Author: Celeste
Feedback: keviesprincess@netscape.net (flames welcome because they're funny)
Rating: PG-13 for yaoi themes
Disclaimer: Not mine…I'm not creative enough to come up with characters as loveable or messed up. ^_^
Pairing: Yuki/Haru
Summary: Short POV piece- Haru mourns.
Dedication: To Anrui and Mel (once again). Anrui, Happy 18th birthday! Mel, thanks for the encouragement, despite the fact that I still suck! :P
A/N: Yes, I realize that all I can seem to churn out are these POV fics, but I really don't think I'm good enough to try anything with a narration because it's too hard and I suck. Hopefully this one didn't suck as much as my smut attempt (which by now, is hopefully long dead!). Aheh. *Cough* Anyway, apologies for any bastardization of the characters, any irritating redundancy, and for my usual lack of plot and substance. I can't help it if my muse is lazy!
Distribution: Ask Anrui, it's her birthday fic. :P
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Akito is dead.
To say it so bluntly might seem insensitive, cruel, vindictive even. But regardless, it is the truth.
He is dead.
And I mourn.
Not because Akito is dead—I could never grieve for someone whom I cared very little to know about while alive, family or no. He was never important to me, to very many people at all. Not as a person, anyway.
He was an important figurehead.
A necessary symbol.
An abstract.
He was our god.
And now he is dead.
I mourn.
But not for him, never for him.
Like a symbol, I mourn for what his death means. It is the very idea of him that I fear.
I sit in silence, alone in the gardens beneath old trees heavy with orange blossoms as the other family members patter about, preparing the finishing touches on the feast for his funeral, the decorations for his wake. There will be fruit piled high and the smell of incense everywhere come evening the following day.
Tomorrow, there will be a grand party at Sohma house, for his final farewell.
After nice words are said, after prayers and food for his spirit are offered, they will just burn him.
They will throw their god to the fires and allow eternity to consume him, leaving only ashes, black and white and gray, behind.
His body will become dust.
Funny that somehow, the most fearsome aspect of him will still remain, though he himself will be nothing but the dirt from whence he came.
His idea will remain.
His necessity will remain.
He was an important figurehead.
A necessary symbol.
An abstract.
He was our god.
He is dead.
Tomorrow, there will be a grand party at Sohma house. Not only for his final farewell, but to assert that he will be here forever, his necessity, his idea, will be forever.
Tomorrow, Yuki will take his place.
Akito has named Yuki as the next head of the family, as his heir.
As heir to his immortal idea.
And that is why I mourn.
Because Yuki will be my god.
I do not want my lover to become my god.
We both do not want it.
You cannot touch gods, because they are abstracts, ideas.
I want to be able to touch him.
I love him.
Tomorrow, there will be a grand party at Sohma house. They will burn Akito's body first. They will assert that Akito will indeed be here forever. Then they will celebrate the crowning of a new deity, a new embodiment of a necessary symbol.
Tomorrow, Yuki will move back into the main house. But this time his things will rest in Akito's lonely wing.
It is his now.
Tomorrow, Yuki will be instated as the family leader in a ceremony more sympathetic to the pomp of the old ways than to the scared young man whom they are sacrificing to fill a void in their lives.
But it will be a gorgeous ceremony, designed to flaunt all of Yuki's stunning beauty, bred as he was by Akito's cruelty all his life to take this role. It will be spectacular, even as it completely slaughters this boy's individual hopes and dreams for the future.
And it will happen, no matter what.
It is his duty, to the family. It is his birthright and great honor, that which cannot be taken from him no matter how many tears he sheds and how often he begs that he be left alone, a mortal.
But it is his duty.
His responsibility.
It is what they all expect of him.
He will become our important figurehead.
Our necessary symbol.
An abstract.
It will kill him.
And so I mourn.
The tears sting my eyes and make my vision blur, they chill my cheeks as they slide down my face and fall off the curve of my jaw, making the front of my shirt damp.
They have not stopped since Akito's heart did, since he called me to see him in his grand, lonely room several days ago.
I had gone, because I could not refuse.
He was my god after all.
I had knelt in front of him, head bowed, silent. Frightened. Waiting.
His room was dark, his voice calm as he greeted me, as he disdainfully asked how the stupid-cow was doing.
I replied that I was well.
He asked me then, very sweetly, if I had had a wonderful birthday the other day.
I replied that I had.
He had asked me next, still very kindly, how his precious Yuki was faring.
I replied that I did not know.
And then he had slapped me, hard enough to send me spiraling to the ground, hard enough for me to topple the small table and shatter the vase full of Anemone and marigolds beside the door. I remember the scent of the flowers scattered about me on the floor as I had lain there, stunned, while he began to scream.
As he beat me for defiling his successor.
I simply kept still as he'd kicked at me, crying and shouting at me while ribs cracked and broke under his wild attack. There was nothing I could do.
He was my god after all.
As he struck me, he asked me, furiously, if I knew what blasphemy I was committing, what sin.
He told me, cruelly, mockingly, that gods cannot be touched. They are abstracts, ideas. How dare I touch him? How dare I, a mere mortal, be so presumptuous?
"How DARE you?"
And then he stopped, stopped the kicking, the shouting, the crying, stopped all movement all together.
He stood there, breathing heavily above me, waiting for my answer. My confession, my contrition, my supplication. Perhaps he would have forgiven me, had I asked.
But I couldn't even breathe.
The silence was painful, painful for us both, I think. We just stayed there, I on my side upon the ground, he, stock still above me, haloed in the spattering of sunlight that bled through the cracks of the shutters in his window.
And then he fell.
He fell so slowly that I expected it to be heavy, as if it would be like the sound of falling empires about my ears.
But it had been subdued. Barely a whisper as he wilted and struck the floor, as he was struck down.
It sounded like nothing.
But it wasn't nothing.
It was the silent crumbling of my entire world.
Footsteps, quick and alarmed, pounded through the hallway, and I could do nothing but lay there, on my side, curled in on myself because I could not breathe.
The door flew open seconds, minutes, days later, and Shigure stood there, stood there heaving for breath with Hatori.
I saw their eyes go wide, frightened, as they saw what I was seeing, looked upon what I was looking upon.
"Akito? Akito?! Haru…Haru, are you okay? What happened?"
I hadn't been able to breathe.
"Shigure, he's…"
"I know…"
"We have to get Haru out of here."
I didn't realize until Shigure gently lifted me up from the floor and carried me out to Hatori's car, that I was crying.
I haven't stopped since.
I am mourning. But not for Akito's death. He was never important, as a person.
I grieve for something else, something that will be lost soon. Tomorrow.
We both do.
Tomorrow, there will be a grand party at Sohma house. There will be food piled high and music in the air, decorations shining brightly in the light of the moon as we celebrate. We will celebrate the passing and memory of our old god as we assimilate the new to his throne, to his elevated dais far above our lowly heads.
The family will come to look upon Yuki with the same reverence, respect, awe-filled love...
...as they had with Akito.
He will be sacrificed to become their beautiful figurehead.
Their necessary symbol.
Their abstract.
It will kill him.
We both do not want it.
END