Heavy Things Won't Fly
Slightly stream-of-consciousness. Warning for bitterness, first-person/present-tense point of view, and an all-over dark mood.
The title is from Nina Gordon's song "Tonight And The Rest Of My Life"; the fic is for Becky, just because.
*`-,--
It's only when you sit at my feet and rest your head cautiously on my knee that I realise where, exactly, I am.
It's not a sense of place--I know where my body sits in this world; give me a minute and I can rattle off the whole address right down to "third-door-on-the-left"--but rather a sense of sequence. I can see a pattern forming, at the very edge of my mind's eye, and I know that my actions will lock it into place.
You murmur that you're sorry. I have to wonder why, Kamui--now you know I was in love with the enemy, with someone who very nearly killed you. I know you'd be relieved if I told you nothing ever came of it; in a way I'm almost relieved, too. After all, I've been responsible for so much destruction: Seishirou-san's eye (oh, he had beautiful eyes, Kamui, you couldn't imagine how beautiful), my sister's death, that counterspell she cast on the Sakurazukamori as she lay dying. Being with him would have been one more betrayal on my hands, and I don't know if I could have lived with it.
I can't accept your apology, Kamui. You have no reason to make it in the first place.
It's not that I don't think it's sincere. I know it is. I know you care for me--and I know there is a little more than friendship behind your worries.
It's so clear to me, Kamui, I wonder that you can't see it for yourself. You hold my hand between yours, and my field of vision is a triptych of scars--my own fading pentagram caught between the whitened, jagged line each of your hands bears. Your scars and mine are not the same, but the fact remains that we're both hurt, we're both prey.
It's so clear. I could lift one of those scarred hands to my lips and become the predator.
I could let you hold me, I could let you sleep in my bed and encourage your crush into love, I could lie to you until my throat closed off with a mass of falsehoods. And day by day you'd start to realise something was wrong, until you finally understood that I had been acting the whole time, that despite every sweet word or soft touch I could take you in my hands and break you and not feel a thing.
I could make you exactly like me.
And, Kamui, nobody deserves to be like me. No one should have to curl up in their armchair, too limp with grief to remember whether it's day or night, stinging with the knowledge that hope and prayer and love wasn't enough.
Love should be enough by itself. It can't be for me, not anymore. I can still do at least one thing right--I can stop myself from breaking you. This one burst of honesty might be my last chance to do the right thing at the right time.
You look back at me as you leave, but when your back is turned again I look down at the stars on my hands. They're still glowing, just a little, pulsing ever so faintly with warmth. I remember how they burned the first time I sensed Seishirou-san here in the city--I've thought, a thousand times, about the fact that he set these marks on my skin with kisses.
Broken glass would have been more bearable than that, a voice in my head murmurs as I bend to kiss the edge of one pentagram. If I close my eyes tightly enough, I can pretend that I'm kissing his lips and that the blood I taste, metallic and sweet, is my own.
Slightly stream-of-consciousness. Warning for bitterness, first-person/present-tense point of view, and an all-over dark mood.
The title is from Nina Gordon's song "Tonight And The Rest Of My Life"; the fic is for Becky, just because.
*`-,--
It's only when you sit at my feet and rest your head cautiously on my knee that I realise where, exactly, I am.
It's not a sense of place--I know where my body sits in this world; give me a minute and I can rattle off the whole address right down to "third-door-on-the-left"--but rather a sense of sequence. I can see a pattern forming, at the very edge of my mind's eye, and I know that my actions will lock it into place.
You murmur that you're sorry. I have to wonder why, Kamui--now you know I was in love with the enemy, with someone who very nearly killed you. I know you'd be relieved if I told you nothing ever came of it; in a way I'm almost relieved, too. After all, I've been responsible for so much destruction: Seishirou-san's eye (oh, he had beautiful eyes, Kamui, you couldn't imagine how beautiful), my sister's death, that counterspell she cast on the Sakurazukamori as she lay dying. Being with him would have been one more betrayal on my hands, and I don't know if I could have lived with it.
I can't accept your apology, Kamui. You have no reason to make it in the first place.
It's not that I don't think it's sincere. I know it is. I know you care for me--and I know there is a little more than friendship behind your worries.
It's so clear to me, Kamui, I wonder that you can't see it for yourself. You hold my hand between yours, and my field of vision is a triptych of scars--my own fading pentagram caught between the whitened, jagged line each of your hands bears. Your scars and mine are not the same, but the fact remains that we're both hurt, we're both prey.
It's so clear. I could lift one of those scarred hands to my lips and become the predator.
I could let you hold me, I could let you sleep in my bed and encourage your crush into love, I could lie to you until my throat closed off with a mass of falsehoods. And day by day you'd start to realise something was wrong, until you finally understood that I had been acting the whole time, that despite every sweet word or soft touch I could take you in my hands and break you and not feel a thing.
I could make you exactly like me.
And, Kamui, nobody deserves to be like me. No one should have to curl up in their armchair, too limp with grief to remember whether it's day or night, stinging with the knowledge that hope and prayer and love wasn't enough.
Love should be enough by itself. It can't be for me, not anymore. I can still do at least one thing right--I can stop myself from breaking you. This one burst of honesty might be my last chance to do the right thing at the right time.
You look back at me as you leave, but when your back is turned again I look down at the stars on my hands. They're still glowing, just a little, pulsing ever so faintly with warmth. I remember how they burned the first time I sensed Seishirou-san here in the city--I've thought, a thousand times, about the fact that he set these marks on my skin with kisses.
Broken glass would have been more bearable than that, a voice in my head murmurs as I bend to kiss the edge of one pentagram. If I close my eyes tightly enough, I can pretend that I'm kissing his lips and that the blood I taste, metallic and sweet, is my own.