Here's my full disclosure. "When Worlds Collide" is NOT an entirely new fanfic. In fact, the first three chapters are exactly the same as Kisses #12 through #14 from my collection of short stories, "A Shower of Kisses." What IS new is the last chapter. I had to censor the version that appeared in "A Shower of Kisses," because I promised not to include any explicit sexual situations. This version, presented here, has no such restrictions. In other words, if you already read Kisses #12 through #14 from "A Shower of Kisses," feel free to skip to chapter 4 here, and just read the new ending.
Regardless, I hope you enjoy this!
Oh right, one last note. Chapter I is from Anna's point of view; Chapter II is Yoh's; and Chapter III is third-person omniscient. (Chapter 4 is a continuation of Chapter III, but to prevent it from becoming overlong I split them up...Once you read that far, you'll see another reason for the breakup, hehe)
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-Taking Back Sunday, "This Photograph is Proof"
I.
Venus
Call it what you will, but I've never had very many friends. I like to delude myself, sometimes, that a lack of social prowess comes part and parcel with being a shaman, but I see my fiancé going on daily jaunts with Manta, Horohoro, Ren and Ryu, and every time I hear his innocent laugh I feel another bit of me die inside.
The desolation gets old fast, believe it or not. In my defense, I never was given much of a chance. Between being orphaned, fending off a demon that possessed me for years, and training, I never had much time to sharpen my social skills. Not that the lack thereof made much difference; after all, would you care to associate much with some weird girl who for all you know would sprout horns and spit fire at every bystander in a fifty-foot radius, no matter how socially charming she was?
If I sound a little resentful, then you don't know the half of it. On the other hand, a lack of a social life has its moments—it affords me lots of time to think. My thoughts mostly occur before the television, another perk of my solitude. It is there upon the sofa, when I watch the hourly melodramas unfold in that campy, overacted way only soap operas can deliver, that I can shake off my worries and supplant them with fictional ones.
Anxiety arises naturally as a result of thinking. In my case, given the hours on end I'm afforded to think, the troubles swarm in the hive of my brain, and oftentimes I find myself unable to sleep, the buzz of anxiety echoing in my head, its jarring frequency almost sending my pillow vibrating. I worry the money will run out and even our meager existence as we know it will cease. I fret over the possibility that Hao, precious little that I know about him, will one day find his way to my bedroom. I'm concerned with the unknowns that abound in my knowledge of Hao. But most of all, I worry about Yoh.
You could say that in our relationship, Yoh definitely got the short end of the stick. He's the one who cooks, cleans, conditions himself and walks on eggshells whenever I'm around. He's the one who's liable to get chewed out, even when we both know damn well who's at fault. Yoh, lest we forget, is in clear and present danger so long as he remains a contender for the title of Shaman King. Just about every wannabe who's ever so much as cracked a joke to a ghost from Kyoto to Konigsberg wants to take Yoh down a peg.
When I say "lest we forget," I'm not including myself.
I could never forget.
You wouldn't be able to forget either if the man you loved came back from a weekend excursion tattooed with virulent bruises and smears of blood. You definitely wouldn't forget if it was the same story week after week. And those recurring visions of him unmoving in a ditch somewhere, with shattered limbs horribly bent back on themselves…People often say Yoh puts his ass on the line every day while I just mind the store back home. I won't deny that, but if you think it's easy having a solid sixteen hours a day to ponder whether or not the one you love will make it home alive, day in and day out, think again.
Yes, I love Yoh. Surprising, perhaps. But if soap operas have taught me anything, it's that losing someone you've become attached to will devastate you. I love Yoh, but in a platonic, almost sisterly sense. Any more deeply and my anxieties would choke me in my sleep.
I love him, but I could go without him.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it.
A good indicator of my anxiety, of my denial, is the extent to which I find sitting still unbearable. That would explain my aimless meandering through the deserted halls and rooms of the En Inn. I straighten a rug here and realign a painting there, my fingers subconsciously shaking, trying not to think about how much the painting of a tree in autumn, suffused in the deep orange of late afternoon, looks a bit like a young man wearing tangerine headphones, copiously dripping blood onto the canvas…
Come to think of it, everything reminds me a little of Yoh, actually. That's a bad thing when you're already one step from a nervous breakdown. "Relax," I tell myself shakily, "Yoh just left to buy some groceries. So he's been gone three hours, maybe he ran into Manta on the way or something. It's just the supermarket; what could go wrong?"
Even to my desperate ears the smugness of my voice sounds strained and artificial. I know full well that the danger Yoh faces doesn't diminish even when he's sleeping in the room next to mine; compared to that, the supermarket is like a convention of Death Row inmates…across the street from a gun factory.
Why am I so anxious? I shuffle like a zombie to the refrigerator, my mind racing against my will, and the cold air wafts against the hem of my skirt, ethereally chilling, like prying open an unearthed coffin. My clammy fingers close around the top of a Coke bottle, prying off its cap with a preoccupied flick of my wrist, and I raise it to my lips willing myself to believe it's an elixir, a philter to ward off my fears.
It's refreshingly cool and almost sickly sweet, but it's no magic potion. Sooner than the mouthful of cola is down my gullet, the doubts resurface. I sigh and pull out a chair for myself at the kitchen table, resigned to listening to my inner voice.
Just outside the window, the sunset begins in earnest. The Zen rock garden is magnificent in its golden splendor, its smooth stones fiery red in the dusk, resembling a bed of hot coals. The cirrus clouds near the horizon form puffy pink lines against a prismatic background that darkens from delicate azure to deep maroon. All in all, it's a magnificent view, but the sight of those clouds crisscrossing upon a color that's all too much like bruised flesh spoils it somewhat. My memory flashes back several weeks until I pinpoint why the sunset is so upsetting…
One of Yoh's adorable habits is the tuneless, atrociously off-key singing he always performs in the shower. When I don't hear him killing the chorus of a Soul Bob song at the top of his lungs, then I know the coast is clear for me to soak in the bathtub for a bit. One day about three weeks ago, the house had been oddly silent; I think I had forgotten that Yoh was even home. I walked into the bathroom oblivious, with a robe tucked under one arm and a newspaper under the other, completely unaware of the cloaked figure behind the shower curtain.
I'm not sure why I hadn't just left the room once I saw the specter of his body toweling off behind the curtain, but in any case before I could leave, the shower curtain whipped to one side, revealing a dripping Yoh completely in the nude. I think we both screamed; he scrambled like mad and made to cover his waist with a towel, but I remained rooted to the spot, unable to shake free what I had just seen…and not for the obvious reason, either.
There's no denying that Yoh's rigorous training for the Shaman Fight left him in very nice physical condition; I have to confess part of me couldn't stop staring because, as he gaped at me with horrified, wide eyes, with his matted black hair trellising down to his collarbone and dripping beads of water onto his chest, Yoh was very cute. But that aspect of Yoh's physical appearance was more or less what I had expected; I had never seen him in the altogether before, but his build was just as sleek as I had imagined it would be.
But I had never spared a thought to what might be lurking beneath those clothes other than taut muscles, and that revelation absolutely stunned me. His biceps and shoulders were tattooed with a network of scars, some light, some deep, some old and completely healed, some still tender and rosy. A truly horrific bruise of the deepest vermillion marred the flesh over his right ribcage, and the opposite side of his chest sported a heroic gash that ran nearly from nipple to belly button. It had not quite healed yet and I could see the oozing pink skin where the scab had begun to peel. And at that moment I felt the injuries that Yoh had suffered personally, as though it had been my arms butchered by claws and daggers and near-misses, my ribs sundered by a twenty-ton behemoth, my chest incised by a ten-foot spear…
And Yoh's innocence, his offhandedness, the naïveté, were thrust at me in stark contrast to the injuries he had sustained by the tender age of fifteen, more than most haggard war veterans have seen upon their deathbeds. He whispered—and I saw a fresh gash on his neck that bulged out with his Adam's apple as he swallowed delicately—"Anna…I'm sorry…" as though he had done something wrong, like he had walked in on me bathing, like he had been the one watching TV for hours while I had brushes with death on a daily basis…
I could say absolutely nothing; it felt as though my throat had been assaulted. I wanted to cry out, to support that earnest face against my chest as I did my best to assuage the anguish of his injuries with my touch, but for some reason I remained motionless and speechless. I wanted to tell him I was the sorry one, that I couldn't bear seeing my love so badly battered, much less even begin to contemplate what it might be like with him gone…
More than anything else, I fear that, were I more expressive of my concern, my love, for Yoh, it would simply interfere with his laid-back lifestyle. I know he operates best with a carefree mind, and if he had to constantly worry about a loved one, as I do, his performance would suffer. Do I want him to know I love him? No.
Maybe…
It does beg the question, doesn't it?
Do I want to know if he loves me?
No.
Maybe…
A lifetime of isolation has hardened me prematurely, and I often lose sight that Yoh's barely old enough to be a high school student. He certainly seems mature enough to be capable of love, but for whom, and on what level? Does he regard me as a close friend, a mentor, or even a personal trainer of sorts? Or…something more?
It's harder than you will ever know for me to be so draconian with Yoh. It's a bit like being the proverbial kid in a candy store, except the kid in my version also has to throw away every last sweet with her own two hands. The way he sometimes acts so strangely around me, I find adorable, but to react any more strongly than with an impassive glare would be letting on too much, I think…Somehow the idea that my presence makes him nervous in that manner so particular to teenage love excites me. This morning he kept looking at me out of the corners of his eyes, almost as though there were a surprise in store for me that I would discover any moment.
But there will be no surprises, at least none for Yoh. I have my duty as the future Shaman King's wife to do everything in my power to help him achieve his goal, and love merely complicates things. If I must exercise restraint and torment myself with a love that will remain platonic and unexpressed at best and unrequited at worst, then I shall; my love for Yoh runs deep enough.
I put down my bottle of Coke; I had finished it long ago but clutched it still, fantasizing that the ridges upon the glass were the scars on Yoh's bicep…I pick up a portrait from the coffee table, handsomely framed in a filigreed gold-plated frame, with a beauty and grace surpassed only by the photograph within its boundaries. I imagine myself materializing on the other side of the glass, feeling the gentle bristle of his pointy hair, but could not. I merely gaze longingly into the picture, and the youngest Asakura stares back at me with relaxed, almost lazy eyes, and upon his lips shines a casual grin.
I press the photograph tightly to my bosom, feeling the frosty glass warm against my heart. "Please…come home safely, Yoh." My breath obscures the portrait with fog, but I close my eyes and feel my lips press upon the blurry glass, and, before I can feel bashful about the ridiculousness of kissing an inanimate object, the picture returns to the coffee table, signed with lipstick, a token of love that only I and Yoh's picture can ever know about.
It will have to do, for now…