A/N: Written for the Diversity Challenge, C59 – write a crossover.
I See an Angel in a Dream
The Sumeragi clan had almost ignored the request, but there weren't too many others and Subaru had the time. They passed the case along to him and he agreed to look in to it. It was the sort of case they wouldn't pass along if he had another, because it begged for something more than paper spells and prayers to drive evil away.
In fact, it was often no evil at all. Just souls that had, often without the rest of the world knowing why, locked themselves away inside their heart.
He knocked on the door. A woman younger than he expected answered it, though lines of rapid aging and stress still marred her face.
'I'm Sumeragi Subaru.' He introduced himself. 'You're…Kimura Tomoko-san?'
The woman nodded and stepped back. 'Come in,' she said. 'Thank you for coming all this way.'
'Not at all,' Subaru responded politely, taking his shoes off and coming inside. It was a quaint little apartment. Homely. He noticed the pots on windowsills, the ornaments that didn't necessary match but each told a story of their own upon the drawers and tables and other surfaces. He noticed the photos: of the woman who was leading him through the living room and into the small thin hallway beyond. Of another woman far older. Of a boy at various ages – Subaru thought it must be that boy he'd come to see.
Tomoko knocked gently on the door, then cracked it open and peeked inside when there was no answer. 'Kouichi? Are you awake?'
She pushed the door open fully. Subaru looked carefully around. The boy he assumed was Kouichi was sitting on a chair by the open window, watching either the fluttering curtains or the barely changing scenery outside.
'His eyes are open,' Tomoko explained. 'But he doesn't react to my voice. Sometimes he reacts to his friends, but…' She stifled a sob in her hands and shook her head and smiled. 'He's so cute when he's asleep though. Just like when he was younger. Curling up when I hold him and mumbling things from dreams…'
Subaru didn't remember too much about his mother, or his father for that matter. They were always busy, working somewhere or other. It had been their grandmother that took care of them, who taught them to be independent so they could live by themselves – or with each other. Just Subaru and Hokuto, next door to each other but always at one's or the other's apartments… Often, they joked about how silly it was to have the separate apartments and the rents, but they did need their personal space as well. Friends from school and dates that had made it past the preliminaries for Hokuto. Some clients and Seishirou for Subaru.
There wasn't much to remind him about when he was younger. Just the embarrassing stuff he'd gotten up to with Hokuto, and the trouble they'd caused. He didn't remember anyone reminiscing on that time either. Hokuto didn't count, because she couldn't remember any better than he did, at that age.
'…he dreams about an angel,' Tomoko continued. 'And when he's awake…sometimes he talks about that angel too.'
'What does he say?' Subaru asked, closing his eyes and trying to feel any magic in the room. He could feel his own onmyoujitsu pulsing in his heart and spreading like his body's heat through his bones and skin. He could feel something else as well: the power of life that existed in everyone. Standing beside him, strong but coloured with worry. Further in the room, dull and sleepy and as though it were snuggled into a warm blanket.
'She grows. Brighter I think.' The woman shrugged helplessly. 'He called it…Plotmon I think, before. Now it's Angewomon. And he said he's waiting for Ofanimon. And something about a Digital World. And a Lowemon and Wolfmon and…I forget the rest.' Her brow furrowed. 'His friends would know. They seem to understand better too, but…somehow it doesn't seem right to ask.'
Her voice had risen a bit, an almost desperate pitch. Subaru wondered if it was because she was torn between respecting that secret and longing to understand what sort of dream her son had drifted in to.
There was nothing else in the room. Nothing else to do but dive into that waking yet sleeping boy's heart…which was why he'd come. Why the Sumeragi clan had been initially reluctant. He couldn't go into the heart of every lost soul, and each one posed a threat of its own. But it was something only they could do, and how could he hold that away from the people who needed his help? They let him, because they knew those feelings. They passed along such cases when he didn't have others that needed him in other ways.
And words of caution. Always the words of caution.
He lay out the ofuda, explaining what he was going to do and then chanting the spell softly. For a while he heard her breathing silently, worriedly, next to him, but then her presence had faded away and he was drifting somewhere dark.
It wasn't turbulent, as he often found dark hearts. Rather, it was calm, and he drifted easily, searching for a spot of light.
Like that, he happened upon a waterfall, falling from somewhere and landing somewhere he couldn't see. Just the glistening white drops falling down – and beyond that, he could make out a soft light.
He touched the waterfall. It didn't push him back, so he went through.
And he saw the angel there. Tall and with long golden hair and white wings that hid the world beyond. She had a ribbon too: a purple one that arched over her head and wrapped around her wrists and came gracefully to her feet like long kimono sleeves.
He could feel life in her. Strong and searching to grow even stronger. He could feel something else as well – a connection, that remained within the world behind the waterfall even after the angel smiled at him and faded.
It was a connection trying to hold the other to life, he realised. He remembered that, from the briefing. That the boy's heart had stopped in the hospital. That he'd been revived, not after the defibrillator but after the tears of the friends that had collected at his bedside.
They'd brought an angel along to save him. He wondered how they'd found her: what special bond they'd formed.
The angel disappeared entirely. Now he could see the boy as well – the one who's heart it was. His eyes were closed, but as Subaru came closer he opened them, staring in surprise.
'I'm Sumeragi Subaru,' Subaru introduced, for the second time that day.
'Kimura Kouichi.' The boy blinked. 'Am I awake now?'
'We're inside your heart,' Subaru explained. 'Your mother is very worried about you.'
Kouichi's expression grew sad. 'I can feel her,' he confessed, 'sometimes, through the waterfall. I want to tell her it'll only be a little longer. Not to worry. But I can't hear her voice.'
'She is in the room with you now,' said Subaru. 'Can you say it aloud?'
'I've tried. It sounds like she can't hear me either.'
It did sound like that. 'But your friends can hear you, can't they? Why is that?'
'Maybe it's because they know her.'
'The angel?'
'Ofanimon…' Kouichi laughed. 'Well, she's Angewomon now. And the Digital World… Come, I'll show you.'
He stood up, and Subaru stood up as well, staring through the waterfall. He hadn't noticed it before. On the other side it was just crystalline, but here it gave him images of another world. The same green grass, blue skies…but there was a different feeling about it. A different energy. Different inhabitants.
He touched the waterfall. It was like dunking his hand into ice cold water and he had to pull it out.
'It's not a gate,' Kouichi explained. 'It's more like a window…so my life that is in that world can flow back to me.'
Subaru blinked. 'When you died…'
'I died before that.' Kouichi gestured. 'In this world. My spirit somehow wandered there. So when I died, my body and soul were separated across two worlds. They need time to come back together, so they've been looking after me.'
Alone, Subaru would not have understood, but he was in the other's heart, and there were memories there as well, helping him understand. Similar things could happen to him every time he dived into a heart, every time he fought with the barriers within – but there was no barrier here, because there was no suffering to be locked away. Kouichi had freed himself of that already.
Subaru smiled and bid farewell and woke up kneeling beside the other's chair with Tomoko's worried face over him.
'It's okay,' he said, still smiling. 'Kouichi-san is just gaining back his life force so he can return. He says it'll only be a little longer.'