Disclaimer: Olih: Thanks! A Random Reader: Of course ^.^ Penny: Hahaha, I think Hikari X Jun is super cute, too : D Mitsy: Thanks! : D And I agree- almost anyone in that show I would date (Nekowaza's cuuute). Hm… what other anime do you watch, and who would you date from them?
Question: Are you buying the new pokemon game?
My Answer: Probably. I still want R/ S / E, though.
Characters: Cyrus X Cynthia. I know that I agreed to do a continuation of Chapter 29, but, looking back, I've realized that I've already written one- Chapter 64, Fatalistic, was the companion to that. Sorry for not realizing sooner ^^'
Summary: I think that this is my new favourite.
Heaven
'This is nothing,' cried she: 'I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing with joy.'- Emily Bronte, 'Wuthering Heights'
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"So this is it," Cyrus muses, inspecting the cloud-stuff beneath his feet and the dream-sky above his head (but there are flashes of the abyss before his eyes, flashes of the perpetual world of darkness that he had resided in for so very, very long before this).
"This is it," Cynthia agrees, smiling beatifically.
His eyes graze over her; over the white dress, the wings of light at her shoulders- why, she doesn't look a day over sixteen (unlike the last time he saw her, wearing a bodybag as a dress and with disjointed shoulders). Her hair is a crown atop her head, and her face is as radiant as the sun (and it's as if she never left, never saw a bad day in her life).
But her eyes are dead. Dead as a sky painted on a canvas. Dead as blue marbles.
(Dead as him.)
"Come on, Cyrus." She laughs, laughs innocently, and the sound slides like unbuttered toast against his eardrums. "Let's go."
"Go where?" he asks, deadpan.
"Anywhere!" Unlike her words, her voice doesn't fizz over with joy: instead it remains flat, monotonous. She stretches her arms out wide, as if to embrace the air, and gives a hiccupping laugh.
And somewhere, in a locked-up place deep in his unbeating heart, Cyrus thinks that he feels a pang.
(And he tries to remember what happened before all this, but it slides like a water pokemon from his grasp.)
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She brought a hurt starly to him when they were younger, tears rising up and spilling over her cheeks like liquid crystals.
"Help it," she begged.
He cupped it gently in his hands, examining, considering. Then, in one smooth motion, he snapped its neck.
"There," he said, handing it back. "I helped it."
Then he turned and walked away.
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"You've been dead for seven years," he says (to remind himself before he forgets again).
She stops swirling her leg in the pond of wishes long enough to smile her flat smile up at him (and it's like she's a painted mannequin; like all those girls she used to scorn and laugh at before). "Huh."
He blinks, and feels long-suppressed emotion boil beneath his skin. "That's all you have to say?"
She continues to smile, and shrugs one pristine shoulder (that he can still picture blood staining, if he squints). "Yes."
"Why?"
"Because," she hums, "that all happened before. This is what's happening now. You have to let go of the before, Cyrus."
He is silent for a moment. "And what if I don't?"
"You will," she assures him, and continues twirling her leg, the wishes darting like frightened water pokemon away from her foot (as if it's something to fear, as if she's about to lash out and kick them at any moment). "We all do, Cy."
(And he frowns, because death- the place he went to because he didn't want to feel anymore- is causing him to feel more emotion than he has in his entire life.)
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"I don't know why you're doing this," she yelled. "This- this Team Galactic, and your ideals-"
"A champion shouldn't be dwelling in the plans of a commander," he told her. "Leave it be."
"No!" Tears filled her eyes, just like that day all those years ago. "We used to be friends, Cyrus. I'm not going to let this go."
He looked out into the middle distance, unblinking. "Very well, then. I will tell you."
She wiped at her eyes, and waited.
"The human spirit will always be incomplete," he murmured, hands locked behind his back. "But even if my new world doesn't arise- even if I am foiled by you and that obnoxious young child- at least I will not go to heaven."
She gasped, stunned. "What?"
"Heaven would be the ultimate hell for me," he elaborated in the barest of whispers. Then he strode off, and left her standing on the slowly-crumbling cliff alone.
Maybe if he hadn't, she wouldn't have fallen off of it.
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The sun hangs at half-mast, as it always does (and yet there are no shadows, no patches of darkness); and the bird pokemon trill their soft tune, as they always do (and there's something melancholy about it, if he listens closely).
She smiles at him in her usual way, and takes his hand (but he can't feel it at all; it's just as much of an illusion as her smile is). "Isn't this nice, Cyrus?"
He grunts in a noncommittal way (because if he speaks, he fears his voice will tremble).
"There's no pain here," she sighs, leaning her silvery blonde head against his shoulder (which is something she would have never done before). "It's never night. You don't get tired. You don't feel hungry. You can't hurt yourself. You can think of a place, and it'll materialize right in front of you. You don't have to worry about anything-"
"You love the moon," he interjects, his voice rough.
She blinks. "Oh."
"You always get tired; even when we were students, you would always nap on the desk during school hours."
"Hm."
"You love snacking."
"Huh."
"You never hurt yourself anyways; it's always me that ends up bleeding."
She blinks again, making yet another absent noise.
"You adore travelling. You adore the labour of it."
"Cy-"
"You plan everything out so carefully, you never have the chance to be anxious."
His voice is rising now- rising so high that it becomes hoarse because of disuse- and she looks on impassively as he trembles and shakes. "There's no love here, either," he spits. "I am not able to remember what happened before. I can remember only snippets, and even those are fading."
Her eyes are lakes with no shadows, clear (and shallow in a way that they never were before). "This is your perfect world, Cyrus," she says. "This is what you have strived for. Why do you fear the heaven you have been searching for?"
"Because it is not supposed to hurt." The words are torn from his throat like sobs. "This place… this place tears the human spirit away. I worked to cleanse the human spirit. To take away strife, grief…not to hold it away from people. Not to make them forget, make them miss emotion."
She smiles her paper-cutout smile, and leans over to kiss him (and although he feels the porcelain touch of her lips on his, he feels no joy; only the grief of the knowledge that this thing is not Cynthia, not the one he wants to be kissing). "Cyrus," she sighs, and for a wrinkle in time he thinks he glimpses her there somewhere inside the corpse facing him now, "even if you die and go to heaven, you still die."
(And he gasps, because the heaven is smearing before his eyes before it's all one swirl of blue and silvery gold.)
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After learning of her death, he stood on top of the many waterfalls in the alternate dimension, the breezeless air hanging heavy around him. Then he stepped, and took a leap of faithlessness into infinity.
Because in order to see her again, the only place for him to go was up.
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Bathed in a cold sweat, his eyes flash open, and he finds himself on the rocky floor of girantia's world (and the darkness of the abyss is such sweet sadness to his eyes, it cracks his soul in two and pours all of the shadows into the drained-dry crannies).
He picks up a stone, and splits open the flesh above his heart just so he can feel himself bleeding.
(And he breaks his own heart as prays to Arceus and cries.)