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Ticking Time by elict

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Chapter notes: Disclaimer: I own nothing. I make no money what so ever -__-
AN: Finished the anime just now, wanted some more angst, and this was born. Oh, how I love to torment characters ^^'';
Ticking Time


She’s trying hard. It’s barely noticeable, and if she’d been there with someone else, they probably wouldn’t have seen the small signs that indicated that she wasn’t really succeeding. But then again, if it had been someone who couldn’t see that, she probably hadn’t gone into hiding here with them anyways.

Chrono watches silently, at Rosette’s back stiffens, her shoulders giving small tremble, only for a second, while she’s chopping up vegetables for their dinner. He catches the short, hesitant look she throws out the window as the sun settles once again behind the far horizon, and he pretends like he didn’t.

He knows that she’s trying hard, and he allows her to, while he himself pretends to see nothing. It’s enough to him that she knows that he’s there, and lets him see those little moments of weakness.

Had it been Joshua, she’d have acted tougher, he knew, because she had always forced herself to be stronger for her little brother’s sake, even when he wasn’t there. She’d been strong for everybody else’s sake, always. Even his.

There’s no more reason for her to act in front of him. They both know what is awaiting them, and the evidence for that is hanging around Rosette’s neck, even now as she’s making their dinner. He’s asked her once if it wouldn’t be better to lay it aside, to be free from the constant sound of their time ticking away, but she just looked at him before answering that she wanted to know. She wanted to know, so that when it happened, they’d be together.

Together.

As if he’d ever leave her.

It is hard on him, to watch her be strong each day, to stay silent, when all he wants is to throw his arms around her and cry and ask her to cry with him, to stop trying, to give up, as he has done a long time ago. But he knows that he’s not worthy of her honesty. He’s the one who is doing this to her after all, he’s the one who’s stealing her time away.

He’s the one who are weak so that she has to be strong.

And yet he wishes for her to cry with him.

oooo

Chrono is a terrible creature, he knows that. A demon, the enemy of all life, a parasite that eats itself into existing in the world, filthy, unworthy. Someone who are not supposed to ever be rewarded with the feeling of love. A demon is a creature that isn’t supposed to have feelings at all, he’s been told. Feelings are a gift to mankind, the purest and most beautiful part of their being, their true self, their soul consist of their feelings.

Demons don’t have souls. And yet he loves.

He has known for a long time that if these rumours and sayings are true, he’s either a defect demon or blessed. Or cursed, if you’d rather say that, seeing as what feelings did to the one who possessed them. Making them vulnerable, weak.

Yet, he wouldn’t trade what he feels for Rosette for anything else in the world. He loves her, more than he’s ever loved anything, and the warmth that tugs at his heart at times as he watches her is enough to make it all worth it. Everything that he’s been through, with the Revolution, with Magdalene, everything. It’s all worth it.

Maybe except for her life.

But love is a feeling out of control, he also knows. It was love that brought them into this mess from the beginning, and it is love that won’t let them get out. He’s offered her to die for her, die so that she can live. He’s begged her to let him die, standing on her knees before her in the grass, looking up on her with eyes filled of regret and guilt.

She became furious. She screamed at him, threw her bucket of water on him, kicking up lumps of earth and grass in his face, screamed more. He’d been astonished, staring at her, wondering why it made her so angry. He only wanted…

“Do you really think that I am ready to pay that prize?” Rosette had yelled, her face red and her fists clenched at her sides. “You’re so selfish, Chrono!”

And then she’d turned her back, walking back to her house with her chin raised, leaving a shocked and confused demon behind.

That evening, she cried for the first time since they’d come there. He’d tried to comfort her, but since he still didn’t understand, he’d only hurt her more. It wasn’t until later, when they lay in their beds, the room feeling way too big and cold in the unusual silence between them, that she’d explain to him.

“It’s not fair, don’t you see? Why should you be the one who’d get to take the easy way out, leaving everything behind? I’d have to live on; knowing that every breath I took was because I let you die for it. I’d have to live with the guilt forever.”

And he sits up, looking at her in the dark, she’s not crying, and her voice is steady. He understands now, sure he does. But…

“At least you’d live. You’d see Joshua again.”

Rosette sits up too, her naked lags dangling of the edge of the bed, and he notices for the first time that she’s become thinner. He curses inwardly.

“It’s not worth it, Chrono. Without you… I won’t be complete. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy all those things that awaits me, without you.”

“You’d forget me in time…”

“No!” she shouts, standing up. Chrono can see her eyes gleam through the darkness of the room. “I wouldn’t! Stop saying things like that!”

“Rosette…” He doesn’t know what to say. All he can do is watch over her as she settles down on the bed, her breath erratic, and he’s ashamed. Of course dying would be the easy way out, away from the guilt, and that would be unfair, but…

But…

oooo

Six weeks passes before Rosette comes to him. Once night, she’s standing by his bed. Startled, he sits up, staring up at her with worried, crimson eyes.

“Rosette?” he mumbles, raising his hand slowly, reaching out for her, but not touching her. She’s the one who has to take the final step, if she wishes contact.

“Chrono… I…” Her breath hitches into a dry sob, and there’s wetness hitting his hand as he raises his hand just a little further to hover just below her jaw. “I… Can I sleep here with you tonight?” she whispers.

“Of course, Rosette, but why…?”

“I’m afraid… Chrono…”

He doesn’t ask anymore, nor does he try to say anything comforting. He just moves aside, lifting the sheets to allow her to sneak in under them, and they lay down together, Rosette is shaking in his arms, crying silently into his chest. Chrono is silent, trying not to do anything that will give him away as he smiles. Of course he feels guilty because of it, but the truth is that during these weeks, he’s never been happier than this moment. She’s finally dared to trust him enough to let go.

When she calms down and the tears stop coming, they stay silent. Chrono traces lazy patterns on Rosette’s back, and after a while, he can feel her arm sneak around hi waist. When she sighs, and snuggles closer, he feels like it is safe to open his mouth again.

“You don’t have to pretend all the time, Rosette,” he says softly.

“Yes I do,” she answers.

“Why?”

“I’ll break,” she mumbles, her hand plays absently with his braid. “I’ll forget everything else but my own misery, and it’ll break me.”

“I’ll help you to bear it.”

She moves away a little to look up into his eyes, tears forming in the corner of her eyes again. “And I’m afraid that if I break, I’ll blame you,” she says.

Chrono’s heart almost stops behind his ribcage. His mouth goes dry, eyes wide and un-seeing as he meet her gaze, his face blank. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” he answers. “You know I wouldn’t.”

“But I don’t blame you!” she exclaims, her voice desperate, her eyes begging him to understand. He thinks that he does.

Because he loves her too.

oooo

Demons don’t feel. They don’t love. All they have is their greed, their lust to own what is not theirs, their hunger for power.

Yet, Chrono knows that what he feels as he watches Rosette sit on her chair by the table, carefully tasting her soup with the tip of her tongue to see if it is too hot to eat can not be anything else but love. This warmth, this content feeling inside him every time she meet’s his searching gaze and smiles that slow, tilted smile that he knows is a honest one.

He’s a demon, but he loves.

His love is tainted, he knows that. He can feel that, because behind the warmth, there is the constant hunger, the damned lust, gnawing at him. Making him filthy, making his feelings towards her filthy. Again and again he curses his nature, his fate, why does he have to be punished like this? Why can’t he be allowed to have a pure love for her, like she deserves?

She’s a saint, a pure being, and he is a demon, his feelings are forbidden, wrong, unheard of by his kind.

Why is it that he never thought about her like this before? Not even once has he felt like he needed to posses her, own her, make her his own. Now that he is the only one with her, he craves her. Is it that his time is ticking out, along with hers? Does the desperation make his demon blood boil hotter as his life is ending?

Is it even his demon blood that makes him feel like this? Or is it natural? Humans aren’t perfect beings, far from it, and their feelings are easily tainted by darker things, especially their love. Is this a natural development?

He is confusing himself, as he finds that he has to swallow hard when Rosette is standing in the grass outside the small house, dressed in only her underwear as she leans over the water-filled bucket, humming to herself as she washes their dirty laundry. Chrono looks away, a blush tinting his cheeks, and stuffs his hands into his pockets. He’s ashamed and confused, and he feels trapped.

Luckily enough, Rosette doesn’t seem to notice anything, and soon she’s scolding him for not helping her out with the laundry. Relieved that everything is the same, that she is the same, regardless of the constant storm of emotions inside him, Chrono joins her.

oooo

He dreads the day when he has to tell her. Because he knows that he has to. He’s never been a good actor, and he’s most definitely never been able to hide anything from her for a long time. And seeing as this only grows stronger inside him the more he tries to suppress it, it isn’t going to stay a secret for long.

The one time he tried to sneak out of the house without her, she had completely panicked when he came back an hour later. To find Rosette curled up in his bed, nearly drowning in her own tears, crying so hard she was almost choking, had been enough to make him promise himself never to do that again.

He can’t run away. He has nowhere to hide from the shame and guilt. Every time he sees her and that blush creeps onto his face, he stumbles further down the path of sin.

He is lost. He knows it. Not that he’s ever been anything else; he’s a demon after all, and they are the damned creatures, but during the years with her, he’s managed to forget. Now it comes back full force, and he stumbled under the weight of everything that is wrong in his ruined existence about his own existence on his shoulders.

All he can do is to hope that it won’t taint her too. He prays for that, as they lay together in his bed – Rosette never went back to sleeping in her own after that night – he prays fiercely, for hours, every night, that it will not harm her soul. That his love will not take away her purity.

That he’ll be able to keep her safe from himself.

oooo

Two months passes, and the silence grows heavier around them. Chrono aches. He aches for Rosette, both mentally and physically. He knows that it is him who withdraws, but that doesn’t stop him from hurting, deep inside his nonexistent soul, in his very core. He can tell that Rosette is confused too, the looks she gives him is questioning him, pushing him to tell her what is wrong, but he stands his ground.

And of course, being Rosette, she can only stand it for so long.

“What is wrong with you?!” she yells one night, when he rises from the table, beginning to pick up his plate to move to the sink without a word. Chrono blinks, and stops, but he doesn’t move, he doesn’t answer.

He’s relieved. Time has finally come. Now he will have to tell her, and then she will throw him out, and he’ll finally be allowed to end this idiocy. To give her life back to her.

“Chrono! Look at me!” she says, standing. She walks around the table to stop in front of him. He looks down and shakes his head.

“Rosette… I’m sorry.”

“Why? What is it, Chrono? Why are you acting so weird?”

“I…” he swallows.

“What?!”

“I love you, Rosette,” he finally says, choking on the words as his throat tightens, his cheeks reddening, guilt burning so hot in his gut that he feels as if he’s going to throw up. So, there, he’s said it. It’s over.

Finally.

He doesn’t expect Rosette to grind her teeth in irritation as she places her hands on his shoulders and almost shakes him. “Well, I obviously know that already!” she bursts out. “Now tell me what’s wrong!

He looks up at her with wide red eyes. “That is what’s wrong!” he answers. “I’m not supposed to feel like this! I’m a demon, demon’s don’t love!”

“And therefore you, who does love, doesn’t have the right to either, just because you’re a demon?!” she shouts, her hands clenching on his shoulders.

“Not when it’s you I don’t!” he yells back, jaw tightening as he tries to shake her hands off. Rosette only grabs onto him harder.

“Why?!” she demands. “Why wouldn’t you have the right to love me?”

“You’re a saint, Rosette! Can’t you see that my love will taint you?!”

Her hands abruptly come to halt. She stares at him, her mouth hanging open in shock. Chrono looks up at her, meeting her gaze stubbornly.

Then suddenly, her eyebrows furrow in irritation, and she releases her grip on him. Now it comes, Chrono thinks, his heart clenching as he waits…

“You’re an idiot, Chrono,” Rosette says firmly, and then she leans forward and there are soft lips on his own, her scent fills his entire world and makes his head spin. At least he has the dignity to try and pull back at first, but she won’t have any of it. Pressing up against him, she doesn’t leave any room for an escape, and he feels his resolve break.

“Mmphette…!” Was that his imagination or did she just growl?

Rosette pulls back a little, gazing down at him with hooded eyes. “Don’t you understand that I don’t care about ‘later’, Chrono?” she asks in a low voice. “For us, there isn’t anything as ‘later’. Not anymore. So, please…” she leans forward, ghosting her lips over his again, “please, don’t withdraw from me. Please share this with me. Please, Chrono…”

How is he supposed to resist her pleading voice? How is he supposed to stop the flood now that she’s made a crack in the wall? It isn’t possible, he knows that, and so he gives in. He kisses her with an abandon that leaves them both breathless, and they’re panting when they part, panting and staring at each other’s as if they can barely believe what’s happening.

He’s still wondering if it’s all a dream, when they lay in their bad that night, and Rosette’s head is resting on his chest, his hands once again tracing lines up and down her back. In the background, he can hear the clock ticking, and he realizes that she is right. To them, there is no such thing as “later”. They only have each other’s, here and now.

And he wonders how he can feel so happy about that.

oooo

Owari

oooo

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