Author's Notes

And this is the end. Originally this story was fourteen chapters, but the chapters were in mind half as long as they turned out, so the overall length is the same despite the deletion of some scenes. Originally I had a court case and all, but then realised it's useless, and some stuff with poison but then decided there's plenty with the brain damage and we don't need to complicate things further. And a lot of things are open. Besides, I love the ending the way it is. It's what started the whole fic though I wasn't particularly satisfied with some other parts. That's the problem with writing the end first…*sighs*

Enjoy, and tell me what you think.

Knowledge without Force

Knowledge is power, but sometimes you need a little force to push. Experience shuns childhood, so it's not children caught in an adult's game. But a player had better yield, before others pay the price.

Kouji M & Takuya K

Genre/s: Drama/Suspense

Rating: M

Epilogue

Final Destination

'How are you?'

'I'm fine.'

She was lying through her teeth, but then no-one could expect anything different. The colour was yet to return to her skin, leaving it cold and pallid like a bleached bed-sheet, and the green seemed like the murky army green rather than the mysterious imp that used to dance in them. Not that he would risk touching her; the currently released restraints were enough of a reminder.

For the moment, apart from her short answers, she was sullenly silent. The silence was defensive, ironically so since the voice of the wind had always been loud and strong. But the girl in front of him looked nothing like the strong self-assured warrior of wind, nor did he, catching his dimmed reflection in the glass, look anything like the charismatic stubbornly proud warrior of flame.

Neither pair of eyes locked. The blonde's were drifting out the window, wrapping the blankets tightly around her. Looking distantly, you'd think she was just cold, but there was far more beneath the surface that went unsaid.

Recovering well. Hmmph. They were probably comparing to the mess they had brought in on the gurney, sickened by the sadism (seriously, who the hell cut up a girl's uterus and dumped squirming rats in before sewing her up) displayed and further sickened by the fact that whoever it was, was still out there, ready for another strike.

They knew nothing.

'What did you do?' Izumi asked suddenly, just as the other was about to succumb to the silence. If anything, in the few minutes that had passed she had grown slightly more pale, and beneath the wrapped sheets she clutched herself, specifically her torso, tightly. 'Did you give in?'

The tone made it hard to distinguish her viewpoint.

'What?' The other hadn't expected the sudden question.

"Once you've broken a few bricks, the rest crumble on their own," the female quoted in an almost mechanical tone.

'Yeah…' That was the truth, in all its brutal glory. 'Friendship verses humanity. It's a decision that always turns in on itself.' He paused, biting his lip hard before looking at the other. 'Which way would you have had it?'

She turned her head. 'It doesn't matter.'

'Dammit, it does.'

'Then you should have told me.'

Something in her face changed.

'Get out.'

'Izumi-'

'Get out!' she shrieked, before clawing at her blanket. The sudden spike dragged in a nurse as the other shrieked.

'Get out! Get out! Get them out!'

'They're gone.' The doctor had operated and removed the dead pests, but the subliminal message wasn't lost on anyone there to witness. Remove a few bricks, and even the strongest walls would crumble.

It was as if someone had put a new reel of film into the cassette and played loop. No matter who it was, it was the same result.

They really had fallen apart at the seams. No-one was really talking, connecting...no-one could. Damn that God-self-centred guy…or whatever he was. Between the three, (assuming the information they had managed to get out of each other), nothing new had been discovered. A shadow just came and went and left them sprawled to start over.

'Kouichi...'

It was said so quietly that the other couldn't hear him...not that it mattered. The damage to the temporal lobe meant the other's hearing was permanently shot. The neurologist claimed they might be able to use a hearing aid, but even that wouldn't help the comprehension of music, something that was also under the jurisdiction of the temporal lobe and apparently lost as soon as the grip was examined. Listening became obvious as well; the melodies were still as perfect as they had always been, but mechanical, hollow, empty…

…just like the person playing them.

He touched his shoulder and the other looked at him with slight annoyance showing in his face. That was another difference; the old Kouichi would never have had that look on his face.

'What is it?'

When the other said nothing, or rather wrote nothing and showed him, he turned his face away again. Neither twin had ever been one for small talk, but the silence between them was nothing like what it had once been. Nor was anything, including him.

At least he could talk fine. And read. The Doctors had been rather worried about that. And his memories too; the temporal lobe was responsible for quite a bit. But Kouichi had just quietly, and a little coldly which was unlike him, stated that there was nothing he had forgotten, but had only commented snappishly after a great deal of prodding that it might as well be a VHS he had once seen for all he felt about it.

Said so bluntly, it had hurt. Really, it had. And Kouichi had probably realised that as well because he had turned his head towards the window and remained silent, but it was a mark of how much the accident had changed him that no flicker fluttered across his eyes or face.

Doctor commented it was nothing unusual. That it happened a lot in road accidents.

But it had practically destroyed their relationship as brothers. He might as well have been some kid sitting in a corner of one of his classes. Not that no-one tried during breaks within the haul to recovery, but nothing could be substituted for sincerity.

Nothing could change the past. But still he clung to it. Unlike his brother who had learnt from his past err and had chosen the other route, to look towards the future. And perhaps even now, that was what he was doing…

He had brought his cello. The one his brother had loved playing. He had, but it wasn't the sweet contentment or the happy little jig, or even the wild joy he had once played at Takuya's birthday party and triggered some sort of wild dance.

The elder twin picked up the bow again to set it horizontally, adjusting himself slightly so that the S-string tuning peg rested just below the left ear, and the cello's body balanced as comfortable as possible on his knees and the upper boat on his upper chest. The pale fingers, all five, curled around the bow, as it was drawn gently across the strings. Force alternated in the index finger and to a lesser extent, the middle finger, guiding the bow perpendicular to the strings and never straying too far from the fingerboard.

A soft, mellow sound floated out, hardly defined but beautiful in its own haunting way. The observer listened; that was all he could do, watching a deaf boy yearn and reach for a thing he could no longer comprehend. As for the player, the cellist, he closed his eyes as he continued bowing sul tasto, for a brief moment listening the melodies sound in ears that could no longer hear...but as fast as they had descended upon him, they were gone, without sense, without purpose, and he was left with simply the very real possibility that an old memory had surfaced in association with the new play.

The bow still moved, rhythmically, methodologically, the tune repeating itself over and over, never to be heard for the one who yearned for it. But he didn't, not really; everything simply felt numb. It was old habits, he supposed, that drove him here, told him to play a tune he could not hear and gain nothing of, simply repeating the same hand movements over and over and over again.

He opened his eyes again, lost in the repetition, the only thing of the present that could hold its form. His head, for a moment, snapped upwards, tilting towards the sky, and those eyes, still cerulean blue but no longer the sparkling gem they had once been, met ones that should have identical if an age didn't separate them.

For reasons he could not explain, the heart he could barely feel cried at that. Not at the thought; it had not processed at the first tear that tethered at the edge of his lashes, and it had faded into nothing soonafter. But at the simple fact, that he was something forever gone now. Something he had risked so much to regain, was now gone.

More tears followed the first, glistening in the afternoon sun, as he felt warm arms embrace him. They were physically warm, gentle he supposed, but there was nothing intimate about the hold. Nothing substantial. Or perhaps there was and he simply remained deaf to it...just like he remained deaf to his world. Something tickled his right ear; it was annoying, he thought for a moment, but he forgot ever thinking that thereafter. The tears still flowed though, slowly, like a spring barely trickling a sustenance that could save mankind, marking their path with small moist tracks down his cheeks. For a moment, a single drop hovered, at his chin, before it fell on to the hands over the cello, pale like his, but warm as opposed to his cold, marking the spot it had fallen as it evaporated on the skin.

It reminded him of another time...but they weren't his memories; not really. The old Kouichi was dead; the one who had been soft, gentle, compassionate, artistic...he was a new one: numb, almost mechanical in a way. Unfeeling, stagnated within the cycle of repetition which was the only thing that even felt familiar to him. But the motions meant nothing, and he knew now they never would.

Kouji watched him play on, and the tears that tricked down his cheeks. He held his own; it was unfair to indulge in that comfort while it remained so foreign to his twin. He cried, he saw that, but those moist eyes held not the gentle soul of darkness they once had. All they held was a boy looking for his footing in the world and carrying with him a burden he could not hold. He would take that burden away. Really, he would...if it had been anything else. But he was selfish, too selfish. And his brother was paying for it. And not just him; they were all playing the price for playing an adult's game.

'I'm so sorry,' he whispered brokenly, for the first time to him since he had awoken. But he knew the apology fell on deaf ears, just another burden to carry, regardless of what others said or tried to say. Because the one person who could lift that burden from him, the one person he would allow, was now simply a wraith, a shadow of his former self, and he would not, could not, comprehend the pain that embraced him still.

He tightened his hold, attempting to reassure his heart of the tangibility. Perhaps a little too hard, as the head tilted slightly to regard him. It seemed so reminiscent of the Ni-san he knew and loved that hope almost exploded...but there was only the dullest recognition in his eyes, and nothing more.

Within his hold, the hand holding the bow still moved, singing an indecisive melody to the air.

The End

Post Author's Notes

Oddly enough, I actually wrote this ending (from "the elder twin picked up his bow…") before starting the first chapter. The scene had just been swimming around in my head for too long, screaming out: 'Write me! Write me!' So I did, and when I got to that last sentence, I almost started bawling. (Luckily I didn't; I was supposed to be doing a biology assignment).

I didn't explain Junpei and Tomoki's reactions because I already alluded to them in the previous chapters. It was really only Izumi and Kouichi who needed explaining, and of course the main characters need to be around for curtains. Also, as for the intentions to our unnamed "villain" – one of my rare cases where there is a clear-cut villain, it was in the end a matter of intention. Will is the most powerful weapon a creature of free will can have, and that's basically humans unless you want to get into religious aspects which is a different story altogether. Kouji and Takuya carried the brunt of Susanoomon and Kouichi carried only the key that triggered the process but nothing of the being himself, seeing as he never became Susanoomon. That should be enough to piece the rest together, but keep in mind it is fairy open ended so anything could still happen, even though the fic is finished.