(no subject)
Story: Black cat, white mage - Part 16
Pairings: Kurogane/Fai, Sakura/Syaoran, Yukito/Touya, the usual suspects.
Rating: Pg-13
Warnings: Angst, strangeness.
Summary:A lost princess. A mage running away from his past. A crippled warrior doing his best to forget the man he used to be. And a young man carrying a terrible curse. All of them are inevitably drawn into an adventure where love might save them... or doom them.
Note: Not as long as I had hoped but the last part was kind of mangling my brain so. eh. Cut quote from "Thou art not false, but thou art fickle" by Byron.
***
A shaft of light descended from the window above, creeping over the floor until it found pale skin, cold from yet another a night spent sleeping on bare flagstones. It felt like warm fingers exploring the prisoner’s face, kind and assuring, and it took a few moments for the first thought to arrive.
Light. Morning. A new day.
Already Subaru was no longer sure how long he’d been imprisoned. He’d sustained a severe concussion when his captor had kicked him in the face, and for a while it’d had him drifting continuously in and out of consciousness. Keeping track of time was under the circumstances impossible. But daylight was good. It meant he wouldn’t have to be as cold.
Trying to get his body to stop shaking, he gradually uncurled and attempted to drag himself into a sitting position, moving slowly as he tried to get cold and abused limbs to function. After an painfully frustrating amount of fumbling, he managed to grab onto the large iron ring set in the wall, to which the shackles on his feet were attached via a length of chain. He paused for a while once he’d managed to sit up, and then started the even slower ascent to his feet, every breath hissing painful and burning cold between gritted teeth as he struggled.
There wasn’t much room in the cell to walk; even less when you happened to be chained to one of the walls, and an iron bar bound your feet together. But moving was important, if he didn’t want to die. He remembered the mornings in a place far away and long ago, waking up next to a body that gave next to no warmth because it was just as cold as his. He remembered, then, how they’d forced themselves from whatever makeshift bed they’d found that night, forced themselves to run until they were shaking and out of breath, because at least that meant they’d be warm for a while.
They’d been street rats, once. It was hard to remember that life now, unless there was something specific to remind him. Mostly because when they were five, a stranger had opened the door of his coach, looked the both of them up and down, and then smiled. “Do you want to get away from here?” he’d demanded.
“What’s the catch?” Kamui had snarled, even then the more suspicious of the two. Subaru had been too busy thinking about how warm the coach looked, and wondering if that red material inside was as soft as it looked.
The man chuckled. “You’ll have to be criminals,” he said simply. “And you’ll never be allowed to be anything else.”
They’d looked at each other, crouched hand in hand in front of the coach. Kamui’s hair was standing on end and in places it was clotted with blood since he kept scratching his head. Lice. They both had them, but Subaru was better at leaving them alone. It wasn’t as if scratching made it any better. But he was pretty sure that he was looking just as red-nosed and blue-lipped as his brother, and if possible even skinnier. Kamui often tried to give him his share of what little food they had, but that didn’t matter much if you happened to be sickly and weak by nature.
After a few seconds, Kamui shrugged. “We’ll be criminals anyway,” he said. Subaru nodded his agreement. The man in the coach laughed and shook his head.
“Not the kind of criminals I’ll make of you. That I promise.”
They’d followed him without a second thought after that. And he’d been right, too. Without his help, would they even have known they had magic powers? Subaru doubted it. They certainly would never have been trained. The Circle of Mages would never have noticed street trash like them, so was it so strange that they hadn’t hesitated to accept their only available option?
They were renegades. Familiarless. Part of the brotherhood of the Unbound. The punishment for their kind was imprisonment, if they were lucky; death, if they were not. Considering that they had used their powers for illegal purposes their entire lives, it was hard to imagine that they had any such luck left. Still, they were powerful. That was how their old master had found them in the first place. The power leakage of two such powerful creatures in that close proximity of each other was quite strong, apparently, if one knew how to look. And the first thing he’d taught them was to hide their magical presence, and hide it well. They were brought up within the brotherhood; unlike many of its members, they had not defected from the Circle later in life. So for a long while, they managed to stay completely unnoticed.
Then one day, Subaru had slipped on a patch of ice on his way to the market. It had been a completely mundane accident, and he hadn’t even used magic for a week, so when a handsome young man had caught him falling, laughing as he steadied him… well, was it so strange that he hadn’t for a second questioned his motives? Kamui had, of course, but Kamui was quite frankly paranoid and overbearing, and definitely more than a little suspicious of anyone showing Subaru any attention.
And so he’d fallen, and fallen fast. He was used to being protected and taken care of, but never spoilt and indulged. Seshirou bought him gifts, took him to beautiful spots that no one else knew of, and never wasted an opportunity to tell him how wonderful he was, how much he loved him. And for the first time in his life, he’d had something that was only his. Not his and Kamui’s, not his master’s, not the brotherhood’s… His, and his alone. It was so new, so overwhelming, and he’d never even thought for a moment that it was just too good to be true.
But of course it was.
He returned one evening from yet another secret meeting - he’d pointed out that it didn’t have to be secret, and Seshirou had smiled and said that no, but it made it much more exciting and romantic - to find Kamui waiting for him. His face was white, his eyes wild, and as he grabbed Subaru’s arm, his twin could feel him trembling.
“What’s wrong?” he’d asked, concerned.
Kamui had nodded almost imperceptibly over his shoulder, whispering, “Is he gone?” His voice was strangely hoarse, almost bordering on a snarl.
“Seshirou?” Subaru had frowned, not liking the tone of his brother’s voice much. “We said goodbye by his house. Why?” Kamui only reply had been to clutch even harder at his arm, digging his nails in until Subaru didn’t dare to pull away for fear of breaking his own skin. He’d flinched nonetheless, hissing a soft curse. “What is wrong with you?” he’d demanded.
“He’s a Hunter,” Kamui had replied abruptly after a few seconds, his voice suddenly surprisingly soft, eyes pleading as he met his brother’s gaze. “Seshirou is a Hunter. One of the best that there is. He… he didn’t even bother using a fake name! I… I had the brotherhood check him out, contact sources in other cities, I... I’m sorry! I just wanted to make sure he was safe, that he wouldn’t hurt you, and… and then it turns out…”
Subaru had just stared at him blankly for minutes at end, unable to take in what his twin was saying. He wanted to laugh, to dismiss what Kamui was saying as ridiculous. Or maybe he should get angry, pull away and shout at him until he started making sense, until he stopped saying such horrible, impossible things about the man he loved. Or maybe…
…or maybe he would just stand there, as his heart started its plunge into bottomless darkness, and he realized with painful clarity that overbearing and distrustful and flagrantly jealous as he might be, Kamui would never say something like that unless it was really true. He’d never hurt him like that, never lie to him about something like that. Kamui wanted to protect him, shield him from everything if he could. He’d never see his brother’s heart broken unless he had no other option.
Seshirou was a Hunter, one of the ruthless mages that the Circle sent out to hunt down renegades. When Subaru thought back now, he remembered with a pang of sickening guilt all the innocent little questions he’d answered, questions which might lead a clever man to several of his contacts within the brotherhood. All this time… all this time, Seshirou had been milking him for information. There had been no love, no trust, nothing that Subaru could call his own. All that there had been, was a clever ruse to make sure he kept ratting on his associates, on his friends. And as he looked up, devastated, and met Kamui’s helpless gaze, he knew that his brother thought him a fool, but that he loved him nonetheless.
He always had, and always would. And he was the only one.
From that moment and on, they were running. Always running. For years and years now; he couldn’t quite recall how long it had been. They didn’t look any older, and they probably wouldn’t in a hundred years either. But with every day that he woke up somewhere new - or more often than not somewhere new in a city where he’d been a dozen times before - he felt his heart growing a little wearier, a little heavier, and he didn’t feel young anymore. He couldn’t stay anywhere for long, couldn’t call anywhere his home, could never feel safe, could never stop looking over his shoulder and wondering if this was the day when they’d finally be caught. And the one person he wanted to be with, the one person that was just as constant a factor in his life as Kamui was… that was the one person he could never meet again.
And now… now he was here. Strange as it was, in a way it was a relief. He might’ve been in hell, but at least it was a hell that he was familiar with, a hell that he’d been given the opportunity to get to know these last few days. It was a sudden constant in the middle of a life of crumbling palaces and shifting sand, and within it he almost felt safe.
Still, the words of his captor kept haunting him, and the look on his brother’s face when he agreed to the deal. All he could hope for now, all that there was left to hope for, was that Seshirou would find him, and end him, before Kamui reached his destination.
~*~*~
Kamui almost fell off the horse, stumbling blindly off the track in the darkness and swatting uselessly at the branches poking at his face as he dragged the reluctant beast behind him. After a few minute’s struggle he reached a small glade which hopefully was out of sight to people passing on the road, and there he managed to get his packing off the horse before finally slumping on the ground, breathing heavily. He’d been riding all day, and every evening meant struggling with himself not to continue through the night, and risking for the horse to misstep and break a leg in the darkness. Of course he could light his way by magic, but he really wanted to conserve his strength, and he could not afford to draw attention to himself in any case. Better then to get a few hours of rest now, and hopefully he wouldn’t collapse from exhaustion tomorrow.
It felt strange, horrible and strange, being so far away from Subaru. Even when they’d split up on the road to avoid detection, they had never gone that far away from each other. Usually one of them would stay in a city, while the other lay low in a neighboring town, and then they’d communicate by letter when they wanted to meet up again. A couple of times, it had actually seemed like they had thrown off their pursuer, but somehow he always found out where they were and came after them once more.
And every time this happened, Kamui would have to suffer through the brief flash of relief and hope that blossomed in Subaru’s gaze, before he managed to cover it up. He had to be reminded that while it tortured his twin ceaselessly that they were running away from that bastard Hunter, it scared him even more that the day would come when they were no longer being followed by him. When he’d be gone from their lives for good.
It frustrated him beyond what words could describe, to have to see how much Subaru still cared. When that two-faced snake had snuck into his life like that, deceived him like that, toyed with his heart just to get information. When they both knew that he would’ve continued doing so if Kamui hadn’t found him out. It hurt, too, because he had a sneaking suspicion that Subaru sometimes wished that he hadn’t found him out. That he could have continued living with the illusion of being loved for as long as possible.
But what could he do? Berate his brother? Try to talk sense into him? Neither would do any good, and would only mean that Subaru would be feeling even more guilty and wretched over the whole sad mess.
And now? He curled up on the hard ground, feeling the moisture in the air starting to eat through his clothes, and above the sky stared down at him with thousands of dead white eyes, every one as pitiless and distant as the next. The night was close and heavy, shadows clinging to him, breathing coldly against his neck. Kamui, don’t do it, they mocked him, the words echoing in the dead space left in his heart. Please. Pleasepleasepleaseplease. Please don’t do it please don’t please please Kamui don’t do it please don’t please please please don’t do it please Kamui please…
As the moon’s light slanted through the trees, and the world was lit in monochrome, the shadows whispered to him about his brother, alone and in pain. His brother, who he had left behind. They whispered about the thing he was about to do, the only way to save them both, the deed that was going to take his brother from him. They whispered about guilt, and loss, and a betrayal that he could not escape.
An innocent person, a good person, would bleed by his hand. They had never done anything like that before. They had killed for their own protection when they had to, true, but never in cold blood. Never with night upon restless night ahead to contemplate the deed. Never with the firm knowledge that that the victim wasn’t involved - that he didn’t deserve to die for some horror dreamt up by a poisoned mind - embedded like a cold blade in the heart. They had killed, but they hadn’t been killers. Kamui knew his brother would never be able to look at him the same way again. If he would even be able to look at him at all.
And if what that mad priest said was true, if he really could kill Seshirou… then Subaru might never forgive him. Kamui had already taken that away from him once. If he did it again, he was surely going to lose even that small part of Subaru that still stayed with him, even as his brother’s eyes went distant and dull, and he turned to look behind them at his own shadow, as if willing it to be something it was not.
But Kamui knew that he would. If he could, he would take his brother’s one dream away, even if it made Subaru hate him. That was the price he had to pay to see his brother free, in body as well as in mind. And renegade or not, to be a mage meant being willing to pay the price. Even when you what you paid for was the last thing you would choose.
Pairings: Kurogane/Fai, Sakura/Syaoran, Yukito/Touya, the usual suspects.
Rating: Pg-13
Warnings: Angst, strangeness.
Summary:A lost princess. A mage running away from his past. A crippled warrior doing his best to forget the man he used to be. And a young man carrying a terrible curse. All of them are inevitably drawn into an adventure where love might save them... or doom them.
Note: Not as long as I had hoped but the last part was kind of mangling my brain so. eh. Cut quote from "Thou art not false, but thou art fickle" by Byron.
***
A shaft of light descended from the window above, creeping over the floor until it found pale skin, cold from yet another a night spent sleeping on bare flagstones. It felt like warm fingers exploring the prisoner’s face, kind and assuring, and it took a few moments for the first thought to arrive.
Light. Morning. A new day.
Already Subaru was no longer sure how long he’d been imprisoned. He’d sustained a severe concussion when his captor had kicked him in the face, and for a while it’d had him drifting continuously in and out of consciousness. Keeping track of time was under the circumstances impossible. But daylight was good. It meant he wouldn’t have to be as cold.
Trying to get his body to stop shaking, he gradually uncurled and attempted to drag himself into a sitting position, moving slowly as he tried to get cold and abused limbs to function. After an painfully frustrating amount of fumbling, he managed to grab onto the large iron ring set in the wall, to which the shackles on his feet were attached via a length of chain. He paused for a while once he’d managed to sit up, and then started the even slower ascent to his feet, every breath hissing painful and burning cold between gritted teeth as he struggled.
There wasn’t much room in the cell to walk; even less when you happened to be chained to one of the walls, and an iron bar bound your feet together. But moving was important, if he didn’t want to die. He remembered the mornings in a place far away and long ago, waking up next to a body that gave next to no warmth because it was just as cold as his. He remembered, then, how they’d forced themselves from whatever makeshift bed they’d found that night, forced themselves to run until they were shaking and out of breath, because at least that meant they’d be warm for a while.
They’d been street rats, once. It was hard to remember that life now, unless there was something specific to remind him. Mostly because when they were five, a stranger had opened the door of his coach, looked the both of them up and down, and then smiled. “Do you want to get away from here?” he’d demanded.
“What’s the catch?” Kamui had snarled, even then the more suspicious of the two. Subaru had been too busy thinking about how warm the coach looked, and wondering if that red material inside was as soft as it looked.
The man chuckled. “You’ll have to be criminals,” he said simply. “And you’ll never be allowed to be anything else.”
They’d looked at each other, crouched hand in hand in front of the coach. Kamui’s hair was standing on end and in places it was clotted with blood since he kept scratching his head. Lice. They both had them, but Subaru was better at leaving them alone. It wasn’t as if scratching made it any better. But he was pretty sure that he was looking just as red-nosed and blue-lipped as his brother, and if possible even skinnier. Kamui often tried to give him his share of what little food they had, but that didn’t matter much if you happened to be sickly and weak by nature.
After a few seconds, Kamui shrugged. “We’ll be criminals anyway,” he said. Subaru nodded his agreement. The man in the coach laughed and shook his head.
“Not the kind of criminals I’ll make of you. That I promise.”
They’d followed him without a second thought after that. And he’d been right, too. Without his help, would they even have known they had magic powers? Subaru doubted it. They certainly would never have been trained. The Circle of Mages would never have noticed street trash like them, so was it so strange that they hadn’t hesitated to accept their only available option?
They were renegades. Familiarless. Part of the brotherhood of the Unbound. The punishment for their kind was imprisonment, if they were lucky; death, if they were not. Considering that they had used their powers for illegal purposes their entire lives, it was hard to imagine that they had any such luck left. Still, they were powerful. That was how their old master had found them in the first place. The power leakage of two such powerful creatures in that close proximity of each other was quite strong, apparently, if one knew how to look. And the first thing he’d taught them was to hide their magical presence, and hide it well. They were brought up within the brotherhood; unlike many of its members, they had not defected from the Circle later in life. So for a long while, they managed to stay completely unnoticed.
Then one day, Subaru had slipped on a patch of ice on his way to the market. It had been a completely mundane accident, and he hadn’t even used magic for a week, so when a handsome young man had caught him falling, laughing as he steadied him… well, was it so strange that he hadn’t for a second questioned his motives? Kamui had, of course, but Kamui was quite frankly paranoid and overbearing, and definitely more than a little suspicious of anyone showing Subaru any attention.
And so he’d fallen, and fallen fast. He was used to being protected and taken care of, but never spoilt and indulged. Seshirou bought him gifts, took him to beautiful spots that no one else knew of, and never wasted an opportunity to tell him how wonderful he was, how much he loved him. And for the first time in his life, he’d had something that was only his. Not his and Kamui’s, not his master’s, not the brotherhood’s… His, and his alone. It was so new, so overwhelming, and he’d never even thought for a moment that it was just too good to be true.
But of course it was.
He returned one evening from yet another secret meeting - he’d pointed out that it didn’t have to be secret, and Seshirou had smiled and said that no, but it made it much more exciting and romantic - to find Kamui waiting for him. His face was white, his eyes wild, and as he grabbed Subaru’s arm, his twin could feel him trembling.
“What’s wrong?” he’d asked, concerned.
Kamui had nodded almost imperceptibly over his shoulder, whispering, “Is he gone?” His voice was strangely hoarse, almost bordering on a snarl.
“Seshirou?” Subaru had frowned, not liking the tone of his brother’s voice much. “We said goodbye by his house. Why?” Kamui only reply had been to clutch even harder at his arm, digging his nails in until Subaru didn’t dare to pull away for fear of breaking his own skin. He’d flinched nonetheless, hissing a soft curse. “What is wrong with you?” he’d demanded.
“He’s a Hunter,” Kamui had replied abruptly after a few seconds, his voice suddenly surprisingly soft, eyes pleading as he met his brother’s gaze. “Seshirou is a Hunter. One of the best that there is. He… he didn’t even bother using a fake name! I… I had the brotherhood check him out, contact sources in other cities, I... I’m sorry! I just wanted to make sure he was safe, that he wouldn’t hurt you, and… and then it turns out…”
Subaru had just stared at him blankly for minutes at end, unable to take in what his twin was saying. He wanted to laugh, to dismiss what Kamui was saying as ridiculous. Or maybe he should get angry, pull away and shout at him until he started making sense, until he stopped saying such horrible, impossible things about the man he loved. Or maybe…
…or maybe he would just stand there, as his heart started its plunge into bottomless darkness, and he realized with painful clarity that overbearing and distrustful and flagrantly jealous as he might be, Kamui would never say something like that unless it was really true. He’d never hurt him like that, never lie to him about something like that. Kamui wanted to protect him, shield him from everything if he could. He’d never see his brother’s heart broken unless he had no other option.
Seshirou was a Hunter, one of the ruthless mages that the Circle sent out to hunt down renegades. When Subaru thought back now, he remembered with a pang of sickening guilt all the innocent little questions he’d answered, questions which might lead a clever man to several of his contacts within the brotherhood. All this time… all this time, Seshirou had been milking him for information. There had been no love, no trust, nothing that Subaru could call his own. All that there had been, was a clever ruse to make sure he kept ratting on his associates, on his friends. And as he looked up, devastated, and met Kamui’s helpless gaze, he knew that his brother thought him a fool, but that he loved him nonetheless.
He always had, and always would. And he was the only one.
From that moment and on, they were running. Always running. For years and years now; he couldn’t quite recall how long it had been. They didn’t look any older, and they probably wouldn’t in a hundred years either. But with every day that he woke up somewhere new - or more often than not somewhere new in a city where he’d been a dozen times before - he felt his heart growing a little wearier, a little heavier, and he didn’t feel young anymore. He couldn’t stay anywhere for long, couldn’t call anywhere his home, could never feel safe, could never stop looking over his shoulder and wondering if this was the day when they’d finally be caught. And the one person he wanted to be with, the one person that was just as constant a factor in his life as Kamui was… that was the one person he could never meet again.
And now… now he was here. Strange as it was, in a way it was a relief. He might’ve been in hell, but at least it was a hell that he was familiar with, a hell that he’d been given the opportunity to get to know these last few days. It was a sudden constant in the middle of a life of crumbling palaces and shifting sand, and within it he almost felt safe.
Still, the words of his captor kept haunting him, and the look on his brother’s face when he agreed to the deal. All he could hope for now, all that there was left to hope for, was that Seshirou would find him, and end him, before Kamui reached his destination.
~*~*~
Kamui almost fell off the horse, stumbling blindly off the track in the darkness and swatting uselessly at the branches poking at his face as he dragged the reluctant beast behind him. After a few minute’s struggle he reached a small glade which hopefully was out of sight to people passing on the road, and there he managed to get his packing off the horse before finally slumping on the ground, breathing heavily. He’d been riding all day, and every evening meant struggling with himself not to continue through the night, and risking for the horse to misstep and break a leg in the darkness. Of course he could light his way by magic, but he really wanted to conserve his strength, and he could not afford to draw attention to himself in any case. Better then to get a few hours of rest now, and hopefully he wouldn’t collapse from exhaustion tomorrow.
It felt strange, horrible and strange, being so far away from Subaru. Even when they’d split up on the road to avoid detection, they had never gone that far away from each other. Usually one of them would stay in a city, while the other lay low in a neighboring town, and then they’d communicate by letter when they wanted to meet up again. A couple of times, it had actually seemed like they had thrown off their pursuer, but somehow he always found out where they were and came after them once more.
And every time this happened, Kamui would have to suffer through the brief flash of relief and hope that blossomed in Subaru’s gaze, before he managed to cover it up. He had to be reminded that while it tortured his twin ceaselessly that they were running away from that bastard Hunter, it scared him even more that the day would come when they were no longer being followed by him. When he’d be gone from their lives for good.
It frustrated him beyond what words could describe, to have to see how much Subaru still cared. When that two-faced snake had snuck into his life like that, deceived him like that, toyed with his heart just to get information. When they both knew that he would’ve continued doing so if Kamui hadn’t found him out. It hurt, too, because he had a sneaking suspicion that Subaru sometimes wished that he hadn’t found him out. That he could have continued living with the illusion of being loved for as long as possible.
But what could he do? Berate his brother? Try to talk sense into him? Neither would do any good, and would only mean that Subaru would be feeling even more guilty and wretched over the whole sad mess.
And now? He curled up on the hard ground, feeling the moisture in the air starting to eat through his clothes, and above the sky stared down at him with thousands of dead white eyes, every one as pitiless and distant as the next. The night was close and heavy, shadows clinging to him, breathing coldly against his neck. Kamui, don’t do it, they mocked him, the words echoing in the dead space left in his heart. Please. Pleasepleasepleaseplease. Please don’t do it please don’t please please Kamui don’t do it please don’t please please please don’t do it please Kamui please…
As the moon’s light slanted through the trees, and the world was lit in monochrome, the shadows whispered to him about his brother, alone and in pain. His brother, who he had left behind. They whispered about the thing he was about to do, the only way to save them both, the deed that was going to take his brother from him. They whispered about guilt, and loss, and a betrayal that he could not escape.
An innocent person, a good person, would bleed by his hand. They had never done anything like that before. They had killed for their own protection when they had to, true, but never in cold blood. Never with night upon restless night ahead to contemplate the deed. Never with the firm knowledge that that the victim wasn’t involved - that he didn’t deserve to die for some horror dreamt up by a poisoned mind - embedded like a cold blade in the heart. They had killed, but they hadn’t been killers. Kamui knew his brother would never be able to look at him the same way again. If he would even be able to look at him at all.
And if what that mad priest said was true, if he really could kill Seshirou… then Subaru might never forgive him. Kamui had already taken that away from him once. If he did it again, he was surely going to lose even that small part of Subaru that still stayed with him, even as his brother’s eyes went distant and dull, and he turned to look behind them at his own shadow, as if willing it to be something it was not.
But Kamui knew that he would. If he could, he would take his brother’s one dream away, even if it made Subaru hate him. That was the price he had to pay to see his brother free, in body as well as in mind. And renegade or not, to be a mage meant being willing to pay the price. Even when you what you paid for was the last thing you would choose.