Disclaimer: I don't own X.
Speaking confidentially
The fire that burnt inside of me
Has turned to ash the tortured tree
That grows beside the anguished sea
Speaking confidentially
Speaking metaphorically
The earth I trust beneath my feet
Is moving now ever so slightly
I shift my feet but feel no relief
Speaking metaphorically
Speaking hypothetically
If the air you breathed was so unique
Would you use it up to idly speak
Or horde it for a rainy week
Speaking hypothetically
Speaking kind of cryptically
The sea that raged beside the tree
Burning bright for all to see
It just might mean the most to me
Speaking kind of cryptically...
- Cowboy Junkies, 'Speaking Confidentally'
one-shot: Burning Tree
Memory had become an ocean, a slowly rising mass, the bottom strewn with decayed shreds of emotion and brittle white bones. The memories themselves were waves that washed over him, back and forth, drawing claws of enticing foam over his sodden body on the return trip.
He had tried, for nine years, to suppress them. No, he did not remember Hokuto's smile- he certainly had no recollection of her blood-soaked shifuku lying on the ground in Ueno. He had no memories of his childhood dreams to be a zookeeper. Had never eaten ice cream and smiled. And neither, of course, were there any traces of Seishirou in his life at all, because he had never met anyone named Seishirou. Not at all. Instead, he tried to believe that he had appeared as a fully formed adult, that his childhood had never, ever happened.
His efforts, however, were to no avail. The Tree was everywhere, a too-solid reminder of things shoved under the bed. Soon, the bastions he had painstakingly erected crumbled. He began dreaming again.
The dreams were always vivid. He lay down, closed his eyes, and they were all there, laughing, talking, smiling, hurting, until he felt as though he was nothing but a shell filled with sharp, bright shards of a past life. He could lose himself inward for hours, sifting through fragments. He let the memories he didn't like fall from his fingertips and break on the ground.
More and more, though, Subaru found himself trying to pick them up again and re-examine them, slicing wounds open again. He didn't understand. He needed more to comprehend. He searched, shoving his memories here and there, looking for something to make it all clear. His nights were fevered and harsh, and in the morning everything seemed flat and 2-dimensional, tipping and sliding under his weary eyes.
Time was fluid under him. If he had had a nice, warm dinner the previous night of sukiyaki and Kirin beer, then why did he find a stained take-out box crusted with three-day old grains of rice on his kitchen table? Wasn't Hokuto taking her time going shoe-shopping?
Sometimes he thought he could hear whispers. It was probably Hokuto and Seishirou hiding in his closet, but they were awfully hard to find. He Sometimes they weren't there at all. Other times, he thought the rooms and halls of his apartment weren't really there, and would spend hours crawling over the floor, touching each inch of carpet and tile with the palms of his hands, affirming they were real. They might vanish if he turned his back on them, so Subaru occasionally went down all the hallways on his knees, shuffling backwards. If he wasn't careful, they would become the polished, worn wood of the Sumeragi estate in Kyoto, or the checkered linoleum of the apartment he and Hokuto had shared. And he wasn't there. Was he?
It was hard to keep his mind on reality. It was a flickering border that jerked in and out of his impaired line of sight. Dreams, visions- what was reality but a vision happening there and then?
Subaru inspected the pips of lint on his sofa. They looked like tiny, blue, fuzzy grains of rice. It'd probably taste the same as whatever came with last night's takeout. Or whenever's takeout.
He was about to rise and try to figure out from the bits in his trashcan just when he'd eaten, but the Tree called him. It got strangely nervous whenever he tried to verify what had happened. At least this time he wasn't in a subway station, or buying cigarettes.
/When are you going to feed Me?
Subaru was amused; the Tree sounded plaintive and a bit uneasy. One thing he was never confused about was the Tree- he had its personality pegged now. "Whenever I feel like it."
/And when would that be? Before or after I turn into a heap of compost?
"Before, probably. I'll go out after lunch."
/Lunch? It's already past midnight, Sumeragi.
Subaru looked around. Yes, darkness was pressing up against his living room windows. He shrugged and examined his watch. It had stopped. He shrugged, stood up, and arched his back in a stretch. "Then I might as well go out now."
He stopped to pick up his cigarettes and stuffed the carton in his trenchcoat pockets, fingers curling around the plastic wrapper.
He found his target on her way home from a bar, red-cheeked with alcohol. It was easy to lead her into a dark alley, and then draw the sakura barrow around him like a cloak. Darkness and a strange chill settled over the surroundings. He stepped out of the black and efficiently dispatched the girl, sliding her body into a plastic bag.
She had short, permed hair, he noted distantly, and bad skin; her shoes were black patent leather, her stockings beige. Her eyelashes were starry wet clumps, the tears that had leaked from her eyes unbidden as he gently burst her heart with his hand making them stick together
"I think you'll like this. It'll last forever and ever." He'd said. She had eyed his hand suspiciously, and then closed her hand around his bony fingers. He flinched. "Your hands are c-cold!" She had plucked at his knuckles with neatly painted fingernails. "Are you alright?"
"Fine," he'd replied, and slid his folded hand into her chest.
In his kitchen later, he was preparing a salad when, unbidden, the memory of his first kill slid into his mind. It had been clumsy and foolish, but somehow…it was strangely compelling and important. He frowned.
In the months after Seishirou's death, after assuming the title Sakurazukamori, Subaru had been granted a kind of 'leave of absence'. The government wasn't going to send him any jobs until a formal report on the change of executor was filed- and that was when he felt like it.
He had tried to resist. It had been pointless.
Eventually the Tree's raging hunger had absorbed him, and he had roamed like an animal in his apartment, trying to defy it, tongue thick with imagined thirst and stomach growling with imagined starvation. It became so bad that he wept, doubled over on the kitchen table with his fists clenched, the Tree shrieking somewhere just out of hearing. Something in him strove to push, and push, and push- at himself, everything, the world- just to see what would happen. He wanted to see just how much more he could hurt- how much more he could take. His sobs were mixed with strangled laughs, his lips stretched over his teeth in a grimace as tears dotted the table.
He was swaying weakly in front of the fruit display in a supermarket when he decided to give up. He watched dully as people filed past him, and as a middle-aged woman in a white cardigan carefully inspected a bunch of bananas, sinking her fingers into the spotty brown-yellow skin, he realized that he didn't particularly care, anymore, about the human race. It made too many mistakes to be worth saving.
He followed the banana woman out into the parking lot, tailed her home, and killed her in her kitchen as she unloaded groceries. Cans of soup rolled across the floor. His feet slipped and slid as blood seeped into the brown paper bags. He stepped on one, stumbled, and fell against a bank of cabinets, the woman's corpse sliding into his arms.
Suddenly Subaru was weeping, holding the woman's corpse, and crying, shoulders heaving. Sobs tore from his throat and he choked on them, tears flowing down his cheeks as though they'd never stop. He clutched the cooling body and cradled it in his arms, stifling a scream of misery in the woman's cardigan. It felt as though all of his grief was pushing itself out through his throat and he just couldn't stop; it hurt so much. There wasn't any use hiding it- it hurt. It hurt. He was tired of pushing, of just living. He wanted Seishirou, he wanted something, anything, that mattered. He wanted love and comfort, and to not have to worry about the world ending and killing people. He wasn't anything any more.
He felt the Tree's inquisitive presence in his mind and just shook his head, head throbbing and cheeks hot with tears It left him to cry.
When he stood before it, eyes empty and cheeks slightly flushed with shame, it dragged the body from his hands with sharp roots. /Subaru, Subaru... He slumped and pinched the woman's sleeve between his fingers. It pulled away, fiber by fiber.
"Don't call me that." It didn't feel like his name anymore. He wasn't Subaru.
Subaru didn't say anything. He wanted to die. It was as though he was keeping something wild and fierce inside of him that tore at his heart, and he wanted that crazy beast to die, but if it did, what would he have left? The ravening screams of grief and rage were all that he felt kept him human anymore, the beast rattling his teeth with emotion. He watched a petal drift to the ground dully. Its pale, waxy texture, slightly ribbed by veins, a pale pink...
/Do you want Me to help you?
He didn't bother responding, just clenched his jaw. No beast. /So young... the Tree sighed again, wind shushing through its branches wistfully.
He let his head fall backwards and clunk against the Tree's smooth trunk. "I can tell when you're lying," he said in a low voice. There's nothing you can do.
/Let me tell you something. Life is a bargain, …Sumeragi. If what you offer is right, there is always someone who can help. And I can do more than any mere human. What kind of bargain will you cast with Me?
"I won't."
/Your predecessor...I think you will want one like his. The Tree went on, musingly. Subaru closed his eyes. The Tree was taunting him. What could it have of Seishirou's? A secret cigarette stash, maybe? Or the requisite black trenchcoat?
/He gave Me his emotions, little Sumeragi Subaru. I got to keep all of his pain; it made a delicious meal. What will you give?
"What do you have?"
/What do you want?
"I'm tired." Subaru replied. "I'm very, very tired." He turned his head to the side, breathing slowly. The Tree creaked in the wind.
/Well? It asked after a long while.
"I want Seishirou back. That's what I want most of all," Subaru said, tears trickling out of his closed eyes. His voice was emotionless. "That's what I want. I want to disappear into his life. I want him, with me, every time I close my eyes. I want his life. I want his memories. I want everything that was ever his that he gave to you. I want what he took from me. I want his secrets to replace mine."
He was flooded with memories.
A warm, flushed, innocent face looking at him with green eyes brimming with some powerful emotion. A shy smile. A cup of tea. The strong, musky smell of himself. The heavy weight of an illusory eagle on his shoulder, the lights of Tokyo burning his eyes. A sweet, cloying scent that filled him with sadness as he kissed someone's red lips in the snow, blood spilling out onto its pristine surface. The texture of a cotton patch against his eye, a dull stabbing pain hovering beneath it. The silky, powdery feel on his lips as he kissed a sakura petal. A fierce surging lust as he watched a young boy in white shifuku. Want. A lurching feeling as he danced crazily, secretly, under the Tree's branches...A terrible calm as a pain-hardened young man faced him uncertainly...an immense tearing pain and great satisfaction as a hand plunged-
Subaru's eyes snapped open. "Stop."
/Is that not it? Something more…corporeal of your dead…friend? The Tree's voice caressed the word.
Suddenly, there was a warm body curving around his own on the chilly earth. "Subaru-kun." The voice was as smooth and rich as velvet. Strong hands eased over his shoulders, and he snugged his head beneath Seishirou's chin contentedly. He belonged here. Seishirou smelled like cigarette smoke and cherry blossom petals. Subaru wound his hands into Seishirou's hair and pulled him down for a sleepy kiss, twining his legs around Seishirou's bare hips. They had all the time in the world…
Subaru drew his knees up, half in silent protest, and half to hide his raging hard-on. He blushed silently in the darkness.
/Well, what do you want, then?
He began to tremble. His hands shook and whispered as he clasped them together, elbows and arms juddering with the force of his shaking.
/Go home.
Subaru staggered to his feet, and wrapped his arms around himself. He felt hot and sluggish, tears stinging his eyes.
/Leave, little assassin. Come back when you have something to give Me.
The moon was full when he came back, cradling the body of a young man in his arms.
/Here you are. What did you bring Me?
"Payment," he said hoarsely, laying the body down gently. "Bodies. In exchange for what I want."
/That's not enough.
"What else do you want?" he asked, panic fluttering in his throat. "What?"
/Give Me... it mused. /This. It reached out and plucked the fury from his heart like a pebble from a stream. /It's not like you wanted it anyway.
Subaru placed a hand flat against his sternum, slightly confused. He felt empty and old. Cold seeped slowly into him.
"What did you do?"
/I took something you will not miss.
"Are you sure?"
/Go home again. I will call you.
"Keep your promise," he mumbled weakly, too concerned with the funny feeling in his chest to assert any imagined authority. He nearly tripped over the corpse he'd brought on his way back. Seishirou was waiting when he got home.
He spent that night in a frenzied rush of heat and release, reveling in the Tree's illusion as it wildly pushed away the cold space in his chest, phantom hands ghosting hotly all over him. He woke up on stained sheets with a hand curved around the bedpost. His mouth felt stale, a taste that didn't go away even after he brushed his teeth and showered, for the first time in weeks, but lighting a cigarette helped soothe the raw feeling in his throat and the nicotine eased through his veins. He stubbed it out against the table.
It was all as he had dreamed- his dreams, they were true. Seishirou was with him all the time- all he had to do was close his eyes, and there he was, waiting for Subaru. All the pieces fit, now. The strange, feverish dreams faded into the background. Now there was just Seishirou, Subaru a spectator, moving in a world not his own. He lived with Seishirou. In a night, years flashed by. He ate and tasted different flavors. He killed and knew what to do.
Now, in his kitchen tearing lettuce, Subaru licked his chapped lips slowly. He was nearly out of cigarettes, nearly out of the neatly rolled tobacco that kept his body happy and his lungs black.
"Still hungry?" he asked the Tree, wondering if that might have something to do with the strange sense of displacement he felt.
/No. You should eat.
"I am, I am. What's Seishirou doing?"
/He's dead.
Subaru shrugged. "Yeah. I mean, after...last night. What does he do?"
/You know what happens. You've seen it all. All the memories.
"There's got to be more."
/There isn't, Sumeragi. I've told you.
"Oh..." Subaru said. He shook out a cigarette and lit it from the burner on the stove. "Well, now what am I supposed to do?"
/Have lots of sex. What else?
"Mmm...right, of course." He took a drag and thought for a moment about what the real thing would feel like. Probably a lot better, but...Wasn't that betraying Seishirou, to think about that? Or would he close his eyes during sex and think of Seishirou, one of Seishirou's encounters playing like a static-broken video behind his eyelids?
/My next meal had best come more quickly, Subaru.
Subaru coughed on a lungful of smoke. "Right. I'm sorry. There's not much else for me though, is there?"
/Is that My fault?
"No, I guess not." He shrugged and started to slice tomatoes. They were awfully red. He slid the knife's tip carefully around the stem, watching it slip under the thin, transparent surface of the rind. A lot like skin. Would skin split that easily?
"You're sure there's nothing left?" What could he give to get more?
/There hasn't been for awhile.
"Right." Subaru replied absently. Tomatoes. The black handle of the knife was smooth under his hand, the blade bright. If he peeled back his skin, would his veins look like seeds?
AN: Revised again. Please leave a review.