New Raws Chapter

[in_loveless_memory]

H-How could Seimei just take him? And Soubi went with him! He didn't even look back!

I want them to come back! I want Soubi back! After everything, after telling him so m-many times I wouldn't abandon him, instead h-he...

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[excoriatedsoul]

[Soubi doesn't know what to do. He wants to grab Ritsuka and pull him close, but he's forbidden to create such closeness. All he can do is watch helplessly at a growing distance. That he's fostering, that he has to foster. He tries to hold on to the memory of the sound of Seimei's orders, which still burn scorched paths through his mind and heart every time he hears them. Everything else is slipping away from his inner world. Ritsuka looks small and fuzzy, as if through a glass frosted in ice.]

You are and you will be, Ritsuka, but you're a child. You have to learn the way the real world works. [Soubi doesn't perceive any irony in this. For his world, the one he considers the real world, he is mature. Ritsuka, who is steeped in normal society, has yet to learn and develop into the one he was born for. But Soubi has had a luxurious taste of the sacrifice Ritsuka will someday grow into, and he isn't lying.] You will be, but you have to accept-- what I am. What fighters are.

[in_loveless_memory]

[He doesn't want to fight anymore. He doesn't like fighting.]

What makes me a sacrifice, Soubi? [He presses his face into his hands. He can't get angry.]

Everyone is so sure that's what I'm supposed to be. But what makes me any different from someone like Yuiko or Kio? I don't have a name anywhere, no matter how many times you all call me Loveless. My parents were never involved in this or someone would have insisted on telling me they were. But all of a sudden, Seimei is involved and now I am. Seimei's been involved... I should say.

I don't know the first thing about spell battles. The only reason I even found out about the threads or the ability to sense other pairs was because Natsuo told me. And even after being shown, I don't see it and I can't do it. Where is the "Loveless" fighter if I am in fact the sacrifice? And why, WHY was I only told now? Clearly they don't have an issue with involving little kids since Mei is younger than me and you were even younger when you were inducted into this.

What makes me Loveless?

[excoriatedsoul]

[Gently.] You're a sacrifice because it's in your blood. Because the threads of your being wrapped around your core tie to somebody. Because you exist to command. Because you don't want to do anything else. [His voice hardens, picks up the strength he knows Ritsuka needs.] You are Loveless because you were born with that marked on your soul. It is your strength and your face that you show in battle. It's not a weakness, Ritsuka. True names never are.

[The air is thick-- and Soubi cuts off abruptly. He has no orders to help Ritsuka. He's treading a dangerous, fine line. This boy, who doesn't need love to be strong, still depends on Seimei's love-- and that is how Seimei wants it to be.]

Maybe you will have to wait. Maybe you'll find your fighter late. I'm the wrong person to ask... I don't know why you weren't told. [Seimei wasn't involved "all of a sudden", and Ritsuka's sacrifice ability isn't news. But sacrifices don't explain "why" to fighters. And the "why" that Soubi can best guess at isn't anything that Ritsuka should know. It's that Seimei wants Ritsuka to depend on him, and Ritsuka, as a sacrifice, wouldn't need to.]

[in_loveless_memory]

Strength in being unloved? Being without love? [He didn't want to be unloved. He didn't want to be left alone and abandoned. He hated being lonely. Why did he have to be the one to be loveless? Was his fighter to hate him? He felt nauseous and just looks up at Soubi.]

It seems that you and I weren't told a lot of things. But where as that's... your world, I don't belong there. [He didn't want to belong in a place where people were treated like objects, where people fought meaningless battles. He didn't want to fight. He closed his eyes. How could they think to involve him in that world? How long how had Seimei been a part of that world? Not even their mother knew? Their father didn't know anything though. He closed his eyes. So many unanswered questions. No one told him ANYTHING and the only person who had given him any information was now gone. Soubi was gone.

Natsuo and Youji would probably leave him now too.

It would only be a matter of days, he was sure, for Goura to take him. And all the while, his fighter... the one HE accepted, wanting nothing to do with him and his real one was nowhere to be found.]

Maybe for someone, they would have no problem being loveless. I don't want that. I don't want that at all.

[excoriatedsoul]

Ritsuka, whether you belong in my world or not isn't my business. [Not anymore. Not since Soubi was forbidden to belong to him.]

[He takes a long look at the sad, drooping child. This boy is torn and upset not because he really believes he doesn't belong in that world. He's suffering because he knows that he does. Poor Ritsuka. The one who isn't weakened by not having love, still all-too-humanly desires it. But it's not only that that makes him miserable. It's his being caught between his fears of what it means to be part of that world, and his inner knowledge that he can't be otherwise. Soubi aches to try to straighten it out a little. To gently suggest that Ritsuka should try being otherwise, and discover how much a part of this world he must be. But he knows that Seimei would be displeased. And when he closes his eyes at the end of the day, it's not Ritsuka's pain that will haunt him, but Seimei's orders waiting to embrace him.]

[So he settles for a standard repetition,] It's not about what you want, or what you think you want. You know that.

[in_loveless_memory]

[It was never about what he wanted. His mother wanted back her old son. Soubi wanted a sacrifice that would give him orders. The school wanted to have him train there. He took a deep breath. How is he supposed to accept living in a world where people are treated as objects? Where people fight for no good reason and could hurt one another without a backwards glance. He looked up at the sky. He knew his problems were miniscule. His issues weren't meant to be important and no one wanted to hear him complain except his psychiatrist. He would have a fighter, the loveless fighter. Or maybe he wouldn't get one. Maybe his fighter would hate him.

To exist without love... He didn't want to be unloved. Nor did he want to stop loving others. He loved his mother, his brother, Natuso and Youji. And if pressed he would have told Soubi he loved him.] So, it doesn't matter. [He knew it didn't.]