Celty Sturluson wondered if she had been human in her past life.

The night she had decided to spare two men's lives, awkward questions lingered somewhere in the thin air above her neck - Where did I already met them? When and how it happened? What relationship there was between me and them?

What if I've lived with humans in my past life?

What if there's another me out there, far away in the universe, who's living among humans?

Celty had denied her very nature as a spirit of death for the sake of something ephemeral, the sensation related to memories that didn't belong to her past, her present and, surely, not to her had always lived in a small cottage near a stream in the depths of the wild lands, and her life as Dullahan was supposed to be a monotonous string of days, all the same. The seasons had passed by, over and over under the same changing skies, and she wandered and killed, and waited. Little by little, moments merged together in her memories until she couldn't distinguish anymore if the fact she was remembering had taken place days ago or if it was long gone. She couldn't even establish how much time had passed since she saw the two men - probably a lot, and both of them had already died before she could establish if a bond had ever existed between her and them.

Though days passed by, the sense of deja vu didn't. It nestled in her chest instead, tightening her already shriveled heart. The smoke from her severed neck came out faster, viscous, rolling like thunderstorm clouds. Confusion about her existence came soon after, leaving her drunk with questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? Her fingers crossed on her chest as questions emerged. Like old relics buried in the abysses of her existence, doubts came to surface, unexpected, unsettling, shocking. It was as though the decision she took that night had severed the delimitations of her soul. As result, doubts flowed out, messily, like water from a collapsed dam.

Celty wished she had someone she could talk to beside her own conscience, someone who could give her answers or, at least, that could find words convincing enough to make her continue with her life as Dullahan, as if nothing had happened. However, hills and forests and wild animals lived unaware of her inner turmoil, and the sky hadn't words to give her beside the rumbling of thunder far in the distance and the pouring rain. Her headless horse, Shooter, was a loyal companion, but Celty couldn't communicate with him beside some basic instructions like good Shooter, quiet or let's go.

Today, the warm sunset light seeped through the small windows of her living room. Celty's severed head lay on the table, as thought it was a creepy centerpiece, reddish-brown strands gleaming like copper wires. Eyelids were half-closed over an unmoved gaze, lips slightly parted. Lack of blood aside, the room looked like the scene of a macabre homicide and, even if she had always been headless, she felt as though she had been decapitated for real. I've told you. You must have killed them, Celty's head was supposed to say. Instead, it was silent as though asleep.

Celty dreaded the bond with her head had somehow been damaged after her decision to overlook her duty to kill every human who would cross her path.

She wondered what the scope of her existence now was, and what she was supposed to do with her life.

Inside her cottage, surrounded by a stillness broken only by the stream flowing, bird chirping outside, and a sporadic horse's neigh, she waited for the train of thought to slow down.

Today, Celty felt the uncertainty of life overburdening her immortal body and the curiosity of what lay over known horizons overcame the ancestral fear that prevented her from approaching the humans' world. She stood up, grabbed her severed head and galloped away on her coach.

The sun dove beyond the hooded hills, casting orange light on infinite fields and thick forests, and a starry night took its place. The wind blew, gently bending the treetops and the stems of vegetation. The backdrop of night was studded with stars, but Celty didn't look at them. Perhaps, far away in the darkness between the visible stars, her other self was looking toward her, crossing a distance of billions and billions light years through something that Celty could explain only as a connection. It felt so real she could almost touch it - the invisible wire that had been wrapped across her heart. Someone far away in the universe pulled it. She nudged Shooter to gallop faster.

The landscape changed around her, over and over, but Celty didn't avert her gaze from the sky above her, searching for clues, searching for truth. She lowered her gaze only when, beyond a hooded hill, the sky became illuminated by something else than stars - a halo that Celty usually identified as the humans' world. She had never approached it before, because she was meant to kill in the wild lands, as though to protect the sacredness of the place. For this reason, if she wanted to reach the place where humans lived, she was supposed to leave her head here with Shooter, just in case it no longer slumbered.

For the first time in many days - or years? or centuries? - Celty was thankful her head was asleep. Otherwise, every ounce of courage would miserably crumble under the voice of reason imploring her to go back, deep into the uninhabited lands.

She dismounted from the coach. Shooter neighed softly when she patted his neck before delving in the forest covering the hill. Holding the hem of her black skirt with one hand and parting the branches with the other, she reached the top. From here, the dark forest gradually faded into human dwellings and, then, into the pitch black of the sea.

A rope pressed on Celty's stomach when she started to climb down the hill. It was thick, adorned with white rectangular shapes that rocked in the wind like oddly shaped leaves. She crossed it.

In the woods, her steps weren't audible above the slight breeze seeping through the trees. She walked through the remaining part of the forest that covered the hill, towards the human village. A path made of an even, dark stone appeared in the distance; it was large, artificially enlightened. Between her and the street there were few rows of trees and something Celty couldn't quite identify - four identical pillars made of wood formed a canopy and, between them, there was a table. It was different, bigger than Celty's one, with benches instead than chairs.

Her shadow preempted her steps, wandering through the trees like an opaque stream. Celty followed immediately after, her steps light on the ground that was switching from the thick undergrowth to tender, short grass.

She was crossing the gazebo when she realized she wasn't alone.

Several feet at her left, stood a man. He couldn't see her, since his back faced her. He was tall, and something in his broad shoulders and golden hair felt familiar. It reminded Celty of someone she had known, someone she had looked so many times walking away. The man wore a white t-shirt, and that sounded unexplainably awkward to her. Through her invisible brain flashed blurred images of that same back, but it was clad in a black vest and a white shirt. The forest seemed too strange around this man, because she remembered him being surrounded by people and grey, tall buildings. The silence, too, didn't fit the space around him, and she could almost hear the loud noises that usually enveloped him - people chatting, wheels rolling, horns screaming like seagulls. They engulfed the sound of his steps as he took his leave, hand raised, a cigarette between index and middle finger. It was just a mumble: "See you next time, Celty."

Celty knew how her name rolled off his tongue.

She remembered how Shizuo spoke to her.

Suddenly, Shizuo spoke: "Izaya! What the hell is happening- Izaya! Talk to me!"

Scarlet eyes pierced Celty like a lightning streaks a tree.

If Celty had been gifted with a mouth, she would have screamed her lungs out. But there wasn't a head attached to her neck, there was just void and dark smoke which now flowed out in branches of shadows that vaulted across her body like an enraged swam. Under it, she was as though petrified.

"W-what the fuck! Izaya!" Shizuo thundered. "IZAYA!"

Celty turned. She ran away from those eyes, red as dried blood. Deep in her guts she knew they were dangerous, the light in them was as sharp as a dagger. She ignored the reason why she had never liked them, but she was glad her instinct had suggested to distance herself because the laugh she heard now was chilling, metallic, evil. It froze her whole body through her empty veins.

While terror forced her to decide whether to delve into the village or go back to her cottage in the wild lands, curiosity kept her feet in motion. She needed answers. She needed to see and touch and feel that what lay between her and the humans there weren't bonds, that they were meant to live in two different worlds, that she should just forget what she had felt. Izaya's laugh echoed at her back as she distanced herself, swift and silent like the breeze, downhill, toward the village. Her shadow curled across her neck, crafting a hood of shadows, thick like wool, black as a starless sky.

There was nobody in sight beside a lone, white-clad man in the distance, walking in the opposite direction.

Celty's smoke overflowed, curls of spiraling shadows escaping the hood. She averted her gaze as the man came closer. The sound of the human's steps was louder than hers, a constant thump of leather soles on asphalt. As though she was holding her breath, Celty kept her shadows from spilling out from the makeshift hood when she passed him.

The man stopped walking.

"Wait," he said.


The change was immediate. A delicate balance had just crumbled because of a single word uttered out of impulse. The black-clad, hooded figure stopped walking. Breath caught in Shinra's throat. He blinked, trying to distinguish reality from dream.

The mysterious creature was facing him, an index finger pointing at Shinra's face. It was so translucent and radiant that it looked as though it had sucked light right from the moon itself. From the slight curve of the breast, the figure was distinguishable as a woman; from the darkness and the trail of smoke coming from under her hood, she couldn't be human.

He smiled.

Shinra had recognized her. He had always believed they were bound by fate, destined to be together even though they were human and immortal spirit - even if she probably didn't know it yet. Shinra surged forward, instinct demanding to grab her hands to keep her from escaping him.

He was going to whisper how much he had desired to meet her, that since he had seen her for the first time, she had always been the object of his thoughts and dreams, when a shout resounded in the air.

Shinra recognized Izaya's name in it, screamed loud and feral by Shizuo's voice. Both of them jerked, she much probably out of surprise, Shinra because he had just seized her wrist, with a firm grip.

"Come with me," he whispered. "I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to protect you."

The resistance he expected didn't came. She followed him uphill, and she let him guide her into his house. Her wrist was pale and cold and lacked the ticking pulse of the living being. Her steps were as light as a bird's, the sound of her breath was absent. But she was real. Once she crossed the threshold, Shinra locked the door at her back and turned on the living room's lights.

When he released her wrist, the headless woman crossed her fingers above her breast, as though she was praying. "Come here," he said, and guided her toward the couch where they sat side by side. "By the way, I'm Shinra."

The woman turned toward him with a sudden jerk. The artificial lights of his living room bad concealed what lay under her hood, and Shinra observed the trail of black smoke flowing out of her severed neck. Of course she can't reply, he thought.

He lifted from the sofa and handed her a pen and a notebook. The hesitation in her fingers made him dread that she spoke a different language from his own or, perhaps, she couldn't write. When the woman started writing, Shinra leaned in, amazed.

Celty.

A smile reached his eyes. He lifted his hand to shake. "Pleased to meet you, Celty-"

The doorbell rang, breaking a moment of promise.

At his side, Shinra felt the headless woman stiffening as a baritone voice had just resounded from behind the closed door: "Shinra?"

Shinra seized her hand, holding her so tight he feared to hurt her. He waited.

The doorbell rang again. "Shinra? I'm sorry - ouch! - I think I need your help!"

Shinra didn't open the door.

He was aware it was selfish. He didn't care. He would do anything, even deny his duty as a doctor, even fighting the whole world, if that meant preventing Celty from bolting. He let Shizuo's steps fade, he let them be swallowed by the night and he blessed the silence that came afterwards. She was more important than anything, and anyone. He wouldn't let her go. Never.

"Don't worry, you're safe here," he breathed.

It took a while before Celty began writing again, but when she did it, her hand moved fast. Shinra leaned closer, just to read, written in sloppy words:

I don't know why I'm here.

Shinra just nodded.

I don't know who I am anymore.

From the way tendrils of smoke danced above her head, Shinra read that she was in a deep turmoil. Probably it was referred to the absence of the severed head that Celty was supposed to bring with her. Shinra thought that, without it, Celty wasn't so different from him anymore.

I don't know why, I have visions of-

She wavered for a moment, before her right hand restarted to write, fast as though she was in a hurry.

I don't know if they belong to my past life, or if they're visions of the other me who lives far away...

Her fingers trembled, before she wrote:

I'm scared!

Shinra went wide-eyed. "Tell me more," he said.

I can't quite describe them. They're messy, I can't understand them. They're sensation of knowing people, knowing voices, knowing humans.

The voice from before... I've already heard it! I think...

She stopped, probably pondering on the word choice.

I think I was fond of that man.

Shinra had to fight a wave of possessiveness as it rose within him, managing to remain silent, but barely.

Do you think it's possible that another me exists, somewhere else? Do you think it's possible that I'm feeling that the other me feels? Are those feelings... real?

She turned the page. In the blank paper she wrote:

You.

I don't know where, or when... But in a past life, or in another universe, we lived together - We were... I...

Her hand stopped. Shinra found himself unable to breathe until she would finish the sentence.

Then, something shifted in the smoke under the hood: a decision.

...I loved you.


"Multiverse," Izaya explained, even though Shinra wasn't quite listening, just looking outside, his eyes gleaming.

"Probably, beyond our universe, lie other universes with different physical laws, different physical constants-" Izaya shrugged, then continued talking: "Different relationships, I guess? It's interesting that she can communicate with herself from another universe, indeed..."

"She's beautiful," Shinra whispered. "The most beautiful being I've even seen, even more beautiful than I remembered."

Izaya raised an eyebrow. "And she even said you were lovers. Did she say why she didn't bring the head with her?"

Once again, Shinra ignored him.

The doctor had just told him that the Dullahan Izaya had seen in the forest was named Celty. If Izaya hadn't seen her himself, he would have never believed Shinra's words. A Dullahan, without the head under her arm, visiting their village? It sounded absurd. In the end, before Shinra could stop her from rejoining her head, she disappeared in the dead of night, leaving behind just a notebook filled with words related to a reality that didn't belong to this world.

"Tomorrow, I'll bring you to someone who has seen her too. I want you to see her properly," Shinra said. "Ah, I want to see her again-"

I want to see her too, Shinra.

"I see. Didn't she tell you where she lives so you can join her?"

Shinra shook his head. "I must discover it."

Izaya thought he had been lucky, after all. The headless woman hadn't brought the head with her yesterday evening, so she couldn't ferry him to Valhalla calling his name, but if Shinra needed to find her too - with this same, desperate need - things would prove to be easier than he expected. Izaya could use Shinra to reach her.

He was going to exhale a breath of relief, when Shinra said something that shook Izaya into his very core:

"I want to make her human."

This words, said with nonchalance, hit Izaya like a blow straight in the face. They brought him back to hell. His brows knitted as he breathed: "What do you mean?"

"I need to severe her head," Shinra said, terribly conversational. In his voice there was that trademark cheerfulness that made his words even creepier: "I mean, I need to severe the bond between her and the head. It's the head who called her back, it's the head who makes her kill humans. I must free her so we can live together like she saw in her visions."

"Don't you think that she's going to be mad at you for that?"

"She probably will be," Shinra replied, shrugging. "But I'm sure she'll forgive me."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Someone so perfect as Celty must be merciful as well, right?"

Izaya exhaled, and drank the last sip of his already cold soup from the dinner Shizuo had prepared him, that they were supposed to be eating together.

"You're idealizing her." Izaya started poking a slice of grilled beef. "You said you've seen her two times in your whole life - three if we include yesterday evening! And between the first time to the second twenty years had passed - You said you fell in love with her when you were four! You don't know anything about her, Shinra."

For a while, Shinra didn't spoke. Then, he replied with a question:

"Do you believe in love at first sight, Izaya-kun?"

Izaya tilted his head back, lips stretched in the smirk he crafted exactly when the layer of rationality protecting his heart felt brittle, thin as an eggshell. "I don't," he replied, without a hint of uncertainty.

Yet, an old memory had resurfaced, and now it kept poking him like a pebble in a shoe - the smell of dusty curtains from his room back in the Military Academy, himself when he was sixteen, the palm of his hand pressed against a cold window glass. Outside, a blond-haired boy fought against two dozen of his seniors, his feet flickering, fast as though he was performing a dance, his punches unerring. He sent men twice his weight flying across the air and then twitching on the ground. One after another, they were all doomed to fall. Soon the fight was over; the boy was the only one still standing. It was as though physical laws changed for everyone who approached him - they found themselves flying as though there was no gravity bounding their feet to the ground, and the time had flowed too fast for every attempt of self defense. Most likely, reality had warped for Izaya too, because he was dizzy, too shocked and mesmerized to divert his own gaze from him. He felt a pull toward the blond-haired boy, like metal to a magnet, and he just wanted, needed to meet him. He swallowed.

The sharp sun caught in the boy's hair, a flash of gold gleamed across the grey soil, like a miracle.

Like a curse.


Izaya exhaled a breath of relief when Shinra finally took his leave. He'd had enough of the doctor's ramblings about a headless woman that, in her incomplete form, didn't induce even a grain of concern in him. He didn't care what happened to Shinra yesterday evening, or how he thought the Dullahan won't hate him for cutting the bond with her head. He was only interested in few questions: When would he meet her again so she could open the gate of Valhalla for him? Where could he find her? And, finally, how could he discover such place before Shinra made her unable to call his name?

He had just started enjoying solitude, pondering about how much time he needed to begin walking on his own, when something out of the window caught his attention - the silhouette of a dark-haired woman dressed in yellow and pink. He recognized her as the bakery shop lady; Kyouko-san, as the beast was used to call her.

Wherever he said her name, Shizuo's voice came out like velvet, low-pitched, a thunder across a dark sky. There was fondness wrung from the depths of his heart, when the monster had said, few hours before: "Kyouko-san will come with us!"

When Shizuo's words had reached him, at first, Izaya didn't feel anything.

Then, Izaya remembered, he had laughed, and laughed, and laughed. What happened next was doomed to remain too blurry in his memories, too surreal.

A monster wouldn't have ever responded that way to Izaya's laugh.


When Shizuo had leaned on him, it was as though he had just put the whole world in a momentary parenthesis. No sound came from the outside, the village was asleep like when Shizuo came back from work late at night. The wind didn't carry the smell of salt and molded lawn anymore - everything had been put under a spell. Probably, Izaya had been bewitched too, because he smelt nothing but the soap from Shizuo's t-shirt, lavender on his blond strands, faint tobacco on his breath, the scent coming from his honeyed skin, hot and sweet. The universe stopped expanding, wheels of time ceased their turns, and space reduced to their breaths. Shizuo was on top of him, the palm of his hands on Izaya's forearms, keeping him still but without being forceful, like he caressed a willow branch, bending it with barely more pressure than the breeze.

It was too late when Izaya had realized that he wasn't pretending to laugh anymore. He was just drinking Shizuo's image in - his blond hair, shining like thin, golden necklaces, the color of his eyes, his dark pink lips, moistened, juicy like plump fruits that Izaya wanted to bite.

Shizuo's hands shifted up, thumbs brushing the same pale wrists he had once sprained out of violence. Once Izaya and he were palm to palm, slowly, Shizuo intertwined their fingers. The hold was firm and warm, impossible to ignore, as though Shizuo had just crucified him on the sheets. Shizuo's fingers curled, fingertips resting on the back of Izaya's hands - a sensation that was no longer as foreign as it should be. Yet, Izaya knew that he must break free, because the rush of excitement he felt now would bring him transcend his rationality, pushing him further.

He needed to escape but, once again, he couldn't do it.

Izaya was a man gifted with rationality, but his determination would break like waves on rocks when it came face to face with his inner desires. Izaya would have shivered if he had allowed himself to, just thinking at Shizuo's raw violence awakening and swallowing him whole. His nerves sang in the anticipation of pain. His monster's hate, Izaya needed all of it, pure, without pity as filter, deep into his core.

Hurt me, he wanted to say.

Though, there wasn't a hint of violence or a glimpse of rage in Shizuo's face before he buried it in the crook of Izaya's neck. Chests brushed and Shizuo's weight settled on him, hips between Izaya's thighs, tangling their bodies together.

For a long moment, Shizuo stood still, just breathing slowly, the tip of his nose resting on Izaya's neck. Suddenly his hold on Izaya's fingers tightened, and he lifted his head a bit, enough to let his lips linger on Izaya's jaw.

Shizuo kissed his cheek.

The kiss was barely suggested, soft, with no sound besides Izaya's frantic pulse striking his skin.

Shizuo drew a sharp breath, as though he was going to say something. When Izaya turned his head toward him, Shizuo's lips lay a hairsbreadth from his own. Izaya could feel his breath, the sweetness of it, the warmth, and his lips parted to drink all of it. He shouldn't desire it, but he did, the yearning was painful, overpowering. Rationality reduced to a background sound, shouting at him to stop, and when he could see his own image reflected in Shizuo's eyes, it fell silent, annihilated.

More.

Shizuo's eyes widened and he jerked away.

"...Work," Shizuo had muttered, lifting from the bed. He put on his bartender uniform with the speed of a quick-change artist, his back facing Izaya. He didn't even lose time knotting the necktie as Izaya had taught him. He dashed out of the room, leaving the dinner he had prepared for both of them untouched. Izaya heard him stomping downstairs and closing the door at his back with a loud thump. When Shizuo ran down the hill, Izaya realized the sounds of the outer world had come back. The spell was broken.

Izaya exhaled and lifted himself to a sitting position.

He grabbed the crutches and headed toward the small table where Shizuo had left the dinner - soup, rice and grilled beef. It smelled very good. Even if, most probably, the soup was too salty for Izaya's own taste, as usual. He grabbed the bowl, feeling the warmth seeping through his fingers.

He took a sip, and turned his head sideways, grimacing.

Too salty.

Izaya had repeated to himself he felt great - soup aside, of course.

He really felt great!

That little... thing with Shizuo hadn't bothered him, at all.


Kyouko disappeared behind a door, now closed, and Izaya carefully wiped any trace of emotion from his face.

He stood up.

The rhythmic thump of the crutches on the wooden floor sounded distant, from another reality. He turned on the shower jet and got undressed.

He stepped in the shower, welcoming the sting of pain from his healing knee.

Cold water fell on him and he stood motionless, bangs almost hiding his half-lidded eyes and his blank stare, glued on an indefinite spot on the light-blue tiles. He breathed softly, letting rivulets of water skim his lips and gliding down his chest.

Slowly, as if to pretend it wasn't happening, his hand shifted between his thighs. Shame rose in his chest, not for the action itself, but for the thoughts that came with it. Though, better to be ashamed of himself now than tonight, when Shizuo would search for his hand. Better now than when Shizuo would embrace him again.

He closed his eyes, and felt again the chaste touch of Shizuo's lips on his cheek.

Water drops poured frozen on him, but he blessed them. If they were the way to forget the monster's heat so be it. He didn't want to remember, he didn't want to think of how Shizuo's chest would feel on his back right now. Shizuo would hug him from behind and Izaya would turn his head to kiss Shizuo's neck again. It was easy imagining it, he remembered the taste of Shizuo's skin even too accurately - the slight saltiness and the sweetness under it, the way the beast's heartbeat had sped up when Izaya's tongue curled across his Adam's apple. Izaya wanted to kiss him again, until other marks would bloom on his tanned skin.

A thin, vertical wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows.

It was too vivid, he knew those sensation far too well. The only thing he didn't know was how Shizuo's hand would feel moving from Izaya's chest down to his stomach, rising and falling with his quickening heartbeat, and then down again, to wrap around his cock.

Izaya tightened his own hold.

Probably, Shizuo would touch him with a serious grip, making a drop forming at the tip before pulling down the foreskin, and then he would stroke him, changing the rhythm, until he would find the one Izaya enjoyed the most, and then-

Shizuo's name blew through him, wiping away his defenses until he was hopeless, lost, unmade.

Breaths shattered on Izaya's lips, and his hand was ceaseless.

The flat of his fingernail teased the slit and the slight pain made him feel the shift in his body towards orgasm. Memories came in waves, inconsequential sparks of images and scents and sounds - The curve of a bare hip in the moonlight, the smell of the sea on tanned skin, a whisper saying Izaya's name. He bit his lower lip, and came.

Gradually, he became aware of his frantic heartbeat, and the ache in his leg, and the still pouring water, washing away white ribbons. He turned his head sideways, smiling bitterly at the realization that there was no water and no soap and nothing in the universe that could wash away Shizuo from himself.

Memories fade, without fail.

Shizuo wouldn't. Shizuo would haunt him until his last breath, as something Izaya could never escape.

Shizuo's voice saying her name played in Izaya's ear, over and over again. Yet, Izaya refused to categorize the feeling squeezing his heart. It was like rage, the way it billowed in his chest. He couldn't push it back, it gathered inside of him until he struggled to get a solid breath.

The shower tiles creaked under his fist, a thin web bloomed from where his knuckles had landed.

He swore.


A/N: Thanks to my beta, Aira Kay!