1Summary: Time is never-ending. (But the clock still breaks. Solomon regrets ever finding Saya, but he is not as sure that he could let her go now that he has.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Blood+.
Pairings: Solomon/Saya
- - - -
He's exploring the taste of her
arousal,
so accurate he sets off
the beauty in her.
He's Venus as a boy.-'Venus as a Boy', Björk
- - - -
She is a pretty girl, not like the stunning qualities of the expensive women who perch themselves in the corners, feathered fans and ankle-length dresses in careful colors. But she is pretty.
Her eyes run nervous and her hands shake, and when he holds them they tremble immensely and he can smell the salt on them even from far away. Her fingers are slender but short and they curl over his own hand in a too-tight grip that makes him smile softly at her from where he stands.
Her loud friend squeals and coos at her from where she is standing across from them, and Solomon smiles politely again as the fingers on his hand tighten more from embarrassment. He does not mind, in any particular way.
Here, he could have her if he wanted her.
The next time he sees her, it will not be the same.
(And, will you want her shy or twice-baked?)
- - - -
When he sees her again, she is a little bit rusted around the edges, a little bit more filled with broken glass and nails, but he does not notice as much as he should, and his smile warms her up again as much as it makes her shiver.
Her Chevalier is a crooked man, with a lopsided look to him and a tilt to his stance. If Haji were a human man, Solomon would call it scoliosis, but it is a more bitter thing than that which eats away at the person standing stoic and quiet before him.
They are looking for something here, and it is not him.
(Dully, you register that it hurts.)
- - - -
"You felt the same way, didn't you?"
He sees the slight movement of her nod, which jolts him like the rocking waves of the ocean. He feels young and in love again, but it is only momentarily.
His romanticism curls the edges of his lips, and Saya looks awakened out of a deep slumber, so much so that he suspects she has not truly heard anything, has not listened to a word he has said, has let it flee out of the other ear once it zooms through the first.
She looks so young (will you teach her the ways of the world?– You would like to be there for her).
- - - -
Carl comes back and tells him that Saya's little brother, her Riku, is dead.
And he grieves as though he remembers her face more clearly.
(The blood that connects you all together comes with the price of many casualties, and it is then, with the name of a boy you didn't know but still felt, as you feel all of those similar to you with the hearts kept quivering in awakeness only by the blood of two people you still cannot understand, ripe and bittered on the tip of your tongue, that you promise the bleeding of you will not force her death.
Saya is Saya. She looks so much prettier alive, a face flushed and a pulse beneath the slimness of her neck and the paper thin flesh of her wrists. You will keep her this way.
You will keep it how you want it to be.)
- - - -
Faintly, the date of Saya's second Chevaliar's death is still embedded into his memory, in the same way, later, he will remember his brothers' deaths.
He lights a candle and plants a new rose bush for every anniversary that passes.
When he leaves, there are two sets, one long dead and the other thriving blue and pristine under the gardeners they have hired long ago. Sometimes, the roses are tucked into Diva's hair, almost ironically, and on occasion, Solomon puts one in his suit pocket.
Saya grieves for her family, but Solomon grieves for Saya. This is how it continues.
- - - -
"Will you carry on this way, Solomon? Your days are dull, and your eyes are even more so. And still you continue this." Amshel is always blunt on his subjects but secretive in his wordings. This is how he has always been, and Solomon has come to understand it more so than even the easy-to-read meanings of the people like Saya's other brother, or James, or even Saya herself.
Amshel's blood was in synchrony with his own, after all, long before anyone else's. Blood is thicker than water, perhaps, but there are different types of blood, and Solomon prefers the original meaning of the phrase than to anything else (family bonds are thick– you see this even in Saya, mostly in Saya, especially in Saya– and perhaps if she does not believe still that you are related to her, than you will be able to pretend that the cursed blood in your veins does not matter half as much as it does).
"Nii-san, there isn't a problem with having goals." Solomon smiles into his fist as he coughs lightly into it, and the corner of Amshel's lips quirk up, meaningless but approving. Solomon feels distinctly proud, even though Amshel's smiles are nothing more than the movement of muscle.
There is solidity to them, but Solomon is not always looking for solidity.
"Perhaps not. But I suggest you find that there is always a life outside of goals."
Solomon smiles again, "Is there one for you? Has there ever been?"
Amshel gives a dry, heartless chuckle, and absently straightens the corner of his suit coat. The color, Solomon thinks, clashes with the shade of his ring. It glitters deviously in the yellow lighting. "If a man has many goals, instead of just one which he will focus on entirely until it consumes him, it is the equivalent of a life. That is the exception."
('But you', Solomon thinks, 'Are still consumed by your goals, Amshel-nii-san.')
It is no exception, and if it is, it is not a very good one.
- - - -
He would like to say he is fueled by his goal, but not consumed by it.
Faintly, he understands that it would be a lie.
They are all men of lies, who have lost their truths in between their beginnings and their endings, one more clear than the other. It is not the beginning that is startlingly clear, either, and this is more depressing than words can say.
It is bad blood, he thinks, it is not me.
It is not me.
- - - -
Time passes quickly once one has lived so many years. What is a week to another is a simple day to Solomon, and he loses track of time enough to be ignorantly surprised when he learns it has been exactly two years, three months and twenty-three days since he last saw Saya. Almost four months.
Of course Carl would know something like that.
Saya is not how he remembers, no longer as young or inexperienced. She does not tremble any longer when he touches her, but she does wince, with the sort of stale after taste that one would experience from what is there, or was. It is easy to say that a large proportion of their relationship was based on the past (would you be just another man to hang for her had she not met you before she crusted over? She is so brittle now, and so hard, that you nearly miss the softness of her. Her hair is still soft, longer now, and it flow over your fingers like rare cloth instead of the choppy, almost boyish quality of it that it used to have.
She will cut it exactly eight months later.)
She does not smile shyly, though he gives the same smile he has had for centuries, and the sharpness of her tongue gives a hurt harsher and deeper than any wound he heals from after wards.
'Solomon' is an insult to her.
And she is an insult to him.
- - - -
He tells her he is lonely when she kills Carl. He tells her he was jealous when she asks.
He tells her he was mistaken.
(And how, how many people could you have saved if you had gone to them?)
Solomon is not sure of her trust on him, which teeters tentatively on the brink, a simple line that he has passed and stomped on so many times. If he puts his foot over it now, he will lose her entirely, and he purses his lips and repeats the same words to her, which he feels will lose meaning if he says them so many more times without her believing them.
'I love you, I love you, I love you.'
(You don't know.)
- - - -
The blood between them runs cold, and for a moment, Solomon is sure that all this time he has been mistaken and the fact that they were once true brothers meant nothing, and never did. He is used to onsidedness, in a way, but his chest aches and his eyes burn slightly with the weakness of his knees as Amshel frowns at him. There is still no meaning to it, ice cold, unmoved.
The lump in his throat is removed as he straightens himself into a position that is easy to defend with, and they stare each other down with a death sentence that will be true eventually, one before the other (whether or not you will grieve, or he will grive– will it matter?
You mouth the words 'yes' but still wonder if it's true. You are a being of obsession, and also of compulsitvity– but he is twice as consumed as you. It eats away at a man.)
"You are betraying Diva. I cannot allow that."
"I understand." Solomon replies with such a sadness, that it is suddenly clear to him that he would prefer to remain ignorant. There is, again, no meaning to anything, and it is not fulfulling, not good enough.
When the smallest inch of skin meets skin as they clash mid-strike fighting, there is a whisper as bare and as harsh as the sea. "Little brother..."
(If you are broken again, you couldn't tell.)
- - - -
The fight is stopped a moment later, as a stray pillar comes crashing down into the brightness of the green grass around them, and he feels, slightly, remorseful.
There is nothing more to be spoken at the ends of the world, even if only in thought. Here, his lips do not say goodbye, even if they open to let out a cough.
- - - -
He sees her again, on a roof top that makes her nervous with it's height and an angry expression on her face that makes him shift uncomfortably. Whether she is angry with him, or with something else, he does not know.
"You felt something back then. And you've felt something all this time." Solomon says, in a melodic, pleased tone that rumbles through his chest twice before it reaches her ears. Saya scowls deeper at him when she responds.
"No, I don't. If I did, that was in the past. You try to dig things up from the grave, but you fail to understand that I'd prefer to have them dead."
"As you'd prefer to have me in that state, as well?" Solomon avoids the word 'dead' as it is so bitter, and he feels it unpronounceable. He doesn't feel able to say it, not when it chokes in the back of his throat and her words sound so true to the emptiness of the air. If he jumped off the side of the building then, it would not kill him.
"You know you can't have me that way. As no else can have you that way. We will remain alive even as our hearts stop beating– haven't you come to accept this, yet, Saya?"
"No, I haven't. There are plenty of things that can make us wind up dead– I suggest you don't interfere with the things that can. Solomon,
"I can't love you."
"Because of duty or justice? Because I am part of that which you are destined to destroy? Saya, since I met you, I have not been Diva's Chevaliar. Please, understand this." She looks windswept by his words, as he is carried away by them. She is so solid (but you, you still are not looking for solidity).
"No. Because you are you."
(You want her to crumble beneath your hands, so you can piece her back together. You think perhaps she would appreciate you then, all the things you have done for her.)
And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore...
"I don't love you."
- - - -
And largeness of heart, even as the sand that is
is
even as the sand that is
understanding exceeding much,
and largeness of heart God gave Solomon,
and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore...
- - - -
Author's Note: Originally, I was going to write more for this. But, in a way– Solomon's love for Saya has always been captivating for me, only because it's so onesided, because it's something we all can relate to. I don't think your love has to be returned for you to sacrifice everything for a person, or even for you to take everything from a person. Unrequited love is something I've always wanted to see and write more of because it's always been, to me, one of the most heart-breaking subjects of the world. In a way, we're never fixed from our experiences with it.
I think that, looking back, now, Solomon's life did end before he died. He had put so much of himself into his love for Saya, and when he discovered exactly how unreturned it was, I believe he could've died right there on his feet. His death, as shown from the almost casual, accepting demeanor he took on in the anime, was nearly not a big deal– he took it and accepted it and understood it, and it didn't make much of a difference to him, because it was as though he'd already had a death, and it was much worse the first time, in the way it came about.
Saya did have slight feelings for him, I believe, and I tried to get that through in this (especially at the beginning, because it was most obvious, even though more shallow, then– but as the story went on, too). I was going to write the scene of his death where he would understand that Saya returned his love for her, in her own way– but again, I decided not to. I think it would've broken the whole meaning and mood of what I'd been building the entire way, which is, quite simply:
Love hurts.
The line 'And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore...' is from The Old Testament 1 Kings 4:29, I believe (though I could be wrong, as usual), and I used it partly because it was in the Blood+ manga. In the manga, it was used for irony, and I also used it in that same way here. The Solomon portrayed in this story is so very different from the line– heartless, selfish, foolish, ignorant and caring only for those who he, strictly, cared about (Saya, for the most part– though a few slipped through his radar as well, such as Carl, and, I'd like to believe partly Amshel, but some could disagree with me, easily, and I'd probably have to agree with them).
But, I think there was also slightly some bits of those traits in my (and the anime's) Solomon portrayal– and it's much easier to see that here, I think. It's easier to sympathize with him, because we've seen it happen so many times.
Happy Christmas, Addie-baby, and I enjoyed writing this for you. I hope you find your Solomon one day. 3