Pandora Hearts © Jun Mochizuki
...
She whispered to him in his sleep, her breath ghosting through his dreams. Ambiguous words floated serenely between them like the phantom she was, like the illusion he was. Two sides of a complex mystery they were: both knowing, neither known. To this end they made a perfect pair.
His world was secretive, hers mysterious. Both were comedians performing elegantly on the stage they called life: stringing, playing, confusing, and using. They were accomplices in this game of manipulation and deception, intrigue and collusion. They were not the only two who owned the rules, who moved the pieces. But they were the only two who did so with such subtle ostentatiousness that the only reason their motives were missed was because they were so blatantly obvious.
In his world, the past was a maze of shattered mirrors. Broken hearts and hopes and lives cut and pierced and bled. It was hateful and hurtful and altogether unkind. In her world, the past was dark and cold and void; he had been the first to open her eyes to experience this level of reality. They formed a pair when they began their new lives. Destinies intertwined from the beginning, they would say, because their separate histories no longer manifested through the plastic facades of now.
The future was nothing more than misting vapor never to be caught. Only guesses and suppositions remained. Would he live long enough to care for her? Would her existence depart with his? When did their time together end? Would it be enough to accomplish so many shared goals?
They couldn't know. They couldn't guess. He had to keep pushing, fighting, lying to live. She had to cover for his mistakes, had to berate him (or the others, whomever was more conveniently accessible) in a loudly irritating and obnoxious manner; her trick to keep maliciously curious eyes from settling upon the truth of his condition. She was his cover. This was her lie. Their lies were their lives and their lives were a lie: two twisted to one, one no longer two.
In life, she was silent. In life, he was not.
In sleep, he was silent. In sleep, she was not.
He dreamed, she spoke. She whispered his sins and he heard, trapped within the confines of his mind as she poisoned the slumber he needed. She poisoned the air he breathed. She spread her malice, her malevolence, her venom, her hate. He listened, he sensed, he knew, he understood. He was the only one who could.
She was he and he was she. They were distorted reflections of one another: both understanding, both the same. But both different, twisted in separate directions: his in his past, hers in his now. Did it make sense? No. But to them it was as it was, and what it was was better than then.
And because of this, he was hers and she was his.
Never to be separated, never to be alone. For aloneness was abhorred, it was their undoing. Without her, he was vulnerable. She was his support, his distractor, his illusion. Without him, she was nothing. He was her life, her purpose, her reason.
Her Break. His Emily.
Their lie. Their life.
The same.