X: Too Many Tears, Not Enough.... "Don't do this," the dream whispered, begged. "Don't do this, Subaru. Turn away. Don't taint your magic like this, don't taint your soul with blood...." "I can't," he whispered back, answering the ghosts in his mind. "I chose this path too long ago... I can't change now...." "There's always a choice." "No... not for this... not for Hokuto-chan's killer...." "..." The voice was silent for a minute, then said quietly, "You're not doing this for her, and you know it. You're doing this for yourself." Subaru stopped for a second as he wrestled with his own truths. "...." "What's he doing?" Kamui asked quietly. "Subaru just wanted to fight and kill Sakurazukamori... or die trying...." "Dunno," Sorata replied. "Maybe...." Sorata didn't finish the sentence, and Kamui looked oddly at him before looking back at the figure of the tortured onmyouji. "What if I stop now?" Subaru asked desparately. "What happens then? What about the Future? Destiny?" Sakurazukamori took a step closer to him as Subaru's other part answered his question. "Try it, and find out. This is the only chance you have to Change the Future... to change *your* future...." "Hesitating, Subaru-kun?" Seishirou asked with a soft smile. "What are my choices?" Subaru asked, not sure if he was asking the other self, Sakurazukamori, or himself. "What *can* I do?" Nothing answered. Seishirou smiled as Subaru-kun's beautiful green eyes met his. Subaru's eyes had always shown perfectly what he felt. And now he was feeling nothing but confusion. "Do you want to die, Subaru-kun?" he asked with another smile, taking another step, noting he was within arm's reach of Subaru. "Shall I kill you?" Subaru hesitated, and his eyes lowered as he seemed to search for an answer. Then he looked up again, and the answer was in his eyes before he even voiced it. Seishirou found himself slightly startled as Subaru softly voiced the word "Yes." He strove for, and reached, center again as he took a final step closer, and ran fingers through Subaru's soft black hair. The emerald eyes watched him trustingly, almost innocently, knowing that he would do this. A random favor, if nothing else. A part of his Destiny. "You always had such expressive eyes, Subaru-kun," he mused softly. "Very beautiful. I think I teased you so much just to watch your shock and outrage, your shyness." "You should have seen me just after, then," Subaru said quietly. "You might have enjoyed seeing my pain and determination." "Perhaps if I had not been Sakurazukamori and you had not been the head of the Sumeragis, I might have fallen in love with you, Subaru-kun," Seishirou mused. "Perhaps you would still have fallen in love with me anyway." "I would have," Subaru confirmed. "How can one not love one's other?" "And hate one's other, as well," Seishirou agreed. "Nothing personal, you understand, Subaru-kun. Just Destiny. Fate." "I wouldn't expect it to be," Subaru replied. "Never personal, not from you, anyway." Seishirou smiled, and lowered his lips to Subaru's for their first, their last, kiss. At the same time, white power glowed around his hand, becoming a gentle sakura pink as he rammed a fist through Subaru's slender body. Only a slight, very slight, jerk implied that Subaru felt anything at all as the Seal's arms drifted lightly around Seishirou's neck. The kiss deepened, meaning more for the pain, for the dying. And then the soft, sensuous lips fell away from Seishirou's, and he opened his eyes again, seeing the love and peace in the emeralds before him fade into empty glassy reflections. He smiled a little. It was over, this part of his life. "Sleep well, Subaru-kun." He let the body fall, and disappeared into sakura. "Sleep well, Sei-chan." That was his mother, and he was a small child. Seishirou smiled as he drifted off into sleep. Odd, remembering that so many years later. The human mind was such a fascinating thing.... "Seishirou-san." He looked up. Before him stood the child Subaru, nine years old again. "Do you remember this?" Subaru-kun asked. Seishirou looked up at the cherry tree, and recognized the inside of his maboroshi. "Of course," he replied, standing. "This is where I first met you." Subaru was sixteen now. "Where you marked me. Where you later tried to kill me. Where you killed my sister after that." "Mmm," Seishirou agreed with a slight nod. "I recall." Subaru pulled off one of his gloves. A star glowed softly on the back of his hand as he caressed Seishirou's cheek. "You don't seem to realize it yet, do you, Seishirou-san? Look more closely. What's wrong with this picture?" The white sakura blew endlessly off the trees, like falling snow. A single white star-flower landed on Subaru's dark hair. "This is not your maboroshi, but mine," Subaru said softly. "You could never create white sakura." "That's so," Seishirou admitted to the twenty-three-year-old Subaru, wondering what this dream was, what his subconcious was trying to tell him. Subaru-kun had never had the power to create maboroshi in reality; what was the significance to his being able to in a dream? "Is this to be another fight?" he mildly inquired. "No," Subaru replied. "This is simply a warning, a fact. When you killed me... you inherited the dreams. I am a part of you, Seishirou-san... and I will be forever. You cannot sleep without this dream, and without me. Do not think that this will not have long-reaching effects." Subaru smiled boyishly, sixteen again. "After all, now I have the rest of your lifetime to complete the duty of the head of the Sumeragi Clan... the destruction of Sakurazukamori. All I have to do to destroy you is to make you care, even the slightest bit." Seishirou smiled. "I anticipate your attempts, Subaru-kun," he replied softly, not believing a word of it. Subaru touched his bare hand again to Seishirou's cheek. "As do I, Seishirou-san... as do I." With a smile, he touched his lips to Seishirou's, then stepped back and disappeared. Seishirou turned over in his sleep as one of the Sumeragi twins vanished and the other took his place. "He's sweet, isn't he?" Hokuto asked. Seishirou looked up to see her sitting in the branches of the cherry tree, swinging her legs and smiling. "And I suppose you'll be haunting me for the rest of eternity as well?" Seishirou inquired mildly. "Of course!" Hokuto replied, dropping down to the ground. "Where Subaru goes, I go! Someone has to take care of him!" "How convenient," Seishirou said dryly. Hokuto smiled, over-sweetly. "You can't do anything to either of us now, and you know it, Sei-chan. So it's time for me to support Subaru rather than you." "And you want no revenge for yourself?" Seishirou asked. "Why?" Hokuto seemed genuinely surprised. "I was born to take care of him, to die protecting him if neccessary. I did what I was supposed to do." "So you're going to let him attempt to seduce me?" "He's a big boy; he can sleep with you if he wants to. Though I think you underestimate my brother." Hokuto paused, one finger resting on her cutely-painted bow of a mouth. "Good luck with having your heart resist him, Sei-chan." Seishirou woke up and started as he found a small table set up next to his bed, with a breakfast on it. As he blinked and looked at it, he could have sworn that he felt a soft breath of a kiss on his cheek, a warm ghostly hand underneath his chin. Slowly, he smiled. "How like you, Subaru-kun." The kiss moved to his lips, and Seishirou knew that if he closed his eyes he would be unable to tell the difference between the ghostly touch and a real one. Instead he stood and got dressed, ignoring the food on the small table until he was finished and ready to eat. He ignored it as he ignored the whispered touches of what could only be Subaru's hands. Hokuto wouldn't bother with harrassing him this way - she'd merely make his life a living hell. She would never be so subtle, nor so gentle and caring in her manners, save towards her twin, of course. He murmured thanks for the breakfast and began to eat, becoming quickly surprised at Subaru's cooking skill. Evidently somewhere over the past few years Subaru-kun had become a very good chef. Better even than Hokuto had been, Seishirou mused. After he was done, he stood up again and straightened his tie, checking in the mirror as Subaru's phantom hands helped him, and departed to go to his work of finding and destroying the kekkai holding Tokyo together. As he left the apartment, he felt a chill run down his spine, and turned to see an afterimage of a white bird. The shikigami, the soul, of a magician he knew all too well, it flew transparently past him and over the balcony railings. Disturbed, Seishirou couldn't help but watch after it. -------------------- "No," Kamui whimpered, sleeping fitfully under Arashi's gaze. She frowned slightly and bit her lip, then caught herself at it and stopped. Bad habit. She must have caught it from Yuzuriha or Sorata. Calmly, she smoothed Kamui's hair out of his eyes, and he seemed to relax a bit under her cool touch. Something moved in the corner of her vision, a sound that she didn't quite catch, a sensation that she could almost understand. A ghost. And, as Arashi focused her senses on the intruding spirit, she started, then relaxed, letting the wandering dead go to Kamui. One of their own would never injure Kamui. "It's not your fault." Kamui looked up from the pools of blood he knelt in, and saw another boy his age, with large green eyes and silken black hair. He almost seemed familiar.... "Who are you?" he asked, hesitantly, hostilely. The boy smiled, and his form blurred slightly. "I forgot that you're not used to seeing me this age." "Subaru?" Kamui asked. Subaru nodded once. "It's still not your fault." "What isn't?" Kamui asked. "This." The dead onmyouji gestured, and the pools of blood and darkness ribboned away into nothing. The Holy Sword, too, vanished. Kamui stared at the flowering cherry tree before them. "What's this?" "The place where I first met my destiny," Subaru replied, looking at the gently falling sakura himself. His body changed, perhaps unconciously, back into his teenage form. "The place where Sakurazuka Seishirou first marked me as his prey. Also, where he tried and failed to kill me that first time... and where he killed my sister." "Then why are we here, if this place holds so many bad memories for you?" Kamui asked, looking sideways at Subaru. "Because it also holds good memories for me," the onmyouji replied. "Without this illusion... this maboroshi... I would never have met him at all. My life would have continued, and perhaps I would have died far sooner than I did, of loneliness if nothing else." "... What do you mean?" Kamui asked slowly, remembering how Subaru had died. In the arms of Sakurazukamori, *kissing* Sakurazukamori. "The only physical intimacy in my life, and it was the moment of my death," Sumeragi murmured. "Ah, well. At least it was to a purpose. Because of that, because of the touch, I continue." His voice was soft, compassionate, as his green eyes turned gently to Kamui. "You never even got that, did you?" "I'm not dead," Kamui defended himself. "Yes you are," the onmyouji replied. "Or dying, at the least. Look at your heart, Kamui... you know this as well as I do." "...." Kamui found he couldn't respond, not to a truth that blatant. "It was Destined," the onmyouji intoned softly. "... Why Fuuma?" Kamui whispered, knowing exactly what Subaru meant, feeling the pain tear at him, ripping away at his heart. "Why did it have to be Fuuma? Anyone else I could fight... but not him. Not Fuuma...." "Because it is our destiny to feel pain," Subaru answered, green eyes even and sad. "All of the Seven Seals will be destroyed by what we feel, or refuse to let ourselves feel. Our pain is what will save humanity... if we are strong enough to bear it." "Were you strong enough?" Kamui whispered, folding to his knees. He didn't feel ashamed of the tears that ran wetly down his face as he thought of Fuuma... Kotori. The two he cared for the most... the two who had been destroyed because of him.... Only Subaru had seen him mourn for them, afterwards. He had been the one who had gone into his soul and helped Kamui to wake again. He had helped him to keep living, though Kamui didn't know why. He had been the one who had held Kamui as he felt like a nine-year-old child whose world had been destroyed.... Subaru hesitated, then knelt beside Kamui and held him again. This time they were the same age. "I had seven years to get used to the pain, to the hatred eating away at me. My body died, but I'm still here. I think, Kamui," he said, speaking the name softly, "that I might have been strong enough to continue rather than stopping altogether. Maybe that's the kind of strength that we need, all of us. To continue for the sake of others...." "Damn you," Kamui said, crying into Subaru's dark clothing, "you're not any older than me." "No, but I have been," Subaru replied. "And I think you and I can understand one another very well...." Kamui half-choked back a sob. "You know, you're the only person I let see me cry," he commented, with a miserable laugh. "I know," Subaru said, running a gentle hand through Kamui's hair. "For me, it was my sister that I let see me cry. And I didn't do that too often because I didn't want her to worry about me." "So you're dead, Sorata's going to die, Kotori's already dead, Fuuma is my enemy, and I don't know who I can trust," Kamui said bitterly. "And I'm expected to save the world? Why? No one will give a damn if I do." He half-swallowed another sob. "Maybe I should just give up...." "There is one thing that matters, Kamui," Subaru said softly. Kamui looked up as Subaru caught a white star-shaped flower in his hand. "This," he said, showing him the sakura. "Innocence. Purity." "Who's pure these days?" Kamui shot back, shaking off Subaru's touch. "... Everyone," Sumeragi answered softly, his large emerald eyes completely open and unguarded as he looked at Kamui. "You." "Me?" Subaru smiled and nodded gently. "You are perhaps the purest person I have ever known, Kamui. Not in a ritual, traditional sense, but in a true sense. You have a simple heart, a good heart. Nothing is in shades of gray for you. You may love and hate at the same time, but you don't lie to yourself about it." "Everyone around me dies," Kamui whispered. "And you feel it," Subaru agreed, with a solemn nod. "It disturbs you, it hurts you. My death hurt you. If you were jaded, it wouldn't hurt you. If you were arrogant, it wouldn't hurt you. If you were anything but what you are, Kamui, it wouldn't hurt you. If you were anything but pure, you wouldn't care so much about all this death. Purity is, quite simply, the ability to hurt. The ability to feel pain, and fear. The ability to be true." Sixteen was such a vulnerable age, Subaru thought to himself. For himself... for his sister... for Kamui. It was a time of change for people aware and awake in the psychic and spiritual levels of the world. Like butterflies, like sakura, he could feel Seishirou-san's lips brushing against his neck in a velvet touch that had never happened... and yet it was a memory, of perhaps another lifetime, sending cold thrills down Subaru's spine. And he knew that the hardest part of his task, of his lifetime, was just beginning. To make Sakurazukamori love him.... And he knew he would succeed. He was the last of the Sumeragi. He had never named a successor among his clan. And all things would be equal. Just as Sakurazukamori had promised to kill him, and succeeded, so had he promised himself to make Seishirou-san truly feel.... It was all in the lay of the Balance.