FY is still not mine, this is still a yaoi, etc. New warning - blood in this chapter (the lemon part, but it's not particularly squicky.)
AN: Okay, Mareu figured out the basics of how his seishi powers work a chapter or so ago, but I'm not going to say what they are yet – it can be a surprise. ^_~ Also, I added a prologue to this fanfic, if you go back and read it it explains how Nakago ended up reincarnated as Mareu.
Facepaint
by Sunandshadow
Chapter 8 – Once More, With Feeling
I walked into the seishi's dining room and Nakago choked on his tea. Soi and Tomo looked at him in shock, then followed his gaze to me, and both facefaulted. After taking a moment to recover, Soi leaned over and whispered to Tomo, "I'd call that Tamahome green, wouldn't you?"
Tomo nodded emphatically but whispered back, "You said it, not me."
"Are you ok?" I asked Nakago with real concern. He said nothing, but his look of shock changed to a poisonous glare. "Oh come on, now what did I do wrong?" I seated myself at the table. "You said several of the Suzakus have seen you, so I figured dyeing my hair would be a good start on my disguise." I huffed.
Soi coughed. "Interesting choice of color."
"Do you think it looks ok?" I addressed my question as much to Tomo as to Soi. "The first guy I ever had a crush on had hair like this, and I figured now that I'm a bisienen I could try and pull off the look. Of course I don't have his purple eyes, or…" I blinked at Nakago, who was now an odd shade of red. "Uh… what…?"
Clearly trying not to laugh, Tomo asked, "Mareu, was this guy's name by any chance…"
Nakago cut him off, "Don't say it." Tomo paused, caught between his habitual reaction to Nakago and the fact that he had transferred his loyalty to me now. He compromised by staying silent but smirking at Nakago's discomfiture.
"Uh, his name was Kyoichi Saionji. Why?"
Tomo turned to Nakago and said smugly, "See? Aren't you relieved to know it's not the same guy?" Nakago glared daggers at him, then without a word got up and walked out of the room.
I waited until he was out of earshot, then demanded, "Ok give: what the hell was that about?"
"Tamahome." Soi grumbled the name.
"This is a guy who has green hair?"
"This is a suzaku seishi who has green hair and purple eyes and Nakago had a crush on him." Tomo clarified in a cheerfully acid voice. Soi scowled.
Ok, now I was confused. "But… but I thought he was straight!"
"He wishes he is. He's like you, likes both, but he'd never admit to liking a guy. Hell, he'd never admit to liking anyone, but at least he pays attention to Soi." Soi preened slightly at Tomo's grumbled admission.
"Ohhhhh! That makes so much more sense!" At some point he must have decided that admitting that sex with a guy could be a good thing would be tantamount to accepting the emperor's abuse of him... How awful. It would be really disturbing to be powerfully attracted to someone yet think that even feeling that was wrong because you were betraying yourself to your enemy, or maybe becoming your enemy...
"It does." stated Tomo, his disbelieving tone indicating that it most emphatically did not.
"Yes, yes of course... Dude, you know, that was the only major difference between he and I – maybe he really must be my long lost twin, or something."
Soi's eyes widened as if she had just had an epiphany. "Or something... Maybe... maybe you're his reincarnation! It says right in the legend that the celestial warriors are incarnated over and over again to serve their god – if Seiryuu rejected the original Miboshi's service he could only have used another seiryuu sei as a replacement, and since the rest of us were already here in this incarnation..."
Soi let her sentence trail off and Tomo wide-eyed finished it for her. "...Seiryuu must have grabbed a copy of Nakago from a different incarnation cycle?"
I scowled. "I am not a copy of anyone."
Tomo looked alarmed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean-!"
I sighed and dragged a hand through my hair at the reminder of how fragile he was and why I really shouldn't take my irritation out on him. "Yeah, I know what you meant, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to growl at you. This idea just bothers me. I mean, I've always kinda halfway believed in reincarnation. Although my guess was that I was a reincarnation of Socrates or Confucius or something. Modesty? Me? Never heard of it." I winked at him, though it was a bit half-hearted because I was still disturbed. "But... before Seiryuu brought me here I didn't have a seishi symbol or any kind of divine powers, I was just a... well not exactly normal, I've never been what you could call normal... but I was just a college student, and a girl at that. So how could I possibly be another incarnation of him, if the seven of you are always incarnated to serve your god?"
Soi shrugged. "Don't ask me, ask Seiryuu."
Tomo sniffed at this unhelpful reply. "Well I think it doesn't really matter if you're Nakago's reincarnation or just someone chosen by Seiryuu because you have a similar temperament – you're Miboshi now, and presumably will be for the rest of your life. You're yourself, no matter how you came to be here."
I couldn't help but smile – Tomo seemed quite pleased with himself that he'd managed to come up with some profound words to counter his earlier slip, even if I hadn't really taken being referred to as a 'copy' as an insult. That was one of the most charming things about him – when something really mattered to him he tried so hard... I couldn't help but want to reward him for his effort. So, I smiled fondly at him and said, "Perhaps you're right." and let that be the end of the conversation, though I still felt that I must have come here by absurdly lucky chance, not destiny or deserving. But then, I have always had the devil's own luck – I should have more than enough experience by now at enjoying rewards that I didn't earn.
And perhaps... perhaps I could come close to deserving this divine power and miraculous freedom from my previous life that the rest of them had bought with their suffering in this violent world trapped in the past... perhaps if I threw myself into loving and helping them, if I wielded this gift well enough, it would be almost the same as earning it. It would be a true good deed if I could help repay some of what the gods and the universe owed these people for their pain.
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Chapter 8 lemon scene here! ^_^
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