Standard Copyright Disclaimer and Stuff: Angel Sanctuary is not mine, worse luck. It would save me a lot of time and trouble if it was largely because then I would be a mangaka and would know what I was doing with my life. It is in fact the property of the talented and fabulous Kaori Yuki, and of the many companies she ended up licensing it to including Hana to Yume comics, Hakusensha and, I think, Central Park Media. This story is therefore a fan work from which I will not make a red cent.
Author's notes: This fic takes as its inspiration the infamous 'Couch Scene' found in chapter fifteen of the manga, a scene much-beloved by fanficcers for its angst potential. This is the second of my attempts to write an Angel Sanctuary fanfic in the first person and because I love a challenge that individual is Rociel. It's worth mentioning that there's a small amount of worryingly strong language and a lot of incredibly vehement anti-Sara sentiment contained within this story, but I wouldn't expect anything less from Rociel.
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I'm scared. Alexiel, I'm scared. What's happening to us? What did I do?
She's changed. I don't know how it happened. I don't know what they did to her to change her like this but she's a different person now. She's someone I can't even understand let alone feel that I could ever grow to love, and yet… I know it's her. I know she's in there somewhere, I've felt her presence. I just can't reach her. It's almost as if she doesn't want to be found, or at least not by me. But it's worse than that; she's denying herself. She doesn't even seem interested in who she really is. She pretends not to understand. She'd rather cling to a lie, she'd rather deny her own past.
She'd rather deny me. Her brother.
It seems funny, after all this time, that the only thing I felt on first seeing her face again was a strange sense of unease that she wasn't the woman I remembered. But even though the body wasn't the same I knew it was her all along. I could feel her there. But I could tell just from the way she looked at me that she didn't recognize me at all. She didn't even know who I was. The expression on her face wasn't the look of a woman who had forgotten me and was only belatedly called to recollection by the sudden fact of my company. It was the look of a complete stranger, of someone who had never known me, never been aware that somebody like myself existed. It hurt. Even now she goes out of her way to hurt me.
She called to me. I couldn't have imagined it. Surely not. She called my name, she knew my name…
But somehow she had forgotten me.
I don't know you, she said. I've never met you. She lied, of course she lied! Of course she knows me, even if she doesn't on the surface. I haven't changed that much, surely? I can't believe that I have. She's the one who's changed. How can it be that I knew her though she had changed so much, whilst she couldn't even remember my face? Sister, I wanted to ask her, what have they done to you? Why have they changed you so much? But I couldn't ask that. She wouldn't have understood. But what happened to her to make her forget me?
Oh, God, it was a terrible thing to have her look at me like that, speak to me in that way. To see that look in anyone's eyes would have shocked me but from her… I would rather she loathed me than she denied my existence. At least her hatred would have given me… something. Anything. But what does being a nothing to her give me to hold onto? What comfort can I get from that? At least hatred implies some kind of strength of feeling and gives me some kind of, I don't know, hold over her. But what it is when your better half disowns you!
Alexiel, please. I know you can't love me. I know you can't need me like I need you (desperately, hopelessly, I need you so much I hate you for it, why do you have this effect on me, why do you make me weak?). I know you don't really need me at all. But please, for the love of all you hold dear, don't pretend you've forgotten me. I won't let you forget me.
If she can't love me then she must hate me. She must feel something for me. If she doesn't feel it now I will make her feel it.
It feels like I've broken faith with her even to think like this. I feel guilty.
Sister. You should have kept your promise.
I saw them.
God forgive me. I saw you, Alexiel. I saw you with her. Even at second-hand I feel soiled. It's wrong, I keep thinking, it's just wrong. Don't they care that it's sinful, has she fallen so far? Has that child Sara degraded her so much? No, it can't be Alexiel's doing. Alexiel is - was - a pure woman. She would not desire such a thing, how could she? Even alone the act is… I don't want to think about it. It's base. It cheapens her and she's so far gone that she doesn't even question its morality. It's being here, I'm sure of it. She's been corrupted by human ways, but it's more than that. She's been corrupted by that child.
Sara. That foolish, simpering little girl. Naive, soft-hearted, selfless… and quite monumentally stupid. It's nothing but a ridiculous little bitch really. What does she want with her? But this I know. Oh, it's all too obvious what she wants with her and it revolts me. How I hate that child.
All is calm now the immediate fury's left me. Still. I'm still because I'm exhausted, because I honestly can't think what else to do (there's nothing to do, at least not for tonight - this much I know. If I could reach them I would but I can't. All is calm, but don't mistake me. Don't think of this as anything other than a stay of execution, Sara… I am inactive merely because, for now, there is no action I can take). I'm letting myself lie here and hoping that, if anyone comes in, they'll think that I am sleeping. I don't want to see either if them right now. I want to be alone. I want to be spared the looks on their faces. Don't think I don't notice them. It's always been there. I can't bear the looks they give me, the pity in their eyes. I can't bear to be nothing more than the recipient of impersonal sympathy, but I always have been. First for my body, now for my mind. Poor thing, and to think that's Lady Alexiel's twin…
No. I won't think about this now.
Kirie I refuse to see; I don't want to know what I'd do to her if she were to come here. She is almost as bad as that other girl. She's facile. Useful up to a point, but hardly the kind of woman whose company I would willingly seek out. Katan… Katan I don't want to see either, but for different reasons. But then Katan is different. I can't face him seeing me like this, lying here on this couch with my hair in my face. If I lift my head slightly I can just see the tattered pillowcase. Did I really do that, I wonder?
Absently I take one of the feathers from the floor, hold it to the inadequate light and turn it slowly between my fingers. It looks defeated. Poor dead thing, trapped in that cushion for so long. The flights are damaged. So it is with all of them. They're all damaged somehow. Crushed, broken, essentially useless. What point is a feather without a wing? A feather is a exquisite thing but such a thing wasn't designed merely for its beauty. Such a thing needs a function to make it whole.
So fragile. So beautiful. I smile, then I crush it in my hand and let it fall.
They think they have a… that they share some special kind of bond. Is that how they'd describe it? They are close. Too close. They sicken me, both of them. Alexiel for cheapening herself, demeaning herself like that. That girl for daring to have without even having to try what I have always wanted and will probably never have. She disgusts me. Both of them do, somehow - isn't that just another sign of how much things have changed between us? It doesn't seem like Alexiel to make such a mistake, to let her judgment be clouded so badly by such an obviously objectionable association with an obviously unworthy girl. I don't hate my sister. I can't hate my sister no matter how hard I try, but I hate this watered-down version of her (the body, I would like to think, and the outside mind is not Alexiel's… but I know that's just a comforting deception. It's her. I can see her in the boy she thinks she is - but not enough of her, damn it!) and her fascination with a child that I can only despise.
Sara. If she had been near me tonight I would have torn her with my bare hands. I want nothing more than that. How dare she? How dare the little slut enslave Alexiel with her body? She pretends virtue and piety but I can see her for what she is beneath that flimsy disguise, beneath the prim and proper front she presents to the world. It's clever, the way she hides her true nature beneath her wide eyes and curls, her childish dresses and innocent smiles. The way she deceived Alexiel so utterly.
Lapis Lazult, I tricked you, but I'm not going to break my promise to you. I will destroy her for you. For both of us.
I curl up on the sofa, pressing one hand to my chest. I feel dizzy. My heart still hurts, Alexiel. You betrayed me once again for a childish infatuation with a corrupt and worthless woman. Does hurting me please you? is the only thing you want from me my pain? If you don't and God willing such a thought is true then why do you torment me so? I hate the child for what she's done to you but I can't hate you, no matter how much I sometimes think I would like to. You make me sad, Alexiel, you make me weak.
You hate me. I know you do. You hate me, but I love you.
There is a knock on the door, then someone calls my name - they sound worried, or am I imagining it? - and lets themselves into the room. A man's voice: so not Kirie then. Katan. I don't know if I'm relieved, alarmed or irritated. He shouldn't have just let himself in, I think impatiently, even if he did knock first, even if he is worried. I half-consider throwing something at him, one of the remaining pillows perhaps, but I manage to restrain myself though my hands have curled into fists and my nails are digging into my palms. I hastily push myself up, force my disordered hair out of my face and try to keep my expression serene. For all my attempts I must look angry, as Katan takes a pace back so he's standing in the doorway. Ready to flee, I realize, and once again I feel angry with him. "Stay", I hiss under my breath. "Don't interrupt me just for the sake of it."
Probably he cannot even hear me.
You're afraid of me, Katan, and I won't have it. I won't have you being afraid of me. Do I look terrible like this? A small part of my mind says I must do.
"What is it, Katan?" I ask; did my voice tremble?
I just want him to know that I'm not angry, that's all. Or at least not angry with him. He is not Sara. I will not inflict the pain that is meant for her onto his innocent body when he has done nothing to warrant it. He has never hurt me, not even through omission. He, and he alone, has stayed faithful to me simply because he wants to stay faithful, because he thinks that it is the right way to be. He is true. I just wish that I could understand why, what reason he has for his behavior. How can Katan manage something that even Alexiel could not?
"Come." I say. "Close the door behind you."
He looks at the cushion more closely now; wondering, no doubt, what happened. The look in his eyes is enough to tell me what he thinks. Once again I wonder how much he heard, how much he knows without having to ask. He can probably guess why all this happened already. He kneels next to the couch, but still keeps his distance.
"Are you all right, Lord Rociel?" I can't be imagining his anxiety.
I can feel his arms around me, can feel him trying to soothe me. I want to respond but I can't, I feel so desolate, so furious with her. All I can think of, as Katan holds me, is the impersonal room behind that closed door, of the unforgivable truth hidden inside it. I think of her, of them. The two of them together and myself alone, able to do nothing but helplessly watch her faithlessness, watch her losing herself in sin. I feel positively sickened by it, by the thought of that whore Sara, of the way Alexiel held her worthless body. Of the expression on my sister's face as they… coupled. Like animals. Carried away by their lusts, their baser animal instincts. What wanton and disgusting creatures Men are. How enslaved by their own carnality.
I pull Katan closer and screw my eyes shut, trying to force my mind to empty and myself to calm. I will not hurt him. I will not hurt him just because Alexiel has abandoned me and that Sara leads her further toward damnation. Katan is true and he is faithful and he will never leave me because I won't let him. I will kill him with my own hands before I consent to let him go and should he leave me I will force him to return. He is mine. He is the result of the only true and noble act that I have ever committed. I can't lose the only good thing left to me.
"She…" I say finally. "She is lost. Alexiel will never willingly return to herself whilst the child lives." Even the thought hurts so articulating it only makes me feel worse, even more alone and abandoned than I was before.
Katan says nothing. Perhaps I have shocked him; he disapproves, I know, of the virulent way I can hate. He probably thinks Sara an innocent (he always was so pure… such a person as Katan simply cannot understand the ways of corruption, the unlikely forms under which vice flowers best). I know the way he thinks about such matters but I can't bring myself to care - or find it in myself to take issue with him. All that matters is he is here and alive and holding me in his arms. That he continues to smooth my hair and comfort me - what would I do if I lost him when nobody else thinks that I know how to hurt? All I want is that he stays devoted. Maybe, if Katan stays with me, losing Alexiel won't trouble me quite so much.
Maybe.
But no matter what happens I won't let him go. I won't let him abandon me for anything, for anyone. Whatever it takes he must stand beside me, he must be mine and nothing else. I have lost too much to take loss in my stride. Katan is all I have now, and I won't lose that too.
~fin~
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