Postnuptial Disagreements (Sekirei crossover)

[legoguydude]

Kiritsugu is a boss.

[TetsuoS2]

Yeah, wins that doesn't come from comparing powerlevels, willpower, and bonds are nice.

[Fancy Face the First]

Magnificient. Simply magnificient.

[VelspertheCat]

Yeah, wins that doesn't come from ... bonds are nice.

What if you won because you got your enemy out into the open and your bro shot him in the head with a sniper rifle?

Clearly, Kiritsugu Emiya believes in the power of bonds.

[Suncofold]

Oh FUCK.

That was epic.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

Kyte, Hymn, get outta my head dagnabbit.

But yes, impressive wins on both counts.

[Hymn of Ragnarok]

Kyte, Hymn, get outta my head dagnabbit.

But....but it's so roomy​ here!

[Seika]

Oooh, nice.

(For Hymn. The chapter, too, but mainly Hymn. )

[Bloble]

...for me, this just surpassed In Flight completely. Possibly HoS too.

That was magnificent. Kiritsugu and Merry fought, and won like proper magi. It was believable, and I enjoyed every word.

Can't wait for the next chapter. And I'll be sad because Kayneth's probably already dead.

[Hymn of Ragnarok]

Oooh, nice.

(For Hymn. The chapter, too, but mainly Hymn. )

Awww, thank you Seika!

*hugs*

[ItsaRandomUsername]

If you're gonna loiter then ya oughta pay some rent, ya freeloadin' mooks.

[/angry ol' coot]

[Suncofold]

If you're gonna loiter then ya oughta pay some rent, ya freeloadin' mooks.

Freeloading is prohibited.​

[Blinker]

Holy shit.

How did Kiri's body survive that many Time Accels?

[TetsuoS2]

snip

There's a difference from getting a power-up(in the strictest sense of the word) and from winning because multiple people planned this crap.

[eddyak]

.....Brilliant.

I love Meriwether so, so much. He tries so hard to win in areas he's not equipped to fight. And instead of most protagonists, he gets his ass kicked. He still manages to win by some minor application of his real talents.

The poisoned blade? Genius. I should have seen it coming.

Yesssss.

This chapter was god.

[Zalgo Jenkins]

A/N: This is definitely NOT the last chapter, though we’re pretty near the end.

************************************************** ****************









Chapter 24

Much to my surprise, I woke up in the same luxury hotel I’d left the previous day. Or days? The timeline was still a bit foggy, though my still-empty circuits argued for something rather less than a week.

My arms were bare. They were also nearly blackened with ink. Someone had scrawled rune after rune on them, layered and interlinked like the more decorative varieties of Arabic script. Amulets dangled over my head, suspended from a jade wheel. The result resembled a child’s mobile.

I blinked. Blurriness retreated.

The H-1 clock still gyrated this way and that, a collection of brass, springs, and bulbs floating on air. A piece of parchment hung nearby. It depicted one of the later, elaborated models of Ptolemy’s solar system, complete with epicycles drawn in nearly endless repetitions. Rings within rings within rings.

I tried to stand. My left leg stiffened. I noticed for the first time that a dull ache had replaced every other sensation there. It was like numbness, but slightly unpleasant. I suppose it had come from some combination of my own improper healing, over-reinforcement, and injury.

I never lost it, by the way. I still suffer from a slight-but-perceptible limp. Though it does give me the excuse to carry a cane, so I suppose that particular glass is half-full.

I tensed each muscle in turn. The procedure revealed a few more spots of numbness.

I smelled cigarette smoke, and turned. Kiritsugu lounged on the couch. A saline drip was attached to his arm. He exhaled, and the obligatory wisps of smoke left his nostrils.

“About time,” he said.

“Did you...wake me?”

“Yes. And you’d better shake the sleep off quickly.”

I rubbed my eyelids. Quite a bit of crust had accumulated.

“I saw your triple accel,” I said. “And the Origin bullet. Through Kochou.”

Kiritsugu shook his head. I thought I saw the ghost of a smile. Looking back on it now, though, it was probably nothing.

“Mmh. That probably would’ve killed me twenty-five years ago. As it is, my body’s pretty shot. Prana’s exhausted, too.”

“Then how--”

Kiritsugu withdrew the cigarette from his mouth. Another cloud billowed in the air, and then dissipated. He no longer smiled. Just watched the trail of smoke, rising upward.

“You have something more important to worry about,” he said.

“Eh?”

“Your father’s about to vivisect your Sekirei.”

“WHAT?”

I have occasionally suspected that somewhere deep in the fabric of reality, a design flaw has ordained that I’m not allowed to receive unalloyed good news. My father was alive. Benitsubasa was about to get cut apart.

Kiritsugu was still talking.

“I’ve always thought that you were a little different from the rest of your family,” he said. “Ilya certainly wouldn’t have been allowed to associate with you otherwise...”

He flicked ash onto the carpet. Those dead-looking eyes fixed on mine.

“...I don’t like to be proved wrong,” he said. “So. Your move.”

“Where is she?” I shouted.

He nodded.

“Good,” he said. “As I expected, then. Five doors down. Room’s soundproofed, so--”

I didn’t hear the rest. I was already hobbling as best I could toward it. Even though the healing magecraft must have been working during the previous day(s?), I could still feel the sting of wounds reopening.






************************************************** ************






Only when I opened the door did it occur to me that Kiritsugu had said ‘vivisected’.

Not ‘dissected’. She’d been revived, somehow.

I broke in on a very unpleasant scene.

If this had been one of those 1930s serials I’d watched with Ilya as a boy (before my parents caught wind of it), I would have arrived just in time. Doubtless I would have been one of those muscle-bound, lantern-jawed “heroes” who seemed to delight in frustrating the schemes of overzealous -- but essentially well-meaning -- scientists. I would have whisked Benitsubasa off the operating table, and that would have been that.

Instead, I froze.

Contrary to the above-noted portrayals, seeing damsels-in-distress on operating tables is neither alluring nor easily forgotten. Especially when the ‘damsel’ is (1) someone you care deeply about; (2) terrified out of her wits; and (3) already writhing in agony from several incisions.

I use the term ‘damsel’ in the loosest possible sense, by the way. Benitsubasa had defended me more times than I cared to count, and could have torn most Enforcers in half. She was more of a knight than I was, at any rate. Which made the situation all the more sickening.

My father looked up.

He wore a white apron over his robe, and held a knife between fingers wrapped in latex gloves. The knife was a black, jagged-looking thing made of obsidian. Even from a distance, I could feel something unwholesome about the prana. Whenever it touched Benitsubasa’s skin, struggling ceased. The muscles lost all their tension.

The knife returned to its steel tray. Copper bands inscribed with symbols held Benitsubasa down. Ordinarily, she could have snapped the metal in an instant. But those symbols had restrained more dangerous creatures than Sekirei. I’d watched a few of the vivisections myself.

“Ah...Meriwether,” my father said. “So the murderer-for-hire woke you after all? Good. I could use an aide.”

Benitsubasa was staring at me. Eyes wide. She was almost hyperventilating through her gag. And I found myself staring back. Had I been a bit less preoccupied, I would have noticed that my knuckles had whitened. My fists were shaking along with the rest of my body.

Blood. Her left arm was open. Muscles moving -- I could see them moving. Oh please, just make it--

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I shrieked.

My father frowned. The room (literally) grew a few degrees colder.

“Do not take that tone with me,” he said. “I will only excuse it once because of your recent ordeal.”

“But Father, you can’t—”

“You hardly expected me to examine this creature’s internal structure while she was still ‘terminated’, did you? It was a simple matter. These ‘Jinki’ were well built. That, I grant them. And with my expertise in Evocation...”

His voice droned on. And I am ashamed to say that I just kept gaping. Rooted there. The scene was unreal, somehow. A routine situation turned into a nightmare -- like seeing some ghoul looking back at you one morning when you step in front of the mirror. My stomach churned.

“...Surely you’ve noticed the Volumen Hydragyrum’s absence, at least?” my father said. “Remarkable creatures, these Sekirei. Would you believe that the ice Sekirei actually forced me to destroy my own Mystic Code?”

He pointed at two operating tables on the room’s far side, both similar to the one that held Benitsubasa. The first contained Karasuba -- or at least what remained of her. I won’t describe the body in any detail, except to remark that she’d probably been alive through most of it. I couldn’t bring myself to feel much sympathy.

The other held Akitsu. As yet, only the Crest on her forehead was missing.

My father smiled and shook his head. His voice had become a bit more animated, as it was wont to do when discussing some new discovery or other. Which was, to my knowledge, the only time that it ever became animated. His knife waved airily as it emphasized his points

“...I thought I had the creature when the Hydragyrum got close to her. I’d even prepared a Melville quotation. Hem! All too apt, as it turned out.”

Benitsubasa. Suffering. Do something. Say something...

“...The ice Sekirei froze it. The same Mystic Code, mark you, that took me years to create. Naturally, I flooded the Volumen Hydragyrum with enough prana to blow them both to gobbets. Which, fortunately, she had not anticipated. Except that the creature was still in one piece at the end of it. Indeed, she only suffered damage to that ‘Crest’ of hers...”

Kochou, I thought. What happened!?

My familiar transmitted a mental shrug.

Your father got there first. Sorry.

You’re safe? I thought.

Hey, that’s uncharacteristically nice of you, she thought. I appreciate the concern, but--

Shut up and answer.

Wow. Misread that one. And to answer your question, I’m far away from your little clusterf--

Good, I thought. Get internet access. Now.

“And that so-called ‘Black Sekirei’...” my father continued. “Fascinating. For all that Emiya assured me of his supposed ‘improvements’ since the War, that Japanese thug burned through four of my artifacts to keep up with her. Four. Powerful ones, too...”

“Father?”

He stopped. His left hand drummed on the wood. Benitsubasa’s rapid breathing was the only other sound until my father snapped his fingers. The gag choked the sound off.

“Meriwether, if this is more insubordination...”

My heart might have been pounding harder against Haihane. Barely.

“I...I just want to...er, suggest that perhaps our interests would be better served by keeping her-- um, the Sekirei -- alive. I believe we can learn a great deal about prana rituals if we just --”

The knife clattered against the tray. My father picked up another tool with a wide, pincer-like set of jaws. Barbs protruded seemingly at random. I assumed that it had a purpose beyond the simple infliction of pain. I still prefer to believe that this was the case.

“Nonsense.”

“I...Father, I’ll promise a publishable paper for the Clock Tower’s next conference! Groundbreaking work. I know I’m not permitted to reveal the existence of Sekirei, but - but even so, I think I could --”

He sighed.

“Normally, I would indulge you. And far be it from me to impede your sudden -- albeit dubiously motivated -- interest in academic pursuits. Unfortunately, my less-than-satisfactory son and heir, I feel that I must administer an object lesson.”

“W-what?”

My father pulled something from his pocket. It was small and gray, and had a hole in the middle. A self-bored stone. He held it above Benitsubasa’s head.

At first, I couldn’t see anything through it. And then, something shimmered. Incorporeal. It looked like thread wrought from some reddish metal, and it was almost infinitesimally thin. Yet it was there. It pointed in my direction. My father traced it long enough to show that lead to me.

“You know that it’s reciprocal, don’t you?” he said.

“What?”

“The Sekirei bond,” he said. “I suspected from the moment you had the absolute gall to talk back to me. This little succubus has been meddling with your mind. Oh, they’re only nudges, to be sure. And I doubt that she’s conscious of it. I would have killed her outright otherwise.”

A cold, electric sensation gripped my stomach. So my own sentiments were -- no, but even so, I didn’t. Augh. So what would I have felt if --? No. It wasn’t the time or -- she was hurting, and --

“Certainly not on the scale that Sekirei bond affects her,” he continued. “No, I’m afraid you’ve brought most of this on yourself. Even so...”

His fingers tightened around the handle of the evil-looking, barbed thing.

“...no one meddles with my son.”

I took a deep breath.

“Actually, Father, her unconscious ‘meddling’ seems fair enough, since she--”

“What?”

Benitsubasa winced and inhaled sharply when the instrument hovered near her eye. The straps bit into her legs. Bruises appeared -- almost impossible on a Sekirei under normal circumstances, but there they were.

My father drove one of the barbs into table’s wooden borders with a thunk. Right next to Benitsubasa’s head. A convenient place to put it, I suppose. The wood would grow back, and the hooks and jaws wouldn’t dull.

Odd how an image can change so much, and still retain the same significance. My father’s green eyes were no longer framed in blood from Akitsu’s ice daggers when they met mine. Yet they remained part of a scene where someone I loved was about to die...

...And I’d just admitted it to myself, hadn’t I?

My father cleared his throat.

“We shall only speak of this once, so pay attention,” he said. “When I faced that ice Sekirei, do you know what crossed my mind? The Crest, do you imagine? No. That I would not live to see my son become the great magus that I know -- mark that, Meriwether -- he will become. All his lazy efforts to the contrary notwithstanding.”

“Father, I hardly see how Benitsubasa would impede me from--”

“You will marry someday,” he said. “And while I cannot promise that your mother and I will select the perfect wife for you, I believe that you will find married life to your liking. Even your Mother and I...”

He coughed, and waved his hand in a lazy sort of half-circle.

“...Well, we’ve had our moments. And I will not allow some alien mistress to ruin that for you. You’ll grieve a bit, yes. But once her death cuts the connection between your souls...finis. You’ll be well on your way to accepting the situation after you watch the dissection --”

While it was hardly a tragedy, I’ve always considered it a great misfortune that I only heard all of this in the moments before I used it against him. (The pleasanter parts, I mean. Not his desire to dissect her.) Note that I say ‘misfortune’, though. Not ‘regret’. I would have done it again, and felt just as horrible afterwards.

“I’ll go to the Clock Tower, Father.”

He hmph’d.

“Don’t be childish. You couldn’t do such a thing without endangering yourself.”

“That’s the point,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“I’ll promise to keep our family out of it,” I said. “I’ll tell Lady Barthomeloi that I acted on my own. Which is true. You and Mother can even have produce another heir, if you like. But I won’t consent to this. I’m sorry, Lord El-Melloi. ”

My father’s eyes widened. Benitsubasa shook her head. Against the restraints’ resistance, it almost looked like a spasm. Looking back on it now, it occurs to me how very strange it was that under those circumstances, my father and Benitsubasa had found grounds for agreement.

His voice lowered.

“Not if I keep you under house arrest,” he said. “If anything, this...insanity only confirms my suspicion that the malady needs to be excised before--”

“Kochou can send the necessary information through electronic mail,” I said. “Instantly. She could release enough to the Enforcers to hang me a few times over. Not that it would matter, since as soon as the Clock Tower receives it, Miya’s geis contract would tear my soul apart. You’d have a front-row seat, as it were.”

My father did not answer for what seemed like an eternity. He just stared at me. When the silence broke, I expected fury. Lecturing. Ice and razor wind to emphasize prominent points. And I would receive all of that presently. But I did not expect what came first.

“You would do that to me, Meriwether?” he said.

My father had a remarkable ability to say my name at just the proper pitch to make me feel like a child again. And evoke all the shame that came with it.

I thought I heard something else in his tone, though -- something not quite so calculated, or proud.

“I...yes,” I said. “With the gravest reservations, but yes.”

If weakness it was, the First Lord El-Melloi did not let it persist long. The storm arrived. Threats to disown me were the least of it. I will not elaborate much, since I find it both unnecessary for the narrative and unpleasant (well, sad, I suppose) to recall. The aftershocks persisted beyond our initial confrontation, but the majority of it occurred in the hour that followed.

He conceded the point, in the end. I had his word that he wouldn’t kill Benitsubasa. And his word was more binding than any geis.

I paid for it. Heavily. I think, looking back on it, that I very nearly destroyed my relationship with my father that day. And perhaps, in a way, actually did destroy it.

In the months after that conversation, my existence was not enviable. Our “arrangement” did not stop my father from inflicting all manner of unpleasantness on me for my defiance. As was his right. I bore it without complaint.

After all, I’d threatened to kill his only son in front of him.

It was, as I said, a misfortune. From that point until the day of his death, I knew that my father would have laid down his life for me. More than that – I'd seen it. And my father went to his grave knowing that I’d tried at least once to do the same for him. Yet this abstract knowledge remained the greater part of our “interaction” during the last years of his life. And for something so supposedly weighty, it often didn’t feel like very much.

But for now, the hour of excoriation passed.

My father left.



************************************************** *********




I rubbed my face where one of his water whips had struck me.

Benitsubasa was still shaking on the table. I unhooked everything and draped a towel over her while I looked for the more conventional medical equipment. She didn’t speak for a little while. Instead, she stared at the ceiling, breathing in and out.

“I...er...Benitsubasa?”

She turned to me. Her mouth opened, but didn’t make a sound. Finally, she nodded.

“Um, let’s get you some bandages, shall we?” I said.

Another nod. While I fussed with straps of linen inscribed with Theban script and the SATOR-AREPO square, Benitsubasa still refrained from speaking. Occasionally, a shudder passed through her. Even those died down after a while.

But Sekirei are nothing if not durable. Inhumanly so, like everything else about them.

The salve under the bandages fizzed. Benitsubasa’s breath caught. I actually watched the spots of blood on the bandages slowly flow back into her veins. Before long, the linen was white again. Rustling sounds underneath the fabric attested to skin folding back into place.

If I’d been in a different mood, I might have speculated about the interaction between healing magecraft and alien physiology.

I grinned like an idiot instead.

“M-meriwether?” she said.

“Hm?”

Benitsubasa’s eyes were wet. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me down. Bandages and all. She hugged me tightly, prompting no small amount of alarm when I wondered whether the linen would hold. Fortunately, the incisions didn’t reopen.

Her body shook with some combination of sobs, shivers, and perhaps a laugh or two born of relief. The front of my coat became rather moist.

Had I been in Benitsubasa’s place, I would have stared into space for quite a bit longer. Even as it was, the recent memory of paternal chastisement (not to mention watching Benitsubasa getting cut apart) had left me nauseous, shaky, and with a throbbing pain in my cheek. I’m afraid that I met Benitsubasa’s outpouring of emotion rather numbly.

But then, Benitsubasa had always been more resilient than I was. In many ways.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“I -- ehm...you’re welcome.”

We rested there like that for a while, wrapped around each other. I relaxed into the warmth of Benitsubasa’s ear against my cheek, and the sound of her breathing, and the way that her exhalations tickled my skin. I couldn’t repress a sigh.

I ran my fingers across the back of her neck, where her Crest had once been.

“Well, it appears you’re ‘free’ now,” I said. “So to speak.”

“Yeah...” she said.

“You knew?”

She nuzzled more deeply into my chest.

“I...I can’t feel your presence very much anymore,” she said. “Not like before. It’s faint. Kinda like I’m empty. It’s -- I guess humans deal with it all the time, but still...”

“I know it’s not a good time, but perhaps you should consider--urk!”

Unintentionally, Benitsubasa’s hand tightened on my collar.

She released me as soon as she noticed, although her voice took on a slightly higher, faster pitch.

“Don’t tell me to get another Ashikabi,” she said. “I thought we covered this. Forever and ever, and I meant it. Crest or no Crest.”

“You’re forgetting Miya’s geis contract,” I said. “That thing’s going to hang over my head like the Sword of Damocles for the rest of my (probably short) life. We can’t cover it up forever.”

Benitsubasa’s reply was so very like a Sekirei. From a human, it would have sounded absurd.

“Another minute would be worth it,” she said.

“...You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

“Your absent Crest notwithstanding.”

“I love you, idiot. My body was just a little ahead of the curve.”

“I’m...glad, actually,” I said.

Benitsubasa blinked.

And then, she kissed me. It resembled the kiss she’d given me before Miya terminated her. No tongue. No exchange of saliva. Just soft, warm lips against mine.

But her Crest was gone. There was no flare of light.

Wings didn’t erupt from her back. Only the faintest trickle of prana passed from my body to hers. It was pleasant.

I kissed back.

[Kyte]

D'aww.

(And no shonen happened tonight. :V)

[Speckled Burd]

I second that D'aww.

[legoguydude]

I gotta admit. I thought that this chapter was kinda meh, at least compared to the previous ones.

[xelloss]

I'll third the D'aaaaaaaw.