Title; Comfort

Rating; T (for mild gore, scary stuff, and suggested shounen-ai… let's see if I can corrupt innocent minds some more!)

Disclaimer; …Do I have to say this? For fear of being accosted by rabid lawyers, I'll repeat; see it? Recognize it? I don't own it! I have my ideas, and my cookies. Mine!

Author's Notes; I just finished The Rose and I still don't shut up. One-shot this time, though it's long, so I hope you'll forgive it. In any case, some one-shots are great reads, so maybe this will be all right. I'm not telling you the pairing. Ha ha! Suffer. You should figure it out soon-ish, anyway. So, not gonna rant this time. I hope you enjoy the story.

Sometimes…

Sometimes he woke up shaking from nightmares that were more memory than imagined. The darkness around him was alleviated only by the bare moonlight through the window, changing the room into muted shades of blue grey, and though darkness had never been one of his fears, he would shake, feeling so terribly alone.

He would try, always in vain, to calm himself after these nights, so as not to wake his lover. Before too long, though, he would feel hesitant hands, reaching up to gently rest on his shoulder, would find himself encompassed by the lithe figure that now sat beside him.

"Shh." It was a whisper against his ear, speaking of comfort, of love, of understanding…. "It's okay, I'm here."

He never deserved it.

A murderer could never expect to receive love or comfort.

------

It had been a Cinderella romance, except it had been she who was from the prominent family, and he who was a traveling European—handsome, smart, and completely poor. Unlike a fairy tale, though, their love heralded no choruses of angels. Rather, it entailed a royal family finding that their youngest daughter had stolen away in the night, leaving only a hastily written note behind, bearing an ill-reasoned explanation. At least, it seemed ill-reasoned to her family, who were shocked by the girl's behavior; their youngest who had usually been the most level headed.

Love is a façade that seemed to hide so much. It seemed to make him able to look past her feebleness, or rather, lack of any experience in how to manage anything for herself. It allowed she, herself, to look past her husband's less than well-bred persona. Still, they were in love, and if things were difficult at times, the times when things were good more than made up for it.

They weren't rich, they never would be on his salary, but they had a house, enough money to support themselves, and the most recent additions; a son of five and a newborn daughter.

------

The summer days were long and sweet, but her favorite time was twilight. When the day had started to fade away into the soft colors before the first stars were visible. The breeze was light refreshing after the sometimes sweltering afternoons that passed.

Miyuki tilted her head back, dark eyes falling shut and her long, wavy black hair sliding down along her back. Her face was upturned, enjoying the ability to just bask in this time of day. It was quiet at the moment, as usually it only rarely was. Her daughter was still an infant, not yet old enough to speak and not young enough to cry whenever she was not held. The girl sat down happily by her mother's feet on the porch steps, amusing herself, however it was that infants managed to amuse themselves.

As for her son…. Five-year-old boys were rarely quiet for a long time. Thinking this, Miyuki opened her eyes, lowering her gaze to follow the boy's wanderings around the open, back area of the house. There was a brief glow of soft light, and the boy jumped, attempting to catch it, but it smoothly flew out from between his fingers.

The boy sighed, looking disheartened for only a moment, before he spied yet another of his pray on the grass; the same pale, glowing light flickering against the blades of green. He cupped it in his hands, peering into a tiny hole between his fingers to watch the creature.

Elated with his success, the boy ran towards his mother, his cupped hands pressed against his mid-sect for some form of stability. When he stopped before her, he looked up into her face with a bright expression (the sort that one only ever saw in the young).

Miyuki was struck once again by how much her son resembled his father. Her precious son. His eyes were the bright blue of the sky, with the darker striations of sapphires. They were beautiful, of course, and while his Japanese heritage couldn't be discounted, they showed far too much of his European ancestry. In these days, they were a mark of disdain.

"Mother, look," the boy said, in an excited half whisper. He spared a glance at his little sister, who had less interest in his captive than in pulling at the grass around her. He looked back to his mother when she ran soft fingertips across his head, through his hair.

Smiling a little, Miyuki noted again how light his hair was, compared to her own raven black. "Hm?" She leaned down across her knees to bring herself face to face with her son. "What did you find, Seiichiro?"

Seiichiro smiled, enjoying the attention and his mother's conspiratorial attitude at his having found something obviously interesting… to a five year old boy, at any rate. He opened his fingers a little more, tilting his hand towards his mother for her to be able to see his prize.

The firefly twitched its feelers in a passive sort of way, apparently not planning any great escape from the boy. Lazily, it flapped its wings a few times, but didn't take off or bother to waste energy by alighting. It was tiny, even for its kind, probably a baby, just born into the summer days.

"Can I keep him?"

Miyuki smiled, and then glanced up at her son. "That wouldn't be very kind." Taking in the boy's look of confused surprise, she added, "The firefly probably has a family. You wouldn't want to take him from that."

His eyes widened a little, apparently surprised by this new information, and he nodded. Before he could further comment on (or ask questions about,) how she knew that fireflies had families, Seiichiro seemed to spy something beyond his mother. "Father's home."

Glancing over her shoulder, Miyuki felt her hair falling into her face, but not hiding the smile that graced it. She stood, brushing off her skirt as she walked towards the tall, handsome man. His face, with its angular beauty, formed into a small smile when he saw his wife moving towards him, and he wrapped his arms around her as soon as she had come upon him.

His hours were later and later, working odd end jobs without any security in them. Miyuki understood that it was all he could do, but she'd missed him. As the two headed back towards the house, she glanced over her shoulder at her children. She broke briefly away from the man to pick up her daughter, cradling the baby to her chest.

"Seiichiro." Miyuki glanced at her son over her shoulder, already heading back towards her husband and the small home. "Come in soon, all right? I don't want you out when it's dark."

And then she was gone inside, though her voice and his father's warm tenor could be heard through an open window. Seiichiro understood this to mean he had a few more minutes at least, and after looking at the small bug crawling over his fingers for two of those minutes, he spied a small jar near the door on the porch.

It was glass, with a twist on tin cap with too much rust on it. The glass itself was smudged and slightly darkened in places, but he smiled upon finding it anyway. By throwing a few blades of grass in the bottom, it worked as a makeshift firefly home. Before it grew dark, he'd managed to catch a few more, and Seiichiro peered through the glass to watch the tiny creatures flare up and fade into darkness.

He would let them go in the morning, he rationalized, remembering his mother's words. In the morning, though, they were dead, needing the open air to keep them alive.

His mother chastised him quietly, and he had enough sense to look properly abashed. He watched her sigh and turn the glass in her hands over, the jar he'd managed to get past her the evening before. "Seiichiro…" she trailed off with another sigh, apparently unable to think of anything to add.

Her face was sad, but worse, disappointed, too. He could hardly stand to see it. "I'm sorry."

------

It hadn't really been shocking. He knew that she had taken it badly, crying and trying to hide it, staying in her room for longer periods of time. She still tried to smile, though, and maybe that was what killed him so much, because her smiles were so false.

When her husband had left, Miyuki had become slowly more and more inconsolable. Seiichiro had watched his mother's depression worsen, though he himself had not been as affected by the loss. His father's hours had always been odd, but over the past months he'd had hours that started earlier and earlier and ended later and later. When he had simply stopped coming home, Seiichiro had taken it in stride, picking up where his father had left them.

At fourteen, this involved menial hard labor and continued begging and persistence for a shop owner in the town to allow him to apprentice on his odd hours off and learn more about money. Knowing any form of trade would help later, however convincing the man to take him in was another matter entirely.

The amount of money a fourteen year old could make, though, could not support a household, no matter how small it was and how many things they went without. So they had ended up here. Seiichiro glanced around the estate of his mother's family with an appraising eye. They were well off, to be certain. It showed in the size of the house, even without considering the interior.

As they passed, he could catch a few of the older servants glancing over his mother's face with curious expression, as if the recognized her from some far off part of their mind. For her part, his mother was composed, as though she was not here to beg for mercy… no, worse than mercy. Pity.

Seiichiro turned his own expression neutral, and cast his gaze down to his sister beside her. Takara was in her best dress, still plain compared to the splendor of the household. Her beauty, though, surpassed most, with her long black hair and large dark brown eyes. Unlike them, her face wore a passive smile.

He wasn't sure, at ten, she would understand fully what their mother was doing.

They walked into the large room, not quite a sitting room, because it was too formal for that sort of quiet comfort, but Seiichiro wasn't sure he knew quite what it was. His eyes widened slightly as his mother murmured a soft greeting, and bowed her head, hiding her face behind her hair in a show of humility and respect to the family she had run away from.

For the only time in his life, Seiichiro knelt, lowering gracefully to one knee and bowing his head low, as his mother began to explain their plight.

------

"I have to leave."

Seiichiro glanced into his mother's bedroom. She looked so fragile, curled on her side, her face hidden. In the gloom of the dark, her features were softened until they seemed to meld with the shadows. She glanced up wearily at her son, now seventeen, who watched her from the doorway.

"I have to leave," he repeated, knowing that she would not have caught the words if she was sleeping again. "It's early still, but 'Kara's awake already if you need anything." Seiichiro knew she would; she always did. However, it had come to be where it was a good day if she chose to emerge from her room.

The woman beckoned him over, now sitting up slightly, and he dutifully moved towards her. As when he was younger, he felt her fingers rake through his light brown hair, and he watched a distant smile cross his mother's face. "Seiichiro," she murmured. "You look so much like your father, as you grow. Have I told you that?"

Everyday. "Yes," he replied. He hated how much he looked like that man, because there were instances he knew that it made his mother sink even deeper into her sadness. He was the one who caused her to cry.

"Oh," she said, letting her hand fall against the bed so that it dropped with a muffled sound. "Sometimes I feel like I'm looking at a memory of him." Her face, which had until now, had at least the distant smile, now fell into a sad expression.

As always, Seiichiro felt a small stab of guilt, a need to protect his mother, when she drifted back into herself. Or, rather, when she drifted back into her memories. "I know." No, he didn't. "I'll be back soon, all right, Mother?" When he received no response, he leaned down, pressing a kiss against her forehead and heading back towards the door.

He looked back only once, to see his mother's eyes fixed on a closed window, where only the barest traces of sunlight slipped through the curtains. He wished he hadn't looked back.

------

"Seii!" The voice was teasing, laughing, playful. "Come on, Seii, you're so slow!" Takara glanced over her shoulder and grinned at her brother as she ran back towards the house. Her jumped, laughed, and waited for him to catch up to her.

Left as the one to carry what few necessities their home needed, Seiichiro cast his sister a glance with raised eyebrows. "How many times must I ask you not to call me that? No one uses a name like that." His serious personality would never have earned him such a nickname. At fifteen, his sister was the polar opposite. Bright, so full of light and joy.

"Then I'll be the only one to call you that," Takara declared. "It will be my name for you, and no one else can use it." She glanced up at her brother, so much taller when he drew even with her. "Okay?"

Whether it was okay or not didn't matter, he knew. She would do as she wished. With a sigh, he added a final protest in a muttered, "It sounds like something you'd name a pet."

"A pet, huh?" Takara smiled, reaching up to ruffle his hair.

"Watch it," her older brother warned. "Or else next time I'll make you carry all the things from the market."

"No, you won't." And he wouldn't, they both knew it. Though she was so vibrant, Seiichiro loved her more than anyone, and strove always to be the one to make her smile so brightly. If that meant giving her more lenience than anyone else, if that meant taking her chores on himself, so be it.

The man glanced down at her as they walked, Takara now next to him rather than running ahead. "Brat," he mumbled, shifting the bags in his hands. They weren't heavy, really, just the constant weight was starting to make his hand hurt.

Seiichiro watched her smile, saying, "I love you, too, Seii-nii," and laughing as she ran into their house. He could already hear her calling out to their mother, a warm cheery greeting that wouldn't be returned.

------

It… it was an accident. She had been hysterical, falling into her delusions, crying loudly out for anyone to come. No, but then she hadn't been hysterical when she'd seen him. She'd become lucid then, and began crying harder.

As on so many days and nights before, Seiichiro had sat by her bedside, attempting to calm her. This could take anywhere from only a few moments to long minutes when he would tell Takara to go outside, go now, and he would come get her later. The last thing the girl needed was to see her mother in her more hysterical moments, calling out for a father the girl would barely remember, and telling Seiichiro that he looked like his father, but wasn't him. An imposter, a liar.

No, hysteria threatened him now. He looked down at his hands, watching the crimson that stained them. The blood seeped into everything, every crack along his fingers and under his nails. For a moment, he could do no more than stare at it, watching it fall around him with such a detached sensation that he almost forgot what had happened only a few moments ago.

But he was kneeling here, by his mother's bed. She wasn't here any longer and he… he had….

He brought his hands up to cover his face, or started to, before realizing the blood that stained them would be smeared there, too. He would never be able to wash it off then.

Slowly, deliberately, he pressed his palms together, pushing them against and away from each other in an attempt to remove the stains, as any one else might brush off dirt. It had no affect, though, and he finally drew his gaze from his own hands, to his mother's body.

Those hands, it had been them at work, but not Seiichiro himself. He knew it sounded crazy, but he hadn't meant to ever hurt her, ever even raise a hand to her. He had always been the one to care for her. He had always been there for her.

She might have been sleeping. She lay slumped against her bed, her head tilted to the side, against the pillow. But the gash to the side of her head belied that, along with the dark red discoloring to the once white bed sheets.

She'd been yelling again, crying, screaming, and he…. The realization hit him, and he slumped into himself. He had murdered her. He was a murderer, a cold blooded killer. A soft cry was heard from the doorway, and Seiichiro turned, eyes wide and scared to see his sister standing in the doorway.

"S-Seiichiro?" Her voice shook, as she seemed to take in the situation before her. Her dark eyes traveled from her brother, to her mother, then back again. Realization seemed to take her, and she backed away from him, looking at him with such fear. He'd never seen her look like that before, ever, to anyone. Like she didn't even recognize him, of all people.

Seiichiro stood, and then started toward her with trembling steps, his hands outstretched. "Wait, please, I—" He watched her turn from him, running away, pure terror on her face.

He knew later he would cry. He knew that shock was only temporary, and that later grief and despair would engulf him. However, it was with a clear mind that he left, and this time, he didn't look back.

------

When the accident happened, it was almost a blessing within itself. Seiichiro had wanted this for a while, but never actively. He didn't want to die, he just didn't want to live.

He'd just been in the wrong place, at the wrong time, on the wrong end of a gun belonging to someone he hadn't even known. The pain was brief, before an overwhelming numbness seeped into everything. He knew that he was dying, but he couldn't bring himself to panic, nor to despair. He'd earned this fate.

His last thoughts were instead on Takara. He'd never gone to look for her, assuming she had gone back to the estate. If nothing else, he hoped she would find the happiness that she had always given to each and everyday before….

Well, before that day.

When it happened, it was such a tragedy. He was so young, only twenty-nine, so handsome, so smart. But he had also been distant from those around him, going to work, going home, and never bothering to know more about anyone than he needed for a cursory hello. No one really grieved, then, because no one really knew him.

The death of Seiichiro Tatsumi was a tragedy, yes, but one that had passed quickly through peoples' minds. To be brought up every once in a while when topics for gossip ran dry. It gave the people of the small town a chance to shake their heads and give their false condolences.

------

He did not lean into the other man's arms, but neither did he pull away, and so his lover took that as at least mildly encouraging. There were times when he woke up, and refused to be touched, leaving the room and collecting his shadows around him in a barrier from the world.

From his lover.

The man cried, but his lover didn't blame him, nor look down on him for it. He simply offered comfort and love, though the latter he didn't say. He showed it, because saying it would not have done much for the desolate man.

He allowed the bigger, stronger body to lean against him, watching as his own long, golden locks fell around them, standing out in the muted dark tones of the room and against their own skin. Light fingertips ghosted over the troubled man's arms, shoulders, his back….

"I'm here," he whispered into the darkness, and felt the man in his arms shudder. There was really nothing more he could say than that, though, and so he repeated it, a quiet mantra to the other. He couldn't ask what it was that had him so upset, he would never receive an answer, and he refused to try to pry it from him.

When he was told what gave the man these nightmares, he wanted it to be because he was trusted. Still, he knew memories would always haunt him, and knowing might not help him to be able to make him feel better.

For now, all he could do was be there when he awoke, and not take offense if he was pushed away.

"I'm here."

Author's Notes; Wow, I torture that poor guy. Sorry, Tatsumi-san, I love ya, but you're such an easy target. Yeah, I started plotting the fic this summer, actually, and I really like the way it turned out (for once! -gasp-) I haven't been able to write in such a while because I've been so busy. Aside from school, my sweet sixteen just passed and that was chaos personified. I was running around like crazy.

Anyway, I hope you'll forgive my absence and I hope this Tatari—yes, of course Watari's the other man!—story makes up for it. Enjoy the angst, and understand why Tatsumi's such a jerk. This is just my take on it; we weren't given a lot of information, so that was basically my cue to just take what little we had and run with it. I have no idea what Tatsumi's past is actually like, and I hope that you like me take on it. Please review!

Humbly yours,
--Phoenix