残された力
She hadn't thought much on Kouta's comment about where she would be 'sitting' when they flew to Kyoto. There were too many things for her to think about, crowding her brain that thumped with an almost never-ending headache.
She really should have, because she hadn't thought he was being serious about not using a plane to get there. She'd thought they'd at least travel part of the way by plane.
He had been deadly serious, just masking it in a joker face. He was disturbingly good at that.
Even though she was shocked to realize Shin would carry her in his arms the whole flight – as in, flight with his wings – to Kyoto, she'd put on a brave face and gone ahead with the plan. When she got back home the previous day they barely had five minutes together before duty whisked Shin away.
In that time, she'd fretted that she was too heavy for Shin to carry on such a long journey. He'd responded by grinning rakishly at her and picking her up bridal-style, spinning round and round until she was laughing and dizzy and thoroughly convinced that he had more than enough stamina for the trip.
And of course Shiori was there to snap five thousand pictures.
Despite leaving before the night sky got truly dark last night, it took them the whole next day to get to their destination. It was approaching dusk by the time they spied the imposing figure of Mount Kurama. Within lay the main Tengu village, the capital of the Clan.
The lengthy time was mostly due to the fact that they kept stopping for breaks before resuming, on account of Pai's being wholly un-Tengu. The high altitude got to her head and made her stomach roll at random times, so they had to stop to let her calm before continuing. At the pace Kouta was going as he flew ahead of them, she was sure that the two would have gotten to Kyoto much faster if not for her burdening them.
To weather the cold, she morphed into a toasty marshmallow in Shin's arms as they flew the final leg of the journey to Kyoto. She was bundled up well, in five layers of warm clothing that made her feel up to ten times her actual size. Pai honestly had no clue how Shin was able to carry her for so long; it was mind-boggling.
Kouta was the one who carried all of their bags, on account of how difficult it was to fly with something strapped to your back. They flew well above the city, to avoid pedestrians looking up and thinking they were more than the shadows of large birds flying through the sky. That would make for an interesting report on the evening news.
"Spotted: Winged Man Carrying White-Haired Humanoid Balloon Flying Over Kyoto City In Broad Daylight"
The thought amused Kuniumi enough that her laughter at it seeped into Pai and lifted her spirits from the anxious depths they lingered in.
Still, Pai was worried, more than she let on. She kept turning over every scenario she could think of for what could happen once they reached Kyoto, and more often than not she arrived to horrid endings. She'd only seen Sojobo Kurama from a distance, and all the downright terrifying stories of the stern man that was Kouta's father that Shiori told her did nothing to calm her.
Shiori had coached her on how to act with him so that she didn't inadvertently disrespect the Sojobo by not bowing low enough or something of the like, and given her plenty of tips. But then Shiori went ahead and idly commented on how Sojobo Kurama was rumoured to have the strength of a thousand normal Tengu, was over five hundred years old, and had the unsettling propensity to tell when someone was lying to him. It was how Kouta rarely managed to keep secrets from his father.
Even though she tried to hide her anxiety behind a smile that turned out more tight-lipped than she intended, Shin could tell she was scared of their impending meeting with the King of the Tengu. She could see it in his eyes, the way he watched her when she woke up after she managed to fitfully catnap when she got bored of staring in rapt awe at the sights around her.
It was only when they were ten or so minutes away from landing just outside the forest the main village stood in that he finally broke through her nerve-racked thoughts to draw her mind away from her worries.
"How'd it go with Aihara-san yesterday?" he asked, breath warm on her cheek as he leaned down to speak in her ear so she would hear him over the sound of the wind whistling past them and the ear muffs sat snug over her head. "We didn't get much of a chance to talk last night."
She squinted at him through the aviator goggled he'd fixed on her head before they took off, way back in Sapporo. She was glad for them. They kept the wind from burning her eyes raw. She glanced down to the city below. She'd gaped in awe at the sights around her when they first lifted off and set flight at Sapporo. The novelty had faded somewhat, but there remained a glimmer of astounded wonder at it all. Shin had been amused by her wide-eyed stare, dryly noting that she could find the experience so breath-taking where he saw it was normal.
She dragged in a deep, cold breath, and sighed heavily. She could recall everything that happened yesterday with uncomfortably unwanted clarity.
"There's a way," she murmured.
Her eyes flicked up just in time to see him frown slightly. "A way?"
"To tell how long it'll take for me to...you know." She still couldn't say those damning words. Not to Shin. Not when they'd only just found each other. "If I knew what kind of Hanyou I am."
"There is?" he asked, surprised.
She nodded. Her arms tightened around his neck as a startled finch twittered madly when it flew past them. It was probably shocked half to death at seeing flying humanoid creatures sharing its sky. Or maybe not, considering this was Tengu territory. Maybe all it was shocked at seeing was her.
"Aihara-san narrowed it down to Hanyou no Ookami and," she watched him closely. "Kitsune."
Nothing. Nothing wavered in his eyes. He didn't falter at the damning words that escaped her. No discernible hate, no disgust, no revulsion at the fact that she may be half Kitsune. It was like he didn't particularly care – or more like it didn't matter to him what type of Hanyou she turned out to be.
That's a good thing, right?
It can be, Kuniumi replied. She was bored. Her voice droned where it usually bounced. It seemed Pai was the only one who really appreciated the incredible marvel it was to fly above a city like this. If he doesn't care what Hanyou you are, it means it makes no difference to him. He'll love you no matter what you are.
"How?" he asked.
She looked up at him and noticed the little crinkle in his brow, the left tipped down just a little deeper than the right. He only looked like that when he – usually rightly so – guessed that Kuniumi was there. She shook her head minutely; she was still unsure of how it was he could tell when she talked to Kuniumi.
She didn't know how to properly answer him. How did one reveal that they had powers when they thought they were completely normal, boringly human? Thanks to Shiori, she'd gone through a plethora of stories where the main character dealt with this exact same situation, yet, when confronted with it in reality, she drew up a blank. Not to mention it was a power she didn't understand at all. She hadn't been able to call it forth on her own since yesterday.
"Hanyou have something called [ability]."
"[Ability]? Like Daitengu?" he asked, head tilted to the side curiously. "How does it work?"
She watched him closely. Since they'd gotten together, she'd noticed something about Shin; he didn't keep his guard up around her the way he used to. The fascinating myriad display of emotions flitting across his face whenever she said something left her speechless, because it meant he was comfortable enough around her to let her see what he was truly thinking, feeling. It was like watching an ever-shifting landscape that teased you with its beauty for just long enough to enchant you before it became something else, something more.
She pressed her hand to her chest, right over where she could feel his soft feather resting against her skin under all the layers she wore. She loved the necklace, but it was these little unspoken acts that were the true gift. His trust in her was what she cherished above all else.
"I think it's like inheriting power from the Ayakashi parent," she finally spoke. "Aihara-san can regenerate small wounds on her body. She cut her hand yesterday to show me."
That, more than anything, reinforced the impossibility of the situation. Normal people didn't cut their hands and heal their own wounds in seconds, broken legs in hours.
Could Aihara stave off even death with such an [ability]?
No. Kuniumi's rejection of the idea was reinforced with cold steel. Nothing can hide from death forever. Not even Kagetora. He will see what he so longs for, one day.
She chose to ignore the sliver of unease that coiled tight in her stomach at the idea of Kagetora dying when he'd proven that he couldn't. What possible horror would it take for something like that to happen when a sword through the chest hadn't done it?
She said, "She figured out what I might be by seeing what I have, because Hanyou have [abilities] unique to their Ayakashi type."
He frowned. Before she realized it, the air whipping around them slowed as Shin beat his wings to bring them to a halt. She looked ahead and spotted the faint yellow-gold speck of Kouta's rapidly diminishing figure as he flew further and further away from them. She turned back to Shin, about to suggest that they talk about this later, when they weren't floating in the air above a city, but stopped at the dead-serious look on his face.
"What is it?" he asked quietly. Now that they weren't moving much of anywhere, Shin's wings keeping them safely buoyant, she could hear him easily. "Your [ability]."
She opened her mouth to say she couldn't do it now, that she'd been trying but couldn't make it happen. Then she stopped. She wanted Shin to see what she could do, if only so that he would know. The problem was she didn't know if she could do it, even if she tried.
Kuniumi?
Really? Her presence rustled, as the long ends of a dress would against a hard floor. You want him to see?
I want him to know everything. She felt Kuniumi's easy assent, and cupped her hands together. As she scowled at it in preparation for the exhaustion she knew would come from this, she said, I want him to know everything so he knows who it is he's with.
No, Kuniumi's echoing smile was sad in her mind. No. You want him to know everything so he can leave you now, while you still you have a chance at being whole without him, rather than later if he decides he can't handle you.
Pai didn't bother responding to that. It was true, and they both knew it.
It started as a strange, twisting sensation in her abdomen. It pulled and tugged, writhing like a snake brought to life. Bile rose at the back of her throat. She pressed her lips to a thin line as she focused all her attention on the centre of her palm. Grey, hazy smoke coiled around her fingers in sensuous whorls, cold as death yet gentle as the caress of a lover's touch.
Little do you know, dear Bibari, Kuniumi murmured. You're already broken so far beyond repair.
Then something yanked the squirming thing inside her. It jerked the thing inside her right out, and a harsh gasp broke out of her when a little ball of crackling black electricity zapped to life in her curved palms. Shin's arms tightened around her. Her stomach flipped-flopped, and her muscles stiffened, ice crawling through her veins. She looked up to see Shin's astounded gaze drop to her hands, the little white lights shooting around in the smoking darkness centred in her hands lighting the sharp azure of his eyes. Something like recognition flickered in his eyes at the sight of it.
They remained that way, hovering over Kyoto city, for three more seconds before the darkness fizzled like a light bulb bursting. Between one blink and the next, the ball of electricity that was blacker than the darkest night disappeared, almost as if it had never been.
A wave of exhaustion washed over her. She slumped against Shin, panting as she tried to get around the weight set against her chest. She curled her fingers into her palms and brought them to her chest as she stared fixedly at her knees draped over his arm, waiting for him to react.
"It's black," he said, confusion etching its lines on his face. "Just like..."
"Just like what?"
He pursed his lips, reluctant.
She frowned. Her hands clenched into tighter fists. "Shin, just like what?"
He sighed heavily, closing his eyes momentarily, as if to gather his strength about him. When he opened his eyes, they were his Kamigami red. She eyed him worriedly, not as unsettled by the sight as she used to be.
"In the forest, when you were sleepwalking. Remember?" she nodded. "The black smoke around the electricity you used just now...it looks – it feels like this empty aura I felt around you back then."
She stared at him for a long moment, remembering how she'd woken up in his arms just outside of Ayashi House. She remembered how terrified of herself she was to realize she had attacked him whilst sleeping, the note her sister had written that made a little more sense now, the gun and bloodstained clothes in the tactical rifle bag she'd dug out of the earth, the powder that was cocaine she'd been addicted to.
"That's hers," she told him dully. "That aura...it's Kuniumi's."
"It's hers?" he echoed. He didn't look too surprised when she nodded. "Did it hurt, Pai? Does it hurt when that happens?"
She glanced up at him before quickly looking away again. She reached out and held onto the front of his coat, shaking her head as she did so. "No. It doesn't hurt. It just makes me tired. Really, really tired." Enough so that she thought she might fall asleep in seconds, if given the chance.
"That's why you went to bed so early yesterday?" he asked.
She nodded. She'd gone to bed at seven when she usually stayed up with Shiori until closer to ten in the evening.
She focused on looking at her hand loosely clenched on the front of his coat. "I asked her to help me. I don't know how to do it on my own." She admitted guiltily. She hastened to add, "It's mine, I know it is, but I just needed her to – to pull it out."
A dark look crossed his face, but he said nothing about it. Kuniumi stirred at the sight of his disquiet.
He thinks himself so above us, doesn't he, she ground out.
He doesn't trust you, she answered. We don't know who you are, Kuniumi.
We are more trustworthy than the one who hides in him, she whispered brokenly. We would never break our promises. Never.
Unease touched her, cold shivers running up and down her spine despite being cradled in the warmth Shin provided. This anger in Kuniumi...it was different to when she was irritated. This wasn't her being annoyed – she was angry.
If you didn't end their lives, we would have.
She frowns at Kuniumi's words, even as a sliver of something strange twists her stomach to knots. What do you mean by that?
Do not pretend. You know who we are.
Her lungs are constricted in an ice cage. Her breath is cold on her lips. Kuniumi.
You know what we do.
No.
You know what our job is.
Was. What it was.
Was. Is. Will be. It's all the same, it's all now, it's all then, it will be, it's all right in front of us. We see everything now, everything that was and is and will and can be. It's all now. There is no difference.
Kuniumi is slipping. Pai is slipping with her.
She can't let that happen.
She can't let Kuniumi fall back into who she was, who she had been for so long, who she was forced to become because of what she needed to do for all that time just to survive. If Pai falls, the only one she'll let get hurt was herself. She will end her life as soon as she feels that she has tipped over the last edge, the last line.
But if Kuniumi falls, if she tips, there is no way back for anyone. She isn't strong enough to hold Kuniumi back then. She is barely that now. There is no way anyone can bring Kuniumi back from crossing that final line.
That's not who you are anymore. That's –
Pai winced, lifting a hand to her ear. Her fingers came away with blood.
She frowned as the memory faded away. That was the only real glimpse she'd ever had from her memories of what truly lay hidden behind the surface Kuniumi hid under. Slowly, as if she was waking from a long dream, she realized that she did know who Kuniumi was.
She'd known who Kuniumi truly was...but she forgot.
She looked down to a tall skyscraper they hovered above, trying to make sense of it. Something stirs inside her, twisting her black, warping her judgement and making her see everything everyone everywhere it's all enemies and they need to be slaughtered, their blood raining down on her head as she lifts her face to the red skies and screams to him.
Let him come, let him see what she's done in the name of showing him what darkness he's released to this precious world by breaking his promise to her. Let him see what his love has turned her into.
"You hypocrite!" she rages, the power in her voice spreading out in a blanket of darkness.
It envelopes everything around her in black smoke that crawls over every inch of dry ground, thirstily lapping up the blood she has spilled. Broken limbs and burning corpses litter the field around her for as far as the eye can see. Red tears coloured with the blood he shed all those years ago slip down her face as nothing replies to her scream of pain.
Just like nothing has for thousands of millennia since he killed her.
"You promised me!" she raises her arm, and the black blade in her hand burns hot with her wrath. "You promised me forever, and you broke it! Come out, come out and play, come out and pay for what you did to me!"
Pai inhaled sharply as Kuniumi suddenly withdrew from her. She whipped Pai out of the glimpse of her memory so quickly that a sharp pain lanced through Pai's chest, a ghost of the heartache that plagued Kuniumi. She was retreating so far deep into herself, fear and wariness following her as she faded away, and no matter how many times Pai called out to her, she didn't come out.
She grew aware that Shin was saying her name, worry mounting with every second she didn't answer him. She blinked dazedly at him, her mouth opening and closing like a gaping fish as she tried to understand what it was she'd just seen. Her chest ached, her heart burdened by something indescribably lamentable. She was sure that if she wasn't held in Shin's arms, she would have fallen from the weight of it.
"Pai, answer me!"
She peered into his worried eyes, noting the blue flickering at the edges of the red. Guilt gnawed at her like angry rats for being the reason that look was on his face.
"What happened? What's wrong?"
She shook her head to get rid of the wilting cobwebs strung about her. With a sad smile, she lifted her hand and put it to his cheek gently. "Sorry. I spaced out for a second."
"What happened?" he asked again, concern still colouring him. Tension she hadn't noticed before ebbed out of his arms at her touch, if only minutely. "You just blanked out. What is she saying?"
Her lips twitched, her mind throbbing with pain. She'd only seen a brief fragment of Kuniumi's memory, she didn't even understand what it was she'd seen, yet she felt like she'd been roasted alive. "She's – she's so sad, Shin. I don't understand why."
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
"She never tells me what it is she wants, but sometimes I see bits of her memories." She gulped thickly around the hot ball of tears threatening to choke her. Kuniumi wasn't there anymore, but she hadn't taken all pieces of her out of Pai. Her grief remained.
"You saw one of her memories?" he repeated, shocked. She nodded. "What did you see?"
"I don't – I don't really know." She mumbled. "It was just a lot of these –these images in my head, like she was in some sort of fight from long ago, when everyone used swords, and –" she shook her head. "I don't know, it didn't make any sense. She was angry at something – someone – she was angry at someone for breaking a promise, but...I don't know." She gestured at her head with her hand, frustration twisting her brows down low in a frown. "It's all jumbled and confused in my head. Nothing makes any sense."
She still wasn't sure how it happened – she thought that, whatever it was she had with Kuniumi, it was a two-way lane. Kuniumi helped to show Pai her own memories of the three years she went missing, but at the same time, Kuniumi's memories, rarely, played back as well.
It wasn't often as Pai's memories came (which was rare in itself) – it was almost like Kuniumi had set up a roadblock on her end, to limit her memories from flowing into Pai. The thing was, Pai could never make any sense from them. They were disjointed, broken into a thousand pieces she didn't know how to put together.
Shin didn't push her for more than that, though he still watched her closely, worried. "Does it happen often?"
"Not really," she murmured as he beat his wings once, twice, angled them, and they were flying toward their destination once again. "Sometimes when I'm asleep, the line separating us gets blurred. I think that's why you felt her aura when I was sleepwalking."
Shin scowled, eyes focused on the distance. "I really don't like her. Why can't she leave you alone?"
"In her own way," she said, seeking to placate him as she lifted her hand and pressed on the angry set of his eyebrows with a gentle finger, smoothing them out. "She doesn't mean to hurt me, Shin."
"Maybe so, but that doesn't mean she doesn't." Shin glanced down at her with a dark look in his eye. "What about when, in her own twisted way, she thinks she's truly not hurting you when she is?"
For the first time, she couldn't answer him in defence of Kuniumi. She wanted to, but she knew that if she did it would be a lie, even if it wasn't a deliberate one. She'd already seen, several times over, that Kuniumi did not understand the human concept of pain.
A slither of unease whispered in her, coiling her stomach into tight knots, as she wondered what would happen if Kuniumi lost herself, and if Pai was too close when it happened.
. . .
Credit goes to WLOP who's the artist of the above image (I'm 95% sure they are, at least)
random A/N: this chap is dedicated to BelitAm for understanding Pai and Kuniumi's relationship so well that she pointed this out [which is mentioned like literally just above this note]: Kuniumi does not understand the human concept of pain.
But guys. GUYS. Next episode we're headed back to Kyoto and finally meeting Kouta's father! THE SOJOBO OF THE TENGU CLAN!
[I really hope I didn't mess him up. I'm actually quite proud of him.]