Wish.
by missBATTY, or, the Louvine Phantasm
1. Dusk
The emotional vampire.
It feeds on emotion to survive.
Four occurences of a spirit, and the cause will appear.
Her soul shards were so powerful that the witch wondered how much power they encompassed altogether. "You could see the soul shards she displayed. The power you exhibited, she wanted."
But she is not evil, this vampire. Only confused.
"Yes. You see it. The 'chimaera soul' - for each heart she has consumed in her confusion, a piece of it resides in her spirit. She could be anything she wants to be, kind, charming, intelligent... but only unknowingly cruel."
"She has your heart hostage."
But the owner of the soul was so obviously human.
Was she the one who had stolen his friendship, stolen his heart, stolen pieces of his soul, stolen his liberty?
As if mocking him, the shards appeared again at the back of his vision.
The wolf, pleading for his friendship.
The crying girl, demanding his love.
The dark vampire, feeding on the shadow of his soul.
The schoolgirl, asking for ownership.
The owner flinched and whimpered. The chimaera lunged with a dangerously clawed, twisted paw.
It rushed at the witch.
The witch protecting him. The witch who had saved him. The witch who he was sure had been important to whoever he was.
TRUTH!
"Yes, I am revealing the truth. The friend who gave up her heart for you is saddened that you're doing this now. That this monster rests at your core."
The owner's eyes filled with tears. Her eyes - were they turquoise? Blue? Green? Indigo? Or one green, one blue? You could almost touch the souls she had eaten through them.
But perched on her fingers was something that was undoubtedly his, aching to fly back into him.
"Watanuki's heart is so beautiful."
Who is Watanuki? The name seemed so familiar...
A tentacle wrapped around his ankle. The chimaera. Himself.
Now twenty feet hung above the sidewalk.
The witch was so far from him now.
Vision was ripped from him, from all but the scintillating crystal-like shards.
Like her soul shards.
The witch held her fist to him.
Slowly she opened her fingers.
The heart, a glowing orb in her palm, spread wings, butterfly wings.
A whisper flew through him, a crystal released from his hand, which he had never realised had been curled into a fist.
Yûko-san had given Watanuki his heart back.
Consciousness rushed into Watanuki, the memory, the sleepiness - and a burning pain.
The chimaera's venom had oozed down his leg to the knee - his pants where it had been were in tatters.
Then he wasn't in the chimaera's grip anymore.
He was in the soft grass, in front of Yûko-san.
The chimaera screeched, but crumbled and faded, leaving a corpse-like being, which looked like the long-dead twin of the owner.
A bat's and a dove's wing sprouted from her back. Her eyes were the iciest of blue.
Watanuki remembered.
Yûko-san puzzled the soul shards together and placed the orb in the fragile girl's heart.
"The death of what could have been, is also the death of what is."
An arrow flew toward the vampire, and Watanuki clenched his eyes shut.
He heard a snk, he heard her last breath.
But as Watanuki opened his eyes, an arrow clattered to the ground, with only a solitary droplet of blood to remind him.
Eventually, that too faded.
Epilogue.
Twilight.
"So that girl I saw, the one Yûko-san had me exorcise and the one whose soul shards were not-spirits-but-demons, why was she that way?" Dômeki asked, carrying Watanuki's things in one hand, the other occupied with helping his classmate use the crutches.
Watanuki winced at the light sting in the chemical burns - or what was left of them anyway - in his leg. "She was a weak vampire, and someone gave her their heart," he answered. "As in, she actually used to drink blood, but once she had a heart, she still had a need and so sought for other ways to satisfy her hunger. That's what Yûko-san said anyway. I don't get it at all."
"The vampire and the girl who gave her her own heart must have been really good friends."
"How do you know it was a girl?"
"When you kill someone, you end up with their memories. The girl who offered her heart knew she would die when she gave it to the vampire, but she did it anyway."
The pair were silent for a moment, reflecting.
But only for a moment.
