8-Retaliation.
T: Chaosdragon has been working long and hard for me and I bring you the final two pieces of this fic…I hope they're worth the wait! Oh warnings the same and nope I'm not a member of Clamp.
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"I know that Murimi is Seishiro's father."
"How did you find out?"
"Sakurazuka-san told me."
"Told you…but you said that he did not recall who Keiichi was."
"Not on the surface, but deep in his psyche he knows still."
"You mean you snooped?"
"I am afraid so and yet, Hokuto, you were scared and only in discovering the cause of that fear could I hope to take it away."
She sighs and when she again speaks he can hear the smile in her voice. "I should be angry at you for sneaking into something I had told you was a secret, Kakyo and yet for that motivation I find I can not."
"Then will you tell me the bits I do not know?"
"Setsuka and I joined the Sumeragi Corporation at about the same time and yet we did not really talk to one another until about a month before Seishiro-chan helped Subaru. She told me later that this was because she was married to Murimi at the time and he wished desperately to keep her close…to keep her away form the sort of publicity I, as their rising star, was getting.
"They had met when she was an awkward 16 year old, working her way through school with the aspiration of becoming a teacher or perhaps a model. It had apparently been love at first sight for them, but a month after the pair was married they were expecting their first child.
"The twins, Keiichi and Seishiro were born in the summer and Setsuka left school to look after them. She was happy enough in the role of the housewife and yet when, five years later, Murimi asked her to join the agency she leapt at the chance for a change in pace, and a chance to achieve one of her dreams.
"By that point Murimi had already become less kind hearted and was descending already into the madness that would lead both to Shijuku's death and his own. Setsuka saw such an eventuality on the horizon and but a year after joining the agency she asked for a divorce. It was a request Murimi granted with but two conditions. The first that Setsuka never talk again of being his wife and the second that he keep one of the twins.
"Setsuka's heart broke at the thought of separating the siblings at first she refused him. Murimi threatened court action . . . threatened to take both the twins from her and she was forced in the end to chose one rather than lose both. As Keiichi was already showing signs of an emotional detachment from the world and thus Setsuka chose Seishiro to be the one she raised as her own."
"On the day that she died Setsuka told me all of this, told me of Keiichi and then she told me that he had been in contact with her, that he seemed changed enough so that perhaps it was safe to re-unite him with his brother . . .
"But clearly that was not the case."
He recounted Seishiro's version of the events of that day and she remarks,
"That must be why Kamui saw only Keiichi that day, Seishiro would have been on the ground and if Kamui had come at the right angle . . . "
"Then he would have seem only one who looked as Sakurazuka-san, and as he had no knowledge of Keiichi he would have drawn the only logical conclusion. Yet how had he come to be there in the first place and why did he not tell the police of what he saw?"
"They met in a relatively public place, Kakyo and so for Kamui to have been passing through as not all that odd. He did not tell the police because he believed Seishiro-san was better off here in the institute and because he know subconsciously of his brother's feelings for the man. As you know, Kamui wishes to protect his brother, wishes to keep him safe, more than anything else in the world."
"Yet you have told him now that he has the wrong man, that he has hated Sakurazuka-san under false beliefs?"
"Yes, for as with you I had no choice but to tell him this truth."
"You do not wish me to tell Sakurazuka-san?"
"That is correct. The first that he awoke Kamui told him what he had seen and it was that truth that caused Seishiro-chan to go back to that fantasy world."
"Yet now he has a reason to stay in this reality, and anger enough inside of him that I can not see him hesitating to bringing Keiichi to justice."
"Keiichi is his twin, Kakyo and no matter how angry Seishiro-chan is I do not believe he shall wish him harmed." A beet and he considers if he should leave it as such, if he should keep to himself Sakurazuka-san's other concern . . . Yet if Sakurazuka-san was right . . .
"What if Keiichi were to harm Subaru?"
"Why?" She enquires and then her mind fills in the blanks and she whispers, "I have to go." before the line goes dead.
……………………………………………………………………………….
There was someone else in his apartment.
This registering as some lazy thing on the edge of his subconscious as he rolls into waking.
Aware that it might possibly be an intruder he gropes in the dark for a weapon and it is only when his fingers come into contact with the paperweight, which is kept always at his bedside, that he venture into the gloom of the apartment.
A familiar figure sat on the couch and almost without a thought he dropped his guard, but just barely, "Seishiro . . . "
The other smiled then and Subaru found his grip tightening again on the paperweight. It was not Seishiro's smile, and though this other looks the same as the man he loved, he knew that it was an imposture, that it is some other person.
"Who are you?"
"I am the mirror of he you know as Seishiro Sakurazuka and yet whom should have claimed the Segawa name as myself . . . as our father . . . "
"Murimi was Seishiro's father?"
"That is right. And it was your family, your mother, who insured that he was destroyed, insured that mother tuned away from father and from me. You aspire to take Seishiro away from me now and I can not allow that . . . I can not allow the last of my family to be stolen away."
There is a flash of steal then and fear freezes him to the spot. "Seishiro . . . " He whispered as the knife plunged towards him.
He feels a body slam into him, and feels himself clatter to the floor in shock. It is only when the paperweight clatters to the floor, miraculously remaining in one piece, that he comes back to himself.
Kamui is crouched to the floor, his hand pressed to the deep bleeding cut on his arm and the breath heavy in his lungs. "Kamui!" Subaru said as he gained his feet.
"Stay still." The other remarks and then smiling despite his obvious pain he says, "I am okay, Subaru . . . it is all okay."
"Why would you believe that, child, especially when you are both in such a vulnerable position?"
"Because I have to keep my faith, because already you have made me doubt both myself and my family . . . When I saw Seishiro I thought to go and talk to him . . . to tell him how thankful I was that he was finally making Subaru live his life, finally making him happy.
"Yet he was covered in blood and Setsuka was so pail . . . so pail . . . I saw your smile on his face and yet still I allowed myself to believe that Seishiro had been the one who killed her . . . still I allowed myself to believe that one who smiled as gently as Seishiro-san could harm another."
"How sentimental . . . yet that emotion, as with all other emotion, is useless to you."
"You have killed your mother, have insured that the twin you claim to 'love' is destined to live his life in an institute and yet still you smile that empty smile. Yes, perhaps emotion is useless in certain situations . . . and yet to feel nothing in that situation is the true disadvantage."
"For that belief you shall die first." The intruder remarks. As in a dream Subaru gains his feet, feels his hands gripping again to the paperweight and for a moment the world blanks away.
When it comes back the intruder is unconscious on the floor and Kamui is sat close to him, one hand clenched had still to his arm and the other laid gently on Subaru's shoulder. "Is he…?" Subaru enquires after a moment.
"No."
"Good." He begins to cry then and Kamui simply holds him. They have not been this way since Subaru had moved out nine years ago, yet he finds himself clutching to the comfort as though it shall be snatched from him at any given moment.
He had never thought himself capable of harming another and yet . . . yet it seemed that even he could harm if something he loved was under threat and perhaps this was not a bad thing. Perhaps this was at last the precursor to the confidence he had always lacked . . .
And the freedom he had always craved.
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T: R+R that's all I have to say!