DISCLAIMER: I don't own LOVELESS | contains a yaoi pairing, you're hereby warned | I also do not own Shakespeare's "The Tempest", Sycorax, and Romeo and Juliet | includes a line from the L word

A/N: this might get confusing so I suggest you read it when you're really on the mood.

Rating: M for violence/gore and profanities

Silence is deafening when you're the only one hearing it; I turned to my side and caressed the pillow beside me thinking as if it was Soubi. I thought I have stopped longing for him but no, I longed for him every day. I sprawled all over the bed fighting urges of seeing him, but it was futile. I thrust in to his house tapping his doorbell numerous times. He opened the door as he stared at me as if he'd expected me to arrive; he had a smirk smeared throughout his face as if teasing thus I went near him, he looked away. He demanded for me to tell him that I love him as he unwrap his bathrobe; it made me think; do I love him? I do, I deeply do...But I can't so I told him no. He reacted violently; he punched me hard on the face. I didn't know what to do so I stood up as if nothing happened getting ready to drive away. He caught up with me, though; I pushed him making me drop my car key, he took it, snatched my car, and gushed out on the highway as I, abashed, was left alone in the coldness standing half-naked on his porch. I stared into the vast blankness in front of me spill like a secret to the edges of my wrought and worn out eyes. A familiar voice from beside me reminded me of the multitudes of lies I have made; it has haunted, tormented my every vein day by day. Moisture started clouding my eyes, was I going blind? Everything was starting to get blurry; in my discomfort I saw a figure slowly shape itself. I wiped the moisture from out of my eyes and only saw the familiar emptiness I always had seen. I closed my eyes as the whole world fade to sepia.

I remembered the first time I saw Soubi, I was 16 years old. He was beautiful beyond comprehension, his pale skin blended well with his sandy blond hair. Wide silver eyes brought out his natural beauty and I couldn't help but stare. His thin light eyebrows showed a mix of danger and safety at the same time. There was just a unique beauty about him that could not be rightly justified with words. He amazed me. And for some odd reason we were feeling the same emotions, as if the whole earth secluded us inside our own gravity. Before long we were all over each other although only inside the comforts of our make believe closets. I didn't know when this addiction started, it just enticed me in all its glory; it was just so hard to resist. Father was tempted as well. Yes, tempted, tempted was the right word. We were both tempted. He was tempted by perfection so he pushed me to be perfect; to be fit to be called his son. He thinks so highly of himself, you know? He was imposing, he was a hypocrite. He spells irony and sarcasm as he spit hellfire and brimstone on that mayoral speech he had ones before, and with every conversation he does with people for that matter; I hate him. Oh but he was my Father, we live on one roof; on one house so how can I come to hate him this much? Well this house was no home to me. For it to be a home, didn't you have to have some sort of love? There was only despair, fear, and loathing here.

It wasn't long before Father knew about it though; about me and Soubi. I remember him bursting into my room; the force of the door slamming close blew an untidy heap of fear and derail into a snowstorm of chaos. Father burst into the room with his nostrils steaming like a bull. He grabbed me hard by both shoulders while he admonishes me like his life depended on it; the next thing that happened made me hate him even more. He held my feet and pummelled me into thin air, he laughed as he glared at me falling, limply, to the ground. The sound I made upon hitting the ground made him laugh even more. He was losing it; I thought to myself. I felt myself shudder, unable to stand up against the weight of his rough, unforgiving hands round the back of my slender neck. A small whimper escaped my lips, now white with fear, and this set him off again. He punched me with his hard knuckles on both cheeks. Silent tears tracked their way through my heavily bruised fresh, virgin face. I looked at him, encouraging every ounce of bravery I had. And then he went near me and told me not to attempt to rebel against his rules again. I lowered my head, sensing the weight of his hands lift as he ambled towards the door walking unapologetically.

I sprawled my broken bones to my dreary, old bed. As I cried trying to hide inside my head and my heart but I failed for now, I was destroyed, exposed, and blown apart like a gaping bullet wound, bloody and raw. I was left there in a crumpled heap amongst the white carpet, now crimson with my seeping blood falling, streaming delicately from out my skin. It was only two hours later when Mother found me sitting on the corner of my bed cloaked with blood shriving, shrieking on the blankness in-front me. I was murmuring inaudible sentences as I converse with someone; an entity that cannot be called a friend, nor an acquaintance, but can safely be called an absolute stranger. With the sight of Mother, the stranger left laughing; I haven't even got her name yet. Mother collapsed on the floor, wailing, as she stared horrified at me; she must've thought I was losing it but no, I was really talking to someone. She attempted to hug me but my broken bones, looking so hideously oblivious, stopped her. The stinging pain it made ached like hell but it will probably vanish from my memory to oblivion by midnight. However, what will remain is the tormenting hurt of fear and unworthiness that will stay with me, and will be my companion until forgotten – if forgotten... Mother went near me, I had to run away or give in for I haven't calculated the outcome of this situation; therefore I succumbed to tears. Feeling the soft lullaby Mother sang beneath my ears was very unsettling, I always enjoyed the breath of Mother warming my neck on a cold night when I'm hurt, but not this time. I wonder why? I closed my swollen eyes and faded to black.

I opened my eyes. A tear escaped from out it racing its way to my cheek, the burning sensation of its track along my face was comforting in its own way; the physical pain is much easier to handle than the pain inside me that was eating away at my every being piece by piece time after time. And then, like equinox dawning, I ran home steeping down the thick snow on my bare feet. I was numb, and broken. The multitudes of temptations I made myself do lied to me, or were it the other way around? I bet on the latter. I gushed up my room and filled my head with thoughts of comfort as I hid myself under thick blankets, but nothing came out. And then I heard laughter surround the darkness around me, it was uncannily familiar. I slanted the blanket out of my sight and followed the voice that was tempting me. I peered out the window. On the edge of the roof I saw her steal a look on what lies beneath standing with her hair flowing long to her feet, listening as her deep slow breathing spiral down Shakespeare's imagery. A dark smug of confusion and lust infected my judgement resembling Juliet's bitter poison diffusing through her veins as I looked at the splendour that was enticing me. She was the epitome of beauty, her skin without flaw illuminates the light from the moon above, her lips redder than blood, her eyes wide as the sun, and her hair long and black as charcoal. She looked at me, alluring, while untying her dress; she let herself drop on the emptiness below her in a soft thud; dazed, I constricted out my window and let my own mind wander. I plunge, like Romeo cleaving his dagger deep within his skin, through the thorny depths of the emptiness beneath.

I woke up, still beneath thick blankets; I slowly I took it off of me and saw the moon bathe the room in a soft soothing silver light while the curtains danced with the flow of the cold air. Was I dreaming? I paced ahead of me and saw a chair looking so sickly amazing, I could not help myself and so I sat on it. And then I saw, with a mirror in my direction, myself sitting in a chair... writhing in agony. A tempest, a minor tempest, is pinning me there, fucking with my head. 'Sycorax', she says, 'I'm Sycorax, the tempest of desire and deceit'... I was mortified for now I felt deep within my bones the stabbing pain my reflection showed. I do not know what manner of thing she is, I had been frozen by her, conquered and dominated.

She asked me with her soft and alluring voice what kind of liar I was as her ethereal tone echoes from every corner of the room. I was bedevilled; I am not liar. I tried to move, but failed for this time I was flayed, splayed on my seat, as I saw in the mirror her face; Sycorax's face. Coldness swept through my contrition, she was that lady from my dream, and she was that lady, a mere young lady when I first saw her back when I was 16. She, in all her glory, caressed me, enticed me. She sang me a melody, a lullaby. "Don't be afraid, love. I'm here" She whispered on my ear the said assurance of happiness and of love. The lullaby she sang was the same melody Mother used to sing to me, only, hers wasn't at all unsettling; it was soothing.

She bit my ear softly, she went in front of me; I gazed at her chest, no not because of the obvious jealousy that had lured me before but because it was cut open; it was flooding her unclothed body with blood. She took notice of the horror my face was reflecting so she stuck her hands inside her opened chest pulling from out of it... her heart. It was beating, oddly;

Lub-dub-dub-lub-dub-lub-lub-dub

Up-down-down-up-down-up-up-down

She took it from her bloody hand and chewed on it with her sharp yellow teeth, munch munch. I froze horrified. "Oh dear, dear, for what use does the heart has? It's neither for love nor it is for hatred; so what is it for my dear?" She asked as her blood dripped down her mouth. She gazed at me swaying through my back kneading down on my shoulders; as she unblock the mirror from which I was forcibly directed in to, I saw my reflection fashion the opposite reaction I had; it was grinning menacingly at me though I feel and know that I was crying, howling in pain feeling the whole of me expedient riot heeding with my sanity what evil thing she was doing to me. Sycorax slowly, but excruciatingly, pierced with her sharp nails the raw skin on my neck; she was smiling perniciously on the process. She cracked it open as I howled in pain, what she did next made me curse the day I was born. She, forcibly, thrust herself inside me through the entrance she made on my neck; first her slender, white legs, and then her hands with her fingers tipping down my spine, and lastly her head, her lips ghoulishly sniggering at me.

I cried in anguish as she positioned herself, comfortably, inside my tormented body. And then I heard her speak, not from the outside, but from my insides as if my subconscious actually spoke. "I'll tell you about temptations, love", she said, seducing. "There are 7 kinds of temptations; temptations for money as they call it is greed, temptations for food; gluttony, temptations for bloodshed and war; wrath, temptations for apathy; sloth, temptations for resentment; envy, temptations for conceit; pride, and lastly, and I so surely discern you know everything about this; temptations for desire; lust.". I heard her, from afar inside my body, my mind, laughing deliriously as the wound she made on my neck ameliorates painfully. "Everybody's tempted, dear. So which kind are you?" She asked her voice echoing through my mind. I had been frozen by her, conquered and dominated. My reflection started to open its mouth; I was bewildered, I wasn't opening mine. What it made next made me curse the day I first breathed the air of the earth, he opened his mouth so wide it made his jaws explode and his cheeks to tear apart. His tongue spread long down his temples, and then Sycorax slid from out of it. He pushed my reflection from out the chair and then she began to sit on the chair as she licks my blood away from her porcelain skin. "Oh my, you look good dear" she said looking at me.

In anguish, I stood up. Surprisingly, I was freed from the chair from which she, Sycorax, pinned me on. Surprisingly, Sycorax stood up also copying my every move. I looked at her, her reaction same as mine. I peeked on my, now dead, reflection and saw that it wasn't anywhere to be found from outside the mirror.

"Who are you?"

"Simple. I'am you, Ritsuka" she said as her reflection started to fade into mine and then it turned back to her reflection. "I'm the figment of your suppressed emotions caged, tormented, killed...resurrected."

I took a step backwards as her words began to make sense. I ran to my bed and covered myself with thick blankets again; I closed my eyes wishing the moonlight would slip inside me to exhaust my head with all the evil it was struggling with; the tempest inside me was tearing me apart, turning me into a piece of pain, suffering, and torture. I fell in repose, the multitudes of lies I made myself do tempted me. And now, the evil... is inside me. "Hush now, dear" I heard her say as the whole world quiet down in peaceful slumber.

Silence is deafening when you're the only one hearing it...