Title: A Significant Spark
Character(s): Lui Hibiki, VY2 Yuuma
"Now I want you to empty your mind."
If he wasn't so mentally and physically exhausted, Lui would have laughed aloud. As usual, his traveling day had begun when Yuuma woke him just as evening was arriving. Unlike usual, they had spent the day traversing through the perilous and rough mountain paths rather than across the plains. Every muscle in Lui's body ached and he could feel the thin soles of his shoes disintegrating beneath him as the day wore on. Several times he seriously considered simply lying on the path and waiting for wild animals to come and relieve him of his pain.
Yet every time he became dangerously close to following through with his plan, Yuuma would look back and lock eyes with him. Despite himself, Lui could never tear his eyes away - how much of this sensation was caused by the force of Yuuma's personality and how much was caused by the magic burning in those eyes, Lui couldn't say.
Whatever the ratio, it wasn't until Yuuma turned around once more that Lui found himself able to think clearly. However, he also found that his morbid thoughts of defeat had fled him to be replaced with cold determination. Even though he said nothing, Yuuma's message was clear.
You've been given two options: the academy or suicide. Choosing a third choice is not allowed.
The more Yuuma exerted his powers on him, the more Lui came to realize something.
He hated Yuuma.
It didn't make any logical sense. A few weeks ago, he had been incredibly grateful to the other man; he was his savior after all. But now, every time he looked at him, nothing but dark feelings roiled within his chest. His one saving grace was that Yuuma barely spoke. The less human qualities he had, the easier it was for Lui to hate him.
That's why, when the two of them stopped to sleep through the day and Yuuma immediately began speaking, Lui's first response was to panic. If Yuuma started being human, who was there for him to hate?
Himself?
"Your education starts now."
"Education...?" Lui parroted back slowly as he fought back his mounting panic.
"The Academy is about a half-days walk away. You haven't killed yourself yet, so I'm assuming that you want to go through with your education."
Silence followed this deceleration and Lui found his hands playing with the knife Yuuma had given him. Time was up. If he wanted to escape through death, now was his last chance.
"Do you mean to say that you'll be my teacher?" Lui asked slowly as he continued to fumble with the knife.
"I should have been your teacher for the entirety of this journey. However, I promised you that I would give you a choice. If I had started teaching you The Academy's secrets and then you tried to escape, it would have fallen on me to silence you."
"So you would have killed me."
"Yes."
The silence returned once more as Lui finally managed to free the knife from its sheath. He held the blade in front of him for several seconds before he allowed his eyes to wander to Yuuma's face.
To his surprise, he found himself staring at startlingly yellow eyes.
Gone was the magically conjured pigment to hide his nature as a mage; gone was the odd tinge of magical energy; gone was any compulsion to maintain eye contact. Now, all Lui saw was a haggard man who carried a burden that no human should be forced to carry alone. In that one moment, Lui saw a vulnerable human being.
Lui saw Yuuma.
Then the moment passed and Lui quickly averted his gaze, taking only a second longer to look at the knife before hastily shoving his hand forward like a petulant child.
"Here," he said in a voice obviously fighting back the overwhelming urge to cry. He watched as Yuuma gently wrapped his hand around the knife handle. As the older man's fingertips brushed against his palm, Lui felt a sharp bolt of energy shoot through his body, causing him to instantly retract his hand.
"What did you do?" Lui asked as he cradled his hand to his chest.
"Marked you as one of The Academy's own."
"What does that even mean?"
"Look at your palm."
Reluctantly, Lui allowed his fingers to uncurl and he felt his breath rush away in shock. His palm was covered in angry red welts that formed a perfect spiral centering on his palm. As he continued to stare, the welts began to darken until they were a deep, inky black. Then, just as quickly as they had arrived, the welts began to melt back into Lui's palm and within a few moments, it was as unscarred at it had always been.
However, the odd traces of energy remained and any time Lui flexed his fingers, he felt the tingle of the electrical pulse run through him once again. Eventually he lifted his eyes from his palm to once more look at the man who sat across from him.
"...I...I don't..."
"What I just gave you enhances your innate power, but it also inexorably ties you to The Academy. The only way for you to escape now is for you to lose that hand."
"So...I've lost my chance."
"Yes, you have."
"...Then let's start my training."
The next hour was filled with speeches about the four cambia, internal and external magic, elemental associations of the cambia, and more information about magic than Lui had ever encountered before. All he found himself able to think was how forbidden this was - his entire life it had been reinforced over and over again that his magic was something to be hidden and never spoken of here was someone who was willing to give him the answers to all the questions he was never allowed to ask.
Yuuma, the one that he so desperately despised, was also the one who allowed him to be normal. It was through him that Lui was able to be just another person rather than a demon with uncontrollable powers.
His education may have bound him to The Academy, but it also broke barriers that had been erected since childhood.
The realization gave him a heady rush of jumbled emotions that only made concentrating increasingly difficult. By the time the hour of explaining was up and Yuuma stated that Lui should try to consciously access his magic for the first time, Lui was suffering from a splitting headache to accompany the overall body ache that came from his day of traveling.
Despite this, when Yuuma told him to close his eyes and think of nothing, Lui tried his best to comply. However, with his gift of sight removed, Lui simply found his mind even more prone to wandering. Every time he tried to clear away his thoughts his mind would snag on some insignificant scrap of knowledge and he would find himself suddenly expounding upon it. Nothingness was overrun by long-ago memories of his childhood, fragments of dreams, and snippets of scenery he had been exposed to on the journey to The Academy.
"I can't do this," Lui sighed in defeat as he allowed his eyes to open, "Every time I get close, my mind keeps thinking of some little thing and I can't let it go."
"Would you like for me to help?"
"You can do that?"
"Of course. As I'm sure you've noticed, I specialize in internal magic; I have the ability to manipulate your cambia to influence your thinking and mood."
"...Please," Lui said quietly as he found himself slowly nodding.
"Very well then. I want you to once more close your eyes. This time I want you to concentrate on my voice."
Fighting back an inexplicable feeling of panic, Lui once more allowed his eyes to close. To his surprise, instead of speaking, Yuuma began to hum. The sound was low and throaty with a dull tinge of power. Lui felt something stir within his chest and a moment later, it was as if a cold wave had crashed upon him, clearing away all the emotions that marked him as human. His mind was plunged into darkness.
"I have just aggravated your phlegma cambium. I want you to remember this feeling of nothingness. As you continue your training, you will need to learn to replicate it at a moment's notice."
The voice that spoke was unfamiliar to Lui, but he was instinctively drawn to it and before he had time to consciously think about it, he found himself opening his mouth to answer.
"I understand."
"Good. Now, I want you to slowly push back against the darkness I have instilled within you."
Not quite sure what to do but unwilling to let the owner of the magnetic voice be disappointed, Lui began to try recalling the emotions he had once felt; happy memories, frightening dreams, and joyous occasions were all called upon. However, the second a scrap of emotion made itself known, it was swallowed by the tidal wave of darkness.
The more Lui failed, the more he felt something kindling within his chest. It was only when he tried to recall the terror of the townspeople treating him like a demon that the memory suddenly stuck. For a moment, he could see everything so clearly - the contorted faces of people he had once trusted, the disgusted eyes of his mother, the weight of the charred body within his hands.
And the flames.
The flames.
The feeling in his chest took form and instantly his mind was overrun by fire. It burned everything, headless of good or evil, happy or sad. Lui heard a far off scream as his head began to pulse erratically, sending painful shock-waves through his body. His eyes shot open as the pain intensified and seemed to concentrate within his arm. He couldn't contain his screams of pain as he watched in horrified fascination as his entire left arms was suddenly covered in angry welts that quickly darkened to black. Everything pounded. Everything hurt.
The suddenly, the fire within his mind escaped into reality.
The entirety of his left arm was aflame and all Lui could do was stare and scream. There should have been the feeling of burning, but all he felt was the continued pulsing pain.
"Lui, calm down."
It was the voice again. This time, Lui recognized the owner of the voice as Yuuma, and as he turned to look at the older man, he felt tears prick at the back of his eyes. The pain made his vision swim, but he forced himself to concentrate on the eyes of the older mage.
"Make it stop...please make it stop..."
"You're the only one who can do that now Lui," He said slowly and calmly as he maintained eye contact with his panicking pupil, "You have to be the one to master it and bring it under control."
"I can't. I can't. It's fire. I can't."
"You were born with this power; you have the ability to control it."
Tears were streaming openly down Lui's face now as he gave a desperate shake of his head. How could he make Yuuma understand? Fire was what had haunted him the entirety of his life; fire was what made the villagers lock him away; fire was what made his mother hate him.
Fire was what killed his sister.
He had no control over it.
None.
"I believe in you."
The words were short and clipped and Lui could barely hear them over the sound of his throbbing pain, but the effect it had was immediate. There was someone who believed in him. No matter how much of a monster he was, no matter how little faith he had in himself, there was someone who believed in him.
Yuuma believed in him.
It was something he hadn't experienced since the day the villagers locked him away.
Lui closed his eyes in concentration and listened to the erratic pulsing that ran through his body. To his surprise, he picked up on two distinct rhythms - one in his head and one in his left arm. Answering to an impulse he wasn't even aware was present, he slowed his breathing and began to push the rhythm within his arm to slow. The resistance he faced was unexpectedly strong. Fighting against his exhaustion and the sweat that was now beading on his brow, he kept pushing forward. Time lost all meaning as the entirety of Lui's existence was defined by the two pulses.
Then unexpectedly, the pulses matched perfectly as both throbbed slowly and dully. The overwhelming strain on Lui's body instantly subsided. Slowly his eyes opened and he found himself staring at his left arm. The black welts continued to dominate his arms, but the fire had receded to the point where it was nothing more than a gentle golden flame that flickered within his palm.
For the first time in his life, he was the one in control.
He could tell that a goofy grin dominated his face, but he found himself unable to care.
"I did it..." He stated slowly and unsurely, "I did it...I did it Yuuma!"
"You did a great job. Congratulations."
When Lui turned from the flame to look at Yuuma, he felt his eyes go wide with shock. Although it was slight, Yuuma's mouth was clearly upturned into a smile. Furthermore, his usually emotionless eyes were shining with something that Lui was immediately able to identify.
Pride.
Yuuma was proud of him.
Yuuma believed in him.
Before the full implications of these revelations could settle on him, Lui felt the pulses of energy within his head abruptly cut off. Suddenly devoid of the energy that had been sustaining him, he collapsed to the ground with a heavy thud. When he tried to move, his limbs refused to comply. Realizing that movement would be impossible, he resigned himself to staring up at the puffy white clouds that dominated the sky. Unexpectedly, he felt something warm settle on the lower half of his body.
"Get some sleep now," Yuuma said as he stepped back from providing the boy with a blanket, "I'll take care of keeping watch."
Lacking even the strength to voice a response, Lui simply nodded his head and watched as Yuuma walked off. It was only when Lui lost sight of him that his thoughts returned once more to both the smile and pride that he had seen Yuuma display. They were the first emotions he had seen out of the older man and despite himself, Lui felt a distinct sense of accomplishment that he had been able to bring them about.
As he quickly succumbed to the alluring siren call of sleep, he found himself hoping that he would be able to make Yuuma proud again.
And if he was lucky, he might even be able to make him smile.
A/N: ...I got carried away while writing for these two again. Originally, this was just supposed to be a cute "Lui manages to control his magic for the first time and Yuuma is all proud of him!" thing, but it turned out to be way more involved than I anticipated. But look, there's a smidgen of fluff at the end! That still counts as it being cute!...Right?
Also, I've decided on a few things for this AU:
- Lui is hemophobic (this becomes important later in the story)
- Magic is based around manipulation of the four cambia (A.K.A. the four humors/humorism). There are two types of magic (internal and external). Internal magic is manipulation of another person's cambia to influence mood whereas external magic is physical manifestation of an element associated with the specific cambia.
Other than those two things, everything is still up in the air with this AU. I can probably assure you at this point that this will someday be written into a longer story.
Maybe.