[love_bingo FIC] "Promises Kept and Broken" (YnM, PG-13)

[matrixrefugee]

This one just shaped itself into a triptych in my head, and I'm quite proud of how it turned out!

Pairings: Muraki/OFC, Muraki/Ukyou, Muraki/Oriya
Word Count: 600
Prompt: "promises"


The platform of the railway station in Shinjuku, just before rush hour. The girl knelt on the ledge above the tracks, waiting for the train to approach. She had positioned herself inconspicuously, trying to make it seem that she merely sat there waiting to board the train.

A shadow fell over her. She trembled and looked up to find a beautiful, pale man kneeling behind her.

"What's troubling you, young lady?" he asked, gently.

She poured out her story to him, of the student in her class whom she had fallen for, and how they had become lovers, how she had given herself to him completely, of how he had jilted her and taken up with another classmate who had always looked down on her. And now, she despaired that she would ever know love again.

And so he put an arm about her, promising her that she would never again know this feeling of despair.

She never would: once she lay sated with love making and drained on the bed in a room of a nearby love hotel, he took up his pillow and gently smothered her, taking the last of her life-force.

* * *

Muraki hated putting Ukyou off for much longer. After had had returned from completing his medical studies at Oxford University, he had asked her to marry him, but things seemed to keep happening to delay the wedding. First, he had to get settled in what had been his father's practice, then he had several high priority patients to tend to.

Then came the attempt on his life by a disgruntled family member of a patient who had died in his care, an attack that left him with one good eye and changed internally, preternaturally. Afterward, he felt that dark part of him pull away from her: it did not think her a suitable mate for its host.

Right about that time, Muraki's former mentor at Shion University, Dr. Hideaki Satomi, had started a new research project dealing with cloning human organs, something which twigged Muraki's interest. That and he was one of the few people in their field who still took the eccentric professor's ideas seriously. He even began to collect genetic specimens for the experiment -- one way to cover his need to sacrifice a victim to his own inner darkness. He promised Ukyou that this research could benefit her, heal her of the heart disease and other problems that plagued her health, that it might even allow them to have a family. He promised Ukyou that when this research was finished, that they would get married.

* * *

Standing with Oriya in the moonlight by Sagano, the light of the memorial lamps flickering on their faces, the moonlight silvering their backs. Muraki promised that this would be the last time that he would ask a favor of his old friend, that his own part in Satomi's research would soon be completed, and that it related to the unconscious young man he carried into a back room of Kou Kaku Rou the night before.

But he could not promise if he would come back, or if he did, if he would return in a shape that Oriya would recognize. This might be the final stage in his evolution, in his development as a preternatural entity. He did not even know if he would survive, if the shinigami's flesh would be his healing or his death. This, unfortunately was not enough for Oriya, whose despair and concern were palpable. All he could promise his friend and donor and sometime bed-mate was that this would be the last time he would ask Oriya to cover his tracks.

Comments

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[noizchild.livejournal.com]

Give me until next Wednesday and I'll have the next square ready for mine.