One Hell of a Something [Colin/Sekai/CLOSED]

...slowly...

...falling...

...like how he fell into her eyes, every time he saw them...

The leaves in the wind were their own roaring symphony, and aside from her soft voice were the only things he heard. No more not-quite-voices on the edge of hearing, no more cars rushing past, none of that tension pushing in from all directions, of thousands of people trying to survive through their own struggles and pain and him feeling it.

Here it was like... freedom, like a headache he didn't know he had was suddenly gone, like he'd been trapped in a room and now he was blinking in the sun and he just couldn't wipe the smile off his face, the only presence here was hers, and he wondered if...

...No, no. No, he shouldn't be thinking about that, but... could he? Should he ask? Like, what if he did it accidentally or something? Because of course he wouldn't try to read her mind that would be an awful thing to do, but... could he?

Blushing.

Soooooooooooooo much blushing.

"S-so," his voice was small and shaking and god dammit, "how do I turn it off? I mean... what if I don't want to? I mean what if I accidentally, I mean--" His eyes shot open and he looked at her in horror. "You can't, can you?!" He scrambled back, "God!!", backed so far off the tree branch that he was hanging in thin air, moving in it like it was solid ground. He put his head in his hands, and only then realized there was nothing beneath him, wavering slightly.

"Please," his voice came from between his fingers, "please tell me you can't see into my mind."

Words: 269

GP: 5 (33)

He was so relieved he almost fell back down to earth, only realizing a few seconds before impact that the rushing sensation was the air rushing past him rather than the blood rushing back to his face where the sudden terror of violation had drained him pale.

"Okay," he said as he started to climb the tree the normal way. "First thing, freedom, check." He was already breathing heavier than he would have liked, which just seemed stupid. "Second thing, I can't feel everybody's... everything... pushing down. Check." How could he fly, how could he do all the crazy things he had done and be out of breath from climbing a tree?

"Third thing..." Heaving himself up to the branch he'd lain down on before, he collapsed, sprawled out, closing his eyes. He tapped himself on the forehead without opening them. "Mental privacy, check." The eye closest to her opened, squinting from the sun, and tried to find her. "Last thing, you." He was almost too happy and tired to smile.

"Are you sure I'm not still dreaming?"

Was the sun lower on the horizon? It felt like he'd been here for days, like he could close his eyes and days would slip away and it'd be okay when he woke up. Everything would be the same.

He could stay here.

It'd be okay.

"Things've been in my head before, y'know." Why was he still talking? "Crawled right up through my ear and drove me around, locked me out from the inside, and..." He wanted to tell her everything. A part of him--the loudest part, the best part--wanted her to know everything, to see through him, because secrets... "That wasn't so bad compared to what happened after." Secrets aren't things you need in a safe place.

"It didn't have to after, it was... worse, it..." How could he explain the kind of fear that let him throw away a friend's life for his own? It seemed like a distant memory, growing dimmer, like the tree itself was taking it away. "I did what it... what he wanted. He didn't have to make me, with... powers, or machines, because..." He opened his eyes and looked into hers, as if her seeing his would somehow make it easier to understand. As if knowledge worked that way.

"I wanted to."

Even whispered, he heard the wrongness in it.

"I mean I..." It was so hard to remember that fear. "I wanted it more than what he would have made happen." Did that make sense? "I wanted to live." No, that's not... "That's not right." Fuck, why was he...

"You told me to live." No, no, this was a happy place. "So that means you understand, right?" He shouldn't be doing this, it was in the past, she didn't need to hear it. "It means whatever I did to stay alive... You'll forgive me."

Secrets are things you need to stay safe.

"I..." It was too late, he couldn't take it back. "There was a man who was kind to me," it tumbled out in a rush, "before I met you, way before, months, while I was still pretty much new to all of this. And because I was scared, I almost let them kill him. Because," A deep shuddering breath, "you said," another, because the first didn't do the trick, "you said I had to, didn't you? You said I couldn't die? So it's okay? I don't have to..." He breathed out, and lay there in silence for a while, listening to the beating of his heart.

"...no, I'll feel guilty anyway." It sped up, as he remembered it. "I'm sorry, but I didn't listen. I didn't do it at the end. I fought back, even if I had to die, I just couldn't... I knew him. I couldn't stand there and..." He shook his head rapidly. "I couldn't, and that's when..." His voice lowered, his eyes dropped. "I don't want to think about it."

A bird sang. He could just sit here and listen to the birdsong. Even if the bird flew away, he would always have that.

Even if Sekai died again, he would always have her voice.

"I used you, y'know." Should he thank them for that? "When I was escaping, when... was it yesterday?" Would he have ever learned to do it without what they did to him? "I stole your voice from my memory. It was the only thing I could think of that I cared about." He gestured, and there it was.

Hello?

I'm hurt, I...

Will you find me?

"I'm sorry it's not perfect. I can do better, now that I've heard you again. It was..." He should have never opened his mouth. "I made one of them think you... someone who sounds like you... was in danger, and when he went to find 'you', I... hit him from behind, and kept hitting, and..."

He rubbed his eyes.

"I'm sorry."

He played the birdsong, because he didn't want to hear his thoughts.

"I thought you were dead, but I guess it's like I stole a part of you."

It sounded beautiful.

"Do I need to apologize for that?"
 
Words: 862
GP: 17 (50)

You can, you can do the one good thing and live like I need you to, because I can't- because I need-

This place seemed so wonderful a few seconds ago; quiet, boundless, open to everything. Up in the tree, it felt like he could go on forever; like he could fill all that space with his awareness, his mind, without running into anything he didn't want to. There would maybe be farms; tiny, quiet lives and whatever kind of animals they raised out here. He was even far from the ground. He could step off and be weightless.

He didn't want that now.

It was different in the city. He lived in a tiny box that felt smaller because of what he'd learned were the minds of everyone else pressing down. He was invisible there. No one looked at anyone in a crowd. He could sit in his box and no one would see, no one would care if he cried.

He couldn't escape her eyes.

"I told you, didn't I?"

He wanted to be small, unnoticed. He wanted to have a bed and a corner where two walls met where he could press himself, feel the cold reassurance of substance before he warmed it with his body. Reducing the world to his eyeline, pretending the walls were impenetrable and that he could see it all.

"I told you about power."

He didn't want to be hanging in nothingness where everyone could see.

"I... we need it."

He wanted to be touched.

"Because, what if someone..."

He looked down at her but he knew that if he tried to get there, tried to balance on branches and tree limbs so that he could feel her warmth, he'd break something. Maybe branches, maybe bones. Maybe what they had between them.

"What if someone does that to us?"

Eye contact was not enough.

"What if it's your life, next time? What if there's something worse that comes along and makes us kill eachother? I won't want to live." A sudden urgency. "I won't. I won't, and you can't make me." His eyes bored into her soul. "I don't need to be human, I don't need to be alive, but I need you."

"And... I can't give it back." He needed to touch her, but it was... almost the same, hearing her voice. "It's like a pattern in my memory. Everything you say, it's... not just like I'm hearing it." It came alive in his memory, all the things she'd ever said to him.  It wasn't like seeing. It was like... all his senses, in a memory that would never fade. Pitch-perfect. And all he had to do was take the pattern from his mind and reach out and put it...
 

I healed you.

Feel a little better now?

 Need a hug?

...h-hold me...?

...put it in the air, to make it real.

He'd always have these moments.

"I was..." How did he...? "I don't know how to say it? Is there a word for it?" The long days in the darkness. The thing he'd had to become, putting any morality in a box where it didn't matter, because she told him he couldn't listen to it. To survive.

"I was... taken, I was..." No, that didn't do it justice. "Punished. They took away everything. People, and... light, and time." He pulled his knees up, wrapping his arms around them. "It's like it happened to someone else, if I don't think about it." He wanted to be anywhere more real.

"There was... water was dripping from something, and it was all there was, the only sound. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't think. But something clicked in my mind and I learned it, and since then..." He snapped his fingers.
 

What the hell is going on here?

"It's been happening with everything. Everything I've heard since then... I think I only knew your voice because I thought about it so much. That day... you don't know how much I thought about it. But... the man I told you about," he was staring into nothing, a sense of horror growing in his voice, "who might be dead now. I can't go back that far. I can't tell you what he sounds like."

Colin sat straight up, shivering.

"If he's dead, no one will know his voice."

Words: 700
GP: 14 (64)

Snatches of blue sky, snatches of leaves, whirling, falling, frantic. Hope never leaving, never dropping faster than his heart, falling from his chest. After her, because she couldn't die. This couldn't happen. It wasn't happening. It was a dream, a nightmare, a sick obsessed fevered vision of something he feared and wasn't real. He wasn't falling. It was something entirely else.

He couldn't save her.

She was small (how did she get so small? like a child, a doll, something about to be cracked) and fading, fast and falling, the wind took her away and the wind was his so why could it how could it take HER AWAY?! It wasn't right it wasn't right and he wouldn't let it be, didn't have to let it with all this power, all this fucking strength what good would it be what good would it be if he let her die alone?

He went faster. When that wasn't enough, he went faster. When that wasn't enough, when the wind ripped from his mystical impossible hold and pulled at his skin, tried to tear his breath away, he went faster. If the world was going to take her away he would break the world.

To hold her again he'd break himself.

And

and and and

there it was, the brush of fingertips, and his heart caught in his chest as he saw the ground because it filled the sky above him and he was rushing back out of endless blue sky below and he hit her, they were going faster, and
 

he reached out

but what do you do against power like that? How do you try and stop it? He tried. He tried to slow their fall, but--too fast--the rushing ground--not fast enough--he reached for the air and it was like, if he was reaching with his hands, it was tearing the skin tearing from his fingertips, and--

Did he regret this?

If this was his last moment or last few as the green grew to become the world and he felt the slightest touch of her, would feel it until sudden impact, cessation, ending, red mar on upwards carpet as what made him real was broken--

Would it be so bad?

It would mean

It would mean not worrying, right?

It would mean he was touching her, and

They were together, and

It would never get worse than this. She'd never hate him. Time would never, so slowly but without mercy, wrench them apart bit by bit until one day he looked at her and saw a stranger or worse, someone he knew perfectly well and liked not at all.

It would be like this, this hot feeling in his chest, her touch like electric fire, until they died.

Only seconds now.

No, he couldn't--there wasn't--there hadn't been time, and

He needed more memories than this.

Something flickered around his wrists. Lawn chairs, at a birthday gathering, smiling as faceless friends gifted tactless presents. A feeling, it was a feeling he remembered and the wind stopped on his hands. Just there, on his hands. The quiet evenings. Not a fireplace, because of course neither of them were that archaic, but that... atmosphere. A quiet longing for warmth he'd never had. It spread. He was making it spread. He could see it now, against the green. The grey. He could see it. Her smile, and he tried to find more, tried to place context to that image but there really wasn't any, it didn't need it. He just wanted to see it again. Cloaked in grey as his hands reached over his head, obscuring skin, obscuring self, and leaching out. Just her sitting there, typing at her laptop, pulling a lock of hair away where it had fallen across her face. She was laughing at a joke he didn't understand. He was happy watching. It covered him. It covered them. He saw the world through a grey haze for a second, half a second, and--

Impact.

What surprised him, afterward, was that he could still hear the birdsong. It hurt like... like gym class, when someone messed up and kicked a soccer ball at him from behind. It hurt. It stung like a bitch and he'd be aching tomorrow, but--

That was it.

That was all.

And he turned to see her and she was there, rubbing her head and propping herself up, the grey fading, and he had never felt so happy in his life.

He lunged across the distance.

He held her.

The birds kept singing.

Words: 756
GP: 15 (79)

"Are you okay?"

Impact.

The sweet sound of her voice.

God, it still felt like dreaming. She pounded her fist against his chest but all he could feel was relief. She was okay, and he was okay, and she wasn't going anywhere this time, and he was strong enough, and...

Ow.

Why was she hitting him?

"Hey...!" but his indignant defense trailed off a less than a second later as he realized that probably, rationally, there was no reason to be scared. Not human, not fragile on the outside unless compared to monsters. He didn't know if it worked that way... She'd done it before, though, right? With the knife? And he'd thought she'd been...

"I'm fine, but I thought you were..." Red rushed angrily to his cheeks as he realized she wasn't helpless, at how... silly and transparent his actions had been, that she knew that motivation... Even if he was hiding behind anything, it wouldn't have been enough.

"I wasn't thinking." And he was stronger at that, somehow, as those words passed his lips. It felt right, that he didn't have to think to try and save her. His body moved, like she mattered more than preserving himself.

He'd never felt like that with anyone before.

"I saw you falling and I just..." No, he didn't want to hide that emotion from her, not now. "I thought you were leaving me again." He took a deep breath, and then another, and then looked up at her and tried to smile.

"How do you do it?"

He gestured at the trees; at the birds, the air, the... calmness of it all.

"It's like... I know I'm here, but I close my eyes, I drift off for a second and I'm somewhere else and it's just as terrifying. Like I'm still running, or... fighting for one of our lives. I know I'm supposed to relax. Everything about this place is so far from crazy that it strikes me as strange, but I..."

Maybe if he looked at her...

"I close my eyes..."

...he'd never have to close his eyes, and...

"...it's like I know it but my body doesn't know and I'm waiting for there to be danger, because I know what to do with that and I know it's horrible but it makes sense and this... it's like a bubble, and I don't know when the needle is coming?"

...he could just keep looking at her, and he'd never have to...

"Does that make any sense?"

...never have to look away, and...

"Does it get any easier, or is there just something wrong with me?"

...could just ignore the world, all the things and all the monsters that he knew, he knew were out there and have this bit of happiness until in five minutes, ten months, twenty years later one of them slipped through nothingness to kill her, talons moldy and rank with old flesh spoiling hers, red staining her dress, blood pouring through her fingertips.

"I want to just... I want to just look at you, because every moment I look at you, every second you're alive is so much better than the rest of my life. It's like, I can't even tell you. I didn't know what to do without you, y'know? It was just. Muddling through one thing after another, because... why? Because of a promise? I didn't have anything. I didn't want to die, but... there wasn't anything to really make me want to live, and..."

It would happen, but it didn't have to happen yet, did it? He could just...

"And now..."

...look into her eyes and smile because he couldn't not, it wasn't even a conscious choice, it was just what the sight of her did to him...

"Every second I have it, it's like, there are all these things that can take it away, and every noise, every little thing that happens I'm overreacting and I'm sorry because it's getting ridiculous, but I..." Images playing of past days, of horrible things. "Is that an excuse?"

He could have it for now, at least?

"Is it like post... post-something because of all the things I've..." He looked down at his hands, "Christ, I'm falling apart", and back up at her eyes.

"How do I relax, Sekai?"
 
Words: 711
GP: 14 (93)