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Happiness was unstable. It was the moment at the top of the rollercoaster, the long hanging second where the world was spread out below you and the terror of the drop hadn’t come. You knew the drop was coming, the long fall towards gravity, but for just a moment...you could fly.
He’d held victory in his hands, won in brotherhood, extracted it from the fallen body of his once-brother, and slipped away with it into the crowd. Fuck their monsters, their enforcers, their demons. It was his, fairly won, and all the twisted, screaming rules in the world couldn’t change that. As if he’d thought for a second they’d let him keep it fair and square.
Crazy, sure, but stupid? Never.
The roar of the crowd even almost masked his naked flank, the gaping hole where his brother had been. (There should have been three of them, the sacred triangle that turned away foes.) But fuck the pain. He’d won.
He’d worn the gold with pride as they’d hunted him, laughed in their faces as he turned their trails cold and their victories to ashes. For all his power and all his plans, the Architect was helpless against a single wily hound. Hadn’t they learned anything, from the days before? You can’t make the joker play by the rules.
It was so tempting, to just take his prize and flee. Fuck their games and their rules, fuck the suited schemers, it was his and they couldn’t make him. But...but…
It wasn’t his, to keep and hide away, until the gold tarnished and the luster was gone. The gold was only his so long as he deserved it, so long as he was strong. The paradox of conquest--the king of the mountain didn’t get to stay safe inside.
But he could fight on his terms. (You weren’t the only one, brother, who could scheme and plan.) He could wait, and stoke his once-brother’s helpless rage. Wait until the betrayer’s wounded pride stripped all his allies away from him. Wait until he was desperate, as desperate as he had been in those first, heart-shattered days…
He had gotten everything he’d wanted. Just the two of them, in the squared circle, and nothing was off-limits until the fight was won. It had been a perfect metaphor, that lump of gold hanging over all their heads, untouchable and alluring, with violence all below.
And such violence. All their rage brought to bear, until it felt like his veins would char and wither from the fire of it. No games, no tricks, no lies. Just two men with torn souls. A storm of flesh and steel and pain.
He’d dragged himself out of his once-brother’s metal grave, he’d climbed the ladder and laid his trembling fingers on the prize. Fingers scrabbling against his, punches and blows, desperation that had shaken the very world below and sent them flying...
The world had stopped around them, and he’d felt it.
He’d felt the fall take hold at last. His wings broken, and his flight dashed.
They’d fallen together, like Michael and Lucifer, and he’d known. He watched in that frozen fragment of time as his once-brother curled around their prize like a child wrapped around a stuffed toy. Like it was the only thing he had left.
Maybe it was.
For a moment, he pitied him. His brother was so alone.
Then the ground, and darkness, and the hollow feeling of leather and metal slipping from his hands.