C.L.O.V.E.R 'Verse

Six Tragedies in Tandem

Part |: Jumping

Author's Note: Some non-canon, grim point of view stuff. Ukyo-centric. Each chapter takes place in a different world and there is no specific world order, so it's not really continual. This is the Clover world. I don't know why, but each time I try to write something for this series, the result is some variation of the same thing.

So, here we go.

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The street is just a tiny strip of pavement from this perspective.

Narrow and gray, with a deceptively smooth appearance. The toes of his heavy boots peek out over the edge of the roof as he rocks with a gentle idleness, resignedly calm. It's the umpteenth time, and he has no demons to whisper urges of a free fall.

He is the demon, and indeed, his destination lies fifty or so feet below.

The late afternoon sunlight glints on the metal frame of her hospital window. He has to tilt his head just slightly to get a good look at it, but that's the one.

It's been five minutes since finished his trek up to the adjacent roof, but he's already thought of at least ten different scenarios in which he, by some second miracle, makes it to the other side. All of them involve climbing into her room, and at first, it's just to make sure she's there. Assuring she is alive, loved and on her way to a happy life seems to be the most he can do anymore.

Infallible torment, to keep finding himself completely out of place in her presence when all he wanted from the start was the privilege of being at her side again. He'd lost his mind maybe two hundred cycles ago, but if there was a chance the next one would be the right one, then...

The tepid breeze stirs his long, mint hair. He feels the weight of the braid against his shoulder and smiles helplessly as he recalls the bashful way they'd looked at each other and appraised the similarity between them the first time they'd met. That's all it'd been–a similarity with no particular depth.

Baseless as it is, he would need every digit and the stars in the sky to count on all the times she'd looked his way on the street–all the times he'd held his breath as he fantasized a knowing look shifting in those round, curious green eyes.

"I think it suits you, too, Ukyo, if you don't mind me saying so."

"Aha...Do you really think so?"

"I do."

"...Thank you."

Just his hopeful imagination.

Once, he'd become so deluded he'd traumatized her by getting hit by a truck neither one of them had noticed approaching on the road. It was something he rarely looked back on, partly out of shame, the other part grief.

The look of horror contorting her quickly paling face...And god, the way she screamed...

The cycles only seemed to grow more merciless. In effect, he lost himself slowly, just trying to find some peace within each one of them.

One road split into two, then three, all seeming unlikely to ever meet again.

One way; one way only, and how did it become this way, anyway? When he looked back, everything seemed smaller, but it was all there...

They were there.

All he had to do was move in reverse...

Yet, if by some chance he found himself inside that room, on the other side of that street, standing over that bed, it would be what little rationale he had left, tucked away in the place where he fought to keep his sanity that kept him from stealing her away. He'd tried and succeeded in some awful things before he'd reached this hopeless plateau.

Sleeping under bridges, riding on the train for a while, sometimes finding some place quiet just to break down into a sobbing mess for an hour or so. However little they helped, he took measures to keep himself in check once he found himself in another crushing scenario.

He'd been fortunate enough that his desperation had never wound him so tightly that he'd resorted to something like kidnapping. Such an idea weighed heavy and grim, dead in the middle of his conscious. Ugly, and appalling, however it appealed to the rawest, most frantic part of Ukyo. The piece of him drowning in darkness, dreaming of vibrant days, a warm, smaller hand in his, and no fear of whether he'd wake up tomorrow only to remember that his lover is gone.

Before he realizes it, he's fully contemplating what it would take to get onto the roof of the hospital building. When his feet tip forward and his weight follows with him, he folds his outstretched arms into his chest as though embracing his shame.

As the street expands all too quickly below, Ukyo is reminded why this is called the easy way out.