Tears By: Amber Michelle K. DISCLAIMER - Fushigi Yuugi is the property of Yuu Watase, Flower Comics, and likely a bunch of other places I don't know. Please don't sue me - I'm poor, and I don't intend any copyright infringement with this story. SPOILERS - Episode 33... WARNING - The material in this story implies shounen-ai (male/male relationship), although I promise I didn't intend it that way. ^^ Misc. notes - I'm not a very good Fushigi Yuugi writer. I've written this only for my own benefit... Everything has already been done as far as fan fiction in that universe, so excuse the cliche - this is just what came to my mind after looking at a certain picture from Suzaku Hi Den. If you're an avid FY fan, I suggest you leave, lest you be offended by my horrid characterization. --- Pain. That's all it was, at first... a flash of pain, a spear through the chest - no, several of them - that stung as if they had been plunged through his own heart. Cold, as cold as the edges of hell itself, seeping slowly through his limbs... Phantom pain... ripping through his phantom soul. "Ne, Hotohori-sama..." Nuriko's quizzical look caused him to blink, a bit confused. Or was that it? A great deal of things seemed to confuse him, when he faced this man... A quick, childlike smile curved Nuriko's lips, full of mischief. "You make a wonderful serving girl..." A delighted laugh burst from her lips after that remark - likely at his expression; he was sure it must have been interesting - before it was stifled, and she whirled, glancing about the hideout to make sure they had not been noticed... A ragged gasp tore the air from Hotohori's lungs as he bolted from his chair, leaving him breathless and shaking. Shivering, from a bone-chilling cold very far from the here-and-now. Or at least... just very far... He wavered on his feet, dizzy, a choked cry caught in his throat... and stumbled forward against his desk, hands pressed flat onto the warm wood as if seeking some solace in its familiar, real grain. The wood was polished to a perfect shine. He stared at the reflection on its surface, eyes riveted to the ghostly vision. Nuriko... Nuriko... Cold, unforgiving emptiness bled through the agony, unbearable, filling with a thousand tears. He closed his eyes and turned his face away from the blur of sparkling purple he thought he had seen - just for a moment - within that shining reflection. That smile, that warm, friendly, loving presence... it was gone. Gone... "Heika-sama..." The voice was distant, physically close... but infinitely far away. Nuriko... His light, his voice, his presence... gone... gone... He doubled over, fingers scraping over the varnished wood and clenching, his forehead nearly touching the smooth surface. The crown tumbled from his head unheeded, and fine, chocolate brown hair drifted down to cling to the tears shimmering on his cheeks. Nuriko! "It was very noble of you, Hotohori-sama..." Nuriko leaned against the wall, bangs hanging over his eyes in a mass of lavender shadow. "I'm... I'm glad everything is alright again." "Noble?" He smiled softly, turning his gaze to the candle on his table, and the tea steaming in its pot beside it. "Nonsense... I knew she was in love with Tamahome. I knew... that even with him gone, she would still love him. Even were he not our friend... any chance to get him back would have made me happier than the illusion I tried to build for myself." "Hotohori-sama..." The utterance was so soft he wasn't sure he had really heard it; soft, and filled with an emotion that sent a thrill through his chest. He knew it well, yet he didn't... and before he could contemplate it Nuriko looked up again, finally, and flashed him a smile that brightened the room like another candle. "Well..." she - no, he - began, trailing off. Hotohori raised an eyebrow, shaken out of his reverie. "Well...?" His smile widened. "At the risk of sounding vulgar..." Nuriko pressed two fingers to his mouth, winking. "You kicked Tamahome's ass...." Shock gave way to a quick, heart-warming laugh, and he shook his head at Nuriko's language. Tasuki was beginning to be a bad influence... Suzaku... no.... It was all he could do not to scream his name out, and sob like a child who had lost something ever so precious. Why...? Nuriko... Why Nuriko, instead of...? If he had gone... if he had been there, protecting him... If he had handled things better... Anything... Anything that he would live, that this piercing, echoing emptiness would leave him and grow warm with the reassuring presence of his most treasured, precious friend... Tears streamed like endless rivers from his cheeks, soaking his robes and dripping onto the polished desk. "Heika-sama!" He curled in upon himself, wrapping his arms around his chest in a desperate self-embrace. His slender fingers contracted, biting through the robes into his shoulders... "Nuriko..." Every tear bled into that one whisper, every moment of sadness, of pain, of laughter... even... love.... "Nuriko..." Tears flowed over his cheeks, unnoticed. A tentative touch of fingertips brushed the back of his hand. "Heika-sama..." The voice was different this time, deeper, more confident. Tomaru... Hotohori shifted away, straightening... His study, the councillors lined along the wall, were all a blur to him, through the endless tears ripping themselves from his soul. "Heika--" He was around his desk in an eyeblink, the insistence of his advisor ignored. They didn't matter - nothing mattered. Nothing but the cold, so cold feeling in his heart, nothing but the emptiness, as if a part of him had been shredded away by cruel, sharp claws. It was numbness, spreading throughout his body and trying to fill that emptiness, though the tears did not still. Grace abandoned, he stumbled to the door, nearly splitting his nails as he shoved the frame open and staggered outside blindly. And though his accursed tears blurred everything to indistinction, the stormy darkness that had been blanketing Konan for the past week made itself known with a howling rush of wind that billowed through his robes and sent his hair streaming back like a banner. But he didn't care... The chill meant nothing, nothing when weighed against the icy, phantom touch of death. Nuriko... He swayed into a walk, shuffling through the corridors without a thought to where his feet were leading him... He needed something. Something that had been close to him, something that he had cherished, that perhaps had been embued with just a tiny, miniscule spark of his vibrant personality... Anything... The doors were closed, of course, when he finally reached them. Blank, devoid of any mark that might have given sign to who lived behind them, they stood quiet and resolute in his path. Were they locked? Not that it would have mattered - nothing remained locked to him, no secret kept from the Emperor. He could summon a key if necessary. Yet at that moment... he would have ripped through them with his bare hands, if they were indeed sealed against him. He pressed his hands flat against the inner frame, the white and brown expanse still no more than a smear of color in his vision. The doors opened gently and quietly at his hand, feeling irrational fear that he would awaken the room's occupant from a restful slumber. But he wasn't there... and the slumber Nuriko had succumbed to would not lend itself to awakening... "I must have been blind, not to notice..." He lowered his gaze, a faint warmth radiating in his cheeks. Shame, shyness... he did not know what it was. He knew only that he must apologize to this friend... his friend... Nuriko shifted, seemed to look away. When he responded, his normally cheerful voice was quiet, and shadowed. "No, Hotohori-sama, just..." "Just what?" He looked up, trying and failing to meet the other's gaze. "It is my fault. I was so absorbed with..." He swallowed the name before it could pass his lips, but it resonated in the silence, all the more obvious for remaining unsaid. After a moment, he continued, voice faint. "How I must have hurt you..." "Hotohori--" "I'm so sorry..." Hotohori closed the distance between them, hands reaching almost hesitantly for the shoulders of his companion, encumbered by his heavy state robes. "... so sorry..." Impulsively, he folded the other into a hug, squeezing his eyes shut. "I am such a fool..." Nuriko remained stiff for a moment, almost unyielding... and then relaxed, a pale sigh reaching his ears as arms encircled his waist tentatively. "Not a fool, Hotohori-sama. Just... young." A smile seemed to brighten his voice, faintly. "Kind of like me..." He opened his eyes, arms still wrapped around Nuriko's shoulders. He didn't want to let go, just yet... He didn't know why, but he wanted to hold on to him forever, lest he just disappear, without knowing... "I am so sorry... Nuriko..." "Ne, ne..." His voice shook, but it was brighter, a bit breathless. "You'll just have to make it up to me then, won't you? When we all get back, and present the Shinzaho to you..." "Yes..." Hotohori closed his eyes again, his arms tightening for a brief moment. "When you come back... when you return... safely..." "We'll be fine, Hotohori-sama... I'll be with them, after all..." A tiny smile crept across his lips. Yes... surely they would return safely, with their grinning faces... Surely... Surely... The sheets slid through his fingers, cool and silken, and smelling of lavender. And there was something else too, a husky scent that had been purely his, underlying everything... Carefully, Hotohori shifted his weight, his knees protesting as they supported him on the hard wooden floor beside Nuriko's bed. But it was nothing - he was nothing, here - in the midst of such bittersweet, precious memories. He gathered the quilt, and the sheets in his arms, pulling them close, burying his face into their silky warmth. The tears had stopped, finally, the icy pain faded... but the gaping wound remained, sapped of the presence he had not even realized was there... until he had lost it... Lost... but it would never be forgotten. He would never let go of it again... "I love you... Nuriko..." Surely, he must hear it, somehow... If it was not quite what he had wanted, it was there, uttered finally in a broken voice Hotohori hardly recognized as his own. Suzaku, have mercy... "I love you..."