Fonts Used:
Cheatin by Matthew Welch
Cirkus by EvasUniqueFonts
Delectable by crazy cow
As always, I'm sure I missed some formatting, I'll look it over eventually but if you see it maybe point it out? Oh and this chapter title was a bit difficult to come up with, I kept changing it around and... anyway, to all those who really do interpret the titles in regards to the chapter themes, if this one is a bit abstract or obscure feel free to drop me a comment or message and we can think it through together!
Oddly enough, even though there are only two scenes in the chapter, this still comes out to about 5k words. Hmmm...if you see the chapter picture and notice that the number there is "6" (and not "7"), that's a typo/error I'll fix it later.
Anyway, enjoy!
№➆|❝Shades of Gray❞
Black is the color on the walls. It's perpetually dark here. Like a bottomless black hole it seems to swallow up all the colors in the universe, only leaving behind an empty, gaping nothingness... Some people would find it unnerving, like looking into deep space and seeing no stars, no pockets of light anywhere. It could be terrifying even; to be so blind to your own surroundings, so vulnerable, so naked. With its poignant vacancy it truly was like space; like being completely cut off from the world and all the natural senses of perception. That in itself was horrifying.
But a vampire sees best in the dark. For a vampire night is day and such a complete blackness is comforting.
Cold is the temperature. It's the kind of cold that strips the coat of your flesh right off, freezes your marrow, and makes your bones so solid they turn to stone. Immovable. Dead. The kind of cold that doesn't ever get warmer. With the solid cement walls and floors, the constant cold is just another intrinsic part of the room. The chill is hypothermic.
Breathe in the cold, breathe out death~
She chuckles weakly and watches her little puff of breath uncurl in the air in a short gray cloud. Then it vanishes.
But a vampire is immune to temperature, impervious to coldness. It can't hurt her.
It can't hurt me.
No, the darkness and the chill don't bother Chouko. She's too mature to be scared of the dark, too sophisticated to be bothered by petty temperature. Those are mortal insecurities. She's not weak.
But, sitting alone on the floor in the cold darkness, Chouko can admit to herself that the oppressive stillness, the silence that was what was going to make her little tiff in the dungeons unbearable.
You see, the thing about dungeons is that they are constructed so that the filthiness, the coldness, the darkness will eventually harm the imprisoned on a psychological level. Ironically that's what Chouko is least concerned with.
She has spent decades trapped within a coma inside her mind, suffering in her own little personal Hell of stagnation. And this little cell in the dungeons under the Sakamaki mansion is only a slightly roomier coffin. That and this time she actually is underground.
It's not claustrophobia that gets her, it's the powerlessness. Powerless to stop the nightmares from invading her mind, powerless to save herself, powerless to save her mother…
Always so powerless…
So in a never-ending free fall once again, all Chouko can do is reminisce, sit and let her feelings fester until she boils over in frustration.
She laughs again. Her mouth opens slightly showing her fangs, and they chatter right before she closes them. Weak. She grits her teeth. At least, vampires are impervious to the cold when they don't have a full stomach. As for Chouko, she had drunk her fill of Yui's blood only last night. Or day. Maybe two. She isn't quite sure how much time has passed. But anyway, when a vampire has hot, thick human blood powering and running through his(1) veins he gets to experience a few human traits. Gets to be warmed by the blood and is therefore susceptible to temperature. The essence of humanity is weakness… That's what the blonde mother would have said anyway.
It's ironic, the little trick they pulled. It's bittersweet. It's completely f*cking hilarious!
Why, they've put me in a box again…!
And she chuckles some more, but it rings hollow. It's not very funny. Because her laugh echoes in the darkness, spins out and goes nowhere at all before it dies. It only shows how trapped she is. She hates the sound. Her shoulders begin to tremble.
She feels every bit like an animal as she bares her teeth in the darkness, sharp incisors straining, jaw locked, teeth gritted and grinding softly and she restrains herself from screaming! Her throat itches like a demon, flames of Hell burning her stomach from the inside out and she wants to breathe fire. She wants to scream so loud Karlheinz himself can hear her fury! One deep breath rocks her chest cavity and she feels like she's going to lose her mind..-!
She can hear her own breathing, her own heart beating, and suddenly it's just like she's in a coma again, with only the maddening sounds of her own creation and the blackness of no escape and utter insanity surrounding her. Rhythmic, like a ticking clock that never stops- why won't it stop!
The world is violently cut into jagged flashes before her eyes. They scramble everywhere and she wants to just lash out and kick at the walls around her! Shake their foundations and tear them to the ground so that the mansion collapses on the brothers’ heads and ends her torture with it. But it's futile, she knows. She's still trapped. That's the worst part. So she opens her mouth widely one more time in a silent scream, shoulders shaking as if she was a volatile prisoner straining against chains.
And I am, aren't I?
But she can’t scream. Then they'll know they've won. That she can't handle being locked up in the dungeons for a night or two. They'll think she's a little child, to show such weakness they would never take her seriously again! Her organs pull and clench as her stomach convulses under the force of stifled screams and swallowed sobs. Tears prickle at the corners of her eyelids as the frustration wells up within her completely-
A sharp clang and a metallic screech stop her in her tracks. And her tears evaporate like they never existed. Footsteps approach.
Tack. Tack. Tack.
A ball of fire appears amidst the sea of darkness, a star in the cold space, and Laito's calm face shoots out of the deep carrying a torch. Under the fiery illumination, a path of steps appear beneath his feet, and when he stops in front of her cells the room is brought out of the darkness and into the light just a little. Vampires don't need light. It's a show, that he has all the resources and she has nothing. He has access to the outside world and she is trapped.
The rays lick the walls with a yellow, sour glow. Chouko turns her face away with a dismissive, disinterested glance:
“Well, well, well...So now you're here, huh?” And her voice is the perfect mix of apathy and the acidic undertone of venom. It falls in the air in a deadly, melodic tune: “You got all excited back there in the living room, acting like you were really going to do something, but in the end you wouldn't even get close to me,” his green eyes watch her head flick in his direction. For a human the lighting is too dim to see her face, but even though he can see it, he chooses not to look at it, instead focusing on the outline of her knees bent and hunched in the very corner of the dirty cell.
“And here you are, now you wanna come get close ‘cuz you know you have these bars to protect you...!”
She appears from out of the shadows, her beautiful face right up against the bars, hands clenched around them. In the light he sees now that she’s snarling at him.
He pauses, contemplating her words. “You're right,” he says glancing around briefly, expressionlessly before resting his eyes completely on hers. He has no smiles left in him and what was the point of pretending, anyway? They left that behind in the living room. “I'm here now because I know I've got you completely stuck in place-”
Her face shifts with surprise only minutely veiling the utter disdain: “You did this, did you-? Wow,” she breathes out another huff. “You're so fucking scared of justice, scared of the truth-”
“No, I didn't have this done to you, but I'm glad it happened,” his handsome face is uncommonly level and relaxed. There's no joy. “It means that you have to listen to me.”
Chouko lets out a laugh so choked by insincerity and spite that it's painful for him to listen to: “You're so twisted up! You think I'm listening to a word you say?! I've heard this allllll before!” And she’s more dramatic than ever. And he sees it for the act that it is: a facade to hide what she truly feels. He recognizes it, because it’s the one he’s worn for many years now... except he's better at it, a master. His mask almost never reveals his true face. “I'm not about to hear you spit out Ayato's words second-hand like the puppet he's made you into, he can come here himsel-”
Like a hammer hitting him in the face, her words blindside him, and a crack appears in his careful mask:
“This isn't about Ayato, this is about you and me-”
“We have nothing!” Sardonicism coaxes a laugh from her throat once again: “Not anymore! I have no reason to listen to you after what you did! I meant what I said back there; I'll never forgive you for killing her-”
Crack. A little piece of his facade dents as he begins to feel impatience and irritation gripping him: “This is what you don't understand, Chouko-”
“No, I do understand! He drew you in on the shackles of his own hatred and then strung you up like a puppet to do his bidding. That's what you are! You're Ayato's puppet. You can say all the things he said; 'that what you did, you did for me', but I know the real truth! I saw it in your eyes back there in the living room.”
Patience...
“That's not how I wanted our reunion to go,” Calm down, Laito. He doesn't even notice that one hand grips the bars. “I only acted like that because I was frustrated and angry-”
“Of course you were,” she interrupts him: “that's just how he wants you. How else could he have convinced you into his plan? How else could he have turned you, who loved our mother so much, into a monster of hate? He manipulated your feelings and turned them into ones that matched his own. He made you believe that your relationship was hollow and when he had you convinced that you were truly empty inside he filled you up with his hate, made you his instrument of revenge,” her face is serious and all-knowing as she speaks every word. This is her philosophy, her heart embodied: “You're not the person you were; he's remade you in his own image. Killing her only confirmed your emptiness; you have no soul. And now you're nothing; nothing but a puppet. Useless. Why would I listen to you?
Why should I give you a second of my attention?”
____________________
#5 - NUMBER FIVE
“Attention”
Many years ago…
.
.
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"Chou-chan! Look what I can do!" A little 9-year-old boy with purple hair ran up to a tall tree on the estate grounds, jumped 15 feet in the air, and landed on a branch, standing up with his arms out wide.
A little girl with chin-length and similar purple hair shifted the Teddy in her arms to clap her hands gleefully on the ground below, "That's wonderful, Kana-kun!"
"Psh!," a green-eyed boy with short, flaming red hair scoffed, walking up to the trio, seemingly coming out of nowhere. His white, long-sleeved shirt was perfectly unwrinkled, suspender pants prim and properly straightened, unlike the other three kids whose clothes were ruffled by the spring air and activites. Ayato.
"Aren't you supposed to be studying?" Another boy with red hair, but chin-length and wavy, turned his head away from the girl next to him and eyed Ayato.
"Yeah, yeah,” Ayato dismissed Laito with a careless nod. “Studying is for losers...and apparently so is jumping trees," he said arrogantly, looking right up at Kanato, whose face took on a scowl that closely resembled a pout.
"He's so stupid,” Kanato teased, childishly ignoring Ayato to comment to his twin directly. Then he turned to the arrogant boy: “You're only saying that 'cause you can't do it yourself," Kanato challenged.
"What?” Ayato looked back at him with a derisive snort: “Jump a tree? I would be really stupid if I could only do that. That's nothing! Watch this." And Ayato, a showman through and through, ran up to the tree, mirroring Kanato's take-off, but instead did a flip into the air, and landed hanging upside down on the same branch that Kanato stood on, smirking while doing so, his face slightly flushed from effort. "See?"
Kanato "tch'ed" and jumped down from the height, unimpressed, opting to stand next to Chouko instead. "Look, Chou-chan, yet another thing going to his head!" He pointed at Ayato's flushed face that was upside-down.
Ayato’s self-assured smirk dropped.
"And he's turning red, too,” Laito chuckled.
Ayato dropped down with a brooding face and barely contained anger. And while he hit the ground in a huff and walked over to his full-blooded siblings, he only had eyes for Laito: "Whatever. Who're you to talk anyway? You didn't even do it, and I bet you couldn't do it better, maybe not at all." He hissed at his triplet.
The other boy frowned and tucked a piece of his long hair behind his ear. He was the only one of any of his brothers to have long hair.
Everyone was looking at him now.
"It's stupid, anyway..." muttered Laito, looking down at the grass beneath his feet.
"I said that too,” Ayato kept on pushing: “but I still did it. Why don't you?" Ayato was in his face now, clearly trying to prove something.
"Just let it go, Aya-kun." Chouko said, and that was the silencing voice. Don't push it further. Ayato glanced at her from the corner of his eye before he immediately backed off and stepped away.
"Fine,” he blew it off, “I have studying to do, anyway." And Ayato looked at his sister one last time before walking away from the three siblings and disappearing off into the estate.
"Chou-chan, I'm gonna go too,” Kanato turned to Chouko. “Mother needs me to sing for her,” he explained before gently taking Teddy out of Chouko’s protective arms and disappearing in a similar fashion.
And then there was only the quiet breeze, Chouko and Laito, and the silence suspended between them.
"You okay, Lai-nii?" Chouko turned to him.
"Fine,” he gritted out, green eyes full of mystery as he looked down at the ground again.
"I'm serious,” Chouko showed concern now. “You're not upset about he said, are you?" She said, taking a step closer to him.
"It's not what he said, it's him...or maybe both, I don't know..." He was frowning and he kept pushing his hair back behind his ears.
"What’s wrong?" Chouko turned her full attention on him and that seemed to unnerve him even more.
He was having a hard time putting his thoughts words. "It's just-....I don't climb trees or sing well or do anything really all that impressive."
Chouko was puzzled: "You said it yourself; climbing trees is stupid, and singing isn't 'all that' either. And neither of those things really matter anyway-"
"Yeah, but-” he didn't seem to hear her much: “it's just hard because...I just don't know where I fit in, I don't have any special talent to make people like me," and he looked off into the forest outside the walls of their home.
Somehow there was a disconnect between them.
"Don't say that,” Chouko grabbed at his shoulder and turned him to face her. “There are plenty of people who like you, I like you-"
"Do you?" His face became very serious all of a sudden as if the answer to the question was very important. As if he didn't already know the answer.
"Of course!” Chouko said obviously: “You're my brother-"
"And if I wasn't?” He was quick to interrupt and clarify. “Would you still?"
"Laito,” Chouko’s baby-smooth face began to wrinkle with a frown. “I don't really understand where this is coming from-"
"That's not an answer."
The purple-haired girl sighed tiredly, all this questioning was confusing and tiring! "What is it you want to talk to me about?"
"I don't want to talk,” his green eyes became distant, firm, and guarded. “I want to know your answer."
What? "And I want to know why that answer matters so much to y-"
"You can't even answer a simple question!” Laito yelled all of a sudden, and all the trees and flowers around them stopped breathing and the wind paused in its path: “Or do you not want me to hear the answer?!"
"Yes! Of course I would like you even if you weren't my brother!" She shouted as well, not even sure why the air was so tense and charged all of a sudden and how it came to be that way. None of it made any sense!
He looked at her face for a long time where it seemed there was something more to that look, something deeper bothering him. And then he turned away.
"...I don’t know if I believe you… You only answered me when I pressed you and that's not a real answer,” he had turned away so that the part of him that was hidden was his face, so acutely tormented with confliction it would be a jarring sight on a ten-year-old. “I have so many questions, and...if you won't give me any answers, at least any real ones, then I don't want to talk to you."
The grass crunched without a sound, not daring to make a noise as if knowing how important these moments were. He took that first step in the opposing direction.
"Wait!" Chouko grabbed his arm importantly. "Laito-nii, please listen to me!"
"You won't answer me anyway,” he kept walking on, barely working hard to shrug off her grasp.
"If you won't talk to me, at least talk to Mommy!”
"Why?" He looked back into her eyes now, unbelieving, like he had already conceded that she wasn't trustworthy and therefore couldn't be listened to in any capacity.
"Because I know she can give you answers. And despite whether you believe me or not, I'm concerned about you! Just please talk to her. Please." She looked into his eyes and begged him internally. She didn't know why this was so important to him, why he was acting so strangely, only that it felt really important to her that she didn't let him go in this state. Something didn't seem right.
For one more second, green eyes held purple ones.
"Fine."
And he was gone.
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.
End.
#5 - NUMBER FIVE
____________________
“Hmmm? I said: why should I give you my attention?” Chouko gives him an annoyed look as she repeats her words. She never once stops to consider her impact on his heart: “We're not a family. And if you're not here to apologize then we have nothing to talk about,” she spits the words from her lips like poison that she had been saving in her mouth to infect him with. And she wouldn't dare risk a drop not reaching him. “Get out.”
And he feels like he's balancing on a very fine blade, teetering on the point of oblivion. One wrong little movement, not meticulously calculated, could send him falling over into the abyss. He knows he's in a precarious way. So while his face is serene, on the inside his eyes can clearly see that she is the abyss, and that her words will certainly end up sending him off the edge if he lets them: “No.”
Precarious and tipping...
She scoffs with malice and pure hatred and sticks her face as far as it can pass through the thin but strong bars of the cell, so that she's practically in his face when she snarls: “I said: get out!”
It doesn't shatter like he thought it would; like Cordelia's expert fingers chipping and levering and eroding and lifting his perfect mask right from him in a tantalizing and painful dance. Slowly and cruelly. No, it's a completely unanticipated scenario: one second it was there, and the next the pieces of its remains were blowing away into dust on the floor.
He grabs her head, her face with his hands through the bars and brings it closer. And he watches that ugly snarl contort her beautiful face and he wants to rip it to shreds: “You brat, you think it's your choice! I'm not like Ayato! You're going to listen to me!”
Why should I play nice? Why should I be fair to her? She was never fair to me! So why should she get to play these games and have her fun?!
“No-!” Chouko begins wriggling in his grip the moment she feels his cold hands trying to hold her head in place. But as she thrashes wildly her struggles only make his hands slide down to slightly under her chin and the back of her head. Suddenly his cinched fingers begin to pull at her hair.
“You think because we-” he adjusts his grip. “Because I did all this for you that everything's about you! That you get to pick what you want to believe or not believe and be naive to the truth! You're so selfish, Chouko!” He is angry now. He's full of a rage so old he's had decades of it stored up for a time like this. He told himself he would never be reduced to a child again, to be slave to his own emotions, provoked, and completely controlled by them. He told himself that his mask that he had spent years sculpting and crafting in just the right way as he'd wanted to be perceived, that that mask would never fail him. That he'd always be in control. That she was behind the bars and he would be in control for once.
But he had fooled himself. Because back in the living room he had tasted her darkness and let it consume him and his facade with it. They’ve long been past the point of no return.
You're so selfish, you're so selfish…!
She’s screaming at him now: “Liar-! You did this for yourself! You're the selfish one! And I won't listen to your lies any more, Ayato-!”
“Shut up!”
His hands are at her throat, the air in the room begins to be squeezed from her windpipe, and Chouko, with complete surprise, allows herself to look up. She’s still thrashing but his hands have slipped. His hands that had tried to control her, force her to look into his eyes and see truth had slipped from cupping her jaw and now choke the air from her throat.
Astonished purple eyes are reunited with shining green ones once more. From her trembling vision she looks into his furious irises and sees for the first time the tears that are present, so apparent in them. And it's like she's never really seen him clearly before, until now. She notices how he bares his fangs in rage and his face shakes with the effort, under the strength he’s enforcing in order to strangle her. She looks into his eyes and sees that there is no depth behind his anger; he is honestly, remorselessly, passionately asphyxiating her.
She sputters.
How-?
He doesn't seem to notice. Not at all.
“So selfish-! You're so selfish- always so selfish-!” Tears slip down his pale cheeks and so the world does from her eyes. They start closing and her violent scratches upon his hands begin to slow, and Chouko wonders where he mustered up all of this hatred from?
Even after the words they exchanged and what she did to Ayato, she didn’t really believe in her heart that he meant to hurt her.
For how long has he despised me...to be able to strangle me so heartlessl-
It rings very distantly in her mind, the question if he really hates her, but her eyes have shut, and the world is gone.
She falls from her body, the gravity tells her this, and she doesn't feel a thing. There's just darkness...and silence.
Everything is heavy. She tries to move, but it's like her body is not her own, for it responds very sluggishly. It's like her brain is underwater. But there is light just above the surface of her hazy, undulating vision. Garbled voices break through. But every time she tries to get back to those voices some unknown force seems to push her down.
Fight the current…! Don't let him be the end of you! Be strong!
.
.
.
And there is air again.
When her vision adjusts, her cheek rests directly on the cold cement flooring of the cell, her eyes opening like old, wooden shutters. With blurry, wavering sight she looks up in the dim lighting to see Laito in a similar state on the ground, and Subaru once again standing between them. Somehow she gathers up the air and sighs with complete relief, rolling onto her back, closing her eyes.
Sweet Satan, thank Subaru!(2)
She doesn't see his face or the way his shoulders tense like a panther ready to rip his prey apart, but she hears the tone of his voice rumbling like thunder a breath from striking: "You would strangle your own sister?"
Nevermind that she had already stabbed, drowned, and attempted to kill one of her other brothers. Nevermind the fact that she hadn't given up the hopes and plans of assassinating the others.
Truly, Subaru is one of a kind.
Laito is visibly shaken on the ground, and though she cannot lift her heavy head to turn and see him, out of the very corner of her eye she picks his face out of the dark. He looks up at her at once, a look loaded with so many things: regret, awe, astonishment, guilt, traces of anger, concern, disbelief, sadness, so many things...
But none of it matters, for it lays choked up in his throat and smothered by her gaze. Never to be spoken.
And then he calmly gets to his feet and he is gone once again.
She chuckles, it's the closest it's been since she woke up to sounding like anything near real. But it's not the same laugh of many moons ago:
“Thank you, Subaru. You really are my White Knight,” she says breathlessly, eyes squinting up at the cell ceiling.
They don't look at each other.
“I didn't do it for you,” his voice is quiet, so gentle. “Not this, not the other thing. Not really. I only tried to stop you then because I knew he'd put you here,” like the dying light his voice dims and flickers. “I'm so fucking sick of that man putting people in here!” Then his voice blows into a full flame, bursting with heat. SMASH!
She doesn't even look, she's had the sound of a crumbling wall engraved into her mind since she was 9 years old. Despite his temperate moods, he's the only one that never changes. So his mood swings have always had a sort of calming effect on her.
“What right does he have to lock people up?!”
But then, instead of strong, his voice is as broken and brittle as the wall he shattered. It breaks, it crumbles. That makes her look up at him.
His fist rests seamlessly embedded into the wall, his face hidden by white locks of hair. But she can clearly see his face in her mind, she had seen it before. She had seen this whole scene before, she really didn't even have to look. He wasn't really talking about her. Well...he was and he wasn't.
Why do I always remind him of his mother?
She doesn't notice when he disappears, his presence still remains. She's sure she haunts him just as much as he haunts her.
Why do I always remind him of his mother?
Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ
Author’s FOOTNOTE:
(1) Because I was taking the SAT I learned a lot of grammar that I hadn't known before and one of the things I learned is this: if you have a "title" that specifies a person (e.g. vampire), then if you refer to that person again you need to cover both genders (his or her, he or she), since the English language doesn't use gender in regard to words. So in this sentence I wrote: "...when a vampire has hot, thick human blood powering and running through his(1) veins he gets to..." when the sentence is correctly: "...when a vampire has hot, thick human blood powering through his or her veins he or she gets to..." Interesting, right? No. Okay.
(2) This was a tricky one, I notice that authors often write one of the Sakamaki characters as saying "My God" or something like that without even noticing it. But think about it; the Sakamakis don't believe in a God, they think that's a mortal fantasy that's foolish and naive. Still I wanted the phrase in there so instead of "God" I put "Satan". Humans worship "God" so why can't vampires and demons worship/idolize "Satan". Though there could be an argument that Satan is tied in with God and if vampires believe that God is a mortal invention then perhaps Satan would be as well. There are other counterpoints for that but I'm sure you guys don't want to read all that!
Comment for your sneak peek of Chapter 8~!