Chapter nine: Uncertain futures.
T: This chapter is a teasing chapter, I warn you of this so that I don't get my head bitten off…though I most likely will anyway! Warnings remain the same if only because adding a new one would spoil the surprise this chapter has in store.
I'm not a member of Clamp, if I were I'd have got a proper anime version of Tokyo done by now, so therefore it's not mine is it!
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He'd finished the job and was on the train home when his beeper went off.
It was a number he recognised well and yet since she had called him to inform him about that job with the 'ailing' mother, he had heard nothing from her.
He knew that he would have to phone he if only to let her know that he was still alive and yet…
He'd most likely have to tell her about his new living arrangements.
It had been all but inevitable that at some point his Obaachan would discover that he was living with the sworn enemy of their clan, yet with her health failing and a divide drawn between them, there had been the vain hope that she would die before the subject was raised.
Cursing ill fortune he searched out the nearest pay phone and inserting his card he punched in the number of the Sumeragi household.
His Obaachan answered almost immediately and she sounded so fragile that he instantly felt guilty for allowing time, distance and a selfish wish to come between them.
"It's Subaru, how are you, Obaachan?"
"I am well."
Silence descends and Subaru wonders if this was the best of ideas after all.
"Obaachan, what did you want me for?"
"I needed to hear your voice, Subaru. It's been so long and I've been so afraid…"
"Obaachan, you can not protect me always. I have to fight my own battle and I need to make my own choices."
"Subaru, I looked again into your future yesterday and I saw again the sakura blossoms.
"They will steal you away, Subaru…"
"Obaachan…" Taking a breath Subaru allows himself a moment to work a meditated calm into his blood, before he says, "I want them to take me away."
"Subaru…Hokuto's loss has hurt you more than any can understand and that grief is confusing you…"
"Obaachan, it is not for her loss that I say these things. Rather it is for the sake of my heart.
"For I love the Sakurazukamori and wish only to remain forever at his side. Forever in the thrall of the sakura."
"To love the Sakurazukamori is madness, Subaru, for it has no heart."
"That is not true, Obaachan. The Sakurazukamori love and yet that signal is a signal of their death, a signal that soon their powers will be passed to another.
"Yet it shall not be as such this time. I will become the next Sakurazukamori, as is my destiny, but not at the expense of his life."
"If you choose this path, Subaru, you can no longer be of this clan. For the Sakurazukamori uses his gift to kill and thus is an enemy to those who use their gift to heal.
"Thus he is our enemy."
"Then, Obaachan, this is the last I shall talk, to you, for that is the path that I have chosen.
"That is the oath that will give me happiness."
He hears her tears before he hangs up and understands them well.
She has, after all, lost her grandson this day.
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The being known once as Fuuma Monou was amused.
The Sakurazukamori had told his other self that he was unaware of the true wish in his heart, that he believed his wish still to be that ignorant childhood want to love and be loved.
How foolish.
He was linked to his other self by the soul and the moment that his wish had changed Fuuma had known.
A replacement for that lost wish had yet to grow within Kamui's heart and yet it did not matter.
There was but one future after all.
One victory.
"Yes the future is still one." Kakyo remarked from his place at Fuuma's side. "A few of the details have changed, though." The Dreamseer remarked as he pointed into the darkness.
A flash of the future that would have been: Of Subaru's death at the hands of his other self and then the new future rolls into place.
His future self regards the new Sakurazukamori with amusement in his eyes,
'I have at last killed the traitor and now, as is your wish, I shall kill you also.'
The Sakurazukamori bows his head in defeat and aware that there shall be no resistance his future self strikes.
A flash of Kamui's screaming face and of a shadowed figure at his side before the vision fades away.
"Who is the other at his side?"
"I do not know."
"How can that be? The future has always been yours to see before this day…"
"I believe someone is preventing me from seeing this new face, but who that might be I can not say."
Fuuma moves then, his hand rising to grip loosely about Kakyo's throat.
"Who?"
"Why does it matter? The future remains as it was despite this new face and my inability to perceive it."
"True enough." Fuuma remarks before he fades back into reality.
Kakyo remains behind to dream the one future of the world, a future that is becoming more and more uncertain with each passing dream.
For the first time he can not see all the players in the ending, can not seem to glance beyond a certain point without the images fading completely.
Again Kotori's words ring in his mind and for the very first time Kakyo believes them.
Believes that there is now more than one future.
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T: Before you start throwing things at me take a really good look at that last sentence. Right so things will not be going this way, it was just fun to tease you with that option! As to the obligatory 'nana Sumeragi kicks Subaru out of the clan' scene, I thought that as I gypped the reader out of it in Wish I'd put it in here instead.
Three-chapter left and then you shall be free! R+R and I'll resist the urge to change that fact.
