Third up: Yukimura. 1,552 words. This part was originally subtitled "Shades of the Past" – shades as in shadowed places and ghosts, yes.
Kiss from a Rose: Yukimura Seiichi
[June 2005 :: Posted July 2013]
There used to be a greying tower alone on the sea.
You became the light on the dark side of me.
The first thing Yukimura noticed about Fuji was his eyes. Even as a mortal, Fuji had unforgettable eyes – more azure than the waters of Mediterranean, the shade even and spotless as the cloudless autumn sky. Those eyes were magnetic under the flickering torchlight. Yukimura remembered standing in the shadows between columns, transfixed, as if Fuji, not he, were the vampire.
When they first met Fuji was a young man just beginning to blossom. Yet his eyes were ageless even then. Yukimura watched him with the fascination of a gardener over a particularly well-formed blossom, not once entertaining the thought of making Fuji his own. He had never made any mortal his own that way then, sharing immortal blood to stopper mortal death. He was simply drawn to the beauty of Fuji's eyes, the grace of his movements, and the rare brilliance of his spirit. Yukimura watched Fuji whisper secret things, sinful things to a beautiful young woman, her pure white tunic barely stifled under her dark cloak and the cover of the night. The young woman's rich brown hair was glossy, free of the usual constricting braids, her brown eyes dark and depthless, skin alight with life and passion. Her tall figure encased in dark cloak was striking in the mist as she stole away before the first light, back to her holy prison. They were siblings by marriage, Fuji and his young woman, although looking at the resemblance around their perfectly formed mouths, the arch of brows and straightness of the nose, Yukimura suspected a blood-relation the two might have known themselves.
Fuji had an image of her fashioned in marble by a Greek sculptor Yukimura introduced. As the marble gave way to the smoothness of her features, Yukimura often caught Fuji looking at the image, longing and pain in his eyes. Just before the base was inscribed with dedication, a human disaster struck the brother and the sister. Someone had accused her of taking a lover, and she was condemned for breaking her vow to the immortal virgin she served. Yukimura thought it another case of mortal foolishness, unfortunate that it would take as its victim such a charming creature, but inevitable, for those with sights as dim as the night about them.
She never revealed the name of her lover.
Partly out of pity and partly from respect, Yukimura helped Fuji see the young woman one last time before her sentence was carried out. Just before dawn, when Yukimura gently led Fuji away, with her eyes shimmering with a kind of devotion and strength Yukimura had never seen in a mortal, she said with conviction: Live, brother. Live for me.
By that time Yukimura was powerful enough to brave the sunlight, at least in the shelter of shadows. From the shades, he watched Fuji watching his sister being entombed alive, with a little bit of water and bread so her hallowed body would not be subject to the horror of starvation. No guards touched her as she, unflinching, descended the steps to her unhallowed grave, her person still inviolate, untouchable. And she had never looked more beautiful than now, cloaked only in her steadfast dignity and pride. Yet it was Fuji's suffering that drew Yukimura's eyes. The boy's face was as pale as death, the blue eyes wide and staring, fractured in a pain he could not even begin to fathom. And Fuji stood so still, so perfectly still, not even a tremor betraying whatever he was feeling inside. At that moment, Yukimura couldn't help but see Fuji as a sapling, a young yearling of a shoot that knew the oncoming storm would mercilessly break it in half, yet stood in defiance, acceptance or both. There was a kind of unparalleled strength and brilliance to his pain, something that made him bright and sharp and dangerous. The allure of Fuji's presence, that wildness raging behind that frozen stillness, was so overpowering that Yukimura nearly lost his control and took him there and then.
That night, Yukimura went to Fuji. And seeing the sharpness of the blue gaze undiminished even by the consuming agony behind them, Yukimura gave him the choice. Fuji never told him why he accepted Yukimura's offer, but Yukimura had his guesses. It was the young Vestal's mortal brother who loved her, but it was the immortal who was once her brother that inscribed and dedicated the statue. The mortal boy had a poetic epithet prepared for the likeness of his sister. The immortal that was left behind inscribed but two words: Lucilla Pulcheria.
The way Fuji yielded to him was intoxicating, all wiry strength that pushed and pushed, then suddenly melting under his hands. Fuji was irrevocably, unquestionably his, and for a long time Yukimura never thought he would have another that would fascinate him as much as Fuji did. But in the distant islands in the East, Yukimura did find a mortal that entranced him even more than Fuji did. And this man, unlike all others Yukimura had ever known, learned his nature and his secrets yet accepted and embraced all he was. Fuji had agreed to be Yukimura's for his own reasons, but Sanada was his simply by choice. Such trust and willingness from one so strong and proud was a heady rapture.
Never in his wildest dreams did it occur to Yukimura that he would need to guard himself and his heart from Fuji. Yukimura had never thought to hide what he felt, what he thought, from his first (and then only) childe. Thus it came as an appalling attack, one that penetrated his heart with sickening precision, when Fuji went against his explicit wish and turned Sanada. It was his fault, he supposed, that he lost control and drained Sanada nearly to the point of death. However, out of respect for the first and only mortal who had given him his heart willingly and without hesitation, Yukimura had promised not to turn him, even if he were to lose Sanada to death. And Fuji knew this better than anyone when he slipped inside Sanada's room and offered his immortal blood. Had he not known that Sanada must had chosen to accept, that Sanada was content with his own choice, Yukimura could not guess what he might have done to Fuji.
It was only after he found himself so deeply in love that he began to notice what he never felt the need to see before, about Fuji, about himself, and about the human world. He had reached out to Fuji in what amounted to a selfish reason. He'd wanted to keep Fuji exactly the way he was forever, as beautiful and brilliant and dangerous as that moment the earth closed over the young Vestal. But Fuji was not Yukimura, and had accepted the immortality and its sins differently than Yukimura had. Sanada, too, had been a miscalculation, at least as far as Fuji was concerned. In his assurance that he knew his childe's every thought, Yukimura had missed what was in Fuji's heart. Once Yukimura began paying attention to him, not as an extension of himself but as Fuji, he began to see what might have been the fatal mistake for both of them. And a part of him began to regret, not that he made Fuji his own, but how it happened and why. Fuji's needs were different from his, and he had never imagined Fuji's needs might include something he would never think of giving.
Perhaps that was why a part of him was relieved when he saw Tezuka for the first time. Another part of him, however, was inches away from erasing Tezuka's existence for good. Fuji never responded to him that way, not with that passionate gleam of life, that burning attraction, that aching desire. Perhaps it was jealousy that made him lure Tezuka to watch as he took Fuji, taking Fuji's body as well as his veiled heart, leaving it bare, and have Tezuka witness every heartbeat of their wild movements. Perhaps it was because he wanted to be able to entrust Tezuka with his childe, one that meant more to him than the waking world, second only to Sanada. But for that Tezuka had to know the full depth of Fuji's soul, understand it, and taste its hidden sweetness and the underlying bitterness, everything. Only then could Tezuka hope to hold Fuji, hold and not hurt, and maybe, just maybe, even protect Fuji.
Perhaps the greatest irony was that what Yukimura hoped Tezuka would be able to protect Fuji from was Fuji himself, one that was Yukimura's own making. Like ashes in his mouth, difficult to swallow, to know there were parts of Fuji he could no longer protect or even touch, parts that were no longer his, even if he was their origin and parent. But Tezuka...Tezuka could, without trying or possibly even without knowing. Tezuka could, and it was all that mattered. So Yukimura watched, entwined in Sanada, in Fuji, in Tezuka, in Yuuta, in Echizen, in everything Fuji had touched and had touched Fuji and shaped Fuji as much as Fuji shaped them. As the world around them shifted and changed, Yukimura did not, nor did his silent vigil over his childe, centuries stretching into millennia.
Time was, after all, all he had.
Note: This series was originally written in 2005, and even then, with more florid language than I generally favor. Upon rethinking it this year, I left them largely alone.
All names here are assumed names (with possible exception of Ryoma). Fuji is originally from Rome, from late Republic or early principate. Mention of white clothing and braids was a hint for a Vestal virgin, who wore white wool and special braided hairdo called seni crines. Vestal virgins were extremely important to Roman culture and were accorded great honors and privileges during their term (30 years), but if found guilty of breaking their vow (which was rare), they were put to death. The lover, if exposed, was also executed.
Lucilla Pulcheria can be translated as "beautiful light."
