5. Misery.
T: Being that Subaru will spend most of the rest of this fic being painfully mature I thought I'd allow him to be completely over the top in this chapter! If you have Chihiro Onitsuka's Infection on your computer listen to it while reading this chappy…if not download it!
Warnings remain the same and no I am still not a member of Clamp despite how hard I've been begging them!
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I can not stop crying.
For twenty five years I have lived my life without sadness or pain, have never been attached enough to feel such emotions.
And now…
Each time I believe the tears have stopped at last the empty hollow of my heart ceases, my eyes move to look again at my hands and the thoughts begin again.
He betrayed me…
No!
I betrayed myself…
For I had known in the heart of me what he was and still I had fallen…
I can not catch my breath and though I know it is silly the tears still will not stop.
I never knew anyone had so much water within them.
Yet perhaps I have been saving my tears always for this day.
Obaasan calls and it takes all my strength of will to sound normal upon the phone…
To sound as though my world had not just fallen away at my feet.
Supposedly I manage it for there is no suspicion in her voice as she talks to me of visiting Kyoto, of allowing her to see me again after months if me avoiding such a meeting.
Though I am mired still within the pain of my heart I catch the worry in her voice and I enquire,
"Obaasan, what is the matter?"
"I performed a spell to see into your future this morning Subaru-kun and I saw you being taken in by the sakura, saw you becoming as a part of it."
"I see." I can feel my control slipping and the tears threatening to spill again I remark, "I will speak to you soon, Obaasan." Before I hang up the phone.
"Seishiro-san." The name is as a wound on my tongue and I know that already my future has come to pass.
Know that the sakura has claimed the very essence of my soul.
There is a hesitant knock on the door and though I am in no real mood to play host I answer it still.
Kamui stands a little way into the porch, his eyes cast to the floor and his shoulders weighted again with the burdens of the world.
"Shirou-kun, why have you come here…indeed how did you find me?"
"I called the Sumeragi residence in Kyoto and then put me through to your Obaasan…
"I lied a little to her and those lies were enough for her to give me your address.
"I came because you are the first person to see me rather than my destiny.
"The first person who looked at me as a growing boy in need of fun and situations where I could make new friends."
He looks so sad and I feel the echo of that sadness in my own heart.
"Come in." I remark as I pad back to sit on the sofa.
Kamui comes to sit at my side and the warmth of his presence eases the ache of my heart just barely.
"You have been crying." He remarks, one fine fingered hand rising to tenderly wipe away the moisture on my cheek.
"Seishiro-san turned out to be something other than what I had believed him to be." I reply.
He does not respond to that, but instead simply snares me into an embrace.
There is none of the 'oneness' that might have come from a hug from my sister, nor the fire of a hug from Seishrio-san, yet still I fell safe.
For within Kamui's arms I feel sheltered and shielded by his great power…felt as a child within the arms of its mother.
I fell suddenly very tired and not wishing to fight the inevitable I fall into the dark of sleep assured that Kamui shall watch over me.
……………………………………………………………………………….
She knew her brother better than any other living being on earth and thus when no answer was forthcoming when she phoned him it was but a moment before she made the choice to come to his apartment and talk, twin to twin.
She had knocked twice without response and though she knew it was wrong she jimmied the door open and stepped inside.
Her brother is laid out on the sofa, his head cradled into the crook of a strangers arm.
No, not a stranger, she realised as she looked harder at the others sleeping face…
Kamui.
She shook her head and kneeling pressed a gloved hand to Subaru's face.
"I hope that you have not done anything silly." She remarks.
Her brother does not stir and again feeling guilty she pulls off her gloves and sets her hands again to his face.
Normally the subconscious mind of the one she had entered would protect itself by blanking off the dreams and she would have to wait until it settled to her presence before she saw them again.
This seemed not to be the case with her brother.
For the moment that contact is made she sees the pale pink of the sakura.
This change in the norm is something that unnerves her until she realises that it must be yet another part of being two halves of a whole.
This conclusion settles her and she watches as her brother's dream self strides across to the tree.
'You looked so beautiful and yet as him you were little more than illusion.' He remarks as he brings up his hands.
He has an Ofuda clenched in between each of his fingers and after chanting a while he releases them into the air.
They spin once in mid air and then they sink into the sakura….
Time stretches and then the sakura implodes.
'Good bye, Seishiro-san.' The dream Subaru remarks before he turns and walks back into the shadows.
The dream changes and she is viewing now Seishiro's apartment.
Subaru is lying in the couch but a breath from where Seishiro kneels on the floor a wobbly smile upon his lips.
'I love you, Seishiro-san.' He remarks.
The other smiles the cold smile she knows so well and replies,
'I do not love you Subaru-kun…but you fascinate me.' Before he catches Subaru's hands in his own 'Let us play a game.'
'Game?'
'I shall protect you from harm, shall watch you with a lover's eye and all you need do in return is to make me stop pretending to love you…is to make me truly care.'
He kisses the backs of Subaru's hands both in tenderness and in a need to mark and possess her brother's sprit.
Subaru glances at those markings and, oddly, he smiles.
'Are these so that you can watch me always?' He enquires.
'Yes.'
'Then it is only fair that I return the favour.' Subaru kisses Seishrio's hands and the pentagram of the Sumeragi clan burns sharp on the assassin's hands before fading completely from view.
'Now you are mine just as I am yours.'
So different…it was so different that it had been in Kakyo's dream and yet still the revelation of Seishiro's character had broken her brother.
Still Subaru wished nothing more than Seishiro's death and his own.
She leases her grip and at last Subaru awakens, his brow furrowing in confusion before he starts into a sitting position,
"Seishiro-san?" He enquires and there is a note of desperation in his voice that gives her hope again that this time things might be better.
"Subaru, keep your voice down! Kamui looks exhausted." She remarks as she gestures to the one at her brother's side.
He does not blush…
It is true that his face relaxes a little when he sees the younger boy and a smile catches onto his lips, but he does not blush.
This, she realises, is a good thing.
"Hokuto-chan, why have you come?"
"Seishiro-chan told me what he had done and I knew, sooner or later, that you would realise yourself…knew that you would need a shoulder to cry on."
"You knew, did you not, Hokuto-chan?"
"Yes."
"Then why did you not warn me?"
"Because I did not think this would occur…
"When he talked to me of you there was only ever fascination in his voice and Seishiro has never been one to destroy something that has amused him."
"Toys are amusing, Hokuto-chan."
"You desire to be more to him than a toy and yet now that you know who he is you believe that impossible.
"That belief has brought you to hate yourself and to hate him also…and yet, Subaru, you are as bad as he…or have you forgotten that you also marked him?"
She can see the faintest echoes of a smile blooming on his lips, yet his eyes remain still closed in.
"It does not matter who is chasing whom, Hokuto-chan…all that matters is that at the end of the chase only one can remain."
She knows this is true, knows with all too much clarity where this shall end…
Blood and the sakura…
The Seishrio of that reality would have appreciated the poetry of it ending where it had begun.
Would have marvelled in the beauty of it and yet by the time it had ended he had long since been dead…
Had long since passed the point where he could undo the harm he had wrought first through lies and then through the truth.
She closes her eyes and is met with two images interlaid over one another so that they seem almost to be happening in tandem.
Two figures stride towards the sakura, one dressed in the pristine white of a Shifuku and the other clothed entirely in black.
A figure steps free of the shade and smiles in one vision, while in the other there is nothing but the sakura and the darkly clothed individual.
The smiling entity plunges for the heart of the figure in white and it, no… she, falls to the floor her lips voicing one last thing.
The moment that that strike occurs is the moment the dark figure breaks free a dagger and plunges it into it's…his…heart.
As he falls his mismatched eyes seem to be searching for something…
He smiles…
And a name falls from his lips…
Then he too is dead.
"If you desire truly to be always with Seishrio-chan, Subaru, then that is where you should be.
"For you are only enemies if you desire such a thing." She remarks, attempting again the rational that had at last forced Seishiro-chan to see things her way.
Seishiro was gifted with a logical mind and thus this argument had been the simplest way to make him stop and think a moment.
With Subaru, however, it was more of a risk.
For he had been raised by Obaachan to respect his duty and his position in life.
The Sakurazukamori was the enemy of the Sumeragi clan, this he had always been told and this he would believe whole heartedly if he wished still to respect still all that Obaachan told him.
Yet the Sakurazukamori had never caused Subaru any true harm and her brother had learned already that Obaachan's beliefs were not always accurate.
It was this conflict that made this particular rational dangerous, for if Subaru chose to honour the family it would be lost…yet if he chose to allow himself to form his own opinion of Seishiro…
"Hokuto-chan, I do not think it is that simple. The Sakurazukamori has no heart, this you can not deny."
She would have agreed instantly, would have leased all the hope she had of Seishiro loving her brother while he lived still if Seishiro himself had not given her reason to retain hope.
In this reality Seishiro had talked of a 'game' rather than a 'bet'; unlike a bet a game was something that could be ended without coming to a conclusion… it was something that was a little more than illusion.
If this had not been proof enough of how much Seishiro wished to keep Subaru close, wished Subaru to emerge alive still at the conclusion of this 'game', then there was a lack of a deadline.
Always in that other reality there had been but a year for Subaru to realise who Seishiro was, only a year to make an emotionless begin to feel.
It had been an impossible task and it had fallen to tragedy in the end.
"There is an exception to every rule."
He frowns and she knows that she had at last broken through to him, that he is at last considering all that she had said.
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T: Few well that chapy was longer than I recalled…I blame Hokuto and her complex thought processes! One thing I really feel that needs noting is that I wrote this before I read X 19 and once I had read that volume I decided to keep Subaru's suicide rather than make things more complicated for me.
