Kamui hesitated in front of the bedroom door. Maybe he shouldn't.... He turned and looked down the hall, and no one was there. It meant that he could go away and nobody would ever know that he'd been standing outside this door for several minutes trying to gather his courage to.... Kamui retreated a step and then stopped short.But....
Apprehensively, he look at the door again. Slowly he inched back toward it. Lifting one hand, he made a fist, then paused and released it. He did that a couple more times before letting his hand fall limp.
No.
He couldn't....
Kamui stared miserably at the closed door. The smart choice, of course, would be to take this as a sign and to go away and forget about the whole damned thing. Or anyway, to try to...and for a moment that was exactly what he was going to do. Then he clenched his fists with resolve, and his wings snapped out from his sides.
He stepped forward and knocked abruptly on the door.
Immediately he jerked his hand away, filled with panic at what he'd just done and half-wishing already that he could undo it. It was too late, though, for him to dare to be having second thoughts about this. His heart was threatening to leap up and strangle him, and he swallowed tight and hard as from the other side of the door a faint voice answered, "Yes?"
"I- it's Kamui. Can I come in?"
Wings
An "X" fanfic
By Natalie Baan
Part Three
"Good morning, Kamui."
As he faltered in the doorway, Kamui wondered if he was imagining it. Did that unruffled voice sound warmer than was usual? He sidled the rest of the way into the room, looking studiously at the walls, the floor, and anything that wasn't the person he'd actually come to see. He left the door wide open also, so that Subaru wouldn't get the idea that he--
Idiot. Of course Subaru wouldn't think of any such thing.
And maybe he should close the door after all. Someone else might want to stop by.
"Do you feel better?"
"Uh--yeah!" Kamui's head popped up like a turtle's as he was jerked back to the present, and he realized that he'd been hunching himself together, his left arm locked like a shield across his chest. He stood up straight and nodded very emphatically. "Much better!" Subaru gave him that almost-smile again and Kamui's heart nearly stopped. He was looking directly at Subaru now--their eyes had met--and he didn't know how Subaru wasn't seeing all the tremendous, terrible things that were surging like a tide within his mind and soul. He felt that they must be pouring from behind his gaze like light from a carved stone lantern.
Subaru didn't seem to notice, however--he didn't seem to see the hot, embarrassed flush that Kamui was struggling to control. The Sumeragi's expression was as undisturbed as ever, except for the very vague flicker of what Kamui hoped was a feeling of being happy to see him. Subaru'd been sitting on his bed and reading; now he set the book aside to gesture slightly with one hand, moving his feet to the right at the same time in what seemed like an invitation for Kamui to join him.
It was a huge liberty to be taking with someone as reserved as Subaru. Kamui hesitated, afraid that he might be presuming too much. Subaru repeated the little welcoming gesture, and Kamui, deciding that the offer was real, moved shyly near. He hitched himself onto the foot of the bed and then sat there on his heels, his hands knotted loosely on top of his knees. Subaru leaned toward him.
"Imonoyama-san and I were talking about you going back to school," Subaru said. "What do you think?"
Kamui stared at the Sumeragi in mute astonishment. How on earth could he ever go back? To sit in class with all the other students...a winged freak like him...but as he looked into Subaru's eyes he could see only a clean and neutral curiosity that didn't seem to doubt that it was possible. His throat tightened up again in the startling hope that maybe it was, that somehow he might be accepted--and then even more so with grief, because such a hope was probably nothing more than an insubstantial wish. It took him a couple of moments to reply.
"Do I have to?"
"No." Subaru sat back tranquilly. "It's your decision. We just thought that you might like to, is all." He looked gravely at Kamui. "It's an unusual school, and Imonoyama-san can be a very determined person. If you wanted to, I'm sure that a way could be found."
Thinking about it, Kamui wasn't certain whether he wanted to or not. School was all right, but.... Subaru was waiting for his reaction though, so Kamui offered haltingly, "Maybe the school could send assignments here instead? Maybe...I could study with you?"
He was ready to die from the shock of his own audacity. Subaru, though, only seemed a little surprised. "If that's what you want," he murmured. "But Kamui, as I told you, I never got further in high school than where you are now. I'm not sure that I'd be that much help. But you know," he went on thoughtfully, "Imonoyama-san is a very brilliant man. He's busy, but I wonder if he'd be available to tutor you. Actually, I'm almost certain that he'd--"
"No!" Inwardly Kamui kicked himself, then fumbled to explain. "I don't want--" /--to be any trouble,/ he'd been going to say, thinking of the Imonoyama, but far more than that he didn't want to be trouble for Subaru, didn't want to give Subaru the idea that he thought he could impose at any time, to have Subaru think he was rude.... Kamui flailed about for a moment, then clenched his hands on his knees and bowed. "It's fine!" he blurted, trying to hold his wings stock still so that at least they wouldn't betray him. "I'm sure I'd learn a lot with you! Maybe," and Kamui's voice dropped a little as he looked up, struck by inspiration, "maybe we could learn it...together?"
There was outright astonishment on Subaru's face--astonishment and a complex tangle of emotions that flickered into view too briefly before being covered over. They flashed by before Kamui could catch more than a fleeting glimpse. He thought he saw old unhappiness, though, an enduring sadness and some kind of dim, distantly yearning ache...that burst of life subsided like a small bird settling back into the grass once danger had gone, folding its wings about itself, but although Subaru's expression had fallen still once again something in it had subtly changed. Subaru ducked his head and looked aside, still smiling that not-quite smile, and his face was touched by sorrow and regret but also by a shadow of real happiness.
"All right," Subaru answered simply. "If you're sure."
Far from merely sure, Kamui was on the verge of jumping up and leaping around the room cheering /Yatta!/ at the top of his lungs. He held himself back, though, and instead just nodded vigorously. He'd guessed right after all, thinking that Subaru held a very deep sadness over not having finished school; he'd actually touched Subaru's heart in some way, having finally found something significant to offer the onmyouji; and although Kamui's whole being ached with sympathy at the pain he'd inadvertently caused, it sang with joy too.
He was amazed that he didn't just explode.
"Won't you miss being with the other students?" Subaru was asking. Kamui started a bit, pulled out of his thoughts again, and then shook his head. Why would he miss being with people he hardly even knew, when instead he could be spending a lot more time with Subaru? Something of his surprise must have shown on his face; Subaru's eyebrows raised mildly. "Your friend has been asking about you," he told Kamui, seeming vaguely amused for some reason. "You don't want to talk to him?"
Friend?...oh, him. For an answer, Kamui shrugged. The conversation was getting away from what he really wanted to talk about, and so he changed the subject, trying to find another tack which would lead him eventually to where he both longed and feared to go. "I didn't-- I haven't thanked you yet for coming to my rescue," he said softly. He bowed once again, more formally this time. "Thank you very much for putting yourself at risk for me."
"I didn't do anything special," Subaru replied. "It's Sorata-san whom you should be thanking."
"Oh, no!" Kamui bolted upright. "Even if that's so, what you did was very brave. He could have killed you!"--and Kamui was there in a split second, reliving the moment he'd realized that...
...the moment he'd known....
It was Subaru's turn to shrug, almost imperceptibly. "That doesn't matter. It's only the same thing that we all know we might face. As Seals, our lives are in service to you as the 'Kamui' of the Dragons of Heaven. If need be, we'll give those lives to protect you for the day that's still to come."
The universe dropped out from underneath Kamui. "Just...just for that?" In an instant everything that he'd yearned for, everything that he'd dared to dream might be true threatened to crumble away. He could feel his lip already beginning to tremble, could feel little pieces start to splinter and break from his heart...oh, it couldn't, it couldn't be true, not when Subaru was leaning toward him all of a sudden--leaning so close, an honest warmth of concern in those jade green eyes....
"Kamui, are you all right? What's wrong?"
Kamui jumped. Utterly bewildered, he stammered out, "I--
"I think I'm in love with you!"
Immediately he shrank back and clapped his hands over his mouth. "No!" he gasped between his fingers, "Wait! I didn't mean--" /I didn't mean that,/ he wanted to say, because he'd seen the words strike Subaru almost physically, an impact like a light but deeply affecting blow. He saw the dark pupils of Subaru's eyes grow wider, dilating like a ripple of water bursting outward from where a stone had fallen or been thrown.
"Love?" Subaru whispered. In the moment of indrawn breath that followed, Kamui could only stare back at him in distress. Then, on the exhalation, he saw Subaru's shock being swept away like the thin smoke of one of the onmyouji's cigarettes. That disturbance disappeared and was replaced by the usual calmness.
"No," Subaru said, very softly. "You're wrong."
What?
Subaru sat back as though comfortably at ease, once more wearing the self-effacing look that could almost be a smile. "Although it's surely nice that you think so," he mused. His gaze wandered away from Kamui's, travelling across the room before coming to rest on the opposite wall. "But the reality is that it's only because you want to think so--because you believe that I've somehow been 'kind' to you, and you want there to be someone 'special' in your life. Regardless," the smile faded away again, "you don't know a thing about the kind of person that I am. And not knowing that...to believe that it's really love is only a lie."
"Subaru--!" Kamui's wings flared open in protest. He wanted to insist that he /did/ know Subaru, that of course Subaru was a good person, and anyway, how could he be wrong about something that he felt so strongly? But even as he was opening his mouth to say those things, he could see that Subaru hadn't heard the first outcry at all. The onmyouji had already gone away from him somehow: had retreated to some lost place deep inside. Even the serious expression was melting thin, and then it vanished, leaving behind just emptiness.
"Besides," Subaru murmured tonelessly, as if speaking to himself, "what is there to love, here?"
At once Kamui forgot about everything else, feeling Subaru falling away from him like that. He lunged forward as though he could somehow grab onto Subaru and drag the onmyouji back from the deadness of that terrible void. He'd misjudged something badly in the distance, though, or maybe he hadn't taken into account the effect of a sweep of his wings--he found himself practically on top of Subaru, far closer than he'd meant. His hand was knotted in the front of Subaru's shirt, and then Subaru was turning to look at him, surprise on that quiet face in the instant before their lips met....
Kamui wavered, caught between ecstasy and pure terror as the fact of what he was doing began slowly to sink in on him. Then, as he became aware of the stillness of Subaru's mouth against his own, that chaos dissolved into sick dismay and then into grief. He'd been wrong, he'd been wrong after all--even though he'd known he couldn't do anything but love Subaru, he'd given in to a crazy, wild, stupid impulse and now he'd just spoiled the whole damned thing forever. Subaru would never forgive him...would hate him, thinking that he was some kind of freak. Kamui squeezed his eyes shut for just one further second of kissing Subaru, knowing that it would be the last. Then he sprang backward, straight off the bed in a single bound.
"I'm sorry!" he choked, not daring to look at the Sumeragi through eyes already blurring with idiotic tears. "Please excuse me...!" He turned and fled through the doorway, bashing both wings against the frame on his way out. Bolting around the corner and down the hall, he rushed through the sitting chamber and dove into his own room, flinging himself right from the door into the middle of the bed in one leap. His wings stung a little where he'd skinned them, but he forgot about it almost at once. It was nothing next to the pain of his foolish, broken heart. Kamui snatched a pillow from the neat arrangement that servants had made at the head of the bed, and he mauled it, pounding it and wringing it with both his fists. Then he folded his arms around the battered remnant and threw himself face down onto the mattress. Helplessly, hating himself all the while for that childish weakness, he started to cry.
The world could come to an end. He didn't care anymore.
For him, it already had.
Clenching his wings around himself, Kamui began sobbing in earnest.
* * * * *
"Kamui. Is it all right if I...?"
At the sound of that voice, Kamui snapped out of his fugue at once. Shit--hadn't he even thought to close the door? Everyone in the whole mansion could have come trooping into his room while he'd been lying there hopelessly bawling. Humiliated, Kamui stayed motionless, rolled up inside his wings, and pretended not to have heard a thing. Then, much closer, from somewhere actually inside the room:
"Kamui...won't you look at me?"
He wasn't going to...and then he realized that if he didn't Subaru might leave for good, and that for the rest of his life he might never have another chance to. Kamui warred between wanting the onmyouji to go away and spare him the shame of it all, and dreading that Subaru would. Finally he unwrapped himself from inside his cocoon, lifting up one wing and peering from beneath it. His heart fluttered and sank. Subaru was standing there, hands thrust into pockets, and while the onmyouji didn't appear to be angry, he didn't seem happy either. He looked...he looked like nothing in particular really: just a dispassionate, faraway face, like an actor's mask. In a way, that was worse than anything else, and Kamui felt pain and disgrace and a thin streak of flame-hot anger strike him to the core. He unfolded himself all the way and sat up, staring woundedly at Subaru, who met that stare with a cruelly neutral and remote one of his own.
"I didn't intend to hurt you," the onmyouji said then, the words without emotion, as though the plain fact of his intention had nothing to do with human feelings of compassion. "My apologies for that. I only wanted to protect you...to spare you.
"You should find someone else to love. Someone other than me."
"I don't want to love anyone else!" How could Subaru even be saying that, as though Kamui could just pick and choose so easily--did he think Kamui could toss aside such feelings as if they were no more important than a child's old toy? Surely Subaru didn't feel that way about his own loves, not someone who had suffered so much...frustrated, Kamui glared at the wall Subaru was putting up between them word by word, moment by slow, distancing moment. "Subaru--"
"I can't feel love."
Subaru's voice was perfectly hollow and empty. It struck the air with the quiet finality of a bamboo water spout falling back into the silence of a garden. Kamui stared at Subaru almost without comprehension, but nevertheless feeling a kind of horror wake cold and slow in him, its touch creeping for an instant over all his passions and sealing them away.
"From long ago," Subaru continued, "ever since the Sakurazukamori killed my sister, I've been able only to hope for one thing. To feel for one thing.... I'm a 'Dragon of Heaven' because it's my fate to be so, but against this kind of wish one fate is really just the same as anything else." Subaru looked at Kamui with lifeless eyes, and then glanced aside. "So you should find somebody who can love you in return, because I'm not the person who can give you what you want. What you need....
"To love me will just cause you suffering in the end."
Kamui forced away the sting of returning tears. "That isn't true!" Something was wrong, something was terribly out of tune in a world where Subaru could be gentle and caring one moment and be saying these awful, cold, heartless things the next. One of those faces had to be a lie and oh, please, let it be the one that looked at him said /I can't feel/.... "That can't be true!" Kamui cried, and when Subaru didn't even glance toward him it was like the stabbing blow of the Shinken all over again, only this time right to the gut.
"Whether you say that it's true or not," Subaru said, "that doesn't change what's real. And anyway, there's nothing to be done."
"If that's so, then he's already beaten you!" Pain and white fury ignited themselves inside Kamui, almost blindingly intense. "So what's the point of fighting at all! What's the point of anything!" He glared miserably at Subaru and then swung away. He felt sick from wanting to fight and having nothing to seize onto...sick as well from having thrown that anger back at Subaru, even knowing that it made little difference if what Subaru said was really true. If Subaru couldn't feel.... Kamui faced away from the onmyouji, hugging his legs against his chest. He curled his wings around himself so their tips crossed in front of his toes.
"Kamui--"
"Forget it," he said, muffling the words a little as he pressed his mouth against the tops of his knees. "Just--forget it. I'm sorry I said anything in the first place. I knew that it was wrong."
Behind him, Subaru almost whispered, "What do you want from me?" and bitterness flooded through Kamui like the salt of unshed tears.
"Nothing," he muttered. "I don't want anything anymore."
It was so quiet then that he was sure Subaru'd left, walking out in the near-noiseless way the onmyouji had. He was surprised when instead the mattress settled underneath him. He turned to look behind himself and locked eyes with Subaru, who'd sat down on the edge of the bed. A hard stare from Subaru now, and a severe one, those narrowed eyes two shards of glass with something awful burning behind them...Subaru held him with that uncompromising look for so long that Kamui had time to be frightened and get over it and then to be frightened again. Finally Subaru reached out toward him, putting a hand behind Kamui and pulling him close. Subaru drew him forward until his head was resting on the onmyouji's shoulder.
For the length of a skipped heartbeat, everything stood still.
Then Kamui's mind started whirling. He didn't understand what was happening at all. He continued to lean against Subaru anyway, even though he knew deep down inside that this wasn't really the answer to his wish. Although Subaru might be holding him now, the arm that embraced him and the body that he was pressed up against felt stiff and awkward, a tautness very much like anger. But even knowing for sure that the embrace wasn't real, even knowing how much something in Subaru was resisting it, Kamui couldn't quite pull away.
In a minute he would, though, in just another minute: just as soon as he had summoned up the strength to straighten and say /Thank you, but...you don't have to/ and then look into Subaru's eyes once more.... Without releasing him Subaru leaned back against the pillows and Kamui almost got up then, but at the last second his courage failed him. Instead he untwisted his wing, which was starting to cramp from being caught between the two of them, and then he curled up against Subaru, folding himself into the curve of the onmyouji's arm. He wanted the closeness so badly, wanted even just the suggestion of a returned feeling--and also he didn't understand Subaru's intentions, and he was afraid of offending the onmyouji by seeming to shrug aside what had to be a sacrifice. Even if it were true that Subaru couldn't feel.... Kamui wondered what thoughts might be going through Subaru's mind right then, what things pulled the onmyouji physically nearer and yet somehow farther away at the same time. He nestled his head against Subaru's chest, feeling the sharp, shallow catch of breath....
Another convulsive breath, nearly audible in the silence.
A tremor that raced almost imperceptibly through Subaru's body....
Kamui raised his head again, gazing into Subaru's face. The onmyouji was staring fixedly toward the ceiling, scarcely seeming aware of him at all. Subaru's face was pale, and the fire which had burned behind those green eyes had gone out so that only the perfect translucence of glass remained to them. Those unseeing eyes grew wider as Kamui looked on. The onmyouji shuddered once again, more violently this time, as though his entire being were in the throes of some terrific strain, and Kamui saw something else then that was rising from below, a tide that was coming on swiftly, a sea about to devour the land....
"Subaru...?"
Subaru drew another breath. His eyes widened further and then the glass--
--cracked.
Stunned, Kamui saw the lost look, the brief, bright glimmering, before Subaru's eyes closed and his empty expression crumpled like a piece of paper. Spasming into a tight ball, Subaru twisted away. He pressed his face against the pillows, his fingers clawing themselves into the bedspread's heavy cloth, and although it was half-strangled Kamui could still hear the wild, frantic, inarticulate cry--
"Subaru!" Kamui sat up in horror and leaned across the onmyouji's back. For an awful, endless minute he was certain that Subaru was dying and that it was all because of him. The high-pitched sound started breaking up into separate, racking breaths, but between them echoes of that cry still remained: every few breaths there was one sob deeper than the rest, followed by a thin, fractured wail....
"Subaru!" Kamui's cry became a wail itself, his own voice cracking into pieces. "I'm sorry!" He'd have gotten up and run from the unspeakable thing he'd just done, making a person like Subaru cry like that...but he couldn't leave Subaru in this pain and besides, Subaru'd suddenly seized his hand with an inescapable, deathlike grip. The onmyouji wrapped both arms around Kamui's, locking it against his chest. As those terrible sobs went on, Kamui fought not to echo them himself. Feeling the tears welling up again, though, even despite his best efforts, he bowed further forward, arching one wing protectively above the two of them. He leaned against the onmyouji's back and whispered brokenly, "I'm sorry.... I'm sorry....
"/I'm sorry./"
It was the only thing that he knew how to do.
* * * * *
The afternoon sun shone brightly, sending a long slant of light angling between the densely vine-covered arbors and the branches that overhung them. Kamui glanced moodily at the glowing patch of gold that struck nearest him, and then pushed on. He'd found a section of park which was remote enough that he didn't have to be jumping up into trees every two minutes in order to keep people from noticing him, and now he was ducking and picking his way through this overgrown labyrinth of honeysuckle. Although the flowers were a little bit past their peak, their scent lay thickly in the air all around him, and masses of shed blooms carpeted the ground beneath his feet. It seemed as though nobody had visited this place in ages, not even the Campus grounds keepers; the wooden lattices which shaped those vines into passages and interconnected "rooms" were weathered and crumbling, and in places falling apart altogether. Kamui guessed that it was supposed to look "charmingly rustic."
It certainly wasn't easy to navigate.
Annoyed, Kamui kicked at a pile of fallen flowers. Squinting toward the sky, he thought about taking off, crashing through the low ceiling of vines, and flying back to the mansion, then rejected the idea with a sigh. He got himself turned around and started back toward what he hoped was the edge of the maze. Aching, frustrated, and miserable inside, he crouched and scrambled awkwardly, got himself tangled and then untangled once again, trying not to do too much damage as he went, and although he was making a tremendous effort to distract himself he unexpectedly was struck by that same awful, hollow feeling he'd had when he'd woken up--
Kamui faltered and stopped, staring blindly into the perfect golden stillness of the arbor. Its silence was broken only by the faint, buzzing flitter of insects. He sank to his knees, then curled slowly forward and buried his face in his hands.
Subaru....
No matter how hard he tried to forget it, that pain just kept coming back.
Somehow he'd fallen asleep while watching over Subaru, run down by emotional exhaustion and the exertions of the night before. He'd just dozed off--and when he'd awakened with a start Subaru had been gone, not even the onmyouji's warmth remaining on the bed beside him. Just the slight, dry scent of cigarette smoke had lingered as he'd pressed his face against the pillows in his grief....
Someone had drawn the end of the bedspread across him while he'd slept. He hoped that it had been Subaru. He hoped that it meant that Subaru forgave him--that Subaru hadn't gone away forever, that Subaru would come back and it would somehow be all right--but at the same time he kept remembering that terrifying instant when the mask had been fractured, when he'd seen Subaru swept beyond all self-control by an agony that went so deep.... He'd realized then how much and how unfairly he'd depended on Subaru's steady presence in a world that constantly was threatening to come apart around him. He'd put that burden on Subaru, on top of Subaru's own.
He wouldn't be surprised if Subaru never came back.
Kamui sniffed and rubbed at his face, then set himself once again to the task of getting clear of this tangle. It was better than dwelling on his despair...since he'd left his room at last, he'd just been wandering around the Campus, trying to lose himself in constant, thoughtless motion.
He hadn't meant to get as lost as this, however.
Looking around, he spotted a gap in the vines, visible now that he was down at knee level. Kamui squirmed through that space and found himself in another low room of the maze. There was a larger break in the far wall, and through it he could see an open space of sunlight and shade and a neatly mown expanse of grass that filled his limited view. He scrambled over quickly and looked out--
Oh.
Subaru.
Kamui froze perfectly still, and stared.
The maze seemed to end where he was, at a place where the grove that surrounded it fell gradually away and the lawn began rolling in a gentle slope down toward a faroff river. A few meters away from him there was a huge, old tree on the crest of the knoll, set a little bit apart from the rest. Someone had hung a plank swing from one of its branches, and Subaru was sitting there, his shoulders slumped forward and his arms laced loosely about the swing's ropes. Gazing down the shallow incline that lay in front of him, he rocked himself back and forth with tiny nudges of one foot against the ground, and the light came in low under the tree's vast spread to paint him with gold....
Kamui could scarcely breathe. Suddenly, even though he'd wanted so badly to see the onmyouji, he decided he wasn't ready. Subaru didn't seem to have noticed him, though. Maybe he could escape. Kamui began to creep stealthily backward.
His wings promptly snagged in the honeysuckle.
Kamui expelled his breath in a soft hiss. Wincing around, he looked back over his shoulder. He was good and caught: the way his wings were built he could fold them down sleekly enough for going forward, but each wingfinger had gone through a different loop of vine when he'd tried to back up. It would take him forever to get them all clear. He looked ahead once more, and with a start realized that Subaru was gazing in his direction, probably having heard him as he rustled about. Well, there was nothing else for it now. Kamui crawled out of the honeysuckle and stood up.
Immediately something small slipped down from the top of his head and obstructed one eye. Startled, Kamui batted at it and it fell out of his unruly fringe of bangs and into his hand. It was a cluster of faded yellow flowers--he must be covered with them, he realized--and hurriedly he swiped his hands through his hair and over his clothes, mantling his wings as well to shake off every last leaf and flower and bit of vine that was clinging to him. They fell around him in a small rain. Straightening again, he looked sheepishly at Subaru, who was watching from just a few strides away. Head tipped a little to one side, Subaru gazed at him, and then...Subaru smiled.
/He smiled./
Oh, there was so much pain and sadness piled up in broken pieces around that smile, but the smile itself...
...the smile was real.
Dumbstruck, Kamui gaped as Subaru unwrapped one arm from the swing's ropes, extending a hand toward him. Kamui stared at the gesture for a long moment, then looked apprehensively back toward Subaru's face. Slowly, almost despite himself, he began walking closer, feeling his heart thundering every step of the way, trying to shake him like the movement of an earthquake might shake a building, making nothing that it stood on seem secure enough. He came within an arm's reach of Subaru and then stopped short. Subaru turned his hand just fractionally, offering it palm up. Tentatively Kamui put his own hand out...he touched the onmyouji's, the long fingers closed gracefully about his own, and the world he was in had no past and no future: only the moment when their two hands slipped together, palm brushing palm, and that moment was everything that mattered. Kamui looked down at Subaru, at the face turned a little aside from his own and the eyes gazing with rapt tranquility at their joined hands.
"I'm sorry," he whispered at last, breaking silence.
"I know." There were shadings to Subaru's voice that he couldn't quite grasp, mysterious things, like that smile...but somehow, even not being entirely certain of their meaning, he found himself set at ease. Subaru lifted up Kamui's hand, pressed its back against his cheek. "Do you know what I remember most about this morning?" Subaru asked. "'I'm sorry,' over and over." Those green eyes slipped shut.
"'I'm sorry,'" the Sumeragi breathed then, a whisper like a far off invocation....
"Can somebody who hasn't heard those words know the difference that they make?"
Kamui gulped, not against grief this time, but against the fluttering, swelling sensation inside his chest. The realization was slowly drawing over him that what he'd felt before had not been love at all. He had never really loved Subaru but only the image in his own mind--the person he'd thought Subaru was, the person he'd wanted Subaru to be for him. But as Subaru lifted his head once again and opened up his eyes, Kamui found himself seeing the onmyouji as if for the very first time. He was struck by a sense of the whole person, separate and distinct--a person who was fragile just as much as strong, who was feeling a way forward into something unknown--and seeing that person, vulnerable and real, in Subaru's eyes...it was like a finger of light reached down and touched him deep inside.
At that moment, he thought he might understand what it meant to love.
"I lied," he confessed softly, his voice an urgent murmur. "I lied when I said I didn't want anything...."
"I lied too." Subaru's fingers tightened about Kamui's hand. "When I said that I couldn't feel. Because the truth...the truth is that I wouldn't /let/ myself feel anything. In my heart, I didn't want to....
"I was afraid.
"Like you that one time: when the world stopped, I wanted to stop with it. And even when I had to go on and live, a part of me never left that place behind. I lied to myself, saying that I couldn't change, because I didn't want to move away from that emptiness which was all I thought remained to me. I didn't want to see the other side of loneliness and loss....
"Instead, all I wanted was to die."
Kamui pressed the onmyouji's fingers gently, and he could feel in their slight response that Subaru was aware of his touch--that some part of Subaru was with him still, though Subaru was far away in memory too. He didn't have the right to demand that Subaru be present, but the thought that it might be so anyway was a bit of comfort. "Dying's easy," Kamui mumbled, mostly to himself, thinking of how close he'd been and how terribly difficult it had been to return from that place. "Living is hard." He studied the bare patch of ground beneath the swing forlornly. Then, without warning, Subaru's hand pulled out of his, and Kamui looked up startled just as Subaru leaned forward to cup that same hand caressively against the side of his face. Subaru's fingertips brushed through his hair, Subaru was smiling again, and the warmth of it was so much richer than the dull afternoon heat that surrounded them that it set an unexpected echo afire in Kamui's heart.
"Kamui...you're very brave, aren't you?" Kamui blinked and flushed. If that was true, then why did he feel so shaky just from the touch of that one hand--so confused between terror and naked happiness that he didn't even think he could speak? Subaru's eyes, though still smiling, were fixed on him with unusual directness; he felt like he was sinking forward, about to fall headlong into their depths. "You found a way to survive and go on and yet stay absolutely yourself. I was angry with you this morning," Subaru went on confidingly, "because you made me look at a truth I didn't want to see. Because you were right...I'd given up a long, long time ago." The onmyouji's gaze flinched aside, and the hand that was touching Kamui's face slipped down to rest upon his shoulder, as if seeking some support. "You were right to say that he'd...that he'd won, because the battle was lost before I even began to fight it. I let what happened on that day shape me without trying to resist it at all. Even not wanting to change or to move forward--still, I changed.
"I never used to be the person who lied to you."
It was so quiet following those words, and Kamui fumbled after something to say to ease that silence. He took a breath, not knowing quite what to do with it, and Subaru glanced at him again. Subaru's eyes held him there for a long moment, the onmyouji's hand still lying on his shoulder, before Subaru added, almost inaudibly, "You know, one of the things that I said wasn't a lie. Do you know what it was?" Kamui shook his head. Subaru half-smiled then, a soft, wistful look coming over his face, a glimmer like light falling over a veil of rain. "I said that I wanted to protect you. That I wanted to spare you...."
"Because...because I'm the 'Kamui' of the Dragons of Heaven?" Kamui stuttered, and Subaru answered gently:
"No.
"Because you're you. Because you're...
"...'special.'"
Taking Subaru's hand between both of his own, Kamui pressed it against his cheek again. Taking a quick breath, he managed to stop the happy sob that wanted to escape him; turning his head, he instead touched his mouth lightly against Subaru's palm.
"I wish," he whispered, "I wish I could protect you, too. But I've never been able to protect anything, ever. Not one person...nothing has ever been saved because of me."
And Subaru murmured in answer, "Maybe some things there's just no protecting against."
The truth of that reverberated all the way down into Kamui's heart.
"Still," Subaru added after another moment, "there's always the intention. Maybe we can't alter anyone else's destiny, but inside we can still stay true to the things that we want to save." He leaned forward suddenly, sitting right at the very edge of the swing. "Kamui," he said, and the intense steadiness of his voice was like something enduring--like the ground beneath their feet, or the great tree that arched broadly over them, shading them from the sun--"no matter what happens, I want you to remember this day. Because the past is the one thing that's always with us, and that never changes. I'll stay with you through all the fighting that's to come, for as long as I can, because I want it, too. I'll do my very best to stand beside you. But if the unforeseeable should ever come between us, then please don't grieve. If you spend your days in suffering over me, they'll only become a part of you forever. Maybe it's selfish, but I wouldn't want to think of you being unhappy like that...." Subaru's eyes were fixed with perfect seriousness on Kamui's, and Kamui felt his heart leap up once more inside his chest. "Instead, think of this moment, because this moment is something that nobody can ever take away from you. Hold onto the memory that there was once a person who loved you enough to want everything good for you, and make a future for yourself out of that.
"And then, I will be always by your side...."
Always.../the person who/...damn it, in a minute he was really going to start crying again. It was starting to get ridiculous. Kamui released a hand from Subaru's quickly and scrubbed at one eye. Then he met the onmyouji's gaze and nodded...he nodded with all of his heart. The half-smile that had been lingering just below the surface of Subaru's expression uncovered itself, a light that had been waiting all along to be revealed. He looked into Kamui's face with a deep tenderness, brushed his thumb along the line of Kamui's cheek...smiling, he picked some stubborn honeysuckle out of Kamui's tangled hair and let it fall. Then he moved over, sliding down to the end of the old wooden plank. It wasn't a very big swing, but it was big enough for the two of them. Kamui settled himself cautiously, facing a little toward Subaru so that he could curve one wing behind them and around the swing's ropes. After a moment he laid his head on Subaru's shoulder. The summer silence spread out all around them, broken only by the brief, high-pitched noises of insects hidden in the grass. Far away at the bottom of the hill a boat crawled on the river. The breezes came and went from time to time, stirring their hair and the shadows of the leaves, but otherwise the world about them remained entirely still.
It was everything that Kamui had wanted.
* * * * *
After a little while, the wind picked up a bit. It rippled past the oblivious pair still sitting on the swing, wove around and through the tree's heavy branches, and then went on. Crossing to the rest of the grove, it struck up a sudden flurry of tossing limbs and a wild, silver flashing of leaves. The shadows that patterned the slender grey tree trunks wavered and danced. As the wind began to fade, though, some of those shadows billowed almost like cloth before settling back into their places, their motion for an instant not quite attuned with that of the rest.
<So Subaru-kun has a cute new playmate,> Seishirou mused. The wind tugged faintly at his shirt one last time, and then gave up. <Well, well, well....>
<And now that I've discovered their secret...I wonder.>
<What shall I do about this?>
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