Possession – Chapter 12
I was staring at the two jars Yoh gave me when I heard Ren start screaming in Chinese from all the way downstairs. Bason, who had chosen to wait upstairs with Horo, looked scandalized by whatever it was Ren was screaming. Even Horo winced and mumbled comments about recognizing some of the names and even being called some of them.
Apparently Ren wasn't too happy with Yoh giving me the spell jars. Not that I could blame him. I almost dropped them when Horo explained what they were.
How could Yoh do this to me? Did he really think he was bestowing some kind of great honor on me? All he did was give Hao a hand crafted invitation to ruin what was left of my life. I don't know what Ren was yelling at Yoh, but I had a few choice words about the moron myself.
Feeling betrayed, I was tempted to kick everyone the hell out of my house, but Faust interfered with that idea when he gave me something for my pain that made me woozy. "Sleep now my friend." He commanded quietly.
"Buuuut," I slurred trying to warn him that I couldn't sleep because there was no way Hao would ignore a chance like this to take complete control of my body and the jars regardless of how drained he was from last night. The problem was I was starting to see three Fausts and none of them were taking me very seriously.
"Shh do not upset yourself; someone will stay with you while you sleep." He assured me. I would have given him a biting comeback, but I was no longer conscious.
When I woke up the next morning completely unmolested a part of me wasn't certain I wasn't still asleep. I would have bet my entire inheritance that Hao would have visited me while I slept.
Suspicious, I spent the following day on edge waiting for Hao's next attack but it never came. Nor did it come the next day or the day after that. After three weeks of nonstop anger, sarcasm and abuse the sudden quiet was unnerving. I started acting like Hao was going to pop out of every shadow.
I tried my best to distract myself with my preparations to leave town or more preferably the country. You do remember after all, that my body was still guilty of several murders.
Annoyingly, I was the only one who was suffering from the stress because everyone else behaved as if everything were perfectly normal with the exception of Ren and Horo who had begun to subtly flirt with one another. Oh, and Anna. Since my nerves were already stretched beyond their limit, I nearly imploded when she apologized to me.
Yes ladies and gentlemen the first sign of the apocalypse has arrived. Anna 'I am the centre of the universe bow to me' Kyoyama managed to choke up an apology and didn't turn to ash when she did it. Sorry, perhaps that was a little rude. I warned you my nerves are a little stretched right?
I was boxing up a few personal items that I figured I might like to keep. Chances were high that it would be years if ever, that I could return home again so I needed to travel light. I'd have to find someplace to store these until I found a place to live. I was hoping maybe Ren or Yoh would take them for me when I felt her behind me.
"He trusts you far too much." She said quietly. "Yoh has always been too quick to trust."
Was she suggesting that I was going to betray Yoh again? If she was then she could go to hell. Ignoring her I kept packing.
"You hurt him the last time you left him. I was just trying to protect him."
I snorted at that. "Protect him from what exactly? The only one in any danger here is me."
"You confuse him."
"What in God's name it there to be confused about? Yoh, could you please help me stop your supposedly dead brother from using me as a murder weapon, slash punching bag, slash sex toy! Tell me what part of that is confusing?!" I yelled at her not caring if the others heard. Why should I be the only one with no dignity or pride left?
If I was any other person under any other circumstance I'm sure she would have tried to clock me one. I admit a part of me wanted her to, just to test whether or not I would go against my rule of not hitting girls. Instead she hit me with something I wasn't ready for.
"I apologize." She said so quietly I barely heard it. "I had mistakenly thought your reasons were more personal and I thought I was protecting Yoh."
The apology was said with such formality and such humility –a so very un-Anna like state- that my anger just went into a tailspin and crashed. Rubbing my face in my palms I struggled to find something to say.
"Protecting him from what Anna? My feelings?" I asked tiredly. "Despite everything you do to him, Yoh cares about you. No matter how crappy you treat him, he always comes back to you."
Anna just looked at me like I'd sprouted a second head and I was tempted to roll my eyes. Was she that clueless about how abrasive a person she was?
"Look, if you don't mind a free piece of advice, learn to smile once and a while."
"Impossible, Yoh is a natural born slacker. If I let up on his training, he would spend his days lounging around eating junk food and listening to music."
I couldn't help but chuckle knowing that was partly true. "You're right Anna, he is a slacker and there will be times where you have to still crack the whip at him, but he is older and more responsible than you give him credit for. Try just being nice to him every once and a while." When she still didn't look like she got it, I added "Honestly, if it were me, I'd want the guy marrying me to want to marry me. Not just because I bullied him into it."
It was sad really, watching her skin turn pale and her back stiffen. It was then that I realized that in her own way she cared deeply for Yoh but she lacked the confidence and social skills to show it. To her it seemed perfectly logical to keep Yoh in a permanent strangle hold than to trust his feelings for her.
Finishing my packing I picked up the box and walked out, but as I passed her I told her quietly "Yoh will always come back to you, but if you showed him you cared he'd come back quicker. Try something small like… smiling."
How the heck did I end up as a relationship counselor? First Ren and Horo, now Yoh and Anna. Stupid really considering I was having sex with the ghost of the man who killed my parents. I was probably the least qualified person in the hemisphere.
Anyway, back to my original problem of Hao ignoring me.
You'd think I would have been thrilled by it, but after a few days without him I was getting pretty twitchy so I decided to finally go visit where Faust was keeping his body.
And that's where I finally found him. He was staring at the frail shell that was supposed to be his body with an odd mixture of contempt and longing.
At first I didn't even notice Hao's spirit was even there. I was too busy gaping at the bed and the frail and sickly figure in it.
Immediately I could see that his overall frame had grown, but that was about the only thing that did grow. The rest of his body looked like it had remained stagnant. It looked as if his skin, muscle and other soft tissues were stretched to their limits and barely fit over the larger structure giving him a bizarre, underdeveloped, skeletal look. Honestly, if anyone wanted to check his internal organs, they wouldn't have to x-ray him. They could just hold him up to the light. He was that thin.
His skin was this hideous paste color that I never would have believed a person of Japanese decent could achieve. It was certainly a big contrast to Yoh's caramel tinted skin that glowed from the inside with health and vitality.
The saddest part was his hair. As we all know Hao is not my most favorite person, but on a purely aesthetic level even I have to admit he's beautiful in his own cruel way. He is after all Yoh's twin. Now having said that even I will admit that I was disturbed to see those gorgeous locks gone and a short spiky mess left in its place.
On a practical level I understood that his new look would be easier to for the hospital staff care for, but my mind kept wandering back to my sex dreams with Hao and how it felt to run my fingers through that black silk mass.
Seeing Hao like this was extremely anticlimactic, if not a little sad. There was nothing powerful or intimidating about the man lying on the bed. No matter which angle I used or how long I stared, it was almost impossible to recognize the person lying there as Yoh's twin let alone the great Hao Asakura.
"I bet you find this quite hilarious don't you?" Hao spat acidly. For a guy that could read minds, he was doing a particularly bad job of it. Hilarious? Not even close. Nothing about this situation was even the tiniest bit funny. All in all it was pathetic, and it made me feel pathetic.
I had spent the bulk of my life with the shadow of Hao hovering over me both before and after the tournament. In truth, I realized I had let my experience with Hao permanently stain me. I let his existence taint everything in my life. Obviously possessed as I was that statement was more true and literal now, but I couldn't blame him for the things that had happened in the interim.
When I was a child I had dreamed to be a detective like my father. It was the only thing I'd ever wanted. After Hao, I was too afraid and ashamed to be one. Instead, I just dabbled on a part time basis.
I had never bothered making any real friends after the tournament. I never let myself get close to anyone. Acquaintances came and went in my life like passing seasons. Other than Benny, Yoh and the others are the closest thing I have to true friends and I hadn't spoke to them in years. True, Anna's strangle hold was partly to blame for that but I didn't try very hard either.
While I stared at the fragile person lying in a coma before me I let my mind sift through countless points of my life watching how I'd let my fear and shame effect everything I did. Hao made me an enraged orphan, but I was the one who kept me there.
Watching the barely perceptible rise and fall of the patient's chest I felt incredibly stupid. Seeing him like this was like finding out the scary boogey man in your closet was just the ugly sweater your aunt knitted you for Christmas. I knew of course that Hao was still a very real threat. I had the scars to prove it, but now he seemed lesser.
If anything I might even be bold enough to say I pitied him lying there, helpless, dependant on the care of others. As I moved so I could sit and get a closer look at him I ignored Hao's spiritual presence much to his annoyance.
At this close range I could see the potential beauty in the man. His cheekbones and jaw line were strong and wouldn't look quite so harsh with a little weight to fill them out. I could easily imagine his full lips that were currently slack moving in the shape of Yoh's quick smile or Hao's condescending smirk. I wonder what kind of person he would have been if Hao had not dragged his ambitions into this life?
Unable to restrain myself I reached out and ran my fingers through the black mess of hair to see if it was a soft as it was in my dreams. It was soft, if a little greasy from lack of washing recently. I was just starting to think about mentioning to Faust that he could probably use a bath when a hand gripped around my throat and carried me across the room. I hit the wall with a slam that had me seeing stars for a moment but when my eyes cleared, they focused on the very livid spirit of Hao.
"Don't touch him!" he shrieked into my face. I couldn't hear his thoughts the entire time I was in the room until he had touched me. Even then his thoughts were a jumbled mess of anger, confusion, vulnerability and a few others that wouldn't hold still long enough for me to identify them.
It was a surprise really. As far as I knew of never in history had Hao been as uncontrolled as he was now. Why would the sight of one sickly coma patient unhinge him so? It's not like he would be jealous of me touching another man.
And then it all made sense. This was probably the first real time Hao had experienced real mortality.
Sure, he'd been dead a few times before, but until now death was more like a minor set back in his grander plans. This was the first time he had to truly contemplate the end of his existence. He had most likely never seen any of his previous bodies this fragile and helpless unless you count the times he was an infant. But even those times he had the spirit of fire and his own power to compensate. Now he had nothing.
"What are you afraid of Hao? That I'll hurt him?" I asked blandly, "What does it matter anymore? You are going to be banished and he will die." I said emphasizing the inevitably of his situation Still, it felt a little weird talking about Hao's body like it was a third person and that I was going to kill him. My eyes flickered back to the coma patient. I guess it was pretty silly of me to think about bathing someone who would be dead soon.
Hao must have caught my look, but instead of slamming me into the wall again, he pressed his spectral lips to mine and forced me into a dream/vision.
In the dream he took further advantage of his power to crush me to him. The part that surprised me the most was he didn't try to subdue my consciousness this time. Instead, he tried to get me to co-operate willingly.
A flood of impressions were filling me while he was kissing me with as much passion and intensity as he had ever shown in my dreams. Some of the impressions were so strong they could almost have been words.
Want me.
Need me.
Desire me.
Love me.
Even though he was allowing my mind its freedom of choice the weight of his mind on mine was enough to make my knees buckle. He was trying to get me to adore him like his usual followers by sheer force of will. He wanted me to worship him as the demi-god they saw him as and not the monster he truly was.
I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I was close to caving in then. Not because of the pressure he was smothering me with. If it was just that I'm sure I could have brushed him off eventually. It has his kiss that almost did me in.
As much as I hate Hao it seems that my body had no qualms responding to him and all of his passion and intensity that I mentioned before. Even if it was only in dreams, my traitorous body easily recognized the best lover I had ever come across. It knew instinctively what pleasure he could bring me to regardless of what it did to my psyche.
Like an addict who didn't care if they were about to inject themselves with a lethal dose of heroine I dove into the kiss letting my tongue wrestle with his. I was on the verge of submitting to his will when he spoke. Perhaps it was my eager response that made him think I had already given in otherwise he wouldn't have acted prematurely.
"Return me to my body. I could make you my consort. An honor I have denied countless others. We could be lovers in the truest sense." He promised while moving his lips from my mouth to my ear. "You know how good it would be."
Ugh, I suppose for someone like Hao who is used to people kowtowing to him granting me position as his number one servant counted as a grand seduction for him. Fortunately for me I still had too much pride and morality left in me to accept such a repulsive offer.
Shoving him off me I found myself slammed back into my physical body which was aching with lust. It took a moment to clear my head and get my eyes tried to focus on the rooms occupants. Surprisingly it wasn't Hao and his body. Rather it was Hao's body, Faust and Eliza. The latter pair was staring at me with rather surprised expressions and I felt my cheeks flush with renewed shame.
"Ar-are you alright?" Faust asked cautiously. I can only imagine what I looked like making out with air. If a person could die of shame I already would have been on the floor.
Tearing my gaze away, "H-H-Hao was tr-trying t-to get me to l-let h-him go." I stammered too mortified to meet their eyes. Eliza, who was such a dedicated nurse in life, seemed to feel obligated to ease my pain. Instead of leaving me to wallow in my humiliation she drifted over to me and positioned herself right in front of my nose so I would have no choice but to look at her.
When I finally did she gave me a kind, gentle and understanding smile that neither judged me nor accused me. I didn't think it was possible for me to ever recover but her smile did ease some of my discomfort. I almost understood why Faust was so obsessive about her. Almost. The smell of her floral perfume didn't quite mask the smell of decay she gave off. Maybe Faust was immune to it.
Not wanting to say anything to make me feel worse, I gave one last look at the man I was about to kill imprinting him in my memory, and left.
TBC
The next chapter is already written it will be up as soon as it is edited!