![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
secretstaircase posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no_true_pairTitle: Stained Glass
Author/Artist:secretstaircase
Fandom: Fatal Frame
Pairing/characters: Kyouka, Reika
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Self-harm
Prompt/challenge you're answering: Kyouka & Reika, "Blood Roses"
The new priestess is too friendly with Amane. Kyouka knows the family head would agree, and though she would never tell her, she doesn’t like it either. At night, when she hears them talking, she goes to listen at the door, but they keep their voices low, and she can never hear what they say. She thinks they must be telling each other secrets.
She sits in her room, listening to the current of voices from the next room, speculating, wondering, sifting through questions as the comb sifts through her hair. Every now and then, a hair comes away in the comb’s teeth, and she winds them carefully around the pins driven into the wall, working left to right, so that each of the hanging strands is as thick as all the others. She draws them through her hands, the way she imagines Akito will. They are so smooth and soft, each one exactly the same.
Amane used to come to her to talk. Now she knows about Kaname they can talk about him, and what kind of life he might be living in the world. Why should she go to a stranger? She has her mother. That ought to be enough.
Kyouka pulls too hard on the comb and a dozen hairs come out. She counts them, divides them, winds them around the pins, humming a meaningless little tune to herself. The hairs are like koto strings that have forgotten the notes they should play. Does that mean they should be discarded?
Amane slips back out of the priestess’s cell and through the room as Kyouka wipes the unexpected tears from her eyes. Along the passage, down the steps; Kyouka hears the individual creak of each floorboard, marking Amane’s progress.
After the sound of the door to the bell hallway closing, Kyouka listens for the mechanism lowering the cage again, but it doesn’t happen. They’ve forgotten. She smiles to herself, blinking away the wetness on her eyelashes. It always pleases her when something in the working of the shrine goes wrong or gets overlooked. Part of it is simple spite, because she knows how much her mother values method and precision; part of it is the sense that it shouldn’t run so brisk and clean while Kyouka’s life is growing smaller and narrower and greyer.
She waits a little longer, the comb restless in her hand, before taking up one of the lanterns and tiptoeing up the stairs to the prison doors. She has been combing her hair for nearly an hour, and it drifts like a web over her face, fine and soft as gossamer. She wishes Akito were here to see it, but he isn’t, so she smoothes it back and opens the door slightly.
“Amane?” The voice comes rustling out of the darkness like the stir of dead leaves. “Did you forget something?”
Kyouka goes inside, and the priestess turns her face away from the lantern.
“Too bright,” she protests, in her dry, whispering voice.
The door mutters closed and Kyouka crouches, putting the lantern down on the floor and peering into the cage. The priestess’s face is still averted, and Kyouka can see the bloom of indigo twining out of her collar and tapering off in the soft place below her jaw. It’s been years since she paid any attention a priestess; perhaps the last time was when she served as a Handmaiden and staked some nameless woman to the wall in the Chamber of Thorns.
“What do you talk to my daughter about?”
The priestess turns her head at the unfamiliar voice, her eyes half-closed against the light. Kyouka drinks in the sight of an unknown face.
“You’re the woman who – you live in the room next door,” the priestess murmurs. “I don’t know your name.”
“Why do you talk to her? What does she say?”
“It doesn’t matter what about. I only talk to help with the pain.”
Kyouka has no patience with this evasiveness, this self-absorption. “Where do you come from?”
The priestess names one of the villages on the other side of the valley. The name strikes a chord, but Kyouka can’t recall why.
“Did you ever leave that village before you came here?”
A strange expression flickers over the priestess’s face, and she shakes her head.
“Then what do you talk about?” Kyouka demands. “What do you have to say? He walked the world before he knew me; he’d seen a hundred thousand different things, he told me wonders, and I still remember them, so why does my daughter come to you?” She twists her fingers between the bars of the cage, feeling the splinters bite deep.
“Did you lose somebody?” the priestess asks with terrible compassion. “Why not let me take that sorrow? It’s only hurting you.” She reaches out one hand, blue lines spiralling over it and rippling like water as the bones move beneath her skin. “Tell me, and I’ll dream it for you.” Her
cold fingers find Kyouka’s, and Kyouka snatches her hand back.
“It’s mine, not yours. Should I let you take everything from me? What will I have when he comes back?”
The priestess is unmoved by Kyouka’s anger, only looks at her with impassive eyes, black wells untouched by the lamplight. “Why do you seem so familiar?” she says wistfully. “Your daughter doesn’t look like you at all, but...”
Her words sting like a blow. It’s always preyed on Kyouka’s mind, how Amane takes after the family head, those stern, closed features, those secretive eyes. To hear a stranger speak of it wrenches something deep in her chest. She bites the inside of her mouth until she tastes blood.
“Why does she come to you?” she says around the rusty taste of it. “You don’t have anything to give, so what do you whisper about together? What has she told you?”
“She only listens because she knows it helps me. She doesn’t tell me anything. Why are you afraid?”
Afraid? Yes. Afraid that Amane will choose to talk to someone else, and Kyouka will be left alone again. Afraid that Amane will give up Akito and Kaname, those precious secrets, to someone who won’t understand. Afraid that the head of the family will find out the truth. Afraid of living out the rest of her days in this manor, locked in ice and cold and solitude, where all the colours are blood-colour.
When Kyouka doesn’t answer, the priestess turns her face from the light again. The indigo tattoo glows on the skin of her throat, like a flower on the snow, a flower painted in bitter ink and dead blood. There is blood on Kyouka’s tongue, too, and when she wipes her mouth it is smeared across the back of her hand, and all of a sudden she wants it gone, all this poison of grief in her, all these memories of dead things. She wants to offer it up and have someone lift it from her. She wants it buried in the Chamber of Thorns, never to trouble her again. She might never be able to be happy in her life, but...
She hears a door open below; footsteps cross to the altar, and then the cage shudders and starts to descend. They have remembered. The chance is gone.
She takes the lantern back to her room. In the mirror her face looks like a carving, more hard, sharp bones than soft skin, soft hair. There’s still blood at the corner of her mouth. She looks old and ill, like a woman on the edge of death, and she doesn’t look like Amane, that much is true. Amane looks like her grandmother, and acts like her, too, so furtive and dutiful, always listening, never speaking. She’s a true daughter of the Kuze family, while Kyouka has an outsider’s face and an outsider’s spirit. She doesn’t belong here; she doesn’t know how.
Before she knows she’s going to do it, she’s drawn back her hand and struck the mirror, and the face of the interloper breaks in twisting lines. The pieces lie on the floor as pale as ice, as sharp as holly. Blood-roses bloom from a hundred place on Kyouka’s hand, and she cradles it to her chest as she weeps, and wonders at its warmth, when everything else is frozen.
Author/Artist:
secretstaircaseFandom: Fatal Frame
Pairing/characters: Kyouka, Reika
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Self-harm
Prompt/challenge you're answering: Kyouka & Reika, "Blood Roses"
The new priestess is too friendly with Amane. Kyouka knows the family head would agree, and though she would never tell her, she doesn’t like it either. At night, when she hears them talking, she goes to listen at the door, but they keep their voices low, and she can never hear what they say. She thinks they must be telling each other secrets.
She sits in her room, listening to the current of voices from the next room, speculating, wondering, sifting through questions as the comb sifts through her hair. Every now and then, a hair comes away in the comb’s teeth, and she winds them carefully around the pins driven into the wall, working left to right, so that each of the hanging strands is as thick as all the others. She draws them through her hands, the way she imagines Akito will. They are so smooth and soft, each one exactly the same.
Amane used to come to her to talk. Now she knows about Kaname they can talk about him, and what kind of life he might be living in the world. Why should she go to a stranger? She has her mother. That ought to be enough.
Kyouka pulls too hard on the comb and a dozen hairs come out. She counts them, divides them, winds them around the pins, humming a meaningless little tune to herself. The hairs are like koto strings that have forgotten the notes they should play. Does that mean they should be discarded?
Amane slips back out of the priestess’s cell and through the room as Kyouka wipes the unexpected tears from her eyes. Along the passage, down the steps; Kyouka hears the individual creak of each floorboard, marking Amane’s progress.
After the sound of the door to the bell hallway closing, Kyouka listens for the mechanism lowering the cage again, but it doesn’t happen. They’ve forgotten. She smiles to herself, blinking away the wetness on her eyelashes. It always pleases her when something in the working of the shrine goes wrong or gets overlooked. Part of it is simple spite, because she knows how much her mother values method and precision; part of it is the sense that it shouldn’t run so brisk and clean while Kyouka’s life is growing smaller and narrower and greyer.
She waits a little longer, the comb restless in her hand, before taking up one of the lanterns and tiptoeing up the stairs to the prison doors. She has been combing her hair for nearly an hour, and it drifts like a web over her face, fine and soft as gossamer. She wishes Akito were here to see it, but he isn’t, so she smoothes it back and opens the door slightly.
“Amane?” The voice comes rustling out of the darkness like the stir of dead leaves. “Did you forget something?”
Kyouka goes inside, and the priestess turns her face away from the lantern.
“Too bright,” she protests, in her dry, whispering voice.
The door mutters closed and Kyouka crouches, putting the lantern down on the floor and peering into the cage. The priestess’s face is still averted, and Kyouka can see the bloom of indigo twining out of her collar and tapering off in the soft place below her jaw. It’s been years since she paid any attention a priestess; perhaps the last time was when she served as a Handmaiden and staked some nameless woman to the wall in the Chamber of Thorns.
“What do you talk to my daughter about?”
The priestess turns her head at the unfamiliar voice, her eyes half-closed against the light. Kyouka drinks in the sight of an unknown face.
“You’re the woman who – you live in the room next door,” the priestess murmurs. “I don’t know your name.”
“Why do you talk to her? What does she say?”
“It doesn’t matter what about. I only talk to help with the pain.”
Kyouka has no patience with this evasiveness, this self-absorption. “Where do you come from?”
The priestess names one of the villages on the other side of the valley. The name strikes a chord, but Kyouka can’t recall why.
“Did you ever leave that village before you came here?”
A strange expression flickers over the priestess’s face, and she shakes her head.
“Then what do you talk about?” Kyouka demands. “What do you have to say? He walked the world before he knew me; he’d seen a hundred thousand different things, he told me wonders, and I still remember them, so why does my daughter come to you?” She twists her fingers between the bars of the cage, feeling the splinters bite deep.
“Did you lose somebody?” the priestess asks with terrible compassion. “Why not let me take that sorrow? It’s only hurting you.” She reaches out one hand, blue lines spiralling over it and rippling like water as the bones move beneath her skin. “Tell me, and I’ll dream it for you.” Her
cold fingers find Kyouka’s, and Kyouka snatches her hand back.
“It’s mine, not yours. Should I let you take everything from me? What will I have when he comes back?”
The priestess is unmoved by Kyouka’s anger, only looks at her with impassive eyes, black wells untouched by the lamplight. “Why do you seem so familiar?” she says wistfully. “Your daughter doesn’t look like you at all, but...”
Her words sting like a blow. It’s always preyed on Kyouka’s mind, how Amane takes after the family head, those stern, closed features, those secretive eyes. To hear a stranger speak of it wrenches something deep in her chest. She bites the inside of her mouth until she tastes blood.
“Why does she come to you?” she says around the rusty taste of it. “You don’t have anything to give, so what do you whisper about together? What has she told you?”
“She only listens because she knows it helps me. She doesn’t tell me anything. Why are you afraid?”
Afraid? Yes. Afraid that Amane will choose to talk to someone else, and Kyouka will be left alone again. Afraid that Amane will give up Akito and Kaname, those precious secrets, to someone who won’t understand. Afraid that the head of the family will find out the truth. Afraid of living out the rest of her days in this manor, locked in ice and cold and solitude, where all the colours are blood-colour.
When Kyouka doesn’t answer, the priestess turns her face from the light again. The indigo tattoo glows on the skin of her throat, like a flower on the snow, a flower painted in bitter ink and dead blood. There is blood on Kyouka’s tongue, too, and when she wipes her mouth it is smeared across the back of her hand, and all of a sudden she wants it gone, all this poison of grief in her, all these memories of dead things. She wants to offer it up and have someone lift it from her. She wants it buried in the Chamber of Thorns, never to trouble her again. She might never be able to be happy in her life, but...
She hears a door open below; footsteps cross to the altar, and then the cage shudders and starts to descend. They have remembered. The chance is gone.
She takes the lantern back to her room. In the mirror her face looks like a carving, more hard, sharp bones than soft skin, soft hair. There’s still blood at the corner of her mouth. She looks old and ill, like a woman on the edge of death, and she doesn’t look like Amane, that much is true. Amane looks like her grandmother, and acts like her, too, so furtive and dutiful, always listening, never speaking. She’s a true daughter of the Kuze family, while Kyouka has an outsider’s face and an outsider’s spirit. She doesn’t belong here; she doesn’t know how.
Before she knows she’s going to do it, she’s drawn back her hand and struck the mirror, and the face of the interloper breaks in twisting lines. The pieces lie on the floor as pale as ice, as sharp as holly. Blood-roses bloom from a hundred place on Kyouka’s hand, and she cradles it to her chest as she weeps, and wonders at its warmth, when everything else is frozen.