12. Understanding compromise.
T: Beware the cliff-hanger…is all I am going to say! Not mine, darn, warnings the same, yay!
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He had not had the fortitude to remain at Subaru's side after such a confession.
Thus he had gone alone to the older man's home and after a little while sat in the living room he had come to sit in Subaru's bedroom.
The smell of the older man was everywhere here, a heady scent that he recalled well from his memories and lacking now the acidic scent of cigarette smoke that had tainted it the last he had smelt it.
He finds a half smoked packet of mild sevens in Subaru's top draw, a pair of broken glasses balanced carefully on top of them.
Curious he continues to look through the draws until he finds a photo album buried beneath the socks in the third draw down.
It is a black thing coated in multi faceted sequins that betray it as a thing from before the conclusion of The Bet.
He flicks through the pictures, marvelling at the almost intrusive quality of some of the shots.
Most at the front half of the album are of the twins, one of Hokuto's hands always out of shot, most likely holding the camera.
There are a few here and there of Subaru sleeping or laughing to someone just out of the camera's view.
Then there came a group of empty pages, dark rectangles on the paper marking where once photos had adorned the space.
After this came varying pictures of the seals…
In this half of the album shots of Subaru were rarer, as though he wished now to erase the memory of himself from all but one persons mind.
Always in these photos he had the same empty expression, as though there was a wall now between the world and his emotions…
Always, that was, but for one shot.
Subaru stands tense, as though he had been instructed to pose for the camera and yet…
There was an edge of the normal to the way in which he was sheltering the fragile boy who stood with him.
Something a little more than brotherly in the look of the other boy's eye and the manner in which he pressed into the one armed embrace.
They looked right together, the boy fey and fragile; Subaru elfin and confidently strong.
Yet it is the faint smile on Subaru's lips that sparks the jealousy in him, the heat of this emotion somehow familiar to him.
He believes this the last photo and yet as he places the thing back into the draw one clatters onto his lap.
The twins are smiling brightly, Hokuto hugging hard to her brother and Subaru blushing in a beautiful fashion.
A little behind them stands an image of the man that he will on day become and yet Tenshi recognises little of himself in this individual.
"Who are you?" he enquires as he touches the face of his 'other self' "I wish that I knew so that I might understand Subaru-kun better…might understand what it was that you did to him and why…"
He places the photo back into the album and after burying the thing back under Subaru's socks he moves through the house and out into Ueno.
As with the last time he had come to this place he feels drawn to one tree in particular; a giant of a thing that somehow seemed more than it looked.
He sets a hand to the trunk and his eyes sliding closed he enquires,
"Are you his tree?"
There is a moment without response and then the air about him grows tepid and a voice so very akin to his own enquires,
'Who are you?'
Opening his eyes out he is met with the visage of the man he had seen in the photo, though this individual was both clearly blind and all but see through.
"What are you?" He enquires, unsure, as yet, how to respond to the things own enquiry.
It smiles and reaching to touch his heart it replies,
'I am the missing piece of your spirit, child.'
"I do not understand."
'Nor should you, for you are neither Onmyoji nor Sakurazukamori in this life.' The thing begins to fade completely and panicked into action he enquires,
"Can you not tell me?"
'No, because you have no need of the information and because my current master has no wish for you to come any closer to him.'
"Yet if you do not speak he shall die."
'All my masters die, child, such is the natural order of my succession and my current is of no special significance that I shall grieve his passing.'
"How can you be so cold? He has given over the heart of himself to see you survive and you would toss him aside as a used napkin."
'I am simply a tree at heart, child, thus I do not comprehend emotion nor hold to sentimentalities.
'It is true that my current master has lost much on his journey to become worthy of holding my power and yet his suffering was not at my hand but the hand of his predecessor.'
"Yet why did he do those things? Why did he continue to shut Subaru away even after he knew that he loved him?"
'Why does any human do anything?' The thing enquires before it fades away at last.
He considers the answer to this enquiry as he walks to the hospital and once he has been informed that Subaru has gone, he returns back to the man's home, the enquiry still upon his mind.
A note sits on the coffee table and desperate to know where Subaru has gone and why he has left he reaches for it.
'Tenshi,
Do not chase me and do not pursue the thought of bringing peace once more into my life.
I have made a choice and I shall stand by it no matter the repercussions…Bid your farewell to Usagi-san before it becomes too late…
Subaru.'
He phones Chihiro as the note had recommended and then he folds himself into the covers of Subaru's bed and waits in the hope that the other shall return to him.
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He places his hand against the tree and relaxes himself until he feels the change in temperature and then he opens his eyes.
'You have come to me with a purpose.'
"Yes, I wish you to take my life."
'Such a thing is not possible. The one who kills you has to be the one whom you love the most, thus ensuring the beginnings of their envelopment into the emptiness of the role.'
"Yet the one that I loved truly is dead."
'He was dead and now he has been re-born anew.'
"That child is not Seishiro…not completely."
'Not completely, no, and yet it is enough that you could love him if you allowed yourself.'
"Then what? Tenshi shall kill me and become Sakurazukamori and the cycle would begin again…I can not allow that."
'It is as it is; there can be no other way.'
He ponders this a moment and then remarks,
"But there is." Before he begins to detail his idea to the spectre of the tree.
'It is a risk.' The thing remarks one he has concluded.
"Is it not always as such?"
'True.'
There is a white heat in his limbs then and has time enough to register the razor sharp branches protruding through his skin before his life fails him at last.
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T: …don't kill me! R+R and remember there is one last chapter to go!