fandom: tokyo babylon
title: iyaseru.
pairing: seishirou x subaru
rating: pg-13
Description - Three days after Hokuto's death, Subaru wakes up from a bittersweet dream.
Disclaimer - Tokyo Babylon belongs to Clamp. My everlasting love for it becomes more and more solidified with the fanfics I try to produce as the years go by.
iyaseru.
By miyamoto yui
"How did I end up here?"
But he knew it all too well.
As he blinked his eyes to immerse himself in the scene before him, he wished that the whole place would engulf him in its seeming immortality. He wanted to stay there and forget that the world did go around the sun.
That things did change with every second a person breathed,
whether for better or for worse.
Getting up from the familiar, yet still unfamiliar bed, the sixteen-year-old pushed himself up clumsily. But he ended up burying his head in the messed up sheets just to catch the sweet, common scent which sent soft, gradual shivers all over his body as if tickling him with its bitterness, shame, and misrepresented affection.
Then, he slowly pulled himself away and finally got up from the bed.
The room remained unchanged. It was exactly as if nothing ever happened. Everything was in its place as if the owner were going to arrive at the end of the day and continue with his business as he always had.
Not today, though. Not ever.
The owner was a vision, reflected in a permanent dream that would never thrust his way into this side of reality.
But what an extraordinary, touching, and wondrous dream it had been!
It was a repeating thought that made him want to keep quiet or shout out and cry. He didn't know what else to do.
Instead, he stood there in silence with his black gloved hands unable to make fists.
It had only been three days and it was as if nothing had ever happened. It was all just a nightmare, but where would his feelings go? Where were the emotions that were left going towards?
What had he fallen in love with anyway?
It was a ghost, just like all his cases. And now, it had to be exorcised.
But how do you exorcise the demons in your own heart?
It was then that he hugged himself because he felt so hollow and cold inside. His passion for life was snuffed out and was at its last matchstick flame.
He turned away from the bedroom. It was the same one the man said he would throw him in if he ever had the chance. Instead, it had been against that very sakura tree they had met under years ago.
"You were a coward just like me."
His words barely came out. It wasn't in self-pity or in sorrow. Though his body acted like a corpse with a soul on loan, the disunited pieces of his mind gathered in conflict and self-infliction. His tone, though weak, was filled with frustration and anger.
"Fate."
These words resounded over and over among the walls, in sync with the tapping of his feet on the wooden floor as he entered the living room. He watched the couch and saw an apparition of himself rain-covered while his beloved took care of him.
The face was already becoming so blurry. It was mismatched with the man at the park and the compassionate veterinarian that had always gone out of his way to help him. And now, when he needed him most, he vanished.
He never existed?
Was that what the man had tried to prove to him?
/But if you were so cold-hearted, why did you save me once more? It's because you couldn't kill me, just as I can't push you away from my mind. Not now. Not ever. I know that for a fact. It's something I have to accept as much as I get mad at myself over and over for it./
The boy's white shirt was tucked into his black jeans. Half-naked, he didn't even bother to put on the sleeves or button the wrinkled blouse.
Yes, it was true.
He turned his head towards the bedroom door. Beyond it was a mirror that stared back at him. The boy blinked at his own emotionless reflection. Staring further into the distorted mirror, he saw the marks left by the man.
They were mixed with the scars of almost being consumed by the sakura tree and the ones that came from a dream that was sweet, but left a bitter aftertaste.
They weren't his marks. Seishirou-san would have never done these things to him.
No, not his beloved.
It was _that_ man.
/My heart knows the truth. My mind just refuses to ingest what the body's been raped of./
The arms that were holding onto one another were now unwrapped. Instead of looking at his profile, he faced the direction of the mirror to look at his corrupted, damaged, and stained self. This was the new person that had emerged as a result of that man's handling.
His eyes became more focused even if the rest of him appeared to be lifeless.
He would fight it.
This was all that he had left.
Even like this, in his dreams, his sister told him to go on.
"You still have someone to protect and I know somewhere deep inside, you believe in that. Who said that people only have one side to them? Are you so weak to believe in such a simple-minded thing, Subaru? It's so unlike you!"
Then, she had shouted while holding onto his cheeks, "Do you think Sei-chan knows who he is? He's not a murderer. He did it to live. This may not make any sense right now, but you have to understand that.
By killing, he proves his existence to the world. But he didn't know what to do with you because you brought out a part of himself he never knew."
He nodded slowly. He started to cry. The voice that had always been so timid and quiet was shouting. "That's why I loved him so much! He made me feel like I could achieve anything! Even if he says what he is, I became a better person because of him. Even if it was just for a little while…
…I want to believe that he was as kind as I felt through his hands and his arms."
The boy closed his eyes and pointed his head towards the ceiling.
"You were wrong. This was another part of yourself. You just couldn't accept it, Seishirou."
He could feel him. The torn clothes were proof that the man had come through that door last night.
While he was washing his face, someone had come in. Like an eidolon transforming into flesh under the bathroom light, the man dropped his immaculate lab coat and bloodied trench coat on the tile floor while walking towards him.
His eyes did not waver.
The boy was watching the figure come closer through the bathroom mirror.
"Subaru-kun," the deep, alluring voice called to him as if in a trance, changing everything into one of unreality.
The man had hugged him as tightly as before and Subaru didn't want to believe, at the moment, in things like reality and dreams. They were just other states of the mind.
He smelled of blood, but Subaru closed his eyes as the man unbuttoned Subaru's blouse and pulled it down. Then, his right hand slowly glided up his neck and onto his chin with his index finger inside of Subaru's lips, feeling his wet mouth.
/Not innocent anymore… I don't care right now…/
We lose all inhibitions…
"Seishirou-san…"
His heart beat faster and faster as the blood rushed to his face. As usual, he was blushing, a remnant of his sinless heart, which was now bleeding into his own corruption.
The man's left hand was holding onto his jean button, which barely kept everything together.
He pressed the boy against the sink, but the man was looking at their figures at the mirror.
With a voice mixed with the man's cruelty and the veterinarian's playfulness, he instructed, "Look at us, Subaru-kun."
The man smirked as the boy opened his eyes to watch his own face and then down at the hand undoing the button of his pants.
"You seem to think that I care for this kind of thing, Seishirou-san."
He had said the name. The two sides of the moon, the torturous one and the smiling one, eclipsed in that single utterance of his lips.
Seishirou chuckled. "I thought you did."
Smiling to himself, the sixteen-year-old shook his head. "Eternity passed in these past three days. I learned not to care. Or at least, I'm forcing myself to."
Subaru's left hand reached back and pulled gently on Seishirou's neck while Seishirou kissed his shoulders.
/The way he's touching me…
…so, ice burns more than fire…/
The black covered right hand desperately pressed against the bathroom mirror before them as Seishirou pulled down the zipper of Subaru's black jeans. His fingers pressed against the mirror, which paralleled his body against the sink and his breathlessness even though his mouth was slightly open.
Feeling more of him, Subaru winced as he was forced to watch his own crimson reflection.
To prove that he was broken beyond repair by this man's hands…
…and they boy didn't seem to care anymore about how it was done…
…as long as it was thorough.
This time, Seishirou-san wouldn't come back.
And he knew it was his time to leave.
It was then that Subaru slowly watched himself button himself up together again. He took off his gloves and put them on the dining table in exchange for the beige trench coat that Seishirou surely had left for him.
In between his freed, unbound hands, Subaru took up the trench coat and wrapped himself within it.
Walking out the door, he didn't bother to look back.
This may not have been the ideal happiness in other people's heads. It's disturbing and perverted to say the least.
But it was his.
Within these impure and restrained hands, he knew in one sense, he couldn't do much. But that's where it was so beautiful to him. By this mark, they were to meet again for sure.
He would always be connected to his most precious one.
A slave to his beloved's afterimages, there was a type of freedom no one else would know. It was his and his alone, granted by the one of the people he loved most in the world.
After all, Subaru was chained to hope itself.
/They keep on telling you 'fate this' and 'fate that'. But even within this trap we've made for just the two of us, this is the happiness I've sought after. It's mine. Just 'you', And until I found out who that is, you can't die, Seishirou-san… Whether by curse or by choice, That's what your eyes told me while kissing me and I looked at our reflections in the mirror… I kissed my hands.
Even you were taken in by this, Seishirou-san.
It's not dictated by my name, my grandmother, or my sister.
Whoever you were.
only I can kill you.
I didn't ever want the scars to heal,
or else I'd lose you forever./
Click.
Owari.
-
Author's note: I had been dwelling on new ideas to contribute in writing for X and TB. I think I am a bit rusty, but I hope to make at least two more fics for X or TB because I've not done so. Another Gravi one that I've thought about for 2 months is in the making also. But going back to TB, it is has been more than extremely hard. In order to find that 'different angle', I have to really step outside of my usual boundaries. (And yes, I know Seishirou smashed that mirror, but we're just going to assume he repaired it somehow. ^^;;;)
There's much to explain for all the symbolism, but I shall leave that up to you. ^_^
So, I hope you have enjoyed this and will enjoy the upcoming fics, whether they are strange or psychotically sweet. I still want to push through to bring new quality: new perspectives yet unexplored, whether or not they're successful. As Bunta from Initial D said, "I tried a million things and only a few worked."
As always, I am very thankful for your continued support. It warms my heart inside because a writer, to me, like friends, are reflected by the kinds of readers they have.
Thank you to Alexos-san for inspiring me and giving me confidence to do TB again.
Most of all, thank you for always being patient with your sporadic author, Rei-chan.
Love always,
Miyamoto Yui
Translation - iyasu / to heal, unfinished.
In this case, it means something like 'to be forced to heal'.
Saturday, April 2, 2005
12:12 PM