[She has four choices, and two are highly unlikely to be what he means. It isn't much of a logic puzzle, but still Rosalind leaps on the chance to occupy her mind with something else.]
Your hearing.
[And? She hasn't spoken anything under her breath. A moment, and she glances up for a moment, wondering if he can hear Urameshi moving about.]
[He folds his hands, glancing down at the way his fingers are woven together. His cut palm is healed now, the bandages gone; even so, looking at the fingers, he finds himself thinking of blunt fighter's fingers holding his hand, a thumb tracing lightly over the slight swell of every knuckle.]
You're not all right. It's none of my business any further than that, unless you choose to make it so, but — let's at least stipulate that everyone concerned is aware of that fact. It seems foolish and disingenuous for us both to pretend otherwise, when we're both aware of it.
[She doesn't glance down, not this time. She wants to, but she refuses to, not when glancing down means she might miss some flicker of expression. She doesn't doubt Kurama means only the best by admitting that, but emotions are so dangerous, and she feels raw enough as it is. Best not to feel even weaker by losing out on some vital bit of information.]
And you?
[She says it softly.]
I'll tell you, if you care to listen. But I suspect I'm not the only one who was shaken by what happened. And I would . . . prefer to be on equal ground, for a talk like this.
There are...reasons, I'm unsettled by the thought that my memories have been altered. Above and beyond simply the experience of having believed a falsehood so thoroughly for all that time.
[He understands, though, why he needs to take the first step with this. He's confessed to having an advantage on her, and she's right; this ought to be a level playing field, not an unbalanced one. For this talk to occur, he'll have to commit part of himself to it, just as she will have to offer up something of hers.
The unsettling part is that he knows what he wants to give. That's frankly a little frightening, because it's something he knows full well he shouldn't.]
...The illusion they crafted led me to believe that I had been responsible for the death of my father. I didn't tell you that, when we were acquainted. I recall believing that it would have...led you to prefer not to associate yourself with me.
[In theory, such a falsehood ought not to shake him. The man, like her husband, like her child, was not real, and so Kurama had not truly lead his father to his death. But the reality is far more complicated, and full of emotions they neither of them can seem to shake, no matter how loathsome they are.
Whether or not she would have reacted in such a way is put aside for the moment. She knows her answer, but it can wait.]
Did that man resemble your actual father?
[Do demons even have fathers? She has no idea, but she suspects they do. Kurama looks so human already; likely he reproduces in the same way. And if he does, if somewhere in the distant past there was a man and a woman Kurama had once called Father and Mother, she imagines that the illusions resembled them.
Her husband had been based on someone she knew, after all. Fink had been realistic to a fault. It was a mass hallucination in part fueled by their memories; that was part of what made it so frightening. Not just that they were delusional for two weeks, but that it was a shared hallucination.]
[He knows the lie he's supposed to tell. He knows the wry humor that will add conviction and depth to that lie, make it feel more real and believable — my father was a fox, so no, there wasn't much by way of resemblance. It's a lie much like the ones he'd taught her to tell in the delusion, easily maintained because of the grains of truth in it that support it.
But for once, it's hard to find that lie when her question only leaves him thinking of his father, the one who gave him the name Minamino. His father, who had made his mother smile in the few memories he has of him before he'd died. His father, who had never known what he was.
His father had been like his mother — believing wholeheartedly that the child born to them was the child they'd conceived. His father had been like his mother: deceived.
And all of a sudden, he just aches for her. This business of Rosalind and her child only amplifies it, in its way — there are echoes of what he believes his mother should have felt about him, in the things that she'd confessed to in their shared nightmare. Perhaps it would have been easier if she hadn't wanted a son to begin with. Perhaps his treatment of her would have been less awful a guilt to bear, if she hadn't loved him so much.
But she'd loved him so much.
And just for a minute, he wishes — paradoxically, bewilderingly — that he could find a respite long enough to just be Shuichi Minamino, a human boy, sixteen years old and missing his mother, desperately.
But the demon Kurama's mother was a fox. He hasn't seen or heard tell of her in centuries.
He aches for her, and he doesn't dare confess it to anyone, lest their captors use it to find her — and to do their worst.]
My father was a fox.
[He's startled at the sound of the words when they escape — so dead and so hollow that even he doesn't believe they carry a single ounce of truth to them.]
...No. The answer to your question is no — I'm not...not all right, either.
[She says it softly, a clumsy attempt at both acknowledging the deadened tone in his words and comforting him. She doesn't know the details of what has Kurama so off-kilter, but in some ways that's even worse. She has the shape of it, and what hazy details she must guess at only grow worse as she ponders them.
Would it be better, she wonders, to have seen one's cherished ones, or not? Her Robert hadn't been a part of the delusion, and though she thinks the grief upon waking would have been tremendous, a small part of her mourns the fact she hadn't even been able to have him for a brief time. Was it better for Kurama to have his parents, or was the very fact they'd been there at all a far too painful reminder of what he doesn't have?
Perhaps she's guessing wrong. Perhaps he's upset about something else. But now it's her turn again.]
Charles Astor was a suitor of mine. One of the most persistent ones, and one I was rather fond of. He proposed to me several times, and once, I nearly gave in. So . . . I suppose, in some ways, the past two weeks were a reflection of what my mind speculates the road not taken would be.
[She wishes she could draw her knees up. It's a childish move, hiding behind them, but still she wishes for it.]
You must understand . . . it would be easy for me to villainize him, but in truth, he was kind, both in reality and in our hallucination. He cared very much for his wife. He gave to charity and supported the arts and lived in luxury, and wanted nothing more in life than to have a happy family. He was a proper gentleman, obeying all the rules and conventions of our time.
But. He expected his wife to do the same.
A marriage like that . . . a life like that . . . there are few things I've ever feared more. Being forced into motherhood would be the final straw.
[It brings him out of his own thoughts slowly, even a little sluggishly, but it does rouse him from them and he's thankful for it. Rosalind is such a counterpoint to notions of his mother; it's easy to offset the thoughts of one with focus on the other, because there aren't many similarities to be drawn between them.
(He doesn't miss the way she tries to comfort him, either, with a soft assurance that he's not precisely sure even she believes. That gentle remark is why there aren't many similarities between her and his human mother, as opposed to none at all.)
Still. It's interesting that she uses the word fear. He remembers how she'd taken a sharp breath and turned away when he'd compared her to her husband after he'd broken into their fine manor — how she'd seen her child as security, but her patents as her life.
Not for the first time, he muses on how Rosalind Lutece would make a better demon than a human — and how that's not disparaging to her in any way.]
I remember you seemed grateful to me. I must have been...different, in the way I treated you. From the norms you had come to accept from the men around you.
[Perhaps that's sad, or pathetic; perhaps she ought to be too embarrassed to confess that. But why both being ashamed of a hallucination? Besides, it's the truth. Grateful is a kind way to put it; she'd been like a deprived child, basking in his easy respect and casual affection.
But she's not embarrassed. That had been a Rosalind deprived, not her true self. After all: Kurama is not her first friend. He's her second.]
You took me seriously, when no one else did. Of course I was grateful.
[A beat. They could linger on that, and perhaps they should, but . . . ]
We danced, Kurama.
[Her tone is slightly lighter, a shade of teasing disbelief there.]
Yes...that's how we know it was all a hallucination, I suppose. Certainly I don't dance that well in actuality.
[Uncanny. She does the same thing that Yusuke does, when things get slightly too heavy with awkward solemnity — a well-timed joke, something to divert the subject just enough. It's a familiar tendency that makes him ache, this time with a certain gratitude of his own.]
My fondness for you, though. That remains across both. You know that, don't you?
[For just a second, her cheeks redden a touch. Rosalind doesn't glance away, but she wishes she had a teacup to bury herself in. He'd been twenty, and anyway, he's a thousand years old in reality, it isn't as if it's inappropriate.]
[Good grief. Still, she hardly misses a beat as she replies sincerely:]
I do. Though I think my own returned is a little less disbelieving.
[Kurama is without a doubt the person she trusts most here in Ruby City: not simply to have her back, but to see her vulnerable, and not equate that vulnerability with weakness.]
[Again, the mood lightens a touch; a smile finds its way to the corners of his mouth, and he brushes a hand back through his hair almost idly.]
Because it sounds like "fox". And "York", I imagine, came from — from an approximation, of sorts, of another of my names. I...was once called Youko, the Spirit Fox. Youko, the legendary bandit. Youko, the king of thieves.
I see modesty has never been a particular virtue of yours.
[But the beginnings of a smile are appearing on her lips. Fawkes and York, hm? Fox and Youko, and she wonders what else had been twisted from his past to fit his hallucination.]
I rather like it. The name, I mean: Youko is quite good, though I shan't ever add those titles on. Meaning no disrespect; we simply speak far too often for me to use them each time.
[She is smiling.]
Is Kurama not your real name, then, or was Youko simply a false one?
He would be offended that you aren't repeating all of them with every instance of address, I'm sure. He took his titles very seriously.
[Which he knows she'll pick up on, because she's not stupid; people don't refer to themselves in the third person, like separate entities, even when speaking about the past.
He knows he should conceal it, spin it, protect himself. Honestly, he isn't precisely sure why he isn't.]
Kurama is my name. Youko is...I suppose it's best described as more of a title than a proper name. Not unlike a title that can double as a proper name, in certain instances — Duke Such-and-Such, for example. It's something of a name, something of a title, and something of...a brand, I suppose. All of Makai knew it. All of Makai trembled at the sound of it.
[He'd once told her that he'd gone through a complicated metamorphosis. That before, he'd towered at seven feet, that he'd had a fox's ears and tails. And now: that he had been feared. Makai, that must be demon world. So: feared, yes, and worse, feared in a place full of fearful things.
And then his metamorphosis, a transformation so radical Kurama considers his old self an entirely different person.
There's something missing here. Thieves are feared, yes, but not that way. They pose a risk to one's material goods, but no one trembles at a thief's name. Further: he refers to himself in the third person when he says that, and yet before had called himself a brilliant thief (the thief).
So. So it follows that his previous self had been more than just a thief. That whatever he had done, it had been far more terrible than simple burglary. Murder? Or perhaps not just murder, but the murder of many. The murder of enough people that soon his name would become synonymous with a terrible fate . . .
Had he undergone his metamorphosis unwillingly? Or had he plunged headfirst into it, out of some kind of need for redemption?
Her thoughts immediately dart to another man who'd disavowed his old identity after supposed reform, but she pushes the thought away almost immediately. Kurama is no Comstock. He had admitted he had done terrible things, and that alone proves it.]
But not anymore.
[She won't demand answers out of him. He deserves more than that. But he wouldn't have chosen the words he had if he'd wanted to keep this part entirely hidden from her, and so she probes at the edges carefully, waiting to see what he'll reveal.]
Because somehow, you changed. You became . . . not Youko, but just Kurama.
...I was badly injured. Perhaps that will cause you to wonder, what measure of beast or force could bring that level of harm to someone of the sort I've described. The answer is...that for every fox, there is a hound. We called them Hunters; their employers had a more lofty name for them, of course, but that was what they were.
[He glances down at his hands, examining the short blunt nails. There were claws there, once. And there was blood, of course. He always has blood on his hands, in one way or another.]
Numbers will always present an advantage; that's just plain tactics. There were more of them than there were of me, and they...hunted me. Perhaps the real testament to my power is that I didn't die; most lesser demons would have.
[He draws a careful breath.]
I said once, if you remember, that my life has been a perfect record of choices, when it comes to avoiding death. Here again, I had a choice. A humiliating one, perhaps, but — heads, or tails. My tails...or let them have my head.
I went into hiding. That's why I don't look as I used to then. People said Youko had disappeared, or been killed; I'm sure the rumors spread wildly. But Youko survived, cleverly...like this. A metamorphosis.
[He looks up at her through his lashes, emerald eyes framed by his thick red bangs.]
In a timeline where Madam Rosalind Lutece became Lady Rosalind Astor...you survived, too. That's why I suspect you'll understand.
[Oh, yes. Of course she does. Though he has one thing wrong: it isn't just the married woman she'd become who prioritized survival. Lady Astor had given over her body, her name, her identity, her spirit, all to ensure she didn't end up as some starving scientist with a head full of dreams and a stomach empty. And as for Rosalind Lutece . . .
Well. The point is: she knows very much about giving things up in order to survive.]
I do.
[A title isn't worth much if you're dead. A genius intellect isn't worth much if you've no money to prove yourself with.]
How . . . how precisely did you metamorphosize?
[It couldn't have been something easy, or common, or else he would have been caught. It had to be something drastic. Some demonic ability? Or something else? What could he do that would ensure he could stay hidden, even from creatures that were employed for their ability to sniff his kind out?]
...If you weren't so brilliant, I would sidestep that question.
[A hint of a smile plays at the corners of his mouth, strangely lonely and achingly sad.]
But I know I won't get away with it, when you're the one listening. And I have far too much respect for your intelligence to attempt that sort of game anyway, knowing that.
[He lowers his eyes again.]
You've called me your friend. I'm...selfish enough to not want to jeopardize that, even for the sake of giving you the answers I know you want. But I can't in good conscience beg you to promise understanding before you even know what you're agreeing to tolerate by that promise. And I wouldn't be able to blame you, if you did find what I said intolerable in someone who was now formerly a friend.
[Ominous. And not wrong: it's impossible for her to say whether or not she'll understand before she even knows what it is he's done. Even Rosalind has lines she refuses to cross. There are plenty of crimes that disgust and horrify her, and perhaps he's committed one of those.
It's hard to imagine. Kurama is charming, and kind, and fiercely protective of people he cares about. He's safe, and Rosalind relaxes in his presence as she does no other. But she better than anyone knows that a charming personality doesn't always mean a good soul beneath.]
I'll listen to the entire thing.
[That, she can promise. Rosalind watches him, studying what she can see of his face.]
Whether or not I understand, whether or not I find it intolerable . . . no matter what, I shan't interrupt, not until you've finished explaining.
[There — she's done it again. For the second time this conversation, she's done something that reminds him powerfully of Yusuke, something that sends him hurtling back in an instant to red-stained rooftop at sunset and the quiet admission, I suppose I just wanted someone to know. She'll listen, and in a way maybe that's more than he could have hoped for — because he knows full well it's not a promise to do anything but hear him out until he's had the opportunity to fully lay himself bare, to suspend judgment until he's reached the end of his story, as opposed to forming it at each juncture along the way.
Even so, the prospect is daunting.
And yet, despite the somewhat chilling knowledge that he might very well lose the person who's become one of his closest confidantes in his time here in the city, he finds there's still a sliver of relief in the idea of just — releasing his iron grip on these secrets, letting them slip from his fingers, letting the pressure of them bottled up in his soul begin to lessen.]
A merger. Youko Kurama consolidated his power, abandoning his body and reducing himself to his soul, and then fused that soul with...
[He stops short, drawing a slow and considering breath, and then gives her a look that cautions her to weigh his next words very carefully for every bit of their implication.]
...a cage.
[That's what she'd called it, herself. Her cage, her life with a man who could provide her security and support — a man who wanted one thing from her in return, and that one thing formed the gilded bars of her life's cage.
He drops his eyes, sparing the faintest of glances toward her abdomen — and that's enough. He dares risk no more, and prays she'll understand that he's deliberately avoiding speaking it aloud for his own reasons, even if she doesn't know what they are.]
That's what this is. What I am. The cage for what he once was...and yet, still the same, but metamorphosed into something new.
[Don't react yet, she wills herself. Keep your face blank, don't react--
Because of course, her very first thought is precisely what Kurama had feared: Rosalind thinks of her tormentor. She thinks of a cruel voice taunting her as it forced her consciousness down and effortlessly took control. She remembers how badly it wanted to kill Kurama, and she remembers with crystal clarity just how laughably useless all her raging had been.
Her breath catches, and once again her heart jumps, a furious doubletime that leaves her aching. Is that why he'd been so furious about the wendigo, then? Not just because it had taken his friend, but because it reminded him of himself?
Think. Logic is always the better option, and she tries to grip her thoughts, yanking them back from the terrified, horrified race they want to run. Think. Kurama has been nothing but kind to her in the three months they've known each other; the least she can do is give him more than her raw reactions.
Kurama refers to Youko as someone separate, someone so distant as to not be a part of himself any longer. Fused, he says, and they both of them are so careful with words that she knows it wasn't an accident. A merger. Not a theft, not a murder, but a partnership. He took his soul and joined it with that of an infant's.
So. So . . . he was . . . what? Reincarnated? No, and yet perhaps that isn't such a bad way to think of it. He had bound his soul up to that of a child's, and then . . . lived. The boy she knows now is a fusion of what he was and what he is: the child, and yet still Youko.]
Ah.
[A faint noise, but it isn't displeased. It isn't happy, either; it's just a noise, acknowledging she's heard him without yet passing any judgement.]
A few questions. For clarification.
[Her heart isn't racing quite so quickly now, though her voice is slightly breathless.]
The child. The other half of your merger. Is he-- are you-- human?
[He says it so softly the word is almost inaudible, more discernible from the shape his mouth takes in forming it than from the sound he puts into it.
He's still listening to her heartbeat, of course. How could he not? And it does exactly what he'd feared it would — skips, and then runs like a rabbit's, jackhammering fear in her chest. It's awful to listen to, and know that he's the one who put it there. It's easy to guess what she might be thinking of, even with the meticulously careful words he'd used to try to mitigate possible comparisons to it.
What Youko Kurama did is, he knows, fundamentally different than that of the wendigo's actions. Morally — morally is something that he doesn't even want to touch. But there is no Shuichi trapped and screaming somewhere inside his soul, and if Youko is in there somewhere, too, then he is at least in confinement that he chose for himself.
Still, it's plainly visible, the way that the emotion seeps out of his expression as he waits for her to process what he's said. This time, it's his turn to wear a mask, building up his walls to hold back the floodwaters of his emotions. He doesn't want to feel, not right now.
If he lets himself feel, he'll wind up hating himself for burning a bridge that had once given him access to a person he's grown so fond of over the course of their acquaintance.]
Half. There were...reasons, that I chose to conceal that when I arrived here. And it hasn't been difficult to maintain that appearance — I've never been much good at being...human. For all that I am one.
[That clarifies things a little, then. He'd picked a human to merge his soul with, and as it turns out, reincarnation wasn't such a bad word to use. He's got a foot in both worlds, something human and demonic both. He says he doesn't know how to be human, and yet he's so divorced from his old life so as to be nearly parted with it.]
What is it, precisely, about being human that eludes you?
...I'm not sure if I can put a single word to it. It's not precisely empathy, and not quite morality.
[He purses his lips, absently folding his fingers together and separating them again, before finally holding the one in the other and beginning to run his thumb across his own knuckles on the opposite hand, self-comforting.]
Imagine being taught the steps of calculating a derivative, but without ever being taught what purpose a derivative serves. The derivative of X-squared is 2X; you've performed the proper motions and achieved the correct result...and yet, what good does it do you?
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Your hearing.
[And? She hasn't spoken anything under her breath. A moment, and she glances up for a moment, wondering if he can hear Urameshi moving about.]
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[He folds his hands, glancing down at the way his fingers are woven together. His cut palm is healed now, the bandages gone; even so, looking at the fingers, he finds himself thinking of blunt fighter's fingers holding his hand, a thumb tracing lightly over the slight swell of every knuckle.]
You're not all right. It's none of my business any further than that, unless you choose to make it so, but — let's at least stipulate that everyone concerned is aware of that fact. It seems foolish and disingenuous for us both to pretend otherwise, when we're both aware of it.
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[She doesn't glance down, not this time. She wants to, but she refuses to, not when glancing down means she might miss some flicker of expression. She doesn't doubt Kurama means only the best by admitting that, but emotions are so dangerous, and she feels raw enough as it is. Best not to feel even weaker by losing out on some vital bit of information.]
And you?
[She says it softly.]
I'll tell you, if you care to listen. But I suspect I'm not the only one who was shaken by what happened. And I would . . . prefer to be on equal ground, for a talk like this.
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[He understands, though, why he needs to take the first step with this. He's confessed to having an advantage on her, and she's right; this ought to be a level playing field, not an unbalanced one. For this talk to occur, he'll have to commit part of himself to it, just as she will have to offer up something of hers.
The unsettling part is that he knows what he wants to give. That's frankly a little frightening, because it's something he knows full well he shouldn't.]
...The illusion they crafted led me to believe that I had been responsible for the death of my father. I didn't tell you that, when we were acquainted. I recall believing that it would have...led you to prefer not to associate yourself with me.
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Whether or not she would have reacted in such a way is put aside for the moment. She knows her answer, but it can wait.]
Did that man resemble your actual father?
[Do demons even have fathers? She has no idea, but she suspects they do. Kurama looks so human already; likely he reproduces in the same way. And if he does, if somewhere in the distant past there was a man and a woman Kurama had once called Father and Mother, she imagines that the illusions resembled them.
Her husband had been based on someone she knew, after all. Fink had been realistic to a fault. It was a mass hallucination in part fueled by their memories; that was part of what made it so frightening. Not just that they were delusional for two weeks, but that it was a shared hallucination.]
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But for once, it's hard to find that lie when her question only leaves him thinking of his father, the one who gave him the name Minamino. His father, who had made his mother smile in the few memories he has of him before he'd died. His father, who had never known what he was.
His father had been like his mother — believing wholeheartedly that the child born to them was the child they'd conceived. His father had been like his mother: deceived.
And all of a sudden, he just aches for her. This business of Rosalind and her child only amplifies it, in its way — there are echoes of what he believes his mother should have felt about him, in the things that she'd confessed to in their shared nightmare. Perhaps it would have been easier if she hadn't wanted a son to begin with. Perhaps his treatment of her would have been less awful a guilt to bear, if she hadn't loved him so much.
But she'd loved him so much.
And just for a minute, he wishes — paradoxically, bewilderingly — that he could find a respite long enough to just be Shuichi Minamino, a human boy, sixteen years old and missing his mother, desperately.
But the demon Kurama's mother was a fox. He hasn't seen or heard tell of her in centuries.
He aches for her, and he doesn't dare confess it to anyone, lest their captors use it to find her — and to do their worst.]
My father was a fox.
[He's startled at the sound of the words when they escape — so dead and so hollow that even he doesn't believe they carry a single ounce of truth to them.]
...No. The answer to your question is no — I'm not...not all right, either.
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[She says it softly, a clumsy attempt at both acknowledging the deadened tone in his words and comforting him. She doesn't know the details of what has Kurama so off-kilter, but in some ways that's even worse. She has the shape of it, and what hazy details she must guess at only grow worse as she ponders them.
Would it be better, she wonders, to have seen one's cherished ones, or not? Her Robert hadn't been a part of the delusion, and though she thinks the grief upon waking would have been tremendous, a small part of her mourns the fact she hadn't even been able to have him for a brief time. Was it better for Kurama to have his parents, or was the very fact they'd been there at all a far too painful reminder of what he doesn't have?
Perhaps she's guessing wrong. Perhaps he's upset about something else. But now it's her turn again.]
Charles Astor was a suitor of mine. One of the most persistent ones, and one I was rather fond of. He proposed to me several times, and once, I nearly gave in. So . . . I suppose, in some ways, the past two weeks were a reflection of what my mind speculates the road not taken would be.
[She wishes she could draw her knees up. It's a childish move, hiding behind them, but still she wishes for it.]
You must understand . . . it would be easy for me to villainize him, but in truth, he was kind, both in reality and in our hallucination. He cared very much for his wife. He gave to charity and supported the arts and lived in luxury, and wanted nothing more in life than to have a happy family. He was a proper gentleman, obeying all the rules and conventions of our time.
But. He expected his wife to do the same.
A marriage like that . . . a life like that . . . there are few things I've ever feared more. Being forced into motherhood would be the final straw.
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[It brings him out of his own thoughts slowly, even a little sluggishly, but it does rouse him from them and he's thankful for it. Rosalind is such a counterpoint to notions of his mother; it's easy to offset the thoughts of one with focus on the other, because there aren't many similarities to be drawn between them.
(He doesn't miss the way she tries to comfort him, either, with a soft assurance that he's not precisely sure even she believes. That gentle remark is why there aren't many similarities between her and his human mother, as opposed to none at all.)
Still. It's interesting that she uses the word fear. He remembers how she'd taken a sharp breath and turned away when he'd compared her to her husband after he'd broken into their fine manor — how she'd seen her child as security, but her patents as her life.
Not for the first time, he muses on how Rosalind Lutece would make a better demon than a human — and how that's not disparaging to her in any way.]
I remember you seemed grateful to me. I must have been...different, in the way I treated you. From the norms you had come to accept from the men around you.
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[Perhaps that's sad, or pathetic; perhaps she ought to be too embarrassed to confess that. But why both being ashamed of a hallucination? Besides, it's the truth. Grateful is a kind way to put it; she'd been like a deprived child, basking in his easy respect and casual affection.
But she's not embarrassed. That had been a Rosalind deprived, not her true self. After all: Kurama is not her first friend. He's her second.]
You took me seriously, when no one else did. Of course I was grateful.
[A beat. They could linger on that, and perhaps they should, but . . . ]
We danced, Kurama.
[Her tone is slightly lighter, a shade of teasing disbelief there.]
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[Uncanny. She does the same thing that Yusuke does, when things get slightly too heavy with awkward solemnity — a well-timed joke, something to divert the subject just enough. It's a familiar tendency that makes him ache, this time with a certain gratitude of his own.]
My fondness for you, though. That remains across both. You know that, don't you?
1/2
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I do. Though I think my own returned is a little less disbelieving.
[Kurama is without a doubt the person she trusts most here in Ruby City: not simply to have her back, but to see her vulnerable, and not equate that vulnerability with weakness.]
Why the name Fawkes?
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[Again, the mood lightens a touch; a smile finds its way to the corners of his mouth, and he brushes a hand back through his hair almost idly.]
Because it sounds like "fox". And "York", I imagine, came from — from an approximation, of sorts, of another of my names. I...was once called Youko, the Spirit Fox. Youko, the legendary bandit. Youko, the king of thieves.
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[But the beginnings of a smile are appearing on her lips. Fawkes and York, hm? Fox and Youko, and she wonders what else had been twisted from his past to fit his hallucination.]
I rather like it. The name, I mean: Youko is quite good, though I shan't ever add those titles on. Meaning no disrespect; we simply speak far too often for me to use them each time.
[She is smiling.]
Is Kurama not your real name, then, or was Youko simply a false one?
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[Which he knows she'll pick up on, because she's not stupid; people don't refer to themselves in the third person, like separate entities, even when speaking about the past.
He knows he should conceal it, spin it, protect himself. Honestly, he isn't precisely sure why he isn't.]
Kurama is my name. Youko is...I suppose it's best described as more of a title than a proper name. Not unlike a title that can double as a proper name, in certain instances — Duke Such-and-Such, for example. It's something of a name, something of a title, and something of...a brand, I suppose. All of Makai knew it. All of Makai trembled at the sound of it.
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And then his metamorphosis, a transformation so radical Kurama considers his old self an entirely different person.
There's something missing here. Thieves are feared, yes, but not that way. They pose a risk to one's material goods, but no one trembles at a thief's name. Further: he refers to himself in the third person when he says that, and yet before had called himself a brilliant thief (the thief).
So. So it follows that his previous self had been more than just a thief. That whatever he had done, it had been far more terrible than simple burglary. Murder? Or perhaps not just murder, but the murder of many. The murder of enough people that soon his name would become synonymous with a terrible fate . . .
Had he undergone his metamorphosis unwillingly? Or had he plunged headfirst into it, out of some kind of need for redemption?
Her thoughts immediately dart to another man who'd disavowed his old identity after supposed reform, but she pushes the thought away almost immediately. Kurama is no Comstock. He had admitted he had done terrible things, and that alone proves it.]
But not anymore.
[She won't demand answers out of him. He deserves more than that. But he wouldn't have chosen the words he had if he'd wanted to keep this part entirely hidden from her, and so she probes at the edges carefully, waiting to see what he'll reveal.]
Because somehow, you changed. You became . . . not Youko, but just Kurama.
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[He glances down at his hands, examining the short blunt nails. There were claws there, once. And there was blood, of course. He always has blood on his hands, in one way or another.]
Numbers will always present an advantage; that's just plain tactics. There were more of them than there were of me, and they...hunted me. Perhaps the real testament to my power is that I didn't die; most lesser demons would have.
[He draws a careful breath.]
I said once, if you remember, that my life has been a perfect record of choices, when it comes to avoiding death. Here again, I had a choice. A humiliating one, perhaps, but — heads, or tails. My tails...or let them have my head.
I went into hiding. That's why I don't look as I used to then. People said Youko had disappeared, or been killed; I'm sure the rumors spread wildly. But Youko survived, cleverly...like this. A metamorphosis.
[He looks up at her through his lashes, emerald eyes framed by his thick red bangs.]
In a timeline where Madam Rosalind Lutece became Lady Rosalind Astor...you survived, too. That's why I suspect you'll understand.
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Well. The point is: she knows very much about giving things up in order to survive.]
I do.
[A title isn't worth much if you're dead. A genius intellect isn't worth much if you've no money to prove yourself with.]
How . . . how precisely did you metamorphosize?
[It couldn't have been something easy, or common, or else he would have been caught. It had to be something drastic. Some demonic ability? Or something else? What could he do that would ensure he could stay hidden, even from creatures that were employed for their ability to sniff his kind out?]
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[A hint of a smile plays at the corners of his mouth, strangely lonely and achingly sad.]
But I know I won't get away with it, when you're the one listening. And I have far too much respect for your intelligence to attempt that sort of game anyway, knowing that.
[He lowers his eyes again.]
You've called me your friend. I'm...selfish enough to not want to jeopardize that, even for the sake of giving you the answers I know you want. But I can't in good conscience beg you to promise understanding before you even know what you're agreeing to tolerate by that promise. And I wouldn't be able to blame you, if you did find what I said intolerable in someone who was now formerly a friend.
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It's hard to imagine. Kurama is charming, and kind, and fiercely protective of people he cares about. He's safe, and Rosalind relaxes in his presence as she does no other. But she better than anyone knows that a charming personality doesn't always mean a good soul beneath.]
I'll listen to the entire thing.
[That, she can promise. Rosalind watches him, studying what she can see of his face.]
Whether or not I understand, whether or not I find it intolerable . . . no matter what, I shan't interrupt, not until you've finished explaining.
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Even so, the prospect is daunting.
And yet, despite the somewhat chilling knowledge that he might very well lose the person who's become one of his closest confidantes in his time here in the city, he finds there's still a sliver of relief in the idea of just — releasing his iron grip on these secrets, letting them slip from his fingers, letting the pressure of them bottled up in his soul begin to lessen.]
A merger. Youko Kurama consolidated his power, abandoning his body and reducing himself to his soul, and then fused that soul with...
[He stops short, drawing a slow and considering breath, and then gives her a look that cautions her to weigh his next words very carefully for every bit of their implication.]
...a cage.
[That's what she'd called it, herself. Her cage, her life with a man who could provide her security and support — a man who wanted one thing from her in return, and that one thing formed the gilded bars of her life's cage.
He drops his eyes, sparing the faintest of glances toward her abdomen — and that's enough. He dares risk no more, and prays she'll understand that he's deliberately avoiding speaking it aloud for his own reasons, even if she doesn't know what they are.]
That's what this is. What I am. The cage for what he once was...and yet, still the same, but metamorphosed into something new.
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Because of course, her very first thought is precisely what Kurama had feared: Rosalind thinks of her tormentor. She thinks of a cruel voice taunting her as it forced her consciousness down and effortlessly took control. She remembers how badly it wanted to kill Kurama, and she remembers with crystal clarity just how laughably useless all her raging had been.
Her breath catches, and once again her heart jumps, a furious doubletime that leaves her aching. Is that why he'd been so furious about the wendigo, then? Not just because it had taken his friend, but because it reminded him of himself?
Think. Logic is always the better option, and she tries to grip her thoughts, yanking them back from the terrified, horrified race they want to run. Think. Kurama has been nothing but kind to her in the three months they've known each other; the least she can do is give him more than her raw reactions.
Kurama refers to Youko as someone separate, someone so distant as to not be a part of himself any longer. Fused, he says, and they both of them are so careful with words that she knows it wasn't an accident. A merger. Not a theft, not a murder, but a partnership. He took his soul and joined it with that of an infant's.
So. So . . . he was . . . what? Reincarnated? No, and yet perhaps that isn't such a bad way to think of it. He had bound his soul up to that of a child's, and then . . . lived. The boy she knows now is a fusion of what he was and what he is: the child, and yet still Youko.]
Ah.
[A faint noise, but it isn't displeased. It isn't happy, either; it's just a noise, acknowledging she's heard him without yet passing any judgement.]
A few questions. For clarification.
[Her heart isn't racing quite so quickly now, though her voice is slightly breathless.]
The child. The other half of your merger. Is he-- are you-- human?
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[He says it so softly the word is almost inaudible, more discernible from the shape his mouth takes in forming it than from the sound he puts into it.
He's still listening to her heartbeat, of course. How could he not? And it does exactly what he'd feared it would — skips, and then runs like a rabbit's, jackhammering fear in her chest. It's awful to listen to, and know that he's the one who put it there. It's easy to guess what she might be thinking of, even with the meticulously careful words he'd used to try to mitigate possible comparisons to it.
What Youko Kurama did is, he knows, fundamentally different than that of the wendigo's actions. Morally — morally is something that he doesn't even want to touch. But there is no Shuichi trapped and screaming somewhere inside his soul, and if Youko is in there somewhere, too, then he is at least in confinement that he chose for himself.
Still, it's plainly visible, the way that the emotion seeps out of his expression as he waits for her to process what he's said. This time, it's his turn to wear a mask, building up his walls to hold back the floodwaters of his emotions. He doesn't want to feel, not right now.
If he lets himself feel, he'll wind up hating himself for burning a bridge that had once given him access to a person he's grown so fond of over the course of their acquaintance.]
Half. There were...reasons, that I chose to conceal that when I arrived here. And it hasn't been difficult to maintain that appearance — I've never been much good at being...human. For all that I am one.
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What is it, precisely, about being human that eludes you?
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[He purses his lips, absently folding his fingers together and separating them again, before finally holding the one in the other and beginning to run his thumb across his own knuckles on the opposite hand, self-comforting.]
Imagine being taught the steps of calculating a derivative, but without ever being taught what purpose a derivative serves. The derivative of X-squared is 2X; you've performed the proper motions and achieved the correct result...and yet, what good does it do you?
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cw: referenced suicide
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