I give you the third chapter of Nevermore, in which there is much Satoshi angst, some bad quasi-Freudism, Risa, Kosuke, and the first of something more solid than the shounen-ai hints I've been tossing out, but, again, they've hidden towards the end of the chapter, silly things.
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Yukiru Sugisaki, the quotes belong to McLean and The Who; the title was yanked from Poe's "The Raven." Rated PG-13 for mild shounen-ai, Tabasco sauce, and angst. If you're uncomfortable with Sato/Dai, implied Sato/Krad, or Dark/Daisuke, what are you doing here at chapter three? While Nevermore is, again, an independent fic, there's a handful of more "True Light" references, so if you blink at something in the Kosuke conversation don't stress, but they're little things that won't make the story hard to get through. Promise.
***Nevermore: Chapter Three
"A long, long time ago
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And maybe they'd be happy for a while…"
-- Don McLean, "American Pie."
"If I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat." -- The Who, "Behind Blue Eyes."
It became clear that something was very, very wrong with Niwa. Satoshi, who had fallen asleep in a chair at the redhead's side, was awoken in the dark hours of the morning by Niwa thrashing. It took him several fuzzy moments to recall just why the smaller boy was in his bed and, blearily, he put a hand to Niwa's forehead. There was a faint feverish flush, but nothing serious, nothing that should have been making the boy toss and turn to restlessly… "Niwa," he hissed. The redhead's eyes stayed tightly shut in a desperate sort of wincing expression, but he shuddered and relaxed, breathing heavily, almost panting.
"… Hi… wa… ta…" Niwa's hands clasped his own faintly, with the tenuous grip of an infant grasping at a parent's finger. Satoshi sighed lightly, tiredly, and withdrew his hand out of the smaller boy's grasp, only to have Niwa reach restlessly for him again, whimpering slightly. "… ri… kun…"
Satoshi sat there until the sun was high in the sky, motionless, half dozing, only to be roused again by the glare coming in through the half-closed curtains. The clock, leering red-eyed from the dresser, announced perfunctorily that it was nearly seven, time to find some more medicine for Niwa. He glanced over the boy, who, defying the apparent odds, slept peacefully, with only ragged breathing left as token of his restless nighttime stirrings. The tracks on the his face, however, left feather-faint traces on his cheeks as silent witness to his tears…
Niwa was feverish, Satoshi noted, frowning. It would seem that the medicine had worn off, but the redhead hadn't started thrashing again. Still… The blue-haired boy moved off for a glass of water and some fever-killer, alarmed by the temperature Niwa was running, only to find Niwa muttering again and turning restlessly when he returned. "Wake up," said Satoshi firmly, shaking the smaller boy awake. Niwa opened his eyes like a newborn kitten, just a slit of his fever-clouded irises showing from under his lashes, then tried to roll back into the pillow, only to have Satoshi catch him and half-drag him into a sitting position. "Take the medicine," he insisted, brusquely popping the little white tablets into Niwa's mouth, "and then you can go back to sleep." Niwa spluttered, but took a bleary-eyed swallow and smiled faintly at Satoshi. It was a smile without any recognition, just a sense of raw gratitude and a preconscious association with something akin to peace and rest. And that feverish cast to Niwa's face… Almost reluctantly, Satoshi let Niwa slip away down to the mattress, watching the redhead slip back into his fever-dreams.
When he got up to move, he found that Niwa's fingers had found their way back around his wrist.
Carefully drawing away, he treaded cat-quiet through the flat, pulling out a dusty directory and scanning for the Harada name, then slipping back into the bedroom to watch over Niwa. He ran through streets and sub-districts in his mind until he had eliminated all of the entries on "Harada" save for that of the listing in the most affluent neighborhood. Picking up the phone, he dialed the number and waited.
"Harada residence." It was a man's voice, which caught Satoshi slightly off-guard, but he pressed on anyways.
"Is Harada Risa-san there?"
"One moment, master…?"
"Hiwatari."
There was the faint clunk of the phone being put down and, several moments later, the fumbling sounds of someone picking up the phone and a sugary "Hiwatari-kun?"
"I need to talk to you about Niwa-kun, Harada-san," he said smoothly.
"Alright," said the girl brightly.
"Has anything happened between him and Riku-san?"
"Not that I know of," she said, though she didn't sound horribly sure. "Why?"
"He's out of sorts."
"And you think it has something to do with Riku? Riku would never do anything to Niwa-kun. You should know that."
"Harada-san, something is wrong with Niwa-kun. I'm not accusing Riku-san of anything, but I need to know. Did something happen? Did your sister tell you anything or come home upset?"
"Not… not that I recall…"
"Is Riku-san there?"
"No, she's out at a game with the lacrosse team, she won't be back until this evening."
"Then do you remember anything at all?" he pressed, glancing over at Daisuke, sleeping peacefully at his side, one small hand curled lightly around Satoshi's fingers.
"No," she repeated, voice testy even over the phone.
"Alright, Harada-san," said Satoshi leadenly. "Thank you for your time."
"I'm sorry, Hiwatari-kun, but I really don't—"
"It's fine," he said. "Goodbye." He hung up without waiting for her response; he'd gotten everything he could out of her, which was, in all essentiality, nothing, and he was wary of talking to Harada Riku. If something had happened between her and Niwa, he wasn't positive she'd talk to him about it. "And you won't tell me anything about it either, Niwa-kun," he sighed, starting to shift away and having to, once again, unhook the redhead's fingers from his arm as he stood. "Poor Niwa."
Leaving the doors between his bedroom and his study open, Satoshi flicked on his computer and keyed into the police network, searching for recent travel and hotel bookings under the Niwa name. Luckily, it was not a horribly common surname; there was a party of thirteen staying in Tokyo, but there was only one really viable choice and, with a combination of police authority and rudimentary hacking programs, Satoshi was able to pull a hotel name and suite number for "Niwa Kosuke." This minor abuse of police privileges seemed to Satoshi a sort of due recompense for dangling off roofs and rushing off to amusement parks in the middle of the night.
It was while he waited for the desk manager to redirect him to the Niwa suite that he remembered the problem of the implacable and certifiably insane Niwa matriarch. True, Satoshi had only talked with her a handful of times, but none of these had been particularly pleasant experiences and he was loathe to hear what she'd accuse him of if he told her that her son was sick and had showed up at his doorstep the night before. He doubted that it would be pretty, but still—
"Hello?"
"Is your wife there?" asked Satoshi, putting a great deal of effort into keeping his voice as bland as possible.
"No," said Niwa Kosuke, bemused but still perfectly amiable, a perfect template for what his son ought to be, "but I can get her if you'd like—"
"No thank you," Satoshi said quickly. "This is about Daisuke-kun."
"Daisuke? Who—?"
"Hiwatari Satoshi," he put in smoothly. There was a pause on the other end, an expectant silence. Satoshi could well imagine Niwa Kosuke's expression on the other end; it was as clear as it had been two years ago, in the snow-blanketed chapel. He paused and amended, with a little half-annoyed scowl, "Hikari Satoshi."
With this matter out of the way, Niwa-san dove back into the issue at hand. "What about Daisuke?"
"He's sick," said Satoshi, "and depressed. I'd say he'd worked up something of a dependency disorder, and when Dark disappeared—"
"Where is he now?" It seemed that Niwa-san didn't care much for Satoshi's quasi-qualified psychological analysis, which left the blue-haired boy moderately miffed.
"Here at my flat."
"And Riku-san?"
Of course. It was to be expected that Niwa would have turned to Harada Riku first, and that was why it had been so hard on Niwa when Riku had refused to listen, or ignored him, or whatever had gone on between them. "Something happened. Risa couldn't tell me, and Niwa-kun… he's sleeping right now."
There was another heavy pause "And what do you propose?"
Satoshi blinked on his line. "I… thought you ought to know." He's your son, after all.
"You said… he's worrying because of Dark?"
"That's what he told me."
"Well, then, Hikari-san," said Niwa-san briskly, "I think Daisuke's in the right place."
"You don't want to—"
"Daisuke's been through a lot, most of it that I'd never understand, that Emiko-san would never understand. The two of us would probably cause more harm than good. His grandfather might be a bit more helpful, but you're his friend, Hikari-kun, his double, in a sense. You went through it with him; it ended in the same rush for you that it did for him. You've talked with him, right?"
"Yes, a bit."
Satoshi could well imagine Niwa-san shrugging on the other line. "I think he should stay with you. Talk to Daisuke, be his light."
"You want him to stay here?"
"If it's not too much of a problem."
Niwa-san's nonchalance was catching Satoshi off-guard; he'd expected the man to be worried, or to call in his wife and let Satoshi know that they'd be there on the fastest train to Azumano. Instead… "Not… not really, no."
"Well, then, that's settled," said Kosuke, jovial. "Give him our best wishes." Satoshi, tongue-tied, stared silently at the wall, and Niwa-san pushed ahead. "We'll be back on the twenty-first, and Emiko-san will worry if he's not at home by then, so help him along. Watch well, Hikari-san."
The phone went silent.
Part of Satoshi felt like laughing at the absurdity of it, of a Hikari watching over a Niwa, of all people, and said Niwa's sane parent being perfectly alright with the situation at hand and encouraging Satoshi to keep Niwa Daisuke at his flat. I'm not originally from the Niwa family, he had said to Satoshi, once upon a winter, so I have a different way of viewing things…
The phantom thief was gone.
So why not?
The Niwa clan's demon-bunny cut his musings short, scampering into the study with a worried "kyuu." Satoshi wheeled out the door in an instant, needing no other message than the familiar's presence to know that something was wrong with Niwa again, just as the medicine ought to have been kicking in at its strongest, just as the boy ought to have been quiet and still and not so sick.
Watch well, Hikari-san.
The redhead was back to thrashing, sobbing and tossing and turning. "Niwa!" Satoshi found himself half shouting, catching the boy's flailing limbs and pinning them down. Niwa's hands clawed wildly at the front of Satoshi's shirt, eyes scrunched tight. Satoshi sat on the bed and held Niwa down, and Niwa shuddered into quiet, peaceful silence, still asleep, it would seem, and his head dropped into Satoshi's lap. The blue-haired boy gave a small start, then relaxed as Niwa's breathing became slow and easy…
He'd told Niwa Kosuke that he would watch over this boy, that he'd keep him here and guide him back to some semblance of sanity. Dammit, Satoshi wasn't going to sit back and watch Niwa Daisuke waste away, not after everything that had happened to the two of them…
And what Niwa needed was comfort.
It wasn't hard, with so many cards on the table, to put two and two together; it wasn't the fever that made Niwa toss and whimper, though the fever was keeping him unconscious, uninhibited, amplifying every little feeling and worry. The super-ego and ego seemed to have been burned away by the fever, and the boy was in some sepia state of pain and comfort… Niwa had lived a year with another presence, with constant reassurance, and now that voice, that comfort was gone in a flurry of inky feathers, and those million wounds he'd suffered...
Satoshi ran his hands through Niwa's still-damp hair idly. It was physical touch, then, that calmed the boy, the sort of reassurance that the subconscious equated with Dark returning, with the end of the pain. This was more than layman's idle speculation, true, but Niwa Kosuke hadn't seemed to care about Satoshi's hypotheses, he just wanted Niwa taken care of…
When Dark had disappeared, Krad had disappeared also. The chains had been broken, the bonds cut – when Dark and Krad had left, it had been a blessing for Satoshi. Some weight on his heart had been lifted then, and when he'd seen the sun shining over the sea, he'd seen it without Krad's feathers falling in his eyes for the first time in a year's slow eternity. A blessing.
And, for Niwa Daisuke, it had been a curse.
Somehow, the Black Wings' sealing had ended Staoshi's living hell and forced the pain on Niwa Daisuke, innocent, laughing Niwa Daisuke, who had never deserved this twisted delirium, and Satoshi was going to bring Niwa back to the way he'd been before, heaven and hell be damned together.
His hands tightened unconsciously in Niwa's hair; the redhead gave a small, tired noise and Satoshi froze, but the boy went on sleeping quietly. Satoshi sighed lightly and ruffled the loose strands of Niwa's hair, daring to bend down and brush his lips over Niwa's cheek protectively, possessively. Krad would have been out for that, would have throttled Niwa in his sleep before Satoshi could get a word in edgewise, and those snow white feathers were so easily stained with blood…
But he'd take it all back, all the troubles, all the pain, all the burning-cold whispers, just to see Niwa smile again.
"Dai... suke…"
***
Strangely enough, I'm pretty nonplussed by having Kosuke being so nonchalant about Daisuke's condition; accepting and getting things settled quickly is just how I perceive the ever-so-wonderful Kosuke. You may call me out on this if you're so inclined. I am, however, concerned with how quickly those phone calls went by (though any longer and I would have been bored of them), as well as with the clarity my explanation of what's wrong with Daisuke, in part because the idea made so much more sense in the chapter outline. Unfortunately, my access to my regular computer is down as I ship it back to Dell, so any more edits would have left me updating half a month from now. Sorry, loves.
Thanks to Sage of Angst, Kiyomi22, digitalized, silver_tears, Flighting dreams, Ayame, Luine, xxphatxbaybeexx, Shooting Starr, kasbaka, KimiKodoku, Enkay, Kuroi Kitty, kawaiidark, Pocketfirefairy, Nox Noctis, fairy of irrelevance, and fowler Nsow (the last two of whom slipped reviews in just before my cutting time) for reviewing!
Give Daisuke a hug – review, comment, rave, complain!