YnM: Exorcism, Part 2
Jun. 4th, 2011 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gaudiorTitle: Exorcism
Rating: R; language, description of rape (this chapter is PG-13)
Pairing: Hisoka/Tsuzuki
Genre: Case fic
Chapter: 2/4
Comments: Spoilers for the entire anime, particularly the Kyoto arc.
After dinner, Tsuzuki was flagging enough that Hisoka had no trouble persuading him to sleep first. He felt the other shinigami drop off into sleep and sighed-- he’d have a few hours to himself now before Tsuzuki started dreaming. One night in the infirmary had been all he’d needed to decide that he hated other people’s dreams, too.
Hisoka stared into the campfire, then turned away. Watching the light was bad for his night-vision, made it hard to see into the darkness clearly. Not that he really expected any danger, but-- there wasn’t enough room for both of them to sleep on that bedroll. Unless they slept close, the thought came, and he blushed and scowled. Dammit, he did not want to sleep with Tsuzuki. Or-- he meant-- not sleep with, just-- He sent a sharp thought through his head, slicing through the muddle: he didn’t want to let Tsuzuki do that to him. He didn’t want to let Tsuzuki hurt him that way. And he liked to think Tsuzuki wouldn’t. He’d never hurt him before.
That is, he’d never hurt him when he’d been himself. When he knew what he was doing. When he was thinking about something besides his own guilt. For that matter, Hisoka still didn’t know exactly what Tsuzuki felt so guilty about-- what he might have done, or to whom he might have done it.
This isn’t fair, Hisoka thought. He’s finally asleep, and I’m still thinking about him. What do I have to do to get some peace?
He peered out past the campfire into the shadows under the trees. There were still ruins around here. The worn, smooth stone he was sitting on had probably been a building stone mouldering centuries ago. He wondered how long the ghosts had been there. They’re not that different from us in some ways, he thought. But I’d hate to be stuck like that. It’s like everything about them disappears except for whatever they’re holding onto, and they can’t do anything except remember it. They stop being people. You’d think they’d notice and move on while they still had enough of themselves left to want to. Pain’s bad enough without becoming nothing but pain. He looked back at the fire, unnerved. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to take some time to think. He didn’t seem to like any of his thoughts. He tried to still his mind, to just be aware of the world around him. Wind in the trees. The fire crackling. Forest animals making their own rustles and barks and howls. Chanting.
Hisoka stood, blinking his eyes hard to try to get his night vision back. The chanting stayed exactly the same volume, not sounding quite human. It sounded more like the wind and the fire were coming together, the sounds of the forest joining in to make one monotonous voice. He looked, but saw nothing under the trees. He hesitated, then reached out, trying to direct his empathy to the search. There... something cold and unmoving and very tired. Not far away. It felt quite close, actually. It felt like it was just on the far side of the fire.
Hisoka stared across the flames, but he couldn’t see anything for certain. It looked like the flames were glinting off something there, maybe tree branches. He stood. “Who’s there?”
The chanting continued, the syllables repeating over and over, unchanging. “Hey,” Hisoka said. “Answer me.”
Nothing. Just the words of prayer, like the night wind. Hisoka started to move around the fire. I should wake Tsuzuki, he thought, but he wanted to see it first. He heard his breath speed up, felt his palms sweat. Another step around the campfire, and he could see a shadow. Another few steps, and he should be able to see it. He took them. There.
The skeleton was holding beads in its fleshless hands, rocking back and forth in prayer. It might have been looking at him, or it might have just been looking straight ahead. There was no way to tell whether its empty eye sockets could see anything in the living world at all. Its jaw moved soundlessly with the chant. Its bones rasped on the rock when it moved.
Hisoka jumped backwards, snapping a shield up. The skeleton seemed to take no notice, just went on with its prayer. “Get out,” Hisoka said. “I order you. Begone from here.” The chanting grew louder. “Leave,” Hisoka said. “Now.”
The skeleton turned, and he’d been wrong before, he could tell perfectly when the empty eyes were looking at him. They were looking at him now. The vertebrae twisted as it turned its face toward him, and the arm bones slid along each other’s smooth surfaces with a squeak. Hisoka held up an ofuda, keeping his shield in place. “Go,” he said. The skeleton seemed to shiver. Then it changed.
Flesh covered the bones from the inside out, blood to flesh to skin to fur. Horns sprouted from the head as the figure rose and kept rising, taller than Hisoka, taller than the trees. Arms formed, clawed and stringy-muscled, reaching for him. Hisoka stared up at it. “Tsuzuki!” he shouted. “Devil! Tsuzuki!”
The tent flap opened just enough for three ofuda to come flying out of it, striking the devil on the arms and shoulder. It roared and jumped over the fire to smash a huge hand down on the tent. Tsuzuki scrambled out, almost getting caught as the tent collapsed behind him. Hisoka dropped his shield and circled around to the other side, casting ofuda of his own. The devil struck out with one hand toward each of them and they dodged, landing together behind the smashed tent. “Hisoka!” Tsuzuki said. “Are you all right?”
”Fine!” Hisoka said. “It just appeared.” Another hand came crashing down on them, and they dodged in different directions. Tsuzuki leapt into the air, casting again, and the devil fell back, roaring. Hisoka got one glimpse of a roaring mouth and enraged red eyes. Then it disappeared, and there was nothing above him but the darkness of the trees.
“Hisoka!” Tsuzuki paused to make sure it was gone, then ran over to him. “What happened?”
Hisoka described the skeleton, finding himself more unnerved by retelling the details than he had let himself be at the time. “It felt odd,” he said. “A ghost should feel angry or sad, but it was peaceful. But not really peaceful.” He thought about it. “As if the peace were a strain for it, something it had to put all its effort into keeping. Like being at peace were enough to hurt it.” He frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”
”No?” Tsuzuki looked rueful. “It does to me.”
Hisoka didn’t know what to say to that. He felt as if he’d misstepped, said more than he’d wanted to-- no, that Tsuzuki had said more than he’d wanted him to. Now he had to answer him in kind or say something that showed he understood, or something to make Tsuzuki feel better, and what the hell was there to say? Tsuzuki noticed his hesitation and smiled it away. “Anyway, this is definitely something that needs to be dealt with. That wasn’t just a ghost. It could have hurt someone. I’m calling the office.”
“Now?” Hisoka said.
“I’ll leave a message,” Tsuzuki said. He put a hand down to the pocket he wasn’t wearing, as he was in pajamas. Which, Hisoka couldn’t help but notice, had come open in the fight, showing off quite a lot of his partner’s bare chest. He hoped that the dim lighting hid his blush. Cut that out, he thought to his face, futilely as ever. Tsuzuki half-laughed at his own mistake and went back to the tent to find his trenchcoat.
He stopped on the other side of the fire. “Oh, no...”
“What?” Hisoka followed him around and looked down at the flattened pile of cloth which had been the tent. Tsuzuki tugged at one end of it, and distressing crunching noises came from inside. “Well,” Tsuzuki said, crawling into the open end. “Let’s see...”
“See what?” Hisoka asked. “Do you have any light in there?” The flashlight, he remembered, had been inside the tent. There was the sound of Tsuzuki bumping into something and swearing. Hisoka sighed. “Tsuzuki...”
“It’s okay!” Tsuzuki called from inside. A hand emerged from a rip in the side of the tent, dragging a trench coat. Tsuzuki pushed the crumpled tent off his head, reached into the pocket of the coat, and triumphantly pulled out... shards. He lost the triumphant look. “Um...”
“That was your cell phone?” Hisoka asked.
Tsuzuki nodded. “Was yours on you?”
Hisoka shook his head. “I left it back in Meifu.”
“Oh.” Tsuzuki sat back on his heels. “Well, we can’t do anything about it now. We’ll head home in the morning.” He reached back inside the tent. “The bedroll felt all right. Why don’t you sleep?”
“I’m okay,” Hisoka said. Tired as he’d been, he didn’t feel remotely sleepy.
“Hisoka,” Tsuzuki wheedled. He tugged the bedroll out, putting it and the sleeping bag on top of the remains of the tent. “How are you going to heal if you don’t rest?”
“Out here?” Hisoka said.
Tsuzuki sat down on a stone. “I’ll watch over you.”
There wasn’t much to say to that, either. Hisoka kicked off his shoes and crawled under the sleeping bag. He could feel Tsuzuki’s eyes on him, warm and watchful, long after he fell asleep.
************************************************************************
It wasn’t dreaming this time, not exactly. Hisoka was drifting upwards, wandering the place between waking and sleeping, and desire pulsed hot through him. He wanted. He saw himself, eyes shut, the sunlight setting his hair to glow golden. Beautiful, he felt. His mouth had fallen slightly open, and he so wanted to kiss it, to hold himself close. So beautiful. So very dear.
That’s not mine, he thought sharply, and woke. The image disappeared, but the desire was still perfectly apparent in his body. He swore silently. He kept his eyes closed, but he could feel Tsuzuki very close by, wanting him. Stop it, he thought. Now. I-- His eyes snapped open.
Tsuzuki sat back, startled by the suddenness of Hisoka’s movement. Alarm flashed through him, and fear of embarassment. Hisoka stared up at him, again unsure what to say. There was no way to say, ‘it’s okay, I didn’t feel what you were thinking,’ without making it perfectly obvious that he had, and besides, it wasn’t okay. He didn’t want Tsuzuki looking at him like that. In his experience, though, once someone started that, what you wanted didn’t matter any more. But it’s Tsuzuki, dammit, he thought, feeling cheated.
“Good morning,” Tsuzuki said. He sounded over-cheerful, but at least he was backing away, standing up.
“Morning,” Hisoka said, sitting up and pulling himself back to calm. “Did anything else happen?”
Tsuzuki shook his head. “It was quiet all night long.” His eyes looked tired, and Hisoka wished he had woken up earlier to make him trade shifts. “The food looks like it’s mostly all right,” he said, gesturing to Hisoka’s pack, which he’d pulled out of the ruin of the tent. “So we can have breakfast just fine. But then we’d better head down to the town to find a phone.”
Hisoka nodded. Stop it, he thought to his body. Stop it now. I have to get up. And I don’t want him to see. It’s nothing to do with me, and I don’t want him to think it is. His head hurt. “Right.”
Tsuzuki turned away to the fire, where he’d set water boiling. “Do you want tea?”
“You made it?” Hisoka said. Surely there wasn’t that much that Tsuzuki could have done to tea leaves...
“Yep! My super-special top-secret mornings-in-the-great-outdoors blend! It’s famous.” Tsuzuki handed him a cup, smiling widely.
Hisoka sniffed it. “What is it?”
“If I tell you that, how will it be a secret?” Tsuzuki poured himself a cup and sat down, inhaling the steam happily. He watched Hisoka’s expression. “Come on, Hisoka. It won’t kill you.”
“I’m already dead,” Hisoka pointed out. Shinigami humor got old fast, and he didn’t engage in it often-- he must be really rattled. He drank in silence while Tsuzuki praised his own tea, the smell of the morning air on the mountain, the view. Hisoka focused on the cup in his hands and, by the time he’d finished it, felt that he could get up without anything showing. “Let’s get going.”
“As soon as I clean up,” Tsuzuki said, holding up the tea pot. “There’s a stream that way if you want to brush your teeth.” Hisoka nodded, digging through his pack. The stream was far enough out of sight that he took the chance to splash water on himself and quickly change clothes. That wasn’t normal either-- he was never comfortable hanging around naked, but he didn’t usually worry about it this much. I don’t usually have reason to, he thought bitterly.
Stop it, he thought. It wasn’t as if Tsuzuki had done anything. Emotions aren’t actions, and it wasn’t as if the other shinigami had any control over them or as if he intended them to affect Hisoka. Still. Hisoka returned to the campfire and folded up the remains of the tent quickly. “We could just blink down,” he said.
Tsuzuki handed him the brazier to pack. “Do you sense anything supernatural now?”
“No,” Hisoka said, checking.
“Then why don’t we walk a while?” Tsuzuki said. “It’s a beautiful morning. It’d be a shame to just go back to work without even looking around.”
Hisoka shrugged. Here or back at the office, he supposed he’d have the same problem. Except that here we’re alone in the middle of nowhere, he thought, with no-one for miles around to hear. He choked. It’s Tsuzuki, he thought fiercely. He’s not going to do anything. I trust him. Why am I thinking like this? “Sure,” he said. “This way.”
They walked down the path, Tsuzuki trying for a while to make conversation. Then they walked in silence. Then Tsuzuki said, “Hisoka...”
“Mm?”
“How do you feel about me?”
Hisoka spluttered. “What?”
Tsuzuki looked and felt as if he hadn’t expected himself to say that either. “I mean, I know it’s a stupid question, you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to, I shouldn’t have said anything...” It was the babble of a man hoping to be interrupted, but for the moment Hisoka could only stare. Tsuzuki stopped. “Never mind.”
He turned away, angry and embarassed and... scared, Hisoka realized, growing more so every second Hisoka didn’t answer. The anger was directed inward, Hisoka felt. He’d start hurting himself again in a minute... “You’re my partner,” he said quickly. The fear checked. “Idiot,” Hisoka added, and the fear started to recede.
“Right,” Tsuzuki said, producing a smile.
They walked on, Tsuzuki wavering in hopeful uncertainty, Hisoka wishing he were several thousand miles away. Or being attacked by a demon. Or anything that meant Tsuzuki wouldn’t say anything else or, worse, expect him to say something else. His luck had never been that good. “I’m glad,” Tsuzuki said softly. “It’s good to be your partner, Hisoka.”
Hisoka shrugged. “You’re too much trouble, you know,” he said. “You eat too much, and you whine too much.” And you keep looking at me like that and feeling that about me, and I wish you’d stop. But I’m not saying so. I’m saying-- I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m saying what I always say, but it means something after what you just said, and I don’t know what, and it’s not what I mean. I don’t know what I mean. You make things so complicated.
“I know,” Tsuzuki said. “Guess it’s hopeless, huh?”
“Looks like,” Hisoka said. Let that be an end to it.
Tsuzuki put a hand on his shoulder.
Hisoka jerked away, turning sharply to knock Tsuzuki’s hand off. Tsuzuki drew back, startled. “Hisoka!”
Hisoka shook. “I...” Tsuzuki was staring at him, hurt and confused and crashingly disappointed. What did you expect? Hisoka wondered, angry, and didn’t think he wanted to know the answer.
Tsuzuki put his hand to his side. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to--” Hisoka waited to hear how he’d end the sentence, sure that whatever he said would only make things worse. “I didn’t mean anything.”
Hisoka nodded warily, feeling his eyes gone wide, his breath fast. “It’s fine,” he said. “I just don’t...” There was nothing to say. “Let’s go back to work.”
Tsuzuki nodded, and they set off down the path again. If he’d wanted to be somewhere else before, now he was just wishing Tsuzuki were somewhere else. Anywhere. No. “I like you,” he said because he had to say something. “But not...” He trailed off, lost, hating it.
“Not like that?” Tsuzuki said. His feelings had gone into crashing cacophany, but his tone was very mild. Hisoka nodded. Tsuzuki felt worse, but sounded just the same. “All right,” he said. “All right. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried,” Hisoka said, sounding too shakily indignant to be anything but. “You’re not going to...” That should end a reassurance. He wasn’t feeling reassuring.
“Bother you,” Tsuzuki said. “I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to, Hisoka.” It was his gentling voice, the one he used on frightened children, and Hisoka was almost annoyed enough about that not to feel relieved. “We’ll forget about it, okay?”
Hisoka nodded. “Yeah.”
“All right,” Tsuzuki said. Hisoka felt nearly overwhelmed by the intensity of his partner’s disappointment, regret, humiliation, guilt, worry, sick realization that a belief had been proved horribly wrong. Tsuzuki smiled. “Let’s go.”
They kept walking, occasionally commenting on the shrines they passed, the bird-calls, bits of office gossip. Mostly, Hisoka felt his partner’s strain to be cheerful, calm, and perfectly normal, and his own to respond to it.
It was almost a relief when the branch swung out around a corner and smashed Tsuzuki full across the face.
************************************************************************
“Tsuzuki!”
Hisoka darted forward to catch his partner as he fell heavily backward. The figure with the branch raised it for another blow. Hisoka lowered Tsuzuki to the ground and lunged to grab the assailant's arm. He-- no, she, he realized-- struggled wildly. “Stop it! No! Let go of me!”
“Tsuzuki!” Hisoka called. Tsuzuki groaned. Blood was fountaining from his nose, but he sat up, and Hisoka breathed a sigh of relief. He turned to the girl he held. “What did you think you were doing?”
She was still screaming, trying to pull her arms free. “Let go!” Hisoka dodged a heel aimed at his instep.
“Hisoka,” Tsuzuki said, standing. “Let her go.”
“She attacked you,” Hisoka argued, raising his voice over her shouts.
Tsuzuki put a hand to his nose, pinching it shut. “Come on, Hisoka-- does she look dangerous to you?” Hisoka reluctantly released his hold, and the girl jerked away from him. “It’s all right, miss. We won’t hurt you.”
Her eyes flicked from one face to the other. She looked about the age of Hisoka’s body, maybe a little younger. “You’re human!” she said.
Tsuzuki started. “What else would we be?” Hisoka asked.
The girl was still holding the branch up in front of her, ready to ward them off, but her expression was melting from anger to dismay. “I--” she said. “I thought you were a demon.”
Hisoka felt Tsuzuki flinch, but his face stayed calm. “We don’t look like demons, do we?” he asked, smiling.
She shook her head, her short hair bouncing around her face. “I’m so sorry! I thought-- I am so sorry! Is your nose okay?”
Tsuzuki laughed. “It’s fine,” he said, wiping his face. The blood disappeared. "See?"
She smiled back. “I’m so glad. I thought I hit you really hard.”
“I’m hard-headed,” Tsuzuki said. “Right, Hisoka?”
Hisoka made a non-committal noise. “Who did you think we were?” he asked, watching her carefully.
She shook her head. “Oh, you know,” she said. “You imagine things in the woods. It’s stupid.” She dropped the branch, trying and failing to seem casual about it.
She looks like hell, Hisoka thought. Her skirt was muddy, her knees scraped, her blouse torn. There were leaves and needles in her hair, and she looked like she hadn’t slept for days. Weeks. “What were you doing out here?” he asked.
“School trip,” she said. “I got lost.”
Hisoka looked at the stone path at their feet, which clearly led down the mountain. “When?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
Hisoka glanced at Tsuzuki, trying to convey all his suspicion with a look. “We’re going down to the town,” Tsuzuki said reassuringly. “Why don’t you come with us?” Hisoka sighed.
She nodded. “I’m Asano Keiko,” she said with a small bow.
Tsuzuki introduced them. “Keiko-chan,” he said. “Did you see anything strange out here?”
“Strange?” she asked brightly.
“You know,” Tsuzuki said, friendly and calm. “Like ghosts.”
“Gh--” Keiko looked from one to the other of them and backed away. “You again,” she breathed. “I knew it was you!” She glared furious fear at them, then turned and ran into the woods.
**************************************************************************
“Damn!” Tsuzuki cursed, starting into the forest after her. “Come on, Hisoka!”
”Wait,” Hisoka said, following him. “I don’t believe her.”
“No, of course not,” Tsuzuki said, pushing branches out of his way. “School trips don’t go this time of year.”
“And there was a phone in her pocket the whole time,” Hisoka said.
Tsuzuki kept moving. “But she was so frightened.”
Hisoka couldn’t argue with that. “This way,” he said. “She doubled back.” Tsuzuki nodded and followed him. “She felt human, though,” he said, trying to move more quietly through the underbrush.
“Good,” Tsuzuki said. “So we just have to figure out what she was doing here. And what she has to do with everything else.”
“Right,” Hisoka panted. My lungs again, he thought. I shouldn’t be winded this quickly. In which case, Tsuzuki... he heard Tsuzuki stumbling behind him and slowed. This is not what Watari meant by ‘taking it easy,’ he thought.
“What’s wrong?” Tsuzuki asked, catching up to him.
“Nothing,” Hisoka said. “But she can’t keep running. She looked exhausted.”
Tsuzuki nodded. “Is she still close enough to hear?” At Hisoka’s nod, he stopped moving. “Keiko-chan!” he called. “We’re here to help!” There was no answer from the woods. “We can find the demon for you!” he went on, his voice very loud among the quiet forest noises. “You don’t have to be afraid!”
There was a rustle ahead of them. Hisoka couldn’t tell whether it was her or a squirrel, but Tsuzuki looked encouraged. “Just come tell us what’s going on,” he called. “You can trust us.”
“How do I know that?” Her voice came from-- over there, Hisoka saw, behind a pile of fallen stones.
Tsuzuki paused, at a loss. “Instinct?”
Silence from behind the stones.
“Look,” Hisoka called. “You can talk to us, or you can run around the woods some more. I don’t care which.” Tsuzuki looked reproachful. Hisoka shrugged.
There was no answer for a while. A bird called. “Keiko-chan,” Tsuzuki called, “don’t you want to go home?”
There was a muffled noise from behind the ruin. “Look-- if you’re telling the truth, and you’re not it-- then you wouldn’t understand.”
“Aren’t you underestimating us?” Tsuzuki asked, more softly now that they knew where she was. “We understand that you’re scared. We understand how much better it feels not to be all by yourself. We can help.”
He’s doing that again, Hisoka thought. She’s going to trust him for no reason at all except that he tells her she can. It struck him as a stupid thing to do, but he remembered exactly what it felt like.
Keiko seemed to have more resistance than most people, though-- she wasn’t coming out. “Y-you,” she called, voice trembling, “you should go away.”
Tsuzuki glanced at Hisoka. “Someone will have to come back here anyway,” Hisoka pointed out. “Probably us. If she doesn’t want to come with us...”
“Hisoka!” Tsuzuki said. “We can’t leave her here with those things!”
“Why not?” Hisoka asked. “She’s managed fine for days.”
Tsuzuki crossed his arms stubbornly. “That’s not what I’d call ‘fine.’”
Hisoka sighed. He’s so unreasonable, he thought with unexpected relief. This felt familiar and right-- coming face-to-face with Tsuzuki’s inherent decency, trying to argue with it, and being reassuringly incapable of making a dent. This is who he is, Hisoka told himself. Not what I’ve been feeling from him. “Well, what do you want to do, then?” he surrendered.
“Keiko-chan,” Tsuzuki called, “we won’t come any closer, but can you tell us about it?” Silence. “We saw a ghost last night,” Tsuzuki said. “A skeleton. Did you see it?”
Keiko’s voice was rough. “You aren’t going to guess it,” she said. “Stop trying.”
Tsuzuki made a startled, thoughtful noise. “You haven’t seen it?” he asked. “What about a devil? It was very tall with long red hair and horns?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Keiko called, choking on a sob. “Devils aren’t real.”
“Lots of things are real,” Tsuzuki called. “It doesn’t matter what you tell us-- we’ll believe you.” He chuckled. “We’ve seen something stranger, I promise.”
The voice from behind the stones sounded desperate. “But even if you did, there’s nothing you can do about it, so there’s no point in talking!”
“If you tell us what it is,” Tsuzuki called, “we can see whether we can do something about it.”
“No, you-- no!” Her voice rose in a shriek. “No!”
Tsuzuki jerked forward at the terror in her voice, racing toward the stones, an ofuda ready in his hand. “Keiko-chan!” Hisoka followed, watching his back, looking around the forest at...
Flames. Flames licked against the paper walls and red-lacquered wooden pillars around him. “Tsuzuki!” Hisoka called, but got no answer besides the screams. There was a crash from above, and Hisoka threw up a shield just before the beams of the ceiling crashed down on him. The air cleared enough for him to see people running away from the building. No, not from the building. He saw a shape, dim through the smoke, then suddenly absolutely clear as it moved forward. The devil roared, and Hisoka heard a more familiar scream. He jumped out of the building towards the shape in white between the devil’s feet. “Hey,” he said, shaking her shoulder. “Get up!”
The girl turned. Her hair was long and black, her outfit utterly traditional, her face a different shape, but when she said, “You!” it was Keiko.
“Come on,” Hisoka said, looking upward at the courtyard around them. The devil was growling now, bending its legs to jump. “Move!”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, he’s going to get me, he’s going to kill me, I can’t stop him. It doesn’t matter, I can’t get away.”
Hisoka stood above her. “So you’re just going to let him?”
The devil leapt into the air and came crashing down towards them, its huge feet ready to crush them. Hisoka grabbed the girl’s arm and blinked out of the way. They landed about thirty feet from it, behind a standing wall which had been rubble ten minutes earlier. “Asano-san,” Hisoka said sharply, “What’s going on?”
She shook her head. “We shouldn’t have run, it doesn’t do any good. He’ll just kill more people getting to me, now. I should go back,” and the terror in those words made them almost impossible to understand. Revulsion and fear blended in her, paralyzing her, and he could hear the devil roaring over the flames. “I should go back...”
“Asano-san,” Hisoka said. “This isn’t real.” She shook, her hair cascading across her back, but didn’t answer. “You’re a school-girl from the Heisei period. This is an illusion.”
“No!” she said. “This is real. This really happened. Like this.” There was a crash, and the wall they stood behind was smashed away, stones bouncing off Hisoka’s shield to fly in all directions. She shrieked as the devil’s hands crashed down on the shield, shrieked louder when the shield started to show cracks. That shouldn’t have happened, Hisoka thought, he didn’t hit us that hard, but the cracks spread. He put more power into it, but the shield shattered as the devil pounded it, and he grabbed for her hand to blink away. She shrank away from him, and the devil’s hand came down, smashing him to the ground. He struggled to rise, but he felt the fingers around him, faster than he could react to, crushing him. He struggled for breath, felt his ribs break inwards, coughed blood, and died.
Rating: R; language, description of rape (this chapter is PG-13)
Pairing: Hisoka/Tsuzuki
Genre: Case fic
Chapter: 2/4
Comments: Spoilers for the entire anime, particularly the Kyoto arc.
After dinner, Tsuzuki was flagging enough that Hisoka had no trouble persuading him to sleep first. He felt the other shinigami drop off into sleep and sighed-- he’d have a few hours to himself now before Tsuzuki started dreaming. One night in the infirmary had been all he’d needed to decide that he hated other people’s dreams, too.
Hisoka stared into the campfire, then turned away. Watching the light was bad for his night-vision, made it hard to see into the darkness clearly. Not that he really expected any danger, but-- there wasn’t enough room for both of them to sleep on that bedroll. Unless they slept close, the thought came, and he blushed and scowled. Dammit, he did not want to sleep with Tsuzuki. Or-- he meant-- not sleep with, just-- He sent a sharp thought through his head, slicing through the muddle: he didn’t want to let Tsuzuki do that to him. He didn’t want to let Tsuzuki hurt him that way. And he liked to think Tsuzuki wouldn’t. He’d never hurt him before.
That is, he’d never hurt him when he’d been himself. When he knew what he was doing. When he was thinking about something besides his own guilt. For that matter, Hisoka still didn’t know exactly what Tsuzuki felt so guilty about-- what he might have done, or to whom he might have done it.
This isn’t fair, Hisoka thought. He’s finally asleep, and I’m still thinking about him. What do I have to do to get some peace?
He peered out past the campfire into the shadows under the trees. There were still ruins around here. The worn, smooth stone he was sitting on had probably been a building stone mouldering centuries ago. He wondered how long the ghosts had been there. They’re not that different from us in some ways, he thought. But I’d hate to be stuck like that. It’s like everything about them disappears except for whatever they’re holding onto, and they can’t do anything except remember it. They stop being people. You’d think they’d notice and move on while they still had enough of themselves left to want to. Pain’s bad enough without becoming nothing but pain. He looked back at the fire, unnerved. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to take some time to think. He didn’t seem to like any of his thoughts. He tried to still his mind, to just be aware of the world around him. Wind in the trees. The fire crackling. Forest animals making their own rustles and barks and howls. Chanting.
Hisoka stood, blinking his eyes hard to try to get his night vision back. The chanting stayed exactly the same volume, not sounding quite human. It sounded more like the wind and the fire were coming together, the sounds of the forest joining in to make one monotonous voice. He looked, but saw nothing under the trees. He hesitated, then reached out, trying to direct his empathy to the search. There... something cold and unmoving and very tired. Not far away. It felt quite close, actually. It felt like it was just on the far side of the fire.
Hisoka stared across the flames, but he couldn’t see anything for certain. It looked like the flames were glinting off something there, maybe tree branches. He stood. “Who’s there?”
The chanting continued, the syllables repeating over and over, unchanging. “Hey,” Hisoka said. “Answer me.”
Nothing. Just the words of prayer, like the night wind. Hisoka started to move around the fire. I should wake Tsuzuki, he thought, but he wanted to see it first. He heard his breath speed up, felt his palms sweat. Another step around the campfire, and he could see a shadow. Another few steps, and he should be able to see it. He took them. There.
The skeleton was holding beads in its fleshless hands, rocking back and forth in prayer. It might have been looking at him, or it might have just been looking straight ahead. There was no way to tell whether its empty eye sockets could see anything in the living world at all. Its jaw moved soundlessly with the chant. Its bones rasped on the rock when it moved.
Hisoka jumped backwards, snapping a shield up. The skeleton seemed to take no notice, just went on with its prayer. “Get out,” Hisoka said. “I order you. Begone from here.” The chanting grew louder. “Leave,” Hisoka said. “Now.”
The skeleton turned, and he’d been wrong before, he could tell perfectly when the empty eyes were looking at him. They were looking at him now. The vertebrae twisted as it turned its face toward him, and the arm bones slid along each other’s smooth surfaces with a squeak. Hisoka held up an ofuda, keeping his shield in place. “Go,” he said. The skeleton seemed to shiver. Then it changed.
Flesh covered the bones from the inside out, blood to flesh to skin to fur. Horns sprouted from the head as the figure rose and kept rising, taller than Hisoka, taller than the trees. Arms formed, clawed and stringy-muscled, reaching for him. Hisoka stared up at it. “Tsuzuki!” he shouted. “Devil! Tsuzuki!”
The tent flap opened just enough for three ofuda to come flying out of it, striking the devil on the arms and shoulder. It roared and jumped over the fire to smash a huge hand down on the tent. Tsuzuki scrambled out, almost getting caught as the tent collapsed behind him. Hisoka dropped his shield and circled around to the other side, casting ofuda of his own. The devil struck out with one hand toward each of them and they dodged, landing together behind the smashed tent. “Hisoka!” Tsuzuki said. “Are you all right?”
”Fine!” Hisoka said. “It just appeared.” Another hand came crashing down on them, and they dodged in different directions. Tsuzuki leapt into the air, casting again, and the devil fell back, roaring. Hisoka got one glimpse of a roaring mouth and enraged red eyes. Then it disappeared, and there was nothing above him but the darkness of the trees.
“Hisoka!” Tsuzuki paused to make sure it was gone, then ran over to him. “What happened?”
Hisoka described the skeleton, finding himself more unnerved by retelling the details than he had let himself be at the time. “It felt odd,” he said. “A ghost should feel angry or sad, but it was peaceful. But not really peaceful.” He thought about it. “As if the peace were a strain for it, something it had to put all its effort into keeping. Like being at peace were enough to hurt it.” He frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”
”No?” Tsuzuki looked rueful. “It does to me.”
Hisoka didn’t know what to say to that. He felt as if he’d misstepped, said more than he’d wanted to-- no, that Tsuzuki had said more than he’d wanted him to. Now he had to answer him in kind or say something that showed he understood, or something to make Tsuzuki feel better, and what the hell was there to say? Tsuzuki noticed his hesitation and smiled it away. “Anyway, this is definitely something that needs to be dealt with. That wasn’t just a ghost. It could have hurt someone. I’m calling the office.”
“Now?” Hisoka said.
“I’ll leave a message,” Tsuzuki said. He put a hand down to the pocket he wasn’t wearing, as he was in pajamas. Which, Hisoka couldn’t help but notice, had come open in the fight, showing off quite a lot of his partner’s bare chest. He hoped that the dim lighting hid his blush. Cut that out, he thought to his face, futilely as ever. Tsuzuki half-laughed at his own mistake and went back to the tent to find his trenchcoat.
He stopped on the other side of the fire. “Oh, no...”
“What?” Hisoka followed him around and looked down at the flattened pile of cloth which had been the tent. Tsuzuki tugged at one end of it, and distressing crunching noises came from inside. “Well,” Tsuzuki said, crawling into the open end. “Let’s see...”
“See what?” Hisoka asked. “Do you have any light in there?” The flashlight, he remembered, had been inside the tent. There was the sound of Tsuzuki bumping into something and swearing. Hisoka sighed. “Tsuzuki...”
“It’s okay!” Tsuzuki called from inside. A hand emerged from a rip in the side of the tent, dragging a trench coat. Tsuzuki pushed the crumpled tent off his head, reached into the pocket of the coat, and triumphantly pulled out... shards. He lost the triumphant look. “Um...”
“That was your cell phone?” Hisoka asked.
Tsuzuki nodded. “Was yours on you?”
Hisoka shook his head. “I left it back in Meifu.”
“Oh.” Tsuzuki sat back on his heels. “Well, we can’t do anything about it now. We’ll head home in the morning.” He reached back inside the tent. “The bedroll felt all right. Why don’t you sleep?”
“I’m okay,” Hisoka said. Tired as he’d been, he didn’t feel remotely sleepy.
“Hisoka,” Tsuzuki wheedled. He tugged the bedroll out, putting it and the sleeping bag on top of the remains of the tent. “How are you going to heal if you don’t rest?”
“Out here?” Hisoka said.
Tsuzuki sat down on a stone. “I’ll watch over you.”
There wasn’t much to say to that, either. Hisoka kicked off his shoes and crawled under the sleeping bag. He could feel Tsuzuki’s eyes on him, warm and watchful, long after he fell asleep.
************************************************************************
It wasn’t dreaming this time, not exactly. Hisoka was drifting upwards, wandering the place between waking and sleeping, and desire pulsed hot through him. He wanted. He saw himself, eyes shut, the sunlight setting his hair to glow golden. Beautiful, he felt. His mouth had fallen slightly open, and he so wanted to kiss it, to hold himself close. So beautiful. So very dear.
That’s not mine, he thought sharply, and woke. The image disappeared, but the desire was still perfectly apparent in his body. He swore silently. He kept his eyes closed, but he could feel Tsuzuki very close by, wanting him. Stop it, he thought. Now. I-- His eyes snapped open.
Tsuzuki sat back, startled by the suddenness of Hisoka’s movement. Alarm flashed through him, and fear of embarassment. Hisoka stared up at him, again unsure what to say. There was no way to say, ‘it’s okay, I didn’t feel what you were thinking,’ without making it perfectly obvious that he had, and besides, it wasn’t okay. He didn’t want Tsuzuki looking at him like that. In his experience, though, once someone started that, what you wanted didn’t matter any more. But it’s Tsuzuki, dammit, he thought, feeling cheated.
“Good morning,” Tsuzuki said. He sounded over-cheerful, but at least he was backing away, standing up.
“Morning,” Hisoka said, sitting up and pulling himself back to calm. “Did anything else happen?”
Tsuzuki shook his head. “It was quiet all night long.” His eyes looked tired, and Hisoka wished he had woken up earlier to make him trade shifts. “The food looks like it’s mostly all right,” he said, gesturing to Hisoka’s pack, which he’d pulled out of the ruin of the tent. “So we can have breakfast just fine. But then we’d better head down to the town to find a phone.”
Hisoka nodded. Stop it, he thought to his body. Stop it now. I have to get up. And I don’t want him to see. It’s nothing to do with me, and I don’t want him to think it is. His head hurt. “Right.”
Tsuzuki turned away to the fire, where he’d set water boiling. “Do you want tea?”
“You made it?” Hisoka said. Surely there wasn’t that much that Tsuzuki could have done to tea leaves...
“Yep! My super-special top-secret mornings-in-the-great-outdoors blend! It’s famous.” Tsuzuki handed him a cup, smiling widely.
Hisoka sniffed it. “What is it?”
“If I tell you that, how will it be a secret?” Tsuzuki poured himself a cup and sat down, inhaling the steam happily. He watched Hisoka’s expression. “Come on, Hisoka. It won’t kill you.”
“I’m already dead,” Hisoka pointed out. Shinigami humor got old fast, and he didn’t engage in it often-- he must be really rattled. He drank in silence while Tsuzuki praised his own tea, the smell of the morning air on the mountain, the view. Hisoka focused on the cup in his hands and, by the time he’d finished it, felt that he could get up without anything showing. “Let’s get going.”
“As soon as I clean up,” Tsuzuki said, holding up the tea pot. “There’s a stream that way if you want to brush your teeth.” Hisoka nodded, digging through his pack. The stream was far enough out of sight that he took the chance to splash water on himself and quickly change clothes. That wasn’t normal either-- he was never comfortable hanging around naked, but he didn’t usually worry about it this much. I don’t usually have reason to, he thought bitterly.
Stop it, he thought. It wasn’t as if Tsuzuki had done anything. Emotions aren’t actions, and it wasn’t as if the other shinigami had any control over them or as if he intended them to affect Hisoka. Still. Hisoka returned to the campfire and folded up the remains of the tent quickly. “We could just blink down,” he said.
Tsuzuki handed him the brazier to pack. “Do you sense anything supernatural now?”
“No,” Hisoka said, checking.
“Then why don’t we walk a while?” Tsuzuki said. “It’s a beautiful morning. It’d be a shame to just go back to work without even looking around.”
Hisoka shrugged. Here or back at the office, he supposed he’d have the same problem. Except that here we’re alone in the middle of nowhere, he thought, with no-one for miles around to hear. He choked. It’s Tsuzuki, he thought fiercely. He’s not going to do anything. I trust him. Why am I thinking like this? “Sure,” he said. “This way.”
They walked down the path, Tsuzuki trying for a while to make conversation. Then they walked in silence. Then Tsuzuki said, “Hisoka...”
“Mm?”
“How do you feel about me?”
Hisoka spluttered. “What?”
Tsuzuki looked and felt as if he hadn’t expected himself to say that either. “I mean, I know it’s a stupid question, you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to, I shouldn’t have said anything...” It was the babble of a man hoping to be interrupted, but for the moment Hisoka could only stare. Tsuzuki stopped. “Never mind.”
He turned away, angry and embarassed and... scared, Hisoka realized, growing more so every second Hisoka didn’t answer. The anger was directed inward, Hisoka felt. He’d start hurting himself again in a minute... “You’re my partner,” he said quickly. The fear checked. “Idiot,” Hisoka added, and the fear started to recede.
“Right,” Tsuzuki said, producing a smile.
They walked on, Tsuzuki wavering in hopeful uncertainty, Hisoka wishing he were several thousand miles away. Or being attacked by a demon. Or anything that meant Tsuzuki wouldn’t say anything else or, worse, expect him to say something else. His luck had never been that good. “I’m glad,” Tsuzuki said softly. “It’s good to be your partner, Hisoka.”
Hisoka shrugged. “You’re too much trouble, you know,” he said. “You eat too much, and you whine too much.” And you keep looking at me like that and feeling that about me, and I wish you’d stop. But I’m not saying so. I’m saying-- I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m saying what I always say, but it means something after what you just said, and I don’t know what, and it’s not what I mean. I don’t know what I mean. You make things so complicated.
“I know,” Tsuzuki said. “Guess it’s hopeless, huh?”
“Looks like,” Hisoka said. Let that be an end to it.
Tsuzuki put a hand on his shoulder.
Hisoka jerked away, turning sharply to knock Tsuzuki’s hand off. Tsuzuki drew back, startled. “Hisoka!”
Hisoka shook. “I...” Tsuzuki was staring at him, hurt and confused and crashingly disappointed. What did you expect? Hisoka wondered, angry, and didn’t think he wanted to know the answer.
Tsuzuki put his hand to his side. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to--” Hisoka waited to hear how he’d end the sentence, sure that whatever he said would only make things worse. “I didn’t mean anything.”
Hisoka nodded warily, feeling his eyes gone wide, his breath fast. “It’s fine,” he said. “I just don’t...” There was nothing to say. “Let’s go back to work.”
Tsuzuki nodded, and they set off down the path again. If he’d wanted to be somewhere else before, now he was just wishing Tsuzuki were somewhere else. Anywhere. No. “I like you,” he said because he had to say something. “But not...” He trailed off, lost, hating it.
“Not like that?” Tsuzuki said. His feelings had gone into crashing cacophany, but his tone was very mild. Hisoka nodded. Tsuzuki felt worse, but sounded just the same. “All right,” he said. “All right. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried,” Hisoka said, sounding too shakily indignant to be anything but. “You’re not going to...” That should end a reassurance. He wasn’t feeling reassuring.
“Bother you,” Tsuzuki said. “I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to, Hisoka.” It was his gentling voice, the one he used on frightened children, and Hisoka was almost annoyed enough about that not to feel relieved. “We’ll forget about it, okay?”
Hisoka nodded. “Yeah.”
“All right,” Tsuzuki said. Hisoka felt nearly overwhelmed by the intensity of his partner’s disappointment, regret, humiliation, guilt, worry, sick realization that a belief had been proved horribly wrong. Tsuzuki smiled. “Let’s go.”
They kept walking, occasionally commenting on the shrines they passed, the bird-calls, bits of office gossip. Mostly, Hisoka felt his partner’s strain to be cheerful, calm, and perfectly normal, and his own to respond to it.
It was almost a relief when the branch swung out around a corner and smashed Tsuzuki full across the face.
************************************************************************
“Tsuzuki!”
Hisoka darted forward to catch his partner as he fell heavily backward. The figure with the branch raised it for another blow. Hisoka lowered Tsuzuki to the ground and lunged to grab the assailant's arm. He-- no, she, he realized-- struggled wildly. “Stop it! No! Let go of me!”
“Tsuzuki!” Hisoka called. Tsuzuki groaned. Blood was fountaining from his nose, but he sat up, and Hisoka breathed a sigh of relief. He turned to the girl he held. “What did you think you were doing?”
She was still screaming, trying to pull her arms free. “Let go!” Hisoka dodged a heel aimed at his instep.
“Hisoka,” Tsuzuki said, standing. “Let her go.”
“She attacked you,” Hisoka argued, raising his voice over her shouts.
Tsuzuki put a hand to his nose, pinching it shut. “Come on, Hisoka-- does she look dangerous to you?” Hisoka reluctantly released his hold, and the girl jerked away from him. “It’s all right, miss. We won’t hurt you.”
Her eyes flicked from one face to the other. She looked about the age of Hisoka’s body, maybe a little younger. “You’re human!” she said.
Tsuzuki started. “What else would we be?” Hisoka asked.
The girl was still holding the branch up in front of her, ready to ward them off, but her expression was melting from anger to dismay. “I--” she said. “I thought you were a demon.”
Hisoka felt Tsuzuki flinch, but his face stayed calm. “We don’t look like demons, do we?” he asked, smiling.
She shook her head, her short hair bouncing around her face. “I’m so sorry! I thought-- I am so sorry! Is your nose okay?”
Tsuzuki laughed. “It’s fine,” he said, wiping his face. The blood disappeared. "See?"
She smiled back. “I’m so glad. I thought I hit you really hard.”
“I’m hard-headed,” Tsuzuki said. “Right, Hisoka?”
Hisoka made a non-committal noise. “Who did you think we were?” he asked, watching her carefully.
She shook her head. “Oh, you know,” she said. “You imagine things in the woods. It’s stupid.” She dropped the branch, trying and failing to seem casual about it.
She looks like hell, Hisoka thought. Her skirt was muddy, her knees scraped, her blouse torn. There were leaves and needles in her hair, and she looked like she hadn’t slept for days. Weeks. “What were you doing out here?” he asked.
“School trip,” she said. “I got lost.”
Hisoka looked at the stone path at their feet, which clearly led down the mountain. “When?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
Hisoka glanced at Tsuzuki, trying to convey all his suspicion with a look. “We’re going down to the town,” Tsuzuki said reassuringly. “Why don’t you come with us?” Hisoka sighed.
She nodded. “I’m Asano Keiko,” she said with a small bow.
Tsuzuki introduced them. “Keiko-chan,” he said. “Did you see anything strange out here?”
“Strange?” she asked brightly.
“You know,” Tsuzuki said, friendly and calm. “Like ghosts.”
“Gh--” Keiko looked from one to the other of them and backed away. “You again,” she breathed. “I knew it was you!” She glared furious fear at them, then turned and ran into the woods.
**************************************************************************
“Damn!” Tsuzuki cursed, starting into the forest after her. “Come on, Hisoka!”
”Wait,” Hisoka said, following him. “I don’t believe her.”
“No, of course not,” Tsuzuki said, pushing branches out of his way. “School trips don’t go this time of year.”
“And there was a phone in her pocket the whole time,” Hisoka said.
Tsuzuki kept moving. “But she was so frightened.”
Hisoka couldn’t argue with that. “This way,” he said. “She doubled back.” Tsuzuki nodded and followed him. “She felt human, though,” he said, trying to move more quietly through the underbrush.
“Good,” Tsuzuki said. “So we just have to figure out what she was doing here. And what she has to do with everything else.”
“Right,” Hisoka panted. My lungs again, he thought. I shouldn’t be winded this quickly. In which case, Tsuzuki... he heard Tsuzuki stumbling behind him and slowed. This is not what Watari meant by ‘taking it easy,’ he thought.
“What’s wrong?” Tsuzuki asked, catching up to him.
“Nothing,” Hisoka said. “But she can’t keep running. She looked exhausted.”
Tsuzuki nodded. “Is she still close enough to hear?” At Hisoka’s nod, he stopped moving. “Keiko-chan!” he called. “We’re here to help!” There was no answer from the woods. “We can find the demon for you!” he went on, his voice very loud among the quiet forest noises. “You don’t have to be afraid!”
There was a rustle ahead of them. Hisoka couldn’t tell whether it was her or a squirrel, but Tsuzuki looked encouraged. “Just come tell us what’s going on,” he called. “You can trust us.”
“How do I know that?” Her voice came from-- over there, Hisoka saw, behind a pile of fallen stones.
Tsuzuki paused, at a loss. “Instinct?”
Silence from behind the stones.
“Look,” Hisoka called. “You can talk to us, or you can run around the woods some more. I don’t care which.” Tsuzuki looked reproachful. Hisoka shrugged.
There was no answer for a while. A bird called. “Keiko-chan,” Tsuzuki called, “don’t you want to go home?”
There was a muffled noise from behind the ruin. “Look-- if you’re telling the truth, and you’re not it-- then you wouldn’t understand.”
“Aren’t you underestimating us?” Tsuzuki asked, more softly now that they knew where she was. “We understand that you’re scared. We understand how much better it feels not to be all by yourself. We can help.”
He’s doing that again, Hisoka thought. She’s going to trust him for no reason at all except that he tells her she can. It struck him as a stupid thing to do, but he remembered exactly what it felt like.
Keiko seemed to have more resistance than most people, though-- she wasn’t coming out. “Y-you,” she called, voice trembling, “you should go away.”
Tsuzuki glanced at Hisoka. “Someone will have to come back here anyway,” Hisoka pointed out. “Probably us. If she doesn’t want to come with us...”
“Hisoka!” Tsuzuki said. “We can’t leave her here with those things!”
“Why not?” Hisoka asked. “She’s managed fine for days.”
Tsuzuki crossed his arms stubbornly. “That’s not what I’d call ‘fine.’”
Hisoka sighed. He’s so unreasonable, he thought with unexpected relief. This felt familiar and right-- coming face-to-face with Tsuzuki’s inherent decency, trying to argue with it, and being reassuringly incapable of making a dent. This is who he is, Hisoka told himself. Not what I’ve been feeling from him. “Well, what do you want to do, then?” he surrendered.
“Keiko-chan,” Tsuzuki called, “we won’t come any closer, but can you tell us about it?” Silence. “We saw a ghost last night,” Tsuzuki said. “A skeleton. Did you see it?”
Keiko’s voice was rough. “You aren’t going to guess it,” she said. “Stop trying.”
Tsuzuki made a startled, thoughtful noise. “You haven’t seen it?” he asked. “What about a devil? It was very tall with long red hair and horns?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Keiko called, choking on a sob. “Devils aren’t real.”
“Lots of things are real,” Tsuzuki called. “It doesn’t matter what you tell us-- we’ll believe you.” He chuckled. “We’ve seen something stranger, I promise.”
The voice from behind the stones sounded desperate. “But even if you did, there’s nothing you can do about it, so there’s no point in talking!”
“If you tell us what it is,” Tsuzuki called, “we can see whether we can do something about it.”
“No, you-- no!” Her voice rose in a shriek. “No!”
Tsuzuki jerked forward at the terror in her voice, racing toward the stones, an ofuda ready in his hand. “Keiko-chan!” Hisoka followed, watching his back, looking around the forest at...
Flames. Flames licked against the paper walls and red-lacquered wooden pillars around him. “Tsuzuki!” Hisoka called, but got no answer besides the screams. There was a crash from above, and Hisoka threw up a shield just before the beams of the ceiling crashed down on him. The air cleared enough for him to see people running away from the building. No, not from the building. He saw a shape, dim through the smoke, then suddenly absolutely clear as it moved forward. The devil roared, and Hisoka heard a more familiar scream. He jumped out of the building towards the shape in white between the devil’s feet. “Hey,” he said, shaking her shoulder. “Get up!”
The girl turned. Her hair was long and black, her outfit utterly traditional, her face a different shape, but when she said, “You!” it was Keiko.
“Come on,” Hisoka said, looking upward at the courtyard around them. The devil was growling now, bending its legs to jump. “Move!”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, he’s going to get me, he’s going to kill me, I can’t stop him. It doesn’t matter, I can’t get away.”
Hisoka stood above her. “So you’re just going to let him?”
The devil leapt into the air and came crashing down towards them, its huge feet ready to crush them. Hisoka grabbed the girl’s arm and blinked out of the way. They landed about thirty feet from it, behind a standing wall which had been rubble ten minutes earlier. “Asano-san,” Hisoka said sharply, “What’s going on?”
She shook her head. “We shouldn’t have run, it doesn’t do any good. He’ll just kill more people getting to me, now. I should go back,” and the terror in those words made them almost impossible to understand. Revulsion and fear blended in her, paralyzing her, and he could hear the devil roaring over the flames. “I should go back...”
“Asano-san,” Hisoka said. “This isn’t real.” She shook, her hair cascading across her back, but didn’t answer. “You’re a school-girl from the Heisei period. This is an illusion.”
“No!” she said. “This is real. This really happened. Like this.” There was a crash, and the wall they stood behind was smashed away, stones bouncing off Hisoka’s shield to fly in all directions. She shrieked as the devil’s hands crashed down on the shield, shrieked louder when the shield started to show cracks. That shouldn’t have happened, Hisoka thought, he didn’t hit us that hard, but the cracks spread. He put more power into it, but the shield shattered as the devil pounded it, and he grabbed for her hand to blink away. She shrank away from him, and the devil’s hand came down, smashing him to the ground. He struggled to rise, but he felt the fingers around him, faster than he could react to, crushing him. He struggled for breath, felt his ribs break inwards, coughed blood, and died.
