Kyou Kara Maou: Grace
Warnings: Alternate universe. Mellow angst. Kay's fetish for giving people who are in love vials of poison with which to kill one another.
( They would find no traces of the man, who did not exist. )
( They would find no traces of the man, who did not exist. )
Betrayed, he had welcomed release in death, only to find himself shackled by duty and belief, bound into the kingdom he forged and damned to an eternal twilight of dream-like sensations. He stirs slowly in intermittent flashes of awareness. There is another, who stands between him and the world's light. He does not seek to reach out, content in the numbness of the spaces between life and death. His restless whispering breathes in the ears of a young girl-child.
The other flickers and flares, thinning the barrier that keeps him from this world enough to look through. Clad in rags, a child with inky hair and stunned dark eyes stares back.
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Not as bright or sharp as the mind of his lover and murderer, but a mind that he touches and that hears the furious words that pour forth from him in an acidic stream of pain and anger. The mind is odd, different from him in a way both simple and profound.
The anger burns and chases away the numbness, the relief. He feels the echoes of the long-gone pain shudder through him, though both poison and body are dust by now.
How dare he come back!
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A shiver passes under his skin; the king snaps, "If you cannot control yourself, I will have you sent home." His niece falls silent, but the look in her dark eyes is reproachful, as if she has expected better from him.
But he thinks that he wants the boy to stay. It is not like him, this sensation of tearing. He remembers being a child, playing at being a hero, a beloved king as the Sage had once been. That same wisdom is within his grasp now that he is king...
"I can use him," he says to no one, explaining himself to the air. He wants to be used.
Why else would the boy's first words have been, 'Will you show me on a map where the border is threatened?'
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The rage is simple, pure to the point of holiness and he lets it free.
The attackers disintegrate, smears of red against the green forest all around them and he retreats as the strain makes the Maou's heart stutter in his chest. The last thing he sees through the other-not-him's eyes, is the once Sage staring at him with wounded eyes.
The Maou's concern floods his senses as he sinks back into the twilight emptiness that passes for his own existence and he finds himself watching as the Maou fusses over a minor wound and calls for healers. The resulting stab of memory takes him by surprise, flashing into his mind with clarion precision before he can stifle it.
Dark eyes made darker with a worry he knows the other will never admit, even to himself. Blood, ( ... )
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The Maou wonders how one boy, not quite as tall as his shoulder, can throw him into such turmoil.
"Geika," he says, quietly. "At least let us offer you a chair." He turns to smile, and is not surprised when the boy jerks his gaze away, as if unable to bear the sight of him.
Days become weeks, and months, and eventually the Sage does allow them to bring him a bench, something undecorated and stern. Perhaps the only person who does not admire his stubborn modesty is the king's niece, who watches him with a deep resentment that seems to have no source -- except in the darkest, most mysterious of the Maou's depressions.
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The game of touches, soft words and shared smiles. He watched jealously as the other-not-him-Maou dances around the Sage, never quite touching him but always there. He cannot interfere, the rage channeled into silent words that only the girl-child can hear.
The day comes when he looks out of the Maou's eyes to see the Sage looking back in. Flight! Retreat in a tangle of emotions and powers to the blanketing numbness of his home as old scars sear and bleed again.
He dares not return while the Sage is near, but finds himself hovering on the fringe of the Maou's awareness, enslaved by memories and emotions that even oblivion cannot devour. He watches the Sage from a distance, seeing the constant flicker of dark eyes towards the Maou and jealousy sinks its fangs in once more.
It takes time to realize that the Sage is not looking at the Maou, but through him. Looking for something else...or perhap, looking for someone else.
Deep in the scarred heart, the first hint of hope begins to blossom.
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The stories which were already becoming legends in her father's time. Stories of the First King, noble, beautiful and awesomely powerful. She spends her days walking through the dusty echoes in the old castle - the Shrine to those long ago days.
In her dreams, the hallways are bright with sunlight or scores of candles and the castle is alive with people coming and going. She trails behind the tall blond warrior king, sharing the laughter and the quicksilver resolve of the man.
In her nightmares, she sees the same dark eyes; horror warring with a twisted satisfaction and a beloved face turning away as the breath tangles into a strangling knot in the throat.
The love still fresh in her mind, her eyes scream her condemnation at the man who stands by her uncle's side, whispering the poison of words into his ear.
His voice fills her ears, weeping without tears until her heart threatens to break.
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She knows that he does and she loves him for it, adores him fiercely with the kind of devotion that she shares with only one another, the one whose soul he bears. "You have taken a viper into your heart. He'll only bring you grief."
It angers her, and it angers him, his resentment flaring in her senses. For a second time, the sainted Sage has wriggled into this most precarious of positions. He has hearts and kingdoms in his grasp.
"That's just a statement of opinion," says her uncle, patient. "Tell me why you think it. I'm not so unreasonable ( ... )
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He watches as she starts to work on the theories of magic and dimensions. The familar words act as a trigger to his own memories and she advances with more than sufficient speed to draw the attention of the court and whispers reach the ears of the Sage.
Afraid and uncertain, he draws back, concealing himself deep within her aura as he struggles in vain to flee back to the empty space as the Sage glides into the room. The crystal globe, already empowered sufficently to float over the table, resists the casual probing, glowing as it spins gently before him.
She reaches out to still the ball's movement, looking up at the inky-haired Sage with accusing eyes as she speaks, her voice echoing the voice that sings in her dreams. "Go away. You are not welcome here."
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He avoids the other-not-him who sits on his throne, with his traitorous lover at his side. There is too much anger, envy that twists bitterly even beyond the grave. He judges the other-not-him to be an adequate king, but sees no great difference in the position, powers and respect granted to the Sage. Yet this Maou needs not to watch the wine he drinks before seeking his bed nor taste the foods to check for new additions ( ... )
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Once he rode out onto the battlefield, but the Sage no longer wishes to see the bright figure of a general in his element, aglow with fervor and adrenaline.
That is why he is the last one there when a violent tremor rips apart the ground, and he cannot hold back his need to know what has happened: torrents of maryoku and houryoku opening the earth, and in the midst of it all the Maou, wounded, struggling, dizzied by the torrents. He is too far away and the Sage can come no closer with so many vultures swooping in for the kill, so it is in despair that he clenches his eyes shut and prays to no one, Please, my power-- Use it to save him!For a heartbeat in the turmoil he knows a serene warmth, and that is how, when he ( ... )
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He feels awake, more totally alive than he ever has before. The world in all its layers and myriad intricacies spreads out before him as he lifts his eyes to stare at the wonders all around. His power, free and unfettered pours out, engulfing the wounds of the earth and binding them closed without more than a passing thought of his to direct the awesome forces ( ... )
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