Distances
Title: Distances
’Verse/characters: post-Lap Dog, Ijirashii, Lavender
Prompt: 040: Sight
Word Count: 422
Rating: PG
Notes: N/A
Will he forget what Lavender looks like? On the morning of the day when his eyes open but he sees nothing, will he wake to find it has all disappeared? In the future, will he know that he is mutilated beyond all beauty only by the feel of his own skin? Will the blood ever in his mind no longer be the same vivid red, and will he erase forever the image of a man with six bullets in his brain? When these clouds of scar tissue make their way into his eyes, will he forget what Lavender looks like?
There isn't a doctor who can tell him that, because he can't bring himself to ask. He can't ask the therapist he was seeing for trauma before he ever started going blind.
The night before his sixteenth birthday he decided not to die because Lavender looked at him with his fake green eyes and his fake blonde hair and his very real vodka-smudged eyeliner and said, "You don't belong here, do you?" with a half-smile through smeared whore-red lipstick-
And Ijirashii followed him and he took Ijirashii somewhere he did belong. (And Ijirashii did belong there, in a house in Kyoto in a war, smothered by the ghosts of Lavender's crimes. Ijirashii belonged wherever Lavender took him.)
Ijirashii hears the beginning of a song-no. He hears the beginning of Tchaikovsky. This is something he wouldn't forget if he was deaf. A blur of black dress and long dark hair moves towards Ijirashii, where he sits at the foot of the bed, staring at the pages of Lavender Perez's book where there are no longer any words. Lavender kneels in front of him and puts his face very close to Ijirashii's, until Ijirashii can see everything in his eyes down to the streaks of gold and the layers of past cruelty, and burns himself there. "Come dance with me," he says, taking the book from Ijirashii. His fingernails are a glint of purple. "I can't be bothered to write anymore tonight. Come dance with me," he repeats.
Ijirashii stands up and Lavender takes hold of his hands. "Lavender," Ijirashii says, "will you read me what you're writing?"
"You won't like it," Lavender says, pulling Ijirashii to him. "It'll never start a war."
"Boring," Ijirashii says. "Read to me anyway."
"If you insist," Lavender says, and leads Ijirashii into the waltz Ijirashii taught him long before the war was over.
He half-smiles at Ijirashii like a memory, and Ijirashii is afraid to blink.
’Verse/characters: post-Lap Dog, Ijirashii, Lavender
Prompt: 040: Sight
Word Count: 422
Rating: PG
Notes: N/A
Will he forget what Lavender looks like? On the morning of the day when his eyes open but he sees nothing, will he wake to find it has all disappeared? In the future, will he know that he is mutilated beyond all beauty only by the feel of his own skin? Will the blood ever in his mind no longer be the same vivid red, and will he erase forever the image of a man with six bullets in his brain? When these clouds of scar tissue make their way into his eyes, will he forget what Lavender looks like?
There isn't a doctor who can tell him that, because he can't bring himself to ask. He can't ask the therapist he was seeing for trauma before he ever started going blind.
The night before his sixteenth birthday he decided not to die because Lavender looked at him with his fake green eyes and his fake blonde hair and his very real vodka-smudged eyeliner and said, "You don't belong here, do you?" with a half-smile through smeared whore-red lipstick-
And Ijirashii followed him and he took Ijirashii somewhere he did belong. (And Ijirashii did belong there, in a house in Kyoto in a war, smothered by the ghosts of Lavender's crimes. Ijirashii belonged wherever Lavender took him.)
Ijirashii hears the beginning of a song-no. He hears the beginning of Tchaikovsky. This is something he wouldn't forget if he was deaf. A blur of black dress and long dark hair moves towards Ijirashii, where he sits at the foot of the bed, staring at the pages of Lavender Perez's book where there are no longer any words. Lavender kneels in front of him and puts his face very close to Ijirashii's, until Ijirashii can see everything in his eyes down to the streaks of gold and the layers of past cruelty, and burns himself there. "Come dance with me," he says, taking the book from Ijirashii. His fingernails are a glint of purple. "I can't be bothered to write anymore tonight. Come dance with me," he repeats.
Ijirashii stands up and Lavender takes hold of his hands. "Lavender," Ijirashii says, "will you read me what you're writing?"
"You won't like it," Lavender says, pulling Ijirashii to him. "It'll never start a war."
"Boring," Ijirashii says. "Read to me anyway."
"If you insist," Lavender says, and leads Ijirashii into the waltz Ijirashii taught him long before the war was over.
He half-smiles at Ijirashii like a memory, and Ijirashii is afraid to blink.