Aiden's Random Drabble Thread

[Aiden]

For Science is the best reason for everything.

Plus, old stuff is gone for a reason. :V

Old stuff is gone because bullshit Nasu metaphysics. ^_^

Damnit stop pointing out the reason it was so fun to write that guy for the one little piece he was relevant for.

[Aiden]

Pretending

=============================

She knew he couldn't really love anyone.

He wasn't a bad person, overall, though he enjoyed bad things. He performed his duty to Allah, or God, or whatever it was Father liked to call their Creator. So she couldn't fault him his piety.

Aanisah knew this, because she saw caught him in the act one time.

There was no moon that night, so she needed a flashlight to see any detail in that hallowed ground. The antique stone was one of the few familiar materials for her, the closest thing to the walls of the desert cities. The darkness though... it was deeper than the streets she'd wandered, that she in her tiny body pretended at one point to have grown up in.

Still, unlike the alloys and and shining... shining... ah, she didn't have a word for that yet. Well, unlike those things, this reminded her of what they'd once called home: the fortress of Alamut. It was darker still, there, so a little girl like her had no reason to fear.

Shadow was her element.

The other familiar thing for her to pick up on were the screams. There was always someone screaming in the depths of the mountain, and every so often Father brought home a monster that knew something about others like it. Others hiding.

Things that, he'd told her, that the barest remaining fragments of the others told her, did not belong in a world dreamed of in the mind of the Creator.

... did that make them nightmares?

Did Allah have nightmares, too, the way she did? The way she knew Father did?

But what would God fear?

She knew what she was afraid of: isolation. She'd been severed, or she'd been the only one to survive... really, she could not recall. The shock took her months to recover from, and she'd lost so much in that time.

Too bad Father couldn't make her remember the way he did the monsters. That would have helped, maybe.

But he was a nice man, so he wouldn't hurt her like that.

When that thought made her smile, she kept her mask on so no one could see it.

--------------------------------------

She knew he could never really love someone.

He wasn't a bad person, overall, though he enjoyed bad things. Father taught her things, helped her piece together lessons she half-remembered learning in a different time, in a different place, as a different person. He kept the rest of the world from hurting her, that way.

Aanisah, when she was still recovering from the severing, made friends with the orphans who came. They were survivors of a fire, and would be leaving the monastery in a week. Father warned her that becoming attached would only hurt her in the end. Still, she insisted on playing with them.

She hadn't known any better at the time.

They thought she was weird, and gloomy, but she knew games with names they couldn't pronounce, knew tricks to get food and places they could hide that they'd never think of. When she didn't want to be found, she simply couldn't be.

Eventually, they began to leave.

One girl promised to write, but Aanisah never got a letter from her.

One little boy said he liked her, but he never came back.

She stopped caring so much after that, and eventually they all went away. There had been only one, who stayed the longest, but they never became friends with each other. They were both too quiet to start a conversation. It was nothing to do with being shy, and everything with having nothing to say.

Then she, too, left the monastery, and Aanisah was alone again.

It was then that the first of the lessons she'd forgotten returned: attachments not formed of blood are fleeting. The lesson hurt her, and he knew this; she knew that he knew, because she caught him suppressing his own joy at her pain.

Still... if that was the only way he could be happy...

She smiled behind her mask when she realized the flaw in that lesson: Father was still here with her.

Of course, she never let him see.

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She knew he could not truly love another living being.

He wasn't a bad person, overall, but he enjoyed bad things.

Still, he gave Aanisah so much. He brought her books to read when she was bored, and found recordings of the music she'd known while alive- no, when she was just a phantasmal imagining in the mind of the self whose soul had been split.

When she found out about something... 'parallel', and having something to do with the modern computer, she'd expressed an interest. He used what stipend he received to buy her a simple desktop model, something that would help her learn but not cost so much that he could not eat. Him, not her, because the only thing she really needed was the prana their contract still gave her. Normally that would be too much, but...

She explored the internet with it, and came to know the world that was always changing around her. The way her little body would not.

Because she was just a part, see? That was why he could support her without the Grail.

A piece, adrift in the world without her whole.

But Father was there to help her along, even when it hurt.

Especially when it hurt.

...

She was not deceived by him.

Kotomine Kirei was an abomination before the Creator, a mythic nightmare who existed to frighten the lesser nightmares of God. He knew only pain, and could enjoy only that in others.

That was why he was there for her when she needed him most. That was why he let her call him Father, because he was so very aware of how she felt, and knew exactly how much she knew of him.

Still...

Sometimes, when she hid her face behind that dreadful skull mask, she could smile.

She could pretend that he was really her father, and that it wasn't just his title as a priest.

Aanisah liked that, no matter how much it hurt to know she'd never really be his daughter.

She could always pretend.

--------------------------------------------

Aanisah sat in the center of the summoning circle, her mask in her lap, and let Father Kotomine see her gloomy face as he chanted.

She was going to become whole again, just in time for the War. She'd become part of the Aanisah that was pure, and fill the collective with her sentiments. With her knowledge, and her dreams.

It would hurt them, because they would care for him.

That was fine with her.

She knew one thing that she didn't have to pretend.

The skull mask went on as she reached out from behind to hold the ankles of the Old Man of the Mountain.

"Zabaniya."

She never had to pretend when it was so very, very true: those who lived in despair? Father could love them. People in pain made Kotomine Kirei happy.

Even as she felt the other nodes reach out to her, and felt herself supplant the Aanisah that would have been, felt the knowledge and gave them her own in turn, she could hide her smile behind her mask.

She wasn't in despair!

She wasn't alone, especially in this crowd that was herself, and Rashid, and Sayid.

Hassan-i-Sabbah

She was happy as long as he was there.

But for his sake, she'd hide it, so he could be happy too.

==============================================

This one was... fun?

I think fun was the word.

You also know why their Librarian of Stored Knowledge went up to C+ from C.

[Moczo]

Pretending
.

... the thing about Kirei caught me a bit off-guard. I was thinking 'Assassin, Assassin, Assassin' all throughout, then suddenly thought "Oh, I was wrong, it was about Kirei's dead wife".

But it really was Assassin.

This is how I know to always trust my first instincts on everything, forever.

[RadiantBeam]

...

Oh.

This.... this made me sad. Little chibi Assassin girl, let me hug you.

[Moczo]

...

Oh.

This.... this made me sad. Little chibi Assassin girl, let me hug you.

Well, she also like... by necessity, has killed a bunch of people, y'know. If that helps.

[Aiden]

Well, she also like... by necessity, has killed a bunch of people, y'know. If that helps.

You're trying to convince yourself as much as Beam, aren't you.

[Lycodrake]

Lost Hassan. ;___;

Aiden, that was wonderful but very sad. Good job.

[Aiden]

Her name, Aanisah, is a name for Muslim girls that means, possibly: Young lady, Maiden.

Because I'm so clever. Really.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

...this made me d'aaaaw and ;__; at the same time. I wanna give her a hug.

[Santo]

...Daaaawwwww (^c^)

*COUGH*

Good stuff Aiden, keep it coming.

[RadiantBeam]

Well, she also like... by necessity, has killed a bunch of people, y'know. If that helps.

That makes it worse!

[Aiden]

...this made me d'aaaaw and ;__; at the same time. I wanna give her a hug.

Kotomine is the one who kept her from being Lost.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

What a papa...

And then I remember its Kotomine we're talking about, here. Then I feel conflicted.

[RadiantBeam]

Kotomine is somehow the best father in the world.

[KooriRenchuu]

He enjoys suffering, he lets you stew in the mistakes you have made and you learn better than to do what got you in the stew.

[Aiden]

Kotomine is somehow the best father in the world.

To an adopted child, no less.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

This really is an AU! :O

[Kyte]

There's something disturbingly heartwarming about a girl pretending to be sad so her parental figure can be happy too.

[Aiden]

There's something disturbingly heartwarming about a girl pretending to be sad so her parental figure can be happy too.

They were together ten years like that, too.

[Kyte]

They were together ten years like that, too.

Like I said, disturbingly heartwarming.