My contribution to Vul's fic challenge. My first try at writing Satsuki *at all*, so please forgive me if anyone is OOC. Especially since I suck at writing DarkKamui!Fuuma. Also has not been betaed or edited in any way shape or form other than proofreading. But it *is* 1999 words, not including the title.
Questions and Answers
It struck Satsuki as rather odd that the Dark Kamui had killed Nataku. Nataku was one of the Dragons of Earth, and thus, one of their teammates. What reason did Fuuma have to kill him? Even though she had been watching, she didn’t understand.
Things that Satsuki didn’t understand had a tendency to irk her.
Like her question to Yuzuriha, for example, the disgustingly genki Dragon of Heaven. Why is it wrong to kill humans? Satsuki knew it, as a fact, but she had never felt it. Never felt, in any way, that it was true. Yet it was a widely agreed upon truth. One that she didn’t understand.
And Yuzuriha had only been able to gape at her, and sputter, too shocked by the question to come up with any sort of answer. Thus proving, to Satsuki at least, that while it was so agreed upon that Yuzuriha didn’t understand how she couldn’t know, there was no real answer.
Yuuto, naturally, had given an answer. Satsuki would never have admitted to the slightest bit of hero worship, any more than she would have admitted that she kept a picture of Yuuto in her wallet, but she still maintained that Yuuto knew the answers to most of her questions.
The answer, however, hadn’t been much good. Because someone will be sad? Satsuki didn’t buy it. People were sad all the time, for reasons far lesser than the death of a loved one. So who was to say that it could possibly be the reason?
“Yuuto?” Satsuki looked up from her mug of tea, which she had been pondering seriously. “Why did /Kamui/ kill Nataku?”
Yuuto shrugged his elegant shrug. “Because it was his Wish to die.”
Satsuki gave this all due consideration, sipping at her tea. Yuuto came by every day to make sure she got some sunlight and a measure of social interaction. With anyone else, she would have considered the time wasted. But not with him. Never with him. “If it’s wrong to kill people, why do some wish to die?” She added together the previous scraps of information, and suggested, “is that because no one will be sad if they do?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Yuuto replied, reaching for the box of cookies that Satsuki had provided and taking one. He didn’t eat it, however; merely frowned at it thoughtfully. “Sakurazuka-san wished to die, yet his death was a terrible ordeal for Sumeragi-san.”
“Why, then?” Satsuki asked. More unanswered questions. God, she hated them.
“I’m not sure,” Yuuto finally said, abandoning his position as the guru of human knowledge. “Perhaps because they can’t stand the pain of their lives any longer? That, at least, is why Kakyou-san wishes to die.”
“It didn’t seem as if Sakurazuka-san had any problem with his life,” Satsuki voiced with a shrug.
Yuuto glanced at her, then back at the cookie. “But who’s to say? He was a very private man, after all.”
“Aren’t we all,” Satsuki murmured, and bit into a cookie. She didn’t particularly want it. She had merely bought them because Yuuto was supplying the tea and she felt it was her duty to bring something as well. Besides, Yuuto was fond of chocolate, or so she had noted many times.
That conversation had been months ago, a mere few days after Nataku’s death. The questions had continued to roll around in the back of Satsuki’s mind, but she was unable to answer them. After a while, she was forced to stop giving them so much active thought. It gave her a headache.
Now, with only a week left until the Final Day, she was beginning to think about them again.
If killing a human was only wrong because someone else would be sad . . . why, then killing all of humanity wasn’t wrong, now was it?
Satsuki frowned. There had to be a flaw in that logic somewhere. Yuuto, she was particularly certain, would not agree. He hadn’t lifted a hand to fight this entire time, except a few times when it had been necessary for another’s protection. Unless one counted his skirmish with Sorata at the beginning, and Satsuki didn’t. Fighting and playing weren’t the same thing, and she could easily distinguish the difference.
She fought Yuzuriha for the second and final time with a bit of a twinge at the back of her mind. Her conscience? She could have laughed. Sociopaths didn’t have consciences, and she had done enough psychological research to recognize the classic symptoms of it in herself.
It was afterwards, lying in a pile of rubble, that she wondered what it was to regret.
Another Seal had come to aid Yuzuriha in the fight, as well as Kusanagi, which had tipped the odds. Yuzuriha had not been lucky enough to escape, but the remaining Seal had inflicted some heavy damage before withdrawing.
Satsuki stared at the rubble around her and realized slowly, dazedly, that Beast had ceased to function.
The knowledge brought with it a certain paralysis. She could only sit and stare. Beast had been her faithful friend -- her only friend, aside from Yuuto. And Yuuto would not be there all the time. Yuuto did not care for her the way Beast had. She was a friend to him, but nothing more. Beast had treasured her. She had felt . . . precious . . . wrapped in its metallic embrace.
“You see,” a familiar voice drawled, “that’s why it’s wrong to kill people.”
She looked up, numb, to see Fuuma walking toward her.
“You understand now?” he asked.
She nodded. There was a strange pricking at the back of her eyes, and she didn’t understand it. It was hard to swallow. She didn’t understand, and she hated not understanding, but more than that, she hated this unfamiliar stream of emotions that she couldn’t seem to do battle with. “Was that my Wish?” she asked bitterly. “To understand?”
Fuuma shrugged. “If it was, I would’ve granted it a long time ago.”
Satsuki remembered sitting at Beast, playing idle computer games to pass the time, using it to connect to everything at once, the exhilerating high that only came when it poured information directly into her mind. She frowned as she realized that her cheeks were damp, and lifted one hand to her face, uncomprehending. “What . . .?”
“You’re crying,” Fuuma told her. “It happens when we lose a loved one.”
She shook her head. “Not to me. Never to me.”
He laughed. Satsuki didn’t have any idea what he found so funny. “Never is a powerful word,” he finally said, smirking at her. “Obviously it does happen to you.”
Satsuki sat in silence.
“Shame about Yuzu-chan, though,” Fuuma said thoughtfully. “She was a real cutie. Wanted to live more than anything, too. It was kind of endearing, since I was surrounded by the rest of you maniacs.”
Silently, Satsuki admitted he had a point. Kakyou-san wished only to die. Nataku-san had apparently wished the same. Sakurazuka-san hadn’t been as obvious about it, but it had held true anyway. No, Satsuki thought, the only one of the Angels (not counting Kusanagi, as she could count the times she’d met him on an amputee’s fingers) who had no death wish of any sort was . . .
“He’s quite the charmer, isn’t he,” Fuuma said with a laugh. “I understand what you see in him. Too bad he’ll only ever think of you like a little sister.”
The words were designed to hurt, and in Satsuki’s vulernable state, they did. She flinched away from them, then cursed virulently under her breath. She had known that Yuuto cared nothing for her on that level, and she didn’t know why it hurt so much being said by Fuuma.
Perhaps, because, until he had said it, she had been able to allow herself a tiny bit of hope.
But perhaps not.
“What about me?” Satsuki finally asked, surveying the ruins of Beast. What was the point? Kusanagi obviously cared nothing for their side. Yuuto had no interest in fighting. Kakyou-san would die by the end of the battle, Satsuki was sure that Fuuma would see to that. If Beast was gone, and she had no real purpose, what was the point?
Fuuma shrugged. “Do you want me to kill you?”
She looked at the floor. “I don’t know.” Then she gave him a sharp look. “But I’d think that you would, being so impressive and all.”
“I do,” Fuuma said. “I was just curious as to what you thought your opinion was.”
Satsuki shrugged. “It’s not like I have much to live for. So just get it over with already. Though I don’t know how you plan to win the Final Battle if you keep killing off your teammates like this.”
“Be fair,” Fuuma admonished. “I only need you to finish off the Kekkai around the city, and they’re mostly done for. In the Final Battle, I only fight Kamui, and so how many teammates I have left doesn’t matter.” He smirked, then added, “Besides, it’s not like the Seals are doing so well in terms of attendance, either.”
Satsuki had to admit that he had a point. No one had seen Sumeragi-san since Sakurazuka-san’s death except perhaps Fuuma, and he wasn’t telling if he had. Yuzuriha was now dead, and so were Sorata and Karen. The sides were practically even anyway. Satsuki doubted that Arashi was going to show her face on the Final Day any more than Sumeragi-san was.
“What if I wish her to live?” someone asked softly, and Satsuki blinked as Yuuto stepped out of the doorway.
Fuuma glanced at him, and smirked. “So what if you do?”
“Whose Wish will you grant?” Yuuto asked evenly, apparently unperturbed by Fuuma’s demeanor. “When there are two that are in such direct conflict?”
“The Wish to die is usually stronger,” Fuuma said, but he shrugged as if he was uncertain. That surprised Satsuki. Fuuma never gave away uncertainty. Then again, she thought with a wry smile, never was a strong word.
“You didn’t grant Sumeragi-san’s Wish to die,” Yuuto replied.
Fuuma shrugged again. “Subaru wanted to die at Seishirou’s hand, not mine. I couldn’t grant his Wish, so I granted Seishirou’s instead.”
“So what now?” Yuuto asked, and a small smile quirked his lips. “As they say in the movies, it appears we’re at an impasse.”
“No, we aren’t,” Fuuma said. “Just buy her a new computer, for God’s sake.” With that, he strolled out of the basement as quietly as he had come.
Satsuki blinked at Yuuto. “What did that mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Yuuto said. “But I’m assuming that his point was that you, knowing that I wanted you to live, wished to die just a little bit less. Enough to make my wish stronger, perhaps.”
Satsuki felt an odd rush of color to her face and looked away.
“Come on,” Yuuto said, giving her a friendly smile. “You shouldn’t stay in this basement anymore, not now that Beast isn’t here. You’ll get lonely. I have a perfectly serviceable guest room.”
Satsuki wanted to protest, but didn’t. She simply let Yuuto lead her outside, into the sunlight.
“So has your question been answered?” Yuuto asked as they walked.
“Yes,” Satsuki said simply.
“It seems a shame,” Yuuto said thoughtfully, squinting up in the sunlight. “To have lived your entire life without understanding.”
“I understand now,” she murmured. “What I don’t understand is why I was only able to feel it about a computer.”
“Beast wasn’t just a computer,” Yuuto said. “Besides,” he added with a sunny grin, “I’d like to think you’d be sad if I died, ne?”
She gave him a startled look, then managed a hesitant nod.
“Then it doesn’t matter,” Yuuto said. “Besides . . .” His face went dark for a minute, and he sighed softly. “It’ll all be over soon.”
Satsuki looked up at the blue, cloudless sky. “Yes,” she agreed. “It will be.”
~~~
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