Hmm… here I am yet-again. I just can't escape this series' clutches!
This is basically just a one-shot exploring the different ways Saya's life could have gone, and the different men she might have spent it with. Angst, squick and adult themes all over the place, so all kiddies take flight.
The pairings, in order of appearance, are KaixSaya, KarlxSaya, SolomonxSaya, and DavidxSaya (God-DAMN! Saya's just all over the place! XP). Overall, heavy (and obvious) SayaxHaji. I wanted to play with the dynamics between each different character, and see how their presence would've molded Saya's lifestyle.
Also, no flames about how X and Y pairing/character is an abomination against God and Man, please. I grant that may well be the case, but this is just a study of possibilities, nothing more. Other than that, all comments and critiques are welcome ;)
I do not own Blood Plus, and have not imprisoned its characters in a box just to amuse myself on rainy nights.
Honest… ;)
There are facets to everything.
Different possibilities all around—just waiting to be explored.
Joel used to say that about Life. That it was like gazing through a diamond; each angle reflecting something different—harsh or clear—depending on how you viewed it.
Diamonds, after all, are composed of facets.
She's always known this, yet never has. Her own life—the one she salvaged after the Zoo burned to ash—was no diamond. More like light blazing through a prism. So focused and merciless as to set all living things aflame. Single-minded duty sweeping all possibilities—facets—to the corners of her mind.
(Not true, not true, that voice whispers in her ear. Aren't prisms like diamonds too?)
Everything, she supposes, is composed of facets.
You just have to know where to find them.
i) Sunlight.
I want to go back to Okinawa, he murmurs, a tentative promise in his eyes. I want to start the new Omoro alongside you
The pink key glitters like a flying kiss caught in his palm—a tangible invitation.
And she takes it.
It's easy, so easy, to return to Okinawa with him, to fall into the sunlit pattern of those days when Dad and Riku still lived. Boiled eggs and bento-boxes. Balmy afternoons and catchball in the park. Even as they both know, without words, that they aren't the same people anymore. That they've seen too much in the war, are too different inside of themselves.
But they both know too, that different isn't the same as darkness.
And life with Kai is always a bright one, warm and nourishing as the sunlight pouring into their bedroom each morning, and the blood he warms for her in a mug every breakfast. Radio chattering in the background while omelets sizzle cheerfully in the frying-pan, wrapping them in uncomplicated white noise.
The intimacy between them is nothing intrinsic or supernatural, but comforting, solid, in a way that springs from mutual trust. He can't read her with a single glance the way Haji did. Can't tell whether she's sleepy or shaken or remembering, just by the rhythm of her breath. But he knows the simple things about her, like how to make her smile and to stop her from crying; the way she likes her tea and her favorite types of sauces.
Theirs is a pairing composed of incomplete facets. Family, yet not. Brother and sister, yet not.
All the others, the complete ones, are gone. David and Julia to America to start a family; Mao and Okamura to Costa Rica to investigate craters; Lewis to covert missions for the CIA.
And Haji is lost forever. Crushed under the rubble of the MET. Never to resurface.
Kai and Saya are the only ones left behind. Adrift, almost aimless. It isn't a feeling Saya's used to. Part of her almost misses the war—misses the function it gave her. Torn away from katanas and cello-cases, she's cut loose now, obsolete. But Kai understands that, and she knows it's because during the war, he felt the same.
They find a simple harmony in grieving together, excising ghosts of dead family with the Okinawan sunlight and the warm mesh of each other's company.
When she wakes in the middle of the night to tangled sheets and a pillowcase soaked in tears, screaming for Haji, he's always there to grab her. Murmuring her name until she stops shaking, until she clings to the sound of his voice like a warm rope in the cold pit of her memory. When she comes home to find him braced over the table, jaw tight with tears and Riku's old baseball mitt clutched in one hand, she always steps behind him, lays a hand on his shirt-back. Even as she knows he hates for her to see him crying—even as they both know he is.
Even as she knows he'll turn around to face her, the moment he realizes so is she.
The nature of their grief is cyclic, spontaneous. Freak-flashes of lightning; transient as summer storms. Or perhaps subtler than that, more permanent. Shot full of invisible wounds like ozone; rived with ghosts that fill the air like smog. Bleedings and hauntings are perhaps the only fixed facet to their life together.
But, as Kai likes to shrug, it's not all bad. At least they have each other, have the moment.
That's more than they can ask for.
She discovers, unsurprisingly, that she likes living with him in Omoro. Likes how their relationship is unchanged in all ways except the bed she sleeps in at night. In the minutiae of normality, it is easy to forget the past she left behind. Easy to put bandaged claws and black wavy hair to corners of her mind—sometimes for entire hours at a stretch.
She and Kai establish a ritual together; as comforting as it is routine. He still drives by her favorite shoreline on their visits downtown. Sun and waves sparkling in her eyes, arms wrapped tight around a boy-chest that grows broader and firmer as the months pass. He still pops the lids of jars for her, and gripes at her for not putting her motorcycle helmet on right. As if, to him, she'll always be that same sweet-sixteen schoolgirl, so bubbly and breakable.
At night, they watch movies, curled together on the sofa like a normal couple. Sipping from Echigo beerbottles and munching on Botan rice candy that dissolves on their tongues. She likes how his arm curls over her shoulder, how his awkward-gentle fingers ruffle up her hair. Likes rolling her eyes whenever he fast-forwards to see the action scenes, how he mock-gags at the romantic dialogue.
Mushy bullcrap, he always mutters. But she smiles when his arm tightens around her, pulling her closer.
Until the cello-case at the corner catches her eye, a stolid reproach. She bites her lip, pretends not to see it. Pretends not to feel that cold trickle spreading down her chest, strong despite Kai's inherent warmth. Heralding droopy eyes and enfolding cocoons, yet-another thirty years of inert isolation.
Only this time around, Haji won't be there to rouse her awake.
And perhaps… nor will Kai.
She wants to cry, but instead she shuts her eyes. Pops another Boton candy into her mouth, and listens to the reassuring thub of Kai's heartbeat.
Later in bed, he tongues the rice-candy flavor from her lips, replaces it with that particular salty-warm tang of his own. Sweat running hot and slick on their skins, his hands kneading her body like some strange culinary treat. She doesn't mind when he accidentally jabs her with an elbow as he braces himself over her; he makes no issue when her nails scratch his shoulders hard enough to mark skin.
He's always cautious with her in bed; watchful. But it isn't from mutual inexperience so much as an unspoken need to study her, inside and out. He's already lost so many loved ones. Perhaps he imagines that if he learns her, comprehends her completely, he'll unlock the secret to keeping her with him.
(But it hurts, doesn't it? that voice whispers. It hurts to know that he can't.)
She is, after all, a Chiropteran. And he's still a human.
No matter how much they care for each other, he'll never be able to keep pace with her.
He often peaks before she does, arms cording tight around her, muscles tensed on a broken groan. Underlining the fact that they function differently, not just genderwise, but as two separate entities. But she forgets about it when he draws her in as soon as he's caught his breath. One warm hand smoothing her hair, the other pressing between her thighs, seeking and stroking, until she gasps and tenses on a long shudder, finding her own peace.
Saya, he breathes drowsily into her ear.
And she likes how the sound warms her all over, sunshine on her skin—but never touches the preternatural blood flowing beneath.
She doesn't want him to touch that part of her. And it's both a relief and a regret, knowing that he can't.
Theirs will always be a life of incomplete facets. Warm and simple on the surface, yet not. Harmonized in mind and body, yet not. There are still secrets between them; white-lies and wintry truths they never truly share.
Like how she pretends never to see him nervously checking the calendar each morning, tallying the dates with how long she sleeps at night. And how he pretends never to notice her body-temperature falling week-by-week, movements growing slower and heavier as if the Sandman's poured an eternity's dust upon her skin.
Both knowing, without words, that the inevitable is approaching. But both willing, as always, to stay in the light until then. Because at least they have each other, have the moment. In face of all else, that's more than they can ask for.
There are facets missing from this life, she knows. Dozens and Dozens.
She would try to count them all, but she's already slipping from Kai's grasp, and into the darkness of her next Long Sleep.
And a part of her will remember a life with no secrets; with perfect synchrony.
Remember cool white hands drawing her from her cocoon. Remember a familiar face untouched by the scars of time. Cool white lips curved on a smile, vowing despite each thirty-year absence to wait patiently, to protect her forever.
Saya, whispered in a voice that knew her in both sunlight and darkness, but never wavered in its eternal constancy for her.
And she will wonder…
Wonder…
ii) Shadows.
We are soulmates born unwanted, he declaims. Let us got to a world all our own.
And a part of her believes it.
Except life with Karl is no life—but a massive inverse like waking death. There's no love between them, but something darker, more base, binds them together—a latticework as tight as veins-to-flesh.
The taste of him is like despair on her tongue.
It's a taste she knows as intimately as blood.
The moment she accepts his offer, she knows nothing will ever be the same. She may as well have signed her own death warrant; spelt out her name in an ink of rape and blood.
He keeps her locked from the outside world. Imprisoned in a tower, like a princess guarded by a fire-breathing dragon. Except its not fire Karl breathes out, but bile and desolation. And Saya's past is too blood-soaked for her to deserve a princess' Happy Ending.
Karl is more like the snake in her rosegarden. Poisoning her, second by second, to a slow excruciating death.
She misses her family, misses Haji. Screams and yearns for them day and night. But in surrendering to Karl, she's buried her past completely. She knows they'll never be able to find her, that they'll have to go on with only memories of her. Karl's sucked her with him into an infinite pit now, a blazing chasm to Hell.
It's too late to pull her back.
Cut off from all sound and light, she subsists in her cell like a twisted ivy-vine, nourished by misery and shadows alone. Time seems to screech to a standstill, so sometimes she almost feels as if the world has frozen, leaving only herself and Karl behind. A single barred window provides her oxygen and a glimpse into the outside world. Too tiny to escape through, too tantalizing to tear her eyes from.
She sits beside the window each day, unmoving. Prays to dissolve into thin air, so she can slip through the bars and flee.
She has a feeling Karl built that window on purpose. To remind her of what she's lost, and will never have again.
Reality blurs as the months pass by. Colors wash away until she's left with only stale memories of them. Just like her memories of sunshine, of comrades and hope. She remembers she'd once told Haji she needed no comrades. That she was better off in her solitude, fighting the war alone. Except she truly is alone now.
She's loneliness in a way no human language can comprehend.
(Always your worst fear, wasn't it? that voice whispers. To be in the same position as Diva once was. To have no friends to keep you sane. No one to keep you from reaching this point.)
She wonders, sometimes, if loneliness drove Karl to this point too.
There's a sick duality to their relationship. The girl in her fears and loathes him; yet the beast in her sees only kindred, a blood-born mate. What repels during the day is impossible to resist at night. Her mornings pass in a senseless blur; chained and crying for freedom. Nights running coppery and fierce, crunching together like shards of a forgotten nightmare.
He teaches her different facets of life.
Of hunger and bruises, the icy blue of roses in and the liquid copper of blood. Teaches her to scream his name in a shrill sonata of agony and bliss, taut thighs smeared thinly red, flesh marked in jagged welts of his ownership. Cold palms grasping her breasts like warm chalices, fangs tearing into them so her now-neutralized blood spills like red wine into his mouth. While her own voice pleads over the blasphemous rhythm of their mating, forming entreaties and screams on a tongue that's slicked with his tart spendings and the salt of her own tears.
The beast in her howls more more more. While the girl in her only sobs and sobs.
There's no love here—no love at all. Only disfigured fingers lacing tight with hers as bodies rock together, harder and harder, a brutal symbiosis of pain-pleasure-pain. Cold white lips hissing both taunts and tenderness in her ear, commanding her to count how many wounds on her body have healed—count them so he can rip them open all over again.
Saya… he exhales across her skin.
And she retches and shudders all over, the sound like acid and frost pouring down her throat. Freezing and scalding her alive.
They subsist like monsters, mate and feed and fight like monsters. From him, she learns how fast her broken bones can mend. Learns how cracked shoulders can feel like shards and snapped wrists like splinters beneath her skin. Learns all the tunes her own screams can sing, and how pleasure can blur so seamlessly into pain until it's impossible to separate them.
Awake, she languishes under a sick waning moon, memorizing the different shades of starlight and the kaleidoscope-colors it strikes in Karl's eyes. Asleep she weaves elaborate fantasies of her family, of killing Karl and escaping to light and freedom.
Even as she knows she never can.
Karl laughs at her for even imagining she could. For still daring to hope, for believing in that futile word at all. He's lost his hope long ago. Perhaps long before he lost his sanity or humanity. He has nothing left but her now. His glorified goddess by daylight; the doll he denudes and violates by night. There are no secrets between them; no sacred spaces. He knows every shred of her pain, just as she knows every shred his despair. Knows it because he inflicts it on her, and vice versa. Both cut open by Life; bleeding into each other like a tourniquet of bound flesh.
Slowly, indelibly, crushing each other to death.
Because even goddesses topple down. And even dolls break.
It's just a matter of how soon.
There are facets missing from this life, she knows. Hundreds and hundreds.
She would try to count them all, if her tears hadn't run her mind completely dry.
And a part of her will remember a life that could've been in the light.
Remember laughter and pink roses in sunshine. Sleek cello strings under her fingers and gentle blue eyes on hers.
Saya, whispered in a voice that knew both bitter pain and harsh love—but which never hardened in its infinite softness for her.
And she will wish…
Wish…
iii) Fairytale
Come with me, he whispers, and his eyes are like emeralds, rare and expensive as the sweet cologne emanating from his skin. Travel the world with me forever.
And she agrees.
Life with Solomon certainly embodies her sense of fairytale. Prince Charming unshackling Rapunzel from her duty-bound tower. Whisking her away to a life of magic and freedom. She leaves a note for her family in Okinawa. Swearing she loves them, promising she'll be back soon—just not immediately.
Not while Haji's loss is still sizzling so hot and unbearable in the back of her mind.
They depart by private jet, with Saya looking out the window, trying to hold back tears. Concentrating only on the glittery promises Solomon spins in her ear, and how his fingers curl gently around the skin of her wrist. In leaving Okinawa, she feels almost as if she's leaving her old self, her true self behind.
Just the essence left in Solomon's grasp, formed into a body that's now entirely his to hold and please and worship.
Theirs is a relationship of fresh facets. Of novelty, possibility. So many past doubts tangle them together—but they have, as Solomon likes to remind her, an eternity to smooth them out. With him, she can recreate her beginnings, start over. He's seen neither the total monster in her, nor the total warrior. They haven't shared decades of battle like she and Haji, nor the naivety of amnesia like she and Kai.
Solomon met her, at the Lycee ball, when she was still caught between both facets.
Still balanced in limbo, free to fall on either side.
And she lets herself believe that she can return to that time with him. That she can forget about both sides, and the heartache attached to each.
With Solomon, there's no hardness, no rough edges. Everything flows so smoothly, silken and satiny-soft. High-rise hotels and lush oriental carpets become her new romping ground. Designer gowns and sparkling jewels are her new playthings. Bagfuls of chocolates, exotic foods, sultry lipsticks and dangerous lingerie, all raining on her in an endless sensorial cascade.
She wakes to spectacular new cities each day and slips between crisp linen sheets each night.
In Greece, he dines her on juicy black olives and rich wines even older than she is. Red liquid sliding sour-sweet and heady down her throat, dizzying as the hot rasp of his tongue on her skin. In Vienna, he takes her to brilliant high-ceilinged operas where Beethoven himself performed. Symphonies rising to thrilling crescendos, blooming goosebumps on her skin like the delicious aftershocks of a night of lovemaking with Solomon. His arm winding lazy and warm along her waist, lips purring contented sonatas into her nape until she loses sight of everything, loses even herself.
That's what she is, with him.
She's lost.
He teaches her new facets of her senses. How to see things in Technicolor; like a true Chiropteran. Streaks of red and gold in the gloom; predator-vision to track human prey. How to stand at the highest skyscraper, high enough to kiss the face of the moon, and inhale all the aromas below until she can tell each one apart.
In evenings, he takes her dancing to the most exclusive clubs. Shows her every style through the ages, from the slow waltz to the Charleston, the tango to the East Coast Swing. She discovers it takes her no time to catch his rhythm, to match him step for step. They dance for hours, gathering smoothness, freeness in each other's arms. Stay wrapped up together, gazes and fingers twined, long after the floor clears of exhausted diehards and the musicians pack to go.
Both covered in a bloom of sweat, her spicy perfume suffused with his airy cologne. Twinkling and swaying, utterly absorbed in each other.
Later at night, she leans naked on the balcony-rail of their penthouse, a strong breeze fluttering her hair, the city spread around her in color and motion. Eyes closed as Solomon slips behind her, kissing the sweat trailing down her spine and licking his way back up. Hands on her hips, sliding deep inside, until she gasps and arches up on tiptoe, pressed between the cold rail and his hot skin.
Saya… he sighs along her neck.
And the sound yields like sake and liquorice when she turns to taste it on her tongue. Neither tangible nor sustaining, but leaving her ever-hungrier for more and more.
It's not exactly love she feels for him, but something softer, hazier. A thrill of euphoria overtakes her when they touch, blotting out all doubt. The adoration she sees in his eyes is one she's seen nowhere else.
(Except you have, haven't you? that voice whispers. You saw it in another man's eyes too. But you didn't realize it until he was gone. Forcing you to find substitutes elsewhere…)
She doesn't like to think about it too much. But at the same time, it's something she never tells Solomon.
She never tells him she dreams of Haji at night, either. That her subconscious reveals what her soul truly aches for, long after the bright lights have dimmed and the taffeta gowns peeled off, the haze of lust and perfume faded to fog. Never tells him that she cries when she's alone, especially if she hears a familiar symphony on the radio, or sees a lonely cello on display in some shop window.
Instead, she runs to the bathroom, dabbing away the tears before they can stain her face. Saving both her make-up, and the risk of Solomon's unanswerable questions.
She pretends not to feel lost. Hides it by padding herself in perfumes and bracelets, cherry-colored lipsticks and dresses that brush her calves like butterfly-kisses.
But when she looks in the mirror, she doesn't recognize herself anymore.
On her visit to Okinawa with Solomon, Kai doesn't recognize her either. Takes her in with blank eyes instead, seats her at Omoro's table like a costly customer to politely inquire what she'll drink, until she exclaims, Kai, don't you know me?
And although he whoops in surprise and snatches her up then, whirling her in a circle until the walls ring with their laughter, she knows he sees it too. That she's changed, and not just in speech or appearance. That after baptizing herself in a flood of wine and condos, sex and sapphires and endless leisure, she's melted her essence away.
Lost the real her.
Or perhaps she already had, the night Haji died.
She doesn't tell Solomon about it, later at their hotel. Smiles instead, cherry-sweet, and convinces him everything's fine. Lets him draw her from the window and into his arms, lips already parted to taste his electric-slick tongue and buttermilk skin. Familiar ache thrumming through her limbs; a sensorial haze almost akin to amnesia. Glazing all her thoughts into the sleekness of sensation.
She knows it's Solomon's name she'll cry out, later tonight.
Just as she knows it's Haji's face she'll see, as soon as she's slipped from Solomon's arms, and into her secret dreams.
There are facets missing from this life, she knows. Scores and scores.
She would try to count them all, but Solomon's already pushed her down into bed, driven her past the point of all resistance, and all coherent thought.
And a part of her will remember of life of unspoken equilibrium.
Remember cool kisses she floated on like lakewater. Soft eyes that reflected the true image of her, one she saw nowhere else. Simple afternoons of boating, of sitting on tree-shaded benches with fingers interlinked, needing nothing more.
Saya, whispered in a voice that buoyed and steadied her, acting as her anchor in the havoc of this life.
And she will yearn…
Yearn…
iv) Business
We are here to support you, he states. Even if the Red Shield is gone, that remains the same.
And she has no option but to accede.
On a frigid dawn, they visit the cemetery one final time. Lay flowers before the graves of their comrades. All of them are here, in a macabre march of two-by-two. Lewis and Joel. Mao and Okumara. Dad and Riku. Julia and Haji.
All lost on the battlefield, worthy martyrs to a worthless cause. Their demises weren't gradual, like a creeping epidemic—but cataclysmic. A torpedoing bomb that ripped Red Shield's headquarters apart; left no survivors save for David and Saya.
She watched her family burn before her eyes. Saw Kai and Riku roast to ash, saw Haji shatter to pieces while saving her from blazing debris.
Most nights, her ears still echo with his dying plea.
Saya. Fight.
The loss, so massive and unimaginable, tears a raw wound into her. A pulsar that drains all emotion, hollows her inside and out. She's little more than a marionette now. Born to dance to swords and pain; to know no language except despair. The misery swamps her every moment, but she struggles to break its hold.
Inertia is the true enemy here. As warriors, neither she nor David have the luxury to mourn.
Not while Diva still lives, and the war still rages on.
David quickly takes the role of a partner for her, unasked and unobtrusive. Just as she comes to embody the purpose of his Mission, the sole reason that drives him. They're the only ones left behind, and they're both ready to fight on. There's nothing else left to be said.
David gets to work on drafting plans for a new Red Shield, composed of its remaining allies. Gathering all the scattered seconds-and-thirds-in-commands, knotting them into one unified band. Saya takes to sword-katas and meditations by day, and Chiropteran-hunts by night. Life falls into an unbroken process. Phonecalls and conference rooms; discussions with allies new and old.
They're a well-matched pair; David organizes, Saya implements, and they're both single-minded in their duty, prone to few words and fewer sentiments.
All those who softened or warmed them are gone now.
And they both vow, with each kill, to make Diva pay for their loss.
It's something, among the many things, she shares with David. A diverse history runs between them; an overlapping sequence of either coincidence or karma. They were both sucked into the war by the actions of their fathers, after all. They both devoted themselves utterly to Red Shield, to avenge past wrongs. Both dealt in bloodshed, tragedy, more than half their lives.
And they both have nothing left, but to fight on.
Their partnership turns physical by pure default. After a long Chiropteran hunt, bloodstained and weary, it's just a matter of expedience to spare funds and share one hotel room. The single bed, faced by a dresser with a cobweb-cracked mirror, reflects their blank faces as they change with their backs turned, in complete and ceremonial silence.
They slide likewise beneath the sheets, asleep even before their heads touch the pillows.
Later at night, it makes no sense why Saya jerks awake with a chill on her skin and terror scalding her blood. Makes no sense why she turns to a sleeping David, brushing shaking fingers over his chest. A soft touch, up and down, as if checking the rise-and-fall of his breathing—until David's eyes snap open, so sharp and blue on hers. Unblinking, unspeaking, until the last moment her mouth covers his—and they slip very deliberately shut.
Without comment, he rolls them both over, and she welcomes his broad calloused hands on the gooseflesh of her skin.
It makes no sense, no sense at all. Yet it does.
In a life so full of coldness, death, isn't it instinctive to seek that age-old association of sex with heat, life. Is it wrong to indulge in the only comfort their minds can allow and their bodies accept?
Except this facet changes nothing else between them. Saya understands that, the morning she awakens to sunlight hitting her face, and David already dressed and on the phone. Two Styrofoam coffee-cups and a box of takeaway on the dresser beside him. Not out of nicety, but practicality. Because he knows she'll be hungry when she awakes, and knows they need to gear up and get going.
Saya, he greets simply.
And the sound reminds her that the mission still marches on, and there's no time to waste. No rest for the wicked, or for either of them.
Which is why she slips from bed without protest, accepting the coffee from him. Meets David's guarded eyes with a flat nod, and orders, Let's get moving.
There's no romance or sentiment here, and she doesn't want any. Her family's loss has eaten a massive hole into her, taken up space where those emotions used to reside. She has room for little else.
They share continuous journeys; planning and agonizing ways to thwart Diva's plans, with David and Saya arguing over methods and means. Share nights of raging battles, blood-splatters erupting in tandem with the craacks of David's gun and the grisly precision of Saya's sword.
Always together in one place, one moment. Nothing on their minds but the fight.
Later in bed, blankfaced and spent, they lie side-by-side, staring at the ceiling. Still together in one place, one moment. But with nothing on their minds that one would dare to share with the other.
When they grieve, it is always in silence.
When they grieve, it is in every waking breath.
To all appearances, they're an infallible team. Steadfast; steely. They both know their roles in the war. David neither has to beat discipline into her as Kai needed; nor does Saya coax the humanity into him, like Julia wanted. He's not Haji for her either—no man alive could be the friend and servant and anchor and protector and countless other things Haji was for her.
Each night with David, she doesn't think of Haji so much as not-think of him. David is tall and taciturn like her Chevalier. But his kisses taste different, warm and caffeine-tart instead of cool and blood-mint-sweet. His hair, when she grips it in fistfuls, is short and wiry instead of swirly and soft. Most jarring, David's back is covered in scars. A sheet of raised welts she can read like Braille beneath her fingers.
Haji had no visible scars. Just a bandaged claw-hand, and unsmiling white lips.
Likewise, David's eyes, if they ever meet hers, aren't focused on memories of Julia, or an old lover, or whoever else he conjures up in these moments, but on something warm and female beneath him, who gasps and arches in all the right ways and can match his rhythm in the dark.
It's not about replacements, but reassurance. About remembering that in this whirl of continuous death, they're still alive.
(But just barely, aren't you? that voice whispers. You live not on air and blood, but on the memory of when you used to want to need it. You live not to fight, but to lie awake each night and remember what you used to fight for.)
Perhaps, she thinks, David feels the same.
Perhaps he knows this arrangement is coldly temporary; more stepping-stone than destination. They're together by default, sharing no forecast beyond the night. All the same, David's jaw sometimes clenches in battles where she doesn't draw her sword fast enough. And sometimes Saya glances behind her, just before swinging the death-blow, to check if he's still standing.
I wonder what Dad would have said, if he saw us together this way, she once thinks to ask, while David pores over paperwork.
And David pauses, mid-page, replying, I think he'd be glad to know you're not alone.
It's the closest he ever comes to admitting they fit together.
And the first thing she remembers, when he falls to his death at the MET. Torn open while trying to shield her from a Chevalier's claws. Not out of love, but because she needs to live to end this war; to kill Diva and avenge everything they've both lost.
She sees him topple in a pool of his own blood, chest shredded to ribbons. One hand gripping his gun, the other on the red-centered cross at his throat. Eyes so sharp and blue on hers, then dimming as he departs on a raspy plea.
Saya. Fight.
And she unsheathes her sword and obeys, because that's exactly what Haji last said. And all she has left to do anymore.
There are facets missing from this life, she knows. Thousands and thousands.
She would try to count them all, but she's already screaming her signature Valkyrie-cry, and swinging her sword for Diva's neck.
And a part of her will remember a life where coldness was tempered by the warmth of love.
Remember cool fingers brushing the bangs from her eyes, for no reason but because. Remember strains of lustrous cello-notes in her bleakest hours; remember a silent romance built on little things like pink roses, and big things like undying trust.
Saya, whispered in a voice that reminded her why she fought each night, but reassured her that he'd catch her whenever she fell.
And she will beg…
Beg…
v) Diamond
I will always love you, Saya, he says.
And she feeds on those words like on the rhythm of his breath, an unbroken sustenance.
The war has ended a year ago. A vast pressure laid off her shoulders, like Atlas freed from the weight of the globe. She's allowed to live—really live now. Nothing to apologize for, no duties or sins to recompense. The once-bleak world glows and sparkles afresh; a diamond honeycomb. New facets just waiting to be explored.
It is wondrous; terrifying. Like plunging off a precipice and into endless blue sea.
Except Haji is still there to save her from drowning.
His return to her life is a miracle she's half-sure she doesn't deserve. She almost wants to pray to someone; offer some ritual sacrifice as a token of her gratitude. Instead, all she can do is look in his eyes, and spill unspoken thank-yous for every second they're not apart.
At odd moments in the day, while helping Kai cook, while crossing the street with groceries, she finds herself reaching for his hand. Fingers laced tight, as if he might fly off, vanish without taking her with him. At night she lies with her head on his chest, reading farewells and eulogies in every hitch of his breathing—until the same sound pulls her from her fears, and into the womb of gentle sleep.
Fear is so infused into her vocabulary that she still doesn't know how to feel anything else. Perhaps feels it even keener now, because she's so happy at last.
But Haji is her airlock in those moments. With him, she can breathe without suffocating.
He reappears one night in a rush of wind, as she's drifting alone through her old school building. In her thirty years of hibernation, a new high school has been constructed uptown, near a better neighborhood. But the old one still remains, a concrete hulk of half-buried memories. Saya is always drawn to it after dark. A forgotten ghost seems to lurk there—its spectral fingers tugging at her psyche despite the deft cleanliness of amnesia.
Which is when she sees Haji.
Standing by the same gnarled tree they met the first time. Backlit in ambient shadow, tall and mysterious and coolly-composed as ever. Except this time, he doesn't step closer, doesn't slash his palm open and force his blood down her throat. And this time, she doesn't freeze like some clairvoyant confronted by a terrible premonition. Doesn't take off screaming rape and murder into the night.
Deja vu ignites a cold shock up her spine, spreads in a prickle of recognition at the base of her skull.
Instead of gasping, instead of running—she approaches him in five steady steps. Looks at the stars reflected in his soft eyes, and accepts the dripping palm he offers.
When her memories return in a fertile rush, all she can do is cling to him and sob.
Later that night, she accompanies him to a tiny convenience flat downtown. Where he has been staying for two days since arriving at Okinawa, and where she insists they go immediately, so they can pick up his belongings and he can return with her to Omoro.
Red neon darts stream from the single curtained window as they step inside. An unused white futon lies in the corner; a patch of cool purity on the dusty floorboards. Behind the chipped walls, Saya hears the garbled roar of traffic, the thrum of humanity all around.
But in here, time drips to a standstill—a red-tinged pocket of calm.
She isn't sure how they end up staying the night here. Doesn't know Kai and the others spend the whole time frantic, searching for her everywhere. But when Haji steps behind her, circles her in his arms and whispers her name, she can't stop the shiver that runs down her spine. Can't stop the way her head falls back against his chest, the way his cool lips trail up the curve of her neck to her jaw, and her mouth is right there to open hot and questing on his.
Memory intrudes in a white-hot sunburst. That distant night at her school; the probing red kiss he'd carved on her tongue.
But this kiss isn't like that—isn't the kind that wakes the princess or shatters the lock on a closet-full of monsters. It's like the first step across a fragile flesh-and-breath bridge. Flames and infinite loneliness licking below, while salvation glimmers at half-mast beyond.
Traffic swallows the vibrations of their deepening gasps and sighs. Her fingers lose themselves in tangles of his hair; his teeth are sharp and sweet on the flesh of her throat. Hands catching shakily on buttons, on zippers and skirts and pants, until clothes drop like all scraps of self-control.
Outlined in neon-red, they fall on the futon in a tangle of too-cool, too-warm skin.
She loses herself to the dizzying allure of each sensation. The familiarity and newness of it. She scratches. He bites. They lick and knead and pinch. Like composing a shared renga-poem— each aching word and motion flowing surreally into the next. His cool palms warm themselves on the lines of her ribs, the curves of breasts and thighs. Cool tongue slip-sliding in phosphorescent swirls across her skin. Teasing first mewls from her, then harsh racing sobs, until a strange phrase floats into the corners of her delirious consciousness: With my body, I thee worship...
When he slides into her, it is agony and absolution. Copper and salt, and jagged shards of colored light. Blurring the edges of her reality, yet calling her back to herself.
Black-gossamer hair tickles her cheeks as his forehead presses cool and sweaty to hers. Over the labored rasp of their breathing, her fragmented moans, his eyes are hazy with fever and abject gratitude. He sets up a soft undulant rhythm, kissing her slowly with each liquid-languid stroke. Swallows her breathy cries into his mouth, her legs riding high and quivering over his hips. Sprawled beneath him on the futon, black tangles of hair hiding her flush, she thinks dimly of those erotic Japanese shunga prints she'd once seen at the Zoo—lovers twined amid exquisitely-pattered kimonos. How the backgrounds had somehow emulated their rapture, curtains and sheets rippling to highlight the frenzy.
That's how it feels, having him sunk into her. Each sensation magnified.
Saya, he breathes against her lips.
And she loves how the sound melts into all her negative spaces, fusing them together again.
Making her whole.
Her friends and family notice the change in her. She still doesn't laugh as much as she used to—but she smiles more, soft and secret. Her mouth always looks a little swollen; her hair a little tousled. The glow of her eyes, the quicksilver in her skin, is all familiar yet completely new. New too, is that tipsy sobriety in Haji's manner; his unexpected smiles and wry glances. Both of them exuding bliss with every breath, like a sleek jacket or a chiffon frock. They've gone without the sweetness of self-indulgence so long—of course they're gorging on it now.
Saya keeps looking for ghosts and shadows everywhere.
All she sees are blue skies and sunshine.
For a change of scene, they all visit Tokyo—her and Haji, Kai and Mao and Diva's giggling twins. She is logy from the long plane ride. But the city jolts her wide-awake. The lights everywhere—the dazzling signs and restaurants and galleries, the people rushing from one flashing sky-high building to the next—stir her up like a can of soda. Fizzling and ready to burst.
At the Meiji Jingu Shrine, they snap photos of teenagers in dramatic vintage costumes and gothic Lolita outfits. Plethora of frou-frou petticoats and ribbed black-and-white stockings; electric blue lipsticks and stiff-gelled rainbow hairdos. Diva's twins don't take photos. They're dressed eccentrically (freakishly, corrects Kai) enough that they blend in without hassle. Mao drawls that they should get them nametags, or else Kai might take the wrong girls home later tonight.
Watching them prance and giggle, Saya remembers, wistful, a time when she used to laugh that way too—until blood and swords made her forget.
Until Haji's hand curls around hers, reminding her that she has a chance to learn it all over again.
At Ginza's streets, she admires a vibrant Issa kimono on display at a boutique. A stunning mesh of traditional and contemporary; cut low and off-the-shoulder at the top, and high and slitted at the knee, with a butterfly obi belt and flaring sleeves. Black-and white orchids splash the red silk, telling a tale of seduction and innocence without language.
Her nieces notice her staring, and convince her to buy it. Come on, Saya, is their conjoined drawl. Live a little.
And Saya notices Haji staring at her glass reflection superimposed on the kimono—and does.
Next morning, she emerges from her hotel room with her hair knotted pertly with chopstick-hairpins, the kimono whispering silky-sweet across her skin. Sees Haji, standing by the table with Kai, stare at her a beat too long from the corner of his eye. Sees his fingers twitch on reflex—as if begging to reach out and stroke her skin through the red silk.
She twinkles and blows him a pouting-air kiss Kai can't see. Shivers at the look he offers in response, and the devotion and debauchery it promises.
After donning a uniform of blood for so long, it seems only fitting that she wear a facsimile of the exact shade—with flowers dancing over its surface.
A reminder of everything she's lost, yet miraculously regained.
Later that night, while Kai and Mao bicker over where to have dinner and the twins increase the TV volume so they can order up an exorbitant Tora-fugu platter that Kai would cut his own throat before paying for, Saya and Haji slip unseen out their window, plunging feet-first into the glittering metropolis.
They eat blood-colored candy apples that stain their lips and fingers a sparkling red. Share stickysweet kisses atop the observatory of Tokyo tower, rising like a golden-white spire into the night. Wind whipping high and sharp through their hair; freezing their skins as the plummeting cityscape zings their blood. In the distance, Saya sees that massive ferris wheel—the eye of Tokyo—glowing like a multicolored vortex in the black sky. Resting her head on Haji's shoulder, she wonders, rueful, if it will be around after her next hibernation.
Wonders if Kai will be there; like Mao, and Omoro, and the rest of her family.
Wonders how, even amid the delicate new happiness she and Haji have knitted like a shell, some things will always be so easy to break.
At the peak of dawn, they glide back to their hotel room, soundless as ghosts. Reclining on the bedsheets with her hair spilled free of pins and her kimono half-undone, Saya watches Haji brace himself in a hard pale curve over her. Watches him undo the bindings on his Chiropteran claw with his teeth, canines white and sharp in the gloom. He unties the lacings of her kimono the same way, torturously slow and sweet. Fangs grazing her skin through the cloth, biting and teasing like featherblades. Lapping at her exposed flesh in wet-cool flicks, until she twists and gasps to each sensation, chewing her lip to keep from waking Kai and Mao in the next room.
Sleek touch of silk amplifying all friction. Melting her body to electrified nerves and heat.
It is those sensations she will dream of, those kimono-patterns she will see, in the unbroken days afterward. When she's cried and kissed Haji and her family goodbye over and over, tumbling headlong into the mouth of her next Long Sleep.
It will be another thirty years, perhaps more, perhaps less, before it regurgitates her back out again.
Her life waxes and wanes, a perpetual moon. Shades of darkness cycled by shades of light. Because one facet wouldn't be complete without the other—who understands that better than Haji and herself? Two people who have known sunlight and shadow, business and fairytales, and all those indefinable facets in between, like the links connecting a chain.
Who have lived for decades in perpetual dark—until some benign deity Up There has perhaps decided to tip the scales in their favor.
Offer them another chance in the light.
But, as Saya well-knows, all facets are intertwined.
Where there is one, there will inevitably be the other.
She remembers this, each year a member of her family dies, and she marks those black-letter days on a calendar, the ink dotted with fresh tears. Looks at the dates at odd moments in the years afterward. To remind herself of everything she's lost, and can never have again.
And there are days when the regret is so intense it chokes her. Days when she can't sleep, can't eat, and can't get out of bed without remembering. Days where her past looms like a perpetual deadweight, crushing her alive.
Haji eases the burden with sepia-toned memories and walks in the sunshine. Lullabies of cello tunes and glasses of sparkling white wine.
He feeds her slices of green apples when she's awake, and chases her nightmares away when she's asleep. Nourishes her in ways both small and vast. The delicious vigor of his fingers soaping her hair in the shower each morning. The deft gentleness with which he plaits it into intricate braids each night. The ways he hums her name between kisses, pressing his forehead to hers as if he can't help himself. The roast-cinnamon shades of his eyelashes on her fingertips, and the purrs that rumble from his throat when she flicks her tongue across the calla-lily smoothness of his skin.
Each word and gesture renewing yet-another lost facet of herself.
Fading yet-another memory of blood and duty to forgotten ash.
But there are days when those same memories form a cold hard glaze over her heart; when wall her away from everything warm and bright. Days where she's barbed and vicious and lashes at everyone around her, days where she and Haji fight and he stays away so long she's convinced he's left her forever.
Until he returns, each time, in a perpetual cycle of wax and wane. Eyes gentle, fingers outstretched. Whispering:
Saya…
And she remembers all over again. Everything she's lost, and what she still has left.
The tears spill in a hot rush; she runs to him with half-blinded eyes. His arms coming around her in a circle, drawing her in and anchoring her—to sanity, love, and the axis of life itself. And when she meets his eyes between salty-sweet kisses, he seems to glow, diamond-bright.
No empty spaces between them; nothing to wonder or wish or yearn or beg for. Because right now, in this moment, all her facets are complete.
While she has him, she will always be whole.
-Fin-
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