![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingI'm doing ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
thirtyforthree again, this time for Kira Sakuya/Mudo Setsuna/Mudo Sara from Kaori Yuki's Angel Sanctuary. There will be spoilers in nearly every theme -- given the characters, it's nearly impossible to avoid them! -- and a lot of potentially objectionable content. This is because the source manga has a lot of potentially objectionable content. If incest squicks you, or you know you'll be bothered by some unusual and often negative interpretations of Judeo-Christian theology, you probably won't want to read any of these stories.
With that said...
Theme: #8 - Babies
Warnings: spoilers! Also, some depiction of the fallout of an acrimonious divorce, especially its effect on a child.
Notes: This fic is set post-manga, in autumn of 2015; Setsuna is 32 and Sara is 31. It falls between "Clouds" and "If Only," neither of which are finished yet. (Possibly more helpfully, it falls after Fluffy Things, in which Setsuna and Sara assume a second set of false identities and move to Nagasaki.)
I originally meant this to be more humorous, but I got sidetracked by the philosophical complexities of reincarnation as proposed (in a maddening muddle) by Kaori Yuki, and then it took me forever and a day to wind the narrative back to the point of the prompt, as you can tell by the wordcount. I would also like to note that no actual babies appear in this story. *wry* (6,000 words)
---------------------------------------------
The Transient and the Eternal: Babies
---------------------------------------------
They decided against children.
Setsuna listened patiently to Sara's explanations of why genetic defects weren't actually likely, but he always came back to the argument that God had created the laws of the universe, God's laws supported the concept of original sin, and they couldn't be sure which laws still held even after God's death.
"You don't want to curse a child just for being born, right?" he said. "We're already being selfish by being together, and that's only okay as long as we don't hurt anyone else."
He'd already made too many people suffer. The idea of his own child suffering because he and Sara decided their desires were more important than the consequences to other people... No. Just no.
He wore Sara down in the end. They mentored instead, taking street kids under their wings and watching neighbors' children. Sara fed them, sang to them, helped them with schoolwork, loved them. Setsuna goofed around, showed them how to fight, chaperoned long walks when they needed to get away from their parents for a while, and did his best to get them after school jobs.
"You should be foster parents, Sara-san, Tendo-san," a new neighbor said several years after they'd moved into the apartment complex. "You obviously love children, and you do such a good job with them. Thank you for watching Takahiro-chan this weekend, by the way -- I hope he wasn't too much bother."
Setsuna exchanged a speaking look with Sara. All their identification was false -- as close to the truth as possible, and nearly undetectable so long as no one had reason to question it -- but they couldn't risk government examination. At best that would bring Lucifer, Kurai, and Belial to 'help' again, and at worst... he didn't want to think about worst case scenarios.
"We're fine the way we are, Oda-san," Sara told the sharply-dressed woman. "This way we get to help lots of children instead of only a few. And don't worry -- it was a pleasure to have Hiro-kun over, and I think we made some progress on long division."
"Well, as long as you're happy," Oda-san said doubtfully, and strode off toward the elevator. Takahiro, thin, awkward, and sullen, rolled his eyes. Then he followed his mother around the corner.
Sara closed the door and sighed. Setsuna reached over to wrap her in a hug, leaning his chin down against the top of her head; her hands rose to rest on his arms.
"Sometimes I wish..." she said.
"I know," Setsuna told her. "But we can't, and we can't. Besides, how would we explain our friends? We can shove visitors out, but that wouldn't work if we had kids living with us. It's enough of a risk letting them sleep over now and then."
"Damn Lucifer anyway," Sara grumbled.
"He already did that himself -- demon lord of hell, remember?"
"Stop being logical at me."
"But it's so much fun..." He kissed the side of her neck.
Sara shivered in his arms. "Bed. Now."
"Your wish is my command."
---------------
Later that evening, while Setsuna loaded the dishwasher and Sara wrote a grocery list on her cell phone, Oda Takahiro knocked on their door. Setsuna frowned as he let the boy in. "Does your mom know you're here, Hiro-kun?"
Takahiro pushed his glasses up his nose and shrugged, eerily calm and self-possessed. "I told her I was going out and she said it was okay, but she was yelling at my dad on the phone. I don't think she really heard me." He smiled, brief and sharp and far too knowing for a ten-year-old boy.
It seemed the height of unfairness to Setsuna that people who didn't love each other enough to stick together and work through the difficult times could marry anytime they wanted, while he and Sara had to disappear into false lives in order to live together openly. Broken marriages hurt everyone -- adults, children, neighbors, and anyone who had to work with the people involved.
"You can stay here for a while, but you have to call your mom every twenty minutes until you get through and tell her where you are. She might not be paying attention now, but when she realizes you're gone, she'll be worried," Setsuna told Takahiro.
"She doesn't care about me. She just doesn't want to look bad in front of people," Takahiro said. "That's why she always sucks up to you." He flopped onto the sofa and grabbed the remote control, flicking through television channels.
"I'm sure she cares. Parents don't always understand their children, but they almost always love them and want what's best for them," Sara said, saving her list and sitting beside Takahiro. "I know one reason your mother argues with your father is because she wants him to visit you more often. She wouldn't do that if she didn't care -- she knows you miss him."
"I don't miss him! My dad's a rotten bastard," Takahiro said, killing the television and curling up in a corner of the sofa. "I found out last week. His new wife is pregnant and he told her their kid will be his real son. He thought I was asleep, but I heard him. He said I'd grow up like my mom -- he called her a worthless, neurotic bitch -- and he's trying to get the divorce terms changed now that mom has a new job. He said he doesn't want to waste money on me."
Sara rested her hand on the boy's shoulder and gestured frantically at Setsuna. He shrugged. This wasn't something astral power could fix. "You want me to beat him up for you, Hiro-kun?" he asked, keeping his voice light.
"He's not worth it. Fuck him." Takahiro shifted, pressing himself into a more compact ball. "He can just go to hell."
Setsuna laughed. "I can arrange that."
Takahiro raised his head and favored Setsuna with a sour look. "I meant 'go to hell' literally, Tendo-san, not messing around with your yakuza friends and head games."
"I suspect Setsuna also meant it literally," a new voice said, and Setsuna whirled to face the bedroom. Lucifer lounged in the doorway, dressed down in black jeans, black t-shirt, and a black leather duster. He looked windblown -- he must have gated in somewhere else in the city and then flown over. Setsuna thought he did that half to give them heart attacks by appearing out of nowhere, and half because it reminded him of riding his old motorcycle.
"Lu-- Kira!" Sara's hands tightened on Takahiro, pressing him into the sofa. "When did you get here?"
"Just now," Lucifer said, walking into the main room of the apartment. "Which one of your strays is this?"
"I'm Oda Takahiro," Takahiro said, prying off Sara's hands and sitting up. "Who are you and how did you get in here? I didn't hear the door."
Lucifer conjured a cigarette with a twist of his fingers. "You wouldn't have. As for who I am... you can call me Kira Sakuya. I'm an old friend of Setsuna and Sara." He studied Takahiro while he produced a lighter out of his coat pocket, and frowned, a slight tensing around his eyes. "Come to think of it, you might be an old friend too."
Setsuna blinked. "What the hell, Kira? Hiro-kun's only ten and he's always lived in Nagasaki. We couldn't possibly have known him in Tokyo."
"Not in this incarnation," Lucifer agreed. "But look at his face. Lose the glasses, lengthen his hair, dye it blond, add eight years... Doesn't he remind you of someone?" He touched flame to his cigarette and then tossed his lighter from hand to hand -- the spinning metal flashed, drawing the eye. "He was a strong soul and he had practice shaping his body. He might well have managed to bypass whatever genetics had planned for him this time around. And some bonds are strong enough to last from one lifetime to the next."
Takahiro drew away from Lucifer, pressing back against Sara. "Mister, are you crazy?"
"No," Setsuna said, slowly, reconstructing a face in his mind's eye and comparing it to Takahiro, "he's probably the sanest person in this room. That's what makes him dangerous. And I think he might be right." Now that he was looking for a resemblance, Takahiro could be Kato's younger brother -- Kato, to whom Setsuna owed so much, and whom he had failed so badly. But did that even matter? It was cruel to judge people by their past lives. He knew he wasn't the same person as any of his past human incarnations, let alone the same person as Alexiel. Even if Takahiro had been Kato, that life was done. He was just a kid with a clean slate, like humans were meant to be.
Why couldn't Lucifer have kept his damn mouth shut?
"It doesn't matter if Kira's right or not," Sara said firmly, interrupting Setsuna's thoughts. "It never matters who a person was in a past life, unless other people make it matter. And I don't care. Hiro-kun is Hiro-kun, whoever he might have been before. Besides, he could just as easily be a new soul -- out of all the billions of people on the earth, it's not surprising if a few resemble each other!" She stroked Takahiro's hair and rubbed his shoulder, trying to ease his tension.
"Sara-san? Tendo-san? What's going on?" Stripped of his cynicism and anger, Takahiro suddenly sounded his age. "Is your friend yakuza? I was just joking about that."
"He's not yakuza," Setsuna said, and didn't add that Lucifer was, by conventional standards, much worse. "He just noticed that you look a lot like a friend we knew when we were in high school. Kato died when he was eighteen, so it's not impossible for you to be his reincarnation. It's unlikely, though, and Sara's right that it doesn't matter. You're you, Oda Takahiro, and that's the important thing. Right, Kira?" he added, staring pointedly at Lucifer.
"Of course. Past lives are almost never relevant to current events," Lucifer said. His voice was cool and even. If you didn't know him, you could glide right over the biting sarcasm without ever noticing the glint in his ice-gray eyes.
Takahiro seemed to catch the undertone anyway. He scowled and crossed his arms. "You're making fun of me, but I don't care. If Sara-san and Tendo-san say you're okay, then I guess you're okay. They've never lied to me. But I still want to know how you got in here!"
"I flew," Lucifer said, deadpan.
Takahiro turned away in disgust. "I hate being a kid," he told Sara. "Nobody ever tells me anything, and everyone thinks I'm an idiot just because I'm not grown up yet."
Setsuna hid a grin. Takahiro was such a touchy little brat sometimes. Which was like Kato... and like every other ten-year-old boy in the world. "He did tell you," Setsuna said as Sara made soothing noises. "He flew."
Lucifer gave him a considering look, and then a voice whispered in Setsuna's mind. Two questions: will he believe you, and, if so, will he keep the secret? I can't spend the rest of your life cleaning up after your fits of optimism.
Fuck you, Setsuna thought back, slow and deliberate. "I was being serious when I said I could arrange for your father to go to hell," he said out loud to Takahiro. "I'd just ask Kira to take him down for a visit. Of course, he might not come back -- demons aren't very civilized, and they're always hungry."
Takahiro blinked, and then knocked the side of his head like he thought he had something stuck in his ear. "What?"
Setsuna shrugged. "You heard me. Hell's a real place, just like earth. I've been there a few times, and if you want to send your father there, I know people who'd be willing to take him. On second thought, I don't think Kira's one of them; he'd probably say it's too much bother. But that's okay, I know other demons. I bet Mad Hatter would jump at the chance to play with a human and not get yelled at." He grinned at Lucifer, who shot him a look of mixed disgust and longsuffering patience.
"You presume too much," Lucifer said. "If Belial gets her claws into a human without my permission, it doesn't matter how much you want her to play with her food. She's my vassal, not yours."
"Are you two sure this is a good idea?" Sara asked, wrapping her arms around Takahiro's shoulders. "You remember what happened when Okazaki found out."
Takahiro blinked again. "Wait. You're serious? He's a demon? You've been to hell?"
Lucifer spread all four of his wings, his pitch-black feathers filling the room and rustling against the TV. "We're very serious. Setsuna and Sara have been to heaven as well, if that makes you feel any better," he said dryly.
There was a beat of silence, which stretched... and stretched... and stretched... until Setsuna couldn't stand it anymore and opened his mouth to say something, anything--
"Holy shit," Takahiro said, his eyes wide and stunned behind his glasses, and his open shock nothing whatsoever like Kato's cocky masks. "You're an angel. Tendo-san, there's an angel in your apartment."
"Fallen angel," Lucifer corrected, pulling in his wings. "I quit heaven some time ago." Then he smiled, Kira's old devil-may-care grin, and pointed his cigarette at Setsuna. "So did he, for that matter."
"Hey! Leave me out of this, you jerk!" Setsuna said, fishing a hundred yen coin from his pocket and throwing it at Lucifer for lack of a better weapon. "We're talking about demons and hell, and no matter how you twist it, I've never been a demon. That's your territory."
"I see little difference between one rebellion against God and another," Lucifer said, pocketing the coin, "especially since your allies were demonic beforehand. Mine were only rebranded after the battle."
"It's what you did after your respective rebellions that makes the difference," Sara said before Setsuna could think of a reasonable response. "Now stop confusing Hiro-kun or I'll throw you both out. He came here to find a safe place and you're not helping."
In her arms, Takahiro had gone very still. "If he's a fallen angel, and he fought God, and he lives in hell... Sara-san, this is just a dream, right? You don't really have the devil in your apartment, do you? You and Tendo-san are good people!"
Setsuna winced. Fuck.
I did warn you, Lucifer said, folding his arms and leaning against the window frame.
Oh, shut up.
---------------
It took nearly half an hour of fast and persistent explanations to convince Takahiro that yes, Setsuna and Sara had been angels in their past lives ("But we're human now, so forget about that. Really, forget it," Setsuna said), and yes, Lucifer was a fallen angel and the king of hell ("But he was human for a while, which is how we got to know him, at least this time around, and... you know, that's way too long a story to get into now," Setsuna said), and no, being the devil didn't necessarily mean that Lucifer was evil, just that he'd opposed God.
("You do realize that opposing God is the standard definition of evil, especially since I eventually helped kill the bastard," Lucifer said, studying the glove of black flames that shrouded his hand.
"You are not helping," Sara snarled at him. "Besides, you were tricked into that role, and then you spent thousands of years trying to help Alexiel just because you didn't like the way God treated her, so stop playing the 'I'm cold and heartless' card. It won't wash.")
Eventually, Takahiro uncurled from Sara's embrace and walked, slowly, warily, over to Lucifer. He pushed up his glasses, set his feet, and stared upward.
"You're the king of hell," he said.
"Yes."
"You were human for a while."
"Yes," Lucifer said again, looking vaguely amused.
"While you were human, you knew someone who looked like me. And something weird happened to him -- you said he could shape his body, and normal people can't do that -- and then he died," Takahiro said, shoving his hands into his pockets and slouching just a little bit. Like Kato before he said or did something outrageous, Setsuna thought, and tensed in sudden apprehension.
"You miss him," Takahiro continued. A faint grin tugged at one corner of his mouth, magnifying the visual echo. "I can tell."
Lucifer raised one eyebrow and said nothing. Setsuna held his breath. Sara stiffened in her seat, her hand clenching on the arm of the sofa.
Takahiro ignored the tension. "If Tendo-san and Sara-san say you're not all the way evil, I believe them. So if your friend was my past life, I don't mind." Now his smile settled in, bright and sharp and one breath away from twisting to draw blood. "But I'm not him and you're not human anymore, so it doesn't matter, just like Sara-san said. He's dead. You can't ever get him back. Nobody can reverse time."
"True enough," Lucifer agreed.
"Okay," said Takahiro.
There was a moment of silence. Then, "Okay what?" Setsuna asked, wary of the way Lucifer and Takahiro were staring at each other.
"I won't tell anyone," Takahiro said without turning, as if Lucifer had been the one to ask for clarification. "And if you want, I'll be your friend. I bet you're pretty lonely -- who wants to be friends with the devil? But I don't mind. It's not like humans are that great either. My parents suck, my teachers suck, everyone in my new school hates me, and my friends don't even text me anymore since I moved. So I know what it's like."
He stuck out one hand, palm empty and face up. "I'm Oda Takahiro. Nice to meet you, Lucifer-san."
Lucifer studied Takahiro, then nodded. "Likewise, Takahiro." He didn't take the boy's hand.
After an awkward pause, Takahiro dropped his arm and sighed. "Maybe you're not evil, but you're still a jerk."
Setsuna smiled in relief. "You have no idea, Hiro-kun. He's always been a jerk, but he's my best friend anyway. And I'm glad you know about him. Now Sara and I don't have to worry about keeping secrets from you."
"But don't tell your mother," Sara cautioned. "I don't think she'd take it nearly as well as you have."
Takahiro blinked. His mouth twitched and his hands clenched. Then he couldn't hold it back anymore and fell onto the sofa, laughing hysterically. "No! No, she wouldn't! She'd call you dangerous lunatics, and she'd lock me up in my room and never let me out again." He laughed harder. "Or she'd send me to my dad, and I'd be stuck all alone with him and his new wife and their kid -- their real kid -- and I'd have to act as bad as he thinks I am just to make him remember I'm alive." Takahiro curled into the arm of the sofa, pulling off his glasses and jamming his hands up against his closed eyes. "I'm not going to tell my mom. What do you think I am, crazy?"
"Of course not," Sara said, sitting down beside him and catching his hands in her own. "That doesn't mean I can't worry about you, Hiro-kun. Setsuna and I know all about family troubles and we hate seeing you unhappy."
Takahiro's mouth twisted. "Yeah, I know. Did you hate seeing that Kato guy unhappy too?"
"Yes," Setsuna said, with perfect honesty. "But we can help you. None of us could do anything for Kato in the end."
"So you're helping me because you couldn't help him," Takahiro concluded.
Unexpectedly, Lucifer laughed. "Get over yourself," he said. "They're helping you because they're bleeding hearts. They've done the same for idiots before you and they'll do it again for idiots after you. That has nothing to do with who you remind me of. But if you push Setsuna and Sara away to make your pride feel better, then you'll really remind me of Kato. He was crazy. He was also a dumbass. Don't worry about whether you might be his reincarnation. Worry about not repeating his mistakes."
Have you ever heard of a concept called sympathy? Setsuna thought acidly at Lucifer.
Yes. It's a waste of time, Lucifer answered. He glanced up at the clock on the wall and frowned. "It's nearly eleven. Is anyone expecting him home?"
Sara shot to her feet and grabbed her cell phone. "We forgot to call Oda-san! She must be frantic."
"No she isn't," Takahiro said. "This is the first place she checks if she notices I'm gone, and she hasn't called you." But he put his glasses back on and stood up from the sofa. "I should probably go home. I bet you guys want to talk about stuff without me here."
A ten-year-old shouldn't be that cynical, Setsuna thought once again. He really ought to take Takahiro's father on a brief tour of hell -- any man who couldn't value his own child deserved the shit scared out of him.
"You can stay," Sara said.
Takahiro flapped his hand in negation. "Nah. I feel better anyway. I can go home and play games online instead of bugging you. Just... I can still come by tomorrow afternoon, right?"
"Of course," Setsuna assured him. "Do you want us to walk you home?"
"I'm not a baby, Tendo-san. I can push the elevator buttons myself," Takahiro said, with a withering look. "Good night."
He closed the door behind himself with a quiet click.
---------------
Sara hurried over to the door and eased it open a crack, just enough to peek out and make sure Takahiro was really going home. Then she shut it, turned the lock, and threw the deadbolt.
"Isn't that overkill?" Setsuna asked.
Sara ignored him. Instead, she turned and glared at Lucifer. "What did you think you were doing? You always say that Setsuna and I aren't Alexiel and Jibril, that our past lives don't matter to our lives now. So why bring Kato-san up when you have no way to prove your theory? What good will it do to put worries in Hiro-kun's head? You can't have it both ways. If our past lives don't matter, his doesn't either -- and if his does, you've been lying to us for years." Her voice was hard and cold, her words ringing clear and distinct like shards of ice.
Setsuna winced as her anger washed through the apartment, but he held his tongue because she was right. There was something fishy about Lucifer's attitude toward Takahiro, and Sara had always been better at calling Kira out.
Lucifer stubbed out his cigarette on the windowsill. "I can prove my theory. You aren't sensitive enough to astral resonances to notice, but that boy's soul matches Kato's almost exactly, just like his body does. That would be normal for us -- it's more unusual that you don't remember being Alexiel and Jibril -- but it's wrong for a human. He hasn't moved on. I wanted to see how he'd react if we brought up his previous life, maybe jar something loose and get a feel for where the Crucible fouled up."
Setsuna sat heavily on the sofa. "Oh, fuck. You mean after everything, Kato's still getting screwed over?"
Lucifer shrugged. "The Crucible obviously didn't process him correctly, but I don't know if it screwed him over. He seems a lot less self-defeating this time around. Maybe that's because of whatever he carried with him from his last life."
"He wound up in another broken family. And maybe he's not self-defeating, yet, but he's getting awfully bitter," Setsuna said. "That sounds like a pattern to me, and I thought the only way those got started was if--" He paused, then finished the thought. "If Uriel laid a curse on someone."
"I never got to know Uriel properly, but he gave Kato the power to shape-shift, right?" Sara asked, her voice warming as she sat beside Setsuna on the sofa. "Why would he curse someone he was trying to help?"
"Why would anyone?" Lucifer said.
"Jerk," Setsuna said reflexively. He slung his left arm around Sara's shoulders, letting his fingers play with the collar of her blouse. She set her hand on his thigh -- nothing blatant, just a light, gentle warmth -- and suddenly Setsuna had to wrench his mind back to the conversation.
"Uh. I mean, Uriel wouldn't curse anyone, not after Alexiel," he said, fumbling back onto his previous train of thought. "Actually, I'm not even sure he could if he wanted to -- that power was in his voice, and he ripped up his throat so badly he couldn't talk anymore. But Kato's memory was fading even in Hades. Maybe Uriel tried to fix that and went too far by accident -- I mean, I know Kato still remembered me when he died, even though he'd been pretending he was losing his memory like dead souls are supposed to do."
Lucifer's face went still and blank, closing off his thoughts and reactions -- cold and alien in a way that Kira, for all his secrets, had never been. Then the corner of his mouth twitched upward and he was familiar again.
"You may be right. I'll have Kurai visit Hades and grill Uriel on the details of his little project," Lucifer said, leaning back against the window frame. "In the meantime, Oda Takahiro is doing well enough. His family may be broken and he may be a fledgling cynic, but you two are much better influences on him than I ever was on Kato."
Setsuna gave him a skeptical look. "Yeah, sure. Until he died, you were the only person outside his family that Kato even bothered to notice, and I bet without you he'd've overdosed and died years sooner. How is that not being a good friend?"
"He noticed me because I led him into a gang and enabled his addictions. I kept him alive because that was less annoying than dealing with people trying to comfort me about his death," Lucifer said dryly.
Setsuna waved his free hand. "Pffft. He would've ended up in some gang anyway -- we talked in Hades, you know. And don't you talk about enabling him. You didn't buy him drugs. I even remember lots of times you ditched your gang 'cause they were shooting up or getting high and you came to hang out with me and Sara instead. Kato had to realize you didn't like drugs. Yeah, you didn't help him get clean, but you kept him from getting kicked out of school. And don't talk like you didn't care about him. Maybe you buried him to protect me, but then you tossed your lighter in his grave. He was a lot more than an annoyance to you."
After a moment, Lucifer shrugged. "Perhaps. The point remains that while Takahiro retains the general pattern of Kato's personality and life circumstances, he doesn't have Kato's actual memories. Furthermore, you and Sara are helping him alter his situation so he can follow a less self-destructive path."
"Don't think I can't spot you changing the subject," Sara said with a smile in her voice. "You never did like it when people caught you doing something nice."
Lucifer acted as if she hadn't spoken. "All that aside, the original reason I came here tonight was to request your presence the day after tomorrow at a summit between hell and the Triumvirate-ruled portions of heaven. Raphael and Raziel have grown tired of ad-hoc negotiations with Belial over territorial disputes. They want to set official borders in the broken lands and around the portions of heaven they control. If you two are there, the meeting is slightly less certain to devolve into a riot."
"Because Raphael wants to look good in my eyes, and Michael and Belial will focus on Setsuna instead of you and Raphael," Sara concluded, graciously letting Lucifer get away with his blatant evasion.
Setsuna groaned. "Oh, man. You want me to beg off work and spend all day putting up with Hatter and your pyromaniac brother?"
"Three days," Lucifer said, a wicked grin lurking in his gray eyes and the corners of his mouth. "Think of it as payment for getting you away from the Tokyo police seven years ago."
"That was as much your fault as mine, so don't even--" Setsuna started to say, but Sara interrupted him.
"Fine," she said. "We'll be there. But in return, you have to get to know Hiro-kun. Setsuna and I will do our best to help him, but he could always use more friends. So could you -- especially ones who aren't also your subjects."
Lucifer went cold and blank again. "I fail to see your point."
"And here you told me you'd learned from your other lives. I think you're a liar. Or no, maybe you're just a coward," Sara said, her voice deceptively light. Setsuna froze, waiting for the explosion -- she and Kira had been volatile even as teenagers, always pushing each other at unexpected moments, and Lucifer's recovered power and memories hadn't done anything to make that dynamic less dangerous for anyone caught in the blast zone.
Lucifer stared at Sara. She held his gaze, the slight clench of her fingers on Setsuna's thigh the only outward sign of her tension.
Then Lucifer's posture eased and the sense of gathering flame and shadow dissipated. "Fine," he said, pulling another cigarette from his pocket and lighting it with a snap of his fingers. "Shall I take him on a tour of hell?"
"Don't be obtuse. I thought you might help him with his homework," Sara said. "You were always good at helping Setsuna make sense of things. I bet you could have helped Kato like that if you'd bothered to think of it. Now's your chance to make it up to him. He's already willing to give you a chance."
"Or if you're going to go on about reincarnation and clean slates again, think of it as doing something God would never have believed you could do," Setsuna added. "You don't have to like Hiro-kun. Just don't trap yourself into being as isolated as God wanted."
Lucifer knocked a bit of ash onto the windowsill and sighed. "No. If we're visiting you at the same time, I'll be polite. If he asks for help, I'll consider his request. But I won't seek him out. I'm through playing human." He raised his hand, forestalling Sara's protest. "Don't push me."
Sara pouted for a moment, then curled into Setsuna's side with a sigh, resting her head on his shoulder. "You're such a pain, Lucifer."
"We've known that for years," Setsuna murmured into her hair. "He grows on you anyway, doesn't he?"
Sara laughed. "Like mildew," she agreed.
"Fascinating as this topic is," Lucifer interjected, "I'd appreciate an answer about the summit."
Setsuna held up his right hand in a one-armed shrug. "I don't care. Sara? Your call." Dealing with angels and demons wasn't exactly number one on his list of favorite ways to spend a day, but then again, neither was dealing with his current supervisor and trying to keep the yakuza and the government from running his projects way past their cost estimates. And if he lost his temper around Hatter or Michael, nobody would blink twice if he started a fight. (On the other hand, Michael and Hatter could both knock him flat, which kind of took the joy out of hitting them.)
Sara hummed thoughtfully to herself. "Mmm. It's short notice to get a substitute teacher in, but no shorter than if I'd caught the flu. And it's been months since I've seen Kurai or Raphael. All right. We'll go. But you still owe us a favor."
"By what calculation--" Lucifer started.
Okay, this was getting ridiculous. And pointless. Time to short-circuit the argument. "Get us a cat," Setsuna said.
Lucifer stared at him. Sara twisted around and also stared at him. "You hated Yuki," she said.
"Yeah, well, Yuki hated me," Setsuna said. "Maybe if we got a sane cat, I wouldn't have so much trouble. And I know you miss the little monster."
Sara's eyes shimmered with incipient tears. Setsuna pulled her in for a hasty hug. "Hey, don't ever say I didn't do anything for you, okay?" he muttered. Because seriously, a cat. Cats hated him. But they loved Sara, just like she loved them, and he always had been crap at resisting anything she wanted.
"We have a deal," Lucifer said. "One cat, in return for three days at the summit. I'll send someone to pick you up in two days."
"Not before 9am," Setsuna qualified hastily, remembering various unfortunate morning interruptions of past years, "and if you send Hatter--"
"We'll have to hurt you," Sara finished, raising her head and meeting Lucifer's gaze. "Was there anything else?"
He shrugged. "Nothing important. We can catch up another day." He opened the window and flicked his cigarette out into the night air. "Stock up on cat food, and I'll see you in heaven."
Lucifer spread his wings and vanished into the electric twilight of Nagasaki's night sky.
---------------
"Why do you think Lucifer won't get to know Hiro-kun?" Sara asked later that night, as she and Setsuna lay side-by-side in bed. "He's still friends with us, after all -- he isn't just waiting for us to die and Alexiel and Jibril to wake up."
Setsuna shifted onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, which was dimly visible in the light seeping around the edge of the window shades and the greenish glow of the numbers on his and Sara's alarm clocks. "I'm not sure," he said slowly. "But if I had to guess--"
"You do," said Sara.
"--then I think it's a little because he knew us before he got his memories back, so he can't just pretend we don't matter. But it's also a little because we will wake up as Alexiel and Jibril -- and they'll remember our lives, right? Takahiro doesn't remember being Kato. There isn't the same line of connection."
Sara was silent for a minute. The faint hum of the refrigerator turning on, and the muffled noise of the city night, seemed to swell in Setsuna's ears.
"He doesn't want connections he knows won't last," Sara said eventually. She sighed, and slid her leg over until her foot rested on Setsuna's ankle. "Maybe it's just as well we're not going to have children. I bet he'd keep his distance from them too, and that would hurt."
Setsuna made a questioning noise.
"Our children wouldn't have angels' souls," Sara clarified. "They'd be human. They wouldn't remember us from life to life, even if we remembered them. We could watch for a thousand years, trying to protect them, and they'd never recognize us the way we'd want them to, not after they'd been through the Crucible."
The bed shifted as she edged closer to Setsuna, pressing herself against his side. "I don't think I could take that. Maybe Jibril could stay more distant, but I doubt it. You stormed heaven for me and Alexiel practically sold her soul for her brother -- do you think either of you would do any less for your child?"
Oh. "I never thought of that," Setsuna said, suddenly chilled despite the warmth of Sara's body against his.
"Yes, well, it just means you were right for more than one reason," Sara said. She reached sideways under the sheet and clasped Setsuna's hand. "Still, sometimes I look at my students or Hiro-kun or babies in the park, and I wish..."
"Yeah," Setsuna whispered. "I know."
They had decided against children. It was the right choice. But sometimes it still hurt.
---------------------------------------------
End of Story
---------------------------------------------
So yeah. A little angstier than I'd intended, but whatever -- it's done! \o/
thirtyforthree again, this time for Kira Sakuya/Mudo Setsuna/Mudo Sara from Kaori Yuki's Angel Sanctuary. There will be spoilers in nearly every theme -- given the characters, it's nearly impossible to avoid them! -- and a lot of potentially objectionable content. This is because the source manga has a lot of potentially objectionable content. If incest squicks you, or you know you'll be bothered by some unusual and often negative interpretations of Judeo-Christian theology, you probably won't want to read any of these stories.With that said...
Theme: #8 - Babies
Warnings: spoilers! Also, some depiction of the fallout of an acrimonious divorce, especially its effect on a child.
Notes: This fic is set post-manga, in autumn of 2015; Setsuna is 32 and Sara is 31. It falls between "Clouds" and "If Only," neither of which are finished yet. (Possibly more helpfully, it falls after Fluffy Things, in which Setsuna and Sara assume a second set of false identities and move to Nagasaki.)
I originally meant this to be more humorous, but I got sidetracked by the philosophical complexities of reincarnation as proposed (in a maddening muddle) by Kaori Yuki, and then it took me forever and a day to wind the narrative back to the point of the prompt, as you can tell by the wordcount. I would also like to note that no actual babies appear in this story. *wry* (6,000 words)
---------------------------------------------
The Transient and the Eternal: Babies
---------------------------------------------
They decided against children.
Setsuna listened patiently to Sara's explanations of why genetic defects weren't actually likely, but he always came back to the argument that God had created the laws of the universe, God's laws supported the concept of original sin, and they couldn't be sure which laws still held even after God's death.
"You don't want to curse a child just for being born, right?" he said. "We're already being selfish by being together, and that's only okay as long as we don't hurt anyone else."
He'd already made too many people suffer. The idea of his own child suffering because he and Sara decided their desires were more important than the consequences to other people... No. Just no.
He wore Sara down in the end. They mentored instead, taking street kids under their wings and watching neighbors' children. Sara fed them, sang to them, helped them with schoolwork, loved them. Setsuna goofed around, showed them how to fight, chaperoned long walks when they needed to get away from their parents for a while, and did his best to get them after school jobs.
"You should be foster parents, Sara-san, Tendo-san," a new neighbor said several years after they'd moved into the apartment complex. "You obviously love children, and you do such a good job with them. Thank you for watching Takahiro-chan this weekend, by the way -- I hope he wasn't too much bother."
Setsuna exchanged a speaking look with Sara. All their identification was false -- as close to the truth as possible, and nearly undetectable so long as no one had reason to question it -- but they couldn't risk government examination. At best that would bring Lucifer, Kurai, and Belial to 'help' again, and at worst... he didn't want to think about worst case scenarios.
"We're fine the way we are, Oda-san," Sara told the sharply-dressed woman. "This way we get to help lots of children instead of only a few. And don't worry -- it was a pleasure to have Hiro-kun over, and I think we made some progress on long division."
"Well, as long as you're happy," Oda-san said doubtfully, and strode off toward the elevator. Takahiro, thin, awkward, and sullen, rolled his eyes. Then he followed his mother around the corner.
Sara closed the door and sighed. Setsuna reached over to wrap her in a hug, leaning his chin down against the top of her head; her hands rose to rest on his arms.
"Sometimes I wish..." she said.
"I know," Setsuna told her. "But we can't, and we can't. Besides, how would we explain our friends? We can shove visitors out, but that wouldn't work if we had kids living with us. It's enough of a risk letting them sleep over now and then."
"Damn Lucifer anyway," Sara grumbled.
"He already did that himself -- demon lord of hell, remember?"
"Stop being logical at me."
"But it's so much fun..." He kissed the side of her neck.
Sara shivered in his arms. "Bed. Now."
"Your wish is my command."
---------------
Later that evening, while Setsuna loaded the dishwasher and Sara wrote a grocery list on her cell phone, Oda Takahiro knocked on their door. Setsuna frowned as he let the boy in. "Does your mom know you're here, Hiro-kun?"
Takahiro pushed his glasses up his nose and shrugged, eerily calm and self-possessed. "I told her I was going out and she said it was okay, but she was yelling at my dad on the phone. I don't think she really heard me." He smiled, brief and sharp and far too knowing for a ten-year-old boy.
It seemed the height of unfairness to Setsuna that people who didn't love each other enough to stick together and work through the difficult times could marry anytime they wanted, while he and Sara had to disappear into false lives in order to live together openly. Broken marriages hurt everyone -- adults, children, neighbors, and anyone who had to work with the people involved.
"You can stay here for a while, but you have to call your mom every twenty minutes until you get through and tell her where you are. She might not be paying attention now, but when she realizes you're gone, she'll be worried," Setsuna told Takahiro.
"She doesn't care about me. She just doesn't want to look bad in front of people," Takahiro said. "That's why she always sucks up to you." He flopped onto the sofa and grabbed the remote control, flicking through television channels.
"I'm sure she cares. Parents don't always understand their children, but they almost always love them and want what's best for them," Sara said, saving her list and sitting beside Takahiro. "I know one reason your mother argues with your father is because she wants him to visit you more often. She wouldn't do that if she didn't care -- she knows you miss him."
"I don't miss him! My dad's a rotten bastard," Takahiro said, killing the television and curling up in a corner of the sofa. "I found out last week. His new wife is pregnant and he told her their kid will be his real son. He thought I was asleep, but I heard him. He said I'd grow up like my mom -- he called her a worthless, neurotic bitch -- and he's trying to get the divorce terms changed now that mom has a new job. He said he doesn't want to waste money on me."
Sara rested her hand on the boy's shoulder and gestured frantically at Setsuna. He shrugged. This wasn't something astral power could fix. "You want me to beat him up for you, Hiro-kun?" he asked, keeping his voice light.
"He's not worth it. Fuck him." Takahiro shifted, pressing himself into a more compact ball. "He can just go to hell."
Setsuna laughed. "I can arrange that."
Takahiro raised his head and favored Setsuna with a sour look. "I meant 'go to hell' literally, Tendo-san, not messing around with your yakuza friends and head games."
"I suspect Setsuna also meant it literally," a new voice said, and Setsuna whirled to face the bedroom. Lucifer lounged in the doorway, dressed down in black jeans, black t-shirt, and a black leather duster. He looked windblown -- he must have gated in somewhere else in the city and then flown over. Setsuna thought he did that half to give them heart attacks by appearing out of nowhere, and half because it reminded him of riding his old motorcycle.
"Lu-- Kira!" Sara's hands tightened on Takahiro, pressing him into the sofa. "When did you get here?"
"Just now," Lucifer said, walking into the main room of the apartment. "Which one of your strays is this?"
"I'm Oda Takahiro," Takahiro said, prying off Sara's hands and sitting up. "Who are you and how did you get in here? I didn't hear the door."
Lucifer conjured a cigarette with a twist of his fingers. "You wouldn't have. As for who I am... you can call me Kira Sakuya. I'm an old friend of Setsuna and Sara." He studied Takahiro while he produced a lighter out of his coat pocket, and frowned, a slight tensing around his eyes. "Come to think of it, you might be an old friend too."
Setsuna blinked. "What the hell, Kira? Hiro-kun's only ten and he's always lived in Nagasaki. We couldn't possibly have known him in Tokyo."
"Not in this incarnation," Lucifer agreed. "But look at his face. Lose the glasses, lengthen his hair, dye it blond, add eight years... Doesn't he remind you of someone?" He touched flame to his cigarette and then tossed his lighter from hand to hand -- the spinning metal flashed, drawing the eye. "He was a strong soul and he had practice shaping his body. He might well have managed to bypass whatever genetics had planned for him this time around. And some bonds are strong enough to last from one lifetime to the next."
Takahiro drew away from Lucifer, pressing back against Sara. "Mister, are you crazy?"
"No," Setsuna said, slowly, reconstructing a face in his mind's eye and comparing it to Takahiro, "he's probably the sanest person in this room. That's what makes him dangerous. And I think he might be right." Now that he was looking for a resemblance, Takahiro could be Kato's younger brother -- Kato, to whom Setsuna owed so much, and whom he had failed so badly. But did that even matter? It was cruel to judge people by their past lives. He knew he wasn't the same person as any of his past human incarnations, let alone the same person as Alexiel. Even if Takahiro had been Kato, that life was done. He was just a kid with a clean slate, like humans were meant to be.
Why couldn't Lucifer have kept his damn mouth shut?
"It doesn't matter if Kira's right or not," Sara said firmly, interrupting Setsuna's thoughts. "It never matters who a person was in a past life, unless other people make it matter. And I don't care. Hiro-kun is Hiro-kun, whoever he might have been before. Besides, he could just as easily be a new soul -- out of all the billions of people on the earth, it's not surprising if a few resemble each other!" She stroked Takahiro's hair and rubbed his shoulder, trying to ease his tension.
"Sara-san? Tendo-san? What's going on?" Stripped of his cynicism and anger, Takahiro suddenly sounded his age. "Is your friend yakuza? I was just joking about that."
"He's not yakuza," Setsuna said, and didn't add that Lucifer was, by conventional standards, much worse. "He just noticed that you look a lot like a friend we knew when we were in high school. Kato died when he was eighteen, so it's not impossible for you to be his reincarnation. It's unlikely, though, and Sara's right that it doesn't matter. You're you, Oda Takahiro, and that's the important thing. Right, Kira?" he added, staring pointedly at Lucifer.
"Of course. Past lives are almost never relevant to current events," Lucifer said. His voice was cool and even. If you didn't know him, you could glide right over the biting sarcasm without ever noticing the glint in his ice-gray eyes.
Takahiro seemed to catch the undertone anyway. He scowled and crossed his arms. "You're making fun of me, but I don't care. If Sara-san and Tendo-san say you're okay, then I guess you're okay. They've never lied to me. But I still want to know how you got in here!"
"I flew," Lucifer said, deadpan.
Takahiro turned away in disgust. "I hate being a kid," he told Sara. "Nobody ever tells me anything, and everyone thinks I'm an idiot just because I'm not grown up yet."
Setsuna hid a grin. Takahiro was such a touchy little brat sometimes. Which was like Kato... and like every other ten-year-old boy in the world. "He did tell you," Setsuna said as Sara made soothing noises. "He flew."
Lucifer gave him a considering look, and then a voice whispered in Setsuna's mind. Two questions: will he believe you, and, if so, will he keep the secret? I can't spend the rest of your life cleaning up after your fits of optimism.
Fuck you, Setsuna thought back, slow and deliberate. "I was being serious when I said I could arrange for your father to go to hell," he said out loud to Takahiro. "I'd just ask Kira to take him down for a visit. Of course, he might not come back -- demons aren't very civilized, and they're always hungry."
Takahiro blinked, and then knocked the side of his head like he thought he had something stuck in his ear. "What?"
Setsuna shrugged. "You heard me. Hell's a real place, just like earth. I've been there a few times, and if you want to send your father there, I know people who'd be willing to take him. On second thought, I don't think Kira's one of them; he'd probably say it's too much bother. But that's okay, I know other demons. I bet Mad Hatter would jump at the chance to play with a human and not get yelled at." He grinned at Lucifer, who shot him a look of mixed disgust and longsuffering patience.
"You presume too much," Lucifer said. "If Belial gets her claws into a human without my permission, it doesn't matter how much you want her to play with her food. She's my vassal, not yours."
"Are you two sure this is a good idea?" Sara asked, wrapping her arms around Takahiro's shoulders. "You remember what happened when Okazaki found out."
Takahiro blinked again. "Wait. You're serious? He's a demon? You've been to hell?"
Lucifer spread all four of his wings, his pitch-black feathers filling the room and rustling against the TV. "We're very serious. Setsuna and Sara have been to heaven as well, if that makes you feel any better," he said dryly.
There was a beat of silence, which stretched... and stretched... and stretched... until Setsuna couldn't stand it anymore and opened his mouth to say something, anything--
"Holy shit," Takahiro said, his eyes wide and stunned behind his glasses, and his open shock nothing whatsoever like Kato's cocky masks. "You're an angel. Tendo-san, there's an angel in your apartment."
"Fallen angel," Lucifer corrected, pulling in his wings. "I quit heaven some time ago." Then he smiled, Kira's old devil-may-care grin, and pointed his cigarette at Setsuna. "So did he, for that matter."
"Hey! Leave me out of this, you jerk!" Setsuna said, fishing a hundred yen coin from his pocket and throwing it at Lucifer for lack of a better weapon. "We're talking about demons and hell, and no matter how you twist it, I've never been a demon. That's your territory."
"I see little difference between one rebellion against God and another," Lucifer said, pocketing the coin, "especially since your allies were demonic beforehand. Mine were only rebranded after the battle."
"It's what you did after your respective rebellions that makes the difference," Sara said before Setsuna could think of a reasonable response. "Now stop confusing Hiro-kun or I'll throw you both out. He came here to find a safe place and you're not helping."
In her arms, Takahiro had gone very still. "If he's a fallen angel, and he fought God, and he lives in hell... Sara-san, this is just a dream, right? You don't really have the devil in your apartment, do you? You and Tendo-san are good people!"
Setsuna winced. Fuck.
I did warn you, Lucifer said, folding his arms and leaning against the window frame.
Oh, shut up.
---------------
It took nearly half an hour of fast and persistent explanations to convince Takahiro that yes, Setsuna and Sara had been angels in their past lives ("But we're human now, so forget about that. Really, forget it," Setsuna said), and yes, Lucifer was a fallen angel and the king of hell ("But he was human for a while, which is how we got to know him, at least this time around, and... you know, that's way too long a story to get into now," Setsuna said), and no, being the devil didn't necessarily mean that Lucifer was evil, just that he'd opposed God.
("You do realize that opposing God is the standard definition of evil, especially since I eventually helped kill the bastard," Lucifer said, studying the glove of black flames that shrouded his hand.
"You are not helping," Sara snarled at him. "Besides, you were tricked into that role, and then you spent thousands of years trying to help Alexiel just because you didn't like the way God treated her, so stop playing the 'I'm cold and heartless' card. It won't wash.")
Eventually, Takahiro uncurled from Sara's embrace and walked, slowly, warily, over to Lucifer. He pushed up his glasses, set his feet, and stared upward.
"You're the king of hell," he said.
"Yes."
"You were human for a while."
"Yes," Lucifer said again, looking vaguely amused.
"While you were human, you knew someone who looked like me. And something weird happened to him -- you said he could shape his body, and normal people can't do that -- and then he died," Takahiro said, shoving his hands into his pockets and slouching just a little bit. Like Kato before he said or did something outrageous, Setsuna thought, and tensed in sudden apprehension.
"You miss him," Takahiro continued. A faint grin tugged at one corner of his mouth, magnifying the visual echo. "I can tell."
Lucifer raised one eyebrow and said nothing. Setsuna held his breath. Sara stiffened in her seat, her hand clenching on the arm of the sofa.
Takahiro ignored the tension. "If Tendo-san and Sara-san say you're not all the way evil, I believe them. So if your friend was my past life, I don't mind." Now his smile settled in, bright and sharp and one breath away from twisting to draw blood. "But I'm not him and you're not human anymore, so it doesn't matter, just like Sara-san said. He's dead. You can't ever get him back. Nobody can reverse time."
"True enough," Lucifer agreed.
"Okay," said Takahiro.
There was a moment of silence. Then, "Okay what?" Setsuna asked, wary of the way Lucifer and Takahiro were staring at each other.
"I won't tell anyone," Takahiro said without turning, as if Lucifer had been the one to ask for clarification. "And if you want, I'll be your friend. I bet you're pretty lonely -- who wants to be friends with the devil? But I don't mind. It's not like humans are that great either. My parents suck, my teachers suck, everyone in my new school hates me, and my friends don't even text me anymore since I moved. So I know what it's like."
He stuck out one hand, palm empty and face up. "I'm Oda Takahiro. Nice to meet you, Lucifer-san."
Lucifer studied Takahiro, then nodded. "Likewise, Takahiro." He didn't take the boy's hand.
After an awkward pause, Takahiro dropped his arm and sighed. "Maybe you're not evil, but you're still a jerk."
Setsuna smiled in relief. "You have no idea, Hiro-kun. He's always been a jerk, but he's my best friend anyway. And I'm glad you know about him. Now Sara and I don't have to worry about keeping secrets from you."
"But don't tell your mother," Sara cautioned. "I don't think she'd take it nearly as well as you have."
Takahiro blinked. His mouth twitched and his hands clenched. Then he couldn't hold it back anymore and fell onto the sofa, laughing hysterically. "No! No, she wouldn't! She'd call you dangerous lunatics, and she'd lock me up in my room and never let me out again." He laughed harder. "Or she'd send me to my dad, and I'd be stuck all alone with him and his new wife and their kid -- their real kid -- and I'd have to act as bad as he thinks I am just to make him remember I'm alive." Takahiro curled into the arm of the sofa, pulling off his glasses and jamming his hands up against his closed eyes. "I'm not going to tell my mom. What do you think I am, crazy?"
"Of course not," Sara said, sitting down beside him and catching his hands in her own. "That doesn't mean I can't worry about you, Hiro-kun. Setsuna and I know all about family troubles and we hate seeing you unhappy."
Takahiro's mouth twisted. "Yeah, I know. Did you hate seeing that Kato guy unhappy too?"
"Yes," Setsuna said, with perfect honesty. "But we can help you. None of us could do anything for Kato in the end."
"So you're helping me because you couldn't help him," Takahiro concluded.
Unexpectedly, Lucifer laughed. "Get over yourself," he said. "They're helping you because they're bleeding hearts. They've done the same for idiots before you and they'll do it again for idiots after you. That has nothing to do with who you remind me of. But if you push Setsuna and Sara away to make your pride feel better, then you'll really remind me of Kato. He was crazy. He was also a dumbass. Don't worry about whether you might be his reincarnation. Worry about not repeating his mistakes."
Have you ever heard of a concept called sympathy? Setsuna thought acidly at Lucifer.
Yes. It's a waste of time, Lucifer answered. He glanced up at the clock on the wall and frowned. "It's nearly eleven. Is anyone expecting him home?"
Sara shot to her feet and grabbed her cell phone. "We forgot to call Oda-san! She must be frantic."
"No she isn't," Takahiro said. "This is the first place she checks if she notices I'm gone, and she hasn't called you." But he put his glasses back on and stood up from the sofa. "I should probably go home. I bet you guys want to talk about stuff without me here."
A ten-year-old shouldn't be that cynical, Setsuna thought once again. He really ought to take Takahiro's father on a brief tour of hell -- any man who couldn't value his own child deserved the shit scared out of him.
"You can stay," Sara said.
Takahiro flapped his hand in negation. "Nah. I feel better anyway. I can go home and play games online instead of bugging you. Just... I can still come by tomorrow afternoon, right?"
"Of course," Setsuna assured him. "Do you want us to walk you home?"
"I'm not a baby, Tendo-san. I can push the elevator buttons myself," Takahiro said, with a withering look. "Good night."
He closed the door behind himself with a quiet click.
---------------
Sara hurried over to the door and eased it open a crack, just enough to peek out and make sure Takahiro was really going home. Then she shut it, turned the lock, and threw the deadbolt.
"Isn't that overkill?" Setsuna asked.
Sara ignored him. Instead, she turned and glared at Lucifer. "What did you think you were doing? You always say that Setsuna and I aren't Alexiel and Jibril, that our past lives don't matter to our lives now. So why bring Kato-san up when you have no way to prove your theory? What good will it do to put worries in Hiro-kun's head? You can't have it both ways. If our past lives don't matter, his doesn't either -- and if his does, you've been lying to us for years." Her voice was hard and cold, her words ringing clear and distinct like shards of ice.
Setsuna winced as her anger washed through the apartment, but he held his tongue because she was right. There was something fishy about Lucifer's attitude toward Takahiro, and Sara had always been better at calling Kira out.
Lucifer stubbed out his cigarette on the windowsill. "I can prove my theory. You aren't sensitive enough to astral resonances to notice, but that boy's soul matches Kato's almost exactly, just like his body does. That would be normal for us -- it's more unusual that you don't remember being Alexiel and Jibril -- but it's wrong for a human. He hasn't moved on. I wanted to see how he'd react if we brought up his previous life, maybe jar something loose and get a feel for where the Crucible fouled up."
Setsuna sat heavily on the sofa. "Oh, fuck. You mean after everything, Kato's still getting screwed over?"
Lucifer shrugged. "The Crucible obviously didn't process him correctly, but I don't know if it screwed him over. He seems a lot less self-defeating this time around. Maybe that's because of whatever he carried with him from his last life."
"He wound up in another broken family. And maybe he's not self-defeating, yet, but he's getting awfully bitter," Setsuna said. "That sounds like a pattern to me, and I thought the only way those got started was if--" He paused, then finished the thought. "If Uriel laid a curse on someone."
"I never got to know Uriel properly, but he gave Kato the power to shape-shift, right?" Sara asked, her voice warming as she sat beside Setsuna on the sofa. "Why would he curse someone he was trying to help?"
"Why would anyone?" Lucifer said.
"Jerk," Setsuna said reflexively. He slung his left arm around Sara's shoulders, letting his fingers play with the collar of her blouse. She set her hand on his thigh -- nothing blatant, just a light, gentle warmth -- and suddenly Setsuna had to wrench his mind back to the conversation.
"Uh. I mean, Uriel wouldn't curse anyone, not after Alexiel," he said, fumbling back onto his previous train of thought. "Actually, I'm not even sure he could if he wanted to -- that power was in his voice, and he ripped up his throat so badly he couldn't talk anymore. But Kato's memory was fading even in Hades. Maybe Uriel tried to fix that and went too far by accident -- I mean, I know Kato still remembered me when he died, even though he'd been pretending he was losing his memory like dead souls are supposed to do."
Lucifer's face went still and blank, closing off his thoughts and reactions -- cold and alien in a way that Kira, for all his secrets, had never been. Then the corner of his mouth twitched upward and he was familiar again.
"You may be right. I'll have Kurai visit Hades and grill Uriel on the details of his little project," Lucifer said, leaning back against the window frame. "In the meantime, Oda Takahiro is doing well enough. His family may be broken and he may be a fledgling cynic, but you two are much better influences on him than I ever was on Kato."
Setsuna gave him a skeptical look. "Yeah, sure. Until he died, you were the only person outside his family that Kato even bothered to notice, and I bet without you he'd've overdosed and died years sooner. How is that not being a good friend?"
"He noticed me because I led him into a gang and enabled his addictions. I kept him alive because that was less annoying than dealing with people trying to comfort me about his death," Lucifer said dryly.
Setsuna waved his free hand. "Pffft. He would've ended up in some gang anyway -- we talked in Hades, you know. And don't you talk about enabling him. You didn't buy him drugs. I even remember lots of times you ditched your gang 'cause they were shooting up or getting high and you came to hang out with me and Sara instead. Kato had to realize you didn't like drugs. Yeah, you didn't help him get clean, but you kept him from getting kicked out of school. And don't talk like you didn't care about him. Maybe you buried him to protect me, but then you tossed your lighter in his grave. He was a lot more than an annoyance to you."
After a moment, Lucifer shrugged. "Perhaps. The point remains that while Takahiro retains the general pattern of Kato's personality and life circumstances, he doesn't have Kato's actual memories. Furthermore, you and Sara are helping him alter his situation so he can follow a less self-destructive path."
"Don't think I can't spot you changing the subject," Sara said with a smile in her voice. "You never did like it when people caught you doing something nice."
Lucifer acted as if she hadn't spoken. "All that aside, the original reason I came here tonight was to request your presence the day after tomorrow at a summit between hell and the Triumvirate-ruled portions of heaven. Raphael and Raziel have grown tired of ad-hoc negotiations with Belial over territorial disputes. They want to set official borders in the broken lands and around the portions of heaven they control. If you two are there, the meeting is slightly less certain to devolve into a riot."
"Because Raphael wants to look good in my eyes, and Michael and Belial will focus on Setsuna instead of you and Raphael," Sara concluded, graciously letting Lucifer get away with his blatant evasion.
Setsuna groaned. "Oh, man. You want me to beg off work and spend all day putting up with Hatter and your pyromaniac brother?"
"Three days," Lucifer said, a wicked grin lurking in his gray eyes and the corners of his mouth. "Think of it as payment for getting you away from the Tokyo police seven years ago."
"That was as much your fault as mine, so don't even--" Setsuna started to say, but Sara interrupted him.
"Fine," she said. "We'll be there. But in return, you have to get to know Hiro-kun. Setsuna and I will do our best to help him, but he could always use more friends. So could you -- especially ones who aren't also your subjects."
Lucifer went cold and blank again. "I fail to see your point."
"And here you told me you'd learned from your other lives. I think you're a liar. Or no, maybe you're just a coward," Sara said, her voice deceptively light. Setsuna froze, waiting for the explosion -- she and Kira had been volatile even as teenagers, always pushing each other at unexpected moments, and Lucifer's recovered power and memories hadn't done anything to make that dynamic less dangerous for anyone caught in the blast zone.
Lucifer stared at Sara. She held his gaze, the slight clench of her fingers on Setsuna's thigh the only outward sign of her tension.
Then Lucifer's posture eased and the sense of gathering flame and shadow dissipated. "Fine," he said, pulling another cigarette from his pocket and lighting it with a snap of his fingers. "Shall I take him on a tour of hell?"
"Don't be obtuse. I thought you might help him with his homework," Sara said. "You were always good at helping Setsuna make sense of things. I bet you could have helped Kato like that if you'd bothered to think of it. Now's your chance to make it up to him. He's already willing to give you a chance."
"Or if you're going to go on about reincarnation and clean slates again, think of it as doing something God would never have believed you could do," Setsuna added. "You don't have to like Hiro-kun. Just don't trap yourself into being as isolated as God wanted."
Lucifer knocked a bit of ash onto the windowsill and sighed. "No. If we're visiting you at the same time, I'll be polite. If he asks for help, I'll consider his request. But I won't seek him out. I'm through playing human." He raised his hand, forestalling Sara's protest. "Don't push me."
Sara pouted for a moment, then curled into Setsuna's side with a sigh, resting her head on his shoulder. "You're such a pain, Lucifer."
"We've known that for years," Setsuna murmured into her hair. "He grows on you anyway, doesn't he?"
Sara laughed. "Like mildew," she agreed.
"Fascinating as this topic is," Lucifer interjected, "I'd appreciate an answer about the summit."
Setsuna held up his right hand in a one-armed shrug. "I don't care. Sara? Your call." Dealing with angels and demons wasn't exactly number one on his list of favorite ways to spend a day, but then again, neither was dealing with his current supervisor and trying to keep the yakuza and the government from running his projects way past their cost estimates. And if he lost his temper around Hatter or Michael, nobody would blink twice if he started a fight. (On the other hand, Michael and Hatter could both knock him flat, which kind of took the joy out of hitting them.)
Sara hummed thoughtfully to herself. "Mmm. It's short notice to get a substitute teacher in, but no shorter than if I'd caught the flu. And it's been months since I've seen Kurai or Raphael. All right. We'll go. But you still owe us a favor."
"By what calculation--" Lucifer started.
Okay, this was getting ridiculous. And pointless. Time to short-circuit the argument. "Get us a cat," Setsuna said.
Lucifer stared at him. Sara twisted around and also stared at him. "You hated Yuki," she said.
"Yeah, well, Yuki hated me," Setsuna said. "Maybe if we got a sane cat, I wouldn't have so much trouble. And I know you miss the little monster."
Sara's eyes shimmered with incipient tears. Setsuna pulled her in for a hasty hug. "Hey, don't ever say I didn't do anything for you, okay?" he muttered. Because seriously, a cat. Cats hated him. But they loved Sara, just like she loved them, and he always had been crap at resisting anything she wanted.
"We have a deal," Lucifer said. "One cat, in return for three days at the summit. I'll send someone to pick you up in two days."
"Not before 9am," Setsuna qualified hastily, remembering various unfortunate morning interruptions of past years, "and if you send Hatter--"
"We'll have to hurt you," Sara finished, raising her head and meeting Lucifer's gaze. "Was there anything else?"
He shrugged. "Nothing important. We can catch up another day." He opened the window and flicked his cigarette out into the night air. "Stock up on cat food, and I'll see you in heaven."
Lucifer spread his wings and vanished into the electric twilight of Nagasaki's night sky.
---------------
"Why do you think Lucifer won't get to know Hiro-kun?" Sara asked later that night, as she and Setsuna lay side-by-side in bed. "He's still friends with us, after all -- he isn't just waiting for us to die and Alexiel and Jibril to wake up."
Setsuna shifted onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, which was dimly visible in the light seeping around the edge of the window shades and the greenish glow of the numbers on his and Sara's alarm clocks. "I'm not sure," he said slowly. "But if I had to guess--"
"You do," said Sara.
"--then I think it's a little because he knew us before he got his memories back, so he can't just pretend we don't matter. But it's also a little because we will wake up as Alexiel and Jibril -- and they'll remember our lives, right? Takahiro doesn't remember being Kato. There isn't the same line of connection."
Sara was silent for a minute. The faint hum of the refrigerator turning on, and the muffled noise of the city night, seemed to swell in Setsuna's ears.
"He doesn't want connections he knows won't last," Sara said eventually. She sighed, and slid her leg over until her foot rested on Setsuna's ankle. "Maybe it's just as well we're not going to have children. I bet he'd keep his distance from them too, and that would hurt."
Setsuna made a questioning noise.
"Our children wouldn't have angels' souls," Sara clarified. "They'd be human. They wouldn't remember us from life to life, even if we remembered them. We could watch for a thousand years, trying to protect them, and they'd never recognize us the way we'd want them to, not after they'd been through the Crucible."
The bed shifted as she edged closer to Setsuna, pressing herself against his side. "I don't think I could take that. Maybe Jibril could stay more distant, but I doubt it. You stormed heaven for me and Alexiel practically sold her soul for her brother -- do you think either of you would do any less for your child?"
Oh. "I never thought of that," Setsuna said, suddenly chilled despite the warmth of Sara's body against his.
"Yes, well, it just means you were right for more than one reason," Sara said. She reached sideways under the sheet and clasped Setsuna's hand. "Still, sometimes I look at my students or Hiro-kun or babies in the park, and I wish..."
"Yeah," Setsuna whispered. "I know."
They had decided against children. It was the right choice. But sometimes it still hurt.
---------------------------------------------
End of Story
---------------------------------------------
So yeah. A little angstier than I'd intended, but whatever -- it's done! \o/
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-02 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-03 03:12 am (UTC)It's interesting to write this trio, because while we see Setsuna interact extensively with both Sara and Kira/Lucifer in canon, we only see Sara interact with Kira once, at the very beginning before any weirdness disrupts their lives. She's briefly in the same scene with Lucifer near the very end, but that's in the middle of a battle, she's crazy for part of it, and Lucifer is preoccupied with telling Setsuna to sacrifice him in order to kill God. So I am extrapolating a LOT based on the easy familiarity they all three show in that one trio-interaction, a couple of "photographs" showing the three of them in happier times, and my understanding of their personalities. I'm glad my results are working for you so far!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-02 05:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-02 06:29 am (UTC)I hope you caught your bus. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-02 09:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-03 02:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-05 07:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-06 02:29 am (UTC)As for Okazaki, his accidental reunion with Setsuna, Sara, and Lucifer is what kicks off the plot of "The Transient and the Eternal: Listening," otherwise known as the story wherein the Tokyo police try to arrest Lucifer for Kato's murder and hijinks ensue. I have had to scrap three partial rough drafts of that fic for various reasons, but I have every intention of defeating it one day. It will not remain a Noodle Incident forever! (Warning: link goes to TVTropes. Click at your own risk. *grin*)
(no subject)
Date: 2018-08-01 05:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-08-01 03:44 pm (UTC)