literature

Feathery Wings (Pitch Black x Death!Reader)

Deviation Actions

ItsyBitsyArachnid's avatar
Published:
6.8K Views

Literature Text

TRIGGER WARNING: IMPLIED SUICIDE/OVERALL SPEAK OF DEATH



The first hours upon this planet had felt like a dreadful eternity- seconds vomiting minutes, eventually spewing years.

For a while, you could only seek out your previous dimension, look for home somehow. You did this frantically, but the more you searched the less frantic and more hopeless it all gleamed.
The beasts around you needed you, though they weren't aware. They lacked consistency and order, for the most part.

Mankind shortened eternity; they cut it into time and space, preoccupied with explaining it all to their own knowledge. However unending it is, it is still somehow always fleeting away from everyone.
Some of them were content with this, as odd as it seemed, it was still much better than those who were not– those that worried over it, those that abused it, or threw it all away.

Some hated it. No longer wished to be involved with time or space.
Some abused it, taking all of another's for their own entertainment or sickening pleasure.
Man was perpetually afraid, man was in a constant state of savagery, man was a culmination of tragedy.

The pieces of humanity that were wonderful, outside of tears and fear and hatred, man's capacity for love and compassion and empathy beyond all that you could fathom– these weren't things you were welcome to.

The only thing it seemed that you were there for was ending all of that past and potential in one fluid motion. After all, if there was one thing in this world that was undoubtedly consistent, it was death.
You.

You looked at the woman on the cement, skull cracked and greyish pink matter sloshing out, spattered in various red and maroon, fingernails chipped, details and visuals of it all speeding throughout your head. A squeak dragged its way from her throat, the sound equal to nails on a chalkboard. The urge digging in your guts to jerk your neck and look away– but that wasn't how things went. You had a job to do, a driven instinctual thing formed by order.

Your fingertips hovered before her eye, the pupil darting toward you and seeming to vibrate in horror. She could see you now, and the terrified expression was not new to you– however, it never failed to hurt your emotional senses on deep levels, shocking formats.

If only she could've seen you moments before, the pavement miles below, if only she heard your words before- maybe that fearful expression wouldn't be bound to you.

"Please smile," You whispered. "Please don't look at me that way. Ple–"

Energy brewed in your digits, and light fled from her eyes and toward the tips, evaporating like smoke from a cigarette. Her face relaxed.

You were an angel, but brought the passing of life rather than the giving.

You were an angel, but had no wings.

A presence behind you; you knew who it was, but did not address him.

"...What a dreadful thing the human condition is." He finally said, walking soundlessly to stand beside you. "That some would rather di–"

"Don't." You interrupted, without anger but with a strictness. You didn't look up, didn't dare meet Pitch Black's optics with your own— you were desperate to keep the composure you barely held onto with every mortal life ending, every suicide, every violent murder, every man dying alone in his shoddy house with estranged yet dearly missed family members embedded in last thoughts. Absolutely in need of restraint on tears, on apathy over empathy, and looking up at another and into sympathetic (howbeit genuine or not) eyes just may prompt the opposite.

"Very well," He replied softly, but you could feel him looking at you still.

"Nowhere else to be?" You'd remarked, and coldly- just as you needed to be. Your vision still rested on her, your job long done but the ever present

and stupid

hope that maybe the lips, twisted slightly agape, the jaw perhaps broken, and now cracked with drying blood– maybe they'd turn to a little smile. A small thing telling you that she was just fine (maybe even much better) wherever she went from this, wherever the light goes.

Would she forgive you if she knew that you hated this?
Would any of those countless lives smile upon your frame and visage, even console you, speak sweetly and of how it was not your fault, how they were at peace? What you would not give to have wings like angels were meant to have, wings to leave this place like man left it in death.

"There were surely moments of joy within her life." He spoke– he'd ignored your question, choosing instead to pick up on the emotions hammering inside you. "And it isn't as if you placed the bad times there. You are, after all, an angel."

"I'm the Angel of Death," You responded, finally looking up at him but giving him a blank expression as you buried away the ache that was always burned into that acknowledgment.

Pitch shrugged, his own face dull as he responded, "An angel, nonetheless."

An odd smile played on his lips, "We're sort of... in the same business. Fear, loneliness, on and on," He waved his gaunt fingers, twitching the digits toward his smiling lips as his eyes met yours once more.  "What say... I handle the fear, the human conditions and tears, alongside you?"

You were struck by this offer; it stretched out across your brain, processing at a markedly stunned pace.
What a suggestion.
He couldn't possibly be serious.
No way.
That wasn't the order of things.
You couldn't just...

"Misery loves-" Pitch stopped briefly, a flash of what may have been color on his thin face, seemingly correcting himself, "misery needs company. And who is more miserable than you and I?"

"Mankind has some pretty bad patches." You were quick to point out, though it was more an attempt to extend the space and time between the proposition.

"In their plane of existence, but what of here? You and I. You know very well what I mean."

You glanced at the slack and internally damaged figure on the ground beside your feet, yet to smile– never to smile. Your breath felt as if it were simply worming around in your throat, not doing the proper job of leaving and returning. Stuck in the same time, stuck in the same space, itself appearing to wait for you to respond with a fully realized answer.

"The badness will still be there." He touched your wrist, not gripping it fully but letting his fingertips rest on the outside in a comforting fashion. "But we won't be alone in it. We didn't choose it, but we can choose this..."

"And what is... this?"

"The good things mankind gets in life. I was once a man, I should know," Pitch let his former countenance– the one of a sharp and slick tongue– dissolve and bleed away from his expression for a moment. "Nothing feels better than companionship, connection. Love."

Could things work that way?
His touch was warm, and it didn't feel improper, disconforming... It didn't feel against anything. You let your fingers twitch up to curl between his, and his eyes presented a slight surprise at this. You smiled.
You. The first in all of the time you'd spent in this space.

"Where to then, King of Nightmares?"

A smirk kinked its way back across Pitch's pale face."Wherever my wingless angel pleases."
For XI-RISU's contest
obvious inspiration fromVoltaire's Feathey Wings
© 2014 - 2024 ItsyBitsyArachnid
Comments19
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Fluttercordluv's avatar
One of the most magnificent Pitch x Readers I've ever read. It was beautiful, and it nearly brought tears of joy and awe to my eyes. (I almost never cry over stories.) Overall, well done.