The Search.
1: First touch.
T: While Silver Salamander is on holiday and I'm unable to update Penance I thought I'd start posting this one, both because I want to keep my regular readers reading and also because I genuinely like this story! Moving on there is a warning of slight AU, slash and of a Clamp Campus Detective crossover down the line…also this fic is, for the moment, without Beta so bare with me on spellings!
It's not mine though I'm flattered if you believe otherwise!
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She had cried so very hard when her Kasan had died, cried without a thought of stopping until he had kissed her tears away and told her that Kasan would not want her sad.
Though his fingers had been red still with her Kasan's blood and though there had been an odd emptiness in his smile she had known the truth of those words and had ceased to cry.
His empty smile had widened then into something truthful and somehow more frightening than the previous smile,
'I shall be you're Oniichan from now on.' He had told her as he had bundled her into his arms, that frightening smile present still on his lips.
Oniichan had looked after her so very well and his kindness had been enough that it was only when she was alone in the night that she recalled that he was the reason her Kasan was dead…
That she recalled him placing a hole in her Kasan's heart.
She knew that Oniichan watched her always, that even when she could not see him he was there in the shadows, watching and protecting her with all his might.
As she grew older his protectiveness became suppressive and often they would fight with one another about Oniichan's inability to let her live her life.
It was for this fact that she kept the secret of her pregnancy from Oniichan for as long as she did, for she feared that he would hunt out and kill the man responsible for her condition.
In the end it had turned out that Oniichan was more angry with her than with the father of her child and he allowed that anger to become him, allowed that anger to drive his murderous hands through her abdomen.
She had felt her lives blood drain from her…had felt, somehow, the heart of her baby still and a blind anger had over taken her.
But a moment later she was no longer bleeding, no longer dying a senseless death and yet for this privilege she had paid not one but two sacrifices.
The first sacrifice had been that of Oniichan's life, for her hand was through his heart now and there was no hope for him to live.
The second sacrifice had been that of her child's life, for the magic of the sakura had stripped all traces of the infant from her womb…had made it as though her child had never existed.
With his very last breath Oniichan had told her that he had loved her as more than a sister, that one day she would find herself one person who she would love as he loved her and that this One would be the person to end her life and take up the legacy of the sakura.
Drenched in Oniichan's blood and feeling a hollow within where there had once been life she could not believe those words…could not believe that her heart would ever again bare itself to the pain that came from loving.
After that day she had began to deal with her life as it was now, had refused, for the moment, to allow herself to be pulled into the numbness that the sakura was offering her.
She had planted a camellia bush in Oniichan's garden and had touched it with her magic so that the bright red of its blooms would remain even amid the chill of winter…so that always she could look at the flowers and recall the child that she had carried within her.
She had then undertaken her role as Sakurazukamori, had allowed the anger and hate that she felt towards the sakura to drive her hand and numb her heart so that she might kill without remorse.
She had become, slowly, two separate individuals; the caring, kindly nurse with time always to listen to problems and the emotionless Sakurazukamori who killed without prejudice and showed no mercy.
Yet even in the sunlight of the world that her kinder self lived within the shadow of the Sakurazukamori lingered.
For the magic that her 'other self' used had to backlash somewhere and who would count the loss of one who had already been upon the threshold of death?
Today the matron of the ward had asked her to sit the day with one of their more influential clientele and she had agreed both because it was something a little different from the ward work that was her normal and also because the assignment was a show of the matron's faith in her.
Her patient's son was sat with him as she entered the private ward and she noted that he was a handsome child, the rich honey of his eyes seeming to suit well the melancholy air that was about him.
There was something about the child that tingled a feeling of kinship within her and sparked a deeper yearning within the dark heart of her 'other self'.
"Ohiyo, I am Sakurazuka Setsuka and I will be with your father during the day." She remarks, a false smile springing readily to her lips.
The boy regards her a while under the patient stair of those beautiful eyes and then his attention diverting back to his father he replies,
"Yuko Seishiro." His voice liquid smooth and full of a bitterness that seems to suit him well enough that she feels a want to nurture it, to take it and twist it until this boy became as darkly perverted as herself.
Was this what Oniichan had first felt the day that he had first seen her? Had the want to have her completely to himself to do with as he would been why he had killed her Kasan and slaughtered her unborn child?
This she pondered as she sat with the boy and his father, this and the thought of what her life might be if she did took Seishiro into her care.
There is a temptation hidden in the dark heart of her to simply kill the boy's father and take away his memory so that he believes him hers…yet here in the hospital there are eyes watching always and to expose her powers so openly, to reveal her true face would be a terrible blow to the mystic of the Sakurazukamori.
"Is your father your only family?" She enquires, wishing to see if there is opportunity for her to take the boy away from the hospital and the risks that such an exposed location entails.
"No, there is Kasan also but she can not be with me yet for there are many who require her skills in Kyoto, thus I must do as I can on my own."
"She is coming soon though?"
"Yes, at the end of next week,"
There is a time limit then, which means she can not learn of where he lives or other such pertinent information by his tongue, as she had wished and will have, instead, to take the information from elsewhere.
The choice to do as such, to risk a little for this boy, is made as she reaches the house, thus she eats a smaller meal than she had planned and changes into a darkly coloured kimono that will hide her well in the darkness of the night.
She knows the hospital layout by heart and thus it is but the work of moments to locate the room that contains the patient's files and even less time to discover both the file of Seishiro's father and his home address.
There is a light on in the building and drawing close she is greeted with the image of her boy hugging close to a woman who can only be his mother.
His lips move to form the words,
'I did not think you were coming until next week.' His mother replies positively for he smiles and vanishes out of the room only to appear a moment later with a bag in his hand.
She feels her heart cease as she realises that he is leaving, that she shall loose him without having ever known him and stepping free the window she decides to risk taking the child and killing his mother as Oniichan had before her.
The two men that stand at the entrance to the house stop her, not because they pose threat to her personally but rather to the secrecy of her identity.
She will not let her boy free without some assurance that she can find him again when the desire takes her and thus she waits until he comes out of the house and then, very deliberately, bumps into him.
His mother is apologising instantly and Setsuka brushes her off politely before she catches her boy into her eyes,
"You are my One, Seishiro and I will find you again." She whispers as she kisses him once on the forehead.
The inverse pentagram that is her mark glows once on the skin that had made contact with her lips and then it is gone again, visible now only to her inner eyes.
Clearing the mind of his mother and the men that are with her she walks a little away from them before turning to watch that light drifting away from her reach.
"I will find you again."
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T: Ta da! The logic here is that in the series Seishiro's true mother does not come early and Setsuka makes him believe that she has raised him. Um the idea that Setsuka is not Sei-chan's true mother has been derived by myself from the fact that the sakura is always in blossom (Does not bare fruit!) and from Sei-chan's character story where he says that Setsuka came to him and said 'I am your mother' . R+R It'll make my day!