Author's Notes: I can honestly say I'm back now. Took a while, I know, but sometimes that happens. Sometimes you just have to step back and abandon everything and loiter around the house like a ghost. I'm going to be reworking some old stuff and then, hopefully soon, create something new. Perhaps this Otakon will offer some new manga to inspire me. As of late, I've utterly lost interest in Weiss K and Saiyuki's beginning to come to a close in my mind. Who knows, maybe something fantastic…

Disclaimer: I don't own Saiyuki or the characters therein, and I'm not really bothered by that. I get to play, that's enough.

Warning: Me? Make something that could possibly be offensive? No way…

Please enjoy.

The Apple

I thought before that day that I had never before seen such a ragged and desolate creature. Having been the morbid sort since childhood, I adored inhuman things like winter-dead trees reaching with bare, bracken fingers toward a gloomy and heartless sky, the cawing of crows, the only birds left to test their way through the sunless seasons of my youth. I had believed the first time I saw him that he was as pathetic as he possibly ever could get.

It pleased me that my absence had worn him into one of my adored trees, into my winter sky. A season, bitter and cold and broiling with despair, wrapped up into the seemingly frail set of slouched shoulders and stooped height. He had never eaten much more than bruised fruits bought at half price before I met him, and that was in his bag today. He looked to be starving.

I couldn't understand why he cut off his beautiful hair, the frayed ends of whatever was left tucked like shame under a bandanna. He moved his fingers nervously, though had somehow retained a good part of his grace despite his bony limbs. When he had turned away from the fruit seller, it was the first good look of his face I'd had. Wide lips, lips that seemed made to smile were flat and expressionless, and his skin was so pale that his scars stood out like fresh marks.

He looked like hell.

And when he saw me, he seemed to be looking into hell. Not a superstitious man, but he saw me as if he had watched a ghost, as if he had been catching my ghost at every turn and now I was more tangible than before; I didn't flit away in the blink of an eye. The palsied twitching of his fingers spilled the bag of fruit at his feet, and the coins he had been about to stuff into his pocket followed from his other hand.

An apple tumbled out, then a second. He had always hated apples, said it was something about the texture, but I had devoured them eagerly not a year ago. On his front porch, in an afternoon, I could go through an entire bag of them and not be satisfied. The double meaning of their symbolism making them, to me, still more delicious. Those were the days when I didn't have a name to him, when I was as much a stray dog as any other mutt he might've dragged home.

I realized that he hadn't bought the food for himself but for me. And he hadn't been expecting me. He looked at me as if a moment was all we had, as if the very sight of me broke his heart anew, aching to move and yet terrified. That bag was for me, for my grave.

There was nothing to do but smile, reach down and pick up the apple that had rolled against my foot and buff its skin on my sleeve. Not once did I take my eyes off of him while I bit deep into the crisp warmth. As if that were proof enough, he edged forward.

Fin The Apple

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