A/N: For Merimask on request. Complete.
Prompt: Diva x Haji, 'twisty kink meets immortal boyscout'
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Catharsis
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He is dreaming.
This is unusual, as he rarely dreams, and when he does they are always either random imagery or flashbacks to past events. He is not an imaginative person. It is why he has had to struggle for literal centuries to coax real music from his cello-- his soul is not an artist's.
Moreoever, he knows he is dreaming, which makes it stranger yet.
"Hello, Haji," says Diva, the third strange thing.
He wonders if he ought to be worried for himself. Even though it is a dream, he knows she is dead and should not be here. This meeting, without swords or blood or tears or death, has never happened in the past. He does not dream of things which never happened.
And yet, he is dreaming, and Diva is here and smiling at him. Her teeth are very white, her eyes very sharp.
He is uneasy in his skin.
"Diva," he says, because he doesn't have anything else to say. "This is a dream."
"Perhaps," she replies with a small, elegant shrug. "Perhaps not."
"Why are you here?" he asks. Somehow it's difficult to think here. His mind feels loose, drifting, disconnected from reality and reason.
She shrugs again. "I don't know. It's your mind, isn't it? You tell me."
Haji thinks, though it's a struggle. Why is she here? Why has his mind summoned her? Perhaps to break the monotony of years while waiting for Saya to wake up, perhaps as the coalescence of some unformed regret... there are many possibilities but none of them sound true to him.
He doesn't know either. That is troublesome.
"I would have had you for my chevalier, you know," she remarks when he says nothing. "I would have cut myself open and poured my blood-- my heart-- into you, made you mine forever. You would have loved me."
"No," he says instinctually, seeing Saya's face over Diva's. "No."
"Yes," she corrects, hands on her hips. "You would have. You don't know, not like I do. Watch."
He is helpless to move as she crosses the floor to where he stands-- floor? is it really a floor, or is it the ground instead? impossible to tell-- and curls her thin arms around his neck. Though she exerts little pressure, his head is suddenly heavy, sinking until his face is pressed against her throat. She smells completely different from Saya-- flowery, light, and childish where Saya smells of foreign spices and rich autumn evenings.
In the dream, he has no need to exhale. He inhales forever as Diva floods into him.
A wound opens on her neck, untouched, and out flows a red so bright he can hardly look at it. It hurts his eyes. It is the only colour in this world aside from the knowing blue of her eyes.
"Go on," she says. "You'll never be satisfied until you know."
It is wrong, so wrong, his heart is sick in his chest to hear it but he knows she's right. This is why she is here. He needs to know.
He lowers his tongue, drags it through the seeping red, and swallows. It courses through him like fire. He is suddenly unbearably hot, suffocating in his own skin. There are screams in his ears, and after a minute he realizes they are his.
It hurts.
And yet... Diva's hands are gentle on his back, holding him upright, her mouth whispers sweet comforts in his ears, and she is like a spar of firm earth in a tumultous sea of pain.
"You are mine," she murmurs to him, sounding triumphant and oddly hopeful at the same time. "Mine forever."
He pulls away, feeling the redness cool obscenely on his lips, and meets her summer-blue eyes.
Haji has his answer.
Even before he opens his mouth to speak it aloud, Diva sees it in his eyes. Her face plummets from hope to mad despair in the space of an instant, a horrifying metamorphosis from pretty human girl to the monster within. She screams and claws at her face, tears of grief and loss salting the wounds she makes.
She is already vanishing. He knows he will never see her again.
"No," he says, and this time he means it.
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A/N: This is vague on purpose. If you don't get it, you can ask, but all the answers are in there if you look. :)
Hope you enjoyed it!