Luka was more than grateful when her little brother's frantic sobbing died down to little more than a few hearty sniffles. He was still trembling even as her fingers smoothes over his freshly-bandaged knees (they'd been terribly scraped, bloodied and barely scabbed, legs covered in shallow cuts), but she only tried to smile, smoothed down his chocolate brown hair, brought the boy to sit in her lap.
"Asato-kun," she said, rocking his tiny form (trying to make her voice match what their mother's had been: soft, sing-song, soothing). "What was their reason for this, love? Why do you let them do this to you?"
Asato looked up at her. Eight and small, wide innocent (violet) eyes still tinged red, still tear-filled. Little nose pink from rubbing it with his sleeve. "I… I don't know why," he half-sobbed. (I know why.) "I just… they chased me, Luka, they hit me with sticks and threw stones at me! This isn't my fault!"
Flushed and angry and so very sad. His round face, small ski-jump nose, caramel-tone skin; the boy was walking candy, and he looked so very much like their mother. It was actually sort of incredible how the soft girlish features complemented him. A spitting image, really, all but… Christ in Heaven, all but those eyes.
Sometimes, in those moments when her tuberculosis seemed to be eating away at her voraciously, Asato would stay by her side and watch her with those eyes until she couldn't stand to look at him anymore, and she'd cry and turn her face away (don'tlookdon'tlookdon'tlook don't look at me with those hungry devil eyes).
And he'd give her this look of betrayal from her bedside, shrinking away into himself as though trying to disappear. She didn't blame him; she felt guilty for those times, but chalked it up to illness, because if it weren't for this damned fever, she wouldn't have fantasies of wrapping bandages around his eyes, his mouth, covering him like a mummy so she wouldn't have to look.
She loved her little brother. She just hated the demon inside him.
But she was a good sister (a good mother), and she held him as he looked to her with violet bandage-eyes, smoothed his soft brown hair as she spoke with his bandage-mouth, clinging to her with bandage-hands: "I don't think they like my eyes, Luka."
Luka opened her mouth to reassure him, but he interrupted, "Maybe it'd be better if I never existed."
(Oh. Oh.)
Why did she hold him tighter, and yet feel so very afraid of him?
"I love you," she told him, emptily. (My demon bandage brother.)
Next up is C - Crown, which centers around Tsuzuki's possession in The Devil's Trill.
Looking for ideas for D! Any suggestions?
