Every Pairing Under the Sun
Author's Note: This was going to become a three-chapter story and involve Hao and the majority of the SK cast from both the manga and the anime. However, time constraints and excessive laziness enabled me to type this up in about three hours. (Not to mention the fact that I wanted to get chapter 9 of YM up – and it is, now. –polishes nails and looks proud of her multitasking-) Perhaps later I'll expand upon the tale, but for the moment, here it stands in all of its 5,400-words-glory. Enjoy. :)
Oh, and before you move on, a warning: this takes place post-anime, in an AU where Yoh did die. No excessive spoilers are given, so don't worry too much on that score; if you haven't seen the series end yet, simply assume that this is a random AU where Hao attained Kingship and Yoh recently died.
List: RenxNichrome, RenxTamao, Ren x Lyserg, KororoxManta, HaoxSquirrel, HaoxLyserg, HaoxAmidamaru (YohxSpirit of Fire bonus. :P), HaoxManta, Yoh x Lyserg, ChocolovexPirika (liable to be moved), YohxRen, YohxOC, HorohoroxManta, YohxHoro, HoroxRen, HaoxAnna, YohxTamao, YohxAnna.
Disclaimer: I don't own Shaman King. If I had, Hao would have gotten far more attention than Yoh ever did. And there would have been so many shonen-ai hints in it that 4Kids would have never offered to dub it.
Drabble Seven: A Conventional Courtship
They held his funeral on a rainy Monday.
Anna remembered him, hair rumpled (wasn't it always?), getting out of bed one leg at a time, stepping reluctantly, feet dragging to accompany a pouting mouth that protested the Monday-ness. She remembered her anger – a vivid spark that had chased him down the corridor and whapped him sharply over the head for laziness and impertinence.
Once, the memories had been a source of pride for her, assurance in her strength. Not so any longer.
She ignored the susurration of whispers, like resurrected ghosts, all around her, and merely endured through the funeral. He would have never liked this set up, this too-woeful melodrama that wept of a saintly Yoh that bore no resemblance to the one that the itako had known – he would have fallen asleep in it. (And she would have been forced to discipline him – i.e. hit him – but that was carefully edited out of the scene that coursed through her mind. Mourners were permitted scant luxuries but this, thankfully, was one of them.)
And so she did, too, dozing off to the dissonant lullaby of a thousand mourning voices.
"Oi, Ren!"
"Kisama." He snapped without looking up. "Shut up. Have you no respect for Yoh?"
"Be a little more polite." The boy whose hair resembled a microphone puff looked mildly affronted. "Don't you have any respect for the dead?" He could have bitten his own tongue off as Ren raised his gaze accusingly. His eyes were stormswept, as though he held a tempest trapped within their stare – a tempest that did not take well to being so entrapped.
He had understood by now; he had had a few weeks to recover and come to terms with the truth. But there was still some fraction of him that did not believe in Yoh's death. He was the kind of boy that was too vibrant to be dead; to stay dead. And his death had transformed him into the martyr that his life never would have.
"What the hell do you want, Chocolove?" The violet-haired shaman growled out from between clenched teeth, eyes radiating angry static at the intrusion. "Get it over and be done with it; the ceremony's still going on, you know."
Chocolove shrugged a little, liquid brown eyes vivid with concern. "Look at Anna." He said simply.
Ren turned.
"No, you idiot!" The comedian snapped, resisting the urge to jump up and down – or use Ren's favorite insult. "The other side."
Eyes narrowed with menace, Ren turned again.
And stopped.
She had fallen asleep against the pew, wiry-thin body untensed for the first time in what was possibly a week so that the sleepless shadows beneath her eyes were exposed. Even the dimness of the church light did not deal well with her; Anna had never had the kind of beauty that could be examined beneath illumination, and her unpretty features were rendered still more so by the bland luminance of the cathedral.
Nevertheless, there was something very pitiable about the way that she curled instinctively into herself, the way that her head nestled automatically into the circle of her arms, and a tiny sigh threatened tremulously, lining the borders of her mouth.
"Do you see her?" Chocolove murmured, and for once, his voice was not laden with humor, but with a bleak sadness.
Irritably, Ren whirled around and dealt him a sharp blow. "Idiot." He snapped, presiding over the cringing Chocolove. "I'm not blind. So she's alone. So what?"
"Then you don't see."
"I see!" Retorted Ren violently, gesturing expressively with his glaive. He had never liked to be addressed as inferior in any way.
"Do you understand, then?" Chocolove inquired, a little grudgingly, rubbing his nose rather meaningfully.
The Chinese adolescent regarded him coldly. "This seems to be a rather tasteless place for you to ask for an apology for my poking your nose all those times." He responded pointedly. "Not to mention the fact that I'm not sorry. At all."
"I didn't want an apology!" The black shaman exclaimed exasperatedly. At Ren's arched brow, however, he amended, rather quickly, "All right, yes I do. And someday I'll beat the crap of you and get it out of you, but—" He skipped hastily ahead, seeing the boy's impatient expression. "Look, you were the closest to Yoh-kun, and now that he's dead…" He paused, meaningfully.
Ren waited.
Chocolove waited.
"…"
"…"
"………"
"………"
Finally, left eyelid twitching, Ren jabbed the other boy sharply in the bulbous nose with his spear. "Kisama." He spat over the comedian's contorted body as the smaller boy writhed in pain. "I have better things to do than listen to you at Yoh's funeral."
"Great Spirits." Groaned Chocolove, still clutching his wounded nose as he rose once again to his feet. "Must I spell out everything for you? All right, then. In some cultures, when a man dies, leaving his wife behind, his closest relative or unmarried friend would take her to ensure that she would not live out her life in misery." He glanced significantly upwards, attempting to wiggle his eyebrows and failing miserably.
Understanding dawned, like a sun crawling vaguely out of bed to check its alarm clock.
Ren looked to Chocolove with some mild amalgamation of horror and disgust. "You mean…"
Seeing that his student had comprehended, Chocolove nodded and stroked his beard (a false one that had appeared in timely fashion) wisely. "You understand at last, then, what must be done."
In only moments he was doubled over in pain again.
"I can't believe that you'd want me to try to marry Anna to Hao." The Chinese shaman snarled, lips twisting into a fine expression of revulsion. "Especially when Yoh's newly died. That's—sadistic. Even discounting the fact that he looks exactly like Yoh and behaves nothing like him." Instinctively, he glanced towards the pew that the newly proclaimed Shaman King occupied. All around him for at least three rows, the pews were empty; people had sense enough to want to keep a safe distance from their new sovereign. (He had not yet begun his holocaust within the human world, though no one knew precisely why this was so.)
Where most people attending the small funeral were in tears, he had pressed one hand to his heart, his other hand to rest his head upon, and was smiling in a fashion that made the presiding minister most nervous. The fact that he was wearing a robe of living fire for the occasion wasn't helping either. It was most distracting to be attempting to listen to a rather boring sermon with someone burning in front of you.
"I wasn't talking about Hao!" Chocolove shouted at last. His voice echoed throughout the room, rebounding off of the ornate arches of the ceiling, causing people to cease in the midst of their half-dozes, wake, and turn to him in bemusement.
Hastily, he modulated his volume. "I was talking about you." He hissed through clenched teeth, still holding his much-abused nose. "You were the first shaman to ever encounter Yoh."
"No I wasn't." Ren corrected him. "Tamao was."
"Yes, but…" Chocolove swallowed forcibly. This bit was going to be difficult. "Tamao can't marry Anna."
Ren blinked. Chocolove blinked back.
"You want me to… what?"
"I don't want you to do anything." The shaman corrected him hastily, attempting to re-establish himself in the other boy's good graces before Ren could recover enough of his ordinary sense to attempt to murder him. "I just think that it'd be a very good idea, that's all. She's alone now, and the Asakura family can't do very much for her. They don't understand Yoh," he pressed a hand to his heart in an unconscious gesture, "the way that we did. As his companions. And you were the closest of them to him. We were just his followers; you were his rival."
"Besides," the boy added prosaically. "It's either you or Hao."
The ornate church doors slammed shut on his nose. And it was quite possible that as Ren stomped irritably down the steps, Chocolove's howls of pain could be heard throughout all the city.
"…That's not a bad idea!"
"…What?"
Ren turned a glowering stare upon his sister; one that rapidly amended itself into a blushing good humor. Gah. He never could keep himself in his brooding moods around Jun; a fact that tried him rather sorely, considering the fact that he had only to enter his grandfather's presence to be put into them. It was most difficult to keep himself level in a room that contained the both of them.
"Well, Chocolove-san's right." The viridian-haired woman pointed out, sipping daintily at her tea. Her lacquered black fan snapped out in a vibrant display of silk as she fluttered it momentarily in a graceful wrist-gesture before placing it directly over her face so that her smile was hidden from her foul-tempered brother's sight. "Cultures did do that."
"Huh." The violet-haired boy was supremely disdainful. "Not the Chinese culture."
"True." Jun nodded solemnly, though her eyes glittered with what could be taken as mischief. "Although I think that a little back, our branch of the family was tainted with a bit of blood from one of the cultures that do…"
She stared reprovingly at her little brother. "Now, now, Ren." She said mildly, dabbing at her splattered cheek with care before applying the same handkerchief to the boy's own mouth. "There's no need to go spitting your tea over everything. The silks are very hard to wash out, and I'm sure you don't want to cause more work for the maids than is necessary. It is so very hard to get maids for a house that has such a haunted reputation." She added regretfully.
The spike of hair dipped as Ren sipped disgustedly at the lukewarm remnants of his tea, nearly impaling her eye. "They should earn their pay for once." The boy said shortly. "It wouldn't hurt them to work."
"Well…" With her polished refinement, Jun deftly turned the subject back to the matter that Ren had been hoping not to address. "Anyway, I think that the family would well approve of your match with Anna-sama. She has the makings of a rather powerful itako, and every inch of the ambition necessary to grow into it."
"You just don't think that she's a match for you right now." Her sibling added bluntly, but now the curves of his mouth unwound and twisted into something unpleasantly amused.
"Not on her own, she isn't." Jun responded simply. "With the thousand-eighty, she might have been, but now, alone, and especially demoralized as she is—" She paused delicately. " Of course, with your intervention…"
Ren sighed. "Just don't—" He glanced up, and immediately regretted it; Jun had carefully rearranged her position into a kowtow, and was now glancing up at him with innocuously shining black eyes, liquid with warmth and pleading…
"Fine."
Left eyelid twitching, he set the porcelain cup down with iron control and rose to his feet. A liquid quick movement followed that action; one that her eye was unable to follow. But as he left the room, without much fuss, the china vessel splintered into a thousand dainty pieces, each sliced evenly with the careful blade of his favored weapon.
Jun stared down at the broken cup.
"Oh dear." She said, to no one in particular. "That was from the Ming dynasty."
How exactly did one court a woman? Ren had no idea – it had never been a necessary theme in the course of his life. Now, apparently, because of a few words from Chocolove, his sister, and the rules of cultures that were probably dead (and for a good reason, he thought savagely, stomping down the cemented sidewalks with his glaive in hand), he was expected to do what he had never done before.
"Master?" The Chinese warrior who was his ghost hovered anxiously to his side, regarding him with a certain amount of worry. "Is everything all right?"
"Of course it is!" Tightly, Ren whirled upon Bason, eyes glowing with fury. "Everything is bloody fine! Just because my sister's manipulating me and Chocolove has gotten some history into that fool head of his doesn't mean that anything's wrong! What makes you think that anything's wrong!" Noting the mild tremulousness of his companion, Ren scrubbed the back of his free hand over his eyes ferociously.
"Great Spirits, man." He snapped. "You're supposed to be a warlord of some kind! Why are you so terrified of a teenager's rages?" Molten gold eyes cut sharply at the armoured figure as the boy tapped a foot impatiently, evidently expecting a reply to what was phrased as a rhetorical question. "Well?"
"I don't know, Master." Bason said humbly, forbearing to mention that Ren in a temper was more fearsome than any of the thousands of enemies that Bason had faced in his lifetime.
A scathing look answered his statement, but faded as Ren lost patience and resumed his pacing down the sidewalk. "Courting." He muttered under his breath, eyes vivid with golden fury. "Courting such a—a female wolf. I'd rather kill myself."
Seeing that here was a place where he could offer advice at last, Bason ventured, "I could tell you a few good positions to insert your glaive if you would like to—"
The Chinese boy returned his paralysing glare to the faceless warrior. "You know, I think I remember telling you once to pick up a sense of when to shut up." He said, in a deceptively civil tone. "Since you appear to have disobeyed that order, shut up for now, and I'll get back to you on the subject of your disobedience later."
"Yes, Master."
The lull that followed did not last for long. It rarely was in these present days; Ren had been well-accustomed to working in silence, but Yoh's death had unsettled something that was normally never touched within him.
He wondered briefly how that brat had inveigled his way so deeply into his life so that he had never noticed that other's intrusion until the latter had been forcibly removed. It felt…
As though something deep within him, something necessary to living, as necessary as breathing and a beating heart, had been removed, lamed, broken, and here he was now trying to function as an ordinary being without all of the parts that made one up…
"Bason?" He inquired briefly.
"Yes, Master!"
"…I didn't issue an order yet."
"Ah. In which case, Yes, Master, In Tones Of Distinct Attention And Potential Obedience."
Attempting to run callused, well-worked fingers through his hair (and nearly getting stabbed in the process), Ren contended himself with looking broodingly irritable; an expression that made little change from his usual air.
"How on Earth," he said at last, after having mulled it over for a few moments, "do you get a woman?"
Bason looked faintly edgy at this question. "Well, you see, erm…" He subsided into an embarrassed silence. "Hasn't your mother or your father gone over the basics of this with you yet..?"
Mild surprise surged through his veins, and the Chinese shaman turned to regard his guardian ghost with full alertness. "Were they supposed to?" He inquired sharply.
Bason looked still more uncomfortable; at least, insofar as it was possible for someone who was merely a glowing expression hidden beneath a golden helmet. "Well, usually it's expected that the parents be the ones to go over the details of how babies are made with their son—"
"Wh—no!" Looking mildly appalled, Ren shook his head firmly. "I don't want to know that." He said rapidly. "Besides which, I already know."
"Oh." Bason looked, Ren thought, rather a little too relieved. Unconsciously, despite not precisely wanting to know, he found himself wanting to ask Bason anyway, simply to watch that expression of tortured misery and obedience coalesce upon the ghost's features. "Well then, Master, what do you want to know about the getting of women?"
"How one usually goes about courting them, naturally."
"Oh." The warlord was silent a moment longer – soldiers were not, by nature, refined connoisseurs of women. What they wanted, they generally took, regardless of time or place. Romance generally took place after the fact and fuss were over. To have romance prior was new territory for Bason, and he was now struggling through it.
"I heard," he ventured, "that chocolates don't go amiss."
Ren looked rather wary. This sounded just a trifle too easy.
"Chocolates?"
"Chocolates?"
She glared disdainfully down at the gold-threaded box, dark eyes sharp with scorn and a fragmented dignity that she carried with all the grace she had ever maintained. Weariness pulsed within her stare, but was rapidly swept away by her sensibility – Anna had never been one to mourn excessively; one to be so loving that her love eclipsed everything that made her who she was.
It was only that she had wound herself around Yoh over their mutual childhood so that, in a sense, he had become who she was – whom she defined herself with. To have him gone…
"Chocolates." She repeated, still in that rather dreadful monotone.
Ren, however, was growing rather impatient. "Open the bloody box and eat them already, would you!" He snarled. "I went through the entire supermarket, most of the department stores, half of the candy store and the majority of a pharmacy before I found these! If I spent that much time finding them, you could at least stop sounding like I'd picked them off the floor and eat them!"
Dark eyes located him and froze him into place with her narrow gaze. "Manta hasn't dropped by lately." She said coldly. "The floors have been unswept. Would you like to do it for me?" You will be, regardless of your own will, if you don't close your mouth now. Her gaze implied. (Ren, looking infuriated, still managed to close his mouth again at her threat; HoroHoro, Manta, Ryu, and Yoh had always spent their time cleaning her house. He did not intend to join their legion.) Then, as though satisfied with the results of her threats, she returned her stare to the box.
"They look… expensive." She opined at last.
"They ought to." Ren grumped. "Thank the Great Spirits they were on sale and only cost me a few hundred yen."
Glittering eyes turned to survey him coldly. "I beg your pardon…?" Anna said clearly…
Women, fumed Ren, stalking away from the Asakura residence, shoulders taut with anger, lips tightly sealed against the words that he might speak if he opened his mouth. The passersby scooted to the farthest edges of the sidewalk in order to avoid brushing against the boy whose hair seemed to have veritably doubled in size, and whose livid gaze spat golden sparks of flame at the world. They say they want chocolates, and then they treat the chocolates that they get as though it's dirt. It's not as though the chocolates were cheap, either. His eyes deepened still further in their intensity as he kicked moodily at the ground. If the Taos didn't have a reputation to keep up for generosity, I'd go back and make her pay me back for them.
He had half a mind to give up immediately, but there was something far too – intriguing about the situation to allow him to stop now.
If he had been more impartial, able to see the situation with a detached eye, he would have seen it as anyone would have; that Ren had been challenged.
And a Tao, regardless of situation, instance, or subject, had never been able to resist a challenge…
"Uh, Master?" Bason hovered anxiously to his side, luminescent eyes glowing with something akin to fearfulness as he regarded the adolescent who had adopted the position of his master at an early age.
The violet-haired shaman regarded his guardian spirit with some minute evidence of furthered displeasure, lips drawing taut, shoulderblades clenching beneath the carefully tailored shirt.
"Yes?" He responded tensely.
Bason hesitated. Throughout all of the li—afterlife that he had spent with Ren, he had learned a lesson that had been etched into his mind, engraved into it, and furthermore, stomped into his metaphorical forehead until his ears rang with it. And that was that the young master always had a double intent to everything that he did; he did not make mistakes, and he certainly did not take well to having his purposes questioned.
Still, there was something a little curious to this set of actions, and the Chinese warrior could not help but ask—
"Master, why do you still have the box of chocolates on your head where the young mistress Anna stuck it?"
"Kisama!" Ren roared at him, eyes narrow with fury. "It's because I can't get the godforsaken thing off! The caramels inside seem to be reacting with something in my hair, and they won't—come—off!" With each puff, he wrenched at the box impaled upon the spike of his hair; to no effect.
"Ah."
"And quit smiling at it! It's not funny; do you know how much money it takes to get my hair to stay like this! And how much more money it'll take to get the caramel out!"
"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU TRIED TO PICK UP A GIRL AND FAILED!"
Ren briefly regretted the lack of a cup of boiling tea in his hand so that he could pour its contents over the head of his rather unsympathetic blue-haired… former teammate.
"Shut up, Horohoro." He substituted instead, voice sufficiently menacing to put off even the most monstrous of monsters. If the most monstrous of monsters had been able to comprehend the subtle nuances of peril within his voice. And even if they had been unable to, they would have still, doubtless, retained more understanding upon the subject than the gawky blue-haired boy sprawled atop the couch.
"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU TRIED TO PICK UP ANNA AND FAILED!"
"Kisaaamaaaa…" Ren drawled dangerously, eyes glittering with an expression that was definitely not humor. It was only then that the Ainu noticed the presence of a rather pointed object in the hands of his companion.
"You, you…" Though he had begun to take more caution with his words upon noticing the lance, nevertheless the azure-haired shaman could not help but allow a little hysterical humor to permeate his voice. "You've gotta admit." He said, nudging the other boy, "It's pretty funny. I mean, you and Anna? It would never work out. You'd always be fighting over who would be the dominatrix when you're doing you-know-what. And let me tell you," he added thoughtfully, grinning with relish. "Anna would win, hands, feet, and various other appendages down."
"Huh." Now that the offense to his dignity had been removed, Ren had recovered his usual arrogance. "Don't be more of a fool than you already were, Horohoro. Chocolove is bad enough of an idiot to have on a team; I don't need two to bring the average I.Q. down. And I didn't come here to discuss my romantic endeavors with you"
"Or lack thereof." The Ainu snickered.
"—I came to ask you what you think that I should do next."
Struck by this, the shaman ceased speaking for a few moments.
"I'm sorry." He said, after a moment. "Did you, Tao Ren, just say that you were coming to me, Horohoro, for advice?"
"Don't let it go to your head." Ren advised him sardonically. "It's only because you have a sister."
"You, Tao Ren, are coming to me, Horohoro, for advice." It was only a matter of time before the hysterical laughter began.
Ren sighed tolerantly – and jabbed Horohoro meaningfully in the side. (All right, so he wasn't being all that tolerant.)
"Call your sister." He ordered the boy. In the midst of his shock, the blue-haired snowboarder did not think to protest his imperious command.
"Oi! Pirika!" He shouted, standing up abruptly. "Get yourself over here!"
"In a minute!" There came sounds of various crashes throughout the house, and finally, with a last resounding smash, Pirika slid open the paper screen door, garbed in a pink Hamtaro apron and looking distinctly irritated at the summons.
"What?" She demanded sharply, eyes passing over her brother to stop directly at Ren. "You rang?" She added, with far more sarcasm than was necessary – she had been biased against Ren upon hearing that he was the majority of the reasons that her brother had not led his own team.
"What do girls like as courting presents?" He inquired abruptly, eyelids dropping into a beautiful pose of insolence. And brusquely, her position altered – she flushed pinkly, and smiled with an odd coyness.
"Getting something for me?" She inquired sweetly.
Ren looked rather taken aback at this. "No." He said bluntly, after a moment's thought. "For Anna, actually."
"Oh." Suddenly, her features had recovered their disapproving expression, and her lips had formed a moue of distaste. "So you're that sort of person."
"What sort?"
"The kind that moves in on another guy's girl after the guy dies." She uttered the definition with a certain amount of distaste, as though this were the most dishonourable deed to be invented since Julius Caesar had been stabbed in the back by a multitude of people simultaneously.
"I've always thought that those sorts of people were disgusting, I did." She went on virtuously.
The Chinese shaman allowed an expression of faint amusement to brush over his features, though irritation did not miss him entirely. "I'm sure." He replied, as noncommittally as possible. "Now, if you were a girl, what would you want?"
"I am a girl."
He peered at her with an expression of mock-bemusement, clear malice displayed upon his features. "Oh." He said. "So you are. The resemblance to your brother was so strong that I couldn't really tell."
In only moments, he had been dumped out of the house onto the street.
"And don't think that you're welcome back in here, either!" Pirika shouted after him, and slammed the door shut with excess violence.
"I won't." He retorted, rising to his feet with unconcerned supremity, calling out to the figure that he could still see outlined against the light in the window. "Just tell me what I wanted to know and I won't trouble you again."
A tiny crack of light filtered through the door as she peered past it again. "Girls. Like. Clothes." She said shortly, and slammed the door shut again, leaving Ren to stew in his bemusement.
Clothes?
"What are these?"
She had removed the silken things from the box and was now gazing at them in vague distaste. Ren was, for possibly the first time in his life, turning a vivid crimson that enabled him to vaguely resemble a tomato.
"Clothing." He muttered under his breath.
"I know that." Said Anna sharply, and returned her attention to the odd garment-things. "My question is… what kind of clothing? How are you supposed to wear them?" Though the queries on their own sounded innocent enough, there was a barbed quality to the asking that caused the boy to hesitate in responding to her.
Firmly, she seized one of the oddly clingy silken things (oh; right – his sister wore those all the time, though this was black and crimson where hers were puffed-silk-viridian and black) and disappeared into the adjoining bathroom. When moments passed and she did not return, Ren followed after her, trailing after her with a faintly irritated air.
The door was ajar as he passed by it, and thereby he could not help but peer into it, receiving, for his efforts, a poke in the eye.
"Gou!" He shouted, employing Mandarin Chinese for his curses. "What was that for?"
"Perverts deserve all that come to them." Was her noncommittal reply. "I've done with your clothing, however. You can have them back if you like."
"They're not my clothing." He snapped. "As though I would wear a dress."
"You wear a shirt that shows your stomach all the time, and low-cut pants." She noted blandly from beyond the door, her voice only faintly muffled by the paper screen. He could see the outline of her wiry-thin body against the light; it was not the slender things that he had once thought to dream of, but he felt compelled, somehow, to linger in any case.
"May I come in?" The violet-haired boy inquired, rather grudgingly, as though he begrudged her even that politeness.
The lacquered door slid open without further ado, and he stepped in.
The room was filled with the half-light of a flickering television whose images neither he nor she watched; occasionally he saw the reflection of a tiny woman play across her skin, then it was gone again, to be replaced by diffused dots and images whose wholeness his mind could not grasp. For it was she that he was concentrating upon.
She looked quite different in his sister's dresses, as though there were something contained in her that was released by attiring herself in clothing dissimilar to her usual plain outfit. And the magnetic thing that had commanded him to remain now pulled at him, stronger than ever in its resolution.
Vaguely, the shaman grew aware that she was staring at a photograph. As he stepped towards her, a hand drifted upwards, to offer the picture to him.
He took it with ginger fingers, buried in the illusion that perhaps it would burn him in ways that were not entirely physical, and would leave its marks there to be seen.
It was an ordinary enough photograph; the quality was only a rather poor black and white, with shades of gray that blurred through the photograph; though they, too, were worn and ill-made, as though set on a paper that had been rumpled and smoothed one too many times.
But it was the contents that truly drew interest; it was, as so many had been before it, of a boy and a girl, together, their fingers so tightly intertwined that one could have never said where his ended and hers began.
The boy was smiling at the camera, as he always had during the course of his life, and though the girl was not, she had tilted her head towards him, inclined in a vague sort of way that indicated benevolence. It was the expression in her eyes that the photographer had captured perfectly; trapped beneath the glass, wrapped in ink and plastic was the soul of everything she had once dreamt would keep until the end of her life. Her affection. Her hesitations. Her kindnesses. Her love.
Vaguely, Ren heard her say, "The dress you gave me… he gave me one too, rather like it." Her eyes flared briefly, illuminated with regret, though he could not have said for what. "It was all black."
"How ridiculous." He said, though the words came instinctively, and with none of the sensibility or shielding that he so carefully uttered his words with. "You look best in red. Red is a lucky color, as well."
"In some cultures, red is the color of mourning."
"Ridiculous." Said the Chinese shaman firmly, and, grasping her shoulders, shook her until he all but feared that her head would snap upon her shoulders. "Wake up." He said, though not unkindly. "You can't spend the rest of your life waiting for him to come back."
It's what I was going to do, though. He thought, though he did not voice the words aloud. It's what I would have done, if Chocolove had not spoken when he did. I would have spent the rest of my life waiting for Yoh to come back, because I never would have believed that he was dead unless I'd had proof – someone who could show me that he was with every moment.
Like a child, she spoke tonelessly, diffident, tentative. "He's dead?" And there was a world of tragedy in those two words that expressed everything she could not say to Ren – expressed what she could not say because he had felt the same emotions thudding beneath his own flesh far too many times.
"Yes." The boy said, rather too flatly and helplessly. "He is."
As an afterthought: "I'm sorry."
"You didn't kill him, now did you." It was not a question. Hesitantly, as though in a dream, she offered him her hand.
He took it, and thought that, in the half-light of the television screen, he could not tell where his fingers ended and hers began.
(end)
Author's Note: As Yoh is one of my favourite characters, this ficlet was a bit of a pain for me to write. I hope it didn't show… -wince-
Ah well; review replies:
Nekoian: I'm not sure why you feel better, as my writing is one of the most depressing styles I know. However, I'm glad that you do. :)
Kawaii Koneko92: RenxAnna. –pokes the pairing rather morosely- I'd like it more if I wasn't of the opinion that Yoh would have to die for it to happen.
KimBob: -cringes and shakes fist- Don't yell at me! –sulks- I'm working on it. HoroRen looks like a set of cute fluff at the moment.
Squirrel Fraulein: Yick, butter. It shall make me fat. –wrinkles nose- Er—does burning the squirrel count?
Ren F and Spirit of Darkness: Whee, a Chocolove-pairing request! –flies and glomps- Not sure how I shall work it out, but I'll think of something. And yes, RenxTamao too; rather earlier than the Chocolove-pairing. -.-; -loves Ren a wee bit too much to be healthy-
Giftoftheelves: HoroRen is a bit far back on my list at the moment, considering how easy it is, but if I get an inspiration, it shall be moved up. :D Watch for it!
Inulover4eva: Wah. –deflatesscowlsgoes off to buy a pump- And thank you. :D I rather liked the opening last line of Vignette I, myself. Which is possibly why I used it for the title. (-meanwhile, is inflating mightily-)
PrismaticMage: Buh- buh- Marco- mine-… Wahhhhhhh. –wails- And thank you! From an experienced MarcoLys writer, I appreciate the compliment.
And your Lyserg-obsession is plain, considering you ask to be called that on your profile. :) However, as I am a Hao-fangirl myself, I see no problems with your hobby so long as you don't, in your zeal for Lyserg, attempt to kill mine. ;) Don't worry about overloading me; this was made mostly as a writer's block aid, and the more prompts I have, the better.
sneaks a HaoxLyserg onto her list as well, on the pretense that you requested it- :P What DO you think of that pairing, just out of curiosity?
