notes/warnings

+ not a lot, actually.

+ this is the chapter of Various Backstories.

Part Nineteen

They go for a walk around the temple.

"So," Natori says, politely. "How are things?"

Tanuma considers this question carefully. He knows that Natsume isn't close to Natori, and therefore it would be a mistake to divulge too much information.

"Fine," he replies. "Everything is okay."

"I'm sorry that Natsume is avoiding you," Natori says. "He shouldn't be-"

"Natsume isn't doing anything wrong," Tanuma says, firmly.

And here he is, interrupting an adult – a very famous adult – to start what is potentially going to be an argument. A year ago Tanuma would have nodded meekly and held his tongue. A few months ago he would have stuttered and apologised for his disagreement. But now, he is certain in what he has to say.

Is this what it means to be grown up?

"Isn't he?" Natori asks. "So it was right for him to keep you in the dark, and push you away from the spirit world for all these years?"

"Without him, I wouldn't have even known about the spirit world," Tanuma says.

"That's true," Natori muses. "You have no spiritual ability yourself, so I suppose it is different."

Different from what? Tanuma wonders.

"Anyway, I just came to check that you were okay," Natori continues, smiling luminously. "As it turns out, you're a very important person. I would hate for you to be harmed."

"Did this happen to you?" Tanuma asks, suddenly understanding.

Natori waves a hand in the air dismissively.

"I'm no healer, I promise you," he says.

"Not that," Tanuma says. "This whole situation. Did you ever have someone who tried to keep you away from something? Were they a friend?"

Natori actually hesitates, and Tanuma feels like he's won some sort of intangible adult victory.

"They're not a friend any more," Natori says, eventually. "And it was different, because I can see spirits on my own."

"So why did he want to keep you out?"

"I was a little bit weaker than he was, I suppose," Natori says, smiling wryly. "I decided we should stop being friends after that. People shouldn't try to control other people."

"Is what I do wrong?" Tanuma enquires. "Am I trying to control people by swapping with them?"

Natori rubs his chin.

"You would make an incredibly evil villain, Tanuma Kaname," he says, patting Tanuma's head. "But as a good person, no. I don't believe you're doing anything wrong. You give people health, and generally they don't even know what you've done. You don't ask for anything in return."

"Natsume is good, too," Tanuma says. "He doesn't try to control people. He's not like your friend with the eye-patch."

"You're guessing, now," Natori says, sounding uncomfortable. "Anyway, I agree that Natsume is an extremely good person, but that doesn't mean that there is nothing left for him to learn."

"This isn't a lesson," Tanuma argues, annoyed. "This is his decision."

"Perhaps he will change his mind," Natori says, thoughtfully.

"Perhaps you should make up with your old friend," Tanuma shoots back. He hates anyone saying anything bad about Natsume. Natsume has done nothing wrong. "You're the one who decided you should part, right? You could go back and change things at any time."

Natsume has done hardly anything wrong.

"I don't think I want to," Natori says, evenly.

"That's fine," Tanuma says. "But that's your choice. You are a lot luckier than me, because I don't get to choose."

Natori blinks at him, and then smiles.

"You are growing into a fine young man, Tanuma," he says, warmly. "Keep doing what you are doing."

"Okay," Tanuma replies, because he isn't really sure how he ought to respond.

Natori leaves not long after that. They don't really have anything else to talk about.

Days pass. Natsume spends a lot of his free time talking to Nyanko. He agrees to relocate a field-spirit who has been causing disruptions in the forest, and ends up needing Taki's help. At school, he catches himself doodling tables and Tanuma's first name in his margins. He thinks this is how it's going to be. He's always going to be miserable. And the end of school is looming huge on the horizon, and he's scared of everything changing. He's scared of forgetting what he so desperately wanted. He's scared of not forgetting.

On Thursday, he and Taki sift through several glossy florist catalogues, trying to find a suitable bouquet for him to take to Aoi's relatives. Natsume should have done this sooner, but even now he has trouble concentrating.

"I think white would be most appropriate," Taki muses. "Maybe lilies and other water flowers, since she was a fish?"

"Yeah," Natsume replies, distractedly.

Taki nearly got badly hurt yesterday. She was pushed off the edge of a steep incline by the field-spirit, and it was only luck that Nyanko had managed to grab her arm to stop her from falling. Natsume's still feels tense when he thinks about it. He doesn't want Taki to get hurt, and he has to prove to Tanuma that he can protect Taki from harm. He needs Tanuma to trust him and not swap with both of them all the time.

He needs so many things right now, and he's so lonely, and he can't stand it.

"Are you worried?" Natsume blurts out, suddenly.

"About what?" Taki asks, calmly.

"About Tanuma," Natsume admits. "About what he can do. Aren't you worried that he might swap with someone and get seriously hurt, or die?"

Taki puts the catalogue down, and turns to Natsume. Her gaze is scrutinizing, and uncharacteristically cold.

"Do you really want to talk about this?" she asks, voice neutral.

"Yes."

He's so tired of not knowing anything about Tanuma. He wants to be able to mirror Taki's grace. He still has his whole life ahead of him.

"Good," Taki says. "Of course I'm worried about Tanuma. He's my friend."

"It's kind of awful, though, isn't it?" Natsume says, mostly to himself. "I feel helpless. I've done everything I can, and I still don't know if I'll be able to protect him."

"I don't know," Taki replies. "I guess I'm used to it."

Natsume blinks at her, feeling suddenly lost.

"Used to it?" he asks. "Why? Did…did you know before I did?"

"No," Taki says, loudly. "I'm used to it because of you."

Wait, what?

"Because of me? But I'm not a heal-"

"No," Taki says, getting to her feet. "But you're out there fighting spirits every other day, and half the spirits you've ever met are trying to eat or hurt you. I've always been worried for you, and now I'm worried for Tanuma, too."

Natsume shakes his head, and takes a step back.

"No," he says. "It isn't the same."

"Yes it is," Taki snaps. "What you're going through now is what Tanuma and I go through every day, being friends with you."

"No," Natsume says, again.

"You haven't even thought about it, have you?" Taki demands. "Back before all of this happened, whenever you were out dealing with spirits, Tanuma and I used to spend hours on the phone just wondering whether you were okay. We knew there was nothing we could do to protect you. We knew we had to trust in you, and believe that you would be fine."

Taki hesitates, as if waiting for a reaction. Natsume doesn't move for a full minute. Then, slowly, he presses his hands flat against his face. He feels as if he's been kicked in the stomach.

"Oh my," he breathes. "What have I done?"

The whole point was for his friends to never get hurt, and to never worry. But humans always get attached to other humans. He should have known. He should never have made friends in the first place. He should never have told anyone his secrets. He should live the life of his grandmother, solitary and alone, devoid of human contact.

"Look," Taki says, tiredly, "you don't have to be friends with Tanuma if it's painful or you can't handle it, but don't act like he's done anything wrong. Because if you think he's doing something wrong, then you're just a hypocrite!"

He's…a hypocrite?

"I don't want you to worry," Natsume mumbles. "Please don't worry for me."

"I will worry for you," Taki says, steadily. "And that's okay. We're friends. You worry for me and I have accepted that part of your life involves putting yourself in danger. I'm okay with it."

Natsume scrubs a hand over his face.

"I'm glad," he breathes. "I'm glad I still have you. Listen, what you've just told me, can you go and tell Tanuma all of that as well? Can you tell him that I'm sorry, and that none of this is his fault? I don't want him to feel bad about our friendship ending."

"So you're still not talking to him?" Taki asks, sounding disappointed.

"We can't be friends," Natsume says. "It's too dangerous. I'm sorry. I can't hurt him any more than I already have."

Taki nods.

"Okay," she says. "But I don't really want to talk to you right now. I think you should leave."

"I will," Natsume says, weakly.

Tanuma spends his lunch period with Kitamoto and Nishimura. They sit in the sun, lazily passing a baseball to each other and talking about girls.

"I can't wait for university," Kitamoto says, enthusiastically. "Next year, I'm definitely going to get a girlfriend."

"You can't just say that," Nishimura complains. "You can't unilaterally decide to get a girlfriend. You need a girl to like you as much as you like her, and there's no guarantee of that."

Tanuma nudges Nishimura gently.

"What about you?" he asks. "Are you going to confess to Taki on the last day of school? You would have nothing to lose, right?"

Nishimura sort of curls up on the spot, and hugs his own knees.

"I don't know," he says, forlornly. "I mean, she probably already knows how I feel, right? And what if I told her that I loved her and she didn't say the same thing back to me? What if she didn't even acknowledge it? That would probably make me feel horrible."

Tanuma feels his chest tighten unpleasantly.

"Yeah," he says, softly. "It does make you feel horrible."

Some things are so enormous, so large and important, that there are no words that are appropriate. 'I'm sorry' doesn't even come close, and 'thank you' seems unacceptably trite. So Natsume ends up just standing there, awkwardly, mosquitos buzzing around his legs and flowers wilting in his hands.

Hikari sits on a rock at the edge of the lake. She still has long red hair, like she did the last time they met, but now she has scales on her hands and arms, and long gills curving from her jaw to her neck.

Perhaps Aoi would have looked the same, when she got older. Natsume will never know. She loved him and followed him around and protected his friends, and he barely knew anything about her. Natsume starts to weep, fat tears rolling down his cheeks, breath hitching. He's been crying a lot recently.

Hikari gets up from the water and walks towards him. She stops a few feet away, her expression absolutely neutral. She is dressed entirely in grey, as if in mourning.

"I should eat you," she says, emphatically.

Something in a nearby bush starts growling in a suspiciously Nyanko-like way. Hikari snorts, and turns away.

"But that wouldn't bring my sister back," she says. "Nothing will."

"I'm sorry," Natsume says, sniffling pathetically. "I am so, so sorry."

Hikair hesitates.

"Do you have brothers or sisters?" she asks.

Natsume shakes his head.

"Then go away," Hikari says. "You don't know how I feel. You don't know this sadness, and you never, ever will. We were going to travel out to the ocean next spring. She had never seen ocean fish, and I was going to show her."

Natsume feels his throat tighten. He is lucky that all his precious people are alive, even if his own plans have been similarly crushed. He did the right thing by pushing Tanuma away. He doesn't want to feel this sort of grief.

"I know there's nothing I can do," Natsume says, softly. "Aoi was trying to protect me and the other humans I cared about, and I didn't even realise what she was doing until it was too late."

"I wish I had been there," Hikari says, sadly. "I wish I had been there to say goodbye. She was so important to me. She was my only little sister."

"To say goodbye?" Natsume asks, surprised enough that he stops crying. "What do you mean? Wouldn't you have tried to stop her?"

"Autonomy is important," Hikari says. "People should be allowed to do what they want with their lives."

Natsume feels himself getting angry, despite everything. Aoi was just a little girl.

"What she wanted to do was die," Natsume says. "Are you telling me that you're okay with that? I thought you loved her."

"My," Hikari says, twirling a lock of hair aimlessly around her fingers. "You're still only a child, aren't you? You cannot love someone by putting them in a cage. That is selfish. I respect what Aoi chose to do, but I still grieve. I wish she had not died, but I would not see her denied her choices."

Tears start to prick at the corners of Natsume's eyes again. He wanted closure, but all he is getting is frustration. He sets the flowers carefully on the ground.

"I should go," he says. "The world of spirits is very different to the world of humans."

Hikari tilts her head back.

"It was a human who taught me to think like this," she announces. "Decades ago. She was young, like you are now, but she was obviously a little bit smarter."

"She was wrong," Natsume insists.

"I was mourning the loss of one of my older brothers. She sat next to the lake, and held my hand until the sun rose. She told me that it was impossible to force another being to stay alive. She told me that all we could do was enjoy what time we had with them as best we could. I never forgot what she said."

Natsume feels suddenly hopeless. What sort of world is it where all people can do is accept the fate of others? What is the point of being alive, of being in love, if even a powerful spirit like Hikari can do nothing?

"It's ironic," Hikari says, kicking at the water's surface, "because that human would surely be dead by now. But I remember how beautiful she was. She had this book, and she used to collect the names of-"

"No," Natsume says, suddenly, shaking his head. "Reiko would never have said anything like that. You're lying."

"Reiko," Hikari says, spine stiff. "Yes. That's right."

"Reiko was my grandmother," Natsume informs her. "My grandmother spent her whole life alone. She would never have talked about enjoying time with people, because she never had any people. You're lying."

Reiko is Natsume's destiny. He doesn't want Reiko to have had anyone important in her life, because then he wouldn't be able to punish himself for what he did to Tanuma.

Wait, what?

"She didn't have any people growing up," Nyanko says, waddling out from under the bushes and casually joining the conversation as if he hasn't been spying on them the whole time. "She was a lonely kid, just like you. But…you do know you had a grandfather, right?"

"The young man with the beard who owned the old calico cat," Hikari says, splashing a little. "He was very handsome. They were friends for three years before they started courting. "

Natsume shakes his head. Obviously he had a grandfather. He knew all along, intellectually, that Reiko got married and had children, but he had never really considered what that meant.

"Hikari was friends with your grandmother in her happier days," Nyanko says. "Being an adult isn't so bad. "

"I knew she loved him the day his cat died, and she asked all of the spirits in the region if there was anything we could do to bring it back to life, somehow," Hikari says, dreamily. "She called in all of her favours, just to make him happy. And then they got – what is the word – married. And they had children. Her children used to fish at this exact lake. Gosh, that was all so long ago. Aoi was only a fry back then."

Hikari turns and smiles at him.

"Thank you, grandson of Reiko," she says. "You have made me recall such good memories."

Natsume doesn't move. He can't move. He's still frozen with the implications of everything that has been said.

"Come on, idiot," Nyanko says, butting at his ankles. "Let's go home."

"I…can't," Natsume manages. "There are some other things I need to do first."

tbc

a/n

+ thank you for reading. you guys are all wonderful, lovely people and I adore you.