( masquerade )
Consider this disclaimed.
Their love was like a masquerade.
He waltzes across the floor in a procession of multicolored masks, glittering like a temptress and waving feathers and diamond dusts. He is too tempted - as was the likes of Narcissus - to seek out his reflection, and swallow it whole. Like a lover the mirror is an ornament to himself; but this ornament threatens to overpower his, and break. He will not stand it, and yet he is itching to touch the mask, to take the mask, to shatter it and from its ruins build a love far deeper than a love of men and far lonelier than a love of mirrors; and that is a love of nothing.
They meet in the middle of the floor, violins mourning in the background. Marble. Velvet curtains. Lace. Both hands are gloved; they cannot touch; and the grin on his lips is enough to make him furious. It's just something about him. Something that he can't place, wouldn't want to, because he's so mad and so obsessed that maybe this has gone too far - farther than it ever should have - but there would be no point in quitting now. Back. One. Two. Step. Dragging him up against his hips, he snarls.
This is the final waltz. This is a dance of death.
When thinking in his heart, he's come to realize that now, there is no reason for living other than this; Right. Left. Step. Crush. Against the hips again, and then, he leads him back away - like a limp doll, like a puppet straining through his broken strings. Nothing to tie them but the hands of fate. And still they come back, keep coming back, and nothing will ever be able to separate them but the walls of death, already building.
And all the time the hate in their eyes reflects and parallels the other's. A perfect set of opposites that are so alike it burns.
This, the slow, masquerading destruction of them. Their dance, like a costume ball. His mask, always in place. He wants to claw it into tiny shreds, like red and white confetti. He wants the plaster to curl and crumble underneath his fingernails until there's nothing left, and he, the red-eyed siren, the perfect rival, will be nothing but a face, and they'll both be nothing together in their hearts so black they scrape against each other with every step and turn.
Their love was like a masquerade.
Three. Four. Spin. Step.
Love shaking among the ruins; pleading for a death that would be their release.
Back. Forth. Back. Forth.
Against me now.
The final escape. An ornament to their combined vanity and a testament to their long-going battle. It had pushed its limits. Now it was just tired.
But it was burning. Kazuma was pulling so hard against his collapsed puppet strings that it was like he'd never break them, never realizing that they'd been broken all along. What kept him coming back was not the fate that tied them. They were, had become the fate that bound themselves to each other; neither giving nor receiving. Only pushing. Always pushing.
A mutual hatred, and a love that sprung rivers deeper than the Styx, more corrupted than religion and far darker than desire.
The kind of love that would have them die not in a dance hall filled with empty faces and painted masks, but in a blaze of glory that neither could dream to achieve without the other's death to seal it's coming.
The kind of love that would follow them to the Underworld and into the next life and beyond, never ceasing. Souls without rest; the souls of obsessed men. A love that would be theirs in the grave.
One. Two. Three.
One. Two. Three.
Dive.
When the masks fall at their feet, all that remains is the feeling.
Two souls so black they scrape against each other with each step and turn, until there's nothing left at all.
/finite.