-[Seven]-
His first words to the mirror this time are not the melancholic refrain that has been ringing through his mind. The castle has broken, buried under the weight of corpses, and standing in the midst of them is a carcass teetering forward, a grin stretching across its face as it falls on top of the pile and laughs, a horrible sound, and flesh like rotting apples, eyes like a black void—
-no. It's just the mirror.
Ashura stares at the not-him on the other not-side and rearranges his face into something resembling a calm, if not slightly worried, expression. He no longer notices the puppet strings (thin and silver, flashing in the shadows) quivering in the air, twitching above his pale hands.
The not-Ashura spreads its palms against the glass, staring at him with angry/sad/broken/worried/mad eyes. It whispers against the surface, small mouth forming the accusation that stabbed at his defenses for the last few years (has it really been that long?).
I am truly a despicable monster: a damning truth that has been disproved again and again and again, or so his advisors tell him. His advisors have the world written inside his head in stone. The grand jury has made its final decision and he is not guilty not guilty not guilty. He did what he did for the sake of purging his country from the greatest evil it has ever encountered and for the sake of lifting a child's burden. There is nothing wrong with what he did. Nothing. Wrong.
Ashura straightens his back, turns to leave, for he is a King and must deal with the mundane affairs of the world in his palm. He is one step from the door when (strings flash and) he whirls around, coming face to face with the not-him again.
The mantra begins again.
I am truly a-
He draws his sword and slashes at the glass, letting faerie-dust-sparkle shimmer in the air and land on him, letting the fragments of reflective jewel dance across the floor and spin to a stop (like falling snowflakes, like a blanket of white over bodies of red). Their sabre edges catch on the drapes and leave scratches on the floor until the white marble bleeds (it's warm) and their conflicting edges shriek in pain at contact. He smiles and there's no-one there to see it but the cobwebs on the ceiling, dripping black oil onto his hair and the pieces on the floor.
Ashura is not here.
Ashura never was.
.o.
He steps into the remains of the ballroom and dances around the dead. Cockroaches skitter over the lovely three-tiered cake and the meat are overrun with maggots - they are crawling out of diseased skin, fighting for air and for freedom and not to drown in blood. Ashura stops to let them run over his fingers before he flicks them away.
The maggots crawl out of the eye sockets, noses, ears. Ashura counts them as he watches them writhe across the floor. One, two, ten, one hundred. None of them have the voice to accuse him of mass murder.
.o.
The castle is quiet, deathly quiet. (The castle is conquered, overrun, eaten at. The king is dethroned. Demons cackle, letting the laughter fill the empty rooms.) Ashura settles himself upon his throne and waits.
He is not stupid. The papers left at his desk were a will, a decree, and the invitation for a dinner with Amaterasu, the reigning empress of a land beyond where it shone with sun rather than snow. He had politely declined.
It was a pity really, that the feast had to end in slaughter. He hadn't planned the horizons to crash together just then, but he knew he was on a collision course anyway and when (the puppet strings jerked) the voices came back, it wasn't like he could fight their will with his.
The decree read that Celes be evacuated. His will left everything to Fai.
Ashura is King of Nothing, King of Corpses, King of Death. There is quiet song in his head and strings of words carved in blood on his eyes. Today, an angel will strike at his heart and kill him, for there is no-one left for Ashura to kill.
It takes forever for Fai's laight footsteps to run down the chamber.
.o.
Yui's smile is as fake as Ashura has ever seen it, and they both stand there: master and pupil, king and subject, father and son. Around his feet there are corpses, and if they walked anywhere else there would be corpses, because Ashura is King of Death and his subjects are corpses.
Fai is a corpse. Yui is flesh and blood and ice and tears.
It had been quite a shock for the boy, yes, fleeing to the chamber with the full intent of killing the beast and being beset with Ashura, King of the Dead, and his subjects instead. But Yui is Yui and Yui hasn't yet locked his smile on completely, for there is sweet, lovely fear in those sky blue eyes and his face is whiter than it's ever been as Yui drops to his knees.
"Well, Fai? Aren't you going to kill me?"
"I—"
"You promised, didn't you? To kill anything troubling Celes."
Yui looks like a corpse, but Ashura knows he isn't. (Or is he?) But Yui is enraged, betrayed, and he's screaming, "Is that why you brought me here, then? So I could murder you when this happened?"
Ashura only smiles. (Get the child to kill YOU, his advisors told him, and it was for the best, who was he to argue?)
Yui hesitates before he calls the magic to him (magic that Ashura can sense anywhere, anywhere in the world or even in other worlds because he knows Yui) and swirls the incantation over Ashura's head, the runes chaining him down – and he doesn't fight, because he is a dirty beast and the King of Death must be as dead as his subjects.
Yui is also compassion, humanity, because he refuses to kill the tyrant king – for now, anyways. Ashura wishes himself sweet dreams because there is no one else here who would do so. The screams in his head have mingled with the refusal in Yui's eyes and they're both too loud, ramming itself like a stake into his mind, until his whole world runs red and blood's dripping from his eyes and from his hair and it shimmers on his robes and pools on the floor. It slides down his face in torrents (even though his cheek is dry, the voices cackle, you're red, Ashura, red and soaking wet—and yes he believes them, because they've never been wrong before).
Ashura laughs, choking on the blood falling into his mouth, and his tongue brushes the tip of the stake through his head. Sharp. Salty.
The edges of his vision dim with redblack smoke.
"A – a sleeping spell?" But of course it is. "And one I taught you, at that." Because he taught Yui everything. He blinks the redness out of his eyes and stares at the pale face before him "But this magic is not eternal – you are only delaying the fulfillment of your promise, Fai."
Yui says nothing, only stares with such pain in his eyes that Ashura, for a second, wonders if his voices were truly right at all. Only for a second.
His hair is wet, matted to his forehead, and not because of the blood (there is no blood). He himself is surrendering to the slumber, and he can feel cold, sharp-taloned hands stroking him, saying to give in, it will be alright, we'll wake you when the time comes.
"Your kindness will be the death of you one day, Yui."
And he is encased in glass, whispering with his final strength. His advisors sing in his ear, and his eyes close, and everything fades to bla—
.
.
This is proof that I haven't died. (Or have I? 8O)
I know it's been forever, but we just got our break now and, ya know, pre-break SUBMIT EVERYTHING NAO OR I WILL KEEL YOU, KEEL YOU frenzy. So now we have this. Ashura as a complete delusional psychopath. He has no sense of self anymore.
So, yeah. Anyway. Next chapter might be in Fai's POV...if I can pull it off, that is. I'm trying for it. If I can't get him right, it'll be Ashura again.
That reminds me. I'm also planning a oneshot about Ashura (yes, I AM Captain Obvious /sliced). In a Mental Prison - er, I mean Hospital. Y/N? (Yes, this is an excuse for me to write more blood.)
Sidenote: Umineko pwnz.
