j_gabrielle | Fic: A door with no lock, too mighty to break (Reply)

Title: A door with no lock, too mighty to break
Pairing: HanChul
Rating: R (for some themes)
Summary: I am the one who lives forever, the one who has seen the rise and fall of empires.
A/N: For shihan_ai because I miss her. And I'd wanted to try writing HanChul and I think I failed kinda miserably and I hope y'all would forgive me. And this is unbetaed... So read at your own risks. (for grammatical errors and so on so forth) Title is inspired by a quote from The Death Of Tintagel a play by Peter Morris. Has anyone seen it?

"Hey there pretty..." He leered. He is a stranger; big and burly. The type who'll hurt me because I am a man and he is a man. And he can't stand people like me. I smile, saunter close. He grabs my wrists and pins them to the wall above my head. There is no one around and as such, there is no one to hear my screams. Not that I'll be the one screaming.

He kisses rough. Once, the mere fact of his tongue down my throat would have made me gag, but now it merely sends shivers up my spine. He grips harder and soon I am swimming in whorls of black. He tears my jeans and I frown. Even if I like this masochistic game I play with myself, I like it better if good clothing comes out unharmed.

The punch is rather unexpected, and it stings none the less. I taste copper in my mouth and relish it. But I smile. Wide and wider. He draws his hand back to strike me again, but instead find himself choking on soundless cries and the gurgle of blood that bubbles forth from his mouth and dribbles down his coarse beard, staining his once white shirt. I stand back to fix my clothing and admire the interesting shade of puce that paints his face. The blinking neon lights become the lighting for this little show in front of me; now his eyes roll back, trail of deep crimson track down his cheek and join the dribble that coat the asphalt where he is lying in the pool of his piss and what I suspect to be his faeces. Wrinkling my nose, I step out of the alleyway and into the night. I managed to check my face in the mirror of a car. Flawless as ever.

I get more than a few appreciative looks as I make my way to the hill. Flocks of children and their family are all around me. A part of me pangs in slight guilt at the sight of fathers and their children. And if I turn at the thought that I’d just seen one of my own children, it won’t be the first time. It’s been too long and too many that their faces and names have all but melded together into a collage of voices and pictures. I often wonder when I am in the mood to think about them, about their children and their children’s children. I wonder how many are there out there that carry the disease that rages through me.

My last child died in arms on the warm sticky August night of 1991. Amelia, my beautiful Amelia. She’d called me up because her husband was away in China for a business trip and she felt like she was going into labour. At the hospital I was identified as the ‘cousin’; a farce we’d both played since she was 15 and old enough to know the truth about me. Little Dahlia is safely nestled between the both of us when she whispers, “Papa...” Something she had not called me since she was a little girl. “Papa... Don’t... Please. Don’t forget me...” I kiss the top of her head. I’d seen more than a few share of births, (been the one giving birth once, but that is one story I will never tell) and I knew by the blood that was staining the floor that my Amelia will never live to see dawn break. “Papa? I love you...” She sighed as her baby cried in my arms.

I wonder whether to sigh in exasperation or to enjoy the view of half naked men and women parading all around me. The choruses of ‘Trick or Treat!’ and the cheap, tacky sound effects filtering through the air. Laughter and joy danced around me and I remembered a time a long time and many lifetimes ago when parents had kept their children indoors and out of harms way. Oh! How things have changed! Whatever will man forget next? The birth of Christ is in spring and that Christmas is actually a pagan festival co-opted by the church to... Oh wait. They already think Christmas is Santa Claus day. Materialistic pigs.

“Let’s go here instead!” The voice. That voice. I could never... I turn around and almost crash into an oncoming cyclist. “Hey, you okay?” The voice is warm next to me, and I slowly open my eyes to see warm brown orbs staring intently at me. “You’re not hurt are you?” I shake my head, not thrusting myself to speak. He... Is an exact replica of him. Reincarnation perhaps? I want to open my mouth to speak when I saw the child next to him.

He is staring at me, as if in disbelief. The things around us slow to a halt, the air heady as I look at the boy. I am confused. The moment passes, and the boy steps forward with a candy in his hand. I look at the man who is watching this with quiet bemusement as the child comes up to me. I kneel on one knee and am even more surprised when the boy wraps his arms around my neck, drawing his lips to my ear.

“I would shatter my hands. I would die for you.” Turning his head slightly, he adds, “My Rella...”

There was once, when I was alive. Truly, living breathing alive. When I still remembered human things, that I had a lover. Oh! It was so long ago, I can't... remember when. As the centuries turn, his face is blurring in the edges and I fear I may soon forget him. But he is the one I have loved, love, will love. To hear his voice from another and to hear his words spoken from a child, the exact words he would whisper against my skin after our frantic bouts of lovemaking, is discerning.

I have not heard those words in such a long time. Too long. The child adds, “Wait for me Rella...” as he pulls away and takes the hand of the man. When they turn down the street, the man gives me a querying look. And then they are gone by the turn of the block.

I have had many names, many facades. I have lived many lives and will continue to live many more. But for this age, I am known as Kim Heechul. I know I am beautiful; many have sang, lauded, many have even fought and died for me. I am not vain, because it is the truth and I never, ever lie. I was once the secret mistress of the King of France and the lover to Ludwig of Bavaria. And I’d lied to them. Looked how they turned out.

Hankyung was my lover. I think that, had to be blatantly obvious by now. He was also my slave, a gift from my father-in-law. I’d been taken by him... Why? I can’t tell you now. It’d been too long ago. But I can tell you I’d love him from the moment I met him. And his weirdly proportioned nose. I can tell you I loved the way his palms felt when they were holding mine. I can also tell you about that night I’d escaped with him to the forest and we’d both hid in the caves until morning. I can tell you of the first time we’d kissed (I’d initiated) and the first time we’d made love (I bottomed, it hurt) and the first time he said ‘I love you’ (under our tree during the mid-autumn festival).

I can tell you about the day they castrated him. I can tell you about the night, our last night together where we did nothing but lay naked, skin to skin and sharing warmth. I can tell you about our deaths in the morning where we’d plunged into the sea from the cliff, holding on to each other, sharing our last breaths through our kisses.

When I’d opened my eyes, it’d been so bright I thought I was in heaven. But it was only hell. Hell because I was not dead, neither am I alive. And I have no idea why. And he wasn’t here. Because my 15 year old mind and even now, believes and believed and believe that the only heaven worth going into was the heaven with him in it. And for centuries I have walked this earth, searching, looking for something and someway that would take me back to him. As each century passes, I have grown only a little bit older. I have tried (electrocution, slitting, hanging, burning, stabbing, OD-ing), by God I’ve tried! And tonight I was going to try again. Tonight on the eve of our deaths, I did what I did every year; return to the cliff where sometime in the 50’s I’d bought the land and built a house there. And in the morning, I’d jump. Just like we’d jumped all those years ago. But tonight... Maybe I’ll watch the sunrise instead.

The crowd has trickled as soon as the distant bells tolled. I thought back on the boy, the boy in a little pumpkin outfit, and smiled. A smoky gray cat approaches me, wrapping its tail around my ankle as I take a seat on the park bench.

Is that boy him? Maybe.

Will I wait for him to tell me? Yes.

Will I still love him in this form? ...Yes.

I am the one who lives forever, the one who has seen the rise and fall of empires. I have seen emperors, kings and queens come and go. I have shared my nights and days with them and many others but I have never shared my heart. I have seen the wane and dawn of days, man forgetting ways of the Old and their constant trudging forward into this thing called the future. What is the future anyways? All it will ever be is but dust to me.

I am alive for one night and one night only. On this night of Samhain, I am my own.