AN: …So late. But I do try.
This has SPOILERS. Kureno and Akito-wise. CHAPTER 97 is pillaged. NOT In-verse. It's Kureno's POV, by the way.
Thanks to Shawnee for her lovely review! Sorry, public service again, but there's no other way… Anyhow, I don't think it was that Takaya-sensei didn't care enough to tell the anime people, I think it was that she cared too much. She wanted it to be a surprise when it came out in the manga. But I am a hopeless fangirl and may be coloring my judgment with neon hues. And again, humble gratitude!
Note to all anonymous reviewers, or account-holders who wanted to save time: I AM SO SORRY. If anyone ever tried to review anonymously before… I swear, I had no idea I was blocking them. I'm a complete backbirth. So sorry! Fixed now, though.
And this is not, regretfully, any kind of set-the-precedent for getting right back into the writing game. My second college course starts in two days… Maybe when I've finished with the GED in October? Just kill me now…
I realized after I was done that Uo-chan isn't even remotely in this. So it's before they met, okay? I love Arisa-san muchly, I just have trouble associating her with Kureno on automatic.
Disclaimer: Own nothing, never claimed to. Go on, mock me.
Dedication: Ooh. Gosh. So many people. HulaHula for requesting this ages ago and then being so patient. Katia-chan for Hindsight. Windswift for forcing me to see the good in Yukina - even if it meant propping my eyes open - with Fatalistic. And yukiislikesnow for giving me muses to play with.
I remember with perfect clarity the first time she hurt me.
Perhaps I should amend that - I remember with perfect clarity the first time she hurt me physically and on purpose. I suppose the true first time was something small, maybe when she was a baby and bit my fingers, maybe when she was a toddler and wouldn't fall asleep in my arms but needed Hatori-niisan's, or… Gure-niisan's.
But this time, the one that combined the two with malicious intent… it should have been stupid. It wasn't that bad; mostly it was an accident.
But it was Her.
I should never have lied; I know - I knew even then - how she hates it when we lie. But it was so small, and I thought it would make her happier. She was already angry when she came out on the porch…
I was leaning against one of the porch poles, reading, when the book went flying from my hand. I hadn't even heard her coming, but she filled my vision now, eyes glowing, face wet. One of her tiny hands, like little birds themselves - so fragile and swift - was clutching at the neck of her robe. "Where is he?" She didn't even try to sound calm.
"…Gur - Shigure?"
"No! Hatori. Where did he go?"
I opened my mouth, and what came out was, "I don't know."
She didn't want to hear confirmed what she must have picked up somewhere else - that Hatori had been press-ganged into accompanying Ayame on a shopping trip and that they should have been back hours ago, especially since they didn't tell her they were leaving - and we both know it. Unfortunately, I am not a good liar.
She reached out and shoved me, and it's not something that should have mattered. Wouldn't have, if I'd had my balance better, or if my foot hadn't turned on the pretty, rounded stones. If my arm hadn't hit the ground at just the wrong angle, skidding away without doing more than redirecting my fall, and especially if that rock hadn't been where it was, just where it would collide with the back of my head.
I saw stars - truly, which almost made me laugh, thinking that somehow it was a cartoon - and then the pain hit and everything went beautifully dark.
"Kureno! Her voice was like shards of light in a dark room, sharp and invasive. "Kureno, Kureno wake up I'm sorry I won't do it ever again if you wake up I order you to wake up -"
"Akito… shh, M'fine."
My head was on something warm and mostly soft, with bits that stuck out like twigs into my shoulders - her lap, I realized, and her face was upside down over mine, dripping with new tears.
Her eyes were red, which was so… relievingly human. She'd been crying before she came, hadn't she? I'd seen the tears on her cheeks then. But her eyes had just shone, no trace of red.
"… feel cold?"
"What?" Everything was so fuzzy…
"I asked if you're cold. Why aren't you listening?"
She was frightened, I could tell, hear that much in the way her voice kept tripping over itself and cracking on the ground.
"Sorry… no, I don't need more blankets."
"That isn't what I asked!" Her fingers dug into my shoulders on top, making an odd symmetry together with her sharp knees below. "Why are you talking like that?" And then, "I'm going to go get - get someone, someone has to help -"
"No, I'm fine." She'd be traumatized if she thought I was really hurt and might blame her - I could think of that much. "Would you help?"
"I - I don't know what to do, I -"
"You knew to ask if I was cold." This is completely beside the point, isn't it…
"Hatori asks me that all the time! I don't even know what the right answer is…"
I smiled. "Just help me stand up and we'll go from there."
She sniffed, rubbing her eyes clear, and said, after looking around for someone else once more, "…All right."
She carefully lifted my head, reminding me abruptly that you're not supposed to move at all for head, neck and back injuries but far too late - after all, if my neck was broken I'd have known by then, surely.
And then she stood, and took both of my hands and pulled.
I scrambled up - it was actually more difficult without use of my hands, and I nearly pulled her over, but she looked so relieved and proud when I was finally standing -
Oh…
And then I couldn't properly see; black and white slowly congealed into an Impressionistic picture of her face and hair, staring up at me. I had my hands on her shoulders and I was, at least, still standing. But then my vision swam more, and once again it looked like a cartoon - a representation of a screen going zigzagged before the static. Couldn't my hallucinations be a bit more… classy?
"Akito, I can't see very well. Would you guide me inside? I think I just need to lie down."
She didn't say anything; instead her hands closed on one of my wrists.
Three little ghostesses, sitting on postesses
Eating buttered toastesses, greasing their fistesses up to their wristesses…
Speaking of ghosts, her fingers were like a skeleton's. I almost wanted to pull away - might have, if it hadn't been her. Although, no one else had fingers like that, so then there would have been no reason to pull away, would there?
"Step up," she directed me, and I could make out her outline turning backwards and watching my feet. "Two steps." She retreated before me.
At the top of the two stairs back onto the porch, I had to stop to regain my balance.
"What is it?" Anxiety stained her voice again. "Kureno? Can't you move your feet?"
I pictured her walking backwards before me again and smiled. "Are you asking me to dance?"
"…I can't - I have to go find someone else -" Her voice was that of someone facing away now, but her hands were even tighter on my wrist, so I reached out with my free hand to find her shoulder.
"Akito, this is just like the game the others play in school, all right? With blindfolds. You lead, and I'll follow ."
"This isn't a game!"
"Pretend it is, then."
"But… you're not wearing a blindfold, your eyes aren't even closed, but you won't look at anything… there's nothing to take off…"
I didn't mean to tighten my hold on her shoulder, but found I had. I needed her to stay here, and be calm, because so long as I had to keep her calm…
"Then I'll really have to trust you, ne?" I smiled again, lopsided. Everything was so tilted…
"…Just until we get - get you inside."
…And then we were, though I didn't remember getting there, and I could feel something warm and wet dripping down the collar of my shirt. I knew we were inside but didn't know where, just that it was dark and there were boards beneath my feet, worn and sanded.
"I think I'm bleeding," I announced.
Her hand tightened and she didn't say anything until, a moment later, "Turn left with me." I did, and she pulled me forward, then turned me. "Sit down."
"Where are we?" I asked, sitting very slowly. She crouched in front of me; I could hear her yukata rustle, smell the mint-scent of her hair. A boy's shampoo. Funny, it's always seemed so feminine to me… Or was it always? Maybe just since she started using it…
"…my room," she answered, and luckily I caught the tail end of it.
Her hand touched the back of my head, and then hovered between our faces, white and red. "You are bleeding," she whispered. "I'll fetch someone to bandage it… You never know what could get in while it's open." I felt her other hand threading through my hair, which must have been filled with dirt and blood and leaves. I leant into her touch. She was usually cold, but now I seemed to be, and in comparison she was so very warm…
"Don't move," she directed, as it struck me that she seemed to be very calm now. I heard her stand, and then the touch was gone, fingers of god.
She must have paused in the door, because her voice come back to me perfectly clearly. "You know, Kureno… I think sometime I will ask you to dance."
I was twelve then. I remember that very plainly because she was six. Both of us were young enough to find it endlessly fascinating that we were exactly half/twice the other's age, and even better, Yuki was three that year as well. (Of course, Kyo was too, but…)
Little things like that…
Well, but it hadn't been so little, had it?
I'd been a fool to think she was actually talking about some cut on the back of my head. Not even then was she ever just a girl; she couldn't let herself be. Every time I thought she was looking at a detail, it was always only the shape of its space in the larger picture that held her attention. She reminds me of Gure-nii like that, a bit.
Only I think her "big picture" makes even his look small. After all, though they have the same number of pieces - and maybe he even has more - he only was one goal. She has fourteen.
I forgot what happened then, eventually - in a way, at least. I had a concussion - a middling-to-bad one, but nothing life-threatening. I didn't need stitches or anything so drastic, though it was insisted I visit the hospital. And I did remember her words about asking me to dance consciously, but the rest I let sink.
And that was stupid as well.
I seem to attract fairy-tale mistakes. The ones in which the heroine (a role I'd rather not play but end up in regardless - and in all fairness it is, occasionally, a male role) is told by the god or monster or whatever her eventual paramour is at the moment that she is not to do something. Not to stay too long in one place, not to look in the locked room, not to lift the mask, not to light a candle. She always does, and she always finds out something she'd rather not know.
Only no one tells me…
But I should know. I should have known not to lie. I should know not to walk into Akito's rooms without knocking. I should know not to eavesdrop.
I don't have her excuse. I was taught common sense. And I'm usually very sensible, which is probably why things go so very badly for me when I'm not. I could look both ways all my life before crossing a street, and then some day when I'm fifty happen to be in a hurry and get run over.
Luck.
Providence.
…It does always come back to her.
I was sixteen, and though I didn't know it yet I had only five months, at best, to be cursed, cursedly normal, to be what I was born to be. Five months in the cage I've lived in all of my life…
I don't know, now, what was so terribly urgent or distracting that day. I just knew that I'd been away from her too long - she was never pleased with that - and anyway, there was something important; I forgot to knock.
So I walked in on her with Yuki.
I smelled the blood right away, and stopped, heart stopping, thinking it was her. God help me, I was so relieved when I saw it was coming from his arm and face… I felt sick with relief, disgusted with myself and with her, with the shard of broken cup in her hand, dripping like a melodramatic horror prop before she dropped it.
Yuki crumpled into her arms, boneless, and for that moment I saw all of us in him.
She had hurt him, so he deserved it. And whatever he had done, whatever he had asked… He would never try it again, because all he would be able to associate with that memory was her anger, and now… there was almost nothing of him, as if he would melt into her.
Bandage it, before something gets in…
Too late. Too late for all of us. And any time we closed up, she thought she could cut us open again.
And she was right, wasn't she.
I could see his complete release when she caught him and held him, and yes, she was right.
Her eyes caught mine and I ducked my head, closing the door behind me as I ducked out of a moment I should never have touched.
My fingerprints were on it now, though.
The problem, of course, is that when you hurt someone once, they shy away from you the next time. They put up defenses. No matter who you are…
I shouldn't have eavesdropped, either, as we've established. But I had to know why.
It was years later, again. I was twenty-four, she was eighteen.
Hatori was twenty-six, and in love.
She had never hurt them. Hatori, Ayame, Shigure… they got away with so much. Ayame, it seemed, with virtually anything, as if he shared with Kagura some invisible shield. I would say it was dogged cheerfulness, but that never helped Momitchi, so I don't know.
Gure-niisan, for his part, could do the things that truly mattered to him, at least, in some give-and-take pattern none of us understood then or do now. She would become furious with him - often - but he always made it up to her, somehow.
And Hatori never seemed to give her anything much to worry about, but he did devote a dangerous amount of his time to other people - his friends, his patients, and most of all, as far as her view went, to Kana.
She must have known he was seeing the woman. They kept it so quiet in words, yes, but every action and glance bounced off the walls, echoing and growing louder.
I saw them together only once, and I knew. Part of me was jealous, so jealous that he had a window out, and I - I wasn't even cursed, and yet…
I don't know what I did expect. But I do know what I did not expect. I didn't think she'd hurt him - not Hatori.
And I didn't think he'd be idiotic enough to go to her with it. She hates lies, yes, but sometimes… there are things you simply don't tell her. This would have been one of them, should have been, if it wasn't Hatori. So cautious, but then he was too honest. And surely, after all those years, he must have thought that he wouldn't be hurt. He wouldn't have let Kana come with him, otherwise.
The walls in the Main House are fairly good for muffling sound, and I was in one of the outbuildings, working. I didn't know until I came back with some papers for her to sign and more questions for her to answer.
I saw Kana first, sobbing and being nearly carried by a servant. Then another two, helping Hatori, who was covering his eye… holding a bandage to it…
I let them pass without questions that would have slowed them down. I wanted to ask, wanted to pretend I didn't know. I wanted to be the kind of person who did not believe that the woman I… To be someone who wouldn't believe that Akito would do something so recklessly cruel.
But I wasn't, not by then.
I walked quickly, into the hallway outside her rooms. It was the kind of empty that comes right after a panic, after many people had been packed in and screamed out. The door was open, and I could see the blood again.
"Why?"
I wanted that question answered so badly I thought it was me asking it, but then I realized my hand was still over my mouth, and the voice was Gure-nii's. It was shaking, and didn't sound like him, but it was.
"Why not?"
Her hiss clawed at the room, slipped out and grabbed me. I sank down, silently, back to the wall and burying my face in my knees.
"Akito - Hatori could go blind. In both eyes. Do you realize that? Eyes are empathetic; you lose one, there's every chance you lose the other."
His voice was starting to steady out, lifting its arms and returning its gaze to the tightrope, where it belongs.
"What if he does? I'll take care of him."
She wasn't going to touch on the subject if he didn't.
But Shigure-niisan has never in his life done so straight out. What he said was, "You know something? Funny thing about scars - once you make one, it's that much harder to cut there again."
"Then," she answered softly, calmly, so very calmly, "I'll cut deeper."
A silence filled the room, suffocating. It spilled into the hallway and covered me.
"Yes." And it broke under his word, shards everywhere. "I believe you will."
She stands, now, in the doorway of my bedroom and watches. I could pretend to be asleep, but I sit up.
"Are you all right?"
She doesn't answer for a moment, and when she speaks it still isn't really an answer. "He left things out."
"What? Who did? Did someone -"
"He told me they got harder to cut. He didn't say that they stopped caring when they were."
"…"
"Kureno, why didn't you leave me?" The quiet desperation in her voice is awful. She moves a hand restlessly, clutching the front of her robe as she so often does, and I realize she wants it out. Badly enough to claw it away, if she has to.
"You asked me not to."
"I don't think they'd listen if I did. I think if the… I think if… I wasn't… I'd be so alone… He thinks he'd stay, you know, but I think he would just laugh if he ever won, and I know she would - she'd be so happy if…"
She doesn't make sense even to me, but I know what she means.
"I am supposed to be part of something. What if I wasn't?"
I stand, slowly. "Akito…"
"What if I wasn't?"
I look at my hands. They're so much bigger than they were when I looked at them, really looked, last. When I lost everything, and gained a chance that I threw away for some tears…
"Then," I say, "you would go on."
"With a hole that big inside? I wouldn't. I'd be alone. I'd just stop."
I want to cry, because she's never been anything but alone and all that keeps her going is that she believes the shadows on the walls are real.
So I don't say it either. I say, throwing another shovelful of dirt onto the piled-up lie that buries us both, "I'd be there."
She looks at me. I can't see her in the dark - there are no windows in this room, and any light is nearer to me - but in the same way that I knew she was there, I know she is looking at me. And that she can see me.
"Kureno." She plays with the name a moment, holding it between her fingers like a butterfly. "My Kureno…" I hear her come closer, smell her, and then her fingers close around my hands.
They really don't look any different with hers on them, and I know we both wish they did.
"Yes?" I say, even though she wasn't looking for a response, not a verbal one.
Still, maybe she likes it now that she has it. I can hear the smile in her voice as her head comes to rest against my chest.
"Dance with me?"
I wrap my arms around her body, the bane of her existence and maybe, maybe her salvation. I hold her as close as I can, and nothing happens to either of us. We've been as close as two human beings can be, and closer - we've been part of one soul, god and zealot.
But we're still so separate.
And I could walk away, if I wanted to badly enough, but she couldn't. Gods cannot go where their worshippers do not.
"Of course," I say, putting an arm around her waist and stepping back. "But don't we need music?"
"You might," she responds offhandedly - she's never needed help to keep any kind of beat or pattern. But she thinks a moment and then begins humming, which is enough for me.
I take her free hand as her other arm loops around my shoulders, spinning slowly around the small room in the circle her voice lays out for us.
I try to think of the words as she turns the tune over between her lips, and when I remember them I pull her closer and close my eyes, leading blind.
"I hope you dance…"
AN: Credit where it's due: The utterly and completely brilliant lines about dancing are not mine. Joss Whedon, Firefly. Kaylee gets shot, Simon, trauma surgeon-turned-fugitive, is helping…
Simon: Kaylee, listen to me, listen - Can you move your feet?
Kaylee (dreamy in-shock smile at her most recent crush while her face is going horribly, chalkily pale): Are you asking me to dance?
(I can't be positive about precise phrasing because a I don't skip scenes on precious discs, and thus can't check on the DVD, and b while I do own the script, I have loaned it out to the one person in the world I would trust it with.)
Also, the "ghosteses" thing is from some Halloween book my mum used to read to me. I don't know if I got words or spelling or anything right, because I have no clue what book it was. But the word "wrist" always makes me think of this li'l thing, and I need Kureno to be nutty… I'm a bad person.
One guess as to the best thing you could possibly do for me now?
REVIEW. Please? I'll love you forever.