KIT GLADIUS BEISEL, THE VERY VERY TIRED BOY. ( matrix universe )
They ripped out your wings before you had the chance to ever fly.
The Bible of older times never spoke of how the Devil was once an angel, of how he once worshipped at the altar of sanctity and praised all that was holy the same way his fellow soldiers did. No one remembers that Satan had once been called Lucifer
No one ever remembers that the Devil was not born, but made.
The same way you were not born for bloodshed, it found you all the same.
The first thing you remember about childhood is your mother’s eyes, the ones that looked down on you, the ones who saw with horror what happened to restless, reckless hearts when they are left alone, the one who saw how having a heart forged from oil and metal turned you into a machine, a weapon, a legend. It never mattered that your kingdom was comprised of dirty streets or that the altar you worshipped at was at the end of a deserted alley way--you turned Hell into your own kingdom, turned trembling fists into something lethal, no longer a boy but a weapon walking. The chains poverty had wrapped around your ankles bound you to the desolation of a forgotten neighborhood, but what does it matter that the consequences of your birth are such when you have no need to leave? When you’re eighteen, barely on the cusp of adulthood, and already a breathing legend because of what you do with your fists under the dark of the moon? When you’ve spent your life toeing the line between saint and sinner, the shackles of an undeserved punishment barely register.
They recruit you first in the dead of night. The Rebellion, they call themselves when the shadow finds you after the ring has emptied and all have gone, leaving you alone with the taste of blood in your mouth and holiness weighed between your shoulders. They ripped out your wings, but all that is holy cannot stay.
You’re still just a boy, and it’s easy enough to remember every time you had to go hungry, every time you clenched your jaw because your mother came home with a bruise on her cheek (courtesy of her Corporate Boss). You’re still just a boy, eighteen and barely on the cusp of adulthood, but the shadow doesn’t treat you like a child. Your life has been a never-ending series of being regulated and relegated, of being made smaller than you know you deserve to be, and being called a “beneficial addition” is the first taste of freedom you’ve ever encountered, the first taste of a life beyond the shackles the corporations had chained you with, the shackles you’d almost forgotten about.
You’re eighteen, barely on the cusp of adulthood, but it’s that boyishness that allows you to convince yourself of one very important idea: you were born for this.
After all, you remember God, but more importantly you remember the angel that turned his back to him. You remember God, but it is not the Almighty that you spent your life drawn to. An untainted halo, gold and glowing, was never what you wanted. In this world, if the corporations were supposed to be your God, you destined yourself to be the one who brought Him to his knees, the one strong enough to challenge the unchallengeable. With the Rebellion painting wings on your shoulder blades, you could be the one who would teach the world what it meant to be both monster and saint.
You’re a man now, and somewhere you lost your fire.
You think maybe that you lost it somewhere between the flames and forgeries, as though the bullets burned it out of you and every time you pretended to be anyone other than yourself (you do this all the time) you forgot what it tasted like to feel passion.
As though a life dedicated to The Cause had stripped you of yourself.
They gave you a starship to replace your wings, but all that glitters is not gold.
Your loyalty to the cause knew no bounds, but for all your charms, even among the people who are meant to be deemed “yours,” you are a creature too filled with darkness to truly belong, a very tired boy turned into a very tired man. Too much sinner to be welcomed among the ranks of the revolution, too much a saint to ever be welcomed back into a life under the corporations, you crafted your own bloodied halo and turned the inferno in your heart towards your palms.
A weapon is a man, a man is a weapon.
Consider this: is it better to live a sinner or die a saint?
The truth is, you’re far too much a glutton to retrain yourself to one, too eager to make people taste the same ash and soot staining your throat and too eager to make yourself the legend the legend your rulers have become. You make people forget, more often than not, that the same hands tracing constellations into the skin of their back have also had the opportunity to play out Mozart Requiem on men’s vocal cords, that the mouth whispering sweet Spanish nothings has also crushed men’s spirits with a single turn of phrase.
You make them forget, but you remember everything.
And sometimes the taste of that violence enchants, sings your name like larks in the cold dew of an early morning.
They ripped out your wings. They forgot you had claws.
















