YAy, part 3, YAy. I started to rewrite this but got too lazy...Thanks to Imbrii for beta-ing my nonsensical words stringed together. Finally got the format fixed [screw microsoft], no more stupid spacing. I know nobody has enough guts to sue, but for fanfiction tradition's sake: Yami no Matsuei is property of Matsushita Yoko, Hana to Yume, and other peep-holes. YAy for them.
Twilight
by calerica
Chapter 3
"How can she know?"
Simply black.
Falling.
Falling endlessly.
It must be a dream then.
"Children hear things, even things unsaid."
_ _ _
Awakening was not something Hisoka was distinctly fond of. A thousand shivers across the mind as he woke once again. There was a fuzzy feeling over his empathy as if someone had placed a cloth over him, dampening all the senses.
It had to have been a dream; normal people didn't wake up and fall asleep that often.
Hisoka found himself standing in the middle of the same room he had first blacked out in. The beds were arranged differently with colorful blankets neatly tucked in. There were two beds, both in different corners of the room. Since when did they have time to move the beds? Hadn't there been a crib? Maybe he had been gone for longer than he had imagined. What would Tsuzuki say? Where was Tsuzuki?
Hisoka found himself listening to a simple melody, piano. Not right, it was something more synthetic in sound. He wondered out of the bedroom cautiously and saw the source of the noise. A little boy was sitting on the floor beside the couch playing what was his own version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. His head bent down, looking at the keys of the keyboard in concentration.
A blue jacket covered the boy-it seemed a few sized too large, but his neat brown hair still made its appearance. Hisoka stared at the keyboard's glaring white keys, the complicated buttons, and five octaves; it had to have been pretty expensive.
"I'm home!" a cheerful voice was heard from the door.
The Yumiko he saw was entirely different from the conservative person he had met earlier. Her dark hair with green on the tips was bound up tightly, and she was adorned with sunglasses, various piercings, and a lot of leather.
Since she walked past him to get to the refrigerator without noticing a thing, Hisoka assumed that he was just an outside observer. Therefore, it must be dream he concluded rather quickly.
The boy he guessed to be Kazaki Akito since there was simply no one else around. Akito fixed his gaze on his mother and grinned. Then the expression suddenly changed and he wore an incomprehensible look on his face. Hisoka thought to himself that small children these days were too philosophical.
"Are we a family?" he asked in a small curious voice.
His mother abruptly turned her attention to him. The sandwich she was making rested on the counter in disassembled pieces. She lifted her sunglasses up to glance at her son. Then Yumiko gave him a little smile that made her face lose its demanding look.
"Of course we are. Why wouldn't we be?"
Family. It seemed a little exaggerated to call just the two of them family, but he supposed it technically was true.
Akito stared intently at the sheet music before him and began to practice his song again. He dropped the topic causing Yumiko to forget about the little question and she went back to completing her little task.
The notes slowly melted together as Hisoka watched Akito practice. The electronic sound suddenly stopped and Akito was holding his hands in his lap with a blank face. Questionable silence took up the room with its uncomfortable stature. Yumiko didn't even seem to notice this.
"Today, Hayashi-sensei said I played very well in class," his subdued tone ruled out the option that he wanted to please his mother with this.
"Really? Well, I'm proud of you," Yumiko replied absently while munching on her sandwich and reading a magazine.
Akito stared down at his fingers and closed his eyes as if focusing on something. "She said I played so much better than the others in my class. She said I was special. And…" he stopped in mid sentence as if he wasn't sure he wanted to say the rest or not. After a few moments, he decided to go on, "And it was because I didn't have anyone to help me like the others."
The magazine was laid down on the table.
"Everyone had a family member with them. To help them read notes, carry the keyboard…"
The sandwich joined the magazine.
"I knew you couldn't come, but I thought maybe it was because we weren't a real family."
Yumiko knelt down and placed a hand on her son's shoulder. "You know I wanted to be there. We are a family, but sometimes we just can't make it." She hadn't noticed the little frown the boy had when she said this.
"I know," he said simply. "But during the lesson, I kept wanting to be with you. I didn't care about the keyboard, I just wanted to be with you."
Yumiko smiled at him gently. "Wanting to always be with someone means that you love them, Akito."
Hisoka looked on as the boy played with the stiff zipper of his blue jacket, thinking. The constant murkiness over Hisoka's empathy was suddenly gone. Soft light of the room illuminated the sapphire of the jacket and set the focus on him. The boy stood up from his cross-legged position and hugged his mother. "Then I must love you okaasan," he murmured into her ear.
A look of contentment was on the woman's face as she held her child.
"And I will love you always."
The oncoming thoughts made Hisoka feel the shallow selfishness in himself. He wanted this piece of Akito's life for himself, no matter the cost. Love, a foreign word to an unwanted child. He just wanted the pain to go away.
And so Hisoka had been horrified to see the manifestation of his selfish parents that he had never seen in himself. Then again, was it so wrong to want something as badly as he wanted to be loved?
"And I will love you always."
It was a phrase that would stay engraved in his memory.
_ _ _
Drifting sakura. It was everywhere.
"Don't let me fall."
"There is nothing we can do."
"Please, I just want to see him."
If only he could figure out who was speaking.
The voice sounded vaguely familiar. No, very familiar…just unidentifiable.
"Then see him inside your heart."
"I…can't. There's nothing there"
_ _ _
Cold glass against his forehead made Hisoka snap into consciousness.
Window?
He looked up and saw his own green eyes.
Slowly standing up straight, he looked at his own reflection. It was wavering as if he'd collapse any minute. He turned the faucet on and splashed his face with the icy water. The sudden cold contact cleared his head a little.
Standing the in the public bathroom with his head in his hands, elbows resting on the sink's edges, he contemplated the events so far. They were pieces that barely connected. First, they had to be dreams. Everything since the last time he met the child. There was always something to tip it off that it was a dream, but they all seemed so real.
"Tough date?"
His head jerked up to look at the man who had walked in. The man looked middle-aged except a few gray hairs-dressed in a plaid shirt and khakis. He empathetically felt laidback and especially easy going.
"Oh, no…" the confused shinigami still had to figure out where he was. From the looks of it, a restaurant of some sort. "I just don't know what I'm doing here."
The man chuckled. "In that case, it must be an impossible date. Word of advice, tell her how you feel before dinner ends, or else she'll think you're insensitive."
Hisoka nodded then murmured a quiet thanks and walked out of the bathroom. That was strange.
He suddenly spotted Tsuzuki waving enthusiastically at him. The words of the man from the bathroom came back to him and he almost laughed-tell her how you feel.
Tsuzuki, thank god he was all right. Then again, this could all be another dream. Nah, nothing wrong so far; he was probably just hallucinating and imagined the whole deal.
"Hisoka, you took so long in the bathroom I thought you ran away or something," Tsuzuki teased as he surveyed the food before them. The violet of his eyes lit up as he spotted the desert amidst dinner.
"I would never leave you Tsuzuki. I'm just glad you didn't run away." There was so much Hisoka wanted to say so much, but it would startle Tsuzuki if he did. It would also be just out of character for him to be sappy like that.
Tsuzuki smiled his usual smile and reached for the desert. Eyeing him suspiciously, Hisoka slapped his hand away. "That's not the order in which you eat dinner."
"Aw, Hisoka, come on. You know the desert looks so much better than the rest of the food. I'll even save you some. I promise this time."
Hisoka almost blurted out his thoughts but kept his silence and gave his partner a pointed look. "I'm not paying for dinner then."
"No! Hisoka's being mean and scary like Tatsumi-san!"
The younger shinigami almost smiled. He really did miss Tsuzuki, no matter what his bad habits were. Tsuzuki began to talk about some new type of chocolate he had found and rest of the evening drifted past in a second.
The air was chilly when the shinigami exited the restaurant, the tinge of winter still in the cool march air. Hisoka felt more content than he had been in the past few days. Then again, maybe time was warped in dreams.
"Will you?" he hesitated. Tsuzuki turned his attention to his partner. "Will you…walk me home? I don't feel like being alone."
"Of course."
And at that moment, everything felt so wonderful, so normal.
Hisoka smiled, for the first time in a while.
The sidewalks were quiet without disturbance with a peaceful breeze passing through. Pulling his coat closer to him, Hisoka shivered against the chill. When they arrived at a street crossing, what he saw on the ground made him freeze in an instant.
Red hair lied on the ground resembling spools of thread.
At that point it all became surreal.
Tsuzuki immediately rushed over to the girl. The younger shinigami reluctantly followed-he felt so angry. Why did she have to ruin everything? The girl just had to appear out of nowhere.
Painfully, she moaned when Tsuzuki shook her. What was even worse than her unconscious state was the bright tacky red spot on her side. Hisoka merely stared at her while Tsuzuki was frantically trying to wake her.
"Kiri-chan! What happened? Please wake up!" the shaking hadn't helped much, and yelling certainly wasn't working either. Tsuzuki knew her? It just wasn't time to ask about such things, if they had been back in the restaurant, he would have interrogated his partner irrationally.
The girl's eyelashes fluttered a bit, but there was only emptiness in her brown eyes. Stillness sat upon blood. It was a dream, if she was here, right? Hisoka only felt hate, no concern. The bothersome girl could die a thousand times and he wouldn't even blink.
"Tsuzuki-san?"
Barely audible words came out disjointedly as if she couldn't think straight. Tsuzuki hugged her like she would disappear if he let go.
"I'm so cold."
"It's okay, I'm going to take you to the hospital," the shinigami said reassuringly as he picked her up from the freezing ground and began to walk. Hisoka followed his footsteps automatically without much thought.
"No, I want to go home. Can you take me home?" she murmured.
Hisoka placed a hand over his heart when he felt something abnormal there. It wasn't his own heartbeat. The movement felt like a weak heart beating with his at the same time. He paused a bit feeling the frail thump against his hand.
Tsuzuki walked on with the dying girl in his arms.
Hisoka only observed, he had no wish to be anywhere near the girl.
"Tsuzuki-san, I hurt. Please take me home."
Tsuzuki waved down a cab but found he had no third hand to open the back door. "Hisoka! Help me get her into the cab."
Walking forward again, Hisoka proceeded to help Tsuzuki.
Only because Tsuzuki asked, not for you.
He got a closer look at the increasing red spot on the girl's shirt; there was a gaping whole in the middle of it. The cab door's hinges were tight and unyielding. The only logical way to save time was if Hisoka sat in the backseat with her while Tsuzuki sat in the front seat since he was still carrying her.
The trip took no time; they turned out to be only a few blocks away from the hospital. Hisoka kept staring at the girl's hair. It looked like the red staining her clothes in the dark. Spun strings dyed in blood. He closed his eyes and felt the heartbeat against his own slowing.
"I want home."
The shinigami pair quickly moved out of the cab before the hospital with the unconscious girl. She stirred slightly against Tsuzuki and whispered something inaudible as they rushed toward the white building quickly.
Sharp cutting wind whispered. It spoke as it stole away life.
Hisoka felt his heart stop, or rather, the other heart stop. There was a silence occupying everything, disturbed only by the hurried footsteps of his companion. He could feel the empty place where the heartbeat used to be. Tsuzuki was about to pull the clear glass door open when Hisoka placed a hand on his arm holding him back.
"There is no need, she isn't there anymore."
The shinigami looked at the girl's face and knew it was the truth. He stood for a second staring at the body he held then wordlessly walked to the nearest park bench and gently laid the girl down.
Tsuzuki glanced at the red now staining his clothes like it was sin staining him. The guilt radiated from him as cold from ice. "Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep killing people?"
The expression on his face told everything: his hate for himself, his uncertainty, his remorse. "You didn't kill her, Tsuzuki. No one will blame you."
"Don't tell me that. You don't know me."
Hisoka was falling asleep on his feet and he knew it. This dream wasn't going to be finished, not yet, he decided. The conflict hadn't been solved, like a story stopped in the middle. The world kept fading into black. There was simply no control over it, his limbs felt paralyzed.
"Please don't leave me Tsuzuki."
The words barely left his lips when the images all faded. Motion, color, sound, touch all melted into one abyss beneath him.
_ _ _
"Why?"
Dreams held no quintessence in substance.
"There is no reason."
There is simply no explanation why people hang on to them so tightly.
"Make one up for me."
The surreal shadows still covered the voice's face, but through the absence of
light, a body could be seen. A figure wrought from mere outlines of gray,
sketches without texture or depth.
No matter how hard Hisoka looked, it was nothing more than lines.
_ _ _
*cough*pointsDown*cough*
aka
That purple review button looks nice down there...