FIC: Amaryllis - Chapter 7: Walk through the fire
Title: Amaryllis - Chapter 7 - Walk through the fire
Author: Anae
Beta: Tegthe
Fandom: Uragiri wa boku no namae wo shitteiru - Betrayal knows my name
Characters/pairing: Shusei/Hotsuma
Rating: eventual M/NC-17 (because it's gonna take while - boys need to grow up, plus well, manga wasn't too helpful for hot scenes)
Spoilers: overall thorough the manga/anime
Disclaimer: After finishing and re-working with this, I would deserve the boys, but no. Not mine. The song used belongs to Shinedown.
Summary: Both Shusei and Hotsuma struggled with their fates, with themselves ever since they were kids. This is how it happened - how two children grew up to be Zweilts, partners, and eventually, grew to understand and love each ther.
A/N: Late, sorry, I know. (Blame my beta. Or don't - she's doing such a good work. :) As you can guess from the title of this chapter, we're finally getting into the real thing - slowly, but surely. Hope you enjoy!
Ps. Do you know the symbolic meaning of Amaryllis? "Success won after a struggle."
Chapter 7: Walk through the fire
I dare you to tell me to walk through the fire
Wear my soul and call me a liar
In the following years, Shusei and Hotsuma kept living a somewhat normal life - they went to school and studied like normal teenagers, but in their free time, they practiced their powers. The practice make them perfect, not yet, but eventually, the boys were able to call upon their weapons - even if they couldn’t keep them materialized for long. For Shusei, the biggest problem was the control of his spheres - he could make them move as he liked, but he still couldn’t create a cage, even if he remembered how it was supposed to look like.
Nevertheless, life was good. They had each other, and Hotsuma still had his parents - not once had they turned their backs on the kid.
But when everything seems to be going well, life has a habit of giving thorns instead of roses. That was the case with the Zweilt pair as well - when everything seemed to alright, it all suddenly went to hell.
It was just any other day when Hotsuma left for school - the only difference was that he had to return home during the lunch break to pick up his forgotten book. That was a great mistake - that was when Hotsuma overheard his parents’ conversation.
“I can’t take it anymore! I’m going to ask Takashiro to take him away!”
Hotsuma was at the outdoor, just about to close it, but halted his actions upon hearing something slamming against a wooden table along with his mother’s yell.
“Please. Have more patience…” his father pleaded, trying to calm his wife down.
“For how much longer?” Her voice was filled with impatience, slowly rising the edge of anger beneath it - and there was a strange edge to her usually calm voice, something Hotsuma couldn’t quite decipher. “Why should I live every day in fear?!”
Hotsuma’s breath almost stopped, and he closed the door. He didn’t want to hear more - then he wouldn’t be able to pretend that everything was fine, that he hadn’t heard anything. But as much as his brain told his legs to move, they were frozen in place - unwillingly, the boy heard the words that crushed his erratically beating heart to pieces. “If we trigger Hotsuma’s temper even once… He’ll burn us!”
“What…?”
“His strength is a desecration.” His mother’s voice was filled with loathing, hate, and that strange edge Hotsuma hadn’t been able to pinpoint before - it was fear. She was scared him. Scared of her own son. “He’s a monster!”
Hotsuma simply stood outside the door for a while - his legs didn’t move even if he wished so. He could barely stand. As he were, he couldn’t even hear the rest of his mother’s shouting or his father’s futile attempts to calm her down - his mother’s previous yell repeated itself inside his head, not leaving the hurting youngster alone.
It was on that day that Hotsuma realized what his parents truly were after. It was the compensation they got as the parents of a Zweilt guardian - in exchange for raising a healthy child, they be paid handsomely.
But behind their smiles and nice words, there was fear.
Until that day, Hotsuma had thought that his parents cared about him - that they loved him.
It was a cruel mistake, enough to break an already deeply wounded heart of a teenager.
When his legs finally agreed to move, Hotsuma started walking towards the school, his mother’s words playing over and over in his head. How could’ve he been so stupid? What had made him think that someone actually cared about a monster like him?
Hotsuma was awaked from his reverie by a familiar, caring voice.
“Hotsuma!” Shusei stopped in front of his best friend, slightly out of breath. Since Hotsuma hadn’t been back by the time classes started, Shusei had gone far enough to skip his own - he couldn’t have focused anyway, not with Hotsuma being god-knew-where. “What’s wrong? You look so upset…”
“Shusei, I feel sick…” Hotsuma choked out - his chest hurt, he felt feverish and his stomach was turning. He felt like throwing up - like his stomach couldn’t hold the breakfast he had eaten in the morning.
Shusei’s placed his hands on Hotsuma’s shoulders, worried golden eyes looking at him. “You’re so pale…” The brunette quickly gazed his surroundings, spotting an empty bench nearby. “Come here, sit down for a while.”
As soon as Shusei got the younger boy to sit down, he turned his back to the blonde. The brunette wanted to ask Hotsuma what was wrong - it was painfully clear that something bad had happened - but he didn’t dare to push, afraid that he would break something. “I’m going to get you something to drink”, he yelled over his shoulder. “Don’t move!”
As soft footsteps disappeared, Hotsuma was left alone with his traitorous thoughts. Why… he wondered, …am I alive?
“No one wants me”, he heard himself saying to no one.
I hurt my classmates. My parents and siblings are afraid of me. It was true - there was no one in this world who wanted him. It was just like they said, he was a monster. And nobody could neither care nor love a monster. So what was the point living a life like that?
My life… The tears started pouring down. …is worthless.
Hotsuma rose from the bench, tears streaming down on his face uncontrollably as he spoke to himself. “…Yes, it’s exactly like that.”
It would have been better if I’d seen that from the beginning.
Hotsuma was too wrapped up in his thoughts to notice Shusei approaching with a soda can in his hand. To Hotsuma, the rest of the world hardly mattered - hell, he didn’t matter himself. He shouldn’t have been born in the first place. Not in this life, and probably not even in the previous ones - hadn’t he always brought pain and suffering to those he cared about? Hadn’t he always been a monster?
It would’ve been better that he hadn’t been born at all.
My existence is a crime.
He stood there, blankly staring forward, not seeing anything through his tears and pain clasping his heart. “Leave…” he spoke up.
“Stop!” Shusei yelled, his heart jumping all the way to his throat as he realized what Hotsuma was about to do.
“Disappear… Renjou Hotsuma.”
Flames appeared out of nowhere to dance as they’ve been commanded, swallowing the blonde teenager.
I will end this.
Even in the midst of the flames, the tears kept coming. As soon as they left his eyes, they dried up -the red flames swallowed them, wiping away their mere existence. Hotsuma found himself thinking that it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would - or maybe he just didn’t feel the burn because the pain made by that white-scorching fire was still weaker than the burn in his heart?
“Hotsuma!”
The other boy didn’t seem to hear Shusei, no matter how loud and many times he tried to call him. Never in his life had Shusei felt so helpless - his powers were weak compared to Hotsuma’s, he was made for defense, but there was no barrier that would isolate Hotsuma from his flames.
Shusei felt his heart burning along with those flames. How was he supposed to live without Hotsuma?
There was no way. There was no life for him without Hotsuma.
Shusei did the only thing that made sense - some might’ve called him idiot and mad for it, but he didn’t even give it a thought; he ran into that pillar of fire, hand closing around his partner’s chest, gripping Hotsuma from behind.
That woke Hotsuma up - this wasn’t real. There was no way someone - Shusei - would or should burn with him. “Are you crazy?” he yelled to make himself heard through the loud sizzling and cracking of fire as the flames licked them. “Let me go!” Even if he was the stronger one of the two of them, he couldn’t shake Shusei off, or even turn around - the panic and adrenaline running through Shusei were far stronger than Hotsuma.
“You’ll burn too!”
“No!” Shusei yelled, pale and slender fingers gripping Hotsuma’s chest. “I won’t let go!”
It was sheer desperation he drew his strength from - there was no way he was letting go of Hotsuma, letting him die. “Did you forget?! If you do this then we will never see each other again! Not even in the next life!” That was the scariest thought of all - life without Hotsuma wasn’t a life worth living. Sure, he had lived some periods in the previous lives without the other - Hotsuma had simply died first - and all he remembered was it had been pure agony.
To live like that for the rest of the eternity… To be alone… No.
But if Hotsuma’s pain was too great for him to keep on going, if Shusei wasn’t enough of a help - of course he wasn’t, the wounds in his partner’s heart were too deep and Shusei possessed no power to heal them - then who was he to stop Hotsuma?
But he didn’t want to let him go. Not by himself at least. “If you still want to die…” Shusei pressed their bodies closer together, so close that he was certain that Hotsuma could hear his heartbeat - he could hear his. “Then take me with you!”
Shusei closed his eyes, his other hand above Hotsuma’s heart, feeling its beats. “Don’t leave me alone here -” he whispered, the weak words barely hearable through the blazing inferno cradling them.
Hotsuma was in shock - he wanted to die, wanted to be free from all the pain, wanted to stop that blade stabbing his heart repeatedly, but… Did he want to take Shusei with him?
“Dammit…” he breathed out, tears still in his eyes as he touched Shusei’s hands. The other boy’s hands were always cold, but not now - the engulfing flames, dancing around them in the mixture of red, yellow and white, had taken care of that.
Back when they were kids, Hotsuma had promised to protect Shusei - but now, if he’d continue, Shusei would surely die with him.
He didn’t want that.
The flames died as quickly as they had appeared.
Shusei dropped to his knees, pulling Hotsuma down with him, still refusing to let go. His own heart was still frozen by fear - even the full power of Hotsuma’s flames hadn’t melted it. His breath came out in short, near-panicked huffs - losing his partner for forever had been so close.
That was when Shusei started couching, tasting blood in his mouth - quick look to the hand that he had used to cover his mouth with confirmed that. Apparently the flame and heat had damaged his throat more than he had realized. Shusei felt his whole body growing sluggish and now that he was no longer protected by adrenalin he was starting to feel the effects his stunt caused to his body.
“Shusei?” Hotsuma turned around in his arms, sounding worried.
“I’m okay”, Shusei weakly answered. It was kind of a lie - his body felt like there were multiply needles piercing his skin repeatedly. And it was worsening every moment, making his eyesight to disappear, making his mind blank, unable to register anything but the pain.
“Shusei?” The worry was evident on Hotsuma’s voice, and panic was slowly starting to creep into it as well. If it weren’t for the younger boy holding Shusei, the brunette would’ve dropped to the ground like a lifeless body.
“Hotsuma”, Shusei breathed out. It was getting impossible to speak, to think - the pain was overwhelming his senses, blackness reaching out, forcing him to follow.
“Shusei!”
That panicked voice was the last thing Shusei heard before the world was swallowed by darkness.
Author: Anae
Beta: Tegthe
Fandom: Uragiri wa boku no namae wo shitteiru - Betrayal knows my name
Characters/pairing: Shusei/Hotsuma
Rating: eventual M/NC-17 (because it's gonna take while - boys need to grow up, plus well, manga wasn't too helpful for hot scenes)
Spoilers: overall thorough the manga/anime
Disclaimer: After finishing and re-working with this, I would deserve the boys, but no. Not mine. The song used belongs to Shinedown.
Summary: Both Shusei and Hotsuma struggled with their fates, with themselves ever since they were kids. This is how it happened - how two children grew up to be Zweilts, partners, and eventually, grew to understand and love each ther.
A/N: Late, sorry, I know. (Blame my beta. Or don't - she's doing such a good work. :) As you can guess from the title of this chapter, we're finally getting into the real thing - slowly, but surely. Hope you enjoy!
Ps. Do you know the symbolic meaning of Amaryllis? "Success won after a struggle."
Chapter 7: Walk through the fire
I dare you to tell me to walk through the fire
Wear my soul and call me a liar
In the following years, Shusei and Hotsuma kept living a somewhat normal life - they went to school and studied like normal teenagers, but in their free time, they practiced their powers. The practice make them perfect, not yet, but eventually, the boys were able to call upon their weapons - even if they couldn’t keep them materialized for long. For Shusei, the biggest problem was the control of his spheres - he could make them move as he liked, but he still couldn’t create a cage, even if he remembered how it was supposed to look like.
Nevertheless, life was good. They had each other, and Hotsuma still had his parents - not once had they turned their backs on the kid.
But when everything seems to be going well, life has a habit of giving thorns instead of roses. That was the case with the Zweilt pair as well - when everything seemed to alright, it all suddenly went to hell.
It was just any other day when Hotsuma left for school - the only difference was that he had to return home during the lunch break to pick up his forgotten book. That was a great mistake - that was when Hotsuma overheard his parents’ conversation.
“I can’t take it anymore! I’m going to ask Takashiro to take him away!”
Hotsuma was at the outdoor, just about to close it, but halted his actions upon hearing something slamming against a wooden table along with his mother’s yell.
“Please. Have more patience…” his father pleaded, trying to calm his wife down.
“For how much longer?” Her voice was filled with impatience, slowly rising the edge of anger beneath it - and there was a strange edge to her usually calm voice, something Hotsuma couldn’t quite decipher. “Why should I live every day in fear?!”
Hotsuma’s breath almost stopped, and he closed the door. He didn’t want to hear more - then he wouldn’t be able to pretend that everything was fine, that he hadn’t heard anything. But as much as his brain told his legs to move, they were frozen in place - unwillingly, the boy heard the words that crushed his erratically beating heart to pieces. “If we trigger Hotsuma’s temper even once… He’ll burn us!”
“What…?”
“His strength is a desecration.” His mother’s voice was filled with loathing, hate, and that strange edge Hotsuma hadn’t been able to pinpoint before - it was fear. She was scared him. Scared of her own son. “He’s a monster!”
Hotsuma simply stood outside the door for a while - his legs didn’t move even if he wished so. He could barely stand. As he were, he couldn’t even hear the rest of his mother’s shouting or his father’s futile attempts to calm her down - his mother’s previous yell repeated itself inside his head, not leaving the hurting youngster alone.
It was on that day that Hotsuma realized what his parents truly were after. It was the compensation they got as the parents of a Zweilt guardian - in exchange for raising a healthy child, they be paid handsomely.
But behind their smiles and nice words, there was fear.
Until that day, Hotsuma had thought that his parents cared about him - that they loved him.
It was a cruel mistake, enough to break an already deeply wounded heart of a teenager.
When his legs finally agreed to move, Hotsuma started walking towards the school, his mother’s words playing over and over in his head. How could’ve he been so stupid? What had made him think that someone actually cared about a monster like him?
Hotsuma was awaked from his reverie by a familiar, caring voice.
“Hotsuma!” Shusei stopped in front of his best friend, slightly out of breath. Since Hotsuma hadn’t been back by the time classes started, Shusei had gone far enough to skip his own - he couldn’t have focused anyway, not with Hotsuma being god-knew-where. “What’s wrong? You look so upset…”
“Shusei, I feel sick…” Hotsuma choked out - his chest hurt, he felt feverish and his stomach was turning. He felt like throwing up - like his stomach couldn’t hold the breakfast he had eaten in the morning.
Shusei’s placed his hands on Hotsuma’s shoulders, worried golden eyes looking at him. “You’re so pale…” The brunette quickly gazed his surroundings, spotting an empty bench nearby. “Come here, sit down for a while.”
As soon as Shusei got the younger boy to sit down, he turned his back to the blonde. The brunette wanted to ask Hotsuma what was wrong - it was painfully clear that something bad had happened - but he didn’t dare to push, afraid that he would break something. “I’m going to get you something to drink”, he yelled over his shoulder. “Don’t move!”
As soft footsteps disappeared, Hotsuma was left alone with his traitorous thoughts. Why… he wondered, …am I alive?
“No one wants me”, he heard himself saying to no one.
I hurt my classmates. My parents and siblings are afraid of me. It was true - there was no one in this world who wanted him. It was just like they said, he was a monster. And nobody could neither care nor love a monster. So what was the point living a life like that?
My life… The tears started pouring down. …is worthless.
Hotsuma rose from the bench, tears streaming down on his face uncontrollably as he spoke to himself. “…Yes, it’s exactly like that.”
It would have been better if I’d seen that from the beginning.
Hotsuma was too wrapped up in his thoughts to notice Shusei approaching with a soda can in his hand. To Hotsuma, the rest of the world hardly mattered - hell, he didn’t matter himself. He shouldn’t have been born in the first place. Not in this life, and probably not even in the previous ones - hadn’t he always brought pain and suffering to those he cared about? Hadn’t he always been a monster?
It would’ve been better that he hadn’t been born at all.
My existence is a crime.
He stood there, blankly staring forward, not seeing anything through his tears and pain clasping his heart. “Leave…” he spoke up.
“Stop!” Shusei yelled, his heart jumping all the way to his throat as he realized what Hotsuma was about to do.
“Disappear… Renjou Hotsuma.”
Flames appeared out of nowhere to dance as they’ve been commanded, swallowing the blonde teenager.
I will end this.
Even in the midst of the flames, the tears kept coming. As soon as they left his eyes, they dried up -the red flames swallowed them, wiping away their mere existence. Hotsuma found himself thinking that it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would - or maybe he just didn’t feel the burn because the pain made by that white-scorching fire was still weaker than the burn in his heart?
“Hotsuma!”
The other boy didn’t seem to hear Shusei, no matter how loud and many times he tried to call him. Never in his life had Shusei felt so helpless - his powers were weak compared to Hotsuma’s, he was made for defense, but there was no barrier that would isolate Hotsuma from his flames.
Shusei felt his heart burning along with those flames. How was he supposed to live without Hotsuma?
There was no way. There was no life for him without Hotsuma.
Shusei did the only thing that made sense - some might’ve called him idiot and mad for it, but he didn’t even give it a thought; he ran into that pillar of fire, hand closing around his partner’s chest, gripping Hotsuma from behind.
That woke Hotsuma up - this wasn’t real. There was no way someone - Shusei - would or should burn with him. “Are you crazy?” he yelled to make himself heard through the loud sizzling and cracking of fire as the flames licked them. “Let me go!” Even if he was the stronger one of the two of them, he couldn’t shake Shusei off, or even turn around - the panic and adrenaline running through Shusei were far stronger than Hotsuma.
“You’ll burn too!”
“No!” Shusei yelled, pale and slender fingers gripping Hotsuma’s chest. “I won’t let go!”
It was sheer desperation he drew his strength from - there was no way he was letting go of Hotsuma, letting him die. “Did you forget?! If you do this then we will never see each other again! Not even in the next life!” That was the scariest thought of all - life without Hotsuma wasn’t a life worth living. Sure, he had lived some periods in the previous lives without the other - Hotsuma had simply died first - and all he remembered was it had been pure agony.
To live like that for the rest of the eternity… To be alone… No.
But if Hotsuma’s pain was too great for him to keep on going, if Shusei wasn’t enough of a help - of course he wasn’t, the wounds in his partner’s heart were too deep and Shusei possessed no power to heal them - then who was he to stop Hotsuma?
But he didn’t want to let him go. Not by himself at least. “If you still want to die…” Shusei pressed their bodies closer together, so close that he was certain that Hotsuma could hear his heartbeat - he could hear his. “Then take me with you!”
Shusei closed his eyes, his other hand above Hotsuma’s heart, feeling its beats. “Don’t leave me alone here -” he whispered, the weak words barely hearable through the blazing inferno cradling them.
Hotsuma was in shock - he wanted to die, wanted to be free from all the pain, wanted to stop that blade stabbing his heart repeatedly, but… Did he want to take Shusei with him?
“Dammit…” he breathed out, tears still in his eyes as he touched Shusei’s hands. The other boy’s hands were always cold, but not now - the engulfing flames, dancing around them in the mixture of red, yellow and white, had taken care of that.
Back when they were kids, Hotsuma had promised to protect Shusei - but now, if he’d continue, Shusei would surely die with him.
He didn’t want that.
The flames died as quickly as they had appeared.
Shusei dropped to his knees, pulling Hotsuma down with him, still refusing to let go. His own heart was still frozen by fear - even the full power of Hotsuma’s flames hadn’t melted it. His breath came out in short, near-panicked huffs - losing his partner for forever had been so close.
That was when Shusei started couching, tasting blood in his mouth - quick look to the hand that he had used to cover his mouth with confirmed that. Apparently the flame and heat had damaged his throat more than he had realized. Shusei felt his whole body growing sluggish and now that he was no longer protected by adrenalin he was starting to feel the effects his stunt caused to his body.
“Shusei?” Hotsuma turned around in his arms, sounding worried.
“I’m okay”, Shusei weakly answered. It was kind of a lie - his body felt like there were multiply needles piercing his skin repeatedly. And it was worsening every moment, making his eyesight to disappear, making his mind blank, unable to register anything but the pain.
“Shusei?” The worry was evident on Hotsuma’s voice, and panic was slowly starting to creep into it as well. If it weren’t for the younger boy holding Shusei, the brunette would’ve dropped to the ground like a lifeless body.
“Hotsuma”, Shusei breathed out. It was getting impossible to speak, to think - the pain was overwhelming his senses, blackness reaching out, forcing him to follow.
“Shusei!”
That panicked voice was the last thing Shusei heard before the world was swallowed by darkness.