Saber Marionette Fan Fiction ❯ Drowining Ophelia ❯ Rosemary for Remembrances ( Chapter 1 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Lady Aoi 
Anime/Manga: Saber Marionette Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Drama | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 09.14.2002 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.5K | Visits: 415 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Saber Marionette Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Angst / Drama | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 09.14.2002 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.5K | Visits: 415 | Status: Completed
Drowning Ophelia
a Saber Marionette Fan Fiction
Chapter One: Rosemary for Remembrances
by
Lady Aoi
Summary: Hanagata contemplates his feelings for Otaru one rainy night. Part One of Three.
Rating: NC-17 for strong sexuality.*YAOI, ANGST and Lemon warnings*
Spoilers: A bit of AU stuck between the ends of SMJ and SMJ Again.
Lady Aoi's notes: Xel-chan, this is so your fault. And thank you, AnitaB, for being kind enough to beta for me. And everyone, I'm really not trying to do Hanagata out of character here.
~*~*~*~*~
"I just want some one to say to me
I'll always be there when you wake
Ya know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today
So stay with me and I'll have it made"
~ Blind Melon "No Rain"
~*~*~*~*~
These things start so slowly, like a leak in the roof, so slowly that you hardly notice them. I should know. I never did until I woke up one morning to find myself drowning.
Otaru Mamiya... even now, as depressing as the whole messy situation is, I have to laugh, like a man laughs at the sight of a murder; hysterically and uselessly. The hopeless laughter of a man condemned. It is almost fantastical. The poor picked-on orphan boy who took karate in grade school to keep the spoiled rich brat and his gang of toughs away. Back then I looked to hurt him, to bury my own weaknesses in every bruise on his face, to prove that I was too good to love what could not match me in wealth or status.
And now, years later, somehow I think he's laughing at me, with that mocking certainty of he who laughs best.
I'm alone in this apartment again listening to the rain against the shutters. It's a cold rain.. a storm with September hidden in every drop and a not-so-subtle promise of winter... Another year is passing me by, has passed me by, and nothing has changed. Or rather, everything around me has changed and once again I've been forgotten like a broken toy on a shelf.
I can't sleep, god knows I haven't been able to for the last three nights. Ever since his marionettes returned from the Mesopotamia his apartment has seemed to thrive on laughter alone with only the briefest of interims for sleep. And it is this silence which is all too short but all too painful that makes everything that much worse.
They say that silence is golden because it brings you closer to yourself. I don't want to be closer to the tangled web of silence and inconsequence that passes and has always passed for Hanagata Mitsurugi! I want to hear him... see him... touch him, lose myself within him at least for a moment. In darker times, those nights when the silence threatens to overtake me completely, I even pine for the days when he would slap me, the times when he would push me away and even beat me cruelly for some perceived transgression against his honor or that of his damned marionettes. (I do not hate them, try as I might... how can I hate anyone for loving him? He is too perfect not to fall in love with...) At least that was something. The silence that has followed their return is nothing.
Yumeji once had a teddy bear that he loved greatly until the day he came home from school to find one of it's glass eyes had gone missing never to be seen again. After that accidental desecration nothing would pacify him. Leaving the empty socket was "creepy" and finding a new eye was "fake". At last, father had no choice but to throw the damned thing out onto the trash heap and buy Yumeji a new friend.
If toys had feelings, I could safely say I knew what that teddy bear felt.
I can't take this anymore. It's too quiet tonight and too cold. The hole Lime made in the wall between our apartments looms before me in the dark, like the hollow of a tree or... or an empty eye-socket. I have stared and stared at this fissure between us every night since Otaru-kun stopped speaking to me and every second I grow more afraid of it.
But tonight... tonight I have made a decision. No matter what he says, no matter what his she-devils do to me, I am going to see him tonight. If not to speak to him at least just to see him. Even if they beat me bloody, it will be worth it.
The rain continues as I slide out of bed and drape my bathrobe over my usual night shirt. As I approach that gaping hole, a memory hits me and I almost laugh. Once I was so naive I thought life could be defined by a vague fortune on a slip of mass-printed paper. "Love thy neighbor..." love him enough to spring through this very hole with a bouquet of fresh-picked roses to proclaim my undying love to an empty room. Ahh. A perfect metaphor for our relationship that hasn't been, ne, Otaru-kun?
It is not as bad as I anticipate. A small tearing of paper and I'm in his silent and dark apartment. In the dim light that emanates from my left-behind room I wonder half-heartedly why they don't bother to board the thing up. But then again, I suppose we must all have easy access to our favorite toys...
Even if they're broken.
It doesn't take me long to find his room. After all, I know the way by heart having memorized the exact number of steps from the kitchen on several of my half-welcome visits. And in my dreams, I have memorized every detail about the darkened pathway to Otaru-kun's bed. I could find my way there without hearing and touch...
Even without eyes.
My heart beats so loudly that for a moment I fear I will wake him. It's too late now, though. I can't turn back after all this effort. And so I gently slide the door to his bedroom open, half expecting Bloodberry's fist to immediately meet my face for this transgression.
Instead of the cluster of marionettes that usually surround him like faithful dogs during this private time, I am surprised to find the room empty save all but a solitary lithe figure glowing with an almost divine luminescence beneath moon and pale sheets. The sight of Otaru-kun like this almost makes me cry out, half with a pleasure that burns my stomach, half with a wonder that makes me want to stoop and pray. Never, never has he looked this beautiful. The sheet rakes at an almost lascivious angle from his chest to the top of the slender bone that shapes his left thigh, baring just enough of his flesh to whet my appetite and yet not enough to step into obscenity. He looks like... like an angel fallen to earth to rest for awhile before returning to his heavenly work.
It is almost too much for me and for a moment my courage fails. I am tempted to forget it all, to leave by the hole I crawled in from and resign myself to another night of restless silence and deep, empty dreams. And yet, something about that pale form captures my eyes, holds me back, strengthens me... draws me forward...
Until my moon-paled hands slowly draw the sheet away from his body. He lies there, as innocent in his nakedness as Adam as I crawl onto the futon with him. My heart is threatening to destroy my vision and veins pulse lightning through my vision as I gently wrap my arms around him and nestle my head onto his shoulder.
He murmurs softly at this newfound warmth and to my surprise, returns the hug almost as freely as it is given, in spite of the fact that my flesh chills like winter at the gentle arms which snake their way around my waist to draw me into his marvelous heat. Oh yes... Otaru-kun.... yes.... just hold me like this, even if it is in our dreams, shared or otherwise. The fantasy of being with you, even for a moment, will be enough to sustain me in this effigy of my life.
I am so comfortable against him that I almost don't notice the slow hands that begin stroking my back. Only when one of them begins to slide up the nakedness beneath the short shirt I wear do my eyes snap open...
Only to find them mirrored in two perfect hazel pools.
Oh God... Otaru-kun! I had a moment of happiness, the first in my life, perhaps, and now look what I've done... I've made myself even uglier in your eyes... please... oh don't look at me that way, Otaru-kun... with such hatred! If you were Hanagata Mitsurugi, this pathetic excuse for a man, wouldn't you want to love something better than your own misery?!
For a moment I'm afraid he is going to hit me, or call his strangely absent marionettes to his side and let them play with me as they will. After all they have been without their favorite toy for nearly .... three weeks now? Longer? Slowly, guiltily, I meet his gaze and begin to turn away. Otaru-kun... if you're going to beat me, please be kind enough not to make me watch while you tear me apart. It's too much now... it will break what's left of the crumbling shell my nothingness is wrapped in.
I am prepared for anything; censure, assault, or simply more silence... but I am scarcely prepared to feel his arms tighten around my waist and even less so to find myself pulled back onto the mattress to stare into his perfect eyes again. I almost cry when I find not reproach, but understanding in his eyes.
"Otaru-kun..." I allow myself to whisper his name as his hand returns to the hem of my nightshirt to begin a lengthy and interested process up my naked backside and into the small of my waist. As he touches areas of pleasure hitherto unexplored by all including myself, I gasp his name again and lean backwards into his curious and gentle fingers.
"Hanagata..." I actually do cry now, because the way he whispers my name makes me sound not only worthy but... somehow human. And in response, as if he both understood and accepted the pain balled inside me, he leans forward to capture each tear as it falls from my eyes.
I give them to him willingly and allow him to drink his fill. Never before have we been this close, and never before has he touched me so gently. When my tears are nearly spent, a gentle hand in the small of my back guides me to my haunches. I am now facing him as those same hands open first my robe and then each button of my night shirt, stopping only to caress each inch of bare flesh revealed by every abandoned closure. Finally, he parts the garment from my shoulders and slides it down my arms, his hazel eyes roaming over my flesh as if it were a conquered territory seen for the first time.
I put up no resistance as he touches what he wants, a nipple here, my stomach there, until his hungry lips travel upwards to find their home on the side of my neck. As he searches for the secrets of this region, my body begins to shake... my lips cry his name again and again, begging with each letter for him to take more and more until I am bursting with a river of his love.
The rain beats down softly as he slides me gently into the pillows. He pets my cheek and hair reassuringly until I can find the courage to open my legs for him, giving him access to the pain and joy I feel whenever he is near. He wastes no time in claiming my chest and stomach with his caresses. And while I am still reeling and moaning from his careful ministrations I am suddenly enclosed in a warm and vibrant velvet cocoon.
"Ohh--Otaru-kuunnn!!" It is almost too much for me and stars swim through my pulsing vision as he rocks above me. More of me is joyously parted and claimed by his hands as he continues his benign conquest. He pulls my body along so sweetly, so gently... I can taste him on my lips, smell him against my flesh, feel him draining all of my misery and replacing it with a sweetness I never knew possible.
He takes parts of me and reassembles them in ways I never knew possible. Otaru-kun pulls hard at me sometimes, making me scream with agonizing delight as he pleases my body to curve forward into his lips. And then, as soon as this violent lightning crackles through us, he becomes as gentle as the rain, both exploring my hidden regions and my trembling skin with a tenderness I never knew God to be guilty of possessing. Oh Otaru-kun.... it's so beautiful it's almost painful...
It's unreal enough almost to be real, the way he both shelters and wounds this body I have longed to give him since the moment we first met. I can feel it approaching now... his hands grip the flesh of my back in an almost animal desperation and his muffled gasping becomes an almost guttural moan. The cocoon that encloses my passion pulses and trembles with a heat unknown and impossible in a night now far removed from rain and misery.
"O--Otaru-kun..." I whimper his name over and over as an earthquake rocks my body. Any moment now... any moment... oh God...
Oh God...
It hurts... it hurts so deeply, Otaru-kun. Because no matter how tightly I closed my eyes, I can't see you clearly... there is only the dark hole through which I did not step tonight and beyond that the way to your door which I could find even when blinded by tears. Only tonight, I did not make my way to you.
With a final shudder, I can feel my solitary heat leave for the painful comforts of the damp and troubled air that blankets this room. And as my weakened body sinks to the pillows from its own futile exertions, the image of your smiling eyes turns cruel and mocking. And once again, the indelible image stands before me, like a phantom made painfully real. Your annoyed fists strike my cheeks, crack my jaw, soften my nose and finally find their most painful mark in my left eye, which darkens in on itself and bleeds it's own rain of crimson tears. As I stand, helpless before this phantom I have seen before, you, Otaru-kun, beat me to the ground, and leave me outside in the darkness to face the rain alone.
And as the cold September rain drowns out all other sounds, for the first time tonight, I allow myself to weep bitter tears of loneliness, fantasy and defeat.
Otaru-kun...
I will never be free of you.
~ End Part One
a Saber Marionette Fan Fiction
Chapter One: Rosemary for Remembrances
by
Lady Aoi
Summary: Hanagata contemplates his feelings for Otaru one rainy night. Part One of Three.
Rating: NC-17 for strong sexuality.*YAOI, ANGST and Lemon warnings*
Spoilers: A bit of AU stuck between the ends of SMJ and SMJ Again.
Lady Aoi's notes: Xel-chan, this is so your fault. And thank you, AnitaB, for being kind enough to beta for me. And everyone, I'm really not trying to do Hanagata out of character here.
~*~*~*~*~
"I just want some one to say to me
I'll always be there when you wake
Ya know I'd like to keep my cheeks dry today
So stay with me and I'll have it made"
~ Blind Melon "No Rain"
~*~*~*~*~
These things start so slowly, like a leak in the roof, so slowly that you hardly notice them. I should know. I never did until I woke up one morning to find myself drowning.
Otaru Mamiya... even now, as depressing as the whole messy situation is, I have to laugh, like a man laughs at the sight of a murder; hysterically and uselessly. The hopeless laughter of a man condemned. It is almost fantastical. The poor picked-on orphan boy who took karate in grade school to keep the spoiled rich brat and his gang of toughs away. Back then I looked to hurt him, to bury my own weaknesses in every bruise on his face, to prove that I was too good to love what could not match me in wealth or status.
And now, years later, somehow I think he's laughing at me, with that mocking certainty of he who laughs best.
I'm alone in this apartment again listening to the rain against the shutters. It's a cold rain.. a storm with September hidden in every drop and a not-so-subtle promise of winter... Another year is passing me by, has passed me by, and nothing has changed. Or rather, everything around me has changed and once again I've been forgotten like a broken toy on a shelf.
I can't sleep, god knows I haven't been able to for the last three nights. Ever since his marionettes returned from the Mesopotamia his apartment has seemed to thrive on laughter alone with only the briefest of interims for sleep. And it is this silence which is all too short but all too painful that makes everything that much worse.
They say that silence is golden because it brings you closer to yourself. I don't want to be closer to the tangled web of silence and inconsequence that passes and has always passed for Hanagata Mitsurugi! I want to hear him... see him... touch him, lose myself within him at least for a moment. In darker times, those nights when the silence threatens to overtake me completely, I even pine for the days when he would slap me, the times when he would push me away and even beat me cruelly for some perceived transgression against his honor or that of his damned marionettes. (I do not hate them, try as I might... how can I hate anyone for loving him? He is too perfect not to fall in love with...) At least that was something. The silence that has followed their return is nothing.
Yumeji once had a teddy bear that he loved greatly until the day he came home from school to find one of it's glass eyes had gone missing never to be seen again. After that accidental desecration nothing would pacify him. Leaving the empty socket was "creepy" and finding a new eye was "fake". At last, father had no choice but to throw the damned thing out onto the trash heap and buy Yumeji a new friend.
If toys had feelings, I could safely say I knew what that teddy bear felt.
I can't take this anymore. It's too quiet tonight and too cold. The hole Lime made in the wall between our apartments looms before me in the dark, like the hollow of a tree or... or an empty eye-socket. I have stared and stared at this fissure between us every night since Otaru-kun stopped speaking to me and every second I grow more afraid of it.
But tonight... tonight I have made a decision. No matter what he says, no matter what his she-devils do to me, I am going to see him tonight. If not to speak to him at least just to see him. Even if they beat me bloody, it will be worth it.
The rain continues as I slide out of bed and drape my bathrobe over my usual night shirt. As I approach that gaping hole, a memory hits me and I almost laugh. Once I was so naive I thought life could be defined by a vague fortune on a slip of mass-printed paper. "Love thy neighbor..." love him enough to spring through this very hole with a bouquet of fresh-picked roses to proclaim my undying love to an empty room. Ahh. A perfect metaphor for our relationship that hasn't been, ne, Otaru-kun?
It is not as bad as I anticipate. A small tearing of paper and I'm in his silent and dark apartment. In the dim light that emanates from my left-behind room I wonder half-heartedly why they don't bother to board the thing up. But then again, I suppose we must all have easy access to our favorite toys...
Even if they're broken.
It doesn't take me long to find his room. After all, I know the way by heart having memorized the exact number of steps from the kitchen on several of my half-welcome visits. And in my dreams, I have memorized every detail about the darkened pathway to Otaru-kun's bed. I could find my way there without hearing and touch...
Even without eyes.
My heart beats so loudly that for a moment I fear I will wake him. It's too late now, though. I can't turn back after all this effort. And so I gently slide the door to his bedroom open, half expecting Bloodberry's fist to immediately meet my face for this transgression.
Instead of the cluster of marionettes that usually surround him like faithful dogs during this private time, I am surprised to find the room empty save all but a solitary lithe figure glowing with an almost divine luminescence beneath moon and pale sheets. The sight of Otaru-kun like this almost makes me cry out, half with a pleasure that burns my stomach, half with a wonder that makes me want to stoop and pray. Never, never has he looked this beautiful. The sheet rakes at an almost lascivious angle from his chest to the top of the slender bone that shapes his left thigh, baring just enough of his flesh to whet my appetite and yet not enough to step into obscenity. He looks like... like an angel fallen to earth to rest for awhile before returning to his heavenly work.
It is almost too much for me and for a moment my courage fails. I am tempted to forget it all, to leave by the hole I crawled in from and resign myself to another night of restless silence and deep, empty dreams. And yet, something about that pale form captures my eyes, holds me back, strengthens me... draws me forward...
Until my moon-paled hands slowly draw the sheet away from his body. He lies there, as innocent in his nakedness as Adam as I crawl onto the futon with him. My heart is threatening to destroy my vision and veins pulse lightning through my vision as I gently wrap my arms around him and nestle my head onto his shoulder.
He murmurs softly at this newfound warmth and to my surprise, returns the hug almost as freely as it is given, in spite of the fact that my flesh chills like winter at the gentle arms which snake their way around my waist to draw me into his marvelous heat. Oh yes... Otaru-kun.... yes.... just hold me like this, even if it is in our dreams, shared or otherwise. The fantasy of being with you, even for a moment, will be enough to sustain me in this effigy of my life.
I am so comfortable against him that I almost don't notice the slow hands that begin stroking my back. Only when one of them begins to slide up the nakedness beneath the short shirt I wear do my eyes snap open...
Only to find them mirrored in two perfect hazel pools.
Oh God... Otaru-kun! I had a moment of happiness, the first in my life, perhaps, and now look what I've done... I've made myself even uglier in your eyes... please... oh don't look at me that way, Otaru-kun... with such hatred! If you were Hanagata Mitsurugi, this pathetic excuse for a man, wouldn't you want to love something better than your own misery?!
For a moment I'm afraid he is going to hit me, or call his strangely absent marionettes to his side and let them play with me as they will. After all they have been without their favorite toy for nearly .... three weeks now? Longer? Slowly, guiltily, I meet his gaze and begin to turn away. Otaru-kun... if you're going to beat me, please be kind enough not to make me watch while you tear me apart. It's too much now... it will break what's left of the crumbling shell my nothingness is wrapped in.
I am prepared for anything; censure, assault, or simply more silence... but I am scarcely prepared to feel his arms tighten around my waist and even less so to find myself pulled back onto the mattress to stare into his perfect eyes again. I almost cry when I find not reproach, but understanding in his eyes.
"Otaru-kun..." I allow myself to whisper his name as his hand returns to the hem of my nightshirt to begin a lengthy and interested process up my naked backside and into the small of my waist. As he touches areas of pleasure hitherto unexplored by all including myself, I gasp his name again and lean backwards into his curious and gentle fingers.
"Hanagata..." I actually do cry now, because the way he whispers my name makes me sound not only worthy but... somehow human. And in response, as if he both understood and accepted the pain balled inside me, he leans forward to capture each tear as it falls from my eyes.
I give them to him willingly and allow him to drink his fill. Never before have we been this close, and never before has he touched me so gently. When my tears are nearly spent, a gentle hand in the small of my back guides me to my haunches. I am now facing him as those same hands open first my robe and then each button of my night shirt, stopping only to caress each inch of bare flesh revealed by every abandoned closure. Finally, he parts the garment from my shoulders and slides it down my arms, his hazel eyes roaming over my flesh as if it were a conquered territory seen for the first time.
I put up no resistance as he touches what he wants, a nipple here, my stomach there, until his hungry lips travel upwards to find their home on the side of my neck. As he searches for the secrets of this region, my body begins to shake... my lips cry his name again and again, begging with each letter for him to take more and more until I am bursting with a river of his love.
The rain beats down softly as he slides me gently into the pillows. He pets my cheek and hair reassuringly until I can find the courage to open my legs for him, giving him access to the pain and joy I feel whenever he is near. He wastes no time in claiming my chest and stomach with his caresses. And while I am still reeling and moaning from his careful ministrations I am suddenly enclosed in a warm and vibrant velvet cocoon.
"Ohh--Otaru-kuunnn!!" It is almost too much for me and stars swim through my pulsing vision as he rocks above me. More of me is joyously parted and claimed by his hands as he continues his benign conquest. He pulls my body along so sweetly, so gently... I can taste him on my lips, smell him against my flesh, feel him draining all of my misery and replacing it with a sweetness I never knew possible.
He takes parts of me and reassembles them in ways I never knew possible. Otaru-kun pulls hard at me sometimes, making me scream with agonizing delight as he pleases my body to curve forward into his lips. And then, as soon as this violent lightning crackles through us, he becomes as gentle as the rain, both exploring my hidden regions and my trembling skin with a tenderness I never knew God to be guilty of possessing. Oh Otaru-kun.... it's so beautiful it's almost painful...
It's unreal enough almost to be real, the way he both shelters and wounds this body I have longed to give him since the moment we first met. I can feel it approaching now... his hands grip the flesh of my back in an almost animal desperation and his muffled gasping becomes an almost guttural moan. The cocoon that encloses my passion pulses and trembles with a heat unknown and impossible in a night now far removed from rain and misery.
"O--Otaru-kun..." I whimper his name over and over as an earthquake rocks my body. Any moment now... any moment... oh God...
Oh God...
It hurts... it hurts so deeply, Otaru-kun. Because no matter how tightly I closed my eyes, I can't see you clearly... there is only the dark hole through which I did not step tonight and beyond that the way to your door which I could find even when blinded by tears. Only tonight, I did not make my way to you.
With a final shudder, I can feel my solitary heat leave for the painful comforts of the damp and troubled air that blankets this room. And as my weakened body sinks to the pillows from its own futile exertions, the image of your smiling eyes turns cruel and mocking. And once again, the indelible image stands before me, like a phantom made painfully real. Your annoyed fists strike my cheeks, crack my jaw, soften my nose and finally find their most painful mark in my left eye, which darkens in on itself and bleeds it's own rain of crimson tears. As I stand, helpless before this phantom I have seen before, you, Otaru-kun, beat me to the ground, and leave me outside in the darkness to face the rain alone.
And as the cold September rain drowns out all other sounds, for the first time tonight, I allow myself to weep bitter tears of loneliness, fantasy and defeat.
Otaru-kun...
I will never be free of you.
~ End Part One