Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes angry
Title: Pulling the Strings
Author: Deathless Juliet
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: X
Pairing/Characters: Fuuma/Kamui, Kakyou
Disclaimer: X belongs to its brilliant creators, CLAMP.
Theme: #28, Are you serious?
Notes: For 30_smirks
“O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,/ Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse / Without all hope of day!” -John Milton
“A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.” -Demosthenes
“Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes angry.” -Euripides
Pulling the Strings
“Kamui.” Kaykyou greeted him by looking up with his grave, meloncholic expression. His dream world swirled around them, curtains billowing and rustling as if embodied whispers were passing through.
“Why did you bring me here?” Kamui spat, struggling wildly as a trapped animal against the wires binding his angular, glittering bat wings. He’d fallen asleep, only to be dragged into a different dream, suspended high into the air on metal strings.
“I took your consciousness here to ask you to end this.” Kakyou said quietly, studying Kamui’s reaction.
“End this? The battle?” Kamui questioned incredulously. “It’s not exactly an easy thing to do, Kakyou. And besides, I need to bring back-”
“Fuuma?” The dreamseer interrupted. He shut his eyes tightly for a second, exhausted even in his sleep. Living, Seeing, of any kind, was becoming too much for him to bear. “Kamui, I know that you wish to return him to the person he once was, but your Fuuma no longer exists.”
The Saviour’s eyes widened in fright, momentarily stunned. “What do you mean?” He whispered harshly.
“It’s his dreams, Kamui; if the real Fuuma was truly alive, he would be asleep in his mind, pushed behind the Dark Kamui’s control. But there’s nothing there. No waves, no activity, no pulses. When I peered past his surface thoughts, there was a void. It’s only a wasteland of gray matter. There’s no way your friend is there, if he ever was.”
“If he ever was?” Kamui bit out sharply, angered. “You’re suggesting that…”
“That the Fuuma you knew was just a vessel for your twin star? Yes. Or that he was a minor personality overtaken and dissipated by the emergence of the Dark Kamui. Maybe he really did love you, and repressed it. The other personality that evolved twisted his leftover emotion of something pure into hatred and lust.” He said all of this calmly, a science, knowing all the while that Kamui’s world was crumbling around him at his words.
“Can you show me?” Kamui asked, cracking Kakyou’s stoic expression with a spike of surprise. The seer concentrated for a moment, their current world wavering and forming into his memory of Fuuma’s mind.
Kamui’s gasp of shock brought him to the quagmire that made up Fuuma’s mind. It was a desert formed of claylike mud, flecked with gray sand. Stretching vast and endless, it was wholly empty of emotions and hope. The sky was green and yellow, darkened by chronic storms and lightning, a photographic negative. There was…Nothing.
It was hollow.
Kamui choked and gulped down his tears. “This is all that’s left?” He hovered in the air, still bound by the wires; but now he sank onto them, flesh cutting at the touch, bleeding angry red drops with his wings pinned and tangled, his body limp and drained of his Wish. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.” Kakyou replied solemnly. “As serious as I’ve ever been.”
The dream memory fractured and they broke into his common realm.
The wires snapped, sending Kamui heavily down into the floor. He remained almost motionless, his body racked with great sobs as he shuddered. The Seal’s wings drew around him, trying to shield him, but they were as broken and bleeding as he was. He curled tight into a ball, cursing the fate that was set upon the twin stars, his hope-fueled fire extinguished. The devastation made his soul ache. The mourning that lay thickly on him was all too familiar to Kakyou, but he did nothing to comfort him.
His own grief had shut him down, blocking all possible ways to comfort others as he drowned into his loss.
~*~
Fuuma smirked at the dark circles ringed around Kamui’s eyes, his haunted, crazed expression as they flew up to the top of Tokyo Tower. They were shooting high up into the air, the speed whipping their clothes as they spun wildly around the other, swords drawn at the ready.
“I can’t let you keep doing this.” His stare was piercing, though his voice quivered.
Then, it seemed as if Kamui had vanished completely. Fuuma screeched to a halt in midair, confused at losing track of his opponent. It was deathly silent, and he heard nothing even as his ears strained for sounds of an enemy approaching.
He reappeared abruptly in front of the Dark Kamui’s shocked eyes, shedding tears as he thrust his sword through Fuuma’s heart, both falling down to the tower, slamming into the metal frame.
“I’m sorry.” He said, scrambling to embrace Fuuma’s bleeding form, regret apparent on his tear-streaked face. “I couldn’t do anything more to save you.” He drew him close and kissed him tenderly, closed his eyes at the ending of the last day of their world together.
Fuuma, dragged up from the murky crevices of his mind, too weak to speak, lasted long enough to watch with glassy eyes as Kamui turned the sword on himself, his body falling slack and his expression finally peaceful. He managed to wonder briefly why he was brought back only to die, why the wishes had turned out this way. It was only too ironic, he thought, fading into black and then nothingness, that the wish-giver’s desire to live was the only one that hadn’t been granted.
Across town, the liquid poison that he had injected into the dreamseer’s veins had finished its coursing, and the man lay cold and blissfully dreamless, face unmarred by any wicked expression of triumph, unbothered by the two he had sacrificed to save himself from his life. Once, he would have never imagined destroying others, manipulating someone into being his puppet. But now- now, he could hear the ocean, and that was all that mattered.
Author: Deathless Juliet
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: X
Pairing/Characters: Fuuma/Kamui, Kakyou
Disclaimer: X belongs to its brilliant creators, CLAMP.
Theme: #28, Are you serious?
Notes: For 30_smirks
“O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,/ Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse / Without all hope of day!” -John Milton
“A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.” -Demosthenes
“Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes angry.” -Euripides
Pulling the Strings
“Kamui.” Kaykyou greeted him by looking up with his grave, meloncholic expression. His dream world swirled around them, curtains billowing and rustling as if embodied whispers were passing through.
“Why did you bring me here?” Kamui spat, struggling wildly as a trapped animal against the wires binding his angular, glittering bat wings. He’d fallen asleep, only to be dragged into a different dream, suspended high into the air on metal strings.
“I took your consciousness here to ask you to end this.” Kakyou said quietly, studying Kamui’s reaction.
“End this? The battle?” Kamui questioned incredulously. “It’s not exactly an easy thing to do, Kakyou. And besides, I need to bring back-”
“Fuuma?” The dreamseer interrupted. He shut his eyes tightly for a second, exhausted even in his sleep. Living, Seeing, of any kind, was becoming too much for him to bear. “Kamui, I know that you wish to return him to the person he once was, but your Fuuma no longer exists.”
The Saviour’s eyes widened in fright, momentarily stunned. “What do you mean?” He whispered harshly.
“It’s his dreams, Kamui; if the real Fuuma was truly alive, he would be asleep in his mind, pushed behind the Dark Kamui’s control. But there’s nothing there. No waves, no activity, no pulses. When I peered past his surface thoughts, there was a void. It’s only a wasteland of gray matter. There’s no way your friend is there, if he ever was.”
“If he ever was?” Kamui bit out sharply, angered. “You’re suggesting that…”
“That the Fuuma you knew was just a vessel for your twin star? Yes. Or that he was a minor personality overtaken and dissipated by the emergence of the Dark Kamui. Maybe he really did love you, and repressed it. The other personality that evolved twisted his leftover emotion of something pure into hatred and lust.” He said all of this calmly, a science, knowing all the while that Kamui’s world was crumbling around him at his words.
“Can you show me?” Kamui asked, cracking Kakyou’s stoic expression with a spike of surprise. The seer concentrated for a moment, their current world wavering and forming into his memory of Fuuma’s mind.
Kamui’s gasp of shock brought him to the quagmire that made up Fuuma’s mind. It was a desert formed of claylike mud, flecked with gray sand. Stretching vast and endless, it was wholly empty of emotions and hope. The sky was green and yellow, darkened by chronic storms and lightning, a photographic negative. There was…Nothing.
It was hollow.
Kamui choked and gulped down his tears. “This is all that’s left?” He hovered in the air, still bound by the wires; but now he sank onto them, flesh cutting at the touch, bleeding angry red drops with his wings pinned and tangled, his body limp and drained of his Wish. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.” Kakyou replied solemnly. “As serious as I’ve ever been.”
The dream memory fractured and they broke into his common realm.
The wires snapped, sending Kamui heavily down into the floor. He remained almost motionless, his body racked with great sobs as he shuddered. The Seal’s wings drew around him, trying to shield him, but they were as broken and bleeding as he was. He curled tight into a ball, cursing the fate that was set upon the twin stars, his hope-fueled fire extinguished. The devastation made his soul ache. The mourning that lay thickly on him was all too familiar to Kakyou, but he did nothing to comfort him.
His own grief had shut him down, blocking all possible ways to comfort others as he drowned into his loss.
~*~
Fuuma smirked at the dark circles ringed around Kamui’s eyes, his haunted, crazed expression as they flew up to the top of Tokyo Tower. They were shooting high up into the air, the speed whipping their clothes as they spun wildly around the other, swords drawn at the ready.
“I can’t let you keep doing this.” His stare was piercing, though his voice quivered.
Then, it seemed as if Kamui had vanished completely. Fuuma screeched to a halt in midair, confused at losing track of his opponent. It was deathly silent, and he heard nothing even as his ears strained for sounds of an enemy approaching.
He reappeared abruptly in front of the Dark Kamui’s shocked eyes, shedding tears as he thrust his sword through Fuuma’s heart, both falling down to the tower, slamming into the metal frame.
“I’m sorry.” He said, scrambling to embrace Fuuma’s bleeding form, regret apparent on his tear-streaked face. “I couldn’t do anything more to save you.” He drew him close and kissed him tenderly, closed his eyes at the ending of the last day of their world together.
Fuuma, dragged up from the murky crevices of his mind, too weak to speak, lasted long enough to watch with glassy eyes as Kamui turned the sword on himself, his body falling slack and his expression finally peaceful. He managed to wonder briefly why he was brought back only to die, why the wishes had turned out this way. It was only too ironic, he thought, fading into black and then nothingness, that the wish-giver’s desire to live was the only one that hadn’t been granted.
Across town, the liquid poison that he had injected into the dreamseer’s veins had finished its coursing, and the man lay cold and blissfully dreamless, face unmarred by any wicked expression of triumph, unbothered by the two he had sacrificed to save himself from his life. Once, he would have never imagined destroying others, manipulating someone into being his puppet. But now- now, he could hear the ocean, and that was all that mattered.