Kamui moaned and his body moved vaguely, writhing against the sweat-dampened sheets. He turned his head, his cheek pressing the curve of his pillow. His eyes flickered under their closed lids and his hands reached out to touch...reached down, shifting, searching......finding...
...as a strange kind of fire waked, a slow warmth building, a fire not quite like or unlike the fire of giving forth wings. That heat drew him into it, drew him down deeper: drowning in it, afraid and yet not. He arched, seeking the moment he knew had to come, the moment of breaking free into the air, into flight...strange flight, the movement of wings, shadows rippling on the wall...he didn't understand any part of it. Frightened that there'd be no resolution, frightened that there would--but neither thing up to him anymore as he moved and his pulse flashed hot and that fire found a sudden focus. The shadows drew apart or maybe came together into one coherent sense of a person, a familiar presence surrounding him...
...filling him...
...becoming his whole world....
A pair of eyes gazed back into his own--
--/Kamui..../--
--and Kamui exploded out of sleep. Thrashing upright, he stared into the bedroom's dimness for a second, and then slumped, covering his face with one hand.
It had only been a dream.
Wings
An "X" fanfic
By Natalie Baan
Part 4
Kamui flopped back onto the mattress. He'd drawn the thin blanket over himself earlier, and now he kicked it off again--too damned hot. Lying there with one arm crooked around his head, he stared at the indistinct light the moon was casting on his ceiling, and hazily tried to pull together those bits of image and sensation that had been shocked apart by his waking up. He wasn't really sure exactly what it was that he'd been dreaming.
He wasn't really sure that he wanted to know....
The feeling of it remained, though, even after the rapid fluttering of his heart had fallen back to normal...and after the low, persistant throbbing in his groin had faded too, which took longer. Kamui flapped the sheet over himself idly, sending a wave of cooler air across his bare chest. He knew damned well what the gist of the dream had been, at least: what those longings were that could make him ache everywhere in body and heart like this, whether he was entirely awake or not.
Subaru...
...and that....
"Mmph," Kamui muttered, squirming, uncomfortable even with thinking about it. He didn't have any real business picturing such things. He didn't even know why they were occurring to him, and he was pretty sure that Subaru would be shocked too, if the onmyouji ever found out...but...but Subaru /cared/ about him, a truth that amazed Kamui every time he looked at it, and if /that/ could be so--
--then maybe there was that feeling also, inside of Subaru.
Or anyway, something like it.
The hope felt good, even if it was just sleepy, wishful thinking, and Kamui decided that he should try to enjoy it while he had the chance. Wriggling around, he snuggled back into his bed. He resettled himself, rearranging wings and sheets so he was lying on his side, and then closed his eyes. Gradually the warmth of his own body lulled him, and his mind began drifting away. It floated back into the slumber that he'd just barely left, carried by that one hope, that one wish....
By the feeling of being safe, of being loved, and by the thought of Subaru...
...the thought of Subaru...being with him....
"Eh," Kamui whispered with a small, sighing yawn, "you sicko." Then he gave himself up to the feeling anyway, too drowsy really to care. He wrapped both arms around his pillow, surrendering himself into unconsciousness, and he'd scarcely gone below the verge of sleep when there was a tapping at the door.
"Ah? Heh?" Kamui dragged his head up from the pillow again, pushing his hair out of his face and peering about. He couldn't figure out whether he'd actually heard something, or if it was only more dreaming. Then he did hear a sound that unmistakeably was a knock, although one that was whisper-soft, just barely audible. "What?" Kamui mumbled, wondering if that was the same sound that he'd heard earlier. Would something so quiet have woken him?
"Kamui? Are you awake? Can I...come in?"
"Sure!" Kamui twisted around immediately, fumbling for the bedside lamp. He found it and flicked it on. Propping himself on one elbow, he blinked owlishly in its sudden glow, trying not to squint at Subaru as the onmyouji slipped into the room. Subaru closed the door behind himself. "What is it?" Kamui asked.
Subaru didn't answer right away. Instead, he took a few steps from the shadows by the door, and then paused to look at Kamui, his head tilted a little to one side. Kamui stared back at the Sumeragi, his mouth dry as dream threatened to mix uncomfortably with reality, leaving him not quite certain which one he was in. He flashed onto those feelings of touch, those sensations of flying, and then that one dizzying kiss he'd given Subaru that time...and finally onto that afternoon, which had been real and helped to settle him down a bit. Subaru was still dressed, Kamui noticed, wearing the light slacks and shirt from before. That was reality also. Subaru gazed at Kamui thoughtfully, a long, appraising look, before he smiled that shy, vanishing fragile smile.
"Kamui, I've woken you up just now, haven't I? Truly, I'm very sorry...."
"No, it's all right!" Kamui pushed himself up straighter. "Please, come in." He flushed, because it had been a stupid thing to say. Subaru was already inside the room. Despite that, Subaru accepted the invitation anyway, dipping his head with grave courtesy before walking over. He approached the edge of the bed, and Kamui struggled to get untangled from the sheet and to sit up properly.
"No, don't get up." Subaru touched one hand to his shoulder, stopping him. "I don't want to disturb you. It's only that I couldn't sleep. Would you mind if I sat with you, just for a while?"
"Um...no." Kamui lay back again, confused. Settling onto the bed, Subaru seated himself just behind Kamui and inside the trailing arc of Kamui's wings, which would make it sort of difficult to get up anyway. He leaned one arm against the headboard and smiled down quietly. Light from the lamp behind him threw halos on the fine dark hair, put shadows into those luminous green eyes....
"You don't need to stay awake, Kamui. Just sleep. I'll only sit with you for a short time. The nights get very long, being alone...." Subaru's murmuring voice began to ease Kamui's nervousness. He sank back against the pillow gradually, his eyelids sagging shut. The strangeness of having Subaru there began fading into the background as Kamui relaxed once again, giving himself up to that feeling of contentment....
Subaru touched his face. Startled, Kamui's eyes flickered open as surprise tugged him back from an almost-doze. He rolled his head and glanced behind his shoulder at Subaru. The onmyouji reached forward to trace the line of Kamui's cheekbone, touched his forehead with cool fingertips, began stroking his hair....
"Do you mind it?" Subaru asked, pausing.
"N- no." Kamui shut his eyes, but sleep was far, far away from him now, and getting further as Subaru's fingers came to rest on him once more. Subaru's hand drifted across the top of Kamui's head, one slow stroke, a pause, and then another, smoothing down the wild, rumpled places in Kamui's hair. That touch began to press more deeply, running through the strands first here, then there, long strokes that never seemed to end until suddenly they did, and it was too soon. They moved lower, brushing through the fine, short hairs by the side of Kamui's face, tracing a half circle around the back of his ear--and Kamui shivered just a little, in spite of himself.
There was a faint, puzzling sound from Subaru, something like a muffled catch of breath, and then a moment's hesitation, long enough to make Kamui wonder whether he should open his eyes or not. Without warning, that touch was on him once again, trailing down the side of his neck and back up into his hair--and down yet again, and outward in one light, unhurried motion, following the line of his shoulder along his back and up the muscled arc of his wing.... Kamui trembled more strongly, and his wing extended, fluttering as if of its own accord. Oh, that was embarrassing. Kamui turned his face even further aside, his eyes squinched tightly shut, but he couldn't control his pulse or that surging feeling in the pit of his stomach, and his breath wanted to come on fast and hard, giving him away.
Suddenly there was an alarming draft of air as the sheet billowed up off of Kamui. He twisted around, writhing wildly onto his back. Subaru slipped underneath the sheet with him, and Kamui froze. He could feel the length of Subaru's lean body against him, could feel the flat stomach move against his own with the faint in-and-out of breath...Subaru stared into Kamui's face, those green eyes almost shimmering. Then Subaru leaned close and kissed him.
Subaru kissed him--/kissed/ him--a kiss that was long and slow, one that was deeper and more entire than any Kamui had ever known. Passionately Subaru's mouth moved on his, asking for, calling for more--and the world, the dream, fell away from Kamui, shattering into drops that sparkled like light upon glass before dissolving away.
Into stark emptiness.
Subaru pulled away just a little, opening those eyes to gaze down at Kamui. Kamui stared back in numb dismay. "Subaru," he began, and Subaru put his head on one side, smiling, with that warm and affectionate look which was the one thing that Kamui had always wished for.
"...doesn't kiss like that," Kamui finished, very softly.
And for a instant, as Subaru simply returned his stare, he held onto the brief hope anyway, to the thought that maybe, just maybe, he might have been wrong about that...then Subaru ducked his head and chuckled quietly. It was a low, rippling sound unlike anything that Kamui'd ever heard from him before, and Kamui's insides fell into the same splintered nothingness which had taken away all feelings of desire.
"Subaru" pushed himself calmly off Kamui, taking the sheet along with him in a white flutter and fall of cloth. Jerking his feet back, Kamui scrambled to his knees as well. He crouched in front of the headboard, hands clenched aggressively, and tried to show that he was ready to fight even despite all this.
"How perceptive of you, 'Kamui,'" that person mused. "Indeed, much more perceptive than I'd thought." He smiled, and it was Subaru's face and Subaru's dark green eyes, but the expression absolutely was not Subaru's. It was warmly amused and charming and at the same time totally heartless, like the smile of a popular student that meant nothing at all.
"It seems you're very observant--about some things, that is. Although in other matters, still rather blind, I think...."
"Who are you!" Kamui demanded, and "Subaru" chuckled again. Something shimmered in the air between them and Kamui tensed further, catching at threads of power inside his mind. The air condensed into a shadow which swiftly grew opaque, hiding that other person from his sight, and then that shadow parted down its center like a curtain or like wings...two black wings opening, and between them a figure that was slender and delicate and terribly, crazily familiar....
"But also extremely cute," the other Kamui added.
Kamui couldn't even blink. Was he dreaming again? That was the only place he'd ever seen himself like this: the face and the disheveled hair just as they greeted him in the mirror each morning, the same slight body that he wished would grow taller wearing pyjama bottoms identical to the ones that he had on now, and those dark dragon's wings curving up above the other's head--but the expression so wholly and completely different. The violet eyes that half-opened to meet his seemed lit from within, a molten gleam like well-polished amethyst, and the smile was a sensually curving, pitiless thing.
He didn't ever smile like that...did he?
The other Kamui looked lingeringly down at himself, tracing fingers up the line of his own arm. He ran them across his chest in a deliberate motion, and Kamui felt an electric jolt as they brushed across one nipple--no, damnit, he was *imagining* that, he was picturing what it would be like, both the movement of the hand and the whispering touch, and *that* was what sent the hint of quickening fire into his body. Nothing else. The other Kamui was messing with his head, that was all--and damned if he was going to give in to that. Kamui took a firmer grip on reality, which had been threatening to slide away from him again. The other watched him indulgently.
"Yes, really exceptionally cute," that Kamui said. Curling those dark wings forward, he stroked them against Kamui's, and Kamui snatched his away, mantling them against the wall behind himself. The other Kamui laughed, a startling silver chime of sound. "You don't agree?" he asked teasingly. "But we can try something else, if you don't find it appealing."
"Who...?"
"Don't you have even one guess? Surely you must have some idea." The other leaned forward, going to hands and knees, and Kamui flinched back from that nearness. The violet eyes so close to his own, the curve of that smile....
"'Kamui,'" his reflection murmured. One hand reached toward Kamui's face, brushed fingers against his cheek with assurance. "'Kamui'...."
Kamui started out of his fascinated half-trance, and with a soundless snarl he swatted at the other Kamui. Deflecting the blow with one wing, the other recoiled mockingly and then laughed again. "You," Kamui mumbled, his voice thick with anger and confusion as he tried to put it all together...not one of the figures from his visions, he decided at last. They'd been something from inside, and this was real. Not a dream after all. And it wasn't the person that he'd feared most it might be...no, certainly it wasn't Fuuma. Something about this was just a little bit off. There were cues that he would have picked up on by now, or that Fuuma would have played against him...Kamui dug his fingers into the scars that crossed the palms of both hands. But if not him, then who...and as pieces began clicking in and out of place in his mind another thought occurred to him. He looked at his echo, sitting curled up perfectly at ease down the other end of the bed, one arm drawn across the slender, naked chest and the wings moving faintly like breathing. As that possibility spread through Kamui's mind, the other, watching his face, smiled even more widely. Lifting up his shoulders in amusement, that Kamui fanned his wings open, and their darkness started to swirl and dissipate into fragments like a fall of black leaves or of snow. The small storm whirled about the two of them, and Kamui raised one arm to shield his face. The fragments faded into cloudy white, then to palest rose...they cleared, revealing at first a shadow and then the solid figure of a person sitting on the edge of the mattress, legs crossed casually: a tall person, wide shouldered and still bare chested, with a fall of black bangs that tumbled over his forehead just above the laughing, mismatched eyes. One that was amber-brown, and the other....
"You!"
"I'm afraid so, 'Kamui,'" the Sakurazukamori said in his real voice. He chuckled goodnaturedly. "But isn't it nice?"
"No!" Kamui snapped, but the man continued anyway, almost unheedingly.
"You have the same pure, transparent gaze, after all," the other said, "just like his. One that discloses all you think and feel. And even now that you know about it, there's really nothing you can do. It's funny, isn't it...in your pretty eyes, anger, loathing, and hatred are all quite plain to be seen. And before," the man leaned forward, his voice dropping into a purr as Kamui stared at him,"before that...other things.
"Isn't that right?"
Kamui colored wildly, and the man sat back once more, laughing out loud. "No! You tricked me!" Kamui insisted over the other's amusement. "And anyway, I did figure it out! I would never have--no, never with you!" The man was still snickering, and Kamui hissed through his teeth, "I hate you!"
"Why?"
The plainness of the question, the simple curiosity of it, stopped Kamui immediately. He gaped at the other's inquisitive, odd-eyed face. "Be-because--!" he stammered indignantly, scarcely able to put words to something which seemed so obvious that he'd never even thought about it, and the man's laughter interrupted him once again. "Shut /up!/"
"'Kamui,'" the Sakurazukamori said, "--or shall I call you 'Kamui'-kun?" The man grinned. "Yes, after all you're very cute. You're so much fun to play with, just like Subaru-kun." He looked directly into Kamui's eyes, and the smile became predatory and possessive. "'My darling Subaru-kun....'"
The faint hum of power at the back of Kamui's mind became a roar. "Get out!" he shouted. "Get out of my room--/PERVERT!/" Incandescent forces flared around him wildly. He whipped them into a tight swirl and flung them at the still-smiling face of the Sakurazukamori, those energies erupting in an expanding cone from both his hands. They smashed through the tall figure opposite him, striking all the way to the wall in the far corner of the room, and there was a thunderous sound, a blinding white nova of light--
--a cloud of dust--
As the wave of power broke apart and scattered, Kamui stared through the haze that was left in its wake. A strange wind filled his bedroom somehow, blowing his hair into his eyes. He peered through it into the swiftly vanishing dust, seeing the gaping hole in the wall and ceiling which was the source of that, but nothing else. Had he just...?
Had he really...?
Something moved contrary to the swirl of dust, something very tiny: something that danced. A flicker of pale pink licked past Kamui, and after it another, carried by the now-diminishing wind. More and more appeared as the dustcloud faded: a riot of cherry petals whirling swiftly at first and then growing gradually more slow. One by one the wind let go of them, and they floated almost to a stop in midair before drifting down toward the floor.
Putting out his hand, Kamui caught a petal from the air right in front of his face. He looked at its delicate rose pink silkiness and then clenched his fist around it.
/Damn./
There were sudden thundering footsteps in the sitting room outside, the sounds getting rapidly nearer. Without warning his door was slammed wide open, and the room filled up with a confusion of Seals and Clamp Campus people. There were several different shouts of his name. Then more than one person was trying to ask him if he was all right, and Kamui just sat there and blinked at them.
He wondered how the hell he was going to explain what had just happened.
Suoh, a bathrobe thrown hastily over his pyjamas, went straight to the demolished section of wall. As he moved across the room, his gold eyes flicked over everything he passed. He inspected the wall's fractured edges, and then leaned a little way out of the gap, looking down toward the ground--
"Yes, I'm fine," Kamui told Sorata, who'd scrambled right up onto the bed and into his face, one hand pressing his shoulder and the monk's eyes intent and worried on his own. Leaning to one side, Kamui tried to follow what Suoh was doing. Had there been anything out there for the man to find?
"--Angel," Suoh was saying quietly over his shoulder to Nokoru, who had just come into the room.
"But how?" Nokoru replied, his voice equally soft. He was wrapped in a luxurious, deep red robe, his blond hair mussed with sleep, but the half-lidded eyes were alert and showed no drowsiness at all. "Campus security is supposed to prevent this kind of thing, Suoh."
"I know." Suoh's gaze was scanning the darkness outside the room. "I'll have to go back over the logs and look for clues. It could be that the physical perimeter is still intact and this was only a sending that somehow managed to get through." He glanced back at Nokoru. "Anyway, if the caster was ever on the Campus Grounds at all, there's no sign of him here. To be sure, though, we still should send a search party out...."
"I'll go!" Sorata volunteered and bounced energetically off the bed, his pyjamas flapping.
"And I," Arashi added. Sorata looked at her, and all expression drained away from his face, leaving just the blankness of utter shock.
"L-like /that/?" Arashi glanced down at herself, discovered that she was wearing a thigh-skimming silk yukata and not very much else, and turned an extraordinary color.
"I'll be...right there," she murmured. Holding her hem down with one hand, she edged demurely backward out the door. She was passed on the way by Inuki, and a few moments later the inugami was joined by Yuzuriha, who was scrubbing the sleep from her eyes and apologizing for getting lost in the mansion's corridors. She dropped her hands, gazed around the room, and her eyes went even huger than usual.
"Kamui!" she cried in dismay. "What did you do to your /room!/"
Luckily the Imonoyama stepped forward to answer her questions. Kamui sighed and glanced aside. His eyes skipped over Sorata, who had toppled onto the bed once again, mumbling something feverishly delighted to himself as he grinned up at the ceiling, and then they lit on Subaru, who'd been standing by his side all along. Subaru was gazing toward the hole in the wall...no, toward a place right next to it, where one final cherry blossom wafted upward on a current of air before falling back toward the ones which carpeted the floor. Even when Sorata had recovered and bounded cheerfully into the night, the onmyouji remained frozen, staring at that place. "Seishirou-san," he whispered, those green eyes gone wide and hauntingly stricken.
Suddenly, Kamui wasn't feeling very fine after all.
* * * * *
The warm, liquid gold of midday sunlight spilled through the kitchen's curtains. It pooled on the counters and on the floor around Kamui as he slowly tried a taste of the apple pie. The handmade whipped cream dissolved into a startlingly delicate sweetness in his mouth. He took a second forkful, discovering the perfect, not-too-dry flakiness of the crust and the meltingly smooth, subtle cinnamon-and-spice of that delicious apple filling.... His mouth still full, he looked up at Akira and nodded enthusiastically. Akira beamed with pleasure.
Kamui dug into his slice of pie once again as Akira started puttering around the kitchen. Like everything else in the Imonoyama mansion, the room was huge--which was good, because it meant that Kamui could sit at the kitchen table, wings and all, and not get in Akira's way. After a moment, a cup of tea appeared at Kamui's elbow. Surprised, he glanced at Akira, and the man smiled down at him kindly before turning back to the counter. Kamui took a long, savoring sip of Akira's tea. He'd had it many times before and it was always just as wonderful.
"Is your new room comfortable enough, Kamui-san?"
"Um, yeah." Kamui set the teacup down again. "It's great!" Akira had set out the rest of the pie and the teapot on a large tray, along with a selection of cups. Now the man took a handful of elaborately folded napkins out of a drawer and began arranging them on the tray as well.
"I'm very, very sorry about what happened," Akira said as he worked. He sighed softly. "Of all places, we wanted you to feel safe here...."
Kamui was partway through a mouthful of pie. He chewed and swallowed quickly. "It's fine!" he insisted. "Nothing really bad happened anyway. I--" He faltered and looked guiltily at Akira. "I'm sorry about what I did to the mansion, though."
"Buildings can be repaired," Akira replied. There was a pause, as though he might have been going to add something else but didn't. Then the man turned around from the countertop, his pleasant face smiling once again. "Would you like something else?" Kamui thought about it for a second or two and couldn't come up with anything that someone who already had Akira's apple pie and tea might possibly wish for.
"Um, no. Thank you," he answered, shyly adding, "It's all very good."
"Thank /you,/ Kamui-san," Akira replied modestly. The man looked pleased. He turned away from Kamui to put a glass cover over the rest of the pie, then paused, glancing toward the kitchen door. Sorata wandered distractedly into the room, his expression glazed over as though he'd been enchanted by a spell.
"Ah, Sorata-san!" Akira exclaimed. "I was just coming to look for you and the rest. I've made some apple pie--here, let me put some out for you...."
"So /that's/ what smells so nice!" Sorata sighed. "I've been following it all the way down from upstairs...hey, thanks!" he added as Akira cut a generous slice for him and set it out on the table. Flipping a chair around, the monk sat on it backwards, picked up his fork, and dug in. "Mmmm... MMMMM...OHHHH," Sorata moaned at the first taste, rolling his eyes ecstatically, and eventually pretended to collapse onto the table. "Oh man, this is so good! Hey, I never asked before, but--are you married?"
Akira smiled and colored, almost as if he was bashful about it. "Why yes, actually."
"Well, she's a lucky woman," Sorata declared. Sitting up again, he took another huge bite and then mumbled around it, "Got any kids? 'Cuz you could adopt me, you know."
"Not yet." Akira laughed, but he seemed a touch wistful. "We're waiting, you see. For the final outcome to all of this."
Sorata swallowed, then pointed his fork incredulously at Akira. "You mean...she /knows?/"
"Of course." Seeing Sorata's astonished look, Akira added sheepishly, "Somehow I just can't keep anything secret from Utako-san. I don't know why that is...but anyway, she told me that she wanted us to wait for right now. Because this is a bad time, but the two of us together have hope for a better day...." Akira gazed down at the kitchen's tiled floor briefly, and then straightened up. "Ah!" he said, smiling, "I should take the others their tea before it gets cold. Sorata-san, Kamui-san, please enjoy the rest of your dessert. And leave the dishes on the table when you're done." Putting the cover back over the remaining pie, Akira whisked a cloth across the tray. He picked the whole thing up and strode out the door. The brisk, steady tapping of his footsteps receded down the hallway, eventually disappearing into the distance.
"Now that," Sorata said into the silence that remained, "is a really nice guy."
"Yeah," and Kamui glanced down moodily at his hands, examining once more the scars that cut across them. Those hands, and in them the fate of the world for all the people like that....
The hope for a better day that was yet to be....
Sorata was being awfully quiet. Kamui glanced up at the monk and saw him staring into his tea, his mobile face unaccustomedly still and the dark eyes distant and intent. Almost like he was seeing something that was approaching them, something that loomed but wasn't yet about to strike....
"Sorata?" Sorata looked at Kamui quizzically, and the mild surprise widening the monk's eyes made him look more like himself again. "Um, thank you," Kamui said. "For what you did the other night."
"Oh, hey! It was nothing!" Sorata laughed. "Lay off, you'll make me embarrassed!" He winked at Kamui and took another quick bite of his pie. "Anyway, it's just part of the job description, you know...."
"'For the day that's still to come'?" Sorata's gaze flicked questioningly back to Kamui's face, and Kamui sighed. "I'm sorry," he said then. "I'm sorry that you have to do these things. Just because of me...."
"Kamui--"
"Do you have that same kind of hope? For what'll come after? Is that how you're able to do what you do?"
A little brass clock on the windowsill chimed the quarter hour. Its four soft notes faded away into the air. Sorata stared back at Kamui from across the kitchen table. Then the monk laid his fork down, his expression becoming unusually reflective once again, and almost a bit sad.
"I don't worry too much about the future," he said. "I've seen enough to know everything I need to know. Kamui, do you understand a lot about the Shingon sect?" Surprised, Kamui made a noncommittal sound. "Well," the monk went on, folding his arms on the back of the chair, "it's too much to get into right now, but the one of the main tenets is 'enlightenment in this life.' Rather'n get caught up with being reborn over and over again, always trying to improve for something that's still to come, you work with what you've got, 'cause the truth is that it's really enough." Sorata looked up and grinned at Kamui, the same direct, intense expression that Kamui had seen occasionally before, and one that had nothing to do with the monk's usual goofiness. "Now, I'm not real big into philosophy," he admitted, "but that's always felt right to me. And truthfully? I'm okay with what I've been given." He leaned across his half-finished slice of pie as though to emphasize the point, his chair tilting up onto its forward legs. "Even being taken away from my parents and raised in the monastery--if it means that I have the ability to protect what I think's important and to make a difference that way, then I'm glad. Not that it isn't hard sometimes...like being a student at this CLAMP Campus school. Everyone here's so smart and talented, it's a problem for a regular guy like me not to feel out of his depth." For a moment, Sorata glanced at the table's surface, his thoughts seeming far away. Then his eyes flicked up and met Kamui's again, and his expression cleared like the air after a fall of rain.
"But still, even if it's tough sometimes, I don't have any regrets. I like you--I like all of the people on our side--so if it's my destiny to die in the fight that's to come then that's all right, 'cause I'll be dying for something that matters to me. Just like looking at Miss's beautiful face is something that's really special...something like that's worth any amount of trouble.
"Though I still don't understand how I'm supposed to die for you and for the sake of a woman too."
Sorata cocked his head and gazed at his pie as if it could explain his puzzlement. Then he rocked his seat backward again, the chair's rear legs falling to the floor with a thump, and reclaimed his fork. "And it's not just you yourself, but all the moments like this one, all the nice times that we've had together," Sorata remarked. He smirked at Kamui. "Even if it's going for roast beef at a yakiniku-ya!" With a flourish the monk scooped up another huge forkful of pie, adding, "Or having one of Akira-san's amazing desserts--now there's a guy who knows what's important in life! If you ask me," Sorata went on blissfully, popping the bite of pastry into his mouth and speaking indistinctly around it, "that's the only secret in life: to find the things that make you really and truly happy and then be sure to appreciate them properly for every moment you've got.
"With that kind of happiness to believe in, you can stand up against anything."
"Oh," Kamui said softly. He dabbled his own fork in his slightly melted whipped cream, feeling a little bit foolish. Somehow the monk made everything sound so simple....
Was it really?
"And speaking of happiness, /maybe you should go and find the Sumeragi now./" Kamui started, his eyes snapping back to Sorata's face. The monk was looking at him with a disturbing intensity, and Kamui panicked for an instant, wondering what the hell Sorata meant by that. Then Sorata leaned way, way back in his chair, the strange expression vanishing as if it had never been. He put one hand behind his head and grinned like a fool.
"And when you do, you should tell him my 'secret to better living,'" Sorata added, "because if ever a guy needed a hit with a happy stick, then he's the one!"
* * * * *
Far away in the distance, the Campus clock struck the hour. Kamui rested his hand against the trunk of a giant tree. He tilted his head to gaze up all the tree's great height to where a dappled light and shade patterned its occasionally stirring leaves...funny how many different kinds of places there were on the Campus grounds. The fields and river, the formal gardens, the arbors and groves, and here, this wide-spaced forest of gigantic, silvery grey trees...it was amazing that the school had all these things together in one spot. And that these trees were so huge, too--like the remnants of some ancient forest. How had they grown up and survived so near the city? Because surely the school wasn't old enough to have protected them....
Lowering his gaze once again, Kamui sighed. He dropped his hand from the trunk. All those different places, and he'd been through most of them already today, looking for Subaru.
He still hadn't found a thing.
There were voices close by, he realized suddenly, and they were coming nearer. That was right--the clock bell marked the end of the school day. The students would be getting out of class. Kamui ducked around the trunk of the tree and then sprang straight up: one bound, to the lowest of the tree's branches, and then another, to a still higher perch. Even there, almost three stories above the ground, the trunk was wide enough that if he kept his wings folded it would hide him from view completely. He leaned against the cool bark and listened to the buzz and murmur and the occasional raised laughter as the other kids went past. Then the chatter thinned and began to fade away. Kamui was just considering where he was going to look next when a last cluster of voices passed beneath the tree. One of them sounded....
Familiar.
Kamui stretched forward cautiously, bracing himself with one hand against the trunk. The tree's width worked against him now, but he got enough of an angle that he could see the last group of students retreating down the forest path. They were far enough away that he couldn't make out their words, but one of them said something and the last in the group responded with an energetic gesture that sent papers scattering out of the workbook he was carrying. That tall figure turned around in dismay.
It was Keiichi.
Surprised, Kamui started. With a smile, his one-time classmate waved aside the grins of the other students and started picking up his dropped schoolwork. The others began to move off down the path, the last saying something brief to Keiichi, who just nodded, engrossed in what he was doing. A brief, trick breeze sprang up, fanning his papers down the side of the trail, and he went after them, gathering them one by one, his words becoming clearer as he approached Kamui's perch: "...here, you silly thing. Don't you know that it's not nice? Aha!--got you too!" Keiichi pounced on the last paper and flourished it in playful triumph. Then he put it into the workbook along with the rest and tucked the book securely inside his satchel. Rising from his crouch, he swung the satchel onto his shoulder, his eyes glancing up...and up...and somehow, in all the patterns of light and shadow, his gaze came to rest directly on Kamui's face.
For about two seconds, everything was still.
Then Keiichi's satchel slipped out of nerveless fingers and thudded to the grass.
"/WAAAH!!/" he yelled. "Shi- Shi- Shirou-kun!! What're you doing up there! No! Don't move! You'll fall!" Keiichi stared around frantically, in near-hysteria. "Oh my gosh, what'll I do, what'll I do?--I know! Wait there! I'll go and get a ladder."
"Umm...wait...."
"I'll go quickly! I'll only be a minute! Please, be careful and--/don't move!/"
"Wait...!" Keiichi'd taken a single step backward, hands lifted as though either pleading with the kami for intercession or trying to push Kamui more securely into place. Now he turned to run back to the school. "Wait! Segawa-kun!" Kamui shouted after him, springing down to a lower branch. Pausing, Keiichi glanced back over his shoulder, and then the young man stopped entirely, his mouth falling open and his eyes going wide and stunned....
Oh...oh, the /wings./ Kamui'd forgotten about them for an instant, but now, as he stood balanced on a different limb of the tree, of course they were totally obvious. Kamui's heart clenched miserably inside his chest, but it was much too late to do anything. He stayed where he was instead, gazing unhappily back at Keiichi, until the other's blankly frozen look began to melt. Keiichi's eyes filled up once more with his emotions.
For some reason, they became very sad.
"So...I see," the young man whispered, his voice barely carrying at all. He lowered his head, that wild, fair hair tumbling in front of his face. Puzzled, Kamui looked down and hesitated, wanting to say something--and then Keiichi spoke up again, before Kamui'd quite figured out what it was that he wanted to say.
"I think maybe I knew it from the beginning," Keiichi murmured. "Knew that you were special...you were always a person who was different from anyone else I'd ever known. Always so pretty...always so far away and sad....
"But never...never a part of my world."
"Segawa--"
Keiichi raised his head, and for some reason he was smiling, his face gentle and mild as it always had been in the past whenever he'd looked at Kamui. "Your friend--he's like you, isn't he? You have the same sad eyes...he's the only person that I've seen you come alive for. The only one I've seen you run toward." Abruptly Keiichi drew himself up as if at attention, his spine straightening and his heels coming together briskly. "Please be happy!" he said. His smile closed his eyes, its warmth like a small but reassuring flame. "A person like you...a person with wings should have a heart that soars too.
"Shouldn't they?"
Bewildered, Kamui stared as Keiichi picked up the satchel. Then Keiichi bowed, a swift bob up and down. Turning, he hurried along the forest path. He half-paused once, twisting around in midstride to wave back to Kamui before picking up his pace once again...beginning to run...he rushed after his companions, disappearing into the shadows between the giant trees, his white shirt a flicker of brightness and then gone. Kamui watched him go, scarcely comprehending.
All this time....
He'd never even known.
And for a instant, he was going to fly after Keiichi, to call for Keiichi to come back, wanting to fix the pain that surely had to lie behind that smile...with an effort, though, he made himself stop. It wouldn't really be fair, not to himself or to anybody else. Instead he'd wait, he'd think about what he was going do, and then someday he'd find a way to make it up to Keiichi for all the kindness that the other had given him and that he'd never really returned.
His friend deserved at least that much.
Having settled the issue in his own mind, at least for now, Kamui turned back to his original problem. He hadn't realized until just that moment how late it had grown. If the students had been let out of class already, then he'd spent hours searching the Campus park with absolutely no luck at all. It was starting to get annoying. He thought about returning to the mansion to see if Subaru'd gone back there, but something held him in place, an echo of memory--
--/maybe you should go and find the Sumeragi now/--
/Sorata./ Sometimes, he thought, when Sorata got a little bit strange like that, you had the feeling that the monk really /saw/ things that nobody else did, maybe a flash of visions like the Stargazer who'd trained him had seen. The "Star from Kouyasan"...it was kind of strange, but it did make sense. And if that was so, if Sorata had believed that he ought to go, then....
/Subaru./
Kamui hesitated for one breath. Then he moved. He raced tree to tree, leaping the gaps between branches, leaves flickering past him and at times slashing sharply against his wings. The trees began to open out ahead of him; he put on more speed. Then there was only a thin wall of leaves between himself and daylight; he crashed through it in a rustling explosion and sprang into the air. Flapping strongly, he climbed higher and then turned, soaring toward the edge of the Campus grounds. He was hoping that most the students had gone home by now--and counting on the ones who were left to be busy with afterschool activities or projects, and not likely to be having their eyes on the sky. Only please, let the birdwatching club not be active today, let the rocket club not be having any launches...he needed just a few minutes to circle the Campus, searching with eyes and distant senses for any sign that Subaru'd been there. And it seemed he got those few minutes, too; he made a swift loop around the Campus and there were no any cries, no disasters at all...but also, unfortunately, no Subaru. He cut back toward the center of the school, flying once more above the park. Then the trees opened up a bit, down to his right, and he almost didn't recognize the place from above, but there was a sudden flash of white from beneath the branches and--
The gazebo! Quickly Kamui switched to a new course, angling down toward the little outbuilding. He dipped lower, between the branches, trying to catch a glance beneath its circular roof. The columns lifted skyward in serene lines, and between them there was the slanted sunlight falling, the empty seats and the table where they'd studied that time....
And Subaru wasn't waiting there either.
Damn.
Kamui pulled up, just clearing the line of trees. It could be that Subaru'd gone into the city; he'd make one more circle above the Campus and then he'd go and look for the onmyouji there. Kamui winged around the school's circumference--flying faster now, spurred on by a growing certainty, a feeling of dread, and he didn't know whether it was only because of that hint from Sorata or if it was a reality that his own heart had started to sense. He came around full circle, back to the gazebo by the high school, and still there hadn't been the slightest trace. Banking, Kamui leaned into the shallow turn that would put him on course toward Tokyo, and as he came about he scanned the faroff skyline with all his senses. No feeling of earthquake, no sight or sound of fighting, but something was wrong, something was wrong for sure...and how the hell was he ever going to find Subaru? There had to be a way.... Surely if he felt that Subaru was in trouble then he ought to feel /where,/ someplace deep inside himself. Subaru had traveled into his heart that one time; surely his heart would know....
Kamui angled his wings, increasing their resistance to the air, and his glide slowed gradually. Slower, and then slower still...holding his wings out arched and unmoving, almost to the point of a stall, he stared down into the gazebo. Long lines of sunlight and the columns' shadows stretched across its floor, and dust motes sparkled briefly in and out of existence as they crossed between one and the other. A slight breeze rose, whispering in the surrounding leaves...Kamui narrowed his eyes. He altered the angle of his wings even further, for an instant coming nearly to a halt in midair. Then he folded them close and dropped. Plunging for several meters, he snapped them open at the last second, catching the momentum of his fall and changing it to a glide. He flapped once, then drew his wings in one more time. Hurtling forward, Kamui fell between the gazebo's tall white columns...
...and into darkness.
Panicking, he flung his wings wide open once again, beating them blindly against the nothingness. After a moment he discovered it wasn't accomplishing much, and so he stopped. Breathing heavily, Kamui drifted in that emptiness for a moment, trying to get his bearings inside the void...he was hanging there suspended in midair, he realized, as though it was a dream. Lifting his wings, he decided that was "up," and then relaxed, letting himself settle slowly in the other direction until his feet touched on something that felt like ground. At least it supported him; he planted his feet on it firmly, flared his wings behind himself, and glared into the dark. All of this was exceedingly familiar....
And so was the sound of that voice.
"Well, well...'Kamui'-kun."
Smiling, the Sakurazukamori literally melted out of the blackness as though stepping forward through a thin wall of water. Rivulets of shadow flowed away from his arms and legs and glided from his neatly pressed slacks and white shirt without leaving a stain. The shadows rolled aside like dark mercury, merging with with scarcely a ripple into the blackness that surrounded the two of them. Kamui clenched his fists, his lip curling up into a snarl.
"So you found me after all," the Sakurazukamori mused. "How exceptional of you. I really didn't know if you would." He tipped his head, still smiling, his sunglasses weird and incongruous in the darkness. "How did you know?"
"I just knew," Kamui answered coldly. "I felt it inside of my heart." He returned the Sakurazukamori's smile with a feral one of his own, and flicked one wing. "Besides which, the wind didn't swirl properly inside the gazebo...."
"I see." Damn it, the man seemed more amused than anything else, even having his mistake pointed out to him. And it had been such a tiny slip...the Sakurazukamori was awfully good, his illusions were near-perfect traps that only got better as he learned, and he was /powerful./ Kamui took an abrupt step forward, fighting his fear.
"What have you done with him!"
"With Subaru-kun?" The Sakurazukamori met Kamui's challenging gaze calmly, that amusement still on his face. "He's right over there." The magician pointed to one side and Kamui saw Subaru, the onmyouji standing straight and motionless inside a vague ring of light. Kamui hurried a step or two toward him, then stopped short. Subaru's eyes, wide and uncomprehending, were fixed blankly on the darkness, and ghost wings of distant, flickering emotions cast shadows in them. The onmyouji's arms hung down limply, his hands in loose fists at his sides. His lips moved, a phrase or two sometimes audible as he mumbled to himself, seemingly not even aware that he was speaking.
"Subaru!"
"/...this place,/" Subaru whispered,"/that child...is 'me'.../
"/...it's 'me' when I was still small..../"
"/Subaru!/" Kamui shouted. There wasn't even a flicker of recognition. Furious, he whirled and advanced on the Sakurazukamori again. "Let him go, you sick bastard!"
The man watched Kamui approach, then flung out one hand in warning. "Wait!" he commanded, and Kamui pulled up short even in spite himself. The man grinned and went on, his voice rich with irony, "Surely you haven't forgotten what happened the last time. What will become of your friend...your precious 'Subaru'...if you leave him unguarded here like this?"
Kamui just stared. The last time...he remembered the muffled roar and crash of illusionary boulders, remembered dark wings and the coils of raw power...
...and Kotori...falling....
But if he didn't do anything, was there any chance at all?
"/...this dream...I've seen it before,/" Subaru was murmuring faintly, "/that's right...certainly this cherry tree..../"
Abruptly Kamui held his hands out in front of him, calling forth his power. It crackled into light between his palms. He took another step toward the Sakurazukamori and the man's arm made a slashing motion through the air: a swift cast of ofuda, the black cards dimly luminous against the dark. "/Shuku you dou,/" the man chanted, pointing. "/Hikuu!/" The ofuda erupted with feathers, then with wings...black birds swept across the maboroshi toward Kamui, and he shifted his hands, hurriedly reforming his power into a defensive shield. The birds streaked closer, shrieking their high-pitched, unnatural cries--and then, just before they struck his shield, they veered aside, scattering left and right at nearly impossible angles. Startled, Kamui turned, trying to follow them all at once. As they passed, they melted from birds back into streams of raw forces, and those streams struck things which had been hidden by the dark: the black, flat planes of ofuda floating eerily in midair, even now scarcely visible. Those magical beams reflected from the cards to glance back around him, were echoed once again from other cards...their power trails spun a web of sorcery, and Kamui understood the trap just a little bit too late. He flung himself at a gap between those glimmering beams of power, a space that closed a second before he reached it. He hit the barrier with his arm and shoulder and a bolt of magical power coursed through him. Kamui bit his tongue. The pain...his whole body spasmed with it. He jerked backward and his wings unfolded, striking the web of pale light behind. Power and agony crawled across his skin a second time, blanking out every other sensation, until with a gasp Kamui tumbled forward and his wings came away from the ward. He dropped to one knee, wings drooping and quivering, and tried to drag a breath into his lungs.
"/...that's right...I made a 'bet' with this person...a 'bet'...yes, a 'bet'..../"
"So, how do you like it?" The magician strolled over to stand outside the ward. "I think it's rather clever, myself.... I got the idea from a little trick Subaru-kun played on me once. I've made a few improvements to it, though, as you can see."
Glowering, Kamui got up. He paused for a moment to center himself, then drew upon his power once more. Building the energies inside his mind and body, he let them coil into the space around him, encircling him, their wind lifting his hair up away from his face, until finally he flung them outward in a single violent wave, striking toward the Sakurazukamori's ward. His power swept out to meet those glowing beams of light--
--rolled smoothly back--
For a split second, Kamui could only stare in horror. Then his own attack crashed into him, reflected in all its strength from that magical web. Searing and destructive forces, a power to rip things open and break free--Kamui screamed and lashed out at it frantically. His second strike just made the matter worse. The two blows whipped around the inside of the ward like live things: a maelstrom of warring powers with himself at their heart. Kamui howled again as energy fired across his skin. He grabbed at the lunatic power storm instead, trying to control it this time, to suppress it, to make it /go/...its painful crackle blinded him, so much that he scarcely realized when the power began to ebb. One moment he was clinging to it, crucified against its raging, and the next there was only emptiness and he wasn't holding onto anything anymore. He found himself falling forward into unexpected stillness, and the maboroshi's ground came up and met him almost affectionately. It was flat and solid and motionless, and the brief thump of landing upon it broke up the pain which had been rebounding around inside his nerves. Kamui lay still a moment, dazed, then lifted his head and managed to pry one eye open. He found that he was staring at the Sakurazukamori's shoes. The man chuckled irritatingly and Kamui gritted his teeth.
"Ow," he muttered, pushing himself up on his arms. "You prick...."
"Well, you /have/ been very amusing," the Sakurazukamori remarked. "But unfortunately for you, I think the game is just about done." Kamui's first instinct was to leap up and deny those words, and then to fight--but instead, he hesitated. He sat up in the center of the ward, careful to keep his wings drawn in tight. The man took off the sunglasses and slipped them into a pocket, then looked at Kamui tolerantly, as though he was a child whose tantrums were insignificant. Kamui bristled resentfully.
"I'll get out of here," he told the Sakurazukamori. "I'll break your spell!"
The man put his head on one side and considered the matter. "No," he replied after a brief pause. "I don't think you will." He turned and walked away across the darkness.
Toward Subaru.
"You son of a bitch! You stay away from him!" Kamui was back on his feet in an instant. He took a step toward the ward, and then flinched. The memory of his disastrous attack on it...the feeling of that pain...if he struck out and failed again then Subaru would have no protection at all. Trembling, Kamui watched the Sakurazukamori continue his advance. He prayed that there'd be some miracle...that he'd be given just one moment's chance....
One moment would be all that he'd need.
The Sakurazukamori stopped in front of Subaru. He gazed into the vacant green eyes. "You see," he explained to Kamui calmly, "although you're a lot of fun to play with, I don't really need both you and Subaru-kun. In fact, it complicates the situation rather a lot. As they say, 'two's company and three's a crowd.'" He glanced back over his shoulder. "I'm sure that you understand...."
The Dragon of Earth began walking around Subaru, one measured step at a time.
"So, which one do I choose?" he mused out loud, then laughed again. "Well actually, to be honest, there's no real choice at all. From a long, long time ago, it's been decided. And cute as you are, you're really not intriguing enough to make me change my mind about it." He cast another sly look toward Kamui. "'Kamui'-kun, I hope that you won't cry."
"Wh-what the--!" Kamui stuttered incredulously, and the man turned back to Subaru. He stepped a little nearer, leaning past Subaru's shoulder to draw a long, caressing touch down the onmyouji's face.
"Yes," he murmured, his fingers still lying against Subaru's cheek, "Subaru-kun has been mine since long ago." The corners of his mouth curved up once again, an expression that was both like and unlike a smile.
"Mine," the man repeated, dwelling on the word as if he savored it.
"/...but there was some spell,/" Subaru whispered back as though replying, the green eyes stark and empty. "/I couldn't do a thing..../"
"What the hell are you going on about!" Kamui finally spluttered out. "After what you did to him--you don't have the right!" He threw an urgent, pleading look toward the Sumeragi. "/Subaru!/"
"It's no good," the man replied without concern. "Subaru-kun can't hear you. He can only hear the sound of my voice...and then, only when I wish." He slipped his arm around Subaru's chest and Subaru swayed against him. "And as for what I did to him--and to his dear sister," the man added almost as an afterthought, gazing serenely at Kamui past the onmyouji's head, "that's the whole point. That's the reason why my choice has been made already."
"Huh?" The man chuckled once again and Kamui glared.
"There, you see?" the Sakurazukamori responded gently. "Now you're angry with me again. But for all that you're cute when you're angry, it still isn't very interesting. You said before that you hated me--but then, of course you would. The person who attacked you, who threatened your friends, who hurt the one most special to you...." The man's smile deepened. "It's no surprise at all. Really, it's only natural that you would hate that kind of person.
"There never was anything there that you would love."
Kamui drew a sharp breath as the man turned his head, laying his cheek against Subaru's dark hair.
"But Subaru-kun," the man murmured, "Subaru-kun loved before he hated, and though he came to hate eventually, deep inside that gentle heart of his has never quite changed. So there are two forces always at war within the thirteenth head of the Sumeragi clan: the powers of love and of hate. Subaru-kun is himself a battleground, a crossroads...he fights himself even more than he fights me. What was once so pure and simple has become complex, shaded with many contradictions--and yet he is still and always my opposite and mirror." The man touched Subaru's hand, and Kamui started, seeing thin lines of blood forming there...a slow trail that trickled over the onmyouji's pale skin, tracing in crimson the outlines of a five-pointed star.
"Subaru-kun affords me a lot of interest," the Sakurazukamori concluded, bringing that hand up and resting its palm almost tenderly against his face. "It's always a question, to see what he will do." He threw a smirking glance toward Kamui. "And although you have potential as a playmate, I'm afraid that you have a long, long way to go before you'll be anywhere near as intriguing. To develop our game so that it's more than one-dimensional...there won't be time enough for that before the final day. And so I think it's better to have you safely set aside and out of the picture. Don't you agree?"
Kamui looked helplessly at the Sumeragi. A drop of blood fell from the back of Subaru's right hand. It struck the darkness beneath him and disappeared into it, and all the while Subaru gazed vaguely upward: oblivious, but with a shimmer of pain behind those blank, staring eyes....
"You're a coward!" Kamui spat suddenly. "That's all you are...even if you're saying these things, the truth is you're scared someone else might take your place!"
"Who--someone like you?" The man snorted. "Not very likely." His voice was unwavering and the amused gaze showed no sign of doubt. The casual disregard only made Kamui madder.
"But Subaru's not a thing!" he insisted fiercely. "You can't just play with him like he's a puppet. He has a right to choose whatever it is that he wants--and he sure as hell wouldn't choose you! That's why you have to put him under a spell like this, isn't it! Because if Subaru knew all that you've been saying--"
"He'd tell you that it's absolutely true. Subaru-kun knows perfectly well that he's bound to me, and that he always will be. It's something that goes beyond the little feelings of 'love' and 'hate'." The Sakurazukamori's smile stretched wider and his strange eyes gleamed. "If I woke him from this spell right now, your presence would have no significance whatsoever. You could shout and cry, but he'd only turn away, and either he would try to kill me or else his gentle heart would prevent him from doing so. But in either case, he would belong to me. For Subaru-kun, there will only ever be me in this world. There's nothing you can do which will change that."
Kamui glared bitterly at the man.
"You don't believe me? You think that he 'loves' you, and that such a consideration should outweigh all else? I'll prove to you that it's not so." The Sakurazukamori stepped away from Subaru, nudging the trembling onmyouji to stand upright. He moved around to Subaru's front. He passed one hand over Subaru's eyes, and Subaru started, blinking. Then the Sumeragi's eyes locked onto the magician's face.
"Subaru!" Kamui cried out desperately. "/Subaru!/" His heart sank--it was true, the onmyouji didn't even seem to know he was there. Instead, Subaru's gaze remained frozen on the older man, his breathing seeming almost to stop...there was just a faint intake of air and then he stood motionless, staring at the Sakurazukamori.
"Seishirou...san?"
"Yes, Subaru-kun. In the end, it comes back down to you and I." The magician smiled his charming smile; his voice was dark and mesmerizing. "So now that the two of us are here...what will you do? Subaru-kun, you're inside my maboroshi, not in the real world; this is the center of everything that lies between us. What do you want most of all, Subaru-kun?" He reached out and stroked Subaru's cheek again. "What is your one wish?"
"My...wish?" Subaru lowered his gaze, apparently confused. The bewilderment in his face made Kamui ache with sympathy, and also with grief. "My wish," he murmured, and Kamui could only watch through the barrier as Subaru raised his eyes once again to the Sakurazukamori's, memory and emotion glimmering vividly in their depths.
"My wish--is to be free of /you!/"
His voice cracking, Subaru raised his hands before his chest. Startled, the Sakurazukamori leaped backward and away. Tears welled up and overflowed down Subaru's face as white magic bloomed between his fingers; pure power rippled upward in a circle all around him, catching his hair and fanning at the cloth of his shirt. The Sakurazukamori's eye caught the light and blazed like an ember. His lip curled up into a momentary sneer. He lifted his own hand and the maboroshi's darkness swirled about it. Ribbons of shadow gathered together and then unfurled, spreading out wide wings...the Sakurazukamori's eagle shikigami screamed shrilly, a sound that cut through the rushing noise of Subaru's power like shards of splintering glass. It launched itself into the air, arrowing toward Subaru, and struck the solid forefront of his spell.
Subaru's eyes had closed briefly. Now they opened. His mouth moved, though his words were inaudible in the windstorm of colliding power. Two or three meters ahead of him the shiki pushed itself through the air, closer and closer...Subaru raised his hands in front of his face. He turned them palm out toward the shikigami and there was an incandescent flare of light.
The bird disintegrated back into ribbons of power and disappeared.
"Subaru--!" Kamui gasped with delight as the counterspell faded. Suddenly he realized that the Sakurazukamori had begun to chant an incantation of his own. The magician was calling up power against Subaru, and the blackness of the maboroshi flared with red.
Subaru's voice became audible for one brief instant. Then the conflict of their two powers drowned it out once more.
Kamui clenched his fist and slammed it into the barrier. The pain hit like a crack of thunder; he drew a fractured breath. Trying to ignore the anguish, he drove his hand against the magical web, forcing his own power through its fabric. The backlash and the fiery jolt from the ward seared along his nerves, just below the surface of his skin. Half-blinded, he struggled to get through the ward, tried to help in any way that he could, even if it was just as a distraction, because Subaru had already made that choice for him...outside the barrier the maboroshi had become a hell of clawed branches and flowing tendrils, all ravaging in toward the center of Subaru's light. As if in response that light flared up more brilliantly, obscuring the Sumeragi from his view. Then several things happened, almost at the same time: there was a shuddering, a splitting sensation, the ward beneath Kamui's hand began to fray, and Subaru's white light blazed outward, shooting cracks through the maboroshi's substance. As Kamui shoved forward into the vanishing barrier, almost falling through it onto his face, he saw the Sakurazukamori stagger back, the man's face a mask of shock. Then the magician's image shattered, as though the space between them had been the surface of a mirror. The pieces of him that were left splintered further, disappearing, and the cracks in the maboroshi spread wider and faster until the darkness broke apart at last into floating, spinning shards of night.
Peering urgently between them, Kamui finally spotted Subaru at the center of a fading ring of brightness. The onmyouji was staring almost straight upward, his expression struck with something like awe. Then he swayed backward, his face going surprised and then vacant once again as the green eyes slipped shut and he began to fall--
"/Subaru!/" Kamui scrambled across the space between them, clawing through splinters of illusion. Somehow he managed to throw himself underneath Subaru before the onmyouji hit the ground. Subaru collapsed in a heap on top of him, knocking out his wind, but he got his breath back quickly, and then twisted around under Subaru and sat up, cradling the other's head against his shoulder. Subaru lay limply against him; as Kamui touched one hand he saw that the narrow slashes there had already ceased to bleed. "Subaru," Kamui whispered, gazing down into the onmyouji's still and unconscious face. His voice trembled faintly, despite himself. He closed his eyes and held Subaru even nearer, laying his cheek on Subaru's. "Suba...ru...."
"There," a young woman's voice said. "There they are."
Startled, Kamui glanced up, hunting through the storm of maboroshi fragments. A number of them burst into flame and vanished. Their absence opened up a line of vision, letting him see the slender, straight figure of the Hidden Shrine Maiden of Ise, her skirt blowing around her knees in the wind of the maboroshi's disappearance and the blade of her sword glinting brightly as she held it at her side. Beside the girl stood Karen Kasumi, her red hair tumbling about her shoulders and the translucent robe she was wearing over her working clothes billowing in that same breeze. The soap girl held a tiny flame in the palm of her hand, a fire which jumped and sparkled merrily between her fingers.
"You're right," the woman agreed, and giggled softly. "But it doesn't look like they'll be needing our help after all."
Kamui flushed and glowered at her, hugging Subaru against himself more securely.
"We saw the illusion around the gazebo shatter," Arashi remarked calmly, "but we couldn't find the Sakurazukamori. I assume that he's managed to escape us once again. Certainly he doesn't seem to stay around when he's defeated." The priestess shook her head, appearing thoughtful. "Incredible, though, the power that must have been called upon to break his spell...."
Karen cocked her head and gazed at Kamui, a smile still flickering wickedly about her lips. "Yes, that's so," she answered, "and all's well that ends well, I suppose...but say, aren't those two awfully cute together? What do you think?" She threw a sly glance at Arashi, who returned the look with a dubious quirk of one brow. "But really, it makes a person feel like she has no prospects." Karen heaved a deep sigh. "The cutest boys always going for each other--it's like being trapped in Yaoi Land!" The soap girl struck a melodramatic pose. Arashi appeared unconvinced. "And you!" the woman added impudently, shaking a finger at her. "You've got a perfectly good one that you're not even using! /I'd/ take him off your hands for you in a second, a nice boy like that. Think we could come to some arrangement on it?"
"No," Arashi answered primly. "I don't."
Karen nodded and then did a doubletake, staring at the Hidden Priestess. Arashi's sword dissolved and slid fluidly into her palm. "I'm going back," she said, and turned, walking away through the still-dissolving illusion toward the distant gleam of afternoon daylight. Karen watched her go, bemused for one instant, and then giggled once again, shoulders twitching uncontrollably with mirth.
"Well, I'll be." The soap girl threw another amused glance at Kamui, and Kamui draped one wing protectively over Subaru. He sort of wished that Karen'd go away too...but instead the woman took a couple of light steps toward him, then paused, leaning over them both. Kamui blinked at her abruptly presented cleavage before snatching his eyes up to look into her face. Her gaze was soft and warm, almost surprisingly so.
"Is everything all right?" the soap girl asked.
Hesitating, Kamui nodded, and the woman smiled even more affectionately. "That's good. You know, there's something I've been meaning to tell you for the longest time." She turned her hand, the flame disappearing from its center, and touched his face with surprisingly cool fingers. "It's a secret, but it's that the darkness can never truly defeat the light." Taking her hand away, she flipped it over and that fire sprang back to life, dancing down the lines of her palm. "The truth is that any darkness is just the absence of light: a place where no fire burns. But as long as the light persists in its strength, then darkness can't ever take hold." She closed her fist and opened it once more. The flame was still there. "The only way that darkness can win is if the light gives up hope." Her green eyes gazed into Kamui's and he swallowed.
"I knew that."
Karen giggled once again, very quietly. "That's good to hear." She tipped her head, still smiling, still looking into his face. "You're a nice boy, aren't you, even when you try to pretend that you're not...well anyway, I was only teasing you before." Straightening up, the soap girl stretched like a cat. "I'm glad if the two of you have found a way to be happy," she said. Her smile widened, turning into something sensual and knowing, and she clasped her hands playfully behind her back. "So now I think I'll leave you and 'Sleeping Beauty' alone together. I'll see you back at the mansion--bye-bye!"
And she vanished in a dramatic puff of flame.
A little dazed, Kamui stared at the place where she'd been standing. Now he felt totally confused. The adrenaline from his encounter with the Sakurazukamori blurred with relief at Subaru being safe after all, and it didn't help that Karen always got him mixed up anyway. He tried to forget about it--he looked down at the Sumeragi instead--then twitched in sudden alarm as he remembered...
...the story of the Sleeping Beauty...and the way that ended....
Someday he was going to /get/ Karen, for giving him such ideas.
Then Subaru stirred against him vaguely, and the thought of how he might possibly make the onmyouji wake up melted away at once. Instead, Kamui gazed down anxiously into the Sumeragi's face. Subaru's eyelids flickered slightly, and such gladness washed over Kamui...somehow, somehow it was going to be all right....
Subaru's eyes drifted open slowly, the shadows of unconsciousness leaving them. The floating pieces of darkness which filled the gazebo seemed to pause in midair. Then those fragments folded themselves inside out in one swift motion, their darkness shifting to silver as they spread out bright wings....
And Subaru gazed into Kamui's eyes as a flock of birds soared upward: a flight of shikigami glittering into the sunlit sky.
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