#and i'm completely mutilated in his arms and he's legitimately traumatized and utterly distraught about me? WOW...what's that emotion?

[witchingrey]

‘ and you say you are broken, but broken mirrors like you create the most beautiful patterns of light. ’ (from Lelouch)

sentence prompts ➝  poetry starters

Pure silence. Pregnant and laden with death. Purple rims the lower lids of her eyes; still half-open even in her temporary lull; even as trembling fingers that are not hers, hers are limp and slack and rampant rivers with blood, move to close them, she will not move. She, the portrait of suffering. She, the portrait of tragedy. She, the lonely one. She, who will not move, who has once again offered her body as a shield at the beginning primarily for the sake of ambition..now, the purpose convoluted, conflicting.

She will not hear him race to give her privacy. Her body laden with bullet holes and shrapnel sticking like spears out of her chest, her arms, her legs, she will not hear them clamoring down the hall. She will not hear Lelouch and his hitched breathing at the actions taken to save him once more. 

After all they are selfish reasons, right? From the witch who was never given an option or taste of happiness in the first place…for the witch who has only known suffering, trauma and ruin….for the witch who wavers between her wish and the strange resurgence of emotions brought about by this accumulation of time and ‘contract’.

Blood smears her entire mouth; gloved hands which surely prided themselves on being clean on the outside dotting them away yet not without tremors. Her immortality is generally a secret. The only person who knows otherwise is an enemy,  a lost piece that was once a friend. The presence trods on, and in death she almost looks peaceful, as if the woman does not quite want to leave. There is a faint half-smile of relief on her bloodied mouth; her darkening eyelids. Foolish boy turned man, you are safe, I will protect you – foolish, selfish boy for some reason I’ll —…….I’ll…..yo—–

bang,

bang,

bang.

The white pallor of death covers her as if in a snowy shroud. The colorless snow, the silenced screams, the weight of all things and all deaths, all rebirths, all fruitless at best. There is no death, only the death of her heart, the death of any hope of joy…has been all she’s ever known.

So her body is easy to discard. For each time the vain hope that this death will be her ‘last’ becomes fainter; and even as the drumming in her dead ears begins to pulse with the sound of mixed messages. Her true name and her alias, both in tandem. Desperately, desperately, a plead from the world she does not and has never belonged to –

– yet one man demands her return.

The only thing that belongs to her is silence, the penultimate suffering without end. The future that surely will be without happiness…the attachments that will leave her.

It is futile.

It is meaningless.

Her consciousness begs as if from a distance, she hears the faint pump of her heart as trembling hands tend to the largest piece of shrapnel which pierced the lifeless, faded organ in her breast. The bullet in her forehead; the holes in her legs..the caked and congealing blood in her beautiful, beautiful hair. I have died far worse, you know, she almost wishes to comfort him, the lost prince, the boy turned man who could become a King if he truly doesn’t stop.. and what will she do, knowing that beneath it he is still just a boy, and all the while a man grown?

When she coughs, it is an upheaval of blood and phlegm; her dull eyes flitting everywhere and nowhere unaware of hands grasping her scratched and bruised face to keep her to him. “Lel…..”

Hoarse, her throat was not spared. It is perhaps one of the more violent deaths she has paid to save him, hence why she is taking so long. Those proud eyes are not proud now. They are frightened, and there is a pain in them she has never seen in anyone before…for herself? Or is that an illusion? A mirage of witnessing pity? Would Lelouch pity her? Why is there no disgust in his face?

You ought to be disgusted. I am not human. For almost a thousand years I have not been human, and I will never be human. I am every bad thing you have said about me, and every bad thing the world has condemned me for long before you will if ever, know the story of that name only you in this world will know —-

Dizzily, and with blood spilling from the corners of her lips as she struggles to speak; C.C. remarks dazedly, “But…am….already dead…. long ago….too long….much………….where…. where…this…are….you?” For once her eyes are not bright when she finally sees his face in blurred contrasts. They are dull and almost lifeless; there is no hidden tenderness or fondness, or teasing, or coldness, the capacity for mercy and cruelty in the unfathomably complicated woman named C.C.

As he steadily removes the shrapnel; the bullets are slowly, painfully closing, and each little beat of regeneration sounds like a scream she has long been robbed of. After all, it was never in her fate to know the word ‘happy’ or ‘peace’. Much less even be at peace, the former cadaver feels the acute pain of death and cannot keep her eyes open, the undead, the living corpse….yes, all names she would hurt herself with. She has been an open, gushing wound ever since she was born…hasn’t she? Hasn’t she?

He talks about something, and with blurred hearing, the pain is so much, oh, Father, you who have abandoned me! Oh world, you who never let me live!

“….?”

Her voice was sleepy and tight with pain that she couldn’t properly articulate the words,a dead, hollow rasp, for as her body resurrects, her soul must find a way to resurrect itself back into the body.

“ You……yes….” She begins, a napkin dabs at her steadily decreasing flow of blood in her mouth; still sticky in her throat.

 “ I …not…..hear you Lel…ouch……but you’re fine so..? Ah….I s-suppose  if I’m dead then you live…that’s the way of it…..but you’re a fo-fool….been dead…long t-time…..ugly isn’t it?” 

Her eyes shutter in slurred vulnerability, so vulnerable she does not caution her words; the pain borderline making her delirious as she hears his words again and her bloodied head sags into his lap, lolling backwards if not for his hands to steady it. Another tremor, the back was still damp with blood…

“….You say….str…strange things to-to m-m-me…you …d-don’t know h-how to ch-charm wo-women….” A hitched series of gasps, his hand behind her back as she struggled to breathe.

The heartbreaking words escape with a smile on her half-conscious features, contradictory to her words, she looked oddly lovely in a halo of blood.

“But….I’d like to hear m…y name………..aga…in……….you sound like….lik….” Her eyes shutter; gripping his hand hard to cope with the painfully slow regeneration.

Like you care about me, you who lies to everyone but me…

This death would take time to recover from, he’d think, or try to compartmentalize the sheer trauma of her dying on him again. It was how he worked through the sheer strength of his mind.

For C.C. however, she had died long before she had ever met the exiled Prince. So why….would he say such a thing….. why would he delude himself into humanizing and personalizing nothing more than a ghost? Was it loneliness? Or did he truly cherish her?

And if he did cherish her in the tender, almost aching way he’d pleaded her name as she had died…..then how should she proceed…how frustrating…..

“How….very….strange…..Lel………..you say strange thi………ngs………” A cough as she tries to laugh; lime hair spilling around the floor in a reddened sheet, coughing more as he demands her not to speak.

The Grey Witch falls once again into the cradle of silence; eyes peacefully closed despite the horror of the hallway she had created with her death. Her face, which was still caked in bloodied hair and dried crimson was torn between a faintly broken smile and a wistful longing to hear the cherishing way a person had said her name…at last it was something true.

All the while the halls were silent, as far as she smiled like one who was dead; covered in wounds; the items and bullets which caused her demise pooling in bloodied gaps around their closely knit bodies…and all the while, she was unaware that he had not let her go. But C.C. would never know this, would she…?

Unaware that one man trembled all the while he held her, perhaps recalling the girlish, hopeful voice of Narita, echoing enough to fill a graveyard…haunting in how it had come full circle..

“ Can you say it? Say it again…like you treasure it in your heart…? “