Disclaimer: No. Just no. xD That sounds awfully like defiance, lol. But I'm sure you know what I mean. :)
Enjoy, minna-sama. 3
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Chapter 20
.angelight.
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The night came and went without the slightest whisper leaving nothing more than the traces of salt in previously wet footprints – dainty footprints of two girls he thought he knew but who now only seemed to blur together into an entirely distinct third figure.
They had wept. They had both wept. They had wept in ways that poets for centuries have sought to express and yet here he was, driving with painstaking listlessness, face pale like those of self-acknowledged cowards, to some place … a place that he seemed only to recognize in his dreams.
Please, dear angel of heaven, will you not welcome me now into your embrace? Or will I have to see their faces once again, seeing but not seeing for perhaps I can never love them, can never love anybody, least of all myself—
His thoughts frothed lethargically in his mind as he stared straight ahead at a wet road glistening silver under the virgin moonlight. Oh, if he could be that road again! Untrammeled and untravelled like a white ribbon of promise, waiting for a pair of small feet to dance on him so that he may marvel at their whiteness and their childlike form.
The car swept through a deep puddle of water and sprayed his windshield with diamonds of water; he didn't notice, but the car, sensing weight on its windows, mechanically moved to wipe away the water. It really made no difference for his vision was too blurred with tears corrupted by regret.
He remembered pulling into a driveway, a wide driveway, wide and inviting like the arms of an angel and of—
He remembered stepping out of the car, holding the cold keys to his temple to keep himself sentient and then—
Falling, falling, voices, and wings of pure ivory that were smooth to the touch but nailed to the ground, quite useless.
He remembered crying over them like he had never cried over anything in his life and watching them melt to smooth, white clay before becoming muddied by the unchaste gasps of his breath.
The next morning, when Quatre found him outside his front door, sprawled on the whimsical cobblestones, dew clinging to his romantic eyelashes, so pale that one might see the blue veins burn intricate labyrinths under his skin, Hiiro seemed to remember very little – nothing but brief flashes of falling water, a kiss, and the glassy eyes of a girl who looked like an angel.
…………………
"Hiiro, you are being too foolish. You cannot do this to yourself," Quatre intoned soothingly as he reached over to test the tea and then readjusted the cover of the sugar bowl so that it rested at a more visually pleasing angle. Though Hiiro sought out his eyes, Quatre never lifted them from the teapot once. "It's really quite ridiculous. You need to stop killing yourself over things that only exist in your mind."
"Then perhaps my life only exists in my mind," he murmured and accepted the cup of tea Quatre poured out with no small amount of care.
"Oh don't be so cynical. You've spent your whole life living as a cynic. I imagine it becomes rather tiring." A very brief flash of crisp aquamarine flashed up to meet his eyes. "You are really too transparent. Trowa would have been disappointed."
Hiiro stood and for a second Quatre started as if afraid but returned to spooning sugar into his tea as if the emotion had never visited his mind.
"You are so nonchalant about it. You toy with me as if I were a violin. Am I so easily played that you can so easily analyze my every half-step, can coax out the most delicate trills and the wildest notes of violence? You think I'm-" 1
"I don't know what to think of you, Hiiro. Very few people do. Trowa does but doesn't tell anybody. Miss Relena does but cannot tell anybody. Nobody else," the blonde replied coolly. "Now do sit down. I won't hold a civilized conversation with your pacing about."
Hiiro took his seat reluctantly and vengefully gulped at his tea, ignoring the searing burn across his tongue, the roof of his mouth, his throat – it did not burn more than his words and certainly not more than his tears.
"We never quite realize how tightly in his grasp Eros has us all, hmm, Hiiro?" Quatre laughed a little but no wind of laughter touched the clear-cut irises of his eyes. "You least of all, I'd think. But it's beautiful what love has made you, Hiiro. Beautiful and terrifying. Your eyes have become most charmingly like paradise blue silk."
"You are still mocking me," Hiiro growled but remained in his seat like a reluctantly obedient schoolboy. "You cannot fathom what I have experienced ever since Relena became ill."
Quatre smiled, a small smile that seemed to make him glow like Mary smiling through tears at the sins of mankind. "No, I cannot, but you are not the first to have experienced it." He clasped his hands in front of him as if in prayer and rested his chin upon them, glancing out the three, tall windows illuminating the breakfast table. "Miss Minako and Miss Usagi are very sweet creatures but they will never be Miss Relena. Perhaps you will learn to love one or the other in order to please your ego, in order to atone for Miss Relena, but until you stop thinking as if they should do everything as Miss Relena does, you shall never be satisfied with one or the other and your atonement will be quite illusory." Quatre paused to sigh and glance out at the laburnums and their violent, uncontained beauty. "Allah never creates the same person twice. I should know," he smiled to himself ruefully, almost cruelly. "I'd spent at least half of my life looking for another woman like my mother and in the end, she is not to be found."
The mist of a dream clouded the clear blue of his eyes as Quatre gazed outside at his garden. The poppies nodded gaily at him in the breeze and he smiled a little in recognition.
"Either way, I do hope you treat the two girls gently," Quatre sighed, turning back almost cheerily to Hiiro as if in the silence he had communicated with God and found solace in His words. "When two people meet, Hiiro, neither can go away untouched; souls are too flimsy to survive in even the briefest flirtations without losing or gaining something. Yours had touched Miss Relena's too violently and left it shuddering in wonder or ecstasy or pain – I can't quite discern. Do be more careful from now on, Hiiro." The blonde smiled sweetly, his eyes darkened to a peculiar lavender-blue as if he had experienced the extremes of both joy and tragedy and had found his heart heavier and more solemn afterward. "Souls are wounded as much by pleasure as by agony."
…………………
In her heart she knew the battle was over, as good as lost, or forfeited, or forgotten.
If only you could be the one I love.
If only indeed! If only love could be something that if one wished hard enough for would come! If only her hair were a shade darker, her voice a touch sweeter, her eyes the most glorious cornflower blue that Hiiro had ever beheld! Why, if only this one time, when she reached up to grab something before the waves of the world suffocated her, she could hold something more durable than dead leaves, more tangible than sunlight, more gentle than the tangled roots of treacherous lilies. Something beautiful with eyes like sordid sapphires, lips like rose-leaves, hands like her last bastions of hope.
Minako had stared after Usagi a long time, long after the other blonde had fled upstairs into her own room, her refusal to talk sealed by the finality of the sound of her slamming door.
For hours into the night she pondered, until the silver lips of dawn touched the earth and became stained with roses and pomegranates and blood, until dawn pressed her passionate, newly scarlet lips to the expanse of the sky and left a foul, vermillion mark that transformed into the sun.
Perhaps she would have been happier as Usagi then, she told herself; Usagi still held all the fantasies of romance in her small hands, perfectly scarlet rose petals she held close to her so that it was never blown away by the cool tempest of somebody's cruelty or, worse yet, kindness.
I have lost all of mine, she sighed to herself, dwelling on the romanticism of her melancholy. But perhaps if I search hard enough, I might find one – just one is enough, no matter how wilted or trampled! – and be able to move on to somebody else…
But she realized the falseness of her thoughts before they trailed off into peals of cold, tinkling laughter. He had been everything to her! A Prince Charming with all the charm of not being at all charming! Her soul had been delighted with him, had drunk him in, devoured his presence, his every glance and every sigh.
But the more it ate, the hungrier it became, hungry for his soul to do the same – and it never did.
And perhaps that was her fault.
…………………
At age sixteen Usagi had convinced herself that her life had all the charm of a fairytale but none of its flourishes and that as fairytales knew not but to end happily ever after, her life inevitably must have stored for her a deliriously happy ending.
She had become quickly disillusioned. After all, it is the expectant rose, the rose waiting breathlessly to be worshipped and remembered in poetry, that wears away the quickest. Michiru had been too perfect in her scarlet dress and Usagi had become a most scornfully white rose with envy, a rose that was nothing more than the ghost of a reflection in a glass of silver. But her heart had remained crimson though it dared not allow itself be seen for fear of being compared to the wine-like hue of Michiru's intellect, charm, beauty.
Her love for Hiiro was, thus, the most curious and startling marvel and for two days she dwelled upon it like a young child dwells on the blueness of the sky. She had observed herself with almost scientific interest and had laughed at her foolish sentiments as if they were mere farces in her life to be observed, laughed at, and forgotten. Even now she had some trouble convincing herself they were more ponderous than illusions and follies, more fraught with the crimson that had always remained in her heart that even she was not aware of.
Her cell phone rang and she hesitated to retrieve it, staring in its general direction with a pensive frown marring her smooth brow. She was in love with Hiiro Yui, was she not? There was so much bluntness in that thought that it made her quite ashamed and her heart blushed with mild resentment. Of all people, why him? Was she destined to choose Minako or Hiiro? Or was the choice closer to her heart – Minako or Usagi?
She walked over and dug her cell phone out of her purse. "Hello?"
"Usagi, this is Rei," a familiar voice shouted into her ear.
"Rei?" she mused; Rei had seem dreadfully long ago, a faded tapestry of rulers and scales in her mind.
"Yes, about the story on the reason behind Miss Darlian's absence … do you know yet?"
"I-"
"I'm sure you do. Please meet me tomorrow at the Starbucks where we used to chat. I need that story."
"Where have you been?"
"I…" Usagi thought she detected a faint note of embarrassment that curled into the melody of defiant joy. "I've become engaged. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. See you then, Usagi."
And then it was over. She was left to collect her thoughts as they clamored about in her brain, each jumping to be picked on to voice its opinion first.
She bit her lip and thought about treachery and love and how confused and lonely Psyche must have felt, experiencing love in the darkness but not once seeing it.
…………………
To live for love, she reminded herself as she sat down to breakfast with Minako, was perhaps just as silly as to die for it. With that in mind, she looked forward to an entirely civil breakfast with no outbursts of ghastly emotion.
She was almost cold in her conduct and thoughts; the vestiges of crimson were seeping away from her heart and she smiled at her forthcoming transparency, her whiteness free of any unbecoming entanglements. Minako noticed and hardly dared to comment; Pagan noticed and became sad.
"Usagi…you are well?" Minako ventured; her blonde counterpart replied with a sunny smile and the topic was dropped.
Usagi then turned her attention back to herself and with selfish myopia decided that it might be best to forfeit all of Hiiro's best-kept secrets to Rei in an act of obsidian cruelty. After, she assured herself, she will surely stop loving him.
…………………
This chapter is highly dependent on MissIndependent13's review which stuck me as almost desperate and made me a little afraid. xD But after receiving it, I sat down (from 1 am to 3) and wrote this chapter out. I think you'll notice that I've been reading Wilde the last two days. xD It really alters my style. But this chapter overall pleased me. I think you realize what Usagi plans to do? And you'll soon realize the momentousness of what Quatre said to Hiiro. Please forgive me for updating so late! I had initially planned to reply to every review regarding that matter but maybe it's better to just type it here. xD And maybe I'm just a lazy hypocrite. --; But yes … I apologize and won't bring up excuses. xD And the updates should come more quickly from now on … I think … or maybe not. xD But certainly more quickly than ten months I should hope. :) Thank you for your time and hope it wasn't wasted. Yours, Ange-.
Notes:
1. "You are so nonchalant about it. You toy with me as if I were a violin. Am I so easily played that you can so easily analyze my every half-step, can coax out the most delicate trills and the wildest notes of violence? You think I'm-" – Hamlet reference – Hamlet to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.