Chapter Text
The skies are covered in thick, charcoal gray clouds. Rain drips from each cloud, pouring onto the earth below like the heavens are weeping. Like ugly hiccups from sobbing lips, thunder roars against the wide cityscape, and like droning whimpers, the wind howls as it darts from one street to the next. It pushes against every fallen item, even slanting the bitterly cold rain so that it might travel into the otherwise hidden shadows. The rain falls onto the glass sides of tall skyscrapers and turns the walls of dark alleyways even darker as it forms puddles against the ground. Some raindrops plummet straight into the puddles, creating ripples that fight each other for dominance. These ripples will sometimes cause splashes that washes the water against the cracked concrete ground. All the puddles match the dark gray of the sky, occasionally burning bright gold with a strike of lightning. All except one puddle.
This puddle is not entirely formed by water. It existed long before the rain started, and perhaps it would remain there for a substantial amount of time after the weather ceases. The puddle is a desaturated red, the shade of rust clinging to iron, dripping in meandering blobs across the surface of the watery puddle. The red comes pouring out of a large tear in an article of clothing, and this cut shows an even deeper laceration in a human stomach. The gash is deep and large, gushing with blood like a popped balloon releasing air. Except, this wound makes no noise as it allows the life-giving ichor to drip onto the dirty, unworthy concrete below the paling, cold body.
Despite the wound in his body, the teenager is not dead. He is on the cusp of it, surely, but the grim reaper is merely hovering over him instead of allowing the guillotine to separate his head and body. His soul clings to the fleshy prison even though he knows that this cut would only slow him down, only cause him pain, should he find some way to stay alive without medication or a healing superpower. He has neither, and there is no way for him to acquire either. Superpowers are fictional, and for as much money as the teenager has, medication might as well be just as unreal.
His eyes are as gray as the sky, as gray as the alleyway around him, as gray as the clean puddles that have not yet been affected by the growing spill. His skin is as white as a sheet, making him appear like the ghost he will become before the sun begins to rise and disperse the clouds. Only bruises remained colored, and they looked ghastly against the paleness. His clothes lack any color they originally had. They were mostly brown from dirt, and the rain was turning that displaced soil into sludgy mud that covered the few clean spots scattered around his pants and shirt. It washed over onto his clothes, and bits of it fell into his wound and the bloody puddle around him. His hair was matted against his head by mud, sweat, rainwater, and a little bit of blood from a head wound that definitely wasn't helping his odds of survival.
He was going to die. No one was going to help a dirty, street rat like him, and he didn't have the means to help himself. He was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. There was no one he could turn to, or some solution that just might work if he put in enough effort. He was a dead end, surrounded on all sides by impenetrable walls, closing in on him enough to invoke his claustrophobia along with his innate fear of death.
The hopelessness of the situation did not crush the overwhelming urge in his body to live. He wanted to continue persisting. He wanted to find a life for himself, find happiness and love and everything he could never have growing up. He wanted to escape his abusive parents who swore to deities they didn't believe in that he was never going to make anything of himself. He wanted to find people who liked him to surround himself with instead of watching all his classmates befriend each other and avoid him. He wanted to be the kind of person who had his whole life worked out, the kind of man that others admired and envied. He wanted all the pain in his life to amount to something, his luck balancing out to deliver him a miracle.
Instead, he was stabbed in the stomach and physically beat up by some random thug on the street for reasons the man never explained. He was just left in the alleyway. The universe didn't provide him an answer. It didn't have the decency to leave him alone. It took all the fragile ambitions he held tightly against his heart, all the seconds he had spent counting down the moments until he could be free from his childhood, and the universe deemed it useless. The universe, without saying a single word, explained to him that he was never meant to be happy. He was meant to live a life of sorrow, and his escape was ultimately futile.
Perhaps he could have lived if he stayed at home. If he decided to wait it out for his high school diploma, he could have gone to a good college. He could have met his destined friend group. He could have met the love of his life. He would have found this elusive happiness that everyone seemed to have except for him.
Then again, maybe his parents would have killed him. Maybe they would have kicked him out. Maybe college would have been a bust, and he would have been beat up just like he was now there. Maybe he would fall in love, and they would take his adoration for him and turn it into a weapon. Maybe it didn't matter what choices he made. His destiny could have been to live unhappily and die the way he lived.
Cold, bitter acceptance washed into his body, faster than the pain but not any softer. There was truly nothing he could do. This was it. This was destiny, and it was unavoidable. It just was.
"Don't give up now," A voice called out. He looked up sharply, trying to find who was being cruel to him. Who was telling him not to give up when the darkness was already consuming his vision? When he couldn't feel his body? When the scent of blood and the taste of iron had faded away into nothingness? When the storm around him was nothing but a distant memory, the only mourner for the poor boy destined to die? "Come on, Tommy, when have you ever given up? You're supposed to be more stubborn than a mule."
There was fondness in the voice that Tommy didn't know could be directed at him. Strangely enough, the tender voice brought tears to his eyes when the gaping hole in stomach hadn't.
A man was standing in front of Tommy. Well, he had the shape of a man. He wasn't one, though, because he was glowing a beautiful yellow-gold color like a field of sunflowers swaying in the breeze under a brilliant sunrise. He did not cast a shadow, and the rain did not flatten his blonde hair across his face. His eyes were the color the sky could have been if it wasn't raining. Tommy couldn't quite make out the details of the angelic man, but he was struck with a strong sense of familiarity. He knew this person, distantly, as if they had met in a dream a thousand years ago. Tommy watched as the man kneeled down in front of him. A warm hand was pressed against his cheek, and Tommy leaned into it with trembling lips threatening to explode with cries. The man smiled sadly at Tommy, "I'm sorry for all of this. It wasn't easy, but I'm proud of you. You did so well, more than you'll ever understand. I know I'm being selfish, but you have one last objective ahead of you. It won't be easy. Maybe even harder than the last objective, but... but I don't think it will be. Because she'll be there to protect you, in whatever form she takes, and he'll be there to guide you, in whatever form he takes. For what it's worth, I truly am sorry. You have my respect and gratitude for as long as you live, no matter what choices you make."
The darkness washed over him all at once as the man's words echoed in his head.