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I walk out of the bar and turn right, my date left already but I needed a drink so I stayed. I’m not drunk, not even close and that is good because my mom is coming to visit tomorrow. I pull my phone out of my pocket and see that I don’t have any messages, I put it back in my pocket and start walking to my apartment. It’s not a long walk. When I walk past an alley I think I hear something, so I stop and listen close. It sounds like someone is crying, ‘weird’ I think. The sounds break my heart and I can’t help myself as I walk into the alley, looking for the person that is crying.
A woman is sitting in the far end of the alley, my hart skips a beat when I see that she is covered in blood. I carefully walk closer, trying not to scare the woman. “hey” I say softly, she looks up at me with the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen. I pull out my phone and say “I’m going to call an ambulance okay”
“no” she says “no ambulance” I ignore her and bring the phone up to my ear when I feel something flying past my face taking my phone with it. My ear hurts, when I reach for it I can feel blood dripping down on my shirt. I turn around to see where my phone is and I see it stuck to the wall with a knife stabbed through it. I face the woman again, now slightly terrified. The woman looks just as terrified as me, she says “I’m sorry, please don’t come near me. I might hurt you, again” she turns around and starts to walk out of the alley. I can see that her blouse is ripped open and her skin is cut open behind it, “wait!” I call after her. She stops and turns around, “let me clean your wounds, I promise I won’t do anything”. “I’m not afraid that you’ll do anything, I’m afraid that I will” she says. I can see that the woman is genuinely afraid of herself, so I try again “you can’t go on the street looking like that, let me take care of you. After that you can walk away and never look back. Besides, you own me a new phone” I smirk. “how big is your apartment?” she asks, I’m not sure how that’s relevant but I answer “it’s pretty big”. She nods and says “okay, I’ll come with you”. I mention for her to come with me and she walks after me, she doesn’t come close to me though. We walk the rest of the way in silence and I can see she zoned out, so when I stop in front of my door she bumps into me. I realise that I haven’t even told her my name. “I’m Alex by the way” I say, “piper” she says. I open the door and let Piper go inside first, “do you have a garden?” she asks. “yeah, through that door” I point at a door and Piper walks through it. I walk after her and I can see Piper looking around my garden as if she is measuring it. Piper turns around to face me and says “please don’t hate me”, she sits down on her knees and I can see something coming from her back. I realise that she is growing wings, angel wings. Although they look like they are made of metal. The wings grow bigger and bigger, until they are almost 2,5 meter wide, both of them. Piper stands up and folds the wings on her back, “please don’t hate me” she says again. “why would I hate you? Come inside, I’ll clean the cuts on your back.” I mention for her to come inside again and sit on the couch, “can you pull of your shirt? I’ll just go grab the first aid kit”. Piper nods and I walk to the bathroom, grab the box and walk back as fast as I can. Piper is standing in front of the couch, shirtless. “I didn’t want to get blood all over the place”, I grab one of the wooden chairs “smart thinking, here sit on this one”. I grab another chair and place it behind the one Piper is sitting on, I open the box and start cleaning the wounds on her arms and neck. I can’t help myself as I keep looking at her wings, Piper can feel me looking. She says “they used to be made of feathers, the wings I mean”. “what happened” I ask, “it’s a long story” she says “we have time” I answer. So Piper begins “I grew up in a waspy family, the image of the family was more important for my parents than anything. They didn’t love us, they didn’t even love each other. My father cheated on my mother and my mother was a drunk, I had to be the perfect daughter but they were never happy with me. I always felt like I had to do better, until when I was 15 years old and my wings started to grow. I loved them, they were so beautiful and literally made me look like an angel. My parents saw them as a disgrace for the family and wanted me to take them away, I didn’t listen to them. So they threw me out of the house and cut me off, I was no longer a Chapman in their eyes.
I was angry, at the world for being so cruel, at my parents for not loving me, even at myself for being me. I didn’t want to be around people anymore so I flew to the woods in Sweden and learned how to survive in the forest. I lived there for almost 3 years when a man came to me, he told me he could help me get stronger if I helped him. I said yes, that was the biggest mistake of my live but I was desperate. He turned my wings into metal and I had to kill someone, that was the deal we made. I did it, I killed the president of America without getting caught. After that my feathers were sharp as knives but I cut myself with them, by accident of course. I am able to throw my feathers like I did with your phone, but I haven’t done it in a while. Before my wings changed, I was able to hide them pretty well, even inside my body. But now it hurts a lot and I can’t do it longer than a day, after that I just faint or you start seeing the cuts on the outside like you saw them. It was a mistake coming back to the city, I’m gonna go back to the woods as soon as I can.”
While listening to Pipers story Alex cleans the wounds and wraps Pipers entire upper body in bandages. Pipers story is filled with emotions and I can feel them, I don’t want Piper to go but I says “I’m sorry this happened to you, I cleaned the cuts…” . Piper tries to stand up but fails to do so, I say “you can sleep here tonight if you want to, you can’t even walk”. Piper shakes her head, “I can’t walk” she smiles “but I can fly”. “yeah okay, listen if your ever in town feel free to visit. My door is always open for you!” I say, I’m desperate to see Piper again. Piper nods and walks to the front door, I follow, she opens the door, walks out and stands still in the middle of the street. I stand there and watch her “goodbye Alex” she says, “till next time Piper” I say.
Piper spreads her wings and I watch her fly away. I’m not sure if I’ll ever see her again but I am sure I will never forget her.
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I almost stayed with Alex all those years ago, I knew I couldn’t though. So I flew away, the truth is that I didn’t get very far. I flew a few blocks further and landed, well I guess the word ‘crashed’ is more accurate, on a skyscraper. I formed a little roof with my wings and passed out, I don’t exactly know how long I’ve been there but I think it was a few days later that I had enough strength to stand up, let alone fly away again. I made a plan, it sounded so easy in my head ‘I’m gonna go find someone that can change my wings back to feathers’. Little did I know that it would take me near 8 damn years to do just that. And even after 8 years, I didn’t get my feathers back, the best for me to do was to learn how to live with them without hurting myself and others.
A year after I started searching I met Red, Red had been looking for me for a while now. She offered me a job and a family, Red told me she could help me get my wings back to normal but that it would take a lot of time and discipline. I said yes, hoping that Red wasn’t a scam like the man I trusted all those years ago. I met my new family and could see that every single one of them was a mutant just like me. Luckily I was accepted in the group and most of the people helped me, Nicky was one of them. Nicky can teleport, and with her personality it makes a lot of hilarious moments. She likes to appear behind me, which is fucking creepy. Nicky became my best friend over time, in her own way she helped. I found out that I wasn’t a mutant, I still don’t really know ‘what’ I am but I think I’m closer to an angel than a human.
I didn’t like the work I had to do, I was part of the suicide squat –as Nicky likes to call it-. We do things the government can’t do in name of the government. My job in this was to fly around and warn everyone if someone was coming, and most of the time I had to take them down. I’ve taken so many lives that even thinking about it makes me sick.
Apart from all the missions I trained to control my wings.
And now here I am, I asked Red to look up Alex’ address. So now I’m standing in front of Alex’ apartment, she is still living in the same place after 8 years. I raise my hand to knock on the door, but I stop and I realise I’m afraid. ‘afraid of what’ I think. I knock anyway and wait to see if she is home. She isn’t……. of course she isn’t. I spread my wings, grab a few feathers and put them down in front of the door. When Alex comes home now she’ll now that I am here, I fly up the roof, sit and wait.
After I have waited for an hour Nicky appears behind me, “fuck Nicky, stop doing that!” I put my hand on my hart and pretend to mad. Nicky laughs and asks “she’s not home yet?”, I shake my head and look down at the street. My eyes go big, “speaking about the devil” I mutter. Nicky looks over my shoulder, “holy shit, she’s hot”. “I know”
“you love her don’t you” Nicky says, I nod “yes, I really do love her”
We watch Alex walk up to her door, Alex sees the feathers, picks them up and look closely at them. She looks around, obviously looking for something, probably me. Nicky pushes me towards the edge of the rooftop “go” she says, I nod and jump of the roof. I spread my wings and land smoothly on the street, it’s only now that I see that Alex isn’t alone. Another woman is standing behind Alex, I can feel my heart slowly breaking. Alex smiles when she sees me but the other woman screams, pulls out a gun and fires it at me. I’m to shocked to react in time and the bullet hits my chest. I fall to the ground, everything is happening in slow motion. I can hear Alex scream and I see her running to me.
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I don’t exactly know what happened, I saw Piper fly down and land on the street. I was happy to see her, what happened next is all a blur. I heard a gun fire and looked behind me, I saw Sylvie holding a gun. I turned around and saw Piper fall to the ground, I screamed “NO” and ran towards her. A woman appeared next to Piper and I remember thinking that was weird.
The woman sat on her knees and just looked at Piper, I sat down on the other side of Piper and saw Piper look down at her chest in shock. It broke my heart to see Piper laying there, she looked even more broken than she did all those years ago when I found her in that alley.
Piper looked up at me and winked, she fucking winked at me as if this was all a joke! She then looked over to the other woman and nodded, the woman seemed to understand and walked over to me. She pulled me away from Piper, I let her. “I’m Nicky” the woman said, “Alex” I answer. We looked back at Piper.
“Angels never die” Nicky says after a few minutes.
We are still sitting here now and I suddenly think about Sylvie and how fucked up this is, I say my thoughts out loud “my girlfriend just shot the woman I love”
Nicky grins “that’s fucked up,
where is the bitch even?”
I look around and see that Sylvie fainted and is laying on the ground “she’s over there, I think she fainted” I point at Sylvie.
“she didn’t faint Alex”
“what do you mean?” I ask
“let me ask you a question, do you love that woman?”
I shake my head, no I don’t love her. Nicky doesn’t say anything, she just looks at me. I look back and hope she can see that I’m telling the truth. After a few moments Nicky does speak
“Angels never die” she says “but they can’t live forever”
At first I don’t understand what Nicky is trying to say, but when I do I’m scared. “she takes a life and uses it for her own” I mutter more to myself than to Nicky. “so Sylvie is dead?”
“not yet, but as soon as those wings open she is. Maybe you should go and say goodbye”
I nod and walk to Sylvie, “hey Sylv, I’m sorry it had to end this way. I’m sorry for being such a terrible girlfriend and I’m sorry for never loving you. I’m sorry”
“Yo Alex! look at Piper” Nicky shouts, I turn to look at Piper and I see white smoke coming from her wings. “what does that mean?”
“it means Chaps send your ex to heaven”
“She can do that!? Jesus Christ.”
“yeah, she is an angel. Literally”
I’m confused, but I don’t have a lot of time to think about it. Piper opens her wings and rises, she is looking Majestic as fuck and I’m happy she is okay but I’m shocked about all of the things that happened the past hours or so. I can’t believe it has only been an hour, it felt like days. I realise I’m staring at Piper and see that she is looking back, Piper folds her wings and walks to me. I don’t see Nicky anywhere so I figure see disappeared again. Piper is now standing in front of me, “hi” she says. I’m not able to react, her voice sounded so good. “he… hey” I say, she smirks and kisses me.
A lot needs explaining and I’m sure that will happen in the years to come, right now we just enjoy each other’s company. Piper loves me and I love Piper, I have ever since I found her. I couldn’t say farewell then and I’m glad I didn’t because Piper came back to me, like I hoped she would.
I am glad I never forgot her, I can feel that whatever happens we will survive because
Angels Never Die.