http://clampfix.fanworks.net/x-fix/inhisheart.txt </head><body><pre>Title: In His Heart Author: Rachael Schnurr Spoilers: Post "Rainbow Bridge," so if you don't know what that means, you may be a little lost. Pairings: Kamui / Subaru (implied) All characters portrayed in the following story are property of CLAMP. No copyright infringement is intended. Comments, and corrective criticism appreciated. A huge thanks to Sailor Mac, for beta reading services. He was very careful not to be discovered, but sometimes, Kamui came here to work on his studies. Somehow, it helped him to focus. The rain was making the air heavy today. Cool and heavy, as though you could part it with your finger, like the condensation on the windows. Kamui thought about what he would write in the thick, heavy, cold, air, if anyone could see it. Only one word came to mind, "help." He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The humid air was making the stale bitter perfume of spent cigarettes stronger today. It almost seemed like Subaru had been here recently. Kamui imagined Subaru slipping in, just long enough to smoke one down to the filter. He knew, however, that Subaru hadn't used this room for weeks. Kamui listened to the wind pelt the rain at the windows. It sounded like someone throwing fistfuls of tiny pebbles at the glass. The rain had chased him in here in the first place. If the day had been clear, he would have been visiting Kotori under her tree. Kamui had ended up in Subaru's room instead. The angry storm outside didn't seem satisfied with having chased him here. It continued to use the wind to whip pellets of water at the windows. As though it too were spoiling for a fight with Kamui. Kamui wasn't going to answer to it. He stretched out, and felt the tiny fingers of the pale thick pile carpet massage his back through the thin white cotton fabric of his school uniform shirt. Kamui supposed that he couldn't lie here on the floor of Subaru's room all evening, but he figured he had at least another half hour before the others returned from their after class activities, and came looking for him. The thought of Sorata, Arashi, and Yuzuriha returning to the house, and interrupting the current quiet tensed Kamui. He turned onto his side, bending his legs and drawing them up to his torso. Kamui opened his eyes, and looked around Subaru's room. He had asked Chairman Imanoyama to leave it as it was, in the event that Subaru did return some time before the Promised Day. The chairman seemed to find it uncharacteristically hard to make eye contact with Kamui when he responded, but he had answered that he would instruct that the room be left alone, except for a weekly dusting. Still, Kamui thought, if anyone ever entered the room, they would have little indication that Subaru had ever been here. Probably the most striking evidence that the room had, indeed been inhabited, was the blood stains that marred the upholstery of the high back bisque arm chair sitting against the wall. Kamui pushed himself up on one arm, and then stood, walking over to the chair. He saw that the stains were soaked into the arms of the chair, in a pattern that suggested the folds in the sleeves of Subaru's coat. The back of the chair was also smudged by two dissimilar patches of brown and rust at the height where Subaru's shoulders would have been. The blood was not Subaru's, of course. That one night, Subaru had returned from a confrontation with the Dragons of Earth uninjured, but not unharmed. Kamui ran one finger lightly over the arm of the chair, and turned his back to it. In all his secret visits here, he never sat in this chair. The notion seemed very wrong, like laying down within the chalk outline at someone else's death scene. It would be and invasion of something very intimate. Kamui walked a few short steps from the chair to the neatly made bed. The duvet and unadorned pillow casings were a bisque that matched the chair. The sheet, that was neatly folded down over the top of the duvet, was a warm creme with a slightly golden hue. Surveying the room in it's entirety, Kamui thought that all of these light neutrals didn't seem very like Subaru at all. It was borrowed space though, after all. Kamui's own room was much the same. Kamui smoothed his hand over the surface of the bed, he felt the firm mattress beneath the covers. The surface of the mattress was even, and uniform. There were no depressions from where Subaru had lain, no indication as to whether he liked to sleep on his side near the edge of the bed, like Kamui, or sprawled out on his back, more in the center. Of course, Kamui had watched over Subaru in his sleep the night after Fuuma had bluntly driven his fingers into Subaru's right eye, permanently destroying the vision in that eye. Subaru's sleep hadn't seemed very deep to Kamui that night though. His torso was tense, and he'd jerked his limbs often throughout the night. His mouth was tugged down at the corners. It seemed as though exhaustion, pain medication, and shock had dragged Subaru's consciousness just below the surface. Kamui didn't really think you could call that sleep. It certainly wasn't restful. Kamui wanted to know what Subaru looked like when his face was completely unhooked, when his body let go of all posturing, when Subaru was at ease in his own skin. Coming out of his thoughts, Kamui looked down at the way his hand was leaving creases and softly folded trails along the duvet. He felt embarrassed, like a child caught leaving finger marks in cake icing. He drew his hand away, and began to draw the covers tight and smooth over the mattress once again. He reached up to straighten a pillow he had inadvertently knocked askew. Lifting the pillow to replace it to it's proper place, Kamui was surprised to see a small dark crumpled object lying on the bed. Kamui picked up the limp cloth, that turned out to be a thin black leather glove. The mate was underneath it. Kamui laid the glove over his own open hand to compare the size. It was too large for him, but not by much. Kamui didn't think it would fit Subaru. Maybe, the glove had belonged to Subaru's twin sister, the one he had lost to the Sakurazukamori. It didn't seem very feminine. Perhaps, Subaru had worn the gloves himself when he was younger. They were wrinkled, crumpled like a newspaper someone had retrieved from the trash, and tried to smooth out. They hadn't been worn in years. Kamui picked up the second glove, and it sagged unnaturally. There was something inside it. Kamui held the second glove by the middle finger shaking it lightly over his open palm. A broach slipped from it's wrist. The pin was affixed to the back of a pale blue bow formed from rich double face satin, and a small gold cross dangled from it's center knot. The bow was uneven now, bent and pressed inside the glove, and the peaks of it's loops had begun to fray. Kamui slipped the broach back into the glove, and placed both gloves under the pillow, as he had found them. He stepped to the small, round table at the head of the bed. There was a small brushed steel lamp, whose shade matched the duvet and chair and a pale marble ash tray, nothing else. The ash tray was empty, and clean. Only the dark grey marks of some deeply embedded ash remained. Kamui walked past the windows, the rain was letting up some. His diaphragm pressed up into his lungs, as he realized he had completely lost track of time. He continued over to Subaru's dresser. There was nothing on top of the low wide chest of drawers. Kamui let his fingers trail over the lacquered surface of the unstained wood, as he continued toward the door. Kamui looked around the room one more time, after he pulled down the light switch. There wasn't really anything here of Subaru himself. A memento of his sister, the blood that stained him after the death of the Sakurazukamori, but nothing that was of Subaru. The room was so vacant, like the look in Subaru's eyes the night that Rainbow bridge fell, the night of the Sakurazukamori's death. That was the last time Kamui had seen Subaru. He was here, in this room, eyes so wide, so empty. Kamui had known he was already gone. Kamui wondered why he could never hold on to anything or anyone. He lifted his right hand to the left side of his chest, and pressed the heel of his palm to his skin, through his thin shirt, and remembered the time Subaru held him in his heart. ===== "Without you my llife has become a hangover without end. A movie made for T.V.: bad dialogue, bad acting, no interest. Too long with no story and no sex." - - Jarvis Cocker</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>