The Sound of His Wings
Author's Notes – Not much to say, really. An oldish fic that's been bouncing around my harddrive forever and will probably never get much better. There's three or four rough bits that I never got round to editing and can't get in the mood for now, but hopefully they won't be too obvious. Any feedback at all is very appreciated!
Disclaimer – I am a sneaky little thief! The title was swiped from The Sound of Her Wings by Neil Gaiman. And Muraki quotes H. Rider Haggard and Kahlil Gibran.
Besides that, I don't own any recognisable characters or concepts. No profit is being made and no copyright infringement is intended.
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Muraki was dying.
His candle had burned unnaturally strong, fuelled by the energy he had sapped from those around him. There was always something abnormal about the flame. Most candles surged with all the sudden, short energy poured into a simple human life, burned hot and vital until they burned themselves out in a flurry of sparks. Muraki's candle was as white and steady as the tip of a laser scalpel, and there was always a coolness around it, as though it drained the heat from the air. No one had ever touched it to see if it still burned like any other flame. It held the cold fire of nuclear fusions, the sort of painless burn that would sink in to the bone, and leave no mark even as it warped away the very blueprint of life.
And now, it was almost gone. A white spark sputtered like a sparkler, choking and drowning in the melting wax that threatened to swallow it. It was the candle of a dying man, one that should be extinguished in minutes. But the hours had rolled by, and still Muraki remained on the point of death, never spilling over.
He had been summoned alone to take care of it, and Tsuzuki was grateful. Despite holding more power than any of the other shinigami, he knew he was not the logical choice. Muraki had always held too much sway over him. Tatsumi would have been the most appropriate for the job, and secretary or not, he would have accepted. Any of them would. There wasn't one shinigami at the office who wouldn't choose to be there to make sure that the doctor was finally dead, not even Hisoka who suffered for every second he spent in Muraki's presence. Perhaps they all deserved to be there too. Muraki's games caught everyone up in webs spun from razorwire and lies, so gently they never even noticed until the strings were drawn tight.
But at the heart of every incident, it all came back to himself. This was Tsuzuki's story, and he would finish it.
Muraki was easily found. Much too easily, and that troubled Tsuzuki. He summoned a simple tracking demon, and within minutes he had found the house in which Muraki would die. A spell throbbed in the air as he placed his hand lightly against it. It was too weak, a simple guard spell that could be easily dissembled by any competent magic user.
There was no trick. He let it fall apart as he passed through, then turned back to reform it. There were demons around. He had seen broken-backed shapes creeping after him on too many legs, flowers withering under mismatched hooves and claws and trailing torsos. Every so often, he'd hear something scuttle insect-like across concrete, see baleful eyes glow like marshlights or hear a yearning, doglike whine from lolling jaws. They wanted him. He watched bony hindquarters bunching eagerly underneath patched fur and scale, a thin black tongue lashing the air, claws sinking hungrily into the road surface to tear up pieces like soft icing. They let him pass. He was not their prey.
There was no one downstairs. The house was furnished, but there was something unlived in about it. No folded newspapers left besides the chairs, no family photos, the air smelling dryly of dust and carpet cleaner. One of Oriya's properties, Tsuzuki considered. He passed through the empty living room and kitchen, and upstairs. He could see light spilling from an open door, syrupy and yellow.
Muraki really was dying.
It was an anticlimax, in the end. He'd came expecting a trap, and there was no final twist or killing joke. Hisoka wasn't there in chains, no mortal hostages, no summoned dragon coiled in the confines of a small study. Just Muraki, waiting, watching the door where he'd came in. A simple pearl-handled, silver revolver lay on the table in front of him. Tsuzuki eyed it warily. A gun couldn't do so much to him, but there must be something more. There always was.
Muraki watched him, patiently, as Tsuzuki froze, awaiting a trap. He held ribbons of fuda magic, and unseen, the shikigami too, wind and water and hellfire held in the palm of a hand. In the flickering light, he looked like something dangerous blown in by a storm, all dishevelled hair and eyes like Siberian amethysts, breathing fire in the dim light.
Tsuzuki straightened slowly, eyes flickering over Muraki, who was sat upright, disregarding the bloodstains painting lunar seas of pain from a wound that he couldn't see. Muraki's visible eye met his steadily with no sign of fear, the other hidden underneath a spray of silver hair. There were so many things to say, and words failed him.
"The guard spell is weak," he said, instead.
"Just enough to keep the wolves from the door," Muraki answered. He pulled himself upright, noticing with slight amusement how Tsuzuki flinched reflexively, and made his way slowly over to the window, the slightest wince as something pulled apart like clumps of wet tissue paper. Something out there whined, the wistful hungry sound of a stray dog.
Tsuzuki thought about the demons he had seen lurking. They were nothing more than messengers or executioners, sent by some greater intelligence. But Muraki was in no state to keep that spell up for much longer, nor whatever magic was keeping him alive after he had received a fatal injury.
"Oh, I know my time is running out," Muraki said lightly, noticing Tsuzuki's eyes linger on the bloodstains. "I simply didn't want to give them the satisfaction of killing me."
"What happened?"
"I got careless, Mr Tsuzuki, and that is all. Nothing less, nothing more."
Something crashed heavily into a roof nearby, something that had tattered wings and no legs at all, just clumsy grasping claws. It hauled itself up, scattering tiles, and turned to look at him. A slit of muddy green glowed with dull marshlight fire. Muraki took aim, and closed it.
He threw something small and glittering onto the table between them, some trinket or other that he must have bargained souls for. "Smash that, and I'll die. It won't last much longer anyway."
Tsuzuki took it, suspiciously. It would have been too hot for a human to hold. A gem of some sort, strung on a fine chain. The stone burned feverishly in the palm of his hand, like a phoenix egg ready to hatch. And when he looked closer, it was beginning to crack. Fine lines were embedded in it like suspended snowflakes, so many the glass had turned cloudy white like a cataract.
"No more favours left to call in," Muraki said.
"Oriya?" Tsuzuki asked, still disbelieving. Muraki did not die this way. He spun plans underneath plans underneath plans, whole layers of safety nets laid down in blood and bargained souls and spells. Even weakened and surrounded by Touda's fire, he had survived somehow.
"I don't doubt Oriya would do his best," Muraki said, pulling out a cigarette. "Unfortunately, the heart is willing, but the flesh is weak. He has few favours he can offer most demons, save his soul, and that is worth less than mortals like to think."
Or, perhaps, it was a last gift to Oriya. Muraki suspected Oriya would sell his soul if he had to, and perhaps he already had, every time he had chosen to look the other way, to cover up yet another corpse.
Muraki made his way back to his chair and sat down heavily, all grace suddenly gone. Tsuzuki waited there, fuda magic trailing like ribbons between his fingers. He was unsure what came next. He'd gone over every confrontation with Muraki afterwards in his head, seen the exact moment when he could have killed the man. And now, when it came down to it, he stood there uselessly.
"Let's talk," Muraki said, almost gently.
"There's nothing to say," Tsuzuki said flatly. "What do you want to talk about?"
"What do you think, Mr Tsuzuki? Us." Muraki lit up. "I've been waiting for you."
There was a moment of silence. Muraki exhaled plumes of filmy blue smoke, the cigarette filter stained red with the foam that bubbled up periodically. He coughed more up into a handkerchief, choosing not to look to see how much there was now. The bleeding was getting worse. It was unpleasant, prolonging one's life like this when it was all in vain anyway, but he had waited for Tsuzuki.
"I knew you were coming."
Tsuzuki glanced up.
"I heard the sound of your wings," Muraki told him, a slow smile curling like a scalpel wound opening. "Didn't you hear them, Tsuzuki, when they finally came for you?"
"No," Tsuzuki said, but he was uneasy. He didn't remember his death very well. He'd been in hospital so long, feeling his mind break up and leave him piece by piece, that it was difficult to tell where reality ended and the dreams began. Towards the end, there was no distinction any more. He cast his mind back and shivered as something stirred there. Shadows spreading, lapping up the white room like something alive, a dry corpse-husk whispering of feathers rustling together, a sudden breathless feeling as something sucked the light and air from the room-
"Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere," Muraki quoted. "The concept of a winged death can be found in almost every culture. Why do you think that is?"
Tsuzuki knew the answer well. "People like to romanticise death."
"Indeed. I suppose you've seen plenty of that. I know I have, as a doctor. Death isn't lovely, Mr Tsuzuki, as you must know yourself. They don't drift into unconsciousness, or the eternal sleep they write about in their sympathy cards. They choke and convulse and vomit, and relatives find them purple with lividity, lying in a puddle of urine. There's nothing so very glamorous about it at all."
Tsuzuki was familiar with this. Death had been welcome to him, but he had seen it come in too many ways since then to think it always a blessing.
"Still, it's a nice idea," Muraki continued. "All you're missing is the wings."
There was a thin crack, sharp in the silence. Another thin line ran silvery through whatever amulet was keeping Muraki alive. A flicker of something crossed Muraki's face, and then his features smoothed out again, as though he wasn't falling apart inside.
"So, why did you come?" Muraki asked. "I had suspected they might send the secretary."
"I was told to." Tsuzuki said, and left it there. He wasn't certain himself. It was not an order he could see Konoe making, and not for the first time, Tsuzuki wondered about who pulled hidden strings behind the paperwork at the Judgement Bureau. It should have been Tatsumi here. Once again, Muraki had distracted him and stopped him doing what Tsuzuki should have done a long time ago. He wrapped the silvery chain around his hand and pulled it towards him, holding Muraki's life between his fingers. It would take very little to snuff it out now.
"I have to wonder," Muraki said. "if you could really have kept yourself away."
Tsuzuki was silent. Muraki could see the strange hold he had over Tsuzuki still held, the fascination that froze prey before they died. He had seen it in some of his victims before, in the way he could let them escape and watch them scrabble madly for the door with bloodstained fingers, unable to believe they might really make it. And he could stop them again with one word, their name rolling languidly from him in three or four syllables more potent than any spell, and watch as they stopped and turned slowly, eyes full of equal dread and resignation. Not all of them. Some, like the boy, would spin around and die spitting curses at him. And some would simply go very still, and hope the end came quickly.
"I can't blame you for being suspicious," Muraki said, with a slow, languid smile. "I did drink strychnine for you, once."
Strychnine brings an agonising death. It causes intense convulsions, that continue until the victim suffocates or dies through exhaustion.
"One of the most bitter substances in the world, Mr Tsuzuki. A very good thing you didn't attempt to resuscitate me. You wouldn't have liked it at all."
The wounds were real. Muraki had estimated, with a clinician's detached eye, that they would kill most people in about an hour and that he could extend his own life by perhaps three or four times that. In the end, pain was nothing more than a particular pattern of electrochemical activity. An acquired taste, admittedly, but he had learned to live with physical pain a long time ago. He could have reduced it with morphine, but with his tolerance, the amount he would have to take would bring on drowsiness. Muraki wouldn't miss this last meeting.
"What do you want?"
"Just to talk. That is all."
Tsuzuki thought for a subject. "Does dying frighten you?"
Muraki laughed hoarsely, pain snagging all the silk from his voice. "Who do you ask for? The boy? Maria? Perhaps little Tsubaki? Not for yourself, surely. Mr Tsuzuki could never be so cruel to a dying man."
Tsuzuki didn't answer.
"Of course you could," Muraki said, leaning over to spit blood to the floor. "That's why I love you so."
Muraki was bleeding again. Tsuzuki watched as dried bloodstains the dusty crimson of stained glass began to brighten as Muraki's life slowly seeped out once more, slipping through his fingers like sand through an hourglass. It was simple biology, in the end. Muraki's blood pressure would drop, his mind would begin to fade and his heart would become more erratic, and none of his strange power would hold sway over any of this.
"Why?" he asked, finally, and knew there would be no answer. There were too many questions in that one word. Muraki would die before he had answered half the things that Tsuzuki needed to know.
"Do you want a dying monologue?" Muraki mused. "What would you like? My traumatic childhood? Or perhaps I should tell you that we're not so different, you and I?"
"Just don't tell me that you're my father," Tsuzuki said, his smile very faint and brittle and strained.
Muraki laughed again.
"It may be trite, but there's some truth in it. Don't you find it deliciously ironic that I chose to become a doctor and chose to kill, while you chose to become death itself and lose a little part of yourself every time you see someone die?"
"Then why-" and Tsuzuki tried again, and couldn't find the words to ask why. Why Hisoka, why himself, and why wasn't it enough for Muraki to capture him and use his hybrid cells, why he had to take Tsuzuki apart piece by piece, and that most complete destruction would still never be enough for Muraki.
"Destroy you?" Muraki thought about it, when Tsuzuki raised the question. "It would free you. You're a lovely contradiction as you are, a juxtaposition of human and demon. However, I would like to see your true nature," Muraki leaned forward, his breath cool and scentless like the air that seeps from catacomb stones. "Don't you miss the screams, Tsuzuki?"
Muraki's laughter rang silver on the air when he did not answer, and Tsuzuki thought of sleigh bells ringing out over frozen earth, fracturing the clogged white silence of nuclear winters.
"I only wanted you to be yourself. Is that so terrible?"
Tsuzuki had that lost and guilty look again, the same way he must have looked when they found him that first time. The blood would be burned black into his skin, his wings tattered and torn, and he would still stumble from corpse to corpse in mute disbelief, like the last man standing on Judgement Day.
"You were born together, and together you shall be forever more. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days," Muraki quoted, and then smiled thinly. "I was flattered that you chose for us to die together, Mr Tsuzuki."
He reached up and caught Tsuzuki's jaw between cool fingers, as gentle as a surgeon and as inexorable. His mouth tasted of blood and cigarettes, of iron and ashes. There was a sudden, mild shock, and Tsuzuki remembered that silver has the highest conductivity of any metal. Then there was only a painless chill, as though his own immortal life was draining away at Muraki's touch.
"Well. I suppose you win, Mr Tsuzuki," There was nothing in Muraki's voice, as coolly arrogant as ever. "Of course, you know yourself that there are no winners here," He turned to stare out the window. "Oh, well. If I have to die, I'd much rather you were the one to do it. At least it won't be that obnoxious secretary. Or the boy. Frankly, that would be humiliating."
"No regrets?" Tsuzuki asked. He didn't think there would be.
"None," Muraki agreed, then paused. "Perhaps just one. I would have very much liked to see the day when you fall apart, Mr Tsuzuki. It will be beautiful to see."
"I won't lose myself like that," Tsuzuki meant it. Touda was always a vague, comforting presence in the back of his mind, promising a void of hellfire where he could lose himself forever.
"You will," Muraki said. "Hybrids like you.. they were created to destroy everything they touch." He coughed, painfully. "It was a noble gesture, summoning your shikigami like that. Foolish, but noble. The world would have been a much less interesting place without you."
Muraki blinked slowly for a moment, perhaps clearing the dimming in his eyes that would never be lifted. His voice had sank to a whisper as his breathing came too shallow for words, but none of the strength was gone from it.
"Or perhaps not. Human resilience is almost frightening, Mr Tsuzuki, and you can take a great deal of suffering. I admire that."
Muraki closed his eyes reflectively. All around the world, things would be coming undone as the strings he had pulled began to fall loose.
Until his own eyesight faded and blurred, Muraki watched Tsuzuki, watching Tsuzuki watch him die. The firelight ebbed and rose, fanned by the approach of something immaterial gathering in the room. The rising light stripped the human edge from Tsuzuki's features, the softening around the eyes or the quirking of a mouth. Whatever lay underneath was there, watching with the patient, unwavering eyes of a predator. His eyes were cast into shadows, nothing human there in the feverish purple glow of banked otherworld embers. In that moment, Muraki thought that anyone could see something beautiful and terrible that lay just below the surface.
Muraki raised his head blindly as he felt something inexorable beginning to stir and awaken within the confines of the small room, something that had no size or substance or shape. The shadows leapt uneasily, fine lines beginning to spread like kanji brush strokes across the walls, a wind rising that carried the scent of enbalming spices and papery bandages and countries fallen to sand. He could hear the dusty sound of raven black feathers rustling as something darker and more timeless than either of them began to unfurl from the shadows. There was the rush of something taking flight, and the sound of his wings swallowed up the thin whisper of Muraki's last breath.