After The Fact Chapter 2: Sakurazuka Setsuka, a x/1999 fanfic

Disclaimer: Characters have been borrowed from CLAMP's anime and manga series, Tokyo Babylon and X.

Spoilers for side story of X-16: Sakurazuka Seishirou.

This is a companion to Destiny Foreordained.

Title: After The Fact

Part 2: Sakurazuka Setsuka

Cotton wool. That was the first thing he noticed. Lots and lots and lots of fluffy white clouds/cotton wool all around him, an endless span that stretched as far as the eye could see. The man who had been Sakurazuka Seishirou on Earth looked all around him. He was looking, quite simply, for a signpost. Whoever ran the afterlife, he surmised, should be someone well organised enough to provide thoughtful signs pointing the way to "Eighteen Courts of Hell" or "This Way To Paradise", or something equally helpful.

Wait—the clouds were parting—the mist was clearing. He narrowed his eyes, squinting into the distance. Amidst the fluffy white clouds appeared a very familiar figure, coming towards him. She was barely twenty metres from him, when his astonished brain registered her identity.

"Okaa-san."

It was confirmation that he was no longer part of the land of the living.

The woman he had known as Sakurazuka Setsuka smiled up at him.

He noted the differences in her. She was dressed in a simple brown kimono that was plain and unadorned, and the sash was a deep russet colour that matched the brown. She looked as young as before, but there was a maturity and steadiness in her face that had been missing when she was alive. Also she looked more…sane. Gone was that fragility he had sensed in her when they had both been alive, a fragility that bespoke of a mind that was threatening to fly apart any moment, held only by the bonds of a Sakurazukamori. The Setsuka here was calm and patient, and strong. Her eyes were also surprisingly clear and tranquil. They had lost the slightly insane gleam that always lay behind her eyes. Another notable absence was that of the childlike, doll-like quality that had marked her. She looked more like a mature woman now.

"Seishirou," she murmured, smiling kindly at him. She held out her arms.

He embraced her tightly and rested his chin on top of her head, feeling absurdly as if he was a little boy clinging to his mother. "Okaa-san," he said again. "You look very well—as beautiful as I remember you."

She drew back a little and her smile broadened with amusement, something he could not recall ever seeing on her face, not in that human gentleness. "Still so charming…" She tilted her head up to get a better look at him. "Oh, but you've grown up, Seishirou. So tall…and much, much more handsome. I always knew you would be so handsome." She laughed, and then sobered. "But also, you look older." Her voice was quiet. "You look so tired. You do know why I am here, don't you?"

He shrugged. "Not in precise terms, but I can guess."

"I won't be here long," she told him. "I just came to take you to the place for transition."

"And that would be?"

She smiled sadly. "I'm not sure. I don't belong here, you know. I'm just allowed to take you there, and…to talk to you…" She looked away.

"Where do you belong then? And what are we going to talk about?"

She sighed a little and leaned on his arm, carefully steering him in a certain direction. "I'm here…to apologise…to explain things." Her face softened as she turned to him. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "For everything, Seishirou. Now I am no longer who I was on Earth—I can apologise."

Seishirou searched in his coat pocket for a cigarette—and found none. "Well," he said pleasantly, "there's no need to apologise, okaa-san. We did what we had to do. It is the way of the Sakurazukamori, after all." To his surprise, he found a hint of bitterness creeping into his voice, and he had to clench his jaw against the emotion that threatened to erupt.

Setsuka's voice was soft and low. "Yes. Yes, it is. But I have to tell you…everything. My real name, as you now know, is Suzuki Setsuka. But I was born…Sumeragi Setsuka. The same family that…holds the balance with us…"

Seishirou blinked. The Tree had not told him this.

"Mine was a very distant branch of the family, the Okinawa branch. The branch you are familiar with is the Kyoto branch, and the—the main one, so to speak." Setsuka sighed a little. "Don't interrupt, Seishirou. I know I didn't tell you all this, but it wasn't something you needed to know. I was born to be the next Sakurazukamori, but the Sumeragis kept me away in seclusion for the first twelve years of my life. They didn't want me to become the Sakurazukamori."

Seishirou frowned. "Why not? They of all people should know the truth behind the reasons why we exist."

His mother gave him a small smile. "They're conservatives."

"Ah."

Setsuka's smile widened. "But the Sumeragi head has always been a liberal."

"Not number eleven," pointed out Seishirou.

Setsuka's face saddened. "That was because I killed her son…my cousin Seiryuu. He—he was the only one who was nice to me…the others kept away from me because I was the next Sakurazukamori. Even my parents stayed away from me. I suppose they thought I would suddenly up and drive my hand through their chests." Her lips turned up in a mirthless smile. "They kept me in seclusion for twelve years. Then on the eve of my thirteenth birthday, the Sakurazukamori came and took me away. Without the family's permission, of course."

"Of course," Seishirou deadpanned, and mother and son exchanged smiles.

"But it was so difficult for me to become the Sakurazukamori after twelve years without training—one must rule with the head and not the heart, remember? And everything must be sacrificed to duty." Setsuka turned to him. "That was why I wanted you to grow up without me, without emotional ties. I didn't understand what it meant, this sacrificing of duty, until I had you." She looked away. "I was so young then…I was married, you know, and I became for a short while Suzuki Setsuka…" She looked away. "We divorced after a year. I did have a baby, though…you. And my teacher, the Sakurazukamori before me—he told me that you would be the next one, after me. And I thought all along that all I had to do was to give you up for adoption, but to have to train your own child to follow the same path…" Sakurazuka Setsuka closed her eyes briefly.

Seishirou's mind was in a terrible whirl. So half the blood that ran through him was Sumeragi blood. Of all the things—! He wondered suddenly what Subaru would have said if he had known that. Hokuto would probably have shrieked with laughter and started calling him cousin, brother, or some other insane thing.

Setsuka was speaking softly. "I could never truly do away with emotions and I didn't want you to have the same trouble. So when you were born, I left you. I felt it would be best if we did not see each other for a long time. You know, you were the most beautiful baby ever…" She smiled fondly at Seishirou.

"A beautiful baby?" mused Seishirou. "Well, yes, I suppose I must have been."

Setsuka quirked her eyebrows. "I didn't teach you to be arrogant."

"All the Sakurazukamori are arrogant."

"True," agreed his mother.

Seishirou looked at her. "What changed you, okaa-san?" he asked curiously. "When I last saw you, you were not like you are now."

He felt his mother tighten her grip on his arm.

"You were only a little boy—only nine years old when I returned," she said quietly. "I came back to train you earlier than I had expected, but the Sakura Tree told me to do so. I—you know I killed the twelfth Sumeragi head…the Tree ordered me to go back to you immediately after that."

She paused to take a deep breath and then went on. "Seishirou, I—I wasn't quite sane after I killed my cousin…I never expected to have to do that. It wasn't exactly something I planned. Seiryuu-san, as the twelfth Sumeragi head, had been called by a private client to a very difficult case involving some high-level black sorcery. The sorceress in this case was a woman called Hamtaro, a very powerful sorceress. I was called to the same case by the government who wanted the sorceress dead. Seiryuu-san got there before I did…oh, Seishirou, he was so silly. He wasn't even at full strength, you know, because he had been up for fifty-eight hours straight assisting in his wife's childbirth and he hadn't eaten anything either. So, so silly…"

Tears filled Setsuka's eyes. "He destroyed the spell, but not before that woman put a horrible counter-curse on him and escaped. He didn't have enough strength to defend himself." There was a helpless look on Setsuka's face. "I couldn't do anything when I got there…we had minutes before the spell completely took control of him—he'd be a mere vessel, you understand, his own soul trapped under her control—she had bound him to black hell forever—so I killed him and destroyed the curse. It took the strongest blood magic I knew, and the Sakura Tree had to lend me some of its own power even then. I flattened the whole apartment complex doing it…more than eighty people died to prevent Sumeragi power from landing up in the wrong hands." Her face was bleak with the memory. "I had to kill the one person who was kind to me when I was so young. It was then that I truly became emotionless, because there was nothing I could not sacrifice anymore. I'd given up my childhood that day and understood what duty really meant. It took me seven years to hunt down Hamtaro—she was that powerful." Setsuka paused. "She was my last kill."

They walked on in silence for a while.

Finally, Seishirou broke it. "Subaru-kun is very like his father," he said quietly.

Setsuka made some noise that signified agreement. She glanced at her son. "You…made sure he wouldn't be Sakurazukamori after you," she said softly. "I was watching…you didn't even give him the chance to kiss you and he would have wanted to…the bonds would have passed if so."

Seishirou cleared his throat and dug into his pocket for non-existent cigarettes for the second time. Predictably, he found none. "Yes. Well, it was a little too painful for me to think of it at that time."

His mother gave a little, ladylike snort of disbelief. "You were trained to withstand what most humans would call mythic levels of pain, Seishirou. It is extremely unconvincing a lie." She smiled suddenly at him. "You care a lot for him, don't you? He's your cousin, you know."

"Very distant cousin, 'kaa-san," Seishirou reminded her.

"The Sakurazukamori allow only those they love best to kill them," murmured Setsuka. "That says quite a lot about how much you care for Subaru. And his twin sister says you're very much in love, the two of you."

"Were," said Seishirou automatically before he realised the full import of his mother's last sentence. "Okaa-san—did you say that you met Sumeragi Hokuto?"

"Yes. I think she will not be very pleased with you regarding what you just did."

Seishirou winced, and his smile was both sad and rueful. "Only a Sakurazukamori could understand."

His mother carefully detached herself from him and stepped back, looking up at him with a proud smile. "I know. I'm very proud of you, Seishirou." She stood looking at him for a little while, still with that proud little smile. "And—thank you, Seishirou. For being my son." She hesitated a little before speaking in a rush. "In a way, your existence saved me. When Seiryuu-san died, it seemed that the bottom had fallen out of my world. But there was you—and I could love you, really love you even though it felt like I couldn't care less about the rest of the world. You were a very adorable little boy, Seishirou." Setsuka laughed a little. "Seishirou…"

Seishirou waited.

"You made the best choices you could, every time. You did what you had to do."

Seishirou smiled. "I know."

Setsuka shook her head. "So arrogant. But as you said, all the Sakurazukamori are arrogant." She tilted her head. "Well. This is where we have to part. I have to go back now, Seishirou."

Seishirou blinked. "Where are you going? And where am I going?"

Setsuka pointed.

They were standing a little way from a doorstep that was very familiar—the doorstep of a veterinarian's apartment in Tokyo, one that had seen a gloriously happy year of illusion and delusion—or perhaps it was a year that had uncovered reality, with all its joys and sorrows.

"Okaa-san…"started Seishirou, turning back to his mother.

But Setsuka had disappeared.

Seishirou stood there for a moment. Then he put out his hand and slowly pushed open the door.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Author's notes: Seiryuu, as you have guessed by now, is the name I gave Subaru's father. It is Japanese for Azure Dragon, and in ancient Chinese, Japanese and Korean astronomy, was representative of one of the four seasons (spring) and of one of the four directions (east). If you are familiar with Fushigi Yuugi (which I am not, I regret to say), you will already know this.

And yes, I did use the name Hamtaro deliberately.