title: sea of lies
characters: Irie Shouichi
pairings: Hinted 10051 if you squint hard.
summary: His whole world consists of lies.
notes: First attempt on second person. If you don't like this style, do not read it.
Lies swallow you whole.
They're there, on the tip of your tongue, and you let them out of your mouth with such ease that it scares you.
Kill them. Our top priority should be getting the Rings.
You inhale lies just as much as you exhale them, because you know that Byakuran lies to you just as much as you lie to him.
Everyone lies in this place, and you know it. Gamma and Glo Xinia's actions only prove this to you, and you feel the righteous anger of the captain of Millefiore's Rosa Squad.
It burns your veins like venom - it snakes through your system and you see metaphorical red when you give Glo Xinia the lecture of his lifetime.
You always had a terrible temper; you merely have managed to hide it from other people under the disguise of meek obedience.
Byakuran is the only one who knows you well enough to know the flares of your temper - he has been the victim of many of your tantrums back in university.
It's a well disguised secret - and you yourself don't know the limits of the pent-up anger, seeing how your mind graciously blanks out when you reach that limit.
In the meantime, you - Irie Shouichi, the person behind the mask of a captain - are drowning in lies, lost on the sea of deception and wrongs that you could never turn into rights again.
You try to swim, but let's face it - you can't swim to save your life, nor anyone else's.
The rope around your neck tightens hour by hour, and Sawada Tsunayoshi's advances in Melone Base don't make you feel any better, not any closer to the victory you thought you wanted.
There are times when you look at the whiteness of Melone Base's walls, and all you can see is crimson red.
You know it is wrong colour, you know it very well, and you squint, squint to see the white. But it never changes. All you see is crimson red - red darker than your hair that you grip tightly when you think you're about to lose the last bits of yourself.
Ha.
The funny thing is - you don't even know yourself anymore.
Past is no longer there, the future still undecided, and the present makes you want to kill yourself.
The present that makes you feel like a man waiting for his execution.
You know you long for something that doesn't exist - and you wake up to this realization every godawful morning, that ache burning in your chest until it feels like there are nothing but ashes left of your once beating heart.
Past is a lie.
Your feelings are lies.
Your Byakuran has always been a lie - an image created specifically for you, an image that you happened to fall for before you knew any better.
But that image is embedded into your mind, into your weeping, pathetically quivering heart - and you have no way to take it out.
In the end, you don't even want to.
You just want this moment, this feeling, to last because you know you'll never see his face again after you have either succeeded or failed spectacularly.
There is no in-between, and you know it.
You have given up on saving him a long time ago - but maybe it's not him who needs to be saved in the first place.
You, who are lost in this intricate web of fake memories and fake friendship, are the one that needs to be saved the most.
But what a treacherous heart you have - it sides with Byakuran, it has always sided with Byakuran, even when your mind screams no.
It's sad - but you know better than to follow the enticing wants of your heart.
And so, when Sawada Tsunayoshi has made his way to you, the rope around your neck loosens a bit, and the web of lies breaks - all of it breaks down, as Byakuran reveals the truth of always knowing your ill intentions.
You hate lying, and yet you have spent the past two or three years doing nothing but lying - to yourself, to Millefiore, to Byakuran.
And Byakuran smiles at you that heart-gripping smile of his - the one that you loved so much before and still do - and the hologram whispers so quietly that Shouichi has to strain his ears-
"Did you enjoy your little game, Shou-chan? I hope so, because now it's my turn~ "
