Title: Harmony in C
Characters: Shizuka x Mokuba
Rating: K / M
Summary: She is a six. Digging in her mothers make up bag. She's cracked and chipped and still her brothers little sister. Just like he's black haired and in all forms still his brothers shadow. Perhaps shadows can seek deffinition together.
Notes: Man this was a bitch to write. Again, for Compyfreaks101 contest. Season 6.
--
When Shizuka was six, she dug into her mothers make up bag, took out anything in the shadow red she could find. Painted her nails red. Smeared lipstick across not only her lips (all cracked and dried, the tears didn't reach down to her lips to keep them wet) but across her eyes. The massacara went on next, thick and gluey.
She stared at herself, and began to cry again. Prima Donna acting.
She vaguely wondered if Jou would recognize her. Sometimes she swore her mother didn't. The heels slipped off her feet. The world still wanted her to grow up to fast. Tripping and sliding on the wooden floors. At the end of the corridor, hiccuping childish tears, (that felt a little like blood sliding with the weight of the massacara) curled up at the bottom of the cupboard.
Her mother found her hours later, scolded her for ruining her lipstick and scuffing her best heels. Then shushed her and wiped the ugly blackness off her face, put her under the covers and they fell asleep together.
She wondered who was trying to rub the ugly blackness away from whom. As her mother slept, Shizuka traced all the lines on her mother's ageing face.
--
She's a little older now. She's with her big brother again, but she's no longer his world. Even though she's still following him everywhere. Afraid, so afraid. The terror's of blindness are nothing compared to reality. When the darkness fades to black, she'll wonder what she has left.
She's hugging the teddy bear Jou bought her, fingers digging into the soft texture, looks up -- and stares, her mouth open, tongue pressed against her bottom teeth. She briefly wonders if that's the colour it'll be when theres nothing left for them all to fight anymore. She hopes it feels like the toy under her fingers.
Then she snorts and blushes, he's younger then her, and is she really thinking this about a boy? She never thinks like this, its always about Jou, her one and only big brother.
Besides, there's no mistaking it, -- its that casual shift of the shoulders, that look of integrity, the way he lifts his jaw, -- he's a Kaiba. Jou would be so mad if she wanted anything to do with the Kaiba brothers. She buried her face into the teddy bear and smiled. That fake smell that came out of stuffed toys, that packaged happiness.
Maybe Yuugi would rub off on him, maybe he would learn that friendship could form. Perhaps she could show her brother for once, that not everything was the way it seemed?
After all, hadn't they already seen that once?
--
Sometimes she has nightmares. Fingers reaching blindly, where everyone around her was dieing.
She could hear it. But there was no vision. The soft laughter. The thump as bodies hit cold concrete. She heard the slosh and the splash on her legs of the warm stickiness. Anzu was screaming, her mother was crying. She could hear a deep voice, that sometimes was Jou, or sometimes the other side of Yuugi. Sometimes both. She wasn't sure who was meant to be saving who anymore. All of them telling her to run. Run from what was coming.
But no horror was like that of the unknown. Stumbling. Blind. Lost. Confused. Untill she heard the whisper in her ear. The hand at her throat. The soft kiss of the blade as it slid like she was made of butter. She felt no pain, just the warmth spilling down and down. Like sunshine water.
And then when she thought she could be no warmer, sight returned. Control. She stared at her hands. Dripping like summer rains. She could see her now red clothes. Feel the blood sliding out of her lips. She began to walk forward. There she could see -- all of them. They was discussing -- there was Jou, bright Jou, her big brother. Whipsering out of --
Slit throats.
She screamed.
--
She didn't know when the younger Kaiba began appearing in her dreams. His black hair blurred into the dark shadows. The only one not mauled, unharmed. Not touched by blood. The only one that saw her. That spoke. That knew her.
Her brother asked her what she dreamed of, she just said of nightmares that she couldn't remember. He soothed her for a little while.
That was enough she supposed, getting up and getting dressed again.
This is Shizuka at five in the morning. Fingers wrapped around her dress as she pulls it on. Her mother had given it to her before she had gone blind. It was the pattern that appeared in the bright lights behind her sightless eyes. Blindess is not dark. It is existence beyond the darkness. It is bright and burning. It is all consuming. That's how she knows her nightmares for what they are. Mocking and untrue. She knows Jou will never not see her. Never ignore, no matter what was happening. He'd done so much for her. All for her.
The sun shine was playing across her face as it darted amoungst the clouds. She stared out the window as Tokoyo ressumed its dance for the new day. She smiled, pressing her fingers against the glass. Even in her lack of sight, there was light. She would stand in the light and admire that darkness, which she knew she couldn't ever be part of. She had not the soul of a being to be in that sort of turmoil. She, at least, knew where she stood. With her brother.
Just like, she summerized, Mokuba did as well.
--
She wasn't sure how this had happened. She was cold and shivering. So was he. This was the darkness she feared most and as she hiccuped her tears, rocking to generate heat in her muscles, he stood on the other side of the room, confused and as scared as she was.
Yet, he hadn't fallen apart like she had.
"It's alright. Nii-san will come"
Her hiccups and irregular breaths stop, she digs her finger nails into her knees, in turn pulling her knees to her chest and nods. "He will."
--
She's shivering now. She misses the light. It's getting to her and she keeps shaking. From cold, from fear, from how much she wants to pull him to her and bury her nose into his hair. She doesn't know.
He is noticing, but culture dictates they say or do nothing, not till she asks. Not till the line is crossed.
But catching his eye, she lifts up her shaking hands. Like he is water and she is thirst. He steps forward, hesitant. This is unfamilar for him. Kaibas dont touch. Kaibas don't hug. Especially not a Jounouchi. Especially not this Jounouchi. But when you can't see, what does it matter?
He trips over his feet, hands landing awkwardly against the wall under her arms. They stay like that for a minute. His breath against her neck, warming her. She wonders if maybe they are both a little sick. Sick in the heart. Sick in the head.
He was younger, but he had shot up, her frail body pressed against him. She was pulling them as close as they could be. She had no notion of what she was feeling, but he was darker then she, that black black hair, but that smile. If she'd been in love, he might of broken her heart with it.
But she knew now, that he felt it too. This was as close as they knew how to be.
"They will come." He murmured. The dark cave echoed with the whipsers.
"We'll be saved."
"Yes"
They still knew, what they were. Where they belonged. Redemption always has a costs, she remembers. It cost Jou's soul for her eyes. But Yuugi got it back. He always got things back. If nothing else. Yuugi would save them. Could save them. Would save them, from their sides.
--
This is Shizuka, sleeping. Mokuba's arm is around her waist. Her nose is pressed into his shoulder on the cold cave floor.
That is how they are found. Borderline children. Borderline adults. That being of growth, a teenager after all.
Borderline indecent.
Jou and Seto shake their siblings awake and pull them apart. They don't meet each others eye. Everyone looks the other way.
They blearly stare at each other across the room, sleep fogged brains making it all seem surreal. The world needs saving again and Shizuka thinks about taking Jou's hand again. She doesn't. Just nods to Mokuba.
Mokuba isn't standing behind his brother this time. Now he is next to him.
No longer in the shadows, no longer needing guidance. This is how sibling fall with the seasons. She wasn't six any more, but the world wanted her to grow up. She bowed her head, and admitted defeat.
--
The next time she sees him, years have passed. Its a foggy memory for both of them. She wets her lips and turns to the congregation. Her wedding is a quiet affair, she feels that she has to invited both Kaiba brothers, they've been a influence just as much as any of them.
Her brother walks her down the aisle, their father is dead. No one but Jou mourned his passing.
She feels no older then she ever did, at her brothers side she is just the same as she was before. But when she looks at him, takes a deep breath and kisses her husband as legacy dictates, she knows neither of them see each other as just the sibling, but as grown beings, who live behind but yet apart. A light and a darkness. Cast in shadow, beings seeing each other clearer then the moon or the sun.
This is them, knowing themselves. She knows, some how, that when the times comes, she will find him.
--
She's not sure how old she is when her husband is finally dead and she falls against him, skin against skin. It's dark like it should be. But he gives her something to redefine her light withm the one inside her eyes when she orgasms. He kisses her through the gasps, the mewls and her moans that follow. Her body aches for him, and his hair.
His hair is just as she knew it would be. The colour the darkness fades into, as soft as her childish remains, and she can just press kisses into as she cradles him as she did in the dark of that foggy cave.
--
When he asleep, Shizuka is six again. She ponders that this isn't love. This is just infatuation. She smiles. No, it isn't even that. It is definition. For the first time, it is clear. It is clear, but evanescent.
There is no more Prima Donna pretending, instead she traces the lines on his face. Tracing all the lines on Mokuba's aging face.
--
end.