Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2007-05-24 06:14 pm
edenfalling) wrote2007-05-24 06:14 pm
Entry tags:
[Fic] "Sixpence" and "Fate" -- Saiyuki
These are some character-study pieces I wrote while I was working on Samsara. The first is a set of six drabbles from Kanan's POV. Contains incest and madness.
---------------------------------------------
Sixpence
---------------------------------------------
Eyes:
Their eyes betray them. Green so deep and brilliant -- like emeralds, snakeskin, poison -- shouldn't be possible with only human blood to fuel it. For two people to have eyes like that without a blood relation is beyond belief.
Gonou's glasses are only for reading, but he wears them all the time. Kanan casts her face to the ground. They do what they can to divert attention.
But their eyes always slide back to rest on each other, and the cold, gemstone green softens into the hue of summer leaves, finally alive behind the polite façade. And that's the other betrayal.
---------------
Hands:
Gonou has beautiful hands, long, slender, and deceptively strong. Kanan remembers them short, chubby, and flailing as the nuns took him one way and her another, both desperately reaching across the gap.
Kanan remembers how his hands shook when she first saw him again, standing haloed by evening sunlight in the school garden. She remembers the callused tips of his fingers, touching her cheek to prove that they both were real.
A small scar marks the crease of his palm, matched by one on her own skin, where they swore with blood and twined fingers never to be separated again.
---------------
Weakness:
It's wrong for siblings to be lovers, but they don't care. Gonou has always belonged to Kanan, and she's always belonged to him. Apart, they fall; he spirals in on himself, and she wisps away into the air. Together, they balance; she brings him out to acknowledge the world, and he pulls her in to remember herself.
Perhaps it's dangerous to depend so utterly on another person, to split their selves instead of teaching each other to stand on their own, but this is how they've always been, and they can't imagine a future where they won't protect each other.
---------------
Strength:
Kanan loves Gonou's body. Everything physical comes easily to him: mending clothes, washing dishes, calligraphy, carpentry, cooking, fighting, loving. She loves to feel his strength restrained when he holds her hand, or teaches her kata and joint locks. She loves to feel him slip free of his self-imposed control when they make love, or when he tosses her into the air as they dance for the sheer joy of being together.
Kanan watches the play of muscles under Gonou's clothes, watches the subtle quirk of his mouth when he feels her hungry attention, and knows she's the luckiest woman alive.
---------------
Genius:
The ironic thing is that the nuns thought Kanan was the brilliant one. When they decided she and Gonou were keeping each other from healing, when they tore her from her brother, they made sure her new orphanage had a good school.
They didn't realize she only told them the answers Gonou told her. They thought he was slow because he didn't bother talking to them. It took him years to prove his intelligence to them and win his way back to her.
Kanan thinks Gonou was right about the nuns; only idiots could miss the mind behind his silence.
---------------
Madness:
It's not about sex, though sex is wonderful. It's not even about love. It's just that Gonou is the only real person she knows, the only one who stands out sharp and solid from the tapestry of the world. She wonders sometimes if the other people keep acting out their lives once she isn't around to see them, or if God folds them away into a drawer until they're needed again.
Kanan likes the shadow people well enough, but there's no point getting attached to paper dolls that might dissolve in the next rainshower.
She knows Gonou won't leave her.
---------------------------------------------
End
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
The second story is a slightly more extended piece on Kanan in Hyakugan Maoh's castle. There's a small fairy-tale conceit, but I think that's just because I have a tendency to think in fairy-tales, and you know, there is something sort of archetypal about the woman held captive in a castle/tower/fortress by some sort of monster. Contains incest and suicidal ideation.
---------------------------------------------
Fate
---------------------------------------------
In the monster's castle, the princess counts her heartbeats, stringing them together into hours and days. She looks back on her life and wonders where she stepped onto the path that led to this place, wonders how she could have changed the story.
What if her brother had come home early that day? What if she'd been more suspicious of the knock on the door (they never had visitors, never) and had hidden in the forest? What if she'd been a heartbeat faster any time the monster left himself open for a second and she tried to kill him?
She goes back further.
What if the nuns hadn't thrown her and her brother out? What if she'd found a job in one of the other towns (the sleazy barkeep wasn't all that sleazy, whatever her brother thought) so her brother could study for the national exams and win an official appointment? What if they'd stayed in that abandoned farmhouse and done their best to be self-sufficient?
And further.
What if the nuns hadn't pulled them apart when they were children? What if they'd grown up together, without the scars of that enforced separation? What if (the most impossible dream of all) their parents hadn't died?
But it's meaningless. You can choose how to live your life, but karma is a lead weight on the weave of the world. Sooner or later fate catches up to everyone; the only question is what path you take to meet it.
She and her brother are two halves of a whole, whether they become lovers or not. Sooner or later the monster's soldiers come by -- this monster, another monster, any monster will do -- and two unarmed humans can't fight a troop of youkai. She ends up in the castle, alone, slowly going mad. The only variable is whether her brother dies trying to protect her or trying to rescue her. This story has no happy end.
Her brother is coming for her.
She will kill herself rather than watch him die.
---------------------------------------------
End
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Looking at these stories, it's obvious that something about Hakkai's backstory -- and about Kanan in particular -- snagged and caught on my subconscious. Normally I turn things over in my head until I can make sense of them, but this time, I seem to have done that via stories instead of essays or extended internal conversations. (That last option is not nearly as insane as it sounds, I swear.)
---------------------------------------------
Sixpence
---------------------------------------------
Eyes:
Their eyes betray them. Green so deep and brilliant -- like emeralds, snakeskin, poison -- shouldn't be possible with only human blood to fuel it. For two people to have eyes like that without a blood relation is beyond belief.
Gonou's glasses are only for reading, but he wears them all the time. Kanan casts her face to the ground. They do what they can to divert attention.
But their eyes always slide back to rest on each other, and the cold, gemstone green softens into the hue of summer leaves, finally alive behind the polite façade. And that's the other betrayal.
---------------
Hands:
Gonou has beautiful hands, long, slender, and deceptively strong. Kanan remembers them short, chubby, and flailing as the nuns took him one way and her another, both desperately reaching across the gap.
Kanan remembers how his hands shook when she first saw him again, standing haloed by evening sunlight in the school garden. She remembers the callused tips of his fingers, touching her cheek to prove that they both were real.
A small scar marks the crease of his palm, matched by one on her own skin, where they swore with blood and twined fingers never to be separated again.
---------------
Weakness:
It's wrong for siblings to be lovers, but they don't care. Gonou has always belonged to Kanan, and she's always belonged to him. Apart, they fall; he spirals in on himself, and she wisps away into the air. Together, they balance; she brings him out to acknowledge the world, and he pulls her in to remember herself.
Perhaps it's dangerous to depend so utterly on another person, to split their selves instead of teaching each other to stand on their own, but this is how they've always been, and they can't imagine a future where they won't protect each other.
---------------
Strength:
Kanan loves Gonou's body. Everything physical comes easily to him: mending clothes, washing dishes, calligraphy, carpentry, cooking, fighting, loving. She loves to feel his strength restrained when he holds her hand, or teaches her kata and joint locks. She loves to feel him slip free of his self-imposed control when they make love, or when he tosses her into the air as they dance for the sheer joy of being together.
Kanan watches the play of muscles under Gonou's clothes, watches the subtle quirk of his mouth when he feels her hungry attention, and knows she's the luckiest woman alive.
---------------
Genius:
The ironic thing is that the nuns thought Kanan was the brilliant one. When they decided she and Gonou were keeping each other from healing, when they tore her from her brother, they made sure her new orphanage had a good school.
They didn't realize she only told them the answers Gonou told her. They thought he was slow because he didn't bother talking to them. It took him years to prove his intelligence to them and win his way back to her.
Kanan thinks Gonou was right about the nuns; only idiots could miss the mind behind his silence.
---------------
Madness:
It's not about sex, though sex is wonderful. It's not even about love. It's just that Gonou is the only real person she knows, the only one who stands out sharp and solid from the tapestry of the world. She wonders sometimes if the other people keep acting out their lives once she isn't around to see them, or if God folds them away into a drawer until they're needed again.
Kanan likes the shadow people well enough, but there's no point getting attached to paper dolls that might dissolve in the next rainshower.
She knows Gonou won't leave her.
---------------------------------------------
End
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
The second story is a slightly more extended piece on Kanan in Hyakugan Maoh's castle. There's a small fairy-tale conceit, but I think that's just because I have a tendency to think in fairy-tales, and you know, there is something sort of archetypal about the woman held captive in a castle/tower/fortress by some sort of monster. Contains incest and suicidal ideation.
---------------------------------------------
Fate
---------------------------------------------
In the monster's castle, the princess counts her heartbeats, stringing them together into hours and days. She looks back on her life and wonders where she stepped onto the path that led to this place, wonders how she could have changed the story.
What if her brother had come home early that day? What if she'd been more suspicious of the knock on the door (they never had visitors, never) and had hidden in the forest? What if she'd been a heartbeat faster any time the monster left himself open for a second and she tried to kill him?
She goes back further.
What if the nuns hadn't thrown her and her brother out? What if she'd found a job in one of the other towns (the sleazy barkeep wasn't all that sleazy, whatever her brother thought) so her brother could study for the national exams and win an official appointment? What if they'd stayed in that abandoned farmhouse and done their best to be self-sufficient?
And further.
What if the nuns hadn't pulled them apart when they were children? What if they'd grown up together, without the scars of that enforced separation? What if (the most impossible dream of all) their parents hadn't died?
But it's meaningless. You can choose how to live your life, but karma is a lead weight on the weave of the world. Sooner or later fate catches up to everyone; the only question is what path you take to meet it.
She and her brother are two halves of a whole, whether they become lovers or not. Sooner or later the monster's soldiers come by -- this monster, another monster, any monster will do -- and two unarmed humans can't fight a troop of youkai. She ends up in the castle, alone, slowly going mad. The only variable is whether her brother dies trying to protect her or trying to rescue her. This story has no happy end.
Her brother is coming for her.
She will kill herself rather than watch him die.
---------------------------------------------
End
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------
Looking at these stories, it's obvious that something about Hakkai's backstory -- and about Kanan in particular -- snagged and caught on my subconscious. Normally I turn things over in my head until I can make sense of them, but this time, I seem to have done that via stories instead of essays or extended internal conversations. (That last option is not nearly as insane as it sounds, I swear.)