[Week 21, Day 1] [Dream] In Desperation, We Climb
(Early morning, pre-dawn.)
WARNING: Disturbing imagery with children, though completely non-sexual.
There is no sound save the whisper of breath - yours and the one beside you. No sight save that of the Elder Emperor, with his long beard and cruel choice, his eyes colder than anything you've ever felt as he stares at you with ice-blue eyes dispassionately, waiting.
You look to the side and see yourself, yet it is not you. His eyes are calm, so calm. They can see the answer to the Emperor’s question in your eyes; reflect that answer back to you. Your hands, tiny little chubby hands, reach out as one and clasp each other tight before you both look back towards your Emperor, your uncle.
He has his answer: neither of you can forfeit the other’s life.
Neither of you can chose any other way, save each other. After all, you’re a child and so is he and in your limited understanding of the world you know only one truth - he is your other half, your twin.
You will always choose him, just as he will always choose you.
A sudden gust, harsh, frigid, unrelenting chills you to the bone and you look up...and up...and up before a sudden, insistent tugging at your hand snaps your gaze back down. There is desperation mirrored in your gazes as those little fingers clamp around each other, twisting and clawing to hold on that moment longer as little eyes widen, so focused on each other that neither of you notice the look of revulsion on the guard’s faces as they sunder the last physical connection between you, and you don’t know whose voice is the louder, but the uncomprehending anguish is clear in the shrill screams that rip out of childish throats.
“Faaaaaaaaii!!!”
“Yuuuuuuuui!!!”
Gone are the impersonal halls, gone is the magic that surrounds you, resides in you, dampened by whatever drains this valley that is your prison.
All that is left are fields of pristine white and unforgiving stone and a tower that is impossibly high.
And as you stand there, little feet numb as you stand in the snow, staring up at the shadow of a window all you can think - rather dumbly - is So this is what they meant when they said they can’t kill us.
No, they can’t kill you twins of misfortune least they suffer the greatest calamities... but they can prosper through your separation.
Your misery guarantees their decadent lives remain intact.
Even so, even now, that doesn’t matter to you.
Neither does the frigid wind and constant snow, nor they way the cold seeps in through your skin and chills the bones, freezing tiny feet or numbing little fingers. All that matters to you is getting to him, so you take that first step, scramble for purchase with soft little fingertips and toes in the cracks and crevices in rough-hewn stone - after all, you can’t feel the sharp edges anyways. Not even a little. Instead you just climb and climb and get up each time you fall to try again.
And all the while you watch as the bodies of the other sinners tumble over the edge of the cliff, to join you in this valley, condemning them, too, to never finding rest.
But that’s when you see it - in the corpse of the noble mother still clutching her child, the messenger still clutching his scroll with the plea for help against a ruler gone insane - it's your fault.
You realize then: You can climb to your freedom and release him from his frozen cage.
Just like you realize you can find a measure of warmth in the thick fur-lined robes adorning her corpse…only he can’t get any such reprieve, which means neither do you. You refuse to steal a comfort you cannot share with him and so you turn to the wall once again, dressed in nothing more than the matching nightgown you both wear and you begin to climb once again.
Then all that matters, as your tiny body drags one heavy corpse after another over to the stone wall, all you can think, remember, feel as you pile them high and scramble up your mountain of sin, are those blue, blue eyes staring own at you from above.
Waiting on you, he's waiting, Yuui. He needs you, don't stop, don't stop, can't stop, please.
Your fingertips bleed, toes split open on the sharp rock, little spider-webs of scars opening across your skin like gossamer threads, staining everything you touch with crimson blooms as you drag and climb and drag and climb on endless repeat until the bodies stop falling.
They just stop but you don't. You mark your progress with stone stained red, win inch upon impossible inch closer to your goal, closer to him until that last body falls.
Your Emperor, your uncle, barely recognizable as the regal figure he once was as he lurches to his feet and puts the point of his sword to his own throat.
And when he looks at you with the mad eyes of someone long since dead, ignores the tattered state of your clothes or how you’ve been there so long your matted golden hair trails a good foot over the snow. He grimaces in the horrifying parody of a smile as he slits his own throat with his final command.
Live...pay for that sin.
And you're screaming, screaming and screaming over the tearful sound of your name on his lips, the faint echo of his own despair drifting down to reach and torment you as you beg for help you know won't arrive, beg for answers that will never come.
Is it a sin just to be born? All we ever did was be born together...just to be born...
You don't know anymore - your young, broken mind can't hold onto the concept anymore as hope dies with your Uncle as you simply lay down where you'd fallen. Like the mountain of corpses that surround you.
And as the snow falls with a gentle caress and your soft, cherubic face thins, become gaunt, to match the constant ache in your belly as chapped lips, cracked and bleeding move to give the only evidence that you still live and breath as you whisper a single name over and over, like a prayer on your tongue.
Fai
[The Hitomi shows the blond lying on his side, blue eyes blinking open and staring blankly at the Hitomi, unseeing for a moment - utterly lifeless and dull. Another blink before recognition dawns in the crystalline orbs as he rolls over onto his back.
He doesn't realize the Hitomi is still recording as he whispers brokenly...]
Please…
WARNING: Disturbing imagery with children, though completely non-sexual.
There is no sound save the whisper of breath - yours and the one beside you. No sight save that of the Elder Emperor, with his long beard and cruel choice, his eyes colder than anything you've ever felt as he stares at you with ice-blue eyes dispassionately, waiting.
You look to the side and see yourself, yet it is not you. His eyes are calm, so calm. They can see the answer to the Emperor’s question in your eyes; reflect that answer back to you. Your hands, tiny little chubby hands, reach out as one and clasp each other tight before you both look back towards your Emperor, your uncle.
He has his answer: neither of you can forfeit the other’s life.
Neither of you can chose any other way, save each other. After all, you’re a child and so is he and in your limited understanding of the world you know only one truth - he is your other half, your twin.
You will always choose him, just as he will always choose you.
A sudden gust, harsh, frigid, unrelenting chills you to the bone and you look up...and up...and up before a sudden, insistent tugging at your hand snaps your gaze back down. There is desperation mirrored in your gazes as those little fingers clamp around each other, twisting and clawing to hold on that moment longer as little eyes widen, so focused on each other that neither of you notice the look of revulsion on the guard’s faces as they sunder the last physical connection between you, and you don’t know whose voice is the louder, but the uncomprehending anguish is clear in the shrill screams that rip out of childish throats.
“Faaaaaaaaii!!!”
“Yuuuuuuuui!!!”
Gone are the impersonal halls, gone is the magic that surrounds you, resides in you, dampened by whatever drains this valley that is your prison.
All that is left are fields of pristine white and unforgiving stone and a tower that is impossibly high.
And as you stand there, little feet numb as you stand in the snow, staring up at the shadow of a window all you can think - rather dumbly - is So this is what they meant when they said they can’t kill us.
No, they can’t kill you twins of misfortune least they suffer the greatest calamities... but they can prosper through your separation.
Your misery guarantees their decadent lives remain intact.
Even so, even now, that doesn’t matter to you.
Neither does the frigid wind and constant snow, nor they way the cold seeps in through your skin and chills the bones, freezing tiny feet or numbing little fingers. All that matters to you is getting to him, so you take that first step, scramble for purchase with soft little fingertips and toes in the cracks and crevices in rough-hewn stone - after all, you can’t feel the sharp edges anyways. Not even a little. Instead you just climb and climb and get up each time you fall to try again.
And all the while you watch as the bodies of the other sinners tumble over the edge of the cliff, to join you in this valley, condemning them, too, to never finding rest.
But that’s when you see it - in the corpse of the noble mother still clutching her child, the messenger still clutching his scroll with the plea for help against a ruler gone insane - it's your fault.
You realize then: You can climb to your freedom and release him from his frozen cage.
Just like you realize you can find a measure of warmth in the thick fur-lined robes adorning her corpse…only he can’t get any such reprieve, which means neither do you. You refuse to steal a comfort you cannot share with him and so you turn to the wall once again, dressed in nothing more than the matching nightgown you both wear and you begin to climb once again.
Then all that matters, as your tiny body drags one heavy corpse after another over to the stone wall, all you can think, remember, feel as you pile them high and scramble up your mountain of sin, are those blue, blue eyes staring own at you from above.
Waiting on you, he's waiting, Yuui. He needs you, don't stop, don't stop, can't stop, please.
Your fingertips bleed, toes split open on the sharp rock, little spider-webs of scars opening across your skin like gossamer threads, staining everything you touch with crimson blooms as you drag and climb and drag and climb on endless repeat until the bodies stop falling.
They just stop but you don't. You mark your progress with stone stained red, win inch upon impossible inch closer to your goal, closer to him until that last body falls.
Your Emperor, your uncle, barely recognizable as the regal figure he once was as he lurches to his feet and puts the point of his sword to his own throat.
And when he looks at you with the mad eyes of someone long since dead, ignores the tattered state of your clothes or how you’ve been there so long your matted golden hair trails a good foot over the snow. He grimaces in the horrifying parody of a smile as he slits his own throat with his final command.
Live...pay for that sin.
And you're screaming, screaming and screaming over the tearful sound of your name on his lips, the faint echo of his own despair drifting down to reach and torment you as you beg for help you know won't arrive, beg for answers that will never come.
Is it a sin just to be born? All we ever did was be born together...just to be born...
You don't know anymore - your young, broken mind can't hold onto the concept anymore as hope dies with your Uncle as you simply lay down where you'd fallen. Like the mountain of corpses that surround you.
And as the snow falls with a gentle caress and your soft, cherubic face thins, become gaunt, to match the constant ache in your belly as chapped lips, cracked and bleeding move to give the only evidence that you still live and breath as you whisper a single name over and over, like a prayer on your tongue.
Fai
[The Hitomi shows the blond lying on his side, blue eyes blinking open and staring blankly at the Hitomi, unseeing for a moment - utterly lifeless and dull. Another blink before recognition dawns in the crystalline orbs as he rolls over onto his back.
He doesn't realize the Hitomi is still recording as he whispers brokenly...]
Please…