"I don't want the world to see me, cuz I don't think that they'd understand. When everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am." - Iris, The Goo Goo Dolls
The clouds above forewarned of the oncoming storm. Ketterburg was cold as ever, frost and ice biting at your skin as you wandered around town.
One girl was out at this late hour of the night, ignoring the unruly chill in the air as she wandered aimlessly. As it had been every night before, she was unable to sleep.
"I miss you."
"Don't leave me."
"Please, don't go."
"Don't go..."
When she did sleep, these were the dreams she had. Lost in a black abyss, calling out to someone she couldn't see. It was obvious who he was; these dreams had only been happening since his death.
"Come back."
Anise was aware she was not the only one suffering a loss, or who had in the past, but the pain refused to depart from her chest and plagued her day and night. She had lived for him. Her purpose surrounded him.
He was gone.
What was there to live for now?
It was like this on a daily basis; ever since the Fon Master's death, Anise had been hopelessly depressed, looking for a way out of the hole she had fallen into. It was a terrifying place, this hole, filled with endless blackness and echoes, just like her dreams.
Ne, they weren't really dreams so much as they were nightmares. Who could possibly get pleasure out of looking for something, blind, and never finding it? The world of her dreams went on forever. It was worse than dreams of falling. At least you had hope that you wouldn't hit the bottom. For Anise, she had no hope that she would find a way out.
The darkness she lived in when sleep graced her clung to her and followed her into daylight. It was a nauseating pain that she struggled to hide from everyone she knew. As days went by, it became harder to hide that there was a problem, yet the cause was easier to cover up.
"Please, come back."
"I need you."
"Don't leave...please don't leave..."
It was like being schizophrenic. Voices whispered in her mind, although she knew whom they belonged too. No voice was demonic, simply haunting, enough so to draw her to tears.
She wanted to be saved. So desperately to be saved.
The borderline below-zero weather didn't phase her anymore; no pain could compare to the one she felt.
"Take me with you."
Her breath was coming out in warm, damp pants now, her chest tightening. It wasn't a good sign, but the anxiety did this to her, and it was something she had learned not to fear.
If death was taking a hold of her, so be it. Maybe then she could be with him again.
Her vision blurred as she staggered down a snow-covered cobblestone street, tripping over ice as well as her own posture. Eventually she hit a solid patch of ice and slid face-first onto the bricks.
It hurt.
It hurt nowhere near as badly as losing him had, and did. Lying with her cheek pressed to the frozen ground, Anise couldn't find a good enough reason to pull herself up.
Staying couldn't hurt.
Moments passed as she inhaled the frigid air, chest tightening more and vision blurring. It was terrible, but the experience was too interesting to let go of.
"I'll be with you soon."
Anise shut her eyes, letting go of consciousness as some unforseen force pulled her under.
- x - x - x -
He wasn't quite sure what had brought him to Ketterburg, it was ruthlessly bitter and the weather never reached more than 40-something degrees.
Nonetheless, he was here, and it took a bit too much effort to get back to 'real' land now.
The streets were dimly lit at this time, lamps a buttery glow beneath sheens of snow that coated them. If anyone were awake, their windows glowed the same, for they had the wit not to be outside.
It was not that he was stupid, but too stubborn to go find an inn to stay at.
Turning down an alleyway, braving the fearsome snowy path, he stopped dead when he reached the other side.
To his left, next to a few boxes from the local market, was a figure coated in snow. Her brown hair fell across her back, now tangled with ice.
Crouching down, he examined her further, reaching out and daring to push her over to see her face. Her skin was ungodly frigid, but her face still so recognizable.
Why the hell was she out here, unconscious and alone?
It wasn't like him to be courteous, especially to a girl like her whom he fought against, but the sight of her slowly withering in this frozen wasteland made his stomach churn.
There wasn't much else to do but take her somewhere. Letting go of his pride, he lifted the girl into his arms and headed back to where he had seen the closest inn.
He let his hair fall into his eyes as he entered the newfound warmth and shelter, shamed that he was giving up all he had fought for to save the life of a girl he had once tried to kill.
His original idea had been to set her down in the lobby near the fire, and then decide whether to stay or leave, but the innkeeper made a fuss and insisted she be taken somewhere better to rest and recover.
The room had its own fireplace, though per the innkeeper's fuss she ended up wrapped up in the bed. He wasn't sure what drove him to stay, but some piece of his being was concerned for her.
Having seen her lifeless on that street had made him ill. She looked so dark, so lost, and no one had come and found her.
Then again, she was smart enough. No one probably knew.
- x - x - x -
One hour ticked by, then two, and yet he chose to stay. He found himself sitting beside the window, leaning his head up against the frozen glass.
In that time, she'd not moved once. To be wholly truthful, it worried him a bit. He need not like her or get along with her, but that didn't mean she deserved to die. Especially not here, not like this.
He was staring intently out the window when a groggy, strained voice spoke up from behind him.
"Ion?"
He shut his eyes tight at the sound of the name, remembering who he'd been created after, acknowledging all the trouble it had caused him.
"Sorry, you've got the wrong guy," he told her, not bothering to look up. It wasn't complicated, and the notion was something she should have been able to figure out.
Silence blanketed the room, and he continued to peer out the window to keep from looking up. Not that it mattered, anyway. She would figure out he was there sooner or later.
"Then who...?" Her voice trailed off, hoarse and raw.
Sighing heavily from the frustration her lack of recognition gave him, he turned around.
"Did lying out there, almost dead, make you forget everything?"
He couldn't help the bitterness in his voice. He had bothered to help her, and she had not a clue who he was.
Her chocolate-colored eyes gazed at him for a while, half-lidded, before they widened a bit.
"You..."
"Yes, smartass, I saved you."
"I didn't want to be saved!"
Her sudden outburst shocked him. His eyes narrowed at her.
"And what the hell were you planning to die for out there, huh?" He snapped, irritated that she was so incompetent. There could not possibly be one thing worth dying for. If anything, he had things worth dying for.
"What the hell would it matter to you, Sync?" She suddenly had a fiestiness to her, just like she always had. "You don't give a damn about what I do."
"Obviously I did, if I kept you from killing yourself, moron."
Sync wasn't sure why he was challenging her on this subject. It was hard not to.
"Give me one good reason that I should have let you die. Tell me what the hell you were out there for to begin with, and I'll let you go back there and preserve yourself as nothing more than a lifeless corpse." His words were nothing short of cryptic, but he was angered.
Anise glared at him, now upright in bed, before she let her reason out.
"I see no reason to live anymore. If anything, I'd imagine you would understand that."
He laughed, and quickly stopped. "You think I would understand you? Do you understand all the shit I've been through? Did you take into consideration that, unlike you, I was created to be the replacement for some kid who was on his deathbed, and when I wasn't good enough, that I was expected to die? Do you have any idea what the hell its like to be so desperate to have a purpose that you let some asshole on a power trip treat you like shit just to have a place to go?"
Sync was furious. There wasn't a way Anise could comprehend all of what he had gone through, but knowing her, she would fish for a way to say she did.
No one could understand that. Being brought into a world to live for someone, not being good enough, being cast out to die, surviving, and only being good enough to be an elite soldier working for some ludacris man who thought that destroying the world was his calling.
To his surprise, she didn't say anything. When she did, it pissed him off all the more.
"You don't know what it's like to lose the most important thing to you."
"Yeah? You don't know what it's like to lose yourself, to truly have no purpose because no one gives a shit whether you live or die. You don't know what the hell it means to live for yourself, and it's something you should damn well learn."
She gazed up at him through the tips of her bangs, and it was only then he saw the twinkle in her eye as it slowly leaked down her face. It wasn't like Anise to be weak, but she wasn't the girl he knew.
Sync watched her as she dropped her head into her arms and tried to make herself as small as possible. Should he have felt guilty for yelling at her and attempting to knock sense into her head?
"Look, all I'm saying is you don't need him to live," he chided, turning back to the window so he didn't have to watch her cry. "Hell, there has to be something out there to live for. If I'm still trying, there's no reason that someone like you should be giving up."
He leaned against the window on his forearm, forehead pressed against it as well. His anger was turning to anxiety, which came in the form of a sharp pain in his chest. It seemed to be a common occurance whenever he was thoroughly pissed off.
He hadn't heard her get up, but he couldn't miss the feeling of her arms wrapping around his waist. She leaned her head against his back, and although he wanted to question why she was doing so, he thought better of it and turned back to his post at the window.
As long as she wasn't crawling back outside to die, he could withstand the agitation.
In the meantime, while she stood there hugging him, he contemplated why it annoyed him that she was doing so. Perhaps it was because she was supposed to dislike him, or hate him, per her choice. Or maybe it was the fact that in his short lifetime, he had never encountered interaction with a female like this.
Whether those were part of it or not felt irrelevant to the reason his mind conjured last;
It was the first time in his life anyone had given even a hint of an idea that they gave a damn.
Anise was probably doing it for herself, not for him, but it still gave him the idea. He shut his eyes tight and tried to remember what it was like, just so when he took off he could remember the five minutes someone practically cared.
"You aren't going to let yourself die, are you?" She asked him, voice muffled by his shirt.
"Why would I?"
He felt her small hand tug at the side of his shirt, silently asking him to turn around, but he ignored the gesture. While the idea was convinient, even nice, the moment was becoming a bit uncomfortable for him the further it drew out.
Rather than turning around, he peered over his shoulder at her. "What?"
Nonetheless, she continued to tug, until he turned around and huffed at her.
"What?"
She was standing there before him, arms still around him, staring into his eyes.
This was too much.
Sync truly wanted to push her away, but some part of him was concerned for her. If keeping her sane meant letting her do this...
So be it.
Anise put her head against his chest and closed her eyes, allowing herself to be vulnerable for a moment. For quite a few.
"Are you leaving?" She asked him, not picking up her head. He contemplated his answer; God knows he wanted to leave, to be left to himself as he had become accustomed to, but his skewed moral compass was actually functioning properly tonight.
"No."
Her arms tightened around him, and he could feel the dampness of her tears on his shirt.
"Are you going to admit this happened?"
"Who the hell am I going to tell?"
Anise pulled away to look at him, finding some sense of comfort in his eyes; not because they looked so familiar, not because they were the closest to his, but just because. Eventually, she found a smile forming on her face, albiet a weak one.
Sync raised an eyebrow at her, desiring deeply to call her something along the lines of stupid girl and at least walking to the other side of the room. Instead, he followed his small dose of morality and stood there with her. Maybe she was still a bit delusioinal from being outside too long, but her words took him by surprise as she laid her head back on his chest.
"Maybe, rather than live for ourselves, we could live for one another."
"You hate me," he impulsively stated, unnerved by the unexpected statement. "If anything, you're just saying that because I'm the closest tangible thing to Ion."
"You're nothing like Ion," Anise reminded him, face buried in his shirt.
"Then why would you say something like that?" It was a struggle to mask the irritation in his voice, but he was attempting to do so.
"I'm not saying you have to stay with me, you know," she corrected pulling away and dropping her arms from his torso. "I'm just saying it as something to remember, should the thought of letting go of it all ever come up."
"Worry about yourself. I know I'm not going anywhere." His statement was brash, and he didn't mean to insult her by it, but she looked hurt. "If that's what keeps you alive, then do it."
She looked at him through her perifferals before darting her eyes away. "Forget it."
Anise walked away from him, heading to the bed and sitting down at the edge of it, her legs dangling over the side. She sighed, digging her fingers into the sheets to avoid the pain that came from the blatant rejection.
"Why are you asking it of me?" Sync asked her. He didn't move an inch from his place by the window, but his gaze was on her.
"You...understand," she whispered, barely looking up.
As she stared at the ground, she watched as his silhouette appeared before her.
"If it'll keep you from doing something stupid, then I'll go along with it."
Anise peered up at him. No, he was nothing like Ion. Their faces were similar, but their personas so different that it overruled the physical completely.
"You care?"
"Do you?"
She knew that he wasn't the only person who would actually have an opinion on what she was doing, but he was the only one that understood the pain. On the other hand, the way he had said it...
"You realize, if you want me to rely on the notion of you as my reason, you're the only physical reason I have."
He was standing there with his arms crossed, waiting for an honest response. She could tell he was irritable, because, while he played along with her, it was nothing he would do on any other given day.
"I know."
"Alright, then. I'll be your reason for living." With this statement, he turned and began to head for the door.
"It goes both ways, idiot," she called after him. Before he managed to slip out the door, he turned around with a smirk on his face.
"That doesn't mean I have to say it, do I?"
He walked out, leaving her sitting on the bed staring after him.
He was her enemy, but it had to be better to live for him than to die for someone who was already gone.
Plus, she had convinced him to live for her. She couldn't let him down now.
A bit OOC for both, but it's the general idea. Reviews are appreciated.