Cross Academy

He could smell how weak she was even before he could see it. He’d left her mostly to herself for the last couple of days, once it seemed that she was doing well enough to be on her own for a while. Nobody wanted to spend so long in his company, after all, and he wouldn’t force his presence on someone who didn't need it. But now he could tell that this had been a mistake. He turned to regard her flatly for a moment, and as usual, his thoughts passed through absolutely no filter before they reached his mouth. It was a small wonder someone hadn’t killed him for his impudence yet. Not that nobody had tried. “You look like shit, Fujiwara.”

It took him a second for that one to catch up with him, and then he realized that, whether or not it was true, he perhaps should not have said it that way. He didn’t usually care for tact or how his words were interpreted, but for some reason, he didn’t want… he didn’t want her to do what almost everyone else did and just think the worst of him. It also… wasn’t entirely true. Of course, he’d meant that she didn't look well, which was obviously the case, judging from the circles under her eyes and the state of her hair, but she was still…

The thought was dangerous at best, and he shoved it to the side before he could complete it. “Sorry,” he amended. “You just… you seem tired. And thirsty.” His mouth compressed into a thinner line, and before he really thought out what he was doing, he reached up to fix her hair a bit, combing his fingers through it and forcing it to lay more neatly on her head. It was lank, missing the healthy sheen it usually had. He swallowed thickly—it made him uncomfortable, disquiet, to see her in such a state. He wanted to fix it, or help her fix it, but he wasn’t sure he knew how. “Do you need…? I mean, you could if you wanted to. I don't mind.” Was it supposed to be this strange? Were other people more cavalier about offering their blood to others? It felt like such an intimate offer to him, even though he’d been raised not to care about it. Maybe that was why—he’d been forbidden in his youth from either asking or offering, to say nothing of taking.

But… this was a way he could help her, and he cared about that more than about any of the other stupid things he’d been considering just now. Who cared if it was appropriate? He’d never let that kind of thing stop him from saying or doing as he pleased before, and he didn’t plan on that changing now. So maybe it wouldn’t hurt to be a little more honest, say one more thing he probably shouldn’t.

“I was worried about you,” he said quietly, almost as if he were ashamed to admit it. “For a while there, I didn’t know if I’d get you back from that and I…” he shook his head, belatedly realizing that he was still toying with her hair and dropping his hands to his sides. Sora swallowed past a sudden lump in his throat. “I was afraid. I don’t know what would happen if I… lost you.” There. He said it. It felt a bit like blasphemy, to admit that he was afraid of anything at all. He never had been before. He knew that this, like the hate he’d striven to avoid, was a weakness. But it was not hate he felt for her, not at all. Some part of him knew what it had to be, then, but he couldn’t make himself say it. Not yet.

A false promise. He knew that. Nothing lasted, and everything was eventually destroyed, the good things most of all. But he’d wanted to hear it all the same, to take that much succor from someone else’s simply being alive, and caring about him of all people enough to say it, even past all the doubt and all the possibilities of failure. But it must have been unfair of him to ask that. He was a selfish person, after all, and there was no longer any denying that. He’d once thought he'd be content with keeping his distance, staying away from all others, until such point as he could use him self up in pursuit of a goal. For the sake of someone else. He’d fooled himself thinking that his revenge would ever satisfy him, but he’d allowed his use for the end all the same.

But he couldn't do that anymore. There were too many things that he wanted now, things that precluded him from simply being a knife in someone else’s hand. Could he accept this about himself? The answer remained to be seen. Perhaps…

Asuka was not done speaking, though, and for a distant moment, he wondered what they would be like, if this world were not such an ugly place. Would they still be as they were? Or would their closeness have ended before it ever became closeness at all? Would they simply be two students, ordinary as they could be, passing occasionally in the hall, exchanging barbs from time to time? Would she be the violinist that he didn’t know the identity of? Would he content himself with the music, or would he have never been drawn to it at all, the way the more mournful pieces seemed to reflect something of his own soul back at him?

His eyes closed as her grip tightened around him, and his lips quirked into a smile. “I’d be stupid if I insisted on helping you without ever letting you help me,” he said, which was rather a way of admitting he had been stupid. His pride had kept him from this for longer than it should have, but he was beginning to see that his pride didn’t matter at all. Not next to her. His canines extended, and he waited for just a moment, hovering above that juncture in her flesh that so fascinated him, giving her one last chance to back out, to refuse, to insist that it had been a mistake. But she did not, and it was with an exhale that was almost relieved that he sank his teeth into that tender flesh.

It was not something that he’d ever learned how to do, but in this as in many other things, instinct guided him, and he let it. Having tasted actual blood only seldom in his lifetime, and that usually his own in the heat of a fight, the taste of it was almost overwhelming to his senses: stronger and more compelling than he remembered it. The temptation to overindulge was great, especially when more of her memories, pieces of her that he had not yet encountered, began to flit over the surface of his mind. He wanted to know her, and this was one sure way to do that, to understand what of herself that it was hard to ask for or put into words. But he knew restraint—it was his oldest lesson, and so he pulled back a little, passing his tongue over the wound as it closed and leaning back. His eyes, normally black as the void, were twin rubies in that moment, faintly aglow, and they bored into hers with some new understanding that he hadn’t had before. It was strange, but also exhilarating, and seemed to coax some kind of adrenaline response in him.

He wanted to kiss her. Ordinarily, this thought would never have translated into action, because restraint was something of a specialty of his, but now, flooded with sensations that he had no immunity against and no experience with, he faltered in that restraint. Even so, when he slanted his mouth over hers, the touch was as gentle as he knew how to make it, tender rather than demanding, though not from hesitation. He had certainly not hesitated.

It was she that shifted the nature of their embrace, and he found that he did not mind this. She had changed so much of the rest of him, shaken him right off his foundations of pride and duty and vengeance, and he’d been content to let her, knowing that he’d been looking for an excuse to step off that path all along. She’d given him one—he needed to do it to protect her, his friend. He’d needed to become more than he used to be for her sake.

This was no longer that: he wasn’t changing because she was his friend. He did not respond to the aggression in the way she kissed him with something just as heated, just as devouring, because she was his friend. And he certainly did not nip at her lower lip and slide his tongue along hers because they were friends. Sora had, after all, had friends before, however few they were. But this was not something that he’d ever had cause to do, and frankly he was starting to wonder what had taken him so long, because there was something about it that called to the same primal part of him as the hunt. Only that was not so heated, so blistering and mind-blanking as this. He was not unable to think of anything else when he hunted, even if the razor focus, the way each sensation seemed magnified, was similar.

He wanted her. In a way he’d never wanted anyone else before. The thought wasn’t as startling as he expected it to be—rather, it was like several more pieces of this puzzle that was what they were to each other, sliding into place, and locking there. He wondered if she knew, that with every breath they exchanged, every small noise, she was just engraving her name onto the thing that beat between his lungs. He’d never had another use for it—she could have it if she wanted it, but he didn’t know how to say this. In all the things he had learned, in every bit of information he’d been taught or experienced or picked up by instinct alone, there was nothing for that feeling. So for the moment, he allowed himself to revel in that which instinct did provide a guide for.

Slowly, he backed them up into the nearest tree, pinning her there with his superior weight. Only then did he part to allow them both air, sensing that she might need it. He wasn’t unaffected himself, and his breathing was shortened, his heart still thundering away as though he’d run for days, only there wasn’t even the faintest trace of fatigue, just more adrenaline. She’d been saying something, and for some reason, now that he could think in decent intervals again, he wanted to know how the sentence finished. “You… what?” he asked, a slow smile overtaking his face. It was mischief and lightness and something so very unlike what he would usually wear that it surprised even him. But he felt… lighter, here. Now, with her, like the troubles that waited for them at every turn were that much further away.

Her answer wasn’t quick enough in coming for his taste, so he decided that there were other, much better ways to persuade her to speak. If her response earlier was any indication, she was enjoying this just as much as he was, and it couldn’t really be considered torture if it was enjoyable, could it? “You should tell me,” he murmured lowly. “I’m trained in interrogation, you know.” It was a playful threat if ever there was one, and he bit gently at the shell of her ear, trailing a line of kisses down her throat to her shoulder.

That smile—that subtle, sly quirk of her lips—was going to undo him someday, he just knew it. He was considering how best to press this interrogation of his when he felt both of her hands on his face, and he went along as she directed, locking eyes with her. Past the point of taking blood, his had returned to their usual black color, but that was where the resemblance ended. They were not flat, nor did they seem cold. If anything, there was warmth in them, and depth. He’d never bothered to do things like pick a favorite color, but he knew in that moment that his was and would always be jade-green. Her eyes reflected the light just a little, making the color seem at once pale and rich, like the sun shone through a gem. And when did he start constructing metaphors? Well, it didn’t matter to him. He’d write her poetry if she wanted it, however unlike him it would be.

He could feel her hesitation in that too-brief moment she kissed him, and so, much as he wanted to, he didn’t try to push or deepen it. He was sensing that the answer he would receive had much more weight to it than he’d expected when he asked, and if so, she had every right to take a moment to give it. The arms that caged her to the tree dropped gently to the lines of her shoulders, delicate but strong—like she was. He kept his forehead bowed to touch hers, their noses scarce centimeters apart. He’d never voluntarily been this close to another person before, but he didn’t mind it. For once, he found it hard to concentrate on all the things the environment around him was telling him through his senses, because they were all so filled with her that he didn’t care about anything else. Not in this moment.

At the hitch in her breath, his own stilled, his entire body freezing into a perfectly motionless render of what he was, the knowledge of what he was about to hear clicking into place a split second before he heard it. And when he did, everything else suddenly made so much sense. He hadn’t wanted to think that it could be the answer, because he didn’t truly know what it was. And yet… wasn’t that just another kind of cowardice? A fear of confronting the unknown only because it was unknown? Sora was many things, but he had never been a coward. Now, when things seemed more important than anything else he’d done in his life, seemed hardly the time to start being one.



He was suspended in animation for another three seconds after that, closing his eyes and processing the effect that three short syllables, such miniscule words, could have on someone like him. Nobody in his entire life had ever told him that they loved him. Not the people who called him their child, not his only friends, not his cousin, not his ward. No one, in more than a hundred years of life.

If he could call it a life.

The first word had tensed him, like a drawn bowstring, taut and immobile. The second had been a cracking blow to a barrier he had not known existed in him, and the third, with its subtle emphasis, had broken through it altogether, and whatever it was that had held him back, stopped him from feeling as other men felt, living as he desired, hearing the things his heart was so desperately yelling at him, shattered utterly. He released the breath he’d been holding, a palpable note of relief in it, and wrapped his arms around her, melding them together so that there was no space, not even a tiny pocket of air, between them. He held her like she was the most precious thing in all the world, breakable and fragile and his, and he shuddered, a tremor wracking his spine. “Asuka,” he said, and the word was uttered so tenderly, so choked with emotion that it almost didn’t sound like his own voice. “I can’t… there’s no way I can tell you how much that means to me, no way I can repay you for what you’ve given me. All I can do is love you, as much as you’ll let me. I don’t know how, and I’ll probably get it wrong, a lot, but I can promise that I’ll never stop.”

It wasn’t enough. Nothing would be enough. But she was generous and forgiving, and he supposed that there was a chance that she’d take it, and forgive him for lacking the rest.

Her fingers against his scalp and through the loose locks of his hair produced a throaty noise from him, something almost similar to one Midori would make. One could nearly call it a purr, because it was the sound of pure contentment. He was here and she was here, and there was nothing standing between them anymore. He hadn’t known he wanted it, and yet he could not any longer imagine wanting anything else. His life, which had seemed to him rather impoverished, dark with the occasional bright spot, now carried a sense of completeness. He had friends, he had a family, however small, and he had her. It was almost too much, for someone like him.

But he knew she would not appreciate the thought, that lingering sense of his own unworthiness, and so for her, he pushed it away for now, locking it up somewhere tight in his mind. The last wisps of that smoky uncertainty were burned away with the heat of her kiss, and if anything, he matched it, fervent and more sure of this, of her, than he had ever been of anything. Asuka Tsukino was a bit of a surprise, and for a frantic moment, he would have choked, had he been able to, but though his heart skipped a beat, thudding irregularly in his chest, it was not a wholly unwelcome thought. Just one for another time. This was new, and it was best to wait until it was a little older for thoughts like that. He understood that there would never ben anyone else for him, whatever that brought them, but even so, it might be better to adjust to the idea, first.

But he didn’t dislike it. He didn’t dislike it at all.

He smiled down at her softly, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. He’d rather mussed it, as he suspected she had disheveled his. Gathering her up in his arms, he bounded into a run, the smile still on his face, then, once he reached a fixed point, he jumped, enjoying the weightless sensation of it admittedly less than the feel of her against him. A few more hops and they were in one of his favorite places—the top of the tallest tree in the forest. From here outwards, they could look out over the canopies of the other trees and see the varying shades of green. None were quite as brilliant as her eyes, but they were, he supposed, beautiful in their own way. Beyond that, the school grounds were visible, and the buildings and the lake. It was, overall, a very lovely vista, but he was more interested in things closer to himself.

Sora settled them both on a branch, putting her back against his chest and draping his arms over her shoulders, his legs running along the outside of hers. He propped his chin on her head, wrapping her in himself and still feeling keenly that they were not quite close enough. It would do, for now. “Tell me something,” he asked quietly. Though the words were phrased as a demand, the tone was one of entreaty, of request. “Anything about you that you want me to know. What is your favorite color? What kinds of things so you eat? When did you learn to play the violin? What do you want to do with the rest of your life?” Over time, Sora had come to know a lot about Asuka, but their friendship was unconventional. He knew more about how she fought than how she spent her leisure time, more about who she was at her core than the odd little tidbits that people usually picked up through acquaintance. He wanted to know everything, but he would be content for now to start with what she wanted to tell him.

He listened attentively to the things she told him, memorizing not just the content, but the tonality of her voice, the way this things was edged with humor, and that with a bit of melancholy, lingering grief for the events of a year and a half previous. He could understand that—it was just more evidence that the things she cared about were incredibly important to her, as was the case with him. His precious things might be fewer, but he cared for them no less than anyone else did—this, he was learning, because he hadn’t quite understood it about himself, before.

He pressed his lips to her crown when she spoke of her cousin and her uncle—Hayate certainly had not liked him, but Sora understood that. He’d just wanted to protect his cousin, and that, they shared. He’d never met her uncle, but from the way she talked about him, he was someone quite dear. His mind wandered to the people he’d called his friends, and it took only a recognition of the twinging ache in his chest for him to understand that he, too, still grieved, even after all this time. “Kaede’s parents were the first and only friends I ever had, before you,” he said quietly, blinking out at the vista before them without really seeing it. Her solidity, the feeling of having her right there, that close to him, made it easier to talk about, somehow.

“They were humans, but they worked for my family. Geneticists, both of them. I spent a lot of time with them, because my family was very interested in replicating my abilities. But to them, I wasn’t just a project. Yusuke told the worst jokes, and I never understood what he was talking about, really. I think he did it just so Sakura would laugh—she was very serious, otherwise.” Despite the fact that even then, he’d been significantly older than either of them, they had been more his parents than anyone, and they’d taught him, without ever really consciously trying to, about things like acceptance. Being a friend. Caring about someone. The only reason he had the faintest idea what love was was because they loved each other, and he’d been able to see it, even if he couldn’t name it.

“They were killed when the rest of my family was. Kaede was only a baby—I’m lucky that Sachiko knew a few things about kids, otherwise we would have really screwed it up.” His cousin and he hadn’t really been that close before the incident the both survived—it was only afterwards that they’d learned to get along as family. Sachiko and Kaede had taught him what that felt like, though he was far short of a father to the girl. Maybe more like a brother should be. His arms tightened a little around Asuka, and he took a deep breath, breathing her in for a moment while she continued.

It seemed he had upset her without meaning to, and he wasn’t initially sure what to do when she buried her face into his hands, so he gentle stroked backwards with his fingers, tracing the delicate lines of her cheekbones back to her ears and running his fingers through her hair. He gathered it to one side, exposing one side of her throat, where he planted a soft kiss, almost chaste, save for its location. “Now who’s asking for impossible promises?” he asked sadly, leaning forward slightly to press his cheek against hers. He didn’t honestly know what to say about something like that—he didn’t have any more idea how long she’d live than she did. He knew what she was, and he knew that there was nobody else like her—in more than one sense of the phrase.

So without any idea of what should be said, he simply said what he could—and that was what he truly thought. “I’ll always love you,” he said, with the simplicity of utter certainty. If there was on thing he really understood about himself, it was that once he had decided on something, he didn’t rescind his choices. He wasn’t sure if he’d chosen to love her or if it had simply happened, but he was choosing to accept it, come what may. “As for how long we’ll have together…” he paused, adjusting his arms so that they wound around her waist and he rested his forehead on her shoulder. It hurt him to imagine her dying, but he was not one to hide from the reality of a situation.

“No one can ever know how long that will be. And your lifespan isn’t the only reason for that. I could die someday; I have enemies that would not mourn me. Anything can happen. Maybe your lifespan will limit us, maybe it won’t. But there’s no point in tainting what we do have with what we might not. Just…” He sighed gustily, his breath fanning over her shoulder and down her back. “Please don't talk to me about you dying. I’m not sure I can handle it right now.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to handle it, and anyway, there was little point in doing so before it was necessary. He would rather focus on being alive with her.

He remained steady as she shifted, anchoring both of them in the branches. Not that he was afraid of falling—their bodies could handle such things easily if it came to that, and he’d be able to catch her and land on his feet, anyway, but he wanted to spare her unnecessary pain or anxiety wherever he could. Plus, he was kind of enjoying this—feeling like there might as well not be anyone else in the entire world. Being selfish for a little while. His hands moved to circle her back, and he ran his fingers in random, nonsensical patterns over her uniform jacket as he listened to her speak.

He’d never thought that a singular person could be such a complex thing, before. He’d been able to look at people, and to some extent, identify what he needed to know about them, and everything else had seemed like so much unnecessary information, and largely dull as well. But he found himself endlessly fascinated with the variety of tonalities her voice could produce, the sound of her breathing and her blood, the subtle variations in scent produced when she moved. The way she wasn’t like anyone else he’d ever know. All of what would have been superfluous about someone else enthralled him about her. It was more than a little dangerous, if he were being honest, but he’d never shied away from danger as such.

She made the suggestion sound so reasonable, so possible, so… desirable. To just take his family and leave, never to come back? If only, if only. But there were things that were possible and things that were not. This, according to Sachiko, was one of those things that wasn't. “They’d find us, Asuka. Trouble would always find us again. We’re not meant to get through this without fighting for it, for how long, I couldn’t say.” Uncharacteristically, he sighed, trying not to think about it overmuch. If it were just him and no one else, he’d probably be able to disappear. He was largely untraceable, and given his abilities, not even a seer could get a proper read on him. But it wasn’t just him, and it never would be. Once, maybe, it could have been, but no longer. He wouldn’t leave them, and most of all, he wouldn’t leave her. A group of four would always leave traces, and he knew for a fact that someone wanted at least her badly enough to keep looking. Sachiko had told him so.

“One day,” he said, voice firm with resolve. “We will. We’ll leave everything behind, get Sachiko and Kaede to somewhere comfortable, and then keep going, just you and me. Wherever you want, for as long as you want. I promise.” So she didn’t have any future plans? Well, neither did he. It was time to make some, perhaps.

The next day found Ana with a free period after lunch, and so she’d taken to wandering the grounds. Aside from Zenith’s sanctuary, there was a large forest off to one end of it, and though she had not yet ventured too far in, she was enjoying a meadow on its periphery—which was to say that she was laying sprawled in the middle of it, arms out to her sides, watching the clouds go by. Since O-chan had showed her yesterday where the cafeteria was, she’d brought most of her food with her, and was idly munching on an apple, humming to herself and trying to decide if that cloud looked more like O-chan or a bunny rabbit. It actually looked a little more like the rabbit, but she wanted it to look like her new friend, and so she told herself that it did.

She was about ready to move on to the next one when a dark shadow fell over her, and she adjusted her eyes until they focused on a face she’d never seen before. The man looked down at her with a flat expression, though there was something in his eyes that made it different from the one Zenith wore. He, too, was quite handsome, and from the fact that she’d caught not even a whisper of his presence, she assumed he must be a vampire also. Odd, that she’d not even sensed his thoughts.

“Shouldn’t you be in class?” he asked her, voice just as flat. Ana blinked—with the way people were around here, you’d think showing your own emotions was a terrible social faux pas. Everyone either his behind smiles or blank expressions. How peculiar. She found that his thoughts were elusive, as well, in a way she’d never encountered before. She had to concentrate for him to even register as present. Maybe it was some kind of ability he had?

She smiled at him regardless, uncaring of the slight awkwardness of being looked at from so far above. “Actually, it’s my free period. Yours too?” She squinted past the brightness of the sun, just able to make out the band around his arm. She’d seen one of those just yesterday… and then it clicked. “You must be Sora! Asuka mentioned you yesterday.” She sat up, sticking out her hand for him to shake.

He looked confused for a few moments, though it was more a slight flicker over his face than any true expression, but e took her hand anyway, his grip a bit gentle, as though he were afraid he might break her arm. Then again, considering what he probably was, he might well do so on accident. “Uh, sure. And you are?” Asuka hadn’t mentioned this person, obviously, and her abundant cheer and seeming disregard for the things about him that usually intimidated other people was throwing him off a bit.

“Ana. It’s nice to meet you, Sora.”