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Iris’s heart pounds in his chest - a rabbit screaming, bolting for cover, desperate for this to be over, a dream - yet the space between each racing beat hangs in the air too long, each frantic step too slow, too late.
Six steps. All Iris can see is the space where the man should have been, where he had stood years- seconds- an agonized breath ago. Where he had teetered, frozen for a moment, before vanishing from view.
Five steps from the edge and the scream tears Iris in half, ripping through the depths of his soul. Hands grab, tear, trying to hold him back.
Four. His blade sinks into someone in his way. Three steps is too many, it's too many.
The last two blur as Iris drops both corpse and sword to the floor, flinging himself over the balcony rail, desperately chasing the limp body plummeting towards the ground below him.
Vision blurring from the stinging wind, Iris fights into a dive, streamlined, racing to catch up. Failure is not an option.
He can't let Lillium die.
Iris slams into Lillium’s body midair, wrapping his arms and legs around him, sending them into an uncontrolled spin. The scars on his back have long since been mangled beyond use or recognition, but there's no time to think, to second guess. Death reaches for them with a scythe of gravity and asphalt, but Iris has Lillium's warmth in his arms again and refuses to let go.
Burying his face in pink hair, Iris shuts out the wind and approaching concrete, breathing deep and dreaming of laughter, of his first taste of real freedom, of marble angel wings taking flight-
“Whatever it is you're doing, you got this.”
-and creates.
Wings explode from his back, catching the wind. Iris gasps from the strain as they are yanked out of free fall, frantically trying to stabilize, gliding fast, too fast. He banks, flapping, desperate for altitude, to escape with his precious cargo.
He brings Lillium closer to his chest, heaving, wingtips sending up plumes of dust as they brush the ground, careening back up into the air. The frantic fear of it boils over into hysterical laughter as he lifts them both higher and higher, soaring over the buildings and startled faces, racing out of the city and into the night.
Lillium groans in pain, immediately finding the bandaged wound in his back when he tries to sit up, falling back into a soft pillow that responds with a sleepy grunt.
An arm around his waist tightens, drawing him in closer. Morning light filters through the soft white feathers of the wings draped over them both. Iris shifts beneath the dead weight of his body just enough to press lips into Lillium's hair, murmuring a greeting so soft it may have just been an exhale.
So he's dead, that has to be it. But if he's dead and Iris is here, then-
It hurts to talk, throat raw from wind and altitude. Lillium rasps, “Iris? You better not have died for me.”
In response, Iris reaches up to comb shaking fingers through Lillium's hair, adjusting him until his ear is resting over Iris's steady heart.