Foxfire
Chapter Eleven
By Pixiedust291
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He returned to his apartment very late. The sun had set long ago and there was no one on the roads as he trudged through the snow. The street lights had been his only company. The moment he closed the door to his apartment, however, he knew something was different. The air felt stale, humid, and his apartment seemed deathly quiet, like the quiet one would expect to hear in the dark depths of a forest at night. Alfred took off his jacket and tried to look around the dark room. He didn't know why exactly but he didn't want to make a move for the light switch. Something was watching him, stalking. With his limited vision he walked forward but did not see anything out of place.
Thinking maybe this uneasy feeling was because of the cat, though he doubted it, he called out "Kitten? Kitten are you here?"
Something grabbed the back of Alfred's head, and pulled. "What the-" Off balance, Alfred crashed to the floor and landed on his ass hard. "Ow, shit!" He opened his eyes and quickly started scanning the darkness. Something relatively small in size moved among the shadows by the windows. It looked gangly and awkward, like a human walking on all fours. Alfred glared as he watched it move up the wall and over the window with a whoosh sound. Alfred's temper sparked. He had had just about enough of kitsunes and anything else magical! "That's it! Whoever you are show yourself!" The shadow stopped, shifted, and then straightened to stand on two legs. Alfred rose to his feet "Who are you?"
The creature leaped, soaring over Alfred's head and around the corner. Alfred growled and chased after it, following it into the kitchen. The thing was sitting on the counter, facing away from him. Alfred reached out a hand and flicked on the light. The darkness seemed to evaporate around them like smoke to reveal a small human child curled up in a ball on the counter. Extending from his back, just above his bottom, was a small, skinny, golden fox tail. Alfred could also make out two tiny little fox ears of the same color protruding from the boys blond hair. Alfred held his breath when he saw how malnourished the boy looked. There was almost no fat on him at all and he was extremely skinny.
What was a kitsune child doing in his apartment? He took a steadying breath and then took a step forward "Hey... are you ok?"
"No. I'm not." The voice was young, male, and one that Alfred knew all to well. Without warning he grabbed the boy and turned him to face toward him. Alfred's eyes went wide and his blood ran cold at the sight of his own childhood face staring back at him. He released the boy and stumbled backward toward the wall. Was this some kind of trick? An illusion?
The boy's eyes, a bright sky blue with an inner heat the color of sapphires, watched his every move. "I am no illusion." His younger self bit out. His right ear twitched and all the lights in the apartment flicked on. He leaped off the counter and looked toward Alfred "Follow me."
Alfred could only obey as he followed the boy back into the living room. Upon the sight of it he covered his mouth and fell to the couch in horror. Blood smeared and dripped from the walls and covered a good portion of the carpet. He saw smeared hand prints and claw marks. Everything was drenched in blood, except for a pristine rectangle on the wall at the center of all the blood, when Alfred knew the painting of the fox had once been. The boy came to stand before him, his gaze patient and unamused.
"You're the fox?" Alfred managed to ask.
His younger self's eyes darkened "No, I am not the fox. I am your fox." He smiled to show two pointed canines "I am you."
Alfred shook his head "But you're just a little boy!"
"That was when you imprisoned me!" The boy hissed and suddenly all the light bulbs in the apartment shattered, except for one. One lone light bulb was left standing to illuminate the darkness just above their heads. The sound alone causing Alfred to jump.
"Imprisoned you?"
"You started rejecting me the moment you figured out I made you different from the other humans. You yelled at me, ignored me, and pretended I didn't exist." The boy looked as if he were about to cry "After some time I tried to force you to recognize me again, to remember what you are and needed to become."
"You tried?" Alfred didn't remember any of this. He certainly would have remembered a fox version of himself talking to him.
The boy shook his head "You didn't hear me!" He put his hands to his ears and covered them.
Alfred didn't know what to say nor did he even understand to an extent what was going on. "Did... did Arthur send you?"
The kid stopped, his eyes going wide "Arthur? Is Arthur here?" he began to look around the living room with obviously joy.
"Um... no. Arthur isn't here." The kid froze and then sank down to his knees, wrapping his arms around himself and shivering. Alfred panicked "Hey, are you ok?" he reached down a hand and touched the kids shoulder.
"Don't touch me!" the child slapped his hand away, leaving two thin cuts of scarlet on the top of Alfred's hand. His younger self looked up at him with fearful eyes. "You don't want me. You never wanted me." Tears spilled down the kid's cheeks "Even when he promised you love us you never wanted me. Stupid!" He screamed "Stupid stupid stupid! Just drop dead!" His tail was lashing back and forth in clear annoyance.
Alfred bit his lower lip as he sank to his knees next to the boy "Alright. Ok." He tried to say as soothing as he possibly could "I'm sorry." He didn't know what he was apologizing for exactly, but he knew he was in the wrong. "I'm sorry."
"Stupid!"
"Yes, yes. I'm stupid. Now would you please calm down?"
The boy sniffed as tears continued to stream down his cheeks. The child had such an angelic appearance, despite his emaciated body, that seeing him sobbing was enough to just utterly wrench Alfred's heart right out of his chest. With a deep sigh he gathered up the boy in his arms, despite his protests and struggles, and cradled him to his chest. He could now kind of understand how Arthur had fallen in love with him when he was younger, he was simply too adorable. Alfred smirked and then looked down at the growling boy who was trying his best to pushed against his chest and get away.
"You're not getting away. You don't have the strength."
"Because of you!"
"Because of me?"
"You rejected me. You locked me away. You starved me. You wanted me dead!" he whined "I'm everything you threw away." The boy then turned to point at the square on the wall where the painting used to be. "You sealed me into that stupid painting because you hated me! Well I hate you too! I hate you!"
Alfred had to tighten his grip as the boy began to struggle again "What are you talking about I never hated you!"
The boy stopped struggling and turned his head to glare up at Alfred "Lies. You wanted to get rid of me so badly that you made that painting to lock me away."
"I didn't..." Alfred shook his head, trying to grasp for the right words "I didn't mean to lock you away. I did that on accident." The boy did not look the least bit convinced "I didn't know that's what I was doing." He tried to think back to why he had painted the fox in the first place. Something had happened. He was sure of it, but he couldn't remember what exactly. "You said you tried to force me to recognize you again?"
The boy nodded "You could no longer hear me and had cut yourself off from the magic. So I tried to reach you by showing you what you could do."
"What I could do?"
"I forced your powers."
"My powers?" Alfred tried to remember but nothing came to mind.
"You won't."
Alfred blinked "Won't what?"
"Remember." The boy pointed to his head. "They're with me. All your memories."
"Even the ones with Arthur?"
"I gave you the ones with Arthur." The boy explained. "You needed to remember him."
"Why?"
Now the boy looked confused "Because we love him." Alfred went quiet as the words seemed to sink beneath his skin and into his very core. We love him. He felt the boy press two hands against his cheeks "You do love him, don't you?"
A second's hesitation and then Alfred smiled, nodding "Yes." The boy's anger seemed to melt from his face at that one word and he sniffled as he stopped crying. Alfred wiped the tears away from his cheeks "I'm sorry that I locked you away. Weather I did it consciously or not, I'm sorry." He thought about all the pain this boy, this fox part of himself, must have endured. The loneliness and the neglect. Alfred moved the boy away slightly, taking in his skinny and scrawny appearance. A hero was supposed to help, not cease so much agony. Guilt and disgust gripped at him. "You did not deserve this."
The boy's golden ears turned forward. He opened his mouth as if to say something and then looked away "I understand. Even when I was locked away, I understood. You were scared."
"That doesn't excuse the way I treated you." He lifted his hands to the boys fox ears and began to rub them. He delighted in watching his younger self gasp and then begin to purr like a kitten. "Is it because I locked you away that I don't have any... foxy attributes?"
The boy nodded "All you are is in me."
Alfred stopped rubbing his ears and looked down at the boy with a serious expression "Do you know what is going on with Arthur?"
"I know everything that you know."
"So you know that we need to become his mate."
The boy laughed "We always were." Alfred blushed, but couldn't help but laugh as well.
Alfred took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. So much stuff had happened, and it was hard to even comprehend how after everything that had happened he had arrived at this point. "I locked you in the dark because I didn't know how to deal with you. That was a-"
"Stupid."
He smirked. He was such a brat when he was younger "Yeah, a stupid way of dealing with it." He averted his gaze "A hero doesn't dismiss his fears, he deals with them head on." He frowned "He also doesn't steal energy from others. Some hero I turned out to be."
"You are a hero." His younger self said enthusiastically "You saved Arthur."
Alfred thought about it a moment and then nodded, a genuine smile of his face "Yeah, and now I suppose I have to save him again don't I?" The boy in his arms nodded. Alfred stroked a hand down the boys head "And I think it's about time you and I were reunited."
"Ok!" The boy cheered before he leaned in and pressed his lips against Alfred's mouth. The action completely shocked the hell out of Alfred even more so when the room exploded in shimmering golden sparkles. The boy in his lap became transparent and untangible as he slowly was absorbed into Alfred's body. Alfred cried out and clutched the couch behind him for dear life. It felt as if every bone in his body was breaking and then reforming all at once. His spine burned with a heat so intense that he swore his skin was being charred. He fell over backward and writhed in agony. His eyes opened wide as the world around him faded in and out of color. With one last silent scream he descended into darkness, illuminated by the small white dots of intricate snowflakes.