Dark Adaptation
Disclaimer: Descendants of Darkness, affiliated characters, locations and concepts… are all fictionalized concepts and any relation to any persons living or dead is unintentional and completely fucking creepy.
Also, I don't own it. Thankyou.
A/N: Happy Belated Valentine's Day to you, dear readers! And boy do I have a special treat lined up for you!
Tsuzuki: Special treat?
Hickock: That's right! Because tonight for the first time, at just about half past ten –
Watari: Why am I hearing a song in this?
Hickock: - there's gonna be a MuTsu lemon!
Saki: (Waving arms around in the air) It's a MuTsu lemon! Hallelujah, it's a MuTsu lemon! Amen! Celebrate good times, come on! Whoot!
Muraki: I find you far too sarcastic for just a head. And you for a waitress, Hickock. But I'll let it go on account that there is finally going to be a MuTsu lemon and I for one am most grateful that it has, at long last, come to pass.
Hickock: Fuckin' A! As much satisfaction as it would give me to further deprive you, Muraki, I feel like I need to take mercy on my faithful readers and reviewers before they report me to Amnesty International.
Muraki: Smart girl.
Tsuzuki: Well I for one don't feel like celebrating at all! Don't you guys realize that this is the beginning of the end of the integrity of Asato Tsuzuki?! No one will take me seriously after this!
Watari: So you'll have pretty much the same relationship with everyone that you do now.
Tsuzuki: Shut up!
Count: (Sobbing inconsolably in the corner)
Oriya: Mr. Tsuzuki, surely you realized it had to happen someday? I mean, you have had a four-year reprieve.
Watari: Four years?! Man, you suck, Hickock! Four years? Is this like the longest fic ever?
Hickock: …
Tatsumi: She's too embarrassed to answer.
Muraki: As she should be. I mean, the lemon section isn't even as long as I would like it.
Tsuzuki: I don't think any lemon scene would be long enough for you.
Oriya: (Reading over chapter content) It is relatively short, considering…
Hickock: Oh stop complaining you lot. If I dragged it on any longer it would have been too much. My intention was for a romantic setting rather than that hormone driving porn fest between you and Bubble-butt over there.
Watari: Now I know where Ichibana gets it!
Hickock: We speak the same lingo, yes. Anyway, there'll be a bit more cuddly pillow talk and extension of sex scenes next chapter.
Tsuzuki: Oh great. Because one sex session with Muraki isn't enough to completely drive me over the edge. I think I want to renew my contract.
Watari: Well, isn't somebody being precious today? Don't pretend like you didn't enjoy it! I've done the proof reading, I know!
Tsuzuki: God dammit! Invasion of privacy! You make me angry, Watari!
Hickock: Okay people… humongous headache, can we keep it down a bit?
Saki: You do look tired…
Hickock: I haven't slept the last couple of nights because I really wanted to have this finished by Valentine's Day…
Tsuzuki: Why? It's not romantic! I'm having sex with Muraki!
Watari: The only thing I regret is that I will no longer be able to call you Chastity Boy when this fic is over… though I think I will anyway.
Tsuzuki: Well that just doesn't make any sense, you stupid head!
Watari: You're the stupid head!
Oriya: You're both a couple of stupid heads. Honestly, just let it rest!
Tatsumi: And would you please stop that hideous screeching, Count? It's not the end of the world you know!
Count: (Wails pathetically) Yes it is! It should have been me compromising Tsuzuki's virtue!
Tsuzuki: Eyuck! I just can't win around here!
Count: I would choose suicide the old fashioned way, before allowing Tsuzuki to consent to such debauchery!
Muraki: Right you are then. (Hands the Count a knife) Oriya, you stand behind him and cut his head off just as soon as those intestines hit the floor.
Count: …
Oriya: …
Muraki: Well, forgive me but you shouldn't offer to kill yourself if you don't fully intend to go through with it. It's a crime to get a man's hopes up for no reason.
Saki: You're in an awfully good mood, 'Zuta.
Muraki: I'm just basking in my feelings of good will and contentment, brother. I'm savoring the sweet sweet smell of success…
Hickock: (Is sleepy)
Tsuzuki: This is really embarrassing! I don't want everyone to see me naked!
Muraki: Darling I see you naked every time I close my eyes. (Shuts eyes and adopts super dreamy expression)
Tsuzuki: … Please stop.
Muraki: (Grins) Oh yes… that's a nice position…
Tsuzuki: (Whiny) Stop it! Hickock, make him stop! He's thinking about me doing lewd things!
Hickock: (Wakes up) Garg! First nap I've had in days and I'm woken up by Tsuzuki's feral squealing?! Mother Theresa didn't have patience enough for you lot!
Tsuzuki: But Hicko-
Count: (Interrupts by wailing hideously)
Muraki: (Tries to assist with involuntary Seppuku)
Oriya: (Being molested by Watari)
Watari: (Molesting Oriya)
Tatsumi: (Cursing over millions of receipts)
Saki: (Watching cooking show upside down)
Hisoka: …
Hickock: Here is that day I never thought would come; the day I finally understood the pain you must truly go through, Hisoka.
Hisoka: One does become desensitized to it after a while.
Hickock: Dear brave boy.
(Squalor continues)
Hickock: Enough! All of you! Do you realize just what I've been through trying to finish this chapter?! Over a dozen rewrites, countless all nighters, endless cartons of cigarettes, over forty dozen bottles of wine –
Tatsumi: (Cough) Bad-influence-on-susceptible-young-readers (cough)
Hickock: - hours of surrendered leisure time, leg and hand cramps, missed meals, neglecting of personal hygiene, to name a few things! … You know, it has become distressingly clear to me now why so many writers end up as smelly, bloated alcoholic drunks!
Muraki: That's not saying much. You were already one to begin with.
Hickock: You should be grateful, you swine! Who else gets a Valentine's present like this?! (Clears throat) Okay, official address to readers. As usual, sorry it takes so long to get these chapters out. As you might have noticed by now, they are rather long and this one was in particular especially difficult to write. And I did set myself a deadline, which probably didn't help because it made me want to rush. But Anyhoo, as always thanks for your support, happy reading and sorry if the lemon isn't long enough to satisfy everyone. There will be more MuTsu lemony goodness next time around. This time, it was Tsuzuki's first, so I aimed to make it just that little more romantic.
Oh and this chapter is dedicated in particular to my very dear friend and betta reader Jollyolly, who has been with me since the very first chapter and kept faith over all these years and got me back into the swing of writing! I hope I have done you proud!
Incidentally, free plug Jollyolly. Read her fanfiction, which is considerably better and far more porn-y than my own.
Now, without further ado, I give to you: -
Death Precedes us with a Knowing SmilePart One of Two: Old Shoes and Fireflies.
X
You're cruel device
Your blood, like ice
One look, could kill
My pain; your thrill
I wanna love you but I'd better not touch
I wanna hold you but my senses tell me to stop
I wanna kiss you but I want it too much
I wanna taste you but your lips are venomous poison
You're poison, running through my veins
You're poison
I don't wanna break these chains
Your mouth, so hot
Your will, uncaught
Your skin, so wet
Black lace on sweat
I hear you calling and it's needles and pins
I wanna hurt you just to hear you screaming my name
Don't wanna touch you but you're under my skin (Deep in)
I wanna kiss you but your lips are venomous poison
You're poison running through my veins
You're poison
I don't wanna break these chains
Poison
One look
Could kill
My pain, your thrill
I wanna love you but I'd better not touch
I wanna hold you but my senses tell me to stop
I wanna kiss you but I want it too much
I wanna taste you but your lips are venomous poison
Your poison running through my veins
Your poison
I don't wanna break these chains
Poison
I wanna love you but I'd better not touch
I wanna hold you but my senses tell me to stop
I wanna kiss you but I want it too much )
I wanna taste you but your lips are venomous poison
I don't wanna break these chains
Poison
Running deep inside my veins
You're poison burning deep inside my veins
I don't wanna break these chains
- Poison: Alice Cooper -
Muraki
17 years ago
Whatever answers Saki Shidou sought from the rain must have been withheld from him. That was the only reason I can envision that brought him to stand there, solitary and unwavering in his contemplation for the past two and a half hours. A sixteen year old boy, going on seventeen and yet he stared up into the streaming sky as though he were a man twenty; no, fifty years older.
I thought that he looked pale and ghostly and coming from a man possessing a decreased degree of pigmentation such as mine, you must realize that this means something. His usual handsome features had started to slacken, the bags beneath his eyes sporting an unhealthy dark sheen and his shoulders had begun to sink downward, forcing his back to adopt a rather ungainly slope. We had been known to each other as brothers barely a year and I had since gotten use to him as this perpetually confident, unshakeable, presence. The last couple of months however, he seemed to have almost sunk down into himself and become something less than the person I had once admired.
I watched him for a minute, slouched and staring up into the overcast sky as though questing for a solution that he hoped might fall from it. I perceived a certain helplessness in his visage as though he had arrived at a crossroads and neither path provided him much of any particular solace.
Most of all I was struck by just how old he seemed. And not just in his actions, you realize. Physically, it was as though he had aged eight years or so in the past nine months.
Water dripped from his chin, his hair, thinned from stress hung limp upon his head and yet his solemn eyes never once wavered from the dark, cloud choked horizon. And though I never made any sound to indicate that I had joined him that evening, he somehow sensed my presence. With a sideways tilt of his chin, he met my gaze in such a way that allowed no movement from his eyes to permeate the dictation of his attention. I admit I felt a pang in my heart. Saki had always been such a mischievous and positive presence but he looked so sad in that moment. He hadn't been the same since Oriya's accident.
I cupped my hands about my mouth, a ditch attempt to be heard above the howling of the wind. "Saki! You should come in before you catch cold."
He looked puzzled for a minute and then, with a sweet grin, placed a hand about his ear, like a blinder and shifted his weight sideways to indicate that he had not heard me and I should repeat myself. I groaned, though not without patience and stepped closer to the overhang of the above awning, attempting to keep myself from having to actually inter myself within the rain.
"Come out of the rain, you idiot! Look at you you're soaked! And I don't think that you're well enough to fuck around like this!"
Saki lowered his hand for a second and blinked at me. And then, with an even more outlandish grin, repeated his earlier action of cupping his ear and tipping side on in order to increase the likelihood that he would now hear me. It was purely jest of course and though I never doubted that he wasn't able to hear me, I understood him enough by this stage to know that he would have done anything to elicit a smile from me. That was the sort of young man he was.
I stepped out into the rain, holding a hand to my forehead to prevent my limp bangs from obscuring my sight. Saki waited patiently for me to join him, hands in pockets and shoulders hunched over. I could see his lips moving and I didn't realize he was singing to himself until I got close enough to hear.
"When you feel the urge to cry and you can't hold back your tears,
Don't be ashamed to let me see,
Don't hide your eyes from me.
Let's walk across the bridges railing, hand in hand in case we slip,
I'll hold you steady while I'm here
As the wind sweeps through our hair-"
"Never heard that song before." I said, as I strolled up to join him. "Someone teach it to you?"
Saki's eyes remained on the horizon. "Don't know… It's just a song." He fell silent, lips pressed together to form a thin line. I realized he had nothing more to say of the matter so I changed the subject.
"I'd expect that someone who scored 170 on a psychometric Intelligence Quotient test would have more brains then to stand outside in this storm," I commented. Saki didn't reply but continued to focus on a point, just a little to the left of my shoulder. "Saki… what's wrong? You've been off for weeks now." I scoffed and shook my wet hair to the side. "No… forget these past few weeks. You haven't been right for months."
If he didn't care for himself properly, I could see that Saki was the kind of person who wasn't likely to age well. I don't think his immune system was very good and he had limited stamina, prone to tiring out easily if he didn't get enough sleep. I think that's why he was starting to look so worn out. He'd even lost weight; appearing to be a shadow of his former self, as poetic that might sound.
Saki sighed deeply and lifted his long mousy brown bangs away from his forehead. "I suppose you're right… I guess even us genius's become remiss of the obvious every once in a while."
It may have sounded like he was bragging and once upon a time, you would have been exactly right to think so. But Saki wasn't wrong. He was a genius. He'd ranked highest in the second year district countrywide examination score. First out of all those people… He certainly wasn't stupid. Neither of us were. But at that moment, he didn't seem the least bit proud or pleased about his outstanding intellect.
Saki looked up into the sky, blinking wildly as drops of rain landed upon his eyelashes, obscuring his vision.
"Oriya…" I hadn't been expecting him to speak, so it came as a shock when he actually did. "You… and Ukyou… I'm so grateful to have had the three of you in my life. You're three people I sincerely love." He lowered his head for a minute and raised a hand to rub both eyelids at the same time. It seemed to me that he had suddenly registered just how tired he was. "Both you and Ukyou mean so much to me… but Oriya was the first true friend I ever made. When I first came to Nokyale High… he reached out to me when no one else did. Even if he was a gruff bastard." He covered his eyes. "I think we may have ruined his life… Kazutaka."
I too felt great regret for what had happened to Oriya. He was in hospital. His back and left leg were broken, his hip wrenched cruelly out of place. The doctors doubted he would ever walk again. But he hadn't blamed either of us for what had happened, even though we had both been responsible for pushing him away from us. A push backwards, when he had been standing on the edge of a precipice.
When we went to the hospital to see him, Oriya looked at us with sad eyes but smiled just the same and assured us he held no grudge. He was grateful to be alive and would fight hard to overcome this obstacle. We, he told us, should do the same.
I looked away and tried to piece my thoughts together before returning my eyes to Saki. "I think that it's best if we lead by Oriya's example… can you imagine what he would think if he saw us now? Last he knew I was the emaciated one. But now… Jesus Christ Saki, you look like you haven't had a decent meal in weeks. You can't keep blaming yourself for what happened to Oriya. We're both accountable. He would never forgive me if he could see how you look now."
Saki made a movement with his lips to represent a huffing sound. "I don't think I can really help the way that I look, Kazutaka… I feel stretched thin these days. As though I'm putting so much out but getting nothing back in return."
"Like a car that's running on empty?" I offered. He gave me a small smile.
"Like a car with only a quarter tank of petrol left." He looked upwards and stuck a finger in the air. "Running on a highway towards my destination… with not another gas station between here and there."
I wiped a finger across my rain-streaked glasses, feeling my patience wearing just the slightest bit thin.
"Working part time at the library and studying for examinations aside, I can't really see how you have been straining yourself, Saki." He looked at me like a wounded dog and I almost regretted the harsh tone in which I had spoken. Almost. "Why do you say such unnecessary things?"
He lowered his eyes. "No reason… I suppose." He sunk his hands back into his pockets, looking straight ahead. "You know Kazutaka… I really am envious of you."
This surprised me most of all. I couldn't imagine any reason at all why Saki should have envied me.
"Envious?" I couldn't subdue the chuckle I felt forming at the nadir of my throat. "How could you possibly feel envious of me? Saki," I took a step toward him. "Since the moment you first came into my life you've always been the popular one. The smart one. The confident one. Everyone at Nokyale High knows that… You'd have to be mad to want to be anything like me."
Saki raked a hand back through his hair and he looked almost beautiful in doing so. "You might think so… but that's because you have no confidence in yourself, 'Zuta." That was his nickname for me; Zuta. No one else had ever called me by that name and I doubt anyone ever will again. "I'm only the way I am because I feel as though I have to be. It's the way my father bought me up you see? To be responsible. I'm been trying so hard to do what I think is right by him that I never really stopped to consider just who I really am underneath it all." He scratched the back of his head amiably. "I think being strong is very important… it helps you get on with things. Push past the bad stuff, you know? But you can only be strong for so long… after a while you start to-" He smiled without humor, chewing his bottom lip at the conclusion of his sentence. "- find yourself 'running on empty.' But with you Zuta, at least you know who you are." The rain grew heavier. "At least you only bear the responsibility of being yourself."
He looked so glum; I couldn't help but take pity on him. But at the same time, I couldn't prevent a peculiar feeling of elation from sweeping over me. Here was someone who from my standing appeared to be unsurpassable; such was the presence and impact he had made on my life. Perhaps everybody has felt this sort of emotion at some point. To be witness to the tiny fracture presented by a person you hold in such high regard, be they friend or foe. A crack in the armor, a point through which you can interpret their standing as a person with doubts and weaknesses not unlike yourself. If only for a second, you can bring yourself to their level.
Saki was a brilliant human being. He knew exactly what he was doing in revealing himself to me like this. But why now? If being strong was so important to him, why would he relinquish upon that? Why would he lower himself to such a degree that I might have felt inclined, if only for a moment, to feel myself superior? I couldn't pretend to understand the intellectual workings of the mind of genius, though I was certainly no fool myself. His reasoning that day was beyond my interpretation however and remains so until this day.
"I've never heard you speak in quite such a dejected tone, Saki-kun." I commented, moving closer and unconsciously slouching my shoulders in order to see up into his face. "I'm sure that Saki has never been anything other than Saki. Even when you think you've been putting a mask on for the convenience of others, isn't it safe to assume that you take such action only because it is in your nature to do so?"
He gazed up at me, seemingly surprised that I had made such a provocative conjecture. "So what you're saying… is that pushing myself to be strong is who I am."
I smiled. "Exactly. Aren't you the one who always said that it doesn't cost a cent to offer someone a smile? Knowing you Saki, I doubt you could say such a thing without believing in it yourself."
His eyes cast downward. "Actually… it was my father who said that." He seemed to be in pain for a moment and gnawed his lower lip; a convulsive habit that peaked through whenever he was overcome by a bout of nervousness. "I wish he were here now. I'm… not well. And I don't know what to do. I wish I could hear his voice… but I'm deaf to so many things these days."
We stood in silence, I not quite sure how to respond to his unfamiliar sorrow. I suppose Saki must have realized that this whole conversation had left me vaguely unsettled because he took a hold of my arm with a deep sigh and pressed his forehead against my upper arm.
"Don't listen to me," He said, voice muffled against the sodden material. "I'm a stupid, self-absorbed boy that couldn't do anything to help anyone." He gave my arm a squeeze. "Ukyou and Oriya mean so much to me. But you, Kazutaka, you're my brother. We're blood you and I. And besides that, you're also my very dear friend, whom I truly value. I hope you can believe that. It's probably one of the only few honest things I have ever meant."
"Saki…" I whispered. I put my arm around his shoulders and held him, not sure that I really felt my heart in the motion but trying nonetheless to hold him only responsible for the human being that he was. I had resented his presence in my life deeply but he'd done nothing to make life miserable for me. On the contrary, he had been a good, kind and decent brother. And a sincerely nice person. Right then, he looked like a flower that had withered almost completely away beneath the sun, whereas my body was finally starting to burst free from a constricted shell and bloom. We were opposite ends of the same plank, balanced precariously on a singular point. One point of the level was always higher than the other. Standing there with Saki, I got the distinct impression that I was watching him sink downward, with the direct result that I in turn was raised toward the sky. Toward the sun. Toward life itself.
What does one do when faced with this knowledge? To think that I was growing stronger, perhaps as a direct consequence of my brother wasting away. Saki had done nothing to deserve such a fate. To deserve to be sucked dry.
Saki clenched the back of my shirt between his fist.
"Do you really want to know why I'm out here?" He asked.
I placed my hand gently upon the back of his head. "Of course."
He might have been crying; I'm not sure. His voice betrayed nothing and of course the rain had saturated my body beyond the point that I would have been able to feel his tears. But I got the definite sense that sadness was beginning to flow from beneath his once long, now frayed lashes.
"Because…" I felt his Adams Apple move up and down as he swallowed. "This is the last time I will ever feel the rain." He tipped his face back and opened himself up to it, unable to see my shocked expression.
"The last time… what do you mean by that?!" I snapped.
He smiled sweetly; his sunken features appearing so small beneath his heap of chin length, bedraggled hair. "I've already spoken with Oriya of the matter and I feel safe in the knowledge that you will be taken care of you. But I want you to promise me - "
"Saki, what are you talking about?!"
" – I want you to promise me that you'll take care of Ukyou. That the three of you will take care of one another. We're the Nokyale gang after all. I want to be sure you remember that, even when you're a grown man." He seemed to see directly into my soul, directly into the future that even I had no knowledge of. "Betray whomever you want, 'Zuta but never turn your back on Ukyou and Oriya. They're the only people I wouldn't ever want you to hurt."
I growled and grasped him firmly about his thin shoulders, shocked by the feel of his protruding collarbone beneath my thumbs. I forced him back, the better to scream down into his emaciated features.
"Saki! Don't talk like that! Why are you saying such pointless things? You're talking like…" I could barely bring myself to say it. " – like you're going to die!"
The smile hadn't left his face. "We all die some day, Kazutaka. Surely you don't entertain any such delusions of immortality, do you?"
I actually felt my features contort. "That's not what I meant! You speak as though you're going to die any day now!"
Saki raised his hand to brush my bangs away from my glasses. "By three o'clock Friday, to be precise."
My eyes burst apart as wide as they could go. "You can't possibly know that! That's impossible!"
"No. It's true. I don't know the exact time but I know I will no longer be a part of this world by three o'clock Friday. I don't even know how I'm going to die but I can feel the Death Wound on my shoulder, right here." He indicated a point on his right shoulder blade, some two-hand widths down from the slope of his neck. For the first time, I saw his smile start to tremble. "I'm… afraid."
I gave him a little shake. "Saki, you can't think that way!"
He gave a little laugh but the effort died in his throat. "You'll understand one day… I can only hope you remember what I've told you here today. Whatever else comes, don't forget that you are my very true friend. Which is why, as my true friend, I know I can entrust you with this task that I would entrust to no other…"
Tsuzuki
Present Day…
The rain of Tokyo had caught up with us. A small patter of drops was starting to fall down upon the scene and yet, I can't remember feeling a single one of them.
I stood there, lost and uncomprehending, wishing with my ever-presiding ignorance that all of this could just magically cease to be. I wanted everything to vanish, myself most of all and for the resolution to this irresolvable situation to present itself. And most of all, and not for the first time, I found myself wishing for my sister. I wanted to be back in our little house in Tokyo, all those long decades ago, where I could stand behind her and yack away pointlessly whilst she cooked dinner and doted on me with a patient smile. I wanted to feel her comforting arms around me; I wanted her kind presence, her sincere love… Oh God how I miss her! If only she could have been there with me, I felt almost certain she could have made things better.
But there was no magic out for this. I was on my own. Muraki's blood was flowing out from his grisly wound in an ever-expanding pool, pressing against the side of my shoes. His fingers dithered weakly against my ankle, holding onto me with only the intention of sharing my contact, fully conscious of the fact that this was the end of his life-
Muraki
Dammit… what's going on?!
My body… I can't move… I can feel the… the cold…
It's creeping in…
Tsuzuki?! Where are you? I can't see you!! Mother! Ukyou?! Oriya!!
Anyone…
Answer me
…
Saki…
… please help me…
I'm in so much pain… I can't think, I can't move… I don't know what's going on around me. I can't help, I can't do anything!
It hurts… it hurts so much…
Please help… Saki… Please…
… Come back…
Tsuzuki
No.
I couldn't allow this! Had I not promised myself that? If I were to ever die, it would be Muraki who would kill me and in turn, it would be I that ended his life. That was our bond. That was our destiny! It wasn't anyone else's to decide!
Blind rage welled up inside of me and I turned on Tatsumi with furious, uncompromising eyes.
"What are you doing?!" Not waiting to see his expression, I dove down and pressed my hands over the bubbling wounds stemming primarily from Muraki's throat and chest. "Our orders were to bring him in, not kill him! You attacked him from behind!"
Tears were flowing down over Wakaba's cheeks and her hands were pressed so tightly against her face that her skin was turning white beneath the pressure. "Tsuzuki, I'm so sorry! Seiichirou knows…"
My anger couldn't even abate long enough to allow myself to be shocked by the entirety of what she was saying. For the first time in a very long time, I felt the presence of that blood thirsty animal inside of me, the very same being that the Count commented upon seeing buried deep within my eyes. The fearsome snake, uncoiling from the dark chasm in my soul…
"Knows?!" I snapped, without patience. "Whaddya mean 'knows?!'"
Wakaba took a wavering step away from me, her eyes widening at the ferocity in my appearance. How could I be anything but? Muraki's blood was bubbling over my fingers, his life draining away as I watched. I was frightened.
"At Tokyo cinema two weeks ago…" She stuttered, looking away so she wouldn't have to meet my gaze. "Muraki… he came and spoke to us. Hajime thought he looked familiar, so we asked around to see if we could figure out who he had come with, thinking it might give us an idea about who he was. Sure enough… some… well, high-spirited young girls told us he'd arrived with a dark haired man with very peculiar eyes. Purple eyes." She met said eyes for a moment before quickly flickering her own to the side. "We knew who he was immediately… we knew who he was and that you had been there with him! Your worst enemy!"
I felt my blood boil as though it were water under heat. "Kanuuki! You-"
She cut across me, no doubt interpreting whatever I'd been meaning to say next as not being particularly affectionate. "Hajime and I have known for a fortnight, Tsuzuki. It was Hajime who persuaded me not to tell anyone… he thought something must have been wrong. He wanted to give you some time… thought you might be in trouble, or you had a plan and we'd just be interfering-"
"Bakayarou!" I was so furious, I was swearing at her without even considering her thoughtfulness thus far. My skin was actually contorting on my face, as though I were changing into some foreign beast before their very eyes. "You had no right to go behind my back and tell Tatsumi! Just who the Hell do you think you are, you stupid little girl!?"
I felt a sharp slap against my face, bestowed so thoughtfully by one of Tatsumi's many lingering shadow puppets. The secretary's eyes burned with disgust as I returned that loathing gaze from beneath ruffled tendrils of hair.
"Don't you start in on her, Tsuzuki. She did the right thing coming to me. Something you should have done at the outset of this whole injudicious arrangement." I felt that self-same shadow he had used to slap me, wind itself around my wrist and yank me roughly to my feet. Blood started gurgling afresh from Muraki's neck as the pressure from my hands was forcefully removed. "Stand behind me."
"No! Stop! Tatsumi!" I shrieked, sounding so much younger than I actually was. I shook the shadow off with much effort, causing it to snap like a plastic band brought under great friction, leaving a throbbing red mark around my wrist. "Listen to me, Goddammit! Why are you doing this? Our orders were to bring Muraki in alive! You just… you just…" I stared in sudden mortification at the red stains on the palms of my hands, feeling the blood running down my arms, dripping from the point of my elbows, rescinding upon themselves before sliding back down towards my fingers again. My fragile mind flickered in and out of focus and I had to consciously force myself to remember where I was and what had happened. This wasn't a century past… this wasn't the blood of the people… of the one important person… "Fuck, the blood! There's blood everywhere! Tatsumi!" I could feel the scream welling up in my throat. "GOD! I don't know- … Where am I?!" I stepped backwards, confused and landing in the fresh pool of blood spurting from Muraki's wounds. I turned to look down at him with mad eyes and felt his hand grasp my ankle. There was a gentle expression on his pain-wracked features.
"It's okay…" So he wasn't dead yet… not dead yet, not even unconscious. Raw relief flooded through my veins. "You haven't done anything wrong… don't be afraid…"
My heart thudded wildly against my chest as my mind came steadily back into focus. No… it was Muraki's blood… the year was 2003… Focus, calm down… I forced myself to breathe.
"Tatsumi… we were supposed to bring him in alive…" I whispered weakly. His chin was down, a classic demonstration of anger as he met my eyes.
"That's only what I was instructed to tell you. My orders however, were different." He pulled something out of his pocket and threw it disdainfully to the ground at my feet. I picked it up with hands that weren't quite steady and quickly looked it over. Sure enough, it was a mission statement made out exclusively to Tatsumi, with the specified parameter's concerning extermination of target. "Muraki is one of the Ministry's Most Wanted. I was told to take you all in on the pretence of restraining him but when isolated, to finish him off."
I dropped the piece of paper as though it had burned me. "No… that's not right!" I lunged toward him, making ridiculously, over exaggerated hand gestures. "Everyone, no matter how corrupt, how evil, has a right to a trial by jury within the Ministry Court! That's the fucking rules, Tatsumi! Only the King of Hades has the authority to overrule that!"
Tatsumi inclined his head. "His Majesty Enma was the one who issued me this particular mission objective. He probably realized ahead of time what you were doing behind our backs all along and wanted it taken care of."
"He… he couldn't…" I mumbled but was distracted by Muraki's sudden, delirious rambles issuing from behind my back. His eyes were staring up toward the sky, without present focus and his blood stained hand was stretching up into the rain as though reaching for something that was not there.
"Saki, it's the… last rain…" He whispered, a small smile unfolding upon his lips. I darted over and grabbed that hand, yanking it down out of the past and into the wall of my chest, clutching it between both my own. His skin felt cold. It was turning black.
"Muraki?! Muraki…" I pressed my fingers against his cheek, biting my tongue to suppress my emotions. "You're going cold… Muraki, look at me!" I clutched his face and forced his half-lidded eyes towards me. "Look at me!" I gave him a little shake, to force his full attention and glanced over my shoulder to take in Tatsumi. "If he dies, Tatsumi… you'll be no better than him! I don't care if it's what Enma asked you to do… but he doesn't get to die like this! You think he's worth this?!"
"Saki…" Muraki murmured, his eye sliding back out of focus. Blood was dribbling down the corner of his mouth, which meant his lungs were punctured. If I didn't do something soon, he was going to drown in his own blood.
"Saki's not here, Muraki." I rubbed his face, trying to restore some of the feeling. "It's Asato… I'm right here…" He continued to stare off to the side. "LOOK AT ME!"
He looked but his face was discouragingly pale and the light in his single eye was fading. His essence was jilting… I could feel his life force ebbing, almost in direct contrast to his still flowing blood. He must have lost nearly a quart in the first stroke Tatsumi bestowed upon him and what remained now surrounded us like the red lake in the Room of Corollary.
"Mr. Tsuzuki…" His finger stroked down my cheek, leaving a trace of wet warmth against my skin. "It's my last rain…" His whole body shuddered. "I feel cold…"
A furious sob jilted out of my body and I reared up, slapping his face as hard as I could. "Shut up! Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP YOU BASTARD! You're not going to die! You think you deserve to die having done nothing to redeem yourself?" I clutched the scarf around his neck and pulled him close to my face. "I love you." I whispered it so Tatsumi or Wakaba couldn't hear it. "But you have a goddamn lot to make up for, don't you doubt that. You… don't get to die before you've started to repair the damage you've done. You don't get the easy way out, understand? Whatever it takes," I slid the bone cleaver out from the waistband of my pants, holding it up as though I were going to start slicing Muraki up into tiny pieces with it. I guess Wakaba interpreted it as such, because she actually screamed like a horror movie extra and Tatsumi was yelling for me to stop. "I'll make sure you live."
Using my teeth, I ripped the watch off of my wrist and then, trying not to think too deeply about what I was about to do, I slapped my right hand down on the ground and looked away, eyes squeezing shut as I brought the cleaver down upon the scars, holding the dull blade against them. And then I repeated that same act I swore once long ago to never perform again.
I slit my wrist.
The scars that brought my death would bring Muraki life.
Muraki
I can't tell you exactly what happened in those moments following Tsuzuki's sensational sacrifice because in all honesty, I am not entirely sure. I had lost a great quantity of blood. Nausea whelmed throughout my delicate condition and my vision was blurring. My mind flashed in and out of reality, faltering back towards the past in which Saki and I had stood beneath his last rain. I could understand that sensation now, could relish the finality of those soft, wet drops that I might never feel again. But after a while I could no longer feel anything. Not the rain on my face, not the pain of my wounds, nor the ground beneath my body. Nor could I feel Mr. Tsuzuki's presence when he lowered his body behind my own and brought his right arm down across my chest, angling his hand up towards my face. I thought perhaps he was indulging in one last embrace and that he meant to touch my face so that I might sense his presence as I passed away. But my fading senses picked up something; a coppery smell, not unfamiliar in the life of one such as myself. I recognized that exquisite scent from only minutes earlier. It was Tsuzuki's blood. I could feel it there, wet and hot against the columns of my lips and it was enough to raise all the hairs on my body, creating a momentary flush of sensation I was able to experience even then on the throes of death.
I acted entirely by instinct, too sick and weak to decline whatever was offered me and still somehow able to sense that I was being offered the very thing that would save my life. I was weak to the state of paralysis, no longer able to speak and every breath was causing a bubbling sensation in the depths of my lungs. My lungs had been rent apart by the blades of the shadow. Even my heart had been compromised and I supposed that the arteries had been grazed. My bowels were bleeding. I was frightened to continue evaluating my injuries.
So when I felt that warm flow of blood not my own, I didn't allow myself the privilege of hesitance. Nor did it occur to me to refuse Tsuzuki's selfless gift, though it was certainly in his favor to do so. He'd already lost a great deal of blood that day, thanks to me. Any more would have made him terribly ill, at the very least.
But I didn't consider that. There's no means for consideration when death itself is standing just in the corner of your eye. I could almost see the Count's fingers poised around the wick of my weakly flickering candle.
"Hurry, Muraki…" I could hear Mr. Tsuzuki's voice, as though coming from far away. He pushed his wet wrist upon me impatiently. "Drink. Now!"
With that final demand ringing in my pounding ears, I gathered what remained of my wits and grasped Tsuzuki's shaking hand between both my own and pulled that weeping wound between my cold, unfeeling lips. Though my senses failed to register the pressure against my mouth, I felt the hot, life giving quality of his blood trickling down the back of my throat and I swallowed, attaching myself to him with despairing hunger, a starving hunger, unlike anything I had ever felt before. I heard him groan, again as though coming from far away but couldn't stop myself once started, not even thinking that I might have killed him in my manic anxiety. In response to the blood lust, my fangs ran out to their full length, additionally puncturing the skin about the wound Tsuzuki had already made.
I registered that unique comfort of nourishment from him; such as I had never received from my mother as an infant. Warmth started to slowly return to my extremeties and I could hear someone screaming in anger, coming in more clearly than anything had thus far.
I had lost so much blood, it needed to be almost entirely replaced and it was through this that Tsuzuki had hoped I might be healed. By giving me so much of himself, he thus converted his energy to me, including his powers of rapid healing. As I drank, I became aware of a familiar, yet accelerated salve, as the gaping wound down the line of my body knitted together, first forming a thick aching scab, which then fell away exposing scar tissue. This too faded almost instantaneously. And then the wound upon my neck seemed to curl in upon itself, vanquished with only a residual ache. And the world around me seemed to fade, as every one of my attuned senses came to focus on that connection between us. I didn't check myself as I brought my head up, finding myself able to move again without even thinking about it and slid my upper and lower canines into Mr. Tsuzuki's neck, breathing soft laughter at the weak whimper he admitted. And yet he did nothing to dissuade me, fearing to break that connection between us just as I did. He opened himself up, allowing his skin to be broken beneath my anxious onslaught. I could feel the pounding of his heart, the soft flutter of his eyelids and the expanding of his lungs as he fought for breath. It seemed to me that the whole world faded to an indiscernible shadow around us. There was nothing but us, with nothing between his soul and my own.
Blessed life sliding into me, from the last rain within his veins.
Tsuzuki
Was I simply remiss of the fact that Tatsumi and Wakaba were still there, watching us and horrified no doubt by this blatant, almost vile and certainly unnatural exchange? Well… yes and no. It became apparent to me the weaker my body became and I had to exercise great strength in order to pull Muraki's teeth out from the holes in my neck. I had given him a lot of blood and only then did I start to feel the effects of it. My head swam and I nearly fell on my side as sudden nausea flooded my body. Muraki was holding me, whispering to me but I knew I had to get control of the situation, judging from the expression on Tatsumi's face. I staggered to my feet, holding my hand over the wound in my neck, waiting for it to heal. But my powers were stunted, as I had transferred so much energy to Muraki transferring to him the means with which to heal his badly damaged body. As a result, the wound continued to weep and my fingers were soon slick with blood.
Muraki tried to help me up but I pushed him away, wanting to remain impartial, still unsure of how much Tatsumi knew and wondering whether I could repair this situation as easily as I had done Muraki's lesions.
"Ruka…" I could see her face in my mind and I pleaded her, long since departed, to give me strength that I didn't deserve. "What do I do now?"
I was so involved with my insipid, unrealistic desire for a solution that I didn't see it coming until it was too late.
I stepped away from Muraki and turned around right into the path of the Shadow Shifter. I could see the fury on his face, the blind anger and the raw grief. I had only a second to consider this before Seiichirou Tatsumi, one of my oldest and most dearly valued friends, punched me in the face.
He was mad and so he didn't hold back. I was so shocked and this was more than enough, when coupled with the bloodless, to send me backwards onto the ground. I clutched my wounded face, staring up into Tatsumi's wrought iron features through increasingly blurry eyes.
He made to come after me again but Muraki got between us and from the noise he was making I could only assume his fangs were on display and he was giving Tatsumi a face-full of 'have-a-go-I-dare-ya'. Wakaba got between them, forcing both men apart and standing in front of Tatsumi with her arms spread wide.
"How could you do that?!" Tatsumi roared in anguish. I could hear the pain in his voice and his eyes sparkled with unshed tears. "How could you let him touch you? How could you?!"
Muraki snarled way back his throat, the same sound a predator might make a second before it attacks with every attention to kill.
"Stop it, stop it!" Wakaba and I screamed in unison. We sounded like two girls trying to keep our boyfriends from fighting. I grappled Muraki around the shoulders and wrenched backwards with all my strength, forcing him to sit down, practically on top of me. Tears were flooding out of Wakaba's eyes as she coordinated her efforts between holding Tatsumi back and keeping Muraki from getting close enough to try anything.
"Calm down, Muraki!" She shrieked, turning about and sliding her arms up around Tatsumi's neck in a last ditch effort to keep him contained. "He's not going to try it again."
Tatsumi's emotions were a mad snarl and nothing existed beyond the cause of his overwhelming humiliation; his grief, his anger. I could see it all there, tangled into a knotted spool at the center of his face. I'd never seen his teeth bared quite so ferociously before and no one could call him beautiful in his fury.
"Like Hell I wont!" Tatsumi roared and with a stamp of his foot, ripped the perimeter shadows from the side of the house and hurled them down towards us like a furious wave of dark water. I tried to pull Muraki with me but he shoved my arms away and dove in the opposite direction, freeing himself from my physical restraint in the process. The shadow crashed down into the ground we had only just occupied, spurning up the dried dirt into great choking clouds. I landed roughly on my side and managed to scramble to my feet just in time to see Muraki dodge another bladed spear of darkness. I turned on Tatsumi.
"Stop it, Tatsumi!" I screamed. His sapphire blue eyes flashed toward me mercilessly.
"Don't test my patience, Tsuzuki!" He barked, hair peppered across his sweat-wracked features. I had never seen him look quite so deranged, not once in our half century of association. "I'll deal with you later."
"Seiichirou, please." Wakaba pleaded, her voice dropping to a low whining pitch I had never before heard. But he ignored her, shunted her aside as gently as he could without making it seem overtly discourteous. Tatsumi may have been devastating in his fury but I'll say this much for him; he never lost sight of just who it was that he was angry with. Wakaba may have been standing between him and his quarry but he wouldn't have dared direct his impatience at her. He was a gentleman. Issues though he had with women, Tatsumi would have never intentionally hurt one.
A beam of glaringly bright light suddenly exploded out from the shrubbery Muraki had previously taken shelter behind. Tatsumi saw it coming and with a violent thrash of his hand, corresponding to a furious roar, sliced the light apart with a sliver of darkness brought forth from the shadow cast by his body. The next tendril he summoned with errant dictations of his left hand and directed it towards the shrubbery, sending leaves exploding into the air as the razor sharp metaphysical matter sliced through. Muraki bounded free in time, deflecting the pursuing spears with rapidly constructed white baubles, that I suppose passed for shields. Absorbing my essence had been enough to restore his rapidly decreased mana apparently.
It was hard to say who appeared the most enraged. Both Tatsumi and Muraki sported strikingly similar expressions of mutual hatred. In fact, their height and physical features were so alike they created an odd correspondence as they ran about the yard, trying to spear each other through and cursing unintelligibly at the tops of their lungs.
"Stop it!" I yelled again but for all the good it did, I might as well have saved my breath. They were beyond listening.
Eyes narrowed behind his glasses, Tatsumi whirled his finger in mid-air, as though stirring a cup of coffee and the shadows beneath the surrounding surfaces darted forward to rise up and meet it, spinning rapidly until they formed into a whirling, ink black tornado. With a flick of his wrist, Tatsumi directed it towards Muraki, who in response whipped off his scarf and whirled it above his head, looking altogether too much like a drunken cowboy. This seemed an oddly unhelpful thing to do until I noticed the subtle variation to the air particles surrounding the distended garment. Directing his mana towards the scarf, infused the material and the direction itself in which he spun it, with a forceful kinetic friction that would outwardly dispel contrary energy when released, much like the stroke of a whip. Which is precisely how Muraki used it, flaying the tassels of the scarf in a vertical twist of his wrist and bringing them across his body, with the result that the projectile locomotion of Tatsumi's shadow cylinder was reversed.
A tornado moves in a circle, following a congealed dictation of wind pattern that is maintained so long as motion is sustained at the highest vertical point. Once released from Tatsumi's hold however, the force of the shadow was maintained only as long as it met no opposing friction. It must have occurred to Muraki in the few seconds before he had whipped the scarf from around his neck. His powers of intuition never failed to astound me, even then. But I was frightened for him. Muraki had avoided confrontation with Tatsumi at the height of his metaphysical prowess. Why stand and fight now when it was obvious he didn't stand a chance in Hell?
Tatsumi glowered at Muraki, as if to suggest how dare he possess the audacity to evade his attack. Muraki responded with his trademark smart-ass smile and dropped his head forward, sinking his right leg backward to offer the secretary a condescending and pretentious bow.
"Terribly sorry to have trounced what I'm sure would have been a tremendously ostentatious, not to mention effective offensive, my friend." Said the doctor, with every trace of sharing only affable relations with the dark haired man. "But I'm sure you can understand if I perhaps preserve the smallest of reservations concerning any further desire to see my body rent apart a second time."
"A reasonable concern of course." Tatsumi replied and through his face was deeply etched by sincere feelings of dislike; his voice betrayed nothing but civility. "As you are already no doubt aware, I have precious few reservations when it comes to people I do not like. And for whatever the reason, you tend to rub me the wrong way." A telltale curl of his upper lip concluded his carefully selected words.
Muraki chuckled, raising his bloodstained chin just enough to make eye contact, which I found to be an incredibly bold move for someone in the defensive stance. "Yes, I do seem to bring that out in people, don't I? I can only conclude that my personality is somehow contributory…" He considered Tatsumi with exaggerated thoughtfulness. "And yet… I can't help but wonder, Tatsumi-san, whether this blatant, almost embarrassing show of aggression is entirely… how you say… strictly business?"
"That," Tatsumi said, in a voice as cold as his eyes. "Is none of your business."
Muraki seemed disappointed that Tatsumi had failed to rise to his purposeful provocation but did his best to keep his emotions circumspectly concealed. I now knew him well enough to feel confident in my interpretations of his moods. When Muraki wasn't able to overcome someone physically, he would change tact and confront him or her on an intellectual basis. At core level, though he may have appeared to be anything but to those that did not understand him, Muraki was truly a childish person who hated to lose. What I think irritated him the most about Tatsumi was that for the first time in his satisfactory self-assured existence, he was forced into contest with an individual that not only harmonized with him physically (almost uncannily so) but in metaphysical powers and intelligence also. Muraki had always considered himself a cut above the rest of the human race and didn't much like that Tatsumi could match wits, barbs and punches with him. Tatsumi too, must have been profoundly incensed by this.
To Tatsumi's response, Muraki laughed but it was more like a throaty bark, an aggressive nuance preceding instinctive aggression, a natural response when people find themselves cornered by an unfavorable situation. "So it seems! But I assure you there is no business I am more intimately involved with than the business of death itself, Shadow Shifter. Don't presume to retract my attentions in such an infantile manner, Tatsumi-san! What brings you here, if not for the very reason that stands before us right now?"
"Shut up!" Tatsumi roared and Muraki grinned, having succeeded in pushing the composed secretary beyond all mental restraint. "Shut your mouth, you egotistical degenerate!"
Muraki put a hand to his heart as though physically wounded. "Such eloquent use of offensive verse, my friend! I fear you may have injured my delicate sensitivity with such an articulate barb!" He huffed that sarcastic, dog like laugh again. Then his eyes furrowed and I could see anger beginning to emerge on his face, as though a rose had suddenly bloomed in the exposure of darkness. "Egotistical, you say? Egotistical?" He stood up straight now, chest distended, pretences abandoned. "I have never fronted to the world anything other than what I am at my core. Perhaps if you had been so honest yourself, Tatsumi-san, it would you standing here beside that which you covet. Instead, you let him come to me." His anger was suddenly overflowing into his outward extremeties, dictating the movements of his hands, feet and arms. "Just what are you?! Who the Hell do you presume to be?!"
He was enraged. Furious. And I could understand why, even before he said it himself. Could see just what he hoped to do to Tatsumi, in sowing these seeds of doubt within his already unselfconfident mind.
"If you truly cared for Asato, it would never have come to this! He wouldn't have given his heart to a murderer like me. Why did you let him fall so low? Egotistical, evil though I may be, were I in your shoes, I would never have allowed him to succumb to my graces!"
"Muraki, please!" I pleaded, tears pooling on the lower lids of my eyes. Wakaba had her hands pressed to the curve of Tatsumi's lower back and I could hear her sobbing angrily.
"Be quiet!" She yelled suddenly. Her tear stained face appearing around Tatsumi's body. Muraki seemed to have forgotten she was there, because his eye widened in response to her dramatic proclamation. "Don't you dare judge him! You have no right! He's no such person to abandon anyone! It's only Tsuzuki's fault he's where he is now, no one else's. Least of all Seiichirou's!"
Her eyes snapped open incredibly wide and she gasped, having actively registered what she had just said. A cord twanged painfully in my heart.
"Tsuzuki… Tsuzuki I'm sorry!" She said tearfully, waving a hand urgently at her mouth, as though wishing she could fan the words back to where they came from. "I don't know why I said that!"
I sighed deeply, eyes lowered. "It's okay. … It's true." I knew it was.
Muraki looked at Wakaba a while and in response to her outburst, addressed Tatsumi instead. "I suppose you will remain ignorant to the sway of her heart as well."
Cruel though Muraki undoubtedly was, you could not deny his acuity. This was the first time he had set eye(s) on Wakaba and already he had grasped upon her delicate constitution. As expected, he had hit the nail squarely on the head and Wakaba retreated back behind Tatsumi with a flagrant blush.
The secretary himself was so obviously offended that words actually failed him. I could see the disbelief quaking the firm line of his jaw. As such, he responded in the most comforting manner available to him.
BLAM!
Muraki's cheek split wide open as he barely avoided the projectile force of the newly shifted shadows. He glared sidelong to take into account the oozing cut that had come close to penetrating deep enough to reveal his bottom row of teeth.
" … I don't see Mr. Tsuzuki desiring me as being of any particular offense to you." He finally said, after a long, contemplative silence. "Having concluded that this is strictly business." He finished quite audaciously.
BLAM!
This time, Muraki lost almost half his eyebrow thanks to his cheek. He touched his fingers to the second cut and then idly examined his blood.
"Call me peculiar but I feel suddenly and unaccountably obliged to stop talking." He said, lightly. Tatsumi bit his lip and nodded, in an almost self-aggrandizing fashion.
"Good idea." He glanced back and forth between the two of us. "Tsuzuki… tell me what exactly you have been doing with him."
"That," Muraki said curtly. "Is none of your business."
"I grow weary of you!" Tatsumi yelled and with a clap of his hands, sent a pressure force of darkness forward. I only had a second to think about it but concentrated on the dividing force and slashed my finger out, throwing a shield between them. It wasn't strong enough to stop Tatsumi's shadows completely but rather created such resistance that the points of the skewers ground to a halt an inch before they would have jabbed into Muraki's face. With a second wave of my left hand, I extinguished them completely.
"Enough Tatsumi!" Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Muraki make a harried gesture and without thinking, erected a secondary shield that blocked his attack. "And that goes for you too!"
Tatsumi turned to me and he seemed to me to be clenching his teeth so hard, that they actually made a noise. "How could you do this to me?" He seemed suddenly embarrassed and rushed to correct himself. "To Kurosaki… Didn't you think of us at all?!"
Though I had previously gone to great lengths to avoid having to explain myself to anyone (least of all to myself) I had finally run up against the wall that I had been rapidly approaching all this time. I had no choice… but where was one to begin such an explanation? My mind still swam in a dizzy haze and I fought back a meaty gag from the ever-present nausea, accountable from the fact that more than half my blood was now swimming through Muraki's system.
"Tatsumi… I did this… I didn't tell you because I knew… I knew you wouldn't understand…" I fluttered my hands about, as though this may have aided in the reasoning of my elucidation. "I did it so Muraki would take the curse from Hisoka and wouldn't hurt anyone else." Well, that wasn't an outright lie. That had been true enough, back when Muraki had first plucked me off of the street and into his living room.
Tatsumi glowered at me. "Tsuzuki don't insult me! I know you better than that!"
I wasn't good at handling pressure under any situation and this would have to be one of the more stressful situations I had been in, in a long time. God knows Muraki wasn't much help. Well, it's true! You weren't! You just stood there and left it all up to me!
"Tatsumi," I clutched at my hair, closing my eyes so I wouldn't have to meet his gaze. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen. Please. You've got to understand the circumstan-"
"Whether you intended this or not is hardly of any comfort to me at this stage." Tatsumi's face was starting to go red and blue veins were standing out on his temples and neck. "I just…" Words seemed to fail him for a moment; such was the extremity of his emotions. "I can't understand how this could have happened! Do you… have feelings for him? Or are you just so desperate for a fuck that anyone who would have you would do?"
My despair abated at these words and a primal fury ensconced my senses again. "Of course not! How can you say that?!"
"You've given me no reason to believe anything to the contrary."
"Bullshit!" I screeched, striding up to Tatsumi and thrusting my finger against his chest. "Bullshit, that's a load of crap and you know it Tatsumi!"
"Is it?" He said, sounding disgustedly smug and contrary to my ears. I was envisioned by the sudden desire to drive my fist through his glasses and see whether any of the shards would embed themselves in those smarmy, sapphire blue orbs. It was a desire I had to drastically reign in or else risk becoming as cruel and sadistic as I was ever likely to become.
"If it was just about sex then for fucks sake, I had a choice between you, between Aki, or even the Count!" Not that I would, I added mentally, hardly feeling that this would add to my point if I were to say it out loud.
This didn't appear to have the effect on Tatsumi that I was hoping. Not that I could have hoped for much by that stage and yet, to see Tatsumi's eyebrows rise in the center whilst sloping at the ends, only made it all too clear that I was not winning this passionate debate. "So… what you're saying is that this is more than just a physical thing…"
My internal frustrations became so overwhelming that I actually started tugging at my hair again, almost pulling out great tufts in the process. "Please… we can't have this conversation right now. Hisoka…" I grasped onto my partners' name like a drowning man to a life raft. "He'll be back any second. Think of how this is going to affect him!"
"Why? You didn't." Something seemed to drop heavily in my chest as Tatsumi intuited what had been painfully obvious to me all along. Something I was terrified of hearing, because to hear from someone else would only serve to establish how obvious it was. How true it was. "You didn't give a damn how any of this was going to make anyone else feel. All you cared about was satisfying your own selfish desires." My breaths were coming hard and fast with every word he hurled at me and I feared I was on the midst of a panic attack. "This might be the only way Hisoka was ever going to find out what you were doing!"
I had nothing to say to this. He was right of course, devastating though it was to hear it from someone else. I couldn't say anything to defend myself from such accusations and yet my immediate concern remained to remove Muraki from the situation. I couldn't relax a hair, thinking Hisoka would be dashing back at any moment. The ten minutes by now were up. "Let Muraki leave." I tried to speak firmly, in such a way that deflected disagreement. "He's not going to hurt anyone else. Are you?" I said pointedly.
Muraki shook his head and held up his right hand. "Scouts honor."
"You see?" I bleated, turning back to Tatsumi with tension in my voice as well as my face. "I swear, Tatsumi. I swear. Jesus Christ, just please…" Only now did the tears start to roll down my face. "Let him go before Hisoka gets here."
Tatsumi threw his hands up in the air. "How am I supposed to take that to Enma, Tsuzuki, answer me that? That I let him walk away, based on your word alone that he wasn't going to do anything else? It's too late for that! He's a murderer. He's killed possibly hundreds of people! And you expect me to just… let him walk away?! How can I do that, Tsuzuki?! How?! If you know how I can do that, then now's the time to tell me!"
I dithered for something to say but came up with nothing. It was only now that Muraki actually conceded to jump in.
"It's true that I'm a murderer. Or rather… I was. I have never denied that. And perhaps what you're saying is true. Perhaps a leopard doesn't change its' spots. But that's me… as for Mr. Tsuzuki, I would appreciate it if you did not lump him in the same category as myself." He smiled down at me, sincere affection blooming on his now thankfully fuller features. "He is truly… a good person. Do not make him out to be the villain of the piece, Tatsumi-san. That is hardly fair now is it?"
Tatsumi appeared simply mortified that Muraki had the audacity to say such a thing. "You are in no position to lecture me on what is or is not fair, doctor."
Muraki chuckled softly. "No, I suppose I'm not. But I know you to be a better person than I am. So you are capable of these things that I cannot even pretend to understand."
Tatsumi chose to ignore him, rather than think about what he had said too deeply. If he had, it might have forced him to act in a way he would have preferred to have otherwise done. "Tsuzuki… this… man, he… he's murdered souls from Hong Kong to Hokkaido. He raped, cursed and killed Kurosaki. He tried to kill you… and worse! He tried to steal your sanity from you!"
"I know that." Even to my own ears I sounded like a stubborn child that simply refused to be told.
"So why-" He was interrupted by a soft thud that issued from behind me and I realized with shameful lucidity that it was already too late.
"- why can you stand by him after everything he's done and will do?" Hisoka soft voice filled in the rest of Tatsumi's incisive sentence.
I was silent for a long time, knowing that in that single moment, I had broken something that could never be repaired. "I… I don't know!" I buried my face into my hands with a sob. "I don't know and don't you think I've tried to figure it out?! I've gone through Hell trying to understand this and I can't give you an answer because I don't have one to give. All I know is that…" I looked beyond my shoulder and submerged myself profoundly into Hisoka's green eyes, as deep and unforgiving as the sea. "I need him."
From the corner of my sight, Tatsumi continued to observe me in quiet introspection, head cocked to the side pensively. "… In the same way that you need us?" It was a heartbreaking question and one I shall never forget for as long as I live.
"What…?" I said as I wiped at my eyes, not sure I had heard him right the first time.
Muraki, whose own eyes were narrowed in deep dislike, didn't seem to have a doubt in his mind exactly what Tatsumi was up to. "Don't you dare." He sounded dangerous.
"It's a simple question." Tatsumi's voice was soft, but he spoke just as threateningly if you knew how to read him like I did.
Muraki's visible eye widened so much that the upper lid nearly slipped behind his eyeball. "Don't you dare… make him choose!" Not bothering to rein his emotions in, he lunged suddenly, fangs sliding down and up. I was forced to pull him back again, begging him softly to calm down as I sank my forehead against the sleeve of his blood soaked shirt. He was able to pretend he hadn't heard me, so soft my voice was. "You will not put him in that position, do you hear me! You will not!"
"He's right!" I said, feeling it unfair for me to agree with Muraki when Tatsumi had so much more of a justified reason for his motives. "It's not fair, you can't right now – not this second – we… let's discuss it later, Tatsumi-"
Tatsumi's voice was unnaturally calm, as though he already predicted his loss of this conversation and was simply going through the motions in the same way a hired actor might read from a script. "You can't have your cake and eat it too, Tsuzuki, not this time. That's not how life works." He met my eyes calmly and it was almost more terrifying than when he was angry. To see him speaking to me so serenely… I can't really explain why. It just unnerved me. "You can't have him and expect that the rest of us will be just okay with it, you'll have to make a choice."
The reality of the situation seemed to suddenly hit me. I was so emotional, I wasn't sure just who I was most upset with anymore. "Please…" Tears streamed freely down my face and I hurriedly swiped at them, feeling it was almost insulting to cry. "Don't… do this to me…" My heart suddenly palpitated wildly and I clutched at my chest, skipping a number of breaths. "My heart…" Anxiety was starting to settle in my chest. I recognized the symptoms. I was having a panic attack. "I can't…" I huffed, feeling my knees collapse beneath me and I had to quickly throw my right hand out to catch the ground as it rushed up to meet me. "I can't… Oh God… this can't be happening…"
I felt Muraki's hands grasp my elbows and his soothing voice move against me like a manta. "Calm down… just breath. It's only a mental restriction – push through it, move beyond it-"
That anger came rushing back but this time, rather than directing it at Tatsumi, I turned on the one person whose fault it truly was that I was in this situation. My mind was at the end of its' tether… I'm sure I would have bitten the hand that fed me, the state I was in.
I pointed my finger at Muraki as I backed away from him. "Leave me alone already! Don't you touch me, I hate you!"
"You don't mean that…" Muraki murmured, face creasing slightly. "Calm down."
"Calm down?!" I screamed. I could see the other Guardians looking on at me with varying degrees of pity, apprehension and disgust. Terazuma, I noticed, didn't appear the least bit surprised and I remembered how it had been him who had kept my secret. I would have been strangely touched under any other circumstances. "How am I supposed to do that?! This is the end of my life! If I wasn't going to Hell before, I definitely am now. I've murdered myself all over again! Whatever my friends felt for me is ruined now, it's gone, all because you couldn't leave me the Hell alone!! Because of your stupid obsession!" I ran at him, blinded by desperation and shoved him hard in the chest, rocking him backwards on the balls of his feet. This made me even angrier. I wanted to see him thrown backwards, hit his head on the ground and bleed to death again. Every word I was saying was the truth. It was all fuel to my emotions and I was running full throttle on a full tank. "I'm sick of you! Sick of hating myself because I feel something for you – because no one else would until now, that's all this is!" I shoved him again but still he refused to fall over and I uttered an angry roar at being unable to accomplish this one, small feat. "Get away from me! Go home! If it weren't for you none of this would have happened! It's all your fault!"
Something astonishing happened then; something I had never expected to see in my wildest dreams. I thought for an instant that Muraki had thrown a mirror between us and I was looking at myself in a moment of pure, unfiltered pain and weakness. The anger actually left me for a moment as I tried to get around what was happening. There was no mirror but it was plain to see just why I had thought there had been. Muraki didn't at all look like himself. His hands were clutching his face, much in the same manner that I did whence unable to cope with confounding circumstances and he was backing away from me with tears in his visible eye. I was stumped. Absolutely, positively, completely stumped. To see Muraki behave just as I would have in his position… it were as though our roles were violently reversed. As if the sheet had been stripped away, revealing a child beneath what you thought had been a strong and untouchable adult. It made me feel ashamed somehow, as though it were something I should have been aware of all along. And I realized with a jolt that it was.
"Stop… stop please…" To say he looked terrified was an understatement. "Don't you understand, Mr. Tsuzuki…? You… you were the only thing that kept me going through my childhood… the only thing…" I saw his eye widen suddenly. "That made sense… my… my mother. She…"
Muraki
My memories returned in the turn of a second.
– Not Saki's face above mine, but hers.
The cut in my leg from climbing the tree… she stitched it together with white cord and needle. Nothing to numb the pain. A doll doesn't feel pain…
And her hand… her fingers sliding into secretive place…
Tsuzuki
"- in those times, you were the only salvation I had… Mr. Tsuzuki… Oh God… I remember." His eye line fell away from my own and traced unknown patterns across the ground. He lapsed into silence and there was nothing more to say because, in a way, everything had been said.
Tatsumi took advantage of this silence and stepped toward me, reaching out to encircle my bicep with his strong hand. "Come on Tsuzuki. We'll discuss this back at the Ministry in further detail. I'm sure Enma will grant you a pardon-"
I narrowed my eyes, finding that I was somehow repulsed by the very idea that Tatsumi might touch me and smacked his arm away before he could get that far. "Yamirou! No! Why should I be excused?!" I actually had to pause to consider what I had just said. I'd used the self-referencing noun boku in my sentence, which was uncharacteristic of me. I usually said watashiwa, which was less masculine, less firm, less powerful. It never, ever came naturally to me to use boku. So… why had I started then? Hisoka too, seemed to have picked up on it because I saw his brow rise at the conclusion of my sentence.
"Boku? That's awfully bold use of expression for you, Tsuzuki."
I glowered at him. "Whatever, Hisoka. The point is boku wa…" I cleared my throat. "Watashiwa… (I) deserve to be here… with Muraki." And as I said this, I moved to stand beside him, unable to avoid the look of pure shock and pleasure that flooded his pale features.
Hisoka stared at me with a look of unadulterated horror. There was no other way to describe it. His teeth were clenched together and his eyes wide. Sweat dripped down the side of his face. He looked to me like a person that was about to be found out for a serious crime, the way perhaps I should have looked in his situation. "No you don't." He insisted, his voice trembling. I suppose he was frightened at the prospect of losing the one person he felt understood him best. "He's a monster. And you… you're human."
My eyes were beginning to sting from my tears and yet I couldn't seem to keep them from falling. "Saying it over and over again isn't going to make it true, Hisoka, so please stop." I lowered my head with a sniff, feeling everyone's pitying eyes on the back of my neck. I couldn't face them I was so ashamed. "I'm not human! I've never been human and I know that now."
Tatsumi's voice was thick with disgust as he turned accusingly to Muraki."You… You've poisoned him."
"He's done nothing!" I yelled, forcing myself to face up to him, against my better judgment. "Wakaba was right… it's… it's been me all alone, don't you understand?! I'm no different than Muraki. How can I… how can any of us stand here and doll out judgment like we know better? Us, each of us, are nothing more than hypocrites! And I'm the very worst because I took life before it was even in my job description. Seventy years ago… in Tokyo… I went insane." I sobbed holding onto the sides of my head, fearing that in revealing myself to them this way I might simultaneously free and destroy myself. I had to make them understand. It was the only way they would release me… the only way I could be free from it all. But to do that, they had to hate me. I had to disgust them as much as I could, so that they wouldn't want me around any more. "Insane with grief at having lost my sister, the one person who cared for me in this whole stickin' world! I didn't want a world that she wasn't a part of. I couldn't see that other people deserved to exist, just as much as she did. I had blinders on to everything else but what concerned me. What I took to be right. And so I…" My mind flashed back to the murders. I had to think on them, examine them to the full capacity of my memory if I wanted them to truly comprehend the monstrosity that was my past. "I need you to understand, so you'll finally see, you'll finally get just why I can stand here next to Muraki. You guys have never known the me other than the me I have shown you. Even when you saw me despair at Kyoto University Hisoka, you still didn't understand who I was back then and how purely evil I was. If you'd known me, you wouldn't be standing there now making excuses for me. You'd be looking at me, the same way you're looking at Muraki now and it's not fair, it's not FAIR –" I defined the importance of these words with a stamp of my bloodstained shoe. "– to differentiate between us!" I sobbed with anger and stared out at them with tear filled eyes. It was like staring through a shattered stain glass window. "I blamed everyone but myself. Everyone. The doctors refused to come and treat my sick sister because of me. Because they were all afraid of me, they all hated me. I was the villages' sick and twisted little beast. Their private joke and ever present fear. After I…" I bit my lip as the pain associated with that evening came rushing back with a vengeance. "… buried her… I …" I scratched burning lines down my face, almost unable to cope with the disturbingly detailed images flashing across my mind. "– Oh god… I couldn't be there, not in that world, not anymore. As far as I was concerned, there just couldn't be a world without her. How could the world possibly keep turning when she was beneath the ground?!"
"Mr. Tsuzuki…" Muraki's voice pulled me back into reality and I was grateful he had spoken. Just by saying my name he prevented me from being lost in the tundra of my past sorrow. I nodded from behind my hands, eyes crinkled shut and was able, with his small comfort, to continue forth.
"That such a good person had to die, when so many bastards got to live… For the first time…" I looked at my hand and then held it palm up, fingers curved like a claw. Crazed laughter started rippling out from my chest, residual shards of the power and insanity I'd once entertained. Once… when I'd been just as mad as Muraki. "I felt my power and all that I was capable of… I used my powers… and I used… my bare hands to the effect of a thousand blades. And everyone died. I stopped… every single heart from beating. I made sure that each person died a tormented death. And I didn't make any allowance for any child, animal, woman or elderly person. They all had to die. They all had to suffer because Ruka had to die in such a way." I continued to laugh, crazy, wild and powerful and even Muraki was beginning to look unnerved by it. "Yeah, you heard me! I killed them all! Why? Because I'm a hateful person that wanted justice for my sister. I wanted to create a world with none of those hurtful people in it, people that wouldn't judge another person for being different. I wanted to make that world a tribute to her." There was a madness to my features then I'm sure. Suddenly morphing from perverse mirth to anger, I lunged in their direction like a snake going for the heel of a passing animal. "Sou da. What makes any of us, think we have the right to stand here and cast aspersions upon Muraki's character?! I know Muraki has done terrible things … but he's only a product of what has been done to him. Victims can become sinners and Muraki is a victim, as hard as it is for you guys to see that! He has a curse on him, just like the one he put on Hisoka and he can't stop hurting other people while that curse exists. Don't you see? We have to help him! It's the best way to stop him! What he's done to you, Hisoka, was monstrous I know and we can't pretend otherwise. But I'm a monster too and I deserve to be punished just as much, if not more. And if you kill Muraki now… you'll become murderers too. And you guys don't want to live in the same world that we do."
Tatsumi cleared his throat and it was obvious to me at least, that he was in great mental anguish. "Tsuzuki…" He seemed to struggle for any means possible in which my actions might possibly be defended. As though he were trying to see a crack in the persuasive argument I had erected, secure and formidable as a concrete wall. "Back then you were sick. Ill of the mind and entirely absorbed by your pain. That's ever more of an excuse then what this…" He pointed his finger at Muraki, words failing him as he tried to come up with an accurate enough term in which to describe him. "-man, and I use the term loosely, has. You… do not, live in the same world as him, Tsuzuki."
I shook my head, almost aggrieved by how desperately Tatsumi wanted to believe the best of me. "My mind was sick and his body is cursed. It's no different. I do live in the same world. I've killed just as many, if not more innocent people than him. And you know that!" They tried to avoid my gaze as I looked at each of my colleagues individually. "You all know! And I'm… so tired of trying to pretend otherwise. I'm old, Tatsumi." I felt old even as I said it. "I know I don't look it but I certainly feel it. I've lived a long life feeling nothing short of a hypocrite. But all that stops now." Eyes narrowed, I moved over and stood with my back against Muraki's front, guarding him only from any direct attack. "Killing Muraki won't solve anything. If you still decide you want to, you'll have to god damn well go through me first. Because I'm not moving." They all stared at me in horror and I felt Muraki's breath grow heavier against my neck. I don't think even he believed the words that were coming out of my mouth. "Muraki's just one small branch on a much larger tree and we need to start hacking at the roots, rather than just… trimming back the buds. Because they only grow back bigger and more violent than ever."
Tatsumi gaped at me wordlessly for a moment and then looked around at the other Guardians as though someone else might possibly leap in and talk some sense into me. When he realized that they had nothing to add and were just as incapable as he was of taking control, I suppose he saw no choice but to reassert authority. He turned back to me and I was shocked to see just how incredibly white the whites of his eyes were.
"I… can't possibly believe what I am hearing." His eye line darted about without focus. "Tsuzuki… surely you're not serious."
I could no longer look at him. I wasn't worthy of meeting his gaze and so I offered him the only respect I could in this situation and as I nodded, kept my head bowed, forcing my own gaze towards the churned up, bloodstained ground beneath my feet.
Tatsumi remained deeply shocked by my admission and for a long, agonizing minute, everything in the backyard of Ukyou Sakagumi was distressingly still and silent. It could not have been more effective had someone picked up the universal remote and hit mute. I could feel Muraki's heart pounding against the wall of my back. The skin of my neck was warm beneath his paced, heavy breathing. Unnerved by what could possibly occur when this silence abated, I tried to reassure myself by sliding my hand back and tentatively placing it on Muraki's hip. He wasn't fool enough to further compromise my position by touching me in return but I did feel a slight dictation of the hairs in my scalp, signifying that perhaps he had grazed his nose or chin against the top of my head. He seemed to want to express his gratitude towards me, in the most minimal way possible.
This was more than enough however, to incite Tatsumi and with a twisted sneer, he broke through the silence as though it were fractured glass. "This is madness!" He lunged forward; now as openly volatile as I myself had been at the very outset of that conversation. "How can you possibly stand there and attempt to justify anything this man has done?! I understand more than you realize the terrible things that you have done but you have paid a life times debt in attempting to redeem yourself. You've shown sincere remorse. What remorse has Muraki shown?!"
Now I was the one scrambling for a justification. "The past few months he has killed no one, Tatsumi, no one-"
Tatsumi groaned angrily, his face going almost purple in his frustration. "You absolute naïve, simple minded fool, Asato Tsuzuki! You are standing by a profoundly intelligent man, who knows how to direct circumstances to his own benefit! If you asked him to stand on his head and cluck like a chicken I do not doubt he would have done it, if you granted him certain liberties in return."
"You think that's what I've done? You think I've been sleeping with him in return for his good behavior?!" I shouted, my anger fluctuating again.
"Of course I think that!" Tatsumi yelled back. "What else am I supposed to think?"
"I'll tell you what I think – " I was so angry now, that I went forward with every intention of wounding Tatsumi as much as I could. "I think you're mad as Hell for all the wrong reasons. Well, news flash, Tatsumi but you never got in line! Perhaps if you had made your feelings clear sooner-"
Shadows flared up around Tatsumi as though fire had roared to life on a bed of fuel and he almost disappeared within the darkness. I fell back against Muraki's body and he grabbed my arms to keep me on my feet. "Silence! I have no reason to defend myself here! It is you who should be explaining yourself and you have the audacity to try and psychoanalyze me? How dare you!"
I tried to be brave in the face of so many shadows, all unbridled and driven in correspondence to Tatsumi's fury. "Well how dare you assume that my integrity was for sale in such a way?! Muraki requested nothing of me other than my companionship!" Muraki bowed his head, as though this would perhaps add weight to my statement. I don't think Tatsumi took so much as a lick of notice.
"Oh? I see." He said, hands on hips and setting his lips in a grim fashion as the shadows diminished about his formidable stature. "So, you were simply something of a geisha then, were you? Entertainment minus the physical benefits. And how long were you planning to continue with his little engagement before you were planning on cluing the rest of us in?"
I set my features as firmly as his own, unwilling to back down. But I could feel my composure starting to crack and my chin began to wobble as my emotions took supremacy of my outward extremeties. "Until such a point that I could figure out how to free Muraki from the curse." I felt exhausted suddenly. Physically, emotionally, mentally. It hit me with such dominance it was all I could do just to stride away from the center of the conversation and seat myself down on doorstep of the house. I felt the pressure settle down on the back of my neck and for the first time that day, I surrendered myself over to the feeling and dropped my face down into my hands, overcome by everything that I had experienced. "Please… if you think you know me, try and understand why I felt the need to do this… I can't try anymore to make you believe in me… I'm tired." I whimpered through the cage of my fingers. "I'm tired of fighting all the time… most of all to understand myself." I forced my hand across my eyes, clearing them so I could offer my colleagues the decency of my adherence. "I'm sorry Tatsumi. Hisoka… I'm so, so sorry."
"Mr. Tsuzuki-" Muraki made as though to move to my side but in having separated myself from him in the first place, I'd forged between us a distance that could easily be breached. And in this time when Tatsumi seemed unable to say anything more, it was Hisoka who took control, simply by stepping into that area between us and blocking me off from Muraki's further influence.
"You stay away from him." Hisoka had always been an impassioned boy but I'd never heard him speak quite so coldly as he did to Muraki. Emotional as we all were, I couldn't say that I found this to be very wise and I could see right away, by the barely witnessed wrinkle that appeared between Muraki's brows, that he did not appreciate it in the least.
"Boy…" His voice could have frozen the blood in your veins. "Any other time I would indulge your petulant whimsies but today, I am sincerely not in the mood." His teeth were distended, a result of too great an infusion of power and it only served to render him even more grisly in his cold anger.
Hisoka glared back and despite everything, I couldn't suppress the feeling of pride I suddenly had for him. Here he was, facing up to the person he both hated and feared in equal measure, the person responsible for his great suffering. For the end of his life. And his only thought, in that moment, was protecting me from this self-same person.
"Going to tear me apart, Muraki?" He made a brave attempt at scoffing. "Like you haven't already been there, done that. You don't think I know what you're up to? This is no different from Kyoto. Mess him up so much that he doesn't know whether he's coming or going and then do whatever the Hell you want with him?" He sighed deeply, shutting his eyes for a moment as though what he were about to say next, caused him some great internal pain. "Now, I know there's something wrong with you, Muraki. I can sense that darkness in you … and I… wish I could understand it. I wish I could sympathize. But the things you have done and not just to me." I could see him fighting through his anger and despair. "What do you want with Tsuzuki? Why the Hell won't you just leave him alone?! Can't you see what you're doing to him?" He was gesturing at me wildly and I was sobbing so hard I couldn't say anything, could neither protest, nor agree. "Or are you just so selfish that it doesn't matter how he feels, just so long as you get what you want? If you want us to understand you… why don't you try sympathizing for a change?"
I'm not sure Muraki knew how to respond to this. An entire range of emotions crossed his face; anger, humiliation, sadness… Standing there beneath the rain, I couldn't tell if he was crying or not but his lips were parted as though he could not decide whether to scream, wail or sink his teeth into Hisoka's neck. His lips trembled and he bit them, seeming to come to the temporary conclusion that it was anger that he was feeling and with teeth grinding together he advanced forward two steps before indecision flashed through his remaining eye and he halted his momentum. His eyelashes fluttered miserably and he turned his head sidelong, chin quavering again.
"… I …" He ran a hand across his face, wiping away the strands of mercury colored hair that were clinging to his damp skin. "For so long… in my miserable life… the hope that I might one day find this person …" His teeth had finally retracted and I suppose he had finally managed to rein in some control of his emotions. "Mr. Tsuzuki was a patient of my Grandfather's… I found his file when I was just a boy and when I saw his face I knew."
Hisoka altered the line of his head slightly, seeming to be curious against his prejudice. "Knew what?"
Muraki wouldn't raise his face but I could still see his jaw trembling on account of his despair. "… That regardless of any hardship I might face, I had to find him. Everything else became second priority… became less important somehow." He raised his fingers and looked at them, as though suddenly realizing exactly what it was those hands had done. What they were still capable of doing. "I suppose that potential was always in my blood. Even if I wasn't cursed, I suppose I would have always turned out to be a cold person. As it was… being born from a dead woman didn't exactly bestow upon me a veritable deal of positive potential." He bore a grim smile as he revealed to us this strange, personal part of himself. Hisoka's eyes were narrowed. He was a person then that seemed to have come close to a solution of the conundrum that had long since plagued him.
"What are you?" He asked softly and so dramatically that I nearly laughed for the cliché it was becoming.
Muraki's silver eye seemed to glow with a light all its' own as he finally raised his head and met Hisoka's questing gaze."… The son of a Moroaică. (1) Bound by her ancient contract to the red moon, forever demanding a sacrifice and eternally starving to quench an unquenchable longing. Being in that house with that woman… now I don't expect any of you to feel sorry for me, in fact…" He sniggered to himself and it sounded as raspy as a smokers laugh should. "I would be repulsed if you did. Because I am sure you are all familiar with a miserable existence yourselves. But what I do hope you will all understand is that I am one of the deadliest creatures in the world. But right now…" His face revealed only the smallest glimmer of emotion. "– I'm frightened. I'm frightened that you're going to ruin my first taste of happiness for me." His hand come to rest on his left hand side where I knew his scar lay. "Before Mr. Tsuzuki stabbed me… I was a man… less than a man really… who killed without thought to the consequences of my actions, unless of course they were of some use to me. Now, I cannot draw breath without pause for consideration." He allowed as a moment in which to digest his words before continuing. "I love Asato. I love him without wanting to, which should be assurance enough of just how sincere my feelings are. Before he stabbed me, I would never have faced you in a fight, Mr. Tatsumi. But today… I did. Because… before Kyoto, I had no reason to jeapordize my own life. Today, I did." He slapped the palm of his hand firmly to the wall of his chest. "I want to give Asato Tsuzuki a clean life. And he couldn't have that with me busting a cap in your crown. You and I and he all know who and what I am. A killer. A cold-blooded murderer. But a murderer who right now, in this moment, would only be too happy to kill you, for – the first time in his miserable fucking life – the right reason."
"There's a right reason behind taking the life of anyone?" Tatsumi asked, apparently unimpressed.
There wasn't a hint of humor in Muraki's face as he leaned forward, giving his full attention to the secretary. It wasn't like him to swear, so I gathered that he was only doing so now in an effort to shock and or convince. "I don't give a fucking damn that you just gutted me a like a fish. I don't care. That is in-conse-quential as far as I am concerned. What I do care about, is that you mean to intrude upon my arrangement with the person that I have grown to love." The hard lines in his face faded as he looked back over to me. "However… knowing all of this only brings me to one conclusion." He turned back to Hisoka. "That you, my boy, are right."
I think my heart must have stopped for a moment.
"What?!" I gasped, not sure that I had heard right. A million thoughts were racing through my head, a million possibilities, none of them good, that could only come from Muraki having admitted this. I stared at him through matted wet lashes but he wouldn't meet my eyes, having his own still trained upon the boy whose life he had ended in such a cruel manner.
"I do love Asato Tsuzuki. And I've done a terrible thing to a person I love. I'm… a bad person for it. I realize that now, above all else." He moved around Hisoka, meeting no resistance on account of having reduced his threat level somewhat and finally met my desperate expression with loving munifice. "Darling…" He placed his fingers gently beneath my chin and carressed it. "Go home."
"Muraki?!" I sobbed.
He pressed a cool finger against my lips. "If you stay with me, you're only going to get sicker. And I don't want to see you waste away. Not you. You deserve to be happy now, more than ever." He leaned back, taking his hand away. "You won't get that with me. You'll always be second guessing yourself. You'll have compromised your morals, your ethics. And those are the very things that made me fall in love with you in the first place. I don't want to see that happen. So go home."
I scrambled to my feet, whimpering useless protests and grasping for his hands as he withdrew them. I couldn't believe he could do this to me! Having done what I had done… stood before him and defended him, openly betrayed my feelings to my friends and colleagues, how could he leave me there to suffer the consequences? Didn't he understand? I only had him now! No one else could forgive me but him. I stumbled forward and tried to grab a hold of him but he backed away so quickly that I stumbled over and landed jaringly on my knees. "Ah! But Muraki -!!"
In the midst of walking away, he turned to look over his shoulder. "Don't you understand? You're worthless to me now. There's nothing more I can take from you. You can consider our agreement fulfilled." His words hit my heart as though he had driven a knife directly through it and I stared up at him, my whole body shaking, my heart breaking. I'd never been so terrified of losing anyone in my life… Being abandoned by Tatsumi didn't hurt nearly quite so badly as the simple prospect that Muraki was going to put his back to me and disappear from my afterlife. "You are no longer bound to endure my company. I release you." He looked down upon me, with no emotion present in his face whatsoever. "I'll love you until the day that I die, Mr. Tsuzuki … but the next time we meet, you will be my enemy again."
"NO!" It burst out of my shaking body, raw primal and unhindered. I grabbed a hold of his ankle to keep him from leaving, clinging on to him with everything I had. But still he refused to look at me. "Muraki, we can help you. We can get rid of the curse, so come with me. You can be free too. You can start over, just like I did." Tears were rolling down my face and I was being so candid with him, I became momentarily enraged by that unshakeable expression on his smooth, handsome face. "LOOK AT ME!"
"… Not everyone get's a second chance, beloved." He said, unmoved by my outburst. "People like you are… special." He finally deigned to meet my eyes but he still offered me nothing but apathy. "… thankyou for your kindness. But now, you need to be selfish and do what's best for you. It's what you deserve." He reached down and gently pried my limp fingers away from his trouser leg. We stared into one another's eyes for a long time and no one dared speak. No one but us could feel that connection and yet everyone seemed to respect it anyway.
"Asato…?" He said finally.
I nodded, biting my lip in an attempt to hold back the sobs threatening to escape. "Mmm-hmm?"
Only now did he permit any emotion to come through and it was so profound that it made my heart ache all over again. "You made me happy."
He had absorbed enough of my energy to teleport and this he did, turning with almost dramatic ease into a burning white light, so strong that it nearly burnt the retina's from my eyes. I reached out for him, grasping with fingers that burnt beneath the heat of his transfigural relocation but all I received for my efforts was a handful of warm, white feathers.
To me, at that moment, the whole world could have fallen down around me and I wouldn't care. Clutching the handful of feathers against my chest, I collapsed face first against the ground, terrified of defacing myself further before my fellow Guardians and yet unable to compose myself for even a second. My sobs gradually warped into ever increasing wails and my heart continued to beat, even though it was broken in two. I was only vaguely aware of Hisoka's arms around me, his cheek pressed against my back. I could only make out a word or two, over my pounding grief.
"Tsuzuki…" He tightened his arms around me. "He's not worth crying over. Please stop crying… Tsuzuki…" And despite his adamant desire for my own tears to stop, I heard his own voice infraction into heated sobs as he too finally submitted to long withheld emotion. "Please… don't cry for him." He held me so tight it was all I could do to continue breathing against the constriction to my chest. "Not him…"
"Oh God… he's… he's gone…" I sobbed, face down in the grime and dirt that seemed so much more a part of me now then ever. "What am I supposed to do now? What?!" I hit my fists against the ground, sending feathers exploding out from between my taut fingers. "I'm so sorry… I'm such a fool… I'm so confused…" I crawled over to Tatsumi and grasped a hold of his foot, begging him physically in much the same way I had Muraki only moments before. "I… I don't know what to do, Tatsumi… My heart hurts…He left me… He left me here… and he's… he's going to go off and hurt more people. I couldn't stop him! I couldn't save him! I couldn't do anything…" I continued to sob as Tatsumi looked on with hurt visible in his saphire blue eyes. "I couldn't do anything…"
I suppose I must have cried for a long time. I was only vaguely aware of Hisoka and Tatsumi helping me back inside of Ukyou's house and laying me down on the couch. I guess that the time I spent in crying, they spent cleaning up the bedroom, preserving evidience where necessary and hosing down the outside area to vanquish all traces of Muraki's blood, as well as the remainders of his and Tatsumi's altercation. After that, they took me back to the Ministry and left me in the lounge area to recover. Someone, Tatsumi probably, tossed a blanket on top of me and exhausted as I was, it didn't take long for sleep to take hold. By the time my eyelids had fluttered open, the sky was darkening outside the window. Hisoka was peeking around the door at me. I forced myself to sit up and return his stare.
"What?" Perhaps that was a little gruffer than he deserved. After all, he hadn't done anything wrong. "Keeping an eye on me? Afraid I'll kill myself or something if left alone?"
Hisoka looked put out by this naturally but took it in his stride, as was his custom. "With your track record, you can't say we're overreacting exactly." He came and sat down opposite me. "How are you feeling?"
My eyes were sore and by rubbing them I could both alleviate the tension and block myself off from Hisoka's expression in the same movement. "Why do you care? Knowing what I've done… you must despise me."
He lowered his head, obscuring shining green eyes beneath those trademarked bangs. "I would have… once." He clutched one trembling fist between the other and set his chin against this formulated support. "Now… I guess I'm just curious. Because I do feel that I know you, Tsuzuki. And I guess that means," He raised his eyes and I was startled by the strength I could see residing in his eternally youthful features. "I want to believe what you said. That Muraki might not be wholly responsible for his actions. Maybe by helping him, we can get to the root of a greater evil."
I slid my thumb up between my lips and wedged the nail between my front teeth. A habit I sometimes succumbed to when genuinely perplexed by something. "You sincerely believe that?"
He offerred a rolling, almost noncholant shrug of his narrow shoulders. "To be honest… I don't know what to believe anymore. But it just seems too easy… and too expected of me to be angry at you for what's happened. I don't want to be angry at you." After an initial moment of hesitation, Hisoka brought his hands across the table and cupped my own between them. "I care about you so much… Can you please just tell me the truth? I won't be angry… You're a good person, so I'm sure there has to be a good reason why you… why you're with him."
I gave Hisoka the abridged version of how this whole sorry mess had come to pass. When I had finished speaking, it was with solemn eyes that he gazed upon me, stunned I suppose that I had felt the need to go this far, when the curse had been removed a fortnight ago.
"You felt the need to put yourself in this situation because of me?" He asked, looking both touched and surprised. I used his unexpected reaction to my advantage and reached over, grabbing a hold of both Hisoka's hands between my own, directing all my energy towards him, hoping he could sense some level of sincerity inside of me.
"That's the reason I did it, Hisoka! I didn't want you to go through anymore pain." Cold nausea flooded through my stomach and I felt both suddenly and profoundly aghast at having purposefully attempted to manipulate my partner into believing me. I jerked my hands back from his as though they had been burnt, praying he hadn't felt these emotions burst through me. "No… No, that's not true!" I put my head down, too ashamed of my behavior to even look him in the eye. "That was the reason… at first. But after a while… that reason became an excuse." I lowered my voice, speaking more to myself than to Hisoka. "You're unbelievable, you know that? How can I just sit here and lie to one of the very few people that care about me?"
Hisoka smiled sadly, shaking his head as if to say he disagreed with my self lecture. "I don't think that there is any lacking in that department, Tsuzuki. The problem with you is that too many people care. Even Muraki cared enough about you to back off and do the right thing. How many other people would he have done that for?"
"Hisoka," I trusted myself now that I was in check, to meet his eyes again, wondering if I could squeeze just the smallest shred of information from him. "Could you… could you feel Muraki's emotions today?" I stared at him with eyes of desperation, wanting someone to comfort and confirm my doubts and insecurities. "Was everything he said to me a lie?"
Hisoka stares at me in silence for a while before turning away with a flick of his head. "I couldn't say."
"Hisoka?" I pressed, wondering whether or not he was lying to me. He was intensely frustrating to read because he very rarely exhibited emotions, having programmed himself to reserve a blank face so that he wouldn't outwardly react to the reading of other people's thoughts.
"I told you," He said, sounding a little impatient. "I told you before, the time we ran into him in Nagasaki, remember? His emotions are so complex, I can't penetrate them by even an inch. There seems to be so much going on beneath the surface. Trying to read him is like…" He dithered for a moment, appartently struggling for a definition. "Swimming through an ocean of tar. It's impossible to steer myself through the darkness. Everything therein in his mind remains unscrutible though the gloom." He dropped his eyes towards the floor, twirling his thumbs in an anti-clockwise direction and then kicking them into reverse. "You probably have a better idea of what's going on in his head than I do."
I drew the blanket in tighter about myself, finding my body still wrought by chill and tremors. "I thought that I did."
Hisoka looked at me without saying anything for a while and then his face gradually developed into one of those slow, awkward smiles he offered so very rarely. To rarely, for someone so young. "You're a lot easier to read than he is, you know."
Seeing that unfamiliar expression on his face, reminded me of something else that I had been meaning to ask him. "Before we went into Ukyou's house today, you said something…"
"Care to narrow that down a bit?" Going over to the door to accept a pot of tea that one of the other workers had delivered for our convenience. Hisoka set it down on the table in front of me before turning his attentions to the china cabinet and searching for some cups and saucers.
"You said that you would give me ten minutes but after that you weren't going to hold anything back. That you would attack Muraki with everything you had. … I got the impression that you… might have… already know-"
"I've always had that inkling, Tsuzuki." Hisoka replied, face still buried in the depths of the cabinet. As such, he didn't see my face contort with surprise.
"What do you mean, 'always'?"
Hisoka sighed as he rose from a crouching position, bringing the cups over to the table and setting them down on their matching saucers, side by side. "Ever since the moment you first met Muraki, you've had contrary emotions regarding him." He explained, setting to work pouring the tea for me. "You hate him but at the same time you're enamoured by him. He disgusts you, yet intrigues you. You want to run from him, yet you want to hold him. And you're terrified of him… because no matter how many terrible acts he commits before your very eyes, you'll never be able to condemn him."
I sighed deeply as Hisoka added three standard sugars to my tea and poured in a dash of milk, just the way I liked it. "I wish I'd asked your opinion on this earlier, Hisoka."
Hisoka paused for a moment, eyes not on me though it was clear his focus was. "He hasn't made you cruel too, has he?"
"No!" I insisted, startled that he would even think such a thing. Then I remembered how my temper had gone so out of control earlier and found I couldn't exactly blame him for asking. "… But… having said so… I can't deny that I haven't been totally affected. I did yell at Wakaba… and Tatsumi." I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling suddenly and acutely ashamed of myself. "I was so awful to them."
"So I was told. But…" He moved over to sit beside me, placing the steaming cup between my hands before picking up his own. "That might have been natural, considering the circumstances. Emotions were high… I'm sure a lot of regretful things were said in the heat of the moment."
I set my teacup down, looking at my young partner with a mixture of gentle amusement and genuine surprise. "Hisoka… you're being so kind. Don't you want to yell at me? Hit me? Throw the couch on top of me and smack me in the face with a five-iron?" I'm not sure why exactly I was suggesting things for him…
"Yes, all those things." Hisoka murmured, as he stirred his tea. "That third one in particular."
"So why are you being so patient?"
"… To be honest…" He said, setting down his tea and gazing over towards the door, as though his lines had beene written across the wood. "I don't know. I don't know… If I had to guess, I would say that it's because I feel as though I know you now. I understand that you have experienced a lot of hurt in your life and I'm sure Muraki has done everything right by you. Shown you great kindness, respect… a particular brand of affection I'm almost certain you're not familiar with."
I had to give him that one.
"I can't pretend to know Muraki's motives exactly but I above all people have first hand experience with his brand of 'mercy'. He's got some agenda behind this, believe you me." Hisoka knelt down in front of me and placed his hands on my knees. "It's not my place but please… I have to know… Have you 'been with him', Tsuzuki?"
Holding the tea cup between two hands, I gingerly touched it against my lips, gauging the temperature. "Been? What do you mean – Yeah, I've been spending time with him… Ow, that's hot." I put the cup back down, waving a hand at my now scalding lip.
Hisoka shook his head, seeming a little exasperated. "That's not what I meant-" We both turned to face the door as it opened with a loud, rather obtrusive squeak and Aki's blond head appeared around it.
"Is everything all right, Mr. Segai?" Hisoka asked, sounding genuinely concerned. I imagine he was probably concerned that Muraki was going to come charging back at any second to reclaim me. Hardly likely.
Aki seemed confused as to why exactly he had stepped inside in the first place. "Oh, sorry to interrupt. Just wanted to let you know, the Count has arrived."
"Is Mr. Tatsumi barricading him?" Hisoka asked, arms crossed tightly across his chest.
"Naturally." Aki said, chuckling as he looked over at me. "You all right, Little Python?"
I smiled painfully, flashing him an 'Ok' sign with my fingers. "As well as I could be, I suppose."
He smiled sweetly, making me feel entirely undeserving all over again. "Good man. Let me know if I can get you both anything." His head ducked back behind the door and out of sight. As soon as he was gone, Hisoka sat down again, resuming his previous conversation with me.
"When I ask, if you've been with Muraki –"
By that stage I had already caught up. "Yeah, I got that now. You know me; always a little slow on the uptake." I laughed humorlessly, tapping the side of my head with the knuckle of my index finger. "Make that extremely slow on the uptake. How do you put up with me?"
"Tsuzuki…" Hisoka murmured, moving to sit beside me again. "I just want to be sure he didn't try to force you into anything." He sighed awkwardly and shifted his weight from side to side, clasping his hands together between his knees and then looking down at them. "The truth is… back… then…"
"Hisoka please…" I whispered, clutching my hands over my ears. "Please don't talk about it."
His eyes narrowed a little, though not much, so he wasn't furious with me yet. "The least you could do is hear me out, Tsuzuki. You owe me that."
"And much more besides." I admitted with saddness in my voice, remvoing my hands from my ears and allowing my guard to drop. "Go… go on."
But I really did not want to hear in any sort of detail what had happened between them back then. It made me sick. It always made me sick and for more reasons than one.
"Back when… Muraki…" Again, he shifted uncomfortably. "– raped me…"
Reached over I clutched his hand fiercly, providing myself as a sort of anchor to keep him bound to reality.
"- it wasn't just that he was… cruel." Hisoka swallowed, his eyes going out of focus. "It was as though he were punishing someone else. The whole time it was going on, I got the impression that it wasn't me he was seeing but a person he wanted revenge against. I was simply the form that person took. Does that sound strange to you?"
I finally made myself meet his eyes, thinking of the hatred in Muraki's voice whenever he mentioned his half-brother, whom bore such an uncanny similarity to Hisoka. It all made a little more sense and yet was still one of the more senseless things with which I had ever been confronted. "No." I confessed, shaking my head. "Not at all."
Whether he had read my emotions or my expression, Hisoka seemed to grasp instantly the hidden meaning behind those few words. His eyes widened and he shifted in order to direct his body towards me. "Then I'm not wrong, am I? … There is someone."
It doesn't matter." I insisted, shaking my head with indicative finality. "It shouldn't have mattered whether there'd been someone or not. What he did to you was wrong." I clutched Hisoka's hand even more tightly between my own as tears start to roll down my cheeks. "It was wrong…" I could feel my shoulders beginning to shake. "And what's even worse is that I have to keep telling myself that! So I don't forget… that I don't make an excuse for the terrible thing he did to you… that he's done to so many people…"
"He made me a victim in more ways than one, Tsuzuki." Whispered Hisoka, lowering his face so that he did not have to bear witness to my selfish despair. "I never told you this… but then I guess there are a lot of things I don't tell you. When…" Now, he looked away entirely, eyes to the far left wall. "– when he… forced me he… he didn't… you know… do anything until he made me physically want it." He bought his face back around as though suddenly realizing that looking away had not been the right thing to do in the first instance and stared at me desperately with eyes that drowned in tears and focused on nothing through them. "Do you know what that was like for me, Tsuzuki? I… saw him murder someone. When I walked in on him, there was a severed arm just lying there at his feet. And it wasn't enough to just rape me no…" He clutched his face between both hands, teeth clenched, looking furious. " He… he had to make me want it! He had to work me up so much that I eventually begged him to finish it! Can you possibly comprehend that, Tsuzuki?! That level of utter humiliation?! To beg a murderer to fuck you… to actually allow someone privileges with your body, simply because you get to the point where you can't take it anymore. I actually wanted it!
"Hisoka…" I moaned, clutching my hands over my mouth as sure enough, nausea welled through me. "Oh Hisoka…"
"I'm not an idiot." He said, finally looking up and focusing on me. "I know I'm younger than you and I realize you know more about the world than you probably let on but… when I realized that Muraki wanted you, I just couldn't bear to think about him subjecting you to the same thing he did me. I felt I had to protect you from that, no matter what." He reached out and touched the side of my face. "You showed me kindness when no one else in this world would even exercise the patience necessary to push forward with me. But you never expressed irritation or anger but swaddled me up and coveted me without asking for anything in return. You gave me a safe place where I could mature and heal, at my own pace. Everything I am today is because of you and I'm grateful for that. I suppose that's why I can't find myself angry at you. You proved yourself capable of healing even the most stubborn and damaged of hearts. I witnessed that first hand. I know better than anyone just how you feel about the weak and the wounded. If a person revealed even the smallest sliver of regret, remorse or saddness, that's all it would take for you to drive yourself to the ends of the earth… to save them." He stroked my cheek with the backs of his fingers. "I think if anyone was capable of salvaging him… it would be you. You did heal me after all."
I regarded him in silence for some time, tears rolling down my face, with no soundtrack beyond them. " I… I do want to save him. Hisoka…" I said at even, touching his hand with my own. "But I don't know how… I don't even know where to start. And besides, he's left now and he won't be coming back. I don't think he even wants to be saved."
Hisoka shrugged nonchalantly. "Well, neither did I. It was the last thing I was looking for. My entire life was driven by dark karmic emotions; anger, despair, hurt and revenge. Nothing existed outside of venting this bile. But then you appeared to me and drained that darkness out of me, granting me something I'd never imagined possible, at least not in my life that is. And what you gave me is that very thing I'm granting you now." He gazed at me enquiringly. "He hasn't forced himself on you at any point, has he?"
"We haven't had sex if that's what you mean." I replied, shaking my head.
He stared at me, as though searching my face for any trace of untruths and at length seemed satisfied that I hadn't lied because he took his hand away without further scrutinty. "But there have been… intimacies."
"In a manner of speaking…" I admitted, picks up my tea again, hoping that it was cool enough to drink now. "Do I need to go into them or are you content to leave it at that?"
He waved a hand hurriedly and dismissively. "Yes, that's fine. I definitely don't need to hear all the gory details, thankyou very much. What I suppose the real question is…" He gave me a sustained sidelong look. "Do you love him?"
I almost snorted tea out of my nose and I shot him a look to suggest that he was taking perhaps just a few too many liberties with my case of the guilts. There was only so much you could get away with before it descended into the realm of bullying. "You can read my mind, why bother asking questions at all?"
His face displayed the first true expression of anger I had seen that day. "Look, no point getting brutish with me, I think I've been pretty damn patient so far here!"
I sighed, not having the strength to argue over my rights with him at that particular moment. "Yeah and I appreciate that. But did you miss the part where I explained to you and half the Judgement Bureau that I didn't have a fucking clue myself how I felt?" I set my tea down roughly, hands clutching the back of my head. "Damn! Muraki just messes everything up for me! That bastard!"
Hisoka groaned, giving my upper back a vague sort of rub. "I think it's patantly clear that in the very least you have strong feelings concerning him." I suppose he must have taken pity on my pathetic disposition because the next minute found his arm settling about my shoulder. "Look… I'm sorry. I guess I haven't matured nearly as much as I hoped I had. But… it means a lot to have you in my life and I can't bear the thought of you not being around. Even so… I'd rather see you do what's best for you for once, Tsuzuki. Having you around wouldn't mean anything if it meant seeing you miserable all day every day."
I looked up at him, wondering if I had heard right and if Hisoka realized just how contradictory he sounded. "And after you told Muraki to leave me alone for my own good, you turn around and tell me now that I should go running back to him?"
He had the good grace to appear a little embarrassed at having been caught out in this fairly dramatic turn about. "I… I just wanted to test Muraki… I suppose. To see if he would do the right thing by you. At least to clear up whether his feelings regarding you are sincere or not. I have to admit, he threw me a little. I hadn't expected him to make such an unselfish move. But then again, he might have seen through my little farce and acted in such a way that might alternatively lead to my approving his character." He offerred a distasteful snort. "Like that's going to happen. Not in a million years."
"… I'm not sure exactly what point you are trying to prove here, Hisoka." I confessed, feeling as confused as I had at the outset of our conversation. He huffed, giving my shoulder a comforting little shake.
"What I'm trying to say, very inarticulately, is that… well… whatever happens…" He swallowed very deeply and dryly, as though not a drop of moisture remained in his mouth. "I'm not going to judge you. You hear me?" He met my stunned gaze fiercely. "I won't judge you. Not now, not ever. Whatever decision you make, I will stand by you. You saved me, Tsuzuki. You saved me from something that not many people can be saved from. I'd like to think you could peform such a miracle again. To think if you could…" He physically reasserted his fierce stance. "Anyway… You're my friend. I'll support you. I promise. Whatever you decide to do… I won't hate you for it. So please… if that's any condolence to you whatsoever, I hope you can move forward with it and do what's best for you for a change."
I was so overcome by my partner's sweet, strange sacrifice that I couldn't even think straight. Of all the people I would have expected to give me their blessing, he would have been at the very back of the line with Tatsumi. I should have realized, long ago what a truly remarkable young man my parnter was blossoming into. "Hisoka…" I embraced him and sank my face into his shoulder and he offerred me that self same comfort I had once shown him when he'd been forced, through Muraki's actions no less, to end the life of Camille, the girl he had fallen for on the Queen Camellia mission. "Thankyou…" I found myself repeating over and over again. "Thankyou so much…"
"It's okay," He told me as he rubbed my shoulder.
"You've been so good to me." I said, pulling away in order to rub my eyes one at a time. "But I don't think Tatsumi is ever going to forgive me."
Hisoka smiled patiently. "You can't expect to make everyone happy all the time, Tsuzuki. Maybe it's time you seriously think about what is going to make you happy. Now."
It seemed both telling and befitting that these were almost the exact same words Ruka used to say to me. But I didn't have too long to think about it deeply because just then, the door bursts open and in flounced a pair of white gloves and a familiar, much maligned half mask. Tatsumi predictably bustled along in its' wake, looking worked up all over again. Whatever calm he might have managed to establish during my nap had been all for nought now that the Count had made his appearance.
"– now where is he?" The Count was in the middle of saying as he entered. "I'm sure by this stage he must be dying for a more sensitive approach than yours Tatsumi."
Even from where I was seated I could see that well known and loved vein throbbing in Tatsumi's forehead. "As I have just informed you Count, what occurs in the Summons Section is hardly your concern. You would do well to just return to the Hall of Candles. It would after all be a dreadful shame should our problems interfere with your important work."
When listening to a conversation between Tatsumi and the Count, you must imagine that they are speaking in code and that some other message exists beneath their misleadingly direct exchange. For example, what Tatsumi just said could be most adequately translated as: "I told you to piss off, now kindly do so before I kick your ass, you deranged sexual degenerate!!"
In case I hadn't yet made it clear, those two did not get along.
"Now, now, Tatsumi, no need to be so cold." The Count said, pinching Tatsumi's cheek and issuing it a sharp slap. I found this a pretty daring mood considering the look on Tatsumi's face before he'd even established physical contact. I would have felt safer slapping a hungry hyena about the chops. "I'm sure you realize more than anyone that Tsuzuki is the most important thing to me." Translation: -
Watari
"Don't cock-block me".
Tsuzuki
As you can see, Watari here speaks perfect Count.
I could see, as well as hear Tatsumi gritting his teeth, in a brave attempt to force back the overwhelming anger plainly welling against the straining seams of his body. "Be that as it may-" Translation: - "Time to die."
"I believe we have spoken about this quite enough, my friend." The Count declared waved his hand in an Emperor like gesture, almost knocking Tatsumi's glasses flying in his dramatic postering. I groaned as the mask then zeroed in on me, wondering just what else could possibly happen to make my wonderful day already more wonderful then it already was! "My sweet darling, I have heard the most distressing news!"
"Whatever could that be?" I asked wearily. If a man could have hidden behind his tea cup, I'm sure I would have been the first to achieve it.
The Count chortled in that all too familiar lecherous manner, that made most sane men with function legs want to run for the hills. "Oh my… isn't he precious in his put upon naivite?" He chuckled again as he turned to Tatsumi. Wakaba, Saya, Yuma and Terazuma were peeping in through the doorway. I suppose he did put on a good show. "Tatsumi, would you mind terribly granting Tsuzuki and I a moment in private?"
Tatsumi's arms were crossed so tightly, I briefly wondered if their circulation was still adequately functioning. "Of course I mind, Count. When have I ever not minded? And who the Hell is this?" This turned out to be a man in a white coat who had entered through the doorway, holding a black briefcase in one hand.
"Oh him?" The Count queried, gesturing with his thumb. As though anyone else on Tatsumi's staff required an introduction. "His name is Dr. Takawa; my exclusive physician. Having heard of Tsuzuki's grevious injury today, it seemed prudent that I call for Mr. Takawa to tend to him as soon as possible. Your own Mr. Watari I know is currently absent, so I can't imagine you would object to having an extra pair of hands on board."
Tatsumi glared from behind his glasses, the intensity as such that I would not have been surprised had all the potplants in the room simultaneously wilted. "That was indeed generous of you, Count. But this is surely a costly gesture, that our department could hardly be expected to repay you for." Translation: - "Don't you dare foot the bill to us for your wasteful expenditures."
The Count snickered, seeming to always treasure the oppurtunity to rile Tatsumi up. "By all means, consider it a favor. I may have no other choice but to add it to Tsuzuki's ever increasing stack of debts, knowing all too well of the impoverished Summons Sections diobolical financial straights."
"You trying to make me feel worse, Count?" I whispered, which elicited a giggle from Saya in the very least. The others were still entirely focused on the exchange between our two powerful superiors.
"If you wish to speak to Tsuzuki in private," Tatsumi continued, with cold diffidence. "You may ask him if he would kindly consent to your individual company."
"Tsuzuki, would you be kind enough to grant me your company without the presence of this infuriating tin man hovering about my shoulders?" The Count asked and there was uncharacteristic vehemence in his voice, as though he were rushing upon a busy schedule and hadn't the time for his and Tatsumi's usual routine.
Under normal circumstances, I would have very much refuted being left alone with the Count. He'd made his amorous attentions quite well known, since the very first moment he and I had made acquantance. However, some months back when he had hosted a fancy dress party, in order to celebrate the remodeling of the Hall of Candles, he had spoken some particularly kind words that had settled my troubled mind at the time. I suppose since then my hostile attitude towards him had mellowed somewhat; though I still had not forgotten the unspeakable perversions lining the walls of his basement.
"Tatsumi…" I spoke in a soft voice, still refusing to make eye contact with the secretary. "It's okay. The Count obviously has something important he needs to say. I'd much rather that he get it off of his chest now, rather than later."
Tatsumi didn't like this but I suppose that he was still far too angry with me at the moment, to even consider fighting for my virtue. Eyes narrowed, he turned about and gestured for Hisoka to follow. My partner's weight left the seat as he joined Tatsumi by the door, glancing once briefly over his shoulder and I'm sure offering me a morsel of mental support. I was beyond caring at that stage. I already felt so poorly, that I doubted the Count could bring me any lower, regardless of what he might try.
Once the Count was sure that we were alone and that the door was shut completely behind the parting company, he turned back to me with his gloves held in such a position that I supposed his arms were crossed and he was offering me a knowing expression.
"Before I inquire any further into your activities over the past few weeks my boy, I would greatly appreciate your cooperation for just a few short minutes." He gestured, palm up to the young, dark haired doctor, whom bowed to me as though on cue. He was probably only in his late thirties but his hair already displayed streaks of gray and the dark skin of his face resembled the smooth, weather worn trunk of a tree. "I understand that you lost a great deal of blood this evening and I'm sure this is not the first transaction of this type that you have submitted to." One white finger tapped against what I suppose was the bridge of his nose. "If you would indulge me in consenting to a brief review of your condition, it would be most appreciated."
I shrugged my shoulders unattractively and turned my head to burrow deeper into the blanket. "Aw'right. Whatever." As I may have already mentioned, it was not as though I were feeling particularly fiesty by that stage. More to the point, I felt at a loss and wasn't sure in which manner to direct my energy. It was by this indecisiveness that I failed to act as I might have once done, by stalwartly refuting anything the Count might have asked me to do and alternatively smacking him around the chops for even daring to request my compliance on such a matter. No, all I could think about was Muraki and where he was right then. Was he out there, right at that moment, murdering someone? Sapping their strength and thereby taking it for his own? Startled by my thoughts, I glanced over by shoulder and out through the bay windows, experiencing a slight flux of relief as witness to the platinum moon hanging as the pendant to the night sky, with no stain of blood upon it. Whatever Muraki was doing at that moment, it was not murder.
Mr. Takawa approached me with great respect and then did a most fatherly thing in patting my cheek. I suppose he meant for it to seem kindly but the truth was, the flesh of my jaw was still a little battered from my recovering wounds and this only served to render me even more surly than I had been in the first place.
"How old are you again, young man?" The doctor asked, withdrawing the plugs of his stethoscope and sliding them into his ears. I told him what year I was born, even as he pressed the cylindrical barrel to my chest and requested that I breathe normally.
"1912… that would make you the year of the rat, is that correct?"
I nodded as he withdrew the stethoscope and then used the tips of his fingers to feel underneath my jaw line, inspecting my glands. It suddenly occurred to me at that moment, that my zodiac sign and Muraki's were the same. He had been born in 1972, which was also the year of the Rat.
"Your skin's hanging off of your bones… that's a bad sign. You should be drinking more water." Dr. Takawa said, moving his hands down from my neck and reaching into his pocket for a light. I gestured to the jug of water someone had set beside me and the glass from which I was currently drinking. The doctor nodded approvingly, using one hand to draw back my eyelids one at a time and the other to shine the light towards my face. "Make sure you keep your fluids up. Losing so much blood would put most Guardians in a certified coma until they had recovered. You're certainly as resilient as I have been led to believe. Anyway, your pupils aren't dilated. Even if your eyes do look a little sore."
"Crying." I mumbled, blinking said eyes as the doctor finally released his hold upon them. He turned my head from side to side, examining the bruising and then feeling my jaw as though to check for breaks or fractures. When he was done, he turned back to the Count.
"Visually, he's fine. There should be no lasting damage to his face, thank goodness." He looked back toward me, almost fondly. "He is rather pretty, isn't he? Such unusual eyes! And I can see he possesses phenomenal strength of will, not to mention a charming disposition. I'd certainly say he's a water type, this one."
I took a sip of my water, not failing to notice Tatsumi's concerned eyes peeping in through a gradually widening gap in the door. The Count too noticed and without so much as shifting his weight one ounce, slid the door back neatly into the border, blocking Tatsumi out again.
"I'm certainly glad to hear that, doctor." The Count's eyes must have been on me. "But I doubt we'll be able to preserve any further lasting privacy, so you might as well conclude your examination. I'm sure you know what I'm most interested in clearing up."
Dr. Takawa nodded and went over to his black case, opening the clasp before delving his hands into the midst. "As you are aware, Sir, Mr. Tsuzuki is not a woman and ascertaining such conditions with a male subject is not nearly so simple. I may not be able to provide you with a satisfactory answer."
"But you should be able to get a good idea from a visual examination of the exterior regions, correct?" The Count looked weary, his hand positioned so that I imagined his chin was supported. Like I've said countless times, I'm not what you would call experienced in picking up on such nuances, so I didn't grasp the meaning of their discussion until I was quite literally subjected to the conclusion of it. Not even when the doctor emerged from his traveling case, snapping the wrist of a rubber glove into place, in such a fashion that signified trouble for any man whom happened to be on the receiving end of said glove. Most rational gentleman would already have been tensing up by this stage, if not pelting for the door itself with their groin about an inch from the ground. But not Asato Tsuzuki. Not dear distracted Asato Tsuzuki, preoccupied with the salacious thought that he might never kiss Kazutaka Muraki again and he was already beginning to miss the feel of his lips upon his.
"Sir?" The doctor asked, looking towards the Count. "Will this room be…?"
"This room will be fine." The Count stated, sounding tired and less diplomatic than he usually did. He must have been irritated to have acted so unseemly around me. The doctor approached me and asked that I stand, which I did, with the blanket still wrapped firmly about my body.
"Might I ask that you pass me the blanket?" Takawa requested. Puzzled, I unwrapped myself from the warm cocoon of material and passed it to the young doctor, who immediately whipped it up into the air and lowered it gracefully to a bare space of floor behind the couch. Meaning that no one peeking into the room would be able to see what was going on should we have… well, I don't know say, had a picnic. Though from the look of those gloves I highly doubted that this was the plan.
Plus, no dinner rolls in sight.
The doctor shut the curtains as though to ward off any peeping toms that might have been lurking in the cherry tree just outside (they would have had to have been the most determined pervert in the world to scale that monster trunk, all for a peek in at my vulnerable body) and then politely asked that I remove myself to the far side of the couch and strip down to my skivvies. Having not been in the right state of mind, I didn't offer much resistance but was still grateful that the Count hadn't yet bothered to shift from his position by the door. I believe most of his efforts were concentrated on holding Tatsumi at bay. A humorous sort of role reversal, when one thinks about it.
I quickly undressed and lay down upon the blanket without being asked to, which I had guessed was the next rational step but the doctor immediately coaxed me back to my feet. I felt uncomfortable being in full view of the Count, who wasted no time in reaping my exposed skin with his eyes and kept my own diverted toward a gap in the curtains, where I was able to survey the moon and in so saying, Muraki's current proceedings.
Dr. Takawa examined my pectoral region and dabbed a little antiseptic on the still healing wounds I'd received during the day. He felt my ribcage, lifted my arms to check the glands situated underneath and worked the pads of his fingers down across my abdomen, checking I suppose for swellings of the organs. He gave me a little shove against the shoulder, indicating that I turn around so that he could check my back. I got the vague impression that this was simply a formality and what the Count was really interested in checking was not my current health, rather then my… ahem, current condition. This occurred to me moments before the doctor spun me about again and asked that I remove my underpants.
"Why?" I asked, voice trembling. The doctor smiled. He seemed nice and I trusted him somewhat, well, more than I did the Count anyway. I was hoping that he might give me a straight answer regarding my current treatment but the Count stepped in before he could say so much as a word.
"Please, don't be difficult, Tsuzuki, I truly do not have the patience at the moment." My eyes actually started to burn, because he had never spoken to me so callously before. "This is the very first thing that Enma requested I check once you had been brought back today. Truth be told, I naturally am most interested myself, so it would truly save us all a great deal of trouble if you could just do as you're told."
I fought back tears as I obediently removed my boxer shorts and under the doctors instruction lay down upon the blanket, staring up at a ceiling that swam before my eyes. I wished that Watari were there to stand up for me. Tatsumi was too angry to and Hisoka was just quietly resolved to let happen whatever I decided to let happen. Watari would have known what should and should not have been allowed to happen to me. He would have burst in the room and told the Count what was what and then taken me aside and cared for me. I really missed him then. And I missed Muraki too. I just wanted to be with people that cared about me, not a doctor I had never met before and an amorous aristocrat who had suddenly decided I wasn't worth addressing with deference.
The doctor knelt by my feet and with a curt apology, asked that I spread my legs. I was so ashamed and upset, that I actually hid my face behind my hands and shook my head, keeping my knees tight together and curling up in an attempt to shield my more personal regions. The Count went further to prove his irritation and impatience with me when he abandoned his momentary post by the door and stamped across the room, slapping my leg hard enough to bring a fresh round of tears to my eyes.
"Didn't I just finish telling you to stop being difficult?" He gave my other leg a somewhat more gentle swat, as though suddenly abashed over how harsh he was being. "Please behave yourself. To hinder the process will only prolong it." He caressed my cheek momentarily before gliding back towards the door, just in time to slam it shut again from the sounds of it. I sniffled as I looked up into the doctors' dark brown eyes and his considerably more patient smile.
"Whenever you're ready." He said and though he spoke kindly, I still couldn't stop the tears from rolling out. I pressed my fingers over my face and parted my thighs in stages, not sure what width would pass as sufficient. I felt so utterly exposed and miserable that my whole body trembled. Muraki was the only other person who had seen a great deal of my naked body and even he had not been granted a view such as this. The doctor eventually assured me that my position was fine and reached between my legs with both hands. I held my breath as I felt his fingers move straight for my rectum and then there was plenty of movement going on inside of me, eliciting small whimpers of shame and discomfort from just as deep a place. I couldn't imagine for the life of me what any of this was proving and wondered for one crazy instant whether the Count had brought this doctor here to have sex with me for his viewing pleasure. Was this the way I was intended to pay back my debts? I wouldn't have initially guessed that this would be his cup of tea. But after less than a minute of mining my most intimate region, Dr. Takawa must have been satisfied because the invading pressure left and when I dared open my eyes again, I saw him taking the gloves off and depositing them within the black case.
"As far as I can tell, he is intact." He said, glancing over at my still prone body and looking surprised that I hadn't yet moved. "Oh, by all means Tsuzuki-san, change, change!"
As I pulled my clothes back on in various degrees of shambling theatrics, I could see the Count no doubt fingering his chin thoughtfully. "That is good news… but I wish there was a way I could be certain… His Majesty doesn't appreciate a 'maybe'." He waited until I had finished dressing before approaching. "Tsuzuki, my darling."
"I'm not your darling." I snapped but he took no notice.
"I'm to understand that you have been in the presence of a particular gentleman these past few weeks." His finger made a motion and I'm to suppose that he scratched his chin, as though musing on how I might have dared possess the audacity. I narrowed my eyes, spurned on by his even more untoward treatment of me and his rude manner besides.
"What's it to you?"
"Have you shared any intimacies with him?"
"None of your fucking business." I said, using one of Watari's words again. Again, the Count, unusually serious, ignored my tone in favor of assuring himself of that which he was most invested in.
"I am not interested in hearing minute personal details such as the amount of times you might have kissed, or touched or whatever else." He stated in a careless manner, raising his gloved hand to offer a characteristic dramatic gesture. "What I need to know is whether he has enjoyed himself with you, sweet simple boy. Did he at any stage undress you and lie naked on top of you? Has he ever breached your body?"
I made a mess of my tie as my anger finally exploded and I nearly ripped the whole damn thing to shreds. "NO ONE has fucking popped my cherry yet, if that's what you're getting at, Count! And it's none of your fucking business or anyone else's for that matter, whom I may or may not choose to have sex with! It certainly doesn't give you the goddamn right to check my bloody state of virtue as though you possess rights to it or something!! Jesus Christ!"
"Well not yet anyway," He mumbled, in such a way that I couldn't help but think he wanted me to hear it and indeed question it. Such things I only realized later of course. At the time, I was so distressed I wasn't thinking ahead and interpreting the situation as acutely as Muraki for example, was capable of doing. He always seemed two steps ahead of everyone, Tatsumi alone exempted. But that wasn't me, a present existing person.
"What do you mean 'not yet anyway?!'" I grabbed for where the hoped the Count's collar was situated on his intangible person and was greatly satisfied when I felt my fingers close about what were distinctly lapels. I drew him close, relieved that I had found someone to direct my anger toward. "You start making sense right now! I've had just about all the bullshit I can take for one day!"
The Count's gloves closed about my wrist and with strength I hadn't known he possessed, he pried my hands away and snapped them apart to about so that they were positioned roughly before each of my shoulders. He was taller and he leaned down over me, radiating whatever precisely might be the opposite of good will.
"You know perfectly well that I have never looked upon you with the eyes of someone whom is interested in your conversation alone, Tsuzuki. Perhaps it is time that I was perfectly frank about my intentions with you, blunt though I gather you assume they have been. Sit down." He guided me backwards towards the couch and I took a seat, though quite outside of my own intentions. It felt altogether too much like backing down and I was still too worked up to want to relax just yet. The Count's hands released me and he sat on the armchair to my right, sliding his fingers together daintily. The doctor took the left hand seat and kept himself busy by writing notes, to make it pointedly clear that he was not a part of this conversation.
The Count's single eyehole focused on me. "As I said, over the years you have known perfectly well what my intentions have been. I've never pretended to be interested in anything else, excluding your smile and soothing nature of course. They are factors of your startling personality that provide me great solace in my otherwise sordid existence. But that alone is not the reason for which I long to obtain the pleasure of your company. And it is certainly not the reason your 'acquaintance' Kazutaka Muraki has pursued you so adamantly these past few years. And noble though Seiichirou Tatsumi pretends to be, you mustn't delude yourself into thinking that he is entirely selfless in his attentions toward you. You must wonder why you are considered such an attractive prospect by now I'm sure? I do not mean to suggest that you are not physically beautiful and unworthy of such attentions however. But there is one very specific aspect of your body that draws great interest. Would you like to guess what that aspect might be?"
I took another sip of my tea, which by now had started to cool and wasn't the least bit appealing. But I wanted an excuse to not answer right away and this was the only thing I could think of doing to delay the conversation. Honestly; I mean, I realize that I'm not the smartest bulb in the bulb box but assuming that I hadn't a clue of what this 'aspect' might be, was just insulting. He'd made it all but obvious both in this conversation and his attentions over the past seventy years or so of our acquaintanceship.
"I'm guessing it's not the fact that I brush and floss my teeth," I finally drawled, setting the tea down and then turning it about by the handle until it faced towards the Count. Again, I was just finding a means to distract myself. He didn't so much as move in response to my answer.
"Be serious," He said.
I looked at him with still furious eyes. "I know exactly what you're talking about. You're talking about my virginity, right? Well I'm sorry but I can't imagine for the life of me why this should be of any interest to anyone. The only good it does is gives other people (namely you Watari) a reason for a laugh."
The Count chuckled quietly to himself. "No… I suppose you wouldn't understand, would you? After all, no one has been kind enough to explain such matters to you." He slid one hand through the air in a refined manner, fingers held together and straight, in order to indicate that an explanation was indeed in order. "Allow me to fill you in," ('I'm sure you'd love that,' I found myself quietly snarking.) "In Olden Times, there was an obscure, though much enjoyed belief, that when an individual gives themselves over to another for the first time in the intimate act of copulation, an unbreakable bond is forged between them. This link is simply called The Lead and whoever holds the end of this bond, is thereby bond to you until the end of days and in some such cases there ever after. This person will additionally possess power over you. Influence and authority. They even acquire the ability to manipulate your actions to a degree, by instilling within you an insignia of their own desires. It's one of the central reasons that high ranking demons employ the use of Pet's and the reason a Pet must be a virgin when they acquire them. By becoming the patron of their innocence, they attain absolute power over them." He looked into my dramatically humbled expression. "So you see why this issue was of some concern to us. Whether or not you trust this Muraki fellow is irrelevant. But if he were to become your patron, nothing you do afterward would do any good. He would have power over you until the end of days. And he could use that power."
My mind suddenly went back to the first time Muraki and I had met. The words he had said, leaning over a broken doll and running his fingers across the cracked glaze of its' shattered face, musing almost thoughtfully to himself that so long as human beings were subject to sickness and death, they would always be burdened. Had he known what might have come about from bedding me? I couldn't imagine that he had. Why go to all that effort to obtain individual power, to use my body to complete the DNA sequence of his brother, if the solution to all his tribulations was so unbelievably easy? He'd certainly had more than one chance to fuck me. After he stole my unconscious body from the doorstep of the Ministry of Hades, I'd been in a catatonic like state for over a forty-eight hour period. I couldn't have stopped him if he'd tried and wouldn't have even attempted to do so; such was my advanced state of delirium. No… I couldn't imagine that Muraki was aware of this 'Lead,' as the Count put it. He'd wanted power so badly… and yet, he still didn't take my body when he had the chance.
I looked at the Count, secure in my conclusions. "Muraki wouldn't know anything about that. Otherwise he would have already had me. I can understand why that is of such concern though. It was bad enough when Saagatanasu had control over my powers. I can't say I'm not convinced Muraki might not have a bone to pick with the Ministry." I poured myself a glass of water and took tentative sips from it, wondering even as I said these words whether this was right or not. Muraki's objectives seemed to entirely revolve around me rather than the Ministry. He wasn't trying to overthrow anyone, or steal anything… No. It was definitely me he was after. Now more than ever. And it seemed an awfully important thing to have simply been neglected in being presented as common knowledge amongst my peers and myself. To think, that by bedding a virgin you might have power over the individual for the rest of their natural life! If this were common knowledge amongst powerful demons, it would mean that anyone of them might possess authority over any large number of people!
And though I essentially had it figured out at that moment, it did not click until later.
"And it's not that issue alone that has his Majesty Enma and I concerned," The Count continued, resting back in the armchair and placing his linked hands down in his lap. I suppose. "Because you possess unusual blood, it seemed quite imperative to his majesty that were anyone to become bound to you, that it would be someone whom would not take advantage of your strength. His Majesty Enma naturally thought it best were he to become your patron."
"Oh get real! Since when did my lack of a sex life become common knowledge to you guys, anyway?" I focused on some none existent point and scowled. "It was Watari. God dammit, I'll bet it was Watari, that no good, four-eyed excuse for a- OW! Hey! I'm just telling it like it was!
Watari
You don't need to go into every tiny detail. Especially when it gets into the name-calling! I'm sensitive.
Tsuzuki
Bullshit. But anyway, moving right along.
The Count didn't confirm whether or not it was Watari and I think hadn't even heard my accusations in the first place. "Naturally, I had an issue with this. And so, Enma and I have fought one another on this point for a number of years now, all the while using our influence to… how you say… keep the competition away."
"WHAT?!" I was up out of my seat again and my hormones were flying about with such reckless abandon that I swear I could have punched the Count's lifeless mask right through the back of the armchair. "Are you trying to tell me that you and Enma-Sama have been scaring off my partners?!"
"And potential partners too." The Count offered, as though this was going to help. It wasn't.
"You BASTARD!!" I picked up the pot of tea (considerably cooler than I would have liked at that point) and poured the entire contents over the Count's head. I was fit to be tied, to say the least! "How DARE you?! The two of you, whittling away the years deciding my future for me? Who the Hell do you think you are?! I'm not some geisha that you can just sell off to whoever wins the bid! I don't care whoever gets a stupid 'bond' with me! I won't be giving up my virginity to anyone but the person I'm in love with and that sure as Hell isn't you or Enma-sama. I'm not even sure that I even like you. And after this little talk I'm definitely sure that I don't like Enma-sama! No one has the right to interfere with anyone else's personal life like this! It's wrong, it's immoral, it's – Gosh, I'm so angry with you right now I could just kill you!!"
The Count stared up at me from beneath two soggy tea bags and then slowly rose to his feet. My anger temporarily fractured and I took a step away, all too receptive to the waves of vehemence rolling off of him. It still caught me off guard however, when his gloved thumb and index finger speared forward and snagged my bottom lip. Muraki had done this very thing the first night of our reunification but even he had never been this cruel. The Count exacted such pressure upon the column of my lip, that my eyes shammed shut of their own accord; a means of combating the sharp, crushing pain. "You know… you really do look most lovely when you're angry. I suppose that's why I make a point of riling you up at every chance we meet." He lowered his face to position his mouth close to my ear. I knew because I could feel the warmth of his breath against my skin. "I underestimated you, Tsuzuki. We should have kept a better eye on you. To think you possessed the audacity to make your own way and with a renowned serial killer, no less. I have to admit, it was a good move. You really threw me."
It was only then I realized, that it wasn't the Count to whom I was speaking.
"E…Enma-sama?!" I winced as he redoubled the pressure against my lip, eliciting a small spurt of blood as a vessel burst beneath the skin.
"You're clearly not as foolish as I took you to be." It was certainly the Count's body standing before me but Enma certainly possessed power enough to possess him or anyone for that matter, which I gather the Count had been aware of before entering the room. They had arranged to see me together, outside of my own knowledge! "You're a precious commodity, dear Tsuzuki. With the debts you owe to both myself and the Count, I cannot even understand for a second why you would think to cheat us by giving freely to a man, what he ought to be paying for."
"Y-yourth not makin-gth any thenthe!" I hissed, not daring to make any attempt at removing his hand from me. Enma was the Lord of Hades; solely responsible for reanimating all the deceased individuals that succeed in becoming a Guardian of Death. The distance in power between Shinigami and Enma was so vast it was quite literally impossible to bridge. I probably could have removed his fingers from my mouth had I wanted to do so but in dealing with the Lord of all Hades, one does not simply piss him off if one can avoid doing so. I was rather regretting my earlier decision to dump tea on his head. Though it had been the Count at the time, who certainly deserved it as far as I'm concerned.
I had never seen Enma's face; only the very few elite members of the Ministry and the servants of his house were privy to his unveiled form. No doubt this is the very reason why he had 'borrowed' the Count for this little session.
"You don't understand yet?" His lips were practically on top of my ear. "You owe a great debt, Asato Tsuzuki. And you have not yet repaid it. Not even close. Until that day such liberties as taking a lover of your own, are a luxury that you, impoverished as you are, cannot yet afford." And here he finished his thought by pulling back my lip so hard he almost ripped it out from the base of my jaw. I stumbled back from him, clutching my bruised and bleeding mouth.
I had to work hard to catch my breath and when I felt that I could speak again, I said, "Your Majesty Enma-Sama! I've never done a thing to make you angry with me!"
"Not until now, you haven't. And if you are a smart boy, you will not continue to do so."
I wanted to excuse myself but his Majesty made it quite apparent with one small flutter of his hand that he fully intended to take his leave first. The doctor, having grasped this, raised himself out of his seat and went over to the door, holding it open for Enma's convenience. All might have gone well, had his Majesty not reserved one final passing jive for me before abandoning me to my own devices.
He poised in the door, outlined by the imposing figures of Tatsumi and Aki, who appeared to be keeping close vigil. He turned, perhaps with one eye peering down the scope of his shoulder.
"You have tried once already to make a fool of me, Asato Tsuzuki. You tried to escape from me and slither off to the world of the dead." His head tilted sidelong and I could feel the heat from those secluded eyes. "Let me tell you now that you will never escape from me. You will never be free. Happiness is not something you deserve so don't be so arrogant to expect it. You have no choice in the matter. This is where you belong."
I fingered my throbbing lip, experiencing a rapid flush of audaciousness as a direct result of his provocative egotism. I did indeed owe a great debt to both him and the Count but this was blackmail, to hold me to ransom because my own existence was at stake!
"I never should have requested a second chance from you. I would rather be dead than face a miserable existence where I am lorded over, like a dog unto a master!"
"What's going on?" Tatsumi asked, but Enma ignored him.
"You cannot speak to me in that insolent tone, Tsuzuki, you cannot!"
"But Enma-sama-!!"
"Tell me, what less can I expect?" He snapped, his tenor rising, his impatience seeping through. "You owe me your life!"
My face contorted in accordance with my melancholy. "But you cannot pretend to own it as a result! Guardian's of Death become that which we are because we wish to do in the afterlife, what we missed out on in the first place!"
He pointed his finger at me. "And what exactly do you feel as though you have missed out on, Tsuzuki-san? Answer me that!"
"I have missed out on life itself!" I cried, tugging at my hair in amassing fury. "I gave you my allegiance because I dared to hope that I might one day live a life that is entirely my own! Where I would answer to no one! I especially don't mean to answer to you!"
I thought for one fatal second that he was about to rip the mask from his face and come at me with everything he had, but he restrained himself at the last second. His voice was carefully controlled, much in the manner in which Tatsumi spoke, when he was attempting to reign his emotions in. "Both you and that Yutaka Watari seem to be going out of your way to purposefully aggravate me. But I do assure you, that it shall be the two of you whom will emerge the worse for wear."
That was the last straw. The doctor couldn't escort his Majesty from the room quickly enough, before I fell one inch short of driving my foot into his butt. "You SHUT UP! Shut up, just shut up! THAT'S IT! I hate you, you rotten son of a bitch!" I ran after him into the hallway and leaned around the door, screaming at his and the doctors retreating backs, whilst my milling colleagues simply looked on in astonishment. "That's right, run away! As for you, Count, my integrity is not for sale! And it's not for you either, Enma! In case that wasn't obvious. I'd rather have sex with one of the Gushoshin twins than you!"
"Tsuzuki, please." Tatsumi said, though he was beginning to look a little amused by the whole affair, which I suppose meant he wasn't as angry with me anymore. I put my hands on my hips and faced him with a face full of huff.
"Oh, now I suppose you'll want to have a little talk with me too, right Tatsumi?"
Wakaba cleared her throat quietly from behind me. "Um… actually… we all would, Tsuzuki."
I really only wanted to go to sleep and forget the whole day had ever happened but I doubted I would be able to relax without having sorted a few matters out. With this in mind, I gestured everybody back into the room tiredly, resuming my seat back on the couch after retrieving the blanket from the floor and rethreading it about my shoulders. Saya, Yuma and Hisoka sat on respective sides of me, whilst Wakaba and Terazuma took the two armchairs. Terazuma immediately sat up, having plonked himself down upon the residual wet patch from where I'd dumped tea on the Count and with a slightly disturbed expression, slid down to sit on the floor instead. Aki sat in front of the coffee table facing me, whilst Tatsumi chose to remain standing before the window.
Before he could get started, I focused my attentions on Aki. "Say Orakiku?"
He glanced over from the damp seat of the chair and met my eyes with his own deep green orbs. "Yeah Python?"
I chewed my worn lip distractedly. "Did the ah… Count ever…" I looked up again, suddenly realizing that asking him to validate the Count's story was irrelevant now because it would have made no difference in our decision to break up anyway. I smiled and shook my head, only resulting in elevating his level of confusion. "No, never mind. It doesn't matter." I took a sip of my water, looking straight ahead but focusing mentally on Tatsumi's figure in the background. "Well all right then. Let me have it."
A sliding clatter told me that he had opened the curtains again. "What would you like me to say, Tsuzuki?"
I put my finger on my chin and looked towards the ceiling. "Oh, I don't know. For a start… how are your injuries fairing? You lost a lot of blood."
"Not as much as you did this afternoon." He threw back, quick as a whip. I groaned and took another sip from my water.
"Guess I deserved that one."
"Yes you did." He let it hang on that for a while, before coming around to the other side of the couch and with one small gesture, succeeded in removing Saya and Yuma. He took their spot and then leant forward and around, so that he could see into my face. It took another minute before he even actually said anything and by this stage I think I was well and truly invested in behaving in a bratish fashion. "Do you recall what it was that I said to you this morning?"
I thought naturally that he was referring to his admission of his feelings. "You may have to clue me in." I peered at him over the rise of the blanket. "There were a great many things of which you spoke about this morning."
He sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, a habit that indicated he was directing all efforts into maintaining calm. "When I spoke to you of Watari and his relationship with Oriya Mibu. I suggested, much to your amusement if I recall correctly, that Oriya might have been manipulating him, so that he could obtain information from the Ministry. Which he then might pass to Muraki, whom would then use it to get to you."
"Aso," I murmured with a slightly sardonic grin. "Yes… I do appreciate the irony, Tatsumi. But if it pleases you to know, Oriya and Watari only became close after Muraki had already established contact with me. And as the 'Count' ever so diplomatically just pointed out to me, Muraki is only after one thing and that one thing certainly has nothing to do with the Ministry." I encouraged Tatsumi to make eye contact and I spoke to him with more power than I had ever shown him before. I wanted to cower him a little, make him feel as though he had underestimated me. "He wants me, Tatsumi. Just me. Not anyone else here. Nothing else matters to him but being with me."
"Now that's just foolish." Tatsumi said, his eyes hardening until they were almost granite. I scowled back.
"Why? Because you think it's impossible for anyone to be happy just being with me?"
"Don't be so stupid or I'll smack you around the face!" Tatsumi suddenly yelled and I retreated back into the blanket, afraid he might follow through with his threat anyway. "It is simply foolish to assume that Muraki is capable of love. He's after power, Tsuzuki. And he's been driven mad by what power he already possesses. We can't possibly allow him access to more!"
"You mean me." I whispered. He ran his hand over his face, nearly knocking his glasses askew.
"Don't you understand…?" He said softly. He reached over and took my hands between his own. "You don't have to be with him. If you indeed did this for Kurosaki's benefit, then you have no more reason to remain with him." He moved closer, so that only I could hear what he next had to say. "Can't you see?" And then he made himself incredibly vulnerable, which was so beautiful and brave of him. He touched my face, bringing his palm down my cheek and making it plain to just about everyone how he felt, even if they couldn't hear his words. "Can't you see what a mess you've made of me? I don't want him to have you… not after all these years of hoping… of trying to… to make you happy."
I looked at him beyond seeing and yet felt emotion so poignant bloom in my chest, that I couldn't understand how anyone could possibly miss it. Oh, the words I would say next would break his heart, of that I had no doubt. "But he makes me happy, Tatsumi."
His hand fell from my face. "I need you to be with me."
A tear slid over my eyelid and down my face, holding fort on my chin. "But I don't love you."
I could see his lower lip trembling from barely suppressed emotion. "How am I so different from him?" He tried to take my hands again but I drew them swiftly across my lap, not wanting to allow myself to become receptive to him. He clutched the rise of my knees instead. "The only way in which we are different is that his core is bruised, Tsuzuki. He is not unlike a beautiful tree that has insects swarming within the trunk, taking nest."
I looked away, unable to face his pain. "Oh but Tatsumi." I bit my lip. "He loves the part of me that you…" I gestured about lamely. "All of you refuse to even see. Isn't it enough that I can be loved in my entirety?"
"But we don't know if that's true love, Tsuzuki." Saya said, leaning over with a desperate look on her face. "You're such a good person now, no matter who you were before! And we love you. You. Whoever you are."
"And shouldn't it be okay not to love everything?" Tatsumi said, revealing his stress in the small bead of sweat that slowly coursed its' way down his left temple. When he wasn't speaking, his lips were clenched tightly together. "Put yourself in my shoes for a second. Just thinking about it… the idea of you with him… you might think you're worth that sort of punishment but not a damn one of us do!"
"But don't you see, that's just the thing." I crouched down deeper into my blanket. "I've never felt that this was about punishing myself. That's why I deserve it." I smiled in a most disabling fashion. "I'm a… bad person."
"You're the person I love most." Tatsumi said and this time everyone heard it and I grew profoundly angry when I again witnessed that sweet smile of Wakaba's. She and Watari were so alike in this way; they went into a smiling defense mechanism to keep people from interpreting their true emotions. Inside, I'm sure her heart was breaking.
"You don't know enough about me to love me." I stood up, bringing the blanket with me. "And you don't know enough about Muraki to assume what his intentions are. Believe it or not, he loves me. For me."
"Because of your power." He insisted.
"You don't know that!" I was starting to cry again but I was so saddened, it was something I truly could not seem to stop doing. "And I'm tired of arguing with you about this! I don't care if you'll never forgive me for it. I don't even care if it makes me a bad person or not. Hisoka understands. And if he can understand after everything Muraki put him through -"
Tatsumi roared to his feet. "Exactly! Exactly Tsuzuki! We're talking about a murderer! If this were just someone who smoked marijuana, or pinched purses it might be a different matter. You can't honestly think I was going to let you stay with someone like that? You're too good for that fate!"
I heard it all as though I were standing behind a glass screen. They were all so separate from me; fighting for me, fighting about me… and yet I was removed from it all. My eyes swiveled to the view outside of the window and the sounds of the birds fluttering about the branches of the cherry blossom tree seemed heightened, drowning out the empassioned shouting around me. I'd never known that sort of freedom and yet it was the reason why I'd become a Guardian of Death in the first place; so that I might have a second chance to do so. I walked over to the window and stared out, resting one hand against the glass as the others stood in silence behind me, watching and awaiting a reaction.
But I didn't have anything to say. It had all been said. I'd fought with my reasons, my rationalisations and it had all been neatly refuted. There was no way of justifying this. Being with Muraki would make me as great a sinner as he. At the very least, a sinner of Oriya's status; someone who would stand by and allow it to happen. Ignore it. Deny it. Hide it.
That silence reminded me of the times in my past, when I would stand behind the window of my home in Tokyo and watch the children outside play. They would never let me join in their games because of my strange eyes. If I so much as stepped outside, they would hurl rocks and abuse at me. One such day, Ruka had stepped in behind me and set her gentle hands down upon my shoulders, almost taller than her own. She had only been diminuative, see? She would sing her song to me, to remind me that one day I would be free to shred my restrictions and set myself free from everything.
"When you feel the urge to cry and you can't hold back your tears,
Don't be ashamed to let me see,
Don't hide your eyes from me.
Let's walk across the bridges railing, hand in hand in case we slip,
I'll hold you steady while I'm here,
As the wind sweeps through our hair.
Those tears will fade away and I'll pick you up in my arms,
I'll carry you to the new sea
Wherever we land we'll be.
Shrug off your shoes and we'll dance across the breaking waves,
Oh kiss the damp sand beneath our feet,
Soon you'll smile and you'll laugh carelessly.
Then I'll kiss your fingers one by one
And ask you to close your eyes
Tell me how it feels, to be in love
For the very first time
Don't be a stranger to new love
Don't run back and slip your feet into your shoes
Before you run, let us plunge
Beneath the waves, I'll lean in close and you'll hear me say;
"I was born to fall in love with you. And I'm here to make you smile!
Isn't that enough for now?"
I want to know you're reassured, that you know I won't lie to you
Someday you won't have to be afraid
Of what anyone expects of you
You'll shrug off their words like your old shoes and we'll go dancing across the sand
Someday we'll find our place to land
Give me a smile; slip your fingers into my hand
Propel yourself through that window and open your arms
Your wings will catch the wind
The day will come when you can wake up and smile
To be in love is no one's sin
You and I will meet again, when you find that distant sea
And dance hand in hand across the sand
The time we'll finally go free."
And I suddenly knew what I had to do.
- EC -
