Author's Note: Wow… it's been a while since I updated. Well, there's news and there's news (namely, that I'm about a hundred thousand words into my novel. Yes, that's probably why I've been neglecting this… -shuffles feet-), but hopefully I'm back to this for a greater amount of time now. Please accept this filler chapter (and a birthday-chapter-fic-thing, involving Ren singing karaoke (yes really) on our favorite pair of twins' birthday. :D) as my apologies.
Disclaimer: I own Shaman King! No, really? ;P
Chapter Eleven: Toleration and Contemplation
She had barely descended the edge of the stairs before he was there, eyes languidly expectant as they touched the hem of her typical black dress and rose, slowly, to her features. A faint blush touched her cheeks, but ran before it could be forcibly chased off by her iron control.
"You did not dress up for the event." He said, and made a sad moue at which she raised an eyebrow. (He himself was dressed as he always had been, the familiar amalgamation of conceit and danger, though she would have never considered voicing this to him. He would have understood – which would have been worse than the dull, faint uncomprehending look that Yoh would have given her.)
"Disappointed?" The itako said, her voice flat with contempt.
His eyes curved shut relaxedly, and the amusement within his voice was strong as he replied, "Only that you fulfilled my expectations."
She fell silent. Anna had never had any use for playful banter, and this languorous toying of words was little more than that – useless, though it sparkled like something beautiful. Seeing this, Hao opened his eyes again, a small smile touching the line of his mouth as he brushed a hand across her face, her cheek, the line of her jaw that strengthened as she watched him a few lingering moments, her gaze devoid of emotion, before slapping his hand away.
He retreated. "Aren't I allowed to touch you?" The dark-haired shaman said dryly, his voice innocent, mouth and eyes smiling. He always had lied beautifully, and the seraphic exquisiteness of his features gave a brief pang to which she paid no attention. "You did promise to be my… date, after all."
"Your date, not your toy." The light-haired itako said matter-of-factly. Beneath the half-light and the fading illumination of the sun beyond the door, her eyes were blacker than ever, but with the softness of shadows that day did not grant her. In twilight, dressed in black, sixteen-year-old Anna looked beautiful. "Play with the lives of others, the emotions of others who can fight back but will go on tolerating you, but know that I don't."
"Don't what?"
Something like contempt curled her lip as she looked to him. "Tolerate you."
"Of course you do." Said Hao. "If you do, do you think that I'd still be alive?"
Her eyes narrowed effectively, then widened again with the struggling reluctance of anger. "You would." She said austerely, and fought off a thousand less-than-complimentary additions that rushed to fill the blank that followed her words. "You seem to have an amazing propensity for surviving." At his mildly curious look, she added, "The spirits have been speaking of you."
"When I'm not around, I notice."
"When you are around," the itako said, her movements overt and careful as she leaned against the banister, still upon the final step so that her head was slightly higher than his, "they vanish off to nowhere." Assumably because they don't want to be around you.
He laughed, delighted with the sudden stunning beauty that shocked her to the core all over again – not something as paltry as emotion, but palpable, like electricity coursing from his skin to hers, as if she were merely the conduit through which the river of strength flowed…
Her teeth gritted subtly. I am no mere conduit. I will be Shaman Que—
For what was possibly the first time in her life, the thought faltered to a close unfinished as even her mind lapsed into silence.
He belongs to me.
He belongs to her.
He belongs to me.
He belongs to her.
He belongs to me.
He belongs to… her…
She did not despair – that was over with, dispensed cleanly, like a smooth cut made from ear to ear with a polished knife. But nevertheless, something like sadness – a flitting butterfly – danced across her mind before being crushed by a careless hand. Anna had no use for sorrow, for the moping of depression.
"Well then." He seemed to sense her thoughts, for he offered her a hand in moments, his eyes ingenuously inscrutable. "I had promised to meet you at six – it's precisely that now. Will you come with me?"
"No." Anna said, with the low amusement of sarcasm, forcing away the thoughts within her mind. "I would much rather go back to my room. There is work to be done aside from things relating to you, as you might consider remembering, and some of that work belongs to me."
A slow, stunning smile unfolded across his lips silkenly as he watched the shadow of the stairs from which she had descended, eyes catching the glint of something that Anna did not. Then, silently, he drew an arm about her, curling it inward with the lightness of possessiveness.
Her eyes widened faintly. But though she stiffened against his touch – a silent battle of control within her mind as she fought against the instinct to turn and strike him so hard that he would see stars for years – she did not break from it as they moved awkwardly together, towards the door. Only her eyes, raised to his, showed that light, cavalier question within her gaze, and even it was obscured.
He did not interfere. She had asked – no, told, and an order from the itako was hardly a thing to be taken lightly – him not to. Nevertheless, Asakura Yoh watched from the concealing darkness beneath the stairs and wondered if he should have refused to give her that promise after all.
She did not look unhappy – he would have worried if she had, and lingered in Hao's arms – but neither was there happiness in her eyes as she turned to look at his brother, and he had half-expected it. Anna did not do things to be perverse… did she?
The click of the closed door rang back into his ears like an earthquake, but he remained immovably beneath the stairs for a few moments longer, wondering…
-
Three Signs of a Classic Date:
Number One: Going to a Movie.
"Why a movie?" Anna inquired with her dry logic. She stood in the midst of the seats, refusing to sit. The ride upon the Spirit of Fire had been quick, and peculiarly disturbing. The itako was not an easily shaken person, but then, the fact that the creature she had employed as a ride consumed souls as its sustenance was enough to throw anyone off, though she had been careful not to show it.
"You watch your silly soap operas." Hao said with a shrug and a charming smile, as though this would explain everything. A hand lay innocently upon the seat beside him, a subtle invitation. She glared at it darkly as though it were a piranha – a live piranha. "I had thought that you would appreciate something played upon a larger screen."
Nevertheless, the blonde remained standing. It was not a matter of tiredness or theatre courtesy, but of pride and withstanding the charms of his smile. "It is a waste of money." She said evenly as the rest of the evening's customers began to filter into the dark room.
"It is a waste of my money." Said the dark-haired shaman, tilting his head back in a brilliant façade of amusement as he threw his arms carelessly across the seats, though a hand dangled still down to the seat beside him. The rest of the audience had been careful to avoid the seats nearest them, though Anna would not have thought that they had so much sense. "Even if I spent it on women or wine or whatever it is that humans ruin themselves with, it would be none of your business." He had glanced back, and his dark eyes were full of some seriousness that she could not – did not – comprehend, but held her enthralled. "Would it, Anna?"
She shook the charm from her eyes, the enchantment from his smile gone like something she knew to be gilded. "Is it your money that you're spending?" She said instead.
He laughed, the sound appealingly clear. She wondered, perhaps, if Hitler had sounded like this as a child, if Hitler had ever looked so beautiful with his perfected angularity, his careful, sculpted features, and the balance between sensuality and grace that was evident in every motion. But then, Hitler had not already been so contracted, so formed as a child, and he was.
"Would it matter whose money I was spending so long as I was spending it on you?"
"Certainly it would matter to the person that you had taken it from." Reluctantly, as the commercials upon the screen began to come to a close, she sat, although little enough upon her seat so that no part of his body touched hers.
"Oh." Said Hao, and his eyes glinted with mischief and something darker as he leaned forward. (The movie lights began to dim, but it did not detract from the shadows of his eyes, brilliant and faceted like jewels.) "I don't think that he'll mind very much, actually. Not at all."
The implication – that he was not in a position to mind so much about his money as about his own health – hung in the air, weighted like a corpse.
He threw his arm about her with all the artlessness of a boy sometime during the course of the movie, and she was so careful to be enrapt by the film that she did not catch it, leaning back subtly against his support.
But the fire shaman noticed – and smiled.
Number Two: Having Dinner Out
She peered at his plate with something akin to suspicion during dinner – there was little else to do.
There had been a brief commotion involving Hao and the maitre d' involving reservations of tables, or lack thereof, but it had been quickly resolved. Anna rather suspected that this had much to do with the glint of maniacal flames within the shaman's eyes – like madness, only with a logic that defeated most, and conquered those who were not prepared to deal with the efficient passions of a child. She had not interfered, though a treacherous string of her heart had whispered, while watching Hao speak with the pleasant subtlety of an adult, Why is Yoh the way he is if his brother has accomplished so much in only a little of his life?
Yoh, she thought, with a sudden clarity. Her thumb pushed against the solidity of her collarbone, fighting away the remembrance of the way that his eyelashes dipped and the awkward smile drifted across his features.
"Thinking of something, Anna?" His voice and eyes were guileless, but still, even with her eyes closed, she could see the glint of flames in his gaze like the beginnings of insanity.
"I didn't know that you'd eat human foods." She said simply. "Don't you profess to hate them?"
He tipped his head to the side, affecting a quizzical air. Upon seeing that this had no effect upon her, however, he fixed his head back to its original position and bent to deftly pick at his food. "Even the worms of the earth have their uses." He said simply when he had taken a neat bite and swallowed it. "Though humans are less than worms, assumably some of their vices may have facets of virtue."
She cocked an eyebrow. "A complicated philosophy, for one so young."
"Not so young anymore." He smiled, and she thought that she could see the flash of someone else behind his eyes, light and dark at once, dressed in the robes of a monk, though with a long, pallid face whose features bore some memory of familiarity…
She brushed the thought away, tucking it securely at the back of her mind for later examination. Now there was much to occupy her – perhaps too much. "You're the same age as Yoh is." The itako said, prosaically. She herself ate rather well of the array of plates that had been set before them – though Yoh's training had been useful, there were times when she simply had to admit that her fiancé had no sense of how much spices were to be added, and had to eat something that pigs might actually accept that had been made in less than a day.
He smiled again, broadly, though now at a secret that she did not catch. "So I am." He murmured." His eyes curved into amused arcs. "So I am."
Number Three: A Romantic Moment on Her Doorstep
"You have a question." He said the words softly, but they were spoken nevertheless, with the meticulous assurance that only he seemed to manage. He stopped in the midst of their doorstep, tucking his fingers neatly beneath her chin as he lifted her unwilling gaze to meet his. "I can see it." He said, and smiled the open smile of a child. "Don't hide it – it only makes me afraid that it will be something bad."
She raised a thin eyebrow, her mouth contracting, working itself into a frown. "And if I don't want to tell you?" The blonde said sardonically.
"You will." He said amiably. "It is a question – you shall want an answer. The only questions that you would ask me are the answers that no one else can give you, and you loathe going without answers."
Ignoring the preamble of analysis and complications, Anna said, "Why did you ask me out, Hao?" Others might have asked this question quietly, seriously. She asked it with a brusque silkenness, like a lump of steel encased in velvet – blunt, but with her own style.
"What?" Even in the darkness, her head tilted away, she could sense his lips curving into a leisurely, sensual smile. "Don't you think that you're a pretty enough girl to catch my attention?"
Irritably, the fingers of her free hand – the other still caught up in his, digits looping together and overlapping like a single creature – twisted so that the knuckles glinted whitely beneath the moonlight. "Don't give me all that flowery silliness you use with your admirers." The itako said, her voice lifeless and deadpan. "I don't admire you the way they do, and I don't fall for things the way they do."
His eyes creased into half-circles of mirth as he tipped his head to the side. A careful hand slid around her waist, as he released her hand, tightening in possession. "Ah.." He breathed. "Cynical, are we? Well, I asked for the same reason that you said yes. Isn't it lucky that our purposes coincide, beloved Anna?"
He received a slap for his pains, and a deadly look that blazed from eyes like coal flashing into flames. "Don't underestimate me, Hao."
The dark-haired boy smiled languidly, but with an air of danger that sent a chill like frosted velvet down her spine. "Now, now," he tutted sardonically. In a flash, he had caught at her wrist before she could slap him again, and his eyes were dark with heady amusement. "Who's underestimating whom right now, do you think?"
His other hand slid two delicate fingers about her other wrist, grasping it so securely that she felt the solid friction of bones against bones. Neatly, he stepped forward before she could complete the classic move generally expected of women being assaulted by men in the dark, sliding his own lean leg between her two as his gaze fixed upon hers with a gentle entertainment. "We were interrupted last time," he breathed, his words coming lazy and softly against her mouth. The scent was sweet; musky chocolate and a curious, indescribable boy-smell that evoked a shiver. "Do you think that the same interruption will happen again?"
"Touch me," She said, near-silent and deadly, "and I swear to you that you will die."
"We all must die at one time or another." He replied logically, though he was still smiling the lazy cat's smile that had struck her so strongly. "I will die at my appointed time, my dear Anna, and there is nothing that you can do to speed or slow the process."
And, matter-of-factly, he kissed her. His hands, falling away from her wrists, wound lazily through her hair, as simply as though they belonged there, and for a single frozen moment, she thought, dazedly, that perhaps they did. Through the growing roar in her ears that dimly suppressed all sights in the world and obscured everything save him, she thought that she heard the ring of something ominous. But then he tilted his head to more securely fasten his lips upon hers and she lost the thread of that thought as well.
Anna was not weak, but this game was something new to her, and it would be a while yet before she would learn not to be quite so easily distracted by it…
-
Black glints in the night, through the crack of the gradually opening door – like obsidian.
Like a pair of eyes.
Author's Note: Twelve is when the bell tolls, twelve is when the ball starts rolling down the hill. (Well, not really. I like chapter 13 and 14, myself. Chapter 14 is character development, after all!) Because I've been so excessively late with updates this time, here's a few lines from the next chapter:
"She tripped," he suggested, eyes curving with mirth like sickle-blades, "and fell on my lips."
The voice rasped through the speaker like something dark, dredged from the shadows of a sewer and a bad dream. "Seven days…"
"I'm sixteen." He said quietly. "I can make my own decisions now."
"You'll die." She said, and it was not certain from the tone whether she enjoyed the thought or feared it – her eyes had gone flat with the inscrutability of a cat.
He tipped his head to the side and smiled. "Will you miss me?"
But she gave no reply.
Review Replies:
Kasumi Nishikao: Well, I know that /this/ one is short. :) And who're you calling sempai? –feels old and wrinkly-
Inulover4eva: Er… Hehe. Haven't updated in forever – blame it on the groundedness? (-hides away the draft of her novel with a sneaky expression-)
bOw-doWn-tO-KeiKO: It /is/ an Alternate Universe – although I suppose there's only so much credibility that that will stretch to. I need to have a talk with Yoh – he's getting OOC again, I think. X.x Although I imagine that he knows that Anna knows her own mind, and would never accept much questioning from him. Being silent is his own way of being supportative.
Bibliomaniac: Yeah – I had this scene planned out since forever and it still took me by surprise, too. xD But there was nothing else that I could really /put/ there – and Anna always did seem the type – to me at least – for a subtle kind of vengeance. Of course he's troubled – I'm just writing mostly in third-person Anna's-point-of-view. She's possibly my favourite to write from. Although I should probably get a hold on myself and see if I'm still anywhere in canon.
He wasn't crazy here, now was he? O:-)
cherri-chan: Hurrah for in-characterness! –does a mad dance- My biggest problem is holding my characters to their personalities. Yes, there were, although apparently you were the only one to catch them. I envy you – I'm learning Chinese by fringes and Japanese not at all.
Dillpops: Manta's got his own fanlisting, though. It's the littler people like Chocolove who need one – he never gets mentioned at all! Or we could just create a little people fanlisting. :D
Frozenmagicfire: Erhehehehe… -guilt-
Kawaii Koneko92: ;P Glad you think so.
Black Hikari: x3 Doesn't he? –fangirls him-
Ketone: Thank you!
Trisyl: Argh. Be gentle. What happened to gentleness? –laments-
Nyago: Thank you; I appreciate the vote of confidence. :) Sexy bastard is right – on both counts, although he doesn't really use it in the manga. He just goes shirtless at every opportunity.
TenkunoMeiou: I'm fine, I'm fine:) It's all right.
eisshi16: Tamao, I feel, just doesn't have enough depth in the manga. I'm hoping to bring her out a little here. Considering the fact that people've told me that my characterizations are madly out of whack before, consider her as a different character with the same name and see if it helps?
anime-obsession260: He IS adorable, isn't he? Particularly when he shows himself up like that.
asn water: You won't find out for… -calculates- Twenty more chapters, about, if planning goes right. Literally. Sorry.
KristiexxNguyen: Yes, they do, and I love her reaction – it shows more depth into her nature than the manga skimmed into. There's subtlety, but that's the hard, solid proof that she does love him, and it completely sold me. :D
Sugacookie: Thanks:D