what I am to you is not what you mean to me

[imugi]

title: whisper.
dedication: flown

series: Saint Seiya
characters: Camus & Milo

rating: pg-13

summary: Milo's crazy.
author notes: --

The long and strenuous reparation of Aquarius Temple was sometimes more of a torture than Milo would care to admit. Without a doubt, the temple was beautiful; sheets of ice still lined the pillars and floors, staining the white marble with a graceful sheen. It carried a lingering cosmo that reverberated through the empty room, marking it with an old claim that hardly had any meaning now. Nevertheless, it was almost impossible to ignore.

At the center of it all sat a cloth in its presentational form, shining as an empty memorial. For now, it would remain as vacant and hollow as the temple itself.

It made him sick, sometimes.

Milo hated coming here. He hated it, but he did it anyway— lifted rubble piece by piece until he had worked hard enough to have even broken a sweat, skin hot but the air cold, always cold. He gripped at the icy pillars until his fingers stung and eventually numbed out completely. He meticulously repaired the temple pebble by pebble only to resist the urge to rip it apart again.

There was something in the air at Aquarius Temple. Perhaps it had to do with the ice, latent with that stale cosmo. Or perhaps it was only the whispers of something that surely wasn't life, prickling the ends of his nerves like a forgotten sensation.

Perhaps it was someone's tears. Touches that didn't quite reach, words that couldn't be spoken, thoughts that would never manifest. Yes, in the end it somehow made the most sense, while at the same time it made no sense at all. He could have laughed, if the irony hadn't already settled so thickly in his throat.

There was someone crying in Aquarius Temple.

.

Milo hadn't counted the days it had taken for the ice to finally melt. Nor had he bothered wiping away the glistening puddles that it left behind on the floors— They had eventually evaporated on their own. For a few days following, that old feeling in the air was almost too potent, but soon it had drifted away and left almost nothing behind without a sound.

Much like its master.

The moon cast heavy shadows across the white pillars. It was as quiet then as it always was, if not even more so. Then again, even back when the temple had been occupied and not quite as stale, silence had ruled it more than the constellation itself. It was something he appreciated as much as he hated it.

There was a soft pop as he pulled the cork from an aged wine bottle with his teeth. It smelled of rosemary. There were others; some already empty and strewn across the floor, the rest stacked in an old crate that he had pulled from one of the far corners of the temple. He thought, vaguely, that he had probably stopped tasting them altogether a while ago, but all of them were undeniably flavorful. Camus had always had good taste in wine, if nothing else.

It came back in a wave, flooding his senses like a gentle tide— the mist of a familiar cosmo that should have already left. He felt it even before he heard the footsteps, but at the same time didn't bother to react.

He lifted his bottle out, a toast to no one, and downed a fair amount even as the shadow stopped only a few feet away, draped in black. Again, he almost laughed— a precious breath away from doing so— but found that he still hadn't swallowed the remnants of that something caught in his throat. It was bothersome.

“Are you supposed to be an apparition?”

It wasn't a very accurate hallucination. In life that sea green hair had never been quite as long, but still his expression remained unchanged.

“Yes,” the reply was hoarse and final.

Milo didn't say anything else. He rose steadily to his feet, tossing the bottle aside casually as if there was nothing out of place about it. The glass shattered. The last of the wine spilled across the floor, red on white— in the dark he thought it might be blood, but there would be none of that here. Nevertheless, Camus' gaze lingered on it for a long time, as if that was what he believed himself.

Then again, it could have been tears. Blood, tears, sweat— it was all the same.

Their lips touched— everything had become too hazy for him to identify who had initiated. Something cold crawled up his spine, like ice. Camus tasted of dirt, ash, and rosemary. Or perhaps the rosemary was himself; he couldn't tell and it didn't really matter. He had already stopped tasting things altogether a while ago.

.

When he woke up that morning, it was in Aquarius Temple. Empty bottles were strewn across the floor, but not a single one of them was broken.

There was something in the air.

It made him sick.