05-10-2008, 09:17 PM
6. Break
I paced the floor of the dim room. The dying candle cast my motioned shadow into disarray, breaking it on the floor. I stopped in frustration and shook my head for what seemed like the hundredth time as I tried to clear the image from my mind.
The king was dead and I had killed him.
No...of course is was not me but it had looked like it. The killer had smiled with my face as declared to the ballroom in my voice that he Shonasha Shonojo, my identity, had in fact struck down the king in the first minutes that he took the role.
I cursed myself under my breath, how could I possibly been so blind. I knew the power that Totsu had, he had warned me of it just the day prior, fair warning and I had been able to nothing to stop it. He had taken my very image and killed the king with it. I was framed by him again.
I fell into a wooden chair and sat my head upon the desk before it. My fingers adsently traced the tattooed lines on my stomach that represented the last crime he had framed me for. How had I let him do it again?
"It won't be long now before they search the rooms and find me. They can finally bring me to justice," I breathed in disbelief.
"I will not let that happen," A heartbreakingly familiar voice said from behind me.
Tears were already falling down my cheeks when I turned to look to the doorway. "Heso..." The brother of my enemy who had framed me. I looked into those red eyes, so much like his brothers and saw the ever-present sign of distraction in them. I wondered if he truly saw me with those eyes that were turned ever-forward to the future that he read like a book. Even now I could not demand his full attention, "You knew," I choked, the words coming out with much more bitterness than I had intended.
"You know I did," He said simply. The fire light in his eyes furthered the distance I saw there.
"Why? Why couldn't you tell me this was going to happen? The king is dead and I was right there, I could have done something!" My heart ached with the guilt of my blindless. I had let die the man who had saved me from rotting so many years before. The guilt however, was not so near to the hate that I felt for Heso at that moment.
"It would not have made a difference. You could not have done anything."
I hated the simplicity with which he said it, because he knew. He did not try to comfort, no he only said it so that I could let out my frustration because he knew I wouldn't listen to him until he did. And with that knowledge he set us on different planes, I knew next to nothing, and he everything. "I could have tried!"
He approached and took my arm trying to make me look him in the face, "And for what? To hurt yourself, I could not allow it!"
"Stop pretending!" I shouted at him as I looked away to avoid the face of the man I had come to love, "Stop pretending..." My voice droned away to a soft whisper, "That you care, that you love me."
There was a change in him then. His whole body froze and as I turned back to him I saw his eyes wide and for once fully focused on the present right there where I was.
"All you care about, is getting me to some place in the future where I will do something that has to be done. It's never once felt real," And my voice cracked because I knew I was lying to him and could see that I was hurting him, "You've only protected me in order to keep time running it's course. You loved me because I asked you to and because you knew it was the only way to build up to this point now. You have never loved me."
Heso blinked quickly and took my hands in his, pulling them close to his face as if to kiss them. "You're wrong,"
"No" I said pulling my hands away, "By dawn I'll just be another knot in the weaving. Lost until I'm useful again." I brushed away my tears with a fist, "What did you come to tell me?"
I heard him breath heavily, the air filling his body until he could speak again, "There is a horse and supplies prepared for your escape. You must leave before dawn or all is lost." His voice formed around the words awkwardly, conscious of the truth that they lended to my own.
"Hosingi and my brother?" I offered.
"You cannot all make it."He said but at my silence realized that I wanted more, "They will be taken into custody when it's found that you are gone."
"Before dawn?" I asked absently. Here was my world caving in on me again, but I had no room to care.
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