butterfly

My breath caught in my throat as I stood outside the heavy wooden doors. It should have been routine – no, less than routine. This should have been effortless. Should have been fun. We were supposed to be best friends. Made bracelets, traded blood. Cut up a neighborhood cat together once. Hell, she was my first kiss. My first time. My first…everything. But as I stood in front of the door to the biggest fuckoff penthouse suite in the city, all I wanted to do was throw up.

Felt like I spent an hour surrounded by shitty wrestling merchandise before the door creaked open and Nico’s maid poked her head out.

“Ah…my apologies, Miss Cooldown. I didn’t expect you for another few hours, but please. Come in.” She gave me a small, sweet smile and ushered me inside. …Never really knew how to deal with being waited on.

The place never ceased to amaze me. It was a bachelor pad for someone with way too much money and way too many hobbies, and every time I visited there were more creepy posters coating the walls and more shelves lined with crap, and some poppy anime garbage filled the room, apparently the menu theme for one Bizarre Jelly DVD or another. I stared at the TV screen for a second before a glimmer of yellow-blonde hanging off the arm of the couch caught my eye.

…She asleep, or what? Jade gave me a little nod when I asked.

“Lately, Milady’s been getting…carried away.” Yeah. I knew that much. “Usually she’s up and about again after a good night’s sleep, but I…couldn’t in good conscience let her go out as she is.”

I put it together pretty well. …The maid drugged her. Heh.

“…I’d prefer not to think of it that way.” Her eyes flicked toward the couch, and I could swear I saw just a hint of a familiar smile. That’s right, her name was Jade. …They looked a lot alike, when she smiled. Kind of eerie. “…Miss Cooldown?”

…Must have been staring.

“Hmm. At any rate, I was hoping…well, I’m not much of a cook, regrettably, and Milady, er…” …thinks pizza is a vitamin. “…Yes. I thought…she might really enjoy a meal served by you. I’ll help with whatever you need me to, of course.”

…Seriously?

I stared at her for a long second before the pleading look in her eyes got to me.

…Beef. Shrimp. Eggs. Chicken broth. Some fresh vegetables. I gave her a short list of ingredients to pick up. …Egg drop soup, with shrimp fried rice and a big, fat cheeseburger to go with. It was kind of exciting, in a way. Didn’t get to cook much around the Hole anymore, and…I don’t know.

She scared the shit out of me sometimes, but I still cared about her. I might have even smiled, if it weren’t for a certain pressure on my head a moment later, accompanied by a tiny, catlike grin from Jade. …She’d forced her frilly little hairband onto me.

“It suits you. Please take care of our lady in my stead.” …I could do nothing but watch her slink out the door while I worked my jaw. …But it didn’t feel bad, I guess.

---

For someone that claimed not to be much of a chef, she was a pretty big help in the kitchen. Took direction fluidly, naturally. Like she knew the recipes I was using better than I did.  …She told me later she knew a lot of recipes, trying to cook like this. They just…didn’t turn out well for her. Didn’t have much of a sense for it, she said, and she got distracted a lot.

…Nico probably just didn’t leave her alone much.

Everything was just about finished when she went quiet, like the idle chatter in her died all at once.

“…Miss Cooldown?” As we played everything up, she spoke again. …There was no trace of the cheer she’d had a moment ago. “If you…if you don’t mind letting me handle the rest, there was something else I wanted to ask you for, while you’re here.”

Are you trying to get me out of the room so you can drug her food?

“What? No. Nothing like that.” Her eyes flicked away again. “…Well, something like that. But I do have a request.” I stared her down. Her eyes met mine briefly, then slipped away again. Her hand twitched at her side, as if she wanted to reach for a weapon, and reflexively my knife appeared in my hand.

“Ah, first…can I…” She mumbled out the rest of her sentence. I leaned in a little, grip tightening around my knife, and her hand raised slowly as she pointed down toward it, finger twirling idly, almost cutely. “You wouldn’t mind if I borrowed that for a moment…?”

I flipped it in my hand and held it out, handle-first. …Wasn’t much she’d be able to do with it anyway. Not against me, and not against Nico.

What she did do was a little more disturbing, and she went on as she did it, like it wasn’t strange at all: she sliced her hand open, then held it over each of Nico’s plates in turn, letting her blood dribble out. Then she mixed it into the soup and the rice, and in with the seasoning on the burger.

“There’s something in Milady’s trophy room…a gift she’s been using for a while. …I think it’s…making her ill. Restless. I don’t typically believe in that, but since you’re a magical girl…and if I recall, one of the other, erm, Rabbits specializes in items with curses…?” She licked her hand idly once she was done, and handed my knife back off to me. …And for my part, I ran my tongue along the edge. …She was already dumping it in someone’s food. It wasn’t that big a deal.

“I was hoping you could take it with you. …Without Milady realizing. She really…isn’t well, anymore.”

---

We parted ways once we left the kitchen, a silver tray in her hands and my knife in mine. She pointed me to the trophy room – not much of a stretch, right next to Nico’s – and told me she’d keep her lady busy. …Couldn’t get an answer as to why she didn’t have me do this while Nico was unconscious, but maybe she had to…I don’t know. Make sure I wasn’t going to go off the deep end over it. Or rat her out. God knows Nico does some dumb, irrational shit when she gets mad.

…sh…ng…

The trophy room was lined with weapons. Broken shields. Orphaned beam katanas, portraits of a hundred dead assassins. And actual portraits of a couple of them. A gladiator’s memorabilia, like the fucking Batcave. …All Jade had told me about what I was looking for was that I’d know it the moment I set eyes on it.

…Pretty sure I did, too. Next to an old rubber tiger mask, the one she’d worn when she was first starting out as an assassin. A mask stand, with something…beautiful on it. A visor, almost shaped like a butterfly, its wings covering the eyes and a…tail sort of thing, a noseguard.. A glinting, black steel blindfold that barely seemed to contain its own brilliance. Cracks of luminous gold covered its surface, and seemed to light up the room all on their own.

…lesh of…len angels…

My body moved on its own. …I think. …I’m not…really sure. I wanted it. I wanted to touch it so badly. I wanted to wear it. …A voice itched at the back of my mind, an irresistible voice. The taste of Jade’s blood lingered in my mouth, roaring into a deep, unquenchable thirst. I…might have started to drool, as I reached out to touch it. As my fingers brushed against cool, black metal, as they traced those golden lines. A mind-melting pleasure erupted from my neck, and from my wrists as the old, bad blood began to drain from my body through the vestiges of old scars, and my cheeks grew warm and wet as my vision turned red.

The flesh of the fallen angels.

…Every light in the penthouse blew out at once as I plucked the golden mask from its stand. It soothed the painful ache in my mind. Even holding it, I felt my senses sharpen. I knew immediately – Nico was holding this for me. This mask was made for me, and it felt…wonderful, to be reunited. Like I was missing a fragment of my soul.

I heard a noise from behind me. A heartbeat. The sound of muscles contracting. A voice, as someone rushed toward the room I was in. Someone saying my name.

A monster. It was a monster that pretended to be human. Pretended to be my friend. A dream. It was a dream. It was her. Her mouth was split unnaturally, drooling black ichor in a twisted smile. Her eyes were pools of the same, ripped open and bleeding. Ripped open years ago. I didn’t finish, then. I couldn’t finish then. I was missing this. Missing a part. Missing an important part.

It howled my name, and behind it, the shadow of a shadow of a person, Nakajima but not. One of the Nakajimas. One of the hundreds. It warbled something as the monster advanced on me, but it was slow, too slow. Both of them were. My knife wasn’t.

It’s just a dream. It isn’t real.

The flesh of the fallen angels is a dream.

Just a dream.

It isn’t real. Isn’t real. Isn’t real. Isn’t real.