Title: 018 - Beach
Author: schyra
Rating: ?
Pairings/Characters: Lucia, Haru
Warnings: -
Summary: He can still remember it clearly. That day.
Author's Note: -
--~~~-oOo-~~~--
018 - Beach
He can still remember it clearly. That day.
It remains clean, untouched. Like crystal in his mind's eye.
He can still remember it clearly. That day.
That day he disappeared.
"Otou-san! Let's go to the beach!"
Gale sighed, setting down his newspapers and running a hand through his hair. "Now?" he groaned. Haru bounced on the tips of his feet, looking up at his father expectantly. "Ne, ne! Ikkou yo!" the seven year old cried.
Lucia, lying with his head on his mother's lap on the Glory's sofa, was getting his ears cleaned. His brow furrowed. That constant chirpiness was annoying. "Urusei...," he muttered. Haru had sharp hearing. The other boy turned to look at him, pouting. "But Lucia wants to go too!"
"Shut. Up," the blonde boy grumbled. "You're so noisy."
"Does it have to be the beach?" Gale moaned. "Why the beach? Why now?"
Haru returned his attention back to his father and stomped his foot adamantly. "Why not now?" he whined. The young boy didn't wait for his father to answer, instead directing a question at King, as he exited the kitchen with a cup of coffee in his hand.
"King-jii will take me, right? Right?"
The blonde man looked into those hopeful, wide eyes filled with hope, and almost declared himself defeated. Almost. "No," he said. Haru looked crestfallen. "But why nooot~?" he whined again.
"Haru," Cattleya intervened. "We can go tomorrow. Nobody but you wants to go right now."
Sakura placed a warm hand on her son's shoulder. "That's right, Haru. Wait until tomorrow, okay?" she smiled.
Haru bit his lip, stubborn as always. "This sucks," he muttered, batting her hand away and fleeing to his room. The door slammed shut. "Haru!" Gale called out after him. "What's gotten into him?" his mother wondered.
"Che," Lucia opened his eyes. "He's such a brat."
"You talk like you're not still seven," King quipped back.
It was just before dinner time, and Haru still hadn't come out of his room. It was strange for him to sulk for such a long time. In fact, the whole episode earlier was strange. Haru seldom actually demanded anything, much less become so upset about a mere trip to the beach.
Lucia knocked twice in quick succession on his door.
"Oiii," he called. "Dinner, stupid."
Nobody answered, so Lucia knocked again. "Oi."
Lucia's brow twitched, once again met with silence. "Kora! Haru! Open the door, you immature baby!" he yelled, pounding his fist against the door. Again, nobody answered. Lucia placed his hand on the knob and attempted to force the door open in frustration. He blinked in surprise when it turned, and the door easily gave way.
".....Haru?"
The room was empty.
He remembers how they had searched frantically. A storm had started up all of a sudden, and night had fallen, as if trying to aggravate their worry. Haru was missing. They were looking for him.
Where had he gone?
Gale pounded a fist against the bark of a sturdy tree, cold sheets of rain lashing at his skin. "HAAAAAAAAARUUUUUU!!" he called out into the dark. The winds howled in answer to him, and Gale hung his head, shoulders shaking. Calling out into the night once again, Gale set off, probing deeper into the woods. He watched him go, thinking hard.
Where would he go?
Lucia swung his head north.
'Of course', he thought. 'The beach.'
He found him standing on the edge of the water, the rain and wind whipping his hair all over the place. He looked cold, and sodden and wet. Lucia stopped where he was, small frame quivering with rage. That idiot. That IDIOT. Didn't he know how worried they were? Running about in the rain, the cold, the wet, looking all over, tearing up everything, searching...
That idiot.
"HAAARUUU!!" he screamed, and started forward. He wanted to beat him, to just punch the lights out of that kid, to pound the cold, seething wet into his head. That stupid, stupid brat. Wandering off like that. He was insane!
At the edge of his vision, something caught his eye. Lucia looked up and out, into the distance. Something was coming, ominous, grey and dark. Rushing.. rushing towards the shore.
That was the start of that strange love affair.
Love.
A boy and the ocean.
Strange.
Lucia could never figure it out. The way Haru would stare out sometimes, looking into the sky or out over the vast expanse of the sea, and just look. Like he was searching. Like he was waiting for something. Lucia would think of Haru as more of a weirdo than ever after that time. Lucia had asked once. Why he always seemed so normal, and okay, up until the point when he looked out at the ocean. What was it? He asked. Haru had smiled at him, sadly, and said,"It's quite like you." He always had an inkling of it. That Haru was searching for something that Lucia was too young, or not-in-the-know enough to understand.
But the sea was rushing up, cold waves and water, heading towards him. The full moon was out. The tide was rising. And a huge wall of water was heading towards him, as Haru stood there on the beach.
Lucia opened his mouth to scream, but he was too late.
In the next second, the wave hit.
It swirled, rushing about his feet, the water swallowing him up and up and up... and in that way he was gone.
Lucia screamed in frustration.
If he ever found the bastard, he would wish he was dead.
Of course, Haru walked right back out of it. He had stumbled, engulfed in the waves, and for a moment Lucia had feared that the boy had drowned. That the water had swallowed him up, and that Haru had become simply, irreversibly, gone. But Haru had walked right back out of the water, and turned to face him as Lucia ran forward, suddenly finding that he could move.
Lucia tackled him, pushed him to the ground, and screamed in his face. Something about being stupid, and an idiot, and God, didn't he know how worried they were? And Haru had stared back at him with confused, glazed eyes, as if he himself didn't know what was going on, or indeed, that he had done anything wrong.
Like he'd been under some spell, and he'd just woken up.
Lucia didn't notice it then, and he snaps at himself for it. Again, every time, the same questions chased themselves round and round in his head. Why hadn't he seen it then? Why hadn't he noticed? The things that were being woven away.
Haru, and so much of his time...
Someone had started working. Things had been set in place, and someone, something had begun to take hold. It had placed its claws around the silver-haired boy, and started to squeeze.
When Haru started to periodically "go missing", they asked questions.
Of course they did.
Haru was disappearing. Sometimes for hours at a time.
He was acting strange. They needed to know.
Sakura tried cajoling, the gentle approach, even a stern one. Cattleya tried guilt trips, whereas Lucia's own mother tried asking, plain and simple, just what it was. King asked questions, sometimes very hard ones. Gale tore out his hair, and Lucia ended up punching him more than once.
They never got any answers.
He found it in a book one day, by accident, by chance.
He'd found the book in the school library, while walking through the 'Magic' section, and his eyes had flicked, almost imperceptibly, onto the page. One sentence had caught his eye. 'Vanishing magic.' Curious, he'd asked Sieg (the resident geek) to explain. The blue-haired boy had suddenly turned serious, reaching out a hand and firmly closing the book that Lucia showed him.
Never, he had said. Ask about this spell.
"Why?" Lucia asked.
The other waited, trying to find the words.
"Because," Sieg replied. "It's evil. It's a forbidden spell, and one of the worst. Its effects are terrible. The slow, quiet wearing away of the self... Whosoever casts it can target anybody, and that person will never be able to tell. Even if the victim were to find out what was actually happening, to him, he could never say. He's bound, restricted. He cannot speak of it. The spell has an element of silence to it. It's silent, but deadly."
Sieg frowned.
"It's meant to completely erase its target, without anybody ever coming to know of it."
There was a pause.
Lucia experienced a feeling of foreboding that he couldn't explain.
The room had been empty.
If he ever found the bastard, he would wish he was dead.
"I would like," Haru says to him one day, out of the blue. "To try disappearing."
Lucia looks up from his breakfast, completely perplexed. That was unexpected. "What?" he blurts out. "Haru, that's stupid." He expected a heated comeback, an angry, hurt denial. He did not know what to do when Haru looked at him with a blank, unfilled gaze. It lingered for a moment, but was gone.
Like he had just been under a spell.
Haru smiled at him, and took another mouthful of cereal.
Lucia just stared at him, perturbed.
Someone was to blame. Someone had to be. He wouldn't just sit back and do nothing. Someone had taken him, used that spell and taken him, grabbed hold and taken him away. Haru had been taken. His life had been tapped into, and slowly, being leached away. He would end up stolen.
Lucia would never forgive them.
If he ever found the bastard, he would wish he was dead.
Lucia wouldn't let him fade.
Lucia would get Haru back no matter what.
It wasn't until much later that Haru actually did it.
When Lucia found out, he was surprised, though he shouldn't have been. It was the sea. The ocean. Haru had just upped and walked into it, and this time he hadn't walked back. The ocean had finally claimed him. Lucia sat there and listened to the steady beating of his heart, as it grew louder.
And louder.
Ba dum.
Ba dum.
Ba dum.
Too late.
Lucia screamed in frustration.
The room had been empty.
If he ever found the bastard, he would wish he was dead.
Lucia still hates himself for that day.
He questions himself.
He wants- needs- to know why.
Why? He asks. Why? He screams. Why you?
But no matter how many times he stares into the ocean, hoping desperately for an answer, Haru would never give him one.
- - -
END.
