Author's Notes: ...and it continues?

Abandoned Dreams

Part Two

Shinobu was allowing himself to fall deeply into a funk, Mitsuru thought. And he had been doing so since his cousin had visited a few days ago.

It was difficult to read the differences in Tezuka Shinobu's moods, but after nearly three years of living in close company with him, Mitsuru felt fairly confident in his deciphering. When he was amused, his smile was a little wider and his eyes even occasionally twinkled. When he was sad, his eyes dulled, flattened, became more gray and less green. His smile would dim until it seemed barely there, at least to Mitsuru's more experienced eyes.

And when he was happy--well, Mitsuru wasn't sure that he had ever seen Shinobu actually happy. Or if Shinobu even knew what the emotion felt like.

He was probably the person Shinobu was closest to, reflected the blond boy as he pretended to focus on upper level calculus, but even he was at a loss as to his roommate's life before Greenwood. Shinobu never spoke of it, but his refusal to ever leave Tokyo spoke volumes.

Clearly, the situation at home was as bad for Shinobu as it had been for his elder sister Nagisa, but an entirely different way. Tezuka Hidekazu neither expected nor wanted anything from his daughter; she was as good as nonexistent, as far as Tezuka-san was concerned. Shinobu, however, as a son was extremely important, even more so after his eldest son's defection.

Shinobu was to be the perfect reflection of his success, and it didn't much matter to Tezuka Hidekazu what that perfection cost the child.

It was costing Shinobu at least half of himself, thought Mitsuru grimly, and not for the first time. His father was a modern man, one who refused to acknowledge the spirits who had been as much a part of Japan as the sea that surrounded it. He rejected it, and he rejected the part of his son that was steeped in it.

The Sumeragi half, remembered Mitsuru. He didn't know too much about the onmyouji clan, but he vaguely recalled his father talking about them when he was younger.

It was, he thought as he stretched to his feet, a good day to call home.

Shinobu didn't even look up as Mitsuru left the room.

***

Given his choice, Sumeragi Subaru would spend as little time as possible outdoors at CLAMP Campus. The squealing voices of teenaged girls seemed a deafening roar. In fact, there was only one reason Subaru was even outdoors now.

Imonoyama Mansion had a strictly enforced non-smoking policy.

Thus, the Sumeragi stood outside in the slightly chill air of late February and smoked a cigarette. He closed his eyes as he exhaled, and leaned his head against the cold stone of the Mansion's exterior walls.

His thoughts turned to his young cousin, as they often had in recent weeks. Tezuka Shinobu, Subaru mused, had things that he himself had always wanted. An existence in the "normal" world, where dealings with the supernatural and otherworldly were kept to a minimum. Several close friends, who would clearly protect him from anything they could.

By the same token, Shinobu had never had the things that Subaru had taken for granted most of his life. He had never had dreams and hopes, or at least they had never been allowed to grow. Subaru was not overly familiar with the world of Japanese financial business; he only knew enough about it to recognize the names of the most powerful brokers. He recognized Tezuka Hidekazu's name for two reasons: the obvious family connection, and because he was always a man who got what he wished.

Subaru could only imagine that any wishes that didn't coincide with Tezuka's own were quickly crushed and obliterated. Even those of his young son.

The result, thought Subaru, was showcased in Shinobu's gray-green eyes if anyone cared to look. The younger boy always had an almost blank smile on his face, and anyone who did not look in his eyes would have difficulty gauging his emotions. But in his cousin's eyes was a sadness and a bone-deep weariness that was all too familiar to Subaru.

It was an expression he saw every morning when he looked in the mirror. And he wished that there were something he could do to erase it from Shinobu's face.

He thought there was not likely any chance of that, however. Shinobu, like Subaru himself, was set on a path that was determined from birth. They were very different paths, but essentially they achieved the same thing. Broken dreams, discarded hopes, and a certain loss of self.

Once lost, it was rare that it could be regained.

"Subaru?"

At the sound of the familiar teenaged voice, Subaru opened his eyes. Kamui stood before him, uncomfortably shifting the pile of textbooks in his arms from one side to another. As he pasted a soft smile on his lips, Subaru wondered how long the fifteen-year-old had been standing there.

"I'm sorry, Kamui. I was thinking of something."

"What were you thinking about?" asked Kamui hesitantly. "I mean, you seemed a little lost there."

For a moment, Subaru considered lying to Kamui. It would be easy; he could say just about anything, and make it believable. Just the same, sometimes he had a hard time lying to the boy. There was occasionally a slightly steely expression in his violet eyes that made Subaru feel as though he was lying to God.

"Shinobu," stated the Sumeragi very quietly.

It took Kamui a moment to puzzle out whom Subaru was speaking of. "Your cousin? Have you seen him lately?" He opened the door of the Imonoyama Mansion and stepped in, holding the door for Subaru to follow.

"No," answered Subaru, "but I was thinking of him anyway. He--" Subaru paused, toeing of his black boots and thinking of how best to say what he was thinking. "He reminds me of me," he said finally.

"Maybe you should try to help him, then," Kamui said matter-of-factly.

"I don't think that there is anyway that I can," returned Subaru softly.

Kamui stopped abruptly on the stairs. "What do you mean, Subaru?"

"There are some things that just cannot be changed, Kamui. You know that better than anyone." Subaru's quiet tone managed to erase any harshness from his words. All the same, he winced as soon as they left his lips. "Oh, Kamui, I--"

"Never mind, Subaru." Kamui cut off his apology with a wave of his hand. "I do know that, and probably better than anyone, that's true." His violet eyes darkened and he thought of how he'd learned that particular lesson. "But that doesn't mean that there aren't some things that can be changed." Kamui began the slow ascent up to his room again. He paused at the top of the stairs, and turned to look again at the older Seal.

"Help your cousin, Subaru. Even if it's only to prove to yourself that there are some things left in the world that can be changed."

Subaru stood there long after Kamui had disappeared down the upstairs hallway, staring after his teenaged leader.

Sometimes he forgot just how much Kamui was capable of understanding.

***

Mitsuru hung up the telephone with a quiet click and strolled out of the room with his hands stuck in his pockets.

His parents had been surprised to hear from him; they were always surprised to hear from him. He preferred it that way. He wasn't theirs to worry over, after all.

But there had been no one else he could ask about the Sumeragi. The only other person who would know was Shinobu, and he couldn't ask him.

He opened the door to their room and stared for a moment at his roommate, with the slightly discontented look still on his face. No, he corrected himself, it wasn't quite that.

It was a look of remembered discontent, from a time before he'd given up on even that.

Without a word to Shinobu, Mitsuru crawled up into his bunk and flopped down on the mattress. He ignored his roommate in favor of replaying the conversation with his parents in his mind.

His mother had answered the telephone.

"Lost his way," murmured Mitsuru absently. "I wonder if he's found it again."

"I doubt it," an unexpected but familiar voice drawled near his ear. Shinobu smiled as his blond roommate jolted out of his reverie to stare into his eyes. "People rarely can find their way once it's lost. At least, they can't find the same path again."

But they may be able to find another, thought Mitsuru to himself.

"You've been thinking up there for sometime," noted Shinobu as he dropped to the floor. "A couple of hours, at least. Are you plotting something without me?"

Mitsuru leaned down and smiled. "Yes."

"Ah." The other boy shrugged a he neatly stacked his schoolbooks and prepared for bed. Mitsuru saw by the glowing blue numbers on Shinobu's digital clock that it was past midnight.

He furrowed his golden eyebrows together. "Aren't you going to ask me about it?"

"No," stated Shinobu as he pushed his bed curtain aside. "I'm sure it'll be made clear soon enough."

He waited a couple of moments, listening to his roommate settle under his covers, waiting until Mitsuru was slipping into sleep, before delivering his next comment.

"You not too good at keeping secrets, after all."

Sleepy violet eyes staring at the blank ceiling, Mitsuru wondered again, for the thousandth time, if there would ever be a time when Shinobu would be unable to surprise him.

He hoped not.

***

Shirou Kamui was doing his homework alone. This in and of itself was actually something of a rarity; either he got his work done quickly and efficiently, during the school day, or he required an entire battalion of math tutors in order to complete it at all.

He had a history essay do the next day, and while he usually did such things in the Campus library during his lunch hour, Keiichi had dragged him outside and made him consume actual food.

Kamui scowled. Sometimes he didn't know which was worse, Sorata at home or Keiichi at school. Both of them had the occasionally annoying habits of relentlessly trying to cheer him up.

He didn't like to complain, but sometimes it would be nice to angst in relative peace.

With a deep sigh, Kamui shook his head, and applied himself to writing his paper on family structure in historic Japan.

Honda-sensei came up with the strangest themes.

Kamui had been writing for sometime, and had lost himself, if not in the subject matter, then the mind-numbing process of writing his essay. He didn't hear Takamura Suoh when he knocked, or when he knocked. Or the first two times he cleared his throat to gain Kamui's attention.

The third time was loud, irritated, and sounded more like a hacking cough than anything else.

Kamui lifted his eyes from the paper where he had been scribbling notes on matriarchies as opposed to patriarchies.

"Takamura-san! I didn't hear you come in."

Obviously, thought Suoh with some irritation. But there wasn't much use in chastising Kamui for his inattention and its possible consequences. The boy would probably just blink at him, and Suoh got enough of that reaction from Rijichou.

"You have a visitor. A student from Ryokuto Academy," he intoned instead.

Kamui furrowed his eyebrows. Ryokuto Academy, he recalled, was the boys' high school that Tezuka Shinobu attended. "You must be mistaken, Takamura-san. He's probably looking Subaru-san."

"No," stated Suoh, leaning against the doorjamb. "He's not. In fact, he specifically requested to speak to someone close to Sumeragi-san. And the one closest to him here is you." The ninja straightened up, and turned to leave the room. "I'll just send him up here, then."

Kamui opened his mouth to protest, and then shut it again with a faint snap. Tezuka-san was already here, after all, so he might as well talk to him. He bent down and gathered up his books and papers, turning to dump them on the desk in the corner of the room. He did wonder what the other boy wanted of him, though.

Hearing a light rustling, Kamui whipped his head around and widened his eyes. Standing just inside the door was a young man, wearing a boys school uniform of a blue jacket, white shirt, and red tie. He was several inches taller than Kamui, and had bright golden hair.

His eyes were exactly the shade of Kamui's own.

Unless there was a real quirk in the Sumeragi gene pool, this tall, golden teenaged boy could not possibly be related to Subaru.

"Who are you?" asked Kamui abruptly. "And why do you want to speak to me?"

Mitsuru ignored him, instead opting to wander over to the desk where Kamui had stacked his research materials. "Ah, the 'family structure in historic Japan' essay. Popular with all freshman history teachers. Too bad, you could have borrowed mine. I got good marks on it, as I recall." Mitsuru glanced up at the smaller boy's confounded expression and smiled. It was almost as fun as teasing Hasukawa.

And he wasn't even trying. It was too bad, really. He didn't have the time today, but he was sure this kid could turn even more interesting shades of red than did Hasukawa. He skin tone was so pale, after all.

"Ikeda Mitsuru. I am Shinobu's roommate."

"I see." Actually, Kamui didn't see. In fact, he was feeling even more confused, if that was possible.

Mitsuru lifted bright gold eyebrows. "My roommate has been somewhat depressed lately."

Kamui cocked his head to one side. "Oh? Well, I can't say that Subaru-san hasn't been depressed, but he very often is." He paused narrowing his eyes. "But he has been disturbed, which is somewhat more unusual."

"Does he tend to go with the flow? That's not the impression I gained when he visited Shinobu."

Ikeda meant, thought Kamui with some amusement, when Subaru had exorcised his would-be girlfriend. But he decided not to comment on that.

"No. I would not say that Subaru-san is in anyway so…careless. But he is rarely disturbed, because everything is fate, and unchangeable, and he accepts that, fully."

In that, Mitsuru mused, the Sumeragi and his cousin were very alike. They had both allowed the inevitable to color the rest of their lives; they allowed those events to make everything else about their lives unavoidable and inevitable as well.

It was something that both violet-eyed teenagers wanted to prove untrue.

Kamui's essay was not written until very late that evening.

***

Shinobu slid on his reading glasses and analyzed the evidence.

Mitsuru had been missing for several hours the day before.

He had come back whistling and with sparkling eyes.

He hadn't said a word to Shinobu when he returned.

Shinobu's gray-green eyes narrowed in a scowl. This wasn't following the usual pattern, and that was worrisome.

It was seldom that Mitsuru had ever planned anything without Shinobu's input, but it was not unprecedented. However, always before, Mitsuru had let something out about the nature of his plots.

He hadn't done that this time.

Shinobu slipped his glasses back off and let them fall to the desk with a faint clink. He rubbed at a headache that was beginning to settle in his temples.

He needed a cigarette. Unfortunately, the cause of his undue stress had confiscated them, and Shinobu hadn't gotten a chance to replenish them yet.

"Problem, Shinobu?" asked a cheery voice from across the room.

Mitsuru was sitting on the floor, leaned against Shinobu's bed, reading a manga. And smiling innocently.

"Oh, nothing major," replied Shinobu. He quickly wracked his mind for an explanation for his obvious stress. "Uh, Hasukawa and Igarashi were arguing earlier. I wasn't looking forward to trying to work something out between them again."

"You did pretty well the last time, I thought," said Mitsuru as he flipped a page and skimmed down the page. "But I wouldn't worry too much about it. They're both so passionate, that they are bound to argue. It's a release, if nothing else."

Not, continued Mitsuru to himself, that Hasukawa and Miya were what really concerned his roommate. No, he knew it was his own behavior that was worrying Shinobu.

It was kind of cute, really. Not that he would ever mention that to Shinobu.

Shinobu, like Hasukawa, disliked being teased. Unlike Hasukawa, it was unlikely to end with a punch to the face, but with something much more calculated and twisted, and it would be almost impossible to trace it back to his roommate.

There were limits to what even Mitsuru would do for the sake of a good laugh, and the threat of retaliation from Tezuka Shinobu was one of them.

***

Subaru peered over the top of his book at Kamui. He wasn't doing anything particularly suspicious; in fact, the boy was engrossed in the memorization of feline organs for his dissection quiz the next day.

Still, he couldn't shake the eerily familiar tingle he was getting up his spine. He'd gotten it anytime Hokuto had plotted something on his behalf, and it always been accompanied by a feeling a fear and dread, because anything Hokuto had plotted would at best make him turn myriad shades of red, and at worst humiliate him in front of all of Tokyo.

He could hardly imagine Kamui plotting at all, let alone something of Hokuto's scale.

Kamui was doing something, though, because he wouldn't have this feeling if he weren't. Both his personal experience and his formal training told him that intuitions came in many forms, and some of those were very mundane.

Kamui's usually clear and expressive violet eyes were giving nothing away, however. Subaru could see nothing but anxiety over his schoolwork and the ever-present dark sorrow that had darkened his expression for as long as Subaru had known him.

The object of his thoughts dropped the thick pile of notes he had been leafing through onto the table in front of him. "I hate biology."

"As much as trigonometry?" inquired Subaru.

"No," said Kamui, "nothing is that bad. But biology is close."

"I could help you. Biology was one of my better subjects when I was still in school."

"Would you?" Kamui's eyes widened eagerly. "I'd really appreciate it; I have to pass this quiz tomorrow or sensei will assign me a tutor."

"It's not a problem," Subaru returned with a smile as he set aside the book he had been pretending to read.

"I'll treat you to tea tomorrow after school as thanks." Kamui held up a hand when he saw Subaru was about to protest. "I insist."

"Then I'd be happy to go. But for now, let's concentrate on this quiz."

Kamui smiled as he returned his attention to the separate parts of a cat's small intestine. His part of The Plan was complete. The rest was up to Ikeda.

And after that, everything was in the hands of Tezuka-san and Subaru.

***

Mitsuru had tossed out the invitation that morning before class when he had been standing in front of their mirror tying his tie.

"Do you want to go for tea this afternoon?"

"Don't you have band practice?" asked Shinobu. He was already fully dressed and was at his desk, gathering his schoolbooks, and placing them into his bag.

Mitsuru shrugged into his jacket and started stuffing his own books into his bag. "Hiroshi-sensei is having a sectional for the woodwinds, so I'm free. Anyway, want to go? I thought we'd try this new place I heard about."

Shinobu shrugged. He had a feeling that whatever Mitsuru had been planning for the past week was coming to a head. "Fine with me. What new place?"

"The Shi Ohana teahouse."

And so instead of going back to the dorm with Hasukawa and Shun, Mitsuru and Shinobu had left school grounds and walked towards downtown Tokyo.

It wasn't a long walk, because Ryokuto was situated on the edge that seperated the residential and commericial districts of the city. Soon the two roommates were in front of an older stone shop with the words Shi Ohana painted on the window, along with a stylized floral design. It looked like a hundred other tea shops in Tokyo, and Shinobu idly wondered why it was so important that they go to this one.

The inside was much the same; a combination of booths, small tables, and a bar. The walls were papered with a pale ivory and their were traditional Japanese art prints framed and hung around the room.

"Not really your usual style, is it?" he noted to Mitsuru. Generally, Mitsuru could be counted on to choose the flashier and more popular places, brilliantly painted and modernly decorated. Shinobu, on the other hand, was more likely to choose shops more like this: quiet and understated. "The walls aren't acid yellow."

"I thought we'd try something different. Go ahead and pick a place to sit, and I'll get our order."

"I didn't tell you what I wanted."

"We've lived together for three years now, Shinobu," called Mitsuru over his shoulder as he walked up to the counter. "I think I know."

Probably so, thought Shinobu. He scanned the tea room; it wasn't very busy, there were at least a couple of more hours before the after-work rush came. There were only a few scattered high school students around, chatting before they went home for evenings of homework, dinner, and cram schools.

He noticed the slight boy with wavy brown hair in the CLAMP uniform before he noticed his taller companion. They were seated at a large table in a corner of the room. Then Shinobu's glance slid over to his companion and he stilled.

"Why don't we sit over there?" murmured Mitsuru from behind him.

At least he knew now what Mitsuru had been planning all week.

***

The café that Kamui had chosen was far enough away that they had to take the subway.

The Shi Ohana teahouse was in an interesting part of the city, neither purely residential nor purely commercial, but a blend of the two.

The building was old, but the tea shop was new, the paint bright and glossy on the clear glass windows.

Subaru and Kamui sat at a large table meant for four in a quiet corner of the tearoom and ordered--jasmine tea and lemon wafers for Kamui and green tea and a blackberry scone for Subaru. Subaru barely touched his scone, and sipped at him tea.

"This is far from CLAMP Campus. How did you hear of it?"

"Ah, Segawa-kun told me about it. His cousins live in this area." It was a convincing lie, Kamui told himself. Segawa Keiichi could have very well have told him about it, and he could very well have cousins in this area of the city.

Except that he hadn't told Kamui about it, and his now deceased parents had both been only children.

Subaru lifted an ebony-dark eyebrow but said nothing. He doubted that Segawa-kun had had anything to do with the choosing of this teahouse. His family had lived and worked in Nakano.

"How was your biology quiz today?" he inquired quietly, picking absently at the blackberries on his scone.

"If Aizawa-sensei's shocked expression was any indication, I think I did fairly well on it."

Subaru smiled slightly. "Have you really been doing so badly in biology as that?"

"Well, yes. It's not that the material is so difficult, but so much of it is memorization, and I don't really have the patience for it."

Priorities were interesting. Kamui rarely had the patience for school or homework. But when Subaru worked late, or just walked the streets of Tokyo late at night, Kamui was the only one with the patience to wait for him to come back.

Subaru was contemplating this when he heard the sharp sound of an indrawn breath. He looked up.

So this is what Kamui had been plotting this past week. He cast a glance across the table at his companion. Kamui met his gaze directly.

"Hello, Shinobu-san. Won't you and your friend join us?"

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