[One-shot] Speaker for the Dead; Guitar Lullaby.
Title: Speaker for the Dead; Guitar Lullaby.
Author: crazy_otaku911
Pairing: Keito/Yamada
Rating: PG
Summary: Five years was too long, but when a stranger appears, offering Yamada a chance to understand Keito just a little bit more, he's torn between wanting to keep the past in the past and letting his heart finally rest in peace.
Disclaimer: This work is purely fiction.
Warnings: Semi Sci-fi AU that FAILED SO HARD. 8| Mentions of death/dying.
A/N: Unbetad; The second of my three remixes, though this one is also based off of dreamweavernyx's Miss You. Uses the concept of Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead, but I totally screwed up in the end because I had no idea what to actually say about Keito (but I still like the idea of Takaki being a Speaker.) I liked writing this one, actually, even if it totally did not work out right, but it was probably good that it was not my remix because it's not... very remix-y.
“Why… why now?” Yamada asked finally, looking pale as he stared at the stranger sitting across him in the café. “It’s been five years.”
“It’s still a story that needs to be told,” the stranger told him, a ghost of a smile flickering over his lips. Thin, pink lips, a small splash of color among all the black, black, black of the stranger’s clothes. Soft black though, Yamada noted in the back of his mind. Not imposing at all. “It sits in the air, fading and reviving itself, turning and turning and turning, with absolutely no escape.” He leaned forward, his dark eyes piercing into Yamada’s soul. “You want it to be told.”
Yamada looked away, shoulders slowly slumping. “Opening old wounds won’t heal them.”
“You don’t believe that either,” the stranger reasoned before reaching out. In the palm of his hand lay a small crystal. “You know when to find me, when you’re ready.”
Yamada knew that he should’ve refused again, should have just walked away and left the stranger’s words to settle in the grains of the wooden table they sat at.
Instead, he reached out, plucking it from the other’s hand. There were no other words said, the man - young man, really, not a boy, but not quite a man yet either - stood, almost bowing before whisking out of the door, letting the tension in the air dance with his departure.
Yamada’s thoughts were elsewhere. He held the crystal, warm between his fingers, and felt like reality was slipping away.
It had been five years.
He placed the crystal in his tech-pad, accessing the information. A contact card flashed across the screen.
Takaki Yuya
Speaker for the Dead
~
“You’re stupid,” Chinen told him flatly, not even hesitating.
“I know,” Yamada muttered, half-heartedly kicking at Chinen, a move that Chinen didn’t even deign to respond to.
“Going back and moping over it all over again won’t make it better,” Chinen told him in exasperation. “We’re almost graduating, you have a grand premiere offer waiting for you the moment you’re done here. You can’t afford to… go back to how it was.”
“I got over it last time,” Yamada reminded him, looking up. “It’s not like I threw everything away after what happened. I think it might…” he hesitated and then shrugged, whispering “it still feels like something’s missing, you know?”
Chinen stared at him oddly for a few moments before nodding. “I just don’t want to see you hurting yourself for no reason.”
Yamada gave him a small smile. “I know. Thanks, Chii.”
~
“Why are you asking me?” Yuto asked, looking puzzled. “It’s not my choice.”
“You were best friends,” Yamada chewed his lip. “I figured if you objected, I’d say no.”
Yuto stared at him for a few moments; his expression matching the one Chinen had given him the night before. “Yama-chan… I’m not the one he came to. If you think it’s the right thing,” and he smiled that warm, enchantingly familiar smile, “then it’s the right thing.”
~
“I don’t get it,” Daiki said as they ate lunch, watching the rain fall outside. “His dad is fine with it, Yuto’s fine with it, why are you balking? Didn’t you want this?”
There was a long pause as Yamada tried to just focus on the rain splashing on the sidewalks outside the window, as if it would bring clarity to his predicament. “I don’t know,” Yamada said finally. “I do. It really just feels like something… there was something more? Maybe I just want there to be something more.”
Daiki nodded, falling silent but Yamada knew he was listening intently.
“I don’t know, maybe I’m just scared,” he admitted. “Maybe there is something missing but it’s the wrong thing and I’ll just be left with… nothing.”
The rain drummed on the world around them as they sat in silence, feeling the grey sky wrap itself around them in a cold, clinging embrace.
It was Daiki who finally spoke, moving to flick the screens into solar-mode, filling the room with warmer, amber light; a sunset. Giving Yamada’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, Daiki offered him a warm smile. “I can’t answer that for you… But didn’t he tell you that sometimes you have to just jump with your eyes closed?”
Yamada returned the smile, his own tinted with distance and small flashes of happiness. “He did, didn’t he.”
~
Yamada had spent the day pacing.
Up. Down. Around. Rinse and repeat; the pattern breaking to give birth to a new one until he’d forgotten if he’d already stepped just so or if it was a first.
He felt torn, but he wasn’t sure why. After being met by green light after green light, he was the only one digging his heels in.
“I’m not afraid,” he told the air, wanting to sound confident. On the desk he stood next to, his tech-pad whirred to life, expecting a command of some sort.
The crystal still sat inside it, blinking a soft, reminding blue.
“I’m not afraid,” he repeated, staring at the crystal.
You don’t believe that either.
“I’m lonely,” he said finally, feeling what might have been a tear run down his cheek. He reached out, activating the crystal. The contact card flashed again and he tapped it, connecting.
The stranger’s - Takaki’s - dark eyes appeared and Yamada shivered involuntarily. They weren’t disturbing, not at all.
They just made Yamada feel like there were secrets in his own eyes that he didn’t even know himself.
“I’ll tell you everything you need to know,” Yamada said finally, sinking into a chair in front of the desk.
“This isn’t your story to tell,” Takaki said gently. “I’ll tell you when I’m done.”
The connection ended and his tech-pad chirped, waiting for another command. Ignoring it, Yamada hugged his knees to his chest, sinking into his own thoughts.
Loneliness, maybe.
Grabbing his jacket, he dashed out the door. There was always one place where he knew he’d never be alone.
Five years ago, it had been his arms. But Yamada knew he had to settle for where they met now. It was dark, but he knew the way by heart, his feet walking along invisible pathways with sure and steady steps as they took him to Okamoto Keito’s final resting place.
~
They were few in numbers. Not that there weren’t more who had cared about Keito, but Speakers were private things. Yamada was there. Keito’s father, Yuto, Daiki, and Chinen were there as well. They all sat in still silence, looking towards Takaki.
Takaki was still dressed in the blacks familiar with his trade, sitting cross-legged on the carpet and regarding them with relative non-emotion, as if waiting for something. The moments seemed to stretch on until Yamada’s nerves were ready to fray and he wanted to scream at Takaki to get on with it.
At long last, Takaki smiled.
“Okamoto Keito was an only child,” he told them in a softly accented voice. “He loved reading, video games, and his dog. He loved banana split sundaes, but he’d always settle for a good mint-chocolate chip.”
It was almost like he could hear Keito saying those words, Yamada couldn’t help but smile, covering his mouth with a hand as Takaki continued.
“He wasn’t always a happy child, but that’s to be expected, isn’t it?” he tilted his head, looking at them all. “Sometimes he hated his father. Sometimes he hated his mother. Sometimes he just hated everyone… and sometimes he realized he felt lonely, felt too weird to settle into his school because all the traveling they’d done left him with a funny accent that he never managed to be rid of and he stuck out. Sometimes he hated himself.”
Normally a stranger speaking such things would cause an outrage, but Kenichi didn’t even blink an eye and Yamada was too tied up in Takaki’s words to feel much else besides Keito. How long Takaki spoke, nobody knew, the man’s voice had somehow suspended time, leaving them with nothing more than a want to hear more, his voice occasionally morphing into Keito’s so much, Yamada wanted to cry and laugh.
“There was someone special in Keito’s life.” Suddenly Takaki’s eyes were on his, deep and compelling, even as Takaki smiled. “He was in Keito’s high school class and he had the prettiest eyes Keito had ever seen.”
Yamada turned pink, ducking his head. Keito had always told him that, whenever Yamada had asked ‘Why me?’. He’d smile and tweak a lock of Yamada’s hair and say it over and over again: “I fell in love with your eyes.”
“The boy with the future that only Keito could see,” Takaki laughed suddenly, startling them all as he threw his hands up to the ceiling and the sky beyond. “Nobody is anybody in this town,” he added and Yamada actually felt a tear slip down his cheek because instead of Keito’s words, he was now hearing his own.
“And Keito knew that was nonsense, because here was a boy who shone brighter than anyone else and he knew it and they knew it… but the boy didn’t.” Takaki closed his eyes, smiling.
“Keito would say that love was a silly word to tag on to what he and the boy were, wouldn’t he?” and the question hung in the air between them, not needing to be answered. “Never try to tie something like us down with a name,” Takaki quoted Keito again. “Never do that, because then we can be free and forever.”
And Yamada cried, because he didn’t know how Takaki would have known, because Keito had only told him that once. Once right before he died.
“If Keito had been able to give the boy one last gift, he would have given him this,” Takaki murmured as he reached into one of the pockets of his inky black coat.
It was a mirror. Just a simple, round mirror, much like the ones a girl would carry around in her bag, and Yamada found it being placed in his hands. Takaki was standing there, smiling with such strange emotion that Yamada found his breath catching in his throat.
“Keito was never perfect, but he reconciled himself with all the hurt in his life. He loved his parents as every child should love them, no matter how broken they become. He came to love his friends and school and even when his life wound to a stop sooner than he wanted… Keito knew he had no regrets, knowing that the boy in his life, a treasure that he’d held close, was shining brighter than ever. Keito was his own person, but you completed him.” Takaki’s fingertips traced the edges of the mirror, whispering so only Yamada could hear. “Look into the mirror and tell yourself that you can do it, just like I always told you.”
“H-how?” Yamada asked, throat constricted, his heart bursting with emotion. There was no sorrow, just a strange, aching happiness he’d never felt before. “How did you…?”
Takaki’s eyes were sparkling as he stepped away, the smile on his lips brightening. “I was called here. I am Speaker for the Dead.”
When he left, they never knew. He was just gone, leaving Yamada clutching the mirror as the others crowded around.
“Was it what you were… expecting?” Chinen asked at long last.
Yamada laughed, feeling tears trail down his cheeks, shaking his head. “No… not at all… but,” and his fingers tightened around the mirror. “It was everything I needed.”
~
It was raining as Takaki walked through the streets, hands in his pockets, not minding as he got soaked. He liked the rain, the steady, hammering rhythm and the way it drew the world into him. Closing his eyes, he turned his face to the sky, letting raindrops stream over his face.
“Sometimes I think we should be called Speakers for the Living,” he told himself. “They’re much more blind than the Dead are.”
He had never met Keito, would never meet him either. But somehow, he could see Keito smiling in his mind and patted himself on the back for a job well done.
______________________________________________________
A/N: One of these days... I will actually write a coherent AU. Or fic in general. Meep. x: I hate how cheesy Takaki's Speaking turned out but I didn't know wtf to write about in the end.
Author: crazy_otaku911
Pairing: Keito/Yamada
Rating: PG
Summary: Five years was too long, but when a stranger appears, offering Yamada a chance to understand Keito just a little bit more, he's torn between wanting to keep the past in the past and letting his heart finally rest in peace.
Disclaimer: This work is purely fiction.
Warnings: Semi Sci-fi AU that FAILED SO HARD. 8| Mentions of death/dying.
A/N: Unbetad; The second of my three remixes, though this one is also based off of dreamweavernyx's Miss You. Uses the concept of Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead, but I totally screwed up in the end because I had no idea what to actually say about Keito (but I still like the idea of Takaki being a Speaker.) I liked writing this one, actually, even if it totally did not work out right, but it was probably good that it was not my remix because it's not... very remix-y.
“Why… why now?” Yamada asked finally, looking pale as he stared at the stranger sitting across him in the café. “It’s been five years.”
“It’s still a story that needs to be told,” the stranger told him, a ghost of a smile flickering over his lips. Thin, pink lips, a small splash of color among all the black, black, black of the stranger’s clothes. Soft black though, Yamada noted in the back of his mind. Not imposing at all. “It sits in the air, fading and reviving itself, turning and turning and turning, with absolutely no escape.” He leaned forward, his dark eyes piercing into Yamada’s soul. “You want it to be told.”
Yamada looked away, shoulders slowly slumping. “Opening old wounds won’t heal them.”
“You don’t believe that either,” the stranger reasoned before reaching out. In the palm of his hand lay a small crystal. “You know when to find me, when you’re ready.”
Yamada knew that he should’ve refused again, should have just walked away and left the stranger’s words to settle in the grains of the wooden table they sat at.
Instead, he reached out, plucking it from the other’s hand. There were no other words said, the man - young man, really, not a boy, but not quite a man yet either - stood, almost bowing before whisking out of the door, letting the tension in the air dance with his departure.
Yamada’s thoughts were elsewhere. He held the crystal, warm between his fingers, and felt like reality was slipping away.
It had been five years.
He placed the crystal in his tech-pad, accessing the information. A contact card flashed across the screen.
Takaki Yuya
Speaker for the Dead
~
“You’re stupid,” Chinen told him flatly, not even hesitating.
“I know,” Yamada muttered, half-heartedly kicking at Chinen, a move that Chinen didn’t even deign to respond to.
“Going back and moping over it all over again won’t make it better,” Chinen told him in exasperation. “We’re almost graduating, you have a grand premiere offer waiting for you the moment you’re done here. You can’t afford to… go back to how it was.”
“I got over it last time,” Yamada reminded him, looking up. “It’s not like I threw everything away after what happened. I think it might…” he hesitated and then shrugged, whispering “it still feels like something’s missing, you know?”
Chinen stared at him oddly for a few moments before nodding. “I just don’t want to see you hurting yourself for no reason.”
Yamada gave him a small smile. “I know. Thanks, Chii.”
~
“Why are you asking me?” Yuto asked, looking puzzled. “It’s not my choice.”
“You were best friends,” Yamada chewed his lip. “I figured if you objected, I’d say no.”
Yuto stared at him for a few moments; his expression matching the one Chinen had given him the night before. “Yama-chan… I’m not the one he came to. If you think it’s the right thing,” and he smiled that warm, enchantingly familiar smile, “then it’s the right thing.”
~
“I don’t get it,” Daiki said as they ate lunch, watching the rain fall outside. “His dad is fine with it, Yuto’s fine with it, why are you balking? Didn’t you want this?”
There was a long pause as Yamada tried to just focus on the rain splashing on the sidewalks outside the window, as if it would bring clarity to his predicament. “I don’t know,” Yamada said finally. “I do. It really just feels like something… there was something more? Maybe I just want there to be something more.”
Daiki nodded, falling silent but Yamada knew he was listening intently.
“I don’t know, maybe I’m just scared,” he admitted. “Maybe there is something missing but it’s the wrong thing and I’ll just be left with… nothing.”
The rain drummed on the world around them as they sat in silence, feeling the grey sky wrap itself around them in a cold, clinging embrace.
It was Daiki who finally spoke, moving to flick the screens into solar-mode, filling the room with warmer, amber light; a sunset. Giving Yamada’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, Daiki offered him a warm smile. “I can’t answer that for you… But didn’t he tell you that sometimes you have to just jump with your eyes closed?”
Yamada returned the smile, his own tinted with distance and small flashes of happiness. “He did, didn’t he.”
~
Yamada had spent the day pacing.
Up. Down. Around. Rinse and repeat; the pattern breaking to give birth to a new one until he’d forgotten if he’d already stepped just so or if it was a first.
He felt torn, but he wasn’t sure why. After being met by green light after green light, he was the only one digging his heels in.
“I’m not afraid,” he told the air, wanting to sound confident. On the desk he stood next to, his tech-pad whirred to life, expecting a command of some sort.
The crystal still sat inside it, blinking a soft, reminding blue.
“I’m not afraid,” he repeated, staring at the crystal.
You don’t believe that either.
“I’m lonely,” he said finally, feeling what might have been a tear run down his cheek. He reached out, activating the crystal. The contact card flashed again and he tapped it, connecting.
The stranger’s - Takaki’s - dark eyes appeared and Yamada shivered involuntarily. They weren’t disturbing, not at all.
They just made Yamada feel like there were secrets in his own eyes that he didn’t even know himself.
“I’ll tell you everything you need to know,” Yamada said finally, sinking into a chair in front of the desk.
“This isn’t your story to tell,” Takaki said gently. “I’ll tell you when I’m done.”
The connection ended and his tech-pad chirped, waiting for another command. Ignoring it, Yamada hugged his knees to his chest, sinking into his own thoughts.
Loneliness, maybe.
Grabbing his jacket, he dashed out the door. There was always one place where he knew he’d never be alone.
Five years ago, it had been his arms. But Yamada knew he had to settle for where they met now. It was dark, but he knew the way by heart, his feet walking along invisible pathways with sure and steady steps as they took him to Okamoto Keito’s final resting place.
~
They were few in numbers. Not that there weren’t more who had cared about Keito, but Speakers were private things. Yamada was there. Keito’s father, Yuto, Daiki, and Chinen were there as well. They all sat in still silence, looking towards Takaki.
Takaki was still dressed in the blacks familiar with his trade, sitting cross-legged on the carpet and regarding them with relative non-emotion, as if waiting for something. The moments seemed to stretch on until Yamada’s nerves were ready to fray and he wanted to scream at Takaki to get on with it.
At long last, Takaki smiled.
“Okamoto Keito was an only child,” he told them in a softly accented voice. “He loved reading, video games, and his dog. He loved banana split sundaes, but he’d always settle for a good mint-chocolate chip.”
It was almost like he could hear Keito saying those words, Yamada couldn’t help but smile, covering his mouth with a hand as Takaki continued.
“He wasn’t always a happy child, but that’s to be expected, isn’t it?” he tilted his head, looking at them all. “Sometimes he hated his father. Sometimes he hated his mother. Sometimes he just hated everyone… and sometimes he realized he felt lonely, felt too weird to settle into his school because all the traveling they’d done left him with a funny accent that he never managed to be rid of and he stuck out. Sometimes he hated himself.”
Normally a stranger speaking such things would cause an outrage, but Kenichi didn’t even blink an eye and Yamada was too tied up in Takaki’s words to feel much else besides Keito. How long Takaki spoke, nobody knew, the man’s voice had somehow suspended time, leaving them with nothing more than a want to hear more, his voice occasionally morphing into Keito’s so much, Yamada wanted to cry and laugh.
“There was someone special in Keito’s life.” Suddenly Takaki’s eyes were on his, deep and compelling, even as Takaki smiled. “He was in Keito’s high school class and he had the prettiest eyes Keito had ever seen.”
Yamada turned pink, ducking his head. Keito had always told him that, whenever Yamada had asked ‘Why me?’. He’d smile and tweak a lock of Yamada’s hair and say it over and over again: “I fell in love with your eyes.”
“The boy with the future that only Keito could see,” Takaki laughed suddenly, startling them all as he threw his hands up to the ceiling and the sky beyond. “Nobody is anybody in this town,” he added and Yamada actually felt a tear slip down his cheek because instead of Keito’s words, he was now hearing his own.
“And Keito knew that was nonsense, because here was a boy who shone brighter than anyone else and he knew it and they knew it… but the boy didn’t.” Takaki closed his eyes, smiling.
“Keito would say that love was a silly word to tag on to what he and the boy were, wouldn’t he?” and the question hung in the air between them, not needing to be answered. “Never try to tie something like us down with a name,” Takaki quoted Keito again. “Never do that, because then we can be free and forever.”
And Yamada cried, because he didn’t know how Takaki would have known, because Keito had only told him that once. Once right before he died.
“If Keito had been able to give the boy one last gift, he would have given him this,” Takaki murmured as he reached into one of the pockets of his inky black coat.
It was a mirror. Just a simple, round mirror, much like the ones a girl would carry around in her bag, and Yamada found it being placed in his hands. Takaki was standing there, smiling with such strange emotion that Yamada found his breath catching in his throat.
“Keito was never perfect, but he reconciled himself with all the hurt in his life. He loved his parents as every child should love them, no matter how broken they become. He came to love his friends and school and even when his life wound to a stop sooner than he wanted… Keito knew he had no regrets, knowing that the boy in his life, a treasure that he’d held close, was shining brighter than ever. Keito was his own person, but you completed him.” Takaki’s fingertips traced the edges of the mirror, whispering so only Yamada could hear. “Look into the mirror and tell yourself that you can do it, just like I always told you.”
“H-how?” Yamada asked, throat constricted, his heart bursting with emotion. There was no sorrow, just a strange, aching happiness he’d never felt before. “How did you…?”
Takaki’s eyes were sparkling as he stepped away, the smile on his lips brightening. “I was called here. I am Speaker for the Dead.”
When he left, they never knew. He was just gone, leaving Yamada clutching the mirror as the others crowded around.
“Was it what you were… expecting?” Chinen asked at long last.
Yamada laughed, feeling tears trail down his cheeks, shaking his head. “No… not at all… but,” and his fingers tightened around the mirror. “It was everything I needed.”
~
It was raining as Takaki walked through the streets, hands in his pockets, not minding as he got soaked. He liked the rain, the steady, hammering rhythm and the way it drew the world into him. Closing his eyes, he turned his face to the sky, letting raindrops stream over his face.
“Sometimes I think we should be called Speakers for the Living,” he told himself. “They’re much more blind than the Dead are.”
He had never met Keito, would never meet him either. But somehow, he could see Keito smiling in his mind and patted himself on the back for a job well done.
______________________________________________________
A/N: One of these days... I will actually write a coherent AU. Or fic in general. Meep. x: I hate how cheesy Takaki's Speaking turned out but I didn't know wtf to write about in the end.