Chapter Text
There was predator, then there was prey. It ran deeper than blood, into the instincts ingrained in every muscle fiber and synapses; that the way to survive was a bloody climb and you must be on top. That was the way of the world and that was the way of war; a smaller world within another, politics in the bullet.
Ouro Kronii compared herself to such a weapon; a gun, meant to be aimed and fired at the target. Simple and easy, no intent in the killing, simply orders being followed. It wasn’t as simple as it seemed, no matter how hard she tried to disconnect herself, tried to convince herself that it didn’t matter anyways. Nihilism at its finest, pessimism at its best, Ouro Kronii was not meant to be a lover.
- - -
It was a message encapsulated in roots, love seeping through cracks even when Kronii tried to stop it. The petals fell apart on her tongue like cotton candy, pollen proud and vainglorious, told her she had kind hands. Oh how bitter it burned, how it made Kronii bare her teeth in a torn facsimile of a smile.
- - -
She told herself this like a prayer, an offering to herself like she was both god and priest and church Failure is not an option because it is not your failure, it is another’s, your masters, and they won’t accept it.
Kronii noticed that Hakos Baelz had sharp teeth, unusual, canine intent. They pierced in more ways than one, scarring that healed over, even when it didn’t. Her teeth were like her smile, cutting and intense in laughter, like her cunning wit and humor. It grew on her like a weed, seeds thrown away gaining roots in rocky mountaintops.
She was supposed to be above this, spy and one of the many makers of a monarchy she would never see.
And yet she learned that Bae drinking coffee was a horrible idea, how she groaned in the mornings and stretched like the cat that wandered their home. How her hands were small and lithe, like her body, and fit perfectly against Kronii. Puzzle pieces, jigsaw. Bae loved it when Kronii carried her on her shoulders, would ruffle her hair as they walked along and pointed out signs, made jokes at every opportunity like there was joy to be found in everything. Kronii supposed she ended up learning that, ended up with a little joker in her, playing cards turning up red hearts.
Her hair was red like the violence that Kronii oh so abhorred, because she could admit that now, tongue loosened by one too many jokes about the weather, streaks of white like the peace Kronii was born too late for. She thought of her victim, the one she pursued in the loosest term, an experiment in the entropic, systematically tearing Kronii apart with things she’d rather not think of. Freedom, selfishness, intent and motive and want and ego and I.
Kronii did not like this.
That was what she told herself, and she told herself that she was glad when she had to go.
- - -
She wrote a message back, told the enemy that crossed her path more times than chance would allow that her hands weren’t kind. They had both killed, neither of them were clean. And yet in the end, Kronii said maybe so. Kindness in the knuckle; under the fingernail you’ll find faith. Said that murder wasn’t the only sin she partook of; envy clouding her judgement of whether to speak to her or not.
The response came in due time, linear chronology like a corpse bent in on itself, everything happening at once and never again. They wrote it in rot and called her snake, and it was vicious. They called her moon swallower, some great beast told in tales, the god of the shadow between the stars, and it was thrilling. Ouro Kronii was given name, and from it grew shape like a tree learning to live between earth and sky, living in the space it was given..
She knew a little about space, astrology, planetary movements. All told to her when she lay warm in a bed she would forget, next to a woman that made her want to loop the moments together over and over so she would remember.
Tsukumo Sana, like the hiss of a snake, slithered off the tongue, she who had Kronii leaning into the crook of her neck like it was a hollow home and listening when she spoke of the universe’s inevitable decay. She was tall, reached up towards the stars she so loved, with dark skin and a kind smile that made Kronii think of Bae.
Kronii didn’t want to think of Bae.
So she dove into Sana like she was the moon, Kronii being the tide pulled inexorably into her grasp. Autonomy lost, paradise found, the facade of a life the watch doctor tempted her with. Sana really liked bread for some reason, ended up buying yeast by the pound on accident and making enough bread to feed the town. Kronii would sit at their table and watch her, gaze at her smile and how she would sneeze when flour got in her eyes, how she would groan when the dough was too sticky and clung to her hands like glue. Kronii would help her, hands kneading and rolling, patting them into shape, hips occasionally bumping against Sana’s, and it was like they were two stars in binary orbit, gravity and inertia keeping them together in a lover’s embrace.
And yet there was distance.
- - -
Leaving became the chorus of a never ending symphony, it always happened and the song never ended, sung in the minor key. Kronii felt like she was caught in riptides, in whirlwind romances that led to a poisoning and a suicide, a classic play of enemies.
Riptides was the word, forests and beaches and deserts. How this one adored the world she was in. Kronii thought it ironic, rather hilarious, how the leash she was on frayed at every tug in her intended direction. The first assignment by a teacher unaware taught her joy, the second taught her wonder. This one showed her life.
It was found in the chest; heartbeat pumping strong, muscles twitching and blood warm liquid iron. Hands were snakes, fastened tight around wrists, Kronii being owned in a way that made her feel like an equal, not a pawn. Like time, life was a current, dragged you along like dust in the wind, the whims of fate steadying your path. Fauna liked going to parks and sitting on benches for hours, until your back ached and the ducks considered you a part of the landscape, no longer a threat and blessedly leaving you alone. Kronii still stayed with her though, and ended up only watching as the planes of Fauna’s face went through changes like the surface of the earth; joy at the ducklings and sadness as she watched a tree get cut down. Cycles and linear paths, geometry like veins under skin.
Fauna was so similar to the enemy it was a shock, the way plants bloomed around her not unlike how the other wielded their weapons, their world made of rumors built of bark and green. Sunlight on Kronii’s vertebrae, skipping stones, a smile that tore Kronii apart and had her giving away the heart she was building for herself.
Dissection, surgery, the careful peeling apart of the layers that made Ouro Kronii. Fauna’s steady hands counting her ribs like they were the branches of trees she so adored, the edges of her eyes crinkling in pure joy as her hands’ heat scorched away Kronii’s rough bark, revealing soft core like a wound.
When Kronii caught herself sending letters to someone she caught a glimpse of, an enemy, she bit her tongue until it bled, the coppery taste there for a second before it healed again. The scars on her body could be easily replaced with theirs, the two of them not so different that the musculature can’t knit itself back together with a memory of before. She started simple, in the cadence the two had made for themselves like a secret, taking a page out of her pen pal’s book and writing it in the sting of a statue’s kiss.
Love was everywhere, and it was worming its way in like death.
- - -
The figure stood there, at the edge of the roof where a gargoyle, long limbed and grotesque, sat on the edge. It was going to rain, soon probably, the figure didn’t care because they wouldn’t be here long enough for it. They giggled to themselves at the hilarity of the situation, at how the follower became the followed, and yet the roles in the play never changed. Ouroboros indeed, they were swallowing their own tails in their fervor for flight.
When the clock struck its first tone, everything shaking like it was falling apart, the shadow pressed a kiss to the curling horn of the beast, tasting notes of metal and stone, grit and dust, a chorus in its telling.
Dear lion’s mane,
I think I am learning. I think I am speaking with an ego I have always held, one that pushed me through endless endeavors. Endeavors now made useless, ships stuck in harbors.
You say we are no longer enemies, and yet that is all I call you. You have no name to me, and foe with its many synonyms is all I know of your kind.
Your kind, I say, like we are different. Don’t we want the same things, us and our leaders? Ex-leaders in your case. We want to be on top when the world comes crashing down, the worlds come collapsing like the house of lies we are building and living in together.
You are a horrible roommate.
Your face was a blur at first, but it became clearer, an old photograph held in the dark long enough to set, features tangible now. You have hair like gold, and eyes like mine, whenever I gather up the want long enough to look in a mirror. You wear a coat everywhere, and a red tie as well, like the blood in your mouth and mine.
I know you now, surface level, biography picture with no essay to be added on. I know you and know nothing, paradox, oxymoron, superposition. I have written long and you speak of purpose. I have written long and you speak of planets dead and not dead, Schrodinger's universe.
Give me one more lesson to myself, let me finish the heart you are making me build, then I wish to see if our eyes really match.
Yours in traitorous arms, Bluebird.
- - -
Her name was Nanashi Mumei and she tasted like all of Kronii’s lessons. There was craving on her tongue, want burrowing into her teeth like cavities, Mumei sating these urges like water to a desert.
Kronii took her to all the beautiful places she knew, the ones she shared with Bae and Sana and Fauna, wanted to let her see them as well. Because all of them together were her, made her like a deconstructed womb in the philosophical. The want to show her lion these things as well, a web of creation through the paths of time, stung like a wasp bite, irritating and always there.
Mumei forgot things easily, searching frantically for her glasses until they fell off her head, dates swimming by in a haze until she realized she was a week late to that flower watering and by then it was wilted. There was a stillness to her though, heaviness, an anchor. She would cling to Kronii’s side in the mornings and simply look at her face, Kronii’s confused expression reflected in her eyes, as Mumei tried to write an encyclopedia all about Kronii in her head.
She would list off random things in the supermarket, in the theater during the ads, when they were showering and waiting for the water to heat. Little things, found in the moments where she stopped and looked. Mumei rattled them off like she was at a gameshow, remembering five would give her one hundred dollars and a coupon deal to that chocolate place she wanted to try. It was endearing to Kronii, her finished heart infested with leaves and stars and bites and memories, love solidified.
Mumei would sing when she was tired, little rhymes or snippets of lyrics from songs she heard on the radio, songs that she remembered Kronii humming along to. Kronii would ask how she remembered that and not her putting the clothes in the washing machine. Mumei would tell her that she drools in her sleep and the conversation would be over just like that.
Kronii wondered if there was a depth to it, if love was a pool inside her and if she went too far down she would drown before she could reach the bottom. Like she was in a bathtub and the stopper was pulled away, draining all the water out and spilling her into the deep.
- - -
Feathers in a nest on an oak tree, tall, in a forest Kronii remembered visiting with Fauna. She liked remembering things now, the little things; habits and moments of the past. Mumei taught her that, the value of them.
The point of the feather wasn’t sharp enough, so Kronii bit down on the knuckle till it bled, letting the blood weave through the down, forming rivers.
Dear indigo starling that flies in my dreams,
You have done it. We have reached our respective ends, its our choice now for the first time.
Ouroboros, your eyes like mine, is your heart built? Even if you say it is I won’t believe you, the making of flesh is never done. It’s a lonely creature within us that thrives on whatever we give it, but will still starve anyways.
We are going to meet where you first saw me, with crystal blue eyes and foggy purpose. You must understand we are running from a war, and our brethren who we have never before seen our the comrades we lead on this mission. We build a new path, a new timeline, in which there is no fight for a future through the past, but a future fought by the present. We always look back, never look forward, and rarely remember what came before. I think you learned that recently.
I am going to see you and hold your kind hands. You can wear my coat if you want, we are already intertwined in the eyes of our sides and opposites, there is no turning back. I believe they already know, I have not received word of anything for some time, and I warn you to remain vigilant in your flight.
We will be free, but we still are on the ground. For now.
From, Amelia Watson.
- - -
Her name was a gilded one, and Kronii had to wonder if she had chosen it herself. Not that she could say anything, her name merely snakes and chrono.
Amelia Watson, a doctor by name, detective by claim. Kronii had the urge to read that story again, her friend’s namesake, but she had to hurry to a safer place first. It was like when she first started unintentionally following Ame (since when did the name shorten to this, comfort in the rain?) knowing her gaze would set her target off, now the hair on the back of her neck prickled, her guts roiled in their places. They knew.
She scribbled it quickly, snowfall in june.
Dear sunflower,
I enjoy your name more than expected, and I await the story you will probably fabricate for it. Names rarely have good stories behind them, even when they are chosen.
Amelia Watson whose name tastes like lemons and sun, I believe I am at an impasse. I know the location you speak of, I know it’s abandoned by the both of them.
Them, like they are now whole, an entity to be spoken of by us in whispers at night, not daring to invoke it for fear of ruining our plans. The ones carefully laid usually fall apart fastest, which I find irritating because I put effort into them.
A joke! Written in melting snow, the crystalline lattice of frozen dihydrogen monoxide. Not my greatest achievement, certainly not noteworthy out of said achievements, but it’s there. And you helped me with it, even when I had guns to your head and yours to mine, even when I knew nothing except insensate violence for a cause that never spoke to me face to face.
We’re going to change that; I’m going to see you and make you smile. I have learned jokes, I have built a heart, I will find you.
We will not end on our knees.
From, Ouro Kronii.
- - -
Lemons and sun, huh? It brought a smile to Ame’s face, second only to the joy of Ouro Kronii’s response; the revealing of her name and agreement to meet. A friend, one she had made even when they had fought, kind of. They would be free together, and Ame could hold Kronii’s hand and ask about her new heart, see if they could test it out together. Ame wanted to choose it for herself, even if in the end the others had become a part of her. Ame wanted to choose to hold Kronii’s hand, to choose to curl up next to her and watch a crappy film while eating partially burnt popcorn because they were too busy naming constellations.
Ame wanted because she could now, and because she had taught another how and it made her feel pride. She wanted all that and more, with Ouro Kronii, her friend.
As long as she didn’t bleed out first.