AUTHOR'S UP FRONT EXPLANATION: Why the hell am
I doing a preview for a Noir fic? I have no clue why... I just felt like giving
the few who visit my website a chance to peek at what I'm currently working
on. This fanfic is about halfway finished and hopefully I will have it up
by the middle of May at the latest. This isn't meant to tease or to torture
readers by just giving a little and then making them wait. I just thought
it might be a nice gesture to those who visit my site and maybe get disappointed
at my slow going updates. With me working 40+ hours a week and doing five
hour drives to visit the girlfriend I don't have a lot of free time so fanfics
are taking longer than usual to complete. Anyway, those who are taking a sneak
peek at the fic, I hope you enjoy it.
HUGE ASS WARNING: This fanfic contains spoilers for
the entire series of Noir. Yep, from start to end. If you haven’t seen the
whole thing and you don’t have any desire to know how things turn out then
please, don’t read the fic. It also has a fair amount of f/f sex scenes so if
you don't enjoy reading those, turn back now. Then again, if you didn't enjoy
that why in the hell are you even looking at one of MY fics anyway? Heh.
TITLE: Psyche's Betrayal
AUTHOR: Dreiser
EMAIL: dreiser3@yahoo.com
YAHOO/AOL IM: dreiser3
MY WEBSITE: http://www.dreiser.net/
CONTENT: F/F romance. F/F sex. Kirika/Chloe.
Kirika/Mireille.
SUMMARY: Kirika and Mireille struggle to forget
the sins of their past but fate, in the form of their tortured memories, stands
in the way.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing but my knowledge that
Johnny Cash and any old school country musician is fitting music for writing
Noir fic. Or anything a little bit dark, in fact.
FEEDBACK: Send it because I've got a little
motto that always sees me through. When you're good to Mama then Mama's good to
you.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I realize that some maintain
after the series ends Kirika and Mireille are promptly offed by the Soldats.
I’d like to think differently and this fic is the result. Also, in my opinion,
the pivotal scene with Chloe and Kirika it appears Kirika only gets a fraction
of her memories back instead of all of them. This fic deals with the
consequences of her remembering everything. The title of this story comes from
the Greek myth involving Eros and Psyche where she betrays the trust he places
in her by looking at his face with candlelight, thereby ruining the short
happiness that they had found together. I think the myth is eloquent in the
point that it makes, which is sometimes we're just better off remaining in the
dark about the nature of certain aspects of our lives.
Psyche's Betrayal
By: Dreiser
Mireille Bouquet never dreamed. Well, that is to
say she never recalled her dreams if she had them. Sometimes when she was in
that enchanted place that existed between sleep and waking a glimpse of them
would come to pass but just as quickly as they appeared they were gone. To her,
it was nothing more than foolish trickery.
A game that her mind played on her when she was
groggy enough to allow it to occur. For in normal circumstances, she was on
edge, always ready for whatever surprise to lurk around the corner and nothing
could slip past her. Only in that tiny space of time when she slept was she
susceptible to illusions which, she felt, were a road block in her quest for
constant vigilance. It was an idea that disturbed Mireille greatly.
If there was anything she prided herself on it
was her sense of awareness. She knew better than anyone when danger was coming
and when danger was near. Living your life on the edge of death did that to you
and she enjoyed it.
Strange that facing death daily was the one way
she could appreciate life. There was an irony to it that she found humorously painful.
Chasing death to feel alive, it was a foolish logic that only those who are
involved in its punishing cycle could comprehend.
What Mireille failed to understand, however, was
Kirika and her dreams. The ones she heard and saw in the early morning light
that was more darkness than the dawning of a new day. Some thought of the sun
rising as a renewal, Mireille saw it as the bringer of death. Each day brought
a new mission, a new challenge, a new assassination, and a new terrible chance
for her to die.
Although she celebrated it in all the morbid
fascination she had, Mireille still found the light of a new day grim and
foreboding. Even more so when Kirika’s dreams began.
In sleep and dreaming, Kirika’s mind betrayed
her, showing everything that she had fought to keep so carefully hidden. Night
after night they came to her, the memories of every sickening thing she had
done and had in turn been done to her.
And in the dismal pale light of a newly born
day, Mireille watched as they played out, Kirika’s face a moving picture of
sorts, revealing through the deep abyss of dreaming what she couldn’t in the
waking day. It was a picture of loss, pain, and regret.
Kirika's emotions were a developing paradox. During
the day, she was as quiet and reserved as she had been since the day they
had first met but at night the once impenetrable safe that were her memories
would open with each key she had somehow gained during the waking hours. It
was becoming dangerous and Mireille knew it. She knew and she saw it coming.
That was why she didn’t sleep anymore. To avoid not only that disgusting lack
of control she possessed in wake from sleeping but to watch and gauge the
situation as it developed.
Things were becoming increasingly worse for
Kirika in the mysterious realm of dreams and memory. It seemed she could no
longer block out all of the horrors she had seen and experienced from invading
her thoughts during the night. It was early morning on a Tuesday, a day
seemingly no different than the next when it all fell apart.
When Kirika's thin frame twisted beneath the
silk sheets, falling gracefully from her body even as she began to thrash in a
clear denial of what she was seeing, Mireille knew it had finally come to pass.
What she had been waiting for ever since the fateful day she had heard the absent
mumblings pass from Kirika’s lips like a curse.
Perhaps it was a curse. After all, until this
point they had been happy of a sort. They were attempting to live a normal
life, although Mireille could feel herself going mad from boredom slowly as she
craved that fix of lethal danger she was accustomed to, and it appeared the
Soldats were letting them alone for the time being.
Mireille laughed at the thought. The Soldats
knew this was coming as surely as she sensed its arrival herself. They knew
whatever short lived peace they managed to trick themselves into believing they
had would be snatched away by the specter of Kirika's past which was far more
checkered than even Mireille could have imagined.
The life that Mireille led was not a gentle one.
It was harsh and it was brutal and nearly every significant moment in it was
related back to some form of violence. When she was six she saw her first dead
bodies, when she was seven she held her first handgun, when she was eleven she
killed her first assignment, when she was sixteen she started her first
business of murder for hire, and when she was twenty she fell in love for the
first time... leading her to trust someone far deadlier than herself.
Skating on the edge of twenty one, seeing more
horrors in her short existence than most people would experience in a lifetime,
was when Mireille first felt lost. Because when she looked in Kirika's dark
brown eyes, wide and shining with a barely hidden sheen of tears, she didn't
know what to do or how to comfort her.
Not when they both knew with horrible certainty
it was just beginning, this wave of unending horrors that were Kirika's
memories. The dawning of each day brought a new batch and with them Mireille
felt the distance between them grow.
These memories, these ghosts of the past, they
were doing what Chloe, Altena, and the Soldats never could. They were tearing
them apart and Mireille had to stop it.
---
Kirika never woke with a cry. Instead she would always
fly forward, sheets tangled on her deceptively delicate frame, eyes wide with
horror. Each time she did, in front of her was Mireille. Sitting calmly, legs
crossed, silk robe falling in elegant waves down her body that remained still
for a long moment.
Then the moment would end and Mireille would
rise, looking like the goddess Kirika considered her to be, and walk forward as
her hand fell to trace a light path across the girl's cheek. Brown eyes would
be wide with hurt and loss, making Mireille curious in an absurd way, wondering
what atrocities Kirika had seen this time.
Only she would never ask. She would raise
another hand, cup Kirika's face firmly but gently, and descend with her lips.
Painting hot searing kisses across her skin, wiping all signs of unhappiness
away as soft sighs entered the air while she stripped her naked.
It would be tender at first then it would
swiftly change due to the fierce and terrible passion they felt. Bodies
straining hard and sweating, gleaming in that grim light of morning, and it was
only in these times Mireille felt alive. When she kissed Kirika hard and deep,
burying her tongue inside her and tasting the sweetness of her thighs. Loving
the hard press of fingers buried deep in her hair, urging her ever forward. Then
moving up Kirika's body, kissing the dip in her stomach as she slipped her long
fingers where her mouth had just been, smiling at the hint of a gasp she would
release. Yes, this was the only thing that brought her out of the comatose
boredom of every day life. If she couldn't kill, if she couldn't put herself at
risk daily, then at least she had this.
At least she had Kirika, eyes dark with lust, as
dark as the day she had retrieved her from Altena and Chloe's clutches and as
horrible as it was to see her that way, part of Mireille was excited by it.
Even now, loathe as she was to admit it, she wanted to see it happen again. She
wanted to see the real Kirika, the person who had murdered her parents with
cool efficiency at the mere age of five, she wanted it and god help her...
The wanting of it was sick. It was sick in the
way some claimed her love for Kirika itself was sick simply because they were
both women. While Mireille scoffed at that, she did find herself, in the dark
of night, thinking on the love she felt for Kirika. Was it even love? She
honestly didn't know. Part of her thought it was some twisted form of
dependency.
For the first time in her life she allowed
herself to need someone only to have it revealed the person she needed more
than any other was the one who killed her family. It was the height of irony,
Mireille supposed. She didn't like to think on it though. In fact, she did
almost everything to avoid thinking on why she needed Kirika as she did.
Love, some would say. Love is why you need her.
Love is why you are confused. Love is why you watch her dreaming in the early
daybreak. Love, love, love...
Mireille despised the word. She thought it
nothing more than an excuse for petty failures. Love made me do it, love made
me pathetic and weak, love was the reason I let all of my dreams go to the
wayside, love is what truly matters. It was bullshit.
But if it was then why did she need Kirika so?
Again, she preferred to not think on it. Although it was hard not to in the
silence of early morning when Kirika would spring up from the messy sheets of
their bed and look at her with a gaze drowning in pain and regret. Despite
that, she tried not to think about it all.
She was trying even now as Kirika took deep
breaths, her eyes squeezing shut and her hands twisting into the bed sheets
tightly. By the time they opened, however, Mireille was sitting in front of
Kirika, one leg tucked under the other as her hand rested softly on the girl's
cheek, moving in a slow caress.
"What do you see when you close your
eyes?" Mireille asked quietly.
Kirika's expression shifted, looking momentarily
surprised before her training kicked in and all trace of emotions disappeared
completely from her face. This was unexpected indeed. Mireille never wanted to
talk about things like this. About anything remotely to do with their past.
Sensing hesitation in her lover and feeling drawn, for whatever reason, to
finally hear the truth that she already knew was going to be confirmed,
Mireille pulled Kirika to her, embracing her loosely. The girl was now
practically sitting in her lap as she wound her arms around Kirika's thin
frame, holding her close in an embrace that was neither awkward nor stifling.
In fact, it was...
It was comforting.
And so Kirika sighed, relaxing into Mireille's
arms, fighting the shiver of desire that slid through her body when the blonde
spoke again, her breath warm on her skin. "What do you see, Kirika? I need
to know. I want these dreams to stop."
Dreams. Not nightmares. Kirika supposed that
they couldn't be called nightmares because they were memories. They were real
events and when you slept and would recall things that happened to you, they
were always called dreams.
"Everything," Kirika finally replied.
More out of instinct than anything else, Kirika buried herself in the crook of
Mireille's neck even as the blonde moved her forward. Now she really was
sitting on the blonde's lap and if forced to admit, very much enjoying it.
Mireille's lap was perfect for sitting. "I see everything I've done."
"They're memories," said Mireille,
seeking a clear confirmation now. Kirika didn't reply, she merely moved closer
yet, nodding into Mireille who sighed. When she did, her body rose up and down
in a gentle movement, taking Kirika along who was now almost an extension of
herself. "Kirika," she said after a long moment, sounding lost and
filled with confusion. Her body grew slightly rigid and feeling this, Kirika
knew whatever decision Mireille had been debating was now thoroughly resolved.
"I want to help you."
Tilting her head slightly and causing her mussed
bangs to obscure her endless brown gaze, Kirika peered at Mireille
inquisitively. Her expression was curious and analytical at the same time,
appearing to wonder just what Mireille meant.
"Help me," repeated Kirika, her voice
careful and precise.
Swallowing the lump in her throat and thinking
that she was most likely backing herself into a corner from which she might
never escape, Mireille nodded her head. "You can't go on having these
dreams." Clenching her jaw, she looked away from Kirika to stare out the
window and at the city it revealed through the glass. "I don't enjoy
speaking on what we deal with in our lives. It just isn't done within the circles
in which we were raised but I'm starting to think that might be wrong."
When the tips of Kirika's fingers graced over her face, pushing back blonde
locks of hair in a feather light touch, Mireille looked at her and smiled
wanly. "I think now it's our own secrets that could destroy us. Far more
than the Soldats ever could." Unable to stop herself, and not even knowing
the reason why, Mireille grasped Kirika's wrist, pressing the delicate hand
against her lips in a desperate kiss. "Tell me everything. Each morning
I'll wait for you to wake and once you do, I'll hold you in my arms and you can
tell me what you remembered in the night."
Silence hung in the air, low and heavy, eating
at Mireille's nerves as she watched Kirika anxiously, waiting for any form of
reply, whether it be good or bad. Finally, the brunette turned to meet their
eyes and the barest tug of her lips occurred, ghosting her face in the shy hint
of a smile that Mireille liked to think only she got to see.
"Yes," Kirika said softly. She paused
for a moment, looking hesitant before she met Mireille with an expression that
was kind but firm at the same time. It left very little doubt that whatever she
was about to say, Mireille wouldn't have much luck arguing against it with her.
"If each night I do the same for you."
Gazing into Kirika's solemn brown eyes, frank
and utterly serious in their intention,
Mireille felt a bubble of delighted laughter
escape her lips before she could help it. And as this went on, Kirika watched,
her expression bemused and fond at the same time.
In that moment, suddenly things didn't seem so
awful. Perhaps their memories wouldn't be their undoing. If they stayed
together, remained true, they could defeat them just as surely as they had any
other enemy they encountered on their missions. Only Mireille forgot one very
important thing. Memories aren't the same as a live target. They aren't
something corporeal that can be easily squashed in force and brutality as she
was so used to doing. No, memories have to be dealt with in an entirely
different manner. One of the heart and it was safe to say neither of them were
accustomed to that.
---
By some unspoken agreement, they didn't begin
their confessions until the next day. It began much like all the others.
Mireille sitting in front of the bed, clad in her silk robe, her long legs
crossed elegantly as she waited in observance. Leaping forward with so much
grace and speed when Kirika woke with a jerk and a soft grunt of disturbance.
This morning was different though. Simply knowing
they were finally going to talk on what Kirika had seen... that it would be out
in the open, it altered their perceptions and made things more intense than
they had been before. Which is why, perhaps, Mireille drew Kirika to her with
an unusual passion that the younger girl accepted, burying her face in the
curving warmth of Mireille's breasts. Sighing at the relaxing floral scent of
the perfume Mireille carried on her like a breeze, Kirika's hands lightly
grasped at the edges of her robe, barely aware of it slipping in her hands,
pulling it down her lengthy frame.
"They killed my parents," Kirika
murmured into Mireille, her breath warm on her skin as her hands spread out,
resting on the curve of her hips. She paused to tilt her head and she peered up
at Mireille who met her gaze expectantly, even kindly, and this made Kirika
want to continue on, despite how odd it felt to finally be divulging the
horrible truths of her life. "The man who did it... he smiled at me. He
treated me soft and gentle so I went with him, thinking nothing of what he had
done."
Closing her eyes tightly, squeezing the image of
her own parents dead bodies from her mind, Mireille brushed a kiss over
Kirika's mussed head of hair. "Why?" she asked.
"I don't know," whispered Kirika,
feeling lost to explain properly. She shivered as Mireille's lips gave a light
press against her cheek then settled on the base of her neck. Her fingers
strained and stretched over the blonde's skin, holding her desperately close.
"I can't remember my parents very well but I think that I didn't like
them."
"What did they do to you?" Mireille
sounded stark and controlled at the same time. Already she was imagining
horrible things, each instance worst than the last, for she had more than
enough experience with seeing the bleakness of humanity. Despite herself, she
pulled back, looking into Kirika's clouded features and cupping the girl's face
in warm hands as to draw her gaze upwards. When blue eyes met brown, Mireille
said a little more anxiously now, "What did they do?"
Kirika's mouth opened then closed and her face
became closed off, lost in a mire of sadness and regret before she fell
forward, weakly resting her face on Mireille's shoulder as she clung to the
older woman. Her head tilted, breath light and shallow on Mireille's skin as
she said calmly, "They didn't want me."
"What?" asked Mireille in more shock
than anything else. Looking at her companion who rested against her, unwilling
to move, she was thoroughly perplexed. Of all the things to hear, she hadn't
expected this. "Why would you say that?"
"Because it's true," answered Kirika
simply. She was growing tired of this game. It had to be done, she knew that,
both because of her promise to Mireille but for their own good as well.
Although she might seem otherwise, she was all too aware of the rift that
slowly was developing between them. Doing this, telling secrets long kept, was
the best way to rid themselves of it. Sighing again, she pressed closer into
Mireille, tasting the texture of her skin and delighting in the soft gasp she
released when she did so. "I was born to be a pawn of the Soldats. To
become Noir. Not because they wanted to have me. No one has ever wanted me with
genuine sincerity."
"Kirika..."
Her name was said with so much pain that it made
Kirika look up and into Mireille's lovely features, now obscured with a silent
shaking rage and absolute sorrow. Again her face was traced by feather light
fingertips on her skin, making her quiver with desire. The blue eyes that met
hers burned with emotions not yet seen and made Kirika look at her partner with
ever increasing admiration.
In a flash of elegant movement, Mireille was
upon her and Kirika was pushed into the softness that was their bed, sheets
tangled about them as hungry lips devoured hers in a ferocious manner she had
yet to become accustomed to. It always surprised her, how much Mireille needed
her. Who was she anyway? Nothing next to this glorious example of a woman, lush
in her curves and brilliant in her logical devices.
Despite her doubts and self recriminations,
Kirika knew very well that Mireille needed her. Needed... but wanted? That
wasn't nearly so clear. Only when soft lips descended on her own, opening her
and melting her easily as butter, with as much delicious intent, did she feel
wholly confident in her worth to Mireille. A whimper escaped Kirika's lips as
Mireille drew slowly away, sucking on her lower lip before gently kissing her
cheek and whispering in her ear.
"I want you," Mireille breathed, her
voice hoarse and filled with longing. When Kirika's fingers delicately twined
in her hair, drawing her back further yet so their eyes locked, she gave a hint
of a smile and said, "Always and more than anyone."
With a tender pull and a tug, Kirika brought
Mireille to her, enveloping her with a quiet passion that threatened to
overwhelm them both. For the first time, as Mireille's tongue swept into her
for the most intimate of kisses, Kirika cried from the joy of it all.
- End of Preview -