Title: Just Words
Author: Winter Ashby (rosweldrmr)
Disclaimer: I don't own Beyblade and I'm not affiliated with
Takao Aoki-sama in anyway. (I haven't even seen the show!) I don't own
Beyblade or the characters, I just mess with them.
Rating: M
Summary: Hilary has to face the consequences of her actions in the wake of the letter that's still clutched in her hand. What will this mean for her life now? Hilary will have to decide... (Hiro-Hilary-Kai triangle-ish)
Authors Notes: This one is a little different. I've been wanting to do something with Hiro in it for a while now. This didn't exactly turn out to be the epic fic that I intended it to, but sometimes brevity is to soul of wit, eh? It's a little convoluted, and jumbled but hopefully it makes sense. If not, let me know and I will tell what happened. (Although I don't think it's that hard to follow.) Italics are flashbacks and the --- indicates a switch back to the present time. Oh, and like always in my Beyblade fics, I use the Japanese names. Here is a little reference if you're not familiar with the names:
Hiromi is Hilary. Kai is Kai (Duh). Hitoshi is Hiro (Shppou no Jin is Jin of the Gale). Kyoujyo is Kenny.
They were just words on a page, just words.
Training.
Hiromi knew that words couldn't hurt… shouldn't hurt this much. But they did.
Accident.
They were like little knives that pierced her skin and tore her insides apart. She could feel her own blood dribble down the back of her throat; she could taste the tangy, metallic liquid against her tongue, almost like it was real. Almost like any of it was real.
Killed.
And then it was just tears on a page. Tears falling drop by drop, smudging the ink across her fingers, like black blood smeared on her hands.
And it was just blood, blood against snow. A man's body lay, contorted and twisted at the bottom of an icy ravine. It was just red, crimson, maroon spilling, staining, trickling down the rocky cliffs and white, ashen, sallow snow.
It was cold, and Hiromi shivered against the wind at her back and the guilt that settled in her gut. She could picture his face, torn and bruised, bluish and cold like icicles.
"You should go. This is a good opportunity for you." Hiromi smiled into the sun, and held a hand up against the light. A shadow fell over her eyes and she could feel him standing behind her. "Train in the mountains, where it's cool." A trickle of sweat fell from her neck and wound its way down her spine until it was absorbed into the white fabric of her summer dress.
She could feel him moving closer. She could smell grass and dew begin to envelope her as they tumbled together threw the mid-day sun and twisted around each other in a tangle of limbs and sheets.
She stood with the door of her apartment hanging open and the cool winter air rushing in. She shivered again and pulled the letter closer to her face, as if she was trying to make sure that the words were real.
Words, tears, and ink on a page.
Who knew that these simple things could bring such ruin? Who knew that she'd be the one to send him to his grave?
"When I come back-"
"You'll be the champion." Hiromi finished his sentence, unsure that she was filling in the right words, but knowing that if there was another end to that thought, she wasn't strong enough to hear it. Her heart already buckled at the edges, thinking of him being away so long.
"And then-"
"And then, you will be champion." She was almost sure then that he was trying to tell her something very important. The way his eyes kept darting to her lips made her almost sure of what he way trying to say. But she wouldn't let him. She wouldn't let him be the one to say the one thing that they'd both been trying for years to figure out how to say, just so he could walk out of her life again.
"Yes. I will be champion."
They were just words. Words that she'd never let him say. Three little words that seemed so important back then, so important that she didn't let him, and now she regretted it because she would never hear him say it. And he would never know that she loved him too. They were just silly little thoughts that meant nothing. Not anymore, not now that she had no one to apologize to, not now that there wasn't anyone left to feel betrayed by her actions.
"Why did you want me to help you?" Hiromi sat at the low table in the tiny kitchen and watched Kai from across it, loading his chopsticks with mounds of rice. He looked up from the pile of white rice tilting slightly to the left and gave her a curious look.
"I don't understand the question."
"Why didn't you go to Kyoujyo, or Hitoshi for help training?" She watched him carefully. The way his eyes slimmed at the mention of Hitoshi's name. The way his knuckles turned white against the bamboo chopsticks in his hand. She thought if she listened hard enough, she could hear the wood begin to splinter in his hand.
He'd always hated Hitoshi, ever since he appeared as Shippou no Jin, Kai seemed filled with a strange, unfounded kind of animosity.
"Kyoujyo is helping Takao train, you know that."
"Yes, I know. But what about Hitoshi, you could have asked him." She waited, hoping he'd take the bait. It had only been six months since Kai showed up at her door, skinny, dirty, and half asleep. She took him in and gave him the empty room at the other end of the hall. He emerged the next morning hungry and angry.
He told her the room smelled like a coward. No doubt he'd seen the pictures of her and Hitoshi hanging on the walls as he stumbled into the prepared futon she'd laid out for him. She just laughed dryly and remembered to take the pictures down while he was eating breakfast.
"I'm sure you know exactly where to find him." He shoveled another heap of rice into his mouth and at least had the decency not to look her in the eyes.
"Yes, I do know where to find him. I could send him a letter today if you wanted."
"No."
"Why not?" She didn't blink as she watched him try to swallow his pride. He seemed to be choking on it.
"He's a fraud and a coward." Hiromi frowned. It seemed he wasn't ready to admit the truth. But that was fine with her, she didn't mind taking her time. She held her breath, waiting to see if she could milk the silence for a little more from him. "He hides behind his mask and fake name so he can intimidate his own brother. He's a traitor."
Hiromi thought of Brooklyn and Hitoshi standing in the background, arms crossed, watching, calculating. "Is that so?" she fought to keep her voice calm so he wouldn't know just how close he came to feeling her palm against his cheek. "I can think of another person who jumped ship." She lifted an eyebrow and pinned him with a questioning glare.
"Don't compare me to him." He set is chopsticks down, hard. "I had my reasons."
"I'm sure you did." She stood, and gathered her unfinished bowls and stacked them in her hand. "I'm sure Hitoshi had his reasons too." She walked to the sink and left the bowls un-rinsed. "You shouldn't judge people so easily. He's a good man."
Eventually she shut the door, still clutching the letter in her hand. She couldn't bring herself to walk down the hall, to the room that was once again empty where he once stayed. Kai's clothes now littered her room and boxes of old papers and odds and ends filled the bedroom at the end of the hall. She felt sick, like there was bile in her stomach that was bubbling over into her throat. She could taste her own betrayal on her tongue, and it tasted like spicy beef. It tasted like Kai.
"So, where is he?"
Hiromi turned from the picture in her hands to the door of her bedroom. Kai stood with his arms crossed. She didn't even have the energy to wipe the tears away, she just let them fall and coat the glass covering her face with a river of regret. "Training."
It was all she had to say. She knew he wouldn't ask again.
"I didn't come here for you."
"As if you had to tell me that." She knew the day he arrived on her door that she wasn't the one he'd come to find. She knew it was Hitoshi that Kai has sought out, through his burning pride. He'd managed to put his ego second and seek the advice of a person he loathed so that he could better himself. He so reminded her of Hitoshi then. She supposed that was the reason she let him stay, let him lie to her and say he'd come to get her help training like she'd done when they were younger.
"But…" But when he showed up here and found her standing there in nothing but one of Hitoshi's old shirts that he'd left behind, Kai settled for what he could get.
She watched him ball his hands into fists, like he was forcing himself not to spit at her feet and leave her with a toss of his scarf.
"But what?"
"You've been a good coach." And he did turn then, trailing a scent of spicy beef all the way down to hall to the room that used to smell like fresh cut grass and early morning dew. She'd never be able to make that room smell like Hitoshi again, not after Kai's domineering scent leaked its way into her floorboards.
It was slowly become more and more bearable to have him around. He gave her something to do, something to keep her mind off counting the moments Hitoshi was away.
She'd never meant for it to happen. She'd never intended to betray him while he was away; training in the cold like she'd given her blessing to. After all, they were just words. Words she'd spoken, a request she couldn't turn down. She never could have denied him the chance to train, to become a real champion in his own right. In the end, he was just like all the others. He sought power and acknowledgment. He went to his death with neither. And he never even knew she betrayed him.
It almost made it worse.
"Why did he leave?" Kai asked one morning almost a year after he'd first stepped foot into her house.
"Because he wanted to be a champion, you of all people should understand that." She shifted her position in bed to she could look at Kai's face over the bulge of the pillow.
"But why did you let him?" She hated him then for being so perceptive. He hid that part of himself so well she sometimes forget that he could read her perfectly.
"Because I had no right to ask him to stay." She answered truthfully with a cool indifference she'd perfected in the time Hitoshi had been away.
"And what will happen when he comes back?"
"What'd you think?" She asked, bluntly, knowing full well that he knew what that would mean.
"And what if he doesn't come back?"
"He will come back." She turned her back to him then, burying her face in the sheets and squeezing her eyes shut. "And when he does, you'll have to leave."
It was summer again, and the sweat pooled against the places where their naked bodies touched. It was so hot it almost burned to touch him. But at least she could feel it; at least it was something, even if it was just to pass the time.
It started with words. Just tiny words that flitted past his lips and stirred up the little doubt that swirled in her belly. But there were also other kinds of words that passed between them in the withering summer and blossoming fall. Words that were never spoken, looks that were secretly met over dinner tables and fall festivals. They were just fleeting glances and feather-soft touches as she passed him bowls of rice or when their shoulders brushed in the halls of her tiny, two-bedroom apartment. He'd slowly moved his things into her room until one day she woke up and there was a spare room instead of a guest room.
He'd grown on her. Bit by bit. Day by day. He was getting bigger and bigger until his scent enveloped the entire apartment and there wasn't a trace of grass or dew in the entire building. But it faded so slowly, it was replaced so gradually, Hiromi didn't even notice. Until it rained one afternoon and he realized that there was something missing from her apartment. It was then that Hiromi discovered that all traces of Hitoshi were gone from her life, except the pictures she hid in her bottom drawer and a few shirts that all smelled like Kai now.
---
"It's freezing out here. What the hell happened?"
"He's dead." Hiromi looked up at Kai from the arm of a chair where she teetered. She pulled a hand to her mouth and dry heaved into her palm.
"What!?" She held out a shaking hand with the letter crinkled in it. He took it, lightly touching her hand. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about how many times those hands had touched her in Hitoshi's absence.
"This… is this for real?" His voice wavered for a moment.
"He's been dead for a month. It took that long to find him and send notification." She could feel the same old walls of indifference begin to erect around her shattered heart.
"What are you-"
"I'm going to tell Takao, he should know his brother is dead." She stood and headed for their bedroom. But Kai caught her around the wrist and pulled her flush against his chest.
"What about us?"
"What us?" She pushed back, defiant and smoldering guilt welling in her gut.
"You can't pretend that none of this happened."
"Trust me, I know that. I only wish I could." Her words were cold and sharp, like daggers that spewed from her mouth and tore him into shreds.
"You don't mean that." He didn't wear the face paint anymore. It was odd that she noticed that now, that it seemed so meaningful now. It meant that he was different. She'd seen the change in him, but she wasn't going to let that get in the way of the devastating self-loathing she was soaking in.
"Yes, I do. Now let me go." She lowered her voice so that it sounded dangerous. He obeyed. "And when I get back, I don't want to see you. Have your stuff packed and get out. I'll give you two days." She didn't bother going to their bedroom to change. None of it really seemed important then. She left him in silence as she pulled one of his scarves from the hook by the door, and slipped on her shoes. He didn't point out that she was taking one of his. She was grateful for that, at least.
She opened the door, and let it hang open as she stepped out into the cold, blistery winter day. Her keys in her hand, she looked back at Kai's face, framed in the doorway.
"But you said you loved me." He looked wounded then, almost human, almost like he knew what it was like to have love and lost.
"They were just words."
Questions? Comments?
Oh, yeah. I also forgot to mention, this is dedicated to SpiritualEnergy who inspired me to write this, and keeps trying (and succeeding) to get me into Beyblade. I have volume 1-3 of the god awful manga to prove it. :hugs: You know I luff you, even if I have seen your naked baby pictures...