Thanks to Ysabet, who gave me the idea for part of the discussion Muraki and Tsuzuki have in this chapter. I suppose I should've asked. Eheh.
Chapter Eleven
Okay, so maybe all hell breaking loose isn’t exactly the right phrase for this situation, but it’s damn close. Of course, what the hell do I know? I’m lying face down on the ground with something heavy on top of me. I’m so weak that I can’t even move, let alone get whatever it is off me. At least the wound on my throat healed.
But what on earth happened? I won’t know until I can get up. So I manage to squirm a little and moan. Great.
The weight lifts itself off me and I manage to roll over to see Muraki stand up. Right, okay, that makes no sense at all. Why was Muraki lying on top of me? What the bloody blue fuck is --
“Are you okay?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Can’t move,” I manage to say.
He gets an arm underneath my shoulders and lifts me up. I finally manage to look around, and . . . wow. The words total devastation leap to mind. I don’t see a demon left standing in the entire army. Ryuushi is lying in a crumpled heap about ten feet away. His wings have been shattered. I can see pieces of them lying around.
“What the fuck . . .?”
Muraki gestures to Tsuzuki. “He panicked and lost control of his powers.”
Tsuzuki is standing wide-eyed, staring around at the destruction he caused. I don’t think the army is all dead, but they certainly aren’t going to be giving us any trouble any time soon. And . . .
From Tsuzuki’s back, there’s sprouted a huge pair of black wings. His have feathers, unlike Ryuushi’s. His humanity coming through? Maybe. They’re black and iridescent, reflecting off the light, and probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“Tsuzuki . . .” I wobble my way towards him.
He turns slightly so he sees me, then sinks to his knees. His wings come forward and wrap around him, hiding him from view.
“Tsuzuki,” I try again.
“DON’T LOOK AT ME!”
Okay, I look at Muraki instead, sort of a ‘what now?’ look. He misinterprets it as a ‘what happened?’ look, which I suppose is another question I want answered, so okay.
“When Ryuushi was draining you, Tsuzuki-san screamed your name,” Muraki said. “Then those wings just . . . came out of his back. Sensing something cataclysmic on the way, I knocked you to the ground.”
I nod. So that’s why he and I survived. The blast probably would have killed us if it had hit us, but it didn’t. “Thanks.”
He shrugs. “Consider it a debt repaid.”
Ryuushi groans and starts to stir.
“What now?” I ask.
“I don’t know, but we’d better make it quick.” Muraki glances at the fog. “I think we’re about to find out firsthand if mortal spirits can make it through the Arechi no Shisou.”
I nod. “At least we don’t need to worry about the army anymore.”
“You’d better get him up,” Muraki says, gesturing to Tsuzuki.
I walk hesitantly over to Tsuzuki. He’s still hiding behind the wings. They look almost the same as when he’d been possessed by Saagatanasu. Okay, not a good parallel to be drawing, since he chopped me apart with a meat cleaver during that. Right, thinking happy thoughts. “Tsuzuki . . .?”
“Don’t look at me,” he says, and his voice is trembling on the edge of hysteria. “I’m evil . . . I’m a demon . . .”
“No, you aren’t.” I rest my hand on the edge of one shivering wing, trying to get through to him. Because I don’t love him any less, even after seeing what he could do. Sure, it scares me a little, but he would never hurt me intentionally. And that’s all that really matters.
I kneel down in front of him, trying to wrap my empathic presence around him. Surround his mind with mine; make him see firsthand that I still love him. More than love him. “Please, Tsuzuki . . . we need you. We can’t leave you behind here.”
He shakes his head, scattering tears. I can only barely see him through the feathers, but he has both hands pressed against his face. “Evil,” he whispers. “I’m a murderer.”
“Hisoka,” Muraki says, in a low, warning tone. I have a feeling that Ryuushi is getting up. Or at least trying to. Muraki doesn’t sound panicked, just cautious. Then again, with Muraki so detached, who’s to say? I certainly can’t spare a glance; I have to keep my attention focused on Tsuzuki. If he feels the slightest bit of fear coming from me, he’ll think it’s directed at him.
“Tsuzuki, you’re not a murderer,” I say quickly, unable to keep the urgency out of my voice. “You’re not, and I still love you, I know what you are and I love you . . .”
He just shakes his head.
“Damn it, Tsuzuki, we don’t have time for this!” I reach through the feathers and grab his chin in my hand, forcing him to look at me. “Listen to me, God damn it! We have to get out of here! You’re not a murderer and you’re not evil and we have to go!”
He stares at me for a second, obviously surprised. Then he nods slightly and lets me help him to his feet.
“Let’s go,” Muraki says. He’s gathered some torches and some other supplies, and shoved them into one of the packs. Without further time to realize what a bad idea it is, we walk into the fog.
It’s about another five minutes before my legs abruptly remember that Ryuushi just sucked out all my energy. They obligingly unhinge at the knees and send me sprawling facedown on the ground. Oh goody. Can my day get any better?
I hear Tsuzuki let out an alarmed little yelp, then feel myself getting lifted up and cradled against his shoulder. Can’t quite see him, though. My vision is hazy. I’ve been running on pure adrenaline since Ryuushi slit my throat wide open, and now it’s finally hit me. Or maybe that’s just all the fog between my face and his. Either way, he sure looks fuzzy.
“Hisoka?” Okay, maybe it’s me being tired, but his voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away. “Hisoka, what’s wrong? Can you hear me?”
I can, but I can’t manage to get up the energy to speak. So I just turn my face into his chest and close my eyes. Sleep sounds really good right about now.
No! What am I thinking?! I can’t sleep. We have to go. I try vaguely to struggle to my feet and end up sagging back into Tsuzuki’s arms. Right, scratch that plan then. “What’s wrong?” Tsuzuki repeats anxiously.
“Tsuzuki . . .” Hey, I can talk. Whoda thunk it. “Your wings’re so pretty . . .” What? I didn’t mean to say that. I have about zero control over my speech right now, apparently. “Makes you so beautiful . . .”
He gives me a puzzled look. “Hisoka?”
“Can you carry him?” I hear Muraki ask. Can’t see him; he’s outside the realm of my peripheral vision and it’s too much trouble to turn my head.
“I could, and so could you,” Tsuzuki replies. “But it would slow us down. Maybe too much.”
“Go . . .” I feel myself vaguely pushing at Tsuzuki’s chest. “Without me . . .”
Tsuzuki ignores me as if I hadn’t even spoken. And given that it was a pretty stupid suggestion, I’m not particularly surprised. “Can we take the time to give him a rest?”
“I’m not sure we should chance it,” Muraki says, and I agree whole-heartedly. I can still feel the patch of cold that signifies Ryuushi on the edge of my senses. I won’t be comfortable until that’s gone. “Ryuushi has traversed this place before, and can probably locate us within it far easier than makes me happy.”
I try to nod, but the world is fading out. I think I’m about to lose consciousness. God, sleep would be nice. To forget . . .
Tsuzuki is saying something, but I can’t hear him.
I feel something pressed against my mouth, firm but soft. The taste of blood. I don’t understand --
then it hits me, like an electric shock right to my system. White-hot energy pours through me, but it doesn’t hurt. It feels good, like a high, and I grab for more of it. More energy --
Then the taste of blood is gone and I’m sitting up, looking around wildly. “What?” I ask feebly, and glance over at Tsuzuki to see a small cut on the palm of his hand healing. He looks tired. “You didn’t . . .”
He smiles wearily at me. “Made sense that it would work both ways, doesn’t it?” He reaches out and caresses my face, pushing my hair out of my eyes. Now that the intial high is fading, I realize that he didn’t really give me that much of his energy; it wouldn’t do for him to wear himself out. I’m not even back up to my usual standard. But I have enough to walk, to make it through this. I hope.
“That’s very sweet and all,” Muraki interrupts, gaining a dirty look from both of us, “but can we go?”
I nod and climb to my feet. “Ryuushi’s not close,” I say. “But he’s still too close for comfort.”
We walk through the fog for a while. I can vaguely see things in the shadows, and it keeps making me jump, damn it. “We have to go through this for a day?” I ask, repressing the urge to groan. Ryuushi has faded to nothing but a vague twinge of my senses. In another half hour or so he’ll be gone completely. Too bad he didn’t die.
“Yes,” Tsuzuki says.
“Do we have any idea what we’re dealing with?” Muraki asks. He still sounds detached, but he’s a little more with it now. Maybe the prospect of getting out of Hell is encouarging him. I sure have no clue.
“Not a clue, other than what we can deduce from the name.” Tsuzuki seems to have accustomed to the wings; they shift as he walks. They aren’t as beautiful when you can’t see their sheen, but they look ghostly in the fog. It’s pretty cool. “Arechi no Shisou. Wasteland . . . shadows of death.”
“Shadows of the dead,” Muraki corrects.
I frown. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s shadows of death.”
“What’s it matter?” Tsuzuki asks, a note of wry humor in his voice. “Either way, it can’t be good.”
Muraki laughs slightly. The fog twists around him and obscures him from view for a minute. I don’t like that one bit.
“Should we . . . link up?” I ask hesitantly. “It’d really suck if one of us got lost in here.”
Muraki smirks at me. “Are you offering to hold my hand, Hisoka?”
I glare fiercely at him. “No! Well . . . yes. God damn it all anyway.”
Muraki laughs and takes my hand in a firm grip. Tsuzuki does the same on my other side. I would rather die than admit it, but I feel a hell of a lot more secure this way. “Ryuushi said that demons would be able to trust their instincts to get out,” I say to Tsuzuki.
Tsuzuki gives me a lopsided little smile. “I thought I wasn’t a demon.”
“Tsuzuki . . .” I say warningly. It’s the kind of tone that generally implies a cold, lonely couch in his future. I’ve only used it a few times.
“I can feel the pull,” he says, and his voice is soft, almost wistful. “Apparently even demons don’t like being in Hell. They’re all programmed to feel their way to the exit. Even through this.”
The fog twists and forms a shadow of a face on my right side. I shiver and look away quickly, hoping neither of the others saw.
“Ryuushi also mentioned something about the Gatekeeper letting them through,” I say, figuring I may as well bring it up sooner rather than later. Muraki’s facial expression doesn’t change a bit, but Tsuzuki winces slightly. “Do you know anything about that?”
Tsuzuki shakes his head. “I think it’s supposed to be a damned soul, but that doesn’t make any sense. We’ll just have to see when we get there.”
We fall into silence. It’s getting darker.
Arechi no Shisou. Shadows of death. Shadows of the dead? I suppose it makes more sense that way.
“What happened with Saki?”
Oh, I shouldn’t have asked that. Muraki’s hand just tightened on mine so much as to cut off circulation. And he doesn’t reply. But damn it, I want to know! Maybe later, I guess.
After a few hours of walking, it’s nearly pitch black. We sit down in the waning light to rest. I can’t feel Ryuushi anymore, and haven’t been able to for nearly two hours. For now, we’re safe enough.
“Do you think . . . it killed him?” Tsuzuki asks hesitantly, and his hand is cold. I give it a reassuring squeeze.
“No,” I say. “It didn’t kill him. More’s the pity.”
“Don’t say that,” Tsuzuki says faintly. “I . . . I don’t want to be a killer anymore.”
The hardest part of the job for any Shinigami is taking those souls who have done nothing wrong except evade death. Even children. If someone is fated to die, they must, or else the entire system can be thrown out of balance. Try explaining that to an eight-year-old girl with pigtails. Worse yet, try watching Tsuzuki explain.
So many times I saw him crying after assignments. But I never knew what to say. And still don’t, not really. None of us want to be killers. But if we didn’t do it, someone else would.
Does that absolve our guilt?
Even maybe a little?
Or does it just make us more guilty, for being the ones to do it?
It doesn’t really seem to bother the rest of them. Tatsumi, Watari, Wakaba. They all know it needs to be done. Even Akimiya takes it in stride. Hell, even Rika takes Akimiya’s job in stride. And once I adjusted, I did too.
Tsuzuki was the only one who never adjusted to being a killer.
How is this fair? What was EnmaDaiOh thinking? In order to make him repent for what the lives he had unintentionally taken, EnmaDaiOh put him in a position where he had to intentionally take lives. Sometimes I wonder if his head is screwed on straight.
So Tsuzuki cries after assignments, and I do my best to comfort him, but I know that I never can.
Muraki, surprisingly, is the one who answers. “Tsuzuki-san, there was nothing wrong in what you did. You acted to protect the life of someone you love dearly.”
“But . . .” Tsuzuki stares down at his palms, freeing his hand from mine. I can barely see it in the dim light. “All this power . . . I shouldn’t have it. It’s not right. I can’t . . . can’t control it.”
“You do control it,” Muraki says evenly. “You could’ve blown me off the face of the planet any number of times, and I’ve certainly done things to deserve it. Yet you never have. You’re in perfect control. Some part of your mind assessed, just then, that you had no other option but to let loose that maelstrom.”
“I don’t want it!” Tsuzuki yells, and presses his hands to his face. “It’s evil . . . it makes me evil.”
“Is a gun evil?” Muraki counters. He’s being surprisingly logical about all this. “It can kill. Yet your partner carries one.”
“A gun isn’t evil,” Tsuzuki says weakly. “It can just be used to do evil things.”
“Exactly,” Muraki says, sounding satisfied. “And so can your power. What you did just now wasn’t evil.”
“And the first time?” Tsuzuki asks in a low voice.
Muraki has no answer to that, because he doesn’t know the specifics, so I leap in to have my say. “Tsuzuki, that was an accident. It doesn’t count.”
“Innocent people died,” Tsuzuki says stubbornly. “Because I couldn’t control this.”
“Because Ryuushi forced you to lose control!”
“I should have been able to -- ”
“Bullshit!” I give him an exasperated look. “We can’t live our lives by ‘shoulds’, Tsuzuki! Don’t you remember what you said to me at the beginning of this whole stupid mess?” He gives me a blank look, and I know he doesn’t. “I kept trying to insist that getting kicked out was my fault because I couldn’t fight Muraki, but you wouldn’t let me say that. Because it wasn’t my fault for freezing up. I was scared. I . . .” I give Muraki an uneasy glance. “I was so scared,” I finish softly. Then my voice hardens. “But that wasn’t my fault, Tsuzuki, and this wasn’t yours.”
“It’s just . . .” Tsuzuki’s voice wavers. “I feel like I shouldn’t hate him. Because he’s my father and all.”
Muraki and I both let out identical snorts of disbelief.
Tsuzuki manages a wan smile. “All right, I know that it’s silly. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling it.”
“We aren’t everything our parents are,” I say softly. “I think the three of us might know that better than anyone.”
Tsuzuki is silent for a long moment.
“Of course,” Muraki continues, “you can go into Christian mythology. Demons are nothing more than fallen angels.”
“So?” Tsuzuki asks, looking confused.
“So,” Muraki says, “you have just as much potential to be angelic as you have to be demonic. To use a classic example, if you cut off a dog’s tail, will the dog have tailless pups? Of course not. The same holds true here. If an angel falls, its offspring could be born angels.”
“It’s a nice theory,” Tsuzuki says, looking somewhat wistful. “But I don’t think it holds true here.”
“Why not?” I ask him curiously.
“I don’t think angels would have the power to cause mass destruction,” he says.
Muraki shrugs. “On a technical level, it’s all just macrokinesis.” He takes in our blank looks. “The ability to move matter with the mind, on a grand scale.”
“I know that,” I say, bristling.
Muraki smirks at me. “All Tsuzuki-san is doing is colliding matter in the air, causing explosions.”
Tsuzuki looks like he has a headache.
“Oh, quit it with the scientific exposition,” I grumble. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
Muraki gives me a dirty look and falls silent.
“I don’t think angels are macrokinetic,” Tsuzuki finally says.
“All right, fine,” Muraki says, now sounding like he’s in a bit of an ill-temper. It makes me want to giggle, but I suppose that isn’t really fair of me. “But you aren’t born to one person, you know. You had a mother.”
I hope Tsuzuki didn’t just catch my flinch. Somehow, I was hoping this wouldn’t come up.
“I don’t know my mother at all,” Tsuzuki whispers. “I -- I remember the people I grew up with, the woman I thought was my mother and Ruka-chan, my sister, but . . . they were only the people who raised me. Not my real parents.”
“Sometimes that makes all the difference,” I say, but Tsuzuki looks so forlorn that I have to tell him. “Your mother was a good woman, Tsuzuki. Tatsumi told me a bit about her. She gave you up to hide you from Ryuushi.”
“Oh,” Tsuzuki says quietly. Then, barely a whisper, “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
I reach out and gently touch his face. “Yes, Tsuzuki.”
“She died . . . protecting me from him.”
I can feel his tears on my fingers, and my own are stinging at my eyes. I manage to choke out, “Yes, Tsuzuki,” and then draw him into a hug. He shivers, clinging to me.
Muraki just sits and watches us in silence. He waits, considerately giving us our little moment, then says, “We should go.”
I nod and stand, then help Tsuzuki up. We link hands again and continue on in silence.
~~~~
We don’t have time to rest, much to my annoyance. By the time I think about six hours has gone by, I’m no longer really paying attention to what I’m doing. My feet just keep moving, one in front of the other. Step, step, step. It’s dark now. Completely dark. I couldn’t even see my own body. But then Muraki lit one of his torches.
The small circle of light we walk within only seems to make the darkness outside it darker. There’s something really scary about it.
“Did you see something over there?” Muraki suddenly asks us, and Tsuzuki and I both flinch.
“Where?” I finally ask, and hope my voice isn’t shaking quite like the leaf it sounds like.
Muraki gestures with the torch. It feels like he’s hitting the darkness itself, like it’s a solid thing. A living thing. I can’t hold back the shiver.
“Shadows of death,” Tsuzuki murmurs. “Shadows of the dead.”
And I can almost see eyes in the darkness.
“I just wish we knew what we were dealing with,” he says, and we all unconsciously speed up our pace.
“Now you know how we felt on our way through Hell in the first place,” I tell him, and give his hand a squeeze. His hands are cold again. I can feel his terror seeping in through my skin, no matter how well he tries to keep it contained for my sake.
But now that Muraki has gotten us worked up, we keep seeing things in the shadows. We’re only about halfway through the Arechi no Shisou. I can’t imagine walking through this for another six hours. But Ryuushi said it would take a day, maybe more, and he marched us for twelve hours on the first day.
So. Six more hours of blackness. You’d think I’d be able to take it, but just . . . something about this place. It wears on my nerves, constantly, like a dull buzz at the edge of your hearing. An empathic buzz. Fear and pain linger just on the edges of my senses. So low that I almost can’t feel it, and that just makes it more maddening. I might almost prefer outright emotion.
It’s the feeling of unease, of something coming. And yet nothing has come. There has to be more to it than this, or why would all the demons have been afraid of it so much?
Shadows of death. (I don’t care what Muraki says, it’s not shadows of the dead.) But what would represent that?
It must be different for each demon, for each person that has to face it. Or for each demon.
“More fog,” Tsuzuki whispers, as another cloud floats up around us. It looks spooky in the light of the torch. I can’t hold back a shiver. Tsuzuki’s hand is still cold; Muraki’s is clammy. I know without touching either of their minds that we’re all scared out of our minds.
Then the fog parts and a single figure steps through it. I can’t see them well enough to identify them.
“Welcome to Arechi no Shisou.” The voice is feminine. Soft and light. Very familiar, but I can’t quite place it. “An odd band of warriors before me. A mortal, though gifted. A Shinigami, though not recognized by the JuohCho. And a half-breed blood demon, not recognized by either of his kind. Not wholly one thing . . . or wholly another.”
We just stand there in silence. None of us have enough balls to demand of the shadowy figure a name or description. The numbing cold is back, but different this time, because it has no source. It simply is.
“I see within you . . . regret. Despair. Betrayal. Hatred. Anguish.”
There’s a moment of utter silence.
“Yet I also see love, sacrifice . . . determination. You are not damned souls, so there is no reason to keep you within.”
I feel myself breathe a sigh of relief. But it can’t be that easy. It’s just not possible.
“However,” the voice says, and my stomach drops back into my shoes. “You must endure the trial to pass, as all must, and I wish you . . . whatever luck you deserve.”
“Wait!” I say, sensing that whoever she is, she’s going to leave. “What is the trial!”
“You must each defeat that which is inside yourself,” she says. “That which makes you weakest.”
No good can come of this.
Then she steps out from the shadows, and for the first time in years, I’m face to face with Kakyouin Tsubaki.
~~~~
Chapter Twelve
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