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More fic.
Not much to comment today. Mentioned to my dad last night that I have to use a typewriter at work. He muttered something about buggy whips. ^_^ He and my mom left for vacation in Jamaica tonight.
Pleased that I could get a cameo in here, and also that I found a new angle on the Sakurazukamori rite of succession, and also that I actually address Subaru's dual nature somewhat better. As well as descrip on onmyoujutsu (visuals borrowed from the first Onmyouji movie because it's cool like that) and figuring out just how paranoid (very) the Sakurazuka ancestor who started this whole thing was. Now I just need to figure out if a certain character is going to show up or not....
Hisoka knew intimately the feeling of Muraki's curses. That was why he did not hesitate in saying that he'd found no traces of them in the hospital. In one way it was a relief (all those children safe) but in another it was a disappointment (they still didn't know what the doctor was up to). Tsuzuki agreed with a "Me neither," while Sumeragi just shook his head in the negative.
They'd ended up in a Chinese restaurant earlier, discussing possibilities and plans over dinner, but now they walked through Ueno Park. Hisoka had never visited the famous grounds before, but he'd seen pictures of the cherry blossoms on televison every spring of his life. He was just as glad it was autumn and the park nigh-deserted, a hint of chill withering flowers into their beds for winter.
The Sumeragi seemed to be thinking something over. "I don't know if it's relevant," he said finally, "but I worked a case in that hospital two days ago."
Hisoka exchanged a look with Tsuzuki. They both knew that as far as the universe was structured, coincidences were rare, especially for magicians. "What happened?" he asked.
"A girl had died of chronic heart failure and her room was being haunted. It turned out to be the work of an animate doll she'd befriended."
"Was Muraki taking care of her?" Tsuzuki asked.
"It's not impossible," Sumeragi replied. "I'll see if I can't find out." A few steps later he turned off the path they were following.
"Where are you going?" Hisoka inquired.
The Sumeragi paused, halfway into the shadows. "Work," he answered quietly.
"The tree?" Tsuzuki asked. Hisoka remembered reading about it--the Sakurazukamori's cursed tree of souls.
Sumeragi nodded, then paused again. "You can come with me, if you like," he said after a moment's deliberation. Tsuzuki followed. Hisoka stifled a sigh and walked after his partner.
The path to the tree seemed to be hidden in shadows. It was one of those ways concealed and guarded from normal people stumbling across it. He had the feeling that had they not been in the company of the Sakurazukamori themselves, even he and Tsuzuki would never have found it. But his step was easy and sure. This trail held no mysteries for him, no stumbling shade of unfamiliarity.
As though out of nothing and darkness, the tree appeared before them, glowing softly as it shed its unseasonal eternal cherry blossoms. The Sakurazukamori stopped at the edge of its clearing, hands tucked into his coat pockets. "None of that," he said softly. "They're not to be bound to you, and neither am I."
Even at the clearing's edge Hisoka could feel the tree's wrongness. It roiled and twisted at his gut, churning in sickness and bile. It was things that never should have been. It was an instrument used the wrong way. He could hear the cacophony of shrieks and screams inside his skull, and they called him, pulling.
"Hisoka!" Tsuzuki grabbed him as he walked toward the tree.
The Sakurazukamori half-turned toward them, his mismatched eyes concerned though the expression did not show on his face. "My apologies, Kurosaki-san. I forgot you were an empath."
"It's all right," Hisoka said, trying not to listen to the voices.
The Sakurazukamori looked at him for a moment longer, then pulled a card out of one pocket. It looked like an ofuda but was blank. He held it between two fingers and placed the first two of his other hand against his lips. His eyes concentrated on the card as he whispered. Around him the air grew still with anticipation. Power gathered silently, an inescapable weight like storm clouds rolling in. Potential hovered, listening to his instructions, his commands. As a scupltor molded clay, so did he shape the universe, pulling its strings and tying them together into a new shape, suiting reality to hiw own purpose and meaning.
This was the power of the onmyouji. Even in the right hands, it seemed terrifying.
One last whispered syllable, a command, finished the spell. The waiting power seemed to snap into a new shape, tied into the card the Sakurazukamori held. Slowly his fingers lowered from his mouth as he examined the card, no doubt seeing things in its power structure that Hisoka didn't yet have the experience to read. After a few seconds he seemed satisfied and looked at Hisoka, at Tsuzuki, who still had a hand on Hisoka's shoulder. "This should help," he offered.
Tsuzuki took it. "What is it?" He too examined the card. A low whistle escaped from his lips. "Nice." He handed it to Hisoka. "It's a shield," he explained.
The card seemed to burn and melt through Hisoka's flesh. He felt the blood curses carved into his body flare to the surface as he touched it. They writhed for a moment, red-hot alienness in his skin, then subsided. The heat of the card didn't dissipate, though, but spread its intensity through Hisoka's whole body. He looked back at the tree. He could still hear the whispering voices, but their call no longer compelled him. He could still feel how unnatural it stood, but it didn't writhe inside his head any more.
The Sakurazukamori stood looking oddly at him, giving Hisoka he'd seen the curse marks even through his clothing. He probably had. He'd probably /felt/ them.
"He is very good," the Sakurazukamori remarked obscurely, eyes narrowed. "He can't be allowed to get better, if that's an old example of his work." Then he turned, white coat catching the air with the movement, and walked toward the tree.
"Hisoka?" Tsuzuki asked.
"I'm all right." His eyes didn't leave the Sakurazukamori's back. "I think I'm glad he's on our side."
*
Half an hour into the exorcism Tsuzuki dropped to the ground to sit. Twenty minutes later Hisoka joined him, and together they watched the onmyouji undo the work of his predecessors.
It was a lengthy process. Using a series of complicated spells, some so esoteric Tsuzuki didn't know them or else they'd been invented by the Sumeragi for this purpose, layers of the tree's protections (and there were many, all equally thorny) were peeled back until the core matrix of the tree's sustaining spell was revealed. It was a work of art, Tsuzuki judged from its complexity. A magician must have spent a lifetime crafting it. It was such a pity it was used for such a bad purpose.... He studied its power lines, noting the absence of any stray threads or dangling intentions. Here, a substructure set up a self-maintaining power system into the spell. There, the entire Sakurazuka clan was bound eternally into the tree's embrace.
Seeing that, Tsuzuki suddenly wondered if the Sakurazukamori's infamous generational genocide wasn't in its way an act of kindness.
After reaching the core of the spell, Sumeragi used the finest knife of his power to tweak open one restriction that would allow him access to the bound souls. Looking at the point of the spell he attacked, Tsuzuki got the impression of repeated rewritings followed near-immediately by self-corrections. But as long as the Sumeragi got in quick enough, he had a crack in the spell he could hold open and use.
Then it was the mere matter of finding a bond and freeing a soul from a possibly centuries-long internment. Were the older bonds the stronger, Tsuzuki wondered, or the fresh newer ones? Either way, it was no small matter to sever the bond. Then started the Sumeragi's real job: getting the spirit, either by convinction or coercion, to move on to its judgement by Enma Daiou.
Tsuzuki suddenly loved his job very much and was glad he didn't have the Sumeragi's.
When the waiting ferrygirl had finally helped her passenger on board her oar and taken off into the sky, waving cheerfully at the three of them as she did a barrel roll and her blue ponytail flew wildly, Sumeragi turned back to the tree one more time and yanked his power out. The matrix and its protections closed with a violent snap that almost sent the Sumeragi stumbling back. Instead he just stood there for a moment, then sighed, tiredness and relief visibly spilling through his wiry body. Turning, he walked back to Tsuzuki and Hisoka and sank down on the grass beside him.
Tsuzuki surreptitously checked his watch. The entire process had taken over two hours to free one soul and the Sumeragi looked exhausted.
"Some days," he said softly, "I really hate Seishirou-san and his entire family."
*
Sakon knew that the Sumeragi had an ongoing project that tended to keep him busy until the wee hours of the morning. He could distantly sense the threads and mechanisms of his teacher's power working at such times, when everyone else had gone to bed for the night and he and Ukon sat alone in the quiet of his room. It was like watching distant pulleys and levers shifting the weights and balances of the universe. Sometimes it was just the flicker of an eyelid, a subtle gesture of a fan. But at times it was the full grand gesture of a love suicide, making Sakon worry until the next twitch at the strings came, proving that the Sumeragi was all right. The patterns of the project were slowly becoming familiar to Sakon as he listened to the voice within. There was always the impression of a flowering cherry tree, which would have made sense, set as the act was in Ueno Park, except that the blossoms had continued to bloom all through summer and into the fall. He'd decided to accept this strangeness as magical metaphor for now and ask his teacher about the symbol at some future point.
It felt like a ghost story, which was unsurprising given the Sumeragi's profession. Sakon could almost sense the shape of the story: a haunted tree, the tragic/handsome protagonist exorcising it... but there should have been a love interest in the story, and despite the fact that he was pretty sure his mentor was honestly affectionate toward Kaoruko, Sakon didn't think it was his aunt. Which left other possibilities, but they felt too private to ask the Sumeragi about.
He sighed, seeing/feeling the distant threads of magic strain against their burden. Life wasn't a bunraku play (at least not always), and it was getting very late again. If Sakon was correct, the Sumeragi was only about halfway through his task. Would it be irresponsible of him to wait and call in the morning?
It probably would, he decided even as sleep weighed down on his eyelids.
*
Suigintou stood in the moonlight, looking into a mirror. She could step through, into her N-field, stay there and wither away into dreaming. But she couldn't seem to care enough to make that decision.
"You could stay here with me," Kazutaka said quietly from behind her. She'd told him about the other Maidens and the Alice Game. He'd showed her around his apartment, shown her his collection of antique dolls. She wondered if he hoped for her to become the prize of his collection.
She wasn't that kind of doll.
"Why?" she asked.
He knelt down to look her in the eye. "Because you're a beautiful thing, and broken," he murmured. One thumb caressed her cheek and she automatically leaned into that touch. His hands were like Father's, she thought. Strong and deft. She could picture him carving a doll mold. An imitation of a human body, held together by wire and magic and love.
Never enough love.
"Stay with me," he asked. "Things which are broken are more beautiful, and rare."
"Why should I live?" she asked.
"Because your father created you to do so," he replied. His smile was strange, but it didn't frighten her.
Perhaps he could be her angel in the darkness, and help her sleep sooner, without pain.
*
Shinku snapped awake with a gasp. "Suigintou, don't," she cried, reaching out a hand, but the other doll wasn't there, couldn't hear her.
That man's smile... he was silver and white like an angel, but that smile had held no good in it. "Don't," Shinku repeated helplessly, knowing already that the cycle was beginning again. That the Alice Game, or something like it, was about to start.
Hadn't Father told them that there must be another way?
Hadn't Suigintou felt him stroking her hair as she slept?
Why did it have to be like this?
Shinku curled around her thoughts and felt tears began to leak from her eyes. She knew that she would not return to sleep. Blindly, in the darkness of her case, she reached for the Kun-kun doll Jun had bought for her, and held it close. Quietly, she wept for lost chances and lost sisters.
*
It was bright and early in the morning when Sakon called. Subaru raised an eyebrow. He'd been in the middle of a meditation exercise and Sakon was usually unusually sensitive to such things.
"I'm sorry for calling you at an inconvenient time, Sensei," the puppeteer began, "but you were unavailable last night and I thought this was something you might want to know as soon as possible."
"It's all right. What's happened?" It had better not be that anything had happened to Kaoruko, Subaru thought darkly. Of course, if something had, Sakon /would/ have called him last night regardless of what he'd been doing. Or should have.
"You remember the doll, Suigintou?"
"Yes."
"She's disappeared."
Subaru let out a breath, a long sigh. "Right. The other dolls don't know where she's gone?"
"No." Sakon's tone was apologetic.
It could be that this was unrelated to his current case, but Subaru had seen too much to make him other than cautious. "I'll see if I can't find her. Thank you for letting me know."
"You're welcome. Good luck, Sensei."
Subaru looked at the phone in his hand for a moment after Sakon hung up, then dialed the Kyoto estate. He should have asked for that report on the girl, and specifically on what doctors had seen her, hours ago.
He rolled his shoulders once, judging the level of his tension and balance, and decided that regardless of the time it took, he was going to finish his morning meditation. If the Meifu report had been anywhere near correct, and Tsuzuki and Kurosaki telling the truth, he was going to need every advantage he could take in helping to capture Doctor Muraki.
Pleased that I could get a cameo in here, and also that I found a new angle on the Sakurazukamori rite of succession, and also that I actually address Subaru's dual nature somewhat better. As well as descrip on onmyoujutsu (visuals borrowed from the first Onmyouji movie because it's cool like that) and figuring out just how paranoid (very) the Sakurazuka ancestor who started this whole thing was. Now I just need to figure out if a certain character is going to show up or not....
Hisoka knew intimately the feeling of Muraki's curses. That was why he did not hesitate in saying that he'd found no traces of them in the hospital. In one way it was a relief (all those children safe) but in another it was a disappointment (they still didn't know what the doctor was up to). Tsuzuki agreed with a "Me neither," while Sumeragi just shook his head in the negative.
They'd ended up in a Chinese restaurant earlier, discussing possibilities and plans over dinner, but now they walked through Ueno Park. Hisoka had never visited the famous grounds before, but he'd seen pictures of the cherry blossoms on televison every spring of his life. He was just as glad it was autumn and the park nigh-deserted, a hint of chill withering flowers into their beds for winter.
The Sumeragi seemed to be thinking something over. "I don't know if it's relevant," he said finally, "but I worked a case in that hospital two days ago."
Hisoka exchanged a look with Tsuzuki. They both knew that as far as the universe was structured, coincidences were rare, especially for magicians. "What happened?" he asked.
"A girl had died of chronic heart failure and her room was being haunted. It turned out to be the work of an animate doll she'd befriended."
"Was Muraki taking care of her?" Tsuzuki asked.
"It's not impossible," Sumeragi replied. "I'll see if I can't find out." A few steps later he turned off the path they were following.
"Where are you going?" Hisoka inquired.
The Sumeragi paused, halfway into the shadows. "Work," he answered quietly.
"The tree?" Tsuzuki asked. Hisoka remembered reading about it--the Sakurazukamori's cursed tree of souls.
Sumeragi nodded, then paused again. "You can come with me, if you like," he said after a moment's deliberation. Tsuzuki followed. Hisoka stifled a sigh and walked after his partner.
The path to the tree seemed to be hidden in shadows. It was one of those ways concealed and guarded from normal people stumbling across it. He had the feeling that had they not been in the company of the Sakurazukamori themselves, even he and Tsuzuki would never have found it. But his step was easy and sure. This trail held no mysteries for him, no stumbling shade of unfamiliarity.
As though out of nothing and darkness, the tree appeared before them, glowing softly as it shed its unseasonal eternal cherry blossoms. The Sakurazukamori stopped at the edge of its clearing, hands tucked into his coat pockets. "None of that," he said softly. "They're not to be bound to you, and neither am I."
Even at the clearing's edge Hisoka could feel the tree's wrongness. It roiled and twisted at his gut, churning in sickness and bile. It was things that never should have been. It was an instrument used the wrong way. He could hear the cacophony of shrieks and screams inside his skull, and they called him, pulling.
"Hisoka!" Tsuzuki grabbed him as he walked toward the tree.
The Sakurazukamori half-turned toward them, his mismatched eyes concerned though the expression did not show on his face. "My apologies, Kurosaki-san. I forgot you were an empath."
"It's all right," Hisoka said, trying not to listen to the voices.
The Sakurazukamori looked at him for a moment longer, then pulled a card out of one pocket. It looked like an ofuda but was blank. He held it between two fingers and placed the first two of his other hand against his lips. His eyes concentrated on the card as he whispered. Around him the air grew still with anticipation. Power gathered silently, an inescapable weight like storm clouds rolling in. Potential hovered, listening to his instructions, his commands. As a scupltor molded clay, so did he shape the universe, pulling its strings and tying them together into a new shape, suiting reality to hiw own purpose and meaning.
This was the power of the onmyouji. Even in the right hands, it seemed terrifying.
One last whispered syllable, a command, finished the spell. The waiting power seemed to snap into a new shape, tied into the card the Sakurazukamori held. Slowly his fingers lowered from his mouth as he examined the card, no doubt seeing things in its power structure that Hisoka didn't yet have the experience to read. After a few seconds he seemed satisfied and looked at Hisoka, at Tsuzuki, who still had a hand on Hisoka's shoulder. "This should help," he offered.
Tsuzuki took it. "What is it?" He too examined the card. A low whistle escaped from his lips. "Nice." He handed it to Hisoka. "It's a shield," he explained.
The card seemed to burn and melt through Hisoka's flesh. He felt the blood curses carved into his body flare to the surface as he touched it. They writhed for a moment, red-hot alienness in his skin, then subsided. The heat of the card didn't dissipate, though, but spread its intensity through Hisoka's whole body. He looked back at the tree. He could still hear the whispering voices, but their call no longer compelled him. He could still feel how unnatural it stood, but it didn't writhe inside his head any more.
The Sakurazukamori stood looking oddly at him, giving Hisoka he'd seen the curse marks even through his clothing. He probably had. He'd probably /felt/ them.
"He is very good," the Sakurazukamori remarked obscurely, eyes narrowed. "He can't be allowed to get better, if that's an old example of his work." Then he turned, white coat catching the air with the movement, and walked toward the tree.
"Hisoka?" Tsuzuki asked.
"I'm all right." His eyes didn't leave the Sakurazukamori's back. "I think I'm glad he's on our side."
Half an hour into the exorcism Tsuzuki dropped to the ground to sit. Twenty minutes later Hisoka joined him, and together they watched the onmyouji undo the work of his predecessors.
It was a lengthy process. Using a series of complicated spells, some so esoteric Tsuzuki didn't know them or else they'd been invented by the Sumeragi for this purpose, layers of the tree's protections (and there were many, all equally thorny) were peeled back until the core matrix of the tree's sustaining spell was revealed. It was a work of art, Tsuzuki judged from its complexity. A magician must have spent a lifetime crafting it. It was such a pity it was used for such a bad purpose.... He studied its power lines, noting the absence of any stray threads or dangling intentions. Here, a substructure set up a self-maintaining power system into the spell. There, the entire Sakurazuka clan was bound eternally into the tree's embrace.
Seeing that, Tsuzuki suddenly wondered if the Sakurazukamori's infamous generational genocide wasn't in its way an act of kindness.
After reaching the core of the spell, Sumeragi used the finest knife of his power to tweak open one restriction that would allow him access to the bound souls. Looking at the point of the spell he attacked, Tsuzuki got the impression of repeated rewritings followed near-immediately by self-corrections. But as long as the Sumeragi got in quick enough, he had a crack in the spell he could hold open and use.
Then it was the mere matter of finding a bond and freeing a soul from a possibly centuries-long internment. Were the older bonds the stronger, Tsuzuki wondered, or the fresh newer ones? Either way, it was no small matter to sever the bond. Then started the Sumeragi's real job: getting the spirit, either by convinction or coercion, to move on to its judgement by Enma Daiou.
Tsuzuki suddenly loved his job very much and was glad he didn't have the Sumeragi's.
When the waiting ferrygirl had finally helped her passenger on board her oar and taken off into the sky, waving cheerfully at the three of them as she did a barrel roll and her blue ponytail flew wildly, Sumeragi turned back to the tree one more time and yanked his power out. The matrix and its protections closed with a violent snap that almost sent the Sumeragi stumbling back. Instead he just stood there for a moment, then sighed, tiredness and relief visibly spilling through his wiry body. Turning, he walked back to Tsuzuki and Hisoka and sank down on the grass beside him.
Tsuzuki surreptitously checked his watch. The entire process had taken over two hours to free one soul and the Sumeragi looked exhausted.
"Some days," he said softly, "I really hate Seishirou-san and his entire family."
Sakon knew that the Sumeragi had an ongoing project that tended to keep him busy until the wee hours of the morning. He could distantly sense the threads and mechanisms of his teacher's power working at such times, when everyone else had gone to bed for the night and he and Ukon sat alone in the quiet of his room. It was like watching distant pulleys and levers shifting the weights and balances of the universe. Sometimes it was just the flicker of an eyelid, a subtle gesture of a fan. But at times it was the full grand gesture of a love suicide, making Sakon worry until the next twitch at the strings came, proving that the Sumeragi was all right. The patterns of the project were slowly becoming familiar to Sakon as he listened to the voice within. There was always the impression of a flowering cherry tree, which would have made sense, set as the act was in Ueno Park, except that the blossoms had continued to bloom all through summer and into the fall. He'd decided to accept this strangeness as magical metaphor for now and ask his teacher about the symbol at some future point.
It felt like a ghost story, which was unsurprising given the Sumeragi's profession. Sakon could almost sense the shape of the story: a haunted tree, the tragic/handsome protagonist exorcising it... but there should have been a love interest in the story, and despite the fact that he was pretty sure his mentor was honestly affectionate toward Kaoruko, Sakon didn't think it was his aunt. Which left other possibilities, but they felt too private to ask the Sumeragi about.
He sighed, seeing/feeling the distant threads of magic strain against their burden. Life wasn't a bunraku play (at least not always), and it was getting very late again. If Sakon was correct, the Sumeragi was only about halfway through his task. Would it be irresponsible of him to wait and call in the morning?
It probably would, he decided even as sleep weighed down on his eyelids.
Suigintou stood in the moonlight, looking into a mirror. She could step through, into her N-field, stay there and wither away into dreaming. But she couldn't seem to care enough to make that decision.
"You could stay here with me," Kazutaka said quietly from behind her. She'd told him about the other Maidens and the Alice Game. He'd showed her around his apartment, shown her his collection of antique dolls. She wondered if he hoped for her to become the prize of his collection.
She wasn't that kind of doll.
"Why?" she asked.
He knelt down to look her in the eye. "Because you're a beautiful thing, and broken," he murmured. One thumb caressed her cheek and she automatically leaned into that touch. His hands were like Father's, she thought. Strong and deft. She could picture him carving a doll mold. An imitation of a human body, held together by wire and magic and love.
Never enough love.
"Stay with me," he asked. "Things which are broken are more beautiful, and rare."
"Why should I live?" she asked.
"Because your father created you to do so," he replied. His smile was strange, but it didn't frighten her.
Perhaps he could be her angel in the darkness, and help her sleep sooner, without pain.
Shinku snapped awake with a gasp. "Suigintou, don't," she cried, reaching out a hand, but the other doll wasn't there, couldn't hear her.
That man's smile... he was silver and white like an angel, but that smile had held no good in it. "Don't," Shinku repeated helplessly, knowing already that the cycle was beginning again. That the Alice Game, or something like it, was about to start.
Hadn't Father told them that there must be another way?
Hadn't Suigintou felt him stroking her hair as she slept?
Why did it have to be like this?
Shinku curled around her thoughts and felt tears began to leak from her eyes. She knew that she would not return to sleep. Blindly, in the darkness of her case, she reached for the Kun-kun doll Jun had bought for her, and held it close. Quietly, she wept for lost chances and lost sisters.
It was bright and early in the morning when Sakon called. Subaru raised an eyebrow. He'd been in the middle of a meditation exercise and Sakon was usually unusually sensitive to such things.
"I'm sorry for calling you at an inconvenient time, Sensei," the puppeteer began, "but you were unavailable last night and I thought this was something you might want to know as soon as possible."
"It's all right. What's happened?" It had better not be that anything had happened to Kaoruko, Subaru thought darkly. Of course, if something had, Sakon /would/ have called him last night regardless of what he'd been doing. Or should have.
"You remember the doll, Suigintou?"
"Yes."
"She's disappeared."
Subaru let out a breath, a long sigh. "Right. The other dolls don't know where she's gone?"
"No." Sakon's tone was apologetic.
It could be that this was unrelated to his current case, but Subaru had seen too much to make him other than cautious. "I'll see if I can't find her. Thank you for letting me know."
"You're welcome. Good luck, Sensei."
Subaru looked at the phone in his hand for a moment after Sakon hung up, then dialed the Kyoto estate. He should have asked for that report on the girl, and specifically on what doctors had seen her, hours ago.
He rolled his shoulders once, judging the level of his tension and balance, and decided that regardless of the time it took, he was going to finish his morning meditation. If the Meifu report had been anywhere near correct, and Tsuzuki and Kurosaki telling the truth, he was going to need every advantage he could take in helping to capture Doctor Muraki.