when i fall

Memory is a sequence of self-reversal. Memory is a play in seven acts, each one unspooling itself backward through its component scenes and speeches, unravelling back to the first and then through until nothing remains but the waiting curtain.

Memory is:

***

You think about the craziest things when you're dying. I mean, really. They tell you you'll close your eyes and be in a tunnel of blackness, but at the end of the tunnel there'll seem to be some sort of light that'll draw you toward it, but they never tell you that before that you'll be lying on a futon thinking about the turtle that used to live under the front steps of your house when you were twelve that had a face like the statues of Buddha they sell in a lot of the cheap tourist stores, and how one day there was a big tropical storm and it washed that turtle right down to the beach and you never saw it again, and for nearly a month it kept you up at night wondering what happened to the turtle, and if it got eaten by a bird or something or if it just found a home down by the water and was happier there without you. ...Come to think of it, though, it's probably better that they don't mention that part. If they did, everybody would want to die. Or no one would.

I'm tired. I'm feverish. My chest hurts, and it's hard to breathe. These are things I have to remind myself to notice. They've just faded into the background by now.

I've been thinking about dreams a lot. More than turtles, even. I guess you would know why. I used to have all kinds of dreams, you know, and most of them weren't really dreams at all; they were you, or the past, or the future, or a few times other things. I dreamed about the way it would end, long before it did, and afterwards it drove me crazy. If my subconscious knew all along what was going to happen, why couldn't it just tell me? It would have saved us all a lot of trouble. But that's not the way it works, I guess.

And aside from Subaru, you were the first piece of all that I'd seen in such a long time, and in a way, outside of everything else, it almost made me feel nostalgic. Isn't that ridiculous? What kind of an idiot looks back fondly on a time when the whole world was crumbling around him? When everything he loved was being taken away?

Like I even need to ask. The same kind of idiot who thinks about a turtle that got lost in a storm when his own lungs are trying to drown themselves.

I think what I'm trying to say, though, is: thank you. I feel a lot better now.

And I'm sorry for how long you've had to wait.

*

Pain screams in his wings. Pain, pain, nothing but pain, it's the whole world. He chokes, trying to breathe.

Kamui does not argue. He's busy trying not to throw up.

*

Keiichi's expression seemed familiar, in a funny sort of way; but then, he supposed it should. God knew he'd felt it on his face enough times. They rode the subway home in silence, not talking or even really looking at each other more than they had to, but he could see the side of Keiichi's face reflected in the dark window beside him, and he watched it, laid over the rushing darkness outside. That's what it means to spend three and a half decades with someone, maybe: you learn to watch his face like it's a subway tunnel, flying past.

The doctor had given him six months, a year at the outside. He liked thinking of it that way; it made it seem generous, like doctors had little parcels of life all tied up that they could just hand out at will, depending on the diagnosis. He pictured the smooth-faced young doctor, anonymous behind his glasses, just reaching into a bottom drawer and pulling out a fresh six months and passing it across the desk. Or a year. At the outside.

He was so tired.

He was always tired, lately. That was part of why they had taken him to the doctor -- but not why they had avoided it for so long, without admitting it, making halfhearted appointments and then inventing little excuses at the last minute so that they wouldn't have to go after all. That was different; it was because they had both known, somehow, deep down, that it wouldn't be just that he needed more rest or a change of diet. He didn't know how, but they'd known. They'd seen six months all tied up and tucked away in a bottom drawer.

Or a year. Or five months, or seven. Or half a day, if a car came the wrong way at the wrong time tomorrow morning. Did it matter?

Keiichi had thought it mattered. Keiichi had thought it mattered very much. There'd been strain in his voice after the appointment, when he'd asked Kamui to wait for him outside, saying that he wanted to talk a little more with the doctor. So he'd sat in the chair just outside the door, not wanting to go back out to the lobby with the coughing businessmen and the miserable, feverish little girl with her mother in the corner, and he could hear them talking even before Keiichi started raising his voice.

He didn't catch a lot of what the doctor said, but it was more than what he'd been told. To him, the actual patient, the doctor had mostly just said it seemed like there'd been a lot of stress on his body in his lifetime, and now all of his systems were just giving out, and he'd accepted that with calm and understanding. Keiichi, though, wanted to know more, was very emphatic about the fact that that didn't make sense, and so the doctor explained.

"Segawa-san," (he said), "there are many urban legends about ordinary people performing superhuman feats under great stress. Perhaps you've heard some of them? The old story, for example, about a mother whose baby becomes trapped under a car, and in her agitation she lifts the car to free the child, without even realizing what she's done."

"I don't understand." Keiichi's voice. "What does that have to do with it?"

"From the strain that Shirou-san seems to have undergone, he might well have spent more than a year lifting cars off babies," came the doctor's implacable reply. As Keiichi got ready for an outburst, he hastened to add, "As we can't know what the cause of this was, I can only restate the obvious: he has been under enormous and irreparable levels of physical stress. It's something of a medical miracle that he's lived even as long as he has. And at this point, there's really nothing we can do for him."

Keiichi had broken in then, close to yelling; outside, he quite suddenly decided to become interested in the outdated magazine on his lap. He hadn't wanted to make a scene -- "What do you mean, there's nothing you can do? You know what's wrong with him, don't you? Then why can't you fix it?"

"There is no cure for thirty-year-old overexertion, Segawa-san."

Silence followed that; and after a minute, the abrupt scrape of Keiichi getting up from his chair. "I see. Thank you." Tight words, wound up like clock-springs. "Could I trouble you for a colleague you might refer me to? I'd like a second opinion."

"By all means," the doctor said, mildly enough; a drawer rumbled open, a pen scratched. "I hope you won't be disappointed, however, when he tells you the same as I have." He paused, and then: "I'd also like to give you some prescriptions for Shirou-san, if you'd wait a moment. For some antibiotics: weak as he is, he'll be more susceptible to viruses, and bacterial infections. And -- perhaps some painkillers. For later on."

"I'm sure that won't be necessary." Too tight. Like he was trying to keep something inside.

"Maybe so. Nonetheless."

"All right," Keiichi said after long minutes, and he sounded tired, and defeated; and Kamui got up out of the chair, telling himself he needed to stretch his legs, and to see if the pretty nurse in the station down the hallway could get him something to drink.

Five minutes and a paper cup of coffee later, Keiichi came out with a handful of paper and slightly reddened eyes. He smiled at Kamui when the other man stood up; and stop, Kamui wanted to tell him, just stop it, you don't have to do that, you're going to drive me crazy. But he didn't.

"Come on," Keiichi said; "we'll stop by the drugstore, and then let's go home."

So they did.

*

"Always," he whispers, then leans forward suddenly, arching his back into a sharp curve. He gasps -- it sounds like pain, or pleasure -- and squeezes Kamui's hand hard enough to hurt; Kamui's not paying attention, though, he's looking at the strange way the flesh at the other boy's shoulders seems to be boiling beneath his shirt. "Always..." And the fabric rips open with a hissing sound, and two great, white-feathered wings burst from his back, snail-trails of blood still clinging to the pinions. Fuuma shudders for a moment, then takes a slow breath, and stretches out the glory of his wings above him. They block out the light from the window, and from their shadows, Kamui stares.

*

Lying in bed, the kitten curled up in a soft purring ball between his arm and his side, listening to the shower run in the next room. Keiichi had been in there a long time, but Kamui wasn't worried yet. He just needed a little while, sometimes.

Today had been the worst in a long time. About a 6.5, they'd said on the radio, though he thought that might be just a guess. The greenhouse was very well-constructed, but even so a few panes of the ceiling had shattered. It was just lucky there hadn't been anyone working directly below them. It still might have been all right, though, if there hadn't been so many phone lines knocked out; but when he'd called Keiichi's office and gotten an apology from a recorded voice, he'd realized just how bad this was going to be.

"Is everything all right, Shirou-san?" Takahashi-san had asked, poking her head into the central office. He didn't know what the expression on his face looked like, but whatever it was, it changed her own to sympathy as soon as he'd turned it toward her.

"I'm very sorry," he'd said. "I think I need to go home."

She'd just nodded; there was no need to ask. "I'll drive you if you'd like. The subway's probably a mess."

And he had thanked her, and that had been that. Her radio blared out a popular music station when she turned on the car, and they hadn't spoken the whole way to the apartment.

And he had come in to find Keiichi on the couch waiting for him -- he was never much good at work after an earthquake, someone must have brought him home too -- and he was shaking so badly it was scary, and when he saw Kamui's bandaged hands he'd fallen apart before Kamui could even explain that it was okay, he'd just tried to rescue a few tea roses from the disaster area and hadn't been careful enough between the leaves, it was okay, everything was all right now.

Little claws pricked Kamui's side, interrupting his thoughts, and he winced. The kitten had rolled over onto her back, tangling up the sheet around herself, and now she was grabbing at his skin with her too-big paws. Kamui smiled and took the hint, rubbing her fuzzy belly with his fingertips, and she purred like a jet engine. She was only their second; it had taken them a long time to be ready for a successor to the illustrious Kimiko, and she had lived to a venerable old age. They'd gotten her maybe four days ago, not even long enough to have thought of a name. He hoped she'd be happy there, though. It's always hard to move into a new family.

Sometimes it was hard to believe they'd gotten anywhere at all. Every step forward, a half a step back. It made you wonder after a while if people could ever get better. You'd think twenty-five years would be enough, but it was clear that it wasn't: just in the nightmares they both still had sometimes, in the way Keiichi had pulled him down to the living room floor and clung to him, and he'd put Keiichi's hand over his heart and whispered I'm here, feel it, I'm here, I'm okay, we're okay. We're going to be okay. And the trouble was that he didn't know if that was true or not. He hated that feeling, but he'd spent so little of his life being okay that he wasn't sure he knew what it felt like anymore.

But then, maybe they could figure it out together. Maybe that was what they were here for, when you got right down to it.

The kitten nudged him again, and Kamui picked her up from the mattress, holding her up in front of him. Fortunately, she didn't seem disturbed by this in the slightest. She was going to be a sweet one, you could just tell.

"I hope you know what you're getting into," he told her, as the sound of water squeaked to nothing in the other room. "We really are kind of a mess."

The kitten purred, but otherwise had nothing to say.

*

By now, he says it just because he knows he should, not because it's what he really wants. Certainly he doesn't expect Fuuma to listen. But when Fuuma says "Whatever you want, Kamui," and pulls away, he realizes his mistake was thinking Fuuma didn't know that.

As Kamui stares, Fuuma's calm smile turns to a mockery of concern. "What is it, Kamui?" He can't, can't look at those dead eyes. It isn't Fuuma, it never has been. If he were strong, he wouldn't...

"You what? You told me to stop."

*

Subaru didn't come to see him as often anymore. He tried not to be hurt by that; Subaru had said it was because Kamui didn't need it as much now, and if Subaru said so, then it had to be true. Still, sometimes he thought he'd trade all the growing and healing just to see Subaru more than just a few short nights a year. While he had Keiichi, and he loved Keiichi, there were things Kamui could never talk about with Keiichi, or with anybody, for that matter; and there were few things in the world, he was sure, as lonely as being the only one left who remembered. There were times when he wasn't sure he could stand it.

It was usually around those times that Subaru visited. He'd close his eyes one night and find himself somewhere he hadn't been in a long time: his bed in the mansion, or in the little house he'd shared with his mother by the sea. And Subaru would be there with him, and hold him, and they'd talk. He always knew when it was, and that he was asleep, but that was the only proof he had that Subaru's appearances were real, and not just dreams he wanted to believe in. There was really no way of knowing for sure. He didn't mind, though. They helped him feel better, and beyond that, what did it matter?

Tonight they were down on the beach, watching the afternoon sunlight sparkle off the water, Kamui tucked under Subaru's arm and leaning on his chest. He was still so much smaller than Subaru, even though now he was almost ten years older than the image his memory kept. It was funny; he certainly didn't feel older than Subaru had been. Sometimes he suspected his mental growth had been arrested at seventeen, and he was going through life with a body that aged and grew up but had a teenager's brain inside it. But then, he understood a lot of people felt that way.

"What kind of award?" Subaru asked him, smiling, and he tried to remember what they'd been talking about. Keiichi --

"Oh -- um. I'm not really sure, actually. Some sort of big city-wide recognition. ...We didn't talk about it much."

Subaru cocked his head. A warm breeze off the water tousled his hair; that and his curious expression made him look younger. That was always nice. "Didn't you?"

Kamui shrugged. "Well, it's not like... He just didn't seem that interested, I guess. And we've both been busy. They'll probably explain it better at the party on Saturday."

He could hear the smile in Subaru's voice. "There's a party? I thought you hated going out."

Kamui winced a little. "I do." Subaru chuckled, and hugged him a little closer.

"Poor Kamui."

"Mm. It's okay. Keiichi likes them."

A seagull swept low over the water, plucking into the waves, and they both watched it for a moment. The shadow it cast rippled and changed shape as the crests rose and fell, cutting a dark spot out of all the diamond glitter.

"Is everything really all right, angel?" Subaru asked, at last. "You seem unhappy tonight."

Kamui pulled around to look at him, wide-eyed. "Oh... I'm sorry -- I didn't mean to --" Subaru kissed him on the top of his head then, though, and that had always been good for shutting him up.

"You don't need to be sorry. But if anything's the matter..."

"No -- it's nothing." He considered that, and then sighed and shook his head. "Well, it's... mostly nothing. It's just..."

Subaru shifted their positions slightly, so he could see Kamui better. "Just what?"

Some of the shine had gone off the water by now; the sun had passed its peak. It didn't seem like it had been that long, though. Maybe time ran faster in dreams.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm faking it," Kamui said after a moment, staring out at the sea. "Like... like I'm not really here at all anymore. It's like everyone else is doing a dance, and they all know all the steps and everything, and I'm just... looking at their feet and trying to follow it." He sighed, and closed his eyes; the afterimage of the water burned there, a negative of an ocean. "It just makes me tired. I'm always so tired."

Subaru didn't say anything for a long time, but Kamui didn't look up. He didn't need to see his face.

"I know, Kamui," his voice came instead. "But it will get better. That's all I can promise you; I wish it were more."

"It's been fifteen years," Kamui said softly. "When will it get better?"

Subaru hugged him, and he clung to the arm around his chest, just a little. "It already has. Do you remember the first time I came to see you? How you felt then? You've come so far, angel, and I'm so proud of you. And it'll keep getting better. Every day, every minute, as long as you keep going. You'll be fine."

He held Kamui a moment longer, and then kissed the top of his head again. "But I should let you get some real sleep. It's late." Kamui made himself smile -- it always seemed so short, when it was over -- and turned to hug Subaru fully.

"Okay. Thank you." He paused. "Oh -- but, Subaru?"

Subaru tilted his head. "Hmm?"

And again, as every time before, the hope reared up in his chest; wild and impossible, a grassfire beneath his breastbone. He knew better, but maybe this time... maybe...

"Do you think..." He swallowed. "Do you think Fuuma might come? Sometime?"

A pause. Just a pause, that was all; but between its beginning and its end he felt the fire die out like it had never been, and something cold and bitter settle in its place. Subaru pulled back slightly to look at him, and it was the sorrow in his eyes that hurt the most.

"Kamui..."

Kamui tried to smile, and somehow that was even worse. "No. I know. Never mind."

Subaru looked at him for a long moment, and then pulled him back into the hug. "You know, Kamui, it has been fifteen years. And in all of that time, in every single time I've come to see you like this, I can't remember once when you haven't asked me that question."

Surprise turned to alarm and then to concern and to guilt too quickly for him to keep up with. "Oh -- Subaru, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you feel bad... I'm really glad you come, I am, I love seeing you -- I miss you. But it's -- "

"Shh, no. I understand. It's all right." Subaru's arms drew him in a little tighter, and he knew the gesture well: the last squeeze before letting go. "I just hate for you to be disappointed."

*

It never stops hurting, but the worst is that it never stops being a surprise. By now it should have lost the power to make him feel so betrayed, but it hasn't. Will it ever? Why can't he make his mind pull apart the real Fuuma from this thing?

"Don't," he says, and when he speaks he finds his teeth clenched, his fingers knotted up in the bedsheets, every word spat and broken. "Don't say that to me."

*

He'd been awake for maybe ten minutes, and the dream had already begun to fuzz out and go dark around the edges. It didn't matter. It was the same as any other, and they all slid away from him eventually.

The bulb over the sink coughed and sputtered light into the room as if it were an old man with a bad cold; once there had probably been a cover of some kind, but in generations of college students it had long since gone missing. Kamui turned the razorblade one way, then another, catching the flickering light in patterns on the narrow strip of metal, held it up so he could see it in the mirror too. His reflection looked grey and parched and dirty, but he wasn't so sure that was the mirror's fault.

He'd spent the last few minutes removing the blade from a safety razor, probably one of Keiichi's; Kamui didn't have to shave very often. The plastic housing hadn't been too hard to take apart, and after that it had just been a matter of pulling it free. He'd almost laughed when he realized he was being careful not to cut his fingers. Even failing the courage for that, there was a nearly full bottle of aspirin under the sink... no sleeping pills, though, which was too bad. He thought he might like that.

It was a narrow blade, hard to even keep a grip on. He held it carefully, not thinking of much of anything, skimmed its corner up the thick pink ridge of scar on one hand. Just lightly, not hard enough to cut. Someone was showering somewhere else in the dormitory; he could hear water gurgling in the walls above his head. What was it, almost four in the morning? Some people never sleep.

It had been Fuuma, and that was all he could really remember. More than enough. It wasn't Fuuma himself, of course; that didn't happen anymore. It never would again.

Some people shouldn't sleep. Or walk, or talk, or think, or do anything everyone does. Some people aren't made like everybody else, can pretend to be like everybody else, but aren't. Born for just one thing. Then they do it. Then they're done. Nobody else even has to know about them, and if they happen to last longer than they were supposed to, well, then it's up to them to fix it. You know the world doesn't want you, and you don't want it anymore either, not after what it did to you. You know this is meaningless, this never should have happened, it just hurts all over inside. You just have to fix it. And it'll go away.

He wasn't going to do it.

It was Keiichi who stopped him; who always stopped him. Keiichi didn't even know about this, but he was still the one who always talked Kamui down. Even when he tried not to, Kamui always found himself thinking of what would happen afterwards, and then he had to think of Keiichi pushing his way into the room, panicked by the locked door and the silence, and of Keiichi finding his body. Of Keiichi putting the few things in the room that were Kamui's into boxes, unmaking the other bed that Kamui never really used. Of Keiichi making himself smile and say he was all right. He would. Kamui knew he would.

And once he had thought about all of that, he couldn't. He never could. Because Keiichi had dreams of his own, even if they never talked about those when the lights were on. And there was such a thing as being fair.

There was knocking at the door then, and the lightbulb flickered as if startled. "Kamui?" Keiichi's voice, floating in sleep-thick and worried. "How long have you been up? Are you okay?"

Some floors above, the water cut off, and the bathroom was suddenly silent. Maybe whoever it was had finally finished for the night and was about to dry off and go to bed. Maybe he'd be up in the morning eating breakfast with everybody else, and no one would ever be the wiser.

Kamui looked in the mirror, and his reflection stared back, ghost-pale and dull-eyed. He watched his lips move as they shaped the words: "I'm fine."

*

He collapses into Fuuma's arms, spent and sticky and panting and almost content, and he closes his eyes so that he won't have to look at Fuuma again. Because he doesn't know if that look will still be there -- that look in Fuuma's eyes that's the old Fuuma, he knows it is, the warmth and love in them cuts all through him and opens all his scars. He doesn't know, and that's the problem. If it isn't, it will only break his heart one more time, and he can probably stand that; but if it is and he looks at it again, the pain will drive him mad.

"I'll... I'll save you," he whispers, and he doesn't know for whom that is, either. "I'll save you, Fuuma... I promise."

*

There was darkness and pain, and he was in it alone, and the dreams there were awful. Then there was light, and it was too bright, and it hurt too. But the dreams had stopped, and eventually it occurred to him that he was awake.

He couldn't really see anything for a long time, or at least it felt like a long time. Just smeary white and grey. After a while, though, that turned into a ceiling, and some walls and maybe a curtained window. A room. Not the mansion; window in the wrong place, bed too small. Hospital? He hadn't been in one himself since... his nose itched, and he tried to scratch it with his left hand, but it wouldn't move for some reason. And his right hand was asleep -- but warm, kind of sweaty. Because someone was sitting next to the bed, holding it. Subaru...?

Cold, sudden, sobering, slapping his thoughts into order: No. It couldn't be Subaru; Subaru was dead. So was everyone. So was Fuuma. And he was alive.

He was alive. The despair the thought brought in was so heavy it suffocated him; a bitter taste rose up in his mouth like he'd melted aspirin there. He was alive and hurt and in a hospital room because he hadn't died.

This was, unquestionably, the worst thing that could have happened.

He might have blacked out again for a bit then, though he wasn't sure. All he knew was that a little while later, he discovered that he couldn't move his left arm because it was in a cast and strapped to his chest, and from the low, sick way it had begun to throb, it was probably broken. His ribs seemed to be, too; again. Aside from the scars he'd had to begin with, though, that was all he could find wrong with him. Everything else seemed to be more or less intact, not counting how his head felt about three sizes too big.

He had jumped off Tokyo Tower and come out with a broken arm, a few broken ribs, maybe a concussion. How? He didn't know -- didn't really care to know -- and would never find out. Maybe the earth and the air had made themselves soft just for him; maybe angels had come to bear him up, lest he dash his foot against a stone. It didn't really matter, anyway. That could stay in the darkness, and the darkness could stay between the time when he'd jumped and when he'd woken up in a cold smeary white hospital room, thirsty and aching. He didn't need to fill that darkness in. It was all right there.

And it was only around then that it occurred to him to notice who it was slumped in the chair next to his hospital bed, who had dozed off holding his hand some time ago and still sat waiting.

"...Segawa-kun?" Kamui said out loud, frowning. His voice sounded rusty and awful, and it made him jump.

It made Segawa-kun jump too, and Kamui found himself feeling vaguely guilty for waking him; the other boy picked his head up off the arm of the chair, squinting against the light. "Nf," he said, and then his eyes focused on Kamui, and he blinked. "Sh-shirou-kun?"

Kamui tried to clear his throat before saying anything else, but there wasn't really anything to clear. He was thirsty. "What are you..." he began, but there wasn't anything to go after that, and they just stared at each other for a little while.

Then Segawa-kun jumped to his feet, nearly upsetting his chair in the process, babbling as he scrambled for the door. "I -- wait, I have to get the, the nurse, or the doctor, I was supposed to tell someone if you -- "

"Wait -- " It came out loud enough to stop Segawa-kun, frowning, in the doorway; but it hurt. He had to struggle for a few seconds to get his breath back. "Don't... please don't leave me alone."

The other boy looked startled, then puzzled. "I'll come right back -- "

"Please. I don't... please."

So Segawa-kun came back, though slowly, and sat back down, and that was better.

When he'd started to feel a little less like crying, Kamui asked, "How long have I been here?"

"Almost a week," Segawa-kun said, looking at the floor. "They didn't know if you'd wake up at first. Well, they thought you would, but they didn't know. But you did!" He looked up at Kamui and he smiled, and it was both too bright and somehow comforting, like it always was. That just made Kamui want to cry again. "So everything will be okay now. Don't worry."

"Why are you..." He stopped, swallowed, and tried again. "How did you find me?"

"Oh." The smile went away, and that was both better and worse. "Well, you didn't come back to school -- after that one big earthquake. So I just started checking the hospitals." He said it without any particular inflection at all. "They'd just found you, they didn't know who you were or where you came from, so they were really glad I came in. I felt bad that I could only give them your name, though. Not much help, huh?"

Kamui stared at the ceiling, and then he closed his eyes. "I'm thirsty," he said. It seemed to make sense.

Segawa-kun's chair's legs scraped on the tile floor, and Kamui opened his eyes again. "I should get the doctor. He'll -- you'll feel better."

He didn't know where he found the strength; it just came, pushing out his arm and wrapping his hand around the other boy's as it passed. He was probably holding on too tightly, but Segawa-kun turned to look at him, and it was enough.

"You won't leave me alone, will you?" He was crying. Why was he crying? When had that happened? "I can't... I don't want to be alone. I should -- they all -- but I don't... think I know how. Please..."

Segawa-kun's hand tightened around his. It was warm, and smooth. It seemed like it was the only part of him left, like his face was sliding out of focus and running away like water. "You're not alone," he said, and it was kind; and it was like hearing his voice from his reflection in a murky pool.

Then he gently pulled his hand out of Kamui's, and left.

After he'd gone, Kamui fell asleep -- real sleep, this time. In his dreams he brought a sword down on Fuuma again and again, and he woke up screaming.

*

And "Please" is what Fuuma says; all he says, before the dream snaps off like a breaking bone and he's left sitting up in the darkness, gasping, heart pounding in horror and hope. "Please," he says. "Kamui, please..."

*

You stand there at the edge of the metal crossbar, the wind in your hair. It's stopped snowing, but you don't look at the sky. You don't care about the stars anymore.

It's so cold, and you wonder: is he cold? Is it cold where he is? No. You don't want to think about that. Wind and the sky, and the clocks are calling it a new year. That's not what you would have told them. You know better.

You leave the sword, you leave his body, you leave it all where it lies, because you're finished with it. It's so cold. You back up to the edge of the crossbar, your heels on the precipice, facing a forever of height. You wish you had wings, but you never had wings. They were only in everyone's mind, and now they're dead, and you will never fly.

So you close your eyes. You stretch out your arms. And you take a step back.

***

Memory is a play in seven acts; and the first line and the last are the only ones anyone will remember.

***

He stood on a sunny path, tree branches blowing overhead like women's skirts, in the mid-spring wind. They were all in bloom, and the blossoms spilled around him in skirls and eddies like some kind of strange warm blizzard. It seemed curious that he was standing and dressed and outside, but then, he supposed this was a dream; after all, there was the Togakushi shrine looming up ahead of him, and it had been abandoned for more than thirty years. He had checked every now and then, always under the pretense of something else, to see if anyone would move in again, but they never did. It would be falling apart by now, but there it was, strong and well-kept as he'd ever known it as a child.

But... this was strange. It was a dream, and he knew it was a dream... but Subaru had never known this place. What...?

Then there was a sound behind him, and he knew. All of a sudden, he just knew; a steady dry roar came up in his ears, and he almost whimpered, reeling with unreadiness and inexplicable fear. Thirty-five years of waiting and asking and barely hoping, and still nothing, nothing had prepared him.

He looked behind him.

And there was only Fuuma. Nothing terrifying, nothing to dread. He stood in profile a ways down the path, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking up at the rustling trees with a strange sadness in his eyes. The wind tousled his hair, blowing soft fragments of blossoms past him, framing him in spring. He was no older than he had been when Kamui had killed him.

"Fuuma?" Kamui whispered, or tried to. No sound came out, though, so he tried it again. The are you real? he wanted to put after it never even made it to the tip of his tongue.

Fuuma closed his eyes briefly, and then turned toward him. His hair blew into his eyes and out of them again. There was a funny sort of expression on his face -- almost a smile, except Kamui had never seen a smile that seemed to hurt that much. "Kamui," he said.

It was all he needed.

He took half a step, stuttered, shuddered, ran the rest of the way, stumbled and fell headlong into Fuuma's arms. They circled him and held him up, and they were warm. He clung. He couldn't have known it would hurt like this --

"I didn't... I didn't think you would come."

Fuuma sighed; warm breath grazed his forehead. "I know."

They stood and held each other in a storm of blossoms. This had always been the most beautiful place in the world.

It was hard to tell how long it was before either of them spoke again, but it was Kamui who broke the silence. He hated to pull away, but he did anyway, instead folding Fuuma's hands into both his own. "You don't hate me?" he asked, finally.

Fuuma frowned, tilting his head to the side. "Hate you?"

"I killed you." Staring at the ground. His feet and Fuuma's, pointing at each other. Fuuma. "I never got to -- tell you I was sorry. I didn't know..."

"But I wanted you to." He'd almost forgotten what Fuuma's voice sounded like. "There was nothing else you could have done. It's all right."

Kamui closed his eyes. "Nothing?" But Fuuma didn't answer that, and the wind picked up again.

"I don't know what to do, Kamui," Fuuma said at last. His voice began to break by Kamui's name, and it was hard to listen to. "I don't know how... I don't know what I should do to fix this." Kamui looked up at him, but he had turned his face away; just a sliver of profile, an eye squeezed shut. His hands shook in Kamui's.

He lifted a hand to Fuuma's cheek. "You don't have to -- " he started to say, but then Fuuma flinched back, jerking away from his palm. His stomach lurched, and for a moment he thought wildly that Fuuma did hate him after all -- but then he turned Kamui's other hand over, staring in bleak misery at the old scar cut through his palm.

"Oh," Kamui said out loud, and tried to smile. He wanted to be relieved, but it was hard with his heart breaking like that. "Honestly, I'd... gotten used to them."

Fuuma closed his eyes again, and swallowed. "I can't," he whispered.

"Maybe not." He bit his lip. "Fuuma... I love you. You know that, don't you? I could never tell you, and I'm sorry, but -- that won't change. I always will."

The hand around his tightened, and he could hear the little sob that Fuuma didn't quite let out. "How?"

"How could I not?" He brushed Fuuma's cheek again, and though he wouldn't meet Kamui's eyes, this time Fuuma permitted it. "Could you stop loving me?"

He had to wait for a while before finally, Fuuma just whispered, "You shouldn't." And Kamui sighed.

"I've hurt you too much already, Fuuma. Please don't ask me to do it again."

Fuuma looked at him; the pain in his eyes was raw and real. "But -- "

But then he took Fuuma's face between his hands and kissed him before he could finish.

When they separated, Fuuma relented, clinging to Kamui and leaning his forehead on the top of Kamui's head. "I missed you," he murmured, with what seemed like an effort. Kamui stroked his cheeks; there were sakura petals in his hair.

"I missed you too," he said, and then he didn't quite smile. "But... it won't be too long, now." Fuuma only winced at that, though. "Why did you wait so long? You could have come... I always wanted to see you so much."

"I wasn't ready." Fuuma looked at his feet; his words came in short, painful bursts like gunshots. "And you were... You have another life now. Someone you -- you love. You didn't need..."

Kamui touched his lips, stilling him. "I will always need you." A shudder seemed to pass through Fuuma, and the wind picked up again.

"Kamui..." His voice was hard to hear. But when Kamui's arms slipped around him, it was like they'd been there forever.

"Always. I... Always."

Then there wasn't anything to say for a while.

The wind in the tree branches made a sort of hissing roar, and against the backdrop of white noise Fuuma's breathing seemed louder, the warmth of his chest greater against the chill. It was so quiet; they could be alone in the world. Wasn't this what Fuuma had wanted? Nothing more than to be the only one...

Fuuma's chest shook against his cheek then, and he pulled Kamui closer, just holding him. "Kamui, I'm sorry," he whispered. "There isn't anything else... I'm so sorry."

He shook his head, as much as he could. "It wasn't your fault." A deep breath. "It was -- it was me." Fuuma made a troubled sound, but he kept going anyway; so many things he hadn't been able to speak, not to anyone. "I wasn't strong enough -- I didn't understand. I... I should have been able to save you."

Fuuma sighed, and his breath ruffled Kamui's hair. "You did. It was your wish, Kamui; I couldn't keep it from you. That was the only way."

Kamui stiffened. "...No."

"That was how it was supposed to -- "

"No!" He shouted it, louder than he meant to, and Fuuma shrank back; Kamui grabbed his shoulders, though, not letting him escape, spitting out the words low and hard. "I won't accept that. Fuuma -- there must be another way, there had to have been. I will not believe that my mother and Kotori and my friends all died for a destiny like that." And Fuuma... but he couldn't say that. Not now, not when he didn't know how Fuuma would answer. His shoulders slumped, and some of the heat slid away. "I can't... no. It should have been different."

He could feel Fuuma staring at him, but he didn't want to look. "Kamui..."

"It should have been different," he repeated. His voice had begun to break, and he thought he might have started crying; there was an awful empty feeling growing inside him, one that hadn't opened its jaws in years. "What does the world matter if you can't save one person? It should have... Fuuma..."

Then Fuuma pulled him close again, and his voice left him for a few minutes.

"I'll fix it someday, Fuuma," he whispered at last, wiping his eyes. "I promise. Someday... we'll do it all over again from the start. We'll get it right."

And this time -- and Kamui's stomach knotted up inside him to feel it -- it was Fuuma who gave him that last, reluctant squeeze.

"I'll wait, then," he said.

Kamui drew back to look at him; he didn't know what was in his eyes, but whatever it was, it made Fuuma flinch and look away. "Are you going already?" he asked quietly, and Fuuma swallowed and nodded.

"It's harder than I thought it would be..." He sighed again, and took an awkward step back. "I'm sorry, Kamui."

He looked down, and pushed down the pain; it made him sick to realize how good at that he was, by now. "It's all right," he said, even though it wasn't. "It just... feels like I haven't said anything to you that I need to."

Fuuma reached out, as if to touch his cheek, and then stopped; he pretended not to have noticed, because he didn't know what else to do. "Maybe it can wait, too."

"I guess so." He sighed. "Will you come again?"

"If there's time."

"All right," Kamui said, finally, but it still wasn't, and he knew Fuuma knew it. So he just kissed Fuuma again, and held on to him as hard as he could. The wind blew until it rattled the sky, and the sun shone on the Togakushi shrine and the ghosts of those who had once belonged there; and the trees spilled down their blossoms like all the love in the world.

And Fuuma had just begun to turn away when Kamui started and called out, "Oh! Fuuma, there's one -- "

*

The weather was finally getting warm, and it was so nice out today Keiichi got off the subway a station early to walk the rest of the way home. He preferred to walk whenever he could; he got to be out in the sun, and that was the one really good thing about going home early the past few months. The trees were just beginning to blossom, and he couldn't stop looking at the sky, it was so blue. The neighbors' children were playing out on the building's lawn, and he waved to them as he went inside. He checked the mail in the front hallway, found a few bills and a catalogue of things no sensible person would ever buy, and went upstairs and down the hall to their door.

Inside the apartment he took off his shoes, flipped through the mail a second time and set it down with his briefcase on the end-table, careful that neither disturbed the three neat rows of bottles and the packet of needles that were already there. Loosening his tie with one hand, he opened the windowshades with his other, and smiled at the sky. It was really beautiful today.

He had just started shrugging out of his coat when he heard the sound from the other room: a thin thump, like something small knocked over. The smile dropped off his face like it had been pasted on, and he made the rest of the trip to the bedroom at a run.

Once it had been a room like any other, but now it was a cave; the blinds had been drawn tight for weeks now, and only the faintest yellowed slivers of afternoon light could slip through the cracks. The air was thick and wet, almost swampy, the humidifier cranking out a low hum from the corner. Fabric was piled in drifts on the futon, an endless mountain of blankets and pillows and weak attempts at comfort, and the dim light across all those folds made them look like the hilly landscape of some other planet at dusk. It smelled like medicine and mildew, and disease. A small reading-lamp was lying on its side on the floor, and Kamui's outstretched hand, reaching from the covers, lay beside it. Other than that, he was much too still.

Keiichi rushed in and went to his knees much faster than he should have, grabbing up that hand. It was like holding a bundle of sticks in a glove. The skin was icy to the touch... but there was a pulse under it.

He let out a breath so sudden and sharp it hurt. Kamui's eyes cracked barely halfway open, the shape of the window mirrored in his pupils, and somehow Keiichi found his smile again.

"You scared me!" Kamui's hand curled around his with a grip that was feeble at best, and he held on as he righted the lamp and turned it on. "I didn't think you'd be awake."

He didn't ask if Kamui was feeling any better today, though. He'd stopped asking that.

It couldn't possibly have been a month Kamui had been bedridden; his mind shied away from it every time he tried to convince himself. It had been forever. It had been just a day, just yesterday Kamui had been upright, looking ill and pale, certainly, but able to get up and get himself a glass of water if he needed it, or take himself to the bathroom. He didn't know how it long had been, but it hadn't been a month. Things like this were outside time. How could a more or less ordinary man in his fifties take both so much and so little time to convert his body into a skeleton with skin; a man who had until recently been perfectly healthy except that he was dying?

They'd fought once, for what might have been the first time ever, not long after it became apparent that Kamui couldn't go to work anymore; Keiichi had wanted him to go to a hospital, so that he could be properly taken care of... so that they could make him better. It had been bitter, and he'd hated the whining tone in his voice, but hadn't been able to stop. Finally Kamui -- who rarely raised his voice above a half-whisper -- had exploded, shouting, I'm dying, Keiichi, and I'd rather do it here than in a hospital! You know I hate them! I don't see what the point is in making me spend the last few months of my life with strangers in a place I hate, when I could be somewhere I've been happy. If you're going to be too busy or you can't take care of me, that's one thing, that's fine, but would you please deal with the fact that I am not going to get better? And then he'd stopped shouting, and what he'd said after that had instead been No, no, please, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell, I'm sorry, please, please don't cry.

Don't, it'll be okay.

But it wasn't. That was the whole point, wasn't it?

With the rattle from the humidifier, he had to lean in close to be able to hear anything Kamui said, almost all the way to his lips. Kamui could barely speak at all, his lungs were so heavy with fluid. Pneumonia, the last of the doctors had said; he was just too weak to fight it off. If it hadn't been his lungs, something else would have gone before long. It was all so goddamned arbitrary.

"...waiting for you," was what Kamui managed to say. Keiichi sat back up enough to frown at him, but when Kamui tried to say more, he broke down coughing. The sounds had a wetness to them that was horrible.

"Don't push it," Keiichi said, trying to cover that sound, and brushed hair off Kamui's forehead. If his hand was icy, his head felt like a stove burner. "You shouldn't talk if it hurts, it's bad for you. I'll get you some -- "

He got halfway up, but from somewhere Kamui's grip found some iron; he pulled Keiichi back, forcefully, so hard his own shoulders drew up from the bed a few inches. "No," he said, and for that one word his voice was stronger, too. Then he fell back on the bed, panting, coughing on every other breath, like it had taken almost everything out of him to get his point across. Probably it had. "Stay... I have to. If I don't now, I can't. I can't again."

Keiichi fell back into place. There was ice in his stomach. "Kamui?" he whispered, and now his own voice sounded weak.

"I'm sorry," Kamui whispered. "I'm sorry... I can't."

Keiichi didn't say anything for a while. His mind seemed to have shut down.

"I should go call the doctor," he said, finally. Numb all over. "I mean, if... I should..."

"No!" Kamui's hand clenched again. "Don't... it won't help. Don't leave. Don't leave me."

Because there was nothing else to say. Because, really, they had both known all along.

"All right. ... All right, Kamui."

That seemed to relax him; he closed his eyes, and settled back into the pillow. Somehow, though, it was easier to hear him now.

"You know what was really stupid?" he muttered first. "I thought... I thought I stopped it." Another coughing fit seized him, and he had to wait for it to pass. "But it ended. The world's always... It's... something ends, something big, and it just stops. Everything stops all around you. And it's the end. The funny thing is... is how everyone else just keeps... paying taxes, and doing laundry, and -- dancing, and sleeping, and... It's like they don't even notice the world is over."

Keiichi closed his eyes. "Kamui," he said. Nothing else would come out.

Kamui smiled, with an effort, and gave his hand a weak squeeze. "'M sorry... not making sense." His breathing sounded different now; not shallow and labored so much as barely there at all. "I'm sorry. I'm glad, that we could be... I'd stay if I could."

"I know," Keiichi barely whispered. Holding Kamui's hand against his cheek.

"...do something? Please. Talk to me."

"Talk... talk to you?"

Kamui nodded. "Don't w -- want... be alone. Anything, but please..." His eyes were beginning to slide closed. He looked so peaceful. So tired. "Just so I can sleep."

It wasn't like he could have said no.

Kamui's hand lay against his cheek, knobs of bone and cold skin. "Sure, I can -- I..." He swallowed. "I. Um. Work... It was... a pretty good day. Everyone's been so nice -- we got a lot done on the floor plans. You know, for the new building? I told you last... B-but, there's been a hold-up with the contractor, so it'll be a while. Before they can start. So..." He couldn't hear Kamui breathing at all anymore. His voice kept shaking, trying to fall apart.

"I walked part of the way home. I thought, since it was so nice... It's a really beautiful day, outside, you know?" Shuddering, crumbling. "The sky's so blue, I can't remember ever seeing it so blue -- and the trees, and... those kids from upstairs, I just know one of them's going to leave a roller skate or something on the sidewalk and Watanabe-san's mother's going to -- fall, and break... her hip... Kamui?" And he'd lost it, whatever he'd ever had since coming home to this, there were tears spotting the topmost blanket, his voice was wavering and torn into pieces and the humidifier was so damn loud, he should have gotten a new one weeks ago... "Kamui, there's more I have to tell you, there was a meeting and I might be getting a raise -- wake up, okay? Kamui... Kamui, please. Kamui. Please don't leave me. I never left you, so please... Kamui. Kamui. Don't leave me."

And then he couldn't talk anymore, so he cried instead. He did that for a long time.

When he could breathe, Keiichi pulled himself up and wiped his eyes, and touched Kamui's throat with his fingers. It was dry, and cool, and silent. He kissed Kamui's cold hand and put it down beside him, and then he got up and went into the other room, where he called the nearest hospital and spoke to an operator in a very calm voice. Then he poured a glass of water, and sat down on the couch and sipped it, and looked out the window at the children playing on the lawn; and he waited for an ambulance with its siren off to come and take Kamui away.

The funny thing is how no one else seems to notice.

*

He falls. The wind he's created spills around him, blowing through his hair, cushioning him; he feels like he's weightless. He's never known dying could be so kind. The air is cold, biting through his clothing as it pushes up to meet him, but it doesn't seem to matter. He could fall like this forever and be glad.

He can't open his eyes, but he can still see the stars --

*

And Kamui woke up in an empty room with the early morning sun spilling in through the windows and filling his eyes with light, and the dust-motes dancing in it like galaxies, like stars being born and dying and being born again. And there was Subaru sitting over him, a messenger stark outlined by the window, and the light was all around him and it made him glow; and he was holding out his hand, and he was smiling, and even as Kamui squinted against the brightness, he could hear him say, Wake up, angel.

Wake up, it's time to go.

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