Tokyo Babylon/X
"Sayonara"


        "Sei...shi...rou...sa...."  Subaru fell to the ground, light gone 
from his eyes the instant that his body hit the concrete.
        "Hmm."  Seishirou looked at the broken body lying on the ground, a 
gaping hole showing in Subaru's midsection.  "Well, that's that."  He 
turned away, looking at the destruction wrought around him.  With a roaring 
of sound and a trembling of power, the 'kekkai' that Subaru had created 
dissolved, making the world within it truly the world of reality.
        Seishirou walked over to a water fountain and rinsed the dark blood 
off of his hands.

        Seishirou watched from a distance, unseen even by the members of 
the Sumeragi clan.  Subaru's grandmother, the twelfth, former, head of the 
clan, wept openly, crying over the loss of her favorite--only--grandson.  
The new head of the Sumeragis stood next to her, face as stony and silent 
as the rest of the clan's, gathered for the funeral.  Seishirou wondered 
absently what the name of the fourteenth head was.  She was young, perhaps 
barely sixteen, but there was a hardness in her eyes that had never been in 
Subaru's.  Her hair was short-cropped, and Seishirou could see glints from 
several earrings.  He wondered why Subaru had chosen this young punk girl 
to be his successor, then shrugged the question off.  Hopefully she would 
be smart enough not to come after him.
        Subaru's grave was beside Hokuto's, the twin headstones sharing a 
single date of birth.  Fittingly enough, a cherry tree shaded their final 
resting places, delicate pink blossoms coloring the light and weeping onto 
the graves.
        The funerary services were brief, but apparently affected the 
members of the Sumeragi clan, as they each slowly began crying.  Seishirou 
wondered why they felt so much for him: Subaru had changed vastly from 
being the lovable boy he had been a few years before.
        Perhaps it was respect that made them weep.
        Seishirou waited until the mourners had left, then approached the 
graves himself.  "Well, you got your wish, Subaru-kun," he said gently, 
brushing the back of his hand across the cold, gray surface of the 
headstone as if it was Subaru's cheek.  "Kill me or die, wasn't it?"
        He knelt by the fresh grave and unwrapped the flowers he held in 
his left hand, first placing brightly-colored wildflowers on Hokuto's 
grave, then white roses on Subaru's.  In his mind's eye he saw Subaru 
accepting the flowers, taking them into his arms and delightedly smelling 
the blossoms.  "You are safe now, Subaru," he whispered, almost lovingly, 
as he slipped off his sunglasses and put them in his pocket.  "You are 
mine.  Like the sakura which bloom so briefly and die in their full glory, 
I have taken you into myself.  I have given you something that few 
receive... my 'gift' to you."
        He smiled softly.  "You never understood that, did you?  Neither 
you nor Hokuto understood that.  All that which is bright and beautiful and 
mortal belongs to me, now and forever.  You will never have to suffer the 
tragedies of mortality now.  You will never have to grow old and weak.  You 
will never have to lose your beauty or purity of purpose.  You are 
perfectly kept in death's endless memory, both of you, as you wished."  
Seishirou's fingers traced over the three characters that comprised 
Subaru's name.  "Mine," he breathed.  "You are mine, now and forever, as I 
promised, Subaru."

        Soyoka watched impassionately as the Sakurazukamori knelt at her 
kinsman's grave, with flowers for both Subaru-san and Hokuto-san, and spoke 
softly to his victims.  She had decided to stay, knowing he would come, to 
see Sakurazukamori for herself.  She wanted to know who it was that had 
killed her predecessor.  She had to see him for herself before she could 
decide on her course of action.
        <Subaru-san may have been fixated, but he certainly was not 
stupid,> she thought absently, flexing her right hand into a fist and then 
relaxing it.  The scars that ran along the underside of her forearm would 
always remind her of her past, but their effects no longer limited her, 
either physically or emotionally, from full movement.  <He picked a 
successor and trained me to be ready to take over as clan head the instant 
he died.>
        <I may just be a kid from the streets, but I _am_ a Sumeragi... and 
now I am the fourteenth head of the clan.>
        "Will you kill him?" asked the twelfth head, her great-aunt, from 
her side, voice soft with tears.
        "No, Obasan," Soyoka answered quietly.  "Sakurazukamori's death was 
Subaru-san's quest, not mine."  She spoke carefully, considering her words 
before speaking them, as her predecessor had taught her.  "Though there 
will always be bad blood between us and him, the feud between Sumeragi and 
Sakurazukamori is over.  He has taken two of our own, and those two are two 
too many.  It stops now."

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Okay, yet *another* short story from me.  I hope you enjoyed it.  Ja ne!