Of The Bonds That Bind
Abby Ebon
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Disclaimer: I do not own DNAngel or X-Men.Note: the Daisuke which was within Rogue was not actually Daisuke himself, only the aspect of his personality Rogue had gained with her power. One is not aware of what is happening to the other. Just something to keep in mind.: Dark's Thoughts:
-Daisuke's Thoughts-
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Of Friendships That'll Last Lifetimes
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Behind Dark's closed eyes, Daisuke saw worlds. There were so many, and he saw dizzying flashes of them, moments, small, but caught and he remembered them all in that glimpse. Daisuke had never really thought about his power, living in the moment as he did.
Yet as he saw worlds flash and fade away before his eyes like raindrops, he knew his wings weren't his only talent. He hovered between and betwixt worlds, red wings flung wide, and watched them. He was lost among worlds.
-Dark – Daisuke saw all the worlds, shining and wet, like dew drops. He could reach out and take one up, and walk upon that world. He knew there was a place he belonged, yet lost among the drops of world as far as the eye could see, he could find nothing that made one world more familiar to him than another.
There was a sea of worlds before, behind and beside him, heaving and vast, and Daisuke was lost as far as he could see. He shivered, as lonely as he was lost. Here he was alone; there was…no one – nothing, only he. Daisuke wept, and the tears he shed he watched become worlds, spinning this way and that.
He wondered if this where all the ifs and buts and maybes went, all the choices taken and untaken.
-Dark, please….- Daisuke didn't want anymore to see the spinning of worlds both strange and familiar to him, and none of them home. Daisuke shuddered silently, resolving not to cry out, not to shed anymore tears, he whipped his eyes and buried his head in his arms, his knees drawing protectively foreword and his wings enclosing his body.
-Answer me….anybody?-
Krad has always loved the feeling of flight, of freedom. It was a joy that he was greedy of. Even flying with intent and purpose was not without its enjoyments.
With every beat of his white wings, a warm elation grew like seed at last nurtured, it was his hope – hope that next day would dawn with Krad reunited with Dark and Daisuke and Satoshi. To have the three at his side had been his dream, his work.
He curled his fingers into a fist and relaxed them, thinking of running his fingertips over a still lake's surface, and so time stood still. This he would do to quicken that bright and warm growth within him.
He could not quite rewrite time or make it turn back by minutes or hours, but this – this was within his reach – as was, at long last - his hope.
There below him was Xavier's home, and it was with ease that Krad landed among those who would not see him or hear him until he wanted it so. He walked amongst them, following the warmth of his bond – silly and cliché as it would seem to anyone else, if he tried to explain it aloud.
Simpler to say it was instinct. Or luck.
Whatever it was, it did not guide Krad wrongly, and he walked below and found the way easier than he knew it should be. It was as if who he sought wanted to be found, as if fate worked in his favor.
Soon enough he saw Dark, laid upon a hospital cot, very still and too pale for someone with such striking features. Krad found his fingers running all too freely through royal purple hair; he stoked and soothed it until it lay like silk. He pulled upon it only a little, his eyes fixed upon an unmoved face. Krad remembered how sensitive Dark had always been about his hair, not about its look – although he had never been lazy in caring for it – but about how it shouldn't be pulled upon, or petted.
Dark had never liked it.
Krad's amber eyes, like light caught in honey, narrowed in worry.
"Why won't you wake?" Krad asked of Dark's stillness, for Krad didn't like it. Once before he had shown Dark this slowness of time and place, and Dark – like Satoshi and Daisuke – had been all but unaffected. Krad thought it had something to do with their talents, but it had never been something he had had the time to prove.
Krad's lips twitched, at the irony of him running out of time – time was something Krad had so misused and manipulated he had once taken for granted that it would always be in his favor. Yet there were other forces at work in the world beyond time, call it fate or fortune or luck or destiny. The eons were ruled by them.
Krad closed his eyes and thought of Dark, what made him who he was, his personality, his body and bones and blood. He flexed his fingers in that silky hair, trying to tug the two together, into the here and now, like two sides of the same coin and two magnates, fighting his force of will.
Frustrated, he opened his eyes, knowing now it would not work. Dark was not dead, but here – somewhere. Krad looked about the medical lab, as if hoping to see some sign of Dark who was much like his name. Peter Pan like, Dark was a shadow of Daisuke who had will and ways of his own.
"Where are you?" Krad asked of the empty room. Brother he called Satoshi, but he had a bond with Dark that was warm and beating within him. It had called them together. With the force of the bond behind his question, Dark answered, and opened his eyes. They were all black, like a pit of pitch, as if the pupil had swallowed whites and iris whole.
All there was…was Dark.
The bond between them tightened, and beat like a frightened thing. Dark alone was like Krad without Satoshi – which Krad had never been, even if Satoshi had slept most of the years away. It was wrong.
Dark smiled as if he knew it was, and didn't care.
"Where is Daisuke?" Krad asked soft into the silence between them. Dark's eyes did not sway from staring at Krad's face.
"Where you can never reach him Krad, he's safe. He's where he belongs, protected." There was bitterness to Dark's words; as if he wasn't sure he liked what he had to say.
Krad hisses between his teeth, soft like a snake. It wasn't enough that Dark didn't like it that underlined that something had gone very wrong. Krad was sure that Dark had meant to protect Daisuke, but if this was the result in Dark – it wasn't at all right.
"Can you reach him, Dark?" Krad couldn't let himself panic, it would do no one any good and might hurt them all in the long run. If he lost the least bit of control with Dark watching, it might drive Dark to mistrust him.
As it was the distaste he had hissed was being taken for warning, but Dark didn't see anything wrong with what he said – he was watching Krad as if he expected to be threatened. It was very crude to think that Dark was the yin to Daisuke's yang, and Krad was likewise to Satoshi, crude, yes – but not altogether incorrect.
One without the other was unbalanced, dangerously so. The more so true with Dark, who shared Daisuke's body…Krad had his theory to why that was. It was time to see if theory proved true.
"I could, if I wanted to. He's safer without me." Dark's eyes shone with wetness, but he did not seem to notice he was near tears.
"That's not true, Dark, you know it and so do I." Krad had not been the only one to tell Daisuke and Satoshi what had happened to him as if they were bed time stories. Krad had listened in, though Dark might not always have noticed it.
"Ah, you know it, but can you prove it?" Krad smiled, and if it was not a very nice smile he thought Dark would not hold it against him. Neither of them was naturally inclined to be…nice.
"Would he have been safe without you, that night his – your – parents would have parted him of his wings?" Dark was very still, and those pitch eyes very cold.
"He would have survived it." Dark spoke softly, a truth he hated. Krad's gold eyes flashed against those words, and he spoke hastily in protest.
"He would have been crippled." Krad loved to fly and had taught Satoshi and Daisuke how, for Dark had never learned the art of it. Dark had had shadows, shadows he could become one with and could part from in form at another place entirely. To say that Dark was Daisuke's shadow was not exactly all he was – or had been.
Dark's wings mantled, threatening at the thought.
"You've saved him and watched over him all his life…why? So you can take him over now?" Satoshi had told him that Dark would love him, but Krad had decided if it was between saving Daisuke or Dark, it would be Daisuke. This life, this body, was meant to be Daisuke – for all that he shared it willing and gladly with Dark.
"It's…it is what he wants." Dark cried, openly and unaware of his own weeping. His words hurt his heart, Krad was sure.
"Are you so sure, Dark? What if he doesn't want to be hidden away…" Krad could not think of how Daisuke must feel, locked away from his own senses. He knew he had to hurry, for there was a risk that Daisuke might not be himself if his sprit was split too long from his body.
Such a thing should only happen at death, but Dark and Daisuke had tied their spirits together, and so deep was their bond that they shared a body that shaped itself into what form pleased it's spirit best. If Daisuke did not want to return to the body that Dark had taken and kept, he would die in truth – and Dark would die with him. It was something Krad dared not think long upon.
"I…I don't know. I…I can't reach him." Dark blinked away his tears, his irritation at himself plain to see. Krad offered his hand, and for all that Dark had become cold and lonely, he did not hesitate in taking it and entwining their fingers together.
Krad felt the bond throb, beating like a second heartbeat, calling Daisuke home with warmth, with darkness and light. He thought of his fingers pulling away from a lake, the stillness of time fading away. The body beside Krad's own took a shuddering breath, and red hair and ruby eyes met his eyes.
"It…it won't work, we've got to save Rogue – all those people, dying - I saw, saw so many, it – Magneto!" Daisuke shuddered and closed his eyes tight as if he had seen something terrible. No, not merely something, many things in many different ways... Krad straightened thoughtfully, and took out his cell phone intent on giving the guests upon his island a call they could not afford to ignore. To do so would insult him, their host – and Magneto would not do something like that so lightly.
"Toad speaking…" The youngest member of the Brotherhood sounded so chipper, it felt like a foreign feeling. Krad looked up as a man wheeled himself into the lab, sitting patiently before him, hopeful. Krad knew this man had heard thoughts that belonged to him – to Daisuke – and to Dark.
He did not mean to eavesdrop; he simply could not seem to help who and what he was. He was, Krad knew, Charles Xavier.
"You are to stop the plan as of now." Krad demanded hotly, authority ringing in his voice.
"Stop? Stop, but…why?" Toad sounded hurt and lost, and Krad was not truly surprised to hear the voice that addressed him next.
"Yes, Krad – why stop now, when we are so close to what we all want?" Magneto might be a hard man, as hard as the metals he manipulated, but he was hot about his passions and his ethics and the people he counted as his own. He only seemed cold and unmovable, this Krad knew. In that way, Krad and he were much alike.
"I've an old friend of yours who can explain it all better than I before it is too late to turn back. There will be other opportunities." Krad gave over the phone to Charles Xavier, who took it with a look as if he might break it if he handled it with less care than precious crystal glass or prized chinaware.
"Hello, Erik. All I ask is for a little faith, if not in me than in science and what we've observed in the aftermath of your theory and test." It was a beginning, Krad knew – but he did not know to what.
Daisuke had calmed in the moments that Krad had started things in motion, and sat leaning comfortably against his side, a small surprised but pleased smile upon his lips.
It was very like as if he had not but hoped to see something like this happening.
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THE END
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