Idols I have Loved so Long
By Eva_kokaze_black (RhblackY@netscape.net )
Disclaimer: YnM belongs to Yoko Matsushita, not to me. Otherwise, I'd put myself in the canon...
All comments, etc., are welcome. Notify before archiving. Slight T/H, T/T. Takes place sometime after Kyoto Arc but before Gensou Kai Chapter. Excuse any Japanese errors; I read YnM in Chinese. ~_~
Idols I have Loved so Long-A Yami no Matsuei Fanfiction
CHAPTER FOUR
*
Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong;
Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup,
And sold my Reputation for a Song.
-The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, LXIX
***
In the early shell-colored light of morning he went down the steps to the street and started walking, taking occasional bites of the leftover rice cake in his right hand as he went. He knew Ruka would be watching his passage down the road; he could strongly sense her behind him, a luminous contented pink mixed unevenly with the gray of worry and indecision. He finished the rice cake and started on another before he realized that he was in the vicinity of a large group of young people in the assorted uniforms of the town's handful of secondary schools and had already been seen and so could not move to avoid passing among them. From the window where she watched Ruka's contentment disappeared and the quivers of gray darkened as he approached the students, several of whom were in his own class.
"Oh look," they said as a greeting, lifting eyebrows and hands (to conveniently whisper behind if necessary), just a fraction later than propriety demanded, "it's Tsuzuki Asato-kun!" "Tsuzuki!" The boys of the group asked, superficially kindly, if Asato was going to join any of the clubs at school this year, finally. The girls simpered, saccharin, giggling at their companions' ingeniously barbed questions.
The haze of Ruka's worry sharpened, and Asato wriggled his toes in his shoes and said nothing, continuing to walk until an ankle appeared from nowhere and he flailed towards earth.
***
It was cold.
A patter of something stinging against his cheek, and then colorless silence. He sent his mind in concentric circles, frantic, panting for even the slightest motion of any nearby human presence, and found none. None anywhere, for miles and miles...dozens of miles, hundreds of miles.
In his dreaming he wept.
***
She was always so patient with him, practically dragging him along the floor to the beat of the music (which he could never catch). "And one-two-three and one-two-three...you're doing better.Western dance isn't easy to learn."
"Right." He dropped onto the tatami with a sigh. "And fish can fly."
Ruka smiled at him. "Are you hungry, Asato?"
"Er..." his stomach grumbled loudly. "Yes."
As she made him his early supper he glanced pensively at her back. "What's the matter?"
"Ah...nothing. I just...heard something. It's nothing." I feel like I'm crying...but why?
***
Some time ago his fingers had started to dig into the mattress, and he pulled himself from the bed with a frightful stiffness in his upper back and shoulders. Less than ten inches from the tip of his nose Hisoka's face, pallid under the moon and smeared with tears. He pushed the small distance and with a snuffle pressed his face into the soft wet skin. Perhaps wherever Hisoka's mind had gone in his dreams, he would come back if he could feel Tsuuzki nearby...he breathed in, deeply. Let him hear me.
***
Coming through the whiteness, a face.
A lovable face. So familiar. He couldn't see it because of the snow--if it was snow. The name almost out of his throat and in the warm air. Ruka's face? The blood-warm air...Ruka's blood on the street, and not a little pockmark on the front of the foreign carriage...Ruka's blood and his hands, wet with it. And then he was lying in it and he was sobbing in it and then cold. Was it Ruka's ghost?
"Ruka." He called the ghost and it shivered; he shouted, thinking that like a candle's flame it would vanish. Instead it solidified like ice and pushed at him and cupped frozen arms around him and caressed him and called him Asato and he could only cry heavingly into its hard shoulder. The tears melted the ice and the shoulder was warm and human and the colored thoughts flooded his brain and he welcomed it. And knew who the face belonged to, suddenly, and he cried, "Tsuzuki!"
The face was bent above his head but the voice was so distant he cringed. "Hisoka."
"Where?..."
"Asleep."
"Oh." And then the voice was there against his ear and breathing hotly and his eyes were open, and he stared at a perfectly round and enternally white moon, his ears singing.
"And now you're awake." He was also very warm, and knew precisely who was holding him as though he were a buoy in an endless ocean no longer chill.
***
"My god, Tsuzuki, no wonder Hisoka-chan slept for so long! D'you know what you slipped in this mousse of yours?"
"...Oops. Guess I accidentally used the ground-up what-you-call-it instead of sugar..."
"That would be my ground-up what-you-call it, thank you very much!"
Hisoka put down his book and proceeded to bellow at Watari. "And you finish the chemical tests after I wake up? And what about that sleeping medicine stuff?" He kicked the door shut as a frightened scientist ran out and glared at his partner. "You know what Tatsumi-san will say about the window..."
Tsuzuki sniffled. "Yes." He looked up when Hisoka didn't say anything and asked, gently, "What did you...er, dream about? No, you don't have to tell me," he added upon seeing Hisoka's expression darken, "I...I can probably guess."
Suddenly the boy had lunged at him and was stammering something incoherent and choking him with a vise-grip around the neck and crying, all at once. Wide-eyed he pried the hands from around his windpipe and wondered if Hisoka had been trying to kill him or talk to him. Perhaps he should have just left like Watari...
"Never leave me alone!" Hisoka looked up, a fierce trembling threatening to take over his face and crumple it like a child's. "Please!"
"I'm...sorry," said Tsuzuki, trying to look like this was perfectly normal behavior and of course he would be glad to hear his partner out instead of running off to get himself some pastry. Nice, comforting pastry that didn't pop out with freakish emotional breakdown episodes every now and then.
"I saw...I saw you."
"Me?"
"Ruka...and you...only I was you and I saw--I saw what happened."
Tsuzuki's lips felt paralyzed. "Happened?"
"With the accident. Ruka and...you." Hisoka was beginning to get uncomfortable, now. "The carriage..."he trailed off when Tsuzuki lowered his head. "I...I suppose you know." He stiffly put out his arm and dropped it, regretting ever telling Tsuzuki what he'd seen. He's too fragile, I should have kept quiet...
"How could you have seen?!" Tsuzuki caught his arm as he tried to slip past. "How?..." His grip around Hisoka's hand loosened. "It's all my fault. You see? I was...am a killer. I killed her." He clenched his teeth and dragging his hand over his face, said, halfway between a whisper and a scream, "I'm a killer! I...now you know. You've seen it. And of course it hadn't been an accident, Hisoka. It was my fault. It was...all my fault..." His partner flung arms around him, arresting his words. "Don't."
"Hi--"
"It was an accident." Hisoka closed his eyes, willing his mind to shut out the terrible montage, playing over and over in his head. Ruka smiling as she took her brother's hand, and then the dark shape behind her, a black metal monster (a man with glasses and fearful blue eyes behind the panel of glass). And he saw it before she did but stood there unmoving and then she ducked in front of him, trying in her last instant of life to protect him. And then silence. And then her blood on his hand, her bloodstained and broken hand limp in his own. Her blood... With a start Hisoka pulled himself from Tsuzuki and, panting, put his hands to his temples. I forgot...he must have remembered that and I must have just read it. Or was it me who remembered? Are we even any different anymore?
No. We were never different at all. We both...we both lost our idols. We both lost everything...
But at least, said Tsuzuki's voice, softly, in his mind. At least we've got each other.
END IDOLS I HAVE LOVED SO LONG
***
CODA
"My lord," said Konoe-kachou, bowing to the empty throne. "They've...it's happened."
"Yes." The room reverberated with the one word. "We hope Tsuzuki is all right? And his young partner?"
"They're fine." Konoe looked up slightly, almost timidly. "My lord, do you think Tatsumi-san will suspect?"
"No."The voice was firm. "The spell we put on him and Tsuzuki when he first arrived in our realm was very strong. Unless Kurosaki one day reveals all of what he had seen, our spell cannot fail. Neither Tsuzuki or Tatsumi will know what Kurosaki now alone knows. And we doubt he remembers everything from the dream. But," the voice of Enmadaiou hardened, "if he shows signs otherwise, then we will have to silence him."
"Yes, my lord." Konoe bowed.
"Go, then."
"Yes, my lord." The great doors shut behind the Kachou, and only Enmadaiou was left on his golden throne.
"Tsuzuki...fate made you." He went to the shelves lining one enormous wall of his hall and a sheaf of papers bound together with countless spells floated to his hand. "Your fate...not even we know." He looked up to the ceiling, decorated with hundreds of impossibly delicately hand-carved dragons and mystical beasts, horns and scales and feathers everywhere. "You are the first and the last. And all we knew was that you are the key. The key to everything."
END CODA
Afterword (Afterparagraph, more like): Well. Is this the beginning of an epic saga? *cue dramatic Star Wars-esque music* Depends on the kind of feedback I get, of course! ~____~ Any questions can be cleared up by a simple email, and whatever kinds of comments will be welcome(Although if you try to flame me, be prepared for a war...*evil look* ). -e.k.b.-
