Just a quick thing I wrote, during class haha. I just read all of Dolls that I could find online in like two days, and decided it was the greatest thing ever. Seiju's so interesting-and pretty.

There is a light in the night. A little room that is its own world, set apart from time.

In day, everything will be different. We will live our sunlit lives, following the definition delineated for us by our concept of how this world is supposed to go. Maybe we will pretend—or maybe we will be. Through cycles we live, ignoring this schism in our Selves.

(And nothing is ever what it seems.)

The water on the stove comes to a boil, the kettle letting out a gentle whistle. He takes hold of the handle, pouring the water into two mugs. The stream falls from the spout, trickling over teabags.

One mug he keeps for himself, its warmth slowly seeping into his palm. The other he hands to the man seated at the table. Grey eyes blink hazily up at him for a minute, before the man breaks out into a small, grateful smile.

Usaki sits down, his eyes flatly regarding the other. His friend smiles so innocently, and maybe it is even real. Because, well—they are somehow a team, and this makes Usaki happier than anything has for a long, long time. He thinks that maybe it is the same for the others. But there are times when his friend's smile is fake. Because the kind of people who choose to kill for a living are not generally happy.

And maybe they have never stopped being children, growing up in a world that slowly, sadistically, broke every hopeful promise that the grown-ups made. Maybe Seiju just shows this trauma, magnified by realization that came too quickly, too early. This breaks people, studding their past with pieces of themselves. Never whole, never here. Back Seiju goes, every night. Never healing.

Usaki has slowly come to the understanding that none of them could ever quite be called okay. Maybe the Captain knows this—it is only the price for not being Dolls. Having a heart means that heart can get broken. And oh yes, the Captain knows the agony of a break. But smiling or killing, he always burns hot and he always burns bright. The Captain has found things he is not willing to lose, and this gives him the strength to go on, to defy this monster world which hates them, yet needs them.

(A continual reminder that keeping killers is not quite the same as keeping pets.)

Usaki himself—well, he proved to the Captain that he too had a heart. And maybe one day, that will end up killing him.

But one day is not today, and Usaki can go much, much further. Especially when he has important things of his own to protect.

He gently blows the steam from his tea.

Seiju is another issue, not fire like the Captain, not earth like Usaki. He is something cold, covered in paper flowers. So beautifully peaceful, but betrayed by the razor edge inside. The line between smiling and killing fine as his wire. Seiju feels this, feels far past his limits, and perhaps is all the more deadly for it. There seethes a part of Seiju which will never, ever stop killing.

And if he cannot find an enemy—well then, he will just kill himself instead.

There is day and there is night. Both men in this room know that night will always come. As much as Seiju has carved out a new face for himself with that smile, something will always haunt those dark eyes and he cannot turn away from it because it is him too. They cannot deny the ghosts that have brought them here. So on he will go, on with this cycle of sunrises and sunsets. Right until the day that sun dies, and he is left alone in that endless eternal dark.

Except—

This.

This little room, with its little light, floating in the abyss of night, outside time.

Usaki is not sure how this started, but he knows he would never go back. Somehow, things just kept working out that the Captain would go one way, the two of them the other. And maybe Seiju began to count on the support, maybe Usaki began to appreciate someone watching his back. Maybe, seeing what they saw, they began to talk. Maybe they became friends.

Usaki made Seiju promise that next time he faces into the void of night, he will remember. Before you do something that cannot be undone, please—just talk to me.

One phone call, one sleepless night, to change everything.

Sometimes, when it is just too—much, they end up here. Waiting for the dawn they know must come. The night after, too, but—

All things in time.