(Skip Beat) Cracked
Title: Cracked
Prompt/Theme: “Who is Tsuraga Ren?”
For: Swollenfoot
Characters/Pairing: Ren, Kuon
A/N: I probably need to rewrite this. There are spoilers for the recent chapters.
Summary: BJ was supposed to be a character, not an alarm clock.
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He splashes his face, the cold water streaming down his skin. It doesn’t help him much, his blood still on fire, angry and turbulent as it runs through his veins.
BJ is just a character. Someone Ren-no, Cain, should slip out of like a snake shedding its skin. Easily discarded, without traces left on him like an incomplete copy, was the way it was supposed to be. Now he is a shadow, whispering in his ear, reminding him of times long gone. There is the cool brush of a metal edge and somewhere something snaps.
Ren stares at his reflection with a start. For he is Ren now, not Cain, not BJ. And the image behind him is of Kuon, his blond hair glinting in the recesses of his mind. This is a memory he doesn’t want to remember. A memory he isn’t ready to remember.
(And it’s still there, the scent of iron and sound of screams. Just waiting in the dark reaches of his dream for him to slip up.)
A person who isn’t ready to wake up. Kuon slumbers restlessly in his mind, dreaming nightmare after nightmare of blood and cold bodies. Ren is who this boy wants to be: always in control, always calm, never dangerous. Ren is who this boy needs to be.
Kuon doesn’t want to be Kuon, doesn’t want to feel the handle of the blade and the soft push of flesh. Kuon doesn’t want to remember the monochrome world of red, the single sound of a scream. He wants the bright spotlight and the quick laughter of a child, the firm hands of a mother.
And he wants to sleep and never wake up. Wants to but for BJ. It is hard to keep control, to keep two monsters on a leash.
To keep one, because Ren knows it has never been BJ who was on the stage then, but Kuon. There is a thin smile behind him, sharp and deadly, and Ren smashes the mirror with his fist. In the cracked reflection, he can make out his eyes, wisps of hair, a thin cheekbone. Fragments of a man, of a boy, and a piece falls out before his eyes.
Wincing, he runs the water again, his fist bleeding from the impact. It was a stupid move, one that Kyoko will notice when she returns to the room. Under the cold water, he washes the blood off, watching the water thicken and darken as it drains down the white sink.
As he watches the red drops fall, he can’t help but wonder whose blood it is.