A/N: Written for my sexy friend Tomoeish on LiveJournal at her illustrious request. XD
Sepia Streets
Eighty years is only a long time if one knows that time exists.
For Guzoro, it didn't, and so eighty years was not nearly long enough. Lala never aged, of course, and he never saw himself but for brief, horrific glimpses in the after-mirrors of rain. For all he knew, he was still young, still capable of love. But for the aching in his joints and the slow, graceless bending of his back, he would never have known that Death was coming for him.
It was, though, and he could feel its approach like the rumbling of a train on unforgiving iron tracks. A welcome train.
Misfits were not supposed to live long, healthy lives. Monsters deserved early deaths. He had not gotten his, however, and if not for Lala he may well have taken it upon himself.
Ah, but there was Lala, and so he could not, no matter how much he wished for it in the dark hours of early morning when the dew settled in the crevasses of his ruined face. Doll she might be, but her emotions were real enough, and he could not bear to think of causing her sorrow. She'd been his only comfort.
He'd discovered a strange thing about being old-- his memories tended to lose their linearity, detach from each other and float around without any regard for what decade they belonged in. Every once in a while, he'd find himself lost in the midst of some event or sensation and not know where or when it came from. He'd stumble across a dying flower and its scent would trigger visions; or perhaps he'd see a pattern in the stones of Martel and remember feeling lost.
Lala was almost always there. He hardly remembered a time when he hadn't been with her, and she with him. As a doll, she had no way of knowing that his face was abnormal, and so what need did she have to fear him? Acceptance was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted.
Memory.
"Would you care for a song?"
Incredulous. That was the only word for how he felt. There were other words that almost fit: hopeful, astonished, shocked, skeptical... but they skirted around the edges. It was incredible that someone existed who was not immediately repelled by the ghastly moonscape he called a face. Incredible that one such should even deign to speak to him. But here one was, and she wanted to sing for him. Of all things.
Of course he said yes, and so she did. Acceptance.
Memory.
It may have been ten years. He didn't really remember how to count years anymore, so it didn't matter-- many cycles of the moon since he'd been abandoned on the sepia streets, cold hands pushing him away and then retreating without a word. Time mattered little when you were a monster.
Lala didn't understand what a monster was. To her, he was human, and he was kind to her and so she loved him. She was kind to him, and so he loved her as well.
It was a sad, limpid parody of romance, the monster and the soulless doll, but they were happy enough in their own pathetic way.
He remembered the first time they discovered touch, and his unceasing wonder at the vistas of pale flesh she offered up to him. There had been pleasure there, for him at least, the very first. She had not felt, could not feel, but she told him she enjoyed his pleasure and so he did not stop.
He remembered the smell of her hair.
Memory.
People came and went, simultaneously drawn and repelled by the legend of the Ghost of Martel. He either avoided them, which was most of the time, or on occasion sought them out to take bitter satisfaction in their ragged whimpers of fear and their dull scrabblings as they crawled away from him on hands and knees.
If he could not be beautiful, he would at least be perfect in his ugliness.
Memory.
He remembered weeping painfully from destroyed tear glands as he watched them leave the city-- something he could never, ever do. These crumbling walls were his prison forever, and Lala was the only reason he didn't hate them as much as he might have.
He remembered how his falling tears cleared away tracks of dust, and thinking how his pain was washing the city clean. And then, he remembered laughing at his delusions of grandeur. Guzoro the monster... how could anything he touched ever be clean?
Memory.
Age was coming now, and he remembered staring in horrified fascination as the wrinkles spread across his once-smooth hands. If not for their bent and hoary shape, his hands might have almost been beautiful. The skin at least had been clear there.
Not now. Now it was drying up like a desert cracking after months of rainless sun. He saw the very last of his beauty slipping away, and made himself rejoice in the final polishing of his countenance. There was nothing left to show him what he might have been.
He remembered, oh yes, he remembered.
"Guzoro-sama?" Lala murmured. "Shall I sing for you?"
"Beloved," he answered, and kissed her instead. That she did not draw away from even this hideous perfection was even then a source of astonishment to him.
When he had finished, she pulled back and sat on her heels. "Guzoro-sama, shall I sing for you?"
"Yes," he whispered, pulling his hood over his face. "Please, yes."
xxxxxx
A/N: Wow, shivery. They are one helluva creepy pairing. O.o