Important: A word of warning: This fic is directly linked to the Unbroken main story, as a matter fact, the prologue takes place only a week after the epilogue, and the 1st chapter will take place even earlier than that. So to understand this fic it is necessary (sorry!) to have read Unbroken, The Final Step, To Choose to Hope, Storms in the Heart and probably the other side-stories too. There will be yaoi content, so be sure you are not actively against it if you read this. With all that said... thank you everyone for the support, and here we go!

Flight on Torn Wings
Prologue

"Leaves on already fallen leaves have lain;
And still the rain beats down upon the rain."

                            - 'In Dejection', by Gyodai -

He stood there on his precarious perch like a bird about to fly. But I knew he could not hold himself up any longer, and that the yearning arch of his back did not beckon to the skies but to the ground below. I knew that as the wind beat his shivering body forwards, he stared down below and saw not death, but surcease. And wanted it. Such a bird was not meant to die, and yet the world had torn it's feather's off until all it could do was dream of the sky, because flight was impossible now.

No bird can fly on torn wings.

"Are you going to jump?" I asked , and saw him jerk and almost fall. He had not though I would find him then, he had no expected me to follow. Slowly he turned his head to look at me, icy eyes glazed and dulled, no longer coherent or even conscious... perhaps his soul had jumped before his body. But he saw me, and I knew that it had made him react.

"Yes."

I bit my lip and took a step towards him, but his eyes screamed defiance at me and I knew that if I took another step, he would jump. The wind whipped his face and hair, making the gauzy hospital robe he wore flutter around his body. Below us, over the rim of the rail he stood on, I could see the distant lights of passing cars and hear the occasional horn. It was a high bridge... he had thought this over carefully then.

"So... you are giving up?"

He closed his eyes, then opened them and looked away. His gaze was lost below his feet, illuminated by thousands of car-lights that streaked passed our view, fading into the dark midnight horizons.

"There was nothing to give up on, in the first place." His dull, tortured voice brought an ache into my chest, and a memory I had wanted to dispel.

"Wasn't there? What about your family? Your Goddess?" I wanted to be angry at him, I wanted to scream at him to jump and let us all be rid of this... but I couldn't. I knew what he felt, I knew that he wanted to jump.

"They... don't need me. I am not..." he breathed in raggedly and sighed. "... indispensable."

I stared at his slumped shoulders and at his trembling fists as he balanced his body on the brink of death and stayed there, because I was talking to him.

"But they love you."

"I know." Yes, he knew. But it was not this that he put to question. Everyone loved him... but he had always been a second choice. For his friends, for his teacher... for his cloth. Never first, never the right one. Never meant to be.

I wanted to reach out and hold him, tell him it would be all right. That he did not have to jump... but down there, metres below him, he could find a peace I would never be able to give him. He could find the end to his guilt, his loneliness and... the end to the unspoken horrors that haunted him and made him as he was: a mystery... a painful mystery.

The stars were shinning up above, but I knew that he did not see them; that the only lights he cared for were those that raced by under his feet. He wanted this, he really wanted it. So had I, long ago.

And it had been denied to me, I had been forced to live and I had become a monster. But I had not been allowed to jump because there was someone who loved me... who needed me.

I owed it to that person, I owed him my life... and this child owed him his.

So I could not let him jump.

I could not.

"So... that's it. You choose the coward's way out." I saw him twitch and felt a slight elation at the fact that he still had his pride. Perhaps there was a chance still.

"Shut up. You don't know how I feel." And that hurt. It hurt more than I could say, even though I knew that he could not have guessed how deeply he had cut me. I took a deep breath and screamed at him, anger and pain and weeks worth of stress boiling inside of me.

"Then jump if you are so bent on it, but don't make me loose my time anymore!"

He turned around violently, and I felt myself grow cold when I realised what it was that I had said. And he stared at me as if in despair, blond hair moving around his face as his eyes widened and brimmed over with tears. He stared at me, lips parting but no words coming out, his aura twisting in upon itself in pain, rejection and finally... defeat.

He smiled weakly, a trembling glow in his eyes... And I lunged forward with a cry on my lips, a plea in my soul and a shriek in my eyes. Begging for him to let me talk, to let him find his step again...

To teach him to fly and not to fall.

But he had already let go, and was falling backwards into the street below.

Toffesayz: Hiyas! New fic, new plot, new depression... you are welcome! *smiles* Dedicated to everyone who mailed me as I wrote the first fic, cause it's because of them (and my obsessions, of course) that I still hang around.