Burning the Bridge of Dreams

Age 14/13

[Juubei]

Juubei runs, clutching one hand to his chest, holding tight to Kadsuki as if he will slip away into the darkness the moment he lets go, his eyes fixed straight ahead as the warm tears slide down his cheeks. Behind them Sakura's footfalls are lost in the crash and roar of the night. She keeps pace silently, slipping into the position she will hold from now on: rearguard, follower, sister to both of them. The night folds itself around them, but the fierce glow from the blaze at their backs lights up the sky as clearly as if the sun had slipped from its accustomed place and crashed to earth in a glory of fire and destruction. The close-packed trees through which they run seem to shiver at the oncoming inferno as if sensing their own destruction, and the three children are not the only small and frightened creatures fleeing the flames. At one point a panicked deer crashes out from the undergrowth, nearly running into Juubei and sending the two boys tumbling helplessly down a short slope. With Sakura's help Juubei picks himself up and pulls Kadsuki after him, fighting to put more distance between them and the destruction of their ancient home. Juubei keeps his tearstained gaze on the narrow path before them. He will not look back. He cannot look back.

Juubei runs, clutching one hand to his chest, holding tight to Kadsuki as if he will slip away into the darkness the moment he lets go. This is something he cannot afford to lose. The sudden flare of light from the Fuuchouin manor had rolled over the countryside, and Juubei had run with his parents and sister to the window to see a great ball of flame rising up into the night sky as one by one the stars twinkled and were lost to view. His father had not hesitated, out of the door before any of the others had had a chance to react. Wits scattered and trembling Juubei had followed him, only to be grasped by both shoulders and roughly thrust back in the direction of the house, a gruff command to remain where he was. His heart leaden and so tight in his chest he could hardly breathe for it, Juubei had twisted out of Sakura's loose hold on his shirt and slipped away into the night, circling back towards the compound, his mother's voice crying his name inaudible under the name thundering,

//Kadsuki//

rushing

//Kadsuki//

through his veins to hammer mercilessly in his ears.

//Kadsuki, Kadsuki, Kadsuki//

Legs trembling so fiercely he could hardly stand, he had finally made it to the complex's main courtyard, standing at a loss amidst the burning buildings and listening to the screams that seemingly came from everywhere and nowhere all at once, as if the earth had opened up a secret chamber to one of the Hells right below his feet. A running figure had stumbled into him and continued on its way with a snarl and a whiplash of black thread Juubei had been too distracted to block, a red line burning on his cheek as he cast about the burning buildings. Kadsuki… Kadsuki… where are you, Kadsuki… He had closed his eyes, trying desperately to think, praying for some divine flash of inspiration…

And nothing had come. No twitch from the red cord wrapped securely round his heart, no sudden knowing… Kadsuki was silent.

And Juubei thought he had been afraid before.

Juubei runs, clutching one hand to his chest. Kadsuki himself does not react – he has responded to nothing since Juubei pulled him from the depths of the half-gutted house, and his face tells a tale of confused fear and quiet misery as he runs. Nor does he look where they are going – were Juubei to leap off a sudden cliff right now Kadsuki would unthinkingly follow him. Since his outburst all higher functions have temporarily ceased, and his dulled eyes see nothing but the shadowy figure of the boy tugging him along. His memories of this night will cease with his mother turning and disappearing into the hungry flames – he will not remember hearing Juubei's frantic voice calling out through the billowing smoke as he pushed through the burning doorway in his search for the his friend. Part of the roof had collapsed around Kadsuki, and only an instinctive flinging out of a threadwork had managed to provide a temporary support for the fallen timbers, but the fire had already been spreading further. On Juubei's part, he thinks that the one sight of this endless night that will haunt him the longest is that of Kadsuki's silver threads slowly beginning to burn, the flames running along the delicate strands and eating them away.

When he had fought his way through the thick smoke and burning rubble to Kadsuki, the other boy had hardly registered his presence, crying out for his mother and fighting to follow her deeper into the blaze. Juubei will never tell Kadsuki what happened then, when the smaller boy went temporarily insane and began kicking and screaming to escape Juubei's grasp and fling himself into the fire, just as he will never tell Kadsuki that as he pulled him out of the inferno of the house Kadsuki writhed and twisted in his grip, sinking his teeth deep into Juubei's hand in a desperate attempt to get away. Juubei can feel the hot blood from the crescent-shaped wound trickling between his fingers, over his knuckles and staining his clothes, his only souvenir of a life that is now irrevocably lost. Now all he has is Kadsuki.

Juubei runs.

[Toshiki]

The dormitory is heavy with sleep. Seventeen boys lie close together on their futons, close enough that one turning over and flinging out a dreaming arm or leg will be sure to wake his neighbour with a jolt. Gathered together in two close-packed rows, they look like a small blanket-wrapped mountain range; quiet and content for the most part, with the occasional shift and subdued avalanche of sheets as someone turns over in the search for a more comfortable position, and once in a while one will sit up and swat the boy next to him with a hissed "stop doing that with your ki!"

The eighteenth boy will have no part of the mountain range. Toshiki staked out his space in the corner years ago, and makes sure to keep a comfortable distance between himself and the others.  If he absolutely has to let down his guard when he sleeps, he would rather be separate from the rest – and have a moment's warning if they approach him.

But tonight, at least, he isn't lying sharp and alert in his corner, waiting for any movement from the centre of the room. The low candlelight guttering in the single lamp over the door flutters against his half-closed eyelids and slides over his skin, turning it to gentle bronze. In the mingling shadows his hair is steeped in overlapping shades of dusk: he looks as Japanese as any of the others.

It's almost too much effort to roll onto his back and stretch the entire length of his body, arms to spine to toes, easing the lingering knots of ki from his joints. His limbs feel like warm, heavy blocks of wood as they loll atop the tatami floor – the slow steady pulse that threads through them a reminder of a day's hard training. Meditation, practice of the basic forms and the long hours of focusing ki into a controlled force – pushing a leaf, a ball, a teacup… and only today, being allowed to use that push against a fellow student for the first time.

And it worked.

Just that memory, the other boy suddenly picked up and thrown into the sandbags packed against the wall of the courtyard… how it had felt to channel that power, the air rippling around the invisible force as the ki-ball flew through the air… it sends a warm thrill through him and he smiles, turning over the cusp of sleep.

Gently his eyes slip closed and the dormitory room retreats behind layer upon layer of pale gauze like spiderwebbing, and the bridge that spans the place of dreams appears before him and the way unrolls before his feet.

The breathing of the sleeping boys washes through the room and laps against the walls, filling it to the brim. Toshiki's eyelids flicker a little as he runs deeper down familiar corridors and across landscapes that can never exist outside the walls of the mind. Outside it is dark and the stars shine coldly on the roofs of the temple that is already drawing down the final stretch to its destruction. There will be no autumn leaves in the courtyard, no snowflakes floating down to land in lazy drifts that swallow the graceful curves of the complex, and this time next year the wind will gust emptily against ruined walls and rubble.

But for now Toshiki can know nothing of this, can know nothing of his own fate, and he runs in his dream, and there's no stopping him.

[Kadsuki]

Kadsuki blinks, and his eyes slowly shift from their fixed stare into the void. He has not been sleeping, but the darkness that has surrounded him since his mother turned and walked away into the bright glare of the flames has lifted somewhat, and he is starting to realise his surroundings again. Which at the moment is more darkness, stretching as far as the eye can see, gaping and empty. He hisses a sharp breath through his teeth and his body jerks in an automatic instinct for escape, but the thin arms wrapped around him tighten and pull him closer to the solid warmth at his side. The brief panic ghosts away as he recognises Juubei's familiar presence beside him, and with that as a reference point in the floating dark the immediate terror drains from him to be replaced by a hollow, lingering numbness. He reaches out, slides uncertain fingers up Juubei's side, over his shoulder and along the arm curled firmly around him until he meets Juubei's hand and intertwines their fingers. He is afraid to break their contact even for a moment in case Juubei should suddenly vanish into the abyss. Opening his mouth, it takes him a minute or so to realise that none of what he is saying is breaking the blanketing silence, and he tries again.

"…where."

"In the village." Juubei's voice coming out of the darkness is rough, heavy with the tears he has shed, choked with those that are still to come. "I ran and… you wouldn't say anything and. And I headed here…. They said… but you wouldn't… And then we. So then… And then we ran. We ran. But I… I… K-Kadsuki…"

Kadsuki doesn't want to hear any more, He burrows further against Juubei to end the broken stream of words, clinging to him as the only solid thing in the world, the only thing he knows is real. Juubei. Kadsuki isn't cold, he can't feel anything, but somehow he can't stop trembling, and Juubei tightens his grip around Kadsuki's waist and pulls the smaller boy's head in closer to rest in the angle between his shoulder and neck. Kadsuki closes his eyes, hiding his face in the protected area under Juubei's jaw and has a brief fantasy that this is all a dream, a horrible nightmare that in a moment he will be waking up from in the morning light of his own room with the sounds of a busy household starting to stir around him. But he can wait for a hundred years, or more – there is no waking from this, and the older boy holding him close is the only remnant of all that once was.

"Ne, Juubei…" His voice is scratchy from smoke inhalation, and it hurts to get the words out. It's something he must do, however: his mother made him promise…

The fingers of Juubei's free hand slow in their gentle threading though his hair, then after a few seconds start up again. "Mm?"

"I… what are we going to do now?"

"I don't know." Kadsuki feels Juubei shake his head slightly, his jaw rubbing against the top of his head. "I don't know," he repeats softly.

"I have to go to Tokyo, Juubei."

"…What? Tokyo?"

A frown creases Kadsuki's forehead as he remembers his mother's last words. To Tokyo. To Mugenjou. To travel all by himself to the Kanto, to enter that vast, teeming city when he has never even left the compound before today. To Mugenjou, a place he has only heard the name of; whispered darkly amongst servants or a furtive mention in an adult conversation cut off quickly as his presence is noticed. What to do there, to go for what purpose save that his mother walked to her death with those words on her lips, he hasn't the slightest notion. And if Juubei doesn't want to, if he has to go alone… More aware now, another sound has intruded on his fractured hearing – low, steady breathing from across the room. Of course… Sakura. Is she asleep, or could she be lying wide-eyed in the dark, listening to the two of them? It doesn't matter, he realises. Because Juubei has someone here, someone alive, someone family… and he doesn't need to go to Tokyo.

"Don't… you don't have to come, Juubei." He has to force those words out, push them past the don't leave me, don't leave that wants to take their place. But however scared he is, however small and lost and alone, he can't force Juubei into anything he doesn't want to do. He can hardly hold Juubei to the ties between needle and thread now, when those ancient bonds lie in ashes and the two of them are all that is left. Juubei has every right to leave. To take his sister and go.

Juubei doesn't respond for a long instant, and Kadsuki feels his muscles tensing up all along his body, despite the shivering that has redoubled its hold upon him. Then Juubei's arms tighten on him again, and when the older boy speaks his voice is muffled in the heavy silk of Kadsuki's hair. "Want to come with you, Kadsuki. Wherever you need to go… don't leave me behind."

Neither of them speaks again that night. What more is there to say, after all? Whatever either of them might be thinking, whatever they might be needing, it's all there in their tightly clasped hands, in their bodies curled closely round one another as they wait for the dawn. But until it comes, Kadsuki takes comfort from the warmth pressed close against him: the friend who will stay by his side, come what may.

* * * * *

Ack, this one took a LONG time. Rewritten three times and I'm still not all that happy with it. But in between trying to get this chapter right… the next one is almost done by now, so hopefully it shouldn't be such a wait next time.

Re Toshiki's background – all I have are the first couple of volumes of the KnK arc and a scan I found online of him in what looks like a bloodstained robe of some kind (and the quality's too fuzzy to read and find out what's happening) So forgive me for skirting that one **embarrassed look** but he's had enough angst up to now for him to be allowed to sit this one out, I think.