Broken Worlds
Part 3
By Natalie Baan
For a long moment, the only motion in the the yard of the shrine was the sakura blossoms falling--still falling, as if they might continue unceasingly for all eternity.
How unfair it was, Subaru thought, that of all things this beautiful death should be so enduring.
And yet, he imagined he understood something of what it was like, to be falling like that. To be so empty and so transient, to be taken from the branch into the air....
In this timeless moment, it seemed as though he might be falling forever too.
And as he stood suspended there, wrapped in the sensation--for that instant not capable of doing anything at all--his eyes drifted slowly back to Kamui. He found himself looking at the teenager with a kind of vague fascination. /My brother,/ he thought dimly: /This is my brother./
/Kamui./
From that place of perfect stillness and inaction, Subaru watched the teenager's fists abruptly clench, and the violet eyes that had been staring blankly in confusion all at once begin to darken, going suddenly stark with furious heartbreak and denial.
"It's..." Kamui whispered, "...all...LIES!!"
The final word was a raw, aching scream, and Kamui punctuated it with a blast of power that rocked the area of the shrine, tearing into the nearest of the torii and ripping the giant crossbeam of the gate to splinters. Subaru moved. That he did so almost surprised himself--but he leaped for the younger Seal and flung both arms around him, pulling the teenager back against his own body and away from the edge of destruction and despair before he could do harm to anything else...or to himself. Kamui struggled, his breath hissing furiously between his teeth, but despite his rage he did not turn his power against Subaru, and physically Subaru was the taller and stronger of the two.
It was strange...to discover that he /was/. He had never really thought of himself like that, in terms of having strength. No matter what he saw when he looked in the mirror, Subaru realized, he still thought of himself always as the boy that he had been....
He thought of himself still as a child.
But...it was not so at all, was it?
Kamui writhed in his grasp, digging an elbow into Subaru's side before Subaru pinioned that arm with his own and with his other hand caught Kamui's wrist, holding the teenager fast. Clasping the struggling Kamui securely to himself, Subaru gazed into the distance past the boy's dark head, seeing but at the same time not seeing the pale pink petals drifting down through the air, feeling the inscrutable stars far above him--aware now, as he had never been aware before, of being in a moment of decision, of being balanced right at the very instant of a change.
He was watching himself become in his own mind a different person altogether, in finding out that he was indeed capable of acting to protect something. It was a strange thing...when for so long he had been the fragile one, vulnerable and easily harmed...the one who had had to be watched over, and for whom that protection had not in the end sufficed....
Who had been incapable of moving, or of saving himself.
He could see now what he had been.... He had been rooted and asleep all his life, as if he had been waiting for a beautiful season that would never come...he had been like a white page, taking whatever words were written upon him. Even his quest for revenge had been nothing but reflection and repsonse, bowing before the wind of another's actions. All he had ever known to do, he realized, was to be that way: to be endlessly open and receptive to whatever had come to him, like a tree accepting rain on its branches and on the soil around it, to take in love and brutality unconditionally, drinking everything into his heart....
Perhaps it was time to unfold himself at last.
Perhaps it was time to flower...
...and to fall.
Kamui gasped a curse finally--whether against him or the Sakurazukamori was not clear--and went tense and still in Subaru's embrace. Subaru could feel his heart beating rapidly, like the wings of a captive moth battering against one's palm. Slowly Subaru sank to the ground in a gentle billow of white robes, drawing Kamui down with him, until they were both seated on that carpet of sakura petals. Around them, the blossoms fell like pieces of everything they had ever known or believed in.
Subaru held Kamui close.
After a brief, bitter silence, Kamui whispered harshly, "You believe him."
For Kamui, it was easier to be alone and bereft. He was used to that, after all...and it was so much easier to have nothing left than to find that vacant place in his life filled with a shadow.
That was the terrible, uncaring cruelty of what the Sakurazukamori had done: to give to a fatherless child the thing he most desired, and at the same time to make that gift a horror.
"It doesn't matter," Subaru murmured to the Dragon of Heaven, "truly, it doesn't matter.
"Whether it's truth or a lie...it doesn't matter.
"Either way, /he/ doesn't care.
"If you deny him or if you acknowledge him...he'll still just smile at you in that same way, unchanged...and unaffected."
Subaru could feel Kamui trembling faintly in his arms. He laid his cheek against the top of Kamui's head.
"But Kamui...I do care.
"And I would have you as my brother gladly....
"Gladly...."
There was just the slightest shiver in the boy...was Kamui crying? He had lost so many things, so many people from his life. Perhaps it wasn't fair to give him something else to lose. But it was necessary that he know this one thing.
It was the truth.
It was the one thing that absolutely was the truth.
"Anyway," Subaru went on after a little while, "even if he isn't my father by birth, he might as well be. He's shaped so much of what I am.... He claimed me a long, long time ago.
"If he's my father after all--in a way it gives me faith that there's a pattern to such things.
"If it's true, then he belongs to me as much as I belong to him.
"But also, even beyond such wishful thinking,...
"Kamui, I still believe that it's true."
"But if he is," Kamui cried out, "if he is, then how can you--"
"/Shh./"
Subaru hushed Kamui, then closed his own eyes and turned his face, burying it in the boy's dark hair. He rocked the two of them gently.
How could he kill the man who was his father?
For he would have to.
He would at least have to make the attempt, for his past, and for the world's future....
And for Kamui.
Seishirou would not let the teenager go. Now that he had made his claim on the boy, the Sakurazukamori would hunt him and haunt him forever, or until one of them was dead. And it would not be for any reasons of human care or concern that Seishirou would do this, but only for one thing....
<"...a Sakurazukamori to succeed me.">
Subaru understood it now.... In nine years he had not forgotten one word of what had been said beneath the cherry tree, during that last meeting in Seishirou's maboroshi. Those words had been cut into his very heart, and he relived them each night, in dreams....
<"The Sakurazukamori are called an 'assassins group," Seishirou explained to him cheerfully, 'but in reality it's only one person."
"The true Sakurazukamori can't be but one person...."
Pain lanced through Subaru from the arm twisted up behind his back, from his other arm wrenched in the Sakurazukamori's cruel, careless grip...and yet it was nothing, nothing at all compared to the anguish in his heart....>
He remembered it all....
<"The rite of succession among the Sakurazukamori, you see, is to kill the previous Sakurazukamori....
"When it's time to inherit as Sakurazukamori, the predecessor, of course, and all people around or related to them, must be killed.
"I was fifteen when I killed my first person," the Sakurazukamori said with a smile.
"It was my mother.">
For there to be a new Sakurazukamori, the old one had to die. The taint of that evil action was part of what created such a person: one who killed in the name of dissolution, a conscienceless destroyer.... It was the breaking of the law of human relationship, the murder of parent by child, that opened the way. The Sakurazukamori was always killed by his successor, and then that person killed everyone who had been associated with the old Guardian. Every single person....
If Subaru did kill Seishirou, and became the Sakurazukamori in turn...who was more closely associated with the old Sakurazukamori than his own flesh and blood?
Who was closer to Seishirou now than Kamui?
Could he indeed be forced to do that?
But then, if he did not kill Seishirou, that burden would inevitably fall to Kamui. Seishirou would ensure that he did not escape it. And if Subaru did not face Seishirou at all, if he therefore was still living when Kamui defeated the Guardian....
If Kamui became the Sakurazukamori....
If Kamui killed /him/....
Never mind the fate of the rest of the world--what would that do to Kamui?
Subaru shuddered slightly at the thought. /We're not like you,/ he told the ever-present image in his mind. /We're not without emotions..../
/I don't think either of us can do that, and still be sane./
The Sakurazukamori would not care about such things, however: would not care if they were sane, or not...besides, it was entirely possible that he, having no feeling heart, was the only sane Guardian that there had ever been.
Being without remorse, he would continue on his path until his aims had been achieved.
Until there was a successor.
/Why?/
Why did Seishirou care about the future, when he was fighting for the end of the world?
Why work to continue the cycle of death and death?
Why...?
A sakura petal, falling, brushed the back of Subaru's hand.
His eyes came open, slowly.
/A cycle./
An endless cycle....
Year after year, the cherry blossoms falling and yet always renewed...the stars moving in their accustomed dance, treading their measure over and over again....
A pattern to such things....
Kamui, restrained by Kamui, while yet a third raised the Shinken high above his head.... It was /all/ Kamui.
And there was only one future....
It was as though something bright and clear ignited itself in Subaru, as he touched a certainty that sang through his mind and heart like a fierce music, like a Dragon's song...like that pure, blinding whiteness of his own true power--
Nothing ever ended...every empty place was only on its way to becoming something else. Every death was followed in some way by a new life.
There was always a future...there was only one future.
And it was whatever Kamui would create it to be.
The true struggle for the future, Subaru realized, would take place wholly inside of Kamui.
That was his destiny.
/And you,/ Subaru whispered to his shadow, his Other, /...did you know this, too?/
Almost, he imagined he heard a soft reply:
/Of course./
Then, that being so, the only important thing was that Kamui be free. And when it was put in that way, everything became very simple.
After all, Subaru had already known in his heart what was important.
He had known it all along.
"Subaru?"
Kamui sounded mildly alarmed, and Subaru realized that he had laughed. How long had it been since he had done something like that?...he couldn't even remember. He suppressed the urge that came over him, though, to laugh again.
Kamui would not understand.
Instead, Subaru nestled more closely against Kamui for a moment, feeling the boy still stiff and awkward and confused in his arms. He smiled into the dark hair.
"Kamui," he murmured, "if you had that person's destiny in your hands...if you could decide his fate, knowing what you know about the person he is...and if there were no retribution, no consequence...what would you do?" Kamui hesitated, and Subaru tightened his hand gently on the teenager's arm. "Truth, Kamui."
"I'd kill him," Kamui admitted hollowly, after a long pause. "For what he did to you...I'd kill him. I think...he would deserve it."
"Mm." Subaru mused. He was glad...the answer made him happy in a way, though now he found he was sad, too.
So long feeling almost nothing, and now so many deeply entwined and contradictory feelings....
"Subaru...."
"Shh, Kamui. It's all right." Subaru slipped his right hand into his sleeve, and drew out a small, closed fan. He snapped it open, that thin span of white silk stitched delicately with kanji, and he passed it once before Kamui's startled eyes.
He felt the boy go gradually limp and unresisting in his arms, the head falling back against his shoulder, the soft hair brushing his face.
"Forgive me," he whispered into Kamui's ear. "Forgive me from taking this choice away from you. But you will have other choices to make. This one thing is the thing that I must do."
He placed a kiss on the sleeping teenager's cheek.
Gently, he lay Kamui down among the rose-colored petals. The violet eyes were half-open, lost in dreams. He stood, and it was only then that he noticed the other two Seals standing a short distance away...how long had they been there? They must have heard the sound of the torii being destroyed, and come to offer their help. They moved toward him now, hesitantly, and Subaru could see the uncertainty in their faces.
It was a good thing that they were here....
It was good, that Kamui would not be alone.
He looked down again at Kamui, and as the other Seals drew near he spoke, before Sorata, who was already drawing breath, could say a word.
"When he wakes," Subaru said softly, "tell him--
"Tell him that I love him.
"And that if he believes in nothing else, he must believe in this."
"Subaru-san...."
Subaru turned away from them. He leaped from the yard into the air in one graceful motion, that easy almost-flight. Sorata shouted behind him.
"/Subaru-san!/"
Subaru's foot lighted on the ridgepole of the main shrine building. He called power out of himself, a single white flash that crackled briefly in the air around him, the intense, hot energy of a star--
And he was elsewhere, all at once.
* * * * *
The tree.
Subaru ran his hands over the smooth, silvery-grey curves of the trunk, slowly, listening to the voices.... Things he had felt only as a sullen, muted resentment when he had been a child were now articulate, each voice distinct and yet all of them together forming such a rushing torrent of sensation that he could not really follow the meaning of any one of them.
He shivered.
He stepped back from the tree. He turned his face away from it, and shut the voices from his mind. It was better this way, when there was only himself. The air was clearer...his heart was clearer.
It was silent.
In the silence, from out of the rain of flowers, a single petal tumbled down toward him. He held out his hand, and the petal hesitated, fluttered this way and that, and then settled, finally, into the exact center of his palm.
He gazed down at it sadly.
It had to be almost time.
/Grandmother...I forgive you now,/ he whispered.
The petal was lifted by the wind. It spun out of his hand and was carried away.
He watched it go.
/Sister.... I understand at last./
He closed his empty hand and clasped it to his chest....
The wind had risen.
He was no longer alone.
He turned his head. A tall figure stepped out of the shadow of the tree behind him...the same person, the same in every particular: the person he had most hated, and had most loved. In the dimness of this section of the park, the figure was half-obscured by those shadows, but light from a nearby lamp-post fell onto his face, and his one eye gleamed. As he came around the trunk, the eagle shikigami swept up from his shoulder into the air. It circled once, and then lighted on one of the surrounding trees.
It called out to them, its "voice" silent and clean and cold.
Subaru turned away again. Unresistingly, he let the Sakurazukamori walk slowly up behind him and reach around him in that familiar embrace. He let the man take hold of his hands. He could feel each line of the stars that were carved into him, pulsing with the beating of his heart.
"Well, Subaru-kun," the Sakurazukamori murmured, "after all, it seems to have come down to you and I."
Subaru did not respond.
"I was a bit surprised, though, that you would abandon your brother like that...." the Sakurazukamori mused. "Why would that be? Are you afraid of being so close to anyone again? Afraid to love and to lose...afraid to feel that pain?" He chuckled softly. "Or maybe you're just a bit jealous, Subaru-kun--jealous of this little brother that's come between us."
Subaru closed his eyes.
"Or maybe," Seishirou said quietly, "you think that somehow you can reclaim the past. Maybe you are thinking of sacrificing yourself, as your sister sacrificed herself for you.
"Subaru-kun...even if you die for him...."
Subaru could hear the smile in the Sakurazukamori's voice.
"Do you really think that this time I will give up my claim?"
Enough.
Subaru snapped his arms downward, breaking the Sakurazukamori's light grip. He turned on the man. With that smile just as Subaru had imagined it, Seishirou took a graceful step backward, his hand raised in a powerful warding sign--but Subaru did not cast a spell, or reach for his ofuda. Instead, he stepped forward swiftly, caught Seishirou by the shoulders of his coat, and with a strength he hadn't been certain he possessed, shoved the man back against the sakura's trunk and held him there.
Seishirou looked down at him in mild surprise and amusement, and Subaru glared back, staring into the man's eyes, searching his face.... "Subaru-kun," Seishirou said softly, "what are you looking for? Some compassion? Some emotion?" The irony lay heavily in his voice. "I don't think you'll find it."
Subaru shook his head.
"You," Subaru said then, fiercely, and brokenly. "I'm looking for /you./"
"All of my life...I have been looking for you."
At that, he crumpled forward against Seishirou--threw both arms around him, and buried his head in the man's chest. He let all the emotions rise up in himself, spill through him and be released, like the release of rain....
/You..../
He broke the bonds of himself to the past, to everything he had ever been...he was free to feel whatever was in him to feel.
He held his father to him, and would not let go.
"Subaru-kun," the Sakurazukamori said, for a moment sounding astonished and almost, if such a thing were possible, a bit affronted. Then he sighed in amused resignation, and relaxed tolerantly into the embrace. "Well, Subaru-kun," he murmured, "I always did say that you had a gentle heart."
"Being that you're my father," Subaru whispered, "you don't really need to call me 'Subaru-kun' anymore, do you?"
There was a pause, as the Sakurazukamori thought about it. "That's so," Seishirou admitted, with a small laugh. "That's so....
"/My son./"
The Sakurazukamori's arms came around him. One hand stroked his hair gently, then slipped down, to lie caressingly against the back of his neck.
"Thank you," Seishirou said, his voice soft and remote now. "Seeing you like this...you've just made my decision very easy."
"No," Subaru answered. He raised his head then, and smiled at the Sakurazukamori. "The decision--
"/It's mine./"
He spread his wings....
He felt for just one instant the sudden tension in Seishirou's arms, before the shikigami ripped through both their bodies....
...and then the world broke apart around him.
/Pain./
The power of the magical blow tore through flesh and bone, dissipated itself in a swirl of red, and faint rosy pink, and purest white.
Subaru closed his eyes.
For a moment, it seemed that they would not fall. The strong arms were still wrapped around him, still supported him; the warmth of the blood that flowed between them seemed almost to join them together. Then, Seishirou began slowly to slide down the trunk of the tree. He went to his knees, still holding Subaru against him.
Around them, all the voices were silent, and the wind was still.
/Seishirou-san./
/Father..../
/I am Sakurazukamori./
/Your power..../
/It belongs now to me./
The petals still fell as they had always fallen, though, in every springtime of the world's existence.
/After all...to be the Sakurazukamori is simply to claim that power, to realize it as part of oneself...and then, to kill. To be the one capable of killing..../
/I accept it./
/To be the Sakurazukamori is to be the one who limits, who acts to makes an end of what is./
/Who destroys./
/I accept it./
/But I am also Sumeragi, dedicated to protect./
/And therefore..../
/I am the one who can close the circle./
/I love you..../
/I kill you./
/I become you..../
/And I take your legacy with me, into the grave./
His own body had become a very heavy weight, somewhere far away. But he knew that Seishirou was still holding him....
/In the world that's to come, there will be another shadow. There is always a shadow...reborn as everything is reborn./
/But it will not be either one of us./
/And Kamui will at least be free of that./
/There will never be that division between he and I...we will not be turned against each other./
/That is my one hope...and my one wish./
/Father, to die with you here, like this..../
/My wish is that all which divides us...should somehow be healed./
The arms that held him began to loosen now. He was slipping away from his father's grasp.
In the last moments of his life, he had learned to let himself be free. Free to choose to act, rather than to be acted upon...free to love, where by right he ought to hate.
He was free....
And he was falling.
/Father..../
/I love you./
"Kamui--"
He regretted nothing....
[Author's note: Seishirou's speech regarding the Sakurazukamori rite of succession is from C. Sue Shambaugh's translation of the Tokyo Babylon manga, and is copyrighted by the translator.]
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