These Paper Pages

One More Time [HetaOni AU]

Under the expanse of the grey skies and weeping clouds, tears melding with the raindropsas he stands, drenched head to toe by the rain. Isen feels the exhaustion cutting bone deep, settling in the hollows and making it their own. Even under the torrential pouring of rain, the blood staining his hands will never be washed off.

There was so much blood.

Isen tries not to think of it; he survived. He lived and escaped, and yet this did not feel like freedom. It tastes nothing like relief, instead he tastes blood on his tongue, ashes in his throat. Bitterness and guilt filling his mouth and making it taste like cotton. Isen is a prisoner of his guilt.

'This isn't fair', he thinks, cries out to the chill gust of wind.

Nothing ever is.

He should be free, damn it! And yet his mind is trapped in that wretched place where he remains alone, corpses as his company. Free, but never truly tasting freedom. He could live with strings, a lot of things in life comes with strings attached, after all. But this? This is different. To have survived while all his friends died, trapped and rotting in that mansion, never to be buried by their family, to never have the truth about them be told—Isen will forever be wearing the shackles of his grief and be chained by his guilt, he will never be free.

He could never live with himself.

Cold raindrops against his skin, small tremors shaking his feeble frame, Isen closes his eyes and steels himself. He does not take a step forward, instead, he turns and faces the mansion. It fills him with dread, like stones dropping in the pit of his stomach, but he squashes the unease and ignores the tremble in his step as he pushes towards the mansion. Isen ignores the quickening of his breath, the rapid beating of his heart as he once again steps into the boundary.

One more time. He'll save them this time, so please, one more time.

Pale face, the icy shade of blue eyes. Short white dress falling just shy above her knees, sandy blonde hair weaving with the harsh howling of the the wind. She welcomes him, holds her arms wide open.

"One more time." She mouths, lips stretching to a grin.

The mansion opens for him, a bargain is struck. The chiming of the grandfather clock rings in his ears, the ghost of a girl smiles with too much teeth.

One more time. The clocks resets, time rewinds.

×××

A chill races down his spine, Isen barely has time to register what happens next as he runs right into someone's back. He stumbles in his surprise, falling back and landing on his back. The colorful string of curse words, the silent murmurs of the morning breeze, the foliage of trees over his head; Isen savours the moment, drinking it all in. He's back.

"Watch where you're going, man. Fucking hell." John cuts through his thoughts, this is the first time he feels relief wash over him at the sound of John's voice.

"Cut him some slack, man." Blyke’s voice is a salve to the wounds he's nursing, he misses him. The sight of him makes Isen almost cry. This Blyke is untouched, unscathed by the horrors of the mansion. His golden eyes are bright and glistening, not dull and empty, and his red hair is lush and soft under the sunlight, messy in that way he adores but never dares to say out loud. This, this Blyke is alive and untouched, but he will never be his Blyke, and a selfish part of him grieves.

"You okay there, Isen?" He offers him his hand, Isen trembles, unable to speak as his hand shakily takes it. If Blyke noticed, he doesn't say a word.