Question Sleep?
part four: death
He stood on the edge of the morass, staring down, down into the city buried beneath the confines of the androgynous sea. It was a pair of eyes, laughing at him as if it had always been there, like the oceans of his childhood. However, before him was a vast watery graveyard, a vat thick with spoiled humanity --- Death contained in a single, beautiful horizon, limitless and seemingly empty of emotion.
Empty of everything that could have mattered.
He stood on a gutted apartment building, it's contents living and exanimate emptied with the Apocalypse and the infinite waters below it, long past in history it seemed and nearly forgotten in memory. For so long had he dreamed, he had dreamed of becoming a butterfly and living in a blur of yellows, passion, and sun-filled breeze, that his feet were no longer and Subaru flew; all the while, standing perfect and serenely still.
When he was merely waiting for the sun to come up in Shinjuku, and the sea of people breathed; the leaves began to fall and obscured the faces under the water, a society that smiled and glinted with all the ferocity of the living soul out at him through the liquid glass, and said in a deep, rich voice.. a voice that spoke without static through his radio, a voice that was hot like blood and dragged him under the current, helpless..
It said, "Hello.."
The butterfly wings behind him were melting into snow, and Subaru cried out as it began to rain, choking on the violin singing the Air for strings in G for him and me, remembering flight then,
Always then, when "hello" meant bruises and I loved.. he loved…
"Hello, my Subaru-kun."
He was still screaming into the roar of the sea against the legions of droplets from above, curled up into a tight ball --- a beautiful mess of pale, curving limbs and chin length hair curling into the water, he was white and cold and reaching out and Fuuma simply stared at him, and dropped the box of china to the ground to be soaked.
He grabbed those small hands, finding them empty of violets or words and watching as they instantly went limp at his touch; Subaru's fingertips were pointed and the fingers long, he would have thought that since humanity was extinct, those were the type of fingers he would put in a museum, so unknowing of less than perfection. Subaru screamed one last time, the sound heartbreaking and taking all of him; his back arched towards the crying sky, and Fuuma cried out with him, flattening the onmyouji to the stone and salt and the Earth's tears in an effort to just make him stop…
Subaru looked very young then, all smooth, pale skin and satiated eyelashes dimming, becoming heavy with moisture in the dark. He made a cracked, killed sound up towards the younger man, and all manner of beautiful creatures described to Fuuma in fairy tales melted into empty shells of what they had once been; skeletons, eye sockets black and guileless with unrestrained pity.
In some tragic parody of that day..
And he lay down upon that still body with an aching sickness, unable to keep his eyes open for more than a moment, while Subaru's mouth drank in the rain and mumbled non-sensical words that no one who knew him was left to understand. He could not understand them – but what he caught, like edible slices of this Eden that had been created, sweet and melodious to the ear, thick and voluptuous in thought, were descriptions of the world Subaru had left, long, long ago.
"Subaru… stop crying, damnit.."
"Monou-san? Sing for me?"
It was warm again and the sky was melting in the Spring, weighing down the heavy blossoms and the clover-filled vision of Subaru's will to open his eyes, feeling heavy with the weight of Spring as well. He had continued to sleep and lay his head on the tatami and wood floor when it rained, letting the water drum him silkily into the dark. They lived somewhere else now, a hidden place deep in the corpse of the city that reminded him of home – traditional and full of dust, shadows and illusions and beauty.
When he'd awakened today the air was restless and flew down through the house; Fuuma had opened the paper door near Subaru's quiet rest when the rain chased in the morning, letting way for the gentle flow of the breeze and sun and rain drenched blossoms to follow them into the corridor. Hazy clover eyes followed the spine of a lath in the floor towards one such fragrance wet fallen bloom, softly contemplating it without fear or memory.
"Pretty.." Subaru mumbled, reaching out to touch it – soft showery silk, like female dolls in a box of clear glass and kimono, submerged in the miniature sea; all these in one note of his reflection.
All these, children's beautiful toys that cannot be touched
in the note of that desperate, tender violin.
…the sun runs in and lights it all up.
But the music had stopped for Subaru when they'd left his apartment, when the cherry blossom had fallen into his dream and the ocean had swept him up unsoiled, sterile, between gray concrete and emptiness. They found shells out near the edge of it at the bottom of his apartment building, a beach of white sand where children screamed and he listened to the new music on the wind, the creak of the swing set in the distance, rust, and the sound of small feet under this beach – dead and underfoot -- running parallel like a glass pane to his own until well out of sight. They found shells of what they had once been in this house, the dark young man with the amber eyes wiping the table clean and setting out the china for six.
"What for?" he asked.
"Don't know.." the younger mumbled, almost inward and inaudibly. "I've forgotten why."
At these words Subaru felt the familiar Nothing stretch out beneath them, like the vast graveyard despoiling the shore of what could have been eden; in their minds, in their eyes.. and everything in the this place felt quiet when he touched it, and everything in Fuuma's eyes felt empty when he looked at them and they weren't looking back.
That would never be enough to fill them up.
There were no mirrors after the end of the world for a long time. And even now, in the reflection of those eyes green as the plain behind their city and as the glass littering and sparkling in the street, Fuuma's manifestation in them paled and crumbled before him. He could look into them sometimes for hours, holding the cream ivory skin in his hands, the frail figure in his lap, as Subaru looked infinitely up with the patience and the sorrow of what a human mirror must be, watching his image wilt like a rose.
And when the sun went down and he leaned in close to catch the shards of sparkle glisten in them, looking hard,
Subaru would smile.
And he would sing.
"Hush little baby don't you cry…"
The rain fell again, and when Death would smile, Fuuma Monou shivered and comforted him, watching his reflection die in the shadows of those eyes.. and the sun flickers out, leaving them again to noise.