Beyond the ancient stone of the castle walls, the winds howl like wolves baying at the moon.
They pay no heed to the raging snowstorm.
The scope of their world is the confines of Shizuru's private study.
Ensconced between towering bookshelves and basking in the warm glow of the crackling fireplace, Natsuki rests, head cradled in Shizuru's lap. Shizuru hums, the lilting notes of an unfamiliar tune drawing Natsuki into a languid lull. Closing her eyes, Natsuki revels in the sensation of Shizuru stroking her scalp. She lets out a full-bodied sigh then, curled up and utterly content to bask in the moment.
When Shizuru chuckles in response, Natsuki can feel it ripple through her whole body like a wave. Soft and tinkling, the sound is like music to Natsuki's ears. Eyes still shut, Natsuki licks her lips, thoughts straying to the heated symphony from earlier. The moans and mewls, the thrilling crescendo of Shizuru's ecstasy rising up and up: just within her reach, just beyond her grasp.
Celestial music, Natsuki had thought, head in the clouds and heart in a vice.
She wants more of it now.
Desire seizes her, budding like champagne bubbles from deep within her core. She wants to carry her down to the fine silk carpets adorned with the sigil of Shizuru's esteemed house. She wants to claim her once more. What other breathtaking melodies could she draw from those lips?
How strange, whispers her trailing sense of reason. This hunger. This pining ache she cannot slake with control. Maybe ambrosia was not meant for mortals.
It should unnerve her, but all she feels is the trill of her want spurring her onwards.
When Natsuki opens her eyes though, her thoughts lose their footing when she spies a ring hanging by an elegant silver chain. It nestles in the dip of Shizuru's breasts, framed by the open white dress shirt she had carelessly thrown on. Natsuki hadn't noticed it before, far too absorbed with ridding Shizuru of her fineries and greedily exploring the expanse of pale, supple skin…
In an almost magnetic trance, Natsuki reaches out to gingerly cradle the item in her palm, soaking up its faint, residual warmth.
For a second, Shizuru's warm, honeyed eyes catch the glint of metal and gleam, haunting and bright. Natsuki stares, transfixed. It is hard not to notice how Shizuru's breath stalls in her throat at the sight, as if a dagger had been slid, past her ribs and into a lung.
(There is much about Shizuru that Natsuki still does not understand.)
When her query finally slips out, it is in a whisper, "an heirloom?"
"A keepsake," Shizuru answers, gentle as always, expression warm and eyes unreadable. "I must keep the memory close, you see. It is all I have left." With reverent affection, Shizuru clasps Natsuki's hand around the ring and presses it to her lips.
(She was an enigma. In their beginning, it was what spurred Natsuki onwards. Now, it feels like every morsel of knowledge she scavenges forms another fragment of their swan song.)
When Shizuru smiles against the back of her hand, Natsuki can see how her lips are still bruised from their earlier tryst. Good, Natsuki thinks. Chest tight, she lets go of the ring to splay her fingers against Shizuru's jaw and to press her thumb to Shizuru's lips. Natsuki tilts her head for a better view and savours the way Shizuru's rich brown eyes seem to glow red as she stares curiously back at her. Natsuki holds that gaze intently as her hands travel down the smooth, pale column of Shizuru's neck. Beneath her calloused hands, she can feel Shizuru swallow, can feel her pulse quicken in anticipation.
Natsuki has never considered herself a romantic, but in this brutal place of stone and snow, she feels the sharp pull to immortalise Shizuru as she is now: cast in the gold glow of the fireplace, with the rosy flush of her skin and the affection and longing plain in those caramel eyes. Ah... but Natsuki has never had the soul of a poet or an artisan... Too clumsy is she for such delicate undertakings. Let her roving hands be the brush instead, let her mind be the paper. She will have to make do with a haphazard sketch.
Shizuru shivers, helpless and pliant before her touch when Natsuki's fingertips brush against a hickey left over an old wound. Good… Natsuki thinks again and resists the urge to surge up and kiss her right then. Whatever ghost held Shizuru's heart… right here, right now, this dominion was hers, at least.
(Whispers Natsuki's heart this: Lowly hunter. Petty thief. You seek communion, yet all you can steal are moments in time.)
There is much about Shizuru that Natsuki still does not understand. There are scars on her skin that Natsuki has mapped with hands and soothed with her tongue: bullet wounds and stab wounds webbed and faded over time.
She retraces those steps now. An entire tapestry of stories lay bare before Natsuki's uncomprehending eyes…
How many times would it take for her to truly see?
(It wouldn't be enough, she knew, no matter how much time they had. It wouldn't be enough, even if they had forever and a day.)
There is much about Shizuru that Natsuki still does not understand.
The unspoken rules between them play out like a dance. Natsuki swallows her apprehension, afraid and uncertain about overstepping her bounds, of ruining the tempo that has allowed them to keep in step.
When at last Natsuki's palm rests above Shizuru's heart, she gathers the courage to speak.
"A memory… is that all I'll be to you?"
Shizuru tilts her head to the side and blinks slowly, entirely unprepared with how to answer. Her wavy chestnut tresses spill from over her shoulder and brush against Natsuki's hand. Natsuki waits with baited breath, waits for her heart to be ripped out, still-beating, from her chest.
"They say that want cannot be truly felt without absence." Shizuru says with a small, placid smile.
Inscrutable as always. A non-answer. Why did Natsuki ever expect otherwise? In response, Natsuki scoffs and pushes petulantly at Shizuru's chest with her palm, then turns away from her with a huff. Courtly pomp was all aristocrats were good for. And there it was again: that bemused chuckle. Natsuki hates how her cheeks flare red in embarrassment, hates feeling so at the mercy of Shizuru's whimsy.
She stands up abruptly, prepared to storm all the way down the corridors back to her quarters despite her state of undress. Let the sombre portraits of royals look upon her retreat with disdain. Let the castle servants titter and gossip.
It all happens in a rush. Shizuru has to reel back to avoid bashing heads with her. "Wait," Shizuru pleads as she makes to follow. "I'm sorry. Please! My hunter, l beseech you"—Shizuru grabs her wrist—"stay."
Natsuki tenses, then dips her head down.
At her feet lie carpets woven with regal gold and brilliant red: the twin lions, facing the world with their backs to each other. This is not a world in which she belongs. Natsuki thinks about the string of lovers in front and behind her and the knot in her chest pulls taut. She wishes otherwise, but her treacherous heart feels neither fury nor bitterness at this revelation.
"Don't call me that. I am yours as much as you are mine."
Shizuru's grip is firm, but gentle. Natsuki could pull away with ease if she so wished. Instead, she turns back to face Shizuru, her dark hair whipping about as she glares defiantly up at the taller woman. "Well, what is it, then?" She snipes. "Speak!"
"I… You will never be just a memory to me," Shizuru says, voice tender as her thumb traces placating circles on Natsuki's calloused palm. What expression was Shizuru wearing right then? Natsuki can't say. It hurts too much to look at her.
Why would she say that? Natsuki's skin burns where they touch. Her eyes itch. She will not cry, even now as she teeters on the brink between hope and despair: a fool to her bleeding heart.
"I don't have time for your games," Natsuki says tersely, her tone belying her exhaustion.
"You were never a game to me," Shizuru speaks softly as she cups Natsuki's cheeks. Gently, she coaxes Natsuki to meet her gaze. "My hunter, you are mine as I am yours, and never have I been so afraid."
Natsuki looks searchingly into Shizuru's eyes and sees no subterfuge, no profundity, just simple fact. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west; Shizuru yearns for her and fears it in equal measure. The kiss that follows is a tender admission that speaks as such.
Admittance is a form of surrender, in a way, Natsuki thinks giddily as they break apart. If they should face each other, let it be as this: with their weapons set aside and intentions laid bare.
How quickly Natsuki's temper unravels at the thought.
What a fool she is, to dream.
How far from home she has strayed. What would her dead say, unavenged as they are and bleeding into the earth where she buried them? Righteousness had spurred her to action then. Natsuki has not forgotten them, but what moves her now: she does not yet know.
"What will we do?" Natsuki asks, voice thick.
Shizuru looks away as if ashamed. "What we must. Our duty. When the snowstorm passes, you will conclude your hunt, as I will mine. I will not shackle you with my selfishness."
Natsuki scoffs and rolls her eyes. Duty and honour: they are high tenets she has been force-fed all her life. Her next words are sharp. She means for them to sting. "You speak of selflessness. It sounds like cowardice."
When Shizuru takes a step back in surprise, Natsuki presses forward. Her heart urges her onward, a tempestuous beast that will not be so easily cowed.
"Shizuru, we stand before each other: hunters both. I shall have a say in my own fate."
She expects Shizuru to flinch away at their proximity. She expects Shizuru to turn cold and cruel. Natsuki's brow furrows when instead the woman only tilts her head curiously, lips curling into an effervescent smile. "Always so expressive... Ever so defiant… I adore that about you." Shizuru murmurs, voiced filled with wonder as she reaches out to gently tuck stray strands of dark hair behind Natsuki's ear.
Her ears burn at the breath of air, and a chill shoots up her spine at the soft caress of lips when Shizuru continues. "You burn so bright, yet know so little. You stalk beasts, not man, do you not?"
Her tone remains even, but something stirs in Shizuru then, like an ancient and sinuous thing from the depths. She feels the weight of its gaze when Shizuru pulls back to look at her proper, and Natsuki has never felt so insignificant."Good hunter, do not presume to understand. The things I have seen… the things I have done…" The light playing over Shizuru's features paints a cruel picture. She wears a facsimile of a smile that does not reach her eyes. "There are depths of the soul no mortal should ever delve."
In the wake of her words, silence saturates the air, setting the stage before a predator pounces. On instinct, Natsuki's hands reach in vain for a weapon not at her side.
Natsuki had overheard the clipped tones and harsh whispers among the nobles at court. It was a dark path Shizuru walked, with a scalpel in one hand and a sword in the other. She had heard the rumors of the lives she had saved and the many she had reaped. Battlefields would bloom in Shizuru's wake, awash with color and ruin. They envied her power. They feared it. This creature of instinct, not decorum, is Shizuru too, a darker, baser part of her, but Shizuru all the same.
Shizuru could kill her if she so wished. Natsuki envisions this now as she stares into those ruby eyes: blood in the air, blood in her mouth. She imagines crossing swords with a being of profound beauty and devastation and falling to her blade. Would Shizuru hold her close as the color drained from her eyes?
The moment passes in a blink when Shizuru looks away from her. The bone-deep, paralyzing chill seeps from Natsuki's body in the same span of time she remembers to exhale.
There were certainly worse ways to die.
"The blood on my hands is not something I wish upon you, my hunter." Shizuru looks at her open palms, and smiles brokenly. "I am beyond the reach of salvation."
She steps away from Natsuki. Then, as if to guard from a sudden chill, she draws the rumpled, white shirt closed about her.
Natsuki's heart clenches in pain at the sight. She can hear her blood pounding in her ears. Her hands are still trembling ever so slightly, in exhilaration, in fear. They were living weapons both, but Shizuru talked as if she were something wretched and beastly.
Natsuki doesn't understand. What stood before her was a woman little older than her, broken and hurting. Natsuki had slain beasts enough to understand that Shizuru wasn't one. Beasts hurt indiscriminately. Killed indiscriminately. The fact that Shizuru wished her no harm was indicative enough.
Natsuki doesn't understand, but maybe she wasn't meant to. She was an outsider after all, a double-edged sword neither privy to their secrets, nor as shackled to their ideas of propriety.
Natsuki takes one step forward, then again. Slowly, so as not to startle with sudden movements. "Our quarry may differ, but I know enough from what I've seen. Beasts and man: when cornered, desperation breeds the same instincts in us all. I've seen you as you are. I know enough to understand that you don't have to walk alone in the dark." Natsuki had braced herself for rejection, but it still hurt when Shizuru flinched away when she reached for her.
"Natsuki… how brave and precocious you are to utter those words. You seek to decide your fate, but your eyes are still shut to the truth." Shizuru speaks and though she does not raise her voice, it is powerful enough to cut through the background din like a knife. "Good hunter, we are but flies caught in a web: mortal vessels to be used and discarded… For your sake, I pray you never truly understand."
Shizuru hails from nobility. It radiated outward, in her bearing, in her grace. Every fluid motion held meaning. It spoke of her stature. It spoke of her strength. Natsuki sees this now, from the rigid set of her shoulders, to her cold, cutting words. "You seek to follow me into the darkness, where things will get darker still." Shizuru's eyes catch the light of the fire and seem to glow with the same intensity that made Natsuki's heart thunder in her chest, all those nights ago. "Dear heart, you seek your ruin and I will not abide by it."
Again, she takes a step back.
Again, Natsuki presses forward. Closer now. The tempo between them picks up. Their noses barely brush. Natsuki must tilt her head up to meet those eyes. Careful now. If she falters, they will both be lost.
"If my path to ruin leads to you, I will it to happen. I claim no noble lineage. My mother forsook everything when she left. As she forged her own path then, so too shall I. If not now, then one day, when my eyes do see." Natsuki says resolutely. They are so close. She can feel the heat of Shizuru's body. "Wait for me, I bid you."
"You know not what you ask of me." Shizuru says softly, brokenly. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. She trembled, ever so slightly, as if cowed by the weight of her world.
Natsuki ached to comfort her. "I know enough of you to ask it." Natsuki leans up then, to cup her face in her hands and gaze into her eyes. "Who you once were, who you are now… whatever you will become: I want you. All of you."
"There will come a time you will be given a choice. The night will be long and the way to me treacherous. I pray instead that you keep away. I know enough not to hope." Shizuru says, resigned to their fate, and there is something in her cardinal gaze. It heralds a language that precedes mortal tongues. It moves like an unseen shape in the night.
Epiphany happens in a fleeting instant. Natsuki glimpses both clearly, the moon and its shadow: its gentle, glowing luminescence and dark, unfathomable depths. The things that Shizuru has done… the things she has seen… Insight is a profane revelation, Shizuru had told her once before. Sturdier vessels have been shipwrecked on this path. She knows this, yet it is too late for her to turn back, caught as she is in an undertow bent for the open sea.
The revelation is as startling as it is fleeting.
Natsuki blinks, and only wisps remain. On the wall behind, the shadow of Shizuru's regal figure looms tall and flickers against the light of the flames. Before her stood the woman she fell in love with. When tears start to bead at the corner of Shizuru's eyes like the makings of pearls, Natsuki peppers kisses to them, and to her forehead, then holds her close, fingers splaying against the back of her neck.
They pull back then to look at each other. There was still so much she did not comprehend, but here, now, Natsuki sees Shizuru… in all her divine splendor, in all her mortal frailty. If this was the road to perdition, then so be it, Natsuki decided. She surges up then, just as Shizuru leans down to kiss her, an oath sworn without the exchange of words.
They meet halfway, longing and desperation melding like their shadows against the wall.
Natsuki cannot help the trill in her heart even as a shiver runs down her spine.
Thank you for reading this strange lil story! It was supposed to be darker and more unsettling, but Natsuki "ride-or-die" Kuga had other plans. Do share your thoughts.
I've been trying to get back into writing so feel free to shoot me any Shizuru/Natsuki prompts. Can you guess which video game kicked my ass and inspired this?