To Mefiant, From Sophia ♥
Title: Static Equations
Author: sophiap
Recipient: mefiant
Series: TB/X
Characters/Pairing: Subaru-centric, with mentions of Seishirou/Subaru and past Fuuma/Subaru. Features a not-actually-original character.
Rating: PG-13
Author Notes/Warnings: One of the central ideas in this fic was inspired by the fic Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 by Aishuu and Xandra, although I think I took things in a rather different direction. This story follows the manga continuity rather than anime. Prompts chosen for this story were "autumn" and "silence." Many thanks to aishuu for serving as beta-reader and sounding board.
October 2007.
Eight years since everything ended.
"So, whatcha thinkin' 'bout, Sumeragi-san?" The words were barely intelligible, muffled by a mouthful of what Subaru guessed was a cinnamon-chocolate crepe. When an answer wasn't forthcoming after two seconds, Kiku elbowed him in the ribs.
"Mathematics." It wasn't entirely what he was thinking about, but it was what currently occupied his mind, so he counted it as an honest answer. And for him, a fairly loquacious one.
Subaru could practically hear Kiku's nose wrinkling in disgust. He was probably about to be treated to another rant about exams, or how it was unfair that education was cutting into prime social activity time.
"No, you're not," she informed him, noisily licking her fingers clean. She was, as always, casually rude. She hadn't bothered with being obnoxiously rude since she figured out Subaru never bothered criticizing her manners. "You're doing math for a reason, 'cause you never do nothing without a reason, and you're never this quiet unless something's eating at you. Which is pretty much all the time, mostly. So I guess what I'm asking is why you're doing math, I guess."
She had also figured out that he never criticized her grammar.
All she received by way of answer was a half smile, and a huh that might have been a laugh. The unfamiliar noise elicited an anxious whine from Shiroko. Subaru automatically reached over and rubbed the dog's velvety ear between two fingers, and she quieted down. "Good girl."
He'd had her for nearly a year, and while she had quickly become devoted to him, Subaru told himself he didn't return the feeling. It was simplest, however, to act as if he did.
There was a satisfied moan, a creak of leather, and a clatter of plastic bracelets as Kiku stretched. She was used to his non-answers, and appeared content to let this one slide. "I can't believe this weather. More like April than October, y'know?"
In April, the cherry blossoms would be in bloom. Today, the scent in the air was of chrysanthemums. In six months, it would be April again.
"Mmmm. Global warming," she muttered with disgust and sensuous satisfaction. "I hate it."
The park bench creaked, and her hand was almost but not quite touching Subaru's back as she sprawled out to soak up the sun.
"It should correct itself in fifty or sixty years," Subaru said. His face was turned fully towards the sun instead of leaving one side shadowed and chilled. It meant he was turned away from Kiku as he spoke, but that didn't matter. She was used to it. "There will be permanent change, of course. Some things will be--have been--lost forever. In the end, though..." He nudged his sunglasses up and scratched the corner of one eye (this part of him would be forty-two in another month, but there was no meaning in that number). "Balance will be restored."
Subaru could have gone on to quote Kamui word-for-word about how humanity and the earth would both go on to survive, and thrive, and work in cooperation rather than competition, but he didn't see the point.
There was a moment's silence, and a whisper of hair on leather as Kiku turned her head. "Wow. That's a lot of words from you in one go, Sumeragi-san. But no shit? You really think we'll get our thumbs out of our asses long enough to stop polluting our way to Doomsday? Is that what the math you were doing was about?" It was meant to sound mocking--meant to provoke--but Subaru heard a haltingness that betrayed a surge of hope.
"Not directly," he said, and once again wondered how much to tell his companion. More and more, he found himself letting little things ("I had a sister. She died.") slip, or that he rather liked having someone tell him to stop being silly and morbid, someone who asked the questions that made him stop and get his thoughts out of a particular rut. For the first time in eight years (he'd done the math) Subaru had found someone who could actually shock him. Most of the time, however, it was simpler to wonder what Hokuto would have thought of her.
Hokuto would have clawed Kiku's eyes out. Or given her a makeover. Or joined forces with her and conquered the world. Or they would have had tea together, all three of them, all sixteen years old, the two girls ganging up on him until he blushed.
He'd done the math. As of this year Hokuto has been dead longer than she was alive. For him, it will take another seventeen years.
Speaking of seventeen...
Subaru felt his approach before he even heard the still-familiar footsteps.
"Kiku?"
"Yeah?" she drawled, sun-drunk and half-asleep.
"Go take Shiroko for a run, please."
The fatigue from a second ago was gone. She was on her feet and had Shiroko's harness switched for her lead before Subaru even finished talking. "Sure thing, Sumeragi-san! C'mon, baby," she said, voice pitched high, "C'mon, girl! Playtime!"
Boots crunched and paws skidded on the gravel path as the two cut loose, laughing and barking, and Subaru steeled himself as their boisterous racket faded and the sound of a measured, cautious tread drew nearer.
"I thought you generally frequented Ueno Park, Sumeragi-san." Once upon a time (at age seventeen, and now he was twenty-five, the same age Subaru was when the world ended--he'd done the math) it would have been overly familiar and knowing to the point of being mocking. Now it was calm, but distant and wary, as if the speaker was trying to figure out if more, and more extreme, changes in behavior were forthcoming.
Monou Fuuma sat down on the bench an exact, deliberate foot away from Subaru.
"I'm with Kiku today." Fuuma didn't need to know if or why Subaru was keeping his companion ignorant of the sakura.
There was a moment of confused silence, then: "You're here as clan head?"
Fuuma's confused silence was echoed by Subaru's own until the wind shifted and the scent of chrysanthemums grew strong in the air. "No. Kiku, the girl over there," he said, waving in the general direction of unfettered laughter and ecstatic barking. "Not the flower."
Not the Sumeragi family crest. The kiku--the chrysanthemum--was once a sign of their allegiance to the emperor. Subaru wondered if the Sakurazukamori had ever flaunted their connection to the Shogun in a similar fashion, but there was no one left to ask.
October's flower was the chrysanthemum. April's, cherry blossoms. Subaru had long since figured out (four plus six is ten) that the two months sat opposite each other on the calendar.
Even though Fuuma made an effort not to react, Subaru heard subtle shifts and a long breath let out slowly as Fuuma struggled with what to say next.
"So." Another shift, another breath. Subaru remembered how that breath felt on his ear, against his throat, but he didn't remember it as Fuuma's. For a moment, the scent of chrysanthemums changed to its opposite, then Fuuma found his words again. "Is she a client of yours? You said you weren't here on Sumeragi clan business..." Wary changed to accusing.
"She's not prey," Subaru said, cutting Fuuma short. "She was a client, about nine months ago. She... attached herself to me for whatever reason." He paused. "I suspect it's because of the dog. She does love animals."
"It's been a while," Fuuma whispered, but only to himself. The next moment, his attention was fully back on Subaru. "You are talking about the girl with the ratty jeans and leather jacket, right?"
Subaru shrugged. Fuuma cleared his throat.
"Sorry. It's easy to forget, sometimes..."
"It doesn't bother me. The doctors never find anything wrong, so what can they do? It can't be helped."
Both eyes were perfectly healthy. There was no damage to either one. There was no sign that his body had rejected the transplanted eye. His pupils contracted in sunlight and dilated in darkness. He had even been told that on rare occasions, and only when he was exhausted, his eyes tracked movement. Everything worked as it should, but he could not see.
At least the eye was alive; sight was irrelevant.
"Just because the doctors haven't found anything wrong doesn't mean there isn't a cause." He was no longer the Kamui of the Dragons of Earth, but Fuuma's words still carried an oppressive weight when he wished. "Something can be done. Kamui--"
Subaru shook his head. "You know what he's like after seeing me. You don't want to do that to him."
Kamui had changed, or maybe he had returned to what he had been once upon a time. Calmer, cooler, his kindness a source of strength rather than a gaping vulnerability. But the handful of times he had met with Subaru over the past eight years, Kamui had left in a state of ragged anguish or in smoldering temper--sometimes both at once.
"If I didn't know better, I would suspect you were being kind." For a moment, it sounded like the old Fuuma. Maybe there was something of the old Fuuma left in him, because he didn't ask and gave no warning before raising a hand to the back of Subaru's neck.
Subaru gasped in shock. He knew what Fuuma was attempting and immediately squeezed his eyes shut.
"Don't you want to know what she looks like, Sumeragi-san? After all, she--"
"Please don't be sorry for me. Don't." He was trembling. The touch to the back of his neck wasn't what he wanted to remember. It was light and reluctant, no longer possessive and demanding.
Fuuma leaned in closer. Subaru tried to smell the cherry blossoms and cigarettes, but could not. In another time, Fuuma would have pulled him in close, leaving bruises and kissing him hard enough to draw blood. (Subaru always, always kept his eyes closed, because then it didn't matter who he couldn't see when he looked at Fuuma.)
"I wish I could still see why you want to stay like this," Fuuma whispered. He let his hand fall away. "I'm no longer the person you wanted me to be."
Subaru said nothing. He sat there, silent and firm in his conviction that Fuuma was wrong. It had nothing to do with what he wanted. It had everything to do with what was.
"You refuse to change, Sumeragi-san. You have for years."
Eight years. Eight years ago to this very day, Fuuma handed him a vial and Seishirou's final wish.
"Kamui says you push everyone away, but you don't, do you? You just avoid us. Even when you're sitting right here." If it had been coming from Kamui the speech would have been impassioned and desperate. Fuuma sounded tired. "So why do you let that girl follow you around everywhere? Even when you're not on assignment. Sometimes, you just go out for lunch together. Do you expect me to believe she was just a client?"
"She was." Subaru had found her, brave and scared, fending off her mother's ghost with an iron poker and standing in a crude protective circle of salt. "She lost her entire family to the earthquakes. Her mother in Ebisu, her father in Ikebukuro, her aunt and brother in Ginza."
He didn't ask why Fuuma had apparently been spying on him. In a way, it was almost comforting.
"Her mother's ghost was terrorizing her. She blamed Kiku for the earthquakes--I've no idea why."
Subaru also had no idea why he showed up at Kiku's apartment the day after the exorcism. Maybe it had something to do with the way Kiku still claimed to miss her mother's ghost, even now, even after the hell she'd been through. Maybe it was because he remembered how she laughed, even as she said goodbye to old ghosts.
"Really?" Fuuma sounded like he was being strangled. "I had no idea. She went through all that? On her own?"
"She's the same age I was when--"
This time, instead of grabbing Subaru's neck, Fuuma gently slid his hand around Subaru's, holding firmly without grasping. Subaru wondered if it was how he touched Kamui.
"It may not work. But try. Don't you want to see her?"
Subaru's mouth and eyes remained closed. But as Seishirou... no, Fuuma started to remove his hand, he said, "I thought you could no longer read people's Wishes."
"I can't, but I can guess. And I could cancel out--balance out--certain forces even before Kamui's choice made me who I was."
Sometimes, Subaru wondered if he was blind because one of his eyes had simply canceled out the other.
Subaru's hand clasped Fuuma's, holding as well as being held, and for a few seconds he allowed himself to take hold of a dream that died seventeen years ago (a lifetime ago, for the part of him that was forever sixteen).
Subaru turned his head so there would be no danger of seeing Fuuma when he opened his eyes. He did not take off his sunglasses.
"What do you see?"
Sunlight, painfully bright. Blue sky. Trees barely tipped with red. In the distance, a teenaged girl playing with a gangly black dog. Everything about her was carelessly casual: threadbare jeans, scuffed boots, a brown leather jacket two sizes too big, dishwater blonde hair pulled back in two utilitarian ponytails, a multitude of cheap plastic jewelry. Shiroko knocked her down, and Kiku squirmed on the ground, shaking with belly-deep laughter as Shiroko licked her face and pranced around, tail wagging her entire body.
In that moment, Subaru almost made a Wish.
But Fuuma could no longer grant those. Subaru slipped his hand free, sending the world back into darkness and sighing regret and relief.
"Thank you. I saw everything I needed to."
He saw a dog playing with a--boy? girl? (impossible to tell at this distance, seventeen years gone)--in bright, improbably elaborate clothes. A glimpse of dark hair under a broad-brimmed hat, and then, in a flash of bright green eyes, the image was gone.
The bench groaned as Fuuma took in and released a deep breath. "You didn't answer my question."
"I'm sorry." A few seconds passed in silence. "Is there anything else you needed?"
Another long pause. "Yes," Fuuma said, grunting a little as he stood up. "Time. Patience. Luck. Sometimes, I wonder if we really can do this."
Subaru had no idea what sort of deal, what sort of balance the two boys (Kamui had been the same age as Subaru when Subaru had met Seishirou for what he thought was the first time--he'd done the math) had struck on December thirty-first. All he knew was that the next morning, his world had started to go dark.
"We need your help."
"I'm sorry."
How many times had they had this exchange, over the past eight years? It was as if no time had passed since the turning of that last year.
"So you're just going to do nothing."
Subaru did not respond. Fuuma had heard his answer a dozen times before now. Subaru would keep on as he had been, doing what he needed to do to keep Seishirou's tree alive and performing the exorcisms needed to balance out the backlash from the assassinations. No more, no less. Zero sum.
"If only I could still see what was in your mind, Sumeragi." The words muffled for a moment as Fuuma ran his hands over his face in exasperation. "I don't know what you want."
"I have no wishes left, Fuuma-kun. You should know that better than anyone."
"It's not about Wishes, not any more," Fuuma snapped. "It's about choices."
"I never had a choice!"
Neither spoke, both startled into silence at Subaru's outburst. From out in the darkness, Kiku hollered out to ask if Subaru was okay.
"All my choices--all the truly important ones--were made for me." His voice shook then gradually settled into its usual dead calm. He had never asked Hokuto and Seishirou to do what they did. He never would have.
"Do you think that makes you unique?" Fuuma's words were sad, and gentle, and seemed to come from a distance.
This was where Subaru expected to be reminded that Fuuma, too, had been forced into a role he neither wanted nor understood, had the blood of a loved one on his hands, had others give up their lives for him unasked and undesired.
But Fuuma threw a variable into the equation.
"You have a choice now, you know." Gravel crunched under heavy footsteps and Subaru felt a sudden chill as Fuuma stood between him and the sun. "Several, in fact. And right now I wish I knew what you were going to choose."
Kiku's voice came pealing through the darkness, asking if he was done talking to the boring government people yet. Sometimes, Subaru thought she knew more about his jobs than he had consciously let on.
"What does it matter what I choose?" If he wanted anything, it was to be left alone.
"It matters because of her." Fuuma laughed jaggedly. "Of all the coincidences, that you found her. Of all the people..."
He did the math. Fuuma was twenty-five. Kiku, nearly sixteen. Subaru imagined them running into each other for the second (first) time at the new Ikebukuro station and he felt something that, if he didn't know better, he might have mistaken for jealousy.
"Who is she?" He did not add to you. Seishirou was the possessive one, after all.
"Who is she? A little girl who was too kind to strangers. A little girl who drank two cans of iced tea and thereby helped destroy one of Tokyo's spirit shields." Fuuma's voice was tight with something that might have been anger. "Unwittingly, yes, but that doesn't matter; she was still marked by it. And it's my responsibility."
Too many years ago, a child meant only to help and for his trouble was marked for a fate he had never desired. Subaru idly traced the twin stars that could now only be seen in memory.
"It doesn't matter that you and I were pulled into this without a choice. I won't just stand by while you turn her into someone she doesn't choose to be. I hope I make myself clear, Sumeragi-san."
Subaru chose not to answer. Fuuma waited. So did Subaru.
"Good-bye, Sumeragi-san. I hope your sight returns before it's too late."
Fuuma's contempt rolled off him without leaving a mark.
He said no more, but he clasped Subaru's shoulder briefly before he walked off. When he let go, it was as if he had never even been there.
A jingle of collar and leash told him Kiku was returning. "Oi, Sumeragi-san! Wanna get some ice cream? Your treat!"
"Sure!" He smiled at her, because that was what he always did around her. This time, though, as he pictured her walking towards him, black hair was slowly replaced by blonde.
Six months from now (ten plus six equals four) it would be April again. October was the month for chrysanthemums, but there was a place where the sakura still bloomed.
He could go back to the beginning. Start from zero.
"Shall we go?" he said, holding out a hand. "I know someplace I'd like to take you."
As her hand came out of the darkness, instead of making a wish, he made his Choice.
Author: sophiap
Recipient: mefiant
Series: TB/X
Characters/Pairing: Subaru-centric, with mentions of Seishirou/Subaru and past Fuuma/Subaru. Features a not-actually-original character.
Rating: PG-13
Author Notes/Warnings: One of the central ideas in this fic was inspired by the fic Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 by Aishuu and Xandra, although I think I took things in a rather different direction. This story follows the manga continuity rather than anime. Prompts chosen for this story were "autumn" and "silence." Many thanks to aishuu for serving as beta-reader and sounding board.
October 2007.
Eight years since everything ended.
"So, whatcha thinkin' 'bout, Sumeragi-san?" The words were barely intelligible, muffled by a mouthful of what Subaru guessed was a cinnamon-chocolate crepe. When an answer wasn't forthcoming after two seconds, Kiku elbowed him in the ribs.
"Mathematics." It wasn't entirely what he was thinking about, but it was what currently occupied his mind, so he counted it as an honest answer. And for him, a fairly loquacious one.
Subaru could practically hear Kiku's nose wrinkling in disgust. He was probably about to be treated to another rant about exams, or how it was unfair that education was cutting into prime social activity time.
"No, you're not," she informed him, noisily licking her fingers clean. She was, as always, casually rude. She hadn't bothered with being obnoxiously rude since she figured out Subaru never bothered criticizing her manners. "You're doing math for a reason, 'cause you never do nothing without a reason, and you're never this quiet unless something's eating at you. Which is pretty much all the time, mostly. So I guess what I'm asking is why you're doing math, I guess."
She had also figured out that he never criticized her grammar.
All she received by way of answer was a half smile, and a huh that might have been a laugh. The unfamiliar noise elicited an anxious whine from Shiroko. Subaru automatically reached over and rubbed the dog's velvety ear between two fingers, and she quieted down. "Good girl."
He'd had her for nearly a year, and while she had quickly become devoted to him, Subaru told himself he didn't return the feeling. It was simplest, however, to act as if he did.
There was a satisfied moan, a creak of leather, and a clatter of plastic bracelets as Kiku stretched. She was used to his non-answers, and appeared content to let this one slide. "I can't believe this weather. More like April than October, y'know?"
In April, the cherry blossoms would be in bloom. Today, the scent in the air was of chrysanthemums. In six months, it would be April again.
"Mmmm. Global warming," she muttered with disgust and sensuous satisfaction. "I hate it."
The park bench creaked, and her hand was almost but not quite touching Subaru's back as she sprawled out to soak up the sun.
"It should correct itself in fifty or sixty years," Subaru said. His face was turned fully towards the sun instead of leaving one side shadowed and chilled. It meant he was turned away from Kiku as he spoke, but that didn't matter. She was used to it. "There will be permanent change, of course. Some things will be--have been--lost forever. In the end, though..." He nudged his sunglasses up and scratched the corner of one eye (this part of him would be forty-two in another month, but there was no meaning in that number). "Balance will be restored."
Subaru could have gone on to quote Kamui word-for-word about how humanity and the earth would both go on to survive, and thrive, and work in cooperation rather than competition, but he didn't see the point.
There was a moment's silence, and a whisper of hair on leather as Kiku turned her head. "Wow. That's a lot of words from you in one go, Sumeragi-san. But no shit? You really think we'll get our thumbs out of our asses long enough to stop polluting our way to Doomsday? Is that what the math you were doing was about?" It was meant to sound mocking--meant to provoke--but Subaru heard a haltingness that betrayed a surge of hope.
"Not directly," he said, and once again wondered how much to tell his companion. More and more, he found himself letting little things ("I had a sister. She died.") slip, or that he rather liked having someone tell him to stop being silly and morbid, someone who asked the questions that made him stop and get his thoughts out of a particular rut. For the first time in eight years (he'd done the math) Subaru had found someone who could actually shock him. Most of the time, however, it was simpler to wonder what Hokuto would have thought of her.
Hokuto would have clawed Kiku's eyes out. Or given her a makeover. Or joined forces with her and conquered the world. Or they would have had tea together, all three of them, all sixteen years old, the two girls ganging up on him until he blushed.
He'd done the math. As of this year Hokuto has been dead longer than she was alive. For him, it will take another seventeen years.
Speaking of seventeen...
Subaru felt his approach before he even heard the still-familiar footsteps.
"Kiku?"
"Yeah?" she drawled, sun-drunk and half-asleep.
"Go take Shiroko for a run, please."
The fatigue from a second ago was gone. She was on her feet and had Shiroko's harness switched for her lead before Subaru even finished talking. "Sure thing, Sumeragi-san! C'mon, baby," she said, voice pitched high, "C'mon, girl! Playtime!"
Boots crunched and paws skidded on the gravel path as the two cut loose, laughing and barking, and Subaru steeled himself as their boisterous racket faded and the sound of a measured, cautious tread drew nearer.
"I thought you generally frequented Ueno Park, Sumeragi-san." Once upon a time (at age seventeen, and now he was twenty-five, the same age Subaru was when the world ended--he'd done the math) it would have been overly familiar and knowing to the point of being mocking. Now it was calm, but distant and wary, as if the speaker was trying to figure out if more, and more extreme, changes in behavior were forthcoming.
Monou Fuuma sat down on the bench an exact, deliberate foot away from Subaru.
"I'm with Kiku today." Fuuma didn't need to know if or why Subaru was keeping his companion ignorant of the sakura.
There was a moment of confused silence, then: "You're here as clan head?"
Fuuma's confused silence was echoed by Subaru's own until the wind shifted and the scent of chrysanthemums grew strong in the air. "No. Kiku, the girl over there," he said, waving in the general direction of unfettered laughter and ecstatic barking. "Not the flower."
Not the Sumeragi family crest. The kiku--the chrysanthemum--was once a sign of their allegiance to the emperor. Subaru wondered if the Sakurazukamori had ever flaunted their connection to the Shogun in a similar fashion, but there was no one left to ask.
October's flower was the chrysanthemum. April's, cherry blossoms. Subaru had long since figured out (four plus six is ten) that the two months sat opposite each other on the calendar.
Even though Fuuma made an effort not to react, Subaru heard subtle shifts and a long breath let out slowly as Fuuma struggled with what to say next.
"So." Another shift, another breath. Subaru remembered how that breath felt on his ear, against his throat, but he didn't remember it as Fuuma's. For a moment, the scent of chrysanthemums changed to its opposite, then Fuuma found his words again. "Is she a client of yours? You said you weren't here on Sumeragi clan business..." Wary changed to accusing.
"She's not prey," Subaru said, cutting Fuuma short. "She was a client, about nine months ago. She... attached herself to me for whatever reason." He paused. "I suspect it's because of the dog. She does love animals."
"It's been a while," Fuuma whispered, but only to himself. The next moment, his attention was fully back on Subaru. "You are talking about the girl with the ratty jeans and leather jacket, right?"
Subaru shrugged. Fuuma cleared his throat.
"Sorry. It's easy to forget, sometimes..."
"It doesn't bother me. The doctors never find anything wrong, so what can they do? It can't be helped."
Both eyes were perfectly healthy. There was no damage to either one. There was no sign that his body had rejected the transplanted eye. His pupils contracted in sunlight and dilated in darkness. He had even been told that on rare occasions, and only when he was exhausted, his eyes tracked movement. Everything worked as it should, but he could not see.
At least the eye was alive; sight was irrelevant.
"Just because the doctors haven't found anything wrong doesn't mean there isn't a cause." He was no longer the Kamui of the Dragons of Earth, but Fuuma's words still carried an oppressive weight when he wished. "Something can be done. Kamui--"
Subaru shook his head. "You know what he's like after seeing me. You don't want to do that to him."
Kamui had changed, or maybe he had returned to what he had been once upon a time. Calmer, cooler, his kindness a source of strength rather than a gaping vulnerability. But the handful of times he had met with Subaru over the past eight years, Kamui had left in a state of ragged anguish or in smoldering temper--sometimes both at once.
"If I didn't know better, I would suspect you were being kind." For a moment, it sounded like the old Fuuma. Maybe there was something of the old Fuuma left in him, because he didn't ask and gave no warning before raising a hand to the back of Subaru's neck.
Subaru gasped in shock. He knew what Fuuma was attempting and immediately squeezed his eyes shut.
"Don't you want to know what she looks like, Sumeragi-san? After all, she--"
"Please don't be sorry for me. Don't." He was trembling. The touch to the back of his neck wasn't what he wanted to remember. It was light and reluctant, no longer possessive and demanding.
Fuuma leaned in closer. Subaru tried to smell the cherry blossoms and cigarettes, but could not. In another time, Fuuma would have pulled him in close, leaving bruises and kissing him hard enough to draw blood. (Subaru always, always kept his eyes closed, because then it didn't matter who he couldn't see when he looked at Fuuma.)
"I wish I could still see why you want to stay like this," Fuuma whispered. He let his hand fall away. "I'm no longer the person you wanted me to be."
Subaru said nothing. He sat there, silent and firm in his conviction that Fuuma was wrong. It had nothing to do with what he wanted. It had everything to do with what was.
"You refuse to change, Sumeragi-san. You have for years."
Eight years. Eight years ago to this very day, Fuuma handed him a vial and Seishirou's final wish.
"Kamui says you push everyone away, but you don't, do you? You just avoid us. Even when you're sitting right here." If it had been coming from Kamui the speech would have been impassioned and desperate. Fuuma sounded tired. "So why do you let that girl follow you around everywhere? Even when you're not on assignment. Sometimes, you just go out for lunch together. Do you expect me to believe she was just a client?"
"She was." Subaru had found her, brave and scared, fending off her mother's ghost with an iron poker and standing in a crude protective circle of salt. "She lost her entire family to the earthquakes. Her mother in Ebisu, her father in Ikebukuro, her aunt and brother in Ginza."
He didn't ask why Fuuma had apparently been spying on him. In a way, it was almost comforting.
"Her mother's ghost was terrorizing her. She blamed Kiku for the earthquakes--I've no idea why."
Subaru also had no idea why he showed up at Kiku's apartment the day after the exorcism. Maybe it had something to do with the way Kiku still claimed to miss her mother's ghost, even now, even after the hell she'd been through. Maybe it was because he remembered how she laughed, even as she said goodbye to old ghosts.
"Really?" Fuuma sounded like he was being strangled. "I had no idea. She went through all that? On her own?"
"She's the same age I was when--"
This time, instead of grabbing Subaru's neck, Fuuma gently slid his hand around Subaru's, holding firmly without grasping. Subaru wondered if it was how he touched Kamui.
"It may not work. But try. Don't you want to see her?"
Subaru's mouth and eyes remained closed. But as Seishirou... no, Fuuma started to remove his hand, he said, "I thought you could no longer read people's Wishes."
"I can't, but I can guess. And I could cancel out--balance out--certain forces even before Kamui's choice made me who I was."
Sometimes, Subaru wondered if he was blind because one of his eyes had simply canceled out the other.
Subaru's hand clasped Fuuma's, holding as well as being held, and for a few seconds he allowed himself to take hold of a dream that died seventeen years ago (a lifetime ago, for the part of him that was forever sixteen).
Subaru turned his head so there would be no danger of seeing Fuuma when he opened his eyes. He did not take off his sunglasses.
"What do you see?"
Sunlight, painfully bright. Blue sky. Trees barely tipped with red. In the distance, a teenaged girl playing with a gangly black dog. Everything about her was carelessly casual: threadbare jeans, scuffed boots, a brown leather jacket two sizes too big, dishwater blonde hair pulled back in two utilitarian ponytails, a multitude of cheap plastic jewelry. Shiroko knocked her down, and Kiku squirmed on the ground, shaking with belly-deep laughter as Shiroko licked her face and pranced around, tail wagging her entire body.
In that moment, Subaru almost made a Wish.
But Fuuma could no longer grant those. Subaru slipped his hand free, sending the world back into darkness and sighing regret and relief.
"Thank you. I saw everything I needed to."
He saw a dog playing with a--boy? girl? (impossible to tell at this distance, seventeen years gone)--in bright, improbably elaborate clothes. A glimpse of dark hair under a broad-brimmed hat, and then, in a flash of bright green eyes, the image was gone.
The bench groaned as Fuuma took in and released a deep breath. "You didn't answer my question."
"I'm sorry." A few seconds passed in silence. "Is there anything else you needed?"
Another long pause. "Yes," Fuuma said, grunting a little as he stood up. "Time. Patience. Luck. Sometimes, I wonder if we really can do this."
Subaru had no idea what sort of deal, what sort of balance the two boys (Kamui had been the same age as Subaru when Subaru had met Seishirou for what he thought was the first time--he'd done the math) had struck on December thirty-first. All he knew was that the next morning, his world had started to go dark.
"We need your help."
"I'm sorry."
How many times had they had this exchange, over the past eight years? It was as if no time had passed since the turning of that last year.
"So you're just going to do nothing."
Subaru did not respond. Fuuma had heard his answer a dozen times before now. Subaru would keep on as he had been, doing what he needed to do to keep Seishirou's tree alive and performing the exorcisms needed to balance out the backlash from the assassinations. No more, no less. Zero sum.
"If only I could still see what was in your mind, Sumeragi." The words muffled for a moment as Fuuma ran his hands over his face in exasperation. "I don't know what you want."
"I have no wishes left, Fuuma-kun. You should know that better than anyone."
"It's not about Wishes, not any more," Fuuma snapped. "It's about choices."
"I never had a choice!"
Neither spoke, both startled into silence at Subaru's outburst. From out in the darkness, Kiku hollered out to ask if Subaru was okay.
"All my choices--all the truly important ones--were made for me." His voice shook then gradually settled into its usual dead calm. He had never asked Hokuto and Seishirou to do what they did. He never would have.
"Do you think that makes you unique?" Fuuma's words were sad, and gentle, and seemed to come from a distance.
This was where Subaru expected to be reminded that Fuuma, too, had been forced into a role he neither wanted nor understood, had the blood of a loved one on his hands, had others give up their lives for him unasked and undesired.
But Fuuma threw a variable into the equation.
"You have a choice now, you know." Gravel crunched under heavy footsteps and Subaru felt a sudden chill as Fuuma stood between him and the sun. "Several, in fact. And right now I wish I knew what you were going to choose."
Kiku's voice came pealing through the darkness, asking if he was done talking to the boring government people yet. Sometimes, Subaru thought she knew more about his jobs than he had consciously let on.
"What does it matter what I choose?" If he wanted anything, it was to be left alone.
"It matters because of her." Fuuma laughed jaggedly. "Of all the coincidences, that you found her. Of all the people..."
He did the math. Fuuma was twenty-five. Kiku, nearly sixteen. Subaru imagined them running into each other for the second (first) time at the new Ikebukuro station and he felt something that, if he didn't know better, he might have mistaken for jealousy.
"Who is she?" He did not add to you. Seishirou was the possessive one, after all.
"Who is she? A little girl who was too kind to strangers. A little girl who drank two cans of iced tea and thereby helped destroy one of Tokyo's spirit shields." Fuuma's voice was tight with something that might have been anger. "Unwittingly, yes, but that doesn't matter; she was still marked by it. And it's my responsibility."
Too many years ago, a child meant only to help and for his trouble was marked for a fate he had never desired. Subaru idly traced the twin stars that could now only be seen in memory.
"It doesn't matter that you and I were pulled into this without a choice. I won't just stand by while you turn her into someone she doesn't choose to be. I hope I make myself clear, Sumeragi-san."
Subaru chose not to answer. Fuuma waited. So did Subaru.
"Good-bye, Sumeragi-san. I hope your sight returns before it's too late."
Fuuma's contempt rolled off him without leaving a mark.
He said no more, but he clasped Subaru's shoulder briefly before he walked off. When he let go, it was as if he had never even been there.
A jingle of collar and leash told him Kiku was returning. "Oi, Sumeragi-san! Wanna get some ice cream? Your treat!"
"Sure!" He smiled at her, because that was what he always did around her. This time, though, as he pictured her walking towards him, black hair was slowly replaced by blonde.
Six months from now (ten plus six equals four) it would be April again. October was the month for chrysanthemums, but there was a place where the sakura still bloomed.
He could go back to the beginning. Start from zero.
"Shall we go?" he said, holding out a hand. "I know someplace I'd like to take you."
As her hand came out of the darkness, instead of making a wish, he made his Choice.