Disclaimer: If I said I owned it, what would ya do? Huh, punk?
Claimer: This wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. I find Ryuhou and Mimori to be a very interesting pairing, one whose dynamics and possibilities I think are quite interesting. In addition, I wanted to try my hand at one of the general themes to SCRYED, so yeah.
Rated M for uh, explicitness? Violence and perhaps a bit of citrus.
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'Idiot. You should never have told her the truth.'
Even now, as he watched her from the shadows, the words replayed themselves over and over again in his mind, bitterly mocking him for his own self-dictated crumble in his so-carefully laid out composure.
It had been so hard for him.
"I just want you to tell me the truth – am I important to you?" she had blurt out, unable to meet his gaze. Resolutely, she stared off into the distance, and somewhere deep inside of him, he knew that this was the moment – this was the moment that he had been prepping himself for this entire time.
Every moment since she had come back had been a methodically planned step leading to this pinnacle, and each and every step to ascend to this point had been a battle perhaps more painful than any he had faced before. He was no stranger to pain, at this point in his life.
Once upon a time, his heart had borne wounds so deep and profuse that he was certain his insides were dead – or, if not dead, then certainly wounded beyond any chance of salvation. It was a mortal wound – a pierce through the very essence of him, a terrible blow that irreparably shattered him beyond repair.
It was not the naivety of his youth that had died that day, lying down and simply fading away alongside his mother, strewn in the city rubble like so much refuse. No – it was his heart and his soul that he laid to rest with her, left to rot in a dank hole in the ground for all of eternity.
Ryuhou died that day, but his death was not something to really be mourned. It was better that way, really – safer for those gentler parts of himself, to keep his mother company until omega comes. The Lost Ground is no home for a spirit such as his had been – there was no need for another raped soul with threatening tears and another god-damned sob story. What purpose could such a boy possibly serve? What contribution could he possibly make to the world?
No; the Lost Ground would not mourn the loss of Ryuhou, but rather rejoice for the birth of his replacement – the Alter User, master of Zetsuei, destined to become a most respected officer in the ranks of HOLY. The death of what he was became the birth of what he was to become – and in some strange way, it was all pleasantly symmetrical. The simple logic and clarity offered him a kind of sterilized form of comfort – an arms-length nudge of encouragement.
He had to be strong if he was to pursue his personal crusade. Native Alters, he had been told – he had believed – were the root of all that which had taken everything from him, and so, in his newly generated dispassionate logic, he would return that favor if it killed him.
Killed him… Heh. What a joke. He was already dead.
What a perfect warrior he was! Spectacular, really, because he possessed every extra little nudge and drive that ever could have gotten him ahead. He had the power, the strength, and – thanks to his terrible tragedy – the conviction. He believed, and nothing else mattered. Nothing. Not his own life – and, though he wished desperately to say he did it all for the protection of those inners without the Alter powers to protect themselves, he had always known it was a misconstruction he told to justify himself.
It was never really about them. It was never applied to the real people – the warm, living, and wholly alive people. To truly apply it to them would be to allow himself to care, and to allow himself to care was to allow himself a fatal weakness – a fatal weakness that would lead only to the kind of despair and sorrow that he knew he could not survive ever again. No – he would not be able to morph and adapt next time – of that he was certain.
Next time, he would die, completely and thoroughly.
And, while the thought of dying wasn't in and of itself unappealing – it would, after all, offer some semblance of comfort that was severely lacking in life – it would keep him from attaining his vengeance, as it were. His ideals would be left discarded and forgotten, and somehow, the thought of dying without accomplishing what he had set out to do seemed like an unforgivable treachery.
His mother deserved more than that. All the others who had died innocently deserved more than that.
The part of him that had died that day deserved better than that.
And so was the story that led to what he was. 'What a pathetic anecdote – what a fucking sob story,' part of him would jab relentlessly, whenever anything within him even started to twinge with the beginnings of emotion. 'Get a fucking hold on yourself. You're too weak – always too weak!'
Always too weak – that was the only true explanation. He was still too weak – too human – and that was why his goal was always just out of reach, tickling the tips of his fingertips, but never quite within his grasp.
Yes; perhaps he was too weak – but he was making progress. He was so very close…
And that was when she had come.
Mimori Kiryu.
Even now, the slightest thought of her sent a jumbling chorus of mixed chaos throughout him.
He had never truly forgotten her – no, certainly not that. But he had been relatively certain that she was as easily contained as ever other asset of his life. She had been a memory – a fond memory, granted, one that made him warm and giddy with elation from another time – but a memory nonetheless. Mimori Kiryu was as dead as his mother, he rationalized to himself. She was gone, far away, and she likely didn't even remember him.
He would never see her again, and though that pained him on some distant level that he never really cared to look closely at, he made amends with it. She was as dead as his mother – and thusly, it was alright to take pleasure in those memories. It was a morbid and masochistic train of logic, but it added up just the same. Gone, dead, whatever led up to it: it meant none could hurt her – and, more importantly, none could take her from him.
And so, when he found that he simply could not bear his self-imposed solitude anymore, he replayed those few but precious moments over and over again in his head. Even years later – even with the certainty that he would not see her again – she was as much a warm comfort to him now as she had been then.
He loved her. He loved her for who she was, for what she embodied, for how she made him feel – and perhaps most of all, he loved her because she was a treasure that was far away, that none could hurt, none could take from him. Mimori Kiryu was a memory, easily cosseted and protected within his heart, the only meager pittance he needed to maintain his relentless drive into the inhumanity he needed to obtain.
Just a memory – a stand alone complex that existed solely within himself. It never even occurred to him to think of her as she might be today – as she might have changed over the years. To think of her as an idealistic, intelligent, beautiful woman. It never occurred to him that perhaps – maybe – she had felt a rapport with him even as he had with her, or that he could ever have meant to her even the slightest fraction of what she was to him.
And so, when he first heard her name – heard the commander offhandedly mention that the Kiryu heiress was coming to HOLY to operate as a scientist, he had refused to believe. Kiryu – the name sent frantic alarms going off through every part of his being.
Kiryu.
Mimori Kiryu.
Here.
Here.
At first, he wasn't sure which he disbelieved more – the fact that she was coming here, or the fact that she was real. That she was more than that cosseted memory – that soul that he wanted to believe so desperately was safe, far, far away from this fucking hell hole known as the Lost Ground that let none escape unscathed.
And yet there she was. Oh, he had spent years upon years carefully building that wall of ice around himself, and it had served him so well that day. He hadn't even looked directly at her, though he wanted to more badly than he had ever wanted anything up until that moment in his life. He had spoken offhandedly, offering some generically sterile greeting, and from her surprised reaction, she certainly had not expected it.
A part of him felt a certain sadistic satisfaction at her nearly pained reaction. The moment he had seen her, he had nearly lost all control.
He had almost raced down the stairway and grabbed her by the shoulders and screamed at her – told her what a stupid little girl she was to come here, of all places – so helplessly stupid to come to such a dangerous place. The muscles in his hands twitched, and though he would later abhor that the thought had ever crossed his mind, he knew that he was not above striking her to make her see the truth. For all that he could never truly hurt her, such an action would surely have effectively severed her bonds with him – but that would have sent her running from this dangerous place. Sent her back to that safe haven that was far, far away from him – somewhere where none of the evils that pursued him could lay hand upon her.
The fact of the matter was, he wasn't really entirely human anymore – and to make her listen, to make her understand, nothing was beneath him.
And yet even as he had contemplated this, another part of him wanted nothing more than the fault down that stairwell and grab her in an entirely different – entirely warmer manner. Even then, he had nearly blushed as the fervid fantasies unwittingly crossed his mind.
He wanted to hug her – to touch her – to assure himself that she was entirely real and solid before him. But beyond that, he wanted to kiss her - and more –things much more primal, things that had never crossed his icily logical mind before. Lurid fantasies of intertwining his fingers roughly into the black silken tresses of her thick mane of hair and pulling her head back, tilting her face so that he could press his mouth solidly over hers – of biting her throat and the spot where her shoulders met the graceful line of her neck…
The torrent of thoughts both appalled and excited him. He hadn't realized how his feelings for her had morphed and changed into something so utterly foreign to the innocent love he had known for her until that very moment.
She was a beautiful young woman, with all the poise and dignity that he had imagined she would have. There was intelligence and compassion in her serenely calm mahogany eyes, and he realized all at once that she had come to embody so much more to him…
He wanted so desperately to tell her – and show her – so very many things. He wanted her to know how deeply he cared for her – had pined for her for so long –
- How angry he was that she was here.
The emotions flickered back and forth within him, warring for supremacy even as he coolly walked away. Above all else, he was furious – furious that her mere presence for a few moments could send everything he had worked so hard to build himself into spiraling uncontrollably within him.
She had to go; of that much, he was certain. It was the only way – the only way. Above every other factor – every other nuance – that was the absolute truth which he believed.
She had to go home. Back to safety – away from him.
And so he had very carefully buried his inner turmoil – so very carefully turned her away at every turn. He had treated her with such careful coldness – such carefully planned disregard.
But she had remained, in spite of it all. In spite of everything, she had remained, so resolute, so stubborn. It had warmed him and amazed him even as it infuriated him.
She had no right to remain – no right.
And so, even as she remained so steady to her own goal, he remained equally as steady to his own. This was a battle he could win – a battle he had to win. She had to go – she had to go back to safety. This was a battle he could not lose, he knew as surely as he had known anything in his life.
He was winning – it was almost complete. Every painful step of the way had taken him that much closer to that goal, and in that moment, he had known he had won. There was something raw about the question – something at the end of her line.
"I just want you to tell me the truth – am I important to you?"
It was the moment – the moment at which he could so easily send her away. The moment which he had been building to this entire time…
But there was something about that gentle vulnerability about her – something that twisted his heart painfully inside of him. Something about the raw purity to her that made him unable to lie in this, this the most important moment of all.
He had squeezed her hand, and his wretched mouth had spoken those words – those words that ruined everything – ruined his methodically laid groundwork, ruined his perfect plan – ruined everything. "Yes, you are. Yes; absolutely. Why do you think I wanted you to go back to the Mainland anyway? I wanted to keep you out of harms way. Seven years ago I was able to be myself – mostly because of my mother – and you."
Treacherous, traitorous heart – treacherous, traitorous mind, body, soul!
Gods-damn it all. He loved her – he loved her! That was why she had to go. That was why he had so resolutely denied his screaming insides this entire time –
But she was both the key and the door to that part of him that he had thought was dead inside of him – the true him.
But his goals were not yet realized and the momentary slice of paradise was short lived. Everything ended in a brutal battle to the death, and this time was no different.
He should have died, but Scheris died for him. Scheris, his young companion who had been like a sister to him for many years. He held her at arms length, like all the others – but she had always endeavored for more. He had saved her life, once, and for some reason she had decided that she owed him that life in return.
He did care for her, but not in the way she perhaps wanted – but she had realized that, in the end, he knew. She had known of his true innermost desires, and she had still died for him just the same. It amazed him even as it broke his heart. His sister, his comrade – gone for him, even though he was not worthy of such selfless love.
She was another added burden to his already heavy soul. Another reason that he had to pursue his beliefs – another reason he could not give up.
He could not bear another 'reason'. He would not allow her to die – not because of him. 'Mimori – go home… Go back to the Mainland, Mimori.'
Steeling himself, he walked out of the shadows, prepared to say and do anything necessary to accomplish his goals this time.
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Ok guys – here's where I need you. I'm writing this in a completely different style to my usual one, so… Does it make sense? Skip around too much? The characterization right – wrong – what? Review, email me, etc. etc. – and there is more to come, soon. What do you want to see?