The Morning After [Colin/Sekai]

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Colin Arascain

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The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 24, 2014 0:11:39 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 24, 2014 0:11:39 GMT -5

Few words were spoken that night. He ate in relative silence, making polite noises of thanks when he had to, snatching little glances of her from time to time and each time the sight of her made the corners of his lips slide upward in such a wondering smile. After all that came before, it was hard for him. Everything turned to shit in Colin's life, it was just a, a fact, pure and immutable and yet nothing happened. Every time he looked up at her, she was there.

It was wonderful, and nothing was going wrong.

He spent most of the time in his head, just... breathing. Relaxing. Enjoying this impossible gift life had given him and not pushing too hard, not demanding too much in case it decided to fly away if he came too close. He'd pushed himself out there in a way he probably never would have if he'd thought it through, and...

Was he allowed to be this happy?

It felt like everything was fluttering, like all of the little pieces of him were threatening to fly apart, and he wanted to let them. He didn't ever want this feeling to fade, even if it left him unable to speak, unable to breathe. If not for the throbbing in his shoulder, the way his eyelids started to slip shut if he didn't pay attention, he could have stayed like this forever.

The bed was warm. He didn't dream, because he was living one.

He was still there when the dawn came. Light streamed through the open window and into his face, and he couldn't see a clock anywhere, and he didn't care if he lost track of time in this place. It felt foreign and wrong to have nothing hanging over him, no worries, no worries at all even though he had nothing in the world but the strength of his soul and the brush of her lips against skin, and the last one was the stronger of the two. Because of it he felt like he could do anything.

For her, he would do anything.

The shower cleaned him, but it didn't wake him up the way it normally had to; he was already there, already in the world, not trying to cling to pleasant fantasy as they slipped away in the daylight hours. The... thing... that clung to him seemed to be dormant, or at least hiding, reduced to a series of hardened ridged on his spine, and he didn't feel anything from it in his mind. He scrubbed his skin and washed his hair--making sure he dried it off this time, because he knew she liked that now--while his head was in the clouds.

He didn't know what would happen now.

He was trying to think about it, about what would happen today, but it was like he was floating or flying and all the practical concerns fell away in the power of that sensation. Even though he had no control, even though something as simple as the meal he ate last came only because of her generosity, he felt safer than he had in a very long time. He realized he barely knew anything about her, barely knew more than her name and hadn't told her all of his, and he wanted to change that. He wanted to dive into her life and make sure...

She'd hurt herself, before, hadn't she? Why had she done that when... He didn't know why that was, there might have been a reason, and he didn't see pain inside her eyes, but...

Wasn't she happy now, too?

His expression clouded up with doubt and he really hoped, he really hoped he was imagining it and it wasn't the first time, was it? Right at the end, when she said how strong he was, recognized that he could protect her now, that he wasn't pathetic and weak anymore... There was something in her eyes then, too.

He had to see her. It was suddenly there, like a piece of cold metal pressing against the place behind his eyes, and the thought that... that something might be wrong... It took his breath away.

He pulled on the same clothes he'd wore for a few hours yesterday, wished he had clean ones but they'd have to do until he could ask her...

He had so many things to say to her, and there was that, that twisting feeling as his hand closed over the doorknob because he didn't know what the answers would be if he moved too far away from that wonderful contentness and looked in the darkness of her eyes, and...

She was there.

He'd barely stepped through the doorway and she was there, her eyes were there, and he knew the look in them, he'd seen it in the mirror so many times and he'd never found out how to fix it. Uncertainty, worry, like the weight of what the world turned out to be would never get better and she knew she couldn't hold it up forever, knew she wasn't good enough, could feel her shoulders cracking under the strain and needed someone to lift it up just for a second and... She'd been that person for him.

"I've been thinking." He could be that person for her, and--not 'Good morning'? Not 'hello', not 'thank you'? Really, Colin? "This is... it's kind of stupid, isn't it? We've been acting like we're characters in some kind of fairytale, and..." It sounded even to him like he was trying to talk himself out of loving her.

"I mean, I'm just a stranger, really, aren't I?" He tried to grin. "If I told anyone about this, about how little we know about eachother and how, how you still let me into your home," how I love you so much, "they'd think we're crazy." The grin grew a little more cocky, a little more sure of itself. "So let's not be strangers."

He stuck out a hand. "Hi. I'm Colin Arascain. I turned twenty a week or two ago. I'm American--was American, I guess, but I haven't been back there in a year, a year and a half, and probably never will again. I have a mother and father--or did, the last time I checked--but no brothers or sisters. My parents think I died in that plane crash early last year, and I... had good reasons for letting them think that at the time, though... I guess... they don't really apply anymore, but... I just don't know what I'd say to them now, you know?" He'd gotten pulled off course somehow. "It's like I'm a different person these days."

"I fell into this mess when I saw a--I didn't know what it was then, but they're called 'Hollows', right?--hunt and kill someone I'd never met before. I-I know that they're ghosts, and that there's another kind of ghost that's supposed to protect us from them, but... they didn't, did they?" He looked up at her. "You're the only one who's protected me from anything."

"U-uhm," stumbling after the silence, "I f-found out I had powers when that plane went down. I really was on it, but I was pulled out of an emergency door with no parachute before it got close to the ground, and... I thought I'd die, but... I just kept falling slower and slower until I hit the ground and since then..." He looked through her. "You know what it's like. More and more happens, and you do more and more and you... find yourself changing, you know? I thought I could go back for a while, that... this would fade if I didn't look at it, like a bad memory, but... Karakura..." He trailed off, not wanting to remember any part of it but her.

"That's when I learned I couldn't hide."

He didn't know what she'd say, after this. He didn't know anything, because he kept getting lost in her eyes.

"That's when I found you."

"And..." he looked down, unable to match that intensity right then. "I just wanted you to know who I am. And there's more, I'm sure there's more, there's probably enough about my life to fill pages and pages but... really... there are only two things that are important." He walked up to her, touching her for the first time since the sun had set, holding his hand above where she had plunged that thing into her arm.

"The first thing I want you to know is that... whatever's wrong with you, I'll help, I'll make it better even if it kills me, alright? I don't know why you hurt yourself last night, just that... if you can't make whatever it is go away on its own, between the two of us, we probably can. And the second thing..." He inched a little bit closer to her.

"The second thing..." He looked down, and bit his lip.

"I-is that I'd really like it if I could kiss you again..."

Words: 1500
GP: 30

Kireon

Bye Felicia~

4,761 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 25, 2014 5:08:15 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 25, 2014 5:08:15 GMT -5

Emotions were a complicated matter.

Doubly so when there were things like unexpected reunions between people who had seen too much, felt too much, and experienced too much were involved.
She tried to pretend she didn't feel a little thrill every time she caught him sneaking peeks at her.

Or the silly little way the curve upward of his lips every time he did so made her smile in return.

She was still a nervous bundle of energy when she finally ushered him to sleep, making up a spare futon when he'd refused to take up her bed, only to use Asgard to get him back into the softer mattress once she was sure he was deep in sleep. He would need to rest, continue to recover what he had lost the hard way until she could take care of it the easy way as Hi-to had taught her.

Well, easy for him, not necessarily for her. But those were the kind of details one left out.

Perhaps... in a rare display of assumption without probable cause, Sekai figured that Colin was American, and rare was it the American who preferred to sleep in the manner of an old, traditional style Japanese bed. Besides, he seemed to like the bed well enough the first time he'd been put into it, had slept as well as could be expected.

Maybe, now that he knew it wasn't just a surreal dream, he could sleep feeling safe and not hunted or terrified anymore.

For the first few hours, she kept an eye on him, watched with a concerned, if critical eye to make sure no unwelcome surprises would come from the odd metallic silver thing that he had been so concerned about, or that he didn't thrash about or wake unexpectedly. While he slept the sleep of the utterly exhausted and spent, she quietly healed the stiffness in the shoulder, continued to encourage the body to replenish what it had lost in its struggle for survival, and whispered things that fell on sleep deafened ears.

When she felt he wouldn't wake, she quietly slipped out the sliding door that opened into the courtyard and disappeared into the silent night.

Her tree was calling.

--

She was awake a little after dawn broke over the mountains.

In, and back out of the room he slept in, she gathered her things and showered in the main house the way she hadn't in... a while, she couldn't remember. It wasn't long before she'd gone to Karakura, actually, so... maybe about two months, almost three? Her brow furrowed over that thought as she nibbled on toast for breakfast, not quite up to eating anything more substantial yet.

She hadn't come home again.

Was she ever going to return?

Her stomach churned a little as the thought hit her.

No.

Sakuya couldn't return now. Not with Colin there. Not when there was... I should have known this was going to get complicated. She almost groaned, tossing the piece of toast back to the plate with a sigh. The piece in her mouth was too dry, sticking like peanut butter and wouldn't wash down past the lump in her throat even when she tried gulping down milk along to ease the process.

What was she supposed to tell him?

'I'm sorry that I will suddenly disappear at times, especially at night. You see, my wife, who is registered as my elder sister in the Fujimura registry because that was the only way we could officiate my joining her family from my own since this country does not recognize two women being able to married in the eyes of the law, died six years ago, almost seven now, and instead of passing on to the afterlife as I had whole-heartedly believed, was still around and managed to become a Hollow during some point in time and I never knew about it until I got back from my time in Las Noches and caught her here in the shrine. I'm not married anymore, technically, so that is... not truly the issue, but you should know that I was married if that matters to you and-' She shut her rampaging thoughts up with a gentle thump of her forehead against the table.

Yep. That was going to go over really well. About as well as if she'd have told Takua and Hi-to she'd let someone she'd known for all of ten minutes in the middle of a disaster into her room, had given him food, clothing, let him sleep in her bed naked because her guardian was a complete asshole and had ignored the yukata she'd left.

...

Takua. And Hi-to.

...

Shit.

Even more complications there. ;Oh, and by the way, it's okay if this one Arrancar comes around. He's blind but can tailor clothing better than anyone I've ever known in my entire life. You'll recognize him because he dresses in American clothing, the jeans and t-shirts and stuff, and has a visor over his eyes to hide them from everyone and it's white in color. He's a friend and won't hurt you unless you give him reason to or try and wake him up from a nightmare, but I'm warning you right now that his sense of humor is absolutely awful, trust me, he was one of the ones who trained me to make me not as... like I was. But, really, he's a good person even though he has to do some bad things sometimes. Nope, that wasn't gonna be good either. Making friends with the people who caused all that... yeah, she didn't see it going over very well.

Takua wouldn't likely be very fond of her doing... this, whatever it was.

Or he'd tease her relentlessly in his own way. One or the other.

...both, yeah, definitely both.

But, Hi-to was an entirely different story. She could practically picture his mouth twisting in that displeased manner he always had when something vexed him, yet his profession and training kept him from actually saying anything about it for the moment.

He was gonna be the real problem in the whole thing. Logic and reason were his tools and this... whole thing was anything but that, because emotion wasn't reasonable or logical, it just was and she'd have one hell of a time trying to explain to him that it just wasn-

Asgard rumbled a warning beneath her feet, ever the watchful presence wherever she happened to be, and settled at the touch of her. Her... guest? friend? more than friend? was awake, it was time to go poke her head in before he panicked, thought that she really had been a dream.

Not that she could blame him, it was all still pretty chaotic and hard to comprehend.

Regardless of how it would turn out, she owed him an explanation.

Or six, really, if they were going to be fair.

...

She hoped he would still be there by the end of it.

Everything was as she'd sort of left it, other than the telltale signs of life in there, and Sekai studied her reflection in the mirror with a frown. Her clothing was proper, again, and she'd, for a lack of knowing what to put on that day, just gone with what was normal for an everyday thing and threw the uniform on. Complications or not, she did have her responsibilities, after all.

She wasn't going to mention the furious explosion of SMS messages between herself and her cousin early that morning. First the usual scolding about sleeping in trees, and then the impact of the message she'd left had really kicked in and the yelling had started.

Her hands had just finished adjusting the starched white ribbon that bound and held the length of snow colored hair away from her face when the doorknob to the bathroom clicked in warning. The rest of her hair fell in a smooth, still slightly damp and wavy stream down her back, past her hips, and just short of the middle of her thighs.

It contrasted well with the bright red of her hakama.

Sekai's arms automatically dropped from their position as she turned to face him. All but her fingertips covered by the long, flowing sleeves of the outer kimono as she held them in front of her, fingers pointed toward the ground. She gave him a smile first, tried to push aside the nerves and the doubts and the worries for a little while to give him a decent morning for the first time in how long. "Good morning, did you sleep well?"

Apparently, she wasn't the only one who'd been thinking too much, or not enough, or just the right amount or something. She didn't know what was what anymore. Not hard, not when your human life seemed like such a far away thing in comparison to being constantly in and out of two completely different but similar enough worlds that they just... seemed to overlap and blend until she couldn't sort them out.

She tried to laugh at the bit of humor, the sense he was trying to bring to a situation that didn't have much, if any, at all. A fairytale... certainly sounded about right.

It was too bad she knew how most of those fairy tales ended.

She wasn't the only one feeling like they stood on shaky ground, and that helped, just a little.

The brittleness in her smile strengthened at the grin, the cocky, sure notes starting creep into his voice. One hand left the place at her front and pressed against her mouth, tried to stifle the muffled bit of what was probably a giggle in response.

Gods; was she back in high school or what?

The hand offered threw her at first, but she managed to respond in a manner that wouldn't embarrass them both later on and accepted it. (She half expected him to trick her and use the opportunity to pull her closer, to close the distance between them like he'd done before.)

...

She owed herself ten bucks; she knew he'd be an American and- wait.

What.

...

What.

He was... he'd just turned...

...

Ooh dear.

There was an expression between surprised and mortified that lit across her face like lightning. I'm s-seven, SEVEN years older than he is. I-I'm, I'm older than... oh no. Ooh noo. Sakuya, that wretched bitch, had been the worst influence on her, and now Sekai was forced to face it; she was a cradle-robber now.

Well, that was going to be an, um, interesting response once it was her turn for introduction time.

He'd made enemies, is what he wasn't saying. Enemies like those she couldn't help but think of one very, very specific individual. Could almost see the green of his hair and hear the rustle of the pocket watch's chain against his clothing.

Old habits died hard, and she scanned the ground and surroundings with a tiny, hardly noticable little pulse of her own energy sent outwards.

All clear.

No Nazomi.

Her eyes told so many tales, and showed every little nuance of emotion or response in what he was saying to her regarding his life- the abridged version, anyway. She would almost certainly be telling him he would have to contact them, somehow, even if he had to lie and say it was because his identification and passport information had been stolen, lost, or destroyed and he'd been in the hospital for gods only knew how long. His mother needed to know he was safe, his family was owed that much respect even if he had to keep away from them to keep said family safe from harm.

She could understand that- and that didn't bode well for her own tale she had to tell.

Her nod to confirm that yes, the white masked ones were Hollow- there would be time to educate him further on matters, the differences and the like, later- and continued to just.. listen. Absorbing the information given, looking beneath the words to get more from the body language, the way he spoke and the tone.

It was the reference to the Shinigami's failure to come to their aid that hit her hard. There was everything in her face then; shame, guilt, remorse, disappointment, and an unhealthy kind of acceptance that likely felt like a knife through the stomach from old expectations being violently torn asunder by someone.

Or several someones, at that.

Worst yet was the sheer, raw power of the silent apology that words couldn't even begin to cover.

Like she was the one personally responsible for the reason why the Shinigami didn't come.

For Karakura's destruction and the Arrancar invasion.

She hadn't done a good enough job protecting him if he'd been somewhere with a bullet in his shoulder.

...

Oh, she hadn't let go of his hand after the handshake.

Oops.

But, it was okay, because he stumbled a bit, and she squeezed in reassurance, encouraging him to go at his own pace because it was no good rushing something when it was hard to talk about. Especially when there was no one else to tell about it when they said you had a breakdown, that you were so stressed you snapped and imagined things and to go take some time and learn how to be at peace or whatever again.

Yes, her eyes told him. She did know.

She knew too well what happened when you tried to ignore it and hoped and hoped and hoped that not using it would make it go away or fade.

She knew how much of a painful lie that was, and what that lie had cost her.

Had cost hundreds of thousands of lives, in fact.

He could hide, like she was trying to. It was possible, she could figure out how to help him, that way he could blend in a little better and not have to be looking over his shoulder so much.

It was why she read so... damaged, low, like she had little power- enough to be spiritually aware without being powerful enough to do anything.

A finer deception than any she could have pulled off even with a deck of cards at her disposal.

Sekai really didn't mean for her cheeks to heat up or turn the kind of pink that was "cute" instead of horrendously embarrassing to see at the way his eyes- still so blue, she hadn't imagined it at all from last night- could just stay on her own like that and make any words in her head go quiet or fumbling in nervous, bird-like flutterings that made no sense whatsoever.

Her breath came back a little when he dropped his gaze.

At least, her breath had been back right up until his body had shifted and he'd moved. She too, had glanced down, looking at the floor beneath her feet until his were there and she looked up, surprised and a little what she didn't know the word for that suddenly he was there and not where he had been standing a few moments ago.

The warmth of his hand was there again, still too there and other words she couldn't find the definition or proper one to use even through the white silk covering her. Modest, definitely so, and yet she felt so... vulnerable, open, that she might as well have had a hologram in place of anything at all.

...yes, she'd checked and made sure her clothing had been real and not fabricated illusion.

She wasn't paranoid, okay, it made sense to check after last night.

And then her thoughts were wiped away completely, neatly destroyed as he dropped the bombshells one after another after another on her. He'd know too, by the way that the 'whatever's wrong with you' caused a completely stricken, wounded look that held a touch of panic, and much than a hint of fear and desperation and hope that it physically ached within her to even feel.

There was so much wrong.

So much, and she couldn't even know where to begin.

But then he moved closer, just a little, still closing that distance there between them and that was going to be trouble and they both probably knew that. They were certainly both old enough to know and know that it shouldn't because they were adults- especially her- and thus should probably not-

Her eyes stayed there, helplessly drawn to his face, watching him, watching as his lower lip drew itself into his mouth and teeth bit down, trying to decide if he was going to say it or or not.

Her face went from pink to a scarlet that matched her hakama in half a second, if that.

Oh.

So, that was the second thing.

Um.

Well the.

If he didn't look u- too late, shit.

Her mouth ran dry.

Blue.

His hand against her arm, lingering sense of touch and weight against silk.

The proximity of him.

The finite space between them.

Trailed off words, hopeful but bashful and like it was bad of him to ask but he couldn't help it because last night was there and it had been something there they hadn't expected or could have predicted would happen.

She really, really should distract herself, tell him about herself first so they could continue this whole not being strangers thing. She could do that, she had to be the one to say something, because he wouldn't or would and it might turn out like the whole stupid reason why things had kind of gotten out of control in the first place- she completely blamed being around Arrancar (Takua) and Shinigami (Hi-to- ohgodhewasgoingtokillherwhenhefoundout); neither of which made much of a thing about wounding one another or themselves to prove a point beyond doubt-

No, really, she should...

Sekai could do this.

She could.

The tip of her tongue poked out to moisten her lips. Preparing herself, she was good, she had this all ready and figured out and was responsible and could be the adult here.

She opened her mouth.

"O-okay."

Goddamn it, Sekai.

--

Word Count: 3025
GP Earned: 60

Colin Arascain

0 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 25, 2014 6:46:44 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 25, 2014 6:46:44 GMT -5

He almost did.

Even the memory of her lips almost hurt. It was so intense in his mind that it wasn't pleasure anymore and just one brush against them, just the feeling of her warmth against his skin would make him lose himself. She could breathe, all she had to do was breathe and he could feel it on his face, would feel it like something growing--something terrifying and perfect--inside his heart.

She said yes. She said yes she said yes she said--and... it was too good to be true. Because she... she was...

The words weren't quite connecting. There was something... he wasn't seeing, and... it was growing in his mind like a cancer over a voice that wouldn't stop screaming in panic that he shouldn't question anything and this was finally happiness and there was nothing wrong, as if by ignoring the signs he knew he saw he could pretend, and reality would never catch on, would never take away his happiness.

Nonsense, of course.

Because she didn't look at him when she gave what sounded like permission. She stuttered when she said it, tripped over her words and all of that beautiful broken strength had gone and she wasn't shining anymore and w-wouldn't look at him, and it was like...

It was like she didn't really mean it, it was like...

...she was scared, and...

...she said he was stronger before, like she was weak, and...

...she was scared of him.

His breath hitched in his throat and he stepped back, and then again, and again, and he didn't know when his hands had come between them in that universal symbol for stop, no, this isn't right and one more step and the back of his foot hit something hard and the pain made him look down and hiss and when he looked back it up what was in her eyes was confusion and pain and was...

...a little more alright again, and she...

...she couldn't be afraid of him.

"You need to know t-that--" His voice shook and cracked and he was biting his tongue and "--that I wouldn't ever ever ever ever hurt you, okay? I-if..." He was staring at her through a shimmer in the air, through glass, and he didn't understand. "If you don't want this, if you're saying this just because I'm strong and you're a-a-afraid because I've fallen into your lap and barged into your house and I'm stronger than you, then just don't, because--" It was only when he felt the drops trail down his cheeks and fall that he knew they were tears.

"I wouldn't, I just..." He looked down, his fists tense and his lips shaking. "I wouldn't."

He looked up at her and she overwhelmed him.

"I think I love you, do you know that?" Just gazing, wondrous, into her too-wide eyes. "I mean that's what this feeling has to be because--I mean, I don't know for sure but--" He shook his head and laughed, bringing up the red fabric of the hoodie's sleeve to dry his tears. "I-it's just the best I've ever felt is when I'm with you."

"So you have to know, I wouldn't do anything that you don't want."

"You have to know that if you told me to leave right now and stay away from you forever, I'd--"

It hurt to think about. He almost couldn't breathe.

"--I'd do it, so--"

Shit, he was crying again.

"I-it's just--"

No, those weren't words, those were barely noises, his voice was barely making it out and he needed to breathe and he needed to stop and he needed to back up several steps and make the panic go away because--

"I'm not used to this."

No, no excuses, because it wasn't okay if for even a second she--

"This... it's what having power means, isn't it? You hurt others with it even if you don't want to, like you're always h-holding a knife or a loaded gun and s-sometimes it's..." He tried, he tried, he tried to relax, "it's just the way they look at you, and I just keep stumbling into more and more and more, and it's like I have all these sharp edges, and--"

Again, finally, he looked at her.

"I keep forgetting I'm not human anymore."

Words: 716

GP: 14 (44)

Kireon

Bye Felicia~

4,761 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 27, 2014 1:59:54 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 27, 2014 1:59:54 GMT -5

He was there; and she was holding her breath in anticipation.

She waited, lost in those eyes of his, of the magnetism she couldn't explain away, the pull and draw of a gravity all his own. Just for a few stolen moments, like she had the night before, she could stop thinking, stop having to always worry so constantly about anything and everything that could possibly go wrong. She could have him silence the voices always there, whispering in a voice that was her own and didn't belong to her in the slightest.

She could just be a human named Sekai who was caught up in the moment like anyone else would.

But, he pulled away, panic thick within his body language and energy. His hands came up between them, warded her off, feet distanced them and drew the void between. The back of his foot connected sharply with something that made a dull thud to break the silence, brittle and sad.

She tried not to let him see how deeply she felt the sting of rejection. That the signals had made her think one thing, but another, the opposite, had happened and it hurt and confused and just-

Did he know?

Had he figured it out already?

...had it all just... been a set up, to see just how far she would let things go and he couldn't do it anymore?

Was she not good enough, broken as she was?

Her fingers uncurled a little, hand moved forward two inches as if she'd wanted to restrain him, prevent him from his hasty retreat. They folded back, tips against her palm, and returned to her chest. She could feel the pendant beneath the thick polyester-silk and cotton. Ever constant, ever present. Assured her of all being well, and it would eat what she tried to dish out without control.

Teeth sank into her lower lip, dragged into her mouth in an attempt to have something physical to hurt, to feel so that she didn't have to concentrate on anything else. Hard enough to hurt, not enough, not quite, to draw blood. It needed to hurt more, to drive everything else away because she'd managed to mess it up all over again just like she had last night.

And she hadn't even... done anything this time.

Just... flustered, shaken, and a little taken aback, but what girl wouldn't be by such blue eyes and that vulnerable-yet-cocksure confidence that wavered and stabilized like a summer breeze?

But her head jerked up, her body followed shortly, as if he'd shot her with his words. Shock, surprise on her face as she shook her head quickly, vehemently denying without words the grounds he feared. That she- he thought that, after all this time, after-

He thought she was afraid of him?

Too wide brown eyes that darkened with the pain of realization, of understanding what and why things had gone wrong without the knowledge of how to fix it immediately. To undo the damage that had been done.

His tears hurt even more than the ones she remembered him shedding in Karakura.

She didn't think anything could have hurt that much again.

She didn't like the way it felt.

Didn't like the way it looked.

She liked that slightly nervous but devil-may-care-'cause-I-think-I-got-this smile instead. Much better. It was so much better on him than this pain and uncertainty and this stupid fear they both couldn't get rid of because of everything happening too much, too suddenly all the time.

Please, don't--! The words didn't make it out of her mouth, the tears fell from her eyes, matching his own. She couldn't stop, couldn't keep the pain and the fear of leaving and the brittle, brittle hope that still flickered and wavered like a flame against a mighty typhoon.

She heard her own words coming back from across time and space. The weeping that followed there on the blood soaked sands of Hueco Mundo amid a maelstrom's aftermath of death and destruction. She had screamed, there in that endless night. Had screamed and screamed and screamed until her throat ran raw and copper was all she could taste and she had no voice left. She had healed it, because she could, because Takua had told her to or that he would for her. And the process had started all over again until she had finished, curled into a fetal position there among the dead corpses and the towering, silent form of Asgard and Takua's pained, sympathetic body.

Through the wash of tears, she saw herself in that moment there in his blue eyes.

She didn't feel herself move.

But she did.

White fluttered, red rustled, and strands of moonlight trailed behind her like the tail of a comet. It was the speed that Takua and Hi-to had taught her to use and her arms were around him all over again. She was clinging to his body, holding him like she was afraid he would disappear if she didn't.

"You are human. Don't you say that, don't you ever believe or say you're not because you are, okay? You are because I feel and see it and know you are human." She almost thumped him for it, thought seriously of doing so, her fist- small in comparison to his own- making an impact against his chest or arm or uninjured shoulder (because that one was sore still and she was upset, but not cruel)- and held on tighter still instead.

How could she explain it to him?

They were human, but they were more too.

They would live twice the lifespan, minimum as a normal mortal because of everything they were and would become in the future. That this wasn't it, this wasn't nearly the peak and it was so scary and she was sorry that it was happening but that he wouldn't have to endure it alone and that was something, right?

They could fight the monsters in their heads together, after all. Remind one another that they were still human, still lived, breathed, and were mortal and not something on the scale of Hollow breeds and Shinigami even if they were strong like them.

They weren't them.

They were only human.

Just that.

Just human.

Just Colin.

Just Sekai.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Her breath hitched at the same time she tried to speak, falling silent again before she mustered the words and send them forth. "You aren't what I am afraid of- never have been. I can't... I can't be afraid of you, s-so please don't think, don't believe that, okay? It's not you or your power or anything about you." Because it wasn't and it wasn't just one girl trying to comfort him, it was the truth and everything that it embodied.

She swallowed hard, fingers locked tighter in red fabric of the borrowed hoodie. "I don't... no, wait. No. No; don't go. I don't want you to go," A risk, but one without a choice to take. Her eyes, long white lashes glittered with the constellation of tears still shimmering, falling from those big, soft brown pools, looked into the blue of his and felt herself falling deeper into the night sky.

Her expression crumpled, lower lip trembled at the efforts of keeping it all inside, all restrained and controlled because she needed to and because it would hurt him if she didn't. It was what she was taught, she did not make a scene, not more than the one she'd made already. "Power is- that's what I'm afraid of; mine, not yours. I lost it, you know, back there. I lost it because someone I met was getting eaten, they were eating him little by little and I couldn't- I screamed, I screamed and he happened and crushed it with one hand- one hand and held that Gillian there while I cut him free and had to heal him."

The lump in her throat hurt. "And then I lost it again, and it was worse. I was in the tower and I almost brought it down, thousands of feet and hundreds of thousands of feet of pure, solid s-stone on top of everyone." A choked sound, small and agonized. "I almost killed my friend, and he was only trying to wake me up."

She didn't have the right to hold him like she was, to cling like he was the only life preserver in a turbulent sea. "Y-you d-don't feel s-s-sharp to m-me," Her words were broken up, hiccuped sobs. "a-and I'm s-stronger than I l-look, s-so don't be afr-afraid, I can t-take it, pr-promise."

But she held on for dear life all the same.

He understood, right?

"P-please don't go?"

A plea.

A prayer.

She didn't want to let him go.

--

Word Count: 1463
GP Earned: 29

Colin Arascain

0 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 27, 2014 5:32:40 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 27, 2014 5:32:40 GMT -5

He wished he could turn back time.

There were days when this was all he wanted; to see her again, to feel her warmth, to lose himself in the connection of their bodies and minds and not feel the coldness of being alone. He'd thought she'd understood, that they were almost so alike that he wouldn't have to speak. A look would be enough. A touch would be enough. They hadn't lived the same lives, but... he thought they was close enough, that they'd walked far enough down the same kinds of paths that...

She didn't understand.

She was holding him and, for the first time since he'd met her, he didn't crave that touch.

"I don't know how you can say that." His voice was contemplative, quiet. He didn't change his posture, or wrap his arms around her, or do anything to acknowledge her presence, her touch, but continue to speak.

"I remember being human." Kind of. Through a veil, becoming less and less real with every day of this. "There were no monsters then. I had a family. I went to school, you know? I had friends." So long ago, they were little more than blurs compared with the realness of now. "We had money, we ate out every now and then, went to movies. Got in trouble once in a while. Argued." He smiled wistfully, tried to push himself away from her so she could see it. "We fit into the world."

He carefully lifted her arms away, turned, walked back a step or two, talked while staring at the walls. "We had... predictable lives. We all knew where we were going. Danny, this guy who lived down the road from me, would end up running his dad's store. We all knew that. He hated it but he knew it too, even if he tried to escape it for a while." He ran a finger down the one of the wall's wooden panels, like it was something from another world. "We'd all pay taxes. We'd all grow up, get jobs, grow old, have families if we got lucky." He turned back to look at her, not knowing what she'd see in him just then. "We'd all die."

"We never really talked about it, but it was there, you know? Most of us would live in the same town. The world's so big and we were just little pieces of it, most of us would follow the same comfortable little tracks and grab happiness where we can. Some of us would get ground down or die early and tragic, and that's just how it is." He looked down, away, anywhere, because being pulled away from all of that still hurt, even though it was duller than it used to be. "How it was."

He didn't know if what he was saying made sense outside his head, but... she was the only one who'd ever understood any of it. If he couldn't... if he couldn't make her see this, where he was, then maybe he really was crazy. Maybe he was just broken in some fundamental way and he should be waking up and getting up and being normal like he had before, and dealing with these ghosts and explosions and deaths like they were anything else, like the weather. He could be the problem. He wasn't sure anymore, like he'd been once, so positive that the world had gone mad instead of him.

"It's just... that's life, you know? That's being human. There are... limits in the way you live, except for a few exceptional people and even then, the limits are just different. This, what we are, it's..." How had he gotten so close? Why were her eyes all he could see? "It's not that."

He was clutching her hand hard, too hard, and every part of him was shaking.

"We're not that."

A relaxing, a loosening, but his eyes didn't look away this time; just confused.

"I don't know... how can you be afraid of yourself?" He reached up, brushing her hair away from her face, cupping her cheek in his hand. He didn't let her look away, because he'd hid from the truth for so long and it hurt to accept it.

But he'd be there for her, so it wouldn't be so bad this time.

"Power is what we are, don't you understand?"

God, it hurt to say out loud.

"We'll never go back to taxes. We can crouch inside the old lines if we really, really try but we'll only hurt ourselves. If you're anything like me you've done... impossible, amazing things, and sometimes terrifying, but never... human." He took a step back, and wished his hair was still long enough to hide behind. He settled for looking at the floor again, so he couldn't see the hurt in her eyes.

"I'm sorry I overreacted. I'm very happy you're not afraid. But you're wrong. It's a nice thing to think and trust me, I've fucking tried to live like it's true, but you're wrong. If you don't use the power you have, other people will. If you're not crushed, you'll be a puppet. That's what I learned, after you left."

He looked at her in his mind, once more across a battlefield.

"We have to be powerful. We have to be strong. We can't hide."

He looked at her with a sad smile, just across a room.

"I'm sorry, I thought you knew."

Words: 910

GP: 18 (62)

Kireon

Bye Felicia~

4,761 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 27, 2014 6:45:46 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 27, 2014 6:45:46 GMT -5

He didn't understand.

It was in the way his body changed, the warmth of it growing colder, withdrawing from her all together in a way she knew all too well. She saw it, felt it, and sensed it in every way she could manage to glean. She didn't know what hurt more, forcing herself to put distance between them, or the fact that he was so quiet, so convinced that they had shed what humanity they had in exchange for this thing called power.

She let him go.

Her eyes stayed on the floor beneath her, weaving the patterns of the soft, neutral hues of the tatami mat with small movements in between slow blinks that came every so often. A year, just about, or so he'd said. About the same time, they'd come into their abilities at about the same time. He from a plane crash, she from... something worse, and those memories were still too fresh, still too close even nearing a year and a half later.

There hadn't been time to adjust, to have it really sink in, to be able to find the will and strength within herself to accept that it was something that had irreparably changed her for good or for ill. That there was no going back, and that whatever they would become, it would be come further and further away from the mundane reality they had known as humanity, little pieces, as he'd said, that had fit into the scheme of things. They were still pieces, but to a much, much larger picture, one that their small, blue, white, and green and brown planet with its pretty things and ugly things and everything that fit into its little spectrum was barely a pixel comparatively.

He knew so little. So, so very little, and it frightened her too. To see him so unknowing, because she knew, she knew what it meant to not know and the price it would take out of you in the very end.

She had the blood of hundreds of thousands on her hands, after all.

Suffering darkened her eyes, staring suddenly into his own because he was too close, too close and his hand hurt, grasping hers to the breaking point, bones creaking and groaning, shifting beneath his grip.

It was worse than a wince that came when he spoke again, saying they weren't 'that'. The confusion within them saying so much that his words couldn't. Her eyes squeezed shut, head turning just enough that the tendrils of hair too short to be swept back into the queue at her nape fell in a soft, snowy curtain to shield her expression.

Of course he would be confused. Hadn't he said he'd been on the run for the last year?

No one taught him what... was supposed to be done in the world. What was supposed to be right and wrong because the rules of the 'game' of life changed so drastically when you threw in two new races who had rules of their own and most of them directly contradicted or flat out broke most of their world's own.

She wished, she wished so much that the hand against her cheek could be comforting, that the stinging in her eyes didn't translate to the tears of grief- for them both, not just for herself anymore- that slipped down her cheek to collect and slide down his palm.

He left, again, the distance between them so little, but so much all at the same time.

"We can't be Power," her voice wavered, finally able to come out past what strangled her with hands like Nazomi's had been, her words a trembling, fragile thing in the stillness. "that's... what he was, what T-tova is." She kept her eyes closed, because she couldn't look, wouldn't dare to open her eyes because they would tell him everything if she did.

He would be able to see the nightmares that kept her running scared in her dreams just before the blood rose around her feet and froze her in place, just before that mocking laughter started and that presence came bearing down and turned into a dark, formless mass with a man's voice and Nazomi's hands around her throat. Occasionally, he wore the faces of her friends and loved ones, twisted and sneering at her in a malicious, mocking manner.

Sometimes, that face was her own.

They always changed, shifted, just before one hand released her long enough to stab through her chest and sever her soul from her body. She watched herself bleed out, time and time again, taking an eternity to die in suffering, shivering, weeping, pleading and begging for the final step not to happen. He always laughed, again, as she died and she reformed within his hands again, fingers playing along the chain within her chest before carelessly snapping it with one last shriek from her.

The hunger was always there.

If she looked at him, if she told him, he might not believe her until he saw it himself and she couldn't... let that happen. She wanted him safe, protected for once, but she couldn't and it was [ii]tearing her apart[/i] because he'd die if she protected him.

Her arms wrapped around herself, trying to keep from flying apart the way everything felt like it was trying to. "We can't be Power, what we are, it isn't that, we're not even close. Colin, we're not even close and I have seen what Power looks like."

She did face him then, and the ghosts, the demons that haunted her were in plain sight. "There's no light, no light, no life; there is screaming and death everywhere. And he knows, and he is the cause of some of it. He surrounded himself with those on the cusp of Power, yet he outclasses them all." One hand crept up to her throat, fingers protectively resting against the column as if it could ward of the shadowed hands still pursuing her.

The thing that came out of her mouth was too chilling, too nightmarish to be called a giggle.

"It... the difference between us and them, it's like Heaven and Hell. A long, endless fall between the two and you're blind and can't see or hear or feel anything but them and can't tell if they're coming at you from above or below." It was the hushed tone of remembrance, of one who was reciting what had happened in a nearly toneless manner because it was the only way they could do it without screaming and breaking down from the sheer weight of what they knew.

It was staring into the void and knowing that it stared back.

And it was hungry, always hungry.

Her eyes darted toward the opened screen leading outside. Never closed, not once since his arrival or even before it had she kept that room completely shut up. She couldn't even have the bathroom completely closed up for fear of being there again. Needed to feel outside, to hear the sounds of life and feel it on the breeze and beneath her feet.

Her tree was out there, and she could feel it, and Asgard sleeping beneath it as well. Awaiting his time to be summoned forth the way they had agreed, or however that encounter had gone. The details still remained fuzzy, unclear.

When her gaze came back, it was too old, too full of emotions that wouldn't be right on someone three times her age, much less on her. "I... just, just know that I don't expect you to believe me, I wouldn't believe me if our positions were reversed and I don't blame you, okay? I-I'm used to it, not being believed or thought to be crazy or flat out lying because it's truly unbelievable, you know?" He did, didn't he?

Colin knew what that was like.

The looks people gave, the knowing, condescending, sympathetic and angry, exasperated looks. The medications and prescription slips stacking up. The bills from one therapist to another, the whispers behind the back.

The walk of shame that never ended between entering the building and exiting it, once again having to figure out if they were right and your mind was playing some sort of cruel joke because of an imbalance caused by genetics and stress, or if they were wrong, so wrong, and you were right.

But in knowing you were right, you wished you were wrong and that they were the ones who knew what they were talking about.

Instead of knowing nothing at all.

"You asked me how I could be afraid of myself," her words were the hollow sound of someone walking toward their own doom. "I know how Hollow are made, how Tova came to be, and what price Power comes at."

She swallowed hard. "If I'm not human anymore," Oh gods, it hurt, it hurt like nothing she had ever felt before just to even say the words.

"...what makes me, what makes us different than Tova Diablo?" Something shattered like glass somewhere inside of her.

She knew there wouldn't be pieces she could easily pick up after this. The wound was cut open, raw and bleeding, and her fears were toxic weeping all over again.

”How can we be strong, how can we be powerful when we don't even know what that is?”

--

Word Count: 1560
GP Earned: 31

Colin Arascain

0 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 27, 2014 7:21:43 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 27, 2014 7:21:43 GMT -5

He hated that he was causing her pain.

A part of him wanted to shout out to the world--so it would know, so she'd know--that he didn't do anything. He didn't make the world like this. He didn't pull her away from humanity, kicking and screaming. He didn't even pull away himself, it just... happened, no matter how much he tried to cling to what was familiar and old, the current of power and circumstance was too strong to avoid and in that prison cell he'd finally let that one tortured fingertip give way.

Now he was falling.

And he thought--he thought--that she was falling through the same darkness, that they could light eachother's way, but it felt with every aching moment like he was leaving her behind.

And it was cold, in the darkness.

But comforting, in a way.

Tova... it was what Amaya had called the worst of them, two-faced monster talking of her king, hating one day and worshipful, joyous, the moment he appeared. He remembered. He remembered feeling that mind like a weight on the world, like something too large to think, burning everything, sucking everything in.

She was right. That was power. That was what the both of them could be, if they wanted, if they tried. If they survived, that was what... was that where they were heading? Was that what was at the bottom, if he ever finally stopped?

Was there any other place to go?

"You remember when we met, don't you, Sekai?" He said her name because... maybe he just wanted to feel closer to her than he was. "I couldn't stop running. I didn't think I'd ever stop running until I found you. I didn't know there was anything in the world left standing. I thought that was... that was it, and..."

He looked at her again, and that was even worse, hurt even more than the taste of her name on his lips.

"What do you think I was running from?"

There'd been too many other things on his mind, other monsters, the scent of her hair, the pain of not being near her suddenly gone, those other monsters suddenly vanquished with newfound strength, and the worst of them... Tova...

He just didn't want to think at all. He could pretend for a little while more, couldn't he? They were human enough, weren't they? They could hold eachother a little longer and pretend the rest of the world wasn't so crazy, and maybe...

Maybe he wouldn't die unloved.

"I know what's out there. I lived it. I saw it. And that's why I know that I can't just sit here with my head in the sand. You understand, right? Haven't you been hurt by any of this?! Haven't things happened that you wished you could have stopped, that you would have stopped if only you were strong enough?" He didn't want to think this. He didn't want to say it out loud, but what the hell else was there?

This was the world.

"If," his voice caught, "if there's a price, I'll pay it. Because whatever shot I had at being human is gone. What matters is what happens next." God fucking damn those tears. "Whatever I am, whatever I become, it won't be that bad." He wiped them out of his eyes so he could see her again. "It won't be as bad as him."

"It takes a monster to beat a monster, and I won't be as bad as him."

Words: 583

GP: 11 (73)

Kireon

Bye Felicia~

4,761 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 27, 2014 8:55:14 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 27, 2014 8:55:14 GMT -5

He was cold.

She couldn't stop burning.

Her lips moved, a tiny, far away voice might have said that of course she remembered, how could she forget someone who mattered and was so important? She had been right, she had been right and in so many ways, she'd told him, hadn't she? That he was only just beginning, that his life, the good he could do for the world wasn't finished yet and he had to hold on.

What kind of monster was she, anyway? To tell him such things was undeniably cruel.

Her shoulders might have moved in some semblance of a shrug, an honest denial of knowledge from her lips.

Why did she sound so far away? Was she in a tunnel somewhere? Falling farther, farther away while the world kept going in and out of blurry and not... further down the rabbit hole, always, always further down, never stopping, never ending with her poor rabbit’s heart beating-beating-beating tiny, impotent fists against the jail of her rib cage.

There were no words, no answers for his question. The world was trying to melt away from her, and she was trying to bring it back into clarity with fingers that could hold nothing.

Slipping...

...so

far...

...awa-

The world came back in frightening, jagged jaws of color and sound all at once. Her eyes, glossed over, suddenly snapped back into focus at his words. The catch in his voice, the way he looked and felt at that moment as he declared himself a damned man. Sekai listened, horrified, as he threw away the visages of humanity and swore himself to become a monster to end another.

She could see the silver of the blade cut across his throat and behead him already.

It was in the way her hands fell, limp, useless to her sides. Her face, flushed with emotion suddenly drained to an unhealthy, corpse-like gray and she swayed as if the slightest breeze. Her knees gave out a few seconds later, dropped her uncaringly to the floor beneath her with an audible thump.

She never took her eyes off of his face.

It wouldn't be that bad, he said.

It wouldn't be as bad as him, as Tova.

He would become a monster, but not as bad as him.

She couldn't even breathe.

Who was he trying to convince? Himself?

Her?

He was going to go and join the others, the realization hit hard, fast, without mercy.

He was going to go and join them, join them in their games of power and things that human beings didn't want to know about and remained ignorant to unless they were in politics. But this was worse than any kind of politics they had on Earth, because these always ended in death and suffering and being gone forever, that was it, no reincarnation, no return to the cycle because you fucked up and you are removed.

Sakuya.

Nazomi.

Hi-to.

Takua.

Colin.

Sol.

Takua.

Hi-to.

Takua.

Sakuya.

She could see them leaving, watched them walk away with shoulders back and head held high and proud. Watched their respective power explode over them, wrapping lovingly, nightmarishly around them and drew the line between them and herself and left her with the line between the rest of humanity and what she was and she didn't even know anymore.

Her limbs, her soul felt the weight of the chains holding her to the floor and bent her head beneath them; a prisoner awaiting executioner. She was Bound, and she could not break the chains that held her there.

A distant voice, one she could not recognize, asked who she was in the far reaches of her mind, demanding, angry but despairing for something lost that they could not find. I'm...

"...the one you left behind." she mumbled, hands slowly closing into fists. She couldn't do anything, could she? He had made up his mind, would want to become a monster to--

She didn't want that.

But he did.

"Please, no," Her head lifted, finally, a terrible grief stricken expression. "not that way, not that way. Don't, that- that's why they never showed, the Shinigami. That's why we were left behind, because they're so concerned with Power they forget what they're supposed to be doing and it doesn't stop, it doesn't end, you get a taste of it and nothing else matters anymore because in that moment you're invincible and the world is yours to take."

She knew what that did to the soul, how it twisted, corrupted and fed upon itself until they were felled. It would only be a matter of time before it would happen again. "don't, don't go that way. I can't, I can't fucking watch another person I love lose to Power again!" Her fist slammed into the floor and it shouldn't have shaken, quaked the way it did. The pendant slipped free, the center stone causing the full thing to glow in a nauseating pulse as it greedily devoured the energy trying to explode free.

She didn't feel human.

That was part of the problem; she felt like them, like one of the sword wielders in all black. She didn't feel like herself but she did all at the same time and it was weird, conflicting, confusing.

Not again.

She wouldn't survive it again.

"I lost her," Sekai finally spoke, her anger and pain and rage and grief all wrapped up into three little words. "my first love, I lost her shortly after we were spiritually wed, we made a commitment, a vow. Rings and everything." Raw, unfiltered emotion hurt, it hurt. "It's been six years now. I was a year younger than you when she died. Six years, and I found out a month ago that she's one of them; she's a Hollow."

Her head lifted, barely enough to look at him. "My brother is trying to turn himself into a monster because he thought I was dead. My friend is learning to embrace what he is so he can have the power to do what he wants to justify his life after eight hundred years. I have watched the Fujimura family ripped apart by a Hollow, two of them dead, a third who I don't even know what her status is anymore, and I went through hell to try and save them." One hand reached up, practically tore away the fabric from her neck and shoulder, down her arm to the elbow, to expose a pink, twisted mess of scar tissue.

There was ugly defiance in her eyes. And the brown in them was changing in a way that wasn't comforting. Brown was being outed by silver threaded with yellow-green.

"This was a small portion of the price I had to pay to wake up." He wanted to know, fine, she would play show and tell.

And he would know.

The silver and yellow-green suddenly replaced itself with blue like his own.

"You want to know what the price for Power is? I will fucking show you; just say the word."

Ball was entirely in his court.

What was he going to do?

--

Word Count: 1187
GP Earned: 23

Colin Arascain

0 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 27, 2014 9:39:53 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 27, 2014 9:39:53 GMT -5

It was like there were two of him, sometimes.

There was the one that did what he wanted to do. It had the easy life. It smiled and it didn't think and it felt good because it never did things that hurt. It raced across the room and told her it was lying, it would help her, they would live there together and every day would be happy.

And it died.

That Colin died; he saw it in his mind's eye every day.

Because that was the world he lived in.

One wrong choice, one moment of weakness, and he was gone.

He was the one that lived, today. And every day. And sometimes they were the same, but not often enough. Not even close.

"I'll tell you what I want."

He sat down next to her and thought about touching her. It would be fake if he did, of course. A calculated gesture meaning nothing but that he wanted her to feel better. It would be cold, emotionless, because in times like these he couldn't afford to feel.

"I want this. I want you. More than you can know, I want it."

His words were cold, like he was reading words someone else had written.

"But how?"

The tiniest hole opened. Panic, like steam, escaped.

"How do I do anything with all of that out there?"

The mask slipped, for a sentence, for a breath.

"Please, if there is any other way, if there is anything--"

Only for a breath.

"There isn't, though."

A grin he hoped she'd understand, full of knowledge and regret.

"Do you know how lucky we are?"

Or maybe she wouldn't.

"Every minute, every second we're alive is because of luck, because we're helpless."

She bared herself to him, showing what her helplessness had wrought, and it made his grin more sickly but it didn't make it go away.

"Would that have happened, if you had power?"

It wasn't--wasn't working this time, the way it usually did. He could stay strong longer than this. He could lock his feelings away for longer but it wasn't working and--

"I just don't know how to live with it."

The feelings came rushing back and floored him.

"I just care about you so fucking much, and if I can't get enough power to hold this life the way it is and keep the monsters out..."

He looked up at her, eyes glistening.

"I can't live in fear anymore. I can't. So if this is a game I have to play, I'll win it. The price doesn't matter because there's nothing else--"

His voice became a shriek before he stopped to take a breath.

"If it's a choice between living every day afraid that I'll die, that you'll die before I do and I won't be able to stop it, that something else can force me or you into a life worse than death... I'll take the other choice."

A grin again.

"It doesn't matter what it is, don't you see?"

He closed his eyes, mumbled a phrase over and over again that sounded like Whatever it takes and opened them again. He saw the world differently now, in a way he hadn't since the prison. It almost hurt, like his mind was trying to pull itself apart, the strain of inexperience but he could take it.

He saw her words. He saw her breath. He saw the shape of her heartbeat.

And he took it.

"the word."

It came from anywhere and everywhere.

Did I say it clearly enough?

His lips didn't move at all.

Words: 603

GP: 12 (85)

Kireon

Bye Felicia~

4,761 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 27, 2014 11:17:50 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 27, 2014 11:17:50 GMT -5

Cold, cold comfort.

Worse than none at all.

He didn't understand. It didn't matter what they wanted, because there was always going to be someone with more Power. There was always going to be someone above them, higher, higher--

Someone they would never stand a chance to.

Just like they didn't stand a chance now.

She didn't know, couldn't he see that? She was just as lost, if not more so, than he himself was in this whole thing and she was so much older than he was. She didn't know if there was another way because she didn't even know what ways there were anymore.

Did he know they would live to be two hundred years old or more?

If he gave her the sign, the word she needed, she would show him how much worse it would have become if she'd had power. Karakura was a large scale disaster, it was something that sent ripples through the universe and would have long lasting effects for centuries to come. She saw the tears in his eyes and almost lost her resolve, wanted to just give way so he would just stop and make it like it was last night when they'd been happy.

It did matter, because he didn't know and that lack of knowing was going to get him taken from her so much sooner than she could bear.

Her voice bounced around the room.

She jerked, looking sharply around. An echo? Not possible, it didn't echo in those rooms, in this place, she'd made sure, just in case of another attack. She had to be sure she would catch them before they could catch-

She looked back at him.

He hadn't moved his lips in the least.

Why did he have to break her heart?

"I've never done this before," a frightened, angry admission as her eyes, still that odd half-blue half-brown. She unfurled her fingers from the death grip on her kimono sleeve and reached up to her neck, flicking the clasp open with a practiced ease and felt the silver chain slither with a metallic clink into her hand.

She shuddered, felt naked without it, and set the pendant with its glowing stone down. The glowing stopped the instant it left contact with her body.

Her eyes closed, energy teasing, wrapping around her body in shades of dark green shot with light, playful hues and spread out before her. She wanted it done like he had done to her in Hueco Mundo, in those blood stained sands.

Without the traumatic rape of his mind from her own mind and soul forcing their way in.

Dust motes in the air shimmered, drew themselves towards the viridian energy like moth to flame and converged, solidifying, forming a hazy rectangle of light tilted like a personal screen before his eyes.

Her eyes opened, reflected the color of her reiatsu.

She needed the contact.

"I'm sorry." She sounded like herself again for that moment, the same, sad girl who wished she could save the world from their encounter in Karakura.

She touched his hand, cold, shaking fingers to his and for an instant, before everything was about to go to hell.

He'd feel the apology, and the need for contact that wouldn't end in bruises for once.

The 'screen' turned blinding white, then green, and faded to life, flickering occasionally as if the reception were bad.

A man who held a passing resemblance to a demon they both knew appeared there. He was alone, for the moment, through a dark hall.

Feel the cold, damp. It was a cell. He knew what a cell was, didn't he? Knew that steady drip-dripping. Feel the pulse of adrenaline and dread and rage and weakness, illness, unwell, never well again. Underfed, mistreated, ready to kill or be killed, it was all or nothing now.

Beside him, Sekai made a sound that might have been a whimper, might have been a sob as the man before them made his break from Hell towards the bliss of a night time Heaven with fresh air and stars and life that didn't exist in the fecal stained pits he knew.

Fire. HOT. Blistering. Consuming. Hate. Agony. Burning. BURNING. Suffocating. AIR. COLD. SNAP. Blackness, nothing. Hate.

There was a sound like she was going to throw up, the hand not on his covering her mouth.

Tears were still rolling down her cheeks.

It was taking everything she had not to slide her fingers into his hand and hold on to him.

Unbelievable agony, voices howling, screaming, never ending. NEVER ENDING. Never silent, always screaming, wailing, laughing, LAUGHING ALWAYS. Maddening. Hunger. ALWAYS HUNGER. Teeth. Flesh. Claws. Eating. Never satisfied. Needing more, more, more, more, more, more, more, more, MORE-

Hands reached up on the screen and delicately peeled the mask away as if it were damp plaster, setting the chunks on the wooden altar in a desolate shrine abandoned somewhere unknown. Body convulsed, shifted and twisted with sickening, poisonous shades of light into a familiar form that rose from the floor.

A black suit, faded, but formal, adorned his body. The black hat he materialized dusted off and stuck appropriately atop a head of grass green hair.

Feline-like yellow green eyes peered out, and the razor wire smile spread across the merry madman's face.

Victorious. Shaking. Cold. So cold. Euphoria. GOD-LIKE. SUPERIOR. Bored. Restless. Agitated. Whispers. STILL. WHISPERING. STILL. HUNGRY.

Nazomi.

The picture wavered, filled with static, and Sekai cried out, her nails digging into his skin on accident. Her reiatsu flared, building and the light before them both rose and exploded even when she tried to call something to protect them both from the aftermath, of what she didn't know was going to happen.

She should have.

Everything had a price.

A fragment of that light that felt like how she used to in Karakura floated gently, landed on his jean clad leg and sank past the fabric, into his skin.

To his soul.

Nazomi was there on top of her, straddling her, a large, ugly knife completely pierced through the same shoulder she had shown him moments before. His hands wrapped around her throat, squeezing until she stopped responding, and waited for her to come back, coughing, choking, and did it all over again.

He sat back against her thighs, measured distance with his thumb- and drove his fist time and time again up and down her body.

When he was done, he dug his nails into the swollen, bruised flesh of her stomach and torso in great furrows that wept and clogged with white sand turned scarlet.

He heard the "Why?" escape from hissed teeth.

He saw the instant Nazomi's eyes changed from yellow-green to the same brown as Sekai's own- her sclera red from lid to lid from the vessels popping.

Nazomi yanked the knife out of her shoulder, threw his jacket over her and dropped her into the human world again.

The whirl of hospital lights and white coats and screams and blood and PAIN and stars exploding like fireworks in-

The light faded, and Sekai looked pale, sweat sheening against her forehead and face.

A piece of her, he would know on a deeper level, would be with him for all of time. It wasn't something she had any control over, and it was something she didn't understand.

But they had paid the price.

She didn't look at him, understanding he had seen more than she had wanted him to- her beaten body, naked and bloodied in Hueco Mundo and all the evidence and implications therein.

Now, though, now he understood to a fainter degree as to what she was afraid of.

Now, Colin too, experienced what it was like to die and transform into a Hollow.

He too, knew what it was that would send her running outside in the dead of night, and into the branches of a tree to sleep away from the dark rooms with too many places for 'demons' to come out.

She remained silent.

The threshold was there, ready to be crossed. He knew nothing, but had the power, the untapped potential within him to become something that could stand toe to toe with the monsters of three worlds and, possibly, come out victorious. She knew... too much, far too much, and knowledge was dangerous to hold and had her marked for death or worse as it was, and she had survived more than what she knew.

She had formal training.

He didn't.

Knowledge and training were what he lacked.

She could give him as much as she had learned, with what she knew and was good at. What she was lacking, however... well, she had an older brother who had taken on Nazomi, and won, despite everything she felt to the contrary, and she had Takua as well. Both of them had taught her everything she knew, aside from the rudimentary skills with her spear and bow.

A Shinigami and an Arrancar. Both of which might be more than happy to point out tips on how to defend themselves against the opposing races. Particularly if she all but begged them to in hopes it might make them feel a little better knowing she was putting things to good use and not going up against Hollow breeds or rogue Shinigami alone.

...hopefully.

They were kind of protective.

She'd have to emphasize the whole we do not set humans on fire thing a couple of times.

"I..." she faltered, unable to find the proper words to help her convince him otherwise. Her shoulders sagged, as if a heavy burden had been placed on them once more. A female Atlas attempting to shoulder the planet. "There isn't... another way then, is there? I don't like it, but I do understand."

She didn't like that either.

It would be easier to be selfish if she didn't understand.

"I will help you then. You're not prepared, not by a long shot. I can tell you, teach you what I know and help you figure things out for yourself too, while you're here." A weaker smile, wane and full of troubled meaning. "I will be the one who teaches you how to be a monster."

For some, it would take a while to realize that she was offering to teach him because she saw herself as a monster. Disturbing, her voice held no self-deprecation, no self-pitying tone. Nothing but simple, if the kind of quiet acceptance that broke a heart over time, admission as to what she saw herself as.

She believed every single word.

--

Word Count: 1764
GP Earned: 35

Colin Arascain

0 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 27, 2014 12:33:15 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 27, 2014 12:33:15 GMT -5

There was precious little time to regret before his senses betrayed him, cold touch turning into so much worse and it took him back, it took him back and he'd gotten out, no he'd gotten out--

...and in the real words the echoes, the tiny house sounds, susurrated and rose...

--he'd killed them and he'd betrayed them and he'd lied to them and they were dead and this couldn't be a dream because he'd found her and she fucking couldn't be a dream because the world was not that cruel--

...his fingertips drummed on his leg once and the sound continued, rising, thriving...

--and all at once it changed. There was vision. It hadn't gone dark--Was that all in his mind?--There was a vision on the screen and it was familiar and new unfamiliar sensations crawled through his mind though he knew it in a sense, in symmetrical difference because his escape was cold, it was meticulous and planned and this was raging and burning and fierce and it was foreign and somehow that made it just a little easier to take.

It wasn't happening again, this was someone else. Something else.

It was okay.

He wasn't trapped again.

Once he convinced himself of that, he crawled to the place he went in his mind when things were too real, when the boy inside just couldn't pretend to be a man and needed to hide, to wait until the worst of it was over and the part of him that felt those strange sensations could take the pain, until it resurfaced in nightmares. He knew, for the next five nights, he'd wake up screaming.

That was the price he paid.

Or...

This was it?

This man, this thing, his first and only victory was what she feared?

He... god, it wasn't funny, it shouldn't be funny, there wasn't room inside his head right now for laughter and he knew he knew that it would kill her somehow if he did, but a smile treacherously climbed its way across his face anyway as he superimposed the man from his memory--with the hole in his chest, malicious game cut short--on top of this supposed horror-show.

This was how they saw him, he thought. This was why Aya laughed when he'd tried to kill her, because she knew he didn't have a chance. He was only a man playing at monstrosity.

And then, a drop of light.

And--andandand--something was wrong because

something was wrong and

he was somewhere else and

he was smaller, and

he couldn't move and there was something wrong with his voice because he couldn't speak and he knew it wasn't real and he told himself it wasn't real and

something

was reaching inside of him

and tearing, and pulling, and burrowing and ripping parts of him out

that weren't him because it wasn't wasn't wasn't real

AND HE TRIED

HE TRIED TO IMAGINE THE HOLE AND HOW PITIFUL THIS MONSTER WAS BUT IT DIDN'T WORK

No escape, no fighting back, no hope, just pain, just violation and helplessness and it stopped after a while of course it stopped nothing that intense can last forever and it didn't matter why just that it happened and he didn't stop it, she'd lived through this and he didn't stop it and THIS WAS WHAT HE HAD TO STOP!

In his world, there'd be no monsters.

There'd be no hurting her. There'd be nothing that could hurt her, or him, or anyone.

They'd be happy.

That's all he really cared about, that they'd be happy.

And he knew, now, and when he could think again he could move again and he hugged her and he clung to her like nothing else in life and a constant stream of I'm sorry I didn't kill him when I could I'm sorry I wasn't there I'm sorry he hurt you I'm sorry I hurt you I'm sorry I'm sorry sorry sorry...

The words trickled to a halt.

The images went away, but they'd never leave, never really leave the space behind his eyes, and he felt different. Softer, stronger, more tired all at once, and he knew that she'd suffered in ways that were worse and better, that she'd been forged in different flames but still forged and wished he could show her, god he wished he could show her--

--Nights and nights in a prison cell, with no one coming--

--A different cell, no light, no sound, drip drip dripping till madness came--

--Betraying a friend because she told him to live--

--Flying, falling, falling--

--The heat, so much heat, and--

--A different hospital room, different white lights--

He only had words to tell her he understood, even if they came from nowhere, spun from nothing. He couldn't reach inside her mind, her soul, the way she'd done to him. He didn't know how, so she'd never really know, the way she'd made him know, that she wasn't alone.

One day, he'd be strong enough.

For now, he only had words.

He pushed himself from her, rocked back on his feet. He hurt, still hurt, in echoed pain, and he pushed down the impulse to scream, to strip and run his hands over his body to be sure there were no new wounds, no hands, no holes, because she needed to know. He needed to speak.

"That man." There was nothing of the man there now, just the boy, the lost and frightened boy tossed alone into a world of monsters. "I've m-met him before, you know?" He saw her eyes go wide, tried to raise a hand but it hurt-- "N-no, not like that! He was, he was t-trying to hurt someone else I cared about... once..." slowing, with memories of the silver-haired boy; the faintest hint of redness rising to his cheeks. "And I stopped him," his voice clear again, "really, I did." Deep breath, deep breath, steady that voice. So she believes, even if you don't right now. Every word calm, enunciated, clear. "I. Ripped. A hole. Through him."

"I left him bleeding. I s-sent him running, and--" The pictures in his mind rose up and no, god, they weren't just pictures, they were everything, he could hear and feel and taste and-- "You shouldn't be afraid." Liar.

He looked down, unable to resist running his hand over his borrowed cotton shirt, making sure there were no holes, no blood.

"I don't want to be strong, I want to be safe, but..."

Still no hands reaching inside and tugging--

"T-they're the same thing, aren't they? It's that or be weak, and--"

He didn't have to tell her.

"So I don't know, I just, I don't know what you wan--"

An all-too-human sound, a sound he didn't create. His stomach growled. He was hungry, that was all.

"I don't want to be a monster."

Nothing mystical, nothing magical, just a body's need for food.

"I..." He breathed out as heavily as he could, drew in more air again, rubbed his forehead. "I have to, I think."

"But I don't want to."

"Not yet."

He tried to smile, to get to his feet, extended a hand to help her do the same.

"I'm hungry, I want to eat. Can we just eat? I know what I said, but... Not today, okay? N-not yet." He pulled the red hood over his head and it didn't shield enough of him from the world. "I'm not ready. Next week, maybe. Tomorrow. I want to be human f-for a little while longer, okay? I want to spend a day or two with you before... it starts."

He looked up at her with pleading eyes.

"Can I have that?"

"I don't want to be a monster yet."

Words: 1288

GP: 25 (110)

Kireon

Bye Felicia~

4,761 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 28, 2014 0:39:47 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 28, 2014 0:39:47 GMT -5

His reaction was so much worse than she could have imagined.

The shock wore off and he was on her in an instant, arms wrapped around, clinging, and apologies of every form pouring out in a feverish chant. It hurt. Badly. Hearing all of it come out, because it was like the mantras she used to love so much, thinking they were mystical and could, and would, drive away the demons that existed in the minds and hearts and souls of others.

They never did work against Hollow breeds, at least, not the ones she had ever learned how to make as a mere mortal girl.

She let him go, didn't force him to stay at her side.

It was cold, so cold.

That was wrong. She'd let her fear turn into anger, and let it get the best of her. She'd done something unforgivable, and now she couldn't take it back. Couldn't erase what he'd seen, and felt, couldn't remove it or make it go away.

She never should have done it.

Hearing his voice still hurt, because now he understood why she had been the way she was, back there in Karakura Town. He knew now the scale, the magnitude, the risks with no reward there that she had tried to reach with her own two hands. He knew now, how she felt and what was always at the front of her mind when it came to things like Power and what monsters were born from.

Themselves.

Human beings just like them.

It was the biggest lesson she could give him, the most important that she felt needed to be imparted, really driven home and understood if he thought he could just say-

What.

What?

Not another. Please not another one, not another her. Not another Aisha or anyone else he'd managed to get his hands on to try and- Oh God, she was just as much a monster as Nazomi and she hadn't even really known on more than just a subconscious.

She wasn't proud that he ripped a hole through him and drove him off. Seemed relieved that the man had managed to avoid death entirely- and that was another strange thing. She didn't have contempt, anger- much of it- towards the one who'd attacked her. Fear. Anxiety. Distress, yes. Much of that, because no one who'd had those kinds of injuries inflicted could remember them and not. "Nazomi-san, his name, that is." Sekai congratulated herself on saying his name without an inflection rising up and down with the syllables of it. "...I think he's... not exactly afraid of me, but I make him... something, i don't know. He ran away the second time we met. Right before I met you."

A faltering pause. A shake of her head. "Fear isn't... not of him. Not anymore. What's left is just..." Another shake of her head. She couldn't put it into words, not right now. Maybe not ever.

She had done the same as he had, so convinced that she could feel that chain against his midsection, the hole that threatened to grow, open wide and swallow what of her existence was left. She took the time to readjust the kimono back into proper position back over her shoulder. No longer exposing scarred flesh, no longer offering a hint at what was lying beneath it. She did it in a short enough time that one might have been suspicious as to just how often she had to deal with half-ripped away/pulled down kimono in her life time.

Sekai wasn't going to answer that question without the convincing ply of multiple bottles of strong liquor in her system.

Leave it to a stomach to remind them that, even if they didn't feel human, that their power tried to convince them otherwise, they were still within a very human shell that would rule them more than anything else ever could.

The way he looked so young sent a jagged knife through her chest. He was just a kid in some ways, even if he had reached his age of majority here in Japan and would be recognized as an adult in the eyes of her homeland. "We can stop here for today. When, and only when you're ready, will we go forward." She let him help her up, gave his hand a half-apologetic, half comforting squeeze.

She brushed invisible dust particles off of herself, readjusted the front tie to the hakama she wore and reclipped the pendant and chain back around her neck.

Her energy faded dramatically, dropping well below normal levels of someone just walking around. It was almost at the level of a regular, run of the mill monk or holy man in their later stages and understandings in life.

It was as close to normal as could be.

"When... even if it isn't much, when you're here, with me. You will always be human, okay?" She wouldn't let him become that, not like Nazomi, not like the dangerous path that Hi-to was starting to walk, and definitely not like that King of Las Noches.

She'd see her own life snuffed out and her soul removed permanently from the cycle before she would allow that to happen.

"Follow me, I'll make you something at the main house, and get you some clothes to wear too before I give you the tour." There would be a lot to cover in this place she lived, and a lot of busy work that might just help him relax a little and relearn how to breathe again.

A pause.

She looked back over her shoulder at him, deliberating as to whether or not she wanted to say what had come to mind.

She went for it anyway. "You mentioned earlier... that your birthday was a couple weeks ago, yes?" Her ears turned an interesting shade of pink-red as she hastily turned her head back in the direction of the door.

Not looking back.

"You, um, should tell me what you would like for a late birthday present."

It wasn't a blush.

Really.

It wasn't.

--

Word Count: 1014
GP Earned: 20

Colin Arascain

0 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 28, 2014 6:00:26 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 28, 2014 6:00:26 GMT -5

He felt so much like a child, as she led him through the halls of her family home. He didn't know where he was. Not what room, not what city--He was pretty sure he hadn't left Japan, but that was as far as he could narrow it down. His clothes were gone, taken if not destroyed. He had nothing but his skin, his bones. The power in his soul.

Her.

It would have been humiliating with anyone else, at any other time. He'd be trying to put up a front, be strong, do something stupid and self-destructive to maintain that essential bit of pride that kept him from breaking down, to impose control on himself if on nothing else in the world, and...

Was that it? Was that all it was, why he pulled away from Dew so long ago and hurt the boy the way he did? Because he was losing control?

It felt right, and he hated that it did.

With Sekai it was... different... and maybe there didn't have to be a good enough answer why, maybe it was just hormones and shared trauma and loneliness and trust all swirled in a cocktail of feeling that made being with her safer than being alone. Maybe it was that she'd... seen him when he...

Shit shit shit no, he couldn't think of that, the jeans he was wearing didn't hide nearly enough, and--a hand flew to the too-large waistband, finger hooking through the belt-loop to hold it up, red rushing to his cheeks--time for other thoughts.

She'd... said she'd been married, hadn't she? It got lost among the other sights and sounds, the ripping and the bright lights and the pain, but... she probably thought he hadn't heard, and... he didn't want her worrying about it. He didn't want to make her more anxious and overwhelmed than she already was, if she was feeling anything like he was feeling. One less secret... That'd be a good thing, for both of them. Eventually there wouldn't be any left, and maybe the knowledge of themselves would overwhelm the darkness she'd shared with him.

But all of the things sounded so stupid in his head.

He couldn't stop the stupid smirk from crawling up his face, the childlike comments trying themselves out in his mind accompanied by a lurch from an organ he really wished would stop it when he was trying to walk--

So you... uh, you like girls too, huh?

Does that mean that you and I...

Did you ever... um.

Yeah, he wasn't saying anything like that.

He didn't even know what he'd do with two girls at the same time...

Hoping the redness was maybe... camouflaged by the hoodie or something, and wasn't as transparently obvious as it probably was, he tried for something a little bit more tactful.

"Look, I heard what you said before. About... being married before, and having a... wife, rather than a husband." He took her hand in his, and turned to look at her. "I'm sorry." His voice was solemn and steady. "I know what it's like to lose someone you care about." He looked right at her when he said it; she knew what he meant. "And... I'm not gonna judge you for it, or anything. I know there are some... some people who would, but I'm not one of them. I actually..." Oh god, was he really going to say that to her?

One less secret.

"The, um, the person I cared about, that... Nazomi... attacked," the name was unfamiliar on his tongue, but he kept talking. Monsters didn't deserve any honorifics, even if he were inclined to use them. "He was, um, a he, so, s-so, I kind of, I know how... that can be." Snatching his hand back, suddenly protesting his innocence. "T-that doesn't mean I'm gay!" The word felt kind of vulgar in this conversation, but he sure as hell wasn't losing her over that misunderstanding. "I mean, i-it'd be fine if I was! But I'm not! I like girls! Girls are nice, very on board with boobs and um uh..." This hood was not big enough at all. "You're nice. That's all I'm trying to say." He peeked out from its shadows with a smile--and, gradually, like he was tearing himself away from some security blanket or stuffed animal, lowered it again.

"I'm sorry I'm not as old as you. I hope that's okay. Some days I feel like I'm so old, like I've seen everything and like everyone else is just a child, and other days..." He shook his head, then looked back at her with a twinkle in his eye. "Other days I ask you to make me breakfast, I guess." They kept walking, but a few paces later she said something that made him stop in his tracks.

"You're kidding, right? This is already the best day I've had in like a year. I mean, finding you again--and--I'd be sleeping in an alley somewhere or trying to mug someone if you didn't let me stay here, and you really think you need to do more for me?"

His eyes weren't fogging up.

They weren't!

...Maybe a little.

"But... I forgot something, didn't I? You said yes, and I was so worried I might be hurting you that I didn't--" A grin split his face from ear to ear and he ran forward, stepped in front of her, his face unhidden and filling her field of vision, again filled with that fleeting confidence. "I'm sorry I forgot."

This time, when his lips touched hers, he wasn't hesitant. His hand slipped behind her head, fingertips twining in her whitened hair, tilting his head so his nose didn't smash into her face. It was electric, but he was on top of it this time, trying not to smile even as he tasted her, pulling away before he took too many liberties, took away that control they both needed in a way that transcended anything else.

He looked into her eyes, and absolutely failed to wipe the self-satisfied smirk off his face. Even though he knew somewhere deep that this was all pretend, that they were at risk from anything at any time and their defenses weren't enough, today? Right now? He didn't care.

"Now's when you say 'Happy birthday'."

It was a good day to pretend to be human.

Words: 1064
GP: 21 (131)

Kireon

Bye Felicia~

4,761 Posts

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai] May 29, 2014 5:48:29 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 29, 2014 5:48:29 GMT -5

She led him through the silent corridors, sprawling and full of unspoken history. Her feet, comically enough, were still bare. Flashes of their soles peeked out from beneath the long hems of the red garment she wore around her waist- the same color as the hoodie, really. Around a corner, and a second, down a straight and narrow where they could look out and see the expanse of shrine ground she lived in. The tree was there, an eye catching thing no matter what the time of day or season- doubly so when the second sight revealed its secrets. Glowing, powerful, and painfully bright to look at for more than a little bit at a time, its spiritual coloring and feeling unique, but not entirely dissimilar to Sekai's own.

It would make sense, as he would find out later, given that she spent a good deal of time in the damn thing.

Theirs was a silent trek, another corner turned and the main house could be seen. Set at the very back of the property, the white-and-wood two story building looked... normal, if a bit on the old samurai movie-but-modified side of things. Mountains and forest stretched on all sides, rising into high peaks and jagged edges that might have had something like snow still on the higher elevations.

A small green house could be seen on their way to the front door, next to what was undoubtedly a garden- faint traces of her were there as well, little green things growing and glowing with bits of light that reflected her own spirit. Beside it, a sand garden complete with stones and delicate, natural patterns rested, undisturbed by footprint or animal or bird print alike.

It was a serene thing, that place, one meant for quiet reflection and meditation.

Sekai was focused on the food aspect of things, trying to figure out what would make for a good meal that he might like. Most Americans thought the traditional breakfast was odd, and didn't necessarily care for it. She could make... something, she knew there were things she could do. An omelet wouldn't be difficult, and she was good at making those.

The idea of her returning to the days of making bento lunches for someone tickled her and saddened her all at the same time. It had been six years since she'd last sneaked away to creep into the kitchen at some ungodly hour to make something for breakfast, and lunch, for someone else to take with them.

His voice drew her out of thoughts of meal preparation and what might be inoffensive to his palate. The way his hand shifted, changed on her own causing her to turn, the subject matter clear once he'd managed to get the word 'married' out.

The quiet, sad, but understanding smile she gave hurt. The thought of her deceased-but-not wife still hurt, still a raw wound that wouldn't heal, would still bleed until she tied that loose end herself. With her own two hands.

She owed Sakuya that.

But his comments took her off guard, puzzled her to an extent. Her head cocked a little to one side, bird-like, as she tried to figure out what it was that was flustering him so.

He actually... what?

His name was wrong out of Colin's mouth, and her expression reflected that. It wasn't right, even without the honorific- he was going to be the stubborn type, just like Takua and Hi-to, ugh, why all the stubborn had to find her was beyond her ability to understand- but then... wait. Was...

...

Was... he implying what she thought he was?

Yep. The hand-snatching away and sudden rapid fire protest that came back was certainly something she knew all too well herself.

She kind of wanted to laugh at him, and the way her lips twitched upwards, creeping, curling into a smile completely betrayed that urge- as did the sparkle that lit a flame of silent mirth in her eyes. It also took a lot for her not to look down at her own chest at the mention of breasts and things related to them.

There was no shortage of chest there. She had grown curves instead of anything remotely resembling stature, damn it anyways. She'd willingly give a pound from each thigh, buttock, and breast if it meant getting even an inch or two in vertical growth that had nothing to do with shoes or standing on higher ground. The fingers of one hand were pressed against the smile on her lips, as if that alone was what saved her from laughing.

"It's okay, that just means you're like me... I think." Maybe. She didn't even know what she was. "It's, um, more about the person than what they have. Sound about right, maybe?" Sakuya had been the first person she'd had more than just a celebrity level crush on or had admired on anything more than a 'gosh, they were pretty, I wish they would look my way for a minute and smile.'.

...

Alcohol fueled incidents did not count and they weren't going there right now.

Her face flamed the color of her hakama and his hoodie at the mention of her age. "I'm, um, I'm not thirty yet, plenty of years left before I'm an old Aunt." Five years. Would be four in the fall.

...and he was just turning age of majority.

But she knew what he was talking about. Oh, how she knew that all too well. She'd been there since she was a child, before the accident even, and long before... all of this and more.

No, she'd been an adult before she had hit the age of majority herself. ...how could I forget? That was... the year she died. I turned twenty only a few months later. She couldn't even remember what she'd done for it, come to think of it.

His footsteps coming to a pause caught her attention again. The snowy haired woman in shrine maiden's attire turned, blinking, confused.

...were his eyes a little brighter than usual?

She stepped, hesitantly, forward to see, about to peer up- and his grin was all she saw as he cut his own words short. Wait, what? A yes? What was said to be a yes and where had the conversation gone, what was even happening anymore and- oh, he was right there and what did he forget? Did they forget something? She could lead him back to the room if he had, it wasn't like it was that big of a dea-

...

?

Oh.

That.

Her hand lifted to rest lightly against his his arm, felt the longer tendrils of his hair brush against her cheek and forehead and- oh, that was what he'd meant. She'd forgotten too, apparently, and she was really sorry she had because how she could and all. His hand cradled the back of her head, felt the way his fingers wound themselves through her hair and created a resistance she hadn't felt in years and what was all of this going on at once, all the sensation and feeling and wha.

He pulled away and she looked like someone had just dropped a stack of bricks on her head. The same dazed, half wondering if it really just happened look on her face as her brain tried to kick start and couldn't find where to put the key because what the hell the ignition switched places somehow and just...

Falling again into endless blue. He was still right there and that was an expression she was all too familiar with because it was the kind that never changed even with the faces differing time and time again. And it always, always seeped into their voice as well, reflecting it just as naturally and obviously as what she could see.

Somewhere, a switch flicked and her brain remembered that air was a very good thing, and that they should probably fill their lungs with it before they did something stupid and embarrassing like, oh, fall on her ass.

"A, um, Ha-happy birthda-" she stammered, clearly still just a little... a little...

"What the hell is going here?"

Oh, shit.

[Thread End]

--

Word Count: 1365
GP Earned: 27
Thread Total: 225

Bleach Gotei

The Morning After [Colin/Sekai]

Post by Colin Arascain on May 24, 2014 0:11:39 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 25, 2014 5:08:15 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 25, 2014 6:46:44 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 27, 2014 1:59:54 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 27, 2014 5:32:40 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 27, 2014 6:45:46 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 27, 2014 7:21:43 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 27, 2014 8:55:14 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 27, 2014 9:39:53 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 27, 2014 11:17:50 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 27, 2014 12:33:15 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 28, 2014 0:39:47 GMT -5

Post by Colin Arascain on May 28, 2014 6:00:26 GMT -5

Post by Kireon on May 29, 2014 5:48:29 GMT -5

Welcome!