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Christmas fic!
So. Here it is. My present to you all. And it’s... *drumroll* ...Muraki/Oriya! The least likely pairing for a Christmas fic ever! Yay! And intelligent little me decided that it would be really fun to do it from first person POV, ignoring the fact that one of them is a twisted killer. Yeah. Um.
Warnings for angst (duh), almost complete lack of fluff, blood, and mild lime because I couldn’t work up the motivation to go any further.
Credit goes to Ms Vance for teaching me about pathetic fallacy, and Ali for yelling at me over MSN until I wrote (and persuading me to leave the humour in). Brandy and hugs to anyone who gives me feedback or at least says nice things, because I put a lot of effort into this one.
I hereby swear by your deity of choice that this fic shall not contain any references to meaningful Christmas presents (especially small furry animals), custard, or dodgy mistletoe scenarios. It shall also not end with the words “and as their lips met, so-and-so reflected that this was the best Christmas ever.”
Oh yeah. At one stage I sort of forgot if they were standing or sitting and just sort of gave up. If you’re the type that notices that kind of thing and you can spot any glaring errors, I’m sorry.
I take no responsibility for the bits where Muraki attempts to be reflective, because he sucks at it. Really.
~
There’s a poetic device – pathetic fallacy, it’s called. When the weather matches your mood to the point of making the emotion stronger. And here I stand on a late December night that by rights should be as white as every other year has been, and I watch the grey deluge outside that is washing away all the snow that has dared to fall this year. Somehow I can’t quite decide whether I like it better this way, or if I’m annoyed at being denied a white Christmas.
But mostly I’m trying to drive away the depression that makes the rain so very appropriate. Trying to tell myself that this is like every other time he isn’t here. He’s been away for weeks, months before. And it’s been two days, and all I can do is stare at the rain and wonder if this is true depression or a merciful numbing of something else.
Because every other time, I’ve known that he will come back.
~
Muraki Kazutaka. Man, magician, mystery.
Murderer.
Does it make me twisted that I can say it so clearly and still not mind? No, rephrase that. I do mind. But I don’t care.
Stranger things have been done for love.
I could try and fool myself, try and pretend that I’m still in love with the person I knew all those years ago – that the only reason I keep letting him get inside my defenses is because I want him to change, and I know he can become something else.
No, I’m not that naïve. He wouldn’t change – not for me, certainly. And because I have accepted that, I also have to accept that I’m not caught by my past. Because if I wasn’t in love with the person that he is now, I would have been able to give him up a long, long time ago.
But despite the fact that I’ve been covering up his escapades for years, his world has stayed almost entirely separate to mine. Only once has he taken a personal interest in my affairs – one night at the KoKakuRou that was just like any other, when it was raining almost as hard as tonight.
Muraki was in the room as I was entertaining, bored enough to tolerate the company and insisting I pass him off as a business associate from Tokyo – which was close enough to the truth. One of my newer clients, an up-and-coming politician called Muriko Seki, had been heavily into the sake all evening and was showing unfortunate tendencies towards violence. I interfered to stop him from striking one of the geishas for being slow with the cups, and got a split lip and bruised cheek for my trouble.
He left soon after, obviously having enough rational thought left to know that physically harming the owner of such an establishment – especially someone as well-connected as I – was hardly a wise move. He would probably have sent a note of profuse apology and a generous gift the following morning; but that can only be speculation.
I didn’t even notice that Muraki had left until the room was empty, but Muraki slips out just as he pleases, and for all I knew he wouldn’t be back for months.
He was on the doorstep twenty minutes later.
“He’s dead,” he said as soon as I opened the door. “Muriko Seki.” And held up his bloodstained hands with an air of faint pride. I had the unnerving image of a cat displaying a dead bird that it had killed, and shivered slightly.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Oh, no.” He smiled. “I think I should have.”
“I see.” I rolled my eyes.
“Will you let me in?” he asked. He always asks that, without fail, and has done ever since he first turned up at the KoKakuRou so many years ago, sliding back into my life as neatly as he left it. It’s something of a game, I think – an affirmation of his power over me. I’ve never been able to refuse, and if he ever thought that I might then I know that he’d stop asking.
And even the blood spattered in a sickly design across his front wasn’t enough to give me the strength to turn him away. Familiarity breeds contempt, or at least resignation.
So I did what I always do – let him in, closed the door, and washed the blood off his coat as he dripped onto my mats and watched me with a half-smile on his face. I can’t count the times I’ve washed that coat – the immaculate white belying the innumerous patterns of blood that have stained it.
“Why?” I asked eventually, knowing the answer even as I said it. Even so, it was something of a risk. I don’t question his acts – it’s one of the unwritten rules that have let us survive for this long.
“He hurt you,” he said, making it sound like the most logical thing in the world.
I sighed. “Muraki –”
“It was a favour for a friend, nothing more.”
“And what when the police discover that I was the last to see him?”
“There’s no evidence, Oriya,” he said calmly. There never is, with him.
“Next time, talk to me about it first?” I said wearily, and let the matter drop.
He never tried something like that again – or if he did, he chose to keep it from me. Clients of the KoKakuRou die with alarming frequency, and one political assassination is difficult to distinguish from another.
~
I said that every other time, I’ve known that he would come back, didn’t I?
Not entirely true. But he’s always had an exception to every rule.
~
It was almost a year ago, now.
I was in a state of shock when he left. Someone so casual in taking the lives of others, and yet I had never thought that he would want to take his own. But that was what he wanted. I could see it as clearly as though he had told me – he wanted to kill Tsuzuki, kill Saki, and kill himself. Ending everything that had ever mattered in his life in a neat trilogy of deaths.
I didn’t want that to happen, but I’ve never been able to change his mind about things that important, and something told me it was better not to try. So I accepted. Accepted to the point of shoving it deep down and laughing as I fought the Shinigami with the pretty, desperate green eyes. Played my own part in the morbid theatre that Muraki had set up around his own death, and hated myself for not trying to stop him.
But I meant every word I said to the boy Kurosaki, even if he was just a convenience. Muraki needed me to delay them, and the young Shinigami very obviously needed to work out his anger on someone. So I fought him, and by the time his empathic abilities had let me read enough of his soul to realise just how deeply he loved his partner, I couldn’t have kept going. Call it pathetic, sappy, meaningless, whatever you like. But I wanted him to know that a love like that should be preserved, and even if I could have killed an immortal like him it would have lessened me to do it. Muraki was killing his heart – I wasn’t about to destroy any chance he had of getting it back.
And if he killed Muraki in the process… well, it was what he had wanted. Maybe I could give them just enough hope to stop him from taking Tsuzuki with him.
To this day I don’t know what they think of me – if they’re grateful to the old-fashioned, brothel-owning swordmaster who gave them the key, or if they realise that I was doing exactly what Muraki wanted me to. Sometimes I wonder which would be worse.
After they left I went inside and pretended to myself that nothing was wrong.
~
I was making tea when the sirens raced through the city and someone came running in to tell me that the lab was on fire. It struck me as slightly odd at the time that I didn’t feel any sadness or even a need to break routine. I just kept whisking the tea.
It seemed like a short time later that someone came to see what was taking me so long and I found out that I’d been whisking and staring at the wall for almost an hour.
The tea was cold.
I drank it anyway.
And it wasn’t long afterwards that the girl who was overseeing things in the main room ran in to tell me that Muraki-san was at the door, and he was bleeding, and he refused to come in because didn’t I always have to talk to him first?
It was odd, really; seeing the blood on the white and trying to realise, through the dizziness of relief, that it was his. It had never been his before. I tried to say his name but ended up clinging to the doorframe instead, feeling like I was the one who was close to death. And thinking that it was just typical of him, so perversely arrogant, to insist on waiting for me.
“Will you let me in?” he said softly. And smiled as his legs gave way and blood seeped through his fingers onto the floor.
Somehow the girl and I managed to get him into a room, where he lay on the futon and stared bemusedly at the ceiling while I undressed him as best I could. After a while he looked at me.
“Saki is gone,” he said.
“I know.” It was an assumption I’d already made.
“Gone.”
“I’m here.”
And that was all we said to each other, that night. He let me wash and bind the knife wound in his stomach, and then fell asleep almost immediately. I washed my hands and then went to my room and cried for the first time in six years. I stopped a little time before dawn.
~
You’d think there would be a limit on how long rain could last. And how much introspection I can stand before it kills me.
And I wonder how many times I’ll have to relive the events of two nights ago before I can forget.
~
“Oriya?”
“Mm?” We were sitting on the balcony of my room, smoking.
“Why haven’t you talked to Chief Hideaka yet? The newspapers said that investigations were continuing.”
“I talked to him today,” I said irritably.
“You left it a bit late.”
“It was the earliest I could manage.”
“I see.”
“Maybe next time I won’t bother at all.” I glared at him.
“Maybe you will.” There was threat in his tone but I was too annoyed to let him know that I heard it.
“Depends on my mood at the time, I suppose,” I snapped, letting my pipe fall into its stand.
“You’re being foolish, Oriya.” He frowned, stubbing out his cigarette, and I wondered how the mood had changed so fast.
“Really? And putting myself at risk by aiding and abetting a criminal, that isn’t foolish?” I stood up and moved to put the pipe away, needing an excuse not to look at him. We don’t argue about this often, but it always ends badly.
“Don’t you enjoy the risk?”
“I’m not quite as much of a thrillseeker as you think, Muraki.”
“You enjoy the power.”
“You’re the one who enjoys my power.”
“But you’re not going to stop,” he told me smugly, standing up. Sometimes I think he just does it so he can look down on me.
‘Why shouldn’t I? When you give me nothing in return?”
“What do you want from me? Sex?” He smirked, took a step forward so that his body was pressed against mine. “I can give you that.” Dropped a kiss on my hair, another on my neck.
“Sex means nothing, Muraki.” I pulled away. “I own a brothel. I know that better than anyone. Sex is empty. Easy to give away.”
“Doesn’t it depend on the person that’s offering?” he asked.
“From you, Muraki Kazutaka,” I said quietly, “it means less than nothing.”
“Hmm.” He reached out again and ran a finger down my cheek. I batted it away irritably.
“I don’t want to have sex with you, Muraki.”
“Now you’re lying.”
“Perhaps.” I met his eyes and knew that I was. “But I’ll keep saying it.”
“And what would you do if I told you that saying it only makes you more desirable?”
“I would pity Kurosaki,” I said coldly. “Because that’s the only reason you’ve ever wanted him.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, but we both knew that he was lying this time. “He’s a pretty kid –”
“Bullshit.”
“Isn’t he?” he asked mockingly.
“Gorgeous,” I agreed shortly. “But that is hardly relevant to the fact that you insist on molesting him at every available opportunity.”
“Isn’t it?” he said with exactly the same tone.
“No. You use him to get to Tsuzuki. Because he’s the strongest weakness that Tsuzuki has.”
Strongest weakness. What an interesting oxymoron; except that it isn’t, really.
“Why, Oriya, I didn’t know you were that perceptive.” There was a very faint smile on his face. “Tsuzuki-san, now… you’ll admit that he’s beautiful?”
“Beautiful. Immortal. Hates you. Completely out of reach. I can see why you’re so smitten.” My tone was only half sarcastic.
“Right on the first three, but not the last. I will have him eventually.”
“You’re wrong,” I whispered. “You’ll never have him. Not while he has the other one.”
Muraki’s hand flew towards my face but I grabbed his wrist. His eye glowed silver beneath his fringe. “I could kill you right here and now,” he said coldly.
“I believe you.” And I did. I let go.
“Then why are you trying my patience?” He put one finger under my chin and tilted it up like a child’s.
“Because you have to hear the truth from somewhere,” I said softly, holding his gaze. “And because you’d kill anyone else for telling you, but you’re not going to kill me.”
“You sound very certain,” he snarled, dropping his hand. I didn’t say anything, and eventually his face calmed. “You didn’t answer my question, you know,” he said abruptly.
“Which question was that?”
“What do you want from me?” He tipped his head slightly, actually looking serious.
“What do I want? ” I asked bitterly.
I want… for this to disappear. To never have been. But that would be far too easy, wouldn’t it?
“I want my life back. I want to be free. I want to go my own way without always having your existence hanging over me.”
“Are you telling me to leave?” He sounded amused, and my hands curled in an automatic anger. If only he wasn’t quite so sure of himself. If only the smile on his face hadn’t been quite so mocking and possessive, I wouldn’t have had the strength to say what I did.
You’ll never know, I thought, how close I came to saying no.
“Yes.”
“Yes?” He laughed. It was very much the wrong thing to do.
“Yes,” I hissed. “I’ve had enough.”
“Maybe we should talk –” he started smoothly.
“Don’t you fucking dare patronise me, Muraki Kazutaka,” I snapped. “You asked me what I wanted from you. I told you. So either you’ll comply with my wishes or you’ll stay here and prove to me that you’re exactly the bastard I think you are.”
The eye that I could see widened just a fraction, and he looked almost shocked. Then it was gone. “I see.” He paused. “I suppose you will let me fetch my things?”
I laughed, but it sounded hollow even to my own ears. “Sure.”
I was waiting pointedly near the door when he reappeared with a small bag of belongings in his hand, knowing that if I didn’t rush this then he would do something or say something to make me lose my nerve.
“I don’t want you to come here again,” I said, not sure who I was trying to convince.
“I gathered that,” he murmured, stopping in the doorway and looking at me speculatively.
I closed my eyes. “Please leave.”
He sighed, put a hand behind my neck, pulled me in slightly and kissed my forehead. It was almost unbearable.
“Goodbye, Oriya.”
It burned.
“Goodbye,” I said, barely keeping my voice even.
He had reached the street before I realised that I was still standing in the doorway staring like an idiot. I quickly turned to go inside, and Muraki’s low voice followed.
“Oriya,” he said smoothly, and I turned to look at him again. “You love me.” It was a statement, almost painful in its confidence. “You can’t shut me out forever.”
“Yes, I do,” I replied simply. “And yes. I can.”
He laughed. “Love is an illusion, Oriya.”
I slid the door closed.
~
In the present, the lights of Kyoto are washed away as the city melts into a grey madness. Around me, women dressed like painted dolls laugh prettily and talk in low tones of Christmas and the cold romance of snow.
I close my eyes to block out the raindrops that slide down the window like tears.
Part Two will come later today. Merry Christmas or Yuletide or whatever you can be bothered to celebrate, everyone.
Love you all.
~ Fahye ^#^
Warnings for angst (duh), almost complete lack of fluff, blood, and mild lime because I couldn’t work up the motivation to go any further.
Credit goes to Ms Vance for teaching me about pathetic fallacy, and Ali for yelling at me over MSN until I wrote (and persuading me to leave the humour in). Brandy and hugs to anyone who gives me feedback or at least says nice things, because I put a lot of effort into this one.
I hereby swear by your deity of choice that this fic shall not contain any references to meaningful Christmas presents (especially small furry animals), custard, or dodgy mistletoe scenarios. It shall also not end with the words “and as their lips met, so-and-so reflected that this was the best Christmas ever.”
Oh yeah. At one stage I sort of forgot if they were standing or sitting and just sort of gave up. If you’re the type that notices that kind of thing and you can spot any glaring errors, I’m sorry.
I take no responsibility for the bits where Muraki attempts to be reflective, because he sucks at it. Really.
~
There’s a poetic device – pathetic fallacy, it’s called. When the weather matches your mood to the point of making the emotion stronger. And here I stand on a late December night that by rights should be as white as every other year has been, and I watch the grey deluge outside that is washing away all the snow that has dared to fall this year. Somehow I can’t quite decide whether I like it better this way, or if I’m annoyed at being denied a white Christmas.
But mostly I’m trying to drive away the depression that makes the rain so very appropriate. Trying to tell myself that this is like every other time he isn’t here. He’s been away for weeks, months before. And it’s been two days, and all I can do is stare at the rain and wonder if this is true depression or a merciful numbing of something else.
Because every other time, I’ve known that he will come back.
~
Muraki Kazutaka. Man, magician, mystery.
Murderer.
Does it make me twisted that I can say it so clearly and still not mind? No, rephrase that. I do mind. But I don’t care.
Stranger things have been done for love.
I could try and fool myself, try and pretend that I’m still in love with the person I knew all those years ago – that the only reason I keep letting him get inside my defenses is because I want him to change, and I know he can become something else.
No, I’m not that naïve. He wouldn’t change – not for me, certainly. And because I have accepted that, I also have to accept that I’m not caught by my past. Because if I wasn’t in love with the person that he is now, I would have been able to give him up a long, long time ago.
But despite the fact that I’ve been covering up his escapades for years, his world has stayed almost entirely separate to mine. Only once has he taken a personal interest in my affairs – one night at the KoKakuRou that was just like any other, when it was raining almost as hard as tonight.
Muraki was in the room as I was entertaining, bored enough to tolerate the company and insisting I pass him off as a business associate from Tokyo – which was close enough to the truth. One of my newer clients, an up-and-coming politician called Muriko Seki, had been heavily into the sake all evening and was showing unfortunate tendencies towards violence. I interfered to stop him from striking one of the geishas for being slow with the cups, and got a split lip and bruised cheek for my trouble.
He left soon after, obviously having enough rational thought left to know that physically harming the owner of such an establishment – especially someone as well-connected as I – was hardly a wise move. He would probably have sent a note of profuse apology and a generous gift the following morning; but that can only be speculation.
I didn’t even notice that Muraki had left until the room was empty, but Muraki slips out just as he pleases, and for all I knew he wouldn’t be back for months.
He was on the doorstep twenty minutes later.
“He’s dead,” he said as soon as I opened the door. “Muriko Seki.” And held up his bloodstained hands with an air of faint pride. I had the unnerving image of a cat displaying a dead bird that it had killed, and shivered slightly.
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Oh, no.” He smiled. “I think I should have.”
“I see.” I rolled my eyes.
“Will you let me in?” he asked. He always asks that, without fail, and has done ever since he first turned up at the KoKakuRou so many years ago, sliding back into my life as neatly as he left it. It’s something of a game, I think – an affirmation of his power over me. I’ve never been able to refuse, and if he ever thought that I might then I know that he’d stop asking.
And even the blood spattered in a sickly design across his front wasn’t enough to give me the strength to turn him away. Familiarity breeds contempt, or at least resignation.
So I did what I always do – let him in, closed the door, and washed the blood off his coat as he dripped onto my mats and watched me with a half-smile on his face. I can’t count the times I’ve washed that coat – the immaculate white belying the innumerous patterns of blood that have stained it.
“Why?” I asked eventually, knowing the answer even as I said it. Even so, it was something of a risk. I don’t question his acts – it’s one of the unwritten rules that have let us survive for this long.
“He hurt you,” he said, making it sound like the most logical thing in the world.
I sighed. “Muraki –”
“It was a favour for a friend, nothing more.”
“And what when the police discover that I was the last to see him?”
“There’s no evidence, Oriya,” he said calmly. There never is, with him.
“Next time, talk to me about it first?” I said wearily, and let the matter drop.
He never tried something like that again – or if he did, he chose to keep it from me. Clients of the KoKakuRou die with alarming frequency, and one political assassination is difficult to distinguish from another.
~
I said that every other time, I’ve known that he would come back, didn’t I?
Not entirely true. But he’s always had an exception to every rule.
~
It was almost a year ago, now.
I was in a state of shock when he left. Someone so casual in taking the lives of others, and yet I had never thought that he would want to take his own. But that was what he wanted. I could see it as clearly as though he had told me – he wanted to kill Tsuzuki, kill Saki, and kill himself. Ending everything that had ever mattered in his life in a neat trilogy of deaths.
I didn’t want that to happen, but I’ve never been able to change his mind about things that important, and something told me it was better not to try. So I accepted. Accepted to the point of shoving it deep down and laughing as I fought the Shinigami with the pretty, desperate green eyes. Played my own part in the morbid theatre that Muraki had set up around his own death, and hated myself for not trying to stop him.
But I meant every word I said to the boy Kurosaki, even if he was just a convenience. Muraki needed me to delay them, and the young Shinigami very obviously needed to work out his anger on someone. So I fought him, and by the time his empathic abilities had let me read enough of his soul to realise just how deeply he loved his partner, I couldn’t have kept going. Call it pathetic, sappy, meaningless, whatever you like. But I wanted him to know that a love like that should be preserved, and even if I could have killed an immortal like him it would have lessened me to do it. Muraki was killing his heart – I wasn’t about to destroy any chance he had of getting it back.
And if he killed Muraki in the process… well, it was what he had wanted. Maybe I could give them just enough hope to stop him from taking Tsuzuki with him.
To this day I don’t know what they think of me – if they’re grateful to the old-fashioned, brothel-owning swordmaster who gave them the key, or if they realise that I was doing exactly what Muraki wanted me to. Sometimes I wonder which would be worse.
After they left I went inside and pretended to myself that nothing was wrong.
~
I was making tea when the sirens raced through the city and someone came running in to tell me that the lab was on fire. It struck me as slightly odd at the time that I didn’t feel any sadness or even a need to break routine. I just kept whisking the tea.
It seemed like a short time later that someone came to see what was taking me so long and I found out that I’d been whisking and staring at the wall for almost an hour.
The tea was cold.
I drank it anyway.
And it wasn’t long afterwards that the girl who was overseeing things in the main room ran in to tell me that Muraki-san was at the door, and he was bleeding, and he refused to come in because didn’t I always have to talk to him first?
It was odd, really; seeing the blood on the white and trying to realise, through the dizziness of relief, that it was his. It had never been his before. I tried to say his name but ended up clinging to the doorframe instead, feeling like I was the one who was close to death. And thinking that it was just typical of him, so perversely arrogant, to insist on waiting for me.
“Will you let me in?” he said softly. And smiled as his legs gave way and blood seeped through his fingers onto the floor.
Somehow the girl and I managed to get him into a room, where he lay on the futon and stared bemusedly at the ceiling while I undressed him as best I could. After a while he looked at me.
“Saki is gone,” he said.
“I know.” It was an assumption I’d already made.
“Gone.”
“I’m here.”
And that was all we said to each other, that night. He let me wash and bind the knife wound in his stomach, and then fell asleep almost immediately. I washed my hands and then went to my room and cried for the first time in six years. I stopped a little time before dawn.
~
You’d think there would be a limit on how long rain could last. And how much introspection I can stand before it kills me.
And I wonder how many times I’ll have to relive the events of two nights ago before I can forget.
~
“Oriya?”
“Mm?” We were sitting on the balcony of my room, smoking.
“Why haven’t you talked to Chief Hideaka yet? The newspapers said that investigations were continuing.”
“I talked to him today,” I said irritably.
“You left it a bit late.”
“It was the earliest I could manage.”
“I see.”
“Maybe next time I won’t bother at all.” I glared at him.
“Maybe you will.” There was threat in his tone but I was too annoyed to let him know that I heard it.
“Depends on my mood at the time, I suppose,” I snapped, letting my pipe fall into its stand.
“You’re being foolish, Oriya.” He frowned, stubbing out his cigarette, and I wondered how the mood had changed so fast.
“Really? And putting myself at risk by aiding and abetting a criminal, that isn’t foolish?” I stood up and moved to put the pipe away, needing an excuse not to look at him. We don’t argue about this often, but it always ends badly.
“Don’t you enjoy the risk?”
“I’m not quite as much of a thrillseeker as you think, Muraki.”
“You enjoy the power.”
“You’re the one who enjoys my power.”
“But you’re not going to stop,” he told me smugly, standing up. Sometimes I think he just does it so he can look down on me.
‘Why shouldn’t I? When you give me nothing in return?”
“What do you want from me? Sex?” He smirked, took a step forward so that his body was pressed against mine. “I can give you that.” Dropped a kiss on my hair, another on my neck.
“Sex means nothing, Muraki.” I pulled away. “I own a brothel. I know that better than anyone. Sex is empty. Easy to give away.”
“Doesn’t it depend on the person that’s offering?” he asked.
“From you, Muraki Kazutaka,” I said quietly, “it means less than nothing.”
“Hmm.” He reached out again and ran a finger down my cheek. I batted it away irritably.
“I don’t want to have sex with you, Muraki.”
“Now you’re lying.”
“Perhaps.” I met his eyes and knew that I was. “But I’ll keep saying it.”
“And what would you do if I told you that saying it only makes you more desirable?”
“I would pity Kurosaki,” I said coldly. “Because that’s the only reason you’ve ever wanted him.”
“You’re wrong,” he said, but we both knew that he was lying this time. “He’s a pretty kid –”
“Bullshit.”
“Isn’t he?” he asked mockingly.
“Gorgeous,” I agreed shortly. “But that is hardly relevant to the fact that you insist on molesting him at every available opportunity.”
“Isn’t it?” he said with exactly the same tone.
“No. You use him to get to Tsuzuki. Because he’s the strongest weakness that Tsuzuki has.”
Strongest weakness. What an interesting oxymoron; except that it isn’t, really.
“Why, Oriya, I didn’t know you were that perceptive.” There was a very faint smile on his face. “Tsuzuki-san, now… you’ll admit that he’s beautiful?”
“Beautiful. Immortal. Hates you. Completely out of reach. I can see why you’re so smitten.” My tone was only half sarcastic.
“Right on the first three, but not the last. I will have him eventually.”
“You’re wrong,” I whispered. “You’ll never have him. Not while he has the other one.”
Muraki’s hand flew towards my face but I grabbed his wrist. His eye glowed silver beneath his fringe. “I could kill you right here and now,” he said coldly.
“I believe you.” And I did. I let go.
“Then why are you trying my patience?” He put one finger under my chin and tilted it up like a child’s.
“Because you have to hear the truth from somewhere,” I said softly, holding his gaze. “And because you’d kill anyone else for telling you, but you’re not going to kill me.”
“You sound very certain,” he snarled, dropping his hand. I didn’t say anything, and eventually his face calmed. “You didn’t answer my question, you know,” he said abruptly.
“Which question was that?”
“What do you want from me?” He tipped his head slightly, actually looking serious.
“What do I want? ” I asked bitterly.
I want… for this to disappear. To never have been. But that would be far too easy, wouldn’t it?
“I want my life back. I want to be free. I want to go my own way without always having your existence hanging over me.”
“Are you telling me to leave?” He sounded amused, and my hands curled in an automatic anger. If only he wasn’t quite so sure of himself. If only the smile on his face hadn’t been quite so mocking and possessive, I wouldn’t have had the strength to say what I did.
You’ll never know, I thought, how close I came to saying no.
“Yes.”
“Yes?” He laughed. It was very much the wrong thing to do.
“Yes,” I hissed. “I’ve had enough.”
“Maybe we should talk –” he started smoothly.
“Don’t you fucking dare patronise me, Muraki Kazutaka,” I snapped. “You asked me what I wanted from you. I told you. So either you’ll comply with my wishes or you’ll stay here and prove to me that you’re exactly the bastard I think you are.”
The eye that I could see widened just a fraction, and he looked almost shocked. Then it was gone. “I see.” He paused. “I suppose you will let me fetch my things?”
I laughed, but it sounded hollow even to my own ears. “Sure.”
I was waiting pointedly near the door when he reappeared with a small bag of belongings in his hand, knowing that if I didn’t rush this then he would do something or say something to make me lose my nerve.
“I don’t want you to come here again,” I said, not sure who I was trying to convince.
“I gathered that,” he murmured, stopping in the doorway and looking at me speculatively.
I closed my eyes. “Please leave.”
He sighed, put a hand behind my neck, pulled me in slightly and kissed my forehead. It was almost unbearable.
“Goodbye, Oriya.”
It burned.
“Goodbye,” I said, barely keeping my voice even.
He had reached the street before I realised that I was still standing in the doorway staring like an idiot. I quickly turned to go inside, and Muraki’s low voice followed.
“Oriya,” he said smoothly, and I turned to look at him again. “You love me.” It was a statement, almost painful in its confidence. “You can’t shut me out forever.”
“Yes, I do,” I replied simply. “And yes. I can.”
He laughed. “Love is an illusion, Oriya.”
I slid the door closed.
~
In the present, the lights of Kyoto are washed away as the city melts into a grey madness. Around me, women dressed like painted dolls laugh prettily and talk in low tones of Christmas and the cold romance of snow.
I close my eyes to block out the raindrops that slide down the window like tears.
Part Two will come later today. Merry Christmas or Yuletide or whatever you can be bothered to celebrate, everyone.
Love you all.
~ Fahye ^#^
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I had the unnerving image of a cat displaying a dead bird that it had killed, and shivered slightly.
I adore that line, totally fits Muraki, twisted bastard that he is. ^_^
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Good. Good. Very good. *incoherent*
I don't know the characters very well, as you know. But I REALLY like how you've done Oriya's POV. Wah.
Oh! By the way! Now I'm pimping OTHER people-
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you have turned me a shipper in the space of HALF A FIC frarsie, which is ridiculous, even if that fic is bloody brilliantly written. muraki/oriya has all the twisted power games i love, and the next part of the story is already loading. well done!
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*glomps eujar*
Muraki/Oriya is the kind of twisted beauty that everyone must succumb to eventually *evil smile*