[ ooc writing: demeleier dream event june 2011 ]
Without the laughing and the voices of those family members you used to love so much the mansion feels intimidating, empty, much too big for just you alone to wander around in. The sound of your hurried footsteps echoing back in your ears only reinstates the feeling of fear, the feeling that things shouldn't be this way - it's wrong, so wrong - and you only hurry more down the empty hallways.
Every time you come across a corpse - that strict aunt who always somehow seemed a bit lonely, the cook who had always seemed a bit scary to you since he was so huge and you were just a little girl back then, that older cousin who was always so nice and calm and kept everyone together - you are fairly sure your heart skips a few beats. But you don't have time to stand still and mourn or even think about it, because you have to hurry up. You haven't found your parents yet or even your older brother, and as long as they don't turn up as corpses there's the chance they are still walking around in the mansion, just as lost as you are.
When you come to the door that leads out to the front steps of the mansion there's a slight moment of hesitation, but you open them regardless.
You wish you hadn't.
Even though you pull the door closed again as soon as you opened it just now, the image is already burned on the back of your eyelids. You almost have to tell yourself to keep breathing even with the shock, and you feel your lungs filling themselves with oxygen again, a slow and shuddering breath. You try to push the image out of your mind, because it's not real, it's fake, a lie, just something more to torture you--
"What..? Aren't you grateful?"
The blue haired witch lands just in front of you, her face twisted into a cruel grin, her scythe in her hands. And you just wish she'd go away, stop talking, so she can stop unlocking the doors of your mind to the images again. But she doesn't go away, no matter how much you push your hands to your ears you can't block out her words.
"I promised you, right? To show you the truth."
- a man in a perfectly neat blue business suit now tarnished by the red blood all over it with a grin and a blazing gun lowered over the corpse of a blonde girl her fist with brass knuckles on it lying motionlessly on the dirt -
"And so I did. So you should at least feel some gratitude to me."
- a woman with a perfectly calm smile on her face covered with blood splatters quietly sliding the knife in her hands completely through a little girl's throat her pink frilled purse lying abandoned on the ground -
"After all.. finally you were able to witness their true nature. The truth I promised."
You finally find some last strength in yourself to tear your feet away from the spot you were rooted on in shock, dodging the witch and further running down another corridor.
It's a lie, all of it is a lie, you refuse to believe a truth like that, it's just another cruel joke the witch made up, you know you just have to run down this corridor and find your older brother somewhere in this mansion and he will turn to you and show his usual smile and tell you that everything will be okay, that he won't let the witch's lie hurt you any longer.
And so you feel a near smile out of relief appear on your face when you run into the parlor and find the sight you've been looking for. The back of a white suit combined with red hair. A symbol of reassurance, that everything will be okay now--
Then he turns to you and his white suit turns out to be even more soaked in red than the other man's and his face is near-deformed into a cruel grin, not anything like the expression you're used to. And then your eyes travel down, from his bloody hands to the tiny figure lying on the couch, sliced and cut up and nearly unrecognizable if it wasn't for the short red hair with two tiny pink bubble hair decorations sticking out.
"Ah.. Ange. You sure are late."
You scream, but there's no sound.
Light seems to errupt from every little thing, completely submerging you and the man with white hair - as white as snow - in a complete white up to a point where you can't discern the point somewhere around your touching hands where you end and he starts anymore. You can vaguely see the man opening his mouth and saying something, but his words are lost in the sheer massive spectacle of the light that surrounds you.
And then the images start flowing back into your mind, one by one, as if it's natural for them to be there. As if it's where they belonged all along.
A girl, her hair and dress a beautiful silver just like the man's (it isn't until now that you recall it isn't white as snow at all, but silver like the beautiful moon hanging in the sky), turns around when you arrive in the room. A smile, bright and honest, immediately breaks out on her face - it's always been you, Venus - and she stretches out her arm to wave enthusiastically.
The same girl as just now appears, this time with a cape wrapped around her mysteriously as if she's trying to sneak away from the palace like a thief in the night. The moment you touch her shoulder she turns to you once again, although this time the expression on her face is a look of surprise rather than that bright smile. But a moment later her facial muscles relax and instead she manages to work up a very inelegant and not even remotely royal pout to show to you. Under protests of 'it isn't like you'd understand' you work her back into the palace, but even so you can't help but remember that tiny happy and amused smile on your face at that moment.
Girls are gleefully talking to each other, discussing one thing or another - interplanetary politics, the princess' last attempt at sneaking off, which boys at the court they would consider cute; it's all brought up just as easily as the topic is changed again in the discussion. When the girl with the long raven black hair scolds the princess for being behind on her studies yet again, with the blue haired girl franctically trying to apologize in the princess' place and saying she isn't that behind at all and they'll just work harder tomorrow and the princess herself just throwing up her hands and pouting and saying it isn't fair, you feel the brunette next to you nudge your side and you giggle together.
The only time you can actually recall tears is the memory of standing in the middle of a broken city, people from the Earth and Moon Kingdom alike fighting each other all around, when the long haired male plunges a sword into your gut and you fall. Tears of betrayal, tears of pain, tears of fear and hope for the safety of that one person who is most important to you, because nothing matters anymore the moment that light would disappear from your life.
When the images fade with the light and the sound returns, you finally hear the man with the short white hair's (not white as snow, not even quite like the moon, but like the light from the planet Venus) words.
And you smile again.
"... Yes. I remember."
It's only a little while after she first starts working in the village that he walks into the clinic one afternoon, somewhat fumbling and awkward, and hands her a bouquet of morning glories. Still somewhat awkwardly - or perhaps nervously - he tells her that it's a way of thanking her for her hard work. She just lets out a high teasing giggle in response, remarking that he got the flower symbolism quite wrong, and he just awkwardly rubs the back of his head in response. He quickly tries to backpedal and leave the room again quickly, but she smiles slyly and tells him she's looking forward to seeing him again soon.
It isn't until a few years later that they watch the villagers preparing the local festival - he under the guise of making pictures for a magazine of sorts, she just because she's on lunch break and tagging along - that he hands her a red rose once the group of people building up stalls has dispersed for the night and (still somewhat fumbling, constantly that awkward sort of behavior and talk when it came down to this) asks her if he got it right this time. She thinks that perhaps the best part about it is his clueless nervous expression when she just bursts out into a fit of giggles as her reaction.
And a few weeks later, during his funeral, she leaves cercis siliquastrum and vitex agnus-castus flowers on his grave and mumbles to herself how she guesses that she just had to be the one to get it right.