Disclaimer: I don't own these adorable dorks.
Notes: This is basically pure fluff but it's still kind of a little bit sad because this is me, after all. Takes place pre-games.
There is some discussion of the Impostor's lacking a sense of identity. I don't want to upset or trigger anyone who may be dealing with similar issues. (I'm always here to listen and/or talk, though!)
It's been over a year since I gave you my name.
I don't know you, still. I don't understand you. You're too loud. You're too flighty. Your lips are always moving and you sing half your words, so I stuff my fingers in my ears and take more notes. Then after school you'll pull me along to chase birds and statues and nurses, up and down until it's dark and you just have to howl at the moon. The wolves haven't answered, yet.
Sometimes I like when you call me -chan. Sometimes it means you're ready to slow down at last — you zip around faster than the Super High School Level Track Star, you're so flighty. And you never pay attention — but sometimes when you call my name you really mean "I want to tell Togami something that I think is interesting, but is really just strange", or "I want to shout at Togami until he orders me to go away, and then drag him about to sing death songs and point at clouds and tell stupid tales about dragons and demons and musical heroes". You like to do that. I don't understand you.
(Ibuki likes stories like that, stories with action in them. Usually Ibuki likes the girls who fight monsters best, but not always.)
You stumble a lot, and screech. You're always getting yourself scratched up by that little blonde girl or catching your hair in doorways — stupid, by the way, stupid long, long hair pulled into cones that shouldn't suit you the way they do. You'll trip on staircases and in the halls, skin your knees and elbows, always smiling. But when you're hurt for real, you won't talk at all. That's how I know.
(Byakuya-chan, though, when he hurts he turns into a persimmon — when he hurts he uses words with too many letters, even English ones, and puffs out his cheeks like this. Byakuya-chan grumbles I'm nobody, nobody and Ibuki tells him nnnnnnnno — did you count the 'n's? Ibuki said seven of them; maybe it was nine.)
I thought I could understand. No one wants to really hear you, really know you. No one wants to know me, either, me without a name or face or soul. But when I told you that, you said that's wrong.
Byakuya-chan, you said.
I thought I could understand. I stared and studied so long that now I can tell you the shape of the pin on your collar, or the way those stupid colored strands of hair fall into your eyes, or how the black lines around your eyes change a little in thickness each day. I can tell the soulful timbre of your voice and the soulful way you look at the sky and the way you look at me, which somehow isn't the same at all, but like anything else that you watch and live and feel so much that it shines in your eyes. Except I don't understand it, because I never was a person.
Byakuya-chan.
I tried so much to understand. When the real Togami enrolled I tried to pick out a safer place, somewhere to fade into obscurity — kind of like trying to run from you, out of any accidental kicking range. You're so flighty. You're always doing stupid, silly things, like showing up outside my door with a guitar (let down your hair, Mr. Porkfeet, let down your hair!) or making rhymes with my name. But sometimes, sometimes there aren't any rhymes; just a simple brush of fingers over my hand, soft breath into my chest. Sometimes you tug, grab where I'm not comfortable and you really can't dance at all. But when you move, I move with you. Always, I move with you; and when the moon comes, I can hear you howling.
Byakuya-chan, you said.
(No, that isn't right, is it? Byakuya-chan isn't Byakuya-chan anymore, but he still has his pork feet and his pink cheeks, Ibuki thinks, so it isn't so different, is it? And Ibuki saw the pictures of Mr. Porkfeet when she looked online, only then he was just Mr. Chickenfeet and walked on scrawny little legs that didn't suit him at all. Ibuki thinks he had a meaner face then too, so Byakuya-chan must have noticed and changed it — maybe Ibuki will write a song about it, something low and mournful and she'll call it For the Better...)
On the last night that the moon was full I told you, I don't understand you at all — and briefly I thought I might have said something that hurt, you were so quiet and calm. Sometimes I think I say things and they hurt you, and I never thought that it was possible for someone like me to feel guilt. But then you smiled at me and I thought maybe I won't hide anymore, because you don't look at the way I (still, still) carefully style my hair like his or arrange the pin on my lapel. You look a little further than that. You always did.
Yes, Byakuya-chan, you said. You do.