Here we go! First chapter consists of the original conversation between Suzume and Kota. Nothing too exciting, but it does include some stuff that I abandoned or shelved in the OG fic.
1 : Gray Stars Watch Over What Remains
Suzume is not good at people, and she's even less good at talking to victims of crime and loss, for all her experience with it. Being able to empathize intimately with a feeling doesn't mean she's any good at being compassionate. Being kind .
She's never truly been kind, she doesn't think. It's simply not her nature.
But something.
Something takes hold of her then.
And she opens her mouth.
"Is it still all still gray?" she asks. Her voice hangs heavy in the cool night air. Stars watch them from high above, glittering and distant and cold. Maybe that's how she feels, when she's looking at everything, when she's drawing in fact, conclusion, from a distance on high. Where people aren't people and all there is is evidence.
Maybe in those moments she is a star, not a girl at all.
Kota stares at her, his nose scrunching up and his mouth twisting. "What are you talking about?" he demands. He glares at her from under the cap of his spiky hat. She doesn't feel like a star right then. She feels squishy and helpless and very much like a girl who's out of her depth.
She waves a hand at the place ar ound them. Trees, and cooking fires, and wood piles and clouds. Birds and his aunt's facility.
"The world. You lost your parents, is the world still gray ?"
Kota goes still for a second before he draws himself up in sudden fury and indignation.
"Stop talking in stupid riddles! What would you even know?"
"It's not a riddle," she says flatly. "It's the truth, isn't it? The world is gray without them."
For a second she's new again. On the cusp of Suzanna and Suzume. Lost and confused and her family is gone and her sister killed her and she has nothing-
Nothing, nothing, not even control of herself, not even her own body, not even her own voice . Everything is gone. Everyone she's ever known is gone, gone, gone . The gravity is crushing and she spends whole weeks trying to understand how she's even breathing.
"I know that everything is gray, dark, and muffled."
Suzume was lucky. For the time she spent suffocating under the weight of grief she had people taking care of her. Other people fed her, washed her, and carried her all around. Other people loved her and drew her from the pain and crushing loss into warmth and slow acceptance.
"And I know that one day you're going to look around and realize that there's a red flower sitting there. And in a few days you'll see there's green in the trees. Birds will sing. You'll see lightning in the sky and thunder will shake your bones. Maybe the gray comes back for a while. Maybe there's more gray days than not. The colors are gone, the sounds are dull, and everyone around you is a million miles away when they could be holding your hand."
She takes a breath. Looks at the stars. Thinks of the diamonds in her first mothers hands, held precious when Suzanna was not. Thinks of dew on spider webs and a knife in her ribs.
Kota's hands are shaking and he glares at her.
"But then you'll look up. The sky is blue, and the sun is warm. Nothing gold can stay, but neither can the gray."
Kota's breathing fast and hard.
"Shut up!" he shouts. Then he spins and goes sprinting into the darkness.
Suzume watches him go. In a fit of that same something, and probably madness, she picks up a chopping knife she was using and follows after the little boy.
Even if she is a star, he is but a child. Alone, in pain, and she knows well that night is dark and dangerous.
The scent of smoke is in the air.
No, she thinks, looking down at the knife that she knows quite well how to use. I am not kind at all.