Work Text:
Exactly a day after they both arrived at Aunt Rasuna’s house, the clock struck midnight. The night was cold, stinging her skin, and the moon shined brightly. Nothing except that was going well. It’s just funny, to see how the world just went on, leaving everyone behind– no matter how much you are suffering. It doesn’t wait for anyone.
That was what she felt after escaping the confinement she was held in after almost three years. When she came back, everything looked the same but was ultimately different. So many things to catch up on, she thought. They didn’t wait for her. They left her– rotting in that room, and just went on like nothing. Students kept studying, teachers kept teaching.
However, she was never too absorbed in the whole academics thing. She was careless, she didn’t really care whether or not people were better than her. She had gotten numb to the feeling a while ago. But for other people– people like Ray, it hit harder than she thought it would. He was limping all the way here, on the brink of a fever. His immune system has never been good. Despite how cocky she seemed to be on the outside, ultimately, she was worried. Thought he was going to die, not because of the sickness only (though that was a probability too), but rather, his mind. Ray’s mind seemed to eat him from the inside. It was what she was worried about.
They never had a conversation about anything that happened in the span of only a few years. The death, the cheating, the fight, the leaking, the imprisonment, and now the new death. Anais doesn’t know if Ray has forgiven her, but it would be wrong for her to want so much since she hasn’t exactly forgiven him either.
A few days ago, Anais watched Ray break with the body of their beloved in his arms. It was going so well at first, they managed to get together again and made plans, and hung out together. But then, everything crashed down along with the ceilings when the explosion happened. The boy they tried so hard to save (almost saved, too) lay motionless in his arms. Anais couldn’t handle the pain so she let Ray hold him instead. He was always way better than her at holding heavy things.
So she broke him out of the cage and never looked back. God knows what they did to him there since she knew damn well what they were capable of when she was there. No matter how much Anais had hated Ray’s guts, to the point she wanted to punch him at every moment– she wouldn’t let anyone lay a hand on him. Maybe she had gotten used to his existence, despite his roughness, despite his grumpiness. On the inside, he was as broken as she was. They shared more qualities than what they liked.
Ray was never a man with many words. Like her. He would always prove things with action and held the principle that what actions spoke was way louder than sweet, fuzzy words. So that’s what she did when the clock struck midnight.
When the clock struck midnight, Anais began to reach the stairs because she knew no words could capture both of their heavy and complicated feelings in a proper face-to-face conversation.
When the clock struck midnight, her feet stepped onto the cold floor, raindrops piercing her skin. It was never this painful before , she remembered. Because she knew her panting, the worried, almost frantic expression on her face spoke more than anything that had and could’ve existed.
And then when the clock struck midnight, her gaze stopped at the boy who was sitting at the edge of the balcony.
Because no words can ever quite capture the heavy, crushing feeling that lay on their shoulders.
First, the words she attempted to let out finally escaped from her lungs. From a deep, dark place in the depths of her body. A voice came out of her– a voice of someone she never knew. Something unfamiliar, something a stranger to her. “Don’t move,” She said, reaching her hand out. “Don’t move further away. Please.” She never meant to say the last word. It just came out of her like instinct, and Anais wondered when that part of her ever came to the surface. “ Please… ”
Anais had never been the type to beg or ask for help. Unlike other overachievers back then, she would never cry to the teachers every time she received a bad grade. And when it all came crashing down on her– a life worth of resentment and exhaustion piling up on her bones– not once did she ever beg on her knees for some kind of forgiveness for doing everything wrong. The girl just let everything go and dealt with it in isolation.
But what came out of her now was not like that. It was begging, desperate begging. It was shameful and messy and embarrassing and sinful. It was the voice of a child she didn’t know the name of, like some kind of wild animal she couldn’t fight back by closing her mouth. The child then kept begging. Begging so desperately in the rain, begging so the last person on her side won’t leave her. Perhaps the voice was really her– perhaps the child couldn’t keep that inside herself anymore. All the chances– all the moments she had to cry and be vulnerable but never did because she knew she could be stronger. An ocean-deep wave of sadness, of resentment, of guilt .
“What the h- what is wrong with you?” Ray said, his brows furrowed. He remained still in his spot at the edge, looking slightly concerned at her. But she couldn’t quite make his expression. Her vision had gone blurry– perhaps from the rain , she tried to convince herself. Since when were the world’s colors so muted? She thought. “What are you talking about? I’m just–” Ironically, those words were the most words Anais had heard Ray say in one go. “I was just enjoying the rain.”
“Enjoying the rain, that close? Are you crazy ?” She broke. “ Do you not see how close you were to the sky? How close your feet were to letting go of the ground?” She broke again. Into a million pieces, this time. One more step, and you could’ve reached for the sky so high you would let go of everything that made you human.
Ray stepped down. Although slowly, he reached Anais and kneeled before her. “ I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have worried you.”
Any other time, Ray wouldn’t give a proper reaction, only a frown or an angry look, a sarcastic statement at most. But now, at exactly midnight when the raindrops danced and streamed on their bruised skin, at a time when the light illuminated from the sky seemed closer than ever– Ray let his heart do the speaking. Was it because they were both so exhausted from the journey they couldn’t even think straight and act like their usual selves? Were their usual selves even real? Or was it because Anais made the first move and acted too dramatically right in front of him?
“We never really changed from being 16, didn’t we?” He suddenly said, his eyes staring into the infinite distance above. “I was really just enjoying the rain, by the way. Control your thoughts.”
That didn’t make her feel any better. Ever since Chairil’s death, the slightest hint of death shattered her to bits. Now that Niko was dead too, she had to walk here again– to the city, with shattered pieces all taped up together, all of them potentially breaking at a certain moment. Should she be glad they all fell to the ground in the rain like this, and not somewhere more…real?
“ I know that we still can’t forget what happened to Chairil…but it would be selfish to think that it’s because of you only,” He told her. “Because it's everyone’s and no one’s fault.”
Anais chuckled. “Since when were you so wise with words?”
“ Because we all feel bad about it. We feel that whatever we did that changed could have saved him but that could only prevent him from dying earlier–” He caught a glimpse of Anais’ sad look. “But that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t die another day.”
After composing herself the best she could, she put on her normal expression– or at least, tried to, the best she could. Then, she reached out her hand and despite all the raindrops being everywhere around her, the one splash of water that hit her finger made her satisfied. The one she reached out for. But why couldn’t she reach out then and there, when it all mattered the most? She was tormented, day and night, by the fear that it’ll happen again, yet she had no energy to do anything about it. All she could do now was collapse to the ground and cry, and somehow all the plans and words she had thought of before– of saving someone just in case she, out of pure coincidence, witnessed the same pattern happening again– just disappeared like fog out of her mind. All that came out was begging– desperate, tearful begging, like a child.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Ray’s words hit her like a gentle knife. It sliced her into pieces she never knew was part of her. “These were the words I wanted to say to someone. But I was too late, as we both know.”
Ray suddenly held the hand that she reached out. It caught her off-guard at first, but as she turned her head to him, she could feel her heart beat slower. His touch blanketed her, and somehow, she couldn’t feel the raindrops hitting her anymore.
At that moment– looking at him, then the world surrounding him, Anais decided to march on. She decided to continue to soldier on, not quite dead, but not quite alive either. She promised herself to continue walking, to continue taking every step– no matter how small. She would continue to breathe even with missing pieces, even if she had to leave those shattered pieces behind.
But she had one more question to ask.
“What were you really doing up here?”
Ray didn’t move the slightest bit. His reaction unfazed her.
So when the clock struck midnight, the two students, not quite children anymore but not quite adults either, sat together amidst the rain. Perhaps, there are some words that could be said, even if a single look could describe the pain better than any combination of letters said through the mouths of guilty people. From her gaze, Anais could see a tear form in the corner of Ray’s eyes, trying to disguise itself as a raindrop. If a raindrop fell from the sky and hit his skin, then his tear emerged from the ground and pierced his barrier with reality.
“I just wanna hug mom and dad again, Na.”
Anais shattered.