13.
T: This is the third in the Flurry series and I'd strongly recommend at least reading 'The letter' before this otherwise nothing is going to make much sense!! The angst comes to the fore here as does the background AU theories that have made this series what it is! Please also be aware that there will be the vaguest allusion to slashy feelings. I own only the crazy theories, everything else belongs to Clamp's evil genius.
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Empty.
Everything is so very empty.
Once it was not.
Once there was laughter.
Kindness.
Love.
The truth had taken that away from him twice over, had clawed out his soul and
left him here empty.
Alone.
In the desperate hours after reading the final page of the final 'diary' entry he'd tried to claw back some semblance of reality, had buried his face into his bloodstained coat and inhaled the sent of dried blood.
That this scent belongs to Seishiro's blood is the only undeniable fact in the chaos that the box has brought him, the only thing within his life that he can say, without doubt, had actually occurred.
The scent pushes away all the erroneous thoughts and feelings in his head, focuses his mind onto one sure train of thought.
He had to talk to the Sakurazuka, had to learn the true shape of his life and then decide what he was going to do with himself from there.
Thus he places the bloodstained coat again about himself and walks the distance to the sakura.
Leant against the trunk is a slim figure that he recalls well and for an instant he looses himself to the recollection of a time that seems now as little more than a dream.
"We meet again, Subaru-kun." The figure remarks, the purr of his voice recalling the bitter instant within the shrapnel of Nago-sun and the desperate sense of yearning that had swamped him then.
"I know what you are, know what you have done to me and thus there is no more need to pretend."
"As you wish." The figure shifts then before his eyes and he is looking now at the countenance of a stranger. "You shall know me as 'Sakurazuka', but I would ask that you call me Rin,"
"Did you truly involve me for little more than sport?"
"Yes."
"Did you kill my sister for the same reason?"
"No."
"Then why?"
Rin smiles the empty smile he recalls well from the conclusion of the Bet and then he says,
"It was part of the price."
"For what?"
"The fulfilment of my wish."
"Ichihiro-san."
Rin's smile fades and again little more than the impassive Sakurazuka he says,
"So you too have met her."
"She was my friend, or at least I had believed that the case, it seems even that was little more than illusion."
"She did not betray you, Subaru-kun."
"Then why ask you to take Hokuto from me, why allow you to tare apart my life?"
"Because no matter how warmly she thought of you she could not alter your fate, nor warn you of what it was to be. You had to face the pain in your life, had to learn the truth of what I was, in order for you to achieve your destiny."
"What can one such as I give the world? There is nothing left within me, nothing at all."
"Your scars shall save this world and shall save someone from treading a similar path to your own."
"You are talking of Kamui?"
"There is so much that that boy does not understand…so much that is being hidden away from him."
"Of what concern is it to me? I do not care what his life will become; do not care for this world at all."
"But you cared for Seishiro, did you not?"
"Seishiro is a stranger to me."
"That is not true; you have read through the progression of his life, learned of what I turned him into and of how he wished to allow you your revenge. You know him in a way that no other living being has ever known him."
"That man and the one that I fell in love with are not the same."
"Had you stopped loving him after I ended the Bet I would believe those words, would allow you to do as you truly wished and end your life. Yet even when I showed you what Seishiro truly was, even when I showed you the full extent of the Sakurazukamori's malice you could not turn yourself away from him, could not stop loving him."
"If that were true what difference would it make? Why would my care for him change my want to simply die?"
"A little before the two of you met he asked me why I took your sister's life and when I told him what I have told you he enquired, 'so are you going to do to him as you have done to me?' I told him that this was indeed my plan and he told me 'I can not allow that.' It was the very first time that he had stood against me, the very first time that I had seen him as something other than Setsuka's son and, curious I asked him how he believed he was going to stop me." Rin reaches across to press a finger to his blind eye and then he says, "He told me 'I am going to give him everything he wishes for, am going to heal every wound that you have ever inflicted upon him and then I am going to let him see the truth.' I believe that there is one more wound left for him to heal and I am assured that he will have found a way to do just that, yet should you let go now you shall never know for certain."
"Do you not think it odd that I should live for such a fragile hope, that I should trust myself to destiny's whim even when it has betrayed me so very badly?"
"My opinion has no part in this, Subaru-kun. Seishiro has shown you the truth and, in doing as such, has set you free from my illusion. Your life is your own and what you do from this point is your own choice."
Rin's form fades then and he is left alone beneath the sakura, his mind filled with the thought of his next step and with what his destiny was to become.
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T: Consider this thing dead! This conclusion leads nicely into X17 and into the blank impassiveness that is Sakurazukamori Subaru. Please note that the title refers to Subaru's position as the 13th head of the Sumeragi clan but that, other than this, it has no real relevance to the story! Please review, I'd like some form of feedback on this and on the series as a whole!!