Title: What We Know
Summary: Guzol and Lala knows little of the world, but they know one thing. Humans are horrible. At least they have each other.
Pairing: GuzolxLala
Genre: Hurt/comfort, romance
Rating: K+
Warnings: Uh... A doll and a human in love? . Mentions of murders that we already know about (Lala, you know). Like very little blood. This is K+ after all, hurr, there can't be too many things to warn about, can it.
Disclaimer: I can't draw good enough to draw a manga, even less make money on it. Therefore I don't own DGM.
Yeah, the scenes ended out differently than planned. I wasn't really intending it to be quite as drabble-ish. Oh well. This is a fill for a kinkmeme request at this page here. http: // dgmkinkmeme. livejournal. com/ 791. html? page= 31#comments
Just remove the spaces, you know the deal.
Point out any spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes and awkward phrases~ And enjoy of course. :D
What We Know
'I don't understand!'
The pebbles that are tossed at him feels like punches when they're really not that big at all. But they're like tiny projectiles and cuts into his skin, projectiles that hates him just like everyone else.
'I don't understand! Someone, please!'
He sobs, tries to cover his head from them, begs for it to stop, prays for someone, someone please, to stop this. Because it hurts, hurts his skin, hurts his heart, hurts something more that he doesn't know what it is, but it feels as if the projectiles cut into his very being.
'I don't understand! What have I done?!'
He doesn't understand. Why won't someone explain it to him? Monster, they call him, beast, they call him, horrid creature, they call him. Why? Why? WHY? He has a name, he has a name! Does no one know it?!
'I don't understand! Call me by my name!'
The projectiles finally stops hitting him, but he stays on the ground, gets dirt that he could care less about in his eyes. It itches, it increases the amount of tears, but he stays still. Someone kicks on him when they walk by too close, maybe it's intended, maybe it's not. He's used to it, but it still cuts deep into him. Why...
'I don't understand...'
. . .
It's so dark. The walls feel like they're going to fall over him, crush him, suffocate him. But he wouldn't mind that so much now. He's all alone. Getting rocks thrown at him and recieving beatings for reasons he never got to find out is better than this. He doesn't want to be alone. It makes him feel so cold inside, it scares him so much, it makes him want to be hated again, even if that's what got him here in the first place. As long as he doesn't have to be alone, please.
He crawls across the ground, the rocks cut into his knees, but he really can't feel it anymore. The tears fall, but he tries to suppress the sobs, because it feels as if the dark and the even darker shadows can hear him. He doesn't want them to hear him. Or maybe he does. What if they could kill him, save him from this horrible place? He has never done something wrong; surely, he would go to heaven... He stops and buries his face in his hands, lets out a long cry that echoes off the walls. What does it matter if he dies? His life is so painful anyway.
Something moves and he hears the sound of rushed footsteps, and then a big silhouette covers the moon. He stops sobbing and stares at it with wide eyes. Panic grips him. Is it here to kill him? It's scary, so scary, and its eyes look so dead as it stares down at him. He has to move, he has to move!
The silhouette moves instead, creaks as it does, and then speaks in a soft and eerie voice.
"Boy... Would you like a song?"
What? A song? For... For him? As the silhouette moves again and the moon shines upon them, he can see that... the... girl - it's a girl - is smiling. She... she wants to sing for him? She cares? He doesn't notice how her hands twitches as he smiles widely. He feels suddenly warm inside. Someone wants to sing for him...
"Song?" he asks tearfully, but this time it's not tears of agony or sorrow. This time, it's tears of relief and disbelief. "Would you really sing for me? No one has ever done that for me..." He sobs and wipes his eyes, then leans back on his heels, putting his hands on his legs. "My name is Guzol. Sing for me, miss Ghost."
It is the most beautiful song he has ever heard, not that he's sure how much that means since he hasn't heard many songs at all. But it warms him up when it bounces off the walls and fills the night sky.
. . .
He shouts happily and slides off the edge of the box with the hairbrush tightly clutched in his hand. Miss Ghost really needs her hair brushed, it's such a mess, so he's going to help her with that. He rushes back to where she sits on the floor, staring absently into nowhere. It saddens him that someone with such a beautiful voice has to suffer so. She's so kind, too... But she doesn't say much.
Guzol sits down behind her and starts to run the brush through her hair. There's a lot of resistance, but as much as her head moves back and forth from how hard he has to pull to loosen the knots, she doesn't say anything. It's as if it doesn't hurt. But... Well, she is a ghost, isn't she? It's not really any wonder. But it's... sad somehow. How a ghost, that is supposed to be evil according to all the stories and rumors, is the one who is more kind than any human has ever been towards him.
The hair feels real between his fingers.
The hair flows as if she's human when the brush removes all the knots.
. . .
"You'll be really pretty now, Lala!"
Lala with the otherworldly beautiful voice.
"Lala?"
Guzol with the unhumanly hideous face.
"Yeah! That's your name now! Do you like it?"
. . .
Lala has never had to eat. After all, she doesn't live, doesn't breathe because she needs it but simply out of reflex, doesn't... feel? It sounds like she has a heart that beats deep inside of her, when they lie together because the nights are too cold for a human child. Then she has to feel something, right? If there's anything that Guzol knows, it's that feelings come from your heart. It's your heart that aches when you're hurt, it's your heart that aches when you're left behind.
It's your heart that soars when you find someone to love, it's your heart that soars when you feel love returned.
It's your heart that feels whole when you find true happiness.
It doesn't matter that he gets so little food and goes hungry most of the time, and the little that he has to eat is either some dry food that has somehow managed to stay edible in the crates, or birds and rats, and anything else that might have the unluck to wander inside the town's walls. Lala's quite the skilled hunter, he discovered not too long after they met.
But it's not like he's not used to having little to eat. It's not like he's not used to having to eat rats occasionally. But now he's more happy than he even remembers ever being. He's accepted here, and loved. It's enough.
"Lala?"
He crawls into her lap. He has new clothes today, clothes from the crates. They had been looking for some for a while. After all, he's still growing. The clothes are a bit itchy, and just a little bit big. But he's still growning, so that's okay. Lala's smile is warm when she looks at him. It makes his heart flutter somehow.
"Yes, Guzol?"
And her voice is like the prettiest bird song in his ears. So light, so soft.
"I'm tired."
She feels human. Because she's warm. He likes sitting in her lap. And he especially likes when she puts her arms around him and strokes his hair. Like a mother he never had.
"Would you like to hear a lullaby?"
"Yes please."
He buries his nose in her clothes as she tilts her head up and sings her beautiful song. Her clothes smell of smoke and dust and blood, and it should be disgusting, but he doesn't think it is. Still, maybe they could find some way to wash the clothes... It doesn't hurt to try.
The dust begins to tickle his nose, so he shifts and lies down on her lap, his cheek resting against his arms. There he stills and smiles while listening to the voice, not really the words, that fills his chest with warmth. The voice that pulls him into peaceful dreams. The voice that makes his home.
. . .
Lala's not used to having humans so close. She used to have them surrounding her pretty much all the time back when this city was still thriving with life. Well, as much life as the land forsaken by God could thrive. But she has never had any so close, so personal. A human has never slept on her lap before. She finds that she likes it, even if she can't feel the weight, or the warmth, or anything that she should feel.
After all, she's just a doll.
She also finds that she likes running her fingers through this human's hair. Even if she can't feel that either. The only thing she can feel is her heart beating inside of her. Somehow, it's there, even if from what she knows dolls aren't supposed to have hearts. It beats quite loudly, even if it's not supposed to exist, especially when Guzol lies in her lap and nuzzles her clothes and... touches her. Because no one has dared to touch her for so long. It makes her chest feel so warm, even if she has never really felt warmth before, not on her skin. But somehow she knows that it's warmth she feels. Because she felt the same back when there were still humans around her that made her feel like she had a purpose.
Although this warmth is a bit different, a bit stronger. Because this human really cares.
It's strange to think that she feels... She has never thought about it before.
She smiles and watches as Guzol shifts in his sleep and clenches her dress. He looks a bit troubled for a moment, and so she tilts her head up and continues singing.
She lived for humans, and so she lives for Guzol.
. . .
"You're not really a ghost, are you?"
"No, I'm a doll."
"Dolls sing?"
. . .
Lala watches Guzol grow. She watches as he changes from the small kid that curled up in her lap to a wild boy that runs all around the place and tells her about the new discoveries he makes every day. He brings his first own catch, a bird, to her with a proud grin. He finds rocks that he can use to light fires and old spears that the townspeople that lived here used all that time ago, time she has lost track of. He sharpens them, makes it possible to hunt with them again. When he asks it of her, she sings a song for him. Every day he grabs her hand and pulls her away to show her new hidden hallways that he's found, or onto a roof where they watch storms build up in the horizon, or the sun set.
He no longer curls up in her lap, he doesn't fit, he just lies his head down on it instead and uses a blanket he found to keep the cold out instead of staying close to her.
But he says he's fine if she sits there and sings, that she doesn't have to lie down next to him. But she sort of wants to.
But she likes just watching him, too... It's fine this way. They have the fire anyway.
"Lala! Come, come! I have something to show you!" Guzol cries happily and pulls Lala onto her feet. "I found a huge room, and it's amazing! Just wait until you see it!"
She stumbles after him as he races through the streets. His feet has grown sturdy through the years. Hers could never scratch from the start.
Together they heave the hatch to the underground floor up and he jumps down before her to help her down, even if she doesn't need the help. But it's a nice gesture and she smiles at it. He always does unnecessary things because he wants to be nice, or so he said. She doesn't quite understand why. Humans are strange sometimes.
Often in a bad way.
Like in the the way that makes her kill them.
Not Guzol.
He's strange in the good way that makes her smile.
The room takes her breath away - though she doesn't need it, so it doesn't matter. Her eyes widen and she just stares at the big round space. Magnificent pillars in the shape of a circle reach all the way up to the high roof, surrounding something that looks like a stage in a way. In the roof there is a hole which allows the sunlight to shine through, and the ray of light hits what looks like a broken seat made out of rock.
Then... As Guzol leads her further in, asks her "isn't it amazing, isn't it, it is, right", she remembers. She knows this room.
She stiffens, and Guzol stops and looks back at her. "Lala?"
"I... used to perform here..." she mumbles slowly, her eyes still wide, memories she thought she had forgotten floods back into her mind. Memories she has suppressed, maybe... "On that stage. For Martel. I was their source of joy here in this hall..."
"Their... source of joy?" he asks silently and stares at her. "The... land forsaken by God. Martel."
Lala nods and her chest begins to ache. She doesn't like it when it aches. It was what made her want to kill those humans... Whatever was needed to make herself feel better...
Still, her heart had ached ever since she was abandoned to the day when Guzol showed up. The only one to... accept her.
"But they left me..." She frowns and clenches her fists, clenches Guzol's hand so that he flinches and pulls it free. "They abandoned me. What was I going to do when I had no one to sing for? When a human finally showed again, I was overjoyed. But he didn't want a song... He called me monster and attacked me... And I--"
"He called you monster?"
She snaps out of the sudden growing rage and her fists loosens. He's staring at her with wide eyes that are gleaming in a strange way, and she soon realises he's getting teary-eyed. No, she doesn't want him to cry!
Her expression goes sad and she looks down on the floor so that she doesn't have to look into his eyes. Remembering is too much alone, she doesn't want to see that too.
"Yes..." she says quietly.
Silence falls between them. Slowly his hand closes around hers again and he leads her towards the stone chair where the sun is shining. He sits down next to it and lets go of her hand. She sits down opposite of him despite knowing that he probably wants her to take the chair. But it feels better this way. He doesn't say anything, but neither does he move.
She is his doll.
But she's treated like an equal human.
It's strange. She likes it.
"I don't think Lala is a monster," he says.
She smiles at him. He smiles back. It's like someone just covered her with a warm blanket. His smile is her blanket. It does things blankets don't. Because she doesn't feel those kinds of things. She just feels.
"People called me monster, too," he mumbles. Her eyes widen. "Monster, beast, horrid creature, freak of nature... Humans are awful."
His smile is sad now, and she has to look down again. She can't stand seeing him sad. She's suddenly angry again.
"Did you kill them?"
His voice sounds so small. Like he's afraid.
"The humans that called you monster, did you kill them? I heard people who came here died."
She doesn't want to scare him. She nods, still doesn't look at him.
"It's okay."
He understands. He forgives. He shuffles forward and puts his arms around her neck.
She still can't raise her head.
"It's okay. It doesn't make Lala evil. She was just hurt. You were just hurt. Right?"
She carefully raises her head to look at him. She doesn't understand how he can smile at her like that when he knows she has killed.
"Humans are awful."
Or maybe he doesn't care. He's hurt, too. She smiles back.
"Guzol was hurt, too."
She understands. She learns. She leans forward and puts her arms around his neck, too.
. . .
Guzol remembers when he used to sit in her lap. Now it's her that sits in his. She seemed so big when he was small, but she doesn't seem very big any longer. It's amazing what a difference a few years make.
They sit on the roof, Lala in his lap, his arms around her, her hands on his. Like that they watch the sky, the stars, her head leaning on his shoulder. He really likes to sit like that. He really likes to hold her. It feels like home. It is home. She knows the sky, after all she has lived for such a long time, and she has found patterns in the stars, images. She points them out to him, smiles all the while, laughs. She doesn't talk about her past, neither of them do, but this is no bad thing. It doesn't make her remember things. Somehow, he feels that this is the kind of memories that she likes. Finding images in the stars...
Her hands are still where they lie. He knows she can't feel what she touches. She doesn't know when she holds things too tightly, like his hands, or when she barely touches them at all. But she definitely feels, there's no doubt about that. Emotions are there in her eyes. She's happy when she's close to him like this, he can see it. She's silent now, her eyes don't move as she looks at the sky. She looks like she's thinking.
"Am I warm, Guzol?" she finally nearly whispers, her eyebrows scrunches together.
Her face shows expressions like any human's.
"Yes... Yes you are," he mumbles and holds her slightly tighter.
"One is warm when one lives, right?" she asks even quieter.
He frowns. "Yes... And when one is dead one is cold... Why do you ask this, Lala?"
"So that means I live..."
Guzol widens his eyes slightly. Or more like his eye; after all, one of them is so disformed he can barely see with it anyway.
"What are you talking about, Lala? Of course you live!" She looks up at him with equally as wide eyes. "You feel, don't you? And you move. How could you not live?"
She smiles warmly and it's like that warmth spreads over his body and into his very being. He smiles back and he can almost bet his eyes are sparkling or something. However now that could happen. But it felt like it.
"I'm so happy I met you, Lala," he whispers and plants a kiss on her forehead. "You make me feel like I could fly if I tried. But that's impossible."
She shifts in his lap so that she's turned fully against him, and there she puts her hands on his jaw and stares into his eyes. It makes him breathless. Her hands are so soft, they feel nice on his skin like this.
"You make me feel a little human," is her barely audible reply.
His chest crumples together at those words. And something brings him to pull her closer and press his lips against hers.
The lips of a doll aren't soft, like he guesses humans' are. But Lala's are warm, just like the rest of her, and it makes him tingle all over. She seems shocked, she tenses up at first, but soon she relaxes and presses back just slightly, carefully, like she's wondering if that's how to do it. Like Guzol knows any better. He knows nothing. But... he has human instincts, he guesses.
It's a bit painful to think that Lala probably doesn't.
He pulls away and brushes some of her hair behind her ear. "That's what humans that like each other very much do," he says, watches her face, her lips pulled together in thought, her forehead slightly furrowed, her eyes confused.
Then she slowly nods. "I've seen humans do that..." she says thoughtfully. "But I'm not--"
He puts two fingers against her lips to silence her. "I like you very much, Lala," he murmurs and allows his forehead to fall and rest against hers. "So very much."
So deeply. The feeling is carved so deeply into his soul.
Her expression softens and she smiles again. "I like you very much too, Guzol," she mumbles and pushes her forehead slightly against his. "More than I thought I'm capable of."
"Maybe you're more human than you think," he smiles.
"Maybe..."
His smile falls when he sees her doubtful expression.
. . .
Guzol has to prove to Lala that just because she's a doll it doesn't mean she can't be human. ...okay, it really does mean that, but he thinks she's more human than any other doll because there's something special about her. It may be childish, and by now he is a grown, even if young, man of at least nineteen years, he thinks at least, but he knows it's like that. It's not some silly little boy's fantasy; this is real and he has seen it from when he was a little kid and met her. She has even become more and more human from that time. She feels, thinks and looks just like a human. He knows she's a doll. But to him she's more than just a doll. It hurts him to see that she thinks she's nothing but a doll.
He sees it from the way her gaze flickers and her smile fades when he says it. The way her arms around him loosen up, the way she seems to put a wall between them. Why does those words make her uncomfortable?
"I'm not human" she says, always. "I'm Guzol's doll" she says, always.
"Yes, you're my doll" he replies, always. "But you're not just a doll" he replies, always.
He tries to tell her that she has a heart. He can hear it beat, so she definitely has a heart, and every human being has a heart. So does each animal, she counters. But that just doesn't matter, because she looks human.
It frustrates him that she can't see it. And angers him, just a little, that she refuses to take those words the way they are meant. They're meant to say how much she means to him, not whether or not she is a human or a doll.
Because he knows she's a doll.
He's not stupid.
. . .
Lala strokes Guzol's aging face. It strikes her that he has spent his whole life together with her, only her, in this old abandoned town. Why he has done that, she doesn't know. She wishes she could. She always thought that every human has dreams. Back when Martel was still alive, the citizens always talked about dreams. About how they wanted to leave. And finally they did.
And forgot her...
Dreams come with a price, don't they? If Guzol is still here, does he have no dreams?
"Guzol, don't you want to travel beyond these walls?" Lala asks, a bit scared to do so.
Because Guzol is a bit sensitive about some subjects. Like the world and humanity. And his reasons for still being here...
Sure enough, he frowns, looking very displeased. "No. Why would I want that?" he replies and looks at her. He looks a bit confused.
"Don't you have dreams? All humans I knew had dreams. I thought every human had dreams..."
He runs his fingers through her hair and she wishes she could feel it, once again, like she has begun doing lately.
"Lala, I never had any place among humans... And now, I've found you, and you've given me a place where I belong. That is what I've always wanted. I'm happy here, I don't want to leave."
Hearing that makes her chest feel warm. There is something in her that says that it's a very sad thing he said, but she can't care. Because she's happy he values her so much. She has to feel needed, or she can't exist. That is her purpose as a doll. She gives Guzol happiness and sings to him. That is her purpose now.
She doesn't want to think about what she'll do once he's gone.
Guzol is a human, so one day he will be gone. One day he will die. And then what will she do?
But she shouldn't think about it now.
"I love you, Guzol."
It had to be said. He has to know. She doesn't know much about feelings, but she knows that she loves him with all her heart. She's unsure if she has one, but that's what he says, that's what she feels. So she just assumes she does. She wants to believe she does. Whatever her heart is supposed to be - because it can't possibly be a real human heart, can it - she wants to believe it.
Because she can hear it beat when he kisses her.
. . .
Guzol is sick, really sick. He has been sick before, of course. He has had colds and flues and the likes. Lala has always taken care of him. This is worse, this isn't just a cold or the flu. He has no idea what it is, but every day it makes him weaker. Eventually he can barely talk without coughing, and sometimes there is blood. He's a little bit scared, especially when he can't stop coughing. He's scared when he coughes for minutes, he's scared when he throws up blood, he's scared when he collapses and can't move, he's scared when he wakes up in the middle of the night because he can't breathe.
Lala holds on tight through it all. She's there to gather him together in her arms when he shivers and maybe cries just a little.
He's not really afraid of dying. Just a little. But he's afraid of what Lala will do once he's gone.
Because he is dying, they both know that.
Lala strokes his back when he coughes in the darkness of night, when his whole body heaves and blood falls onto his palm and it's painful. She holds him with her small arms, but it feels like they're so big. She's so strong, so very strong. He's not sure where he would be without her.
"I will stay as long as I can, Lala," he whispers and clutches her robe. "I will stay with you until the very last drop of my life leaves my body."
"Guzol..." she whispers back and presses a cool kiss to his hot and sweaty temple, sweaty from the fever and coughing. "Guzol. Guzol. Guzol."
Her breath brushes against his skin. She breathes like any other human. It makes a calm spread throughout him. At least he has finally stopped coughing for now. He doesn't know why she repeats his name like that, but it feels good. It feels good to hear her say his name.
"Guzol... When I... I mean, when you die... Then I'll have nothing left to do. I'm Guzol's doll. When you die, I want to die, too. Guzol, when you die, can you destroy me? I think... if the one who owns me destroys me, then I'll die."
There is a long pause where he looks at her hair and she keeps her lips against his temple. It's not an uncomfortable pause, but it's heavy around them. It holds the weight of her words and somehow it manages not to crack. The words settle on his heart and wrap around it. And he understands. Because without Lala Guzol would be nothing. Maybe Lala would be nothing without Guzol.
"Yes... I will destroy you."
She tugs him closer and lowers her head.
"Thank you."
His eyes fall shut and he falls asleep like that.
The next thing that wakes him up is Lala screaming and explosions shaking the ground at dawn.
. . .
Lala hates him. Hates him hates him hates him. That man that says he has come to take the doll's heart. Hates him hates him hates him. He may have protected her and Guzol, but she hates him. Hates him hates him hates him. He says they're not safe. Yes, they're not safe, not with him there. She and Guzol has made a promise, and they're not breaking it. When Guzol dies he will destroy her. That is the deal, nothing else.
She almost wants to get angry at Guzol for lying and saying he's the doll. But she can't be mad at him. He thinks it will protect her, but she doesn't understand what the difference will be in the end.
But you know, that boy that argues for them, that boy that they have shared their story with, he's okay.
He understands.
Just like Guzol.
And you know, he has an arm that is very strange. He's not normal, just like her and Guzol.
He understands. When Guzol told him that he never belonged anywhere because of his face, there was this flash of recognition and understanding in the boy's grey eyes. And a little bit of pain. And she knows, she knows that things will be okay. And she knows, she knows that Guzol knows that things will be okay. Just because the boy understands them and wants to help them.
And then, even when her heart was pulled away, he kept thinking that he could still help them.
You know, Guzol and Lala thought that they knew everything about humanity.
Well, you know, Allen Walker proved them wrong.
