Digimon Existential Theater Presents: No Exit
aka, "Hell is Other DigiDestined"
Author's Note: Readers who have stuck it out this far will probably either really like this chapter or really hate it, and I'm not sure which... but hey, we're entering the home stretch here!
As I was writing this thing, I debated with myself whether to split it into chapters or just post it as one big monster fic (to mimic the one-act nature of the play). Obviously I decided on chapters, but maybe I kind of regret that now? The thing got off to a pretty slow start, and looking back, the chapter breaks seem fairly abrupt. But here at last, I finally feel like we're going to have a proper cliffhanger :)
The two women held each other's gazes for several more charged seconds. To Tai, it looked like a battle of wills. Sora's eyes were calculating, almost pleading, as she searched for a chink she could exploit, while Mimi was pushing back, adamantly refusing to give, daring Sora to keep trying.
And to Tai's surprise, it was Sora who relented first, although it was not with the look of disappointment or sadness he was expecting. Instead, she fixed an appraising look onto him.
"Well, Tai," she said in a businesslike tone. "There you are. Full disclosure. Do you understand our situation any better for it?"
Tai considered this. "I wonder. Yeah, maybe a little. But now suppose we try to help each other."
Sora turned away from him at this. "I don't need help," she said, crossing the room once more to sit on her couch.
He followed her. "Sora, wait- don't you get it? They've put us in a trap, like a... cobweb. Every movement you make pulls Mimi and me. We can't save ourselves alone, so you can't- hello? Are you even listening?"
Sora looked far away again. She answered him as if some external entity were making her speak. "They've rented it. My apartment! The windows are open, light's pouring in. There's a man sitting on my bed- MY bed! A woman, too. She's going up to him, putting her hands on his shoulders. And now it's going dark... open the windows again, or turn on the light, please! But she's saying... she's saying it's so bright, with the noonday sun... and they're kissing. But that's my room, they can't... I must be going blind. Blind and deaf."
She focused on Tai again after a few more seconds, a deadened look in her eyes. "It's over. I'm done with it, done with Earth. I feel so empty- really gone at last. All I am is here in this room. No more alibis."
She sighed and rubbed her temples. "Sorry, Tai. What were you saying? Something about helping me, I think. Help me do what?"
"Defeat them," Tai said. "Help me. Help us. It just takes a little effort. Don't you remember when we were in the Digital World? You were always looking out for the whole team. You were like our mother. It would just take a spark of that old human feeling to do the same right now."
Sora laughed bitterly, a hand still over her eyes. "Human feeling! If you haven't noticed, I'm not the same person I was when I was eleven. That sort of kindness is beyond me." She looked at Mimi again, who was fidgeting.
"Stop that," he said forcefully. "Don't you get it? Mimi's fated to be your torturer. She's a trap for you!"
"Don't you think I've already guessed that?" Sora said placidly. "Do I look like I care? I know I'm going to burn, and it's going to last forever. There are so many traps. She's a trap for me, sure. But I'm a trap for her, too. And maybe I'll catch her. It'll just take time."
He stared at her, anger building in his chest without the words to back it up. "You were supposed to be the one that had the Crest of Love," he said bluntly. "Is this really what your idea of love is anymore?"
Her expression changed from impartial to angry as quickly as a summer storm, and he started to have second thoughts about asking her for help. "Don't lecture me," she warned, her voice suddenly dangerous, "about the idea of love. I could tell you one or two things about love that certainly wouldn't fit into your philosophy, Tai Kamiya."
"Tell me then," he said, recklessness overriding any residual feelings of caution.
"Tell me," she said, looking directly at him. "Do you think love means protecting other people's feelings, sparing them from pain and suffering, when in reality you'd like to do the opposite? Even when they wouldn't do the same for you? Stroking fragile egos, feigning interest in the problems you stopped caring about a long time ago? Ignoring their annoying little habits, pretending they don't bother you, when all you'd like to do is scream? I had always thought so. It was a game I played for years. Love everyone, forever, no matter what. Be forgiving and gracious and helpful, stand by their side through thick and thin, and hope that you find just one person who loves you a fraction as much as you love them, because when your capacity for love is supposed to be infinite, that's about as much as you can hope for.
"And then, maybe ten years ago, after yet another broken heart, it hit me... aren't my feelings, my happiness, important? Can't I be more selective of whom I love, and when, and for how long? Why do I have to give and give when I never get anything back? That's when all those other emotions started to surface, the ugly ones I had always felt but tried to keep hidden from the world for as long I could remember. Anger, jealousy, lust, ambivalence. I was drunk with pleasure, acting on all of those forbidden impulses. I knew I should show some restraint, but I couldn't stop. It felt so good, like a little fire burning inside me. It burned and burned, spread throughout my psyche, until one day there was nothing else left. I looked in the mirror and saw the sum of all of my selfish actions, and it disgusted me, terrified me. That put the fire out for good. Since then, I've been nothing but an empty husk."
Tai was silent for a bit. "Well, you may have given up, but I haven't, anyway. I wouldn't be much of a leader if I didn't feel something for my team. Sure, I don't regret what I did to put myself here either; I'm dried up too. But for you, Sora, I can still feel pity." He reached out to touch her, but she moved away.
"Spare me!" she snarled. "I don't need your pity; save that for yourself. Because don't forget, Tai, that there are traps here for you too. You should watch out for your own interests. Just leave me alone- me and Mimi- and I'll see that I don't do you any harm."
What he wouldn't give for a moment of peace! "Fine," he said, exasperated, and turned away from her toward his own couch.
He didn't get very far. Mimi was standing directly behind him, her hands clasped at her breast.
"Please, Tai," she said beseechingly.
He took a step backward. "What do you want?" he asked suspiciously.
"You can help me, anyhow," she said in a low voice. "You said, didn't you, that you'd look after us? Well, I don't want to be left alone right now. Catherine's taken him to a cabaret!"
"Who?"
"Pierre," she answered, still looking at Tai, or past him. "Oh, and now they're dancing together!"
"Who's Pierre?" asked Sora.
Mimi shook her head and gave a short laugh, watching the scene transpire on Earth. "Such a silly boy. He called me his glancing stream, his crystal girl. What a romantic! He was terribly in love with me. She convinced him to go out with her tonight, but she's such a fool to insist on dancing. She's rather let herself go, you see. She's already out of breath and wheezing like a grandpa!"
"Did you love him?" Sora demanded.
"Of course not," she said vaguely. "He's only eighteen, and I'm not a baby-snatcher... but he belonged to me, heart and soul."
Sora smiled. "Don't be silly. Nothing on Earth belongs to you now. Try to make him hear you. Try to touch him. You can't. But Catherine can. She can talk to him as long as she likes, and put her arms around his neck, rub against his-"
Sora's words seemed to be fueling Mimi's reverie. "You're right! She's pressing her great fat chest into him, huffing and blowing into his face. My darling, can't you see how ridiculous she is? Laugh at her, why don't you? Oh, if only I were there! It would only take one look from me to get her to leave him alone. Is there really nothing left of me down there?"
"Nothing," Sora said confidently, "not even a shadow. All you own is here. Would you like that statue on the mantel? The letter-opener? That sofa's yours. I am too- yours forever."
"You? Mine?" Mimi scoffed. "That's rich! Which of you two would call me half of the names he came up with for me? You know too much about me. But Pierre, my dear... as long as you still think of me as your crystal girl, I'm only half-here, and thus half-wicked. The other half of me is down there with you, pure and unblemished. You can save me! Just don't look at her like that, please... don't you remember we used to laugh at her together? I mean, her face is red. All red, like a tomato!"
She had moved away from Tai now, into the center of the room, lost in whatever she was seeing. She was swaying and stepping absentmindedly, small movements in time with an unheard melody. As she turned slowly on the spot, her leg lifted in a half-pirouette, she reminded Tai of a music box his grandmother used to have. It had been made out of porcelain in the shape of a dancing woman, and so delicate (his grandmother had insisted) that it could break if you handled it too roughly, spoke too loudly, or looked too closely.
"What's that tune?" she asked, her voice quavering. "I always loved it. Dance away then, but oh, Tai, I wish you could see them; you'd die laughing. She's treading on his toes- it's a scream! He always said I was so light, and that he loved to dance with me. I can see you, Catherine, I know what you're doing. But you don't care, do you, you don't see me. What's that you said? 'Poor Mimi?' How dare you! You didn't even shed one tear at my funeral! And now- oh no, no. Don't tell him, please! You can do what you want with him, but don't tell him about that. Oh, isn't it foul, Tai? She's told him everything about Joe, Switzerland, and the baby... he's looking so serious, but not exactly surprised. The crystal's shattered then. 'Poor Mimi,' he says. Oh, yes, poor Mimi... Dance all you like then, dance away, but do keep time. How I would love to go down there for just one more minute and dance with him again! They've turned the lights down now, like they do for a tango, and they're playing so faintly... louder, please, I can't hear. Softer and softer... darker and darker... It's all over then. The world has left me."
All this time, Tai had been watching her, fascinated. But now the spectacle was over; Mimi was silent and still in the middle of the room. He felt another stab of pity for her, but was uncertain about how to act on it. On the one hand, he could comfort her, but at the same time... he couldn't help thinking that he was the only one that had any connection to Earth now. The ability was finite, fleeting, and he had no way of knowing which time would be the last. He would never forgive himself if he squandered those last chances to observe the world of the living.
He moved to go back to his couch, where he thought he would try to listen in on the happenings of the newspaper office again. However, before he could turn, he saw Mimi run to him, felt her press her body into his arms.
"Please don't," she pleaded. "Don't leave me alone. Hold me, Tai."
Tai looked down at her soft brown head, then over at Sora, who was sitting tensed on her couch as if ready to leap up and rip them away from each other. She had a warning look in her eyes, and he vaguely remembered what she said about letting her and Mimi be.
"If you want someone to hold you, talk to Sora," he said huskily. He tried to push her away, but she held him tightly around his waist.
"Don't turn away!" she cried. "You're a man, aren't you, and surely I'm not a fright as all that. Everyone used to say that I was lovely, and a man killed himself on my account, after all. You have to look at something, and what else is there besides some couches and that horrible ornament on the fireplace? I've got to be better than a lot of stupid furniture!"
"Mimi, I'm telling you, you should be talking to Sora," he insisted again, his voice less firm this time. He had just caught a whiff of Mimi's shampoo. It didn't so much smell good, but it was flowery and fruity, unabashedly feminine, and that was a comfort to him somehow. She was the same old Mimi, after all... and she was very pretty. He had half of a mind to tell her so if only to cheer her up, but the other half was preoccupied with what Sora might do if he did.
"Sora?" Mimi said dismissively. "She doesn't count. She's a woman."
"Oh, I don't count, is that it?" Sora said, getting up from her couch to approach the pair of them. "I would do whatever you wanted of me. Mimi, you're... you're my glancing stream! My crystal!"
"Your crystal?" Mimi sneered, turning her head to face Sora in her anger. "Do you think you can fool me? The crystal's shattered, but it doesn't matter. I'm something else now. I don't know what, exactly, but whatever I am, it's not for you."
"Please, Mimi!" Sora entreated, gazing longingly into the other woman's face, shortening the distance between them so they were an arm's reach apart. "Come to me! You can be whatever you want: a glancing stream, a muddy brook. Look into my eyes again and deep down you'll see yourself exactly as you want to be!"
"Leave me alone!" cried Mimi. "Isn't there anything I can do to be rid of you? Oh, I know!"
And she wound her hand back and slapped Sora across the face.
"There!" she addressed the older woman savagely. "Maybe that will teach you to keep your distance!"
Sora didn't say anything for a long time, an illegible expression frozen on her face. "You'll pay for this, Tai," she said evenly, but he was too stunned to care.
"So you... you need me, is that it?" he asked Mimi. He knew he should feel angry with her, that he should demand some sort of apology on behalf of Sora, but he couldn't bring himself to do either. It's not like it had really been Mimi's fault. After all, if Sora hadn't been baiting her, it wouldn't even have happened.
Mimi nodded, continuing to stare at him confidently, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. He could feel the heat creeping up his neck and face, whether it was the result of her proximity to him or his own blush, he wasn't sure. He couldn't think of a time when anyone had said that to him before.
"I'm, uh... I'm not your type at all," he insisted. What am I doing? he thought. "I don't dance the tango, for one thing."
"I'll take you as you are," she smiled playfully. "Maybe I can change you, you never know."
"I doubt it." The newspaper office flashed suddenly across his mind. Someone was talking about him again! He quickly disengaged himself from her arms. "I have other things to think about, and they wouldn't interest you."
"That's fine. I'll just sit on your sofa and wait for you. I won't bother you at all." She glided over to his couch, flipped her hair over her shoulder, and looked at him expectantly.
"That's right," Sora said sardonically. "Fawn on him. Grovel and cringe!"
Somehow, Tai had nearly forgotten that Sora was there. He turned to her again, in one more silent appeal to the old Sora, but no trace of her could be found on the face that glared back at him. That cinched it- the Sora he had known was dead. Worse than dead, really, because his mind's eye seemed to be unable to resurrect even a memory of her. He had pictured her often enough while he was alive, and even though that Sora had been imagined, maybe idealized, he never would have guessed there would be such a disconnect between his desperate dream and the real thing. But now he knew. The girl he had wanted to love had died when he had, and ceased to exist in his mind as soon as he met her replacement: this formidable woman with a cinder for a heart and hatred in her eyes.
White-hot anger blazed in his chest and the room, his newspaper office, everything else was driven from his mind, except this newfound hatred and an overwhelming sense of loss. Do it! the vindictive, Sora-like voice said in his head. The new model had even taken over his thoughts, and he couldn't help but listen. He would. He would show her. He would make her pay for her crimes against him the only way he knew how.
He sunk down onto his couch and kissed Mimi full on the lips.
Mimi responded at once, and with enthusiasm. He was surprised by the warmth coming off of her; he hadn't thought it was possible for him to feel any hotter. Less surprising was the softness of her lips, the shape of her tongue, the small movement of her hips as he reached around to touch the small of her back...
He heard a squawk over to his left. "Tai, Mimi! You've... you've gone crazy! You're not alone. I'm here, too!"
Tai couldn't resist, and, he could tell, neither could Mimi. They pulled apart to twist the knife together.
"What does it matter?" he asked Sora coldly.
"You wouldn't," Sora said, her eyes wide. "You couldn't. Not while I'm here."
Mimi laughed, a shrill, cruel sound. "Why not? I often undressed with my maid looking on."
"But you... you promised." She was speaking directly to Tai, looking at him with sadness in her eyes for the first time since she arrived. "Please, Tai. I'm only asking you to keep your word."
"My word...?" He vaguely recalled their conversation from a few minutes- hours?- ago. He had agreed to leave her and Mimi alone, and in return... in return she had said she wouldn't hurt him. Thinking about his feelings for her, how she had treated him since arriving, he realized that just by being here, she had hurt him in more ways than one, more ways than she could ever know.
"Why should I," he said evenly. "When you were the first one to break our agreement?"
He turned his back on her, focusing on Mimi once more. She smiled at him, sweetly, triumphantly, and they kissed again. It was an act that was both calculated and experimental, unnecessary and urgent. With his free hand, Tai reached up and began to caress Mimi's breast through the fabric of her dress, and she sighed appreciatively into his mouth.
"Fine, have it your way," Sora said from somewhere. It seemed that she had found her voice again. "I'm obviously outnumbered. But don't forget I'm here, watching you. I won't take my eyes off you, Tai, and when you're making love to her, you'll feel them drilling into you. Yes, do what you want, but remember that we're in hell, and my turn will come."
Tai couldn't help but hear her. No matter, he thought. Sora didn't count, not as long as he had Mimi. She was so much better than any of those Brazilian women, more familiar somehow. Not to mention she had to be the first human being he had touched in- well, certainly since he had died. It seemed like an eternity ago; he was probably out of practice. He could feel his calloused hands catch on the fabric of her dress as they roved around her body, see them leaving dark sweat stains in their wake. How romantic.
He pulled away for the space of a second to catch his breath and met Mimi's eye. He couldn't help it, they were fixed pupil-to-pupil, and, as always, unable to blink. It made him uncomfortable, to have eye contact while they were so close to each other. He wished she would look somewhere else.
He sat up, unable to continue, trying not to look at anything. A little nagging echo of his former life was worming its way through his thoughts, making it impossible to concentrate on what he had been doing.
Mimi propped herself up on her elbows, looking annoyed. "Now really. Didn't I tell you not to worry about her?"
He shook his head. She had misunderstood his actions. "It's Gomez, in the press-room. They've shut the windows and left their coats on. It must be winter. It's been about six months then, since I-" he gave her an ironic smile. "I warned you I'd be absent-minded, didn't I? He's talking about me again."
"Is this going to last long?" She sounded irritated now. "You might at least tell me what he's saying."
He listened to Gomez. Mustachioed, swaggering, smug Gomez. "Nothing," he said, even as anger was causing his fists to clench. "Nothing worth repeating. He's a swine, that's all. A god-damned dirty swine."
He took a deep, shuddering breath, attempting to regain his composure. "It doesn't matter. Let's come back to ourselves. Please, Mimi. Will you... will you say that you trust me?"
He reached for her and she sidled against him again, giggling slightly. "What a quaint thing to ask! Trust is pretty meaningless in this place. There's nowhere for you to hide, you know. You're always under my supervision, and I don't have much to fear from Sora as far as you're concerned."
She had misunderstood him again. "I was talking about another kind of trust," he murmured, leaning forward, forcing himself to look at her even as Gomez's voice buzzed in his ear like a fly. Talk away, you swine, talk away. I'm not there to defend myself, so you can say what you like. "Mimi, please give me your trust."
If she noticed the serious look on his face, she was ignoring it. "How aggravating you are! I'm giving you my mouth, my arms, my entire body! Everything could be so simple- but my trust! You must have something pretty ghastly on your conscience to make such a fuss about a triviality like that!"
"They shot me."
"I know that, but it's because you refused to fight. What you did seems reasonable to me."
He felt his eyes leave her face, shifting to focus on nothing in particular. "He really makes a good case against me. But it's no help. He never says what I should have done instead. Should I have gone to the general, told him I refused to fight? Sent Greymon in my place? Gone to the Digital World? They'd have locked me up if I had stayed, and they were guarding all of the Digiports, so that was out, too. But I had to take a stand, show my true colors, you know? They couldn't silence me. So I took the train. They caught me at the frontier."
"Where were you trying to go?" Mimi asked conversationally.
"Mexico. I was going to launch another pacifist newspaper up there." He looked at her again. Her lips were pursed. "Well? Say something!"
"What do you want me to say?" she asked, confusion coloring her voice. "It all makes sense to me. You didn't want to fight, so you didn't. What could I answer beyond that to make you forget this silly business?"
Tai heard Sora's low chuckle as if from a million miles away. "Can't you guess?" she asked Mimi. "He wants you to tell him he bolted like a lion, for bolt he did, and that's what's bugging him."
"Bolted. Went away," he shrugged. "Let's not argue over words."
"But you had to go, didn't you?" Mimi pressed. "If you had stayed, they would have sent you to jail."
He nodded, wondering if he liked hearing someone else justify his actions out loud, wondering if it made them sound more reasonable. "That's right. So what do you think, Mimi? Am I a coward?"
She shook her head, more in disbelief than in answer to his question. "How am I supposed to know? I can't put myself in your shoes. You have to decide things like that for yourself."
"I... I can't decide."
She looked at him earnestly. "You had reasons for acting like you did, didn't you?"
"I did..."
"So there you are!"
Tai got up from the couch, frustrated at her unhelpfulness. "But were they the right reasons?"
He thought he saw Mimi roll her eyes out of the corner of his. "You have to understand," he said, wishing he could return to a frame of mind where it had all made sense to him. "I'd thought it all out. I was making a stand. But I can't tell if that was my real motive or not!"
"That's the question, isn't it?" Sora asked from her couch, an echo to his own thoughts. "You argued it out with yourself. Weighed the pros and cons. Rationalized what you did. But you know about the things that hide in the depths of your psyche. Fear and hatred and all of those dirty little instincts you try to keep buried, because you know that they can be motives, too."
His mind traveled back to those few hours after he had made his decision, the implementation of his grand escape. How he and Agumon had sneaked onto that freight train in the dead of night, and it started carrying them away into the future. How his blood had run cold when he realized that they were slowing down mere miles from the border, and that the guards were committed to a slow and thorough search of the cargo. How quickly they had immobilized Agumon with a well-placed tranquilizer dart and disarmed him just as easily. How cold and miserable that jail cell was, cut off from light and food and his digimon partner...
"After they got me, I didn't have much to do except sit in my cell and think," Tai said to the wall. "A man must face himself before he can face his enemies, I've always said. So I tried to figure myself out. Why had I taken the train? Doesn't courage mean doing the right thing, even if you understand the consequences, even if you're afraid? I thought it had been the right thing to do. And I was terrified of how it would all turn out. That should have absolved me. But I still doubted... then finally I thought, my death will settle it. If I can face death like a man, I'll prove I'm no coward."
"And how did you face it?" Sora asked quietly.
He thought of the blindfold pressed against his eyeballs, the sounds and smells of the barracks overwhelming him as he stood in front of the firing squad, the tense, restless energy that had agitated every nerve in his body and made it impossible for him to stop shaking, causing even his heartbeat to seem erratic as it hammered in his chest. He remembered the thoughts that had screamed through his head: it's not fair, this can't be happening to me, it just can't end like this! How his brain had refused to understand why his body continued to stay where it had been placed while he still had two working legs, blood pumping through his veins, a will to keep living. The desperate slap of his feet against the hard ground, cut short with a blast like thunder, and then only vague sensations: pain, the dull realization that he was lying in something warm and wet, his vision dimming into an unnatural darkness, coldness spreading from his chest into his arms and legs, and finally silence.
"Miserably," he conceded at last. "A physical lapse. I suppose it could have happened to anyone. But now, everything's been left in suspense." He beckoned to Mimi, who approached him looking relieved. "C'mere, Mimi. I want to feel someone's touch while they're talking about me. You have such soft hands."
"Soft hands! Listen to him!" Sora snorted. "What about you, Mimi? Do you like cowards?"
Mimi shrugged, caressing Tai's chest through his shirt with one hand and sliding the other around his waist. "What does it matter, so long as he kisses well?"
Tai was only half-conscious of what the women were saying. "They look bored, tired. They're thinking, "Kamiya's a coward." It's what they've decided, those dear friends of mine. In six months they'll be saying, "cowardly as that skunk Kamiya." You two are lucky, no one on Earth giving you another thought. Me, I'm long in dying."
"What about Kari?" Sora asked.
Tai gave a blunt laugh. "Didn't I tell you? She's dead."
"Dead?" Sora repeated, looking somewhat taken aback.
"She died just now," Tai said dully. "About two months ago."
"What of?"
"Grief- what else?" He disengaged himself from Mimi's embrace and sat down again, cradling his head in his hands as if it had become too heavy for his neck to support by itself. "It's all for the best. The war is over, my sister's dead, and I've carved out my place in history."
He felt Mimi's weight next to him on the couch, the heat radiating from her body almost unbearable against his skin. "My poor darling," she cooed, her white-hot hand caressing his cheek, lifting his chin, forcing eye contact onto him once more. "Why trouble over what those men are thinking? They'll die off, one by one. Forget them. There's only me, now."
He turned away from her, wondering how it was possible for her to be so much warmer than the room that was already too hot. "But they won't forget me." His voice was bitter. "They won't. And when they die, others will come after them to carry on the legend. The legend of Cowardly Kamiya, who took the train and died like a dog."
She gave him a searing peck on the forehead. "Really. You think too much. That's your trouble."
"But what else can I do?" She made as if to speak, but he didn't give her the chance to. "I was a man of action once. Surely you remember? If I could go down there, just for one more day, I'd show them... but I can't. I'm locked out, they're passing judgment on my life without troubling about me, and they're right because I'm dead. Dead and done with." His fist was clenched again, and shaking on his knee.
"Tai." It was Mimi again. He couldn't believe she was so persistent.
"Listen," he told her, finally meeting her eyes of his own accord. "I need you to do something for me."
She looked uncertain again, shifting her weight and shying away from him slightly. He grabbed her wrist and held firm. "It's nothing big, don't worry," he reassured her. "Just- look, this is the way I see it. Maybe there are a thousand people down there, saying that Tai Kamiya is a coward. But numbers don't matter, do they? If just one person could say definitively that I didn't run away, I'm not the type of guy to run away, that I'm brave and decent and all that- well, then I'd be redeemed. So, I'm asking you- can you believe that about me? I'll love you forever if you can. Mimi, will you?"
She looked at him, sweet, sincere, beautiful Mimi, and her eyes danced with mirth. "Oh, Tai," she cried. "I like men who are real men, don't you see? With tough skin, and strong hands. You don't have a coward's chin, or a coward's mouth, or a coward's voice, or a coward's hair. And it's for all of those things: your mouth, your hair, your voice, that I love you!"
"Do you really mean it?" he asked, holding his breath.
"Of course I do." She smiled at him, and it was so comforting, so pure, so genuine and radiant that he couldn't help but feel the weight of his own damnation lift off of his shoulders. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close, laughing.
"Then there's nothing to worry about! I spit on them all from my couch, those newspaper pigs, and you and I, Mimi, we'll climb out of hell!" They both broke out laughing, and all was well for the first time since Tai had come here. It felt so good, and he couldn't stop. Her smile had infected every part of his body, every corner of the room. Even Sora had joined in, her low chuckle contrasting with their increasingly high-pitched and hysterical giggles.
The only difference was that Sora's laugh continued long after Tai and Mimi had stopped, and only then did Tai realize she hadn't been laughing with him.
She had been laughing at him.
"Really, Tai, how can you keep deluding yourself like this?" Her dark voice smothered his elation further. "She doesn't mean a word she says. Haven't you been listening? Coward, hero- as if she gave a damn either way!"
Mimi's face was turning stony, the smile leaving her face and eyes. "How dare you, Sora? Don't listen to her," she said to Tai, branding his cheek with another burning kiss. "If you want me to believe in you, you have to start by trusting me."
"Oh, yes, trust her! Trust away!" Sora insisted with mock-enthusiasm. "She wants a man, that much you know- and that's all she wants. She would swear that you're God Almighty if she thought it would get her past second base."
"Shut up! Won't you shut up!" Mimi cried, and Tai felt the happiness that had filled him just a few short minutes ago turn to ash in his chest and mouth. His arm slackened around Mimi's waist.
"Is that true?" he asked, not sure what he was expecting to gain from her. If what Sora was saying was correct, then he shouldn't believe anything Mimi told him anyway, yet he felt the inexorable need to hear what she had to say for herself.
Mimi shook her head in disbelief. "What do you want me to say?" she wailed. "Do you have any idea how maddening it is to have to answer questions one can't make any sense of? I'd love you just the same, even if you were a coward. I'm no expert on love-" she shot Sora a significant look- "but I think that's what a woman should do for the man she's given herself to. And isn't that enough?"
She looked at him with what she had clearly intended to be a pleading look, but all he could see were wide, unblinking eyes looking at him stupidly, blankly, like a fish's.
He shuddered involuntarily. This... person, this thing was not the Mimi he thought he knew, caring and genuine and worthy of possessing the Crest of Sincerity. This Mimi was a shell, beautiful but superficial, that he himself had painted to resemble the girl he had known all those years ago. She had had an affair, killed her newborn baby, admitted to being directly responsible for the death of one of their friends, and didn't see anything wrong with telling him what he wanted to hear as long as he kept paying attention to her.
He had lost Sora. And now Mimi was gone, too.
"You disgust me," he said savagely. "Both of you." He pushed Mimi away, staggering a little as he got to his feet.
"What are you doing?" He heard Mimi's cry, but he did not dare turn around and look at her again, for fear of becoming sick.
"I'm going," he said firmly, marching to the door on the other side of the room and regarding it like an old foe.
"You won't get far," Sora said in a singsong voice. "It's locked, remember?"
"I don't care. I'll make them open it!" He jabbed the bell button as hard as he could while pounding the door with his other fist, praying to any gods that were listening that something he did would work.
"Stop! Please!" Mimi wailed from his couch.
"Fear not, my darling," he heard Sora croon. "The bell doesn't work either."
"It will open," he insisted. "I can't stand it anymore, I'm through! I can't stand being here with the two of you anymore!" He heard quick, light footsteps, felt himself suffocated by the heat of Mimi's embrace around his middle.
"Go away!" He shouted, fighting to remove her arms while she tried to maintain contact with him. "You're even worse than Sora. Soft and slimy- ugh!" But the more he struggled, the more it seemed to Tai that she was all arms: grabbing, pulling, and twisting, winding and wrapping themselves around every part of his body they could reach, like an octopus.
"Don't, Tai," she begged, the desperation evident in her voice. "Please don't leave me! I won't say anything else to upset you- not another word, I promise! I won't be any trouble, just don't leave- please don't leave me alone with her!"
Tai stopped struggling to look at Sora and Mimi in turn. A look of haughty amusement played about Sora's face, as if she was curious to see where Tai's struggles with Mimi and the door would take him. Mimi was clearly terrified about the prospect of him leaving, but he couldn't say that bothered him in the least. "Look after yourself," he said to her, once again trying to shake off her grip. "I don't care. I never asked you to come here in the first place."
"How mean you are!" She loosened her hold on him somewhat in her indignation. "It's quite true, you know, that you're a coward." She seemed to think that throwing that particular barb would halt his attempt to escape, but he was past caring about what she thought of him. All of his instincts were telling him to get out of this room, get as far away from these two women as quickly as possible. He couldn't stand being around them anymore. He could barely stand being around himself.
He hadn't noticed Sora getting up and walking over to where he and Mimi were standing, but she was there now, painfully close to him. "I hope you're satisfied now," she was saying into Mimi's ear. "You spent all that time playing up to him, and we had a few little lovers' spats on his account. But now he's leaving, and good riddance. We'll have the place to ourselves at last!"
Mimi stared straight ahead, trying not to look at Sora. "You won't get anything from me. If that door opens, I'm going too."
"Where could you possibly go from here?" Sora asked in a confident voice. "I wouldn't exactly call the hallway a prime vacation spot."
"I don't care where!" Mimi cried exasperatedly. "As far away from you as I can!" She clung even more tightly to Tai, and he pounded still harder on the door.
"Open the door!" he shouted with renewed vigor. "Put me somewhere else, anywhere else! Give me any form of torture you can think of- hot pokers, molten lead, racks or shocks or garrotes- I'd take any of them, all of them, everything that burns or flays or tears- as long as it's not this mental agony, this gnawing and fumbling and caressing pain that aches and throbs and never hurts quite enough! Open- for God's sake, OPEN!"
And to his complete surprise, to the surprise of everyone in the room, the door slid open into the ceiling with a soft whoosh, as if it were expelling a contented sigh.