Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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Tongue-tied, what more could I say for your comfort? The words sealed between my lips no longer hold their old serenading meaning.

The night glimmers with the richest blue, it envelops us now.

Morn will arrive, and with it, the disbelief fades, and it seems to never have happened. The most astounding lie.

Now, if only I were dreaming. If only I could awake and trace your features with my blooded fingers. Have you ever felt so pure?

Perhaps you would open your arms and hug me tight as if the past won’t be our future. As if it was nothing, meaningless.

It’s a sweet dream. A dream well met, those memories seep from my neck and lips. How I loved you.

The last night we spent together, those stars shined brighter than usual.

Will you wait for me?

Lord, I beg, when she holds the last note to my deathly lullaby, save my soul from this.

My father, my universe, please, steal the weak from my body, and cusp my demeaning will to live.

I stand on the edge of a cliff, will you catch me when I topple forwards?

Darkness crowds my vision, bring to me brightness. Show me proof, hear my voice rise. Hear it fade, and pity me.

I cannot see. Where are you? Show me proof that you’re here now, lord.

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Chapter Text

Sua's eyes gleamed lavender in the rosy haze surrounding them. Never had Mizi felt as if her lover would shatter. Fragile and longing, she had unwittingly placed Sua on a pedestal. Her god. Her universe. Her chosen one and only.

Midnight strands of hair fell onto Sua's porcelain cheekbones. She held her head high as if awaiting, startled, eyes smiling like the curvature of a long lost moon. Lips hushed with powdery pink, they curved around her last sweet note.

Mizi smiled, utterly captivated by Sua’s swan-like neck. She saw, within her last moment of sanity, it bend to an uneven angle, and heard it snap amongst the crowd. Reverbrating and echoing inside her head, she met Sua's fallen eyes one last time before she slouched and hit the ground.

Slowly, beads of blood decorated Sua’s lips, her eyelashes catching the last of the light as it faded on the stage. Roaring, cheering, booing, even, dripped and spun from the stands. Anticipation well met, collective satisfaction. These monsters haunted Mizi's dreams and they had been Sua's embodiment of sacrifice.

Hearts intertwined and so impossibly lost, hope had bonded those young women. Mizi fell to her knees. She pretended, for a sick moment, that Sua’s single untouched eye had expanded into the world she had wished for.

Throwing up, she tasted the bitter resentment in her throat hurl from her mouth onto the ground

Mizi soaked Sua’s ruby blood into her velvet dress, chest heaving. A frenzy of emotion built up in her fingertips. She tried, as one could, to reassemble Sua's gouged open neck and smashed eye.

The gore twisted around her hands, and she shook with dread. It dove into beneath her fingernails, sweet smelling and dangerously beautiful. Her world had crumbled entirely. She felt, with a stinging sensation, her collar clip back into place around her neck. The light shone crimson immediately, her anger and shock on display for the crowd to gape at.

She could just make out, from the far corner of her eyes, her face on the screen above the stage. Face pale and eyes narrowed, no tears yet plastered her cheeks. Her hair lay dank and straight with sweat, a belligerent halo of baby pink and sky blue ends.

Her lips, a haunted cupid's bow, were blessed with the last of Sua's life, flung dangerously as if some sick artist had found glee in these young lovers' pain.

She was then dragged far, hands still reaching for Sua’s lifeless ones. Expecting, quivering. Mizi's world had imploded, that soft haze of rose and gold now sharp and still. Suas eyes no longer of a warm lavender, but of a simple deathly violet. Rage couldn't hold her down, nor could the pain bear her heavy heart.

She saw Anakt garden in her vision, its rolling hills gloriously green, its flowers simple, the slightest touch making its black camera centre zoom in and capture a moment of wonder. And she saw Sua's outstretched body lolling lazily in the grass, shy and awaiting Mizi's love.

Mizi fell into a state of the past with her small glimmer of crushed hope and guilt.

The capsule that held her upright stretched to become her claustrophobic horizon of loss.

Sua - 86, Mizi - 87.

Round one had ended