i'm working on versagen. really! but this has been tumbling around my head, beating me over the brain. it wanted out so after two different sessions, it's getting out. i don't know if i'm going to write more of it and it's the first time that i've written in this tense so tell me if it went okay. please?

 He was different.

But he was the same.

Change always does that to people. It digs into lives and rips them to pieces.

Through the haze of smoke in the air and through the years of memory, he sees him. Never thought the past could come up and shake apart his present as easily as it does. Never thought to see him again but isn't that just how life is? Isn't that what Fate likes to do to everyone?

Ten years gone and the ache still hasn't left him. He doubts it ever will.

Memories, you know, they hurt when you think about them. He's learned to forget. He's good at forgetting. But all his skills in that area erode with one look through a smoky bar, one chance encounter with the past, one more dig into a life he has tried to forget.

Failure. What a general statement for his life.

He passes through the crowd like water. Doesn't touch a single person. He was taught too well. Or he learned too well. He can't forget old habits. They die, and they die hard, but not yet. One of the few things he has left to hold onto. Sometimes he wonders what it would be like to let them go. Ah, but if he does that, then everything will fade around him and he won't remember a thing. Nothing but the present. The past will be non-existent. Clean slate. If that happens, he will only scratch the board with his nails again.

Eighteen steps to reach a past. He could have stepped away on the first one. Should have. Didn't. Now it's too late because he's here and he's waiting and he's wondering if he's thinking too loud.

"You always thought loud," the redhead tells him in a flat voice. "Out of all of them, you thought the loudest."

All. All meant four once. Now he has no number to tack onto that word anymore. Nothing but pain.

"Schuldich," Omi states in a tired voice as he takes a seat on the barstool. "Never thought I'd see you again."

The German shrugs a shoulder and downs another shot. It's his sixth, judging by the empty, over-turned shot glasses on the counter. Hard to find good liquor in Japan. There's not too many places that serve the kind that a person can lose themselves in. Forgetfulness comes marked in dark bottles in an un readable language. All the professional drunks know this.

"Never is a long time. I don't bet on never," the German tells him.

"Thought I'd see you in hell," Omi says.

"Figured you were already there with the rest of them."

Omi says nothing. He flags down the bartender and points at the row of shot glasses sitting in front of the redhead. "Make me a row," he tells the man. Make me forget, he thinks, hoping that the German won't hear his thoughts.

Schuldich hears him anyway.

"The River of Lethe," Schuldich says. "There's not enough alcohol in the world to help me forget."

"Excuse me?" Omi replies, reaching for the first of six, hoping it'll be strong enough to dull the pain that's shooting up his arms and down into his heart. The bones in his arms never did heal right.

"The Myth of Er. The River of Forgetfulness. Don't you read the classics?"

"I don't read much of anything anymore. Don't have the time."

The German laughs. It's an empty sound. The kind of sound you get when you tap an empty glass, in an empty restaurant, hoping for your waiter to come.

But he never does.

Empty.

Hollow.

"Still have a perfect shot?" Schuldich taunts.

Omi downs the second and the third shot. Reaches up to touch the eye patch that covers his right eye. His reflection has never been the same since it was gouged out in the fall. Depth perception gone. Can't judge distances anymore. Still able to shoot the bulls eye. He could only be that good.

"Just kept getting better and better, I didn't want to stop."

There's humor in the world. You just have to know where to look for it. Omi gets his out of graves. Schuldich laughs down a White Russian and asks for another one. Wants it doubled. He's going to do his damned best to get falling down drunk. Shouldn't take too long. A few more shots. Another mixed drink. Think about that night. Sobriety comes real quick if you want it badly enough.

"Damn," Schuldich whispers. "There goes my buzz."

Omi looks over at him. His row of shot glasses are empty. "You never had one."

The green gaze slides over to look at the blonde. "Why are you here?"

"Didn't think I'd ever see you again. Thought you were dead. Thought I was the only one alive."

Red hair the color of sunset when it hits orange gets tucked behind one ear. There's three gold hoops through pale, curved cartilege. None in the other. Memories everywhere, if you know where to find them. Face pale and drawn over high cheekbones, as if food is an after thought for him. It probably is. Darkcircles under his eyes caused from nightmares that will never leave him.

Never.

"Too stubborn to die," comes the admission. "Devil didn't want me badly enough."

Omi nods his head, complete agreement in his single blue eye.

Survivor's guilt.

Thing will eat you alive if you let it. He knows. He's been there. Still hurts, even after all this time. It will always hurt.

"So you try and drown it with alcohol."

A crazy smile pulls at full lips. An expression that drags up memories Omi thought he had lost in water. Feels like his guts are being pulled out

through his navel. Hurts that much.

"Better than remembering. But you already know that, don't you?"

Omi looks down at his hands. He's got them resting in his lap, clutching at his jeans. Long sleeves cover the scars but you can still see pale white lines streaking over the back of his hands. Sheared metal through skin, through bone, all up to his shoulders and sprinkled with needle marks.

Painkillers can't stop the pain anymore so you turn to a different drug, with a different name, but nearly the same effect. Only stronger. Makes another world for you.

"Yeah. I know."

Empty pasts. That's what they want. Two men with ten years behind them and two lifetimes that they want to forget but can't because it's not that easy and they know it. The glasses know it. The countless bars they've wandered into know it. Ignorance is bliss. They could only be so lucky.

Schuldich pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket. Lights up. Offers one to Omi. He takes it. Smokes it to the filter. Asks for another one. Schuldich gladly gives one up. Chain smokers the both of them only Omi's out. He needs to go to the store to get another carton. Needs to get through the week somehow. Has to fill up that void inside with something. Water wasn't thick enough. Maybe smoke will be.

Someday.

He likes to think so.

The German gets to his feet. Looks at Omi. Looks at the door. Their eyes meet and questions are asked, offers are made, words are said. They head outside together. Silence surrounds them. City noises can't touch them. They walk side by side, separated by inches that get pried apart by years. Omi's almost as tall as Schuldich but he's broader in the shoulder than the German and he knows the redhead could out run him even in his current condition. It would be an even fight, he muses, if they went at it. If you counted out the redhead's telepathy.

"I'm not going to fight you," Schuldich mutters out of the corner of his mouth. "So would you stop acting like I'm your enemy?"

"Because you are," Omi tells him. "Or you were. Hell, I don't even know what I am now. Excuse me while I try to place you."

Schuldich smirks at him but it lacks the life it once had. Lacks the sultry arrogance that upheld it in the past when he had a reason to play with the minds around him. He doesn't smirk very much anymore; smile's half as less. You would need emotion for that and he just doesn't see the point.

"Little Omi. All grown up and still not sure who he is. Bet you'd be a great thesis for a psychology major."

"So would you."

Laughter like broken glass and people look at them weirdly as they pass the pair on the street. One blonde, one red, both scarred behind the cigarette smoke. Omi blinks his single eye and tucks his hands into his pocket as he takes the last drag on his cigarette before he spits it out.

"Where do you want to go?" Omi asks him.

Stupid question. There's only one place each of them wants to be. Ten years past. Ten years different. More than one survivor each. But they can't change the past and they have stopped looking towards the future so all they have is now. Surviving isn't all it's cracked up to be. They'd each rather be dead. But it's not that simple. Inevitably, nothing ever is.

Schuldich stops and turns to look at Omi. Stares into his single eye and wishes with everything he has that there were more scars on the younger man's face. That it was his left eye that had been taken out. That his eye was a burnished gold with hints of amber.

"Anywhere but here," he says in a quiet, tired voice. They lead each other through the night, to the motel that has a name but which neither of them bothers to read. Things are better left forgotten. The less they remember, the better. Makes all the tomorrows easier to bear.

The door gets locked, the lights get dimmed, and Schuldich takes the bed. Omi takes the chair and they sit in the silence for a long time, going through all the packs of cigarettes that Schuldich has on him.

The smoke fills the room like fog. It drifts over everything and they breathe it in with a desperation that few would be able to notice. Like they're drowning men searching for air.

Or breathing men searching to drown.

Omi gets to his feet first and reaches for Schuldich. Or maybe Schuldich stretches out his arm and reaches for Omi. Neither really knows who moves first and neither cares. All that matters is that their hands are tearing off clothing and that they're feeling for the first time in years and it hurts, God how it hurts, and both of them want it to stop. But they can't so it won't and it's not like pain isn't a stranger to both men.

Pain's been theironly companion since that night ten years ago. Nothing new about that.

Schuldich drags his hands over Omi's body as the heavier man presses him down onto the bed. There are scars criss-crossing his body; thick ones, long ones, curved, straight-hell, they probably made a prettier picture inside. White lines to show the scars and double the tissue beneath it. Double the pain. He wonders how Omi can walk.

"Why did you do it?" Omi breathes against his neck, hands tracking over bones held together by thin flesh. "Why?"

Schuldich drags his nails down Omi's back, feeling the skin break as he does so. He has never learned to be gentle. "Because we wanted to," he replies thickly. "Because we wanted to be God."

"There is no God. Not anymore."

Schuldich buries his laughter against the blonde's chest. It shakes out of him like glass and tears him up inside. "Funny," the German rasps. "That's what he used to say."

Omi kisses him brutally hard, feeling their teeth rip into each other's lips. They lick the blood away, hands holding on tightly to something that they have tried so hard to forget. But they can't seem to ever get away from it and this-maybe this is only a reminder. Maybe Fate wanted to laugh in their faces again. Omi chokes on his pain and paints bruises over Schuldich's body even as the redhead tears into his.

"You could have left well enough alone," Omi manages to get out as he scraps his teeth against a taut nipple. "Could have turned your backs on us and gone away. Things were over after Taketori's death."

"Things were never over. They still aren't over. Doubt they ever will be," Schuldich tells him as he arches beneath the younger man's body and mouth. "You could have turned around and walked away."

"Could have. Didn't. Does it matter anymore?" Omi whispers as he feels Schuldich slide his hands down his body and grip his hardening erection. He gasps and lifts his head to bite down against the pulse beating in Schuldich's neck.

"Should it?" Schuldich demands as he pumps his fist. "Did it really ever?"

"I don't know," Omi admits as he slides his hands down and mirrors Schuldich's actions with one. The other curves beneath the fragile body beneath his and searches out an opening. He slides a finger in dryly, deeply.

Presses against that spot inside every human male that will make a person scream.

Schuldich doesn't scream. But he does arch upwards, does cry out softly. He whimpers, hands falling away from Omi. "I knew it was you five blocks away."

"Did you lead me here?" Omi demands, adding a second finger. "Did you?"

Schuldich smirks up at him, jade green eyes empty. "No. You brought yourself and ten years worth of memories. I was only looking for a drink."

Omi smiles thinly as he adds a third finger and moves them. Stretches the ring of muscles none too gently and Schuldich hisses. "Don't fuck with me, Schuldich."

"I'm not fucking with you, Omi. I just want you to fuck me."

He obliges without a word. He removes his hands and lifts long legs over his shoulders as Schuldich reaches up and pulls him down for a kiss that makes it hard to breathe and he thrusts into the tight, willing body beneath his.

Schuldich cries out against his mouth, the pain beating through both of them.

Ten years worth of pain. Ten years worth of loneliness and they cling to each other tightly as they drive their bodies to a climax that neither one can feel.

It burns deep inside but Schuldich welcomes the sensation. He misses it, actually, and as he moves his body to meet those thrusts, he looks up into Omi's face and digs his fingers around Omi's left eye.

"Why couldn't you have been him?" he whispers in a voice full of a pain that the alcohol and drugs could never take away.

Omi doesn't answer. Just closes his eye and reaches for that climax. He reaches, reaches, and then lets go and they both tumble over the edge of reason to something that is hard when they hit. He collapses on top of Schuldich and the German doesn't move. He's staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes and Omi can almost see the memories play out against the jade background.

He pulls out and rolls over. There's blood on the sheet and on their bodies.

He doesn't care. Schuldich slowly turns his head to look at him and smiles a sad, empty smile.

"We did it because we could," he tells Omi. "And you did it because you had to. But it still doesn't change a damn thing."

Omi sits up and reaches for his clothes.

Schuldich curls into a ball as he dresses. He pulls on the clothes mechanically, hearing the sound of the ocean in his ears. He can't hear their voices anymore, though, because the waves ate them years ago. But they didn't eat his and they didn't eat Schuldich's; but the memories are eating away at their lives and the pain, well, the pain is the only company they can keep.

Omi pulls on his coat and doesn't look back.

He steps out of the room and takes his ghosts with him.

Owari