AN:  Muraki/Tsuzuki of Yami no Matsuei, written mostly to bother croik. That's my story and I'm sticking too it. Bother! Actually, I'm rather fond of this one. I think the ending kind of caught me by surprise.
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Permanent Midnight

When he said to me, we should go somewhere more private, this isn't what I'd had in mind.

Outside the snow is still falling in silent progression, each wisp of white like a moment until death. We haven't spoken since we arrived, and the only sounds are the hiss of wet wood on the fire and the dry, mocking laughter of wind through the walls. I don't doubt that someone is mocking us for being here.

I wonder if he's dreading the moment he runs out of coffee to brew and beds to make. Pilot lights to check and coats to hang to dry before the fireplace. I wonder if I'm dreading it. We've always been good, but I think we're better in the quiet places before reason kicks in. Where I would sleep with one eye open and he would not sleep at all.

But he's always been more beautiful in agony, and so I let him anguish a little longer. He's the one who said we should come to this place, when I sought him out only so he would know that I wasn't dead.

No. Nothing dies unless I say so.

I think he was relieved to see me. The look he gave me was one I had never seen before, at any rate. Once, he gave me meaning, and now, I think, it's the other way around.

And he's watching me. He thinks I don't know, but it's cold here and I can feel the heat of his stare. I let him look. Maybe, one day, he'll find what he's been searching for. "So," he says after a while. "Here we are."

"Here we are." When I trail my fingertips over the mantle, it sends a cloud of dust into the air. "Might I say, I don't much care for your decorator's sense of taste."

"Well, I didn't ask you, did I?" He's silent for a moment, and I think that we're right back to where we started. And then he says, "What do you want?"

Want? I had been hoping to catch up on old times, as they say, but I don't think he'll like that answer very much. "I'm not sure. You're the one who brought us here, Mr. Tsuzuki."

"Because no one knows where here is," he says. And I can see by his face that he's trying to decide whether or not it was a mistake to tell me. It doesn't matter. I'd known as much already.

"That's a bold move, wouldn't you say?" Bored already of this line of conversation.

His expression hardens. "It's always been me you wanted. Just tell me what you're after this time."

"And then what?"

"And then..." He hesitates. "I can't decide until you tell me."

"Maybe all I wanted was to get you alone." I start forward a step, and then give it up when he doesn't back away like I had expected.

"I beat you once already," he says.

"Yes, I know." Before I can stop it, my hand drifts to the hollow inside my left hip, tracing the line of an old scar. It's cold like this that makes it ache sometimes. "I'm quite all right now, though. There's no need to worry about me."

"Muraki..." He looks away. "Why can't you just die? How can you continue living... knowing what you are?"

I have to smile, because that's just like him. "How can you?"

"I don't..." He shakes he head fiercely. "We're not the same. I'm nothing like you."

"Yes, I know. But the question still stands." He doesn't answer right away, so I tell him what I've come to understand. "We're here to do the best we can in the time that we're given. They say that no one is truly dead until there's no one left alive to remember them. Even so, on a long enough time line, we'll all die young."

"If that's true, then I wonder how many people you're keeping alive," he says bitterly.

"I wonder how many you are, Mr. Tsuzuki." He straightens a little, like a man who's heard his name called on a crowded street. "But it doesn't really matter, does it? Soon enough we'll be gone too. It's inevitable."

And in an instant, he's standing in front of me, hands tightening into fists at his sides. He wants to hit me, but he won't do it. Not yet. "Do you think that justifies murder?"

"No." I reach out, take one of his hands in mine and force it to uncurl. His breath catches. "But don't worry about me. I'll pay for my crimes." I lift his hand for closer inspection. "Maybe I already have. I spent twenty years of my life pursuing you, and now that you're here all you can think about is how much you'd like to see me hurt."

"I'd hurt you if I could," he says softly.

"Yes, I know." His hand twitches between mine, and I expect him to pull away. That... might hurt a little. But maybe he's telling the truth and he really is incapable. "Perhaps some day you'll think of something. I shall be waiting."

He tilts his chin back, the way he does when he's nervous. "Tell me..."

"Yes?" I run my thumb lightly over the backs of his fingers.

"Tell me, does anything... mean anything?" He swallows hard. "In the end, does any of it really matter?"

And I smile, because I know the answer to that one. "No. Nothing matters."

I draw his hand to my lips and a shudder runs the length of his arm. "Good," I hear him say from miles and years away. "Good." And I tug him forward.

But he is not where he was a moment ago, and I don't bother opening my eyes because the sound I'm waiting for – of the door opening onto a snowstorm, then closing again – comes soon enough.