Revenge of the drabbles
"What is the price for happiness? Haven't you given enough?"
She stared at him, midnight voice echoing in the gray world that surrounded them. "All debts must be payed."
He wasn't backing down on this. He could out stubborn her and drag her around if he just stayed here and forced her to talk about it. "The debts are owed to you, you don't owe anyone anything anymore. Why can't you rest? Why can't you just let us be together and happy now?"
Cloven feet stamped as she folded her arms defensively under her breasts. "I am insuring that what has been achieved remains intact and the debts owed to the abused are fulfilled. Witch has a reason for being, that is the price paid in blood and dreams Daemon. If not for this, there would be no dreams to make Witch at all."
She acted like she was alone in this, alone with the burden of two worlds, neither of which she wished to rule.
"A mother does not place a price on her child. You can force me to go, force me to leave you be, but you will have to force me. We place our own price on our own lives by how much we value ourselves, and without you I have no value to myself. This is my price. Come home."
Spira is built on irony.
She wasn't who he wanted, and he wasn't who she loved. His girl was real and breathing and stared at him from two different yet beautiful gemstone colored eyes. Her man was obsessed and determined and frighteningly smart considering the first two characteristics.
But if he closed his eyes and listened he could almost hear Yuna in her voice and if he kept his mouth shut she could fool herself into thinking he was someone else.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. She and her man were supposed to be dead and gone, and he was a dream of a person who really wasn't real. But the dead don't go away in Spira, and heartache can outlive lifetimes. Yuna was the only one who could connect them all together, and wasn't it irony that he should have died for her? Because he'd only been alive for her anyway, right?
Lenne sings for him and dances and he can feel Yuna in the air, so he stays silent and holds her when she needs it, and she imposes over him an image of a man who wants to destroy the world for a love lost but not dead.
Spira is built on irony.
"But wings aren't walking bits!"
Zack couldn't help it, he just doubled over and howled as Cloud ran around trying to catch the three little toddlers who had discovered not how to crawl as most babies do, but to scuttle ala crab fashion.
"Cloud, really, they can't fly and we can't carry them all the time, I'm sure it won't hurt them to... erm... crawl..." Seph was looking at his progeny with a frown, wings beating slowly as he hovered in the living room.
Little Clo was attempting to catch one of his mother's wings but kept missing, while little Seti scuttled after Cloud who was chasing Little Zax. Zax had some how mastered the art of downy crab no jitsu and was scuttling as fast as his six little wings would let him over the carpet, occasionally mistiming and tumbling head long into something.
Coordinating six little wings must be a lot harder than two little legs but Zax was determined to give his father the literal run around.
And Cloud just kept chasing him, and muttering about carpet burns and feather wear and walking bits while his dark and dead lover laughed his guts out.
Seph finally picked Clo up and let the little bugger snuggle, leaving his two husbands to figure it out while he prepared some formula.
There was something about breaking the broken that intrigued him.
He'd considered, briefly, tying the blond onto the wooden horse until he passed out, but if he left the metal leg on it wouldn't take long and if he removed it it would be hard to keep the boy in place.
So he settled for hobbling the teen, tying a flesh wrist to a flesh ankle while he figured out how to deal with the puzzling appendages. The pet was too weak from hunger and thirst to fight very hard. It was interesting actually, how *fast* the child ran out of reserves when denied sustenance. Almost as though his body were powering the limbs and something else aside.
He'd gagged the blond from the outset, not interested in whatever the other had to say. Studying the catches on the flailing shoulder he found the release device and swiftly 'disarmed' the pet. The shudder of pain did not go unnoticed.
Setting the metal aside he moved to the metal foot and repeated the procedure then tossed the much lighter child further onto the bed.
It took his a while of searching in one of his chests before he found the lock pick set given to him by his corporate matters during the war. He had no intention of ruining the devices that gave the pet mobility, but he'd never played with a cripple before and really, if the parts that were supposed to go there caused pain, what about the parts that didn't?
"You know, if you really want to get with Yukina, you should find some common ground with her." The toddler was watching Kurama's fight with unconcealed boredom. The fox was toying with his enemy, the same way he always did, and frankly everyone knew it at this point.
"Oh yeah? like what exactly? We were made for each other! The sun to the moon and and... um, wait why do you care?" Kuwabara was a bit slow on the uptake but he wasn't *stupid*. Not really. He just used his emotional abilities to the point that actually *thinking* about something tended to slow him down at crucial moments.
"I mean, things you have in common, things you both like, things you both think are important. Like, what does she care about that you care about? And I care because if I have to listen to another of your speeches about true love and destiny I want there to be actual *evidence* on your part."
Keonma, as most knew but few dared point out, was a big romantic softy.
"Well. Um. She cares about finding her brother, and healing things, and snow, and she likes dancing under the cherry blossoms and listening to the birds sing... And I like watching her do all that and protecting her." Which sounded good in theory but there was something missing, if he could figure out what. "And I guess she likes the runt. But I don't know why, I mean, he hasn't even found her brother yet and I bet he's not even looking!"
Kurama finally finished the damned thing off and was looking at Hiei, almost like he was tossing out a challenge for the Korime to one up him. Koenma filed that look away for later, he was still keeping an eye on both parolees.
"So why don't you search for him? You said yourself he's pretty important to her, wouldn't he be important to you to?"
Kuwabara puzzled that over a minute. "I would, and, I kinda try when we go on missions, you know, to feel if I can feel anything like her, but... I don't know, something tells me, something tells me he doesn't want to be found you know? And I don't want to find him if he's gonna hurt Yukina just by running away again. I don't know, maybe the runt has the right idea. But if I do find him I'll pound his ass for making her worry for so long."
"You do that." Koenma watched the fight between Hiei and some no named A class youkai end in a blood bath after a scant minute and a half. "You do that. I wanna watch."
They're all idiots. Self proclaimed and proud of it and one day they'll be stupid and brave enough to get themselves killed. It's happened before. There isn't anyway it won't happen again.
They're praised for bravery and courage and strength, but he tends to agree with the old woman; it's not enough. Heroes are simply martyrs who haven't been fed to the lions yet. They can't stay brave and stupid and heroic because they'll die, stabbed in the back for trusting the wrong person at the wrong time. Or even worse, they'll stop being stupid and start being cunning. They'll stop throwing themselves in the way of the innocent and start telling the world to fend for itself.
He's seen the knowledge pass through Uremeshi's mind, that sooner or later one or all of them will fall. That he will fail. That his power in the grand scheme of things is nothing more than a blazing star, soon to darken. Uremeshi fights to stay the bright stupid hero by denial and belief. denial of time and belief in his people, his friends... his chosen family.
How long will he be able to fool himself now that he has the blood of a long lived demon coursing through his veins?
Kazuma has faced the knowledge of his own mortality with as much grace as a human can. Part of his devotion to Yukina is due to the fact she will see him dead and gone long before she herself feels the hand of time. It's a futile gesture to love a maiden of the Ice, but most human lives are futile, and his less so than the majority.
The fox has seen both sides of the proverbial coin. It's a toss up which way the fur will fall when the time comes, because neither side can quite agree on which way would be more fun to go. No matter how or when, it's probably a good bet he'll die laughing at someone, if only quietly to himself.
They're all idiots, and himself doubly so, because he's a demon who can not face the truth of himself, a creature of Fire seeking the cold oblivion of the frozen fields. he knows the ending to his own story, and it is soaked in the same blood his life has been forged from. He may be praised for it, or scorned, or simply forgotten, but he is what he is, a son who should have been daughter. He'll die so that another might live, the only difference time has wrought upon him, is when. Because he has more people to die for now than just a sister. So he'll probably go sooner, and with a bit more fanfare.
That's alright though. They're all idiots, and he'd rather go first anyway. It'll give him some peace and quiet.
Windows were expensive. She tried never to throw him out one in case it broke. Glass shattered and could leave serious injuries and getting new glass cut to fit the frames was a pain. That's why she usually put him through the roof. Roof tiles were cheap, he was a well seasoned carpenter by now, and the tiles broke and crumbled upon impact.
He didn't realize the thoughtfulness she put into the mallet swinging.
"You know, it's not that I'm not grateful for your help and all, but, I really don't *want* a master. I want my brother. I need to find him, and I don't see how fighting for another's cause will help me find him."
Mahado gazed at the young boy he'd found in the shadows. He was strong, a good monster for the masters, but he was also stubborn and foreign. If he could teach the child...
"If your brother is outside of the Shadow Realm, you will need to learn how to be called in order to find him there. If he is in the Shadow Realm, you will need to learn to fight in order to survive to find him. The fee for such teachings is only a few lifetimes of servitude. Not much in the life span of a monster."
Alphonse smiled, a grim smile that he'd learned from watching Ed for far too long.
"I'm sure it isn't sir, but I'm human. If Ed ever heard someone call me a monster he'd break their kneecaps with his metal foot. I'm going to find him, I have a promise to keep, and I don't have time to waste serving a man I don't know from a world I've never seen."
Al whimpered from where he was hanging, arms tied above his head, suspended from the ceiling by an iron chain and spreader bar. Sephiroth wasn't stupid enough to give either boy a chance to use their strange powers.
The older brother was just coming around, eyes glazed with pain and fatigue. He'd had to break the fingers of the flesh hand after Ed had tried to create an array in his own blood.
To keep himself entertained while he waited for the older brother to come back from the abyss of agony, he'd stripped the younger and proceeded to paint him in the runes and arrays the boys had been studying before his arrival to their world.
Hence the whimpering he presumed. If the children were afraid of whatever they had been studying, then really, they had no right to be looking into the matter. Just like Hojo and Lucretia they were meddling in affairs not suited for them.
Well, it was his duty as an adult to rectify the situation correct? and now that they were both aware, he proceeded to experiment with his new 'toys'. Chalk wasn't a medium he preferred, but when the symbols on the floor flared to life under the touch of his materia, he really couldn't find it within himself to complain.
And the screams were almost lyrical.
He's been around so long that the idea of living by any schedule other than a self imposed one seems ridiculous. The sun rises, the sun sets, and he gets his ass out of bed when he feels like it, regardless of the burning gas ball's relative position along the horizon.
Other people try to tell him to be places 'on time'. He tells them to screw themselves. He doesn't answer to time, and even if he cared about the daily running of things, he still wouldn't bother to schedule things in because life doesn't work as predictably as clocks. People live and die and do things in between. Trying to schedule when those things should happen is a form of insanity and he's got enough of that to deal with as is.
The desert burns in the day and freezes at night but they both know how to cope because this is home. The smaller boy doesn't know it the same way he does, because the knowledge comes second hand in the way all dreams and memories and past lives do, but to Bakura it's the same desert it's always been and he's never known a better place to survive.
Yugi huddles in his arms at night, driven by the old wind to seek the only warmth left in a land beaten bronze by the sun. Bakura holds him, not because he cares, but because he knows the wind, and he knows it won't stop blowing until he gives in and lets the little pharaoh find shelter.