© Copyright 2002 Original Storyline by Gold (E-mail: )

Disclaimer: If I were CLAMP, I'd know how X/1999 ends. No such luck, though.

For Mikuro-san, my good friend, in the hopes that he will still love me to death despite this chapter.

For Skuld-chan, who wants some angst, but didn't specify who.

For Shi, who has been a v. faithful reviewer.

For Aishuu, whom I hope is churning out the next part of Nyctalopia... and I really hope I've got the spelling right.

In Berlin, there is a famous street, lined on both sides with linden trees, called Unter den Linden, or Under the Lindens, in English.

After The Fact (Version 3.0)
Part 5: Unter den Sakura

It was that time of the year again, when the sakura were in full bloom. Over a thousand years ago, when earthquakes had ravaged Tokyo's streets and buildings, the process of rebuilding the city had begun with the planting of a thousand cherry trees all over the city, with two hundred trees planted in what remained of Ueno Park, to add to the five or so cherry trees that had survived the earthquakes. In this way, one year on in the spring, even if the city had not been completely rebuilt, at least the cherry blossoms would come to Tokyo as they always did. No city in Japan could be without the one flower that universally symbolised the people.

And it was that time of the year again, when they gathered to admire the sakura, picnic under cherry trees, and compose poems and odes to the floral beauty, several with puns about cherry tree hills—Sakurazaka.

Monou Fuuma drew a shallow breath as he silently looked around him, at those of the party he belonged to. They could not see what he did…

…not the seventeen-year-old twins, with their sooty-black hair and happy faces, but a sixteen-year-old girl twirling, as he had seen her more than a thousand years ago, in the dream panels of a youth who had loved her; and a thin-faced, haunted-looking twenty-five-year-old young man, clad all in black, with a white trenchcoat fluttering around him, one eye a bitter, dark green, one eye pure white…

…not the nineteen-year-old youth with fair hair cut in an attractive, asymmetric fringe sweeping over a spiritual-looking face, but a young man, looking little more than a boy, with that same fair hair spilling over his shoulders, dressed in loose white robes with a neckline swooping down to his chest, eyes and face fixed in a look of utter despair, his only company the visions of death and destruction in the dreamland he inhabited…

…not the bright-faced fifteen-year-old girl who was his sister's best friend, but another girl, just fourteen, also bright-faced, but with a hidden power that had marked her as one of the fourteen most spiritually-powerful people in Japan, and a dog-spirit by her side—former inugami-mistress she had been…

…so many others, so ordinary-looking, so happy—

And behind them all, Monou Fuuma saw, if only briefly, the glimpse of what they had been a thousand years and more ago, children bound to a destiny foreordained. But look at them now!

There were Kigai Yuuto and Shiyu Kusanagi, who were good friends of Sakurazaka Seishirou and Kuzumi Kakyou respectively. Yuuto and Seishirou had been at high school and college together, and had graduated the previous year. They were now architects in the well-known firm belonging to Yuuto's father. Yuuto had brought his girlfriend along: Yatouji Satsuki, aged twenty, and coincidentally a very good friend of a certain Kishuu Arashi, a good friend of the Sumeragis. Shiyu Kusanagi, on the other hand, was a little younger than Yuuto and Seishirou; around Satsuki's age. He was studying to be a veterinarian. And he was waiting for fifteen-year-old Nekoi Yuzuriha, Monou Kotori's best friend and classmate, to grow up.

The lines of fate, it seemed, held strong and sure.

And sometimes Fuuma didn't know whether to laugh or to cry, because everything seemed so surreal. Sometimes it was so hard to see them as anything other than what they had been in their past lifetimes; at other times, he could see them just as they were, ordinary human beings, being—ordinary. Kusanagi being a veterinarian and Seishirou and Yuuto being architects…the whole thing was just so…cosmically appropriate.

And then Fuuma stiffened, because he caught someone else's eye, and his heart bounded up, seemed to choke itself in his throat, and then just burned inside him, and the smile wiped itself off his face in a flash…

…because Shirou Kamui was looking at him, with those enormous eyes of soft purple-violet, dusted with black lashes, and oh, the look in those eyes hadn't changed over the past thousand years or so.

Not for a thousand years…

…Fuuma felt himself go very pale, and the world seemed to go dark before him. Was that the sky darkening? A strong wind howling through the world, unblocked by tall buildings that had collapsed? Was the world ending again—? He could hear nothing but the wind, in a sky mockingly bright for a Day that had ended in broken hearts and bleeding, mortal wounds, in words of truth spoken for the first time, and secrets unleashed, in sharp blades that burned white-hot as they sliced through yielding flesh, and thus ensured the rebirth of the Earth as well as the survival of mankind at one shot—o, ye gods above—

"Monou-kun."

Fuuma straightened, breathing heavily, and looked up into deep amber eyes.

Sakurazuka—no, Sakurazaka Seishirou had a hand lightly placed on his shoulder and was standing in front of him, gazing down.

With a sudden shock, Fuuma's eyes widened.

There were shadows under the weary amber eyes, and a haunted look in the depths of those same eyes, that spoke of a knowledge…a knowledge of a thousand years back.

He was looking at Seishirou with new eyes now.

Seishirou regarded him expressionlessly, dropping the hand from Fuuma's shoulder. "Ice-cream goes with memories."

Fuuma's eyes narrowed a little. "There's a parlour I know," he answered coolly, nonchalantly, much as he had been wont to do in the old days. But he could not smile like he used to.

Seishirou held out a hand, palm upturned. He did not look at Fuuma, but stared steadily at his hand as sakura petals floated down, caressing the palm. "Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," agreed Fuuma quietly.

He did not notice that Shirou Kamui was watching them with eyes like wet, bleeding violets, and a face as white as paper.

Author's Notes: What a tangled web we weave...never thought I'd enjoy writing hints of Subaru/Kamui and Fuuma/Seishirou. Wonder whether I can do a Seishirou/Kamui...hrmmm.... No, I don't think so. My stomach just recoiled at the thought, and I think I see an angry Mikuro-san running after me...