Violets and Emeralds

No one assumed that I ended the fic horribly and that the last chapter would be the last? Funny, that usually happens to me…

The funeral was… horrid. In my opinion, at least. We stayed at the wake for 4 ½ hours. That's four hours longer than needed. With a dead body in an open casket. My hands are cold.

I swear that I had this entire chapter written out in various places already. I just had to get 'em typed up and placed together. (Actually, the middle section was lost sometime between Mississippi and now… I hope no one picked it up!)

I should make iced tea. five minutes later I am making iced tea! the next day All my iced tea is gone…
-

Chapter 7
Carpe
-

I walked onto the college campus and breathed in the tree-and-pollution-fragrant air. I was home and I had been for about a week, though I had not began attending classes. Rather, I had isolated myself by barely leaving my dorm and not emailing anyone, despite that I promised Bakura-kun that I would contact him. I decided to change that today by going out a little and maybe emailing him later.

I was greeted briefly by some people I almost know that are heading in the direction of the School of Business.

There was no Camel-san to greet me. I really, really missed that camel.

The lines from a certain song in an awesome movie I saw once were running through my head right then. I started singing it to myself. "All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces. Bright and early for the daily races; going nowhere, going nowhere." Just by chance, I walked in front of the café/coffee shop that I frequent right before a paper is due. There were people in there, of course, and they were sitting in a heavy silence from all I could tell. A sort of grief that I, in my constant hurry and bubble, could not feel had descended like a shroud upon the place. But now I felt that grief. These people, most of them at least, were those considered outcasts by society; they were the Untouchables of the college campus.

Maybe I was one of them, now.

"The tears are filling up their glasses; no expression, no expression. Hide my head, I want to drown my sorrow; no tomorrow, no tomorrow." Yeah, I'm gay. I, Otogi Ryuuji, once one of the most popular guys in my high schools and college, and a heartthrob in the media, was now one of the 'freaks,' as I've heard people like me being called back before I knew who and what I was. I smiled. This was the first time I'd actually taken it in and admitted that I was gay. Sure, I knew that I loved another person who happened to be a guy, but never did the word 'gay' pop up that I could remember. What difference should there be, anyway? I just fell in love with someone. "And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad; the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I ever had. I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take; when people run in circles, it's a very, very mad world… mad world…"

I headed to my dorm. It was a good ten-minute walk at the pace that I was walking, which wasn't really fast… but not entirely slow. It was an Otogi Ryuuji pace.

This campus and its lively host of people used to thrill me. Even my usual pack of girls wasn't around to overfill me with confidence to the point of an egotistical time bomb threatening to form. I would say that I wanted that to happen again. It would mean that I was 'normal,' in all societal sense of the word. However, I could not forget that I fell in love with another man that I would without a doubt never see again. That's what hurt the most: not that society would quit accepting me for who I love, but that I wouldn't see him anymore. "Children waiting for the day they feel good; happy birthday, happy birthday. And I feel the way that every child should; sit and listen, sit and listen. Went to school and I was very nervous; no one knew me, no one knew me. Hello teacher, tell me teacher, what's my lesson; look right through me, look right through me."

I could very well try to erase him from my mind. Whether or not I would succeed was debatable, but I could try. I was trying not to say his name. I could have gotten a girlfriend that would try to get in my pants at the first half of an opportunity, but I would not. I was an emotional masochist, as I saw. I wanted to feel this pain tearing at me from the inside, forcing me to die internally after flinging myself into an abyss of insanity. "And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad; the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I ever had. I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take; when people run in circles, it's a very, very mad world… mad world…" Yes, it is a mad world, isn't it? I was running in little circles in my head.

I flopped down on my bed. It was a single room with its own bathroom. I just happen to have that much money. But money couldn't buy happiness, as I knew, but in this case, it could damn well get me close. I could buy a ticket back to Egypt and throw myself at the mercy of that sexy blond Egyptian with the wonderful ass, but I won't. I had this life that I couldn't afford to lose. I guess I could lose my heart and live a life that is very likened to Kaiba-kun, minus having a Mokuba-kun to keep my stable. I could throw my emotions away and be a rich game designer who just doesn't care.

I couldn't do that. Damn it, I was too close to my emotions to allow that to happen. So therefore I would always be at this miserable medium without a fulfilling feeling in my success and without love.

I hate my life. Why couldn't it be easier than this?

-
I drove out to dinner that night, after dropping the souvenir by my friend's dorm. She was very, very happy. I got back in the car after prying her off and telling her that I would tell her about my trip later. Much later, I thought to myself. After I've gotten over this whole thing.

I considered dropping by a convenience store to pick up some cigarettes. I didn't smoke, but there was that Camel brand.

Maybe I should just run around in circles. Yeah, run around in circles, screaming at the top of my lungs in some gibberish language. Then they'd have to through me in a locked, padded cell somewhere, where my phantoms couldn't haunt me. My blond, sexy phantoms with indescribable faces.

Is anyone else seeing the Phantom of the Opera?

But they could knock me out with sedatives until I became a vegetable! Yay! And if I threw a hard enough tantrum in my times of lucidity, they could buy me a stuffed camel!

This sounded like a plan.

Okay, think of something happy, something happy—Dead Poets Society movie! Yeah, that was a good movie. Some of it was sad, like when that kid committed suicide. But hey, carpe diemCarpe diem Seize the god-frickin' day!

That phrase seemed just a little too uppity for me at that time. I rolled it around in my mind like a boulder, for boulders do roll, and tested out a variation on my tongue. "Carpe diem… carpe. Seize, or, to be more literal, pluck the day. Take the day and appreciate it. Live it as if it's your last, because that's what the Metaphysical poets told all the chicks they wanted to have sex with. Carpe diem." I shook my head. "Carpe… just, carpe."

That sounds like carp. I giggled in my mind for a few minutes. Okay! Enough there. We should turn on the radio so we stop thinking about carp.

You're turning multi-personality.

"Ryuuji knows. Ryuuji doesn't like people in his head talking to him like that. Actually, Ryuuji feels that the people in his head should just observe him right now, because he sure as hell doesn't feel like listening to them."

…

There was silence.

"Hah, Ryuuji told you." I felt proud of my triumph over the voices in my head. "Radio." I had no idea what station I had left my car on before I left.

"When all the vacancy the words revealed is the only real thing that I've got left to feel-" Oh, I remembered this song. Not who wrote it or what it was called, but I remembered it well enough. "Nothing to loose." Got that right, background vocalists. "Just stuck, hollow and alone and the fault is my own and the fault is my own." Hell yes, it was my fault. But, shh!, Ryuuji didn't need to know that.

Whee, I am random again! Insert a smiley emoticon here, please.

"I wanna heal, I wanna feel what I thought was never real. I want to let go of the pain I felt so long—erase all the pain till it's gone." So do I! You and I have stuff in common, you know that, little man inside my car that sings for me on command? "I wanna heal, I wanna feel like I'm close to something real." You too? "I want to find something I've wanted all along. Somewhere I belong "

The thoughts paused for a few seconds. Someone really hated me, didn't they?

This place that I was in, Los Angeles, no longer felt like home, as it used to. I liked big cities, so I fit in perfectly, but now, not anymore. I felt like an outsider. Maybe I should move to San Francisco and go to that stupid convention for people eighteen and up.

No, I refuse to become that desperate!

I started twirling my hair on my finger. During my time in Egypt, after meeting him, I stopped doing that so much. I would inadvertently, at times. But now, back in Los Angeles, I've started again.

Twirl, twirl, the hair tightens around the finger. Let the hair go and start the process over again.

It's a good thing that I could drive with one hand or I would be so dead right now.

-
I attended the first of my classes back. My teacher welcomed me offhandedly—it was a guy, so I didn't get eyed. Some of my female professors would do that—eye me in various ways. It had been just a little creepy.

I pulled out my laptop and began booting it up. It was a little early and only a few people were in the room. I would usually be one of those dashing in just as the professor shut the door, but now I saw no reason to linger in one place more than needed. Quite the contrary, I felt the need to always keep moving. Perhaps if I moved fast enough and far enough, the demons wouldn't be able to catch up.

"Ryuu!" Some girls surrounded me. They refused to call me by my family name and could not pronounce my given name, so they decided to shorten it to what they could actually pronounce. This was a section of my fan club.

"You're back from Egypt?"

"How was it?"

"You didn't get too hot, did you?"

"Did you bring us back anything?"

"Ladies, ladies!" I raised my hands up in a defensive manner. "Yes, I have returned to you." I grinned and winked, though it was a horribly plastered mask to cover up my actual annoyance and want to be alone to think.

"We missed you so much!" They all grabbed onto me at once. I wondered to myself if I really used to enjoy this sort of attention.

Luckily, the professor seemed to hear my psychic cries for help. "Class, the lecture is about to begin." Okay, so maybe it really was time for class to begin, but it's the outcome that counts, isn't it?

"Aw…" The girls slid off of me and I breathed again.

"Sorry, girls." I gave them an apologetic look.

"You'll come with us after class, right?"

I gave a pained look. "I have a meeting with the head of Industrial Illusions to rush to after this." This was a lie, but a believable one. I will note that these girls do not even know who the head of the mentioned company is.

They made more sad sounds and went to their seats, which were, due to some loving hand of Fate, far away from me.

Now to pay attention to the beginning lecture.

Moo, moo, cow goes moo. So does the camel. I miss Camel-san. I also miss—no, no thinking. Bad Ryuuji. The people in your head will get angry.

So instead, various anime theme songs took over.

-
I ate lunch at that café I mentioned earlier. It was a small lunch—a croissant and a glass of tea. My entourage would never find me in there because they would never think to look in such a place.

I never noticed before when I ventured inside, but there were so many people in there that I had never noticed before, and never mind that the campus was huge and there was no way to ever know everyone. Usually when I went in there, I brought my laptop, bought coffee, and heeded no one until I was finished with whatever I was doing. But now I noticed things.

There was nothing particularly dark or dismal about the café, but those were the people it attracted, like the pale girl dressed in black in the corner, and the boy now ordering at the counter, trying to cover scars on his arms, and the group in back that smelled very distinctly of pot. There was no person up front reciting famous Gothic poetry or singing about death, there was no heavy incense.

There were, however, the drug-addicted, the depressed, the suicidal, the lonely, the outcasts, the intellectuals (and by that, I mean distinctly gifted to the point of eccentricity), and the gays. It was the college slum, to put it bluntly, where the socially-deprived, subconsciously attention-seeking people went—the people who wanted to be alone in the company of others like them.

I fit in perfectly, now, except that I am not socially deprived.

No one asked if I was alright. It was every man and woman for themselves, I supposed, and perhaps that's how it should be. No one spoke, with the exception of food orders and some conversation between groups, but it was all hushed, as if everything had the volume turned down.

No one cried.

This experience, no, this revelation of sexuality opened my eyes to see what I, and everyone else, otherwise ignored. I was a new person, though still at times clinging to my old self, and it took a piece of real love to make me realize.

I also realized, in that moment, sitting with the people that have been, that I could not allow myself to forget him, even if I wanted to.

I sighed and rested my head on folded arms.

"Malik."

-
It was evening by the time I climbed back up to my dorm room. I was tired and ragged, despite that I had only gone to a bookstore after my long sit in the haven of the café.

I opened the door slowly. I really just wanted to go to sleep and dream. I had given up forgetting Malik and the memories made me unbelievably sleepy.

I did not expect there to be anyone in the room when I arrived. I thought I was hallucinating and that they would finally have to ship me off to the mental institution. It took me a few moments to get over the initial shock of the tanned, blond-haired, violet-eyed phantom of my thoughts sitting on my bed.

"What—how?" I asked finally, openly gaping.

Malik shrugged and answered as if nothing had happened. "Well, I used the money that nee-san left me for the month, bought a plane ticket, and flew over. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought my plan out very well since it was a little spur-of-the-moment, so I was very messed up when I realized that no one at the airport spoke Arabic and that my English is very, very bad. Luckily, I found a couple of Japanese people and asked them where the University of Los Angeles was. They pointed it out on a map that I had picked up, and they helped me to a cab and told him where to take me." You took a cab? "When I got here, I wandered for about five minutes until a short girl asked me what was wrong. She didn't know Arabic, but she knew Japanese. I asked her if she knew who you were, she said that she did, and she brought me here." Good thing you learned Japanese, ne? My mind was also occupied as to how she got my door open, but then I remembered that I had given her a key right before I left so that she could borrow my books and things.

But to the things at hand.

"But why?" I shook my head. "Why did you come all the way here and go through all the trouble just to find me?"

"Because, for some reason, watching you leave was the worst thing I had ever experienced. Plus," he tilted his head slightly, "I wanted to know what you were going to tell me."

I started laughing then. I started crying, too. Tears were falling down my face as I choked laughter, all dignity and ego that I had earlier shed forgotten. "Kami-sama, you…" He pulled me close to him and I buried my eyes in his shoulder, still shaking from the conflicting emotions.

I really hate ambivalence because you have to actually sort through what you feel.

He sat us on the bed and I still blubbered like an infant. It was embarrassing, but that feeling, luckily, faded away. I could feel his cheek gently pressed against the side of my head and his hand moving slow circles on my back. Oh God, if you exist, I'm sorry, but this feels so right. "I love you," I whispered, sobs ceasing into nothingness.

"I love you, too, Ryuuji," he murmured back to me. Somehow, not meaning to sound egotistical, I had known that. When I first saw him in my room, standing there, waiting for me, this one last shred of egotistical bastard in me laughed and said, 'I told you so.' He followed me to America. He hunted me down in a place that must have been so terrifyingly strange and new.

He moved his shoulder away and a hand to my cheek, pulling my face up to look at his. I imagine I looked like a mess. I'm not supposed to cry, because boys don't cry, and yet here I was. He wiped the remaining tear from my cheek and asked, "May I?"

Such the gentleman. Kami-sama, I love him.

I nodded and didn't have to wait through the everlasting moment for his lips to touch mine. It then went painfully, sweetly slow, and at the threat of sounding like a masochist, I didn't want it to end. More than anything, more than anyone, I was in love with this person that was holding me in his arms, comforting me, kissing me, and sharing what I felt on every level of existence. It didn't matter what anyone else thought. It didn't matter that we're both guys from different countries, different ethnicities, and different religions. The fact that we found each other made this, this one shining moment, all the miracle. Some may find this disgusting, damned, and this country's imperfect, impractical government may try to close us up, and people, down even to our peers, may find us abhorrent, but it didn't matter anymore.

We loved each other. Why should it matter who we were?

-

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Notes and Translations:

The unnamed movie mentioned is Donnie Darko. Awesome movie. The song was kind of the theme song, a Gary Jules remake of Mad World. No idea who the original artist was, but was told that it sucked. If you're able to see rated-R movies and don't mind cussing and sexual talk, then see it! I commandeth thee! And while you're up, can you get me a sandwhich? Turkey, because I don't like ham. No cow products—my stomach rejects those now. And I just don't like pimento cheese.

The other movie is the Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams. Because of that movie, the teacher told us all to stand on our desks and say, "Oh caption, my captain!" We did that again at the end of the school year without her permission and she looked vaguely amused, which is saying something for this teacher.

Hee, carpe does remind me of carp. --

But we're learning about the Metaphysical poets in English 4, and, well, they did the entire "carpe diem" poetry and all that stuff. But seriously, those poems were made to seduce women. "Seize the day, for you will be dead tomorrow. Do you really want to die a virgin? I didn't think so, so have sex with me right now so that doesn't happen!"

I love that class.

Whee-hee! I am an absolute idiot with too much free time on hand—a very dangerous combination. I arranged two pages of Final Fantasy X music that I can play on the violin. Now, if my orchestra director knew that I did something like that, she would yell at me for not practicing our music, since I have, vaguely, three to four times as much to learn as the majority of the class because of my participation in the Senior Musical pit orchestra. Eighty-four pages of music for that… and then seven songs for actual class… dies

Wildwolf: sexy voice Whatever Lola wants… Lola gets…

Chibi: Ya know, the sad thing is, you would make a good slut woman, Wildwolf-chan.

Wildwolf: …I hate you. Go work on your Damn Yankees music!

Chibi: I don't want to! tantrum

Wildwolf: Thank the people for reading!

Chibi: stands up Thank you all for reading this, really! This is the longest undertaking since, well, my Yami Ryuu series back when I started writing Yugioh fics. It is also one of the few things that I actually finished, which makes me proud, personally. Maybe V-chan will give me a cookie. widens her eyes pleadingly, because she knows that V-chan will read this

Anywho, if you are a fan of mine (because I do have them, somehow), thanks for bearing with me. You people know that I am hopeless when it comes to stuff. And those of you who just read this and aren't really a fan, thanks for giving this a chance.

As for the coupling, I seriously just bunched Malik and Ryuuji together because they were the only two that I didn't already have paired up with someone. But then I realized that on some level it worked. I started this fic a few months after Yami Ryuu (a LONG time ago) and it was completely different, but in all truth, I'm glad it turned out like this. I also kind of halted it for a while. Ah well. '

I sound like I'm dying, don't I? I did that for the end of Akutenshi as well. I am not dying! I cannot be destroyed! Please don't test that theory, I still have to see Prince of Tennis episode 123, where my favorite coupling of that series is almost canony. Then you can kill me.

There will be no sequel. Perhaps another fic with this coupling, but no sequel.

And to all of thee, I bid you, adieu. See ya when I see ya in the fanfictiony world of ! --