Title: the lines between love and hate
Day/Theme: May 5 / arms out in the rain
Character/Pairing: Kyoko, Sho, Ren, hints of Ren/Kyoko, Sho/Kyoko
A/N: Um...Kyoko...I don't know if she's IC, it's been a while since I've read the series. As it is, she's reflective and I hope the tone doesn't bore you too much. On the other hand, my first long one!shot for this series. Normally I just write drabbles.
Summary: She hates and she loves and she doesn't know which stands out the most.
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There are no start-over's with them. As it is, she can barely choose between hate and love. She probably feels neither-probably feels both. Her emotions have always been confusing like that, swirling from extreme to extreme without a moment's rest. She jumps, quickly, unsteadily, from one storm cloud to another and now...
Now Kyoko doesn't know where she stands.
-x-
Sho's staring at her again, in that odd way that he's been doing lately. It's as though he's seeing a ghost, some specter from a past he willing ditched. Surprise! she feels like yelling when she catches him like that. Surprise!
Sometimes she glances over her shoulder, expecting to see a monster from their past, but there is nothing. Only the air, the molecules in it constantly changing as a breeze blows by.
What does he see, she wonders, when he stares at her like that? A rival? A childhood friend? The girl he left behind? A mystery?
Kyoko never voices those questions, lets them die in her just like her heart did, and scowls in return.
He doesn't deserve a single thought.
-x-
"Is there a problem?"
Polite. If she had to choose a word to describe Ren-other than amazing, talented, frightening, confusing-she would choose that word. It rolls off him, manners that completely hide his thoughts behind a thick veil. He sometimes gives a smile, sometimes a quiet greeting, but nothing beyond that. A wall divided him from everyone else and she can never tell if she's seeing the real him or his alias.
"No, not really," This is her standard response. She can't bear to tell him her problems. There is a faded square on her wall where Ren's poster used to lie. She can't remember what she did with it, only that vengeance seemed like such a petty thing now.
Sho's is still there, though, but it isn't so much as hatred that keeps it there. If anything, it's a goal post, her motivation-she'd never use such a positive word.
She stares at it every now and then, at the creases that track across his golden hair, at the cracked edges that border the paper. There are holes from where she threw darts and broken colouring from where her tape stole the picture.
Imperfect, but he has never been perfect.
"Are you sure?" Ren's watching her now, his eyes impossibly kind. She doesn't really deserve that. She doesn't have a single reason for him to worry right now.
He's been nice to her lately, his gentleman smile disappearing like a bad dream. She can't remember the last time she saw it, can't remember the last time he was angry at her.
Can't remember a lot of things when she thinks about it.
His hand reaches out to grip her shoulder, it's warmth seeping through her skin like a virus.
"Really, I'm fine."
If she wasn't before, she's sure to be now.
-x-
She takes out her voodoo dolls, her hand-stitched suits and carefully preserved pictures spilling out of the bag out of them. This, she supposes, is a sign of obsession. A sign of perseverance. A sign of a lot of things, really.
Kyoko takes each one up to the light-there's Sho in his latest concert outfit, there's Ren from the recent model shoot, there's the formal officer outfit, the metal earrings, the tall boots and short gloves. Every single one painstakingly copied onto classified ads and war articles, on day-old newspaper and kept together with tape. Then she'd sow, spend hours after midnight infusing spells and curses as she jabbed her needle in and out.
Or maybe no jinxes, because she hadn't really thought of anything when she stitched. She just was, and that was enough.
Now she stares at the seams, needing some repair, and takes out her thread once more. She might not use them again, might not ever even make one after this-the time for toys has long passed-but they are a part of her. A part of her past.
She doesn't quite know what to think of Ren and Sho, then.
-x-
Sometimes, it's too easy to love him. No, not love, because she doesn't love. Can't love.
Will never love again, with this broken, cracked, wilted heart. There are walls, a castle surrounded by deep moat, and the prince will have a hard time making it past the alligators. Her heart, if it is still one, is far too protected to even have to worry about this.
No, if anything, she's thinking of forgiveness. It's sometimes far too easy to forgive and forget, because Sho isn't the same. He's calmer, his arguments less barbed, and sometimes he gives her this look, the look that she hasn't ever seen before, that tells her how much he has changed.
(Or maybe she has changed and he followed suite.)
He will try to protect her, in that awkward manner of his, and when asked, he will try to deny it. Sometimes he fights with her for no reason at all, and that in itself is a bigger step in their relationship than all the talks he used to give her as a child.
Only it's not a relationship. It's a rivalry, a blood-feud, something darker and far more twisted than any relationship ought to be.
Sometimes she considers forgiving him. Only, she hates him too much to do so.
(Only, she's too scared to do look deeper.)
-x-
Sometimes, it's too easy to love him. No, it's not love, because she can't love and neither, it seems, can he. For all the defenses she put up, he seems to have double the amount.
(She can never see the cracks, the toppling towers, and for that, Ren is glad.)
It's too easy to...respect him. Care about him. Caring never needed love, not the romantic type at least. He is her sempai, her mentor, her tutor, her manual all rolled up in one package. It wasn't like this at first, but then again, neither was her relationship with Sho.
She's learned since then to look past the first impressions, to try and see the change that (always) sometimes appears.
He's kinder and more considerate now, calling her back whenever she leaves a message. He always knows when she has a problem, maybe even knows her better than she knows herself.
And that scares her, just a little, because he always has the solution when she needs it. And he always gives it, freely, openly, no questions asked. If she has an issue, she can talk to him and have it solved in an instant.
That is what scares her the most, this dependency. He is her first thought in a problem, her first call in an incident, her first word in an issue. It's not healthy to be like this-look what happened with Sho. What's still happening with Sho.
(She doesn't know what's still happening, for that matter, only that it's different and she can't say she hates it entirely.)
So she tries to distance herself a little, stand on her own two feet instead of constantly using him as a crutch. Now, in an accident, she thinks Ren and then What can I do? She doubts she can stop thinking of him instinctively, but at least she doesn't act on that emotion.
Yet he still finds out somehow, coming after the emergency's dealt with. What's wrong, he'll ask, and she'll smile, Nothing.
It's still nice to know he cares. She thinks she might just because of that. Care.
It's not quite that scary when she thinks they might be friends.
-x-
She hates it, with every fiber in her being, to the very core of her soul, when they pull a fast one on her. When Ren does an act too far, causing her heart to beat (beatbeatbeat, a marathon runner). When Sho gives her advice, in an oddly soft voice that makes her stop and stare.
It's just not fair.
She was supposed to hate them. Hate or respect or not even think about them. There were supposed to be lines, carefully divided portions of her life where she would keep them separate from everything.
Then they do something like that-something strange and stupid and wonderfully unexpected-and her boxes break apart.
She doesn't know where to put them, only that the border between hate and love is blurred.
(And then again, isn't hate another form of love?)
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