I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
                --The Lake Isle of Innisfree, by W.B.Yeats


X: A Love Ballad
by Kristin Huntsman
Part 2

        Nokoru sighed as he watched Subaru moving around the kitchen.  He 
saw the frailness of the form, the translucence of the skin.  The graceful 
moves that might have been a dancer's were too otherworldly.  Even if he 
hadn't known beforehand, Nokoru would have seen by watching that Subaru was 
dying, fading away.
        "You really are an idiot, you know," Nokoru criticized in a soft 
voice.
        Subaru paused, back to him.  "I made my choice," he murmured.  "I 
could have chosen other paths, but I didn't."
        Nokoru sighed and leaned back against the doorframe, looking at the 
closed door to Nataku's room; he had asked that Nataku let him talk to 
Subaru alone.  "You scared Nataku," he said.  "You've got it confused and 
upset because you want it to lie to Seishirou-san.  Are you so determined 
to make everyone else unhappy with your death?"
        Subaru turned to face him, as he had not since Nokoru arrived.  
Nokoru nearly winced, seeing only a shadow of the self in those leaf-green 
eyes.  "I'm just tired, Nokoru.  Is it so wrong for me to want sleep?"
        "No," he replied, "No, that isn't wrong.  But it is wrong for you 
to force your death and dying onto the rest of us; don't you think we care, 
Subaru?  Don't you think... don't you think that we love you, that we'd 
miss you?  Doesn't it matter?"
        Subaru turned away from him.  "I've done things for others all my 
life," he replied in a quiet monotone.  "Can't my death be for myself?"
        Nokoru crossed the space between them and held his arms around 
Subaru's shoulders, resting his cheek on the slightly-taller man's 
shoulder.  "No," he whispered.  "No, you can't die.  What would 
Seishirou-san do without you?  And what about Nataku?  And what would I do 
without you?"  He laughed a little, truly afraid of losing Subaru now that 
he bothered to let himself contemplate the idea.  "I have someone for 
myself now, but that doesn't mean I ever stopped loving you.  It just 
mostly changed to a different kind of love.  I do love you, Subaru.  I 
wouldn't know what to do if you died.  Please stop trying to kill 
yourself...."

        So far distant... even when he was held like this, by someone who 
cared about him, and who he should care about in return, Subaru couldn't 
touch.  It was quiet here, being like this, and peaceful.  And he ached so 
much, was so tired....
        "I'm sorry, Nokoru," he whispered, feeling the words echo through 
him.  "I can't."
        Nokoru's grasp tightened around him, and Subaru had the vague, 
passing thought that he should probably hold Nokoru in return.  That was 
what a friend would do, and he and Nokoru were friends, weren't they?  But 
it was too far away, too far in the fog....
        His vision slowly grayed out into that fog, releasing him, letting 
him go to where he belonged, and he thought he heard a distant call of his 
name by a voice that he had nearly forgotten, it had been so long since 
she'd been alive....
        A sudden jerk of motion yanked him out of that peaceful fog and 
back into the mortal prison of soul's pain and slow dying.  "Don't go," 
Nokoru said, that look in his blue eyes that Subaru had only seen once 
before, the other time Nokoru had stopped him from dying.  The words were 
the same too.  Strange, that....
        "Don't go, Subaru," Nokoru said again, command in his voice.  He 
really was a spoiled little rich brat, Subaru thought, but his will 
overrode Subaru's lack, and Subaru didn't fall back into that soft fog of 
dying.  "Stay here, with us."
        Subaru had no choice but to bow his head in acquiescence to 
Nokoru's dominance.

        Nataku suffered by waiting.
        It found the time to be endless during Nokoru-san's conversation 
with Subaru-san.  It wanted that to be over already, it wanted Nokoru-san 
to have stopped Subaru-san from dying altogether....
        And somehow Nataku knew it was its fault.  By having sex with 
Subaru-san and Seishirou-san, it had caused this.  It had acted as the 
trigger.  If it hadn't, the situation might have defused, it might never 
have happened--
        --And Nataku would be a lot less confused and "hurt."
        It couldn't help the tears that burned at its eyes, just let them 
blur at its vision and trace down its face.  For everything that it had 
learned, everything it had thought and done on its own, it still couldn't 
do things right.  Perhaps it should never have left the laboratory where it 
had been created.
        As if sensing its misery, its cat came and rubbed up against its 
leg, perhaps trying to comfort it.  And the tabby it had named "Kakyou" in 
honor of its first friend, a deceased Angel now, looked so forlorn himself 
that Nataku couldn't help but pick him up and stroke his fur.  Kakyou 
responded almost immediately by purring and, eyes half-lidded, kneading 
Nataku's trousers.  Nataku laughed a little, tears wavering its voice; 
cats, unlike humans, were so easy to please.  It was almost impossible to 
make a cat mad enough at you that it ignored you or tried to die.  And cats 
couldn't die until the ninth time anyway, Seishirou-san had told Nataku.  
Nataku had regarded all felines with a bit of awe since then; they had to 
possess very potent magic to be able to have eight spare lives.
        Nataku curled into a ball and rubbed its damp cheek against 
Kakyou's fur.  Maybe it would leave the apartment and find someplace else 
to live, someplace where its actions wouldn't hurt anyone and especially 
not people as wonderful as Seishirou-san and Subaru-san.  Maybe Kakyou 
would like to go with it.
        "Nataku?"
        It sat upright as Nokoru-san entered its room and walked over to 
it.  The Chairman smiled, a soft smile, and sat down next to Nataku.  "Why 
have you been crying?" he asked, taking a soft white handkerchief out of 
his breast pocket and gently beginning to wipe Nataku's cheek with it.
        "Because I don't want Subaru-san to die," Nataku replied.  "And 
because I'm afraid it's my fault...."

        Nokoru paused, his eyes meeting Nataku's.  "Why would it be your 
fault?" he asked, surprised.
        "Because I... he and Seishirou-san...." Nataku stuttered quite 
charmingly.
        That and the blush fit in all the pieces Nokoru needed.  "Nataku, 
did you... 'sleep' with the two of them?"
        Nataku mutely nodded, tears still brimming in its pretty golden 
eyes.
        <Kinky...> Nokoru thought to himself with half a smile.  Out loud, 
he said, "Nataku, that has nothing to do with what's happening to Subaru.  
I promise you."
        "Really?"  Nataku looked and sounded so hopeful at that.
        "Mm-hmm."
        Kakyou jumped off of Nataku's lap and looked inquiringly at Nokoru; 
he usually brought it a treat or a small toy.  Not today, though; he'd left 
in a bit too much of a hurry to procure any such thing.  Nokoru and the cat 
regarded one another.
        "Go watch over Subaru," Nokoru instructed the feline, pointing 
towards the door.
        Kakyou did not deign to respond in any way other than daintily 
licking the back of a paw and brushing it over its forehead.
        Nokoru considered.
        "Cat food," he tried, pointing towards the door again.
        Kakyou scampered over to the door and nosed it open, undoubtably 
going to the kitchen, where it usually got fed.  Nokoru giggled.
        "Your cat," he informed Nataku, pulling the bioroid that he 
considered to be more or less his younger sibling into a hug, "is as 
self-serving as any human I've ever met."
        "Nokoru-san," Nataku said, its voice quiet, "What /is/ wrong with 
Subaru-san, then?"
        Nokoru sighed and bowed his head a little.  "Nataku, have you ever 
seen Subaru get angry?"
        "No...."
        "Do you get angry?"
        "Ummm... a little sometimes.  I think."  Nataku was cutely 
indecisive.
        Nokoru ruffled its hair.  "It's normal for people to get angry.  
Subaru has been suppressing a part of himself for a very very long time, 
the part that would react in anger and pain.  Because he's been suppressing 
it, the feelings have been bottled up; they've festered and fizzled.  He's 
like a bottle of shaken-up soda right now, and he's been suppressing things 
so long that he doesn't know /how/ to release the pressure.  So he's going 
to die rather than let it out, because he can't do anything else."  
Nokoru's voice quieted.  "I don't want Subaru to die either, Nataku, and 
I'm going to do everything I can to prevent it, I promise you.  He may be a 
different person at the end of it, but at least he'll be alive, and maybe a 
little more whole."
        Nataku's voice was very soft as it whispered, "Thank you, 
Nokoru-san."
        Nokoru gently nuzzled the fine platinum silk of Nataku's hair and 
considered exactly how he was going to fulfill that promise.

        The book fell open to the page out of habit.  Subaru's finger 
brushed down the words read and considered many times.  "Turning and 
turning in the widening gyre," he murmured, eyes not even half-fixed on the 
printing, "the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart, the 
center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed 
tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the 
best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate 
intensity.  Surely some revelation--"
        The book was snatched from his hands and loudly closed.  Subaru 
looked up to see Nokoru glaring at him.
        "You do not," Nokoru stated, "need to be reading Yeats."
        The Chairman turned and walked over to the bookcase, returning the 
book of poetry to its place.
        "I've memorized it," Subaru said quietly into the silent air.
        That made the Chairman pause.  "You think far too much about the 
darkness, Subaru," he criticized, turning around.  "Maybe I shouldn't have 
given you that choice eight years ago."
        "The future is one's own choice," Subaru said, echoing the words of 
the child who was the second birth of both the "kamui."  He felt so 
tired.  But Nokoru wouldn't let him die....
        Nokoru came and knelt by his side, placing a hand on top of 
Subaru's, his very blue blue eyes looking up to meet Subaru's green ones.
        "If you must read Yeats, start with 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree'," 
the soft voice asked.  Asked, not told.
        Subaru smiled a little.  "'I will arise and go now, for always 
night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; while 
I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep 
heart's core'," he murmured to Nokoru, feeling so tired of the world around 
him.  And that place of peace and silence and aloneness floated somewhere 
almost tangible to him.  But Nokoru couldn't know that.
        "'I hear it in the deep heart's core'," he murmured again.
        Nokoru couldn't know how much....

                                *Tsuzuku...*