by your side/REBIRTH
Disclaimers: I have to put a lot of these for this one, because not only am I basically novelizing the Tokyo Babylon arc "rebirth" TB/5 into story format as opposed to manga format, I'm using the name too. bows to CLAMP So, the name "rebirth", the dialogue and such from TB/5, and characters/basic concept all copyright CLAMP. So, I guess spoilers to TB/5/6/7. Not much Kak/Hoku fluff in here, but it's necessary to proceed with the plot.
A/N: We're slowly closing to the end, guys. cries Second to last chapter, but there IS an epilogue, so rejoice! This might be a long chapter... but I guess for those of you who haven't read TB this is sort of a good thing, since it sorta gives you an idea of what it's really like. I feel really pathetic writing this chapter, it's just me novelizing TB/5, adding a little Kakyou/Hokuto, and novelizing maybe TB/6 also. Well, enjoy.
Patting Subaru's head with worry as he coughed, Hokuto frowned, concerned. "Subaru-- "
Subaru gave his twin a reassuring smile and made himself appear healthy. "Don't worry Hokuto! The doctor said I only have a cold, so he gave me some medicine."
Not looking very convinced, Hokuto replied, "You're my only brother, it's typical for me to agonize about you... Subaru, I'm very troubled, seeing you like this... You often had lots of fevers when you were little, remember?" Subaru smiled again, thanking his sister. The speaker unexpectedly dinged, and a voice echoed in the room.
Sumeragi Subaru, Mr. Sumeragi... you are requested to pick up your medicine...
"Don't move, I'll go get them!" Hokuto declared sternly, and bounced up to retrieve Subaru's remedy.
"Thanks Hokuto," Subaru answered, relieved. As Hokuto waited, a little boy ran up and sat beside Subaru. "Did you come here alone?" There was a hint of concern in his voice. The boy nodded smiling and said that his mommy was coming for him that day. "You seem very mature!" Subaru answered, as the boy looked at him curiously.
Inquisitively, the boy asked him, "Do you have a cold?"
"Yes, but the doctor gave me a shot so I'll get better really fast. Do you also have a cold?"
The boy shook his head. "No. Look, there's the operating room I'll be at later." He pointed down a lengthy, dim hall. "I have to stay here while I'm waiting because it's not my turn yet, though."
Walking up, a nurse said kindly, "Yuuya, you can come now..."
Before going with her, Yuuya said, "Will you come back to the hospital soon?"
"Yes, I'll come back after tomorrow... to get my cold medication."
Yuuya chirped excitedly, "After tomorrow? What time? Same time as today? So, you can come see me! I'll be here everyday..."
"Everyday--?"
The nurse seemed impatient as she said, "Come, Yuuya, it's time..."
Still looking energetic, Yuuya piped up, "Okay! See you the day after tomorrow!" A woman met him as he was swept away, tired and smiling sadly at Yuuya, her son.
Hokuto came back cheerfully and handed Subaru the medicine. "I got your medicine! Here they are, Subaru. And... I've got a surprise for you! I found a chauffeur to take you home!" She laughed as she motioned to a tall figure walking up behind her.
"But... it's Seishirou!"
Seishirou looked cheerful as he greeted, "I'm your new chauffeur, Subaru! How are you?"
"Thanks, I'm much better... but... how did you know I was here?" Subaru asked inquisitively.
Smiling mischievously, Hokuto grew a cat tail as Seishirou replied, "When I came home, I found Hokuto's message on my answering machine telling me that my dear Subaru was at the hospital and that I should come quickly!"
Subaru seemed uncomfortable as he mumbled, "I'm sorry, I've gotten in the way of your job again..."
Smiling, Seishirou declared, "Of course not! I didn't falter for a second, I came here because I knew you needed me!" Hokuto laughed loudly as she clapped, "Bravo Seishirou! You got in a lot of points this time!" Seishirou looked determined as he proclaimed, "I'm Sakurazuka Seishirou and I'll do anything in my power to show my love for Subaru!"
Subaru blushed as he stammered, "S-Seishirou-san...!"
Hokuto stopped laughing for a second and looked thoughtful, asking Subaru, "By the way... who were you saying farewell to just now...?"
"To a little boy about ten years old... he comes to the hospital regularly..." Subaru looked slightly worried. "He told me he often comes alone..."
Seeming a bit troubled, Hokuto commented softly, "That must be very hard... a child so young... but what department is he in?"
Subaru pointed to the operation room Yuuya had indicated earlier. "He said he was going to the operation room over there, down the hall. He comes every day, apparently... I may come to see him, I have other medications to pick up the day after tomorrow..."
"I think that boy comes to the hospital for dialysis..." Seishirou remarked softly.
Tucked in bed already, Subaru thought to himself, thinking of Yuuya's smiling face, How can he be so cheerful? He's dialysised...
Outside his bedroom on the couch, Hokuto and Seishirou were talking, Hokuto seeming even more anxious than ever. "The place Subaru pointed out is the place they practice dialyses... that's why I think that that child must have trouble with his kidneys. Dialysis is indispensable to anyone who has dysfunctional kidneys, they need help from a particular machine two or three times a month. But in any case, the problem is always a hard thing to accept, but a little boy his age... it's even tougher, taking him to the hospital all the time..."
"That's terrible..." Hokuto said softly, faintly upset. "I just hope that Subaru doesn't get too worried about this boy..."
Seishirou smiled comfortably. "Hokuto, you are a very nice girl!" Hokuto didn't seem to be relieved by his compliment.
Quietly, she said, "No, it's not me who is nice... It's Subaru who's nice... Subaru's always had a tendency to be too caught up in the feelings of other people... when he sees others suffering, he suffers... he's very moved by human character, because he puts in himself completely every time he works..." Seishirou said nothing, showing no signs of surprise as Hokuto continued. "But Subaru has never gotten used to the cruelty of life, he probably has remembered every person he has met to this day, but most of them have already forgotten about him... But he won't forget them, all those memories in his mind, he'll never rid of them. Since we were children growing up together, I thought that with his nature, he'd never endure life... His soul was so pure that in the end it will break under the burden of life." She sighed. "But fortunately, Subaru loves nobody, so nothing's happened yet..."
"He feels strongly about you, Hokuto!" Seishirou said in an almost protesting voice.
Looking down sadly, she answered mellifluously, "Yes, that's true. But I'm... family... Subaru has much love to give, but he never thinks of himself... he's unable of being self-centered, and yet he worries about others as simply as breathing. But if he ever loves anyone in particular..." Her voice became fainter with every word. "And that person betrays him, I'm sure Subaru will... will die!"
Seishirou didn't seem troubled as he said contently, "Hokuto, you really are a sweet girl!"
Relaxing, Hokuto smiled graciously in return. "Oh, that kind comment deserves the house specialty! A cup of royal tea with mild... while I'm at it, I'll make some for Subaru, and maybe a hot ginseng drink too...?"
Smiling as Hokuto left the room to make the tea, he took off his glasses, an evil gleam in his eyes. Such thoughtfulness, purity of soul... feelings I know nothing of... I believe the day of our bet draws near... Subaru-kun.
Walking in with a nurse and Yuuya's mother, a doctor asked the little boy, "So, are you doing okay Yuuya?" Yuuya agreed as his mother greeted him.
Abruptly, another nurse dashed in with a look of intense concern. "Doctor! We have a problem with room 302's patient!"
"Excuse me Yuuya, I'll be back later-- !" The doctor ran out from Yuuya's room in a hurry, looking worried. Subaru was watching Yuuya's mother, who had a strange look on her face before she followed after them. "Ma'am-- w-wait!"
"Your husband has encephalitis... for the moment he's breathing synthetically, but without the help of this machine, he won't live... I'm sorry... there's... no hope..." the doctor said softly to a distraught, crying woman.
Kneeling down before her cataleptic husband's bed, she sobbed, "My husband... my dear... my love..." She sniffed loudly.
Walking slowly into the room, Yuuya's mother bore a dark, frightening look on her face. "His kidneys. His kidneys... for Yuuya." Subaru's eyes widened as he protested loudly. "Ma'am! Wait! Ma'am!"
"Let me go! Maybe if I ask her... she might accept... Get lost!" Yuuya's mother replied fiercely, pushing Subaru away. "His heart will stop beating! Please! Let me go! Let me go! It's for Yuuya! My little Yuuya!"
Grabbing Yuuya's mother's hand, Seishirou stared into her eyes and said sternly, "You have a sick child ma'am... try to grasp what this woman is going through, scared at the thought of losing her husband. She knows there's no hope, but still, she keeps on praying... there is nothing more awful than watching someone's dearest fall ill and nothing else to be done but watch. For you, a man with encephala may be a dead man... but for his loved ones, he's still alive, breathing..."
Crying silently, Yuuya's mother whimpered as she attempted to calm down slowly, "I... know... I know how this woman feels, living with such a burden, and yet... what I wish is terrible... it's so horrible to be sick... to envy those who have the luck to be healthy... you may not understand ... but health is the most important thing for a human's life! Yuuya... Yuuya... I'm sorry... I'm sorry for not bringing you into the world healthy...!" She fell onto the ground, crying.
"Ma'am..." Subaru said softly.
"The disease is often very difficult for both the sick and their loved ones to accept... the poor woman, losing her first child at four years old from a kidney disease. A girl she named Maya. After becoming a widow, she lived only for her two children, and she knew at the time that they both suffered from the same disease... once she learned about it, she donated one of her own kidneys... to save one of her kids. Each normal human being has two kidneys, and it's possible to live normally with only one... but sadly, the mother had two children, and she was forced to choose between the two..."
"Finally, she chose Maya, but the kidney was rejected... the child was submitted to new dialysis, and her condition resumed worsening until she died during the winter four years ago... Yuuya's body might not reject a new kidney... he wouldn't have needed any more dialysis, if he had been chosen..."
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."
Subaru looked uncomfortable. "Ma'am..."
Ignoring him, Yuuya's mother continued to cry. "Yuuya... Maya... it's all my fault... nobody wants to give you their kidneys... Yuuya..."
"Ma'am..." he said softly.
She wasn't listening. "A kidney... for... Yuuya..."
"Ma'am...!"
"But you... you could give Yuuya a kidney... please... I beg of you..."
"Ma'am!"
"It must be done quickly... or... he will die..."
Subaru's eyes widened as he said frantically, "Ma'am! Listen to me! I'd be happy to give Yuuya my kidney! I'd be happy to..."
Still not listening, Yuuya's mother turned her back to Subaru and grabbed a knife, whispering ominously, "Yuuya!"
"SUBARU!" Hokuto screamed as she walked towards where Subaru and Yuuya's mother was, realizing something was horribly wrong.
"I must have a kidney... it doesn't matter whose it is!" Yuuya's mother swung the knife at Subaru, cutting him. As she tried to kill Subaru again, who stood there willing to give up his life for Yuuya...
Seishirou jumped in front of Subaru, the knife cutting into his eye. As blood splattered everywhere, his glasses were knocked off as Hokuto screamed. "Seishirou!"
"KYAAAAA!" Yuuya's mother attempted to attack again, stopped by Seishirou. Holding one hand over his bleeding eye, nurses and doctors grouped around him and the unstable woman.
Subaru watched in shock, pounding on the door behind which Seishirou was led away. "Seishirou! Seishirou! Seishirou... Seishirou! Seishirou!"
Hokuto looked saddened as she tried to stop Subaru from hurting himself further. "Subaru... Subaru, control yourself!"
"Seishirou! Seishirou! Seishirou!" Subaru sobbed miserably.
"Subaru..." Hokuto said softly, giving up her attempts to calm Subaru.
Sliding to the floor with stains of blood smearing down the door from his injured hand, he cried, "Seishirou!" The room darkened while Hokuto could do nothing but watch him powerlessly. "Sei... shi... rou..."
Behind a wall that divided his dreamseeing and his dreamscape, Kakyou sighed as he watched the scene play behind the thin barrier. Hokuto's brother...
You knew that this would happen, didn't you?
Hinoto-san...
That boy... will play a part... in the future of the earth.
That book you were reading... it was written by those who had spoken to dreamseers.
Hokuto didn't seem comforted as she entered Kakyou's dreamscape that night.
"Did you know that this would happen?" she asked softly, staring at the ground. She had not even given him their usual greeting of her hugging him and he being embarrassed.
"...Yes," Kakyou admitted quietly, feeling awkward at Hokuto's silence.
"Oh, okay," she replied quietly in a voice quite unlike her own. And then, "I'll be going, then."
Kakyou's eyes widened in alarm as he struggled to run after the departing Hokuto. "W-wait!" Turning around and staring at him blankly, she asked in an emotionless voice, "What is it?"
Cautiously, he asked, looking rather uncomfortable, "...Are you mad at me?"
Surprisingly, Hokuto gave him an emboldening smile and shook her head. "Of course not. Do you want me to stay? It'd be nice to talk, like we used to do... and maybe straighten out some issues that have been bothering me." Still a bit astonished, Kakyou nodded anxiously, wondering what exactly those predicaments were, although he had quite a good guess lingering in his mind. Changing the dreamscape to that of a café, he held the chair out for Hokuto to sit down, having acquired that habit from months of Hokuto's scolding.
Her smile seemed a little too fake as she sat down, straightening herself accordingly and then glancing at him contently. Then, unexpectedly, as he sat down, she glared straight into his eyes, only an inch or two's breadth between their faces. Still smiling falsely, she asked in a seemingly cheerful voice, "Why don't you ever tell me what you see in the future?"
Kakyou looked very uneasy and restless as he pondered his answer. "Because you don't pay me for it like the politicians do" seemed haughty and rude, and it appeared as only an excuse, it not being the reason. "Because I don't like you" was a definite don't, as that'd just completely ruin their relationship that they had spent months developing. "Because I care about you enough not to see you get hurt by what I see in my dreams. So I try to protect you from that, because isn't that what being in 'love' is all about? Trying to watch over the one you love so they won't be sad, even if you know it's not that effective?" He sighed, and finished, "Hokuto-chan... please understand that..."
She resisted herself from raising an eyebrow. Yet she still felt, in spite of all her momentary anger, that what he'd said was true. "Are you sure you love me?"
That question took Kakyou aback.
"What?" he exclaimed incredulously, and then added hastily, "of course I do!" He blushed almost instantaneously.
Hokuto looked sullen and reserved as she said in a voice almost lower than a whisper, "You say you love me, but what kind of love do you mean? I try to protect Subaru, but that's just because of our blood relation, and that I'm really quite fond of him, and I'm his twin sister. I don't... really think you love me."
Kakyou stared.
Suppressing a snicker, he attempted to reply as seriously as he could while staring back into her eyes-- they were still quite close to each other, and he could feel her breath on his cheeks-- and said, "Hokuto-chan, I do love you... before you happened to wander in my dream, I didn't really think my existence mattered at all. But now, it does, to at least one person..." He paused, and for a brief moment sudden panic flooded his face. "I do matter something to you... right?" he stammered frantically.
Staring at Kakyou skeptically for a few minutes, Hokuto's face remained empty and expressionless. The imagined animosity between them increased with every second that they remained so dangerously, closely aligned. The rising tension augmented and heightened hazardously. Their faces remained eerily adjacent and their eyes were burning through each other with vacancy and hollowness. It would have been a rather frightening sight, but the supposed, visualized café was empty, save for them, so there was nobody to see them and remark on the alarming aura of the scene.
Then, in a sudden burst of laughter, Hokuto erupted into giggles. "Ohohohohohoho!" Giving Kakyou a quick kiss on the lips, she grinned and piped up, beaming brightly, "Oh, don't worry Kakyou-kun! I know you're there for me." She sighed and gave him an apologetic smile. "Although, I'm not sure if you'll be able to understand... I've already told you so many times before about Subaru's purity..." She looked thoughtful, and then her eyes widened as she glanced at the nearby clock. "Is it already almost dawn?" She swore, and then grimaced. "We spent too much time staring at each other," she proclaimed, glaring playfully at Kakyou, who had nothing else to do except grin sheepishly in return.
Sighing, Hokuto sipped the last of her coffee and looked pensive. "I'll see you soon, I guess?" There was a hint of hesitation and uncertainty in her voice, and he could sense it, although he didn't mention it.
"Yeah," Kakyou managed to reply, smiling broadly.
A gentle ringing of the telephone, soft yet loud. Hokuto winced-- it added to her already constantly growing headache, since she had been poring over her homework for quite some time and still couldn't seem to understand it. Grudgingly, she took the phone anyway, warily cradling the receiver in her hand.
"...Obaachan? What's wrong?"
Silence. It was foreboding. And then an elderly voice answered solemnly, "Subaru-san's friend... Sakurazuka Seishirou. After some suspicion, I did some inquiries and investigating. And... he is...
the Sakurazukamori."
There was a sudden, sharp gasp, and Hokuto dropped the phone in alarm.
Subaru had just left her apartment after a hearty meal...
to visit Seishirou.
Notes: Not too fond of the first half of the chapter, but I make it up to myself in the remaining portions. Finally leaving off at a cliffhanger. Although I admit the previous chapters weren't so good, I really am fond of this project and hope to finish totally in May so I can work on my new story, Within My Own Prison. If you like Fuuma/Kamui please give it a try.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! sigh The next one's to be the last.