Spectrum
Title: Spectrum
Pairing: Kaixing
Rating: PG
Summary: To experience the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows is to live on both ends of a spectrum.
The wind slices through the thin material of his dirt-stained jacket as Kai steps off the cargo train. He follows the crowd towards the red building, its perimeter surrounded by wire fences. Soldiers, armed and dressed in white, are stationed by the brick walls, eyes impassive as they push the stragglers forward with the butts of their machine guns. A quick glance is enough to tell him that the people who had been gathered were all magic practitioners who, like him, bore tattoos on their faces as indications of their abnormalities.
Crimson flags flank the heavy double doors, which lead to a windowless chamber. He comes to a stop behind a group of men who, too, had been taken from the concentration camps without explanation. The captives around him exchange silent looks, too afraid of the soldiers' wrath to voice their confusion. Kai feels a growing sense of dread as the doors close behind him with a dull thud. They are trapped within, accompanied by a handful of soldiers who begin to pull on gas masks.
The air suddenly becomes thick and unbreathable, and he chokes. His lungs, assaulted by the odourless gas, feel as if they are on fire. Around him, people begin falling to their knees with sharp screams of agony, hands closed around their throats. He drops to the ground, his entire body shuddering in pain. Death is upon him and he tries desperately to drudge up the magic inside him, the inner fire that months of starvation and ceaseless labour in the concentration camps had all but extinguished.
He hears the thump of a body drop to the floor beside him. The eyes that gaze at him are wide and terrified and very much alive. As the magic surges through him, he reaches out, clamps a hand on the boy's shoulder and teleports away.
He wakes to the smell of smoke and the orange glow of a small fire. Stone stalactites hang above him, tapering to points that resemble the teeth of some monster, but the fresh air and silence tell him that he had left the true monsters behind. The boy from the gas chamber peers at him from across the fire, arms hugged around his knees. Though his face is shadowed in the firelight, Kai could see the black tattoos on his cheek.
The boy nods towards the small pile of berries and nuts before him. "Eat. You must be hungry, after using all that magic." His lips lift in a dimpled half-smile and adds, "Thank you for saving me."
Kai grunts and stuffs a berry in his mouth, wiping the juice that trails down his chin with the back of his hand. He had acted on mere impulse, rather than some noble sense of heroism. Self-preservation had been his only thought but a part of him was glad that he was not alone.
"What's your name?" the boy asks when he finishes.
He pauses. It was a word that he had not spoken aloud, not since the day his parents had been captured and he had been sent to the camp. The syllable fall from his lips with all the strangeness of a foreign tongue.
"Kai."
"It's nice to meet you, Kai," the boy replies, his voice sweet and melodious. "You can call me Lay."
By some unspoken agreement, they decide to journey together. Each night, they would find a place to sleep-beneath a small bush or a cave if they're lucky-and every morning, they would wake, cover their tracks and teleport elsewhere. They remain in the woods or on the outskirts of towns, careful to avoid well-travelled paths crowded with tanks and patrolling soldiers.
They find the abandoned cabin a few months after their escape. Kai sees the wonder in Lay's eyes as they take in the small, square windows and overgrown garden. The door creaks as he pushes it open and he is surprised to find the place furnished. A bed is pushed against the far wall and a table with a pair of wooden chairs stand in the centre of the room.
"This'll do," Kai says as he draws the curtains and pushes the windows back in place.
"It's perfect," Lay sighs happily as he spins once, twice with arms spread out and a smile on his lips. The golden sunlight catches the strands of brown in his hair as he dances and Kai feels his heart twinge in response.
They both refuse to take the bed out of politesse until at last, when the skies had darkened, Kai declared that they would share the tiny cot. He murmurs goodnight and stares up at the low ceiling, his body taut with tension as he tries not to think about the boy lying beside him.
He is woken in the middle of the night by Lay's whimpers. His arms reach out of their own accord and gather the boy's thin body in a tight embrace. Lay clutches at the front of his shirt with trembling hands and somehow, between the tears and mingled breaths, their lips meet in the quiet darkness. They kiss with a desperate need, the heat and brush of bare skin silent affirmations that in this cold, cruel world, they still have each other.
Against his better judgement, Kai relents and agrees to remain at the cabin. They no longer rise at dawn, though Kai would sometimes wake up early just to spend the lazy mornings marvelling at Lay's sleeping face. Their days were passed tending the garden or foraging for food while their evenings were whiled away trading stories about life before the war.
"I was a healer," Lay muses as they sit beneath the green canopy of the maple trees. Fireflies dance in the summer air, glowing pinpricks of light that float lazily in front of their faces. "I could fix things, plants, animals, people even."
"But I couldn't fix everything. Once they locked us up in the camp, my powers began to fade so when my mother became sick, I couldn't do anything to help her. So during our third week, they took her away." Lay blinks to keep the tears from spilling but some still manage to escape.
"I'm useless, aren't I?" Lay lets out a watery laugh as he wipes furiously at his eyes.
Lifting his hand, Kai gently brushes the droplets away. "No you're not," he says quietly. "I haven't been able to use magic ever since I was captured. If it weren't for you that day in the gas chamber, I would never have been able to teleport away." He brings Lay's palm to his chest, just above his heart.
"You might not be able to fix everything, but you've fixed me."
Kai had always known that their idyllic life was too good to last.
The skies are blue with dusk when they are ambushed by soldiers. He yells and reaches for Lay, but they are pulled apart before he can teleport them to safety. Helpless, he gives up his struggle as they bind him and push him onto a truck packed with grim-faced prisoners.
They are transported to a facility, full of dimly lit corridors and blank grey walls. He can hear long, drawn-out screams from behind the metal doors and shudders as he wonders about the instruments of torture that lay in wait. A quick death was the best he could hope for at this point, but he knew he would be shown no such mercy. They are led deep into the labyrinth until they arrive at the dungeons and he catches one last glance of Lay's frightened eyes before they are locked behind separate cells.
He loses track of the hours and days in the perpetual darkness. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot summon the vestiges of magic that Lay had reawakened. He can do nothing but pace between the four walls, trapped and alone.
They come for him after the isolation and nightmares have worn away at his sanity. He shifts between dream and reality with every blink of his eye. The room they take him to is washed with light and drenched in shadow, and the wires they attach to him are like colorful worms or tiny snakes-he can't decide which.
They sit him down in a chair in the centre of the room. He fades in and out of consciousness, only to be jolted awake by the electrical currents that draw raw screams of agony from his lips. He writhes but cannot escape the shackles that bind him to the chair. In between the bouts of indigo pain, he sees lab coats from the corner of his eyes and hears pens scribbling notes across paper. To them, he is just another rat to be experimented upon, his labored breaths just another observation to jot down in a chart.
He tries to close himself off, retreat within his haven of happy memories but the agony pierces through and stabs at him until his mind is completely shattered. All notions of love and happiness disappear and his body becomes a vessel for pain in its purest form.
The violet hues of delirium darken as he approaches the end of the spectrum. He knows he is nearing the edge and wonders if the chromatic shades would lead to heaven or hell.
His eyes flutter close and with one last thought of the boy with the dimpled smile, his world fades to black.
Pairing: Kaixing
Rating: PG
Summary: To experience the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows is to live on both ends of a spectrum.
The wind slices through the thin material of his dirt-stained jacket as Kai steps off the cargo train. He follows the crowd towards the red building, its perimeter surrounded by wire fences. Soldiers, armed and dressed in white, are stationed by the brick walls, eyes impassive as they push the stragglers forward with the butts of their machine guns. A quick glance is enough to tell him that the people who had been gathered were all magic practitioners who, like him, bore tattoos on their faces as indications of their abnormalities.
Crimson flags flank the heavy double doors, which lead to a windowless chamber. He comes to a stop behind a group of men who, too, had been taken from the concentration camps without explanation. The captives around him exchange silent looks, too afraid of the soldiers' wrath to voice their confusion. Kai feels a growing sense of dread as the doors close behind him with a dull thud. They are trapped within, accompanied by a handful of soldiers who begin to pull on gas masks.
The air suddenly becomes thick and unbreathable, and he chokes. His lungs, assaulted by the odourless gas, feel as if they are on fire. Around him, people begin falling to their knees with sharp screams of agony, hands closed around their throats. He drops to the ground, his entire body shuddering in pain. Death is upon him and he tries desperately to drudge up the magic inside him, the inner fire that months of starvation and ceaseless labour in the concentration camps had all but extinguished.
He hears the thump of a body drop to the floor beside him. The eyes that gaze at him are wide and terrified and very much alive. As the magic surges through him, he reaches out, clamps a hand on the boy's shoulder and teleports away.
He wakes to the smell of smoke and the orange glow of a small fire. Stone stalactites hang above him, tapering to points that resemble the teeth of some monster, but the fresh air and silence tell him that he had left the true monsters behind. The boy from the gas chamber peers at him from across the fire, arms hugged around his knees. Though his face is shadowed in the firelight, Kai could see the black tattoos on his cheek.
The boy nods towards the small pile of berries and nuts before him. "Eat. You must be hungry, after using all that magic." His lips lift in a dimpled half-smile and adds, "Thank you for saving me."
Kai grunts and stuffs a berry in his mouth, wiping the juice that trails down his chin with the back of his hand. He had acted on mere impulse, rather than some noble sense of heroism. Self-preservation had been his only thought but a part of him was glad that he was not alone.
"What's your name?" the boy asks when he finishes.
He pauses. It was a word that he had not spoken aloud, not since the day his parents had been captured and he had been sent to the camp. The syllable fall from his lips with all the strangeness of a foreign tongue.
"Kai."
"It's nice to meet you, Kai," the boy replies, his voice sweet and melodious. "You can call me Lay."
By some unspoken agreement, they decide to journey together. Each night, they would find a place to sleep-beneath a small bush or a cave if they're lucky-and every morning, they would wake, cover their tracks and teleport elsewhere. They remain in the woods or on the outskirts of towns, careful to avoid well-travelled paths crowded with tanks and patrolling soldiers.
They find the abandoned cabin a few months after their escape. Kai sees the wonder in Lay's eyes as they take in the small, square windows and overgrown garden. The door creaks as he pushes it open and he is surprised to find the place furnished. A bed is pushed against the far wall and a table with a pair of wooden chairs stand in the centre of the room.
"This'll do," Kai says as he draws the curtains and pushes the windows back in place.
"It's perfect," Lay sighs happily as he spins once, twice with arms spread out and a smile on his lips. The golden sunlight catches the strands of brown in his hair as he dances and Kai feels his heart twinge in response.
They both refuse to take the bed out of politesse until at last, when the skies had darkened, Kai declared that they would share the tiny cot. He murmurs goodnight and stares up at the low ceiling, his body taut with tension as he tries not to think about the boy lying beside him.
He is woken in the middle of the night by Lay's whimpers. His arms reach out of their own accord and gather the boy's thin body in a tight embrace. Lay clutches at the front of his shirt with trembling hands and somehow, between the tears and mingled breaths, their lips meet in the quiet darkness. They kiss with a desperate need, the heat and brush of bare skin silent affirmations that in this cold, cruel world, they still have each other.
Against his better judgement, Kai relents and agrees to remain at the cabin. They no longer rise at dawn, though Kai would sometimes wake up early just to spend the lazy mornings marvelling at Lay's sleeping face. Their days were passed tending the garden or foraging for food while their evenings were whiled away trading stories about life before the war.
"I was a healer," Lay muses as they sit beneath the green canopy of the maple trees. Fireflies dance in the summer air, glowing pinpricks of light that float lazily in front of their faces. "I could fix things, plants, animals, people even."
"But I couldn't fix everything. Once they locked us up in the camp, my powers began to fade so when my mother became sick, I couldn't do anything to help her. So during our third week, they took her away." Lay blinks to keep the tears from spilling but some still manage to escape.
"I'm useless, aren't I?" Lay lets out a watery laugh as he wipes furiously at his eyes.
Lifting his hand, Kai gently brushes the droplets away. "No you're not," he says quietly. "I haven't been able to use magic ever since I was captured. If it weren't for you that day in the gas chamber, I would never have been able to teleport away." He brings Lay's palm to his chest, just above his heart.
"You might not be able to fix everything, but you've fixed me."
Kai had always known that their idyllic life was too good to last.
The skies are blue with dusk when they are ambushed by soldiers. He yells and reaches for Lay, but they are pulled apart before he can teleport them to safety. Helpless, he gives up his struggle as they bind him and push him onto a truck packed with grim-faced prisoners.
They are transported to a facility, full of dimly lit corridors and blank grey walls. He can hear long, drawn-out screams from behind the metal doors and shudders as he wonders about the instruments of torture that lay in wait. A quick death was the best he could hope for at this point, but he knew he would be shown no such mercy. They are led deep into the labyrinth until they arrive at the dungeons and he catches one last glance of Lay's frightened eyes before they are locked behind separate cells.
He loses track of the hours and days in the perpetual darkness. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot summon the vestiges of magic that Lay had reawakened. He can do nothing but pace between the four walls, trapped and alone.
They come for him after the isolation and nightmares have worn away at his sanity. He shifts between dream and reality with every blink of his eye. The room they take him to is washed with light and drenched in shadow, and the wires they attach to him are like colorful worms or tiny snakes-he can't decide which.
They sit him down in a chair in the centre of the room. He fades in and out of consciousness, only to be jolted awake by the electrical currents that draw raw screams of agony from his lips. He writhes but cannot escape the shackles that bind him to the chair. In between the bouts of indigo pain, he sees lab coats from the corner of his eyes and hears pens scribbling notes across paper. To them, he is just another rat to be experimented upon, his labored breaths just another observation to jot down in a chart.
He tries to close himself off, retreat within his haven of happy memories but the agony pierces through and stabs at him until his mind is completely shattered. All notions of love and happiness disappear and his body becomes a vessel for pain in its purest form.
The violet hues of delirium darken as he approaches the end of the spectrum. He knows he is nearing the edge and wonders if the chromatic shades would lead to heaven or hell.
His eyes flutter close and with one last thought of the boy with the dimpled smile, his world fades to black.