[#294 - Starting Out] with(out)
Title: with(out)
Challenge: #294 - Starting Out
Word Count: 568
Rating: PG-13
Summary: They are without a beginning and without an end, he tells her, but she's not inclined to believe it.
Notes: Not difficult to figure out the pairing once you start reading. Some sexual references, so beware of that. The idea for this just popped into my head last night.
They are nothing; they are nobody (Nobodies); they are without a beginning and without an end, he tells her.
She knows better, though. She now knows that they can fade (it is death and not-death; it is indescribable and strange and she thinks it is probably very lonely). She knows that they all had a beginning of some sort.
She knows that she once had a beginning, even though she can't recall it. She remembers being lost; she remembers being found and subsequently becoming his (a quiet little bird trapped in a gilded cage).
Maybe that was her beginning-she can't claim to know, or to properly understand it. But this is her existence now: all white walls and fragrant flowers and sinister smiles. There is color too, in the form of the markers and crayons and pencils he brings her (and in the form of his roses with thorns that prick her and make her bleed) but she feels as if none of it is enough. The emptiness is perhaps characteristic of her “kind”, she supposes, but it is made worse by the solitude and by Marluxia's unwanted intrusions.
She watches him when he tends to his flowers-she notes how gently he treats them and knows that there was more to him once (more to him than this predatory role he's taken on; more to him than the cruelty he so readily displays). She knows that he was once someone's son, perhaps even someone's husband. Maybe he was a kind botanist or maybe he even owned a flower shop. He was a Somebody with a different name; he was not a Graceful Assassin but an (extra)ordinary person.
She prefers to think of him like this. She thinks of who he could have been instead of who he is and it gives her some strange form of comfort, to think of how things could be so very different if he still possessed a heart (the beating thing that the members of The Organization supposedly desire above all else). She thinks of things like this on the nights (or days-Marluxia follows no schedule, really) that he comes to her bed and takes what he wants from her, pushing and pulling and leaving bruises and teethmarks in his wake.
She prefers to think of how things might have been or how things could be; she'd rather imagine him in shades of vibrant colors (colors that aren't lent to him by his flowers) rather than shades of washed-out-grey (and there's black there too, let's not forget).
“Who were you before?” she dares to ask him one night as his nails bite painfully into her hips.
He smiles - a dangerous glint of sharpsharp white - and whispers into her ear: “I was never another other than myself, precious flower.” It is a lie, but she doesn't call him on it. She knows that it's best not to push him, even when he has no regard for how often he pushes her.
He then asks her the very same question and she falters, gaze darting away. “I don't remember.”
He laughs then, just as cold and cruel as ever, and the bright colors disperse and the kind images retreat. “You will remember this, my flower,” he intones, “for this is the kindness you are given now.”
And he resumes plucking her petals, one by one.
(He loves me; he loves me not.)
Challenge: #294 - Starting Out
Word Count: 568
Rating: PG-13
Summary: They are without a beginning and without an end, he tells her, but she's not inclined to believe it.
Notes: Not difficult to figure out the pairing once you start reading. Some sexual references, so beware of that. The idea for this just popped into my head last night.
They are nothing; they are nobody (Nobodies); they are without a beginning and without an end, he tells her.
She knows better, though. She now knows that they can fade (it is death and not-death; it is indescribable and strange and she thinks it is probably very lonely). She knows that they all had a beginning of some sort.
She knows that she once had a beginning, even though she can't recall it. She remembers being lost; she remembers being found and subsequently becoming his (a quiet little bird trapped in a gilded cage).
Maybe that was her beginning-she can't claim to know, or to properly understand it. But this is her existence now: all white walls and fragrant flowers and sinister smiles. There is color too, in the form of the markers and crayons and pencils he brings her (and in the form of his roses with thorns that prick her and make her bleed) but she feels as if none of it is enough. The emptiness is perhaps characteristic of her “kind”, she supposes, but it is made worse by the solitude and by Marluxia's unwanted intrusions.
She watches him when he tends to his flowers-she notes how gently he treats them and knows that there was more to him once (more to him than this predatory role he's taken on; more to him than the cruelty he so readily displays). She knows that he was once someone's son, perhaps even someone's husband. Maybe he was a kind botanist or maybe he even owned a flower shop. He was a Somebody with a different name; he was not a Graceful Assassin but an (extra)ordinary person.
She prefers to think of him like this. She thinks of who he could have been instead of who he is and it gives her some strange form of comfort, to think of how things could be so very different if he still possessed a heart (the beating thing that the members of The Organization supposedly desire above all else). She thinks of things like this on the nights (or days-Marluxia follows no schedule, really) that he comes to her bed and takes what he wants from her, pushing and pulling and leaving bruises and teethmarks in his wake.
She prefers to think of how things might have been or how things could be; she'd rather imagine him in shades of vibrant colors (colors that aren't lent to him by his flowers) rather than shades of washed-out-grey (and there's black there too, let's not forget).
“Who were you before?” she dares to ask him one night as his nails bite painfully into her hips.
He smiles - a dangerous glint of sharpsharp white - and whispers into her ear: “I was never another other than myself, precious flower.” It is a lie, but she doesn't call him on it. She knows that it's best not to push him, even when he has no regard for how often he pushes her.
He then asks her the very same question and she falters, gaze darting away. “I don't remember.”
He laughs then, just as cold and cruel as ever, and the bright colors disperse and the kind images retreat. “You will remember this, my flower,” he intones, “for this is the kindness you are given now.”
And he resumes plucking her petals, one by one.
(He loves me; he loves me not.)