Disclaimer : Noir is owned by those who created the original anime, and I'm not among them. Used without permission, and without malicious intent either.
"To the rythmn of a heartbeat" is a song written by german band Helloween, of which I only borrow the title. Song titles tickle my creative bone, sue me :-)
Note : English isn't my native language. Feel free to comment on that as well (I'm willing to improve), but keep it in mind.
--------------------------- To the rhythm of a heartbeat ------------------------------
Shadow beckoned her.
It was so quiet here now. She had never realised it before, but the flat was always alive somehow. There was the background rumour coming from the street below, the muffled talks of passers-by and humming of car engines; there was the occasional tap or bump when the neighbours below were careless, the rare outburst when they had an argument; there was the singing of birds in the nearby trees, the mewling of alley cats, the laughter of children... The city never stopped breathing, even after dark, when moonlight bathed the sparsely furnished room in a pearly glow.
When had it become so eerily silent?
She could hear her own heartbeat. It ticked the droplets of time, the slow, unfazed passing of lonely moments. Her slow, precise, mechanical reloading of the gun magazine did nothing to break the feeling of emptiness, did not fill the void between seconds.
A scrap of concrete crumbled under her foot. She had not cleaned the place much - not at all, in fact. Windows were broken, furniture smashed, lamps blasted, the pool table ravaged - even the orchid pot by the window had been damaged. The walls were strewn with bullet holes. It was as if a gunshot storm had raged here and left, leaving only silence and ruin in its wake. The usual, too often overlooked side effect of urban warfare, a side effect she was well accustomed to.
Why did it bother her so much?
For a fleeting moment, she wished her heart would stop pounding. She dismissed the thought with a frown - it was so silly of her. But the silence between two heartbeats was threatening to drive her mad.
She had never thought silence could be so loud.
Her steps had taken her near the breakfast table. The teapot was still here, along with two cups, spoons and dessert forks. The only thing that had been, miraculously enough, spared. The only shard of memory that was left intact, glaring back at her in its glossy white smoothness. In a way, it only underlined everything else, all she had lost, all that was gone...
Since when had she started to care?
She quickly glanced outside, half-shy, half-daring, her blue eyes scanning the street below, searching, looking for someone - anyone, almost begging for someone to appear and break the slow, monotonous drift of moonlight pools on the apartment floor. The silvery sheen played with the curves of her face, drawing ethereal veils and ghostly shadows on her skin, mute memories of night hours that had, not so long ago, seemed so much more serene and comforting. But the silence and the pale glow were empty now, devoid of meaning and substance.
When had life left?
Shadow beckoned her to rest in her black embrace.
Tomorrow...
The word felt so oddly hollow, so meaningless.
Tomorrow, she would meet with the silver-haired Soldat high-up, cutting the Gordian knot once and for all, unbinding the threads of Fate. Tomorrow she would go to that place removed from the world, and would do what she had to do - snuff a life out.
Once again, she mouthed the promise soundlessly.
Tomorrow...
Even that thought did not lend her the strength of resolve, the drive she had always taken for granted. The pounding in her ear, in her head was not a rhythm of anticipation - it was the uncaring, unchanging tick of the world clock. A clock that would sweep her, and then leave her, an empty shell on the unmoving beach of the Lost and Forgotten, a fallen angel with broken wings and no soul. She felt numb.
Why was it so cold?
As if to recall some semblance of normality, she took the orchid in its broken pot, sliding it towards the trash bag she has begun to fill with the scattered remains of her ravaged home.
A flash memory, of a voice begging her to end it all.
Her hand jerked. The pot crashed.
Why was it so hard?
The envelope, on the small table, was both compelling and threatening. Even as she moved to open it, she felt the eye of the world upon her. Her heart missed a beat.
Each word, each sound unspoken yet clear as a birdsong in her mind, each image conjured stabbed her with a needle of excruciating pain. Yet she could not stop reading, could not stop hurting.
For the eyes that should have met but never truly did.
For the hands that should have joined but were stopped by shyness.
For the words that should have been whispered but were left hanging in silence.
Words were crystal shards cutting through the haze of numbness, their sting unveiling everything she could not face, every feeling she had denied, every thought she had smothered under a blanket of dedicated professionalism, every secret hope she had not dared feel. The hidden threads binding her life were burning in searing purity of understanding.
And understanding hurt.
Who was the fool?
She was on the edge of an abyss of aching, of despair too vast for her to bridge with lies. The world clock had stopped in a flash of lightning. The ancient watch was cold in her hand, its delicate etching carved in her palm, carved in her mind.
She had lived to the rhythm of a heartbeat that wasn't hers.
And it was gone.
Darkness was a ravenous void spreading tendrils of hopelessness, trying to pull her down, trying to drown her in grief. Shadow beckoned her, a promise of oblivion.
Could the silence of loss be filled?
The image of a brown-eyed girl was lingering, and with it, a thread of hope. But could she dare hope now, standing on the edge of nothingness yet afraid to face her own feelings, afraid to face... what gave her life meaning?
The soul-searching words reflected on the image of caring eyes and the ghost of a smile. Somewhere, that other heart was still beating.
She closed her eyes, and wrapped her soul around that sound, around the light it gave her to face the darkness. And slowly, tear after tear, her life began to breathe again.
To the rhythm of a heartbeat she knew at last.
---------------------------------------- End ------------------------------------------
OK, it's done. My first fanfic ever, if anyone cares. It's strangely draining. The problem was in fact not in the writing, but in getting it to a close.
I've tried to capture the atmosphere of what I think is one of the keypoints in the series. There are others, some of which I'll probably get my creative mind on someday, especially if I get positive feedback. I think the various sensorial elements in that part of the anime - the lighting and shading, the soundtrack, the background - are really evocative, yet leave much to the imagination (something I can be grateful for, in a way). I merely tried to fill in the blanks.