straight line motion
karasu;haruka
[ twenty-nine: the sound of waves ]
a / n ;; I'm actually kindasorta fond of this drabble. And, I didn't use a single set of parentheses thankyouverymuch.
To prevent any confusion, this is La'cryma-verse Haruka, and this chapter may or may not contain some speculative ideas, depending on how you interpret this.
their story is the sort left on the cutting room floor.
Once upon a time there's a boy and a girl and a world that's theirs for the taking.
And even if it's shriveled up and dying under the glare of the magic circle project, it's got to count for something, right?
--
The first time they notice the ouroboros arc across the horizon they point and stare and stutter, and from that moment onward she knows her breaths are numbered.
The next time she sees it, it's a stolen, over-the-shoulder glimpse as she's being ushered underground; shut and locked away in a prison there's no key to.
But he's standing here beside her with their fingers intertwined so that she's not sure where he ends and she begins, an ouroboros of their very own, and in this moment it's almost easy to forget the screams and sobs of others or Miho's burned and broken eyes or her mother's corpse lying in a tangled heap somewhere on the surface.
"It'll be okay," he says.
She wants to believe him.
--
The days seem to stretch into eternity with no sun or stars overhead to govern the passing of time. Their bodies have grown so pale and skeletal that she's almost convinced that they're the ghosts and this is their hell and miles above their people are carrying on with their day-to-day lives, mourning them instead of the other way around; like the riddles from her nightmares. But then she remembers the explosions she thinks she hears sometimes which sound like the muffled crashing of waves or of a dimension falling apart.
She's half-convinced it's only a dream when the men come and take away Isami and Yuu.
The whispers of quantum surgery and alien weapon-machines are the very ones she tries to keep from her mind.
--
"I love you, and I've only just realized, and I thought I'd tell you, Yuu."
"It's Karasu."
--
This dimension is falling apart, and she knows it now; everyone does.
It's only a matter of time, they've been told, until the merging of La'cryma into Shangri-La, particle by particle until there's nothing left.
It scares her more than she could have imagined, and maybe that's why she agreed to be the observer--because she's terrified of there being a world without Ai; Isami; Miho; Lily; him.
--
"Haruka,"
"I don't mind."
He doesn't say the words that he means the most.
--
Once upon a time there's sleeping beauty and her knight in bloody armor, but this is no fairytale and some spells can't be broken with a kiss.