Look! Fanfiction!
Fandom: X
Characters: Subaru (mentions of Seishirou and Hokuto)
Rating: PG
Genre: Character profile, angst.
Warnings: Spoilers for Tokyo Babylon and X volume 18.
Summary: The words "winds of change" mean nothing to Subaru.
This has been collecting dust on my hard drive for ages. In the end, I deleted a whole paragraph and rewrote the ending completely, and I'm still not fully satisfied with it. Constructive critism is, as always, welcome.
To others, the wind represents change. Like water it flows, it swirls, it shakes up. Like fire it destroys and devastates. And in the ruins of where the wind has gone, or water, or fire, the chance for something new to begin remains. To others, the wind is change.
Subaru is not like others, never has been. That three elements out of four should bring about change is to him an impossible thought, because that would mean that it would not be in balance. For as long as he can remember, Subaru has been taught to think in opposites. Light and darkness, good and evil, love and hatred all collide and intersect and Subaru isn’t always sure which is which. All he knows is that the two sides complete each other, balance each other.
He sees it in the way two stars could be born in the same sky and love one another across the vastness of the universe, and he sees that right and wrong turn on each other and are one and the same in the way that the brightest of those stars was the one to falter and wane, leaving the other one to light up the night sky all by itself.
Yes, the world is in balance. It’s a cruel, painful balance, one where one must die for another to live and where one person’s happiness is someone else’s misfortune, but it’s a balance nevertheless and in this world where Subaru tries to live life for someone whose light was so much brighter, there can never be such a thing as three elements against one.
That’s why, whereas to others the winds represents change and the future, to Subaru it will always mean the past.
The past is how the wind covers those fateful words that are to shatter Subaru’s very existence. It’s how he can hear Hokuto’s laughter in the wind and how her smile flickers in the trees’ leaves as the breeze rustles them. The wind is the past to Subaru, because it’s the wind that carries Hokuto’s last words to him and forces him back to try to keep his balance in a world that has robbed him of the one person who completed him. Good and evil, right and wrong are one and the same in this cruel, painful world and Subaru isn’t sure if that one person is Hokuto or Seishirou, because mingled with his sister’s last whisper are those words, those painful, devastating words that are the most cruel and the most beautiful Subaru has ever heard. He closes his eyes to feel the wind in his hair and it feels like Seishirou’s caress on his skin and Hokuto’s lips brushing against his cheek and wonders why he, the one person who has lost all balance in life, the light to his darkness and the darkness to his light, is not allowed to think of the world as being in imbalance and of the wind as a bringer of change and to leave the past behind forever. And then there comes a gust of wind, and the cherry blossom petals scatter and are blown away, and Subaru is left alone behind, with nothing but the past and with no hope of a new future.
And in spite of that, in spite of himself, because Subaru is not like others and never has been, he prefers it that way.
Characters: Subaru (mentions of Seishirou and Hokuto)
Rating: PG
Genre: Character profile, angst.
Warnings: Spoilers for Tokyo Babylon and X volume 18.
Summary: The words "winds of change" mean nothing to Subaru.
This has been collecting dust on my hard drive for ages. In the end, I deleted a whole paragraph and rewrote the ending completely, and I'm still not fully satisfied with it. Constructive critism is, as always, welcome.
To others, the wind represents change. Like water it flows, it swirls, it shakes up. Like fire it destroys and devastates. And in the ruins of where the wind has gone, or water, or fire, the chance for something new to begin remains. To others, the wind is change.
Subaru is not like others, never has been. That three elements out of four should bring about change is to him an impossible thought, because that would mean that it would not be in balance. For as long as he can remember, Subaru has been taught to think in opposites. Light and darkness, good and evil, love and hatred all collide and intersect and Subaru isn’t always sure which is which. All he knows is that the two sides complete each other, balance each other.
He sees it in the way two stars could be born in the same sky and love one another across the vastness of the universe, and he sees that right and wrong turn on each other and are one and the same in the way that the brightest of those stars was the one to falter and wane, leaving the other one to light up the night sky all by itself.
Yes, the world is in balance. It’s a cruel, painful balance, one where one must die for another to live and where one person’s happiness is someone else’s misfortune, but it’s a balance nevertheless and in this world where Subaru tries to live life for someone whose light was so much brighter, there can never be such a thing as three elements against one.
That’s why, whereas to others the winds represents change and the future, to Subaru it will always mean the past.
The past is how the wind covers those fateful words that are to shatter Subaru’s very existence. It’s how he can hear Hokuto’s laughter in the wind and how her smile flickers in the trees’ leaves as the breeze rustles them. The wind is the past to Subaru, because it’s the wind that carries Hokuto’s last words to him and forces him back to try to keep his balance in a world that has robbed him of the one person who completed him. Good and evil, right and wrong are one and the same in this cruel, painful world and Subaru isn’t sure if that one person is Hokuto or Seishirou, because mingled with his sister’s last whisper are those words, those painful, devastating words that are the most cruel and the most beautiful Subaru has ever heard. He closes his eyes to feel the wind in his hair and it feels like Seishirou’s caress on his skin and Hokuto’s lips brushing against his cheek and wonders why he, the one person who has lost all balance in life, the light to his darkness and the darkness to his light, is not allowed to think of the world as being in imbalance and of the wind as a bringer of change and to leave the past behind forever. And then there comes a gust of wind, and the cherry blossom petals scatter and are blown away, and Subaru is left alone behind, with nothing but the past and with no hope of a new future.
And in spite of that, in spite of himself, because Subaru is not like others and never has been, he prefers it that way.