Fandom: Yami no Matsuei/Descendants of Darkness by Yoko Matsushita

Disclaimer: Characters © Yoko Matsushita et al.

Rating: K

Category: Introspectific; pre-slashy

Pairings: Hisoka Kurosaki x Asato Tsuzuki

Summary: Hisoka may be lost in Gensoukai, but his heart knows the way home. Written for Veleda's request on the LiveJournal fic-on-demand community, in which she asked for a Tsuzuki x Hisoka fic with some connection to Dar Williams' song "Closer to Me."

Warnings/Spoilers: Possible spoilers throughout manga volumes released in English (1 through 11), plus translations found on theria-dot-net of additional Hana to Yume chapters.

For Hisoka, the name "Gensoukai"—"illusory world"—suggested "virtual reality." Wakaba had told him it existed in cyberspace. Wouldn't it resemble the living world's computer and video games (pastimes he'd only encountered afterhe died)?

Gensoukai, it turned out, was nothing like a game.

Hisoka's life (and death) experience had failed to prepare him for that first moment of hanging in the air over a city he'd never once read about, never even pictured in his mind's eye. Age-old and ageless, peaceful and perilous; steep-gabled rooftops, glowing expanses of gardens, lakes flaming too brilliant to gaze at directly.

Confronted with Gensoukai, Hisoka felt even more insignificant than usual—yet, for a beat in time, that seemed not to matter. Being present here didn't require the spiritual effort it took to move about the world of the living, whether seen or unseen. I've never felt solight.

It was only later, after an anthropomorphic Byakko and then Tsuzuki tackle-glomped him that realization struck. Picking himself up off the ground, Hisoka had wondered why he hadn't sensed either approach—and then Tsuzuki slung his arms around Hisoka's neck.

And Hisoka felt—nothing. Not the constant percolation of excitement that Tsuzuki had been giving off for days, not his partner's unending gnawing-over of their experience in Kyoto, not the bottomless welling of grief it had taken Hisoka forever to make out underneath constant currents of humor, mischief, hunger, affection, irritation…

Nothing. It was as though he'd left his empathy on the other side of the portal into Gensoukai.

Days later (Gensoukai days—Hisoka had no idea of the passage of time in the outside world) he was striding through the plaza, hands rammed in jacket pockets, skimming through his mental (but ever-shrinking) list of shikigami. From his knapsack came Riko's tuneless humming. A suitable soundtrack for my farce of a quest.

Again and again, his thoughts returned to Kurikara, picking at the forbidden name like a scab. He grimaced at the memory of Tsuzuki leaning forward, face abnormally stern: "Kurikara is much too powerful for you."

Hisoka drew his hands out of his pockets, stared down at wrists shooting out pale and knobby from denim sleeves. Oddly, now that he lacked access to his empathy, he had begun noticing things about Tsuzuki—his tones of voice, the chase of expressions on his face, the extra inches that made his partner able to loom over him.

And that "Nobody knows you better than I do." Hisoka's fists tightened. It was as though their positions were reversed, Tsuzuki able to read Hisoka's intentions while Hisoka scrabbled for hints of his partner's mood.

Really, I should think of this as a vacation from Tsuzuki's emotions. Yeah. Sure, it's disconcerting, but anyway I'm spending most of my time here away from him.

He pulled out the map Kijin had given him and unfolded it. Might as well make the distance literal.

His eyes, inevitably, found the desert.

Well, I wanted the Fuyuu desert, and the wormhole gave it to me. Be careful what you wish for, isn't that what they say? Hisoka settled against a wall of wind-worn carvings, gazed up at unfamiliar stars. At his feet, the fire he'd built flared, then guttered.

Now that he'd gotten separated from Riko, he realized: the cactus Shiki reminded him just a little of Tsuzuki at his most goofy.

The thought made him doubly lonely. He hugged his knees.

He shuddered away from the dream he'd had that morning—the faceless playmates he'd invented for himself in childhood had begun pawing at him, laughing at him.

If I could choose what to dream, he thought suddenly, you'd be with me, Tsuzuki. With me, and I would be telling you the things I can only say in dreams.

He remembered standing under the cherry trees outside the Ministry after Kyoto, Tsuzuki in an invalid's yukata beside him, listening to him, looking at him. Tsuzuki's concentrated attention is a heady thing. It had made him bold enough to roll up his sleeves, to reveal Muraki's curse marks flaming on his arm, even knowing that Tsuzuki's reaction was bound to swamp him with emotions.

How strange—I wasn't even thinking about my empathy at the time. I was so fixed on finding a way to stay with you, even if it meant clinging to my hatred of Muraki.

And where am I now? A world away from you. A world away from—

Home.

I want to go home.

The breeze was picking up, stinging his cheeks with tiny grains of sand. Hisoka dropped his head on his knees.

His eyelids fluttered shut.

For one vivid instant, he was back in front of a bedraggled trenchcoated form, staring at snowflakes splotching in dark hair, blood spangling a tear-wet cheek.

"If a creature this weak isn't human, what else could it be?" sounded his own internal voice.

The words strong, weak, human coiled together in Hisoka's mind, re-formed themselves into the characters Asato Tsuzuki. "There's a lesson in there somewhere," he muttered drowsily, and fell asleep.