Work Text:
En returned to the world of the living in a shimmer of magic.
He arrived in a hospital room, which was a change of pace. He usually found his humans alone and isolated, far from help or unwilling to seek it. An accident, a suicide, a natural disaster. It had been almost a century since he'd been needed in a place like this, if he had a good grasp on the passage of time.
But hospitals were always the same, or at least the good ones were. The atmosphere was the same, order and cleanliness wrapped around a core of fear. The technology was new and incomprehensible, but there was no mistaking where he was.
The room's only other occupant gazed out the window. As far as En could tell, he still thought he was alone. En leaned against the wall and said, "Hi."
The man jumped. It looked painful. Lank silver hair swung around his face as he jerked around to stare at En.
"Who are you?" he demanded, in what perhaps was once an intimidating tone.
"I'm En."
En studied the man. He was younger than En had thought. The hair had thrown him off, but he couldn't be more than thirty. And he was speaking Japanese. "A shinigami," he added.
"A shi—" The man stopped, winced, took a deep breath. "A shinigami."
"Yep." En crossed to the bed and plopped down in midair beside it. He felt for the man's name, and an answer came. "I've come for you, if you'll leave with me."
The man—Kinshirou Kusatsu, his name was—was still staring at the nothingness En was seated on. His eyes darted up when En finished speaking. "No," he said flatly.
That was often the initial response. En continued, gentling his voice. "Think about it. If you could recover, I wouldn't have been sent to you. At best, you can look forward to gradual deterioration. But you can skip it if you just take my hand now. It'll be easier." And he held out a hand.
Kinshirou closed his eyes. "Go away."
"Can't."
He opened them again.
En got to his feet and stretched, letting the trailing sleeves of his robe fall across his face. "You're my charge. I'm here as long as you are. If you're not gonna take my offer, then get some sleep. You look exhausted." It was true; there were deep circles under Kinshirou's eyes, and his head trembled as he tried to lift it.
He gave up and let it drop back to the pillow. "If I sleep, what will you do?" There was suspicion in his tone, but En let it slide. It was less annoying than outright disbelief, and, sadly, a lot rarer. Even when humans were dying, they were always stubborn.
"I'm going to sleep too," En said. "That couch looks comfy. I'll wake up if I'm needed."
"Shinigami need sleep?"
"I wouldn't say need." En plopped down on the couch, which, thankfully, was a lot more comfortable than the magic he'd been sitting on a moment before. "But it's nice. And the trip over here is exhausting, you know?"
"To Binan?"
"To this world." En closed his eyes. "Wake me up if you want something, Kinshirou."
There was a slight pause. "I won't."
* * *
The prognosis came in the next day.
Kinshirou knew something was wrong when his father arrived. It was clear from his sudden tension, the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. He'd just been operated on; En knew this because he'd been told, in a pointed way, as if to say, So you see, your services aren't necessary.
"Father," Kinshirou said quietly. En vacated his chair and passed through the man as he sat. In the bed, Kinshirou pursed his lips.
"Kinshirou." Kinshirou's father said nothing else, but something about his voice seemed to unsettle Kinshirou more. It had sounded like a normal enough tone to En. Reserved, perhaps a little cool, but after spending the morning with Kinshirou, he would have expected his parents to sound that way. And this guy did look a whole lot like Kinshirou. An older, healthier, bespectacled Kinshirou. En peered at him as they waited, examining his hair, the line of his chin, his green eyes. He sat in silence, oblivious to En's face less than an arm's length from his own. Kinshirou must have known En was staring, but he paid no attention. He was watching his father too.
The wait was short, and the doctor's expression, when he entered the room, was solemn. A veil of composure fell over Kinshirou's face. He sat up very straight, or at least he tried to. Before the doctor reached his bedside, he sagged with a wince and let himself recline, leaning against the bed's lifted upper half. Kinshirou's father watched him. What he was thinking, En had no idea.
"I'm sorry, Kusatsu-san. The operation was only a partial success..."
By the time the doctor began to speak, Kinshirou must have known what was coming. The tension in the room, the doctor's grave manner, En's own presence... But it was worse to hear it aloud, where there was no uncertainty, no way to run from it. He shot En a brief, stricken look as the doctor continued to talk.
The doctor followed the glance, but, seeing nothing, returned his attention to Kinshirou. "With your permission, we can run a few tests, but at this point the question isn't whether there's been metastasis, but how far it has progressed. Regardless," he finished, "I'm afraid the disease is terminal."
Kinshirou bowed his head. His hair fell around his face, clean and shining. He had managed to bathe, this morning, slowly, with the help of a nurse. Maybe to him it had looked like the beginning of recovery.
It was his father who asked the question. "How long does he have?"
"It's hard to say. Please understand, estimates like these are very vague—" Kinshirou's father made an impatient gesture. "It depends on how far the cancer has metastasized, Kusatsu-san. In the worst case, a couple of months. In the best case, sixteen, perhaps eighteen months. There are treatments we can administer to lengthen that time period, more chemotherapy—"
"I want the imaging." Kinshirou looked up abruptly. His face was set. En studied his expression, hoping to understand him a little better. "I want you to make the best estimate possible. And then—" He glanced at his father. "I want to go home. I'm not interested in any more treatments."
The doctor nodded. "I'll arrange for the imaging, then." His voice softened slightly. "Again, Kusatsu-san, I'm very sorry."
"Thank you."
The doctor bowed and left the room. The click of the door closing echoed with finality.
They all sat in silence, or, in En's case, leaned in silence against the wall opposite the end of Kinshirou's bed. "Explain yourself," Kinshirou's father said at last, softly.
"The chemotherapy won't save my life." Kinshirou stared at En. "Even if it gave me more time, I'd have to spend it in pain. I would rather die peacefully, in my home."
After a moment, his father nodded. "I'll see to the arrangements at the house."
"Thank you," Kinshirou repeated.
His father hesitated for a moment. Then he stood, and followed the doctor out of the room.
Full of fatherly affection, isn't he, En wanted to say, and, I told you so. But he wasn't that type of spirit, sent to annoy or cause pain. Not for the first time, he wondered whether malevolent spirits had kind urges, selfless impulses that they could never act on while they were in the world of the living.
"I'd like to be alone, please," Kinshirou said. His voice was still steady, but there was a note of strain there, now that the other humans were gone.
En nodded and withdrew to the bathroom, but kept the door cracked open. It was the best he could do. Kinshirou didn't ask again.
* * *
The Kusatsu house was huge. En had seen larger, but the same factors that took him to the empty corners of the world tended not to lead him to the homes of the rich. While Kinshirou was occupied with one of the nurses, he had wandered through the walls, examining the austere public rooms, the extensive gardens, a servants' quarters that looked to be in use... it went on and on. But now he had returned, and was lurking outside Kinshirou's bedroom door, listening to him complain to the nurse.
"Are these monitors necessary?"
There was a short pause. "Your father insisted, Kusatsu-san." En took that to mean No.
Kinshirou sighed, muffled through the door. "I'll speak with him. Thank you."
En reentered the room as the nurse left it, and perched on the edge of the bed. "Hi," he said. Monitors beeped in the background, quiet but intrusive. Kinshirou's father had remade an entire bedroom into something like a hospital room, only with stark black decor and an entire wall made of glass, looking out onto a garden. He had hired a small staff of live-in nurses, and apparently there was a doctor on call if necessary. When he had said I'll see to the arrangements at the house, En hadn't quite grasped the magnitude of the statement. It was a good thing it had taken Kinshirou a couple of weeks to get out of the hospital; this couldn't have been done overnight.
At least, he was pretty sure it couldn't have. He didn't actually know what most of this stuff was. Maybe if he was less lazy, he'd have come to this world often enough to be familiar with modern medicine. Instead, here he was, sitting on the edge of his charge's bed, eyeing a bag hanging from a metal stick and wondering what in the worlds it was dripping into Kinshirou’s arm. It wasn't that he couldn't read, but the words on the bag meant nothing to him.
Kinshirou eyed him, sitting up with his back against the headboard of the bed. “Hello."
"Your house is amazing."
Kinshirou raised his eyebrows. "Do you think so?" He seemed amused.
At least that was one way En could be a cheering presence. He cocked his head. "Don't you think so? You asked to come back here."
"I like it," Kinshirou agreed. "But I'd have thought you'd seen better."
"I have." En grinned as Kinshirou rolled his eyes. "But not often. It's nice. It's a good change from the usual fare."
As he had hoped, Kinshirou looked interested despite himself. "What's the usual fare?"
"Like... mining cave-ins. People lost in the snow. War casualties, diseased people who've been cast out from their communities, criminals sentenced to death. Actually, those are a weird case—" He caught himself. "But yeah, we don't see a lot of luxury."
Kinshirou looked at him, his brow furrowed in thought. "You're wondering what the connection is between all of those," En guessed. "Or between them and you." Kinshirou flushed and didn't answer. "I thought so. Listen, Kinshirou, you're at home, where you wanted to be. You're comfortable. You're at peace. You can see the garden—"
"I'm not going with you."
En sighed. "I really am here to help you, you know?"
"Then stop asking me to die." Kinshirou had gone white, and his eyes blazed with sudden anger. "Do you think this isn't difficult enough? What do I gain from your pestering?"
En leaned back, alarmed. "All right. Sorry. Calm down, you'll hurt yourself."
"I thought that was your intent."
"No." He meant the word to come out sharply, but instead he found that he sounded almost gentle. "It's kind of the opposite, actually."
Kinshirou took a deep breath, and En readied himself for a scathing response. But before Kinshirou could deliver it, his shoulders slumped, and all the fight bled out of him. "Nothing you do makes sense," he said wearily. "And you aren't a real part of Shinto, anyway. You're an adaptation of Western ideas."
Was that meant to be an insult? Sometimes it was hard to tell, with Kinshirou. En slid off the bed and leaned back against it with a tired sigh. Unfortunately, the bedframe jammed into his back, thwarting all his attempts to get comfortable. He made a discontented noise and slumped down on the floor instead.
"And yet," he said, once he was relatively comfortable, "here I am. Maybe I call myself a shinigami because it's become a term your culture recognizes. Maybe all you humans are wrong about the supernatural. Have you considered that?"
"Are you lying down on the floor?"
"There's nowhere else to lie down. Do you have any extra pillows?"
"No,” Kinshirou said coolly.
"Shame." En yawned. "I'm gonna take a nap, okay?"
"If you sleep there, the nurses will step on you. Why don't you just float in midair, like you did before?"
"That's even less comfortable than the floor. It'll be fine, they'll never know the difference." He yawned again. It was definitely time to sleep. Arguments were exhausting, especially after all that wandering around. "Think of it as selective corporeality. Do you really not have extra pillows, or are you just not giving them to me because it'll be weird for them to show up on the floor?"
Kinshirou sighed.
* * *
The doctor had given Kinshirou seven months to live. He was down to six, and the post-operative recovery had begun to give way to his final decline.
His father came and went, dividing his time between his work in the country's capital and his dying son. At the moment, he was gone. But Kinshirou had had guests nonetheless, a couple of friends who had visited before. En had been kicked out of the garden to let them view the cherry blossoms. The monitors were nowhere in evidence; Kinshirou had won that battle.
He was just a little late returning. He was wandering the nearby halls, watching a stiff-looking butler instruct an intimidated maid, when every speck of energy that made up his being spun like magnetized iron to face the garden. Kinshirou's friends had left him alone. He sped through the walls of the house toward his lodestone.
Kinshirou's two friends still stood just inside the door. En had time for a quick glance as he blew past. The dark-haired man had pressed his hands against his face, sliding his fingers under his glasses and pushing them up from their perch on his nose. The one with green hair rested a hand on his shoulder. Then, presumably, they left, but En didn't see it. He'd already passed through the door and hurried to Kinshirou.
When he saw him, alive and in no immediate danger, he breathed a sigh of relief. At one time, Kinshirou might have glanced over his shoulder at the sound. Now he just gazed at the koi pond, and the stray pink petals that floated on its surface. En sat down on the ground by his bench, lounging back with his weight propped on his hands, and let him think.
After a long silence, Kinshirou finally stirred. "Nothing to say? No rambling comment about the water? No attempt to convince me to die?"
"You didn't look like you were in a talkative mood."
Kinshirou sighed. "I'm worried," he said softly. "Atchan tries to act upbeat when he visits, but I can see that it's hard. I'm concerned about him."
The moment En had seen as he made his way to the garden flickered through En's mind. "Atchan is the one with the dark hair?"
"Atsushi Kinugawa, yes." Kinshirou enunciated the syllables with pointed clarity. En sighed.
"How was I supposed to know his name?"
"You knew mine."
"You're my charge."
Kinshirou fell silent, and En let the conversation lapse. It was good that Kinshirou was confiding in him. It was a hopeful sign. He was one of the most stubborn charges En had ever had, but if he could just trust a little...
"I didn't think there was an afterlife," Kinshirou said abruptly. "There are stories, but I thought they were just..."
En glanced up at him. "Yeah, a lot of people are surprised. But it's a nice surprise, isn't it?"
"I don't know." En blinked. "I don't know what it's like. Maybe I'm going to an afterlife of torture." En opened his mouth to reassure him, but Kinshirou wasn't finished. "And the first sign of it is that I have to deal with you lurking all the time."
En shut his mouth again.
"That's rude," he said finally. Kinshirou looked down at him, bemused and skeptical, studying his expression.
"Did that really hurt your feelings?"
"I do have them, you know?"
"Feelings?"
"Yeah." En sat up. It had stung, more than he would have expected. It wasn't like he hadn't been insulted by charges before... by Kinshirou himself, even. "I didn't ask to be sent here. You're not a charge I would've chosen either, but I can't give up unless I'm recalled. If I annoy you, you can take it up with the gods when you get to the afterlife. Which, by the way, is a nice place, no matter who you were in life."
Kinshirou was still staring at him, his face blank with surprise. "I... apologize if I gave offense," he said slowly. "But you weren't sent to hover over me at every moment."
"You don't know why I was sent here. If you'd rather die alone, I'll try my hardest, but there's only so much I can do."
It was Kinshirou's turn to fall silent, pale and composed. En's anger slipped away, although most of the hurt remained. "Look, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."
"No, perhaps not." Kinshirou's arms rose to wrap around himself.
"Are you cold?"
"No. En, I'm sorry. I was cruel."
"It's fine." What else could he say? He pulled his knees to his chest and let the moment linger until the awkwardness and the hurt had passed.
When the silence was no longer so fraught, he asked, "Do you really want me to talk about water? Or was that sarcastic?"
"It was sarcastic at the time. But yes. Talk to me about water."
"All right." He studied the pond. "Do you want to hear about water coming to earth through meteors, when there were so many of them you guys call it the Late Heavy Bombardment period? Or about hot water freezing faster than cold water?"
"Isn't that second one a myth?"
"Nope. It's been observed in a lab."
"How can you possibly know that? Were you there?"
"I can read," En said, a little defensively. "Sometimes there's not much else for a shinigami to do."
"In collapsed mines and war zones?"
That was an opportunity, if En had ever seen one. "People write books in the afterlife. There are science magazines, mostly just talking about things the writers learned while they were alive. Trying to educate people, I guess. They're free," he remembered to add. "It's a good place, Kinshirou. You don't have to be scared of it."
Kinshirou looked away, out over the garden alive with spring foliage. His eyes trailed across trees, pathways, the garden's high walls. En had been a death spirit long enough to trace his thoughts. Assuming he even believed En—and since he thought of him as a harbinger of torture, he might not believe anything En said—even a pleasant afterlife wasn't life. He would be leaving this world behind. A human could know for certain that they would die in peace, surrounded by loved ones, on their way to a beautiful afterlife. Spirits like En weren't sent to people with so few fears, but En knew they existed. But the truth was that none of those things touched the fear of death itself. That fear was its own entity.
Kinshirou's gaze settled back on the pond. "Meteors," he said. "Tell me about the meteors. What did you do then, anyway? Before there were people to see to?"
"I didn't exist yet. But, okay. This was billions of years ago, right? And these meteors, they had a little water in them, because sometimes water forms in space..."
* * *
Days passed like that, and then weeks, until one day, on their regular walk to the garden, a tall, intricate cupboard in a recess caught En's eye. As he turned to look at it, Kinshirou's footsteps fell silent beside him.
"Kusatsu-san?" One of the nurses walked alongside Kinshirou, ready to support him if he lost his balance from fatigue. He hadn't yet reached the point where that was a real danger.
En studied the cupboard. He had passed it in the corridor several times before without giving it a second glance. But now that it had his attention, he was pretty sure he knew what it was.
"Thank you," Kinshirou told the nurse. "If I could spend a few moments here alone..."
The nurse hesitated. Then, as she glanced at the cupboard, her face softened. "Of course, Kusatsu-san," she said with a bow, and left Kinshirou alone, as far as she knew.
When she was gone, Kinshirou leaned against the wall. En glanced over at him. "You know," he said, "you'd be able to walk around more if you'd just use a cane or something."
"Not yet." Kinshirou's voice was barely more than a whisper. Whether it due to exhaustion or to keep others from hearing, En didn't know. His expression was set with a stubborn cast. "Soon, I'm sure." He straightened up, approached the cupboard, and pulled open the doors with unusual reverence.
Then he stepped back and stood beside En, and they gazed at the Kusatsu family shrine in silence. En's gaze travelled over the photographs, the inscribed tablets, the small statue of a fat man looking down over it all. He could never keep human religious figures straight in his head, but the fat guy looked familiar, the way all religious iconography did after a while.
In time, the nurse returned, deferential, to guide Kinshirou outside to the newly-installed cushioned couch by the pond. Kinshirou closed the shrine doors with the same respectful care as before and turned to leave. En followed, casting a final curious glance at the shrine. Kinshirou didn't look back.
Once they were alone, Kinshirou settled back against the couch with a weary sigh. The weather was getting warmer, but maybe that was more comfortable for him. The other day, he'd asked for another blanket for his bed. "Is there a point in having a shrine?" he asked.
En gazed over at him from his position curled in the corner of the couch opposite Kinshirou. "It comforts people."
Kinshirou twitched his fingers dismissively, echoing the gesture his father had made in the hospital months before. "No, really," En said. "You might not think that's important, but it's my life's work."
Kinshirou glanced over at him. "Is it?"
"Well, I'm not alive, I guess. But according to the spirit of the phrase, sure."
Kinshirou looked like he was tempted to give some sort of insult, although En had a suspicion that he didn't mean half of them anymore. Instead, he asked, "What I meant was, do those in the afterlife hear prayers? Do they affect the real world?"
"The afterlife is a real world. And... I can't discuss anything too specific, you know. I've already bent that restriction as far as I can."
Kinshirou sighed and turned away, looking not at the pond, as he usually did, but up at the sky.
"I'm sorry," En said. "I don't mean I'm not allowed, I mean I can't. I can't help it."
"It's not that." Kinshirou blinked and looked down. It was a clear day, and the sky was bright. "I'll be part of that shrine soon. Nothing more than a picture. My father will adopt a new heir, and I have no children, no one to look at my picture and think, 'That was my father.' Or even, 'That was my father's brother.' I'll be a... a footnote."
Kinshirou would exist in the afterlife as more than a picture, but En didn't point that out. Nor did he mention that Kinshirou's father would see the shrine, although it seemed like the obvious thing to say. Kinshirou's father was still a complicated topic. Instead, he leaned forward toward Kinshirou, unfolding from his comfortable position.
"Forget about the shrine for a moment. Think about your friends. Atsushi Kinugawa and Ibushi." What was Ibushi's family name? It didn't matter. Kinshirou's shoulders tensed at the mention of them, but En kept talking. "They won't think of you as a footnote. They'll remember you for the rest of their lives. They'll talk about you. They'll say, 'I had this friend...' and they'll mention interesting stuff about you when it comes up in conversation. And then people who never knew you will sometimes think about that story they heard, about the guy they never met who did that interesting thing."
Kinshirou was staring at him. "I've been around humans a lot," En said quietly. "I've heard that conversation enough times. Trust me, okay? I know."
Kinshirou looked down, tracing the lines in the stone path beside the couch. After a moment, he nodded to himself. His posture relaxed, and the tension around his eyes eased a bit. "Thank you," he murmured.
The conversation lapsed into silence, but for the first time since he'd been sent to Kinshirou, En felt like he'd achieved something important.
* * *
Kinshirou must have been beautiful once. En could still see the remnants of it, lingering like a ghost. High cheekbones, piercing eyes, hair that brushed his shoulders in a ripple of silver. The hair was annoying him. There was always an obscure gratitude in his voice when he spoke of it, but he still wanted to have it cut. En just wanted to touch it. But, of course, that was impossible.
Truth be told, Kinshirou had almost been beautiful when he had first come home. A little skinny, a little too pale, with shadows under his eyes, but it hadn't been so bad. But he was dropping more weight, and his hands trembled when he held things for too long. Eating wasn't hard yet, but holding a book for long stretches was more of a problem. He could do it, but only if he braced the book against his legs or laid it on the wheeled tray in his room. Every time it became necessary, his eyes narrowed in weary disgust.
"I used to practice kyudo," he told En.
"I know." En had found his equipment stashed in a remote storage closet, gathering dust.
Kinshirou didn't ask how he'd learned. He probably didn't want to know. "I could never have done it with hands like this."
En fetched the tray and wheeled it over so that it sat in front of Kinshirou, clenching his jaw to hide the sullen protest of his form.
He had never done things like this before. He existed to ease people's deaths by the comfort of his presence, such as it was, and by giving them an escape if they wanted it. Supernatural euthanasia, Kinshirou had called it, and when En had learned what euthanasia was, he couldn't entirely disagree. But getting items for the dying? Laying blankets over them, reminding them to take their medicine when they were sleepy?
He could do it. His body didn't freeze in place, the way it would have if he'd tried to take a knife to one of his charges, or even tried to describe the afterlife in detail. But it was like being corporeal and moving through molasses. Somehow, these gestures were in opposition to his nature. Maybe it was too much like extending Kinshirou's lifespan, and thereby prolonging his suffering. But he couldn't be sure what the problem was, because it was new to him.
But besides all that, it went against his personality. He was lazy. It was just... it was hard, seeing Kinshirou fade like this. No matter what En did, it was a struggle. He hurt inside, with a strange, helpless tenderness.
He pushed the matter out of his mind and set Kinshirou's book on the tray. "Here."
"The worst thing is that it's not an outside force making me sick." Kinshirou kept scowling down at his hands. "My own body has given up."
Since the conversation about the shrine, he had warmed to En a little. He had confided in him before, yes, but only because he was scared, and because he was too private a person to confide in anyone else. Again, En could follow his former train of thought easily enough, and it had gone like this: En didn't count. He wasn't even human. Despite his human appearance, despite the robe, he walked through walls. He had appeared out of nowhere in Kinshirou's hospital room. He talked about the afterlife, and, in Kinshirou's eyes, he was trying to lure him to his death.
En hadn't asked Kinshirou to die in a while. He knew his business. But as Kinshirou leaned back in his bed and tried not to look defeated, the words welled up and spilled out of him.
"Kinshirou."
Kinshirou shot him a wary look.
"I won't ask you to make it easier on yourself. I know better by now. But just... let me get this out, okay? Let me say it, and then you can tell me to fuck off afterwards."
Kinshirou frowned at him with a sense of injured propriety. "I've never said that."
"Not in so many words." Kinshirou didn't argue with that, just watched him with an unreadable gaze. En didn't often find him impenetrable anymore. He forged ahead regardless, the words coming faster and faster. "I just want you to remember, the option is always there. If you're with someone else and I'm not here, you can still do it. Just call for me, and I'll hear you. It doesn't have to be out loud, just in your head. And—I've talked about taking my hand, but that's just the tradition. All we need to do is touch. I can't touch you directly until you want to die. See?"
He reached out for Kinshirou's hand. It went straight through and landed on the tray. "I'm trying to be corporeal, but I can't do it. Not until you want this to be over. It's your decision that opens the door. It's nothing to do with me, I'm just here to... to facilitate the process. So that means there can't be any mistakes, right? You can say what you want, gesture however you want, and if I misinterpret any of it, I'll just look like an idiot—"
"En."
En closed his mouth.
"You're rambling."
"Yeah." He looked down. "Sorry." What was wrong with him, anyway? Where had that come from?
Kinshirou said nothing. When En dared to glance up from under his hair, he was considering En with a puzzled expression.
"I believe," Kinshirou said slowly, "that we're encountering a cultural difference. Or perhaps a difference caused by your nature as a shinigami? You see premature death as the most logical way to avoid suffering."
En turned that statement over in his head, looking for ways he could claim that it was more complicated than that. When Kinshirou put it that way, it didn't sound like something humans would understand at all. "Yeah," he said finally, reluctantly. "But you only disagree because humans don't know everything about existence."
"Neither do you. You've never been one of us. You don't know what it's like."
"That's a big assumption."
Kinshirou raised his eyebrows. "Well, have you?"
"No," En admitted. Kinshirou snorted, but quietly. By now, it sometimes wasn't much more than a forceful exhale. "I'm sorry if I'm bothering you," En said. "It's just..."
"No. You don't want me to suffer. It's a kind thought, En."
En stared at him for a second. "That’s something I never thought I’d hear."
"Perhaps I’ve gained a bit of perspective. It's a shame it required a terminal illness. I could have made better use of it when I was well." Kinshirou smiled with a tinge of wry sadness. "This conversation has been a bit wearing. Would you mind if I took a nap instead of reading?"
In other words, Could you get this tray out of the way again? "No problem," En said, and squared his shoulders as he got to work.
* * *
When Kinshirou's father was home—and En gathered that although this was still no more than half the time, it was vastly more often than before they had learned Kinshirou was dying—he visited Kinshirou nightly. En was absolutely forbidden to attend these meetings. The nurses' checkups, very well. Atsushi and Ibushi's visits, if he must. Kinshirou's father's appointments, only under the most extreme of circumstances. He could guess what Kinshirou meant by that.
But Kinshirou couldn't be left alone. That was why he was here. For a while, he had hovered outside the door, covering his ears and humming to himself as he waited for Kinshirou's father to leave the room.
"You know," Kinshirou had told him one night, "I can hear you humming. It's distracting."
"I'm trying not to listen in. Would you rather I not bother?"
"You could just go elsewhere. He stays for three minutes every day." A thread of pain had run through the words, but En hadn't tried try to tease it out. Even now, Kinshirou was close-mouthed about his relationship with his dad.
"Fine," he had said. "Three minutes." So now, while Kinshirou's father was visiting, he watched a clock in a faraway corridor and waited for two minutes and twenty seconds. That left him ten seconds to get there, floating through walls and furniture. He'd timed it. And ten to get back, as well, and twenty seconds of cushion. They were never saying much during the last twenty seconds anyway.
Maybe they never said much in the entire three minutes. En wouldn't be surprised.
One dreary afternoon, En wandered in through the wall to the next room as a nurse was leaving. Kinshirou usually napped at about this time, but today he almost seemed restless. En settled at the edge of his bed, as he was allowed to do increasingly often. Rain drummed on the roof as he studied Kinshirou's face.
"What's up?"
"Nothing."
Yeah, right. "Wanna go for a walk?"
"No."
"Wanna hear about—"
"No."
"Kinshirou." He waited until Kinshirou looked at him. "What's wrong?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
En unfolded a bit from his slouch. "So it has to do with your father?"
Kinshirou bristled. "There are any number of things I might not want to discuss with you."
"I'm sure there are. But I'm worried, you know? I'm trying to help." He pulled his legs up onto the bed, letting them overlap with Kinshirou's both for convenience and for the effect. If he reminded Kinshirou he wasn't human, maybe he'd relax a little. "What's the harm in talking to me about it? Who am I going to tell? You said it yourself just the other day. I'm not human."
"You—" Kinshirou broke off with a shiver and pressed himself back against his headboard, as if it could provide warmth.
"Are you cold?" En managed not to glance out the window at the muddy garden. It was summer, the rainy season. If anything, Kinshirou should have been too warm.
"A bit." That meant, Very.
"Just a sec." En slid back off the bed and pulled a couple of extra blankets and pillows up from the floor where he slept. He arranged them around Kinshirou, the blankets over his shoulders, and one pillow on either side of his waist for a little extra support. They dragged at his arms like lead weights, but he was used to that sort of thing by now. When he was done, he looked up to find Kinshirou replacing one of the blankets. It had already slipped off his narrow shoulder.
En braced himself and took a risk. "Here. I have an idea." Before he could talk himself out of it, he stacked the two pillows on one side of Kinshirou's body and settled into place himself on the other.
Kinshirou stared at him, too astonished to protest, at least so far. In the back of En's mind there was a sense that it was weird to be so nervous about this. Against his nature or not, he was just trying to help, in his own way. Plenty of people had rejected his help before. Kinshirou certainly had. Why was this scarier?
Once again, he got the sense that it was probably best not to think about it. He pulled the blankets snugly around Kinshirou again, and then he kept his arm there, around Kinshirou's shoulders.
To keep them in place, of course, and provide his own warmth. But in his head, that sounded a little dishonest.
Once he was still, it became harder for his nature to make its objections known, but he still felt an obscure sense of failure. He ignored it and made himself as comfortable as he could while he waited for Kinshirou to get over his surprise.
It took a moment. "I thought you couldn't touch me."
"We aren't touching. I'm touching the blankets, and so are you."
"Ah." A pause. "I suppose that's why the blankets are warm. I would have expected you to have no body heat at all."
"It's like... extreme corporeality. It's tough to manage. We can both take a nap after this."
Kinshirou gave one of his barely-there snorts. "You'd do that anyway." But instead of shrugging En off or snapping at him to remove his arm, he gradually relaxed. En's gamble had succeeded. It did feel less intimate to Kinshirou if the person holding him wasn't human, and couldn't touch him except through layers of cloth.
"Tell me," he said again, quietly.
Kinshirou took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly in silence, his shoulders slumping a little. The next time, he was able to get the words out. "My father. I want to try to talk to him tonight."
"You don't talk to him when he visits you?"
"Not really." Kinshirou's voice was pensive. En would have tried to read his expression, but in this position, it was hard for them to look at each other. He watched the wall and listened. "I don't think he knows what to say, and neither do I. So he asks me how I'm feeling, I say that I'm doing well... other such meaningless things. He gives us three minutes, and then he leaves before it becomes too awkward."
En didn't know how to respond to that.
"En, may I ask you something?"
"Sure."
"How can we speak to each other? You and I. Why do you know Japanese?"
"I learn my charge's native language when I arrive. Or it gets updated, I guess. I already knew Japanese, but it was from about four hundred years ago."
"Oh. That's useful." Kinshirou fell silent again, but there was a tension in his shoulders that suggested that he wasn't done talking. "Tonight, I want to try harder with my father. But—we've never really had a conversation."
"You don't get along?"
"That's too strong a term." Kinshirou took another deep breath, and then his shoulders slumped a little under En's arm as he started to talk. "We don't know each other well enough to not get along. He was never there when I was growing up. I was raised by nurses. A long string of them, one after another. Fujimoto took care of the arrangements for school and extracurriculars and such things." En recognized the name of the Kusatsus' butler. "He was the one who taught me how to act, how to dress, all of that. Father came home every couple of months for one or two nights. We would have dinner. I would tell him what I was doing, and he would nod. I don't think he heard any of it. I could have said, 'I've made an evil pact to take over the world,' or... I don't know, 'Father, look at this talking hedgehog I found,' and he would have done nothing but nod at his plate and ask about my grades. He didn't care what I said. It was just something he thought he had to do."
Kinshirou picked absently at the blanket. It wasn't a typical thing for him to do. He must have been more anxious than he was letting on. And he was usually so reluctant to talk about his father that En didn't want to interrupt, even to ask questions or make sympathetic comments. Kinshirou would feel better once he had told someone.
"When I was older, I had to go to Tokyo for dinner. He couldn't even be bothered to come home. And it was exactly the same. No matter how old I was, it felt like I was six. Still trying to tell him about how the tea ceremony teacher called me talented, or how I had the best grades in my class, so that he would just look up from his dinner and see me."
En's arm tightened around Kinshirou. He didn't mean it to, but for a second, his indignation was stronger than his common sense. Fortunately, Kinshirou didn't seem to notice. "We never talked about anything, unless he was telling me what he wanted me to do for the family here in Binan. That was the only time he looked at me, and it was always so cold. As though he expected me to fail." The flow of Kinshirou's words finally began to falter. "I didn't think he would react like this. Even if the treatment failed, I thought he would... come to see me once, perhaps. Give his condolences, like a stranger. But I still don't know what to say to him. He sent my mother away, did you know?"
"What?" En turned to glance down at the top of Kinshirou's head. He had assumed Kinshirou's mother was dead, actually, but he didn't say so. Nor did he ask how in the worlds he could have known.
Kinshirou nodded against his shoulder. When had he started leaning against En? "When I was little. The first thing I remember is her hugging me and crying. I didn't understand."
"Why?"
"I've never asked." Kinshirou was quiet. "I didn't even know for years that she'd been forced to leave. I can only assume that Father thought she would make me too soft. That would make sense of the nurses, as well, why they kept changing. I never had time to become attached to any of them. But I always hoped to find my mother someday."
En seethed in silence. Kinshirou looked up at his face and laughed softly. "That's the face Ibushi makes when someone mentions my father." En forced his expression into neutrality. "Or perhaps it's more like that," Kinshirou added. "More restrained. He probably thinks I don't notice."
He looked down. "He's not all bad, you know."
"Ibushi? I didn't think he was."
"No," Kinshirou said softly. "My father. When I got sick, he consulted with doctors and devised a treatment plan... It was incredibly expensive. He flew in experts from around the world. It was enough to be noticeable to us. Even our money isn't limitless. And changing my bedroom like this on such short notice must have been expensive, as well."
So he wasn't all bad because he was willing to spend money to save his child's life? En only had secondhand experience with parents and children, but even to him, that seemed like a pretty low bar. But it seemed cruel to say so.
"You should ask him about your mother," he said instead, abruptly. "You're not dead yet. You can still meet her."
Kinshirou didn't respond for a moment. "I don't know. I don't know what he'd say."
"Well, what's the worst that can happen?"
"He'll say absolutely not," Kinshirou said promptly, "and be disgusted with me."
En nodded. "And the best outcome is that you'd be able to see your mother. You have to weigh the risk against the reward. I think it's worth it, but I'm not you."
"No, you're not." And then, out of nowhere, all the energy drained out of Kinshirou. "En, I want to take my nap now."
"All right. Sit up for a moment."
The sense that he was going against his purpose eased when he pulled his arm back from around Kinshirou's shoulders, but the ache of separation that took its place froze him where he sat. Realization bloomed in him like a flower, pulsed like poison through his veins. Wide-eyed, he grabbed the extra blankets and pillows and scrambled off the bed as Kinshirou, too exhausted to notice, lay down and promptly passed out.
En stared at him. The rain beat down against the roof, ignored.
He didn't even have veins. What kind of metaphor was that, anyway? What was the matter with him?
Well, he knew the answer to that one now. It wasn't unheard-of, for death spirits to return from long assignments in love with their charges. It earned you pity or scorn, depending on who your friends were. En had never understood how it could happen at all, but then again, En had never had a charge like Kinshirou.
Maybe they were all like him, the humans that death spirits loved. Strange and stubborn and brave, prone to backtalk and comments that changed you.
What was almost unheard-of was for the charge to return the death spirit's affection. Thus, the pity. There were rumors that it had happened, but En had never believed them. Not that he'd thought about it much at all. What difference had it made to him?
If ever there was something not to think about, this was it. He curled up in a corner, where Kinshirou's bed met the wall, and tried to sleep.
* * *
For the first time, it was a guilty relief to leave Kinshirou to talk to his father. Unfortunately, Kinshirou had rescinded his usual three-minute time limit. They might talk for some time, or his attempts to draw his father out might make things so awkward that his father would leave early. There was no way to know, he had said.
En gave them a minute and a half, based on the reasoning that it would probably take at least that long for Kinshirou to get up the nerve to break from their routine. When he had made his quick, silent way back to Kinshirou's door, there was no sign of his father, but there was also no overpowering pull to warn him he was straying from his role. So no matter who was in there, Kinshirou wasn't alone.
It was a bad night to start humming again, so En just listened at the wall. Silence. Then, with uncharacteristic hesitance, Kinshirou spoke.
"How... are things at the Ministry?"
It wasn't a conversation he would want En to hear. He withdrew as far as he could without losing sight of the door, although a part of him was screaming internally about the risk. But if he started moving when the door opened and went his absolute fastest, surely he could be back in Kinshirou's room before his father stepped outside.
Another part of him, one he was trying to ignore, was giddily pleased that he had known exactly how long it would take Kinshirou to break the ice.
In the end, all the worry was for nothing. The visit stretched for more than three minutes. It lasted long enough that a nurse appeared outside the door, and gave it a cursory knock before opening it. Usually, that was fine; this was her normal time to check in, and the only other person in the room at the time would be En. But tonight, she excused herself and hastily left again. A moment later, Kinshirou's father emerged, looking tired. The nurse bowed to her employer and slipped past him into the room.
She would be there for a little while, administering medicine, checking over Kinshirou for signs of anything that needed seeing to. Speaking to him, if he was awake, though her lack of greeting as she closed the door suggested otherwise. But her presence gave En an opportunity to follow Kinshirou's father.
He wasn't sure why he was doing it. It wasn't like he could yell at the guy. The most he could do was pick up a pen and write an angry note, which he didn't want to do. Maybe he was just curious. Maybe he wanted to look for signs that Kinshirou's father cared. Kinshirou hadn't said it in so many words, but it was clear that he didn't believe it.
Kinshirou's father went straight to his own room. It was decorated more traditionally than Kinshirou's, in keeping with the rest of the house; there was a metaphor there, if En could be bothered to name it. As soon as the door was shut behind him, he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. But his hand dropped quickly from his face, as if it was too heavy to lift, and for a second, alone in the darkness, he looked as nakedly anguished as Kinshirou had ever done.
Then he closed his eyes and straightened his shoulders, and the moment was over. En turned away and flitted back through the walls, holding the memory in his mind. But the memory of Kinshirou's lonely face was stronger.
* * *
Kinshirou never brought up his discussion with his father, and En followed his lead. Nor did Kinshirou mention his mother, but about a week later, while Ibushi was visiting and En was wandering through the foyer, an older woman appeared at the front door.
In terms of looks, Kinshirou took after his father to a stunning degree. The resemblance between them was so strong that for a moment, En almost didn't recognize the woman. But the purple tint to her hair gave her away, and the delicate, long-fingered shape of her hands as they cradled a bouquet. En had seen those hands, bony with weight loss, trembling as they tried to hold the heavy books Kinshirou liked to read.
Her cool reception by Kinshirou's father was also a clue. She returned it. "Show me to him, please." Her voice warmed slightly as she turned to a maid. "And a vase as well, for the flowers."
"Of course." The maid bowed and hurried off down the corridor, but Kinshirou's father led her to Kinshirou's room in person. En hurried ahead.
When he ducked into the bedroom, he found Kinshirou saying goodbye to Ibushi. He looked apprehensive, and jumped when En appeared through the wall. "Leave," he said curtly, as soon as Ibushi was out of the room. En rolled his eyes.
"I came to tell you your mother was on her way. You're welcome."
Kinshirou paused, and looked, briefly, a bit guilty. "I know."
"Yeah, it looks like it. See you later." And he vanished halfway through the wall, as close as he could bring himself to leaving Kinshirou alone. He was just in time to see Kinshirou's parents turn the corner and arrive by the door.
"Thank you," Kinshirou's mother told his father, and he offered her a shallow, clipped bow before he turned and left. It was awkward even to watch that level of cold politeness. It made En want to tear down a painting or something just to snap them out of it. He might have, but he had a feeling Kinshirou wouldn't be happy about it.
The maid reappeared, holding a large vase half-full of water. Kinshirou's mother nodded to her, and they entered the room.
En retreated to his remote door-watching position, which, honestly, was a pretty boring place to be. The maid reappeared almost at once without her vase, but Kinshirou's mother did not. Left alone in silence, En's thoughts turned to Kinshirou's health. Two visits in a row, including one so emotionally charged...
As much as he longed to stay by Kinshirou's side and watch over him all the time, he knew he would just be an annoyance. But he breathed a sigh of relief when Kinshirou's mother appeared in the doorway.
Now that she was out of Kinshirou's sight—or so En assumed—her lips were starting to tremble. En dashed into the room, which had the side benefit of letting her cry in private.
The door closed. "Would it be so difficult," Kinshirou said in an undertone, "to allow me some time alone?"
"I'm doing the best I can." It stung more than it once had, when Kinshirou said things like that. "I can go in the bathroom if you want."
"I'm teasing you, En."
En looked at Kinshirou for the first time since he'd hurried back in. Whatever he had expected, it wasn't there. Kinshirou was lying down, not sitting as he had been when En had left him, but there was a faint smile on his face. Something almost like contentment. En had never seen him look content before. It had never occurred to him as a possibility.
"I didn't think you knew how to tease," he said, before the moment was lost, but the warmth in his stomach made it hard not to smile goofily. Besides being embarrassing, an expression like that would reveal too much.
Then again, maybe Kinshirou wouldn't suspect his death spirit of developing a crush. It was weird to En, and En was the one who had done it. He made his corporeal way to the pillows by the head of Kinshirou's bed and plopped down on top of them. The flowers Kinshirou's mother had brought were arranged in an elegant bouquet on a side table right above his head. En craned his head back and peered up at them.
Dying flowers, clinging to beauty for as long as they could. An appropriate gift. Although, admittedly, Kinshirou's mother probably hadn't been thinking along those lines.
Kinshirou's meeting with his mother had gone well. When he died, he would be a little more at peace. That was already clear just from his unexpected lightheartedness, the sense of calm in his smile. And En had brought her here, kind of. It had been his suggestion. It felt crude to keep a tally, but he couldn't escape the sense that he'd done something else right. Like when he'd talked to Kinshirou about the shrine, and when he'd let him pour out a lifetime of pent-up hurt over his father.
If Kinshirou had died earlier, when En had first appeared to him, maybe, or just after he'd gotten his prognosis, none of that would have happened. En would never admit it aloud, but maybe Kinshirou had been right to wait.
* * *
He changed his mind about that pretty fast.
It was like Kinshirou turned a corner, and the death he had been easing towards came rushing up to meet him. His comfortable king-size bed vanished, replaced by a hospital bed to make it easier for him to sit up; instead of walking to the garden, he walked to his window where he could sit and look out on the last of the summer flowers. Even that became rarer and rarer.
His birthday arrived and was observed quietly. The monitors returned, despite his protests. His weight dropped and dropped until he was almost emaciated.
For the first time, a visit with Atsushi went poorly. En knew because he was there. He refused to leave Kinshirou now unless he was with one of his parents. If it was annoying, Kinshirou could just deal with it. So he was there to watch from beside a far wall as Atsushi appeared in the doorway and spied the half-eaten lunch on Kinshirou's tray.
"Kin-chan," he sighed.
"Hello to you too," Kinshirou murmured. His voice had weakened, too.
Embarrassment darkened Atsushi's cheeks. "Sorry, Kin-chan." He closed the door and approached the bed. "I brought you more music." Atsushi had taken to bringing Kinshirou flash drives full of pleasant music, instead of books as he once had. He set one down on Kinshirou's bedside table. "Why didn't you finish your lunch?"
"I wasn't hungry."
"You have to eat."
En tensed. Kinshirou's chin rose. "I did eat."
Atsushi glanced at the tray. "You have to eat more. Your body needs all the help it can get."
Shut up! En thought at him as hard as he could. Stop being an asshole. But it was just wishful thinking. He couldn't make Atsushi do anything. Sometimes being a death spirit was fucking useless.
Kinshirou looked down at the tray as well, away from Atsushi's face. "I know, Atchan. I ate all I could."
"Can't..." Atsushi hesitated, then took a deep breath and forged on. "Can't you try a little harder?"
Kinshirou glanced up, hurt, and En lost patience. He crossed to the corner of Kinshirou's long-abandoned desk and swept his arm across it, knocking over a whole row of books.
They both jumped; the readings on Kinshirou's heart monitor leapt into sudden urgency. But En had gauged Atsushi's personality right. "What on earth—" he began, and hurried around the table to set things straight again.
Kinshirou would glare if En just let Atsushi step through him, so he moved out of the way and turned toward the bed. "Tell him a lack of appetite is normal for your stage of the illness, and if the nurses don't bug you about it, he shouldn't either." Kinshirou shot him a quizzical look behind Atsushi's back. "It is normal. I read your father's pamphlets."
Kinshirou's eyes narrowed. En narrowed his right back, and eventually Kinshirou's face softened into a wry little smile. Something in En's chest twisted at the sight.
"Okay." Atsushi finished putting the desk back in order and returned to his seat, but the tension of the discussion was broken. With a smile, Kinshirou reached for his hand. En squelched a surge of bitter envy as he retreated to the far wall. "Atchan," Kinshirou said, "I appreciate your concern. But a lack of appetite is to be expected for me right now. My nurses don't seem concerned, and they would know, don't you think?"
Atsushi gazed at him for a second, and then, unexpectedly, he bowed his head. His shoulders slumped, and he clasped Kinshirou's hand gently between both of his own. "You're right. I'm sorry, Kin-chan. It's just..."
"Yes." Kinshirou's expression as he gazed at the top of Atsushi's head was soft and fond. Jealousy squirmed in En's stomach. "I want you to know, Atchan, you've been a good friend."
Atsushi's head shot back up. "Don't talk like that!"
"Why not? Not even you can pretend not to see the obvious anymore." Atsushi's glare wavered. "I know it's difficult, but you must face it."
Atsushi swallowed. Kinshirou watched him, green eyes glimmering in sunken sockets.
"You're right," Atsushi said in a small voice. "I'm sorry."
"And stop apologizing."
"Sorry." Kinshirou pursed his lips, but Atsushi was smiling, if faintly. "You've been a good friend too, Kin-chan."
It wasn't a scene meant for witnesses. En struggled with himself, and won. He turned and passed through the window into the garden.
* * *
Not more than a couple of weeks later, Kinshirou rarely adjusted his bed even to sit up. He received visitors lying down, and the visits were becoming shorter and shorter. His father's visits dropped back below the three-minute mark. His mother never cried again in the house, but her face as she left the room was enough to make En ache.
That was another strangeness. He'd seen grieving relatives in his time. Not as many as he could have, given his role, but enough. They'd never made him sad in quite the same way. Love was weird.
In any case, the unpredictable length of Kinshirou's parents' visits meant En had to lurk outside the door, dashing back in the moment it opened. He hated dashing. He would only have put up with this constant running for a few people, and all but one of them were other death spirits who wouldn't need it anyway.
But the one person who did lay in his bed, wide-eyed, when En sped through the wall and came to an abrupt stop. His father's even footsteps receded on the other side of the door. En crossed the room and lay carefully down on the bed next to him. That had begun one evening when Kinshirou was especially cold, and En had just... never stopped. If Kinshirou wanted him to knock it off, he wouldn't be shy about saying so.
He studied Kinshirou's distracted expression, his shining eyes. That look was more common after his mother's visits; even now, his father tended to leave him pensive and closed off. "Did something happen?" En asked, making sure Kinshirou's pajamas were straightened and the blankets were in place, so that En could wrap a careful arm around him. For warmth, of course.
"He told me..." Kinshirou's voice drifted off for a moment. There was some chance that he was about to wander away for a while, as the very sick sometimes did, but it was too early to know for sure—and, indeed, just as En was thinking that, Kinshirou blinked and clarity returned to his face. His voice, though, remained faint. "He told me he was proud of me. Because I've borne my illness so well."
Easy for him to say. He'd never been sent as far away as he could go, so that Kinshirou could cope with his grief or his fear in private.
"He's never said he was proud of me before," Kinshirou whispered. His eyes flickered shut.
"I'm glad he got there in the end." En sighed, and curled up against Kinshirou. He was not going to think about what all this... for lack of a better word, all this cuddling revealed about his feelings. It was nice, and Kinshirou didn't mind. That was enough. "He does care about you, you know."
"Do you think so?"
"I followed him once. He looks really sad when he thinks he's in private."
"En." Kinshirou sighed his name. "Don't spy on my father."
"I only did it that once," En protested. Kinshirou smiled. "You should sleep, Kinshirou."
"Yes."
And for a while, it seemed like he did. En was about to follow him when he spoke again. "Were you sent to tempt me to my death?"
En opened his eyes. "What?"
"You're beautiful," Kinshirou said. En stared at him. His eyes were open, if half-lidded, and his face was turned slightly in En's direction. "And kind. And you know all those interesting things." En propped himself up on an elbow and stared down, incredulous. Kinshirou gazed back up at him. "It would make sense."
"Kinshirou..." En began, and didn't know how to continue. There was something in Kinshirou's expression that he was afraid to see. It hurt to hope, so he had shied away from it whenever he could. But there was no running from the fondness in Kinshirou's eyes.
"Then again," Kinshirou added with a glimmer of a smile, "you can also be very frustrating."
"Kinshirou." En took a deep breath. "I'm not here to tempt you to your death. We invite you, like... I don't know, like any invitation. We don't tempt. I'm not a devil. You sound like a Westerner."
Kinshirou nodded. "Then does that mean you've failed? Since I didn't accept your invitation?"
"There's still time," En countered. Kinshirou smiled that wry smile, fainter than before in his gaunt face. "But no. Our duty... I'm really not supposed to talk about this, you know." Kinshirou just waited. En closed his eyes and focused hard. He was comforting Kinshirou by explaining, so really, it was in keeping with the higher principles of his calling. That was more important than keeping the secrets of his kind. That was the most important thing. He thought that over and over, as hard as he could, until he felt the strictures of secrecy loosen around him, allowing him to speak. He opened his eyes again. "We ease suffering. That's it, really. We invite you to your death so you can cut it short."
"This again," Kinshirou murmured.
"You asked." On instinct, he tried to brush Kinshirou's hair away from his face, the way he would do for some of his nonhuman friends. His hand went right through Kinshirou's forehead. Kinshirou exhaled a voiceless laugh as his eyes fell closed. "Don't laugh at me," En muttered, and lay back down.
His body thrummed with tenderness, and the fear that he'd phenomenally misinterpreted Kinshirou. What were the odds, anyway, that Kinshirou returned his feelings? Pretty damn low. Kinshirou didn't even like him sometimes.
And yet... there had been that look in his eyes, that affection. And there had been that question. Are you here to tempt me to my death? No one had ever asked him that before.
He wanted to pull Kinshirou close through the blankets, but if he was wrong... Luckily, he was also afraid that it would hurt Kinshirou to jostle him like that. So he could use that as an excuse, and not even have to consider the topic anymore.
He waited for Kinshirou's breathing to slow before he whispered the final words, the ones he kept closest to his heart. "There's only one way we can really fail. But I won't fail you, all right? No matter what, you won't die alone."
It would explain a lot to Kinshirou, probably, if he heard. All the running around, all the refusals to leave him unattended. But he continued to sleep, his slow breathing more erratic than En would like. En curled his arm tighter around him and drifted off, holding his duty close.
* * *
When the end came, it felt sudden.
It wasn't, obviously. They had seen it coming for months. But it felt too soon.
And why was that, anyway? Why was it too soon? If anything, shouldn't it be too late? All Kinshirou's fear, all his frustration, this pointless, unnecessary decline—wasn't it good that it was almost done? Of course it was. En needed to stop thinking like a human.
He curled up next to to Kinshirou's bed, sitting on air as he hadn't done in months. Kinshirou had been hard to wake when the nurse arrived, and already he was slipping back into unconsciousness. The nurse had looked at him, her face grave, and called for a colleague.
"Kinshirou," En said quietly, while Kinshirou was still clinging to consciousness. "Kinshirou, you did it. You see? You fought hard, you used all your willpower, and you won. You outlived your prognosis by six weeks. Now you've done all you can. You don't need to drift away like this. This doesn't have to happen. There's nothing left for you to do, so please—" His voice caught. "Kinshirou, just take my hand. I understand why you wouldn't do it before. But it's all right to let go when there's nothing left to do. It's all right."
He watched Kinshirou's hands, hoping for some movement, some sign. Nothing.
The nurses concluded their hushed conference. "You'd better go get his father," the first one said. The other left. Except for the beeping of monitors, the room was silent.
"Kinshirou, please." Kinshirou's hands were still. "This might as well be the end of your life, right now. Your body will live for a few more days, but it won't make any..."
But when En looked back into Kinshirou's face, trying to catch his eye, Kinshirou's eyes were already closed. He couldn't hear.
It was the most horrible thing En had ever seen. He curled up tighter and pressed his face against his knees to block out the sight. Kinshirou had fought so hard, for so long, and gained so much in the battle when he could have just surrendered, and now... En squeezed his eyes shut, but the tears came anyway.
He was being ridiculous. Listening to Kinshirou had tainted him. The end of a lingering death was supposed to be good. But it didn't matter anymore what he thought about it. He wanted what Kinshirou wanted. That was what love was. And in the end, no matter how good a face Kinshirou had put on it, this was the moment he had feared the most. Falling away into sleep and lingering there for days, not dead, but not truly alive either. And even then, he hadn't let himself escape it.
The door opened, and Kinshirou's father entered the room. En glanced up at him through tear-blurred eyes—and at that moment, when he lifted his head, Kinshirou stirred.
The nurse who had stayed rushed to his side, which spurred his father to pick up his pace, but Kinshirou didn't move again. He stayed as he was, with his head turned ever-so-slightly in En's direction and the faintest shimmer of green between his eyelids, wearing the tiny, wry smile he wore when he didn't want to admit that En was right.
His father reached his bedside. "Kinshirou," he murmured.
En hesitated, swallowing the sudden surge of hope that closed his throat. "Kinshirou...?"
Kinshirou's fingers twitched on the blanket.
En stared at them. Glanced up at Kinshirou's little smile, and looked right back down at his hand before he started to cry again. He began to reach out, but hesitated, suddenly, strangely afraid.
But what was the harm? He had told Kinshirou as much himself, hadn't he? If he was wrong, if he had misunderstood, nothing would happen. But he hoped, with all the piercing pain that hope brought, gods, he hoped he was right.
His fingers brushed the dry skin of Kinshirou's palm. And as Kinshirou's eyes closed for the last time, En finally took his hand.