Disclaimer: Both X and Tokyo Babylon belong to CLAMP. This means that Seishirou and Subaru (as well as their basic story) is not mine. The other characters (as well as all of their respective stories), however, do belong to me and should not be confused with anything of CLAMP's.
Additional Notes: The sakura had to come from somewhere, and to my knowledge it does not really have a story, so to speak. So I gave it one. Also, the title and summary of this fic comes from "Feed the Tree" by Belly.
So enjoy.
* * *
She had charcoal black hair and sapphire blue eyes, and some would say she resembled a handcrafted porcelain doll in all her perfection. Many hated her for this – this untouchable beauty she had that they would never possess – but he could never.
He could only love her, could only cherish her and card his fingers through her charcoal hair and gaze blindly into her sapphire eyes.
Her cheeks were a light pink – he loved this feature of hers most, because it made her look youthful and exuberant, so different from everyone else. It was fitting, too, because she loved pink far more than any other color (though, admittedly, the shade of her cheeks wasn't quite right, as she preferred dark, deep pink to light pink, but shades of pink rarely mattered much to him anyway), and she surrounded herself with it. "It sounds odd," she had said to him once, "but the color just makes me feel happy and alive. I can't describe it."
She was the only one who ever spoke to him. He had a power, a gift, a magic, that no one else did, and they feared him because of it, hated him for it. In their eyes, he was a devil – perhaps even an incarnation of the Devil – and not to be consorted with, unless of course you were one of the few men he worked for on occasion, one of the few who needed him and his magic.
She was an exception, too, of course. "Don't bother with him," they all told her – he knew they did. "He's evil; he will hurt you, destroy you, and everyone you care about will suffer." And she didn't listen, not because she was particularly rebellious or disobedient, but because she loved him, much as he loved her.
She should have listened.
Wrong place, wrong time, and the bridge will always collapse.
"It was an accident," he told himself, head in his hands and tears stinging his eyes. "It was an accident." He cried until his tears blended with her blood on his arm and turned it a murky, dripping pink.
She hated tombs and coffins and headstones. "I want to be buried under the sakura in the park," she said, and when asked why, she answered, "It is the most beautiful tree I have ever seen. It would be an honor to spend the rest of eternity under such a beauty."
He watched from a distance – wearing a blank expression and bearing the heavy weight of an empty heart – as they buried her in the shade of the sakura. There was no reason to feel anything, he had reasoned days before; he would see her again someday. Maybe he would even be buried beside her, under the tree with her.
He stared up at it for a moment, watched the tiny white blossoms tremble in the wind.
She was wearing pink, he knew, her favorite color. She always wanted everything to be beautiful, perfect, even her death.
He glanced down, watched the shower of dirt fall on wood, before he turned his gaze back to the sakura.
It would be perfect, he thought, if the cherry blossoms were pink – deep pink. It would be perfect if the tree itself wore her color. The sakura would be special – it would be her sakura, no one else's – because the blossoms wouldn't be white – the dull, snow white that they were now – and they wouldn't even be milky pink like the ones he had seen so many times before – white with maybe a hint of pink if one looked at just the right moment; they would be pink. It would be perfect.
He looked away.
He would turn the cherry blossoms pink for her.
* * *
The first picture she had ever painted was of the sakura that grew near her home, when she was 13. It was the most magnificent thing she had ever seen, and even when she was just a small child she had been entranced by it. With its strong, unscarred trunk and its white, pristine blossoms, it begged to be painted.
She never imagined that as an adult, she would see a sakura far more magnificent than the one of her childhood, but she did.
It was huge – monstrous, even – and its roots twisted into the ground like errant veins. What first struck her, though, was the color of the cherry blossoms themselves: not white or even pale, the way cherry blossoms were supposed to be, but a deep pink, like watery blood. It took her several moments to discern that it was a cherry blossom tree, despite its color, and when she realized that indeed it was, she could scarcely breathe. She had to paint it, had to capture its beauty, its magnificence.
She sat in the grass of Ueno Park for six days, mixing paint and smearing it across paper, determined to make this her best work yet. When she was done, it would look like a photograph, not a painting, and it wasn't far off from that now.
She just couldn't seem to replicate the color of the cherry blossoms. She had tried every mixture of red and white that she could think of, and she'd even tried to add in some blue or some yellow, but nothing seemed to work. She couldn't even get close to this shade of pink, but still she tried. A paper stained with her previous failed attempts lay by her side, and she continued to mix until the paint either dried or turned entirely black.
Perhaps, she mused, I simply need to buy new paint.
She packed up her paints, and so absorbed was she in this task that she failed to notice the footsteps behind her until a deep masculine voice accompanied them.
"It is a magnificent tree, isn't it?"
Her body jerked in surprise, and the container of paint she held in her hand fell. Bright red paint streaked the grass.
The apology was immediate, and the man was kneeling to help her. "I didn't mean to frighten you."
"It's fine," she answered, staring mournfully at the red paint already beginning to sink into the ground. "I'm afraid I don't know exactly how to clean it up, though."
"I wouldn't worry about it," the man said as he recapped the bottle of paint and handed it back to her, seeming unaware of the red blots that now coated his fingers. "Nature usually has a way of cleaning itself of such things."
He smiled at her warmly, and there was something about him – perhaps the way his dark brown eyes twinkled behind his glasses – that made her smile back.
"You must really like this tree to be painting it as you are."
"I've always been fond of sakura," she admitted, "but I've never seen one like this before. I've never seen such pink blossoms before; I can't seem to duplicate the color."
"No, I suppose not."
The man turned his head, barely, and the sun reflected off his glasses, hiding his eyes and hurting hers. She averted her gaze to avoid being blinded.
"Did you know that there are corpses buried under the sakura?" he asked, and she, sensing that he wasn't anticipating a response, remained silent. "The cherry blossoms are pink because the tree feeds off their blood."
A shiver slithered down her spine, and the ghost of a piercing pain struck her heart – so brief, so vague, she was sure she imagined it. "Fascinating," she said, but her tone betrayed her.
She clutched her painting almost desperately with one hand and grabbed her bag of supplies with the other. "I should be going. I want to finish this painting, and I've decided I need new paint," she said by way of explanation and lifted herself from the grass.
He adjusted his glasses on his nose, watching her hurry away, before he stood as well and reached in his pocket for a cigarette.
He would bury the unfinished painting with her, he decided, after he killed her.
* * *
Children usually tend to ignore the sakura at Ueno Park. It is only a tree, after all, and what fun is there in a tree?
This one doesn't ignore it, however. Indeed, this little boy hasn't been able to look away since his eyes first caught sight of the sakura. He continues to stand, transfixed, in front of it, though if someone were to stop and ask, he wouldn't be able to give a reason for his actions (or lack thereof, as the case may be).
He wants to touch it, wants to step forward and rest his hand on the trunk, because for a moment he is sure the tree is alive and he will be able to feel it breathing against his palm.
There is a prickling sensation on the back of his neck, and he turns to find a pair of empty, mismatched eyes – one pale green (like an emerald that has lost its luster) and the other dark brown (so very close to black) – staring unblinkingly at him.
"What are you doing?" the man asks, his voice quiet and monotone. His hands are buried in the pockets of his long black coat, and, though he has no way of realizing it, this makes him appear far more threatening than he intends.
The boy takes a hesitant step back toward the tree, and the man makes a move as though he is about to rush forward in response but manages to refrain from doing so.
"I-I," the boy stutters, and only when his back brushes against the trunk of the sakura does he find the courage to finish his sentence. "I was just looking at the tree," he mumbles, angling his head upward as he speaks to stare at the rustling pink blossoms.
The man makes an odd, breathy sound of amusement, and when the boy glances at him, he is smiling, just barely and fairly oddly. His eyes seem unfocused for a moment as he lets his own gaze follow the branches of the powerful tree and linger on the blossoms that suddenly seem to reach blindly into the sky.
"Do you like sakura?"
"Yes," the boy replies, feeling much calmer now, though he can't be sure exactly why this strange man doesn't seem so intimidating anymore. "I like the blossoms. They're very pretty."
"Do you know why the cherry blossoms grow pink each year?"
"No. Why?"
The man shifts his gaze to where the tree's roots buried themselves into the ground so many years before, and there is a long silence before he speaks again. "There are corpses buried underneath that sakura, and the blossoms grow pink because it feeds off the blood of those corpses."
The boy inhales sharply and, slowly, takes a few steps away from the towering sakura, not moving his eyes from the looming pink cherry blossoms.
"Does it frighten you?"
"No," the boy admits, his voice barely audible. "It makes me sad. Those people…they must be suffering. How awful it must be to be buried under there."
He turns around to find the man staring at him, mouth open just slightly and wide eyes brimming with far too many emotions to identify. Then the man is staggering closer, falling to his knees, and pressing one hand to the boy's forehead while clutching at his palm with the other.
The boy will have dreams about this until the day he dies. They will be vague, probably, and filled with deep pink cherry blossoms and a harsh, cold wind that deprives him of the senses that will allow him to remember. He will always know the story of this sakura and how its leaves stay such a shade of pink, and maybe he will think of it when he sees a similar tree, though he will never be quite able to recall where he heard the story or to which sakura it is referring. And, possibly, when he sees a man in a long black coat, an image of dead, mismatched eyes will flash in his mind, and he will hear a voice – infused with more emotion than its speaker had felt in years – echoing in his head.
"You are so much like me when I was younger," it will say. "You are me. But I am not him. And that is why I will let you go."
He will never see the tree again.