[ It's a strange sensation, to have someone sort through his unspilt viscera, collect his bruises, turn his wounds inside out. This Murmur makes real the thing of dreams, makes tangible the soul's subterranean currents. Static sweeps the back of Subaru's neck at Toji's unhurried proximity. Mottled, overwarm, instinctual. Toji feels closer than he is thanks to the nature of the connection, the veil between memory and skin even thinner than what he's used to. But he bears it — a madder dog would have already bitten, if it were so inclined. And even if he did, Subaru would first look to himself to discern the reason. Even beasts seldom attack for nothing.
Instead, he cants his head to confront him with his good eye. On his periphery, the unnatural springtime shimmer of cherry blossoms burgeons. They speak intrusion; they loom, low and accusatory. Because they were asked to be here. ]
If it was? Are you going to come all this way just to tell me there was no need to?
[ He can't recommend others do as he does.
And still, Subaru makes use of this connection as if he was born for it, paring its spectrum of soul and color down to just one single thread. It plucks, the reverb drawing long and pointed throughout the city. There is just enough tension to act as a lure or lead, to denote there is something alive at the end.
Here, is what it says. A small park downtown, its iron gates smashed in, fountain corrupt. Sighted blossoms grow over where tulips once were, snarled and swollen, and yet Subaru sits with all of it. In real time, he takes his veil off to sever the electric nearness of the connection, but the thread remains. Quiet ritual then marks the way he reaches into his pocket for a scavenged pack of cigarettes and takes one between his lips; the tobacco ignites stale at the behest of a cheap plastic lighter.
He breathes in, lungs clouding over with his addiction's assuage, and he waits. ]
[ the parting barb teases an unwanted truth out of toji's mind, that subaru sees him, knows him, at least on some surface level. subaru sees the cat and mouse game for what it is and rises to meet it. everything about the other man is peculiar to him; subaru is familiar in ways that squirm uncomfortably beneath his skin but also inscrutable in ways that compel toji to flay him open just to see what lies within. how fortunate for them both that injustice is all that has ever caused toji's restraint to fail.
he may not seem a man who possesses any control at all, but his is exacting. whether or not he chooses to employ it is another matter entirely.
subaru's apparition flickers away, but toji is already on the move. he's not as fast here as he's used to, as he once was, but he supposes that is a reality of a world with no cursed energy to start with. (well, something is certainly deeply cursed here, but it plays by different rules.) here, toji is finally equal, no different from any other offering laid out upon the altar. so he's still fast, still strong, still more than capable of doing what he needs to, but he's had to re-learn the limits of his body.
he's still learning, and he finds he's run himself too hard by the time he reaches the snarled iron gates. he drops down to a walk to catch his breath, pulse rushing in his ears and lungs burning. it feels good. it feels like being alive. he'd almost forgotten.
by the time he rounds on subaru he's collected again, enough to try to sneak up on the side he knows is blind. from the back, steps silent, almost cat-like, until he's close enough to pluck that cigarette straight from subaru's lips as a way of greeting. ]
You smoke? Might be a hard habit to keep up here.
[ toji brings the cigarette to his own lips but stops just short of actually partaking, grinning as he offers it back. ]
You're skinnier than I remembered.
[ they say the astral projection puts on ten pounds. ]
[ Subaru starts when the cigarette disappears from it'd been perched on his lip. Toji got the jump on him, which is a surprisingly difficult thing to do, even on his blind side. It's a salient reminder he's no longer at the apex of his ability. Still, whatever surprise touched his eyes fast mellows; he's long since sobered of this knowledge, at least. Silky tendrils of smoke follow the lines of this greeting, stolen away and then given back freely. Subaru's expression sets in grim acceptance of Toji's reminder as the cigarette exchanges hands again. Yes, it is going to be a difficult habit to upkeep. But then again, Subaru has never shied from inhospitable conditions. ]
Perhaps you didn't get a good enough look the first time.
[ Or it was the astral projection filling out all his lines. Hard to say. He turns to face the staunched fountain again, the fungal rot that twists all around it looking even more terrible in the light. Quiet a moment with his spine straight against the bench's backrest, he lets the cigarette burn in his grasp, contemplative. ]
You got here quicker than I imagined. [ An eye for an eye... while they're comparing, and all. For his diminutive height and build, there is something — commanding, almost, about the way the space beside him looms empty and waiting. ] I wasn't entirely sure that method of communication would work.
[ Says Sumeragi Subaru, a man who wields the love of the universe's magic with quite frankly terrifying efficacy, for all the good that it's ever done him. ]
You got some kind of habit for underestimating people? [ the cadence of toji's speech is slow, deliberate, every syllable teased out on his tongue as he tracks subaru face with a gaze that's just a hair too sharp. he pauses another fraction of a second, then heaves himself down on the bench next to where subaru is sitting. in spite of making a show of throwing his considerable weight down on the rickety bench, he lands as though weightless, barely disturbing the air between them as his weight settles on his seat as though it was always there, as though subaru was the one who joined toji here. ]
[ He sips smoke from the cigarette, letting it cloud in the hollow of his chest alongside the prickle of Toji's provocation before breathing it back out. ]
It's not you I doubted.
[ No, not with the equal command of space that Toji has, inverted as it may be compared to his own. The proximity inhales, calm; a prowess that whispers when not in use is one to be respected. Those are syllables Subaru knows how to trace the shape of, rather than the ones cavalier on his tongue. If only he were less used to a rending eye, it might have made a less frustrating mark of him. ]
Does that mean you were enjoying the sights on the way?
[ As he's doing here, clearly. The fountain releases an alarming gurgle of a noise. ]
[ the smell of burning tobacco is as familiar as it is unpleasant, cutting and cloying all at once. the pale haze of it wafts over him on subaru's exhale, and toji decides it's sweet from its intimacy with subaru's lungs. on some people, it's vulgar, to know that something has been inside them, coated the wet of their viscera and made a home of it. but this, this is sweet.
there's almost a toffee stickiness to it, and toji knows he'll smell it on his own clothes later, long after they've parted ways. he remembers when megumi made him quit, remembers the clubs, the bars, the women. remembers megumi accusing him of smoking again when it wasn't him. it was the vulgar air spat between them in the back rooms and the basements and the alleys.
the silence is pensive, and then toji stretches, the oldest trick in the book as written by teenagers who are still working off pamphlets and notes scrawled hastily in margins. he stretches, languid, cat-like, and then his arms come to rest across the back of the bench, one perilously close to subaru's back. ]
Not really my kind of scene, [ he answers, voice on the irreverent side of neutral, but his eyes narrow at the twisted fountain which would long have called for an exorcism where he comes from. not by him, but someone would've been by now for sure. fucking curses.
toji shrugs again, then gestures lazily with the hand that's not well into subaru's personal space. ]
I'm guessing you could do some kind of magic shit, before? [ some of this is from impressions subaru has given him through the murmur; most of it is from seeing the way subaru takes to it like a drowning man to water. like he should know better. like he doesn't know any other way to be. ]
I couldn't. Not for shit. But it made me stronger. Looks like I don't get that perk here.
[ Not his scene. It's a believable enough comment with the remembrance of the Murmur's connection baring the man's previous location to him. One of detached observation even in the wake of inexplicable dream-touched phenomena, aweless and blunt. Toji came to him, but he can imagine that the journey was much the same. A blur, a connective tissue with little care for what was before it or what would come after it.
So, Subaru sits as what he's certain is a waypoint, rather than a destination.
He wears intrusion well. Not because he intrinsically bleeds the colors of the intruder, but because he doesn't. Subaru accepts the harbor of his arm and drops his own to his lap. Loosely, his hands cup into one another with the cigarette still poised in his leftmost — a gesture of contemplation, but also one emblematic of the magic this man speaks of. His fingers could so easily assume the delicate weave of a mudra, hands manifesting language, power.
Of course, he doesn't. That was before. ]
I practice onmyoudo. Most people here would probably consider it something like an exorcist. [ Naturally, there's more to it, but he doesn't seem immediately keen on elaborating. ] My original power is gone, but something else seems to want to take its place.
A real life onmyoji... [ toji lets out a puff of air that isn't quite a laugh, not mocking, exactly, but certainly there's a joke in there to him that he doesn't elaborate on. because the punchline is him, it always is. he's sure whatever discipline of practitioner subaru is, they'd want nothing to do with him too. the fact that subaru is here, again, entirely electively says everything about him that toji could ever want to know.
the question gets subaru another careless shrug, toji glancing up at the broken canopy and dreary sky. ]
Maybe? Woke up feeling like my body was different, but it's hard to tell what's what.
[ there's a slip of a frown, a ripple of uncertainty between them as he looks down at himself, as he flexes the muscles in one hand, then his arm, then sighs and relaxes again. it all feels the same, answers the same, if more sluggish than it should.
and there is, of course, the other thing. toji's brings one leg to cross over the other, stance wide, lower leg bracing against opposite thigh, casual as anything. his gaze slides away from subaru, retreating in the opposite direction. ]
[ Some things need no explanation. There is derision with nowhere to run and so it simply sits, snarling, not entirely driven to bite. It wouldn't mask the flavor of distaste anyway, so consistent as to be palatable. He's well aware that acceptance takes many forms.
And Subaru is used to so many of those forms that the absence of one is glaring. It would always do him better not to chase, but he always does.
Toji turns away but Subaru doesn't give him the courtesy of averting his gaze. It peers, fog and emerald. ]
[ this time, the laugh does fully escape toji's lungs, startled loose by the manner in which subaru pries. he looks back at subaru just to take in his expression in that moment, and then he shakes his head with a habitual grin. his humor has long been half mocking and half acerbic, but he honed it to discourage people from getting too interested in his personal life. a hard thing to do when what you've got going on is a new baby and a dead wife, but with his personality he managed. ]
Guess I don't remember a lot of the nights before, too. Why do you know that? [ the question, the accusation, really, is rhetorical. he knows about anyone, not limited to people as astute as subaru is proving to be, can guess at what a fucking mess he is pretty much after first meeting. ]
It's different, here. I don't have to... let myself go, I guess. It just takes me. [ there's a click of toji's teeth, even as he tries to bury just how much he hates not to have that choice, that control. mastery over himself is the only real autonomy he's ever had, and this place has taken it from him. ]
The kind of mess I wake up to— It's nothing I could do during the day, you know?
[ overturned cars, deep, deep gashes, things he can't even identify. he actually hasn't given it much thought until now, because it didn't really bear thinking about to him in the absence of being able to come up with any kind of solution. ]
[ His two-pronged question gets him both answers, but Subaru doesn't look gratified by it. Not when it can be rendered down to the fat of instinct, ego in the proteins. It's just that he's not so easily manipulated to look elsewhere nowadays, a habit that bleeds into the margins of selfishness — he'd lost everything, because of it. Toji's accusation stands.
As for the rest of the explanation, he finally drops his gaze to the ground, contemplating the oily sheen of rot stretching out beneath them. ]
It amplifies what you're capable of without giving you control of it. [ His thumb softly flicks the end of his cigarette to loosen some of its ash. The ground looks like it should ignite but doesn't. ] It's been called Sundowning. The price we pay for daylight.
[ the confirmation (or perhaps the mere acknowledgement) of that loss of control elicits a low, animal snarl from the back of toji's throat, rumbling out from a place so deep that it feels lodged in the space between his lungs. ]
I'd rather lose my fucking head— [ he starts, then stops because that's not an option here. not like this, not yet. not when megumi—
—he remembers the way she would tease him, after they found out. how this changed everything for him, for them. that he would always be a father first, no matter what else came to pass. this was a blessing, then a curse. he's not sure what it is now. just a fact.
he grinds his teeth instead, scrubbing a hand over his face to try to pull together something else to say. ]
[ Subaru's hands remain steady in his lap despite the threat of rupture, the aggression that might upend this meeting. He'd be ready for it, if necessary. It also makes his hair stand on end. But, with drifting motes of time and patience, it calms and continues to circle instead.
It may come to that, he thinks. If Toji isn't careful, which Subaru already knows is a sentiment he doesn't seem to reserve for himself, regardless of its manifestation here between them. Something intrudes, half sensation and half memory, but he can't quite make out the shape.
Some of his sternness seems to ease, however. Understanding has always been Subaru's greatest strength and his greatest weakness. They are not the same, but some words and motions echo. Toji knows onmyoudo, to a detriment. When Subaru recalls his fight with the abomination, it speaks to the strength he'd cultivated in spite of it, is what Subaru assumes. To be born without power is... to wager flesh and blood. Or have it wagered for you. On his heart's periphery, wind caresses through flowered treetops. ]
No, it's not. Not entirely. Something shifts for me, but it's not my instincts.
[ toji lets out a scoff, but it's toothless. it voices derision at the injury of it, that it just fucking figures being robbed of all he has ever truly had for himself is unique to him, but the frustration finds no target here and simply fizzles out. he knows it can't be just him in this, but the neat divide between the man that subaru is and the beast toji is ever cornered into being rankles all the same. ]
Yeah. Sounds about right. [ it's not like him to throw a pity party for himself, though, and he's not sure why sitting next to subaru like this turns him into an open wound, bleeding out black bile. he knows better. this is the shit you keep in, even from yourself.
toji straightens in his seat, then turns to look his companion over again, trying to put together what he actually knows about the man. there's a deep well of impressions, of presumptions, of wretched resonance between them, but of the things he actually knows... ]
The eye thing, [ he says suddenly, voice scratchy at first, caught on the jagged edge of his scramble to get away from their previous topic. ] I met a guy in the... dream thing, before I ran into you. You two seem... [ he first reaches for 'friendly', but he's not sure anything seishirou does is friendly. the man is cheerful like an open grave. ] ...acquainted?
Is the eye thing some kind of epidemic where you guys are from?
[ Subaru knows the cure for Sundowning but doesn't immediately leap to offering it. To tether is a thing that still commands what's left of his discernment. If he were younger, maybe. If there was less left to lose, suddenly, violently, on the heels of Sleep's death reversal. Similarly, he would rather lick the wounds of his spirit in silence than invite someone else in to witness them. The benefits simply wouldn't outweigh the perils. So, he declines to bring it up.
Which is just as well, given the instant effect that mentioning someone with his same eye injury has. As if all that instinct and color, judgment, familiarity, and fear snap over him like a pair of invisible jaws. His knuckles tense; his vices all run together. ]
Yes, I know him. [ Mild. Too mild. ] Years ago, he lost his eye in an accident. Mine was lost in a fight.
[ Surely, this was not the order of things one would expect, but here he is. ]
[ toji studies subaru's reaction, reaches for the flesh and bone of it in the murmur, calculating his next words with as much tactical precision as he can muster. he lets the topic of missing eyes go, since subaru has offered what information he's willing to part with, and toji doesn't think it's important enough to pry. ]
He was pushing a girl under the water, when we met, [ he begins slowly, the cadence one of a man measuring twice. ] We... recognized something, in each other.
[ diplomacy tastes fuzzy on his tongue, cottony and unpleasant. offering more than he has to gain tastes just as foul, but— things are different now. megumi is grown. he has people, has connections like toji never did. he doesn't really need toji at all. cutting deals as a loss is no longer quite so existentially harrowing when all he has to lose anymore is himself. it's half lost here anyway, with each setting of the sun.
toji swallows. ]
I guess you've already tried staying away from him.
[ Recognition pulses twice, shutters his eyes for a long moment, not entirely divested of anger. Once, he'd felt the enmity soften. Like how bruises pearl skin. It was just too late, and he's not delusional enough to misunderstand how easy it is to romanticize the dead. His clan also worked in the light of death, after all.
Subaru hadn't necessarily hoped or even expected differently. Death is the trade of the Sakurazuka and they, he, luxuriates in his corporate employment of it. To kill was simply an exercise in will. Perhaps, if the Sakurazukamori was feeling kindly, his marks would see something beautiful before they died. Understanding threads the joints of the murmur as they continue to fuse, so Subaru decides to simply push it into his hands. ]
I haven't tried staying away from him at all.
[ He shows both his hands, which Toji had long seen for what they are. Releasing with one, retrieving with the other. ]
[ the reply, flat and brutal and honest, is emblematic, toji finds, of the twisted thing the years have made of subaru. it makes him laugh, though the sound comes out halfway to a scoff. he looks down at subaru's hands, feels the swell of connection between them, and manages to resist the urge to push it back. he does glance away again, a wry smile pulling up the corners of his lips. ]
...yeah, well. Guess I might know a thing or two about trying nothing and being all out of solutions too.
[ no point in wasting his breath on advice no one is going to take. he wasn't a dad long enough to get into the habit of it, at any rate. ]
We won't get better, you know. We'll only drag you down, to where we are if you're lucky. To an early grave if you're not. Or, I guess it's dealer's choice on which one is lucky to you.
[ ...maybe he was a dad for just long enough for this particular vice. ]
You're not saying that for my benefit. [ Brutality lined with the velvet of a flower's first bloom, the onset that inevitably leads to its rot. ] At least not entirely.
[ Toji hadn't pushed him away and Subaru hadn't shied back, afraid of what he'd find. His only recourse is to look it in the eye, regardless of what looks back. Knowing, maybe. Knowing, worst case scenario. There are so many things he had to live his life not knowing and so many things he came to know too late. Subaru has never been afforded the comfortable static of ignorance for any amount of time that mattered.
This man is seeing him. But not only him. ]
Who is it that you really want to say those words to?
[ toji's head jerks up again at that, at the way subaru calls him out like a knife to the gut, that the other man does so to him as easily as breathing. he pulls his arm back, hunching over, and clamps his hands down over his stomach as though afraid of what might come spilling out onto the dusty earth in the wake of that surgical incision.
he stares at subaru, then frowns. when subaru looks at him like that, beseeching, when the wind ripples through subaru's hair, when the sunlight dapples through the trees over pale skin, he could almost—
[ Subaru has no right to judge a man for seeing what he wants to see. Dreams, violence, and memory have a way of overlapping their own fragmentation, of sowing devastation in the seams. Those sutures, he knows, are meant to keep things out as much as keep things in. He'd struck the fault line and it'd hurt. Cigarette still burning to ash in the delicate poise of his fingers, Subaru also eventually looks away, into the middling nothingness of a world's end and a man's end within it.
There is a cadence. To those who speak of the dead versus those who speak of the distant. Subaru is well-acquainted with it. He has to draw a ghost out of its imprint to see it, after all. It harrows, making his insides feel empty so that the ache of it surges in with less resistance. ]
Then, what do you live for?
[ A question less honed, incandescent, raw, and resonant. ]
[ if the first question cut him open, the follow up cleaves him in two. it's not a new question to him; his childhood, his upbringing, his waste of an existence that came after megumi did— people asked him to his face almost as much as they whispered it behind his back.
why? why? what do you live for? why bother? why do you persist? why keep struggling? why? give up. give in. why?
that was always easy enough to answer. because fuck you, that's why. there were days when spite was all that kept his battered heart beating.
but that isn't how subaru asks it.
then, what do you live for?
the question searches for reason over explanation. it claws into the core of him, seeking answer, seeking understanding. every other time someone asked him this question, it was to look down on him. it made a mockery of a novelty of him, demanding to know why something so wholly wretched would cling to a life where he could not be more unwanted.
subaru is asking from somewhere inside of him, looking out, cracking open his chest in search of some light.
toji stares, the impulse to brush this off, to brush it all off right there on his tongue. it doesn't make it out. there's no air in his lungs to make any sound at all. ]
...I think— [ he begins, voice splintering even on those scant two syllables, throat so raw he's certain he could cough up blood if he tried. ]
I think, to die, you have to first figure out how to live. I never got that far. I didn't really die. It all just kind of... ended.
[ toji's hands are shaking, and he clenches them tighter to make them still. ]
[ He craves the finality of resisting him. Subaru can tell in the way everything strains backwards in defiance of being known as a measure of being alive.
When Toji doesn't, it's a little like looking into a mirror that's been made wrong. Not of his own design, but of Subaru's. Looking into a mirror has so often yielded someone else's face looking back at him that he no longer expects anything different. Only his heart, unfortified by all the scars it should have had, knows the difference. Hokuto had given her life for it — and what rending differences they are. A life lived in confrontation, a life looking at the cruelties humanity wields and still always choosing it. He has always mourned alone, refusing the madness that should sanctify in him.
One must figure out how to live in order to truly die.
But it all came to an end anyway. Toji's life was ended this way. Subaru ended a life this way. This time, he surrenders the vast net of his heartache, gaze downcast. ]
So, it was your wife. [ "She" comes into clarity now, the ragged edges of shards reflecting in mosaic, its glass stained by the color of intuition. A suspicion seeps into his soul's edge at the mention of a child, peripheries clouding. If he reaches through, he's certain... ] Tell me your name.
[ there is a painful, jarring accuracy with which subaru makes his predictions. that he speaks not to only who is before him, but also to a ghost. surmising not that there was a woman, but a wife. and he is right, but both are generous estimations of him that toji himself would not make. he is someone who speaks plainly and without thought. he is someone who has women and very little else. toji can remember exactly the last time he met someone who seemed to know him better than he knew himself. she smiled a lot more than this, though.
he shuts his eyes.
before subaru has even finished asking the question, toji knows he will answer. it is a strange weight, this knowing, and also a strange freedom. ]
I took her name, when we married, [ he explains. his lips twitch with a reflexive smile, because he's never not smiled when he says this. ]
[ It's his greatest weakness made manifest by this very encounter, an overrunning of spiritual exploitation given to him by the will of the stars: Subaru knows others more than he knows himself. A crown jewel of exorcism, gentled of its expensive shine by empathy.
Expecting the answer doesn't make its hit land any softer, however. ]
It's Megumi. [ His composure lapses very slightly, almost as if it's left him short of breath. ] Megumi is your son.
[ Instantly, another kind of knowing lances through him. Megumi's skill in sorcery is surely not ordinary. Subaru sees it, even in this place that's uprooted and twisted all of their magic. Yet Fushiguro wasn't among the sorcery clans he'd shared with Subaru back in that first dream, a nascent nightmare.
Derision, the complexity of the word onmyouji on his tongue. To not inherit the magic but also to spurn the name...
Subaru leans back to look at him, expression suddenly unreadable. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Instead, he cants his head to confront him with his good eye. On his periphery, the unnatural springtime shimmer of cherry blossoms burgeons. They speak intrusion; they loom, low and accusatory. Because they were asked to be here. ]
If it was? Are you going to come all this way just to tell me there was no need to?
[ He can't recommend others do as he does.
And still, Subaru makes use of this connection as if he was born for it, paring its spectrum of soul and color down to just one single thread. It plucks, the reverb drawing long and pointed throughout the city. There is just enough tension to act as a lure or lead, to denote there is something alive at the end.
Here, is what it says. A small park downtown, its iron gates smashed in, fountain corrupt. Sighted blossoms grow over where tulips once were, snarled and swollen, and yet Subaru sits with all of it. In real time, he takes his veil off to sever the electric nearness of the connection, but the thread remains. Quiet ritual then marks the way he reaches into his pocket for a scavenged pack of cigarettes and takes one between his lips; the tobacco ignites stale at the behest of a cheap plastic lighter.
He breathes in, lungs clouding over with his addiction's assuage, and he waits. ]
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he may not seem a man who possesses any control at all, but his is exacting. whether or not he chooses to employ it is another matter entirely.
subaru's apparition flickers away, but toji is already on the move. he's not as fast here as he's used to, as he once was, but he supposes that is a reality of a world with no cursed energy to start with. (well, something is certainly deeply cursed here, but it plays by different rules.) here, toji is finally equal, no different from any other offering laid out upon the altar. so he's still fast, still strong, still more than capable of doing what he needs to, but he's had to re-learn the limits of his body.
he's still learning, and he finds he's run himself too hard by the time he reaches the snarled iron gates. he drops down to a walk to catch his breath, pulse rushing in his ears and lungs burning. it feels good. it feels like being alive. he'd almost forgotten.
by the time he rounds on subaru he's collected again, enough to try to sneak up on the side he knows is blind. from the back, steps silent, almost cat-like, until he's close enough to pluck that cigarette straight from subaru's lips as a way of greeting. ]
You smoke? Might be a hard habit to keep up here.
[ toji brings the cigarette to his own lips but stops just short of actually partaking, grinning as he offers it back. ]
You're skinnier than I remembered.
[ they say the astral projection puts on ten pounds. ]
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Perhaps you didn't get a good enough look the first time.
[ Or it was the astral projection filling out all his lines. Hard to say. He turns to face the staunched fountain again, the fungal rot that twists all around it looking even more terrible in the light. Quiet a moment with his spine straight against the bench's backrest, he lets the cigarette burn in his grasp, contemplative. ]
You got here quicker than I imagined. [ An eye for an eye... while they're comparing, and all. For his diminutive height and build, there is something — commanding, almost, about the way the space beside him looms empty and waiting. ] I wasn't entirely sure that method of communication would work.
[ Says Sumeragi Subaru, a man who wields the love of the universe's magic with quite frankly terrifying efficacy, for all the good that it's ever done him. ]
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I got here slow, for me.
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It's not you I doubted.
[ No, not with the equal command of space that Toji has, inverted as it may be compared to his own. The proximity inhales, calm; a prowess that whispers when not in use is one to be respected. Those are syllables Subaru knows how to trace the shape of, rather than the ones cavalier on his tongue. If only he were less used to a rending eye, it might have made a less frustrating mark of him. ]
Does that mean you were enjoying the sights on the way?
[ As he's doing here, clearly. The fountain releases an alarming gurgle of a noise. ]
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there's almost a toffee stickiness to it, and toji knows he'll smell it on his own clothes later, long after they've parted ways. he remembers when megumi made him quit, remembers the clubs, the bars, the women. remembers megumi accusing him of smoking again when it wasn't him. it was the vulgar air spat between them in the back rooms and the basements and the alleys.
the silence is pensive, and then toji stretches, the oldest trick in the book as written by teenagers who are still working off pamphlets and notes scrawled hastily in margins. he stretches, languid, cat-like, and then his arms come to rest across the back of the bench, one perilously close to subaru's back. ]
Not really my kind of scene, [ he answers, voice on the irreverent side of neutral, but his eyes narrow at the twisted fountain which would long have called for an exorcism where he comes from. not by him, but someone would've been by now for sure. fucking curses.
toji shrugs again, then gestures lazily with the hand that's not well into subaru's personal space. ]
I'm guessing you could do some kind of magic shit, before? [ some of this is from impressions subaru has given him through the murmur; most of it is from seeing the way subaru takes to it like a drowning man to water. like he should know better. like he doesn't know any other way to be. ]
I couldn't. Not for shit. But it made me stronger. Looks like I don't get that perk here.
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[ Not his scene. It's a believable enough comment with the remembrance of the Murmur's connection baring the man's previous location to him. One of detached observation even in the wake of inexplicable dream-touched phenomena, aweless and blunt. Toji came to him, but he can imagine that the journey was much the same. A blur, a connective tissue with little care for what was before it or what would come after it.
So, Subaru sits as what he's certain is a waypoint, rather than a destination.
He wears intrusion well. Not because he intrinsically bleeds the colors of the intruder, but because he doesn't. Subaru accepts the harbor of his arm and drops his own to his lap. Loosely, his hands cup into one another with the cigarette still poised in his leftmost — a gesture of contemplation, but also one emblematic of the magic this man speaks of. His fingers could so easily assume the delicate weave of a mudra, hands manifesting language, power.
Of course, he doesn't. That was before. ]
I practice onmyoudo. Most people here would probably consider it something like an exorcist. [ Naturally, there's more to it, but he doesn't seem immediately keen on elaborating. ] My original power is gone, but something else seems to want to take its place.
[ He cants his head aside finally. ]
Is it not the same for you?
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the question gets subaru another careless shrug, toji glancing up at the broken canopy and dreary sky. ]
Maybe? Woke up feeling like my body was different, but it's hard to tell what's what.
[ there's a slip of a frown, a ripple of uncertainty between them as he looks down at himself, as he flexes the muscles in one hand, then his arm, then sighs and relaxes again. it all feels the same, answers the same, if more sluggish than it should.
and there is, of course, the other thing. toji's brings one leg to cross over the other, stance wide, lower leg bracing against opposite thigh, casual as anything. his gaze slides away from subaru, retreating in the opposite direction. ]
...I don't really remember the nights.
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And Subaru is used to so many of those forms that the absence of one is glaring. It would always do him better not to chase, but he always does.
Toji turns away but Subaru doesn't give him the courtesy of averting his gaze. It peers, fog and emerald. ]
Should you be remembering the nights?
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Guess I don't remember a lot of the nights before, too. Why do you know that? [ the question, the accusation, really, is rhetorical. he knows about anyone, not limited to people as astute as subaru is proving to be, can guess at what a fucking mess he is pretty much after first meeting. ]
It's different, here. I don't have to... let myself go, I guess. It just takes me. [ there's a click of toji's teeth, even as he tries to bury just how much he hates not to have that choice, that control. mastery over himself is the only real autonomy he's ever had, and this place has taken it from him. ]
The kind of mess I wake up to— It's nothing I could do during the day, you know?
[ overturned cars, deep, deep gashes, things he can't even identify. he actually hasn't given it much thought until now, because it didn't really bear thinking about to him in the absence of being able to come up with any kind of solution. ]
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As for the rest of the explanation, he finally drops his gaze to the ground, contemplating the oily sheen of rot stretching out beneath them. ]
It amplifies what you're capable of without giving you control of it. [ His thumb softly flicks the end of his cigarette to loosen some of its ash. The ground looks like it should ignite but doesn't. ] It's been called Sundowning. The price we pay for daylight.
[ And Sleep isn't about to let them incur debt. ]
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I'd rather lose my fucking head— [ he starts, then stops because that's not an option here. not like this, not yet. not when megumi—
—he remembers the way she would tease him, after they found out. how this changed everything for him, for them. that he would always be a father first, no matter what else came to pass. this was a blessing, then a curse. he's not sure what it is now. just a fact.
he grinds his teeth instead, scrubbing a hand over his face to try to pull together something else to say. ]
...is it like that for you?
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It may come to that, he thinks. If Toji isn't careful, which Subaru already knows is a sentiment he doesn't seem to reserve for himself, regardless of its manifestation here between them. Something intrudes, half sensation and half memory, but he can't quite make out the shape.
Some of his sternness seems to ease, however. Understanding has always been Subaru's greatest strength and his greatest weakness. They are not the same, but some words and motions echo. Toji knows onmyoudo, to a detriment. When Subaru recalls his fight with the abomination, it speaks to the strength he'd cultivated in spite of it, is what Subaru assumes. To be born without power is... to wager flesh and blood. Or have it wagered for you. On his heart's periphery, wind caresses through flowered treetops. ]
No, it's not. Not entirely. Something shifts for me, but it's not my instincts.
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Yeah. Sounds about right. [ it's not like him to throw a pity party for himself, though, and he's not sure why sitting next to subaru like this turns him into an open wound, bleeding out black bile. he knows better. this is the shit you keep in, even from yourself.
toji straightens in his seat, then turns to look his companion over again, trying to put together what he actually knows about the man. there's a deep well of impressions, of presumptions, of wretched resonance between them, but of the things he actually knows... ]
The eye thing, [ he says suddenly, voice scratchy at first, caught on the jagged edge of his scramble to get away from their previous topic. ] I met a guy in the... dream thing, before I ran into you. You two seem... [ he first reaches for 'friendly', but he's not sure anything seishirou does is friendly. the man is cheerful like an open grave. ] ...acquainted?
Is the eye thing some kind of epidemic where you guys are from?
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Which is just as well, given the instant effect that mentioning someone with his same eye injury has. As if all that instinct and color, judgment, familiarity, and fear snap over him like a pair of invisible jaws. His knuckles tense; his vices all run together. ]
Yes, I know him. [ Mild. Too mild. ] Years ago, he lost his eye in an accident. Mine was lost in a fight.
[ Surely, this was not the order of things one would expect, but here he is. ]
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He was pushing a girl under the water, when we met, [ he begins slowly, the cadence one of a man measuring twice. ] We... recognized something, in each other.
[ diplomacy tastes fuzzy on his tongue, cottony and unpleasant. offering more than he has to gain tastes just as foul, but— things are different now. megumi is grown. he has people, has connections like toji never did. he doesn't really need toji at all. cutting deals as a loss is no longer quite so existentially harrowing when all he has to lose anymore is himself. it's half lost here anyway, with each setting of the sun.
toji swallows. ]
I guess you've already tried staying away from him.
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Did you?
[ Recognition pulses twice, shutters his eyes for a long moment, not entirely divested of anger. Once, he'd felt the enmity soften. Like how bruises pearl skin. It was just too late, and he's not delusional enough to misunderstand how easy it is to romanticize the dead. His clan also worked in the light of death, after all.
Subaru hadn't necessarily hoped or even expected differently. Death is the trade of the Sakurazuka and they, he, luxuriates in his corporate employment of it. To kill was simply an exercise in will. Perhaps, if the Sakurazukamori was feeling kindly, his marks would see something beautiful before they died. Understanding threads the joints of the murmur as they continue to fuse, so Subaru decides to simply push it into his hands. ]
I haven't tried staying away from him at all.
[ He shows both his hands, which Toji had long seen for what they are. Releasing with one, retrieving with the other. ]
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...yeah, well. Guess I might know a thing or two about trying nothing and being all out of solutions too.
[ no point in wasting his breath on advice no one is going to take. he wasn't a dad long enough to get into the habit of it, at any rate. ]
We won't get better, you know. We'll only drag you down, to where we are if you're lucky. To an early grave if you're not. Or, I guess it's dealer's choice on which one is lucky to you.
[ ...maybe he was a dad for just long enough for this particular vice. ]
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[ Toji hadn't pushed him away and Subaru hadn't shied back, afraid of what he'd find. His only recourse is to look it in the eye, regardless of what looks back. Knowing, maybe. Knowing, worst case scenario. There are so many things he had to live his life not knowing and so many things he came to know too late. Subaru has never been afforded the comfortable static of ignorance for any amount of time that mattered.
This man is seeing him. But not only him. ]
Who is it that you really want to say those words to?
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he stares at subaru, then frowns. when subaru looks at him like that, beseeching, when the wind ripples through subaru's hair, when the sunlight dapples through the trees over pale skin, he could almost—
toji swallows. he blinks, then looks away. ]
Doesn't matter. She's not coming back to hear it.
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There is a cadence. To those who speak of the dead versus those who speak of the distant. Subaru is well-acquainted with it. He has to draw a ghost out of its imprint to see it, after all. It harrows, making his insides feel empty so that the ache of it surges in with less resistance. ]
Then, what do you live for?
[ A question less honed, incandescent, raw, and resonant. ]
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why? why? what do you live for? why bother? why do you persist? why keep struggling? why? give up. give in. why?
that was always easy enough to answer. because fuck you, that's why. there were days when spite was all that kept his battered heart beating.
but that isn't how subaru asks it.
then, what do you live for?
the question searches for reason over explanation. it claws into the core of him, seeking answer, seeking understanding. every other time someone asked him this question, it was to look down on him. it made a mockery of a novelty of him, demanding to know why something so wholly wretched would cling to a life where he could not be more unwanted.
subaru is asking from somewhere inside of him, looking out, cracking open his chest in search of some light.
toji stares, the impulse to brush this off, to brush it all off right there on his tongue. it doesn't make it out. there's no air in his lungs to make any sound at all. ]
...I think— [ he begins, voice splintering even on those scant two syllables, throat so raw he's certain he could cough up blood if he tried. ]
I think, to die, you have to first figure out how to live. I never got that far. I didn't really die. It all just kind of... ended.
[ toji's hands are shaking, and he clenches them tighter to make them still. ]
But, I did have a kid.
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When Toji doesn't, it's a little like looking into a mirror that's been made wrong. Not of his own design, but of Subaru's. Looking into a mirror has so often yielded someone else's face looking back at him that he no longer expects anything different. Only his heart, unfortified by all the scars it should have had, knows the difference. Hokuto had given her life for it — and what rending differences they are. A life lived in confrontation, a life looking at the cruelties humanity wields and still always choosing it. He has always mourned alone, refusing the madness that should sanctify in him.
One must figure out how to live in order to truly die.
But it all came to an end anyway. Toji's life was ended this way. Subaru ended a life this way. This time, he surrenders the vast net of his heartache, gaze downcast. ]
So, it was your wife. [ "She" comes into clarity now, the ragged edges of shards reflecting in mosaic, its glass stained by the color of intuition. A suspicion seeps into his soul's edge at the mention of a child, peripheries clouding. If he reaches through, he's certain... ] Tell me your name.
[ His whole name. ]
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he shuts his eyes.
before subaru has even finished asking the question, toji knows he will answer. it is a strange weight, this knowing, and also a strange freedom. ]
I took her name, when we married, [ he explains. his lips twitch with a reflexive smile, because he's never not smiled when he says this. ]
Fushiguro. Fushiguro Toji.
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Expecting the answer doesn't make its hit land any softer, however. ]
It's Megumi. [ His composure lapses very slightly, almost as if it's left him short of breath. ] Megumi is your son.
[ Instantly, another kind of knowing lances through him. Megumi's skill in sorcery is surely not ordinary. Subaru sees it, even in this place that's uprooted and twisted all of their magic. Yet Fushiguro wasn't among the sorcery clans he'd shared with Subaru back in that first dream, a nascent nightmare.
Derision, the complexity of the word onmyouji on his tongue. To not inherit the magic but also to spurn the name...
Subaru leans back to look at him, expression suddenly unreadable. ]
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