Time to wrap this fic up. I did this chapter from memory, so some parts may or may not be true to the manga.
I have a beta now. Holy fishpaste, Batman.
Aaand, on top of that, this fic passed the 5000 view mark a while back. Five thousand people... maybe I'm a nerd, but that seems like a helluva lot. I guess it's time for me to start thinking about what kind of fic I want to write next? Something more planned, better done, I think. Something that's actually worthy of being online. And something WITHOUT non-con. I'm getting a little sick of writing non-con scenes.
Everything was quiet now. Sometimes it was quiet and sometimes it wasn't. When the winds picked up, which they did sometimes, the snow would fly into his eyes and sting the tip of his nose and make his neck burn and go numb at the same time.
He didn't know where he was, or who he was. Wait, yes, he was Daisuke Niwa. Now he remembered. Daisuke Niwa, age fourteen, Azumano high school, ninth grade. Daisuke Niwa, age fourteen, Azumano high school, ninth grade.
Daisuke Niwa… fourteen… high school… ninth.
Daisuke Niwa… high school… fourteenth? Fourteenth grade? Yeah, that sounded right. Fourteenth grade was in high school, wasn't it? Or was that college?
Daisuke… high school.
…who am I?
He walked on. There was nobody there. There was nothing there, in that snow-white world, but him and the blankness that surrounded him. No sound or so much as an echo: and yet, the flakes continued to fall, as they had been doing forever and would continue doing until the end of time, slow and tranquil.
And it was just what he thought he wanted.
His memory was going blank, until he wondered if he had ever really been a boy at all. Everything he remembered about Satoshi, Takeshi, Dark, Riku, Risa… hell, even Saga… they all faded away. It was terribly lonely in his own mind without his memories.
After walking for a long time, he began to grow tired. He sat down against a large mogul and rested his frozen head in the frozen snow, incapable of getting any colder anyways, so it didn't matter. And he closed his eyes.
I'll just sleep here… for a little while…
He dreamed of Dark, breaking through the glass of the church windows with a sneer on his face as Satoshi stared after him, his eyes wide with shock. And then he dreamed that Satoshi knelt next to the crystal, which had become not so small, and wondered aloud who had released the sleeping monster.
He dreamed of Satoshi, clothed and unclothed, far away and up close, uptight as when he'd first met him and smiling like he had the day before. Or was that last year?
He dreamed that Dark, looking like Daisuke, was dressed as a girl and was yelling at Satoshi, who was dressed like a phantom thief. Right, like that could happen, Daisuke thought.
He dreamed that he was sitting in a chair in front of an enormous canvas, and a person whose face he couldn't see handed him a brush and said, "Paint, Daisuke. Paint what means the most to you." He found colors laid out next to him and he set the brush to canvas and under the bristles the canvas became a photograph: It was Satoshi, facing the viewer, a look of inexpressible sadness on his face and white wings sprouting behind him.
Daisuke woke up some time later in a small, bright glass room. There was sunlight here, and blue sky, and out the window he could see gently sloping green hills seamed with sparkling streams and occasionally a cobblestoned pathway or bridge. Flocks of birds idly flew by. There were trees, too. He rose and looked out the window, his mind still fuzzy.
"Do you like it?" someone asked from behind him. He turned to see a girl, age eighteen or so, with waist length blonde hair and very, very blue eyes. Her skin was pale, like maybe she didn't go outside very often. He nodded, his head blissfully empty. "It's pretty."
"Do you miss… anything?"
He thought hard for a second. It seemed like something was there, just out of his grasp…
"No, I don't think so."
"Good," she said, and smiled. "I'm Freedert. Who are you?"
"I'm…" he couldn't remember. He shook his head mutely.
"Well, I'll have to call you something. What about Elliot?"
He considered. "That name sounds familiar."
She shook her head. "No, you wouldn't know him. He's been gone for a very long time. That's partly why I had to bring you here. You look a lot like him, you know, but your hair is a bit different. You have his eyes though, and his face." She touched his cheek. "You're very handsome, too, but you aren't him." Her face fell.
She looked like she was about to cry. Daisuke felt, somewhere deep down, that the last thing he wanted was for her to be crying, so he shook his head. "No, it's okay. You can call me…Elliot, I guess."
"Really?" the sad look vanished. "Oh, thank you! It's just that I've been waiting for a while, and I don't know when he's going to come back, so I thought maybe you could… replace him for a bit…"
"Well, um, I'll try," he said. Her speech was so eloquent, as if straight out of a fairytale, and he couldn't match it. He wanted nothing more than to make her happy. "What do I… have to do?"
"Paint and forget everything else," she said with a smile. "Just paint what's most important to you. That way this world, and you and I, can be kept alive for a little longer."
That's what he did. Just like in his dream, there was a blank canvas that Freedert provided for him, and a stool upon which to sit. He didn't know how long he painted, but sometimes he fell asleep and woke to find the canvas blank in spaces he was sure he'd painted the day before. And sometimes things were there that he hadn't put himself: someone's face, an extra river in a hill, a cloud where previously there had been none.
He was there for days and days. When he slept he didn't dream about himself, though. He saw people that he knew he ought to remember, but didn't quite seem to be able to. When he wasn't painting, Freedert told him he was free to walk around the town and palace, just so long as he didn't go too far. That was all-right with him. He had no desire to see much of the outside world anyways. He only wanted to be near her.
Once, he remembered Satoshi's name for a moment. And then it, too, slipped away from him.
One day he went walking in the snow, which was something he enjoyed often. Though the view from the castle and the grounds around it was composed of the green-and-river scenery, if he took the back door from the bottom of the castle he would find himself in this snow world. He never tried to learn how it worked. He didn't care anymore. All he could think about was Freedert, her name bouncing inside his skull like a bullet, drowning out everything else.
After he came back to the castle, sometime in the evening, he went back to the room with the canvas and sat down to paint, staring at it very hard. He was sure that his painting had been here, but now everything was gone! The canvas was blank!
"Daisuke!"
Daisuke turned his head slowly to see a figure standing in his way. He must not be talking to me. I'm Elliot, after all. That's what Freedert always said when she visited him, anyways.
"Who are you?" he asked the young man with dark hair and solemn eyes.
"What do you mean, you idiot? It's Dark! Only been sharing a body for the last eight months or so…" the young man replied irritatedly. But Daisuke only stared at him, wide-eyed, his face blank.
Suddenly it was as if clockwork had snapped into focus in his brain, and he gave a startled little jump on the bench. "Dark!" he said, eyes widening. "My God, how'd you get in here? Where is this place anyways?"
"Hikari helped a little," Dark admitted, his voice surly. "I mean, he told me how to get inside your crappy little painting. But that's all he did. I had to do the rest by myself, okay? And your girlfriend's here, too. We're stuck in your snowscape, and you'd better figure out how to fix this because if we don't break the seal on this painting, you're going to be in here forever. And Kosuke will kick my ass, or exorcise me, or worse." He finished, slightly out of breath, and Daisuke was surpised that he could now recall the memory of the Klein church, and of touching the Second Hand of Time.
"God…" he said, rubbing his head tiredly, trying to wrap his mind around all this. "You figured all this out by yourself, Dark?"
"Well, naturally. I am the phantom thief Dark Mousy, after all. Besides, I wanted my possession back, and I refuse to let some stupid painting take him away from me."
Daisuke raised an eyebrow. "Whatever you say, Dark. Wait—" one thing penetrated, "Did you say something about my girlfriend?"
Dark snorted and turned, motioning for Daisuke to follow with a jerked finger. Daisuke rose off the bench and quickly darted to Dark's side, afraid that he'd forget everything if he let the thief get out of his sight.
When he realized that they were going to the jail on the underside of the castle, he ran ahead and went to the door that Dark showed him, unlocking the lock with a deft twist of his fingers and throwing the door wide. "Riku!" he called anxiously to the darkness.
When Riku laid eyes on Daisuke, she narrowed her eyes. "You and Dark, both in my dream? This is starting to get suspicious…" she shook her head. Dark ignored her for the moment, but Daisuke smiled back at her reassuringly. "You probably ate something funny," he told her, and then turned to Dark angrily. "How could you bring her in here?"
"Wasn't my fault," he mumbled. "She grabbed onto me. You gave her the painting in the first place."
"Dark! You better not have done anything to her!"
"Who, me? Of course not. She's still an innocent virgin flower."
"I can hear you two," Riku said flatly.
"Dark, get her out of here. You can't get me out right now. Something feels… off here. Not right, y'know? I didn't even know who I was until a few seconds ago. Freedert's trying to keep me here, now that I think on it."
"Freedert?" both of them asked simultaneously.
"This is… her world, I think. I think she wants me to be Elliot for her. She wants me to recreate the world as long as I can before she has to close it and let it die." He shrugged. He couldn't have said when this knowledge came to him, but it had seeped in slowly, like water to a sponge.
"Dai, I can't afford to leave you. The painting might not open again." As Dark said this, Daisuke found his mind clearing again, and he couldn't grasp his thought processes as easily as he could a moment ago. He closed his eyes, trying to remember what he wanted to say…
"It'll open. Tell my dad to look through 'Ice and Snow' and…"
He trailed off, frowning.
"And what?"
"Find the real Elliot. He must be a piece of artwork, or Freedert wouldn't be trying to keep this world…" again he lost his thought. How frustrating!
"Just get out of here," he said. "She'll find you if you don't and then you'll be stuck here like me." He sat down in the snow, looked up at Riku. Poor girl. She was terrified, her eyes were open as wide as they would go, and she was clutching the edge of Dark's shirt as if she would rip it. She wasn't stupid, Daisuke knew. She would figure this out soon enough, and then he would have more on his hands than just one angry thief. Straightening, she walked over to Daisuke and threw herself on top of him, wrapping her arms snugly around him. Surprised, he returned the gesture, though it now held no romantic attraction for him. It was more awkward than anything, and Dark was still glaring daggers at him over Riku's shoulder.
"Am I really dreaming? It feels pretty real to me…"
Daisuke forced a laugh. "Yeah, just a dream. Don't worry, Riku. I'll see you at school tomorrow." Over her head he exchanged a silent look with Dark, which clearly said, Take care of Riku and get her home without trying anything on her or you'll be sorry. And don't so much as lay a finger on Satoshi or I swear to God I'll make you regret it.
But what he said out loud was, "Thanks for understanding, Dark. About all of that… earlier." He waved a hand as if he didn't really care about the ring and about telling Dark off, but inside he was secretly nervous that Dark would still try and hurt him again. No! Don't think about that!
He didn't want to be hurt anymore. Not now. He couldn't remember why he was afraid of Dark, but that was part of Freedert's spell, he knew. Maybe it was better that he didn't remember anyways.
Dark's face hardened, eyes glinting. "I'm not surrendering. Once I've got my own body, I'm going to get you to see things my way." His mouth curled in a distinctive sneer.
Daisuke narrowed his eyes. "Get her out of here," he hissed, his voice wavering with fear, "And don't say things like that in front of her." Riku was looking at him with wide eyes. She obviously thought she was having the craziest dream of her life. He could practically see what must've been going through her head: Dark Mousy and Daisuke Niwa having a lovers' spat! What an odd combination! Suddenly his head emptied like a toilet being flushed and he clenched his fists. He felt helpless.
Dark rolled his eyes, stepped forward, and plucked Riku off of Daisuke like she weighed nothing. Together they walked as far as the outside, to the snowy side of the castle, with Riku squirming and protesting the entire way about 'this damn pervert'. Dark only ignored her further, though Daisuke could tell by his face that the comment stung. His wings sprouted and he began to fly… up, above the mists and bouts of snow that flurried across the sky, until they were out of sight.
He let out a sigh and lay back in the snow, wrestling with his memories. No! Don't forget again! Keep your head from clearing out… but to no avail. Though he could still grasp his own name and the memory of what had just happened, he couldn't seem to recall anything else.
A while passed. He looked at the sky, flat on his back. He didn't really feel like going back to the castle just yet, though he knew that eventually he would have to.
A figure kneeled next to him, skirts spreading over his legs and hips and their freezing-cold hands splaying out on his shoulders. Freedert's head was above his, and she looked down at him. "Elliot, what did you do?" she asked him. He raised his head to see that all around him were guards, their faces covered by masks and their spears glinting in dull winters' light. "Did you… remember?"
"Yes… Freedert. I talked to a friend. My name's Daisuke, not Elliot." He looked up at her. The spell was broken, at least momentarily, and he didn't feel the same complete adoration that he'd been consumed with before. Her eyes turned hard, steely.
"You've done something wrong. I'm sorry, but I need to keep you here for a little while longer. I can't let you remember. Please, forget them, and stay with me, Elliot." She lay down in the snow with him, not at all like a young lady ought to do, and wrapped her arms around him, nuzzling her nose into the crook of his neck. He felt an icy cold hand wrap around his mind and stay there.
"Do you love me, Elliot?" she asked him then.
"Yes," he replied. And it was true. He wanted nothing but to be with Freedert.
He didn't remember anything after that.
Freedert took up watching him paint. Sometimes she would sit next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. He didn't sleep very often: when he slept, he saw faces of people he knew but didn't recognize, and the visions bothered him.
"Did you dream about them last night, Elliot?" she would ask every morning.
"Yeah. I don't know why I keep doing it though," was his usual reply.
"The memories will go away soon. You aren't him, but if the real Elliot doesn't return to me soon, then I'm afraid you'll have to stay with me for a long time. Would you like that?"
"Yes," he always said. It was inevitable. He couldn't help but love Freedert. There seemed to be someone else he remembered being in love with once, but he didn't care about them now.
One time she led him out onto the balcony and showed him the golden afternoon, the sun setting and painting the sky orange and pink as white clouds drifted lazily across the horizon. It was beautiful, so beautiful that it must have been a fantasy, but it was real. He could feel the warm breeze and smell the flowers in the garden below. It was not a dream.
"I'm dying, Elliot," she told him, hands folded on the balcony wall. "I'm not going to live if I don't get to meet the real Elliot sometime soon. I don't have much time left, and very soon now he'll be coming for me, I guess. Your paintings made me live a bit longer, but… eternal time… isn't really eternal."
She looked like she might go into one of those bouts of crying that she did often, so Daisuke put an arm around her and drew her into an embrace. She sighed happily, looking out at the world and smiling for a moment before continuing.
"But you know, the way they put the story in the books isn't right at all. They forgot about Kyle, anyways."
"Hmm?" Daisuke turned his face downwards to her. She was shivering, and he wanted to do something to comfort her, but she seemed to be thinking of something else at the moment. He waited for her to continue, nothing but the babbling of the stream and the twittering of birds cutting through the silence.
"A long time ago, Elliot, Kyle and I were best friends. We did everything together. Elliot… he was wealthy, and so different from Kyle and I. He had duties; he was next in line to inherit his father's fiefdom. He wasn't around sometimes, and when he was gone, I missed him horribly. I was in love with him before I even knew it. We were only seventeen at the time, so neither of us thought it was serious."
She paused, took a shaky breath, and continued.
"But then one day he… kissed me, and it evolved into something more than friendship. He was the one I loved. I couldn't stand to be away from him. Kyle was still our best friend, of course, but I didn't feel for him the same way I did about Elliot. He was different; more morbid, darker in a way. And then there was war."
She sagged a little in Daisuke's grip and he held her tighter, holding her up. "Freedert, it's all-right… I mean, you don't have to tell me about this if you don't want to," he said.
"No. I have to, Elliot, or else I'll never get a chance. War broke out between us and our neighbors, and my Elliot was called off to fight in his father, the duke's place. I gave him my father's sword to keep him safe. We didn't have much, my mother and I, because we were just normal villagers. But Elliot never cared about that. He took the sword and told me he'd cherish it always. I didn't know then what Kyle would do, how far he would go. He was madly in love with me, I could see that. He was jealous of Elliot and wanted him dead. I could see that also.
"But one day he went to the church and prayed to our village Goddess. He begged her to kill Elliot, to let him die in battle. It was a selfish wish, and he didn't tell me what he had done until later, when they brought back his… his b-b-body," she said. A hand fluttered at her throat, trying to maintain her composure.
"The god… killed him?" Daisuke asked as she sank further into his arms. Was it his imagination or was she becoming smaller, frailer? It seemed like her skin was getting very cold. But she set her mouth in a determined line and continued with the story.
He was furious at Kyle. Who would dare do something so horrible to Freedert? She was perfect. She was beautiful, and enchanting, too. Daisuke loved her with all his heart.
"Elliot's body was struck through with an arrow through the heart. When everyone left him, intending to hold a funeral pyre the very next day, I prayed to our Goddess to take my life and give it to him. I wanted her to take all my time and make it his, so that he could laugh, and smile, and maybe to love someone else." She made a small choking noise. "And I don't remember anything after that. But when I awoke, I knew that she was inside me. The Goddess, I mean. When he had awoken, Elliot prayed that all his time should be given back to me! It sounds stupid, I'll imagine, but I was… so sad… and so happy…"
Her skin was icy. Daisuke rubbed his hands up her arms, trying to get her warm, but it didn't seem to work. She shook her head. "The Goddess wasn't so hard to live with, but she took our village and she made it… she sealed it off from everything else in the world. This place would be given eternal time, but we could never return to what we had been before. We weren't human any longer. I was alone here, with just the Goddess to keep me company. Elliot disappeared. I don't know where he went; Kyle wrote a book, sent it out to the real world, and then took his own life. He couldn't live with what he had done. The name of that book was Ice and Dark."
She turned around and grabbed at Daisuke, pressing her nose into his chest. "I don't want to die!" she cried. "I want to be with Elliot, and I don't want to die alone!"
"Please, don't," Daisuke said to her desperately, and helped her to a kneeling position on the ground, still holding most of her weight. "I love you."She looked very faint. If she had been white before, now she was completely drained of color. It was an eerie effect. He didn't want her to leave. What would he do without Freedert?
"You'll be free soon," she whispered to him. "I'm sorry for doing this."
He held Freedert for a long time as she cried, until she was silent. He thought she might have fallen asleep, but he was clearly wrong, because at length she murmured, "He's coming," and straightened up. "Help me stand," she asked him pleadingly, and he did. She cast her eyes up the sky, her face filled with sudden determination.
"Miss Freedert? Are you okay?" he asked, rubbing one eye with his index finger. "You should sit down. You don't look well."
"No. I have to be ready for this," she said. "I mustn't sit down."
Daisuke looked up at the sky and saw two things. One was a glimmer of light, nothing more than a sheen against the sun. And the other was a dark figure, approaching at a very fast speed, wings spread out in preparation to land.
The glimmering object struck first. It was a sword, and as it plummeted to earth Freedert raised her arms towards it the sword struck her straight through the chest. But instead of going through and hitting the ground, the sword merged with her and they became a swirling mass of light and color.
"Freedert, wait!" He shouted over the maelstrom, but felt himself captured by arms, dragging him up and away from the scene. "Freedert—no! Put me down!" he snarled, trying to wrestle the arms off of him. Too late he realized the person holding him was Dark. "Daisuke!" he hissed. "Leave them alone, we're gonna die if we don't get out of here, you idiot!"
Daisuke continued to fight him the entire way. He wasn't going to go quietly, that was sure. Dark cursed and muttered the whole trip and grabbed him painfully around the upper arms as his wings beat for purchase against the air. "Daisuke! Stop yelling, do you want to get stuck in here?" he yelled.
Suddenly there was a pop and Daisuke's ears cleared, and realization kicked in. His thoughts cleared, and the spell was broken like a spiderweb torn down the center. He was on the floor of his bedroom with Dark, completely wrapped up in his wings and arms, and both of them breathing hard with the effort.
"You just had to fight me, you anal little thing," Dark quipped. "Wasn't like I chose to come get you."
"Then why'd you do it?" Daisuke said, narrowing his eyes. The floor in front of him was shadowed by the canvas which lay front side up. The entire painting was now completely black, as if it had never been a snowscape at all.
"Jesus Christ, Dai. I just saved your life and that's all you can say? What a lot of thanks I get around here." Obviously Dark thought he was entitled to some serious ass-kissing after this. So he dragged me out of one painting. Doesn't make up for all the time he spent screwing with my mind. I still don't trust him. He had not forgotten Dark's words when the thief had come to him through the painting.
"Get away from me," he snarled, pushing the thief off and moving to the other side of the room. "And don't touch me." Now he remembered everything, and it wasn't good.
In one moment, though, something clicked in Daisuke's head. "The ring… where's that ring?" he asked, looking at his hands. There was no sign of it. Dark gave him a half-smirk, crouching next to him on the floor.
"The stupid artwork sucked it in when it took you with it. Looks like it's gone, doesn't it? What a pity."
"You're a bad liar, Dark," he replied. The thief reeled, only slightly miffed at being caught in the act of lying, and recovered with a sniff, picking up the blackened painting and tossing it into the wastebasket. "It's no good anymore," he said nonchalantly. "I made a promise and I intend to keep it."
Daisuke looked around his bedroom, taking in all the familiar comforts. His family and his home, all in one place…
…and when had Satoshi gotten there? He was sitting on the bed, glaring daggers at Dark and the wastebasket alternatively. breathing hard.
"Satoshi!" Daisuke said. It seemed like years ago he'd seen him last, as if he had gone on a very long trip. The older boy waspanting heavily, trying to get his breath back like he'd just been running. He was wearing his school uniform still.
"You… okay?" he asked, heading over to the bed and leaning over to look Satoshi in the face. Satoshi, meanwhile, was trying very hard to keep breathing, and was rather green in the face.
"Yes, I'm fine. Just tired," Satoshi said inbetween gasping breaths. He clenched his hands.
The idiot. He put the Chock of Time in that painting before I could tell him otherwise, but he got most of his energy drained. I won't be surprised if he's out of it for a while, or if Krad manages to take over…
"But what… was that?" Daisuke asked Dark, closing his eyes. "I mean… all that, with the snow world and Freedert? I sort of remember being in there, and something about painting, but other than that, nothing."
She captured you. Or rather, the art did, because it wanted to keep itself alive. Her spirit was still trapped in the artwork. Elliot's spirit was stuck in that sword. Bring the sword to the painting and… voila, everyone's happy.
"She died. I remember that much."
Naw, just the artwork. That's our job, Daisuke. We're supposed to kill artworks. They aren't supposed to be alive. And don't you go off on me right now, because you don't have that ring anymore to protect your scrawny ass.
Daisuke's hand fluttered to his finger, and he suddenly ached for that ring like nothing else. God, why had he been so stupid as to touch the artwork? But maybe Dark wasn't as pissed as he had been. Maybe he'd had time to cool down and really think about Daisuke's earlier proposition.
You get a break for now. I –want- that body. Just don't do anything to make me mad, or I might lose control…
"How long was I in there?" Daisuke asked Satoshi, who seemed to be recovering slowly. The boy straightened himself and fixed his tie: "Ah, a couple of weeks, give or take," he replied in that fluid voice. He was being very stoic, very aloof and cold, which of course meant that he was feeling more emotional than usual and was doing his best to cover it. At least Daisuke could make the assumption Satoshi had missed him, or he wouldn't be acting like this. He tended to turn into an ice king when he was feeling particularly vulnerable.
Haha, he's well trained. We had a little talk while you were gone.
Daisuke's eyes widened. "Satoshi, did Dark…what did he do while I was gone?"
Satoshi frowned. "Nothing," he said, his face darkening, and then sat back, no longer looking so pale in the face. Daisuke wanted to press further, but felt that any interrogation would prove fruitless.
Everyone was completely quiet. Satoshi didn't say anything like 'welcome back' or 'hey, I just spent the last two weeks trying to get you out of a painting' or even 'hello'. This was all sharp edges and corners. Walking on eggshells. Things like that. Daisuke sat cross-legged on the comforter and tried to think of something to say.
"I'd better go," Satoshi said eventually, standing. "I will see you at school tomorrow, Daisuke." Each word was a distinct effort. The tension coming from Satoshi was crazy, completely felt in the air.
Very neutral. Daisuke smiled thinly in reply: "Me too. See you later."
Satoshi walked out, just like that, and was gone. Nothing beyond a simple goodbye. Daisuke couldn't help but be interested now: Dark must have said something to Satoshi, or done something god-awful to make the Hikari boy act like this. Satoshi didn't back off for anyone, especially not Dark.
I didn't do anything. It's Krad.
"Mm," Daisuke said, like he didn't really believe that. Which he didn't. If Dark had had control of his body for two whole weeks, what other kinds of chaos had he wrecked?
Well, you're getting a C in Algebra, because I don't know the first thing about math, but…
"Fuck, mom's gonna kill me," Daisuke groaned.
For the rest of the night Daisuke got to work on fixing up his grade. He did some extra assignments to turn in the next day and even managed to finish a project which Dark coldly informed him was due the next day. By the time he tumbled into bed it was almost two AM, but that was all-right because he didn't expect to be doing much the next day anyways.
It was just like old times, when Dark had first manifested and they'd been sort of best enemies: friends, but distantly so, and forced together only because they had to be. Daisuke actually missed those times, before Dark had become so… freakishly obsessed with him, with everything about him, begun to hurt him and find causing pain appealing. Before Satoshi and he had started to get involved. Before he'd had to start stealing more and more dangerous things, sometimes twice in one night.
He missed those days. Now he had someone else to look to. He had someone to care about for the first time in a while. He couldn't be paying attention to himself.
He knew that those memories, especially of what had happened that night at the hotel, would not disappear. He wouldn't be able to fix that; and he wondered why it didn't bother him that his other half had held him down and forced sex on him. Why didn't this bother him? Shouldn't it have? Wasn't it something that should have torn him up, made him stop caring, ruined him? But no, he admitted to himself. He had locked his self-pity away the first time it had happened. Just because Dark had restrained him physically that time did not mean he hadn't used words and threats do to the same thing many times before.
He could push it away for now. Maybe it would come full circle and severely fuck up his head in the future, but for now he had to push it away, because anything else would be unacceptable. He had someone to take care of, didn't he? Hell, Satoshi was even more screwed up than he was.
He wanted to help Satoshi learn how to feel, like a normal person should. Sure, he wasn't the best example. He wasn't even good at figuring out what he was thinking half the time. But he felt like every time Satoshi was about to say something important, or say what was on his mind, he froze up or distanced himself.
Maybe someday he would be able to talk. And when he could, Daisuke could be there to listen.
When he awoke in the morning, Dark was blissfully asleep and he was much too tired to consider anything past his own nose for the first two hours of school. During this time he received a freakish amount of compliments on his amazing acting skills and how he should probably go into the show business.
Huh?
He decided not to press the matter and just shrugged it off. Satoshi wasn't in class, which wasn't all that odd (he had lots of work to do on the side of school) and he didn't get asked to deliver homework this time. As he was walking out of the school with Takeshi, talking about something-or-other, he stopped. He was sure that he saw Satoshi crouched near a bush on the opposite side of campus, far off by the soccer field.
"Um. Is that Satoshi, do you think?" Daisuke asked Takeshi reluctantly. He couldn't see that far very well.
Takeshi waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Hmm, could be. Are you gonna jump him or something?"
"No!" Daisuke said, mortified. And then slyly added: "Not on school campus, at least."
Takeshi snickered. "You're growing up, kid," he said, as if he were forty years old and not fifteen. He thumped Daisuke on the back. "Yeah, it's him. I can tell Hiwatari from a few miles off. See you later, and take care of yourself."
Maybe Takeshi wasn't as dense as he appeared.
Daisuke split off from Takeshi and made his way across the field, praying that Satoshi wouldn't get up and leave. But the boy just watched him approach with detached interest, hands braced against the grass as the girls kicked the ball around behind them, cheering and giggling.
He came to stand at Satoshi's left side, plopping down in the grass. "Hey," he greeted, looking over his shoulder at the group of soccer players converging at center-field. "How're you?" he figured this was a very simple way to start the conversation.
"I'm… good," Satoshi replied, his voice guarded. "And… you?"
"I'm fine. Dark's asleep, and after last night, I guess he will be for a while. What about Krad?"
Satoshi let out a breath as soon as Dark's name was mentioned, and his look of relief only grew as the sentence went on. But his face was sealed up again as soon as Daisuke finished speaking.
"I missed you… so fucking much. I didn't think you'd make it out of that painting alive, Daisuke. How could you be so stupid and go touch it like that? I thought you'd died!" he ranted.
"I'm okay, thanks to you. That's over with," Daisuke insisted. "Freedert's sealed away forever. I won't be touching things in museums again anytime soon, though."
"It was a church."
"Oh, right. My memory's still a little fuzzy."
"Don't do it again. I might not be able to get you out, and then I don't know what I'll do. I don't like feeling… like this."
"Like what, Satoshi?"
"Like you can control me. If you had died... You could hurt me badly, and I wouldn't be able to close myself up again. I don't know what I'd do." He shrugged. "Nevermind, I don't want to say anything else. Just forget I said that."
Another pause. "We have a job tonight, don't we?" Daisuke didn't want to press what he'd already managed to build with Satoshi. The kid was finally opening up to him, a little, and he didn't want to screw things up so soon.
"That's what the note said. Tonight at ten."
"I'll be a zombie in the morning. I hate late nights," Daisuke mused, stretching out in the grass next to Satoshi.
"You say that so calmly," Satoshi said flatly.
"Well, it's true, I do. Especially the nights you're there. Dark always rants for about an hour before he'll let me go to sleep."
"Hmmm." Satoshi closed his eyes, flat on his back, arms behind his head.
"This is going to sound odd, but… I think that I… um…"
"You don't have to say it. I know."
"…You do?" Daisuke looked over at him, surprised.
"Yeah." Their shoulders were touching, barely, and Daisuke could feel a kind of hum, the surreptitious knowledge that someone's skin was touching against his own. It was a pleasant, touchy-feely kind of vibe.
He picked up Daisuke's right hand with his left and brought it close to his face, inspecting the nails, the etchings of lines down the palm. Daisuke didn't find it odd, but merely shifted so Satoshi could look at it more easily.
"Your hands are… surprisingly clean," he said with a small smile. "Surprising, I mean, with all the tripping you seem to do."
"I'm just clumsy, I guess."
"I don't mind." Satoshi's smile got a little wider, just a tiny bit, as he lowered Daisuke's hand.
Daisuke sighed happily. "You think those soccer girls are going to find us?"
"We're just lying here. They won't care."
"I wish we didn't have to hide this," Daisuke said seriously. "My parents don't even know. Takeshi knows, but he doesn't care, I don't think. But my parents? They might never find out that I… am… like this."
"I think they'll understand. I mean, I'm pretty irresistible." He lowered his voice about half an octave and for a second he sounded just like Dark. Daisuke's mouth fell open slightly as he stared at him. "My God, you just cracked a joke."
"There's lots about me you don't know."
"When will I get to learn it?"
"Someday. Not now. I don't want to talk about things like that now."
Daisuke's throat clenched up at those words. Something about them hit a note, made him think about himself for once. And Satoshi, too. What would happen to them when they grew up? They would probably be forced to move, go to college, live lives of their very own. They would have to go out into the world. It wouldn't always be fun and games, Dark and Krad, good versus evil. Eventually they would have to give up these things and go into the real world as full adults.
But how could he be a full adult when he only felt like half a person?
"Hey, Satoshi. I dunno, maybe I'm crazy or something, but do you feel a little like… you're on the edge of a cliff?"
"What, metaphorically speaking?"
"No. Just that…bad things are heading our way. Trouble's coming. That sort of thing."
"That's a good way to describe it. I know what you mean."
"What do you think is gonna happen?" Daisuke wondered aloud, grasping Satoshi's hand tighter.
Someday they would have to figure out their futures, and everything would be in the past. This would all just be a distant memory, a vague remembrance of a sunny afternoon when two teenagers lay in the grass behind a bush while the soccer team scored behind them, their voices drifting up to the blue, bright sky. Would he look back on this and think that this was the worst time in his life, or the best? What would his future bring? Would he always be a part of Dark, and would Dark overtake him, as he had done to all of Daisuke's descendants? It was these things that he worried about now.
"I'm not sure, Dai. But I think we'll manage."
And that was what he needed to hear most of all.