11. meteors on fallen angels

ー

a boy and his summers
in a house full of ghosts.

&

Chrollo was no older than five summers when the blurred countenance around him sharpened into focus, roused awake by a slap on his wrist.

The first thing he absorbed was the red blooming on his arm, stretching like vines. Then he registers a numb sensation and a ringing in his ear. It’s all — new. Fresh. He doesn’t know how to describe the picture painted on his wrist, but he knows it’s a warning. A punishment.

“Your handle on the dagger is sloppy,” a voice snaps.

And Chrollo, alive for only a meager of five years, does not understand half the sentence. He hears handle and dagger and your — and understands no more. He knows, though, by the tone of the voice and by the patch on his arm that he’s doing something wrong.

Chrollo adjusts his hold on the dagger, shuffling his index finger.

The voice hums.

“Still sloppy,” and he receives another slap on the wrist.

The blade falls from his hand and he picks it up with no wasted movement.

He adjusts.

He receives— “No,” and a slap.

He adjusts again.

There’s a clicking of tongue heard in the silence, and then another crisp slap.

Chrollo pays the scorching sting of his wrist no mind, and adjusts the knife again.

━━━━━━━━

The Lucilfers were thieves.

Chrollo knew this much. He knew that he was born to the world of theft, of deceit, of criminals.

So he’s aware of the eyes that watch him — of the eyes that expect him to know how to work his hands swiftly, to move unseen, to disguise his footsteps as brushes of the wind. And he does — he does all of what’s expected of him perfectly like clockwork.

No Lucilfer has ever swayed from this fate, from this kind of life, to the point that the people of Meteor City could only see it as a lifelong tradition from them, to be a family of thieves. They were not wrong, either — because that was exactly what the Lucilfers were. Thieves. Pickpockets. Criminals. Pick your poison, so to say.

These words have been passed along the rumor mills, fed by whispers that do not tell of less than the truth — birthed the irrefutable fact that the Lucilfers were no more than that — thieves.

Chrollo wonders, though, how one fact hasn’t been poured into people’s mouths and ears. He wonders how the people of Meteor City — curious and almost all-knowing as they were — did not know that the Lucilfers were also a family of killers. He wonders how they didn’t know that several of the Lucilfer children have been murdered by their own parents because they could not adapt to the lifestyle of thievery. (And, that too, was their tradition. Cutting off weak links. Literally killing the soft, fragile ones.)

He knew of this when he was six summers old, with brittle bones and crimson coloured wrists. He knew of this by the screams he heard from the end of the hall — from a door kicked ajar. Chrollo knew of this by seeing the exact shade of blood his supposed sibling spilled that night for his incompetence. He knew of this by the smell of gunpowder, heavy in the room.

He, six years old and detached from nothing but himself, knew of this by the words his parents whispered in his ear: “You’ll be good, won’t you, Chrollo?”

Ah — perhaps — Chrollo was lucky this way. Perhaps he was fortunate that he endured the beating he received because it meant he could still be alive today.

It’s not that appealing to him, though, the idea of living. He’s not at all thrilled of continuing to exist in this plane like he even has a purpose aside from living in a world of lies.

No, Chrollo was not afraid of the promise of death his parents swore to him. He did not fear the concept of falling and breaking and dying. He did not fear walking alongside the stench of death crackling in his veins.

But he would not give his last breath to the hands of his parents. He would not meet his end at the points of their guns and stabs of their daggers. He did not want his death witnessed by the filthy.

Chrollo knew he was worth more than that.

━━━━━━━━

Chrollo Lucilfer was nine summers old when he decided that he was not born to handle a knife.

He was, instead, born for the feel of pages. For the texture of books. Born for that knowledge. And so, he decided that this caged life was not for him — that it was time to break tradition, as the last remaining child of the Lucilfers. (Everyone else has been wasted away — murdered like cheap lambs because they could not meet their parents’ expectations.)

Chrollo was nine summers old when he finds himself gripping a blade for the last time. This was when he found his once numbed wrists, splotched red from beatings, driving a knife to his mother’s stomach. This was when he found his arm trickling with fresh, warm blood, while the knife he’s holding was buried in his father’s head.

For a while, there’s a ringing in his ears, loud and almost painful as he struggles to breathe for five seconds, perhaps a minute.

And, as he pulls out the dagger, every noise disappears.

There’s nothing. Chrollo could not hear the thunk of the blade as it falls from his hand. He could not hear the ear-splitting cry from his father as he drops to the ground and bends into himself like crumpled paper.

There’s... nothing.

No guilt. No satisfaction in breaking the established practice. No fulfillment in escaping tradition. No basking of the glory in gore.

It’s only him, the last remaining Lucilfer, the soles of his shoes soaked with blood and his fingers colored a vivid red.

There’s a whisper in his ear that’s rejoicing in the wake of this madness.

(Go, Chrollo, run away—)

And so he does.

(—your life here is over.)

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[s.] who were you under the blanket of ‘orphan’?