Ficbit

[sakon76]

A bit from the Tales from a Ramen Stall universe. X, Weiss Kreuz, and Ayatsuri Sakon, with a little YYH.

Striking the Balance

Seeing ghosts was no comfortable thing for Aya, particularly not in his line of work. Every time he went through his sword forms and found that elusive place Shion had mentioned, where all thought and emotion bled away from him into the pure way of the sword, a few more voices bled away from the shrieking gray haze that surrounded him. Unfortunately that white place, even with the Sumeragi's teaching, was hard to find. Until then he was left with spirits flickering at the edges of his vision. It was not a comfortable situation, especially after he realized that he was not the only one being haunted.

Omi's host of ghosts numbered even greater than his own. Aya's stomach had gone cold at that. One tended to forget that Omi had been Weiss' first member. He had been made into a killer at an age when Aya had only been worrying about his grades and standing in the tennis club.

"Aya-kun," Omi said one day when they were alone in the shop, Ken having left to run deliveries and Youji, as always, running late for his shift, "you've been staring at us a lot recently." Aya hadn't thought his observations had been so very blatant. "It's not that much," Omi hastened to assure him, reading Aya's frown correctly. "I just noticed and wondered if it had anything to do with... /that/."

Aya reminded himself that he was not a freak, not a specimen in a zoo. His powers were spiritual, Sumeragi had repeated to him numerous times, and not at all psychic.

He looked firmly back at his work, adjusting an iris. "How old were you when you first killed?" he asked sotto voce.

"Ten," Omi replied without hesitation. "Why?"

"It shows."

There was a silence before Omi softly asked, "You can see my ghosts?"

Aya nodded and met Omi's eyes. "As clearly as I can see my own. And Youji's. And Ken's."

Omi exhaled, a long, slow sound. "No wonder you've been twitchy."

There was another pause where they both pretended to work before Omi asked the inevitable, "What do they look like?"

Aya set his spool of florist's wire back down on the table and looked, not at Omi himself but at the darkness that surrounded him where he sat. "A roiling cloud," he answered, reporting as he saw. "They're more like demons now than men, with claws and fangs."

"Do I know any of them?"

"You know all of them," Aya replied, watching as Ouka slid her arms around her brother's neck and kissed his cheek before flitting off to join the rest of the crowd. She at least retained her human appearance, for which Aya was glad. "Most of them want you dead so they can hurt you."

"'Most'?" Omi demanded, his gaze catching Aya's.

Aya didn't look away. "You know who," he said quietly, "Bombay."

"She's not like--"

"No, she's not," Aya interrupted. He'd lost track of Ouka in the crowd now. "She likes you. Think of her as your guardian spirit if you want."

Omi dropped his forehead to rest on a balled fist, his eyes closed. "I didn't think she was with me."

"She's not suffering," Aya reported, "and she doesn't seem to mind."

"Do Ken-kun and Youji-kun have anyone like her?"

"No. Neu seems to spend her time either crying or trying to strangle Youji. Kase rides Ken's back like Ken rides a bike."

Omi looked green. "And you see this?"

Aya nodded. "Sight, apparently, can't be turned off. Not even if one is blinded." Which Sumeragi half was, so presumably he knew what he'd been talking about.

Omi's eyes were on him again. "Aya-kun, do you have anyone like her?"

"No." Aya watched Hirofumi snarl defiantly at Ouka and claw ineffectually through Omi's head. Omi didn't even blink. He couldn't see and he couldn't feel. He was blind and deaf to the demons who would tear his soul apart the moment his body died.

And no one could save Omi from that.

"When you die, they'll destroy you," Aya murmured.

Omi had a wonderful poker face, he reflected. "If that's my fate, Aya-kun, and it's the justice meted out on /me/ for what I've done, so be it. There are some things you can't fight."

*

"I want you to teach me," Aya told the Sumeragi, looking almost level into the mismatched eyes. The onmyouji was just the slightest bit taller than he was.

"What do you want to learn?" the onmyouji inquired. "I won't teach you magic to kill."

"I want to know how to exorcise ghosts that aren't my own."

"Ah." The onmyouji wandered off the park path and Aya followed. A gaggle of shrieking, laughing children ran past, chasing a ball. "You've seen your friends' ghosts."

The protest ran through Aya's mind that they weren't his friends but his co-workers. It died of irrelevance before reaching his lips.

"They don't have your power to feed on," Sumeragi said after a few minutes. "Their ghosts aren't nearly as dangerous."

"I don't care," Aya replied. "I won't let them be destroyed by their demons once they die."

"By their deeds, rather." Sumeragi held up a hand that forestalled Aya's reply. "Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a young onmyouji who fell in love with a fellow practicioner. That practicioner, however, had no heart. He utterly destroyed the onmyouji's life, shattering everything he'd ever believed. But the onmyouji couldn't make himself stop loving, and when they met years later, the practicioner killed himself on the onmyouji's hand, making the onmyouji the inheritor of all his dark magic." They'd come to an ancient sakura tree now, its trunk gnarled and twisted with age. Looking at it somehow made the hairs on the back of Aya's neck stang up. His hand itched for his sword.

Sumeragi ignored the malevolence emenating from the tree and stepped forward, laying a hand on its trunk. He closed his eyes then opened them again. "I hear him," he said softly, no looking at Aya. "He screams, he whimpers, he begs. He cries. He suffers retribution at the hands of his victims, as all Sakurazukamori do. Some day I'll manage to exorcise enough of them that he, too, may be freed. This tree is my life's work and will likely be the work of my heirs as well." He glanced at Aya. "Perhaps you. But my point is this: no matter how many the ghosts, or how strong they are, you needn't worry that your friends will be destroyed. They'll merely suffer penance along with their victims."

"Penance or not," Aya said, "I won't let them suffer less than myself when my deeds have been as dark."

Sumeragi studied him for just a moment, then smiled. "I think you'll go far, Fujimiya-san. I'll teach you what you want to know. Just keep in mind that you can't fight everything. Unless you eat mermaid's flesh, death comes to us all."

"Mermaid's flesh is just a legend," Aya scoffed.

The Sumeragi smiled.

*

The door bell jingled. "Hello!" Omi called, looking up. His smile grew wider as he saw who stood just inside the door. "Good morning, Tachibana-san, Ukon-san!"

"Heya," the puppet said while the puppeteer quietly nodded in greeting.

"If it's about Aya, he's in the back room," Ken said from where he was inspecting their stattice supply.

"Feel free to go right back," Omi said, pointing at the door. "He's filling ikebana orders."

"Thank you," the young magician said, and did so.

*

Aya's hands and mind were concentrated on the work before him, achieving balance with only a few materials, a branch, a blossom or two... so different, so clean in line and form compared to the bouquets and live plants that made up most of the Koneko's business. It was a refreshing change and cleared his mind from the irritation at the overabundance of everything on the other side of the door.

A soft cough woke him from his work. He glared up at that person, at the puppeteer he'd sensed coming for him as soon as the teenager had entered the shop.

"It's exquisite," Sakon Tachibana said, looking at the half-complete form in Aya's hands. Purple eyes glanced up, met Aya's. "I think you could do magic with this as well as the sword."

*

Sakon was beginning to understand the differences between his own magic, his mentor's, and his fellow apprentice's. All three of them practiced their skills through centuries-old traditions, the forms focuses for their wills with little to no room for innovation. Ritual gestures and talismanic scribings, Buddhist Sanskrit chants--these were the way of the Sumeragi. He had probably been learning about the play of the universe's forces since before he could walk. Sakon's powers were likewise phrased through his own upbringing. He had been imbued with the traditional stories of the bunraku theatre since the same stage in his own life, had started learning to study, emulate, and finally understand the human heart before even kindergarten had entered his life.

Perhaps it was that training in empathy that paradoxically both drew him to and repelled him from Subaru's other pupil. Aya was disdainful and icy, hateful and proud. But once or twice Sakon thought he had caught a glimpse of something vulnerable, and he knew better than most how hate stemmed from pain. And, as Ukon had put it, what kind of damage would it take to drive someone to be a killer-for-hire? Whatever it was, Aya wasn't telling. But Aya's magic was powerful, certainly more dramatic and active than Sakon's own. A sole slash of his katana, with mind, heart, and will all focused on an exorcism was as effective as several minutes of Sakon's more laborious coaxing and removal.

Had Subaru not pointed out that not all spirits needed banishment and that a gentler method was more likely to succeed with many, Sakon might have become disheartened at Aya's ease in learning to control his powers.

*

Sakon sat at the ramen stall one night, slowly eating a bowl of wild vegetable ramen while Ukon quietly sang random joruri lines from the production they'd just begun to rehearse. A cloud of bright-haired darkness sat down next to them; Ukon broke off singing, but at Sakon's urging kept silent while Aya ordered.

"You smell like blood," the puppet accused as soon as Urameshi had turned away to cook.

Aya didn't even deign to glance at them.

Sakon studied the ever-present cloud of onryou that followed the swordsman around. Their numbers were always changing as Aya managed to exorcise a few more or gained a few more through their murders, but Sakon was quick enough of memory to recognize them. "Two?" he asked eventually; the newer ghosts retained more of a human semblance than the older ones .

"A designer drug dealer and his chemist," Aya said lowly. "They tested their poisons out on children."

The picture the few words painted in Sakon's mind was not a pretty one. He looked away.

"People get what they deserve, one way or another," Urameshi observed, setting a bowl down before Aya. "As long as you're not gettin' off on it, who's to say what you're doing is wrong?"

*

It wasn't until later, when both of their paths were leading them in the direction of the nearest subway stop, that Sakon spoke his answer to the scornful question that had underlain Aya's words.

"I don't blame you," he said, his voice pitched to be caught only by Aya and Ukon's ears. Sakon's training left him well able to have a private conversation in the middle of a crowd. "In the same situation, I might do the same thing."

"What're ya talkin' about, Sakon?!" Ukon demanded. "You would never--"

Sakon hushed his partner with a hand over Ukon's mouth.

Aya had stopped and looked at them. His eyes, like the Sumeragi's, sometimes seemed to be able to see right through Sakon. "No," he said shortly, "you wouldn't." He turned, his dark coat swirling with the motion, and resumed walking.

Comments

[sailormac.livejournal.com]

I remember reading the original version of this some time ago. It's even better in this version -- it's a very vivid portrait of Aya's quiet intensity. If he were to have spiritual gifts, I can definitely see this being the way he'd handle them.

Nice to see you doing the ramen stall stories again, too. You have a rare gift for making crossovers seem *natural*.