Rites of His Own

Summary: They had arrayed themselves in appropriate mourning, but he had rites of his own to complete… (Implied SilvaChrom) (Re-take of a scene from Book 4.)

Disclaimer: I do not own Shaman King. However, I promise that if you vote for me as President of the SK gang, there will be free distribution of—Dammit. It doesn't matter whether I become president or not, does it?

Author's Note: Inspired by the original scene from the manga, I couldn't really resist committing it to paper and deepening the relationship between Chrom and Silva. Neither of them are mentioned very much in other fanfictions, and I thought that was a shame; Silva seemed like an interesting character, what with having five spirits and all. But for now, all he gets is his own one-shot while I try and figure out if I have a decent plot to tortu- er, plot him out with.

Enjoy, read, and review. :)

Show some respect for your colleague's funeral rites!

The words echoed through his ears, but he didn't hear them, not really; not the way that they ought to be heard, with a deep, engraved solemnity that culminated in understanding and sorrow. Safer to say that he hadn't heard them at all, to pretend that the blood-stained figure before his eyes didn't exist, and neither did the obvious absence of the prize Oracle Pager, given to successful contestants in the Shaman Fight.

Safer to dream that Chrom was alive still.

Chrom, my friend, the Patch who loved to sing and dance the most…

Memories flashed before his eyes, of a delighted long-haired figure whose features were lit by sunlight and some glow that had emerged from deeper within. Dark hair swaying in an invisible breeze as a tightly-muscled body whirled to some inelegant music to which only he had the rhythm. Yes, Chrom had had his charms..

Has, Silva reminded himself desperately, fighting the urge to enfold his arms about himself, to cling to his own body as though his soul, too, were fading. Has. He can't be dead, not Chrom. We grew up together..

"Silva?" The words were spoken with the airy carelessness of an eight-year-old; but that was forgivable. The speaker was eight years old, after all.

The one that he had addressed glanced up from a brow-furrowing activity of attempting to carve his own tiny totem pole. "Mm?" Whittle, whittle, went the ivory-white carving knife held in a palm that was not much larger than the blade itself.

"If I died, would you miss me?"

The smooth rhythm of cutting stuttered to a stop as Silva gazed confusedly at his companion. "Chrom!" He said urgently. "What are you saying! Surely you won't die soon!"

The addressed grinned widely, giving the other boy a charming smile that stilled him and soothed the worries from his heart. "I'm too young to die." He said simply. "But you know how the Elders were talking about how the Officiant's life can be in danger if you don't worry enough about your life…"

"So?" Now that the danger had passed, Silva could afford to be magnanimously scornful of such an office. "Chrom, you don't need to worry about silly things like that. What you need to think about is the Shaman Fight!" Now there was a subject that inspired him; in only moments, the boy's eyes had lit up, bright with the ambition and vigor of youth. "We'll save the world from pollution with the power of the Great Spirit behind us," he enthused, and rattled on to speak of a thousand other things that they might do in order to save the world. Chrom watched in smiling silence, basking in his friend's delighted ambition.

"I'd like to be a Shaman Officiant, though." He murmured dreamily at last, when Silva's flow of words had come to a stop. Silva glanced at him in confusion, but the dark-haired boy was no longer looking back. He was sprawled upon the ground, staring widely and unblinkingly into the wide, pristine blue of the skies." It would be so wonderful, to know that the Shaman King might have to get past you first. You could spend the rest of your life thinking that way, I tested the Shaman King."

"Hmpt." Silva muttered dubiously after a moment's consideration of such an ambition. "I'd rather be the Shaman King alone. I don't want to waste the rest of my life waiting for one event, and then settling down again once it's past. That's boring. I want to change the world, and change it in a biiig way!" He gestured expressively, waving tiny palms in the air, enthusiasm regained.

"But there can only be one Shaman King, and there will be ten Shaman Officiants." Chrom pointed out logically, grinning hugely at having caught the ever-logical Silva in a reasoning mistake. "And…"

"And what?"

Rather than ducking his head and blushing, Chrom appeared to grow still more defiant, losing his smiles and gaining an adult solemnity. "And I want to be with you." He said quietly. "I don't want to see you move away when you learn of things that are more important to you than your best friend. I want to be by your side in everything, Silva, sharing everything that you have."

Silva appeared to ponder this for a moment, but abruptly, suspicion sprang up within his eyes. "Chrom.." He said slowly. "You're my best friend. But…"

"But what?"

"But you still can't have my lunch. I won't share it."

"Baka!" Laughing, in a moment Chrom had swatted his friend's head. "I didn't mean your lunch. I meant bigger things than that!"

"Like what?" To the young Shaman, there could be no dreams greater than that of a lunch fashioned by his mother, who was, the Patch admitted, the best cook within the entirety of the tribe.

Chrom grinned secretively, but there was an odd emotion intermingling with his mischievousness.

"I'll tell you when you're older." He said at last with a smile.

"Aww.. but that's not fair! You're only a year older! You cheater, Chrom!"

Suddenly, though he had not caught his legs in motion, he was kneeling beside his everlasting companion's body, hoisting its still-warm flesh into his arms. And for a moment, he felt a thrill of surprise and defiance in that warmth; dead bodies were cold and, well, dead, but Chrom's flesh was, though a little chill, still too warm to be a corpse. He was alive! And Silva basked in the knowledge, exulting in that fact. He could not imagine a day that was not lit by sunshine and the brightness that was Chrom.

But though he had not intended to think upon it, the shaman recalled that dead bodies could retain heat for a little while after their deaths, and that Chrom's muscles had never been so stiff, so tense and unwilling to move.

Recognizing the condition for what it was, his fingers loosened and fumbled as he almost dropped the corpse that had once been his best friend.

Rigor mortis.

"Who did this?!" He demanded hoarsely. His voice rang all throughout the cement buildings, reverberating through their walls as though they might shatter them. "Who killed Chrom?!"

"Silence, Silva!" The reprove came like a whiplash across his bare, tenderest skin, scoring a mark that would be etched into mind and body for ages and ages hence. They told him to be silent, but how could he, when all he wanted to do was scream aloud and let the world know of this new, too-precious death? "Control yourself!" That masked other went on, with a harshness that, had his mind not been blinded by grief, the shaman might have recognized as carefully restrained sorrow. "You call yourself a Shaman Officiant?!"

"Uhn…" Carefully, Silva bit back the words that came to mind, particularly the ones that involved insults upon the other's… size. (Ahem.) Chrom would have loved it, but then again, Chrom was no longer there.

"Very well," The other man nodded his approval of Silva's rapid recovery, and turned towards the device that he had grasped firmly between two hands. "Look at the images on this genuine traditional hand-crafted Patch Oracle Projector." Blurring for a moment, the screen flickered to a stop at last upon an arrogantly-faced boy whose hair had been smoothed into a distinct and most probably painful point. But aside from those distinctive features, there was nothing memorable about the lad, nothing that caused Silva to start and form a connection as to why and how he could have killed Chrom.

"Who is he?" Though he barely managed to whisper the words, they flowed freely upon the breeze as they flowed to settle into the other shaman's ears.

"He is Tao Ren." The latter said, and the long-haired officiant felt the words engrave themselves into his mind, burning their way through with a brand that would never allow its mark to fade.

Tao Ren…

"…also the one," The masked shaman went on, heedless of the fact that Silva's shoulders had slumped and he was gazing blankly into the air, "who passed the test with the highest furyoku value."

These words, too, scorched, but differently. Had Chrom been conquered so easily? He had had strength of his own; he would have never fallen to some unpracticed child without serious luck on the child's part. And even then, it should not have led to his death. No one should have died, save, perhaps, the child. And who cared about the corpse of some worthless boy if it would have prevented Chrom's own demise?

"What…" He said softly, but his voice pulsed with strength as he resumed speaking. As he wavered gently in his half-kneeling position, his voice rose above the crowd, settling into their unyielding hearing with no effect. "What do you mean, he passed?! Even if he's that powerful… How can someone who killed an officiant be allowed to pass?! How could we guide one so evil down the path of the Shaman King?" But though his lips spoke the words mindlessly, with a passionate strength that had been derived from ancient, childish days when he had still loved, and loved with fire, it was a different question that cried out within the depths of his mind, crying for an answer that would never come.

How could he bear to extinguish a spirit as brightly fired as Chrom? How could he endeavor to hurt him, me, the way that he has without a second care? How can someone so childish ever be molded to fit the needs of the people as their Shaman King?

"Tao Ren broke no rules under the condition of the test." The other's voice resonated through his thoughts, refusing to go unheard, though their content was more distasteful to him than the time that he had had, carefully explained to him, the process of how babies were made. "It is the Great Spirit's will to pass him." Here a sharp pause, laden with quiet anger. "Dissent is forbidden."

Dissent is forbidden, and yet you were a dissenter every day of your life, Chrom, The One of Bright Fire. You were a dissenter from darkness and solemnity with your light and your laughter. And now you've taken both to the Spirit World, where you may light the days of others. It is selfish to mourn you when I know that you've gone somewhere better.

And yet…

And yet…

Is it so selfish for a heart to wish that its other half be restored, though the other died so long ago that even its memory has turned faded? And your death is still new; my case is different from that one. Your body is upon the ground, your soul in the spirit world, and yet I cannot grasp it.

"This is a legitimate outcome." The other shaman blared loudly, intent upon blustering until this thought, too, had been engraved into Silva's thoughts. "The Shaman King requires enormous furyoku to be one with the Great Spirit. If this boy possesses more furyoku than we do, then he has great potential." Sharp eyes fixed upon his own, and a chill coursed through his veins as the speaker continued. He could not determine the identity of the speaker from the latter's concealment behind the wooden cover, but he loathed him nonetheless, with a fervor that he had not thought to feel since he had left adolescence.

"We conduct the test by actual combat to gauge the candidates' furyoku. A death among us only foreshadows the coming of a king, and should be celebrated."

Fists clenching futilely, Silva clamped his teeth firmly together, refusing to allow a convenient reply to make its way past his lips… If a death among us is so favored, then why didn't I kill you instead and let us all feel proud that a Shaman King was coming! There have been tournaments in the past where no officiant was killed; why then, is this such fortune?

"This should not be so hard to accept for a true officiant." Now came the taunting goad that forced his shoulders to stiffen. But none followed. "If you allow your emotions to rule you, Silva," the other said simply instead, "you will never be an impartial officiant." And abruptly he was alone again; the other shaman had vanished in the heat of the moment, gone while the drama still lasted.

Alone… with his thoughts, and his memories…

"Why?!" The echo of flesh hitting stone did not go unheard by the approaching shaman. Neither did the fact that Silva now appeared to be intent upon dashing his brains out against the rock. And what a pretty picture of abstract art that would make for the shaman officiants to admire.

Biting his lip, Chrom very carefully refrained from pointing this out to his best friend, instead seating himself upon a rock and awaiting the latter's attention.

"Because." He said at last, when the other's movements had slowed, wavering. "You are strong, Silva; you think that they haven't noticed that? They need that kind of strength on their team right now. And you are clever too; you control three spirits already, don't you? At your age?"

"Four, actually." The adolescent murmured with a thin, though no less self-satisfied, smile. Wearily, he moved to sprawl by his friend's side atop the large, flat rock, carelessly dabbing away all remnants of blood with his cape. "I added Silver Horn to the group. He'll be a very useful addition if ever I need extra stamina." That faint smile, however, was rapidly erased again by the memories of what they had said. "The Great Spirit wills this, the Great Spirit wills that." The dark-haired shaman mocked them faintly under his breath, breath coming quicker as their images passed before his eyes.

"Sometimes…" He began, and stopped.

"Sometimes what?" Chrom inquired.

"I wonder if my ancestor wasn't right in wanting to discard all the formalities of the Shaman Fight." Silva said quietly, glancing sharply at his companion. "You know," he prompted, "Hao. Admittedly he wanted to kill all the humans, which was a bit of a downside, but he had good reason to want to." And it would have made it a good deal easier to spurn the Elders' wishes and refuse to join the ranks of the Shaman Officiants. Though Chrom had never wavered in his persistence for the both of them to join the officiants, Silva had found it a good deal easier to ignore his wishes as he had grown older.

Regarding his friend penetratingly, Chrom broke into genuine, hearty laughter, much to the latter's surprise.
"You don't mean that." He said with a charming smile when he had recovered. "If you did, you would have joined him long ago. But you love the world too much for you to kill so many of her children indiscriminately. Sooner or later you would have become disillusioned with his cause and would have run away to bash your mind out against another rock."

"But rest assured, Silva," Chrom added, before his companion could reply angrily, "no matter where you go, you will never go alone. I could never leave you."

"And I never will."

How could any man have those memories within his mind, and still be impartial as the definition goes? The dark-haired shaman wondered, though he did not voice it aloud. It was a desperate anger, but it was his own alone, and though his grief he wanted to display to the world, this mourning was a private sort.

One of the masked shaman had reprimanded him for not following the rituals to mourn Chrom… but he had rites of his own to fulfill.

"Impartial?" His voice was raw with weariness and an angry humor as his lips curved into a bitter smile. It was to the silent darkness that he spoke; not a living being, but a writhing malevolence that seemed entirely against him now. "How can a cold-blooded murderer ever become the Shaman King?! Oh Great Spirit," and his tone had become one entirely mocking, "I thought you were all-knowing! How could you ever have allowed an abomination like this to happen?"

How could you…

How could you, Chrom…

How could you have left me?