[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

Night was slowly dissolving into shades of grey when I exited a small train station in the Saitama prefecture. The trip had been a strangely uneventful one: despite my travelling with either the last trains of the night or the first of the day and thus finding myself in almost empty coaches, there had been people whose course had brushed alongside mine.

Blind.

None of them had seemed to notice the fantastic being of fire flanking me. None of them had seemed to feel the heat of its flames, or to see the air ripple all around it. Since I had taken the precaution to dissemble my wounded hand beneath a jacket folded upon my right forearm, I had been able to go among other people without attracting attention. The bouts of violent nausea were gone, and the throbbing pain in my hand had grown distant. The fire within and without had made it easy to push it all away.

No police squad had been waiting for me in Ueno station, or anywhere else. Yet, I knew I hadn't made a mistake when I had identified the uniforms of the men standing beside Sumeragi Ran at the Ichinomiya shrine. It might be she hadn't told them my name--unlikely. From now on, I was lost, but it mattered little. I wouldn't even have enough time to worry about fleeing the authorities, they had seen to that.

They.

She and he.

Shuusuke.

Shuusuke! The steed of flames reared beside me, the sparks of its insubstantial hooves pawing at the heavens. For a moment, the wild fire obscured my vision and I staggered. The tearing sensation of being eaten away from within receded after a few heartbeats, and I started on my way again.

Consumed by a sickening mixture of fury and despair, of a pain that had no name--whispers of the wind in high branches which lingered inside me and whipped me onward.

The unreal murmurs hurt me more than anything Ichinomiya Masami had ever made me endure.

There was no green around me, no beautiful forest sparkling under the first rays of sunlight--no rainbow reflected in precious drops of morning dew that glittered upon the leaves and flowers of bindweed tumbling down garden walls like diamond necklaces. There was no life pulsing everywhere around me, no riot of wondrous sensations that sent the flames shaping the creature on my left shivering.

There were no gently sloping hills.

No mountains in the distance.

There was nothing, but the image of the fey man who had decreed that the assassin couldn't kill me, the fey man who had sheltered me and ensnared me--who had given me the poisonous gift of a bracelet of black and white beads.

A rosary which had thrown a blanket over my perceptions, and had prevented me from sensing what was happening before I had torn it from my wrist--too late.

Vengeance. It was a word as good as any, as inadequate as any to name the black storm raging inside me. It had come from the assassin, the skinny man called Sakurazukamori, and so the word certainly carried its own share of venom. I couldn't care less about that hollow scarecrow's games. A pawn I might be in his eyes, it was fine with me.

Everything was fine, as long as I could get to the one person upon whom the fire could be released--would consent to be released.

The sun still hadn't fully risen above the horizon when I came to a stop before a high door of dark wood. The flames beside me purred and grew, their sparks reaching out to the Sumeragi mansion's main gate with greedy precipitation.

The fire horse was trembling.

A smile curled up my lips, and I strode toward the door. It wasn't locked. Nothing came to prevent me from entering. No storm of magic challenged either me or the creature of flames.

So much for the Sumeragi's wards.

"Sumeragi-sama isn't here." An old man was coming from a corridor on the right in hurried, unsteady steps. "You," he dragged in a breath, "shouldn't be here. You can't be here."

In a slow, lazy movement, I looked at him. "Go away," I paused for a second, searching my memory for his name, then I nodded, "Takashi-san." The tone of my voice had been calm, gentle even, but the old servant staggered back, and something like fear troubled his gaze.

Good.

Wiping him from my mind, I walked past his frail shape, and felt him shrink against the wall when sparks brushed against him. The flames by my side shimmered, and I reached out to them. They were laughing, bristling in savage joy at the inhuman pranks they could play on the rare people who could feel their existence, if only dimly. "Hush," I whispered at them in an absentminded voice, and I went down the corridor in quick, brisk strides.

Close now.

So very close.

No koi jumped up in the air to greet me or demand more food when we entered the garden. No clap of the ponds' clear waters disturbed the silence. Even the birds had stopped their chirping and singing, sensible creatures that they were. The fire at my side could devour everything here in an instant, would do so if I didn't hold it back. Its crackles were filling my mind, along with a low growl that resounded in my bones.

Ripples traversed the air before us.

Irised currents, coursing an insubstantial wall of crystal.

Gleams of sunlight caught in it like sparkling jewels.

Here.

Here. There was a great whoosh beside me, as if a powerful wind had risen all of a sudden and fed the flames, multiplying their power a thousandfold. Here at last.

"Wow!" I clenched my teeth, and struggled to focus on the blurred silhouette that was approaching the translucent barrier's other side in relaxed, unhurried steps. The fire on my left was shaking, quivering with the overwhelming, raw need to be free.

Unfettered.

Unleashed upon the absurd wall and the one who had shaped it.

Free to burn, to consume them both.

"There's no need for that," the blurred silhouette gestured toward the horse of fire. He could see it, then. It was really there. Really. "No need to fight your way through my wards." Was there a hint of amusement in his voice, of mockery?

Dragging in a shuddering breath, I made myself stand still while I listened to those words. The urge to fling myself forward, to burn and devour had almost obliterated what bits of sanity remained inside me. Wards. Wards, he had said. "I care nothing for your wards!" I snarled. "What I want is--" he hadn't crossed the translucent border. He had come to a halt within one step of it.

Cunning.

"YOU!" The animal cry won past my lips in the moment the crackle of the flames exploded into thunder. The fire horse flung itself into a gallop, and it--I--

Slammed into the delicate wall of morning dew.

Struck at it with hooves of flames.

Bit it with red gold sparks.

Blind and deaf to the low hiss that rose from it in answer.

Unaware of the shivers that started disturbing the irised currents, I stepped back, and rammed the barrier again.

Again.

Again.

It would burn. Sumeragi Shuusuke would burn as well, burn and be gone, erased from the world forever. Cloaking me, the flames rose up to the sky. "Futile." The gentle pronouncement cut through the roar of the fire.

The shimmering wall rippled and ebbed away from me.

Then it closed around me in sparkling circles and crystalline songs of water streaming down the mountains.

Strong.

So awfully strong the power of the fire went out in a heartbeat, and its desperate hiss of defiance overwhelmed my mind.

"You can't do it." There was grass beneath me, damp with humidity left by the night--and pain within me. I blinked when an attempt to gather myself from the ground failed, and when the struggle to gasp air inside my lungs made my eyes water. "Even if you had years of training behind you," Sumeragi Shuusuke stepped through his unreal wall and came toward me, adding in a quiet, unconcerned voice, "your power isn't enough to harm me, and not enough to force me to kill you," he finished with a smile.

Behind him, the steed of fire was struggling savagely, thrashing against the immaterial bonds that had closed around it. Its flames were writhing, flickering in and out--tied to the frantic beatings of my heart. Their furious howl speared the night. It was an animal thing to feel and to do; the desperate baring of teeth of a downed beast.

It couldn't win free.

It couldn't.

And I--lips drawn in a snarl, I watched my enemy come, and stop beside me. Look down at me.

Now.

"Damn you!" I shouted, and I willed myself to stand, willed my legs to obey--and got my wretched body from the ground. "You--" I gasped, snatching at the front of his worn out jacket with the right hand and hissing out in pain.

No.

No, I wouldn't recoil and faint!

No!

"I've been a fool." The hazel eyes were focused on my wounded hand clutching the fabric of his jacket, and a murky light had darkened his gaze. "A fool," he repeated softly, motionless. "I failed to see this coming, uncaring as I am of my dear onee-sama's dealings with the mundane world." His eyes met mine, and bitterness twisted his smile. "It's my fault," he sighed, reaching out and covering my broken hand with one of his.

Careful.

Gentle.

"I won't let you drain yourself of life, but," a rueful chuckle escaped him, "strike at me if you must. Not with that though," he threw a glance toward the still trashing horse of flames and hummed short, unintelligible words.

As it had the night before, the fire winked out in an instant.

It died.

"No, not dead," he said while I swayed, drowning in the emptiness that had rushed in to replace the flames, "but you won't use it anymore today. So," again he looked at me, "strike."

There was nothing in the light brown eyes.

Nothing at all.

For a while I stared into their depths, but there was no anger to be found there. No contempt. No regrets. No sadness. No fear.

No compassion.

No gentleness.

No understanding.

He was just standing there, waiting for me to hit him-- "No." The toneless whisper had come from me. All of a sudden, the lines of his face blurred and water, stupid water spurted from my eyes even as my legs buckled under me. "Fuck you." Muted sobs shook my shoulders while my fingers clutched at his jacket. "Fuck you," I repeated, head bowed, staring at my knees in the grass and willing the tears to stop.

And failing.

"All right." He dropped to his knees before me, and I tensed. "Yes," he said softly, then his arms closed around me and pulled me against him.

Crazy.

He was indeed crazy. Crazier than even I was.

While his meaningless words faded around us, laughter joined the sobs shaking my shoulders, hoarse and broken. He didn't say anything else. He just knelt there, and held me.

My head jerked up in a reflexive movement when a log of wood bigger than the others split into two perfect halves with a ringing crack, and sank into the fire burning before me. Sparks rose in the air above the hearth set at the center of the small house's main room, then showered over the flames and the quietly burning wood. To watch it churned my stomach, in spite of the grilled fish, the rice and the sake that Shuusuke had offered me once the sun had set behind the mountains--or perhaps because of that meal, and of the generous quantities of alcohol I had drunk.

With the fall of night, shadows had sprung to life, playing hide and seek with the waning light of day. Later, they had started a slow waltz with the fire Shuusuke had lit. They would no longer haunt me, he had promised. They might whisper at me, even sing to me, but they would never whisk Time away from me again. So I had watched them swirl around me and tentatively lick at my feet and my legs I had tucked under me, resting my back against one of the wooden pillars supporting the roof above the room.

Incomplete roof, with a hole in the middle, right above the hearth. A path the fire's smoke seemed more than willing to follow in order to win free of the pavilion and embrace the stars outside. For a while I observed its slow, spiraling ascent, then eventually the fire's gentle glow recaptured my gaze. There was no unfeeling its warmth or unseeing the beauty of its flames.

No unremembering the horse of fire, or the murderous folly that had engulfed me--was drowsing within me even now, subdued but not dead.

The day had passed between long moments of semi-consciousness, and short breaks of wakefulness, whenever the infusions of herbs Shuusuke had brewed ceased to have a hold over my stubborn body--mercifully short moments. There was a fierce headache pounding in my skull, twined to a strong queasiness in my stomach that was bordering on nausea. It was like a bad hangover. No, worse. There was something missing inside of me, beyond the glow of flames.

The tantalizing hum of the wind's song in a lace-like canopy of needles and branches.

The caress of that breeze against my heart.

Its dulling of my mind, making me blind to the folly of my actions.

Shuusuke had taken care of my wounds as best he could, warning me that he was a crude healer at best. While applying antiseptics and bandages, he had sung in a low, beautiful voice. The unknown words had bound the wound as well, and hushed the searing pain. He hadn't taken me to a hospital, or called a doctor. He hadn't dumped me into the nearest police station, or given me up to his sister's care. Once more, he had offered me the hospitality of his home, he had offered me the safety of his domain set aside from the world.

While I had been out to kill him--be killed by him.

Lured by an assassin's cunning manipulation.

When another log of wood cracked in the hearth, I tensed and winced, unable to refrain from grimacing. The muscles in my back and my shoulders were taut as violin string, and the thing crawling in my stomach refused to behave.

"This one is mine," Shuusuke's quiet voice reached my ears in the same time his shadows touched the wooden floor next to my left hand. "And it won't bite you." He was smiling as he said this, his eyes set on the fire purring in front of us. Just as I was opening my mouth to retort that I wasn't so far gone as not to have noticed that during his absence, he squatted down beside me, and dumped a blanket over me.

"What--" I stammered, "what's that for?"

He gave me a look. "At night, the wind glides down the mountains, and the air can get chilly, enough to end up with painfully stiff shoulders in the morning," he shrugged. Something in my expression must have been funny, for he smirked, then he sat down beside me and closed another blanket over his own body. In slow, clumsy motions, I imitated him. "Your hand?" he asked, far too perceptive to my taste.

"It's okay," I lied, which elicited a snort from him. Then he turned his gaze toward the fire once more, and silence embraced the room.

Gentle warmth and the soft glow of embers enfolded us, safe enough now that he had come back and that I could feel his presence despite my closed eyes, a shining beacon in the night. "She came back," Shuusuke murmured all of a sudden, "and then she went away again. She never felt my tampering with her main wards." I didn't need to look at him to know he was smiling.

Gathering the blanket around me with the left hand, I listened to his words echoing in my mind. His sister had returned to the mansion and then left. Likely it meant that Sumeragi Ran didn't know I was here, and thus that she was still searching for me. It also meant that the old household servant hadn't told her about my barging into her home--a favor to Shuusuke, it had to be. Still, sooner or later she'd go to Sho. Sho, to whom I had revealed far too many things, and who must have understood a lot more. Once she spoke with him, she would be sure to know exactly what had happened. With an inaudible sigh, I shooed those thoughts away. There was no help for it.

"What was it?" I asked in the quiet, lulled peace of Sumeragi Shuusuke's home. It was not that I truly cared about the answer to that question--not now, not yet. But I needed the silence to be broken--that, and to distract myself from the growing feeling of something missing deep within me. My headache had grown dull, but the sensation of loss was growing sharper. So much so that acknowledging it made my eyes burn with tears and my gut wrench, and twist, and clench in revulsion. No answer came, and I looked toward the swirling shadows on my right, realizing that the question, such as I had uttered it, made little sense. "This thing that snatched Time away from me," I added, "what was it?"

This thing which would have made me kill a human being if it hadn't been thwarted by a thunderstorm's whims.

A small cup appeared in my field of vision, and I took it. It was sake, sure enough. I heaved out another sigh as I sniffed the cup's contents. "A family heirloom," Shuusuke's calm voice replied. I gave him a sharp glance, but there were no mocking flames dancing in his hazel eyes. His gaze was set on the hearth in front of us. "A kami that lived on the grounds claimed long ago by the Ichinomiya clan, most likely." He shrugged one shoulder. "I can only surmise that, in the beginning, a bargain was struck, one which insured the Ichinomiya's continued rise in power, and which insured the kami retained a safe haven, a home it could call its own. And then," a mirthless smile touched Shuusuke's lips, "the world moved on, as I told you before. The hills grew old, and the knowledge faded from human memory, lost bit by bit, until a time when the bargain, whatever it was, was no longer kept. When things such as these happen, bonds fester and their essence rots away. It's a dark, ugly process," he brought his knees against his chest and hugged them, his eyes lost in the red-gold glow of the fire. "One that changed the kami," he continued, "which perverted its nature until it was poisoned so deeply the kami became some kind of mononoke. A vengeful spirit, full of wrath," he looked at me.

It was hard to sustain his steady gaze, hard not to feel I was being judged, and found wanting. "The cedar," I made myself say, "it was that beautiful old tree--"

"Rotten," he countered, his voice not unkind. "Oh, it must have been beautiful once, but its heart festered long, long ago. Why the Ichinomiya kept it, or how they didn't feel what it had become--" he stared up at the roof and at the smoke rising into the night through the hole above the hearth. "Their name once meant power. Their fall was so slow and smooth that nobody ever wondered about it, and those who descended from that line shrank. They diminished, ensnared, trapped by what their ancestors had bound and used to rise above the others."

Gods. "Then, my mother--" I bit my lower lip. The words had rushed out of my mouth before I could stop them.

"Was as much a victim of its curse than you were," he nodded at me.

She had tried to save me.

Even though her poor, shattered mind had been drowned by shadows and the drugs given to smother the minds of schizophrenic patients, she had tried to reach out to me, again and again.

She had never wanted to hurt me, or to kill me.

What she had so desperately wanted-- I bowed my head, my eyes burning with tears. "So deeply lost that she almost killed me once, that I almost killed a man. How," I snarled, refusing the sobs constricting my throat and shaking my body, "how could it happen?! How could I--we not feel it and fight it?!"

Fingers clasped my left knee and gave it a gentle squeeze. "Standing in the shadow of that tree must have been enough for the spirit to touch your soul, never mind that your mother tried to protect you in giving you that lie of a firstname. Your name," he said in a soft, soft voice, "your true name is a song inside your heart, and once it touched you, the spirit knew it, there would have been no way of hiding it--just as there would be almost no way to feel its presence. It would work in subtle ways, nudging you down this or that direction, paths you might be willing to tread with a little push away from the rules that would otherwise prevent you from walking that way. Little by little, it would spread within you, intertwine itself with your soul, using your...." His voice trailed off into silence, and a frown barred his brow, as if he was groping for a word.

"Weaknesses!" I spat, filling in the blank for him and staring at the drowsing flames in the hearth. "I wanted to change the world!" I laughed, "I wanted to heal it! I knew it wasn't possible, I knew that all I could do was to live out my life while watching it agonize a bit more each day. I knew that, and I couldn't bear it. I couldn't find the strength to deal with it, but when I--" my voice broke, and I let out a shuddering breath. "The idea was so simple," I whispered, smiling, "so luminously simple. I never doubted it, even though it was flawed, insane from the start."

To work within the system.

To use the system.

To accept it, to bow to it, and feed it in return.

It could never have worked.

Never.

The absurdity of it all was such that there were no words for it. None. "Weaknesses," I sneered, "yes, that's the word you're looking for." I was lucky someone had stopped me before it was too late--lucky Sumeragi Ran had burnt down the cedar.

Beside me, Shuusuke gave me a long look, then he shrugged. "Call them that if you will, but a better word would be open skylights. Or perhaps sails, free of railing and direction, free to catch any wind that might come. They're doubts, in a way, the foundation stones without which no true faith or certitude can be built--stepstones and hurdles that force our minds to fight them and overcome them if we can, or to work around them if we can't. They may well be the one true strength we have, the invaluable gift that can spark change and evolution. But," he smiled, "call them weaknesses if you must."

Reaching down for his cup of sake, he took it to his lips and drank a long swallow from it. Then he gave a light tap on the pitcher that went with the cups, and grinned when the slight echo of a liquid moving inside rose between us. "Still a bit left, good."

There was a lump in my throat, a crushing pain in my chest, that his words had sparked to life.

Gentle.

Generous.

Too gentle to be true, but still I-- I bit my tongue and drew in a deep breath, smothering the ludicrous feeling inside me, and the even more absurd impulse it had triggered. It made no sense.

It would never make sense.

"The gist of it is," Shuusuke was saying, oblivious to the moronic vagaries of my soul, "that the spirit used you against yourself. Few are those who can tear themselves free of the mire such a spirit drowns the mind into--few, and learned. Heirs to knowledge and power old as the hills around us. You didn't stand a chance," he added, "but you put up a good fight. You found yourself at key moments, which shows the strength of your will. A strength," his voice dropped to a whisper, "that your mother may have lacked."

He was wrong.

It was because she hadn't found anyone to help her.

It was because neither my father nor I had understood what was tearing at her inside. She had tried to escape, she had fled to the other side of the world, to France, but that hadn't been enough--or it had finished the job of shattering her soul. I sucked in a painful breath, and blinked back the traitorous wavering of my vision.

And anyway, all his explaining was useless. It didn't change a thing. It didn't pain a different reality. The truth remained, that the Phantom Thief had raided Tokyo repeatedly, that he had tried to kill someone, and I--

I would have to deal with it.

I would have to--

"Enough." Shuusuke's fingers pressed my knee. "Enough," he repeated. "I've burdened you with too much already. We'll finish that sake, and then you'll sleep, with the help of sleeping herbs if need be. Drink," he pointed to the cup I had set on the floor beside me.

It was easier to obey than to do what I knew I must.

Far easier.

Cowardly as well, but--well, it was fitting.

Lifting my cup in a mock salute, I emptied it in a long swallow, and held it out for him to refill.

Warmth was tickling my left cheek, a whimsical ray of the sun which kept knocking at my eyelids, insisting that the day had dawned. Eventually I yielded and pulled myself away from the ebbing waves of slumber. Exhaustion still plagued me, I found as I struggled to sit up on the futon, much more of it than there should be, even if we had drunk generous quantities of sake the night before. The sick sensation of something lacking within me had shrunk, dulled into a distant, throbbing ache that was less than the last night sake's parting gift.

Letting out a sharp hiss, I jerked my right hand up and glanced at it with a grimace. I should know better than to have tried to lean some weight upon it: pain had knifed through my arm, white-hot, and it was subsiding reluctantly into a deep tearing sensation that seemed to pulse in rhythm with my heartbeats. Drawing in a breath, I looked up to see a seated figure splashed with sunlight a few steps away from me.

Beautiful.

I blinked. He was so beautiful, with the gentle light rippling down his light brown hair, sitting against the edge of the half-open panel of the room, one leg brought back against his chest and used as a support for his left forearm, and the other leg stretched before him. His gaze was set on something outside. Distant.

Proud. It was the one word that best described the strange man sitting there. Pride, quiet, serene, and undeniable. The clothes he wore were old, there was nothing remarkable about them, and yet this eerie figure couldn't help but draw the eye. It was in the way he held himself, in his every gesture. It seeped out of him like power did, and strength.

And something alien.

Faery, my western-educated mind kept wanting to call it, clinging to its absurd fantasy with unbreakable stubbornness. A lord of Faery, stranded in a world of computers and internet, and just-in-time stock management, where myth and legends had become obsolete--objects of ridicule, or to be used and twisted so some profit could be sucked out of them. Unbidden, a smile crept up my lips, and I heard myself heave out a small sigh.

"Good morning." Sumeragi Shuusuke had turned his head toward me.

"This is turning into a habit," I gave him a slight bow, "your losing precious hours of sleep to watch over me." That sparked flames of laughter in his eyes, but they were gone as quickly as they had come when he stared at me steadily.

"How's the hand?"

Reflexively I shrugged. "As well as can be expected." My hand was unimportant. What was were the events which had led me to him, an impossible creature of fire by my side, intent on killing or be killed.

What mattered was the thing I had thought to be madness.

The thing I had allowed to come over me and that I had given in to, allowing it to use me like a puppet--a willing enough puppet.

The thing I knew, deep down, that I couldn't drape around me as an excuse or a justification for what I had done.

Those events.

Their aftermath.

In a brisk motion, I stood up from the futon and gulped in a breath, swaying like a drunk for a moment. With an absentminded gesture, I reset the yukata around me, then turned away from Shuusuke and took a step in the room.

Hollow echo.

Empty sound.

The cold creeping in my gut was spreading, I could feel it reaching out to drown my mind in white fog. "Why," I whirled around, snatching at a stray thought and holding on to it, "are you doing all this?" focusing on anything to keep the cold at bay, to delay the moment that I knew must come. He didn't reply. He just watched me with that unfathomable, cat-like gaze of his. For a while I stared back at him, struggling against the almost irrepressible urge to yell at him, to shout at the top of my lungs that he was a sadistic madman. "Why?" I growled, even as I walked to his side and knelt beside him. "Why, damn you?"

"Must there be a reason?" the ghost of a smile was hovering on his lips.

"Shit!" I spat, grabbing the mirth seeping from his voice and using that as well, "stop making a fool of me! How come someone so strong and wise as you, so," sarcasm dripped from my words as I went on, "knowledgeable about humanity isn't the one leading the Sumeragi clan?" Something flickered in his eyes, that might be surprise. "Why are you letting your sister shoulder the burden of that alone? Why don't you help the poor, lost souls who make most of humanity, instead of hi--" I bit back the word, just in time before I threw a mortal insult in his face, and said instead, "removing yourself, stranding yourself to this place as you do?" Even as I said the words, a shiver ran up my spine.

It was the truth.

Stranding himself--it was what he was doing.

Carried away by anger in my frantic desire to escape the cold, cold hand that was busy crushing my rib cage, I had unwittingly stumbled upon a truth I had no business uttering.

Laughter, as dark as the light in the hazel eyes, spilled from him, and it was all I could do to stand my ground--to remain kneeling beside him and not to look away from the awful strength I could feel rising in him.

Ice.

Inhuman.

Contemptuous.

"You're not the only one who's cursed with a family heirloom," he replied with deceptive, frightening calm. "My branch of the Sumeragi is tainted, has been since the beginnings of the Edo era. Some say," the smile that curled up his lips never touched his gaze, "that gaijin blood has polluted our line, that a western shadow has poisoned our blood."

A shadow.

I could see it now, or rather I could now see it completely.

He was a shadow.

It was no taint in his blood, no little flaw in his ancestry.

Fey.

Alien.

And that great shadow was watching me, daring me to whistand the sight and feeling of it. Waiting for me to run away from it in terror, as had all the people who had ever touched his wards--his wards, which existed as much to protect people from him as to shield him from the outside world. Unable to help myself, I bowed my head, and leaned my right hand upon my thigh, put weight on it and used the pain to force myself to face him again.

"In most of us," scorn had filled the tone of his voice, "it's nothing. Just patches of green in the color of our eyes--just a touch of Summer running through our veins. Just a few flowers of frost in our blood. In some..." he let his voice drop into silence. His cold, eerie gaze was still focused on me. Unwavering. i>Go away, those eyes seemed to say. i>Run. Flee while you can. Run!

I would not.

I would not.

A snort escaped him, and he resumed, "In some, it's just too strong. It's madness. In Subaru," abruptly he looked away, "it was gentleness, kindness and a generosity too great for a human heart, a love and trust so absolute that they ensnared him, and led him to his eventual downfall."

Subaru? Who could it be? Sumeragi Ran's predecessor, the one whose sudden demise had devastated Sumeragi Ran with grief, as Sho had told me?

"In me," Shuusuke had faced me again, the same, frightening smile frozen on his lips, "Winter and Summer are at war. The insanity they bring when combined is strong. Fickle. Dark. There is no balance within me, no stability. I am what their whims make me: dangerous and impossible to trust." The darkness that had overcome the hazel eyes was dreadful to behold. Sumeragi Shuusuke was a predator, one who knew neither mercy, nor human boundaries.

Lethal.

Terrifying, just as the assassin named Sakurazukamori was, or perhaps even worse, for Shuusuke wouldn't allow himself to be bound by rules, as I had heard him tell the assassin. He did what he wanted and went where he would, as unpredictable as the great storms that rose over the oceans when the whim came upon the winds gliding over the waves.

"So," he smirked, "won't you recoil and flee?"

No. Even that small word couldn't fight its way up my constricted throat and pass through my lips. Still, I stayed where I was, motionless. My heart was beating painfully hard in my chest, and the echoes it was raising inside me were deafening. The hole in my soul, the whisper of a void poised at the core of my being glided through the drums of my heartbeats, beckoning. Tempting. It would be so much easier to drown into that emptiness than to face the dreadful being sitting beside me. Yet, I didn't move. I didn't turn my gaze inward. With all that was left of me, I refused that way of escape, and made myself look into the icy, inhuman light in his eyes.

"Fool!" he snarled. Then he gave a single, slow shake of the head. "Fool," he repeated in a low growl. The smirk that had twisted his lips reverted to a smile, and this time it touched his gaze. "Fool," he said the word a third time, "for not taking that half-answer and run." His shoulders sagged, ever so slightly, and he heaved out a sigh. "I strand myself here, as you say, because I can find some peace in this place, because I don't trust my patience with the ways of the outside world and--" a sad chuckle escaped him, "because I've never been able to entertain delusions of grandeur or power about myself. I know I cannot change the world. I cannot make it into what I think it should be. Nobody can do that--can force that. It moves on its own, breathed on by winds of sunlight and starlight, and by the combined wills of billions of people. Held up by the unquestioning, yet waning strength of everything that lives: sea, earth and stone." Glancing at the garden on his left, he added in a quiet voice, "It's a harsh truth to accept and feel in the marrow of your bones, but I do. And so," the flick of his lips might have been a smile as he went on, "I strand myself away and I watch," his voice reduced to a whisper and he said, "alone."

Head bowed, I stared at the blurred shape of my knees. It took a desperate effort of will not to reach out to him and hold him tight, and-- With difficulty, I swallowed the lump in my throat, and forced words through my lips. "I'm sorry. I had no right to say what I did." Making myself snort was incredibly hard, but I managed it, and looked up at him. "I'm a fool, like you said."

He laughed then, and faced me again. The darkness had faded from his gaze. "That you are, but a warm-hearted one. A generous one." With that, he stood up, leaning a hand upon my left shoulder when I made to follow suit. "Stay," he murmured, then he went away.

He wasn't gone for long. Less than five minutes later, he walked back into the room with a kettle of tea, and two cups. In slow, willowy motions he folded his legs under him and knelt opposite me, before pouring me a cup and then pushing it toward me with the left hand.

For a few seconds I watched the steam rising from the cup, then I took it and raised it to my lips. "Thank you," I bowed at him, and drank a sip. Silent, he observed me, then at last he served himself a cup as well.

Birdsong and the occasional, random clap of a koi jumping out of the water of its pond were the only sounds that filled the room for what might have been seconds, or an eternity. It was as if Time had flickered again. However, as it had always done, it eventually reasserted itself, and resumed its endless flow. There was almost no noise when Shuusuke set his cup on the wooden floor and looked at me. "Your friend, Inoguchi Shousuke, came here right after dawn." I started at that, and stared at him. "He came so far as to touch my wards." The quirk of Shuusuke's lips meant amusement. "I told him to leave, that you still needed a bit of time. I also told him," the quirk became a nasty grin that revealed his teeth as he added, "that I'd curse him and all his descendants until the umpteenth generation if my dear onee-sama ever got wind of your presence here."

"What?!" The horrified exclamation had come from me.

He burst out laughing. "No, don't worry. I didn't; there was no need to. That man's heart was clear and unveiled. Your friend," he said gently, "that he is, through and through."

Sho had come.

Come for me.

I drew in a breath. "Was he angry?"

"No." Shuusuke's voice was soft. "He was worried about you."

I chortled. It was more than I had a right to expect. More than-- "Did your sister tell the police about the identity of the Phantom Thief?" That earned me a silent nod, and the cold inside my gut bit. "Do they know," I asked between clenched teeth, "where I am?"

A shake of his head.

He was watching me again, waiting. I wrenched my gaze from his, and looked at the garden without seeing it. Consequences. Moments piling upon moments, shaping a bridge between then, now and tomorrow. There was a world on the other side of Shuusuke's insubstantial wall of light. A world that could never touch me while I remained here, while-- "Would you," the words rushed past me, escaping me before I could gather the strength to keep them inside me, "let me stay if I asked?"

Silence was my only answer.

Silence, deep and heavy.

At last, I found the courage to confront him. There was nothing to be glimpsed in the light brown eyes he had set on me, nothing to be read from him.

But I knew.

Without having to be told, I knew inside my heart that he would, and that it would break the tenuous, fragile bond between us. "Forget it," I murmured in a not altogether steady voice. "I didn't say anything. It was just the wind." With that, I made to stand up, but he laid a restraining hand on my left thigh, just above the knee.

"Before you go," he said in a quiet voice, while reaching for something the pockets of his jacket's right sleeve, "will you take this?"

A rosary of black and white beads was sparkling before my eyes.

The bracelet he had once given me, and that I had torn away from my wrist.

A trick to put a blanket upon my mind and make it oblivious to the shadow and the workings of absurd, impossible eastern magic.

"It will ensure that the fire drowsing inside you stays asleep." He smiled when I drew a sharp intake of breath, as I remembered the being of flames. "It will put that part of you at rest--the talent that runs through the blood of your mother's family. And it will silence the lingering memories of the shadow that tug at your spirit." Frozen in place, I stared at the bracelet, my mind a blank. "I won't force you to wear it. It has to be your choice."

I would never go mad.

I would never lose myself or hurt anyone again.

A part of me would be fettered. Perhaps it would even die in time, but-- I dragged in a shuddering breath, and nodded at him. With infinite gentleness, he fastened the rosary of beads to my left wrist, as he had once before. When my hand shook, he clasped it, intertwining my fingers with his own.

Time flickered.

Stopped.

And then started again.

Consequences. It was more than time for me to face them. Without a word, I freed myself and he let me go. Then I stood up, and turned away from him, stepping toward my clothes that had been piled up in a corner of the room.

I didn't hear him leave.

I didn't look back, or search for him when I left his garden. My eyes set on the path laid before me, I walked out of the Sumeragi mansion and returned to the station where I'd find a train to bring me back to Tokyo.

The sun was well past its zenith when I reached the high building the Tokyo police department used as headquarters. The echoes of tires screeching on the asphalt when an absentminded driver literally stood upon his brakes to heed a red light and the unintelligible chatter of a thousand voices of people streaming past me were waltzing inside my mind--dizzying, but not enough to drown the churning sensation in my gut. I knew the name of the cold feeling spreading within, it was fear. The same fear that had made me feel weak in the knees and kept shouting at me to turn tail and run. The temptation to allow it to engulf me and carry me away was almost overwhelming.

It was an illusion.

A deception.

There was nowhere to run. I could never get inside a plane or win past border controls. I could no more get back to my room than I could find a refuge in the Ocean Research Institute, or even go to Sho's place. An international warrant for my immediate arrest must have been issued, and that must have gone around the world a dozen times already, if not more. And what was more, despite appearances, going underground was no solution either. Oh, Kurogawa would help me, as well and as much as I could pay him anyway, but--running was absurd.

Hesitations were a luxury I could no longer afford. Better to get inside the building and be done, as quickly as possible. Eventually I sucked in a breath, and started up the stairs leading up to the main door.

I came into a buzzing hive of people streaming in every direction with brisk steps, somehow failing to come in each other's way and collide, and drop piles of paper in the process. A grimace twisted the lines of my face while I stared up at the neon tubes in disgust. The white light they spat on people was hollow. It took me more than a few heartbeats to wrench my gaze from them, and I hissed out air from my lungs while looking for the equivalent of the place's welcome and information desk.

Among a forest of signs dangling from the ceiling, I found what I was looking for at last, and strode in the direction I was supposed to go, barely avoiding a female officer who was half-walking, half-running toward a door marked with the telltale sign identifying the ladies' room, at the other end of the hall. She threw me a furious glance from above her right shoulder, but never slowed down. Laughter bubbled up my throat, unstoppable, making a sick mixture with the cold roving in my stomach, and I continued on my way.

The man standing behind the desk was writing something down while nodding to whoever was talking to him on the phone. "Yes," he said at some point, "absolutely. We'll take care of it, sir." With that, he hung up the phone and heaved out a loud sigh. When he made to dig into the pile of papers on his right, I cleared my throat. He jerked up his head, and his eyes widened when he saw me. For a moment, I thought he'd start shouting, "Phantom Thief!" in the great hall, but nothing like that happened. His shoulders dropping with weariness, the police officer asked me in a neutral voice, "How can I help you, sir?"

It was hard not to start sniggering, as hard as it was to hear what he was saying above the deafening drums of my heartbeats. "I think I'm the one who can do something for you, officer," I managed a smile. "My name is Ayné Nanashi and, if I'm not mistaken, you're looking for me."

The man in front of me blinked. Then he groaned. "Please, not another one." Looking me in the eye, he added, "Let me guess, you're the real, genuine Phantom Thief unlike the hundred fools who came here before you did, and you didn't give me that name because you read it on the website of the guy who hacked into our database yesterday."

This time, I burst out laughing. Gods, was the Phantom Thief so popular that people would do crazy things like impersonating him? "Yes," I hiccuped, fighting down the hilarity tainted with hysteria, "I am." Sobering, I fished out my ID card from the left inner pocket of my jacket. "Here," I made it slide across the smooth surface of the counter, "check that, and call up my file from your computer. I'm pretty sure the picture you must have is recent enough to be used to identify me."

During a long, long minute, the man stayed silent. Then: "Don't you move." His voice was toneless, and his eyes very, very wide. He must have stepped on some hidden alarm switch, because moments later, five officers came running, with weapons drawn.

"Is that him?" One of them asked, while the others spread into a wary circle around me.

"Yeah," the man behind the desk heaved out a sigh. "Ayné Nanashi, the real one."

At least one of them gasped, but their surprise didn't last long. Two of them grabbed me, while a third roughly pulled my arms behind my back, twisting my wounded hand in the process. I let out a muted yelp of pain, but the man behind me never paused. In swift, professional gestures, he locked handcuffs around my wrists. The man on the other side of the desk was talking quickly on the phone, most likely to someone in the investigation section.

"How long for someone to get here with sedatives?" the one on my right asked, tense. He had hooked an arm around my shoulder and he was pulling on it hard, just short of putting it out of its socket.

Fear.

Through the pain flaring to life in my hand and my shoulder, I felt it in the unnecessary harshness of his grip on me, and saw it in the shadow flickering in the eyes of the man before me. "It's all right." The one behind the desk let out a shaking breath. "Those orders have been countermanded. It's safe, they say we can bring him upstairs."

"All right then," the one on my left bobbed his head. "Move!" There was another, brutal pull on my shoulder and I stumbled, fighting to keep my balance while they dragged me toward the closest elevator. Around us, people hardly even paused in their work, perhaps used to such sights, or simply too much in a hurry to stop and gawk.

The elevator whisked us up to the ninth floor in no time. The cold inside me withdrew somewhat when I saw the sign which identified this floor as the theft and assault section of the criminal brigade.

It wasn't the homicide section.

It meant that they didn't consider what had happened to the Mori Tower security guard as attempted murder. In their eyes, it was assault, only assault. I bowed my head, all too much aware of the truth. Assault, yes, but it would have been murder if the shadow had had its way, if lightning hadn't shoved it back and allowed me to regain my grasp over flickering Time and to fight the shadow's inhuman rage at the man who had dared disturb it.

"Here," two hands abruptly pounced on my shoulders, and I fell more than I sat down in a chair. "He's all yours, Nogami-san." While the two men were walking away, a woman looked up at me, the light in her dark grey eyes a quiet, confident one. She was beautiful, breathtakingly so, the kind of woman who drew the gaze of most men and made them stammer, their hearts pounding in their chests.

The kind of woman who had Tex Avery's wolf's eyes spring out of their sockets and his tongue rolling over the floor's length in a bad imitation of a red carpet.

"Ayné Nanashi-san?" she asked pleasantly. When I nodded at her, she sat back in her chair, and smiled. "You're under arrest. From this moment on, you're placed in police custody. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you might say can, and will be used against you. Once your custody ends, you'll have the right to get a lawyer, and if you can't afford one, one will be assigned to your case." She paused, probably expecting me to comment, but there was nothing to add to her summary of the situation. Once the period of police custody ended, they'd press formal charges against me, and the heavy judicial machinery would take over. When it became obvious that I intended to hold my peace, she waved toward the computer on her right, and sighed. "To think that I had devised a dozen clever scenarios to apprehend you--" her eyes narrowed in thought as she added, "why did you surrender yourself, Ayné-san?"

I gave her a look, then shrugged. "It seemed to be the only thing to do."

"That doesn't make sense." She gave a brisk shake of her head, then she refocused on me. "You're UNO personnel, Ayné-san, which entitles you to a rare privilege: before the police custody officially starts, you may request that we warn either the UNO or the French embassy of your arrest."

Of course. And she had to tell me, lest that breach in procedure cost her a nonsuit verdict in court. The thought that I might warn someone who could impair their work during the police custody period must rankle, but--she was safe from interventions or pressure. "No," I shook my head, "thank you. I don't need anyone to be warned."

Something flickered in her eyes. "As long as you understand that due process has been respected," she said, then she stood up and gestured for me to do the same. "That makes even less sense," she muttered under her breath as she reached my level, and she threw a quick glance at my back, likely to check that the handcuffs were securely locked.

She started, freezing in mid movement and hissing out air between her teeth. "What's that wound on your right hand?" she asked, her voice tense.

"Nothing to concern yourself about, Nogami-san," I smiled. "Nothing any police officer did. I hurt myself stupidly is all."

A snort echoed between us. "Right." Giving a gentle push on my right shoulder, she drew me back the way I had come, toward the elevator. "It looks bad, so I'll have a doctor pay you a visit and check it up once you're in a holding cell."

Said holding cells were of course located in the building's basement. It seemed to be a universal constant. And of course, they were exceedingly small, not to mention that the stone bench that must also be used as a bed looked perfectly uncomfortable. There were no toilets, but that was a given. What came as a surprise was the cleanliness of the space, and the much too bright light in it.

Neon light.

Obediently I sat with my back to her so she could release the handcuffs, then I lied down on the bench once she was gone, and engaged in a detailed study of the featureless ceiling. There was nothing to be hoped from the UNO. When he heard, Benedict would perhaps want to offer Greenpeace's help. Accepting that would only undermine the organization and impair its capacity to act, should its name be tied with that of a thief. As for the French embassy, well--I doubted they'd be interested in tales of onmyoujutsu, Shinto and of curses running down some families' blood. A shrink might perhaps establish I was delirious, insane like my mother, and clear me of responsibility.

Condemning me to spend a long time in a mental institution.

I didn't want that. I didn't want to avoid being convicted. There were no regrets in my heart concerning the thefts, Shuusuke had been right when he had told me the shadow had nudged me down paths I might have chosen myself. The one thing I wanted was to stand before the man I had nearly killed, and take responsibility. He had a right to see justice done, and perhaps my expressing regrets would help him.

Perhaps.

Time slowed down to a crawl in the cramped space they called a holding cell. A doctor came at some point. The man grimaced at the sight of the wound in my hand, and declared it was far too late to stitch it, no matter how badly necessary that would have been. I might very well not regain mobility in my forefinger: the probability that the sinew could heal correctly was ridiculously small. At least, thanks to a miracle then man didn't understand, the wound hadn't festered. He left me with two pills supposed to be painkillers, which I pocketed with a sigh.

Officers came to fetch me for long, boring interrogation sessions during which Nogami-san was often present. I gave them the details they wanted, or at least those I could remember. When they were done, they led me back to the small cell, and the wait started all over again.

And it went on.

And on.

In spite of the neon lights, I managed to doze off every now and then. In between moments of timelessness, investigators came to fetch me for more interrogation sessions, again and again. It made little sense. The things they kept asking me were insignificant details that didn't need to be asked during a police custody period. They were wasting what should be infinitely precious time for them. They should charge me, they had more than enough elements to do so, and still they didn't.

Still they asked futile questions, as if they were waiting for something, or hoping for something.

"It's over." The voice of officer Nogami scattered the fog that had clogged my mind. When I saw her standing before the door of my cell, I got up from the stone bench, ignoring the stiffness in my back and my shoulders. Her arms were crossed over her stomach, and her mouth was drawn in a taut line. "It's over," she repeated, her voice devoid of emotion, and she opened the door wide. "They've dropped charges, all of them. The municipality, the prefecture, the state, the companies, and even Imamishi Hajime." A smile twisted her lips. "They've withdrawn their complains, and the JFE group had even announced it will compensate Tokyo police for the investigation's every expense. You're free, Ayné-san."

I gaped at her, dumbfounded. This just couldn't be, it was absurd! We stared at each other during a long minute, until at last I stepped toward her. "You're one hell of a lucky bastard, mister," she whispered when I passed her by, "one with fucking impossible connections in all the right places. Now go, before I decide to fabricate evidence so I can get you in jail and lose my job in the process."

Freezing in my steps, I turned to face her. "I didn't--" I stammered, "I don't have any connection that could make something like this happen. It's impossible."

She sniggered. "Well, it has happened. So get the hell out of that cell."

I did.

Then I went up the stairs, followed her so I could sign various forms I didn't even read. It was no game, it seemed. No charade. Nobody came to stop me when I went out the building's main door. It was morning. Early morning outside, and the madness of Tokyo traffic greeted me as soon as I stepped on the sidewalk.

A bit less than five days had gone by since the moment when I had entered the building behind me. Five days outside of time, and now I had been spat out again, but the wind had changed, and fate had bowed before it. Try though I might, I couldn't make any sense of all this. It had to be a mistake. They'd come and arrest me again. They would, certainly. My mind a blank, I let myself be drawn away by the crowd.

End of Chapter 6..

Notes

Nogami Saeko is of course a direct reference to City Hunter. There's no particular reason for it, except that I like City Hunter, and that I needed that kind of character.

I think this is the chapter that will feel the most obscure to people who haven't read the other stories in my chronicles of the Sumeragi clan. Sorry if things sounded really bizarre. All I can do is advise you to read these other stories, if you're mad and brave enough to do so. ^^;;;

On to Next Part

Back to Previous Part

Back to my Fanfic page.