Part 5: Sometimes

Your eyes... The very suggestion of tears sears my heart. The mere reflection from a too-glassy surface produces a foreign, trembling ache. A smile lightens them, produces a new sun, moon and stars, a new heaven for poet's to ponder, dreamers to never touch.

But there was no brightness, nor were there tears. No light, no darkness. Only a gaze strangely gray, a swirling cloudiness. The only true color was the blood seeping into such a pure, vacant gaze, the crimson thorns of roses melted trailing over skin pale by contrast. Color fading, receding, in the face of an eager, hurtful brightness.

Your smile... A projection of youth, joy, of something I lost in the ages piling up, falling apart, drafting in my wake. A ray of beauty, which, directed at darkness, directed at me, scatters such a velvet with pearls.

That blood... Would that it might disintegrate, disappear by my hand. Would that I had the power to make blood and tears simply - disappear. One would think, with all the time and experience, everything I have endured, I could have saved you, protected you. It was a matter of principle, really, a matter of wrong and right. It was wrong for it to be your blood spilled, right that your adversary died by my hand. Wrong that your innocence should be stained and scarred, right that I should embrace the blame.

I knew it wasn't a mortal wound - but the blood from your head, streaking your pale flesh, matting your copper hair, scarred me, burned me. I've been sitting by your side for - days, it must be. I go about what work must be done. I continue through these days of flowers, but on break, in the evenings, I find myself back here, always here. I send off Ken, I send off Yohji, whoever should happen to be watching over you, and, in silence, assume my vigil.

It is necessary, has become a sort of obsession that I can't begin to understand, that baffles me, confuses me, tears me from the inside out. When you wake, I want it to be me you see. It must be some feeble projection of faith, of this strangeness within me. But it doesn't matter - I will be here when you wake.

* * * * * * * *

A murmur, a whisper, a stirring of the merest of hearts.

"Ran-kun..."

Heart fluttering with surprise. I had grown accustomed - far too accustomed - to the silence. I focused my vision, fixing violet eyes on an angelic countenance, on cerulean oceans that blinked owlishly in the dim light.

"I'm here."

Those sapphires shifted, shimmered, focused. He looked somewhat dazed, but coherent, awake, and not only in an instant of semi-consciousness.

"How do you feel?" I asked quietly, studying his face with masked eyes.

Omi shifted, shrugged his slender shoulders. "Alright," he acknowledged. He lowered his gaze. "Somewhat... dizzy."

He peered back up, and reached up a hand to gingerly touch his forehead. "It was a head wound, right...?"

His hand drifted, fluttered against the wrappings of bandage. I intercepted it with my own, gently removing his slender fingers. He seemed startled, and the glance he gave me, briefly, before again dropping his eyes and drawing his hand away, was difficult to read, both startled and curious, with some underlying current.

"Yes, a head wound," I confirmed. Again, I hid any emotion that might strive to find it's way to the surface. "I don't know exactly what happened..."

He understood the unspoken inquiry, took the prompt. "I... don't remember."

His eyebrows knit. "The events, they are blurry to my memory."

"It's all right. At least you are fine now."

He gave me a soft, small smile.

There was a quiet moment of silence, not uncomfortable, but tense in a way, expectant. As if words hung on the edge of sound, trembled, waited to fall. The effect shattered when I rose. That was always me - the first to break the silence, leave in silence. Quick to stand, quick to fade. I forced myself to not let that change now. The spell of silence dissipated.

"I will inform the others, and see about bringing you food - rice and tea, perhaps."

"Ran...?"

I bowed my head, the motion slight. Red bangs fell forward, casting my face in shadow. "They will bring it. I must return to work."

His eyes on me, I left the room.

* * * * * * * *

"Who was she?"

Omi was doing well, recovering remarkably. Perhaps the wound had been less severe than it seemed. He had first awakened two days previous, and it was evening when his soft voice broke the darkness. The sun was a cascading fire on the horizon, it's flames peeking through, around the mostly drawn blinds. Only a soft, pinkish hue permeated the room.

I froze, rigid, startled. I was conscious, then, quite intensely, of his intent gaze upon me, could see it clearly in my mind's eye. Cerulean, open. Delving, endless.

"Nani?"

Even I did not recognize the emotion - or lack thereof - in my voice. I didn't turn. But I could imagine his reaction, see him bowing forward his head, see the copper bangs falling to hide his eyes. There was hesitation coloring his voice.

"I . . . saw you," He said softly. "It was after a mission, and your door to your room was left ajar. I. . . glanced inside. I just happened to, that's all," he quickly added. "There was a - painting or drawing, a rendering of some sort. A beautiful woman, and you were holding it..."

Silence.

Lengthy, enduring, all-encompassing.

Enveloping.

Overwhelming.

Slowly, I turned. The pinkish, pearlish hue was contrasted by shadows. Dark versus light. In the center of the light was Omi, standing near his bed, where the glow of light was strongest. I gazed from the shadows of the threshold.

I had been on my way out, having stopped in his room (we had moved recently into the flowershop itself, the rooms upstairs, previously for storage, having been finally cleaned out, and the rest of it, such as the kitchen, refurbished), by order of Ken, the mothering one among us, to see if he needed anything.

Lifting his head, one hand brushing bangs from his eyes, he peered at me, eyes large in the darkness. Seeing my statement, he bit his lip.

"I... Gomen," he whispered, looking away. "Ran-kun-"

"I don't know her name."

I didn't remember opening my mouth to speak, didn't recall ever deciding to answer. And yet, there I stood, and the words had been released from my lips, from lips that had never spoken of the portrait. Surprise flickered across his face, from my answering, from my answer. He frowned slightly.

"You... don't know?" He blinked. I shook my head, glancing away.

"No..."

What was I doing? This wasn't me... I couldn't say anything about this. It was revealing. It was wrong. More importantly, the event was meager, because the portrait was of the past, in the past. Why, then, did I feel compelled to continue?

"I don't understand," he said quietly, frowning slightly.

I looked at the window, at the glow of light seeping through. In silence, I walked to it, drew open the blinds. A bloody sunset greeted me, dripping with golden majesty.

"It... won't make sense," I acknowledged finally.

I heard the soft tread of footsteps behind me. Next to me he stopped, and there was a light touch on my arm that rested on the sill.

"Gomen," he said again, "you don't have to say anything else..."

"Iie," I replied. I kept my eyes trained on the sun, as near to it as I could focus. "Daijoubu. "I don't - have a past," I began, voice assuming a quiet monotone. "I remember my life beginning only some years ago."

This elicited a small gasp. The lies fell easily from my lips, because I had lied for my virtual life. What I said, however, was truly only a bending of reality. Years, lifetimes. To me, it's so very similar.

"My first memory is of being alone, in a room that felt empty. There were furnishings, however run-down, and a few belongings that I took to be mine. But it was as if there had been more, and half of this 'more' was gone. On the wall was this portrait."

So close to truth... I had woken alone, and the only memory I had, then, was of what had happened, what had been told to me. A memory of what I was. There were a few belongings that were clearly mine, in a corner. And with them the portrait.

"That's... horrible," the boy said, voice quiet with awe and sympathy.

I ignored the sympathy, fought down the reflexive urge of bitterness at the emotion. I could only hypothesize what might have happened. Perhaps, whoever had taken me to the room, had passed their immortality onto me, had taken some things from my home for me. As a kind gesture, as a cruel joke, it was all the same.

"Sometimes," I said quietly. I found the words were suddenly harder to say. Because they were the truth. "It feels like I know her - knew her." I lifted a hand, feebly, hesitantly, towards the sunlight, towards the dusk. My voice was a whisper. "Like I shouldn't have been able to forget... because I loved her."

I let the hand fall.

"But - the emotion doesn't remain. Nor does the memory. Only a mere suggestion of something that should have been."

"Do you remember her name?" Omi asked, so very softly. His hand crept forward, gently touching the back of mine. I felt his presence as only a soft, compelling force.

"Sometimes... a name comes to mind. Swirling from the depths of something in myself I can't recognize." I heard my words as if through numb ears, heard in them some sort of twisted poetry. "Elise... Rose... Perhaps they are not even her."

"But you miss her...?"

I forced my eyes away from the sun, let them be drawn to him at my side. Youth was still reflected in his face, but there was a strength and wisdom in his gaze. A curse of understanding sorrow too well. He was far more than the child I thought he was on first impression, in body in mind. All humans are children, to me. And yet - these three I have found, they are maturing as they embrace a darkness innocents will never know.

No longer children.

"You are perceptive," I said quietly, turning partially to fix him with an intent gaze. "Yes... I miss her. I miss the past she represents, with a strange aching sensation... It is distant, sometimes, but others..."

He opened his mouth, as if to speak, then he hesitated. I heard it in the words he did not say, saw it in his eyes. Finally, he spoke, softly.

"I... Understand. As trite as it may sound, it - it's true." His eyes reflected the sunlight with a burning intensity. The sun was nearer to setting. The hue draping the room had become crimson.

"I discovered my past slowly, painfully, and it's something I want to forget even as I must remember it. Not knowing was as painful as the knowledge. I remember the agony when the merest suggestion of the past floated in my mind was never quiet substantial enough to grasp. I... remember."

I was drawn to him, by a powerful force. The portrait in my mind flickered, an image of myself, my thoughts.

<< Luminous, gorgeous eyes. Cerulean, azure, the absolute essence of the seas, which paled in comparison to such splendor. Absorbing and reflecting the lucid moonlight even through the thin parchment, through time. >>

"I know what it's like to not have a past..."

<< Flaxen, golden-straw hair. Spun with the gold of fields of wheat, embracing as much sunlight, capturing it to reside therein. Molten, liquid copper. >>

"To want to remember..."

<< Skin - so pale, lovely, would that I might touch it. >>

"To lose..."

<< My hand, a trembling thing of translucent proportions, uncertain, as I gently laid my fingers upon the cream flesh. >>

His lips parted slightly, startled, uncertain. With a flash I was drawn back out of my mind, and the portrait flickered, disappeared. Faded. I was touching something real, living and soft. It was no longer parchment, it was a reality. How long I had striven to know this...

Omi lifted his hand, slowly, his fingers brushing against mine on his cheek. His eyes glowed in the light. My heart trembled. I kissed him, bending down, tasting his sweetness on my lips. He was still, rigid. Then hesitantly, with a shy longing, he responded. His hand pressed against mine.

When I drew back we were both breathless, our soft gasps the only sound. An anticipatory emotion hung in the room. He lifted his other hand, hesitantly, and then reached up, brushing it against my bangs. Our gazes were locked. I traced his soft features with my fingers, feeling the soft strands of hair that found light to reflect in the near darkness, brushing soft lips.

His eyes slid closed as I kissed him again, then feathered kisses across his jaw, down his throat. Pure, soft flesh, palely visible. Desire strong within me... Overwhelming, flooding... But strangely different from the past. He was still innocent, in his paradoxical way, and I would not stain him. I wanted only - wanted desperately - to understand this innocence, to be a part of it. He moaned slightly, at my lips on his neck.

"Ran," he whispered, voice a mere flutter. I drew back, brushed a hand through those copper strands, met his eyes. "I... I've never done this before," he said, softly. He dropped his gaze, flushing. "But... I - I want you to stay... tonight..."

The sun disappeared, and darkness reigned.

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