AN:This was a fill for the commentfic community on LJ for JordannaMorgan. It became a lot longer than planned and eventually I just decided not to keep going to its logical conclusion because it was long enough already and that could be left to the imagination what happened from the point I end it at. Prompt: DNAngel, any: the only way to end the curse on the Niwa and Hikari families is for the two bloodlines to become one.
NOTE: Involves eventual use of a magic artifact by Satoshi for a sex change. If this isn't your cup of tea, don't read beyond the second part.
"What do you mean that's the only way to end the curse?!" Daisuke sputtered. In his head, Dark was tense and listening with his full attention. "Mom never mentioned anything about that!"
"I'm not surprised," Satoshi murmured. He flipped a page of a yellowed, leather-bound book. "It was something no one particularly wanted to talk of. In fact, I myself only learned about it recently while reading through one of my ancestor's journals."
"Satoshi," Daisuke said hesitantly, "are you sure your ancestor knew what he was talking about? He wasn't…crazy or anything?"
Satoshi lifted an eyebrow. "No, Daisuke, this particular ancestor was not crazy, or at least no crazier than any of my family has ever been. He was the grandson of the first cursed ancestor and as such was much more aware of the curse's specifics than later generations." He lifted the book to show a page. It had cramped, handwritten notes in a language Daisuke couldn't read and what vaguely resembled a family tree. "He wanted to end the curse with his generation, but unsurprisingly, no one was interested in following through. As his father had murdered one of your ancestors the generation before, animosity between families was very tense."
"But." Daisuke flailed. "But marriage?"
"It's a logical solution," Satoshi said. "Dark and Krad are two halves of a whole; what better way to return them to their whole than to merge the bloodlines into a single line with a child from that union."
"But the curse wouldn't be stopped! The kid would just have Dark and Krad both in their head and that would be even worse!" Dark shuddered at the thought of being stuck forever alongside Krad in some kid's head. It's bad enough having to get used to a new person each generation, Dark said. Daisuke felt a little put out by that. It wasn't his fault he hadn't known about Dark before Dark woke inside him.
Satoshi shook his head. "The theory was that Dark and Krad wouldn't be separate entities anymore, but one being, Kokuyoku. It's not clear if it would be Kokuyoku inhabiting the descendant's body alone or if it would be a similar situation to how our bodies hold Dark and Krad, but that was more or less what would happen. From there it would have been possible to return Kokuyoku to the artwork he originated from."
Daisuke felt even more horrified. "If Kokuyoku was the only one in possession of a descendant's body, wouldn't they be killing their child?"
Satoshi smiled, humorless. "For a family who created monsters for pleasure and had no compulsions on letting them loose on the rest of humanity, is that really so surprising?"
"Maybe not on your side of the family, but I couldn't see mine doing that!"
"Couldn't you?"
Daisuke thought about how his mother and grandfather had reacted to Satoshi at first even though there were so many signs that Satoshi was unwell. He couldn't see them killing a child. He could see them destroying an artwork that they felt was too dangerous. If they looked at the child as nothing more than the artwork… He felt sick. Dark was disturbingly still in the back of his mind. "Okay," he said softly. He took the book from Satoshi's hands, lingering over the lines and words. After a while, he could make out his family name in one of the lined diagrams. "So why didn't anyone ever do it?"
"Simple," Satoshi took the book back. "Either there was too much hatred at the time as in the journal's author's time, or there wasn't anyone of the main family line of opposite sexes to make a union possible."
"And it had to be an actual child-producing union, not just…I don't know, a symbolic metaphorical one?"
"According to the theory anyway." He frowned. "No other forms of unions were tested. Somewhere around the sixth generation from the first ancestor, the union theory was thrown away and never mentioned again, though I believe that to be because the grudge started flowing both ways in earnest and Krad's host of the time was very mentally unstable even before Krad manifested."
"This is starting to sound like Romeo and Juliet," Daisuke said. "You'd need two lovers dying and ending the main lines to end the feud."
Satoshi snorted. "Well, us both dying would probably end the curse too. So far as anyone knows, Krad and Dark can only pass down through direct descendants. For the last six generations, our familial lines have been only children, so there's only very very distant cousins in existence out there." He shut the book. "At any rate, we have once again lost the chance to end the curse using that method since our generation is once again the same sex."
"Is that part of the curse too, do you think?" Daisuke asked. "That there had to be someone to manifest Dark if Krad could manifest or vice versa? Because your mom was the only descendant when my mom was born too, and so the last generation didn't have Dark or Krad manifest at all."
"It's possible."
"Well, I guess we'll just have to find another route." Daisuke sighed and slumped against the table. There were various other Hikari books and journals on it where Satoshi had been going through them bit by bit in hopes of finding anything useful. Krad was surprisingly quiet during all of this; either Satoshi had his emotions on lockdown or he was using some artifact for suppressing him again. Daisuke was grateful for it though since it meant he had a chance to talk to Satoshi without ending the conversation with preventing his own murder.
"Mm," Satoshi pulled up another book. "Most likely. Although…"
"…what?"
"There is always the option of testing if a symbolic union of some sort would be enough. We're the closest either of our families has been in centuries." He didn't look up from the journal as he flipped it open, skimming the pages. Daisuke had a weirdly unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"…Are you suggesting we get married just to see if that ends the curse?"
"It would have to be more than a mere hand wave of symbolism for it to have any chance of working—after all, our emotional states are directly linked to the curse, and as such we would have to be emotionally united." He paused. "Possibly physically."
Daisuke's brain bluescreened, Dark swearing up a storm while Satoshi watched without expression. "Excuse me?" Daisuke asked finally deciding he must have heard something wrong.
"Well, there are many ways of defining a union."
"I'm—that's—you're…" It felt like his face was on fire. He hadn't blushed this much since—since—.
"Hell no!" Dark screeched, assuming control of their body. He jabbed a finger at Satoshi's face. "Over my dead body!"
Satoshi smirked and pushed Dark's had away. "So hostile." He turned back to the books. "It was a joke, Dark. No need to get up in arms about it."
"Like hell were you joking," Dark growled.
"Oh, I'm quite serious that it could be a way of potentially ending the curse for this generation, though it is unlikely to work for the next one." Satoshi tossed a book away like it wasn't a century old with poor binding. It bounced and laid crooked with a few pages sticking out on top of the other discarded volumes. Daisuke curled around himself and tried to block out his thoughts and the reality beyond the space in his head he went when Dark was in control. "I wasn't going to suggest that we take that path. In all honesty, it would probably get us killed if we tried it, between our parasites and our own cluelessness."
"Who the heck are you calling a parasite?!"
"I think it's quite accurate. Both you and Krad exist using a host's energy to exist and manifest while slowly choking off their ability to thrive. Do you have another term for that kind of situation?" Satoshi was still smirking, but he was only giving Dark half his attention.
Daisuke felt Dark's frustration palpably. "Fine, where is your 'parasite,' Hiwatari? You'd think he'd be raging against that label too."
"Actually, Krad could care less about what I think of him. We hate each other mutually." Satoshi squinted at something scribbled in the margins of a manuscript, bound together with what looked like twine. "And he's asleep."
"Bullshit."
"I wouldn't have had this meeting if I wasn't sure we could have it without it becoming a duel to the death. Now sit down." Satoshi waved a hand at a chair. "Pick something and start reading; I'm sure you still remember how to read the languages these are written in. You might as well help find a potential cure to our situation that you aren't disgusted by."
"It's the principle of things," Dark grumbled. He leaned over the table. There were dialects he hadn't seen in a century among the mess. In it he vaguely recognized the handwriting of Hikari Yuuto. He hadn't hated that particular host as much as most of the Hikari. And Yuuto had lived long enough to have more than one child, so maybe he'd tried something to keep only one of his from having to deal with Krad's particular brand of sadism.
In the safety of his mind, Daisuke uncurled from his embarrassed ball and hovered closer to the surface. He heard flickers of Dark translating—less translating than the meaning coming through Dark's subconscious, but close enough. He wondered if there was really any point in going through these journals. No one had broken the curse in all the generations ahead of them. There wasn't really much chance that they would stumble on something the others hadn't found. But they had the advantage of being the first of their families in years to work together, perhaps ever, so there could be something that one of them had noticed that the other family hadn't. He'd have to see if Grandpa had anything similar to these journals that he could look through. They had to find something or Satoshi would…
He shook his head. They'd find some way. (He ignored the tiny voice in the back of his head saying he'd probably even give Satoshi's crazy idea a try if it would mean Satoshi lived. It was the same part of his brain that questioned whether Dark had conveniently taken over or if he had changed because he'd dared to picture Satoshi in a more than friendly manner for a split second. Daisuke didn't really look too closely at that part of his brain because he never knew what to do with what he found there.) There had to be more than one way to break a curse after all.
"Huh, this journal's even older than the other one. This ancestor had the guts to make an artwork that would change someone's sex. But he was too prideful to use it on himself, and of course his Niwa counterpart wanted nothing to do with that. Interesting."
Daisuke's brain went back to a gibbering mess of embarrassment. Satoshi had to be doing this on purpose.
"Not. Happening." Dark held the book he was reading in front of his face.
Across the table, Satoshi laughed. Even in his embarrassment, Daisuke was glad to hear it.
