The Two Lives of Reki and Fujio
-a .hackLegend of the Twilight fan fiction by Calliope-
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Message: It's about time I wrote something .hack, I LUVIST .hack! To date I've seen/heard/read/and played everything there is, save for the final chapter of the game. Well, anyway, I wrote this one morning while I was sitting alone in my best friends basement in my jammies waiting for her to wake up and get her ass outa bed. We'd been playing .hackOUTBREAK that night so I kinda had .hack on the brain... Balmung and Reki have always been my favorite characters, and I luv them in the .hackLegend of the Twilight mangas. (I'm not a big fan of .hackDUSK so I don't consider its events in this fic) So, anywhoz, I sort of started scribbling on some scrap paper, writing from Reki's POV, with what I knew about him from reading "Reflections in the Azure Sky" and this is - more or less - what came out of that. The style's kinda weird, and I'm sure I've broken like, a hundred rules of good writing, (like tense shifts! AGG!) but oh well... such is life. Hope you guys like it! R & R if you can! Thanx!
Summery: Reki reflects on his double life: both as his real self Fujio, and his digital self, Reki. There are both conveniences and trials being two people in one body - and he thinks about the emotions he must deal with when both his selves are torn between the people they love in their separate lives.
Warnings: shounen-ai
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It's not hard to imagine, that every player who sets foot in "The World", begins a second life. When your avatar first enters into that perfectly created universe of pixels and programing it is, as though, you are reborn - a new person, with a clean slate. That is the beauty of the WWORPG - it is, essentially, another living world. We can be, and become, whomever or whatever we desire; completely separate from the lives we live offline.
Inside of such a system, everything is constantly moving - just like life outside does. There is no pausing it. No stopping it. Wether you are online or not, The World, will continue to progress and change. As will the people inside of it.
Those who find themselves consumed by the allure of such a second world, begin having to lead a double life - with one in the "real" world, and one online. We try our best not to put one before the other, but - more times then not - one falters and falls to the wayside in favor of the life more dearly loved. Living one life is tough enough; yet, giving up one for another, puts an end to an entire part of ourselves which we have created: be it flesh and blood, or pixels and coding.
I suppose that means that I am blessed in my own way then. For, I, have little need to choose between my life in traditional human existence, and the life which I have created for myself in, The World.
While the CC Corporation runs our virtual plane of existence, I am lucky enough to get to help them do it. As both Fujio and Reki I can lead my lives equally. Unlike the thousands of others within, The World: school children, house wives, blue collar adults - I have need, excuse, and reason, to meld my first and second lives together. I needn't give up one for the other while they fit so well together...
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Every morning it's the same: get up, get dressed, have breakfast, and kiss my live-in girlfriend good bye before I head to work at the CCC...
She's so beautiful and wonderful - probably the most important person in my life. I still remember when we met in college; both history majors in the same classes, and I had fallen for her before the first semester was even over. Afterwards, we moved in together, and fate lead me to programing for the CCC, while she began teaching history. Lately I've been thinking about asking her to marry me; yet, I always seem to have a feeling, deep inside of me, that keeps holding me back.
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I don't think I knew what to expect when I started working in, The World, yet, I've come to feel like I'm incredibly lucky. When, The World, is your job, you don't have to worry about many outside obligations that would otherwise keep you from it - thus, both Fujio and Reki lead similar kinds of lives. It's not that complicated - right? Yet, sometimes I wonder what my girlfriend would say if she knew about my life inside, The World. She's hardly computer literate - so, it's not as though she's especially interested in what goes on. All she knows is where I go, and that the man who calls himself both, Balmung, and my boss - tends to ask a lot of me.
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"Reki?"
"Yes, Balmung-san?"
"I don't suppose you'd be willing to pull an all-nighter with me?"
"Hmm? What for?" I ask, pretending to be more engrossed in what I was doing then I really was.
"Cuz I REALLY wanna have this event done for tomorrow." he smiled sweetly at me. The childish expression, on his anything but childish face, playfully pleading with me to say yes.
I sighed and rolled my eyes, shaking my head. Nothing less from him. But I was smiling all the same.
"Of course Balmung-san, whatever you want."
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Tonight the table in my apartment will be neatly set for two, and my girlfriend will be wearing my favorite flowers in her hair - the way she always does on special occasions.
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Time passes by quickly as we sit there, back-to-back, the pixels of our avatars supporting one another. Together, we work in the darkness, before our glowing program screens - our virtual bodies, doing virtual work, for our virtual world.
In these times, I forget all together, that Fujio has places to go and things to do... an anniversary dinner to attend, where his wonderful girlfriend is sitting alone - with flowers in her hair. While, in the meantime, Reki and his boss have things to do as well... and Reki always seems to have an especially hard time, leaving that angel's side.
"This event will be perfect, don't you think?" Balmung smiles with a sleepy expression on his face, as he closes down his windows for the night.
"Of course." I nod in agreement, wether it's true or not.
It's late now, nearly 4am, I'm sleepy and my right foot has lolled off to sleep far before the rest of my body.
"Thank you again, Reki." Balmung grins at me, "You know, I'd be lost without you."
"Indeed." I snicker back, something in my heart clinging, a little too dearly, to the words from that mans lips.
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My girlfriend is always so understanding...
I came home to find her asleep on the couch, flowers wilting in her hair, and soft white petals falling on her cheeks and dress, like so many tiny feathers. Even so, she didn't scold me - yet, I'm almost certain I saw tears in her eyes when I left for work again that morning.
Half of me wants to stay and make it up to her, but... someone is expecting me...
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"That was perfect Reki! Just perfect!" My boss praises me happily, his hand on my head, ruffling my avatar's hair.
"Best event ever?" I ask, smirking, not wanting to show him too much enthusiasm.
"Best event EVER!" he replies emphatically.
I can remember a time when Balmung's enthusiasm toward, The World, surprised and even unnerved me - but, it wasn't like that any more. I try to remain stoic about the whole thing, but, I admire him - envy him even - for this life and his first life, for him, are nearly one and the same.
In the idle chatter within the hundreds of hours we've spent together, I've never heard him talk so highly of a single thing in our, flesh and blood, reality as he does of things within, The World. Looking over the painted-pixel landscapes, he never sees anything which to him is not "real". But, The World, is so tangible that one could hardly blame him; as, at times, it can seem impossible to distinguish between what exists in the world of reality, and what exist in our - real - World. And thus there are times when I never want to leave.
You see, the sun is always shining in, The World. You'd never see it rain in Mac Aue, and the breeze is never too warm or to cold in Dun Loriege. Beautiful country side, icy snow drifts, lush forests, or beautiful, dark, rainy fields - it's all here; with just three little worlds... So it seems little wonder, that, Balmung, rarely leaves - and as such - neither do I.
There was a time when my heart beat faster around him, out of fear and apprehension - when I didn't even know myself, wether or not I liked, The World. But now that feeling, when my heart is beating just a little bit quicker in my chest, - has nothing to do with fear. I can say to anyone, without the tiniest bit of doubt, that I love, The World. Yet, sometimes I think there are other things that I would say and do - would my character - both psychological and fractal - allow me to do so. But it is becoming painfully obvious now - that my two lives have begun to inhibit one another...
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"Reki...? Rekiiii...? Hello...?" A sharp jarring sensation snaps me back to "reality" and I realize that I've been gapping out again.
"Oh - Balmung-san, I'm sorry, I was -"
"Daydreaming?" he enquires.
"Ummm... something like that." I stumble, as I feel my face flushing behind the visor of my headset.
That's all right," he laughs, "I guess it just means you're comfortable here with me."
I only nod, and turn my attention back to the task at hand.
"It really is turning out beautifully." Balmung's quiet, appreciative voice lulls, as he admires my nearly completed handy work, with a kind of awe that only he could find in such things.
In the open book in my avatar's hands I place the last of the coding necessary to set a soft cool breeze running through our newly created field.
Standing alone on the crest of a gently sloping hilltop, with virtual grasses painted in a subtly blue tone of green - which, Balmung, insists reminds him of my eyes - we can look over the whole of what we had just created.
It makes you feel almost God like, to watch a sun-set you created hang our your own horizon and know that soon, others will see its beauty and not think of you at all - because, the illusion you created will seem so real...
The first of the golden autumn leaves which he and I had just work so long and hard to render - floated down from the surrounding trees and off into the distance on that cool-autumn breeze. In a moment, it felt more like spring then fall, as tiny leaves - in an array of hues and colors - began to dance around my head like Sakura blossoms during the flower festival.
I sighed, feeling proud of myself, as that exact, calm, wistful feeling I'd been wishing to create with this field washed over me. There was no need for background music here - nothing to distract from the beautiful sound of the wind in the trees and the rustle of autumn leaves. This was a place so perfect it could never exist outside of, The World, and I sighed again to myself; content in that knowledge.
A bright, white, feather, brushed across my face before blowing along with the leaves, off into the distance. And it was then that I remember that I am not alone. For a second I meant to turn to him, and say something - but I forget what it was as I felt leather bound and feather laden arms reach around me from behind and pull me backwards.
In this game - in this time, when nothing is beyond technology - within this, World, bodily contact is still always the strangest sensation.
That quick heart beat returns, as I hear the angel behind me sigh and feel him pull me closer - his chin dropping to my shoulder as he whispers in my ear...
"It's perfect, Reki -" and I can hear his smile in his voice, and wonder if he could feel the way my heart was pounding.
Something inside of me wanted to walk away from him then, as if, my other self was wishing to protest, in favor of the things I already held dear - but, Reki, didn't care.
"Balmung-san..." I hear myself say softly, as I wrap my arms around his and clasped his hands underneath my own. I can feel his soft feathers blowing in the wind and tickling my skin as he holds me tighter still, add kisses the back of my head.
I cannot be certain what he - or I - was thinking right then, but I made no motion to stop it. I gazed out over the reality which we - together - had created, and with his arms around me then, felt the desire to never leave it.
I knew him better then anyone, and I don't doubt that he would say the same of me... yet, in that mocking and un-serious tone of his; no matter how true. And it so often seems like I am the more grown-up and mature of the two of us, even if he is older then me; but, right then, I felt much younger... Just a childish boy - with my face flush and my heart racing - in the arms of someone who I knew I loved.
We've never needed to say much to one another, after all, even actions carried out in pixels, speak louder then words between people like us.
Resting back in his arms I tuned my head and looked up at him. His soft, feather-white hair, blowing gently around his face and a subtle, but intense, smile crossing his expression. His eyes - I saw them far less in "reality" - and I don't doubt I wouldn't even recognize them. Besides... these eyes - those of the avatar I knew him as - were so perfect and blue, like the flawlessly rendered skies of, The World. I knew he had always looked at me with something I could not grasp.
It didn't matter if it was between avatars - nothing more then a meeting of pixels - but when he kissed me then, I felt it, and it ran threw my body like an intense shiver... so strong that I never wanted it to end.
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Every day, when I left work, I left thinking how much I wanted to stay. I wanted to be there for him... with him... he was the center of the other universe to which I belonged. The light in my second life - no matter how we acted to one another, be it arguing, teasing, or in anger - we were something else. Balmung... an administrator, a player, and a character within this - anything but fictional - World... I had grown to love him as both Reki and Fujio; and I knew it.
But, what was I doing? This was, no matter how I feel or how strongly I wish it - not the "real" real world. I had a job, and an apartment, and bills, and a cat - and a girlfriend who loves me dearly...
So - what was this?
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I suppose I could only have kept lying to myself for so long - trying to think that the two lives I lead were so perfectly intertwined, and yet so far removed from one another, that they could never interfere. But, it was clear now.
While my lives were separate, I was still only one person. Fujio and Reki, they are both me - me's living different lives - but me's which still had to share the same thoughts and feelings... and those feelings, were for Balmung.
How could I do this? To my girlfriend, to myself... to Balmung? The longer I stayed in his arm - with his lips so wonderfully pressed to my own - the more bittersweet questions began to form in my mind...
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When I came home that night - she was gone. The promise ring I had given her so long ago was laying on her pillow with a letter in her sweet and beautiful handwriting that I knew so well:
Fujio - I love you more then I love anyone in this world... and you know I always will. But I can tell, as I know you can, that there is someone, somewhere in the world, who you think of more then me... For as much as I know you love me too, and as much as I know you would be with me forever... I know what I am doing is right... for me, and for you. I love you with everything I have Fujio, and I am certain - that whoever it is you love, even more dearly then you love me - that they will love you with ten times the intensity that I ever could...
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That's the thing about WWORPG's, there is no stopping them - they move, and change, wether you're there for it or not - just like life outside the game does. As simple as it may seem, and as wonderful as it may be - to be able to begin a second life within those coded walls... you can never really leave your first life behind. It will always be there when you log out.
And as I sit here now... with my guardian angel watching over me - I think of the things that I have lost and gained through, The World. And while I have, both regrets and joys, and while I cannot atone for the wrong doing of one life within another - I can still try to make both of my selves better because of it.
I don't know if I deserve to have his arms around me, or to feel the sensation of his lips so gently pressed to mine - but, be that real or not - the feelings inside me, and the way my heart beats faster, are real enough to compensate for anything imperfect within, The World.
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The End