So… I’m back! For real and in full force. And I shall be rewarded for my utter degeneracy in a complete wealth of Katia-fic love! This is so much more than perfect. I’m saving “Storytime” thingy for last, but you did get it in within an acceptable time limit and may now relax, because I will not have to axe-murder you for Deprivation of Yuki-Aya Goodness.

Now, though, for another of that Most Wonderful Mabaduchi Trio… oh, the wonderful, wonderful angst. Still can’t get over “Blame”. And so shall now launch myself full-force into Wonderland.

“No one said that now, no one dared, but before they had said it.”
- Ooh… I thought that was just him thinking it before; that it… even if it isn’t said now, it’s being THOUGHT and everything. God I’m two lines in and… yes. Because no one takes on the entire issue of blame like you do. So adore the honesty you give when you subverse It, It being the unspoken rule of all fiction that if someone feels guilty, they are noble and everyone else will comfort them, but if they don’t they’re evil and everyone else will make sure they know it.

Then, about it “hovering so neatly on the edges of pleading”… just so beautifully put.

“He had gone anyway, and so they thought he had been ignoring them.
He hadn’t been, of course.”
- Whu, breathe gone… like on purpose…?

“Hatori had been careful all his life…. He had never learned to use this talent, but it helped anyway. He was always ready.”
- Couldn’t just paste the entire few paragraphs, because that felt a bit cheating, but… it is. It was some kind of self-destruct, or Kana-destruct, or happiness-destruct. I… am in some kind of melancholic ecstasy. This is so horribly perfect.

“Did he think he’d been ready for the events of that day? Looking back on it, he wasn’t entirely sure. But, contrary to what everyone else thought, he had been fully aware of what he was doing.”
- Yes, yes I was right about that much… witness your powers of injecting prophecy in fic… God, I’ve missed the way you WRITE…

“It was simply the why of the matter that he wasn’t certain of.”
- Oh oh oh…

“If it had been love, he knew, he would have felt terror instead of the sick deadened resignation that had come over him when he had entered Akito’s rooms that day.”
- So very much adoring this definition of love as according to the counterbalance feelings. Big love, big loss. Things have to come out even.

“It wasn’t as if Akito’s fury had caught him off guard. If that had been the only reason for the disaster, then he would have wasted away like Kana, fully able to take the blame and call himself a fool.”
- Ability to take the blame… the luxury of wallowing. The strength of weakness. *wiggle*

“It wasn’t any of those powerful emotions that had caused him to risk everything simply for protocol. Either one of those reasons would have made him think to run…”
- Oh so true so true… you know this is going to be ingrained as canon in my head from now on. How’d you make everything fit like the missing pieces of a freaking enormous puzzle?

“This…what had actually happened, had merely been the inevitable.”
- The ending is inevitable. All the associations this drags up…

“Admitting it hurt, stung and made him feel ashamed, but it was true.”
- And I shall treasure that shame… not often protagonists get be not just hurt but embarrassed. You outdo Holly Black, I swear…

“When children break things, sometimes they will bring their parents to see the damage… Like a child,, he had gone running to Akito with his sin. He had shown her Kana, and had waited for punishment.”
- Yes~s. Oh yes. With the fitting, and the genuine-desire-to-look-away shame…

“His only mistake had been that he truly had underestimated the weight of his crime. To him it was disobedience, but to Akito it was thievery.”
- My favorite lines out of the entire thing so far, which is saying something.

“She had used Hatori’s injury to steal him away from Kana, and she had used Kana’s breakdown to bring Hatori back into the fold.”
- Because Hatori may not be able to wield people like weapons as Shigure can, but Akito surely can.

“A punishment…but one that she offered to him like a redemption.”
- For I am a jealous God… oh, the way that alters the picture. And you look at it from this angle it’s so much sharper and uglier [in the best sense] and makes so much more sense…

“ It had been cruel, because there was no reason for her to suffer like that, with no forewarning; no chance to prepare herself.”
- And another sibilant yes, because it WAS just plain cruel to do that to her like that, cruel and rather cowardly, inasmuch as Hatori, sweet Hatori, can be those things, and oh for the acknowledgement.

“He’d had a chance, somewhere deep in his subconscious he had been preparing for the end of the dream.”
- Because dreams ARE subconscious, and something about the doubles of this falls me in love.

“He had had a fighting chance to be strong, to survive…but he’d never given that to her. He had kept their doom a secret, because he loved her, and in the end that was how he had lost her.”
- Oh, the laws of tragedy… you have to make your own doom or it’s meaningless.

“So he didn’t hate himself for going that day…but there were other things he would never forgive.
‘It would have been better…if we had never met.’ ”
- That… may have taken over as favorite lines. Close call. But… oh, there is so much love. The implications and the bitterness and the pure, wonderful wonderfulness.

Oh, all hail Katia being back in the writing game with three full stories, because I have just re-realized how much I need the fix.

Rawr, this is crap, rip rip shred shred-"uso, uso." The Shigure has rubbed off on me, woe.

Heh. You have Hatori angst... I have AkiGure. And it is good.

It's good to see that, at least, everyone is nice enough not to rub it in his face.

Already I can feel the futility, inevitablility... I'm predicting that it's going to go along the lines of, like with Hiro, "He was probably too afraid not to." The bonds, etc. You don't go against God.

Ooh... like the love, terror vs resignation.

Ah... also love the comparison to, "loving someone other than God is a sin." That they're all children who can't help but make mistakes, and either try to hide it and get punished, or end up running to Akito in hopes of making it less terrible.

"His only mistake had been that he truly had underestimated the weight of his crime. To him it was disobedience, but to Akito it was thievery." Uwah...

And... and... wah...

There is somewhere a, "Hah! I was right! But that's probably because you're blaming the fic on me..." But I think it got lost in the "wah... uwah..."

Haa-san...

-Shinju