2Waking the Heart, Slept in Stone
It is understood that there are countless kinds of pain,
Though they all exist under two categories;
Physical, and emotional.
What is not understood, is why all forms of pain, lead to a common, powerful emotion;
Despair.
The deepest form of what we call, sadness.
Hopelessness, doubt, defeat…
All these words are derived from this gateway emotion.
If despair is a gateway emotion to our heart.
Our hearts must be a gateway path to loss.
The sound of glass meeting wood woke me from my tragic poetry. I looked up to see who had caused the disturbance. Two emotions washed over me. Disappointment and relief, that it wasn't Amon. It was a friendlier, more casual coworker. It was the ever so charming boy Doujima had been flirting with. The joker Karasuma had been learning to laugh at herself from. The right hand man to STNJ's tech man,
"Sakaki!" I addressed him, a smile making its way onto his face.
"I notice you, in this very spot, every day here at Harry's, before you come to the STNJ, as I'm driving along the road out there. So since Amon isn't here, yet at least, I thought I'd keep you company. Hope he doesn't get jealous." I blushed softly at this idea, forcing my imagination not to react with it. The brunette sat down next to me, poking my cheeks.
"You like him, don't you, Robyn?" He teased, and I pulled the hood of my STNJ trench coat over my face as it darkened from pink to cherry red. "You're so cute when you blush." This flirt… I thought, taking a few breaths and thinking gloomy things to erase the blush from my cheeks. I then let my hood slide away, resting between my shoulder blades once more.
"Did Doujima tell you about this?" I asked, not sure if I should affirm or deny his statement.
"Don't be ridiculous," Sakaki began, taking me aback a bit as I wondered what source had told him. "I'm a guy. I don't need some gossip queen to see your fancying Amon."
"My fancying… Amon?" I repeated, knowing what he meant, but not sure if it was 100% how I felt about him.
"I watched the disappointment in your eyes, not with Amon, but with yourself, whenever he found something wrong with your performance in a hunt. It was like you were criticizing yourself for not impressing him, or not living up to your worth." I nodded, thinking back to all the times I'd beat myself up over mistakes, and how many logs would end up scorched in the fireplace when I came back to the home I shared with Touko. "Don't do that, okay?" the flirt advised me, and I gave him a weak nod before my eyes returned to the coffee mug cupped tightly in my palms.
"Come on, I'm serious." He said, draping an arm casually over my shoulder. "Be confident in yourself. But don't lose your shyness; it's cute… You're cute." I blushed again, and he turned my face towards his with his fingers, staring deeply into my eyes. I wouldn't have had a problem with Sakaki, if he had kissed me like he was meaning to. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't glad that I heard a familiar voice brusquely ask,
"Am I interrupting something?" Sakaki put up his hands in a surrendering gesture and took a seat to the left of me. Dark, handsome Amon took the seat his coworker had previously occupied. At least he wanted to sit next to me, instead of keeping me at an arm's length like he did the last time I'd met him here.
"Robyn, Sakaki," He addressed the two of us. "What do you know about the Salem Witch Trials?" I put on my calmest front as he mentioned the bloody, historical event.
"It was an event about 400 years ago where both witches and humans were burned to death right?" the brunette answered.
"Some 900,000 people… all turned to ash." Sakaki's eyes widened to the size of baby tomatoes. My partner nodded.
"Both of you are correct. Can either of you guess why I addressed that?" I had a theory.
"Because it's starting to happen again, isn't it?" another nod from Amon's head delivered the worst. My blood instantly ran cold, and Sakaki pulled me into his arms possessively.
"Then just what the hell do you think you're doing here?!" He spat. "Robyn is a witch, and God knows how much you despise all people like her. You're a hunter, no a hunting dog, just ready to take any order you're given!" Fear crept into my being as I realized what my protector was getting at. I was a fool to think we were getting closer, wasn't I?
"I have no intention of using these events in persuasion to eliminate Robyn." The Seed explained calmly. "I'm only making here aware of the situation." I relaxed, and so did Sakaki's grip, though his eyes were still glaring daggers at my partner.
"What's going to happen to me?" I asked.
"You're going into hiding, by Zaizen's orders, since it's likely you'll be dead the next time you're seen walking in the streets."
"So what's the…"
"The plain is you're going to have to live with me until this uproar quiets down."
"No way in Hell is she living with you!" Sakaki shouted, clearly distrustful.
"I don't think you have the authority to challenge that decision." Amon countered him flatly, suddenly grabbing me possessively by the arm and pulling me next to him. The brunette was cracking his knuckles, but I shook my head no at him.
"I'll be fine. I trust Amon." Shock filled my friend's face. "And you should too." I put on the most assuring looking I could for as long as possible until the tranquilizer in my chest knocked me out.
I awoke to the sound of rain splattering against glass, my opened eyes meeting the clear ceiling far above me. Everything in this room was dreary. Gray walls, stainless steel, white and grey marble. Swinging my legs over the bed, I realized the overhang between me and the floor, wondering why I hadn't noticed how far down everything appeared earlier, and dropped six feet to the floor, landing on my feet.
"Amon?" I called, opening the door into the rest of the house, but even the first step out was like a dive into an ocean of wonder. The walls were of ebony wood, painted with a mural of a dark, magnificent rose garden, trellis bordered with Craft characters and depicting a story. Vines, flowers, thorns and medieval inspiration…
"Like it?" I jumped slightly as I heard my partner's voice.
"I love it." I agreed, awestruck, but my eyes wandered to his ungloved hands, holding a stained paintbrush. Oh Maria! I thought. "Amon… did you do all this yourself?" I breathed, in complete astonishment.
"I did. I add a new part to the story, on each wall, every year. And today happens to be the anniversary to when I painted the first wall. He pointed to the one left of me, depicting briars ensnaring a castle with their thorns and roses, an angel weeping at the castle's highest spire, a clock embedded between her shoulder blades. I wanted to know Amon so much already. But this… this beautiful, heartbreaking story painted on his walls… I was done waiting for him to open up. I would open him up to me myself.
"Amon," I addressed him confidently. "I'd like to paint my own mural, in that drab room you've given me." A smile of amusement played on his lips.
"You want to tell your own story on those walls?" I nodded. "Then get to it. Paint cans are in the room to the right. Finish it today though. I'm not in the mood to be waiting till tomorrow for my essential colors." I nodded, grabbing an orange, yellow, red, black, and a brown. I'm going to inspire your sleeping heart, Amon.
Seven hours and twenty five minutes. Fire consumed the walls of my room. The pendant I wore around my neck was painted on the segment facing my bed, two guns pointed at either side of it, and I had painted myself, hanging from the four bands of gold stretching across the blood charm. A scarf draped from my neck to cover my chest, and a torn pair of shorts covered my lap, lacerations marred my porcelain skin, and a shards of my heart lay at the foot of the crucifial bands. The walls were decorated with a string of Craft characters, but stopped in space for the most telltale of the images. Mary, Mother of Jesus, dressed in a black widow's veil and destroyed wedding dress, knelt in a pool of blood, weeping with a red haired, green eyed child wrapped in a bundle and laying in the pool as well. This faced the crucifial depiction.
Juliano, my grandfather, held a knife over my thirteen year old self, tears streaming from his eyes, and my own, as I knelt in a pew, praying. And the wall across from it, to your left as you entered, showed a black cloaked figure, only his mouth visible with the most angelic smile. He was pulling me into a loving embrace, lips on the crown of my head, as the nose of his gun rested at the back of it.
Certain of my work, I entered the room I had been speaking to Amon in earlier, and saw him resting on the couch, eyes shut, but breathing not relaxed enough for him to be sleeping. Setting the paint cans on the table in front of him, he "woke up" and followed me into my room. When I escorted him in though, his emotionless façade shattered into pieces, like a mask breaking away from one's face on impact. He looked from wall to wall, running his fingertips over the freshly dried depiction of my crucifixion, and the Craft characters making a trellis along the walls before making space for the most enlightening parts of the stories. My stoic, beautiful soldier fell to his knees in front of Mary, lamenting the birth of her witch child. As I walked beside him, I saw something absolutely unbelievable.
Amon's lovely, coal black leaked tears onto his porcelain, perfect cheeks, and dripped onto the floor from his chin. I knelt down to comfort him, but he pulled me into the most heartfelt embrace I'd ever experienced. He stroked my hair through his bare fingers, whispering "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" over and over again. Dear God… Tears welled up in my own eyes, as Amon's drenched the velvet shoulder of my dress. I'd made him cry. I'd broken him. But his heart… it had finally been awakened. When Amon retreated from me, head held with shame and eyes still weeping with all the tears he'd never cried…
I took a brave chance. I kissed him, on his right cheekbone, on his left, on his brow, down the bridge of his nose, and last on his unblemished, Irish coffee tasting lips, deeply and passionately.
