An Eternity to Perish von AlenaChen ([Marco/Ace]) ================================================================================ Kapitel 1: There Were Once Just Memories… ----------------------------------------- The first time he remembered seeing the stranger, was on a random street in town. Ace had still been very little, although he could not really remember his exact age during that time. But it must have been one of his oldest childhood memories. And he had always thought it weird how something so insignificant as a random encounter on the street had managed to stay in his memories for so long, when he had forgotten so many other nice things that had happened around the same time, which he could now only recall by looking at the pictures his mother used to take of him. Like the one time they went to the amusement park. Or their trip to the huge zoo of the town. Those could have all been fond childhood memories, but he could barely recall any of it now. But of this one time he randomly met that stranger on the street – just a passing-by – he had very vivid and detailed memories. At that day he had been walking alongside his mother. He had not know where they were going and probably, as the child he had been, had not cared about it either. But she had been holding his hand and at one moment her grip around his fingers had tightened ever so slightly as if she had sensed something dangerous and her mother instincts had told her to hold one to him more firmly. He remembered looking up to her in his innocent confusion, but she had only been staring at something that had been in front of them and ignored him. Ace had followed her glance to the sidewalk in front of them and that had marked the exact moment when he had first seen him. It had been a strange, short meeting. Usually all those details he did still remember about it now should have been lost over all this time. But nonetheless he still remembered how the man looked like as if it had only been a minute ago that he had last seen him and definitely not through the eyes of a small child. The first thing that struck him had been the man’s size. Maybe he had simply seemed big, because Ace had been so small back then. But he had felt as if the man had been towering over him in a threating manner. The next thing he remembered had been the man’s unusual clothes. He was wearing sandals and short, blue trousers. Wrapped around one of his legs was some sort of white ornament object. He further wore a blue sash around his hips in which lay, half hidden, a belt that was adorned by even more, golden, ornaments. But the most striking had been the purple shirt the man wore openly, presenting a large, blue tattoo on his chest that seemed to be a cross with some sort of crescent shape running through its middle. He had felt threatened by the man back then at first, yes. But that was only because the man’s eyes had solely rested on him for the entirety their short meeting had lasted. But then all of a sudden, the man’s lips had curled up into a warm and gentle smile that was so unlike his threatening appearance that Ace had felt at ease at once. Seconds later they had passed him and that had concluded his first meeting with the man. In his memories he had simply been a stranger he could remember way too vividly without any apparent reason. He never thought about it much though and one day simply concluded that it must have been so memorable because it had been strange to him that someone would stare at him like that while he had been with his mother. When usually she was the one to get all the attention with her long and beautiful strawberry-colored hair and the freckles that adorned her face. The second time he saw the stranger was shortly after his mother had died. Ace had taken it very badly. Just like anyone would. He had been eighteen, at least old enough to live alone from then on. But what sort of comfort was that supposed to be? He had wanted his mother back. He had wanted her to be alive again. That had been all he had wanted. But of course nothing like that had happened. Nothing like that had even remotely been possible. So, to somehow suppress the pain in a very lame attempt, he went to visit a club in one of the worse parts of their town. It was stupid really, but he had drunken and drunken and yet the hollow feeling in his chest just had not wanted to go away. The only thing that had happened was that he had started to feel light-headed and sick. Of course he had never expected anything else, giving that he had never been one to drink much before. But it had been then that someone approached him. The man had been completely drunken himself. Ace had been unable to understand much of what the man had been saying, because the man had been slurring his words and Ace’s hearing was deafened by the noises around him and his own, poor state. But when the man got up, grabbed Ace’s arm and dragged him with him outside the building Ace followed him without hesitation. What did it matter anyway? Anything that was going to distract him from the pain and emptiness he was feeling back then had been a welcome distraction after all. They did not go far from the club. The man had dragged him into the nearest alley and had roughly pushed him against the wall there. Then he had slowly flicked his tongue over his lips and starred at Ace in a very lewd manner and it was probably in that moment when Ace first understood what was actually going on and he had started to panic for the first time. But before he had been able to do or say anything at all, the man before him had been pulled away from him and after a loud cracking noise sounded through the night, the man had scurried out of the alley, muttering wild insults that Ace had only been able to hear for a moment. Then he had looked up. Scared at first, but that fear had quickly disappeared when he had looked into the deep, brown eyes of the man he knew from his weird childhood memory that now stood before him and looked at him worriedly. The next thing he remembered was the man's deep, somehow familiar sounding voice saying his name. Saying it like a name he had longed to say for what might have been an eternity. "Ace." The man had said, worried, yes, but somehow he had even sounded happy, too. Ace’s eyes had widened. Scared, he had thought. He was scared. It had all been so unreal. Why was there such a painful, lonely and devastated feeling spreading through his body like wildfire at that moment? Why did looking into the depths of this man’s eyes feel so familiar? Why was there so… so much pain visible in them? Ace’s hand had reached out all on its own. There was a lump forming in his throat that he just couldn’t get past to speak out even a single word. But he had this irrepressible desire to run his fingers over this man’s cheeks. To comfort him. To tell him that everything was going to be fine. Because it was almost like the tormenting feelings he had to endure right at that moment were not his own and he had never been meant to feel them in the first place. The man however had caught Ace’s hand with his own before the youth had ever been able to touch him. “What are you doing here?” He had asked, his voice soft, yet stern and still so worried. “I’ll drive you home.” He had said and Ace knew it was not an offer. It was almost an order and there was nothing he could say against it. He never understood why he just went with that stranger, but somehow he had felt safe and protected by his side. He had been calm, almost a little happy, if the recent death of his mother had not still been heavy on his mind. The man had never asked why Ace had been at that place. He had never asked why he had gone with that man from the club. He had never asked what was bothering Ace. And Ace had never dared to ask any questions either. He had only wondered how the man knew his name, how he had known where Ace lived without asking him. Why he had looked at him as if they had already known each other for a long time. Yet somehow, Ace though, he wouldn’t have received an answer anyway, even if he had dared to ask. He has had his own theories though. Maybe the man was a friend of his mother, maybe even a past lover of hers and that was why he had watched over him. He had almost been inclined to ask him and to pour his heart out about his mother’s death, too. But somehow the silence between them as they drove had felt too thick for any words to cut through and so, in the end, he had said nothing at all. Yet, the strangest part of his memories of that day were still to come. And afterwards Ace had never been sure if it had all been real or not. After all he was almost sure that something like that could never have really happened. He had felt dizzy and sleepy, the alcohol still heavily clogging up his mind. The man had supported him as they were making their way up the stairs to the door and he had asked Ace for the key to open it. Once they had been inside the man had helped him to sit down on the couch. He had brought him a glass of water and then just stood there silently as Ace had taken a sip of it before putting it away. Ace barely remembered what had happened afterwards, but he still had blurry memories of the man crouching down in front of him. He had said something. “…miss you… so much…” Ace had barely been able to hear the whispered words. He had barely been able to feel the man’s fingers lightly and gently stroking his cheek. Almost like the touch of a ghost. He had seen his eyes drawing nearer, the saddest eyes in the whole world and then eyelids fluttering shut as lips suddenly brushed against his own. And even that kiss had been almost… like the touch of a ghost. He should have been afraid then. Being alone in his house with a stranger that had just kissed him. He should have been afraid. But he had not been afraid. Instead, his eyes had widened and all of a sudden there were images flooding his head, blurs of memories that were not his own. Could not be his own. And then there was one thing that stood out of all of it. One tiny, little thing that found its way onto the tip of his tongue. And as he spoke it, it had felt so unreal, so wrong and yet, somehow, right. “Marco…” A mere whisper. A name. Something he seemed to have long forgotten. Something he had not been supposed to remember. What had happened afterwards, Ace could not remember. Only that his vision had blurred and that the man had vanished somehow. Almost like a ghost, Ace had thought. And in his drunken state he had fallen asleep then, right there on the couch. And when he had woken up later that day he had thought that everything that had happened the night before had been nothing but a dream. Nothing, but a dream. Hosted by Animexx e.V. (http://www.animexx.de)