Author's Notes: If you somehow missed the warnings on our CLAMP page, yes this is an AU, and no, Hokuto is not acting exactly as she did in Tokyo Babylon. She's also 25 and not dead, so that stands to reason. ^.^ This was mostly an experiment written one night when I'd been poking through the Tokyo Babylon art book and was struck with the sudden urge to play with the twins, which may earn itself a companion vignette from X Subaru's POV at some point. Your Eden An X/1999 vignette by Amet Imonoyama Mansion: 1999 "Fuck. There goes another one." There had been a time not so long ago when Sumeragi Hokuto would have laughed off a broken nail, opened up one of the many diminutive drawers in her makeup caddy to pull out an assortment of synthetic replacements (acrylic, not those cheap press ons) and gone on with her life. Nowadays, her hands looked stubby and worn -- cuticles as prominent as a man's, nails brittle and broken, too long not to chip and tear and too short to look anything but raggedy. Acrylic was a distinct no-no these days, her stash long since abandoned to necessity in some anonymous junk drawer in her old room in Kyoto, because as much as beautifying one's self was a duty, so was making sure there was a self to beautify and long, insensate nails had a tendency to tear through ofuda. She'd tried to compensate, growing her hair out soon after It happened, partly to give herself a keener sense of the feminine in her form, and partly to kill the sting of the reminder every time she looked in the mirror, seeing him for an instant every damn time before reality kicked in and told her that he was gone and she was being stupid. It hadn't lasted long, despite the fact that three seconds after Grandmother had oh-so-dispassionately informed her that with him gone she'd inherited the unenviable position of family head and onmyouji at large she'd been chastened that it was time to grow up, train herself for the coming confrontation and become a 'proper' young lady (read: boring shrine maiden slash breeding cow), there was only so much she could go against her nature, and her nature thought the idea of spending an hour every morning braiding her hair just to look shiny so some foppish priest from a well respected spiritual family would consent to knock her up was a notion that needed to be browbeaten out of the family's collective consciousness so fast it'd made their heads spin. She was The Sumeragi now. She had better things to do than pander to some idiot with the personality of a wet sock and all the understanding of the shadier side of her work of a three year old. The face in the mirror now was more what she was comfortable with -- a choppy, pixie haircut that framed her face and highlighted the patina of her features well enough, smoky, smudged makeup that added a little mystique to her newer persona, one far less ostentatious than she might have liked but compromise was the seed of virtue, or so he used to tell her whenever he was tired of arguing and still angling to get his way. The face was still his, but leaner, harder -- people told her she had sharp, delicate features, but what they were really trying to tell her was that she looked like an anorexic teenage boy. Luckily the boy in question had been pretty, or she'd have taken it to heart. Not that she didn't occasionally smack someone upside the head for it anyway. Compromise might have been the seed of virtue but hubris was a damn hard habit to break and her pride rarely let the others give her any shit. Reaching forward, Hokuto plucked a jar of dark nail polish from her dresser, wrinkling her nose for a moment in indecision before deciding against actually trying to gloss over the new split in the nail on her index finger. She didn't have the fifteen minutes to spare slapping a couple of coats on and letting them dry, and in the end all it ever did was chip and peel in record time anyway. She was surprised sometimes, to find her own thinking following such utilitarian tracks, but she figured it was just another wonderful part of what her grandmother called growing up, and she just called getting fucked up. The Incident, moving out of Tokyo, moving back to Tokyo and into the strange shadow world inhabited by the players in their macabre little apocalyptic vision... If that was supposed to mature her, well, the only thing it'd done was teach her to swear a hell of a lot more and further convince her of the virtue of basic black. Today was a banner day for the color, her shirt a dusky blend of light weight cotton and gauzy mesh that straddled the grungy side of avant guarde, long enough to just barely reach the waistline of a pair of brown-black corduroys (yet another compromise because apparently people just weren't wearing black corduroy and she didn't have time to sew anymore), baring a glimpse of midriff when she shifted just so. That was more for entertainment value than anything, just to see Arashi twitch and Sorata try his damndest to be looking at anything but her in the middle of a meeting, something to mediate the boredom while the other Seals droned on and on about the nuances of destiny and foretelling like they hadn't heard it all a thousand times before. There was a short leather jacket to complete the outfit lying across the foot of her bed whenever she chose to get off her butt and retrieve it, tight fitting and streamlined in an effort to be dark and brooding without being cliché. On a man she figured it would probably have been ridiculous, but she imagined she was a little more commanding, style set to add a little swagger to her habitual sway, movements a little more forceful in the face of her more powerful (and didn't they let her know it) peers and she needed all the edge she could get not to get swallowed whole as they reached towards their imagined inevitability. Hokuto didn't believe in inevitability. If she had, she'd have given up years ago and that would have been the end of it, falling at her brother's side and into the same despairing mental hole she'd found their leader in when she'd arrived, and frankly, she'd always been a little disgusted that no one had bothered to teach the kid better. There was nothing more pathetic than someone who gave up before the battle had even begun, and she, useless though she of the half-assed onmyoujitsu power could sometimes be, she had never, ever lay down in the face of a threat. Ever. Her hand automatically went to clutch at the cross at her throat, her brother's and literally the smallest one he'd owned (though it was still nearly as big as her palm). It was cheap ass costume jewelry, the kind of fake plastic tortoise shell that looked absolutely nothing like the original material (it'd gone so well with that rawhide vest she'd given him that last Easter), but he'd never worn anything long enough to bother with anything more expensive. It made a pretty crappy memorial, but with everything important in her life going up in smoke for so cheap a price, it didn't seem to matter all that much so long as she still had something that was his. Her brother. Her twin. Her Subaru. His death had left a Dragon of Heaven-shaped hole in the fabric of destiny, and a heart shaped hole in her chest, but the former was considered a bit more pressing and even while they'd been telling Hokuto that she would have to assume the duties of leading the family her grandmother was blithely explaining that she had fuck all spiritual power with which to do it. But it'd been her fault dearest Seishirou-san had waltzed into their lives despite the hundred or so protests her brother had made whenever they'd joked about setting a date for the wedding. In the end his vague sense of foreboding had been more accurate than all her vaunted skill at judging character, and the Sakurazukamori had taken another of their family just as the feud, and all that history and tradition dictated. Like my father, and his father before him... Fuck tradition. "Obsessing again?" She hadn't heard the door open, but it was hard to miss the slender form inching its way into the room from where he'd cracked it open, unobtrusive as always and she wondered exactly how much the kid'd been eating lately to fit through that small a hole. Their leader. The Kamui of Heaven. Her student. He wasn't terribly impressive on the whole, but then neither had her twin been and he'd been one of the most powerful onmyouji to hit Japan in generations. Slender, short, gawky in that coltish way that only teenage boys could manage, Shirou Kamui was walking jailbait and she'd taken it upon herself to stay as close to him as humanly possible as soon as she'd seen him, realizing how many unhappy parallels could be drawn between his situation and her own sordid history. He was pretty, with those selfsame sharp features, artfully messy hair and indigo eyes that were enough to drown in (if you were into teenage boys, which she was decidedly not) and she'd found some familiarity in him, something to cling to in the confusing tide of drama and foreboding that seemed to rule their lives as Seals. He was also a little shit, though she'd managed to curb his anger enough to make his outbursts more along the lines of witty repartee than the awkward and somewhat colorless teenage drama it'd been to begin with. Their fearless leader couldn't do with telling a dream seer or a higher up at CLAMP Academy to fuck off, and he'd learned very quickly the benefits of shredding someone in politer tones and effectively keeping his poise throughout. Despite how he may have looked, Kamui was smart enough to know that he had to appeal to the petty prejudices of men twice his age to be an effective leader, and that meant finding ways to appear imposing despite his appearance. He was eager to learn, and considering that she couldn't do much else in the way of kicking bad guy ass Hokuto had been just as eager (not that she'd ever have told him that, mind you) to help, teaching him the ways of formality in the adult world and whatever she'd managed to learn in her truncated onmyouji training that could potentially aid him in harnessing the power he'd had been so unceremoniously dumped to deal with on his own. Today he was in pinstripe, a very official looking button down -- except for the part where it was bright indigo, a deep shimmering fabric that made his eyes that much more arresting and the higher ups twitch in annoyance. She'd been all too happy to help the kid develop a little style considering how unwilling everyone around them had been to give him any sort of comfort in the middle of his trials, and she'd been glad to see him growing something of a personality beyond instinctive defensiveness in the months since her arrival. He was The Kamui, but he was also a sixteen year old kid and he needed some kind of distraction if he was going to have to pull a miracle cure for humanity's ails out of his ass. His hair had grown in those months as well, messy locks just long enough to brush his shoulders and she considered for a moment -- "C'mere kid, you look like a vagabond." Hokuto ignored his earlier question, motioning him to her with a sweeping gesture, and his face split into a goofy grin as he let the door shut and shuffled over, stopping just short of her personal space. They'd always been informal, Hokuto all too sure that she was the only person in the house besides maybe that dope Sorata who let the kid be, well, a kid and damned if she was going to let them run him ragged over something so simple for the sake of ceremony. She'd made it clear to him when they began that she was always willing to be a safe place, corny psychobabble definition and all, free of judgment beyond a swift kick in the rear if she thought he was being stupid, and certainly free of all that pre-apocalyptic nonsense the rest of the house was so eager to feed him. Not to belittle the cause, that was so far left of a laughing matter it didn't bear mentioning, but there was only so long someone could stay on point before they felt the strain and started making stupid mistakes. Hokuto kept a little porcelain box on her dresser for just this sort of occasion, filled with every manner of hair tie she'd been able to find since Kamui'd sprung his sudden allergy to haircuts, some subtle, some decidedly not. She reached in to fish out a pale blue one, an elastic wrapped in woven threads a shade lighter than Kamui's shirt, and turned him around with a hand on his shoulder, tying the bulk of the unruly mass at the base of his neck. He still had bangs falling forward to obscure his eyes when she was done, but at least he looked a little less like he'd fallen out of bed and run for the door with less than five minutes to make himself presentable. He grinned as he turned around, shaking his head and pushing bangs from his line of vision. "Why do you even have those things?" "For keeping unruly little fashion victims like you," she aimed a poking finger at his stomach, rolling her eyes as he danced out of the way, "from looking like you're trying to grow a mullet." Kamui wrinkled his nose. "Like you could talk." His eyes roamed her outfit, assessing, shoulders squaring haughtily and if she'd thought for a second he was serious she'd have belted him one for his trouble. "Excuse me, child. Have some respect for your teacher." "I would, if teacher didn't look like Madonna-does-vigilante-fashion," he warbled, flopping down onto the bed and rolling on his stomach to face her, feet swinging gaily in the air. "We have these things called colors now, they're all the rage outside of funeral services." Silence stretched between them, expectant on his end and strained on hers. She'd never really figured out how to break the news to Kamui that despite their verbal jousting matches, her life had been nothing but one long memorial service since the day she'd found her brother's lifeless corpse bleeding fire engine red all over the pavement. Life before that day had been a never ending party -- switching clothes to deal with unwanted admirers, sneaking into Subaru's room to shove hot milk at him when she knew he was having trouble dealing with something he'd seen on the job, all the hysterical combinations of color she'd convinced him to wear with just a pout and the threat of a bitching session -- the party'd come to a screeching halt long ago, and since then she hadn't been able to bring herself to be anything but glib and maudlin. Her colors had always reflected her mood, and without him... She straightened abruptly, banishing the last dregs of that particular thought. She knew the kid understood that her brother had been killed by a Dragon of Earth, but only intellectually, and she intended to keep it that way. The last thing she needed was to get all blubbery and whine out her troubles on the shoulder of her own damn student, who had seen more strife in sixteen years than she'd seen in twenty five. "Is there a point to this little visit," she said, "Or did you just stop by to critique my outfit before you toddled off to school like a good little boy?" His smile softened, tipping his head for a moment to throw her a quizzical look, but he allowed the evasion, shimmying around on the bed until he could stuff a hand into the pocket of his slacks and drag out a battered piece of paper, flashing it triumphantly before folding it into a paper airplane and launching it at her. "You got a call," he said, choking out a laugh as she was forced to lunge out of her seat to catch the plane in motion. "Something at Tokyo Tower again." Tokyo Tower. Great. The place had enough associations for her to render what little concentration she usually mustered for her duties nearly null, and the last time she'd been there she'd managed to meet up for a little session of witty banter with His Highness the Murdering Fuckhead. There went any chance of her morning being any fun at all while Kamui was off playing mild mannered high school student at CLAMP Academy. She sighed, unfolding the paper in her hands. It was the usual -- disrupting spirit manifestation, wreaking havoc, please help, yadda yadda. In the end, Hokuto could actually handle most of the spooks the family traditionally took responsibility for, but most of the instances she was called in to handle were more annoyances than actual threats and with the apocalypse looming large over their heads she was finding it harder and harder to leave Kamui's side for extended periods of time. Maybe she couldn't do a damn thing if the other Kamui attacked, but Hokuto didn't think she could stand to be the one who found the aftermath again, to find another brother bleeding vivid color over unforgiving earth. Better to die for the cause than to be the one left burying the bodies. "Hey." As if sensing her distress in that uncanny way of his, Kamui moved so that when she looked up he was by her side, hand squeezing her shoulder. She only realized her hands were shaking when they stopped, held her breath and tried to fight the uprising of shame that she'd let herself slip enough to let him see her upset. He needed a rock, not another patch of quicksand. "I think I can survive math class without you. Go hunt some poltergeists." His words hit a little too close to home, but she dredged up a smile to reassure him, petting a hand over his hair to smooth it back into something resembling order. "Just make sure you don’t fail it, boyo, that's what I'm worried about." He laughed, ducking away from her fingers, and headed for the door. "I'm not failing because I don't get it, I'm failing because I've missed so many damn classes." He turned, yanking the door open with a flourish and motioned her through. "But I'm going today, and who knows? Maybe if I ask really, really nicely and mention that I'm living in the Chairman's mansion again Sensei'll give me some extra credit?" She rolled her eyes. "Cocky. Who taught you that?" "You did," he grinned. "Tell you what, you go to work, I'll go to class, and when we both make our triumphant return to the house we'll order pizza. Maybe play cards or something. Yuzuriha's been complaining she never gets to see us again." Crumpling the phone message in her hand, she grinned. "Sure thing, kid, just be prepared to have your butt handed to you." He blinked for a moment, surprised for all of an instant before teenage mercurialness helped him shake it off and brought the grin back. "You wish." One last squeeze of her arm and he was gone, running full tilt down the hallway to round the corner, and she knew she was getting older when just watching him made her tired. She spared another glance at the paper in her hand. Tokyo Tower, of all places. If it hadn't been one of the great monuments standing in the way of the planet falling apart she'd have rallied to have the damn thing torn down with the number of times her family had been called there over the years to take care of one manifestation or another. Ah well, at least when she got home she could kick back and watch the kids act like actual kids, pretend for a little while that the sky was not falling down around them while the rest of the world went about their business in happy obliviousness. Locking her bedroom door behind her, Hokuto started down the hall, pocketing the paper and her keys to follow Kamui's path at a far more sedate pace, heels clicking satisfyingly across the polished wood of the floor. She spared a moment to wonder at the strange look on Kamui's face when she'd agreed, weird to think that he would be so surprised when she'd never made a secret of how amused she was that she could wallop him at cards and still have him come back for more... She paused, blinking muzzily at the toes of her boots for a moment before realization hit. That little shit. He knew she hated pizza. return to splash page