Disclaimer: CLAMP owns X/1999. If I own X/1999, I'd make Subaru stop angsting. Last I check, he is STILL angsting, so guess not.
Note: Spoilers in general, for both manga and anime, tread with caution. Anything that is not consistent, I made it up. Originally started out as a challenge drabble, requested by Dark Magician.
Depth
written by: damouse ®
There was once a man, and a boy. The boy was destined to save the Earth, and the man to aid him in his task, one of his Dragons, his comrade. Both of them were lonely, both of them found it hard to trust other people, but in spite of that, both of them formed a close kind of rapport with each other.
The boy then fell in love. He fell in love with the man, the gentle, kind man, who always had a smile and a word of support for the boy, who was heavily burdened with his ordained fate.
The man? He didn't know.
For the man had a past, a past that spoke of terrible betrayal, a past that haunted him incessantly. He was once an innocent, where he once believed in happily ever after. He believed in true love and kindred spirits. The man saw the same kind of innocence of his past shimmering in the boy, beneath the burden the boy was forced to carry, in the name of destiny.
The same innocence that yearned for love, to love and be loved.
When the man was a boy, he, in turn, loved a man. The man he loved took everything away from him, everything saved for broken promises, an empty heart, and a thirst for revenge. His love for that man destroyed him.
He saw some of that man in the older him, and it scared him. He saw how he could manipulate the boy if he wanted for. For the boy was in love with him.
He did not want to hurt the boy. He did not want the boy to experience the same kind of despairing loss if, no, when the fairytale fell apart and grisly truth presented itself, and will force the boy to become a hardened man, not unlike himself.
He did not want the boy to carry with him, a shattered dream and an anguished love. The hollowness he carried with both loving and hating a person. It was a terrible feeling.
He could not love the boy as whole-heartedly as the boy seemed to love him, not when the shadow of the other man still hung around him, a shadow, a perpetuating shadow. But he could not turn his feelings on and off whenever he pleases. He wanted to maintain his distance, but he could not. Even when the other man was still alive, he could not control his growing affections for the innocent boy, such a beautiful boy. But was it love? Or was it something else?
Sometimes, in the dead of the night, the man questioned himself. About himself, the boy, and about them, their relationship - the depths of their relationship. But somehow, the gloom of that other man always loomed, and a shell formed around his already fragile heart, closing it, forbidding any kind of warmth.
And then the other man died.
His grief was so immense, and he hated himself for grieving, grieving for a murderer, a cold-hearted man that killed his beloved twin, ripped away half of his soul, left him with dark, hollow emptiness of a love he had to forbid himself to feel, but still, he grieved.
He told himself he could never love another after the searing betrayal, tormented love, and unspeakable loss. He would never wish that kind of suffering he endured onto another person, much less the boy.
The hands of Fate remained as it was, he believed that his fate will bestowed itself upon the boy, for the man was, but a cursed man.
And so, the man did not want to love the boy, did not allow himself to love the boy.
He did not want any more pain. He did not want to grieve, or be grieved.
He only wanted emotional detachment. Not wanting to feel. To love. He had had enough of those feelings. He told himself he did not love the boy, he would never love the boy, never be able to love, not ever again.
Until he lost the boy. In that one single, shattering moment when the boy was taken from him, he remembered love.
He remembered love at its purest, at its strongest, as he gathered the dying boy in his arms, and held the boy against him. He felt powerful feelings sweeping through him, feelings that had been lost to him since he himself was a boy.
He felt love. The man thought he was incapable of feeling such a love again, but he was wrong.
He had felt love as a boy, and now he felt love again, as a man. In the past, he loved the other man, and at present, he loved the boy – the boy who had helped him heal even without he himself knowing it. The boy who had given him so much, along with a heart of pure, unfettered love.
And as the boy lay dying in his arms, he realized, too late, that he loved the boy.
The man loved the boy. He had always loved the boy.
He tried to tell him, as his tears fell down in rivers. He begged for a second chance, another chance, but it never came. The boy smiled at him, one final, beautiful smile, and quietly slipped away as Death claimed the Savior.
He could not stop shaking as he held the boy's body, the gradually hardening, lifelessly cold body. He had denied himself, and the boy. The depth of his feelings were much deeper than he had known it to be.
The boy died without knowing the man loved him…
Regret, torment, agony and devastation followed the man as he grew older. He never loved another – not when he still could not forget...
The man now stood alone, under the clear, moonlit skies, and remembered. He didn't know how long had it been since the boy died, but the wound he carried still remained fresh, blazing with pain. With terrible anguish and a solitary tear, he remembered the boy, his innocence, their love, the loss.
Sumeragi Subaru remembered Shirou Kamui.
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-Finis-
damouse ®posted 20th July 2004
Apologies for Subaru's OOC-ness. And I know this fic is just weird, to put it plainly, but what can I say, I am a weird person. Hope all those "mans" and "boys" are not too confusing. I had planned to write a Subaru/Kamui since forever, and this crap is what I came up with.
Someone once asked me why not I write a happy Subaru/Kamui fic. And my answer to that is: Is it even possible? Heh.
Please comment/review/criticize/flame/whatever. I need improvement.