ficlets100 - number seven.

[rawri]

001. Guilt
002. New
003.Solitude
004. Content
005. Tale

006. Distort
007. Luxury
008. Listen
009. Party
010. Scent

011. Storm
012. Lessons
013.Apology
014. Relief
015. Breeze

016.Fading
017. Passion
018. Stay
019.Rain
020. Within

021.Dread
022.Revenge
023.Time
024.Perfect
025.Eyes

026.Bloom
027.Beginning
028. Bath
029. Object
030. Lost

031.Pride
032. Death
033

Comments

Soul Campaign -> ⌈11.⌋ Storm

[rawri]

31 Days. Arashi/China. 24.
I'm almost drowning in her sea.
The war was over, and there were no worlds to return to.

Their obligations were gone- the desert now ended, and they could cross it without a mission in mind. The something more to their body, that something that made them what they had become, disappeared-- or perhaps the better word for it was that it had returned, returned to wherever it came from.

A promise had been a promise, and because it had been a promise, it hadn't been fulfilled. When they had bordered on five years, he had paced - when they had gone on to twelve, he'd sat down and waited. Waited for what, even China didn't know, but it had something to do with Tibet's (he couldn't even recall the face of that Nation) age-old practice, of sitting and thinking and wondering. Not even her sharp looks could get him to move, then, because he knew, he knew she would possibly have done the same if she could have.

But another year, he was back up, and they traveled together. Vacations had become impossible, toward that end-- breaks were single meals eaten in peace, a moment to look at someone else without soot or blood inbetween and possibly smile. But smiles cracked, shattered as easy as rain.

It rained, the day it was all over; the sun that none of them even glanced at was hidden, and they were standing, and there was no fireworks or big booms or celebration. They were standing, and they looked at each other, and they went back to their apartments, stepped over bodies and rocks and mud to sit on worn couches with partners or friends. Because there was no ruckus, everyone was silent when it was announced that BREW had disappeared along with the evil, when the cloaked figure with the white mask bowed and said he would take any complaints.

No one said much of anything, however. Oh, sure, he was sure Jones (it was impossible to think of him as America, now) went back with that old, loud spirit, and that Tiesel had went with him, but he didn't much care. He took the same seat he had a year before, and waited.

He waited for when he met with Deng, the ambitious man he'd known before now the leader of his country. He waited for word of everything is changed, everything is safe from her. He waited as former Nation after former Nation passed by. He waited as Matthew voiced the idea that perhaps they had been insane, all of them, together. He waited as this idea was shot down by Kujikawa with a loud voice and married-couple attitude. He waited when they all left, when he waited in Shanghai's many buildings and heard of Ling and Ping in India, in Nepal, in Bhutan.

He waited a long time.

She arrived after a short time, arrived by voice over the telephone (no matter what, he refused to use that PDA, and by extension, a computer) consistently, until shared silences weren't enough and she demanded - not quite the right word, but good enough - that he come. That he arrive there.

"I have always hated Japan's sea," he'd said with a sigh, with a dull look at an old suitcase.

"It's my sea, too." She'd said, right before hanging up, because the click of the dial tone would make him move more than anything.

[rawri]

He took a ship, because the planes were too strange. He took wobbling steps off of that ship, because his knees had always begun to hurt and the swaying motion did nothing to help, and the dock creaked and the captain was an old man who gave his old styled clothes an odd look, and it was raining, and she was waiting.

They stood, and they looked at each other, and their souls did nothing. Thus the reason they had separated - after being Meister and Weapon, it was hard to think on anything but that empty side, just as it had been hard when they had first came to Shibusen - and Yao wanted to tell a story on a rain that filled the entire world, that drowned every creature, but he walked forward and put his head to her shoulder instead.

"I nearly drowned," he said, to which she didn't make a sound and so he replied to that with, "They don't make boats like they used to."

But nothing was as it was it used to be, and so when he went to her clean, organized apartment to find two beds, went out to eat and complained on the food and stayed in and had her give him the cold shoulder over a prodding to cook, he found he didn't have to wait for the rain to drown the world, because he didn't have to wait for anything again. He never had to pack again, either.