Work Text:
There was a reason why time magic should never be tampered with.
“You will not find the happiness you seek, and the cost of your soul is too heavy a payment.” warned the seer.
“You know not of my happiness.” replied he.
“Perhaps not.” the seer agreed. “Very well. You will not heed my caution.”
In the end, making that decision had been easier than falling into a slumber.
In the first life that followed, Alice took a lungful of air upon first breath. He was shivering at the side of a snowy pavement, dripping wet. He did not feel demon, and he cried for the loss of his wings.
“Are you alright?” Iruma-sama asked him, and despite his face being shadowed, Alice knew it was his king immediately, by the angle in which his head was tilted, in the amiable rise of his worry-laced voice.
When Alice cried for the second time, it was out of relief. The night was cold, but Iruma-sama was not.
“If you have nowhere to go, would you like to come home with me?”
He’d take that extended hand in a heartbeat, no matter where it led.
“Home”, it turned out, was a rickety old shed that stood at the very edge of the city.
“I have nowhere to go either.” Iruma-sama explained, face stretched in an achingly familiar smile that was bordering on bashful. “It’s not much, but…”
Alice had to stifle the urge to cry for the third time. This was happening, and this was real. Iruma-sama was alive in front of him. Suddenly his breaths felt like precious things. What if by the next inhale, he would discover that all of this was part of a fever dream? What if by the next blink of his eye, Alice would be back in the castle, alone and riddled with dread?
“Are you alright?” Iruma-sama asked again. “Your face looks very pale. Are you feeling unwell anywhere?”
“I’m simply splendid.” Alice finally dared to exhale. He could never purposefully bring Iruma-sama trouble. And it was the truth as well. How could he ever be unwell when he was exactly where he wished to be?
“That’s good to hear.” Iruma-sama finally beamed, and it was every bit as radiant as Alice remembered. It never failed to render him a little bit breathless. “My name is Suzuki Iruma. What about you?”
“...Asmodeus Alice.” he said. This was the first time he was hearing Iruma-sama ’s family name. Suzuki. He repeated in his mind. Suzuki Iruma. It left an imprint on his mind, as well as deep in his chest.
This life was simple. Iruma-sama mostly went wherever he was needed. He cleared streets, dusted windows, walked dogs, anything. Alice helped out as best as he could manage.
“There’s not much I can do other than this.” Iruma-sama had explained. “No one wanted to hire someone underage, and no one will want to hire someone who haven’t even completed middle school.”
Is this the life you led before we met? Alice wanted to ask. Where are your parents? Where is the government? Why doesn’t anyone care?
He held his tongue, because he didn’t want to pry, and because Iruma-sama never tried to force any answer out of himself either.
Still, it was a simple life, and it was peaceful. Peaceful was enough for Alice. He was content as long as Iruma- sama was content.
It was a simple life up until their early twenties. Iruma-sama had gone out to buy on-sale groceries. Alice wanted to meet him at the store. His footsteps were swift and his heart was light. It had been a pretty good week, their water supply hadn’t even run out yet. He caught a hint of blue across the street and immediately felt his face bloom into a smile. Iruma-sama seemed to have noticed him as well, for he raised a hand to wave.
The light turned green, and Alice hurried forward.
The truck had come out of nowhere.
It was so cliched, and Alice was frozen to the spot. The color of fresh blood spilled over, and it was every bit as revolting as Alice remembered.
(He didn’t have to check, he knew it was death on sight, but he still fell to his knees and held Iruma-sama ’s body as life slowly trickled out. Iruma- sama ’s had been warm. No longer.)
He was barely coherent enough to hear a pedestrian scream.
Death had followed. He thought dreadfully.
The second life had been immediately far worse. He was born straight into war, raised to kill.
That alone hadn’t been so calamitous, but the battlefield was so wide. How was he to find Iruma-sama ?
The enemy soldiers seemed endless, and Alice had to forcefully tell himself not to think how every abdomen he hacked, every gut he spilled, belonged to a living person. (Belonged to someone else’s beloved, someone else’s sun.) His arms were getting tired and his eyesight was going fuzzy. His human body was far less endurable than his demon one.
Alice thrust out his sword, and there was a sickening squelch as it hit its target.
He only got one look before his opponent met the ground, but one look was enough. He would recognize his king anywhere, and hadn’t he vowed to never have Iruma-sama be frightened again?
The worst of it, perhaps, was that Iruma-sama didn’t die right away. The wound Alice had punctured hadn’t been deadly enough. On the battlefield, there seemed to be a protective bubble shrouding over the both of them. Once again, Alice was holding his body as his spirit balanced on a single thread.
“Will you finish me off quickly?” his fading light asked him. “Please?”
It was one of the few times Alice had been able to refuse Iruma-sama ’s wish, all because his hands were shaking too much to do the job. He couldn’t imagine the type of pain Iruma-sama must be going through, and he supposed it was almost cruel of him to reject. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t raise his blade.
“I don’t- I can’t- ” words caught themselves on his tongue. There smell of death was prominent in the air, and Alice had thought he’d gotten used to it after spending days and nights here. Now the reality of it all was drowning him.
He wanted to barf.
Cool, slippery fingers found his own. He didn’t know whose blood it was anymore, just that his hands still hadn’t stopped trembling.
“Shh.” murmured his king. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
It wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay. Iruma-sama held his hands and hummed a broken little tune to him. It sounded like it hurt.
“Live.” was Iruma-sama ’s final request, and Alice wanted to laugh. He couldn’t even do the one last thing Iruma-sama asked of him. Or maybe he was doing it too much. The line of life and death blurred when one was living more than one life.
I need to lose Death. He realized too late.
The next life Alice wished that there was no war, and there wasn’t. It should’ve been a relief, but he knew better than to let his guard down. There was still no Iruma-sama in sight.
He was a merchant’s son, and they travelled a lot.
Alice’d hoped this would be a better life. It seemed harmless enough, but then so had the first life.
Iruma-sama was a hunter, he would soon learn, in one of the quaint towns they’d gone. They became fast friends, and that town became his favorite. Every visit would be spent sneaking off to spend time with Iruma-sama in the forest, where Iruma-sama taught him how to make flower crowns and how to shoot an arrow. In this life also, Alice realized, Iruma-sama ’s parents were absent. He wondered if it was a coincidence or if it was a constant.
They were sixteen when they shared their first kiss. Alice had been so nervous, his entire face blazing bright red. It was nothing more than the slightest of pecks, and it had been so so much . His heart felt so full, he wondered if it was going to burst. Iruma-sama had laughed then, and Alice couldn’t help but laugh along. Their hands were firmly intertwined as they made their way back.
It was a shame, but Alice could never stay for too long because of the family business, but he always promised to return soon, and Iruma-sama always waited. Honestly, if he could, he would live with Iruma-sama always, but he figured he owed it to his family in this life, who had raised him and educated him, so Alice had planned on leaving when he was grown.
He didn’t get to wait until then.
He went to the town that day and couldn’t find Iruma-sama in their usual spot. His cabin was also empty. He has no choice but to ask around the townsfolk.
Accident. Alice heard. Mutilated by a crazed bear that was about to attack her own cubs. Drugged by foreign hunters.
It was so like him to die protecting another life. Alice was too numb to properly react. It had hurt. It felt like falling and falling and falling into a bottomless pit and anticipating the impact that would crack your skull and shatter your ribs. It hurt even more than the last two lives. Maybe because only in this life he’d gotten a taste of bliss. He thought he’d found it, his happiness. Once again, he let it slip through his fingers.
Death was still close on Alice’s tail.
The lives generally had little in common. There were differences every time. In one Iruma-sama was a photographer, and Alice was his model. In another Iruma-sama was the heir of a mafia and Alice tried to help him break away.
In the second life where he killed Iruma-sama , he thought he’d broken, but he woke up in a new life all the same. He couldn’t hold a single weapon all throughout his next nine lives.
In one, the one that was most like their original life, Iruma-sama was the king and Alice was his right hand man.
“Isn’t it time for you to settle down?” his king had asked, so Alice married a nice girl who was like the moon.
“You hold no affection for me, only fondness.” she said, and Alice couldn’t argue, because she was right.
She was the moon, and while the moon was alright, Alice served his sun only.
In some lives they were close, in the ones when they become lovers, they were even closer, and Alice cherished the moments of intimacy, where they would lie and bed sharing body heat. In some lives they only brushed by each other on the street. Alice always tried to head back, to search for Iruma-sama , but he would never manage to find his king, already vanished into the crowd.
In all lives, Iruma-sama died young. Even the ones where they barely crossed paths, Alice would inevitably learn about his demise on the news or in the papers.
No matter what he did, he couldn’t outrun doom. Death was at every corner, mocking him.
The seer had warned him that he would not find happiness, and at first he thought that seeing Iruma-sama was his happiness, that just simply seeing Iruma- sama alive and animated would be enough. He hadn’t anticipated that by manipulating time so he could chase across lives meant that he would have to witness Iruma- sama die again and again and again.
Alice was tired, and his soul was battered. When will it all finally end? When will he find the right life? This was what it meant when he’d been told that his soul was the price.
Iruma-sama held him in place, kept him sane. In one life, and one life only, Iruma-sama was a psychic, and he said to Alice, “You have gone down this path many times, and they all reek of sorrow. I hope it isn’t for my sake.” Alice almost broke down then. He could hold back the sobs, but he couldn’t control the tears. Iruma-sama held him so startlingly gentle, and Alice found his emotions after four lives without any. Iruma-sama was his anchor, and every time Alice would almost lose himself, he would remember soft laughter and kind hands. He would tell himself that he had to see it again, had to see his king again.
You will not find the happiness you seek, and the cost of your soul is too heavy a payment.
Alice would gladly trade his soul if it meant he would finally bring Iruma-sama peace, and well, that was where his happiness would be.
He surged on into the next life.