Drabble: Osiris (All in Pieces) (YnM, Hisoka)

[b_hallward]

AN: Prequel to Yet Still 'Tis Just and Of Angels Watching Round. Series Index here.

Osiris (All in Pieces)Behind the empty courtroom were a small set of chambers, dimly lit, filled with scales from floor to ceiling and littering the ground in piles; Hisoka watched, silent, knife and feather in hand as the Judge felt along a shelf, fingers

Comments

[p_zeitgeist]

Also? I can't believe you did that in one sentence. By which I mean, of course I believe it; but the sheer stylishness of it still leaves me breathless with admiration.

I'm going to feel like an idiot for needing to ask, but the need to know outweighs the desire to look clever. So: did you intend the ambiguity in that final "his"? Because I can read it as applying to any of three characters here, and have it make sense each way, albeit a different kind of sense depending on which I pick.

[b_hallward]

I'm so pleased you like it. And I have to thank you for knocking this loose (however strange an angle it sits at in relation to the original prompt).

And now I want to look all masterful and clever, but in this case it was more tolerating the ambiguity than, strictly speaking, intending it; I knew they all worked but I really meant Hisoka removing his own heart to be the primary reading, playing off the Ma'at references. And I thought of only two of the possibilities -- the Judge and Hisoka -- since Tsuzuki was, in my mind, very much elsewhere. But! If you place this after 'Still Tis Just' rather than before it then there's a strong appeal to having him remove the Judge's heart as one of the early moves in his war on heaven and all sorts of nifty implications circle out from there.

And isn't Hisoka a lovely character that you can imagine it all three ways and think, yes, he would.

[wordsofastory]

Ooooooh. I love this. I love all the hugeness of the story around it that it implies, I love the images, I love the title, and I so love the last few words.

[b_hallward]

Thank you! I've always loved that scene in the King of Swords arc where Hisoka stabs his own hand, so that + Egyptian mythology, I figured: how could I go wrong?

Because to save Tsuzuki Hisoka would cut out his own heart. And because this is Yami, that can be 'cut out' literally.

[veleda_k]

Wow. There's so much here that I want to read it again and again, just to make sure that I catch it all (or most of it, at the very least).

[b_hallward]

Thanks! I'm so very pleased you liked it. (And that the outline of the larger story came through -- I wasn't sure it would.)

[lady_ganesh]

oooooh.

[b_hallward]

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it.

[ranalore]

This is one of my favorite sentences ever, anywhere. The sheer magnitude, the love and pain and rage and it's Hisoka. Death be never less kind, indeed.

[b_hallward]

Thank you! It took a slightly different turn than I'd originally plotted but I'm quite pleased with the results *g*

[ranalore]

Now I'm curious as to what you originally plotted. *G*

[b_hallward]

Well, the truth is that I didn't have this scene at all originally and it causes all sort of problems, not the least of which is that I hadn't allowed for Hisoka giving up his heart (or more precisely perhaps that early soft almost childish love Tsuzuki earned simply be being transparently and unguardedly kind to a wary teenager who'd known too little kindness). The original conception was more doctrinally and thematically pure -- Hisoka only gains, gains power and knowledge and control, without ever giving away anything and still loses things so thoroughly he doesn't even miss them -- but this was what my version of Hisoka demanded and I suppose I love this side of his character too much to snuff it out without one final, active, heroic gesture. Meifu may get him in the end, but it's not like sinking into a slow, fatal illness (which was, damn it, the plan).