Infinity, Moonlit
Summary: He takes her whole. Drabble- Shuna, Mikage.
Warning: Challenge.
Set: Story-unrelated.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
[My whole life I've been waiting]
Sometimes it's hard to remember who he is.
Correction. There is no distinction between his past and his present self, no need to discern. He is Souichi and Delos, a bastard, traitor and a mercenary, bodyguard to Lady Aglaia and the boy who lives in the now. He knows everything there is to know about his life in Pompeii and everything he has learned in his present life. Sometimes it's a lot – all jumbled up, in contrasting colors, odd sounds and weird comparisons – but overall, it is his life. They are his memories. They do not disappear just because he hates them.
[I was born here for the day]
No. They don't disappear and he knows exactly who he is. Still, nothing of it was important before he met Shuna.
[we would meet again]
And she is so much like the Lady Aglaia he knew he would laugh, except he feels like screaming. Like shouting, fighting, raging, he can destroy a baseball glove and fight with his parents and throw in a window and go out with a dozen other women and still it won't change anything. Shuna is willful and arrogant and fiercely protective, she is kind and unselfish and understanding. She is strong-minded and quick-witted and silver-tongued. She is slender and small and beautiful, her lips are rose petals, her hair fine gold and her eyes deep as an ocean. She is ten years old and he wants to take her and lock her away, for him to look at only.
[You always turn me upside down]
Souichi wants her to hate him and to forget him, and at the same time he wants to touch her and hear her say she forgives him. Because what he did was unforgivable, his actions were treason in heart, soul and mind, but what he did he did for a reason. And, in the end, he watched her beloved city die when she was unable to. He did not close his eyes even once. He had owed her that much.
[And I don't even know]
He remembers it, clear as day: the slender figure standing in the backdrop of the blossoming almond trees, her white robes blood-splattered – and yet she is beautiful. She holds herself like a queen and more while she smiles like nobody else he knows does, and he knows he wants her entirely and fully but never will have her.
[how]
Strange how greedy humans are: what they want, they take, and if they cannot have it they destroy worlds to achieve it. Destroy what they long for. He has killed her in so many, unspeakable ways and still he wants her. Infinity is mirrored in her eyes, a world beyond a world, and he can see himself in them.
[you died]
There is a woman who gave her heart to anyone but never to him alone and there is a girl who refuses to give her heart to him because she knows him. There is a city they both know and which she loves and he hates, until the end, a life she lives and he despises. They are so different it hurts. Shuna is sweet and small, Aglaia was beautiful and kind, and they are the same. He can see it, Delos can see it, it is easy when you know how to look at her. Delos calls her Lady Aglaia and Souichi calls her Shuna, not that it matters to him. Delos and he are one. Shuna can forget about Aglaia, she can forget about Sirix and Loleus and Pompeii, about her life and her heritage and her job. But she cannot forget about him. She cannot. How can she? He bound her to himself with ties made of blood and still she forgot. It is proof how much she hates him, he thinks, the fact that she was willing to erase her memories to be free of him.
[Or, perhaps, she loves him, and there is another reason entirely for her memory loss, not that it matters when she looks at him like that and he can see himself in her eyes]
He takes her whole.
[How precious, these memories]
Body, soul and heart, the price is not too high and he is ready to pay it even though he does not know yet what it will be. When he kisses her – darkness around them and the moon, a playground and a street, and he is wet and cold and she is warm and alive in his arms – there is nothing that remains, no hate, no apology, no doubt. No reason.
[that led me]
She tastes like moonlight. Souichi takes her entirely: Shuna Sakakibara, willful, strong-headed, proud, kind, loving, tender, quick-tempered, beautiful. He takes her and her constant urge to clean up, do charitable work, to protect her sister and her friends, he takes her with her fine, golden hair, her blue eyes and her slender figure. He takes her everything – and he knows, even though she has forgotten, that there is Aglaia in her, somewhere deep inside. But it is not what he needs. What he wants. He wants her, he needs her, he wants to feel her and sense her and hear her and kiss her no matter their past. It is impossible for him to look at her and not see Aglaia. But he sees Shuna in her, too, at the same time. It's not so difficult. It's just what she is.
[to you]
It does not mean he gives up on his guilt. But for a few seconds – every time he kisses her – he forgets about it more and more. Perhaps, one day, it will be gone.
[Noone blames you anymore]
Until the day Souichi does not blame Delos anymore, either, he will love Shuna. And after that, he still will. Forever and ever. There is no doubt about it: he has already waited 1900 years.
[Nobody]
Aglaia always was beautiful. He finds Shuna is even more so when she cries. So he kisses her. In her eyes, infinity shines brightly.
[You]
[are]
[mine]
Forever.