[ Fanfic ] Pierrot: Chapter One (Kingdom Hearts)
First and foremost, see this post. It is where I will keep the link archive to the different chapters (though I'll link to them as well in the individual chapters, most likely, as well), and it is also where you can see a more in depth explanation of what this fic is about. As time goes on, I'll likely add to the post.
Title: Pierrot
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing: A lot, probably no het, but yaoi/yuri is a go.
Rating: R
Summary: Riku is lost in the desert, in some distant world forgotten even by the nexus. He's searching for something, salvation, absolution, he doesn't know, only knows that, as he runs, as he chases, something follows close behind.
A/N: A lot is going on in this story, and this is just the beginning. Please follow me into these crazy worlds I'm looking to spin together. Thank you!
He drove with the top down, the wind whipping his hair like twisted vines behind him. To be honest, he wasn't sure that the old Mustang could raise its mast anymore. Better that way, in his opinion, because it gave the hollowed shell of a once beautiful machine a more decadent feel. And besides, it allowed him to see the stars, eyes cast to the inky expanse instead of the reflector dotted highway. His only concern was his stereo, installed and after market, though it only played one thing, a deranged combination of strings and techno cacophony.
Not that there was much call for concern, not in the world in which he'd found himself, carried to by his wanderings, his fleeting tire tracks spanning miles, infinities. He didn't recognize the dust bowl state he'd discovered, the endless terrain dotted with hovels, tucked away from the road, into safety, but close enough that he could still see them, reach them, if it struck his fancy.
These places had gasoline, not a lot, but it was more plentiful than water at least, and therefore less expensive. He'd made jokes early on, about how he wished he could run off the same resource as his faded sky blue Mustang. What felt like years later - though it had barely been months - as his munny pouch dwindled, so did his humor.
His skin, baked by the sun, was deep brown, shaded only by a wide brimmed, cracking leather hat, given to him by an old woman, some number of tiny towns passed.
“Here, child,” she had said, her watery eyes reflecting the light from the ever present sun, which hung above them like a furious god. “Ye need this more than I.”
“I-I can't,” he said, stumbled over the words from solitude and lack of practice. “Really. I'll move on out of this sun soon enough.”
Her expression narrowed, and she patted his arm, her touch reminding him of fluttering moths as his skin began to crawl.
“Aye, ye say that now,” she said, mysticism undeniable in her voice. “But take it with ye regardless, lest the hateful sun finds thee in desperation.”
She had spit upon the ground then, the parched earth eager to welcome her saliva, and he had taken it, rigged a makeshift chin strap later out of the string from an old sneaker, to keep it close to him as he cruised the empty, unkempt highway. At night it flew behind him, straining to escape his possession, as though it knew something which he could not.
A light in the distance caught his attention, the unmistakable glow from one of his little towns. Only, he had yet to see one at night, had expected, though never strictly had it confirmed, that the places were without electricity. And the illumination he saw was too clear to be flame, too still, even as the harsh wind that raged across the sandy flats threatened to shove his car from its course if he didn't pay it the proper respect.
The land distorted distance, but his eyes, the color of deepest sea green, never left that sight, as he sped through the darkness to reach it. It was more like a real city, he felt certain, thought even, perhaps, that it bordered another world line, that he might again feel that tremor in his soul as he crossed the unseen barrier.
Hope was fleeting in the desert, he had seen that truth, amplified a thousand times, in the faces of dirt streaked children as he passed them. They regarded the white haired stranger as some sort of god, or a warrior. On more than one stop, he could have sworn he heard the murmured word,
“Gunslinger.”
He knew not what that meant to the people, but never met, knew only that he carried no guns, never had. The closet thing to a weapon he'd ever wielded was a wooden sword, back on a distant island with even more distant friends. He'd been running since then, had seen the darkness and been swallowed by it, even as he reached for company, foolish lies spilling from his mouth.
Whatever had happened, whatever had set his events in motion, he couldn't remember. There were only shadows, and then the bright blue sky, smiling at him from so far away. Only that wasn't right, it had been him smiling. Crazy to mistake thoughtless clouds for emotion.
All that he could recall, that distant town closing fast, was that he'd been driving, classical music with a twisted synth beat blaring through the custom speakers, as the wind tore at his hair. It was tied back now, the bit of red silk courtesy of a woman whom had fallen for him; he hadn't had the heart, as she trailed her fingers through the snowy strands, to tell her that he'd never be interested in the likes of her.
There had been girls before and since, fawning beauties he could appreciate but never really admire or reach for. Dancing close to him in the sprawling metropolis that had reminded him too much of the shadows, peering at him from behind metal mesh walls in places so oriental he might have felt at home. Even when the desire welled in him, became more than he could conquer, he never sought the company of woman. No, it was always his own embrace he trusted, fantasies leading him to climax.
Brown hair, blue eyes. Sometimes he wondered if he was going insane, if he'd lost his grip on reality when it had lost it's hold on him.
Easing onto the gas, he saw that the town was no city, was just another miserable collection of dwellings, but it was closer to civilization than he was certain he could rightly remember.
He cut the headlights, coasted to the shoulder, kicking up dust as his hands linked behind his head, and his knees steered the car.
“Tomorrow,” he said, to the moaning spirits in the wind, taunting him to continue. “Don't want them to think a demon has come to call.”
Though sometimes, when he glanced at the rear view mirror and saw his own eyes, his tired, nigh defeated expression, he thought he saw a demon watching him in return. Some monster born from incorrect decisions, and pacts with beings for whom he had no names, only numbers.
-xxx xxx-
They stood in the doorway, around the windows, in the only saloon in town, watching the twin lights close distance as they approached. None there had seen anything like it, even the drunk old man, who sat in a corner alone, mumbling to himself. But then, no one there really knew the things he had seen, and most weren't convinced that he himself could be certain.
But there were children there, barely seventeen, though the quartet didn't look it. Three boys and a girl, the latter of which dressed in the simple, yet somehow senselessly frilled and frilly attire of a bar maid.
“What is that?” She asked, though she received no answer as they continued to watch what they didn't understand.
“Do you think it's dangerous?” One of the boys asked, the largest of the four, with a plump face from which the dry air had not yet succeeded in stealing all joy.
“I think we should ignore it,” the taller boy said, as he turned away from the hazy window. “C'mon, we're not closed yet.”
With murmurs of agreement, the children moved away, save for one, the newest member of the staff, and town. He was slim of stature, with a messy shock of blonde hair sitting above startling blue eyes. He surveyed the lights, a sense of dread growing in him, a sense of things not long forgotten, of a past he couldn't speak, or even recall.
Flashes of memories that weren't memories quite, but things more fibrous, tormented his thoughts now as well as his dreams. Unspeakable things that sent him cowering to the store room as he tried, without any real accomplishment, to banish his inner monsters.
Something about those lights, gleaming like eyes out in the darkness, triggered something within his soul. A set of directions he still didn't realize he would of course fulfill, even if it meant condemning another to his silent, hellish prison.
“Are you coming, Roxas?” The girl asked, but he ignored her, walked to the old drunk seated by himself, unconcerned by the newcomer and ever mumbling his inconsistencies to his watered down beer.
“Sir,” he said, sat across from the man fear, his eyes never the less meeting those of the man. “I have to ask you, do you know anything about this?”
The man looked at him, bandages on his face tinted crimson from where the sores had leaked, oozed their sinful pestilence onto cloth that had been applied with filth, not to treat, but to conceal. There was understanding in those eyes, and madness beyond that. But it was the knowledge onto which Roxas locked, the sudden surety that his own insanity was at least shared if nothing else.
Yet he didn't say anything, the man just looked at Roxas with those understanding, yet vacant eyes. If he knew what to say, how to answer the question, he held his silence.
“Sir, please...”
Olette touched Roxas's shoulder, a silent comment on the senseless time he was wasting, that they should all get back to work. Roxas, however, ignored her, leaned toward the man whose name he didn't know, wasn't sure that anyone did.
“You don't have to worry about whatever you have to say,” he said. “I don't think you're crazy.”
A sound bubbled from the man then, but it wasn't words, it was laughter, high and tittering, though his eyes, those eyes, shone more brightly with sentience.
“I'm insane,” he said, took a long drink from his beer, and eyes it suspiciously as he returned it to its spot on the grimy table, as if he blamed it for his problems, and maybe it was at fault.
“Maybe,” Roxas said. “But right now I don't think so, I really don't.”
“Oh,” the man said. “You're new here. Your eyes are different.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I've not been here very long. But I'm talking about those lights right now, about whoever is coming.”
“Yeah? You think it's important?
“I do, and I think you know why.”
The man shook his head. “No, boy, that I most certainly don't know.”
“Do you know who it is, then?”
“Hell, no,” he laughed again, drained his glass, tapped it on the table, though no one rushed to fill it, because everyone was too rapt in the strange conversation between the boy they had not yet come to trust, and the old man they had always ignored. “I have no clue who's out there.”
“But you know something,” Roxas said, glanced at Olette, hoping she'd refill the glass, but she didn't, because she too was watching, wondering.
“I don't know anything about what's to come,” he said, took a breath, his demeanor seeming to quiver where he sat. “I only know the past.”
“The past?”
“The man who came before.”
Olette made a noise, squeezed Roxas's shoulder. “Come on,” she said. “Drop it. This is stupid.”
“No,” he said, though he let her continue to touch him. “I want to know about this man that came before.”
“He wore all black,” the old man said. “A long black robe with a giant hood, and black gloves. He was a magician.”
“A magician?”
The man nodded, seemed afraid suddenly. “He gave me a number, told me never to say it, never to ask the meaning... He told me, though... He told me that I would meet a boy with hair like the sun, and eyes like the sky, and that I would tell him the number, as if he knew the meaning.”
Roxas felt a quake in his soul, a shiver that seemed to disjoint him from the world, dislodge him from the reality he had found himself trapped within.
“What is the number?” He asked, his voice as hollow as his place in a world he'd never admitted he was not a part of.
“Thirteen,” the man whispered, voice so quiet Roxas could scarcely hear him. “And it's meaning... Do you know the meaning behind the number thirteen?”
Roxas shook his head, but the motion was a whispered lie. The number spoke to him, in flames of desire and discarded pain, as sharp as the sting from the scorpions that littered the waste.
“No,” he said, stood from the table, and looked to Olette. “I'm going to bed. I'll work a longer shift tomorrow. Dock it from my pay. I... I don't care.”
He passed her, ignored her quiet protest as he did the stares of patrons and staff alike. He climbed the stairs to the room they'd made for him, a permanent hotel room, good for however long his life in the town lasted, though he knew, without possibly knowing, that his time there was growing short.
Counting those steps as he went, he found the number to be, with no real surprise, the one that had finally begun to untangle his soul from its mysterious shackles.
Thirteen, wrapped in enigma, robed in black, embraced by flames.
Title: Pierrot
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing: A lot, probably no het, but yaoi/yuri is a go.
Rating: R
Summary: Riku is lost in the desert, in some distant world forgotten even by the nexus. He's searching for something, salvation, absolution, he doesn't know, only knows that, as he runs, as he chases, something follows close behind.
A/N: A lot is going on in this story, and this is just the beginning. Please follow me into these crazy worlds I'm looking to spin together. Thank you!
He drove with the top down, the wind whipping his hair like twisted vines behind him. To be honest, he wasn't sure that the old Mustang could raise its mast anymore. Better that way, in his opinion, because it gave the hollowed shell of a once beautiful machine a more decadent feel. And besides, it allowed him to see the stars, eyes cast to the inky expanse instead of the reflector dotted highway. His only concern was his stereo, installed and after market, though it only played one thing, a deranged combination of strings and techno cacophony.
Not that there was much call for concern, not in the world in which he'd found himself, carried to by his wanderings, his fleeting tire tracks spanning miles, infinities. He didn't recognize the dust bowl state he'd discovered, the endless terrain dotted with hovels, tucked away from the road, into safety, but close enough that he could still see them, reach them, if it struck his fancy.
These places had gasoline, not a lot, but it was more plentiful than water at least, and therefore less expensive. He'd made jokes early on, about how he wished he could run off the same resource as his faded sky blue Mustang. What felt like years later - though it had barely been months - as his munny pouch dwindled, so did his humor.
His skin, baked by the sun, was deep brown, shaded only by a wide brimmed, cracking leather hat, given to him by an old woman, some number of tiny towns passed.
“Here, child,” she had said, her watery eyes reflecting the light from the ever present sun, which hung above them like a furious god. “Ye need this more than I.”
“I-I can't,” he said, stumbled over the words from solitude and lack of practice. “Really. I'll move on out of this sun soon enough.”
Her expression narrowed, and she patted his arm, her touch reminding him of fluttering moths as his skin began to crawl.
“Aye, ye say that now,” she said, mysticism undeniable in her voice. “But take it with ye regardless, lest the hateful sun finds thee in desperation.”
She had spit upon the ground then, the parched earth eager to welcome her saliva, and he had taken it, rigged a makeshift chin strap later out of the string from an old sneaker, to keep it close to him as he cruised the empty, unkempt highway. At night it flew behind him, straining to escape his possession, as though it knew something which he could not.
A light in the distance caught his attention, the unmistakable glow from one of his little towns. Only, he had yet to see one at night, had expected, though never strictly had it confirmed, that the places were without electricity. And the illumination he saw was too clear to be flame, too still, even as the harsh wind that raged across the sandy flats threatened to shove his car from its course if he didn't pay it the proper respect.
The land distorted distance, but his eyes, the color of deepest sea green, never left that sight, as he sped through the darkness to reach it. It was more like a real city, he felt certain, thought even, perhaps, that it bordered another world line, that he might again feel that tremor in his soul as he crossed the unseen barrier.
Hope was fleeting in the desert, he had seen that truth, amplified a thousand times, in the faces of dirt streaked children as he passed them. They regarded the white haired stranger as some sort of god, or a warrior. On more than one stop, he could have sworn he heard the murmured word,
“Gunslinger.”
He knew not what that meant to the people, but never met, knew only that he carried no guns, never had. The closet thing to a weapon he'd ever wielded was a wooden sword, back on a distant island with even more distant friends. He'd been running since then, had seen the darkness and been swallowed by it, even as he reached for company, foolish lies spilling from his mouth.
Whatever had happened, whatever had set his events in motion, he couldn't remember. There were only shadows, and then the bright blue sky, smiling at him from so far away. Only that wasn't right, it had been him smiling. Crazy to mistake thoughtless clouds for emotion.
All that he could recall, that distant town closing fast, was that he'd been driving, classical music with a twisted synth beat blaring through the custom speakers, as the wind tore at his hair. It was tied back now, the bit of red silk courtesy of a woman whom had fallen for him; he hadn't had the heart, as she trailed her fingers through the snowy strands, to tell her that he'd never be interested in the likes of her.
There had been girls before and since, fawning beauties he could appreciate but never really admire or reach for. Dancing close to him in the sprawling metropolis that had reminded him too much of the shadows, peering at him from behind metal mesh walls in places so oriental he might have felt at home. Even when the desire welled in him, became more than he could conquer, he never sought the company of woman. No, it was always his own embrace he trusted, fantasies leading him to climax.
Brown hair, blue eyes. Sometimes he wondered if he was going insane, if he'd lost his grip on reality when it had lost it's hold on him.
Easing onto the gas, he saw that the town was no city, was just another miserable collection of dwellings, but it was closer to civilization than he was certain he could rightly remember.
He cut the headlights, coasted to the shoulder, kicking up dust as his hands linked behind his head, and his knees steered the car.
“Tomorrow,” he said, to the moaning spirits in the wind, taunting him to continue. “Don't want them to think a demon has come to call.”
Though sometimes, when he glanced at the rear view mirror and saw his own eyes, his tired, nigh defeated expression, he thought he saw a demon watching him in return. Some monster born from incorrect decisions, and pacts with beings for whom he had no names, only numbers.
-xxx xxx-
They stood in the doorway, around the windows, in the only saloon in town, watching the twin lights close distance as they approached. None there had seen anything like it, even the drunk old man, who sat in a corner alone, mumbling to himself. But then, no one there really knew the things he had seen, and most weren't convinced that he himself could be certain.
But there were children there, barely seventeen, though the quartet didn't look it. Three boys and a girl, the latter of which dressed in the simple, yet somehow senselessly frilled and frilly attire of a bar maid.
“What is that?” She asked, though she received no answer as they continued to watch what they didn't understand.
“Do you think it's dangerous?” One of the boys asked, the largest of the four, with a plump face from which the dry air had not yet succeeded in stealing all joy.
“I think we should ignore it,” the taller boy said, as he turned away from the hazy window. “C'mon, we're not closed yet.”
With murmurs of agreement, the children moved away, save for one, the newest member of the staff, and town. He was slim of stature, with a messy shock of blonde hair sitting above startling blue eyes. He surveyed the lights, a sense of dread growing in him, a sense of things not long forgotten, of a past he couldn't speak, or even recall.
Flashes of memories that weren't memories quite, but things more fibrous, tormented his thoughts now as well as his dreams. Unspeakable things that sent him cowering to the store room as he tried, without any real accomplishment, to banish his inner monsters.
Something about those lights, gleaming like eyes out in the darkness, triggered something within his soul. A set of directions he still didn't realize he would of course fulfill, even if it meant condemning another to his silent, hellish prison.
“Are you coming, Roxas?” The girl asked, but he ignored her, walked to the old drunk seated by himself, unconcerned by the newcomer and ever mumbling his inconsistencies to his watered down beer.
“Sir,” he said, sat across from the man fear, his eyes never the less meeting those of the man. “I have to ask you, do you know anything about this?”
The man looked at him, bandages on his face tinted crimson from where the sores had leaked, oozed their sinful pestilence onto cloth that had been applied with filth, not to treat, but to conceal. There was understanding in those eyes, and madness beyond that. But it was the knowledge onto which Roxas locked, the sudden surety that his own insanity was at least shared if nothing else.
Yet he didn't say anything, the man just looked at Roxas with those understanding, yet vacant eyes. If he knew what to say, how to answer the question, he held his silence.
“Sir, please...”
Olette touched Roxas's shoulder, a silent comment on the senseless time he was wasting, that they should all get back to work. Roxas, however, ignored her, leaned toward the man whose name he didn't know, wasn't sure that anyone did.
“You don't have to worry about whatever you have to say,” he said. “I don't think you're crazy.”
A sound bubbled from the man then, but it wasn't words, it was laughter, high and tittering, though his eyes, those eyes, shone more brightly with sentience.
“I'm insane,” he said, took a long drink from his beer, and eyes it suspiciously as he returned it to its spot on the grimy table, as if he blamed it for his problems, and maybe it was at fault.
“Maybe,” Roxas said. “But right now I don't think so, I really don't.”
“Oh,” the man said. “You're new here. Your eyes are different.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I've not been here very long. But I'm talking about those lights right now, about whoever is coming.”
“Yeah? You think it's important?
“I do, and I think you know why.”
The man shook his head. “No, boy, that I most certainly don't know.”
“Do you know who it is, then?”
“Hell, no,” he laughed again, drained his glass, tapped it on the table, though no one rushed to fill it, because everyone was too rapt in the strange conversation between the boy they had not yet come to trust, and the old man they had always ignored. “I have no clue who's out there.”
“But you know something,” Roxas said, glanced at Olette, hoping she'd refill the glass, but she didn't, because she too was watching, wondering.
“I don't know anything about what's to come,” he said, took a breath, his demeanor seeming to quiver where he sat. “I only know the past.”
“The past?”
“The man who came before.”
Olette made a noise, squeezed Roxas's shoulder. “Come on,” she said. “Drop it. This is stupid.”
“No,” he said, though he let her continue to touch him. “I want to know about this man that came before.”
“He wore all black,” the old man said. “A long black robe with a giant hood, and black gloves. He was a magician.”
“A magician?”
The man nodded, seemed afraid suddenly. “He gave me a number, told me never to say it, never to ask the meaning... He told me, though... He told me that I would meet a boy with hair like the sun, and eyes like the sky, and that I would tell him the number, as if he knew the meaning.”
Roxas felt a quake in his soul, a shiver that seemed to disjoint him from the world, dislodge him from the reality he had found himself trapped within.
“What is the number?” He asked, his voice as hollow as his place in a world he'd never admitted he was not a part of.
“Thirteen,” the man whispered, voice so quiet Roxas could scarcely hear him. “And it's meaning... Do you know the meaning behind the number thirteen?”
Roxas shook his head, but the motion was a whispered lie. The number spoke to him, in flames of desire and discarded pain, as sharp as the sting from the scorpions that littered the waste.
“No,” he said, stood from the table, and looked to Olette. “I'm going to bed. I'll work a longer shift tomorrow. Dock it from my pay. I... I don't care.”
He passed her, ignored her quiet protest as he did the stares of patrons and staff alike. He climbed the stairs to the room they'd made for him, a permanent hotel room, good for however long his life in the town lasted, though he knew, without possibly knowing, that his time there was growing short.
Counting those steps as he went, he found the number to be, with no real surprise, the one that had finally begun to untangle his soul from its mysterious shackles.
Thirteen, wrapped in enigma, robed in black, embraced by flames.