Fine! Fine! I give in! Take your ShizNat! And be grateful!
The next two chapters will be very ShizNat oriented. Now it's all character development with me, the poor lowly author, trying to sneak in some plot like a pet owner trying to sneak a pill rolled up in ham so that the bloody dog will actually eat it. "No! I said swallow, damn you! How dare you disobey me! I AM YOUR LORD AND MASTER!"
That actually is how I speak to my dog, by the way. In a joking manner, I might add. I'm not mean. God, no! If anyone were really mean to my big lovable black lab, I'd probably strangle that person then proceed to desecrate their sorry corpse. Even just reading something like "Water for Elephants" chokes me up a bit.
Technically, I had actually already planned to give y'alls a large dosage of ShizNat after all that strange mumbo-jumbo, voodoo-hoodoo of chapter 19. After these next few chapters, though, it's back to Plotland! You will read it and you will like it.
So there :P
In all seriousness, 'twere I reading this instead of writing it, I'd be yelling at the two characters depicted on the screen, "For the love of -! Just mount each other already! Why must you deny me this? Author! Give me that which I desire or I will sacrifice you to Hekate Propylaia! Along with a sleek, white heifer which I will offer up to the great, celestial beings for rain..."
Now, on with the angst!
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Mai-HIME is not mine.
Natsuki couldn't, for the life of her, understand what had happened.
One day, she and Shizuru were exchanging their usual repartee, which Natsuki was starting to genuinely enjoy (though she would never tell the woman that; she'd never hear the end of it), and the next, Shizuru wouldn't even look her in the eye.
Had she done something wrong?
Over and over, Natsuki replayed the events of the past few days in her head, but no clue arose from her scouring and re-scouring that could possibly explain Shizuru's actions.
At first, she had thought it was because she acquired and moved into her own quarters, away from Shizuru. But that had been two and a half days ago. If the woman found it offensive, wouldn't she have shown some sign of such sentiments when it happened? It had not been until yesterday evening that Shizuru started avoiding her.
Well...not exactly avoiding her, per se. They still spent hours together every day. Hell, the majority of her time these days was spent with Shizuru. Natsuki had tried to socialise more by visiting Mai, but the District Officer had been brusque, making excuses about being busy. It didn't help that a new hardness had been added to the line of Mai's jaw, probably received from stress, or that the vampire, Shiho, occupied her friend's time, dragging her around Parliament on their suddenly intertwined duties. She didn't know anybody else besides her boss, Midori, (or was that ex-boss?) and hanging out with her would just be plain awkward. Another person might have endeavored to making new acquaintances, but that had never been Natsuki's forte. She couldn't just go out a meet people; she didn't know how to properly act in those situations.
And that left Shizuru.
Previously, whenever she and Shizuru were together, the woman would always find excuses to touch her. Nothing inappropriate. Just small things: the brushing of her fingers at Natsuki's shoulder, at her arm, her hair. When Shizuru had first started doing this back in Phaesporia - that all felt so long ago, now; she still thought at times that perhaps this was all a bizarre dream - Natsuki had jumped like a skittish colt shying away from the halter. But now...Now, she was used to it and its absence was marked down in her mind as strange. That, in and of itself, was enough to give her pause. More, she found herself missing those brief, simple moments of contact.
True to her word, Shizuru had started training Natsuki in the foreign art of controlling her new-found powers. They'd had two 'lessons' thus far and the task presented to her was proving to be far easier than she had originally thought. Shizuru had started her off with releasing and withdrawing her blazing white aura like it was a set of retractable claws. She'd mastered that without much trouble, much to Shizuru's approval. Then it had been closing her eyes and allowing herself to sense her surroundings, more importantly, the people around her.
During that lesson, taken once more seated in Shizuru's quarters, Natsuki had asked Shizuru a question she had been thinking about for some time.
"Shizuru?"
"Hmm?"
"What exactly are you?"
For a moment, the Countess had not answered, "Can't you tell, Hespera?"
Natsuki's dark brows had met together in a scowl, "You know I don't like it when you call me that."
"Why is that? It is one of your names, is it not?"
"Stop avoiding my question."
Shizuru had simply blinked at her. When her eyes were revealed once more, they blazed forth with that scarlet light Natsuki had come to know so well, "You tell me."
Confused, Natsuki had just looked at her. But then, she'd really looked at her. Looked into those familiar crimson eyes bleeding a bloody light into the air around them. And what she had seen there made her gasp aloud.
A Ker. An embodiment of cruel death, a death on the battle-field, a bloody death. It had not been a single Ker, however. Oh, no. It was the Keres.
All of them.
Clustered within one body, raging, baying for bloody-strife, clawing at the walls of Shizuru's person for release, infecting those she Turned with a wild thirst.
And Shizuru had sat there, calm as an untouched pool nestled in a mountainside.
Soon after this rather unsavoury discussion, she had been taught how to manipulate her primary element, light. This was her favourite so far. When lying in bed, alone in her room, she would find herself idly making spheres of light dance through the air in a swirling waltz. Or even when she now woke to go to the bathroom at odd hours of the night, she would summon up a radiant globe of cold light to lead her way instead of fumbling to the opposite side of the room and flicking on the light-switch like she normally would have done in the past.
Just then, she realised that she was more perturbed by the fact that Shizuru was no longer touching her as much as she used to than the overwhelmingly more pressing issue of suddenly being aware of a god living inside of her, infiltrating her person like some sort of infectious disease or parasite that could take control of her mind and body the instant she got a little fright from walking around the corner and bumping into a door. She was a walking time bomb and here she was concerned because a blood-thirsty, millennium old woman whose body housed all the shades of violent death refused to "look at her the same way."
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Apparently she had paused in her ministrations during her musings because the wolf-pup in her lap nudged her hand with his muzzle. Blinking, Natsuki continued petting the smooth fur of his head, idly playing with his black-tipped ears.
The truth was, Natsuki didn't feel any different. All her life she'd supposedly had this god slumbering within her. Nothing felt radically different.
Ok. That was a lie.
There was the fact that she was strangely immune to weather and temperature. She had always preferred cooler weather, which was a good thing she supposed because all she ever felt now was vaguely chilly. Not in a discomforting sense. It was actually rather pleasant. Still, her body now no longer seemed to care for external temperature and therefore simply ignored it. The first time, it had been more of a nagging question lingering in the back of her mind. She'd awoken in her own bed at Westminster Palace two days ago, just the day after she had first awoken in Shizuru's bed - the thought still made her cheeks turn pink - and she couldn't register the usual feeling of waking up in a warm bed. In fact, to her knowledge, the bed hadn't been warm at all even though she hadn't moved from beneath the sheets since she first crawled beneath them nine hours before. But then, it was later that same morning when a cup of steaming hot coffee sloshed all across her wrist and forearm in the Banquet Hall when she'd accidentally bumped into a Cynthian soldier. She had hissed in pain purely out of instinct, for she had expected it to burn. It hadn't. She'd barely been able to feel the tingling warmth that spread across her skin where the scalding liquid had landed. She might have gone on thinking that the coffee was just cold, but the soldier had yelp and clutched his arm where he had been lightly splashed.
That was when she knew something was wrong.
Then there was the little affair of her diet.
It wasn't that Natsuki was never hungry. The hunger was there, but it was something she could easily forget about and did quite frequently these past few days. Others had greater appetites than her own, but she had never been one to starve herself or even miss a meal. The first day, she'd gone without eating anything and she hadn't even realised it. The next day, she'd headed down to the Banquet Hall, but had only picked at her food sans gusto.
However, just this afternoon, she'd been walking by the stands of fruit in the Banquet Hall, tray in tow, when she'd stopped dead in her tracks. A heavenly smell assaulted her senses. Whirling around for the source, her eyes had alighted upon a basket of apples. As though in a trance, she had dropped her tray of food on the ground and scrambled over to them where she commenced picking up an apple as though it were a saintly relic. She had brought the red and gold orb to her nose and inhaled deeply, her entire form had quivered and she'd quite literally salivated. As soon as she had sunk her teeth into the crisp flesh, she had fallen to her knees with a barely restrained moan.
Just thinking about it now made her legs go weak.
Needless to say, Natsuki had gotten a few stares. In fact, she had needed to be escorted from the premises, but not before she had grabbed the entire basket of apples and dragged them out with her, refusing to be parted from them. (1)
As of now, she'd already eaten a dozen and a half and still she craved more. She'd even devoured the cores and the seeds. She'd had to forcibly remove herself from clutching the basket of apples to her chest like her life depended on it. God, but nothing had ever tasted so good. Mayo paled in comparison, and that thought alone had made her blanch. Something was definitely different.
That was when she had decided to get far away from the apples and thereby found herself here with a puppy in her lap.
Here was a warmly lit room exclusive to the puppy, which had grown remarkably large since she last say him just a few days before. She thought, perhaps, that he would stop growing soon since his withers already reached her knees, but the vampire who had been assigned as caretaker, a young man by the name of Endymion whose company Natsuki rather enjoyed for he seemed to genuinely care for the animals' safety and comfort - probably why Shizuru chose him for the job - had informed her that the puppy would continue to grow a great deal more if fed and tended to properly. Endymion, whom she fondly referred to as "End" during their brief interludes with one another, had proposed that Natsuki care for the pup herself, if she wished, claiming that the companionship would be good for him; wolves were pack animals, after all. Natsuki had readily agreed and made a point of visiting for at least a good hour every day. Technically, this was a part of the dungeons, but unlike the dungeon in which the animals had been found, this place had been outfitted and equipped to accommodate them comfortably, each with their own spacious room. Brightly coloured toys littered the floor; she had used them earlier to wear the puppy out, indulging in a fierce game of "tug-of-war" that the puppy had won and gone prancing around the room as though in a victory lap, tail wagging in the air like a flag. Natsuki was quite pleased with the arrangement, truth be told. Currently, she was leaning against the far wall, the wolf-pup curled up between her sprawled legs. She could hear End humming softly to himself as he cleaned the room next-door which housed the eagle that had glared so calculatingly at Natsuki during their entrapment together. The wolf's silvery fur was scattered with streaks of dark gray and black. His ears and tail looked like they had been dipped in ink.
"Who's such a good puppy?" she asked, voice higher than normal, almost sing-song in quality, "Is it you? Hmm? Oh, yes it is!"
His broad tail started thumping on the floor at her words and he gazed up at her with those deep red eyes. When she started ruffling the fur of his neck, scratching, he raised his head and arched it back to direct her hand to the optimal scratching position. Chuckling, she indulged him and his hind foot raised of its own accord, flailing wildly in the air in a most canine display of pleasure, "Silly puppy..." she murmured, leaning down to plant a brief kiss to his brow.
When she stopped, he licked his chops, satisfied, before moving to her hand, his large tongue lapping at her wrist in an expression of endearing gratitude.
"Thanks," Natsuki grinned down at him, green eyes sparkling, "I just love getting slobbered on."
To her surprise, he stopped and huffed at her. He then rested his chin back on her thigh, closing his eyes.
"You know what?" she began, regarding him with a small smile, "I think you need a name."
The pup's ears perked, questioning.
She played with the silky triangles that were his ears, her smile turning melancholy, and she confessed, "I always wanted a dog, but they would never let me have one..." His eyes opened, watching her, listening, "One of my foster-families had a dog," she screwed up her face, sticking out her tongue, "But he was small and yappy. So annoying. Plus, he hated me because I wasn't actually family. It was almost like he knew I didn't belong there..." He blinked owlishly at her, "But you don't care about that, do you?"
To this, he huffed again then proceeded to bury his nose in her crotch, snuffling for good effect.
"Oy!" she tugged at the thick fur of his neck, but he ignored her, happily snorting away, begging for more attention, "Alright. Fine. You win." Her smile brightened and she pet him some more, letting her mind wander while she did so.
"Duran."
Immediately, the wolf-pup's head lifted.
She repeated herself, "Duran."
He cocked his head, tail wagging, and whined.
"Do you like that name, then? Duran?"
He barked, clambering to his feet in order to lavish her face with slobbery kisses.
Laughing, Natsuki pushed him away, wiping at her face which she hadn't been able to pull away in time, "I get it! I get it! Duran it is!"
Butting her chest with his head, Duran bore a wolfish smile characteristic of dogs, panting into her shirt. She wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes, breathing in the clean scent of his fur. End must have bathed him just that morning, for he smelled of lavender soap. A hint of wildness still streaked beneath the civilised veneer, a tangy, metallic smell that filled her nostrils and lingered on the tip of her tongue. He smelled almost like Shizuru.
Shizuru...
And so the question remained, nagging at the very fore of her mind: What was up with Shizuru? And more importantly, why did she care?
Drip.
Bright, crimson eyes were partially hidden behind heavy lids. An arm rested on the side of an enormous tub, porcelain and set into the gray marble floor, dark squares that were streaked with cream and set apart by staggered diamonds of black slate. Steam rose from the surface of the still water in which a body soaked, misting the large mirrors set on the walls. Tips of hair around snowy shoulders dipped in the water, floating lazily, stained a dark gold by the water.
Drip.
The shining chrome faucet hadn't been turned off all the way and consequently its nozzle leaked periodically. She would have leaned forward to change that, but she rather liked it how it was. It gave her some measure of rhythm, like a metronome steadily, slowly ticking away. Besides, she was too lazy to move.
Drip.
Shizuru lounged in the bath, loosing herself to the soothing heat. She couldn't remember how long she had been lying there, completely stretched out with room to spare. This was far superior to Natsuki's bath at the girl's small apartment. She was enjoying the experience immensely. Her pleasure would have been optimised, however, had she not been plagued by recent events.
Natsuki...
Her brows furrowed irritably. The dark-haired girl filled her thoughts more than she would have normally liked. Especially now that she knew the truth behind the mystery that was Natsuki Kruger.
She wished now that she didn't know.
She had waited for what she had perceived to be the best moment to summon Haruka and question her about recent events. Well...Granted, it had been more of an interrogation. Getting the woman to appear was a task unto itself, nearly a heroic labour. Midori had claimed that Haruka was deceased, but Shizuru knew better. Haruka was too powerful to have been so easily dispatched.
Haruka had been surprisingly adamant about not appearing when summoned. Shizuru would not be denied however. She knew that the best way to summon fate was to flout it and, eventually, Haruka had deigned to appear.
She had not been pleased about it. And she had most definitely not been alone.
Shizuru had merely smiled at the three figures who had materialized in her room not two days ago.
She may have not been expecting all three Moirae to pop up, but it wasn't anything she couldn't handle. A small girlish looking figure with a sword twice as tall had appeared, sharpening said sword with a whetstone and glancing up at Shizuru with a bored look over her work as though she were an annoying fly that buzzed around her dark head. The other was a young woman seated cross-legged on the floor with brown hair falling about her face, silently spinning, ever spinning, thread from a gray and black spool in her lap. She didn't even look at Shizuru. Haruka, of course, had appeared at the head of the trio bearing a belligerent scowl, furious at being summoned in such a manner, brandishing her measuring tool at Shizuru like a mace.
She had greeted them cordially in turn, "Mikoto. Yukino." she'd grinned at the last, "Haruka."
"What do you think you're doing?" Haruka had snarled.
"I have some questions for you three."
An irritated growl rumbled from the blonde Fate, "We are not your personal sources of information!" she hissed, knuckles whitening around her weapon, "Or need I remind you of your place, Keres?"
At this, Shizuru lost her temper. Something she rarely ever did. Stepping forward, eyes blazing, shadows expanding to wreath her form, Shizuru had bared her fangs, "You will show me respect, Lachesis! Do not mistake me for a lesser spirit!"
"You overstep your bounds again, Keres!" Haruka had spat, her own skin burgeoning with golden skeins, her gaze twin points of amethyst flame, "I will not have you disrupting our affairs! Your duty -!"
"Damn your duty!" They were less than a stride apart now. Their fields of energy clashed, crackling ponderously with thunder, bolts of sickly coloured lightning darted between them and the room darkened, "I may not be able to kill you, but I will chain you up beside Prometheus and watch you scream for eternity!"
Haruka's weapon struck the ground, sending sparks reeling across the stone floor, "You -!"
Suddenly, Yukino spoke up, never looking away from her task, "Haruka." Her voice was soft, but its effect was immediate.
Breathing deeply to steady herself, Haruka stepped away. Their auras simmered then died and a very loud silence filled the room.
Finally, Haruka spoke, calmer though a shiver of anger still shone in her words, "Things are in a very delicate balance right now, Shizuru. I can not afford to have you disrupting what we have so carefully laid in place."
"I have no interest in upsetting your affairs," She was hiding behind her composed mask once more, though beneath it all she boiled, "All I ask for is some information."
Mikoto lifted her blade and looked down its length, giving a small grunt of satisfaction before turning it over and starting on the other side. Both she and Yukino seemed not to be paying attention.
Haruka huffed and reluctantly conceded, "There is another Revenant."
In spite of herself, Shizuru's fists clenched, nostrils flaring, "Where?" Her voice had dropped to a husky whisper laced with blood-lust.
I will tear this Revenant to pieces. I will feast upon their flesh. I will slaughter every man, woman and child who dares follow them. I will -
"You are not required to know such information," was Haruka's bland reply.
An animalistic snarl ripped from Shizuru's throat, "Do you not remember what happened last time?"
"How could I forget?" Haruka's voice was dry, "Your precious Nina and Darvulia were who put us into this mess, after all."
Nina.
"Do not speak her name!" she growled.
The Moirae couldn't resist goading her, "Which one?"
"Both." Shizuru could not refrain from hissing like a snake, possessed by her draconic rage, "They are dead to me."
"Is that so?"
Nina. Her darling Nina. She had very nearly gone mad when Nina died. In a way, she had never recovered from it. Her lover, still married while she, herself, had been a widow, was in the final term of her pregnancy when she had taken the fall from her horse that had claimed her life. Nina had always loved to ride, no matter how much Shizuru had discouraged it.
"You are with child, Nina! You should not be galloping about the countryside!" She had insisted, pleading even.
"Oh, nonsense!" Nina had scoffed, shaking back her mane of long, dark hair, haughty and dismissive as a queen, "You worry too much, Shizuru!"
When it had happened, she was willing to do anything to bring her back. Even offer up her own body as a house for the shades of bloody death, the Keres. She had turned to the witch, Darvulia, begging for her assistance. Seeing this opportunity before her, Darvulia had taken the Countess of Hungary up on her request. What had taken place, however, was far from what Shizuru had originally bargained for.
Dancing with devils rarely turned out the way people wanted.
The last Revenant, Darvulia, had done as Shizuru asked, but with her own ulterior motives. Nina had lived again, but she, herself, had been transformed into a creature that was the stuff of nightmares.
And then, after all that, Nina had died a month later during childbirth.
Stop.
Don't think of it.
Ne finge. Ne finge... (2)
Yukino wordlessly held out a thread to Mikoto and the girl cut it with a single smooth swipe of her sword. Somewhere in the world, a soul shrieked.
She needed to change the subject and she needed to change it now. Mnemosyne was a cruel goddess, indeed, ever haunting her, "How does Natsuki fit into all of this?"
At this, Haruka's gaze softened slightly. Confused, Shizuru arched a brow at her, "Well?"
Sighing, Haruka responded, "You may not like my answer."
Shizuru's eyes narrowed dangerously.
"Don't say I didn't warn you..." the Moirae held up her hands defensively to ward off Shizuru's glare before continuing, "Ms. Kruger is the latest in a long line of women who have housed Hespera in their souls."
"Go on."
"Beginning with your Nina's daughter."
The information took a moment to seeping into her.
Natsuki...Natsuki was...? Nina's descendant?
No.
No, that can't be true.
Shizuru staggered back as though she had been dealt a wailing blow to the chest. Her eyes were wide, she stared at Haruka, "That...That can't..." her voice was a broken whisper.
Haruka just looked at her and said nothing.
"You...You're sure?" Shizuru's words held a pleading despair, as though begging for it to be simultaneously true and false, "You're absolutely sure?"
And with Haruka's small nod, everything changed.
That had been days ago. Presently, she was trying to soak all of her troubles away. To no avail it seemed.
Natsuki...
How could she look at the girl now? How could she even be in her presence? How, when all she saw was Nina? When all she wanted to do was gather the girl into her arms and sully her perfect body with unseemly passions?
She clenched her hands beneath the water which was starting to cool. She would have to get out soon. She didn't want to. Getting out of the bath would mean that she would have to face Natsuki. They were supposed to be meeting again for another lesson in a few hours.
I can't...
Red eyes stared up at the ceiling, watching the steam billow and twist.
I can't even look at her. If I do...If I...I can't...
Or I will be lost.
(1) apples: if y'alls can recall, Natsuki is one of the Hesperides, guardians of the tree that bears golden apples. I just thought it would be a fun little twist to have her crave apples all the time. Myth tells us that even the Hesperides couldn't resist eating the apples from time to time, which was why the dragon, Ladon, was also used to ward off any from eating them, a guardian for the guardians one might say.
(2) Ne finge: Latin. "Do not think it." This is actually a quote from the Aeneid, Book IV. When Dido confronts Aeneas, he gives a little speech to try to dissuade her impassioned confrontation and says. The grammar is technically incorrect, as an imperative would normally be made with a form of Noli / Nolite with an infinitive, rather than an imperative form with a negative. But, it's Vergil. You don't argue with Vergil. (Unless you're going to be writing an extensive commentary of his work).