(NOTE: Sick as it sounds, I like Sakura because he got arrested for drug possession. Before that, he and Hyde had a great friendship and I think that's even cooler. I wrote most of this trash in cold turkey in the hope that I will give eloquence - note: not "justice" - to Sakura's out-of-it-ness. As usual, I have no regard for continuity and actual events, so Sisters, forgive me for staining your name.

(Psychoanalyze me if you will, but you don't really need to cite a big book of medical terms just to prove I'm crazy. Copyright laws that have been agreed upon by the United Nations at one time or another apply. But please have pity and don't sue the mentally infirmed writer. She has no true concept of good and evil and means no real harm to all the parties concerned.

(Daryl-sama, change the title, onegai!!)

[Nameless Transgressions]
by Bhex Arcega

My house was broken and entered into by the police, while I was still inside. I remember shouting at the top of my lungs to be read my rights, but I don't think anyone heard me in the ruckus.
The guys claimed that they rushed to the precinct I was being held in at the exact time they heard. I was inclined to believe them. Ken had obviously not even combed. Tetsu was shouting as if he had not had his morning coffee yet. Hyde's eyes held on to the last glaze of a fulfilling night.
Tetsu might have said something about me being disowned by the band, somewhere in his rambling. I wish I'd remembered the words. Problem is, I couldn't imagine the leader of the band saying I was out. Hell, OK, so it was his band, but…we were also friends, and I didn't think he would do that. Then again, he would.
Only Hyde held my hand: Hyde who sometimes didn't care if anyone else was watching or not. That was one of those times. His palm on mine felt feverish. It felt like it had just punched a wall, or struck a jail warden. It felt like a hundred other things that I knew never took place.
His was the only hand that touched me that day that wasn't cold. But his grip wavered, and sometimes it was stronger than mine, sometimes it was not.
"We're going to get you out of there," he promised without much hope beneath his breath, and then he left.
    I sat alone and silent as I waited for the day to end. I didn't know how to tell to anyone else the relief I felt. Robbed of all I had, I didn't really have any more reason to dread. Anything.

    Hyde liked to call himself, in his naïve, sweet way, my best friend. He never said it to the reporters, though. But in private introductions, he would go "This is my best friend, Sakura." When drunk, he would add "My best friend in the whole wide world." Then he would kiss my cheek and go on a laughing fit.
    We first met when I joined the band, around four years ago. Hyde looked young. He didn't look feminine. When I didn't immediately offer my hand, I did it to what I thought was a kid, not a woman.
    When I finally offered my hand, and he took it, I liked the strength he feigned in his grip.
"Hyde," I savored. "As in Dr. Jekyll?"
He seemed mildly surprised. He had obviously expected that sort of question from a lettered man and well, maybe I didn't look the type. "Yeah," he answered simply. "Hey, you read?"
I shook my head. He didn't look disappointed.
"Neither do I," he said. "So where'd your name come from? Your real name, I mean."
I laughed. He wanted me to. And I wanted him to beam with pleasure at the sound of my laugh. Fair trade insued in those few seconds. "Not even my mother knows that."
    "Bet your mother doesn't know a lot of things about you," he says, comfortably. I had appealed to the joker in him. I had won him over.
    Later I came to secretly call him "the pretty one," and fondly remember how easy he was to bait.

    Tetsu wasn't the tough guy. Ken was the tough guy. Ken, the lead, was always the clean-cut mama's boy who went to school regularly, but had the night life of a rat. You never knew with Ken. He would sulk until he found something he recognized, and then you would know he was alive, because his eyes would suddenly go "piku" like a neon light.
    Ken had his secrets, even while he laughed. Before we became famous as a band, he was the sulking "problem child," unaware that he did the things he did because he wanted the attention - and little more.
    When we became famous, he started sleeping nights, his face cracked wide open, and the rat-shell he wore just dropped out of plain sight. He was still quiet, but whenever he spoke, it was obvious he liked the attention he got. That way, he strategically situated himself as the darling of the media.

    Finally, there's Tetsu the bassist, the laughing leader, the rebel against ideals. That was his ideal: to be totally different. He is still a snake, but he smiles like Eve before the apple.
    That was already him when we first met: Eve before the apple, pretending not to know what's going to happen next. He had lost two "children" before me: Hiro and Pero. Pero was the old drummer, who left before the first album could be recorded. Ken compared him to me constantly. Tetsu stood by me and said I was the one destined to help bring the band to fame - not Pero.
    He said, much later, and still with those guileless eyes, that he was glad I didn't embarrass him.

    The gang knew I was taking drugs even before they took me in. Tetsu said he didn't like it, but he was cool with it - so long as I didn't freak out. I promised not to freak out and he took me for my word. But he watched my every move like a mother hen.
    People like me when I'm stoned. I guess I play well when stoned. Hell, when I'm stoned, I can be the best or the worst damn drummer in the world and not care.
    Even the band likes me better that way. During our early days, they even lent me money. And that was exactly what they said: "Hell, go get stoned." I guess I wasn't much fun when sober.
    The band, even my "best friend," never got to know the things about myself I kept dearest. Like why I had to do drugs. And why I stuck with them, when they knew other bands were offering me their left eyeteeth. Well, I guess none of that matters. Except I can't explain why I still haven't told anyone my two most secret truths: I am a bastard. And fame is my favorite drug.

    Hyde swung his hips even offstage. He would wink at me playfully as he said "Daijoubu" before every live performance. He would let his hand rest lightly on my shoulder for a long time. It was all a game - for a while, we both believed that.
    This is a famous example. Hyde got an idea. His hair was very long, then. He said "Let's run." I told him he must be crazy, because I'd said no to that idea days before the performance. And he'd said "Yeah, it's a crazy idea." Now, he was bringing it up.
    "Let's run," he said, tugging at my clothes and pouting like the child he first seemed to be. "Come on. Don't say you're scared." I said I wasn't scared. "Let's run," he said again, and he ran.
    I ran after him. Tetsu went "What the hell are you two doing?!" But he was grinning like an idiot. Ken's mouth was hanging open, unsure as he was of laughing or shouting his indignation.
    When my reaching claws even brushed across the fabric of his costume, Hyde would scream and throw himself around. I remembered the picture: I was the big bad wolf. And I was supposed to look like I was going to eat him alive.
    When I finally caught him, we both tumbled and ended up in a tangle of limbs and loose cloth. Hyde ended up half-naked. The girls loved that. Should've seen it - girls screaming their necks out.
    I was wildly not-sober and I couldn't get angry. Hyde, who was never stoned, or else was stoned perpetually, laughed with me, and laughed and laughed.

    I was the band's personal demon, whore of whores. I infected Tetsu while we were climbing to the peak of our fame. He was the one who took the brunt of the stress, mostly, and he had to give in at one point or another. I'd stored away my "starter pack" for him a long time ago: a shot of this, an ounce of that, and a touch of Gin Blossoms on the track.
    Ken and Hyde openly expressed their disgust of my and Tetsu's "nocturnal activities." But when the opportunity came for Hyde to share a room with me on a tour, he brightly answered "OK." I was thinking, either he was kidding, or he was out to save my soul.
    But of course, I didn't ask for another roommate. Neither did he.
    Hyde was as talkative as ever. He was cheerful everyday, and whenever I had to take out a needle or a stick, he just kept quiet or looked away for a second. To return the favor of being such a nice guy, I asked about him whenever I felt like it, without fail.
    "Me?" Hesse smiled. "I'm not special. I'm someone they saw walking down the street, thought was pretty, drugged, then kidnapped and KEPT drugged to be kept from escaping." With "they," he meant the agents who recruited our band for commercial purposes. He was still confident that the band - Tetsu - had chosen him for vocalist because of his beautiful voice. "I don't remember the days before the band. Maybe I was even a girl back then."
"Somehow I don't doubt that in the least."
"Which?" There was a twinkle in his eye. He was in the mood for a joke.
"...That they drugged you just to make you stay," I answered. "You had a sex change coming."
He smiled like he was getting ready for a fight. "Upgraded assets, that's all," he snapped, coyly running his slender hands down his slender flank...
I punched him on the shoulder to make him stop and he flinched from the pain, grinning.

    When he slept, I watched him. The pretty one. More and more, "they" gave me reason to have chosen that name for him. "They" marketed him as the dress-up doll he had always wanted to be. Maybe he thought it was kinky. I don't know. I never thought of the little games and jokes he planned as a sort of come-on.
    There were times when, in the absolute dark, I noticed his breathing wasn't the regular breathing of a man asleep. Then I waited. For a while, I entertained the idea he was going to say something to me. But he would say nothing. He would swallow a lump in his throat, sigh very loudly, then roll over and go straight to sleep.
    Only once, during that tour, he slept beside me on my bed. His leg brushed against mine more than once the whole night. We both pretended not to be awake. And that, my child, is why we both ended up cranky come the morning.
    As the tour was ending, Tetsu walked up to me. With one hand, he held me close to him by the collar, but did not meet my eyes. He looked upset, but not panicked. And he reeked of alcohol.
    "Did you touch him?" he asked beneath his breath.
    "What?" I said. "Did you touch him," he said again.
    "No!" I almost shouted. He let me go at that signal. "Good," he told me. "I wouldn't want to have to explain for both of you." And he staggered off.
    I didn't want to explain his behavior. I don't want anyone to go around trying to explain mine, so I give them a good example. "Look at me, I'm not making your little lives hell!" That's what I would say.
    I'd get a good fuck anyway.

    Tetsu wasn't much of a challenge. Everytime our band hit a speed bump, or ran a slow zone, something inside him cracked. He would show it only in private. No other person has ever cried so much on my shoulder, I think. Stress destroyed him. So did ennui. When Tetsu cried, in his traditionally quiet, restrained way, you could never really tell what hurt him.
Ken was resentful: the tough guy to the end. He pretended all the while that he never really cared what the rest of the band did. I'd had to pin him to the floor behind a stage after the smoke has gone down and there was nothing to hide us. No one saw us, but that wasn't what bugged him. He wouldn't speak to me for days afterward, but I slipped a packet of white stuff in his guitar case. We had been confidantes since then.
The pretty one gave in last, and lasted longest. He made the sounds of a dying man. He took everything I gave with less than quiet grace, the grin I've come to love looking like something else at every turn of the light.

    I knew the one who told had to have been one of the band. I first thought it was Tetsu. But I thought he owed me too much. And I had only been a good little boy.
On the third time he visited, six months after my indictment, he said, I remember, when he realized I wasn't paying attention to him: "You never asked me who told."
"What?"
"The cops. The one who snitched."
"I didn't think you knew. Do you?"
"I was expecting you'd ask." He sighed. It took him a while to continue, and I was almost sure the waiting hurt him more than it hurt me. "Rest assured, Sakura, 'that person' takes responsibility for his actions, and is sorry."
    Gotcha, I thought. I laughed aloud, "Nobody in the world except one person's sorry like that, Tetsu. Better luck next time."
    His brow furrowed and he looked away. "You think you're so damn smart," he whispered. Snake that he was, I had to fall silent for that.
    When I could speak again, I said "Tetsu, I never thought it was you. And I never thought you would defend me. It feels good, knowing I was right all along."
    He was still silent. The circles underneath his deadly, guileless eyes became more pronounced. In another time and place my arms would be around him and he would be close to tears.
    "Tell him that, too," I followed up. "Tell him I'm not mad."
"You were on your way down and he couldn't take it anymore."
    "I know," I said, benevolently. I wanted to kick someone's face in.
    "Can you stand for him to drop by?"
    "Why not. Hell, it's been six months. Last time he looked at me was through bars."
    "What'll I say?"
    "Tell him I miss him."
    At one point or another, Tetsu said "You shouldn't have started hurting him."
    "He shouldn't have started to get in my way."
    "He does miss you."
    "Fuck him."
    "He's been wanting to visit for a long time now. He's been…not himself. He cut his hair…"
    "His problem. This place is Paradise."
    Hyde was a wimp. Hyde was a kid. Hyde would apologize if he could. In that respect, I think I like Tetsu more than Hyde. At least Tetsu had more sense than to say he loved me, even once.

    One thought kept me from falling asleep, took all night to fuel my drive to punch a hole through the prison wall or somebody else's stomach. One thought, just one thought ate at me: he shouldn't have cut his hair.
    I wish I could wrap my hands around his slim, powdered neck. I would squeeze slowly until he ran out of breath. Maybe I would kill him. Maybe I would just punch his freaking lights out.
I wish he would come to me in tears and on his hands and knees, confessing everything, begging me to forgive. I would take his face in my hands and tell him…
"I know you're the one who's going to dream of me most often. I take some comfort in that."
    Hyde would laugh and look helpless and drag me off to somewhere dark and unrelenting.
That was the kind of angel he was.
    He said he loved me. Then to survive, he betrayed me. What can we call that sin?
    I would kill to see him again.
    And to hear him laugh.
    And to be made to laugh. To see in his eyes that he had become a treacherous, lying, beautiful bastard with hands like fire and a voice like lightning, piercing to the heart. He is no longer a child and he fought back the way he knew how.
    I may never see him again and it hurts, for a second.

    "Yasashiin da ne," he says. He turns away while barely stifling a laugh, his long hair flying in the sudden movement. A gentle breath escapes this chuckle and brushes across the skin of my neck.

~oOo~

First draft:
September 4, 1999
8:30 AM