Anger is a silly emotion, he finds, but an effective one. As he stands there at the top of the tower, he sees the bright lights shining below, the shouting and the screaming of many people and cars and other contraptions that people have in this world.
And right now, he is angry.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he jumps off of the tower, letting himself fall before turning into a pigeon and swooping through the city.
Where is she?
The master had told him that she would be in this world, along with the other companions that the master had sent. She would be unconscious, said the master, his eyes gleaming. I have taken her memories, and in effect, her soul.
He had been intrigued, but still confused. Then why do you need me to follow them, if you have such close tabs on their whereabouts? he had asked.
The master laughed. Silly child, I need someone to make sure she doesn't get hurt until the time is right. I can't do that from all the way over here.
And for some reason, some inexplicable reason, that statement made him angry.
It takes him a few hours, but he finally locates her. Now perched on the windowsill, he cocks his head at the image in front of him. A girl's body, clutched tightly in the arms of a young boy's. They are both asleep.
And there it is again, the anger, bubbling inside him like lava, horrible and cruel and disgusting and why is it there, he doesn't understand why—
He flies away.
The little black haired girl is outside, yelling at the three males, but the girl he is supposed to watch is inside the small, windblown house. Like a good servant, he watches her carefully.
She yawns softly and rubs her eyes, looking rather like a lost fawn. He almost smirks.
All of a sudden, her head snaps up and she stares right at the spot where he is sitting. He jerks back, surprised and wary.
"Who's there?" she says groggily.
He doesn't reply, perched very carefully on the high beam.
Her eyes are defiant, not with anger, but with fear. "I know you're there."
"Princess Sakura?" It's that boy, the one who makes him angry—he has hurried back into the house and is now sitting next to the girl, looking at her with worried brown eyes. "What is it? Is something wrong?"
"Syaoran-kun," she says slowly, quietly, "Do you see anything up there?"
He looks up, but his gaze misses where he is sitting. "I'm afraid not."
The girl nods slowly. "All right then."
But when she turns away, he can still smell the fear.
"She's an interesting girl, isn't she?"
He looks up from where he had been watching her inside the tiny cell made for children. "She'd be more interesting if she actually had a personality," he says curtly to Kyle.
Kyle laughs. "Sharp-tongued as always. I can see why the master favors you."
"Don't kid me. He treats me like shit." He looks back at the girl, unconscious on the bed. "I think he hates me sometimes."
"He hates us all." Kyle comes up behind him and wraps his arms around his shoulders. He almost shudders. "We're defects, dearest. What else would you expect?"
He pulls away sharply. "Hands off, you ass."
Kyle laughs again, but this time it's not so nice. "Do you hate me, dearest?"
"You bet I do."
The smile goes sly, like a snake's. "Do you hate her?"
He opens his mouth to say yes, but in the end, he can't quite say anything at all.
He sits by her egg in thought. The people who run the game of Oto constantly walk by him, giving him suspicious glances. All he does is smile at them with razor teeth and look back at her. Surrounding them are her sleeping companions, immersed in a dream of battle and family.
Inside the egg, he hears her heart beating fast, and he figures something exciting must be going on. Watching her turn restlessly, he lays his hand on the egg's smooth surface. It is unblemished, preserved and utterly freezing. He pulls it back, rubbing his hand on his leg to warm it back up.
"Syaoran," she whispers in the egg.
And there it is again, the anger, the anger that is ripping him apart whenever he hears that name, that stupid name.
Picking himself off of the ground, he walks out of the game center and leaves her behind.
It's a while before he can bring himself to get closer to her again. And this time, he allows himself to be free.
It is when she is sailing in a plane high above the sky with joy and determination etched into her features that he allows himself to appear before her. Now sitting beside her in her craft, he tilts his head at her startled face. "So," he asks nonchalantly, "having fun?"
She sputters, waving her arms around like a windmill while her plane swerves. "How—how—"
He hisses, leaning over her and grabbing the wheel. "Careful. You don't want a crash."
"Oh." She sits in silence for a few moments before tentatively speaking again. "Thank you. But I don't understand."
"Understand what?"
"How you got in here. My plane. I didn't see you when I took off."
He shrugs. "I guess I'm just that awesome."
She is zooming down a canyon now, but she still manages to converse with him. "And another thing—who are—"
Suddenly, geysers shoot up from under the planes. The girl shrieks, he swears, and they swerve precariously around them.
"Fu—" he gasps, clinging onto the sides of the plane like his life depended on it. "I hate flying."
"Then why are you here?"
He smiles at her, and she blushes down to her toes. "Just to see you win."
They are going down through a crack in the canyon now. He can hear the announcers roaring and shouting, but he doesn't care. All he sees now is her hair, her short, brown hair flying in the wind and her jade green eyes finally fixed on him without a trace of fear.
"Who are you?" she whispers.
As the canyon streaks by them, he leans over and lets himself kiss her on the cheek. "Nobody you need to know," he grins.
Then he leaps out of the plane, oblivious to her cries, and washes away with the water.
When he appears behind her on the train, she yelps a little bit before smiling. "Oh, it's you," she says. "How did you get in here?"
"Same way as I did last time," he smirks, letting himself lounge beside her. Through the window, trees and forestry streak by in green and blue blurs, magic dense in the air. "How've you been?"
"Fine, thank you," she replies. "And you?"
He's almost taken aback before responding. "Great."
She nods. "That's good."
"Is it really?"
Now she's the one taken aback. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"Lots of people wouldn't give a damn about me."
"Oh." She looks down at her shoes. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." He looks at her slyly, letting himself drink in her features—pale skin, rosy lips, hair falling in little waves down to her chin, and lets himself gulp down the greed. He wants it all.
It's too bad that he's on a leash.
She begins to ask him a question as he snaps back to reality. "Are you a world-traveler? Is that how I'm seeing you now?"
He shrugs. "Pretty much."
"That's amazing!" Her smile almost blinds him. "We can only travel because of Moko-chan, and that's limited too. Can you control which worlds you go to?"
He has to smile back. Damn it, she's contagious. "Yeah."
She claps her hands together in delight. "Wow!"
In his head, he hears a ringing noise and he knows it's time to go. It's just in time too—the train is screeching to a halt, and it's not her stop. "Well, I'm off," he says, pushing himself off of the railing and stretching his limbs. "Got places to go to, things to see."
She frowns. "Okay."
The door is right next to her and as he passes, their hands brush each other's. She flushes slightly, retracting the limb while he bites his lip to keep from flushing as well. Why was she so contagious?
Just as he's about to step out of the door, she calls out after him. "Will I see you again?"
He turns, surprised. She stands there hopefully, holding the door open barely.
He smiles just for her. "Sure."
As the door closes, he waves to her.
And she waves back.
The train screeches away.
When she enters her room, he is waiting for her. "Hey," he says. "Miss me?"
All she does is stare at him and blink. Her outfit is strange, dressy and lacy and dark. It is not her, and he cannot help but stare.
"How did you—" she begins hoarsely, but he holds up a hand.
"Window." He gestures for her to come over, patting the side of the bed amiably. "What's happened lately?"
She sits, her eyes downcast. "Syaoran left."
The boy. The anger begins to bubble again, but this time, he pushes it down. "The boy with brown hair?"
"How do you know him?"
"I've seen him with you on the train." It seemed like a good enough excuse, and it was pretty damn well honest too.
"Oh." She looks up at the ceiling. "He lost his soul," she whispers.
"How?"
"I don't know," she chokes out and to his horror, he sees tears dwelling in her eyes. "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know." She pulls her head down into her lap and begins to shake. "I don't know, it's all my fault, I don't know."
He sits there, unsure of what to do as she sobs desolately. She is depressed beyond imagining, a light extinguished.
Come back, he whispers to her silently.
"He said," she gulped, "he said that he would get the feathers for me. No matter what." She lets her fingers tangle in her hair. "I'm so weak," she whispers. "I can't help him, I couldn't be strong enough to get my memories back on my own. I'm so stupid."
"You're not stupid," he says more sharply than he intended, and she looks up, eyes wide. "And you're not weak either."
"How would you know," she says tearfully. "We've only met twice."
"I know you better than anyone."
And all of a sudden, he knows that is the truth. He knows her, he sees her for who she is, and he knows that she knows him too.
And while she still stares at him, he leans over and kisses her slowly on her tear-stained lips with lust and pain and he tastes it on her lips as well when she kisses him back.
When he leaves her that night, he knows that that is the end of it. He will not be allowed to go near her again, to see her again. He knows that.
But when her lifeless body appears with Kyle inside the master's home, he finds himself roaring and lunging for Kyle's throat, pinning the man down and screaming and raging and slamming the man into the ground until the master flicks him into a wall like a bug.
"Control yourself," the master snaps as he hisses and writhes on the floor. "I did not make you so that I could destroy you."
"Kyle," he chokes out, clawing at the floor, "Kyle, how dare you?"
The man merely looks down at him before handing the body over to the master and walking away.
"God damn it," he sputters, struggling to right himself. "Kyle! Get back here! Kyle, get the hell back here! Kyle!"
The man vanishes.
"Kyle!"
"Control yourself," the master growls, and he flinches before letting his shoulders go limp. "I only tolerate your actions because you are one of my better experiments. Do not cross me again, or I will eliminate you."
The master sweeps away from the room with her body in his arms, and he pounds on the floor and screams and screams, but nobody seems to hear him anymore.
The rest of the battle is a blur to him. He remembers running across the tiles, avoiding magic and swords, hitting and screaming and ripping across the flesh. He can't remember if the flesh is his own or not, but he remembers that it was a red that wasn't her red, not soft and lovely like hers but angry and hard and raging.
And when the master is almost defeated and screaming and aiming for the girl revived with the boy, he doesn't know what happens but all of a sudden, there is a sword through his stomach and it hurts and nerves are snapping and blood is all over his chest and did he protect her and it's coating his mouth, the mouth that kissed hers, the mouth that she kissed and it hurts and she's screaming and racing to his side and holding him while he bleeds and chokes and gasps and she's crying and sobbing and—
"Don't cry," he chokes out, feeling the sword go deeper through his stomach and coughing again. "I hate it when you cry."
"I cry when I'm sad," she sobs, leaning over and touching her forehead to his. Tears run from her eyes and onto his forehead, beautiful things that make him feel delightfully refreshed in the heat basking his body. "I'm sad that you're hurt."
"I get hurt all the time," he gasps, feeling jagged glass puncture the wound. In the distance, he hears the lair crumbling and Fei-Wong Reed is gone and they are outside in the desert night, the sand cooling his skin. "It's nothing to worry about."
"But you're dying," she cries out and hugs him tight, avoiding the sword. "I don't want you to die, Envy."
"I didn't want you to run off into the dream-world, Sakura. But you didn't listen to what I wanted."
"Because you never tell me what you want," she chokes, face scrunched up in pain. "You never tell me what you want, so I never know what to do."
He looks at her with amethyst eyes made of glass and broken stones. "I want you."
She jerks in surprise, flushing. "That's not the time to be talking about that."
He smiles at her. "I want you to kiss me."
She stares at him. "Why?"
"So I can die peacefully, why else?"
She shakes her head. "I'm not going to let you die, Envy."
He laughs and spews blood on himself. "Humans are so stubborn."
"I love you," she whispers. "I love you so much."
"Do you?"
She nods.
"Then kiss me."
She does, and it tastes like sweet strawberries and copper and tears and pure Sakura.
When she pulls back, he sees the stain on her mouth. It looks as though she has been devouring raw meat, and he almost smiles at that one.
"Do you love me?" she asks, voice trembling with pain and wanting.
Over her shoulder, he sees her companions watching, the two boys standing side by side, the other Sakura, their pet and the two men guarding them. All their eyes are wide, watching tensely. Didn't know their girl was capable of loving a monster, he supposed.
"Yes."
With a last-ditch effort, he leans up, the sword's weight heavy and slicing forward now as he kisses her again.
"I love you," he chokes out against her bloodied lips.
And then everything is silent.
I apologize if they seem OOC, but what do you expect? Totally different circumstances, you're bound to get differences. To make up for it, you decide if he lives or dies. :)
Word count: 2733
Happy very late birthday, Mare. Hope you enjoy.
As do the rest of you.