Broken Worlds
Part 4
By Kristin Huntsman
The sakura fell, never beginning, never ending. And a laugh echoed through the darkness until it illuminated. Kamui stood and watched as a child ran to join two others. He knew it was himself. And the two others were Fuuma and Kotori.It was always this way in his dreams.
But this time it wasn't.
The other boy and girl were older than his childhood self, and looked identical to one another: shiny black hair cut short, and large emerald eyes. They were teenagers while he was still a child. And they played with him, laughing. But the only laughter he could hear was the faint echoes of his own.
Subaru, as he had been when Kamui was that age. When Kamui was seven, he had been sixteen. And that was his sister, Hokuto....
Kamui's sister.
She pulled the child-Kamui onto her lap and hugged him fiercely as Kamui watched, and Subaru smiled and hugged both of them.
It was a past that had never been, and it melted away as Kamui watched.
"Mother--"
He turned at the high, clear voice, to see another of himself sitting on his mother's lap, looking up into her eyes.
"--Mother, where is my father?"
Tooru smiled and held him closely. She had never much spoken of his father. Kamui had sometimes wondered why. Now he knew, and didn't want to.
"Your father is someone I hope you will never meet, Kamui," his memory of her said. "He is a very powerful magician, but one who does not have a heart. He would destroy you if ever he met you. Do not speak of him, little one," she hushed him. "Now is the time for happiness...."
"But Mother--"
"/Shh,/" she hushed him again, and the lights dimmed until Kamui was left alone once more in the falling sakura.
Then he saw it: the tree from which the sakura fell. A boy-child stood in front of it, chanting quietly, and he knew it was Subaru. But it was not Subaru as he was now....
The figure blurred, and became Subaru as Kamui had last seen him. He was before the tree silently now, watching a single petal as it fell, drifting down into his palm. In his eyes was peace, and loss, and Kamui had a very bad feeling about it.
The petal blew away in the wind, and Kamui saw the shadow step forward. The shadow that was both their fathers.
Sakurazukamori.
He watched Subaru turn away, watched the evil one step closer to hold him, murmuring something that Kamui couldn't hear. And still the expression on Subaru's face did not change, not until a sudden whirl of movement and white robes pinned the Sakurazukamori against the flowering cherry tree and Kamui could no longer see his brother's face....
Then Subaru held tight to their father, startling the Sakurazukamori, and Kamui took one step forward towards the two as suddenly Subaru said something to the assassin, his face shifting into Kamui's view, looking so happy that it hurt Kamui, and the shadow of power suddenly shifted--
--and destroyed.
"NO!!!" Kamui screamed into that echoing void of night, seeing both the forms fall, bleeding, dying away into the sakura petals. And he heard one last whisper, one last voice--
--Subaru saying his name.
"SUBARU!!" Kamui screamed suddenly, jerking into wakefulness in Sorata's arms, one hand outstretched as though reaching for something. Sorata held him fast, fearing that he might do damage to something he shouldn't in this violent waking.
"Let me go!!" Kamui demanded, struggling. "Subaru!!"
"Hey, Kamui, calm dow--" Sorata's sentence, and breath, was cut off when an elbow connected hard with his ribs. His grip loosened a little, and that was all it took for Kamui Shirou to slip out of his arms and run like a shooting star, going wherever he was going.
Sorata gingerly rubbed his bruised flesh (ow, that was gonna hurt...), sighed, and took off after Kamui, Arashi beside him. And Sorata had a vaugely definite feeling that what they would find would not be comforting in the least....
* * * * *
The park was silent beyond the wind.
Cherry blossoms ripped from their branches and fell in a never-ending storm, a hurricane, a maelstrom of gently floating pink death. And buried somewhere in the center of the swirling mass of death were two forms too still.
Kamui batted at the flower-filled air with his hand, but could see no further than before. The blossoms got in his eyes, their faint scent now overwhelming, and the wind that carried them, that rushing sound of air, was all he could hear.
He was alone in a world of sakura.
An indeterminable rage filled him then, rage at the flowers that fell and rage at his own helplessness when surrounded by them.
"GET LOST!!" he yelled, letting loose a blast of his power that shaped itself into a globe and vaporized the flowers near him.
Others filled their place.
"You realize that's not the right way," a girlish voice said suddenly behind him.
Kamui whirled.
A teenage girl no taller than he was stood smiling before him, wearing a white shirt under a turquoise knit dress. She smiled, her head tilted to one side, hands held behind her back.
Her eyes were as green as flawless emeralds.
"... Hoku--" Kamui started to ask, when she suddenly grabbed his hand and started running, pulling him along behind her.
He had to follow, her grasp of his hand refused to loosen. And as they ran, the wind seemed to die, to still, and they moved /between/ the blossoms, between the pretty flowers of death that hung now in the air of Ueno Park. He didn't have time to look around, to see the darkness beyond the flowers, but Kamui knew it was there, and he wondered what it was.
"It's nothing," she answered him, the grace of her stride never altering as Hokuto Sumeragi turned to look back at him, green eyes smiling with promises of michief. "It is literally... nothing."
"Where are we going?" Kamui asked.
"To Subaru," she answered, as if their destination were the most natural place in the world to be going. "That's what you wanted, isn't it?" He couldn't answer, and she curved to the left, still guiding him, holding his hand and running faster and faster, as if they were playing a game of crack-the-whip and at any moment she would let go and he'd stumble to the ground and be alone in the darkness and flowers again--
And Hokuto stopped.
There sprouted an enormous cherry tree before them, alone in the darkness, source of all the blossoms that even now fled from its branches. Where it met the ground, two forms lay still, one in black, one in white, and both colored with red.
Kamui couldn't step closer, couldn't take his eyes off the two, couldn't even speak a word.
"It was inevitable, you know," his sister said, regarding the two bodies as well. "From the moment Subaru met him... this ending was inevitable."
"Why?" Kamui whispered, hearing the echo whisper in the silence.
She shrugged and smiled, lacing her hands together behind her back. "Because it was," she stated. "Two of the same blood, raised to oppose one another... do you really think that something like that could have been overcome? I don't." She stepped around in front of Kamui, making him meet her eyes. "Kamui," she said softly, "Subaru found his own exoneration. In the end, he found a father that none of the three of us had ever had, and got past everything else to that one point. And when he did what he had to do--what he'd known all along he had to do--he freed us." Her vivid green eyes refused to let Kamui's go. "He freed all of us in the cherry tree by ending it. That's why all the blossoms."
"You mean--" Kamui asked, looking up at the tree. "All of these are people the Sakurazukamori killed?"
"Over the generations, yes," Hokuto replied, stepping back with half a skip. She regarded the tree too. "That could be just about all of us, in fact. We've all fallen from the cherry prison and left...."
Even as Hokuto Sumeragi spoke, Kamui was stunned to see the flowers on the cherry tree suddenly stop blooming. A last two fell from the silent branches, then nothing.
Hokuto's arms encircled from behind him. "Kamui," she whispered into his ear, "Subaru was always my little brother--he couldn't be anything else until Seishirou gave him a little brother of his own. When he became the eldest...." She shrugged with a rippling motion of her shoulders. "When he had someone to protect, Subaru grew up."
Kamui closed his eyes and let his breath slowly go out, let the pain disappate a little. There was nothing he could have done....
"Hokuto-chan."
The ghost holding Kamui started, and he did too, at the gentle, familiar voice.
"... Subaru...?" Hokuto whispered as Kamui's eyes flickered open.
Glowing a soft, gentle white, as though he was standing in a spotlight the moon cast on him alone, Subaru smiled at them: a smile that held no pain, no anger, no bitterness, no regrets. His face and form were as Kamui had known him, his silk shikifuku flowing, untorn, unsullied, his eyes shining with a quiet emerald happiness, and the stars on the back of his hands gleaming a clear, pure white.
For one moment, Kamui believed in angels.
"Subaru!" Hokuto cried in delight and released Kamui, running to her twin and catching him in a hug. He reciprocated the fond gesture, then straightened, looking down at her with affectionate eyes.
"You heard me, then," he murmured, green eyes meeting green. "I wasn't sure."
"Baka!" she chided, a happy laugh skipping in her voice. "Of course I heard you!"
Subaru smiled at that, then turned to look at Kamui. The smile slowly faded to seriousness, and a touch of quiet curiosity, as he approached. "Kamui," Subaru said, tilting his head a little to one side as a slightly glowing hand, almost translucent, touched the right side of Kamui's face, "what's wrong?"
"You're dead," was the only answer that Kamui found in himself to give.
Subaru smiled. "That's inconsequential," he replied. "It's just one part of a circle, just one phase. Death, like life, is not forever."
"Why?" Kamui whispered.
Subaru heard the meaning of the question, and the smile faded away again. "Because one of us had to end it, Kamui," he replied, "and your life continuing, your sanity... that was worth more than my denials.
"He was always mine to fight, not yours."
Kamui shook his head, feeling his eyes prickle and start to tear up. "It's not fair."
Subaru smiled and enfolded Kamui in his arms, in the soft white folds of silk that smelled of spring, letting Kamui's tears break into the fabric. "Yes it was," he murmured, hand gentle as it slowly stroked Kamui's hair. "I got to finish what got started a long time ago. I made it all worth while, made all the pain and hate worth it. I found what I needed, and I made sure you don't have to go through it... at least not with him."
Subaru pulled back a little and examined Kamui. "You know, little brother," he said affectionately, "you look more like him than either of us do. You have his hair... and his smile. Seishirou-san had a beautiful smile. Promise me you'll use your smile."
"I don't want to look like him," Kamui argued, voice hot, "not after...."
"No," said Subaru, placing a silencing finger on Kamui's lips, his green eyes gentle but implacable now. "Don't think that. Seishirou-san was one person; Sakurazukamori was the force that made him do what he had to." Subaru smiled a bit, a smile that reminded Kamui of Nokoru Imonoyama, tilting his head to the side like that and looking so /happy/. "Besides, don't forget, I was Sakurazukamori too."
"For about thirty seconds!" Hokuto interjected, glaring at them. "Come on, Subaru, wrap it up. We've gotta go, remember?"
"Hai," Subaru replied, glancing at her. He looked back at Kamui. "Do you think you'll be okay, Kamui?"
Kamui nodded, slowly. "I think so."
"That's good." Subaru smiled again and brushed a gentle kiss on Kamui's cheek. "Take care of yourself, little brother," he whispered.
The two spirits faded into light, leaving Kamui all alone, and the darkness around him alleviated to let in the night sky. He looked around the park for a moment, wondering, then turned suddenly, feeling two people behind him.
Sorata and Arashi regarded him somewhat hesitantly.
Kamui looked up towards the sky again, then decided and took one step towards the others.
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