You're Mine
Disclaimer: I've realized by now that I don't own Shaman King. I hope that you do too.
Author's Note: Do you realize that in three days I've received about 123 hits on my fanfic? All I can really say is, wow. I had no idea that about nine people visited my fanfic in the last few days. I feel special. :) Really. –waves to all the invisible people that she never greets because she has no idea that they're there- Hey! I see you! Thanks for reading my fanfic and my inane greetings! If you see these at all!
Also, I love Hao. And I have chapter 13 on my hard drive, ready to go. No slow updates this time; a week on the outside, although maybe slightly more because now I must work on Fridays. And my updates prevaricate a lot, because to be honest I am completely, utterly squeeful over feedback and therefore...
Did I mention I love the next few chapters? Really. The character who re-enters the stage has so much complexity that's unexplored in other fanfics that I couldn't help but throw him into his misery again and… mmf! Can't say too much. Those of you who actually read my author's notes, notice that I don't want people voting anymore because there's no use voting for what's past, feel free to guess who it is. :)
Karaoke: Part Two
He twisted his dark head about, eyes gleaming with the faint innocence of his mischief.
"Anna," suggested the shaman, his mouth curving up into a double-edged smile as his gaze struck her own, "why don't you go next?"
Her eyes had flickered up, and they held his now, levelly, with no hint of retreat or balking to mark her as one inferior to him. To those unaccustomed to the subtlety that passed for speech between the two, it might have seemed an ordinary meeting of eyes; but the blonde's held glints of steel that might be turned upon Hao if he should chance risking her displeasure.
"I don't sing." The itako said, neutrally, though the faint movement of her wrist drew attention to her fingers, curled as though she were ready to back that statement with physical evidence that she would not be made to do what she did not want to.
He turned, tipped his chair so that they drew close, their noses centimetres apart. "You could try." He breathed, as his eyes neared hers. (The scent of him drifted like fire; chocolate warmed by the gradual pulse of embers and flames, drawling slowly over her tongue and down her throat.)
She snapped her head up, rigid, the pieces snapping together as though it were what she had been meant to become. Her eyes were brittle with ice, encased with a bright shadow whose outlines seemed aflame. "I don't think I will."
"Are you so sure, Anna?" The shaman seemed strangely melancholy, somehow, his lashes drooped down, overcast and dark, and his mouth made a sad moue that his eyes caught the reflection of (in her own unwavering gaze) and parodied, glittering and sardonic. "After all, everyone else has gone, and Yoh and I will go—"
"Don't be annoying, Hao."
"You always seem to think the worst of me." He pressed his hand over his heart in a perversely familiar gesture; she resisted the urge to brush his hand aside to check if there truly existed a beat beneath his skin. His head tilted inquiringly to the side, though his eyes were still cool in the gloom; shadowed locks fell over his shoulder like a waterfall of darkness. "What have I done to you that makes you so cynical?"
She arched a brow, her eyelids never lifting. "You won't stop pestering me until I go, will you." It was not a question; she rose immediately after it, as though she did not desire his speech in return. "Tell the stage manager the song you want played." She threw over her shoulder, carelessly, as she stalked towards the stage. "You would have done it anyway, but you don't need to make it a secret that you've manipulated every instant of this evening."
"Have I?" Hao murmured, and his mouth worked into a broadened smile, faintly edged with malice. He made a quick nod towards the manager, flickering fingers in an unmistakable gesture. And the audience quieted as Anna drew her first, clacking step onto the stage.
She did not look herself beneath the harsh, white lights of the platform; her wiry body was exposed as thin, all edges and joints of a girl like a scarecrow who snarled and barked. But as the music came on, it wound about her, so that the lights seemed to dim, and a soft elegance overcame that initial appearance of something like to plainness. She was not plain, this itako. That, of all things, they could be certain of.
She grasped the microphone with the easy confidence that she had always dealt in life, raising her chin so that the light, instinctive tremor in her fingers was masked. (What Anna did, she did without hesitance, and well. And wondered, occasionally, how heavily this destiny pressed upon her, that she should do so.)
An offering of reasons
We put them all away
A covering of treasons
That one by one we let slip away
She sang as she always knew she was capable of singing, her voice pitched low to match the peculiar man who put the words to the melody. They rang powerfully over the stage and past it, into the echoing darkness where only a few faces were familiar; a few faces whose sight she kept to in that alien gloom.
The song did not describe her situation; it did not fit her at all. Hao did not – could not – understand her. (Or was that simply another maneuver, another manipulation whose depth she had missed?) So why was it that a shudder traversed over her shoulders like a cloak fitting itself to her skin?
A solitary dancer (and the solitary dancer glared at Hao as the realization dawned upon her)
So lost upon her stage
I have seen you on the edge of dawn
Felt you there before you were born
Balanced your dreams upon the edge of thorns
But I don't think about you anymore
A study made of winter
Of summers long ago
And dreams that use to glitter
Safely now hidden under snow
And Yoh remembered the day beneath the sunlight, the leafless branches flung like some wildly intricate pattern over his head and hers, turning to speak and finding the moment broken by a pair of black eyes that glittered, even then, with malice.
(They glimmered stronger now, pulses of disjointed light, as he watched her, and Yoh wondered how Hao could ever have a use for her – why he wanted her so that he would challenge his brother, whom he had humored and sought to strengthen all his life, for her.)
And so we end this chapter
And let the stage lights fade
I have seen you on the edge of dawn
Felt you there before you were born
Balanced your dreams upon the edge of thorns
But I don't think about you anymore
I have seen you on the edge of dawn
Felt you here before you were born
Balanced the dreams upon the edge of thorns
But I don't think about you any more…
The piano notes began again, tiny trills that faded up and down the keyboard until at last, they faded… into darkness. Without a second word, an excess bow or flounce, Anna executed an inflexible obeisance towards her audience and turned to stalk down the stage-steps in a flare of her usual black skirt. She returned to the table in silence, tight-lipped, refusing to speak save to accept an occasional dish that was passed her way.
"You did well, Anna-sama." Tamao managed to whisper timidly after a few stammered starts. Anna's mere look was enough to brighten her cheeks with vivid crimson. (Her fingers, gripping the table, went white. She stared down at her own plate and did not look up again, even as Yoh laid a few careful fingers across her knuckles in quiet sympathy.)
Hao smiled at her, warmly, but she did not respond; her eyes were huge and flaring with some alien emotion as she turned to look at him once, before returning her attention to the laden plates before her.
Ren took the opportunity to be centerstage again; upon emerging from his brief affair with his adoring audience, he had promptly been caught up in a brief but noisy quarrel with HoroHoro. Both of the shaman now sported two lumps on their skulls – neither of which the other would admit to being hurt by.
"Everyone's been except you and Yoh," The Chinese shaman said, in tones that were deliberately, pinpointedly accusatory. "Was this your idea of fun, Hao?" The absence of the honorary prefix was left hanging in the air, a subtle challenge to the dark-haired shaman's strength. "Hanging each of us up to dry, putting us through the wringer—"
"My dear Tao," The fire shaman drawled, "Is that your idea of torture? Being made to sing? Considering your own voice had Yoh clapping his fingers off—" At this, Ren flushed as crimson as Tamao ever had, cheeks gaining a vibrant color as he glanced instinctively towards the aforementioned boy, and then, quickly, to the floor. "—I shouldn't think that this party was the entire failure that you thought it, do you?" Though he had not paused in his flow, nevertheless Hao had caught the abrupt color in the Chinese shaman's cheeks.
"Nevertheless," he added, voice rolling with a soft, arrogant burr, "if you really think yourself cheated, both Yoh and I will be more than happy to accommodate you, won't we, Yoh?" A glint of mischief in his eye, the shaman continued, with a certain amount of calculated malice, "And perhaps my brother would even dedicate a song to you, Ren." He appeared to contemplate this, as Ren began to look steadily more and more infuriated – and slightly alarmed.
"I'll leave that for you to think about." He said abruptly, rising to his feet. "But for now, in order to fulfil the promise that I made… I'll go."
Smiling blandly at the astonished group of shaman, he swept from the table, swaggering – though that movement implied an unfounded arrogance that was not evident in Hao's manner; his walk came of practice and the assurance that he had always been correct- towards the stage. A few murmured words in the stage manager's ear – which was always open to the suggestion of money – brought him to…
"Where's that kisama going?" Ren scowled ominously, shoes squeaking against his chair as he stood on tiptoe in an effort to locate the fire shaman.
Horo, who was mostly on tiptoe on his chair in order to keep a wary eye on Ren, said, in tones of fervent hope, "Perhaps he's gone home."
"And left the rest of us here stranded with the bill to pay?" The suggestion only infuriated the violet-haired boy all the more. "Kisama!" Shouting his traditionally obscene battlecry, he began to brandish his glaive with far more meaning than he had of late.
"Sit down, Ren." Said an affectedly easy voice to his side. Yoh smiled up at his oftentimes rival and occasional friend. "I'm sure that my brother wouldn't abandon us like tha—ah, there he is!" His tone warmed with languid ease as he gestured towards the boy so easily recognized as Yoh's twin and brother.
For a moment, there was a stunned silence.
Chocolove was the first to break it, peering in surprise towards the apparition on stage. "But…" he muttered, "What is he wearing?"
Somewhere towards the front, a girl appeared to faint as the eldest of the Asakura siblings strode onto the stage. And it became evident to all precisely what he was wearing. He was garbed in…
A suit, a black overcoat that appeared tailormade, so neatly did it conform to the lean lines of his body and accentuate their predatory vividness. Beneath it, there peeked out a hesitant, starchy white collared shirt, and its sleevecuffs curled neatly about his wrists as he moved onto the stage. Formal trousers accompanied that waistcoat; black as well, though they fitted to his legs well enough that there appeared to be no complaints about the formality of his dress.
Turning as he strode into the midst of the stagelight, he grinned innocently towards his companions, eyes veiled with some secret that, it appeared, was his alone to keep, for he pressed two fingers in a silencing gesture to his lips and turned to nod at the stage manager. He whirled a little casually as the guitar riffs commenced, sounding throughout the club with a buoyant, though typically conceited, beat. As the audience began to grow restless, however, he murmured at last, into the microphone, "All right.
I am intrinsically no good…"The line was pronounced with a flavoured sarcasm, and the light within his eyes glinted with mocking laughter withheld as he sang the lyrics that had been provided. Where some of the others had stuttered and shuffled their feet, he seemed like light itself, with that illumination's mercury-quickness, which enabled him to dance with a natural beat all his own from one side of the stage to another, glance up sharply at precisely the right moment, and smile.
I have a heart that made of wood…And I am only biding time
Only reciting memorized lines
And I'm not fit to touch
The hem of your garment…
He extended patronizingly poised fingers in his table's direction, catching, as he did, the slow infuriation of Ren's features as he began to contemplate whether Hao was guilty of incest, and the vivid scarlet that already adorned Tamao's. Only Anna seemed utterly unconcerned with his song; as though utterly unaffected by it, she had begun to pick lightly at the flaws within her fingers, snapping off loose bits of skin with the perfect control that she had always exemplified.
Instinctively, as Hao's song began, Yoh had glanced towards her, and it was now still that he surveyed her, eyes fixed upon her with liquid concern.
"Anna," the boy said very gently, and already he had begun to extend a tentative hand to grip her shoulder, "are you all ri—"
A wiry-thin arm extended itself, slapping his support away. "I'm fine!" The itako's reply was brusque, laden with a fury that she did not ordinarily allow herself to demonstrate. But, she thought grimly, fighting the fine tremor that tensed her body, there were exceptions when it came to Hao. It seemed that there always would be.
No, no I'm not fit to touchThe hem of your garment…
He revolved again, but in a careless, elegant motion that caused his black waistcoat to fly up around his arms, which were extended into the air. As the girls within the audience screamed, the speed of the motion whipped the garment from his body, leaving him with a collared white shirt, apparently starched and buttoned primly into place. There was a kind of sensual quality to his smile, however, that pervaded that garment and added still more volume to the fangirls' screams.
Aside from the new development regarding his clothing, however, as the riffs ended and the words began to flicker onto the screen again, Hao allowed himself to sing again, though his eyes remained fastened eternally to the table in the back…
I have no love but only goalsHow very empty is my soul
It is a soul that feels no thrill
It is a soul that could easily kill
"Too right." Anna remarked caustically, though there appeared to be no one in a state of mind sensible enough to hear and appreciate it.
And I'm not fit to touchThe hem of your garment
No, no I'm not fit to touch
The hem of your garment…
Yeah, yeah.
But a new development had occurred; upon the second 'yeah', the dark-haired shaman leapt off of the stage, landing in the midst of the crowd. Parting automatically around him, a pressing audience of apprentices to a true showman, few people noticed as the stage manager mouthed furiously at the stagehands. With the grudging reluctance of fascination and laziness, they began to extend his microphone cord as well as manipulate the stagelight so that it followed his path as he began to saunter casually towards the table that he had so recently occupied.
Yeah
He murmured into the microphone, and many more things, though the denizens of his table hardly noticed, not with his eyes fixed mesmerisingly upon their own… At last, as the melody wound back into lyrics again, his song resumed, though it seemed as though the words came through his mind alone; certainly his sight was not occupied with anything save a certain two girls at his table…
I am intrinsically no good…
I have a heart that made of wood…
And I am only biding time
Only reciting memorized lines
The last word was uttered with a scathing tone that its original singer had doubtless not intended to imbue it with, but nevertheless, still he ventured forwards, now circling his table with something akin to a rapacious glint within his eye.
Ren thought that perhaps he had seen such a look before – in the eyes of the beasts that his father had once brought home in cages, to frighten him with in the dark, and to strengthen him with the amalgamation of fear and power. (They had been great, slavering things, with madness and a ferocious intelligence that had coalesced at the back of their minds until it had been honed and sharpened with purpose that they watched him with now, edgy, wary, and above all; conscious.)
The littler Ren had thought that such looks remained so; only in the eyes of the beasts that had not the intelligence enough to carry out the mad plans evident within their gaze.
But the elder Ren knew different now, in this consuming, sensual darkness. Hao was anything but dim; and what he wanted, he procured by any means necessary.
And I'm not fit to touchThe hem of your garment… No, no, he said, though the sweet poison within his tone seemed to have redoubled over the course of the song, and now could murder quite a large rat in its tracks.
I'm not fit to touch
The hem of your garment…
He had traced his path around the table, and now appeared to pause where Anna and Tamao had been (inadvertently? Anna no longer thought so; it had begun to seem more and more as though Hao had anticipated and premeditated every single detail within this event, including his own song) seated.
Carefully, with more of a raw, tragic note than he had employed in any other section of the song, he sang, with a fragile note to his voice,
No, no I'm not fit to touchThe hem of your garment…
He had begun to lift his hand, and now it trailed towards her, tracing the line of her cheek. Frozen in place – by fury or embarrassment that he had dared to do this to her in public – her eyes smouldered with the fury that her hands itched to express, though she had not yet acted.
No, no I'm not fit to touchThe hem of your garment…
And finally, as the lingering notes wavered and fell away into the more rhythmic regularity of the song, she thought she heard him laugh – and was up in moments. The spell had broken over her, but despite that tiny end, she still intended to exact her revenge.
A hand flew out, and the blonde drew a grim satisfaction from seeing the scarlet mark blossom upon his cheek. That assurance wavered only slightly as she saw that he was smiling, and cupped the mark that she had dealt him as though it were a precious thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Grinning still, he slipped back into the crowd, towards the stage with a backwards pace, and eyes that never failed to leave her bloodless features. The music died neatly, in a clean split that enabled to fade away just as he had ascended to the center of the stage once more.
Pausing there, he executed a flawless bow, and luxuriated in the thunderous applause that emitted from the audience, along with several – female – cries for an encore. He did not oblige, however, but slipped back into his seat, still garbed in that – ridiculous-looking, thought Anna, though it was more for the purpose of thinking it than for any sort of truth in that statement; Hao, as always, was resplendent – suit.
"Did you enjoy the performance, Anna?" There was always a peculiar inflection upon the second syllable of her name, as though they were two separate words entirely.
Coldly, she glanced unconcernedly over her food, and began to pick at the cold remains with a sullenly muffled fury. "It was all rather dull." She responded coolly, though she would not look up to say the words. "I wouldn't say that I noticed very much of a performance in the process."
"Oh?" He mocked her coolness by affecting airs himself; his palm dug sharply into his cheek as he said, sadly, "And I thought that this mark was a token of your appreciation, too."
She glanced up to catch his smile. Her eyes narrowed intently, mouth curving into an ugly line of hatred that did not quite suit her habitually inscrutable features.
"Must you always be such a—what was the word Ren used for it?" She tapped a spoon delicately to her teeth, though her eyes never wavered from his. "Oh, yes," she said deliberately, with an edge of savagery that made him smile, "A kisama."
He laughed merrily as though she had said something amusing, and gestured for her to regard the stage instead. "After all," He murmured, and it was only then that she noticed the absence of the boy seated to her left, "My ototo will be performing the next."
Yoh had been bustled and gestured towards the stage, and he stood bemusedly at its steps now, staring at the wood as though he found something intriguing about the patterns of its grain.
"Hurry up, boy." The stage manager was looking at him impatiently. That strange boy who looked like this one, with the hypnotic, loathsome gaze, had paid him for the evening, but nothing was worth dealing with him for even an extra moment. He thought longingly of the hours when he would be freed from this madness at last, and gestured brusquely at Yoh, his eyes narrowed, mustache bristling. "We haven't got all evening."
Yoh glanced up, smiled dreamily, and stepped up the stage. "Of course we do." He said, over his shoulder. "What's life for, if not to relax?"
"To make money, maybe?" The stage manager retorted under his breath, glaring apprehensively over his shoulder. Hao was Worth Something. Therefore, in all likelihood, this boy who looked like him was probably Worth Something too, and therefore Not Worth Offending.
"Money." Yoh mused, pausing for a moment. (At the table, Anna watched the stage, her eyes sharp as the yellow, needle-curves of a hawk's gaze.) He looked up. His eyes were the charcoal-dark of embers, and warm. As he stepped up to the center of the stage, which protruded out into the dining area, he glanced down once, met her eyes with that faint, questioning hesitance. Then, as though he had only realized that his eyes had met hers, Yoh broke into a smile, his head tilted to the side in a wry expression. And he turned to the microphone.
I cannot follow you, my love,
you cannot follow me.
I am the distance you put between
all of the moments that we will be.
He sang the words softly, as though they were not words at all, but whispers carried on the breeze, meant for a single person alone. For Tamao, there would have been the gentle melody, the song that would have made no bones about what he said, what he meant, the gentleness that had ever characterized him. But Hao curled his fingers and only smiled; it was evident that there would be no gentleness. Tonight was a celebration, not of love and of the sweetness that might be derived thereof, but of the birth of something dark like shadows and hard like diamond that would cut at the world until its rotting wounds had healed.
Hao did not play chess; he considered the game barbaric, too simplistic with its blandly carved pieces to suit him. But he thought of Yoh, the king, backed into a corner as the melody closed in and surrounded him inexorably.
And smiled.
You know who I am,
you've stared at the sun,
well I am the one who loves
changing from nothing to one.
He watched the crowd, smiling faintly still, although the words did not brook smiling, and there was only one person that they were meant for, as Hao had intended.
Tamao watched with something like to the fawning eagerness that she had always possessed. But as Hao's head moved into her range, a spark leapt in her gaze; something glittering like the fire that the shaman lit at his fingertips…
It seemed that Mikihisa had seen something in her that the rest of them had missed – but would not be permitted to miss for much longer. (She had been born dull, quiet, given all that she needed and spoon-fed like a delicate, porcelain figure.
They made soldiers of porcelain now, and Tamao understood, now, what it was to fight for someone you loved.)
You know who I am...
If you should ever track me down
I will surrender there
and I will leave with you one broken man
whom I will teach you to repair.
His eyes flittered to the pink-haired girl, where they rested and smiled, though his lips moved to follow the song that spun out before him like a path.
You know who I am...
I cannot follow you, my love,
you cannot follow me.
I am the distance you put between
all of the moments that we will be.
You know who I am...
The song faded, from the bright flames vanishing into the ashes. Yoh smiled as the music wound to a close, and whispered something into the microphone, his gaze vague and diffused so that it encompassed two figures at once.
Anna started from her seat before returning abruptly. (Her hands gripped the wood as if she thought to find a sword between her hands.) And Hao smiled.
(to be continued…)
Author's Note: Wow, Yoh's song took some finding. –laughs- I didn't decide until up to the last minute what his song could be, and then suddenly I was listening and I knew. The chorus, I thought, was perfect as it was.
Nothing really can be said, can it? What'd you think? What'd you like? What'd you hate? Tell me, because I know that the majority of you will leave me with one sentence reviews otherwise, and I'm dying to know.
Also, what do you think of Yoh? But before I deluge you in questions, here're my replies from the last time.
Review Replies:
Dillpops: I always did think of it as a manga not intended for adults; not because it wasn't mature enough, or because the plot wasn't intricately fascinating enough, but because it showed how children – if you can call them that, but remember their ages; it's hard to, but we ought to try – could be independent, could live without adults, given the support. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, but I felt that it was a point to be made; and it was one of my main attractions to it; that 'children' could be powerful beings in their own rights, and capable of controlling the world. Or something to that effect.
Hee, well, Anna's song was as Anna as I could make it; I don't think either twin would've appreciated it very much if she'd dedicated it to them. –bland smile-
Rumia: No voting anymore, remember? –pokes gently- And sure, I'll try and keep it up. Of course Yoh and Anna make a wonderful couple; they –are- canon, after all.
BabyKaoru-Sama: A week and a day; hopefully soon enough for you. :) I would have updated it earlier, but real life conditions have met in a conjunction decidedly unhappy for my online life.
winner-loser: No, it's all right. Trust me, some other people have been a –lot- more blunt about their voting. Thank you. :)
Anna1215: -laughs- I'm sorry. But at least you didn't vote as everyone else did long after the fact – I'm still getting emails that say nothing but what pairing people want.
lent0inkz: Well, you can always hope, can't you:P
pendulumxswing: Nah, I think Horo was just surprised. –hugs her squishy blue Ainu- It seemed like a canon reaction to me. Why don't you like yaoi?
X37: WAH. –embarrassed look- Guess I'm not that good at painting out the moral shades of gray, then. I'll have to work on that. He IS sweet; he's just caught in… circumstances.
anime-obsession260: Well, Yoh and Anna sang; hope it lived up to your expectations. :)
hannami08: Hey. :) Nice to see one of the anonymous hits on my counter turn up. Just remember that it splits into two arcs at the end, all right? If you don't remember, I believe it was in one of my author's notes; probably worth reading those, neh? ;)
Inulover4eva: -laughs- It's all right, no worries. And I've updated! Not to mention I've chapter thirteen right on my hard drive and ready to go…
Kasumi Nishikao: Yep; my name on LJ is Lasakura; feel free to friend me. I haven't been on a computer I trust all week, so I can't get on at the moment, but I'll try and add you when I get on the one at home. And you're not spamming. xD I generally appreciate the longer reviews since they're actually saying something probably worth listening to rather than the usual, uber-vague 'great job!'. And, er, isn't sempai generally for –guys-?
Pandorac: Anna was prominent in this section. xD What can I say, saving the best for last.
asn water: -grins- As Ren would say: "Huh! My family composed 66 classical songs and made an audience of 666 people cry before your family ever realized that beating each other over the head with rocks wasn't a good idea!"
Teishya: What, really? I'll need to work on that, then. ;) Thanks for pointing that out – inadvertently, as it may be.