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May All Be Pain or Love	By : Skwishee Category: > Kyo/Kaoru Views: 5674 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the members of Dir en grey. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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I was staring at my own worst nightmare: a hall, blackened by swarming shadow, two fire-lights at the end of the passage, one on each side where the hall split in two to move deeper into the belly of the beastly edifice. I was sapless and bleeding, my sword long lost from me and in no way able to defend myself against whatever had devoured the meat from these barren bones. The tears that wet my cheeks were drying out, perhaps because I couldn't find the strength to push them out anymore.

Outside the faint sounds of battle dispersed into the dark and the heavy pelting of rain, likened to the rage of a monsoon, grew to echo in the room, a saturnine and almost mystical sound. I'd spent moments cowering in this place, pride stricken and childish in my very real fear, contemplating the sounds outside, and I listened carefully for any of these that could at least tell me which side was taking the win. Of course, nothing did and nothing could. Each scream, each cry or pained gasp, each sharp, chime of blade against blade was indistinguishable. Their men sounded no different from ours.

I was wrested back to reality by the sound, as strong as I had heard it when I was young. I pushed myself back into the corner and held my breath, making an attempt to steal away my nervousness and keep silent. I couldn't begin to tell you how it sounded, course and dry, but inversely wet and smooth. On its own I suppose it wasn't any sort of sound that would make one afraid, but in the dark and unknown it was chilling. I felt like a coward, but it had brought my mind backwards to that little boy who had stared into the dreary dark and had heard a noise so foul it had scared the very composure out of him. Yes, perhaps I was a coward after all.

I watched the little hanging pans that were sailed inside with bright flame, they rocked and flickered as the wind blew through the embrasures set high on the walls, too small for escaping through but enough to allow the wind room to move. On each sway of the pans it seemed as though the flat black shadow on the left grew bigger and moved more toward the middle of the hall. The sound seemed to grow and soon I realized that it wasn't my imagination. Cast there on the wall was an abnormality, an ungainly silhouette. It lurched against the wall as though the wind was hindering its advance.

The wind...yes, it was howling, absolutely screaming outside, whipping through the trees and the thin, gaunt branches that scraped the roof every now and then. It roared in with a great gust and snapped the left pan from the wall, sending it crashing to the ground. The fire died instantly. I looked to the pan on the right, still burining and barely wavering despite the bluster. I prayed that it would stay alight.

A stirring in the dark took my eyes right back to the center of the hall and the thing that crept through it. Whatever it was it was lumbering. Up and down went its head as it came. I knew because I could see its eyes now even if I had to squint to do so. My breath was becoming so ragged that it disturbed the pile of the arrow on every inhalation.

At the end of the hall, just out of any revealing view, it stopped— and to my surprise— spoke to me.

"I know your smell." It said. This was startling, not because the creature itself could articulate like a human, but that its voice was not raspy, not gruff or deep. In fact it was soothing and sweet, soft spoken and proper.
I couldn't find my voice. Here I was, six years old again, a scared little boy face to face with a monumental (but very polite) fear. I heard it move forward again and the little bones on the floor snapped like twigs underneath its weight.

"How unfortunate that you find yourself here...but fate seems to have led you once again to my door, child. Devil-seeking little creature, I can smell the blood...coming up your throat..." It hissed.
"Who...what are you?" I said, asking the obvious, despite my own urges to stay silent and pretend I didn't know it could see me.

Little shudders wracked my body and I became aware of the fact that I was beginning to slip into unconciousness. My heartbeat was so frantic in my ears that I could scarcely hear any other sound now. Finally a coughing fit took me and I realized that I was choking on my own blood.

A coiling tail —as thick as my waist— rolled out of the shadow like a wave and came crashing down to the floor, crushing more of the scattered things underneath as well as turning up a thin cloud of dust perhaps older than me. Because of the poor light I was only able to see that it was smoothed and scaled, however knowing that I could describe it was nothing of a comfort to me.

"I am the god to which you whisper your prayers." I heard it say before I felt my heart finally burst.

o o o

[ "Kaoru! Kaoru! Look at me!"

.....
....................

A flash of lightning lit up the sky and I found myself just as wet as if I had jumped into the river. Rills of water came down my arms that hung loosely by my side, the very real attestation that the sky was still suffering a lover's quarrel with the earth. There was no pain in me, no arrow in my chest. The only wounds I bore were scratches.

"Kaoru!"
I looked up toward the voice that bid for my attention but saw no one. Instead I found that the wetness on my body wasn't rain at all, or rather not only rain, but blood as well as water. It was as if some horrendous battle was raging in the heavens, but looking skywards I saw that it was only the treetops and there was no battle, at least not any that lasted so long.

It was lifeless; lifeless except for the thunder, and then also for the rain and the wind, and for myself who seemed to be the only living person under this canopy of dead men, for that's what it was. The casualties were held lovingly by branches and arbors, thrown into the air by something unseen. Their blood was being drawn from them, called out by gravity and the elements, down the trees, through the air, with the wind, from any direction, from any point it all came and soon found the ground.

Yes, but there was something else here, something...not alive, standing at the gargantuan white gate that led to the main hall of Miya-tei, creeping against the white like a displaced shadow. The hand facing the gate was raised, sliding fingers across the alabaster paint and bringing with them ghastly trails of red. It smiled to me, licked the blood of its fingers, drank it from the red rain. When it looked to me I saw it clearly, an unsung, white faced phantasm.

The hair on the top of its head was black as an ink block, thick and the long, long length of it lashed his face when the wind howled. His, yes, it had to be a him. The body, while shapely, was too flat, masculine, dark pants and a black, sleeveless hanten open and revealing a pale torso wrapped with bandages. There were dark cuts all over his form, the most noticeable not a cut at all but a horridly oversized hole in his chest that stood gaping like the hollowed out maw in a tree, dusty cracked edges, like his body was as dry as if he were made of sand no matter the moisture coming down on us.

When he finally noticed me he licked his lips and I had only the time to blink before I felt something slide around my fingertips. The creature was kneeling before me suddenly, black tongue running over my blood soaked digits. I pulled away in shock, too taken aback to speak.

For some reason I felt compelled to stay where I was, almost as if my body was frozen to the ground. The very next time I blinked I saw its face adjacent to my own, dark, upturned eyes staring into mine. The artist in me appreciated the fact that while morbidly unsettling, the thing had a beautiful face. The high bone structure, even more angular than my own, aided in making the overall shape of its head very catlike, the other features, the drawn mouth and somewhat hooked nose, only helping to obtain this image. The eyes...the eyes were incredible, seductive and consuming, despite my fear I felt lost in them. Another blink sent it away from me entirely. Now the gate was open wide, where before it had been shut and bloody footprints— in the process of being washed away—went straight through the broad doors.

Not being able to help myself—and indeed I had decided that I couldn't stand there forever— I ran up the stairs and peered into the main hall. More bodies were here, left where they had fallen, but not defiled like the ones outside.

In the center of this courtyard sat a slouched form, not dead, but weary. It was Kyo, kneeling on the cobblestone, wet and shaking. His blond hair was mostly a deep red now and what was not stuck to his face and his body en masse was pooled in the puddles behind him, fanning and waving in the water as though it wasn't filled with hair but with tiny, yellow snakes.

While this scene made my blood run cold, I was, however, happy to note that none of my family were among the dead in the hall, and it didn't seem as though the battle had gone any further into the house than that. But it was a fleeting happiness, especially so when the figure below me let out a shrieking wail and my ears burned from the ferocity of it. I knelt before him, trying to figure out what could be the matter but he seemed not to notice me at all. Instead he fell forward and sobbed into his hands.

Then I heard someone call his name and frantic footsteps ran toward us. I moved aside in a daze as Dai crashed to the ground in front of him and wrapped his arms around him, letting Kyo cry into his shoulder like a vulnerable child, something I hadn't seen since that day at the spring when he tucked Kano's small body in the hollow of the tree and wept for the cat like it had been a person. and I had held him and let him cry. This time though his sobs were louder and more pained. The grim visage of death was all over this place and I couldn't help but wonder who had died.

The rain seemed to pelt harder at my body and Kyo sunk further into Dai's arms, unable to control his crying. I was growing more afraid. From the look of complete devastation on Dai's face as well I could only think of Shinya and at once I felt my stomach lurch and a feeling of complete dread washed over me. The rain painted me with a sadness I had never felt before and all of my own problems seemed to fly from me, but when I saw Shinya's delicate and shrouded form rush into the rain from the other side of the house and stop short in shock I was dumbstruck, and only one explanation remained in my head. I was the one who had died.

Overwhelmed by the realization I turned to run only to come face to face with the tall black figure again, and somehow I immediately found myself pushed into the west wall that had moments ago been half the courtyard away from me and I was left to wonder how I had gotten so far in such a split second. And as quick as I had come to this position he had descended on me and captured my lips in a forcefull kiss, his hands held my arms above my head and I could feel the stone wall scrape my knuckles. My mouth was forced open and his tongue snaked inside. I could feel it moving into my throat like a worm and, gagging, I found that I could feel the thing in my chest,tearing through thin tissue, the tip stopping directly over my heart...

When I felt it make contact I gave a muffled scream and lashed out as hard as I could and then everything went away...everything...]

o o o

I was very surprised when I awoke to find myself someplace other than the main hall of Miya-tei. In a moment of confusion I glanced around me and as soon as I felt the full throbbing in my chest I remembered what happened. Surprisingly my first recollections were not of the strange thing that had caught me as I lay dying in the shrine...as I died, or even of the strange encounter with the black beast, but how fared the battle outside those heavy ornate doors. If I listened carefully I could hear the violent clang of metal still and the cries of men that could, in no way, be distinguished from Ryozen or Miyamoto.

Then it was still night and time had stopped, or it was the next night and I had slept through the day and the battle still went on, because it still felt very much like night and the wind and the rain still sang outside in parody of a raging monsoon. I couldn't fathom it being the same night having slept only hours, or not even that. Perhaps I really had died and there was no time in heaven or hell...whichever direction I had gone.

It felt a little too cold to be either, and my pain had certainly not dissipated by any account. Back in the room I realized it was lit well enough that I could see all manner of things. Really it was opulent and yet humble at the same time, typical of a shrine. Stone statues set in alcoves all along the walls. All of these idols were serpentine, some with their fanged mouths spread wide, others with their heads held high and dignified. I recognized a few of the icons.

The one in the center, directly across from me was Ryujin, the god of the sea. This statue was a dragon with an exaggerated mouth. According to legend Ryujin lived in Ryuugo-jo, his palace under the sea built of red and white coral, and from this place he controlled the tides.
The icon to the right of him was Seiryu, the holy dragon and god of the East, presiding over the spring season. Its powerful visage was considered to be the bringer of wealth and good fortune. The remaining statues were various incarnations of snakelike creatures with open mouths.

The rest of the room was filled with stacks upon stacks of book and high tables with parchment and ink stones and brushes scattered on top of them. It reminded me very much of Kyo's old room in Kiyomizudera. I could scarcely see anything at a sufficient angle from where I was laying but some of the papers looked like brush paintings in progress and a few of the books looked handwritten.

Notably, there was also a lovely sound in the air, accompanied by the storm outside it was almost pleasant. Someone was singing:

izuko mukaishi ka toeba sutare kara
nozoku ayashi ga utau nageki uta
urameshiku omoeba itoshisa ga shihairu
ana kanashi uta kara nijimu sabishisa
itoshi... kanashi... sabishi...

(My song of lament that I recite, peeks into my suspicions
If I think so hatefully, my love will be so earnestly banished
So I sing this song of sorrow and my lonlieness spreads
Beloved...Sorrowful...Lonely...)

I had the impression that if I moved any more than craning my neck I would at once fall into unconsciousness. I kept as still as I was able considering I was relatively curious as to what had become of me and if I was still in the shrine, though I assumed I had to have been. I couldn't have heard the sounds of battle from the temple, but who had brought me here to this room and chased the shadow away?

Suddenly my thoughts turned back to the thing I had seen and felt my pallor drain of blood again and I tried to pull into myself and keep against the wall, as if the wall could somehow guard me from my impending doom, but when I moved my body pitched and I collapsed against the soft bedding I was laying against.

The voice that had once been singing so beautifully stopped. "Don't try to move yet, You're not ready." it said calmly, and with horror I realized it was the same voice that had spoken to me before I blacked out in the hall.
I did as he commanded, in fact, I could hardly do anything else because my body went rigid at the sound and wouldn't budge. I closed my eyes tightly when I heard the sliding sound again and I willed it away, but it wouldn't go.

It grew closer, louder and then came to a stop somewhere beside me. The hissing breath was above me again and I must have squinted hard to keep my eyes closed. I had to do this to keep myself from looking because even for the horror of discovering the true image of this creature I was made to wrangle my curiosity away. And though the light in the room was fairly low I could have still been able to see the thing for what it was in perfect clarity.

"Open your eyes and don't turn away. You are in my home and I loathe such rudeness."

I tried to speak to ask what it was that speaking to me, or to apologize for being cruel, but when I tried to speak I found that my words cracked and broked before they left my mouth.

"Your lungs have torn, you can't get breath enough to speak." It said, like it had already rehearsed it's words. I felt a surprisingly warm hand come down on my chest, pulling open the top of my robes so that my chest was laid bare. My eyes shot open at once and I was rooted in fear when I saw it over me like a phantom.

The top of it was fine enough and only served to startle me because it was neither horrifying nor unusual. Pale skin, this creature had, overlayed with black scaling patterns. Black hair hit softly against the human-like face like a brush on paper, shorter and jaggedly cut, but there was an underside to it that fell down his back and that was long and ice blonde. The features on the face were soft, masculine but with an embrace of femininity that should have seemed out of place or contrastive but didn't. I saw he wore a dark red kimono, encrusted with a delicate floral pattern. The obi wasn't an obi at all, but three silk sashes: the first a black brocade, the second a deep red inset with a gold wave pattern and the third a creamy gold, all were tied together in the front and hung down haphazardly. The robe was very long, even for a maiko style and from underneath it came, not feet or legs, but a long winding tail that was impossibly thick, a girth as big around as my waist. The thing wasn't a person at all, but a serpent with a human torso.

"Nevermind wondering about what you see, what I am isn't relevant just yet. Wonder instead how you can breath if your lungs are torn or what it is that is obstructing your windpipe. The answer is that you cannot. You are not breathing, don't you see?"

Focusing on my being I realized that he was right, my chest did not rise nor did it fall and I felt no air enter my body at all. I looked up into his eyes in horror when I noticed that not only was I not breathing but my mouth was caked with drying blood that was also deposited on my clothing, all over and my chest—that was now visible to me with a slight crane of my neck — was part way open and the wounds had all been cauterized but were still hanging agape and the one where the arrow had been was wider than before, as though someone had cut it further to get inside. What disturbed me even more than that was the fact that there did seem to be something stuck in my throat and the feeling stretched down into my chest. I tried not to panic.

"Your heart is gone... well, halfway, but I'm sure you realized. A person would surely feel something like that. The other part of it is there." He said, pointing to the only low table in the room and a thing surrounded by crumpled paper. What lay inside looked like a bit of black and red blood, clumped and clotted.

"I had to take it out before the one half ruined the other." The words were lost on me, but I felt comforted that he knew what he was talking about at least.

I looked back at him, fear in my eyes, no glimmer of understanding. "Don't be afraid, you haven't died." he said and then decided that wasn't quite true. "Well...you have, but you will not remain so...my own energy is keeping you awake well enough I think while I work."

I couldn't have been more afraid if he had told me he was going to eat me whole and toss my bones on the pile with the others. What did he mean? I was dead? And suddenly my thoughts turned back to my family and the battle outside and I worried if any were lying in pools of blood somewhere, praying that I would find them.

"Don't worry about the outside." he warned me sternly, narrowing his eyes. "It's being taken care of now."

I didn't have time to wonder what he meant, wincing as a ragged cough tore through me bringing a sharp pain and the thing put his hand on my chest and held me to the bedding so I wouldn't disrupt my wounds. Then he picked up something from the taller table beside me and held it up, examining with the one hand while the other held me still, careful not to touch my lesions. What I saw looked only like a bit of black tourmaline, viterous and opaque, just a roughly hewn stone. I couldn't imagine what importance it played.

He saw me eyeing the thing suspiciously and asked if I knew what it was. Of course at this point I was only able to nod or shake my head and hope either would suffice since I had been instructed to keep quiet. I decided to shake my head, knowing that even if I had suspicions to what it was I had no inkling of its purpose. He studied it carefully, turning it into the light and its sub-metallic luster seemed to shine.

"Calcified shadow." he said. "You probably thought it was something else." I nodded. "But it's much rarer than a gemstone. Tell me, do you know what Kasha are?"

I shook my head.

"Of course you do." said the voice. "Of course! You've just seen one and he licked at your heart, the beast, but he probably saved your life without realizing."

He? The black haired Thing that I saw? I didn't understand. There were so many questions I had but I couldn't have found breath or voice to ask them. He saw this in my eyes and said, "Think whatever you like and I will hear you, but say nothing aloud. Only, let me explain first."

I nodded.

"When mortals die...when we all die...they do not go to be reborn, at least not at first."
[[So we are reincarnated?"]] I asked mentally.
"Yes, be quiet. When death comes it comes to the last place that crept into your thoughts, and in this place the kasha bring to you, not death, but decay. You see, kasha are the things that atrophy a mortal body. Invisible to your kind's eyes but we demons see them just fine. Kasha pick at a body for months, like an artist, sculpting from human clay the cadaver's your kind associate with the grim image of death, an image they find beautiful. No one will ever see them, even as you are stripped of your skin and remain only bones. Their purpose is to break down the body and devour the soul before it is sent to be reborn. Don't you know this is why the Japanese burn their dead? Through fire a spirit is immediately reincarnated and the body cannot be taken therefore the souls of loved ones are free to find repose instead of being buried, so to speak, within the hell of a kasha's body. Think of it as...a ferryman...but they don't adhere well to rules, I'm afraid. That one you saw in your 'place' is not the most ideal to cross paths with, and he was keen enough on taking you. I don't deal well with him. His madness is consuming. I'm sure you could tell that even being what he is his mind was still very sick."
[[What do you mean? What makes him...]]
"He's a collector...of corpses. Preferring to drain their blood and keep their bodies as trophies in his home, though most he preserves well enough. He, unlike the rest of his kind, likes beautiful things, and he would have kept you that way I think, you're attractive enough."

The mere thought of being a decomposing doll for someone made me want to vomit.

[[You said...that he probably saved my life, what do you mean?]]

He held up the stone. "Kasha aren't flesh and blood, they're shadow and as immortal as the sun and the stars. Their shadow comes in many forms: dense smoke, thick black fluid, and even something like sand, but all, once severed and away from their person, condenses and calcifies into a stone like this one." he paused. "Fortunately for you a fraction of their immortality is also present in these...'splinters', and can serve well enough as a surrogate heart. Which brings me back to what is inside you now..."

My eyes were impossibly wide.

"Junji..."

[[The kasha? That's his name?]]

He nodded. "Yes, you fought him back, and he lost an extension of himself in you when you did."

[[His tongue!?]] I was mortified.

"No, no, it wasn't a tongue you felt inside you, not at all. Kasha infect by shadow and it was only that, shadow moving from inside him and into you, though it may have felt very solid to you. At any rate, that shadow was broken into you and it's pierced your heart, if you're lucky it will take hold of it and give you the life that's inside of it, but it's a slow process and I'm keeping you alive while it is done."

[[But....why are you helping me? I don't even know who...what you are...]]

"You smell like a demon, but I know better. That means you have been very close to them, one in particular, that hanyou child."
[[Kyo]]
He nodded. "Yes. He was born in this shrine. His mother came to me, frightened. She, an oni, was being hunted by the villagers and his human father sacrificed himself so that she could get away, but she was full term and needed to give birth immediately. So she came here, to me."
[[Why you? What are you?]] I wondered silently.
He raised an eyebrow. "I have no name in your tongue, save for what the priests call me and that is Isshi. I am a Naga and I am sanctified. Nothing mortal can set foot in this shrine without my blessing, you saw the bones in the front..."
[[I thought you...had...eaten...]] I trailed off, hoping I hadn't offended him.
He shook his head. "I don't eat. I don't need to. It's the reason your heart failed you, that arrow was in your lungs, not your heart, your death had nothing to do with your wounds, though that lesion..." he pointed to where the arrow had been. "Would have done the job anyway. Those bones are of animals and maybe some humans...wanderers that lost their way...unfortunately."

[[And Kyo's mother...she came here because the ones tracking her would have died had they entered.]]

"Exactly. She knew she was safe in this place, but her constitution was so worse for wear that she died giving birth to him and to protect her body from the kasha I buried it underneath the floor in this room. They can't enter here...or mortal dwellings for that matter and she will have never deteriorated for it. It was the least I could give her. Eternal beauty. Exhume her now and she would still be as fair as the day she came to me, despite being twenty some years in the grave."

I couldn't help the wave of sadness that swept through me. He sighed and continued, "I gave the child to the monks that came to tend the repairs to my shrine, reverent, trusting souls that they were, I knew they would care for him. I'm glad to see that he is alive, his smell is very strong on you and that is why I am helping you now. As neutral as we shikigami are supposed to be I can't help but feel that I owe him some favor to make up for the loss of his family. You understand me now?"
I nodded sadly. [[Thank you...]]
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May All Be Pain or Love