La mer allée

[TBX] Bindings (Subaru)

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:37:50 GMT

Title: Bindings
Fandom: TB/X
Characters/Pairings: Subaru
Length: 112 words
Notes: done for a_white_rain

Subaru's breath is short and gasping. He can hardly move. He doesn't want to move. There's blood everywhere. The woman's body hangs from the lustre with red ribbons, head down, hair falling limply. Her eyes are blank and green.

Subaru's hands are searing cold, his arms are loose, dangling lamely. He could do- he can't. He clings himself tightly and falls to his knee.

Red ribbons, strangling her, spreading her. Like a spider's web. A cat's cradle. Almost pretty.

Dead, bound, tightly held, and he-

She's dead. She's dead. His fault, as much as anyone is to blame, but he-

Twin strings of self-loathing and yearning threaten to throttle him.

-envies her.

[HP] Wild flowers (Neville, OC, Augusta)

Thu, 01 May 2008 18:39:49 GMT

Title: Wild flowers (Root Cutting Remix)
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairings: Neville, Augusta, OC
Summary: Flowers bloom, and children grow up.
Length: 1024 words
Notes: Remix of Summer Roses by msmoocow. Much love to redcandle17 for the emergency beta work ♥

Sow

The summer he was eight years old, Neville found the book. It was a very good book, about a garden and children and a wonderful secret, and he fell in love with it. It wasn't a very easy book to read though, and he had to read slowly, sometimes aloud, to help himself make sense of the words. Another voice would have been even better. A woman's voice, warm, and kind, and patient like a mother.

Root

"This is Anne Edward," his grandma said, "She'll be taking care of you while I visit your Great-Uncle Algernon for a while."

She was a tall woman, smiling kindly. Neville barely got a look at her face while shaking her hand before running away from the kitchen. In his wake, a flower pot crashed down on the floor, again. These things always happened to him.

He stammered an apology, but even as he walked away, he was able to hear the hushed words exchanged between his grandmother and the woman.

"We fear that he might be…"

"A Squib?"

It wasn't a word that he heard said, usually. It was always a word they whispered around him, but he knew what it meant. He ran up the stairs and laid down on his bed and closed his eyes. He imagined that he was in the secret garden, and it was blooming beautifully.

That evening he learned Anne Edward hadn't stayed home to take care of him, after all. The visit to Great-Uncle had been put off. He apologised to his grandmother, again. "No matter," she said. He knew it did, though.

Bud

She came back later, Anne Edward did. Except Anne Edward wasn't her name really. Her name was Antonia, it was only that everyone called her Anne. Only her mother, before she had died, and Neville called her by her true name. It was a secret name that nobody else but him knew.

They played in the garden. He was clumsy and shy at first, but eventually she won him over. She was always so patient and kind.

Neville could forget a little about it, there. He could stop worrying about not being magical and forget his fear of Great Uncle Algernon.

He told her about it and she said not to worry.

Let's read a book, she said.

They read the book in the garden, sun warm, the leaves whispering and the petals dancing around them. At least, that was how Neville remembered it.

Blossom

Sometimes they'd walked outside the house to admire the wildflowers. They were beautiful, as well. Even when not cared for properly for, even unhelped, they were resilient and strong, Antonia said. They grew stubbornly, and blossomed by themselves. All in due time, she commented, like how the garden in the book had survived in its wilderness.

"But isn't it better when it's properly cared for?" Neville said.

Antonia sighted. "It's a different kind of beauty."

"I'd like to…" Neville said, and stopped himself, blushing.

"Yes?"

"I'd like to take care of a garden."

Antonia took his hand and held it. "Yes."

Flower

"The garden has been beautiful, lately," Grandmother observed.

It was true. The flowers were more beautiful than they had ever been, the hydrangeas blooming like never before, and the summer roses growing to unprecedented size.

"It has, hasn't it?" Neville said, beaming, raising his head from where he was playing.

Grandmother arched an eyebrow at him.

"It's all thanks to Antonia."

"Ah," Grandmother said, in a tone that wasn't forthcoming to anymore discussion, so Neville bowed his head and said nothing else.

Later Antonia told him, "It's not thanks to me, you know."

Neville looked up, surprised. "What do you mean?"

"It's not thanks to me that the garden is so beautiful. I don't have that kind of magic."

"Yes, it is! It's never been this beautiful! It can't have happened all by itself."

She smiled. "Maybe someone helped it along."

Neville hesitated. "But not you?"

"No, that wasn't me."

"Then who…?"

"What do you think," she said, gently.

Neville bit his lips. "Maybe Grandmother hired someone…"

"Someone you didn't even ever see?"

Neville looked down. "You think it was me."

"You said you'd like to take of a garden." As if it was that simple.

"Does that mean I have magic?" He said very, very faintly.

She poked his chin up, so he'd look at her. "Neville, how do you think you can see and talk to me, when nobody else can?"

His eyes started stinging, and he swallowed. "Grandmother said you w-were just an im-imaginary f-friend."

"Do you think I'm not real ?"

"No," he whispered.

Antonia smiled. "You called me with your magic. Like you made the garden grow more beautiful."

Withering

Antonia left at the end of summer. She said he didn't need her anymore. Even though she wanted to, she couldn't stay, and she missed her little brothers, too.

Shortly after, Great Uncle Algernon came visiting, dropped him from a window, and Neville bounced up. He was finally magical, to the relief of his Grandmother and the rest of the family.

He continued taking care of the garden, which grew even more beautiful every year, and he kept the book, rereading it each summer.

It was many years later that he dared to look her up in the archives and finally found her: Antonia Edward, a grand aunt of Anne Edward, who had had two little brothers. They had been killed, the three of them, during Grindelwald's war.

He found the memorial where they were buried and planted wildflowers around it. He visited it every summer and watched them bloom.

Seed

After the war, he applied for a teaching position at Hogwarts. At the time he was only thinking of the need to rebuild, but he was surprised to find out how much he liked taking care of children. They were rough, shy, wild, sometimes violent, or petty, or kind, or bright. Always colourful. They grew nevertheless. They always did, given the chance. Only a little bit of patience and gentleness helped them growing straighter, taller, closer to the sun.

[ASOIAF] Motherly Advice (Cersei/Sansa)

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 12:19:42 GMT

Title: Motherly Advice
Fandom: ASOIAF
Characters/Pairing: Cersei/Sansa
Warnings: Graphic sex, non con
Lenght: 475 words
Summary: It was only proper, really, she was the closest thing the girl had to a mother here, so she should be the one giving her advice before her bedding.
Notes: Done for redcandle17 for the notafanficcomm's smut exchange (original post here, under flock).

It will be a shame. Giving the Stark girl to her ugly brother. Especially after having been promised to her Joffrey.

Poor thing. That will teach her. She never did listen when Cersei had explained to her what a woman’s lot was.

Yet, it was a shame. For Tyrion to get such a prize. A young, pretty girl like her for an ugly dwarf. That was unfair.

Cersei could think of a way to spoil it for him. It was only proper, really, she was the closest thing the girl had to a mother here, so she should be the one giving her advice before her bedding.

She had Sansa led to her chambers.

The girl looked up at her from behind lowered lids, full of pretended innocence. Cersei touched her chin up.

“You’re a maid flowered. There are thing you must know.”

“Your Grace?” Sansa said.

Cersei smiled at her.

When Cersei told her to strip naked, she flushed but didn’t dare to protest. She looked a little bit silly, so red and pink standing naked in the cold room. She was pretty enough, she guessed, but without grace.

She voiced a delicious muffled sound when Cersei pinched her breast.

“You’ll have to be ready, for when a man will do that to you.”

The girl tensed underneath Cersei’s hands. “Joffrey-”

“Oh, no. Not Joffrey. You didn’t think you were still good enough for my son, you little treacherous slut.”

Sansa shivered. Cersei removed her hand, looking at the red marks her fingers had left on her skin.

“Look what you’ve made me do.” She paused. “It will be very much the same with you Lord Husband – whoever that will be. You may anger him, and you’ll always have to pay the price. Do you understand?”

The girl nodded shyly.

“Good. Now onto the good part.” Her hands reached once more to the naked girl. “Let me show you how to use your cunt.”

It took a goddamned time before rubbing the nub above her slit did anything to wet her properly, but by that time Sansa was breathing pleasantly fast and making slight motion with her hips along Cersei’s movements. Cersei slipped a finger inside her cunt, then, not caring to be gentle.

“Oh,” Sansa said. Her lips very round and very red.

“Of course,” Cersei said pleasantly. “You’ll have to imagine something bigger when it’ll be with you husband.” And slipped another finger.

The girl gasped, wavering, so Cersei used her other hand to push her onto the bed.

Later on, she had Sansa pleasure her, using her pretty mouth for more interesting things than her inane blather of courtesies.

After she had the girl taken back to her room, Cersei fell asleep pondering half-hatched plans to prevent her wedding to Tyrion. It would be a real shame to leave her for that ugly dwarf.

[Atla] Psyche's Contemplation (Azula/Zuko)

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:32:37 GMT

Title: Contemplation of Psyche
Fandom: Avatar
Characters/Pairings: mild Azula/Zuko
Length: 510 words
Warnings: Candle play, just your average mindfuckery
Summary: When she had been a little girl, she had used to dream of what having the perfect big brother would be.
Notes: Many thanks to cyrulean for her beta work.

He was too soft. Lying on the bed, face entwined by the wavering lights and shadows of candlelight, he was softer than ever. A study in chiaroscuro.

He was supposed to be harsh, to be strong, to be made of obsidian-sharp edges and blazing lightning. Like her. Like their father.

She bent over him, and the shadows merged even more, twisting lines on his scar like a dual mask. He looked unwhole, confused and needy.

When she had been a little girl, she had used to dream of what having the perfect big brother would be. It had been silly, of course. Much better for her to have a foolish brother, so as to shine the better in the eyes of their father and one day inherit the throne.

Yet she had dreamed.

She laid one index over his pouting low lip. Full and soft. Fire wasn’t supposed to be soft. It was supposed to burn, to scorch, to blacken, to devour, to melt and forge; to remake old things into new things, soft things into steel.

She smiled.

One drop of wax flowed down from the candle and stroked his collarbone. He woke up with a start, eyelids fluttering out of sleep.

“Azula…?”

She pressed her finger tighter to his lips. “Shush.”

He looked up at her obediently. “I should have been the elder brother and you the little sister,” she said.

He started to protest but she tilted her hands just slightly, so that more wax fell down on his skin, and the protest got lost in the following gasp.

She wanted him stripped; she wanted him cut and sliced open, up to the barren bones and burnt stark. She wanted to see if there were hard things hidden in that softness of his.

She joined two fingers, as if to call her blue fire, and set them on the crack of his collarbone, watched him swallow; let her fingers trail slowly, slowly over the length of his breastbone. Where her finger led, she let the wax follow, eliciting more intake of breath from him.

“Azula!” Anger was ever his smokescreen, to hide within its confounding curls and twirls.

Her hand had reached his stomach, and the wax pooled in the belly button.

“Zuko!” She mocked in mirroring tone.

“Stop it.”

She arched her eyebrow at him. “Why?”

He flushed. Too soft, too soft; and the skin under her fingers so warm.

“Because,” he countered.

“I was wondering, big brother,” she moved closer to him, whispered to his ear, “if there was anything hard in you.”

He roared and pushed her, but she evaded easily, flowing out of his range with a laugh. The candle fell, forgotten, onto the cold tiles.

“You’re such a fool, Zuzu.” She smirked at him.

He stood, naked and breathless with rage, ever so pliable to her every plays. Still soft, even when furiously heated.

She turned and walked away. There was only so much that even the best smith can do if the material was unworthy.

Still. It was fun to try.

[TB/X] Sugar

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:29:15 GMT

Title: Sugar
Fandom: TB/X
Characters/Pairings: Hokuto, Karen
Length: 120 words
Notes: Gift for cyrulean

She took her tea sweet. She would add loads and loads of sugar, and sometimes milk and honey too. Seishirou liked to tease her about it. Sugar with tea, he called it.

She hated the bitter taste of traditionnal Japanese tea which her grandma prepared. Subaru would drink it, of course, but she’d never succeeded in getting him to admit whether he liked it or not.

“What news of Subaru-kun?” Karen asked gently, after she’d finished mixing sugar in hot water.

Hokuto looked up and smiled mechanicaly. “Nothing yet, but I’m close, I can feel it.”

Karen nodded slightly, sympathy in her eyes.

Hokuto brought the cup to her lips. It was funny, really. So much sugar, and it still tasted of tears.

[TB/X] Kingdom of Ice, Season of Fire 1/?

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:42:52 GMT

Title: Kingdom of Ice, Season of Fire 1/?
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon / Card Captor Sakura
Characters/Pairings: MeilingxHokuto, Subaru (so far)
Length: ~2000 words
Summary: Hokuto lost her brother when she was a little girl and wants to find him. She finds Meiling who wanted to lose herself. Meiling finds Subaru. Subaru didn't want to be found.

It had been a very hot day, and it was a very hot night in Tokyo. Full of howling alarms and abrupt motor roar. Somewhere down the street of their hotel, bikes were racing.

The two girls laid sprawled over the bed sheets, legs and arms tangled, short and long hair sticky with sweat all over their bodies. The heat of the atmosphere ensnared them in a concrete web.

“I give up,” the one with long hair said. “It’s too damn hot to have proper sex.”

The other girl chuckled. “You didn’t say it was too hot to run earlier.”

The first one grimaced. “Don’t remind me, it was hell. But I was properly motivated by the men in uniforms right behind me.”

The girl with the short hair sat up and mused. “Does that mean I should wear a pretty policeman suit to seduce you?”

“Please don’t. Besides, you already did that when you came to my rescue.” She grinned. “I love the way you used your high heels to high kick, stylish, that.”

“Hear, hear… I’m a girl who knows all the proper uses of a fashion accessory.” She lit up a cigarette. “What had you done to piss them off, anyway?”

“Shoplifting?” Said the long-haired girl hopefully.

“The truth, Meiling.”

The girl named Meiling sighed. “My family wants to get me back.”

“Why did you run away?” The short-haired girl tilted her head, an expression of appraisal on her face.

“Couldn’t stand to go back to Hong- Kong, and couldn’t stand to stay … with my family in Japan. They don’t really want me back, you know, just what I represent. Even if I’m a failure of everything they always wanted me to be, they can’t not let go of the appearance.”

“Oh, one of those families.”

“Exactly.” She said trying to not sound bitter. “I thought Tokyo would be a good city as any to disappear in. Looks like I was wrong.”

Another bike passed under their window, throbbing like one giant bug.

“I waited until I was eighteen to go. I’m from one of those families as well.” The short-haired girl said. Looking toward the window, her tone wistful. “Always wanted to go to Tokyo. It’s been six months now.”

“Where were you from?” Meiling asked, putting her head over an elbow and raising one hand to caress the curve of the other girl’s back.

“Kyoto. Maybe I should’ve gone earlier. God knows I went into enough fights with my grandmother to justify running away a thousand times over. But I couldn’t do that to her.”

“You’re from Kyoto?” Meiling asked, surprised. “I always heard Kyoto girls were supposed to be demure and perfectly polite.”

Teasing back. “I heard the same about Chinese girls”

“Oh no. Not about Hong- Kong girls. We’re all tyrannical dragons.”

“My grandmother’s like that too.” A snort. “It’s always been the men who were the demure and polite ones in my family.”

“Why Tokyo? Why did you always want to go to Tokyo?”

The Japanese girl looked back at her then, a small sad smile on her usual mischievous features.

“I used to have a brother. A twin brother. He came to Tokyo when we were eight years old. One day, my grandmother told him to wait in a garden and he disappeared. We never found him. All the resources of my clan, all the hope that they had put in him, and we never found even one clue. Eventually my family decided to declare him dead. But I could never accept that. I think I had the hope that once I came to Tokyo I would miraculously meet him. Pretty foolish of me, no? Eight year old children who disappear are not usually found anywhere but buried underground.”

A pause, and Meiling answered, sincerely. “I don’t think so, Hokuto. If you were his twin, you probably had a special link to him. If he were dead you’d know it.”

“Maybe. But then he could be anywhere. Why Tokyo?” She shrugged and let herself flop down on the bed.

The long-haired girl crawled over her, removed delicately the cigarette from her mouth and kissed her lips.

“It’s a good place as any to find people. Look at us.” She said. Then kissed her more.

Hokuto answered her kiss gladly; and eventually changed Meiling’s mind about it being too hot to make love.

They had sex and then fell asleep still entwined. The night stretched over there, and enfolded them into gentle darkness.

* * *

It was four hours later and nearly dawn when Meiling came down to the Combini for breakfast shopping and she saw the silhouette standing in front of the stark lights of the drink machine, all unbroken grace and elegant lines.

“Hokuto!” She called from the other side of the road and she ran across the street, wondering why the girl had left their room.

It was only once she had reached the other sidewalk that, meeting the person’s eyes, she realized her mistake. This one was taller than the girl, the clothes too simple and plain except for the bright red gloves; and the way they fitted was wrong for the body she had become acquainted with earlier that day. And the eyes, deep green instead of brown, as well as empty of any of the spirited humour Hokuto was always full of.

The man who looked like Hokuto looked at her with a silent pensiveness that chilled her, his face perfectly calm and still. “I am sorry, I’m not Hokuto.”

Meiling thought, so that’s what she meant about the men in her family being the polite and demure ones.

He replaced the cold soda he was holding on the top of the machine and it left a trail of wetness dripping slowly downward. It was only then that she noticed the red on his hands wasn’t gloves after all.

She didn’t wait to see what he would do. She had been properly trained in martial arts, and she knew how to recognize a threat before it hit her. She let herself drop onto the ground to dodge and hit him with a low kick, and was rewarded by hearing him taking a sharp breath and hesitating for an instant. She straightened up, starting to run at the same time, hoping it would provide her with enough time to…

The piece of paper landed a few feet in front of her. The inverted pentagram on it shone briefly red before the Ofuda consumed itself in thick smoke; turning around she realized she was surrounded by four others paper-strips. Trapped.

Magic. Damnit! Once more she could only curse her own lack of any spiritual gift, tightening her fists as she looked toward her opponent. But then again she had been raised in a family where she was one of the only child not able to use spells and invocations to help herself, and she had never given up on a fight for that much.

The young man, so similar to Hokuto, was walking toward her, taking his time.

Onmyoujitsu wasn’t much different from the Taoist brand of sorcery she was most used to opposing. If she could make him loose concentration, she might be able to loosen the spell.

“I know your sister. She’s looking for you,” she aimed. “Don’t you care that she’s missed you?”

Something did flash through his expression though he didn’t slow down.

“Her name is Hokuto, don’t you remember her? She is your twin sister. She came to Tokyo to find you!”

He looked genuinely surprised. “Why?”

How could he not understand?

“Because she’s your sister! Because she loves you!”

He shook his head. “She’s better off without me,” he said gently. And joined his hands together in a prayer formation.

Now!

She lunged to escape, sure that this was the moment when the spell was at its weakest. Racing breathlessly, she overstepped the perimeters of the pentacle. Free!

Running without looking back, she felt something soft falling on her face, then another on her arms, and a third one on her brow. It came with a sickeningly sweet smell of flowers barely covering the tang of blood.

What the hell… ? She slowed down and realized the world had turned to pink. In the distance a massive cherry tree was crowning the new landscape.

She bolted around in time to see the man reach her. Realization chilled her, informed from many boring hours spent studying magical folklore. “You are…”

Then the world turned from pink to darkness.

* * *

There are two children in a garden. One of them still wears ceremonial white and is quiet and still under the shadow of the house and trees. The other wears yellow, gay and dancing colours as she moves around the first child.

They look very much the same, and yet very different.

The girl child tries to think of something to stimulate her brother’s interest. He looks so tired those days, so remote from the fatigue of learning to deal with ghosts and curses. She hates to see him taken away like that. She wants to keep him with her.

“Look, Subaru,” she says, holding the book to him. “I found this in the cellar.”

He looks up to her, green eyes wide with the readiness to be awed.

“What is it?”

“Fairy book story. Want me to read one to you?” She asks him enthusiastically.

He smiles back sweetly. “Of course, Hokuto-chan.”

She flips through the book’s pages, trying to find a fitting tale. She doesn’t want to read one of the tragic bittersweet stories. Eventually her eyes fall on a snow-layered illustration and her expression brightens.

“Perfect! I’ll tell you this one. See it’s about two children, just like us. They were raised together, although they weren’t brother and sister, but they had an old grandmother just like us. I bet she looks exactly like Obaa-chan. Anyway, they loved each other a great deal, and they used to play in a garden like this one. But one day, a cold wind went through and it put something in the boy’s eye and in his heart.”

“What was it?”

The girl spares a smug glance to the round eyes of her brother. There he is, hanging at every word she says.

“Fragments of a mirror. A wicked magical mirror that distorted everything it reflected to make it look dead, ugly, and twisted. Because of it the boy changed a became cold and mean tempered.”

“That’s horrible!” The boy says. “Couldn’t they exorcise him?”

“Yes, well, they didn’t realize what had happened. Time passed, and Kay – that’s the little boy – was becoming more and more cold and withdrawn from Gerda – the little girl. One day, as winter had settled, the Snow Queen came and took him with her.”

“The Snow Queen?”

“She was an evil witch who reigned all over the winter land. Her heart was as cold as the eternal snows, though she was a most beautiful and aloof woman.”

A wind passes over the garden, clouding the landscape. The voice of the little girl still storytelling growing softly fainter.

The scene changes to another garden where the young boy stands alone. Suddenly he starts to run up to a tall cherry tree. Under the branches a beautiful and aloof woman watches his coming and smiles.

“Subaru, no!” Hokuto calls, watching from outside the dream. “Don’t go to her, don’t go to the Snow Queen.”

But the boy doesn’t hear her and reaches for the woman anyway. The red lips smile and a pale hand caresses his cheek.

“Subaru…” Hokuto desperately cries “Don’t go with her, don’t leave me.”

The Snow Queen takes the child’s hand in her cold one and departs with him. They slowly disappear inside an icy storm.

“Subaru…” Hokuto said one last time, and then woke up.

The hotel room had cooled at last in the final hours of the night, so she had no good reason for being damp with sweat. She shuddered while sitting up. She always hated having that dream.

A faded dawn was lightening the room, revealing Meiling’s absence. She wondered where the other girl had gone. Maybe she’d fled away? Hokuto hoped not. She was barely seventeen, no matter how headstrong and resourceful she was, and surviving in Tokyo while an old, wealthy family was searching for you was not the easiest thing. She felt a great deal of kinship with the Chinese girl – not to mention a great deal of lust – and she would have liked to spend more time with her.

Standing up, she saw a note where a few hastily scribbled words informed her that Meiling would be back in a few minutes with coffee and croissants for the both of them. Hokuto smiled with relieved amusements, and picked up her clothes from where they had come undone scattered across the floor.

Half an hour later, she was clean, dressed up, and pampered, but Meiling had still not gone back.

Hokuto wasn’t renowned for her patience. She crushed down the cigarette she was nervously smoking in a flowerpot and ran down the stairs of the hotel.

It didn’t take her long to find the crumpled remains of a few dark spells. Nor to identify the mark left behind.

The day had already warmed up with the sunrise, and yet she felt very cold.

The Sakurazukamori never let go of its prey, she had learned.

Alone in the deserted street, Hokuto laughed mirthlessly.

She was not one to surrender in the face of a superior foe.

After all, willing or not, and whether or not her pathetic spiritual powers were up to it, she was the Head of the Sumeragi clan. And dealing with dark sorcerers like the Sakura Assassin were part of her job description. Surely, her grandmother would be happy to see her take an interest to it.

Grinning fiercely, she lit up a cigarette and set herself to work.

-TBC-

[TB/X one shot] It's springtime again

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:29:17 GMT

Title: It's springtime again
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon / X
Length: 875 words
Summary: Subaru's musing as he goes home, post '99.
Notes : halcyon_libra owns my soul for betaing it. She rocks. And you can blame both tamchronin and rhole for me writing it. As I said, I believe in hope. For the Going Home Challenge at togakushishrine.

"Soldiers live, and wonder why", Glen Cook, Soldiers live

You would think that, after a while, he’d get weary of the Sakura blossoms’ beauty. That year after year and murder after murder, the pink sweetness would raise nothing but sickness in him.

It doesn’t.

Every time spring comes and the streets are filled with falling flowers, the old wound opens up, a strident ache like disaccorded violins in his heart, scattering his concentration like paper strips to the wind.

And yet.

Yet, he thinks the sakura beautiful. Just like he did, decades ago, when a gentle stranger in high school uniform told him a legend about Sakura tree and he had wondered for the first time how could something so distressing be so beautiful at the same time.

He is no wiser today; he gave up trying to understand. Some things are just as cruel as they are ravishing. In a way, he loved them more because of it. Just as he loves the sakura more for awakening within his soul the pain which he treasures and cherishes, stroking it like a small animal against his stomach.

Maybe he ought to ask Kamui, who lost more than he ever did held and who had more wishes ripped up before his eyes why we can love the things that destroy us. And why indeed, sometimes being slowly destroyed is the only way we find of remaining alive.

Walking by the sakura-adorned road, it summons a small smile to remember.

There was a time when he never thought that he could look forward to life anymore. When he thought grief would bury him, would swallow him and spit out only an animated shell to pretend to be Sumeragi Subaru.

But fate, or maybe hazard, was more demanding and cruel than that. It kept asking for more - and giving you more - stubborn boys with a trembling voice, gifts of eye anchoring a drifting soul, and more crosses to bear than you could ever imagine to ground you to the hungry earth. Somehow it pulled you over, ripping you apart all the way through, but kept you alive. And one day, besides the stinging ache, within the unbearable sorrow, across the wrenching guilt, you found yourself enjoying the sound of children’s laughter again.

Like wildflowers blooming amid the wreckage.

So strange and odd a realisation that despite the scars and the damage, he had found himself smiling at it.

This was the world. Bared of wishes. Devoid of meanings. Emptied of any great plans or necessity.

Beauty, everywhere.

Colours, shining or mute, nuances of every kinds, life aplenty, growing from death everywhere, the sound of voices a true music of irony. And people, at all times, who endured, who strived, despite the taxes and the worries, the pettiness and the sacrifices, death and agony, they still marvelled at the most futile little pleasure.

There could have been bitterness to it. There should have been, maybe. That after all the shattering experience that had been 1999, mankind hadn’t really changed, the earth hadn’t really changed, and even he, who had lost his dearest persons and wishes twice, could find pleasure again in a very vain thing. That no matter how crippled he was, he could still walk. But there was none. After all, if he was as good as dead, then every little bit of joy was pure gratuity, and every little good he could offer was a grace, priceless and infinite in a random world that wouldn’t scale anything.

It was a fatalistic conclusion but then Subaru was a fatalistic man who had learned a long time ago not to argue with destiny anymore. It never helped any to struggle.

So, that day, when Kamui did his usual visit - steady like a clockwork, moved by the magnetic attraction of pain and guilt - he didn’t push away the comforting hands and accepted this latest gift of existence.

And it wasn’t love - how could it be, when they had both loved already so vividly and so desperately only to be torn to shreds ? And it lessened no anguish - nothing could ever. But it brought something new to both their life, something precious and absurdly delightful, something to savour in the long boring nights after you realised that when things hadn’t killed you, there were no choice but to survive, and it was both bitter and sweet and incredibly selfish, but it suited both of them.

He finishes walking to the house, and sits down to wash the blood from his hands, contemplating the still falling sakura blossoms in its senseless beauty.

You do get used to pain. It is tragic, it is comic, but it is true. A first love is in full colours, as dazzling as radiating sunrays. What he’s got with Kamui is different, muted and toneless, but warm and reassuring like a small candle in the darkness.

Two steps and he’s at the door. "Tadaima," he calls in.

It is both tender and brittle at times, as they clash against their mutual confines and needs for loneliness. This domesticity is soothing as well.

"Okaerinasai," comes the answer from the kitchen, as well as a smell of cooking meat.

And it’s not happiness, neither is it peace, but somehow, it feels like home. Maybe that is enough.

[HP drabble] Aconite

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 01:14:54 GMT

Title: Aconite
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairings: Walden McNair/Remus
Length: 313 words
Warnings: Graphic sex, BDSM.
Notes:Gift for catrionamacnair

The room stinks so much Remus cannot even smell his own stench. The rust makes odd patterns on the concrete walls, and the lone light bulb hangs from the curved cellar like a strangled man. Remus finds it very fitting.

He tests the chains around his wrists and ankles one more time, and finds them comfortingly tight. Say what you will about Walden MacNair, but he knows how to trap animals. From the wooden chair where he is seated, drinking bad vodka, MacNair addresses Remus a yellow-toothed grin. Remus almost wants to answer in kind, as one beast to another.

Then the moon rises, and Remus can only trash and howl. Nothing matters to the wolf but rage and hunger. There is something liberating in it which he never dared admit to anyone.

When Remus comes back to himself, MacNair’s hands are on him, stretching him with greasy fingers. Remus feebly struggles against him – not to escape, but to relish in the heaviness of the chains still binding him. It makes McNair laugh.

He pushes inside Remus without anymore preparation. The pain is new and dull, a welcome relief from the lancing ache left from transformation. MacNair fucks Remus with rough, artless thrusts which go on forever. Remus closes his eyes and lets himself ride the feeling. Dust from the ground is filling his mouth, and he thinks he broke his arm again. But he’s trapped under the chains, under MacNair’s relentless weight, under the underground bunker, and being trapped means safety. Means being able to let go. It’s not a pleasure sexual in nature – even had he the energy for it after a full moon – but it’s one Remus still savours.

Remus cannot afford Wolfbane, so MacNair is his aconite. He never thought to begrudge MacNair of his side of the bargain. Beasts shouldn’t disdain on those who take their pleasures of beasts.

[asoiaf] the lady in the tower

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:03:32 GMT

Title: the lady in the tower
Fandom: ASOIAF
Pairings/Characters: Cersei Lannister
Length: 333 words
Summary: She was beautiful, they say, as beautiful as she was wicked

Nobody ever sees her. She lives walled up in the tower and a blind servent brings her meals every day, without saying any word. The mercy of the queen, they say, to even let her live (but was it really?). It makes people curious, of course.

They say she was beautiful, once, the lady in the tower. As beautiful as she was wicked, some like to say. They say armies had gone to war for the sake of her beauty (or was that for another? They all blend together, the beautiful queens and princesses from before the Long Winter). Sometimes they whisper of her children, who were Kings, and long dead, murdered by poison and treachery. Some say she murdered them herself.

Some people - mostly children, when they try to out scare each others at night around the fire - say that she is beautiful still, that she bathes every month in the blood of virgins to keep her beauty as youthful and fresh as when she was a maiden.

(She would probably have tried it, had she ever thought of it. Maybe she did, when she was still queen).

She thinks she is beautiful still. She is mad and old and there is no mirror in the tower. She likes to tell the blind servant about the man who loves her and will rescue her, her one true love. His name’s keep changing in the telling, and the servant never says anything in answer, even when the tale turns crude and filled with filth.

Sometimes, when it is very cold and very dark, she cries madly “the valonqar, the valonqar!” until the soldiers who guard the tower must hammer at the door with their weapons for her to stop.

She is very old, they say, older than winter, colder than iron, deadlier than age. All who loved her and all who hated her are long dead. Nobody ever says her name, but they look at the solitary tower, and tell stories. She was beautiful, they say, as beautiful as she was wicked.

[SKU] Three facts about Kozue

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:01:54 GMT

Title: Three facts about Kozue
Fandom: Shoujo Kakumei Utena
Pairings/Characters: Kozue
Length: 281 words
Notes: Written for the three facts of my personnal canon meme

1.
She was never good at piano and she never meant herself to be - but... but sometime when she passes in front of that music store, she looks at the violins and imagine herself playing the cello, wood firmly held between her tights, rasping the archer against the ropes in a wild, struggling, sensual tone so different from the orderly music of piano.
It's just a dream, though. She's not about music, that's her brother.

2.
Up until when she was 10 year old, Kozue was extremely shy. She hated when people were looking at her. Her brother was the one who talked the the adults invited by their parents. The good, polite boy they showed off and who smiled and greeted back (Oh! Ah! How smart he is! How cute!). Kozue would hide more often than not during that time, or stand silently behind her brother's back, glaring at the tall silhouettes overshadowing them.

3.
She stopped being shy when she discovered sex. A boy - not even one that had liked her - had wanted something from her (the games of children, exchanging a gaze at what was hidden by their underwears). Suddenly there were a world of power - desire and flesh and namelessness - that she could understand. This, she knew. This, she could play (skin against skin in the music room and only she can listen to the masterful symphonies she makes).
It amuses her, too. The boys and their toys, how they looked at her, all the Tougas of the world. They thought her a doll, at first. They didn't realize two could play the game. They didn't realize she was a predator, too.

[coldfire] Three facts about Damien Vryce

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:55:02 GMT

Title: Three facts about Damien Vryce
Fandom: Coldfire
Pairings/Characters: Damien, hints of Damien/Gerald
Length: 224 words
Notes: Written for the three facts of my personnal canon meme

1
Damien got into the Church because it meant doing something, concretely, to improve the world. He sometimes finds it ironic that the Church's values means they're not able to do things immediatly, in the way Pagan faiths are efficient. That's why he jumped on the occasion to do sorcery when the Matriarchy opened up to it - and later to bring it to the East. He can't stand to be powerless in the face of suffering.

2
He discovered the Prophet's writings when he was a young teenager, it was love at first sight. He read obsessively, talked to Priests. His parents never did understood his faith. At fifteen, he would fall asleep head full of imaginary discussions with the Prophet. Funny how things went. He never did got around to ask those questions.

3
Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night, from a faint, hazy nightmare which tells him some ties never come fully unbound. It's a bittersweet pain, all the more for the fact that he cannot put a name on it. He's not without vanity either, and, if allowed, he would be terribly proud of what he did to redeem the Hunter. But the Hunter is dead, and Tarrant is no more. So that vanity too, went away in sacrifice.
It was, he thinks, certainly worth it.

[Fic][drabble][TB] Let him fly

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 22:47:27 GMT

Title: Let him fly
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon/X1999
Characters/Pairings: Seishirou, Subaru, Kamui
Length: 230 words
Notes: first line meme, using a first line from shadow_lynne

You never could be content to let him fly, could you?

You had to keep him with you, with chains of guilt in a cage of pleading words. To keep him with you, you'd have done anything.

Don't give me this look, Kamui, I'm not likely to feel ashamed. Heartless assassin, remember?

What? You think you're worth more than me... because you did it out of love? Please, don't give me that lie. I know all the lies in the book, and made quite a few. The things you do for love are rarely good. You can break people with love. You can wound them so deeply they remain crippled for life, like blind nightingale kept to sing only for one ear.

Why, of course, I'm referring to what I did to him. That makes the both of us very alike, don't you think? We both couldn't bear to let him fly away - ethereal creature that he is. We were so enamoured of his purity we kept wanting to spoil it.

Oh, that makes you so angry again. How cute. I can see what appeal the other Kamui saw in you... such fire when you cry. It's not much use to be angry at a ghost, you know, Kamui. And it's your own fault you became Sakurazukamori.

Chains bind both way, you see. I know.