"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them." ~Desmond Tutu
A/N:: The title of this story, Ensorcelé pour les Siecles des Siecles, means "Bewitched for all eternity"... I think... If anyone happens to know it isn't, please PM me! (So I can go blame my French Teacher.. ^^) I tried finding the backward dash over the first "e" in Siecles... but, I cant seem to find it at all... ^^'
Hope you enjoy the story!
He was of Light. He'd always known that.
When he was a child, and his mother slept fitfully in her bed, he created balls of light to guide her back from her darkest nightmares to her most peaceful dreams. And from there, he played the piano, allowing it to illuminate her happiest memories in golden hues and silver bells.
He was happiest when others were. He grew sad when others frowned.
He gave life to the flowers in the dead of night, and heated the chill that grew in the deepest of winters. He saved the children who were hungry in the orphanage just twenty minutes away from home. He flung his hands out, and life flew from them, eager to please, just like he was.
He came to realize he was the only one who could do what he could do: none of the servants understood what he meant about the stars at night transforming into glittering beacons for the lost and the damned, none of the gardeners knew what a glowing flower looked like under the powerful blaze of the earth sun.
No one even understood the simple concept of a smile bringing more than happiness into the world: it actually strengthened his powers, made him feel invincible.
His mother was sick, and everyone said she was dying.
She would lie in bed everyday, wasting away before his eyes. It was enough to break him, and from far away, he heard something snap in two. Maybe it was his heart, in watching someone he loved silently lose themselves with each passing day.
She told him her happiness came from seeing him happy. Her hair glowed like starlight, just the same as his did. Her woolen cloak shouldered her elbows, pink and impossibly bright. She smiled, and he felt a tugging sensation in his chest.
His grandmother pulled him out of his glowing white world, and she forbade him from ever using his powers ever again, to heal, to help, or to save. He was banished into Darkness, and it's creator smiled whenever the Light flickered inside of him, ready to dwindle away. His heart beat slower, and he was cast into a glass cage, unable to leave, unable to fight, and scared half to death.
He was only twelve.
He didn't understand the world, much less one that expected him to thrive in Darkness and suffering.
He grew up alone for five years, and the Light inside him died altogether. It had seeped through his fingertips onto the cold hard ground in thinly woven tapestries of white blood. Lights were never meant to bleed: his blood was too precious, and the sight of it as it pooled around his body horrified him beyond imagining. Violence scared the child of Light.
He forgot the sunlight as it shone upon the glittering butterflies. He forgot what the stars said when no-one was listening. He forgot how to help others who needed him, more than anyone else in the world.
No-one cared that in those five years, the lonely Light Guardian had become a lonely boy.
Ouran Academy.
The dome of a place his grandmother stuck him in.
He knew nobody. He didn't want to know anyone. They were Japanese, English, Irish, African, American... and they all spoke in different tongues to his native French. He couldn't understand what they said, even though his grandmother told him he would be coming here.
She never bothered to help him, never bothered to allow him to understand, and build the bridge between them, and him. She really didn't care, and he really didn't understand.
If his father was the Chairperson of this esteemed place, why did no-one care? Why didn't he ever come to visit him, or his mother? Did they not love each other?
He sat up further in his seat when the teacher mentioned something in French. They were studying French. A small sigh escaped his lips.
He finally, if briefly, felt he was home for a change. The light of the sun through the floor-to-ceiling window blinded his eyes, and for one second, the teacher looked exactly like his mother. For once, he understood everything the teacher said.
Everything.
It was a reminder, to remember. To recall everything he was supposed to do, to help everyone in the world. It was a calling, an alarm bell that sounded the long, endless corridors of this entire world.
He was needed.
His Light flickered back to life.
From then on, he understood everything the people in this classroom said, be it in Japanese, or in French, or in Chinese, Latin or Irish.
Because his language was universal. All it took was a look, and he knew what any one person was really trying to say.
Help me.
He was more than willing to give everything he had.
And he started with Kyoya Ootori.