(no subject)
Folie et déraison
[A loveless soubixritsuka fanfiction][PG-13][slash]
Disclaimer: Loveless belongs to Kouga Yun.
Author's Note: It's been a while since I've written anything. This was begun in the middle of literature class. In it you will find various strange references to modernist literature and various shamelessly stolen/altered quotations. Much love to F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, John Keats, and Michel Foucault.
This is an AU, where psychologist Agatsuma Soubi meets his latest patient: brilliant, beautiful, disturbed Aoyagi Ritsuka. Theirs is the story of hurt personalities healing, and of love.
Thank you! Please review if you enjoyed it, and con crit will be vastly appreciated.
Folie et déraison
6th September 2007
*
Agatsuma Soubi has never met a patient like Aoyagi Ritsuka. Aoyagi Ritsuka is a curiosity, neatly wrapped up in a slender, beautiful body.
*
Their first meeting is nothing, but their second, oh, the second time -
He leaves his white coat at the door and takes a deep breath before he enters.
Aoyagi Ritsuka is reading, but his gaze tips upwards from his book and arrests Soubi - just as Soubi is turning towards him, vulnerable and half-caught in the balance of motion.
This child is so sane
it takes Soubi's breath away.
*
Dressed in white, Aoyagi Ritsuka is real but crisply fragile, like a cut-out fascimile of childhood. Potato-chip glass, Soubi thinks, and carefully sits down on the bed, beside him. 'Ritsuka,' he greets.
'Am I?' Aoyagi Ritsuka asks, as if he is speaking of the weather.
'Yes,' Soubi replies.
The child at his side folds up like an unbudding flower. The book lies in his lap, slender fingers tangled in the pages.
Foucault's History of Madness.
*
Schizophrenia is such a word. Thirteen letters for the thirteen shattered years of Aoyagi Ritsuka's life.
σχίζειν φρήν; shattered mind.
In the privacy of his own office, Soubi takes a deep breath and desperately seeks an elusive composure. Aoyagi Ritsuka’s dissection of Foucault is incisive and destructive and almost terrifying. A brilliant person, he will write in his reports.
Like he is searching for a fragment to live on; like he is looking to shore up ruins with the words, but Soubi will not write that.
*
Aoyagi Ritsuka becomes, by the fifth day, a fascination. Agatsuma Soubi has seen many patients, but no one, no one has been like Ritsuka.
There is something in him that Soubi cannot relinquish.
*
On the sixth day Ritsuka has visitors. A teacher with staid waist-length brown hair, long frowsy skirt, sensible granny shoes. Shinonome Hitomi-sensei. (And a classmate by the name of Hawatari Yuiko, whose pink hair is vivid in the light.)
Sexual repression is what Soubi diagnoses in her, and he takes a slightly perverse pleasure in unsettling her, in being blatant and beautiful in front of this pathetically virginal woman. She stutters her way through his advances and when he steps aside, she disappears in with the other child to see Ritsuka with every sign of relief and reluctance.
The smiles are hard on their faces, but Soubi does not intrude on their time together with Ritsuka.
Instead, he goes back to his office and looks through Ritsuka’s case files. Shinonome was the one who first got him admitted here, before Soubi had become Ritsuka’s psychologist. He reads the transcript of the interview they had with her.
A broken family. Brother missing. Introverted. Very intelligent. He... had a fit? In class once... it was a fight with a classmate and then... There are scars on his body. Self-mutilation?
Fragments of Ritsuka. Soubi has already ruled out the last of Shinonome’s wild guesses. The wounds on Ritsuka’s body, those he has seen, those are not the wounds of a self-mutilator.
Soubi should know.
*
Seven days have passed since Ritsuka was transferred to this quiet country manor, under Soubi’s care. A thick manila folder arrives for him, from the city, and Soubi is surprised to see that it is from Ritsuka’s last psychologist. Her notes are far more insightful. Does not respond well to drugs. Mother is abusive, father is absent, and his brother... an enigma whom Ritsuka is not willing to talk about. Personality change, split-personality disorder? The dominant personality now is the quiet one, but it seems that that has not always been the case. Loves books very much. Brother somehow a connection, a catalyst. Needs rest and quiet. Beware his mother!
*
‘Soubi!’ Ritsuka’s glad shout startles him, and he catches an armful of black-furred vibrancy, Ritsuka’s arms twined round his neck, trusting and sweet. ‘Can we go out today?’
‘Out?’
‘To the gardens!’ and Ritsuka’s laugh is a cotton-candy cloud. ‘One of the nurses said you could take me out to the gardens!’
Soubi’s mind whirls even as he instinctively shifts to get a better hold of the butterfly child in his arms. ‘Of course,’ he answers, smiling fondly at Ritsuka.
He carries Ritsuka out to the gardens, Ritsuka’s nose buried in the crook of his neck.
*
Ritsuka plays tag with a butterfly and laughs, and Soubi watches him.
It is so surreal, unreal, to see Ritsuka shriek with childish happiness, and then fall into the grass and sleep the sleep of the carefree -
*
When Soubi sees Ritsuka again in the afternoon, though, Ritsuka is once again the somber ancient. He looks up expectantly as Soubi enters, and Soubi’s breath catches in his throat once more, as Ritsuka holds up his copy of The Great Gatsby.
Somehow - he has become biased and he should not be, but he is - he is fonder of this Ritsuka, this familiar child with his curiosity like a challenge gauntlet flung between them.
‘This man, is he Jay Gatsby or James Gatz?’ Ritsuka demands to know. ‘Is he not both? He is insane too?’
Soubi hesitates. Only Ritsuka can make him do that.
‘We would not call him insane, because he consciously set out to create an identity for himself that he particularly wanted to project. An extreme form of ambition and self-improvement, maybe, but he reinvented himself for the woman he loved. He reinvented himself to show to the rest of the world.’
Ritsuka’s eyes are shuttered. ‘People are not what they show to the world. People are not only what they show to other people. People are not what they themselves think they are. People are not what they dream of becoming. What are we, then?’
‘Flawed creatures,’ Soubi answers. ‘Egoists who centre the known worlds at our hearts, and when we vanish, we do so like so many dreams.’
It is not until he understands that Ritsuka has fallen wordless that Soubi realizes that he has said too much, said something that he had not thought he would say.
*
Soubi does not seek Ritsuka over the weekend. It is a folly, a sweet sort of peril, to let this thirteen-year-old snare him, scare him, and yet, as Soubi takes a walk in the woods, in the midst of the twilight air, patchwork world of red and brown and tawny-green -
Soubi yearns towards him -
His whole self straining, with the effort to match Aoyagi Ritsuka, to reach him who is lucid and potent and Soubi no longer knows if he is drowning in Ritsuka, or if Ritsuka in his too-clear madness is the one bringing the air of spring to his watery grave.
Soubi, too, has demons.
*
You can never exorcise them fully, only lock them in a cupboard. And then the toys cannot come out to play at night.
Then again, that’s alright. Soubi never played with toys as a child.
*
When he goes back on Monday, Soubi falls back on the standard arsenal of the bewildered psychologist. ‘Ritsuka, I’m not sure if your last psychologist did these with you, but I’m going to run you through a Rorschach test. Tell me what you see.’
Ritsuka nods gravely, attentively.
‘A bird.’
‘A window.’
‘A knife.’
‘Mother’s face.’
‘The wind.’
‘Mother’s hands.’
‘The sun.’
‘Mother’s favorite pearl earrings.’
‘Running water.’
‘A butterfly.’ Ritsuka pauses, and his fingers come to rest on Soubi’s wrist, his index finger centered on Soubi’s beating pulse. ‘What do you see, Soubi-sensei?’
‘The net, and the pins, and the glass case,’ Soubi answers unthinkingly, and is startled, first by the honesty of his own response, and then by the way Ritsuka’s delicate origami face crumples into sorrow and pity.
He gathers the child to him, stroking the line of his back. He lets Ritsuka weep the tears he cannot shed.
The cards lie on the table, forgotten.
*
Soubi is grateful.
*
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk
Ritsuka’s tears, like the waters of Lethe. River of forgetting. Of oblivion. As he looks at Ritsuka, Soubi cannot remember the lies that make up who he is.
Aoyagi Ritsuka may have dark hair and dark eyes and look nothing like Soubi, but maybe, in him, Soubi can try to save the child he himself used to be.
*
Slowly they begin to talk to each other. Ritsuka tells Soubi about his mother, the screams and the shouts of ‘You’re not Ritsuka! Give me back my son!’, the soul-destroying fear of her uncertain, terrifying wavering between maternal warmth and the demon who falls upon him, teeth claws crimson anger, branding her palm into his cheek. Soubi listens, and burns with hatred for this woman, who would damage such a brittle soul for her own selfish, small-minded wants.
Soubi talks to Ritsuka too, on walks in the gardens, Ritsuka’s one hand clutching a book and the other hand curled in Soubi’s, trustingly. Soubi tells Ritsuka things he never thought he would have to remember again - Ritsu, and the school, and his earlier belief that to be abused was to be happy, to be treated as a slave was to be happy - and somehow, strangely, feels better for the telling. He explains his choice to be a psychologist - to lead other people out of the trap his own hand was caught in, steel teeth and cruelty and pain. Ritsuka nods, and understands, without words.
They sit together under the autumnal maple trees, and read books together. Ritsuka is no longer as despairing as he was - and he was, Soubi can see that now. When Ritsuka first came here he did not care if he were to change back to the Ritsuka his mother wanted - he even wanted to disappear, in order to please her - and Soubi feels like crying again, remembering his own desperation, his almost-insanity, his parallel desire to please Ritsu, the only parent he had ever known but a poor parent indeed.
But it is different now, as Soubi tucks a coat around Ritsuka to keep the autumn winds off him.
Now there are the hints of smiles in Ritsuka’s eyes and lips and cheekbones. And as Soubi watches him, his heart throbs like a butterfly emerging triumphant from a chrysalis -
*
The realization is more like a stray thought in his mind than anything else:
I am in love with Ritsuka.
- the instinctive unfurling of glorious wings.
*
But that happiness is nothing, compared to the ecstasy of looking at Ritsuka’s smile and the truth in his eyes -
Ritsuka is in love with me as well.
- flight.
*
Their lips meet, once, briefly, beside the little low wall in the gardens, red brick delicately sheathed with new-budding ivy in the young spring air.
*
But happiness can be broken - like glass, like the soul.
Aoyagi Seimei radiates sensuality. Tall and handsome, he links his hand with Soubi, a handshake like a caress, his touch bordering on sexual promise, banked heat radiating from that slim body, dressed in a leather coat and a wool turtleneck over neatly pressed slacks. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Agatsuma-san. May I see my younger brother?’
Soubi has a million and one questions - where were you when Ritsuka was suffering, and now, when I’ve come so far, why are you here now, who are you - and he wants to find out why exactly he is recoiling from Aoyagi Seimei even though the man is undeniably powerfully attractive, but he can only nod and say, ‘Your brother is this way.’
*
Ritsuka is reading, as usual, but he looks up as Soubi enters the room, Aoyagi Seimei a few paces behind him.
Ritsuka sees Soubi first, and he tilts his head and almost-smiles, softly, before Seimei steps out from behind Soubi and Ritsuka’s face is transfigured, dazzling. ‘Seimei!’ he screams, and Aoyagi Seimei smiles - oh, they are brothers indeed, they share that half-smile, but that smile so sweet on Ritsuka looks faintly sinister on Seimei - before falling to his knees and opening his arms.
Ritsuka rushes to his brother with a shout of joy, and Seimei strokes Ritsuka’s fur, and kisses Ritsuka on the mouth. It is just a chaste, dry touch of lips, but Soubi realizes that nothing, nothing can make this scene any less sexual. A tingle runs down his spine as he watches them twine fingers.
He is forgotten. This is their world, and it is not his place to intrude. Nonetheless, Aoyagi Seimei turns to him and gives him a slight smile, and Soubi wonders if the other man can sense his murderous intent.
Maybe he can. Like to like, after all.
*
Soubi sinks into the leather seat in his office, a fine tremor shivering through him. He will not dismiss his instincts, his inexplicable distaste for Aoyagi Seimei. It is a revulsion heightened by the fact that he knows, he knows that if Aoyagi Seimei were to approach him he would not be able to resist. There is something powerfully charismatic about that man, something that warps other people to suit him. Something that makes him irresistible.
Oh, they are brothers indeed. But while Ritsuka is magnetic, Seimei makes his own gravity. And that makes him dangerous.
Later, he interviews Aoyagi Seimei. Or, more like Aoyagi Seimei insinuates himself into Soubi’s office and leans across the desk. Soubi holds firm against the intrusion. To give into to him is to give ground that will, Soubi knows, never be regained.
Aoyagi Seimei smiles, a glimpse of white, beautiful teeth, and leans back, steepling his fingers and resting his chin on them. ‘I’d like you to release my brother, Agatsuma-sensei. May I call you Soubi?’
‘Ritsuka is not yet well,’ Soubi says, ignoring the attempt at familiarity. ‘It is not advisable to release him now.’
‘He will be fine,’ Seimei declares. ‘I’ll take care of him.’
‘You should be as aware as I that his parents are incapable of giving him the care that he needs. The child has been brutally abused - and you weren’t there then. Forgive me if I do not consider you a capable caretaker.’
‘It was a difficult time for me,’ Seimei says.
‘He told me you died.’
‘Sometimes the way to fool an enemy is to fool a friend - or in this case, your nearest and dearest.’
‘And if you have an enemy who wants you dead, would Ritsuka be safe with you?’
Aoyagi Seimei smiles, and Soubi fights a shudder. Aoyagi Seimei is a praying mantis ready to strike.
‘Now he is,’ is all he says in answer.
‘Nonetheless,’ Soubi says, fighting to repress a snarl. ‘Ritsuka is still unstable. He’s suffering from multiple personality disorder.’
‘Really?’ and Seimei’s smile shifts from predatory to extraordinarily self-confident. ‘He seems to be the same person I remember.’
‘Until I am convinced that Aoyagi Ritsuka is sane, he will not be released.’ Soubi stands up, opens the door in clear dismissal. ‘I won’t see you out.’
Aoyagi Seimei rises gracefully from the seat. As he walks past, he brushes Soubi’s arm and murmurs, ‘You’ll see, Soubi.’
Soubi shuts the door and leans on it, trembling.
*
Soubi watches them with an impending sense of doom. Aoyagi Seimei is right. Soubi has not seen his Ritsuka in days - not when Aoyagi Seimei comes in as early as possible and leaves as late as possible, and all Soubi sees now is that laughing carefree child, who is glad to have his brother with him, and Soubi cannot help but wonder -
Where has Ritsuka gone?
Aoyagi Seimei’s triumph is a bitter taste on Soubi's tongue, bitter like ashes on the water.
*
Ritsuka’s books - are they still Ritsuka’s anymore? - lie abandoned on the small shelf in his room.
*
‘Ritsuka!’ Soubi storms into the room. He is dressed in a loose sweatshirt and baggy drawstring pants - not his usual attire, but it is two a.m. in the morning. The nurse who had run to get him stumbles into the room after him. Ritsuka’s room, where the orderlies are struggling with an armful of panicking, struggling fear, a hellion with wild, wide, terrified eyes.
‘Soubi!’ Ritsuka sobs, and Soubi surges forward, gathers him close and glares at the nurse who holds the tranquilizer gun. He turns down her offer to stay nearby (he does not like her distrustful eyes, so near his Ritsuka), and rocks Ritsuka back, forth, back, forth, as he waits for them to leave. Which they do, though their looks are lingering and doubtful.
Then and only then, he says, ‘Ritsuka.’
‘Soubi,’ Ritsuka gasps, and Soubi knows, with a wave of relief, that this is his Ritsuka, not Aoyagi Seimei’s, not the innocent laughing child but the dark-eyed adolescent, all shadowy maturity, a fine tarnish on well-worn silver. His Ritsuka. His Ritsuka. ‘Soubi, I - I - I don’t know where I’ve been, they told me it was Saturday and I thought, that couldn’t be, because yesterday night was Sunday - and I haven’t - forgotten - in such a long while, ever since - you and I - why? Why now? Soubi, I don’t want to forget things again, I don’t want to disappear-’
Oh, they’ve come such a long way, from Ritsuka’s days of weary nihilism, and Soubi’s heart aches for him. Soubi’s heart aches for this lonely child, who reads books too old for him and yet is afraid and is looking for comfort, like crawling into a warm bed, to be loved and sheltered from the monsters of the world, real and imagined, and are they any less real for being imaginary?
Soubi holds him and presses gentle kisses to his forehead, to his cheeks, to the corners of his lips, to his mouth, soothing him, and Ritsuka calms down, and as he continues to love Ritsuka, this quiet, gentle way, the thought occurs to Soubi - will Aoyagi Seimei know, the next time he touches his brother?
Aoyagi Seimei.
With an absolute certainty Soubi knows why for the last six days all he’s seen is the other Ritsuka, the laughing, carefree child, and with an absolute certainty he knows what he must do to save Ritsuka. Because damn the philosophers and damn the psychologists’ manuals, this is the child that Ritsuka is now and he will not let Aoyagi Seimei resurrect the ashes of the old Ritsuka, the Ritsuka who never knew a care in the world. Because that would be to deny the truth of the last few years, the truth of the scars that Ritsuka carries on his war-battered little body. It would be to deny his love for Ritsuka, and Ritsuka’s for him.
‘Ritsuka,’ he says urgently. ‘Ritsuka, listen to me.’
*
Ritsuka is shocked to hear that Aoyagi Seimei - the brother he had presumed dead, grieved for - is back, and is trying to take him away. And Ritsuka makes the connection on his own - that whenever Seimei appears he disappears. And Soubi is so proud of Ritsuka he could burst with the joy, when Ritsuka sets his lips in a firm, determined line and decides to fight to keep himself, to hold on to two years’ of pain and not let them be elided by Seimei’s promise of salvation. No matter how enticing, Ritsuka says, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty-that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
Yes. Better to live a jagged-edge truth than a flower-golden-gilded lie.
For a little while, Soubi entertains wild plans of spiriting Ritsuka away. He could do it, he has the authority to take patients out of the manor, trips for good behavior, and Ritsuka - excepting that one moment an hour ago - has been well-behaved. It would even be a good excuse - a change of scenery, to take his mind off something, to let a child his age be cooped up like this is not good... They could be far, far from here by the time anyone realized something was wrong.
He savors the idea for a moment, steeping himself in the fantasy so it seems almost-real -
The tang of the morning air vivid with their secret freedom, the butterflies wings’ trailing a magical dust -
Taking the train with Ritsuka, Ritsuka his precious treasure, stolen from the ogre -
And the jewel-bright certainty of his love for Ritsuka,
that nothing else matters -
But Soubi is not a fool.
If they run now they will be running forever, fugitives fleeing Aoyagi Seimei’s controlling shadow. Because running will not change the power he has over Ritsuka, to obliterate the Ritsuka that Soubi has come to know and love.
No. There will be a confrontation and there will only be one Ritsuka at the end of it.
Soubi can only hope that it is the Ritsuka of now, or else Aoyagi Seimei will have the Ritsuka of eleven-years-old, and he will have won. Soubi can only pray that he will be allowed to keep the Ritsuka that he loves, so very, very much.
He says it to Ritsuka over and over again, like a talisman to ward off fear and the bad dreams and the forgetting. He tells Ritsuka all the things he loves about him - him, and only him.
The understanding in his eyes.
The hesitant, sure touch of his hands.
Even the shadows in his soul, because - ah, here is the crux of the matter, the heart - they have healed each other, more than they can ever understand, only comprehending that it is a miracle, their finding each other in his wide, loveless world.
Aoyagi Seimei will be here tomorrow.
*
Soubi does not return to his office. He stays with Ritsuka in his room. They do not sleep, and when Aoyagi Seimei walks in, he walks in to find Ritsuka and Soubi reading the tragic dénouement of The Great Gatsby.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Soubi shuts the book and prays that it will not be so.
Ritsuka continues to look at the back cover of the book for a moment, looking but not seeing. Soubi can feel the tension suffusing every inch of him, and Aoyagi Seimei continues to wait, unsettlingly, silent by the door like a sentinel at the gates of hell. Soubi can only wait too, and hope. Hope that his love - their love! - is enough of a truth, for Ritsuka to make sense of this frightful reality.
Seimei attacks first. ‘Ritsuka,’ he whispers, and in their triangular silence his voice carries, low and hypnotic and mesmerizing -
Ritsuka shudders, and Soubi surreptitiously slides a hand over Ritsuka’s own. If Ritsuka breaks now, if Ritsuka reverts to the Ritsuka Seimei knows - wants - him to be, what will happen to Soubi? Who will be broken again -
He will not think of that now. Ritsuka and him, they hold on to each other and support each other, leaning back to back and if either one of them falls the other will crumble to pieces, wordlessly. But for Ritsuka, Soubi is willing to take that chance. Knowing Ritsuka is worth breaking.
Ritsuka takes a deep breath - a gulp of air, and turns. ‘Seimei,’ he says, and the nuances in his voice are the nuances that Soubi is familiar with, the tone of the Ritsuka who can be so old and yet so wonderfully childishly innocent. Those syllables resonate bone-deep within him with the benevolence and the mercy of relief.
What does not kill you makes you stronger, and Soubi is awed and humbled, that thirteen-year-old Ritsuka is strong enough to hold on to who he is, in this confused, wounded world.
*
Finally, Aoyagi Seimei leaves for the day, and Ritsuka turns to Soubi. Still a child, looking for approval, longing for affirmation. Soubi can only be glad that it is to him that Ritsuka turns to.
Soubi presses a reverent hand to Ritsuka’s delicate cheek, the skin warm porcelain under the pads of his fingers, each nerve end set afire by Ritsuka and Ritsuka’s courage and Ritsuka’s endearing, unsure half-smile.
Their lips meet.
*
Theirs will not be an easy road to walk. But he will walk it, with Ritsuka, because the butterfly feeling in Soubi’s heart promises that there will be books, and smiles, and rumpled blankets with morning kisses -
- a beckoning future, and an infinity of hope.
[A loveless soubixritsuka fanfiction][PG-13][slash]
Disclaimer: Loveless belongs to Kouga Yun.
Author's Note: It's been a while since I've written anything. This was begun in the middle of literature class. In it you will find various strange references to modernist literature and various shamelessly stolen/altered quotations. Much love to F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, John Keats, and Michel Foucault.
This is an AU, where psychologist Agatsuma Soubi meets his latest patient: brilliant, beautiful, disturbed Aoyagi Ritsuka. Theirs is the story of hurt personalities healing, and of love.
Thank you! Please review if you enjoyed it, and con crit will be vastly appreciated.
Folie et déraison
6th September 2007
*
Agatsuma Soubi has never met a patient like Aoyagi Ritsuka. Aoyagi Ritsuka is a curiosity, neatly wrapped up in a slender, beautiful body.
*
Their first meeting is nothing, but their second, oh, the second time -
He leaves his white coat at the door and takes a deep breath before he enters.
Aoyagi Ritsuka is reading, but his gaze tips upwards from his book and arrests Soubi - just as Soubi is turning towards him, vulnerable and half-caught in the balance of motion.
This child is so sane
it takes Soubi's breath away.
*
Dressed in white, Aoyagi Ritsuka is real but crisply fragile, like a cut-out fascimile of childhood. Potato-chip glass, Soubi thinks, and carefully sits down on the bed, beside him. 'Ritsuka,' he greets.
'Am I?' Aoyagi Ritsuka asks, as if he is speaking of the weather.
'Yes,' Soubi replies.
The child at his side folds up like an unbudding flower. The book lies in his lap, slender fingers tangled in the pages.
Foucault's History of Madness.
*
Schizophrenia is such a word. Thirteen letters for the thirteen shattered years of Aoyagi Ritsuka's life.
σχίζειν φρήν; shattered mind.
In the privacy of his own office, Soubi takes a deep breath and desperately seeks an elusive composure. Aoyagi Ritsuka’s dissection of Foucault is incisive and destructive and almost terrifying. A brilliant person, he will write in his reports.
Like he is searching for a fragment to live on; like he is looking to shore up ruins with the words, but Soubi will not write that.
*
Aoyagi Ritsuka becomes, by the fifth day, a fascination. Agatsuma Soubi has seen many patients, but no one, no one has been like Ritsuka.
There is something in him that Soubi cannot relinquish.
*
On the sixth day Ritsuka has visitors. A teacher with staid waist-length brown hair, long frowsy skirt, sensible granny shoes. Shinonome Hitomi-sensei. (And a classmate by the name of Hawatari Yuiko, whose pink hair is vivid in the light.)
Sexual repression is what Soubi diagnoses in her, and he takes a slightly perverse pleasure in unsettling her, in being blatant and beautiful in front of this pathetically virginal woman. She stutters her way through his advances and when he steps aside, she disappears in with the other child to see Ritsuka with every sign of relief and reluctance.
The smiles are hard on their faces, but Soubi does not intrude on their time together with Ritsuka.
Instead, he goes back to his office and looks through Ritsuka’s case files. Shinonome was the one who first got him admitted here, before Soubi had become Ritsuka’s psychologist. He reads the transcript of the interview they had with her.
A broken family. Brother missing. Introverted. Very intelligent. He... had a fit? In class once... it was a fight with a classmate and then... There are scars on his body. Self-mutilation?
Fragments of Ritsuka. Soubi has already ruled out the last of Shinonome’s wild guesses. The wounds on Ritsuka’s body, those he has seen, those are not the wounds of a self-mutilator.
Soubi should know.
*
Seven days have passed since Ritsuka was transferred to this quiet country manor, under Soubi’s care. A thick manila folder arrives for him, from the city, and Soubi is surprised to see that it is from Ritsuka’s last psychologist. Her notes are far more insightful. Does not respond well to drugs. Mother is abusive, father is absent, and his brother... an enigma whom Ritsuka is not willing to talk about. Personality change, split-personality disorder? The dominant personality now is the quiet one, but it seems that that has not always been the case. Loves books very much. Brother somehow a connection, a catalyst. Needs rest and quiet. Beware his mother!
*
‘Soubi!’ Ritsuka’s glad shout startles him, and he catches an armful of black-furred vibrancy, Ritsuka’s arms twined round his neck, trusting and sweet. ‘Can we go out today?’
‘Out?’
‘To the gardens!’ and Ritsuka’s laugh is a cotton-candy cloud. ‘One of the nurses said you could take me out to the gardens!’
Soubi’s mind whirls even as he instinctively shifts to get a better hold of the butterfly child in his arms. ‘Of course,’ he answers, smiling fondly at Ritsuka.
He carries Ritsuka out to the gardens, Ritsuka’s nose buried in the crook of his neck.
*
Ritsuka plays tag with a butterfly and laughs, and Soubi watches him.
It is so surreal, unreal, to see Ritsuka shriek with childish happiness, and then fall into the grass and sleep the sleep of the carefree -
*
When Soubi sees Ritsuka again in the afternoon, though, Ritsuka is once again the somber ancient. He looks up expectantly as Soubi enters, and Soubi’s breath catches in his throat once more, as Ritsuka holds up his copy of The Great Gatsby.
Somehow - he has become biased and he should not be, but he is - he is fonder of this Ritsuka, this familiar child with his curiosity like a challenge gauntlet flung between them.
‘This man, is he Jay Gatsby or James Gatz?’ Ritsuka demands to know. ‘Is he not both? He is insane too?’
Soubi hesitates. Only Ritsuka can make him do that.
‘We would not call him insane, because he consciously set out to create an identity for himself that he particularly wanted to project. An extreme form of ambition and self-improvement, maybe, but he reinvented himself for the woman he loved. He reinvented himself to show to the rest of the world.’
Ritsuka’s eyes are shuttered. ‘People are not what they show to the world. People are not only what they show to other people. People are not what they themselves think they are. People are not what they dream of becoming. What are we, then?’
‘Flawed creatures,’ Soubi answers. ‘Egoists who centre the known worlds at our hearts, and when we vanish, we do so like so many dreams.’
It is not until he understands that Ritsuka has fallen wordless that Soubi realizes that he has said too much, said something that he had not thought he would say.
*
Soubi does not seek Ritsuka over the weekend. It is a folly, a sweet sort of peril, to let this thirteen-year-old snare him, scare him, and yet, as Soubi takes a walk in the woods, in the midst of the twilight air, patchwork world of red and brown and tawny-green -
Soubi yearns towards him -
His whole self straining, with the effort to match Aoyagi Ritsuka, to reach him who is lucid and potent and Soubi no longer knows if he is drowning in Ritsuka, or if Ritsuka in his too-clear madness is the one bringing the air of spring to his watery grave.
Soubi, too, has demons.
*
You can never exorcise them fully, only lock them in a cupboard. And then the toys cannot come out to play at night.
Then again, that’s alright. Soubi never played with toys as a child.
*
When he goes back on Monday, Soubi falls back on the standard arsenal of the bewildered psychologist. ‘Ritsuka, I’m not sure if your last psychologist did these with you, but I’m going to run you through a Rorschach test. Tell me what you see.’
Ritsuka nods gravely, attentively.
‘A bird.’
‘A window.’
‘A knife.’
‘Mother’s face.’
‘The wind.’
‘Mother’s hands.’
‘The sun.’
‘Mother’s favorite pearl earrings.’
‘Running water.’
‘A butterfly.’ Ritsuka pauses, and his fingers come to rest on Soubi’s wrist, his index finger centered on Soubi’s beating pulse. ‘What do you see, Soubi-sensei?’
‘The net, and the pins, and the glass case,’ Soubi answers unthinkingly, and is startled, first by the honesty of his own response, and then by the way Ritsuka’s delicate origami face crumples into sorrow and pity.
He gathers the child to him, stroking the line of his back. He lets Ritsuka weep the tears he cannot shed.
The cards lie on the table, forgotten.
*
Soubi is grateful.
*
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk
Ritsuka’s tears, like the waters of Lethe. River of forgetting. Of oblivion. As he looks at Ritsuka, Soubi cannot remember the lies that make up who he is.
Aoyagi Ritsuka may have dark hair and dark eyes and look nothing like Soubi, but maybe, in him, Soubi can try to save the child he himself used to be.
*
Slowly they begin to talk to each other. Ritsuka tells Soubi about his mother, the screams and the shouts of ‘You’re not Ritsuka! Give me back my son!’, the soul-destroying fear of her uncertain, terrifying wavering between maternal warmth and the demon who falls upon him, teeth claws crimson anger, branding her palm into his cheek. Soubi listens, and burns with hatred for this woman, who would damage such a brittle soul for her own selfish, small-minded wants.
Soubi talks to Ritsuka too, on walks in the gardens, Ritsuka’s one hand clutching a book and the other hand curled in Soubi’s, trustingly. Soubi tells Ritsuka things he never thought he would have to remember again - Ritsu, and the school, and his earlier belief that to be abused was to be happy, to be treated as a slave was to be happy - and somehow, strangely, feels better for the telling. He explains his choice to be a psychologist - to lead other people out of the trap his own hand was caught in, steel teeth and cruelty and pain. Ritsuka nods, and understands, without words.
They sit together under the autumnal maple trees, and read books together. Ritsuka is no longer as despairing as he was - and he was, Soubi can see that now. When Ritsuka first came here he did not care if he were to change back to the Ritsuka his mother wanted - he even wanted to disappear, in order to please her - and Soubi feels like crying again, remembering his own desperation, his almost-insanity, his parallel desire to please Ritsu, the only parent he had ever known but a poor parent indeed.
But it is different now, as Soubi tucks a coat around Ritsuka to keep the autumn winds off him.
Now there are the hints of smiles in Ritsuka’s eyes and lips and cheekbones. And as Soubi watches him, his heart throbs like a butterfly emerging triumphant from a chrysalis -
*
The realization is more like a stray thought in his mind than anything else:
I am in love with Ritsuka.
- the instinctive unfurling of glorious wings.
*
But that happiness is nothing, compared to the ecstasy of looking at Ritsuka’s smile and the truth in his eyes -
Ritsuka is in love with me as well.
- flight.
*
Their lips meet, once, briefly, beside the little low wall in the gardens, red brick delicately sheathed with new-budding ivy in the young spring air.
*
But happiness can be broken - like glass, like the soul.
Aoyagi Seimei radiates sensuality. Tall and handsome, he links his hand with Soubi, a handshake like a caress, his touch bordering on sexual promise, banked heat radiating from that slim body, dressed in a leather coat and a wool turtleneck over neatly pressed slacks. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Agatsuma-san. May I see my younger brother?’
Soubi has a million and one questions - where were you when Ritsuka was suffering, and now, when I’ve come so far, why are you here now, who are you - and he wants to find out why exactly he is recoiling from Aoyagi Seimei even though the man is undeniably powerfully attractive, but he can only nod and say, ‘Your brother is this way.’
*
Ritsuka is reading, as usual, but he looks up as Soubi enters the room, Aoyagi Seimei a few paces behind him.
Ritsuka sees Soubi first, and he tilts his head and almost-smiles, softly, before Seimei steps out from behind Soubi and Ritsuka’s face is transfigured, dazzling. ‘Seimei!’ he screams, and Aoyagi Seimei smiles - oh, they are brothers indeed, they share that half-smile, but that smile so sweet on Ritsuka looks faintly sinister on Seimei - before falling to his knees and opening his arms.
Ritsuka rushes to his brother with a shout of joy, and Seimei strokes Ritsuka’s fur, and kisses Ritsuka on the mouth. It is just a chaste, dry touch of lips, but Soubi realizes that nothing, nothing can make this scene any less sexual. A tingle runs down his spine as he watches them twine fingers.
He is forgotten. This is their world, and it is not his place to intrude. Nonetheless, Aoyagi Seimei turns to him and gives him a slight smile, and Soubi wonders if the other man can sense his murderous intent.
Maybe he can. Like to like, after all.
*
Soubi sinks into the leather seat in his office, a fine tremor shivering through him. He will not dismiss his instincts, his inexplicable distaste for Aoyagi Seimei. It is a revulsion heightened by the fact that he knows, he knows that if Aoyagi Seimei were to approach him he would not be able to resist. There is something powerfully charismatic about that man, something that warps other people to suit him. Something that makes him irresistible.
Oh, they are brothers indeed. But while Ritsuka is magnetic, Seimei makes his own gravity. And that makes him dangerous.
Later, he interviews Aoyagi Seimei. Or, more like Aoyagi Seimei insinuates himself into Soubi’s office and leans across the desk. Soubi holds firm against the intrusion. To give into to him is to give ground that will, Soubi knows, never be regained.
Aoyagi Seimei smiles, a glimpse of white, beautiful teeth, and leans back, steepling his fingers and resting his chin on them. ‘I’d like you to release my brother, Agatsuma-sensei. May I call you Soubi?’
‘Ritsuka is not yet well,’ Soubi says, ignoring the attempt at familiarity. ‘It is not advisable to release him now.’
‘He will be fine,’ Seimei declares. ‘I’ll take care of him.’
‘You should be as aware as I that his parents are incapable of giving him the care that he needs. The child has been brutally abused - and you weren’t there then. Forgive me if I do not consider you a capable caretaker.’
‘It was a difficult time for me,’ Seimei says.
‘He told me you died.’
‘Sometimes the way to fool an enemy is to fool a friend - or in this case, your nearest and dearest.’
‘And if you have an enemy who wants you dead, would Ritsuka be safe with you?’
Aoyagi Seimei smiles, and Soubi fights a shudder. Aoyagi Seimei is a praying mantis ready to strike.
‘Now he is,’ is all he says in answer.
‘Nonetheless,’ Soubi says, fighting to repress a snarl. ‘Ritsuka is still unstable. He’s suffering from multiple personality disorder.’
‘Really?’ and Seimei’s smile shifts from predatory to extraordinarily self-confident. ‘He seems to be the same person I remember.’
‘Until I am convinced that Aoyagi Ritsuka is sane, he will not be released.’ Soubi stands up, opens the door in clear dismissal. ‘I won’t see you out.’
Aoyagi Seimei rises gracefully from the seat. As he walks past, he brushes Soubi’s arm and murmurs, ‘You’ll see, Soubi.’
Soubi shuts the door and leans on it, trembling.
*
Soubi watches them with an impending sense of doom. Aoyagi Seimei is right. Soubi has not seen his Ritsuka in days - not when Aoyagi Seimei comes in as early as possible and leaves as late as possible, and all Soubi sees now is that laughing carefree child, who is glad to have his brother with him, and Soubi cannot help but wonder -
Where has Ritsuka gone?
Aoyagi Seimei’s triumph is a bitter taste on Soubi's tongue, bitter like ashes on the water.
*
Ritsuka’s books - are they still Ritsuka’s anymore? - lie abandoned on the small shelf in his room.
*
‘Ritsuka!’ Soubi storms into the room. He is dressed in a loose sweatshirt and baggy drawstring pants - not his usual attire, but it is two a.m. in the morning. The nurse who had run to get him stumbles into the room after him. Ritsuka’s room, where the orderlies are struggling with an armful of panicking, struggling fear, a hellion with wild, wide, terrified eyes.
‘Soubi!’ Ritsuka sobs, and Soubi surges forward, gathers him close and glares at the nurse who holds the tranquilizer gun. He turns down her offer to stay nearby (he does not like her distrustful eyes, so near his Ritsuka), and rocks Ritsuka back, forth, back, forth, as he waits for them to leave. Which they do, though their looks are lingering and doubtful.
Then and only then, he says, ‘Ritsuka.’
‘Soubi,’ Ritsuka gasps, and Soubi knows, with a wave of relief, that this is his Ritsuka, not Aoyagi Seimei’s, not the innocent laughing child but the dark-eyed adolescent, all shadowy maturity, a fine tarnish on well-worn silver. His Ritsuka. His Ritsuka. ‘Soubi, I - I - I don’t know where I’ve been, they told me it was Saturday and I thought, that couldn’t be, because yesterday night was Sunday - and I haven’t - forgotten - in such a long while, ever since - you and I - why? Why now? Soubi, I don’t want to forget things again, I don’t want to disappear-’
Oh, they’ve come such a long way, from Ritsuka’s days of weary nihilism, and Soubi’s heart aches for him. Soubi’s heart aches for this lonely child, who reads books too old for him and yet is afraid and is looking for comfort, like crawling into a warm bed, to be loved and sheltered from the monsters of the world, real and imagined, and are they any less real for being imaginary?
Soubi holds him and presses gentle kisses to his forehead, to his cheeks, to the corners of his lips, to his mouth, soothing him, and Ritsuka calms down, and as he continues to love Ritsuka, this quiet, gentle way, the thought occurs to Soubi - will Aoyagi Seimei know, the next time he touches his brother?
Aoyagi Seimei.
With an absolute certainty Soubi knows why for the last six days all he’s seen is the other Ritsuka, the laughing, carefree child, and with an absolute certainty he knows what he must do to save Ritsuka. Because damn the philosophers and damn the psychologists’ manuals, this is the child that Ritsuka is now and he will not let Aoyagi Seimei resurrect the ashes of the old Ritsuka, the Ritsuka who never knew a care in the world. Because that would be to deny the truth of the last few years, the truth of the scars that Ritsuka carries on his war-battered little body. It would be to deny his love for Ritsuka, and Ritsuka’s for him.
‘Ritsuka,’ he says urgently. ‘Ritsuka, listen to me.’
*
Ritsuka is shocked to hear that Aoyagi Seimei - the brother he had presumed dead, grieved for - is back, and is trying to take him away. And Ritsuka makes the connection on his own - that whenever Seimei appears he disappears. And Soubi is so proud of Ritsuka he could burst with the joy, when Ritsuka sets his lips in a firm, determined line and decides to fight to keep himself, to hold on to two years’ of pain and not let them be elided by Seimei’s promise of salvation. No matter how enticing, Ritsuka says, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty-that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
Yes. Better to live a jagged-edge truth than a flower-golden-gilded lie.
For a little while, Soubi entertains wild plans of spiriting Ritsuka away. He could do it, he has the authority to take patients out of the manor, trips for good behavior, and Ritsuka - excepting that one moment an hour ago - has been well-behaved. It would even be a good excuse - a change of scenery, to take his mind off something, to let a child his age be cooped up like this is not good... They could be far, far from here by the time anyone realized something was wrong.
He savors the idea for a moment, steeping himself in the fantasy so it seems almost-real -
The tang of the morning air vivid with their secret freedom, the butterflies wings’ trailing a magical dust -
Taking the train with Ritsuka, Ritsuka his precious treasure, stolen from the ogre -
And the jewel-bright certainty of his love for Ritsuka,
that nothing else matters -
But Soubi is not a fool.
If they run now they will be running forever, fugitives fleeing Aoyagi Seimei’s controlling shadow. Because running will not change the power he has over Ritsuka, to obliterate the Ritsuka that Soubi has come to know and love.
No. There will be a confrontation and there will only be one Ritsuka at the end of it.
Soubi can only hope that it is the Ritsuka of now, or else Aoyagi Seimei will have the Ritsuka of eleven-years-old, and he will have won. Soubi can only pray that he will be allowed to keep the Ritsuka that he loves, so very, very much.
He says it to Ritsuka over and over again, like a talisman to ward off fear and the bad dreams and the forgetting. He tells Ritsuka all the things he loves about him - him, and only him.
The understanding in his eyes.
The hesitant, sure touch of his hands.
Even the shadows in his soul, because - ah, here is the crux of the matter, the heart - they have healed each other, more than they can ever understand, only comprehending that it is a miracle, their finding each other in his wide, loveless world.
Aoyagi Seimei will be here tomorrow.
*
Soubi does not return to his office. He stays with Ritsuka in his room. They do not sleep, and when Aoyagi Seimei walks in, he walks in to find Ritsuka and Soubi reading the tragic dénouement of The Great Gatsby.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Soubi shuts the book and prays that it will not be so.
Ritsuka continues to look at the back cover of the book for a moment, looking but not seeing. Soubi can feel the tension suffusing every inch of him, and Aoyagi Seimei continues to wait, unsettlingly, silent by the door like a sentinel at the gates of hell. Soubi can only wait too, and hope. Hope that his love - their love! - is enough of a truth, for Ritsuka to make sense of this frightful reality.
Seimei attacks first. ‘Ritsuka,’ he whispers, and in their triangular silence his voice carries, low and hypnotic and mesmerizing -
Ritsuka shudders, and Soubi surreptitiously slides a hand over Ritsuka’s own. If Ritsuka breaks now, if Ritsuka reverts to the Ritsuka Seimei knows - wants - him to be, what will happen to Soubi? Who will be broken again -
He will not think of that now. Ritsuka and him, they hold on to each other and support each other, leaning back to back and if either one of them falls the other will crumble to pieces, wordlessly. But for Ritsuka, Soubi is willing to take that chance. Knowing Ritsuka is worth breaking.
Ritsuka takes a deep breath - a gulp of air, and turns. ‘Seimei,’ he says, and the nuances in his voice are the nuances that Soubi is familiar with, the tone of the Ritsuka who can be so old and yet so wonderfully childishly innocent. Those syllables resonate bone-deep within him with the benevolence and the mercy of relief.
What does not kill you makes you stronger, and Soubi is awed and humbled, that thirteen-year-old Ritsuka is strong enough to hold on to who he is, in this confused, wounded world.
*
Finally, Aoyagi Seimei leaves for the day, and Ritsuka turns to Soubi. Still a child, looking for approval, longing for affirmation. Soubi can only be glad that it is to him that Ritsuka turns to.
Soubi presses a reverent hand to Ritsuka’s delicate cheek, the skin warm porcelain under the pads of his fingers, each nerve end set afire by Ritsuka and Ritsuka’s courage and Ritsuka’s endearing, unsure half-smile.
Their lips meet.
*
Theirs will not be an easy road to walk. But he will walk it, with Ritsuka, because the butterfly feeling in Soubi’s heart promises that there will be books, and smiles, and rumpled blankets with morning kisses -
- a beckoning future, and an infinity of hope.