dragonfruit #22: never in the same room as myself; malt
Author: Marika Kailaya
Title: two different sets of lungs
'Verse: Nagekawashii; MeYu
Challenge: Dragonfruit: 22. never in the same room as myself
Counts for the Summer Challenge?: Yes.
Toppings/Extras: Malt: "They talk of my drinking but never my thirst." - Scottish proverb
Wordcount: 652
Rating: PG
A/N: about a year post-LPB.
Two eyes that were almost blind, one locked with shrunken pupils on each reality, with a second pair in the back of his head gazing at the otherworld where he had once belonged. And which had the better sight? Which eye of which pair? The eye of the cigarette burns and the codes for kisses (the never, the way he did not fit himself anymore), the one looking desperately to the hope that he was still himself, that one self he had created less than ten years ago, it must've been.
Or the eye that watched Lord Shi in his castle, or the eye that looked with utter, mad adoration on Tatsuri, Lord Shi's brother-this pair of eyes that saw a self that had died, slowly, at Tatsuri's wretched, miserable hands?
Hakuri, Haku, Meguru, Meki, Kobayashi, Tomoranai (that one in more than name a pun, a play, a game, one everyone thought they could win but no one ever could because maybe the truth was no one knew he himself was playing), mine-mine-mine. People wondered why he did the things he did! People had wondered then why he shoved pills down his throat half the time not even caring what they were. Yuku had wondered. Yuku had hated him for it and hated him more for worse things before it was all over.
He had been young then. Both of them had been very young. That too was gone now but still something Meki watched.
Well, here is why, isn't this why, then? Yuku did not know, properly, the way Meki was everyone and everything worth of centuries. The whole damn universe could crawl under Meki's skin with the knowledge that Meki had become half of it, somehow.
Names and identities and all of them separate and all of them inside Meki's head, flitting around in between the sparks and screams and violent, angry colours that swirled and tangled like thorns, like barbed wire in his mind.
All those colours and sounds and not a single one happy.
And Meki could never say if it was worse than the blankness, the whiteness, that had led him there-but they were connected. Strip all his selves down to nothing, kill him in one world and resurrect him in the other, and you are left with something that can let everything in and has no choice in the matter.
And Meki is blind and numb and broken most of the time, in all senses literal, but he sees and hears and feels and understands everything as it happens, everything, as though he created this reality and now sits back to watch it unfold. It's all there, every tiny detail exploding inside him, and you wonder, all you people, you wonder why he did that?
He did not have a single clue who he was, and certainly not an idea of who he was supposed to be. It all got lost, fell right into the cracks through which shrieks and infinity poured out like acid.
He lived in all realities and he must've surely been in some way or all ways dead by now.
He thought he heard himself laughing, turning his hands upward to the sky where he lay in the middle of the road outside his own house. The sky was remarkably blue, bluer than Meki's clothes or eyes or bluer than itself, an unimaginable blue untouched by clouds. The sun lit up his skin and made his fingers glow like the fire of foxes.
He could see himself in the sky. He could see losing himself in it and leaving entirely and forgetting everything again and never, ever, ever having to come back or remember. Over for real this time.
Yuku appeared beside him, kneeling down. "What are you doing?" he said, and didn't let Meki answer before he took Meki's hands, pulled him off the ground, and led him inside.
Title: two different sets of lungs
'Verse: Nagekawashii; MeYu
Challenge: Dragonfruit: 22. never in the same room as myself
Counts for the Summer Challenge?: Yes.
Toppings/Extras: Malt: "They talk of my drinking but never my thirst." - Scottish proverb
Wordcount: 652
Rating: PG
A/N: about a year post-LPB.
Two eyes that were almost blind, one locked with shrunken pupils on each reality, with a second pair in the back of his head gazing at the otherworld where he had once belonged. And which had the better sight? Which eye of which pair? The eye of the cigarette burns and the codes for kisses (the never, the way he did not fit himself anymore), the one looking desperately to the hope that he was still himself, that one self he had created less than ten years ago, it must've been.
Or the eye that watched Lord Shi in his castle, or the eye that looked with utter, mad adoration on Tatsuri, Lord Shi's brother-this pair of eyes that saw a self that had died, slowly, at Tatsuri's wretched, miserable hands?
Hakuri, Haku, Meguru, Meki, Kobayashi, Tomoranai (that one in more than name a pun, a play, a game, one everyone thought they could win but no one ever could because maybe the truth was no one knew he himself was playing), mine-mine-mine. People wondered why he did the things he did! People had wondered then why he shoved pills down his throat half the time not even caring what they were. Yuku had wondered. Yuku had hated him for it and hated him more for worse things before it was all over.
He had been young then. Both of them had been very young. That too was gone now but still something Meki watched.
Well, here is why, isn't this why, then? Yuku did not know, properly, the way Meki was everyone and everything worth of centuries. The whole damn universe could crawl under Meki's skin with the knowledge that Meki had become half of it, somehow.
Names and identities and all of them separate and all of them inside Meki's head, flitting around in between the sparks and screams and violent, angry colours that swirled and tangled like thorns, like barbed wire in his mind.
All those colours and sounds and not a single one happy.
And Meki could never say if it was worse than the blankness, the whiteness, that had led him there-but they were connected. Strip all his selves down to nothing, kill him in one world and resurrect him in the other, and you are left with something that can let everything in and has no choice in the matter.
And Meki is blind and numb and broken most of the time, in all senses literal, but he sees and hears and feels and understands everything as it happens, everything, as though he created this reality and now sits back to watch it unfold. It's all there, every tiny detail exploding inside him, and you wonder, all you people, you wonder why he did that?
He did not have a single clue who he was, and certainly not an idea of who he was supposed to be. It all got lost, fell right into the cracks through which shrieks and infinity poured out like acid.
He lived in all realities and he must've surely been in some way or all ways dead by now.
He thought he heard himself laughing, turning his hands upward to the sky where he lay in the middle of the road outside his own house. The sky was remarkably blue, bluer than Meki's clothes or eyes or bluer than itself, an unimaginable blue untouched by clouds. The sun lit up his skin and made his fingers glow like the fire of foxes.
He could see himself in the sky. He could see losing himself in it and leaving entirely and forgetting everything again and never, ever, ever having to come back or remember. Over for real this time.
Yuku appeared beside him, kneeling down. "What are you doing?" he said, and didn't let Meki answer before he took Meki's hands, pulled him off the ground, and led him inside.