Boring legal bit: Angel Sanctuary, it's characters, indices and related designs are property of Kaori Yuki, Hana to Yume comics, Hakusensha, whatever company released the OAVs and about a million and one others who own the distribution rights, in fact just about the only person who doesn't seem to own the rights to it is me. This was written solely for my own and, hopefully, other Western fans' amusement, I am not and will not ever make any money out of this fanfiction… etc, etc, etc.
Author's notes: Wow, I finished a piece of fanfiction. Even better, I finished it within a few days of starting. This is not usual and will probably never happen again so I might as well enjoy it while I can. This is also my first completed fanfic since I lost interest in Minami Ozaki's BRONZE sometime last year AND my first ever Angel Sanctuary fan work. Best of all, it has Rociel in. I know I'm not the first person to use this scenario (I was inspired by a couple of great stories by Phoenix Serapha), but I enjoyed writing this more than I have anything for a while so forgive me please? Hope I'm not the only person out there who likes it. Reviews are welcome, but please don't be mean or I might cry.
Apologies for any OOCness - I own the Angel Sanctuary manga but my Japanese ability is limited to being able to read about ten kanji and a few katakana and I have never seen the OAVs.
In his lucid moments he wondered just what exactly he had become, wondered what was happening to himself, even though he didn't have to search hard or for very long in order to find the truth. He stood outside himself and regarded himself with shock, awe, maybe even with fear. He saw himself as he truly was. Funny how little had really changed; conversely, funny how much was different now, so different that he could barely even recognize his situation, barely recognize himself. How had it come to this? How had he got himself into this situation? If he was to be totally honest, how had he managed to end up in this terrible mess? What had happened, what had gone so horribly wrong?
And it was funny how futile his actions seemed when he saw himself like this, in his lucid moments. Tiny islands of clarity cutting through the fog which normally seemed to envelop him so completely.
Did he sleepwalk all the other times? He was awake now, fully awake; normally this part of him slept. Lay dormant, locked away. Trapped. He couldn't touch it, didn't know how to reach it. It only stirred when it chose to; he had nothing to do with it. Normally he didn't even notice its' absence and certainly didn't miss it but when it woke he could see clearly, see how he lived his life like someone in a trance. But why couldn't just knowing be enough to make him pause, draw back, stop to think harder? Why didn't the awakening of this logical core bring him any relief, or indeed anything other than another form of torment? And why, if he slept, why did his actions always strike him as logical?
Maybe they only seemed that way when viewed through the eyes of a madman. His own eyes.
Now he regarded himself in the glass of the window with those same eyes and thought, what's happening to me? Why didn't he understand any more? Why did he feel so unsure now that he saw things for what they were, when he saw the world and himself in the same way that everyone else did? Why were there so many questions and why couldn't he answer a single one? He looked at the hands of the figure in the glass and was surprised by their shape; he looked up at his own face as if regarding the features of a stranger. What would he think of a stranger with a face like his own? Would he think them cold, strange, destructive? Would he call them mad?
Would he call them beautiful? Maybe. He didn't know. What he saw when he looked in the glass was her face, his sister's face… only subtly changed, altered by the very different mind behind such similar features. Alexiel had always been beautiful. She would still be beautiful. But for now she slept, just as trapped as he had been (as trapped as he still was, maybe; what was freedom of the body if your mind was not your own?). Her soul slept, trapped within the body of another. To awaken her would be to destroy the boy she was trapped inside. Did that matter, if in doing so he reclaimed her?
Without Alexiel he was incomplete. He needed her. He had always needed her, far more than she had ever needed him. Without her he was nothing, without her he wouldn't even have existed, couldn't imagine existing without her; she could take him or leave him or, more often than not, choose to ignore him completely. In his lucid moments, he wondered if Alexiel had ever needed him at all…
He pushed the thought away. Even now he refused to think like this. He loved her. That was all there was to it.
Are you frightened, Rociel?
No. No. No, he wasn't afraid. Never. Not of Alexiel, his sister. He turned from the window, suddenly sickened by the sight of his own face, his face that was really hers anyway, like everything about him was really hers. What was he? A bad copy, a clone, Alexiel's twin, his sister reborn as a man - almost; even there he knew himself to be imperfect. But Alexiel had always been beautiful, whereas he…
"Damn you." He murmured under his breath. Who was he talking to?
Rociel shook his head slightly, the slight movement sending his hair tumbling into his face. He closed his eyes, breathed in. Was he apprehensive? Why? The memories had surfaced unbidden, terrible to the touch. Early memories, for now still disjointed, blurred and vague as barely-remembered nightmares which nonetheless still possessed the power to confuse, shock, maybe even to frighten. For how long could he count on them remaining formless as dreams? At least with nightmares came the reassurance that such things were merely the product of hallucination, the frenzied speculations of an over-tired mind; with memories there was no such relief.
Was he afraid? What did he have to be afraid of? The dead past? But that couldn't hurt him now; what would the point be in fearing it? Painful though it was to recall that part of his life was over, locked away. The worst that he would have to face? (What was death after such a birth; what could it be but anticlimactic?) Bleak days, memories of isolation, of loneliness, of desperate longing for something that he must have known, even then, that he could never have… of longing for her, Alexiel.
And other times. A different time, a better one… one that was closer to hand, but just as irretrievable. Maybe the best time he would ever know. For a moment he'd even been able to forget his own lingering sense of incompleteness, the feelings that being without his sister always seemed to trigger which he'd known then were all but impossible to alleviate. For a time he'd been able to sublimate them, almost suppress them completely; he'd had other things to occupy him, other people. Another person. He'd forgotten her. Almost. He'd been happy, or as near to happy as he was likely to get.
The worst was behind him, possibly. The best was behind him, unquestionably.
Are you frightened?
Rociel opened his eyes and stared wildly round himself, round the room, alive with the soft flicker and unsettled shadow of candlelight; he could have sworn someone was speaking to him, but he was alone. Was he frightened? Of what? Pointless to be afraid of the past, so… what then? Of the future? Or of what he was becoming? In his lucid moments (fleeting islands of reason in the inhospitable ocean of his own insanity) he recognized his own failings, his own fallibility, and what he saw of himself shocked him. He didn't recognize himself, barely understood his own actions. In his lucid moments he saw himself differently - more clearly? In moments like this, Rociel knew that he was going mad.
"Who are you?" He asked the man whose face he saw reflected in the windowpane. Who was he? He didn't know. If he didn't even know that, then what could he know?
Rociel didn't want to look. He didn't want to see his own face, distorted replica of Alexiel's, any longer. Not tonight. Instead he gazed round the room, looking for… what? He didn't know. He just knew he didn't want to look any more. He didn't care what he did as long as it was anything but this, anything but to stand and think and confront his own triviality, his unfeeling, unthinking malice. Body on autopilot, barely realizing what he was doing, he picked up a vase that stood empty of flowers and was in its emptiness strangely meaningless. A fit metaphor, he thought, though he wasn't sure what for. Life or just his own life, lived without her? Grasping it in one deceptively fragile, slim-fingered hand he turned back to the window, a small giggle bubbling up in his throat has he spotted his reflection in the glass. Once in a while, everybody tired of their own face.
He smiled a thin, utterly unamused, feline smile. Took a pace forward, then another. Hurled the vase at the glass, almost surprised by the sheer ferocity of his actions. Was he like that all the time? The glass splintered, shattered, the shards cascading to the floor, illuminated briefly by the light from outside and the flames of the candles. An exquisite, lethal rainfall. What remained of the broken pane was cobwebbed with cracks which crazed what little reflection the glass still held. The vase too would break. Rociel didn't care about the vase, or the glass on the floor or on the window ledge outside. He giggled again, his smile ferocious. The part of himself that recognized his own insanity could spot the hysterical note to his own laughter. It wasn't funny but he couldn't stop laughing and he didn't care. He didn't care that the sound of glass breaking had undoubtedly woken the others. He didn't care that he was losing control again, what little control he still possessed. He didn't care about anything except the disappearance of his double and would have happily broken every other window in the apartment to stop him coming back.
Left to himself he might have gone on to do just that, but a noise in the corridor startled him, almost made him jump; the sound of a door closing. Straightening, his laughter subsiding somewhat, Rociel turned and looked over his shoulder at the door to his own room, listening for footfalls in the corridor. He would have been more surprised not to hear something than he was by the sounds of movement he could hear, by the hesitant knock on the closed door.
"Lord Rociel?"
Katan. Of course. Rociel smiled again, mirthlessly, a terrible smile that felt all too familiar on his face. He hadn't expected anything less from Katan, hadn't expected anything more. The concern was obvious in his voice, but his own natural deference kept him from entering the room without being bidden. Deference, tempered with fear? Was Katan afraid of him? Rociel was still lucid enough to know what the answer to that question was. Of course he was afraid. Katan believed in him, Katan respected him, Katan was unswervingly loyal to him… but he was also terrified of him, of what he was becoming, of what he had already become. He knew this, part of him wished it wasn't so. He had never wanted to hurt Katan, had never really intended to do anything of the sort, but somehow…
Somehow he had. Always. And the worst part was there was no way to change that now.
He didn't answer the boy's call. He just stood, staring through the broken window and shivering slightly; there was a draught now and he welcomed it. The slight breeze disordered the ends of his hair, agitated the flimsy curtains, the flames of the candles, but he didn't notice. He had no eyes for his bedroom, for the crazed reflections in the broken glass. He hadn't meant to become so distracted so abruptly, but all it had taken was to gaze out of the window at the city below and he'd known, or rather he had remembered. She was somewhere out there, he could practically feel her presence, her proximity. Alexiel and that vapid, foolish girl she - or rather the boy whose body currently imprisoned his sister's soul - was so taken with. He could feel her. He could feel them, both of them, and it hurt. He could tell they were together without having to question where the knowledge had come from. He just knew, never mind how. Rociel had wanted to forget about them. About her. About the girl she thought she loved.
Rociel loved his sister and he couldn't bear the thought of that ridiculous child having what he desired seemingly without even trying, without having to do anything but be herself, whereas he had struggled all his life to gain acceptance in Alexiel's eyes, trying almost desperately to make her see who he was now when she looked at him, not the hideous creature he'd once been, and he had absolutely nothing to show for his efforts. What right did that child have to take all that? It might not have been his by rights but it certainly wasn't hers. He hated them both. But most of all he hated her, that girl Sara.
"Lord Rociel?" Katan said again, pausing momentarily before adding, "May I come in?", speaking so hesitantly it was almost as if he feared that this question had been somehow impetuous or disrespectful. Very likely Katan feared the response, was afraid of incurring Rociel's fury again, was unsure if he wanted to know the answer to his question, didn't want to know how his master would react to his concern, but his loyalty rendering him utterly incapable of leaving without at first checking that Rociel was safe. Once again though, he received no reply.
"Alexiel." Rociel said softly, barely realizing he had spoken at all. He walked towards the broken windowpane, this time ignoring the splinters of his own reflection, ignoring the broken glass underfoot - no doubt that would be at least one of the reasons for Katan's anxiety, Rociel doubted that he trusted him round broken glass. He rested one hand on what little glass remained, felt it yield and fracture slightly under his fingertips. It didn't matter; let it break. He leant out, the night air cool on his face, the wind tangling his pale hair like the fingers of a lover, a lover that he had never possessed. She was out there. She was so close. Alexiel was so close he imagined that he could feel her presence… and yet to be unable to do a thing about it, to be stuck, constrained and frustrated, so near to her but unable to actually reach her, was an exquisite torture.
"Alexiel!"
He didn't realize he'd shouted her name until he heard the door click open behind him; Katan, throwing caution to the wind, worry and fear scoring their unmistakable marks on still boyish features. There was a lot Rociel didn't always realize about himself. At the sound of the door he had half turned to regard Katan over his shoulder and the look on his face had stopped him in his tracks, already stammering out an apology for daring to interrupt. Rociel wanted to tell him not to apologize (it was damnably annoying and what, after all, did he have to apologize for?) but he didn't. Instead he carried on looking at Katan over one shoulder, the wind twisting his hair and tugging at the flimsy robe he wore. If he was at all cold it didn't show.
The question was in the boy's eyes. What do you think you're doing? But they both knew that nothing would have made him so reckless as to actually ask it. Such a question would, to Katan's eyes, have probably been considered terribly disrespectful. He seldom questioned Rociel's actions and to do so in such a forthright way would have been unthinkable to both of them.
"Katan."
He turned slightly, facing back into the room and looking straight at the boy, gaze level and voice calm, cutting off the apology before it was any more than half-finished. He was the one who had interrupted and it was Katan who was ashamed for speaking. Rociel couldn't understand such loyalty, in his lucid moments. He doubted he ever could have done. What about the savage, unthinking automaton that tonight he knew he was could be deserving of such loyalty? But he was grateful for it; what was the need for an understanding then? Grateful, though he never showed it. He raised one eyebrow and felt himself frown at the expression on the boy's face. Afraid even now? Afraid that the unspoken question had been one step too far?
"She's near." Rociel said suddenly, averting his gaze to face the window once again; the view over the sleeping city seemed almost to obsess him, to hold him in thrall. Without the glass he could see far more clearly. "I know it."
Katan's expression seemed, if anything, to only grow more concerned at Rociel's words. Of course he knew to whom he was referring. The look on his face would be troubling the boy; his eyes were distant and, when he spoke, his voice was as vacant as his gaze. Alexiel. The very name seemed enough to vex him, these days. Enough to vex the both of them, perhaps? Framed by the shattered glass Rociel frowned again, an expression that now spoke not of irritation or ill-concealed anger but simply of an unnatural pensiveness. He sighed once, a soft sound that was barely noticeable over the noise of the night, and his eyes closed momentarily. Troubled by his own thoughts or a fragment of memory.
"Why are you doing this?" Katan would know that he wasn't talking to him. The averted eyes, the troubled expression, the sigh… any one of them alone would have been quite enough to give it away. It was almost as if Rociel had barely noticed the boy's presence at all; as if he had turned to look at Katan merely to confirm that he wasn't alone any more, spoken to cut off his anxious protests, then had promptly forgotten all about him. It was after all entirely possible. "Why do you want to do this? Does it please you?"
The question was serious, the almost plaintive note to his voice was genuine. Plaintive… he could barely remember the last time he'd pleaded with anyone. Anyone save her.
"Lord Rociel…"
Katan, taking a couple of paces into the room, clearly worried now. Rociel barely heard him. In his lucid moments he knew, or thought he did, that she didn't really care. She had never cared as much as he had, never. She hadn't done then and now she almost certainly never would. Why would she, when she already had someone to watch over her? When she was trapped so deeply in the soul of someone else that the boy Setsuna hadn't even realized she was there, could deny that she was there? Rociel could practically feel her presence she was so close but she would never love him, could never have loved him in the way he loved her, and it hurt. He hated that girl. Hated her. She had Alexiel in thrall and whilst she had her he would never be able to touch her. Why then did he go on hoping?
"Sister."
The cobwebbed glass shifted beneath his fingertips, splintered, shattered; Rociel stumbled slightly, caught by surprise, yanked his hand back and away and almost instinctively looked down at his palm. Fragments of glass catching the candle flames, tainted only by splotches of red. Blood; his blood. Shock mingled with sudden pain made Rociel gasp slightly but otherwise made no move, gazing in something approaching wonder at the glass, the blood, gashes running across otherwise unmarred flesh. At the pearls of blood forming upon them. The wounds were shallow, more inconvenient than serious, but to Rociel they were proof of something fundamental. Cut him and he bled. Really, they were not so different any more. Everything Alexiel was he was too; he was the image of her, the way they'd always been intended to be. But he could never forget where he'd come from…
Movement behind him; Katan had heard him gasp. Concern once more overriding deference, the boy had finally approached him, stood close to him, reached out to try and touch him - but there he had faltered, unwilling or unable to come any closer without being bidden to do so. This close Rociel was unable to ignore him or forget his presence; anger at the unwonted interruption fought relief at the distraction, at the presence of the one person whom he knew loved him in spite of everything he had done to push him away. Who loved him in spite of himself, in fact. She wouldn't care if he hurt, if he was frightened or lost or alone or losing his mind because of her, but Katan did. He cared. He still cared, God help him.
God help them both.
Maybe he had never meant to hurt Katan but tonight there were no deceptions; tonight Rociel knew as well as he ever would do that, for all his good intentions, he had hurt him and would probably go on doing so…
He finally moved away from the window and stood facing Katan, his uninjured hand resting on the back of the wounded one almost protectively, a drop of blood crawling slowly down one wrist. Close now, so very close. If he tilted his head up he would almost be able to feel Katan's breath on his cheeks. He didn't, and he didn't know why he didn't. What would one more sin be to a creature who had sinned so much already?
"Katan." Rociel said again, and the sound of his own voice surprised him. "Do you think she's happy now?"
Katan didn't look happy. He gave a sigh; he looked so confused, unsure what was expected of him. He sounded forlorn. Rociel's mood troubled him, his master's introspection was no less worrying to him and no more to be sought after than his anger was, he feared Rociel's mood swings, he didn't know how to answer his question in any way that would remain both honest and tactful. "… I don't know." He said finally. "She may think she is, but…" He let the sentence trail off unfinished, unsure how to end it. Maybe there was nothing more to say.
"But." Rociel echoed. Delicately, he picked a shard of glass from the palm of his hand and dropped it to the floor. "Why doesn't she want me?" Lost, he sounded so lost. A child's voice, a boy wondering aloud why nobody liked him no matter how hard he tried. He wasn't expecting a reply. He wasn't expecting Katan to know the solution to his problems when he couldn't even think of one himself. The only one who knew the answer those questions was Alexiel and she would never reply. What did that fool of a girl have that made her so important, so special? She wasn't exceptional by any means. Nothing about her was exceptional. So why her?
"What's wrong with me?" he asked, and suddenly it wasn't just about Sara any more, or even about Alexiel. What was so wrong with him that made Alexiel unable to care for him, what was wrong with him that made him think like this sometimes, what was going wrong with him that was turning him into this creature whose mind was not his own and whose motives he could barely even recognize, never mind understand? Four words, so simple and yet asking so much. "What's wrong with me?" Rociel blinked twice, vision splintering, and he took a deep, ragged breath.
Was he crying? He didn't cry.
But he didn't understand any more and he felt so alone. Tonight Rociel was seeing things with a clarity that appalled him. He couldn't pretend not to know what was going on between his sister and that child, that stupid little girl, and he couldn't pretend not to know what it meant, for him as well as for them, for the plans he had made as well as his secret hopes. He wasn't capable of vocalizing the thought - that would have meant acknowledging it and to acknowledge it would have been to admit the futility of his own actions - but part of him knew that he'd failed before he'd even properly begun. But to admit to failure… that would have been impossible. He couldn't even admit it to himself. Maybe, if he didn't think about it, it wouldn't necessarily be true…
He looked up at Katan now, willing him to say something, do something, anything at all. He didn't care what. Speak, or move, or… anything. Even if the boy didn't say anything helpful. Even if all that happened was that what he said caused that stupid, irrational anger Rociel sometimes felt round him to well up again. Even getting angry at Katan over nothing at all would have better than this…
"Lord Rociel." The pause before he spoke was a sure sign that Katan was picking his words carefully. Natural caution, but then Katan was cautious; afraid of causing offense, afraid of breaking taboos… poor boy, he was so unsure, but he didn't sound unsure now. "It's not you who is at fault. Please don't blame yourself." His tone was level and gentle but perfectly serious and the conviction in his voice was breathtaking.
How could anyone sound so certain? How could Katan have confidence in him when he felt so unsure?
Katan, he wanted to say, Don't leave me. But he didn't; Rociel couldn't trust himself to talk. Instead he practically flung himself at the boy, felt him stumble slightly, take a step back. He could feel Katan's surprise, the sudden tension in his body, the way he seemed to hesitate slightly - only slightly, but noticeably, damn it, it was noticeable - before daring to put his arms round him. God, Rociel thought, why is he frightened? Is he that afraid of me? The thought only made him feel worse and he tucked his head under Katan's chin, clinging to him almost desperately, and listened to the sound of the boy's heartbeats and his own muffled sobs.
"I need her." Talking through his tears. He spoke into Katan's shirt, turning his head slightly, clinging to him in a way that was almost possessive. In a way that was possessive. Katan was his. God. If Katan were to leave him too… he couldn't. Rociel wouldn't let him leave. He thought he'd probably kill Katan before he willingly let the boy leave him. He couldn't bear the thought of being left alone again. I need her, Rociel thought, but I need you too. Do you know that, Katan?
"I know." Katan replied softly. Again, what more could there have been to say? Tentatively, he reached out and smoothed Rociel's hair, a calming motion, the kind of thing a parent would have done to a tearful child, surprising how much things had changed between them, how different it all felt now; Rociel shivered at the touch and bit his lip to suppress another sob, tightening his grip on Katan until it became, he suspected, almost painful. He didn't want to let go, he didn't want to lose Katan too, he couldn't afford to lose the only true thing he had left.
"You're cold."
How long the silence had stretched on for before Katan broke it Rociel didn't know. Long enough for his tears to subside, long enough for him to start to forget his own loneliness and his terrible fear of losing control, enough to forget the utter panic that seeing things clearly for once had engendered. Enough time, too, for some of Katan's anxiousness about what might have been about to happen to abate somewhat, for the tension in his body to start to ease. Rociel could feel his muscles slowly relax and, though it had barely been perceptible at the time, his breathing had gradually slowed.
His reply was vague and somewhat sleepy. "It doesn't matter." Lifting his head slightly he had looked up at Katan's face and smiled a small, quiet, placid smile that felt odd on his face. It wasn't like his normal smiles at all. Once upon a time Alexiel had smiled like that… but that was over and done with, lost long ago in the dead past. How different things were now, how many things had changed and yet, how many things seemed not to have changed at all. He reached up and, almost as cautiously as Katan had stroked his hair, traced the line of Katan's lips. Such a gesture was nothing unusual from him, but this time there was something missing, a certain deliberateness of intent that was, this time, lacking. This time, he did it simply because he wanted to. Never mind what happened next.
Eventually, reluctantly, Rociel pulled back slightly, loosening his grip but not quite relinquishing it. He ran one hand down Katan's arm, taking his hand and leading him back toward his bed, smiling a little more broadly at his bemused expression. Sitting and drawing his legs up onto the bed, he gently tugged at Katan's wrist.
"It's late, Katan."
It's late, and I don't want to think any more. The best thing Rociel could think of right now was to seek oblivion and a respite from his unquiet mind in sleep. In his lucid moments he knew he was going mad and the way he started to think terrified him. In his lucid moments he dreaded the thought of being left to himself. Left to himself, Rociel knew he would get no rest at all. It's late, and I don't want to sleep alone tonight.
He lay on his back and looked up at the ceiling, felt the mattress shift slightly as Katan surrendered to the inevitable and sat down next to him. He still looked troubled; Rociel suspected he always would and sighed; he'd gone very, very wrong somewhere, they both had. He didn't know how or when it had happened - maybe it had always been inevitable, maybe nothing he could have done would have prevented it - and no matter how hard he searched for a reason he didn't know what he'd done. All he'd ever wanted was her; had even that been too much to ask, for such a creature as himself?
Maybe all he had needed to do was be born, but that couldn't alter the fact that, inevitable though his path may have been, he had sinned. He had done quite enough to warrant damnation, and yet… but there was no turning back now, no way to recover his rapidly slipping grasp on reality. Tonight Rociel knew he had done wrong, tonight he could understand. Tomorrow he would still be wrong but tomorrow it would no longer matter. Tomorrow he wouldn't care and wouldn't even remember why he had been so unsure. He would barely even remember what that uncertainty felt like. Whatever uneasy self-awareness he had reached tonight would evaporate with the dew come the morning.
"Katan, come here." He saw Katan look up, startled and confused, and he grasped the boy's hand again and pressed gently on his shoulder. It was late and he wasn't the only one in need of rest. "Don't go anywhere. Please?" Beseeching again, a child woken from a nightmare, convinced that only the presence of another would keep his demons at bay. Rociel didn't plead with anyone; he had no need to. Normally. But tonight he didn't care about any of that. As long as Katan stayed with him it might be all right in the end, even if it was just for now. Even though none of this could last no matter how desperately he wished that it might be so. Rociel was going crazy and he realized it and there was nothing he could do.
There was no way back, no way to mend what had already been broken, no way to recover what had already been lost. All that he could do was try to weather the storm, this storm that he had created: it didn't much matter any more whether he had done it through accident or design. Whatever it was, it had happened. He turned to Katan and wrapped his arms round him, desperate for the comfort that his proximity brought, always brought even if he almost never showed it. Stay with me. Please.
The candles guttered in the draught from the broken window.
~fin~