.
.
The place of his dreaming lies just north of the cliffsides, over blue mountains and tall grasses bending in the wind.
"It's pretty," Hokuto says, and Kakyou just nods solemnly, about to move forward when she catches his hand.
Kakyou's eyes widen. Hokuto grins, stands up on tiptoe and presses a quick kiss against his ear. He blushes hard and looks away.
"Ne, Kakyou," Hokuto says. She pouts, gripping his hands. "It's our third date now and I'm sick of making all the moves!"
"Moves?" Now the blush cracks across his face and makes him flush a furious red.
"It's my dream," Hokuto says. Kakyou averts his eyes. "Oi! I'm talking to you!"
"And what will you have me do?" Kakyou says, softly. "We have never met. I have never held your hand-"
"Doesn't matter," Hokuto says. She leans against his chest, then presses a second kiss against his jaw. "It's my dream, remember?" she says. "I can do whatever I want."
Kakyou turns. His eyes meet hers, and he's struck by how wide they are, how her pupils dilate just so and how her lips part just a little. Slowly he bends and presses a soft kiss against her mouth, and it's sweeter than he imagines, softer too. He breathes and he feels her breath on his skin, and when he feels her arms wrap around him he's almost giddy. "Hokuto-san," Kakyou says. He feels her smiling against his skin.
"Ne, Kakyou?" Her voice is muffled by the skin of his neck. "What do you think of our future?"
But Kakyou gathers her close and doesn't answer.
xXx
.
His dreams have never been like this. Before, his dreamscape was an endless void, dark spaces punctuated by images of the future. Apocalyptic landscapes, yellow skies with air thick with sulfur.
The first night he met her, he felt her consciousness brush against his own. It was alive and bright and he was overwhelmed with sunlight. Warmth. His mind was a vacuum, sucking her inside him. And when he brought her inside, she was not afraid.
"Of course I wasn't afraid," Hokuto says. She's all but sprawled up across his lap, one leg draped unceremoniously over the arm rest of her couch. She's painting her toenails, something so mundane an inexplicable Kakyou has to blink a bit before letting her reality seep in; he realizes they are in her apartment, that she's showing him a little more of herself in her dreams. "Hey Kakyou. When are we going to meet anyway?"
"I cannot." Kakyou stares mournfully at Hokuto's hands, which are moving delicately with the red polish. Hokuto frowns and pouts and wiggles her toes, and Kakyou reddens when her foot lands squarely against his thigh. "Hokuto-san-"
"It looks good, doesn't it?" She wiggles her toes in approval, before leaning in to give him a quick kiss. "I want to kiss you for real," Hokuto says.
"As do I," Kakyou says. His throat is dry. Quietly he brushes back the strands of hair from Hokuto's face, fingers gently brushing against her skin. "But you may not like the real me."
"Why are you so gloomy?" Hokuto says. She turns, one bare knee bumping into Kakyou's shin. "Of course I'll like you! I like you now-"
"But you are only seeing me as I wish to be seen," Kakyou says. He looks down at his hands, which are folded tight in his lap. "In my waking life, I am weak. My body is thin and weaker than your own. You may not like the real me," he says.
But Hokuto is looking at him with a serious look, before leaning in and hugging him, tight. "You're my Kakyou," Hokuto says. "I'll like you no matter what you look like." Kakyou turned and frowned.
"Shall I show you?" Kakyou says. Hokuto nods. His eyes close. The room swirls, blackness creeping in, rearranging itself until they're in his room, curtains closed and motes of dust floating in the dark.
There is a sound, the soft, steady beat of his heartrate on the monitor. Hokuto seems stunned. She turns in half circles, drinking in the darkness of his room.
"This is the real me," Kakyou says, and Hokuto looks down again; in his dream he can see himself, the cracks of his veins on his body, the pale skin, hair limply falling over his face. She kneels and he can feel her hand brush against his forehead.
"Pretty," Hokuto says, and Kakyou starts to smile.
xXx
.
She shows him the world through her dreams. He travels to Okinawa and Tokyo, to the farthest corners of Japan.
"What's your life like?" Hokuto asks. Kakyou squints as he looks out into the horizen, the streaks of sunset spilling across the sea.
"Every night I dream of things to come," Kakyou says. "I see the universe in its entirety. Past. Present. Future. I see pain and death and everything surrounding it. But then I met you," Kakyou says. He smiles, lets his hand brush against her shoulder.
"Were you lonely?" Hokuto says. She steps forward, fingers twining around his. "Kakyou?"
"Yes," Kakyou says. Hokuto frowns and leans her head against his chest, arms wrapping around his waist. There's a warmth behind his eyes as he smiles against her hair.
xXx
.
"Ne, Kakyou?"
"Yes?"
She's fidgeting, her face a furious blush.
"If this is a dream...then maybe we can make it a wet dream..."
"Wha-?"
Her jacket falls, the remains of her skirt pooling around her feet.
"Your turn," Hokuto says. Kakyou nods mutely and steps forward.
xXx
.
Doubt and self-loathing float across his dreamscape, rolls over his subconscious like the coming storm. This isn't real to her. Do you really think she'll remember your dreams?
When he wakes, he wakes to clammy sheets and a feeling of shame, his vitals erratic on the monitor.
xXx
.
"What?" Hokuto says. She's angry enough to hit him, but Kakyou ducks, just narrowly missing the blow."How could you think that about me? What are you, stupid or something?"
"I'm sorry," Kakyou says, but she goes to hit him again. "Hokuto-san!"
"Unforgivable! I love you, and you act like I'm gonna forget!" Hokuto says, and Kakyou stares, heart leaping into his throat.
"You love me?" he says. Hokuto glares and blushes, turning a furious red. "You never said that-"
"If it wasn't obvious," Hokuto says. "Ugh. What's a cute girl like me doing with a gloomy guy like you, anyway..."
Kakyou can't stop smiling. He closes his eyes and breathes her scent, gathering her in his arms.
xXx
.
Love was like this: a shared dream, two souls twining together in the dark.
She's lying against his chest, and Kakyou lets his hand follow the curve of her hip, relishing the feel of her bare skin against his palm.
"It's weird," Hokuto says. "We've done this twice now, but I'm still technically a virgin." She looks up at him and smiles. Kakyou smiles into her hair.
"Perhaps when we meet, we shall make this a reality," Kakyou says.
"Yeah," Hokuto says. She presses the length of her body against him, one arm draping sleepily over his chest. They kiss again and she sighs when he slips inside her body, one sweet thrust upward as he makes love to her a third time.
When she is not asleep, Kakyou is alone. He sees glimpses of what's to come in a briliant flash, fractured timelines crashing like waves.
The future edges close, threatens him from the corners of his mind. He's thrown, battered from all sides as the danger slams against him, perilously close. It's only until he feels Hokuto's consciousness creeping into his that he's pulled away.
"Kakyou!" Her voice is his lifeline. He feels her hand reach out, pulling him out from the waves. "Kakyou," she says. "Are you all right?"
She's holding him. Kakyou shakes and grips her, tight.
"You said that you could find me," Kakyou says. "Do you think that is still true?"
"Of course," Hokuto says. Kakyou nearly sobs with relief, collapsing into her arms.
"Find me," Kakyou says. "Come to the place where I am sleeping. Otherwise-"
"What?" Hokuto says. Kakyou shakes his head.
"I do not know," Kakyou says.
xXx
.
His dreams begin to haunt him. They don't make any sense.
He sees sakura trees swaying. Petals. The sting of a sword covered in blood.
"What else?" Hokuto says.
"I don't know," Kakyou says. "But I think your brother is in danger."
"Danger?"
"Yes," Kakyou says. "Someone who loves him will betray his trust."
"And?"
"And I can't see the rest of it," Kakyou says. "It's the first time this has happened, but the future remains obscured to me."
Hokuto frowns. Her brow furrows. "I told you where I live. There's no way you can wake up and visit me?"
"No," Kakyou says. "I wish I could. But I am a prisoner..." He grips her tighter, stroking her hair.
xXx
.
A smack across the face wakes him; he reels, the sudden shift in realities jarring to him.
"Why aren't you dreaming?" they say. Another punch. Smash. Kakyou doubles over.
"I see nothing," Kakyou says, and it's true: all he's seen is Hokuto, Hokuto's smile and the light in her eyes.
He's beaten so hard he's almost killed, and when he sinks back into blissful oblivion it's Hokuto who travels to him now, her mind touching his in his dreams.
"Kakyou." She sobs and clings to him, his consciousness hemorrhaging around her like blood. "Kakyou. What did they do?"
"Nothing," Kakyou says, and he closes his eyes against her chest, sinking into her arms.
xXx
.
There are only three times when Kakyou wakes:
The first after he meets her, after he reaches out for her and grasps nothing but air.
The second time it is by force, the group that holds him prisoner shaking him hard and shoving him against the wall.
The third time is the last time. After that, Kakyou ceases to wake at all.
xXx
.
They are planning his escape. "We'll get you a wheelchair and a cane, and my brother is strong enough to lift you, he'll definitely help, I'm sure of it..."
She talks but Kakyou is filled with a sense of dread. He's neglected his dreamgazing, and something gnaws at the back of his mind.
"Hey, Kakyou." She looks up at him with wide brown eyes. "I'll have to wake," she says. She touches him on the arm.
"I'll see you tonight, okay?" Hokuto says.
He nods mutely. His chest is tight.
When she wakes, he's left alone. And the dreamscape unfurls in front of him, horror in his eyes.
xXx
.
There's no way to warn her now.
When they find him, his robes are torn and he's left half-dead on the steps to the Sumeragi shrine. "Please," he says. "Kill me." His captors say nothing. Across from him, he can see the others lifting Hokuto's body onto the stretcher, the great black tarp billowing in the wind.
All his life, he has watched from the shadows, the images of things to come playing in his mind. And he has done nothing. And for this, he wishes to die.
xXx
.
The storm rolls, lightning filling the room with false sunlight before blackness and bleakness surrounds him. He doesn't wake. He slides into darkness, that silver thread of consciousness snapping at his back, as the monitor blinks and he's overtaken by his dreams.
She dies. Again and again, he sees her death spinning the world into an apocalypse, as petals fall and the earth starts to shatter.
"I can grant your wish," Fuuma whispers, long fingers stroking the length of his hair.
And Kakyou looks outward, out into the expanse of darkness and the fleeting rush of the coming dawn.
xXx
.
"Why was I able to come inside your dream?" she asked.
"Because I wanted to see someone," he said.
"Because I am alone."