[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

GAI !... NOOOOOOOO !...

There were too many things in the cry. Far too many. A feeling of loss so intense, so terrible it went far beyond human understanding, a grief so great that a heart couldn't have felt it. It was resounding endlessly in the dark, echoing stronger with each moment, filling the void all around, tainting the night in blood.

Hurting...

Hurting so much...

Falling was better, yes. Falling further away. Falling down. Down... Anything, but to feel this. To feel the other mourning, to feel...

That part of my self.

My ?

No... No that had no meaning. None. Nothing held meaning anymore. Nothing but pain, and darkness.

Anger.

Fury.

Hatred.

A muted howl tore through the very fabric of this reality, darker than the night, stronger even than the pain. Devouring what there might have been left. Claiming...

Possession.

Ownership.

From a place that had never known light, beyond the stars, a presence reached out, hungry. Famished. Raving... Demanding...

No...

Better to fall. To keep falling, eternally.

Down below the Diet Building, in a place that looked like the inside of one of the rare old houses that could still be found in Tokyo, a woman who looked both ancient and young tensed almost imperceptibly as she felt a Dream taking hold of her. She was alone in the large, empty room, kneeling on the wooden floor. For a brief moment, she wondered what the meaning of this might be, how it could be.

She already knew...

Questions and doubts flew away from her as the Dream envelopped her. As she had so often done in the past, she allowed the vision to engulf her, and Saw.

A young girl cruelly tied to a giant metal cross by a myriad of thin iron filaments.

Watching her reflection in a mirror that was a lake of crystal clear waters.

Her gentle hazel eyes numb with shock and pain, fear.

Watching, as her other self was ripped to shreds by the iron filaments the one she loved pulled.

Watching, as blood filled her vision.

And then, falling.

What was this about ? The woman felt a slight unease as the now well-known Dream unfolded in front of her.

As the Dream that was the Past happened again.

Almost, she drew away from it. It had no meaning, it held no interest. She knew all this, everything was done already. The future locked. Fate tamed to bring about what she intended it to... A part of her silently laughed as she thought the Dream might simply be the product of guilt, of her conscience.

Stupid, ludicrous.

Yet, out of what might have been morbid curiosity or a vague sense of boredom, she kept watching.

As the young girl fell, she saw below her the beautiful crystal sphere that was the Earth, the Earth that she would shatter and destroy if ever she were to touch it.

Fall on it.

If this happened... As she had once before, the girl chose death rather than to be the cause of the earth's destruction. Of humanity's destruction. Slowly, her body was ripped to shreds as she herself pulled the iron filaments which had never ceased to imprison her. The hazel eyes filled with pain, and also with love as death claimed her. Then, the hundreds of small body fragments harmlessly fell around the beautiful crystal sphere, showering it with blood.

The sacrifice had been made, humanity now stood a chance. The watcher knew all this. There was absolutely no point to this dream, none !

The girl's blood was still raining down on the crystal Earth, shedding some sort of shadow over the scene, which was why the watcher didn't immediately notice a tiny object falling down in its midst.

A small thing, so insignificant...

Unhindered and unseen, a beautiful pearl fell, coming from nowhere, everywhere, from a place and time that it had fled, for what might have been an eternity. The watcher eventually saw it among the drops of blood, and distantly wondered what it was doing in her vision.

In the meantime, the tiny, beautiful pearl kept falling.

Utterly black against the blood red night.

In her own realm below the Government Building, Kanoe sat back in the weird piece of furniture that might have been called a throne of sorts, trying to ease her mind from the sight and feeling of the Kamui's presence. Things might just be a bit more complicated than she had first planned, but everything would turn out as she wanted it. She just needed a bit of time to ascertain control, and Fate would unfold exactly as she wished. Relaxing slowly, she sensually leant against the strange shape of the throne's back, focusing on the sensation of both metal and the delicate fabric of her dress rubbing against her skin, and eventually closed her eyes.

A faint line creased her brow as a weak sensation she knew tugged at the back of her mind. Sighing slightly, she focused her thoughts, and followed the link, wishing her sister would have had a better sense of timing.

Sure enough... Bored, Kanoe watched the well known scene happen again through her sister's eyes, and wondered dryly if it wasn't high time for her dear Hinoto onee-san to start a therapy. She really had no time to waste in Seeing visions as useless as this one, and she didn't understand why her sister put up with it, why she wasn't stepping back from it. Masochism could be interesting, but in this case, it sure was inconvenient.

Kanoe saw the young girl's body shatter as she chose to die to protect the Earth and humanity with it, and thought the scene lost all interest and strength with repetition. For a little bit, she might have laughed aloud. It was so cliche, really. The young girl, the insignificant heroine of a small budget horror movie...

Wait, something...

There, among the rain of blood showering the sphere... A small pearl, utterly black...

No, not exactly...

Fascinated, Kanoe watched the tiny pearl fall, wondering if light could be black. For this was what the true colour of the pearl was. It was both luminous, and utterly, absolutely black.

So beautiful...

On impulse, she made to reach out to it, in the same time her sister did. Their fingers touched, and they froze, staring at each other numbly, distantly wondering how they could have been moved to act so. To...

The black pearl slowly hit the crystal Earth, so softly it didn't raise the slightest sound. The two sisters looked down, pulled by a feeling so strong it was undeniable, trapped by what their Sight demanded them to witness. The small pearl was sinking in the sphere, as if it had touched an ocean, but in such a gentle way that it had created absolutely no ripple on its surface. Like bad quality paint, its blackness slowly wore away, spreading on the crystal and marring its purity. Kanoe recoiled suddenly.

Feeling...

Beyond the blackness, light was shining, coming from the pearl.... No, the pearl *was* the light.

Light that shone so brightly...

That hurt so horribly...

Pain...

Soundlessly, the crystal sphere shattered before the two Seeresses.

Myriads of utterly black crystal fragments mixing with the half dried pools of blood on the insubstantial floor as what might have been a mixture of silent laughter and sobs filled the Dream.

Kanoe fled the vision as her sister did, their souls gripped by a terror that had no name.

Reaching out beyond the endless night, the presence came again. Clawing at what was left of what I had been. So harsh, so violent it could be felt beyond the cry that had engulfed and devoured all, and impossibly kept amplifying with each second that passed.

It was laughing.

Refusal, shame and grief came forth, distant and vague images that held no meaning but relentlessly tortured something within that amazingly could still be hurt and feel pain.

No...

There was no will, no self left to oppose the presence, nothing but this pain. That, and the fall.

Never...

There was nothing to be done, but cling to the abyss, and fall further into the dark.

Homeless people weren't uneard of in Tokyo, but still they could have had the good taste to remain in the backplaces of subway stations where they were supposed to be. The middle aged man brushed a stray tree leaf from the shoulder of his impeccable jacket, wondering where the world was coming to. At last, a taxi appeared in the large avenue and stopped beside him. Hurriedly, he stepped in, hoping there was still a chance he'd be on time for his appointment. As the car reached the traffic lights a hundred meters from the place the man had been waiting for a good ten minutes, all thoughts and memories of the homeless had vanished from his mind.

A little girl was running after a balloon she had inadvertantly lost to a whimsical breeze, when suddenly she tripped against something and fell. Her knees hit the ground hard, and she cried as she saw a few drops of blood where the skin had been scratched. Eventually, she stopped as she knew she was alone and her mother wouldn't come pick her up to comfort her, and looked up, vaguely wondering why she had fallen like this.

The little girl started, surprised. There was someone sitting down on the ground, his back leant against the small wall under the park's iron gates. The person who was there had his head bowed deeply, so deeply that his face couldn't even be glimpsed if one didn't look at him from below. From her vantage point, the little girl could see him perfectly. He was covered by what seemed to be a big grey sheet of tissue that covered even his hair and served to hide his features. The little girl stared at the young man for a long time, without triggering any response or reaction from him, there was no sign that he was even aware of her presence. Those eerie, beautiful russet-gold eyes were looking right at her, but couldn't see her, she knew.

Eventually, the little girl remembered about her balloon, stood up, and ran in the direction she had last seen the wind take it away. When she finally gave up her search, she abruptly felt a strange ache in her chest, and absentmindedly thought it hurt far worse than the scratches on her knees. Tears filled the little girl's eyes and silently ran down her cheeks as an emotion stronger than anything she had known in her short life engulfed her heart.

Sorrow.

Sounds...

Smells...

Sights...

Illusions, all this. There was nothing, nothing but the fall. It would never end, just as the pain, the grief and the shame would never leave. Just as the laughter would never...

No. No...

Sensations...

Lies, they had to be. They had to !

They had to...

Wandering along the ocean's ghostly beach in the Dreamscape, Kakyou wondered which emotion he should have felt after witnessing the sisters' vision. A dark hand had reached out, and reshuffled the deck of cards. They had been given a new deal, and the two Seeresses were likely busy frantically trying to find out whether this one was better than the former... Which was exactly the purpose behind the vision.

The purpose of the shadowy hand.

It was all meaningless, Fate hadn't changed in the slightest because of what had happened. It might come about in a different way, but everything remained the same where the result was concerned.

The gods were simply playing their little games with insignificant mortals who unwittingly followed where they were being led. Never questioning...

Here though...

Kakyou stopped beside a rock on the edge of the ghostly beach, and sat down on it, letting his gaze wander beyond the horizon.

Seeing...

A young man sitting on the hard pavement of Tokyo's sidewalks, his back leant against the wall supporting the iron gates of a park, his head bowed and his shoulders slumped, as if he was being crushed under a weight far too heavy for him to bear. Kakyou watched, and saw the crowd of passers-by brush past the young man, not even noticing him, some rare few silently cursing against a worthless homeless who should have had the decency to move from their way. Of all the people who passed by him, only a little girl saw him, and lost herself in his eyes. When she finally went away, the DreamGazer felt emotions rising from her, shining brighter than a beacon fire as a grief and sorrow that had no name and no depth gripped her vulnerable soul.

The young man's...

Unexpectedly, Kakyou saw tears running down the little girl's cheeks, and reported his attention to the unmoving figure, who was still oblivious to the reality of the world around him. Or so it seemed... Someone, or something had released the emotions within the child, allowing them an escape, or they would have burnt and consumed her spirit. They weren't human, their violence and strength beyond what the human mind could even apprehend. Kakyou closely watched the unmoving young man for a long time, examining the locks of pale grey hair that had managed to escape from the hood of the poor blanket which was the only thing covering the young man's body, the russet-gold eyes that anyone would have thought empty, unseeing, the expression that would have been called devoid of emotion by any passer-by who could have been bothered to look at what was before him... The young man was beautiful, there was no denying that.

Beautiful, and damned.

Eventually, Kakyou allowed his awareness to leave the real world, and once more drank in the peaceful sight of the ocean of dreams in front of him. He knew enough now, he had seen what he needed to. Things would happen as they were supposed to, it was merely a question of time. He had waited for so long... He could wait a bit more. At last, the DreamGazer reached a decision as to which emotion he should be feeling.

And smiled.

In this case, the gods had outdone themselves. Calling the picture of the young man one last time to his mind, Kakyou thought that this went beyond cruelty. But then, that wasn't his concern.

Soon enough, he would be needed. In the meantime, he would remain here and watch. Gather strength.

He would try to cope with what there was in the lost young man's eyes, try to cope with the echo it gave rise to in his own heart, try to cope with this feeling he had never thought would come back and haunt him so acutely.

Understanding... So complete and absolute understanding...

Slowly, he stood from his rock and resumed his walk along the ghostly beach, allowing the light wind to wipe away what was after all only a dream of tears from his eyes.

End of Part 1.

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