m o r t a l
Author's Note: Interesting... I'm not sure where to put this one. It's so short but took a long time to complete- and I like it, for some reason. It's different. -^^- Takari, btw. I do hope you enjoy it, and review (please!). And yes, -sigh-, I am not dead and have been working on Betraying Innocence as well. I just need a small break. ^^ Arigatou to all the patient reviewers of that story out there! Anyway, enjoy this one... review!
Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon or any of it's supporting characters. I do, however, own this fic and it's original theme. -^^-
Warnings: All in all, very clean. Rather sad, in a way, dealing with heaven and death (not in an angst way) and the lost love of childhood. Takari and an alternative reality.
Help! My Quotes and Commas (,) Are Screwed Up!: If your quotes and commas (,) look like i's, ~'s, or O's, you'll need to change your browser. If you're using Netscape or M. Internet Explorer, just go into your pull-down menus at the top of the screen and select Character Set ' (Font ). Open it and select Western (Mac)'. This is the font the story is in. If this doesn't solve the problem, ask me in reviews.
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I sighed, breath slipping through my lips and escaping into the winter air in a small cloud; amazing, even now, how it is that I can breathe. The world sat still, tranquil and untouched in the night silence, even the snow's sound hushed before me. It was a void, an unlivable void of pure human beauty: the earth, mortal in all it's unseen existence. It had stopped for me.
Why I had returned once more to this place I couldn't begin to say- life, maybe, I longed for life. I longed to not only breathe but depend on that breath; my breath was only an illusion in this mortal realm. I longed to feel cold, to feel again what it was to have flesh and feel warmth's touch as well. I longed for a body to place around this soul- to be alive.
Snow was falling; snow. The tiny touches of cold fell over me, fell through me- I had no flesh to catch them on my body, so, instead, they simply passed through me like the cold air itself. It was beautiful- glorious, no, compared to the things I had seen, but beautiful in it's simplicity none the less. I closed my eyes, breathing out once again and enjoying it, the moment I had to spend here.
Then I remembered. The reason I had returned here- not to live but to simply remember what it was about. Snow.
I opened my eyes and smiled, smiling being the only thing I could do since the price of immortality had shattered my sadness. I remembered snow.
We used to play together in the snow, him and I. As children, of course. I had loved it.
Snow.
I blinked, looking up, the knowledge of what I had came for bringing the moment to me; I had known he would come. I smiled, eternally happy, other emotion no longer existing in me. I had wished I would see him here.
At first, the gentle snow blurred him from my vision, the form of his body clouded as he walked toward the place where I sat. And yet, as he came closer, he became more real, colour shaping his lips, barely open in the winter's cold, his arms clasped around a small bundle and his his shoulders forward as he walked. Mortal, a human soul still, but familiar to my own soul none the less.
I smiled. I had known he would come.
He stepped forward, the snow falling around him and catching softly in his blonde hair, resting on his shoulders and eyelashes, whereas the snow fell through my own body. He was only an arm's length away from me, so close I could touch him should I wish, though it would amount to nothing. My hand would pass through him as it did all flesh; for in this world I was nothing, and only he existed. But I wanted to touch him none the same.
He was more beautiful then my memory of him, his strength grown with the passing of mortal time. Time had no meaning to me, and it was nonexistent to me as I was to him- I had forgotten how the time passed here. He had grown, different, taller, his childish face no longer innocent as that of a boy but changed into that of a young man. I remembered only the child, a child as I had been, and yet seeing him now was familiar to me still. I remembered him.
Takeru.
He stepped forward again; not seeing me, not knowing my presence; and drew out the bundle from within his arms. The snow that had rested on them fell off, down to the ground silently, and my smile slowly disappeared. A few petals had shaken off with the sudden movement, the light pink strangely dead in the drift of snow-covered ground they fell upon.
I watched them fall, slowly, as close to me as the boy was. I looked down, seeing, for the first time, the cold stone I had chosen to sit upon. It inscribed my name, the year- my name no longer existent here, time meaningless to me. My grave.
I looked down, down at the petals on the ground and below them, below to where I knew my mortal body rested, beneath the cold ground. I no longer existed here, I knew- my lifeless body the only thing left behind. I couldn't even remember what I looked like.
A movement startled me, and I looked back up, the boy- Takeru- kneeling down before me in the snow, setting the pale flowers just under my feet. I stared at them, at the snow falling gently on them and the boy's hands, pale with cold as well. Then, after a short pause, he lifted them, leaving the flowers to rest on the snow of my grave.
I looked up, at the boy this time, at the way his lips curved downward, shaded red with the cold, his eyes reflecting some sort of sadness. I felt my lips fall as well, as his, and I suddenly wanted to reach out and touch him once more, to be closer to him, to remember him the way I could the child I once knew in him.
And, as thought over took me, I slowly reached out my hand.
My fingertips brushed against his cheek, sadly drifting through the flesh as I knew in my soul they would. I couldn't feel him, no closer to him then I had been with my sight, knowing that I no longer existed in this world. I held them there, my fingertips, desperately trying to grasp at something I knew I could no longer hold, until he pulled away.
He pulled away from my touch and stood, leaving me no longer above him, an emptiness in me as I slowly pulled my palm back to my own body. I blinked, looking at him, his mortal beauty, and he looked back through me, not knowing I was here at all, his own mind lost in thoughts I could not hear. Then, as I watched, he tilted his head downward from me to read the words on my gravestone again, silently, until he spoke.
Goodbye, Hikari., he said slowly, looking down as if the grave itself and not me was there to speak to him. The snow fell, down over everything, already beginning to tint the flowers over with white, the silence overbearing.
I felt something drift into me, my soul suddenly heavier then it had been a moment earlier. It touched me and I, nothing in this mortal realm, stood, my feet passing through the snow and the flowers before my grave. I felt my wings stretch out behind me, my balance as I was suddenly closer, almost nothing between us now except death.
Takeru, I said, my lips moving and no sound released- I could only speak to my own self in this realm- I am here.
He didn't move, didn't glance up from the gravestone I now stood in front of. I knew he couldn't hear me any longer, touch me, see me so close to him. I knew, and it only dampened the emptiness in my soul, that strange feeling I had known I could no longer feel.
A moment passed, and I no longer knew in my mind what to do, for I was nothing. I took in breath, feeling heavier each second, my soul so uncertain.
Then, mouthing my farewell to God, I stepped forward and closed my eyes to this world, leaning forward and pressing my lips against his.
My lips drifted through his flesh, not feeling the warmth that I longed to feel in them. I felt heavy again, farther and farther away from him as I became closer, somehow feeling so... lost. He hadn't felt me, hadn't closed his own eyes, hadn't moved at all. He was there, looking past me to my grave, the only thing left here he could see.
I broke away from him and stepped back, my footsteps passing through the snow and leaving no mark behind, and looked at him, my eyes suddenly wanting to take it all in, to have something, if only sight, to remember him by.
Then, in a moment, he blinked and looked up. I took in breath, wishing he saw-
Yes, he looked up, from my grave and through me, turning his head away from the stone and the flowers beneath it with a brief moment's hesitation; turning again and walking away from me and my death for the final time.
I took a single step forward, then stopped, lowering my hand and watching instead as he left me behind there. Just as he had came, distance took hold and his form drifted farther away, silently fading into the snow with the mortal passing of time.
And I stood, watching, the heaviness deepening in me until I could no longer stand, the boy long gone back into his life, and I colasped on my knees, my palms drifting through the snow like the cold and hovering over the ground, my body hunched over the disarrayed bundle of pink flowers.
I gasped, feeling my farewell to the Lord answered as my wings, stretched out from my back and the colour of the snow itself, disappeared from my soul. The heaviness poured down over me, through my body and my soul, one now in death, and I knew in shame that through that boy I had fallen.
And so, as the time in the mortal realm passed, I stayed kneeled above my lifeless body, the flowers given to the memory of me dying along with my once immortal soul, the snow melting and the time disappearing for me, still meaningless.
The heaviness lasted, and for so long I was nothing- I existed not here nor the heavens I had diminished from, nothing without neither life nor the immortality of death. And in time the heaviness came to take me, and I let it take my soul down with it; knowing that in time all those calling themselves fallen angels would be ended in themselves.
And, with nothing left to last for, I finally realized that you could die at the whim of love, and that I had loved him, being willing to do anything to be with him once more. Even give up death itself.
Giving up all I had to be able to feel emotion once more, my soul ended.
-t h e e n d-