Another drabble from the utenadrabble community at livejournal. More obsession over the Black Rose Arc, though today we look at Mikage and the false Mamiya. Obsessed, much?

empire in my mind, rated pg-13. mikage/mamiya suggested (no challenge, just a drabble about memory and mind). series-based. 601 words.

Mikage doesn't believe that he has ever seen Mamiya sleep. When he tries to wrap his mind around the logic of this – for surely it would be impossible for Mamiya never to sleep, particularly given his frail health! – things become blurred, indistinct. He has the same problem when he tries to understand where Mamiya goes when they are not together. He knows perfectly well that Mamiya cannot always be underneath Nemuro Memorial Hall all the time, despite his protestations of hating the upper levels of the school. And yet, Mikage never sees Mamiya anywhere but with the water and a single black rose.

…and even though there are never any times set between them for such meetings, Mamiya is always waiting for him when he goes to the lower levels of the largely abandoned hall. Today is no exception; Mamiya is tracing the lines of the petals with one small finger when Mikage comes to lean over the opposite edge of the tank of still water.

Sometimes he thinks that such still water should be contaminated with bacteria, propagating unchecked in the silence lit only by the light underneath the liquid. Yet, the water is as still and as sterile as the darkness that reaches into every other corner of this room. It makes no sense, but so little makes sense in this world. Mikage knows this should bother him more than it does. The reasons why it does not are as hazy and mysterious as the answers to every other question idle moments of thought have brought to the forefront of his mind.

Mamiya does not say a word, does not break the silence; Mikage had not expected him to. Rather, he is the one to move, to speak. Reaching out a slender hand across the water, he gently touches the dark-skinned hand. "There are thorns, Mamiya."

"I have felt worse pain." That is Mamiya's only reply, and his eyes are shadowed when he looks up to meet Mikage's. "The rose is near blooming, sempai."

A blooming rose means a growing malevolence; Mamiya raises roses while Mikage fosters hates. It is an odd symbiosis and sometimes Mikage remembers that a synergy such as this was never part of the final analysis.

"Is there something bothering you, sempai?"

Mikage is looking off into the black distance; he will call to him a student today by making them believe that they wish to take his seminar. Such a silly thing. Why should such a trivial action disturb the universe? "I'm merely thinking."

"Thinking?" Mamiya has left the rose, has glided about the tank like a butterfly without wings. "What are you thinking about?"

"Memories," he says, thoughtful with blank eyes that try to make sense of the darkness but find all answers wanting. "I remember--"

"There's nothing to remember."

The sharp answer has Mikage turning his eyes back to Mamiya, a frown touching narrow lips. "What?"

Mamiya's eyes are like the universe, in a way – Mikage can't calculate an end to them, nor can he understand how an end cannot exist. They pull him towards the younger boy, swallow him whole and leave him recalling the fact that some spiders don't actually spin webs at all. "There's nothing to remember," Mamiya repeats, much more gently this time around. One hand gently traces one high cheekbone, and for a moment Mikage has a fleeting memory of glasses, of violet lenses.

"Nothing to remember."

Mikage surrenders again to the distraction of the taste of Mamiya's skin, leaving aside for now the broken memories of a mind he's not entirely sure is his own.