http://clampfix.fanworks.net/tb-fix/faded.txt </head><body><pre>Faded Flowers A Songstory by Shanti Fader Author's Note: This one requires a little explanation. Take Subaru, somewhere between the end of Tokyo Babylon and the beginning of X, and cross him with White Wolf's World of Darkness. Then add as soundtrack Shriekback's haunting song "Faded Flowers," (I highly recommend it, if you haven't heard it), and you get what is easily the strangest fanfic I've ever had hit me over the head and demand I write. For those of you unfamiliar with White Wolf, I have tried to keep this story as jargon-free as possible, and explain the terms I couldn't avoid without falling out of the story and into exposition mode. This is an experiment, and I'd appreciate feedback on how it worked. All song lyrics quoted are from "Faded Flowers" -- more or less, as the lyric sheet is literally impossible to read. This is the sound of poisons, The sickness no one knows. No one is crying for us this time Our shapes are blurring under miracle of snow. The bus doors hissed open and then closed behind the small, slight figure who passed out through them and down onto the poorly paved road. Gravel crunched and hissed as the bus lumbered away and was quickly swallowed by the darkness. There was a single streetlight by the bus stop, but the light it put out was weak and a sickly orange color, and it had little effect on the surrounding night. *Night...closing in...* Still, the young mage decided it was enough to read by. Better to use what little the landscape provided than conjure up a light and risk drawing attention to himself. Especially since he had no idea what he was up against. He pulled out the hastily scribbled page of directions, frowning as he tried to make them out; then on a sudden impulse, he reached back into his pocket and pulled out the letter from the leader of his Celestial Chorus chantry -- the letter that had sent him on this journey to a small traditional village outside Kyoto: /Most honorable Sumeragi-san,/ the letter read, /there is an assignment for which I believe your skills are eminently suited. There have been several mysterious deaths reported from this village over the past few months, too many in a place which is usually quiet and peaceful. The police are baffled. They can find no clear pattern to the killings. Even the methods are not consistent: some bodies are mangled beyond recognition, others are found without a mark on them. /Ordinarily I would not involve the chantry; such matters are better left to human agencies or our Akashic friends over in the Shaolin temple. But there have been other reports: a mysterious, pale figure who appears by moonlight, a sickness or malaise that's fallen over many of the villagers. I believe that this mystery would best be solved by one of your talents, rather than the more physically oriented Akashics. /Unfortunately, Sumeragi-san, I have no more information and cannot even tell you what you will find. My own suspicions point to the Restless Dead, but I cannot know for certain. Please walk carefully. And when this matter is resolved, return to us. It has been too long since your voice joined our chorus. /May the harmony of the One lighten your burden and your path./ Subaru sighed, and stuffed both pieces of paper back into his pocket. It *had* been a long time since he'd visited the Celestial Chorus chantry in Tokyo, the place where he'd Awkened to his magical potential, studied onmyoujitsu, and learned how to speak to and quiet the spirits whose voices had tormented him for too many years. His lips curled into a tight little curve that wasn't quite a smile -- and banished the memory. Memories were dangerous now. Besides, he'd never been much of a one for singing. Weave a circle round him three times You have to plan your moves at these times Our hearts are breaking, One more song to go. The bus ride from Tokyo had taken longer than Subaru had expected. He'd hoped to arrive by dusk and seek out a place to stay the night. Even with the power of Awakened magic, it was better to stalk night-terrors when rested, but it looked like that wasn't going to be an option. *Not that he'd really had a restful night's sleep. Not since- -* *No. Not now. Not with a job to do. Focus on the job. Focus on the present.* Subaru fixed his attention on the narrow gravel path by his feet. Step, and step. This way to the village, the village haunted by a pale figure who was killing them. There was a time when he would have been horrified, when his bright green eyes would have overflowed with pity for the dead and for the grieving ones still alive. There would even have been pity and horror for the monster preying on this village, for nine times out of ten such beings killed not from malice but out of a deep and grievous pain of their own. Wraiths, bound to this world by unresolved issues from their lives. Wolf-changers, driven mad by the burning in their souls. Faerie-folk, lashing out against a world which no longer believed in them. Demons who drained the living of blood and chi to sustain their own lives. He'd seen them all, and more. And he'd wept as he banished, slew, or drove away the night-terror. But no longer. He had no tears left. Or pity, or even horror. Nothing but duty and inertia kept him moving. These eyes are blind This is a pure thing The red haze faded, melting away from her sight; and as the world returned to normal, she saw what had happened to the young man. She knelt over the body, watching fascinated as blood dripped from her bone-white fingers. "Ah, no," she whispered aloud. "Not again..." Bowing her tangled head, she wept. Her tears fell on what was left of the young man's face, and melted into his still- flowing blood. These hands I kiss Tragic as anything. As it turned out, Subaru didn't even have to go all the way into town. He found her on the lonely gravel path just beyond the first houses: a still, pale shape, kneeling over something dark and unmoving. Her face was bowed and hidden from him, but the curves of her arms and throat glowed unnaturally pale against the night. *Vampire,* Subaru thought. She was too solid to be one of the Restless Dead; even the ones who could manifest physically always had a wavery insubstance to them. One saw, as through a scrim of water, the forms they used to wear. Coolly, like an exterminator choosing the proper poison for a certain type of beetle, Subaru cataloged the things his chantry had taught him were useful against vampires: crosses, garlic, holy water, wooden stakes. The first he was never without, the third he carried in a small silver flask. The other two he didn't have with him, but fallen wood was easy enough to find. The sun was beyond his power to summon -- but fire was not. He moved towards the kneeling figure, slowly and making as little sound as possible. He was painfully aware that most of his weapons were based on supposition. His chantry's information on vampires was for the most part gleaned from folklore and fragmented personal accounts that could be as much terrified exaggerations as not. Subaru himself had never run into one directly -- Japan had its own demons, and seldom fell thrall to the Western undead. As he stepped closer, the woman's head shot up. The mage caught a brief, flashing glimpse of dark eyes and red streaks cutting across sunken cheeks, before she unfolded up from the ground and darted away into the forest. Her full, pale skirts flashed briefly, then faded like dissipating smoke. These eyes are blind This is a pure thing Oh splash and hiss Beyond all measuring Subaru cursed under his breath -- why hadn't his chantry said anything about superhuman hearing and invisibility? -- then knelt to inspect the crumpled figure she'd abandoned. He paused only long enough to see that it was a man, and that he was dead, his face and throat torn to bloody ribbons, then Subaru took off in search of the vanished killer. He ran in the direction he thought she'd taken, but there was no sign of her. The trees and undergrowth were sparse here, not enough to hide anyone; the ground held a brief flurry of footprints near the road, then nothing. Subaru frowned in puzzlement; then his brow cleared. Drawing a white slip of paper out of his pocket, he whispered a quick blessing, and cast it into the air. The ofuda vanished. There was an odd rippling sensation, and then, some ten or so feet away the vampire woman wavered into sight: first the death-pale shimmer that was her aura, then the cloudy skirts and cold lines of the woman herself. "So, you have magic then," she said softly, turning to face Subaru. The mage blinked. She spoke in English! Hastily, he made the appropriate mental switch, and addressed her in the same language: "Are you the one responsible for the deaths in this village?" She tilted her head back toward the road. "You mean that poor young man?" "Yes. And the others." "Well, you must understand." There was something odd about her voice, a strange, musical lilt that was unlike anything Subaru had ever heard. "He offended me. I...I really didn't *want* to kill him, but after what he said..." "Did the man attack you?" "Attack? Well, not as such. I mean, he didn't pull a knife on me or anything horrid like that. But he..." The woman paused, dark eyes searching the sky for just the right word; she looked down and shook her head sadly as if what she wanted didn't exist. "He insulted me. And my love. It's all part of the nightmare, you see." *Love.* For just a fraction of a heartbeat, something small and wounded deep within Subaru stirred from its long dormancy. Then it curled back in on itself and sank out of awareness. "How did he insult you?" he asked. She put a bone-white hand to the bosom of her gown, drew out something that hung on a chain around her neck. "I asked him if he'd seen my love. And he laughed at me. He said there was nothing there." She raised her eyes to Subaru, and suddenly there was a wild hope burning there. "Maybe you, with your magic? Have you seen this man?" Before the startled mage could react, she ran up to him and thrust her hand before his face. Subaru found himself staring down into an open gold locket, held in a gaunt hand stained and crusted with drying blood. Stifling his distaste, he peered at the double circle of gold. It was empty. There was no picture at all. *She's insane,* he realized. These faded flowers Precious as memory A veil of clouds Correct his energy For the first time, Subaru took a real look at the woman standing before him. Her hair was long and tangled, so thick with dirt that he couldn't begin to guess what its actual color might be. Her face, where it was visible through the knotted locks, was death-white and tightly drawn over the bones. Dark purple stains ringed sunken eyes. Her gown hung in stained tatters from her angular shoulders; the fabric, which Subaru had thought white, was in fact some pale color so greyed and dingy as to be totally unguessable. The hem of her skirt was caked with filth, as were her unshod feet. Subaru felt a thrill of some unnamed emotion run through him as his image of a cold and elegant monster shattered irrevocably. "I'm sorry," Subaru said carefully, moving back a little from the outstretched hand. "I haven't seen him." He was bracing himself for an attack, but the madwoman simply sighed and tucked the locket back into her gown. The eager light drained from her face, and she drooped like a cut flower denied water for too long. "Ah, well," she said, her voice a sorrowful whisper. "I could but ask." "Have you been searching for long?" Subaru was surprised to hear himself ask. "Oh yes, milord. Longer than I can recall. He was taken from me, you see, and at first I couldn't follow. But then I knew that I'd never wake from this nightmare until I found him, and so I took it as my quest." She smiled; astonishingly, her ravaged face softened and brightened at once, suffusing with a strange, wistful beauty. "I /will/ find him, you see. I cannot fail. And then I'll awaken from this nightmare, and we will stand together in the sun and be free of all the monsters, and nothing will part us ever again." *Do you really believe that?* Subaru wondered. A part of him, the part that had been dominant for the last several years, regarded the madwoman with cold detachment, cataloging her away as an interesting case of delusion. And yet...somewhere hidden carefully away in his shuttered heart, Subaru knew full well that a heartbroken boy yearned desperately and unceasingly for something just as impossible. The small, wounded thing stirred again. It was buried deep, half-dead from silence and neglect, but it would not go back to sleep again. The madwoman was regarding him speculatively. "You understand me," she said, her voice tinged with wonder. "You've lost a love, too." "How could you know that?" Subaru demanded, a little too sharply. She smiled, and that strange radiance now reached out to include him. "Your heart isn't hard to read, milord. Not for me. But then, I care to read such things; most do not, in this world." Subaru closed his eyes against the memories he could no longer hold back. How he'd fallen, as a young boy, newly Awakened, for an older man. A genial man, friendly and understanding and with a teasing edge of danger; a friendship that constantly danced on the edge of being more. And then -- he'd learned that the man was a mage as well. A Euthanatos, a death-worshipper. Latest scion of a family of Euthanatos, who went beyond the limits of even their morbid Tradition, shutting away their feelings until they could kill coldly and without discrimitation. They buried their victims beneath cherry trees. Sakurazukamori. He'd played the young Sumeragi like a puppet, feigning affection, and leading the impressionable boy remorselessly into a love which he, the Sakurazukamori, could never return and had no intention of honoring. And then, when the game grew boring, the Euthanatos mage had cast aside his plaything in the cruelest way possible. Only a daring sacrifice ploy on the part of his twin sister had saved Subaru's life. Only duty and obligation had kept him going since. Eight years ago, it had been. Almost nine, now. Subaru looked down at the mad vampire, wondering how long and how far she'd been wandering, questing for a lost love who was probably long dead by now. Vampires did not age or die naturally; she could have been searching for hundreds, even thousands of years. The strange quality to her voice, which Subaru had thought at first was some sort of foreign accent, now suddenly became clear: not one accent, but scores of them layered one over the other, each one from a different land through which she had wandered. Furthermore, her quaint manners both of speech and gesture, and the antiquated gown she wore, spoke of an earlier era. She was caught out of time, displaced, with no home and no resting place, no possible end to her hopeless quest. And she was a killer. Her last victim, even now, lay torn and cooling by the road. It would be a mercy to destroy her -- and yet he knew he could not do it. For the first time in nearly nine years, Subaru felt his heart contract with pity. A crack had opened in the shell he'd built around himself; and in the very act of letting her in, he let his own pain, denied for so long, come flooding out. "Oh," she said softly. "Please don't cry, milord. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to grieve you. Here -- dance with me." She took his hands, clasped one in her own and rested the other against the curve of her impossibly small waist. Her hands were icy, her body cool beneath the worn bodice of her gown. "Do you waltz? It's frightfully daring, I know, but such a lovely dance. /One/ two three.../one/ two three...." and they were whirling through the darkness, the forest mould soft and fragrant beneath their feet. For Subaru it was like being spun out of world and time into a nonplace where nobody could intrude. Where he didn't need to be strong and to go bravely on despite his heartache, where he could weep and not be ashamed, where he could grieve at long last for his sister, for the lover who'd never really existed, for the innocent boy he'd never be again. We had some good machines But they don't work no more I loved you once Don't love you anymore. When at last they stopped and the vampire woman released his hands, he asked her, "What is your name?" She gave him an odd, sidelong glance. "Do you want to know my name...or who I am?" "Who you are." The faint tension relaxed out of her face, telling Subaru he'd chosen properly. "I am Dulcinea." "Sumeragi Subaru." She laughed, but there was no malice in it, and swept out her ragged skirts in an old-fashioned courtsey. "I saw a chariot with your name on it! You must be a great man indeed!" Subaru smiled faintly. He couldn't laugh. Not yet. "Dulcinea," he said, "I was sent to find out who's responsible for the killings in this village. And to...prevent any more." "Ohhhh," she said, all humor draining away. "Are you going to kill me, then?" "No. But I will say this -- get out of this place. Go far from here. I can't promise to stay my hand if I see you again, or hear of any more deaths." "I understand," she said. "I will go. Nobody here has seen my love, anyway." She turned and began to move silently off into the forest. "Wait!" Moved by a sudden impulse, Subaru called out to her. "Dulcinea!" She turned, poised on one foot like a nervous grey deer. "Yes, milord?" "Let me see your locket again." She ran up to him, and pulled out the little gold pendant once more. Subaru took it in his hand, and began chanting softly. *Let me see through your eyes. Show me what you see when you look at this.* The world wavered and shifted, like a camera changing focus. And where before he'd seen an empty locket, old and battered, now he saw a gleaming ring of gold, and in its embrace, a beautifully painted miniature of a man. Carefully, Subaru observed the oval face, the dark blue-grey eyes, the curly short dark hair, the sensual curve of the full lips, the strong chin and open-collared white shirt. "Thank you," he said finally, returning the locket to Dulcinea. "If I see this man, I'll tell him you're looking for him." Dulcinea smiled up at him. In her mind's sight she was a radiant young lady, flush with life and beauty. Her hair fell in careless chestnut waves around her shoulders, and her diaphanous white gown glimmered in the moonlight. "You've no idea how much that means to me. Farewell, and may your wish be granted." "But I don't have any wish," Subaru called after Dulcinea as she ran lightly away. "Oh, but you do," she said, and vanished into the night. Subaru stood for a long time, watching the place where she'd been. "One wish..." he said musingly. Yes. He did have one wish left. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* Follow the windsong...follow the thunder... Follow the neon in young lovers' eyes, Down to the gutter...up to the glitter... Into the cities where the truth lies. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*</pre><p><a href="./">Back</a></p><p><a href=http://www.dreamhost.com/donate.cgi?id=216><img border=0 alt="Donate towards our web hosting bill!" src=https://secure.newdream.net/donate1.gif></a></p></body></html>