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Category: Yami no Matsuei
Title: Hidden research, an experiment in death and rebirth.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: An experiment leads to rebirth for a green-eyed Shinigami, tearing him away from death and a devoted partner.
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Fateor
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In the wake of Suzaku's flames, in the middle of the lab as her fire roared and machine and stone fell alike to the heat engulfing it. Tsuzuki regained enough control to pull away from Hisoka's touch. Catching a blood soaked Hisoka in his arms, as the world around him rose in tongues of orange-yellow flames.
"Hisoka," Tsuzuki urged, shaking him slightly harder than necessary. "Hisoka please." He begged, watching as bright, evergreen eyes, blinked completely opened.
"Tsuzuki," Hisoka rasped voice soft and dry from days of anguished screaming. "You came."
"I could never let you go." He reaffirmed, watching a slight smile ghost over his elfin lips.
"I didn't want . . ."
"What?" Tsuzuki pressed, shaking him a little harder when it seemed Hisoka could not stay awake. "What?"
"I don't want to see you cry."
"Then don't leave me," Tsuzuki pleaded, eyes tearing as Hisoka blinked, his gaze, a little out of focus.
"I'm selfish Tsuzuki."
"Hisoka?"
"I couldn't let you go." Hisoka murmured, face pale and hurt. "I couldn't let you leave me. I needed . . . I wanted you, always by my side."
"Hisoka," Tsuzuki whispered, cradling the boy softly against his chest. "That's not selfish at all . . . that's . . ." That's love, he wanted to say. Instead he pulled him closer, hid his face in his matted locks and slowly began to rock them back and forth. "I won't let you go," he promised. "I will never let you go . . ." He whispered, closing his eyes as Suzaku continued to circle above them, smoke and heat, just barely held back by shields that would soon collapse. "Hisoka," he murmured, closing his eyes against a tide of tears as he realized, Hisoka could no longer respond.
Till the end then, he thought, lightly brushing his fingers through Hisoka's hair before bending down, releasing his hold on the shields above them as Hisoka's lips touched his in a final kiss. And darkness, as he'd once known it, overcame everything else around them.
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Reluctance, he thought, did not compare to Anonymity in its interpretation of struggle over love. However well written or beloved, "For when did a man ever inspire such reasons; to be loved or resend such indifference; but in death. In death, my dear beloved friend, I argue, I cannot take a breath if your will is to let me go."
"Who is that?"
"Ah, Kurosaki-kun how nice to see you awake," the blond scientist said, putting his book aside as he rose to take a closer look at his still too pale face. "We were afraid we might have been a little too late this time." Watari murmured eyes strangely distant for a moment before he shook his head and looked down into wary, jade like eyes. "Tsuzuki's fine," he injected, watching as the boy's face contorted slightly.
"I didn't . . ." Ask, he almost said, as he watched Watari in turn, the other man smiled and gestured to his left, to the bed set beside his and where the other Shinigami currently took his rest.
"He wasn't injured but . . ."
Hisoka's gaze bore into the scientist, catching more than just words as he looked at the blond doctor.
. . . he was very distraught. He nearly killed himself when he thought you were gone.
The scientist thought, gaze slightly worried as he glanced away from the smaller youth to the older brown-haired man. "He needed rest," he simply said, sighing slightly, before brining forth a smile.
"Here," he said, handing Hisoka the book he'd been reading. "It's a book of poems Gushoushin brought in for you a little earlier but you weren't yet awake so, I hope you don't mind." He said, turning around as he gathered a few files of a nearby desk. "I have to step out for a minute, so do me a favor and don't try to leave like last ok."
Hisoka nodded and watched him walk away. Very inconspicuous in his exit as though Hisoka couldn't read the way he felt.
But then as he turned to look at the man beside him, mind and heart at peace he dreamt of other things, Hisoka couldn't help but want to run away. So much of what had happened, of the things he'd unwittingly said, in light of recent events, he thought Tsuzuki might expect . . . Some sort of outcome, something he might not be able to give.
Despite the fact, that he did indeed love him. He could not just shake off the things Muraki had done to him. It was impossible. As long as the curse remained, Hisoka felt, he could never ever; love Tsuzuki beyond words or an occasional sign of affection.
'Never,' he thought, bitterly turning away from the unaware man—focusing instead on his hands and the light pressure of the book beneath them.
As he turned it over, distractingly, smoothing a hand over the cover, he glanced at Tsuzuki's bed before opening it and focusing on the page that drew open.
Anonymity, he mouthed, silently reading over the scientist's earlier words before weighing Robert Frost's Reluctance not against it but in correlation to what seemed to be the theme.
"For when did a man's true nature ever overcome a beast, then when love itself seemed to be in danger."
'Aa,' Hisoka thought, smiling ruefully at the book before turning over the page and And as Fate, would have it:
"If in death there is some peace for you my friend, then I grieve you to say, I wish you no peace. I wish you no harm, but if in death you will part from me, then I soil that image you have me. For will and wish, are as strong in me, and I cast, I will never let you go."
"I see," Hisoka murmured, putting the book down and glancing over at the sleeping figure on the bed.
He didn't think it was coincidence that the book had come to find its way to him today. This was them trying to interfere, he thought, becoming slightly angry at their intrusion. They had no right to tell him how to feel . . . or make him regret, any of what he would have to do. He had to push the other man away, couldn't they see that. He wasn't strong enough to care . . . Couldn't they see?
Tsuzuki would only suffer if he alluded to a love he could never quite convey. Because he loved him . . . Affection could never be something that existed between the two of them. Any elucidation of his reasons, would ultimately be deficient and yet too clear for the other man's understanding. He was keen, if nothing else, when it served his purpose. Particularly when it regarded him and it, he was already too acute.
"Hisoka?"
"Um," he responded, automatically rising from his bed and going to the one beside it. Gazing down to at the figure in it slightly blink sleep out of dark-violet eyes.
"Hi-soka," Tsuzuki yawned, running long slim hands over the back of his eyes before letting them completely open.
"Hisoka," he breathed, catching the boy quite of guard as he cupped his face, one hand stealing over his hair, as he ran a hand through long, jagged locks.
Hisoka blushed and for a moment forgot to step away. "Wh-what are you doing?"
"Your hair, your face," Tsuzuki breathed, wonder and affection, threading through his tone like petal against his face. "You're . . ."
Beautiful, he thought. Knowing Hisoka must have heard him as his blush deepened and he tried to pull away.
"Tsuzuki."
He wanted to step away. The older Shinigami could tell by the way his smaller frame had stiffened. The way he tried to make his face cold and eyes sharp.
"Hisoka," Tsuzuki murmured, wanting so much to pull him down with him, he reluctantly thought it best to let him go. "Haven't they . . . Didn't they tell you . . . Show you what you look like."
When the youth frowned and shook his head, Tsuzuki smiled and pulled himself off the bed; stepping closer to the youth, who seemed to have forgotten a need to escape.
"Have a seat," he said, as he motioned to the bed while he walked over to Watari's desk and pulled out a mirror he knew, his friend kept hidden in one of the lower bottom drawers of his desk.
Eyes alight on the youth; he kept the reflective surface of the mirror down as he made his way; gestures soft and not threatening as he took a seat besides him. "Here," he said, handing the mirror over to the youth, who looked at him a moment before reaching out take it.
Holding it face down a moment before something else took his notice.
"Hisoka?"
His hands, he realized where not the same as the last time he'd seen them . . . His arms then, he realized as he tossed the mirror aside and rolled up a sleeve, were soft and pale, and completely free of any curse. "Tsuzuki . . ."
If he was free, then . . .
"Muraki's dead," he sobbed, unaware of the moment he'd breached the distanced between them. He's dead, dead, he thought. As he cried out his relieve and stored up anguish over things he had yet not done. Tsuzuki squeezed him, pulling him closer into his arms.
Remaining silent through it all and even, long after his tears had gone. As a comfortable silence settled between the two, Tsuzuki's hand continued to distractedly play through a mound of flaxen locks. Thinking nothing really as Hisoka sighed, contentment washing off the boy like how I love you, suddenly escaped him—made him freeze in place, as Hisoka pulled away, eyes wide and red, from crying.
"Tsuzuki?"
He had not meant to tell him, not this way, maybe not even at all. He knew after everything Hisoka had been through that any words of love might have been misinterpreted. But—he didn't mean to think it, he thought. Panic turning to despair as Hisoka pulled a little further away, emotions closed of as he regarded him.
"Hisoka . . ." He didn't know where to be begin or how to excuse his thought other than to tell him he didn't mean it in the way thought. Anything to get the boy to come back to him, to step back into that moment of peace and warmth, his arms full of Hisoka and lo . . . He stopped himself, inwardly shaking the thought away.
He would do anything, anything, he thought, including lie to get him back. Regardless of how he felt or how . . . how . . . I love you, resonated in his head . . .
Hisoka sighed—seemed almost disappointed as he turned his face aside. Muttering something that sounded an awful like "Baka-yarou," before he turned back to look at him again. Eyes uncharacteristically bright, as he glanced down at his hands, a slight blush spreading across his face.
"Me too," he said, blushing furiously as Tsuzuki's mouth fell wide open.
"Hisoka?"
"Yes, ok. Now get off the bed," he snapped. Blushing furiously as he tumbled him off the covers and proceeded to try to get to sleep.
"Hisoka . . ." He just couldn't find the words. To anything, he thought, grinning foolishly as he climbed back into his bed, his eyes full of hope as they rested over the well covered bundled; he called Hisoka. As his eyes, drooped in sleep, his heart full of love and fears set aside, a happy sleep enveloped him.
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It was contentment, even from a distant, he could feel. In the way he smiled and joked and nearly swallowed everything in sight. Hisoka sighed, thinking the idiot was making it kind of obvious to anyone around that he might have conceded . . . something.
"Baka," he thought, turning back around to gather the rest of the folders off his desk before heading home. Kami only knew how much work, they had ahead of them.
Tatsumi was very unforgiving in that way, a few days being kidnapped and tortured where enough to buy them but an extra week off of work after Watari had released them.
Not nearly enough for Tsuzuki, who seemed permanently attached at his side but it was enough for him and he guessed that was something. Goodness knew; some time away from all theses peering eyes would do him a bit of good.
Though he didn't regret loosing his sixteen year old self, he was a little put off by how much attention he perceived was placed upon this twenty year old self. It's not like he was any different. He was just older he thought. Scowling as he turned around and began to leave the office, the sounds of laughter, washing through the air, like Tsuzuki's feeling of contentment.
"Soka," Tsuzuki breathed, bounding awfully close to Hisoka as he reached him. Breath as sweet as the candy he'd inhaled. "Are you ready to go home?"
"Aa," Hisoka nodded, face a little flushed as Tsuzuki's eyed him, lips close enough to touch as he bore down on him. "Good," Tsuzuki breathed, lips ghosting over his affectionately before grabbing him by the arm and whisking him away—turning over, Anonymity in his head, as they disappeared from a group of shocked friends.
'For when did a man ever inspire such reasons; to be loved or resend such indifference; but in death. In death, my dear beloved friend, I argue, I cannot take a breath if your will is to let me go.'
'And I will never let you go,' he thought, face upturning like a flower in the sun. Basking in the happiness radiated at him before his lips were firmly caught, kissed and kissed, until all other emotions were devastated by the loss. As Tsuzuki pulled away, a soft smile tugging at his mouth—"I love you too," he whispered, hands entwined, as he pulled him along.
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-Owari
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Well that's the end for you. Little sappy, maybe but I liked it. Had to stop several times there and make myself sad, you know, I have to be feeling in a particular mood for me to write angst. And I'm a afraid the lack of troubled inspiration I was searching for eluded me through the end. Still I hope all of you enjoyed. Questions, comments, you know where to find me.
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Fateor, as it applies to this story and by definition, means to confess, admit, allow, reveal, or make known.