Writing. Angst. AAAANGST.
So, while we were at Powell's today after the protest, sakuratsukikage picked up a book of 1,001 writing prompts. This evening, we all had a writing party in the apartment living room. It was excellent. My prompt was: "Look... I'm making eggs. There's no deeper meaning to anything I'm doing here. It's breakfast. Plain and simple." The core image itself started out fairly light-hearted, but the fic ended up heavier than hell. I have no excuse.
In any case, it's Kaida/Ryoushi, and a bit over 1,200 words. It takes place in the year 309, towards autumn, when Kaida is back in Minoru and has reunited with old comrades. Warnings: angst, and implied... things.
As always, concrit and suggestions are appreciated.
Somehow - somehow - I still manage to ship these two like no other.
A dim sequence of sound breached the numbing veil of his sleep. The murmur of a cooking fire, gentle clinking and tapping of bowls and utensils, soft footsteps over tatami floors - and, after a few moments pulled him closer to waking, the smell of white rice and miso. The dreams had not cleared from his head, and to him, the blurred figure at the cooking fire was tall, smooth, full of grace and kindness, a shade of glossy black hair - he smiled to himself and relaxed. Natsumi was there, cooking the day’s rice, as she always did. Everything was well and normal. The past two years had been a nightmare, a bad dream, nothing more-
Natsumi swore under her breath.
That wasn’t right, Ryoushi thought weakly. Natsumi never swore.
His haze broke. The pain in his arm returned full-force. He sat up stubbornly and looked with clearing vision at the small figure tending to the kitchen, and suddenly felt the weight of reality more forcefully than any pain that a mortal body or mind could imagine. His stomach twisted, his vision swam, tears pricked like needles at the corners of his eyes. He pressed his face into his hands and grit his teeth against the urge to cry out.
He could feel Kaida’s sharp eyes on him, hot as sunlight. It did not improve his mood.
She was tactfully silent, and after a half-second that seemed to take an eternity to pass, the background chorus of household sounds began anew. Kaida was chopping something with a knife, but the rhythm was slow and jarring. Whatever it was, she soon added it to the pot of liquid suspended over the fire, and in a few moments, she was at his side, a bowl of miso in hand.
“Breakfast,” she said, with the curtness that for her signaled discomfort.
“You made me breakfast,” he observed distantly, incredulously, into his palms. Sensing her tension, his instinct was to provoke her, but he couldn’t quite muster the will to follow through with it; it was strange, he thought belatedly, that after all these years, he could still read her so well.
“I made you breakfast,” she repeated with a dismissive breath. “That’s all there is to it, Koichi. It isn’t an implication, or an apology, or any sort of acknowledgement whatsoever. It is food. Take it, or I’m putting it outside for the stray cats.”
He felt an awful lot like a stray cat, he decided, all broken limbs, scars, and the grayness and wear of so many extra years. Likely he meant about as much to her. Numbly, he took the proffered bowl and forced himself to drink. At first he thought that it tasted horrible, but it occurred to him that, really, it was only mediocre, and that for some reason, he had expected it to be like Natsumi’s cooking, which skill and love had made into something unparalleled by man or nature.
Even after the events of the previous night, it seemed ludicrous that he could expect any similarity. Kaida was a being of angles and sharp edges, complex but intentionally cold, like a self-made maze that few dared to pursue and that damaged any who tried. She could be admired physically, perhaps even loved as some vague essence, but not as a person. Not in the way that he had loved - still loved - Natsumi, who was soft and smiling and perfect. Where Kaida was focused and intense and burned like the white flames of a forge, Natsumi was airy and gentle, playful and clever without severity; where Natsumi was passionate and warm, Kaida was austere, barren, void. They occupied two separate places in his life - Natsumi his wife, his lover, the woman to whom he belonged, and Kaida a superior, a rival, a guardian whose compassion was reserved for ideals, not human beings. They did not and could not overlap. He wouldn’t let them.
Thus, it upset him that even their briefest touch could have beckoned those dreams which had lingered into waking. He reasoned that it was guilt, nothing more, and took another sip of the broth.
He noticed that Kaida, standing near the fire, was holding a bowl of her own and had her eyes on him expectantly.
“It’s terrible,” he announced.
She drank. He knew that she knew he was lying.
“That’s twice, now, that I’ve saved your life,” she said, picking thoughtfully at the tofu with her chopsticks.
Lacking the necessary utensils and the use of a second arm, Ryoushi simply stared at the uneven blocks of off-white curd at the bottom of his bowl. “And?”
“And I’m not sure what to follow that with,” Kaida replied frankly. “It was something to say. That’s… all.”
The last of the year’s cicadas were humming outside. “You don’t need to try so hard to ignore last night,” Ryoushi said on impulse.
The red-haired woman stared at him blandly. “Why don’t I?”
“Why do you?” he countered before he could think better of it.
“Because it was a mistake,” she answered, coolly and without pause, as if he had asked the most obvious thing in the world. “It should not have happened. We are not-” she stopped, narrowed her eyes in thought, and resumed. “That is not a part of our relationship. And that was a stupid question, Koichi. You can’t think differently.”
She was right, really. He knew perfectly well why she should want to ignore it, if such a thing were possible.
“Besides,” she added, looking to the door and the sunlight that slowly grew bolder. “You were saying your wife’s name in your sleep. You’re as incapable of this as I am, if for different reasons.”
He sighed and set his bowl aside, and said the words as quickly as he could, so that his voice wouldn’t crack or waver. “Natsumi’s dead.”
“Even if you could accept that fact…” Kaida stopped, and for once, although he could complete her sentence adequately, Ryoushi couldn’t guess how she felt about it. His pulse was quickened by the pain in his arm and the feverish sensation of dull, impossible desire, and even though he had only drank the miso broth, his appetite had fled completely. When she brought him a bowl of rice (chopsticks included, this time), he could not eat, and leveled upon it a gaze filled with misery and thorough confusion.
If he was reading her correctly, her slow assault on her own bowl of rice was a token gesture. “Both of us have work to do,” she said after a moment, proving him right by setting her bowl, still mostly full, to the side. “You need to heal, and-”
I don’t feel anything for Kaida, he thought forcefully.
“Cease looking so troubled,” she commanded in a tired but otherwise perfect facsimile of the voice he knew from eight years ago. At least she didn’t sound like she was pleading. “If nothing else, I’ve made my decision, and that is not going to change…”
I don’t feel anything for her.
“…and besides, there are more important things at hand. Without our attention, the revolution will fail.” She looked to the west again, at the glowing sky and the backlit rows of small, shabby houses. “You know where my loyalty lies - to my cause and my people. I cannot allow myself to be distracted from that, not even by…”
I don’t.
In any case, it's Kaida/Ryoushi, and a bit over 1,200 words. It takes place in the year 309, towards autumn, when Kaida is back in Minoru and has reunited with old comrades. Warnings: angst, and implied... things.
As always, concrit and suggestions are appreciated.
Somehow - somehow - I still manage to ship these two like no other.
A dim sequence of sound breached the numbing veil of his sleep. The murmur of a cooking fire, gentle clinking and tapping of bowls and utensils, soft footsteps over tatami floors - and, after a few moments pulled him closer to waking, the smell of white rice and miso. The dreams had not cleared from his head, and to him, the blurred figure at the cooking fire was tall, smooth, full of grace and kindness, a shade of glossy black hair - he smiled to himself and relaxed. Natsumi was there, cooking the day’s rice, as she always did. Everything was well and normal. The past two years had been a nightmare, a bad dream, nothing more-
Natsumi swore under her breath.
That wasn’t right, Ryoushi thought weakly. Natsumi never swore.
His haze broke. The pain in his arm returned full-force. He sat up stubbornly and looked with clearing vision at the small figure tending to the kitchen, and suddenly felt the weight of reality more forcefully than any pain that a mortal body or mind could imagine. His stomach twisted, his vision swam, tears pricked like needles at the corners of his eyes. He pressed his face into his hands and grit his teeth against the urge to cry out.
He could feel Kaida’s sharp eyes on him, hot as sunlight. It did not improve his mood.
She was tactfully silent, and after a half-second that seemed to take an eternity to pass, the background chorus of household sounds began anew. Kaida was chopping something with a knife, but the rhythm was slow and jarring. Whatever it was, she soon added it to the pot of liquid suspended over the fire, and in a few moments, she was at his side, a bowl of miso in hand.
“Breakfast,” she said, with the curtness that for her signaled discomfort.
“You made me breakfast,” he observed distantly, incredulously, into his palms. Sensing her tension, his instinct was to provoke her, but he couldn’t quite muster the will to follow through with it; it was strange, he thought belatedly, that after all these years, he could still read her so well.
“I made you breakfast,” she repeated with a dismissive breath. “That’s all there is to it, Koichi. It isn’t an implication, or an apology, or any sort of acknowledgement whatsoever. It is food. Take it, or I’m putting it outside for the stray cats.”
He felt an awful lot like a stray cat, he decided, all broken limbs, scars, and the grayness and wear of so many extra years. Likely he meant about as much to her. Numbly, he took the proffered bowl and forced himself to drink. At first he thought that it tasted horrible, but it occurred to him that, really, it was only mediocre, and that for some reason, he had expected it to be like Natsumi’s cooking, which skill and love had made into something unparalleled by man or nature.
Even after the events of the previous night, it seemed ludicrous that he could expect any similarity. Kaida was a being of angles and sharp edges, complex but intentionally cold, like a self-made maze that few dared to pursue and that damaged any who tried. She could be admired physically, perhaps even loved as some vague essence, but not as a person. Not in the way that he had loved - still loved - Natsumi, who was soft and smiling and perfect. Where Kaida was focused and intense and burned like the white flames of a forge, Natsumi was airy and gentle, playful and clever without severity; where Natsumi was passionate and warm, Kaida was austere, barren, void. They occupied two separate places in his life - Natsumi his wife, his lover, the woman to whom he belonged, and Kaida a superior, a rival, a guardian whose compassion was reserved for ideals, not human beings. They did not and could not overlap. He wouldn’t let them.
Thus, it upset him that even their briefest touch could have beckoned those dreams which had lingered into waking. He reasoned that it was guilt, nothing more, and took another sip of the broth.
He noticed that Kaida, standing near the fire, was holding a bowl of her own and had her eyes on him expectantly.
“It’s terrible,” he announced.
She drank. He knew that she knew he was lying.
“That’s twice, now, that I’ve saved your life,” she said, picking thoughtfully at the tofu with her chopsticks.
Lacking the necessary utensils and the use of a second arm, Ryoushi simply stared at the uneven blocks of off-white curd at the bottom of his bowl. “And?”
“And I’m not sure what to follow that with,” Kaida replied frankly. “It was something to say. That’s… all.”
The last of the year’s cicadas were humming outside. “You don’t need to try so hard to ignore last night,” Ryoushi said on impulse.
The red-haired woman stared at him blandly. “Why don’t I?”
“Why do you?” he countered before he could think better of it.
“Because it was a mistake,” she answered, coolly and without pause, as if he had asked the most obvious thing in the world. “It should not have happened. We are not-” she stopped, narrowed her eyes in thought, and resumed. “That is not a part of our relationship. And that was a stupid question, Koichi. You can’t think differently.”
She was right, really. He knew perfectly well why she should want to ignore it, if such a thing were possible.
“Besides,” she added, looking to the door and the sunlight that slowly grew bolder. “You were saying your wife’s name in your sleep. You’re as incapable of this as I am, if for different reasons.”
He sighed and set his bowl aside, and said the words as quickly as he could, so that his voice wouldn’t crack or waver. “Natsumi’s dead.”
“Even if you could accept that fact…” Kaida stopped, and for once, although he could complete her sentence adequately, Ryoushi couldn’t guess how she felt about it. His pulse was quickened by the pain in his arm and the feverish sensation of dull, impossible desire, and even though he had only drank the miso broth, his appetite had fled completely. When she brought him a bowl of rice (chopsticks included, this time), he could not eat, and leveled upon it a gaze filled with misery and thorough confusion.
If he was reading her correctly, her slow assault on her own bowl of rice was a token gesture. “Both of us have work to do,” she said after a moment, proving him right by setting her bowl, still mostly full, to the side. “You need to heal, and-”
I don’t feel anything for Kaida, he thought forcefully.
“Cease looking so troubled,” she commanded in a tired but otherwise perfect facsimile of the voice he knew from eight years ago. At least she didn’t sound like she was pleading. “If nothing else, I’ve made my decision, and that is not going to change…”
I don’t feel anything for her.
“…and besides, there are more important things at hand. Without our attention, the revolution will fail.” She looked to the west again, at the glowing sky and the backlit rows of small, shabby houses. “You know where my loyalty lies - to my cause and my people. I cannot allow myself to be distracted from that, not even by…”
I don’t.