Ronin Warriors Fan Fiction ❯ The Kaf ❯ Part Six ( Chapter 6 )

The Kaf - Part Six - a.k.a. THE END!!!
By Djinn Hashiba-Maxwell

For those who are saying "How could she KILL Touma??" I say: "I'm evil but I'm not THAT evil..."

*~*~*

Shin stepped through the doorway of Ibilis' chamber and his eyes went wide at what he saw.

The huge, black-winged figure was sprawled out on the floor, motionless, leather back wings covering it like a blanket. Beside it, Sraosha was hunched over another prone figure, her golden hair brushing her knees each time she sobbed. Her elder sister knelt at her side, still managing to look regal and angelic despite the fact that she was kneeling in a pool of stark crimson blood. In her hand she held her staff, and the gem at the head glowed in the darkness.

Touma was white - paler than a living being could be, the color of mist, and lying in a pool of blood with his head in Sraosha's lap. He shook as his adopted mother clutched him, crying. His blue kimono was stained black with his blood.

"Tou-chan." Ryo breathed the nickname without thinking, unable to form any other coherent words.

"Too late..." Shin murmured in reply.

Haurvatat turned over her shoulder and so the two shocked angels standing there. She stood, her dress heavy with crimson blood, and stepped towards them. Her expression was impassive but the mask over her eyes was cracked with tears.

"Trust, Virtue. You came." She called them by their attributes, as was often her custom at solemn times.

"Is he..." Ryo breathed.

"Toumawashi sacrificed his life. When his form died, Azrael was trapped. Ibilis is no more." Haurvatat informed them. He voice cracked slightly on her nephew's name but she managed to maintain her vaguely detached expression.

Ryo swallowed and then stepped past her to kneel at Touma's side. Sraosha looked up to him with tears in her blue-green eyes and without warning she threw herself into his arms, needing the comfort of another person. He closed his arms around her, never taking his eyes off Touma's still form.

"Shin." Haurvatat said, causing him to finally turn his eyes from the form on the ground. "My staff... look at the jewel on my staff."

Obediently, Shin looked. It was murky, swirling, and looked as if it were filled with blue mist. He raised an eyebrow. "My lady, what is..."

She took a deep breath. "For all the good it will do us... this is Touma's soul." She whispered, and Shin jumped at the solemn seriousness of her words.

"His... how?" He asked.

"Azrael forced it from his body. The staff merely captured it." She responded her voice trembling in the slightest. "But Shin... his body is dead. His body is dead and I have trapped his soul." She said helplessly. The always collected and calm Haurvatat was scared. Shin did not know how to react when a woman that he and thousands of others looked up to looked so lost, so he merely blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"Perhaps there is a way... to heal his body..." Shin suggested.

Haurvatat laughed at that, a dry, bitter laugh. "There is always a way, Shin. But do YOU wish to ask Ahura Mazda to grant life to a djinnee bastard that turned his back on him?"

Shin swallowed.

"So I thought." She responded softly.

"Seiji." Ryo said, calling the attention of everyone in the room. He still held Sraosha loosely, who was hiccuping against his shoulder, and he had loosed one hand just enough to slide Touma's blue eyes closed. "The human that Touma brought here. He must still be at Touma's home." He said. "If Touma planned to do this... I doubt he would've allowed Seiji to come..." He stood, helping the female mala'ika to her feet beside him.

"Please." Sraosha pleaded, latching onto Ryo's robe, speaking around hiccuping sobs. "Please. Don't leave him here... don't leave him..."

There was a moment of hesitation, and then Haurvatat took two steps to Touma's side. She swept her violet robe off of her bare shoulders and tossed it over him, and Shuu lifted him into his strong arms.

And then the grim funeral march walked out of the building.

*~*~*

'You are not crying.' Seiji reminded himself. 'You are not crying, you do not cry.' Of course it was a silly thing to say, since the trails of water that worked their way down his cheek were obviously tears.

There was a pillow clutched to his chest. After last night Seiji had been comforted to find that it possessed the same smell of wind and sand that Touma did. The scent was pure and clean and Seiji swore that, no matter how Ibilis abused his form, that was how he would remember the blue-haired djinnee.

The sound of footsteps echoed into the main room and he stood quickly, wiping tears from his eyes before peeking through the curtain. He let out a soft sigh of relief when he saw that is was Ryo and Shin who stood there, and he stepped out to greet them. But before he spoke a word, Shuu stepped through the doorway.

Seiji did not have to be told what lay inside the bloodstained violet cloak, his eyes went wide and he stumbled back a step. "What... why..." He demanded in shock.

Sraosha took a step closer and regarded the blonde curiously, and then she grasped his hand and laid her cheek against the back of it. "I am Sraosha, Hearer of Prayers, and the woman that raised Touma. I am the only mother he ever knew..." She took her deep breath. "I heard you praying for some form of salvation. You cared for my son." She whispered.

He swallowed in response.

"Better dead than inhabited by Ibilis." Ryo muttered to himself.

The other blonde woman took another step closer. "I am Haurvatat, one of the amesa spentas. I was Touma's aunt." She curtsied slightly. "Touma took his own life to kill Ibilis. I am very proud of him."

Seiji uncertainly bowed, eyes straying of their own will to the bundle still closed in Shuu's arms. He swallowed again, and a stray tear dipped over his cheek. Sraosha wiped it away with her thumb. "You loved my son, didn't you?" She whispered, her voice pleading for him to agree.

Seiji hesitated. He'd hardly known him, and yet... "H-hai." He whispered.

At that Sraosha wrapped arms around him, so tightly that even her wings curled around the taller boy's form. She buried her face against the shoulder of his green cotton kimono, tears dry though she still trembled. "As did I... as did I." She whispered. "With my mind, heart and soul. I loved him dearly."

Seiji uncertainly wrapped his arms around the distraught mala'ika. Haurvatat cleared her throat and stuck her staff against the ground twice to draw their attention.

"It is time we left." She said, and everyone but Sraosha and Seiji nodded in agreement. "Mortal. You may join us if you so wish, we will... attend to Touma. Or if you so wish I can return you to your home."

"I have no home." Seiji replied by reflex. "I wish to go with you."

*~*~*

Sraosha's hands shook as she walked through the darkened palace. Her sister's room was just down the hall, and Haurvatat should've long since drifted into the realm of sleep. She was safe in that, at least.

She creaked open her neesama's door and slipped into the darkness. She wore a black robe to hide her in the darkness - it had been hard to find such dark clothes. Mala'ika did not traditionally wear dark colors, let alone black. But she had managed it and felt all the safer for it.

She waited for her eyes to adjust, rather than fumbling in the darkness, ad there beside her sister's mat sat the object of her search.

The staff.

The end still held that faint glow of blue, of Touma's color. Haurvatat did not think her sister heard when she told Shin of what had occurred, but the Hearer of Prayers had heard every word. As her sister had spoken the words Sraosha had let out a desperate plea to her master - to Ahura Mazda - that he might grant, just this one, the right to life to her son.

But for the first time in her life, a prayer had no effect. And that was because the Hearer of Prayers could make no prayers of her own.

And so it was of her own disobedient will that she snatched the staff from her sleeping sister's side, it was taking fate into her own hands as she slipped down the halls. It was without anyone else's say that she pushed open the door to what had long ago been Toumawashi's chamber and saw the candlelight flickering over her son's pale face.

"Touma." She whispered, as if he might hear her.

"Haurva." Sraosha pleaded, looking up to her sister. "There must be something we can do. I cannot live the rest of my life, never seeing Toumawashi again. I cannot, I refuse! He is like my own child."

"I will do what I can, Toumawashi. I will." She whispered.

I cannot live the rest of my life, never seeming Toumawashi again.

*~*~*

There was anarchy in the palace at midnight.

"What is wrong?" Haurvatat asked, sitting up as a shaft of light from the doorway split the darkness of her room. The guard bowed low to the ground.

"The lady Sraosha is not in her room." He told her, and without needing further words she tossed the blanket back off her and reached, by reflex, for her staff.

It was gone.

And Haurvatat's eyes went wide.

"Oh, no, Sraosha." She whispered. "Gods, no."

*~*~*

She ran down the hall, hardly dressed, white undergarments billowing out behind her. Her usually tightly bound hair was blowing over her shoulder like a cascade of sunlight but she paid it no heed. She did not even notice when Shuu, Shin, Ryo and even Seiji joined her in her frantic run.

She nearly skidded, stopping suddenly before the door of the room where they had laid Touma, and threw open the door. She inhaled sharply.

Dim candlelight gave the room a misty glow, and there on the futon Touma lay, as they had left him. The only difference was that now Sraosha lay beside him, arms wrapped protectively around her son, her wings folded over the both of them like a blanket. Her face was calm in the confines of sleep with the faintest of smiles on her pale rose lips. Beside her lay Haurvatat's staff.

The jewel was it's usual silver-black. Not even the slightest hint of blue colored it.

And then suddenly Touma's eyes fluttered open and he drew a shuddering breath.

It all seemed frighteningly like a dream as Touma blinked at the ceiling in confusion, and then slowly sat up. In the process he dislodged Sraosha's arms from around him, and she rolled over onto her back, her wings spreading out beneath her. As her wings rolled off him he turned to look down onto his mother's angelic face and for the barest hint of a moment a smile lit his features, but then it quickly disappeared.

Sraosha's name echoed in the room as a harsh whisper, and Touma lifted his adopted mother's small body into his arms, shaking her slightly. The only response he received was her head rolling around limply on her shoulders. And slowly the other's gathered around them, and Haurvatat took her sister from Touma's arms as Seiji, half in disbelief, wrapped his arms around Touma.

"Kaasama." Touma whispered at hot tears slid over his cheeks.

"Touma." Seiji whispered, pulling the blue-haired boy to him.

Haurvatat said nothing, but the tears sparkling in her eyes spoke for themselves as she closed her sister's eyes.

And Ryo and Shin stood back a pace, holding each other, uncertain of their own emotions. Touma was alive...

...and Sraosha was not.

Was this a happy ending to all that had happened, or a sad one?

*~*~*

Very bittersweet, ne? For all intensive purposes, that is the end, so please tell me what you think of the finished product. There [u]will[/u] however be an epilogue. Here is what you can expect:

1. Find out what happened to Shuten, Kayura, Nasutei, and the other ppl you haven't seen in a while.
2. Learn more about Touma's father, and his relationship to his mother.
3. There will be a Tou/Seij lemon. Seiji will be uke. *hee hee* ^__~

If you don't want to read the lemon, click here for the PG-13 version