Disclaimer: I'm sick of insulting intelligence. If I were dumb enough to claim I own Rurouni Kenshin, I'd deserve to be sued. If you are dumb enough to think I own Rurouni Kenshin, then you deserve, uh, having to deal with lawyers. Right. Hell, I'm dirt poor anyway.
A cookie if you can find all the musical references.
Warning: Odd narrative voice. Dark.
DemonSong
Wonder dig and try
Tear it up and learn to bless the reader's eye
Peter Murphy ~ Should the World Fail to fall Apart
The myriad choices of his fate set themselves out upon a plate for him to choose.
It started out easy enough. Walk with her, she had asked, come. Like she even had to. It's a clear, simple choice for me to make. It's what I live for, after all; to be in her presence. Simply to walk beside her (always beside her), so I can drown myself in her image, in the flood of perceptions that the tidal wave that is her always drags behind like a halo.
Something important, she said. Important. That word carries more weight for me than anyone, and I must remember. I have to keep the memory fresh in my head so I won't make the same mistakes, the same fucking idiotic mistakes I've been making all my lives. Ideas can matter too much. Can't hear for lack of sleep.
But then again, maybe not today. No, today feels different. Today I can let go (just for a while, I think, maybe). There's always a chance. I could try to clear my head to draw out all the noise and the sights, to leave it clean of everything except her, in all her maddening glory. Sunshine surrounds me, showering a perfect green. Forget, for a while, the weight on my mind; to lose knowledge of the nightmares that hang over me like a night-shroud, like an ever-present ghost leeching off my soul. Just for an instant, maybe let the chaos go and … Her.
What had he to lose? Not a ghost bloodied country all covered with sleep where the black angel did weep. Not an old city street in the east. Gone to choose. Choose the touch of her hand as she leads me away. Choose to remember each shift of her red shape, each minute sensation of the air's heartbeat around me. Choose her, and ignore everything else. In the shadows whispering, singing in the underground. "Love and the never men can't hear for lack of sleep." Don't hear it, let it go (it's just nonsense, anyway). Let go of everything else, and cling to her, for she is all I have, all that I can hold as true and real when the rest of the world fades into visions and obsessions. I have so little without her. (But nonsense taunts.)
I got my head, but my head is unraveling, can't keep control, can't keep track of where it's traveling. I got my heart, but my heart is no good. And it's all I have to offer.
Her guiding hand still leads, with the ghost of a whisper of warmth trailing my skin where the pads of her fingers land. I come along, but I don't know where you're taking me. I shouldn't go but you're reaching back and-- She turns and smiles, and again I am shut off from the rest of the universe, and all that exists is she, in all her shining truth. I see who she really is. And I want you.
She'll never know just what I found, that blue-eyed girl . She has no idea what I see in her, the real her, not the masks she shows the rest of the world. For her I see with clear eyes, and everything else seems blurry. It can be frightening sometimes. She seems so real she can't exist. (You are the heart of hearts.) She's unearthly, she must be. Too free and untainted to be worldly, too tempting and sly to be girlish. She's like a black-midnight goddess of all that is female: completely timeless, nurturing and obsessing, soothing and maddening. She shines in a world full of ugliness. She matters when everything is meaningless.
If once a woman kept me sane, she undoes her every action. For right now, before her, I have no hold on my mind, no control over my thoughts. I have no will. I merely follow wherever the Goddess leads, I follow the blue of her halo of light, and allow myself to vanish in its undertow. (Peace still eludes me) and the demons keep chanting. Here she comes, you better watch your step. She's going to break your heart in two, it's true.
A few minutes into the path, and I know where we are going. I somehow wish I didn't. Down by the water (down by the water) I took her hand. That dreaded place, where once I hurt her. Come through this storm, I had to lose her, to do her harm. I can see the regret on every feature of her face, I can feel the pain start inside my bones. And I know. It's coming. ... don't forsake him, strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart.
Her face is serious and her eyes glow with depth. I can't bring myself to think (not right, anyway). I fixate on her irises, and I wonder where the careless sparkle went, and how is it possible that even with it gone those eyes still haven't lost their light, merely traded it for something more haunting, something bordering on the fearsome. Who but a Goddess has these eyes? Who can wear them with proper strength? (I am all that surrounds you, the earth and the sky) I live for her, it's true. To worship her. I live to be near her, to drown in her aura and watch her every sight.
I can feel it coming now. It's over. Heaven isn't on my side.
Her words come weighted and striking, as she says what she wanted to and awaits my reaction. Let her go, she says. She's tired. Tired of being pushed away. Trying to be mature, to let go of what can't be. (She said now I'm a new skin) she won't live on the borders of my life, and she won't be shoved away without ceremony or consideration. She wants to be close to me, but I won't let her. She's tired of trying, and she's tired of being disregarded and shut off. I have no say in this. She's informing me: she's moving on. (There's nothing in this world I want from you, don't fool yourself, I won't cry… You're too scared to live. Too quick to die.) Moving on so she can grow, so she can learn from herself, and maybe, given the chance, find happiness with another.
And the fucking demons will not shut up.
It's absurd, the heaviest chain is contained in the sound of one word. "Another"? So the Goddess leaves me, with nothing to cling to, to hold (I can barely breathe). Another won't give her happiness. I am not so vain as to think that I could ever be worthy of her, with my past, with the pain that burdens me. But I am wise enough to know that no other man could be, either. Few seem to know the force she wields; few acknowledge that inebriating halo around her that attacks the senses and drowns the mind. (No man could care for her like I do.) Those few who recognize that light, the few who see in her what I can, only wish to abuse it, with no regard at all for her. Those men will break your bones… You were not meant for us lowly mortals (not meant for human arms). But I can't stop worshipping you now. You can't leave me now. Not now that I've become accustomed to seeing you everyday; not now that I can almost see your scent clinging to everything around you. You can't leave me now that I've become addicted to you.
Come again, choose to go.
Shut up.
For the loss of remains, come and start, start the game. I Choose to choose to choose to choose, choose to go.
The voices won't leave me.
Meanwhile she stands away, still and tranquil, expectant. She wants to hear my response, waits for my words to prove her decision. It's not a last chance. She won't give me a chance anymore.
Turn off the sun, pull the stars from the sky.
Her words hang on the air around me like the rank smell of autumn leaves. She says wants to be close to me. How close? How much can you handle?
How close, love?
Stop,
Close enough to sense your scent as it wafts in the air around you?
crash,
Close enough to drown my hands in the feel of you?
fall on a leper mass of swelling glass.
Close enough to make your lip bleed when I sink my teeth into it? Close enough to be aware of every pore in your skin, every hair on your scalp as I run my hands all over you? Close enough to feel your agitated breath on my neck where I hold your face? Close enough to smell the fear of me you never thought you'd feel? How close, love?
The more I give to you, the more I die.
Close enough to own you?
The other thing is the ability to be remembered... love anything. Love Anything.
She shakes under my touch (Deep) and again I drown in her. I find my way through the layers of red silk, gripping her tightly. I revisit her bleeding lip and I feel myself getting drunk on her. Of her. If I could feel all the pins and the pricks, if you were real, I could take what's apart and put it all back together. Don't fight me. My hands fist on her scalp --Deep.
She shudders more. My teeth find her collar (her heartbeat is so fast) and my mind finds her voice. Mine. Always mine, because no one deserves you, no one should ever find what I have. Only I know what is behind your mask, only I fit inside you. Mine. (Deep…) I have her on her back and I can feel her legs around me, her hands gripping the earth. She feels tight and warm and bleeding. (What now, love?) Your skin speaks up but your lips couldn't say it. Right now I know, somehow, we could take the chance and we could make it.
Her voice utters my name, questioningly at first, then shocked and then just angry. The love of the Never man jumps through the blackest heat. And I can feel the strength radiating off her, the violence (yours as much as mine), charging the air, making it heavy with something indefinable. Can you feel it, love? (She has to feel it...) The taste was sweet and you delivered. It's so strong it's almost tangible, pulsing through her veins and mine (I didn't know I would feel so high) , like some sick kind of connection. ( Deep. ) It's so alive around me, I can't even breathe. Air chokes in my throat with a strength I can't define. Everything that we've been missing, you make me feel like there's a part of me that I want to get back again.
Deep.
It stops with the deathlike finality of lightning. Her voice is gone, and so is her strength. I draw back. And without her to numb my senses, nothing stops me from realizing that I am a monster. It's a lovely end to an ugly night.
She lays there, the skin of her lips bruising before my very eyes, her hair tangled and mussed. Her figure is completely limp. Her eyes, dead-dull blue, refuse to meet mine. She's too broken to even feel angry or betrayed. Sometimes, it's just that nothing seems worth saving.
I've committed the greatest crime. Everything I've ever-- With all my faults, I've added the worst and greatest one to the list. The gods should wipe me from the face of this earth. (Only when you're wrecked do you agree with all my plans for you and me ) she doesn't deserve this. I've left a vacant idol where once there was a deity so bright she could singe my eyes. My mouth is clean, my hands are dirty. I've crushed all her glory to a sad mortal shell, too broken to even fight back. And I'm left crumpled at her feet, like I usually am, begging for forgiveness and affection when she can give neither. (The Never man will weep -Never sleep at night) I've killed her light. I've broken her trust, and lost her. And I can't face that.
I've lost her.
I can't watch her slip away. I won't let you fall apart.
It's a sad solution, but it is all I can offer after this. My blade is no more worthy of her than I am, but it's all I have to give, all the solace I can offer someone I have hurt so much. Maybe there is nothing to say. I make it fast and painless, so that she no longer has to endure the empty numbness that I caused. The vacant eyes die for a fact, and now they recover a semblance of the light they once held. At least who ever finds her will remember that, and not the milky death I brought upon her. I want to tear it up, I want to break it down, I want a wall of tears to wash away. Blood drips down her graceful neck, like precious divine offerings, trailing crimson rivulets around the bare purpling skin of her chest, and disappearing in to the folds of red fabric rumpled at her elbows. Shining brightly red-rimmed and redlined with the time, infused with the choice of the mind. I close her eyes. I've done it now. No point in killing halfway. ( Everyone is going to have to die – sometime.)
My own breath fails to come.
I am tired, I am weary, I could sleep for a thousand years (The demons' songs are relentless, always have been). A thousand dreams that would awake me, different colors made of tears.
No point in killing halfway. None.
What is next, then? Well, what could be? I am nothing without her presence. That unearthly presence I killed before I killed her body. Without you, without you everything falls apart. Without you, it's not as much fun to pick up the pieces . (Relentless...) I still have no promise to make her but the one I've always kept. I will always love her. I will always worship her, her volatile essence of violence waiting. I've nothing left now. Singing a killer's lullaby, identified by the dying ring of her good-bye. The last thing you hear before your life disappears. (Unforgiving...)
I'm dead without you (no, no point in killing halfway).
But I know that I'll see you again, on that you may depend. I just don't know how or when. Sleep on, my lost love on gone.
The voices' constancy is a provides me some sick sort of comfort. They will never leave me. And they blame me just as much as I do. It's good. It's good they know the truth.
There's some use in treating courage as a remote friend, learning what it is to lie.
The demons' song was never bolder, never louder, as the razor-calm mercy of my blade tore through me, spraying my blood on the ground to mix with hers. Of all the bloods I've drawn, this one is the only one that deserved it.
I descend from grace in arms of undertow. I will take my place in the great below.
And I crumple to the ground like the will-less, worthless doll that I am. Beside you, love (always beside you).
Metatext:
Meta-: more comprehensive: transcending meta psychology -- used with the name of a discipline to designate a new but related discipline designed to deal critically with the original one metamathematics.
Text: (1) the original words and form of a written or printed work.
Metatext: my obnoxious, pretentious way of referring to author's notes. Call me a lit-geek. Go ahead, you want to.
And let the flaming begin.
Let the records state. When I say "dark" I mean it.
I don't expect many people to like this portrayal of K/K, but it was hard to resist. With the fear of loneliness on one side, the possesiveness on the other, the long line of past traumas, and the complete lack of communication; this pairing was just waiting to be fucked up. Literally, as it turned out.
I'll admit I set out to make the darkest fic possible to me. It all started with the third or fourth re-reading of Maggie's Rakuen , a superbly written fic. After throwing out the empty kleenex box, I started wondering what could possibly happen to the RK characters that would be darker than that. I didn't expect my brain to actually answer. Hopefully, this fic measures up to its inspiration. The plot is dark, but I'm unsure about the writing, which is why I'm begging for reviews. Please?
I didn't know my head was capable of coming up with such a plot. This is what happens when you read e e cummings while listening to The Velvet Underground.
And speaking of the Gods of underground rock. If you look in the "demonsongs" (not that you will, mind you, you'd get a migraine you'd never forget) you'll find parts of the lyrics to The (holy) Velvet Underground's Femme Fatale, Venus in Furs, and Black Angel's Death Song. Lou Reed must have precognition, because the latter is the most Battousai song ever written. You'll also find Nine Inch Nails's The Perfect Drug, The Fragile, The Great Below, and Deep; Underworld's Dark and Long, River of Bass, Spoonman, and M.E.; PJ Harvey's Down by the Water and Broken Homes; Arab Strap's Cherubs, Esthero's Heaven Sent, and Faithless's Killer's Lullaby. And, of course, the great Peter Murphy's Never Man, Things to Remember, and, obviously, Should the World Fail to Fall Apart.
Bela Lugosi's dead. But you knew that.