Submission #28 -- Tranguli, "Sumerian"
,
Title: Sumerian
User ID: "Trianguli"
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Subaru: (implied seixsub, if you squint hard enough from 20 yards away)
Warnings: Blood, comparatively mild apocolypiptic themes, Subaru as the ever-present vessel of irony, and Bruce Willis.
Summary:
"I can't," Subaru replies sullenly. "I have to wait for the world to end."
There has been very little variation in his dreams for the last ten years, and a great deal of him hopes that it's a type of latent dream-seeing that has only kicked in late in life. He sees how Babylon has fallen, the once expansive horizon of buildings laid to waste by fourteen dragons: seven holy seals, seven harbingers. First fell the kekkai, and then fell the rains. The water burned, but it fed the sea and she, the mother of all life, eagerly kissed the land goodbye and swept all her children back into her arms. They screamed, but the acid waves rocked them to sleep, and she held them sweetly, because for once the noise had stopped.
And in the end, she claimed Tokyo as her own again, washing away landfill and concrete. So fell the Tower.
But when he wakes, all is as it was. The date is 2008 years after the death of Christ's first incarnation. 2009 in a few moments he has to remind himself, because even at his current age of 34, he has a hard time recalling where the years have gone. Today is New Years Eve, or so says the news anchor reporting from the illuminated television screen.
Sometimes Subaru Sumeragi feels as though he's missing something.
-
Occasionally Seishirou-san comes to visit, though not often and not for long. The older man will sit quietly, allowing the unusually enthusiastic Sumeragi to fill the silence with inane chatter and questions he will never receive answers for. He just smiles, and it's the same as it always was: handsome, cold, perfect. Now and again when Subaru is busy trying to play the good host (Seishirou-san will always refuse anything offered to him with a wordless shake of the head, but he makes the effort anyway), he'll catch a slip in the former-assassin's expression, where the seamless smile falters under sudden seriousness. But before he's sure that he's seen it, the solemn air will disappear, and not long after that, Seishirou-san himself.
Hokuto-chan comes too, but with more frequency. She doesn't, however, bother to smile as Seishirou-san does. Instead her eyebrows and lips pull together in unison, and she cries for him, or at least looks like she wants to. She winds her arms around his shoulders, resting her chin on the top of his head, and although the sensation is feathery light…he can feel it. He can tell that there are words to be said, but can find no way to utter them. How strange it is that he cannot hear her.
When she is about to leave, she asks the question with her eyes, lifting his hands in hers in supplication. Come with me
"I can't," Subaru replies sullenly. "I have to wait for the world to end."
She frowns, and then points out into the night, every block lit up like a street festival, neon lights casting shadows over the sea of people who live the lives of thousand others before them. He doesn't understand. Perhaps Hokuto-chan sees something he cannot.
Somehow Subaru feels as though there were something wrong with these visits altogether. He shouldn't be entertaining neither Seishirou-san nor Hokuto-chan in his kitchen, yet he cannot place why. Perhaps he is just missing something.
-
But besides hosting strange guests, Subaru does very little else. There are no jobs. The strange faxes from anonymous bureaucrats had ceased a month or two after he'd first received them. A year later, he'd stopped checking the machine altogether; when his grandmother passed, there was no one left to be worried. Even the tree had become silent. The first months had been brutal with her intense hunger washing over him, at first in ripples, then in paralyzing waves like the constant demanding of a child. At times like those he could feel the pain of his victims more acutely, their screams of betrayal rooted so deeply, to be killed by the young man with such profound sadness in his pretty green eyes. It hurt. At first.
"Why do you seem so sad?" Subaru found himself muttering, not surprised as he should have been that it was all too easy to remain cold while warm, sticky blood slid off his fingers. "Betrayals like this happen every day, all over the city."
Yet he does not hear them anymore, no voices of ghosts or spirits, no feeling or sight of them in any way. Perhaps he has lost his powers. Perhaps it is for the best, because he cannot imagine trying to deal with lingering spirits when he can no longer sympathize with them.
To suffer through a weary life wishing so much to be dead, only to cling to the pain they'd sought to leave behind…to be trapped and never realize.
How pathetic.
-
The former seals are a matter of irritation to him. They will pass on the street, always in groups of two or three, faces drawn and countenances gray. Perhaps they are still waiting for the apocalypse as much as he is. Cloaks in varied states of disrepair seem to be the fashion of the day for them, tattered edges whisking across the pavement like a violent extension of their auras. Like a cult, Subaru sometimes thinks, because that's certainly what it looks like, and what's left of the Angels is no better. He tries sometimes to speak to them, but they only whisper amongst themselves, staring past him as though they were the only ones remaining in the still-vibrant city.
He might have well been speaking Sumerian for all they understood.
-
"Thank you onii-chan," she says softly, large brown eyes glancing up shyly though the veil of her bangs. Being timid must be a Sumeragi tendency, he thinks. The little girl is one of his distant relatives, meant probably to inherit the role as clan head, and one of the only ones who is willing to speak with him."But…why are you still here?"
Subaru asks her what she means by that question, but the girl blushes and stammers never mind. She never brings it up again, and he decides to dismiss the occurrence altogether. Per usual, he is missing something.
-
In a few moments it will be ten years since 1999.
Ten years since the Day of Judgment.
Ten years he cannot remember, but that's all right, the dead rarely do.
When the clock strikes midnight and a bell chimes somewhere while champagne pops, the news caster wishes a happy new year, and the world hasn't ended. Admittedly, Subaru is disappointed.
Title: Sumerian
User ID: "Trianguli"
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Subaru: (implied seixsub, if you squint hard enough from 20 yards away)
Warnings: Blood, comparatively mild apocolypiptic themes, Subaru as the ever-present vessel of irony, and Bruce Willis.
Summary:
"I can't," Subaru replies sullenly. "I have to wait for the world to end."
There has been very little variation in his dreams for the last ten years, and a great deal of him hopes that it's a type of latent dream-seeing that has only kicked in late in life. He sees how Babylon has fallen, the once expansive horizon of buildings laid to waste by fourteen dragons: seven holy seals, seven harbingers. First fell the kekkai, and then fell the rains. The water burned, but it fed the sea and she, the mother of all life, eagerly kissed the land goodbye and swept all her children back into her arms. They screamed, but the acid waves rocked them to sleep, and she held them sweetly, because for once the noise had stopped.
And in the end, she claimed Tokyo as her own again, washing away landfill and concrete. So fell the Tower.
But when he wakes, all is as it was. The date is 2008 years after the death of Christ's first incarnation. 2009 in a few moments he has to remind himself, because even at his current age of 34, he has a hard time recalling where the years have gone. Today is New Years Eve, or so says the news anchor reporting from the illuminated television screen.
Sometimes Subaru Sumeragi feels as though he's missing something.
-
Occasionally Seishirou-san comes to visit, though not often and not for long. The older man will sit quietly, allowing the unusually enthusiastic Sumeragi to fill the silence with inane chatter and questions he will never receive answers for. He just smiles, and it's the same as it always was: handsome, cold, perfect. Now and again when Subaru is busy trying to play the good host (Seishirou-san will always refuse anything offered to him with a wordless shake of the head, but he makes the effort anyway), he'll catch a slip in the former-assassin's expression, where the seamless smile falters under sudden seriousness. But before he's sure that he's seen it, the solemn air will disappear, and not long after that, Seishirou-san himself.
Hokuto-chan comes too, but with more frequency. She doesn't, however, bother to smile as Seishirou-san does. Instead her eyebrows and lips pull together in unison, and she cries for him, or at least looks like she wants to. She winds her arms around his shoulders, resting her chin on the top of his head, and although the sensation is feathery light…he can feel it. He can tell that there are words to be said, but can find no way to utter them. How strange it is that he cannot hear her.
When she is about to leave, she asks the question with her eyes, lifting his hands in hers in supplication. Come with me
"I can't," Subaru replies sullenly. "I have to wait for the world to end."
She frowns, and then points out into the night, every block lit up like a street festival, neon lights casting shadows over the sea of people who live the lives of thousand others before them. He doesn't understand. Perhaps Hokuto-chan sees something he cannot.
Somehow Subaru feels as though there were something wrong with these visits altogether. He shouldn't be entertaining neither Seishirou-san nor Hokuto-chan in his kitchen, yet he cannot place why. Perhaps he is just missing something.
-
But besides hosting strange guests, Subaru does very little else. There are no jobs. The strange faxes from anonymous bureaucrats had ceased a month or two after he'd first received them. A year later, he'd stopped checking the machine altogether; when his grandmother passed, there was no one left to be worried. Even the tree had become silent. The first months had been brutal with her intense hunger washing over him, at first in ripples, then in paralyzing waves like the constant demanding of a child. At times like those he could feel the pain of his victims more acutely, their screams of betrayal rooted so deeply, to be killed by the young man with such profound sadness in his pretty green eyes. It hurt. At first.
"Why do you seem so sad?" Subaru found himself muttering, not surprised as he should have been that it was all too easy to remain cold while warm, sticky blood slid off his fingers. "Betrayals like this happen every day, all over the city."
Yet he does not hear them anymore, no voices of ghosts or spirits, no feeling or sight of them in any way. Perhaps he has lost his powers. Perhaps it is for the best, because he cannot imagine trying to deal with lingering spirits when he can no longer sympathize with them.
To suffer through a weary life wishing so much to be dead, only to cling to the pain they'd sought to leave behind…to be trapped and never realize.
How pathetic.
-
The former seals are a matter of irritation to him. They will pass on the street, always in groups of two or three, faces drawn and countenances gray. Perhaps they are still waiting for the apocalypse as much as he is. Cloaks in varied states of disrepair seem to be the fashion of the day for them, tattered edges whisking across the pavement like a violent extension of their auras. Like a cult, Subaru sometimes thinks, because that's certainly what it looks like, and what's left of the Angels is no better. He tries sometimes to speak to them, but they only whisper amongst themselves, staring past him as though they were the only ones remaining in the still-vibrant city.
He might have well been speaking Sumerian for all they understood.
-
"Thank you onii-chan," she says softly, large brown eyes glancing up shyly though the veil of her bangs. Being timid must be a Sumeragi tendency, he thinks. The little girl is one of his distant relatives, meant probably to inherit the role as clan head, and one of the only ones who is willing to speak with him."But…why are you still here?"
Subaru asks her what she means by that question, but the girl blushes and stammers never mind. She never brings it up again, and he decides to dismiss the occurrence altogether. Per usual, he is missing something.
-
In a few moments it will be ten years since 1999.
Ten years since the Day of Judgment.
Ten years he cannot remember, but that's all right, the dead rarely do.
When the clock strikes midnight and a bell chimes somewhere while champagne pops, the news caster wishes a happy new year, and the world hasn't ended. Admittedly, Subaru is disappointed.