FIC: Fairytale's End (1/1), A 'Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle' vignette
Title: Fairytale’s End
Series: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle
Author: Sephy
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG-13;
Archive: Fallen Icons, Light Up
Warnings: Vampirism, end of the world imagery, spoilers for the Tsubasa chapters 108 onward, some hintings of S+/xK.
Disclaimer: I don't own Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle nor any of its characters. They are the property of CLAMP and I'm only playing in their sandbox. No profit is intended.
Summary: When he walked, he no longer made any sound.
Thanks: To lostfrontier for putting up with me all this week even though I’ve been a nervous wreck and for betaing this for me.
Author's Notes: This is part of a meme issued on my LJ; originally I was only supposed to write a paragraph for a requested pairing/character but it sort of ballooned probably because it’s Tsubasa Kamui who has been poking at me for weeks now and because I’m desperately trying to avoid studying right now. This is for twinkle_byte; I’ve owed you some S/K fic for awhile and if nothing else, I hope this satisfies.
Fairytale’s End
A Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle vignette
Sephy
When he walked, he no longer made any sound.
Kamui followed the rusty stairwell downward, the elevators long since dead with not even the ghost of electricity to revive them. A few had been damaged irreparably when the worst of the earthquakes hit, the structure of the building surviving though it was little more than a mocking shell of what it had once been. He had been sixteen then, overawed by this place, by the way it gleamed amidst a garden of skyscrapers, the afternoon sun already beginning to sink behind it, lending a reddish tint to the stone dome.
The sun. It had been so long since any of them had seen it. Had seen anything stronger than the candles they made or the glare of strobe lights from the Dragons of Heaven’s machines, their Great Tower in the distance a forbidding monolith, barely visible in the stinging rain, the corroded ground constantly hissing, growling its displeasure into the night.
He could hear it even now, through the empty pipes, as he pushed into the basement, his pupil widening to accommodate that rising darkness, offset only by the faintest of sheens, the walls down here covered with green lichen. The earthquakes had knocked the floor out, the spring, their one gift in this entire mess taking its place, lapping against the low platform they’d fashioned. In those early days, they’d allowed the others down here, hoping it would raise morale, the children in particular enamored by being able to splash and swim. There had been other sources of water then, ones they had thought to turn to before the ground outside gave way, the ever constant eating through and through like funeral worms, the bones and blood of the earth laid bare before its relentlessness. Now … now they did what they could to protect it, harvesting what water they could and monitoring the levels. So far they’d been lucky though Fuuma and his Dragons were continually making attempts to wrest the building from them, as if their own water source wasn’t enough to content them. Perhaps it was in danger of becoming contaminated, too. He didn’t know.
What he did know was that he would do whatever was necessary to protect this building and those people living in it, those who were too weak and helpless to do anything but wait, knowing that it was only a matter of time but hoping -- hoping that he would be able to forestall that fate.
But when had he ever saved anyone?
“Someone came?”
The words though murmured, echoed in this place, punctuated by the drip of water, Kamui pausing, his cloak drifting to a lazy halt around him, the whisper of the fabric somehow the loudest sound of all.
“Yes,” he answered simply, the pool reflecting back varying shades of green - some gray, some with the faintest hint of yellow, and something deeper, almost blue, each shade making the water surrounding full of shadows, writhing and dancing across the unstable surface, “But not him.”
Kamui never heard him coming, not since the first had he ever heard him but over time he’d come to know when he was there and that was more important. As important as the hands that closed around his throat and chest, lightly now, not hurting as they had once been, hard immortal fingers icy against skin, tugging at his cloak, the fastening unsnapping easily and pooling around their feet. He’d long since given up on resistance, instead covering the hand over his heart, twining their hands as Kamui tilted his head, shivering at the sharp sting, a blossom of lethargic heat, the only thing that warmed him these days at all, that gave him any sense of peace.
The world was dying outside and he was dying inside, bit by bit, giving over what was left of his life for power, the power to change things, to fight back and save things. It was never enough though; the strings that had always bound him to Fuuma bolstering the other boy, each battle becoming nastier than the last.
He should stop, Kamui knew that. This should have stopped long ago but he’d never had the strength to turn him away, to give up the only shade of green that pool had never reflected back at him.
Cracking his lids, he caught their reflection in each jumpy wave of the water, two bodies, thin and wiry, clad in black as limbs seemed to merge, disappearing into the darkness, soft black hair brushing his cheek as he reached an arm behind him, starting to feel light-headed.
‘Subaru.’
There was so much in that name that was a blessing and curse, stirring in him emotions that were stronger than ephemeral hope and more real than despair. He would die with that name on his lips, in his heart, filling him until he wondered what was left of Kamui at all that hadn’t been taken from him.
Kamui found himself jerked around suddenly, warm, wet lips against his, salty with his blood and he kissed Subaru willingly, shuddering as fangs brushed against his bottom lip, the vampire pausing only long enough to bite the tip of his tongue, Kamui’s mouth parting easily against his. This was different, always so different than the taste of himself, his blood nothing in comparison, not enough to cause sparks behind his eyes, light-headed and starving, throat bobbing to keep up with that steady stream oozing down his throat. Changing him. Remaking him. Hollowing him out just as the rain was doing to the earth outside but unlike that, filling him with something else, something stronger and more irrevocable. Eternal.
The world was ending but he had only just begun.
***End
Series: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle
Author: Sephy
Genre: Drama
Rating: PG-13;
Archive: Fallen Icons, Light Up
Warnings: Vampirism, end of the world imagery, spoilers for the Tsubasa chapters 108 onward, some hintings of S+/xK.
Disclaimer: I don't own Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle nor any of its characters. They are the property of CLAMP and I'm only playing in their sandbox. No profit is intended.
Summary: When he walked, he no longer made any sound.
Thanks: To lostfrontier for putting up with me all this week even though I’ve been a nervous wreck and for betaing this for me.
Author's Notes: This is part of a meme issued on my LJ; originally I was only supposed to write a paragraph for a requested pairing/character but it sort of ballooned probably because it’s Tsubasa Kamui who has been poking at me for weeks now and because I’m desperately trying to avoid studying right now. This is for twinkle_byte; I’ve owed you some S/K fic for awhile and if nothing else, I hope this satisfies.
Fairytale’s End
A Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle vignette
Sephy
When he walked, he no longer made any sound.
Kamui followed the rusty stairwell downward, the elevators long since dead with not even the ghost of electricity to revive them. A few had been damaged irreparably when the worst of the earthquakes hit, the structure of the building surviving though it was little more than a mocking shell of what it had once been. He had been sixteen then, overawed by this place, by the way it gleamed amidst a garden of skyscrapers, the afternoon sun already beginning to sink behind it, lending a reddish tint to the stone dome.
The sun. It had been so long since any of them had seen it. Had seen anything stronger than the candles they made or the glare of strobe lights from the Dragons of Heaven’s machines, their Great Tower in the distance a forbidding monolith, barely visible in the stinging rain, the corroded ground constantly hissing, growling its displeasure into the night.
He could hear it even now, through the empty pipes, as he pushed into the basement, his pupil widening to accommodate that rising darkness, offset only by the faintest of sheens, the walls down here covered with green lichen. The earthquakes had knocked the floor out, the spring, their one gift in this entire mess taking its place, lapping against the low platform they’d fashioned. In those early days, they’d allowed the others down here, hoping it would raise morale, the children in particular enamored by being able to splash and swim. There had been other sources of water then, ones they had thought to turn to before the ground outside gave way, the ever constant eating through and through like funeral worms, the bones and blood of the earth laid bare before its relentlessness. Now … now they did what they could to protect it, harvesting what water they could and monitoring the levels. So far they’d been lucky though Fuuma and his Dragons were continually making attempts to wrest the building from them, as if their own water source wasn’t enough to content them. Perhaps it was in danger of becoming contaminated, too. He didn’t know.
What he did know was that he would do whatever was necessary to protect this building and those people living in it, those who were too weak and helpless to do anything but wait, knowing that it was only a matter of time but hoping -- hoping that he would be able to forestall that fate.
But when had he ever saved anyone?
“Someone came?”
The words though murmured, echoed in this place, punctuated by the drip of water, Kamui pausing, his cloak drifting to a lazy halt around him, the whisper of the fabric somehow the loudest sound of all.
“Yes,” he answered simply, the pool reflecting back varying shades of green - some gray, some with the faintest hint of yellow, and something deeper, almost blue, each shade making the water surrounding full of shadows, writhing and dancing across the unstable surface, “But not him.”
Kamui never heard him coming, not since the first had he ever heard him but over time he’d come to know when he was there and that was more important. As important as the hands that closed around his throat and chest, lightly now, not hurting as they had once been, hard immortal fingers icy against skin, tugging at his cloak, the fastening unsnapping easily and pooling around their feet. He’d long since given up on resistance, instead covering the hand over his heart, twining their hands as Kamui tilted his head, shivering at the sharp sting, a blossom of lethargic heat, the only thing that warmed him these days at all, that gave him any sense of peace.
The world was dying outside and he was dying inside, bit by bit, giving over what was left of his life for power, the power to change things, to fight back and save things. It was never enough though; the strings that had always bound him to Fuuma bolstering the other boy, each battle becoming nastier than the last.
He should stop, Kamui knew that. This should have stopped long ago but he’d never had the strength to turn him away, to give up the only shade of green that pool had never reflected back at him.
Cracking his lids, he caught their reflection in each jumpy wave of the water, two bodies, thin and wiry, clad in black as limbs seemed to merge, disappearing into the darkness, soft black hair brushing his cheek as he reached an arm behind him, starting to feel light-headed.
‘Subaru.’
There was so much in that name that was a blessing and curse, stirring in him emotions that were stronger than ephemeral hope and more real than despair. He would die with that name on his lips, in his heart, filling him until he wondered what was left of Kamui at all that hadn’t been taken from him.
Kamui found himself jerked around suddenly, warm, wet lips against his, salty with his blood and he kissed Subaru willingly, shuddering as fangs brushed against his bottom lip, the vampire pausing only long enough to bite the tip of his tongue, Kamui’s mouth parting easily against his. This was different, always so different than the taste of himself, his blood nothing in comparison, not enough to cause sparks behind his eyes, light-headed and starving, throat bobbing to keep up with that steady stream oozing down his throat. Changing him. Remaking him. Hollowing him out just as the rain was doing to the earth outside but unlike that, filling him with something else, something stronger and more irrevocable. Eternal.
The world was ending but he had only just begun.
***End