Pairing: TsuSoka Warnings: angst, lots of it. shounen-ai, obviously. a smidge of sap, if you squint just right.
Disclaimer: Yami no Matsuei and characters thereof belong to Matsushita-sensei and other important people. Not me.
Notes: Hisoka POV ficlet. Pessimism and angsty musings on the cruelty of hope. Set vaguely post-Kyoto. Huge thanks to Nenya85 for the super!beta. (grin) Also thanks to Mephisto Waltz and DSM for beta-type comments and encouragement. .


Disillusionment

Hope is an illusion. Hisoka does not believe in hope.

Hope is a cruel, cruel thing. It taunts you, tantalizes you with glimpses of heaven, only to let you fall and shatter. It hands you bright dreams with a false smile, only to dash them into pieces at your feet.

Tsuzuki, though, has hope enough for the both of them. Hisoka can see it now, shining in his eyes. He can hear it in the tone of his voice, the question that hangs on the air.

Can I... kiss you?

A question infused with hope, with the possibility of being more than friends, more than partners--Hisoka must either crush that hope, or become a part of it.

Tsuzuki lives and thrives on hope. Somehow, all the many disappointments life has handed him have failed to crush completely that faith in possibility, the will to reach for a dream. Even when he has nothing else, he has always had hope. So many of his wishes have never, will never come true; but still, he hopes. Still, he dreams. Now Hisoka knows that he, himself, is that hope; that this dream is of him. For him.

Can I... kiss you?

It is possible, Hisoka thinks, for this particular dream to come true. It is not so distant as it might be. He loves Tsuzuki, he knows that now, and maybe, just maybe that is enough. It is possible for them to be together, possible that fate will not snatch them apart, possible that it will last. It is just possible.

Not likely--not likely at all. It is against the odds, and it would be strange for fate to suddenly decide to give him a hand, when she has spent his whole life laughing in his face. Fate is a spiteful creature.

There are so many things that could go wrong. So many ways to be hurt, to hurt each other. There is no such thing as happily ever after. Not when life has a gleeful habit of stabbing you in the back, every time you dare to dream.

It is probable that even if he loves Tsuzuki, and Tsuzuki loves him, one of them will die; it is a dangerous life, being shinigami. It is likely that they will get on each other's nerves so continually that their disagreements become real fights, and they will no longer enjoy each other's company. It is almost certain that sooner or later, Muraki will reappear and use them against each other, again.

Perhaps one of them, someday, will love someone else. Perhaps one of them, or both, will become so unstable that they can no longer work together. Perhaps they will both end up in an institution. Hisoka would rather die. He can't stand the thought that he might be trapped in such a place, again, with no hope of even a lingering death to end it. And perhaps one of them, or both, will succeed in committing suicide. After all, Tsuzuki already has, once.

Can I... kiss you?

What does Hisoka, who has never been loved, know about love? He has no way of knowing if he will always feel this way, if he will love Tsuzuki tomorrow, and the next day, and forever. He can make no promises. He has no way of knowing if he will get tired of caring, if he will wake up one day, and simply...not care.

He can't imagine that happening. Tsuzuki is his whole world, the one person who can see his heart. No one has ever cared about him the way Tsuzuki does, for the simple reason that he likes him, likes being with him. Hisoka's never known anyone who liked being around him, wanted to be with him. And Hisoka, certainly, has never been in love, never felt this way about anyone else. Hisoka can't think of any reason why that would ever change. But it could. If there's one thing Hisoka knows, it's that love, like any other emotion, has no guarantees.

Emotions are fleeting and changeable, and they don't depend on reasons. Hisoka knows all about emotions. As an empath, he is all too familiar with the way that emotional reactions are irrational, very often hurtful. He knows well that it can take very little to change how someone feels; even deep, strong emotions are not always lasting or permanent. Emotions are not something that one can count on.

Yet there are some emotions that can take root deep in your soul, until they are part of you. There are times when powerful emotions last even beyond death, like love and hate and revenge. Hisoka has seen it often enough, in his life as a shinigami. He has seen those who mourn from beyond the grave for the lovers they lost, those who cling to a ghostly life, unable to rest as they watch over the ones they left behind. And then too, there are some caught in life and grief for years, unable to move on because their heart is still tied to a dead lover or friend or family member.

Hisoka knows also the ones driven by hatred, lingering to haunt those who wronged them. The ones like Muraki, even, driven in life for revenge on one who is already dead. Or like himself, living after death for his own hatred of the man who killed him. Both love and hate, there are those whose emotion is so deeply a part of them that they cannot let go, even when death separates them from the life that inspired it.

It is possible, then, for such emotions to remain and to last; sometimes they do exist. Love can be forever. But not always. All lovers begin by hoping their love is the kind that lasts, by dreaming of forever. But such is not always the case. Some loves are eternal, while others fade with time.

Hisoka does not know how to tell the difference, in himself or anyone else.

He does not want to hurt Tsuzuki. He does not want to be yet another in a long line of people, nearly a century of people who have abandoned him, loved and left him. He doesn't want Tsuzuki to hurt him, either, to be the one who is left. Hisoka has no idea how far he can trust this, how much it means. Too much hope is required to take it on faith.

Hope and faith have long been things that Hisoka simply can't afford. Hope and believe with all your might, and still, someday the illusion will shatter. The cruelty of hope is that just as you get within reach of it, it vanishes from sight. It lets you dare to fly, to believe; deigning then to catch you as you fall like Icarus, when it casts you down, away from the sun again.

Hope is cruel.

It allows you to think you will not be hurt, leaving you with no shield against the pain when it comes. Pain which is all the worse because you were foolish enough to believe you would escape it. In the end, it is your own fault; you threw away your own defenses, and have none but you to blame for your own agony.

It is dangerous, to hope. Hisoka cannot afford it, and neither, he knows, can Tsuzuki. Not this time. It's too important, it means too much, and fate is seldom kind.

Can I... kiss you?

When Tsuzuki smiles at him in that hopeful way, and lets his feelings show, waiting for a response....Hisoka should not let him hope that this time will be different. It will hurt him, now, to reject him; but it would be far worse to allow this, for awhile, only to hurt him later.

He should shake his head, and frown, and walk away. He should not let Tsuzuki kiss him. It would be cruel to allow this dream, if someday it will only splinter and break around him, leaving mere fragments of the illusion.

Hisoka is cruel. He stands silently, looking into the hopeful eyes, seeing the emotion shining there--feeling it wash over him, through him. He allows a tiny smile to tilt the corner of his mouth. He nods, just barely, and when Tsuzuki kisses him, he parts his lips to taste him, and kisses back. He is cruel and selfish, and a fool. But it tastes good, feels good, oh so good.

Hisoka doesn't believe in hope. But he wants to.

-owari-