Going. Going. Gone. [Onyx/Frankel/Kousei]

[kousei ♚]

[attr="id","prestoPicture2"]

K A E

It's in your stare and at your core

One click, one bang and the pretty picture my mother painted for me is shot straight through with bitter realities backed up by all the evidence loaded in the chamber. He knows who my mother is, he looks practically identical to the Keyser in the photograph and his name is actually Keyser. Sure, he has extra wrinkles, his face is more developed and his eyes seem more weathered but the fundamentals are crystal clear. They're the same person and that's that.

We're left to hang in the silence surrounding the two of us. He reads the letter and I can already see the dawning realisation slowly creep into his facial features. A once hardened and unflinching face is now broken by creases. I keep the woman who was with him in the back of my mind while my eyes scan for a sign of anything. Analysis runs deep, flooding my veins and filling every corner of my mind - still, none of it is enough to give anything away. Keyser Summit is a mystery, an equation with unknown end and start points, seemingly conjured from nothing. A chain of analysis I cannot link together.

He is so arcane, so unknown. The pages unfinished and left end to end - not quite hanging over the fire but seemingly torn from cover to cover. Unreadable, crumpled and torn paper must be littered and writing distorted to the point that not even I can read the words to decipher the mystery. I don't know Keyser Summit and I don't think I ever will.

That is why my breath catches between my teeth when he speaks. I'm as weightless as air, like a feather caught in the undistinguished passing wind between one gust and the other. When he speaks, I feel myself teetering on the edge. ”Of course I loved your mother, that’s why I left, I didn’t know she was preg…” He cuts himself off, the rest of the sentence blurred by each page torn and each letter distorted. It's really a mystery I cannot solve.

Why would he leave if he loved her?

I've never believed in any of that stuff, love and children. The straight life of organisations, watching children grow old before dying - the doctrine never quite caught on. The idea of more children with those two syllables for a last name - beginning with S and ending with T. I recoil at the thought, if anything, Keyser Summit soiled the idea even further for me. He said he loved her but he left - he tore their book cover to cover, end to end and watched the pages burn before they could truly be finished.

He left me to be reborn from the ashes.

I take the letter back, not even taking anther glance at it. The piece of paper feels like it weighs a ton and I feel my hand shake, as if an undeniable and unreasonable pressure was suddenly applied. Just holding it I can hear her voice reading out the words to me and pleads of forgiveness and streams of apologies sound just as real as they did two years ago.

Kael, my son-

-have a mother who is a whore-

I beg of you-

~ Your mother

Both parents held a gun to lies painted by my mother and both dispelled the lies with a single bang and left me the pieces scattered around me. Portia Adler with her letter that pierced a hole right through the illusion of abandonment around my neck that she branded on me when I was six years old and Keyser Summit with his very presence, piercing a bullet through my muscle, bone and sinew and dispelling the pictures of a knight in shining armour my mother painted for me in the six years I remembered her. Keyser Summit stands here, unsure what to do with himself, and only just realising he fucked up. I don't know if he's guilty about leaving the woman he loved to be used up by other men so she could die or if he's embarrassed in front of his female companion.

He's a mystery I can never solve, each cover torn end from end and each sentence written with smeared ink. What I can understand is acceptance has sunk in because he knows who Portia is, he recognised the damn handwriting and he knows he hasn't done enough.

This is love, love is rotten.

I stuff the letter back into its rightful home, back into my pocket and we're back to staring each other down. A silence sits between us, lost between the plane of tense and awkward - it's an entity in between. ”What do you want me to do?” He breaks the silence with a plead - another thing him and my mother have in common. They both feel the need to plead with me. I shift uncomfortably - I always desired power and to rule the night but this isn't a power I should be wielding. It's wrong.

I allow the question to hang as I chew over my words before I finally answer. "There's nothing you can do," I pause, allowing myself to think for a second as I throw my head up so I'm looking right into his eyes, "except explain, and look at me while you do it; you owe me that much." I finish. A power that's wrong, an evil power that I shouldn't yield but power is power - something more important than the night. Power over my past.

I could never quite make the grasp for power.

”What did she name you?” He asks me, and I resist the urge to laugh. Someone who must have seen himself as so powerful but doesn't even know the name of his sixteen year old son.

Love it rotten, this is all it's brought.

"Kael, Kael Summit." I answer the question without hesitation. Not Kae, Kael because that's exactly what she named me.

"I want you to explain and I want you to be truthful, I want you to tell me everything. How you met, how long you were together for, what it was like," I pause, letting my gaze flutter for a bit before regaining my resolve, "and I want you to tell me why you left the woman you 'love', that's all you can do at this point." I finish, allowing myself to walk towards him.

He never taught me what it was to be a man, he never taught me about girls, or healed my wounds, or helped me with work. He never even stuck around and if he had, my mother would still be breathing to this day and she wouldn't have died a whore. All he did was press the loaded gun against my chest and blast right through the pretty pictures painted by my the memory of my mother.

"She never could tell me any of the details, I think they got lost between trying not to starve to death and looking for you. Or maybe it was just because I was too young; either way, she can't tell me now because she died, in her words and yours, a whore." I explain, and I fail to hide the bitter tang in my tone.

I've been dwelling on the past ever since I dared speak those three words the moment I could speak - I dared break the cycle and doomed myself to live an existence that could never come full circle. Now's the chance to fix it and come full circle; for my sake at least. Dwelling on the past whilst living an existence that can never come full circle is a dangerous game; Portia Adler played it and I don't want to end up like Portia Adler.

[newclass="#prestoPicture2"]background-image:url('http://i.imgur.com/ZiqvX5S.png');width:450px;height:642px;-moz-transition-duration: 1.2s; -webkit-transition-duration: 1.2s; -o-transition-duration: 01.2s;[/newclass]
[newclass="#prestoPicture2:hover"]background-image:url('http://i.imgur.com/jfRZNFg.png');width:450px;height:642px;-moz-transition-duration: 1.2s; -webkit-transition-duration: 1.2s; -o-transition-duration: 1.2s;[/newclass]

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

K E Y S E R

Dragging me further and further away from power, the chains have engulfed me; nothing I can do now will grant me back the freedom that I have preserved for so long. I’ve been in this state before, a place without freedom…that’s why I fled. Everything I did, dictated by that family inside the big house. We are a big family, we must stick by traditions. The only tradition the Summits have is multiplying like rabbits and obviously, even I couldn’t escape from that fact as the result of it stands right in front of me. Freedom swiped away by my so called son, a burden, a fact that no amount of denial can hide.

An unknown boy, his veins filled with my blood and Portia’s and yet he is a mystery to me and I hoped that he would’ve always remained one. Within this disaster District, I’ve struck my own crisis, I’d rather have lost a limb and lived with that burden for the rest of my life. I believe it would have been easier to adjust too than switching my lifestyle to the ways of a parent. Love really does have its negatives, even if it is filled with such pleasure. This negative will be hard to outweigh with positives.

Cydonia must think me of some kind of man whore scruff, fortunately she is no longer trying to get involved with the situation although I hoped the peackeepers would swipe away this burden but obviously it is going to have to be something I face myself. I fought for my freedom before, something like this can’t tear me down as easily as it has, and I will find a way to fight this, even if I have to break some souls for simple happiness in my life. A goal had been set; mine and Cydonia’s plan will not be tarnished by this rather enlarged obstacle.

But there is nothing that comes to me, no ideas, nothing at all. Fighting my brain, its steam is empty as it fails to conjure up a plan to help tackle this. I’m not equipped to be a father; I don’t know how to do it.

After turning to the boy for ideas, his first initial response is not helpful. "There's nothing you can do," Then I can just take off and leave him, he’s coped all his life without me being there. My father was not exactly the typical masculine figure towards his one of his many sons, me. Never did he help me with anything; he wasn’t the father he should have been. If he still breaths now, he really is a wasteful resourcee, taking all the food and oxygen that so many others need. He doesn’t deserve to have air in his lunges and food in his stomach. "except explain, and look at me while you do it; you owe me that much."

Keeping my gaze fixed upon the boy, my brain goes to mush as it compiles all the forgotten memories. Pulsating with an irritating pain, my head can’t contain all the past thoughts that I have tried so hard to discard. Soon it will likely implode, there was a reason I brushed them to the back of my mind.

"Kael, Kael Summit." Exhaling out air, the name Summit adds to the pain that is currently circling around inside of my head. So I am able to put a name to the face. My so called son Kael Summit, never have I ever been in his life yet right now his existence has been piled onto me like a tonne of rocks.

"I want you to explain and I want you to be truthful, I want you to tell me everything. How you met, how long you were together for, what it was like," Keeping my view on the Kael, the pain in my head still sweeps across it like the tsunami, unlikely to pass by anytime soon and likely to cause as much devastation as the actual wave. "and I want you to tell me why you left the woman you 'love', that's all you can do at this point."

A series of questions all thrown in my direction, all needing to be answered right away, I don’t have the time for this right now. Powering full steam ahead, every single forgotten memory eventually reaches the front, flashbacks being repeated quickly over and over again. Something inside me wants to run away but something else is keeping me here, my conscious is at a full out war. This isn’t me; this isn’t the Keyser Summit I have moulded so perfectly over the years. Something as simple as a young boy like this cannot tear me down.

"She never could tell me any of the details, I think they got lost between trying not to starve to death and looking for you. Or maybe it was just because I was too young; either way, she can't tell me now because she died, in her words and yours, a whore." The thought of Portia trying to track me down, halts the processing of the forgotten memories. Why did she even bother, she knew what I was like…I did tell her why.

”If you were in my predicament, I bet you would have done the same thing.” Hopefully if I tell the truth, these chains will stop suffocating me. For too long, this boy has been filled with lies and hopefully he will be happy enough to have the truth. I don’t have to look after him if he knows the truth.

”I knew her all my life, we were classmates, and we became lovers when we were fifteen. It lasted two years.” Taking a pause, each memory presents a slideshow, giving me the evidence to explain the truth. ”I loved being with her, every moment I relished. A perfect romance like in the books.”

Realising that I am slowly becoming soft, the side effects of my loss of freedom and the return of the forgotten memories are helping towards it. Fighting the effect, I try to hold up on sharing the sappy side to it all. I can’t let Cydonia see me in such a state.

”I left because everything slowly began to fall apart, that family you live with helped contribute to it. We argued for weeks before I left, she slowly became a burden and I realised that I couldn’t commit to such a thing, not at the juvenile age that I was at.” Exhaling out air, the truth floats away and it somewhat sooths the pain in my head. Having children, raising a family was never for me and it will not ever be for me. Learning about Kael will not change it.

”If I had known she was pregnant, I would never have left. I just never wanted to have my own family, not after seeing what happens to people when they become parents, especially the Summits.”

Everything explained, a few points missed out but he does not need to know that. Hopefully that will help him fill any empty pages in his history. He doesn’t need me.

”You should just go home.”

[kousei ♚]

[attr="id","prestoPicture2"]

K A E

It's in your stare and at your core

I had always viewed myself as being all seeing and all knowing, seeing through fogs spun and weaved by lies. It only made sense, I was always an intricate webweaver myself. I was sturdy as well, as sturdy as the trees I'd spent a good year hacking down left and right. I could cut down trees and see through smokescreens that suffocated the majority, damn the statistics, I would not be deceived.

I was wrong.

He fills the blank pages of the prologue with his own hand. Prologue X: Kae's Origins. He does not hesitate to sign the pages with his own hand and tell me the truth and nothing but the truth. A typical love story, like the stories I would be told and read in the early AMs and the late PMs. Summarised by the living man's own hand, the details lost between finding him and trying not to starve are embedded into the early pages and signed by Keyser's own hand.

It's funny, I thought I could drift through life knowing only X but never the Y. Never the inputs but only the outputs and that's probably why I became twisted and bitter; I am cynical to no end because the inputs were lost to me. Somewhere along the line, I fucking lost count of every chapter I ever mentally filed and labelled them all X as the numbers all slurred between the pages. I thought only knowing X would get me by.

Signed by his own hand, he gives me the Y to the X, like an unsolvable equation with two constant unknowns. I feel my heart flutter with a soft relief, I almost smile but think better of it because I remember where I am and who I am facing.

”If I had known she was pregnant, I would never have left. I just never wanted to have my own family, not after seeing what happens to people when they become parents, especially the Summits.”

If only that meant anything, if only the excuse of I didn't know could undo the question that would kill the cycle ('Mommy, where's Dad?') Not knowing won't stitch together the lacerated flesh littered with bullet holes or the smokescreen of delusions my father blown and dispersed by the heavy barrel of the gun pressed against my chest as he littered my childhood dreams with holes from hollow bullets.

None of it can be reversed, his excuses may as well be thrown at a brick wall - at least I'm sturdy.

He says I would have done the same thing, and I can't honestly deny it. I stare at him wide eyed, the letter clutched in my sweaty hand and thin air closed into my fist. Between the three of us and his words, I am as weightless as air. The sudden realisation that I am the end result of a crumbling romance. A field ravaged by the battle of a lovers spat. Daisies and roses replaced by blood and abandonment. The moment I was born I was left with the mesh and a pile of 'could haves' and 'should haves'.

One part of me can only silently be thankful that I was not caught in the cross fire. However, the other part can only be bitter that I was left with nothing but 'could haves' and 'should haves'. Mesh is useless and I was still left with nothing but a flimsy piece of paper and a vague letter begging for my forgiveness. I am left with a dead mother who could only pretend to abandon me and a father who may as well have been dead because he did abandon me.

The thought makes me clench my jaw, because although he looks sorry and has tried his best, I cannot look at him and think of my mother laying dead in a rat infested bed somewhere because he was never there. ('He was like my knight in shining armour.') It doesn't matter what she says any more, I've seen him for myself.

If I am the result of love then love is rotten. A war caused by a lovers spat, daisies and roses uprooted and replaced with mesh. The two of them left me to inherit a land full of 'could haves' and 'should haves'.

I don't even have the strength to be bitter any more, I just allow acceptance to wash over me. I thought my eyes were opened when I was finally deemed worthy enough to read the letter but I was wrong. I dared still hold on to the fantasies of the all great -but unfortunately dead- Keyser Summit who was a knight in shining armour to my mother. She loved him, she thought he was sent down to her by some god who was too kind to her. It was as if he was a gift from divinity itself.

He was a poisoned gift. He was the starting input in the chain reaction that led to the output of abandonment being strung around my neck and my mother dying. Until now I only knew the endpoint (I am an orphan) and the output (I am what I am) but I never knew or could understand the start point (Keyser Summit ran away) or the input (a lovers spat was caused a war). It's funny how quickly that all changes. He was a poisoned gift but I can understand it all because of him. He was a poisoned gift but I now know my own prologue because of him. My prologue is a war caused by a lovers spat that would leave the main story with nothing but mesh and the 'could haves' and 'should haves' but I know that because of him.

I step towards him because he's my father.

I want to say it, I want to almost beg and say the words. Come back with me, please. It would be so easy, maybe we could start again. I open my mouth but the words become stuck in my throat. No time for hesitation, no time to lose my words or become speechless for the first time ever. Words were always my weapon, so why have they failed me? I inhale -

”You should just go home.”

-And exhale.

I freeze mid motion and realise with bitterness that I practically walked into the barrel of the gun.

Bang!

I may as well be falling, but I don't even have the energy to fall. Instead I take two shaky steps back, ice buried in the bottom of my lungs and and no words to be spoken besides a choked and simple "what?"

I hold the silence and curse myself for utter stupidity, it doesn't need explaining. He doesn't need me. Or better yet, he doesn't want me. I cannot say I am surprised, because I cannot honestly say I would say the same thing. My mother described my father as a gift of divinity and her knight in shining armour but in hindsight I know he was a poisoned gift.

He gave me the start point and the inputs and gave me Y. He revealed my prologue and signed it off in his own hand. A war torn prologue caused by a lover's spat and a child left to inherit the scraps - at least his pages were not caught in the cross fire. Caught between shock and acceptance, I allow my jaw to hang slack and my shoulder to relax. I fiddle with the letter buried into my pocket and sigh.

"I suppose I never should have expected anything less," I swear, my voice is on the verge of cracking but I do not allow it. "I'm not going to thank you, because you owed me this much at least." I'm staring into his eyes that are oh so different from mine. But he shares the Summit features with me, practically ever lasting proof that I'm his.

Given the chance, I suppose he would tear my pages cover from cover if it meant he could continue on his own. "Just remember what you caused, and don't you dare fucking forget it Dad." I spit before turning my back on the man my mother described as a gift from divinity, just as he turned his back on me.

Signed by his own hand: the start point, the inputs and Prologue X. Like Portia Adler, Keyser Summit was also a gift to me from divinity - I should have guessed such a gift was fucking poisoned.

[newclass="#prestoPicture2"]background-image:url('http://i.imgur.com/ZiqvX5S.png');width:450px;height:642px;-moz-transition-duration: 1.2s; -webkit-transition-duration: 1.2s; -o-transition-duration: 01.2s;[/newclass]
[newclass="#prestoPicture2:hover"]background-image:url('http://i.imgur.com/jfRZNFg.png');width:450px;height:642px;-moz-transition-duration: 1.2s; -webkit-transition-duration: 1.2s; -o-transition-duration: 1.2s;[/newclass]