Work Text:
Title: The Wind Stirring
Fandom: Kaze to Ki no Uta (OVA and manga)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Characters and situations are not mine.
Note: This is the first time I've really tried to write a fic in the second
person. I hope it turned out all right.
And I hope you like it, Sara Jaye.
Summary: Gilbert reflects on Serge, and muses on why he is the way he
is.
*****
I remember the first time you looked at me. You stood uneasy, sweat
on your brow, eyes clouded with exhaustion and incomprehension. You
gave me only the briefest glance, a glance that conveyed surprise and
wonder. I knew you would be easy. You fell into my arms that day just
as readily as you would fall into my trap.
You were the ultimate hypocrite. You told me I was wrong, that I
should be ashamed...that I should do what I did behind closed doors,
away from where sweet little innocents like you could see. You feigned
contempt and disgust, even as you longed for me. You pretended to
befriend me, even as you contemplated the temptation I presented. You
tried to be cold, but you burned for me. You treated me like a child, a
child who would take leave of his sinful ways if only he were scolded
and informed that he was wrong.
I was never a child. I was only a body, a vessel, and I knew nothing but
the service I provided. I was the space into which the passions of men
were poured. I was a tool, a toy, passed amongst them as a mere
amusement, a trinket. Fifteen minutes of gasping, aching, fleshly
fulfillment. And I loved it. Kisses and caresses became breath and
blood; two bodies, separated only by decaying flesh, sinking into one
another in a moment of white heat, bone and hair and brain meshing
together.
I longed for---I lived for---violence. I was an unfeeling carcass,
requiring the sustenance of another's living body. I did not understand
anything except the intrepid flow of blood, the clean snap of a breaking
bone, and the sweet sensation of tearing skin. I felt nothing but need. I
had never felt anything but need.
You prided yourself on how you "understood" me, how you had a rare
insight into my soul. You were so good at fooling yourself. I had no
soul, and I felt no humiliation. Your sympathies were wasted on me.
You could not imagine yourself in my place, so you felt that I must be
devastated as you were. To protect yourself, you tried to protect me.
My knight in shining, blackened armor. You reached out into the fire,
knowing that it would make you a hero. In my eyes, you were a
coward.
You paled, and sighed, and wilted when I kissed you. When I took you
in my arms, I took you in my arms---I knew you would never willingly
embrace me back. I wanted to betray you, the way you betrayed me
with every glance, every word. I wanted to violate you, the way your
sanction sought to violate me. I wanted to break you, the way he would
have broken me. That sweet, sweet sound of flesh breaking open, of
wounds flowing free...my Augu.
You accepted your punishment more gracefully than I could ever have
imagined. You sank into me and let me sink into you; I tarnished you,
and you hardly flinched. You worried and prodded, stroked my
forehead and hummed to yourself, setting yourself at ease. You let me
steal the last of you and stood still, thinking you were strong, that you
were showing yourself as the better man. But all you did was fall victim
to me, just as I'd always known you would.
I was a born victim, a transgressor of the natural order, a biological
phenomenon. Only humans were capable of this sin. When they pushed
me down, when they grabbed and groped and clumsily roved over me,
I felt no humiliation; only purpose.
You had no concept of purpose. You thought you had found your
meaning, to break me free of sin and show me to the light. You thought
that was your path. But you merely subjugated to my will. You thought
you would be the breeze that lifted me; instead, I became the wind that
stirred your branches, stripping you bare. You reached out willingly,
placed your hand in the flames, and watched calmly as you burned
away.
You were a born victim too. You knew nothing of freedom. You were
a clown, poised to make everyone laugh and jump. You had nothing of
yourself. You thought I was an empty shell, but I was far more human
than you ever were. Your ideals became you.
Those were the days of our youth, the tumult of childhood. You thought
only of pleasing others. You wanted to become your father. I wanted to
become him, to be with him, to be him. I had no father, no
mother, no earthly existence save for pain. The only wonder I knew
was the rip of claws against my chest, tearing through the emptiness.
You saw my pain and you thought you could take it into yourself; you
thought you could take away from me the only joy of my life. I had to
hurt you for that, for your arrogance and your idiocy. You saw the
apathy of me and knew it mirrored your true self, and you tried in vain
to become what you saw in me.
I begged him, time and again, to kill me. He said I was about to achieve
perfection, that with the right delicate balance of excruciating pleasure
and delirious pain I would bloom, cultivated just as he had envisioned
me. I was his project, his experiment, and failure was the same as
pleasing him. Someday, he said, I would become the ultimate, the
singular perfect creation of the world, the Galatea to his Pygmalion. And
on that day, he would finally be mine, just as I was his.
Some part of you must have known, because some part of you was
jealous. You wanted me to be your creation; you had worked for it,
you thought. You grasped and searched for the strings that could bind
me to you, and to your credit, you almost found them. But in the end,
you lost.
And I consumed you. Day by day, hour by hour...I consumed you.
You looked at me with your big, watery eyes and you begged me to tell
you why, but deep down, you knew the truth.
You and I were both born to die.
*****
THE END