Title: The Gap Year
By: Sei-chan-1999/Darkest Symphony
Summary: A survivor yet victim of the trauma he underwent in Tokyo, Sumeragi Subaru returns home to Kyoto for a year, learning how to live again.
Warning: Deals with teenage depression, murder, bereavement and other dark themes. A LOT of angst. Rated T.
Disclaimer: I don't own Clamp or their characters.
XXX
The relevance of it only dawned on him a week later, when they were all gathered together like organised animals in a room too good for the likes of him, where he felt that every breath he let out polluted the atmosphere for everyone.
"No," he choked out, staring at the white-haired woman seated passively in her wheelchair and interrupting whoever had been speaking before, "No, no, no, no...Obaa-san, he hurt you because you tried to-"
There was something close to silence in the hall, broken by loud swallows, the rustle of clothes or breathy sighs and someone hissed his name.
"Seishirou-san, he-"
His grandmother's face which had been so still before, now changed like the turbulent waves that rose and fell into themselves until the end of time. Anger, sorrow, concern, fear- until she managed to force a look of mild reproach instead. For him.
"Subaru-san," she said firmly, "That is in no way relevant to what was being discussed before you interjected."
He heard the words faintly and stared in horror at her bent and dead legs, the knowledge of what she'd done to save him and the mortification of the fact that he'd been too self-absorbed and selfish to care-
He tried to messily get up and run before anyone saw the tears filling his eyes, but someone caught him by the elbow, the injured one, and forced him back to his knees. Hokuto, he knew, would've delivered the quintessential punch to the offender's face before making her dramatic escape, but he wasn't her. He was not Hokuto.
Subaru was forced to sit there and weep as they all watched.
XXX
It would've been an irony if they had gone back home to Kyoto together. Their twin apartments were locked, sealed and the keys confiscated together. Some property was boxed. Together.
It would have been a fitting irony; dead or alive, to have been together on all their journeys.
But they hadn't allowed Subaru to travel on the same day as the corpse. As the Clan Head, it would've been inappropriate for him to be contaminated that way.
His sister.
Contamination.
Subaru wanted to tell them that they were mistaken about that; the real contamination was the one they still eagerly offered their hands to because he kept stumbling for some unknown reason.
XXX
"He didn't do anything to me," Subaru announced shakily as soon as he heard the door being slid open and the creak of wheels he'd grown used to.
He felt her stunned silence and without turning to face her, he hastened to add, "Nothing beyond what I've been treated for. I'm untouched."
He knew that nobody would ask, of course, but they'd presume, which was infinitely worse than being called a whore to his face.
"Your parents worry, Subaru san," his grandmother said instead and he sensed that she wanted to come closer, but the wheelchair forced them to maintain a formal distance. Swallowing his reluctance, he turned to face her and knelt at her feet as she regarded him with a deep frown.
"Do you sleep?" she inquired kindly. His face was smudged grey in places and he'd lost the almost monkey-like chubbiness of his cheeks. His lips were slightly apart and she noted he'd started biting them.
Subaru opened his mouth to answer without even processing the question and then froze; sleeping well would mean granting himself peace, forgetting his transgression and utter stupidity. Troubled sleep would mean more attention and time wasted over his account; experts and worried faces that peered at him. He had no idea which answer would result in less damage.
"You have no reason to feel guilt, Subaru-san," she continued, neatly moving over his panic, "You lost far more than I ever did."
He nodded, remembering the way he'd burst out at that last meeting and nodded again to tell her that he understood, probably not convincing even the glass of water next to his untouched bed. She took one of his hands in her own and held him like that for a few minutes. The skin was dry and the pentagrams were distorted by the soft wiry veins and tendons that were starting to show. In a few days, she would have a new set of gloves sent to his room, the message made clear. It had been two months.
XXX
Subaru tried school again. It passed the time between painful conversations with clan members and tortured attempts to fall asleep.
"What subjects interest you?" the tutor had asked. He'd been a tall and elderly man, one of those traditional teachers who made sure you knew you were his inferior and reminded you of it as many times as possible in a single day.
Subaru wanted to learn how to kill.
He briefly considered asking the man that and the idea almost sent him into a fit of hysterical laughter. Hokuto would have been proud. In his place, though, she probably would've demanded a Biology book to shriek with laughter at the fleshy diagrams in the Reproduction chapters until he was on his knees begging her to stop.
"Is something amusing?"
"English," he answered quickly and felt the man's wave of silent disapproval. A purist, of course. But Subaru needed it; that distance from everything he knew and whatever he'd been brought up with till now.
"That's all? You only like one subject?"
"I'd like to focus on one subject until I'm proficient, sensei," Subaru corrected softly. His concentration was a third of what it had once been and the sound of someone sneezing in another room was enough to make him flinch these days. One subject was a Herculean accomplishment for him.
"We meet for eight hours each day. Do you mean to say that you will study nothing but English for that interval?"
Subaru shrugged and knew that if he'd been anything lesser than the Clan Head, he would've been chased out of the premises with his own books and sharpened pencils.
Their arrangement lasted for almost five months. By the end of it, the teacher vowed never to speak the infernal language again.
XXX
"It's really a very abused task, Subaru san," the woman assured him as he stepped into the unfamiliar terrain of the Sumeragi kitchen. He'd eaten the food that had been prepared here for most of his life and he still felt like a lost tourist.
"Modern youth really makes too much a fuss about it," she continued and handed him a utensil he didn't even recognise, "It's very easy and everyone should learn how to cook. Not just the wives."
"I know," Subaru said, feeling harassed.
This woman (some aunt of his, apparently) might have meant it as a joke with her careless talk and friendly smile but that stung, as he remembered who'd done most of the cooking during his one year stay in Tokyo.
He managed to peel exactly two potatoes and some of his finger before he was summoned for a meeting. He felt too tired to apologise, so he just placed the items down on the board and bowed before turning to leave.
"Always the women," he heard her mutter.
XXX
It was a challenge to find something to do. He knew his mother spent the nights outside his room, making sure he didn't kill himself and that his father watched him worriedly, silently sending away visitors so that he wasn't bothered too much. Subaru envied cousins who had things to do; normal boys and girls who rushed around the estates looking frazzled and then satisfied as they accomplished something and managed to steal a few minutes to laugh and share a story or two.
It had been almost seven months since he'd been home, Subaru noted, and not once had the word 'Sakurazukamori' ever been mentioned within his hearing. He raised a hand to wipe some hair behind his ear before remembering with irritation that he'd had it cropped short and that furthermore, he was wearing gloves. He ripped the damn thing off with his teeth and flung it as far as he could. Being lightweight and flimsy, it landed a pathetic eight feet from where he stood.
"Help me," he whispered into the wall, all the while hoping that nobody would.
XXX
The smell of smoke woke up everyone in the estate, even though Subaru had taken care to find a spot where he wouldn't be obtrusive or burn down the whole city.
His parents arrived first and they stood where they were, perhaps too afraid to move, watching their son throw another mass of cotton and silk into the trembling flames like something deranged.
Within two minutes, there was a crowd of fearfully silent relatives behind him and Subaru ignored them all, gathering up piles of colourful cloth and letting the flames and smoke blind him as he fed them without reserve.
"Subaru san?"
His grandmother. Her voice was shivering.
He made sure nothing could be salvaged, before removing and tossing his gloves into the pyre. Then he turned around to meet their faces, pentagrams blazing on his hands.
"I didn't mean to disturb you, Obaa san," he said to her stiffly, "but this was the proper thing to do. Forgive me."
He was prepared to shoulder his way through the crowd but they parted in a beautiful synchrony, like a human curtain.
Behind him, every piece of clothing Hokuto had ever designed for the two of them turned to dust.
XXX
The last three months, Subaru pulled his act together. There was a routine. He followed it. He made himself learn the workings of the household again, instead of letting it work around him. He attended meetings, offered his expertise and managed to put a close to four or five particularly troubling local cases. He weight finally stabilized and he stopped tripping so much. He knew basic cooking and read novels in his free time.
His request to return to Tokyo was still being debated over and until then, he was determined to feign flawlessness.
XXX
Covered in another's reeking blood.
The dreams were less frequent, but they still came.
Struggling to speak as his hand wormed its way into a fluttering heart.
Having known that they foretold the future, any other eighteen-year-old would've started writing them down for future analysis.
The dead, early evening sun making the water beneath them shimmer faintly.
But Subaru preferred to let them fly away from him.
Seishirou-san!
He coaxed his dreams and their goddamn meanings to the edges of the Universe till they vanished.
Yet this morning he woke with a mild start, sleepy hands still trying to pull away from an adult's corpse and batting at the red stains on a long coat he wasn't even wearing. Barely conscious, he felt the cold tears drip into his ears and watched the weak rays of light illuminate the muscles on his chest.
He woke up with his heart dead.
He would forget this dream as sleep took over again. And when he woke next, it would be the bustle and ceremony of preparing him to travel back to Tokyo and the dry details about his apartment and food and staying alive and keeping in touch. He would pretend to listen dutifully. Anything to escape at last.
He would change there, undoubtedly. Tokyo, after all, had changed for him first.
This moment though, he embraced the sensation of holding that cooling corpse in his arms; feeling blood dry all over him as a staring eye went blank forever.
In the dream, he'd been weeping. How strange.
But for now, eighteen-year-old Sumeragi Subaru smiled.
XXX
Author's Note: We see a HUGE change in Subaru, between his TB and X versions. Somewhere in the middle, though, for a few pages towards the end of TB 7, we see an angry, vengeful and visibly unstable Subaru who wants nothing more than to hunt Seishirou down and kill him. I wanted to write a fic that shows Subaru's personality like this before he changes into a resigned adult who realises he's too deep in love to take any other action but end his own life. I've only read one or two other fics that focus on this part of him so I wanted to explore. Also, being an angsty and stubborn teenager myself, I think I can relate, although on a far lower level. (That was a joke...)
I decided to liken his journey to the concept of a gap year between school and University, because some people take a backseat from life during this time, but change their outlook and personality through new experiences.
Please read and review! I hope you enjoyed.