Tokyo Babylon Fan Fiction / Yami No Matsuei Fan Fiction ❯ We Share This Humble Path, Alone ❯ Prologue ( Prologue )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

When the dark wood fell before me

And all the paths were overgrown

When the priests of pride say there is no other way

I tilled the sorrows of stone

I did not believe because I could not see

Though you came to me in the night

When the dawn seemed forever lost

You showed me your love in the light of the stars

Then the mountain rose before me

By the deep well of desire

From the fountain of forgiveness

Beyond the ice and the fire

Though we share this humble path, alone

How fragile is the heart

Oh give these clay feet wings to fly

To touch the face of the stars

Breathe life into this feeble heart

Lift this mortal veil of fear

Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears

We'll rise above these earthly cares

Cast your eyes on the ocean

Cast your soul to the sea

When the dark night seems endless

Please remember me
-Dante's Prayer



Hisoka is a mental escape artist, exactly the opposite from me. I have more of a habit of
locking myself in with my memories than of running away from them. I would like to say I figured
this out on my own, but I didn't, really, not without a big push that he didn't mean to give me. For
the longest time, I just thought he was really smart. Well, he is really smart . . . he reads books
that I would never want to attempt, and he does it for pleasure. Not for pleasure . . . not really . .
. he does it to lose himself, because if he wraps his mind up in someone else's story, he doesn't
have to think about his own. If I ever did pick up a book to forget about myself for a while, it
would probably be something you could find on the rack at the checkout in a grocery store. Not
Fyodor Dostoevsky or Victor Hugo. Hisoka's walls are lined with books by every big name
author I've ever heard of, and more by those I haven't. So he's a kid who likes to read (really
shouldn't call him a kid), that may be unusual, but there's nothing unnatural about it.
Outwardly, he seems pretty normal. If you take the word "normal" in stride and temper it
to the conditions of Hisoka's life and death. Maybe it's better to say he hides himself well. Not just
his true feelings and vulnerabilities with that attitude, which he does, but all the little
idiosyncracies that took me so long to add up. I knew he had nightmares. Everyone knew he had
nightmares. But I don't think there's anyone in the department who doesn't have nightmares. If we
didn't have things in our pasts to have nightmares about, we probably wouldn't be here. The first
thing I really noticed was the showers.
Most people bathe in the morning before work, or the night before. Hisoka does both. Not
quick rinses either, but long, hour-length affairs that leave the bathroom billowing steam in his
wake. I didn't know that until after I had moved into his house. Two weeks after, I'm ashamed to
say. He gets up so early to do it, as if he doesn't want to be caught at it, like he knows there's
something unnatural about it. Or, he might just be paranoid of me walking in on him, which is just
as likely.
My moving in was entirely his plan, which gives me a pathetically warm and fuzzy feeling
to think about. Never mind that it was fueled more by fear and desperation than by affection. I
asked in Kyoto if I could stay with him . . . he took it to heart, in a very literal way. By the time I
was released from the infirmary, he was already waiting for me, dragging cartons of books out of
his spare bedroom (he had been using it as a sort of library for himself up till then, it was all
bookshelves and one armchair. All that is in the livingroom now, which I don't particularly like --
makes me feel like I need to whisper) and trying to figure out how to incorporate my seventy
years worth of accumulated belongings into his austere living space. He must have been raiding
my apartment for days while I was still hospitalized.
The decision was made, he was determined to do it, and I didn't get a choice in the matter.
I didn't mind. He ended up throwing a lot of my things away. I didn't mind that either, not really.
A decaying paper fan from a 1947 street festival paled in comparison to the fact that Hisoka
wanted (was determined to force) me to stay. He said he felt better having me across the hall. I
took that as Hisoka-speak that he cared about me, was worried for me and for himself, and found
my proximity comforting. Maybe I read a little to deeply, but those are the kind of things Hisoka
has trouble putting into words. I suppose he's afraid of reactions. If I had to feel peoples' honest
reactions to everything I said or did as constantly and thoroughly as Hisoka does, I doubt I would
be very comfortable wearing my heart on my sleeve either. He does trust me at least, more than
anyone else anyway, maybe as much as he can possibly trust anyone, and that's something. It's
someplace to start.
But it was the showers I noticed first, the carefully hidden, but almost obsessive
compulsion for cleanliness and order. Then the locks. It's natural to lock one's front door, even in
meifu. A habit left over from earthly living, a minute detail that makes this world a little more real
. . . even though it's hardly necessary. Hisoka has a deadbolt, and a lock on every window. In all
the time I've been here, I've never seen him voluntarily open a window, unless I ask him to, and he
never leaves a room without shutting it and locking it again.
I used to tease him about how bare his house was. I don't anymore. Of course, between his
books and my paraphanalia most of the house has a much more lived in look, but his bedroom is
still empty. Not even bookshelves. Just the bed, and a night stand with a small lamp and clock
radio, and a dresser against the wall with a stereo on it. Nothing extra, and never anything out of
place. It was strange, I thought, sad even for a teenager's room which should be cluttered with
band posters and CDs and electronics and dirty clothes and personal effects . . . then it occurred
to me how he doesn't like the dark. I don't suppose he likes waking up from a nightmare in a room
full of shadows either. So I don't tease him anymore.
But I find the stereo encouraging. It's a very teenaged thing to have, and when he shuts
himself in his room and starts blaring rock music to let me know he's annoyed with me and doesn't
want me to try to talk to him just yet, I can almost imagine he's a normal, bratty teenager. Then
again, it also makes me feel like I'm his father, which is an awkward wrench to toss into the oh-
so-delicate machinery of our tenuous relationship. I say tenuous not because either of us are going
anywhere, we need each other far too much for that, but because of the massive expanses of grey
that engulf the details of our feelings, hopelessly obscuring them from any kind of rational
interpretation. Even by Hisoka, who deals with translating feelings everyday. There are some
emotions he was never exposed to, or exposed to in a negative way, that make the waters
separating us too tumultuous for even him to navigate. I wish I could wipe his mind clean, and
give him his childhood over again and make him sane. But then he'd be a different person, so I
guess I'm too selfish in the end.
I never would have understood his need for books at all, if I hadn't found his journal. I
didn't read it, not really . . . I don't know what all he puts in there. Things that are too hard to say
out loud, I suppose, or maybe things he doesn't trust me enough to tell me. I don't know that
much about him, about his life, when it comes down to it. He doesn't tell and I don't ask. I think
someday he'll be able to talk to me . . . at least I hope so. Maybe I'll be able to talk to him too. I'm
such a hypocrite.
I wouldn't have found the journal if he hadn't raided my candy drawer. He was angry at me
for some mundanely idiotic action, I don't remember what. I didn't believe he'd really been so
cruel as to throw it all out, so I was checking his room. I didn't know what it was, when I found
it. It was just lying there under his bed, an unimportant marble notebook. Case notes maybe, or
something left over from one of his incognito forays into a school, lost and forgotten. I should
have just put it back. It was the most brutally, disturbingly honest part of Hisoka I've seen to date.
I really, truly didn't *really* read it. To be honest, I'm not sure I could have if I'd wanted too -- all
the writing was jagged and haphazard, rushed and furious. Written in the heat of the moment,
maybe when he woke up from a nightmare, or maybe it's just a daily part of him. In any case, it
was nothing like the neat, precise handwriting that filled our reports or labeled our files, and it
was interspersed with rough, angry looking images scribbled darkly in pencil, none of which I
wanted to examine too closely.
The page I landed on was somewhat neater than most of the writing, more organized and
coherent. "Things I Learned From Muraki" was written sharply across the top with so much anger
that I didn't need any empathy to pick it up. The first thing listed was "Never tell a madman you
don't want to die, he'll take it as a challenge." I shut the book after that and put it back, feeling
sick. It was a glimpse deeper into Hisoka's troubled mind than I had been prepared for. I wonder
if that's what it's like for him to touch my thoughts.
We live in a world of grey, more than friends but not quite lovers . . . trapped in a limbo
between desire and disgust, want and fear, a painful reality Hisoka can't escape and I can't save
him from. He became a shinigami to find out why he died, to find a purpose beyond confusion and
self-pity . . . he stayed a shinigami because he found the answer and the purpose in Muraki. That
much is simple. Sometimes I wish he could pass on, and have peace, but I'm too selfish to really
embrace that want. But I wonder if that's even possible . . . if he couldn't pass on because he was
too tormented to accept peace, or because his torment is too great to be at peace. It's nice to
think of heaven as the ultimate perfection, maybe that's what humans need to believe to make
living bearable. But maybe it isn't perfect, maybe you need to meet it halfway, and maybe souls
who become shinigami are incapable of that. I don't know, I've never been there.
Almost every night, Hisoka appears next to my bed. I don't question it, I never did. The
first time it happened I was too afraid of scaring him off to try and question him. It took a great
deal of courage for him, I think, to risk being turned away. I always edge back to make room for
him and lift up the covers and he crawls in like a small child in a thunderstorm. Sometimes we
talk, if he initiates it, and sometimes we kiss. We don't kiss very often. The first time I tried it, it
was a disaster. Hisoka had been only thirteen when violently divested of his innocence. Thirteen and still a child. And as a child, lust was one of
those emotions he'd never had an opportunity to know, and his experience with it on one horrific
night translated it as unequivocally, inexorably bad. It meant pain and terror and humiliation and a
Pavlovian reaction of sheer panic. I should have known better. He spent two hours in the
bathroom that night before I could convince him to come out. Whether he was more frightened of
me or ashamed of his reaction, I'm not sure. I think he was sick in there. He didn't tell me and I
didn't ask.
Three days of avoidance and questioning and worry and avoidance and talking and it was
laid to rest. I'm very careful, now, to shield those feelings of attraction from him when they
manifest, although they can't help but seep out when we do kiss. Understanding took some of the
fear away, exposure and the combination of other, warmer emotions are easing through the rest,
but it's painfully slow work. His biggest fear is that I'll get tired of waiting for him, that I'll need
more and he'll never be able to give it. He told me that much. The way he keeps his vulnerability
locked down makes the occasional outburst or confession or other gesture of trust that much
stronger. I'm not going to leave him. He still fears it.
Ultimately, kissing still ends badly, but it always takes just a little longer before something
sets him off and the panic wells up in his eyes and he frantically pushes me away. Kissing, in and
of itself, he's actually pretty okay with, beyond the normal awkwardness and embarrassment. He
says the contact is too intimate, he can feel so much of me through it, that there's no comparison.
I refrain from pointing out the obvious parallel of intimacies that statement could apply to. It
probably wouldn't go over well just yet. It's almost laughable, the complicated game of touch that
accompanies the kissing. We've got it mostly figured out though. It's alright to cup my hands
around his ribs, but not to move them across his chest. It's alright to hold him at the waist, but he
gets edgy if I drift down to his hips. It's alright to lean over him if he feels he's got room to move
away, but I can't lean any weight on him or make him feel trapped. It's alright to rub his arms,
always through sleeves, but he'll freak if I hold him by the hands or wrists or anything that
resembles pinning him down. And knowing all that, I still have to push at those same boundaries,
because if I don't he never will. I hate that something I did brought that pain to his eyes, but I
remind myself that it was already there, constantly inside him, waiting for something to bring it to
the surface, and then I redouble my hatred for Muraki. Besides, he doesn't need to worry about
his responses triggering my guilt. Sometimes he still locks himself in the bathroom for a while, but
less and less often. Most of the time I leave the room, let him collect himself without the added
weight of my presence and make two mugs of instant hot chocolate. By the time I return he's
calmed down and we sit in silence for a while, drinking (usually I finish his for him), and then he
can curl up in my arms again to sleep. We used to try to apologize, me for going to far, him for
his reaction . . . but we don't anymore. Those are the nights that sometimes he's still there in the morning.
When he comes just to sleep, he never makes it through the night. I wouldn't know, he
gets up so early for his second shower, to wash away the imagined impurity of his nightmares,
except that some nights I wake up when he's not there. As far as I know, he's never gone back to
his own bed. I don't know if it's the weight of his empathy, touching me for so long in sleep that
drives him away, or a more sinister memory of arms around him and weight against his body.
Secretly, selfishly, I know, I hope it's the latter, because that's something conceivably
surmountable. When I wake without him, I know he's out in the livingroom with the tv on. If he's
left the door open, I can see the hallway flickering from it's light. Sometimes I almost find it
funny. He didn't have a tv before I moved in, and now he uses it more than I do, even if it's just a
covert nightlight. Sometimes I slip out to check on him. If he's awake, I stand in the hallway. He
knows I'm there, but doesn't look at me, and then I go back to bed. If he's fallen asleep, I turn off
the sound but not the picture, so that if he has a nightmare at least he won't wake up alone in the
shadows. But I think, sometimes, he just sits up awake all night. We never talk about it.
There are really only three types of nightmares for Hisoka, I've learned to identify each of
them by the way he wakes up. The first, and most common, is a Muraki nightmare. I have a
pretty good idea what happens in those, but I wouldn't want to watch it firsthand. With a Muraki
dream, he'll sit bolt upright, as if he can't stand to be on his back another moment, and he doesn't
want me to touch him or even come near him until he's fully away. If it's particularly bad, he'll
hug himself and sometimes even shake. But after all this time, he can recover from a Muraki
dream pretty quickly. The second nightmare is Kyoto. They've become less frequent the more
time passes. I know what happens in them too, though I don't know if he just replays the events
or if his mind twists it with "what if"s. With a Kyoto dream he's usually in tears by the time he
wakes up, and he latches onto me immediately, as if I might disappear. The third nightmare is the
kind that has something to do with his childhood. They don't happen very often. I don't know
what happens in them, but I've heard him mumble "Tou-sama" in his sleep a few times, so I'm
pretty sure I'm right about the subject matter. With one of those, there's no panic or crying or
anything, he wakes up perfectly calmly, but he's particularly despondent for most of the morning.
He's always awake by the time I get up, even if I try to get up early. Sometimes he's made
breakfast. He can't cook like Wakaba, but I'm not allowed to use the kitchen for anything more
than micro waving, under pain of death. His cooking isn't bad, not usually, just simple.
Rudimentary. He's good at scrambled eggs, but can't seem to flip an omelet. I don't mind, I get
mushrooms and cheese even if he's ended up mixing it all. Toast is simple too. Sometimes, if he's
feeling particularly nice towards me, he'll make french toast, with extra sugar on mine and nutmeg
on his. I like those mornings because I know he doesn't care for sweet things, and he's doing it to
tell me he cares about making me happy. He tried frying bacon once, but burned himself on the
grease and hasn't attempted since. He says he never had to cook while he was alive. I ask him how
he learned. He says he got hungry. I don't ask more than that and he doesn't offer to tell me. I
wonder what his life was like. I know his parents locked him up, but that couldn't have been the
extent of his life. How could he have learned martial arts? How could he have been outside to run
into Muraki . . . ? I wonder if he knows I wonder. And I wonder if he wonders about me.
I don't take it personally when he yells at me, I haven't for a long time. That was one thing
I figured out quick. Anger isn't something he really means, it's his defense mechanism. His mask. I
can understand that. Being angry makes you feel hot, and righteous . . . it doesn't leave as much
room for the fear or the hurt to overwhelm you. For Hisoka, it keeps people at arms length, so he
doesn't have to interact with them on a more intimate level. I don't think he ever spent much time
around people. I know he hates to cry.