Ghosts and Light

Rated M: contains same-sex romance, mild language, some violence. (I think it could be rated T, and if I receive consistent feedback to that effect, I may lower the rating, but I'm playing it safe for now.)

I do not own Kyo Kara Maoh or any of the characters in this story, and I make no profit from this story.

"Your Eminence—"

"Ken-chan, Emily. You can't call somebody 'Your Eminence' while you are tying bows into their hair."

Emily, a girl who looked a few years younger but was easily twice his age in this lifetime, giggled, as did the other girls and a few of the less self-conscious or more curious boys that stood gathered on one side of the children's room. A group of older boys, trying to maintain a stoic, macho attitude, loitered on the other side of the room, sneaking surreptitious glances at the activity around the Great Sage.

According to protocol and propriety, he really should have been out in the main hall, dancing and socializing and trying to seem especially wise and impressive. But he'd volunteered to shepherd the children out to the next room so that the grownups could get on with the phase of the celebration wherein drinks were served and small groups would gather and plot and strategize and threaten under the cover of the music, free of any small ears hidden under nearby tables to hear things they shouldn't. Political intrigue was inevitable at the Maou's parties.

Murata, however, was determined to take hold of this opportunity for innocent, youthful play while he still looked just young enough to get away with it. And after all, Ken Murata had only lived for some seventeen years. He'd already known too much about adult thought patterns and fears and ambitions and failures as a young child – he always did, these centuries – and with each lifetime added to his soul's memory, he grew more and more to cherish such childhood experiences as he could find. He knew ahead of time that this phase of life passed quickly enough, and old age, when he got that far, always held a wistful longing for childhood past and a pleasant anticipation of childhood coming.

So instead of going back out to be the Great Sage, he remained with the children, clowning until they warmed to him and some of the less shy girls initiated this game of dress-up, exchanging hair ornaments and scarves.

"Ken-chan, are you sure you don't want to try my green ribbon?"

"Ah, I'd better not, Tara. It's too long, I don't have the hair for it. Besides, my head's getting heavy with all these other things. I bet it would look good on Alicia or Will over there, though." He beamed encouragingly at the named girl and boy hovering shyly at the edge of the group. All in all, he'd found traditional girl-childhoods he'd lived through to be more pleasant than boy-childhoods, as the physical games tended to involve grooming rather than fighting. Fighting gave him nightmares of battles long past.

A sudden burst of noise signaled the door opening, and a wave of excited whispering started at the edge of the group closest to it. "It's His Majesty! His Majesty!"

"Um, hi there! Hey, Greta! Are you all having fun in here? Listen, have you seen..."

"Hey, Shibuya!" Murata shrugged off the impulse to try to stay camouflaged in the crowd, accepting that he had responsibilities he couldn't put off forever. Or at least accepting that it wouldn't actually work, because everyone knew who he was and who the Maou was and would point him out in about three more seconds.

Besides, it was fun to push Shibuya's buttons regarding the breaking of gender roles. He stood up and waved, turning the cheerful smile up to full intensity. "Did you come to join us? You can borrow Erin's beaded crab, I think he's losing his grip after Diera's jeweled bird and Greta's silver butterfly ganged up on him." He gestured illustratively at the side of his head laden with the named ornaments, causing a lavender silk scarf to slide off his shoulder and eliciting more gratifying giggles from his companions.

"Ahh, Murata! What are you...I mean, what...Um, no, that's okay. I was just looking for you, because there's a...situation I wanted your help with."

"What happened?" Murata gently edged through the crowd, hands touching shoulders to nudge bodies out of the way, serious now.

"Oh, nothing yet. It's just, a bunch of women dressed, um," Shibuya glanced at the nearby children who listened unashamedly. "Dressed in...colors that Wolfram doesn't like, they've been sort of cornering me for a while, and he looks like he's...going to do something...impolite, in about ten more minutes of it."

Murata allowed himself a mental sigh, then put the smile back on. "Well, if it's not an emergency, I'd better give back all these beautiful things I've borrowed before I forget what belongs to whom. Erin, here's your crab, thank you." He proceeded, conscious of and pointedly ignoring Shibuya's bemused gaze at the back of his head.

"Um, Murata, don't you think those girls were a little young to be flirting with?"

"As usual, Shibuya, you completely miss the point of playing dress-up. So, let's see. What you're telling me is that a bunch of ladies in low-cut dresses are chasing you more enthusiastically than usual, and von Bielefeld is about ready to set someone on fire."

"I guess that's about right. Honestly, I kind of just needed an excuse to get out of there for a few minutes without offending people." Shibuya rubbed the back of his head. "Murata, I really don't know what to do about him these days. He keeps getting worse about the whole engagement thing instead of better. I'm starting to wonder if he actually wants to go through with it. I mean, I understand he still sees it as an insult to his pride if I break it off, but how far is he really going to go? Is it honestly that rare to end an engagement, when neither party actually...you know..."

Murata employed his best encouraging, questioning, uncomprehending smile.

"Um, is attracted to the other."

Murata used looking around for Wolfram as an excuse to turn his face away before the smile faded. I'm too young right now to be giving relationship advice. But, he is the Maou, and I'm the Great Sage, so what can I do?

"How do you know he's not attracted to you?" He forced some of the smile back into his voice so Shibuya could dismiss it as teasing instead of identifying the Great Sage trying to lead him into recognizing a blindingly obvious truth. It wasn't his place to scare Shibuya out of a relationship with somebody else. Maybe the question would follow him into the quiet time before sleep and prod him into considering the possibility without his typical Earth-bred immediate rejection of the opportunity. Probably not.

"Murata, not you too! It's bad enough he keeps up these jokes about our eternal love and our future as...husbands."

"You know, there are lots of men married to each other here. Those two dancing, maybe. They're at least in love, see how they're looking at each other?"

"Well, I...I know that, and that's fine, I guess, but, I mean, it almost makes this worse, because it's like it's an option the rest of the world doesn't blink an eye about, and there's nothing to stop us from getting married even though neither of us really wants to...I mean...neither of us likes guys. Wolfram even said so when we first met."

Murata's gaze settled on the blond standing across the room with arms folded and scowl aimlessly roving over the gathering. That may have been true when you met, he thought, then, Looks just like him. He blinked and shook off that train of thought before it went anywhere, and he looked away as Wolfram's attention suddenly landed on the two of them.

"Shibuya, no one is going to force you to get married. You have to participate in the ceremony, you have to say the vows, you have to choose it of your own volition. If you get married and you don't really want to, you have only yourself to blame. It's not going to do anyone any good if you end up in a marriage you hate, either." He paused, adjusting his glasses and choosing his words carefully. "You don't have to decide right now – could be, in a few more years, you'll decide that maybe a relationship with a guy wouldn't be that bad after all." He plowed on over Shibuya's indignant attempt at denial. "But sooner or later you'll need to make a decision and act on it. It wouldn't be fair to either of you to drag this out another twenty years and then you finally get around to ending it. And in the meantime, it won't cost you anything to publicly treat him with respect. Better to end it sooner than later if you're going to try and make it obvious to the world that you don't find him appealing, if you want to try to remain on friendly terms afterward."

"I...What? How am I not treating him with respect?"

Murata did sigh out loud this time. "Look: say you have a girlfriend. Maybe you don't know if you like her all that much, but everyone comments about how pretty she is, and you take her to a party. You introduce her, 'Hi everyone, this is my girlfriend!' Then some good-looking guys come over and start hitting on her right in front of you, and without even looking at you she goes off to spend all night hanging out with them instead of you. How do you feel about it?"

"Um. I guess that would be kind of awkward."

"And then maybe you keep catching people looking at you all night, and once in a while when you try to talk to someone, they say, 'Hey, didn't you come here with that hot girl over there?'"

"Okay, okay." Shibuya sighed. "I guess I see your point. So you think that even though he's not attracted to me, he knows other people know he came here with the double-black Maou, and...damn. I've been doing this for ages, every social event, haven't I?"

Murata said nothing, just gave him a small smile of encouragement.

"I guess I should go apologize. Well, that wasn't something I really wanted to hear, but I guess I needed to hear it. Thanks, O Great Wise One."

Murata laughed. "Good luck."

He kept smiling at the back of Shibuya's head for a moment, then sighed again as his gaze fell on the blond prince. His duty as the Sage was to the Maou, of course, and Shibuya was his friend on top of that. But he hated seeing the anger and hurt in the other face, with the golden hair and the brilliant eyes. The startlement and the hope as Shibuya began his awkward but sincere apology was almost more painful, because as long as Shibuya didn't grow up about this, further hurt was inevitable. And this face, new to this lifetime but unavoidably resembling one long past, set him to remembering times when that past face had borne whatever was the current expression on Wolfram von Bielefeld's. Given the context, that meant he found himself reliving mostly painful moments, and a handful of sweeter memories that were still painful to remember here, in the palace of the Maou.