Once upon a mythical long ago time in some faroff bit of netspace, Kasumisora-sama put before a certain author a desire to co-work on a series of seven fics on the seven deadly sins...
And thus, I am here. Heh.
Welcome to "Sloth" the first of my four out of the seven fics KS-sama and I are apparently working on for the seven deadly sins fic community on Livejournal. I intend to put up my four, no telling what KS-sama will do, but Sloth's the first. And how does one start a fic on sloth? Well...after dismissing the JO cast as SLOTHS being too much of a furry fic, NF-kun runs off to her microsoft works program and looks up the stuff. First draft was three or four pages long, it went to KS-sama. KS-sama looked it over. A matter of weeks or so, and NF-kun was done with her first of the seven deadly sins and decided to put it up before the world in an attempt to convince that she is in fact alive, that she is in fact working on all varieties of fanfiction amidst senior year schoolwork for high school, and that she does in fact hope to pressure KS-sama into showing more of her excellent work to a cold and unreviewing fandom. (grin)
Enough said.
"Sloth" is, as I said, the first of four or so fics that I am sure I'm going to do, the second of which, "Pride" is currently in first draft, and the other two I fail to remember without my list in front of me, but are yet still within the confines of my evil anime-tastic hair.
None of these fics will have anything to do with the existing fanfiction universe used for my epic stories (Control, and Gracious Wings), and will serve as one-shots, confined to the rules of any of my other one-shots, under seperate universes and a mostly-canon storyline.
This story in particular is an unpairing'd Itsuki twins fic. And actually I think its style blends more of FoolishMortal's knack for describing scenery, with my long drawn out head-action-thoughts, and best of all, it's taken a leaf from KasumiSora in that it's only a few pages long. It is appropriate for all ages as far as I know, and is rated such, and I must say it turned out rather well.
Please enjoy the first of four of the seven deadly sins.
-NF
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Sloth n.--laziness: a dislike of work or any kind of physical exertion. Synonyms: idleness, sluggishness, indolence, apathy, languor, lethargy
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Stretched out in an endless curve of bleached white skin, of dank, tangled blond hair, of white blanket covering and ghastly gleaming machines and wires and drips of things in and out, vast charts of readings, a mask concealing the entirety of her face, lay his sister. There was something immortal about her as she lay there, something unchanging and permanant and hopeless about her state where she lay within the equal consistant, boring, gleaming white room: a wire-ridden living statue. Something everlasting seemed to sling to her limp form, and yet that something seemed all the more hateful for that strange spiteful quality of immortality and timelessness. Time was only measured here by the amount of times she was moved to prevent bedsores, the occasional trimming of her hair, the massaging of atrophied muscles, the sponging off of her clammy lifeless skin by uncaring, masked, white coated healers. Yet for all their disturbing her, for all their coming in and out and never allowing her more than a few hours peace at a time, she never seemed to change, though time moved around her.
At times he wanted nothing more than to simply let loose his powers in that room, ruining and cracking the gleaming, perfect machines enslaving her every breath, her every thought at times, submitting her to a de-humanitized humiliation beyond words--a life that was merely a dull room, an uneventful existance. Sometimes all he was sure of was that she was truly uncared for and unnoticed except by him--he couldn't help but feel that strange melancholy thought over and over again like the same dull tone of a piano--a single key chiming over and over and over again until it made him want to flinch every time it hit his ears. She was unimportant except as an experiment for others, a mystery to be decoded and solved like a mundane riddle, an easy game to be dusted and put aside on a shelf...
No no no, nothing inhuman about that at all. She wasn't human after all. Psychics were beyond such mundane things as morals, as even humane kindness, and this was after all a time of war--you did what you had to. You justified it all with the stamp of progress, you went about horrors matter of factly, and blinked over the concept of embarassment, of privacy, of any want to LIVE for more than the sake of soldiering a war for a non-advancing side...
The apathy of the rest of the world disgusted him beyond words, even beyond thoughts at times.
He took her hand listening to the dull audible clicking of the machine harnessed to her. There was a hum as some fresh surge of power washed through the machine, feeding back out, diluting, and dissapating the excess to who-knew-where... 'Haruna...?' He tried to tempt her out with a tendril of his mind. See? Your brother? He wondered at times, so trecherously if he was possibly just another minor annoyance, just another minor pinprick of indignity.
Sometimes he could only wish those limp, cold, dead fingers would even give the slightest twitch back...
His sister didn't reply. Was she sleeping? Was it possible for her to sleep, really, on that machine? Did any psychic really have a time of rest? There was no time when thoughts didn't enter HIS head, he could only assume it could be so terrible for Haruna, but perhaps it really was so peaceful in that machine that she felt no such surges of power.
Maybe it wasn't his place at all...She hadn't asked him to save her--he'd always assumed it would be what she wanted, but...what if what if it was better for her here? Peaceful even...Peace was something he never had...
Haruna didn't speak, neither confirmation, nor denial, nor even the slightest hint of activity to tell him she was even aware of his prescence. He dimly wondered what she could be so absorbed in.
Yes, he could only wonder, assume, impute...
All he could do was deduce.
He could only glorify his own longings for apathy and do nothing, glorify his own weariness, his own trecherous thoughts that he might never be able to entice a mindbreaker to him, glorify that trecherous impulse that he might never be able to barter away himself to that unknown source and hope the creature was not so cruel as to leave his sister here. He had known there was a risk of course, but he WANTED her to be free...
It was a dangerous bargaining game he played, taunting out those with power, defeating them one by one--and each time it became more and more frustrating to have to deal with another creature who could not help. Mindbreakers were all around him according to his faction's propogandas, but in reality they seemed so sparse as to not exist. Those few he had found had no interest in a teenage boy, no matter his family lines, no matter his powers. He was a fly on a wall to them, and not worth the effort to squash. They had no time for him, or for either his pleading, or his impulsive attacks when denied. They were beyond him--so much more like his faction itself that he hated them all the more. They were just the same--evolved beyond humanity, evolved beyond kindness, too powerful for pity.
His head throbbed faintly. What of his promise of before? To save her and wisk her away with him, where they would never be seperated again...He of course could only loathe this splitting off of his other side, his other part. Psychic twins could only be so close, and he hated being seperated from Haruna.
But what could he do? Could he dare assume that was what she wanted?
Hey Onii-chan...I can hear you. He gazed down at the still form and slipped his hand out of hers, to attempt to hide those embarassing, embittering thoughts from her. She'd been through enough. Stop that, it's not like you can push me out. He sighed. "Haruna...Can I be pathetic by myself for a moment?" He asked bitterly. She seemed to hesitate within his mind. That had probably hurt her, but he didn't care--this mattered more. He couldn't let her see that wicked slothful part of him that wanted to do nothing, the part that wanted to admit defeat and selfishly let her lie there forever.
What would she think of him if she only knew?
"I'll come back in a few minutes. I didn't mean to bother you."
She was quiet for a long moment. ...Didn't work, again? He didn't answer, turning his head away, wanting to drown out the noises of the machines, the fresh rush from another emanation of her powers, dispersed and dissipated out all so uselessly and wastefully. He didn't want to think there might be disappointment to her tone...
What a waste of a person, a waste of life...lying there day after day...
What a waste of a person he was, running himself down to the bone like this and yet still unable to save anyone!
The carelessness of the rest of the world bothered him, but not nearly so much as his own--unable to do anything but sit there and watch--unable to change a single thing, or even save his sister no matter how hard he tried.
So why try? the thought had sprung to his head one day. It had plagued him ever since, in that single dissonant, persistant, piano tone. Again, and again, and again, relentlessy digging in its monosyllabic defiance, its harsh selfishness.
Why...Why...WHY...
"I'll do better next time, you just wait. I'll get you out of here." He said to the wall softly, not even looking at Haruna. How much he wanted her out of here...how much he wanted her to enjoy the sun again, how much he missed really hearing her voice... How could she NOT want that? "I'll get you out..." he whispered, this tiem as much to himself as to her. Haruna stirred a little against his mind. You always say that. He flinched. The tone hadn't been unkind, just matter of fact. It still hurt. You work yourself too hard, Naoya. Naoya was unable to keep the bitter smile from his lips. "Me? Work too hard? Nah. I don't work hard enough." He rose from her bedside. Where are you going? He looked back, dull amber eyes gazing at the prone form.
"I'm skipping work again." He said dully.
His horrible, horrible sin of sloth. He hated that most of all. Either driving himself to a frenzy, to an ulcer-inducing inhuman work schedule, or unable to work at all, lying there with barely enough strength to breathe...perhaps the sins of the world would strike him down as they had Haruna, make him unable to move, slave to his powers. On some days he wished that if it were going to happen at all that it would happen already so he wouldn't have to sit there and wait out his every waking moment, wondering if he would be struck down yet, how much longer he had. Some days he longed to fight it, to work as hard as he could with what limited time he might have to save Haruna, but those other times, those increasingly more numerous times, he simply wanted to sit there and wait for it all to end.
At least he wouldn't have to see or deal with all this pain, all this sadness, all this frustrating helplessness.
Those were his two dangerous extremes, battling one another with enough force to tear him to pieces under the opression of his own desires. And he hated both of those evil, abusive extremes with a passion he could not explain or express even to his twin without sounding absolutely mad.
But he hated his sloth the most, because that harmed not only him, but Haruna as well.
'You deserve a better brother than me...you really do...you deserve to live like everyone else.' He felt her prescence stir in his mind. Well I have this one, and that's it, and that's enough for me. He almost smiled
"This one brother, or this one life?" he asked.
If Haruna had been able, he was sure she would have smiled that wicked grin of hers, would have punched his arm, would have teased him. He could still feel a twinge in his shoulder where she'd dislocated it "playing" with him when they were younger. (How terrible to live in a mostly female faction and have to deal with being beaten up by your own sister's wrestling fanaticism) If he chose to flip up the blankets, her pale skin would still have scars from the times he'd ambushed her in yet more of their rough play-fighting, scraping a knee or an elbow, screaming at one another and pulling hair, biting and kicking one another... When she grinned again--if she ever did--she'd still have a faint chip to one tooth where he'd gotten her back for some forogtten stupid thing or other. (how much she'd hated that--she always tried to hide her grin because of that little, barely noticable chip...) If he parted his hair a certain way, he could still find that one line where it wouldn't grow any more, the place where she'd nearly driven a shovel through his skull playing around with telekenisis when they were no older than three and still trying to outdo one another with their powers--she'd beaten him easily even then...
His scars were beginning to be overlain by scars from less playful, more serious battles...hers were the same as ever, though perhaps just a touch more faded...
Was it foolish to miss those times? Was it foolish to think she might walk free of the machine one day?
She didn't answer his question, or his nostalgic thoughts--usually she'd correct him and say he'd started this particular scuffle, or THAT ONE had been HIS fault entirely... Perhaps she was absorbed in her own spiritual realm once more, fascinated by a world of peace, even if it only lived within her. He envied her if that was the case, because she could at least fill herself. He on the other hand, was left empty without her. His twin was a large part of him, and he missed her desperately. But she seemed terribly indifferent at times. Who knew whether that was patience or apathy of her own.
The room was only filled with the worried beeping of machines, and the inhuman silence...
There was no play, there was no work, there was no hope, and there was no war: An eternity of sluggish apathy.
If this was peace, how horrible it must be. How terrible and meaningless a life was without some kind of work, some kind of goal, some kind of war...
Naoya Itsuki wasn't one for peace in that case...
"Scratch that...I think I'll go to work after all."