Awakenings
A one-shot series with the theme of "awakening," both natural and supernatural. Part One: 1915, Saya's first long sleep is coming to an end.
i. 1915
The first time she had succumbed to her Long Sleep, Haji thought that he might go mad with loneliness. He had no idea when she might wake, and only a baseless certainty in the new, deeply primal part of himself, that she ever would open her eyes again.
For thirty years he sat vigilant by the cocoon that held his only reason for living, perfecting his cello-playing, obsessing over every tiny detail that he had read in Joel’s journal, and, when the silence grew too much to bear, talking to Saya. Over the decades he confessed every detail of his life, both before and after he had come to the Zoo, every hope and dream that had ever taken root in his heart. Thirty years of agonizing solitude, without even the respite of sleep, only broken briefly when the thirst for blood became completely unbearable.
He had been out on one of those hunting trips when his blood stirred in his veins, pulling him back towards Saya like a magnet to a lodestone, inexorable and irresistable. By the time he returned, the cocoon that had sheltered her was ripped half-open. Shaking, Haji reached inside, plunging his arms shoulder-deep into amniotic fluid, and lifting Saya free of the strange womb.
She squirmed in his grasp, and, unbalanced, they fell the ground, with Haji twisting to take the brunt of the fall. Pain exploded, starlike, on the back of his skull, but when his vision cleared, all he could see was Saya, poised on hands and knees over him, eyes gleaming lily-red.
Her gaze -- an inexplicable mixture of innocent and predatory, but with no hint of the Saya he knew -- held his eyes firmly locked to hers, but a few other details did manage to trickle down into his awareness: one, that they were both curtained in the impossibly long, heavy black silk of Saya’s hair; and two, that said hair was all that she was wearing.
Desire lanced through him, rippling his flesh and causing his heart to pound in his ears. The tiny rational corner of his brain had time for a single, strangely lucid thought -- what on earth happened to her dress? -- before she lunged down and bit into his jugular, hard.
The initial sharp pain quickly shaded into pleasure. Haji’s hands, quite of their own accord, lifted up and slid against Saya’s hips, into the dip of her waist, over the delicate ribs, and against the edges of her breasts, before finally moving upwards and sinking into the thick shroud of hair at the back of her head. All thought extinguished, there was only Saya, her mouth at his throat, and the blood that made a physical link between them.
As quickly as she’d lunged forward, Saya tore her fangs from his neck and jerked straight up, settling all of her weight across his hips. Haji groaned aloud at the loss of her warmth.
“Haji? Are you...alright? God, I’m so sorry, are you hurt?” Her voice, though a touch raspy, was every bit the Saya that he remembered, and the recognition in it soothed an anxiety of which he hadn’t even been conscious.
Swallowing hard against the sudden dryness in his throat, Haji opened his eyes, then quickly averted them. The brief glimpse of Saya, straddling his hips with every last glorious inch of her flesh flushed pink from his blood, seemed to have etched itself permanently on the inside of his eyes, like looking directly at the sun. It was only the extertion of every last bit of his willpower that kept his eyes from consuming the sight the way that she had consumed him, body and soul.
“I’m fine, Saya. Though...perhaps we should find you some clothes.” He made himself say it, his gentleman’s upbringing finally reasserting itself over both his body’s lusts and the yearning of the beast in his blood. For a split second, he cursed Joel and every notion of propriety that had been drilled into him since age twelve.
A high-pitched shriek of embarrassment echoed off the walls as the weight lifted off of his hips, and Haji didn’t need to look at Saya to know that her face was as red as her eyes, though that did beg the question of whether or not her face was the only part of her that changed color --
Stop that. He cut the mental image off before it could fully form. It was completely improper, not to mention unworthy of the depths of his love and respect for her.
“Give me your coat, and don’t you dare look over here!”
The imperious edge to Saya’s voice reminded Haji of the girl he’d first met all those years ago, spoiled and haughty. Even before she’d fallen asleep, he hadn’t heard that tone in years. Its use, something that had once grated on his nerves to no end, made one corner of his mouth quirk up in a smile. He sat up and deftly unbuttoned his coat, holding it out to one side without so much as twitching his eyes that direction.
The fabric left his hand, and he heard a rustle, then a sniff of irritation, before Saya finally spoke. “Okay, you can look.”
The diminutive young woman half-drowned in his coat, with the hem falling almost to her knees. It made her look even smaller than usual, especially with her hair cascading down and pooling, ink-like, on the floor. The sight managed to be almost as erotic as when she’d been completely naked.
The look in her eyes deterred any further gutter-thoughts, however. Momentary lightness of the awkward situation forgotten, the mixture of despair and determination that he had grown too familiar with had reasserted itself. She jerked her chin up, lips thinning to near-invisibility. “Let’s go. We have a murderess to find.” No further comments, no questions about the length of her sleep or the absence of her clothing -- only the mission mattered. This Saya lived exclusively to kill Diva, and not a moment longer. The pain of it settled like a weight on his heart; he had waited so long for Saya to wake, long enough that he had half-managed to convince himself that the Saya who emerged from the cocoon would somehow be the woman he had fallen in love with, not the one he’d vowed to kill with his own hands.
Suppressing a sigh, Haji inclined his head. “If that is what you wish.”
i. 1915
The first time she had succumbed to her Long Sleep, Haji thought that he might go mad with loneliness. He had no idea when she might wake, and only a baseless certainty in the new, deeply primal part of himself, that she ever would open her eyes again.
For thirty years he sat vigilant by the cocoon that held his only reason for living, perfecting his cello-playing, obsessing over every tiny detail that he had read in Joel’s journal, and, when the silence grew too much to bear, talking to Saya. Over the decades he confessed every detail of his life, both before and after he had come to the Zoo, every hope and dream that had ever taken root in his heart. Thirty years of agonizing solitude, without even the respite of sleep, only broken briefly when the thirst for blood became completely unbearable.
He had been out on one of those hunting trips when his blood stirred in his veins, pulling him back towards Saya like a magnet to a lodestone, inexorable and irresistable. By the time he returned, the cocoon that had sheltered her was ripped half-open. Shaking, Haji reached inside, plunging his arms shoulder-deep into amniotic fluid, and lifting Saya free of the strange womb.
She squirmed in his grasp, and, unbalanced, they fell the ground, with Haji twisting to take the brunt of the fall. Pain exploded, starlike, on the back of his skull, but when his vision cleared, all he could see was Saya, poised on hands and knees over him, eyes gleaming lily-red.
Her gaze -- an inexplicable mixture of innocent and predatory, but with no hint of the Saya he knew -- held his eyes firmly locked to hers, but a few other details did manage to trickle down into his awareness: one, that they were both curtained in the impossibly long, heavy black silk of Saya’s hair; and two, that said hair was all that she was wearing.
Desire lanced through him, rippling his flesh and causing his heart to pound in his ears. The tiny rational corner of his brain had time for a single, strangely lucid thought -- what on earth happened to her dress? -- before she lunged down and bit into his jugular, hard.
The initial sharp pain quickly shaded into pleasure. Haji’s hands, quite of their own accord, lifted up and slid against Saya’s hips, into the dip of her waist, over the delicate ribs, and against the edges of her breasts, before finally moving upwards and sinking into the thick shroud of hair at the back of her head. All thought extinguished, there was only Saya, her mouth at his throat, and the blood that made a physical link between them.
As quickly as she’d lunged forward, Saya tore her fangs from his neck and jerked straight up, settling all of her weight across his hips. Haji groaned aloud at the loss of her warmth.
“Haji? Are you...alright? God, I’m so sorry, are you hurt?” Her voice, though a touch raspy, was every bit the Saya that he remembered, and the recognition in it soothed an anxiety of which he hadn’t even been conscious.
Swallowing hard against the sudden dryness in his throat, Haji opened his eyes, then quickly averted them. The brief glimpse of Saya, straddling his hips with every last glorious inch of her flesh flushed pink from his blood, seemed to have etched itself permanently on the inside of his eyes, like looking directly at the sun. It was only the extertion of every last bit of his willpower that kept his eyes from consuming the sight the way that she had consumed him, body and soul.
“I’m fine, Saya. Though...perhaps we should find you some clothes.” He made himself say it, his gentleman’s upbringing finally reasserting itself over both his body’s lusts and the yearning of the beast in his blood. For a split second, he cursed Joel and every notion of propriety that had been drilled into him since age twelve.
A high-pitched shriek of embarrassment echoed off the walls as the weight lifted off of his hips, and Haji didn’t need to look at Saya to know that her face was as red as her eyes, though that did beg the question of whether or not her face was the only part of her that changed color --
Stop that. He cut the mental image off before it could fully form. It was completely improper, not to mention unworthy of the depths of his love and respect for her.
“Give me your coat, and don’t you dare look over here!”
The imperious edge to Saya’s voice reminded Haji of the girl he’d first met all those years ago, spoiled and haughty. Even before she’d fallen asleep, he hadn’t heard that tone in years. Its use, something that had once grated on his nerves to no end, made one corner of his mouth quirk up in a smile. He sat up and deftly unbuttoned his coat, holding it out to one side without so much as twitching his eyes that direction.
The fabric left his hand, and he heard a rustle, then a sniff of irritation, before Saya finally spoke. “Okay, you can look.”
The diminutive young woman half-drowned in his coat, with the hem falling almost to her knees. It made her look even smaller than usual, especially with her hair cascading down and pooling, ink-like, on the floor. The sight managed to be almost as erotic as when she’d been completely naked.
The look in her eyes deterred any further gutter-thoughts, however. Momentary lightness of the awkward situation forgotten, the mixture of despair and determination that he had grown too familiar with had reasserted itself. She jerked her chin up, lips thinning to near-invisibility. “Let’s go. We have a murderess to find.” No further comments, no questions about the length of her sleep or the absence of her clothing -- only the mission mattered. This Saya lived exclusively to kill Diva, and not a moment longer. The pain of it settled like a weight on his heart; he had waited so long for Saya to wake, long enough that he had half-managed to convince himself that the Saya who emerged from the cocoon would somehow be the woman he had fallen in love with, not the one he’d vowed to kill with his own hands.
Suppressing a sigh, Haji inclined his head. “If that is what you wish.”