Chapter Text
he’s celebrating by himself.
it’s a little bit late, he knows - a few months too late, to be exact. the first sakura are finally blooming from their buds into pinks and reds, cotton candy and sunsets, life and death in the same frame as he blinks and the flowers have all cascaded around him in a carpet of beauty and guilt, one on his nose, several on his haori, perched on his horns like a particularly annoying bird. he reaches one hand up and waves - he doesn’t even need to touch it, and the flower falls to land between his legs, pulled up to his chest.
there’s a heavy, heavy feeling in his heart, burning his throat like he might breathe fire and acid and retch up the contents of his stomach alongside his entrails. it sinks to the bottom of his body like a stone in cold water and freezes the fire building in his throat, crackling ice and the burn of frostbite until he turns into a frozen statue beneath the tree that people will visit for years to come. he exhales weakly, and the flower petals on his eyelashes and nose and the butterflies in his stomach all come flying out in a beautiful display of pain.
it never gets easier.
it never gets easier, celebrating death - or celebrating life, depending on who you asked. his hands clutch the stick of a lone sparkler, unlit, so tightly that the wood digs into his hands. it’ll leave a scar, much like the ones he continues to score over his heart, over his lungs, until it’s so hard to breathe he feels he might never take another breath again.
on this day (this day three months ago), the anniversary of the death of his clan, vox simply wants to pass it by. he simply wishes to sit and exist and pass the day by without memories of death and the cries of children in his ears, the ones he couldn’t protect, the ones he was too cowardly to protect, for when they told him to run, wild eyes, makeshift weapons, pleading, begging, he ran. a splinter digs into his palm where the wood chafes and rubs against him, where it hasn’t been sanded down enough. it feels like a pick of ice being driven into his abdomen, freezing indecision and burning reminiscence.
he chokes out a laugh under the trees, watching the sun set in stripes of orange and red and pink and purple, the same colours as the fire reflecting the backs of the castle walls and the sun that set over his clan that day.
it never gets easier.
it’ll be dark in a few minutes, and then he will light the fireworks in his hands, watch them turn into bright sparks of life and light that fade out in a few seconds, golden and pink koi fish swimming through the air in a display of fragile tranquility before they turn tail into the night sky and swim far, far away, almost like they’re mocking him. for a second, they shimmer like shades of gold and silver and red in front of his eyes, starry scales and shining dark eyes, before they shatter like glass in front of him, a mirage that never existed, another wish that he places into the hands of the heavens, the hands of his brother in heaven, the hands of the angels and the hand of god, that they spit upon and deny him, laughing, laughing, mocking. the fireworks turn into stars and the koi into constellations that stare from a million miles, burning stars, freezing light, illuminating the foolish, foolish demon.
he laughs again.
—
he doesn’t light the fireworks when the sky darkens, not even when it gets so hard to breathe and the darkness feels so oppressing that he feels it crawling down his throat and making a home there, the blackened heart of the demon that bleeds red for people who should never have trusted him, people who he didn’t deserve to call his own. he inhales and it feels like his throat burns. he feels like the world is crumbling around him. it feels like he’s an imposter in his own skin, like he wants to scratch and tear at it until it falls off and he has no human skin to hide his true self from the world. he presses one hand to the horns that grow from his forehead, runs a hand through black and red hair, stares wordlessly, sightlessly, at the fireworks in his hand.
they used to light fireworks together on the anniversary of the clan’s formation. the first time they did it, he’d thought they were preparing to overthrow him. and then they’d lit the sky with gold and red and blue and purple and he thought that he’d never seen anything so beautiful, nothing so familiar and comforting, even as the rain started and the colours and vibrancy of the lights were dimmed, flattening his hair to his head and sending a chill through his body, the children grabbing onto him and hiding underneath his coat with smiles that lit up his world despite the rain in the sky and the lightning ripping the heavens in half. he’d wondered how hako was doing when it happened, so bright that it blinded him.
and the first tear falls.
not to the clan’s death, not to the children he couldn’t save. not for the death of the voice demon nor the fall of his kingdom.
instead it falls when he thinks of his wayward brother, blue eyes and white hair, pale skin like snow and a glare as cold as ice. his little brother, ostracised and left alone because he had a demon for a brother. who’d yelled at him, bitter and angry, cursing him, casting him out. and he’d left.
hako tenshi , he murmurs under his breath. hako for box because he refused to be called box tenshi , despite the fact that hako was just box in japanese.
he wonders how his brother is doing now?
and then a stick cracks from behind him.
—
he hasn’t forgotten how to wield a sword.
despite the years he’s spent pretending to be human, he is still very much a demon. whoever is behind him gasps, falls over, and the very tip of the sword comes back a sickeningly bright scarlet, a thin rivulet of blood slowly making its way down the blade. there’s a hiss of pain, and then nothing. the flashlight they were holding falls to the floor, and he scrambles to pick it up, turning it off.
there are demons roaming the mountain tonight, after all. and it wouldn’t do a mortal any good to see them.
(he spares one glance at the unfeeling sky, at the stars that burst and explode, at the moonlight filtering through the tree.)
vox? is that you ?
his breath cuts in the middle of an inhale.
he doesn’t know how to answer.
huh, i didn’t know you came up here too, it continues. there’s a cautious shifting somewhere to his left, like eveland is trying to make sure he doesn’t impale himself on whatever sharp object had caused his injury. his hand tightens on the hilt of his katana, and he makes sure his horns have disappeared from his head before turning on the flashlight, pointing its artificial, garish light at the schoolboy in front of him.
he’s dressed in a black and gold yukata.
eveland squints at the light, furrowed brows and one delicate hand in front of his eyes. he’s holding - he’s holding several slips of paper in his hands, scrawled handwriting and stars on the corner, wishes to the stars that he wants to tell the other are no use, because the stars are angels, and angels are cruel, cruel beings.
what are you doing here? he asks instead. eveland raises the slips of paper in his hands, several of which have fallen to the floor in his tumble to the ground, and smiles sheepishly, the kind of smile that girls at school send him when he catches them staring at him, wide-eyed, red-faced, from behind pillars or walls.
i could ask you the same thing , eveland- ike, his name is? he isn’t sure. he doesn’t pay much attention to the names of most people, anyway. the more he learns, the more he forgets, and the more he forgets, the colder the hole in his lungs becomes, shriveled alveoli bursting into flowers that fill his airway as he chokes on them.
it’s none of your business, he replies, because how is he supposed to tell ike about the fireworks, and the fish, and his brother in heaven and his contemptuous gaze, and the hole in his lungs that is slowly filling with water that he can feel? he’ll stumble over his words and fill eveland’s lungs with ash and dead flowers, and then watch him choke on both, or neither, or on his disbelief.
ike has the audacity to smile, closed-eyed, like he’s already figured everything else, hidden wisdom beyond his years, before cheekily replying. he doesn’t miss the way ike’s fingers tighten on the slips of paper he’s holding.
if i don’t get to know what you’re doing, why should you get to know what i’m doing?
then ike gets up and brushes himself off; he notices that ike is barefoot, and the grass must hurt, scratches and injuries on his feet and legs.
because i asked first , he says before realising.
he sounds like a child.
ike turns around to face him, and there’s unspeakable sadness in his gaze, the type so old and ancient that he wonders for a second of ike is also out of his time, a stranger in an alien world, where people ride in cars and there is no more shogunate of iron and steel.
hoshimatsuri , he says softly.
and oh, vox akuma is such a fool for forgetting.
—
he feels like a fool, he really does.
the way ike is looking at him, watery eyes and wavering smile, like he’s holding on to some hidden bravery, like the slips of paper clutched so tightly in his hands are call signs to the heavens he’s clutching like a lifeline.
the star festival , he says, just as softly as ike’s previous sentence.
he used to celebrate the star festival - with his clan, and then in the few years after, when they were gone and the only thing he had to accompany him were the wishes of five hundred twenty two people wishing him well, wishing that he had survived, that he painstakingly wrote onto papers and hung on trees, all five hundred of them, for years and years before it had seemed like too much work, and he had written all five hundred into one wish that said survive . and then he had stopped doing that, too, because the bitterness felt like lead in his mouth and flowers in his lungs and fireworks exploding behind his eyes in colourful shades of red and silver until it was too much to bear. mostly because all he had wanted to do during the star festival was die.
yeah, the star festival , ike says, jotling him out of his stupor. i came up here to hang my wishes. did…
oh, the hesitation in his voice is heartbreaking.
he sounds like a child, trembling voice and sadness and pain all in one, like it kills him to say anything about what he’s doing, like bearing this truth to anyone is more than he can bear because who still believes in wishes and constellations and stars and the heavens at this age?
did you come up here to hang yours, too?
( no , he wants to say. i don’t believe in wishes , he wants to say. but the hope will drain from ike’s eyes, sparkles of life dim and dull like tarnished metal and burnt out stars, dying constellations and forgotten nebulas swimming in the blue of his eyes that he’s noticed because it reminds him so much of someone else he used to know; a golden eyed, black haired boy with a smile like the sun and laughter like the wind.)
he looks at the sky for a second, at the moonlight in the trees and the silver-tinged leaves and the pink flowers on the floor. at the stars that hang silently and solemnly, at the koi fish that have returned in the edge of his vision, black and gold, black and gold, until they shatter into silver and red and fall to the floor at his feet. the ache in his chest leaves him hollowed out like nothing he’s ever felt before, the sheer vulnerability of the boy he calls a classmate on full display, waiting for mockery and insults and laughter.
he turns around and stares at the branches again, the wood under his fingers, the unlit sparklers in his hand burning, burning like fire.
and he smiles, stiff and painful because he’s forgotten how, a hand brushing through his hair and a choked, forced laugh escaping his throat. he hasn’t done this in so long.
i was going to, but i actually left them at home .
the lies burn his throat going down. he chokes back a scream.
do you happen to have some paper?
and ike’s face lights up like the sun. golden, black, angel, demon, ike and vox.
he sees a flash of the boy he used to know in his mind, and something clicks in his mind.
he’d like to spend some more time with ike eveland tonight.
—
he’s lucky ike had extra paper and pens for him to write on.
but he doesn’t know what to write.
he thinks about the charred body of the little boy he held in his hands, an anguished scream torn from his throat. he thinks about the little girl whose hair he brushed back from her forehead, matter with blood and gravel, as he’d sang through his tears and the blood mixing with saliva in his mouth a lullaby about butterflies in a field and birds singing in the trees, all within a gilded golden cage of lies. he remembers promising a young man to survive, to come back and rebuild the clan. and he remembers golden eyes and black hair, lying motionless against a wall, and the tears that followed.
he thinks about the five hundred twenty-two wishes hung on trees throughout the country. he thinks about the ones that just say survive in handwriting that gets messier and messier because he just didn’t care anymore. and then he thinks about all the years he never did anything because all he wanted to do was die.
having trouble remembering your wish? ike asks him.
and it would be so simple to lie again. it would, really.
but it makes the hole in his chest even colder and the acid even hotter, and it’s all going to come to a head and spill out of his mouth one day in a flood of blood and guts and muscle wall and flowers of nightshade and sakura, black and gold, blood and ichor. it’ll look like he spat out a galaxy from his insides, stars and stardust, mixed together in a beautiful shade of red, but most importantly, he’s tired .
then what is it?
he shakes his head. his hands tighten on the hilt of his katana. he wonders how quickly he could run away.
he writes i'm sorry on the slip and passes the pen back to ike.
it feels so disingenuous.
but ike doesn’t press. he just passes him a string, and begins tying his own up.
black and gold.
the yukata. the paper and string. the bark and flowers. the sky and the stars. the koi fish in his vision that swim and shatter and reform and break apart like glass. the kintsugi on his horn from where it’d broken off and he’d fixed it. the demon and the human.
then he hangs it up in the tree next to ike’s, where he can barely make out the word death .
you never did tell me what your wish was , ike murmurs to him.
he smiles lopsidedly, and it’s a little less forced this time, a little bit more like the sun in ike’s smile; the sun that he lost and chased after desperately for years and years, trying to fulfill it somewhere else, with someone else, in a time so different and far away from its zenith.
if i tell, it won’t come true , he responds, but the words feel bitter and chalky in his mouth, and he knows he doesn't believe them.
—
he suggests they light the firecrackers when the sun begins lighting the edge of the horizon in shades of indigo and orange.
isn’t it a bit too late for that ? ike says. his voice croaks and cracks in the dawn light.
he’s been crying.
and maybe it is too late. it’s no longer the star festival, and it's months, months after the anniversary of the death of his clan. they are both late to something, running out of time, having already run out of time.
vox akuma… ike muses. funny name . he yawns, leans his head on vox’s shoulder, and accepts the sparkler that flares golden and dims to black at the dying wood base. he thinks he sees koi fish chasing each other in the bright sparks of light flying off the wood. they appear and disappear, fading into the dying embers and ash on ike’s fingers, turning them soot black and gray. vox blows, and the sparkler goes dark.
he lights his own, watches it die as the sun comes back to life, rebirth, reincarnation, restart, black turns to gold and blood waters the soil of a mountain somewhere on the japanese mainland.
and when the sparks die out and the fireworks have stopped firing behind his eyes, there are koi fish swimming in the sky above the figures of ike and vox, asleep on each other, shared grief and wishes hung on a tree above them.