by Seishuku Skuld (skuldsai@magicgirl.com)
Series: Tokyo Babylon/X
Pairing: Seishirou + Subaru
Warning: implied non-consensual sex, violence/blood/murder/death (and other Seishirou type things)
This chapter dedicated to: Tsukiyono Omi. ^_^ My dearest.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Seishirou puts down the book he has been reading. He closes its hardcover tome with a sigh. His mind keeps wandering, not in the mood for long Russian novels. Somehow, Crime and Punishment just isn't suited to his tastes at the moment. Especially with the Tree keening with hunger. Seishirou sighs in the empty darkness of his apartment, the tree's ethereal voice echoing eerily in his head.
He walks to his closet, shrugging on his trench coat and his shoes. It has been two weeks since he has the fed the great sakura, and he can feel its primitive discontentment at his negligence. Seishirou grabs a pack of cigarettes sitting on the kitchen counter, and instinctively reaches for the lighter lying next to it. His hand pauses for a moment as it closes over the familiar cool plastic.
It had dropped on the floor that night. The night that he had fallen, had lost control. The night that he had Subaru and tried to make the boy his. It must have slipped out of the pocket of the boy's jeans or trench coat, when he was undressing Subaru. It must have landed on the carpet quietly, because he did not discover the small thing lying there until the morning, after the boy had said his goodbye and left.
Seishirou closes his eyes and remembers the night. He remembers sliding the thin garments from Subaru's slender, fragile body. He remembers the feel of his flesh against Subaru's, the silky soft texture of that gracefully curved neck, the pleasure of the unresisting body beneath him.
He remembers the despair at seeing those glittering liquid crystals on the boy's cheeks, making their slow descent down the soft skin only to disappear into the fabric of the pillow. He would have stopped there had he not been too far gone; when the deed was done, he had fled the room, picking his clothes up hastily. Subaru had lain on the bed, his eyelids leaking tears like some grotesque, shattered doll. For some strange reason, Subaru had frightened him then. It had been an irrational emotional impulse, but Subaru had frightened him, his arms outspread, legs open, head lolling to the side like a broken toy.
Nothing ever scared the Sakurazukamori. Not the thought of death, not the sight of pools of blood, not even the thought of the end of the world. But Subaru had unnerved him sufficiently that he had to grope in the living room for his cigarettes to calm his frayed nerves.
Seishirou takes the lighter from the counter and puts it in his pocket. Subaru's lighter. It is a silly little thing to keep around, since there's hardly any fluid left in it, but nevertheless he still keeps it with him. A little trinket, the only thing left of Subaru that he hasn't ruined. He considered returning it to the Sumeragi, but he'd doubted if the boy wanted to see him again. Well, Seishirou had shrugged, Subaru was not to be blamed for that.
Seishirou leaves his apartment, closing the door quietly and stepping out into the hallway. It is night, and the dim lights flickering only seem to make for depressing his mood even further.
The midnight air refreshes him as he walks out the door, breathing in deeply the air so different from the stale atmosphere of his own apartment. He wonders who he will find tonight. He has met actors, strippers, writers, musicians, scientists, students, criminals…and they all begged for their lives. They pleaded, cried, screamed, and they were all killed. He cared nothing for them, if the Sakurazukamori wanted a kill, nothing would stop him. Or so always thought, until he would remember Subaru-kun. But that was now a mystery that Seishirou did not want to touch.
It's a quiet part of the city that he walks to, mostly small shops and restaurants, all closed. The street is completely deserted, save for the presence of the subdued buzzing of the occasional street lamps shining through the darkness. Empty, save for a two people standing in the shadows of a tall building. They are wrapped in each others arms, oblivious to the night world about them, oblivious to the fact that Seishirou is stealing upon them in the darkness.
Seishirou isn't the mood for a long, arduous process, and as he is walking past the couple he quickly weaves an illusion about them. He makes quick business of one of them, a male, grabbing the neck and wrenching the pitiful body backwards as he impales the chest on his other hand.
A scream cuts through the air, but is absorbed by the fabric of the illusion. Warm blood coats his hand and creeps up the sleeves of his coat, but he tosses the lifeless body aside. It crumples on the ground in an unkempt heap, a pool of crimson blood growing about it.
Seishirou advances slowly on the remaining figure. The tree will have two souls tonight. The lone figure backs towards the wall, eyes frightened but strangely calm, emerald pools of crushed innocence staring back at the Sakurazukamori.
Seishirou smiles, the darkness shrouding his features. It is a young boy he has cornered, probably still of high school age, most likely out in the night for a frolick with a lover. Two boys on a midnight tryst. How cute.
"Isn't it a little past your bedtime, little boy?" Seishirou asks.
The boy eyes the body lying on the cement, the scarlet blood already cooling. Tears spring to his eyes as he whispers a name. "Kazuhiro." The gaze travels from the corpse to Seishirou with a wicked grin on his face. "What did you do?" the boy asks quietly.
"Should be obvious enough," Seishirou says with a shrug. He wonders what it is that makes him spare this young boy a few more moments of life. Seishirou frowns, finding an enigmatic reluctance to quickly end this boy's life. Something about those sparkling green eyes… "I've killed him."
"…Why?"
"Don't you know it's dangerous on your own in the city at night?" Seishirou continues, lighting a cigarette, closing his fingers about Subaru's lighter. He ignores the boy's suffering look, the adrenaline rush through his body giving him an erotic high as he closes on his prey. "Someone might get killed."
There is a long, pained silence from the boy as he closes his eyes. Tears begin pouring down his cheeks, but he makes no move to wipe them away. "But it is the only time we can be together," he replied quietly, his breath shaking with sobs. "Are you going to kill me too?"
Seishirou arches an eyebrow, impressed. The boy, with his lover taken away from him in front of his eyes, can still speak coherently. The assassin expects the boy to crumple as well, begging for mercy, but no such plea comes. Seized by an irrational rise of emotion, Seishirou reaches out and grips the boy's thin, slender throat tightly. "Maybe not. What if I let you live?"
Tears, glittering in the ephemeral light of the moon. Diamond drops from twin emerald jewels. Glass rain traveling down a pale cheek. Seishirou shivers.
"I don't want to live," the boy replies, his body slack, unresisting in Seishirou's iron hold.
"And why not?" Seishirou asks, calming himself down and getting a hold on the sudden pathos that had surged up within him.
The boy shakes his head. "If Kazuhiro is dead, then I have no will to live."
"What if you were to live anyway?"
The boy shakes his head. "Then I'd be lonely. So lonely that I wouldn't even want to be with myself anymore. Kazuhiro is the one I want to be together with. If Kazuhiro is dead then…"
A pause. The boy makes a decision.
"Kill me too, please."
"Why?"
"Because I can't live without Kazuhiro."
Seishirou poises his hand for the kill.
"Because Kazuhiro is the only one I want to be with. I don't want to be with anyone else. Life is nothing without him. So please kill me."
"What's your name, boy?" Seishirou asks with a frown, his heart suddenly thumping in his chest.
"Kouru."
"Well, Kouru-san, I'll let you say goodbye to your Kazuhiro-san." Just a simple thrust away, and his business is done for the night. Just a thrust away, and Seishirou has paused. Kouru smiles back up at him. Why didn't the boy resist?
A broken puppet with severed strings, lying on the bed half covered in rumpled bedsheets. A broken puppet with a macabre, frigid grin.
The boy shakes his head, the tears still spilling down his face. But Kouru still stands amidst his pain. "It's not goodbye, because I want to see him again."
A teenager with a deathwish. Seishirou smiles coldly, though his own body has gone chill with ice. "Sayonara, Kouru-san."
Not even the warm blood cascading over him can warm his soul, because the peaceful smile freezes his heart.
***
Seishirou steps back in his apartment, throwing his shirt into the bathtub for a good wash. It is almost soaked through, leaving a trail of vermilion behind on the clean white porcelain. Seishirou sighs as he absentmindedly turns on the cold water.
A boy named Kouru, who had watched his lover die. Who had refused to lose his lover, and followed him willingly in death. A fragile boy, devoted and unresisting. Seishirou had never met one of those, much less killed one.
Seishirou looks at himself in the mirror, a crooked grin on his face. Another mask to hide the emptiness inside him. "You're a mess, Sakurazukamori," he says, and the mirror responds likewise with a lopsided, but sad smile.
A sad smile, and a waterfall of silver tears.
"Goodbye, Kouru-san."
Another victim. Done and done. Another mindless soul among the thousands trapped in the tree, stripped of its humanity and identity, slave to the og power the great sakura. Another fragmented memory lost in time.
{It's time you let go, Seishirou.}
The Sakurazuka concurs with himself. He takes the lighter out of his pocket, examining its white plastic surface. It is a cheap lighter, the kind found in convenience stores. It is nearly empty, and Seishirou feels it cannot offer him much more. Everything, he tells himself, is as it should be. Everything is okay. He tosses it in the air, catching the small thing as it spins in the air.
"Sayonara, Subaru-kun," he says before tossing it in the trash.
End Honestly Okay