|
|
Part of me could still not believe what I had done. That was the part that was still sane, the part I hardly ever listened to anymore. Sometimes it chastised me for having been deformed and twisted into this horrid, warped creature, but it was easy to frighten. It was the part that was still a little boy, afraid of phantoms in the shadows and the cacophony of war, wanting nothing so much in the whole world but the sound of a brother's flute to soothe it into sleep.
It was the same part that had lured me here in a moment of weakness, and profound despair. I had never realised that I knew the way to his new village so well, but it had felt like finding my way home. I curled hidden in the branches of the big tree, and listened to him play his flute somewhere inside.
Aniki.... My stomach hurt. I'd made it this far by not thinking about what I'd done, what I'd given up, what I'd destroyed. I'm sorry, aniki. I'm terrible, and I'm so, so sorry. You wouldn't like me now. I don't even like me now. But would you forgive me..? That was a silly question. He already had. He'd tried to bring me with him. And in the end I'd betrayed even him.
I could remember what he no longer could. I could still taste the tangy bitterness of the juice in my mouth, feel the involuntary tensing of his lips when I kissed him, see his eyes going wide and hurt when he realised I was abandoning him. I was haunted by the pain in his face, fading into unconscious oblivion, erasing all memory of me from his heart.
Why? My heart screamed, and my eyes stung with tears I would never be able to show around another person again. Why did I do that...aniki, help me! What have I become? But it was too late, he couldn't help me now, and everything that I now was, I had made myself.
The monster I had become let me ignore everything. Without it, I could still hear the screams of children dying, feel their blood drying thick on my fingers. If I was a holy warrior of Seiryuu, then Seiryuu was a terrible, heartless god indeed, to let me butcher innocent children and call it revenge against people who had done me no wrong. I had been too blinded by rage at the time to see the heartbreak in Tamahome's eyes when he found them, but I had imagined it many times since. I thought they had killed my aniki, but they were so much better than I was. He was right to want to be one of them.
I had lost control of the monster long ago, if I ever had control to begin with. I thought it was righteous anger, once, but now it was more like going insane. It was what made me betray the brother that I had killed an ally to save. And then...there was no word for the shame I felt when I remembered what I had tried to do to Suzaku no Miko. Murderer of children, attemped raper of priestesses, betrayer of brothers...all this was now me, and nothing I could do would ever redeem me. If twins were truly one soul split in two, then I was everything dark and evil and corrupt that could exist, and he was everything good and pure and perfect. The only good I could lay claim to was saving him, and taking him away from where he might have become more like me.
His flute's song drifted mournfully through the night air, brushing my skin, tickling my salty eyes, and I huddled in the treebranches and cried for the beast I had become, for the boy I could never be again, and the brother I ached to hold once more. I could not cry to anyone else, they would not understand. Not this time. I cried because the song he played--no song he ever played again--would ever be for me.
I cried because I was ruined.
