Greater Than Gravity
By Seabreeze
Prologue: Hundred
A/N: This story has been one I've been wanting to write for a long, long time. I've had serious issues with writer's block and inspiration and everything, but it's still something I want to write. Even if it's a painful labor, in the end it will be a labor of love. I hope you enjoy it, and this prologue is going to be kind of vague so don't feel too bad if you're confused. Also, this prologue is not an indication of what the rest of the story will be like, but it is important to the plot. Oh, ps, title inspired by the Fray's song "Hundred". It's a fabulously accurate mood-setter for this chapter.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Watsuki Nobuhiro, Shonen Jump, etc. NOT ME.
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It was heavy.
The husband toiled underneath its weight, knowing how very important it was to carry it, but wishing it weren't so heavy. His heart was heavy enough, heavy enough to drop right out of his body and fall into eternity. He didn't need any more weight on his shoulders.
She understood; he knew she did. They were like that. Often times he didn't even have to say what he felt… she just knew. She would understand. No one else could.
He trudged along with the other men – did he know their names? Most likely not – identically dressed in crisp black. Black. A heavy color. He could not escape the burden – even the clouds were dark and full. The sky itself bore down on him.
When they set it down, it was as if the weight stayed with him. He stood, sat, stood, in the front, mind numb and curiously foggy as the man up front spoke eloquently of her. She would love how that man talked; would listen with rapture. He could not bring himself to listen, no matter how he wanted to. It was too much, too easy to speak of something you did not fully understand. He could not open his mouth.
There were songs and recitations, tears and even a few laughs. The world around him was a blur, he felt himself idle and immobile amongst it all. Amongst all the life. Was he dead? It almost seemed so. He wished for death. The world moved too fast and he was too tired, too worn out. It was too much.
Hands patted his back, rubbed his shoulders, wrapped themselves around him in sympathetic support, and he wondered if there were tears on his face. He was too separate from his own body to know. A self-vertigo that numbed him and made everything close to bearable.
Lilies were everywhere. She loved lilies. Like bright pin points of light on a dark day, they surrounded him and overwhelmed him. Lilies were for her, not for him. He stared at the lilies in his hands, the most beautiful he could find. For her. He lay them carefully on the glossy oak, mumbled a prayer that was nothing more than words on his lips at the time. Goodbye would not come. It couldn't be.
They had been a whole. A husband, a wife.
He was a husband without a wife. So incomplete, so unnatural. Half a being. Half a soul.
The guilt was the heaviest of all. She had asked much of him, and he had done it for her. Because it was right. Because she asked him. Because he loved her more than anything in the world. Because she looked at him with eyes so strangely, unnervingly calm, and asked him to sacrifice her.
She had fallen. Gravity, pulling her down. Pulling him down still. He could do nothing.
He cut his hair. She had always wanted to see it shorter. She would run her fingers through it and laugh at how quickly they took to reach the ends.
It was too much. Too much weight, too much guilt. Too much life around him where he felt none. He could not, could not could not could not could not could not could not
He ran. Hard leather shoes beat blisters into his feet and toes step after step, beat after beat. His clothes were stiff and scratchy, but he was only fueled to run more. He had much ground to cover, much to do in the time to come…