Thin as Rice Paper 6
By Nix Winter
Disclaimer: I don't own WK
Warning: And sometimes when writing comes really slow, I write really short chapters
Youji sat down on the bed, one knee bent, mindlessly pulling at the tube feeding him. When he'd fallen, he'd known, he didn't really want to die, but living held such a deep grief. He wasn't sure when he'd transferred his reason for still living to Aya. It had to have been before the kiss. Aya sure as hell didn't need him though.
Dizziness washed over him and he was sliding off the bed, grabbing at sheets and not catching anything. He was like one great big tear falling, but he sat there on the solid floor head on the crisp sheets and realized he'd become thin as rice paper, delicate as cherry blossoms hiding from a late frost. This was his life though, this rice paper that he hadn't finished writing on.
Pain that he'd been putting off for years misted back. The day his mother had found out that he was homosexual and told him to ask Asuka to marry him anyway, that haunted him now, though he hadn't thought of it in years. He'd sworn that he would, that he'd marry Asuka, that he wasn't homosexual. But. He was.
And because he was, Asuka had died, leaving him too, and it wasn't just that she'd died the first time, he killed her personally the second time. Into that guilt and shame had come Aya, and Aya didn't bow to anyone, didn't flinch for a moment when going for what he wanted. Youji knew he'd slipped in under Aya's wing, hiding there and he'd moved so far from the empty shell he'd been when he'd first carried Aya up the stairs.
'I should know how to find my way,' he thought, smearing tears across his face with the back of his wrist. 'I should know what I'm doing. I shouldn't need him to find my way out.'
The healing felt so close that he could put his hand up to touch and it'd be just on the other side of rice paper. He hid in a house of lies, trying to avoid the shame of other people's disapproval, but the walls were just rice paper. All he had to do was get up, get his clothes, go find Aya, or go find something. It didn't have to be Aya that he held onto, he could go find something else. He could do anything he wanted with his life. It was like he'd died then, there on the street, and been brought back just to have a second chance. Everyone should really have a second chance.
Fear replaced the pain, a sudden swoosh of it, making him shiver and duck his head. He wasn't a child anymore and he wasn't a coward, reminding himself of these things did nothing at all to help. He didn't understand the fear. How could he be afraid when he'd faced down monsters before? When he'd broken into places that could have taught the government how to do security, how could he now be sitting on the floor in tears, clutching a hospital sheet in his fist, terrified to move?
Cool fingers touched his cheek, but he refused to look. Asuka had haunted him for so long that he didn't need to see her to know she was there. "Dieing isn't all that hard," she said, "And it's usually not even your fault, but living, for the next seventy years with this pain is truly frightening. You're angry at him for leaving you to face your fears alone, but you didn't ask him to stay and you left yourself first."
"I'm bad and stupid," Youji whispered, feeling that way, feeling the truth of it to the core of his being that he deserved nothing good and should have to live the rest of his life in atonement for the sin of not being what he should have been in the first place.
"Youji, I love you," she said, voice fading just a little. "Don't be such an unforgiving asshole forever, please? You are a good man, and you always will be. That's just how you are. You screw things now and then, but you really do try. You can be happy. I know you can. I've done all I can for you and I think I've paid back what I can. Don't be afraid of living. No one can do it better than you."
"Afraid of living," he asked softly, feeling the paper house begin to collapse. "I'm not going to be afraid of anything."
"Then get up and go find him."