A Process to Power
Warning(s): Mentions of witchcraft, I guess, and vague, cliffhanger-ish ending. Weirdness
Rating: PG-15?
Genre: Fantasy, friendship(?)
Word Count: 4400~
Summary: The strong bond between Ginji and Ban was undeniable. But how exactly did it come about -- and what sacrifices were made?
Magic was thick in the air and swirling around them.
Their clothes rippled and blew by the force of it. It grazed roughly against their skin. Any hairstyle formerly maintained was nonexistent in its wake. They squinted against it and the darkness it moved through, faint candlelight allowing glances at the dull wisps of magic manifested. It was a supernatural storm and they were in the eye of it.
Amano Ginji mutely watched a thread of mercury silver magic dance through a section of light, before getting swallowed up by the darkness. A green vein of dim color shortly followed, moving as sluggishly as the other one. He fastened his sight on that corner of light, seeing the beam flicker as the magic's wind touched the flame emitting it, but not truly recognizing what he was seeing. The old bricks, the dissipating wax poles, the figure standing just far enough in the shadows to only be an outline - he saw them all but could no longer understand what he was seeing. The spell was a heady, dizzying one.
Brown eyes shifted, though he didn't himself know if it was to see more of his surroundings or to avoid looking at the shadowy form. His gaze moved from the door, a few yards away and at the top of crumbling cement stairs, to the opening built in the base of the stairs. It was shrouded in darkness and impossible to see into. He absently wondered what was in it. Then his stare wandered again, along the wall near it. The bricks seemed to be clay, or some other material not used in a long time and susceptible to such damage. Chips from them lie on the equally ragged floor, which was a faint red color that spoke harsh things to his imagination.
There was a table in the middle of the room taking up most of the area. It was the length of a pool table, made of sturdy wood, and circular. Strange, intricate designs were engraved on its surface, lit by the candles on different sized stands surrounding it. It captivated Ginji for a moment, one ribbon winding around the circumference, traipsing into other arrangements and looping itself in complicated formations. He was tempted to ask about it but had a feeling he wouldn't understand anyway.
He didn't understand much of what was going on. He couldn't understand what he saw, what the meaning was behind every peculiar detail. He didn't understand why this building - one of many abandoned ones in the area - had to be their destination. He didn't know what was going to happen here. He knew the end results, but not the specifics or anything. The most he could figure was this: he was going to be bonded to Ban. The retired Lightning Lord didn't know much, but he knew that this was serious.
Ban's face on that day told him as much...
Ginji mindlessly handed Midō Ban a convenience store bento, thought process occupied by a busy hum of questions. They were a constant distraction now that he was out of the Infinity Fortress. He wondered what had shut them out before - a thoughtless strength with no need for second guesses or an atmosphere where you only needed such power to survive. Either way, they now flooded his head, waves of differing topics rocking his attention.
He wondered what he would do from now on. More accurately, what they would do from now on, seeing as Ban and him had become somewhat of a team. He questioned when that had begun forming, since he couldn't remember either of them seeming to like the other. (Though he did, like him that is. Or at least didn't dislike him much anymore.) He queried what they were. Were they best friends? It was one thing he had never had, amidst a world of enemies, friends, strangers, and associates. He wouldn't know how to define it. But his relationship with Ban was pretty incomprehensible too, so maybe it fit.
They didn't talk much, though they had been spending more and more of their time together. Whenever they did, it usually ended up awkward, in a fight, or both. The dark-haired man had been showing signs of his manners wearing away: hitting him in response to his inquiries, gazing perversely at passing women as his fingers twitched suspiciously, slipping into a slang-riddled, informal dialect. It could be taken as him feeling more comfortable, Gin supposed. Which did support the idea of them being best friends. But then the Evil Eye-user would meander off without him, without looking back, and Gin's answers returned to questions.
The blonde had little tact. If he wanted to know something then his brain and his mouth cooperated to get him heard, usually disregarding the small part of Gin that wanted to go about it with logic. Therefore, bursting with queries and confusion, Ginji asked, "Are we best friends?"
Ban froze, chopsticks hovering over a piece of sashimi. There was a small shift in emotion in his eyes, which Gin had come to notice but not translate into something meaningful. The chopsticks lowered and stirred the rice around for a bit. Ban's expression was tight. A minute passed before he actually looked at the blonde.
"No," he said resolutely, eyes dead, mouth in a straight line, and body rigid. He ate a piece of cabbage, eyes straying from the other man. At the quietly whispered "why?" in response, he sighed and began picking at his fish before continuing. "Because all my friends have to meet a certain requirement. You lack what I need."
Amano Ginji wasn't the type to be offended by people's words - sometimes due mainly to a lack of comprehension, admittedly - but he felt a slight sting with the delivered ones from Ban's mouth. He looked down at his unopened lunch, not really focusing on anything in particular. A tense silence arose before a rustle of clothes and a sigh ascended into the mix. The older male's chopsticks were put down with a clink.
"Hey, don't look so bothered by it. It's better for you this way probably." Amano frowned, not aware if he had actually looked glum. "I've had people closer to being my best friend than you. But none of them were ready to meet the requirements either. So I've decided I don't really need a best friend."
They both kept their eyes trained on the other, looking for a change in emotion, a sign of falsity. Midō's face was pointedly blank, something Gin found dubious in such a situation. He had a feeling that the brunette locked up more feelings than he ever showed. An empathetic despair filled him when he said he had decided against having a best friend. If he could feel such a level of grief about the notion of someone else's loneliness, he imagined the emotions Ban bit back were much worse. It wasn't healthy.
"I'll do it." Gin jabbed his chin out stubbornly, brown eyes alight with determination.
"What?" Ban asked, a stuttering quality to his speech.
"I'll get whatever I need to become your best friend. That way we'll both never be alone."
The most discernible emotion - outside anger and irritation - Amano had ever seen on Ban's face danced across his features: worry. But that couldn't be right because if there was one thing the blonde knew from their little time together, it was that Ban didn't worry. A person in trouble? He was confident that he could help or didn't care to at all. New diseases and fresh poverty? He was the invincible Midō Ban and everything would turn out all right. Worry was something for other people. And yet at that moment Ban had looked worried. For himself or...?
"I don't-"
"I'm going to do it," the former Infinity Fortress resident said, cutting the other male off, earning a sneer in reply. He crossed his arms and turned his head away, like he had seen some people do to indicate finality. It was mostly women dumping their partners but he was sure it worked both ways.
An awkward silence followed. Ginji refrained from glancing at the other, though he was getting concerned. He couldn't feel the piercing gaze on him, nor any movement from that side of the car. His posture loosened and he found himself staring out the window. Minutes passed, in which the blonde started to freak about what kind of requirement could necessitate this kind of deep thinking. Any introspection, for him, usually meant severe situations. It was possibly the same for Midō, who always seemed to have answers prepared.
He heard the moist sound of lips opening, the click of teeth clamping together, and then the faint workings of a jaw. "I'll give you a week to come to your senses. But if you haven't regained sanity by then, I'll... I'll get started on the requirements. You won't be able to take it back once we're done."
Ginji nodded, vision still lost amidst the swirling shades of green.
He had said yes. Midō Ban could hardly believe it, even knowing how Amano Ginji was. He had been given a week, filled with vague, foreboding hints as to what the requirement would be, and yet... A week later and here they stood. In a place his grandma had shown him when he was little. A room for bonding, she had said, before instructing him on all the little details of the ceremony.
He knew what everything around them was for, and why, because of it. He knew that the building was decrepit because of its former residents: witch wannabes with a tendency to incite others' wrath, resulting in attacks on their home base for it. He knew that this room was where the survivors had breathed their last, what little magical ability they had locked in the basement, creating a nice place for actual magic users to do their business. Ban knew what lay in the shadows of the space under the stairs. Candlesticks, books, skeletons, and blood-scratched messages - nothing he needed to show Gin if he wanted to keep him here. Which he still felt unsure of.
He knew why, despite the fact that the attack never made it below ground, the room was so battered. The later residents of the building used sorcery like he was: a powerful brand that destroyed everything not instrumental to keep it going. And sometimes it destroyed indiscriminately, tattooing the blood of its wielders across the floor.
The table in the middle was long for a reason. It needed to hold all the inscriptions, all the runes. It needed to be a channel for the searing power that he couldn't hold. The candles had to light the designs up so he didn't misread a line and incinerate himself.
Ban knew everything going on. He even knew why - but with less definitive accuracy - the magic moved as it did. There was a complication of emotions manifesting in a flux of power. They moved cautiously because he was cautious. And that hesitation was the only thing he had no clue about.
He hung back in the shadows, watching Ginji carefully, but at the same time distracted from really registering him. It felt like a surge of battling sentiments were rising up in his throat and choking his breath. It wasn't something entirely foreign and he worked to shove it away. If he just hung on for a few more minutes, just stifled the quarreling insanities; if he could just do that then everything would be fine...
He stepped from the shadows and reached for Ginji.
A hand, the first source of warmth outside of his own body heat in a while, wrapped around his wrist. Despite the heat that bloomed from that area, he shivered. Snapped from a reverie that had been slowly heading down the path of a regret and panic cocktail, Ginji whipped his head to see where the heat was coming from. Even though he already knew.
Ban. His heart filled with a bittersweet relief, before being inundated by a bottomless trepidation. The serious look hadn't lifted from his face, and there was the slightest tension in his brow that read worry. Nevertheless, his lips twitched in a half-hearted smirk. It only buried the blonde further in anxiety. He wanted to do this, to be the one freeing Ban of his loneliness. A loneliness that you can't even admit to was nothing more than a burdening ball of despair. He wanted to be the one to show Ban life outside himself just as much as he had done for him. However, a natural fear was stirring inside him at the transactions that had come to pass.
There was a more frenzied motion in the manifested magic. It wriggled through the air, picking up speed, the wind getting harsher for it. It attacked the candles, a fight that threatened to leave them in darkness but never did. It lifted a cloying sweet scent to his nostrils, which rose nausea in his stomach. The wind made soft grating noises against the wall, deafening in the otherwise eerie silence.
Ban's breathing was almost nonexistent. Ginji could hear his own, a foreign entity with a ragged rasp to it. But the older male's was a soft exhale in irregular bursts, as if trying to calm himself. The thought of a cool-headed Ban comforted him more than a worried one rushing into... whatever they were doing. He felt a bit of relief bite through the stone of nervousness tied to his heart. He tried to match his breathing to the other man's. In-pause-out, in-pause-pause-out.
A large hand guided him towards the table. He was pushed against it until he got the idea and sat down. Then he was positioned until he was seated in the center, inches from any of the designs. He watched the bespectacled male carefully. There was something cautious, jerky even, to his movements. He fished things from his pocket and then stared at them as if they were alien artifacts that had suddenly appeared in his palms. He held them loosely and with a somewhat pained expression.
Questions - an endless stream - flowed through Gin. For every breath he took, the oxygen seemed to fuel another inquiry. It was becoming a quiet, desperate sort of madness. He wanted to know what was happening. He wanted to know what the materials were in his friend's hands. He wanted to know what would happen to him. But most of all, he wondered what had happened to those who hadn't met the best friend requirements. Whether they were the causes of this wholly uncharacteristic doubt Midō was exhibiting.
Natsuhiko, Yamato, and few others...
They had all reached the very limits of friendship. And yet they never succeeded in the transition of friends to the purest, greatest form of such a relationship. Because Ban was a witch. And witches required bonds forged in magic and not just companionship.
Natsuhiko had turned him down, an innocent rejection caused by a childish - and utterly natural - fear of the unknown. Ban couldn't stand it, but he had accepted it, always expecting, always hoping that another opportunity to convince his friend would cone around. But then he killed Eris and his chance was lost forever.
Yamato had jokingly accepted. He agreed to do whatever task Midō needed but later. It was always delayed, something signed with a bright smile and ever brighter words. But the German descendent never lost faith and continued waiting. He waited until there was longer a Yamato to wait for.
Others had followed, though his relationships with them had seemed grey and short-lived compared to the first two. He asked out of obligation and desperation with no expectations. It felt grudging, like friendships had become simply about the give-and-take that always left him wanting or worse off. Eventually he gave up. He didn't need a friend, best or no; he didn't need to form a bond. All that would come of it was the same old thing, like a curse his grandmother forgot to mention was an addendum to even considering going through the ceremony. They all left him.
Shutting off his heart and that part of his life didn't stop a sickly sweet feeling from bubbling up inside his heart when Ginji still agreed to go through it with him. It was a buoyant feeling, floating amongst heavier notions. Guilt, concern, bitterness, and panic sought to weigh it down. Guilt for not telling Gin; concern because it had been years since his grandmother had told him of this, and even if his memory was crisp, it was still dangerous; bitterness originating from remembering his friends. Lastly, panic because there were truly no guarantees that the closest thing to a best friend he'd had yet would even survive.
He swallowed back the rush of emotion, feeling silly for allowing it to overtake him. He didn't want to lose this chance but stood to do so just by worrying over it. It was time to clear his head and get to work. Ginji was strong. It was a quality he never truly admitted to liking but did. A child's stubbornness, a monster's resilience, the force of lightning itself - this was the medium he had to work his literal magic with. It had to work.
Ban's face had cleared suddenly, the blonde noted. There was a fire in his eyes, licking the dark color surrounding them. It was a reassuring sight, like an ember amidst timber on the night you really need it. The former Raitei almost felt a smile rise to the surface for it.
He was probably being dumb again, Ginji decided. He cared too much, he had been told, as well as not understanding situations. It was probably such a case. His imagination getting him wound up enough to forget what lie at the heart of the matter: his and Ban's friendship. It was possibly a comment that would warrant a hit from the older man but it was true. They were friends and such a partnership meant far more than either could ever say.
Without warning - or perhaps there had been, but it had gotten swallowed in the buzz of his thoughts - Ban leaned over him. Their eyes met. The brunette's eyes conveyed a guarded expression, though the younger male had the feeling he was merely checking on him one last time. Ban could never admit to his caring about anything. But soon, Gin hoped, they would be close enough for him to translate those meaningful looks. Just a while more and they could be closer than people who knew each other a lifetime. It was his instinct.
Ban's mouth was moving. It was a rush of slurred, slippery, sticky words. They clung to his hearing, but were so indistinct he couldn't pick out specific sounds or where something ended for something else to begin. It was like a lullaby. It soothed him for some reason. He followed where Ban's eyes were, looping along the lines engraved in the table. If he concentrated enough, lost himself in it enough, it was almost like he could understand the design. The crests and waves and ribbons seemed to correspond with the soft rise and fall of the voice near his ear.
Around and around the ribbon weaved. Time lost all weight. The wind, considerably harsher, dashing itself against his skin had no meaning. The magic, moving in a tighter circle around them, mattered not. The world had condensed to the two of them.
The air around Midō felt thick, though his words traveling through it were light. He couldn't remember sounding like this before. He couldn't remember his grandmother sounding like this. It was the sweetest keening, the softest singing, and a sibilant masterpiece. He was left in a daze.
There was no room for the doubt and other negative emotions. Every part of him was bursting with magic and energy. Though he could see blood carried on the wind through his peripheral vision, he could not feel the ache of pain. Nothing extended past the sphere around him and the blonde, created by frenzied wisps of solid magic.
He neared the end of the incantation. The etched script finished by reconnecting into the beginning with an exaggerated flourish. It was hard to communicate into words and felt heavy on his tongue. The weight of what he was doing... It sunk under his skin, saturated and buoyed by the heady feeling of the spell. It was already in motion. It was already showing signs of working.
He felt acutely aware of everything, and yet too disoriented to sort any of the thoughts out. He mindlessly reached for items he had earlier retrieved from his pocket. Thoughtlessly, he dabbed at the other man with herbs, concoctions, jellies. He didn't even seem to notice. They were both entirely lost in the process and their minds were drifting off in tandem. Only when the knife sunk into tanned flesh did either react.
He had been in a field, lush and verdant. Every color was bright and beautiful - their own works of art. The sun - which he reasoned uncertainly had to be the streams of magic - seemed to shine on everything with undying fervor. The grasses, the trees, everything glowed.
A brook - Ban's chanting, he figured - babbled in the background a short time, before ebbing away. It was replaced by birdsong, in the form of the slight creaking of the table. It was all incredibly majestic. Amano wanted to show it to his friend. They would meet odd people and creatures while there. Maybe even a unicorn or a faerie, though the Evil Eye-user would probably end up wanting to capture and sell them. He wouldn't though, because he was respectful and considerate even if no one knew it.
Gin had just been contemplating where first to show Ban when a fresh pain awoke in him. It seared him instantly, as if the sun had descended from the sky and filled his flesh. It tore him apart seam by seam, over and over again without the excruciating nature lessening. He howled, the sound completely inundated by the screams of the wind, like a thunderclap in his ears. He wasn't sure but he thought Ban screamed too. The way his body vibrated seemed to resonate with his own.
A guttural noise ripped at his throat. Raw pain clawed at his flesh from the inside. Through it, he could still feel clarity that this wasn't his pain. His pain was a distant entity, locked away for later analysis. This blazing torture was not his own. But he felt it like it was.
It was working. He bore down a little harder with the knife.
There was no such thing as hope. But there were no hollow feelings left in an absence of hope's wake. There was no sadness or fear or madness. There was agony. There were his bones grinding against each other's. There was his blood curdling and melting his skin. There was rot, destruction, and mutilation. There was he and Ban, an almost tangible bond forming between them.
It was forged in pain and felt stronger for it. It was a load they both were burdened with.
The hurt was ebbing away, its space being fed by an awareness. He felt hypersensitive. Every part of him was an antenna, a receptor, a bundle of technology hardwired to Amano Ginji. The magic lessons that had been drilled in him since childhood, the power that always trilled inside his veins, his own person - nothing felt more familiar than Ginji at that moment
They were getting closer, he knew. A literal bond was in the making, though Ginji had not the presence of mind to decide if he had used 'literal' correctly. He just couldn't think. About anything. Nothing made sense over the booming noise, the grating pain, the overwhelming existence that was Midō Ban.
Though he didn't know his past - something he supposed would be told over the course of time as they grew more comfortable - he knew all his previous feelings. There was an aching loneliness which echoed with his own. There was sadness and long moments of nothing but emptiness. But there was a blinding amount of hope, illuminating the dark corners of his heart. And he liked Ban all the more for it.
It was nearing the breaking point, the climax, the crescendo. The manifested magic was in a manic dance around them, creating every color he could imagine and seeming to fill every inch of the room, though there was no more than the dozen or so ribbons they started out with.
His heart was pounding. He no longer had to exert energy, just stay still and let his body adjust. But it felt exhausting, even with the adrenaline still pumping through his blood. He slumped over the table and clung to the body there as best he could, feeling it return the gesture. He could feel his skin under the other's palms, feel the nerves reacting to his touch, as if it was his own skin. Both bodies were domains for him. He knew every feeling the other had.
Almost there.
It was so close. They were so close. The end was almost palpable. There was something sibyllic about it. He could feel it coming, like a message carried on the wind. Pretty soon it would be upon them.
His breath rasped in his chest as the flurry rose even further around them. Time suddenly felt too slow, like an obstacle they just couldn't get over. There was so little time before it was over and yet it seemed like forever.
His mind made known its desires for hurrying the process along. It yelled for finality, trying to be heard over more inner turmoil than Gin's questions had ever stirred up. It was noisy. He held his breath in anticipation.
He found himself not breathing. He couldn't. Every particle was dedicated to speeding the bonding along. He needed completion now.
They were really almost there! It was close enough to taste!
It was on the tip of his tongue, like a teasing taste of the most delightful thing in the world. He just needed a bit more!
So close, so close! Too slow even though they were so close!
It was there on the horizon! It approached!
It was upon them! Just a second more...
He knew him.
He was him.
It was done.