" you wanted happiness, i can’t blame you for that. " idk but wah ..
he stands there – a pariah, a martyr, figure outlined and burning with ire, his insides all mangled with the strings that keep his limbs afloat. she hates it: seeing in him a reflection of herself, dark and lonely and seething with self-destruction – what was fate to them, but something someone else created? “if only i had said something --” the parts of her lips unfold, hand-written notes on soft-scented paper, her tears pressed onto her father’s knee, “if i had the courage to warn him of the path he was taking, maybe none of this wouldn’t have happened.”
maybe you wouldn’t have killed him, lives there, a wound vile and split between them, a brand on her already quickly beating heart, words unspoken. she doesn’t have to say it – it’s there in the setting of her lips like cold iron, and neither of them are fools. “even when we beat him in his palace, i was ready … i was ready to forgive him. he was all i had.”
“you wanted happiness,” akechi says, reaching out as if he were trying to be a balm to her heart, “i can’t blame you for that.” it is the kindest she has heard him, and that is why she doesn’t look into his face, doesn’t have to see the way the words might crumble like dust if she saw even a flicker of disgust in his eyes. no, she thinks, the repressed anger in her like a simmer, a boil with the lid clasped tight, who gives him the right to say that? what right had he to forgive her pain when he was the one who caused it?
“of course i did,” she replies, the thin of her lips creased with the knot of her brows. “doesn’t everyone? don’t you?” she tries to hold onto her anger, strength as easily fallen away like sand, through the webbing of her fingers, but a sadness settles in instead and makes her eyes shine like glass. “don’t you want the chance to be happy, too?”
she reaches out to him, and he recoils as she knew he would, a tremble violent in its repulsion. “it’s okay to live your life the way you want to, akechi-kun. we can defy our fate.” she looks up to catch his expression, hair-line cracks in an ever-present smile. “i can’t forgive you yet … but i understand. you still have the chance to change, you know?”
she reaches closer, and he snaps, spittle like venom out his mouth, “i don’t have any other choice,” he says, smacking her away and her hand lays suspended, a fragile thread between them.
haru doesn’t say anything else. instead, silent, her eyes sag with pain.
@gorot + inbox call