Disclaimer: I do not own X/1999.
Faded Footsteps
He turned the key and opened his apartment door with a soft "Tadaima." The fluorescent light from the hallway flooded in, then stopped abruptly after two feet so that a blue slipper hung precariously between black and white, light and darkness, good and evil. Subaru knelt to brush the wayward slipper back against the wall where its identically mate lay with ginger fingers. His boots were still muddy on the sides although he had wiped his heels clean on the welcome mat.
There was a soft creak from the black leather sofa in the living room. A faint flash of lighting from the bay windows.
"Subaru!"
And then there was the press of a warm body against the damp gray of his overcoat. The fabric rubbed against him, chaffed his skin, but Subaru hesitantly wrapped an arm around a slim waist.
The girl lifted her head. The lightning flashed. Her lips were warm, her eyes were relieved, but Subaru could only give a wan smile in return.
"I waited for you," the girl whispered as she ran slim fingers through his hair, shaking dew from ebony strands.
"You didn't need to," Subaru replied, breaking away from her to shed his jacket.
They stood in the half-gloom for the long minute it took to hang the sagging coat onto a hook. It's white-gray was translucent. The fabric stretched like old skin.
"No, I did," the girl whispered. She fumbled for the light switch.
The warm orange of the lamps dazzled Subaru eyes as she reach towards him and pulled him further into the house. She slammed the door closed so his muddy footprints were in the house, and the ones before could not be seen.
Subaru's feet felt clumsy and heavy as she shed the shirt that clung wetly to him like a second skin. He shivered as she kissed his collarbone.
His footprints had always been in the house.
His footprints had never led anywhere else.
Shimako took off his boots so he couldn't try again.
Sometimes, Subaru dreamed. It was raining, it was cold, so cold. He was all alone, and at first he shouted. Then he cried. But no one ever came except for Shimako, and when she knelt to embrace the dream him, he melted away like the snow, bit by bit. She looked on with hard eyes.
"You're not trying hard enough."
He didn't understand, but whenever dream-Subaru opened his mouth it was too late. His voice had disappeared. He had disappeared.
One day, Subaru didn't call. Just sat there in the rain. Just before he woke up, there was a painful prickle on the back of his hands. His blood began to draw the invisible wounds, straight lines, that crisscrossed, bringing slowly to life a inverted pen-
Subaru woke up screaming, and when Shimako got tired of soothing him, she stuck the edge of a pillow into his mouth to muffle the noise. He whimpered, biting into the dirty case, thick and soggy with his own sweat, salty and more real than dream rain. She soothed over each knot of his spine, and held him down with lead arms and didn't let go until day crept, red, orange, yellow over their bed. Shimako's eyelashes stirred against his cheek as she awoke, while he drifted off, never seeing the pink light reach any higher than the low curve of her chin.
"Hello, Kamui-kun," Shimako smiled.
"Hello," the purple-eyed teenager replied, but the boy was looking at the bags under Subaru's eyes. Subaru felt Shimako tighten the grip around his arm.
"Subaru, how are you?" the boy asked. Kamui's skin was as pale as porcelain. There was a web of scars around the boy's neck as if the skin had been slightly cracked. Kamui caught Subaru looking, and the boy pulled up the neck of his school uniform to hide it.
"Hello, Kamui. I am fine," Subaru ignored the cover-up and beamed. Kamui flustered and looked at him with wide eyes.
"We're very happy," Shimako added, smiling and snuggling against Subaru's shoulder. She was wore a floral dress in a shade that matched the onmyouji's shirt. "He's making a lot of progress." She tapped Subaru on the nose and he scrunched it up.
Kamui kept quiet, staring at Subaru as if he were the eighth wonder of the world.
Shimako drew Subaru away.
"He looked very happy," Subaru said, still smiling.
"That's because you called him 'Kamui'," Shimako said.
"Very good friends don't use suffixes," Subaru intoned.
"Kamui is your very good friend," Shimako said.
"Kamui is my very good friend," Subaru intoned.
Shimako looked at him closely, and primped his hair so that one wayward strand fell neatly behind his ear. "You can stop smiling now." So Subaru did.
"Where were you?" Shimako demanded.
"I had a job," Subaru answered. His boots weren't muddy, but he took them off delicately and moved Shimako's heels aside so he could lay them down. It was a crowded fit, so he frowned, and then moved his boots to the opposite wall.
"You aren't employed," Shimako said, crossing the space between them.
"Of course I am. How else did we afford this apartment?"
"What do you do then, Subaru?"
"I help people," Subaru said.
"What people?"
Subaru stopped staring at his boots' shoelaces. "Everyone, anyone who asks."
Shimako's lips pursed and she dragged him down onto the couch. She went over to the VCR and pulled out a tape from the side cabinet.
"No, I don't -"
"Don't lie to me, Subaru. Sit."
He sat with his fingers clenched as the home video commenced. The shots were shaky, but the images were clear enough. Subaru was sitting in Ueno Park or perched on the wall of the rebuilt Sunshine 60. But no matter where he was, Subaru was saying things, growling things. There was no one there. He wasn't talking to anyone. At one point, one of the video-Subarus at Sunshine 60 raised a sheaf of ofuda. The shikigami exploded from his hands. Their sharp wings cut his cheeks and smashed into the window panes of a skyscraper. The mirrors shattered, and the silver dust was blinding. The cameraman or woman scuttled away into an awning. Subaru watched himself cry as a shard bit through his white coat and into his arm. More ofuda appeared in his hand, and he kept flinging it into glass, into the air, into a thousands reflections of himself...into his own body.
"You're not helping anyone. You're just hurting yourself. Stay here, and it won't be a problem anymore," Shimako said, turning off the screen by remote control. She took his shaking hands into hers. "You're broken Subaru, but I can fix you. I know I can. You just have to stay with me, that's all." She rubbed down his arm over the bandage he had forgotten about. She kissed him, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them she was above him. For a moment he couldn't see in one eye, but that feeling passed, and then she leaned against him, laying her head on his chest, small and vulnerable. He brushed fingers through her hair. Her neck was warm against his hand. Something told him to grip. But then that feeling also passed. She lifted her face and placed kisses on his closed eyelids, one over each eye. There was the tiny prick of a medicinal needle.
"I love you, Subaru."
Very good friends don't use suffixes.
But as Subaru drifted off to sleep, he wondered if lovers sometimes did.
They didn't have mirrors in the apartment anymore.
Once, when the red haze cleared, he found himself in the bathroom, and his legs were bleeding. Shimako was sweeping away broken glass.
"What happened?" Subaru heard himself asking.
"Just an accident. An accident," Shimako said, the hysteria in her voice barely subdued.
Subaru reached for her and she cried into his shoulder.
"Shimako. I am fine."
He smiled.
One day, they didn't have knives either.
"Look Subaru, an elephant," Shimako giggled. Subaru looked down at his finger food, amorphous chicken nuggets, and smiled.
After a while, Subaru decided Shimako was right, so he stayed at home, in bed.
"Subaru, what do you want for lunch?"
"Not hungry," he replied, staring out the window. The sunlight gleamed off his hazel eye turning it gold, but was absorbed into the green forest of his other.
"Kamui's been asking about you. He doesn't think I'm helping."
"Of course you're helping!" Subaru exclaimed. Then his voice became distant. "A long time ago, I used to help people, too. But I can't even help myself anymore, isn't that right, Shimako?"
There was a banging at their front door.
"Subaru!" She clutched at his hand. Shimako's face was turning red and blotchy. Her eyes were hard, scared things, full of knowledge and trying to blink back their fear. "He'll get the authorities to take you away from me. After all that therapy, after everything. Please, you have to get up! Smile at him and it'll all be okay again," she cried with a voice that finally betrayed her.
Distantly, someone shouted, "Open up!"
"I can't go anywhere, you closed the door," Subaru said serenely. "You wiped away all my muddy footprints. Thank you for making everything clean again, Shimako."
Footsteps.
She cried, and he caressed her hair.
Out of the corner of his eye, there was a man who was finally trying to talk to him, but Subaru knew he wasn't real.
"Open up! We're breaking down the door!" The voices were clear enough behind the wood of their bedroom door. There was the sound of timber giving way.
"Hello. I'm fine."
Subaru smiled and smiled at the strangers, because he couldn't stop smiling. Shimako sobbed, and the man who never came when Subaru cried in his dreams -
Cried now.