Eleven Clovers asked for a KA fic spinning off the prompt 'It's the hardest thing in the world – to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.' Also, 'some sort of death would be nice. Could be faux-death, near-death, symbolic death, etc.' Let's see if that worked out, hmm?
Loosely based off the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone; whomever doesn't know it had better look it up for fuller comprehension :D (… not that there is much to comprehend, of course…)
Warnings—character death. Dark. Angsty. Also, if anyone fully understands what's going on here, I'd love to know. My muse ran away with it.
Disclaimer—I don't own MK. The title is picked up from Edgar Poe's poem The Raven, and the parts' titles are random quotes—not mine either. Thank you.
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nameless here for evermore
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'And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird, human kind
Cannot bear too much reality.'
—T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
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So upon a time, on the shining earth, the god-girl who reflects the sky in her eyes plays the summer fields gold and rich and warm—
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i. sweet chariot
"Let's write a story where we are happy, " Kaito says one day, and Aoko blinks, because perhaps she knows Kaito better than he knows himself.
(She does not say: we are happy.) "Well," she does say.
("… well," she does say, because there isn't much else, is there.)
This is how Kaito's story begins: The sun plays warm and rich and gold onto the summer fields, and they shake and open black and raw. And out comes—
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—and out of the chasm black and raw comes a man with black hair and grim, pending desires that latch onto her—
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ii. did you make it to the milkyway?
(Writing a story is—dangerous, mostly. Painful. Intoxicating. A trap—the characters' white, white arms looping around your neck, dragging you into the pool, the flask of water-empty you had brought to fill forgotten to the side, twining green hair around your limp limbos, dragging—dragging—
You can lose your self in a story; writing it; it can lure you into thinking what it says is true.)
"Let's write a story where we are happy," Kaito says, and then goes forth with black strokes and milk-white paper, and does exactly that.
(Then again, some might be looking forward to it.)
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—and he brings her kicking and screaming down to the shaded kingdom where the blue of her eyes is dulled and dark—
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one. one of the greatest outcasts
. condemned to eternal laughter
(This is the tale:)
The blue-eyed man flounders in the train compartment with a string of fine-flowing French and red, red roses, and a smile that says, Take me, take me, and you'll find me far away—
"Pourquoi me refusez-vous encore, mon amour, mon amour…"
"I can't speak French," Aoko intones dully.
Kaito smiles. "I know."
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(This is the story:)
"Saviez-vous ce de quoi un train est souvent une métaphore?" the blue-eyed man says, and smiles, some more. "Did you know what a train is often a metaphor of?"
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—but he is enthralled by her and her eyes and her smile, and he replies to that with concussion grins and stealthy amusement—
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iii. so call me a liar i dare you
catabasis. noun. from A. Greek kata-, up to down, and baino, i go. 1. going downward. 2. in Ancient Greece tradition, an odyssey's hero descending to the Hades and meeting the dead. DERIV. metaphorical descent to hell. 3. death.
"Fascinating, the things you find in a dictionaries these days," Kaito says, eyes hooded and dark and full of paper promises.
Aoko snorts. The radio cackles a little.
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—while, on earth, her parent searches everywhere for her, asking the moon and the sun and the icy-cold rivers that carried the traces away—
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two. and if the only way you can take me
. is to know you can break me
(This is the tale:)
The drag is long and slow, and Kuroba tilts off the ashes, his face and its dips and body shadows lit sharply for one second before the dim light dies out.
It has started drizzling moments ago, and Aoko wants to bark out a laugh, because this is so cliché, so obvious, and they are stuck in this traditional black and white. The sky-water trickles down her face and hair and seeps into her clothes, and she wonders vaguely why it doesn't damp out Kuroba's cigarette.
"You're not going to get away with it," she says, and nearly chokes on the over-used words.
Kuroba takes another long drag.
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(This is the story:)
They hear the gunshots first.
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—and so he keeps her prisoner under the tree-roots, promising her marvels if she will just give in to him, promising her wealth and beauty and gorgeous fruit—
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iv. reflection of fear makes shadows
"Let's have an adventure," Kaito says one day. It comes in surprisingly genuine, and it sounds like black ink spilled across white sheets with the harsh contrast of opposites. "A real adventure, with treasures and forests and dead men walking and. Gods."
Long-fingered hands curl around the sill of a window. Look onto the outside world in glass and grass.
"It would be glorious—" g-l-o-r-i-o-u-s, gloria, gloria—he muses, "to go out there." (The pool shivers in silver slivers; and ripples under the flash of a coin-like scale. Make a wish, says the fish. Make a wish—)
Aoko runs up her palms, up the leather binding of the book she reads and says, "Are you still writing stories?"
"Oh, yes," Kaito says.
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—but she refuses to accept his eyes and his grin and his black hair that basks his face in a black halo—
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three. drown me
. i'm not scared
(This is the tale:)
The blue-eyed youth behind the bars is young, too young to be there surely, and Aoko looks alternatively between the ticking clock and the rainy window. It is cold outside, and the station's lights are blinking and electric onto the hard tiles.
It is not an agreeable night. The blue-eyed boy sighs.
"And now," the blue-boy says, and,
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(Aoko blinks.)
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(This is the story:)
—the keys are already dangling in his hand.
The blue-eyed boy behind the bars grins and holds out his free hand, and Aoko cannot help but think about shiny badges and blue uniforms and oh, this is wrong, but there is a certain wolf-tilt to his lips and a certain cat-look to his eyes, and she is already dragged forward into the dark.
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—but cold and hunger drive the god-girl from her seclusion, and she eats seven pomegranate seeds, one-by-one, hoping not to be noticed—
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v. and you do lose what you don't hold
"How long have you been writing this?"
(the black-haired girl sitting and playing in the apple-garden, and roses, and roses, the blue-eyed boy looking over the apple-garden, and ashes, and ashes)
"… long enough."
"Think you'll continue?"
"Perhaps."
"Do you like it?"
(the apple-light falls into the pool, and someone laughs and slips and)
"… yes. Yes, I do."
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—but she stands with her lips red and wet and raw with the burn of the underground fruit, sugary and bitter like it—
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four. knight in shining armour.
(This is the tale:)
Once upon a time, there was a young girl with vibrant blue eyes, and a boy with messy black hair, and the village in which they lived. They had grown together, and they had played together, and they had no wish beyond that of living together forevermore.
One day, the girl disappeared.
And when the boy woke and, intrigued at not finding her, asked her around the villagers, each and everyone of them found themselves surprised; as not one remembered the girl whose eyes could rival with the sky—not even the man who had been her father. And he asked, and asked again, but the answer was always the same.
One day, the boy disappeared.
He was searched after in the high mountains and the green forests, but he was never found. Some said he had drowned in the river, although his body was never found. Some said he had transformed into a fierce bear, although no one ever was valorous enough to go check.
Some said he had gone to find the inexistent girl, and those might just be the closest to the truth.
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(This is the story:)
A girl sits in black on the very edge of a chair, a chair in a world where clocks are turned upside down and days are nights and nights are days. Her eyes are dulled and dark, and they affirmate, at time; only with the determination of the one who has seen too much in too short a time.
A boy walks in white on the very edge of a town, a town that is yellow and harsh and skinned raw and fast by the blazing sun. His steps are quick and over-mechanical, and blood run down his hands, though his or others', he has long forgotten; he walks on.
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(This is what happens:)
After four seasons the villagers elevated a little shrine for the boy they had loved and they girl they had forgotten. They offered fruit and flowers there, and recited short prayers to whatever deities was listening. When summer came, hey hung coloured paper lanterns between the trees, and lit small candles to float numbingly on the river.
By the third year, the grass of the clearing was rich and damp with dew, and the trees whose roots bathed in the river offered crops more delicious than they ever had been before.
They hoped it meant that, wherever they were, they were happy.
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(This is how you know you're wrong:)
Both die.
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—and she smiles sweet and sweet and poisonous as she lies back, and bends and makes a choice—
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vi. i will bury what i can't burn
Aoko wakes and Kaito is sitting on the windowsill, looking outside. The sun is yellow and raw as it sets, and it unfurls grey ghosts over the room. He doesn't (immediately, and the blue-eyed boy flashed her a grin that was vibrant with life) look up when she speaks.
She feels drowsy. "What's happening?"
"Oh," Kaito says, vaguely, and turns gray eyes on her. "You're dying."
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(Aoko sleeps and Kaito wakes and dreams and wonders if he won't remember her name come morning.)
(He will.)
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—and gold-child and god-man looking onto each other they wonder—
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vii. and heavens bowed before him
(This, the tale:)
Whichever the story, Aoko dies.
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(This, the story:)
Kaito dies, too.
Eventually.
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—which of them was death, in the end?
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… my muse seems to like experimentations these days. Hope you liked it, eleven-chan. (who is never online anymore ;o;)