Many apologies for not posting this...it was written before Christmas...this thing gets longer and longer, it was originally only 4 chapters, not anymore.
Twilight
by calerica
Chapter 4
It was similar to a tube. Looking through a tube, seeing the crystal image of only a small patch of space while everything outside was blurred. And in that tube was someone dressed in a white shirt and black skirt without a face.
The faceless person bent down into the ground and pulled up something. It was too small an image to tell what she held in her hands. Green and blue merging was all there was. Paleness and the absence of clouds made it look as if it were an empty canvas of an indecisive artist.
Hisoka saw someone climbing out, another person that seemed similar to the outline of the other. And suddenly he felt himself being lifted up like a line tugging sharply at his arm. Somebody was pulling him up, and the air and light exploded as if he hadn't seen it in eternity.
He looked to see who had released him.
The faceless figure stood with her back to Hisoka. In hindsight, the person had a face, Hisoka probably just didn't remember it or recognize it.
"Who are you?"
"Someone buried inside."
There was a tension that twisted through air like fear and anger. Maybe it had nothing to do with fear-Hisoka just didn't want to think anymore. Yet something whispered that she was afraid.
"But there isn't anyone inside me."
"Maybe you don't look hard enough."
The walls fell flat like foil being peeled away. The figure disappeared just as fast as she came.
"Why won't you tell me who you are?"
"You already know my name."
_ _ _
Hisoka was running down the halls of the Shokan division.
He wasn't running for the fun of it as much as he felt he was running from something. Unexplained, there was a feeling of dread seeping into his thoughts. All he could do was keep running for fear whatever was behind him would catch up.
Soon, his body tired out and he felt he couldn't go another step without collapsing. Hisoka stopped and bent over, panting. What he saw behind him was a pair of blond shinigami trying to catch up with him.
"Oh shit." He muttered.
"Hisoka-chan!" the bubbly Saya said as she rushed to give him a bone crushing hug. Her partner soon joined and held the struggling Hisoka tightly.
"My! You've gotten even cuter since the last time we saw you! I just want to shave your hair and make it a wig for me!" Yuma exclaimed running her fingers through his hair.
Hisoka laughed nervously at the thought; he wouldn't put it above them to do something of the kind. The girls just wouldn't leave him alone for one second. "Oh Hisoka-chan, Yuma and I found the prettiest outfit. You will look absolutely gorgeous in it!" Saya said happily as she let go and straightened her long hair out of the mess.
"I uh…have to go ask Tatsumi-san about…something. Now! How about we talk later?"
"Only if you promise to try out the outfit!"
Suddenly he stopped, eyes narrowing. "What kind of outfit?"
"One that'll look so adorable on you!" The two were nodding energetically. Oh well, five minutes of humiliation was better than hours of being around them. At least, it was that way he saw it.
"Okay. But only for a few minutes, and nobody else gets to see it."
Saya and Yuma were no longer paying any attention to him. They were too busy squealing and screaming with joy.
_ _ _
Previous experience with the hyper Hokkaido girls taught Hisoka to think ahead and keep to himself as much as possible if he wanted to keep any of his dignity. Right after the girls left, he found himself in contemplation of the mistake he had just made.
Trying on clothes from Saya and Yuma. Did he lose his mind?
He smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt then walked on calmly. Better figure out what was going on; it could be just another dream. The hallway seemed different than he remembered, but other than that, nothing was out of the ordinary. He still had to find Tsuzuki just to be sure.
As he walked back the way he ran from, he noticed something strange. The door to his left was red. In his recollection, no offices in the division had anything but white doors. Aside from no indication of a name anywhere near the door, it was quite ordinary.
There was only one way to be sure.
Hisoka knocked.
_ _ _
"Onii-chan, how long do we have to keep him asleep?"
The older boy reassured his sister and replied, "As long as we have to."
The little girl nodded. Her chubby fingers strayed from her lap and found the unmoving hand of the unconscious shinigami lying before her. She wrapped her warm hands around his icy fingers while a frown set in her clear eyes.
_ _ _
There had been no reply when he knocked on the crimson door nor was it locked. Hisoka turned the knob without hesitation only to find it was Watari's lab. Since when was the door red? He couldn't ignore the suspicious inner voice telling him it was another elaborately spun dream. Yet, Hisoka wanted to believe that he was truly back in Meifu.
He suddenly noticed another red door. This one was identical to the door he had just entered through. Its bright red was distorted to a darker color by the shadows in its corner directly opposite of the lab's entrance.
Once again, he turned the knob. The shinigami gasped as he found himself back in the hallway. It didn't make sense how could a door opposite of the hallway lead him back to it? He looked around and found it was the exact same hallway he was accustomed to.
The only puzzling mystery was-there was only one red door. The door behind him where he had emerged from Watari's lab. Turning back, he looked at the original entrance to the lab.
It was nowhere to be seen.
He told himself to get more sleep.
A high pitched giggle echoed down the tiled hall. Then he heard them.
"Hisoka-chan!" they shouted in unison.
Of all things.
Yuma held up a bag as Saya took his hand and dragged him down the hall. Hisoka could feel their excitement which brought dread to him. They pushed him through a random door into a hotel like room.
"I don't remember our division having this room…"
"You're so silly Hisoka-chan!"
"Every door goes to every other door! How could you forget that?"
Hisoka merely nodded in confusion. Every door to every other door…what was wrong with this picture? He didn't question it further-dreams had a way of being distorted, right? Before he could think more, Yuma held up what the bag contained.
What was he thinking when he agreed to this?
Saya glanced at her partner nervously then muttered, "See…we didn't really have an outfit for you," then she brightly added, "But Hisoka-chan looks good in anything!"
He could feel himself twitching.
"So we just got Yuma's clothes!"
Dress up, it felt so stupid. Yet a promise was a promise, and he didn't want to find out what the girls would do to him if he started running. There was a small bothersome irritant at the bottom of his thoughts, the kind that pushed itself up and eventually had to be faced.
The curse. They would see the curse.
Hisoka snatched the green skirt and sleeveless shirt, stalked to the bathroom, and stopped by the door. If every door went to every other door…he pushed open the door slowly. No such luck, it was a bathroom.
Through the shirt he could see the carved curse that killed him as well as the more visible scars on his arms. They made him shiver despite the current room temperature. When he opened the door, a brilliant flash greeted him.
"Take another one Saya!"
Pictures. Of course, why didn't he see this coming?
Hisoka crossed his arms and scowled in protest. At least he wasn't wearing a mini-skirt or something. He suddenly felt a twinge of sadness floating toward him. The curse, they were looking at the curse.
"This is indecent."
The overexcited shinigami got over their shock at seeing the curse and pushed Hisoka to the full sized mirror on the other side of the room.
"Don't you look just lovely?"
Hisoka frowned at his reflection and replied grumpily, "NO."
"You know, we could go shopping with him like this and pass him off as a girl!"
Mirror. It wasn't himself inside the mirror.
"Hisoka-chan? What are you staring at?"
His mirror image had pale skin devoid of imperfections. No scars, no curse, no pain filled feelings. The reflection suddenly looked at him and smiled gently. Hisoka recoiled from it in surprise as the image beckoned him. He reached forward to touch the metallic copy.
His fingers couldn't feel the cool pane of glass that met his fingers.
"Don't do that!"
It was too late. Saya was yelling at an empty mirror.
"What is wrong with him today? Not even remembering that mirrors were doors. Come on, he probably ended up back in his office or something."
_ _ _
Entering the mirror was similar to walking from a warm room suddenly to a cold hallway. The sensation was strange, but the stranger thing was…he was wearing his old clothes.
"You…just who are you?" he asked exasperated.
His reflection still in Yuma's clothes stared at him intently. Green meeting green. It walked around Hisoka as if studying him. "So you're the heir." That voice and this one were the same, a feminine mirror of him own.
"You haven't answered my question."
She smiled with a hint of cruelty on her lips, a disturbing image of himself. "That is very simple," she pointed to herself.
"I am Hisoka."
The response infuriated him, "No, you're a coward. Why do you hide behind my face?"
The reflection stopped smiling and stared through him as if she was focusing on something behind Hisoka. "This is my face," she said, her voice chilling and jagged with unconfined anger.
"Stop this!" copycats had always annoyed him.
She fixed an angry gaze on Hisoka. "You have no right to tell me that. I should be telling you to stop it. You stole my parents. You stole my face. You stole my life.You even stole my name."
"I don't understand. You must be crazy."
The ground beneath his feel shifted, a bizarre sensation of unbalance, Hisoka staggered back to keep upright. It didn't stop until he was staring at a gray piece of stone set into the ground. Familiar kanji carved into it.
Hisoka, that is your grave.
"Our father was so intent on continuing the family, continuing the sick traditions. All of them wanted you instead of me. And so I never had a chance to live. It's not your fault, I know, but I hate you anyway."
It was hard to process the current words spilling out of her mouth. Hisoka lowered his empathic shields and tapped into her thoughts. He stiffened as the information flooded his senses. Hisoka looked up from the grave.
"You killed me."
A string of heartbreaking emotions wrapped around Hisoka in a warped fashion. His sister placed a hand on his shoulder, her upset expression shifting to a smile. "Everyone wanted you-the heir who would continue on the Kurosaki family-not me, the worthless child. There are so many things I want to say right now, but there is no time. I don't know whether to keep hating you or to take you away.
I screamed for so long, but you couldn't hear me. Yet now that you can, I find
almost nothing to say. Maybe someday I can understand it and explain. Until then,
promise to remember me because I want you to be happy. I want you to escape from here."
Hisoka was still reeling from what she told him and could only speak one word to her self-contradiction.
"Why?"
She pulled her dazed brother into a soft hug and whispered into his ear. "You took away my pain. From the moment I saw you with your surreal eyes, I wanted you like everyone else. I can't keep hating you…I think you stole my heart away too. If you are happy, then maybe I can be too. You and I, we are almost the same person." She refrained from adding "but we're not" onto the end.
The shinigami was staring at the grave again. That didn't make sense-she had been angry with him just a moment ago. So many things didn't add up, including how his sister was in his dream if she had really existed and died.
"What are you? A ghost?"
"I am what you want me to be."
The evasive answering was starting to grade Hisoka's nerves. He could feel her arms around him tightening. Perhaps she was the one helping him and confusing him in the process. That was a guess he ventured. "How do I get out of these dreams?"
"You learn to see who you are. You imprison yourself in reality only to be freed in dreams-the only truly beautiful place. Let reality free you from this dream. If you can't find it in yourself, find it in me."
Hisoka didn't quite understand her. A person who never lived couldn't give advice. "You really do hate me if you're willing to tell me lies," he accused nonchalantly without thinking.
She stepped away from him, surprised, as if it repulsed her to touch another person.
"If you are real, what wouldn't you do to me? If I took away so much?" He stared at his own face with a calmness that could only be described as tranquility before the storm. "You hate me enough to tell me useless melodramatic drivel. Just why do you even bother? You're probably just that girl trying to drive me crazy."
On the contrary from what he expected, she smiled.
"You are so stubborn. I should have known better than to think you were gullible. But don't you see it? In taking everything that was mine, you became me. And I became you. We are both undeniably Kurosaki Hisoka. It is your choice to accept. You can reject yourself, but please give me something for everything you took."
"So this is all in your selfishness." He remained unmoved by her explanation. People couldn't be trusted; they were all tainted inside, even someone who never lived to experience the world's ugliness.
Her whispers barely audible as she added, "I only wish to see Hisoka happy."
She was disappearing, dust slowly dispersing into the wind.
There was still the chance none of this was real, but sometime told him to hold on to what she advised. He took another look at her. Her form was his exact copy, but there was one difference-she wasn't an empath. Hisoka could sense her sincerity, but hidden within it was an uneasy enmity that worried him. The chance was too big a risk.
It was a risk he would take. Tentatively going over in his head if he was really accepting this, he stumbled upon words he had to speak before she left. The other Hisoka kept insisting they were the same person…
He made up his mind: no two souls could be alike.
"No," he suddenly said firmly, "You're not Hisoka, I am."
Hisoka reached for her hand in a firm grasp. She closed her eyes in satisfactory, a strange perception of his words, then shook his hand as if in compromise. All evidence left of his sister's manifestation was a handful of sakura-beautiful and frightening. Even though the feelings they would bring rekindles itself, flowers still faded and decayed.
He let the petals scatter over the grave that still stared up at him.
"If I am Hisoka, then you are Himitsu."
_ _ _
took a little break...I had most of it written but then deleted half of it because some better ideas came after listening to Jisastu no Riyuu by Pierrot which everyone should listen to. Sorry if it's confusing, it should start getting less confusing from here out. If it doesn't, then you're doomed.
Remember: crack is whack and to REVIEW. YAy.