A/N: In a sense, some ideas should remain a private fantasy. There's something about 3 a.m. though that makes one lose some inhibitions. I've always imagined an alternate universe situation in a feudal era with Doumeki as a shinto priest with his exorcism bow, and Watanuki as an onmyouji. In this work, I indulged myself. *sigh* I guess until I can spare the time and energy to do this properly...

In Another Life

A world where even the palest grass shoots were stained with thick blood dripping onto the severed fingers of a manor guard. Doumeki's pure white robes were befouled by the dreaded corruption of death- a Shinto priest's nightmare. Yet he hadn't even a reproachful gaze for me as the fires cast his soot-streaked cheeks in a hellish light. Alone, thronged by the riven corpses darkening the earth, he checked the burning gash in my side.

"Run, Shizuka-dono. There is nothing left for you here." Each breath shallower than the next. I had expended far too much of my spiritual strength.

"There is nothing left," he retorted simply. The proof of that hung over us. The twisted vermillion of twilight stained the blackened sky as the sun bled into the horizon.

"When night falls, their comrades will rout the land. If you leave now-" For all the power those demons that possessed the lord and his men had demonstrated, they had thrown themselves before our spells far too readily to have been the masterminds behind the deception.

"We'll be stronger together," he insisted with infuriating calm, quite ignoring the weeping spear wound in his left shoulder as he began to clean mine. His bow hung as limply by his side as that disabled left arm.

"Don't be stupid!" A coughing bout broke my furious reasons into ragged remonstrance. "Haa- every second of this taint- haa- weakens you! I weaken you!"

"I'm not talking about spiritual power." He calmly explained as his fingers worked gently around the torn flesh. "I'm talking about will."

"Doumeki-" I tried again but he cut me off.

"Because you're the type who will give up on himself too easily- I have to survive to keep you from doing something stupid." My silence drew his resolute gaze against my blurring vision.

"Stupid… I'm the reason the demons came…" I whispered as the confused tears fought to be free.

"You don't know that-" He started to soothe.

"YOU DO!"

The chill of the night touched only my eyes, hellfire surged within my blood.

"I bear the forbidden soul that every demon covets… the incarnation of darkest temptation… and because I dared believe in a home of my own…" My words were tumbling as helplessly as my emotions.

"We just need to find a purer land, a better anchor for a spiritual barrier-" He tried to reason.

I watched the taut cords in his cheeks play anxiously. The yearning to touch them weighed more than tomorrow did upon my heart, but whatever I touched was doomed to fall beneath the crushing talons of clamouring demons.

"I killed the lord you swore to protect-"

"No-"

"…the people you swore to protect-"

"-none of this-"

"…the land your ancestors have guarded for generations-"

"I will not watch you die!" Clutching my robes, his trembling grip struggled to secure me, as if he feared losing his hold. "I staked their lives just so I could keep you here- do you get it now?"

"What… you…" I stammered.

"You're so obsessed about demons seeking to lay their claim over you that you couldn't… wouldn't notice a human doing the same. Watanuki… Watanuki… only you… you're the only one I won't let go of." His head remained bowed against the pained battering of my heart while the agony of his breaths hemmed me in.

"You fool… you've lost everything… and you still…" I mumbled numbly.

"I lost that a long time ago… when I first found you, collapsed before that wayside shrine." Soft murmurs warm against my chest. "When I found that one thing, that only thing."

But what did that mean? I gazed unseeing at the crimson emptiness around us, closing in on us.

"I will not be yours in this life…" I quavered, "but if I am permitted a next… this debt to you…"

Malice twisted the latent poison of grievance in the spiritual field, energized hatred rippling around our pale auras. They approached. He raised a smile stricken with bitter tears, the last stores of his power awakened to their brightest incandescence.

"Just let them take me in this life… you can still escape." I could only pretend to accept my fate, but if I had to witness them tear Doumeki apart… I simply had no courage for that.

"I told you," he murmured as he leaned in with a radiance that emanated from a deeper place than mere power, "I'm claiming you for my own."

Such… warmth… but in the instant that the tide of his passion weighed into mine past our lips… I sensed the balance of nature shifting- an onmyoudo spell?

"Dnm-mnf-hah-Doumeki!" I struggled to break away.

"Shhh… this is fine-" He soothed, but I had already recognized the spell patterns.

"You-mnff!"

Doumeki could force my silence with his lips, but not my acquiescence to his plans. 'Not in my place- no, please, not in my-'

But the light of my consciousness was slipping away as my essence poured forth into Doumeki's glowing form. When the demons descended they would find only an empty corpse slumped against a maimed Shinto priest shining with an irresistible enigma of existence… their talons and their fangs, ripping into hard-earned sinews and sun-rich skin as if they were nothing more than the wrapping around a prize… a nightmare far more terrifying than the one that had once spurred me relentlessly across the restless land.

'Dou… meki… plea-'