[fic] [yst] At the Stars 12/?

[morphaileffect]

might be editing this later but god it feels good to finally get this out.



At the Stars
Part 12

Ryo had a dream. In this dream, he saw a slender young man in old court robes, wearing a tall black eboshi like a priest or a royal official. The young man was standing in the middle of a battlefield in the aftermath of a bloody war, surrounded by bodies and dust and darkness.

His back was turned; Ryo couldn't see his face. The nobleman stood very still.

This scene was vaguely familiar to him. It felt like he had seen this before - perhaps on a television show, or the cover of a book he'd read. He was even sure that he knew that nobleman himself, though the name escaped him at the moment...

In his dream Ryo approached the man in the battlefield. He reached out his hand and grabbed the nobleman by the shoulder, turned the nobleman towards him. But at that instant he saw that the hand reaching out wasn't his own - it was a soldier's. And a number of other soldiers came from behind him to surround the nobleman with swords and spears.

The nobleman turned to the soldier whose hand was on his shoulder. He smiled. But though the smile was visible, the rest of his face was not.

The soldiers clamped iron manacles on the nobleman's hands and feet. "I knew you would find me," he said calmly.

Then the scene changed: the nobleman was on his knees in front of a throne. He remained bound in chains, surrounded by watchful soldiers, though he was surrounded too by dozens of stern-faced courtiers. They sat like gargoyles, motionless and menacing, all their stone eyes fixed on the young man at the center of the room.

The young man knelt quietly, head bowed, awaiting judgment. Ryo started to speak. Why, he asked. Why did you do it?

The young man raised his face. His lips started to form an answer.

Then someone started calling Ryo's name.

"Ryo..."

So that was another vaguely familiar thing, except on a different side of waking. A young man's urgent voice, calling to him across the years.

"Ryo... wake up."

It was one of his friends. Touma. Was it Touma? It would make sense if it was Touma, because this was his apartment, wasn't it...?

"Ryo." A hand on his arm, cool like moonlight. The temperature finally roused him.

When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Seiji's face.

He knocked his head against the headboard in his rush to sit up and almost fell asleep again that way. But when he opened his eyes, slowly and cautiously, Seiji was still there.

This was no dream. Seiji was up and about, and at the moment he was sitting on the edge of Ryo's bed.

And Seiji's eyes were bright with life, gently reflecting the light streaming from the open doorway. He sat with his shoulders squared and his back straight... not trembling with the effort of keeping himself stable, not even slightly. Seiji had managed to come to the guest room where Ryo slept, all by himself.

Seiji was -

Seiji was okay.

Skeletal as he had been all this time, but finally with strength in his limbs and ease in his movements. His voice was not weak anymore, it was steady and clear.

No words could come out of Ryo's lips. His hands reached out and grabbed Seiji by the shoulders, and Seiji did not wince or resist. Seiji met his gaze wide-eyed - every bit as surprised, if not more, every bit as overjoyed.

And scared.

Ryo's hands touched Seiji's face. There was warmth under the skin, a flush that felt like life. He was sure that in stronger light, the color in Seiji's cheeks would be visible.

Ryo pulled Seiji close, not caring if he might have pulled too strongly, or if he didn't understand.

Seiji started to speak. Then Ryo started to speak. Then they both started stammering at once and then they started laughing at their own incoherence. Their fears inched away, until all that was left was two young friends in the middle of a miracle, still telling themselves this was real, this was real, it wasn't a dream, Seiji was all better.

It was close to sunrise when Seiji came into Ryo's room. First light found the place ringing with their loud voices and laughter.

Touma's cell phone must have been off. Ryo tried ringing him until his fingers were sore and he had almost destroyed the keypad of their landline unit. Voicemail was all that answered.

"It's all right," Seiji assured him. "He'll come back."

"We should look for him," Ryo declared. Seiji shook his head.

"We don't even know where to start," he pointed out.

He also told Ryo about something Touma had said, about how to treat every major health occurrence: Seiji should wait 24 hours, monitoring himself all the while. If within 24 hours he had not gotten better or worse, it means his condition - whatever it was - was stable. If he had not slipped back into inutility after 24 hours, it was safe for him to presume he wasn't going to do so anytime soon.

"Tomorrow," Seiji said half to himself, "it should be safe to go out."

Seiji fell silent, and Ryo fell silent with him. There was no telling what could happen in 24 hours. They didn't know where this miracle came from, and they didn't know what was going to take it away, and when.

While they thought things over, hoping all the while for Touma to call, they stayed indoors and tried different things. They tried feeding Seiji solid foods, and he did so without difficulty (and great relish, it must be added - "grace" went out the window where Ryo's vegetarian dishes were concerned). He couldn't eat a lot, though, because his body had been on a semi-liquid diet for months and he needed time to adjust. They tried testing his arms and legs, and while he could stand and walk without problems, it seemed he still ran out of breath after a few minutes of exertion. They conducted Seiji's routine tests and marveled together at how normal the results were, as if they had not been consistently dismal during the past weeks.

They dared not make Seiji do anything that required too much effort, like lift anything heavy or do push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups and other regular exercises for healthy bodies. There was no need to tempt fate.

Ryo wanted to call Shin and Shuu, and even Seiji's family, but Seiji asked him not to - in 24 hours, his condition may still deteriorate. They didn't need to be informed of any changes that weren't going to last. They should be patient.

Ryo understood, but patience was never his strong suit.

And he could tell Seiji was getting impatient as well. Late into the morning he became restless. He wanted to go out of the apartment, at least.

"The last time I took a step out of these doors," he lamented, "it was to go to the hospital. I want to stretch my damn legs."

And when Seiji was resorting to cussing, he could only mean business.

So Ryo helped Seiji to the shower (a shower, not a bath - Seiji enjoyed being able to wash himself, finally), then they picked out something for him to wear - a Western-style suit, from one of the many suits Touma had bought for him during his last trip downtown with Ryo.

As he was helping Seiji put the clothes on, he noted the sad look in Seiji's eyes. "I didn't think I was going to be able to wear anything like this again," Seiji said thoughtfully.

"It looks good on you," Ryo remarked. And it did. Touma knew Seiji's body inside out, it seemed - a fact that made him feel cold inside, for some reason.

But Seiji chuckled, "I hate the colors."

The colors were not terrible, Ryo assured him. Shin could have picked them out and he could be wearing plaid right now.

Thus prepared, they left the apartment. Seiji looked nervous as he took his first real step out of doors, in a long time.

But he sighed audibly in relief as Ryo closed and locked the door behind them.

The first place they went to was Mrs. Nakajima's apartment, just down the hall. From that experience, they learned that Seiji had to walk slowly, or else his knees would start to wobble - partly from anxiety, and partly from exhaustion. He had already done a great deal more walking in place indoors than he had done in a while.

Mrs. Nakajima was still in her robe and hair rollers when Seiji called on her. Then again, it wasn't Seiji's fault she was caught unprepared; it was mid-morning. Other women would be out of their robes and rollers by then.

"What d'you want?" she barked at them. She glared daggers at Ryo, who stepped back warily.

"Good morning," Seiji greeted with a shallow bow. "Mrs. Nakajima, we've never met. I live down the hall." A killer smile. "I just wanted to drop by and thank you for the pies you sent."

Ryo watched amused as Mrs. Nakajima transformed slowly from harpy in hairspray to shifty-eyed little old woman in hairspray. Wow.

"So you're that young man." She gathered her robes about herself - more to pull herself up, than to seem defensive. "All better now, are you?"

"It seems," Seiji answered, still glowing with charm. "I was wondering if you liked to read. I wanted to give you this."

He produced a number of books he had been carrying under one arm - his Sengoku-era novels. A complete set, up to the last one published, neatly tied together with string.

"What's this?" she asked, curious instead of excited.

Seiji explained then that he had been holed up in the apartment all this time, because he was a writer. He was also known as Rin Koutarou, perhaps she had heard of him?

She seemed puzzled at first. Then recognition dawned on her and her eyes slowly grew wider. And wider. Ryo was sure a hair roller popped out at that point.

"YOU'RE Rin Kou - " A hand rose to her lips. "MY GRANDDAUGHTER LOVES YOUR BOOKS."

"Does she now?" Seiji flashed a knowing smile aside to Ryo, as if to say Piece of cake.

Mrs. Nakajima babbled a bit more about her granddaughter, who was 12 and good in English and about to enter middle school, then she invited them in - and not grudgingly this time, like she did with Ryo. Obviously she did not care as much that they could be that sort of young men, who lived in the same building as she did. That didn't matter today.

But Seiji declined. He and his friend Ryo had other places they needed to visit. He handed the books to her, and she thanked him profusely, leading Ryo to think her granddaughter was in fact not the only one who liked Seiji's writing.

As they were walking away, Ryo asked what these "other places" were. Seiji answered, in more refined terms, Hell if he knew.

"The trick is to leave them thinking 'What a nice boy. I should tell all my friends about him,'" Seiji explained.

"Uh... right," Ryo said, as if he got it.

"I do want to go out of the building, though," Seiji said. "There's a good cafe by the park near here, if I recall correctly - can we stay there for a while?"

They couldn't go too far, in case Touma called or came home. Seiji didn't think it was likely that was going to happen soon, however. He was confident they had time.

Seiji sat on a park bench, basking in the sunlight - not like he did at home, in the greenhouse or by any of the windows. His eyes were closed; a calm smile was on his face.

It felt like a long time since the last time Ryo had seen him like this - happy and peaceful, free of any discomfort or pain. Years had fallen from his face and from his very thin limbs, and he was suddenly twenty, sixteen, fourteen years old.

He was going to stay by Ryo's side forever. They were going to stay friends all their lives. They were going to grow old together, and die together, and fight together and for each other, should the need to do so return at any time.

Nearby, children played unaware of their presence. Out in the open, nobody cared about them, nobody cast them a second glance. Out here was a place you could lose your cares in.

Why was it, then, that Ryo felt so contemplative?

"You're worried about him."

Ryo sat up. What was Seiji talking about?

Seiji wasn't smiling anymore. "I am too," he said, before he looked away again.

Ryo remembered the dream he had last night, which might have been one of the reasons he felt a bit off. But that wasn't what he wanted to talk about right now. "He should be here," he said to Seiji. "This is everything he wants. His medicines just take a long time to work, but they work. He should know!"

Seiji was silent. After a while, he asked "Why do you think Touma is often away?"

Ryo asked back: "Doesn't he tell you anything?"

Seiji shook his head. "I try to ask, but he gets angry." A faint smile touched his lips. "We used to fight, too. A lot. Did you know that?"

Ryo didn't answer. He didn't know. A part of him didn't want to know.

"Touma... looks at all possible angles to solve a problem. And when he's settled on one solution, he gets stubborn about it. He'll bend all his energies to making it happen, because he knows it's what's best, and nothing you say will change it." Seiji turned his face up to the sky. "I know that's what you like about him."

This would have been a good place for a witty retort. But Ryo was never very good at those. And the way Seiji spoke about it made it seem like an incontrovertible fact, not a simple observation.

"I remember," Seiji said with his eyes closed, "right after we had sealed away the youjakai, after getting the white armor... we needed time to heal. So we stayed with Nasuti at the Yagyuu mansion while we recovered.

"You were always looking for him. You didn't always have to be around him, you just needed to know where he was, because you'd feel uneasy if you didn't. You needed to know if he was okay. You were like that with everyone... but especially him."

"That must've made me unbearable," Ryo said dryly. Seiji chuckled.

"No, Ryo," Seiji answered, "that just made you obvious. To everyone except him."

Ryo's ears started to feel hot. God, was he blushing again? This wouldn't do. There were plenty of ways to react, and this was definitely the least acceptable one.

He could swear he'd never even thought about it. Okay, maybe once or twice. But he'd never really thought about it seriously. They were all his best friends, his family - none of them affected him more than the rest.

And he dared not think that he affected any of them more than the rest did, either. He dared not think he was special to any of them.

But it took too much effort to lie.

"It's okay," Seiji said. "You got away with it. We all had a crush on you back then, anyway."

This almost made Ryo fall out of his seat.

"...What?!"

"Except maybe Shin," Seiji said flatly.

Which meant he was joking.

Ryo punched him on the shoulder. Seiji punched back. It turned into a friendly scuffle, and then people started to stare.

It wasn't rough enough to make them fall to the ground, but it was rough enough to make Seiji start breathing heavily through his laughter, and for his face to turn red with exertion. Ryo stopped it by wrapping his arm around Seiji's shoulders and pulling him close, and soon Seiji's laughter started fading reluctantly.

Seiji laid his head on Ryo's shoulder, and his hand on Ryo's knee. Ryo let them stay. He held his friend close, no matter who was looking.

"Ryo," Seiji said softly, "what will happen tomorrow?"

Ryo let out a breath and leaned in closer.

"I don't know," he admitted.

Touma didn't call. Or come home. Close to dawn, Ryo still couldn't sleep.

He went over to Seiji's room. Seiji couldn't sleep either. He lay on his side, looking over at the empty bed by the window, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Do you need help turning in?" Ryo asked him, thinking of the pills that Touma had set aside specifically for that purpose. Seiji had never actually needed them; it used to be so easy for him to fall asleep. "You must be exhausted."

Seiji looked at his friend, his eyes bright in the dim light. Ryo sat on the empty bed and faced him.

"I'm not tired," Seiji answered. "I'm afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of all of this." Seiji looked past Ryo, to the stars barely visible in the late night sky. "If I wake up tomorrow, and I can't use my body again..."

"Don't talk like that," Ryo said quickly. Seiji held his gaze.

"Ryo... you believe in fate, don't you?"

"Of course!" Ryo answered without hesitation. If there was no such thing as "fate," he might not have been born into the Sanada clan, would not have inherited the responsibilities that he did at the same time that four other boys around his age did. He might never have met those four other boys and forged with them bonds that ran stronger and deeper than blood.

"Of course," Seiji echoed emptily. "For us, it's all been written down... by someone, somewhere out there. On our foreheads, on the substance of our being, in the stars... how we were born and how we're going to die." He looked out the window. The dark hours before dawn showed the stars the brightest, boldly but faintly shining over the glow of the cityscape. "The kind of pain we're meant to experience. The names of the ones we would fall in love with, and who would fall in love with us. All of it. But this is different. This.. doesn't feel like it's supposed to happen."

It was chilling to hear Seiji say something like that. But Ryo couldn't scold Seiji for it. The feeling of anxiety that wouldn't go away, the feeling that there was something wrong, very wrong, was something Ryo shared...

Except he didn't want to say it, didn't want to ruin the moment. The feeling came only at the time of Seiji's sudden unexplainable recovery. It was too easy to say the two were related.

Perhaps, if they still had their armor, it would be easier to identify the feeling for what it was. It felt vaguely like the approach of something evil, but somehow the feeling resisted being familiar.

"Don't think too much," Ryo said firmly. "Or think about something else. You can talk to me, if it'll help."

Seiji's eyebrow rose. "We've done nothing but talk all day." Which was not true, exactly - Seiji had spent most of the day writing, pounding furiously and hungrily on his keyboard. That must have felt like "talking", to him. "What's left to talk about?"

The answer came more quickly to Ryo than he could have anticipated: "That story of yours, the one with the evil warlord... what happens next?"

Seiji blinked. The question caught him by surprise. He was not even aware that Ryo had finished reading all the books, though he seemed pleased at the revelation.

The story was close to ending, he told Ryo; it was all mapped out in his head. If he had time tomorrow, Seiji wanted to pick up on the writing again. But since there was no assurance of that, he supposed it was all right to give spoilers.

The strategist and the general became friends. Close friends. Close enough to swear to each other that they would serve under their lord together all their lives, no matter what happened. But the evil warlord's spies and strategists discovered this bond, and they decided to use it to their advantage.

During a truce, the evil warlord launched an all-out attack and captured the general at his hometown. He was tortured for months. The young lord knew only that the general was captured, and became determined to save him. But all that time, the warlord was finding ways to blackmail the strategist directly, issuing demands through spies and secret messengers, promising the general's safe return at the end of every one.

But the strategist knew that the general was being tortured, and started to lose his calm and became desperate. He did what he could to sabotage his own lord's tactics, making decisions that cost entire villages and hundreds of lives.

The general found out about this by accident and, realizing that he was the cause of it all, found a way to kill himself in prison. The strategist found out and became blind with anger. He devised a way to lead an elite army to the warlord's gates himself, but his lord learned of this plan and sent soldiers out to stop him. Though the strategist was dangerous alive, the lord insisted on his safety, so he was imprisoned.

(Again, Ryo remembered his dream. He recalled the young nobleman in chains, the soldiers who had captured him, and the courtiers who passed judgment on him silently from above. Perhaps it was a premonition of some sort. So it was Seiji's story he was dreaming about, after all...?)

The lord, with the help of his two other friends, carried on the fight without the strategist. They were losing, badly, when the strategist recovered and came to their aid. The strategist's clear head helped ensure the victory of their nation and the complete defeat of the warlord. And then...

"What?" Ryo asked, sitting up. "It's over, isn't it? The warlord is defeated."

"Yes," Seiji replied. "But you'll have to tell me how it ends."

Eh?! "What do you mean? It's your story."

"It's not my story," Seiji said quietly. "It's just my words."

Ryo did not know what that meant. He did not know how to oblige Seiji, either. "I'm not good with things like that," he said with an apologetic chuckle. "Maybe the ending will come to you after you've rested."

Seiji was silent after hearing this. Finally, he said, "Will you sleep here tonight?"

Ryo readily agreed. He could sleep anywhere, and besides, this wasn't the first time.

Within a few minutes of Ryo settling into Touma's bed, sleep started to take over Seiji. It seemed easier for Ryo to fall asleep then, too.

"Ryo..."

He turned to face Seiji. Seiji was on his back, face turned to the sky again.

"Remember your promise."

Ryo didn't need to reply. It was only after he'd said that, that Seiji was able to close his eyes.

Seiji made late breakfast, because he woke up first. He was up on his feet and feeling better than he did yesterday, if it was at all possible.

It had already been 24 hours. Seiji's condition had not gotten worse. His routine tests showed that his body continued to function normally. Surely now they could start thinking the miracle will hold.

Ryo wanted to go out. Seiji didn't. He wanted to stay home and write some more. Ryo wanted to go out and find Touma, though he wasn't sure what coming along would do to Seiji.

"I'll call Shin," Ryo decided aloud. Shin stayed in an apartment just a few stations down, so he could come and watch over Seiji while Ryo was out. Wasn't that why he'd gotten the apartment and lent Ryo his car in the first place?

Seiji thought it was a good idea. It would be a surprise for Shin to find him up and about too, and that was certainly worth the wait.

But as Ryo was approaching the phone, it rang. Puzzled, Ryo answered the call.

"Ryo?" the person on the other end greeted grimly.

Shuu, Ryo mouthed silently. Seiji nodded, looking apprehensive for some reason.

"Shuu, what's up?"

"Something's happened to Shin."

(tbc)