Things You Wrote On the Walls

Torchwick

Once upon a time, he had dreamed of becoming a Huntsman.

But that was years ago, years that had flown by, like pages caught in high wind. And he was a shell now, as insubstantial as a ghost. He was serving a power that he hated because he was a coward. Better to join them than die by them.

He hated her. He hated her and he hated her two ‘partners’, but he had no choice.

Cinder had come from the darkness, melted from it like she was as insubstantial as a shadow come to life, her eyes two glittering flames. There had been two others with her— the boy with gray eyes, and the girl who lurked in her shadow with cold, cold eyes— but Cinder was the one to fear. She was the puppet master, with her allies and tricks and lies.

“You’re alone,” he said, exultant at having trapped her without her silken words. “Cinder, Huntress, however you call it— you’re the only one behind this, and all you have is me, those two children, and brute force. That’s not enough for a world-wide revolution.”

“Mercury and Emerald are not children,” she said, her voice sharp, more angry than he had ever heard it. Cracks were showing in her armor, her eyes furious, before she visibly glossed her emotions to an icy veil again.

“And I am not alone in the plans that are being woven, you fool,” she went on softly, as softly as the crackle-purr of a fire. “How ignorant of you to presume so.”

“If that’s true and you expect me to believe you, prove it,” Torchwick muttered resentfully, folding his arms across his chest.

Cinder looked at him with an amused smile, before she said abruptly, “Tell me, Roman, do you have any allies of your own?”

He stared at her for a second, taken aback. “I—,” He faltered, thoughts straying back, years and years ago, so long it seemed like a lifetime.

It had been a hot summer’s day, the sun beating down against the streets and making the air shimmer with a thick, resinous heat. He had had a long week, unable to purloin anything, and deals had been trickling in at a sluggish rate. He had barely enough money to scrape up a meal and he had scavenged from wherever he could, foraging for meals like a street rat— just like what they called him.

He had plans, great plans. He knew it. But there was no way to enforce them, with no money and no support.

He was turning out to be all that he feared: poor, and a nobody. He’d labored for this long under the illusion that he would be great one day, but that’s all it was: an illusion. Illusions were pretty, and they were as empty as his father’s promises before he’d been killed.

He crossed a street, pausing by a shadowy alley. He narrowed his eyes into the darkness, seeing a light flicker of movement at the far end, and then the silhouette of a shape— too big to be a rat or a stray cat. It looked like a person— a thin, bony person, but someone all the same.

Seeing a chance to pilfer some money, he slipped into the narrow space between the two buildings. Like every alleyway in every kingdom, it reeked of stale smoke and less desirable fluids. His lip curled at the graffiti scrawled on the walls. But he could hardly have expected better from the lowlifes living in Mistral, for he was one of them himself.

The person at the end of the alley lifted their head and made a low hissing in their throat as he approached. Surprise lit in his heart as he saw it was a girl, no older than eleven, her two-toned eyes— pale rose and earth colored—narrowing angrily at him.

“What are you doing back here? Don’t you know it’s… dangerous in Mistral, especially for someone like you?” he asked. “Your age won’t protect you, you know. Not with the scum that live here.”

She spat at him. He shook his head, bemused, realizing that he had unconsciously decided not to take advantage of this girl; she looked about ready to keel over. He stole, but never from those who truly needed every scrap they had.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her. “I swear it. Tell me, though, why are you hiding back here? Why not get out of here, to Vale or Vacuo? They’d treat you better.”

She frowned at him, clearly judging if he meant what he said, before she shook her head with an uttered sigh. She held out her hand and pointed to his own, lifting it, palm-up, into the air.

“Do you want me to hold out my hand?” he asked warily. She nodded earnestly. “Uh, okay, I guess. Why?”

She smiled mysteriously, her odd, two-toned eyes answering an unasked question. Roman blinked at her, before extending his arm, as if in a daze. She took it, and then slowly, carefully, traced her finger on his wrist, just above his pulse point.

“Are you trying to spell something in letters?”

Another nod, followed with an excited grin.

“Alright—er— okay, no, do it again, I didn’t get the letter the first time.”

Slowly but surely, the girl traced out letters on his wrist. C-A-N-T. S-P-E-A-K.

“I’ve seen worse on these streets, believe me,” he told her with a laugh of his own, feeling oddly light and happy, and she looked surprised, before smiling. It struck him what an odd pair they made— him, the scrawny dreamer with a head full of plans and no way to enforce them, and her, the small girl with no words of her own but her eyes alive with thought. “I’m Roman. What’s your name?”

Her hand hesitated over his skin, before she scrawled out more letters, a little more hurried this time. N-E-O-P-O-L-I-T-A-N. N-E-O.

“Just Neo?”

She nodded, hair bouncing over her shoulders.

“Well, I can see why you’re called that. So if you can’t talk, how do you get by?”

She pointed at him, drew two fingers across her throat with a chilling look in her eyes, and mimed stealing the knapsack on his bag and removing the contents. “Thievery,” he said with a knowing nod. “Well, then, Neo, you and I may not be so different after all.”

She nodded with a little shrug, before tracing a sentence into the thick dirt at their feet. Her handwriting was shaky. I survive by myself, she wrote, before flashing a look of defiance up at him.

“I’d figured that, believe it or not.” He watched as she scuffed out the sentence, dust motes twirling up into the feeble autumn sunlight that fell to the floor of the alley. It was an oddly pretty sight, one that he had long since ceased to appreciate.

She lifted her shoulders in a wordless shrug before letting them fall.

“Do you—” He paused, knowing how hapless the question was, before blurting it out. “I don’t know. I feel wrong to leave you here. And I… this sounds odd, and please, feel free to just ignore it, but… do you want to team up, maybe for a little while? Try surviving together?”

Her eyes widened in shock, pink against brown, before she tilted her head, considering him. Then, just after he was sure she would race off, Neo grinned, and took his hand and brought it to his chest. Y-E-S, she wrote, just over his heart.

He came back to the present with a shudder. “I do have allies,” he said petulantly, tasting the words in his mouth as Cinder watched him dispassionately.

“Good.” Her words were cold. “In the new age, those who are alone and apart will not survive without them.”

“I don’t know what to do, Neo.”

Her odd-colored eyes regarded him, unreadable and reserved. The two of them had become so adept in their silent communication that she could quickly scrawl a message on his skin, when needed, without him having to ask her to repeat it slowly; often they communicated via Scrolls, but the old way felt more personal.

What’s troubling you now? She wrote on his skin.

“Her,” he said, the word coming out as a hissed breath between gritted teeth. “Cinder, the bastard. How I hate her, Neo. With her stupid rules, her fanatic games, those idiotic children she totes around and cares nothing for, except their powers…”

Neo’s brows furrowed. Her touch was cold as she paused before writing on his forearm. If you hate her so much then it is simple.

He gritted his teeth. Neo pointed at him, and mouthed his name. Leave her then. Never return.

He gave a gasping sort of laugh. “If only it were that easy,” he said. “She’d hunt us down, the both of us, and kill us. Torture us, first, it’s likely, for betraying her… we know too much of her plans now. I can’t let that happen to you. And you know…” He shook his head, kicking angrily at a box. “She’ll win. She’s going to get what she wants.”

And what’s that?

“She wants to burn this world to her name,” Roman growled. “To cinders. To ashes. How can I let that happen?”

He looked up, startled by the depth of bitterness on Neo’s face, and she wrote, hard and angry on his arm. The world doesn’t care about you or I. Why should you care about it?

“So you believe that I should go along with her, even knowing what I know?”

She nodded.

“Neo—”

Her open hand sharply closed into a fist, eyes flashing, and he knew he’d gone a step too far. She hardly ever used the hand-sign for ‘enough’. What’s done is done, she traced on his flesh, just over his knuckles. Put your heart into one thing or another, but do not allow it to be torn in two with uncertainty, Roman.

“I will serve her faithfully. It is better to be a live coward then a dead fool. But Neo, I’m afraid…” He swallowed. “I’m afraid that if I go too far into this darkest night, I may never be able to return.”

Her grin was dark, entirely devoid of any real happiness or amusement. It looked like something on a disembodied skull. Darkness is where we reside.