Warning/Spoiler: Was written when 151 got posted. Will probably (shortly) be outdated. There are run-on sentences like you wouldn't believe. Continue if you dare.
black and white
They like to pretend that the world is as simple as black and white. It is far, far easier to ignore the splashes of red and blue and green and brown that x across their outlines and monotonous color scheme.
It is simpler to say that she, their princess, wants her memory back. Truth hurts, and to admit that all their work is unwanted and dreaded would tear at least one of their hearts in two. So they try to forget that she feels that if she gains all, she will lose more than what she can take. They will try to forget that she wakes up sweating in this new world, afraid of the vision she saw—of their bodies, lying broken and bleeding as they die on a black-and-white checkerboard floor. To forget is to comfort, and in the unsteady and oft unsettling changes in their lives, they need comfort more than anything else.
They try hard not to remember him, and try harder to accept that their newest companion won't do anything to them when they least expect it, that he wishes to help them, and to make up for what his replicate has done. He wants, more than anything else, to atone—to pay the price for what was done in his absence from the real world, to make up for her lack of memory and all their hurt done by his doppelganger—whether it be the shaking of trust, the loss of an eye, or the shattering of a heart that was already as delicate as china. Though the pair may look the same, their souls are not—similar, but not identical. She is the first to notice this—his touches are more gentle, more apologetic, then his were, and if it weren't for the fact that she will never forget that look he gave her with blood running down his chin and a ice-blue eye staring back, there would be no other difference.
Things never were truly black and white for one perspective—red was always the color of his world, reflected in his eyes and the color of the blood running down his sword's blade. His life was an abattoir ever since his father was cut down—his mother's murder only added to the crimson staining his hands. So in attempt to forget the blood and the bodies and the battles, he drinks a bottle of sake, keeping a half an eye on their new companion while he waits for the other two to be done talking behind shut doors. However, he is always reminded once again of his bloody world when he sees his wrist, and the cut across it. Life will always be scarlet for him—even when he has no sword and no ties, he will still need to draw a blade across his skin for another to live. Whether his view on the matter is acceptance or resignation, even he isn't sure—he just knows that his world will never truly be pure.
For the last man, nothing is ever simple and clean, and nothing ever was. He lives, and yet he has convinced himself that it would be better if he were dead. His friends would not be in danger if he were gone, for one enemy (but are they really enemies? Or are they people who can't be truly defined in their world of contradictions and skewed meanings?) would stop searching and the other would be far less dangerous. He is reminded of his closeness to death whenever he sees his reflection in the cracked mirror, truly looks at the strip of black that has been a part of him ever since he changed from something almost human to something that wasn't quite, any more.
So they put up walls and wear false smiles that don't reach their eyes and wander off into the pretty lies that they spin when asked why they are there. They ignore the obvious and act oblivious and wait for the day when things may become simple and clean and all their facades won't be a lie. As they watch the worlds and dimensions pass by them through their cracked kaleidoscope of a point of view, with all the objectives skewed and all the perceptions shifting, they feel that everything won't ever be even close to how it was.
Perhaps they are right.
And perhaps they are not.
They will never go back to the days when they wandered in the worlds, fighting for justice and the noble ideals only found in fairytales. They cannot go back to when their goal was as simple as to find their princess's memory. They will never regain the trust and the eye and the unbroken heart.
But perhaps it is for the better, that they are thrown together in these dire circumstances of death and curses and visions and regret. Maybe this was the way things were supposed to be, and the happy oblivion before was simply something that happened by chance, before the real events were to begin.
They do not know what it will come to. They do not know what will happen to them, where they will go, what they will do. They cannot see every future; they cannot divine the events to come.
But to them, it doesn't matter.
Because they will travel to wherever fate chooses them to go. They will try to hold on to their ideals and justice and pretty ideas about equality and safety and happiness. They will fall and get back up again with bruises both inside and out, just to say they can—just to show they can.
They will go where they need to go. They will do what they need to do.
And that is enough.
In their world of hurt and lies, of pretty tales told to children and bloody battles not even the most scarred soldier can comprehend, in their world of painful suffering that no-one should bear and the joyful laughter of the deepest friendship, in a world of heartbreak and curses and travels and dreams, it is enough.
…
Perhaps their world was a little bit more black and white than they thought.
-we can't ever go back-FIN-we can only move forward-
A/N: Written when I was in a highly poetic mood. Thus, it's wordy, has run-on sentences like you wouldn't believe, and is almost overly descriptive.
Meh.
Review, and I will love you forever. … On second thought, I'll just give you an e-cookie.