[dream 08] the traces of blood always follow you home [week 6, day 6]
The rain may be cold, and undermining the grip you have on Nunnally's legs dangling over your back, but at least it dampens the smell of the bodies.
( You've been breathing the dead for so long, it comes naturally now. )
( You've been breathing the dead for so long, it comes naturally now. )
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What he had told Miharu. These words are what come to Yoite's head first. How many had he killed now for the kairoshu? Without a care to the value of their lives as each of them was just another step to his own wish Yoite had shredded them one by one without question.
There had been no emotion. No regret. Not until he had begun to care. Until people had forced their way into his shriveling heart.
But soon Yoite's mind exits thoughts of his own past, his own present, and enter what he can see in the small screen of the Hitomi. And he tries his best not to think of what he can feel from it.
Bodies. Everywhere there are bodies and all of it feels too familiar to Yoite.
Except the emotion. The screams and the tears and the fear. Yoite is very unfamiliar with emotion. He struggles to categorize them and refuses to ask about them and in the end he tries to hide them but they all come leaking out when he...
comes apart THIS is what is most terrifying. How easily Lelouch ( ... )
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But Yoite's question, in its child-like sincerity, was one Lelouch had not expected.
Gently: ]
It was a nightmare, Yoite. It doesn't mean anything.
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[It may not be his place to ask. But Yoite sees himself as one without a place and thus simply asks what he longs to have answers to.
And now, attempting to verify what type of person Lelouch was from a nightmare he was gripping at straws to try and make the world seem more stable by forcing everyone else around him to be good.
Clean.
And it scares him to think, to KNOW that he most likely would not get the answers he wanted from them.]
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No. That never happened. That is, he's never peeled his skin from his bones and stared at the rot underneath, wondering how long before he is as empty as the man behind him. Literally, at least. The rest, too, did not literally happen. So there's no hesitation: ]
No. Of course not.
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It's a struggle Sasori overcame decades ago, and the weight of experience lies behind his words.]
All great goals require sacrifice. There's no need to burden yourself with guilt if what you did was necessary to achieve a greater purpose.
Remember the blood you've shed, always remember, but don't allow yourself to drown in it. The sacrifices that have already been made will become meaningless if you succumb to such weakness. Don't allow those chains to hold you back from doing what must be done.
[And his voice softens.]
It will become easier, with time and experience. Keep your eyes on the vision you wish to achieve, never stop grasping for it.
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I'm willing to walk the path of blood, he'd said to Kirihara. And at the time, he had believed it. ]
[ Lelouch laughs a little, self-deprecatingly. ]
I'd thought I'd gotten past it... I suppose one never completely gets over it.
I've killed...many people. And it never gets easier.
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[He chuckles softly, without much humor to it.]
And my own experience as a shinobi tells me it gets easier. You'd be surprised just how easy it becomes. Of course, when one's own life is at risk, one learns to kill without hesitation. When I was first sent to the battlefield at eight, my enemies showed me no mercy, so it was a lesson I had to take to quickly.
...How many lives have you taken, with your own hands?
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With my own hands...
[ Do those he's Geassed count? He remembers watching the spark, the self drain out of the soldiers' eyes before they'd turned their guns up under their own chins. Dead before the bullet struck. Dead before they pulled the trigger. Such a small word, die, but he'd had to watch the consequences. Watch and learn about power ( ... )
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My sister is paraplegic. It's carry her or leave her behind. Of course I'm willing.
[ He says it reflexively, almost as if slightly insulted. But it's not really aimed at Steve. It's more that carrying Nunnally is not even a question. She's his everything. She's the one person Lelouch would start a war for. The one he'd burn the world to save.
He pauses a long time, to make sure Steve knows this is a separate conversational topic. ]
Why would you say that so confidently? With all due respect, Mr. Rogers, you don't know me. You have nothing to base such a statement on. [ His voice softens, but only slightly. ] Why...
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And when it's over, he rewinds to that moment, the moment of that shooting, because he remembers that boy. Remembers him from the dream he saw in his first night in Kannagara. In that dream, he died (Lelouch killed him? He wasn't sure, he never asked). In this one, he was the one trying to kill him.
Again, Ukitake does not ask. The one question he does ask is the same that he asked that night, over a month ago.]
Are you all right?
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Right now, Lelouch just needs to talk to someone. ]
Have you ever done something you've regretted, Ukitake-san? Something that led to the death of someone you loved?
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He knows Lelouch didn't mean it, but the moment he had spoken Ukitake'd had the image of Kaien on that night, impaled on Rukia's blade.]
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...Yes.
[It's spoken so quietly it's barely a whisper. But the pain and guilt and regret is laden heavily in just that one word.]
Or rather...it was something...I did not do, that I regretted.
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The feeling, the sensation, it washes over him like a water against stone. And then the moisture sticks to the surface, sinks in to the small holes or openings because even rock can be penetrable. Even rock can weaken. This is how Castiel feels now.
Weakened.
Like he is brought to his knees by the sheer physicality of how a dream - it's just a dream, and dreams are nothing but man's own; they do not belong to an angel - can make his hands shake. Make him feel the weight on his back that really is not there. The weight of a guilt that may or may not be greater than his own ( ... )
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Among other things.
[ It can't be long now. Lelouch knows. Sooner or later, his dreams are going to betray his secrets, one by one. Until all of him is pulled out to dry in the sun, a stinking mess of insides, so he can be stuffed and mounted on the wall. It's like a still-living slow taxidermification. ]
What do you dream of, then, Castiel?
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[Castiel says this a little quietly, a little unsure. Because how it feels to dream, Castiel does not know. He enters dreams, watches them, converse to the individual dreaming within their dreams, lurk in their heads, peel their thoughts away.
But to dream?
(That is not an honor given to you. Dreams are for humans, you are not human. Just a poor excuse of an angel. But not human. Never human.)
It is something out of Castiel's reach. He can perhaps question things, maybe desire for things. Like this whole mess with Lucifer to end. For mankind to live on and what not.
Dreaming.
(What does it feel like?) ]
Not everyone is capable of it, Lelouch. You do dream of rather difficult things, though.
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[ The way Castiel phrased that makes Lelouch absolutely certain. ]
You can't dream, you speak strangely, you don't interact with other people well, and you seem to be able to guess a lot more about others without knowing them for very long.
[ Castiel does not have Geass. But he is something other than human. Lelouch is convinced now. Not simply with powers like the shinobi, but something alien, different, Other than what a human should think and act like. ]
Castiel.
What are you?
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