Yasashii Uso
By SMYGO4EVA
Piercing crimson eyes scanned the grey and bleak room from where he stood, his arms crossed, leaning against the wall behind him, then darted back to the magician, silent and still morose.
The magician still wasn't talking, even after all that had happened to him, to everyone in the cursed place. But there was nothing he could do with the inability to just say what he had to say, instead of letting all that anger and gloom eat him up from the inside out, unless if that was what he wanted to occur.
That was so pathetic.
Truly it was a coward's way out of his misery, letting everything bottle up and eat him alive until there was nothing left. Nothing left of his humanity and nothing left of his existence. That was what the magician would have wanted instead of just living.
Truly pathetic.
Kurogane snapped out of his train of thought upon noticing Fai lifting his head and facing the warrior a few feet away from him, his one sapphire eye holding a look of confusion in itself.
"Kurogane….is something wrong?" The magician spoke finally, after the long period of silence had trapped his voice for so very long.
He looked so innocent, and he was damaged. And he didn't even acknowledge that.
"You could say that." The warrior replied back, gritting his teeth at the growing anger that bubbled in his chest.
The magician blinked, a hint of fear evident in his one eye, and shifted where he sat. "What do you mean? What is wrong, Kurogane? What is wrong?"
The warrior let out an exasperated sigh. "You would say that, magician." He said with a snarl, clenching his fist tucked in his crossed arms.
A narrowed blue eye let him know that he was aware of what the other man was going at, that he was waiting for him to say something that wasn't just mindless chatter.
He wanted to know something.
Something that he himself didn't know, but he wouldn't tell in a hundred years.
Something that he wouldn't tell even in a lifetime.
Fai shifted once again, a little uncomfortable with Kurogane's tone, but gathering up gusto so he would stand up and walk a few feet in front of the warrior. He then lowered his head, staring at the dirty and grey stone floor underneath him.
A clenched fist released itself and just then, the anger that was kept inside the warrior had burst.
"HEY! I'M TALKING TO YOU, MAGICIAN!"
Before Fai would react from Kurogane's outburst, the warrior grabbed a handful of the magician's black shirt, spun him almost savagely from his stance and shoved him against the stone wall hard, emitting a startled and pained gasp.
"You idiot! What the hell is your fucking problem?"
Fai struggled to breath against Kurogane's vice-like grip, his eye wide with a paralyzing fear. He stayed limp though, afraid to say anything that would further the warrior's blind rage or anything that would be futile in this situation.
The warrior, still fuming, leaned in so that their faces were inches apart, their lips barely touching and slitted crimson eyes stared deep into the lone sapphire eye, marking the depths of how one could possibly become weaker than before.
"Coward. For as long as I have lived, I have never seen or even thought that I would see someone as pathetic as you, magician. You simply gave your life away, you would have handed it to that monster on a silver platter even if he fucking asked you to. You really drive me mad…I'm getting sick and tired of it. Either leave the past behind or get out of my sight. I don't really care anymore."
The warrior's voice was barely above a whisper, filled to the brim with a seething rage and disgust towards the magician, his words venom to his ears.
A lump formed in his throat, tightening and drying to the point of thirst, hot tears burning and searing against the back of his eye. A knot twisted itself in his stomach, twisting until it would have snapped in two.
An avalanche of mixed emotions became known inside the magician: anger, relief, fear, realization, guilt, loneliness and sorrow. He thought he could just smile his famous smile and hold back any sign of the hurt he held inside for so long.
How wrong he was.
He blinked.
A tear slid down his face.
Marking him.
The rage that was present in the warrior was suddenly quelled when he saw the lone tear slide down the magician's face.
Fai was crying.
It took Kurogane a moment to realize what's happening.
Fai lowered his face, his form shaking violently in Kurogane's grasp before collapsing into the other man's arms, floods of tears pouring his lone eye, the eye that lost the other that was savagely taken from him.
The warrior was surprised by this sudden outburst of sadness that the magician, so surprised that he almost fell to the ground before he let his legs fall under him.
Fai took deep breaths before releasing shaky and shuddering sobs, releasing all the sadness, all the loneliness, all the torment, all the loss that he experienced and all the anger that he had kept bottled inside him for so long, maybe too long that he would have surely been easily broken.
Kurogane was hesitant into taking all of this in, of what was happening at this moment.
He wasn't used to seeing someone cry, not even he had shed tears for the longest time.
To be emotional was to be weak, and for someone like him to be seen as weak is to invite horrors no one should have to experience.
But…
The magician was different.
"I'm…… I'm…sorry….I….I'm...…so sorry…."
Fai was crying into Kurogane's shoulder, holding onto him as though to let go of him would mean certain death. The magician looked weaker and more vulnerable than the warrior had ever seen him before – in fact the warrior had doubts if this was the real magician. The magician would usually hide what pain he felt so that he wouldn't let others get involved in his own anguish, but now it seemed that the magician had let himself become human.
Fai let another shuddering sob descend into the silence that was between them. Kurogane couldn't but smile bitterly; for the first time in his life he felt as though he needed Fai as much as Fai needed him.
That was the way it was supposed to be, for the magician to release all the gentle lies he held in and he would set free.