Blue and Green
Yami no Matsuei
Fic by Elise
First draft- June 23, 2005
Inspired, if not directly by, then at least while listening to Dir en grey's Taiyou no Ao.
I do not own Yami no Matsuei; this is merely a non-profit work for amusement.
Gensoukai fic. Kurikara returns to Tenku after becoming Hisoka's, and memories of a friendship and a blue deeper than the sky overwhelm him.
It was painful. Kurikara knew he was a fool for returning to Tenku, but he did it anyways. For that boy.
The Twelve Divine Generals- the talkative ones, at least- had babbled to him when his banishment was lifted. That they were glad he was back, that they had missed him, that he would enjoy being here again. Suzaku-neesan had grabbed him and nearly hugged him to death against her bosom. He'd always hated that before, but he found he didn't really mind it then. Byakko had of course pounced on him, knocking him to the ground, and that he had minded. But Byakko wasn't nearly as soft and comfy as the curvy Phoenix.
Then they started babbling about other things. They were all quite taken with their master, Tsuzuki. He didn't see it. He had turned down the shinigami when he'd come to him. Tsuzuki had already had most, if not all, of his current shiki at the time, and Kurikara had thought him greedy for power. He purposely made it so the shinigami would fail his test. Now Kurikara knew what Tsuzuki had done for Touda, and he wondered if he had planned the same for him.
Free the outcasts, bind them together, let them suffer alone in each others presense.
No thank you.
He'd picked the one that needed him instead. Cursed, broken, trapped in a teenager's body, never strong enough... That was the sort of person Kurikara needed, and the one that needed him.
Kurikara liked to be needed. Because of his own child-like form, people often over-looked him, even for things he was perfectly suited for. Souryu sprang to mind. The stuffed up water dragon had taken decades to admit to himself that Kurikara was his equal. He'd loosened up since then, just a little, but it had been a battle to gain his regard.
How he'd wanted it back then! Souryu was tall and handsome and powerful in every way that mattered. He was what Kurikara had wanted to be. He'd been ecstatic when the other dragon had started treated him as an adult.
They'd been friends, after that. Kurikara's admiration was tempered by the realization that Souryu was a dragon just like himself. He still remembered the times when they would just sit together, Souryu with a book in hand and Kurikara playing with the butterflies and birds that came to him.
Those memories brought a slow smile to his face as he sat in Tenku's gardens. Although the newer memories hurt, the old ones were pleasant, once he shook off the sheen of regret.
His blind eye throbbed, and out of the other, he could see a deeper blue against the sky. His smile dropped. It was Souryu, playing with Kijin and Tenko. The girl, Kurikara knew, kept the form of a child, even though she could become an adult at will. He wondered what Souryu thought of his daughter doing the same thing his mortal enemy did. Or did it make him think of those long-ago, regret-tinged times in this very garden?
Souryu smiled down at the girl, his form strong and fatherly, the burdens dropping off his face. Once, Kurikara had been the one to make his careworn frown fade. He was more than a little jealous of the girl.
The tiny fire dragon wondered idly if he could ever bring a smile to his old friend's face- any smile at all would do. Was the pain he'd inflicted too deep now, or had it been worn over by other joys? Did his betrayal of his own kind to help the weaker humans still hurt?
He would never make Souryu smile again, and it was his own fault. He'd done what he thought was right. He'd paid for it when he was trapped in the Floating Desert. He still paid for it now.
Kurikara turned away from his old regrets, and looked up at the leaves above him. There were no trees in the desert. He'd missed the way the leaves turned with the seasons. Now, they were the vibrant green of mid-spring. The blossoms were gone with the flowering wind, and the leaves were free to grow.
He knew eyes that color, that bright green of life itself. The eyes of his new master. Let the others keep their Tsuzuki. There was an entire world, and a little boy with green eyes, who needed him now.
Leaf-green, he reminded himself as he walked out of the garden, and left the blue behind.