Disclaimer || I own nothing more than an empty cereal box. I just own the story itself. Go on, try suing me, you'll be lucky to get a few crumbs of my cereal.

Theo Gabrielle and sage || This would've gone nowhere without your expert beta-reading wisdom and your ego-inflating emails. Give me anymore and I probably won't be able to fit my head through a doorway.
Thanks. You both rock my world.

A.Note || (text) indicates thought. Damn word processor screwed up on me and most of the italics went ka-put and stayed that way.


Your Absence by Flamer

do you still feed the animal?
muffled madness

quietcalmpervadeher
I couldn't go through this again

you say you love her
you know you love her
you never want to be without her

PossessionDepressionDevotionOppressionConfusionObsession.

Sometimes images, thoughts, feelings, and all those finer lines in-between them to separate madness and reason blur and come together, turning into one big fucking mess. Most chose to label it as insanity, some demented form of thought that controls mankind's murderous urges, and each articulate assumption that has ever been made cannot be more wrong. It all comes from battle. When one goes to war and says he fights for his people, his country, or whatever else that can be thought of, one is nothing more than an ignorant liar. In battle, nothing else matters, nothing else exists, just your sword and fighting to stay alive as the Enemy keeps sending wave after wave of attacks at your ranks. Then comes the moment of truth: Your people are dead, your comrades are falling around you, your Enemy is writhing because your blade is still deep in his chest, and you have nothing else besides the unconscious intent to murder and destroy.

Such is war.

(Three years.

Everything has changed since then. I'm the same, true, just older, and you don't change at all. But you have. Three years can transform everything into something entirely different. But it's the same. It's still that night and I can smell the fire, the blood, the burning skin, and the smoke from the church. It's immortal. It breathes and lives. No matter how hard I fight, how fast I run, how far I go.... It stays. It doesn't change.

...Change. Changing. The truth it nothing really changes. It might take another form, but it remains itself, it only changes because of flawed perceptions. A will, a desire for a chance at change. The truth is 'chance' is only a feigned idea to put hope in the hearts of the hopeless. Fate is a force that controls every single aspect of one's life. If you don't comply, only death awaits you; those that defy fate can only expect to be crushed by it.

My destiny is to fight. As it will be forever.

I couldn't change for you. I had no desire nor will to. You cried when I told you.

You cried all the time and it fascinated me.)

Only one word was spoken. Only one word was needed. Around me, buildings burned and history was lost forever in unforgiving flames. People were dying, comrades as well as enemies, and my commanding officer was rerouting more of his troops in an attempt to finish the already-won battle. I moved forward, towards the final impending confrontation, and there you were. Suddenly. Just there, standing in the heat of our glory, clutching your stomach with your hands. The fire raged on. The battle began and more people were split open to share the sky, blackened by smoke.

And none of it mattered.

(You died when I first met you.)

A mane of fair brown, long and curly at the tips, crowning your face like halo. In the sun, I could imagine easily mistaking it for gold. Your eyes were a bright shade of emerald green, glistening with more liquid heat than fire. I stared into them, half unaware of my body's instinctive reaction, and still a touch startled by your sudden appearance.

A deep scarlet hue soaked into the blue cotton of your dress. I drove it inside you, visibly appearing behind you in a deadly silver arch of still-warm blood. Three days worth of hard won conquests had given me an edge I never asked for, fighting to stay alive, staying alive to keep fighting, automatically killing without contemplation. Your eyes had widened impossibly and I could see your tears shining intensely.

(What's left of humanity likes to ease guilt, sin, and pain. A simple justification for one's crimes can annul murder, release hurt, undo the shame that one feels as clearly as a punch. It's a messy affair and most soldiers learn to avoid it. It's always a matter of 'why.' A question goes unanswered and many questions surface, but it all comes back down to that one enquiry. I never asked it of anyone.

I asked it then. When I pushed my blade into you, I asked my question and it was barely acknowledged. It was a simple question. I had been twelve and the question formed itself in my brain. A chain reaction from your blood, to my sword, to my mind, and all I could do was stare at the emptiness inside my head. Only one query echoing deeply,

Why?

I had been twelve, one of the youngest of Omega. The smallest section of the army that the Four Generals secretly handpicked teenagers and children to be trained for war. Omega had been the elite of child soldiers. Since our youngest days at the training centers, drill instructors molded our minds, our bodies, and even the way we perceived the world, to the military's liking. Through psychotherapy and desensitization, we could look at a dying man uncompassionately, or even a defenseless animal being viciously torn apart by predators maddened by hunger.

You didn't know that then, but you would know it when we met again. You could've stayed, but fate and my sword already claimed you.

Why?)

You looked at me, as if you knew the overwhelming emptiness I felt for you. You reached for my face, my shoulder, anything to keep you steady. I feared that your handprints on my face would never fade.

(I can still feel them, even now. They still burn from your touch.)

Your pupils dilated and irises became dark, as if caught by shadow. I could tell you no longer saw me, maybe not even the ache of the still-embedded blade, or anything that could bring you any kind of pain. You were dying and yet you were so much alive. What did you see behind those eyes? What vision did you witness alone?

A trembling smile met your lips and you whispered, "aishi...teru..."

You wanted to say more, but death silenced you and you swayed forward. I caught you gracelessly in my arms, and in them, you pulled me closer as if to seek the comfort I couldn't offer to you then, or now. It took an eternity. It took a moment. With only a breath of wasted oxygen, you were gone.

Intensity left me. Hatred quelled by the unshed tears of your eyes. All awareness of the on-going battle on the bottom of the hill was damned to hell. It was all replaced by a coldness I never felt before.

None of it mattered.

I pulled away from your arms, removing my sword from you. You fell to the ground unceremoniously, the spill of your long wavy hair overpowering even that of blood, creating a void inside my chest. My sword felt too hot to hold on to, as if it would scald my skin even through my gloves, and it fell to the stone walk in a clatter of metal and alloy. In my head, someone told me to leave, turn, and walk away without even a second glance back, but whatever it had been was drowned out by the heaviness in my lungs.

(You broke me open.)

"Oh, gods," I whispered, choking back my urge to vomit.

(Tore me open to bleed the sky with an abyss of nothing. A lot of things happen when you're faced with an unbreakable silence. A lot of things have happened, like when each breath drawn is a stab to the neck, when a moment of wasted time demands a reward, given or otherwise, like when it feels as though you'll inflate with oblivion.

I wanted to scream at you for being so foolish as to walk up to an armed enemy who was high strung from a blood campaign.

You were too pretty. You still are.

Again the questions in my mind resurfaced with a vengeance. A million different questions, implying a million different things, and millions worth of seconds couldn't have made it possible to understand and answer them all. You frustrated me. Impatience and the need for patience collided and suddenly I didn't know what to do.

Years worth of battle strategies and training came down to only a blank state of mind. I hadn't been trained to kill young women or children, only grown men who could or couldn't handle a sword. It took me forever, glancing down at your body, curled, eyes still open, to realize what I felt for you was a compassion I hadn't been trained to recognize either.

See? You broke me open with a word. A word and my carefully designed world came crashing down.)

I knelt in front of the fragile form, picking you up gently in my arms, and pulled you to my chest. You were as light as a feather, and I could imagine you smiling in the sun, filling the air with laughter as you were lifted into the air. I stroked the hair from your face, it was soft and thick, each strand was like silk and more so. Your emerald eyes stared blankly at me, still glistening with your tears.

With a cold shiver, I closed them for you.

(I don't remember the first man I killed, all the people in my head, those that I slaughtered and a few who I keep locked away because I don't want to remember them, are just one person: the Enemy. It's easier to think of them that way.

I didn't want to lock you away in my darkness. Instead, I hid you and visited you from time to time. I imagined your voice, a lulling tone, and you would whisper one word over and over again. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I could still feel your final breath against my neck; the heat lingering on my skin. I remembered the shock of seeing you again, as if given a second chance to make things the way they were meant to be. Your fair brown hair had been trimmed short and you wore the most ridiculous looking clothing I had ever seen. But it did nothing to suppress the familiarity in the air around you.

It was the first time again. There you were, like a sudden unexpected smile, standing there amidst the men of Schezar's crew. A spark of attraction ignited itself in me. I was drawn like a moth to the flame, absorbed into your eyes. I recognized them. Stupid, but true. Eyes untouched by the time that passed since I last saw you. A pure, undiscovered element, like the fall of snow and the beginning of heat, and the wash of green had deepened darkly with confusion when you saw me.

You couldn't recognize me, could you?

A steady, quiet rage grew set and concealed itself within me when Schezar made that brash move to kiss you, saying you were his. His kiss on your cheek distracted you and you failed to remember where we had met before. He couldn't comprehend the deep connection between us, of what we shared before and after that brief meeting. None of them ever did. All were too blind to see that you belonged to me even before we truly met.

Even as my Dragonslayers and I were ordered to destroy the frontier fort that Schezar guarded, I knew that, somehow, you would live through it. You were stronger than others gave you credit for, I could see that, and it made my hunger for you escalate even more than I expected. You were the same yet entirely different. You alone stirred the cause for my obsession.

I had to see you again. I needed to feel what you could evoke in me. I wanted to take your mouth with mine and feel your heart's pulse on your tongue; I wanted to feel your flesh intertwine with mine until there was no way that anyone could tell us apart. Your long absence had taken its toll on me. My starvation for every part of you that I could taste and feel, from your touch, your lips, and your skin, had grown so immensely that I would've hurt everyone you cared for to acquire you. You were alive. Alive.

That's why I came for you. I stood outside a wooden door that divided us and it would only take a turn of the knob to bring us back together.

I found you again.

They say that war is meaningless.

But it was war that brought us together.)

you say you never want to hurt her
you know you hurt her

how many lives you've lived
how many hurts you've done
how many times you've come to this place
how much you want it

you say you love her
do you—
skym  || Underworld

|| owari ||