...Ta-daa. Chapter two. *piku piku* It didn't /really/ take me six months to do, I sort of wrote the first bit way back in December or January or somesuch, which is why I'm not very happy with it, and then finish the rest over the course of the month of May. And yes, I'm only posting it now. ^^;x
Many, many thanks to Flamebyrd. Now, enjoy. Chapter notes follow.
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Subaru blinked. The Sakurazukamori, cold-blooded, heartless assasin, the embodiment of dark onmyoujitsu...
...Was inviting him for ice cream?
The transition from the note of carefully controlled, tight-rope walking danger that the conversation had held to its incongruous ending threw him off-balance, and he found himself entirely not knowing how to respond to the other. For his part, Seishirou was smiling at him cheerfully, no hint of the earlier predatory look in his eyes--and if Subaru didn't know better, he might have convinced himself that he had been imagining things, earlier.
For a moment, he was tempted to accept the offer--after all, if the assassin wanted him dead, he would be dead, without anything fancy involving ice-cream.
His mind threw him a memory of a slip of paper and neat fax from his grandmother, however--and a quick glance at his watch showed that if he didn't leave /now/, he was going to be late for his job. He offered Seishirou an apologetic look. "Sorry, but I have work to do... Maybe some other time."
The phrase was more polite lip-service than an actual promise, since Subaru quite fully expected never to see the assassin again. Seishirou's expression, however, didn't shift from its pleasant smile.
"I'll look forward to it, Subaru-kun," he replied, no hint in his voice to indicate whether or not he was serious.
Subaru left, idly considering the lies people told under the cover of tact and social order, and didn't look back--nor did he notice the cry which sounded above him, a harsh, proud scream, like that of an eagle...
...Or Shikigami.
He made it to the place of appointment without much mishap, and was even on time. The apartment wasn't large, by any standards, although it wasn't small, either. 'Homey', he supposed, was the word that most would use. He was greeted at the door by a worried face--a lady who might have been beautiful once, long since gone to crows' feet and smile lines.
"I'm Sumeragi Subaru," he introduced himself. "Is Mitsuki-san in?"
The lady relaxed and opened the door fully, smiling. "That would be me," she said, indicating that he should come in. "Thank you for coming at such short notice, Sumeragi-san."
"Subaru," he corrected her, absently, as he followed her down a short hallway and into what was presumably a living room. "Just--Subaru. Please."
"Subaru-san, then. Can I offer you anything to drink?"
Subaru declined politely, looking around the room. There wasn't much--somewhat like the living room at his own place, most of what it held consisted of a sofa, a coffee table, and a family altar burning at a corner.
"I understand that you and your daughter have been suffering similar nightmares for a few weeks?" Subaru asked, mentally going over the fax his grandmother had sent him.
She nodded.
"Have you any idea what might have triggered it? Any unusual happenings, just before that? Ah... death in the family?"
Mitsuki shook her head, 'no'. Unlikely that it was a ghost, then, although the possibility couldn't quite be eliminated. A wandering spirit, perhaps... He thanked her quietly, kneeling on the floor to begin his search.
There was, after all, work to be done.
Subaru closed his eyes and raised his hand before his face in a two fingered gesture.
It wasn't magic, but perhaps it was close.
To see the world through the eyes of another--
--/Through the eyes of a Shikigami/--
In his mind, the room was a flat, colourless plane--the way a crow would view it. His spirit bird whispered to him, as he watched... a dry, dusty murmur as familiar to him as his own voice. It spoke in a tongue he did not recognize, yet somehow understood, as it always did--
/Look./ it whispered. /See. Watch. Have patience--not the patience of the hunter, but the patience of one to whom all things eventually go, as long as one has patience, and watches, and waits.../
Subaru watched.
/Look. Listen. There is nothing here, but what you wait for, what you watch for, you will find.../
Mitsuki-san was a brighter spot in a sea of greys, lit not by spiritual energy, but by the simple fact that she was alive. He 'saw' her looking, wondering, and watching, but she was not what he was searching for. He moved on.
/Watch, and wait--see yourself, see yourself in your reflection of reality--/
Still, the images came, as he went over the room nearly inch by inch, linked with his spirit bird.
/There,/ satisfaction overlaid its century old voice like a mask.
/Do you see it?/
He saw it.
Subaru melded further with his Shikigami's mind, examining the place it had pointed out carefully. /Something/ was wrong there, something dark and tainted--
He thought he recognized it.
/Many types of spiritual being exist--some are harmless, but some are not. One of the less common types you might come across are the gaki, which feed on anything from music and emotion, to flesh and blood and souls./
A memory of a lesson from a long ago time, in the rich, scratchy voice of his grandmother--
/They can take on human forms, if they wish, but they are, naturally, far less noticeable--they can look like the mist which lies low over graves, or the darkness that rises from a fire--/
--Or the innocuous smoke curling up from an a stick of incense at an altar, which he only just realised was unlit--
Subaru opened his eyes and was momentarily disorientated, as the world flickered in and out of colour, a kaleidescope of warm browns and creams in one second, and flat grey in another. He saw what he thought was a glimpse of himself, diaphonous and far away, as though he were looking at a mirror through a shroud...
Then he blinked, and his Shikigami went back to its place at the back of his mind, and everything began to make sense again. Standing up, he made his way towards the room, ignoring the mild complaint from his slightly cramped legs. Subaru sank to a cross-legged position in front of the altar, pulled his ceremonial knife from his belt and placed it on the floor.
Curiously, he held a hand towards the stick of incense--it was cool, even to his direct touch, despite the smoke that curled up from it. Ash flaked onto his fingers, soft and gray and lightly sandalwood scented.
He traced the symbol of his family onto the altar using the ash, an upright star that glowed faintly once the pattern was completed. Mitsuki-san was standing at the edge of his vision--he ignored her again, putting his hands together, twisted and locked in a pose so familiar to him. The smoke turned dark and twisted in the air, as though a breeze had caught hold of it, whipping the grey column about without making it dissipate.
He drew a handful of ofuda, holding them fanned between his fingers--five, to correspond with the five points of a star--
--to contain--
"On."
--to bind--
"On, battarei-ya sowaka."
--to seal--
The ancient syllables came to him with the ease of long practice, focusing his will and channeling it to his purpose.
--to expel--
And occasionally--
--to destroy--
The star marked out in ash flared suddenly, echoing the glow of the pristine white cards that he held. Subaru continued to chant, altering rhythm and cadence under the direction of his own intuition and the dry voice at the back of his head.
He threw the ofuda with a flick, letting them settle into their positions around the altar--
/A flash of grey and white and hunger--not mindless, not malicious, just longing, like everything that had ever lived, to stay alive.../
A low keen filled the room, plaintive and grating. There was nothing 'natural' about the smoke now--it thrashed wildly against the confines of the ward set against it, battering at the faintly blue outline of its prison.
Some spirits, he could coax back to their rightful plane--the further threshold of the realms of the dead. Some, he could exorcise, giving them the peace that they didn't know they craved.
Some, however--the ones who hovered between this realm and the next, living, yet not alive--he could do nothing for.
And some, like this one, with its dreams of pain and blood, he did not dare let exist.
Subaru balanced the power holding the ward together carefully, and drew his dagger.
He didn't use words, this time--didn't need them, as he carefully wove threads of magic with his will, keying the almost tangible force to another focus-card and the ceremonial knife he held. The struggles of the spirit became more pronounced, as it flung itself against the walls of barrier holding it, gone from flickering blue to deep, clear cerulean.
He poured more power into the five points that anchored the kekkai, reinforcing weak spots caused by the crazed pounding of the gaki, even as he continued constructing the tapestry of power that was beginning to surround his dagger.
It wasn't /easy/, to destroy a spirit--how was one to kill something which had never been alive, after all?
It wasn't easy, nor was it done often--but it was still possible.
The plain-hilted knife was beginning to glow, even to ordinary vision. To his Shikigami, it was a mass of bright thread in the shape of a knife, like a cocoon--shifting and somehow alive, almost sentient in its purpose. The gaki had settled down somewhat, occasionally still testing the strength of the walls that surrounded it--
He put the knife down and raised his hands to begin his next spell.
The spirit regarded him warily from within its confines. The air became still, like the calm which heralded a storm, crackling with energy as yet unspent, to be released of its own will, and none other--
Subaru harnessed that power, concentrating--
--And without warning, the spirit struck--
The wards shattered, the power they had contained draining abruptly--and the gaki was free.
The storm broke.
Subaru hastily threw a shield over Mitsuki--it wouldn't last long, not if the spirit was powerful enough to break through his kekkai, but it would buy a little time, at least.
And that was, after all, the most important thing.
He snatched the dagger up, holding it carelessly by the blade, which, against all reason, felt warm against his skin.
/You want blood?/
His grip tightened, and the metal bit into his palm--it hurt, a little, but that didn't matter. He let the parallel cuts bleed freely, transferring the dagger to his other hand.
/I'll give you blood./
The gaki turned, distracted. He didn't have enough power to spare for constructing a set of secondary shields over his own protections--and as it attacked, he found that he wouldn't have had the /time/.
Subaru closed his eyes, trying to finish weaving his spell, part of his mind anticipating the pain of the spirit's strike--
Something rustled.
Something screamed.
And the benign presence at the back of his mind stirred, and spread its wings...
Spell completed, Subaru opened his eyes--and saw shadow fighting smoke, a shadow that winged away once it sensed his attention, leaving the path between him at the gaki clear.
It lunged, again, but it was his turn to attack.
The dagger hit the gaki and stuck fast, as though there was something solid behind the facade of smoke. Subaru jerked the knife to the side, with a sound of ripping cloth--drove it in further--
The gaki shrieked--a sound of death, and not of defiance, like the scream that had sounded earlier. The edges of the figure blurred, diffusing as real smoke did, becoming thinner and lighter, bringing with it the scent of sandalwood mixed with decay--
Then Subaru's dagger was abruptly lodged in nothing, the scream stopped, and the smoke continued to dissipate, until a sharp breeze chased it entirely from the room.
Subaru watched the numbers displayed above the elevator controls click their slow way towards 'one', finally letting the doors slide open with a quiet beep once it reached the ground floor. He stepped out of the lift, hoped vaguely that it wasn't too late to catch a taxi, and stared at the ground as he made his way to the road.
It was this that made him take some time to register the dark shape which not-quite blocked his way, leaning against the wall just out of his path. Subaru looked up.
"Hello, Sakurazuka-san."
"Seishirou," the other said. "Hello, Subaru-kun."
The assassin's arms were crossed carelessly as he shifted into a more comfortable position against the wall, casting an odd shadow with the angle of the sun.
An almost... eagle-shaped shadow.
"That was your Shikigami, wasn't it?" Subaru asked quietly. Seishirou didn't reply, merely tilted his head in what Subaru supposed could pass as a nod, raising one loosely-fisted hand.
It was as though part of Seishirou's shadow had detached itself and somehow transferred itself to his wrist--there was /something/ there, something misty, diaphonous, which resolved into--
--An eagle, piercing bronze eyes looking directly into his own, wings mantled, claws gleaming, magnificent and beautiful and deadly.
And his own Shikigami stirred further.
Subaru held a cautious hand out to the eagle, which stared at him disdainfully for a while longer, before ducking its head and brushing it across the back of his hand.
It felt odd--a little like velvet, a little like marble, and very, very cold, but the gesture made him smile slightly.
"...Why did you send it?"
"Because I wanted it to. Because it wanted to."
He ran his fingers across the Shikigami's head, although it made his fingers slightly numb, and it let him.
He supposed that this was how it felt, to touch a shadow.
Seishirou was watching him--he took his attention off the eagle and returned that steady bronze gaze. The assassin flicked his wrist in a practiced movement, and silently, the eagle winged upwards--circling their heads once, and disappearing mid-air. Hands now free, Seishirou took his cigarettes out of his coat pocket, and lit one.
He glanced over at Subaru questioningly, tapped another out of the box, and offered it to him.
There was a long pause--
And Subaru shrugged, then took it.
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Yummy chewey chapter notes:
The idea for Sei-chan to send his Shikigami came from Leareth, although the freaky psychedelic Subaru's-Shikigami thing was my tortured imagination.
I made the magic up. /All/ of it. The only part I /didn't/ make up was the chant, which was from the OAV. X.x The gaki came from a long list of spirit-things-that-Subaru-can-fight, which was written up by me and Aine... ah... last year. Ehe.
The /original/ ending of this chapter was /going/ to be Sei-chan cooking dinner for Subaru in Subaru's own apartment, because I had a wonderful mental image of Aproned!Sei-chan smiling up with that delightful innocent smirk as Subaru walks in through the door with both eyebrows raised.
"Seishirou-san... locks are there for a reason."
It was scrapped for being wierd, implausible, and since the point of the rewrite was to get things to go slower... yes. So instead, we get Sei-chan offering Subaru a cigarette, which is also a rather nice mental image, although I don't know whether or not it works. And remember, smoking is a bad habit.
The Shikigami fascinate me, and I wanted to give them a bigger role. And Aine-chan encouraged that. So go and blame /her/, not me. I'm /also/ making up everything that involve the Shikigami, because so little about it is said in the manga. X.x And just so you know, Shikigami = the three-headed crow of Subaru's, or Sei-chan's eagle. And shikigami without a capital letter = those little bird-things that Subaru and Sei-chan make out of ofuda.
This was a very long author's note. But anyway. This chapter took six months to do when I had a full idea of what was going to happen, I don't even know what will take place next chapter, so, uh... ^^;;;x
