by Kelsey
Disclaimer: If I owned X, this would be canon.
Warnings: Nonsensical strangeness and non-explicit sex. How's that for a warning?
Notes: And thus a four-month project comes to a close. Huge thanks to Xyn, the awesomest beta reader who ever did awesome, without whose encouragement I never would have finished. I also thank the music of Joan Osborne and Tori Amos. And now that I'm done with the thank-yous, enjoy the fic. :)
Way down in the hollow, leavin' so soon
Oh, St. Teresa, higher than the moon
Just what I been needin', feel it rise in me
She said, "Every stone a story, like a rosary."
--Joan Osborne, "St. Teresa"
Tokyo was made of dust and ash and pain; slabs of concrete and pale pools of flickering light. When the sun shone, it did so behind a sky like a dirty window, caked with the grime of thousands of years. Maybe her second Kamui had been right, maybe humanity deserved this. Maybe by winning, humanity really lost.
Lost. Two meanings to the word, and she was both of them. All of them. The literal and the metaphoric collided like cars, like two tears merging into one long track of salt and water. Where am I going, what am I doing, why could I not follow him into death? The last time she cried was a month ago, an eon, a veiled velvet curtain over a corpse, a dead boy, a ghost she pursued in memory and dream. The air around her screamed with unvoiced pain.
She stumbled and was suddenly aware that it was raining, pouring hard enough to drown all the lovers in the world, send them together to icy watery graves. The rain was dirty and left gray smudges on her tattered school uniform. Water soaked through the holes in her shoes as she tramped through puddles, ducked through crowds, found her way to the first relatively intact building she could find. Shelter. Shelter from the storm. But she was the storm, a fettered storm, a caged thing in long bones and flesh.
Legs folded like a ballerina's poised to leap, and she stared up at the ceiling, at the soft candlelight. Had she eaten since he died? Always her way, eat nothing in the face of terrible grief, must find another reason to eat, to live, to wait to die. She felt translucent, liquid, strange and emotionless as a jellyfish, the wet black strands of her hair pressing against her back, cold trickles of water down her neck.
"Arashi?"
A name. Two. Hers and hers, but which was which and what was what? She knew this woman, could put a name to her if only she could focus, could make out something besides the blurred outlines of dark clothes and red curls. A melodious voice, its measured cadences more cocooning than a caterpillar's haven. She could hide inside that voice, dissolve into nothingness, sink into blissful coma.
It was hard to hear around the beauty of promised safety; the woman was saying something, about how terrible she looked and how she was coming to her apartment, right away, and please would you look at me, can you get up, are you hurt, are you sick. She wanted to tell her that yes, she was sick, mortally so, eternally afflicted with life. But only a raven's croak emerged, and then she coughed.
Her body swung in a crazy arc as she felt herself being lifted, colors streaking over her eyelids in the most psychedelic of fashions, and then the remnants of a stained glass window jarred into clarity, blue lumps of glass eyes boring into hers, a nose, a mouth, an arm and a half, two legs, a torso with one breast missing. A candle hissed as a raindrop flew through one of the numerous cracks in the remaining glass and found its target. Sweet smoke curled around the wounded woman's face.
"Karen-san," she said aloud, and then slipped back into semi-consciousness. Murmurs floated by, brushing softly against her skin, this isn't right, you shouldn't be light enough for me to carry you so easily, you're too thin, too warm, I have medicine in my apartment, you're staying in bed. An umbrella folded up and out, and the rain ran down it like fingernails on a chalkboard, like a cat's claws over fabric. She wondered if it was ripping or if it was just her imagination again, her mad, broken, sick imagination.
"Karen-san."
"Hush. Don't tire yourself."
Doors dully opened and shut, clickthud clickthud, ceiling overhead, and then the softness of bedsheets, more candlelight. Electricity is expensive these days, and I have a different job, you don't mind the candles, do you, Arashi, you need to sleep before you take a bath, here, take your medicine, good girl, go to sleep, pleasant dreams.
Karen blew out the candles, and Arashi slept.
Then came a long time of hallucinations, of fever-induced dreams, of calling out a name that made Karen's eyes well with tears and her lips form a painful smile. Cool hands on her forehead, hot soup ladled into her uncaring mouth, sweaty and twisted bedsheets. These three things were real in the labyrinthine nightmare of blood and dead boys and blind dolls. There was ever the temptation to stop eating, but that would be an insult to Karen's hospitality, and most of the time she was too delirious to realize she was being fed, anyway.
Yet there was something infinitely appealing about her maze of half-phantasms and coiling dreams; she buried herself in it, losing herself among its passages. Labyrinth. She remembered reading the story, thousands of years ago. If a monster came for her, she would sigh and submit and be blissful as it rended her limb from limb. If she bled enough, perhaps her hands would be clean again.
But her own patient Ariadne lingered still, creating a silken trail of kind words and orange juice and pale medicine tablets, and she followed it out, to emerge cringing and shivering in the full light of day, for better or for worse, no longer in sickness but in health.
She became aware of light; it flooded her dim first impression of the apartment, suffused it with sunshine. Pale rose-colored candles scattered in silver candleholders about the room, white walls, white ceiling, a dark floor. An elderly red armchair in one corner, a white-doored closet in the other. A dresser scattered with makeup and hairbrushes and other things for making yourself pretty; Arashi had never been interested in those sort of things, no one had ever said she was a pretty child, though he--he said she was beautiful. But now there was no one to be beautiful for.
She sat up, frowning at the weakness of the motion, and took in the futon spread on the floor, the American-style double bed she lay in, white sheeted, a pale pink bedspread patterned with tangles and snarls of roses. She staggered out of bed and opened the closet doors, seeing endless rows of pretty clothes hung up neatly, a shoe rack filled with elegant shoes of every type. The sensation of displacement pursued her, sank its teeth into her neck.
This is not my home.
A door creaked; she tensed, fumbling for a sword that was no longer there. Karen, dressed all in black despite the bright spring sunshine that lent a premature heat to the day, looked surprised and pleased in the doorway, her arms encircling a brown paper grocery bag. "Arashi! You're feeling better." A smile broke like dawn across her face. "I'm glad."
She said nothing, stood trembling in a simple white cotton nightgown, a strange childish garment for a lady like Kasumi Karen to own. She gripped one smooth knob on the closet door, held onto it as if its sheer solid presence could anchor her to the world, this floodlit place of snow white and rose pink. Snow and roses. She could die in here. The thought flowered unexpectedly in her mind, transfixing her. Dying here. Yes. Somehow deeply appealing. The cold of snowfall kissing her limbs, sweet pink roses twining over her corpse. Death by beauty.
"Arashi?"
Freezing to death, choking on the scent of roses, bones cracking with ice and her face red from suffocation. Buried under an avalanche of snow and petals. There was no point in living, no lines or angles or any geometric figure whatsoever, the area of a triangle was one-half its base time its height, the volume of a pyramid was trickier, she could calculate the shape of her kekkai except she couldn't make one, now or ever, so nothing mattered at all.
Her hand released the doorknob, let go of rock solid reality; she dived into the sea of insanity, insani-sea; she went under with hardly a splash or bubble, without a ripple of protest.
Mermaid in her element, she righted herself, faced the woman gone pale in the doorway. "I'm awake, Karen-san," she said, stating the obvious, watching the bubbles of her words float incandescent to Karen's ears, where they popped and released their sound. Karen mouthed something else, but she had to wait for the bubbles to get back to her, except a few floated past her entirely, so she caught only the sound of her voice but not its meaning. So easy to hear without listening, without understanding. She could die here...
Hands grasped her shoulders, long-fingered hands tenuously strong as they were lovely, and Karen had lovely hands, lovely, lovely. You're still sick get back in bed Arashi look at me do you want me to call a doctor they told me it was only a cold but maybe you need a hospital Arashi Arashi Arashi?
"I'm drowning," Arashi replied, "I'm dying."
Underwater roses, a glacial mermaid, her refuge, her death, her non-life.
She built herself a cage, called it a haven.
"I'm dead."
The waters closed over her head, and she, willing victim, floated comfortably in darkness, disdained any lifelines, sought instead a deathline, a thin black thread to hang herself from. Healthy of body, unsound in mind. She traced wrinkle pictures on the sheets of the bed in the room she could die in, and her eyes traced pictures in the bumps on the ceiling, and the sunlight made patterns over everything.
Water-filtered words of concern sometimes trickled into her ears, but they, treacherous things, always slid back out of her consciousness, drifting up and up to the surface, where she could no longer reach them. Sometimes Arashi tried to speak, but what emerged made no sense, was borne away by drifting currents, too far away for anyone to hear. Karen watched her, and fed her, and brushed her hair, and once cried when she thought Arashi was asleep, only the violent quivering of her body giving her away. Saltwater not part of her own ocean intrigued Arashi, but she could not find the droplets, though they surely must have floated past.
She lay on the bed for a month, a hundred years, three days, waiting to die, before she killed anyone else, dragged yet another victim to a watery grave, she the screaming siren, death to all sailors of uncharted waters.
I could die here.
"Arashi."
From below she watched a foam-crested wave glide over the no-longer glassy surface of her sea, and Karen's single word, one-two-three syllables, carried undertones of a changing tide. She rolled over on the bed, expecting a red-haired woman and a tray of food to greet her, and instead came nose-to-nose with a small gray kitten, who sniffed her inquiringly and then wandered off, exploring the wide expanse of the bed.
But kittens drown underwater.
Don't they?
This one, curling up in a dusty patch of light, let out a sneeze, a tiny baby sound, and Arashi's breath caught in her chest; the sound was clear, traveling through air to ear, beautiful. Girls slowly drowning should not hear such small noises at all, certainly not with such astounding clarity. She was on her side floating, one ear up and out of her ocean. She lifted a hand out of the water, stretched it across time and space to touch the kitten's soft fur, to feel it stretch so its head could be more easily petted, and the sound of purring drowned out even the crashing waves.
"It hasn't drowned," she said wonderingly, and the sea ebbed further.
"I thought you two would understand each other," Karen said with a smile, and then left the room.
But her kindness stayed, her kindness stayed to burn up the last of the sea, and it hissed and boiled and frothed and steamed itself away, leaving nothing but mountains and mountains of salt, which blew away in the wind like ancient tears.
At least her room to die in could not crumble; it was not a sandcastle to be worn down in the work of a few hours. Yet the snow was melting, her comfort blanket of cold puddling around her, leaving her naked and exposed to the soft spring air. Frightening. Exhilarating. She trailed a thin ribbon to entice the kitten and then walked around, lighting candles as she went. She had to use matches.
She could smother her face in a candle, melt like wax and find oblivion, but death by fire somehow did not have the appeal of death by drowning, and she had already forsaken a watery grave. She drew the curtains to shut away the streetlights, harsh and incongruous with the night and season, and then paused, her gaze falling on a row of framed photographs, so neat on top of a tiny bookshelf.
Aoki Seiichirou and a slim dark-haired woman, a laughing little girl with blonde hair that would soon darken with age. Picture after picture, each one with the little girl looking a little older and the parents unchanged. Aoki-san beamed in the safety of the frame, the radiance of his and his daughter's smiles nearly overwhelming the quiet beauty of his wife's.
"He sends pictures with his letters. Aoki-san is very happy," Karen said softly, coming up behind her and touching one polished nail to a frame. "Things worked out for him."
Husband, wife, daughter. Arashi wondered if Karen had ever dreamed of it; certainly she herself had never dreamed of fulfilling the role of either wife or daughter. Daughter she had been, but so long ago as to barely remember it, and as for wife... She never had time to meet boys in the secluded life of a shrine maiden, never encouraged them when at last she began to attend school in Tokyo. Dragons were not beautiful, dragons did not fall in love, and she was dragon in bone and blood and heart, the first Seal to appear to the Kamui of Heaven. The joy of feeling beautiful had flared brilliantly, died just as quickly, a gout of blood across her hands. Dragons destroy knights come to rescue maidens, even if maiden and dragon are one person...
The world had grown confused and blurry again, so Arashi stopped thinking, inhaled the warmth and drowsiness of the air, the heady scent of Karen's nearness, lightly scorched vanilla and the beating of butterfly wings. Redemption by fire. A phoenix sunburst of hair. The echoes of long-lost love pressing down the corners of her full mouth, pooling in the rich gold-brown of eyes. The way her pretty fingers lingered on the picture frame.
A pang of sorrow pressed at Arashi's heart, sorrow for a person other than herself, a healing feeling for all its dull pain. Plenty of affection for the wives, the daughters, the mothers, but no love for the lovers, the lunatics. Women cut adrift from their heart's desires, groping blindly for purchase in a cold and unfeeling world. More cold, more unfeeling; earthquakes had cracked everybody's compassion, shattered the foundation of human kindness with the foundations of so many other essential buildings. Was this, then, what her first Kamui had sought to uphold?
And yet she knew of at least one woman that had retained her essential goodness, one who could still light candles by entering a room. No worms of jealousy and deceit gnawed at her warm heart; they would not dare to; her light would burn them away. This woman, this woman who had rescued her from sicknesses of all sorts, this woman who loved a married man, this woman who knew she could never have him. Arashi felt an ache below her breastbone. She was not, after all, the only being in the universe to have known suffering, grief, despair.
But she still needed matches to light candles.
Karen's hand drifted back to her side, and then she turned to focus on the kitten, now hopelessly ensnarled in the ribbon. She laughed and murmured, "I think she needs rescuing."
Arashi watched her, wondering whether she could learn that sort of fire.
She could get lost in the way Karen moved her hands, and sometimes missed snatches of conversations, which made the lady worry until it was certain that no other signs of madness were appearing. Or maybe this was a different sort of insanity, a spring fever flushing her skin, the barest tracings of her own inner fire.
"You need something to wear besides my old nightgowns," Karen announced one morning, finishing the last of her toast and dusting the crumbs from her fingers.
Arashi blanched, imagined setting foot out of the comfortable haven of her room, her death room, a place to die if not call home. "These things are fine." She pulled the still-nameless kitten into her lap, stroked the soft gray fur. It tensed for a moment, debating whether to pounce on her fingers, and then relaxed, purring mightily. Kittens were easy to please; all they wanted was love.
"Arashi, you can't mean that." Karen's voice was reproachful, as if she expected all girls to have the desire to be pretty, and to wear pretty things. Had she ever been like that? She couldn't remember. Her past was a Monet painting mercilessly lashed by rains, all colors running, any artistry destroyed beyond repair. Karen continued, voice gentle, "Besides, the kitten needs food, and a collar. You can pick it out if you like."
Bribery. Arashi wanted to laugh and laugh until her throat bled with the noise and warm red liquid pooled in her lungs, but instead she pulled at the hem of her nightgown, Karen's nightgown, the garment of lost girls everywhere and nowhere all at once. "It's not easy." The words burst from her, balloons of resistance punctured, the hissing air escaping in the form of words. "It's not easy, Karen-san."
Pretty fingers lingered over her own (such attention-drawing hands, and the lady didn't even wear rings, not a ruby or diamond or wedding ring to be seen) and then flinched away, suddenly. "I know it's hard. But please. Please."
She knew what it was to refuse a savior, though arguably her second Kamui was one as well. She knew what it was like to deny the final sacrifice of a boy, just a boy but still the boy, the boy who was so loud and so obnoxious but one blazingly hot day folded origami animals to decorate everyone's rooms. Maybe the cranes flew away when he died, maybe the tigers left for jungles unknown, or perhaps the Tokyo jungle, screaming metal and choking air. It wasn't spring outside; it was winter, winter forever, in this cold clear whiteness, winter and roses, the slightly bitter taste of icy weather and the overwhelming sweetness of roses.
She didn't want the kitten to die, though, and the snows and flowers would reluctantly recede whenever she held the little body close. "Tora," she said aloud, reaching down to pet the kitten again, running her fingers all the way from its head to the tip of its tail.
"What?" Karen, expecting a refusal, hoping for an acceptance, did not at first make the connection.
"Her name is Tora," explained Arashi, careful to avoid the clutch of cold and thorn. A frigid breeze hissed through baby soft petals, poisonous in the still air of the apartment. A different sort of chill touched her breastbone; she knew above all things that she did not want this kitten to die, that it was strangely important to allow this one small gray thing to live.
A low sound, a laugh not quite fallen out of practice, rich and red not with blood but wine. "A good name for a cat, I think. Certainly a very common one." Karen leaned forward in her chair, eyes glittering in an almost tigerish way herself. "But surely there must be more."
Briefly Arashi wondered if all people did this, gleaned scraps of some deeper meaning, some purpose, from the most commonplace of things. Simple decisions given the heavy weight of significance, of symbolism. The curve of her hand around the handle of a teacup; did that mean she sought warmth but needed an easily breakable shell to keep from being burned? Burned. Karen could light her like a candle if she crept too near; she had the feeling that she was just a moth after all, a small dusty thing slinking and shrinking too close to the beautiful unreachable. She wanted to cry out, to scream that it was just a name, nothing more, nothing less, a name for a pet and that was all. The words trembled on the edge of her lips and then fell back, to be swallowed and consumed and no more. Arashi remained silent.
"I'm going shopping right now," Karen said at last, rising to her feet, stood statuesque, a Greek goddess, Aphrodite and Athena and a touch of the hearthfires of Hestia, beauty cast in something infinitely softer than marble. She looked now as if she belonged in a ruined temple by a crashing sea, pale white columns still rising to an infinite sky blue.
"Are you coming?"
"Yes," answered Arashi, over the crack of ice and the still-ominous rustle of roses.
The water was hot and burned almost like fire, but with none of its crackling promises of redemption. She washed her hair first, movements crisp and efficient and so very like the way she used to move, back when she had metal in her arm to balance out her body, all her awkward teenage non-grace. Soapsuds trailed down to the shower floor, fragrant little puffs like snow--no, like clouds.
The bottle of shampoo fell to the tile with a muted thud, and the shower spat and hissed with water not quite hot enough to burn.
It didn't seem right, somehow, this ability to make herself clean. Books and plays and countless pieces of art had been built on the concept that hands once stained with blood would bear its red evermore, yet her hands seemed lily white as always, untouched by the sun and the life of a boy; the sense of not right escalated as she realized this. Her entire body should be crisscrossed with streaks of blood, her hands dripping with gore. She should have been unable to wear clothes for fear of ruining them, should have to stand naked and damned and vulnerable beneath the aching sky as crows picked at her prone form.
And still her hands were white. Not quite soft; her swordswoman's calluses had not yet faded, despite the months that had passed since she had handled a weapon. She pressed both hands to her collarbone, felt the drum of her heart under the base of her palm. Alive. She was alive, a murderess, a lost girl. Alive to feel the press of moist skin against skin and the spray of water against her back and hard tile beneath her feet. She reached for the soap, and it did not slip from her fingers.
"Sorata-san."
The name rose to her lips, a sound that could barely be heard for all the steam of the shower. A sob rose in her throat, a ragged exhalation of his name once more, and the tears left melting tracks down her cheeks, hot and and hurting and in some inconceivable way wonderful, like being born. She drew long trails of soap over herself, rinsed it all away, wept for the boy--Arisugawa Sorata--that she had killed merely by existing. The tears did not rinse with the soap; there were always more to replace them, a neverending stream. The boy who broken open the floodgates, shattered them with a smile and with a kiss and finally with blood--Arisugawa Sorata.
"Sorata-san..."
Her legs were clean now, slicked by the fall of tapwater, and it was so hard to breathe around the sound and shape of the boy's name, his name, the name of the boy who loved her, loved her, loved her a thousand times and yet not nearly long enough, a million wasted yesterdays echoing his name--Arisugawa Sorata. Just a boy, a boy strange and wonderful and peculiar, a boy she loved with teeth and bone and sinew, a love strong enough to bear the weight of one dead boy, the dead boy--Arisugawa Sorata.
Her voice caught on his name, and this time did not finish it.
She should be dead.
Soap-laden fingers came once more to rest on her collarbone, and still her heartbeat persisted, though she shouldn't have expected anything less, out of her room to die in and tucked away from the fall of snows and rose petals. Anger replaced grief, and now she choked on a scream rather than a name, and her fingernails drew glaring red lines over soft white skin, roses blossoming on snow, and they were beautiful, beautiful. Again Arashi raised her hands to look at them, and saw to her disappointment no blood, only tiny bits of old gray skin caught underneath her fingernails, and that washed away with everything else.
She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, so to drown it out she turned off the water.
It didn't take long to towel off, to return to her room to die in. Excursions were things to be feared, to be undertaken only when the gain far outweighed the loss. She dressed quickly, in a plain gray skirt and something dark red Karen had insisted on, then sat down to brush her hair dry.
In a distant corner of her mind, she wondered if old skin around the heart came away as easily.
It was a grisly sunset, all streaks of copper and smears of red, the purpling of bruises in the corners of the sky. Like a ravaged woman curling in on herself, the sky deepened and darkened and dimmed, and no stars came out. The thin tracings of a moon glimmered behind clouds.
Arashi did not turn around as the door clicked open, then shut again, too busy with her contemplation of the heavens, wondering if she could drift up and be lost in them, vanish into smog. Perhaps it would be better to die in midair, in the cool of dusk, than shut away in a room. Perhaps. Behind her she could sense the pale ice of roses.
"I'm sorry I'm late."
It was then she turned, took in the lady in the wan waitress' dress, faced the chill garden of her room to die in. It didn't seem right for Karen to exist in such a space, she so full of life, she who bloomed and lit fires in the dark. Even in the half-light her hair was bright, and as she turned towards the closet, unbuttoning her work clothes, Arashi watched and wondered what her garden looked like. Karen had tan lines, a curiousity to someone as pale-skinned as Arashi, and there were the long legs, the narrow waist, the lacy black of a bra and the fullness of breasts. The room was dark now, so Arashi struck a match, lit a candle without being burned.
"Arashi!" The startled gasp had only a trace of indignance.
Blushing cheeks seemed oddly incongruous on a former Soapland girl, and Arashi's brow creased in puzzlement. "Yes?" Belatedly she realized that she had been staring, and she clasped her hands together in embarrassment, raising them up to conceal her face. How very impolite of her, how unlike her! Still, strange that Karen seemed to be embarrassed as well... and with a wave of her hand, Karen lit the rest of the candles in the room, threw a warm glow over everything.
The forgiving smile hurt in some indescribable way. "It's all right. You didn't mean anything by it." Out of the closet came a breezy nightgown, cream-colored, and Karen pulled it over her head, straightened it, blew a stray curl out of her eyes. "Besides, I imagine I'm nothing much to look at right now, anyway. All of my makeup's been smudged off by now, I'm sure."
Arashi sat down on the bed.
Clothes in the laundry hamper, shoes put away neatly in the closet. Karen was thinner than she had been when she first met her, stretched out and worn thin in places, a candle being burned at both ends. Shadows underneath her eyes, the result of too little sleep and too much worry. Lips not lipstick red but instead a tired pink, and Arashi had a moment of sudden, violent hope that it was only twilight that made her appear this washed out, only twilight. No, no, it was she who was decaying, who was dying. Karen couldn't leave, couldn't die, couldn't wither and fade. She had to go on, to save the world after saving humanity, after saving one lost girl. No, still in the process of saving. She couldn't leave her. She needed her. Some lights were never meant to burn out, something had to light the way home.
Selfish.
The word rang so loud in her room to die in that at first she thought it had been spoken aloud, that she had last torn Karen's goodness to shreds and she could no longer stand such a person in her apartment. Who was she to need this woman, when the last time she had needed she had returned nothing but death? She gave Karen nothing, was another burden, a charity case for a worker of quiet miracles. She glanced down at the roses on the bedspread, and they swam before her eyes. Cold. It was so cold. She should leave, she should get away, she should save Karen.
Coward.
How bizarre, that she lacked the courage even to run away, lacked the strength and stamina of will. Her room to die in: prison or haven or a touch of both? Or neither? She couldn't imagine why Karen kept her here. Surely she had her own needs and wants. She had never asked for this, to spend all of her time catering to a half-mad girl, one of the living dead. She couldn't even sleep in her own bed; Arashi watched her lay down on her futon, dimming the candles with a brief frown of concentration.
Now.
The words were difficult to push out; such talk was alien to her nature and she wasn't much used to speaking besides. And yet, she spoke to offer the only thing she could:
"You're beautiful."
Grocery shopping. The sheer delightful mundanity of the phrase played itself over and over in Arashi's mind, a tuneless little tune that she was almost but not quite tempted to give voice to. But her voice was not lovely, not like Karen's; she had heard her singing along with a CD once, voice soaring, aching, sweet. It had been a hymn of some sort, a hymn written in a tongue she had been unable to recognize, though certain words sounded disconcertingly familiar.
Normally Arashi preferred to take the stairs, relishing the feel of her moving body, but the grocery bags were heavy and she followed Karen into the dingy elevator, leaning against the wall as the door slid shut and Karen pressed the button for their floor. Their floor. Arashi supposed in some small way that the apartment was now hers, its energies attuned to her own, some small piece of herself permeating the aura of the rooms. Still, she shouldn't be thinking of any part of it in proprietary terms; her room to die in was a means to an end, nothing more, and as for the rest--nothing. It all belonged to someone else, and she just a guest, an intruder, some strange combination of both.
"Here, I'll put the groceries away. You look tired." A hand absently smoothed Arashi's hair and then withdrew, as if its owner were embarrassed by the gesture. Karen needn't have been; Arashi didn't mind. The smile she flashed at her was quick and hesitant but nevertheless conveyed both that sentiment and that she was grateful for the opportunity to rest. It had been a long day, a long, hot day. At least the rainy season would be here soon. Behind her she could hear Karen pouring cat food into Tora's dish, and Arashi smiled as she made her way across the kitchen.
The bedroom door swung open at her touch, and all at once she could hardly hear over the hiss of ice slipping off rose petals.
Where have you been you are dead you do not belong out there you belong here you must not leave you cannot leave you belong here you are here you must be punished
Cold. She fell to her knees, it was so cold; her bones ached with it and she could feel tears freezing to her cheeks. The garden-laced glacier of her fear towered above her and she cowered before it, powerless and prostrate. Somehow the overwhelming ice of it all did not frighten her as the roses did; they writhed across the bedspread, thorns bristled to seek blood. Her blood. Death in her room to die in.
She should welcome this.
She would die on her knees, leaning forward, palms digging into the floor, body and mind quaking with terror. Was this what it had been like for him--for Sorata--this sense of pervading doom, this nauseating, soul-fraying fear? A breathless half-cry hung pale and white in the chill air, a frozen cry for--what?
You left you are dead you are not alive you are dead you are dead YOU ARE DEAD
The ashes of her afternoon fell around her, the remnants of a fire abruptly banked. Already she could feel the last traces of warmth flickering out, away, gone south for the winter. Her eyes squeezed shut, she sobbed, rocking back and forth, and though she could not see anything, she could hear everything, everything, the bone-gray of approaching death. The perfume of roses was overwhelming, and she gagged on her tears, heaving without ever managing to vomit. Bile soured the back of her throat.
Gasping, frantic, she sought the depths of her sea, but she passed over it as if over the surface of a lake in winter, though she knew that oceans did not freeze over completely, that there had to be some way in, but she could not find one and, helpless, she beat her fists against the ice in frustration, scraping her hands bloody, and though she screamed and screamed inside her own mind, the only utterance that made it past her lips a ragged exhalation of breath. He had not died like this.
She would not die like this.
She opened her eyes and saw the thorns' sharp points and wanted to run out of the door, flee to somewhere far away where roses wilted and withered in the heat and ice could never survive. She could leave here, never again to return to Tokyo, hide away somewhere and drift through the remainder of her years, a half-dead purgatory of her own making. She shuffled backwards on her knees, then let out a low moan of despair. No. He would not have lived this way.
And Karen... should not be alone.
Swaying, she climbed to her feet.
die die die you are dead you must be so you are dead you are dying at this moment
Stumbling, half-falling as she caught her foot on the dresser and slammed her hip into the wall, her fingers scrabbled for the little book of matches. Light a fire in the dark. Fire, the only weapon against winter and against death and against her own madness. Fire, her only ally, incandescent red curls and warm golden eyes that burned from without and within and made her burn, too, burn with her own sort of fire. If death found her, she would go boldly towards it, a witch and a heretic to be burned at the stake but never, never a cowering, petrified victim.
And yet her resolve still faltered at the scent of roses, at their overwhelming pinkness and the ferocious brown of their thorns. They would tear her to shreds. The thin vestiges of soul still remaining to her would be torn beyond repair, and she would fall away into oblivion.
die die die die die DIE
One hand around the canister of hairspray, one finger squeezing down as if upon the trigger of a gun, the hiss of liquid like that of escaping steam, the promise of heat. One match fell to the ground, snapped in half, and then one lit, a bright little flowering of flame, and the roses screamed and screamed and Arashi was screaming too, out loud this time, as the garden went up in a brilliant crackling of twigs and the mushier sizzle of dying petals; flowers curled and browned sank to the unforgiving ground, finding refuge from the flames only in death.
"Arashi!"
She was dragged from her incandescent death garden in a blur of concern and confusion, and it was not until her hands were thrust under running water that she saw the burn marks marring the soft white skin. White. A nervous giggle rose to her lips as she saw that the fire had burned the blood staining her hands away, and the sound shifted to tears, a rush of water so hot she at first thought she had burned her face as well. Her hands had risen phoenixlike from the flames and here she was now, living, still herself yet irrefutably transmogrified.
Karen reentered the kitchen, curls disheveled and visibly trembling. "You destroyed the bed! What were you thinking?" She crossed the short distance between them, looking as though she wanted to shake Arashi, too angry and upset to notice the tears on the girl's face--and then she paused, biting her lip and turning away. "Never mind."
"I was thinking," Arashi began, and then choked on a sob, only the strange wonder of her hands motivating her to proceed further, to stumble gracelessly into Karen's ready and smoke-scented embrace, to bury her face against one comforting shoulder and confess aloud, "I want to live, I want to live..."
Soft sounds of traffic intermingled with the light tapping of rain on the roof, and Arashi rolled over, watching the water stream down the windowpane. Perhaps the agonizing humidity would fade, though it didn't seem likely. And that wasn't so bad--the scent of smoke still clung to the bedroom walls, and it was easier to sleep with the windows open. She played with her bedsheet, wrinkling it up and then smoothing it out again, and then forced herself to still. She had deprived Karen of a bed in more ways than one and would not rob her of sleep as well.
Rain. She closed her eyes, focused on it, but felt neither the mere lethargy of sleep nor the serenity that accompanied meditation. Next to her, Karen rolled over, and the fragile glass structure of her concentration went to pieces with a crash more distracting than her earlier restlessness. Gleaming shards pointed sharply to the odd but not unpleasant warmth all of this brought, but did not care to define "all of this" for her, having neither the resources nor the inclination. Arashi shifted away but could only go so far, the futon really not having been made for two.
Her fingers absently found her pulse; she had developed the habit after her hands' burning, wondering at their renewed life. Tonight her pulse was slightly erratic, faintly off rhythm with each beat. Or it could simply be her imagination, searching for what it expected and, failing to discover anything, inventing it. Never mind that she had never been prone to wild flights of fancy, and at this she abruptly flung the bedsheet away, without thinking of the possibility of waking Karen. On her knees, she moved the scant inches forward to rest her head against the cool of the glass door.
Enough of this. All of this. Whatever that meant.
Still more or less pressed against the glass, Arashi rose to her feet, staring out at Tokyo, its still-jagged wounds and harsh lines washed and softened by the rain. Reflected in the glass were long legs, a ghost-white nightgown, the suggestion of vibrant curls. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that she had uncovered Karen as well in her haste to get out of bed, and with a small sigh, turned and knelt beside her, pulling the sheet back over, then sank back into a cross-legged position, watching the sleeping woman.
She wanted to live, now, but what did it mean?
Her instincts told her that it had something to do with Karen, with her own personal savior, in her own way as much a Messiah as her first Kamui had been. Did it mean, then, that she was to live for Karen, making of her life what Sorata had made of his death? The comparison gave her pause; she did not think that the other woman needed anyone to live for her--she did her own living. And she certainly did not need anyone to die for her, and Arashi felt hopelessly muddled again, incapable of puzzling out what "living" meant. What made it difficult was that she had never known what it was to live in the first place, only what it was to be: to be a Dragon of Heaven and then a Dragon of Earth, to be a priestess of Ise, not just a priestess but the priestess.
She knew what it was to be loved, but had never--
No.
Closing her eyes, she could remember seeing that expression of incredulous joy through the film of tears clouding her vision; she had for a few brief and glorious moments lived being loved, and the memory of that heartbreaking tenderness lingered in her veins, sending tendrils of warmth curling around that strange pulse-beat, the irregular rhythm of her heart. Arashi opened her eyes and reached out to touch one soft curl and decided that she did not have to live for Karen; it was enough that she lived because of her.
Fear blossomed unexpectedly.
Karen could destroy her, tear her apart, damage an already damaged soul beyond repair. There were scars and then there were wounds that would never heal, and sitting here in the dark she was afraid, afraid to test the limits of her will to live, still in its infancy. She watched as Karen stirred, eyes opening, and then they watched each other, and their thoughts hung like heavy velvet curtains between them, weighted with significance and yet transparent enough to see through.
"Arashi," Karen whispered, and she made a motion to light the candles. Arashi seized her hand, arresting the movement, and wondered if those hands would burn her. Already she could feel heat softly curling, warmth deceptively sweet. But Karen had never been deceptive and here Arashi left that train of thought, leaving the station with the suitcase of her mind intact. There was something in the air.
For some moments there was only the sound of rain trickling down, and then Karen closed her eyes, brow furrowing as if she were in pain. "This isn't right," she said, and it was then that Arashi remembered that Karen was not only a pyromancer but a Seal as well, a Seal capable of making a kekkai, of rebuilding something after it collapsed to ashes. The rain fell harder and faster and Arashi saw the invisible barriers between them catch fire and the air was hot, so hot and so heavy, rich with a thousand significances.
"You're a child still." And Karen's voice was pleading as Arashi looked at her, and both knew that no person could have survived her ordeals without emerging into adulthood, unhindered even by the chyrsalis of adolescence. A butterfly wating for the blaze of the sun to warm its wings so it could fly. She let go of Karen's wrist and then the formerly captive hand made its way to her face, pulled her down and down and down again, the inexorable force of gravity and the inevitability of the hungry flame, a kiss of life and death all in one, something new out of the ashes of something old. The air shimmered and misted, the moisture in the air going up in a cloud of steam.
The kiss dimmed and Karen made as if to pull away and then, changing her mind, rolled over and space meant for one abruptly held two, and shoulders and ceiling gleamed above Arashi. Excuses went up like so much paper before they were even uttered, and Arashi raised her arms and felt her nightgown sliding over her head, sinking somewhere to the left of her, and Arashi wondered if the rest of her would be likewise bared until nothing remained but a beating heart, lit from within.
She was made luminous, one shoulder hanging haphazardly off the futon yet not quite touching the floor, and her hair pooled beneath her, soft and dark against a back abruptly bare. Little sparks leapt from her fingertips as she reached achingly towards the ceiling, all of a strange shadow and form, and satisfied with their gesture towards the heavens, her hands moved and there was a cascade of white nightgown above her, tangling around two pairs of knees as Arashi closed her eyes and kissed Karen, kissed her with the urgency of a cresting tidal wave or the broad sweep of a forest fire. Karen gave a short gasp of startlement or pain or some combination of both when Arashi grabbed two fistfuls of curls to bring her closer still, and the fear of before had not gone away, only made itself over, and now she feared losing this moment as she had lost so many others, and she did not care that holding fire near meant becoming consumed.
"Everything will be all right," murmured Karen, pulling away briefly, and then the fear lit up, too, smoldering with all of the other parts of Arashi, and she slipped further off the futon, heedless of her surroundings, rising up and over what she used to be, taking flight with every touch. Her own hands, clever things, blazed out in reciprocation, and above her Karen shuddered and said her name and pressed her face into her neck, where a pulse hammered as if it, too, sought to break free of the place where it once was.
Space and time met in strange juxtaposition, and Arashi felt herself drowned and afire both, sinking and rising, and burning, always burning, burning to the ground.
Nothing had changed.
Tokyo was still overcrowded and dirty, its inhabitants still bustling and buying and moving from place to place. The sun still rose in the east, as it was rising now, a half-circle pressed up against a palely flushed skyline. She thought suddenly of the sun goddess Amaterasu, and realized that she had been away from the Ise Shrine for almost two years. She wondered if they had found a new priestess yet. She wondered if they missed her.
She wondered if they were still alive.
Nothing had changed, and yet everything was different.
"You're up early."
Karen's smile was still brilliant, her face still beautiful, but now something extra shone from within her, a soft glow she sometimes put name to when they lay in bed together between sleeping and waking, neither with any inclination to get up. Arashi had not yet answered the words with words of her own; she could not seem to feel anything different between them. Karen now, bathed in the fragile light of early morning, and Karen before, hazed in underwater madness, invoked the same sort of feeling, and surely if Arashi had--she would have known it all along. Even with the fine gauzes of insanity and sorrow obscuring her vision, surely she would have seen.
"It's getting colder," Karen noted softly, drawing her bathrobe closer around herself. "Summer is almost over."
Once she had welcomed this sort of everyday mundanity, these conversations that served only as conduits for a feeling of closeness, but she didn't know anymore, and she wondered whether the seams of her mind were coming unraveled again, stitched so haphazardly back together so recently. She knitted her fingers together, stared down at her thumbs. Eating an apple, discussing the weather, pulling on socks, touching a lover's face, feeding a growing cat, striking a match--did all of these things mean living? Was this merely a more pleasurable form of simply existing, coasting along? She looked at Karen and wondered if she knew that she had meant it when she told her she was beautiful.
Arashi climbed atop the railing that surrounded the apartment's tiny balcony, feet balanced on the narrow strip of metal, her center of gravity remaining undisturbed even as she hung poised in the air over sleeping Tokyo. Arms outstretched as if to embrace the horizon, she laughed, the sound unfamiliar and free. "Do you think I'm mad?" she asked, and the wind stirred her hair.
Her actions had not startled Karen in the slightest; her countenance was serene as she looked up at Arashi. "I think you made your own sanity," she answered.
Arashi flung her head back, ignoring the sudden feeling of vertigo, and felt herself suspended in this moment as well as the morning air. Angel on high, but an angel knowing nothing of any god. The morning seemed to be full of mythology, or theology, whichever shade it was painted. Standing on the earth, facing heaven, and in her mind all of the unlit candles of understanding abruptly leapt with dancing flames. Teetering on the precipice between life and death, walking the thin line between sanity and insanity--she would make her life there. Here, in this city, in this apartment, with this woman, with candles and clothes and a kitten and both of their scars.
Amazing.
Karen turned, sliding the door open. "When you're done, come in. I'll have breakfast ready." And then she turned again to face Arashi once more, her face betraying her anxiety, her hope. "Do you want to come in?"
When she stretched out her hand, Arashi took it--there was nothing else to do.