Disclaimer: Loveless isn't mine; Kouga-sensei just has the prettiest sandbox to play in. *w*

Warnings: Blood/violence, unhealthy relationships, a lack of happy endings; basically canon, but more so. Spoilers for volume 8.

Complex Metamorphosis

There's a lot of blood.

That surprises Soubi. He's no stranger to pain, and to be surprised that Seimei left him here would require him to have been expecting anything of Seimei at all, but the blood... it frightens him.

Blood always reminds him of being small and scared, six years old and newly orphaned, and of the way his parents looked before their bodies were hidden away.

It reminds him of being -

weak.

Useless.

Pathetic.

The words bite more sharply than Seimei's knife even when he thinks them to himself. And he must be all of those things, because why else would Seimei simply leave him here? Not even the person to whom he now belongs has any use for him. After all those years of trying so hard to be what Ritsu-sensei needed, he's not even good enough for the boy who chose him when Ritsu cast him aside...

The prickling heat behind his eyes is almost as upsetting as the blood, because he doesn't cry, ever. Sensei doesn't like people who cry, so Soubi doesn't - but there are tears sliding down his cheeks, and his nose is running, and before he knows it he's outright sobbing. Anger and hurt and confusion explode into tears and shaky gasps for breath and now he's glad that he's alone, because it means no one will have to see him like this.

Once he collects himself and goes back to the school this will be his secret, and no one will have to know how disgraceful he is.

At least Seimei has allowed him that.

Eventually the tears stop, though they leave a splitting headache behind to remember them by. Dizziness washes over Soubi as he lurches to his feet; if he had any choice he would heed it and stay put, but he knows he can't stay here. He has to get back to the school, and... after that, he isn't so sure. But he can't stay here.

He hasn't stopped bleeding yet, for one thing. Should he go to the infirmary? But they might ask questions he doesn't want to answer. Nagisa-sensei? She is a doctor, and she usually means well despite what Ritsu-sensei thinks of her... but she would ask questions too, and even the thought of her shrill, panicked voice is enough to double Soubi's headache.

And Sensei -

Soubi is angry at Ritsu-sensei - more so, it feels, than he's been about anything, ever. His hands clench into white-knuckled fists, nails digging into his palms, at the mere thought of how deeply he has been betrayed.

He has no right to feel that way, he knows. A Fighter is what its master wants it to be. Its feelings do not matter.

But he can't shake them.

(Maybe that is why Sensei abandoned him; because he is flawed, imperfect. Soubi knows that Sensei deserves better, but he doesn't - can't - believe it.)

He's a little unsteady on his feet, but not so much so that he can't walk, slowly, back towards the school. This place has been his home for eleven years, and he could walk the grounds blindfolded. All he has to do is keep moving, and his feet will take him where he needs to go. It's like sleepwalking. Only the physical pain reaches him - and he knows how to handle that.

It's the only thing he knows, really. The only thing he's good for. Isn't it?

Hurting, and being hurt... that's what his life narrows down to, in the end.

Without the battles, he'd be nothing.

Step by slow, trembling step he lets his feet lead him, paying little attention to the path they carry him down. Into the main school building through a side door, down the empty halls - everyone must be at dinner by now. In front of one door in particular he comes to a halt, his body refusing to move any further, and his hand reaches out to knock of its own accord.

The sound of his knuckles against the wood startles him out of his trance. He blinks hard to clear his vision, even tries again before he realizes that it's a smudge of blood on his glasses that's keeping him from seeing clearly. Just as his feet moved to carry him here his shaking hands go about the routine of pulling them off to clean them on the hem of a shirt that isn't there, and all he can do is fold them and shove them carelessly in his pocket.

The door in front of him opens, and it takes every ounce of strength he has left not to run away.

"Soubi-kun, what -"

In all the years he's known Ritsu-sensei, Soubi has never heard him shocked into silence, and he's certainly never been the one to do it himself. He can't bring himself to look up, terrified of what he might see if he does - anger? Disapproval? Soubi is certain he's failed some test he wasn't told he would be taking, and Sensei does not tolerate failure.

Soubi is angry. He's angrier than he's ever been in his life. But even so, he remembers that a disobedient Fighter is nothing short of worthless... and he's failed two masters today.

"I'm sorry -" he starts, voice a choked whisper, but he can't force anything more past the lump in his throat.

He stares at the floor and Sensei's shoes, and when they move towards him he flinches back before he can think - another failure, and when he realizes it he braces himself for the punishment he knows he deserves. But -

"You have nothing to apologize for."

And instead of lashing out at him, Sensei's hands settle heavily on his shoulders.

"Sensei, I..." He dares to look up, searching for some explanation in Sensei's face, but any that might be found is hiding behind the glare of the ceiling lights in Sensei's glasses. "I don't understand. I disappointed my - my..." Neither "Sacrifice" nor "master" will come to his lips. "I disappointed Seimei. I came running to you, even though you're not..."

Tears sting at his eyes again and he tries to pull away, but Sensei's strong hands won't let him move. It's strange. These hands have always caused him pain, and yet now, when he most deserves to be punished, they're almost a comfort; it's almost like being held. But he doesn't deserve that comfort, or Sensei's inexplicable leniency. He knows he doesn't, and that knowledge sets him on edge as he waits for the scolding that will surely come.

He waits -

and waits -

and there is nothing but silence, until finally -

"Come, Soubi-kun."

- Sensei's arm curls possessively around Soubi's shoulders, and Soubi lets himself be led down the empty hall, as malleable as clay in Sensei's hands. As he always has been.

There are people in the hallways now, trickling out of the cafeteria in twos and threes as dinner comes to an end, and everyone they pass stops and stares. Soubi is used to people staring at him in awe or in envy, staring because they want his talent and his place as Ritsu-sensei's favorite, but this is... different. Shameful. Soubi finds himself curling inwards, his chest against Sensei's, his head against Sensei's shoulder to hide the bloody mess of his throat from his classmates' prying eyes, and he knows that something is not right when Sensei lets him.

"Only feeble minds spread gossip." When Sensei speaks even the least promising students react like well-trained Fighters, and today is no different. The cloud of gawking students instantly dissipates, but Sensei's arm remains tight around Soubi's shoulders - and fighting it, unfolding himself and standing with only his own power and strength, seems impossible.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"...Sensei always asks hard questions," Soubi murmurs, and for once Sensei doesn't press further.

They've turned down a hallway unfamiliar to Soubi, one lined with doors he's never opened; he sees glimpses of this when he lifts his head, bordered by Sensei's collar and Sensei's hair and the curve of Sensei's shoulder. In front of a door labelled with Sensei's name, he begins to realize just where they've ended up, and he tries to pull away, to protest - students, and Fighters, and this one in particular all don't belong here, but Sensei won't let him go.

"I shouldn't -"

"Shh."

"I'm not allowed -"

Click. The door opens, and Soubi hides his face in the curve of Sensei's shoulder as panic rises in his throat and squeezes his chest. This is not his place. He has never - never, not even for their lessons or when Sensei took his ears - been here, and he doesn't want to be here now. Sensei's room is - is Sensei's, private, and he doesn't deserve -

"Soubi-kun," Sensei whispers into Soubi's hair, right between where his ears would be had Sensei not stolen them long ago; "Soubi-kun, who would get you into trouble here? Are you expecting some jealous student to wander by and tattle to the principal?" Ritsu-sensei, Soubi remembers (a heartbeat too late), can out-talk and out-logic anyone, and especially a student who learned his art of cutting quick and deep by chilling example. He doesn't answer, and doesn't protest further as Sensei guides him inside.

If Soubi had ever spared the subject any thought, he would have imagined Sensei's home to be a mansion, or a castle - not a modest room at the far end of the school, where the distinction between Seven Moons and Seven Voices blurs. It's a room not unlike Sensei's office, actually, aside from the bed. A clean room. Tidy.

And unmistakably Sensei's, because instead of pictures in the frames on the walls, there are butterflies.

"Take off your shoes." It's an order, just like the hundreds upon hundreds of orders Sensei has given him before. He follows it without question, even though he has to lean on Sensei to do it, and only after he's stepped out of his shoes and nudged them into a neat pair in the doorway does he so much as think.

He's glad that Sensei ordered him, because he wouldn't have remembered on his own, and then he would have tracked dirt and grass and worse all over the carpet. But was that right? Is he allowed to follow orders from a Sacrifice who no longer has any claim to him? He doesn't know whether he did right or absolutely wrong. He doesn't even know if he's allowed to ask.

Either he did right, or Sensei wants it to hurt when he finds out that he did wrong; but either way, his only answer is silence. Ritsu-sensei guides him across the room with only a hand in the small of Soubi's back and a hand on his arm to keep him steady, and Soubi, voice caught in his throat, pretends that's enough.

In the bathroom, Sensei sits Soubi down on the edge of the tub and starts to pull his shirt, stained with Soubi's blood, over his head. "Strip. Remove everything. We might as well clean all of you at once."

Soubi's hands are at his belt almost before Sensei can order them there, but they freeze as Sensei's shirt lands on the tile floor; he only has enough energy left for one thing at a time, and something more important than his pants has his attention.

Like anyone who's been in battle, Sensei has his fair share of scars - but Soubi couldn't care less about those. Everyone has scars; they aren't special, or important. All they mean is that no one was there to protect you. But sometimes, sometimes, they mean everything in the world, and because Sensei is a Sacrifice, he has the most important scars of all.

Just there, just above the waistband of his pants, is written a word more familiar to Soubi than any Japanese. He's traced the letters with his fingers a thousand times, scratched the letters into his own skin, because he'd thought... he had always thought...

Now his hand scrabbles helplessly against his hip for the last time, painting smudges of a name that will never be his to use or wish for; KINDLESS. One who shows no kindness or compassion. One who is inhuman. Someone who - and his soon-bloodslick fingers slide up to his throat and the new name there that he doesn't dare touch - someone who, in the end, was just human enough not to take what should have been his.

A cool hand closes over his and lowers it to his lap. Sensei's touch eases his pain, then increases it a hundredfold when Sensei speaks; "You are not Kindless," he says, and to hear it said so plainly, as though it's hardly even worth mention, tears at Soubi's heart. "You are Beloved, and you will not dishonor your name by playing at taking another."

Soubi's shaking hands are useless, and so Sensei is the one to undress him. He's never so much as touched Soubi's clothes before - ordering Soubi to strip has always marked the beginning of their lessons and ordering Soubi to get dressed again has always marked their end, but this, as is becoming painfully clear, is not a lesson. Soubi sits frozen as Sensei slides his pants and underwear to the floor, so uncertain that he hardly dares to breathe.

Sensei doesn't quite lift him into the bathtub, but he certainly guides him there, his strong hands on Soubi's shoulders as clear an order as any spoken words. As he settles down against the cool surface, he wonders if Seimei knows that kind of order. (For a moment he wonders if Seimei really knows how to order a Fighter at all, but then he remembers the soft hands that touched him, and the soft voice that spoke to him - and the harsh knife that bit into his skin - and he has no doubts.)

When Sensei presses a soapy washcloth into his hand he manages to fumble it across his skin and the largest patches of dried blood, though he's glad that Sensei's the one directing the showerhead. The only conversation comes in the form of commands and Soubi's murmured responses of "yes, sensei" as he does what he's told; he shifts his weight, unfolds his legs, tips back his head so Sensei can wash the blood from his hair.

It's easy, until -

"This will be... unpleasant," Sensei says as he brings the showerhead up to Soubi's chest, and before Soubi can respond - before he's even really processed what was said - the water hits the name etched into his throat, and suddenly Soubi is drowning.

This is not pain.

Pain has never been this hot, bright, all-consuming - a physical force that slams into his chest and sends him reeling against the back of the tub.

It isn't because of Sensei's lessons that he doesn't scream.

He doesn't scream because he would have to draw breath to make a sound.

Maybe he blacks out for a moment; maybe he only loses himself so completely to the agony that he loses his awareness of anything else. When he comes back to his senses he is huddled, shaking, in a corner of the bathtub, producing keening little noises in a voice that hardly sounds like his own.

(Why does becoming someone's Fighter have to feel like being torn apart? That's already what not becoming someone's Fighter feels like.

Having to endure it twice just doesn't seem fair.)

"You'll have to clean it frequently." Sensei's voice sounds oddly distant, but his hands are strong and real as they slip behind Soubi to wring the water from his hair. "I won't lose my best student to infection. Besides," and his fingers brush the edge of the collar Seimei made, the coiled rose-stem lines and bleeding thorns; "these will heal badly if left to their own devices. If you irritate them evenly, they will scar evenly."

"Irritate them...?" That isn't how you get wounds to heal. Soubi knows from his back; the less you bother something, the better it heals. You keep wounds clean and covered and leave them alone - but Sensei is nodding, so close to Soubi that he can feel it in the way Sensei's hair brushes against his shoulder. Today is a day of forgetting lessons and learning them anew. Why should something as simple as first-aid be any different?

"If you leave them alone, they'll heal too quickly. Keeping the wounds open will create stronger scars when they finally close."

He helps Soubi out of the bathtub and into a towel, guiding Soubi with his hands, not words, to sit and hold his hair out of the way. "You can wash them with vinegar or lemon juice," he says as he starts to smear antibiotic ointment on the wounds, as calm as though this is just another lecture. Soubi, meanwhile, flinches - not from the sting of the ointment, but from the words being spoken. He rarely doubts that Sensei knows almost everything, but sometimes... "Or rub them with salt -"

"Sensei, I -"

Sensei's hands fall still against his throat. "Yes?"

"Please stop."

What he doesn't say is that he thinks he's going to be sick. But Sensei seems to know even without him saying, and he finishes tending to Soubi's neck in silence.

Dry and dressed in a tee-shirt and sweatpants too large for his lanky frame, Soubi tries to feel normal again, but things are still all sideways and wrong. He's still in Sensei's bathroom. He's still marked with the wrong name, and he can't simply scold himself into believing that it's the right one. Not even a Fighter can simply forget eleven years - that has to be true.

There are limits to what even a Fighter can do, and so he hasn't failed. He might be Ritsu-sensei's best student, but he's still only human, isn't he?

"If you feel at all strange, go to the infirmary." There is something very final about those words, and something inside of Soubi feels like it's dying. "Seimei would not want for you to become ill -"

"I want to stay."

For a moment Sensei only stares at him, and Soubi can't fault him for that, because he isn't sure himself what he means or why he said it. There is certainly no magic to Sensei's room that will keep everything the same, but -

"With you. I want to stay with you, Sensei. Just -" Sensei is opening his mouth to interrupt, and instead of falling silent Soubi just talks faster, determined to have his say for once. If he doesn't speak now, he'll never get another chance. Of that, at least, he's certain. "Just for one night. Just... to know what it's like, before..."

"Soubi-kun -"

"Please!" He's never spoken over Ritsu-sensei before today. The freedom, he supposes, of belonging to another. "I... Sensei, don't you want this? You've always said," and the words come out in a rush before he can stop them, because today is a day of firsts, of speaking things that have always remained unspoken. "You've always said I look like my mother. Don't you want to pretend, just once, that you had her instead of me?"

Silence.

And then, in that last long moment before Soubi accepts that he's gone too far and flees - then Sensei pulls him close.

It is the furthest thing from romantic, and close to painful. Soubi's face is crushed awkwardly into Sensei's shoulder; they are all bony elbows and sharp edges that don't fit properly together. But they are close for once, closer even than when Soubi lost his ears, and that is all that matters. No matter what happens, Soubi will have this night, this memory.

"One night," Sensei says. "And one night only. Do you understand me?" Soubi has used up all his words and all his breath and he can only nod, but at least it's enough for Sensei.

This isn't enough for Soubi. But if he doesn't take what he can get, he'll have nothing at all.

Sensei's bed is softer than his; it feels too soft, somehow, like something he doesn't deserve. He folds his legs up underneath him and doesn't watch Sensei get undressed. Sensei has better people to undress in front of, people who aren't too-bold students in too-big clothes awkwardly folded up in his too-soft bed.

He does watch as Sensei sits down beside him, staring in wide-eyed fascination as his teacher plays with the pill-bottles on his nightstand. It's almost like hearing a secret to know that Ritsu-sensei takes pills, strange drugs with strange names that could be for any number of things; but it doesn't surprise him, not really. No one here at Seven Voices, no member of the Seven Moons, is healthy. Why would the man at the heart of it all be any different?

What does surprise him is Sensei taking his hand and pressing a few pills into his palm.

"Sensei...?"

"The larger ones will take away your pain." Sensei holds out a half-full bottle of water, clearly expecting Soubi to take it, but Soubi... can't. This is all wrong. "The small one will make you sleep.

"You've never..."

"What Seimei did wasn't a lesson," Sensei says, in a voice that leaves no room for argument. The water bottle bumps against the side of Soubi's face, cool and damp and just enough of a shock to drag him back to his senses. "There is nothing to be learned from this pain. Take the pills, Soubi-kun."

He does. They taste bitter on his tongue and stick in his throat, but he takes them, just this once, and tries not to think about what it means that Sensei has suddenly gone soft. It doesn't matter. After tonight, nothing Sensei does will matter anymore.

After tonight, he'll belong to someone else.

The blankets feel heavy as he curled up underneath them, pressing down against his exhausted body and urging him to sleep. He wants to stay awake and soak in every last second of Sensei's company, but his eyelids flutter closed against his will, and he can only listen, and feel the bed shift beneath him, and be reassured by those small things that Sensei has not yet left him.

Something brushes against his temple as he drifts off to sleep, but he pays it no mind. Sensei is not the kind of person for feather-light kisses, and Sensei is not the kind of person for drawn-out goodbyes,

so he mouths I'll miss you into the pillows instead of saying it aloud,

and then a heavy, dreamless sleep washes over him.

The next morning Soubi wakes, not to the insistent beeping of his alarm, but to the gentle heat of a sunbeam playing across his face.

Next to the bottles of pills on Ritsu-sensei's nightstand rest his glasses, cleaned of blood and smudges. The world snaps into sharper focus when he slips them on, and his mind seems to focus as well, filing the previous day away for future reference and leaving a blank slate behind.

He feels nothing - no pain, no longing for what wasn't and never will be; instead of a deep-set ache where his heart should be there is only a steady pulse pumping blood through newly-wakened limbs. Everything feels light and soft and new. He sits on the edge of the bed and stares out the window - at the sun and the sky and Mt. Fuji in the distance - like someone who has never seen the view before.

He wonders if this is what it means to be reborn, and all his mind can stir up in response is idle curiosity.

He isn't sad.

He isn't angry.

He is Beloved, and that -

That's just what's going to happen.