Hate was a strong word, really strong. Deep and too desolate, she found. Like a void, endlessly sucking the light of the surrounding world into it and tearing whatever could be torn to two. Simmering over her skin as if it were acid, then crawling right under to scuttle over her like a million ants. It burns the one who holds it and the one who is subjected to it. It's a strong, big, daunting word.
It remains the right word, nonetheless. But also not right enough, only a few parts of its murky existence malleable; they fit into some of the dips and curves and leave the others empty, unchecked on the list.
Headphones hates Sakura yes, but she also doesn't.
The balance between it is harrowing. She stands on it like it's a tightrope at a circus, something harsh and biting below her. The whispering of her onlookers flutter beside her ears and the stage-lights twirl around her skin as she attempts to make it to the other side—not even sure what she's trying to make it to. The rope is wobbly, yet somehow sturdy. It threatens to break beneath her feet and allow her to fall but it also consoles her with the fact that it hasn't yet. Makes her question why she questions its support of her. Maybe she only deludes herself into thinking it's sturdy, led astray by the wants of her own mind while the rope's actuality is as precarious as it could be.
In the end, thinking is a fruitless activity. She shouldn't think about it too much, shouldn't overanalyze. Headphone hates Sakura and they in turn hate her. Simple as that. There's no need to work out the semantics.
And, regardless, she can't help but think, mind pinning theory after theory to an imaginary board against her very own will. Trying so stupidly to make sense of it, when they should be focusing on not plummeting to the dark, hate filled abyss below. Falling into hatred would be her downfall as much as it serves to be her drive. Especially when the rope she stands on is the same one that pulls her and Sakura together all the time. It's nauseatingly surreal. Kind one moment and brutal the next.
Splitting between something so sweet it melts through your skin in abrasive scalds to something so vile you can't help but want to look and willingly wither by the sight.
At the end of it, they still end up being pulled together. Fate must be an entity so cruel.
Sakura... Sakura is like a bruise. And Headphone is only half a masochist, even if being only half is enough die by. She's softer, still. If she let it be more than only half, she would break. Giving Sakura that satisfaction sounds like a bitter end. If she let it be less than half, she would still break. Giving Sakura that pain would be a sour end.
Giving Sakura anything at all except the rush, the drive that pulls them both—the possibility lingers heavily on her tongue, tasting like something she can't quite name.
But when she's with them, she doesn't need to have names or know or be alive. She only needs to fight, needs to feel blood imprinting on her hands, needs to exist as she is and isn't all at the same time. Sakura makes her feel...real, in a sense. Not alive, not existing, not needing of labels. Simply real. Bleeding and feeling someone else bleed by your hand feels real to Headphones.
She's hopelessly stumped by the fact. Never does she ever feel like herself with Sakura. Just real. Only real. Only hate.
Just hate.
Headphones shudders at the thought of anything else. In fear or aversion of want, she's unsure.
They've proclaimed undying hate, as big and daunting as it is, for eachother time after time. Except neither of them seem to know what an enemy should feel like—because it certainly should not be the blurry emotions that string them along in the same stanzas of cacophonic music—so they proclaim hate like friends would. Like how good acquaintances would.
Perhaps it's more like a game then. A play; full of acts and roles and set-in-stone scenes.
Sakura tries to kill Headphones. Headphones tries to kill Sakura. Neither of them succeed, and their battle ends with both of them terribly bloodied and battered. A cut lip, a swollen eye, broken kneecaps. Sometimes large gashes, other times only small wounds. But Headphones will have to be clean by tommorow when she will be required at the temple, clean enough that her sister does not query. Sakura will have to be well by tommorow, well enough so that they can find some new place to explore. Clean and well and perfect to the pinnacle of that. So that no one questions, no one assumes anything other than the falseness of their friendship. Their ties.
So they find a secluded place, sit themselves on the sun bathed grasses, stolen medical supplies in hand. And they tend to eachother in silence while watching the sun set to another part of the world. Sometimes she sings their wounds away, daring to brush her fingers through light pink hair, daring to let a head lay in her lap. Daring to let herself be touched by the hands that desire so deeply to kill her.
“You're more busted than I am,” Once, Sakura preened, eyes flittering all over Headphone's body. They were far more younger, then. Abhorrence still like a sapling. The cloth in hand waved in idleness, saying, “Doesn't that mean that I win the fight?”
They had phrased it like a question, but it was definitely a statement. She remembers being on the ground, all sprawled out, scowling prominently at them with her cheeks puffed out. “That's stupid,” She'd sighed, rolling over to toy with the grass, soft to her palms. Askance look to Sakura, who'd stuck their tongue out when the two had faced eachother. “No one wins until one of us is dead. Those are the rules.”
A tap to their chin, tilt of their head, rosy petals falling off to the side. What a sight to see. Headphones wanted them pressed to her side in certain suffocation; up until they were blue and dead in her arms. It was weird. She didn't know why she had those thoughts, only that she had them and that Sakura was the one they were always directed at. Just that the thoughts tasted so delicious, as much as they burned.
“Well,” They started, plopping to the ground beside her, “What I killed part of you?”
She'd blinked, sitting up. “...what?”
“Killed a part of you,” Sakura supplied, unhelpfully. “What if I left some important crevice of you dead so you'd be nothing but a hollow making of what you are now. The adults always say that the best way to kill someone is by killing off their spirit. I think it counts. I'm gonna do that to you one day so I'll win.”
Her lips had pressed, a twitch to her finger. Concerning behavior of the adults in Sakura's life aside, it was stupid.
Utterly, terribly idiotic and it weaved around what they'd sworn to do to eachother. To end the other, crimson blood to remain under one of their nails. Headphones wanted to argue, wanted scrunch up her face and spit words sweetly vile. Anything sweetly vile was only ever felt around Sakura. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
But their equally stupid, pink, sakura-shaped accessory just so happened to have framed over them in that sweetly vile way oh so prettily that whatever she wanted to say burst in small sparks at her throat and died out there in the dark, the end to impulsive fireworks.
“Sure, I suppose. You could do that.” Headphone had hoped it was a good reply, laying back on the sunset covered grass.
Like a sapling, hate only grew. The attraction only grew. Bloomed, blossomed; furled into caging leaves of deep, unending, palpable hate—something indescribable, as if a dark, muddy sea with crashing waves. A something with its thorns bleeding into their sides. They are both welding knives in this dance, glinting under sunlight as they hold the other close. Ready to stab and poke, to prod in a way that's not prodding, merely killing.
They enjoy eachother. Be it from the thrill of wanting the other dead, or the softer satisfaction of simply laying beside eachother, bleeding out while neither of them are dead. It's harrowing, still. Very confusing, dunking Headphone's head under wet cement until her mind is too disoriented to know anything at all.
Maybe hate doesn't grow. Maybe they're the ones growing against it. Instead of logically getting rid of the nicer feeling thorns so that only a drive to destroy is left, they lean against all the unchecked dips. Spill over everything in ravaging, harsh splashes, contents never finding an exact spot. Not only is there need to destroy, there's a need to devour.
Headphone, untethered, takes it both.
Call it an icky sort of desperation. A gigantic, drawn out impulsive decision. A long-suffering passion project for her to throw herself into. Their pull is still nauseating, making her feel wrong in the contours of her fingernails. Her want is the same type of want that a parasite has for warm flesh. Like a musician to an instrument, broken and begging to be left alone to make no sound. It is just wrong.
Sakura leaves Headphone untethered, straying from the lines. Even when this is still like a play. Headphone wonders often, in the dead of night, whether her sworn enemy feels untethered because of her too.
She links her hands, hoping to replicate the feeling of when Sakura does it. She presses on her throat, hoping to replicate the feeling of when Sakura does it. She comes out empty, going to sleep and hoping to wake up soon.
Trying to destroy is her favorite part of a new day. Afterall, if she kills Sakura, she would get to devour her right after. Would their screams be melodious? She wants to hold them.
How disgusting.
Very, very disgusting. Very stupid. Very vile. Too sweet, too bitter, all at once. Too real to want to ignore.
She's helping Moonpirate on one of her book-searching escapades when her sister decides to ask—or rather, cut right through the elephant's skin.
Putting a book back on its shelf, Moonpirate states idly, “You've been coming back home with more injuries lately.” It's random and Headphones goes rigid from her spot at an opposite shelf, the urge to make an excuse hammering her skull. Ultimately, she doesn't say anything back. Her sister pauses aswell, turns to her with a cocked brow, turns right back to the shelves and decides to continue casually, “I mean, I know you and Sakura have...whatever it is you have, but aren't you two getting, er, more violent with your stupid fights?”
“They're not stupid,” Headphone flails abruptly, he'd first instinct to defend. It's hers and Sakura's thing, their special thing, where she feels hopelessly real. Her first instinct ends up being a stupid one; perhaps Sakura is rubbing of on her. She deflates very quickly at the other's pointed deadpan, a nervous smile growing slowly on her face as she, thumbs a random book's spine. Her throat clears. “...you...you knew?”
No one else seems to know.
They make it seem as if Headphones and Sakura are amiable, close. And only one of those is woefully true. If it's so obvious to Moonpirate then maybe everyone else does know.
“I'm your sister,” Moonpirate states again, voice flat but there's a hint of incredulity in there. She snatches a book, thinner than the rest and pauses to scan it before it's put back with a dramatic sigh. Headphone shifts. “Give me some credit, I practically raised you—and half the kids in the childrens division—of-course I know. But that's besides the point; maybe you two should stop fighting.”
That draws a blink from her. Headphone glances away. Glances back, fiddling with her fingers. What she's about to say is...just as stupid as her previous instinct. Again—Sakura must be rubbing off on her. “Uh...we, um, swore on Cassian's name—but that was when we were younger, though, which means you can't blame me!—so...”
Quietening for a moment, Moonpirate squints. After a second or two, Headphones averts her eyes. Her sister breaks her own silence with a drawn out groan. “Be careful then. Don't die.” She adds, probably as an afterthought, “I'll look into how to break swears without getting struck by god's ire.”
“...okay.” Her mumble is halfhearted. She feels uneasy at the thought of suddenly having no reason to fight Sakura. At the idea of never feeling that same realness, nor the raw hate.
Silence takes over again. It's uncomfortable and Headphones’ eyes fall have lidded, finger twirling a strand of hair.
“Also you're grounded,” Moonpirate speaks up again, completely ignoring her sibling's proceeding sputters and squeaking protests.
She never did find out how to break swears. Not ones made on god’s name, sacred and holy. Made to be carried out.
So laying here, Headphone wonders, untethered. If her sister had found a solution, would she had agreed to stop it? Severed the excruciatingly sweet ties? If she and Sakura never met, would it only be desolation she would feel for the rest of her life?
Hate is a really big word, so she chokes on it. Soft but not moldable to have it merely pass down her throat.
The other thing she feels—she doesn't have a word for it. So she cannot tell whether it's choking, or needing, or dying. It's desperate, though. That, she knows. Even Sakura's leers at her are melodious. Even the sobbing and pleading that follows after shows to be melodious, not too far from the spite. Never too far.
“Don't—” Sakura grits, eyes erratic. They're pressing her to their chest. And Headphone is dying, she notes, dully.
“Stop bleeding so much, you're not supposed to—I—I didn't mean to...not like this.” Their nails dig into her flesh, and it's a numb type of soreness she feels from the action, spiking but watered down all the same. She can feel Sakura's breathing, taken quickly and too short. “I hate you. But I don't want you to die yet—you can't die yet—not...not now. I hate you! I'll hate you forever if you die now.”
But haven't they always? Hasn't it always been the right word for them?
Her eyes are glazed over; she realizes, maybe hate was never the right word. It was never right enough so she should have known it was never right at all. Spilling over the indents of their souls.
Sakura is still talking, incessant. The blossoming thorns are still in her abdomen, growing inside her like a parasite, drawn to warm flesh. She didn't know they had magic. She didn't know they felt like a parasite too, short of breath at the sight of the other, wanting to feel flesh and blood.
“When I was younger...my older sister used to read to me stories about soulmates. I always liked the musical ones. There weren't any actual tunes...but we'd make it up and she'd sing the lyrics,” Headphone starts, voice faint. A whisper. Colors dance under her skin and body, threading onto a rope that tugs at the both of them.
“Shut up.”
“I think... that's what we are, maybe.” Breathing is hard. Her words slur. “I was... nev'r really sure. You make me feel so weird.”
“Shut up.”
“I hope in the next life I get to kill you too. I still hate you. I think I can do both. Hate you and...be soulmates.”
“Please stop talking.”
Headphones is quiet. She can spare that mercy.
“Okay,” She says, deciding it's her last word.
It's fine now, because she knows what's right and wrong about them. Knowing eachother at all was the first mistake with them. Sakura's pleading is pretty, fits so nicely around her ears.
She won't plead, in their next life. If they get to have one at all. She'd sing for Sakura—would hold their bleeding corpse in her arms until guilt flooded every sense of her soul. And she would bring Sakura's corpse to any of the priests, beg them to revive them with tears in her eyes.
Headphones is the softer of the two of them, afterall. Only half a masochist—a life without any Sakura of any form would be too painful to bear. And a life with would be painful too, but bearable at the least.
She hopes they meet again sometime, to be real without having to be alive.