I'm not expecting much feedback on this. I wrote it in about twenty minutes but it was nagging at me to take notice of it on the bus so...
Here is a drabble from me. Happy 40th fic, me : Gawd, twenty fics ago I wrote "And After All These Years" and it seems like yesterday I was chatting about it with my Janebee.
I'm still going though xD; (poor you)
-Forgive the "--" but effeffdotnet seems to hate formatting.
On a side note, this is one hundred percent AU. I picture it being set in something like the dark ages, but it's wholly open to interpretation.
When he was a little boy, mommy had told him never to look at people.
She said that his very gaze would turn people to stone and that everyone he loved would die away and leave him alone.
She said that his eyes were hideous and poisoned people to their very soul.
She said that they were the eyes of a demon.
--
When he was a little boy, Kai tied a tattered piece of cloth around his eyes. He tied it with tiny, childish fingers into tiny, childish knots that caught his hair and made him wince. In the end his mommy had helped him, cooing to him softly in a soft and motherly voice.
--
When he was a young boy, he existed in a world of vague shapes and dull light, terrified that if he were to see the world again, the first thing he would see would be an innocent and that they would fall to his hungry eyes. His world was a lonely one, especially when mommy went away, though he refused to cry. Mommy told him once that if he did cry, it would not be tears, but blood leaking down his face. That thought alone kept his sadness firmly locked inside of him.
--
When he was a boy, special people who were insistent on coaxing him into removing his blindfold looked after Kai. He tried to be reasonable, and explain to them that he was only trying to protect them, but they would not listen and tore his defences away from him. Blinder than he was used to, with eyes tight shut, Kai had become a feral, desperate creature, instinctively lashing out until those people had relented and handed him some material to cover his gaze with once again.
They didn't try again, but despite the satisfaction that came of saving those human beings, Kai's world grew as lonesome and dull as the grey before his eyes.
--
When he was a young man, Kai had been sitting peacefully upon a fallen log near to the house where he lived in solitude. There, another young man had happened him upon.
That boy, to Kai's great surprise, rather than simply ignoring him had sat down besides him and launched into a conversation. Kai did not speak and merely sat in shock as the other had talked to him as if he were an old friend. Eventually, Kai had become entranced by the warm and musical voice and his heart had skipped in excited bemusement, wondering what reason on earth such a wondrous being would take notice of him.
Without even setting eyes upon him, Kai fell in love.
Eventually, the other boy asked whether he was blind. In return, Kai told him the dreadful power of his eyes, but once again, to his surprise, the boy had laughed.
He truly was nothing like the others, Kai knew then.
The boy had been insistent, like the others, but unlike the others he had gently placed his hands upon Kai's face. Kai had trembled, the feeling of another's touch overwhelming.
"Why?" Kai had asked. Was he doomed to lose the one he loved after only hours of knowing him, for he knew that he could never deny the magical being before him a single damn thing.
"I want to see the eyes of the one that I love, so that I can know that he truly loves me too."
Love? Kai's heart had leapt and his eyes had squeezed shut as the material fell away from his face as sly fingers tangled in his hair and loosened ties that protected the world from Kai's evil.
How
could anyone love a monster like him?
"Open your eyes." The
voice had been soft and filled with something that he had not heard
since he was a little boy.
"I can't," he had whimpered.
"Open your eyes." No impatience, just warmth and understanding.
" I don't want to lose you," he had said, breath shuddering out of him.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"I won't watch the one I love wither and die before me!" Kai had roared out of desperation.
Hands had grabbed his wrists. "Open your eyes." Breath on his lips, the closeness was almost overwhelming.
Against his will, or even his awareness, his eyes had fluttered open, and all he had seen was yellow. Glorious yellow, so stark to the dull grey of his existence, which made him fall in love all over again.
Rei did not turn to stone, nor did he wither away, or drop down dead.
He had simply smiled.
"Truly beautiful."
I know, I know. WTF, right?
Well I thought it was a bit insane, but Neddy and Janepuff actually gave it the thumbs up, so up it goes.
Love, me. xx