Title: Dishes for One

Author: Tiamat's Child

Rating: G
Fandom: X-1999

Pairing: None! It's gen all the way, darling.

Summary: Sometimes Keiichi thinks he's the only one not dying.

Disclaimers: The boy's Clamp's, not mine.

Dishes for One

Keiichi has always liked doing the dishes. There's something solid and warm to the actions, always the same each time. The routine doesn't change. Reach to the stack of dirty dishes, take one, put it in the hot water basin, wash it, rinse it in the cold water, wipe it with the dishcloth, put it on the drying rack. Repeat.

Nothing about it changes. The little details may shift for a spoon, or a knife, but the pattern remains exactly the same. Keiichi finds that comforting.

It wouldn't matter if he dropped a dish and broke it, either. If one of the heavy clay plates slid from his grasp and chipped on the floor it wouldn't be a disaster. There's comfort in that too, in not having to worry about holding on tightly enough.

Only. Only things do change. Once Keiichi washed dishes for three. Now he washes dishes for one. It doesn't take as long to wash for one as it does to wash for three, but it's lonelier and far less stable.

Three is a good number, a firm number, a magic number. With three you can make a triangle, and a triangle is the strongest shape there is, the one that's hardest to break. Three threes are a nine and everyone knows that nine is the most human number there is. Threes are witches and Goddesses in triple form, related to the deep parts of what the mind is. There are three sons, three princesses, three tasks, three guardians, three golden apples. Three is a good number.

One is… One is the Orphan, one is death, one is left in the box. One is alone. One is a point, easily mislaid. One can be broken so much more easily than three.

Keiichi is a one now.

Keiichi is a one and so he must be careful. He needs to be gentle with the pale rose goblets his parents bought the night they realized he was going to be joining them, because if pink glass shatters and skitters across the floor it could cut so much more than his skin. He doesn't want that. So he's more cautious with the dishes now than when there were three people he did dishes for.

Keiichi read a story once, when he was little, about a man who was too good for hell and too insolent for heaven, and therefore could not die. So he had to wander, and wander, and live and live and live while everyone else died around him and all he knew was ashes. He hadn't liked that story much. He still doesn't like it. But sometimes, sometimes he thinks that he's living it.