Title: Idyllic
Fandom: .hack/ROOTS, RP
Rating: G
Pairing: HaseoxShino
Notes: Gift fic for NileGal- my very best friend in the whole wide world. Based on her RP with her boyfriend. Yes. I know it feels unfinished. It's supposed to have that kind of a feeling around it. The scenario being described has yet to be resolved, so I left the end rather open on purpose.
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He loved her. He really did, but he didn't believe it until she was gone.
And during all that time when he couldn't reach her, he idealized her, changed her, twisted her in his mind until she was his image of perfection. He didn't realize it, but he changed reality to suit him.
And soon, it was only his copies that he loved. He lived in his idyllic little world, and anything that didn't fit was removed- changed away.
Such is the power of the mind. And his mind changed her- almost to the unrecognizable.
If he saw her- the real person she used to be- he wouldn't know it was her. He would deny it until every star fell from the heavens. Because that wasn't the her that he remembered. That was someone else. That wasn't the her in his memories.
But he had changed his memories. They weren't real anymore- she wasn't real anymore.
Anyone who bothers to look at him for even a few moments can see what he's done to himself- walled himself into his idyllic little world with perfect little copies. He hid the flaws from himself and destroyed everything that makes anyone human.
Humans are not meant to be perfect, and eventually, his idyllic little world will shatter and all the little pieces will come crashing down around his ankles and he'll wonder what happened. He'll suddenly see reality, but he won't believe it.
Because it won't be his idyllic little world.
Selective vision, or something much like it. He won't see because he refuses to see. He's made himself blind. Blind to what he does in his mind, blind to what's real, blind to what he's done to her.
But since he doesn't know, he can't care, and if he can't care, he can't change. Right now, changing him is like changing the stars. He can't change- he won't be changed.
Who knows but that it might hurt to try?
But then, to him, she hasn't changed either. She's always been the way she is in his fractured memory. She's always been his twisted view of perfection. And that's because he doesn't remember her any differently, so, of course, she never was. She can't be any other way because then she's not her.
But she isn't anymore. She's his idyllic little copy, dancing on his string whenever he pulls because she doesn't know any better. He made her that way, and neither of them knows it.
Sad, really. That he has this power- that he's capable of doing this. He might have done better to just kill her and build her again from the ground up. He may as well have. He killed her former self and replaced her with the doppelganger he created of her that lives to fulfill his every wish, dream, whim. Every vague and half-formed desire he could conceive in what's left of his mind.
And she'll do it- whatever it is. Because that's how he remembers her. She doesn't live her own ideals anymore- she lives his.
Yes, sad. The pathetic being he's turned her into.
To live for the will of another… A nightmare of a nightmare. A tangled mess of a life, with no way to escape it- unless it is the other's wish. No identity of her own. Everything she has or is belongs to him. Because she belongs to him. He made it that way.
She's become his idyllic little copy.
Maybe, if he allows her to remember enough, she can change him. Make him back into the person he used to be, for he did use to be a person. A whole person. Now, though…
Now he is two halves in the same body, unable to fit perfectly together anymore for experience and erosion.
Maybe his memories will heal themselves. Maybe. Not likely. Memories are hard things to heal, and it's only that much worse if the damage is self-inflicted.
So many possibilities. But will he let any of them work? Will he ever be able- be made- to see what he's done to her? Will he even accept that if he did finally realize everything? Would he allow the collapse of his idyllic little world?
Doubtful. All of it, doubtful. Too set in his ways, too arrogant to care. Too stiff-necked to look down and see the humble, the pleading, the weary, begging him to let her go. "That's her. That's who I remember. It has to be. She's in my memories. I swear it." Assertions that what he remembers is real. To himself? Or the world around him?
The old mantra, "time will tell." Time will indeed tell if either can rise above what's been done to them. If she can stop being his idyllic, perfect copy, and he can be made whole again. If they can ever be forgiven- by the world, by each other, by anyone they've hurt in their little dance. Time. Slipping, flowing, however it moves, moving forward.
What will it take to bring about the downfall of his idyllic little world? Time, we say, will tell. We'll watch for it. We'll pray for it. We'll plead for it.
Give us both of them, whole again.