The Devil You Know A Yami no Matsuei ficlet Sephy "Death is when the monsters get you." --Stephen King, Salem's Lot There was no warning, just a faint displacement of air as he threw himself to the floor. Hisoka clutched the fuda tightly, fingers slick with sweat and blood as he skittered down the stairs, sticking them between his teeth when the corridor widened into the half-submerged foyer, lit by yellowing electrical sparks, the damp carpet threatening to throw him facedown. The broken exposed wiring fizzed as it hovered dangerously above the water and he eyed it, wary as he stepped off the staircase. He grimaced, feeling the pulse of magic ensnared in those crumpling bits of paper, transmitting from tooth to gum to nerve like a bad toothache, imbued with all the power he and Tsuzuki could muster between them. They glowed across his empathy, the ghost of their making lingering like an emotional afterbirth. Pained amethyst. The desperate twining of power, fueled by grief and duty, filled with all the fragments of that last kiss. Despair. Need. Loss. Resignation. His eyes stung and he swiped at them with the back of his hand. He had to keep moving. The Diet building shuddered around him, mortar and steel giving way under the strain, glass shards raining down from the gaping hole where the great dome used to be. The night sky was visible, cold and remote with millions of stars twinkling down offering false hope by their light, hope he no longer carried. Water dripped from an exposed pipe, slowing to a trickle as it fed the ocean lapping at his feet, soaking heavily into his jean cuffs. There were other things, the glinting of eyes in the darkness, the sound of skittering too loud and ominous to be that of a rat (if Meifu ever had such things) and ... shapes. He clutched his side, feeling the flesh there give way, blood and skin trying to coagulate and failing miserably, instead leaking down his side in a trail of sight and sound. No, they weren't shapes, more like outlines -- the rise of a shoulder, the head lowered so that the curve of an ear could be made out before it disappeared again. His eyes followed it until they reached the torso, bile rising thick in his mouth so that he had to remove the fuda for fear he might well vomit. The body ended abruptly, bitten cleanly in half, the trunk floating serenely just a few centimeters away. He couldn't tell who it was, thank Enma for that. He'd seen too many friends dead this day and one more might undo him completely. Hisoka couldn't say what it was that drove him forward beyond the need to finish this. There was no plan, no last ditch effort. No cavalry would be coming to his aid... There was just him and it. It. When had he become an 'it'? Closing his eyes, Hisoka forced himself to breath, nearly choking on the stale scent of wet carpet and blood landing on his tongue, the air acrid as if it had caught fire. He leaned forward, allowing himself for the first time to admit the truth. They were all dead. He was the only one left. Technically, as Shinigami, they were all already dead and some of them had been for decades. They weren't alive as humans were alive, but they hadn't passed on either nor lost that tie to the physical as ghosts did. They simply were and not even numerous discussions with Watari in the past had brought him closer to understanding their undead state. Watari. Hisoka tried to banish the image of the genki scientist. There was nothing to be done for him now. The others...they were dead, as in completely dead, as in never coming back, not healing, gone from this plane of existence DEAD. He couldn't detect so much as a trace of them lingering in the air, renewed flesh violently discarded one last time. Tsuzuki... Hisoka wondered if he wasn't dead too, because all he felt was empty, as if his feelings had permanently frozen at the moment of his partner's death, the last remaining bit of the man trapped with in the bindings of the fuda he now held, burning his cut fingers as he clutched them. His power and Tsuzuki's last breath poured onto three final slips of paper. Protection. Offense. Banishment. The protecting ward had gotten him this far but he could feel the other pressing at it, pushing at the edges of his mind, seeking a way in. The raw, animalistic hunger worried him, but not quite so much as the rage, a rage that seemed to go on and on, lurking underneath the surface where they had never suspected. He had fooled them all with it in the end, perhaps even himself. Hisoka wasn't sure the fuda would be enough -- not against a visceral force that had lain the very Castle of Candles low itself, Tsuzuki's shiki destroyed one by one as their master summoned them. It was too much. How could he be expected to do this alone? Not all alone. The silence lay thick and accusing, broken by the death throes of the building, the inevitable drip-drip of water and the moan of broken concrete, time itself slipping away. And still the monster came, dogging his steps, maddened as it bestrode the halls, a newborn god, vicious and thirsting, demanding a hefty homage. He rose out of his half crouch, clutching the wall and moving again, clumsy and slow, damaged beyond even his preternatural abilities to heal quickly. He shambled along, this time towards the outer doors, wanting nothing more than to be free of this unlit funeral pyre. For untold millennia the Judgement Bureau had stood, indomitable as the forces they represented, always challenged, always changing, but never defeated. Never hovering so close to destruction as it did now. Would it rise again once they were all gone? Like the world from the Norse myths of Ragnarok? Or would it all just stop, no more humans, no more Shiki, just a winter of time unmoved, death striking even the dead? 'This is the way the world ends...' Hisoka shuddered, pushing aside the insane singsong of old poetry, the orchard looming just ahead, snow-white in the darkness, the twisting trunks beckoning him, not as the nightmare he had always associated them with, but as old friends. The wind stirred, a flurry of leaves brushing across his hot cheeks, tears streaking down without shame, the sweet scent cloying as it mixed with the harsh brittle taste of sickness in his mouth. He held no illusions about what was to come, only that he had this one last task to accomplish, one last burden laid on him by Tsuzuki. Tsuzuki whom he had loved and never told, never in words. Only with a hurried kiss, tasting the blood burbling up from his beloved's lungs, flecking their lips, the surge of power between them infusing and insuring his last escape. Warm lips whispering his name, a rattle of breath stealing between them, and then amethyst turning black, the cord that had always tethered Tsuzuki's consciousness to his awareness snapping leaving nothing but a void that went on without end. Leaving him nothing but endless regret and a wound so deep it would never heal. Even if he came out of this confrontation the victor, he wouldn't survive this, which was okay because he wasn't sure he wanted to anymore. The ground shook as he reached the edge of the orchard and he smiled grimly, aware of the irony of dying once more in a ring of cherry blossoms. Maybe some things really were meant to be. Hisoka straightened, tired pity in his eyes as he studied the misshapen hulk looming before him, razor sharp teeth and claws clicking against each other, bits of white cloth sticking to the bony spine from his back. How could they have known this would happen? That this one time, as equally harmless as the many before it, would prove their downfall, the brew gone horribly awry. Feral amber eyes stared out of blackened skin, twisted and snarling from beneath a wild mane of blond. Hisoka hoped that the experiment had robbed him of consciousness, had stricken him dumb of all but instinct, praying for the scientist's death so that he might at least be spared the knowledge that he had killed his friends. "Hello, Watari," Hisoka lifted the fuda as the monster charged. ***End 1.) The poem Hisoka quotes is of course The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot. For those interested in reading the entire poem, I suggest you go here. return to splash page