note: takes place during episodes 7-8, or the corresponding place in the novels. i use "rat" instead of "nezumi" because i enjoy how the translation calls attention to the oddity of the name.
title from joyce carol oates's "on boxing" (usfca dot edu/jco/boxing/).
THE THING IN ITSELF
After seeing Rat light up the waters with song Shion knew he wanted to hear that voice in the open air, just the two of them, intimate and free. The cave was damp and cold in a way that clung to the skin like the loose grip of somebody dying so that night they took the long way home, across the wide plains where they'd stood that morning with their knuckles gone white.
Shion watched Rat, slightly ahead of him, walking over the uneven ground, scattering rocks every other step. "Rat, about that song—"
"If you want to be my equal you're gonna have to learn how to fight." Rat stopped without looking back, hands hidden in his jacket pockets.
Shion paused, frowning. Even with the sun still hanging over the Wall, lighting up the world beyond, it was hard to read Rat's expression, and here night was coming on, spreading itself across the West Zone. He knew Shion could catch him, paralyze him with a touch. This had to be another of his so-called jokes, funny in a secret, isolated way.
"What's wrong, Shion? Don't think you can do it?" Rat's smirk was there, yes, but his tone was rough, indecipherable.
"I know how to fight."
Rat scoffed, the puff of breath ghosting away from him against the glow of the city. "Not really. Sneaking around, hitting people when they don't expect it, that works fine, sometimes. But it's not the same when the other guy's ready for you, waiting."
"Why?" Even as he said the word Shion was embarrassed by the sound of it, the plaintive, almost whining way his voice rose. Rat didn't ask questions, not like that. At least, he didn't think so. Then the freezing wasteland wind slapped him across the face and he refocused, realizing that Rat had been staring at him for that overlong silent moment.
"That's why," he said.
Shion nodded, his back to the city. It was Rat's turn now to search against the light for a sign, narrowing his eyes, but all he saw was a mass of white, coming quick and sudden at him—
The shock of flesh against flesh came before the understanding, and he held Shion's fist in his hand tight like a treasure. "Hey, what'd I say about sneak attacks?"
"You looked ready to me," Shion said, red eyes almost black in the fading sun, the bones of his fingers turning beneath the skin—
Rat let go. Spinning away from the high kick he could see a smile on Shion's face, the scar tissue stretching out of shape, but his next turn around the smile was gone. Rat let himself fall, shaking dust loose from the barren plain, and rolled over the rocks. He rose behind Shion, who was still twisting towards the fight, and lashed out, hands curled hard—
They connected at the iliac crest, where the hip began and its bone neared the surface. Shion collapsed, not from the pain but from the surprise of it, his lungs heavy. But there was an energy thrumming in his blood, strange, comforting, like a song in some lost language, and so he pushed himself up, dirt gritting under his fingernails, to start again. In the growing dark the blues of Rat's hair were washed out, leached into the shadows of his face. They stood there, calculating, adjusting to the question of each other, their breath coming out sharp and grey.
Shion swung first, aiming again for the cheekbone still scuffed and tender from before, and Rat raised his arms to block the blow—but then Shion's head dipped, it was a feint, a knee thrust against his floating ribs—
Hissing, Rat grabbed Shion's leg, thumbs squeezing into the soft underside of the knee, and lifted him off the ground, threw him away. Here, then, was one of the differences between them in quiet physical fact; Shion never learnt how to defend himself, coasting instead on serene privilege and ignorance. He landed joint-first, sand and rocks scraping rough across his nose and forehead. His chest ached, his throat gone raw from the effort of staying alive, and he lay there, face down in the dirt, breathing that fine dust.
The crush of gravel under boots resonated in his finger bones as Rat circled him, slow and dangerous. When they were close enough, Shion decided, he'd grab an ankle, snake-like, and bring the whole thing crashing down—but this was Rat, this was the boy to whom he owed so much—
As soon as he saw the cock of a wrist Rat leapt, arcing over those reaching hands, and kicked Shion in the sacrum when he landed. "Too slow." Rolling scattershot shocks deep in the muscles, pulses beyond pain, that sent Shion wide-eyed and gasping: in there, somewhere, was something he could not name. Not yet.
Keep him still to mark the victory, yes, that was why Rat pinned him, knees pressed against the sides of his body, and felt the fierce beating of Shion's heart. That was why Rat took one hand and seized Shion's head, pushed it down, and brought out his knife with the other. That was why he dragged the back of his hand along that smooth hairless stripe of scar tissue on Shion's throat, blade flashing white under the moon.
"I win."
Shion was quiet for a moment, re-learning how to breathe with his ribcage compressed. Then: "I was holding back," he muttered, and the weight grew suddenly heavier, the boy on top of him breathless just for a moment. But Rat didn't respond, just kept holding his head down hard, fingers wrapped tight in that strange pale hair. In an instant he flipped the knife around, held it sharp against the base of Shion's neck, where the muscles joining made a vulnerable hollow.
"Don't fight to protect anybody besides yourself. You'll just be distracted," he said. "You'll die." The force of it, the words snapped out, hit Shion's bare flesh like a confession.
Speaking softly under the blade, Shion said, "Won't I die anyway? We all die someday, don't we?"
After a pause, Rat huffed out a laugh. "I don't get you," he said, climbing off to let Shion roll over and stretch out alongside him.
They laid on the ground like that for a while, the slow cold of the stone plain sinking into their backs and legs like a balm. They couldn't see each other, had no idea what they looked like now, but the warmth of their skin rising up out their clothes, hand against hand and thigh against thigh, was all they needed to know.
"Look, up there." Rat's voice, loud in the night air, thrummed throughout his body. Shion felt him move, a rolling of the shoulders, and knew he was pointing at the stars. "Orion."
"Orion?" All he saw was the vast wash of light, clusters of planets and long-dead suns, scattered across the void.
"The constellation. Come on, everybody knows that one—it's easy."
Shion was quiet for a few moments. "We didn't really look at the stars in Number Six. Not like that." As he spoke Rat sat up, pulling their legs apart. The temperature was dropping rapidly now, the desert winter air cutting through the fabric of his city pants, but he wasn't worried. There was Rat's superfiber cloak, and Rat himself was still there. His breathing was steady, familiar. Shion pushed himself up past the tight ache of his muscles to sit crosslegged next to Rat, ready for the warm hand on his shoulder.
"You know what constellations are?"
"Yeah. I'm not that naïve."
"No, just shorter." Rat pressed his face against Shion's, his smile small but distinct in the rise of his cheek. "Look where I'm looking. See those three bright stars in a row?" Shion nodded. "That's Orion's belt. And up there—" Rat used his other hand to point, the tip of his finger blocking out the stars behind it. "His shoulders. The two stars below the belt are his knees. Your mom, the people there—European mythology was part of the classics they didn't teach you, right?" Shion didn't move. "Thought as much. He was a legendary hunter, hung out with the gods, and he knew he was so good he could kill everything on the planet."
Shion lay back down, his head at Rat's feet. The stars and the great city were just enough to make Rat's eyes shine, glistening thin points of distant light in the grey and the black, so Shion looked away. "Is that why he's up there?"
"He's up there because Mother Earth killed him for being a threat." Rat's words came out low and abrupt, his jaw clicking shut on the final word.
"There's other constellations, right?" Earth had enough death and suffering; it didn't need more hanging over the world, unreachable and eternal.
Rat turned his face to the sky, hiding his eyes. "Yeah, but that's the one everyone knows."
"Tell me about the others. Like on his right, that's a constellation, isn't it?" Shion raised up an arm and traced it, ignoring the numbness creeping down his hand and under his coat. A crooked letter Y, or a person falling backwards, legs waving in the air, useless—
"That's Monoceros, the unicorn." Rat sounded surprised, pleased, and a little worried, as though he'd seen something he wasn't ready to think about. "Most people have a hard time finding that one, especially near a big city."
Shion smiled. "Does it have a story too?"
"Not that I know of. Hell, it could be a Western unicorn or a kirin. Works either way."
"Which do you think it is?" Shion asked, nudging Rat's knee with his own. "C'mon, tell me."
With a chuckle and the sound of him shaking his head—a whisper of displaced air, superfabric rubbing against itself—Rat knelt down, leaning in close, his loose hair barely brushing Shion's forehead, and said nothing.