Title:
Overlap
Pairings:
Gen, Subaru (Tokyo Babylon/X) and Hisoka (Yami no Matsuei)
Rating:
PG
Warnings:
Mention of rape.
Summary:
Subaru investigates the Kurosaki family's possessed son.
***
Subaru let his eyes roam over pages describing his potential customers.
Despite the age of computers, each case was carefully written out on thick rice paper, elegant lines of calligraphy shining in the light as though still wet. Hand written reports, often handled by members of the family or friends-- the residual traces of the touch of people's spirits lingered on the pages, in the ink.
The echoes helped Subaru choose the cases he would take. (When he bothered to take them at all, the soft echo of his mother's voice whispered to him.)
He discarded the first stack, and paused when he touched the top of the next pile. Though the first case held no interest-- ghosts were certainly not stealing paintings from Tokyo galleries-- he could feel the echo of despair and fear leaking from one of the pages without even coming into direct contact with it.
He slid the pages off the pile one by one, looking.
He had a case.
***
Subaru walked up the hill from where the taxi had dropped him off, mind morbidly dwelling on the Irish vampire novel and just what it implied that the young, nervous cabby wouldn't drive him up the drive to the main house.
He had been dropped off at the gate, of course. But this was the home of an old samurai family; the grounds were massive. He'd walked over a kilometer by the time the main house came into view, by his best guess.
It reminded Subaru of home; the familiar feeling of old protection spells and ancient struggle, with a fresh, lonely tang of agony stinking up the air.
He took a moment to consider leaving. There was nothing stopping him from turning around, walking back to town and buying himself a ticket to Tokyo.
Whatever was happening here, it was more than just a matter of possession. The energy on the place, hanging in the air, was tainted by more than a child's soul being pushed aside for something darker-- no matter how long term-- could account for.
The staff came out to meet him before he could make it past the gardens. A woman (girl, really, she could barely be into her twenties) hurried out from the house to greet him. "You're the priest?" she asked quickly, face anxious, hands clasped tightly in front of her.
"Yes," said Subaru, not wanting to argue. If the family thought they had hired some sort of holy man, he wasn't going to be the one to break that illusion.
"The Master is away for business," she said, and gestured him toward the house. "Mistress has been waiting."
Subaru followed her down the stone path, stepping carefully on the uneven ground. Paths broke off from theirs, distinct more by the emotions that traced with them than the pleasant visuals-- disconcertingly pleasant, against the sagging unhappiness the paths gave off.
If he weren't there for the family's heir, he would have never guessed children lived on the property at all.
They entered the house into sudden darkness, leaving his eyes blind after the brilliance of the sun. Wooden walls, closed shutters-- it was dim inside, all the dyes still bright, as though the sun had never had a chance to fade the colours.
All
the protections on the house were old, obviously untended for
generations. The strands of power pulled at him as he walked through
the hall, strangely hostile, but far too weak to pose any
threat.
The
girl stopped, and dropped to her knees. "Mistress," she
called through the door, and gestured for Subaru to kneel with a
hurried wave of her hand when she noticed him still standing. "The
priest from Tokyo has arrived."
Subaru couldn't even feel annoyed at the bother. He dropped to his knees.
"Is he staying?" a voice snapped from within the room, sharp. The door slid open, and Subaru bowed briefly out of respect and straightened his spine. "Madam Kurosaki," he said, quietly. "I will not be staying. If I can help, it will not take long."
The woman's appeared traditional in every sense of the word. Dark hair, dark eyes, formal though plain dress-- were it not for the madness he could feel stirring around her, he would have never given her a second glace.
Not that he gave her one, anyway. "The mad matron of an ancient house"-- those were much more interesting in literature than they could ever be in the real world.
"Good," she said, and stepped out of the room, back straight, expecting them to follow.
Subaru dusted off his knees as he rose, glanced at the still kneeling girl beside him, and did not bother hurrying to catch up.
The two of them stopped in front of a wooden doorway, first one of the hall to boast a lock. "He came home one night covered in blood," she said, conversationally. "Said he couldn't remember what had happened. This was after he had scared away most of the staff, of course, with his--" she took a breath, and looked over at Subaru, holding his gaze for the first time. "You'll see. That child is a monster." She looked away, and reached into her sleeve to hand Subaru a key. "Lock the door when you go inside. The last time he was out, we found a local girl stabbed to death in the fields."
She walked off, leaving Subaru alone, the key cold in his hand.
He looked down at it for a moment, considering, the pushed it into the lock and opened the door. He left the key at the top of the stairs the doorway revealed, and did not lock the door behind him.
***
The first thing Subaru thought when he saw the boy was that the woman upstairs could not possibly be his mother.
The boy was... foreign was the best word he could come up with. Pale limbs and light blond hair feathered over the top of a too-thin arm.
Despite the boy's delicate appearance, the room stank of power. Emotions layered on an magnified over every surface, so strong he could almost see the events that had helped to build them shadowed on the walls. Despite the sun which shone brightly through the barred window, the whole area kept the same dim, shuttered feeling as the house above. And from the boy himself, something rotten oozed out, red and vile. But unlike the emotions, the rot seemed somehow contained, never reaching out the rest of the room.
It was focused inward, on the boy, eating away at his soul.
Demons didn't smell of rot. Demons didn't let a room keep its memories of fear, and loneliness, and pain, when they could overwrite them with trauma caused by their own hands.
"You're Hisoka?" Subaru asked, gently, suddenly remembering the boy's name from the case file.
The boy didn't answer, just curled himself into a tighter ball.
"My name is Subaru," he continued after a moment, approaching the bars of what was quite obviously a well-lived-in cell. "Your mother called me here to help you."
Subaru hadn't even noticed the fine tremors shaking the boy until they were gone. "She's not my mother," came the voice, somehow familiar, synching up perfectly with the sadness that shadowed the walls.
"She might say that," Subaru said, and stepped forward to grip one of the cell bars. "But she is. Mothers don't have to be good to give birth to you."
The boy didn't uncurl his legs, but he raised his head, and gave Subaru a distainful glare. "Women don't give birth to monsters. She is not my mother."
Subaru let the topic drop. "I'm here to help you," he said again. "Your mother-- the Lady Kurosaki thinks you've killed people, hurt them."
Hisoka shivered, and ducked his head back down. "I don't mean too. But they're so, so loud. I just want them to go away."
A sudden wave of anxiety and misery washed over Subaru. It was so familiar, so natural, that it took him an instant to realize the emotions were coming from the boy.
Empath.
"It's alright. I can help you," he said, and summoned his own shields. This was going to take longer than just his afternoon. There was still the mother-- not so dull in her madness after all-- to contend with.
The boy gave him a harsh glance, but faltered when he saw Subaru extend his hand through the bars.
It must been the first time anyone had come down here without fearing him in months, Subaru realized, remembering the dates on the case file. "It's alright. Just take my hand."
Subaru kept his hand raised as he waited, even though it shook with the effort after a few moments. His palm itched in the sunlight that shone across it.
When the boy seemed unconvinced after minutes of waiting, Subaru lowered his shields deliberately, and sent a brief burst-- hope, happiness, trust, gathered up from his memories-- outward, and watched the boy gasp as though struck. "It's alright," he said again.
It barely took any time at all for the boy to reach him, after that. The smell of rot was stronger, from this close, and Subaru had to struggle not to let the disgust that roiled in his stomach show on his face or leak through his shields.
Hisoka kneeled, facing Subaru, and gathered himself for a moment. He reached his hand up, and Subaru felt a brief, shining moment of triumph before their hands touched, and then--
-- Subaru snapped his hand back, and fell back from the bars, mind swirling with visions of blood, cherry blossoms, pain, and a one eyed madman who carved his mark into the souls of his victims.
It wasn't him. It couldn't be. The colours were all wrong, inverted, like a funhouse mirror stained with blood, cracking at the edges.
The boy was crawling backward, pushing hard with his heels to back away from Subaru, hurt and a building terror flowing out from him in a steady stream.
Subaru should have said something to reassure him. Should have done something to help.
"I'm sorry," Subaru gasped, and ran for the stairs, frantically grateful that he hadn't locked the door as he slammed himself into the open.
He ran, away from the dark house, empty and too full, away from the boy who wasn'twasn'twasn't touched by Seishirou, he couldn't be--
Nobody could help the boy. Once a madman like that touched you, there was no going back.
Not
for any of them.
***