Presenting the second chapter of Nevermore, in which you the reader shall learn and not be terribly surprised about whose door Daisuke was dropped off at, and in which there is much angst and crying but not nearly enough Sato/Dai hints until the end of the update.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Yukiru Sugisaki, the second quote is from Tolkien's first Book of Lost Tales. The title, Nevermore, was stolen directly from Poe's "The Raven," which has the dubious honor of being quoted once again. Rated PG-13 for impending shounen-ai and mild angst. If you're uncomfortable with Sato/Dai, implied Sato/Krad or Dark/Daisuke, I don't know why you didn't leave during the first chapter. While Nevermore is an independent fic, there's a brief allusion to my short, "True Light," which is a pre-series fic with Satoshi and Kosuke. Blink and you'll miss it.
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Nevermore: Chapter Two.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this and nothing more." – Edgar Allen Poe, "The Raven."
"You and I got lost in Sleep,
And met each other there—
Your dark hair on your white nightgown,
And mine was tangled fair." -- J.R.R. Tolkien, "You and Me and the Cottage of Lost Play."
Hiwatari Satoshi hardly blinked when he heard the thud at the door. There were some people downstairs with little children and it was rainy; it was all too likely that they were playing a game, though it was late enough that Satoshi might take the issue up with the landlord if he was feeling grumpy in the morning. Nonplussed, he turned back to his papers, shuffling through the odds and ends he'd scavenged from his foster-father's office. Most of them were locked safely away in the study, but these pieces had tidbits of information he'd never seen before, and he wasn't going to file them away into orderly obscurity without draining them dry…
A handful of papers fell to the floor, old parchment laced with notes in spindly pencil and diagrams in bold, clear ink, bright as the day they'd been drawn. He allowed himself the faintest of smiles before picking them up off the floor and slipping them back into their proper place, but there, there above the desk –
"Kyuu…"
Satoshi stared. There – on his shelf – was a little white rabbit. Of course, Satoshi had enough experience with the thing to be well aware that it was most certainly not a rabbit in the conventional sense, no matter what seemingly harmless form it had chosen for the moment. Still, it seemed content to pass the time in a staring contest, kyuu-ing again when Satoshi had to blink (perhaps it was the red eyes, but it seemed that blinking was merely and affectation for demon-wing-bunnies). All the while, Satoshi's mind was racing… If the Niwas' pet (if it could be called a pet) had gotten into his apartment, then Dark… No, it couldn't be; he had made sure neither of them would ever come out again. He'd scattered the key's pieces himself; he would have known…
What was it, then? The familiar was smarter than the average rabbit, true, but any creature intelligent enough to come here completely on its own would have posed a threat to its summoners; the Niwa clan would have left it back in hell, or wherever it was that one summoned demon bunnies from, nowadays. Daisuke? He doubted, somehow, that Daisuke would come over here of his own accord, but…
The familiar jumped from its perch with a heated "kyu!" and Satoshi instinctively put an arm over his face, but the rabbit-thing landed at his feet and began nudging his ankles like a lop-eared, over-sized cat. When Satoshi failed to respond in any way whatsoever, it hopped to the door, whimpering like a lost puppy.
Satoshi eyed it with a healthy dose of skepticism. It seemed to have gotten in on its own; why was it clawing at his door like a cat that wanted to go out? Still, the sooner the thing was out of his apartment, the better, so Satoshi walked slowly across the room, drawing from his reserve pool of skepticism and glancing through the look-shot to make sure that he wasn't confusing the Niwas' demon-pet with someone unknown serial killer's demon pet. When he didn't see anyone in the hall, he unbolted the door and—
And lo and behold, Niwa Daisuke tumbled across the threshold at his feet.
Satoshi blinked. "Niwa-kun?" The redhead was soaked through, locks of hair lying limply over his closed eyes, and the tell-tale holes in the back of his shirt showed pale, wet gooseflesh. "Niwa-kun?" He bent down and rolled Niwa off his stomach, checking breathing and pulse in one fluid motion, but no, Niwa wasn't cold at all, and there was perspiration mixed with the rainwater on his face, though there were faint lines that might have been tear tracks… Alarmed, Satoshi lifted the redhead up in his arms as easily as one might a rag doll, taking in again the flesh of fever, the torn shirt, the small crooning familiar nudging the door shut behind them with a dull thud. "What happened to you?" he murmured.
"…ta… ri… Hi – Hiwatari… kun?" Niwa stirred slightly in his arms, eyes fluttering wearily open. "Thank you…"
Satoshi sat the redhead down on the couch and started to move away, only to have Niwa catch his hand with warm, trembling fingers. "You're sick," he said, sitting down next to the boy and skipping the preliminaries of inquiring after his visitor's health.
Niwa tried to shake his head, and gave a faint, pained little smile that faded in an instant. "No…"
Given the circumstances, Satoshi found it perfectly acceptable to give the boy a look, though he refrained from dispensing a full force glare. However much he tried to deny it, Niwa was sick enough that much more than a glance would have knocked him over like grass in the breeze. "You're burning up," he said flatly, "and soaking wet." He glanced at the familiar, crouched protectively on a cabinet, and said nothing of the great tears in the dripping fabric of Niwa's shirt. "You're shivering and can hardly move. Don't expect me to believe you're alright."
"I'm fine," the boy insisted, trying to sit up. His arms seemed to give way on him halfway through the effort, though, and his familiar was at his side in an instant, nudging him up. "It's nothing."
"You're sick," he repeated, pulling the redhead up and propping him up with a pillow as the demon-bunny skittered away onto the coffee table.
Niwa closed his glassy eyes tiredly and sank down on the couch's arm. "Not sick," he said huskily. "Lonely…" His hand went feebly to his heart and he opened his eyes, staring at Satoshi with a certain wild air, and the light of fever was almost indistinguishable from the growing glow of madness in his gaze. "You… you know, ne, Hiwatari-kun?"
Black feathers and black wings and… He gave a stiff nod. "Dark?"
Sighing, the redhead closed his eyes again. "He was always there and talking and laughing, and no one else understands that he was a part of me, not just some silly little friend, he was me, and they can't ever know what it's like now that he's gone…"
"Who are they, Niwa-kun?"
"Riku-san," he whispered.
"What happened between you and Harada-san?" It was Risa who liked Dark, and Satoshi had seen the older twin blow up whenever Dark was mentioned, despite – or perhaps because of — what the phantom thief had thought of her. Still, Niwa had leaned heavily on Harada Riku after the immediate shock of the Kokuyoku incident, and if she'd done something to him, it could have been the last little straw…
Niwa shook his head vehemently and glossed over this by rattling off some more names. "It's not just Riku-san, it's kaasan and tousan and Towa-chan and… and everyone. But you know what they were like… You remember, don't you? Please say you remember…"
"Yes, Niwa," he said gently. "I remember."
"And you won't forget him? I won't be remembering alone?"
Satoshi paused. "I'll remember."
Niwa smiled, such a weak smile that Satoshi almost didn't catch it. "Thank you."
They sat there for a long while like that, Satoshi watching Niwa bemusedly as the redhead's chest rose and fell with each gasping, husky breath. "Do your parents know you're here?" he asked finally, and the spell shattered with the tangible tension of a thousand shards of glass smashing on the floor.
"They're not around," the smaller boy said. "They went on holiday with Towa-chan before school got out…" He struggled and finally managed to sit up, his familiar half-hopping half-flying to nuzzle his hand encouragingly. Niwa was looking at Satoshi very seriously, bright eyes wide. "Ne, Hiwatari-kun… does it hurt?"
"Does what hurt?"
"Your heart."
Satoshi blinked. Did the boy understand what it was like to live without his other self? He looked at Niwa incredulously, at the tired, frail form and the sad, flushed face. He'd been thrilled when Krad disappeared, when that unwanted bit of himself disappeared and the last shards of ice in his heart finally thawed. When Kokuyoku was sealed, he'd been delighted, he'd been thrilled, free for the first time to think his own thoughts without him whispering or threatening or coming out and wreaking havoc… "No." Niwa sighed lightly again, wavering where he sat, and Satoshi reached immediately to steady him. "I'm sorry," he offered, and then, reconfirming the sickly warmth of Niwa's hands, added, "You need medicine."
"It's just a fever," the boy protested, but Satoshi was already up and moving off to the packed little medicine cabinet. There were dozens of half-empty bottles, left over from a rather sickly childhood and a certain children's psychiatrist who'd been sure Satoshi's icy demeanor and unwillingness to talk to stupid people was some strain of selective mutism. Somehow, the over-the-counter fever-reducers and headache-killers had gravitated towards the back of this medicinal mess, hiding behind an enormous bottle of something with a worn and faded label.
Returning with medicine and a glass of water in hand, Satoshi's first thought was that Niwa had dozed off, curled in a little ball, but the boy looked tearily up at Satoshi as he entered. Stoically, Satoshi offered Niwa the drab little pills, and the redhead swallowed silently. "I'm sorry, Hiwatari-kun," he whispered hoarsely some time later, tears still chasing each other down his face. "I've been a nuisance…"
"It's alright, Niwa-kun," he said, brushing pale blue bangs out of his eyes. "It's hardly your fault."
"But it is," said Niwa, and alarm bells went off in Satoshi's mind, though his pose radiated nothing but a certain calm impassiveness. "I was there at the museum with him; I could have kept him from going or something, anything…"
He was talking about Dark, of course. "You couldn't have done anything about it. He made his own decisions going in there."
"That's what Riku-san said…" He sounded almost accusatory, though any hint of snappishness was well hidden beneath layer upon layer of tired grief.
"She's right," he said, not unkindly. "You'd already given Dark control of your body and you… you saved my life." Satoshi had been full ready to kill himself to keep Krad from unlocking the powers of Kokuyoku, and it had been Niwa who brought him back, who pushed through the bloody circle.
The boy gave a teary smile. "That was one good thing…"
"Dark knew full well what he was doing. It was his choice to seal the Black Wings, Niwa-kun, and his choice was to save the city and everyone in it. His choice was to save you, so that you could go on and you could be happy…" He sounded like someone's doddering old mother, he thought wryly, or perhaps a televangelist, but it hurt to see the redhead like this when Niwa had always been the bright, enthusiastic one, the optimistic one…
"But I can't be happy, not when…" He tripped over the words, biting his lip. "Dammit, Hiwatari-kun, it's lonely and it feels like everyone is leaving or forgetting and it hurts and sometimes it feels like I'll never be happy again, not with Riku-san or you or anyone when all I can do is think back about how happy I was then with him always there and laughing—"
"Niwa-kun." Satoshi cut him off sharply, grabbing the redhead's shoulders until Niwa was looking at him and stopped ranting on. "Niwa-kun, you're hysterical. You have a fever, you're delirious. You need to calm down."
He took a deep breath, shaky and rattling, but it was, at least, a break in the soft, wracking sobs, the calm at the heart of the storm where Satoshi could, perhaps, get a word in edgewise before the winds picked up again. "He wanted you to live and be happy."
"He wanted to be remembered…"
"And he will be."
With that, all the worry seemed to rush out of the redhead, like water rushing out of a sieve into a more pleasant oblivion, and whatever tense cord had been holding Niwa up seemed to have vanished; the boy collapsed into Satoshi's lap like a puppet whose strings have been snipped away. He was crying again, true, but he didn't seem quite so desperate…
Tentatively, Satoshi put his arms around Niwa, which earned him an approving "kyuu" from the demon bunny. They sat like that longer than Satoshi could reckon; it was long past midnight when he finally glanced up at the clock, and, slowly, Niwa started to unwind. Satoshi listened with a sort of detached attentiveness as the hiccupping sobs turned into ragged panting and finally slow, collected breaths, and felt as Niwa's chest took on the steady rise and fall of the quiet sleeper. Even then, even when he was sure that the redhead was asleep, he sat there, taking in the soft, damp smell of Niwa's hair and the flushed porcelain of his skin and savoring it with the air of a wine connoisseur who is willing to sample a glass a sip at a time and stretch the moment on forever.
Finally, as he himself was nodding off, he picked Niwa up and carried him through the quiet apartment to the bedroom, where he set the redhead down like a child. But as he checked the fever's heat, Niwa caught his hand sleepily and opened his eyes just a little bit, lashes fluttering faintly. "Hi… Hiwatari-kun?"
"Niwa?"
"Will… will you stay with me?"
Satoshi stared at him, and Niwa's voice echoed round and round in his head. Lonely… and it feels like everyone is leaving or forgetting… stay with me? And this little boy looked so frail and beaten down and—
"Please… don't go."
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*cries* They're not in character enough~~! I'm sorry, I just don't feel like I got the characters down well enough this chapter. Alas. No, I didn't say that Satoshi was on drugs or had psychological disorders, I said crazy doctors thought he had them (I was thinking about Jeffrey Ford's "The Empire of Ice Cream," and obviously Satoshi has some sort of issues…). There was actually a short bit on Krad on anti-borderline personality disorder drugs, arsenic-laced brownies, and innocent rodents, but this was edited out as it presented a serious hazard to the sob-story mood.
And to my reviewers, whose Prozac-filled contributions to the cause will set Daisuke back on track to being our perky pretty Dai-chan… I love you all (and thank Sage of Angst for catching the Daiki/Daichii mixup, and would like to Kayuuko for asking to host "Nevermore," which made my day). So many lovely reviews! Such encouragement! You're wonderful!
When you're done reading this, I encourage you to reread it, inserting some variation of "[to] molest him then and there" where you feel appropriate. Or you can review, as either one will make me smile and let me know that I've contributed something to the world.