X/1999 Fan Fiction ❯ Paradise of the Broken ❯ Paradise of the Broken ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: I do not own X or Subaru Sumeragi, if I did, I'd give him a happier ending in the anime and in Tokyo Babylon.

Notes: This fic may be considered a companion piece to "The Significance of Coffee," although they seem to have very little to do with each other on the surface. I actually suggest you read "Coffee" after this fic to get the full impact of what I was trying to convey.

Tadaima = I'm home.

Hime-chan = Little princess.

Paradise of the Broken

The center of Shinjuku was a bustling mess of pedestrians in a badly rehearsed dance number. Elbows met chins, while hands held tightly to purses as their owners panicked under the threat of being robbed. Subaru Sumeragi was an airy figure amidst the orchestrated chaos; his white coat floated in the wind to brush the lapels of business suits. Like butterfly wings, his coattails kissed the skirts of harassed young ladies as they swished and swayed out of their way form the throng. But no one spared the fluttering coat or the black-haired man a second glance. Neither did verdant eyes blink once at their dismissal.

It was a shady part of Tokyo. The red-light district with its neon signs flashing an allure that would come out full force in the bleakness of night. Subaru had seen it all before. It was better to pay attention to the sidewalk. His boots sidestepped a particularly threatening piece of broken glass, a luminous green that tantalized even in the shady afternoon. It smelled of alcohol. Subaru didn't drink; he preferred his mild sevens. The bittersweet smoke that would leave a familiar scent of another on him for days.

After being propositioned the third time by a nonchalant teen leaning against a lamppost, Subaru's fingers were itching for a cigarette. Walking into the den of the devil always made him nervous.

But he loved Tokyo anyway.

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The sun was still hazy in the sky when he reached an old tenement building, an edifice with a worn façade and stone faces made expressionless by time. Subaru gazed at it for a long time. Beneath the building's shadow, he withdrew a piece of white ofuda from his coat, and bid it to transform into a white crow which flew up to the third floor and peered into a dusty window. It turned back to look at its master with solemn eyes and then disintegrated back into a black pentagram upon a white background. Ignoring the piece of paper, Subaru walked up to the door, and placed his hand on it. He closed his eyes. The door eased open like liquid water.

He stepped in. The wind carried the ofuda away.

The battered steps had only creaked once when he finally made it to the apartment. Subaru knocked. There was no answer. His hand closed upon the cool metal of the doorknob, and twisted. The lock that should have held gave way. He entered.

"Kaoru-san," Subaru stated in a soft voice. The slender figure hunched in one corner of the room filled with sunlight did not respond. Instead, the dark head bowed further, and clutched a broken doll closer to her body. Subaru sighed. He walked closer and closer, a few steps at a time in order not to startle her. But with each pause, the woman stiffened. When Subaru was about to touch her shoulder, Kaoru suddenly turned and laughed a nervous giggle.

"Subaru-chan! You came to visit me! You know, next time you should call!" And she embraced the man and smiled. A smile like a three-year-old's, full of joy and innocence. But Kaoru Ikido was near thirty. The little girl's smile was full of madness.

Subaru's face fell before he could command himself to be professional again. "Kaoru, its time to go back." He tugged gently at the arm that still held the broken doll, dressed in a faded white dress.

"Why?" Kaoru asked with wonderment, but her frame was shaking with nervousness, and understanding.

The door suddenly banged open in a cheerful explosion.

"Tadaima!"

A man wearing a bright blue blazer and snug jeans struggled into the room with his overflowing bag of groceries. When he saw Subaru, his eyes flashed with challenge and protectiveness. The eggs were broken when he let the bags fall.

"Who are you?" the man asked suspiciously.

"Tou-san, that's Subaru-chan! You remember, don't you?" Kaoru threw her arms around Tenaka in hero-worship adoration of a man nearly ten years younger than her. Tenaka smiled with constraint, and tried to act the part of a father when he patted her head.

"He can't remember me. That's not your father, Kaoru," Subaru interjected in the awkward silence that followed.

"Is that true?" Kaoru asked with wide eyes. They were a beautiful brown like Hokuto's had been.

"Of course not," Tenaka lied.

"Ask him Kaoru. When did we first meet?"

Kaoru looked to Tenaka, but he could not answer.

"We spent that summer near the ocean, you, Hokuto, and I. We chased the seagulls and tried to eat the ocean foam, because we though it might be ice cream," Subaru answered his own question with wistfulness.

"Shut up!" Tenaka shouted when Kaoru tried to cover her ears.

"That was the summer before your father died."

"Papa's not dead! He's not!" Kaoru began to cry.

"You can't keep protecting her," Subaru said when Tenaka reached out to hug her. "You're not her father. He died when she was five, and now it's been more than twenty years."

"You're wrong," Tenaka said, even though his own eyes were bright with tears.

"You can't be her father," Subaru eased Kaoru away from him. " You aren't able to, because you love her in a very different way."

Tenaka's hands clenched at his sides.

"You didn't even ask, did you?" Subaru questioned, rubbing Kaoru's back in gentle circles.

"I - I could tell she was hurt. When I asked her about her past, she'd clam up or start screaming. When I called her hime-chan, she smiled for me for the first time we'd been together. She told me that's what her father used to call her." His head bowed in defeat. Subaru's eyes softened.

"When we were eight, my sister and I met Kaoru at the beach again. Her father had just passed away from a heart attack; she told us it was the first time she ever felt helpless. But she grew, and was strong again. She married when she was twenty-two. I was at the wedding. Kaoru-san and I are onmyoji. We are spiritual exorcises. We share the same profession, and met by accident many times on our jobs - we never lost touch for long. I noticed that I had not bumped into her for a long time." Subaru let his hand stop its movements and rest on her shoulder.

"I learned her husband and her son had been murdered by a man possessed by a demon she had failed to properly exorcise." Subaru paused. Then he turned his attention away from Tenaka. "I've searched a long time for you, Kaoru-san." His green eyes shone with the light of sympathy, knowing what she had endured. Kaoru lay still in his arms as Subaru whispered.

"It's time to let go of the guilt. To let the grief die."

Slowly, Kaoru's hand felt its way along Subaru's arm. It met and entwined with his fingers. Then she cried, tears that were purifying the hysteria, the grief, and the madness away. She cried and cried until her fingers gripped on so tightly to Subaru, that his hand began to feel numb. Underneath the darkening sky, and the worried eyes of Tenaka, who stood by helplessly, she clung and sobbed. The guilt remained, but life was dawning once again in her heart.

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It was six in the morning before Subaru was able to leave the Spartan apartment. Before he could leave Kaoru in the hands of her lover, knowing she would be as well as she could ever be again. Before he could stand before the building, and gaze at it again.

The sun was a considerate painter that applied reds and oranges gently onto the broken building until it glowed with a warmth Subaru could only recall in memory. Subaru strolled down the street slowly. Thinking of Kaoru, and of his sister.

Hokuto-chan was dead, murdered also. But he could also live on, without her, and without…

Subaru shook his head.

The grief returned to his heart, but there also came the greater guilt that he would ever try to forget her - and also, the familiar pain that beat in his heart.

Subaru lit his cigarette.

His salvation did not lie in this world.

Seishirou-san had once told him he loved Tokyo because it was the only place that could enjoy itself as it walked down the path to destruction. Subaru noticed there were no casual loiters that batted their eyelashes at him on the street this early in the morning.

Before he had killed Hokuto, and nearly Subaru himself, Seishirou-san had also once told him he was as fragile as a glass cup.

Subaru wondered what Seishirou thought of him now.

The smoke and taste of the cigarette was comforting to Subaru as he sidestepped a few more shards of glass. They lay there beautiful, and broken.

And Subaru wondered why he bothered to avoid them at all.

The End