Archive of Our Own ^beta

Gakushuu Asano dies the same way he was born. On the cusp of the new year, in the dark, changing Gakuhou's life forever. 

The warranty on Gakushuu's life had been beyond generous. He was never meant to exist. When he lost his wing and last bit of use left Gakuhou knew it was before long that Gakushuu would be taken from him. He hadn't anticipated it to be so soon, far quicker than he had anticipated. 

Three years was a blink for someone who could live centuries. Three years was nothing in the grand scheme of things, barely a tick on the clock. Gakuhou had read literature, watched movies, and he'd always found amusing and ironic how humans stretched time, such that three months or days or even hours could be forever, and he'd never understood. But lifetimes could have passed for Gakuhou in those three years. .

Lord Wilkes decreed it the first time - Gakushuu's next assessment to keep his life would take place on the dawn of Gakushuu's eighteen birthday. He'd make the claim shortly following Ivanoff's trial, before Gakuhou divulged the loss of Gakushuu's right wing, and the only marker of his worth. Everyone had been disappointed, amused, when Gakushuu was made to appear in court the following month. There and then his death sentence was etched in stone, hanging over their heads. 

Gakushuu dies on his eighteenth birthday. When Gakuhou returns to Earth alone, Akabane Karma and Jelavic Irina are there to greet him. There are human proceedings for this sort of matter - a funeral. They'd taken care of the petty administration. 

Akabane’s eyes were red, and his hands shook that entire day. Gakushuu had loved him for the brief time they'd been together, and Gakushuu had continued loving him after they broke it off, up until the moment he died. It's something Gakuhou doesn't understand. 

They ended things terribly. A fight, warranted, justified on both ends. When his execution date was marked, Gakushuu wanted to end their relationship - break the bond between them. Akabane had hated it, screamed about loving Gakushuu to the very end, about how three years was a long time, how he wouldn't give up. Gakuhou remembers agonising weeks, the argument dissolving into quiet sobs by the windowsill and broken cries by the stairway, no doubt amplified and echoed by the emotional telepathy they shared between them. The bond goes in the end, one year in. 

"You have to get used to being without me," Gakushuu had murmured, soft against the moonlight, a hand curled on Akabane’s cheek. 

"It feels so cold without you," Akabane says, tears streaming down his face. They're in the public hall of Gakuhou's house, and yet it seems like such a private and vulnerable moment, Gakuhou feels bad for eavesdropping. He turns to leave. 

"I know," Gakushuu says, and Gakuhou pauses in his tracks. "But I'm still here, now, okay? You'll have to let go of me. I'll love you forever even if you do." 

"I don't know how," Akabane’s voice breaks. 

Over the parapet, Gakushuu looks up and meets Gakuhou's eyes. Gakuhou turns away. 

Sometimes he thinks about that scene, and wonders if Gakushuu had said those for him as much as he did for Akabane. It's not something he likes to dwell on often. 

18 years should have been nothing. It should have been nothing . 

Gakuhou returns to Earth alone. He stays in his house - the house - for one night, then locks the door the next day and never returns. 

Two hundred years down the road he finds out it's been refurbished and converted into a coven's mansion. The latent demonic energy within its walls must have made it a prime location to practice the dark arts - that, and he'd slipped the key into Irina's mailbox. 

She's long dead now, but she lives on. The woman who greets him on the front steps wears her hair and eyes, remnants of her magical signature on her fingertips. 

A great granddaughter. 

"This place belongs to you," she says -her name is Kaori, her head cocked. "We kept it in pristine condition. We can leave quietly, and you can have it back." 

It's been a long time since someone had spoken to Gakuhou with such reverence. He's not weak - raw power alone he rivals a good number of his own kind, but he's long lost his former influence. All he has to blame is himself. 

When Gakuhou looks around on the front lawn he sees the remnants of Gakushuu's life there, the very reason he couldn't stay. The Aspen tree, a former product of his magical experiments, now a sprawling giant casting shade over half the yard. The front steps of the porch, Gakushuu seated there with a book in his hands. The rooftop, where on clear calm nights he would lie back down on to watch the stars, his wings laid out to stretch, inky black pools seeping into the tiles. 

"No," Gakuhou says. "I was just curious." 

Gakuhou'd long lost his former influence. He wanted to say he'd seen it coming, that it had been a gradual process he eased himself to, but it would not be the entire truth. 

Siring Gakushuu in itself was a risky decision that already tested his reputation. He'd been on thin ice ever since, and retreating to the human world to raise the child had been a highly discouraged decision. The only thing he'd managed to salvage from it had been Gakushuu's flight achievements, but even then it had resulted from a birth defect that had made his wings underdeveloped. It worked in his favor in the way that demon wings weren't very much aerodynamic to begin with, and Gakushuu had somehow scored the lottery with his record breaking anatomical flaws. Throughout his stay in the human realm he'd kept up consistently with his research, but it's very much treated as mundane with most of society's eyes waiting to watch whatever Gakushuu would do next, especially since he'd defied expectations. They were doubly disappointed then, when Gakushuu had run his course, and Gakuhou fell much more into disfavor. 

He had still been in the council then, and his seat remained for him when he would return, up until the point he'd killed Ivanoff for his son. A demon, and a fellow council member to boot, someone highly important in exchange for the life of someone barely considered a person! And even worse still, when the curtains were drawn and everyone realized that Ivanoff's sacrifice had been in vain. 

(They called it a sacrifice. A martyr, undeserving, limitless potential. Never mind that they were both still on the lower rung of the council, still considered one of the more indispensable by the higher levels of Court.)

The height of Gakuhou's embarrassment - what led to his final termination - surrounds the events of Death Day itself. Gakuhou remembers that day clearly. He sees it every night, nevermind that he doesn't sleep. Gakushuu in the middle of Court, eyes desperately shut, the audience jeering. Gakuhou had already known he was not going to bring the body back - a science experiment to the very end, his cadaver for autopsies, his essence for laboratories. Gakushuu joked about it, saying it was akin to being a human organ doner. 

That should been the deal, and Gakuhou would have watched it happen with poise and control. It's an inevitable moment.

But perhaps scientific curiosities were too much to pass up on, and after all, Gakushuu was akin to nothing more than a lab rat in their eyes, there was no question or morality or ethics in the execution attempt, and it wasn't like they needed permission from Gakuhou anyways. 

It takes four men in total to pin Gakuhou down to the ground, but he's still struggling against them. He doesn't remember what he said - when he tries to recall the incident, all he sees is a haze. At the very last moment a decision was made and they put Gakushuu under the knife. (Live dissections were long made illegal amongst humans, but it’s not a demonic concern.) 

Gakuhou remembers Gakushuu's screams. The scalpel digging into his arm, Gakuhou lunging forward, immediately getting pulled back. The audience laughing, pointing. He remembers Ikeda gripping onto him hard, begging him to calm down, he remembers Gakushuu begging for him to help him, they're cutting him up live and awake straight on the table, messy and horrific and unsalvageable. It's no longer for science, not the way they're slashing him up - there's nothing that can be studied.

Gakuhou remembers crying. Begging. He doesn't remember what he said. He remembers his throat raw and hoarse, his eyes wet and blurry, his body aching from where the others have him anchored. 

"Let him go! Please! PLEASE! I'll do anything! WHATEVER YOU WANT FROM ME! LET HIM GO!" 

He falls from the top that day, and nobody takes him seriously then, not after making such a fool of himself. That's okay, and he doesn't care about what everyone else thinks anymore. He cares about Aina, and only her - she'd stood up and drove a knife straight into Gakushuu's heart. He doesn't think he'd ever be able to thank her enough.

Ikeda finds him later that day. They're on one of the balconies of the Calliope. Aina sent him to the en-suite adjacent hers after the ordeal. 

"Came to laugh at me?" Gakuhou says, bitter. 

Iked scowls, and shakes his head. "I knew him too, you know," he says, crossing his arm. "I didn't want it to happen."

"You held me back." 

"You would have gone over there and ripped everyone apart. You could never have saved him, and then you'll be killed too." 

Gakuhou doesn't answer. He looks out to the horizon. The balcony overlooks the cityscape and the people bustling about their lives. Gakuhou's life changed today, and every one of them bore witness to it. 

Ikeda leans over the banister. "I'm sorry." 

Gakuhou remembers the first time he brought Gakushuu here. Just barely a few months old, bundled up in his arms. Gakushuu was looking up and out at everything - the arched ceilings, the tapestries, the artwork. Today he paints the floor with red like one of them.

(100 years down the line there's a new tapestry on the wall - or perhaps it's been there far earlier, Gakuhou wouldn't know. It's his last attendance here at the Calliope and he wouldn't return for a long time. It's about Gakushuu, the half-demon born with the gift of flight. It's a shame, they say. If he had been a full demon, he would have been something . 

Gakushuu already was, as himself.) 

All Gakuhou hears when he closes his eyes is Gakushuu's screams echoing in his mind. He hadn't screamed like that when he had his limbs broken, his wing ripped off. For the first time in a long time Gakushuu had called out to him, and worse still Gakuhou had been right there, and yet he did nothing. 

Ikeda searches his face for a few moments, then pulls something out from his breast pocket. "Here."

It's a jet black feather. Just looking at it, Gakuhou knows who it's from. "I thought they were all taken for tests," Gakuhou says.

Ikeda shrugs. "They missed one." 

Gakushuu's feathers were the softest things to the touch. A real demons' wings were razor sharp, and each feather was akin to a knife. Gakushuu never developed past his down and primary feathers for his sabre feathers to set in. When he was far younger and still incapable of hiding his wings himself, whenever his mother wasn't around, Gakuhou enjoyed stroking them. It helped that Gakushuu enjoyed it and was often pliant and lethargic like a cat when Gakuhou did so. If he needed to focus on work, he'd sit Gakushuu on his lap and pet the fluff. It was like a little pillow and it worked great for lulling a restless demon child to a nap. 

Gakuhou takes the feather from Ikeda. He turns it over in his hands. 

"They didn't deserve him," Gakuhou says. 

Ikeda doesn't reply. 

Gakuhou owes a debt to Aina, and Aina does not seem to wish to pursue it. Gakuhou hates being indebted to someone, and she looks at him with something akin to pity in her eyes and says that to repay her, he needed to show her he was taking care of himself. Which was ridiculous because Gakuhou was perfectly fine at surviving. 

"You're not," she says, shaking her head, a hand on his shoulder. "You haven't smiled since-" Then her voice trails off, awkwardly stilted. 

"You saw it," Gakuhou says, voice wavering (as it does whenever he brings it up. But he can't stop bringing it up, it's the only thing he's thinking about. It's been 3 months, barely any time has passed, it seems like it had just been yesterday.) "They killed him."

"Gakuhou," Aina says, voice firm but soft. "You need a break."

"I was right there ," Gakuhou sobs. "He needed me. Every time I close my eyes I hear him again."

"There was nothing you could have done. If you'd stopped it, you'd be the next one-" 

"Maybe I should have been," Gakuhou snaps, then the both of them stare at each other in shock, and the weight of his words come crashing down on them. 

It was a dangerous thing, for immortals, like that. It never ended well. They weren't exactly immortal but they lived long enough to might as well be, and there were myths - horror stories - of loving someone who had a time limit. They would die, as mortal beings do, gone in a blink of an eye. And then what? 

Demons don't love. It's not something that exists. It was simply survival. They weren't made to have sentimental attachments or dwell on things because they outlived most. 

"Gakuhou," Aina says, sharp, confused. 

"I have to go." 

Seeing Irina's great granddaughter stirs harsh feelings. Gakushuu's grave is untended to for two hundred years. It's faded, the engraving barely legible, and it's a placemarker more than anything. Gakuhou didn't have a body to bury, after all, and the soil beneath is empty. With how dilapidated the surrounding looks, it feels almost melancholy. 

A gravestone is a starkly human artifact. Gakuhou's not one for sentimentalites, but Gakushuu was part human after all, and it made sense to adhere to the one side of his culture that respected him when he had been alive. Distantly he wonders if Gakushuu would appreciate it. 

Gakuhou knows that a gravestone is meant for constant maintenance and visitations. He knows Irina and Akabane had been frequents until their own deaths (a few yards away), and Gakuhou knows he should have come down before, but he didn't. There's simply no reason for it. Without Gakushuu, Earth has nothing more to offer him, and there's no justification in the effort for a periodic grave visiting for someone who wasn't even buried there. 

That's a lie. 

Gakuhou goes to Earth many many times. He tries each time, to visit the gravestone, but he never makes it far enough. Irina and Akabane tell him about the flowers they'd left there, and he thinks he'd bring flowers. 

The florist in the window had strawberry blonde hair, and Gakuhou leaves.

Gakushuu would have gone to MIT. He would have taken Business because it seemed like a fun major to have. 

"Did you know," Gakushuu says, "I can drink when I'm eighteen?"

Gakuhou shoots him a look. "What?" 

Gakushuu raises the bottle in his hands. "Legally. I'm supposed to be able to drink when I'm eighteen."

It's two days after the death sentence was issued. Gakushuu is pondering over what he wished to do. "I could vote," he says. 

"Those are human trivialities," Gakuhou says.

"I'm human," Gakushuu says. He looks to his left. "You know, eighteen is supposed to be a turning point in many people's lives. Kids look forward to their eighteenth birthday. It's the age you become a legal adult." 

Gakuhou felt sad, and regretful. Or perhaps he felt nothing in the moment, too buzzed up on the alcohol they're trading between them. His memories are muddy.

"I guess I'm also looking forward to being eighteen, in a weird way," Gakushuu says, and smiles at him. 

"Daddy! Papa!" 

Gakuhou sees Gakushuu everywhere. Who he could have been, what he might be doing now if he had survived. He finds himself at MIT's graduation ceremony 4 years after Gakushuu's death, hands in his pockets, staring up at the stage through the glass doors. He could get into the hall if he wanted to, but he stares at the line of actual parents, eagerly filing into the room to greet their children. 

"Sir," a staff member says to him politely, "the ceremony is starting soon, if you'd like to confirm your registration-" 

"I'm not here to attend the ceremony," he says, and for some reason he says even more, "my son is dead. He would have been graduating this year. I was… just." 

He doesn't have anything else to add. Just what? Being emotional? 

Gakushuu'd applied ahead even though he won't be attending. "I just wanted to see this," Gakushuu says, clutching the acceptance letter to his chest. "You probably think it's silly."

Gakuhou had, at the time. He has the letter with him now, folded up in a drawer in his study. 

"I'm sorry," the staff member says.

Gakuhou scans the crowd for blonde hair under a graduation cap. Gakushuu would have looked funny in that, but he'd have found a way to wear it anyways, all wonky and tilted. 

He keeps odd jobs in the human world, floating aimlessly from one to another. Aina keeps him employed as a contractor, because he's still useful. 

"You could see yourself back on the council by next century if you work for it," she says, voice uncertain.

"Back there?" Gakuhou snorts in derision. "They couldn't wait to get rid of me." 

"Of course not, you're useful," Aina says. "It was a temporary lapse in your performance-" 

"So will I see them vivisect anyone who stops being useful?" Gakuho snaps. 

Aina frowns at him. "I killed Eliza," she says, "because she had no aptitude for anything after a whole century and kept me in a bad light." Eliza had been one of Gakuhou's nieces, who died when Gakuhou himself had been a child. 

Gakuhou crosses his arms. "What are you saying?" 

Aina shakes her head. 

Gakushuu had spent the most time in Calliope there as a child because Gakuhou often had council meetings to attend. He'd leave Gakushuu to his own devices, and he'd often find mischief in his own ways. 

Gakuhou had always almost regretted leaving him there. He always came back with wounds from how the other demon children would kick him around, bruises running up and down his arms. He would go up to Gakuhou's side whenever he saw him and Gakuhou would give him nothing but a swift kick in warning if he got too close. Gakushuu would say nothing, but get back up onto his feet and carefully mind his distance. 

In the very end he dies in Calliope, his blood splashed across the council room floor, streaked along the hallways as they dragged his mutilated corpse out. It's what Gakuhou sees when they ask him to step in again, and he immediately asks to step out.

"What's wrong?" 

Gakuhou wants to be more grateful. He could have everything back, his life, his prestige. He'd kept his contributions as an external contractor. Aina had gotten him an opportunity back for a seat. 

Three feet away from where Gakuhou stands now was where he had been braced against the ground, screaming and crying, as he'd watched people rip up his son. His baby. The pedestal at the center of the circle had been where Gakushuu was tied down to as they cut into him, still alive and awake, punishing him for having dare existed. 

Gakuhou bows and asks to leave again. He only breaks down when he exits the main hall, where no one but the passers-by and the whole world can see. 

Aina is the oldest among all four of them. Gakuhou is the third. They are all present on attendance on Death Day, which means they see their sibling make an utter spectacle of himself.

The youngest, Belinabal, is waiting for him when he gets dragged outside the hall. 

"You," Gakuhou says. 

Bel tilts her head. "You're crying." 

Gakuhou scowls wetly. "They killed my fucking kid. Of course I'm c-crying." He's not supposed to cry. Demons are not supposed to be affected like this. 

"It was a cruel thing to do," she agrees absently. "Does it hurt?" 

"What?" Gakuhou stares at his wounds, inflicted when people tried to restrain him, wings and claws digging into him. "No." 

Bel doesn't roll her eyes, but it's a near thing. "Here," she says, and steps forward to press a hand over his heart - and he winces when she does so. "It hurts here, doesn't it."

There's a photograph of Gakushuu and Gakuhou on Gakuhou's bedside table. It's them on their last night together, Gakuhou on the couch of their old home together with his head pillowed with the armrest, Gakushuu lying on top of him asleep. He has his wing out and draped over the both of them. Gakuhou has both arms around Gakushuu and the softest look on his face. 

It's a candid shot by Irina. Gakuhou had been pissed when she took the picture without his permission, but he's glad she did. It's one of the only things Gakuhou has left of him. 

Irina had captioned it "Mama and her duckling", after some wildlife photographs she saw featuring a mother duck and her young, the little chick all bundled up in its mother's feathers. "Parents, even animals," Irina said, pressing the picture into his hands, "will do anything for their kids. Defend them to the end." 

She had been trying to comfort him, to say he did everything he could. But Gakuhou had failed Gakushuu every step of the way, and even at the very end. 

There's a reason he doesn't visit Aina often. He finds his own place far away from her. She talks to him a lot, about getting back into work, about how people can grieve for only so long. 

"I'm not grieving," Gakuhou snaps. "I just - hate - the fucking council. I don't want to go back." 

But she bothers him with calls anyways. He doesn't visit her because Toi is there, and every time Gakuhou looks at her, something twists in his chest. 

Toi is nice. She's already on the council, young as she is. She's the only one of his three nieces (plus one nephew) that survived Aina. 

"Mom's in the study," she says, when he drops by. She's working away in the dining area, snacking on pears. Gakushuu liked pears. 

Gakuhou has nothing against Toi, or Aina's treatment of her children. It's nothing out of the ordinary. There's no such thing as natural selection for immortals - even Gakushuu, as weak as he was, would not succumb to any normal force. In order to ensure species progress, selection came from within. The weak were culled, the strong moved on. 

Perhaps it was jealousy. That Aina had a perfectly healthy and living child that bore a resemblance to her, as much as Gakushuu did to him. She's a century and a half years old and she's looking more and more like Aina by day. 

Gakuhou wishes for that. To see Gakushuu grow up, to see him all grown up. He wants to see how his mother's features soften into his face as he grows, how age would mold his features, whether his eye color would lighten to better match the characteristic that their family shares. He imagines Gakushuu next to Toi, looking like Gakuhou next to Aina. 

Gakushuu never grew taller than he did since middle school. Maybe he would have, given a bit more time. Maybe he might have even grown taller than Gakuhou, that would have been a sight. Gakuhou would pretend to hate it, but he'd always enjoyed seeing the bright expression on Gakushuu's face when he beat Gakuhou at something completely meaningless and mundane. 

He heads up the stairs to Aina's study. 

"I would rather have died that day," Gakuhou blurts, surprising the both of them. It was a dangerous thought for an immortal to have. Wanting to die, because they were going to live on after that for a very long time. Which was why they didn't love, because heartbreak and regret were not things they were supposed to keep. 

"No!" Aina yells, grabbing Gakuhou by the shoulders. "No! You don't understand what you're saying!" 

"It hurts so much!" Gakuhou tells her, a hand over his heart. "Everywhere I go I see him! Him in the past, as a kid! Who he could have been if he was alive!" He screws his eyes shut and he hears him - Gakushuu screaming, calling out to him, a splash of red over black-

Gakuhou's eyes snap open. Aina is gripping onto him, frowning. "You could never have done anything," Aina says slowly, gently. "Even I was outvoted. This was not a fight you could have won." 

"I would have…" Gakuhou looks away, blinking rapidly, eyes stinging. It's been so long. "It didn't matter. I still did nothing." He turns to look at Aina again. "He died without me. I was supposed to be there. I felt when he died, you know? He was in pain, scared, and all that while I was 10 feet away."

Aina's eyes grow wide with realization. A hand drops from his shoulder. "You love him."

Gakushuu told Gakuhou a total of five times he loved him. Three of those were as a child, when his mother threw those words around, and Gakushuu echoed them.

Once was after the Death Day decree, when they're home again. Gakuhou was exhausted, and he didn't need to sleep, but he was considering it. Gakushuu came up to him, his lone wing wrapped around his shoulder, and he wordlessly went straight into the empty space in Gakuhou's front and curls up there. 

Gakuhou had been unsure what to do. 

"I love you," Gakushuu had said, both arms wrapped tightly around Gakuhou's front, eyes shut. He was shaking, a testament to how hard he was trying not to cry, and the timer countdown hit just under three years then - the longest three years of Gakuhou's life. 

Gakuhou has many regrets. 

"Demons can't love," Gakuhou says. 

"I know," Aina says. She wipes a stray tear away from Gakuhou's cheek. "Gakushuu was never a demon." 

She steps around him and flits to a bookshelf, humming to herself, and Gakuhou crosses his arms. "He loved me," Gakuhou said, (and when he said so he felt his heart break and warm at the same time), "what does that have to do with me?" 

"You're his parent," Aina murmurs. "Your job is to reciprocate." She pulls a book from the shelf barely glancing at the title, and skims it's contents. "We're built to not love, as a survival mechanism. It's in our nature. But what predates that… is the most fundamental instinct for sentient species, humans especially. Caring for your offspring." 

She pulls out two more books. 

Gakuhou frowns. "You've been talking to Lex." 

"He talked to me," Aina says. She procures a stack of books and heads back over, and dumps it into Gakuhou's arms. Gakuhou stares at the titles but there didn't seem to be a common topic. "What-" 

"You need," she says, "to get your mind of things. I want a book report for every one of these." 

"I'm not a child." 

"To me, baby brother, you always will be." 

Gakuhou's older brother, Zlexalophries, had also been present on Death Day. Gakushuu doesn't see him until much later, and he's there already when Gakuhou gets back to his house. 

"He's a cute kid," Lex says, gazing at a photograph of Gakushuu. He's four in that one, and it's one of the last pictures his mother had ever took of him before she died. 

Gakuhou crosses his arms. "Came to laugh at me?" 

Lex rolled his eyes. "The world is laughing at you. I don't need to specifically do so." But his voice is without heat when he says it. "I came to speak with you." 

They had a falling out last century, and now Gakuhou doesn't even remember why he had been mad. "What about?" 

"Gakushuu," Lex says.

“If you could bring him back,” Aina says, “would you?”

Gakuhou hadn’t known the answer to that when she asked him. Many other people have thrown variants of the question, not expecting Gakuhou to have developed an actual attachment to Gakushuu himself. “Would you recreate the experiment?” “How many more test subjects would you consider?”

It’d been something put on the table at the beginning of the trial, after Gakuhou had killed Ivanoff. Give Gakushuu up, a life for a life, and it’d be like nothing had ever happened. He could have many more test subjects if he wanted to, halflings to suit his whims and fancies, a controlled set-up, more support. 

Except none of them would have been Gakushuu. 

Aina’s question is different, because she asks to bring him back. Gakuhou’s immediate answer wanted to be yes, but he ruminated over it for a long time (Aina had a funny way of doing things, sometimes you could never tell if she was simply entertaining a callous thought and needed a sounding board, or if she had a concrete plan ready to go.)

When she’d asked him that question it had been decades after, and if she’d asked this of him any earlier he’d had said yes without a second thought. But now he thinks of what love is, and Gakushuu loves in a way unlike any other. But he would return to a world he didn’t have a place in anymore. Gakuhou had spent a long time carrying that weight then, loving when life didn’t allow it. It would have put Gakushuu in the same fate, loving something he’d lost a long time ago. 

Demon council would not let it slide. It might actually really kill Gakuhou this time, if he had to watch Gakushuu die again.

“No,” he says, and a part of him is surprised when his heart hardens in it’s resolve around it. Aina smiles at him.

"So this while," Gakuhou says, trying to wrap his head around it. "Gakushuu was my pet project… and we were yours." 

"The emotional repercussions of raising a half demon, half human child," Lex agrees. "It's gathered wide interest as of late, I'm surprised you've yet to hear about it - especially considering the central topic of discussion is, well, you.”

Gakuhou frowns. “I’ve been busy.”

Lex nods. “Grieving.”

“I’m not -”

“You know it’s fine, right?” Lex interrupts. “You get to be sad that your child died. You didn’t choose to cull him yourself. He was taken from you, ripped apart, and killed. You get to be sad about it.”

Gakuhou sighs. “I suppose.”

Lex knocks him on the side of the head. “You’re a child,” he chides, softly. “Sit down. I’m here to interview you. We can take breaks if you cry.”

“You-”

“No, that’s a promise. I do plan on making you cry.”

To his credit, he does. Gakuhou cries a lot easier since that day. He doesn’t understand why. Perhaps it had been an issue of pride before, but he knew he couldn’t possibly hit any lower then begging for a half-demon’s life in front of the world in Court. 

“You love him,” Lex says.

“That’s impossible.”

“Unlikely as it may seem, nothing is ever impossible.”

Nothing was ever impossible. Gakuhou almost lived by that, when Gakushuu was born. He kept defying every expectation thrown his way and had Gakuhou on his toes ever since he was born, and Gakuhou lived life in anticipation of which of his worldviews Gakushuu would challenge next. 

Gakushuu had a hidden talent in the art of necromancy since he was four. He had his own strange blend of magic. He was a demon that loved like a human, a human that fought like a demon, someone who belonged in both worlds and yet in neither.

On some days Gakuhou regrets ever letting him be born. He wonders what it would have been like if Gakushuu simply never existed. Him seated at the council, whatever trifling mortal worries out of his mind. 

Other days he regrets letting Gakushuu live this long. The novelty of it would have made him interested in half-demon children anyways, at one point, and there isn’t to say Gakushuu would have been the product of it, but another one doomed to his fate would have. Gakushuu’s birth quelled his curiosity. That should have been the end of it, and Gakuhou should have taken everyone’s advice. Kill him, before any sort of attachment formed. 

Some days he regrets having not been there. He could have broken free if he wanted to, in the end, but some part of him knew that he wouldn’t have been able to walk away from the consequences. He wished he did - thrown off Ikeda and the others, turned the hall into a bloodbath as much as he could. 

In the end, when he’s looking at what’s left of his old life in pictures and holding the single feather in his hands, he knows that he never truly regrets the former two. The only one he dwells on is the latter. He plays it out in his head. In every scenario Gakushuu dies anyways, but he dies in Gakuhou’s arms. A bloodied hand gripping onto the lapels of his jacket, his wing between them. And then Gakuhou dies himself, a cruel gruesome death, and half the times he thinks it’s worth it. 

“It’s not like it would be impossible for us to feel love,” Lex says. “It could happen. The reason it does not is because it’s an evolutionary advantage - but that means somewhere up the line, we would have loved and lost as hard and as fast as humans do. Maybe those who did never lasted long, because they feel like you do, when it inevitably breaks their heart. It’s hard to keep on living like that.”

Gakuhou presses his palm to his chest. He feels his heart beat, beat, beat. “Why me?” He chokes out then. 

“Evolutionary disadvantage, perhaps,” Lex shrugs. “A long-dead parental instinct that awoken to fulfil your human child’s needs. Just plain old bad luck.”

Karma Akabane loves Gakushuu and Gakushuu loved him back. He’s in his thirties when Gakuhou meets him again, a decade after Gakuhou last saw him. He’s grown up into his features, a young man in his own right. Selfishly Gakuhou wonders what Gakushuu would have looked like in his place, all grown up.

“It’s been a while,” Akabane says, a smile on his face. “Or barely any time for you, I suppose.”

After Gakushuu’s death his trips to the human dimension had been sparse. He’s surprised to see that for however much it changed, it stayed the same. 

“Love?” Akabane muses. “Well, I don’t really know how to explain it to someone who doesn’t understand… ah, it’s an instinct, more than anything. It’s never just in your heart, no matter what the media says. It’s everywhere, it follows you everywhere.” He stretches out his hands. “When I miss him, I miss the way he feels. His hair, his feathers. I miss him hugging me, curled up next to me…” 

A noise draws their attention. One of Akabane’s children - they bear so much resemblance - pokes their heads in and giggle. 

“Go outside and play, okay sweetie?” Akabane coos. The child disappears.

“Oh, sorry,” Akabane says, looking a little sheepish.

Gakuhou stares at the child, almost fondly. “I remember when Gakushuu was that small,” he says. “I could pick him up like a bowling ball. When he got his wings I threw him into the air until he flew.”

Akabane laughs. “I won’t be doing that with Yuki, that’s for sure.”

“I remember him,” Gakuhou says, staring at his fingers, hesitating. “What you said.” Gakushuu, snuggled up next to him. His wing, fluffed up and warm, a blanket over them both. Gakushuu’s head at the crook of his neck, his eyelashes fluttering. “Dad?”

He misses it.

Karma’s eyes are wide. “Gakuhou.”

“You’re so unlike anyone I’ve ever met,” Kaori says.

“How many have you met?” Gakuhou says. They’re both not talking about human beings.

Irina had married that man, Karasuma Tadaomi, and had a child with him. Despite her blonde hair and blue eyes, Gakuhou can see Tadaomi in her. 

“Five,” Kaori says.

“Exorcism?”

“Great Grandma was odd about that,” she laughs. “It used to be standard practice, sure. But she reformed our system - exorcisms not mandatory. Other covens probably still do those.”

Gakuhou hums. 

“You lost something,” Kaori says. “Something dear to you.” She leans forward. “It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt from your kind.”

“He’s been dead for two hundred years,” Gakuhou says.

Kaori’s eyes widen. “He?”

Gakuhou scowls. “My son.”

“Oh, oh!” Kaori says. “Forgive me... I wasn’t aware that demons form sentimental parental-child attachments.”

“We don’t,” Gakuhou says, looking away. “He was half-human.”

“Oh! You!” 

“I assume I’m the topic of many rumor mills?”

Kaori looks embarrassed. “Ah, well,” she says. 

“I love him, you know,” Gakuhou says. He closes his eyes. He doesn’t say it to many people. “I came to terms with that after his death. I hadn’t understood it at the time.”

“I didn’t know that was possible,” Kaori says.

“Neither had I.”

“Love is not a bad thing to have,” Akabane says softly. “Well, although I suppose constant falling in and out of love would be a, ah, hassle for someone who lives for a very long time…” 

Gakuhou sighs. “I’m considering shortening it.”

“No!” Akabane yells, sharply, reminding Gakuhou of Aina and startling the both of them. Akabane’s gotten bold with him. He doesn’t think the teenager of ten years ago would have dared shout. “Gakushuu would never have wanted you to..”

“What does it matter what he wants?” Gakuhou says, wearily. He’s tired. He hurts all over. “He’s gone.”

“He’s not,” Akabane insists. “He loves us forever. We can love him forever.”

“Your forever and my forever are not the same.”

“I guess not,” Akabane acquiesces. “But he’s never gone. I don’t say that to mean his spirit or his… essence or whatever,” he waves a hand. “But he’s here, in our memories, where we keep him.”

Gakuhou knows. He remembers every bit of Gakushuu in his memories, screaming, crying, begging. Red dripping onto the floor, the body convulsing on the table. The feather pressed in his pocket. “It hurts,” Gakuhou breaks, and the show of vulnerability makes Karma get out of his chair. “It hurts. I was there, when they killed him. Four people held me down. They killed him in front of me.”

Akabane bows and exits. When he returns it’s with a box. “I’m sorry,” he says, “you have to remember that. And I won’t say that you will ever forget it. When Koro-sensei died, I remember everything of it - Nagisa stabbing him, the life leaving his body… I don’t want to say time heals things, because you have so much more time than me.” Akabane looks away. “It has been twelve years for me. I’m almost twice my age as I was then. It probably feels like yesterday to you.”

He opens the box. “I do want to say this. Love is a cruel reminder of things we have lost, but it’s also the warmest embrace you’ll feel. Very rarely does something come along that make you feel the way you do,” he spares a glance at Gakuhou, “and it means all the more to you, I’d imagine.”

“For a moment, I don’t want you to think of what you have lost. Don’t think of what you would have done differently to change things - it’s all over. Don’t think of what-ifs. Think of… things you’ve done together, things that have happened. Good things.”

Are there any? Gakuhou remembers the car accident they were in that took his mother’s life. Training after that, to improve his magic ability. Gakushuu mid-flight, Gakuhou watching him, everyone else oscillating between awe and shock and contempt. 

“Good things,” Akabane repeats. “Nice fun things, like watching a movie or cuddling on the couch.”

Gakuhou doesn’t understand. Every memory of Gakushuu is laced with bitterness and hurt, of what he should have done. Regrets. It runs through his mind now, even as Akabane urges him not to think of them, because if he had done better, fought a little more… perhaps Gakushuu would be here. Seated across him instead of Akabane, an amused wry look in his eyes. “You’re acting your age, old man,” he’d tease. “Reminiscing about the past. That was barely two decades ago.”

Gakuhou misses him. He misses him so much. How could living with this be a good thing? How could Akabane miss Gakushuu with a smile on his face, like it didn’t twist up his insides to think of what they could have been now? 

“I don’t understand,” Gakuhou says. 

From the box, Akabane pulls out a photograph. The one taken by Irina, Gakuhou on the couch and Gakushuu on top of him, fast asleep. “We wanted to give this to you,” Akabane says. “You disappeared before we could track you down.”

The picture was dated December thirty first. Gakuhou remembers the two of them over, quietly spending time together, and they’ve begged off shortly after Gakushuu had fallen asleep, giving them time alone together. It has been a quiet day, Akabane had cooked, Gakushuu cajoled Gakuhou into trying some, and it hadn’t tasted like anything, really. They’d watched a movie, played with a ouija board for fun. Gakushuu told Gakuhou that he loved him. And then they’d fallen asleep like that, a few short hours before Gakuhou would never see him again, Gakuhou running his fingers through Gakushuu’s feathers. It had been…

“Oh,” Gakuhou says, finally getting a little bit of what Akabane had meant - the warmth over his entire body, missing Gakushuu from his heart to his fingers to everywhere else... 

“ Oh .” 

“What had he been like?” Kaori asks.

“A nuisance,” Gakuhou says, a fond smile on his face. “He was annoying. I never wanted a brat, you know? Too much trouble.”

She laughs. 

“And then I had to go and get a child from the most bothersome species on the planet. A human . A demon child would have been tolerable. One decade at the most and they would be out of my hair. That was karma, is what it was…” His voice trails off. “He had a boyfriend named Karma for a little bit. They even had a bond for a while.”

“That’s nice.”

“It’s funny, you know? If I had a demon child, they would still be alive, but I wouldn’t need to care about them. I had a human child that died fast, and yet he bothers me every single day long after he’s gone.”

“It’s a bit of a curse, is what it is,” Gakuhou says. “There are days I still miss him, it hurts so much. He died on his birthday.and I don’t know how to celebrate it.” Pause. “One year should be nothing, you know? His mother used to celebrate his birthday. After she died - he was four - I did, too, because… well, New Year’s was a celebration in itself and I suppose I just didn’t see why not, but I hadn’t attached sentiment to it. I suppose I also did celebrate it because… at that point, it hadn’t been determined whether Gakushuu would live past his eighth birthday. Demons had thousands of birthdays, it would be silly to celebrate them… I suppose I felt that it would have been worth it, if Gakushuu only got so many.”

“They gave him a deadline of three years, and at the end of it he would be executed. Publicly, to broadcast my shame. Well, to broadcast a message - halflings were prohibited. Those three years… I probably could have celebrated a birthday every day. It’s what it was, right? A celebration of life. Every one more day I saw him wake up in the morning I would thank him.” 

Pause.

“I must be rambling on about him. I don’t get to talk about him often.”

“No, please continue. It’s… sweet, to hear about it.”

“Wow, I didn’t know how much he looked like you,” Bel says, looking over the pictures Gakuhou had of Gakushuu. “I don’t know what he looks like when he’s not screaming in pain from being torn apart-”

“Belinabalzariphospa,” Lex snapped.

“Oh, sorry, too soon?” She says, not sorry at all. “It’s been a century.”

Lex gives Gakuhou an apologetic look. He’s more sensitive about it, given that Lex is the one that has been watching Gakuhou pour his heart out, even though he takes notes the entire while.

“What’s this?” Aina says, wrinkling her nose, as she stares at a knick-knack on a coffee-table. “It’s so ugly. Is it Gakushuu’s, or can I burn it?”

Gakuhou sighs. “Burn it.”

It goes up in a puff of smoke.

“Why are you all here to bother me?” Gakuhou says.

“Well, we don’t want you to mope alone,” Lex says. “Today would have been Gakushuu’s 100th. We know you like moping.”

“So you’re here to mope with me.”

“I mean, Lex is here to mope with you,” Bel says. “I’m here to dig through your stuff.” She pulls out a blanket. “Was this Gakushuu’s?”

Gakuhou sighs. “Yes.”

“Aww, sap,” Bel says.

“I’m here to mope, and to pick your brain,” Lex tells him cheerfully. “Tell me. What are you feeling right now?”

“Sad.”

“Oh my god!” Bel interrupts them again. She holds out a photo album and shows it around. A photo of Gakushuu, aged five, a fluffy feathery little ball curled up on Gakuhou’s lap. Gakuhou’s hand is buried somewhere in the tuft. Gakuhou remembers Ikeda taking that picture.

“So cute!” Bel says. “He was so small back then! Oh god, those feathers must be really nice and soft, huh! I wish we had fluffy feathers now, not these giant razor blades on our back. I should get a baby. Should I get a baby?”

“No,” Gakuhou says. 

“This is your house,” the woman who greets him says as she opens the door. She has dark hair, shocking blue eyes, and Irina’s smile. “Kaori’s my mother. She’s not here today, but she talks about you.”

“Does she?” Gakuhou says. The woman looks like Kaori and Irina, and once again - when faced with most things like this - Gakuhou thinks of Gakushuu, and what he might have been like as an adult.

“She said anyone will recognize you as soon as they see you,” she says. 

“So it seems,” Gakuhou says. The landscaping has changed again, but the Aspen is still there, bigger and stronger. She follows his gaze to the tree.

“We keep it trimmed,” she says. “It’s a very strong tree.”

Gakuhou smiles. “My son planted it.”

“Oh? Ah. We’ll keep the tree healthy and alive for as long as it lets us.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Gakuhou must have been avoiding Aina for a long time. When he steps in again to her house many years later, a child comes up to greet him. Dark hair, violet eyes. 

Toi comes into view, shooing the child away. “Hi, Uncle.”

“Cute kid,” Gakuhou tells her.

Toi smiles. “He is. He’s four.”

At four years of age the child is already strong with magic. His wings are thin and sharp, good for slicing through things and not much good for flying, less so for cuddles. Gakuhou watches him for a bit as he goes through the basic incantations of the standard magical spells, and succeeds. Whatever Gakushuu’s melting pot version of magic he possessed lived with him and died with him. Gakuhou wouldn’t be able to replicate it if he tried. 

“You’re reminiscing,” Aina says, when she comes to greet him.  “It seems like it’s all you do these days.” 

Gakuhou shrugs. 

“Come, I have a present for you,” she says, leading him up to the drawing room. “Remember the conversation we had two centuries ago?”

“You have to be more specific than that,” Gakuhou says.

“Gakushuu. Do you miss him?” Aina asks. 

“You know I do.”

“Would you ever want to bring him back?”

Ah, that conversation. “No,” Gakuhou says.

Aina smiles at him like she had that day, pulling him up by the arm. “That’s good,” she says. “Would you have answered me differently if I told you another day that you could?”

Despite himself, Gakuhou’s breath catches in his throat. Aina doesn’t wait for him to reply and sweeps into a vault, and returns with a box. “Do you know what this is?”

Gakuhou shakes his head. Aina was always like that, flighty with her details. She was powerful, and there was not a lot she couldn’t do, but magic itself had limits. Necromancy never brought a person back to life, simply reanimated their corpse in the will of their master. Gakushuu didn’t even have a body anymore.

“It’s his soul.”

“His!-”

Demons didn’t have souls. 

“Half of it, at least,” Aina says. “His human side.” She pushes the box towards him and Gakuhou takes it with trembling hands. 

“What-”

“I took it. Demons didn’t have souls, so they weren’t looking for one,” Aina says. “I figured that if anyone should have it… it should be you. Provided I knew you weren’t going to do something stupid first.”

Gakuhou looks down at it.

“It won’t bring him back, you know,” Aina says. “Reincarnation is very difficult. And even if I could, that’s only half of him. You’ll never get him back.”

“I know,” Gakuhou says quietly. “I know.”

Kaori is a decade older when he sees her the next time. Wordlessly he hands the box over to her, (although it takes him more effort than it should to let go of it), and she gasps when she receives it. “This is!-”

“It’s Gakushuu,” Gakuhou says softly. “Half of him.”

Kaori holds it with reverence. “Did you want… to talk to him?”

Gakuhou hesitates. “I don’t know. I… came across it recently. I don’t know what I should do.”

“That’s for you to decide,” Kaori says, handing the box back. “I can’t make that decision for you.”

Funnily enough, he takes the box to MIT. The acceptance letter from hundreds of years ago exists only because of magic - it would have crumbled to dust ages ago otherwise. MIT has changed, since he last saw it. It’s been three centuries. There are students milling around campus, laughing, fulfilling their dreams. 

Gakuhou feels silly talking to himself. “You’re finally here.”

The feather is light in his pocket, and the box is heavy in his hands. He reads the acceptance letter once more, twice over, Congratulations, Asano Gakushuu, you have been-

It crumbles into dust, and then blows away in the breeze. Gakuhou had almost thought he’d regret it, letting go of something like that, but strangely enough he doesn’t.

The thing is, the thing is , 

Gakuhou looks at the box. He knows he can’t keep it, but he doesn’t want to let go of it. He’d never be able to get Gakushuu back, not in the way it matters. Gakushuu’s gone, and he’s been gone for three hundred years. Gakuhou won’t ever stop missing him. Akabane was right, in that regard.

But there was nothing to be held in a soul. It simply was, useless in itself. And Gakuhou would admit he’d felt something sad, knowing Gakushuu was in a box and had been for the past centuries. He doesn’t blame Aina for it, and he doesn’t think he’d be able to thank her enough. But Gakushuu had spent a long time, his entire life, chained to both worlds he’d never be a part of. Gakuhou doesn’t want to keep him locked up any longer. 

It’s been a long time. 

"You have to get used to being without me," Gakushuu had murmured, soft against the moonlight. “I'm still here, now, okay? You'll have to let go of me. I'll love you forever even if you do." 

Gakuhou’s been alive for 537 years. He’d had Gakushuu for only 18 of them, and he thinks his biggest regret was that he didn’t fully appreciate them when he had him. The moment he opens the box, the soul inside it would dissipate into light, and Gakuhou can never get it back. Maybe in millennia or an infinity, the right set of circumstances might bring the soul back together again - but it still wouldn’t be Gakushuu. Just a small part of him. 

That’s okay, Gakuhou thinks. He thinks he likes it best, knowing that Gakushuu will been his only. He'd love him forever. It's getting easier to say that, day by day. 

He lets Gakushuu go.

Gakuhou’s favorite photograph of the two of them is of their last night together. On more melancholy days he hugs a pillow to his chest and lies like that, thinking about it. Three times he holds the box. He can feel it, the soul inside - the essence of something. It doesn’t feel like Gakushuu - souls didn’t work like that - but Gakuhou imagines that it does.

Sometimes he sleeps. Sometimes when he sleeps he dreams of Death Day in the Calliope, Gakushuu screaming his name. Other times he dreams of Gakushuu with him, them cuddled together, Gakushuu telling Gakuhou he loves him and Gakuhou wishing he’d said it back.

Sometimes, he dreams of nothing at all.