Correction to credits from last time: Tash, Maruta, Ondine, and Ayano all 
get credit for composing various things used in this fic.

The Obsidian Key
-an UnAuthorized Key story-
Part 2
by Kristin Huntsman


        Through the darkness, a pair of eyes.  Honey-gold, with blue stars 
shining out of them, watching him, always watching, always smiling.  A 
silver flash, then, a slash of metal that cut, and pain, and redness, and 
he woke seeing that one damaged eye, milky-white, paired with the other and 
still smiling.
        Opening his eyes, Subaru found he was awake.  The hurtling rush out 
of his nightmares was almost always disorienting to him for a few 
heartbeats, so he missed the faint smoke of incense for a moment, and the 
white candles that guttered low gold around the room.
        His hand hurt as he looked at the candle nearest him, and he 
uncurled it from where it was curled around the obsidian stone.  He felt 
the blood start to flow onto the blackness of the soft cloud of bedding 
beneath him as the cutting edge was dislodged from the gash it had made in 
his palm.  The pain rose like slow sap up through the heel of his hand, 
then his wrist, then into his forearm.  It stopped there, a dull throbbing 
pulse of pain while the heat and wet stickiness flowed out of his hand.
        He closed his eyes and didn't care anymore, sick of life and the 
world and himself.
        Warm fingers closed around Subaru's wrist then, a thumb pressing 
against the vein in the center as his arm was lifted and a warm mouth 
closed on the gash, a tongue lancing the cut with tiny darts of pain as it 
swept back and forth, lapping up the blood.
        "I'll get in trouble if you get injured, you know," a soft voice 
said as the mouth momentarily left the cut.
        Subaru's eyes opened slowly as the boy returned to ministering to 
the wound.  A cloud of soft, dark hair was all he could see; the other 
person was swathed in layers of soft darkness that matched the infinity of 
the room.  "Who are you?" he mumbled carelessly.
        The boy paused, lifting his head away from the cut once more, 
though again his face did not rise to Subaru's view.  "I am Sakura," he 
replied, "your slave."
        "Sakura is a girl's name," Subaru said, mind absent as that thing 
which was so very like sleep sometimes came closer to him.
        "And it is mine... Sumeragi-sama."
        "Just... Subaru," he corrected as his eyes closed and he ceased to 
feel his injured palm, or the stars carved on the backs of his hands, and 
even the constant pain of his self fell away, "...sa..ku..r...."


        Seishirou, known as Sei, known as Sakura, smiled as he watched his 
young owner sleep.  "So cute, Subaru-sama," he whispered before setting his 
mouth again to the bleeding cut.  One by one the candles in the room winked 
out as he sat in that position, just holding Subaru's hand and looking with 
pleasure on the face and form of his prey-cum-owner, noting the small 
changes, the differences that told so much more than Subaru knew.  What had 
been attractively slender before was hardly more than skin stretched over 
bone and vein now, the body almost emaciated underneath those loose gray 
sweats.  Seishirou bet he would be able to define quite clearly the shape 
of each rib and Subaru's pelvic bones as well were he to examine him.  
Without Hokuto-chan to make sure he ate, apparently Subaru-kun was wasting 
away to nothing.  <And when you do remember to eat - what, once, twice a 
week, maybe? - I'll bet it's most certainly not nutritious enough for your 
growing body, Subaru-kun.>
        <Or do you do this to yourself deliberately, as part of a 
punishment?>
        Seishirou shook his head.  Either way, he was going to have to see 
about that.  It wouldn't do at all for Subaru to die of malnutrition before 
they confronted one another again.  And above the thinness of the cheeks, 
the blue touches to the fair skin beneath the eyes worried him.  <And 
overwork too.  You're nothing but a thread, Subaru-kun.  That much despair, 
that much compliance with your own death before even finding me again - 
that's unlike you.>
        <I'll have to do something about all of this.>
        And the last few of the candles guttered out obligingly slow, 
leaving just enough dim light for Seishirou to see by as he moved onto the 
bed as well before their light vanished entirely.  He moved behind the 
Sumeragi and held him, still grasping the wrist of that injured hand and 
restricting the blood flow for a bit more, until the clotting was secure.
        <You're certainly not responsible enough to care for yourself.>


        The morning had passed rather quietly, Subaru still sleeping and 
the darkness of the room soothing Seishirou's wakefulness into something 
approaching a trance state.  He'd bandaged Subaru's self-inflicted wound 
without waking the young onmyouji and retreated into his own thoughts, 
simply planning for and anticipating Subaru's reaction when he awoke.  Such 
things as Seishirou's mismatched eyes, and general looks, and even the name 
he was known by - oh, such things as those would definitely put Subaru-kun 
on his guard.
        So Seishirou had been building a little wall for himself, 
constructing an airtight personality shell to hide behind when he would 
need to.  Even the best of the Sumeragi's probes wouldn't be able to tell 
it from an actual person.  So for a little while, just for Subaru-kun, 
Seishirou was going to forget himself and become Sakura.
        A faint noise from the bed woke him from the trance, and he 
stretched a little before going over to the bed, where he sat down beside 
the young man, watching him wake.  The long, tapered fingers moved on the 
satin sheets as the eyelashes fluttered and Subaru's head moved a little 
from one side to the other.  Then the slow blinks began, the lips parting 
and starting to move a little, and then finally full consciousness, the 
green eyes opening and looking around the strange room a bit fuzzily.
        "Good morning, Subaru-sama," "Sakura" said quietly.  That snagged 
his master's attention and made him look up into Sakura's face.  Subaru 
looked at his eyes first - most people did, but Subaru's reaction was 
different from most people's.  Instead of pretending not to stare, he froze 
and his expression was horrified.
        Frightened.
        "Subaru-sama?" Sakura asked, taken aback by that reaction.
        Subaru moved faster than Sakura would have thought he could, across 
the large bed in a heartbeat and staring wildly across that new distance as 
Sakura.  "Sakurazukamori..." he breathed, and there was fear there, and 
hatred too in that name.
        "Who?" Sakura asked, not knowing what his master was talking about.
        Subaru stared at him.