Author's Note: ... Um, hi. Yeah, remember all that stuff I said about being back? About posting more fics and answering reviews again? Guess I lied, huh?
... Well, I'm surprised at how impersonal I've grown with It used to be my life. So did writing. But now that I've come over this huge hurdle with the OCD, I hope -I hope- my fanbase will trust me again and return to support this newest fic, even if it is a bit short. I'm trying, guys. I'm trying.
Well, anyway, what better than some of my Lee and Gai angst to kick us back into the mix? Enjoy!
Hiccoughs; Little whining wisps of the hopelessness escaping, and savage chocolate drying metallic on the rows of bandages. Close your eyes, it'll go away, close your eyes-
But when reality wrenches them back open Lee is sobbing, and the air is sharp with urine.
The room is gray, not black like the night outside, black and right and decent like things used to be, but gray like the moral area he's tread on; His face is the color of ashes (ashes to ashes we all fall down), his little, precious eyes leached of their hopeful sable; The walls are medicine gray, the color of corpses in the river that float on home; The windows throw harsh, cloudy-colored slashes through the window blades and across the room in long shadows, the mercury sheets draped over his bird-thin little body- and even across the giant, steel-colored spot directly in their center that Lee's trying so hard not to look at.
He gives a little hiccough that shakes his whole body (or what parts he hasn't broken), and the sound could be echoing down a hallway a mile long. It reverberates through Gai's head, resounds all through his body, makes him feel like a layer of sound has separated him from his body. God, he wants that for the boy, now, wants this all never to have happened, wants Lee not to have-
"G-Gai-sensei…"
And they come, gray like forbidden techniques on the moral color scale, like heaven's tears when he lets the rain just run down his arms, soak him from head to toe to try and get clean: Lee's little tears, in silver rivers down his pale little cheeks; So pale in contrast to that stain, so dark gray-
"I-I-I think I… I… just…"
He can't take his eyes off the stain. They've just hit rock bottom, and it's all, all going gray for them both.
He's never felt so hopeless. Or more like a murderer. And not of women and children, fellow Shinobi- he's never had a problem killing them, watching them belch blood and try to crawl away, gouging out eyes and keeping secrets-
He's a murderer of dreams. And that grates.
"I just…"
REALLY GRATES-
"… I want to die."
And so Gai is a killer. He can't live with it, oh no, live with this pain, it really grates- He can't live with it for now, and neither can Lee, because Lee knows, he'll never say but he knows, and he's killed so many people- But we all know what murderers deserve, and Gai is getting it, just watching the light go out of Lee's little bleak, gray eyes. He can't take it, and he looks away, but he'll see it everywhere, for the rest of his life. Murderers deserve to be locked up, with the key thrown away, and urine smells worse than blood, urine sharp with anguish and the death of buoyancy and he can't just go pick up the pieces of Lee this timeTHISTIME-
Murderers deserve to be locked away. And so on the outside, the only part that thank God anybody sees, Gai will be the Loving Sensei, and run down the hall to get Shizune, who works the graveyard shift, and tell her my student just urinated on himself, just wet his sheets and bled all his little Youthful happiness out all over those gray sheets-
But on the inside, he'll be trapped forever in that deep, crystal-gray moment, seeing for the first real time how guilty he is, and why they're called Forbidden Techniques.
Lee wants to die, but not as much as Gai does, now.
A/N: Yes, Lee peed the bed. How did I turn that into a fanfiction? Weeelll...
I'm actually pretty proud of myself, here- I need to tone down on the detail in my work, because it gets boring and leads people away from the plot, and this is a good attempt at doing that. All this time that I haven't been posting, I've been thinking- And you be the judge if my work is better for it. Thanks so much for reading, everyone- And please be sure to hit the little purple button on your way out of the window!
