Fic for a new fandom???
Yeah so this... happened recently :|a Got into the fandom via the new anime; as the broadcast continues I hope this series takes off a little more!
Title: Sacraments
Fandom: Blue Exorcist
Genre: Drama
Charas: Fujimoto, Mephistopheles
Pairing: Gen. Could be pre-FujiMephi if you squint.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Vomiting, alcohol
Summary: The first meeting of a boy and a demon. Pre-canon.
Wow well this may be one of the more pointless fics I've ever written, lol. Just some vague ideas about Fujimoto and Mephi's first meeting which will probably someday be jossed. XD;
Japan, 1965
In the mountains of Enigahara, it was raining.
The rainy season had just begun, in fact, and the forest was a deep, deep green, full of rustling leaves and mist and echoing birdsong. It was also absolutely wet everywhere one turned, but this didn't bother the little boy climbing gingerly up the narrow stone steps toward the local shrine. Indeed, he welcomed it. This was one of his favorite times of year -- it wasn't too oppressively humid yet, and the rain kept tourists and picnickers away from the scenic beauty of the local countryside, which meant he had this mountain grove almost entirely to himself. A whole little rainforest for his own playground.
The steps were worn with age and slick with water and moss here and there; he slipped once or twice on the way upward, but slowly and steadily kept going, raincoat clutched about him. He was used to the climb -- he knew this place well, visited it often whenever he didn't have chores or friends to see or schoolwork that he couldn't afford to blow off. At the top there was a little clearing in the center of the grove, with a lovely view of the sky and the next mountain over, and a tiny shrine to Amatsu-Mikaboshi. This was not a well-traveled shrine. The local old ladies liked to gossip that Amatsu of the Stars was an evil kami and would curse anyone who crossed paths with him, but the boy found that rather unlikely. He was just god of the stars, wasn't he? And his forgotten little shrine certainly did provide a perfect spot for stargazing.
Today, though, there were no stars yet; only a dim, grey-blue afternoon sky burdened with heavy clouds. Pulling his hood closer, the boy glanced upward through the parting leaves of the trees as he reached the top of the steps, squinting against raindrops that rolled down his eyelashes. The drizzle looked likely to continue for a while. All around him rose the scent of fresh rain and fresh leaves, the sight of wetly glimmering green, the flicker of a bird or a rabbit here and there. Water dripped from the stones and battered wood of the old shrine.
Walking over to the spot of worship, the boy laid a single wet and slightly battered orange atop the front altar, clapping twice and offering a bow. He didn't really think Amatsu-Mikaboshi was an evil kami, but it never hurt to be polite about this sort of thing.
"Hi, sir. Thanks for letting me use your spot," he greeted, as he always did. "...Hope you like oranges. I'm gonna go hunt frogs, but I promise I won't hurt any, okay?"
In his young life, he had never yet had occasion to believe that a kami might actually have time to answer him; so he turned away then without waiting, ready to wander back off through the drizzle into that inviting green canopy--
--and that was when something grabbed his leg.
He jumped a little in surprise, stared down at the ground, tried to tug his leg away a bit -- but still it held fast. He couldn't even see what was ensnaring him; it looked like perfectly clear ground... was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe? He tried to pull his leg upward slightly again, gave it a brief shake--
There was a tiny prick of pain on the side of his ankle; a single bead of blood welled up to trickle across his skin, diluted by the rain. Had something bitten him?---
....and then, all of a sudden, he could see.
There was a hand wrapped around his ankle, holding it tight. Pale, extraordinarily unhealthy-looking flesh; long fingers; prominent knuckles; sharp purple-tinted nails that looked almost like claws. The nail on one finger had a dab of his own blood still stuck to the end.
And the hand, of course, belonged to an arm, and the arm belonged to a man. A man sprawled over the grass, a man who had somehow been invisible until just moments before. The boy gaped down at him. Was he a foreigner...? He looked like nothing the boy had ever seen before -- sharp features, pointed ears, slitted eyes that stared up at him like a cat's. How long had the stranger been here? His dark hair was plastered to his face, and the thin yukata draped around him looked long since soaked through to his skin. Here and there it bore faded dark stains that looked to have been half-washed away in the relentless storm--
"Mir ist kalt," mumbled the man.
The boy had no clue what he might be saying, but he seemed to have trouble even pronouncing those few words, mouth moving sluggishly. His gaze was unfocused as he stared up in the general direction of the child's face, and the sound of his breathing was a rough counterpoint to the hiss of the rain. It looked an awful lot like the time his uncle had taken fever and auntie had called him -- what was it again? -- 'delirious'?
"...I dunno what you said, mister," the boy informed him, crouching down and trying to use simple words. Sometimes foreigners could understand some Japanese if you were real patient, he'd heard. "But you shouldn't lay in the rain. Are you sick? C... c'mere... Let's move a little. We'll get some rain off you--"
He reached for the man's arm to carefully try and haul him up to a sitting position, little heart pounding hard. He didn't really know how to help sick people. It would be better to go back to the village and get a grownup, but -- it took a while to climb all the way back down the steps and get to town again. What if the man got worse while he was gone? What if... what if he even died?...
"...the shrine," mumbled the man, this time in thick but understandable Japanese.
"Yeah-- Yeah, the shrine!" agreed the boy, slightly heartened by this turn of events. He ducked his head under the man's shoulder then, trying to take on some of the other's weight despite his much larger size. "That's where we're going. C'mon, we'll get get under the awning, it's not so wet over there..."
"Inside... the shrine..." The man's words cut off for a moment, his breath hitching.
"Wh--... I don't think you'll fit, mister--" Alarmed though he was by that ominous noise, the boy continued to drag his burden over toward the shelter of the shrine's tiny wooden roof. It was only a little further before they'd be fully underneath the awning, or at least as fully as they were going to be able to get. He arranged the stranger as comfortably as he could manage given his much smaller stature; the man lay limply where he was placed, leaning backwards half-upright against the little shrine's wall.
"In... side the shrine," he managed again, letting his eyes fall closed. "A b... a bottle. It says... 'holy water'..."
"...you left something in there?" asked the boy, brow furrowing in confusion. But it seemed to be important to him -- important enough to ask for it when he could barely speak -- so maybe it would help somehow. Quickly removing his raincoat, he draped it over the man's legs, still stretched out in the rain as they were; then with a mumbled apology to Amatsu-Mikaboshi he clambered up to poke around inside the tiny interior of the shrine.
Sure enough, there was a small ceramic jug within. The boy couldn't read many of the characters written on it, but there were two large ones painted over the side in bright blue, and the second of those definitely meant 'water'. Picking it up, he carefully climbed back down to return to the man's side, his own hair already beginning to stick to his face. He plopped down in the wet grass as he began to work the cork out of the ceramic container.
"Is this what you wanted, mister?" With a brief 'pop', the jug came open, and he picked it up to hand over.
Wordlessly, the man reached out to accept it. With shaking hands he held it up to his face, breathed in -- grimacing slightly as he did so -- and then, eyes squeezing shut, he pressed it to his lips and tipped it back.
It was not a terribly large jug, but the man took a while to drink it, adam's apple bobbing slowly. Still he never once came up for air, not even when the clawed hands gripping the jug began to shake harder, not even when tears welled up at the corners of his eyes. He drank every last drop and then tossed the container away with a desperate gasp, seeming to wilt against the side of the little shrine, his whole body shuddering.
"M-- Mister...?" All the boy could do was watch, wide-eyed. This didn't really seem like it was helping the way he'd hoped--
Then the stranger leaned over, half-collapsed onto his side next to the shrine's front, and proceeded to vomit up the contents of his stomach right there at Amatsu-Mikaboshi's altar.
Afterward, he just laid there for a little while longer breathing shallowly, body gone limp again save for the occasional brief spasm. The boy could only watch this for a breathless second or three before he was stumbling over to shake at the man's shoulder, frantic.
"H-- hey! You're not gonna die, are you!? Wh-- what was that-- Are you okay!?..."
It was a moment or three before those slitted eyes pried themselves open again; but at last the stranger glanced up at him. One large wet hand reached up shakily to press against that small wet hand for a moment, and he managed a tired, but reassuring quirk of the lips.
"The worst... is over, little chickadee... A poison to purge a... worse poison. Thank you... for the help. Thank both of you."
Saying that, he rolled backward a little against the kami's stone altar, closed his eyes and passed out.
- - -
The boy stayed there as long as he could, but the strange man never woke. Finally the clearing around them was beginning to grow dim, he was soaked through and cold and hungry, and he knew there was no way he could carry the man all the way back down to the village with him -- so the boy left him with that small raincoat carefully draped over his lap, asked Amatsu-Mikaboshi if he wouldn't mind taking a shift at watch, then began the journey back home. Once there he was thoroughly scolded for being so very late and so very wet, and absolutely no one would believe his tale of meeting an ailing stranger in the forest. He had school tomorrow, his auntie told him, so he had best shape up and get dry and do his homework and forget all this tall-tale nonsense--
So of course, the next day, he snuck away before the morning bell to visit his spot again.
Once he'd climbed all the way up to the shrine, though, he discovered that the man was no longer there. Who knew what had happened to him -- the clearing was just as the boy had left it the evening before, green and damp with the rains, the ceramic jug still lying where it had been flung. But then he noticed... at the altar of Amatsu-Mikaboshi, next to the wet and battered orange, his raincoat lay neatly folded atop the stone.
The boy walked over to shake it out, stared at it for a moment, and smiled. It seemed like a good sign.
- - -
From then on, the boy's world became a rather different place. He saw things which, before that rainy day, he most certainly would have sworn hadn't existed. He saw black sprites flit through the streets of the village, goblins peeking around corners and stealing children's candy. In his hikes through the mountain forests, out of the corner of his eye, he caught glimpses of what surely must have been tengu.
Perhaps another child would have been terrified of it all, but for him -- for him it was exciting. Here he was still in his own boring backyard, and yet all of a sudden, every day brought some new adventure! He wanted to know this new world he'd been invited to lay eyes on. He wanted to be part of it.
And so it was that he started making friends with the local monsters. He left out treats for the tengu and coaxed the goblins into leaving little girls alone; he met a kitsune up in the mountains and cautiously traded amusing tales with it. He learned a few things, and tried a few things, and-- he wanted to know more.
It was nearly two years later on another damp, quiet day when he ascended the steps to Amatsu-Mikaboshi's shrine again, offerings in hand, and found someone there ahead of him.
"Ah---"
For a moment, all he could do was stare.
"You----"
"Skipping school again...? Quite the bad habit for someone of your young age."
The stranger smiled.
It was, of course, none other than the very same man whose life he'd saved at this spot years previous. The boy had grown a bit in the intervening time, as boys are apt to do; but this strange foreigner looked utterly unchanged, save for the umbrella in his grip and the white suit that took the place of that soaked-through yukata. He raised one hand in greeting.
"H... How do you know I'm skipping?" In his shock, these rather sullen words were somehow the first to pass the boy's lips. "I haven't seen you since---"
"Ahh, but I have seen you," smiled the man again. "You've come here many times in the last two years, hmm? And your favorite time to stop by seems to be right in the middle of a weekday, when good boys should be in school. A day such as today."
"....y... yeah, well--" The boy's brow furrowed, his shock turning a little further toward defensiveness. "Who cares, anyway, I didn't---"
"But since we happen to be paying our respects to Lord Amatsu-Mikaboshi at the same time today, please allow me to take the opportunity to thank you."
"....Huh?" A pause, and a blink. The boy stared down at the food offerings in his hands before his gaze turned toward the stranger again, and -- he flushed a little.
"You don't have to do anything like that... I mean, all I did was drag you around and--"
"Had I not drunk that hateful water, I most certainly would have died within the night," said the man quite seriously. One eyebrow was raised as he stared into the boy's face. "I have you to thank for my life, young man. I owe you a debt."
At those words, the boy gave a quiet swallow. There was something... unexplainably heavy about them. The very air drifting about the clearing seemed for a moment to grow utterly still.
"May I have your name?" asked the stranger softly.
The boy glanced up to meet his eyes for a second, brow furrowed uncertainly. Sometimes... sometimes he'd heard that it was better for some things not to know what you were really called, but---
"...Shirou," he answered back, a little hesitantly.
"Fujimoto Shirou."
At this, the stranger gave a slow nod, and tossed his umbrella into the grass. With a few quick strides he had crossed to the boy's side and -- right there in his white suit in the wet clearing, he knelt on one knee to take Shirou's free hand.
"Fujimoto Shirou. I am in your debt, and a gentleman of quality must discharge his debts," he murmured, head bowed.
"Ask what you will of me, and your bidding shall be done. You have only to call the name Mephistopheles."
The boy's brow furrowed, expression noncomprehending. Not only did he have no real clue what this was about, but--
"Meph... phela... stopha... Feffees...?"
"...Mephisto will do for short," the man volunteered, with an amused quirk of the lips as he glanced upward again.
"Have you any requests at the moment, Fujimoto Shirou? You may take your time thinking on the matter if you like..."
"Well-- what can you--"
The boy stopped himself mid-question, frowning as he glanced down at this mysterious man. Thought about the prick against his leg, the goblins he'd never been able to see before, this strange almost-ceremony.
He met the stranger's eyes and stared back hard, gaze focused, intent. His fingers, still smaller and skinnier, wrapped around the spindly clawed ones.
"Mephi... Mephisto. What are you?"
Somehow, it had all started here. He knew it.
He wanted to be part of this world.
"Why, I thought you'd never ask," murmured the man, eyes bright. A smile spread wide across his lips, revealing very white teeth -- those canines seemed longer and sharper than any the boy had ever seen on a human before--
"Tell me, Fujimoto Shirou. Have you ever heard of Satan...?"
- - -
It took years for him to truly understand what he'd gotten himself into on that day. Rescuing a rebel son of the Dark God who'd made one last spectacular attempt on his father's life, gaining his eternal debt of gratitude in return, using it as a ticket into the hidden world of demons and magic and exorcism -- he thrived in this new world, but his choice of friends didn't come without a price. The demon Mephistopheles, for that was who he was, had always had an eye for good Exorcists; and his offer to repay his debts hadn't been an entirely altruistic one. As the new addition to the Order's fold matured, more and more often Mephisto pulled Shirou into plot after plot that they both knew the younger man couldn't resist.
No longer would Mephisto face his father on his own -- no, on his last try he'd come too close to losing everything. Instead he had determined to himself that he'd find some other way to secure the humans' victory, some new power that even Satan himself could not stop. Something better than the best of the demons, the best of the humans, surpassing every weapon known to the universe---
It was impossible and ridiculous on a number of levels, but really, that was what Fujimoto liked about the guy.
There were certain things he couldn't help wondering about from time to time, though; and one night as they sat on the balcony of Mephisto's manor together, sharing a bottle of wine under the stars, he posed the question:
"Why are you so attached to this side, anyway? I mean, I ain't gonna look a gift horse in the mouth, but -- you're just so different from all the other demons out there. What makes you side with us instead of with home sweet home?"
Briefly, Mephisto paused with his hand on the stem of his glass, lips pursing for a moment in silence. Then at last he glanced back the other man's way, quirked one brow, and smiled a small, wry half-smile. Fujimoto was no child himself by this point, but -- somehow in that moment, he could feel all the other's years in that slitted gaze as the demon spoke.
"If I'd been in Gehenna... I would have died, back then. No one would have had the means to heal my wounds, nor the courage to undo something my father had done. Isn't that reason enough?"
Picking up the wine bottle, he reached over to pour a bit more into his glass, expression thoughtful.
"...I don't believe in rule by fear. I believe in a world that is what one makes of it. No matter whether he were born the third son of Satan, or a village boy entirely too fond of skipping his classes." Beaming, he offered the bottle over in Fujimoto's direction.
"--That strikes me as an appropriately dramatic explanation. Your verdict, Shirou?"
"Sure, why not," chuckled Fujimoto, holding out his mostly-empty glass. "From here it sounds like it calls for a toast."
"A toast?-- A toast... Hmm, let's see..." Thoughtfully pulling at his goatee for a moment, the demon raised his glass.
"Well then. To changing the world."
"To changing both worlds," murmured Shirou in return. Their glasses clinked together.
"Assiah, Gehenna, and everywhere in between."
With those ambitious words spoken, he threw back his wine; savored the prickle of the alcohol against his throat; fancied that perhaps drinking holy water felt a little bit like this. And as his head tipped back, gaze sweeping the black, star-studded sky--
He raised his glass one more time after that, to give Amatsu-Mikaboshi his best salute.
Mirrored from Dreamwidth
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Title: Sacraments
Fandom: Blue Exorcist
Genre: Drama
Charas: Fujimoto, Mephistopheles
Pairing: Gen. Could be pre-FujiMephi if you squint.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Vomiting, alcohol
Summary: The first meeting of a boy and a demon. Pre-canon.
Wow well this may be one of the more pointless fics I've ever written, lol. Just some vague ideas about Fujimoto and Mephi's first meeting which will probably someday be jossed. XD;
Japan, 1965
In the mountains of Enigahara, it was raining.
The rainy season had just begun, in fact, and the forest was a deep, deep green, full of rustling leaves and mist and echoing birdsong. It was also absolutely wet everywhere one turned, but this didn't bother the little boy climbing gingerly up the narrow stone steps toward the local shrine. Indeed, he welcomed it. This was one of his favorite times of year -- it wasn't too oppressively humid yet, and the rain kept tourists and picnickers away from the scenic beauty of the local countryside, which meant he had this mountain grove almost entirely to himself. A whole little rainforest for his own playground.
The steps were worn with age and slick with water and moss here and there; he slipped once or twice on the way upward, but slowly and steadily kept going, raincoat clutched about him. He was used to the climb -- he knew this place well, visited it often whenever he didn't have chores or friends to see or schoolwork that he couldn't afford to blow off. At the top there was a little clearing in the center of the grove, with a lovely view of the sky and the next mountain over, and a tiny shrine to Amatsu-Mikaboshi. This was not a well-traveled shrine. The local old ladies liked to gossip that Amatsu of the Stars was an evil kami and would curse anyone who crossed paths with him, but the boy found that rather unlikely. He was just god of the stars, wasn't he? And his forgotten little shrine certainly did provide a perfect spot for stargazing.
Today, though, there were no stars yet; only a dim, grey-blue afternoon sky burdened with heavy clouds. Pulling his hood closer, the boy glanced upward through the parting leaves of the trees as he reached the top of the steps, squinting against raindrops that rolled down his eyelashes. The drizzle looked likely to continue for a while. All around him rose the scent of fresh rain and fresh leaves, the sight of wetly glimmering green, the flicker of a bird or a rabbit here and there. Water dripped from the stones and battered wood of the old shrine.
Walking over to the spot of worship, the boy laid a single wet and slightly battered orange atop the front altar, clapping twice and offering a bow. He didn't really think Amatsu-Mikaboshi was an evil kami, but it never hurt to be polite about this sort of thing.
"Hi, sir. Thanks for letting me use your spot," he greeted, as he always did. "...Hope you like oranges. I'm gonna go hunt frogs, but I promise I won't hurt any, okay?"
In his young life, he had never yet had occasion to believe that a kami might actually have time to answer him; so he turned away then without waiting, ready to wander back off through the drizzle into that inviting green canopy--
--and that was when something grabbed his leg.
He jumped a little in surprise, stared down at the ground, tried to tug his leg away a bit -- but still it held fast. He couldn't even see what was ensnaring him; it looked like perfectly clear ground... was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe? He tried to pull his leg upward slightly again, gave it a brief shake--
There was a tiny prick of pain on the side of his ankle; a single bead of blood welled up to trickle across his skin, diluted by the rain. Had something bitten him?---
....and then, all of a sudden, he could see.
There was a hand wrapped around his ankle, holding it tight. Pale, extraordinarily unhealthy-looking flesh; long fingers; prominent knuckles; sharp purple-tinted nails that looked almost like claws. The nail on one finger had a dab of his own blood still stuck to the end.
And the hand, of course, belonged to an arm, and the arm belonged to a man. A man sprawled over the grass, a man who had somehow been invisible until just moments before. The boy gaped down at him. Was he a foreigner...? He looked like nothing the boy had ever seen before -- sharp features, pointed ears, slitted eyes that stared up at him like a cat's. How long had the stranger been here? His dark hair was plastered to his face, and the thin yukata draped around him looked long since soaked through to his skin. Here and there it bore faded dark stains that looked to have been half-washed away in the relentless storm--
"Mir ist kalt," mumbled the man.
The boy had no clue what he might be saying, but he seemed to have trouble even pronouncing those few words, mouth moving sluggishly. His gaze was unfocused as he stared up in the general direction of the child's face, and the sound of his breathing was a rough counterpoint to the hiss of the rain. It looked an awful lot like the time his uncle had taken fever and auntie had called him -- what was it again? -- 'delirious'?
"...I dunno what you said, mister," the boy informed him, crouching down and trying to use simple words. Sometimes foreigners could understand some Japanese if you were real patient, he'd heard. "But you shouldn't lay in the rain. Are you sick? C... c'mere... Let's move a little. We'll get some rain off you--"
He reached for the man's arm to carefully try and haul him up to a sitting position, little heart pounding hard. He didn't really know how to help sick people. It would be better to go back to the village and get a grownup, but -- it took a while to climb all the way back down the steps and get to town again. What if the man got worse while he was gone? What if... what if he even died?...
"...the shrine," mumbled the man, this time in thick but understandable Japanese.
"Yeah-- Yeah, the shrine!" agreed the boy, slightly heartened by this turn of events. He ducked his head under the man's shoulder then, trying to take on some of the other's weight despite his much larger size. "That's where we're going. C'mon, we'll get get under the awning, it's not so wet over there..."
"Inside... the shrine..." The man's words cut off for a moment, his breath hitching.
"Wh--... I don't think you'll fit, mister--" Alarmed though he was by that ominous noise, the boy continued to drag his burden over toward the shelter of the shrine's tiny wooden roof. It was only a little further before they'd be fully underneath the awning, or at least as fully as they were going to be able to get. He arranged the stranger as comfortably as he could manage given his much smaller stature; the man lay limply where he was placed, leaning backwards half-upright against the little shrine's wall.
"In... side the shrine," he managed again, letting his eyes fall closed. "A b... a bottle. It says... 'holy water'..."
"...you left something in there?" asked the boy, brow furrowing in confusion. But it seemed to be important to him -- important enough to ask for it when he could barely speak -- so maybe it would help somehow. Quickly removing his raincoat, he draped it over the man's legs, still stretched out in the rain as they were; then with a mumbled apology to Amatsu-Mikaboshi he clambered up to poke around inside the tiny interior of the shrine.
Sure enough, there was a small ceramic jug within. The boy couldn't read many of the characters written on it, but there were two large ones painted over the side in bright blue, and the second of those definitely meant 'water'. Picking it up, he carefully climbed back down to return to the man's side, his own hair already beginning to stick to his face. He plopped down in the wet grass as he began to work the cork out of the ceramic container.
"Is this what you wanted, mister?" With a brief 'pop', the jug came open, and he picked it up to hand over.
Wordlessly, the man reached out to accept it. With shaking hands he held it up to his face, breathed in -- grimacing slightly as he did so -- and then, eyes squeezing shut, he pressed it to his lips and tipped it back.
It was not a terribly large jug, but the man took a while to drink it, adam's apple bobbing slowly. Still he never once came up for air, not even when the clawed hands gripping the jug began to shake harder, not even when tears welled up at the corners of his eyes. He drank every last drop and then tossed the container away with a desperate gasp, seeming to wilt against the side of the little shrine, his whole body shuddering.
"M-- Mister...?" All the boy could do was watch, wide-eyed. This didn't really seem like it was helping the way he'd hoped--
Then the stranger leaned over, half-collapsed onto his side next to the shrine's front, and proceeded to vomit up the contents of his stomach right there at Amatsu-Mikaboshi's altar.
Afterward, he just laid there for a little while longer breathing shallowly, body gone limp again save for the occasional brief spasm. The boy could only watch this for a breathless second or three before he was stumbling over to shake at the man's shoulder, frantic.
"H-- hey! You're not gonna die, are you!? Wh-- what was that-- Are you okay!?..."
It was a moment or three before those slitted eyes pried themselves open again; but at last the stranger glanced up at him. One large wet hand reached up shakily to press against that small wet hand for a moment, and he managed a tired, but reassuring quirk of the lips.
"The worst... is over, little chickadee... A poison to purge a... worse poison. Thank you... for the help. Thank both of you."
Saying that, he rolled backward a little against the kami's stone altar, closed his eyes and passed out.
- - -
The boy stayed there as long as he could, but the strange man never woke. Finally the clearing around them was beginning to grow dim, he was soaked through and cold and hungry, and he knew there was no way he could carry the man all the way back down to the village with him -- so the boy left him with that small raincoat carefully draped over his lap, asked Amatsu-Mikaboshi if he wouldn't mind taking a shift at watch, then began the journey back home. Once there he was thoroughly scolded for being so very late and so very wet, and absolutely no one would believe his tale of meeting an ailing stranger in the forest. He had school tomorrow, his auntie told him, so he had best shape up and get dry and do his homework and forget all this tall-tale nonsense--
So of course, the next day, he snuck away before the morning bell to visit his spot again.
Once he'd climbed all the way up to the shrine, though, he discovered that the man was no longer there. Who knew what had happened to him -- the clearing was just as the boy had left it the evening before, green and damp with the rains, the ceramic jug still lying where it had been flung. But then he noticed... at the altar of Amatsu-Mikaboshi, next to the wet and battered orange, his raincoat lay neatly folded atop the stone.
The boy walked over to shake it out, stared at it for a moment, and smiled. It seemed like a good sign.
- - -
From then on, the boy's world became a rather different place. He saw things which, before that rainy day, he most certainly would have sworn hadn't existed. He saw black sprites flit through the streets of the village, goblins peeking around corners and stealing children's candy. In his hikes through the mountain forests, out of the corner of his eye, he caught glimpses of what surely must have been tengu.
Perhaps another child would have been terrified of it all, but for him -- for him it was exciting. Here he was still in his own boring backyard, and yet all of a sudden, every day brought some new adventure! He wanted to know this new world he'd been invited to lay eyes on. He wanted to be part of it.
And so it was that he started making friends with the local monsters. He left out treats for the tengu and coaxed the goblins into leaving little girls alone; he met a kitsune up in the mountains and cautiously traded amusing tales with it. He learned a few things, and tried a few things, and-- he wanted to know more.
It was nearly two years later on another damp, quiet day when he ascended the steps to Amatsu-Mikaboshi's shrine again, offerings in hand, and found someone there ahead of him.
"Ah---"
For a moment, all he could do was stare.
"You----"
"Skipping school again...? Quite the bad habit for someone of your young age."
The stranger smiled.
It was, of course, none other than the very same man whose life he'd saved at this spot years previous. The boy had grown a bit in the intervening time, as boys are apt to do; but this strange foreigner looked utterly unchanged, save for the umbrella in his grip and the white suit that took the place of that soaked-through yukata. He raised one hand in greeting.
"H... How do you know I'm skipping?" In his shock, these rather sullen words were somehow the first to pass the boy's lips. "I haven't seen you since---"
"Ahh, but I have seen you," smiled the man again. "You've come here many times in the last two years, hmm? And your favorite time to stop by seems to be right in the middle of a weekday, when good boys should be in school. A day such as today."
"....y... yeah, well--" The boy's brow furrowed, his shock turning a little further toward defensiveness. "Who cares, anyway, I didn't---"
"But since we happen to be paying our respects to Lord Amatsu-Mikaboshi at the same time today, please allow me to take the opportunity to thank you."
"....Huh?" A pause, and a blink. The boy stared down at the food offerings in his hands before his gaze turned toward the stranger again, and -- he flushed a little.
"You don't have to do anything like that... I mean, all I did was drag you around and--"
"Had I not drunk that hateful water, I most certainly would have died within the night," said the man quite seriously. One eyebrow was raised as he stared into the boy's face. "I have you to thank for my life, young man. I owe you a debt."
At those words, the boy gave a quiet swallow. There was something... unexplainably heavy about them. The very air drifting about the clearing seemed for a moment to grow utterly still.
"May I have your name?" asked the stranger softly.
The boy glanced up to meet his eyes for a second, brow furrowed uncertainly. Sometimes... sometimes he'd heard that it was better for some things not to know what you were really called, but---
"...Shirou," he answered back, a little hesitantly.
"Fujimoto Shirou."
At this, the stranger gave a slow nod, and tossed his umbrella into the grass. With a few quick strides he had crossed to the boy's side and -- right there in his white suit in the wet clearing, he knelt on one knee to take Shirou's free hand.
"Fujimoto Shirou. I am in your debt, and a gentleman of quality must discharge his debts," he murmured, head bowed.
"Ask what you will of me, and your bidding shall be done. You have only to call the name Mephistopheles."
The boy's brow furrowed, expression noncomprehending. Not only did he have no real clue what this was about, but--
"Meph... phela... stopha... Feffees...?"
"...Mephisto will do for short," the man volunteered, with an amused quirk of the lips as he glanced upward again.
"Have you any requests at the moment, Fujimoto Shirou? You may take your time thinking on the matter if you like..."
"Well-- what can you--"
The boy stopped himself mid-question, frowning as he glanced down at this mysterious man. Thought about the prick against his leg, the goblins he'd never been able to see before, this strange almost-ceremony.
He met the stranger's eyes and stared back hard, gaze focused, intent. His fingers, still smaller and skinnier, wrapped around the spindly clawed ones.
"Mephi... Mephisto. What are you?"
Somehow, it had all started here. He knew it.
He wanted to be part of this world.
"Why, I thought you'd never ask," murmured the man, eyes bright. A smile spread wide across his lips, revealing very white teeth -- those canines seemed longer and sharper than any the boy had ever seen on a human before--
"Tell me, Fujimoto Shirou. Have you ever heard of Satan...?"
- - -
It took years for him to truly understand what he'd gotten himself into on that day. Rescuing a rebel son of the Dark God who'd made one last spectacular attempt on his father's life, gaining his eternal debt of gratitude in return, using it as a ticket into the hidden world of demons and magic and exorcism -- he thrived in this new world, but his choice of friends didn't come without a price. The demon Mephistopheles, for that was who he was, had always had an eye for good Exorcists; and his offer to repay his debts hadn't been an entirely altruistic one. As the new addition to the Order's fold matured, more and more often Mephisto pulled Shirou into plot after plot that they both knew the younger man couldn't resist.
No longer would Mephisto face his father on his own -- no, on his last try he'd come too close to losing everything. Instead he had determined to himself that he'd find some other way to secure the humans' victory, some new power that even Satan himself could not stop. Something better than the best of the demons, the best of the humans, surpassing every weapon known to the universe---
It was impossible and ridiculous on a number of levels, but really, that was what Fujimoto liked about the guy.
There were certain things he couldn't help wondering about from time to time, though; and one night as they sat on the balcony of Mephisto's manor together, sharing a bottle of wine under the stars, he posed the question:
"Why are you so attached to this side, anyway? I mean, I ain't gonna look a gift horse in the mouth, but -- you're just so different from all the other demons out there. What makes you side with us instead of with home sweet home?"
Briefly, Mephisto paused with his hand on the stem of his glass, lips pursing for a moment in silence. Then at last he glanced back the other man's way, quirked one brow, and smiled a small, wry half-smile. Fujimoto was no child himself by this point, but -- somehow in that moment, he could feel all the other's years in that slitted gaze as the demon spoke.
"If I'd been in Gehenna... I would have died, back then. No one would have had the means to heal my wounds, nor the courage to undo something my father had done. Isn't that reason enough?"
Picking up the wine bottle, he reached over to pour a bit more into his glass, expression thoughtful.
"...I don't believe in rule by fear. I believe in a world that is what one makes of it. No matter whether he were born the third son of Satan, or a village boy entirely too fond of skipping his classes." Beaming, he offered the bottle over in Fujimoto's direction.
"--That strikes me as an appropriately dramatic explanation. Your verdict, Shirou?"
"Sure, why not," chuckled Fujimoto, holding out his mostly-empty glass. "From here it sounds like it calls for a toast."
"A toast?-- A toast... Hmm, let's see..." Thoughtfully pulling at his goatee for a moment, the demon raised his glass.
"Well then. To changing the world."
"To changing both worlds," murmured Shirou in return. Their glasses clinked together.
"Assiah, Gehenna, and everywhere in between."
With those ambitious words spoken, he threw back his wine; savored the prickle of the alcohol against his throat; fancied that perhaps drinking holy water felt a little bit like this. And as his head tipped back, gaze sweeping the black, star-studded sky--
He raised his glass one more time after that, to give Amatsu-Mikaboshi his best salute.
Mirrored from Dreamwidth
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