Shattered

Author’s Notes: This one is just a bit weird, I admit it, and I don’t really know where it came from. Kind of experimental, really. It doesn’t make a lot of sense either, but my one consolation is that it wasn’t really meant to. It was more an attempt to paint a picture with words than tell any kind of coherent story with a beginning, middle and end. _____

It hadn’t been so much a matter of pride as it had been of simply not breaking, of holding it in until he knew it was safe to let go. And with that had come the pretence.

He’d felt it keenly. The desire to seem content even when he wasn’t, the need to pretend he felt fine, that nothing troubled him, to be happy like everyone else was happy. It hadn’t been a conscious decision to play the part; it had just happened. Better for everyone, he’d thought, that he did. It made things so much simpler to pretend, to play-act. And it had worked, it had come naturally to him. He’d discovered – how, he didn’t know – that it was easy. It was nothing. The construct was more him than he’d ever been.

It’s me. That’s me.

The person he’d invented had a name and a character of his own, he did things his own way. He was sociable, open, confident – almost aggressively so. Everything that he himself wasn’t, everything he wanted to be but couldn’t. Poised where he was retiring, forward where he was discreet. And he’d flourished and he’d grown more assured by the day whilst the ‘real’ him gradually stood aside and let the construct take over.

It had been easy, really. There hadn’t even been a struggle.

But the old him hadn’t died. He’d just become a bittersweet secret.

Standing under the shower, the spray plastering his hair to his head, his curls flattened under the weight of the water, Kaoru Nakano’s mind was full of white noise and static and little else. A nothing channel… lights on/nobody home. That kind of thing.

Nothing. Nothing.

It was apt… a good way to describe himself. Kaoru was all sound and fury and nothing under the surface. He was everything they accused him of. Shallow, vain, superficial. He knew he was, knew it, knew it, knew it. And when they told him he was shallow he would laugh. Laugh and flip his hair and agree with them. He would pull his sunglasses down his nose and gaze at them over the frames and tell them that they liked it and they wouldn’t want him any other way. And normally they didn’t really.

They liked it.

They Liked It.

Too bad he didn’t… and ultimately they wouldn’t either. He had an ex-girlfriend rail at him in public for that, for his shallowness, his callousness, didn’t he care about anything other than having fun? True… she was a very new ex-girlfriend. And he’d smiled and said she’d known it when she’d met him and it was true and it had been what she’d liked in him… she’d said it herself.

You just don’t care, and I like that. You’re amoral. Like a cat.

He’d laughed. Laughed at her and watched the tears forming in the corners of her eyes and he’d waited for her… to slap him, to swear at him, say anything. And waited for the tears to fall.

And then she’d turned and walked away.

She’d walked away with her head down. Eyes to the floor, her hair hanging in front of her face. He hadn’t known how he’d worked it out but he’d known she wasn’t crying yet, but she would cry, he knew that too. They all cried.

So did he, when he knew himself unobserved.

It had saddened him to watch her go, but he hadn’t gone after her. He’d lit a cigarette and gone to a bar and spent the evening with the first person who’d made themselves available. And then he’d left him too, left him sleeping and walked home in the dawn, his eyes on the sky, the pale stars, the leftover glow of the city.

Wandering. Wondering. Is this all there is?

He was everything they accused him of and knew it. Heartless, callous, manipulative. Playboy. Slut. At the same time he knew that they didn’t know him at all, because although he was all of those things he was none of those things. Victim and violator in the same body. A schizophrenic personality… almost split.

Turning the water off, he picked up his towel.

“What’ve you been doing in there? You pass out or something?”

Toshiya, smiling and giddily breathless at the table. No matter what happened, regardless of whether he was tired or rested, Toshiya always sounded slightly breathless; he had an air of nervous expectancy about him and a way of waiting, of hanging back, that would make him seem younger than he was long after he’d grown out of his adolescent awkwardness, would have him regarded naturally and unthinkingly as a boy long after he’d become a young man. Kaoru envied him his youth, his innocence, the easy way he smiled his dizzy teenage smile. There was still something of the child in him, something Kaoru had long outgrown at his age. Or had he just lost it? He didn’t know.

Toshiya had once looked at him and asked why he laughed when he didn’t mean it, why his eyes were always sad and smiles never reached them. And Kaoru had no words for him.

…you can ask me anything toshiya so long as its not that…

Nothing. No words.

Kaoru had never known what to do with him, with the bewildering child who called him niichan, who would laugh and ask him fearless questions about anything and did. And he’d demanded protection without ever once asking for it, simply by being young and lively and Kaoru’s little brother. He was young and lively and here… sat at the table happily oblivious, eating a piece of toast in lieu of making dinner and drinking tea and contemplating the day that had been and the day he wished he had been living instead whilst Kaoru stood in the doorway with his hands in the pockets of his bathrobe and his hair hanging damp in rat-tails round his face and watched him. Watched, and was watched back by the teenager, his eyes sparkling but still in a placid face.

Toshiya didn’t like coffee. It was too strong.

“Niichan,” the boy said, gently chiding, his face suddenly as animated as his eyes were, “If you’ve used up all the hot water again it’s justifiable homicide…” He stopped, blinked, and frowned. Distance was not something he was used to. Not in Kaoru’s expressions, that young man’s face. Not there. “Is there something the matter?”

…you can ask me anything but not that…

He’d thought he’d left it behind… Thought he’d left it… Left it behind…

He’d thought it was just to survive; to hold on until it was all over. But he’d been wrong. He’d thought he’d left it behind but some things you can’t leave.

You can’t leave when it’s all over because it’s not all over for you. It was over but only just beginning for him. The other, the others, had forgotten his name and his face and just moved on to start it all again… theoretically.

“Has something happened?”

… not that toshiya not that you dont want to know that some things you shouldn't know and i cant tell you anyway…

“Nothing like that, Toshi-kun.” “Well, if you’re sure.”

He knew when not to push it, did Toshiya.

The boy got up and turned the stereo on and picked up his bass. Kaoru smiled. Creature of habit, Toshi. Picked up his guitar and dreamed of stardom like so many children did… practiced and dreamed sat there on the floor still wearing his work clothes, his tie loose and shirt untucked. Uncomplicated. He was easy to understand. Sixteen years old; he’d lost a lot of his naivety but kept his innocence. Sixteen…

A bad age, sixteen.

Then. He remembered it. He’d always had a good memory for detail.

He’d been young then, obviously so, and he hadn’t even looked his age. Fourteen… or was it thirteen? Thirteen; too young, much too young. Slenderer than even Toshiya would be, fine-boned and slight, his hair black and wavy, like his mother’s; it had always been long, even back then he’d had long hair, for a boy. The wind had tangled his hair, ruffled his dark curls. He’d been hurrying home to escape a sudden storm, clutching his book bag to his chest, mind on other things as he made his solitary way home.

Alone. He didn’t know where he’d got the confidence for that. Alone was… difficult. No distractions. He needed the distractions. They stopped him from thinking too hard. You needed that when thinking hurt. The memories hurt.

But of course he’d been different then. Alone, but not lonely. He’d liked solitude then, he’d liked the silence of solitude, he hadn’t needed sound and fury and the company of strangers to make him feel at ease.

Kotaru Nakano.

And… It had been then that it had begun. He’d called to him as he was walking and then it had begun. Slowly at first, but it had been a beginning, everything has to start somewhere and this had started here. He’d said it made him feel more alive, but Kotaru hadn’t. If anything, it felt like dying. Every time, over and over. Every time it felt like dying. Someone had said that once, called it a little death.

…dont joke kotaru that kind of things not funny…

And finally he’d died, but not because of him. Or them, even. They may have touched him but they’d wanted him alive. Because of someone else. A stranger, stranger even than he was.

…i knew youd think i was making it up!

In memory of Kotaru Nakano, died aged seventeen. Killed by an interloper with a woman’s name, a ready laugh, an open smile… and no past. No past. Never any past. Running wild, living wild… for himself and for the present and nothing else but that. No one cried for Kotaru, no one had put flowers on his grave. He hadn’t even been buried.

And the usurper flourished and he grew more assured.

Kaoru Nakano sat at the table and cut an orange, his hands bare for once. His fingers and palms were sticky with the juice, the pith was stuck under his fingernails. Purple varnish and orange juice on and under Kaoru’s nails. He leant over the fruit, concentrating on bisecting it over and over and over, head bent, seemingly deep in concentration. It would have surprised some people to see how hard he concentrated, how hard he could concentrate, and on such a trivial thing as a piece of fruit.

But then, they’d have said, he’s good with the little things. It’s the serious side of life he misses.

Red

The knife had slipped and he cut himself deeply. His palm. But apart from a small gasp of pain and surprise and a very obvious flinch, he did nothing. What was another scar? Sat and watched, the knife in one hand, as his other bled, dripping red onto the table, brilliant ruby stains on the surface, on the forgotten orange, on the blade of the knife.

Déjà vu.

The boy looked up, frowning, quietly worried by the stillness and the sudden change in his brother’s silence. Still life with orange. Toshiya blinked then gasped himself and the moment shattered like a wine glass knocked clumsy to the floor, splintering, liquid and jagged fragments and tiny shards that catch you unawares. Weeks, months, years later they catch you and the pain is no less for it’s being delayed.

“Kaoru!”

Sleeping alone. There was a reason for the casual love he normally sought; Kaoru seldom slept well, if he slept at all, when he was alone in bed. Some nights he’d go into his brother's room and fall asleep with his arms round Toshiya - who knew not to ask - just so it wouldn’t feel like he was alone in the world. The boy may have been his brother, but he was also company, he was a person, real and reassuringly solid and there.

Nights were always the hardest time. The night knew his secrets. The night knew him for what he was, and it would ask him why he pretended so.

He lay on his side in the dark and listened to the silence that nearly stifled him and thought the things he didn’t want to and remembered the things he’d wanted to deny. Remembered the years that had broken him so completely that he couldn’t have picked up all the pieces if he’d tried, the things which had made it all inevitable; the wanderings, the superficial relationships, the late-night pick-ups, the drinks and the cigarettes and the flippancy and the recklessness and the quiet, almost casual self-destruction…

… his desperate search for something, anything, that might numb the pain…

And the pills and the tears and the blood and the sleepless nights and the smell of antiseptic and the sombre men in white. That too, that had been inevitable. Standing on a crowded street; wordless screams… they’d all seen it coming. He’d seen it coming and known himself to be helpless in the face of it. He’d seen it coming and known it would break him and there’d been nothing he could do…

Maybe that had been why Kaoru screamed.

He’d been wounded and never healed. He’d lost his way and never found it again. He’d been murdered and left to take the blame.

In memory of Kotaru Nakano… he’d been shattered and now he, what was left of him, crouched among the shards, his reflection in the pieces as crazed and deranged as they were in a broken mirror, his palms and legs cut to ribbons, bleeding and weeping as he tried to pick up the pieces.

Kaoru cried himself to sleep, the same way he did every lonely night.

Kotaru hadn’t cried. Kotaru hadn’t needed to.

~owari~