Chapter Text
The first rule of the Brightwing was simple.
Do not touch the threads of fate that are not yours.
And the second is simpler:
Do not let your heart be flattered by the bound
The moment she felt the time tear open, she slipped between the seconds—light bent. Sound folded inward, and time spat her out into a narrow, rain-soaked alley in the early 2000s. Fragments of time drifted around her like glowing petals—moments she had lived, moments she had escaped, and moments she would soon regret.
Four butterfly iridescent wings trailing behind her back, wings no mortal nor immortal eyes had ever seen and survived intact. She staggered forward, heart pounding with an emotion she hadn't felt in centuries. Guilt clawed at her chest—raw, suffocating, relentless. She pressed a trembling hand to her sternum, forcing a breath through the ache.
“He’ll move on,” She whispered to herself, though she didn’t believe it. “You saved him from yourself. From…this”
The lie burned as it slipped through her lips.
The streets buzzed with neon signs, cheap perfume, and the humming quiet of nighttime city life. She walked without purpose, small butterflies surrounding her body as she went back to her human disguise and an outfit appropriate for the timeline she was in. Heels clicking rhythmically against the wet pavement. Every step was an attempt to outrun him—the smile she loved, those brown eyes filled with mirth and possessiveness staring right through her, the hands that were held out in front of her, the voice laced with curiosity and softness as he called her name.
But memories cling harder than time.
She wandered without aim, letting the city swallow her. Humans flooded the sidewalks in waves—phones pressed to ears, conversations overlapping, lives unfolding too fast.
Time here felt different.
Loud.
Sharp.
Busy enough to bury memories.
She welcomed the drowning. She passed a cafe blasting tinny pop music. A bus roared by, its brakes screaming. A cyclist nearly hit her, shouting an apology she barely heard. She crossed another street.
Still, his voice clung to her mind like a ghost.
My dear… what an interesting creature you are…
She exhaled sharply. “Of all the centuries,” she muttered, “why this one?”
She wandered until she found herself beside a small electronics shop wedged between a bakery and a pawn store. Noticing its unfurnished wood column, indicating the store was centuries old, with its fluorescent lights flickering weakly, illuminating rows of radios displayed like hollowed ghosts.
Modern ones.
Digital ones.
Sleek, plastic things she didn’t recognize.
But there, on the far left of the display window, was a familiar shape. A very antique radio. Walnut wood as its base, polished really well so that it still looks very new, not a radio that was made in the old times. Dials made of brass. A grille shaped like a cathedral window.
Her breath caught painfully. “I’m sorry,” she choked, pressing her fingers to the cold glass. She bowed her head, letting the rain and guilt wash over her. When she finally tore herself away, she turned to leave—and froze. A soft crackle slipped into her ears, and a familiar hum came from the radio in front of her as it got replaced by static.
Her blood ran cold. Slowly, she turned back toward the window. The antique radio was glowing. Its knobs turned on their own, scraping against the wood. The dials jittered violently from left to right, searching—no, tuning—as though eager to hear a voice.
Her heart thudded. “That’s not possible…”
The static sharpened, aligning.
Then—A quiet, warm voice drifted through the speakers. One she hadn’t heard since the 1920s.
“Testing…one, two.” The broadcast crackled through time like a splinter in her spine.
Alastor
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Today’s broadcast is dedicated to a woman I once knew.
Peculiar, elegant… and quite unlike anyone else, even I couldn’t decipher her next actions. Smiled like she carried secrets older than the bayou itself.” She staggered back as if struck. No. No, no, no—
“She vanished one day,” he continued softly, sorrow threading between each word. “Slipped away before I could ask her why. And I—foolish, arrogant—believed myself above such sentiments as grief.”
He wasn’t supposed to follow her. Humans weren’t supposed to follow anyone through time. His soul wasn’t supposed to be strong enough to leave an imprint…a bond. And no one—not human, not demon, not heavenly being—was supposed to remember her when she stepped out of their timeline.
Yet he was always—
Watching
Listening
Waiting
“If there were such a place as Hell… I’d meet her there, you know. I’d search every corner until I found her again.” Her throat closed. This wasn’t a recording. This wasn’t an echo. This was her timeline bleeding into another.
He wasn’t here. Not yet.
“Alastor…” she whispered, gaze showing longing yet filled with guilt. “Please… Please don’t follow me. Let me go. Don’t look for me anymore.” Closing her eyes while leaning her forehead on the window.
The radio hissed. The warm human voice vanished— crushed beneath a sound like insects crawling through electricity. A deeper static rolled through the speaker—low, amused, and inevitable.
Hungrier.
Older.
Wrong.
Her eyes snapped open in instinctual terror. Then— a deep and hissing voice spoke, “Oh, ma chère, you should know better than that.” The lights in the shop flickered violently as the radio glowed green, symbols started to appear with it. “You can slip through centuries…You can shed faces… You can bury your name…” The radio’s grille bent outward as if something inside wanted to crawl through.
“But I will always find you.”
She stumbled back into the street, trembling as the static bled into a distorted laugh— the same laugh she once thought she would never hear again. The radio died suddenly. The glow vanished. Silence fell. But the echo of his promise— his vow— hung in the air long after the speaker went dark. And she realized something chilling: The chase began, and fate snapped shut like a trap around them both.
She hadn’t escaped him.
She had led him straight to her.