Disclaimer: I love, love, love The Twelve Kingdoms. Sadly, not mine. But thank you for letting me borrow.
Author's Note: Youko and Keiki - I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist and not try to fill in the blanks, simply because we see so little of their interaction, while the relationship is practically the basis of the series and of quite a few of the books. This will be a drabble/vignette series, most parts of which are already written. I'd be really grateful for some feedback on the characters.
I. Meeting
by onescape
Before they meet, there is a shadow in his heart that bears the shape of Yo-ou.
Keiki is young and there are still many things he does not know, but he is not naive. He is aware of that black, ugly thing that eclipses his every thought and blinds him to the possibility of finding another.
To examine it would mean to relive the unnamed yearning for the sight of her pretty face, a child's face, the way she looked when he laid his eyes on her from his kneeling position at her feet - she was the first. He truly believed (and did not falter, until much, much later) that she would be the only one. Even after that child's visage twisted and contorted in front of his very eyes, marked horribly by fear and bitterness, when her eyes lost their lustre no matter the beauty treatments, when her innate kindness towards people turned into a singular love turned into all-consuming desperation, her heart hollowed out and filled with ashes, because the one she wanted did not want it - even with hands speckled by blood, she was his, and he was hers. She was dying and he was dying with her.
Then the thread between them spun, tightened and snapped in the blink of an eye. He was left alone to live and observe his failure, now but a stumbling half.
He carries that shadow inside of him, nurtures and cherishes it; it is the only bit of her left. His mind shies away from the mere thought of another's face replacing Yo-ou's.
Yet his travels take him constantly further and beyond, while he drowns his grief in mindless flight. He does not realize what it is (because it feels, surprisingly or perhaps not, different the second time) until, in his daze, he has crossed the Outer Sea and the shoku has spit him out by the shore of a strange city shrouded in screeching metal and blinking lights.
"It is you."
Chalk dust floats through shafts of sunlight in that classroom in Hourai, igniting like tiny falling stars, and a terrible slowness of perception settles over him (despite the imminent danger, despite the shadow in his heart). His world comes to a halt, overwhelmed by a sudden sense of peace. His feet are firmly anchored to the foreign, dirty floors, his mind clean and sharp like a blade, such a staggering change from the bleak aimlessness of being without.
Outside heavy-bellied clouds are boiling slowly in a mottled sky, an incarnation of the threat hanging over both of their heads. Yet when light seeps through here and there, it bathes the cowering form of the girl golden and precious, her hair red as sunset, her limbs shaking, mouth open in a trembling oh of shock.
Shu-jou.
He thinks – for a split moment, but very clearly – that he has never seen anything so beautiful, or dangerous. (He has, of course, and the thought itself leaves a taste of doubt in his mouth.)
To kneel in front of her is the most natural act in existence. His body mellows and folds, brought to ground by the mere presence of this girl, guided by instinct that is ages old and indisputable. There is a click, a sigh, a motion in his being not unlike when a finely-carved piece of a puzzle falls into its place on the board.
But that is merely a beginning.
And they have no time.
There will be no leisure to simply look and etch the other into their respective minds and hearts; no such luxury. It does not matter – they are still ruler and kirin, and as such they are inseparably bound, no matter the circumstance.
(Or so he thinks.)
Long before they meet, she does not recognize her own reflection; not in the mirror above the sink in a bathroom swathed in blinding artificial light, not in the eyes of the people she calls classmates and family.
Nakajima Youko is a daughter, is a student, a friend, a girl. She walks, she talks, she helps out, she does her homework. She is a wishbone, flexible and pliant, ready to bow to someone's will. There are so many of her - her greatest care is to keep them apart and keep herself away from groups of people, because they confuse her.
Then the air around her howls when the windows implode and throw a barrage of shards, as tiny as pins and as long as her forearm, against her. The gale blows over, crackling over desks and people; caressing her face.
Youko feels wide awake and certain that she will die; a curious combination. Her eyes open to the man before her, so tall, so strange, with his elaborate robes and inhuman face.
It is no big surprise after all that it is not her face that is reflected by the blade of the sword she's given.
She is a blank slate.
What does 'I accept' mean?