Chapter Seven, Part Two: Collide and Collude
Why, when he was concentrating fully on forgetting Brooklyn was present, he became more apparent than ever? Fine threads of self-control frayed and ripped—counting the tiles on the floor helped, but wouldn't for long (frantically snatching at distraction rarely does). He'd gone over the same row five times already and could still hear beyond the mounting numbers. He wished to be surprised, so that the beast might stir and the all-encompassing, vacuous buzz return, but alas, he was far from surprised—he'd expected exactly this from the beginning, but foresight made it no easier to stomach. His loudmouth animal's maw remained firmly shut.
The blood and so color had been draining out of his flesh for some time, and Kai could not fathom just where it was going. Perhaps to accommodate his suddenly irregular heartbeat? The story of certain fateful, ice-filled times was being told incorrectly, and it was driving him insane. But he could not speak up; he'd have nothing helpful to say on the subject. There was nothing to say about it. There was nothing—the Hiwatari heir was adamantly silent when it came to those times. He would not, could not put the events or emotions into words. Not for anybody's benefit… not even for his own.
"You threw away Suzaku? For a… stronger weapon to use?" Garland interjected, sounding disgruntled. The C-Bolt didn't know what he wanted the truth to be—about Kai's intentions, about where his loyalties had lain. Did he, did he value power over everything? Over friendship, loyalty, love… Even now?
There was only one person in the room that could set them straight about the events in Russia, after Brooklyn's editorializing… if he only would. Merely armed with the power to theorize, the gryphon blader saw himself as perceptive (or at least not stupid), but Kai was turning out to be a mass of contradicting mysteries beneath an equally enigmatic surface. Garland was having trouble just gathering enough facts to make keeping them in order a legitimate task. He genuinely wondered how a person could live, function, being as emotionally inhibited as Kai.
"You left your team to fend for themselves in a World Championship tournament?" Kylie added, not helping the situation, blinking her dismay, eyebrows raised all the way up under the fray of her long bangs. Quite uncomfortable, the woman rubbed the back of her neck with one hand and slowly turned Kai's half-full water glass with the other, though she did neither with any visible conviction. "The… G-Revolutions, those guys from the Justice Five, right? Oh Jeeze, Kai…" The Hiwatari thought she made it sound like he'd killed somebody. Oh wait, he had. Suzaku. Kai sighed.
Apart from the scattered details she'd gleaned from conversation with her brother, only one image of the one-time world-renowned Bladebreakers stuck out in her mind from the broadcast of the BEGA tournament: they had run to meet him plodding down from the platform, laughing and cheering and grinning like, well, kids – and he'd nearly fallen, and they'd crowded around, and their concern, joy, all in an instant, told volumes of everything they'd gone through together.
Kai had been with them, among them, present in a way… Kylie couldn't boast that; she knew his heart had been elsewhere since stepping foot in the house. She hadn't thought… She would never have guessed that he'd hurt those people like Brooklyn said; seeing the frayed and beaten teenager at the center of their attention, completely harmless in their midst despite all the harm he'd just done to his opponent, Kylie would not have thought he would hurt them. They loved him. How different could it have been only 'a couple of years ago'? You don't hurt the ones that love you.
"I bet we could dig up some video of the matches," Brooklyn helpfully told his 'family' members, pretending to be disinterested in the troubled eyes they had for Kai, when in reality, he was obsessed with the tiniest negative reactions. Kai looked back at them as if they'd each grown a few extra heads: disgusted and not a little alarmed… "It was interesting to see him drunk on power; he loved using Boris' Frankenstein," the god-bearer wistfully continued, as easily as if crazed, enraptured, blood-thirsty part-Russians were an everyday occurrence, and as certainly as somebody that believed their eyes—the Hiwatari balked that Brooklyn had managed to see some kind of alleged video.
"And you enjoyed ripping away the bit beasts of the other competing teams—not a moment's pause before taking your friends'. You just couldn't get enough. And Suzaku… not a thought spared poor, destitute Suzaku, not then and not in our matches, so much time later. Your perpetual indifference throughout your beyblading and beast-bearing career is heart-wrenching, really." Brooklyn threw his opponent a knowing, imperious grin, egged on by Kai's utter stillness. He wanted a reaction. No, he wanted tears.
"You sacrificed your sweet, pitiful phoenix to Zeus; you know that now. And you know that all along you had a deliverer ready and waiting in the wings, if only you'd bothered to exploit the advantage Boris gave you. You didn't even think of it, did you? But then, I suppose it stands to reason… You never act in the interest of anyone but yourself. Seeing that Kuro Suzaku could have fought, maybe won, in the place of the ill-fated original is asking for you to have a great deal more sensitivity than you've got—though it should not be too much to ask from anyone honored with a bit beast's partnership.
"Can you honestly tell me that you care about Suzaku? The evidence screams otherwise. If you cared, Kuro Suzaku would have been destroyed long ago for its role in betrayal; I know it hasn't been—that much is written across your face. If you had cared in the slightest, you would not have allowed a supposedly beloved friend be so abused in our battle. You could have saved Suzaku…" The young man shook his head sadly, blue-green eyes narrowed in vicious, hypercritical reflection. "Are you finally feeling guilty Kai?" Just a couple of tears. Come on.
Inexplicably taking some of Brooklyn's flippant provocation as an example, Garland was the next to take a stab at the younger boy, though in a tone noticeably disappointed, rather than gleeful. "All this time you've been letting me think that you wanted to… what, avenge Suzaku? And now it turns out that you've hurt your bit beast more than Brooklyn has, or will ever have the ability to. It's got to be worse, being misled by somebody you love than by a known opponent, from whom you'd expect no better—have you have ruined every single thing you've ever had going for you, Kai? Are you determined to..? I…"
He took a step towards the frightfully tense blader stoically undergoing his interrogation, as though physically traversing the gap could aid the construction of a bridge over the mental and emotional chasm. Garland tried hard to avoid lecture mode, but failed nonetheless. "Your friends—I knew you'd mess with your old teammates, Kai, I mean, I saw it, but Suzaku? That's… that's low. A bit beast is the closest thing a beyblader can have—probably the most sacred thing a person can have. I just think that you're… you're lucky you've still got one at all…"
Kai stared at Garland as though he'd grown three extra heads, opening his mouth and then resolutely shutting it without a word said. These outsiders had no right to speak as they did—they couldn't know what he'd felt, how he'd needed Kuro Suzaku… They couldn't fathom the reasons he had to make those choices, those incorrect, but momentarily obvious choices. Until every person had had the means to reaching their life's goals dangled in front of their faces, ripe for the easy, easy taking, they couldn't begin to understand—they couldn't act so righteous, as though they'd not have done the same.
It was wrong and he would never live it down and he would never forgive himself, but Kai knew why he'd destroyed… everything. Sure, in Brooklyn's words, he'd sacrificed the faith of his rightful phoenix, of his team. For a split second he had been on top of the world, he had been unstoppable; he had been perfect, no matter the delusion involved. Something in the boy still said that if only for that second of greatest purpose and power and detachment, void of all remorse—if only for the dark beast's lies as a reward, he would do it all over again.
He was excused, every single time, for every single thing. For no rhyme or reason, Kai was not fated to the desertion to which he so naturally condemned others. So maybe it was worth it. Maybe he wouldn't have been what he was at that moment, trapped in the kitchen, with the firebird and friends that adored him and would die for him, if not for the terrible things he had caused and endured and heard echoing in his head. How could he wish those things away now? The present was nothing without the past. And Kai was doomed to repeat the past. Garland, Kylie, Brooklyn? They had only entered a greater unknown than ever before, still seeing nothing.
"I don't feel any desperate need to be validated by pawns," the Hiwatari dismissively informed them, eyes bright with some façade of boldness and bitter humor. "Rest assured, Suzaku has forgiven me for all of that—my teammates have forgiven me. I've put the bit beast of which you so casually speak, Boris, and Russia behind me. I've moved on; your turn. Balcov is a filthy liar, and unless any of you were present at every step of the way, you have no right to speak of the tournament and the events surrounding it, pretending to be authorities, when whatever you were told… Whatever he told you is wrong, I promise. Whatever you know can't be half the case."
His crimson gaze was somehow scornful, oddly pitying… As hassled and offended as the young man felt, deep down, he was not the type to turn tail and run from a fight. The Hiwatari grit his teeth, bit the bullet, and continued to put up a brave face, reassuring himself of his superiority—at least in terms of sheer information. Kai was the expert here; he was, after all, the problem.
Boris, on the other hand, was a deviant at withered heart with a penchant for bending the truth into whatever form he so desired. Becoming good at it, so good that even he believed the lies sometimes, was the first step to brainwashing an army's worth of wayward children, whom, as the dredges of society, were willing to accept anything if it sounded nicer than the hurtful realities from whence they'd come. Boris could have sold a hangman back his own noose if sufficiently motivated.
The former director and current fugitive was convincing, Kai knew, because he could tell exactly what others wanted to hear. He would have lied to Brooklyn's face about Russia, having missed the control, enjoying the influence. As intelligent as the "genius" admittedly was, he remained only a boy, on which Balcov specialized—furthermore, Kai was convinced that even if some part of Brooklyn had suspected insincerity, he would have listened regardless… It was the story of a lifetime. It was a weapon against an enemy. Boris had known it, giving, and Brooklyn had known it, receiving.
"You don't try very hard to clarify things for us, do you?" Kylie observed, sounding sour, but for the most part in control of her self. "If all anybody knows about you is what they see for themselves—let's just say the impression isn't great. Not having any idea of your… motives, emotions… Kai, you look like a bad person." A bad person, a petty, pointless grudge-holding person; someone she had begun to question would have any desirable influence whatsoever on her brother. Kylie looked at the seemingly smug, diffident Hiwatari doubtfully; what she had heard of him was nothing like this. A much different picture had been painted by Garland and the little amount of him she'd seen in the tournament—the boy had come across unthinkably stubborn… and incredibly strong.
In her mind he'd been full of spirit, fire tempered by unfailing focus and self control. She understood why his team had rushed to him after the fight with Brooklyn; why they loved him. And her youngest sibling, whose opinion she respected and maturity she acknowledged, had thought highly Kai. So who was this? This, this frightening, crazed, unreachable kind of wild animal was not the sort of thing you went around thinking highly of or loving, at least not in civilized circles. This child that had been overtaken by fits of violence and rage… that was apparently constituted of violence and rage, this was Kai?
She had allowed through the front door an entirely different young man: standoffish, but potentially likable—had it only been an agreeable doppelganger? Kylie had been trying desperately, so far unsuccessfully, to drag that young man forth once again, the one Garland respected and the G-Revolutions cared for, because he, she could reach. Even, even if that person was just an illusion used to get through doors and into hearts.
"Don't bother, Kylie—he thinks we're the bad guys," her brother grimly said, hands briefly curling into fists, chestnut eyes flashing. "It's because we listened to Boris though, right? You can't pretend this is about your phoenix anymore, Kai, I know it's not. Whatever pain you've felt for Suzaku's sake and've been using as an excuse is just a front. I know Boris disgusts you. Brooklyn was right: you two did avoid each other… and now I hear how you were acquainted. On his team twice—on the Russian team against your friends." The teenager shook his head slowly, revulsion hardening his features as it quieted his voice. Kai eyed him curiously, because Garland, for the first time in their contact, was grasping at straws.
"Did he bribe you with a shiny new bit beast, Kai? Are you that weak?" The C-Bolt made Kai regret his curiosity. He'd been listening too closely. He'd been hit point-blank. He was angry. Sensing as much, Garland quickly continued, wanting to voice his train of thought before it ran into another of the phoenix-bearer's brick walls. "You called us pawns, but you're the same. We're only guilty of wanting to be the best, to be better. Boris had everything to offer us and we had no reason not to believe he would help… In the end I could see it: he was bad news, he was crazy. But you, you knew all along. And you followed him. You betrayed all of them for him again, when you knew better…"
Kai, appearing deeply grave in order to avoid showing just how upset he really was, stomach turning at the very concepts the Apollon blader communicated, stared blandly up through his bangs, wondering how one person could be so very wrong and so very certain at the same time. "I never did anything for Boris' sake." The adolescent's voice, a more reliable window to the soul than his readily deceptive ruby eyes—its very few tones directly reflecting on the very few moods he frequented,—was a passionate growl, originating from deep in his aching throat.
He was strongly insulted; not once had Kai's actions been questioned (period) in such a way that could suggest any amount of allegiance with… to… He had never done anything for Boris Balcov's sake! It had always been for himself and himself alone; not even his grandfather could have boasted of any control in Russia, and neither of the tyrannical old men exercised any at present. He would have had to have been a complete simpleton to allow them any more leverage against him than they already possessed—he was not a simpleton, and he would not be used again. Boris, for Kai, had existed as a mere stepping stone or inconvenience, interchangeably. He harbored no secret love for the director, nor did he hate him with any amount of venom; Boris did not deserve the honor of being granted one of the very few intense emotions Kai had for other human beings. He was not worth it anymore. He was not worth the young Hiwatari's spit.
"Right," Garland skeptically replied. "It's all for you, everything, the world… You don't care what happens do you? Just as long as you've got your means to an end." He waited for Kai to say something to the contrary. And waited. And waited. The seconds trickled by without the phoenix blader moving a muscle, blinking an eye—he hardly seemed to be breathing. He had, in fact, become fatalistic about the entire conversation, convinced now that they could not be made to comprehend even if he had felt there was a need for them to. Garland became more and more crestfallen, worried that these continual stabs at the slate-haired boy's character flaws had hit something vital and shaken his reality just as much as Brooklyn's unscheduled appearance in the training room had, doing permanent damage. He hadn't wanted to break the beyblader, really, just provoke him out of his shell a little…
Though, in all honesty, it was a lie to say the C-Bolt wasn't currently more than enough galled by Kai to have said much of what he had to him out of pure malevolence. Suddenly guilty about the way his ill-tempered counterpart had begun to resemble an abused dog and desperate to be proven wrong, to have Brooklyn somehow proven wrong, and a little faith in the Great Kai Hiwatari (if not all of mankind) restored, the tall, athletic young man crossed the remaining kitchen in two strides, halting in the most dangerous place he might have, a foot away from the cornered lone wolf.
"Defend yourself, Kai!" Garland commanded in his sheer frustration, seizing the boy tightly by his upper arms and shaking him, glaring into distantly curious garnet eyes obscured by a fall of thick blue-gray hair. "Tell me Brooklyn's wrong and it's not true! Don't admit to being something I know you're not!" The Hiwatari heir's nose wrinkled somewhat in distaste for equal parts the sob of the former BEGA captain's words, and the death-grip the older boy thought it wise to have on his limbs. Kai's patience for this particular game was wearing thin, and it showed in the surreptitious glower slowly turned the foreigner's way, saying, words unnecessary: 'you don't know a thing about me.'
Horrified, but bull-headed, Garland shook him a bit harder and, snarling every syllable at least as much as he cried them, continued his feverous monologue. "Tell me! You can't be what he says you are… A beyblader that throws off the people that care about him at every possible chance and then crawls back to them again, who—who does these terrible things without pause, without regret, who acts like he doesn't have a soul… who allows himself to be used when he knows he's being used… abandons a bit beast like Suzaku… Kai, I know you have a soul." Garland was being, in a word, fierce. Perhaps if he believed these things hard enough, Kai would have to—and he would nod and smile apologetically and say it was all just a big misunderstanding. Brooke would sheepishly admit that he'd been dreaming up the whole thing. Maybe it was a great big cosmic joke. It had to be… even if it was real, it was a joke.
Still, no one could really laugh. It was too sad to laugh about. The C-Bolt rasped onwards, motivated by the heavy quiet liken to that surrounding shocked car crash witnesses. "Did I hear right? Did Brooklyn really say that you stole from the other teams back then..? That's—unbelievable. If you're a, a person that's been lying to himself, pretending everybody else is just as bad as he is so that they'll be easier to hate… someone that lives his life that way, doing all of it, all of what Brooke said was true… I trust Brooklyn, Kai. But if he's right and you're that person, then I don't think I can…" His imploring, searching, begging stare held its own apology. "Then I don't think that I can be your friend."
Detached and only angry towards the thunder blader in a wearied, remote sense of the emotion, Kai spent a moment examining the long, strong hands that only half-heartedly held his arms stationary before carefully moving to knock them away. "… Garland, if I can't hate Brooklyn for what he did to me a few months ago, then you cannot beat me up for my actions years ago. You weren't even involved." His voice was measured and frown apathetic. Kai knew he was a 'bad person' and it came as no real shock that others might pick up on it, cracking through to the surface—he'd never tried very hard to hide his true nature, and, sadly enough, here it was.
It was an unfeeling bastard with a mean streak. It was a petty, grudge-holding, pointless little kid. It was somebody that wished with all their might to forget a past their easily corruptible true nature had been helpless to avoid, facing the terrible hand fate had dealt. He was volatile, obsessive, arrogant, and cruel, and yet, all of what he'd accepted, all of what he consciously dealt with was only a scratch on the surface. Kai simply knew that he was a bad person, and had never kidded himself into thinking otherwise; it came as no great shock that others, someone like Garland, might not want to be his friend. It was probably in their best interests anyhow.
The youngest C-Bolt straightened proudly out of the stoop he'd taken on when trying to get down to Kai's level, to see through his eyes. He hadn't been able to see a damn thing from there… it had proven a hazier vantage point than any. Stepping back in order to absorb the full image of the first person he'd ever met to simultaneously prompt the urges to embrace and strangle, Garland sought to ingrain the phoenix bearer at that grievous moment upon his memory forever. "I can't believe you didn't deny a single thing…" And he couldn't.
It had always seemed to him that Kai would fight without hesitation, would fight anyone or anything that challenged him—so why not the truth, or… Brooklyn's truth? Hadn't it hurt him, hadn't it been pushing to the surface things he would have preferred hidden? Anyone would have preferred those things hidden. So why had he refused to lash out, or at least protect himself? It must not have been a challenge after all. All that Brooklyn had revealed—had Kai agonized over it already? Until it felt natural to confront? The three perspectives attacking him in that kitchen, were they echoes of the fire blader's self-doubt? If they were anything less, Kai wouldn't have stood quietly by—if it had been news, Kai would have reacted much differently. Every word they'd uttered? A thought long past. Garland was overwhelmed by sympathy.
Kylie cleared her throat and her brother turned, jumpy, hastily blinking the glaze of unshed tears out of his eyes. Kai didn't bother looking away from the tiles he'd begun to recount. Brooklyn didn't need to see, as he knew quite clearly what was going to happen. "Alright, now both of you are total hypocrites," the blonde C-Bolt sighed, nursing a headache. "I need to get this straight… Kai's been claiming Brooklyn is hateable because he, A: hurt Suzaku, which apparently makes no sense—is this one of those no-one-is-allowed-to-do-that-but-me things? I hate those,—B: He got hurt—from what I've seen that's kind of to be expected these days and honestly, you don't seem like the type of guy that would be bothered, Kai,—C: This Balcov person messed with the BEGA kids, which, I guess, is another of those no-one-but-me things.
"Ah, and of course, D: Kai got beat, in one lousy fight, once... It's over! You won later anyway, so what the hell does it matter? Is that all? Did I forget anything? Kai, those reasons suck. Really. Garland, Kai's right. You can't preach about moving on and then hold the mistakes he made a long, long time ago against him now." The harried older sibling sunk back against a wall for support, trying to pinpoint the moment she'd gotten herself too involved to back right out again, no strings attached. Her eyes slid shut; she imagined laying on a sun-warmed deck.
As something suddenly occurred to her, Kylie opened one eye and leveled it on the handful of stubbornly indignant Hiwatari, temperamentally examining him from rigid head to toe. He looked pale, drained of most energy, and thoughtful, yet to her surprise and anxiety, the crimson gaze that compliantly locked horns with her own was as domineering and authoritative as ever, testament to the destructive will smoldering somewhere barely below the surface. Garland need not have feared for breaking him… it would take more than a few revisited nightmares to damage Kai Hiwatari. He was not fragile. He was not helpless. Even after a lengthy battle, three on one, he had retained his frustrating convictions that they had no right to know anything and he had no reason to give them anything. He had not cracked and spilt his shameful secrets across the floor for them to paw through.
At a loss, but antagonized by the tiny, triumphant smirk she had noticed ghost its way across the Hiwatari's lips while staring at him, Kylie resolved to stay put and see this through. It might be a while yet, she was well aware, but eventually Kai would have to give up something of him self—something deeper, and however she was unaware of the ambition, perhaps they were ultimately looking for what lay beneath the ash-covered fire, where sincerity might dwell. She wanted to be around to see him taken down. She wanted to smirk triumphantly at him.
She was also the only sane party left, and somehow the young lady knew they'd need some more sanity going around before the end. "But then, you haven't really claimed anything, have you, Kai? So enlighten us, we're listening," Kylie tried, supported by a collective nod of agreement. The phoenix bearer's attention flickered narrowly across their group before landing, out of necessity, on the copper-haired, blue-eyed, tickled pink genius. He felt, with some satisfaction, the dying embers of his wrath stoked to fiery life.
"What's wrong? Why do you really feel the need to throw glasses at Brooklyn?" She was without ceremony, supposing they were somewhat beyond ceremony—now was the time to be direct. For varying reasons, the three cohabitants of the spacious, airy house prayed, all at once, that something blunt would be able to break open the padlock barring them from Kai Hiwatari's mind and heart. Garland, for one, wanted to make certain, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the younger boy did actually have a soul… He didn't want to have shown Kai tears for nothing. A soul… Kai was interested in resolving that question as well.
Author's Notes: It gets deeper, and deeper, and deeper… and heavier. As an afterthought, sorry about all the swearing.
Astera Snape commented in a review last chapter that Kai needs psychiatric treatment. Yeah, yeah he does. The poor kid has a whole slew of defense mechanisms in place so that he won't have to confront the real reasons for despising Brooklyn so much – at the forefront of which are the painfully obvious repression of most of his feelings (which he's had going to varying degree during the entire show) and rationalization of the negative ones existing. Next chapter you'll get some obvious evidence of projection (if it's not there already… I think it is) and outright denial. Unfortunately, I think he's shown just how likely he is to stay in a hospital for treatment when there are really tall rocks to be climbed and beybattles to be watched.
Now, what are these real reasons, considering the other ones are more or less… lies? Wait and see. It's alarming that even when these people can drag some kind of explanation out of Kai, it still isn't true. I have no doubt he's believed in all of them so far, though. Crazy people don't know they're crazy. It's the same principle.
Spyrit Phoenyx, your presence is valued as always. I eagerly agree that a maternal Garland is an intriguing Garland, 'specially when ya make 'im all desperate-like. Kai would have been more violent about it if he wasn't so tired. Somehow I don't think that kind of attention is welcomed with open arms. Storm-of-insanity, The Hands of Fate and Destiny, and Demenior, thank you for taking the time to review as well; you've all no idea how encouraging it is, and I'd do more in return if life didn't keep interfering.
Brace for impact, the next chapter's gonna be a doozy.
