DISCLAIMER: The owners of Tokyo Babylon are the lovely ladies of CLAMP. Not me.
He stood there, stone still, waiting.
The knife was speeding towards him, short steel blade glinting under the beams of the fluorescent hospital lights.
She wielded the knife with no skill, but with so much passion, so much anger, so much love. Love for her dying son. Love for the little boy who desperately, desperately needed a kidney.
Subaru was healthy, fit, young. He would gladly give up a kidney; gladly give up his life so that sweet little boy could have it. Who was he to say that one life was more important than another? How could he make judgement on who deserved to live between the two of them?
Just seventeen years, but his life had been long, strenuous, sad. Everyday he saw the blackest of human souls, the amazing lengths people would go to to have fame, money, love. All through his life he had been doing Onmyouji work, saving lives, according to Oba-san. No, he wanted to tell her, no, I'm saving deaths. Who was more important; an Onmyouji or a doctor? An ordinary human, with no magic to speak of, only skill, and a desire to save, to heal; or a unique Onmyouji, one in a million, born into their job. Subaru hadn't beggared himself to pay for med school, hadn't gone away to a university filled with strangers to learn everything the hard way, right from scratch. He had been taught by his Oba-san, lived with Hokuto; he was rich, fit, healthy.
He had a wonderful life, friends, family. And all that grief-mad mother and her sick son had was each other.
He closed his eyes, unable to watch her any more, unable to stomach the sight of her once beautiful face, the face that was now lined with worry and twisted with hatred. The face of someone who loved their child so much that they would kill to see him happy.
How could he deny them happiness?
The knife was so close, so close. He wasn't stupid; he knew that there were much better ways to cut out organs than with a small blade and extremely basic medical knowledge. But still he stood there, eyes closed, body relaxed. If he died like this, so be it. If this poor family would benefit from his demise, he was ready to die.
People died all the time. It was the cold, hard truth. Even if you knew that, accepted that, there was still that little voice that said it'll never be me. When you watched a news segment about a person who was killed in a car crash in your hometown, in your street, it still seemed so far away. Like it couldn't touch you. You would never be in a fatal crash, no. You had your whole life ahead of you. You had to go out that weekend, you had to pick your kids up from school that day. You would never crash. You had so much time left. Nothing like that would ever happen.
Subaru had silenced that voice long ago. People die everyday. And today it would be his turn.