Solitaire
gREV. kai, tala. That lone tear Tala shed in comatose state when Dranzer shattered. After all those years, it's strange how telepathy still connects them like this.
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credits to carzla and AngelhearteD as always, for being the first to acknowledge and interpret this scene.
I'm in my retirement phase haha... but I still thought I'd like to clear something about the GREV canon. I never liked how the English canon screwed up the original Japanese canon where they replaced the scene of Tala shedding a tear for the loss of Dranzer with Tyson's (!!! of all goddamn things!) face. I had a feeling they wiped it out because they wanted to focus instead on Kai and Tyson – the main characters of the show, but I felt they sorely missed the point. That single scene shed way too much light on the friendship Kai and Tala shared in their childhood years; it could have explained the later scene where the two friends exchanged significance glances at the end of the BBA Revolution... anyhow, I'm glad I have the original footage with me still to view up till today. I think I'll never get sick of viewing that over and over again – it always tug a heart string or two in me whenever I do that.
Thus I decide to churn out this fic, to clear the air, and provide my interpretation on the original canon scene that could have changed it all and explained a lot, alot. Kai Tala friendship IS canon. And it was credits to this scene that started everything for me in this fandom. remember, the original canon NEVER intended to sideline Kai and Tala's friendship.
oh and all that telepathic shit below is seriously a warped fantastical idea I toy with.
They were only eight year old, as a pair of friends growing up together in the dingy abbey brought up by the harsh hands of Boris and his guards, when Tala began to find it freaky how he and Kai had gotten so close in the last few months, they had begun to complete each other sentences without even trying. By the time another year passed, their sneaking out activities at midnight, and pranks played on the guards, and a few more tricks up their sleeves pulled successfully in the abbeys, had boiled down to their uncanny ability to read each other's minds.
It stopped being freaky, to Tala.
It was as if living with another voice in your head, your best friend growing up with you that is, felt complete. Gradually, it became a part of you, and you forgot how to live by another existence.
That was why when Kai had walked out on him and on his life when he was thirteen, Tala saw emptiness for the first time in a long while.
Nothing else in his head but Wolborg. That abrupt vacancy. All of a sudden, that part of his brain where he could usually feel the emotions and thoughts of his best friend emanating was absent. Unaccustomed, he lived day by day drifting along feeling as if something was missing, something precious, and he couldn't put a finger to it, until he realized as much as a solitaire they labelled him and Kai in the abbey, a lone wolf, whatever ---
some people are meant to exist in pairs. As friends.
Kai realized this, too, when he celebrated his fourteenth birthday on his own the first time in a foreign country, Tokyo, having lost his memory, and wondered what that missing thing in his head felt like.
When he recalled everything again, and met Tala after all those years—
God, their chance encounter after all those years apart—
It was more than a collision.
Tala felt something living in his head again.
Kai swore someone was talking in his mind. He feared going mad.
It took days to get accustomed to it again, when they were tag-team partners on the same team. After all those years of separation, distrust and suspicion of each other no longer made them feel the same way being connected telepathically again after all that time. Yet they still lived in each existence – and every moment was a pain. Every disregard, every attempt at ignorance, every chance of avoiding one another, became a harsh encounter of snides, snarkiness, sarcasm, sardonism...
Until the comatose incident, and Kai watching Tala taking Boris in his own hands.
Kai felt fear. And worry.
And it wasn't only Tala's emotions playing in his own head.
It was his.
And guilt. And sorrow. And regret.
And it wasn't just his.
When Dranzer broke in his palm, Kai forgot how to live.
Tala, comatosed, wondered if that sudden loss of voice in his head was akin to his own death as well.
He hated having Kai live in his head –
but all of a sudden, that same emptiness scared the hell out of him.
Emptiness that matched the acute pain that seared through his own comatosed brain.
Kai's loss. Regret. Guilt. All that jampacked emotions – how could an unfeeling lone wolf like that felt that much? They were crazy when they called Kai an ice pack. That guy felt emotions the size of Lake Michigan, and they were all so overwhelming right now, they were teeming and brimming like a relentless river in Tala's head.
His eyes flickered in deep comatose sleep.
Kai's pain melded with his own. His own regret. His own guilt. At being unable to save their friendship. At betraying his old friend by turning into a cyborg under Boris' wish two years back. By preventing their friendship from falling apart after reuniting after all those years. By being unable to put aside their mistrust, their suspicions, and work things out, together, as they should have. At having lost faith not just in this friend, but in any possible attempts to salvage their friendship, at least.
And they call him Captain.
He felt like a failure.
Confused, unable to tell apart his own pain with Kai, a tear brimmed on the corner of his eyes.
Years transcended in his head. He felt like he was living in a surreal dream. He wondered if this was Kai's head. Did his friend see them too? Those memories that lived in him now. Were they both going through this together? They were always connected telepathically in the abbey – as though hanging around each other had forged that kind of bond that years wasn't going to destroy no matter how shit threatened to tear and shred them apart.
Whichever, Tala felt like he was living through the past years of his life again.
Seven years growing up in the abbey, first meeting the lone wolf, saving his ass from Boris by jumping in front of Kai when he was about to get cane-whipped by the guards. To have Kai visit him that night in the cell to treat those brutal lacerations. Their first handshake in the abbey, the first of introductions. That unmistakable trust upon their first exchange of steady gazes—never breaking, never faltering. As though both realized they had met their match, and a friend. Then going through years of hell in the abbey, growing up, notoriously breaking the rules and laws every now and then, getting thrown into the punishment cell for many nights, running away together but always ending up back where they started --- that first betrayal where Kai then destroyed everything, and then everything after that just went downhill.
Tala remembered Kai's gaze when he first touched Dranzer, accepting them from Boris. His eyes glazed, shone. He never thought he'd lived to see that emotion in his friend's gaze, but he saw that, and he knew what it was. Joy, pride – Kai had only smirked and looked up at Tala with a small nod, but Tala knew Kai had found his life companion. And Kai recalled Tala gawking at Wolborg the first time Boris handed it to him. Tala's look of disbelief had matched the unmistakable pride in his gaze.
That night, both boys skipped sleep to rip it out in the bey dish until dawn broke.
Tala grew up with Kai. Wolborg and Dranzer had been with them for...forever. The four of them, they were connected. Tala knew Dranzer meant so much to Kai, if anything happened to it, Kai would sail the seven seas and trek the highest mountain just to do anything for it. Kai knew if someone messed Wolborg up, Tala would made sure that person would be a dead man within the next few nanoseconds.
Yet nothing prepared Tala for that sear of emotional pain he felt when Boris confiscated Dranzer from Kai.
It wasn't even his own beyblade.
Kai couldn't explain the same way his heart was nearly wrenched out of place when a fellow monstrous rival in the abbey had knocked Wolborg out of shape until it was in near-death state. Tala had looked as if he was about to give up living on the spot, and Kai had nearly wanted to punch the teeth out of that bastard that minute. And Wolborg was Tala's beyblade, not even his.
And now...and now this.
Kai had broke down in the dark tunnels in the stadium, his strength failing him. Dranzer had shattered in his palm. His mind was succumbing to the darkness around him. He tried called for help—but the only calls of help remained in his head, failing to elicit any more from his throat.
In those seemingly last moments, he lived through his life all the way from his childhood years again in his head.
A strange pang of sadness hit him – as if he had lost beyond Dranzer. As if he had lost way, way more than that. A friend, a long-weathered friendship forged since the dingy days of the abbey...
and he had lived long enough to know that that sadness wasn't just his.
As the memories fleeted through him, he wondered if Tala saw them too.
If they had always been this connected, Kai wondered if Tala knew he had lost Dranzer.
Don't feel my pain, Tala. I'm not worth it.
Kai blinked, struggled to stay awake... and he slowly felt darkness shrouding his mind. He clambered to the floor, and stopped breathing.
...Somewhere in the hospital, a certain heart rate machine started beeping furiously.
For the lone wolf, being enveloped in darkness was nothing. Darkness was escape from pain, no matter temporary.
For Tala, being comatosed meant living everything –
and that pain in his heart, in his head, for his friend, for him, for everything their friendship had stood for, those years back then and now---
It meant so much, it hurt.
"Doctor!! A patient here, Mister Tala Ivanov, he needs help QUICKLY!!! Call the doctors!!!"
"Oh my god, we're losing him! Get the doctors!"
Kai, can you hear me?
An attempt to establish that telepathic connection again after all those damned years.
Nothing but silence.
"His heart rate is dropping way too fast, too much! We need to transfer him to the emergency ward right away!"
Kai?
"I hope it's not too late to save Mister Ivanov!"
Kai!
How could a single person feel that much pain?
And was all that Kai's, or his?
Tala saw a pair of phoenix wings – Dranzer.
Then white, alot of pain, and then nothing.
In their flurry, the doctors and nurses had missed that single lone tear trickling down that pale ivory flesh.
His fist, always clenched in a will to awake, gradually relaxed, and fell softly onto the bed.
owarida.
reviews are always appreciated!
myst-san