Sleepwake (Part 16/?)
See Part 1 for disclaimer.
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Hwoarang slid out of his room, moving with almost casual stealth even though he doubted anyone would be awake to hear him. Not that he really cared if they did. To his frustration, sleep had failed to follow exhaustion, resulting in a lengthy but fruitless wrestle with his pillow for comfort, and several seconds on the downy bed before he gave up all hope. Hwoarang hated to admit any physical weakness, hated even to consider their existence if he knew they couldn't be rectified, but his insomnia stared him in the face and mocked him. It was loathsome testimony to a theory he'd built his life by: the only enemy that was capable of defeating him was himself. Well, besides Kazama.
"Fucking tie," he muttered. The deep gray silence absorbed his words like they'd never been spoken.
Barefoot, he strode from his room with no destination in mind, moving his feet one ahead of the other to occupy his body and to calm his thoughts. It didn't occur to him to check on Natalia until he was standing in front of the lacquered door, not entirely certain why he'd walked there. He stood immobile, unready to leave, but averse to idea of going inside, penetrating that mysterious and vaguely restorative stillness. Even the raucous bass of the dance music had subdued to become inaudible now.
Hwoarang was excused from his dilemma when the door swung forward on oiled hinges. He dimly saw the sweeping, shadowed figure of Natalia.
"Bob," she acknowledged. Natalia pushed the door closed and turned to him in one natural movement, as though she'd been expecting him and he was late. Hwoarang wasn't bewildered by her lack of bewilderment; it took a great deal --for instance, Jin, he thought-- to catch her unaware. Over the course of their past friendship, she had developed a sensitivity to his comings and goings. She used to go off about auras and disturbed fengshui by way of explanation, which he eventually came to accept, because who was he to argue over the occult with a witch? Regardless, the whole thing took some getting used to, though he'd been both repelled and fascinated by her impossible talents. Which Mike still refused to recognize the existence of.
Irked by the thought of Mike, Hwoarang frowned deeply, still looking at Natalia. She misinterpreted, and made a shooing motion at him. "Don't look so worried, it'll be fine."
That jolted him to his senses.
"Xiaoyu will be okay?" he asked, too quickly, earning him a sidelong look from Natalia.
"The girl? Yes. She just needs the understanding of her friends, and sleep. You could probably use some too, by the way."
"Well, you're not sleepwalking," he pointed out. She shrugged, waved vaguely toward the wall that separated the hall from the dance room.
"They sustain me." Seeing the look on Hwoarang's face, she snorted. "It's not as if I'm a vampire, you idiot. The energy rolls off the dancers like steam. I can't help it if I pick some up."
Hwoarang shook his head. He returned to the topic that, he realized, had been itching in the back of his head.
"Tell me what happened. With Xiaoyu."
Natalia grew abruptly somber, and sighed. She looked at him thoughtfully, and then tilted her head.
"Ask her yourself, in the morning. I don't think it's my place to tell you. I'm sure she won't refuse you." He began to protest, but Natalia continued over him, "Now, show me which rooms you and, uh, your friend have chosen."
"Why?"
"As the hostess, I have the right and obligation to know where my guests are staying, do you disagree? So move it, darling." The endearment sounded like another amused slight, coming from Natalia. Hwoarang, too worn to debate the issue, trudged back with Natalia at a safe distance from his side.
"That one's Jin's, this one's mine. Do I get a cookie?"
"Hush."
Natalia was staring at Jin's door in concentration. Mouthing sliding syllables, she made a diagonal sealing motion with her right arm, and her left came up to brace against the air parallel to the plane of the door, like a traffic officer making the stop signal. The doorknob began to glow, iridescence and shadows dancing around each other under its smooth surface, so that Hwoarang felt as though he were watching lightening bugs at play. He kept expecting for the effect to fade away under his stunned and uncomfortable gaze, but it didn't. Hwoarang turned to Natalia, waiting for the explanation. Instead, she issued a command.
"Touch the doorknob."
"No."
"It's safe. Trust me, Hwoarang." Then, perhaps to demonstrate the validity of her reassurance, Natalia reached forward. She brushed lightly against the incandescent brass in a brief caress. Natalia looked at Hwoarang expectantly.
She's right, I am an idiot, he thought, but he grazed his finger against the doorknob anyway. At his touch, it flared brilliant blue. He jerked his hand away, turning to glare at Natalia, but the blue melted calmly back into the ordinary, familiar browns of brass. The door looked the same as it had before.
"What was that?" Hwoarang demanded. "If that was an attempt on Jin's-"
"You street punks," Natalia cut in with a martyred look, "so damn superstitious. Show you some flashing lights and you're cowering in fear."
"Natalia."
"It's an inactive spell, Bob, to let me know when . . . Jin leaves his room after nightfall. When I'm awake, I sense everything under this roof, but I can't watch him if I'm sleeping. Thus, if he decides to stagger to the bathroom at midnight, I wake up and I know. And so do you, since you touched the doorknob." Hwoarang involuntarily grimaced at this particular scenario, but Natalia continued.
"It has no other effects, although I'd recommend that you don't mention this to him. No one gets hurt, everyone's safe."
Hwoarang stared at the door a while longer. Then he looked back to Natalia, speaking in slow, deliberate tones.
"I think you should explain to me what you know about Jin."
Natalia nodded.
"We have a great deal to talk about." Walking past Hwoarang's door, she looked back at him, saying, "Shall we?" After an almost unnoticeable hesitation that anyone other than Natalia would have missed, Hwoarang followed, and shut the door.
Inside, she moved to a nightstand without turning on the light, and pulled out an object, which, upon being lit, Hwoarang saw was a candle.
"You keep one in every room?" he asked.
She set it onto the floor. It stood without any obvious means of support.
"I like them. These burn brighter than most candles, softer than most lights, and they shine white. They don't dribble either."
Hwoarang considered.
"Those must sell," he said. Natalia laughed quietly.
"Haven't changed, have you."
There was a moment's silence as they both sat on the floor, watching the flame of the candle. It remained remarkably still, one tall tapering spear of light.
"How is Mike treating you?" Hwoarang finally was compelled to ask.
"Well," she said.
"I'm glad," he said.
"Why didn't you come to the wedding?"
They both heard a rush of air as Hwoarang let out his breath. There it was, out in the open. Where the hell had Bob been?
"Because," he started, staring resolutely into the candle, preparing to lie. "Because I was. . . "
"What?" Natalia prompted. Her voice was soft again, wistful in a way he hadn't heard it since too long ago. With that voice, a wall crumbled down between them.
"Because I couldn't stand it," Hwoarang said, truthfully. "Because I didn't think Mike deserved you."
"Did you deserve me?" she asked, genuinely interested in what he'd been thinking.
"No," he said with another quiet sigh, "I don't think I deserved anyone. But you and Mike. . . I was wrong. You're right for each other. Mike loves you."
Natalia too was staring at the candle, a tiny grin on her face.
"I was furious with you, you know. When you didn't show up, I thought 'How dare he? How dare he pretend to care and not be there to see my entire life change?'"
"Was it for the better?"
"Yes."
So much buttressed that word. He could hear the companionship that made it true.
"Wish I'd been there," he whispered, envisioning Mike, bumbling and blond and sincere in a stiff new tuxedo, and Natalia, wearing no jewelry because she was radiant without it.
"Me too."
They looked at each other, smiled.
Then Natalia laughed at her sentimentality and he joined her, wondering if he'd always been that mawkish or if Mike had rubbed off on him.
"Don't forget to invite me," she said, wearing a broad grin now, "when you decide to glue yourself to that special woman. I'm dying to see who it'll be."
Hwoarang snorted.
"Or man," Natalia added as an afterthought. "That Jin is awfully handsome, wouldn't you say?"
"You and Eisuke. It's like I'm being punished."
Natalia paused, leaning forward to stroke the candle flame.
"We have to talk about him, don't we?"
"Why do you say it like that? Like it's something I don't want to hear."
"You don't. Good things are not in store for him, Hwoarang. Not for you either, if you leave with him."
"I can't abandon them."
"Why not?"
It was a reasonable question. Didn't the Blood Talon always put his own survival first? Hwoarang shut his eyes.
"I don't know why yet."
Natalia gave him that sidelong look again, like maybe she did know but wasn't going to tell him.
"His aura is invisible to me," she said instead, "Do you know how strange that is? I can feel everyone like you can see or hear. Not to be able to see, able to hear one single person. . ." She trailed off, hugging herself. "When people enter, I feel them, and they feel me. The regulars think it's some kind of new drug in the air that makes them get that headache when they first step through the door. They don't know it's me, scanning their hearts for malice, pushing them out if I find it. How do you think we stay so successful so easily, Mike and I, in this part of town?"
"I thought it was luck."
That was partially true. He had been dubious and worried for them when Mike happily insisted on buying the place on a crime-infested street, but after they gained their footing and the dance club flourished, he did dismiss it as luck. Luck, and somehow Natalia, but the suspicion had never solidified in his mind before now.
Natalia looked at him, as though to say, 'Since when did you start believing in luck?'. She shook her head, went on.
"But I never felt him. He entered the club with you, strolled down that hall with you, and stood right before my own eyes with you, and I didn't realize he was there until he stepped forward, holding the girl, who was hidden from me because she was so close to his body. It terrifies me. It's unnatural. That's coming from a witch." Natalia was clutching her arms, shivering. Hwoarang himself felt on edge.
"When I looked into his eyes, I thought I'd lost my mind. You see irises. I saw light. Red light. And then it flickered, and he looked normal. I tell you, something in him was aware of me, and tried to hide itself from me. There's several things he could be, Hwoarang, but 'human' is not one of them."
"Can't you," Hwoarang searched for the idea, struggling to find it, for this talk of aura and the intangible didn't come easily, "Can't you exorcise him or something?"
Natalia turned on him, seizing him by the shoulders with her nails digging into his skin.
"Understand this, and don't forget it. Your friend is not, NOT, possessed. He is not a hollow vessel."
Hwoarang looked at her, at a loss for words. Natalia released her vise- like grip and turned her face away, back to the candle.
"You don't take him seriously enough. You're all too complacent. I don't know how I can make you understand, this temporary safety that you wallow in. Certainly I can't show you; how could I, when the demon himself is unaware? My fear is that he lies to himself, trying to disentangle the demon from his identity." And Natalia's tone shifted, betraying the lateness of the night, over a reflective uncertainty. "Or am I wrong?" she murmured. "No, he isn't one possessed, but perhaps the two do not meld." Natalia blinked, slowly, drowsily. Then she shook herself. She met Hwoarang's eyes, laughing.
"I curse this gift of mine. It shows me, but does it show me truth? At least I know I'm not all mad; the girl feels it too."
"Xiaoyu? What do you mean?" Hwoarang said, sitting up and unconsciously leaning forward.
"She fears what's ahead for you all. It's a confusing jumble of echoes and unease in her mind, but it's there."
Hwoarang pushed his hair back from his face with both hands, feeling burdened by this new knowledge that he had no part in. Natalia watched him with a sly smile. He leaned back, anticipating a barb, but what she said was more confusing than insulting.
"I told you that when Jin held Xiaoyu, his invisible aura eclipsed hers. So I found it rather interesting that you, your aura I mean, changes in response to her. Do you want to know how?"
"If I say no, will it stop you from telling me?" he asked, his eyes slit.
"No," Natalia chirped. "Your aura is, oh how to put this delicately, rather ugly, Bob. It's blotchy and bruised. But when you're close to her, or look at her, or maybe think about her, I don't know-" She said the last part rather quickly as Hwoarang started to growl. "- then the bruises do this nice little trick, where they just mellow and fade. Isn't that nice?" she asked, beaming at him.
"You're making this up to annoy me," he accused. She laughed.
"Oh, don't you wish I were."
"I do not have a bruised aura." Hwoarang pouted, for show, because he was quite aware that it made him adorable. Natalia smirked and stood up, moving to the door.
"Natalia."
She turned back, waiting.
"You going to sleep?" he asked.
"Yes. Although Mike and his germs have the luxury of the whole bed for tonight." Hwoarang frowned at the unnecessary info, then cleared his throat.
"Could I go check on her then, in case she gets thirsty or something? I won't be losing any sleep."
Natalia raised an eyebrow.
"Have pity on my bruises, Nata."
She laughed.
"Fine, fine. Don't do anything I wouldn't do," Natalia said, winking at him before closing the door, muffling Hwoarang's loud and indignant reply.
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Gracias a Sam! Constructive criticism will be printed out and framed. Flames will be used to toast marshmallows. Yum.
See Part 1 for disclaimer.
.
.
Hwoarang slid out of his room, moving with almost casual stealth even though he doubted anyone would be awake to hear him. Not that he really cared if they did. To his frustration, sleep had failed to follow exhaustion, resulting in a lengthy but fruitless wrestle with his pillow for comfort, and several seconds on the downy bed before he gave up all hope. Hwoarang hated to admit any physical weakness, hated even to consider their existence if he knew they couldn't be rectified, but his insomnia stared him in the face and mocked him. It was loathsome testimony to a theory he'd built his life by: the only enemy that was capable of defeating him was himself. Well, besides Kazama.
"Fucking tie," he muttered. The deep gray silence absorbed his words like they'd never been spoken.
Barefoot, he strode from his room with no destination in mind, moving his feet one ahead of the other to occupy his body and to calm his thoughts. It didn't occur to him to check on Natalia until he was standing in front of the lacquered door, not entirely certain why he'd walked there. He stood immobile, unready to leave, but averse to idea of going inside, penetrating that mysterious and vaguely restorative stillness. Even the raucous bass of the dance music had subdued to become inaudible now.
Hwoarang was excused from his dilemma when the door swung forward on oiled hinges. He dimly saw the sweeping, shadowed figure of Natalia.
"Bob," she acknowledged. Natalia pushed the door closed and turned to him in one natural movement, as though she'd been expecting him and he was late. Hwoarang wasn't bewildered by her lack of bewilderment; it took a great deal --for instance, Jin, he thought-- to catch her unaware. Over the course of their past friendship, she had developed a sensitivity to his comings and goings. She used to go off about auras and disturbed fengshui by way of explanation, which he eventually came to accept, because who was he to argue over the occult with a witch? Regardless, the whole thing took some getting used to, though he'd been both repelled and fascinated by her impossible talents. Which Mike still refused to recognize the existence of.
Irked by the thought of Mike, Hwoarang frowned deeply, still looking at Natalia. She misinterpreted, and made a shooing motion at him. "Don't look so worried, it'll be fine."
That jolted him to his senses.
"Xiaoyu will be okay?" he asked, too quickly, earning him a sidelong look from Natalia.
"The girl? Yes. She just needs the understanding of her friends, and sleep. You could probably use some too, by the way."
"Well, you're not sleepwalking," he pointed out. She shrugged, waved vaguely toward the wall that separated the hall from the dance room.
"They sustain me." Seeing the look on Hwoarang's face, she snorted. "It's not as if I'm a vampire, you idiot. The energy rolls off the dancers like steam. I can't help it if I pick some up."
Hwoarang shook his head. He returned to the topic that, he realized, had been itching in the back of his head.
"Tell me what happened. With Xiaoyu."
Natalia grew abruptly somber, and sighed. She looked at him thoughtfully, and then tilted her head.
"Ask her yourself, in the morning. I don't think it's my place to tell you. I'm sure she won't refuse you." He began to protest, but Natalia continued over him, "Now, show me which rooms you and, uh, your friend have chosen."
"Why?"
"As the hostess, I have the right and obligation to know where my guests are staying, do you disagree? So move it, darling." The endearment sounded like another amused slight, coming from Natalia. Hwoarang, too worn to debate the issue, trudged back with Natalia at a safe distance from his side.
"That one's Jin's, this one's mine. Do I get a cookie?"
"Hush."
Natalia was staring at Jin's door in concentration. Mouthing sliding syllables, she made a diagonal sealing motion with her right arm, and her left came up to brace against the air parallel to the plane of the door, like a traffic officer making the stop signal. The doorknob began to glow, iridescence and shadows dancing around each other under its smooth surface, so that Hwoarang felt as though he were watching lightening bugs at play. He kept expecting for the effect to fade away under his stunned and uncomfortable gaze, but it didn't. Hwoarang turned to Natalia, waiting for the explanation. Instead, she issued a command.
"Touch the doorknob."
"No."
"It's safe. Trust me, Hwoarang." Then, perhaps to demonstrate the validity of her reassurance, Natalia reached forward. She brushed lightly against the incandescent brass in a brief caress. Natalia looked at Hwoarang expectantly.
She's right, I am an idiot, he thought, but he grazed his finger against the doorknob anyway. At his touch, it flared brilliant blue. He jerked his hand away, turning to glare at Natalia, but the blue melted calmly back into the ordinary, familiar browns of brass. The door looked the same as it had before.
"What was that?" Hwoarang demanded. "If that was an attempt on Jin's-"
"You street punks," Natalia cut in with a martyred look, "so damn superstitious. Show you some flashing lights and you're cowering in fear."
"Natalia."
"It's an inactive spell, Bob, to let me know when . . . Jin leaves his room after nightfall. When I'm awake, I sense everything under this roof, but I can't watch him if I'm sleeping. Thus, if he decides to stagger to the bathroom at midnight, I wake up and I know. And so do you, since you touched the doorknob." Hwoarang involuntarily grimaced at this particular scenario, but Natalia continued.
"It has no other effects, although I'd recommend that you don't mention this to him. No one gets hurt, everyone's safe."
Hwoarang stared at the door a while longer. Then he looked back to Natalia, speaking in slow, deliberate tones.
"I think you should explain to me what you know about Jin."
Natalia nodded.
"We have a great deal to talk about." Walking past Hwoarang's door, she looked back at him, saying, "Shall we?" After an almost unnoticeable hesitation that anyone other than Natalia would have missed, Hwoarang followed, and shut the door.
Inside, she moved to a nightstand without turning on the light, and pulled out an object, which, upon being lit, Hwoarang saw was a candle.
"You keep one in every room?" he asked.
She set it onto the floor. It stood without any obvious means of support.
"I like them. These burn brighter than most candles, softer than most lights, and they shine white. They don't dribble either."
Hwoarang considered.
"Those must sell," he said. Natalia laughed quietly.
"Haven't changed, have you."
There was a moment's silence as they both sat on the floor, watching the flame of the candle. It remained remarkably still, one tall tapering spear of light.
"How is Mike treating you?" Hwoarang finally was compelled to ask.
"Well," she said.
"I'm glad," he said.
"Why didn't you come to the wedding?"
They both heard a rush of air as Hwoarang let out his breath. There it was, out in the open. Where the hell had Bob been?
"Because," he started, staring resolutely into the candle, preparing to lie. "Because I was. . . "
"What?" Natalia prompted. Her voice was soft again, wistful in a way he hadn't heard it since too long ago. With that voice, a wall crumbled down between them.
"Because I couldn't stand it," Hwoarang said, truthfully. "Because I didn't think Mike deserved you."
"Did you deserve me?" she asked, genuinely interested in what he'd been thinking.
"No," he said with another quiet sigh, "I don't think I deserved anyone. But you and Mike. . . I was wrong. You're right for each other. Mike loves you."
Natalia too was staring at the candle, a tiny grin on her face.
"I was furious with you, you know. When you didn't show up, I thought 'How dare he? How dare he pretend to care and not be there to see my entire life change?'"
"Was it for the better?"
"Yes."
So much buttressed that word. He could hear the companionship that made it true.
"Wish I'd been there," he whispered, envisioning Mike, bumbling and blond and sincere in a stiff new tuxedo, and Natalia, wearing no jewelry because she was radiant without it.
"Me too."
They looked at each other, smiled.
Then Natalia laughed at her sentimentality and he joined her, wondering if he'd always been that mawkish or if Mike had rubbed off on him.
"Don't forget to invite me," she said, wearing a broad grin now, "when you decide to glue yourself to that special woman. I'm dying to see who it'll be."
Hwoarang snorted.
"Or man," Natalia added as an afterthought. "That Jin is awfully handsome, wouldn't you say?"
"You and Eisuke. It's like I'm being punished."
Natalia paused, leaning forward to stroke the candle flame.
"We have to talk about him, don't we?"
"Why do you say it like that? Like it's something I don't want to hear."
"You don't. Good things are not in store for him, Hwoarang. Not for you either, if you leave with him."
"I can't abandon them."
"Why not?"
It was a reasonable question. Didn't the Blood Talon always put his own survival first? Hwoarang shut his eyes.
"I don't know why yet."
Natalia gave him that sidelong look again, like maybe she did know but wasn't going to tell him.
"His aura is invisible to me," she said instead, "Do you know how strange that is? I can feel everyone like you can see or hear. Not to be able to see, able to hear one single person. . ." She trailed off, hugging herself. "When people enter, I feel them, and they feel me. The regulars think it's some kind of new drug in the air that makes them get that headache when they first step through the door. They don't know it's me, scanning their hearts for malice, pushing them out if I find it. How do you think we stay so successful so easily, Mike and I, in this part of town?"
"I thought it was luck."
That was partially true. He had been dubious and worried for them when Mike happily insisted on buying the place on a crime-infested street, but after they gained their footing and the dance club flourished, he did dismiss it as luck. Luck, and somehow Natalia, but the suspicion had never solidified in his mind before now.
Natalia looked at him, as though to say, 'Since when did you start believing in luck?'. She shook her head, went on.
"But I never felt him. He entered the club with you, strolled down that hall with you, and stood right before my own eyes with you, and I didn't realize he was there until he stepped forward, holding the girl, who was hidden from me because she was so close to his body. It terrifies me. It's unnatural. That's coming from a witch." Natalia was clutching her arms, shivering. Hwoarang himself felt on edge.
"When I looked into his eyes, I thought I'd lost my mind. You see irises. I saw light. Red light. And then it flickered, and he looked normal. I tell you, something in him was aware of me, and tried to hide itself from me. There's several things he could be, Hwoarang, but 'human' is not one of them."
"Can't you," Hwoarang searched for the idea, struggling to find it, for this talk of aura and the intangible didn't come easily, "Can't you exorcise him or something?"
Natalia turned on him, seizing him by the shoulders with her nails digging into his skin.
"Understand this, and don't forget it. Your friend is not, NOT, possessed. He is not a hollow vessel."
Hwoarang looked at her, at a loss for words. Natalia released her vise- like grip and turned her face away, back to the candle.
"You don't take him seriously enough. You're all too complacent. I don't know how I can make you understand, this temporary safety that you wallow in. Certainly I can't show you; how could I, when the demon himself is unaware? My fear is that he lies to himself, trying to disentangle the demon from his identity." And Natalia's tone shifted, betraying the lateness of the night, over a reflective uncertainty. "Or am I wrong?" she murmured. "No, he isn't one possessed, but perhaps the two do not meld." Natalia blinked, slowly, drowsily. Then she shook herself. She met Hwoarang's eyes, laughing.
"I curse this gift of mine. It shows me, but does it show me truth? At least I know I'm not all mad; the girl feels it too."
"Xiaoyu? What do you mean?" Hwoarang said, sitting up and unconsciously leaning forward.
"She fears what's ahead for you all. It's a confusing jumble of echoes and unease in her mind, but it's there."
Hwoarang pushed his hair back from his face with both hands, feeling burdened by this new knowledge that he had no part in. Natalia watched him with a sly smile. He leaned back, anticipating a barb, but what she said was more confusing than insulting.
"I told you that when Jin held Xiaoyu, his invisible aura eclipsed hers. So I found it rather interesting that you, your aura I mean, changes in response to her. Do you want to know how?"
"If I say no, will it stop you from telling me?" he asked, his eyes slit.
"No," Natalia chirped. "Your aura is, oh how to put this delicately, rather ugly, Bob. It's blotchy and bruised. But when you're close to her, or look at her, or maybe think about her, I don't know-" She said the last part rather quickly as Hwoarang started to growl. "- then the bruises do this nice little trick, where they just mellow and fade. Isn't that nice?" she asked, beaming at him.
"You're making this up to annoy me," he accused. She laughed.
"Oh, don't you wish I were."
"I do not have a bruised aura." Hwoarang pouted, for show, because he was quite aware that it made him adorable. Natalia smirked and stood up, moving to the door.
"Natalia."
She turned back, waiting.
"You going to sleep?" he asked.
"Yes. Although Mike and his germs have the luxury of the whole bed for tonight." Hwoarang frowned at the unnecessary info, then cleared his throat.
"Could I go check on her then, in case she gets thirsty or something? I won't be losing any sleep."
Natalia raised an eyebrow.
"Have pity on my bruises, Nata."
She laughed.
"Fine, fine. Don't do anything I wouldn't do," Natalia said, winking at him before closing the door, muffling Hwoarang's loud and indignant reply.
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.
Gracias a Sam! Constructive criticism will be printed out and framed. Flames will be used to toast marshmallows. Yum.