Growing Pains

01: It happens at seven

Auteur : Rain

Disclaimer : Shaman King…. Doesn't belong to me! How surprising! I am only playing with borrowed toys.

Notes :

To lie; to care; to remember.

So this came to me in a fever dream, and I could not rest until I'd started it. This won't be a long fic, maybe twenty or so chapters? We'll see other characters than my main three, but not in too much detail I don't think. I know Yoh, Anna, Ryû, Horo-Horo, Ren, Mathilda, Ash, Marco, Meene, and Luchist will show up again, beyond that I'm not so sure. I have a logic for the bonds, but it might not be immediately obvious or ever explicit. What do you think?

If you'd rather, a French version is available on this same account.

Comments are how I sustain myself, fair lads and lasses!


It happens at seven. The age of wisdom, they say, which shows what they know.

She grows up watching models in shop windows, plastered with obviously fake marks. That is, somewhat, how she learns to read. It's a storybook fact of the world, the only golden ray of sun on her small existence. People are not alone. People – everyone – has another, waiting somewhere in the world, with the first words you will ever tell them inscribed on their skin like a promise. Everyone is looking for their another, and when they find it they live happily ever after.

When she sees them for the first time, she sees no mark, and it takes a bit of time and courage to ask. But she doesn't have to wait for permission, for she gets a glimpse of Marco's as he washes up in the frigid waters of the bay. She tells him it's dangerous. He says the salt and the danger carry a blessing and he turns to dunk his head below the waters.

The words are splayed on his shoulder blades, like wings. She knows the letters and, surprisingly enough, the language. What do you want?

Marco says he heard them in his ear when he first entered the Church, and Luchist smiles thinly. Jeanne does not point out it makes no sense. When she asks, he shows his, on the inside of his wrist. Come with me.

Luchist is impossibly old and says he does not remember who said the words. It did not work out. That is puzzling to her; that it could not work out. She thought those who have words have a destiny picked out for them. That God would not allow such a terrifying despair to form. Doesn't He know best?

He does, Luchist says, but He does not control the human soul. Free will is His last and most terrifying gift. You have to choose to pursue your destiny, he says, every minute, with all of your soul. Otherwise it falls out of your hands, like sand.

She will realize much later that his mark is not flared. Neither is Marco's. It hasn't happened yet. But she doesn't know then.

On her arms, a random day in a random year because she does not have any clear records, there are suddenly two lines she does not recognize. They could pass for darkened bracelets, circling taut around her biceps. Strange words in a strange alphabet. She keeps the date and the marks to herself.

Luchist pauses the day he sees them. He is bandaging her, careful to stay extra appropriate and show her how to do it herself. He traces one with wonder in his eyes, but he says nothing. He doesn't mention it to Marco; Jeanne doesn't, either.

Tamao has one on each ankle, and she does not know if they are meant to be read as one or two. One is in Japanese, familiar words that are among her first kanji. You should be careful.

So she is, in all things. The other sentence is in European script, and the oddity of it is enough to pique the Asakura family's curiosity. Mikihisa is the only one who does not give her grief about it.

"We'll deal with it when it comes," he tells her. "Race you to the peak?"

She still wonders. One? Two?

Miki's, as he explains before she asks, was burned off in the same accident that took his face. Later she will wonder whether Hao meant to do that, meant to erase the fact that a human-born Shaman with no ties to any family worth a mention is his new mother's soulmate. But Hao does not really seem to care about Keiko, so maybe he was oblivious instead of cruel.

In his first life he has no words. She says it isn't odd, that many humans have no words, that there are other pursuits. Still, it is another reason to hurl stones at his head.

He is in the middle of carving Demon Child into his arm when he hears the crowd gather around her hut.

The second time around he doesn't even look at his words. He makes it a point to propose to a girl who does not wear his, and mothers children he cares not for, and these two facts are in no way related.

This time he has two lines, curled around his wrists like chains he means to break.