Session

Summary - For some reason, they had been given puppets, and it was all Sorata's fault. But you had to pity the guy. He had NO idea what he'd let himself in for...

CLAMPverse: TRC, random world

Genre: ... Crackish

Warnings: For anyone who only follows the manga as it comes out in English: minor spoilers for Acid Tokyo. Likely-OOCness. I'm so sorry! I had to do it to fit in every expression from my inspiration. (Which was a comic by lj-user niconeko.) Also, there are X-characters... so yeah, surprise, surprise, FK, SS.

A/N - Er. Yeah. Um. I don't know what to say about this. I think maybe I should be shot. Also, I posted this previously on livejournal, so in case you were wondering, yeah, yeah, Ilumena Luinramwen and vice versa.

Disclaimer - You want it? You can have it! (CLAMP will kill you if you try)

-

For some reason, they had been given puppets.

It was ALL SORATA'S FAULT, Kamui decided, glowering at the Sakurazuka brothers, who were making their puppets do some ridiculously complicated secret handshake, at least until Seishirou got bored and tried stabbing the Fuuma-puppet through the chest with his puppet's blunt little nub of a hand.

"Ow!"

"All right, everyone, settle down!" Sorata said happily, standing up with one foot on his chair in a dramatic pose, his own puppet standing proud with its nub-hands on its non-existent hips. "We're just waiting for the last member of our group therapy to show up, and then we'll get right down to business!"

Yes, Kamui decided, still glowering, no matter what world they went to, no matter where they found Sorata, insanity was a deep and intrinsic part of his soul.

So why was he not surprised that in this one, he was a psychiatrist?

"If they don't care that they're late, we should just get started without them," Fuuma complained, making his puppet sulk at Seishirou's. "I just wanna get this over with. I don't know what good you think this will do. Nii-san and I have years and years of perfecting our insanity. Group therapy is just not going to cut it."

Seishirou raised an amused eyebrow. "You're not as happy as I thought you'd be to be in the same room as your Kamui-kun."

Kamui choked, and Sorata looked alarmed, possibly because the puppet was going bright red and hiding its face, and he had no idea how it was doing it.

"I agree with Fuuma," Kamui said when he could breathe again. "Let's just get this the hell over with, all right?" And please, please, PLEASE don't let him make it here in time. Please, please, PLEASE...

"I want to wait," Seishirou said, stubbornly.

"Why?!" chorused Fuuma and Kamui.

He smirked. Kamui suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. Oh please, no, make him be late...

"Ah, about that -" Sorata said with an uneasy grin. Kamui was momentarily glad to find that he was not the only one that The Smirk creeped out.

The door burst open.

"Arisugawa-sensei, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to be late -!"

Kamui shut his eyes. So much for the practical application of faith.

"I'm sorry if I held everyone up, I - F-Fuuma-san?! Wh-what are you doing he - Seishirou-san!!"

His eyes flared open and he tensed, waiting for everything to go to hell -

And saw Seishirou standing quite close to his twin, but not actually touching him. Instead, Seishirou's puppet was bowing elegantly before kissing Subaru's hand, and Subaru was going pink, and lowering his eyes in shy embarrassment but not looking at all freaked out...

"What. The hell?" Kamui said, weakly.

Fuuma's puppet had gone into a cheer-routine, complete with pink and white pom-poms and tiny flags with hearts on them.

"Shut up, Fuuma!"

Fuuma did not listen.

"I missed you, Subaru-kun," Seishirou said in a low, silky voice over the sound of his brother's encouragements, and Subaru's eyes widened as their gazes met. His cheeks stained faintly pink.

Sorata coughed, effectively breaking the moment. Thankfully, it also brought a halt to Fuuma cheering.

"L! O! V! E! What does that spell?! TROOOO LUUU – oh. Are we doing something now?"

"Ah - Subaru-san, your puppet, if you please," Sorata said, pretending to ignore Fuuma.

"Huh?" Subaru blinked, turned away from Seishirou, and stared in bewilderment at the strange cloth toy that Sorata was holding out to him. "Um. What? And -" Pink again. "Why does it look like me?"

"I made 'em all last night," Sorata said proudly. "Without any help from Nee-chan, either. (She's gorgeous, but my honey can't sew for beans!) Now if you'll sit down, Subaru-san, we'll get started right away and you all get to know why you have puppets!"

"... Yay?" said Fuuma.

"Sit by me, Subaru-kun!" Seishirou insisted, pulling an empty chair closer, and tugging on Subaru's free hand.

Kamui saw red. All this time running from the bastard, and there was no way in the multiverse that he was possibly going to let him win now, or that easily.

"Subaru," he interrupted, urgently, and Subaru glanced up, guiltily, at Kamui. There was shame in his eyes, and Kamui was sure he had him, especially when he pulled out the stricken look -

And then Seishirou tugged harder, Subaru lost his balance, and fell down into Seishirou's lap, where he proceeded to turn tomato red. Seishirou smirked, and proceeded to take advantage of the situation.

"Um!" Subaru apparently hadn't noticed that Seishirou's one arm was twined about his waist quite possessively. He was somewhat preoccupied with the way that Seishirou's puppet appeared to be trying to molest his.

Not, Kamui noted, feeling some angst coming on, as though he was totally creeped out by it either. His suspicions that his brother had never actually hated or been scared of the eldest Sakurazuka seemed to be being proven rather decisively.

...Why was he even surprised any more? Life sucked, and Subaru liked the stalker type.

"aHEM!" Sorata cleared his throat, sounding annoyed. "Separate yourselves and your puppets! And by that, I mean that Subaru-san needs his own chair, and whatever your puppets are doing, tell them to stop it or I'm separating them by force."

Seishirou and his puppet pouted, but let Subaru go. Kamui was just ever so slightly relieved when Subaru fled across the circle to the chair beside his twin.

"All righty then!" Sorata said, looking pleased with himself. "Let's begin, shall we? Do you all know each other?"

"Yes," hissed Kamui, feeling his back trying to arch like an angry cat's.

Fuuma's puppet did a fangirl wriggle of joy and bliss at the sight of angry-kitty-Kamui.

"... I see. Well, could you go around the circle then and tell us why you think you're here?"

"We won it as a prize," Kamui said through gritted teeth. "You set up a trap to soak people with water balloons, and I 'just happened' to be the hundredth person to set it off, so I won a therapy session and apparently everyone else 'just happened' to set it off at an important number as well, and - what the hell were you doing setting up a water balloon trap in front of your office anyways? I thought you were supposed to be a professional!"

"Ah," said Sorata, attempting to look mysterious and rather failing. "There are deep scientific reasons for that, none of which mere laymen like yourselves could possibly understand."

"... You were bored out of your skull, right?" Kamui tried, knowing Sorata pretty well after constantly running into him in almost every world they went through.

"Ah, well, yeah," mumbled Sorata, scratching his head in embarrassment. "But! That's not the whole reason why! It was genuinely legitimate! I swear!"

"Uh-huh. Sure."

Sorata coughed. "OK, moving on! Next thing! Now, everyone has problems of some sort, so I want you all to think about this for a minute and then we'll actually go around the circle this time, and you'll tell us about whatever problems are affecting you the most right now."

Long moment of thoughtful silence.

Apparently none of them had any concept of a circle, because they all started talking at once.

"My mother's insane! She killed my father!"

"And she tried to seduce me."

"My parents were murdered in front of me!"

"I'm Ichihara Yuuko's wage-slave and will be for the rest of eternity to pay for the power to travel across dimensions, reasons for wanting to being something that even I have no bloody clue about."

"I look like a girl."

"Me too!"

"Subaru-kun, that's not true. Don't even say that! Even though you are an extraordinarily beautiful boy, I have never, ever thought that you look like a girl."

"You bastard stop hitting on my twin!"

"I'm not hitting on him. I'm just complimenting him. There's a difference."

"... We're vampires -"

"Kamui-kun hates me and is constantly trying to kill me."

"Kamui hates me too!"

"He keeps Subaru-kun away from me and it's not fair -"

"We're on the run because that bastard wants to kill us and use our blood to become immortal!"

"Kamui killed me once. How's that for a good relationship with your future brother-in-law?"

"DON'T YOU START THAT AGAIN, YOU FREAK! YOU DIDN'T EVEN HAVE THE DECENCY TO STAY DEAD!"

"- Just because I'm in love with your twin isn't a reason to get all pissy at me..."

"What about the fact that you're a sociopathic pedophile? Is that not a problem to you too?!"

"... Pardon? I'm sorry, did you say something worth paying attention to?"

"Kamui hates me!"

"Shut up, you already said that!"

"Kamui doesn't love me!"

"You constantly molest me and you don't even have the excuse that you've mistaken me for a girl like most of the others do!"

"You let other people molest you?!"

"I don't ask for it!"

"Subaru-kun doesn't love me. But then I suppose a lowly hunter like myself is not fit for a beautiful near-immortal like him -"

"You don't molest him enough, that's why -"

"HE MOLESTS HIM PLENTY!"

"S-S-Seishirou-san...! Don't go saying things like that -!"

"And don't you go acting all shy and blushy at him again, Subaru! Geez!"

"But -"

"You said you weren't in love with him any more! Don't tell me you are again!"

"But I -"

"If he is, can I molest you?"

"QUIET!" yelled Sorata, loud enough to stop the four from bickering.

Predictably, Subaru was the only one to look embarrassed. "I'm sorry, Arisugawa-sensei, that was incredibly childish of us..."

"...That's OK. Excuse me for a moment," Sorata said weakly. "I think I need to go, er, do stuff... important stuff... that can't wait until later.. I'll be right back don't kill each other OK bye!"

The door banged shut behind him in his hurry to get out of the room.

Silence, for a long, long moment, though Kamui, straining his ears, thought he heard moans of despair from the direction of the corridor.

And then, because, of course, there was always someone who couldn't leave well enough alone:

"Subaru-kun... you're in love with me?"

Subaru stared at his hands, face beet red and mortified beyond all belief.

"Shut up," Kamui said fiercely, even if letting Seishirou become aware of the possibility had been entirely his own fault.

Silence.

"Subaru-kun... are you really -?"

"I said shut up!" snarled Kamui, springing to his feet. His puppet sprouted tiny but extremely long claws.

"Um," said Subaru, quietly, going faintly pink.

"Yes, Subaru-kun?"

"Um. I... Well. Um. Yes?"

Kamui's jaw dropped in complete and utter disbelief, and Seishirou beamed at everyone like a child on Christmas morning, and continued beaming even after Sorata came back into the room, pale but still forcing the cheery professional smile.

"Well, it sounds like we have, er, a... lot of problems to work through today. Er. I can't do anything about, er, anyone's parents or anything else that's happened with the past, so let's concentrate on your interpersonal relationships within this group, and, um, go from there. Yeah."

Sorata had just committed himself to hell by that statement, Kamui decided, and rather pitied the guy.

"So, let me make sure I have this straight," he went on. "Kamui-san, you hate everyone here, except for Subaru-san. Fuuma-san, you and your brother aren't exactly close, and if I'm right, you like Kamui-san, which is a problem because he hates you because you molest him randomly. Seishirou-san, you're having jealousy issues with your brother and dislike Kamui-san for getting in your way, and you're, er, in love with Subaru-san, who is taking playing hard-to-get to extremes. Subaru-san, you're very close to your brother, you don't mind Fuuma-san unless he's pissing Kamui-san off again, and you're in love with Seishirou-san in spite of the fact that he's a possessive sociopathic freak and your twin will do anything to keep you two apart because he thinks it's protecting you. Am I right?"

Dead silence for a moment.

"You got all that out of our screaming?" Subaru said, sounding impressed.

"Uh, well, ah, actually, your files. Someone named Ichihara sent them to me. I don't know how she knew."

Silence again, until Kamui, completely unnerved and still angry as anything, could not help himself any longer.

"... Fuuma, you're a pervert!"

"And proud of it!"

"And so is your puppet! Keep it away from mine!"

"That's no fair, how come you're letting your twin's puppet be seduced again by Nii-san's? Have you finally accepted their love?"

"Subaru is not in love with a sociopathic freak, what are you saying?!"

"I am not a sociopathic freak!"

"Kamui -"

"If you're not a sociopathic freak, then I'm Card Captor Sakura!"

"QUIET!" yelled Sorata again, desperately

They kept bickering. Kamui's eyes started slitting.

The door opened, and a tall, slender woman with a fall of straight black silk hair walked through, eyes narrowed. She had a sword in her hands. "Sorata-san, what is going on in here?"

They immediately fell silent, eyes focussed on the angry girl with the sharp pointy object. Sorata beamed with gratitude.

"My honey! You saved me! ...Why do you have a sword? Oh wow, you have a sword! Kyaaaaa, it's such a sexy look!"

She ignored him and stared suspiciously at the others. "You're interrupting the therapeutic yoga class next door."

"We're sorry," Subaru apologized. "We'll try to keep it down from now on."

She kept staring. "You'd better." And then she turned and left.

"Don't gooooo!" wailed Sorata, dropping all professionalism in favour of abject terror.

Unsurprisingly, the girl ignored Sorata's melodramatics. In spite of his abandonment, Sorata was essentially good-natured and optimistic, so he had himself under control again only seconds later (even if he was paler than usual).

"... Why did she have a sword?" Sorata wondered again, then shrugged, as apparently it was of little concern to him. This was, essentially, true. After all, he was in a roomful of insane people, and so it was decidedly obvious that things like a sword-wielding girlfriend were not the main issue here. "Oh well.

"Since we're all, um, very clear on what our problems are, our goal will be to try to work through at least one for each person. And this where your puppets come in. Pull your chairs over here, around this table, and we'll get started."

"Um," said Subaru. "What are we going to be doing...?"

"Role-play!" Sorata explained, finally able to get to the point. "We're going to work through common scenarios with the puppets, and then we're going to take a look at different ways we can approach each one. All right, who wants to start?"

"Are you kidding me?" Kamui said in disbelief. "No way!"

"I'll start!" Seishirou said. "I'll need Subaru-kun's help, of course. And I suppose Kamui-kun had better participate as well, as he's always the one getting in the way..." The Seishirou-puppet flew across the table at the Subaru-puppet and started snuggling it happily.

"Hey!" The Kamui-puppet sprouted claws once again, dove at the Seishirou-puppet. He didn't even stop to consider how bizarre it was to get his revenge through the puppet, and not through actually tearing his throat out, which was what he'd always tried before.

"S-Seishirou-san...!" The Subaru-puppet was blushing, as was its vampiric counterpart.

"See, Kamui-kun? Subaru-kun and I get along just fine!"

"YOU'RE MOLESTING HIM! HIS PUPPET! WHATEVER! NO! NOT ALLOWED! GET AWAY FROM HIM YOU SICK CREEP!"

The Seishirou-puppet was summarily disemboweled, and Sorata looked like he was going to cry.

"My... my masterpiece..." he whimpered. "What did you do to it?!"

"Seishirou-san!" Subaru cried in shock. "Are you all right?"

"Dying... so painful..." gasped Seishirou, making the puppet crumple to the table-top. "I'm... not going to make it... Subaru-kun... I... you..."

"No! Seishirou-san!"

Fuuma coughed. "You do realize that it was only the puppet that died, right, you two?"

"It was a part of my soul," Seishirou avowed, looking hurt. "You wouldn't understand."

Sorata, Kamui noted, as he began slipping into the dark sea of angst once more, was really looking ill now.

Fuuma's puppet began to molest his, apparently out of boredom and instinct.

"Stop it," he mumbled unhappily, but was too depressed to shake it off.

"You're so cute, Kamui" was his only reply.

"... Ya know what? I think you guys are beyond therapy," Sorata said fervently. "Totally, completely, beyond my help."

Kamui was inclined to agree.