Written for my friend's birthday. Hope you enjoy it as much as she did. :D
Disclaimer: Don't own.
Inside Eternity
Here you are
Daylight's star
made out of miracles
He remembers the old stories. The ones of anger and rain, of a little girl dancing alone among the buttercups -- of sorrow, pain, and a forgotten happily ever after. He's picked them up through the years as he traveled from city to city. Clichés repeating, all the same motifs playing over and over in his head.
"We should go back."
Tsume lifts his head off the ground, clumps of snow sticking to the fur around his neck, and says, "What?"
The landscape is a sea of sparkling white that stretches from the horizon to the sky. Kiba's golden-yellow eyes watches as snowflakes land softly on his nose.
"Hige and Toboe are probably worried by now," he continues, staring off into the sky, "We usually return after a couple of hours when we hunt."
Yawning, Tsume drops his head back into the snow. "They're just hungry."
"There's a blizzard coming."
"Not until dawn."
When Kiba looks back down on him, his eyes are a clear grey, like the shadows of stars upon the snow. They speak of longing and a search that's sure to end in blood, doubt, and screaming - just like in the stories that they hear from city to city.
Tsume shifts to the side, away from the wall of their makeshift fortress. "...Feel like I'm losing you in a cloud."
This time, it's Kiba's turn to blink questionably at him, head tilted to one side, confused, but Tsume shrugs. He's not willing to elaborate any more than he wants to.
The wind gives a piercing howl; the sky is already darkening now. At last Kiba turns his attention away from the horizon, lays down beside him and huddles closer, his body trembling in the cold.
When Kiba returns from the fight -- and it was a vicious fight, with thirteen other dogs, all snarling and mean, he's limping. Blood trails after him, little dribbles splattered all over the concrete. There's scratches criss-crossing over his face, his arms, with bruises swelling up everywhere.
Tsume sends him a disapproving glare, which Kiba ignores.
Yeah. He was probably caught in another fight too big and too bad for him. Probably a pack of dogs who laughed at his silly notion of "Paradise," who mocked him, called him worthless, and he let his pride get the better of him. A true wolf, he is.
Tsume turns away as Hige comments on the wounds.
"Going for a walk," he calls over his shoulder to anyone who happened to be listening. He can feel Kiba's eyes on his back, but he doesn't really care.
If Kiba was willing to go all the way for a figment of a dream -- to die, to bleed, forget -- then that was his problem.
The world is washed in white and splotches of red, with deadly poison dribbling everywhere. The screaming doesn't stop, doesn't desist, doesn't go away. It bounces off the walls with the sound of crumbling of metal as Tsume streaks down the hall.
Next turn, next turn, next turn...
He leaps over a firing machine gun as it bursts through the wall. Plaster and bullet shells rain on the floor like a storm; his teeth sink into the machine and it tears into pieces.
A guard gives a shout from above. For a moment, there's only the sound of rapid fire spitting against linoleum tiles and bits of metal flying into the air. Tsume falls back into another hall, and seeing an open doorway, he lunges at the chance to escape.
The floor beneath him shudders and breaks. He snarls, kicking off a piece of falling ground. Pain sears across his arm - a bullet embeds itself into the tile. With gritted teeth, Tsume catches himself on a bent railing and pulls himself back on solid ground.
Somewhere ahead, he spies a flash of white. Golden eyes glare back at him, blind and angry. I can't find it. I can't find it anywhere!
The men in white had caught Kiba the day before yesterday, injected him so full of poison and sedatives that's he's delirious, seeing white-petaled flowers everywhere. But now the institute's been broken into and he's escaped and the place is falling down.
Kiba turns and runs, slamming against the wall as he goes. Red smears along the cracked plaster; his shoulder is bleeding. With a growl, Tsume follows behind.
It's snowing outside; it usually is. They fly across the ground, leaving wet blotchy bruises in the snow. The guns have died down, fire no longer raining down from behind. They run through a hole in the barbed wire fence.
Tsume jumps, crashing into Kiba. They tumble down the snowy plain, a mess of fur and blood, limbs flailing and snarls exploding. The sky and ground flip back and forth, a dizzy spin of snow and clouds.
And then they were still, just breathing.
Kiba speaks first, eyes still unfocused. He's still twitching from the overdose of drugs and his voice cracks. "Where are the others?"
"They ran off. I told them to leave as soon as the alarms rang."
Kiba nods, slightly.
He gets to his feet, knees shaking. Snow falls off his coat, dirty and stained with blood. The institute's no more than a couple miles away, a tiny block of grey in the distance.
"It went east," he says.
Tsume shakes his head. "It wasn't there in the first place."
"It..."
Kiba blinks hard, seeing things only in his head.
Tsume nudges him in the shoulder, in a direction away from here. "Let's go," he says and they're off, flying over fields of snow and towards the horizon.
He remembers the old stories, the ones that he's picked up from city to city. Those that end bittersweet and longing and that wishy-washy he's barely understood. They all start the same, end the same. There's always conflict, a dream just beyond its grasp, sorrow, anger, brief bouts of hope -- or it wouldn't be a story at all.
If Kiba wanted to give it all up for a figment of a dream -- to die, to sleep, forget -- then that was his problem. If he wanted to meet the end in tears and blood as the doors of Paradise open, that was his choice.
But hell if he was going to do it alone.
--