[REVISED][X-1999/Tokyo Babylon][Seishirou/Subaru] Cyclical
I come with more fic! This idea has probably been done like 2850982036826 times in an old fandom such as X-1999 but I personally haven't come across any fics TOO similar, so I figured I'd give it a go! I have another PROBABLY CLICHED chapter fic coming out if you enjoyed this, and some small crack ficlets I might post (crack is sadly, my speciality. I don't know where all these serious fics are coming from T_T)
Oh also, this is HUGE. SORRY :(
Without further ado!
Title: Cyclical
Fandom: X-1999/Tokyo Babylon
Rating: R for violent themes
Pairing: Seishirou/Subaru...sort of. It's reincarnation fic >:O
Word Count: 6,418
Warnings: spoilers for all of the X-1999 manga, m/m slash, large age gap in a relationship (although the youngest is 19 so no underage to worry about!)
Summary: When Subaru needs someone to succeed him, the cycle begins anew.
Notes: set in the mangaverse, 20 years after X16. More notes are at the end of the fic.
Disclaimer: X-1999 and Tokyo Babylon belong to CLAMP and no copyright infringement was intended by this work of fiction.
Cyclical
He knows the dilemma would have occurred eventually. The Sakurazukamori is supposed to be killed by the one he loves most, but the one Sakurazuka Subaru has loved most has been dead for twenty years, and no one has ever taken Seishirou's place in his heart. Now he is getting old - in five years he will be fifty and he can already feel the agility leaving as quickly as his sanity did so many years ago.
He wants nothing more than to die and rejoin Seishirou, but the Tree's fear of death outweighs his own desire, and it will not let him die without an heir. Five suicide attempts taught him this, to his own chagrin. The pistol shot to the forehead should have killed him, but the tree had magic far older and more powerful than even the magic that the Kamuis had wielded at the end of the world, and Subaru had awoken face-down in Seishirou's mother's house without a scratch on him.
There is no one to succeed him. He has no children, no relatives, no one he cares for. The tree will make him live forever if need be, to keep itself alive by feeding it with corpses, and he's locked between a rock and a hard place, because he does not love anybody other than Seishirou, but Seishirou is dead.
Until one day, when he is walking near Shibuya and he sees a young man, talking animatedly on his cell phone. He can't be much older than nineteen, but there's something in his eyes that Subaru recognizes on an instinctual level, and he freezes and stares at him. He can't eliminate the feeling that the young man is familiar, despite that he's never seen him before in his life. His hair is crested with blond highlights and he wears the uniform of one of the more popular colleges in the area, and even though his face is too wide and his mouth is too small and his eyes are too big, Subaru knows who he is immediately.
He pauses beside him at the train station and the young man gets off his cell phone and stares at him. Subaru looks at the sky and notices that it is blue through the smog. His new companion's eyes are also blue, a guarded, heavy indigo, and his face is round with youth. He doesn't know how he knows, but he can feel the spirit behind those eyes, and it's Seishirou, through and through.
"Seishirou?" he asks and the young man stops staring and grins smoothly.
"No, I'm sorry. You must be confusing me with someone else."
"I must," Subaru replies absently. "My apologies." He wanders off brokenly and watches a bird take flight from one of the trees in Ueno Park, where he always inevitably ends up.
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The young man finds him there, standing in front of the tree. The wind blows his blond highlights in ruffles as he huddles with his hands in his pockets, watching the strange, crazy older man who he feels he should know.
"Your eyes," he says, and Subaru starts visibly before turning around. "They're very unusual."
"It's all his fault," Subaru says without malice. "He died and left me alone." He eyes the figure beside him, the smoothly polished shoes and perfectly-pressed uniform, and he can feel it. Despite the differences in looks, this is Seishirou, somehow, somewhere, come back to him, and it hurts so very much.
"My name is Matsumoto Kenta," he said, his very formal speech sounding unnatural from someone of his age.
"Sakurazuka Subaru." Kenta moves over to touch the tree, running the bark under his fingers, his eyebrows furrowed in deep concentration. "Why did you follow me?" Subaru asks at last, when Kenta doesn't speak. He's already feeling uncomfortable being social with another person after such a long period of solitude, but this is Seishirou, and he clings to the last remains of his lover like a starving dog would cling to a bone.
"I felt like I should," Kenta says quietly, then laughs self-consciously. He's so young compared to how Subaru remembers Seishirou, and his eyes are bright, and Subaru wonders if Kenta is everything Seishirou could have been had he had a different upbringing, a different life. Kenta is handsome and young and Seishirou, so he looks at the boy and says, gently,
"Kenta-kun, do you like sakura?"
Kenta glances at him, startled.
"I've always liked sakura," he answers after a moment, and Subaru watches the tree sway in the wind and thinks about parallels and Seishirou and how much he wants to possess this boy. It's wrong, that bit of conscience that he still has left screams out, it's wrong, he's innocent this time around…
Subaru has suffered for twenty years without Seishirou. He's hesitant to let him slip through his fingers now. Kenta is glancing at him with a shrewd expression and Subaru bites at his lower lip and pulls at his gloves. Being around Seishirou makes him feel like his skin is on fire and too big for him, even after all this years, and like thousands of tiny needles are pricking him. His proximity spreads through his body like a fever and when Kenta shivers he knows he can feel it too.
Subaru can't take it anymore and begins to walk away, because it's the only thing he can do without driving himself any further along towards insanity, but Kenta reaches out and stops him by grabbing one of his wrists.
"You're lonely," he says, as though he didn't cause it all, as though it wasn't his fault. There's calculation going on behind his eyes - it's only through years of reading Seishirou's moods that Subaru can see it, and it's much more innocent than ever before, but Kenta is definitely plotting something.
Subaru doesn't bother to reply, staring up at the sakura and letting his back shield him from the wind.
After a moment of awkward silence, Kenta smiles slightly. "I'll see you around." Then he turns and leaves, and for the first time in twenty years Subaru wants to cry.
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Subaru sleeps on Seishirou's bed, curled up in his sheets and sometimes in his old suits, because they still vaguely hold the scent of cigarettes, sakura, and blood. Had he been sane he would have realized long ago that the scent is his now, inherited like his eye and his job, but all he can think about is how it allows him see Seishirou when he closes his eyes. The dull ache in his heart is so common at this point that even Matsumoto Kenta can't fix it when he shows up at the Sakurazuka house one rainy day with his schoolbooks, raising an eyebrow.
"How did you find me?" Subaru asks, although he really doesn't care.
"I followed my feet," comes the answer, which really isn't an answer at all and Subaru knows this even if he can't put his finger on why. He lets the young man in, prepares tea for them in dusty cups, and watches guardedly as Seishirou (no, not Seishirou. Kenta.) glances around his mother's old home with curiosity. He finally slumps into one of the tattered armchairs like this is a common occurrence, sliding his schoolbooks elegantly onto the coffee table. He has Seishirou's natural grace despite his different stature, and Subaru can tell just by looking at him that he's extremely intelligent.
Subaru curls up on the couch and sips at his tea. They sit in companionable silence for a few moments, the only sound the slow drip of rain on the windowsill, before Kenta abruptly sets down his teacup and stands up.
"I have dreams," he says awkwardly, as though he isn't sure how to broach the subject. "About you. You're younger, and your eyes are both green, but it's unmistakable. I always thought you were…imaginary, until a week ago at Shibuya." He frowns.
"What kinds of dreams?" Subaru asks, only really half paying attention as he sees bridges falling, blood, so much blood on his hands, Seishirou's last words and the moment his world shattered…
Kenta is blushing, and it abruptly throws Subaru out of his memories. Oh. Oh.
"But since I was dreaming about you before I even met you, I figured you were important, and that I should make an effort to get to know you," Kenta hurries on. The awkward shyness is uncharacteristic of Seishirou and it throws Subaru for a loop - it's more like himself at sixteen than Seishirou at any age. But then the confident smile returns. "Do you know anything about calculus?"
Subaru, of course, does not, but he could never deny Seishirou anything, and they spend the rest of the afternoon with their heads bowed together over a textbook, Kenta solving ridiculously complicated math problems and Subaru watching how the sunlight glints off of his hair.
As Kenta closes his book and is about to say goodbye for the day, something within Subaru snaps even further and he grabs on to him, pulls the younger man to his chest and buries his face in the gold-tipped hair. Kenta doesn't protest, but instead wraps his arms around Subaru and rubs his back.
"I missed you," Subaru whispers brokenly, barely audible above the pounding of the rain. "I missed you so much, you left me alone for so long, don't leave me again."
"I won't," Kenta says in a voice not entirely his own. "I won't leave you, Subaru-kun."
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After several weeks of quiet afternoons doing homework, Kenta moves all of his things into one of the spare bedrooms. This fact doesn't register to Subaru for three days, until he walks in on Kenta cooking in the kitchen one bright morning and thinks of several mornings when he saw this same sight, so many years ago.
"Why are you here so early?" he asks. Sometimes it feels like all he does is ask questions anymore. His life blurs from one moment of Kenta to the next, with the lonely spaces empty and dull. Kenta turns and stares at him, a spatula in one hand.
"I've been living here for a few days. I figured since you didn't say anything, you didn't have a problem with it." Subaru has noticed the increase in chocolate in the pantry and ice cream in the freezer, but not the young man's presence itself. The idea of Seishirou never leaving again is a very nice one and so he smiles and nods. Kenta eyes Subaru disapprovingly. "I haven't seen you eat since I moved in."
"I forget."
"There's no food in this whole house. I had to go to the grocery store on the corner to survive. All you have is tea." Kenta is angry. Subaru can tell by the intense stare, very much like the one Seishirou used to use when Subaru abused himself, and even though he's being lectured by a man half his age, in reality Seishirou has always had this power over him and it doesn't even seem unnatural.
Kenta doesn't say anything further, but makes him an omelet and stares at him expectantly. Subaru picks at it and is surprised when it's tasty. His stomach is too unused to food for him to eat more than a few mouthfuls, but he enjoys it because Seishirou made it.
"The house was lonely until you moved in," Subaru says. "It recognized you the moment you walked in the door."
Kenta smiles slightly, finishing his omelet.
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Subaru returns home with blood on his clothes, on his gloves. He doesn't wear Seishirou's old suits out to work, afraid of ruining them, but after washing up at home he slips into them, the soft green fabric still bringing back memories after all these years, tattered as they are.
It isn't until Kenta sees the blood on his hands one day and goes tense that Subaru realizes that he doesn't know what he does for a living. "I don't want to," he says as he sees the look on Kenta's face. "I don't want to, but he made me, he made me. I do it for him."
"Sakurazukamori," Kenta whispers, and Subaru wonders where he ever learned that word. He nods in confirmation and Kenta leaves, returning with a warm washcloth. He cleans Subaru's hands for him, gently wiping the blood off with firm strokes, his eyes never leaving Subaru's.
"I don't even see their faces anymore," Subaru whispers brokenly. "It's been so long, and the tree wants so much."
Kenta's eyes flicker with confusion as he reaches up with one hand to cup Subaru's face, a look in his eyes that says he doesn't know why he has dreamed of this broken man since his fifteenth birthday.
"I think if you saw their faces, you wouldn't be able to do it," he says at last. "You're too kind, Subaru-san."
When I think about it…you weren't ready to kill someone…because…you're too kind.
Seishirou's words. Kenta's words. Subaru closes his eyes on the pain of seeing Seishirou die, again. He sees it once a day, and it never gets better. Even now that Seishirou has come back to him, the dreams still linger, the waking nightmares.
"The tree would still be hungry," he tells Kenta, taking the washcloth from him and wringing it out in a sink that has been stained red with years-worth of blood. Kenta had wondered about the color, but never asked.
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A month after moving into the Sakurazuka house, Kenta celebrates his twentieth birthday. To Subaru's surprise, he comes home from walking in Ueno Park to find four other teenagers in his living room with Kenta, celebrating his newfound ability to buy alcohol legally. None of them have souls that he recognizes, and he quickly loses interest and retreats up to Seishirou's bedroom, clamping down on his jealousy. Of course he is not the only one in Kenta's life - Kenta still attends classes, and occasionally even goes out at night. Despite his hasty and inexplicable move from his college dorm to the Sakurazuka house, Kenta is still an active college student, and sometimes Subaru has to remind himself of this fact.
After Kenta's friends leave, he heads upstairs with flushed cheeks and a calculating grin. "I'm twenty today," he announces, hanging in the doorway. Subaru looks away from the window and frowns.
"You're too young," he says. "Too young, and your face is wrong." Kenta ignores this and flops on Seishirou's bed, and Subaru realizes vaguely that he's been drinking. If Subaru were Seishirou, Kenta's virtue would have been in serious danger, but Subaru is Subaru, and always has been, so he stays by the window and pretends that he can't see Kenta stretching out from fingertips to toes on the bed.
It occurs to him vaguely, as Kenta finally rises from the bed and drapes himself over Subaru on the window seat, that Kenta is Seishirou and perhaps his own virtue is in much more danger.
Kenta reaches for him and brings his lips to Subaru's, softly, and it feels vaguely like Subaru is drowning. He hasn't felt this in twenty years, since Seishirou died and left him alone, and now all he can see is a pair of matched indigo eyes and ruffled blond-tipped hair.
Kenta is not Seishirou at all. Kenta is so much Seishirou that it hurts.
Subaru pushes him away and stands shakily. He runs out the door into the night, runs away from that temptation, curls up underneath the tree in Ueno Park and tries to forget.
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The first time Kenta sees Subaru kill, he is sick to his stomach in the bushes nearby. If Subaru hadn't been so focused, he would have been vaguely amused at the younger man's disgust for killing - such a change from his previous lifetime. Subaru wonders in amusement if Kenta will hate him now that he's seen. The urge to possess the boy grows in him again, almost as if Seishirou himself had infected Subaru with his sadism along with his eye, so many years before. Kenta would be remarkably easy to break. Kenta, although shrewd, is young, passionate, and compared to Subaru, incredibly innocent. Subaru dreams of staining that innocence with his own sin, like a mirror image of the past.
Then Kenta will laugh, and Subaru can't take that away from him. Subaru is not as cruel as Seishirou was. Subaru is more broken and pathetic, and less of a predator.
He brings his hand to the damp wetness at his eyes and realizes that he is crying for the first time in years. Kenta has finished being ill and is now standing at his side, still looking nauseous but trying to make an effort to be there for him, somehow.
"I'm sorry," Subaru sobs, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, it's the only part of him I have left and I have to do it." He sinks to sit on the bench near where the victim had just disappeared and Kenta places one heavy hand on his shoulder.
He looks like he doesn't know what to say. Subaru vaguely wonders if he's going to leave, going to flee and never return. If, like a mirror image of his past self, the killing is too much for Matsumoto Kenta to bear.
"Subaru-san," Kenta finally speaks, his voice shaky and sounding so small, "we should go inside." The wind is whipping up and the winter air is chillier than usual, but Subaru doesn't even notice. Instead, he pulls Kenta down on the bench beside him, pulling him against his chest and stroking long fingers through his hair, and he can feel Kenta's breath catch in his throat.
"S-Subaru-san?"
Subaru doesn't say anything, but he doesn't need to. He trails his hands down Kenta's face, coiling in his hair, and buries his nose in the crook of Kenta's neck and breathes in a scent so distinctly Seishirou that for a moment he loses track of time and space and he's twenty-five again. Neither of them know who initiates it, but suddenly Subaru feels warm lips pressed against his own and he clings desperately to Kenta, like a suffocating man finally given air. He explores Kenta's mouth slowly with his tongue, mildly surprised that he doesn't actually taste like Seishirou because he is Seishirou in every other way, even in the way he splays his fingers across Subaru's back and the way he clutches at his hips, as if learning from the vague echo of a distant memory.
They walk home in each others' shadows, not actually touching but together all the same, as dawn breaks over Tokyo.
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Kenta is fiercely overprotective and demandingly possessive, and on his good days it reminds Subaru of a certain friendly veterinarian he loved when he was sixteen. On bad days it brings back flashes of a figure in sunglasses, and hands through chests with collapsing bridges, and Kenta knows him well enough after four months of living with him to leave him alone.
He sits at the kitchen table and pours over his sociology textbook, watching Subaru out of the corner of his eye as the older man stalks in front of the windows, itching to go outside and yet not knowing why. Subaru needs air, needs sunlight, needs to get away from the constant living memory of his Wish, and sometimes he sits under the Tree and for a fleeting instant, wishes that Kenta had never come into his life. With Seishirou's return has come the return of his emotions, his ability to feel, and he can no longer wade through life like a walking dead man, never reacting to events but simply letting things go on around him. That method of living had suited him for twenty years.
Now it can no longer sustain him. Kenta makes his chest grow tight and his eyes water, Kenta makes him crazy, hot and cold all over, and Subaru knows that Kenta is ages older than his mere twenty years dictate by the way he looks at him.
Kenta has Seishirou's ridiculous love of sweets and the strange, silly persona that Seishirou had adopted for the year of the Bet, which makes Subaru wonder how much of that cheerful, dorky man had actually been an act. Ridiculous things are constantly appearing in his cupboards, plates hand-painted with witty sayings and mugs with animals painted on them. An apron hangs in the pantry now, and Kenta occasionally will cook for them both, completely at odds with the slightly troublesome college student he normally seemed to be.
Subaru can't say that he minds.
They know ridiculously little about each others' separate lives, Subaru realizes one day as he watches Kenta study and discovers he doesn't even know what he's at school for. Kenta always has lots of work in various different subjects, and can often be found sitting at the kotatsu with his laptop, typing away. Technology still baffles Subaru, so there is nothing too complicated in the Sakurazuka house, but with Kenta comes the invasion of gadgets like iPods and cell phones and gaming consoles hooked up to the TV. Finally, Subaru asks him what he's studying.
"Veterinary medicine," the young man replies absently.
When Subaru looks at Kenta, he sees a Seishirou who could have been, if his life had been different.
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Six months after first meeting Kenta, the constant presence of Seishirou in his life again begins to bring sanity back to Subaru's mind. He can feel his thoughts becoming less disjointed and strange, and he's not sure that he likes it.
With the return of his sanity inevitably comes the remembrance of things long past, sorrows and joys, a sister he misses so much it hurts, a man he loves so much it nearly killed him. He can think back and remember being sixteen again, remember the essence of Subaru, and that's when the guilt hits him.
He sinks to the floor in shame, countless faces in front of his eyes, stained with the pallor of death, all killed by him. He rocks back and forth and cries desperately, wondering how he allowed himself to become so broken and empty that he killed with such precision, with such a lack of remorse. He wonders how Kenta can even look at him, but surely if anybody has no right to judge, it is Seishirou.
He wonders if he can ever atone for what he's done. He weeps brokenly for hours, until Kenta arrives home from his biochemistry class to find him. He kneels down beside him and pulls Subaru into his arms without asking, because he too has noticed the return of Subaru's sanity, and he knows it will be difficult. Subaru buries his face in Kenta's hair, no longer dyed as ridiculously as it had been six months before.
"How did I become this monster?" he finally asks in a raw voice. "I'm never going to do it again. I can't ever do it again." The Tree is protesting, somewhere deep in his mind, but Subaru ignores it.
Kenta looks into his eyes. "Can you just stop?" Subaru wants to say "yes, of course", but in reality they both know the answer, hovering over them, and so instead he shakes his head. "That's what I thought," Kenta adds, gently pressing his lips to Subaru's hairline.
"Seishirou-san…" Subaru murmurs. Sometimes he still calls Kenta by that name, but it feels almost as natural to him as his own, and he doesn't complain.
"Teach me," Kenta says at last. He looks determined and worried, a combination Subaru should have learned was dangerous long ago. "Teach me to do this for you, so you don't have to."
"No!" Subaru shouts, standing up angrily. "I won't let you turn back into him!" Kenta doesn't move, but stares up at him with wide, innocent blue eyes.
"Your sanity is the most important thing to me," Kenta growls.
"And what about yours?" Subaru bites back. "You're just as innocent as I was, so many years ago. You couldn't ever kill a person. The guilt would destroy you." But this is not entirely true. Kenta has never shown any indication that he disapproves of Subaru's work, besides his obvious disgust of the act of killing itself. Kenta never says anything when Subaru returns home covered in blood, and Kenta's respect for the lives of people he has no attachment to is tenuous at best. They both know this. "I can't turn you into a monster," Subaru says, then his face crumples and he begins to sob again, sinking back down and curling up in Kenta's arms.
Kenta doesn't bring up the topic of his teaching again that night, but Subaru knows in his heart that he was born to be his successor.
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There are more dusty books in the Sakurazuka mansion than even Kenta knows what to do with. He pours through them while Subaru is out walking, searching for the key to awaken his powers and convince Subaru that this is his destiny. He's been thinking about this for a few weeks, since Subaru began showing signs of rational thought, and he knows it's the only thing to be done. Subaru still has the guilt invading his every thought, and Kenta knows if he wants to keep this sane, almost cute version of the normally cold assassin, he has to stop him from killing anyone, ever again. After hours of searching the books, Subaru still hasn't returned, and the whir of the fax machine breaks Kenta from his reverie. He's not concerned for Subaru - the man can go out and angst for a whole day on some occasions - but the fax machine does grab his attention, and as he removes the familiar set of papers, an idea begins to form in his head.
He flips through the assignment. Everything is heavily coded against prying eyes, but Kenta has watched Subaru pour over these enough that he can decipher crucial things, such as the victim's name. The man's picture is there as well, smiling up at him. A quick search on the internet reveals that he's a highly conservative minor politician, vocal and outspoken about changes in government policies.
Kenta stares down at the assignment, stares at the man's website, and something like excitement begins to churn in his veins. If he goes and kills this man, Subaru won't have to. He's not sure how he'll accomplish this, or when, but he takes the acceptance symbol that Subaru keeps in a desk drawer and faxes it back to the original number, then stuffs the assignment papers in his thick anatomy textbook.
If he can pull this off without Subaru knowing, he can prove he's capable of becoming the next Sakurazukamori. When he was young, one of his mother's friends once told him he had all the raw power of an untrained onmyouji - he knows he can do this, knows he can save Subaru's mind from itself. With this thought, he returns to the library. There is a faint whisper in his mind, and it urges him to select a book on the far side, away from his starting point. Kenta trusts his instincts and pulls the book out. It's thick and very old, bound with leather. He sets it on the table and pulls it open, jumping back with surprise as the wards flash in front of his eyes before settling back down into the cover. Green, glowing words begin to swirl across the page, and Kenta's breath catches. This is it.
If you are reading this, the book reads in swirling script, then you are one of the individuals destined to be called Sakurazukamori. Power calls to power, and only those who wield the power of the Sakura can read what is within this book. For Kenta, who hasn't even been tutored in onmyoujutsu, the pages following are difficult to decipher and hard to understand. They contain many spells and few actual discussions on the art of assassination, and Kenta sighs in consternation with the realization that he will need Subaru to teach him after all.
He sets the book back into the shelf, wondering briefly if Subaru would have ever been able to read those glowing words. Somehow, deep in his heart, he knows the other man was never meant to be the Sakurazukamori at all, that he was just a transition until the true master of the Sakura could return again.
In order to convince Subaru that he won't mourn the loss of his own innocence, Kenta has to kill the minor politician in his assignment. Not only that, but he must do it quietly, and without the use of onmyoujutsu this will be much more difficult.
He frowns heavily. He has quite a bit of work ahead of him.
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The Tree approves of Matsumoto Kenta as Subaru's successor.
It tells Subaru this, and the older man shuts it out of his mind with an angry growl.
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With a lot of blind luck and probably some divine intervention, Kenta manages to sneak inside his victim's home. The man isn't very well protected and it's a wonder the government had even needed the Sakurazukamori to take care of him, but it's lucky for Kenta because he does not possess the skills to take care of a more cautious opponent. He pulls the vial of poison that he meticulously crafted from a book in the library out of his pocket and calmly coats the teacups in the corner with it. There is a magical component to the poison that he hadn't been able to achieve, but even without the power behind it, it is supposed to kill silently and without leaving a trace behind, and that is all Kenta needs at this point.
He slips out before he is seen.
The next day, the death is a major headline, and the excited high that Kenta has been riding fades abruptly as he realizes that he killed another human being. Subaru finds him in the bathroom, leaning over the sink and staring emptily at his hands. He doesn't say anything, but Kenta can see through the mirror that he knows what he did.
"I thought it would be easy," he whispers into the air. "I didn't care about him at all."
Subaru closes his eyes on the pain. "For you, it used to be," he replies and gathers Kenta into his arms. They sit there together, on the bathroom floor, Kenta clinging desperately to Subaru's shoulders and feeling ridiculously young and stupid and tainted, but after his panic attack is over, he feels at peace.
He knows he can do this again. He's stronger than Subaru.
"You have to train me," he says at last.
"No," comes the stubborn reply.
"If you don't, I'll do it again on my own. You can't stop me." Kenta is Seishirou and Seishirou was nothing if not determined. "I don't like it but I'll do it for you, I have to. And if I don't learn onmyoujutsu I'll eventually be caught and executed…" He puts on the big innocent eyes and watches Subaru cave.
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The Tree is loud in Subaru's mind, yelling at him to take Kenta's offer, but it is the thought of losing Seishirou to death again that truly makes him sigh and nod his head.
Subaru is a fool for Seishirou.
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Three years pass. Kenta becomes the Sakurazukamori in all but name.
Subaru hasn't killed since Kenta first killed the politician, so long ago. His sanity is mostly restored, and he hates himself daily even now, wondering what he ever did to deserve some fleeting happiness before his inevitable death. Kenta always seems to sense these moods and gently draws Subaru to him, curls up on his lap with a book, and his very presence banishes Subaru's self-hatred, at least for the moment. But the moment is all either of them asks for, anymore.
Kenta has graduated from university and sometimes talks of graduate school, but his two jobs already tax his resources. He enjoys the work he does at the large veterinary clinic in Shinjuku, and shivers when he thinks of the nights that he spends stalking prey across Tokyo. He has taken to using the name 'Sakurazuka Kenta', all but forgetting his original surname, much like Subaru himself. His aversion to killing has nearly disappeared, replaced by a resigned sense of inevitability, but Subaru is pleased that he's never shown pleasure in the act.
It reminds him that Kenta is not really Seishirou, that Seishirou died long, long ago. Nearly twenty-four years ago.
Subaru wakes up on the morning of his forty-ninth birthday and knows that it is time.
Kenta is already cooking breakfast and Subaru stands in the doorway, watching him fondly. The still-gangly nineteen year old has matured into a graceful twenty-three, and every year that Kenta ages, he grows more and more like Seishirou, in both looks and actions. He's the Seishirou that never actually existed - the cheerful, troublesome veterinarian with an insatiable sweet tooth and a love for huge gestures. He teases Subaru daily and sometimes Subaru wonders what Hokuto would have thought of him.
He thinks she would have liked him. It's a shame that he killed her.
Kenta and Seishirou sometimes blur in Subaru's mind, but in the end it doesn't really matter, because Kenta is Seishirou, and even if most of the time Subaru breathes the wrong name in bed, or sometimes absently refers to Kenta as 'Seishirou-san' when talking to him, Kenta doesn't get offended. In the fragile confines of Subaru's newly-healed mind, Seishirou and Kenta are the same.
"Today is the day," he says, because there's nothing else to say. Kenta looks up from his frying pan and frowns.
"I'm not doing it."
"You have to." Subaru is firm in his conviction, unafraid to die. Kenta has been his salvation, and with one hand through his heart, Kenta will also be his destruction. It is poetic and beautiful and so wrong it feels right, and although Subaru knows Seishirou won't be waiting for him beyond life, he finds himself looking forward to the day when he will be reunited with him.
Perhaps he could even reincarnate and come back to see Kenta. The thought was oddly pleasing.
"I can't kill you," Kenta growls, turning off the stove. "You're mine." After three years, Seishirou's possessive streak has manifested even stronger in him. Subaru wonders if he'll have to trick Kenta into killing him, much like Seishirou once did. He wonders if killing him will drive Kenta mad.
"You have to. It's time for you to become the Sakurazukamori." Subaru is quite resigned to his fate - he has been for over twenty years. Leaving Kenta is something he doesn't want to do, but four years of happiness cannot truly compete with twenty years of utter despair and madness, and in the end, Subaru is just relieved that life is over.
Something in Kenta changes suddenly. He drops the pan and his blue eyes are suddenly much darker.
"You'd better not say something inane, like you want me to have your eye," he says sharply.
Subaru raises an eyebrow. "Which one?"
"Subaru-kun," Kenta says patiently, and Subaru realizes he's not speaking to Kenta any longer. The coldness of Seishirou settles on his reincarnated features, and he takes Subaru's hand, pulls it against his cheek. "He won't do it."
Subaru's eyes fill with tears. "I'm glad I could see you, one last time." He wonders if Seishirou will kill him right in the kitchen, next to the sizzling frying pan of eggs, but Seishirou has more dramatic sense than that, because Kenta leaves the kitchen and walks out to the garden. Subaru follows.
They pause beneath the biggest sakura tree in Seishirou's mother's garden, and Kenta smiles coldly at him. It is such a Seishirou smile that Subaru feels weak.
"You were a horrible Sakurazukamori," Seishirou tells him. "I feel like your successor will do much better."
"Of course he will," Subaru says quietly. "He's you." He wraps his arms around Kenta's neck for the last time, leaning in to kiss the familiar lips. He doesn't know if he's kissing Kenta or Seishirou, but he knows he loves this person, and that's all that matters.
He feels Kenta shift.
Everything is going numb, slowly. He glances down numbly at Kenta's arm, protruding through his chest, then glances back up. Kenta is staring at him in horror, the expression on his face mirroring Subaru's own, twenty four years before, and Subaru realizes that Seishirou is gone.
Everything is starting to fade away. Kenta is yelling something, shaking him, desperately trying to stop the bleeding, but he is just so tired, he can only say one thing as blackness begins to set in.
"I…love you…" he gasps out, then goes limp in Kenta's arms. Sakurazuka Kenta sinks to his knees with empty eyes, buries his face in Subaru's hair one final time, and for the first time in his life, hates himself completely.
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'Everything is a cycle,' the Tree tells him grouchily. 'The Sakurazukamori is always killed by the one he loves most.'
"Then how will I die?" Kenta asks snidely. "I killed the one that I loved most." He's grown sullen, bitter, and sloppy since Subaru's death. His ties are never done anymore, and he no longer works as a veterinarian. He's given up on grad school. He sits in Subaru's empty house and kills.
He's turning into Subaru, the Subaru he first met, but somehow he doesn't care.
'I had this fight with Subaru many times, and fate solved the problem,' the Tree told him. This annoys Kenta even more. He doesn't want fate to solve the problem. He's twenty five and his life has ended.
He can't see fifteen years into the future, when a forty-year old Sakurazukamori, after completing a job, is challenged by a half-trained Sumeragi onmyouji, white shikifuku blowing in the wind.
He can't see his own death at the hands of that boy, a satisfied grin on his face. An endless chain of death and rebirth, started in the year when the world was supposed to end. Two souls, constantly dragged together.
After all, everything is a cycle.
Sakurazuka Kenta falls asleep curled up in one of Subaru's trench coats, under the Tree, and dreams of lives to come.
-the end -
More Notes:
This obviously takes place after the world "ends". In my mind, Kamui and the Seals win, but not without great casualties on both sides. Regardless of what actually occurs, Subaru is left alone, and never sees any of them again.
I wasn't sure if Setsuka's words to Seishirou about only being killed by the one he loved most applied only to him, or to every Sakurazukamori, but I decided to play with the idea that they did apply to every one of them. This is what resulted. It also makes me want to write about the new Sumeragi onmyouji Subaru inevitably gets reincarnated as, but that will probably not actually happen o_O;.
Sorry about using the Tree as a cheap plot device. I know X fandom gets their panties in a twist over it, but I just love it so. Please overlook it :D
As for vocab words:
A kotatsu is a Japanese heated table. Onmyoujutsu and onmyouji are pretty much self explanatory if you've read Tokyo Babylon at all :P Shikifuku are the white traditional robes that Subaru wears. I don't think I used any other Japanese besides suffixes, which are really hard to drop with S/S.
Self-edited again. If you catch any errors, please let me know! And as always, feedback is always appreciated! Thank you for reading :D
Edit: thanks to some awesome advice from solo____, I've posted a revised version that smooths over a bunch of the parts that had drastic shifts in point of view. I changed maybe 5-10 sentences around total so this is in essence the same fic, just a bit neater. Thank you for reading!
Oh also, this is HUGE. SORRY :(
Without further ado!
Title: Cyclical
Fandom: X-1999/Tokyo Babylon
Rating: R for violent themes
Pairing: Seishirou/Subaru...sort of. It's reincarnation fic >:O
Word Count: 6,418
Warnings: spoilers for all of the X-1999 manga, m/m slash, large age gap in a relationship (although the youngest is 19 so no underage to worry about!)
Summary: When Subaru needs someone to succeed him, the cycle begins anew.
Notes: set in the mangaverse, 20 years after X16. More notes are at the end of the fic.
Disclaimer: X-1999 and Tokyo Babylon belong to CLAMP and no copyright infringement was intended by this work of fiction.
Cyclical
He knows the dilemma would have occurred eventually. The Sakurazukamori is supposed to be killed by the one he loves most, but the one Sakurazuka Subaru has loved most has been dead for twenty years, and no one has ever taken Seishirou's place in his heart. Now he is getting old - in five years he will be fifty and he can already feel the agility leaving as quickly as his sanity did so many years ago.
He wants nothing more than to die and rejoin Seishirou, but the Tree's fear of death outweighs his own desire, and it will not let him die without an heir. Five suicide attempts taught him this, to his own chagrin. The pistol shot to the forehead should have killed him, but the tree had magic far older and more powerful than even the magic that the Kamuis had wielded at the end of the world, and Subaru had awoken face-down in Seishirou's mother's house without a scratch on him.
There is no one to succeed him. He has no children, no relatives, no one he cares for. The tree will make him live forever if need be, to keep itself alive by feeding it with corpses, and he's locked between a rock and a hard place, because he does not love anybody other than Seishirou, but Seishirou is dead.
Until one day, when he is walking near Shibuya and he sees a young man, talking animatedly on his cell phone. He can't be much older than nineteen, but there's something in his eyes that Subaru recognizes on an instinctual level, and he freezes and stares at him. He can't eliminate the feeling that the young man is familiar, despite that he's never seen him before in his life. His hair is crested with blond highlights and he wears the uniform of one of the more popular colleges in the area, and even though his face is too wide and his mouth is too small and his eyes are too big, Subaru knows who he is immediately.
He pauses beside him at the train station and the young man gets off his cell phone and stares at him. Subaru looks at the sky and notices that it is blue through the smog. His new companion's eyes are also blue, a guarded, heavy indigo, and his face is round with youth. He doesn't know how he knows, but he can feel the spirit behind those eyes, and it's Seishirou, through and through.
"Seishirou?" he asks and the young man stops staring and grins smoothly.
"No, I'm sorry. You must be confusing me with someone else."
"I must," Subaru replies absently. "My apologies." He wanders off brokenly and watches a bird take flight from one of the trees in Ueno Park, where he always inevitably ends up.
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The young man finds him there, standing in front of the tree. The wind blows his blond highlights in ruffles as he huddles with his hands in his pockets, watching the strange, crazy older man who he feels he should know.
"Your eyes," he says, and Subaru starts visibly before turning around. "They're very unusual."
"It's all his fault," Subaru says without malice. "He died and left me alone." He eyes the figure beside him, the smoothly polished shoes and perfectly-pressed uniform, and he can feel it. Despite the differences in looks, this is Seishirou, somehow, somewhere, come back to him, and it hurts so very much.
"My name is Matsumoto Kenta," he said, his very formal speech sounding unnatural from someone of his age.
"Sakurazuka Subaru." Kenta moves over to touch the tree, running the bark under his fingers, his eyebrows furrowed in deep concentration. "Why did you follow me?" Subaru asks at last, when Kenta doesn't speak. He's already feeling uncomfortable being social with another person after such a long period of solitude, but this is Seishirou, and he clings to the last remains of his lover like a starving dog would cling to a bone.
"I felt like I should," Kenta says quietly, then laughs self-consciously. He's so young compared to how Subaru remembers Seishirou, and his eyes are bright, and Subaru wonders if Kenta is everything Seishirou could have been had he had a different upbringing, a different life. Kenta is handsome and young and Seishirou, so he looks at the boy and says, gently,
"Kenta-kun, do you like sakura?"
Kenta glances at him, startled.
"I've always liked sakura," he answers after a moment, and Subaru watches the tree sway in the wind and thinks about parallels and Seishirou and how much he wants to possess this boy. It's wrong, that bit of conscience that he still has left screams out, it's wrong, he's innocent this time around…
Subaru has suffered for twenty years without Seishirou. He's hesitant to let him slip through his fingers now. Kenta is glancing at him with a shrewd expression and Subaru bites at his lower lip and pulls at his gloves. Being around Seishirou makes him feel like his skin is on fire and too big for him, even after all this years, and like thousands of tiny needles are pricking him. His proximity spreads through his body like a fever and when Kenta shivers he knows he can feel it too.
Subaru can't take it anymore and begins to walk away, because it's the only thing he can do without driving himself any further along towards insanity, but Kenta reaches out and stops him by grabbing one of his wrists.
"You're lonely," he says, as though he didn't cause it all, as though it wasn't his fault. There's calculation going on behind his eyes - it's only through years of reading Seishirou's moods that Subaru can see it, and it's much more innocent than ever before, but Kenta is definitely plotting something.
Subaru doesn't bother to reply, staring up at the sakura and letting his back shield him from the wind.
After a moment of awkward silence, Kenta smiles slightly. "I'll see you around." Then he turns and leaves, and for the first time in twenty years Subaru wants to cry.
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Subaru sleeps on Seishirou's bed, curled up in his sheets and sometimes in his old suits, because they still vaguely hold the scent of cigarettes, sakura, and blood. Had he been sane he would have realized long ago that the scent is his now, inherited like his eye and his job, but all he can think about is how it allows him see Seishirou when he closes his eyes. The dull ache in his heart is so common at this point that even Matsumoto Kenta can't fix it when he shows up at the Sakurazuka house one rainy day with his schoolbooks, raising an eyebrow.
"How did you find me?" Subaru asks, although he really doesn't care.
"I followed my feet," comes the answer, which really isn't an answer at all and Subaru knows this even if he can't put his finger on why. He lets the young man in, prepares tea for them in dusty cups, and watches guardedly as Seishirou (no, not Seishirou. Kenta.) glances around his mother's old home with curiosity. He finally slumps into one of the tattered armchairs like this is a common occurrence, sliding his schoolbooks elegantly onto the coffee table. He has Seishirou's natural grace despite his different stature, and Subaru can tell just by looking at him that he's extremely intelligent.
Subaru curls up on the couch and sips at his tea. They sit in companionable silence for a few moments, the only sound the slow drip of rain on the windowsill, before Kenta abruptly sets down his teacup and stands up.
"I have dreams," he says awkwardly, as though he isn't sure how to broach the subject. "About you. You're younger, and your eyes are both green, but it's unmistakable. I always thought you were…imaginary, until a week ago at Shibuya." He frowns.
"What kinds of dreams?" Subaru asks, only really half paying attention as he sees bridges falling, blood, so much blood on his hands, Seishirou's last words and the moment his world shattered…
Kenta is blushing, and it abruptly throws Subaru out of his memories. Oh. Oh.
"But since I was dreaming about you before I even met you, I figured you were important, and that I should make an effort to get to know you," Kenta hurries on. The awkward shyness is uncharacteristic of Seishirou and it throws Subaru for a loop - it's more like himself at sixteen than Seishirou at any age. But then the confident smile returns. "Do you know anything about calculus?"
Subaru, of course, does not, but he could never deny Seishirou anything, and they spend the rest of the afternoon with their heads bowed together over a textbook, Kenta solving ridiculously complicated math problems and Subaru watching how the sunlight glints off of his hair.
As Kenta closes his book and is about to say goodbye for the day, something within Subaru snaps even further and he grabs on to him, pulls the younger man to his chest and buries his face in the gold-tipped hair. Kenta doesn't protest, but instead wraps his arms around Subaru and rubs his back.
"I missed you," Subaru whispers brokenly, barely audible above the pounding of the rain. "I missed you so much, you left me alone for so long, don't leave me again."
"I won't," Kenta says in a voice not entirely his own. "I won't leave you, Subaru-kun."
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After several weeks of quiet afternoons doing homework, Kenta moves all of his things into one of the spare bedrooms. This fact doesn't register to Subaru for three days, until he walks in on Kenta cooking in the kitchen one bright morning and thinks of several mornings when he saw this same sight, so many years ago.
"Why are you here so early?" he asks. Sometimes it feels like all he does is ask questions anymore. His life blurs from one moment of Kenta to the next, with the lonely spaces empty and dull. Kenta turns and stares at him, a spatula in one hand.
"I've been living here for a few days. I figured since you didn't say anything, you didn't have a problem with it." Subaru has noticed the increase in chocolate in the pantry and ice cream in the freezer, but not the young man's presence itself. The idea of Seishirou never leaving again is a very nice one and so he smiles and nods. Kenta eyes Subaru disapprovingly. "I haven't seen you eat since I moved in."
"I forget."
"There's no food in this whole house. I had to go to the grocery store on the corner to survive. All you have is tea." Kenta is angry. Subaru can tell by the intense stare, very much like the one Seishirou used to use when Subaru abused himself, and even though he's being lectured by a man half his age, in reality Seishirou has always had this power over him and it doesn't even seem unnatural.
Kenta doesn't say anything further, but makes him an omelet and stares at him expectantly. Subaru picks at it and is surprised when it's tasty. His stomach is too unused to food for him to eat more than a few mouthfuls, but he enjoys it because Seishirou made it.
"The house was lonely until you moved in," Subaru says. "It recognized you the moment you walked in the door."
Kenta smiles slightly, finishing his omelet.
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Subaru returns home with blood on his clothes, on his gloves. He doesn't wear Seishirou's old suits out to work, afraid of ruining them, but after washing up at home he slips into them, the soft green fabric still bringing back memories after all these years, tattered as they are.
It isn't until Kenta sees the blood on his hands one day and goes tense that Subaru realizes that he doesn't know what he does for a living. "I don't want to," he says as he sees the look on Kenta's face. "I don't want to, but he made me, he made me. I do it for him."
"Sakurazukamori," Kenta whispers, and Subaru wonders where he ever learned that word. He nods in confirmation and Kenta leaves, returning with a warm washcloth. He cleans Subaru's hands for him, gently wiping the blood off with firm strokes, his eyes never leaving Subaru's.
"I don't even see their faces anymore," Subaru whispers brokenly. "It's been so long, and the tree wants so much."
Kenta's eyes flicker with confusion as he reaches up with one hand to cup Subaru's face, a look in his eyes that says he doesn't know why he has dreamed of this broken man since his fifteenth birthday.
"I think if you saw their faces, you wouldn't be able to do it," he says at last. "You're too kind, Subaru-san."
When I think about it…you weren't ready to kill someone…because…you're too kind.
Seishirou's words. Kenta's words. Subaru closes his eyes on the pain of seeing Seishirou die, again. He sees it once a day, and it never gets better. Even now that Seishirou has come back to him, the dreams still linger, the waking nightmares.
"The tree would still be hungry," he tells Kenta, taking the washcloth from him and wringing it out in a sink that has been stained red with years-worth of blood. Kenta had wondered about the color, but never asked.
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A month after moving into the Sakurazuka house, Kenta celebrates his twentieth birthday. To Subaru's surprise, he comes home from walking in Ueno Park to find four other teenagers in his living room with Kenta, celebrating his newfound ability to buy alcohol legally. None of them have souls that he recognizes, and he quickly loses interest and retreats up to Seishirou's bedroom, clamping down on his jealousy. Of course he is not the only one in Kenta's life - Kenta still attends classes, and occasionally even goes out at night. Despite his hasty and inexplicable move from his college dorm to the Sakurazuka house, Kenta is still an active college student, and sometimes Subaru has to remind himself of this fact.
After Kenta's friends leave, he heads upstairs with flushed cheeks and a calculating grin. "I'm twenty today," he announces, hanging in the doorway. Subaru looks away from the window and frowns.
"You're too young," he says. "Too young, and your face is wrong." Kenta ignores this and flops on Seishirou's bed, and Subaru realizes vaguely that he's been drinking. If Subaru were Seishirou, Kenta's virtue would have been in serious danger, but Subaru is Subaru, and always has been, so he stays by the window and pretends that he can't see Kenta stretching out from fingertips to toes on the bed.
It occurs to him vaguely, as Kenta finally rises from the bed and drapes himself over Subaru on the window seat, that Kenta is Seishirou and perhaps his own virtue is in much more danger.
Kenta reaches for him and brings his lips to Subaru's, softly, and it feels vaguely like Subaru is drowning. He hasn't felt this in twenty years, since Seishirou died and left him alone, and now all he can see is a pair of matched indigo eyes and ruffled blond-tipped hair.
Kenta is not Seishirou at all. Kenta is so much Seishirou that it hurts.
Subaru pushes him away and stands shakily. He runs out the door into the night, runs away from that temptation, curls up underneath the tree in Ueno Park and tries to forget.
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The first time Kenta sees Subaru kill, he is sick to his stomach in the bushes nearby. If Subaru hadn't been so focused, he would have been vaguely amused at the younger man's disgust for killing - such a change from his previous lifetime. Subaru wonders in amusement if Kenta will hate him now that he's seen. The urge to possess the boy grows in him again, almost as if Seishirou himself had infected Subaru with his sadism along with his eye, so many years before. Kenta would be remarkably easy to break. Kenta, although shrewd, is young, passionate, and compared to Subaru, incredibly innocent. Subaru dreams of staining that innocence with his own sin, like a mirror image of the past.
Then Kenta will laugh, and Subaru can't take that away from him. Subaru is not as cruel as Seishirou was. Subaru is more broken and pathetic, and less of a predator.
He brings his hand to the damp wetness at his eyes and realizes that he is crying for the first time in years. Kenta has finished being ill and is now standing at his side, still looking nauseous but trying to make an effort to be there for him, somehow.
"I'm sorry," Subaru sobs, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, it's the only part of him I have left and I have to do it." He sinks to sit on the bench near where the victim had just disappeared and Kenta places one heavy hand on his shoulder.
He looks like he doesn't know what to say. Subaru vaguely wonders if he's going to leave, going to flee and never return. If, like a mirror image of his past self, the killing is too much for Matsumoto Kenta to bear.
"Subaru-san," Kenta finally speaks, his voice shaky and sounding so small, "we should go inside." The wind is whipping up and the winter air is chillier than usual, but Subaru doesn't even notice. Instead, he pulls Kenta down on the bench beside him, pulling him against his chest and stroking long fingers through his hair, and he can feel Kenta's breath catch in his throat.
"S-Subaru-san?"
Subaru doesn't say anything, but he doesn't need to. He trails his hands down Kenta's face, coiling in his hair, and buries his nose in the crook of Kenta's neck and breathes in a scent so distinctly Seishirou that for a moment he loses track of time and space and he's twenty-five again. Neither of them know who initiates it, but suddenly Subaru feels warm lips pressed against his own and he clings desperately to Kenta, like a suffocating man finally given air. He explores Kenta's mouth slowly with his tongue, mildly surprised that he doesn't actually taste like Seishirou because he is Seishirou in every other way, even in the way he splays his fingers across Subaru's back and the way he clutches at his hips, as if learning from the vague echo of a distant memory.
They walk home in each others' shadows, not actually touching but together all the same, as dawn breaks over Tokyo.
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Kenta is fiercely overprotective and demandingly possessive, and on his good days it reminds Subaru of a certain friendly veterinarian he loved when he was sixteen. On bad days it brings back flashes of a figure in sunglasses, and hands through chests with collapsing bridges, and Kenta knows him well enough after four months of living with him to leave him alone.
He sits at the kitchen table and pours over his sociology textbook, watching Subaru out of the corner of his eye as the older man stalks in front of the windows, itching to go outside and yet not knowing why. Subaru needs air, needs sunlight, needs to get away from the constant living memory of his Wish, and sometimes he sits under the Tree and for a fleeting instant, wishes that Kenta had never come into his life. With Seishirou's return has come the return of his emotions, his ability to feel, and he can no longer wade through life like a walking dead man, never reacting to events but simply letting things go on around him. That method of living had suited him for twenty years.
Now it can no longer sustain him. Kenta makes his chest grow tight and his eyes water, Kenta makes him crazy, hot and cold all over, and Subaru knows that Kenta is ages older than his mere twenty years dictate by the way he looks at him.
Kenta has Seishirou's ridiculous love of sweets and the strange, silly persona that Seishirou had adopted for the year of the Bet, which makes Subaru wonder how much of that cheerful, dorky man had actually been an act. Ridiculous things are constantly appearing in his cupboards, plates hand-painted with witty sayings and mugs with animals painted on them. An apron hangs in the pantry now, and Kenta occasionally will cook for them both, completely at odds with the slightly troublesome college student he normally seemed to be.
Subaru can't say that he minds.
They know ridiculously little about each others' separate lives, Subaru realizes one day as he watches Kenta study and discovers he doesn't even know what he's at school for. Kenta always has lots of work in various different subjects, and can often be found sitting at the kotatsu with his laptop, typing away. Technology still baffles Subaru, so there is nothing too complicated in the Sakurazuka house, but with Kenta comes the invasion of gadgets like iPods and cell phones and gaming consoles hooked up to the TV. Finally, Subaru asks him what he's studying.
"Veterinary medicine," the young man replies absently.
When Subaru looks at Kenta, he sees a Seishirou who could have been, if his life had been different.
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Six months after first meeting Kenta, the constant presence of Seishirou in his life again begins to bring sanity back to Subaru's mind. He can feel his thoughts becoming less disjointed and strange, and he's not sure that he likes it.
With the return of his sanity inevitably comes the remembrance of things long past, sorrows and joys, a sister he misses so much it hurts, a man he loves so much it nearly killed him. He can think back and remember being sixteen again, remember the essence of Subaru, and that's when the guilt hits him.
He sinks to the floor in shame, countless faces in front of his eyes, stained with the pallor of death, all killed by him. He rocks back and forth and cries desperately, wondering how he allowed himself to become so broken and empty that he killed with such precision, with such a lack of remorse. He wonders how Kenta can even look at him, but surely if anybody has no right to judge, it is Seishirou.
He wonders if he can ever atone for what he's done. He weeps brokenly for hours, until Kenta arrives home from his biochemistry class to find him. He kneels down beside him and pulls Subaru into his arms without asking, because he too has noticed the return of Subaru's sanity, and he knows it will be difficult. Subaru buries his face in Kenta's hair, no longer dyed as ridiculously as it had been six months before.
"How did I become this monster?" he finally asks in a raw voice. "I'm never going to do it again. I can't ever do it again." The Tree is protesting, somewhere deep in his mind, but Subaru ignores it.
Kenta looks into his eyes. "Can you just stop?" Subaru wants to say "yes, of course", but in reality they both know the answer, hovering over them, and so instead he shakes his head. "That's what I thought," Kenta adds, gently pressing his lips to Subaru's hairline.
"Seishirou-san…" Subaru murmurs. Sometimes he still calls Kenta by that name, but it feels almost as natural to him as his own, and he doesn't complain.
"Teach me," Kenta says at last. He looks determined and worried, a combination Subaru should have learned was dangerous long ago. "Teach me to do this for you, so you don't have to."
"No!" Subaru shouts, standing up angrily. "I won't let you turn back into him!" Kenta doesn't move, but stares up at him with wide, innocent blue eyes.
"Your sanity is the most important thing to me," Kenta growls.
"And what about yours?" Subaru bites back. "You're just as innocent as I was, so many years ago. You couldn't ever kill a person. The guilt would destroy you." But this is not entirely true. Kenta has never shown any indication that he disapproves of Subaru's work, besides his obvious disgust of the act of killing itself. Kenta never says anything when Subaru returns home covered in blood, and Kenta's respect for the lives of people he has no attachment to is tenuous at best. They both know this. "I can't turn you into a monster," Subaru says, then his face crumples and he begins to sob again, sinking back down and curling up in Kenta's arms.
Kenta doesn't bring up the topic of his teaching again that night, but Subaru knows in his heart that he was born to be his successor.
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There are more dusty books in the Sakurazuka mansion than even Kenta knows what to do with. He pours through them while Subaru is out walking, searching for the key to awaken his powers and convince Subaru that this is his destiny. He's been thinking about this for a few weeks, since Subaru began showing signs of rational thought, and he knows it's the only thing to be done. Subaru still has the guilt invading his every thought, and Kenta knows if he wants to keep this sane, almost cute version of the normally cold assassin, he has to stop him from killing anyone, ever again. After hours of searching the books, Subaru still hasn't returned, and the whir of the fax machine breaks Kenta from his reverie. He's not concerned for Subaru - the man can go out and angst for a whole day on some occasions - but the fax machine does grab his attention, and as he removes the familiar set of papers, an idea begins to form in his head.
He flips through the assignment. Everything is heavily coded against prying eyes, but Kenta has watched Subaru pour over these enough that he can decipher crucial things, such as the victim's name. The man's picture is there as well, smiling up at him. A quick search on the internet reveals that he's a highly conservative minor politician, vocal and outspoken about changes in government policies.
Kenta stares down at the assignment, stares at the man's website, and something like excitement begins to churn in his veins. If he goes and kills this man, Subaru won't have to. He's not sure how he'll accomplish this, or when, but he takes the acceptance symbol that Subaru keeps in a desk drawer and faxes it back to the original number, then stuffs the assignment papers in his thick anatomy textbook.
If he can pull this off without Subaru knowing, he can prove he's capable of becoming the next Sakurazukamori. When he was young, one of his mother's friends once told him he had all the raw power of an untrained onmyouji - he knows he can do this, knows he can save Subaru's mind from itself. With this thought, he returns to the library. There is a faint whisper in his mind, and it urges him to select a book on the far side, away from his starting point. Kenta trusts his instincts and pulls the book out. It's thick and very old, bound with leather. He sets it on the table and pulls it open, jumping back with surprise as the wards flash in front of his eyes before settling back down into the cover. Green, glowing words begin to swirl across the page, and Kenta's breath catches. This is it.
If you are reading this, the book reads in swirling script, then you are one of the individuals destined to be called Sakurazukamori. Power calls to power, and only those who wield the power of the Sakura can read what is within this book. For Kenta, who hasn't even been tutored in onmyoujutsu, the pages following are difficult to decipher and hard to understand. They contain many spells and few actual discussions on the art of assassination, and Kenta sighs in consternation with the realization that he will need Subaru to teach him after all.
He sets the book back into the shelf, wondering briefly if Subaru would have ever been able to read those glowing words. Somehow, deep in his heart, he knows the other man was never meant to be the Sakurazukamori at all, that he was just a transition until the true master of the Sakura could return again.
In order to convince Subaru that he won't mourn the loss of his own innocence, Kenta has to kill the minor politician in his assignment. Not only that, but he must do it quietly, and without the use of onmyoujutsu this will be much more difficult.
He frowns heavily. He has quite a bit of work ahead of him.
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The Tree approves of Matsumoto Kenta as Subaru's successor.
It tells Subaru this, and the older man shuts it out of his mind with an angry growl.
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With a lot of blind luck and probably some divine intervention, Kenta manages to sneak inside his victim's home. The man isn't very well protected and it's a wonder the government had even needed the Sakurazukamori to take care of him, but it's lucky for Kenta because he does not possess the skills to take care of a more cautious opponent. He pulls the vial of poison that he meticulously crafted from a book in the library out of his pocket and calmly coats the teacups in the corner with it. There is a magical component to the poison that he hadn't been able to achieve, but even without the power behind it, it is supposed to kill silently and without leaving a trace behind, and that is all Kenta needs at this point.
He slips out before he is seen.
The next day, the death is a major headline, and the excited high that Kenta has been riding fades abruptly as he realizes that he killed another human being. Subaru finds him in the bathroom, leaning over the sink and staring emptily at his hands. He doesn't say anything, but Kenta can see through the mirror that he knows what he did.
"I thought it would be easy," he whispers into the air. "I didn't care about him at all."
Subaru closes his eyes on the pain. "For you, it used to be," he replies and gathers Kenta into his arms. They sit there together, on the bathroom floor, Kenta clinging desperately to Subaru's shoulders and feeling ridiculously young and stupid and tainted, but after his panic attack is over, he feels at peace.
He knows he can do this again. He's stronger than Subaru.
"You have to train me," he says at last.
"No," comes the stubborn reply.
"If you don't, I'll do it again on my own. You can't stop me." Kenta is Seishirou and Seishirou was nothing if not determined. "I don't like it but I'll do it for you, I have to. And if I don't learn onmyoujutsu I'll eventually be caught and executed…" He puts on the big innocent eyes and watches Subaru cave.
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The Tree is loud in Subaru's mind, yelling at him to take Kenta's offer, but it is the thought of losing Seishirou to death again that truly makes him sigh and nod his head.
Subaru is a fool for Seishirou.
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Three years pass. Kenta becomes the Sakurazukamori in all but name.
Subaru hasn't killed since Kenta first killed the politician, so long ago. His sanity is mostly restored, and he hates himself daily even now, wondering what he ever did to deserve some fleeting happiness before his inevitable death. Kenta always seems to sense these moods and gently draws Subaru to him, curls up on his lap with a book, and his very presence banishes Subaru's self-hatred, at least for the moment. But the moment is all either of them asks for, anymore.
Kenta has graduated from university and sometimes talks of graduate school, but his two jobs already tax his resources. He enjoys the work he does at the large veterinary clinic in Shinjuku, and shivers when he thinks of the nights that he spends stalking prey across Tokyo. He has taken to using the name 'Sakurazuka Kenta', all but forgetting his original surname, much like Subaru himself. His aversion to killing has nearly disappeared, replaced by a resigned sense of inevitability, but Subaru is pleased that he's never shown pleasure in the act.
It reminds him that Kenta is not really Seishirou, that Seishirou died long, long ago. Nearly twenty-four years ago.
Subaru wakes up on the morning of his forty-ninth birthday and knows that it is time.
Kenta is already cooking breakfast and Subaru stands in the doorway, watching him fondly. The still-gangly nineteen year old has matured into a graceful twenty-three, and every year that Kenta ages, he grows more and more like Seishirou, in both looks and actions. He's the Seishirou that never actually existed - the cheerful, troublesome veterinarian with an insatiable sweet tooth and a love for huge gestures. He teases Subaru daily and sometimes Subaru wonders what Hokuto would have thought of him.
He thinks she would have liked him. It's a shame that he killed her.
Kenta and Seishirou sometimes blur in Subaru's mind, but in the end it doesn't really matter, because Kenta is Seishirou, and even if most of the time Subaru breathes the wrong name in bed, or sometimes absently refers to Kenta as 'Seishirou-san' when talking to him, Kenta doesn't get offended. In the fragile confines of Subaru's newly-healed mind, Seishirou and Kenta are the same.
"Today is the day," he says, because there's nothing else to say. Kenta looks up from his frying pan and frowns.
"I'm not doing it."
"You have to." Subaru is firm in his conviction, unafraid to die. Kenta has been his salvation, and with one hand through his heart, Kenta will also be his destruction. It is poetic and beautiful and so wrong it feels right, and although Subaru knows Seishirou won't be waiting for him beyond life, he finds himself looking forward to the day when he will be reunited with him.
Perhaps he could even reincarnate and come back to see Kenta. The thought was oddly pleasing.
"I can't kill you," Kenta growls, turning off the stove. "You're mine." After three years, Seishirou's possessive streak has manifested even stronger in him. Subaru wonders if he'll have to trick Kenta into killing him, much like Seishirou once did. He wonders if killing him will drive Kenta mad.
"You have to. It's time for you to become the Sakurazukamori." Subaru is quite resigned to his fate - he has been for over twenty years. Leaving Kenta is something he doesn't want to do, but four years of happiness cannot truly compete with twenty years of utter despair and madness, and in the end, Subaru is just relieved that life is over.
Something in Kenta changes suddenly. He drops the pan and his blue eyes are suddenly much darker.
"You'd better not say something inane, like you want me to have your eye," he says sharply.
Subaru raises an eyebrow. "Which one?"
"Subaru-kun," Kenta says patiently, and Subaru realizes he's not speaking to Kenta any longer. The coldness of Seishirou settles on his reincarnated features, and he takes Subaru's hand, pulls it against his cheek. "He won't do it."
Subaru's eyes fill with tears. "I'm glad I could see you, one last time." He wonders if Seishirou will kill him right in the kitchen, next to the sizzling frying pan of eggs, but Seishirou has more dramatic sense than that, because Kenta leaves the kitchen and walks out to the garden. Subaru follows.
They pause beneath the biggest sakura tree in Seishirou's mother's garden, and Kenta smiles coldly at him. It is such a Seishirou smile that Subaru feels weak.
"You were a horrible Sakurazukamori," Seishirou tells him. "I feel like your successor will do much better."
"Of course he will," Subaru says quietly. "He's you." He wraps his arms around Kenta's neck for the last time, leaning in to kiss the familiar lips. He doesn't know if he's kissing Kenta or Seishirou, but he knows he loves this person, and that's all that matters.
He feels Kenta shift.
Everything is going numb, slowly. He glances down numbly at Kenta's arm, protruding through his chest, then glances back up. Kenta is staring at him in horror, the expression on his face mirroring Subaru's own, twenty four years before, and Subaru realizes that Seishirou is gone.
Everything is starting to fade away. Kenta is yelling something, shaking him, desperately trying to stop the bleeding, but he is just so tired, he can only say one thing as blackness begins to set in.
"I…love you…" he gasps out, then goes limp in Kenta's arms. Sakurazuka Kenta sinks to his knees with empty eyes, buries his face in Subaru's hair one final time, and for the first time in his life, hates himself completely.
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'Everything is a cycle,' the Tree tells him grouchily. 'The Sakurazukamori is always killed by the one he loves most.'
"Then how will I die?" Kenta asks snidely. "I killed the one that I loved most." He's grown sullen, bitter, and sloppy since Subaru's death. His ties are never done anymore, and he no longer works as a veterinarian. He's given up on grad school. He sits in Subaru's empty house and kills.
He's turning into Subaru, the Subaru he first met, but somehow he doesn't care.
'I had this fight with Subaru many times, and fate solved the problem,' the Tree told him. This annoys Kenta even more. He doesn't want fate to solve the problem. He's twenty five and his life has ended.
He can't see fifteen years into the future, when a forty-year old Sakurazukamori, after completing a job, is challenged by a half-trained Sumeragi onmyouji, white shikifuku blowing in the wind.
He can't see his own death at the hands of that boy, a satisfied grin on his face. An endless chain of death and rebirth, started in the year when the world was supposed to end. Two souls, constantly dragged together.
After all, everything is a cycle.
Sakurazuka Kenta falls asleep curled up in one of Subaru's trench coats, under the Tree, and dreams of lives to come.
-the end -
More Notes:
This obviously takes place after the world "ends". In my mind, Kamui and the Seals win, but not without great casualties on both sides. Regardless of what actually occurs, Subaru is left alone, and never sees any of them again.
I wasn't sure if Setsuka's words to Seishirou about only being killed by the one he loved most applied only to him, or to every Sakurazukamori, but I decided to play with the idea that they did apply to every one of them. This is what resulted. It also makes me want to write about the new Sumeragi onmyouji Subaru inevitably gets reincarnated as, but that will probably not actually happen o_O;.
Sorry about using the Tree as a cheap plot device. I know X fandom gets their panties in a twist over it, but I just love it so. Please overlook it :D
As for vocab words:
A kotatsu is a Japanese heated table. Onmyoujutsu and onmyouji are pretty much self explanatory if you've read Tokyo Babylon at all :P Shikifuku are the white traditional robes that Subaru wears. I don't think I used any other Japanese besides suffixes, which are really hard to drop with S/S.
Self-edited again. If you catch any errors, please let me know! And as always, feedback is always appreciated! Thank you for reading :D
Edit: thanks to some awesome advice from solo____, I've posted a revised version that smooths over a bunch of the parts that had drastic shifts in point of view. I changed maybe 5-10 sentences around total so this is in essence the same fic, just a bit neater. Thank you for reading!