Holy crap, but it's been a long time since I so much as touched this fic. Still...it is one of my favorite of the fics I've written. At any rate...part five - the Hisoka chapter. Written largely due to my having listened to David Sylvian's "Darkest Dreaming" on repeat all morning - it's a beautiful song, all melancholy and haunting and hurty. But in a good way. :)
silvershadeus
Disclaimer: I do not own Yami no Matsuei, I'm just borrowing the characters for a little while.
Legacy - Part 5
In the story I understand that pride and dignity - for surely the oak had plenty of both to have become such a fine tree - can be one's downfall if one isn't willing to give way, give ground in certain matters. The thing I'm not entirely sure about is what qualities the reed had that it was willing to do so. Certainly it didn't lack either of those qualities, for every being shares them in some capacity, but what was it about the reed that allowed it to surrender before the storm?
And here my coworkers would pause and consider the point that perhaps I put too much of my energy into thinking about trivial things instead of doing what I should be doing. Perhaps they're right about that, as I have been known to get sidetracked by such things, but...there is a method to my madness, to quote a famous playwright.
In this line of work, I have seen many things beyond imagination, seen many great men - and other beings - fall because they were unable to adapt to the changing times and situations. Because they were so sure they would never fail, that their plans were flawless. I have known good and true people who could not alter their way of thinking and their perceptions, only to be brought low by the things they refused to acknowledge. I have also known good and true people who were willing to accept there were things beyond their realm of understanding, things they had never considered possible, and learned from them.
That may be the real lesson to be learned from the story of the oak tree and the reed - the ability to adapt to changing situations in order to survive. There is something to Darwin's theory after all, one cannot survive if one is not willing to adapt.
Still...some changes take time to come about. Time and care and patience, but it is most definitely worth it.
And this, or course, would be where Kurosaki Hisoka comes in. The newest Shinigami added to our ranks, he is also the youngest. At sixteen, he died before his time, as so many of us do, but his story in particular is...
I will say that he has known his share of hardship. And even then those words do nothing to explain what he's gone through in his time. He has lived, experienced things no one should ever have to, and yet he has made it through. Survived, and become a better person in the process. Stronger.
Sometimes in order to survive the only thing someone can do is endure. Do what it takes to make it through, and deal with what results from it later. Or not at all in some cases. Life is cruel in what it chooses to throw our way, and sometimes...
Sometimes survival means remaining who you are, not losing yourself to the darkness. The pain. There are ways to keep hold of your sanity, methods to ground yourself, but not everyone knows about them.
The easiest thing to do is build a barrier between yourself and the world. A wall to keep others out, to keep them from hurting you more than they already have. A veritable fortress designed to isolate you from others - those that would hurt and those that would help.
Regarding Hisoka...when you're used to having to hide yourself - protect yourself - for so long it becomes amazingly difficult to simply stop. It's hard to tell yourself that it's safe, that you're safe. That it's okay to take your defenses down and simply be. It's hard to learn to trust enough to lower the barriers in the first place, but to do so willingly and believe in others...it takes a tremendous act of courage that has nothing to do with physical danger and everything to do with the heart.
Hisoka told me once that he didn't hate his parents for what they'd done to him, that he couldn't hate them because for all that they had done to him, they were still his parents. They had loved him, perhaps they still did, but they'd been faced with something they didn't or couldn't understand, and had reacted in the most human way possible. Out of fear and hate and cruelty.
Maybe they'd thought they were doing the right thing at the time, maybe they regretted their actions when it was too late, I don't know. What I do know is that they gave him him life and he was grateful for that. They gave him warmth, love and acceptance at one point in his life, and it's shown in his actions and words since. He's a remarkable person, one of the few with heart strong enough to handle what life has thrown at him and not break beneath the weight of it. He's come close more than once, but there is a strength of spirit at the core of him that won't let him give in so easily. He's learned to reach out to others, to rely on them for strength when he has none, and in some ways that's a greater strength than any other. The ability to trust another so completely that you place yourself in their hands, telling them without words that you have faith they won't let you down.
In the end, mere survival isn't enough. Survival isn't just about who is stronger, who is better - it's about life and living. It's one thing to endure, to make it through...but if you don't have the strength of heart, of spirit, to pick yourself up and move on there is no point to having survived in the first place.
Yutaka Watari
To Be Continued...