Disclaimer: I don't own much – and that "much" certainly doesn't encompass Linkin Park and Tsubasa.
Notes: Er…Spoilers for very recent chapters. (chapters 155 through 157 – with vague spoilers of 120 and so on) and inspired by the release of Minutes to Midnight (which I finally got)
Song Note: Because the chorus repeats several times, I have left it out – otherwise it would be like rereading the same two paragraphs three times – not good flow.
-o-o-o-
Be You Without Me
DemonUntilDeath
-o-o-o-
Fai stared in horrified shock at his deceased twin that stood before him, looking at him with sullen, haunted eyes. Those sunken cheeks and dry, cracked skin sent shivers down his spine – memories of a life he wished he could forget.
"You killed me."
No…No, it was a past made of dreams – of memories that weren't his. He didn't want them to be his. He wished they weren't his.
But what was the use of such a wish? You can't run from your past and you can't run from your future. It is as futile as trying to run from yourself- and that is the first thing that Fai ever tried to run from.
So he would be an expert at explaining just why it doesn't work.
He closed his beautiful blue eye – the last of a legacy of power that doomed a people and condemned two young children. Visions fluttered beyond his closed eyelid, just out of sight but not out of mind; he knew the images that passed and was thankful they did not linger long.
All but one.
Water began to fill the closed orb as images of a falling twin lit across the darkness that hid his eye from view.
ooo
I dreamed I was missing, you were so scared
But no one would listen, 'cause no one else cared
ooo
Fai shot up with a scream, sending the small samples of snow that had slowly clung to his hair and rags that his captives long ago called clothes flying up with his sudden jerky movement. His breathing was ragged and ripped at his chest and lungs, which rebelled against the freezing air he gathered in desperate gulps.
He could hardly breath – the air was too thin, his body too cold, his mind too numb.
And his dream- Yuui! Was Yuui okay?
Fai scrambled for his small, barred window that he had to climb to reach. Small hands composed of abused, cracking skin grabbed at the harsh and worked metal that formed over the only face of his freedom. Struggling to pull himself up, the scraggly child was able to peer down through the bars at the snow covered bodies many dozens of feet below.
And amid those lifeless corpses a single body lay buried beneath snow, almost as listless as those around him. And yet Fai knew that life still lingered in his twins limbs – the chest buried beneath a white blanket rose and fell in slow and silent peace.
"Yuui," he whispered softer than the harsh wind that whipped just outside his caged home. His twin was far below and yet still shifted under the inaudible words he knew his brother spoke.
Yuui woke from his mindless dreaming and looked up the tall tower to his brother. His sunken blue eyes had almost lost all luster – a haunted look that threatened to claim his soul.
They had to get out of here and soon…soon before there was nothing left of them to escape.
"Yuui…"
Fai had to get his brother out, if not himself. He had to let someone know that his twin was here…here dying.
ooo
After my dreaming, I woke with this fear
What am I leaving when I'm done here?
ooo
Yuui stared up at his brother. His body was tired and exhausted – he could never sleep enough anymore.
His mind urged him to try again, at least the small bit of it that still dreamt of freedom when lost in the deepest depths of dreams where there was no cold snow, harsh bars, or lifeless bodies.
But try for what?
Nothing but pain and hopelessness.
He wanted to get out. He wanted out more than anything in the world...but
But…more than being with Fai?
ooo
So if you're asking me, I want you to know
When my times comes, forget the wrong that I've done
Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed
ooo
Fai's silent sobs didn't escape those that watched him, but no one said anything.
Yes, he had wanted to get out more than save his brother. He wanted to live a life of freedom, but it had been nothing more than an illusion.
Those bars that had kept his brother locked away and the walls that had kept him buried from all but the dead – they still existed even after he had taken the hand of that prince…The prince that stood before him as King now.
Those bars had formed the curses that followed him; the prison that was a castle in a cold, snowy land; the dark eyes of a king that never stopped watching him; the secrets he would never let his companions hear…
They had formed a prison that was more than anything he'd had to survive as a child.
Because in this prison he was alone.
Nothing could change that anymore – he had lost any hope of being anything worth remembering for his brother. He remembered his promise - he had shouted up in the blaring wind so long ago that they would get out together.
Together.
Another tear slipped down his eye. No, there was nothing worth being missed in his life. He had not equaled his brother's death, for the life he earned with it was nothing more than a shell – an illusion of freedom.
ooo
Don't resent me, and when you're feeling empty
Keep me in your memory, leave out all the rest
ooo
Yuui wept as he held his bleeding, broken brother close to his frail form. What had he done? Was this the price of living?
The cost of being born was the happiness of every man and woman in their country.
The cost of living had been their freedom.
The cost of freedom…was his brother?
Yuui cried out in agony, his scream of pain ripped through the air and broke through all. The country felt the shaking ground and the whipping wind that echoed out the poor child's pain.
Hadn't they suffered enough?
"P-please don't hate me…" Yuui whispered quietly to the bloody mess of hair and face he held gently in his arms, pulled close to his chest and heartbeat. "Live a n-new life without the pain you f-felt in this one. F-Forget everything…but remember me?"
His request was a foolish one, he knew. Tears fell down his wide and broken eyes in streams, soaking into the blood of his brother…his blood.
The only blood he would share…he had no one else anymore.
He knew his words fell on ears that no longer heard but he prayed his brother's soul would echo the words back – if only for the comfort of not being alone.
ooo
Leave out all the rest, don't be afraid
I've taken my beating, I've shared what I made
ooo
Fai's blue eye opened once more as he looked down into the identical eyes of his long deceased brother. The true Fai was staring up at him with almost emotionless eyes that screamed something out to him.
Something Fai couldn't hear – or maybe he just didn't want to for fear of what was being screamed.
No.
No more.
That was what he had decided in the presence of those eyes and the small, tortured body of what he used to be…and what his brother had lived as.
It wasn't fair and it should have been.
They had long suffered the weight of a superstition built upon twins; he had long bared the burden of leaving his brother behind.
Fai had lived a life of pain and suffering – always in guilt and never truly happy.
He only pretended to be happy because he couldn't bare the guilt of making those around him unhappy as well.
But he knew what allowed the true Fai – his twin, his blood – to stand before him.
In the last months…the months before everything had fallen apart – before Syaoran had left them and taken their princess's happiness with him…before everything, Fai had been happy.
He had gotten close to his companions, he had even begun to love again – a thing he had sworn would only be for his fallen brother.
Promises meant nothing when you couldn't keep them.
Fai wept as he stared at his fragile brother. He had given that love to others – he had given up everything he had worked so hard to erase.
He couldn't atone for his sins: he only ended up making more.
And no more. He would repay his debt now.
ooo
I'm strong on the surface, not all the way through
I've never been perfect, but neither have you
ooo
Fai knew Kurogane would hate him for his new transgressions – the ones he would soon invoke upon their traveling band which had formed a makeshift family, albeit a broken one.
But what was one more sin to atone for in hell?
At least he could atone for his brother's pain.
Pain that he had caused.
The blue eyed mage knew that, similarly, this would break the princess when she learned of it – if she learned of it. If Kurogane and Syaoran could save her. If Fei Wong Reed didn't win.
So many ifs.
If they would forgive him for this. They would have to. No one can do everything – no one is infallible.
But he had his own worries now. He would think of his brother first – not himself, like he should have all those years ago. If he had thought of Fai and not himself then he would have gotten his brother out all those years ago when Fei Wong Reed came to him.
He should have gotten his brother out.
Isn't that what a brother is supposed to do?
ooo
Forgetting all the hurt inside you've learned to hide so well
Pretending someone else can come and save me from myself
I can't be who you are
ooo
His blue eye never left his brother as he whispered, "What a fool to think I could be anything other than the sin that I am…To think I could be saved."
Dead eyes returned his stare as he started forward, coming upon his smaller and nearly broken twin. Fai knelt down so that he and his brother were once more at eye level, as they always should have been.
He should not have left him there.
"I…" Fai closed his eye to gather his strength and swallow the lump in his throat. "I hope my life has been enough to level at least one sin. I hope…I hope you are left with something of me that is not hate."
The whisper traveled through the room and Kurogane frowned in reaction. The idiot mage always worried him with his reckless abandonment and disregard for personal safety.
What was he up to now?
ooo
When my time comes, forget the wrong that I've done
Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed
ooo
A tear slipped once more from Fai's eye as he gently encompassed his brother in a soft hug – afraid anything more would break him. Those lost eyes closed in return, wavering from their emotionless and zombie-like appeal. Slowly, thin and shaky arms rose and enclosed around the taller twin.
Another tear slipped. "Forgive me, brother," Fai whispered softly into the ear of his twin even as his hand found the true Fai's and he held the smaller appendage to his heart, letting his brother feel his heartbeat. "Remember…Remember me when I am gone because..."
The faltered whisper echoed through the tense silence of the throne room, reaching everyone's ears but not in time to register what the blonde was about to do.
ooo
Don't resent me, and when you're feeling empty
Keep me in your memory, leave out all the rest
Leave out all the rest
ooo
Blue light suddenly filtered through the room, almost leaking like a smoky toxin from between the two brothers, seeping out of the smaller boy's hand pressed to Fai's chest. Dull blue eyes opened wide as they finally awoke from their trance of motionless emotion.
Fai tried to pull his small hand away but his brother, his twin – the true Yuui, the one who had taken his name, held it there and he looked up into that single, pure blue eye as tears streamed down both brothers' faces.
"…Because I can't be you anymore."
Fai screamed out as Yuui closed his single eye.
Blue light pulsed through the throne room, blinding the onlookers as they were forced to shield their eyes from the beating light that throbbed as a heart does.
"Fai?" Kurogane shouted out in worry, trying to see passed the light that brought water to his eyes. As he squinted, forcing his red orbs to work overtime, he could see the very faint and flickering outlines of his traveling companion and this acclaimed twin.
And then both seemed to meld together and vanish.
ooo
Forgetting all the hurt inside you've learned to hide so well
Pretending someone else can come and save me from myself
I can't be who you are
ooo
As the light finally cleared, allowing the onlookers to finally see the result of…of whatever that light had been, they beheld a single body in the middle of the room which once held two.
Fai's small, childish body sat – kneeling on all fours, hands gripping the stone sharply beneath his no longer frail hands. His body was not as weak and sunken as it had been – not so fragile as the improperly cared for and nearly broken form of seconds ago
Kurogane glanced to Syaoran, who seemed shock as he held his pounding head in his hand. The ninja took a step closer, curious and worried with a deeply sinking feeling in his stomach and heart – where was the Fai they knew?
The smaller of the supposed twins was sobbing horrendously, though trying to keep his thin frame from showing the tears that poured down onto the stone of the throne room.
Kurogane knew he was crying for his brother.
Fai lifted his head, looking past his long and scraggly hair to stare at the approaching man dressed in the black clothes of Celes.
He knew his name was Kurogane.
"I…I'm alive now…" he whispered to the man who paused his approach at the weak voice choked with sorrow. "Yuui…" those blue eyes look away, down to his hands as he sat back on his calves and stared at the appendages. "You gave your life…for me to live once more…"
Kurogane and the others stared on in wide-eyed shock as the once dead twin stumbled to his feet – now filled with the life and memories of his now dead brother.
ooo
I can't be who you are
ooo
The End
-o-o-o-o-
A thoroughly rotten ending, I know – but I'm a morbid one and I love this idea…just about as much as I hate it.
And I hope (know) it won't happen, which is why writing it is so much fun.
I hope it was enjoyable and written okay.
Please review if you would be so kind.