Kouchi na Uso (An Elaborate Lie)
Written by Jeldi

Series: X/Tokyo Babylon
Rating: PG-13/R
Pairing: S/S

Spoilers up to volume 16…déjà vu anyone?

Author’s Note: I didn’t die and I’m still writing fanfiction (and going to participate for NaNoWriMo 2008). Thanks to everyone who posted comments for this fanfic so far – you’re kind words have helped to motivate me. I hope this doesn’t disappoint!

Disclaimer: We all know that these characters belong to CLAMP. This fic is just for entertainment; no profit; yada yada...it’s great that CLAMP allows us to torment their characters…otherwise I’d have to make my own…oh wait, I do that too.

Kouchi na Uso – Chapter 3

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A cool feeling settled on his forehead and a moment later his sleep-muzzled mind registered the sound of a door creaking as it closed, causing him to slowly surface from his slumber. Lying still as he came groggily awake Subaru felt as if he had awoken from a coma. His muscles were stiff and responded lethargically to even the smallest shift. Slitting his eyes against the sunlight streaming through the open shades of the windows, his altered depth perception caused the light playing across the off-white ceiling to appear planar. As he watched those myriad ever-changing patterns, he tried to piece together why he was in bed and still asleep at mid-day. His mind, however, still refused to communicate the lapse of time between the previous evening and present.

As he sat up, a damp cloth fell into his lap from where it had rested on his forehead. He looked at it briefly, lost as to a reason why it was there, then leaned forward and rubbed his temples where a persistent headache was forming. The cool massage against those pressure points helped to ease the dull pain. As he dropped his hand away from his face, his bare skin reminding him of that same pale hands covered in crimson; those hands that seemed forever stained with the blood of his loved one, though it had long been washed away. As his mind awakened further, he gaze shifted from his hand and traveled up the length of his arm.

Pajamas? I’ve never owned any like this…even when I was sixteen, he stated while creasing his brow in confusion. Sure enough, though, Subaru was clothed in pajamas, a little more subdued than something his sister would have picked out for him had she still been alive. Not wanting to lose himself to that loneliness, he forced his thoughts away from Hokuto and back to the present.

Taking one step at a time and focusing on the task of getting out of bed he turned and swung his legs out from under the covers. As he started to get up from the bed, his gaze fell on the other occupant in the room who had, until that point, went completely unnoticed. He let out a surprised gasp; his legs immediately gave out causing him to fall back to the mattress. Curled up in the chair across from him, his long-dead sister was serenely dozing. Having roused her with his commotion, she began to stir. Stretching out her kinked muscles, she was muttering something about accidentally falling asleep in uncomfortable chairs, not realizing her supposedly sleeping patient was awake.

Finding his voice, Subaru managed a stifled, disbelieving, “N-nee-san?”

Startled by the sudden speech in the otherwise quiet room, Hokuto started momentarily before looking toward her brother in surprise. Not getting a vocal response from his twin, Subaru tried again, his voice gaining in steadiness, “Hokuto-chan? Am I dead?”

A look of guilt shot across her emerald gaze, and she simply shook her head saying in an uncharacteristically flat voice, “No, you’re not, Subaru.” She got up and went over to the bed, smoothing out the tails of her blazer before sitting down beside him and resting an arm protectively across his shoulders.

He looked at her, not quite sure how it could be that he was not dead and yet she was solid. “Then…how?” his voice wavered with confusion. He felt her tense, and then hug him slightly before turning to face toward him.

“There is something that we have to talk about…” she began, to be interrupted by the door creaking open again, Seishirou carrying a tray laden with breakfast dishes. He paused as Subaru’s eye went wide. He tensed under Hokuto’s arm as silence once again in the room, the trio at a standstill.

Subaru’s stomach twisted with the pang of betrayal as Hokuto broke the silence with an exasperated sigh and motioned Seishirou to come inside the room, she said, “Sei-chan…you don’t need to stand there like a statue. Come in and set the tray down…” Pausing, she looked toward Subaru, who in turn was eyeing Seishirou suspiciously as he pushed the door completely open and set the tray down on the desk across the room. He casually leaned against the desk, maintaining a “safe” distance from the twins across the room. Subaru did not think it was a far enough distance.

Hokuto began, “Subaru...”

Steeling himself, Subaru voiced his thoughts aloud cutting off what Hokuto was about to say to him, a slight bit of venom creeping into his tone, “Would one of you care to explain why the two of you are here if I’m not dead?” He brushed his sister’s arm off and got up, stepping warily back a few paces and positioning himself with his back toward the picture window, away from both of them. Hokuto looked startled at his reaction; Seishirou merely regarded him in his usual passive disinterest. Hokuto had probably never seen him so defensive, ready to either fight or take flight at the slightest provocation. Then again, there was a lot that his sister did not know about him these days.

“I believe that Hokuto-chan was beginning to tell you as I came in. Shall she continue what she was saying,” Seishirou interjected, keeping his voice neutral. Subaru shot a glare toward him, doubled in animosity when Hokuto looked toward Seishirou in thanks.

“Subaru, you’ve been weak and asleep for three days. You’ll probably take this a lot better if we all sit down and talk like the adults we are,” she said, gesturing to her recently vacated armchair off to his side of the room.

He continued to stand where he was and replied formally as if talking to strangers, “I think I would prefer to stand given the circumstances.”

“All right, then you need to promise me that you’ll hear this out to the end,” Hokuto countered, trying to keep frustration out of her voice, “Please?”

Subaru nodded his head in affirmation, though he didn’t relax a fraction. He would hear them out, if only for the confirmation that he had not gone insane and was talking to a hallucination.

Hokuto shifted uneasily and looked earnestly at Subaru, “We need to clear up what truly happened in 1990.” Subaru was already getting uneasy at the mention of that time. “But first, we need to know what you think happened.”

Subaru almost wanted to laugh in contempt, but his checked anger kept him from it. As if they didn’t know what he believed. “Seishirou-san betrayed me, destroyed who I was and killed you. Though I can see the last point is now irrelevant. Don’t forget the added torment, pain and suffering for the next nine years. I never learned to trust anyone but myself since then.”

Subaru briefly wondered how they were reacting to this outburst. He saw that Hokuto was unsettled, which brought on feelings of both remorse and malice; sadness that cruelty to his sister was wrong even though he thought she was long dead; malice for the fact that she had obviously lied and left him alone without his other half. I said I’d listen, he thought, I didn’t say I’d make it easy. Seishirou, on the other hand, was maintaining his mask of indifference though the mask was flawed with slight surprise at the forwardness of Subaru’s response.

“Sei-chan, you need to start with the bet. Subaru has the right to know why it ended the way it did.” She looked toward the man, silently watching the tension rising between the two.

“Very well,” Seishirou started, reassuming his indifference, “I admit that there was a certain interest I had in the bet. I originally expected the year to end and resume life as it had been. As time passed, the bet had given a new flair to my rather monotonous existence. I was reluctant to end it and could not find a logical explanation as to why.”

He looked at Subaru pointedly, “The truth, if you choose to accept it, is that I didn’t know how I felt. And my reaction to that reluctance was anger, which was directed at you in the maboroshi nine years ago.” Subaru reacted subconsciously to grip his right arm, felt the phantom snap and grating of bone on bone. Even Hokuto looked a bit green from memories of seeing her brother bashed and bruised.

“Regardless, the bet was over and per the rules I was to make a decision,” Seishirou continued. “I said that I had won, but words are only words, especially spoken out of anger and spite. Call the end of the bet a stalemate, if you will. Do you remember what your reward would have been had you won?”

Subaru replayed the words through his mind of that fateful meeting within the maboroshi. “After a year, if I think of you as “special”, it is your win and...”

Subaru looked toward Seishirou, his mouth agape as if to reply, but no response came. He reached out to grip the chair Hokuto had earlier offered, a small point of stability in a world that was quickly becoming quite chaotic. He had taken Seishirou’s win and cruelty at face value, not even considering the fact that he was still alive after all these years. He looked down, seeing the marks still prominent on the backs of his hands. All this time and the answer was right there... a mouse slipping through the talons of a hawk and able to survive.

“You do realize that I never initiated an attack on you after that day, Subaru-kun?” Startling Subaru even more, his looked back up to see a half smile on Seishirou’s face. Hokuto was watching the two in silence, knowing that there was nothing she could to ease the tension between them. “Everything I ever did was in self defense to your attacks. Fate was cruel to pit us against one another for the Promised Day, but this would have been crueler yet if you had still been naïve and innocent. Hence, the reason we chose this deception.”

Refusing to be put off-balance by the unexpected revelation, Subaru glowered at the older man. “Explaining it wouldn’t have been enough!?” He was fuming, still not believing they would have went to these lengths just because of something to happen nine years in the future.

“Would you have believed it? What we did was the best way to insure your survival. You would never have become as powerful without something driving you to do so.” Seishirou replied, still in that unnervingly calm manner. Hokuto nodded in agreement.

Subaru started to object to Seishirou’s statement when Hokuto cut him off. “Subaru, Sei-chan and I realized while you were Within yourself, that the person you were would not be strong enough to handle 1999, especially if you always had us to rely on. Sei-chan knew that you would be enemies in the fight, though the details were still foggy even to him. And I knew that if I were still close to you, I would be a liability and a target. Do you honestly think that we wanted to do this in the first place?”

Subaru was still barely containing his emotions, his eyes reflecting all the hurt and betrayal of the last nine years ten-fold. “So, you would rather have had me lose everything I held precious? I lost Seishirou-san once, then lost you Hokuto-chan. Then again, I had to face losing Seishirou-san…all for a masquerade!?”

“Subaru…we knew that you would be hurt,” Hokuto said, reflecting nothing of her former self who would have jumped for joy at his half-confession of feelings. Instead she was looking down at her hands and forcing them to stop making wrinkles in the hem of her jacket and continued, “But we also thought that those wounds would heal over time. Obaa-chan tried to get you to see that…but you refused to listen to anything she said on the matter.”

The floodgate on his emotions finally let loose, Subaru was close to screaming at both of them. “Listen to what?! The last nine years has been a lie, all of it! I’ve suffered from those lies more than a normal person would in a full lifetime! And in case you didn’t notice, I finally had enough and tried to kill myself!” Subaru’s eye reflected an anger that not even Hokuto had seen before. Turning away from both of them, he set his jaw and in a monotone voice lacking the volume yet just as venomous, stated, “Get out.”

“Subaru…” Hokuto began, getting up from the mattress and taking a tentative step towards him.

“I said ‘get out’.” He was visually beginning to tremble with the severe control it took to suppress his anger and prevent him from physically lashing out; his hands balled into fists so tight that his fingernails would have bit into the skin of his palm had they been long enough.

“Hokuto-chan…now is not the time to argue. He has a lot to digest for the moment. Leave him be for a while.” Seishirou advised, walking over toward her and directing her towards the bedroom door with a hand on the small of her back. Subaru held his ridged stance until he heard the door click shut, both presences out of the room. Failing to hold out any longer, he turned and slumped against the wall beside the armchair. Sliding down its flat surface to a sitting position, he drew up his knees and buried his face in his arms.

Feeling like his entire reality has been turned on its side yet again, he adamantly refused to succumb to tears. He sought to calm his emotions and realize what was really bothering him about the revelation. Finding out that Hokuto-chan and Seishirou-san are both alive is shock enough, but to also have everything surrounding their deaths be fake... Emotions warred within him; elation and revulsion fighting for supremacy over his thoughts. Though part of his mind was glad neither of them was truly dead, he could not accept what had been done. The ache of betrayal plagued his heart once again, ripping open a wound that had never healed.

They were concerned about you and did what they thought would be best for you. You’re being over-sensitive, a voice in the back of his mind chided him. He chose to ignore that voice as he uncurled and stood up. Moving over to the closet and opening the doors, he chose some clothing randomly coming up with black jeans and a black mock turtleneck. It was his standard fair in clothing, aside from the turtleneck having zippers that ran the length of his forearms on both sleeves and the double buckle across one upper arm. Karen had bought it on a whim as a gift, having found it in a store that one of her co-worker shopped at frequently, saying that she thought it would suit him. Removing his pajamas, he changed quickly, set on leaving the apartment to clear his mind.

Closing the closet door, he checked himself once-over and then stepped over to open the door to his bedroom. Cautiously opening the door quietly and peering out, he noticed the sitting room door ajar. I’m not ready to deal with them yet. Maybe later, but not now, he thought as he continued toward the door and stooped to put on and lace up his boots. Two more pairs accentuated the otherwise vacant entryway, Seishirou’s classy dress shoes and a pair of Hokuto’s royal blue ankle-boots. Shaking his head, again assuring himself that he would not think about it yet, he rose to leave. Pausing to open the small built-in wall cabinet, he retrieved his wallet, pager and keys. Not even bothering to grab a coat, he opened the front door.

The door at the opposite end of the hall creaked further open and Hokuto’s panicked face appeared demanding, “Where are you going?”

Not turning around Subaru replied in a voice lacking the anger and volume from before, “Just…don’t talk to me Hokuto-chan…I have to sort things out. And don’t follow me.” With that he passed through the doorway and closed the door softly, but firmly behind him.