Dying means sleep. Muddy sleep, winking for all eternity. Dying meant dissipation. Giving into the things that screwed
up your life. This, on the other hand, means thinking you are on the brink of disaster. And being so sadly mistaken.
The discordant songs of the machine's wires make me want to die, over and over and over again.
Inky blue eyes peered from ridiculously long lashes.
Omi was awake.
"...Where...?" he mused distantly.
I heard destruction from far away. I turned idly, seeing Yohji's hand buried in the wall.
"Yohji!" Omi choked.
"Shit. Fuck, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you, I just..." Aya helped Yohji dislodge his fist from its inanimate
captor. "It's just all this, all these..."
"We'll get someone to look at that," Aya stated simply, leading Yohji out of the room.
Bastards.
Silence came, not exactly gently. There was a suffocating nothingness between me and Omi, leaving no space
for us to breathe. Only a staggering sequence of fear and anger.
He knew, I'm certain he did. He knew that when he slashed his wrists, he was tearing into my skin as well. He was
doing that in revenge. Trying to steal my right to breathe and think and live by trying to take his life away.
"Do you want me to go, too? Do you want to be alone?"
It sounded much harsher than I had intended, than I had meant. But if there's one thing I've ever learned in this lifetime,
because it may as well have been ingrained in my mind as a religious catechism, it's that there's no way you can take
anything back. It's out of your hands. "No, please. Please, I need to talk to you," he murmured.
I granted time for more ruthless silence, until my curiosity got the best of me. "Do you hate me?"
"H-huh? No, no, I--"
"Then why? Why did you... try to kill yourself?!"
His eyes widened. Yes, Omi, we know. "Ken..." a frightened sob escaped his throat.
"I didn't mean to. Shit." I sighed frustratedly. I should've taken it all out on Yohji. But there was no way I could
have anticipated what I'd feel when I was faced with Omi. No way to prepare myself, or anyone around me. "It's just too hard,
I don't know how to deal with this..."
"I don't, either, but please don't hate me for this..." He looked up, finding me clawing at my skin. "Ken...?"
"It's all so tiring." All I wanted was to crawl beside him, put my
head on his lap and let him brush my hair from my face with his small, perfect hands. Without having to imagine the cuts that
scream so brutally beneath them.
"I know you hate me right now. You and Aya and Yohji. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry for being so weak..."
"Why did you do it, Omi? Did you do it to make me suffer?"
He seemed shocked, as if he didn't know that being threatened by his loss wouldn't destroy me. Bastard. "I didn't--"
I held the metal bars enclosing his bed until my knuckles paled into a more colorless shade of white. "You mean you didn't
realize that it would affect us? I can barely recognize Aya anymore, thanks to what you put him through. Yohji has gone
through more personalities than he has gone through women. And I'm not doing too great myself. I'm... I..." I
should not be the one here. The kid is suicidal, and I'm laying on the guilt trip. That doesn't exactly qualify me for
Guidance Counselor of the Month. "You have to tell me what made you do that, Omi. Please, it's... It's undoing me, and
I could just fall apart," I whispered.
"I'm sorry, I'm so, so... sorry..."
"Why, Omi? Tell me, please..."
It's hard to brace yourself for something you knew could turn the whole world upside down and inside out.
"When I felt you kiss me..." His voice cracked, effectively imitating my heart. I could almost hear the world crumbling, a
shaky tremor of blue and green, trying to balance itself on its nebular pedestal. "...it reminded me so much of Ouka."
Times like these, it hurts your heart to breathe.
"It felt so similar. Not physically, but it touched the same something inside me. It made me want to believe in everything
you said, it made me want to forgive you anything, and to protect you from whatever I could. It made me want to never lose
you..." The tears came in rivulets, with drops clinging onto his dark gold lashes. "It made me remember my curse..." His
lifted his tear-studded eyes to meet mine, eviscerating me with his pain and filling me with it. Is this what he feels,
then, when he tries to do everything to console us, every time we need him to?
"What curse?" I asked, my voice husky by the way my heart was stuck in my throat.
"I'm haunted, Ken. Haunted by the lives I cherished..." He broke down, his thin frame shuddering with wracks of
lament. I was immediately by his side, despite the restraining order I had put on myself. He instinctively
curled into me, both of us knowing by heart how flawlessly our bodies weaved into each other.
"What do you mean?"
"Of course you don't see... Oh, Ken..." He buried his face in my neck, but it was almost as if his hands were pushing me
away. No, not pushing me away, but pushing himself away from me... Just by holding him I could feel the inner-conflict
he had nourished in himself. "I'm a killer, Ken, and this is the only retribution I deserve. The people I love most
will be taken away from me, just like the lives I take."
"You idiot. You little idiot!" I held him closer, giving him no chance to struggle against me. "People don't die because
they're making up for your sins, they just... die." The gravity of the situation left little room for articulation. I
couldn't focus on what I was saying, on as much as what I wanted him to hear. "It has nothing to do with us!"
"No, it has nothing to do with you or Aya or Yohji. She died because of me. You... You'll be gone to, because--"
I've always wondered how and admired the way he freed himself from the disillusionment amidst the human race eternally
dying, at times, even at our own hands. But then, what finally broke him was how much he cared for someone. ...For
me.
I shook him, literally shook him. Grabbed him by his shoulders and fiercely swayed his slim body. "I will not die because
you care for me. If anything, I'd only die if you didn't."
He saw the vehement sincerity in my eyes, I could tell. He looked so burdened from having to explain his catastrophic
identity to me. "You don't understand! You think you do, because we all go through these moral crises on occasion, but
we're not the same. You weren't programmed for this kind of life... Ken, my existence in itself is a sin. I bring pain
everywhere I go and to everyone I meet. And I pay for it by losing all the people that I..."
Did we help you feel this way? Was it our fault, for making you think that you brought about the pain that we made you
deal with? I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I couldn't handle it myself, I'm sorry I needed to tell you...
"You stop that, stop that bull shit right now."
"But-!"
"What you don't consider is the fact that so many people need you in their lives! Don't you get it? Don't you see it in me
and in Aya and in Yohji?" I let my head fall on his shoulder, ignoring the way my neck had to make an extraordinary reach
just to do so. I didn't know what to say, I wouldn't know how to say it if I did. "You can't be so irresponsible, because
you... it's not just you who would be affected in pulling stunts like these."
"But you'd get over it, too, all of you will. It'd be nothing compared to what might happen to you if I cast my doom on you."
"Cast your doom on us?! Omi -- please don't get insulted -- but I almost want to laugh at that. Will you listen to yourself?
I mean, aside from it sounding like you ripped it out of a poorly-written movie." I held him in arm's length, making sure he
saw my eyes. "You're just afraid, that's what you are. You're no bringer of death, not unintentionally, anyway. You're just
scared to be alone."
Omi's eyebrows met in a tremulous second.
"And that's fine. Everyone's scared shitless of that, and the reality of loneliness... you probably know it better than half the people
in this planet. You've went through a lot, and nothing is scarier than being alone. But... listen,
I can't stay with you forever, but I'll never abandon you, Omi. I wouldn't even be able to." I'm so not
eloquent it could be a super power.
"I never said you would..."
"But that's what terrifies you. And it terrifies me too, the thought of losing you. So please, if you care for me. Don't
ever. Ever again."
One of his hands wrapped itself around mine. Timidly, contritely. "You're not angry anymore?"
"I would be, if you ever tried to do that again." I squeezed his hand, as if to verify the life in them. "Please, no more
of this? Will you just forget that 'casting your doom upon us all' shit? Please?"
He bowed his head, a slight blush on his cheeks. Possibly out of embarrassment, I really couldn't tell. "I'm sorry."
"No more of it?"
"No more."
"You promise?"
"Yes, I promise."
We were both tired (even if 'depleted' was a better word), and I was more than a little satisfied with the kind of silence
ascendant now -- it was a rather accepting one. Still, I didn't take it against Omi when he decided to disturb the
tranquility. "K-- uh. Ken, why'd you kiss me?" I just, sort of, panicked my way into a frenzy. I almost missed the effulgent
pink that nearly his whole face was being doused in.
"Oh, yeah that." Oh, yeah. Great, now my inner voices are mocking me. "Sorry. I wasn't trying to be romantic or
I dunno... You know, not like, it seemed, but, uh -- I just really wanted you to think about what you were saying. You really were being ridiculous then, you know?
Well, anyway, I don't think about you that way, don't worry. I'm sorry that it... it was the first thing I thought of. It didn't mean anything, though. I mean... Yeah. Sorry." I think I wanted to cut off my damn blasphemous tongue,
either for (a) its heinous lie or (b) how unconvincing it was.
But dear, sweet Omi. Taking what I said in face-value, simply because his trustworthy friend said it. "You don't have to apologize. It does explain everything. I think." He offered me a brittle smile, obviously still spent from everything that had happened. I smiled back, hoping
it was close enough to the real thing. "I thought... Ah, never mind."
"You thought what?" I raised my eyebrow at his soft, thoughtful smile.
Before he could generate a response, Aya walked in, with an unreadable glare. "Aya!" Omi voiced his refreshed characteristic
enthusiasm. Yohji appeared as well, in slower strides than Aya, as if wary to come in. "Yohji! Aya--!"
"You self-serving son of a bitch!" Aya nearly shouted.
I didn't see Omi's reaction, and I didn't have to. I set myself between him and Aya, ready to prevent Aya from advancing
any further. "Aya, what are you doing?" I asked, a hint of danger in my voice.
"You selfish little brat. If you ever try to do that again--" He pushed me aside, and his other hand reaching out to Omi,
making the younger boy fidget in terror. "I'll kill you myself!" Omi gasped when Aya's arms came loosely around him,
in what could indistinctly be mistaken for a hug. Except, Aya doesn't normally hug people. "What would we have done...
if you had succeeded...?" It actually did start to look more and more like an embrace, to my surprise. I turned to Yohji,
who seemed close to approving of the scene, and merely waiting for his turn to let Omi know how much he meant to all of us.
Above anything, Aya's question perturbed me, rather than the show of affection he just extended. What if Omi did die? And
supposedly in my place, no less? What a mistake it would have been, my life for his.
I didn't want to think about it. All I wanted to do was to wait for Omi to get better. Which I ended up doing, of course.
When he was released by the hospital and allowed to come back to the Koneko, his gashes thoroughly healed, I realized I was
still waiting.
[[ I know it's far too late to be self-conscious about this fic, but I still sorta am. I really didn't want to continue this, (I didn't know how) but I wanted to see more Ken/Omi existing... Even if it were my own. ^_^' What can I say, I'm a very protective shipper. I'd like to convince myself that it's not dying. ^_^ ]]
