"Anyone perfect must be lying,
anything easy has its cost,
anyone plain can be lovely,
anyone loved can be lost..."
-BNL

Author's notes: I always have to have these. . . why am I writing this? Not sure. I thought of it in the middle of last night at about three a.m. and was terrified that I'd forget it, but when I woke up I still remembered it. I guess part of me was wondering when and why Subaru started smoking. Not that that's what I was thinking at the time. I don't know . . . I was thinking about Subaru and Seishirou and the terms of the bet and everything else. Give me a break, it's Finals week and if I wasn't writing this I'd be studying Sociology . . . which I really should be doing, but who cares! Besides, I don't know where CLAMP is going with this but in all likelihood it's going to make me cry my eyes out, so I figured I would write my own version . . . or something.

Disclaimers: Subaru belongs to me . . . oh, no, wait, I got delusional there for a second. None of these characters, settings, magical powers, et cetera, belong to me. If you sue me, I will laugh at you, because I'll have to sell all the things I bought from you in order to pay you. Spoilers? Hell yes. For all of Tokyo Babylon and, bizarrely enough, X/1999 around manga 14/15. The whole Kakyou thing.

This takes place at the almost-very-end of Tokyo Babylon. Before Annex/Start, because he's too old in that . . . I'm not sure exactly when that's supposed to take place, but since I'm going to totally derail the timeline anyway, I don't care. Actually, in Volume 11, End, because Hokuto is still - ah, but that's a spoiler. Complete aside - doesn't TB have a great ending? Annex/Start I mean. "People do evil because they're lonely . . ." Oh God, I cried my eyes out. Not the point. Never mind.

Yeah. I should be studying. Enjoy.

Part One

It just figured that after a year's worth of time and effort, the whole entire thing would come to a crashing, unspectacular, disappointing halt. A year spent caring, helping, being friendly, being . . . well, lovable . . . and this had to happen. Seishirou looked into Subaru's glass green eyes from across town in utter disgust. Why does it not surprise me that he would just fold after what I did? I should have just killed him and gotten it over with. And in truth, he wasn't actually sure why he hadn't. It bothered him to not be sure why he had done something.

Immensely.

He pulled out a cigarette and lit up, still staring across town with his second sight, attached to Subaru in a way the younger boy had never - and probably would never - understood. And there was Subaru, staring blankly at the walls of his apartment while his sister cried over him, guilty over every time she'd egged the two of them on, guilty over everything.

Seishirou smiled.

An amusing game, while it had lasted. He had played the role even better than he'd expected - or maybe the twins were just far more gullible than he'd honestly believed possible in a human being. So trusting, so innocent, so naïve . . .

So lovable, and yet, for him . . . completely unlovable. He didn't love Subaru. Couldn't love Subaru.

His smile widened.

The bet was over, and he'd won.

For some reason, he wished he could feel triumphant. And he did feel triumphant, it was just something tickling at the back of his mind that was giving him discomfort.

Why didn't I just kill him there, in the hospital?

Oh, it was true that he could beg off and say that the grandmother had interfered, the illusion had been shattering, the hospital staff had been coming . . . but that wasn't exactly true. He could have held the illusion against all of that if he'd really wanted to. But he hadn't bothered to try. And as he vanished away, unseen, he'd heard something that had disturbed him then and still disturbed him now.

"Seishirou-san . . . I really was in love with you . . ."

Except what disturbed him, that almost-could-have-been-last breath from Subaru, was that he hadn't heard clearly. Had Subaru said "was" or "am"?

What disturbed him more was that there was absolutely no reason why this should disturb him.

He knew he didn't love Subaru. He knew that he had done his best to make Subaru love him. Somehow, however, the realization that it had worked had come as a surprise to him.

Maybe, a little voice in his head whispered, because you see nothing worth loving here.

He squashed the voice impatiently. Of course there was nothing worth loving inside him. There wasn't supposed to be. He was Sakurazukamori, cold-blooded assassin, and always, always, destined to be alone.

Destined to be . . .what does that have to do with anything?

Seishirou lit another cigarette, still looking into Subaru's eyes, unable to figure out why they intrigued him so. Normally Subaru's eyes were completely blank, open, easy to read by anyone who cared to look. Now they were veiled, and try as he might, Seishirou could not fathom what the Sumeragi was thinking.

He dropped the second sight and decided to make tea to calm his nerves.

Not that his nerves needed calming.

After all, why would they?

The game was over, and his, and he would kill Subaru and that would be it. Where was the problem?

His head snapped up, and he nearly dropped the cigarette.

She was coming.

****

One month.

Subaru had memorized every speck of the wallpaper, every leaf that blew on the tree outside his window, every tile of his ceiling. His grandmother moved him periodically; to what purpose, he was unsure.

Subaru.

It didn't matter, though. It was quiet here, safe within the depths of his own heart. Not a nice place, those ruins, but safe. He wouldn't come out. Not for anything.

Subaru!

Hokuto-chan?

Subaru!

"HOKUTO-CHAN!" Subaru threw aside the bedclothes and leapt for - he wasn't sure what - not even seeing the room around him, seeing blood and pain and those soft petals swirling everywhere.

His grandmother grabbed him around the waist.

"HOKUTO-CHAN!"

He slumped to the ground in her arms, staring at the ceiling but seeing something else, seeing it all too clear, a flurry of pink and a cold smile. A hunter's smile.

"Hokuto-chan . . ."

Barely a whisper.

For me . . .

Grief overwhelmed him and then passed in an instant, replaced with a deep, burning anger.

I will kill him.

A doubtful voice spoke up in the back of his own head. Even though you love him?

"I love a man who does not exist," Subaru murmured to himself, and got to his feet. He was talking to his grandmother, something about school, faraway and unimportant. Hokuto was all that mattered, and Hokuto was dead. And Seishirou-san, who also mattered, and was equally dead, at least in Subaru's eyes.

Hokuto-chan . . . I already miss you.

The anger faded back into the grief, into a deep, empty sorrow.

Subaru left the apartment.

****

Stupid.

Seishirou shook his head. He honestly couldn't believe that his Subaru-kun could be that stupid.

So he left his apartment and took a cab to Ueno Park, threading his way through the trees until he found one particular Tree, which Subaru was leaning against. "Subaru-kun, this probably isn't the best place for you to be."

Subaru jumped at his voice. "I know," he whispered, voice harsh. "I came looking for you."

"I didn't give you my forwarding address when I moved, did I." Seishirou smiled, the same cold smile. "I'm sorry, I was afraid that your grandmother was going to try to have me arrested."

"I wouldn't have let her." Subaru looked at the sky. "And she's not that stupid. To have you arrested would accomplish nothing."

Seishirou nodded his head slightly in acknowledgement of Subaru's intelligence. "So why are you here? Don't you think I might harm you?"

"If you do, that's your right," Subaru said, and his lips twitched in a crooked, bitter smile. "After all, as an object I most thoroughly belong to you."

Seishirou blinked, taken aback by that statement. He looked curiously at the Sumeragi. He was acting nothing like the sweet, bashful teenager that Seishirou remembered. It had only been two months since they'd last met . . .

Seishirou chuckled dryly. "You've changed, Subaru-kun."

"Not by my own choice," Subaru replied.

"You are no longer sweet and innocent." Seishirou sighed, putting on a despairing face. "Whatever shall I do without my delightful little Subaru-kun?"

Subaru twitched, looking like he wanted to say something akin to 'burn in Hell.' But nothing came out of his mouth.

"You've cut your hair."

Subaru inclined his head slightly to confirm the statement.

"Why?"

"It didn't suit me anymore."

Tired of seeing your sister's face in the mirror, Subaru-kun? Seishirou thought, smiling again. "It looks good on you."

Subaru glanced up at him and said nothing.

Seishirou was getting sick of it. There had to be a reason Subaru had come here, and unless it was just to torture himself by making himself have a pleasant conversation with his nemesis, Seishirou didn't see his purpose. "So why have I been graced with the honor of this visit, Subaru-kun?"

Subaru shrugged.

Seishirou resisted the urge to leave. He certainly couldn't leave Subaru standing there at the foot of the Tree; if he'd been stupid enough to come at all, he might be stupid enough to try something else. But this game was boring him.

"I had a question."

Finally, something useful from the Sumeragi. Seishirou looked at him, smiling warmly now. "A question, Subaru-kun?"

Subaru nodded. "Why did you make that bet with me?"

Seishirou blinked, this not having been what he was expecting. Then the smile was back. "To amuse myself."

"You could have just killed me then."

"Yes."

"You made a bet with me over whether or not I could make you feel something."

Seishirou was starting to get a little uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking, but he was damned if he was going to let Subaru know that. He pushed his sunglasses up on his nose and nodded. "Yes."

"Why?"

"I told you. To amuse myself."

"You could have made a bet over something else."

"It popped into my head at the time." Seishirou shrugged. "You were a very cute child, after all."

Subaru looked up at him, and his green eyes bored past the shades and into Seishirou's eyes. "If you made a bet about whether or not I could make you feel," he said, voice strained, "it means you want to be able to feel."

Seishirou blinked again, but quickly collected himself. "Not necessarily. It means I was curious over whether or not I could. Mild curiosity hardly equals the same thing as desire."

Subaru walked very close to him, and Seishirou tensed, though he still gave the appearance of looking relaxed. "Then why didn't you kill me in the hospital that day?"

Damn it, he had to ask the one question Seishirou still didn't know the answer to.

"The bet was over." Subaru pressed onward, voice getting more bitter as he continued speaking, sounding altogether odd compared to what Seishirou remembered. "Quite obviously, I lost. I wasn't in a position to fight back. Why didn't you kill me? Why did you kill Hokuto instead?"

His voice ached when he spoke her name, but remained steady.

Seishirou smiled. So that was it. "Hokuto asked me to kill her."

"Liar," Subaru breathed.

"No." Seishirou took off the sunglasses and smiled cheerfully at him. "She was babbling something about a spell only she could perform. And she seemed to mistakenly think that her death could be used as a tradeoff for yours."

"Mistakenly?" Subaru asked in a low voice.

"Yes, Subaru-kun." Seishirou's smile was as cold as ice. "You are still my prey. Never forget that."

Subaru took a step back. "As if I ever could." He looked up at Seishirou, and his green eyes were no longer blank, but they shimmered with an emotion that Seishirou couldn't identify. "Seishirou-san." He still used the honorific, something which amused Seishirou terribly. "Give me back my sister."

Seishirou blinked, taken off guard for at least the third time in the admittedly bizarre conversation. "Give her back? Subaru-kun, surely you don't realize what you're asking. I can't - "

"Yes I do and yes you can!" The words ripped from Subaru's mouth and he grabbed Seishirou's hand, placing it on his chest. "Give me my sister back!"

Oh.

Seishirou looked down at his hand, wrist held firmly between Subaru's delicate fingers, and began fingering one of Subaru's shirt buttons. Then, realizing what he was doing, he stopped himself abruptly. The boy was indeed beautiful, and Seishirou had more than once caught himself having off-color thoughts, but he'd always put a quick halt to them. No reason to taint Subaru's innocence for his own, merely physical, desire. Subaru, for his part, seemed completely oblivious to what Seishirou's fiddling might imply.

Seishirou shrugged. "If that's what you want."

"It is." Subaru's eyes ached.

Seishirou nodded once; he was sick of this game anyway. Energy began to crackle at his fingertips. Subaru's eyes never left his. Seishirou stared into them, still taken off guard by the sorrow and the pain . . . not that he felt any regret . . . and the love.

Subaru-kun, do you still love me?

He shook himself slightly. Where had that thought come from? Subaru was too much of a distraction. Best to kill him now and get it over with.

He stopped.

He didn't know why he stopped, but he stopped.

His first thought was that it was simply inelegant, to kill someone because they had asked him to do so. However, what could be more elegant than killing Subaru in the exact same place and way he'd killed his sister?

it means you want to be able to feel

His Subaru-kun always had been perceptive.

Was it possible, just maybe, that when he'd made the bet, he'd been hoping to lose? Maybe, just one tiny little part of him hoped that Subaru would be able to make him feel? And he'd made the bet with such a beautiful, intelligent, pure boy, because he was the only one who'd had a chance?

He had said the bet was for his own amusement, but where was the amusement in a bet that he knew he would win? If he was guaranteed to win, there was no excitement, no amusement, no point. So why had he made a bet instead of just killing the boy where he stood, like he should have?

He didn't remember, it had been ten long years ago, he'd only just started being the Sakurazukamori anyway.

All this had nothing to do with anything. He did not love Subaru, he had won the bet, so what did it matter why he'd made the bet in the first place?

But now that he was thinking, he just couldn't stop, and it occurred to him to wonder exactly how he'd phrased it anyway. "If I experience true feelings for you . . ."

All right, he hadn't exactly said "If I love you" but what qualified as a true feeling?

If a true feeling was waking up and knowing you were going to see someone and that pleasing you, he'd lost. For a year, Subaru had been there. And Seishirou did not love him. But he was loathe to lose his company, still . . .

And that was why he hadn't killed him in the hospital.

Well, it was nice to have that cleared up, even if he wasn't altogether pleased with the conclusion.

"No." He removed his hand. "I can't." He amended that quickly, so smoothly that Subaru didn't notice. "I won't."

Subaru stared up at him for a long second, eyes unreadable. Then he breathed out a word Seishirou had never heard from his innocent lips. "Bastard . . ."

And sank to his knees among the petals.

Seishirou stood there, at a complete loss for the first time in his life. He didn't dare just walk away and leave Subaru with the Tree, but the silence between them was growing more uncomfortable with every second. And for some reason, he simply could not force himself to not let it bother him.

"Subaru-kun," he said smoothly, "you're wallowing. Get up."

Subaru said nothing, did nothing, heard nothing.

Oh, not this again . . .

Seishirou knelt next to him to confirm his suspicions; the Sumeragi's eyes were wide open and blank.

Wallowing is right.

Might as well just leave him there. He wouldn't damage the Tree any in his current state of mind.

Satisfied, or at least trying to convince himself that he was satisfied, Seishirou got up to walk away.

And stopped again.

He really needed to sit down and do some thinking so he could put a stop to all these unwanted impulses. It had disappointed him when Subaru had done this the first time and it disappointed him now. No more than that. It wasn't as if he cared . . .

But Subaru could do better than this.

He scooped the unresisting boy up in his arms and took him back to his new apartment. He placed Subaru carefully on the couch and made some tea. "Subaru-kun. You awake in there?"

"Yes."

Seishirou nearly fell off his chair; that was the last thing he was expecting. "You faked it," he said, unable to hide the surprise in his voice.

"Yes."

Seishirou regained his equilibrium quickly and smiled. "How flattering, that you wanted to see the inside of my apartment that badly."

"I have nowhere else to go." Subaru's voice was flat, even, empty.

"Would you like some tea, Subaru-kun?"

"Tea would be nice." Subaru accepted the mug from his outstretched hand and took a sip.

Seishirou lit up a cigarette and tried to contemplate this little twist in the workings of Subaru's mind.

"Why do you do that?" Subaru's voice interrupted his reverie.

"Smoke?"

Subaru nodded.

"It calms my nerves," Seishirou said without thinking, then cursed himself vehemently for saying it.

Subaru's lips twitched at the Sakurazukamori's obvious discomfiture at having been caught off guard. Then he reached out and plucked the cigarette from Seishirou's fingers, lifted it to his lips, and took a drag on it. He nearly dropped it as he started coughing. When he'd finally regained his breath, he looked at Seishirou and said, "I can see why."

Seishirou kept staring at him, completely unable, for some reason, to come to terms with this new Subaru. Sarcasm certainly wasn't what he'd expected.

Subaru took another, more careful, drag on the cigarette. He got used to it quickly and breathed deeply, closing his eyes. Seishirou simply stared at him, nearly hypnotized by that beautiful face wreathed in smoke, looking altogether ethereal.

What are you thinking?

Seishirou shook himself.

"You're right," Subaru said. "It does calm my nerves."

"They'll kill you someday," Seishirou said with a cool smile.

"Really?" Subaru looked at him. "I was under the impression that my death was going to come at someone else's hands."

And the Sumeragi was smiling.

Smiling, as he sat there and talked about Seishirou killing him.

If Seishirou had been a little less schooled in controlling, suppressing, and otherwise demolishing his emotions, he was sure he would've been running around his apartment yelling "I DON'T GET IT!"

As it was, he cleared his throat and lit himself another cigarette, since Subaru had stolen his first one and his nerves were in definite need of some calming.

"Or perhaps you've lost your nerve?" Subaru looked at him with the same smile, curiosity in his eyes.

Oh, that was it. That was an insult, and Seishirou wasn't going to stand for it -

Subaru was laughing.

Not much, certainly, just a little twinkling in his eyes and a tiny shake of his shoulders. "And you say I'm easy to fluster," he said.

"Apparently times have changed." Seishirou quickly regained his cool.

"At your instigation." Subaru put out the cigarette and picked up his mug of tea. "Those things do leave a nasty aftertaste, though. I suppose I'll get used to it . . ."

"Subaru-kun, what are you doing?" The question dropped out of Seishirou's mouth before he could stop it.

Subaru raised an eyebrow. "I should think it was perfectly obvious."

Perfectly obvious? Seishirou was perfectly confused.

"The only two people who have ever meant anything to me," Subaru continued, "were Hokuto-chan and Seishirou-san." He smiled up at the Sakurazukamori. "As you have denied me my sister's company . . . I'll just have to stay with you."

Seishirou could not even reply.

****

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