The Pieces of His Heart

Disclaimer: I really, seriously do not own FF:U. If you have a problem with my not owning it, take it up with my evil muses; they'll be happy to deal with it. This oneshot is for Reinna, the 75th reviewer of Kokoro no Hanashi. You do know I love you, right?

Rating: T

Genre: Angst. 'Cause you just can't get enough of the tragedy in Kumo's life, NOW CAN YOU?

Pairings: Cloudshipping. Also, hints of Skyshipping.

Warnings: Yaoi. Incestuous pairings. Discussion of sexual abuse. You don't like? Back button's over there, darlings.

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((when you're gone, the pieces of my heart are missing you/when you're gone, the face I came to know is missing too)) –Avril Lavigne//When You're Gone

Kiri.

A beloved face, a treasured name. The dearest memory. The long, brutal ache of knowing that everything changes, but nothing, nothing will ever return to the way things were.

In his dreams, he remembers how it was back then: Waking up every day in the arms of someone who adored him, spending every hour, every minute side by side with the one he loved more than any other. Warmth, kindness, togetherness.

Days spent in swordsmanship practice, sparring, dancing back and forth between wins and losses that mattered nothing because either way the result was deeper trust. The burning heat of summer, pale and inconsequential beside the heat of passion, the slow and languorous love they'd made, trysting beneath the high blue-black sky and the all-encompassing blanket of stars. The terrible cold of winter, held at bay by soft and protective arms, by the entrancing heat of the taller, stronger body curled around his own.

My beloved. The words burn into tears behind his eyes, curling pain around his shattered heart as the memories darken and the love grows bitter.

Cold, soulless, apathetic scarlet eyes where once there was so deep a love. Dancing in deadly earnest, combat locked to the death. Pride honed to a painful edge, unyielding, unforgiving.

Blood. The blood staining his hands and arms, the worst of sins, as that hardness and that hatred dissolve, leaving only deep shock, and pain, and sorrow. A brief touch, and then everything is gone, the warped and resurrected memories retreating into the grave from which they were so brutally resurrected.

It hurts. It hurts like no other pain. There are days when he doesn't know what is real anymore, even though all he wants are those gentle hands against his bare skin, those tender kisses, those whispered oaths that promised an eternity of love and protection.

But nothing can ever be the way it was before.

Kiri. My brother, my love. When you died, you took so much of what I was with you.

Kaze.

Strength and protection and the uncompromising, bitter grip on a goal that must be fulfilled.

Relentless. Tireless. Unforgiving. So very unforgiving.

Bitter memories, twisted lies which encircle and obscure the truth. Ally turned enemy, and all it brings him is pain, bitter pain, when over and over he is forced to fight to hold back someone who might once have become a friend. Every time they come face to face, the fading hope rekindles that there will be acknowledgement, acceptance, understanding, kinship—or at least something—in those flat cerulean eyes. But time after time there is none, no memory, nothing whatsoever. Just cold distrust and hatred.

Sometimes he thinks it would be easier to end the pain by accidentally, purposely slipping up, by allowing the life of one or the other of them to come to an end. But he cannot. If they do not triumph in this hopeless battle, who will?

And so he stalls for time again and again and keeps hoping and his hopes are always crushed and it's killing him. The pain that Chaos itself might well have engineered, the pain that surely helps Chaos to grow stronger.

But he cannot give up and so it just keeps spiraling on and on endlessly.

Even worse are the stray thoughts he cannot repress or control. Brief moments where he wonders things that he knows are forbidden. Just what it would feel like, to have hands rough with the recoil of hundreds of gunshots slide along his naked skin. What warmth those still and silent lips might hold, how they might taste. If that blank expression would ever change—in a kiss, or in passion, would there be kindness there? Would there be helplessness, or a smile? Was that face capable at all of displaying love? If ever they did, somehow—what would it be like? Would he himself still be capable of feeling and expressing pleasure at all?

But then the shame would break across those thoughts and scatter them. How could he even entertain them in the first place? He'd loved someone, sworn to commit to that person and only that person, and even if those vows were already being broken by force the least he could do would be to keep from breaking them willfully. But still those thoughts came, those vividly bitter and twisted fantasies, and they stirred his blood brutally and it ruined him.

Kaze. What are you to me, after all; what would you be—if there could ever be a day when we would not be enemies…

Chaos.

Hatred, fear, and pain. Bitterness. Revulsion. Being forced, and forcing himself to take it.

Please let it end.

Brutal touch that makes the hope and light and life in everything go dull. Greed, and lust. It burns his skin and tears his body, and he bleeds, and tries so hard to stifle his tears.

Anyone…

It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. And it never seems to end, not even when he's sure he can't take any more without screaming, without pleading. His vision fades and everything aches and he can't take much more, God he can't take any more.

K-Kaze… please…

He holds his thoughts in and surrenders to the architect of his despair, to the creature that professes to own his body and soul in a travesty of his dearest memories, reaching into and ruining even the purest moments of the life that came before.

Niisama…

He lies broken and bleeding and dying the slow sure death of shame and heartbreak until his nemesis is sated, and it takes so much of his pain and humiliation to sate a monster nearing godhood. Nowhere he tries to hide is safe—his mind is as good as shattered and his body is trapped in endless horror and his heart is broken and every memory is tainted and corrupted beneath the touch of those cruel hands.

Please. Save me.

Once he has been abandoned, abandoned to rue his very existence and lie cold and alone and heartbroken, he allows his tears to come. As silently as he can, he cries and cries into the stifling darkness where no one can hear him.

He never hated until he came face to face with this beast. He never feared, never desired to kill, never whetted his temper on ugly, cutting words. There are times when he fears that he is becoming all that he pretends to be and worse.

He will never be pure again. He will never be whole again. The poison of his enemy's existence has seeped bitter and painful into the very depths of his soul, and he fears that the stain can never be cleansed away.

Chaos. May the day come soon when I can raise my sword to seal it and all the ugliness it spawns away.

Kiri. Kaze. Chaos. Once his life was so much more, but it revolves around these three so much that even their names and existences begin to blend, to meld, to run together into an aching blur of grief and confusion and despair. What he had, and what is left—there is no escape from his pain. He is alone and yet always surrounded by the three lives most important to him, the good and the bad, and yet he must escape the evil that surrounds him and take shelter in the tattered shreds of what was precious once. And then, only then… can he piece his heart back together at last.

Owari.