Gargoyles Fan Fiction ❯ Of The Night ❯ Hello, Gargoyle ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: “Gargoyles,” its products and such, are copyrighted by The WB, and possibly some other things I don't know of. The point is, I don't own “Gargoyles,” in whole or in part. I am but a feeble fanfiction-writer out to amuse herself.

 

 

Of The Night

 

One

 

 

Describing herself wasn't something Lydia knew how to do well, nor something she was asked to do often. Many of the questions she was asked over the course of her life were asked by her, verbally or not. She was one of those rare human beings who didn't feel right in the body they were born in. Lydia in particular had an interest in the nonexistent; creatures that were said to be total myth intrigued her, and probably more so than was thought sane.

Lydia was born and raised an orphan, whose adopted parents were distant throughout her life. The closest person to her was always her elder brother, despite not being blood-related. There were times she entertained fantasies about being a real sister to a real brother, and yet she never understood how easy it could be.

She grew up knowing she was an orphan, never using the words “mother” or “father” towards her adopted parents. The distance, at times, was so great it seemed insurmountable. In school she never made friends, never seemed interested in boys, but was such a great study that she graduated at age sixteen and valedictorian.

She wasted no time in trying to separate from her parents, landing a full-time job at a post office working third-shift, from dusk until dawn. She also kept an eye on herself in a physical sense, staying in shape, fit, strong, and flexible. Her job helped in this endeavor, as it kept her moving at all times.

Almost one year after graduating, she had a job, money, and a one-room apartment on the fifth floor of a seven-floor building. The room itself was about twelve-foot square, plus a bathroom complete with a shower and a doublewide closet, but no kitchen nor refrigerator nor stove. For a while she ate out for all her meals, and then bought a portable stove and mini-fridge.

Rather than getting a car, she chose the sometimes-quicker path of getting a bike and set of roller blades. These, along with cabs, transported her wherever she wanted to go within Manhattan.

And then the big news about gargoyles struck the big city, leaving Lydia feeling like she had literally walked into a myth. All of her interest in the paranormal, impossible, improbable, and pseudo paid off all at once. The problem was that she couldn't figure a way to meet these gargoyles, as there never was any specifics about what they did all day or where they stayed.

The photos in the newspapers were always blurry, snapped in a hurry and often by a lucky pedestrian. This left her with a very limited mental image of what they looked like, let alone what color they were. The only parts discernable about the collection of pictures were that the gargoyles had wings, all of them, and that they seemed overall humanoid - built like human men and women, if with some differences.

Two of Lydia's personal habits that she was never able to shake over her lifetime were for one, the need to climb. She often stepped out of her apartment window to climb the fire escape to the roof, and from there simply enjoyed herself. The second, more costly habit was the need to draw. She hadn't taken classes for it, merely bought sketchbooks, pencils, markers, and learned by practice alone. It was something she could remember doing even as a child, and always the subject remained mythological; a great amount of sketches were thought up by her alone.

It was during the former of these habits that she first encountered the fabled “gargoyles.” As she reached the roof and climbed up, she didn't see the robbers - not until it was a bit too late. Upon seeing the first of them, she recoiled only to be swung around. Four men surrounded her, one of whom held her by the arm. Although she considered herself capable of getting out of scrapes like this, it almost entirely depended on her ability to out-maneuver the attackers. If she couldn't escape their grasp, there was little chance she could continually dodge any additional grabs.

It took two seconds for this realization to hit her, which was followed instantly by a sinking feeling in her gut. Still, she resolved herself to try, twisting her arm and dropping to her knees. It worked in freeing her arm, and so she darted for the fire escape. She got one foot on the wall, and that was as far as she was going to get. Something grabbed the vest she wore and jerked her back, the force of the pull bruising her underarms. She hit the ground hard on her rear, but kept from being laid out flat.

“That was close,” one of the men commented to another. “We almost lost `er.”

All four men were surrounding her again, but despite the harrowing situation this was, she couldn't summon any real fear. If anything, she felt like laughing at the irony present: she was now likely to be killed by the looks of these men, and nobody was going to miss her.

“I think you did!” came a different voice, a belated answer to the man's earlier comment. All five present looked in the direction of the voice, which was baffling in and of itself - it came from above. She had enough time to recognize was seemed to be a winged form diving downwards to the roof before all hell broke loose.

She was yanked up to her feet, used as a human shield with one arm twisted behind her back, while the winged beast shoved through three of the four attackers as though they were tissue paper. It wasn't until a few seconds later, when the excitement died down, that she fully realized she was staring at a gargoyle.

He was a dark color, though in the low light around it was hard to see well, and he was hunched a bit, hiding his height. Staring straight at her and the criminal holding her, she had to wonder what was going through this gargoyle's mind. He seemed to be helping her, but she wasn't so hopeful as to jump to conclusions.

“Back off!” the man behind her snapped. It wasn't until this moment that she became aware there was a blade pressed against her neck. “I know what you are, beast!”

The gargoyle growled, and a tinge of fear went through her to see his glowing in the darkness.

“I go free, or the girl dies,” the man snarled.

Oh, hell no, her mind replied. With her free left hand, she reached up and grabbed the man's wrist, trying to twist it away from her neck. Somehow, in the flurry of movement that followed, she felt herself thrown and spun, hitting the wall hard. She collapsed against it, one hand holding her neck, though at first she didn't understand why. Then she was looking up, hearing a shriek directly in front of her.

She wasn't the only thing that had moved. The gargoyle was standing at his full height now, on top of the wall's additional three feet or so. In his hand, he was dangling the man by his neck, eyes still glowing brightly. In one split second she saw him from a whole different view, realizing for the first time that he had an elongated face, more of a beak than a mouth, and long white hair.

“Don't!” the perpetrator was saying desperately. “Let me go, let me go!”

A chuckle came from the gargoyle. “Maybe you should reconsider that phrase, given where you are right now.” His voice was lower than before, she noted; a bit raspier and definitely more threatening.

“I didn't - I wasn't -” the man was stuttering.

“You obviously don't know what I am,” the gargoyle told him. “Gargoyles protect; it's what we're born to do. You tried to kill this girl,” he gestured her with his free hand, “threatened her life. Guess what that means to me,” he finished, a clear growl coming through at the end.

The criminal looked ready to faint, fear making him struggle harder against the gargoyle's grip.

“I say drop him,” Lydia threw in, surprised at how raspy her own voice was. Clearing her throat did nothing to help, she noted as she went on, “I think he deserves it.”

“No!! Oh, god -” the man blurted, kicking his feet.

The gargoyle, on the other hand, glanced down at her, the glow of his eyes disappearing. “Do you think he'd die at the impact? This is - what, eight stories high?”

“Seven,” she corrected, holding her neck a little tighter in a vain attempt at smoothing her voice. “And no, I don't think it'd kill him. It's more like an eye for an eye, in different context.”

“So you think a bunch of broken bones equals a threat?”

How strange, she thought, that she was arguing semantics with a gargoyle. She pulled her hand away from her neck, palm outward. “He didn't just threaten me,” she replied.

He looked surprised for a second, and then the glowing eyes returned. With another growl, he swung that terrifying gaze on the man still dangling seven stories above a cement alley. “You cut her!” he snarled. Everything about this gargoyle was starting to frighten her, but no more so than the man in his hand.

The man whimpered now, struggled a second more, then seemed to go limp. With a twist of the gargoyle's arm, he was thrown onto the roof, where he tumbled like a rag doll for a second before lying totally still. Four unconscious men lay practically in a pile, all at the hands of a single gargoyle. Lydia found herself with a newfound respect for the dark, shadowy figure that had saved her.

With a bit of effort, she got to her feet, surprised to find herself helped by the gargoyle, steadying her with a hand on her arm. And for tossing around four men so easily, his grip was far from painful. Now standing much closer, she could see many more details about him that she couldn't before: a stout nose, horns atop his head, and deeply-shadowed eyes stood out to her.

“Do you live around here?” he asked her.

Once again, she found herself surprised - this time at his question. She gave a nod, then glanced over the wall at the fire escape. Pointing, she said, “Three windows down.” Now she was officially frustrated at the sound of her own voice.

“Okay, let's go.”

She stared at him. “Go?” she repeated.

“Yeah, we have to take a better look at your neck.”

The wound. She'd almost forgotten for a moment there that this might be a life-threatening cut, given the pain hadn't quite set in yet. Now that she was thinking about it, she could already start to feel a throb that warned of the pain to come. “Right, that,” she rasped. She swung her legs over the wall, and that was about all she did by herself.

He hopped over the wall much quicker than her, and with a grip on her waist, helped her down onto the metal railing. He even led her down the steps to her window, on alert in case she fell, she supposed. And after helping her through her window, he actually waited for her permission to enter her apartment.

Whatever his ideas of propriety, they certainly exceeded her own. She had a touch-lamp by her bed, and three taps turned it on fully. Then she went to her bathroom, flipped on the light, and opened the mirror-cabinet to begin taking out first aid items. She had three sizes of medical tape in there, along with Neosporin, rubbing alcohol, peroxide, and more band-aids than she thought she'd ever need.

When she closed the mirror, she jumped pretty hard at seeing the reflection of both of them. “Geez,” she sighed.

“Sorry,” was his apology. “I forget sometimes how scary I look to humans.”

“It's not that,” she clarified, tilting her head to see her cut. “I'm not used to seeing other people in my mirror.”

“You mean you don't have guests?” he asked, leaning far to one side - she guessed to see the wound as well.

“Nu-uh,” she answered, wishing she had cotton swabs. She added that item to a mental list of things she needed the next time she went shopping.

She wasn't positive exactly what followed, given she started to suffer from blood loss, but she had a lasting feeling of being spoken to and of talking back. Perhaps this gargoyle was far more clever than the tabloids made them out to be, keeping her partially focused the entire time. She also had the distinct feeling of falling for a brief moment, and then of being propped up. Her sight came to and went of its own accord, leaving her with glimpses that reminded her of freeze-frame and skip functions on DVDs.

Once her eyesight cleared again, she found herself more or less sprawled across her bed. Getting a grip on the reality around her, she sat up and met with another unusual sight: that gargoyle was still here. He was sitting on the foot of the bed, back to her, glancing this way and that, his wings draped around his shoulders.

“Did I miss something?” she asked.

He turned halfway towards her, and she could almost believe he was smiling. “You were out for a little while,” he answered. “I thought of calling an ambulance here for you, but there's a few problems with that.”

“. . .Like?” she prodded.

“I don't know the address here, or the apartment number. And I don't see a phone anywhere.”

“I have a cell,” she told him. “Ah. . .and I left it at work,” she went on as she realized it. She blew out a sigh at her own forgetfulness, then decided to change the subject, even as she felt the bandages around her neck. “How long exactly was I out?”

“Maybe half an hour,” he told her with a slight shrug. “You gonna be okay?”

“I've suffered worse,” she answered with her own shrug. “What were you doing this whole time?”

“You mean besides worrying?”

The world around her shook at that question.

“Admiring the neatness you keep your room in, for one,” he pointed out.

She glanced at the floor. Her bike had slid flat onto the floor, her backpack had been tossed without concern, she had clothes dropped just about everywhere, and old magazines, newspapers and sketchbooks were piled in several places. A twelve-by-twelve room looked filled to the brim despite it having a small amount of items around. Other than her bed, nightstand, desk and fridge, nothing really took up any large amount of space nor needed to remain in place.

She scoffed at the sight. “I figure it this way: only parents or those looking to be parents have a need to keep tidy,” she told him.

“Words to live by,” he laughed.

A pause stretched out between them until, in unison, they said, “What's your name?”

Lydia's brows shot up. Never before had she managed that kind of stunt. Before she could answer, he did, saying, “Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn?” she echoed. “Like the city?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I was kinda named after it. So, you are?”

“Lydia,” she introduced with a nod. “Hey, a second ago you said `admiring the neatness for one.' What was the other?”

He lifted his hand in an answer, and she recognized a sketchbook of hers. It was an earlier one, which she could tell immediately by the page it was open on: a female centaur stood erect on hind legs, spear weapon in hand, with flames around each hoof. It was one she did more than two years prior.

“Ah,” was all she could say. Oddly, she didn't feel like her privacy was invaded at all; it was a carelessness she had known for most of her life.

“These are pretty good,” he said. “How long have you been at it?”

“I date the pictures individually,” she told him. “Top right corner.”

“I noticed that. I'm asking if you've been drawing longer than two years.”

“Since I was little,” she answered, shrugging. “I don't have a real time frame.”

He nodded, and after a lengthy pause, closed the sketchbook and put it down. Then he got to his feet, saying, “If you're gonna be okay, then I need to get going.”

She almost panicked, shocked at herself for having such a reaction. Even so, she felt she couldn't let him walk out of her life just as easily as he showed up. He was the only person she'd had a real conversation with in years. She stopped him by getting up and asking, “Wait, uh. . . You know where I live; where do you live?”

He actually looked a bit surprised at the question. “Why do you want to know?”

He sounded more than a little defensive, which she supposed she could understand. “What if I want to talk to you again? I'd rather not get attacked every time I want to say hey,” she reasoned.

After a few seconds' hesitation, she thought she saw amusement on his face. “C'mere,” he said, curling his fingers in a gesture matching the phrase.

“. . .To where?”

“The window,” he answered, pointing at it. Once she had joined him, he pointed over the nearby buildings at a particularly tall skyscraper. “I live up there, above the clouds.”

“Isn't it hard to breathe that high up?” was her immediate retort.

He chuckled. “Not for gargoyles.”

She glanced at him. “I have to ask. . . Are you a good example of gargoyles in general?”

“You mean how I'm built?” At her nod, he went on. “Not as much. We're all very different.”

“Define `very,'” she pressed.

“Well, I have two best friends,” he told her. “Broadway is blue and much bigger than me; Lex is green and much smaller.”

She lifted her brows, having trouble envisioning what he meant. “So three vastly different gargoyles,” she put together.

“Yeah,” he laughed. “But there's more than just three of us.”

“I'm not surprised,” she replied. “There's girl gargoyles too?”

“I'll say,” he said quietly.

“What does that mean?”

“Very pretty girls,” he told her with a smirk.

“Oh. Sounds nice,” was all she could think to say.

He opened the window, a clear sign that he was going to leave. But before going, he said, “Make sure you get that cut looked at better.”

“Gargoyles aren't doctors?” she teased, smiling.

“Nope. See ya, Lydia.”

He climbed out and quite literally climbed up the fire escape, which she noticed was much quicker and probably easier than rounding the stairs for three stories. Once she heard wind rushing by the window, she shut it.

Her mind kept replaying the events of the night, short though it was. Most pointedly, she found herself trying to understand Brooklyn in a physical kind o way, fascinated with the way he looked. She was trying to recall every detail as best she could, and came to several realizations as she did so. His wings were at the forefront of her mind despite her attempts to banish it back; wings always held the strongest interest to her.

And then her mind brought back the incredibly gentle way he'd helped her down the fire escape, bringing up his hands. He had four fingers? Or was it five and she hadn't looked hard enough? Not to mention the few times she'd touched him, she hadn't felt hair the way humans had it. Other than that long, white mane of his, she seriously doubted he had any hair. He certainly didn't have eyebrows, though that didn't have any hindrances for his facial expressions.

What a peculiar person he was, gargoyle or not. She definitely had to see him again, if only to get concrete images of what he looked like. It was then that she decided she had to put onto paper what she could remember, so she set to work doing so. The downside was how hard it was to find suitable pencils and open sketchbooks.

Though her mind supplied her with plenty of detailed images, she couldn't seem to put it to paper right. Several sketches later and she just about gave up, frustrated with the failures. A twinge in her neck helped her put the paper down, reminding her that she still had to get a checkup for this cut. That in mind, she resolved to leave the sketchbooks alone and put her health first. She took a cab to the nearest little clinic, glad that was barely eight-thirty.

All throughout the checkup, prescription, cab ride back and the rest of the night, she couldn't get Brooklyn out of her head.