fandom - Clover
title - always clean
rating - pg
pairing - kazuhiko + oruha
description - Kazuhiko visits two graves.
Disclaimer - Clover isn't mine. always clean.
By miyamoto yui
A tear frozen in time was melted today.
Rolling off the green leaves, little rainbows are made even though they must be mini prisms. These small splashes of color become clear once again when touching the ground, feathers shedding down on their descent from heaven.
How could something as magical and sparkling be made into something ridiculous as cranes shot down to immortalize their momentous beauty? Is this what humanity's true nature is?
In the process of making a perfect product, does it become artificial after all the modifications? Do we suffocate the natural beauty which allowed itself to shine imperially?
When I was looking through various forbidden documents hidden in the dark layers of the 'facility', the former embellished prison of the fair Suu, I read that there used to be a world beyond our own. We weren't encased in this mirrored dome that was supposed to play an unending cascade of pictures where many camera tricks made them seem lifelike.
The texture of green plants were soft when you touched it with your fingers and rain came at the most unexpected of times.
Most of all, people were allowed to choose the path they wanted and not have their careers, maybe their own lives, chosen by the elders…
In between the telephone wires and the frequency waves that flow through my body, in their slight disruptions to my health and sanity, I continue to seek something that will make me real once more.
As I look at the dying eyes of the assassinated, I wonder if there really is such a thing as empathy through all my thorough apathy. Like now, things happen in a cinematographic fashion. I watch my own life like a movie without the dubbing making any difference.
All the irrational static is filtered out.
Only a narration remains for the vessel of this body I involuntarily occupy.
I turn around and leave.
After getting my pay from my client, I turn around and leave.
That is all I seem to do these days. I just look at what's before me and then avert myself away from the scene as soon as it wants to imprint a scene into my being.
I don't want to remember more or unnecessary things.
I don't want to forget the moment when time stopped and I died…
…so why does my body still wander this decrepit land?
The clues are all in my pocket, inside my wallet.
The puzzle locks are inside my mind to hinge them together.
And yet, like the carousel that doesn't go anywhere, but round and round in its place, I find myself stepping into this place once more. Piece by piece, the remnants of a colorful amusement park filled with happiness are nothing but broken artifacts blown into the ocean.
The statue of a fairy who can't sing is immortalized, staring into the loneliness which reaches her lover, the sea swallowing where she lives. I sit here trying to remember the past as my mismatched uniform displaces the purity around me.
The blood of the kill stings my nose, but not as much as the salt drying my eyes. By instinct they want to moisten, but the well inside of me has dried up.
I drip with a crimson liquid that might as well as have been my own.
As I get up from my bench, I pull out a petal from a white rose from the ground.
"How did you manage to grow here?" I question while placing it into my pocket of my long, dark coat while looking up to the sky knowing that probably Suu had something to do with it.
I take out a cigarette and go visit the other grave.
On an empty stage, in an underground nightclub, everything's rusted away. There's nothing but dust. And it waits for an angel with dark blue feathers whose voice haunts the exact place where she was shot to death.
The song was half-finished, did you know? Or so, that's what I want to believe since I knew her the best.
Trying to recreate the lively air that used to be in this very place, if I squint my eyes, maybe I'll see her again. I pretend I can because my dream was not realized.
She was called Clover 1 by researchers.
I had found that out because, now, they're doing 'testing' again to check the genes to 'filter' for what won't 'benefit society'. Humanity was repeating the same folly of imagining they could control what was more powerful than themselves and crushing what they couldn't understand.
I knew it too well.
It was my job, after all, to execute the missions they told me. I had to turn the other way with my rigid face even though I felt nothing but shame.
Over and over, Gingetsu and I would see the secrets the world wanted so much to camouflage from the ignorant. But we couldn't hide from the truth even if it cost us more than what we were imagining to give.
Once, the Earth was destroyed and we were evacuated to something that simulated 'our everyday life'. Now, we had to eliminate others in the name of freedom and unjustified oppression because this was our 'job', the meaning of our existence according to those in power.
That didn't matter before. I lived on the streets. I lived in luxury.
I've taken and saved lives according to the list of my missions.
I feigned indifference until I met her, the one they labeled Clover 1.
And to me, she wasn't even labeled Oruha, as with the way that names went to distinguish you from others. She was the unpredictable bird who transformed my very existence with those deep, concentrated kisses. She was the child and woman who drew the symbol of a heart onto my palm with the color I abhorred and found disgusting.
Like those green plants of legend she was titled after, I looked deeply at her. In a place where things grew without synthetic products, I made a wish on her. Like plants, whose origins and continuations are never really fully known, she was mysterious.
I didn't know anything about her, but she smiled even at her death.
Dignified and as filled with love as she'd always been.
When I reach the top of the stairs and head to the streets, at that moment, I see a little, white curly-haired girl walking by me with her hood down. Her coat marks that she is an orphan from a certain place. Even though it starts to rain because it always does so at this time of year, she smiles. She sings to herself, but stops to nod her head at me.
There is no fear. Not even at the dried blood all over my dark coat.
I wave at her politely and she comes closer to me. I squat down as she gives me a hi-five with her small hand. She pushes against my palm.
"Please sing again," I say, hoping to catch a glimpse of the voice who used to sing for me and me alone even though she shared her moving, but resilient words with the world.
Her fingers intertwine into mine. She sings for me and I am filled with the tears that have been hardened into crystals all these years.
"Take and give,
Give and take,
This is all I can do for you.
You don't understand anything,
But that is all right with me.
You were never meant to…"
When she is done, I take out the petal from my pocket and press it into her palm. I clearly look at her in the eye. "If you are still singing years from now, find me and present this rose."
I smile at my foolishness and turn around.
She shouts, "Please expect me!"
I glimpse around and see the smile that I loved so well. She waves goodbye and goes on her way as I go with mine.
The girl is the same age as the number of years you've been gone. I laugh at myself for even thinking that you could be-no, miracles don't happen that easily. People change their luck when they fight with all their might.
I think that's why I'm still here.
From you, the person I love so much, I remembered the meaning of what it meant to be human: To live with all that I had, no matter where it led me to.
I had to learn the meaning of believing.
With those large eyes and that powerful voice, you gave me your everything. Even if people wanted to label what you should be, you defied them all and made your own purpose in life.
And this goddess who said she was nothing but human,
to you,
my appalling and dishonorable hands in everyone's eyes
were always clean.
I walked on with my head up high and looked straight ahead at the twisting road.
Owari.
Author's note - Yes, I know it seems very simple in format, but as always when I write for Clover, I want to convey the complexity of its feelings with its beautiful simplicity in white space. Since I'm such an Oruha fan (unconsciously), I wanted to turn and make something from Kazuhiko's perspective.
Even if it's a little ooc, I really wanted to present someone who was vulnerable and fierce at the same time.
And so, here's the Clover fic I said I'd write. ^_^
-yui
Monday, June 13, 2005
8:30 PM