming from but eventually his eyes lock onto the roof. “Busy.”
“Busy doing what?”
Instead of answering his question, Cloud watches Helel's feet heat up like glass inside a furnace, burning white around his ankles before gradually blending into his signature blue near the sole of his foot.
Although impressed by the display of his power, Cloud continues to mask his true feelings, even once Helel leaps into the air and uses the combustion to propel himself far enough to land next to him on the roof.
“Why does it matter?”
Cloud clears his throat, wondering if he should have just shut his mouth once Helel swipes the bottle from him before proceeding to chug down the rest of it. “It doesn’t. I don’t know why I asked.”
Helel takes Cloud by the chin and tilts his head so that he can take a closer look at his seven new stitches, a personal record in Cloud’s book, smashing the previous record of four. “So are you going to tell me what happened or do you want to argue some more until you’re blue in the face.”
Cloud flinches away, only barely resisting the urge to swipe at him.
The crickets chirping song carries the silence as they look at anything other than each other for a long while, Cloud’s frustration only doubling with each passing second until he unclenches his jaw to ask the only question he is truly dying to know.
“You’re my real father, aren’t you?”
Helel sighs, adjusting the cowboy hat around his neck so that it doesn’t dig into his skin as much. “This again?”
“I could have died last night...” he whispers, picking at the crusting scab on the outside of his index finger. “...and I would have died thinking the only person who could possibly understand me wouldn’t even bat an eye.”
“Would it matter if I was?” he asks, looking at Cloud expectantly, quite literally with a sparkle in his eyes from the light of the moon reflecting off of them.
“On most days it wouldn’t…but sometimes…”
“Sometimes?”
Cloud collects his things, giving up on trying to persuade him to offer up the answer he seeks, only looking back once he has one half of his body already inside. “Sometimes, sometimes it would mean everything.”
YOU ARE READING
The Initials | Nanowrimo 2023
Fantasy[Book 1 in the Displaced Angels Series] "You took the life of my best friend, made her life a living hell...so I took your building and everything inside, and turned it into ash." °°° Being abducted the first time was already crazy enough, but twice...
