fandom - Viewfinder
title - blindfold.
pairing - Fei Long x Takaba, Asami x Takaba
description - Impatiently, Takaba waits in Hong Kong. Slowly, but surely, he is learning that Fei Long and Asami are more similar than his pride would like to acknowledge.

Disclaimer – Viewfinder isn't mine.

blindfold.
By miyamoto yui

After the blindfold has been taken away, the brilliant summer sun burns my eyes.

Its rays feel as if they want to singe my skin in the next few seconds. In contrast to the gentle way they took off the black silk handkerchief, they shoved me into the middle of the room full of windows.
My lips bleed immediately after rubbing against the carpeted floor. Still, I bite my lower lip from letting out any kind of response as the two guards laugh at my misery.
"Where's your pride now, Boy? You used to shout whenever we took you somewhere. Are you getting used to everything all right?"
Their eyes give a menacing, demeaning glance at me and they leave. My fingers grope onto the floor and I make sure they were gone before I pat my mouth and close my eyes from the throbbing. "Ahh…" I say while making a hissing noise.
As I wobbly sit up, I realize that the fasting is starting to take effect on my body. I watch my reflection for an instant and then my eyes roam around the room.
"I haven't been here before..." my voice trails off. It's like a greenhouse, but there's a white bed to one side. Even the ceiling is made of glass and there are patterns of phoenixes and dragons etched into the walls. Who would have thought that Fei Long paid attention to such things? Then again, he and Asami are haughty that way: Thinking that their taste in beauty is impeccable. But even I had to admit that I silently agreed with their aesthetic preferences.
As I walk towards one of the windows, I realize where I am. The windows are covered with steel metal bars. Beyond that, I can still make out that it is the peak. I can see all of Hong Kong from up here and it is beautiful even with all the smog.
There are ships sailing everywhere, large green hills, long cement bridges, and tall buildings full of windows. Even though I've been taken here against my will, I can't deny that the view is breathtaking.

Even now, I wish I had my camera.

The sun is so bright that I think I'll melt away, disappear into the atmosphere. I look around the room and it is almost becoming comfortable. After all, I am always transported to somewhere new almost everyday. When do I get to breathe with Fei Long always breathing and licking my back?
I feel a little dizzy as my eyes hazily look around to find where the opium holder is hidden this time. Fei Long likes to keep me clawing around because it amuses him. "You're just like him. Torturing people because you enjoy seeing a face that's only for you. Whether it is in pleasure or in pain, you don't care as long as it's only towards you. Selfish..."
Yet, with all my being, I still continue to fight. But for what exactly? To be imprisoned again by someone like that? Whenever I think of Asami, I would be filled with images and then my body would react. His fingers and his lips have touched me where even the powerful sun has not been able to touch. Even Fei Long, who tries to emulate the same reaction out of you using your words and your caresses, doesn't make such an invisible indentation. My body knows who has raped it open, along with my deepest, darkest feelings and desires.
But what is there for a bird to do as it sits in its cage? Even if I stand here with torn clothes and vicious eyes, I am not his. Nor am I yours. I am a slave to my camera and all the images it holds. Yet, does that mean as I enjoy the scenery that I could never imagine myself in such circumstances? Am I always looking at things from an outsider's point of view even though I am supposed to evoke the emotion of what's going on in the middle of it all?
Am I diminishing in this place?
I look up to the ceiling, wishing it would cave in and bury me. What would photography mean now? The more I stay away from the viewfinder, I feel like my life has no purpose. I am a vessel for my camera's thoughts. Maybe that's why no one cares about my feelings no matter many times they take my body. It just reacts as I watch, unable to feel a damn thing.
The constant switch between apathetic surrender and unyielding protesting is the only way I've been able to live on in this country. I don't know how to speak Chinese but I can feel what they tell me. I've become so helpless that I can have this much time to think of stupid things like this.

You didn't do anything to me. And yet, I am so sure that isn't true. Not at all.

I grab half of my face as my body sways back and forth. My knees slip to the ground. Listlessly, I look around this empty room. I imagine how I would take a photograph of this room. Years ago, I used to just capture scenery like mountains, lakes, high-rise buildings, parks, and interesting art pieces all over Japan when I left home to go traveling. I just came back to Tokyo when I started my job. Before, people were superfluous to any of the scenes I took. I used to etch them out through computer image techniques unless I was told not to. This was all until I began to understand that expression was more than colors, angles, aesthetics, symmetry and formation.

This was all before the moment I met you, Asami. That's when I realized that people could be used to emphasize the message or image conveyed.

Your damn confident, devilishly impenetrable eyes…

I want to escape from here, but all the more, I want to go to a place where you can't find me.
"Yet even that...I..." I sigh.
The more I resist, the more the Chinese paper finger puzzle exists to strangle me. If I were to think of staying, that would be the end of me because this is more than pride. In a world that I do not know, I can't even speak the language, not even 'Thank you' or 'Where am I'? More than that, I am not even a human being anymore.
I've tried to jump off the pier, but that was a madman's attempt. I wasn't too sure of the details because I could have dreamt it since time is passing too slowly here.
When I jumped, I realized that I had your picture somehow stuck with me under the blue sky. It was the same clear one where I ran away from you and jumped off a building with you trailing after me.
It was worse than the first time we met because in that expression, you looked as if you wanted to hold your hand out to me, but your lips remained closed. Your eyes…

…your eyes stared at me so longingly, yet you still smirked as if it was all amusing to you…

I loved that picture even though it hurt me just as much. In the next second, drowning, I couldn't help but feel ashamed that I'd thought of giving up for one second.

You aren't the reason why.

You were the person that caused this whole mess in the first place. My life was going somewhere and then when you appeared, everything seemed to revolve around you. I was just trying to make a story, but you had to make a toy out of me. Now, everyone thinks they can do the same.

Tap, tap, tap…
I don't even notice that I am already on the ground, gasping and feverish. I watch Fei Long's feet as they quietly walk towards me.
One knee kneels to the ground as he puts one cold hand under my neck, raising me to eye-level. "Even if you're dragged to the ground, your eyes are still defiant."
I didn't know that even through all my physical weakness, I could still evoke that kind of emotion out of me.
"But…you will soon find out that Asami's kindness runs out. Even for you."
Fei Long begins to lick my ear and I flinch, hating myself for showing him a little of myself everyday that he explored my body. I turn my head to one side and watch one of the steel bars outside the window.
It is then that Fei Long carries me to the bed. "You've gotten much lighter since you've come here."
I look at him again and bite my lower lip, pushing on his collar, touching his Adam's apple with all the strength that I could muster up. He brushes my hands aside as if I were a child and holds my wrists over my head with one hand, taking off his belt with the other. Wrapping my hands with the belt onto the bedpost, he leans forward and whispers into my ear. "Even the devil remains a devil. He was once an angel, but that doesn't erase the fact that he'll keep on committing the same crime because that's the side of him that will win. It isn't in his nature. He chose his own downfall."
"I am not waiting for Asami like you think I am," I tell him through seething teeth. "I am thinking of a way to get out of here without having to kill you in the process."
He stops kissing my neck and nods his head, smiling at me with an amused expression. "I am enjoying seeing you try."
"Don't make fun of m-"
He forces his tongue into my mouth as his fingers lightly touch my hip and under my boxers. The more he kisses me, the more his hand touches further downwards. I jolt and my fingers clasp onto one another.
"Ahh~" I let out when he licks the tip of my nipple.

"I used to not be like this. Although I followed whatever my father wanted, I used to be the ideal assassin, but then Asami took that away from me." His tone was half in admiration and then it turned bitterly sour.
"But isn't it stupid to use me to get to him? Even Asami isn't this dumb to fall for such a crude trap. It's insulting to him," I say while gasping with my chest rising and falling and my body shivering under the unusual tenderness of Fei Long's touch.
"Even the ruler of Rome had forsaken his empire for a woman, Takaba. Didn't you know that?" He begins to laugh at how innocent I sound. He comes up to kiss me again although I try to turn my head away.
It is getting harder and harder to breathe…

I look at Fei Long and he stares at me, waiting for my response. Without lies and without arrogance, I answer, "I don't know him as long as you have, but I do know that when you pose a challenge to him, he won't back down." My eyes melancholically look to my right side. "It doesn't matter what the prize is sometimes. That bastard is so sick he just loves outwitting the person who dared to defy him. Here, I am a matter of convenience."
Fei Long shakes his head and darkly grins at me in that scary, polite, and mocking Asian manner. "Then, you don't know him as well as you think you do."
The more his fingers press into me, even though it hurts, the more my body began to writhe in ecstasy and shame. I begin to hear the voice that I had tried to muffle and breathe heavily until I begin to cling onto him with my fingernails scratching the skin near his spinal cord.
My mind is going blank. I close my eyes and I find myself slightly whispering, "Asami…Asami…"

Fei Long doesn't say anything more, but when I let go, I dizzily look up to see Asami's concerned face before me. I half smile out of relief thinking I'm having a bad dream. He holds out his hand out to touch my cheek but he won't ever ask me if I am okay.

Only his eyes ever tell me the truth.

I don't ever want to believe his words…they always confuse me…
"I should have...hell..." I mumble.

But when I blink my eyes, it is Fei Long looking down at me, his long hair touching my shoulder. He runs his fingers through my hair. "Now, I understand why the most powerful man in Japan wants to possess you."
I mumble weakly, "To have me means nothing."
"You'll forget this once the opium wears off, but I'll tell you this once. You're stronger than Asami Ryuichi and that's why he's fascinated by you."
"So once he's done, he'll leave me because I don't amuse him anymore," I sarcastically reply.
"Takaba, you're like a Siren. Once you capture a sailor, they will never go back to the place they once lived nor to the person they once were."
At that, Fei Long wrapped his coat around himself and left. Before closing the door and with his back towards me, he said with a semi-confident voice, half serious and half jokingly, "It might be worth it not to give you back."

"I won't forgive him if he does," I whisper to the window before me.

I look up to the glass ceiling and find that the sun is setting.

I am losing my mind. I don't want to be here anymore.
Crying won't help. And I won't forget or forgive that crap you said about hell, for I didn't choose to commit this sin with you. You decided it on your own.
How many days have passed as I stayed in these rooms waiting?
Are there still seasons? I could feel the heat even with the AC on. I am almost going to pass out. I am used to the humidity, but it isn't suffocating like this in Japan. In fact, it is dry right now. Ironic, isn't it? You'd think that it would be better without all the moisture.
But I am not a bird, I am a fish.
I slide from place to place, depending on the current. Sometimes, I will fight against it. And somehow, I've been able to live. Will I see you again, I wonder, but it sounds so pathetic. More and more, I feel that my emotions are sucked dry, forced to react when taken over and over not by choice.

Still, is this any different than with you? I didn't choose that either.
I don't know anymore.

And yet why am I here almost crying like a crazy person as the guards hear me scratch my nails along the bedpost, making pictures inside my head with my fingers since I can't take them?

And agonizingly, I wait for you to come through that door to scold me as you always do. I want to hear that impeding, decisive voice that tells me you are the one consistent thing in my life. That no matter what happens to me, because I can proudly say even your pride can't defeat me, you are bound to me, from now and until the future.

Shamefully, deep inside, I have been confident of that.

The sweat from my forehead falls down to the pillow as the heat suffocates my mind, my breath, my heart. My eyes are heavily closing on their own.

Your voice is playing in my head.

I've heard all your words.
I've heard it all before.

Asami, stupidly, I still believe in you...
...but I don't know how much longer I can hold on.

+++++
"Takaba," you whispered into my ear as you held my waist inside your limo.
I put my head onto your shoulder and put my arms around you, but I didn't say anything.
"Is this all we ever are?" you asked me.
"You wouldn't chase me anymore if there was more, right?" I retorted back, unable to look into his face. Instead, I kept my arms folded around him.
He didn't say anything as he began to kiss me on the mouth with a passion that even he never showed me before.
I couldn't do anything but give in to kissing him back. It was then that I began to comprehend that his position in leading me was not as firm as I thought it was.
Even Asami could feel fear, but only I knew that secret. And it was only meant to be mine.

I wouldn't let anyone else see this face. It was like the one he called beautiful quietly every time he thought I was sleeping before he left me...

Even with tied hands, I open my eyes for a second. I raise them up to grab the back of your head and pull you closer towards me…

Then, I dream again, hoping to wake up from this nightmare...
...even if the line between him and him has begun to vanish.

Owari.

Author's note:

Having now been to Hong Kong, I wanted to bring the atmosphere of it into the fic and integrate Viewfinder's energy, passion, and desperation. As I was discussing with one of my friend's, I had noticed that I enjoyed this title so much because of each of the characters' sense of pride. Each complemented one another and are so strong that it's become destructive. Yet an interesting angle, Asami, Fei, and Takaba grow more and more to become human characters rather than stay their stereotypes.
I have liked them so much because of how much they show sides of ourselves that sometimes we're afraid to face. But as everyone knows, I love Takaba as he fights through everything, as I tried to show here: his sense of self vs. his pride, the constant inner war.

Wow, the draft was only one page and now it's multiplied! Damn it, I really love this title~! I don't know why, but this is one of the few titles that I take care of as much as Gravi and Tokyo Babylon. That is why this fic has a special format.

I wrote this on the plane back home to Tokyo from Hong Kong. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I had writing it~!

Sincerely with love,
Miyamoto Yui

8/20/2006 2:26:14 AM – LA
8/20/2006 6:26 PM - Tokyo