X - Haunted

= Haunted = Chapter 2 = Control =

by Katalyst

Obligatory Disclaimer: CLAMP owns X. I make no claims to it. In fact, if I owned it, it probably wouldn\'t have made it past the first manga. >.>

My story won\'t be an easy one to listen to. It\'s fragmentary in the extreme, and who knows? I may begin telling you about one incident and then switch to another, leaving the first unfinished. Bear with me. Everything I say today will be entirely relevant.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. That\'s traditional, right? Very well. There were things that came before, of course, but the beginning of it all was when she died.

Don\'t you mess with a little girl\'s dream
\'e she she\'s liable to grow up mean

Hokuto, my twin. She was always the strong one of us, never wavering, even when I felt life was going to crush us both. When things got rough, it was always her who supported me. Through my training to be an onmyouji, through our parent\'s deaths... through everything. I grew to depend on her, even more than I already did because of our twin-bond. She was my sister, mother, best friend... she was everything to me.

Hokuto wasn\'t like me. She had plans. She had goals. Always the motivated one, always the one who could dream. She had a dream for me you know. More than one, I\'m sure. Of course, I had a couple dreams of my own. But as much as I dreamed, things always seemed so out of reach to me. As The Sumeragi, my life is not my own. It is constrained by my duty, I\'ve known this since I was very young. But not Hokuto. She understood me, my dreams, my needs much better than I did. That\'s why she tried to give me love and happiness. She tried up until the day she died.

~ Surprised you to find that I\'m laughing?
~ You thought that you\'d find me in tears
~ You thought I\'d be crawling the walls
~ Like a tiny mosquito and trembling in fear

I saw every second of her death, you know. I was standing there, a silent witness to it all. She called my name in those final moments. The last name on her lips was mine. I could barely hear it, but I could see her form the syllables. She talked to him too, cupping his face in her hand, coated his cheek with her own blood, but their conversation was too quiet for me to make out. I screamed for her, sobbing as he turned to me. I couldn\'t see his eyes, but I didn\'t need to. I knew they held only coldness. There was a smile on his lips as he held my twin\'s body in his arms. He smirked as they both dissolved into sakura blossoms.

I awoke from my coma, crying her name and choking on the scent of sakura, my anger and betrayal. My grandmother was there. She seemed so frail as she held me, kept me from acting rashly. She was shocked to hear the news. I wonder why.

~ Well you may be king for the moment
~ But I am a queen understand
~ And I\'ve got your pawns and your bishops
~ And castles
~ All inside the palm of my hand

I wasn\'t shocked anymore, I was enraged. He couldn\'t shock me anymore, I was past that point. But he could still hurt me, and he did. After the initial agony of losing my twin, anger flooded me, overwhelming the pain that had kept me locked away in my heart.

I leaned the meaning of rage and hate that day. I had my first taste of all those negative, soul-devouring emotions, and I relished them, held them to me. The washed away my grief, gave me something to do besides love in vain, ache helplessly as my heart closed around me.

I could hate, and I would. I would hate with all the passion that I ever had in loving. With more even.

~ While you were looking the other way
~ While you had your eyes closed
~ While you were licking your lips
~ \'Cause I was miserable
~ While you were selling your soul
~ While you were tearing a hole in me

I made what I consider to be my first important decision that day. I remember looking out the window, over the Tokyo we all had loved for our own special reasons. I contemplated the city, the smog that hung in the sky... and knew, somehow what my fate would be.

I walked away from my dreams that day.

~ I was taking control
~ Now I have taken control
~ Now I havken ken control...

I dropped out of school, re-dedicated my life. Dreams were pointless. They were only illusion, not reality. Just like him.

I swore that I wouldn\'t let him beat me.

~ This is beginning to feel good
~ Watching you squirm in your shoes
~ A small bead of sweat on your brow
~ And a growl in your belly you\'re sd tod to let through

Grandmother was still weeping as I told her my plans in a quiet voice. I fully became the head of the Sumeragi clan that day, took leadership of it. Tears flowed unrestrained down Grandmother\'s face as she watched me with eyes that had lost their dignified reserve. When I had finished speaking, she seemed to crumble into herself. Her shoulders trembled as she gave herself over to grief, gave her burden to me.

I had only heard her cry like that bef before... when my father had died at the hands of the Sakurazukamori. Distantly, I wondered if there was a special cry that she had for Sakurazukamori deaths. Her cries were less sobs and more a soft keening wail. It was chilling.

~ You thought you could keep me from loving
~ You thought you could feed on my soul
~ But while you were busy destroying my life
~ What was half in me has become whole

I left her to mourn then. I slipped out of my apartment, found myself just staring at Hokuto\'s door. I didn\'t want to go inside. I didn\'t know what I\'d find there. I stood, fingertips lingering on the dirt-smudged paint under the number on the door.

~ While you were looking the other way
~ While you had your eyes closed
~ While you were licking your lips
~ \'Cause I was miserable
~ While you were selling your soul
~ While you were tearing a hole in me

Finally, I dropped my hand to the cold knob, turned it. Her door was unlocked, and it swung open silently.

~ I was taking control
~ Now I have taken control
~ Now I have taken control...

I wandered her apartment aimlessly, not touching anything. The place was in a state osarrsarray, she hadn\'t bothered to clean it. It was if she\'d come in at any moment.

In her bathroom, I found a sketch taped to a mirror. Hokuto had drawn it. This, I pulled down, studied it.

Hokuto\'s drawings were always cute, fun, and her characters chibified. She claimed it was to make up for her lack of artistic skill, but this drawing was different. It was realistic, lovingly detailed, breathtaking -- with a skill I hadn\'t known she had. She had drawn us. Seishirou and I stood on the beach, arms linked as we laughed. Hokuto was there too, carried piggyback by another man, one I didn\'t recognize. His hair was long, and his eyes were sad, even as he smiled.

~ So this is how it feels
~ To breathe in the summer air
~ To feel the sand between my toes
~ And love inside my ear
~ All those things that you taught me to fear
~ I\'ve got them in my garden now
~ And you\'re not welcome here

There was writing on the bottom of the picture. Her messy, cheerful handwriting declaring that someday, the Sumeragi twins would have a day at the beach with their true loves.

True loves? I was momentarily taken aback. She hadn\'t mentioned that she was seeing anyone.

~ Come a little bit closer
~ Let me look at you
~ I gave you the benefit
~ Of the doubt it\'s true
~ But keep in mind my darling
~ Not every saint is a fool

Suddenly, looking into Hokuto\'s face was like looking into a stranger\'s.

~ While you were looking the other way
~ While you had your eyes closed
~ While you were licking your lips
~ \'Cause I was miserable
~ While you were selling your soul
~ While you were tearing a hole in me

I loosely folded the drawing, once, twice.... till it was just a bit smaller than my hand. Dimly, I felt as if I should be crying. That was what one did in a situation like this, right? I held the paper dispassionately. I didn\'t feel like crying.

~ I was taking control
~ Now I have taken control
~ Now I have taken control...
~ Don\'t you mess with me

It was a little frightening, then, to realize that I didn\'t feel much of anything but that anger that burned within me. It left no room for me to mourn her dreams. Letting the drawing fall into the sink, I made use of a lighter, purloined from Hokuto\'s makeup drawer.

There has to be more to life than this, because in our confrontation with a cold cold universe, there is something comical to the idea that we can really impose our will on humanity-- power corrupts!

I could still hear Grandmother\'s sobs, soft, painful echoes that hovered on the edge of consciousness. I shut them out as best I could, deafening myself to them.

~ This is scaring me
~ ...I live at the end of a 5 and 1/2 minute hallway

I watched the picture burn in the sink, barely flinching as the smoke detector shrieked to life.

And at the end of it all lies of course the final phenomenon of deterioration entropy, which is a predictable disintegrations which the creative life ceases: everything has to fall apart.

Seishirou loved this city because it was the only city that could enjoy itself as it walked the path to destruction.

I wondered idly then, if I walked that path of self-destruction, willingly, what he would think of me.

Why are you always so serious?!