Tokyo Babylon: Sound
part 3: Heartbeat / Emergence


        Subaru woke screaming in the night, his heart pounding in his 
throat, sweat dampening his face and pyjamas.
        "Subaru!"  Both of his parents ran into the room in the same 
moment, concern on their faces as they moved to sit on either side of him 
on his bed.
        "Okaasan!" Subaru cried, instinctively clutching her as her arms 
moved around him.  He tried to stifle his fears and be brave, but couldn't; 
he was too overwhelmed by what he was feeling.  He sobbed into her shirt 
and let her try instead.

                             *       *       *

        Midori looked worridly at Subaru.  Their son seldom had nightmares, 
and never this bad.  But this made two in the week since Subaru had begun 
to stay with them.
        She wasn't foolish enough to think that the nightmares were caused 
by her son's fear of being taken away from her by his father; she did, 
however, suspect Subaru to unknowingly be the cause.  His beginning to 
instruct their son on the ways of onmyoujutsu had started the chain 
reaction she had feared, and there was little Midori could do to stop the 
disruption in the Balance she felt in the world around her.  But, for every 
action there was an equal and opposite reaction, and she intended to do a 
divination to find out which reaction would get her the results she 
desired, and a return to Balance.  If there was time....
        "For every lie, there is a truth," she murmured comfortingly, 
rocking softly back and forth to calm their crying son.  "For every 
misdeed, there is a good deed done.  For every pain there is a happiness.  
For every darkness, there is a light.  For every oath broken, there is a 
promise kept.  For every grain of sand, there is...."
        "... there is a drop of water," her son murmured between sobs, 
reciting part of the litany of the Balance that she had been taught and had 
taught him in turn.  Destiny and their bloodline required Balancers to 
balance Heart and Emptiness, but it was a fine line they walked.  The 
litany had kept more than one of her predecessors sane by reminding them 
that they could succumb fully to neither side.  And now it calmed her son's 
nerves, as it was meant to do.  "For every moon there is a sun, and for 
every death there is a birth.  For every fear there is a bravery, for every 
duty there is a joy, for every enemy there is a friend, and for every night 
there is a day.  The Balance is One, and for every One there is an All, and 
they are the same, two faces to the same whole."
        "Sou desu," Midori murmured soothingly, stroking one hand gently 
across his black hair as she held her son to her with the other.  "Sou desu 
yo, Subaru...."

                             *       *       *

        It took a little more than half an hour to get their son back to 
sleep before Subaru and Midori returned to the living room where they had 
been quietly discussing both of their trainings of Subaru.  It was, Subaru 
reflected, as if their son was the only topic that they considered "safe" 
to talk upon.
        "Midori--" he started, then cut himself short, not knowing what he 
would say.
        "It begins," she said obliquely, folding to her knees in a graceful 
move that was purely Japanese.
        "What begins?" he questioned, following her move.
        Midori's silver eyes met his steadily, without a trace of the 
wavering emotions that he had sensed from her since they had met again.  
"We have both endured our own personal hell, Subaru," she said quietly.  
"Mine was eight years ago, when it seemed that the two people I loved best 
in this world would destroy one another.  Yours was longer... from the 
moment you first found out Sakurazukamori's true nature to the moment when 
you accepted peace again into your heart.  Now it is another's turn to 
suffer.  This happens in all things.  Time flows, turning the wheel of 
fate.  It is now a time of difficulty for our son."
        "What do you mean?" he asked, wishing that he knew more than the 
smattering she had told him about her clan... about the Balancers.  It 
would be easier to know than to ask her to tell him....
        Her eyes closed for a second, and when they opened again, Subaru 
started inwardly, seeing a design in her silver irises, a star of six 
points traced white on the silver-gray color.  The hairs on the back of his 
neck prickled, something that hadn't happened to him since early 
childhood.  It was like a cold wind touching him, a power touching 
something deep inside him that responded blindly, instinctively, whether he 
wanted it to answer or not.
        "I told you that it was a danger for him to be both the Balancer 
and the Balanced," Midori stated.  "Before, while the side and powers he 
inherited from you were dormant, he was safe.  But since he has started 
even marginally down the path of his onmyouji training, Subaru has become a 
target to those who hunt on levels that even you may not be fully aware of."
        Something fit itself into place in Subaru's head.  "Subaru is the 
reason you never contacted me.  His safety... I've placed him in danger."
        "He is part of the reason," Midori agreed.  "And the rest is 
between us."

                             *       *       *

        Midori observed, with some subdued sense of surprise, how easily 
she slipped back into being who she had been in her youth.  Gone were the 
layers of personality that masked her as Fire; she had returned to her 
natural element, Stone.  All Balancers were at the heart Stone; an element 
unchanged by all it endured.  Water became steam, a fire could be put out, 
air could be polluted, but a stone remained a stone, no matter if it was 
broken, worn down by time, or cast into the hottest of fires to melt.
        And with the change, sudden and prompted by the danger to her son, 
felt right.
        Had she the luxury to do so, she would have stretched out with all 
her sorcerous senses, delighting in the power that she newly-realized lay 
shimmering around and within her, a dance, a raw energy and void at the 
same time that was her birthright.  There would be time enough to delight 
and sorrow over the reawakening of the Balancer within her later; for now 
there were other things to be tended to.
        Subaru, her love.
        Subaru, her beloved son.
        The darkness that was haunting the latter.
        And the darkness that mirrored the former.
        These four elements were the Balance she had presented before her, 
and she knew the natural lay of the cosmos, feeling the simple sense of How 
Things Were Supposed To Be.  It was skewed, as it had been once before in 
her lifetime, and the only other with the power to Set Things Right was 
himself part of the balance, and not yet fully trained, in any 
circumstance.  In another few years, this would be his job, but in the 
meantime it was hers.
        Like marbles on an uneven table, she studied the four, trying to 
see which way of tilting the table could send all four to the places they 
needed to be.  The Heart and the Void elementals she had dealt with before, 
and knew how they would roll.  But Air and the other were new to her, and 
she did not yet understand them....
        She opened her eyes again, knowing this was no simple problem to be 
solved so quickly as in a night, and breathed a soft breath.  Subaru knelt 
before her, carefully watching, and she knew that somewhere along the way, 
the path to the Balance, Heart and Stone would have to reach their desired 
positions in regards to each other.
        She saw in his eyes a vague, distant understanding of what was 
beginning, and it gave her hope.
        Perhaps the heart and the stone might find a destiny together yet.

*****
Linguistics: "Sou desu" and "Sou desu yo" both mean approximately "That's 
        right."  "Okaasan," of course, means "Mother."