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Displaced A X/1999 Alternate Universe story Sephy Prologue Tokyo Tower December 31, 1999 'The hardships we endure are what temper us, what make us who we are.' --Charles de Lint There was no such thing as time. In this place all he could see were the moments of his life ticking by, a slow fracture that picked up speed, widening until it was as deep as a ravine and as close as the rush of blood through his veins. There was a heart once, one that used to beat true but now that was gone too, leaving nothing in its wake. Not hope, not love, just a resigned, almost weary acceptance that went on forever. And then it all came rushing back -- the world, the truth of things, and one last inevitability to accept. It didn't hurt, not the way it should. Not the way you would think a sword through your chest would. Instead, everything was numb, as dead as the fear that should be there or the wistful realization that for everything he had done, for all he had tried, things had still come to this. His fingers closed around the blade of the Shinken, his skin cut deeply by just that, as if it were no more than butter against a burning knife. But he didn't feel warm -- no, not at all. Rather, he was cold, like the ripple of ice that had always been in those eyes he found himself staring into, past the angry face of one who had once been his friend, looking into another face, horrified pity etched in beautiful features. Pity and some sort of light, a look of anguished comprehension that seemed to thaw -- everything -- and he untangled… For the first time that Kamui could ever remember seeing, Subaru untangled, almost reaching as the Savior of the World jerked backward, a small gasp rounding his lips. He lingered there, hand to the empty space in his chest where he was certain a heart once beat, a heart that had loved and wanted and now was ash, destroyed by the fire of the sword wielded by another he had loved, not as much as the emerald-eyed one standing with him, but enough to want to save him. In the end this was what all wishing came to -- nothing at all. Someone screamed, a woman's voice, throaty and rich, one he remembered as full of laughter when all the shadows of her life should have made it otherwise. Screaming his name, shattering the silence, and as if that were a cue the strings seem to cut and he fell backward, a gout of blood erupting from his half-opened lips, the scent of warm copper and salt thick in the air, pouring over his fingers in a river that never ended. More shouting followed it, but Kamui couldn't bring himself to care. No, not about anything. He'd done everything that was required of him, everything he could, and all he wanted was to embrace the folds of sleep he felt skirting the edges of his consciousness. It'd been so long since he'd rested well, without nightmares or the fatigue that followed. So long since he'd been able to let go -- to not care or worry anymore about what would happen, if he would make the wrong choice, and everything would end. Well everything would not end, he'd made certain of that but for himself … he himself was another story, the threads of which seemed to grow shorter with each gasp for air, coughing against the bubble of fluid slowly strangling him. Fingers touched his face, the prick of nails against his cheekbones enough to rouse some response, the slow lift of gritty lids, fighting to focus as his vision blurred, filled with magnificent fires and sun-shot golds, the shape indistinct before it came together again. A woman, beautiful and crying as he had never seen before, smiling at him as she realized she had his attention. She was warm, her fingers seeming to burn his freezing skin and he shivered, eyes fluttering as he turned into that. She. Warm. Fire. His wandering mind dutifully spat out the correct information. Karen. She was Karen and that was important though it was becoming increasingly less so. Scratched and disheveled, she was still beautiful, tears spilling down powdery cheeks, a clean warm scent that reminded him of his mother. He thought perhaps he would be seeing his mother again very soon and he wondered if she would still smell like that, would feel like Karen, all soft skin and comforting warmth. So comfortable that all he wanted was to close his eyes again, to fall into a cocoon of heat and security. "Kamui." The word was thick and smoky, like wet fire, dragging along his senses and he barely registered the arm moving underneath his neck, tilting it upwards. He sputtered again as his body seized up, blood bubbling and flowing more freely over his lips and chin. It was somehow worse than before, the blood filling the inside of his mouth with a rotting soupy taste that left him vaguely nauseous even as he tried to smile, to offer some last reassurance that not even he felt. "Kamui, you need to stay awake," Karen prompted, "Focus on me." It seemed a waste of effort but if it made her happy, he supposed he could try. He didn't have the heart to try and discourage her, even if he could manage to voice that. Didn't have the heart … His lips curved a bit more at the irony, trying to tighten his fingers around his chest and no longer sure he was even doing that, fingers deadened and insensate. She shifted, clamping her hand over his, exerting enough pressure that he felt it distantly, more as if a weight had been pressed on him. "I need you to hold on, Kamui. Everything will be all right." Her eyes raked over him, breath catching in a choked sob before she continued, "W-we're going to get you some help now but you have to hold on. Do you understand that? You have to hold on, Kamui." "Just let him die! Let him fucking die. He killed my sister--he--Kotori--" Even Kamui flinched at the raw anger and despair cutting up the air, his head almost lolling as he turned towards Fuuma, the other boy screaming and struggling where Subaru was holding him back, arms underneath his in a tight lock for all his attention seemed to be focused on Kamui, green eyes dark against gray skin and oh so liquid. Tears looked different on Subaru than Karen, whose golden eyes made him think of a clear summer morning, the sun shining through pale rains. No, Subaru's eyes were a well, outwardly placid until something stirred them, the disturbance echoing inward, reflected back in an overflowing wash. Fuuma was crying too, though his face was red and furious, splattered with blood, most of which was his, Kamui realized with a belated start. " -- we need to get him medical attention right now," Karen was saying. "Subaru, are you liste--" His chest tightened again, body arching upward and Karen caught him, not flinching as his lifeblood flowed between them, holding him tightly as if she thought by the mere press of her body alone she could staunch that mortal tide. His mouth brushed against her neck, he spat again, gurgling, listening as she sucked in another sobbing breath, willing just enough strength to move his hand or at least he thought he was, clasping her upper arm. He could feel it in the tight set of her body, the taunt resistance, all her will to fight as if she were trying to impart it to him through touch and Kamui wished he could take it. He wished -- The tide came in, and Kamui slipped beneath it, drowning as his sight dimmed around the edges, a gray fog that took everything with it and offered only oblivion. There was no fear or pain, no doubt to be had. Only a hollowing sleep that opened its arms and felt the world and all that bound him dissolve away, a discarded shell that splintered around him. *** Tokyo, 2002 'Home is behind The world ahead And there are many paths to tread. Through shadow, to the edge of night, until the stars are all alight ' -- Billy Boyd & Howard Shore Masae hummed to herself as she made her rounds, clipboard clutched in against her chest, the keeping one eye on her watch as she bounced from room to room. It was only a couple more hours until her shift ended and she was bored, ready to get off and hit the sheets. They definitely were not paying her enough for the near twelve hour shifts she'd been forced to pull the last week, her social life about as lively as some of the patients in the ward right now. The hospital was in the midst of another hiring freeze, desperately needing more nurses and somehow (despite the large candidate pool) falling short, leaving those remaining on staff, the ones who hadn't pulled up stakes for so-called greener pastures, to pick up the slack. She'd already had more than one fight with Hisato over the fact they never seemed to make their schedules meet up and by the time she got home she couldn't handle much more than climbing into the sack let alone initiating anything even remotely sexual. It was murdering more than her social life though, seeping in and killing her sleep too, willing to swear that she was walking the hospital in her sleeping as well as waking hours. What she needed was a vacation but with a skeleton staff, bills, and an apartment to pay off that didn't seem very likely any time soon. Still, a girl could dream. She turned the knob of one door, an older man named Ieyasu who had been a long time patient of the hospital, the mechanical rasp of a respirator filling the room as she busied herself, paying just enough attention to make sure his vitals were sound and the I.V.s were hooked in correctly, drawing the coverlet more tightly over his emaciated chest. Ieyasu was one of those special patients whose family refused to take him off life support but never bothered to visit or call after him, waiting with uneasy indifference for the day when not even the machines breathing for him would be enough to keep him alive. There were a few other patients like that, waiting for release, tangled in the system despite the fact they remained little more than vegetables, Ieyasu no longer even reacting to the most severe of stimuli even though the physical therapists visited every week, exercising limbs that should have long since atrophied, little more than sallow skin and bones, the hook of his nose perhaps handsome once but at sixty, with little sun and nothing even closely resembling a solid meal his stomach for almost seven years, a terrible toll had been taken, making him seem far, far older. What a terrible fate, to be dead and alive, stuck somewhere between, unable to move onward because of some damn court order keeping alive a shell already vacated. Suffice to say, she'd worked here long enough to already draw up something of a will, donating her organs, and refusing any sort of life support. She'd rather die with some sort of dignity, thanks and being surrounded by a bunch of strangers, prodding and poking at her broken body fell somewhat short of that definition in her mind. Sighing, she let the door shut behind her, moving on to the next one, four sixteen, the one she liked the least of any the others in the ward. The one belonging to their youngest patient, just nineteen this year. Shirou Kamui. Masae had long since learned not to linger in this room, always trying desperately not to look as she went about her business, checking Shirou's I.Vs and catheter, wanting desperately not to stare and as always she failed. What had happened to Ieyasu was a damn shame, but Shirou … Shirou was an outright tragedy. Outwardly, he was probably the best preserved of any of their patients, appearing more living than dead, thick black lashes resting against porcelain skin, his features carrying just enough of the effeminate to be pretty without being overly girlish. Unlike Ieyasu, he didn't need a machine to breathe for him, though how that had come about was nothing short of a miracle, having read up on his case enough to know that he had been admitted with multiple injuries, not the least of which was a chest wound that had punctured a lung and come dangerously close to his heart. He'd very nearly drowned in his own fluid and no one she'd ever met who'd been around the day he'd been admitted was ever able to offer a reasonable explanation as to why he hadn't. Maybe he was too tenacious for that or just too damn unlucky. Three years and many, many examinations later, he was in as good a shape as anyone in the ward, comatose or not, only he wasn't exactly around to enjoy that fact, exhibiting no awareness in his surroundings beyond a few random twitches, most likely brain dead thanks to the same thing that had put him in his coma in the first place, acute hypoxia. Shirou had been on medications for some time after that and, the only things that had regulated and stabilized him enough to prevent further degradation in his condition. And so he lay here, a little taller now than he had been, still growing as if to spite his unconscious state, slender as a greyhound and still smacking of that same subtle androgyny of three years earlier even if some of him had filled out a little more. And also unlike the unlucky Ieyasu, Shirou had all sorts of visitors. A flame-haired women with clothes just low and daring enough to tell Masae that she wasn't making her money teaching school -- not unless it was for a very special, private tutoring session. A younger girl, bowl cut hair, with a giant of a man trailing after her, making puppy eyes and almost embarrassed whenever he received any sort of admiration himself. Three men, all impeccably dressed, one of whom she'd seen on the television enough to realize he was associated with CLAMP Academy. And sometimes…sometimes, she glimpsed someone else, swathed in black from head to toe, so fair that it was almost painful to look at him, and completely uncaring of the attention he garnered. Enough people, all of whom were so disparate, that she had to wonder who Shirou had been in his waking life that he would garner so much attention. True, only the red-head came regularly now, visiting almost weekly, bearing a bouquet of yarrow and irises, sitting with him for a couple hours at a time, taking out old flowers and replacing them with new ones before settling in to read to him. She'd been by so often that everyone on staff knew her on sight, calling out to Kasumi Karen as if she were there to see them and not the youth languishing in four sixteen. But she wasn't and Masae had never been able to forget that, not anymore than she could spindly fingers lying slack against uniform white sheets or his face, one that was so very alive in spite of everything and yet horribly blank, devoid of anything like a human expression. No, Shirou appeared -- empty, as if those cords binding body and soul had snapped a long time ago, only his body had yet to catch onto that fact. If he were hers… Well, if he were hers in anyway, she wouldn't be able to do as Karen did. She wouldn't be able to sit here, day after day, year after year, making this place a living tomb. The dead stayed dead, even those still alive and that was pretty much all they wrote. Perhaps it was heartless to think so, but after three years … Could anyone really blame her? She started to leave, to turn away as she did every night but some feeling, indecipherable and ominous settled at the base of her spine, prickling all the way up to her neck, as if the air around her had become charged with static electricity and Masae found herself eyeing Shirou more closely, studying him as if … she expected some sort of change. The hairs on the back of her neck raised accompanied by the uncomfortable feeling of goose bumps exploding all over her body. For a moment, everything seemed to flicker, as if the world had caught its breath, a pause between birth and afterbirth and she swallowed hard. And then it was gone, leaving her staring around in dumb incomprehension, nearly dropping her clipboard as she laughed to herself, a nervous, uncomfortable sound. 'Good one, Masae. You're so fucking bored and tired, you're imagining things now. The only thing that's ever going to move in this room is your ass towards the door, so why not get on that, huh? Before you creep yourself out further?' Sounded good to her. This time she didn't wait, didn't linger, just flipping the light switch off again, more than grateful for the harsh fluorescence of greenish-yellow overhead, faux marble tile floors reflecting the glare back, taking some comfort in the click clack of her shoes as she walked on and the sharp antiseptic tang to the air. Normal things. Comfortable things. She felt for Shirou, she really did. But it was the hand he'd been dealt and she had her own life to fuck up without having to worry about the ghost of what he might have been haunting her thoughts. *** The room so recently vacated was quiet now save for the hum of the machinery in the background, it's inhabitant sleeping on as if unaware that there had been any disturbance at all. Kamui's chest rose and fell with very little outward change, steady and effortless as always, as if he were no more than a wind-up toy left to run to its own devices. Changeless, it waited, the thin stream of light from the flashing lights and towers outside filtering through the blinds, throwing wan features into relief, stripping everything down until there was nothing but a skein of unused parts -- And violet eyes opened. ***End of Prologue [ back ]
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