summary- [Peace Maker] Okita finds justification for living. He also tries to skip a stone. Drabbley.
disclaimer- I disclaim.
prefic- Written for the Temps Mort Raison d'etre challenge; done in fifty minutes or so, with a few re-takes.
warning- Spoilers, perhaps, but nothing major, for both the anime and manga. Also awkward imagery.
Life Underwater
There was something perverse in the way he lived.
They /had/ said there might be some trouble, later on, when he was past that nine-year-old freshness, that nine-year-old blankness, that nine-year-old pick up the sword and just do it. Split, scrunch, and splash; everything felt better afterwards.
Except it often went split, scrunch, splash and- what, there's /more/?
He went to bed at night feeling nothing, spent the darkest hours gratefully dreamless, and woke up the next day feeling something had changed, something wasn't right (him?), something was looming before him but pressing down on his back at the same time. It choked him. He coughed.
He did his laundry to clear his mind; watched as the water turned a strawberry milk colour from the blood and the mud. He did Hijikata's laundry as well, and anyone else's; he scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, and when it was over he tipped the bucket over onto the ground, watched as the water seeped into the ground, taking its blood with it, and its grime with it, and like that, none of them belonged to him anymore.
He did not have blood on his hands because when he washed them it was gone. Like that.
He remembered Hijikata's voice, low, and soft, asking him if he was all right. He remembered meeting Ayumu, and that strange flicker in her eyes and voice when she said he reminded her of her brother.
"Except, different," she had said.
"Really, how?" he'd answered, a smile that was curious on his face, but she hadn't replied, just smiled, shook her head, shrugged.
He remembered finding out that he had tuberculosis. Ah. So it wasn't that something was looming before him but pressing down on his back at the same time. It was just a disease. He was just choking on a disease.
And there /had/ been something perverse in the way he lived- but it wasn't there anymore. He couldn't see it, or touch it, or smell it, or taste it, or choke on it, or feel it.
It just wasn't there anymore.
-
And he remembered one time, by the river, skipping stones at dusk. Hijikata's skipped five times across the surface, as Okita watched, making a small sound of admiration.
He tossed his stone into the river.
It skipped the slightest bit, just once, and ripples stretched out like a falcon's talons before it sank, with a small plunk, below the surface.
And when the ripples faded, there was no sign that there had ever been a stone.
Like that. It just wasn't there anymore.
-
END./ 24Dec03.
notes- There might be a few discrepancies. I've no idea about their ages, when they joined and all that. So-- yeah.
