Current mood:	anxious
Current music:	Loreena McKennitt - The Two Trees
Entry tags:	ficlets, x fic

FIC: Lullaby (1/?), A Tokyo Babylon / X/1999 story
Title: Lullaby (1/?)
Series: Tokyo Babylon / X/1999
Author: Sephy
Genre: Drama
Rating: R-ish
Archive: Fallen Icons

Warnings: Major character death, eventual blood, gore, even more death, AU timeline-ishness, creepiness, and anything else I can think to add later.

Disclaimer: I don't own X/1999 and Tokyo Babylon nor any of its characters. They are the property of CLAMP and I'm only playing in their sandbox. No profit is intended.

Summary: Destiny is turned on its head as Sakurazuka Setsuka acquires a prize no one could have predicted -- Shirou Kamui.

Thanks: To Amet, who beta'd this and encouraged it even though I think I creeped her out. XD

Author's Notes: This was supposed to be yet another of my ficlets but it's turned out to be something longer than that as it has, God help me, grown an actual plot. This one is for ripedecay and was inspired by both a conversation we had concerning Kamui and Setsuka, specifically on what would happen if they met or God help him, Setsuka came into possession of him. For whatever reason, the plotbunnies really started breeding on this one and thanks to that conversation and the lovely picture ripedecay drew to accompany it, I think it's safe to say this one is going to be an ongoing project.

So this is for ripedecay who has always been encouraging and kind and while I know I've said this before, I really hope you enjoy it and if I mangled your girl, I apologize.



Lullaby
A Tokyo Babylon / X/1999 Alternate Universe story
Sephy

Prologue

Requiem

“Sakurazuka-san?”

From where she was sitting near the window, Sakurazuka Setsuka lifted her face from her contemplation of the flower stems she was carefully cutting, one of the snow camellias slipping from her hand, bouncing towards soft destruction on the buffed planks of the wooden floor. They broke so easily, petals and yellow innards spilling over her hands as she attempted to save it, fragrant and fragile, the sickly sweet of death strengthening as she crushed what was left in her hand, watching a rain of crushed petals, nails digging into her palms.

“Itou-san,” She said and she smiled at him, finally raising her eyes to his, all too aware of his discomfited shuffling, the way he was kneading his hat between nervous hands, stepping forward then back again as if he feared crossing into her threshold, into the innermost recesses of her sanctum.

And this same man had delivered a son to her just a month earlier!

“Itou-san,” She spoke again, careful as she laid the rest of her flowers aside, sparing them a wistful glance before arranging herself, the folds of her heavy winter kimono pooling around her, a protection from the cold. She waited until he was seated across from her on the floor, her hands held in front of her. It seemed to set people at ease when she did so, when she had no sharp objects in her grasp and they could watch, as Itou-san was watching now, her hands.

Not that it ever made any difference.

“I was not expecting to see you again,” she murmured, reaching for the bell pull nearest her, ringing for tea and at something of a loss. Before she had known what to say to this man, what to ask and to do – before she had been with child and he was her caregiver, the one to help her deliver that precious life into this world and then take it from her before it could become a nuisance. Taken so that it might properly be trained and molded, in the ways that all the Chosen before him had been. “Unless this is some last visit? To assess my heath though I can assure you that I feel – so much more now than I ever did. More alive, more vital.”

Itou-san shook his head, his young face suddenly old, gray and more lined than she remembered, circles underneath his deep-set eyes as if he’d not been sleeping well. “Sakurazuka-san,” he began and then paused, staring at her hands, the pulse point in his throat jumping visibly in the stillness as she waited, “Sakurazuka-san, your son –“

“Oh, if this is about Seishirou then you’ll have to talk to the main house,” She tilted her head, her hair brushing against her cheek, her smile winsome as she shrugged, “I don’t handle decisions about him, I’m just his mother.”

“Sakurazuka-san, he’s dead.”

Her fingers stopped, black hair caught between them, scarlet nails almost black in the gloom. “Oh?” There was a pause and she straightened, picking at the fabric threatening to wrinkle in her kimono. “May I ask – how?”

“We don’t know as yet. But the autopsy –“

She rose to her feet, seized with the need to move, wishing they were out in the garden, longing for the sting of ice against her bare feet, a welcome distraction from the sudden stuffy oppressiveness of her room. “Was he sick? You told me that he was healthy. A fine, healthy son, you said.”

“He was,” Itou-san interjected, rising too, this time forgetting enough to almost touch her, his hand hanging in the air between them, both of them staring at it until he fidgeted, rubbing the back of his neck, regret reeking off him like offal. “He had a good, strong heartbeat. Good birth weight, too. There didn’t appear to be anything wrong with his birth.”

“And yet he is dead. My Seishirou,” She lingered over the name, running her fingers over the bars of the window nearest to her.”

Reaching up to remove his glasses, Itou-san wiped at them with a handkerchief, coughing behind his hand before replacing them on his nose. They were crooked and her fingers itched to fix them. “Sakurazuka-san. Sometimes…sometimes, infants just die.”

Setsuka pivoted towards him, opening her mouth and then closing it, realizing there was nothing she could say to that at all.

He took her silence as an acquiescence to continue, “There will be an autopsy, Sakurazuka-san though I’m not certain we will find anything. Not enough to rule his death anything but SIDS-related. Are you familiar with this term?”

“Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Yes. It was in one of the pamphlets you left.”

“Then you know that males in particular, have a higher incidence of reported deaths than females,” There was another of those hesitant, helpless pauses she was coming to loathe in the man. “There will be a thorough investigation and I promise – I promise that we will do everything we can to assess your baby’s cause of death.”

“But you may not find anything?” She blinked, confused then something occurred to her and she smiled again, this time warmly, leaning forward to catch the man’s hand, it rough and too warm beneath her own. “You don’t want me to blame myself. How kind.”

“Sakurazuka-s-san,” Itou-san stuttered and she could all but taste the way his heart rate jumped, feeling the sweat breaking out on the hand in hers. “I – I –“

“Or is it, you’re afraid I’ll blame you?” Setsuka’s smile widened, almost pleased at the way he backed up, forgetting about his hand until he realized he could go no further, that she was clinging to it, smoothing her free hand over it, feeling him flinch. “You came with the recommendations of the House. They said you were the best pre-natal doctor in Tokyo.”

She let him go suddenly, watching him stumble back, falling hard on his backside. “I want to see him. I want to see my Seishirou.”

“O-of course. After the autopsy –“

“Before,” Setsuka shook her head, turning from him, towards her discarded flowers, kneeling before them and picking them up in her arms, cradling them gently, running the ridge of her nails along the browning edges of one of the petals. “They die so quickly. So quickly and without warning. Soon there won’t be any flowers to be found at all. Not in Tokyo, not in Japan. Not until the season passes. They’ll lie sleeping, whispering dreams to me until spring comes again and the sakura drowns them out. The sakura. The sakura will receive an early tribute this year, one rich with Sakurazuka blood. The sakura devours us all,” She lowered her face to one of the flowers, kissing it with gentle care, “Soon it will have my Seishirou and one day, one day we’ll lie together, twined forever in blood and petals, living and dying with the seasons. Always beautiful. Always beautiful.”

She turned her face towards the window, gaze lingering on the frozen bark of the cherry trees, stripped and gray in the elements, their only adornment the slick trickle of glass-like water, forming icecicles. “How sad. To outlive one’s child. To see him cut down before he can find his spring.”

“You are young, Sakurazuka-san. There’s still time. For other children, if you wish,” Itou-san murmured, edging towards the door, as if that could save him should she choose to take his life. Maybe she would but not yet, not when he could still be of use. It wouldn’t be fun to kill him now. It would just be meaningless.

Her fingers curved around another of her flowers, holding it as she had Seishirou in those few minutes after his birth when she’d been allowed to hold him. She had cared nothing before that moment, her pregnancy little more than a distracting nuisance but feeling that solid, wet weight in his arms and hearing his lusty, shrill screams, she’d shivered. He’d had such a hunger for life, such a vitality that she wondered if she’d traded some of her own to him, if it had transmitted to him in her womb.

And now he was dead. There would never be anything but that ghost weight in her arms, like the weight of her flowers, coming to her at random moments then leaving her again with nothing but an aching sense of loss. Still hers, yes, he was always hers now. He would never belong to anyone but her and the sakura. Her dear boy, lost in the snows.

No, there would never be another child, not from her. The very idea of something else growing in her body was repugnant though the House might order it to be so. There were other ways to continue tradition, to continue the line. They’d just have to find another way.

Setsuka found she didn’t care at all, eyes focusing on the remains of the flower she’d destroyed earlier, her smile never wavering though the flowers in her arms were suddenly wet.

***End Prologue