DGM Oneshot: Himawari
Fanfiction.net link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5319796/1/Himawari
Himawari
He reminisces while watching her sit, surrounded by the pristine wilderness growing just before the small patch of sunflowers planted beneath the lower arches of their new “home”; as she so lovingly likes to call the place where their children learn how to break without dying.
And he muses, does she remember? How she used to sit just like that under the clouds in the tidy backyard of their house, staring for hours at the many tall sunflowers nurtured with so much care by their lao-ye (1) until niáng (2) had to drag her in for the evening tea (3). He wonders if maybe she can recall the same way he does her small, so incredibly tiny fingertips counting fallen seeds in a clumsy mix of tangled tonge proper of her age and dizzy summer slumber.
Then Reever slams his way in with bags under his eyes and kindly whispers to him to “stop staring out the bloody window already and get back to the damn papers”. He’s right; there’s work to be done,missions to prepare, lives to risk.
The next time he steals a glance, she’s gone.
It’s not until a week later that he spots her out in the garden again, picking up dark toasted grains with slender hands. Her fingers work slowly, with a lazy kind of stretch more fit for a cat’s tail than a cheerful teenage girl.
He takes in the details of this little ritual of sorts and muses over the last time he was able to fit those fingers in the palm of his hand. It was that final morning in the sea of sunflowers, moments before the red devored the yellow along with everything that made up their world. She couldn’t possibly remember. That’s what he desperately prays.
That afternoon, she heads to the gate; suitcase tight in her grasp.
There are charcoal stains on her cheeks smeared with those left by tears, and she gazes wide-eyed sideways, at something only she can conprehend. There is chocked sobbing mingled with her attempts at talking, at slurring out an explanation for the charred outfit and the equally charred oval-shaped somethings clinging to the cloth.
“I didn’t see it I- I wasn’t ... Allen’s eye was b-bleeding and I got distracted because they weren’t supposed... there were no more, that’s why we started going back and... t-the flames ...”
He tries reaching for her hands, rough and blackened by the smoke. In her frenzied, panicked gesturing she pulls them away “The flames would not stop growing to the sky, they were all over the building, that orphanage” He’s scared by the trance-like state she’s submerged herself in and looks for a way to anchor her wildly rolling eyes to his, tries to take them off the fire.
“ I ran you know? I ran really really fast I swear, you’ve seen how fast I can go; but by the time I got there everything was blurry and hot; scorching, just like back then, ge-ge”.
Water and powder sneaking their way down her neck, gathering in her sweat covered collarbone, and she’s absentmindedly picking the crumbling petals off her skirt with jerky movements. He’s ready to make the correct decisions, he’s calling the nurses with their sedatives, but suddenly she stands still and looks him in the eye with a haunted look. “There were sunflowers in the backyard this time, too”.
And she smiles.
(1): If I’m not mistaken (note the if) it’s coloquial for grandfather in chinese.
(2): Mother in chinese.
(3): So yeah, let’s pretend they drank evening tea in 19th century China.
I was aiming for an incest-like one-sided ( Just Komui) stalkerish ficlet. But all of a sudden I flipped it over and made Lenalee spiral into madness. Um... I blame it to the fact I hate Lenalee; my subconscious self wasn’t able to betray that.
Himawari
He reminisces while watching her sit, surrounded by the pristine wilderness growing just before the small patch of sunflowers planted beneath the lower arches of their new “home”; as she so lovingly likes to call the place where their children learn how to break without dying.
And he muses, does she remember? How she used to sit just like that under the clouds in the tidy backyard of their house, staring for hours at the many tall sunflowers nurtured with so much care by their lao-ye (1) until niáng (2) had to drag her in for the evening tea (3). He wonders if maybe she can recall the same way he does her small, so incredibly tiny fingertips counting fallen seeds in a clumsy mix of tangled tonge proper of her age and dizzy summer slumber.
Then Reever slams his way in with bags under his eyes and kindly whispers to him to “stop staring out the bloody window already and get back to the damn papers”. He’s right; there’s work to be done,missions to prepare, lives to risk.
The next time he steals a glance, she’s gone.
It’s not until a week later that he spots her out in the garden again, picking up dark toasted grains with slender hands. Her fingers work slowly, with a lazy kind of stretch more fit for a cat’s tail than a cheerful teenage girl.
He takes in the details of this little ritual of sorts and muses over the last time he was able to fit those fingers in the palm of his hand. It was that final morning in the sea of sunflowers, moments before the red devored the yellow along with everything that made up their world. She couldn’t possibly remember. That’s what he desperately prays.
That afternoon, she heads to the gate; suitcase tight in her grasp.
There are charcoal stains on her cheeks smeared with those left by tears, and she gazes wide-eyed sideways, at something only she can conprehend. There is chocked sobbing mingled with her attempts at talking, at slurring out an explanation for the charred outfit and the equally charred oval-shaped somethings clinging to the cloth.
“I didn’t see it I- I wasn’t ... Allen’s eye was b-bleeding and I got distracted because they weren’t supposed... there were no more, that’s why we started going back and... t-the flames ...”
He tries reaching for her hands, rough and blackened by the smoke. In her frenzied, panicked gesturing she pulls them away “The flames would not stop growing to the sky, they were all over the building, that orphanage” He’s scared by the trance-like state she’s submerged herself in and looks for a way to anchor her wildly rolling eyes to his, tries to take them off the fire.
“ I ran you know? I ran really really fast I swear, you’ve seen how fast I can go; but by the time I got there everything was blurry and hot; scorching, just like back then, ge-ge”.
Water and powder sneaking their way down her neck, gathering in her sweat covered collarbone, and she’s absentmindedly picking the crumbling petals off her skirt with jerky movements. He’s ready to make the correct decisions, he’s calling the nurses with their sedatives, but suddenly she stands still and looks him in the eye with a haunted look. “There were sunflowers in the backyard this time, too”.
And she smiles.
(1): If I’m not mistaken (note the if) it’s coloquial for grandfather in chinese.
(2): Mother in chinese.
(3): So yeah, let’s pretend they drank evening tea in 19th century China.
I was aiming for an incest-like one-sided ( Just Komui) stalkerish ficlet. But all of a sudden I flipped it over and made Lenalee spiral into madness. Um... I blame it to the fact I hate Lenalee; my subconscious self wasn’t able to betray that.