disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: Chloe, Emily, Rhys, Les.
notes: you know what. you know what. I can't even. I don't. … fuck it, I'm hungry. fun fact: I really don't like Amaimon/Shiemi.
notes2: so I have to scale back my update schedule to bi-weekly. sorry, my beauties; life's gone crazy and is currently trying to eat me.

chapter title: Chaos+CHorus
summary: In a world where someone else found the twins that snowy night, Rin leads a demon army. — Rin/Shiemi.

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Somewhere, it was summer.

Somewhere, innocence still existed in cloudless blue sky and the simple things like smiling were currency. Somewhere, nothing hurt and no one died. Somewhere, the world was still golden and good and clean.

Somewhere, it was summer.

Konekomaru danced with the dark, searching for his teacher in a place devoid of light and heat. It was a place that had never seen summer. It was a place that never would. He crawled through the dank and mouldy, knees digging into the ground, crushing leaves and bones beneath him. Something squelched.

For Shura-sensei, Koneko, he reminded himself. He repeated it over and over and over in his head, Shura-sensei—Shura-sensei—Shura-sensei—because it was all that was keeping him sane. The thought of her was all that kept him moving forward.

His arms shook with the effort of dragging himself to his feet, digging Tokijin into the ground, breathing raggedly and barely able to stand. The two and a half days without sleep were starting to get to him.

If only a little.

The sky was lightening in the distance. It was in the kree—ee—eek! of the monsters overhead that Konekomaru found himself gathering his strength. They retreated as they did with every sunrise.

This time, Konekomaru followed them.

They screamed through the air, back and forth in zig-zag patterns through the atmosphere. It was like children's tag—they bumped into each other, pushed, shoved, flew back and started it all over again; but even among the chaos, there was a definite forwards movement. They were going somewhere, all of them, in a mass-movement like birds flocking south for the winter. To somewhere else.

And Konekomaru was determined to find out where that somewhere was.

He dashed between trees cragging towards the sky. The branches clawed at the air and his uniform as he went, clinging and ripping at the fabric. He would save his teacher in torn clothing, a messenger of Life with livid destruction at his heels. Konekomaru was Exorcist.

He would not fail.

The demons hissed and swirled, funneling down into a little clearing. They whirled round and round in circles in a demented waltz, laughing in a harsh way that put his teeth on edge like blood and strawberries and white lace stained with ink. They sunk into a still black pool in the middle of the forest floor, languishing away contentedly.

He'd not seen this place before—he'd not known it had existed. For a moment, he paused to calculate the likelihood of his dying. It was high. Higher than he liked to admit.

But—Shura-sensei—

Konekomaru grit his teeth.

There was really only one thing to do.

(If he wanted to save her, that is. If he wanted to retain any shred of dignity, that is. If he wanted to still be able to look in the mirror and not despise what he saw there, that is.)

He set his jaw, decision already formed in his head. It was half-cracked, but he didn't think there was any other way to go about it. It was this, or giving up—Konekomaru was not about to give up.

He headed straight for inky pool; limbs pumping, muscles contracting, heart pounding. Barely able to see, barely able to breathe; this was stupidity at its finest, he knew, but he paid it no heed.

The demons around him screamed.

He didn't even register them.

He neared the edge of the pool. His reflection was colourless and perfect, the growing daylight glinting off his glasses. He careened back and forth at the edge, driven forwards by momentum and though he very nearly saved himself, it wasn't enough.

Konekomaru pitched forwards into the inky water and fell.

And fell.

And fell.

/ / /

Shiemi stayed in the water so long, her fingers shrivelled up and gone pruney the way they always had when she was a child. The water dripped off her fingers when she raised her hands to her face to look at the extent of the damage to her skin.

It didn't look like it could get much worse.

But at least there was no blood left. Not in her hair, not under her nails, not smeared across her cheeks—the water had lifted it all away, washed away cuts and bruises and shame. It left her drained and quiet, an exoskeleton of herself, dying inside quietly and shrivelling up into nothing. Just like her fingers.

Shiemi heaved a great sigh and slipped out of the water. Towels and fresh clothes awaited her, just as last time, and she buried her face in them to breathe in the innocuous scent of cleanliness.

If she closed her eyes, she might have been pressing her face into wind-dried blankets.

But of course not.

Shiemi hoisted herself out of the water. The marble was cold underneath her skin. She wrapped her arms around her knees and sat there for a minute, a little ball of fears and dead dreams.

"Izumo-chan…" she murmured.

She tipped her head back to stare at the ceiling with glazed eyes.

Her heart should have hurt.

But it didn't.

Rin had—well, he'd let her cry herself dry, sobbing into his shoulder until she'd gone quiet. Her eyes were still red and prickling, her lids like sandpaper. Shiemi didn't know if she was ever going to need to cry again.

There was nothing to be done, though.

Bringing someone back from the dead wasn't Shiemi's forte—and Izumo never would have forgiven her, anyway. Izumo's life philosophy was it's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees (so get up, loser!)—which Shiemi thought was extremely ironic, given their history—and nothing less would have satisfied her.

Shiemi's cheek wanted to pull up into a smile, but even her muscles were tired. She wrapped herself in the snow-white kimono, crimson flowers blooming across it like underwater blood-splatters. She ran her fingers down the front.

What was she to do, now?

She'd never liked sitting around and doing nothing. There were times when it was unavoidable, and Shiemi was a patient person; she'd learned early on that forcing her way almost never worked. She worked like creeping vines, slow and methodical.

But vines without roots were nothing more than strings without knots, bits of fluff lost to the wind. And Shiemi had lost her roots. She'd lost them very badly. She looked down at her feet, and raised them far off the ground as she walked to the wall, right to where Rin had disappeared through.

Without roots, she could go where she wanted.

Shiemi touched the wall.

It melted away beneath her fingertips. There was soft, inky blackness just beyond where Shiemi stood, and there was a tangibility to it—it looked thick enough to sink her hands into, soft as sable and yet more luxuriant, deadly and lovely.

She breathed it in, hoping that maybe it would make her forget.

It didn't.

Shiemi took another deep, slow breath.

And she walked forwards, into the dark.

She breathed and counted her steps; maybe to keep herself calm, but the thing was that Shiemie didn't care anymore. She was a seed, caught on the wind and waiting to be deposited somewhere far away. Seeds had no sense of time, and so neither did she.

It was an easy thing, darkness.

Shiemi wandered in a blind man's world, devoid of light and colour. She couldn't even see her hands in front of her face, not that that was a real issue. She drifted, half awake and dreaming, for what seemed to be a very long time.

It might have been hours for all she knew.

But it wasn't.

Shiemi stumbled, tripped, and hit a dense mass of flesh. She jumped back, blinder than a bat without sonar, arms up across her face and wishing, wishing for Nii-chan.

"Who's there?" she asked.

"Huh, so this is where he hid you."

The hall flooded with sick white light, bright but slatted; through a finger-grip on the witchlight—and Shiemi's world tilted, because that was an Exorcist witchlight and that—that was—

"Takara?!"

Tousled-haired and bored, he stood in front of her with his ugly pink puppet on one hand and his eyes closed, looking as young as he had the first day she'd met him. He was wearing dirty Exorcist robes open over a beige shirt (beige, of course; Shiemi had always thought that beige was the perfect colour for Takara), the witchlight held aloft.

"I figured he'd like you too much to let you die."

"I—how are you here, Takara?"

He shrugged at her. "I live here, Moriyama."

"What?"

"I don't wanna repeat myself. Don't tell anyone, yeah? That would complicate things."

Shiemi stared at him, too flabbergasted to be terrified. And she should have been—she should have been terrified out of her mind to find someone she had spent years with in this dark place, looking comfortable and relaxed. She should have been screaming.

She laced her fingers together, instead.

"What are you?" she asked. She looked him straight in the face and waited for an answer, steadfast and quiet—an ancient tree with ancient roots, she had all the time in the world. "Takara?"

His face tugged down into a frown. "You don't wanna call me that."

"Don't avoid my question, Takara."

He heaved a very great sigh. Perhaps he was rolling his eyes behind closed lids, Shiemi thought with a hysteric, mental giggle. He shook his head back and forth.

"Moriyama," he said, with the air of an indulgent person explaining something very simple to a child in the midst of a tantrum, "you really don't wanna call me that here, 'kay?"

"Then what should I call you?"

Mischievousness coloured the air around him. "Abaddon, youngest of the Eight Kings. At your service."

And then the terror did come. Last-ditch effort, but it came like a tidal wave, crashing over her in the wake of his delighted smirk, closed eyes and laughing mouth. Shiemi's fingers shook.

"Prove it," she said. Her hands curled into fists.

"Do I have to?" Takara almost whined, and in that sound was a history of two people who had never really known each other, but had a surface acquaintance that was enough to tell what they each didn't like. Shiemi had danced with him, laughed with him, learned with him, but had never known him—and that made all the difference.

"Yes."

Another long-suffering sigh escaped him, annoyance incarnate, and she was suddenly fifteen again, lounging around the Exorcist classroom. Bon was infuriated, yelling his rage to the sky, and Takara was bored; sarcastic, sniping through his puppet at Bon's wrath, and Shiemi and the others had stood by and sighed as they waited the storm out. It had been nothing new.

She shook the memory off.

"Fine," Takara sighed.

There was a quiver that Shiemi felt deep in her bones like the breaking of a seal, and Takara opened his eyes.

Virulent yellow orbs with slit pupils grinned out of the sockets of his eyes, a smiling reaper's skull-face. His skin crackled and shredded, going paler than snow, and a pair of horns curled into ram's spirals took root in windswept, mousy hair. His nails curved and his ears sharpened to points. Even the puppet—ragged, dirty dark pink—changed; it stretched and twisted and coiled around his neck to stare at her with empty eyes. Shiemi could see the faintest glimmer of fangs in his mouth.

The influx of evil nearly knocked her off her feet. It was so oppressive that she couldn't speak. It was so oppressive that she could barely breathe.

"The horns are a bit much, but you wanted proof, Moriyama. There it is. Believe me now?"

Shiemi found her voice somewhere in the recesses of her throat. "I—yes."

"Good," he replied. He sent her a sharp grin full of pointed teeth. "Wanna see something interesting?"

Shiemi eyed him warily. This golden-eyed boy with ram's antlers and demonic energy pouring off him, thickening the air and sending every nerve she had into over-drive—she didn't know him. She didn't particularly trust him, either.

Actually, she didn't trust him at all.

"Why should I?"

He giggled. "Because it's interesting, Moriyama. If you catch my drift."

"I don't—I don't think so, Takara, it's—"

"Abaddon," he said, patiently. His voice was a low, gentle lull, "Moriyama, my name is Abaddon. Now, come on. It won't hurt. Promise."

Shiemi took a deep breath, and nodded. There was nothing else she could do—he would leave her in the dark without the witchlight if she didn't, and Shiemi didn't like the dark. It was too easy. It was far, far too easy.

"Fine," she said.

A funny little grin pinched his lips up, and for a second, Shiemi thought of Rin. Rin and falling and painting her name in—no. She raised her head and set her jaw. "Fine."

The funny little grin stretched into wide mischievousness. "Yeah, I knew he'd like you. You're nothing like Lili."

"Who?"

Takara shook his head. "Doesn't matter. This way."

He held the witchlight up high above his head as he turned, slow and graceful as a line of music, the shadows crunching under his heels as he went. Shiemi followed behind, fingers still laced together and a tired fear in her eyes.

(She was so tired of being afraid.)

He led her down empty hallways—too empty, really. Shiemi was left with the uncomfortable feeling of eyes on the back of her neck, and she shivered to chase it away. She slipped her hands into the recesses of her kimono, and stumbled along after Takara.

The witchlight burned away the shadows as they walked, but even so, Shiemi nearly lost sight of Takara. The shadows slunk up her skirt and crawled across her hands. She cringed away from them.

"Moriyama, keep up," Takara called over his shoulder. "Don't wanna get lost, do we?"

Shiemi silently despised him.

They turned a corner, and he stopped abruptly. Shiemi very nearly crashed into him; she only caught herself on the last step, shuddering at the thought of having to touch him. Blue eyes and black hair flared in her memory for a sheer second, and Shiemi almost smiled.

"Here," Takara smirked. "In here."

It was a small, square, empty room with a window on the opposite wall. Takara nodded towards it.

"Go on. Take a look," he said.

Shiemi went to the window to press her fingers against the glass, leaving fingerprints there. Her breath caught in her throat. Her voice was choked. She gasped.

"Shura-sensei—!"

/ / /

She woke to pain.

It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last (she was always waking to it, recently, it seemed.). Shura wasn't the type to shirk from pain, but the clink of chains around her wrists had her seeing red. She snarled and fought herself into exhaustion. It came to nothing. She hung in the still-flickering candlelight, now faint and guttering as they went out one by one, and did not move.

Sensation came slowly, after that.

The sound of footsteps from behind her had her craning her neck around, trying to match the oddly familiar sound to a face—

"Shura-sensei?"

"Kitty? What—are you crazy, why are you—?"

"No time," Konekomaru whispered. "Saving you. Moriyama?"

"No," Shura murmured.

His fingers were working at the shackles, but Shura could already tell that it would be to no avail. They were demon locks, and they seemed to reject lock picks.

"Damn it," Konekomaru muttered. "Don't—"

A wave of blue fire across the floor.

Desperation hit Shura in the gut. "No, no, not now, I was so close—"

"What?" Konekomaru whispered.

"Kitty, you need to—"

"Visitors, Shura?" Yukio's voice echoed through her skull.

"No, no, no—"

Yukio strode towards them. His lab coat was white and immaculate as always, and it was the first stirrings in her blood that had Shura hating herself and everything around her. She would not—would not—let this get to her.

"Kitty," she hissed, "you need to get away right now—"

Konekomaru shot her a sharp glance. His eyes left Yukio only for a minute. "Who's he? He feels human."

A minute too long. Yukio laughed softly. "Human? Really, Shura, this is what you were working with? I'm not impressed."

Shura growled. "Yukio, he don't have anythin' t'do with anythin'. Leave 'im alone."

"Quiet," Yukio growled in reply.

"Don't talk to her like that!" Konekomaru snarled, surprising them both. He edged his way in front of Shura, close enough to touch

"Remove yourself from my property," Yukio said, "and maybe I'll let you live another few minutes."

"I—" said Konekomaru.

"Too late," Yukio murmured, simply.

The crack of breaking bone was the only sickening sound as Yukio threw Konekomaru across the room into the wall.

Then gurgling, the squelch of breaking flesh, hacking coughs that sucked wetly; Shura watched as Yukio bent over Konekomaru, and it was almost lovingly that he stepped back from the other man, eyes trained downward and the forearms of his lab coat stained vermillion.

Konekomaru swayed back and forth, wide-eyed, one hand on his sword and the other over his heart. He pulled his hands away.

There was a cavern where his heart should have been.

"No," Shura gasped. "No. NO! KITTY!"

"Shura-sen-sei—"

Konekomaru fell forward.

Yukio turned towards her. There was a quiet look of triumph on his features that made Shura sick to her stomach. She jerked in the chains. Snarled at him. Dared him to come close. I dare you. I dare you.

And still, he walked the length of the floor.

He cradled her face in blood-soaked hands; gently, so gently. He pressed his forehead to hers and dragged his thumb along her lips; just enough to paint her skin the darkest of reds.

"I don't share, Shura," he murmured.

"I hate you," she hissed. A single tear streaked down her cheek.

"I don't share," Yukio repeated.

He kissed her then.

Corruption had never tasted so sweet.

Far in the distance, there was a glimmer of candlelight glinting off of something thick and dark. It was beautiful and sick like dead butterfly wings shining in the sunlight. She caught sight of it out of the corner of her eye, and mourned for something—though she couldn't remember what.

And Shura fell and fell and fell.

/ / /

On the other side of the glass, Shiemi sank to her knees, white-faced, and sobbed.

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tbc.

notes3: I dislike killing characters off. especially because it gets easier every time. so actually. I sort of do.
notes4: you guys, could we have a repeat of what happened last week? where like. you all reviewed? because I really liked that. yeah. Please don't Favourite/Alert without leaving a review!

oh yeah, fun fact: there's a drabble request link on my profile page. go spit one at me, yeah?