Horizon
A Microfic by Sarehptar
Theme Song: Who is This Child? (Trans-Siberian Orchestra)

What is this life? There will be other lives.

When she looks at me, with eyes like that... It is the look, the confusion, in the blackness of her pupils. She does not know me, but what she sees is reflected on the surface of her eyes. Look! There, where the light stabs into her irises at just the right angle: she is seeing me like I am seeing her and I hate her and she is judging me! In her eyes I am a stranger, a man, a new face, a twisting grin. Like reading any scroll, I can tell her thoughts. Who are you? What are you doing here? Can I know your name, can I know you? Let me hear your voice just once before...

Because she surely knows, must know what is going to happen. As easily as I have read her she has read me. The dead can do that. We are still as statues, ha, stiller. Statues have more life than she and I, and each breath we take is taken together. She is keeping pace with me so that she will be ready when it stops. When everything stops. I want to hear her exhaling, want to hear it sharpen in expectation but she is like my own reflection, not a second too soon or late. I hate her and I am afraid because what if when it stops my exhaling is the silent one?

She is beautiful, but it is not in a way I would notice. I notice it now. Her skin is smooth, as nice as mine, and only Sasori's is nicer because it isn't really real. She is small, in the way that women are, thinner and more glass -easier to see into- in every way. She is young, but not the young that I pretend to be, because in the corners of her mouth I can see the barest of something that tells me she's not always happy. No one's always happy, I am. In the darkness of the room, she looks much smaller than she is, she is standing and she should reach my eyes but somehow, even with only a vase of flowers between us, she seems infantile, the size of one the roses she has so delicately arranged.

What is she worth? Nothing, what I am worth? There are million other women as glorious, as intricate as blown-glass as she is. But this one counts because she's looking at me and she knows and she's just a child really! I wish I had not come, but later I will revel in this moment, each moment like it that I have ever lived. Now I want to blind her eyes, stop them from seeing into my soul—I am a forbidden scroll and you know too much about them already. I hate her, because this tiny woman, bad woman, is reading me! What have you done? What do you love? Can I know your name, can I know you? Tell the truth to me just once before...

Her hair is blonde just like mine in that way that is natural but never looks it and its flawless and pale and is it glowing in this lightless catacomb? Her eyes, her eyes are as sharp as senbon and as inviting. Mine are blue and hers are as green as the ocean in comparison to the sky, as the waves are to the expanse. Here I am, Heaven, standing over her, Earth, impossibly out of her reach except that distant, always distant point were we blend together, where invincibility is hers as much as mine and Heaven and Human or Human and Heaven are just names for the shades on a vaster painting than both of us. I hate her!

Your name is... and you love... and you are here to... Our same-time breath is quickening, in in in, and I fear that she will make a move. Maybe she will scream, maybe she will run, maybe she will cross the distance and touch me with glass hands that know, maybe I will let her. If for one moment all the ocean and all the sky were to meet, would anything change? We aren't worth enough, she and I. One, two of thousands, two breathing statues who can not even force their limbs to move, two doomed souls among millions. I am a killer, she is a protector, but what's so different and what's so special and where are we both going if we're going anywhere?

She is every person I have ever met, every pair of eyes I have looked into, every soul that I have seen stripped bare and every heart I have heard beat in time with my own in the last precious seconds. She is everyone, each one of them, nothing special, not distinguishable from the hundreds that have come before her, will come after her. But in that one moment standing there behind the roses and seeing her and being seen there is an infinite knowledge between us, the secret intelligence of beloved siblings, or destined lovers or the desperate strangers that we are. I have seen the darkest depths of her and she of me and for one moment with our eyes locked together we are at the point where sky and waves are one and the same, the ever retreating point where Heaven and Earth and maybe even Hell are all one. Protector and Murderer and we are one for this one moment, breathing together, only a garden of thorns between us, and she is judging me and I am learning.

It is not either of us that breaks the hold, not one of our stone forms makes the first move, there is no first move made, but suddenly we both are in new places and she has judged and I am educated now and the moment has lasted too long. The taste of her gaze has turned bitter on my tongue like the gazes always do and I regret coming. The singular fluid jerk is in my hand and in my eyes and in my Chakra. The sky has been ripped from the sea by my approach; in a roil of clouds inside the blackness, I am gone from her. For the five seconds four seconds threesecondstwoseconds ONE! she may imagine I was never there at all, a dream, a nightmare, an... instantaneous explosion that shatters the silence I had there and here, and I am far enough away that I can see the blaze but the judgment cannot reach me.

Now it has passed, and the ocean is receding in my mind. I will stop caring soon, I will not hate her seeing me, I will not mourn what I have seen in her. Soon she will be only another number, another story, another soul I have seen, another breath I have taken. What does it matter? There will be others exactly like her, others as fragile, others as intelligent and inescapable. What's one soul worth, and what does it matter if she dies a little early? The world will not lose something because she is gone, there are millions waiting to take her place! I will not hold myself accountable for this, for this little death. I will not be responsible for her breath stopping—it would have stopped one day.

The darkness is warm around me, and the far reaches of her garden smell like blood and roses. Already I am forgetting all I have learned, forgetting the shade that waves and sky make when they meet. The path back into my own life where eyes are only eyes is winding dirty now before me, lit by an oily orange glow and the thin glassy shadows of thorns.

Your name is...
By my dreams tonight she will be only memory, less than memory, an artistic moment, and like her death no one will value this.
...and you are here to...
By tomorrow she will be to me what all my other victims are:
...and you love...
no one.

Could this one life really matter?

Author's Notes: I'm getting more and more abstract as time goes on, which isn't really like me... But this chapter is very a product of my current situation. I've been writing Cloaks like a mad woman, and I think this drabble got seriously influenced. The style of this piece just has Kharl written all over it... Which I guess is bad, but I can't bring myself to say that. I actually kind of like this piece. Maybe you don't—but I think because I know exactly the message I was trying to get across, the idea is just really appealing. In what way did you read this? I'm sorry about the crazy syntax, I got a little sick of the English language. Ha ha, no. I honestly wanted to cut all the commas and stuff because I thought it gave the writing a feverish pitch. Maybe I failed... Anyway, sorry I haven't updated in forever. Busy with school and trying to finish up my other fanfiction. Blah.

To Ione-girl: I argee with you totally. Deidara as I see him really seems to have two sides, and I want desperately to know what is inside. Kishimoto, bring him back into the storrryy nowwww! Anyway, thanks for reviewing, and I'm glad you got my meaning. What about this one, did you like it?
To Jazzy Uchiha: Yay, you understood it too... Many thanks for reviewing, and I hope you liked this chapter as well.
To Suiren Ningyo no Koori: I'm glad you still like the story even if we don't talk anymore. Thank you for reviewing, and I hope you liked this chapter too.
To .why hello.: Cute name:D I'm glad you like the story, and I'm really really glad you like my style of writing. It's been changing lately, but I'm hoping to stabilize things soon. Deidara's thoughts were exaggerated? Yeah, probably. I tend to project every tiny thing, so I probably just made the thoughts too out there. This chapter was pretty much all thought... It wasn't too exaggerated, was it? T.T I hope not. Anyway, thank you for reviewing!
To The Leviathan: Hee hee, I'm really glad you like them. I'm glad you liked the crack!fic... I was really bored that day, and those things made me laugh too. This chapter wasn't on the site list, but I am really going to try and start picking those ones soon... I've been dividing myself between two fics lately and I think the other one is sapping all my plot writing ability. T.T Anyway, thanks for reviewing!
To A.K.W: What a strange coincidence—one of my friends in Germany has the very same initials. Cool. You only watch the dub anime? Ouch, seriously. I hate the English voices. You really ought to look into getting your hands on the Japanese version, it's soooo much better, plus no editting! (Hates the censoring!) Anyway, I'm glad you chose to spoil yourself, because it means that I got a new reader. :D Thank you for reviewing.
To TatteredCrimson: Whoa,first time writing that name. My writing style is perfect? (Faints) No, no, you have us confused! I think your style is so much better. You know, the cadence? Your stories make me feel like things are happening (sad things and mysterious things usually but always real things) so don't you say you lack that. Still, I get so happy hearing you say you like my writing. As for the colors in the last chapter, you were like, dead on. If you've never heard the song Half Light, it's probably hard to understand, but I really see music in colors, and that song was, like Wind, one of those songs that just seems to bring out the wonder of just a few colors lost in monotone. I'm glad you liked the little things I threw in there, I was worried they might be too much... But most of all, I'm so glad that you understand my feelings about Deidara just by reading what I write. When I think of him, I almost never feel happy... It's just like looking at a monster who knows how terrible he is, and wants to be someone else but can't because of so many reasons. Blah. Anyway, what did you think of this one? Crazy or did you get it? (Why am I asking, I know you must have gotten it.)