To my dearest vedette_26.
Merry Christmas and Happy birthday! I hope you like this in second person. It was hard to write to be honest.
Love your husband-o kooks.
FACELESS face·less [fáyssləss]
Adjective. 1. Unidentified individuality: anonymous and impersonal
2. dull and characterless: lacking character or distinctive features
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
- an excerpt from Ode to A Grecian Urn, John Keats
Mukuro knows that everything has an end.
He's died five times already he'd be a fool to contest that.
Felt bullets pierce his body, bones breaking with sickening definitive cracks, cold steel pressed against his neck long enough to draw an insurmountable amount of blood, his insides burning as he chokes on his own vomit and blood.
And yet he cannot seem to grasp how this sad farce will come to its penultimate close.
He wonders if it's all worth it, all the scheming and the plotting, the killing and the violence—if his 'being' is just being or a whole other matter of farce.
And sometimes—oftentimes—as he pulls his trident from his enemy's carcass, he wonders if he's still human. Better yet, if he's truly become a nightmare of his own.
What is real Chrome? A soft baritone asks. His velvety voice lilts ever so slightly, his presence void and formless.
She can neither see, feel, touch nor smell anything of him. Only hear. And she strains her ears for his presence—that may or may not even be there.
She sees things you see, of things she can barely understand. A memory here and there; changing, transforming ever so fast before she can make a connection. A torn limb, a fiery blaze, a searing pain so dreadful she feared it would never stop. And she feels even more lost in this little exercise of his.
The fear creeping into her bones and she knows she is afraid.
She traverses the empty space, touching floating objects suspended in animation, a lamp, a lighter, a cigarette, a mitten. Chrome notices her feet are suddenly bare, and she slowly breaks into a run until she has to wade in a slowly rising river of blood, the fluid steadily becoming more viscous until it's as viscid as honey.
She feels sick.
Which is real? He asks again, the river threatening to drown her in its bloody grip. She struggles to remain afloat, trying to stem the panic she feels to no avail. And she cannot breathe. Her limbs lock, her eye widens into shock. She knows she will die, slowly, painfully, feels it as the blood enters her lungs she drowns silently—with no one to hear her and no one to save her.
And suddenly she is seated in a chair, battered, bruised and aching. Her body frail, as if she's been starved to death, her eyes hollow out in pain and insomnia, lips chapped from dehydration. Her right arm hooked by multiple needles to an IV drip. She grips her belly protectively for the organs that she knows are not there.
She does not know how long she's been like this. She is too exhausted to move. The pangs of hunger are altogether too real and her confusion too great. She thinks she is awake, but is not quite sure and she knows for a fact that this inability to decipher this riddle could mean the end of her. So she keeps her mouth closed, lips in a thin line.
Mukuro sighs exasperatedly at his student. She does not understand yet. He pushes himself off the brick wall of their current hideout, his apprentice already free from his illusion but trapped herself in her own.
So he feeds her another one of his, a family, a murderer and a hidden door.
It has only been five minutes yet the illusion has fed upon her remaining strength, her body and her mind continuing to battle his will.
"Open your mind child, yours is still far too close minded. An Illusion is a battle of will. If you falter, you will die. If you cannot break the illusion quick enough, the strain will sap your body and guzzle you dry until all you have is a withered body and death await you."
As if hearing his words her body immediately stands rigid and she gasps for much needed air. Mukuro spares a small grin that goes unnoticed by the tortured teen at her progress. What would have taken her an hour a week ago she could break in five minutes, but she still lacked the conviction to believe her imagination.
"It's difficult I can never seem to break it with my own thoughts. When I think I have I know I haven't. I don't even know which idea is mine or yours anymore. Do I make sense Mukuro-sama?"
So Mukuro leans close to her, his lips touching the auricle of her ear. His breath hot, "Just because I think it is real doesn't mean that it is. Remember this well Nagi. An Illusion is the reality we accept. And reality—well that is the state we think is the truth and truth can be bent, it can be hidden in lies so great you can mistake the truth for the greater lie in itself."
"But I still don't understand! How do I know that what I think is real will be real? Everything is just so confusing…" she exclaims, her tired voice echoing in the small dilapidated room.
"Everything is a matter of perspective. What is real is what you choose to be real. And that reality is what you show your enemies. You show them the fears you have, the fears you believe they fear. You believe them to be real and that's what makes the illusion real. Do you understand me?"
Nagi—no Chrome—shakes her head and smiles. "I am trying Mukuro-sama"
He lifts her chin and dares her to look straight at him, she does so albeit reluctantly.
"Do you believe I exist then?"
"Yes, Mukuro-sama"
"Then I am your reality."
To be an Illusionist means to live in an illusion. You have no past, present or future you set in stone. You are someone and no one at the same time. You exist to be and yet not be.
Which is how you like it and why you wanted it.
Mukuro knows that there are two faces to people, a good and a bad.
And it is in the duality of people that you know that every truth is hidden between lies.
Know for a fact that a lie is often preferred to the truth, mistaken for it even.
So he feeds everyone a lie. He feeds them Mukuro.
He wraps himself in webs so tightly spun even he can't remember what is real anymore.
But that's alright.
It's better to be Mukuro than him.
He'd rather live that lie than face his truth.
Than face it again.
You turn your head ever so slightly, noting the silver-haired consigliere's presence. You wonder what he would want from you, you've already agreed to the request Sawada Tsunayoshi had asked of you.
Wipe out the other famiglia but spare who you can. The children. Spare them.
You scoff at his request, foolish naïve little child. It would be better if the children could be ended lest they turn out into a monster. Turn out like you.
"What do you want Hayato? I have already agreed to your master's request. Or maybe you have a request of another kind in that case we might have to change location" you say as smoothly as possible, wishing him to take the bait.
Hayato takes a lengthy drag of his cigarette, letting the nicotine fill his lungs before he gives you a reply. " I sure as hell don't want to fuck with you M—"
Your eyes widen in surprise at his use of your name. Not your name, not this name, your real name. You wonder who he had bribed or killed or maimed to get a hold of a shredded piece of your identity, you're most closed guarded secret. You wonder how long it would take to kill this filth and what the repercussions might entail.
"My, My boy, you've got a lot of nerve to call me that. I'd kill you right now if I didn't want to know who told you that name"
He gives you a steely look, unflinching, unafraid and you can feel the back of your neck prickle with excitement. "You've got some nerve to call me by my own name too. The boss doesn't know about it, but he will the minute you do what you seem to be planning right now"
"Looks like you're intelligence spared your life. You'd do well to keep that name our dirty little secret. If it's not my company you want what is?"
He offers you a cigarette from his carton, which you gladly accept. Placing it in your mouth you decline his offered lighter and instead lean forward, your light catching from the tip of his. You haven't had a smoke in a while, not since Kyoya.
"Fucking tease"
So you smoke in silence for a few minutes. Nicotine filling both your lungs as the sun starts to set in the horizon. The stained glass windows of the Vongola Mansion cascading you in its vibrant hues of red, yellow and blue its subdued beauty stunning you for only a moment. Hayato is the first to break the silence.
"Don't do anything stupid"
"And why would you think I would do something stupid?"
He looks at you pointedly, his cigarette still between his lips. You wonder what it would be like to ravish him right here and right now, to kiss his full lips and trace your hands upon that delicate body hidden between his well-pressed Armani and drive him to the brink of insanity. But then you wouldn't want to face the wrath of that obsessed samurai of his. He had grown well into his moniker developing a penchant for missing fingers and a bonus of a lack of guilt. He'd be dangerous enemy, that unreadable face of his and the fact he can read you so well and you so little of him. And besides, Kyoya would come at you with newfound vengeance as well. You start to reconsider acting upon your desires just so you can see your lover's fury etched upon his face.
"This hit is too close to home for you. Don't make this personal. Finish the job, get out. "
"Why I never knew you cared so much for me Hayato!" you quip, cradling your cigarette between two long fingers. A grunt is his only reply and there is silence between you once more.
"Have you ever thought how much this world has taken from us? And how we've lost ourselves in it?" you murmur quietly, so quietly you think he can barely hear it.
"I wouldn't know, I've never known anything else outside of it"
"Neither have I. "
"Just don't die M—" Hayato says as the sun finally sets in the horizon. He looks at you seriously, as if to emphasize a point. And you're starting to wonder if he's an idiot to call you by your given name twice or foolhardy.
"Once is a surprise twice is pushing it Hayato" you exclaim returning his gaze with piqued interest.
"That's the only thing real about you," he replies taking another drag from his cancer stick.
"And Hayato isn't for you"
"It's the only thing real about me either." He offers you another cigarette and you agree, snuffing yours out with your heel. You place the new one between your lips and he lights it, a slight hum of satisfaction emanating from your throat as the nicotine hits your lungs.
"Tell me, do you actually like these menthol cigarettes? I thought you were the type to like them unflavored"
"I have a kinky bastard of a boyfriend. I'm giving him positive reinforcement"
You chuckle quietly at his statement, unable to stop the corner of your mouth from slanting upwards in a grin. "I never thought that obsessed samurai of yours to enjoy playing such devious games."
The silver-haired man chuckles an amused, cryptic reply "You have no idea"
Nodding your head at him acquiescence you begin to walk away, the soft cadence of your footsteps the only sounds pervading the still air.
"Guard your name well consigliere" are your final words to him before you take a final drag of your cigarette. The smoke you exhale is overflowing, swirling around you again and again until there is nothing left of you but a cigarette butt.
"Show off"
Sometimes you wonder why you keep coming back.
Why this sordid affair you have is never just a singular thing. Never the last. Verde surmises that you want physical attachment, a delicate and subdued form of imprinting your existence—Mating as he calls it.
You are no stranger to physical attachment, to lustful glances and the feel of two bodies joining as one. To the breathy moans of pleasure and pain that come with it. To the art of ghosting your lips against pale, creamy skin, His hot breath against your ear as he grips your long hair with such force you feel strands pulling out. Feeling his teeth clamp and bite against yours as your lips meet again and again. Never slowing, nor stopping.
There is no hesitation.
And you wonder what it is about Hibari Kyoya that enthralls you so. That gives and fills you with such overflowing emotion that you're sole wish is to devour him. Your only wish is to speak his name over and over, to delight in his misery, to seek the comfort of his warmth, to press kisses in unspeakable places, to suffer through the aching pain of your heart. To watch his back arch in pleasure and trail your existence upon the pale canvass that is his body—to feel whole.
And as he pants, exhausted from both of your completions does he steady a lazy, lustful gaze on you. His dark kimono askew, leaving little to the imagination at this god sitting in your bed. And again you wonder why you come back. And he never asks. He only takes. And you take what you can get.
There is no attachment, there is no love. Or what you would usually consider love as.
You would mock him, pressing your slender hand against the bone of his waist and kiss him once, twice, thrice, "I love you Kyoya"
"You've been smoking Gokudera Hayato's cigarettes," he says softly, his voice unable to hide its accusatory lilt, body rigid, poised to strike. You chuckle at his statement, burying your head in the crook of his neck, your lips smirking against his skin, "and if I have?"
He turns you over and straddles you his dark kimono contrasting deeply against your skin. He places his hands on your neck in a firm hold, dark, slanted cat-like eyes chastising you for your supposed sin. "You aren't his," is his only reply, the hands on your neck squeezing. Your eyes widen at his boldness. Pulling his hands away from your neck, you guide them to cup the angle of your face.
You kiss apologies in the palm of his hands your eyes never leaving his face. His mouth parts slightly before he gives you a beatific, predatory smile. And you know you've won. "Stop making out with my hand that is not its use"
And you smirk into his palm as you turn his body over. Kissing him hard as you begin to throw yourselves in the wanton pleasure of making love to him again, and you never doubt the way he holds you like a lover, the way his body tenses when you give him a punishing thrust. Never doubting the way he struggles to overcome his coital bliss to ask you the same question again and again, the singular why.
And you bury your head in the crook of his neck, biting the lobe of his ear and smelling that thick, musky scent his body exudes in waves. In his reassuring hold against your back, bodies pressed together, not knowing where the other ends and the other one begins. Your silence is deafening as are your thrusts, it only takes a matter of minutes until you both come undone.
Because there is only one singular answer, one you have made true, one you have made your reality and you whisper as scathingly and as lovingly as you can muster—
"Because I am Mukuro"
A/N: This is my first time writing this pairing and I really don't think I did it any justice. But still constructive criticism is highly appreciated and loved. Leave me a review and tell me what you think!