Hokuto didn’t know exactly what had happened between her cousin and her brother, but she was sure that something had. For the next four days, Irishido had no dizzy spells, no fever. And if he experienced any pull towards Seishirou, he damped it down enough that she didn’t notice.
All in all, Hokuto was worried. She was sure that her brother was off sulking somewhere, and that just wasn’t going to get them anywhere. If only he would behave like a reasonable human being for once . . . well, that would help matters immensely. Her trip to Kyoto had been absolutely useless; their grandmother didn’t have the slightest clue as to what might help.
After four days, Hokuto gave up on beating around the bush and sat Irishido down with a mug of tea. “All right,” she said. “You tell me what happened between you and Subaru, or else I’m going to go nuts not knowing.”
Irishido sipped his tea. “Wouldn’t be a very long trip,” he remarked dryly.
Hokuto stuck her tongue out at him, then put her hands on her hips and gifted him with an immensely frightening glare. “Irishido-chan, you are treading on thin ice. Tell me what happened. No, scratch that, ‘cause I already know. You argued. What did you argue about?”
“I’ll give you three guesses,” Irishido told her. “And the first two don’t count.”
“All right, already,” Hokuto said, exasperated. “You argued about the whole taking-control-of-your-body to whatever-Sei-chan. Stop being a prat. You must have said something damned harsh if it got Subaru to sulk for four days straight. He’s not a sulking type.”
“No offense, Hokuto-chan, but you have no idea what type he is,” Irishido said. His tone was mild, but the words themselves made Hokuto flinch. “He’s not who he used to be, not by any means. I can understand him because he’s in my head. Hell, I can’t not understand him at this point.”
Hokuto put two fingers to her temples, feeling a migraine coming on. “Look, will you just tell me what you said that pissed him off so much?”
“Technically, he pissed me off,” Irishido said. “I finally caved and offered to let him have my body, as long as he offered me a decent plan. He didn’t even have that, so I told him to shove the hell off until he came up with one. I’m sure he’s off somewhere in my subconscious cooking up evil schemes. Which actually surprises me, because I didn’t expect him to listen.”
“All right,” Hokuto said. “But there must be something else you said. Maybe I don’t know my brother that well anymore, but I know that he wouldn’t go off somewhere without a reason.”
“I got pissed at him for lying to me,” Irishido said with a shrug. “Because he keeps saying he’s not in love with Seishirou, and he is, and that’s all there is to it. He’s all for torturing him, but really what he wants to do is make Seishirou fall in love with him, and that’s what he doesn’t know how to do.”
“Well, if you think about it, that would be the ultimate torture,” Hokuto said, smiling dryly. Subaru wasn’t the only one who had changed over the past five years. “I mean, for Seishirou to fall in love with him. Given that he’s dead and they can’t be together now.”
Irishido rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I can imagine that Mr. Emotionless would probably be pretty pissed off if he did actually fall in love. But Subaru’s got no clue how to do it and quite frankly, I’m stumped, too. If I had a good idea, I might offer it to him.”
Hokuto tipped her chair backwards so she was leaning against the counter and smoothed her skirt over her legs. “Well, it’s a quandary,” she said. “I won’t even go into the ethics of this. I mean, Subaru loves ‘Seishirou-san’, and he’s not really -- ” She stopped as Irishido let out a dry chuckle. “What’s so funny?”
“Did you know that Subaru knew about Seishirou all along?” he asked.
Hokuto’s jaw dropped. “No.”
He nodded. “Oh yes. He knew the first moment they met. He thought that he could change Seishirou. In a way, they were a lot alike. Seishirou was fascinated by Subaru’s innocence, and Subaru was equally fascinated with Seishirou’s darkness. He wanted to ‘save’ Seishirou.”
“Well, splendid,” Hokuto said, now annoyed. “So did Subaru let himself get killed or what?”
“I’m not sure,” Irishido said with a shrug. “I’m pretty sure most of this was subconscious, and he’s certainly denying it all now, so it’s not as if I can ask. I think, maybe, he thought that Seishirou wouldn’t kill him. That he meant at least more than that.”
“Obviously not,” Hokuto said, scowling. “All right, this is stupid. I want to talk to him directly.”
Irishido gave her a look for a second, then shrugged slightly. “He comes and goes as he pleases. Not much I can do about it.”
Her scowl deepened. “Subaru!” she said, in that demanding tone that she had usually only used when Subaru had been about to leave the house in an outfit she didn’t like. “Subaru, you get over here this minute! I want to talk to you!”
There was a long pause. Irishido’s hands tightened on his tea mug, then loosened. Hokuto could tell it was difficult for him to consciously give up control over his body; it went against everything he had ever been taught. After a few moments of internal struggle, he looked up again.
The subtle changes fascinated Hokuto. Irishido often slumped, but Subaru sat up straight in the chair. He put down the tea as if he wasn’t interested in it at all. Even the eyes were somehow different, although Hokuto would have been hard pressed to explain exactly what the difference was. Subaru just wore the body differently, that was all.
“You called?” he asked mildly.
She gave him a look. “I heard you need a plan.”
He nodded agreement. His hand dipped into Irishido’s pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Hokuto waited in silence while he lit up, then couldn’t suppress a giggle as he started to cough. “You know Irishido-chan doesn’t smoke, right?”
Subaru’s eyes narrowed and he glared at her. Hokuto’s giggles died in her throat. There was just something in that look that was so alien, so utterly . . . not Subaru . . . like he didn’t care what he had to do to get what he wanted. Whether it was a cigarette or Seishirou, he wasn’t going to let anything get in his way.
“Subaru,” she said firmly, reminding herself that this was her brother, her twin brother for God’s sake, and she was not about to be afraid of him, “you will give your cousin lung cancer. And then he will be very, very angry with you.”
“He can handle one cigarette.” Subaru took another drag, and this one went down easier, as Irishido’s lungs got accustomed to the smoke.
“I wish you had told me,” Hokuto said quietly.
“That I wanted to start smoking?” Subaru asked. He wasn’t quite sure when the urge had struck him; sometime during the previous week, and he had snatched Irishido’s body (and not so incidentally, his wallet) long enough to buy a pack and a lighter.
“That you knew what Seishirou was.”
Subaru’s face went through a range of expressions: disbelief, anger, then a mild curiosity which somehow frightened her more than the anger did. “I see you’ve been talking to our cousin.”
“Of course I have,” she snapped. “He lives here. Lives. As in, is still alive.”
Subaru gave her a withering look. “Look, what would you have done if I said, ‘excuse me, Hokuto-chan, I think Seishirou-san is the focal point for all the dark onmyoujitsu in Japan’? You would have gotten worried. I didn’t need you to worry. I was taking care of it.”
“Oh, yeah,” Hokuto said, unable to keep the incredulity out of her voice. “You took care of it, all right. You took care of it real well.”
“Is there a point to this?” Subaru snarled.
“I want you to answer some questions for me,” Hokuto said. “And I want you to answer them honestly. And if you do all those things, then maybe you and Irishido can come to some sort of agreement. All right?”
“All right,” Subaru said suspiciously.
“Did you love Seishirou?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still love Seishirou? And I mean the whole package, not just the nice veterinarian who killed puppies while we weren’t around.”
There was a long pause. Subaru finished cigarette and looked for a place to stub it out. Not seeing one, he flicked it into the sink. “Yes,” he finally said.
“Then what do you want to do?” she asked softly. “You know that making him love you is the ultimate punishment. Making him face what he’s done, not only to you, but to himself.”
“It would be nice,” Subaru admitted, and Hokuto wondered which was more important to him: Seishirou’s love or Seishirou’s suffering. She thought that they might weigh equally in his mind. “But it wouldn’t work. He killed me. Even if by some bizarre coincidence I could make him fall in love with me, he never would, because I’m dead.”
A spark of an idea tugged at Hokuto’s mind. She turned it over a few times, pondering. “Well,” she finally said. “You and Irishido-chan do look an awful lot alike . . .”
“Obviously,” Subaru said, rolling his eyes.
“And you have been dead for over five years now, so any minor changes could be written off as aging . . .”
Subaru looked at her. “Hokuto-chan,” he said, eyes narrowing again, “what are you thinking?”
Hokuto finished considering the plan and gave her brother a sharp, toothy grin. No, he wasn’t the only one who had changed in the past five years. She could be vindictive with the best of them.
Subaru lit another cigarette, and listened as Hokuto explained her plan.
~~~~
Irishido had been pacing up and down the hallway for well-approaching twenty minutes. It wasn’t that he was nervous, not really. After all, he wasn’t going to be involved in what happened next. Well, his body was going to be, but he wasn’t going to be there. That was the agreement he and Subaru had.
Really, he had absolutely no desire to witness what was going to happen next. He might hang around as a spectator for a while, but that was all. He had Subaru’s word that if anything went wrong, he would be told.
Other than that, he wasn’t too fond of thinking about what came next.
Hokuto’s plan was, as most of Hokuto’s plans were, absolutely insane. Irishido could think of at least a dozen words to describe it. Insane, idiotic, impossible, impractical, and several others starting with the letter ‘i’ alone. Reckless was another good one. He had no idea how she had come up with it. In fact, the best word might be ‘bizarre.’
The most insane thing about it was that, if Subaru could pull it off, it really might work.
Therefore, Irishido paced up and down the hallway outside of Seishirou’s apartment, waiting. He wasn’t a smoker and he desperately wanted a cigarette. He had knocked twice before his courage had given out, but there was no answer. Seishirou was out, and given the hour, it was probably on business.
So Irishido waited.
He knew when Seishirou was coming. The faint marks inside his mind, that he had taken so much care to find and isolate and learn to use, gave him due warning.
//Are you sure you want to do this?// Subaru’s voice drifted out from somewhere in his subconscious.
Irishido was not sure. He was not even vaguely approaching sure. //The sooner we do it, the sooner it’s over with,// he replied, even though he knew that it could be quite a while before he got his own body back. //Just keep up your end of the deal, Subaru.//
//I will.// Subaru’s voice was soft and sad. //When this is over, your body and mind will be your own again. I promise.//
Irishido stood up, and stretched a little. He sighed. This was not something he wanted to do, but he had sworn that he would show Seishirou the meaning of pain, and if this was the only way to do it, then he would do whatever it took.
He was going to win this bet.
~~~~
Seishirou whistled as he walked up the stairs. Elevators were for wimps, and in any case, it was easier to avoid people if he took the stairs. Not that he cared who he ran into. No one would see the blood his hands were coated in. Illusions took care of that.
No one, that was, except the person who was sitting outside his apartment door. Seishirou hadn’t bothered to make the illusion strong enough to fool him. Why bother? It wasn’t as if Irishido didn’t know he was a murderer.
“’Shido-kun,” he said, with his large smile that was only partially false. He was glad to see the Sumeragi. In the past four days, he had been wondering what the younger man was up to. Not enough to go seek him out; it wasn’t worth the bother. He had known that sooner or later, Irishido would be drawn back to him. “What brings you here?”
Irishido looked up, and it struck Seishirou again how much he looked like Subaru. It was those damn Sumeragi genes, he supposed. Strong magic and green eyes.
Very cold green eyes. It was not Irishido he was speaking to.
“Hijacked your cousin’s body again?” he asked, amused. “He won’t be pleased with you when he manages to get back into control.” He fished his keys out of his coat pocket with his clean hand and unlocked the apartment. “Would you like to come in?”
“I’d love to come in,” Subaru said, in a sweet tone of voice which made Seishirou start to get nervous. No, nervous wasn’t the right word. Unfeeling assassins didn’t get nervous. Apprehensive was probably better. “And by the way, I haven’t hijacked my cousin’s body again.”
Seishirou didn’t pause in the act of taking his coat off. His movements continued as unhurried as ever. But his mind flicked out to the Sumeragi and he found that it was true. There was no trace of Irishido.
Interesting.
He lit up a cigarette and offered the pack to Subaru. The younger man took one and allowed Seishirou to light it for him. “Did you kill him?” Seishirou asked, admitting to a small amount of curiosity.
“No,” Subaru said with a mysterious smile. “We came . . . to an agreement.”
“Let me guess,” Seishirou said. “You get his body as long as it takes to wreak your terrible vengeance, and then you’ll go back to being dead and he’ll go back to being the burned out Head of a dying Clan.”
Subaru considered this, smoking his cigarette slowly. He noted that Seishirou was smoking his rather quickly, and smiled. “No,” he finally said. “That’s not the agreement exactly. But you’re close enough that quibbling over semantics isn’t really worth it.”
“Which part are you objecting to?” Seishirou asked. “The terrible vengeance part, or the burned out Head of a dying Clan part?”
Subaru smiled. “How do you know it’s either of those parts that I’m objecting to?”
Seishirou raised an eyebrow at him. “Because it’s either that or the fact that you go back to being dead, and something tells me that ‘Shido-kun would have been very insistent on that being a part of the bargain. Or am I wrong?”
Subaru shrugged. “I don’t really think the details of our bargain are any of your business, Seishirou-san.”
“All right,” Seishirou said. “Would you like some tea?”
“Tea would be nice, thank you.”
The two of them settled down at the kitchen table with their tea and their cigarettes and regarded each other seriously, and with no small amount of suspicion on both sides.
“So tell me, Subaru-kun,” Seishirou said, with a charming smile, “if you’re not here to discuss the results of your bargain with ‘Shido-kun, why are you here?”
Subaru returned the smile with a very sweet one of his own. “Call me by that ridiculous nickname one more time, and I will tear out your intestines and strangle you with them.”
Seishirou raised an eyebrow at him, studying him over the rim of his teacup. He honestly believed that Subaru was capable of making good on that threat, and the reality of it disturbed him somewhat. He had to remember he was not dealing with naive, innocent Subaru-kun anymore. Nor was he dealing with frustrated, sarcastic Irishido.
The problem was that he really had no idea who he was dealing with.
“All right, Subaru,” he said, with exaggerated patience, “why are you here?”
“The last time I was here . . .” Subaru took a long drink of his tea, giving Seishirou careful consideration, “do you remember what you said to me?”
Seishirou smiled. “I said a great many things to you the last time you were here.”
“In specific,” Subaru said, “you told me that I was no threat to you, since I did not have full control over the body I was inhabiting. So my question is, now that I have full control . . . am I a threat to you?”
Seishirou laughed. “No.”
Subaru smiled at him.
“Why are you smiling?” Seishirou asked curiously. The Sumeragi’s complacency upon being told that he posed no threat was somewhat disconcerting.
“Because that’s exactly what I thought you’d say.” Subaru finished his tea and poured himself another cup.
“Let me guess,” Seishirou said dryly, “that’s exactly what you’re hoping I would say? You think I’m underestimating you? You forget, Subaru, I watched you for years. I know exactly what you are and aren’t capable of. And you aren’t capable of anything that is a danger to me.”
Still that same, satisfied little smile.
“And yet,” Subaru said, “you immediately dropped the familiarity when I told you to. Which means that you honestly believed I would make good on that and rip out your intestines. Tell me, Seishirou, if you don’t think having your intestines ripped out is a threat, what is?”
Seishirou realized too late how neatly Subaru had trapped him. He grinned widely. This was going to be immensely entertaining. “All right,” he said. “I concede. You could physically harm me if you so chose. It wouldn’t be easy, but you could do it.”
“I have something now that I didn’t have five years ago,” Subaru said with a smile. “Can you guess what it is?”
Seishirou thought about it for a few long minutes. He lit another cigarette, poured himself more tea, considered. “The marks,” he said, and shook his head with a smile. “’Shido-kun figured out how to use the marks against me. He taught you?”
“Of course.”
“That was the part of your bargain that I missed.”
Subaru smiled. “I will always know where you are, Seishirou . . . I’ll know when you’re awake and when you’re asleep. I’ll know when you’re vulnerable, when your store of magic is depleted. I’ll always be able to find you.”
Though Seishirou would not have admitted it to save his own life, he found all this extremely disconcerting.
“Ah, but what’s the point?” he asked. “I find myself extremely curious about that, Subaru. You’ve as much admitted that you don’t want me dead. You want me to suffer. I suspect you must have some sort of grand plan, but I’m having trouble figuring out what it must be.”
“Oh, it’s not my grand plan,” Subaru said casually. “Hokuto came up with it.”
Right around then, Seishirou got extremely nervous.
~~~~
Hokuto was doing the dishes when there was a soft knock on the door. Irishido had keys (or should she think of him as Subaru now? She wasn’t sure) and in any case, there was only one person she knew that knocked that quietly. She dried her hands on the dishtowel and opened the door. “Konban wa, ‘Kyou-chan,” she said with a grin, and kissed his cheek.
“Konban wa, Hokuto,” Kakyou said with the same slight smile he always gifted her with. She was happy to even get that much from him, usually. This time it was shorter-lived than usual.
“I don’t want to know,” she said, standing back to let him in. “I don’t want to know what visions you had or what you Saw. I don’t want to know if it’s going to go well or badly. For once, just don’t . . . just don’t tell me.”
Kakyou regarded her for a long minute, then nodded silently. “I brought some dinner,” he said. “I figured you would be too nervous or too high-strung to cook tonight.”
“Thanks,” she said, gesturing for him to put it on the kitchen table.
He did so, then wrapped his slender arms around her. “It’s a good plan that you came up with,” he said softly, holding her.
She hugged him back, but she knew that his words weren’t necessarily meant to be reassuring.
She had never been so scared in her life.
~~~~
“So, Seishirou,” Subaru said, lighting his second cigarette from a pack in his pocket, “there’s something you said to Irishido the other day which very much caught my interest.”
“Is that so?” Seishirou asked, his voice betraying none of his apprehension.
“Mm.” Subaru took a long drag on the cigarette. “When Irishido reminded you that I had been in love with you . . . you said ‘so?’”
“Did I, now.” Seishirou was amused. A conversation about their tragic love, he could handle. He felt like he could handle pretty much everything at this point, except this nebulous plan that Hokuto had come up with.
“Mm hmm.” Subaru sipped his tea and studied Seishirou over the rim of the mug.
Seishirou didn’t like the look that Subaru was giving him. For lack of a better analogy, it made him feel like he was on the dissection table, and was slowly being cut apart and examined. No, it was safe to say that he was still nervous. However, he had answered the question. He chose to continue to smoke and wait for Subaru to get around to whatever he was going to say next.
After a few moments of silence in which Seishirou had ample time to stew, Subaru went on to say, “So my love meant absolutely nothing to you.”
Seishirou smiled. “I killed you, Subaru. I think it’s fairly obvious that you meant nothing to me.”
Subaru gave an amused little chuckle at that remark, and finished his mug of tea. Seishirou chose to not ask what was so funny. It was altogether too possible that Subaru might tell him, and then he might have to run screaming.
“You killed me,” Subaru finally said. “And I think I finally realize why. I can read it on your face right now.”
Admirably, Seishirou managed to not react at all to that little comment other than a slight lifting of his eyebrows, inviting further explanation.
“You,” Subaru said, obviously relishing each syllable, “were afraid.”
Seishirou couldn’t contain an amused snort. “Oh, yes, Subaru. You’ve found me out. Secretly, I thought you might win the bet, so I wanted to kill you before you could. I forgot how good you are at the art of self-delusion. The year was up, Subaru. I felt nothing for you, so you lost, and I killed you. It’s as simple as that. You can add all the connotations you like to make yourself feel better, but it won’t change the facts.”
Subaru gave a pleased smile. “Have you ever noticed,” he said casually, “how if you say something vague, someone will extrapolate your full meaning, thus telling you what they were really thinking?”
Seishirou’s eyebrows lifted again.
“All I said,” Subaru continued, “was that you were afraid. I never said what I thought you were afraid of. But you’ve just told me. You’ve filled it all in rather nicely. Thank you for that. I wasn’t particularly sure.”
“You are a little bastard now, aren’t you,” Seishirou observed mildly.
“I’m entitled,” Subaru replied. “I went there that day to proclaim my love for you . . . and you killed me. Don’t you think I have a right to be a bastard?”
Seishirou laughed. “Quite.”
“What were you thinking?” Subaru asked curiously. “That day?”
“That the year was up,” Seishirou said concisely. “And that it was rather a shame. Playing with you was so much fun. You were so gullible. But a bet’s a bet, and I always keep my word.”
“So you killed me.”
“So I killed you.”
“And you felt no regret.”
Seishirou’s lips twitched. “I felt bored. But I didn’t feel regret.”
Subaru tapped ash from his cigarette into his tea mug. The pack of cigarettes lay on the table and he began to draw them out, playing with them, arranging and rearranging them in different patterns. The silence grew.
“What if you hadn’t killed me?”
Seishirou raised an eyebrow at the younger man. “I hardly think it’s necessary to speak in hypotheticals, Subaru. I did kill you. Isn’t that all that matters?”
“Humor me,” Subaru said with a smile. “I had a year. What if I’d had five? Do you think in any tiny little way, it would be possible that if I’d had as long as I needed, I could have brought you around?”
Seishirou gave it due thought. Subaru had certainly been amusing, this much was true. He supposed that, in a lot of time, it might have progressed onto something more. He also had the feeling that if he gave the wrong answer, Subaru might stub out his cigarette in his eye, and he only had one good one left.
The eye. That was the only thing that gave him pause. He had never, in the past five years, figured out why he’d felt the need to do that. Why risk his own life protecting Subaru only to take it himself a few days later? For the amusement value of those last few days? The amusement of the murder itself?
Or something else?
“I suppose you could have,” he finally conceded.
Subaru’s smile was sudden and brilliant. He stubbed out his last cigarette and lit a new one. “Then let’s find out.”
His hand moved rapidly, tracing a pattern in midair with his cigarette. A star. The smoke hung in the air holding the shape.
Subaru put one finger in the center of the star. Seishirou felt a moment of admiration that he would be able to do any sort of spell, let alone a complicated one, using cigarettes as his medium, but that was all he had time to do. Before he could raise his mental barriers higher, so even with the marks, Subaru wouldn’t able to penetrate them, he felt a sensation strangely akin to the top of his head being lifted off.
And everything went dark.
~~~~
I feel entitled to that cigarette thing since Seishirou did it in Xtv... so I didn't *really* pull it out of my ass. Much.