Perfection
June 2004

“You didn’t have to kill him.”

Silence answered the statement, violet eyes shifting aside to a safer object. Only a few hours passed after the duel and already he knew. Silk clad arms folded, the black material sliding without sound. The violet-eyed boy refused to reveal expression—refused to be anything but ice.

“What does it matter?” he heard himself ask; he wasn’t quite there, suspended in nothing. He ignored his sigh, keeping a steady mantra in his head: stay like the ice. He flinched when he felt the warm touch on his shoulder, before the near burning heat of another body wrapped around him, orange overlapping black. Violet eyes remained aside, hiding under midnight tresses.

“It matters,” he said, after a moment’s silence, “because life is a precious gift.” Violet eyes shut as the boy bit his lips, fighting the derisive laughter. He knew how precious life was – oh, he knew! It still changed nothing, did not melt the apathy about death he developed, that he helped cultivate.

“I know life is precious. I know that, I know it better than you do, god damn it,” pale lips bit out, half-snarling, half-despairing. “Every time I feel a life just snuffed out, become nothing after…” He felt the arms tighten around him, feeling his heartbeat through his back. The searing warmth wasn’t so bad now, not after he got used to it.

“I’m sorry. Just… forget about it,” he said. The violet-eyed boy couldn’t help but to melt at his words; he was the sweet sugar to his bitter medicine. With each second, he could feel the tension slowly drain, melting into his arms. They stood for a while, in wordless accord; a perfect fit. He silently drew him to rest on the bed—that’s all—and carefully, as though afraid the raven-haired youth would break, he caressed the locks.

The violet-eyed boy felt his mind go blank, his thoughts fizzling to nothing. His mind was blank; for the moment, there was nothing but the fingers running through his hair, and his warmth enfolding him. He felt like sleeping, but he wasn’t tired. Maybe he would give him a real answer tomorrow—a real truth. Not a gilded truth, distorted by the facets of a crystal so that up was down and night was day. Instead of offering a flawless illusion, he would submit the flawed reality. Yes, that would be a beautiful idea. He could imagine his expression at the ruin beneath the shroud, the insidious cancer biding its time under the guise of health. He wanted to laugh, but that would have disturbed him.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked. The black-haired boy murmured a non-committal reply, shifting slightly on the bed. He always somehow translated the mumbled, garbled language that spilled from the pale lips—confusion that even he didn’t understand. Maybe that was why, he mused. He understood where to look for the essence in the mirrors. He looked through the glass and crossed the river; he shattered the warped facets of imagined beauty—but even he couldn’t see everything. Still, he could not judge. He was the flawless moon from afar, hiding his scars.

Fingers still combed through his hair, bringing the constellations closer to life. He remembered how he pointed out the stars once, waxed poetic about the waning moon. It was a crystalline moment, so easily shattered. That was a truth he could offer him—the only thing real the moon was. The only real thing he could give.

And maybe he would let him die, and everything would be perfect.

-Ende

A/N: The last line is intentionally un-italicized. You do not know if he is him or he is him. Etc. etc. Open for all interpetation.