companion to
Clarity Scifiroots
Rating: ?? judge for yourself
Content: Cloud's POV this time, SI, implications of "blood-love", dark, rather depressing
Disclaimers apply
Notes: This has been one hell of a day - who'dve thought so? But I'm afraid it's gotten me shot straight back into depression ::laughs:: Oh joy, let's see who Kara fucks up this time, hmm? Excuse me, I'll drag my bitter ass off to the side and vanish for the night.
August 9, 2001
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"What will we do when we get to graduating...?
What then? Where to? What happens to us?"
"I have a solution. Don't do it."
"..."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
The blade was sharp, but not as sharp as I had grown accustomed
to. I thought about turning back to 'my' room - the one I shared with an older,
lazy man - to take out the broken shard of mirror... But I knew it wasn't
suitable any longer. It was so easy
to slice through the skin and bring blood to the surface with that shard. Almost too easy. The pain was too little and too short...
There had to be more pain than what I was getting from that shard! I... I deserved more!
I wonder how those arguments sound to you?
Do you think they are silly? But is it not true? How could - how can - I not deserve such punishment? Have you looked closely at me; seen
me; even known me at all?!
C'mon, look at me! Look at the freak with weird hair and disgusting
looks! See the fool boy so different from everyone else! Check over the one boy
in his class who did not make it into SOLDIER! See this pathetic wimp, too weak
to speak, too weak to act... See me for a moment and then just put me out of my
misery! Go farther than anyone has and complete the beating and kill me already!
Actually, I know you would... you would if I told you the
truth of my admiration for you. How can that feeling have changed to something
more?! How could it if I hardly know you?! You're just as far from my reach as
you are to anyone's - probably even further for me.
So why do I hope? Why must I feel hope? I want to kill
hope... I wish it would be cut out or ooze to the surface of my skin so that it
can be washed down the drain in a pink mixture of blood and water.
Just cut me out.. erase me from this huge picture where I don't fit in... This
is not where I belong. A star in the sky, I should be there... cold and
unmoving... dead.
Dear God, do you know how much that would mean to me? I
couldn't care less about there being an afterlife or not, or if you really do
not join the sky... I just don't care about that anymore... That promise... the
promise of eternal silence and sleep. Yes, that's it. That's what I crave to
have.
Damn survival skills, damn them because those skills are
what drag me through this hellish life. How I wish it would just end!
'And I don't want
the world to see me, 'cuz I don't think that they'd understand... when
everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am...'
Songs... song lyrics just running about
my head. Nothing else can make its way into my mind. It's only lyrics...
oh-so-pleasant lyrics... beautiful flow... But you must see them as
frightening... depressing? Dark? Probably...
The knife, I used it a number of times, and grit through
the pain, although in the back of my mind I know I continued to wish for the
mirror shard - it did a cleaner cut and slid quite deep... letting a pleasent river of blood flow.
...the darkness of sleep... the bittersweet tang of
blood...slicing pain... it was my world; my entire world...
==================
It finally came to "that day". The day I knew I just could not live an hour more. I made my
decision, and I would take one of the slowest and painful ways out... the
knife; even after all its use I couldn't learn to favor it, although the pain
was quite sweet.
There was one last thing I wanted to do, only one thing,
and I went to you for it. I never believed you would do a thing, even cast me a
look, but far in the back of my thoughts... there was a dim hope - so dim... It
wished for you to slide the knife from my hand and look in my eyes, asking to
stop... But why would you notice? Who would care to notice? I'm nothing at all
and not worth it!
Your door was closed, but you called me in so I entered
and locked the door behind me, out of habit. I was actually quite surprised
that you looked at me with acknowledgement. You knew me? How? I think I
stumbled out some words, I'm not even sure what. My
body was functioning on its own and I soon found
myself kneeling beside the bed, too weak to stand. What right did I have to
request this wish of you?
"What is it?"
Did you really want to know? How could you want to know?
I...
I had to have spoken for my face was upturned and I was
closing towards you and... you were...! You were,
too...! Still hesitant, I moved away, and it was you who brought me back,
holding my lips closer to yours. A kiss. My first
kiss... My first and last, I thought.
When we split apart again I couldn't take my eyes off
you, just too stunned - and so very scared. Your face - your beautiful pale,
silver-framed face - was stained with tears. W-why...?
Not for me, surely not for me! But then... why...? There were tears on my own
face, too; they must have been from all the pent-up emotions, just all that
pain that was barely concealed behind my cracking glass seal.
I waited in what felt like endless moments, wondering
idiotically if you would stop me - if you'd only stop me! So torn... so
completely torn, was I, between living and dying... between doing one thing or
the other... to fully die? or to walk the world as the
"living dead"?
"Don't..."
I was so shocked; that one word I'd been waiting for...
the one word might have meant nothing from anyone else. But
you... you cared. My God, you cared! Your green eyes still shined with
unshed tears and an inner pain, and this inner fear...
F-for me...? Could someone possibly care for me?!
That was enough. That was enough for my fingers to uncurl
and drop the knife, to crumble in on myself and just sob. My throat hurt, my
chest burned, my head ached, and I felt so sick... so sick of everything and
anything, but suddenly I could feel all that pain mingling with ideas of
possibilities. Possibilities of things that are
happier and more promising.
I'm not at all sure when your warmth closed over me, I
was hurting too much to notice that... that... embrace - something I had never
felt before. An embrace from a... caring friend... Could you ever learn to care
for me... as I care for you? To love me?
"Hush-a-by, don't you cry, go to sleep my little
baby, when you wake, you shall have, all the pretty little horses, blacks and
bays, dapples and grays, all the pretty little horses..."
What an old lullaby... an old song from days long past,
yet back far enough to a time that I was still young enough to be loved by
anyone and everyone - when anyone could accept me. God... your warm arms...
your voice... No one ever cared that much. When did you notice me? How? Why?
So many unanswered questions... and still those viscious thoughts... I didn't deserve you, I never will - I
deserve no happiness. I destroy everything, even myself. I'm too dark and
depressing, too ugly and over-confident... Nothing is right about me, how can
there ever be? But I can't turn this down - this one and only chance for a
glimpse of happiness.
Can you help me live? I... I don't know if I ever learned
how... Please... just hold me forever... only here, only here I feel safe...
~~~Owari~~~
Author's notes: This all right for a follow-up? I wanted more detail for Cloud, yet I'm not feeling up to pouring out such things at the moment, I'm just so exhausted and fucking depressed today that I can't deal with it... Thank you for reading.
1) in case you didn't know, lyrics playing around in Cloud's thoughts are from the Goo Goo Doll's "Iris". Kick-ass song.
2) "Iris" was my only backround music for this piece while I typed.
3) I guess it just takes the right person and right situation to get someone to stop. I can imagine the ideal set-ups, but they won't happen here - for me or imouto or friends. Lovely, isn't it?, to have everything so fictional and out of reach?
4) Depending on reactions for this, I may try and pull away from FF7 fiction for a while until I stop pushing myself into the characters. I've already messed with characters' minds and others' minds with my writing.