Fic: Crimson Sunset (Part 1)
Title: Crimson Sunset
Word Count: 1985
Pairing: Adam/Hiro, Adam/Ando, Hiro/Ando implied
Rating: This part PG-13. It will go up later on.
Description: This is the last part of what turned out to be a series. The order goes: Screaming into the Wind,
Discovery,
Meeting.
I started this to satisfy a request over at hiro_ando for Adam to take revenge on Ando. It grew a bit beyond that and is now a series of interconnected pieces of Adam’s ruminations about Hiro and his existence. I’m not sure how many parts it will have, probably four or five. Most is already written.
I was heavily influenced by Jorge Luis Borges's notions of time. The quote is from his short story “The Immortal”, translated by me.
Disclaimer: I own noting but my own words.
There are those who search for immortality as if it were the original sin. They are like little lost lambs pretending to be a ravenous wolf, noses sniffing in every corner, paws clawing at the ground, yet they can never reach their goal. They're looking for a feast, rich and sumptuous and ever lasting, meat and wine and fruit that never loses its intoxicating allure. They don't realize that the platter is filled with bones, the cups with ash, and that the greens and reds and golds are no more than a thin veneer painted over crumbling flesh. No one knows that but me. I attained this "blessing" simply by existing. According to the Company's research, it was precisely my dying so many times that facilitated my body's inability to age. Even for that I must thank you, carp. I certainly wouldn't have been running heedlessly into my own destruction if you hadn't showed me that physical wounds leave no mark on me. Not on the outside, that is. I have scars, many more than anyone could count, but they're not visible to the naked eye. You have to peel back the layers of skin and muscle and go deep beyond the bone to the innermost core of my being to see the weeping, palpitating mass that's the wound you gave me that day when you betrayed me. You'd think it would have healed by now. Time heals all, isn't that how the old saying goes? It's a lie. I heal broken bones, severed nerves, ruptured organs, but that's only my body. My soul is stretched raw over a spit, scorched by the fire that is your memory all the days and nights of my life. There's a man who wrote that "to lengthen the life of men is to lengthen their agony and to multiply the number of their deaths." I've been dying my entire life because of you. The stab and gunshot wounds are but shadows of my real death, an interminable series of deaths and resurrections that will only end when I see you again. Or so I hope. It's the only thing that I can cling to in this world.
I wish that my body had blown to ash in that armory.
|||||
What am I, Hiro? Am I a man? Am I an animal? How can I be anything that is human with this body? Men die, women die, animals die, even worms die, but not me, for I'm not mortal. How then can I be the same as them? Body and soul, there's no distinction. There's no schism, no great divide. My body is heaven, it's hell, it's everything and nothing. I am one and only in myself, inextinguishable light even in the deepest darkness. The earth has no claim to me. I am spirit living between what can and cannot be.
|||||
Ten slips of paper. That's all I had left of you. Ten little scrolls stuffed inside the hollow hilt of my sword. I took them out every once in a while, stroked my thumb over the aging ink, and read them again, every last word, even though I memorized them all long ago. I know the exact form of each kanji: where you lengthened the line a bit more than necessary, where it’s too short, the particular way the ink curves upward at the end of a vertical stroke. I can visualize each letter as vividly as if I had them in front of my eyes. I didn't need to read them anymore, but I wanted to, though I don't know why. It certainly wasn't enjoyable. They weren't meant for me; they were for someone whose ancestors didn't even exist yet. There was his name heading every letter. Ando. Dear Ando. No more than a name on a fragile piece of paper. You told this name about the adventures I always thought of as exclusively yours and mine, but now there was a third party in the room, one that didn't belong, a phantom lurking between the pen strokes of your words whose outlines melded with the fog of a future that I couldn't see. And he wasn't just a friend, no. You loved him. It's right there on the paper. Love, directed at another man. A man who isn't me. All our time together, I'd been so afraid that you'd be disgusted with me for the desire I harbored for you. I was wrong. Here was the proof. In the hilt of my sword. Another thorn for you to stick in my heart.
|||||||
I used to think that those scrolls were the only proof that you were ever here, but that's very far from the truth. I am the proof. My life, my thoughts, my actions. None of them would exist if you hadn't appeared at that battlefield right at that moment. You could have arrived anywhere: in the next town, in the next country, even in the next century. We might have first met when I was a twelve year old urchin running about the streets of London stealing purses or maybe we wouldn’t have met at all. There's no limit to the possibilities. Have you considered this? Surely, you must have. Then again, for you, from the time we spent together to your present it would take no longer than the beat of a hummingbird's wings. I have considered it, all too much. Remember how paranoid you were about changing history? Well, the truth is, you would have done so no matter what you did. Even the smallest ripple alters all the forms around it, opening up a new path to a world not conceived before. Time isn't just one long stream flowing towards a predetermined end. It's an infinite basin of rivers and tributaries spreading their veins all over the universe, so numerous that it's impossible to distinguish one from the other. Worlds upon worlds where every possible variance happens. How many different paths can our lives take? Is there a world where you and I never broke our friendship? Maybe in one of them I confessed my feelings and you returned them and we remained heroes, saving the world side by side. Somewhere in a place I can't touch, another me is happy with you. Yet for that world to exist, there needs to be another where I never get what I want. Is that the world I'm trapped in?
Yet I wonder. For you to have been able to go into the past, first you needed to be born, which means that another me existed right here, a me that never knew you existed. Perhaps this is the world where every possibility is possible through you. Roads that led west now lead north. An aimless drunk is now a hero. And from a hero you changed it again to whatever the hell it is that I'm now. You still grew up reading about the adventures of the great Kensei Takezo, but that's easily explained. Legend doesn't equal fact, and I was making a name for myself before you arrived. Perhaps all the stories you heard were fabricated by me to aggrandize my own persona and then grew in the telling. I would have discovered my powers eventually and personal gain was the first thing on my mind when you told me that I could heal from any wound. It's certainly plausible, don't you think? Yet whenever I think about that man and try to imagine what steps he took, what air he breathed, I find it impossible. How could there be another world without you? It'd be like living in a world without a sun. I look for a way out but all I see is darkness.
||||||
I wonder how many times I've watched the date February 4th, 2007 stare at me from a calendar page. I might have lived hundreds, thousands of times, but it was never the same moment. It was never me, here, standing on the roof of the Deveaux building watching your father turn towards me. Kaito. It's been ages. It's been no time at all.
"Out of all of them, I never expected it would be you."
Now how can I believe that? You, my jailor, responsible for thirty years of wasted time, leaving me with nothing but my nightmares while I felt the world outside fester with yet more wars, more hate, more senseless everything that should have never come to be. How can this happen any other way? Is there another me, right now, stepping off to the side, and heading back down the stairs, deciding to let bygones be bygones? I'm not that man. I run, smashing straight into Kaito, propelling us both backwards into the nothingness of thirty stories of air between us and the street. We fall and fall and die. I spring back up at the same moment that awareness comes crashing back into my body and run down the street as fast as my legs will carry me. Screams echo above me. Inside, I feel nothing.
||||||||
Ando Masahashi. Employee of the Yamagato Company. For the past four months personal assistant to the recently deceased CEO Kaito Nakamura. Previously worked in the same office as Hiro Nakamura, who just so happens to be the CEO's son. Amazing things computers. Snoop around in the right one for long enough and you'll find everything you need. Especially your father's, which is where I got all this lovely information. And who did I see pick up the newspaper as I lurked outside the office after I finished? Ando Masahashi himself, an exact match for the picture in his file. It was quite a shock, to have the man whose existence has long been little more than a name on yellowing paper right in front of me, mere feet away. I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to, and I did want to, so much that the floor trembled beneath my feet. But I restrained myself. The time wasn't right. First, I had your father to take care of, and then I'd be able to concentrate all my energy on this one. He's precious to you, I know that well. That makes him worthy of special interest on my part. So I won't simply take my revenge, dispatching him quickly like I did with your father. Of course, he and I already had our history. His death was certain even if he'd had nothing to do with you. But so, I suppose, could be said about everyone else's. But him I want to savor. I want to know who he is, what he's like, what are his wishes and aspirations, what his mouth tastes like.
He stands five meters away at the food stand, waiting in line to buy a sandwich. He tells me that airlines now expect you to pay for the stale food they serve you, so most people prefer to purchase something at the airport before their flight. I've already bought a taco from the Mexican place, a treat I haven't indulged in years. Now I'm saving him a seat at the crowded departure gate. Our flight to Tokyo leaves in a little over an hour. We'll have plenty of time to get to know each other. I made sure that our seats are on the same row on the same side of the plane. All I need to do is coax a sympathetic stranger to switch seats and voila, he's mine for 14 straight hours. He's already taken quite a shine to me. Hasn't left my side since he helped me with the check-in machine. He's very pleasing to be around; I can see why you like him. It'd be hard not to be won over by his smile. Too bad I already lost myself over yours. But you gave him much more than just a smile, and that's why I'm here. Soon he'll be giving that precious gift to me.
Part 2
Word Count: 1985
Pairing: Adam/Hiro, Adam/Ando, Hiro/Ando implied
Rating: This part PG-13. It will go up later on.
Description: This is the last part of what turned out to be a series. The order goes: Screaming into the Wind,
Discovery,
Meeting.
I started this to satisfy a request over at hiro_ando for Adam to take revenge on Ando. It grew a bit beyond that and is now a series of interconnected pieces of Adam’s ruminations about Hiro and his existence. I’m not sure how many parts it will have, probably four or five. Most is already written.
I was heavily influenced by Jorge Luis Borges's notions of time. The quote is from his short story “The Immortal”, translated by me.
Disclaimer: I own noting but my own words.
There are those who search for immortality as if it were the original sin. They are like little lost lambs pretending to be a ravenous wolf, noses sniffing in every corner, paws clawing at the ground, yet they can never reach their goal. They're looking for a feast, rich and sumptuous and ever lasting, meat and wine and fruit that never loses its intoxicating allure. They don't realize that the platter is filled with bones, the cups with ash, and that the greens and reds and golds are no more than a thin veneer painted over crumbling flesh. No one knows that but me. I attained this "blessing" simply by existing. According to the Company's research, it was precisely my dying so many times that facilitated my body's inability to age. Even for that I must thank you, carp. I certainly wouldn't have been running heedlessly into my own destruction if you hadn't showed me that physical wounds leave no mark on me. Not on the outside, that is. I have scars, many more than anyone could count, but they're not visible to the naked eye. You have to peel back the layers of skin and muscle and go deep beyond the bone to the innermost core of my being to see the weeping, palpitating mass that's the wound you gave me that day when you betrayed me. You'd think it would have healed by now. Time heals all, isn't that how the old saying goes? It's a lie. I heal broken bones, severed nerves, ruptured organs, but that's only my body. My soul is stretched raw over a spit, scorched by the fire that is your memory all the days and nights of my life. There's a man who wrote that "to lengthen the life of men is to lengthen their agony and to multiply the number of their deaths." I've been dying my entire life because of you. The stab and gunshot wounds are but shadows of my real death, an interminable series of deaths and resurrections that will only end when I see you again. Or so I hope. It's the only thing that I can cling to in this world.
I wish that my body had blown to ash in that armory.
|||||
What am I, Hiro? Am I a man? Am I an animal? How can I be anything that is human with this body? Men die, women die, animals die, even worms die, but not me, for I'm not mortal. How then can I be the same as them? Body and soul, there's no distinction. There's no schism, no great divide. My body is heaven, it's hell, it's everything and nothing. I am one and only in myself, inextinguishable light even in the deepest darkness. The earth has no claim to me. I am spirit living between what can and cannot be.
|||||
Ten slips of paper. That's all I had left of you. Ten little scrolls stuffed inside the hollow hilt of my sword. I took them out every once in a while, stroked my thumb over the aging ink, and read them again, every last word, even though I memorized them all long ago. I know the exact form of each kanji: where you lengthened the line a bit more than necessary, where it’s too short, the particular way the ink curves upward at the end of a vertical stroke. I can visualize each letter as vividly as if I had them in front of my eyes. I didn't need to read them anymore, but I wanted to, though I don't know why. It certainly wasn't enjoyable. They weren't meant for me; they were for someone whose ancestors didn't even exist yet. There was his name heading every letter. Ando. Dear Ando. No more than a name on a fragile piece of paper. You told this name about the adventures I always thought of as exclusively yours and mine, but now there was a third party in the room, one that didn't belong, a phantom lurking between the pen strokes of your words whose outlines melded with the fog of a future that I couldn't see. And he wasn't just a friend, no. You loved him. It's right there on the paper. Love, directed at another man. A man who isn't me. All our time together, I'd been so afraid that you'd be disgusted with me for the desire I harbored for you. I was wrong. Here was the proof. In the hilt of my sword. Another thorn for you to stick in my heart.
|||||||
I used to think that those scrolls were the only proof that you were ever here, but that's very far from the truth. I am the proof. My life, my thoughts, my actions. None of them would exist if you hadn't appeared at that battlefield right at that moment. You could have arrived anywhere: in the next town, in the next country, even in the next century. We might have first met when I was a twelve year old urchin running about the streets of London stealing purses or maybe we wouldn’t have met at all. There's no limit to the possibilities. Have you considered this? Surely, you must have. Then again, for you, from the time we spent together to your present it would take no longer than the beat of a hummingbird's wings. I have considered it, all too much. Remember how paranoid you were about changing history? Well, the truth is, you would have done so no matter what you did. Even the smallest ripple alters all the forms around it, opening up a new path to a world not conceived before. Time isn't just one long stream flowing towards a predetermined end. It's an infinite basin of rivers and tributaries spreading their veins all over the universe, so numerous that it's impossible to distinguish one from the other. Worlds upon worlds where every possible variance happens. How many different paths can our lives take? Is there a world where you and I never broke our friendship? Maybe in one of them I confessed my feelings and you returned them and we remained heroes, saving the world side by side. Somewhere in a place I can't touch, another me is happy with you. Yet for that world to exist, there needs to be another where I never get what I want. Is that the world I'm trapped in?
Yet I wonder. For you to have been able to go into the past, first you needed to be born, which means that another me existed right here, a me that never knew you existed. Perhaps this is the world where every possibility is possible through you. Roads that led west now lead north. An aimless drunk is now a hero. And from a hero you changed it again to whatever the hell it is that I'm now. You still grew up reading about the adventures of the great Kensei Takezo, but that's easily explained. Legend doesn't equal fact, and I was making a name for myself before you arrived. Perhaps all the stories you heard were fabricated by me to aggrandize my own persona and then grew in the telling. I would have discovered my powers eventually and personal gain was the first thing on my mind when you told me that I could heal from any wound. It's certainly plausible, don't you think? Yet whenever I think about that man and try to imagine what steps he took, what air he breathed, I find it impossible. How could there be another world without you? It'd be like living in a world without a sun. I look for a way out but all I see is darkness.
||||||
I wonder how many times I've watched the date February 4th, 2007 stare at me from a calendar page. I might have lived hundreds, thousands of times, but it was never the same moment. It was never me, here, standing on the roof of the Deveaux building watching your father turn towards me. Kaito. It's been ages. It's been no time at all.
"Out of all of them, I never expected it would be you."
Now how can I believe that? You, my jailor, responsible for thirty years of wasted time, leaving me with nothing but my nightmares while I felt the world outside fester with yet more wars, more hate, more senseless everything that should have never come to be. How can this happen any other way? Is there another me, right now, stepping off to the side, and heading back down the stairs, deciding to let bygones be bygones? I'm not that man. I run, smashing straight into Kaito, propelling us both backwards into the nothingness of thirty stories of air between us and the street. We fall and fall and die. I spring back up at the same moment that awareness comes crashing back into my body and run down the street as fast as my legs will carry me. Screams echo above me. Inside, I feel nothing.
||||||||
Ando Masahashi. Employee of the Yamagato Company. For the past four months personal assistant to the recently deceased CEO Kaito Nakamura. Previously worked in the same office as Hiro Nakamura, who just so happens to be the CEO's son. Amazing things computers. Snoop around in the right one for long enough and you'll find everything you need. Especially your father's, which is where I got all this lovely information. And who did I see pick up the newspaper as I lurked outside the office after I finished? Ando Masahashi himself, an exact match for the picture in his file. It was quite a shock, to have the man whose existence has long been little more than a name on yellowing paper right in front of me, mere feet away. I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to, and I did want to, so much that the floor trembled beneath my feet. But I restrained myself. The time wasn't right. First, I had your father to take care of, and then I'd be able to concentrate all my energy on this one. He's precious to you, I know that well. That makes him worthy of special interest on my part. So I won't simply take my revenge, dispatching him quickly like I did with your father. Of course, he and I already had our history. His death was certain even if he'd had nothing to do with you. But so, I suppose, could be said about everyone else's. But him I want to savor. I want to know who he is, what he's like, what are his wishes and aspirations, what his mouth tastes like.
He stands five meters away at the food stand, waiting in line to buy a sandwich. He tells me that airlines now expect you to pay for the stale food they serve you, so most people prefer to purchase something at the airport before their flight. I've already bought a taco from the Mexican place, a treat I haven't indulged in years. Now I'm saving him a seat at the crowded departure gate. Our flight to Tokyo leaves in a little over an hour. We'll have plenty of time to get to know each other. I made sure that our seats are on the same row on the same side of the plane. All I need to do is coax a sympathetic stranger to switch seats and voila, he's mine for 14 straight hours. He's already taken quite a shine to me. Hasn't left my side since he helped me with the check-in machine. He's very pleasing to be around; I can see why you like him. It'd be hard not to be won over by his smile. Too bad I already lost myself over yours. But you gave him much more than just a smile, and that's why I'm here. Soon he'll be giving that precious gift to me.
Part 2