Title: the songs people sing
Author:
Rating: PG
Warnings: ): sort of bittersweet. and also. i could not keep oruha out what. D:
Word count: 574
Summary: But in the end, she sang, and he heard her.
A/N: I'm sure I didn't do them justice. I haven't read Clover in about a year, and if I could, I'd reread it, but I just don't have time. I'm sorry about that. :\ Hopefully you'll still like this quick bit? ♥;;;
“Are you afraid of dying?” Suu asked.
Oruha pressed a smile like a secret into the curve of the phone, cradled against her shoulder as she painted her toenails. “No, I don’t think so.”
The girl on the other end of the phone asked, “Why?”
Laughing, warm and amused and a little sad, her heart aching high and sweet for such an innocent question, she explained: “Because even if I die, I know I have somebody who will always remember me with love.”
“…you mean Kazuhiko.”
“Yes,” Oruha said, closing her eyes and humming a long, delicate note, holding it in effortless glory for a shining moment, before letting it go. “That is exactly who I mean.” Then she murmured, tenderly, “And you, as well, I hope?”
“I will never forget you, for as long as I live,” Suu whispered, quiet as a feather falling.
*
Suu looked at Kazuhiko, so tall and broad, and maybe to some people he looked fierce, at least at first, but Oruha had shared too many stories, and Suu could still see the lover, the so-called dork, the gentle soul within him.
One night, curled within the edge of his coat gingerly while he watched the horizon, she asked, “Do you carry a song in your heart?”
“Hm?” he asked distractedly. Suu waited until he looked down hat her, with his dark eyes behind his charming glasses. “What was that?” he asked.
“Do you carry a song in your heart?”
For a long moment, Kazuhiko stared at her, and then he snorted, leaned his head back against the cold wall they were using to recline against. He said, “Yeah. Yeah I do.” His smile was crooked and stained with the shadows of the past; not quite all there, lost a little somewhere behind him, with someone else. Suu thought of Oruha, and didn’t blame him for lingering.
“It keeps the nightmares away?” Suu asked.
“Or perhaps,” Kazuhiko said heavily, “it brings them.” He gave her a vaguely shuttered look, and raised an eyebrow. “Awfully chatty tonight, aren’t we?”
Suu kept staring at him. Her heart beat faster than it had in a long time. Faster than when she’d first stepped out of her cage. Maybe the bars hadn’t been her prison after all; maybe she was going to learn what it was to be free-
“Do you have room,” she said carefully, “for two?”
Kazuhiko gazed down at her for a long time, looking confused, puzzled, his jaw clenched so that shadows flitted darkly over his face. Then he said, “Go to bed, kid.” and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. Suu waited long enough for him to really fall into slumber, and then she very gently laid her cheek against his arm, and closed her eyes, and mouthed the lyrics of a song that Kazuhiko would perhaps only ever hear in somebody else’s voice, no matter how loudly she dared to sing.
*
But in the end, she sang, and he heard her. He heard her, and he looked at her with such an expression in his eyes that it broke her heart. And that was when she realized what flying really felt like. She smiled at him in the distance, and she curled up comfortably on the breaking stone, and she waited to die, unafraid.
Remember me, she thought tenderly, with kindness, if not love.
That, she was sure, would be enough to set her soul at peace.