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"You hate her, don't you?"
The tree bark is rough and unyielding against his back, but he presses close to it anyway. Any perceived sanctuary was welcome, even if he knew on the most intuitive level that nothing could protect him. Not even his brother.
"You hate them both."
The boy can't suppress a strangled sob. The tears are like ice on his cheeks, a foul wind seeming to freeze them onto his face. He's shivering, his body wracked with cold and terror and despair, a heavy ache settling into his chest.
How was this happening? Why was this happening?
~
It was a cold bright morning that Jin had woken to, sunlight streaming in from the church windows. He wiped the sleep from his eyes, let his mind shake off the remnants of slumber. Ragna was unsurprisingly still asleep, and he did not need to check for Saya. Lately, all his sister seemed to do was sleep and whine. She was a pathetic sight, bed-ridden all day, fevered and whimpering. He had half suspected she was only faking illness, a suggestion that had put Ragna into a barely restrained fury when his younger brother had brought it up a few days ago.
Jin scowled at the girl's sleeping form. Even if she really was sick, that only meant it was her own fault for getting sick in the first place, for her fragility. Even in healthier times she had been needy and willful, as likely to quarrel with her brothers as laugh and play.
'But aren't you the same way? Would it be any different if you were sick, and she were healthy?' Jin quickly pushed the thought from his mind. It was her fault for making him an outcast and taking the warmth from his life, while he stood by in helpless frustration. And it was his fault, Ragna's fault, for his naivety and complacent sentimentality, his lack of conviction.
Jin spent that morning outside, solitary and aimless. What could be done? They wouldn't listen to him. They'd just shut him out, with rebuking words, or worse still, her sad, knowing smile. He thought about running away, and thereby escaping all the sickness and bitterness and jealousy. (For he knew well, that just as much as he resented her for her sickness, she resented him for his strength.) But there was nowhere he could escape to. Even if there were, he'd only come back.
So he wandered aimlessly, not really running but escaping home all the same. Ragna called to him through the cool morning, but still he wandered. They would only fight in the end, like had happened so much lately. So he followed the clear shallow stream at the bottom of the hill as it wound by the church. He wandered into the copse of trees at the edge of the stream, and there he stopped his wandering, because a slender man with slanted features called his name.
~
"It's okay to hate," the man laughed. "Hate makes you strong, hate gives you a reason to live!" The stranger's voice was sharp, mocking, as if always cherishing some private joke. There was something terribly wrong about him, something in the strange glimmer in his golden eyes and the insidious meaning behind his words.
"I d-don't-" Jin tried to choke out some denial or rebuke, as if by refuting the man, he could make him disappear, but words kept eluding him, dancing past the edges of his mind.
"Hmm, what's that? Seriously, I used to think you'd never shut up, and now you can't do nothing but cry! Goddamn, this is just priceless," the gold-eyed man laughed. "Where's all that 'White Void' bullshit now?"
Jin wanted to run, but his muscles wouldn't obey, as if they had turned to water.
"Nothing's going to change, kid, not unless you're willing to do something about it. That bitch will just take him away, take every single thing away from you. And him? Nothing can save him, Jin." Long dry fingers brushed Jin's forehead. He tried to recoil, but he fell still as some feeling surged into him, knowledge, too much knowledge, in broken sharp fragments that cut him apart until he couldn't recognize himself.
A great shadow, like a hole in the world, moving across the world, a shadow cast by his brother, and where the shadow passed there was blood and bones and lifeless stillness. Saya had stolen him away, or at least her shadow had, with silver hair and the burning crimson (Azure) eye. And her shadow was their brother's shadow, the shadow of a sword that walked like a beast and burned with crimson (Azure) fire. He heard screams, so many terrible screams; Ragna's was the loudest and most desperate.
Nothing could stop the pain and loss, the shadow of his own pain and loss, until finally Jin drew his sword and cut The Sword's shadow apart, until it was nothing but the shadows of azure daggers, until he had cut Ragna and Saya apart and apart from each other and apart from him.
Jin felt some great change, something rearranging and being shaped. The terror was gone, leaving only that heavy ache in his chest, and within moments that had faded too, until he felt nothing. He felt the nothingness as if it were a tangible thing, hard as diamonds but vast and yawning like a chasm under him, and everything else seemed like a dream.
The man smiled. "See? You see, don't you? This is what you have to do."
He wanted to scream, he wanted to deny it, he wanted to run, but nothing was all wrapped around him like a blanket, so he nodded instead.
"Follow me, boy."
Jin walked with the stranger. It was so cold today.