White Night
by Penny Paperbrain
They were pushed closer together during teleportation. Much closer. In fact, when the shadow walls dissolved, Tatsumi found his face pressed up against Muraki's. Startled, he caught at the dust-smeared white planes of the Muraki ’s shoulders and pushed himself backwards. Immediately white radiance enveloped the doctor, but Tatsumi renewed the shadows that pierced his arms, anchoring Muraki to the uneven ground of the forest clearing where they had re-emerged. “Really,” Muraki protested, his breathing catching as the new bonds tugged his arms downwards, chafing his flesh from the inside. “My trainee nurses have more precision with needles. Indeed, that was a sloppy transit altogether.” “Enough,” snapped Tatsumi. The banal banter only irritated him. He could slice Muraki’s head off now, and the idea was tempting. Given a few moments of rest from the teleportation, however, he could manipulate the shadows to travel through the doctor’s veins and stop his heart. A “natural” death was more than Muraki deserved, but it was in the rules. Except the rules were getting vague, along with everything else. “My concentration is limited,” he grated, feeling Muraki’s gaze on him as he bowed his head for a second. “You are not my only concern.” He would be able to compose himself a lot more quickly if the images of Tsuzuki would get out of his head. Tsuzuki looking up at him in gratitude when he first arrived. Tsuzuki looking across at Hisoka with... something else. By Enma, it was not the time for this. “Dear me,” responded Muraki. “Are you referring to Tsuzuki-san? I think perhaps he will be mainly ‘concerned’ with the boy tonight. So fickle, after our date. Now don’t look at me like that,” the doctor continued, chiding. “How could I not draw certain conclusions from that display back there?” Muraki’s mention of Tsuzuki had snapped Tatsumi back to clarity. Perhaps not the same brand of clarity he’d had when he faced the doctor on the edge of the woods, but it would do to anchor him in the present. For a second he focused entirely on Muraki, his dirt- and blood-stained coat, his wash of silver hair in the moonlight, the still, watchful cunning of his visible eye. Date? Tatsumi reached in, grasped Muraki by the chin, forcing it as far back as it would go, so that pale skin rode up around the tips of Tatsumi’s fingers. “Have you laid a hand on Tsuzuki-san?” he demanded. Muraki smirked. His expression was only half-visible as he faced the sky, but Tatsumi could feel the movements of the man’s muscles against his fingers. The temptation to physically strangle the doctor was strong. So what if, years ago, on conventional assignments, Tatsumi had killed quickly and painlessly? Muraki did not deserve that. His captive seemed to recognise the danger, and relaxed the muscles of his throat. “Squirm if you wish,” said Tatsumi, strangely disappointed at Muraki’s unexpected good sense. “But you will tell me what happened between you.” “Ask him yourself,” suggested Muraki. His voice blurred, vibrating through Tatsumi’s palm. “Or perhaps you are afraid he may not be available for conversation tonight?” “What have you done to Tsuzuki-san?” Tatsumi emphasised every word, fleetingly wondering if Muraki had somehow cast a spell to make Tsuzuki... No, ridiculous. But... Tatsumi’s grip tightened convulsively around Muraki’s neck. Muraki emitted a wheezing gasp. One of his knees shot up and butted blindly at Tatsumi. Tatsumi forced it back down with his own legs then summoned shadows from the pebble-strewn earth to bind Muraki’s feet to the ground. “After this...” The doctor gasped. “Counteraction of... shadow magic... up priorities.” “Do not delude yourself that you will survive,” said Tatsumi. He released Muraki and stepped back, watching the doctor’s neck mottle with a dark flush before fading back towards white. “You will die when I am ready.” And that would be soon. At a level beyond normal perception, the shadows around Muraki’s collar were separating into filaments, stringing together in a coiled chain prior to their untraceable journey through his arteries. It was a long time since Tatsumi had done this, and he had almost forgotten the primal satisfaction it gave him, which went deeper than questions of right or wrong. There was a fierce, creative joy to the process, a joy in simply knowing that the skill, the power of mental manipulation on a plane beyond mortal perception, was still there. Would Muraki appreciate the art of his death? “I would not take him in the bullish way you imagine,” Muraki said quietly then. “I do not spoil beauty, I enhance it.” Tatsumi regarded him sharply. Perhaps it had been the hoarseness of strangulation, but there had been a definite tremor in the doctor’s voice. His face, turned away, nursing his bruised neck as best he could without use of his hands, was in shadow. For a second the thought crossed Tatsumi’s mind that this twisted creature did hold, somewhere in his heart, a real love for Tsuzuki. After all, who could do otherwise? If there was good in a person, Tsuzuki would seek it out and force it to blossom. In every person except Tatsumi. Tatsumi he no longer needed. Then Muraki turned back into the light. The detestable smirk was back in place, had probably never been gone. His apparent compassion had been a trick of the twilight, of the doctor’s strange effulgence against the dim grey and black shapes of the forest around them. The shadows around his collar, almost ready for their work, rose in translucent tendrils at Tatsumi’s command. “Tsuzuki-san attacked me,” Muraki continued, unconscious of the danger. “Terrible manners. And now, would you like to slaughter me in a crass fashion, or shall we talk some more about our mutual interest?” He looked Tatsumi straight in the face then, the night wind blowing his curtain of silvery hair to the side so that his human and prosthetic eye were equally visible. For a moment, Tatsumi was mesmerised by that strange, asymmetrical tableau. Insanity and calculation, working in unison. Even insanity could be beautiful, in its way. Tsuzuki carried it inside him as well. The shadows lapping the edges of Muraki’s chin paused. Then Tatsumi noticed his captive’s hands were moving. Gesturing. At the same moment, Tatsumi felt the air shift behind him. Immediately he sent his own shadow scything upwards, corkscrewing back and forth through the air. There was a heavy thud as something hit the ground. Muraki smiled a little, conceding a clever move, lowering his head so that his mechanical eye was once again obscured. He looked down at his coat, as if he wanted to brush himself off, but the shadow skewers held his arms in place. “Why toy with me like this, Tatsumi-san?” he demanded then, tension just beginning to creep into the edge of his voice. “You could have killed me back there. I wonder what prevented you?” Tatsumi prepared to retort that he wanted to do this in accordance with the rules, that if Muraki could see what was crawling up his own neck he would understand exactly how little “toying” Tatsumi was doing – but suddenly he felt unsure of that answer. Muraki was not an ordinary assignment. No-one would really frown on a decapitation if it got rid of one of the single biggest contributors to the departmental workload. Except Tsuzuki. “In front of that poor child?” he growled to cover his confusion. “Unthinkable.” “So I see,” responded Muraki. “But which child are you referring to?” Tatsumi turned away, then remembered that taking his eye off Muraki was not wise and spun back, almost losing his footing. Tsuzuki loved all things more than he loved Tatsumi. Among those things was the serial murderer Muraki Kazutaka. Tatsumi did not have the right to kill him. And Muraki had picked that up loud and clear, first from the scene on the edge of the woods, and now from Tatsumi’s own hesitation. Tatsumi remembered why he’d always hated psychopath cases. They never missed a trick. The doctor’s amusement was heavy in the air. “You manipulate well.” Tatsumi acknowledged. “And to someone like you, I don’t doubt that I appear a fool. I must seem as misshapen to you as you do to me,” he paused. “It’s hard for me to accept how a man of intelligence can understand him so much, and misuse that knowledge so disgustingly.” “I misuse my knowledge?” Muraki quirked an eyebrow. “If I’m not mistaken, it’s keeping me alive at this moment.” Another pause, then Muraki continued more softly. “He fears our kind, Tatsumi-san, the ones who are strong enough to truly enjoy him. He will never come to us of his own free will. We must take him, for his own good.” Our kind. Tatsumi felt a sick, intimate thrill at those words. Part of him still rebelled at the obscenity of being classed with Muraki... But why not? Tsuzuki had done as much a few moments ago. Our kind. The dark kind. The violent. The efficient. The untouchable. The lost. Whose only gift to Tsuzuki’s kind could be renunciation. “I will not do that,” said Tatsumi, squaring his shoulders and looking Muraki in the face. Muraki stared back at him, head slightly to one side, a sarcastic smile on his face. “What alternative do you find?” Perhaps it was the moonlight, or the buzzing aftermath of power usage, but the shadow pattern against Muraki’s chin, the gleam of challenge in his eye, the tension in his posture as his trapped body revolted against the shadows laced through his skin... This was not the soft, damp-eyed lure of Tsuzuki, but something new, and simpler. Why hold back? Who was Tatsumi holding back for? “I find this,” he said. He reached across, brushed Muraki’s hair out of the way, then held his hand in front of the cold, blue mechanical eye. The eyeball followed his movements. This close up, tiny clicks were audible as it revolved in its socket. Tatsumi ran his forefinger across the surface of the eye, from left to right. It seemed to be coated with some kind of plastic. Unlike a normal organ, it neither flinched nor watered as his touch crossed the pupil. Tatsumi had seen many uncanny things in his time as a shinigami, but this marriage of the human and the machine was something new. He envied it, and it reminded him of himself. The fire in Muraki was insane and without scruples but it answered something in Tatsumi. He could not remember the last time someone had seen him for what he was, and it was a relief. Tatsumi withdrew his finger, pressed it into the congealing blood gathered around the bindings which pierced his captive’s arms, then held the fingertip to Muraki’s lips. Muraki licked it, his tongue a flicker of red against his pale skin “A rich flavour, blood,” he commented. A moment of understanding passed between them. Obscene, silent, inadmissible, but bright enough to illuminate the darkest corners of this unexplored place in Tatsumi’s mind. “I will take you,” whispered Tatsumi, flicking his tongue against the little ruby that stared up at him from Muraki’s earlobe. “Therefore, because I am an honourable man, you will survive our meeting. This time.” The shadows coiled around Muraki’s jaw finally dissolved as their master’s lips brushed across them. Tatsumi felt muscles quirk as the doctor smiled once again. “I do want to live, Tatsumi-san. I have my private affairs, but in tandem with that, I take my pleasure where I can. And, more to the point, I am not afraid of that pleasure. I will buy my life from you, and enjoy the transaction.” Tatsumi cupped Muraki’s chin, finding the bruises he had made, but this time he only forced the pale head half-way back. “You are not him,” he whispered. “I will not be gentle.” “I am sure you will not disappoint,” Muraki responded. Tatsumi lowered his hand. As his head came down, Muraki’s glasses, already loosened, finally slipped from the bridge of his nose. Tatsumi caught the rims between thumb and forefinger and slowly pushed them back into position. Then, at the last moment he yanked them forwards, threw them to the ground and crushed them under his heel. Muraki’s face seemed naked as he winced a little, screwing up his human eye at the enforced change of focus. “No,” said Tatsumi. “I won’t.” |
