ficlets100 - number seven.

[rawri]

001.	Guilt	002.	New	003.	Solitude	004.	Content	005.	Tale
006.	Distort	007.	Luxury	008.	Listen	009.	Party	010.	Scent
011.	Storm	012.	Lessons	013.	Apology	014.	Relief	015.	Breeze
016.	Fading	017.	Passion	018.	Stay	019.	Rain	020.	Within
021.	Dread	022.	Revenge	023.	Time	024.	Perfect	025.	Eyes
026.	Bloom	027.	Beginning	028.	Bath	029.	Object	030.	Lost
031.	Pride	032.	Death	033.	Dance	034.	Remember	035.	Savage
036.	Late	037.	Crossroads	038.	Change	039.	Hope	040.	Dawn
041.	Hero	042.	Annoy	043.	Trouble	044.	Imagine	045.	Believe
046.	Words	047.	Home	048.	Understand	049.	Cage	050.	Animal
051.	Woods	052.	Fun	053.	Dare	054.	Spell	055.	Pray
056.	Warmth	057.	Mess	058.	Leap	059.	Attention	060.	Shopping
061.	Dessert	062.	Paper-cut	063.	Compromise	064.	Mouth	065.	Gone
066.	Intuition	067.	Fairies	068.	Gift	069.	Priceless	070.	Jewel
071.	Grin	072.	Quake	073.	Blush	074.	System	075.	Pressure
076.	Crash	077.	Closer	078.	Break	079.	Habit	080.	Safe
081.	Confusion	082.	Someday	083.	Instigate	084.	Goodnight	085.	Paint
086.	Always	087.	Guide	088.	Embrace	089.	Fall	090.	Help
091.	Different	092.	Anticipation	093.	Real	094.	Enough	095.	Again
096.	Glorify.	097.	Lack thereof.	098.	Fix.	099.	Smile.	100.	A little.

Comments

toward the terra -> ⌈70.⌋ Jewel.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

Mister Red was a funny, funny man. He arrived every so often, and he just had to be different. Amidst all the bright colors, the smell of waffles or cakes or whatever his mama decided to bake that day, he stood out, solid and dark and imposing, and he couldn’t help but look over at the man whenever he came around. He didn’t come often, and so he had to pay attention when he did.

It was hard to pay attention, though—Jomy and Swena would appear spontaneously, too, and though he’d told them they should be more on time (Jomy? On time?), they didn’t listen. Mister Red did listen. He didn’t tell him to study, either, even if he acted a bit like his father.

The world was always bright, but it was growing cold.

And maybe Mister Red wasn’t so different, because his colors got darker and darker, too, although his ear still held that sparkle (red- hah! like the textbook cover, like a cut finger, like the professor’s necklace, like Mister Red) and when asked, the other froze. He might have had some problems paying attention, but he knew what that meant – didn’t like it, because everything these days seemed to be getting colder and colder, freezing like the other had frozen.

And yet, it was alright that he wasn’t allowed to touch it, even if he thought it was nice-looking (like a cut finger), because Mister Red was a funny, funny man, all the same. It was strange, though- Jomy and Swena weren’t laughing.

Neither was Mister Red. Sam made sure to laugh more, just for him.

toward the terra -> ⌈67.⌋ Fairies.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

It never walked—only floated, danced and pranced about without a single care. It was a pink creature, with clear blue eyes and a rabbit-kitten sort of body, and it wouldn’t go away. Oh, no, it would go away—whenever someone was around, it disappeared. Whenever he was along, it was everywhere.

It had to have psionic powers, because it was always swirling around him, brushing past him, never touching him – he never touched it, it never touched him- and if it was reading his mind, he couldn’t tell. It would summon up pink bubbles, or balls, or whatever they were, and bounce around the walls with them; ‘pass’ them to him, as if inviting him to play. It had to have psionic powers, because it would give calls of mu, mu whenever it was particularly happy.

Or sad.

Or angry.

He could never tell the difference, honestly. It giggled, sometimes, but even that was a strange, alien sound. It couldn’t be shot and it couldn’t be touched. At first, it had gotten under his skin, he had let it under his skin, watched it out of the corner of his eye and spent more time on the deck so it couldn’t follow him—Matsuka even had asked him if something was bothering him—and at that point, he’d decided to ignore it. Which was good- a decision meant he could move on, get back on his normal routine, no longer falter.

In other words, Keith Anyan got used to it.

It being the creature. The creature that couldn’t possibly exist. For all of its floating and bubble-making, long tail and tiny front arms, Mu Factor scans couldn’t catch it-- of course not, was the rationale, after long nights spent in front of a screen, searching through every document he was privy to, it’s a true monster.

For a true monster, Keith thought, watching as it spilled a cup of coffee after getting too curious (he’d call Matsuka to get him another one, but right when that monster entered, the coffee would magically be back to how it had been—he knew, it’d happened several times); for a true monster, it was horribly unthreatening. Something to keep an eye on, but unthreatening.

He’d wonder if he’d gone insane, except he hoped his hallucinations would be in better taste.

Mu, mu, mu.

And as he closed his own Mu’s eyes for the final time, and as an insanity patient’s body finally gave out, he came to appreciate the hovering, deluded red creature, began to listen to its calls of mu, because it acted as a siren, a beacon, warning them all of the monsters that would board humanity’s ship unharmed. Intentionally.

And just like a siren, once they were aboard, the creature disappeared at last. Keith supposed he disappeared afterward, too, so it was only fit.

He never did find any record on a Type Red.

ffvii -> ⌈53.⌋ Dare.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

There’s a cat strung up by its hind legs, strung up on a string with is on a stick, and Cid’s carrying the stick because the rest of the kids are plain pansies. The cat’s yowling, and Cid tells it to shut the heck up (he’d been learning new words lately, words like heck and darn and goddangit), but it doesn’t, so he shakes the stick a bit, makes it go back and forth, back and forth, and he’s so distracted with this that he doesn’t notice Nibel rising around him.

It was a dare, a stupid dare, if you asked Cid- simply take the cat up to the base of the mountains and get back before the nasty wolves bit your butt (another word he’d learned). But all the other kids thought it was a grand plan—at least, it was a great plan until they had to pick the person to do it.

And then they’d kept on arguing and talking. Like they were adults or something.

Cid didn’t like being made to wait. So he’d grabbed the stick, made the obligatory you’re all a bunch’a darn pansies! and set off. Really, the worst part was how much the cat yowled.

Which it wasn’t doing any longer. Cid paused, taking once glance into the cave they’d stopped before, shook the stick and told it to yowl more – more because he didn’t like how the cave sucked away all the noise than because he was actually scared -- but it didn’t listen. It was beyond evening at that point, colors reflecting on the grey stone, with red and orange and yellow and bright neon blue—

He dropped the stick only to get the cat to yowl again. That was the only reason. There was a man at the entrance of the cave, arm outstretched toward Cid as if he was saying stop (stop what?), and just like the cat, Cid didn’t.

He did rise up on his toes, puff out his chest, and let out a resounding what the heck are you frikking doing, you old geezer? lost your frigging marbles? and then the cat was finally yowling and the man was gone.

Well, sort of. Cid (slack jawed and wide eyed, facts that would be left out when he told the story to the kids later) stared—because it wasn’t everyday you met an old man who could fly. Really fly, too, going straight up against the red and orange as a streak of blue, and Cid swore that he flew straight into space.

Cid vowed right then and there that he’d do the exact same thing. Dared himself (and not a stupid dare!). He’d do it before he got white hair, too, because he was Cid freaking Highwind, and no red-eyed weirdo was going to beat him.

-- Just like no wolf’s howl made him double-time it down the mountains.

toward the terra -> ⌈28.⌋ Bath.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

You can’t look so afraid. They’ll see that, and then they’ll feel like that, too.

He turned the heat up, and his skin went from an unhealthy pale to an unhealthy red in seconds flat. Something that being ’better’ couldn’t even change.

You’re looking indecisive again. They’ll see that.

His head hurt- too many thoughts, too many rumors, too many hopes and dreams and nightmares, and he was just beginning, the red cape hung outside of the tiled box like a dead crying mouse.

Speaking of which. He could hear Rain calling, from the other side of the glass; made him look away from the wall in front of him, jumbled thoughts pulling together.

The soldier has to be strong.

Why was he crying? His species’ name besides-- "Hey, Rain, I’m right here—"

Something in the wall seemed to snap, and he fell back.

You have to be strong.

Throat constricted, eyes squeezed shut – keeping them open in water was easy enough, but now things really had turned red, and it burned. Thick, heavy streams, falling from the shower head in a way that reminded him of the hose his mother had kept behind the house. Hands fumbled, back unwilling to leave the wall he’d pressed himself back into, and then- the pipes whined, and finally, it was off. He couldn’t stop the small gasps from leaving, as the door slid open easily, far too easily, and--

I know you can do it, Jomy. Look ahead.

-- When he stepped out, he fancied puddles of red followed him. He could imagine it perfectly, as long as he kept his eyes closed. Somethin- no, Rain, Rain brushed by his ankles, and he jerked away, because he didn’t want to get the mouse wet with-

When he opened his eyes, there was still only blue.

air gear -> ⌈85.⌋ Paint.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

Black was the color of the walls, of the air, of their suits. The computers were white, but when the scientists shut them down and left, they were black, too. Twining fingers and quiet smiles—if she was the sheep painted black by the others, he had had a whole vat of tar dumped on him. They all were nervous, but thoughts were void when one slept in the abyss, and his chest rose and fell just as steadily as hers.

Curled together, hair splayed out, they bumped noses and settled in—he opened his eyes to darkness and shut them to meet the same; the dim glow of floor lights only gave an underpainting of shading, tints and contrasts and layers, piled one on top of the other, black after grey after onyx.

She burrowed in closer, and he threaded his hands through her hair.

If he looked, he’d finally see something else. Dim pink, near white, but nothing at all like grey or black—and that was what made a masterpiece a masterpiece, the subtly in nothingness. When the light caught green, too, he held on tighter and promised never to look at any other art again.

She accepted the vow with a sleepy mummer and a wish to go back to sleep.

air gear -> ⌈o7.⌋ Luxury.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

The chair was a luxury. The room was a luxury. Even having clothes was a luxury, and she knew it- had her hands clasped in her lap, satin skirt and flowing blouse, because she knew it. A ribbon pressed and shining on her back, eyes under fluttering eyelashes- she knew it was all a luxury.

The walls were white to compliment pink, and his blue-collared suit made her want to giggle. It was ironic, all of it- that universal defeat would be a personal win, that she could outstretch her arms and simply smile, and after two beats, two seconds, two thousand milliseconds, he took two steps forward.

Arms outreached and met with a solid back, because he was bending for her, the smell of blood and battle lifting her up, and though she spotted a drop of red on his shoulder, she didn’t mention it. It would have ruined things. Red didn’t go too well with pink, but the choice of fashion was also a luxury.

He took her from that chair, and she slung her arms around his neck, disregarded the stiffness of his spine and deep scowl on his face, and thought, yes, this is quite a luxury.

air gear -> ⌈18.⌋ Stay.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

“Simca-”

“Shh.”

He stilled, held still, because he had to. The feeling was wrong, entirely wrong - he was a young adult! - but his twin was deft, quicker at lacing strings and tugging in the right places to get it evened out than he was at getting out of any of it. Which was unfair, because some of the things were really—uncomfortable—

”… Simca.”

“Just a little while longer, Kiriku.”

He grit his teeth and stayed still, fingernails biting into his hand, and she was pushing at his shoulders to get him to loosen up (it didn’t work). She’d said it was one of hers, but even the chest fit perfectly on him, and she was – developing into a young adult, too, so that didn’t work out at all.

Or maybe it did. He scuffed the toe of the shiny black shoe against the pavement, frowning deeper. “Simca.”

“Done!” She bounced back, all smiles and grace, and he turned out as stiffly as he could. Now his hands were fisting in the skirt, unconsciously holding his stomach in—it was binded expertly, that was true—and her cheer faltered. “Kiric. Don’t do that. You’re going to rip it.”

Well, that would have been a tragedy. But taking a look into her eyes, he realized it would’ve been – she would cry, or something, and that would make it even worse. So he let go of the skirt.

He didn’t smile, though.

She sighed, expression soft, and actually walked (normally she’d skip or jump or run) to him, fiddling with something or the other at his neck. He didn’t care to know what it was. Looking down to see the ground was bad enough.

Luckily, he didn’t have to. The top of her head jarred his jaw, and she snuck in like she belonged in his personal space all the time (she definitely didn’t own this outfit), even though they weren’t kids anymore. Between layers of silk and lace and cotton, he became increasingly aware of her aging, and that just made him frown more. And burn in the face, but neither of them mentioned that.

He did jump when she slid a hand past the undercoats, and her full grin was something else to feel against his skin. He made sure to stay still.

toward the terra -> ⌈14.⌋ Relief.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

A dish fell and shattered, and he leaned against the counter and held onto the frustration that followed. It was an accident – it was, they couldn’t prove anything else, it’d slipped right out of his hands, just an accident – but one that he refused to let go, closed green eyes and concentrated.

A bell seemed to ring right in his ear, and the anger, blue and calming and natural, slipped through his fingers.

There was a brief flash of disappointment, but then another bell – bell, buzzer, ringer, wringer, wranglers for cattle – was struck and that flash was gone, too. He rubbed at his temples, fingers lingering on the band around his head for a moment – only a moment, he wasn’t going to yank or tear or scratch at it, he just wanted to feel it, that was all, they couldn't prove otherwise - before stooping down to begin to carefully pick up the pieces. Careful not to be cut, careful not to feel anything, and the whole incident went blessedly silent. He remembered he’d wanted to feel angry, but now, he couldn’t fathom why.

“Oh, dear, let me help you with that.”

He glanced up, took a moment to put face to name to label (girlfriend? or was it fiancé?), and smiled. Why had he wanted to be angry? Everything was perfect. But he looked over her brown hair, straight and long — at her (empty) green eyes — at her cream-colored dress, all curves and flow and no uniqueness, and his smile faltered.

He almost felt the anger coming back, anger at something, but the bell tolled once more and he couldn’t move, couldn’t think. After the blink in time passed, he found his face a few inches from hers, a female face with (mock) concern and a soft hand threading (fake) comfortingly through his hair. “Are you doing that again, honey? They told you not to. It’s bad. You know that. Why do you do it?”

He looked at her clean black shoes, at her thin arms and pale legs, and then he looked at the floor.

She sighed, gripped his forearm lightly, sat back on her heels. Heels in clean white socks and shiny black shoes. “I love you.”

A bell tolled. Black – not the shoes – filled his vision. Her voice filled his mind.

“But if you don’t fight it, I can’t love you.”

She gathered him in her arms (like his m----- had), rested her chin on his shoulder, hair to hair but no skin to skin, and his hands stayed in the pile of broken shards. There was something wet rolling down his cheek, but no bell tolled, and so he relaxed in the blissful quiet that came with feeling nothing.

She released him, (triumphantly) smiled. “See? That wasn’t hard, Jomy. Now let’s finish cleaning this up.”

toward the terra -> ⌈81.⌋ Confusion.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

Related to this. (http://rawri.livejournal.com/44876.html?thread=525388#t525388)Sam frowned over his hand, watching the way both Swena and Jomy were seated side-by-side in one of the academy’s library chairs. He was bored, and when he was bored, he didn’t tend to think on anything particular, but this was something that had been bothering him for a while, something that became too apparent to just ignore in his current situation.

The situation being the fact that both Swena and Jomy were sitting in a library chair.

Reading books.

Sam switched hands to lean on, because his elbow was growing numb, but it didn’t change the scene in front of him. Swena had always been a good studier, a good student, a good girl who could sit still and read for hours. Jomy had always been an active kid, someone who couldn’t have sat still long enough to let the teacher get out one sentence, his mind always focused on doing rather than thinking. It was why they'd become best friends.

Admittedly, Sam’s memory was foggy (not in relation to Jomy, he noted absently), but everyone’s was like that. Well, almost everyone. There was that other guy, Keith, who didn’t seem to remember anything, and Jomy didn’t seem to, either. It’d been awkward, when he – and later Swena - had found his old friend and gotten a blank look in return, but after a moment or two of the silence, the blond boy had been smiling and laughing at their good luck of all entering together. Sam’d thought that pause had just been Jomy working through what he remembered and didn’t. Sam did that, sometimes.

But it hadn’t been. Time went on, and Jomy said straight-faced that he didn’t remember a thing about his mother. Or father. Sam didn’t really, either, but he had vague ideas of them.

Now his head was off his hand and on the table with a sigh. Swena looked up, raised an eyebrow at him, but Jomy’s eyes and mind stayed in the book he was apparently reading with gusto. Or something. Sam didn’t get how you could sit in a chair and read with gusto. Gusto was reserved for sports. Like soccer.

Jomy didn’t remember playing soccer, either.

Sam partially wished Keith was around, so he’d have someone to talk to, but then he felt guilty. Swena and Jomy were his childhood friends—he’d never had problems talking with them before! But then, Jomy hadn’t normally done what Swena did.

He finally met the girl’s eyes, only to find them creased in discontent, too. Her head was tilted to her left, and Sam looked over—oh. So she’d noticed, too.

“Why don’t we go to the recreational area?” Her voice was smooth, not at all awkward, which his would’ve been if he’d have been the one to talk. “I want to know which one of you two win.” Jomy’d finally looked up, at that, but then he seemed to – freeze. It was only for a second or two, but even Sam could see how the other’s smile was strained afterwards. Sam was reminded of those battle simulators they went through, and how if you shot one of the enemies in the leg, their expression would curl like Jomy’s was.

“Why don’t you try going against Sam, Swena? I bet you could beat him.” The girl openly frowned at this, but it didn’t seem to matter – the blond boy was glancing around for his bookmarker, and the task seemed to take all of his concentration.

They’d been sitting there for at least thirty minutes, and it looked like Jomy had barely gotten through a chapter of Giver. Maybe tasks did take all of his concentration. He’d never known the other to be slow at anything, before.

toward the terra -> ⌈49.⌋ Cage.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

“Eh? Jomy? What is it, what is it?”

“It’s the newest exhibit at Dreamworld. They’re supposed to be monsters.”

“We’ve got to check it out!”

“I don’t know, Sam. Isn’t Dreamworld kind of a kid thing…?”

“Oh, c’mon. We’ve got a day to do whatever we want. Let’s spend it. You’ve still got those free tickets, right?”

And so here they were. Clutching the bars (bars that reminded him of those old, old movies, vertical ones that you’d see in an ancient jail, and maybe it was fitting), they both had their faces pressed up close – it wasn’t hard to see, because the new exhibit was an amazingly dark room with an amazingly bright spotlight on the ‘monsters.’ Sam was the first to pull back, head tilted to the side and a hand scratching the back of his neck, almost sheepishly. “For a monster, it sure is boring.”

A lot of other people seemed to agree, too, because right after they’d glanced in, they glanced away, ushering their children just as quickly (though the kids didn’t seem to want to move as fast) to get out of the room and check out the next cage, a rare – and sickeningly cuddly – pand.

“… Yeah. Boring.”

Jomy rocked back on his heels while still gripping the bars, eyebrows drawing together some. Something was—

“Jomy, let’s go. Even if it’s boring, it’s creeping me out.” His green eyes jerked over to where Sam’s back was retreating out of the room, and he looked back into the cell (that was the only label that came to mind) one last time – the thing’s head was still pointed toward the floor, and all he could see was white hair (fur?) and white skin, so he reluctantly let go of the bars and started away, too.

“How can they do this?!”

A woman’s yell made him stop, made even Sam pause mid-reach for the button that would’ve opened the door to the next exhibit. They both looked over at her—a short lady, hands balled at her sides, someone old enough to be in their middle age. She was gesturing widely, and her husband made futile efforts to get her to be quiet.

“No, no, Harold, I won’t be silent- look at him! How is this a monster? He looks normal! No, he looks worse than normal—he looks like death warmed over! Are those chains? The children shouldn’t see things like this! It isn’t right! It isn’t right! It isn’t—“

No one made a sound as the dark, dark room lit up with another spotlight, a paralyzer hitting the woman right in the back – she fell, and her husband stepped away. Sam pulled on his arm, not even daring to whisper out a let’s go, but he had to watch as the Patrol hoisted the limp body up and walked away. Clean, cut, simple. People around them didn’t mention it- they filed out, as new ones came in, and Jomy didn’t even manage to see what the husband did.

Sam went on without him, once he realized Jomy wouldn’t budge (“Fine, fine, but meet me in two hours. I want to at least eat lunch with ya. -- Pand, here I come!”), and his watch told him he only had ten minutes before he had to start running for the food plaza.

He almost wanted to rattle on the bars he’d been holding onto, but three Patrols had already asked him if he was alright, if he was waiting for someone, if there was something wrong – the unspoken will you leave yet hanging in the air. He could feel it, for the first time; the weight of being watched, of actually having to be quiet, or else he’d give them reason to throw him out. The only reason he wanted to rattle the bars was because the monster hadn’t moved. The thing hadn’t even looked up! He would've call fake if the slow rise and fall of a bumpy, bony chest didn't give it away, the white-knuckled grip on white arms occasionally getting even whiter, bent back and curled into itself (white, white, white self).

It really did look normal. Oddly colored, but normal.

Boring.

His watch blinked five minutes after you should have left at him, he sighted a Patrol standing in the corner watching him, and he let go of the bars with a rather explosive sigh. “Fine,” he said to nothing in particular, to the weight and gaze on his shoulders, “You’re just a monster in a cage, anyway.”

And he left the cage under the weight of being watched, of red eyes on his back.

toward the terra -> ⌈99.⌋ Smile.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

Loosely related to this. (http://rawri.livejournal.com/44876.html?thread=525644#t525644)

They came to her when her child was a mere five, came with smiles and reassurances and in the middle of the night. She woke him with a shaking of the shoulder, smiling her own smile when he grumbled sleepily at her and yawned on the way out of the bedroom.

They knelt next to her child, took his small, delicate chin in between their gloved hands, smiled and reassured and promised all was well. She led him back to bed, placated him with warm milk and a cookie, tucked him in with a smile of her own.

She went to her child’s room with a smile and a call, a bid for breakfast in the light of the morning, having been reassured and promised to. She went to his room to find a teddy bear in the corner, a soccer ball on the shelf above the bed, sheets and pillows.

She found out when her child was an old twenty, a physical age of five, and she had no smiles to give or receive, no assurances or promises to keep her from crying, holding tight to her husband and wringing his shirt in her hands. She saw brass and silver, a band around his forehead and a gun on his hip, seemingly placated by the man – a human, an assigned Senator that would have her child killed when he died – he was in step behind.

The headlines read evolution harnessed, and as the world smiled, assured itself humanity’s rights, she knelt next to her husband and wept.

air gear -> ⌈o9.⌋ Party.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

“There’s this—this, thing, you see.”

“A thing.”

“Yes. A thing. A big thing. I mean, it’s not- it’s not really big, but it’s… big enough to be – big. You know?”

“No.”

“Y-you should. Because. It’s the thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

“This big thing?”

“Yeah.” His glass was sparkling, sparkling cider on a cold summer’s day (wait), and he swirled it once to watch the light dance. He had to push his cap up to see it clearly, but doing that also made him see the guy next to him (with stupid-looking white hair and that even stupider-looking outfit), so he pushed it back down. “That thing.”

“What is it?”

“A thing.” He paused, thought on that, decided thinking made things too fuzzy, and drank more of his drink. Because that was what it was for. Drinking. “I—well. You know how you guys… You guys merged with sss-- Sleipnir?”

“Yes. Is that what this thing is about?”

“Kinda.” He eyed his glass again – empty, darn – and then pushed his hat back up to look at the other second-in-command. Who was looking at him. Looking at him kinda funny-like, but Kazu didn’t think on that, because it was even fuzzier than thinking about the thing. Which he still had to define. “It was a last minute thing, wasn’t it?”

“Sort of.” Loki was leaning back on the rail, head tilted to the side, and Kazu wanted to tell him to stop being such a girl, except that was enough of an Ikki-thought to make him not say it, even if he was drunk. He thought he was drunk. He might’ve been.

But his glass was empty. Did that make him not-drunk?

“Mikura. Is that why you called me out here?” Oh, hey, Loki was talking again. Kazu eyed him. Man, he wouldn’t have worn that get-up, even in the height of his internet surfing days.

“Wha—oh. Yeah. Yes! Yes, it is!” Aha! So Loki did know what he was talking about!

Loki seemed happy about knowing, too. The man nodded, folding his gloved arms, brushing a long piece of hair behind his ear. Kazu bit his tongue on the Ikki-comment again. “I didn’t think your leader would go for it… He’s really a proud person.”

Wait. What? “Uh. Yeah. Ikki? Yeah. He is.”

“But since you asked… And since Sleipnir left, you may.”

What. “What.”

He smiled elegantly (Kazu almost expected him to say that he smiled elegantly), put one hand on the cap’d boy’s shoulder. “You may join our party, Mikura.”

That brought back a short memory of the former Rumble King, which wasn’t so pleasant, and then brought up a memory of an old RPG, which wasn’t as pleasant, either. He stuck with the familiar route. “What.”

“You may join our party!” Oh, god, he was becoming extravagant. Pointing to the stars and pushing him toward the railing in one go. “We’ve been on a search for the legendary Sky Regalia, and we’ve been lacking a good speeder for a long time! Your leader may have beat us this time, but it hasn’t set us back too far! It’s a side quest of ours.”

“What.”

“Yes, yes. You look like an educated young man. You’ll have to start at the lower end of the party, of course, and stay in the back, but we’ll share experience and dic-“

Kazu contemplated jumping over the railing or throwing himself repeatedly against the sliding glass door to the balcony, but his old, inner roleplayer took reigns, instead. Even though he had to sit through two hours of monologue, he came out of it with loaded dice and a pretty neat sword.

And a party. Cool. He’d never been accepted into one (one that he beat, nonetheless) that fast, before. It felt… nice. Made him smile.

And refill his glass at least three times.

toward the terra -> ⌈20.⌋ Within.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

“Grandpa! Grandpa!”

He was hardly at chest height, but he was old enough to enter the Room without permission. Jomy had never had problems with it, before – had always greeted him with a small, small smile (none of the others got smiles) and he would hop up on the bed and they would talk. He wasn’t allowed to actually lay in the bed, but that was okay, because he was allowed in. Welcomed in.

The stiff red-caped shoulders were turned away from him this time, and for a brief moment, Tony’s face lost its exuberance and fell, fell, fell.

But then he realized what was going on, and balled his fists, eyes narrowing.

“Grandpa. I want to talk with Grandpa.”

The shoulders didn’t move. Tony growled in his own mind – loud enough that the other had to be able to hear him, unless he purposely wasn’t, and that made him feel even angrier. This had happened before. Always when Tony just wanted to talk. This-- relic was keeping him from Jomy, stopping Jomy from being able to give out little smiles and finally break his sad, sad gaze to laugh.

He knew he was supposed to respect this Mu. Jomy loved this Mu like Tony loved Jomy; it was the only reason the Mu was even still alive, if one could call how he stayed around as ‘alive.’ But Tony barely remembered the Mu, only remembered how Jomy would stand or sit at the side of the bed and wait wait wait, make his mother (and probably father) wait along with him, make everyone wait. And now, even in his half-living state, he was making Tony wait.

His fists unclenched, and he forcibly relaxed, breathing through his nose. The figure, headphoned and silent, finally turned around after what seemed like hours—an eyepatch, black as the Room around them, broken up by blond-white-gold-albino hair, looked back at Tony.

His voice broke, out of his growing-up stage and feeling. What if Jomy was going to wait forever. “Please. I want to talk to Grandpa, Soldier.”

But his only response was a single, lidded red eye.

Silence. The room echoed in it. Tony’s lips thinned, while the former Soldier didn’t move at all.

And then things seemed to breathe out, the dark around them expanding back into its abyss, and the eyepatch was switched over smooth enough to make Tony want to hug himself. But when a green eye blinked (looking slightly exasperated and tired and sad, so it was him, it wasn’t the other Soldier) at him, mouth opening to undoubtfully say Tony?, Tony hugged Jomy, instead.

He got to sit on the bed, and talk to his grandfather, and he was welcomed into the Room as usual – the lapse in time when his grandfather had been that Other went unmentioned. And yet, this time, Tony couldn’t make the sad look in Jomy’s eye disappear.

But it was alright. As long as it was his grandfather, it was okay. He’d make him laugh again sometime else, when the Blue Room didn’t feel so Blue.

.hack// -> ⌈42.⌋ Trouble.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

The house at the very end of 15th Street, with its green shutters and molting wood paneling, was very rarely ever visited. The mother of the household was an eccentric – she mostly stayed indoors, doing who-knew-what, and never stopped by the parlor at noon to trade stories like all the other ladies; the father was seen between the times of five and six, morning and night, a silent, ghostly fellow who walked with a limp and didn’t know his Packers from his Patriots.

There was no garden in the front of the house at the very end of 15th street. There wasn’t a basketball hoop in the driveway, there wasn’t a car parked haphazardly in the garage. As far as the neighborhood knew, the strange couple had two children- one was an alright boy, a normal boy with a bright smile and curious, slowly-aging eyes. He liked to play soccer, he wanted to dye his hair blue, and his favorite game was Cowboys and Indians, where he always painted triangles on his cheeks and chased the girls around, laughing. He said his name was Kite.

The other one was this normal Kite’s twin, a shambling husk of a child with one wide, green-rimmed eye. Well, he might’ve had another eye, but this one barely ever looked at anyone with both at the same time – he was like a bird, a girl had once said, because birds never look at anything straight-on. The only reason the neighborhood knew this twin-of-normal-Kite existed was because he was forced to go to the elementary, sit in the back corner like a broken doll and somehow pass to the next grade. Normal-Kite said his name was Kite.

No one ever got to question the woman why she’d ever named her twins the same thing, or why she hadn’t put up a fuss if her husband forced it on her. No one really wanted to.

The one who enjoyed soccer and face-painting, who most parental figures of the neighborhood pretended was an only child of a family that didn’t live on 15th street, was sometimes seen dragging his silent (some said mute, some said mentally handicapped, some turned away) twin about. It wasn’t proper, to take a boy with sick skin and diseased-looking eyes into town, but Kite was a good kid like that, and so whichever shop was unlucky enough to get the duo put on grins for them, offered them extra candy or stickers or whatever nick-knack was laying about, and didn’t dare breath a word about the deathly figure until the heavenly one was far, far away.

The whole family was bad luck, an old woman coming back from church would cry. The handsome boy who ran in the sun and wore shorts was going to waste away in that house.

Three of them were just plain trouble, a manager would shake his head, whisper over the counter. The one who brought back missing money and helped toddlers across the street was going to become corrupted if he stayed there much longer.

Even if we can only save one, conspired a student, over a few drinks at the local bar. It has to be the nice one who made friends and stuck out his tongue at the mention of ‘cooties.’

Even if we can only save one, echoed the others at that bar, all nursing a mug with sad looks in their eyes, and the tender rubbed his chin, turned away and disappeared into the phone booth they kept in the back.

The handsome boy who played soccer, chased and laughed and blushed at girls, who never ding-dong-ditched a soul, screamed and kicked and fought when they took him from that house at the end of 15th street. The mother, with her skinny wrists and red-rimmed eyes, stood on the porch wringing her hands; she didn’t stop her other son from flying out of the house like a demon, down the block, chasing after tail lights, and the cries from his mouth were the first things anyone had ever heard from him. Cries of an animal, people’d say. There would be urban legends based on that child, as the police had to appear to restrain him, to keep him from beating his tiny fisted hands against the glass of the Foster Agency’s doors bloody.

.hack// -> ⌈61.⌋ Dessert

[rawri.livejournal.com]

loosely related to this (http://rawri.livejournal.com/44876.html?thread=577612#t577612).“Kite!” Was the call, the demand, the whine – an eye blinked, body turned over, crouched; the bush covering him rustled and then parted, and a near-identical-yet-utterly-not face nearly slammed into his, the end syllable of “Kiii-te!” cut off.

He blinked.

“There you are,” groaned the face in front of him, and suddenly warm hands were grabbing his cold shoulders, pulling him out of the bush. The other boy wasn’t careful about him getting scratched by the branches, and he appreciated it. “Didn’t you hear mom calling?”

He blinked again.

“… Fine.” Said the boy with a frown and a bit of a pout, as though this wasn’t a normal coincidence (he had enough sense to know that it was), sitting back on his hands as he resumed his crouch next to him. “Didn’t you hear me calling?”

He contemplated blinking, but one look from his twin’s clear eyes had him nodding, instead.

“Ugh,” complained Kite (not him, not him), bringing up his legs and folding his arms over them. It was definitely more of a pout, now. “You could’ve answered, y’know. Or at least gotten out of the bushes. Mom said we could have dessert first—“ she’d really said this normal, caring Kite could have dessert first “- and so I came to get you. It’s pie. What were you doing that was more important than pie?”

He didn’t blink or nod, just looked down and scratched at the ground, drawing a little slightly-sideways A. It was his favorite letter. It was the only letter he had bothered to learn to write perfectly, actually.

His twin sighed again. “That’s not much of anything, Kite.” And he thought that he shrugged his shoulders, only he wasn’t too sure, but the real, likeable Kite apparently thought he did, too, because there was a lull in the conversation (an abnormal thing, with this boy), in which he finished up his perfect A and the other one looked over the bushes at the evening sky.

The pause became tangible, so he made sure to break it. Cold hands on warm shoulders, he took his twin back into the bushes – and he made sure that this other boy wasn’t scratched by the thorns – pushed aside some leaves and presented what only the birds and deer had known previously.

“H-hey, are these raspberries? I thought these were all gone!” The other was smiling, mother’s calls forgotten, and the smile became contagious. “Alright, you win – these a lot more important than some stuffy store-bought pie.” And even though he knew the pie was actually hand-baked by the local baker, was the pie that the shining, brilliant Kite liked best, he kept on grinning a shaky smile.

They went back home, through the bushes, just a little while after eating their fill of raspberries, and though their mother didn’t really look at both of them (she checked Kite for scratches, of which the other Kite had made sure there was none), there was pie, and she let them take their plates into the living room, so that he could lean against his twin and take in the heat where he was only cold. There would be complaints of stomach aches, later, and finding sticky raspberries in bedsheets, but each of them felt sated enough that they didn’t care.

Trigun -> ⌈32.⌋ Death.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

The first breath was the worst. It felt like stone and brimstone and cold, like sand and gravel and heat, and his body quaked.

“What is this--a Plant?”

“It’s got the blond hair!”

“—That’s impossible, Plants are man-made, and female beside-“

“It’s moving!”

The second breath was better. He had to struggle, didn’t want to struggle, pushed the rocks clumped up against his sides away while drawing them closer. There was something wrong with it all, contradiction, betrayal (of what? to who?) in the form of hisses and vocalizations and the feel of inner cold and streaming heat, new heat, running from his shoulder, and his nails chipped and broke on the rocks, and he couldn’t remember his name, and he couldn’t remember why not remembering was a very bad thing indeed—

He was blind, he was deaf, but he still felt the sting of a (stunner) lightning strike against his chest, felt the rise of blue-colored indignation and maybe panic in the back of his mind, but then the strike came again and that was that.

Perhaps next time, the first breath would be easier.

-----

“It’s a Plant. Put it in.”

“I-I’m sorry, sir, but - it isn’t! It might have some of the properties, but it’s utterly useless for energy—“

“No, no, see this? That’s energy. That’s plenty of energy. It didn’t survive for this long without energy.”

“Not anything we can use--“

“- We’ll find a way. We might need all the Plants we can get. Stick it in there.”

“… Yes, sir.”

-------

His hands were on the glass, big blue eyes staring up up up into the tank. His brother was messing around on the computer, as per usual, but Vash was more interested in the actual thing.

They’d never seen another male Plant before.

“Knives, Knives—do you think we can talk with him?”

“Wait a bit.” The twin with his hands pressed against the cold glass stuck out his bottom lip, but waited. It took a whole ‘nother minute, but eventually Knives looked up and nodded. Not that he had to nod. Vash understood him from the other side of the ship, nevermind inside of the same, dark room (it was off limits, and they both knew it, but it didn’t matter when you were with your brother and Rem was busy and they were adventuring). Vash closed his eyes, pressed his forehead against the glass, and concentrated.

For the first time in his year-long life, he realized just how clumsy he was.

He tripped, he fell, he got lost in vacancy, found his own head hurting in sympathy of this one’s. A burst of blue, a flash of yellow-green-mixed-together, not at all like Knives’ clean, organized mind; Vash opened his mouth and yelled, a streak of white in blurred vision, the knowledge of death and rebirth clinging to the back of his tongue as he yanked himself back, was pulled back, Knives at his back yelling Vash, Vash, as loudly as the (who he thought had been sleeping) other one was saying Soldier, Soldier.

“-diot! What were you doing? Vash, Vash, talk to me—Vashu-”

He blinked, and tripped again, fell into the blackness of Nazca, Terra, a big blue planet that had lots of green, a little bit of yellow and the overtune of his brother’s voice. The one who had been floating inside of the tank was now floating in orbit, and Vash thought that he looked sad, really sad. So he did what Rem always did when they were sad, and somehow pushed himself – it was like their zero-gravity bedroom, only without the walls – toward the other, gave the other a hug.

It jolted him, jolted them both, and afterwards, the guy just looked sadder, and Vash didn’t quite get how that worked, was about to ask this other how it worked, but then the background noise of his brother reached a deafening pitch (Knives was supposed to be the quiet one, he wanted to tell the other, because the other looked like he needed to be told things) and then Vash found out that breathing hurt, and that he couldn't get to see any color at all.

.hack//g.u. -> ⌈73.⌋ Blush.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

Ryou muttered under his breath, because muttering over his breath would mean there would be a possibility of the napkins flying off. He was balancing a tray with one hand, keeping the drinks somehow steady with the other, and glared daggers over it all once the people in his booth became visible. Not that it really helped. They were stupid like that. But at least once he got to the table, Tomonari stood up to help him distribute everything. Which there was a lot of. Geez, he was the teenager- why were they the ones eating the most?

The seat was plastic and uncomfortable, but there weren’t too many unidentifiable stains, so he sat down on it hard.

“What’s wrong?” Piped Tomonari (damn him), a question that was only answered with a low look and (sulking) drinks out of the soda cup. “… Aw, c’mon, Ryou. Don’t be like that. You lost the coin toss.”

“A coin only has two sides!”

“Yeah, it does. I’m… glad you know that-“

“There’s three of us here!”

“- You wouldn’t have made her get the food, would you?”

“Of course he would have,” Reiko murmured, eyes on her own burger. Uncaring. Tch.

He opened his mouth to tell her a thing or two about what he ‘would’ve had’ her do, but then the light hit just right and – time out. “What the…” He squinted, leaned across the table toward Reiko, who was eying him back as if she was about to punch him. Which would hurt. But he had to see-- “Are you wearing make-up?”

She really did punch him.

Tomonari (cackled) laughed in his seat, though he tried to stifle it when people began to look over; Ryou rubbed his now-bruised face, feeling heat rise up. In defense of his dignity, he started yelling – so she grew stormier and stormier – fries began to fly and tempers rose - and later, Tomonari tried to explain to the manager that it hadn’t been intentional, that they wouldn’t do it again, and they were all really, really sorry – really!

The fact that Reiko and Ryou kept on arguing during his plea made convincing the manager a bit hard, and when Ryou brought up why, exactly, make-up wouldn’t help cover that, anyway, (which made the manager – and Reiko - go red in the face and stand up straight, look Tonomari in the eyes – and Tonomari must’ve been the only one who had the sinking feeling in his stomach, go pale as the sheets in Ryou’s bed) it was even harder to convince him, after that, but at least he tried.

They still got kicked out and banned from every McDoodles in the city for a month.

.hack//g.u. -> ⌈92.⌋ Anticipation.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

Saku wasn’t afraid of Haseo. She wasn’t.

She was afraid that Haseo would beat Master En (never! said her brother, but he rarely knew what he was talking about, and that was why she had to do this for him), that the loss would drive Master En into ‘retirement,’ like so many other Emperors. She was afraid he would disappear from her sight, and then she was afraid her brother could follow, because if his idol disappeared, why would he need her around? They didn’t play this game for battling, or leveling up, or anything silly like that- they played it mostly because it was the only place she could be a real girl, where they could be truthful (“My sister’s getting on tomorrow”) and no one would raise an eyebrow.

They played this because Master En was perfect. There was no way he’d lose to a loser like Haseo. She wanted to step on Haseo’s foot just because he thought he could beat Master En! Thought that he could just waltz right in, and take down her brother’s (and her’s) idol, show the World that anything could be possible, even if you were alone (and she knew he was, because who could like a dummy like that? – again, her brother hardly knew anything, so he didn’t count).

She wanted to do something, do something soon before the gnawing feeling in her gut got to her, do something to show Bo and Master En that she was useful. Because she was! Just like she wasn’t afraid of Haseo. Wasn’t afraid of how he’d helped her brother out while she hadn’t been looking, wasn’t afraid of his ‘from-the-back’ victories, wasn’t afraid of him at all.

But Bo wasn’t afraid of Haseo, either. And that made Saku afraid.

.hack//g.u. -> ⌈97.⌋ Lack Thereof.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

100 words: Pi/Kuhn/Haseo.
It would be cliché to say their breaths mingled, especially when they really didn’t—they were front to back, stripped down in the living room, tangled up in limbs and heat and pressure and noise, one on top of another, but it all had nothing to do with air. In fact, Tomonari found it was a bit hard to get any air. Reiko had her tongue down his throat, and he had his hand around Ryou’s mouth (the boy was always so loud), and Ryou had—well, he had three somethings somewhere that made it very hard to breath, indeed.

.hack//g.u. -> ⌈64.⌋ Mouth.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

They’ve almost made it into a game.

Not the keep-Haseo-quiet game, though that had been a favorite of Tomonari’s for a while—now it was the abridged version, the keep-Ryou-quiet-so-we-don’t-get-thrown-out game, because if his landlady heard one more ‘strange sound’ coming from their room after ‘those strange older people who always hang around your door before you get back from school, Ryou, should I call the cops on them’ and they really would be thrown out. Or, worse, the landlady would pick the lock and barge in. Tomonari definitely didn’t put it past that woman.

Speaking of which. Reiko always seemed to be better at the game than he was. Normally, the whole thing wouldn’t have been thought about – there’d always be a blanket, or a pillow, or a shirt, or something around, but as of late, things had begun to progress in the very hallway of Ryou’s apartment and… Well. He’d accused Reiko of cheating with the silence-him-with-a-kiss thing, because that was so unoriginal.

Then again, so was this.

Although he was obviously trying to fight it, Ryou’s face was bright red, eyes lidded and breath coming short, coming fast. Tomonari would’ve been worried that he was going to hyperventilate if he hadn’t still been making noises, little encouragements that mimicked the way the boy’s nails dug into his skin, and he was just happy the guy wasn’t biting him. They’d tried that, too, but it was actually something Ryou’d protested – he wasn’t a damn vampire, he’d said.

Could’ve surprised us, with your skin, Tomonari’d responded, but then Ryou really had bitten, and things deteriorated from there. Or went upwards. Depended on your point of view.

His view wasn’t that good at all, honestly. Things were a bit messed up – there Tomonari was, pressed up against Reiko, who in turn was pressed up against Ryou, and with his arm stretched around Reiko to keep Ryou quiet, all he could do was move with the rhythm and hope things went well. Which they generally did.

But whatever Reiko was doing with her hands had Ryou writhing like he was being tortured, and that made it hard to keep a hand over his mouth. Tomonari tried for a few more seconds before deciding it was a lost cause, what with how the teenager (he really was a teenager, too) was breaking rhythm and hissing and Tomonari decided that, hey, if Reiko could be cliché, so could he. It really didn’t help with volume control, since then both of his hands were free to take on Reiko’s hips, move them faster already, and his own kisses were getting sloppy, missing by the mark by, oh, the neck -- and while he knew she hated being out of control, the breathy noises Ryou finally quieted down to was worth it all.

He’d get them back, later, for tag-teaming, probably by playing the show-how-much-more-flexible-my-younger-body-is game, and Tomonari was pretty sure he’d lost this round, but Reiko’s quiet hhn (no one else could get her to do that, he was sure of it, none other than 'her idiotic teammates') emphasized that this wasn’t just random playing around.

Didn’t mean he wouldn’t start keeping track.

axis powers hetalia -> ⌈63.⌋ Compromise.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

It was 2012, and the recession officially slipped into a full-blown Depression. Fortunately, it happened to no one but America.

Initially, all eyes were on him. Satellite viewing had gotten better and better, and if Russia wasn’t spreading pictures of the knocked-down nation, everyone else seemed to be kicking him. Metaphorically, of course; even if America had fallen, the rest of the world still moved, and though they could spare time to poke fun in newspapers and television shows, they worked harder than ever to make sure they didn’t follow the Depression trend. It wasn’t easy, but they managed.

It was 2020, and that was America on the stand, looking unkept and far, far too small, voice over-used but tiny. When Poland squealed about finding a spider under his spot’s desk, and the Northern Italy brother pointed out that the water dispenser wasn’t working any more, England formally moved the UN meetings to his flourishing city of London. There weren’t too many complaints – in fact, the only one who did was drowned out by a simple murmur of approval.

That invisibility would last for a long time, until even Canada had an issue with picking his brother with cracked glasses and limp, dying hair out of the crowd. In actuality, America stopped showing up altogether by 2023, and no one noticed when Russia’s satellites stopped picking up footage of him by 2030. The world moved, sluggishly moved into a dreamy sort of half-peace. No one dealt in each other’s business much anymore – if Canada was asked, he could say there had been a fuss over someone called a Dalai Lama, but it hadn’t been his problem, and besides, China was sort of scary, lately. He’d concentrate on himself, and maybe France or England, was that so bad? — No, no, it wasn’t. The rest of the world thought precisely the same thing.

He went through a routine. It was a nice routine; mix up batter for pancakes, open the windows to let the fall breeze in, sit back on the couch and maybe watch the news (not that there really was any) for a bit. Canada liked his routine. There wasn’t much that would move Canada from his routine.

But then it was 2090, and for the first time in forty seven years, America was on his doorstep.

“Matt,” he said, hands wringing, and Canada blinked – when had Alfred gotten back to normal? Pale as a hermit, sure, but healthy looking, and yet none of them had heard a thing from him (or had they?)—“Matt. You have to move in.”

- They hadn’t heard a thing from him. “What?”

“Merge with me. Please, Matt.”

“What are you—is this… April Fool’s, Al?” He remembered that holiday, a bit. America had always been big on playing pranks. He wasn’t sad that holiday had disappeared with the other, really.

“No, it’s – September 3rd.” It was actually October 17th, but Canada didn’t comment on that. The desperation in his brother’s eyes (had he forgotten his glasses? He wasn’t wearing them) gave him a sinking, white-cold feeling, and his grip increased on the doorframe.

“… Is this a declaration of war?”

“No! No. No, Matt- Canada- listen. Your provinces will get full state rights—you’ll have representation- it won’t be like Mongolia--“

Like who? – Oh. Right. The one China’d killed, lined up for the bored world to watch, right next to Tibet and Nepal and Bhutan. Canada knew there had been a reason the Asian Nation scared him.

“- my people just really miss yours, and I- I think yours miss mine, too, at least, I like to think they do, because I miss you-“

He found out he was yelling when he tried to talk. “What are you talking about?! You’re the one who closed the border! You’re the one who forgot about me!” There was a pause, where American stared at him, pin-prick blue eyes wide, looking like a cornered animal despite his somewhat-kept appearance, and Canada realized, no, no, I’d done all those things. Because he’d forgotten that America could even export. Because he’d forgotten to visit for Christmas or the other’s Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July or anything, just like America had often forgotten centuries ago.

When had America’s memory gotten so good?

axis powers hetalia -> ⌈29.⌋ Object.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

Related to this. (http://rawri.livejournal.com/44876.html?thread=582988#t582988) part II.
It’d come out of nowhere. He hadn’t even thought on it.

But now there were broken pieces of a white dish at the base of a wall, and he was backed into a corner, for-once steady hands holding out a shining kitchen knife – he couldn’t see anything but red, couldn’t think, only heard the ring of silence – narrowed blue eyes were stalking toward him, and someone was yelling, screaming, demanding to be let go, let it go, I’ll cut the ties, I’ll cut them, and hands appeared out of nowhere and Matt turned the knife on them.

There was a flash of red (red eyes? no), and he couldn’t move again; in this pause, though, someone else made an action. The corner was no longer something he’d backed himself into – he was shoved against it, an arm barred across his throat, and the knife clattered as noisily to the ground as the plate had shattered. His larynx was crushed on top of feeling hoarse, and for a good fifteen seconds (enough to suffocate if he was hyperventilating and he was hyperventilating) Matt couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t hear, could see.

He saw Cusa stand up from the kitchen table and back out with a wary look – since when was Cuba ever wary? – and he saw blue. Sound filtered back in, whispers in his ear, I don’t want to hurt you, Matt, I never hurt you, you know that, so why did you say those things, those things would have hurt, you could have hurt us, and just like with the plate, the numbness fell to despair.

The arm around his throat lightened, two arms around his neck pulling him closer, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, he could feel his hair becoming slicked with something too thick to be water. His brother held him (trapped him) like a prized toy that had been lost for a week, a sought-after reward that was finally gained.

What were you thinking? was whispering into his ear, breathed into his hair, collapsing onto the floor to be cradled instead of simply held, a little girl and her breakable doll.

Nothing, he answered, limp, truthful. There was a pause, a suspicious – paranoid – pause, but his brother had always loved the truth, always loved him, so instead of a reply they sat there, rocked back and forth. His brother loved the truth, but he also liked to be told what he wanted to hear. I didn’t mean to. It- it came from—something, I don’t know. I-i-it’s gone now, I think, I hope--

It’s alright, was the reply. It had been exactly what he wanted to hear. You don’t have to say anything else. I know you mean that.

Three days later, he’d find his bed moved into Alfred’s room (his – former - boss was moved to Nunavut), and while a part of his hair would stay stiff and red for a good month, all he could think on was that he hoped his brother wouldn’t get tired of his toys as fast as he had when they had been younger (a time that, for all of the other’s improved memory, he couldn’t seem to remember). Because aside from that, there wasn’t much to object to.

axis powers hetalia -> ⌈30.⌋ Lost.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

Related to this. (http://rawri.livejournal.com/44876.html?thread=582988#t582988) Part IV.“Korea was silent.”

Cusa’s hand froze mid-extension, not changing the channel as had been planned; Matt’s folded arms jerked before he, too, froze, and neither of them looked at the one who spoke until that one continued.

“Yong Soo told me that everything originated in China. Everything was made there, so everything came from there.”

Matt stood up, hunched his shoulders in but forced himself to look over at Kiku, at that bowed head and mumbled, nearly-whispered words. The man’s hands were white-knuckled on his armrests. He wouldn’t stop talking.

“And then he disappeared.”

Cusa changed the channel. Matt looked at the front door, where Al was due to walk in after the noon bell. That was in two hours.

“Ivan refuses relations.”

He wouldn’t stop talking. Canada looked back at Kiku, and the Nation was practically bent in half – this sparked a bit of concern, not only because it was the first time Japan had ever spoken (was this speaking? He seemed to be remembering – which was supposed to be good?), but because he looked like he was about to break, and Matt didn’t know what happened to Nations who broke from the inside out. Didn’t want to know what happened. Especially not when Alfred was going to be back in two hours.

“He knows Jones has his eyes set on me. I know it, too.”

Cusa wasn’t going to do anything – so, with unsteady feet, Canada walked over to where the white wheelchair was (Kiku still wore his white suit, even if it was growing brown on the cuffs and flimsy, barely washed and hardly ever ironed, and he’d never known the other to let things go like that), stopping a breath away.

“Taiwan said she wanted to marry me.”

And just like a breath, after an exhale, the Nation’s entire being was folded in on itself, crumbling (like the body in the basement), and Matt hurried to get down on one knee before the smaller man, hands pushing at the Asian’s shoulders, and Kiku straightened up far too easily, still wouldn’t look at the rest of them. Silence reigned, before the light caught Kiku’s cheek, and Matt did the only thing he could think of, could remember England doing (before he had his ward burn down Al’s city); with careful movements, he encircled his arms around Japan and waited.

Eventually, the trembling turned into full-blown shudders, entire waves of shivering that shook them both. Kiku burrowed his face into Matt’s loose t-shirt, catching all of his tears before they could fall properly, muffling any noises that he possibly could’ve made. Canada still heard what he said.

“My legs hurt.”

gurren lagann -> ⌈18.⌋ Breeze.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

“Old man, this is never going to work!”

“Of course it will! Just keep going, m’boy, and you’ll reach the top! Don’t be a sissy, don’t you give up!”

“You’re senile—"

“Look at that, Kamina! Look!”

And he would’ve looked, except he was blinded, and he could feel his eyes dilating and watering in the light – but even so, he tried to keep them as wide as he possibly could, and his jaw really did drop. For being an old man, his ‘leader’ scrambled up pretty quick, leaving Kamina behind to cling to the outside of the hole they’d made and gape.

The old man was laughing.

“Hah! You didn’t think we could do it, could you? You shouldn’t have underestimated us! We’ll scratch and claw our way up, no matter what!”

Kamina blinked, watched as the giant light far off became even more blurry, tried to pull himself up further as he grumbled out a, “You’re crazy, Old Man,” only to sink back down as something invisible began to throw sand in his face. No matter how much he swatted at the dirt, it only seemed to calm down when it wanted it to- and when it chose to clear up, he saw the fluttering cape of the Old Man, as wild and red as the hazy ball that made his eyes hurt if he stared at it too long.

As he finally hauled himself all the way up, scrabbled at the ground with bent fingers and dirty nails, collapsing under his father’s laughing guffaws, all Kamina could think about was how he was going to go blind if he stayed on the surface much longer.

The Old Man probably planned that, too, because years later, he did become blind- when underground, he couldn’t see anything but that sky.

gurren lagann -> ⌈87.⌋ Guide.

[rawri.livejournal.com]

Simon blinked behind his goggles. Normally, he wouldn’t question a thing his ‘brother’ did (often because he knew he wouldn’t like the answer), but…

“Kamina? What is that?”

“—Oooi, Simon, how many times d’ I have to tell you? It’s ‘brother!’” And he was given a sharp, large grin, just as pointy and bright as those things the other was wearing.

Another blink and pause, before Simon pushed up his goggles; instantly, the reflective orange surface dulled as the light was pulled away, and the ten-year-old leaned in closer to see what, exactly, had made Kamina crawl all the way through his tunnel. By the way the other kept tilting his head left and right and flicking his nose, Simon figured the older boy expected a dropped jaw and praise.

He wasn’t really impressed, though.

“They don’t light up.”

Aha, so the other had been digging for compliments. Kamina’s face crumbled for a moment – only a moment! – before frowning in a rather exaggerated way, and Simon could vaguely make out the other’s red eyes behind the – well, he supposed they were glasses, although dysfunctional ones – and his not-really-brother had that I’m about to inform you of life’s facts look.

“Of course they don’t light up! That’s what yours do. You lead the way, drill as surely as you were born- to the heavens!”

That was another thing Kamina had gotten more and more obsessed with, but Simon just shifted a bit (his arms were becoming numb), eyebrows drawing together in open confusion. He really wanted to figure the Mystery of the Orange Glasses out before the Chief discovered Kamina was distracting him. Again.

“Then what do yours do?”

Another grin, only this time his not-really-at-all-brother took a moment to pull his goggles down over his eyes once more, the light bouncing around before reflecting steadily on those glasses.

“They make me look cool and like a man, obviously! Not that I need it.”

Simon opened his mouth to reply to that (still not impressed), but then they both flinched and turned tail as the Chief's voice reverberated down the tunnel. They couldn't stay a long, long time down in the ground, but they both knew the Chief couldn't fit in the tunnel, and so they stayed as long as possible - Simon in the lead, Kamina flashing orange right behind.