A/N: All right, time for the first of our bonus stories! This one will dive into the relationship of Ashura the elder and Taishakuten, our RG Veda crossover characters. As I mentioned earlier, Taishakuten spends most of RG Veda being a jerk, but I've always loved the few romantic glimpses of this couple available in the series, and I love the doujinshi CLAMP wrote placing them in the CLAMP School-verse. I really enjoyed writing this, so I hope you enjoy!
Rating: Been missing the M rating? It's back!
Timeline: Before the events of Chapter One, extending to Chapter Seven (aftermath of the flood).
0o0o0o0o0o0
Outcomes
Taishakuten was bored. He always was. He was certain he had been born into the most boring village in the world. The rice fields were boring, the small stall in the marketplace his family ran was boring, and all the men and women everyone else delighted in gossiping about were boring. The landowner and his house full of seven daughters were particularly boring; all they ever thought about was creating heirs, and since they were incapable of actually doing it, they spent their lives projecting into the future, imagining the household full of squealing baby boys that eluded them. He wanted to scream at them that nothing would ever change. Even the people who moved to the village from elsewhere became like everyone else: blank minded, bland, and painfully ordinary.
Taishakuten slumped forward in the booth where he was supposed to be arranging the bowls and cups so that anyone passing by could see their quality and hand painted details. It was pointless. The next customers would just pick them up, paw at them, and put them back down in whichever direction they pleased. Being showy was wasted on these people, but that didn't stop his mother from begging him to make an effort whenever he helped her manage the stall.
"How dull," he muttered under his breath. He lifted his eyes to watch the women strolling to and from the stalls, and a few of the younger ones started giggling when he caught their eyes. He scowled at them and looked away. The only thing on their minds was marriage and a family, and he had no desire to reproduce with such common people and fill the village with even more commonness.
"If you were planning on being so useless, you should have just stayed at home," his mother snapped, swatting him with a dust cloth. "At least smile at the customers and reel us in some pretty woman who wants to spend money in front of you."
Taishakuten grumbled, but softened his glare just a little. He liked his mother more than most other people. She had a sharp tongue on her, and wasn't afraid to tell him exactly how much he grated on her nerves.
A middle aged woman paused at their stall, admiring a sake cup that had caught her attention. Since Taishakuten wasn't giving any indication of starting a conversation, his mother quickly stepped in. "How are you today, Aoki-san?"
"Very well." The woman leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Have you heard what everyone's talking about? A young man from the capital is moving into the village this afternoon. Rumor has it that he's the son of a military commander. The eldest son, I believe."
"Why on earth would someone like that come here?" Taishakuten asked. "Is his secret ambition to be a rice farmer?"
Aoki-san smiled politely at him, doing her best to ignore his needlessly blunt tone. "It's my understanding that he's more for studying than war. Our poor landowner may have more on his mind right now, but when he was younger, he had a passion for collecting ancient texts. All of them still remain in their house, to my knowledge."
"How dull," Taishakuten grumbled. Surely the only thing worse than being a farmer or merchant was to be a scholar. Why couldn't the lucky little twit just have gone into the military like his father, since it was the one place where things actually happened?
"In any case, the boy should be arriving with a merchant from the capital," Aoki-san continued. "If you were planning to go to trade or restock, that would be a good time to catch a glimpse of him."
"The poor thing is a child, not an exotic pet," Taishakuten's mother scolded. But as soon as Aoki-san purchased the cup and moved on, she knelt down in front of her son with a smile on her face. "All right, Boredom-kun," she said. "You want something to do? Go meet that merchant and see if he has a piece like what we're missing in the ceremonial tea set your father got a hold of a few weeks ago."
"I don't care about seeing some boring bookworm," Taishakuten said.
"I don't care either. All I care about is getting you out of my hair for an hour so you can stop scaring off our paying customers with those cold eyes of yours." She grabbed his cheeks and gave them a hearty pinch. "Get on with you, now."
The village outside of the marketplace during the work week was the dullest thing about it. All of the men were in the fields, worrying about things like irrigation, harvest, and droughts, leaving the streets empty of everyone but the occasional wife or daughter heading to and from the market. Taishakuten could respect their constant chattering about it- the survival of the village depended on their success, after all- but he had heard it all so many times that it had become yet another thing he had lost interest in.
A small crowd had gathered nearby near the sprawling house where the landowner lived with his seven daughters, the place where the road intersected with the route leading to the capital. The merchant and illustrious new visitor hadn't arrived yet, evidently. Taishakuten yawned and lazily climbed up the tree overlooking the road. Maybe he could take a nap while he waited.
The very moment he shut his eyes, a shrill voice shrieked, "There they are!" He cracked open one eye. A large cart was being wheeled down the road by a capital merchant, and walking alongside him was a raven haired young man wearing the kind of fancy robes the people in this part of the country could only dream of owning.
The fancy boy pulled off his sun hat, and all of a sudden Taishakuten could understand why the young woman had been so excited to see him. For an alleged scholar, he was actually quite strong in appearance. He had broad shoulders and muscled arms, and both his chin and ears were slightly pointed. His hair was by far his best feature with its long and dark silkiness, falling past his shoulders and pooling like ink. Taishakuten also liked his face, which was more cold and unsmiling than he had imagined it would be.
The landowner broke through the crowd to stand before the young visitor, who promptly bowed in respect. "Ashura-kun, I take it?" he said, smiling widely. Taishakuten could clearly see the gears turning in his head: this kid, even though he had abandoned his birthright, would make the perfect suitor for one of his daughters.
Taishakuten scowled. What a waste that would be! Whoever this kid was, he was far from the ordinary throngs who never shut up about their petty concerns and held the intrigues of leaders and warriors they had never met as their dearest treasures. He was the very picture of cool detachment, much like Taishakuten himself, and it was a bit painful to imagine what living with one of the landowner's brow beaten and determinedly motherly daughters would do to him.
But what would suit him? Taishakuten tilted his head, trying to study him without revealing his position in the tree. This Ashura, if he managed not to get swept up in the pettiness of the village, had the potential of being quite interesting. Taishakuten liked discontent people on principle, because a part of them did not accept the dull and pointless way things were. Ashura's looks were another thing that worked in his favor. He was beautiful without being showy, and gave off the air of someone who could be looked at but not approached, which made Taishakuten all the more hungry to rise to the challenge.
The landowner gestured Ashura forward to come inside the big house, but Ashura said something in a voice almost too quiet to hear about paying his debt to the merchant who had escorted him. The landowner indicated he would come to fetch him again in a few moments and scurried off, presumably to dig up one of his many daughters.
Taishakuten swung down from the tree, landing only a few steps away from Ashura. The crowd backed away, as always treating his chronic boredom and penchant for stirring up trouble like an infectious disease they were in danger of catching.
Ashura regarded him without a single change in his gloomy expression. Taishakuten wondered if it was exhausting for him to be so serious all the time, or if it simply came naturally to him.
"Hello," Ashura said. His voice, now that Taishakuten could at last hear it properly, was formal and dignified, like the rest of him.
"Ashura-kun, huh?" He circled him like a vulture, studying him from every angle. In spite of his strength, Ashura's back and chest were quite slim. Without asking for permission, Taishakuten lifted one of Ashura's arms to test its firmness, and then drew up a few strands of his dark hair to his nose, breathing it in. The hair was just as silky as he thought it would be, and smelled like lavender.
"Well?" Ashura asked expectantly, as if he was awaiting the results of Taishakuten's analysis.
"You'll do."
"For what?"
Taishakuten considered this. At seventeen, he was well past the age of needing a playmate, and he didn't have much of an interest in making friends since he wasn't concerned with gossiping about the village girls or all the joys of tending to the land. The only aspects of adult life that enthralled him were arguing and love making, and Ashura looked as if he had the potential to be adept with both.
"For sex," Taishakuten said, testing the waters. To either directly accept or reject would be the common response, and he wanted to see what Ashura would do.
"Do you run a brothel?" Ashura asked, his eyes perfectly serious.
"No."
"Then you're asking for yourself?"
"Yes."
"And do you want sex just the once, or multiple times?"
Taishakuten grinned. This guy was teasing him quite delightfully, but with such complete earnestness that it could hardly be called teasing. "Multiple times, preferably."
"Hmm. Well, to be honest, I didn't really come here for that." He turned away abruptly, handing over a small bag full of coins to the merchant. The conversation almost seemed to be concluded on his side, but he turned his head to look over his shoulder, his sharp eyes skirting over Taishakuten's features.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Taishakuten."
"Tai-kun, then. I wonder what the consequence would be if I slept with you."
Taishakuten was taken aback for a moment. "The hell if I know. It might hurt a bit."
"Of course. But what would it change in the future? Would it end up effecting us both in some particular way later on?" Ashura seemed to consider this in the privacy of his head for a moment. "I'll have to think about it."
Taishakuten shook his head in amazement. What was with this guy? Did he take everything that was said to him so seriously, or was it all an elaborate ruse to punish Taishakuten for being so forward to him?
"Ah, he's back," Ashura said. The landowner had returned, unsurprisingly with his elder daughter Shashi at his side. Shashi was still in her miko robes and had an expression on her face as if she had just eaten a sour grape.
"I work in the marketplace every morning," Taishakuten informed Ashura. "If you ever want to play, come find me."
"I'll think about it," Ashura repeated. The landowner and Shashi were approaching them, but Taishakuten could still feel Ashura's eyes following him as he headed back to his mother, seeing him in a way that was very far from boring.
0o0o0o0o0o0
To his surprise, Ashura showed up at the market the very next day. He didn't walk up to Taishakuten's stall at first, but milled around a bit, buying an ink stone and calligraphy pens and answering the insipid questions of the villagers who approached him.
"New kid?" his father grunted, wiping down one of the rice bowls a customer had just finished handling. "The one staying in the big house?"
"He's quite pretty," his mother noted. "And quite... focused. Or perhaps solemn?"
"Gloomy," Taishakuten corrected. "And touched in the head."
"So you like him, no doubt."
"No doubt."
A few minutes later, Ashura appeared in front of their stall, his lips pressed into the same tight line they had been the day before. "Tai-kun," he said. "I asked my hosts about you after we talked yesterday."
"Oh, great," Taishakuten said drily. "I bet they had wonderful things to say."
"Yes. They said you were an inconsiderate whelp, and that they had considered marrying you to Shashi-san before you went and called her a-"
His mother started laughing. "Oh, no need to say that one in polite company. It was a lot meaner than 'inconsiderate whelp'."
Taishakuten shrugged. Shashi had been decent when she was younger, but adulthood had ruined her. Her disinterest in marriage paired with her father's fanatical verve to pair her off and have her give birth to a son had left her with a sour constitution and prickly attitude that far outstripped Taishakuten's.
To his added surprise, Ashura's face melted into the warmest smile he thought he'd ever seen. "I liked the stories they told me about you," he said earnestly. "They were very funny. Your bluntness is refreshing."
Taishakuten pressed a hand over his heart, which was suddenly beating loudly. What the hell is wrong with this guy, he asked himself yet again, but there was nothing wrong with him other than the fact that he was perfect. Solemn, pensive, gloomy, and touched in the head, but all of that was just as beautiful as the smile he wore on his face.
Without thinking about it any further, he leaned forward and kissed Ashura's upturned lips. For having spent so often drawn into a closed line, they felt soft beneath his, and alluringly yielding. Oh yes, he thought. You'll do. You'll do perfectly, you and no one else.
His parents grabbed him by the shoulders and yanked him back. "Sorry about that, Ashura-kun," his mother said with a forced smile. "He has no sense of occasion."
"Oh, no," Ashura murmured, pressing his hands to his lips. "That was fine. But I wonder... I wonder what this will change?"
All three of them stared at him blankly as he wandered back in the direction of the big house, lost in thought. "Wait," Taishakuten's mother muttered to herself. "What was that?"
Taishakuten shook his head and smiled. He hoped it changed plenty of things. He wanted to see that smile again, to taste it with his own. Finally, for the very first time, his life seemed to have a purpose other than being a source of infinite dullness. A very beautiful, solemn purpose.
0o0o0o0o0o
After that, every time Taishakuten finished up his work in the market, he stopped by the big house to visit Ashura. Shashi and her father were less than thrilled, but still seemed willing to make allowances for their guest from the capital. According to the village rumor mill, Ashura was not only an eldest son, but the eldest of five. And when it came to families with sons, the landowner always made allowances.
As Ashura read his books and scribbled down notes that Taishakuten wasn't literate enough to understand, he would engage in long, and often one-sided, conversations with Taishakuten. He seemed to have an odd fixation with the future and how much of it was written in stone. With everything he did, he confessed, he wondered if it would greatly change his fate, or if it would unfold a certain way regardless of what direction he tried to steer it. He didn't want to make any mistakes or cause anything bad to happen, but at the same time he wasn't completely certain he could control everything on his own, or if a bad future was an inevitability that nothing he could do would change. Unsurprisingly, most of the books he borrowed from the landowner seemed to have something to say on the subject, twisting his thoughts even further in every direction.
That afternoon, he set aside his books and ink stone and papers and sat on his mat, studying Taishakuten's face for a long time. "Were you serious?" he asked finally, his solemn voice sounding a little bit fragile.
"About...?"
"When you said you wanted to have sex with me. Were you serious?"
Taishakuten nodded. "Very serious."
"Do you still want to?"
"Even more than I did before." Taishakuten lifted an eyebrow. "Do you want to?"
"Yes."
"Really? Have you decided something bad won't happen?"
"No." He crawled over so he was close enough for Taishakuten to touch him. "But I think we should."
Taishakuten wanted to take him up on it immediately, but he was half-convinced that Ashura would change his mind partway through. He kissed him tentatively, giving him that one chance to run away. He wouldn't let him go afterward, so he felt it was only right to give him a moment to confirm his choice, to be certain that this was really what he wanted, even if it brought cataclysm down upon them.
But Ashura didn't resist. If anything, he pushed the kiss deeper and deeper, sinking to the floor and pulling Taishakuten down on top of him. Taishakuten stumbled through removing Ashura's clothes, deciding it was not worth getting in trouble for destroying the high quality silk in his haste, and Ashura helped him with it, guiding his hands in between pulling off Taishakuten's more simplistic robes.
"Aren't all the girls still in the house?" Taishakuten remembered belatedly. He didn't really care at this point if they made enough noise to raise the dead, but he felt like he should bring it up in case Ashura didn't want to do something to jeopardize his living situation.
"I'll be quiet," Ashura insisted, curling his legs around Taishakuten's waist. "Please, don't think of anything right now."
Taishakuten grinned, bending down to kiss Ashura's beautifully pale body while preparing him with his fingers. Ashura, true to his word, was very quiet, pressing his hand tightly against his lips to muffle the worst of it.
Why are you doing this? He wanted to ask it so badly. He had decided at this point that he had fallen in love, possibly from the first moment he laid eyes on Ashura's complexly veiled face, but he wasn't that he could say the same thing for Ashura. Was he simply tempting fate here, or testing how far he could go without destroying the purity of the future?
Ashura moved his hand away for a moment. "Tai-kun, please, please don't think right now. Just feel me. Then you'll understand."
That was enough for him. Without waiting any longer, he went inside, gratified by a soft gasp that Ashura just barely managed to muffle again.
"Fantastic," Taishakuten murmured. "You're fantastic. So unexpected and strange and fantastic."
"You... too..."
"I love you, you know that? I won't be bored anymore, as long as you're here."
"Tai-kun... please just... please show me..."
He pushed in again, trying hard to contain his excitement and keep quiet himself. Ashura was at last displaying the haphazardness he usually kept closeted in his mind, all of the beautiful confusion of his thought and desires spilling forth and leaving him completely exposed. If there wasn't a family on the other side of the doors, he would go completely wild with him. He would show him everything, and then some.
As their pace increased, it grew harder for Ashura to contain everything inside of him. He had to press his face against Taishakuten's chest to hold it back completely, but the feel of suppressed moans against bare skin was enough to push them both over the edge. They both collapsed at the same time, tangling together and panting with the exhaustion of fulfilled desire and both containing and releasing so much all at once.
"I'm so worried all the time about something bad happening," Ashura said between deep breaths. "But even if something bad happens, I wanted to do that."
"Don't talk as if it's something you're going to take away when you decide to leave," Taishakuten growled. "I signed up for multiple times."
"Multiple times is fine. Just not yet." Ashura wiped a bit of sweat from his forehead. "You're beautifully straightforward. But I don't think I've held anything as certain in my life."
"Maybe you should start."
"Maybe I should. But I can't help not wanting something horrible to happen to people I care about."
"Does that include me now?"
Ashura granted him one of his beatific smiles. "I wonder," he said simply, "what this will change?"
0o0o0o0o0o
"Don't get so smug," his mother said, placing her hands on her hips. "Just because the new boy's hot for you now doesn't mean that's going to change the fact that the landowner saw him first."
"I saw him first," Taishakuten corrected, wiping down a ceremonial tea bowl. "The landowner hadn't made it through the crowd yet to beat me to it."
"It doesn't matter. He wants to marry him off to Shashi. And the landowner's not exactly someone you can refuse."
"I thought Ashura's family outranked him."
"They do, but Ashura chose to live independently of his family when he came here. He's in the landowner's debt, even as we speak."
Taishakuten sighed in annoyance. "If Shashi needs a kid so bad, I'll sleep with her just the once. If it gets her to leave Ashura alone."
"Oh, right," his mother snorted derisively. "That will be a fun conversation! 'Please allow my son temporary liberties with your daughter so he can go on making love to the lovely young gentleman you're housing without interruption.' Think with your head for once!"
"I love him," Taishakuten said forcefully. "He's the only thing in this town that's interesting."
"And everything interesting gets sucked up by the world," his mother reminded him. "You said so yourself. Nothing is safe."
"But he..." Taishakuten trailed off. He couldn't imagine him married to Shashi, fitted neatly into the expectations she had been filled with by her parents. He would be lost in that world, swallowed up by it just as much as her spirit was. It would be the very disastrous future he was so fixated on avoiding.
"I won't let it happen," he said, scowling at his mother.
She smiled sadly. "There's only so much just you can do. It's up to Ashura, too, and I'm not certain that person has his head on straight enough to realize what exactly lies at the end of every future presented to him. Just keep that in mind, Taishakuten. You'd better figure out where you stand now, while you still have time."
0o0o0o0o0o
A few months later, Ashura stopped by Taishakuten's stall in the market, holding a letter tightly in his hands. "Where are your parents?" he asked. His voice sounded strangely hollow.
"Another merchant from the capital stopped by. What's the letter?"
"It's from an aunt of mine. I've never met her before... my uncle moved to the north years ago, and married her there. He's died since, leaving her behind with twins. She's moving to the village north of here, the place where my uncle used to live before he left."
"Is she asking you to visit?"
Ashura shook his head. "No. But I think it's time for me to go."
"What do you mean?"
"She sounds awful in this letter. It's a pretty bad case of low spirits, and I'm worried that if this goes on, she won't make it. It must be hard enough for her to look after the twins when she can barely even take care of herself."
"And you're saying-"
"That I want to go there. To be with them. They're only babies, and I don't want anything bad-"
"But you'll come back when they're all back on track, right?"
Ashura looked down at the ground. "Maybe."
"What the hell?" Taishakuten sucked in his breath. "So that's it, then? You've sated your curiosity, and now you're done?"
"That's not it."
"Then what is it? What else could it be?"
"It's just that I'm completely certain this time. Something will happen to those boys if nothing is done."
"Oh yeah? And what will happen if you leave me, huh? What if I make something bad happen to myself to show you just what happens when you toy with someone else's future?"
Ashura's face paled. "You wouldn't."
"Wouldn't I? I don't give a damn about living here without you. And if I followed you to where you're going, you'd just try to tell me it doesn't concern me and cut me out all the same. What do you want me to do? Didn't you think about this consequence when you slept with me?"
Ashura sighed miserably. "I told you. I don't want something horrible to happen to people I care about."
"So apparently you care about people you've never met more than me."
"It's not that!" Ashura cried. All eyes in the market turned to them. Ashura shook his head, balling up the letter in his hands. "I'm sorry. It's my fault. I can't change the way I am, and I'm sorry if it makes you hate me now. But I don't want to make a mistake that will cost us the future. I... I..." With a strangled moan, he turned tail and ran away from the stall, away from the person who loved him.
Taishakuten buried his head in his hands. What the hell is wrong with him? He wanted the answer, but he knew it was the wrong question to ask. He still loved him, in spite of everything. Maybe the person in the wrong was himself, for not being a person worth standing beside to the one who so badly needed one certain thing to place his fragile faith in.
0o0o0o0o0o
A few years passed, and Ashura hadn't come back. The landowner talked about him from time to time, so Taishakuten knew his aunt had died, leaving him in custody of the twins. He'd hoped Ashura would move them back to the village, but there never seemed to be any indication that he intended to come.
When morning came, Taishakuten pulled himself out of bed and began gathering their merchandise to begin setting up in the market. His mother and father were already eating at the table, leaving a heavy helping of rice waiting for him at his seat.
"Don't bother," his father grunted. "Market's closed."
"Why? Today isn't a holiday."
"The landowner's daughter is getting married. Shashi."
"To who?"
His mother looked at him, frowning. "Do you really need me to answer that question?" she asked. "But it seems like we'll be losing our miko. She'll be traveling north with him tomorrow morning."
Taishakuten stared at her, anger welling up inside of him. What the hell was he doing? Why her, of all people? Ashura had never showed even a passing interest in her, and she'd never shown interest in return. Even if he came from a family that had born healthy sons, why did that mean he had to marry her? How could it possibly lead him to the future he wanted?
With an incoherent snarl, Taishakuten stormed out of the house. Just as they'd said, the village had emptied. Everyone had gathered at the shrine, wanting to see the event the landowner had been dreaming of since his own wife passed her childbearing days. Taishakuten climbed up a nearby tree, waiting for the bridal party to emerge from within. He wondered if the twins were there. He wanted to hate them just as much as he hated Shashi for taking Ashura away from him. He wanted to, but the more forgiving part of him couldn't. Ashura had chosen for himself; they'd had no more say in it than he did.
When the guests finally emerged, his eyes immediately sought out Ashura. He was wearing the same solemn expression he'd had when they'd first met, but it was nothing near as spectacular as Shashi's pinched scowl. Two little boys were clinging to Ashura's hand, blonde, wide-eyed, and also appearing as if they were on the verge of tears. He'd never seen four such miserable people in his life, but the landowner's pleased grin made up for their aura of grief. He, at least, was one step closer to getting what he wanted.
Ashura paused his steps, passing the twin's hands to his new father-in-law. Without seeming to notice he'd stopped, the bridal party and guests went on without him, laughing and chattering and preparing for what would most likely be an extravagant and expensive feast at the big house.
Taishakuten swung down from the tree. Ashura was waiting for him, his eyes failing to register any change in emotion.
"Married, huh?" Taishakuten said finally. "I'd congratulate you, but you look like you've just come from a funeral."
"I don't regret doing it," Ashura said quietly. "Those boys... I'd like to think that I can do everything for them, but I can't. They need someone else."
"Her?"
"She's the one person I knew who was perfectly ready to deal with raising sons."
"That's not what your new father wants. He wants you two to have one of your own."
"I know." Ashura bent his head. "Tai-kun... it would be best if you hated me after this."
"Would it? Well, I'm sorry. I'd like to hate you, but I don't."
"You should. I love you, but I chose to do this anyway, even knowing exactly how it would make you feel. A person worthy of your love would never do something like that."
"I never said you were worthy. I just said I loved you." Taishakuten placed two fingers underneath Ashura's chin. "But you love me, hmm? You're willing to say that now."
"I wouldn't have slept with you if I didn't."
"Well... I guess it's nice to hear. Maybe it's a little too late, but it's still nice." He dropped his hand away. "If I'm being completely honest, I think you're going to give Shashi a horrible life. You don't love her, and I really doubt someone like her is capable of loving anyone either. So don't make it worse for her by dallying with another man minutes after marrying her. I'm a cruel guy, but not to that point." He smiled sadly. "If you ever want to play again, figure out how to do it without hurting us both again, all right?"
"All right. But still... you really should just hate me and let that be the end of it."
"It won't end so easily. You know that." He leaned against the trunk of the tree. "I guess the next time I'll see you, you'll be coming back to the village with your own brat."
Ashura nodded, looking even more miserable.
"Hope it looks like you. The twins are cute, but if you hadn't told me yourself, I'd never guess they were related to you."
"Me either. They're only seven, but... I think they're already a lot better off than me. Fai especially. He's got a special friend who reminds me a lot... of you."
Taishakuten sighed, turning his face away. "Well. I hope everything you did for them works out. And I hope you don't regret it."
"Yeah," Ashura said feebly. "Me, too."
0o0o0o0o0o
Taishakuten had expected to see him again much sooner, armed with a baby to appease his father-in-law. But years passed and passed, and slowly it had gotten to be over nine unbearable years that they'd been apart. It felt like a lifetime to Taishakuten, who'd fallen back into his old ways without Ashura there to convince him that there was something that kept the world from being a repetitive cycle of sameness.
And then a letter came for the landowner announcing the birth of a child. It was an oddly worded letter that gave no indication of whether the child was a boy or a girl or if Shashi was doing well following the delivery, but the landowner tried to be optimistic about it. "Has to be a boy, has to be!" he boomed. "See, they named it Ashura, after the father. That has to mean it's a boy."
But no further word came from the village until a merchant passed through to warn them that a flood had been foretold in the north. There was no indication that it would reach them, but the village where Ashura lived was supposedly in grave danger, although their own landowner seemed to be taking steps to keep them safe.
It did rain heavily in their own village, closing the market for a span. Taishakuten refused to be cooped up inside nonetheless, fearing that in spite of Ashura's actions, something bad was heading towards him. What if the flood was the very thing he had been worrying about from the beginning? What if he'd unknowingly damned himself and the twins and even his newborn child to die by leaving them in that village for all that time?
He paced the path back and forth, soaking himself in rain as he waited for someone to bring more news of what had happened. But day after day, no one came. He had nearly given up when a figure finally appeared on the road leading north, soaked and staggering forward slowly as it tried to shield a swaddled bundle from the worst of the elements.
Taishakuten ran forward to catch Ashura before he collapsed. His eyes were glistening, but there was no other sign of a fever from him. The child, whose golden eyes regarded him curiously when he picked it up, luckily seemed unharmed.
"Shashi..." Ashura gasped out. "I have to... tell her family. She's been trying... to kill it."
"Don't exhaust yourself," Taishakuten yelled. "I'll get you both inside. Just stay quiet and don't make it worse!"
When they were all safely indoors, Taishakuten toweled off both Ashura and his child, listening in confusion to Ashura's disjointed explanation of what had been happening to Shashi. "And Fai and Yui... I had no idea the flood was coming... I would have never have left them... Yui told me to leave, he seemed so certain so I thought there was a reason... what if I made a mistake?"
"Shut up!" Taishakuten yelled. "For once in your life, would you please just shut up! How can you possibly say that this is your fault? Did you tell it to rain? Did you tell Shashi to try and kill her own child, and you? Don't be so damn selfish! You're just a small portion of this outcome... I could have stopped you from leaving and marrying her, so why don't you blame me if you want to blame someone? But it won't change anything. Something bad happened, just like you always feared, so stop moping and figure out what we're going to do about it!"
Ashura's eyes widened, but he at last seemed to calm down. "We have to go back," he said finally. "We have to bring Yui and Fai here before she takes them. I don't know if what's wrong with her can be fixed, but if anyone can do it... her parents have to forgive her for not bearing a son. They have to do it if they want her to go on living."
"All right," Taishakuten said quietly. "That's what we'll do, then. I'll come with you."
"But-"
"I'm sorry. I've been weak. But I won't let you do whatever you want all alone anymore. This has and always will affect me, too."
Ashura's face crumpled, and for the first time ever that Taishakuten had seen, he started crying. "T-Thank you. Thank you, Tai-san. Thank you for loving me. I didn't want you to hate me, even though I've been so stupid."
"Yeah, yeah." Taishakuten wrapped him in his arms, pressing his face near the battered heart still beating on his behalf. "We'll go as soon as the rain ends. No matter what, I'll stand by you. And I swear to you that me being here will only change things for the better, okay?"
"Okay," Ashura whispered, smiling through his tears. "I'll believe in you this time."
0o0o0o0o0o
A happy scene did not await them in Ashura's village. As soon as they came down the path, they could see for themselves that everything was ruined. Their landowner's house still stood, but the shrine had collapsed, and each of the houses had been damaged in one form or the other. All of the villagers were out of doors, already immersed in their rebuilding, but they paused as soon as they laid eyes on Ashura. Their faces told everything, and they did not prolong the agony further. Shashi was gone, they said. And Yui, too. Their bodies had been found a little ways outside of the village; she had tried to take him away, after all.
Ashura nearly collapsed at the news. Taishakuten had to hold the child for him as he handled this latest blow, gasping for air as he processed that everything he had feared had come true right in front of his eyes.
It was only the knowledge of Fai's survival that he was able to stand up and move forward. The more fortunate twin was in the home of the landowner Clow Reed, who was now also deceased, recuperating alongside the friend that had saved his life through the duration of the storm.
Taishakuten did not like to watch the scene that unfolded when they came to collect Fai. He didn't know much about the boy, who had turned sixteen and grown so much since Taishakuten had last seen him that he would have never been able to recognize him if not for the blonde hair, but there was something achingly familiar in the way his companion argued with him, trying to get him to open his eyes and stop blaming himself and casting distance between them. But there was nothing to be done about it in that moment. Ashura would not return without Fai, and Taishakuten could not countenance leaving any of them to live homeless in the village where they had lost everything so quickly.
And so they had gone back. Fai had remained determinedly silent throughout the journey, and Ashura was hardly better. The child Ashura was the vocal one out of all of them, crying for milk and the mother who had never given it and now never would. Taishakuten was grateful that one of Shashi's sisters had also given birth recently, so the baby would be able to be fed as soon as they made it back home.
When they at last returned, Ashura insisted that he had to tell Shashi's father about what had happened as soon as possible. They were all invited into the big house, and Taishakuten handled setting up Fai in the guest room and seeing that the baby was fed while Ashura broke the news.
When the children were taken care of, he withdrew to Ashura's old room in the house. He hadn't been back there since the very last time they'd made love there in secret, only days before the letter from Ashura's aunt had drawn him away. It felt nostalgic, and terribly bitter to remember. I said I wouldn't let him go, Taishakuten berated himself. Why did I? Why wasn't I strong enough?
It was quite some time before Ashura returned. His eyes were bloodshot, a far cry from how sharp and coolly assessing they'd been when they'd first met. They were still beautiful, though. Hauntingly beautiful, and achingly real now that they were filled with his fully realized fears. Taishakuten loved them all the same, but wished Ashura hadn't been brought to the point of having them openly displayed with the worst kind of grief.
He held out his arms for Ashura to fall into, and he said nothing, making no more accusations for either himself or Ashura. What happened had happened. There was no going back. Soon, they were going to have to decide what would come next, but this very moment was there for them to wallow in their respective sadness.
When Ashura had wrung himself dry of his tears, he requested very quietly that they make love. Taishakuten knew better to refute him, even though the occasion hardly created the appropriate mood. Sometimes when the pain was too much, you could only give it reprieve with a different kind of pain, and as much as they still loved each other, the prospect of sex was in its way incredibly painful. Not so much physically, although Taishakuten supposed it might be after so many years of Ashura being kept from intimacy with him, but rather in how laden it would be with thoughts of what could have been if only they had been stronger when it had mattered most.
"I love you," Ashura whispered when Taishakuten went inside of him, a feeling he had forgotten how strongly surged through him. "I won't worry about what consequence it has anymore. If something bad happens... I'd rather suffer it with you then feel as alone as I always have... Tai-san... Tai-san..."
"I love you," Taishakuten said softly. He said nothing more as they joined together again and again, giving one last act of love to a house that had seen so little of it, and even now was still veiled in sadness, from the landowner weeping for his daughter to a lonely twin staring blankly at the ceiling, hating and blaming everyone for leaving him this way.
It wasn't fair. But it was life. Taishakuten was happy to be alive if only to love and be loved by the strong yet fragile soul in his arms who would at last trust him enough to find together a future that would one day restore their faith.
0o0o0o0o0o