Breathe

Warnings: Femslash, which means girl on girl. Dark themes. I didn’t proofread. Sorry.

Summary: Life’s whatever life is, and cheating’s half the fun. (femslash/yuri)

Notes: Thankies, Chaotic Mind, for your very kind encouragements. They totally made my day :)

X

“It’s just a game, you know,” she tells me, out back, on the green. “That’s all it really has to be.”

“What is?” I ask, beside her, on the grass. The tilted hills stretch down below us, dropping for miles on an impossible slant, and rising a moment later. We roll down them, sometimes. Just to feel the wind in our hair. Or at least, I do.

“Life,” she sighs, and lets her head back. I turn mine to look at her, and wonder. The stone house behind us doesn’t make a sound, and the stone path behind that is quiet, and the rows of bushes and gardens and houses behind that are buzzing with life and noise. “Everything.” She throws her hands up. I smile.

“And we’re the pieces?” She laughs. I’ve heard this one before.

“Yes, and the point is to beat everyone to win, and you do that by the roll of a dice, of chance, of fate. That sounds silly, though, like you’re not in control – you just move along the board. I guess that’s how it is. As long as you’re breathing it’s your turn, to move, to roll, to live.” She pauses. “And then you stop, and lose.”

I blink. “Oh.” I haven’t heard that one before.

The quiet buzzes around us, and a gust of wind puffs through the grass, throwing it up in the air, throwing it right before our eyes. Dandelions dance in the sun, that isn’t too hot, and the grass isn’t too cold. It’s just... it’s just right.

Quietly, just right.

“But that’s just a game, too,” she mumbles, and a yellow tuft flitters down on my face. She rolls over, on her shoulder, and smirks down at me. A harsh nail flicks it away.

I close my eyes, and scrunch up my nose, because her long blonde hair is pouring into my face, and it tickles. She brushes a few strands behind her ear. My eyes open again. “What is?”

Her eyes are prettier. “Breathing.”

Whispers. “How so?”

Silence. “Stop, and just keep playing. It’s the only way to cheat.”

I never thought of cheating life before, but that’s my Narcissa for you.

My Narcissa, who always walks in front. I always walk behind. “Can I lead this time?” I can hear myself asking, inside my head. I will, some day. I’ll step in front of her, and I’ll take over, and I’ll do something for once.

“Of course,” she’ll say, and she’ll toss her golden waves back, smiling. Her black leather boots will stop walking, and she’ll stand in place, while her chains and buckles and bracelets all clatter against her sides. “Go ahead.” I’ll stop, too.

I know I will. I’ll tilt my head to the side. And I’ll hate myself for it. But I won’t move another step. And that will just be that – she’ll turn around, and start walking again. Black sweatshirt, black jeans, paperclips in her ears and metal on her tongue.

“I thought so,” she’ll say, and I’ll nod, and I won’t care. I’ll get so confused, talking to her like that, my best friend, my goddess, my darkness. I know I will, because I always do, and around her I never finish my thoughts. If I let them, they’d stretch on for miles.

Running around in circles. Miles and miles of circles.

“So,” I sigh, behind again. With my worn blue jeans, and my striped turtle neck, and my hair pulled back in a pony-tail. “Are you a cheater, then?” And she laughs.

She turns around, and winks, and keeps on walking. “Of course, lover girl. It’s the only way to get any where.”

The stone pavement echoes with our footsteps, and I want to pull the weeds out from between its cracks. Houses line the sides of my vision, cobblestones, fences, gardens, and everything that’s so much less than the pair of us. “If life’s a board game, you can’t get very far off the board, anyway.”

She grins, and I know it, even though she’s turned around. “The board? No, life’s a roller coaster.”

I hurry to keep up, and shrug my backpack to the other shoulder. Her black bag swings at her side, torn, and sewn, and torn again on purpose. It’s covered in duct tape. “A roller coaster?”

We’re going to be late, but I don’t care, because the things I learn from her are worth more than everything else I’ve ever known. “Exactly. Life goes up, and life goes down, and some times you’ve just got to scream, ‘cause that’s the best part of the ride. The point is to go as high as you can.”

Up the steps, to the door, the bell’s ringing and it hurts my ears. “How do you cheat with that?”

She smirks again. A pale hand holds my shoulder to the wall, and later students flood past us, and she leans in really close. A hard nail brushes a loose strand behind my ear, and whispers, low, “You stop breathing, and fall from the top.”

She smells like lavender, and I know I should go to class, but she’s holding me down, and it’s... warm. “How do you stop breathing?”

It’s just... right. “Like this...”

I don’t know, I kind of like breathing.

But I’ll stop, if she really wants me to. I’ll stop, just for her. I’ll do anything for her.

I think she knows that.

I think she knows too much.

I think she knows that these textbooks they give us are ridiculously heavy, and it’s not just me being weak. In any case, she takes the stack off my hands, and adds them to her bag. I can see it splitting, again. I know we’ll fix it together, again. Maybe it’s a good thing I’m so weak.

We could walk straight back to our houses, back down the streets, back down through the world. She’d rather tug me around back, behind the school, behind the streets, behind everything. She doesn’t have to tug, and she knows it, because when she carefully slips down the wet, grassy hill, I follow without a word. The slant’s not so bad here. It’s just a little steep in parts, a little rough, a little muddy. We slip down, into the trees. Now the school’s above us, the forest below. I don’t know which scares me more.

Off she goes again, over the rocks, and through the green, over the brown. I wish we lived somewhere flatter, where we didn’t need to use branches as a place to pull on and roots as a place to push from. I wish a lot of things.

I wish she’d make more sense to me, for one thing.

“Riding kind of low on the coaster, aren’t we?” I mumble. She stops. I wonder if I’ve said something wrong, until I reach where she is, a patch of nothingness covered in golden leaves and twigs. There’re trees all around, and trees rushing down, to a lake of still water, dark, and deep, and low. Trees around the edge, trees in the distance, trees that stretch far above our heads and nearly block out the sun.

“Coaster, darling?” she drawls, and moves to sit on the edge. I join her, though I’m afraid, and the soft dirt feels week beneath our weight. “No,” she continues, looking down at our reflections. “Life is like a tunnel, and the farther in you go, the darker it gets, until you reach the light at the end.”

I shrug my bag off my shoulders, rest it behind us, and move my hand towards hers. “Oh.” I wish she’d make a wit of sense to me.

“Yup,” she finishes, in a sigh. “If you just stop breathing, you can cheat, and tunnel out, and find the light faster than the lifetime it takes for the sane.” And she pushes herself, right off the edge, into the water. The splash stops just short of reaching me.

I don’t know what to do, or what to say, and I’ve forgotten all the homework I promised I’d do for her. She’s on her back now, paddling with her arms, gracefully, kicking up her legs. “Narcissa,” is all I can mumble.

“Come on in,” she calls, and her black mascara doesn’t run. Her light bangs stick to her light forehead, and the minimal amount of light slides over her shadow. “I’ll show you the light.”

Yeah, I kind of like breathing. Like I like being free, and being dry.

I like her more.

She’s always told me that fear isn’t very becoming.

“It isn’t, you know.”

I don’t care, and I won’t move out from behind her. Her brother’s... scary. Not mean, or anything. Just... scary. He’s big. Imposing, like her, and important, like her, and when they get into fights it scares me just to think about it.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” he mutters strongly, glaring at her, from the doorway of his room. The room she lives in. Regardless.

“I’ll talk to her however I want,” she says passively, and steps back, to loop an arm around my waist. She glares right back. Smirking.

He steps back in his room, and slams the door. I can hear the music blasting, filling my soul, and she trails over to her adjacent, empty room. Without being asked, I follow her. I like her room better. It holds only what she likes. That’s what Narcissa surrounds herself with. I hope this means she likes me.

There’s a bathroom between their rooms - they share it. She marches through it, and picks the lock on his side, and stalks into his room like nobody’s business. Her hair flops out when she lands on his messy bed. She reaches over him, and turns his music up. I sit at her side, and feel so out of place, and he slaps her hand away, and he gets up, and he leaves.

“I didn’t mean to scare you off,” she calls after him, quietly. He ignores it, and slams the door. She turns to me, and tugs on my sleeve, so I fall down beside her. “You know what life is like?” she sighs.

“No,” I reply. I don’t have a clue.

Grinning, she rolls on her side, and puts a hand under her chin. I don’t know what to do. And I don’t care. “Life is like a kingdom. You start off as a peasant, and you work your way up to queen, and you can’t work out anything if everyone doesn’t work together.”

My hands move under my head. Me feet scrape across the floor. “Oh.” I wonder when he’ll come back.

“Yup,” she states, dramatically, and then sits up, to change the CD. To one of his, of course, because she doesn’t need her own. “But when you stop breathing, you stop playing your roll, and everything falls apart.”

“Why would you want that?” I ask.

“Because then there’s only rubble left,” she replies. “Then demons crawl from the ashes, and you can be their queen from the start, because you’re the one that knows the rules, and how to break them. You can build your own kingdom.”

There’s a pause, and she lies back down. The music pours quietly over us, mysteriously, powerfully. It draws me in, and I turn to her, and I want to take her hand. “You’ll let me be in yours, won’t you?” And I know how that sounds, but I need to say it.

The music blasts, and pounds, and pulses, hard, and fast, and loud. Crashing around us, powerful, intense. It traps me in. “Create your own,” she laughs, and places a finger over my lips.

I’ve nothing wrong with breathing.

But I’ll practice stopping, just for her.

In front of the mirror, my own, I’ll lean over the sink. I’ll hold my hands over my mouth and my nose. I’ll take a deep breath, and try to plunge, straight down into the theories of life and cheating and a game I don’t want to play. I’ll try really hard to stop, and I’ll try harder, every time.

I’ll do anything for her.

Even break the rules she’d never set.

I’ll even miss school, for no reason at all, to sit with her on her porch. Her parents are out, and her brother’s ignoring us, and the rain is pouring down. Washing over us. I can hear the bell ringing in the distance, and I know I should go, but I won’t. She’s holding my hand. I’d rather stay here.

I kind of want an umbrella, but at the same time, I’m afraid to ruin the magic. She looks so beautiful, leaning against her metal railing, in just her jeans and black bra. She’s soaking, and I’m soaking too, in the long white shirt she leant me. She’s looking out at her garden. Small, and green, with flowers everywhere. She’s never cared for gardens.

It’s hard to work in the rain, but I don’t complain, because I don’t mind. The needle feels slippery between my fingers, but it doesn’t hurt as much when I prick myself, so it’s fair. I’m no good with needles. I don’t know how good Narcissa is. I don’t think it really matters.

I’m sewing her bag up, again. I’m tying all the holes together, with florescent pink string, that looks odd against her blackness. She’s never said anything about the colours I choose to mend her things with, and I don’t think it matters to her, so long as I mend them. It’s funny. Half her bags are only broken because she carries my things home, too.

Through the last loop the needles goes, and her black is sewn over so many times that it’s getting difficult to find patches to sew up next. Te duct tape wraps around the handles, and along the bottom. I push it back to her, and she doesn’t acknowledge it at all. I don’t care. She’s beautiful.

“Life is a monotonous little merry-go-round,” she mutters suddenly, sounding as if she finds the whole world utterly mundane. The rain falls down a little harder, and I like the way clouds of fog puff up around her edges. The moon is out high, and the light’s just right, dim, and alive. It’s not too warm, and it’s not too cold, and everything’s just... right. “You go up and down, in little bouts, and in a circle all over again.”

I wait for her to elaborate. She doesn’t.

“Oh...” I pause, a little unsure. “Then... then what’s the point?”

She grins. “Find a way to cheat.”

Giggling, I make a move to go a little closer, and our knees touch. She rolls her head to me, still bored, and smiles. She drapes an arm around me, and pulls me to her side. I can’t help but ask for more. “And how do you cheat?”

“I can’t tell you that,” she says, flatly. I tilt my head to the side. “Then you’d win.”

“I bet it has something to do with breathing,” I reply, and hold mine in. I’m getting good.

“Yeah,” she repeats, looking out through the fog. “Yeah... I bet it does.”

She stops with me. Or rather, I stop with her. I’ll stop everything for her. I’ll stop the life I don’t have, because she is my life, and that’s all there is. I’ll stop everything there is.

That’s just the way I am. I’ll give anything to her.

And that’s just the way she is. She’ll take anything from me.

I always knew I’d die for her.

It’s not that hard to figure out.

I don’t mind, though.

When she protects me from the dandelions, by rolling between my body and the sky, I don’t care at all. I kind of like how her hair gets in my eyes, and how her chains chafe my skin, and how the metal feels cold. I enjoy the way her nails scrape my back, and her hips pin me down, and her tongue takes control of mine. I love the feel of her chest pressed against mine, and her lips pressed against mine, and all the warmth of everything pressed against me. It makes me sigh. It blows my mind.

When she climbs to her feet, and holds out her hand, I don’t hesitate in taking it. I follow her down the cobblestone street, like the good little girl I am, and I wave to her brother as we pass him, hiding behind her. He waves to me, but not to her, and she blows him a kiss. We walk twice as fast. I know where we’re going.

When she pushes back the trees, she starts up again, as I trail slowly after. “You know what?” The leaves crinkle below her feet, and the branches snap. The dirt brushes aside, the mud splashes. Through thin trees, then thicker trees, then trees too wide to wrap your arms around. “I think I’ve finally found a theory on life that suits me.” She steps down, along the roots, lower and lower.

“What is it?” I inquire, and though I know my voice isn’t very becoming, I still allow it to sound afraid. She reaches the edge of the water.

She turns to me. She smirks. She puts a foot in, and falls down. There’s a great splash as she hits the water, and it sprays me, a little. Then she wades out to the middle, and gestures for me to follow. I’m such a good girl that I do. I paddle right out to her. Sopping wet, I smile, and listen. She sighs.

“Life is... whatever life is.”

I tilt my head to the side, confused, and she wades out a little farther.

“There’s no way to win, no matter how you look at it, or maybe there’s no one way, but it doesn’t matter either way, because there’s no way to know for certain.

I go after her, and my shirt feels heavy, and I should have taken off my shoes.

“Breathing’s something separate, something totally different, and cheating’s just a difference game.”

I think I agree. If with nothing else she’s ever said, I might agree with that.

When she pushes herself down to the bottom, I follow, second, like I always do.

She opens her lips, and they keep going, and although I can’t hear a word, I know what she’s saying. Tiny bubbles fly up all around her, and her hair flutters about her face, and I’d no idea there were fish in here. The light’s so thin, it’s hard to tell.

‘Life doesn’t have a point, and even if it does, I’ll never find it. If life is pointless, then breathing’s pointless, and I don’t know why I’d pointlessly do it for a hundred years or so. I don’t think I could stand a hundred years of pointlessness. I’d rather just cheat, and skip to the end.’

I’d mouth something back, like ‘perhaps I agree,’ but my head is feeling fuzzy. It’s just like practicing in front of my mirror, only I’ve got her hand in mine, and I feel so consumed. I always knew I’d do anything for her.

I don’t mind, though.

The light fades out, and I can feel her arms around me, and the warm liquid rushing over my skin.

I don’t mind at all.

After all, it’s just a game.

That’s all it has to be.

As her darkness devours my vision, I wonder vaguely if I’ve won.

I know I’ve found my point.

X

Yah... that wasn’t very good... I just haven’t posted anything in a while... yaaaah... I should probably go over this sometime... proofread and stuff, you know... ((sighs)) I wish I could write like Derdekea...

Well, in any case, please review. :)